The Steam-Powered Sniper in the City of Broken Bridges (The Raven Ladies Book 2) Read online

  Claudia worked quickly to free the bike and push it further up near the giant rock shard, larger than most buildings in Tombstone, to take full advantage of its shelter. She sat on the lone chunk of asphalt that was once the tiny parking lot, leaning her back against the bike, watching the river of death flow around her to either side. A strange, thin hope crept into her born out of something she wasn’t sure had even happened. The City of Broken Bridges—San Francisco maybe.

  Chapter 3:

  Into the Wounded West.

  The following day brought with it an oppressive heat as though the rainstorm of the night had never existed. Claudia awoke with a start, having slept sitting up in an uncomfortable position. She had a direction, albeit a vague one with little more to go on than what she’d used to decide on north to that point. She briefly considered searching the rubble for the shadowy man who tracked her, but discarded this plan as the mudslide could easily have deposited his corpse, and it would with almost complete certainty be a corpse, miles away and dozens of feet beneath the rubble.

  She stood, stretched as best she could and began to survey the state of the world in the harsh light of day. Hunger and thirst were beginning to nag at her. She’d lost the plastic jugs and even if she found them again, the water inside would likely be too foul to drink. The building that was the rest stop was gone as though it had never been there, and with it her satchel, her night vision goggles, and any survival accoutrements that weren’t physically strapped to her. Her rifle had been saved only by the luck of her being too tired to un-strap it from the motorcycle the night before. She had her survival knife, her Walther, her rifle, and her survival filtration straw in her battle harness, but little else.

  To add to the problem, the mud flow left a river’s breadth of debris and mud across the road in either direction. Getting the bike back to the highway would be a struggle and one she wouldn’t be able to ride through. There was always the option of abandoning the bike to walk, but she had no idea how far she was from anything and she doubted she could walk for very long without food or water in the oppressive heat of the Utah desert. She removed her jacket, tied it around her waist, and set to the work of walking the bike across the inert mudflow.

  †

  The sun was setting before Claudia finally pushed the bike through the mudflow. She had to use the engine several times to dislodge the monstrously heavy motorcycle, burning precious fuel. Her entire body, especially her back, ached from the exertion. She’d lost count of how many times the bike threatened to roll over the top of her during the entire process. Back on the road, with the bike struggling to keep a pace of 70 MPH, she felt a little like the banged up, half-starved motorcycle. Her mouth was a desert, her stomach had long since passed from hungry to nausea from want of food, and she was fairly certain she’d done permanent physical damage to herself and the motorcycle throughout the day.

  She struggled the bike onto highway 50 heading west. On the map in her head from before the U.S. fell to ruin, she probably couldn’t accurately place Los Angeles and New York, let alone anything in between, but she knew a bit more about the lay of the land now that the Ravens had taken over much of the region. Salt Lake City was a smoldering crater next to yet another landmark she knew better than to approach. The Slark hadn’t actually destroyed Salt Lake City. They’d hit it, done a number on it, and moved on. The true devastation came when a Mormon Holy Land arose from the ashes to declare Utah once again a sovereign nation gifted to the Latter Day Saints by the prophet Brigham Young. Obviously the Ravens took umbrage at having the patriarchal holy land in the midst of their female dominated territory. The war, if it could even be called such, took place a year ago, lasted only a month, and resulted in heavy artillery shelling of the city until nothing stood above the height of a short woman’s knee skirt. The refugees, men and women Claudia helped track down, were brought back to Las Vegas as indentured servants. Claudia didn’t know what the U.S. map looked like before the war, but she knew full well what the Raven map looked like as she’d played a small part in forming it. Salt Lake City wasn’t worth seeing in its current state and she wasn’t interested in what amounted to a detour for past glory’s sake.

  No matter how she cut the directions, she would have to go through Carson City. If she was lucky, her fuel would last until then. The Carson City area was a hot zone. The war between the Slark and the Ravens was still very much alive on the border between old California and new Nevada. There would be Ravens there, food, water, a comfortable bed, and maybe even fuel enough to finish her trip. Her last hope was that her name and rank within the Ravens was still good enough to get her some pleasant treatment. Word traveled slowly without modern technology. Carson City might not know Tombstone had even been annexed by the Ravens.

  With the bike laboring badly and her own situation not much better, Claudia didn’t really have a choice. She’d spent so much time in the saddle as a scout that long rides on the motorcycle were heaven by comparison, but she’d gone without water for some time now and she was beginning to feel the effects of extreme dehydration including a splitting headache and slowed reflexes. She would cross the desert on a limping motorcycle with the hopes of collapsing of thirst in Carson City where she might be hung as a deserter. Part of this tragic ending for a lone rider appealed to the macabre sense of beauty she had, and brought a weak smile to her face as she pushed on toward what might well be her ending.

  †

  The shine of her tragic tale of the Old West was well tarnished by the time she actually rolled into Carson City. The bike’s headlight, which she hadn’t used to that point, barely illuminated the road before it. This might have been a problem if the motorcycle hadn’t lost all ability to run, trundling along with gasps of steam and smoke, barely breaking 30 MPH.

  Raven patrols paid her little attention as she clunked her way into the rearguard. She was obviously one of them, and while her ride was peculiar, it wasn’t unheard of for someone to still manage a bit of technology and if someone had, it was likely in the state Claudia’s motorcycle was. The cantankerous machine, which Claudia had come to love and loathe in equal parts, managed to roll to a stop at the edge of the Raven controlled downtown district. She cranked down the pod to park the bike and nearly fell out of the saddle.

  “Well, look at this bit of tumbleweed blown in,” a man’s voice said from above Claudia. Somehow she’d managed to lay flat on her back across the sidewalk, although she wasn’t quite sure how that had happened. “Where are you in from, gerbil?”

  She pried her eyes open to see who had just called her a gerbil. Four men, no doubt U.S. soldiers reclaimed by the Ravens at some point, were collected around her. They wore a strange amalgam of metal breast plate armor and modern body armor yet carried the provincial assault rifles of their own era. When Claudia’s response only came out as a strangled croak through a parched throat, the hardened men all looked to the largest of the bunch, the one she assumed spoke to her.

  “Medic!” the largest man bellowed down the street.

  Heavy boots came clattering toward her. Above the sound of the medic’s approach, she heard the familiar sound of heavy cannon fire and assault rifles in the west. She knew the line was lively at Carson City, but she hadn’t really known how lively. The lack of information exchanged between outposts apparently worked both ways. She still had her Raven credentials on the dog tags around her neck. The medic would no doubt find them, know her name and rank, and then she would find out if she was to be labeled a deserter or simply a rider off course. Being hung for desertion sounded unappealing, although she didn’t think she’d survive her dehydration without help at that point. Two days crossing a desert in summer without water was a feat unto itself.

  “Hang in there, gerbil,” the big man said. He smiled down to her in a way that made her feel like she could hold out a little longer. She struggled against the rising tide of unconsciousness, but lost that battle a few moments after the medic arrived.

  Chapter 4
:

  Meeting the Owl.

  Claudia strolled the railroad tracks in her native Quebec. She knew she was dreaming, knew the world of her childhood was not reality. She was still her adult self and she hadn’t been back to Canada since age 14. The granite gravel between the railroad ties crunched beneath her boots all the same. The richly green triangles of pines still framed the railroad tracks that cut a straight swath ahead and behind her. She could hear her father calling to her, his voice just on the edge of hearing and well beyond understanding.

  She knew a train was coming. Every now and then, she would adjust her path from walking between the tracks to balancing on one like a tight rope walker. When she did this, she could feel the vibrations of a freight train coming down the iron rails. Playing chicken with the train that passed by her home was a game she’d enjoyed her whole life. She would wait until she knew it was coming and stand in the center of the tracks, eyes closed, arms outstretched. The train’s horn would blare at her, the rocks would bounce a little around her feet, and the tracks would tremble at the approach of the thousands of tons of train bearing down on her. She would keep her eyes clenched tightly shut though, wait as long as she could stand it, until she finally threw open her eyes and leapt away from the tracks. She was always sorely disappointed in herself when she would open her eyes and find the train still hundreds of meters away. Each time she resolved to be braver and each time the result was the same—the train would be too far away to be any danger and then roll by her at what she guessed to be a paltry speed designed to bring it to a stop at the depot on the edge of town.

  Her father had only caught her once playing the potentially suicidal game. She thought he would rail at her, tan her hide, and drag her home to restart the whole process. He’d surprised her ten-year-old self by racing to her, scooping her off the tracks, and then cradling her in his arms at the edge of the tree line. He’d stroked her hair, clutching her head to his chest, whispering again and again: you’re safe now. She’d believed his words and felt safe in his embrace. Still, she couldn’t quit playing the game, only hiding it better to spare him.

  In the strange world of dreams, she could see her younger self and her father’s younger self from her memory off to her right. He was cradling her, whispering the promise of safety, waiting for the train to pass through without taking his daughter. She ignored the touching scene. She wasn’t that person anymore. She closed her eyes and walked forward, arms outstretched to prove the train didn’t frighten her.

  She could hear her father’s voice more clearly now as he no doubt raced through the woods to reach her in time. His calls varied, but the one that stuck out to her was a question: why have you waited so long? She didn’t understand the question. It wouldn’t matter. The train would get to her before he did this time and then she wouldn’t be able to hear him above the sound of its passing.

  She walked on, the train’s horn blared from what seemed like just up ahead. She knew better though, knew it was simply a product of the alley created by the trees to funnel the sound to her to make it sound closer than it really was. She hadn’t known this when she was a child, but she knew it now and walked on. The ground beneath her began to shake and she could hear the clicking and clacking of the train as it approached. The horn blared again, this time closer. She clenched her eyes tightly closed. Not this time, train, she told herself and walked on.

  Her father was close now, close enough to be heard above the roar of the train. She could hear him screaming from behind her. “You have the ruinous streak of your mother,” he shouted to her. This was true, and not the first time he’d told her so. She wanted to correct him, to tell him she’d survived all the same, ruinous streak or no; it would have been a hollow statement in light of what she was doing though and so she ignored his words and walked on.

  The train roared through the Canadian wilderness like an angry god. She could feel her heart thundering in her chest now, beating quickly to match the clacking of the train down the tracks toward her. She clenched her eyes even tighter, refusing to show the train her fear. The horn blared again and this time she knew it was no trick of sound. The train was upon her. She opened her eyes to the glare of the lone headlamp in the center of the engine as it was a mere inches from her face.

  She tried to awake into action, but her body rebelled in its limp, semi-conscious state. She was in a hospital bed. A man in a white lab coat had awoken her by checking her pupils with fingers to pry her eyelids open and flashing a small flashlight into her eye. She shook her head to get away from the light.

  “I was asleep, not in a coma,” Claudia hissed.

  “You were in deep REM,” the doctor replied. “I should have been able to check your pupils.”

  “Yes, well, they are fine,” Claudia replied, batting away the flashlight the man was still holding entirely too close to her face. Her headache, the one she’d almost grown accustomed to over the past two days of dehydration and heat exhaustion was gone. She could feel the IV in her arm and knew the source of the restorative fluids although she could remember little of how she came to be where she was.

  “Don’t get your feelings hurt over it, Doc,” a gruff woman’s voice sounded from the other side of the bed in the darkened room. “You should know better by now than to manhandle a sleeping Raven.”

  The doctor, who was little more than a shadowy figure in the darkened hospital room, scoffed and took his leave. For a brief moment when the door opened, bathing the room in faint light, she could see she wasn’t the only patient in the room. A match struck to light an oil lamp and her little section of the hospital room was bathed in a soft, warm glow. The woman who had spoken and lit the lamp sat back in the chair, which she’d occupied, to that point, in the dark. She was a stout woman with a round face, a flattop haircut in her graying hair, and half a dozen scars lining her stern face. Everything about the sturdy woman spoke of authority derived from her attitude as much as her rugged appearance.

  “We’re supposed to get reinforcements,” the woman said. “I’m hoping you were sent as an advanced scout and not as a messenger to tell me they aren’t coming.”

  “Neither,” Claudia croaked around a dry mouth.

  The woman poured water from a canteen on her belt into a little plastic cup and handed it to her. Claudia drank greedily, swishing the obviously boiled water in her mouth to clear away the dryness before swallowing. Despite the lukewarm state of the water, she could tell it had been boiled—water purified by fire had a taste to it like tea without the tea; thinner somehow is the only way Claudia could think to describe it.

  “Then what are you doing this far north if you’re supposed to be attached to the White Queen’s expeditionary force?” The woman spun the cap back into place on the metal canteen and resettled herself into the little arm chair.

  “I’m on a scouting and mapping mission to Oregon and Idaho,” Claudia explained quickly. “The White Queen wants to know if there is a newly opened route around the northern edge of the Slark line.” She’d always lied well under pressure. She assumed the woman she was speaking to was probably used to ferreting out lies though and so she only gave herself a coin’s toss of a chance at being believed.

  “I’m sure you’ve got orders to prove this too?” the woman said shrewdly.

  “I lost all my supplies, my orders, and most of my gear in a mudslide in Utah,” Claudia said. This was the truth, at least in part. She hadn’t lost her orders since they’d never existed, but the rest was true. “I wasn’t even supposed to be this far west yet.”

  Claudia couldn’t tell if the woman believed her or if there simply wasn’t enough proof to the contrary to confront her with a proper accusation. Regardless, the woman didn’t seem all that interested in pushing the issue. “Well, Corporal Marceau, I’m afraid I must impose on you a few more questions before I let you get back to sleep.” The woman leaned forward in her chair, settling her massive arms along her knees. She was dressed like a soldier in dirty camouflage wit
h the sleeves rolled up to above her elbows. “I am the Red Rook Bancroft—have you heard of me?”

  Claudia shook her head.

  “Never mind that then. Count yourself lucky you’ll be able to formulate your own opinion of me before the well is poisoned.” The woman didn’t smile at this although Claudia guessed it was meant as a joke. The woman nodded to Claudia’s empty cup. Claudia handed it to her. Bancroft refilled the cup and handed it back. “I find myself in need of a sniper. The rifle strapped to your bike wasn’t just a prop, was it?”

  “No, ma’am.” Claudia shook her head.

  “Good.” Bancroft stood slowly as though her joints had already settled into the seated position too much to return to life easily. “One more question: where the hell did you get that motorcycle? My mechanics have been looking it over for a couple days now and can’t make heads or tails of most of what they’re seeing.”

  She’d been out that long, a couple days, Claudia mused to herself. “It is a prototype created by the White Rook Gieo,” Claudia said. “Beyond its basic operation, I know only that it is beyond my understanding.”

  “Get some more rack time,” Bancroft said, not really interested in Claudia’s answer after it had been given. “I’ll be back in the morning to take you over to meet the Owl.” Bancroft walked from the room with something of a limp in her sturdy right leg.

  Claudia thought her mind would refuse to return to sleep. There was too much to think about, too much to plan. Her body thought otherwise though. She finished her second cup of water and immediately fell back into a deep slumber.

  †

  Claudia awoke several hours later with sunlight streaming in through windows above the headboard of her bed. A doctor, she guessed the same one from the night before, was hovering in her general vicinity and came rushing over when she sat up. Bancroft was close behind as though she too were waiting only for Claudia’s recovery. The doctor quickly checked her vitals, removed her IV, declared her fit for duty, and sat back smiling as though some great miracle had been performed.