Av paused at the aft hatchway, examining the hatch and the bulkhead around it with his light. There was no discoloration to the hatch as there had been up on number one, so he surmised that the fire or whatever hadn’t reached the lower decks. Did they go in from here, then?

At this point, he was inclined to believe that they were alone down here, but he wasn’t inclined enough to risk his life on the bet. That sort of thing got you killed.

He glanced at Henry. The man looked like half warmed over death in a leaky pot. Truth be told, he didn’t feel all that spry himself. It had been a long day and he was older than his companion by more than a couple of years.

He arched an eyebrow. Henry, bent over with one hand braced against a knee, just waved limply with the barrel of the revolver in his free hand.

Standing one to each side, they mouthed a silent count. One... two... three! Av spun the dogging wheel and they went in hard. Almost immediately, Henry went down, cursing and clattering, one of his pistols flying across the deck.

Av ducked low, searching the darkness. He hadn’t even heard a shot. “Henry!” he hissed, swinging the Thompson in tight arcs. “Henry, you alive?” ducking back, he waited for the expected flash of gunfire from out of the black maw beyond the hatchway.

He heard Henry groan from down on the deck, shifting around amongst much cursing and more clattering. “I’m not shot, you daffy bastard,” he grated. “I tripped over something.”

Av relit his flashlight and shined it into the area from whence he could hear Henry’s swearing. There he was, splayed out on the far side of a pile of something that looked almost like hydraulic rams, but with wires coming out of them at all angles and no obvious hydraulic lines anywhere. Damned things were nearly two feet thick and more than ten feet long. And there were five of them, taking up nearly the entire passageway.

“What the hell are those things?”

“Painful,” Henry’s reply was strained. “Help me up, damn you.”

They were in some kind of storage compartment. It only stretched a couple of feet beyond the pile of whatevers before ending in a high row of sturdy shelves stocked with various mechanical parts and supplies. There were no lights, not even emergency lights. And there was no way aft. Dead end. Or was it?

Looking around with his flash, Av spotted an overhead hatch about three feet by three. There was a mounted ladder folded up and latched to the plating beside it.

Moving over to where Henry was sitting on the pile of cylinders examining his torn leg, he handed the man his flash and bade him hold it for him while he consulted his map.

“According to this thing, that’s supposed to be the engineer’s workshop up there.”

“Where the hell’d you get that?” Henry demanded.

“Pilots’ quarters.”

“When?”

“When I left you in the hold — will you hold that damned light still?

“Yeah, says here that this is engineers’ stores down here, but that the workshop is up there. Well, that explains the lift outside and that hatch up on the bulkhead.”

“Does it say in there why the power is dead here but not forward?”

Av gave him the owl eye. “I think the answer to that is that buckled door up on one,” he said. Then he shrugged broadly, chucking his chin up at the folded ladder. “Shall we?”

“I’m not climbing that ladder,” Henry shook his head. “You know better than to breach a hatch while you’re hanging off the top of a ladder. Particularly a blind hatch.”

“So, what?” Av inquired. “You wanna go all the way up three decks and come at it from the other end?”

Henry snorted. "Far’s I’m concerned, we can just cut the whole sonofabitch loose and let it float away. At that point, who cares what’s on the other side of that damned hatch.”

Av shook his head. At this point, the last thing in the world he wanted to do was cut the strange ship loose. It held far too many ugly mysteries for him to let go of it willingly. He meant to have some answers if he had to ride the thing down the trades on his own.

“Well you cover me then,” he said. I mean to finish what we started.”

“Well, damnit, Av,” Henry cursed. “Let me get set then. Unless you want me to shoot your britches out instead of covering you.”

Av handed him the flashlight and let him get set while he was pulling the ladder down. He couldn’t lock it into the dogs on the deck because of the pile of cylinders, but he set the lower end atop them and made his way to the top. Henry nodded, flashlight in his left hand, revolver braced against that wrist and lined up with the beam, which he shone directly at the hatch.

The wheel turned easily, and Av pushed. Nothing. It was as though it were still locked.

“What?” Henry demanded from below.

“I dunno,” he replied. Hang on.”

The angle of the ladder was bad for leverage, but he got himself turned around so he could set his back against the reluctant hatch. Gritting his teeth, he braced his arms and straightened his legs.

The hatch fought him for a couple of seconds, and he was starting to see stars, when all of a sudden, it swung up and a shower of filthy liquid spewed from the open hatchway in a torrent that all but bowled him off the ladder.

Henry yelled in alarm and dove out of the way, nearly making it. All Av could do was hang on as it washed over him, wanting to curse, but unwilling to open his mouth to the flood.

It took almost two minutes for the flow to slow enough that it wouldn’t knock him off the ladder, and even then, it didn’t stop. He shook himself like a big dog, finally giving vent to his anger. He didn’t know precisely what had just washed over him, but it bore a strong chemical smell, mixed with more than a hint of black water. Wiping the back of his head, his hand came away with what he recognized as fire retardant foam. The stench wafting down from the upper compartment made him forget all about allox and pigs.

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“I think we found our fire, Henry,” he called down, stifling a cough.

“Ya think?” Henry asked. He was soaked nearly to the waist and standing ankle deep in the sludge that had poured down from above and washed up and over the lip of the hatch and out into the hold.

Av eased himself up into the blackness, not moving from the lip of the hatch — waiting for Henry to come up with the light. The darkness was absolute. As he waited, he wondered. Why had this compartment still been flooded?

The pirates had been on the ground and in full control of the Pascal stead for half a day at least, before he, Marty, and Dar had crashed the party. Surely, that would have given them plenty of time to clear these decks. What had stopped them? He fought the temptation to run a finger along the slimy deck. Had it, maybe, been because they knew something he didn’t?

Henry stuck his head up through the hatch and cursed. “There wasn’t any fire here,” he said angrily.

Looking around, the workshop might have been prepared for an inspection. The paint on the walls was crisp, with only the slightest edging along the ceiling showing the telltale signs of smoke.

Coughing, they crouched low and edged aft, wishing they’d thought to procure protective masks before coming below. They’d passed various emergency stations that had obviously once held such things, but all they’d encountered thus far had been empty. The station in this compartment was the same.

The next compartment aft was obviously the electric shop. It, too, showed signs of smoke, but no fire. It too, stank of chemicals and molten metal.

Beyond, they found an oddly shaped passageway, lined with cupboards against the far bulkhead. Ah, and a ladderway upwards, liberally slathered with suspicious stains and streamers of foam. They hadn’t found the fire, but they had found their passage up to the next deck.

Number one deck was a mess. It had burned here, and burned hot. They hadn’t time to investigate why, but there was no doubt that it had happened. Parts of the bulkheads had started to run. The air, even this long after the fires had been quenched, was nearly unbreathable. There was nobody hiding in here. Nobody alive in any case.

There were two more ladderways here, one up and one down. Henry looked longingly up, but he knew that Av wouldn’t rest until he’d cleared the entirety of the huge vessel. He nodded glumly and down they went.

They descended into watery sludge that was ankle deep and still warm enough to send steam up into the compartments. Henry gestured to Av with some alarm.

Av just shrugged. The pilot’s map was blank for this whole section. Whatever was down here, he’d obviously not been cleared to know about it. The compartment number stenciled on the bulkhead wall called it, not particularly helpfully, an ammunition space.

The aft bulkhead of this latest companionway was wall to wall with tall lockers, clearly marked with crisp new lettering proclaiming them arms lockers and 12.7mm ammunition storage respectively. They were tightly locked, and if anybody down below had had the key, Av hadn’t found it.

To the left was a tightly dogged hatchway that was sealed with some kind of lock that required two keys, neither of which he had.

Around behind the ladderway, they found themselves in a large compartment devoted to some sort of control systems that neither man recognized at all. This one called itself a ship control space. Gauges, knobs, switches, and levers lined two of the walls, and there were a couple of consoles with bolted down chairs against the inner bulkhead that served no purpose either of them could work out.

Beyond this mystery control room, they found a compartment holding a pair of huge diesel engines.

“Sweet mother!” Av let his breath out with a whoosh. “Those things are big enough to power an ocean going destroyer. What the hell are they doing on an airship?”

The next compartment told them the answer. “You could power a small town with those things,” he told Henry, staring at the two massive generators, one to an engine. “What the hell do they need alla that power for?”

Henry trailed his eyes along the thick bands of cable to where they disappeared through the aft compartment wall. “Whatever it is,” he said. “I’ll bet it’s behind that hatch we can’t get to open.”

“Yeah,” Av nodded. “I’d sure like to see what’s in there.”

“Like in one hand,” Henry told him wryly. “Unless you’ve got some keys hidden on you that you found somewhere, we’re not getting through that hatch any time soon.”

Av shot him a look and headed for the ladderway that led back down to deck three.

The water trapped down here was nearly waist deep, and every bit as foul as what had rained down on them on the other side of the ship. Dogged hatches lined the flooded passageway on either side, and it looked like they’d found some powder magazines.

Neither man wanted to try the hatches, either. Some of the powders in use on New Victoria got a mite unpredictable when they got wet. On an airship, that wasn’t normally a big deal. They were currently standing waist deep in an exception.

The rest of the after deck was taken up with general stores and the pair of pneumatic cannon that were used to launch the power grapples the pirates used for taking their victims under tow, along with the motors and generator that powered them. Presumably, the heavy coils of tow line were somewhere below, in probably flooded compartments. If there were hatches down to them anywhere on this deck, neither man could find them.

Henry was almost crying with fatigue by the time Av started back up the ladder. He was tired of being Henry Entmann, damnit! He’d forgotten what a trial that had been — how much pain he’d forgotten over the long years of peace.

Afterdeck number one, foul as it was, needed only a quick once over. The machine shop at the far end, hard up against the stern boom, had missed much of the heat of the conflagration, but bore its own fire and smoke damage. Little wonder the pirates had decided they’d rather commandeer somebody else’s. It, too, was clear.

The bodies were gone when they’d regained the main deck. There was a bit of a hiccup when one of the nervous militia nearly pegged a shot at Av as he poked his head out through a hatchway from an unexpected direction, but a stern glare and shouted threat brought him in check before he managed to pull the trigger.

Av ordered the militia to maintain the guard, but to stay out on deck under pain of a beating.

All the while, even above his other concerns, he was wondering what had happened to the aircraft. Had another ship taken them aboard? Had they been shot down? The damage to the ship alone was enough to tell him that Kestrel hadn’t gone down without a fight.

But what if they hadn’t? Was there a possibility this thing’s fighters might yet make an appearance? He knew the island pretty well, and he knew that there wasn’t anyplace you could land an HTA on it that at least somebody wasn’t going to notice. But there were also one or two uninhabited rocks out there in the island’s debris cluster big enough and near enough that one or both might have landed on one of them with enough fuel to get back here.

It was all Henry could do to make it down the ladder. As he watched him climb down, struggling with his torn leg, Av thought that he looked like he was more than ready to resume being Hendrel Entigh the shopkeeper again and leave the specter of his former life behind him. Damn shame he probably wouldn’t get to.

Milo met them on the ground, so excited he was nearly dancing. “RN just radioed the constabulary office in town on a secure channel!” he told them. “They’ll be here by morning!”

“Damn!” Av spat. “You tell Mr. Palanna about that?”

Milo shook his head nervously. Truth to tell, he wasn’t entirely sure that he wasn’t more afraid of Palanna than he was of old Tall Pines. At least he sort of knew what to expect of Tall Pines.

Av started for the farmhouse, but Entigh’s voice stopped him. “Where’d the prisoners go, Av?” he demanded, looking around, his face gone hard.

Av spun about, regarding him cautiously. Old and tired he might be, but Henry had been a tough customer once, and wasn’t much of a slouch even yet, for all that he looked at this moment to be about ready to keel over dead. And he still had all those pistols belted around him.

“Where, Avery?” Henry’s voice dropped menacingly, effectively shedding Hendrel Entigh at least this one more time.

“Where RN won’t find ‘em,” Av said evenly. “Last thing we want is to let RN have those guys.”

“Why’s that, Avery?” He’d been promised justice. He’d been promised the gibbet. He wasn’t happy with this spiriting away of the transgressors. It smacked of something underhanded.

“Didn’t Marty tell you?” Av asked.

Entigh shook his head slowly, measuredly.

Av sighed resignedly. It saddened him that he was going to have to do this to a man who’d already suffered all that Henry had suffered these past hours.

“Milo?” he half-turned without removing his gaze from Henry’s. “You’re dismissed.”

He didn’t have to say it twice. The last place Milo Watkins wanted to be was anywhere near these two hard old men with sparks ready to fly.

Av watched him go out the corner of his eye, waiting until he was well out of earshot and among his men. Then he gestured to Henry. “Follow me,” he said quietly.