Free-Wrench Read online

Chapter 9

  After some initial difficulty, Nita got the knack of sewing while dangling from a hastily tied harness high over a deck that was itself high over the ground. Wink never seemed to show the same urgent agitation again, so she wasn’t required to develop her punk-intimidation skills, a fact that left her both relieved and strangely disappointed.

  She climbed back to the deck, Wink shadowing her as always, and made ready to join Lil in the boiler room. Her own experiences with cleaning boilers probably didn’t have much in common with those on a ship. The steamworks boilers were large enough for a three-person team to climb into and had to be hoisted away from the heat of the volcano with building-sized winches. Even on the smaller scale of the ship, it was bound to be terribly unpleasant. She was heading for the nearest ladder below decks when something caught her eye. In one of the crates of wailer ship parts rested a pipe connection. She picked it up and turned it over in her hands.

  “This… this might work.”

  Nita glanced around to ensure the deck was clear of any shipmates or other witnesses, then crept to the damaged floorboards and pulled them aside. She held the salvaged connector down to the broken one. It was a perfect match.

  “Of course it matches,” she remarked quietly. “The fug folk make these machines, too. It makes sense they’d reuse parts.”

  She turned the connector over. It even had a similar amount of wear. Her mind began racing in tight circles. She had been ordered not to make repairs, but this was such a small thing. It, along with her earlier judicious manipulation of the various valves and switches, would certainly get all five of the turbines spinning again. Lil was scraping away at the boiler, rattling the pipes across the entire ship. She’d never know this was even happening. No one would know.

  The reasons to do it began to accumulate in her mind. She could restore the ship, get them back on schedule, and get a chance to negotiate for her mother’s medicine. The only reasons not to do it were an order from her new captain and the vague and dubious threat of reprisal from unseen boogeymen. She hesitated, but only for a moment. All she needed were tools, which Gunner had required that she leave in the boiler room to prevent her from… well, from doing precisely what she was planning to do. She crept up to the hatch to the lower decks.

  “Lil! Do you need me to come down there? Or should I remain on deck to keep a lookout and get this wailer taken apart?”

  “I’ll tell you what,” the deckhand called back. “It’s kind of a tight squeeze. Not a two-person job. I reckon you should stay up there, keep an eye out and such, and slice up that ship some more like you said.”

  “Not a problem, but I’ll need my tools.”

  “These are them on the floor in here, right? Well, come on down and get ’em! Just be quick about it, so’s we don’t leave the deck empty for too long.”

  Nita hurried down the ladder and into the boiler room. When Lil indicated there wasn’t room for two people on the boiler-cleaning job, it was a drastic understatement. There wasn’t even room for one. She had somehow wedged herself halfway into a hidden hatch near the top of the boiler and contorted into a configuration that human anatomy had never intended. She hung entirely upside down with both legs splayed outward at odd angles. Her upper body was out of sight, squeezed into a space that didn’t appear to be large enough or even the right shape to conceal her. There was the constant sound of scraping, and bits of grit could be heard tinkling down to the bottom of the boiler.

  “Are you okay in there?” Nita asked.

  “It ain’t my favorite job,” she said, her voice distorted by the boiler’s interior. “Lucky this only happens now and then. The hard part is getting out again. I might need your help for that bit.”

  “I’ll keep my ears open,” Nita said, snatching up her tool belt, tool sash, and—out of habit—her monkey-toe. “Heading back to the deck.”

  “I’ll meet you up there when I’m done. It’ll be before you know it.”

  Nita made her way quickly back to the primary deck. Repairing the connection took only a few minutes, but she nevertheless did it with great care. The whole enterprise would be pointless if the repair didn’t work. She also kept a close eye on Wink all the while, lest another looter take advantage of her distraction and sneak aboard, but the ship’s inspector seemed more interested in her own activity than the approach of an intruder. In no time she had the replacement part firmly in place and tied the moldy rag over it as it had been before. She then tossed the broken connector into the mound of discarded parts and got to work on disassembling the rest of the wailer craft.