Free-Wrench Read online

Chapter 8

  Her work suit hadn’t dried yet when the time came to meet with the captain, so she reluctantly made her way to the upper deck in her dress. For better or worse the ship wasn’t moving as quickly as it might, so the wind wasn’t quite as vicious as it had been on her previous visits. It still required her to hold her hands strategically and angle herself with care, lest an errant gust give her crewmates a show. She made her way toward the bow of the ship, taking a wide detour around the wailer craft that was still lying on the deck.

  The captain stood at the wheel, and the entirety of the crew gathered around him. Coop seemed none the worse for wear. He hadn’t even felt it necessary to change out of his torn and bloodied clothes. The slice through the sleeve of both his coat and shirt revealed a lightly stained bandage. Butch was muttering something unrecognizable, clucking over her patient it seemed, as he filled the breaks in her ranting with scolded assurances.

  “I know, Butch. Don’t lift nothing heavy with that arm for a few days. And drink lots. I’ll do that too,” Coop said, like a schoolboy enduring a long good-bye from a fretting mother. “Oh, look, Nita’s here. We can get started.”

  “I’m sorry, am I late?”

  The captain pulled a pocket watch from his vest pocket.

  “Not quite late, Ms. Graus, but not early,” he said, clicking it shut.

  “Look at you, all dressed up in your finery,” Lil said. “That’s more what I’m used to from you Calderan folk.”

  “My only other clothes are still wet.”

  “You gotta let me try that on once. How come nobody ever brings a dress like that to trade?” Lil said.

  “Because we don’t never get no girls doing the trading,” Coop said.

  “I know that. You think I don’t know that? It was one of them… what do you call it? Rectory-ical questions.”

  “What’s church got to do with it?” Coop asked, scratching his head with his good hand.

  “I think you meant rhetorical,” Nita said.

  “Is that the one you ask but you don’t want no answer?” Lil asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Right, I was askin’ one of them.”

  “Now why would you want to ask a question but not want no answer?” Coop asked.

  “To make me look smart, stupid.”

  “Let’s get down to business!” the captain growled. “Ms. Graus’s tinkering has got two of our turbines working at full strength, which is a damn sight better than they’d been doing, but still not good by any stretch. I’m bringing us down to the surface to take on water for the boiler. We’ll drop a buoy to get an idea of our speed right now, but if I’m worth my salt, I figure we’re not going more than twenty knots.”

  “How does that compare to our proper speed?” she asked.

  “With a stiff tailwind, Wind Breaker can give us fifty knots. That’s just about what I was figuring on us managing in order to hit Keystone in two days. There’s better than two thousand miles between us and our intended port of call. At this speed, we’re looking at five days. We were long overdue for a resupply even before we took on a new crewman. In a pinch the food will last, and we can always try for some fish if we come up short. With only two turbines running we can stretch the fuel. The problem is water. We lost a lot of fresh water in the attack. There’s a bit of ale left, and we might be able to manage an extra day on the drippings we can get out of the steam lines, but we don’t have the fuel to waste to boil up enough to be safe, and I don’t like the idea of coming up more than a day short on water with so much chance for more trouble before we make landfall.”

  “You figure we’ve got to stop by the Lags?” Coop said.

  “That’s what I figure,” the captain said with a nod.

  “Would those be the Lagomoore Islands?” Nita asked.

  “That they would. Though they’ve changed a bit since you Calderans closed your borders.”

  “I would imagine so. They weren’t populated back then.”

  “They aren’t populated now, either. At least, no more than a piece of meat is populated by maggots after a few days. A couple of enterprising traders took the place over, put up walls around all the springs, and otherwise found ways to wring a living out of the place. Resupplying there will cost us dearly, but it beats drying up, and it’ll give us a chance to get a patch on that hole up there. All this presents a problem for you though, Ms. Graus.”

  “Why?”

  “Getting down into the fug to talk to the fuggers isn’t the sort of thing you do all willy-nilly. It has to be planned weeks in advance. Before I even leave on a Caldera run, I make sure to set one up. It is scheduled for four days from now. With three busted turbines, we ain’t gonna make it, and this resupply trip is going to cost us another, or just shy of one.”

  “How long will it take to reschedule it?”

  “Can’t imagine it will be less than four weeks. Most likely you’ll either be back in Caldera by then, or else you’ll be with us for another month waiting for it.”

  “No,” Nita said, anxiety in her voice, “that won’t do. My mother—”

  “I know it, ma’am, but it can’t be helped.”

  “It can be helped. Just let me fix the pipes.”

  Captain Mack turned to Gunner.

  “I told her, Captain. No repairs on the boiler.”

  “Let me just do temporary ones then. I’ll remove them when we’re closer to shore.”

  “Absolutely not. They’ll know.”

  “I assure you I can do it in a way that won’t show.”

  “Doesn’t matter. They know everything that happens out here. They probably know we’re here jawing about it,” Coop said.

  “That’s silly. How could they?” Nita asked.

  “Doesn’t much matter how they know. They just know, and I’m not gambling that this is the time they aren’t paying attention.”

  “This has gone from a bizarrely restrictive business arrangement to pure superstition.”

  “I don’t mind a bit of superstition if it keeps my ship and its crew safe. And I’ll thank you not to question any more of my orders,” he grumbled, with the hint of a threat in his voice.

  “Well… I…” Nita grasped at scraps of ideas. “At least let me look at the damage a bit more. If I get a feel for the way the system is laid out, maybe I can find a way to reroute some pressure to the remaining turbines.”

  The captain gave her a hard look, then turned to Gunner. “Gunner, show Ms. Graus everything she asks to see, and make it clear to her exactly what she can and can’t do.” He turned back to Nita again. “I’m giving you an awful lot of rope, Ms. Graus. Enough to hang yourself and the lot of us. So do us all a favor and don’t go tying any nooses.”