However, the telepathy trick required a solid link and was restricted by proximity. Hugh’s ambitious project to turn the whole of Luilekkerville against itself in an arch morality play on the vulgar glories of war had rather hit a snag with his main players turned away from him, and the ill-considered death of many of the early standout stars in his drama. Now, something was shaking his airborne home, throwing the whole wretched thing out of whack.
Hugh opened his eyes just in time to see Kane launch a high kick into Cecily’s proudly jutting jaw, sending her floundering backward like a dancer who’d just been relieved of his date.
Antonia turned her attention toward Kane, trying to fix him in her mental grasp, but the spots before her eyes were confusing her. On the decking, Cecily was trying to do likewise, but bother!—the ringing in her ears. Both women connected at the same time, as Kane tossed another flash-bang to the deck at his feet and turned his head away. It was the last one he had.
You’re mine, thought Antonia, directing the full extent of her mind powers on Kane.
You’re mine, thought Cecily, directing the full extent of her mind powers on Kane.
Whoosh!
—the flash-bang blurted out a great burst of light and sound between them.
* * *
U
P
AT
THE
FRONT
of the hanging gondola, in the lower section where the pilot sat, Algernon was aware that something was occurring above and behind him. The controls remained steady but the airship jostled as if caught on a gust of wind, the cacophonous sounds of explosions reeling across the heavens as Kane set off the flash-bangs in the compartment above.
“Enough of this,” Algernon spit, turning from the controls. The craft could take care of itself in hover mode, and he wanted to find out just what in the name of Her Royal Highness was going on up there.
He moved across the cramped pilot’s booth and reached for the metal ladder rungs, barely a head’s height above him. As he grasped the first rung, the front window of the airship came smashing toward him in a burst of splintering glass.
Algie brushed the glass away as shards slapped against his back and tangled in his hair. There was a man standing behind him. Algernon recognized him immediately, the dark figure he had tangled with in the burned-out factory where he had first constructed the airship, and the same man he had tussled with in the back alleys of Hope.
“It’s over, pretty boy,” Grant commanded as his Sin Eater materialized in his right hand. “Your reign of terror has finished.”
“You have me at a disadvantage, good sir,” Algie replied as he turned to face his would-be attacker. “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten your name.”
Grant began to answer but already Algernon was moving, rocking across the cramped pilot’s booth in a blur of phenomenal speed before driving the heel of his hand up toward Grant’s nose. It was a move calculated to force the cartilage up into Grant’s brain, killing him instantly. A combination of combat instinct and sheer luck prevented the blow from striking—Grant slapped out protectively with his right hand as he turned away from Algernon’s blow. As such, his outstretched arm took the full impact of the Dorian warrior’s savage strike, and Grant shrieked in agony as his arm went dead, the Sin Eater dropping from his grip and breaking free of its holster mechanism.
Algernon struck again without pause, bringing his other hand around in a tight fist that slammed against Grant’s right shoulder with the power of a sledgehammer. Grant staggered back against the broken window, but with nowhere to go the only place left was outside. In an instant, Grant felt himself overbalance and begin to fall, slipping through the shattered remains of the windshield and into the evening air.
Chapter 27
Falling.
For a moment it was as if it hadn’t really happened. It was so unreal, it was hard to take it in at all.
When Grant went crashing out the window high above Luilekkerville, pulling half the front panel of the metal shell with him, he had about one and a half seconds to go through all those emotions, get past the shock and get his head back in the moment.
Algernon’s punch had been powerful enough to knock Grant back, but it had not been a good blow, not full-on the way he had intended. Instead, his fist had struck just a glancing blow to Grant’s shoulder—albeit with enough force to leave his right arm nerveless and shunt him clean through the metal plate of the wall where the busted windshield had already weakened it. A direct hit would have thrown Grant so far out the front of the airship that he would have had no chance to survive; he would already be plummeting past the last of the ship and out into the great beyond.
Instead the ex-mag found himself tumbling backward, head and shoulders dropping as he fell through the gap in the pilot’s cubby, his feet grazing across the last quarter inch of the deck before meeting with nothingness.
Grant reached out—blindly, hopefully,
desperately
—seeking purchase on whatever came into his hands. His right arm was numb from the blow but he forced it to work—the survival instinct is the greatest motivator a human being has, and a whole bucketful of adrenaline serves to provide as much fuel as that body might possibly need, high-octane rocket fuel.
Eventually, Grant’s left hand clasped around something. In this instance, that “eventually” was maybe three seconds. Three long seconds where Grant’s heart kicked into overdrive and he felt nothing but
nothing
beneath his feet. Three long seconds where he had fallen almost fifteen feet through empty air. Then he was swinging through the air on a rope, the coarse fibres hot against his one-handed grip as he was suspended in a wide arc over the cathedral tower. The red circle of window was glowing beneath him like the setting sun, beaming down on the ville like the eye of a cyclops. Grant watched it hurtle under him, bent his legs to lift then over the highest point of the cathedral tower lest he be pierced by it.
The rope was one of the guy ropes that worked as anchors when it came into dock. This one ran up to a strut not four feet from the front of the depending metal container resting beneath the balloon. Grant gripped the swinging rope with both hands, struggling to hold himself there as he swayed wildly over the smoking streets.
Above, Algernon—the blond-haired Dorian male—was standing at the break in the front of the airship’s gondola box, watching as his foe miraculously cheated death. “Well played, old man,” Algernon called, pulling something from the inside pocket of his frock coat, “but it won’t do you a jot of good.”
Swinging wildly in the air a dozen feet beneath, Grant tried to make sense of what the superman was doing. He held a pistol in his hand, a bulky thing with chimneylike vents placed at either side of the grip. Grant recognized it—it was the same pistol that Hugh had tried to blast him with back in the factory in Panamint, the heat beam weapon that had overloaded his shadow suit and almost fried him underneath.
Grant watched from his swaying position as the supersoldier took aim at him, sighting down the length of the blaster.
Pzzz-chow!
The heat beam blasted toward Grant in a line of lava-orange, burning through the air with a sizzle of fried molecules.
Grant winced, the heat beam missing him by inches rather than feet.
Above, Algernon was laughing as he blasted again, the hot beam burning up the air. “No escape now, old man,” he bragged. “Your gun’s gone and you’ll be, too, in a moment.”
Grant didn’t doubt it as another red-orange line cut the air eight inches from his face.
* * *
K
ANE
’
S
FLASH
-
BANG
turned the interior of the gondola into a blizzard of light for a few seconds, and when it faded Kane could see nothing but glowing streaks of color across his vision. He should have used the protective lenses he had, but there hadn’t been time. He had felt the mental touch of the two women as they probed into his mind, and he had reacted, survival instinct kicking in, a trapped animal lashing out.
The glow was fading now, not from the room but from his eyes. He was all out of flash-bangs, he knew that much, so whatever was left was going to need something else. The two women lay there, the brunette sprawled on the deck at Kane’s feet, the blonde propped against the exterior wall, semisprawled against the low bench that sat snug beneath the open windows. Both women wore the same expression, a look of blank bewilderment. Their mouths were open and drool was forming on their lower lips, snaking slowly down their chins.
It took a moment for Kane to work out what had happened. The two women had tried to pierce his mental shell with their violent telepathic assault, but he had stepped out of the way, igniting the flash-bang. Somehow, in all the confusion, they must have latched on to one another instead, driving mental stakes into each other’s brains, sending them both into oblivion.
Kane activated his Commtact, a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. “Grant, I think I’m about wrapped up here,” he said as he turned back to golden throne where the other one waited in his trance.
The throne was empty.
“What the—?” Kane began.
Something struck him from behind and Kane went tumbling across the cabin before slamming into the metal hide with a great clang of flesh on metal. The impact left a dent in the hull so deep that one could almost see Kane’s profile in it.
Hugh strode across the passenger cabin and lifted Kane from where he had collapsed on the deck. The handsome dandy was swimming in Kane’s blurred vision, and Kane could only barely hear the words over the sound of blood pounding in his ears as Hugh drew his face to close to his own. “You’ve ruined my beautiful performance, little man,” he hissed, “and I don’t respond well to critics. Any last words?”
“Surrender,” Kane said through bloody lips, “while you still can.”
With a snarl of anger, Hugh tossed Kane aside like a rag doll. Kane sailed through the air and crashed into the thin metal shell of the passenger compartment. Into—
and through.
* * *
J
UST
BELOW
THE
FRONT
of the metal gondola, Grant was swinging wildly to avoid the fearsome blasts of heat from Algernon’s ray beam. If just one of those hit him, he knew, it would liquefy his bones through the flesh, turning him into nothing more than a bubbling puddle contained in a shadow suit.
Pzzz-chow!
The beam blasted again, searing the air and leaving a shimmering heat haze in its wake.
Grant estimated it would take a moment for Algernon to get his eye in, such was the crazed loop through which his body was racing at the end of the swinging rope. But Algernon had other thoughts.
Algernon adjusted his aim, targeting not Grant but the end of the rope where it connected to the ship. Sighting down the gun, Algernon fired another blast from the heat ray, clipping the top edge of the rope in a burst of black smoke. Smart guy, Grant realized. He’s going to burn the rope and let gravity do his work for him
.
“Sorry, old fruit,” he called down to Grant, “but I just don’t care to lose.”
“Yeah?” Grant snarled back, letting go of the rope with his left hand and trusting his right—already weakened from multiple blows—to hold him in place long enough for what he had in mind. “Well, me, either.”
The heat beam cried again, setting light to the rope as Grant dangled below. But that didn’t matter now. Grant’s left hand was already reaching around and almost behind him to where he had strapped Shizuka’s sword to his belt. In one single, swift movement, Grant had the blade free and he hurled it up, across his dangling body, up toward Algernon where the man was readying another blast of the burn beam.
Grant was swinging so wildly that he didn’t see the blade strike home. But Algernon did, though he couldn’t quite believe it. Thrown with incredible force, the
katana
’s twenty-five-inch steel blade drove straight into Algernon’s chest where he leaned out over the side of the pilot’s rig, burying itself to the hilt right through his heart. The Victorian supersoldier was launched upward with the force of Grant’s blow, dropping the blaster. Pulled off his feet, Algernon was shoved into the low metal ceiling with a mighty clang as the blade pierced his chest and embedded itself in the gondola’s roof.
But it wasn’t enough. Hanging there, his feet eight inches above the deck, with the
katana
pierced straight through his heart, Algernon merely growled. If there was pain then he didn’t show it, and no blood leaked from the wound beyond an initial trickle that seemed to coagulate almost as soon as it appeared.
Alone in the cabin, hanging from the ceiling like a piñata, Algernon reached mercilessly out for the control switch that would release the atom bomb, the final act of the great art project.
“All art is ephemeral,” Algernon murmured as he reached. “Its perfect existence should be fleeting, and the artist should know when the performance has come to its natural end.”
* * *
T
HE
WRENCHING
SOUND
of tearing metal echoed in Kane’s ears, shrieking through his skull like nails down a blackboard as he crashed through the metal shell of the gondola, landing on one of the scaffoldlike struts that acted as a cage around the balloon.
Kane lay on a narrow metal strut, winded and struggling to catch his breath. Far below lay the streets of Luilekkerville, waiting patiently like the dreadful punch line to a joke that began with him falling to his death. Kane turned his attention back to the gondola construction that hung beneath the balloon, watched as the dashing figure of Hugh Danner strode through the torn gap in the side of the gondola, giving no thought to stepping into the open air. Danner’s face was red with anger, and his long hair and the tails of his maroon frock coat whipped about him with the wind.
“Philistine! Ingrate! You’ve ruined what was to be the most celebrated performance of all time,” he snarled.
“Show’s over,” Kane told him, bringing his Sin Eater around to target the approaching Dorian. “Time to drop the curtain and take your final bow.”
The Victorian supersoldier moved with astonishing speed. Eyeblink-fast, he was standing before Kane on the narrow skeletal arm of metal, his right foot kicking out and knocking the Sin Eater from Kane’s hand. Kane heard something crack in his wrist, hoped that it was the retractable holster and not his ulna bone.
And then the immortal warrior was upon him, driving his hands at Kane’s face as he threatened to throttle him. Kane felt the pressure against his throat as Hugh adjusted his grip to break his neck, just as Harold had done a few days before.
* * *
A
LGERNON
’
S
PALE
HAND
grasped for the bomb release lever—and missed. He was stuck fast against the cabin roof, the thrown samurai sword holding him there as effectively as a clothes peg. His fingers clawed at empty air, two inches away from the switch that would unleash certain nuclear doom on the people of Luilekkerville.
A moment later, Grant came scrambling through the makeshift hatch in the front of the cabin, breathing heavily, his face tense with worry. He eyed Algernon where the man struggled against the cabin roof like a pinned butterfly. “Things are looking up for you, huh?” he taunted as his gaze took in the damage to the cabin.
Algernon pierced him with a vicious look of hate. “You’ve absolutely ruined my shirt, you cad,” he spit out.
“Yeah?” Grant asked. “Sorry about that.”
With a howl of frustration, Algernon rocked against the sword that had him pinned to the cabin roof and kicked out, jabbing the heel of his shoe into the controls with a resounding crack before Grant could react. Sparks erupted across the control circuit. The Dorians were stronger than a normal man and while Algernon’s last stab at victory had failed to launch the atom bomb, his kick sent the airship into motion once more, beginning a perilous descent toward the streets of Luilekkerville.
“They’re dead,” Algernon snarled through bloodied teeth. “The people, the project—all of it must end in death. When the ship strikes the ground, the bomb will go off regardless. And
I’ll
survive. You can’t stop it now, foolish man.”
Grant struck the dangling figure a bone-crunching haymaker to the jaw, sending Algernon into a state of semiconscious delirium. “Shut up and let me think,” he snarled, turning back to the sparking control board.
“Now,” Grant continued, muttering to himself, “let’s take a look at what we have here.”
Grant’s eyes roved over the controls, studying the strange collection of levers, dials and knobs. He had piloted a number of different vehicles in his time, from the magistrate’s favored Deathbird Apache helicopters to the alien tech of the Mantas, but he had never seen anything like this. The levers were intricately carved with Latin identifiers, and the whole pedestal had been designed as much for decorative effect as for operation. Grant could guess that one of the flickering dials was the altimeter, showing even now the rapid descent of the craft as it plummeted earthward. No doubt another dial showed the speed, though he was damned if he could work out which on the cracked and sparking board. At least he had the experience to recognize the language, even if he could not read it.
“Latin,” he grunted. “Huh. Where’s Baptiste when I need her?”
With that, Grant reached for the controls and decided it was time to take a crash course in airship piloting—emphasis on
crash.
“Now, everybody just hang on,” he said, engaging his Commtact and automatically broadcasting the instruction to Kane and Brigid.