Soap said, “I’d rather we don’t actually kill her, I’d as soon not go down for murder.”
Dusty only looked embarrassed by the whole conversation.
In the end, they elected to push Monique out the door as the train crossed a small bridge over a goose pond. The water looked particularly dirty. Soap slowed the train while Dimity untied Monique’s wrists. The girl made a delightful squawking noise around the gag as she fell. She also made a decidedly satisfying splash. Hopefully, there wouldn’t be another train along for ages.
With Monique gone the mood lifted. They began to plan how to acquire more coal and food.
Then Dimity gave a holler. She’d spent most of the afternoon hanging by one arm out the doorway, while Sophronia took the same position behind Soap. This left room in the middle for Sidheag and Dusty to stoke.
Dimity explained her holler. “I see a dirigible on the horizon.”
“Flywaymen?”
“Hard to tell, they’re far off.”
Sophronia came over, shading her eyes. “I don’t think it’s the one we crashed into, how could they repair it that fast? Besides, this one looks armored.”
“Wonderful, does it have a cannon mount and recoil guard?” Sidheag asked.
“Looks like.”
“I guess the Picklemen decided we know too much,” said Dimity. Rather calm, Sophronia thought proudly, under the circumstances.
“Or your darling Lord Mersey ratted us out,” said Sidheag.
“Not my darling anything, Sidheag.” Sophronia was abruptly tired of that game. And she didn’t like the way Soap’s shoulders hunched at Sidheag’s words.
“If they know we’re Mademoiselle Geraldine’s girls and not Bunson’s boys…” Sidheag stressed her point. Bunson’s boys on the loose larking up to Scotland were one thing. Bunson’s boys were dangerous with exotic inventions but could be depended upon to come ’round to the Pickleman agenda eventually. Mademoiselle Geraldine’s girls, on the other hand, were dangerous with information and couldn’t be depended upon by anyone but their patrons.
That was the moment when Sophronia realized their safest course of action would have been to return to school. The Picklemen would never make a direct move against Mademoiselle Geraldine’s, for that would only get intelligencers investigating. Plus, they couldn’t afford to make an outright enemy of Lady Linette.
The dirigible following them had a propeller spinning at high speed. It had also caught a stiff breeze and was gaining on them.
Nevertheless, a train was faster than most dirigibles, except those new high-flyers out of France. They could tell even at a distance that this was an older model, of the kind Queen Victoria once employed in the Royal Float Force, heavy and heavily armed.
They had only one choice.
“I guess we try to outrun it,” said Soap. “All hands to the boilers!”
By this point in the journey, most of the girls had given Dusty a hand with the boilers, breaking whenever he needed a rest. As a result, they had all developed some rudimentary shoveling savvy. They also had arms screaming from the unexpected activity. Sophronia had thought, before this journey, that she was rather fit. She was, after all, prone to climbing around airships and swinging from hurlies. But stoking was a whole different beast. It was awfully hard work, and explained Soap’s delightful muscles. There were only two shovels on the train, so they took turns going as fast as they could, working their way through what coal was left in the tender at an alarming rate. One girl, inside the tender, scooped it forward into range, then the stoker shoved it as fast as possible into the boiler.
The train screamed at the top of its pitch, engine taxed almost beyond capacity.
“Any more and we won’t make those turns,” Dusty cautioned Soap, who nodded his agreement.
The girls kept shoveling.
“We don’t want to blow her, and we don’t want to lose the rails!” yelled Soap.
So they had to relax their efforts, even though Dimity reported that the dirigible, while not gaining on them, was keeping pace.
It was a challenging afternoon. Mademoiselle Geraldine’s prepared its young ladies for unusual situations, but it did not prepare them for heavy labor. The very idea! Even as intelligencers, actually working was not expected of women of standing. Now that Sophronia, Dimity, and Sidheag were acting drudges, they didn’t even have time to stop for tea. Not that there was any tea.
As the sun began to set and the moon rose, now on the waning side of full, they realized the tender was empty.
It wasn’t a surprise, they knew it was coming, but now they had to face reality.
They fed the boiler more slowly, eking out the last of the reserves that Bumbersnoot hadn’t consumed, drawing out the inevitable.
“The flywaymen are gaining on us,” reported Dimity.
An hour or so later, “They’re on our tail now.”
Half an hour after that, “Cannons are up.”
And then, “Can’t see them anymore, they must be right on top of us.”
A boom sounded.
“They’re firing!” said Dimity.
“Yes, dear. We can hear that,” said Sophronia.
Nothing happened; the train continued to clatter along. The cannonball must have missed. There was a long pause while the dirigible reloaded. Soap gave the engine all the throttle they had, but the boiler was cooling regardless.
Another boom sounded.
This time Dimity didn’t report the occurrence. But the train did shake dramatically. It shuddered and then began to squeal as if the brake were being applied.