Tin Swift Read Online Free PDF Page B

appointed to continue following General Alabaster Saint’s orders long after the battles this United States were engaged in were done and gone. Long after the Saint had moved on to raising his own militia of mercenaries.
    “So Les Mullins wants to make himself useful to the general he worships. And he knows what the general wants: glim. Knows the general has plans to bribe, bully, and kill his way into every peak and mountain of this country until he controls every ship and glim field. The man who rules glim and gold rules the world.”
    Hink paused and nodded toward Seldom. “It’s a good story so far, don’t you think?”
    Mr. Seldom shrugged, focused on flipping the marlin spike:
slap, slap, slap,
as if his palms were restless determined to use it again.
    “Let’s see,” Hink said. “How does this story end? I’d say it ends with General Saint’s spy, Les Mullins, getting killed on the floor of a shack in the Bitterroots unless he tells a man named Captain Hink just who, exactly, he’s working for and what, exactly, that man wants.”
    Mullins had gone from bleeding to wheezing. His good hand was pressed over the chest wound as if he could hold the blood inside. Looked like he thought he could hold the words inside too. But Hink would get them out of him. He’d done worse to better men.
    “I’ll give you a moment to consider my request, Mr. Mullins. Because this is the last time I’m asking you to give me answers. From here on out, I’ll just be doing an awful lot of painful taking them from you.”
    Hink turned back to his desk and took a drink of coffee. His hands shook from a hard anger.
    George Rucker had been a friend. The younger brother of WilliamRucker, a man Hink served with, and had been unable to save from Alabaster Saint’s bloodthirsty loyalists.
    Hink had come too late to stop William’s hanging, but he’d found young George Rucker and taken him in. Looked after him as best he could, even while carrying out the president’s orders. Because Mullins was right about that. That tin star was his. He was Marshal Hink Cage when he wasn’t wedged up here with glim pirates, trying to suss out the kingpin of their black market trade.
    He’d given that star to George Rucker for safekeeping and as a promise that he would return from this mission to retrieve it from him.
    A promise he couldn’t keep now because of Les Mullins. A promise that had gotten George Rucker killed.
    A shot rang out and the high steam whine of engines catching hot pounded the air. Not just engines. The
Swift
’s engines.
    “Captain Hink!” A woman yelled from a good ways off. “The ship. They’re on her!”
    The gunshot boomed out again, louder. That was the
Swift
’s cannon.
    Hink grabbed the map off the table and his shotgun, which had been leaning against the wall. Seldom already had one foot out the door. Hink gave half a second’s thought about taking the time, and wasting the bullet, to kill Mullins.
    Decided the man wasn’t near enough worth either and was halfway down the road to dead anyhow.
    He pushed through the canvas and squinted at the onslaught of harsh afternoon light.
    There was enough of a tumble of rock and scree on this outcropping that the
Swift
could land and lash, but not so much that any ship bigger than her—and that meant every other ship in the range—could catch hold.
    He’d chosen this spot for just that reason.
    Mr. Seldom ran quick as a gangly jackrabbit over rock and aroundwind-twisted scrub toward where the
Swift
hovered, just so high above the ground that a man couldn’t catch her ropes with a jump. Not that she had any of her ropes dangling.
    Built like a bullet, the
Swift
was one of the smallest airships that carved the sky. Outfitted with the biggest boilers she could bear, she had more power per pound than the North’s battle cruisers. She carried a crew of twelve, if needed, and enough water, coal, wood, and glim to get her an eight-hundred-mile range.
    But the thing that