Dreadnought (The Clockwork Century #2)

Dreadnought (The Clockwork Century #2) Page 60

He said, “And they’re coming.”

Theodora Clay said, “What?”

As the exclamation made the rounds, the ranger came back inside, swiftly, nicking his arm on a triangle of unloosed glass from the window frame. He snapped the looking glass shut and jammed it into his pocket. “They’re coming!” he said again. “A huge goddamned wave of them! You—” He seized the conductor by the vest. “You get this thing moving! You make it move right now!”

“Let me see the glass!” Mercy demanded.

But he said, “If we don’t get out of here, and fast, you’re not going to need it.” And he shoved past her to the rear door, saying over his shoulder, “Get those civilians back in that car—get everyone in there who’s hurt, or who can’t shoot. Everyone else, up front! We need people who can shoot!”

The soldiers were disinclined to take orders from the ranger, but the captain gave the view from the window another steady gaze and reiterated them. “Out!” he shouted. “Everyone without a gun, get out! Get back into the forward car; you’ll be safer there,” he continued, beginning to herd them backwards the way they’d come.

The conductor was already gone, having obeyed the order to flee sooner—perhaps because he had his own glass, and was able to judge for himself that nothing good was coming his way. Mercy could not hear him or see him, but before long, she could hear the Dreadnought rising again, awakening from its temporary pause and firing up, blowing its whistle in a long, piercing, hawklike scream.

As the few remaining civilians were ushered away, Theodora Clay said, “No. No, I won’t go, not this time. Take my aunt and stuff her in that car if you must, but I’m staying. Someone give me a gun.”

“Ma’am,” said Lieutenant Hobbes. “Ma’am, you have to leave.”

“I don’t, and I won’t. Someone—arm me, immediately.”

“That isn’t going to happen,” the captain told her.

But she held her ground and continued to fuss and fight as the rest were sent away. The ranger returned to check the first car’s progress. He asked, “How are we doing? Where’s that conductor? He’d damned well better be up front, lighting the damn engine or whatever it is he does. We haven’t got another minute!”

At which point, Miss Clay spotted an opening. She flung herself at the ranger, who appeared half horrified, half repulsed, and wholly suspicious of the gesture. She pressed her well-​dressed bosom up against his chest and whined, “Oh, Ranger, you wouldn’t believe it—they’re trying to send me away, up into that first car!”

He replied, “Get off me, woman. We have bigger problems to attend to!”

But she didn’t get off him; she clung to him like a barnacle and wheedled, “They say everyone without a gun has to go back up front—stuffed there, useless—and I won’t have it.”

On the verge of seizing her wrists and flinging her away, he wanted to know, “Why’s that?”

She dropped away from him, as cold and prim as if she’d never touched him, except this time she was holding one of his Colts. “Because now I have a gun.”

“Woman!”

“Oh, you’ve got plenty of others,” she said dismissively. “I felt at least three. Shoot with those, and let a lady defend herself.” She turned away from him, concluding the conversation. She flipped the gun’s wheel open, inspected the contents, and spun it shut again. She let it swing from her fingers and held it out in her hand, testing its weight, before throwing it into her palm with an easy tip.

Even the ranger paused, though she wasn’t aiming anything at him. “Where’d you learn to swing one of those?”

She glanced at him sideways, then returned her attention to her inspection of the firearm. “My father’s a gunsmith. He does quite a lot of work for the government. A lady can learn plenty if she’s paying attention. Now, can I talk you out of a handful of bullets, or will I have to content myself with these?”

The ranger shrugged, dipped into a pouch on one of his gunbelts, and pulled out a fistful of the requested ammunition. He clapped it into her open palm and said, “Maybe you’re not perfectly useless after all.”

“And maybe you’re not a perfect barbarian. I’m always willing to be surprised by such things.”

“Y’all two stop flirtin’ over there,” Mercy groused. “We’ve got trouble.”

“Worse than that,” said the lieutenant. “We’re about to have company.”

Captain MacGruder said, as quickly as he could force the words out of his mouth, “There’s no way to barricade ourselves inside, not really. The best shots will have a better chance up on the rooftop. We’ll split our ranks, abandon the second passenger car, and concentrate on defending the smallest space possible.”

Theodora Clay was already out the door and climbing the ladder, and Ranger Korman was behind her.

The captain pointed out half a dozen others, saying, “But keep in mind, you’re on your own when the train gets moving again!”

As if to underscore the point, the Dreadnought’s boilers let off a keening sound, followed by the rattling of metal that was cooling and is being warmed once again. And behind that sound came the clatter and noise of something else—something inhuman, but not at all mechanical. It approached in a horrid wave, a cry unlike anything a living man or woman might make, coming from a thousand men and women, sickeningly nearer every moment.

Mercy said, “The injured! Get all the injured out of that second car!” Suddenly she couldn’t remember who was back there anyway, if anyone at all who was still alive. No one seemed to answer her, so she ran for the rear door. But Jasper Nichols and Cole Byron stopped her.

Byron said, “We’ll get them, ma’am.”

She saw that Jasper had a gun and wondered where he’d gotten it. Byron might have had one, too, but he had already turned away from her and headed out through the door. Soldiers came charging in around them and past them, and suddenly the first passenger car was immensely crowded.

The captain was standing on one of the seats, directing the crowd like a symphony, sending some men forward and some men up. Lieutenant Hobbes and two of his nearest fellows were sent to the conductor to help protect the front of the train and work the Dreadnought’s defense systems.

When the captain paused to take a breath, Mercy stood beneath him and said, “What about me, Captain? Where can you use me?”

He looked her up and down, his eyes stopping on the gunbelt she wore and the pieces she’d picked up on the battlefield. He pointed at her waist and asked, “Do you know how to use those?”

“Well enough.”

He hesitated and stepped down off the chair, to face her directly. They made a little island in the swirling bustle of frantic men seeking positions. He told her then, “Get up to the engine and help them there. That’s the most important thing right now, really. We’ve got to protect that engine. If we can’t get the engine moving again, none of us are leaving this pass alive.”

She drew up to her full height, took a deep breath, and said, “You’re right. I know you’re right. I’m going. And I’m going to do my best.”

Mercy Lynch had seen enough salutes in her time to feign a pretty good one, and she did so then, snapping her heels together.

A peculiar look crossed the captain’s face. Mercy couldn’t place it. She didn’t know what it meant, and there wasn’t time to ask him.

“Inspector Galeano!” the captain called.

“Here,” he answered.

“Accompany Mrs. Lynch, please. We need people up front, protecting the engine. And I’ve seen you shoot.”

“Absolutely,” the Mexican replied, and he hurried to her side, checking his ammunition.

The Dreadnought’s whistle blew.

The nurse turned and ran, the inspector beside her. They ran out through the forward door and shoved their way through the gold car, using their elbows to clear a path. When they finally pushed into the gleaming brightness of the snowy afternoon, they were both startled—very startled—to find that there was no snowplow attachment between them and the next car.

Mercy couldn’t imagine where on earth something so enormous could’ve possibly gone, but then she saw it being winched around on a cart. The wheeled platform it had been attached to had been levered off the track, and was being worked toward the front of the engine with a pulley system that defied description.

The sight made her pause, marveling at the smoothness of it. Three porters and two rail hands, whom she’d seen once or twice in the caboose over coffee—that’s all it took to maneuver the thing. It hardly seemed possible, yet there they were . . . and there it went.

The conductor shouted something to someone, and Lieutenant Hobbes’s voice rose up over the snow. Mercy caught only the last words, and they weren’t meant for her, but the inspector said, “Señora Lynch!” and spurred her forward, over the gap with a leap. There they met another soldier and another porter, who was carrying a tool that was nearly as long as he was tall.

“Ma’am,” he said to her in passing. “Inspector.”

The porter dropped the tool like a hook over to the other platform and, with the help of the soldier, began cranking the two cars together, closing the spot left by the snowplow attachment’s absence.

They pushed farther forward, into the fuel car with its stink of iron and condensed steam, and copper tubes and charcoal and smoke. Between the two sections of this car, there was a walkway, and on either side were the great reservoirs of coal and the immense processing equipment that produced and delivered the hydrogen. It loomed up above them, tall enough to close out the gleaming white sky and white cliffs. But through it they ran, and up into the next car, which wasn’t really a car so much as a wagon piled with crated ammunition that was affixed to the Dreadnought itself.