Something large descended onto the street, throwing a downwind that blew frost up from the road in huge, glittering clouds of particles that glinted like stars in the spotlights. The object moved over the car, towards the robots, then turned with surprising speed and touched down. It was an airship of some kind, although not one of the now-retired police aerostats. This was more like…
Rad’s eyes went wide. More like the Nimrod, the airship of Captain Carson. Rad raised a hand to cut out the glare and caught a glimpse of silver and metal
This thing was much larger than the Nimrod. And the last time Rad had seen the Captain’s explorer craft, it was jammed next to the bulk of an Enemy airship, the pair locked together and piloted out into the fog by the Captain’s companion, Byron.
Jennifer floored the accelerator with a yell and the car sprang free of the rubble, skidding to the right as the spinning wheels hit the ice. She turned, hard, but the road was too slick and although the car began to turn, it was still moving forward, towards the ship. Whatever it was, they were going to hit it, and Rad was fairly sure the car really was going to be wrecked this time.
Then the light cut out. For a moment the darkness was disorienting. Then the green of the car’s one remaining headlight flooded the view ahead, like there was suddenly a wall right in front of them. Rad flinched, throwing himself to one side instinctively, and the green light faded as the car continued to turn. There was a soft, deep thud as the car hit something and came to a stop.
Rad pulled himself upright.
They were inside the airship — it had opened a cargo door. The white spotlights illuminating the street were now out beyond the bay doors. Ahead, Rad could see the rubble of the collapsed building.
The car had collided with a collection of wooden crates and sacks of something softer, destroying several boxes and spilling the contents of the sacks. The air was filled with a harsh scraping — the sound, Rad realized, of the car’s stuck engine. Jennifer killed it, and the floor of the cargo bay tipped. The car slid against the wall, and the view of the road outside vanished as the airship lifted off and the cargo bay doors began to close.
Lights were thrown on outside. Rad looked around, and saw Jennifer and Kane were as surprised as he was that they been suddenly, unexpectedly, rescued from a dead end.
“Mr Bradley, a pleasure, as always,” came a voice, metallic and echoing, coming from all around them. The voice over the ship’s PA filled the cargo bay.
Rad felt Kane looking at him.
“Is that…?”
Rad nodded. Then he opened his door and swung a foot out. He leaned forward and looked at the cargo bay’s high ceiling. The place vibrated as the ship’s propeller engines carried them up and out to safety.
“Captain Carson, you sonovabitch.”
The PA squawked as the voice laughed.
“My dear detective, such a way with words,” said Carson. “Now, come up to the main deck, all of you. Follow the stairs. I’ll open the doors.”
Rad cracked a grin and slapped the top of Jennifer’s seat. “About time I started to count these blessings we all seem to have. Come on.”
He swung himself out of the car, Kane right behind him. Rad pointed to the narrow metal staircase ahead of them, leading to a walkway that ran around the hold halfway between the floor and ceiling. On the walkway at the back of the hold was the bulkhead door.
Kane took a step forward, but Rad turned back to the car. Jennifer hadn’t moved from the driver’s seat.
Rad peered in to the car’s interior. “You coming?”
She nodded, and Rad helped her out. But as she walked forward he kept his hand on the small of her back.
They had a lot of talking to do, all of them.
Especially Special Agent Jennifer Jones.
THIRTY-SIX
Carson led the way from the Nimrod, unbuckling himself as soon as the craft had touched down in the dark tunnel. He had hardly spoken except to bark the order to follow as he hobbled off the flight deck, wooden leg and wooden stick banging on the floor. Rad was right behind, grateful that his old friend was still alive but wondering what the hell had happened to him out beyond the fog. Along with the wooden leg and Santa Claus beard, Captain Carson was older by a decade.
Despite Carson’s disability, Rad and the others had to jog to keep up with the old man. They walked out of the tunnel into a huge chamber, a concourse of elegant marble, the blue ceiling immensely high and studded with lights like the night sky.
“What is this place?” asked Rad as they crossed from one side of the chamber to the other.
Finally Carson broke his silence. “It is called Grand Central. It has been here always, although never used. It is a train station.”
Carson led them up an inclined passageway and then down a set of wide, shallow stairs. Rad jogged alongside him. “There are no trains in the Empire State.”
Rad saw Carson grin under his beard. “Precisely,” he said. “The City Commissioners were never interested in this place. A veritable fortress, right in the heart of the city! I always thought it would be useful one day, so I had one of the tunnels converted to an airship dock. Splendid, isn’t it?”
“That’s one word for it, sure,” said Rad.
“Oh, Mr Bradley, you haven’t changed, haven’t changed a bit.” Carson clapped, his face lit in a grin Rad remembered well. “And, Kane, my dear fellow,” he said, turning to the younger man, “it is a sheer delight to discover you did not perish as we all thought. The Fissure is a strange and wonderful thing.”
“It’s good to see you again, Captain,” said Kane.
“Aha!” Carson came to a halt. In front of them was another large room, as impressive as Rad’s fleeting glimpse of the concourse above, but in a different way. Here the ceiling was lower and curved into great vaulted arcs, illuminated by up-lights that cast triangular shadows against the walls. The vaulted ceiling came together to form the inside of a flattened dome in the center of the room, creating a series of separated spaces like the segments of an orange. There were tables of varying sizes scattered around, and plenty of chairs, like the place was some kind of restaurant.
Carson hobbled forward and pulled out one of the chairs.
“Now, then,” he said, gesturing for the others to sit. “It is time we had a good, old-fashioned chat.”
Jennifer filled Carson in on recent events.
Rad watched as the Captain studied her golden mask, his one good eye moving over the features constantly. Something bothered Rad, and Jennifer had left out a couple of details from her account — like her search for her brother and her own investigations.
Rad rolled his fingers on the tabletop. Finally, he turned to Jennifer. “We’ve got a robot army coming for us, but the thing that bothers me is that your old boss here doesn’t seem to know who you are. You wanna tell us about that?”
“I-”
“And about what your brother has to do with the King of 125th Street?”
Jennifer sighed behind her mask and looked at the three men seated at the table. She pulled off her gloves, and played her fingers along the edge of the wood. Rad felt a jolt of surprise when he realized that her naked hands were now the only part of her, apart from her hair, that was visible. He knew his turn would come to explain to the others what he’d found in the theater freezer, and he wondered what her reaction would be when he told her about the glass head.
“I wasn’t an agent,” she said. “And I didn’t work for Carson, I worked for the City Commissioner — the other one, during Wartime. I was just an ordinary desk clerk, like a hundred others.
“I was attached to the group liaison between the robot yards and the Empire State. It was fine, we were fighting a war, but… I found things out about the ratings used on the Ironclads.”