LEGACY BETRAYED (18 page)

“Whoa, whoa!” Vector cried, throwing out a hand with his palm spread in a signal to stop. “That’s a really dangerous device there!”

“Is it now?” one of the men, with shaggy, oily dark blond hair and a malevolent grin, asked him. “Does it scare you?” He swung the barrel of the glass cannon toward Vector and its inventor genuinely screamed, rearing backward and crawling up the stairs behind him.

“Come on!” he begged the lunatics. “You don’t know what you’re doing!”

“It’s a cannon, you nancy,” the other man, rotund with mutton chops, sneered at him. “It’s not even loaded; just calm down. We’re just going to have a bit of fun with it, aren’t we?”

“No,” the blond disagreed, grinning. He ran his tongue over his corroded teeth. “We’re going to have a lot of fun with it.”

Vector whirled and raced up the steps, weaving lightly through the thronged first floor of the police station, then exploding through the entrance, spilling down the stoop, dashing to his loaded rickshaw and leaping inside with such velocity that its brass wheels skidded to the left.

Fumbling in his pocket for the automaton’s key, he jammed it into the bot’s back and wrenched the key desperately to the right.

“Hello and welcome to Ic–”

“The aerial docks! The aerial docks!” Vector cried.

He was somehow sure they did not have long now.

              Liam broke onto the aerial dock and found it abandoned of not only all guard staff, but of most of the ships on the external dock. He stepped slowly through the open gate which led to the external dock; the rain out there was worse. Hardly any airships remained moored, even though it was dangerous to travel in such weather. Frowning against the spatter of cold water, he trod down the dock, scanning . . . What had Victor said about this place?
“Just because you don’t see it at first doesn’t mean it won’t show itself.”
What the hell?

              But, if Liam excelled at one particular task, it was doing as he was told. He simply trusted that people said things for reasons. So he continued along the dock and continued scouring for the airship Victor had promised him would be there.

              He was almost to the end of the line, squinting against the rain and telling himself he surely didn’t see what he saw . . . the stern of a ship seeming to materialize as if through a layer of disintegrating fog . . . though there was no fog. As he advanced, the ship revealed itself, foot by foot and inch by inch. Its panels were a patchwork of materials, as if the entire thing was built second hand, squares of copper and pipes of titanium with a low, deep belly and a stout berth. It was connected to an equally ragged hot air balloon by a system of ropes and pulleys, aided additionally by propellers and sails.

             
That damn Victor,
Liam couldn’t help but think.
He’s a right clever son of a bitch.

              As the body of the vessel came into being, so did its crew, rushing along the deck. He recognized none of them, with the exception of Dax Ghrenadel. The wiry brunette, never to be seen without a leather rebreather strapped over his nose and mouth, was easy to recognize quickly. With him came others, but Liam paid them no mind. “What’s going on out there?” Dax demanded. “Have you seen Vector, or Leg?”

“I saw Vector,” Liam answered. “May I come aboard, or is this ship not really . . . real?”

Dax rolled his eyes and set out the companionway for Liam to join the crew on the deck. More people filtered up from the berth – even some Old Earth fugitives – and he wondered dazedly just how many there were.

“What is this?” he wondered, mostly to himself.

“I said,
what’s going on out there?
” Dax repeated, eyes flashing. “Haven’t seen anyone or heard anything in at least an hour!”

Liam stared into the desperate gaze of the other man – acutely aware of how senselessly invested in Legacy Dax was, much like Liam himself – and slouched, uncertain of what to tell him.

“I came here looking for her,” he admitted. He knew that was what Dax really wanted to ask, even if he wouldn’t let himself. “I don’t know where she is. It’s . . . it’s total chaos out there, man. People trying to kill each other.”

Dax’s eyebrows settled low. “I’m going to look for her,” he said.

A pretty, blue-haired girl grabbed his arm. “No!” she cried. “I came out of that mess, Dax! I can tell you! Let it blow over!”

“What if she needs our help!” Dax wrenched his arm from her and made toward the companionway he’d only just set out. “What if Vector does!”

“Dax, no!” the blue-haired girl called again, more emphatically now. “Don’t!”

“I’m not just going to stand here, safe and sound outside of Icarus while the entire city goes–”

“Vector!” Rain called, bolting to the rail of the ship. An automaton rickshaw skidded through the gate of the exterior dock, the rebel inventor lunging from its seat and scrambling to load his arms with an array of brass-colored instruments. “Vector, what’s going on in there?”

“Let’s go,” Vector rasped, dumping his instruments onto the slick deck, where they went
ding
and
tink
in the drumming raindrops like a chorus of tiny bells. “We’ve got to get out of here,” he said, racing back down the companionway and onto the exterior dock. “Now! Rain! Raise the damn anchor!”

“Right now?” Rain asked. She looked remarkably uncomfortable. “Why?”

Vector approached with a second armful of devices, again spilling across the deck. “Some idiots have got the electric cannon,” he explained, lifting the companionway without asking for any further help. “We’ve got to get the hell out of here now; that thing is dangerous as fuck.”

“What?” Dax snapped. “What’s going to happen? We can’t just leave the city behind, everyone we know is in there!”

“Wrong, mate!” Vector barked, jabbing him in the chest with an index finger. For the first time, the bespectacled, dreadlocked boy rose up as the stronger of the two, in spite of his shorter stature. “Everyone we know is dead, and we will be too–”

A strange sound emanated from within the dome, a crackling, electrical series of tiny pops.

The deck fell silent, staring hard at the floating city, willing it to give up its answers.

A jet of pale green tendrils, part light and part air, arced over the business district beyond and slammed into the side of the dome, sending a wave of shuddering ripples in its wake and shattering several triangular panes of the thick glass plates.

“Oh my god,” Dax said, his eyes fastened securely to the large hole. “Oh my god.”

A blast of heated air moaned loudly through the jagged crater, and Icarus began immediately to tilt.

“Legacy,” he murmured, entirely to himself.

“The anchor’s coming up,” Vector announced, moving toward where the airship was moored. “I’m sorry, man.”

The streets were complete and total hell to navigate. Legacy didn’t know how she’d ever find Coal 106 – Radia – in this turmoil. She’d braved the bottlenecked bedlam of the main stretch, but hadn’t recognized a single soul.
If I were her, where would I go?
Legacy asked herself. But then, had her sister even survived long enough to arrive here? And if so, was she still free enough to decide her own course of action? Or had some “law-abiding” citizen snatched her up and bashed her head in?

Now, Legacy wandered back toward the aerial docks, still scanning the streets. Having strayed from the abyss, there was chaos here, but it was a hushed, passed chaos, like treading through the aftermath of a tornado.

Slivers of glass from store windows or busted automatons littered the street, along with an occasional spray of gears or a stray key. Single people ran past Legacy without even glancing back, though there were no groups. Fires poured out of windows, but no one came to extinguish them. There was no sign of any law or order, and she couldn’t help but wonder where Kaizen was – where the constable was – where anyone was who could help; even a stiff, law-abiding civil servant like Liam would do.

There was a crumpled body spilling from an alleyway, its head shaved, its garb gray.

It couldn’t be her,
Legacy deduced, passing the fallen soul. Its body was small and bent at odd angles, and she was certain the thing had to be dead. But then, just as she strode by, it groaned, and she glanced over her shoulder.

The refugee thrashed in her unconscious state, her arms folding away from her face to reveal the heart-shaped bone structure. The strong nose and the full lips. The peach-fuzz of silver hair.

Legacy returned and dropped to her knee to gather the slack girl into her arms, who felt so small and frail compared to Legacy herself, the way her neck lulled as if boneless; it was difficult to believe that their DNA was identical. The girl – Coal, Radia – her eyelashes fluttered and closed again, but Legacy found it surprisingly easy to haul her up and sling her across the shoulder. “We’ll get you some help,” she promised her sister. That was a phrase she hadn’t really even taken the time to consider. She had a sister. It’d all gone so fast, so dire, such demand, to truly think about this was an unaffordable luxury.

              Legacy’s back tightened as she climbed to her feet, Coal-Radia’s arms and legs dangling, when the ominous crackling filled the dome.

              She looked back and forth, searching for the source of the sound, when a ribbon of bright green laced over the drizzling mists of the dome and made impact with the northern face of its triangular panels. There was no vibration, no dispersal of the force; the thick glass shattered outward as naturally as if it were crystal.

              The ground subtly tilted beneath Legacy’s feet, and her stomach lurched. The buildings around her groaned as if under the strain of gravity, glass windows crunching like fractured teeth, and the mist of condensation swirled overhead with a macabre beauty, like a snow globe. Legacy’s mind went blank, and she vaulted forward. A subconscious compass in her gut pulled her toward the aerial docks, and maybe evolutionary biology would have dictated that she drop the rag doll draped over her back, but she didn’t. It didn’t even cross her mind.

              As the sloped angle of the cobblestone streets became more and more apparent, screams of absolute horror filled the sky – except that the sky was turning upside down now, wasn’t it?

              Still, Legacy pounded through the streets, weaving around the carriages and rickshaws, which had lost their traction and rocketed blindly by, leaping with the second nature of one who had known this tiny, compact city intimately her whole life.
How am I going to make it?
a part of her whispered, so afraid of the words that it barely spoke.
There’s no time, and they’d be mad to still be anchored.

              She could see the aerial docks ahead, but no ships were moored there now. The earth beneath her feet was approaching a thirty degree angle, and her boot slipped. They must’ve been gone. They had to be gone. But then . . .

              Even if
Albatropus
was gone, her chances for survival were still greater if she was outside of the dome. In the dome, the shock of the crash and the sheer volume of pointed, dense debris would surely kill her – kill all of them. But she didn’t think about that. Her mind was airtight, and she didn’t allow thoughts of anyone else inside. It would only get her killed. And she had Flywheel-2, with its silken wings that would extend in a fall. It was possible that she could survive, she and Coal-Radia both, if they landed in the soft muck of the marsh, if they landed upwind of any predators, if they landed close enough to N.E.E.R. to beg for assistance . . .

              Legacy gripped the cobblestone of the interior dock with her free hand and hauled herself ever closer to the gaping gate, the wedge of slate sky outside like a window, and she didn’t look back. She didn’t look back, even hearing the caterwauls of misery which likely belonged to her friends, her family, everyone she knew. She shouldered her way through the gate and onto the metallic grid of the exterior dock, twisted onto the railing – which was now at sixty degrees, somehow, or maybe it only seemed that way to her fevered brain – and leapt, Coal-Radia over her shoulder, nothing but raging winds and sheets of frigid rain above, nothing but Icarus slowly capsizing below.

              The city of Icarus looked so small and controllable from the castle grounds. No longer able to hear the rioting, one would think that it was a normal city, business bustling, laws bidden. But no. There was some smoke in the air from random fires. That was wonderful. His father had never had to deal with random fires. Riots. An entire populace of slaves ascending from a thousand feet below. He’d always been so attentive to the needs of the N.E.E.R. dome. Now Kaizen knew why.

He didn’t want to listen to the radio. Dyna Logan was probably reporting that the constable was dead, and he didn’t want to hear it. There was only so much he could take in one week. How had it all gone to hell so quickly? And Ferraday’s men . . . weren’t they arriving tomorrow?

Kaizen cracked a wry smile.

Perfect.

An automaton carriage trundled through the drawbridge and parked itself at the entrance to the grand hall, where Kaizen sat, contemplating.