Beyond the Rails 3: Slayer of Darkness

Chapter 12

Mombasa Sunday morning

          Yesterday’s bluster only a memory, the heat was back in Mombasa even in the early morning, a threatening presence hanging in the still air, shimmering over the rooftops like a predatory animal waiting to spring. Kestrel hung, envelope soft, mooring lines slack, gently bumping the dock in the light breeze. Her boiler was cold, and no cargo awaited delivery on her after deck. It was such an unaccustomed look for the busy little ship that the aerodrome workers were beginning to speculate.
          Captain Monroe was beginning to speculate as well. He was uneasy as he strolled along the railing, idly examining the mooring lines for the umpteenth time, and he couldn’t put his finger on the reason. It didn’t harm the ship to lie idle, not so long as Patience kept positive buoyancy established and they had a source of income in the form of Jinx’s retainer, so what was bothering him? He picked up a discarded lashing from the cargo deck, idly coiling it in his hand as he turned over his uneasiness in his mind, and inevitably, he came to the one factor that had changed since their last cargo run: Jinx.
          There were too many contradictions in her constantly evolving story, and too much he knew about her that he rather wished he didn’t, such as the fact that the girl was a cold-blooded killer. Would his crew be next to fall to her callous disregard for human life? She dressed the part of a stockman, and her accent and slang seemed genuine enough, but clothes could be purchased, accents studied. Who was this really that he had taken into his home? The young girl far from home, desperately seeking her sister? Or a poisonous serpent who would destroy them all? This was a question that had to be answered, and he hoisted himself onto the mess room roof, crossed his legs Indian style, and waited for the only person who could provide those answers.
          Shortly, that person came around the side of the pilot house, saw him seated on the low roof, and walked over to join him.
          “Good morning, Captain,” she greeted him in a friendly enough manner, taking the day’s stipend from the breast pocket of her shirt and handing it to him.
          “Miss Jenkins,” he replied, pocketing the voucher without looking at it. “How does the day find you?”
          “Worried,” she said candidly.
          “That doesn’t seem like you.”
          “It usually isn’t. I’m about to be evicted from your ship, even though I pay well for its use, and put you in no danger that is associated with my activities. Now I’m going to have to find another ship whose crew will be willing to help me, and I understand there are only seven ships that fly in the colony.”
          “That’s correct, and one of them is cargo only. They never consider passenger flights.”
          “So I’m worried. I’ve lived up to everything we’ve agreed on, and still you want rid of me. What have I done?”
          “It’s what you haven’t done.”
          “What have I not done?”
          “Told me the truth.”
          “I have, Captain.”
          “About your dear sister lost sister who you are frantic to find?”
          “That’s right.”
          “And that’s what bothers me. Here we are tied to the dock for no other reason than waiting for Patty’s holster. Now, we might pick up a cargo before tomorrow, but if you were so frantic about finding Sydney, you’d be railing at me to get into the air, or at least using the day canvassing Mombasa for leads. Instead, here you are strolling the deck after a leisurely breakfast like you don’t have a care in the world.”
          “People handle their frustration in different ways, Captain.”
          “I don’t doubt it, but you don’t act like someone who’s bereaved over a missing loved one, whose name, by the way, I thought was Sylvia.”
          “What?”
          “I just called her Sydney, and you didn’t even notice. You couple that with events from the last time we met you, and I don’t detect the aura of a poor little farm girl. You’re something altogether different, and if you hope to continue with us, I will know what it is.”
          “Captain, I’ve told you. You agreed to abandon me in Nairobi. I call on you to honor your word.”
          “Oh, we’ll take you to Nairobi, that isn’t an issue. What about after that? Do you want to continue on with us?”
          “You know I do.”
          “Then I will have the truth. Not another cock and bull story, not a retelling of this one. Something you can prove, and that I can verify. Once I know what you’re really after, then I can decide, based on facts, whether it’s worth putting my ship and my crew in danger to help you.”
          “Captain, I can’t.”
          “Then neither can I. I like you, Jinx, I really do. You’re self-assured, capable, you’re the kind of woman the future’s going to need, and I admire that in you. Besides that, you and your crew did us a great service in Malinde, and we owe you something for that, but you are not looking for your sister, if you even have one, and I will not put my crew in danger until I fully understand what that danger is.”
          She looked at him as a tear welled from one eye, which she quickly dabbed before it started to run.
          “I envy these people, Captain. I lost my father early. I like to think he might have been like you.” She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly. “All right, I’ll tell you everything, and I’ll offer proof, but only when we’re airborne. There can be no possibility of anyone overhearing this.”
          “At last! Do you have any business to conduct ashore?”
          “No.”
          “All right.”
          He walked forward to the pilot house as she followed him. Stepping in, he pulled one of the flexible speaking tubes down to face-level.
          “This is the Captain. Is anyone there?”
          “This is Bakari,” came the distorted reply.
          “Get everyone on deck, Bakari. I have an announcement.”
          “Yes, Nahodha.”
          He stepped back out and waited beside Jinx as the three members of his crew climbed up the accommodation ladder.
          “Patience, Bakari, raise steam and get ready to fly,” he told them when they were assembled. “David, find us some line handlers. We’re going to take a tour of the harbor.”

Northwest of Mombasa 10:00 AM

          Reinhard looked longingly out the window of the rocking, jolting car at the distant airship descending toward Mombasa. He wished now that he’d gone to the aerodrome where he had seen one of the blimps’ envelopes swaying to and fro, but Mutala had never complained about travel on the Mombasa-Nairobi, and he never associated it with problems.
          But problems there were. Fifteen hours on a hard wooden seat was already a problem only an hour into the journey. Granted, they were shaped to support the curve of a human spine, but they remained hard wooden slats, and he was already feeling their bite. He would feel it a lot more before nightfall, aggravated as it was by the track itself. He had done some traveling in his time, but never before had he encountered a stretch of track that felt as though it had been constructed with ruts and potholes included.
          Riding in this abominable carriage was a true art, and one of the artisans was seated on the aisle beside him, a turbaned Sikh, or so he assumed, dressed in ragged pajamas with curly-toed slippers, and hailing from a province where bathing had not yet been discovered. Compounding the problem was the loud, sing-songy conversation he carried on with his comrade across the aisle; surely one of them had to be stone-deaf. As if to prove that it could be worse, they shared from a bag of fruits that when opened smelled like feces. When the man had turned to offer him one, he almost puked.
          Fourteen hours to go, he thought, resting his face against the bars outside the open window. Somewhere, somehow, someone’s going to pay for this!

Aloft above Mombasa 11:00 AM

          Patience Hobbs brought Kestrel to a virtual standstill five hundred feet above the bustling confusion of Mombasa Harbor. Captain Monroe stepped into the cramped pilot house, drew Jinx into the doorway, and with Smith and Bakari standing just outside, invited her to convince them.
          “Before I start, I must have the promise of everyone here that nothing I’m about to say goes beyond the confines of this vessel. If you repeat anything ashore, officially or otherwise, it will be denied, you will be ridiculed as a delirious fool, but there will be damage done nonetheless. Do I have your word? All of you?”
          “To what end?” Monroe asked.
          “I told you, secrecy is of the utmost importance. I am committing an egregious breach of protocol by telling any of you what I’m about to say, even in this isolated setting, and I fully expect to be censured for it, but I need your cooperation, and if this is what it takes, then I’m willing to risk it. Now, do you agree?”
          “All right,” Monroe said, “I’ll agree to anything to hear the next tale of woe. How about the rest of you?”
          “Captain!” Hobbs exclaimed. “What a thing to say.”
          “Oh, do you still have some doubt? What about the rest of you? Do you all agree to keep her story secret?”
          “What if we don’t?” Smith asked.
          “Then you drop me off in Nairobi, as Captain Monroe agreed to do, and you never see me again. So, it’s time for your decision. If you believe that what I’m about to tell you is a fairy tale, then you’ll have no interest in passing it along, but if you believe that it’s the truth, then the need for utter secrecy will be immediately apparent. You brought me up here to hear my story, so how is it going to be?”
          One by one, the four crew members of the Kestrel agreed to take her secret to their graves.
          “All right, then. I am a member of a trans-national organization called the Darklighters.”
          “Oh, for God almighty’s sake!” Monroe erupted.
          “You agreed to hear me out, Captain.”
          “Yes, but a secret society? That does what? You’ve had the better part of a week to work on this. Is this the best you could come up with?”
          “This can all be proven when the Government House opens tomorrow. Shall I continue, or not?”
          “All right, but this had better be some extraordinary level of proof.”
          “I think you’ll agree that it is.”
          “All right, I apologize. So, what are the Darklighters?”
          “As the name suggests, we exist to shine a bright light into the dark corners where evil festers and thrives. I was a member when you met me last year beneath the streets of Malinde. The team that I was with was under orders to shut down that facility, and with your assistance, we did. I was merely a foot soldier on that operation, and to this day I can’t tell you any of the details.”
          “Because of the secrecy?” Monroe asked.
          “Because I don’t know them. An interrogator cannot extract information that I don’t have, you see. I am a member now, and I am on a similar assignment, only this time I’m here alone, in charge of the entire operation with instructions to recruit local talent for whatever I need. You people are the only local talent I know, and utilizing you means that I don’t have to start from scratch. It will save me weeks of vetting strangers before I can begin the actual work.”
          “Putting us all in a great deal of danger without any form of warning,” Monroe finished.
          “The possibility exists, though I have already gone to great pains to avoid that.”
          “My thanks to you for that. So, how is there this international organization that I’ve never heard of? I used to be highly placed in the Royal Aero Service. Is Britain not a member?”
          “Britain is a member, as are fifteen other nations, five of them in the new world. If you’ve never heard of us, it simply means that you weren’t placed highly enough. Now, over the last dozen or so months—”
          “Wait a moment, who are the other members?”
          “That is information I cannot yet disclose to you. As I was saying, over the last twelve to fourteen months, we have begun to focus more and more of our effort on an organization calling itself Kraken.”
          “Kraken?”
          “Yes, Captain. We don’t yet know whether the name was chosen to evoke dread of the mythical sea monster, to describe the effects of many tentacles, or if it is in fact an abbreviation of a longer name, possibly in a language other than English.”
          “Kraken! And what are they out to do, take over the world?”
          “Precisely.”
          Monroe’s eyes rolled until his irises were almost out of sight.
          “I assure you, Captain, they are very real, and they have very disturbing plans for you and your little airship.”
          “What sort of plans?”
          “Kraken began as a guild of merchants seeking to gain advantages in trade. Like so many organizations that begin with innocent intentions, they got a taste of power, and felt that a bigger taste would be an improvement. As we speak, their ranks have expanded to include politicians, military leaders, spies, assassins, and even a sort of private army beholden to no nation that they deploy when it suits their purposes. They are a very real threat to the stability of the world order.”
          “You cannot be serious!”
          “I presume you are aware of the East India Company and its activities?” she asked him.
          “Of course.”
          “Well, imagine what a much larger and far reaching organization that prefers to do its business out of the public eye could accomplish. When you control the wealth, the trade, the distribution of vital goods, including food, when you control who eats and who goes hungry, you control everything. No political leader can afford to oppose them if they show him or her how easily their people can be starved into submission. His own people will depose him, and his successor will be far less likely to step out of line. The threat is real, and we, meaning my organization, must contain it.”
          “Why not simply publicize their existence to the world? Expose them? Shine a light on them, as you say?”
          “Does this scenario sound far-fetched to you, Captain?”
          “It most certainly does!”
          “And you are a well-traveled man of the world. How will it sound to a bartender in San Francisco, or a peasant in a Chinese rice field? This isn’t your typical nest of cockroaches that you can shine a light on and watch them scuttle away. Their first line of defense is the unbelievable nature of their network.”
          “That certainly works for me,” Monroe said. “You said you could prove all this. Just how, by all that’s holy, do you plan to do that?”
          “I carry on my body the indelible mark of the Darklighters, known to the senior officials of all the signatory nations. You may accompany me at your convenience to Governor-General Sanderson’s office where I will show him this mark, and without any prompting from me, he will confirm everything I have just told you.”
          “Without any prompting?”
          “Correct.”
          “And you think you’re just going to show up unannounced at Government House, and he’s going to give you an audience?”
          “More than think it. I know it. I will send in a phrase known only to the Darklighters and those authorized to assist us, and we will be his next audience.”
          “Oh, this I have to see! Patience, take us down.”