Fiddlehead

Sixteen

The steep slopes of Missionary Ridge were cold and treacherous—muddy from the rains of the past few days, and slowly freezing as the temperature dropped yet lower and a blustery wind kicked up from the west. Spitting hints of rain slapped against the windscreen as Henry drove, and flicked inside the open cab to sting Maria’s cheeks. She huddled deeper in her coat and burrowed as far as she could back in her hard seat, despite the discomfort. She could feel the gears shift and yank, and the frame behind her shoulders rattled as the car tugged against the road’s slick, unforgiving ruts.

The dock itself was perched high atop the tree-covered ridge overlooking the city, outside the wall and far enough away to provide a generous view.

“Tennessee likes to say their wall is one of the wonders of the modern world,” Henry told her through chattering teeth. “I don’t know if that’s true, but”—he drew the vehicle to a halt and set its brake so it wouldn’t roll—“it’s a sight to behold all the same.”

“Agreed,” she said, through lips so numb she could scarcely form the word. Without the wind rushing in the windows, the world seemed somewhat warmer; but as soon as she opened her door and stepped to the ground, she found the currents were almost worse up there in the scenic elevations.

She wished for a good umbrella, something that would fend off ice and rain alike.

On second thought, it was just as well she didn’t have one, as it would not survive the weather—or so she concluded when a fierce gust shoved up against her side, peppering her cheeks with needle-cold shards of sleet.

“Flying in this weather won’t be any fun.”

“Won’t be very safe, either, but we don’t have much choice.” Henry tucked his own coat closer and made a beeline for the ticket house, a long, narrow building with four counter windows ready to do business.

While he handed over his papers and sorted out the arrangements, Maria eyed the dirigible offerings. She counted three big transport ships, far too large for their needs—and almost certainly too big for them to fly as a pair—but they had closed-in cabins with enormous glass shields, so she wished for one all the same. Two others were middling-sized, though one of those looked too bedraggled to fly. And she thought she spied several smaller crafts behind a tall wooden fence, the tops of their domes peeking above the barrier, bobbing against one another in the wind.

Henry returned with a pass and a set of keys in hand. “Let’s go. The ticket girl says that the weather’s supposed to get even worse. A storm’s coming, spinning up out of the Gulf.”

“Little late in the year for that,” Maria grumbled. “You’d think the weather would be warmer, if that’s where it’s coming from.”

“You would indeed, but such is not our lot in life. Not today, anyway.”

They hiked against the wind until they reached a big gate, which opened with the turn of the largest key on Henry’s ring. Once inside, they were protected from the worst of the chill, for the fence and the ships themselves served to break up the gale. “They tried to talk me out of it, actually,” he told her, scanning the rows for the right slot. “They said we’d be crazy to fly today, and whatever we’re doing could wait for morning.”

“What did Mr. Troost tell them when he reserved the craft?”

“I’m not sure, but it had something to do with the war effort. I think he told them you’re a nurse, and I’m a doctor, and we’re running an emergency aid something-or-another to someplace. I’m sure the particulars were fascinating. He has a knack for detail.”

“Strange little man, that.”

“And you have a knack for understatement. Here, this is it: the Black Dove.” He used another key to unlatch the ship’s anchor from a claw-style mooring, then pulled a lever inside the craft. The hook and chain retracted with a tinny grind, then disappeared into a side panel that closed behind them.

It didn’t look so bad. Open to the elements, more than not. Engine-powered, but controlled by foot pedal, so their feet would dangle over an open chassis through which they could watch the land pass by below.

“It’s sturdy enough,” Henry surmised. “We’ll freeze our noses off if we don’t wrap up, but then again, we might freeze them off anyway. I don’t know about you, but I can hardly feel mine anymore.”

They climbed inside and drew the frame doors shut behind them. The seats featured a long strap of good hemp canvas to serve as a belt, but it fastened across them both, securing them to little but each other. Henry worked up a blush, but Maria refused—she was glad for the closeness.

“We’ll both stay warmer this way,” she told him as she settled herself as comfortably as possible, without a hint of an improper struggle. “Now, I’ve never flown one of these before, but I’ve ridden in one. What can I do to help?”

“Navigate,” he said as he slipped a pair of goggles over his glasses and urged her to do the same. He used another key from the ring to remove a steel lock from around the ignition, then leaned out the window and deposited the keys and the lock into a basket provided for the purpose … and cranked the dirigible to life.

Its motor purred willingly, if with a faint clatter, while it warmed, then quivered, and then lifted them off the ground. Henry took an experimental turn or two with the thrusters, testing them for responsiveness. He fiddled with the steering mechanism and flipped switches and tugged levers.

Maria didn’t think this looked very complicated, in the grand scheme of things. She resolved to learn how to fly a dirigible upon her eventual return to Chicago—assuming she didn’t freeze to death in the sky above north Georgia. Well, assuming also that her mission was a success. And that the world was not overrun by necrotic leprosy.

Though, as the dirigible gained altitude, she considered that a plague might be all the more reason to learn how to fly. Victims of the ailment could run and eat, but they couldn’t chase her off the ground, could they?

Henry valiantly fought the drafts and currents, forcing the Black Dove high enough to pass the ridge. His gloved fingers were tight on the controls, and his eyes dashed back and forth between the readouts, the levers, and the sky. Without looking at Maria, he asked her, “I gave you Troost’s map, didn’t I?”

“Got it right here,” she said, withdrawing it from the satchel where she’d stashed it. Keeping a firm grip, she splayed it across her lap. “Do you see the southbound road?”

“No, but it can’t be far.”

He was right; it wasn’t far. They found it fast, puttering and swaying against the intermittent rain and wind, dipping up and down above the trees, only to drop back down into the valley as they soared past the wall, so near that Maria could’ve stuck out her hand and touched it. Her stomach dropped and lurched, but luckily she hadn’t eaten since the night before, so there was nothing present to cast out over Lookout Mountain as they careened off to the south.

The weather worked against them every mile of the way. It buffeted them head-on, and sometimes threatened to throw them off course. Henry wore himself out keeping the craft as steady as he could, and eventually found some violent rhythm to the trip. Maria couldn’t see his eyes behind the lenses, but she had a feeling that they were hard and unblinking.

“There’s a spyglass in my bag,” he shouted to her over the rushing air and rumbling motor.

“I’ll get it.” She nodded, and fished around until she found it.

“I’m not seeing much traffic down there, are you?”

“No,” she said loudly back, though her view through the spyglass was compromised by the lenses she wore to protect her eyes. “That’ll change as we approach Atlanta. It’s picking up even … even now.” She gestured at the road, then off to the side, where a large factory compound coughed out soot from three tall towers. “That’s Dalton, I believe.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

“So”—she squinted back down at the map, and pointed to a spot with one gloved finger— “we’re about here. Still ninety miles from the city, I’d estimate, but I’ll keep my eyes open. If we’re lucky, they’re still quite a ways outside town.”

“If we were lucky, Troost would’ve gotten us a ride with a heater,” Henry said. His icy cheeks were round and red, and he wasn’t smiling.

“Just one more reason to hope we find them fast,” she replied, though she couldn’t feel her face at all, and her jaw must surely be freezing shut.

Talking was difficult, so they soon gave up and concentrated on their respective chores. Henry kept the craft aloft, and Maria watched the ground below, tracing the comings and goings of carts, horses, and diesel carriages as they chugged along the southbound route to the biggest city in the Confederacy.

She did not take her eyes off the road as she asked, “How much fuel does this thing hold?”

“Enough to get us to Atlanta, but not much farther. These little ones aren’t made for the long haul, but we’ll make it to the city,” he assured her. “Even fighting the sky like this.”

“Good,” she said quietly. And then she closed her eyes, listening for something she heard very faintly, behind them and off to their left. “Even if we take a detour or two?”

“Detour?” He frowned hard enough that the goggles dipped on his forehead. “Why would we detour?”

“Not a detour, then. Call it evasive action.”

Her ears pinpointed the noise and she turned her head far enough to catch it with her eyes. A ship was incoming, far enough away that she couldn’t suss out the details, but it wasn’t alone—and that was the main point of note. It had a friend, and that friend was approaching from the right.

“Two ships, Henry,” she said evenly. “Coming up behind us.”

“They could be merchants or military fellows,” he tried, but he didn’t sound convinced even as he said it. “This is a common enough trade route.”

“Henry, we’re being flanked.”

“That … can’t be by accident.”

“I shouldn’t think so, no.”

“It might be nothing,” he said, hands tight on the controls. “We haven’t seen any other ships today because the flying conditions are nothing short of awful, but this section of sky is a regular roadway. They have no reason to confront us.”

Maria turned the spyglass outward and caught the first ship in the round viewing area. It was small and nondescript, and still too far away to see with any great clarity. But the second ship was larger. She could just make out some lettering on the side, but not quite read what it spelled.

“What do you see?”

“I see…” she said, slowly, “a military ship, I think. It’s big, but doesn’t look well armed. Cargo, transport, something of that sort. It’s CSA gray, at any rate. With … yes. The Bonnie Blue,” she added, meaning a white star in a blue circle—to differentiate it from the Texian insignia, with a white star on brown. “It’s one of theirs, or someone’s made it look that way.”

“You think it’s one of the Union decoys?”

“Might be, but if the Maynard device wouldn’t fit on something that size, it must be bigger than I’d assumed.” She adjusted her grip on the spyglass and tried the other ship again. “The smaller ship … it’s not marked for the military. I’m not sure it’s marked at all.” It was gaining on them faster than the CSA ship, but still she saw no identifying flag, insignia, name, or registration numbers.

“That isn’t good.”

“It might mean pirates. Pirates wouldn’t bother a pair of adventurers in a tiny rented craft, not when there are travelers below and big city docks another hour or two out. I do hope it’s pirates,” she concluded.

“You’re a peculiar woman.”

“I’ve had good luck with pirates. I’ve been told I’m a bit of a pirate myself.”

“Let’s not talk of luck anymore, shall we? Or pirates, either,” Henry pleaded through teeth clenched with chill or nerves. “We’ve already noticed that luck isn’t with us. And as for pirates, you are no such thing. That having been said, you’ll have to tell me that story sometime.”

“Not much to tell,” she lied, keeping one eye glued to the spyglass lens. “My first assignment as a Pinkerton agent had me working with a pirate crew. The captain was a runaway slave named Croggon Hainey. He’s the friend of mine that Troost hopes to call in for backup in Washington.”

“A friend of yours?” Even through the goggles, Maria could see Henry’s eyes widen with incredulity. “All right, I’m not a man to judge. But if he’s a pirate … do you think he’ll help us, or the Lincolns, or anyone else? Even if Kirby Troost asks him to?”

Still peering through the glass, she told him, “Yes, I do. He’s an adventurous sort, and no fan of Southern politics, as you might expect.” She shifted her grip on the device, and directed the conversation back to more pressing matters. “And I wish to God that he was here with us right now.”

“They’re still on us?”

“Very much so.”

“Goddammit.”

“Now, Henry, listen: the smaller craft is bigger than this one, but not so large as its brethren. Perhaps a crew of three. I don’t really think it’s pirates, but it could be anything—state, federal, or private.”

“Do you see any weapons?”

“Not mounted to the exterior. Maybe it’s an observation craft? Survey work?” She wasn’t sure why she kept making guesses. The ships would either bother them, or not. “But here they come—another thirty seconds or so until contact. Look innocent, Henry.”

“I’ll do my level best.”

The ships drew up on either side of the Black Dove. Now Maria could see their faces without the spyglass, so she put it aside. In the course of acting innocent, she waved cheerfully at the nearest ship—the CSA gray with blue and white markings. Without moving her lips, she said to Henry, “Wish I had a flag. I’d wave it.”

“You’d look silly,” he said back, smiling and joining her in the friendly greetings.

“Silly is usually innocent,” she said, and blew the craft a kiss.

Inside the main cabin of the big craft she saw five men: three seated, two standing. All uniformed. None smiling or waving back; not at first. But then the captain gave her a small salute, and the others did as well, before deliberately turning their attention elsewhere. Shortly thereafter, the big ship peeled away from them and sped ahead, leaving just the smaller of the two hovering nearby.

“Can’t quite see the little ship,” Maria complained, straining to look around Henry’s bulkily coated form.

“Shall I cut off my head?”

“Extremes aren’t called for. Not just yet.”

He forced a smile and released one side of the steering column to chance a quick wave. “Three men,” he told her.

“Uniforms?”

“No. And I don’t think smiling at them will be very helpful.”

“It’s usually more helpful than glowering.”

“Glowering won’t help us either. I think we have trouble.”

“Do you see any guns?” she asked. “I didn’t.”

He sniffed hard, the sniff of a man who can’t feel what’s going on in his sinuses anymore. “They’re inside.”

The ship fell back, and then pulled around closer to Maria—who saw that, yes, the men within were heavily armed and did not look very happy to see them. She beamed at them regardless, and waved like she had for the military ship—which was now well ahead of them, keeping its course along the southbound road below.

No one waved back, but one man cranked open a side window, which jutted out from the craft like a fragile glass wing. He held a megaphone up to his mouth, and leaned out into the clouds.

“You there!” he shouted. “Land your craft immediately!”

Maria pretended she hadn’t heard, or hadn’t understood. “I’m sorry?” she mouthed, and pointed at her ears. “Too loud! So much wind!”

“Land this craft immediately!” he tried again.

“They want us to land,” Henry said, staring straight ahead.

“Thank you, dear, I heard them,” she muttered. Then to the craft, as loudly as she could, “I’m very sorry, we can’t hear you!” She trusted they’d get the gist.

They did, and it made them angry.

“Land the craft immediately! Right now!” And this time, he brandished a gun in a threatening fashion.

“I’ve seen bigger!” she yelled.

“Now you’re just antagonizing them!” Henry complained.

“Oh, they can’t hear a word I’m saying. Can we outrun them?”

He said, “I’m not sure. Maybe. Maybe not.”

“Well, we can’t just land. They’ll kill us both, and that’ll be the end of it.”

“I thought you liked pirates.”

“They aren’t pirates,” she said with more confidence than before. “They’re mercenaries.”

While the man at the window gestured with his megaphone and firearm, Maria lifted the spyglass again, to get a better look. Not at the man, but at the crates on the floor behind him. Something was stenciled thereon, and she could just discern the logo. “Baldwin-Felts.” She said it like a curse.

“The detective agency? Something like the Pinks?”

“Nothing like the Pinks.” She snapped the spyglass shut and stuffed it into her satchel, since that one was the closest. “Oh, all right, something like the Pinks—like a Southern version of the Pinks, with fewer morals, leaner pockets, and no problem with assassinating innocent bystanders.”

“But people do say similar things about—”

She growled, “When the Pinkertons misbehave, they reflect badly on Chicago. The Baldwin-Felts reflect badly on Virginia.”

“I see.”

“How much ammunition do you have on you?”

“Look, there’s a megaphone in the back. If you can reach it, maybe I can talk some sense into them. I’m a U.S. Marshal, after all. They may think twice about—”

“They won’t.” She held up one finger to the man in the other dirigible, asking him for just a moment while she rifled through her luggage in search of her gun. “They’ll just bury you deeper, and figure no one’ll find you ’til it doesn’t matter anymore. They’ve threatened us, they’re giving us orders, and they will shoot us down if we don’t land ourselves. That’s what the man’s gun means, Henry. When he waves it around like that, he’s telling us he’s willing to use it.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Henry said, jaw locked tight. “I’m clear on that. I just wonder if we shouldn’t have some kind of plan, apart from shooting first.”

“I’m a pretty good shot. Better with a ball turret. Pity we seem to be missing one.” Using her shoulders to shield the other ship from what she was doing, she checked her chambers, grabbed a fistful of bullets for future use, and took a deep breath.

“I can’t believe they’re just … waiting on you. To see what you’re doing.”

“Men are trained from birth to wait on the whims of women. Even murderers expect it.” She adjusted her goggles, looked back at the unnamed ship, and then at Henry. She leaned in close, so close that her breath warmed his ear. “All right, here’s what I’m doing: Our ship is smaller than theirs, we’re possibly slower than they are, and we’re outnumbered. Our only advantage is surprise, and I intend to cash in that advantage before it’s wasted. If you can fly as well as I can shoot, we might make it to our destination—and so far, you’re doing a hell of a job. So don’t stop now.”

Before Henry could respond, she looked back over her shoulder. She saw that the man was getting impatient, but the window was still open, and he still hung halfway out of it—anchored by his feet somewhere beyond her view. She slipped her hand around the gun, put her finger on the trigger, and felt its gentle resistance against her glove.

She whipped out the gun.

Aimed in a fraction of a second.

And fired three times in a row, knowing that her shots might spin wild, given the motion of the ship and the air alike; and that she was a good shot, but not a great one, as she might have implied to Henry.

One bullet shattered the window, one bounced harmlessly off the metal casing, and one caught the man in the upper chest, just below his throat. He snapped backwards, clapped his head on the broken window edge, and flipped forward into the aether.

No time to savor the victory. She fired again, this time at their windscreen—hitting it and fracturing it, but not smashing it outright. The front glass was thicker; it had to be, to face the elements.

“Aim for their tanks!” Henry screeched, his elbows shaking with the effort of holding the craft in line.

“Not yet! We’re too close! Any explosion will take us with it.”

One of the other men leaned out the broken window while the captain kept flying—the grim set of his face implying that yes, they, too, were having a struggle of it. The wind was high and wet, and now he was flying with a broken window that snagged the currents and yanked the ship. She hadn’t sent them down, but she’d given him more to fight, and that was good. It meant one less person shooting at them.

Four shots volleyed fast, fired by a man in an earflap hat and a very large coat.

Two of them didn’t land anywhere important, so far as Maria could tell, but one winged a thruster, and a hard sound hissed against the motor. The last shot plunked into the bag at Maria’s feet. She felt the shove of it, and for a moment assumed the worst—but no, something had stopped it. Hopefully not her extra stockings. She didn’t own a third pair.

She aimed the gun his way, but he ducked inside, and then the Black Dove ducked, too. With a hard, belly-bombing lurch it lost so much altitude that Maria thought something else had been hit, something more important than the fizzling thruster. “Henry!” she shouted.

“Hold on!”

“What are you doing?!”

“Getting away from them!”

“Let’s not get away all the way to the ground, please?” she squeaked.

“Not to the ground…” he said, but whatever else he would’ve added was lost when his full attention was called for at the controls. He pulled up out of the dive in a veering sweep that brought them up again, higher than they’d flown before, to an altitude where breathing the air felt like chewing on ice.

“Oh God.” Maria coughed, but she held the gun tight and pointed it back at the unmarked ship. She gauged the distance between them and hoped it was near enough to hit, but far enough to escape any fireball that might ensue.

She emptied the last of her chambers and hit the windscreen again, this time puncturing it with a short round of finger-sized holes. But the pilot was unharmed, and she’d come nowhere close to hitting the hydrogen.

Whoever that pilot was, he was good. As good as Henry. Maria could only pray he wasn’t better.

The two ships soared around each other, circling and feinting in a deadly game of chicken, both sides aware that they were careening through portentous weather while strapped to tanks full of a gas so flammable they’d leave a second sun blazing in the sky if one of them lost the match.

Henry wrenched the steering column and kicked a lever by his foot. The ship zoomed upward again, so steeply that Maria’s throat clenched shut and her eyes followed close behind. She couldn’t look. “Henry, what are you doing!” she demanded, not really wanting to know, but needing to know—clutching the gun, but unable to reload it because then she’d have to take her other hand off the Black Dove’s frame. If she did, nothing would be holding her inside but the ridiculous hemp strap, which now struck her as so fragile as to be laughably useless. “They’re right behind us! You can’t outmaneuver them this way!”

“Not trying to! You have to reload!” he cried, leveling out and letting her catch her breath for a bit.

Her hands were shaking and she could scarcely feel them to guide the bullets. She picked them out of her pocket one by one like seeds from an apron. “What are you doing?” she asked again, fumbling and dropping one, losing sight of it as it tumbled downward.

“Are you loaded?”

“Only … only three!” She tried to keep the panic from her voice.

“Those tanks are pretty big. Can you hit them in three shots?”

“I think so, but…”

“From underneath?”

She paused. “I think so.”

He grinned wildly at her. “The explosion will go up, so we’ll go under. Hang on to your hat!” he roared, and dropped the Black Dove nose-down. The engine gurgled and fought, but didn’t fail, despite the near free fall.

Maria laughed the unhinged cackle of a lunatic when she realized her hat was long gone, so all she had to clutch was her gun and this ship. So she didn’t fall out as she leaned, squinted through her goggles, and aimed.

The unmarked ship loomed above her, its tanks dangling low and inviting on the sides. She only needed to hit one, but she had to hit it square, and she was falling, falling, falling … and had the engine cut out? She couldn’t tell. There was nothing in her ears but the rush of the drop. The sky was huge above her, and the other ship was coming after them, but it was coming too slow as it turned to dive in their wake. Five more seconds and the angle would be wrong.

She fired.

The first shot missed, but the second hit home.

The craft did not shake or stutter, it simply exploded—the punctured tank first, and the other one an instant later. A ball of fire flared mightily above them and shot higher yet, and a warm wave of searing air snapped back against the Black Dove.

“Pull up, pull up!” Maria shrieked at Henry. He was already trying to level the craft, but the drag and the wind and the new push of heat were working hard to stop him. “Get us steady!” she added. She felt stupid for it immediately, but the ground was right there, and they were flinging themselves toward it, and the thruster—was it even working? It spit like a snake, and a thin, diluted jet of black smoke went streaming out behind it.

“Hang on,” Henry told her. Maria hoped he felt as stupid about saying that as she’d felt about giving him orders.

She jammed the gun into her coat. No way she could get it in the satchel, which had only remained in the craft this long by virtue of being slung across her chest and smushed between her and Henry. Even through the wool of her pocket she could feel the gun’s freshly fired warmth. It might singe the fabric, but what other option did she have? It was that or throw it away, and it was worth more than the coat and dress together.

Not that her clothing should be her biggest concern at such a time. Then again, what thoughts should she be having, in a moment like this? She wondered, faster than the speed of light, about what was appropriate to consider in one’s last moments. A prayer? A wish? A bargain with whatever gods, saints, or angels might wait on the other side of the dark?

“Oh, God,” she said. It meant nothing, but it was all she had.

The engine surged—so no, it hadn’t stopped after all—and though a hard southwestern current shoved them into a lilting curve, the Black Dove righted itself. Maria’s stomach dropped back into its usual position, and Henry’s arms did not relax, but they quit fighting so hard.

The sky fell quiet, and Maria’s ears popped from the shifting pressure of it all. But the thruster was definitely damaged, and the road stretched many miles before them. The CSA dirigible was nowhere in sight.

“Do you think,” she began. It came out too hoarse and quiet, so she tried again—louder this time, and once more near Henry’s ear. “Do you think we can still make Atlanta in this thing?”

He eyed the smoke dribbling from the thruster, and took a moment to listen to the ominous hiss. “I don’t know. But we shouldn’t have to make it all the way there, should we? We’re bound to catch up to them sooner than that.”

“Right.” She nodded.

“If not, we … we set it down beside the road and hunt for a couple of very fast horses.”

“You think we’ll get the chance? To land, rather than crash?”

“Oh, yes.” He nodded back at her. “Absolutely. It’s a steering problem, not a propulsion problem. Might land us in a field, or on top of somebody’s house, but I’ll land us.”

“Good to know.” She patted his arm, breathing hard and trying to calm herself, with limited success. She scowled out across the skyline. “Now, where’s the other damn dirigible?”