Part the Third - Giving Thanks

Chapter one

Inch by inch I pulled myself upright. When I dangled perpendicular to the cliff, I saw where my foot had stuck fast in a layer of clay stuck to the side of the cliff. I could feel the rope giving way each time I jerked myself up another few inches; if I tried to pull myself free of the mud I would likely pull the cart and girls down on my head.

My trapped leg wouldn’t work; the cog didn’t mesh with my hip. My free leg, on the other hand, worked fine. Six inches at a time I pulled myself upright. When I could reach, I slammed the stump of my right arm into the mud. I expected it to hit rock beneath the layer of clay. Instead, it shot straight through, puncturing into a dead space beyond.

I bent my elbow, securing me to the wall, and kicked with my good leg. With each blow, the entire wall of clay shuddered, cracks spreading out from both the point of impact and the hole with my arm hooked through. Gradually a spindle shaped outline formed; the clay covered a natural cave, my damaged foot stuck at the narrow bottom of the opening. I paused, watching the clay to see if it would collapse under its own weight.

I had no such luck; at this altitude, at this time of year, the clay was frozen solid. I could crack it, but it wouldn’t be easy.

"Miss Tina!" Evelyn's voice echoed down from above.

I set my vocoder to maximum amplification, "Is the wagon secure?"

"It's rocking a little. Are you coming back up?" Intervening wind and distance robbed her voice of excitement or fear.

"I may have you come down. Get the girls ready to climb!"

With that I pulled my foot back as far as it would go, then hammered my knee into the clay in front of me. It shattered explosively; chunks as big as my head raining down around me. My foot came free, and suddenly my entire prodigious weight was on the rope. I dropped, visualizing the wagon above me sliding sideways into the chasm. My hand shot out even before the screams of the girls reached me from above. I grabbed into the cave for something, anything to give me purchase.

My questing hand found something smooth, metallic. I clamped down on it, surprised when it didn't give. I twisted around, got my good foot underneath me, and pulled myself upright in the mouth of the cave. I nudged my optics to pick up even the faintest traces of light...

...and stared straight into a muzzle wider around than my fist.

***

The cannon was an old Mechanical model, a Franklin Explorer class Autocannon. Designed to support scouts like Lewis, Clark, and Fremont, they were six-legged, four-ton beasts made to overcome the fiercest terrain Franklin could imagine. I ran a hand over it, wondering why it had been left in this cleft of rock. I could find no damage, but it was cold as the ice coming down outside. By the light of a match I examined the rest of the cave. Barely bigger than the wagon above us, boxes and boxes of salt beef, hard tack biscuits, and ammunition for the explorer took up most of it.

It was barely bigger than the wagon, but tons of rock on all sides insulated it. I leaned out of the cave opening and tugged on the rope.

"Evelyn! Send Angela down!"

A few moments later a series of rhythmic tugs shook the rope. Angela's voice filtered from above. "Marshal, are you... are you feeling well?"

"I am damaged, but still functional. Are you stuck?"

The rope jerked frantically for a few moments. Wood cracked far above me. I tried to think of a way to catch Angela without sending us both tumbling into the abyss, but I had no way to brace myself. I tried hammering the stump of my severed arm into the wall of the cave, but all I wound up doing was damaging it further.

A strange double awareness overtook me. Part of me scrabbled frantically for some way to catch Angela before she plummeted past. That part cursed softly, swearing in frustration as I waited to grab a falling body. Another part of me observed myself, fascinated with how furious I became over not being able to save Angela, over not having my arm.

Then, suddenly, it was right in front of me. My fist still clutched around a thick branch; my arm dangled in front of the cave opening.

"Hey! This thing isn't light!"

I let go of the rope and grabbed my arm. I pulled arm, branch, and Angela through the cave opening. The girl squawked with dismay. My arm twitched as I accidentally squeezed the hydraulics. The branch didn't say anything.

"It's getting awful snowy out there." Angela shook her head, sending a wave of slush onto the casing of the old Explorer. A moment later she ran into the cannon face first, winding up on her backside on the floor of the cave.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

"Ow!" Her nose bled where she'd smacked it. I dialed my optics down to human normal and realized why; with my optics dialed up I could navigate the cave, barely, without light. To Angela it was black as pitch.

"Sit still, Angela. Don't move around too much."

"I'm freezing in my own slush puddle!"

"The others are colder." Saying it, I realized how true it must be. I needed to get the rest of the girls down here quickly, lest they freeze to death in the damaged wagon.

I stared, unseeing, at the cannon in front of me. If only I had its spider legs, capable of finding purchase on sheer cliff faces, I could be up to the girls in short order, able to carry them down just as quickly. The answer struck me a moment later.

"Angela. I need you to be my hands. There is a Mechanical device in front of you. Carefully feel it until you find a latch."

I watched in silence as she groped for the latch to the Explorer's fuel bunker. When she found it, she smiled despite her puffy nose. Without prompting, she pulled the latch and swung the bunker door open. I chose not to point out how close she came to hitting herself in the face again.

"I will hand you pieces of the branch. Place them inside the bunker. Fill it as far as you can."

"Yes, Marshal." She kept one hand on the opening of the fuel bunker and held the other out. Using my good foot and hand, I stripped branch after branch from the broken tree. After a few minutes, branches stuck out of the fuel bunker.

"Excellent. Now slide backward until your back is against the boxes behind you." When she was out of the way, I leaned over and tried to light the wood. The match sparked, fizzled, and went out. I was running out of matches. There might be some here in the cache, but I didn't have time to look. I staggered back to the cave mouth, yanked on the rope to get the girls' attention, and shouted.

"Evelyn!"

I heard her reply, faint over the sound of the wind. "Yes, Miss?"

"Send down water and lamp oil!"

The rope slithered up out of my grip. After an interminable wait, a shadow descended through the snow. A coarse canvas bag, covered in snow, proved to contain a half dozen bottles of lamp oil and three canteens. I wasted no time; I poured a bottle of oil onto the damp wood. I ripped the hem off of my robe, doused it in a second bottle of oil, and stuffed it into the fuel bunker.

With my next to last match, the coarse fabric of my robe caught fire. I opened the flue and closed the bunker door. I called Angela back over and had her open the boiler. We poured two canteens and all the snow we could scrape into the tank. By the time we were done, the boiler casing was heating up. I closed the boiler, dogged it shut, and pulled myself over to the controls. While I waited for it to heat, I loaded a single specialty round into the cannon's internal magazine. By the time the gauge indicated the Explorer had enough steam to move, full dark had fallen, and the snow was a white sheet outside.

"Put your coat back on, Angela."

"But it's beastly hot in here!"

"It will get cold fast when I take this out. Get your coat on." She scrambled back out of the way; she'd found a lamp while I waited for the Explorer to heat up. With her safely ensconced in the back of the cave, I buckled myself into the command seat of the Autocannon and pressed gently on the controls. The machine skittered out the cave mouth, nearly pitching me off when it adjusted to the vertical cliff face without breaking stride.

I turned it around and started up the cliff. I couldn't see the trail in the blowing snow, but when my mechanical steed leveled out, I knew I'd found it. I walked it gingerly back and forth along the trail, but it was no use. I couldn't find the girls. Shouting produced no response. If they were still alive, they couldn't hear me. I was out of options. I leaned the Autocannon back until its barrel pointed near vertical, angled to face slightly over the cliff. When I was sure I wouldn't hit anyone, I pulled the trigger.

The roar of the cannon echoed through the pass, calling answering chaos from the cliffs on either side. The round shot up into the sky, disappearing immediately into the gloom. A few seconds later a tiny pop, anticlimactic after the huge sound of the cannon firing. Green light, provided by a flare drifting through the night sky, illuminated the scene just enough for me to make out the wagon where it rested, nearly a hundred feet down the trail.

I set out as quickly as my machine would allow. Two faces peeked from beneath the tarp, both white with cold. None of the other girls had even been able to muster the energy to peek out at the sound of a cannon. I had to act fast, or all of them would die of cold despite my efforts.

I found the rope the girls had been lowering down to me and pulled it up. The moment I did, I realized what it was. They'd found the truant officer's lead, the one I'd seen Evelyn trapped by on the day I returned Phobos to the museum. Slavery or death then, it would mean life now. One at a time, I slipped the tight loops around the girls' waists. Most of them were too far gone to put up more than a token protest, and the loops were made to hold recalcitrant children. Only Evelyn managed to squirm out of my grasp.

"Not again," she moaned.

"I told your mother I would take care of you. I got you away from Cartwright, I kept you from going over the cliff, and I'm not losing you to this storm, Evelyn Jennings!"

I pulled the last loop of the rope around my own waist, grabbed up Evelyn in what remained of my arm, and buckled myself back into the command seat of the Explorer. The girls dangling beneath the Autocannon like bizarre fruit, we worked our way down the cliff until I made out the cave opening. Angela's lantern glimmered from within, a beacon of hope.

When we were level with the cave, my worst fears realized themselves. The spider legs of the Explorer, agile though they were, had never been intended to be used in snow. I heard the first slip free of the cliff face with the sound of a sword sliding free of a sheath. I tossed Evelyn unceremoniously into the cave. The force of my throw jostled another foot away from the hard rock wall. My control rods slipped their friction grips. I ripped the command seat buckle from my waist and leapt for the opening, girls crying and screaming as they slammed into the cliff beneath me.

The Explorer toppled down the cliff face, trailing a line of fire and steam after its first impact. I landed half in, half out of the cave. My sodden clothes offered no traction, I started sliding backward under the weight of the children beneath me. I groped for anything to stop my fall.

My fingers found the groove where the Explorer had rested so long. The old Mechanical had saved us one final time. With that traction, I pulled myself into the cave, then pulled the rest of the girls up with me.