Dawn's Early Light (10 page)

“Could dimensional travel cause damage like this, Agent Braun?” Felicity asked.

“In my experiences utilising æthergate travel, if something like this happened as a result, it has never been reported.” Eliza came from around the remains of the stern. “But we have seen plenty of damage done when something similar to æthergate science goes horribly wrong.”

Wellington smiled wryly. “In that case you call the Janus Affair, a reverse of polarity caused catastrophic failure. Failure far worse than what we're seeing here.”

“Æthergate science is still a science,” Bill offered. “This could just be a bad day at the lab.”

“But there are two problems to this deduction,” Wellington said. “If pirates are making their ships disappear completely, never to be seen again, these must be the best-equipped but thick-as-clotted-cream pirates.”

Felicity crinkled her nose as she looked up from her memo pad. “How so?”

“If a pirate is burying their treasure, presumably they will want to be able to get it back. Why hide something forever?”

“Fair enough point, Johnny Shakespeare,” Bill said, “so what's the second problem?”

“Not all the disappearances have been unregistered ships, have they?”

Felicity clicked her tongue. “He's got a point, Bill.”

“I know,” Bill grumbled. “I know.”

Regardless of the overcast morning, Wellington felt quite warm, as if the sun were shining directly on him, just for him.

But then the chill of the day returned. “Since we're all kickin' around ideas, how about this: pirates aren't making their own ships disappear, but can you think of a better way to pillage a ship? Just take the whole damn thing.”

Git,
Wellington seethed. “Quite a good deduction.” He waited as Bill walked around to the opposite side of the wreckage before continuing. “So let's expand on this theory—the disappearances are pirates, plucking ships from the sea and sky. The
Delilah
, an unregistered airship . . .” He pointed in the direction from where Eliza appeared. “Now there's a notion.”

“What?” Eliza asked.

“Extrapolate, Miss Braun. What if dimensional forces are indeed at play and the
Delilah
blew their engines trying to combat it?”

“I think I see where you are going with this.” Eliza walked down to Felicity and pointed to her legal pad. “We will need to contact Ministry headquarters and have them pull Case #18940912SWFA. It involves a device called the Frankenstein Array.”

“All right,” she began, writing feverishly. “And what does it do?”

“The array theoretically collects and regulates electric surges created during thunderstorms.”

Felicity paused in her note taking. “Theoretically?”

Eliza nodded. “The design implies it can do that, but if your calculations are off, even in the slightest, you don't have a power collector so much as you have an amplifier.”

“If memory serves,” Wellington said, “the laboratory where you found the Frankenstein Array is located where the hamlet of Lugano is.”

“Was.” Eliza raised her hand at Wellington, keeping him silent. “It wasn't me. The House of Usher had started a sequence with it when a thunderstorm happened in the valley. I think they wanted to vaporise Geneva.”

Felicity shrugged. “The last I heard, Geneva was still standing.”

“Remember that part I said about calculations being off?” Eliza asked. “The north wing of Frankenstein's stronghold was vaporised . . . along with Lugano.”

“The problem with the Frankenstein Array,” Wellington interjected, “is that you need incredibly bad weather to use it. Why would anyone dare such conditions?”

“If they were mad enough and knew the potential of something like the Frankenstein Array, they might. We never concluded if the schematics were destroyed in that blast. Usher could have sold them through underground circles.” Eliza walked over to the hole Wellington had earlier been studying intently and shouted, “Bill?” From the other end of the wreckage, the silhouette of the American agent appeared. “Think you can make it to the wheelhouse?”

“The gondola's listing pretty hard,” his voice echoed through the hull, “but I think I can, yeah.”

“See if there's anything you can find up there that can give us a clue as to their heading or destination, and weather reports. If they were using a Frankenstein Array, then they're waiting for storm fronts to come rolling in.”

Wellington's eyes darted between the hole in the keel and the spot where they had just seen Bill pop up. “Just a moment,” he muttered, standing where Eliza had called out to Bill.

“What is it?” his partner asked, her brow furrowing.

“In Major Brantfield's account, how did he describe the catastrophe again?”

“A sword of fire, I think he said.”

He looked back at the damage to the keel, and Wellington silently chided himself for not noticing it sooner.

Eliza looked at the hole. “What am I missing?”

“The hull,” Felicity said with a gasp. “Observe its decided curvature.”

Wellington had seen the keel damage as merely part of the engine room's, but now when he looked again, he noticed large chunks of its metallic hull were bent inward, as if something had punched through the gondola.

“The engine didn't fail on account of a power overload, nor did it fail during dimensional travel. This,” Wellington said, tracing the metal's bend with his finger, “was the entry wound, and that,” he said, pointing to the hole where an engine had once been, “is the exit wound. This ship was run through by something hot enough to melt metal on contact.” Wellington stepped back to examine the damage from a new perspective. “A sword from hell itself, he had said?”

Gunshots, in a sudden burst, tore away at the metal scraps at the ship's entry wound. Wellington grabbed the screaming Felicity as Eliza drew her pistols and started firing back in quick succession, providing cover for the moment.

“Fall back!” Eliza screamed as she reloaded her pistols. “Fall back behind the stern when I start shooting.” She snapped her second pistol shut, then took a long slow breath. Wellington admired the way calm washed over her face. “Now!”

With Eliza unloading her pistols in the direction of the hostile gunfire, Wellington and Felicity crouched low to the ground and scrambled for the
Delilah
's stern. Bullets kicked up sand and rock around Eliza, continuing to shuffle back until her pistols were spent. She then turned and bolted for the wreckage, small explosions, usually associated with explosive shells, following in her wake.

“Five gents, armed with what sounds like Rickies,” Eliza said, collapsing by Wellington and Felicity. She started fishing out bullets from her belt as she talked. “That's the good news.”

“And the bad?” Wellington asked.

“They have the high ground.” Her words stopped as holes suddenly appeared in the hull. “From where I saw movement, they're on that dune you were eyeing up.” She finished loading the pistol in her grasp, twirled it in her hand, and offered it to Wellington, handle first. “Something tells me, this time, you won't throw it back at me.”

He took the weapon, still warm from Eliza's touch. Exquisitely balanced. The
hei hei
design against the ivory was still quite appropriate for Eliza, only lovelier up close. He glanced up. “But I have the Nipper . . .”

She actually rolled her eyes. “I am sure that thing is cute, but in this situation I think my gun is more appropriate.”

She had a point.

Then Eliza D. Braun grinned. “Shall we dance?”

Wellington gave a slight nod. “I'll lead.”

Leaning out from cover, he caught a glimpse of a shooter high on the dune. He took a shot but merely sent the man's hat into the air. How he hated the crowns of American hats. They were so ridiculously tall!

From his side, Eliza fired, but her aim was more level to the ground. He looked in the direction of the shot just in time to see one man fall while the other ran for cover. Wellington's eyes immediately darted back to his original target. A small section of the dune was slowly rising up. It was just enough of a target to take his shot. This time, from the glimpse of spray reaching into the air, Wellington knew he hadn't missed. Two more shooters popped up from the top of the dune just before Wellington slipped back behind cover.

“One on the ground, one
in
the ground,” Eliza said over the rapping of bullets against the hull. “One target down on the dunes, two still remaining.”

The archivist dared to get a peek from their hiding place, but chunks of the
Delilah
raining down on him forced him back. “There are more up there. At least seven remain.” Wellington watched a man topside attempt to sprint for a flanking position. Wellington's shot was a step faster. “Correction. Six. How many rounds left, Eliza?”

“Five in the belt, and then we're done. Now where the hell is Bill?”

Felicity, who was cowering on the ground, offered no suggestions.

Wellington decided to concentrate on staying alive rather than worrying about the erstwhile agent, but that was when all thought was momentarily obliterated.

The dune looming overhead exploded; sand, dirt, and high grass flying in all directions. Eliza bolted out of their hiding place and drew a bead on the other man she had seen advancing on them. He staggered back, his brow knotted as if he were trying to understand what happened to his compatriots on the dune; then he dropped hard to his knees before surrendering to the ground. Another shell launched from the deck, tearing away at a small ridge of sand. The shot was enough to bring down the rest of the dune on top of what sounded like a trio taking cover behind wreckage and flotsam.

“Found the ship's armoury!” Bill's voice called from the top deck of the
Delilah
.

Wellington looked over to his side to find Felicity in a tight ball next to the hull, her fingers in her ears. He tapped her gently on the shoulder and she gave a start.

“I think we're safe,” he offered.

She pulled her hands away. The poor thing was shaking like a leaf. He offered her a spot of help in standing, but suddenly Felicity was wrapping her arms around him. Wellington could now feel her trembling all over, feel her body pressing into his own form with each deep breath.

“Easy there, Miss Lovelace,” Wellington said, his hand searching for the right way to console the terrified woman.

“I am reminded why I prefer the library work over fieldwork,” she said with a gasp. She was looking up into Wellington's eyes, her own gaze soft, vulnerable, and yet quite alluring. “The quiet.”

“Yes, well, umm . . .” He tried patting her back a little harder, but her embrace on him tightened. “All's well that end's well?”

“You were amazing, Mr. Books,” she said, her eyes wider, her smile warm and alluring.

“Yes,” a voice came from behind him, “a wonder on the battlefield, aren't you?”

He craned his neck to look over to Eliza. Why did she look so upset? She didn't have a traumatised librarian clinging onto her like ivy. Wellington gave Felicity two more quick pats on the back before wrenching free of her.

He stumbled over to where Eliza was removing a satchel from one of the would-be assassins. “Rather lucky, don't you think?”

Eliza opened the bag, rummaging through it. “Luck has nothing to do with it,” she said, looking up at him. “Welly, why would assassins—all of them carrying satchels—come for us at a shipwreck and break into an open shootout?”

Wellington paused, then saw the reasoning there. “They were just as surprised as we were.”

“Bring me that other man's bag,” Eliza said, returning to the one in her hands. “I have another idea.”

As she began pulling out an assortment of items, Wellington went to the second dead man and relieved him of his pack. Inside he found an assortment of heavy glass bottles.

Eliza took a whiff of one of the bottles she had set out before her and recoiled. Shaking her head, she peered into Wellington's bag. “Just what I thought.”

“What?”

“These are accelerants. I would have no doubt the men topside are carrying liquids that are volatile in nature. Maybe even high strength acids.”

Wellington looked back at the other man and then up at the dune where the sniper had been. Only five of them, but with the right tools, they would make easy work of this site. “Cleaners?”

“No bodies? No wreckage? It would make sense to have them waiting on a word, in case of something like this.” She returned her attention to the corpse, and then sat back on her haunches. “Well now,” Eliza said, lifting up the dead man's hand and inspecting his ring, “looks like this case just got a touch more interesting.”

The shooter, much like his friends, was not a man of means nor privilege. They all wore the trappings of labourers; whether that labour was on the docks or farming fields, it was difficult to conclude. Harder to conclude still was how this man and the other nearby came to wear such fine silver rings, each displaying the same sigil carved in a cut of obsidian. Wellington felt himself shudder slightly at the sight of the raven.

He looked up to the dune still smouldering from Bill's attack. He then turned back to Eliza. “If the House of Usher are involved—”

“One step ahead of you.” Eliza relieved Wellington of her pistol before calling out, “Bill! We got to get a move on!”

Both Bill and Felicity appeared from the stern. Bill was carrying what looked like a pair of small cannons. “Got you a little something to remember me by, Lizzie. Where to now?” he said with a sparkling grin.

“We've identified these boys. They're with the House of Usher.”

“Really?” Felicity's hand went to her chest. “Do we need to call the home office for reinforcements?”