And the Third Brought Fire Pt. 08

The dockside port of Burned York was small compared to the ancient bustle from before the Fire - but small was not small in any human sense when you were actually there. Zimmerman walked past the bobbing fishing boats, her boots thumping on the wooden slats - pausing occasionally at the ominous creak. She was suddenly aware of the extra weight of her implants and her sacrament, and wondered how much of Genevieve's desire to have her sent by boat was for her secrecy...and how much of it was in the hope she might be pulled under the water by robes, brass and plutonium. She pushed the thought aside as she came to one of the intersections of pier that gridded this area. Around the nose of a fishing trawler, she could see two figures in the blue and black of York police officers, their caps on and their torches in their hands.

She remained in the shadows - and heard one of them grumbling. "I've seen neither hide nor hair of this Radwalker we're supposed to be keeping an eye out for."

"Quit your bitching," the other said. Their accents were American - but their colors were British and their hearts were traitorous. Zimmerman pursed her lips behind her mask, then stepped back. She rapped twice on the side of the boat that floated near her. The reverberations were just loud enough - she could hear the scuffing of shoes.

"Who goes there?" one man asked, and he started towards the corner. He came close...

Zimmerman sprang out. She grabbed onto the chest of his shirt, bunching it in her fist. His eyes widened, mustache bristling wildly, as she shoved him back towards his comrade who was fumbling - torch clattering to the wooden slats of the pier as he reached down for the revolver at his hip. They crashed together and she bore them down onto the ground. Her free hand drove down - knuckles cracking into nose, jaw, the side of the head. None of the blows were overly damaging, but they were oh so satisfying, the crunching sound of them reverberating through her arm, into her bones. It left both men stunned as she took her robes off and slung them over them.

Their struggles were more pointed now - but she moved quickly.

"This guise no longer serves the Lord, and so, shall be your whale," she said, her voice pitched low.

Zimmerman used her boot and rolled both men over the side of the pier. Wrapped in her leaded robes, they plunged in with a splash. She stood, tugging her mask off and tossing it down with them. While she felt the pain of losing her vestments, she knew...she was still walking with God now. She knew it in the depth of her being, a bright core of certainty. After all, had she not, she would never have been given the clothing she wore now underneath. Genevieve had made sure to have her sent out with a long sleeved white shirt that now mostly covered her implants. The lack of leading made it feel as if she wore nothing at all - and she made sure that she would pray extra.

Trinity would keep those around her safe, she was sure of it.

It took another few minuets before she found the boat in question. It was a modern motorboat - a small steam engine was tucked into the back, and the ship's spirit was sitting on the prow, kicking her legs and humming quietly. There were three crew members waiting: Two burly men who Zimmerman surmised she could handily dispatch if need be, and a stripling blond boy with a furrowed scar along his cheek. Zimmerman was about to speak to the men, but the boy piped up first.

"You Ven?" he asked - his voice high and unbroken.

"Yes, boy," Zimmerman said. "You can-"

"I'm not a boy, Ven," the blond boy - no, the blond girl said. "The name's Rudi Cut Nuts, I'm in charge around here. Miss Chapel said, if you even think of goin' screwy, I'm to make sure you don't get anywhere. Got it?"

Zimmerman frowned at her. "Your name is Cut Nuts?"

"Cause I cut the balls off the last man who touched me without my permission," Rudi said, smirking slightly.

"She did," one of the men said.

Zimmerman was not sure if Genevieve was trying to keep her happy with a treat, tossed to her like she was some rabid dog, or if Genevieve had wildly miscalculated in choosing her agent for this mission. No. She tightened her jaw. She had sinned once, far too recently. She wouldn't...be tempted to sin again. Even if, as she watched, Rudi turned to start snapping orders to the men and the evening twilight sparkled along her pale throat and her short, short cropped blond hair and-

"So, Venny," Rudi said. "Is it true you're a big carpet munching dyke?"

Zimmerman blinked, then snorted. "I am a servant of the Lord," she said, firmly. "And the Lady."

Rudi spat. "Well, I don't know about the Lady. The only Lady we care about here, is Sparky. Innit that right, Sparky?"

The spirit at the front of the ship jerked her head around. "Heya!" she said, waving. Her body was slim and wooden, with steely-gray along her back and shoulder blades. Her eyes glowed with an inner light, as if they were coals themselves. "Oh, dang, she looks heavy. Make sure you stay right in the middle of me - don't wanna capsize!" She giggled. "...seriously, though, if we capsize, we're in serious trouble. Restarting my boiler is not easy."

"Listen to her," Rudi said, narrowing her eyes at Zimmerman. "Come on."

Zimmerman followed the slender girl - how old was she? Twenty? - and found that the interior of the motorboat was as cramped as it had looked: A narrow corridor led down into the guts of the ship, where a cargo hold was stuffed with huge crates. They were marked with no labels and Zimmerman couldn't smell anything. Zimmerman made a face, while Rudi scowled at her. "Officially, we're pulling over the bits and bobs you turn into telephones and radio - consumer electronics, they calls it." She smirked, slightly. "Unofficially, it's guns. Even more unofficially, it's you."

Zimmerman grunted. "How are we going to make it to New Austin? Through the rivers?"

"Nah," Rudi said. "With the number of locks and checkpoints, plus the bribes, it'd be longer, more expensive, riskier. We're going down the coast, around Florida, and into the Gulf."

"And the pirates?" Zimmerman asked, frowning slightly.

Rudi led her back up to the deck. She whistled. "Sparky! Show her the thing."

Sparky giggled, then twitched her nose from side to side and wiggled her rump. Zimmerman had to admit, watching a nubile spirit wiggle around like that was pleasant - but before she could remark on it, the prow of the boat swung a panel around, revealing a pair of heavy water cooled machine guns. They swung back shut again a moment later. Rudi grinned at Zimmerman. "We got teeth, Venny."

"And you have me," Zimmerman pointed out.

"Mmm, no offense," Rudi said, then slapped her shoulder - yanking gently on the cybernetic prosthesis hidden right beneath her filmy white shirt. "The last thing I want is you going overboard."

Zimmerman snorted.

***

Sparky sat at the head of the ship, humming along with the buzzing, puttering noise of the high speed boiler in the back of the ship that shared her namesake. The prow of the ship hit every wave that was coming their way and sent them skimming smoothly over it - or, at least, that was how it felt to Zimmerman. As a woman used to trains and to airships, the sudden realization that vehicles could rock and sway this much was...unpleasent. She gritted her teeth, kneeling above the john in the back of the ship, her head ducked forward near the metal rim of the bowl. She wouldn't vomit. But...if she was going to vomit, she'd at least be in the right place. She put her hand on her belly, her eyes half closed as she breathed slow. Shallowly.

"Some big badass you are, eh?" Rudi asked from around the doorway.

Zimmerman lifted her head to glower.

The first two days of travel passed in that misery - her stomach perpetually on the verge of rebelling, her legs stumbling under her with every jounce, every bounce. Despite her misery, though, Sparky cut along the coastline of North America. Glittering cities were rarities and towns were sparkled but thinly between the wilderness that stretched along New England. The further south one got, the more one could see settlement, as the Empire had been quite eager to rebuild land that had once produced the most valuable crops in the world. With the Fire long behind and the Empire bringing in fresh colonists and tenet laborers, those crops flowed again - but in the sky now. Zimmerman and Rudi both watched the immense cargo airships drifting by overhead as they skimmed down the coast.

Like immense, pregnant whales, they bobbed through the air, their holds stuffed with cotton, tobacco, coffee, sugar, all of it flowing towards Albion - a vile heart beating at the center of an empire of debautchery. Zimmerman's lips curled and she muttered. "How I wish I had thee, Midway..."

"What was that?" Rudi asked, narrowing her eyes.

"Nothing, nothing. Just thinking to myself," Zimmerman said - but she didn't convince the young girl. But still, images of what Midway could do up there. The flight of a hundred fixed wing airplanes, diesel burning, pulled from the ether like God splitting the fishes and loaves in the hands of Christ's Son. The idea of it blazed in her mind - the ships burning, their spirits crying out in lamentation and fear, as Britain began to starve without her imports. Her lips curled up in a fierce smile.

The Sparky stopped several times on its journey. The boiler could be pushed till it ran on fumes by the eager spirit that served it, but she could not burn nothing at all. When they stopped between towns, the two burly men sprang off the ship with hatchets and downed small trees, then chopped them into pieces as quick as they could. Here, Zimmerman turned her brawn to the skill, carving up wood and branches with the same eagerness. The chips were fed into the boiler - and despite not being as good or easy to burn as coal, the Sparky was able to once more move again.

They stopped in a village here and there. Tiny, no-name places that had grown up after the Fire, when people had fled smoldering cities and blasted ruins to try and find security. Their English was as queer and strangely accented as any of the free cities of the Wastelands - but rather than flying a patchwork quilt of state flags and local flags, each had a flapping Union Jack, like a slap in the face of the Founders and their sacrifices. Zimmerman remained aboard ship, watching as Rudi handed over silver and copper for coal and other odds and ends.

But after the first three days, the trip ran into its first danger.

They were nearing what had once been Savannah - if Zimmerman didn't miss her guess - and swinging wide away from the rebuild city. Even from a distance, Zimmerman could see the British airships hanging over the city had a different character and design than the cargo ships from earlier: These were sleek, dark, and deadly. Warships. Zimmerman watched them with such a fierce glower, she almost forgot that she was sea sick.

"Oh shit," Rudi muttered.

"What is it?" Zimmerman asked, drawing her eyes away...and there she saw it.

A fisher trawler was coming their way.

Rudi had navigated carefully - dipping close to land near wilderness, even pulling them up a river from time to time, whenever it seemed they would get close to fishing ships. It would just take one to mistake them for a pirate or smuggler...or...well, to accurately determine they were a smuggler...

"Turn aside!" Zimmerman snapped.

"And go where, you galoot!?" Rudi snapped, her eyes flashing, her scar pulling her scowl into an almost smirk. "We're in open fucking ocean!"

The fishing trawler turned aside. Zimmerman could see the crew - mostly American natives like herself from their build and postures and clothing - peering over at them. The captain and the spirit of the fishing trawler stood nearest to the back of the ship, and as it slowed, the captain eyed them curiously. He was a burly looking, red faced man with a thick beard, while his spirit was even smaller and slighter than Sparky - she had the kind of simple smile of a spirit from something just on the edge of awareness. It made sense - their trawler had complex fishing machinery, and a steam engine within, but it was otherwise simplicity itself.

The captain had a pipe clasped in his mouth. He pulled it free, tapping it with his finger. "You there!" he called down. "What ship be that?"

"I'm the Sparky!" Sparky said, waving. "Hi!"

"Hello!" the fishing trawler spirit - she came up to her captain's chest and had to stand up onto her toes to wave back. "Hi! I'm a boat!"

"I know, I'm a boat too!" Sparky said.

"Well, they get along at least," Zimmerman rumbled, while Rudi put a big smile on her face.

"We're from Chatagone, up north - taking a load of their pottery to New Miami," she said, casually.

"Chatagone, eh?" the captain asked. "Never knew they could afford such a nice little ship. Yer spirit looks almost like an airship."

"Thanks!" Sparky said.

"We just, uh, paint her real good to be honest," Rudi said, chuckling.

"Hey!" Sparky pouted. Zimmerman leaned in, whispering in her ear.

"Be good," she said.

"You're not my mechanic, you can't make me do anything I don't wanna," Sparky said, wriggling in her grasp. Zimmerman gripped her tighter, while Rudi hurriedly continued.

"Still, we're just heading along-"

"I was just wondering," the other Captain started at the same time.

"Lemmi go!" Sparky whined. Zimmerman wished she knew how Nix had done what she did. Machines were so...finnicky. She shook her slightly, hoping that joggling her would get Sparky to be quiet. Instead, Sparky started to whine louder. "Let me go, you big radioactive...galoot!"

"Did she say radioactive?" The other Captain asked, his brow drawing together.

"Uh..." Rudi snapped her head around to glare at Zimmerman.

Zimmerman released Sparky. Sparky harrumphed, then turned to the captain. "Yup, she's really radioactive. She's got cybernetics too."

The other Captain's brow's drew in even harder while Zimmerman frowned intently at Sparky. Rudi groaned, then shouted. "Sparky! Fast! We go fast! Now! Now! Now!"

Sparky nodded, then the boat leaped forward with a roar of propellers. The fishing trawler started to recede behind them and Zimmerman grabbed onto the railing, watching them fade moment by moment. She spoke hurriedly. "At least they didn't seem to be complicated enough to have a telephone, or a mobile telephone. Maybe-"

Something whistled up from the ship. It flared bright red overhead - a flare.

"Fuck!" Rudi hissed under her breath. "Ven, put those muscles to work. Miss Chapel said to me that if we were gonna get caught, we dump the fucking guns. So, dump the fucking guns!"

Zimmerman grunted, then turned and started down the stairs. Her legs had more surety than she expected - she took the steps easily, coming down to the cargo hold. She drove the knife of her forearm into one of the locks on the chests, shattering the metal with a clang against her hardened muscle and the edge of her cybernetics, hidden under her shirt. Then she yanked the chest up - having judged that she didn't have the time to lug them out of the stairs, if that were even possible. The entire roof of the cargo hold opened normally. The guns within were mostly the sacred Thompson, but there were also the glorious Browning, and even bouquets of grenades. It was enough American weaponry to make her heart sing - and then sink when she knew what she had to do.

Zimmerman crammed guns under her arms and hurried up the stairs. She threw them overboard, splashing into the water. When she turned back, she saw that the men were going down below as well.

Sparky was humming a song she did not recognize. She was clearly having fun at least.

They had gotten the cargo hold half emptied - and the ship was noticeably faster - when Zimmerman saw the airship heading their way.

"Hell, hell, hell, hell!" Rudi was swearing again and again as Zimmerman came to the wheel. "That's a fast destroyer - a pirate hunter. They're going to swoop over us, drop surface charges, and then threaten to blow us out of the water with the guns..."

"Can we get into shore, head to ground?"

"Not before it reaches us," Rudi said.

"We can make it," Zimmerman said. "They will not know where to shoot us."

"Oh, and you can just make it rain? Plunge is into night? You're nuttier than I thought!" Rudi snapped.

"Simply head inland. The Lord shall provide the rest," Zimmerman said, her voice firm.

Rudi shook her head, clicked her tongue, then swung the wheel.

The next few minuets were eerily calm. They were cutting with the waves, rather than against them - things smoothed out and the Sparky ran as fast as Zimmerman had ever seen her. Sitting on the prow, leaning forward into the wind like a dog at a train window, her spirit beamed and let her glittering, silvery hair tumble into the wind behind her. And all the while, the fast destroyer drew closer and closer, running along a perpendicular route to their own travel. The ship was a sleek knife of a craft, black armored with a pair of engines running off an atomic steam engine that could get it around the world ten times before she'd ever need to stop and rest. She had two heavy cannons mounted on the belly, arranged so that they could fire in a hemisphere around and to the sides of the ship, while her armored balloon was protected by a pair of heavy machine guns mounted on sleek towers. She had a pair of lifeboats attached to her aft sides - tiny gliders that could be brought down to ocean or land, to float or to scrape to a stop.

Her name?

The HMS Speedy.

"How appropriate," Zimmerman said, her voice wry.

"Oh ha ha so funny," Rudi grumbled, her hand brushing her sweat soaked hair slick to her head.

They were getting closer and closer to the coastline - and there was a large river running inland, though Zimmerman didn't know how deep it went before it became too narrow for their ship to traverse.

One of those cannons spoke. A roar of white water bloomed ahead and to the left of the Sparky, shooting froth upwards like a fountain. The other cannon tracked them and Rudi snarled to Zimmerman. "That's English for shut the fuck down or we blow you- what are you doing!?"

Zimmerman had started to unbutton her shirt.

"Now is not the time!" Rudi said, her cheeks flushing as Zimmerman exposed her broad, muscular shoulders, her pale skin, her scars, her cybernetic implants, her breasts. Her eyes widened even more as Zimmerman rolled her shoulders and cricked her neck - and as she tightened her muscles, let them ripple under her skin, the plutonium implants whirred and clacked, lead lining sliding back to reveal dull gray and the Latin inscriptions upon them. Rudi's jaw dropped. "W-Wha...what the fuck are you doing you maniac?"

"Providing a miracle, Rudi," Zimmerman said, smirking.

She grabbed onto one of the many ropes the ship had, one fastened firmly to the aft mooring point, stepped up, then dropped into the Atlantic ocean.

Oh Lady, thy Fire brings warmth to the world - thy touch spares all from the curse of thy anger. The burn of radiation is a balm to the faithful. Thy shall see we never suffer the cancer, the rot of gums, the withering of hair... Zimmerman focused on the prayer as she felt scalding hot water flare and hiss and froth around her arms, her shoulders, her back. Then the rope drew taut and dragged her forward. She could hear the thrumming propeller - and she knew not how close her head was to it. Instead, she dragged herself up the line - pushing her head above the water. She drew in a sharp breath, but that breath was rich with steam and hissing froth. When she opened her eyes, they near scalded. She was in the midst of brilliant white vapor.