Doc paused on the catwalk running down the center of the Storm Cloud’s interior. He took his bearings. Directly above, crewmen descended toward him along access ladders, their feet in felt boots. Below, blue-uniformed officers ascended toward him. None would shoot at him, nor he at them, with giant envelopes of hydrogen surrounding them. Forty feet below was the access shaft down to the liftship’s gondola.
Then he saw fire blossom above, toward the bow.
He leaped over the catwalk rail and dropped past the men below, catching one crossbeam twenty feet down, stopping his plummet through sheer grace and strength; the impact wrenched his shoulder and he felt the flesh of his arm sear where it came into contact with steel. Then he dropped again, slowed himself by grabbing a beam ten feet above the shaft, and hit the catwalk beside the access shaft. He could already feel the heat from the wave of fire advancing toward him, and the men above were yelling. He swung into the shaft and slid down the length of the metal ladder into the gondola.
Above were the roar of fire and the screams of the men caught in it. His arms trembled from iron poisoning.
He stood in the vehicle’s bomb bay. He saw the hatch leading into a room forward, another leading aft, open doors showing the buildings of Neckerdam below. And Harris Greene, panting, stood in the forward doorway.
“Fancy meeting you here,” said Harris.
“I’ll look aft, you look forward,” Doc said. “Don’t waste time. We’re on fire.”
“Good to see you, too.” Harris went forward.
The third door Doc opened belonged to Duncan.
His withered, ancient son lay bleeding on the floor. Doc saw the ruin of the man’s eyes and winced in sympathy.
For a moment he was awash in memories. Dierdriu smiling at their baby boy as she nursed him. Finding the body of the child Duncan strangled the morning he left home forever. The guardsman of Beldon telling him his wife had been found in the river. The body of Siobhan Damvert with her head twisted around nearly backwards and her eyes staring sightlessly.
Doc tried to harden himself against what had to happen now. And, just as it had been twenty years ago, he could not.
Duncan moved feebly, hearing him. “Captain?”
“No.”
“Desmond.” Duncan shrank away from him, drawing back against the wall of his cabin. “Father. Don’t kill me.”
Doc felt something break in his heart. “I’m sorry, Duncan. Gaols cannot hold you. If you do not die now, someone else will die because of you.” He crossed the cabin, knelt before his boy, and drew his pistol. He saw his hand shake. His head felt light as once more the decision to do what he had to do threatened to overwhelm him.
Duncan brushed his leg against Doc’s.
Doc saw a flare of brightness as lightning leaped between them. He heard the unaimed gun fire in his hand, felt his muscles jerk as the electrical jolt coursed through him.
Then he knew nothing more.
Duncan heard Doc fly across the cabin, hurled by the force of the old devisement. Doc hit the wall with a shuddering impact. Duncan heard him slide to the floor and go still. Smelled the odor of charred flesh rising from him.
Imbecile, Duncan thought. You didn’t think I’d prepared myself after our last meeting? For years I’ve renewed that devisement each morning . . . and finally it has proved worth the effort.
He straightened up, ignoring the pain in his eyes—the hurt and blindness would be gone once he passed some gold to very expensive doctors he knew. He groped around on his tabletop. Now, where did I leave that knife?
The gondola narrowed as Harris continued forward. The passageway passed between a small washroom starboard and a larger radio room port.
The next chamber was some sort of map room with windows to either side. Two long tables were laid out with maps and charts Harris didn’t bother to look at. The hatch forward was open.
Harris stepped through into the control room, the forward end of the gondola. Windows all around provided a panoramic view of Neckerdam and the river immediately ahead. A large, impressively carved wooden wheel, a ship’s wheel, was situated at the very front.
A uniformed man stood there, impassively guiding the airship on its course. He turned a little as Harris entered. He was bearded, looked sober and intelligent.
“Where’s Duncan?” Harris asked.
“Aft,” the captain replied. “Cabin Four.”
“We’re on fire.”
“You think I don’t know?” The man sagged just a little. “I’ll be putting her into the river. I won’t let her fall on the city. You have nothing to fear from me.” He turned away.
Knife in hand, Duncan crawled up his father’s body. Three cuts, he decided. A grimworld smiley-face. One blow each into Doc’s eyes, then a sweet curve across his throat. It would be a charming way to remember the man; a pity he couldn’t photograph the moment. Then, he’d make his way to the pilot room and find out just what was going on—
For the second time, someone entered his cabin without permission. “Captain?” he asked.
Harris stepped through the doorway and sidekicked. The blow caught Duncan in the sternum and threw him off Doc’s body. Harris felt frail bones break under the blow.
Duncan, twisting in pain but not unconscious, crawled away from his enemy. There was hate as well as pain in his voice this time: “Who’s there?”
Harris stared at the shriveled, bloody-faced thing in the corner. Every bit of him wanted to take another two steps and kick the life from Duncan Blackletter.
But Duncan had caught Doc in a trap. He might have others waiting. Harris wouldn’t let Duncan win through a mistake. Even the delay it took to kill him might prove fatal.
He grabbed Doc beneath the arms, pulled him out into the passageway. Doc looked bad, with burns on his arm, smoke rising from his hair and clothes.
“Who is it?” Duncan asked, voice harsh yet quavering. “Talk to me, you wretch—”
Harris let go of Doc. He stepped back into the cabin and swung the door away from the wall. He struck an open-palm blow at the inside knob. The blow knocked it free. “Enjoy your ride,” he said, his voice cold. Then he stepped out again and closed the door.
As he dragged Doc forward, he could feel the liftship tilting down at the bow; the angle increased, became troublesome even before he got into the bomb bay.
Smoke poured down from the access hatch; the air was hot and getting hotter. In a bare minute, he’d be burning. He heard pounding from the direction of Duncan’s cabin. Pounding and shouting.
The gondola was only two or three hundred feet above the ground. Even as he watched, the liftship moved out over the river.
The gear in the bomb bay included a winch. But it was wound with cable and not rope—nothing he could tie around Doc.
With his knife, he cut free a piece of the rappelling line he’d climbed. He tied one end to a loop at the end of the winch cable, the other end to Doc. He hoped the decidedly non-Boy Scouts knots would hold. The skin on his back was blistering from heat before he was done.
“Captain?” he called.
“Not done yet,” the man replied.
Harris shook his head. He gently levered Doc over the lip of the hole in the floor, keeping his grip on the rope, playing it out as carefully as he could; it still tore flesh of his palms as Doc descended.
A moment later, he threw the main lever on the winch, watched the motor turn and cable unspool; he grabbed the cable with both bloody hands, swung out over open space, and rode the cable down, Doc dangling a dozen feet below him.
The heat was scarcely better here. He glanced up, saw the entire surface of the liftship glowing gold and white, a cleansing fire that would burn the last of Duncan Blackletter’s stain from this world.