The Oilman's Daughter Page 2

  She grinned. “As long as your intentions are honorable, Jonathan.”

  “They are indeed. However, I must admit they are somewhat selfish. My father sends me on these trips to woo investors, but I’m not much for space travel. I would love nothing more than some genuine conversation with a nice person to make the trip pass by faster. When I saw you from across the room, I thought you looked like just such a person.”

  Her face filled with a mixture of relief and good humor. “In that case, I will gladly accompany you.” She slipped her slender arm through his. Jonathan nodded at Porter, the unspoken communication stemming from many years of close friendship. Porter would remain at a respectable distance and deflect anyone who came to interrupt them.

  The Engineer’s Cupola was a blister on the side of one of the maintenance cars. Its leaded glass was protected from the earth’s glare and the sun’s rays by large sails on collapsible frameworks. It permitted the engineer to examine the length of the train toward the front or rear for any irregularities, using a double-lensed brass telescope. With the shielding sails in place, thousands of stars were visible. To get into the Cupola required some crawling through a narrow tube and Jonathan fretted about Cecilie’s clothing, but she was game and followed him without complaint.

  The Cupola was cozy for two people, but Cecilie didn’t seem to mind; she was transfixed by the view of all the stars. “C’est magnifique! Amazing. But why can I not see this from my berth?”

  “The light from the sun and Earth smothers the starlight. But here, that light is blocked so the engineer has a clear view of the entire train.”

  “And that is the engine?” She pointed at the glowing radiators above.

  “Indeed, powered by a Curie-Rutherford atomic pile, the most modern of its kind in the world.”

  “Oui, it is truly wondrous what your father has built.”

  Jonathan nodded. “Yes, it certainly is.”

  “You don’t sound like you mean that.”

  Her gaze was direct and sharp, and Jonathan could tell this was a woman who would suffer no fools. “You’re a straight shooter, aren’t you?”

  She blushed a little and looked away. “I am sometimes too frank for my own good. My father says this is why I will never find a husband.”

  “I don’t mind it. Anyway, my father’s creation is an amazing thing. I admire everything he’s accomplished. I just don’t feel like any of it is mine. I’m just along for the ride.” He was shocked by how much he’d opened up to someone he hardly knew. Perhaps it was the intimate space of the Cupola, almost like it was some sort of confessional.

  “We’re all along for someone else’s ride. You just have to find a way to make the trip more bearable until it is your turn to take the wheel.”

  She spoke like someone who could personally relate to what he felt, and this only made him want to know more about her. “You’re absolutely right.”

  “Do you wish to hear my proposition now?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “My father has been researching petroleum, and has developed a means to refine it for wide use. I am seeking investors so that we may develop the process into a viable industry, as an alternative to atomic-steam or coal-steam power.”

  “Petroleum? Are you looking to make asphalt or light some lamps? That industry hasn’t gone anywhere in half a century.”

  Cecilie’s words came faster as she spoke, excitement making her accent grow thicker. “Monsieur, my father’s refining techniques have produced kerosene and natural gas that are valuable fuels with many applications. We could stop burning coal in our boilers, and more importantly, we could replace steam power with a direct-driven internal combustion engine.”

  Jonathan goggled at her, then laughed in spite of himself. “Now I know you’re dreaming, Cecilie. I’m no engineer, but even I know that internal combustion doesn’t work with kerosene. It isn’t energetic enough.”

  Cecilie’s tone turned frosty. “I did not come here to be laughed at, Jonathan. I’ve seen the results of my father’s work. It is revolutionary. I was visiting Texas, where there is much petroleum underground. I hoped to find someone to invest in the project, but had no luck. My father has worked very hard and will be so disappointed.”

  “I apologize. I shouldn’t laugh at any visionary. Plenty of people laughed at my father when he told them about his idea for the Circumferential Rail. I’ll be traveling through Europe on business myself, seeking investors to expand the line, but when I return home, I’ll certainly mention your proposal to my father. He will likely see its promise.”

  “Zut alors! Qu’est-ce que c’est?” She pointed at an object moving through space.

  Jonathan looked. “That’s a Fulton.”

  “What is a Fulton?”

  “A schooner. Basically it’s a giant coke-fired teapot with a cargo hold attached to it. I’ve never been in one, but I hear they’re sweltering hot inside and cramped like a cattle car. They carry freight through orbit, clear wreckage, and any other number of things.”

  “But why would someone send freight through orbit instead of by land, sea, or air?”

  Jonathan shrugged. “For the same reason people ride the CR when they can take steamships or dirigibles. Because it’s faster. Modern commerce has to happen faster than it ever did before the turn of the century, and some people realized it was faster to ship their freight up into orbit, transport it through space, and deliver it back to Earth again.”

  “I never would have thought such a thing. Yet, I see how it could be very effective.”

  “I don’t know much about it except that it’s a complicated process. High-altitude dirigibles raise cargo to the very edge of space. Then Fultons lower crane cables to pull that cargo into their holds. Afterward, they reverse it to deliver to the destination.”

  “And even this complicated process is faster?”

  “Yes. Perhaps when we reach Pinnacle Station, I can show you.”

  Cecilie lowered her eyelids. “I would like that. I am sorry for my short tone earlier. It has been a stressful trip and I was hoping to have good news to deliver to my father when I returned home.”

  “I understand that sort of stress very well. Maybe we can have dinner in Paris, if you would like. You can show me around the city.”

  Her eyes widened and she pointed at the Fulton again. “Sacre bleu!”

  He turned to look, expecting she’d seen some other mundane thing, but instead saw something he never expected but had long feared when he started traveling in space.

  Sunlight glinted off a pair of huge kettles welded together in tandem. A great plume of steam shot from the thrusting nozzle, crystallizing into snow immediately. A shaft protruded obscenely from the end of the vessel, tipped with an intricate arrangement of geared teeth. Along the sides of the cabin, Jonathan could see open gunports with cannons protruding from them. The vessel rolled over to display the image of a blood-red shark painted upon a field of black as it closed in on the train.

  “Pirates!” cried Jonathan.

  “Pirates? But what does this train have for them?”

  “Passengers with a lot of money.” Jonathan found the emergency cable wrapped in bright red tape and yanked on it to sound an alarm in the locomotive’s cabin.

  A moment later, the intercom crackled and a heavily distorted voice boomed from the speaker. “Who’s in the Cupola? What’s the alarm?”

  “It’s Jonathan Orbital, engineer.”

  “Who?”

  “Orbital!” yelled Jonathan. “Jonathan Orbital! Sound the alarm, we’re about to be boarded by pirates.”

  “Who?” A shrieking whine filled the speaker. “What the hell is—” The engineer’s voice cut off.

  Jonathan and Cecilie watched as the Fulton schooner touched its snout to one of the cars. A whining vibration carried through the train’s framework, setting Jonathan’s teeth on edge. Men in pressure suits boiled out of a bay in the pirate vessel, trailing tethers and towing hoses. They he
aded for the atomic engine itself. Jonathan knew they’d be after spare water to refuel their own ship and any compressed air canisters they could find. The water and air were valuable, certainly, but not worthwhile enough to attack a train.

  “Jonathan, we must do something!”

  “What can we do? Those are pirates. Desperate men. They’ll be armed.”

  “I have pistols in my berth. I bought them in Houston. A gift, for my father.”

  “You can’t fire a pistol inside the train. You could put a hole in the wall or window, and then we’d lose all our air.”

  Cecilie opened the hatch that led back down from the Cupola. “Then I will have to be careful not to miss. Now are you coming or are you going to cower here?”

  Without waiting for his answer, she squeezed into the tube and wriggled back toward the car below. Jonathan cursed under his breath and went after her. He couldn’t let her put herself into danger, but she was bound and determined to get them both killed. Rumors floated around about some of the independent Fulton crews that roamed low-Earth orbit, preying upon the valuable cargo transported through the void. The pirates were brutal men, lifetime spacers who knew how to fight in microgravity. They eschewed modern weaponry in favor of the far more terrifying crossbows, swords, and axes of the past.

  As they emerged from the tube into the car, Jonathan could hear shouts further forward in the train. “Your berth. Tell me it’s toward the rear.”

  “Oui. Two cars back.”

  They hurried through the cars, already empty of passengers who had fled to the rear as they realized the train was going to be overrun. The CR employed a few security officers, but they would be with the passengers, ready to defend them from the pirates. Jonathan kept glancing back, expecting to see a horde of space barbarians come boiling through the end of the car at any moment.

  Cecilie rummaged through her luggage and emerged with two Colt pistols in a polished wooden case with brass hinges. She handed one to Jonathan. “I have never fired a pistol before. What do I do?”

  Jonathan may not have been one for adventuring, but he was from Texas, and he’d done a fair amount of target shooting over the years. He popped open the cylinder and fed six bullets into the chambers. The cylinder closed with a well-oiled click and he handed the weapon back to her. “Point it and pull the trigger. It’s loud and it will jerk in your hands. This is a very bad idea.”

  “So is standing idly by while pirates overrun your train. Have you no sense of honor, Jonathan? Do you not feel an obligation to—mon Dieu!”

  Jonathan sensed someone behind him and started to turn, but something hard and heavy crashed against the base of his skull and he knew nothing more.

  Chapter Two

  Phinneas Greaves, captain of the Ethershark, stepped from the airlock and into the CR’s atomic-powered locomotive. His heavy magnetic boots made authoritative thuds on the carpeted floor. The men had already done a fine job of securing the rig’s surplus water and oxygen units, but he expected no less from them. Cap’n Finn, as his shipmates called him, hadn’t earned his reputation as the hardest Fulton driver in space—among pirates and non-pirates alike—for running a loose operation. Phinneas stalked over to the engineer, who quivered in the cabin’s corner under his heavy suit of quilted lead. Like most of the rust buckets in space, the control cabin was hotter than the devil’s armpits. It was doubly worse in the engineer’s room, because instead of a coal or timber-fired boiler, the CR ran on atomic power, and even the train’s sizable radiators couldn’t keep the cabin from feeling like a summer day in Delhi . . . “I don’t believe I got yer name.”

  “It’s A-artemus. Artemus Heath.”

  He pulled out a daguerreotype of the treasure he’d come for. “Well, Artemus Artemus Heath, I wonder if ye can tell me where I might find this lovely piece.”

  “I wouldn’t know.” Heath’s eyes had widened and shifted just a touch, telling Phinneas the engineer was lying.

  “If ye don’t start talking, I’ll take this blade and cut yer protective little suit to pieces and ye can boil in here like a lobster for a spell. If that doesn’t work, I’ll do the same thing to yer hide. But don’t worry. I’ll start small. One finger at a time.”

  Artemus screamed when Phinneas reached down to grab at his suit. “All right, stop! I saw her in the coach car when she first boarded. Please just take her and go!”

  Phinneas smiled like the predator for which he’d named his ship and flung the engineer across the cabin with one hand. The man bounced back from the bulkhead and blubbered. His tears drifted off into the air like tiny jewels. Phinneas took a deep breath and savored the tang of fear in the air. He wondered if he should leave a more permanent memento of his visit, but the commotion of gunfire interrupted his train of thought; such a racket was never welcome on a space vessel.

  “Bloody hell, what fool’s got himself a popgun?” Phinneas left the gibbering engineer behind for good and stormed out of the locomotive into the first cargo car of the train. “The first son of a whore I find wieldin’ a firearm on this train will find himself towed home by his guts!” He smashed his axe into a crate as he passed and took a meager measure of satisfaction from the way splinters exploded all around him like wooden snowflakes.

  One of his men—though calling the greenhorn a man was a stretch, given he was barely out of puberty—loped toward him from the passenger cars further aft with his dark face a mask of panic. “Cap’n Finn! Somebody’s got popguns back there!” Stolen gold necklaces and bejeweled rings decorated his neck and fingers. He must have stopped to strip valuables from every single passenger he found. Avaricious dreams of wealth first drove men to piracy in the void, but only too soon did they learn that the real valuables weren’t the gleaming decorations of the Earthworms, but their consumables. Fuel. Air. Water. Protein. And the love of the void.

  Phinneas himself had no use for the glittery trinkets. He’d collected thousands of such things over twenty years of sea and space voyages alike. As he grew older, he found he preferred books, rare art, or useful tools. He struggled for a second to remember the greenhorn’s name. Sebastian something. “Aye, ye think I can’t hear the racket from up here? Which one of ye shriveling dicks brought the pistol?” He grabbed Sebastian by the arm and herded him down the hall.

  Sebastian’s feet flailed as he tried to regain contact with his magnetic boots. “But it ain’t us, Cap’n. It’s that jet-haired doxy! She’s back in the aft cargo car right now, and we can’t get to her with all the bullets flyin’ around. She’ll pierce the hull and we’ll all be for Willy Wright’s Locker.”

  Phinneas bit back the storm of curses that wanted to fly from his mouth. His orders had been simple. Get the French girl and bring her back to Houston. The businessman had bankrolled the largest sum the Ethershark had ever earned for a job, but he’d said nothing about the possibility of armed combat, and Phinneas hadn’t expected it. These passengers were soft-bellied rich folk who were as likely to pack a gun onto a spaceship as they were to drink Kentucky Moonshine and piss vinegar. They weren’t supposed to fight back.

  A white-faced unconscious passenger drifted past Phinneas and Sebastian. Globules of bright red blood spun and wavered through the air in his wake. Cordite-scented smoke washed in swirls of gray amid the sulfurous electrical lights. The pirate captain didn’t stop for anything until he reached the cargo compartment door. Another whip-crack of a pistol firing, and something whistled by his shoulder to bury itself in the far bulkhead. He felt the heat of its passing on his skin.

  A group of his crewmen huddled around all edges of the entrance, peeking into the aft cargo car like they were watching a ten-cent peep show. Bloody cowards! Phinneas shoved Sebastian aside and tried to see over the heads of his men. He didn’t want to pick his feet up from the floor and risk getting caught in open air with no leverage to move or dodge.

  “Get outta me way, ye useless lumps!” He forced his way through the group with great shoves and heaves. When he got to the wind
ow, he saw a woman in a wide-brimmed hat perched behind a big wooden shipping crate, waving her six-shooter around, firing almost at random. The pirates crouched down behind barriers of their own and clutched their crossbows to their chests. At least the whelps weren’t trying to shoot her. She was no good to them dead. With her wide eyes and steely grimace, the lass looked crazy enough to do anything, like shoot out a window on purpose. The way she kept snapping off wild shots, it was only a matter of time before a bad ricochet cracked a pane and then they were all in with Willy Wright.

  “Where’s that cursed Chinaman?” Phinneas bellowed. He’d hired an acrobat for a reason; Feng could move through microgravity better than even the most seasoned full-time spacer.

  “Right here, Cappin,” said a small voice from behind him. Phinneas looked up to see Feng pressed flat against the roof of the car. He wore no magnetic-soled boots; in fact, he disdained shoes altogether, and his clever toes could find purchase on even the smooth surface of the glass overhead. He was crazy, though—crazier than a Fulton coalman in bad ventilation. He filed his teeth to make his face a wicked parody of the Ethershark’s namesake, which was disturbing for even the most hardened spacefarer to gaze upon for too long. Phinneas tolerated the man’s eccentricities, though, because of his uncanny ability to dance through a crowded room without a single person laying hands on him.

  Phinneas pointed to the door. “Get in there and get her. She couldn’t hit a standin’ barge let alone a twirlin’ Chinaman.”

  Feng bared his mutilated grin and placed his hands on the edge of the door, ready to fling himself into the cargo car.

  “Feng,” said Phinneas.

  The acrobat turned back.

  “If you kill her, I’ll personally turn yer insides into chop suey and feed them to the crew for an extra protein ration.”

  Feng laughed. “Aye-aye, Cappin.” He flew into the room.

  The Chinaman flipped end over end from ceiling to floor, bulkhead to storage rack. It was the kind of motion that no ordinary man should have been capable of, and Phinneas struggled to keep his eyes focused on the whirling freak show.