Thus wherever he went, he was accompanied by an ever-growing crowd of boisterous well-wishers.
He found this very odd as usually whenever people in general discovered a person was a Spark, the crowd tended to run in the other direction.
He shook his head. This is Mechanicsburg, he reminded himself.
Riding above the crowd, Krosp noticed a snail-seller pause. The man began looking around wildly. Krosp sniffed. Was that coal gas?
With a roar, a column of flame erupted from the nearest lamppost, sending the snail-seller stumbling back until he collided with his cart.
The crowd screamed. Some in fear, some in delight. This only intensified as, one by one, other lampposts also burst into flame. Soon every street was lined with brightly burning posts.
Gil stared. “This is no ordinary gas leak! What—” He turned back to his companions, and saw the look on Vanamonde’s face. He grabbed the man’s coat and dragged him closer. “Von Mekkhan! You know what this is?”
Van’s eyes looked like they had seen something impossible. “The Lady Heterodyne,” he said, gesturing at the lamps. “She must have woken something. The town is… is beginning to defend itself.”
Gil looked at him blankly. “Defend itself from what?”
Aboard the pink airship serenely drifting above Bill and Barry Square, things were quiet. The lights had been dimmed to night-watch levels. The only oddity a seasoned flyer would have noticed would have been gleaned from the gauges and dials themselves, which revealed that the batteries and boilers were still operating at full strength. Usually at night they would have been switched off and set to standby mode.
Captain Abelard grimaced as he checked his instruments for the hundredth time that day. An airman learned that as far as airships were concerned, less was better. This naturally led to an abhorrence of waste and the thought of fuel being burned while the ship simply hovered gnawed at him. The only balm was the agonized grousing of Duke Strinbeck, who was apparently the man paying for it all.
The captain glanced over at the man responsible for this “wasteful extravagance” and sighed. Kraddock was a damn fine wheelman and no mistake, but right now he looked like a middie who’d been given the wheel for the first time and told, in strict confidence, that the only reason the ship stayed up was because the wheelmen kept telling themselves that they were really birds.
The thought brought a touch of a smile to the captain’s mouth. He’d always loved that one. But not here. Not now.
The second mate came onto the bridge. Shift change already? Indeed it was. Lieutenant Waroon activated the shipboard intercom and deliberately rang the ship’s bell twice, paused, and then once again. “Three Bells,” he announced. “Stand down for the Night Crew!”
The Night Crew, who, as tradition demanded, had stood off the bridge until it was their time, entered and went through the official turnover procedure.
Captain Abelard ran a tight ship, but a happy one, and so the crew felt free to chat briefly, not that there was much to report. As Ensign Stross reported to his replacement, “Dead simple and boring all the way, Mate.”
But, as the captain had expected, there was trouble with Kraddock. His replacement stood by and requested the wheel but the old man refused to relinquish control.
Abelard sighed. It happened sometimes. “Airman’s Grip” they called it, when, for whatever reason, a crewman latched ahold of something and simply refused to let go, convinced that if they did something terrible would happen.
It usually was the signal that an airshipman was ready to settle down and leave the air. The captain shook his head. He’d have never in a million years have thought that would happen to an old cloudnuzzler like Kraddock.
He stepped over, and spoke in a low, but firm voice. “Hey, old timer, shift’s over.”
Kraddock turned and saluted sharp enough, but his face was enough to cause the captain to draw in a quick breath. The wheelman was sweating like a ballast tank and his eyes looked like a pair of bloodshot boiled eggs. The captain wondered if he had blinked in the last several hours.
“Something is wrong, Captain,” the old man said. “I can feel it.”
Sturgeon, the other wheelman, rolled his eyes. “Patch the gas leak on him, will you, sir?” he appealed to the captain. “He’s been like this all day.”
“And don’t I know it. Ensign Kraddock, you are relieved—”
He was interrupted by one of the spotters. “Captain! Fire on the ground!”
The captain paused. “Let me see.”
The spotter pointed to a small park near the castle. Sure enough, it appeared that one of the lampposts was on fire. Odd.
The captain nodded. “Very good, Mr. Owlswick. Helio the coordinates to the town watch and—”
“No!”
The bridge crew turned as one man and stared at Duke Strinbeck as he stepped onto the bridge. Captain Abelard took a deep breath. Now what? “Your Grace?”
The Duke crossed his arms. “No communication with the town until Oublenmach gives the order. Were we unclear?”
The captain frowned. “But, your Grace, fire spotting is one of an airman’s sacred duties.”
The Duke waved a hand dismissively. “I am your employer, and I don’t give a bent gear about your ‘sacred duties.’ You will—”
“Another fire!” This time it was the starboard spotter.
Both the captain and the Duke paused.
“And another!” This time it was the navigator, peering out the windows.
“Two more over here!”
Mr. Owlswick gasped. “I don’t believe it! Sir! There’s dozens of them! Everywhere!”
“GET US OUT OF HERE!” Kraddock’s shriek caused everyone to leap into the air. “NOW!”
So frantic was the man that two of the bridge crew grabbed him as he tried to head towards the captain. “He’s gone mad!” one of them shouted.
Kraddock ignored them and addressed the captain, desperation in his voice. “Captain! Get us up! Get us out of Mechanicsburg airspace!” Kraddock’s hand, dragging one of the men holding him, pointed towards the ground, where hundreds of sparks could now be seen below. “It’s the Torchmen!”
Captain Abelard drew in a sharp breath as the old stories roared through his mind, but before he could say anything there was the unmistakable sound of a gun being cocked. Silence fell instantly. The Duke pointed his weapon at Kraddock. “I will shoot any man who tries to move this ship,” he said coldly.
Fury filled Captain Abelard. “Get that gun off of my bridge,” he roared, shaking a fist.
Strinbeck stared back. “Don’t touch me. We stay here!”
This galvanized Kraddock, who again began to thrash against the men holding him. “Take us up!” he screamed. “We’ll all die!”
Strinbeck’s eyes narrowed and he placed the barrel against Kraddock’s temple. “You will die now unless you shut up.”
“And don’t threaten my crew,” the captain snarled.
The two glared at each other. The pause was broken by Mr. Owlswick’s shout. “Captain! The fires! They…Sir, they’re moving!”
Captain Abelard froze. “It is the torchmen,” he breathed.
Strinbeck rolled his eyes. “I don’t like your tone, hireling.”
Captain Abelard had seen military action, fought hand-to-hand against pirates, and was once the last man standing at the end of a glorious fight at Montgolfier’s Rest—the notorious airshipman’s bar in Paris—but the punch that he landed upon Strinbeck’s jaw was the most satisfying one he had ever thrown. The aristocrat went down like a cut sandbag and crashed to the deck, motionless.
“That’s Captain to you,” Abelard snarled. Then he grabbed the intercom. “All hands,” he roared. “Dump all ballast! Emergency climb! Engines ahead full! We are birds! Fly for your lives!”