Free Johannes Cabal the Detective by Jonathan L. Howard

bollard, listened and considered. “Rough with the smooth, eh, Hasso?” Hasso grunted noncommittally. “We may have lost Cabal, but at least we located a dangerous spy and saboteur.” He drove his boot under the prone man’s stomach and used his instep to lever him over the edge of the quay. There was a cry, a splash, weak struggling, and silence. “Shame he died whilst attempting to escape.”
    Hasso walked over to the edge and looked down. “What about Cabal, sir? Are we giving up on him?”
    Marechal looked out across the waters of the Gallaco Sea. “He could be anywhere by now. No, Lieutenant, we have other fish to fry. If he crosses my path again, then that’s different; he will not live to regret it. But life’s too short for vendettas.” He paled slightly as he said this, and even Hasso wasn’t fooled. From the direction of the city square, there was the crackle of gunfire. Marechal stood up and dusted off his seat. “Come on, we’ve got peasants to kill.”
    E xactly on schedule, the gyroscopic levitators whirred up to speed and the Princess Hortense began, in a very real sense, to ignore gravity. The huge suspension springs in her landing cradle extended gently as the aeroship started to lift. Deciding that it would be suspicious if he were not on deck for the departure, Cabal checked the forward lounge-cum-dining room and found it too heavily populated for discretion. Instead, he went back to the aft salon and leaned on the starboard rails there, the windows that would seal them in flight having been slid aside for the occasion. The great line-guide assembly was above and off to one side of him, and he watched it with interest as it angled, twisting on its mount slightly, seeking out the magnetic lines that the Hortense would pull herself along like a great spider on an ethereal thread. With a sharp electrical crack that filled that air with ozone and a shower of blue sparks that drew delighted cries from the spectators in the aeroport and on the field apron, it found and latched onto a likely candidate. Almost immediately, the fore starboard nacelle found one, too; Cabal couldn’t quite see it, but the flash of blue light was clearly visible on the grass around the cradle in the dying light of the day. There was an acoustic thudding through the public-announcement speakers in the lounge, and then the captain spoke to the passengers. “Ladies and gentlemen, please brace yourselves. We are about to disengage from the landing cradle and there may be some slight disturbance. Once we are clear, we shall perform one circuit of the field and then begin our journey. Thank you.” The speaker clicked into silence.
    For the few people who were in the lounge with Cabal, bracing themselves seemed to consist mainly of gripping their drinks with both hands. As it happened, the disengagement was smooth and untroubled. The Princess Hortense rose in near-silence but for the cheers of the passengers, the answering ones of the ground spectators, the click and crackle of one of the line-guide nacelles abandoning its first setting in favour of a stronger one, and the constant hum of the gyroscopes that sang through the decks and into the inner ear. At three hundred feet, the Hortense slowed her ascent and started to move forwards, swinging her tail out to perform a tight circuit of the field. Below them, the city was starting to light up, with lamps in windows and angry red bonfires of houses burning as the riots spread. I suppose that’s my fault, really, thought Cabal as he watched the fires and the dimly seen crowds amongst the smoke and the flicker of rifle fire. Then he looked up into the sky and tried to make out the early stars. Politics had always bored him.
    The Hortense completed her circuit and set course for Senza, beyond the mountains. She accelerated and climbed gently until the lights of the city were little more than speckles, like fireflies, and then they were gone altogether.

Chapter 4
    IN WHICH CABAL