Part 4 (2/2)

The City of Hoboken continued to lurch over rougher terrain, swinging back and forth to avoid the Nephil. Tom's footing was challenged in the little cabin, his gla.s.sware threatened even stowed within various leather-padded racks. He drew on his heaviest insulated gloves, and then with great care proceeded to wire the free end of the cable to the copper terminals of the Plante-Faure cell.

He was just tightening down the second connection when the great steam ram shook with a noise that Tom felt within his bones. There was a grinding, and the deck canted off true five degrees, then ten.

Somehow the captain got the vessel back on balance, but the stride had changed Tom could feel the difference. Where had the shot hit?

Only one shot in that Parrott rifle, he thought. Blast and d.a.m.n that featherless bird, this wasn't how men were meant to live!

He raced back up the ladder, afraid he might already be too late. Had the shot signaled the beginning of the Nephil's attack?

The weather watch were already blazing away, their rifles and muskets wreathing the open deck with smoke as fast as the breeze could carry it off. The top of the steam ram already reeked of death, and there had not yet been blood spilled.

”Not yet!” Tom shouted, but his voice was lost in the violent noise. He looked up, around, scanning for the attacker, but between the gunpowder smoke and whatever revolutions it had made through the sky, he could not find the Nephil.

Tom slapped Bannock on the shoulder. The day watch had his harpoon loaded and tracking, swinging the gun on its pintle.

”Have sight of it?” Tom asked.

Bannock shook his head.

Then the Nephil rose above the City of Hoboken's starboard flank. The muzzle of the Parrott rifle was huge in its arms, a vast, gaping pit of death sweeping the deck as the Nephil grinned. Despite his resolve, Tom screamed, as terrified as any child.

Imagine a man tall as a telegraph pole. His eyes glitter the same bottle-green as the insulators that carry the copper-cored cables with their burden of living thought and speech. His skin is fair as an Irishwoman's, his hair black as the heart of a Georgia cracker. He is handsome in a way that would make a statue weep, and bring any blooded soldier to his knees. If this man was not terror incarnate, if he did not tower over everyone and everything in his path, he would be worthy of wors.h.i.+p.

Instead, he is merely and utterly feared.

The Nephil's smile drove the weather watch toward the hatch. Oakey Bill jumped off the port flank, arms flailing, screaming his way into the long, fatal fall in preference to being trapped amid the scrum on deck in view of the leering monster.

Tom shoved Bannock back into the scout's cupola. ”Fire it on my call!” he yelled. ”Into the chest!”

”I ...” Bannock was screaming, too.

Facing the Nephil was like facing a city on fire. The force of its will blazed across Tom, Bannock and the rest of the panicked weather watch. Though it was pale as any white man, the Nephil's skin gleamed like moonlight in a graveyard. Tom felt as if he were falling forward into a city, a necropolis, a land peopled by the dying and the dead, an eternal, pallid landscape of lost memory and- ”No!” he shouted. ”This is the Age of Reason.” Tom grabbed Barley by the shoulders and pulled him from the scout's cupola. He would be d.a.m.ned before he would bow before the evil thing's fearsome aspect. The harpoon could not be so difficult to fire!

”Me,” shouted Salmon in his ear.

Tom looked up to see his great, good friend shaking his head and pointing at the harpoon. ”No time,” he said, then swung the shoulder brace toward the Nephil, which was already rising above the weather deck, c.o.c.king its arm to throw the Parrott rifle down upon the steam ram.

The lines were clipped into place, the pressure gauge showed a full head of steam. Tom flipped over the locking pin, aimed the steel head toward the Nephil's vast chest, and pulled the trigger.

There was a horrendous shriek as the steam pressure discharged. The shoulder brace of the harpoon slammed into Tom harder than any punch he'd ever taken, while a burst of scalding steam enveloped him from the line which sprang free with the shock of the firing.

The Nephil took the harpoon point in its gut. Even through the swirl of steam, smoke and pain, Tom registered the expression of surprise on the monster's face as it dropped the Parrott rifle and grabbed at the shaft which stuck. Somehow the electrical cable held.

But nothing happened.

The Nephil began to laugh, an enormous barking roar like a Missouri cyclone, dark vapors gusting from a mouth that seemed to open wide enough to swallow them all whole.

What had gone wrong? Even within the agony of his steam-scaled face and hands, Tom felt a cold stab of pain and fear in his heart.

Then he realized that he had not arranged to complete the circuit.

Salmon slapped his shoulder again and pointed down. Tom leaned over, blinking away the agony of the steam burns on his face and hands, to see his friend standing over the knife switch stapled to the weather deck.

Tom nodded.

Salmon leaned down, closed the copper blade, and held on even as sparks played through his hair.

The Nephil's laughter changed to an eerie howl. Tom looked up again, his vision growing red why? he wondered even in that moment to see sparks pouring from the monster's mouth, its hands, its hair. Far more electricity than could have come from Tom's Plante-Faure battery cell. The Nephil raged amid a storm of blue, yellow and green sparks, lightning snakes that writhed along its arms and legs, seared its eyes, set fire to its skin.

I have opened a circuit to Heaven, Tom thought. He collapsed against the edge of the scout's cupola, wracked with pain of his own, wis.h.i.+ng he could pa.s.s out. That mercy was not offered him, though his sight dimmed to red mist. Even the arrival on the weather deck of the dragoons with their grenadoes and their clattering weapons was not enough to distract him from the pain.

Tom woke to a hand upon his shoulder. The steam ram was underway once more, he could tell by the gentle swaying in his body. He tried to blink, but his eyes were gummed tight.

A bandage, he prayed.

”Can you hear me, son?” It was the rumbling, patriarchal voice of Captain Brown, the City of Hoboken's master.

”Yes, sir.” Tom paused, gathering his fears. ”But I cannot see you, sir.”

The grip tightened. Brown smelled of whiskey and old leather the cover of a Bible, Tom thought. ”We'll find you a doctor at Council Bluffs, Mr Edison. Cletis reckons you'll have your sight back. As for the scars ...”

Scars? ”What?”

”You cannot feel them, son? Your face and hands is burned fierce by the steam.”

Tom felt very little other than the captain's hand on his shoulder, and that scared him.

”Where's Salmon?”

”Your Negro friend is dead. Kilt by your telegraph gun.”

Salmon had been holding the knife switch closed when the Nephil ... exploded. The copper wire must have carried some of that extraordinary energy back onto the deck and into his friend. Tom felt his eyes finally, as they filled with tears so warm he thought he must be weeping blood.

”But you kilt one of them monsters, son. You're a hero.”

Hero. Tom wanted to turn his face to the bulkhead and cry for Salmon. He would never hear that beloved voice again.

But he could not. This was the century of science, and he would be d.a.m.ned and d.a.m.ned again before he would let some Biblical monsters drive America from her West. No other man would ever lose his particular friend this way again. ”I will bind the West in chains of copper,” he whispered, ”and make her monsters bow to Progress. I swear this.”

”That's the spirit, son.”

Brown's hand left Tom's shoulder, then the captain stepped out through a hatch which clanged shut, already shouting orders.

He could not think on Salmon any further, so Tom set his mind instead to wondering how the so-called telegraph gun had been so deadly to one of the Nephilim. Could he arrange for bigger Plante-Faure cells, perhaps mounted on aerostats, to bring the battle to the enemy? The West needed railroads and telegraph and civilization, not the wild anarchy of steam rams and Clark's Army and avenging angels.

He would pluck the last of the Nephilim from the sky himself, and ground their cousin angels as well.

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