Rebel Skyforce (Mad Tinker Chronicles) (20 page)

“I suppose you’re right in that regard,” Erefan agreed. “But this is hardly Scar Harbor we’re talking about. These are kuduks.”

“And one daruu you know like an uncle, from what I understand,” Vaulk replied. He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “No offense, of course. You were in his household under pretense; we all know that. But that means you can help craft a story he’ll swallow.”

“You think you can write me a twister of a fairy story and get these blighters to let me go?” Chapun asked.

Erefan shook his head and walked between the two men as he resumed his pacing. “No, not go. We can do better than go, I think. Kezudkan thinks humans are all dumb animals, that I was some rare exception. We might be able to set you up as the fool he uses to undo us.”

“I presume you mean for him to be mistaken in that regard,” said Vaulk.

“I’m not undoing anyone!” Chapun protested. “If I’m a fool, I’m a loyal one at least.”

Erefan gritted his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut. “I’m trying to say he’ll underestimate you. He doesn’t know about the twinborn, and there’s no reason for him to learn. We can get you the information you need to feign a betrayal that plays into our hands.”

“How do I do that?” Chapun said.

“I have years of experience in smuggling twinborn,” Vaulk replied. “I know a thing or two about laying false trails.”

“We need to work out the details,” Erefan said, “but here’s what I think we need to do ...”

“My name is Chapun,” Powlo said. “I was a mine foreman for the Genrech family in Bessel Deep.”

The kuduk with the mechanical arm and leg smiled, showing teeth in better repair than any other part of him seemed to be. “Glad you decided to stop playing the dumb animal. Now how did you get into that mine we found you in?”

“Blast me if I know,” Powlo replied. The words had barely enough space to sneak out of his mouth before the kuduk’s metal hand struck his jaw. Spots swam before Powlo’s eyes as he pushed himself onto his hands and knees with no clear recollection of arriving on the floor. He worked his jaw back and forth to see if he still could, and felt a pop and a stab of pain as it settled back into its proper place. He covered his mouth to mask his moan (and a muffled curse), and to keep his jaw from wandering away from his skull.

“Chapun, let me level with you,” Draksgollow said. “I have neither the experience nor the inclination for questioning humans. But I’ve got answers I need from you and a whole workshop of tools at my disposal. If I have to muddle through the best I can, I can assure you that you will be the one to suffer for it, not me. I have employees who I can order to clean up the mess I make in here. We clear on that?”

Powlo nodded. It hurt his jaw, but he guessed that talking would have hurt more.

“Now, how does a mine foreman from Bessel Deep end up in another world?”

“Favor for favor,” Powlo said slowly, keeping his teeth clenched as best he could. “My freedom in return for running the mine.”

“That doesn’t answer the question,” Draksgollow replied, looming over him.

“His name was Erefan,” said Powlo. “He had a machine that made a hole in the world, brought me and a bunch of mine through. Made me an offer I’d’ve been a fool to refuse.”

“Do you know where you were?”

“Never showed us a map, but he said it was off west of the Lumberlands, a place where humans lived free. He needed an expert on mine operation for it though, said I’d keep two percent as my pay.”

Draksgollow nodded slowly, seemingly appeased for the moment. He sat—trousers up thankfully—on the seat of the toilet. “And you spoke the language of the locals?”

“Not at first, but Erefan said it was easy to learn. He was right too, only took me a few weeks.” Powlo paused to work his jaw up and down. It ached, but the pain had dwindled from “crushed under the wheels of a thunderail” to “hit in the face with a shovel.”

Draksgollow didn’t wait for him to elaborate. “And where was this machine located? Where is Erefan now?”

Powlo knew this one was important. He tried to imagine that Erefan had betrayed him, had left him to die along with the others. He pictured the carnage in the tunnels and whispered lies to himself that it was all Erefan’s fault. His breath quickened and his face grew warm. “I wish I knew. That bastard plucked me away from everything I ever knew and stranded me in that lonesome mine with foreigners I barely understood. He was weeks overdue checking in on us. When your hole appeared, I thought it was him at first. I shoulda known better.”

“You’re certain you don’t know where he might be?” Draksgollow pressed. Powlo tried to look the kuduk in the eye, but the human-like lack of beard revolted him. The chain leashing him to the pipe clattered as he turned away. “You do, don’t you?”

“It’s an airship,” Powlo replied. “He stole himself an airship. Machine’s down in the lower shafts of it.” He was careful to remember the terms Erefan told him to use. He should be ignorant of how an airship works, sea ships too, for that matter. Chapun would know terms from his own experiences, not a shared set of memories with a Telluraki like Powlo.

“Slag,” Draksgollow snarled. The mechanized kuduk slammed his fleshy fist against the door. Powlo ducked low against the sewage pipe, finding its damp comforts preferable to his captor. “Where was the ship? What was its heading? When were you there last?”

“I ... I didn’t look out much. I tried, but it gave me the stomach something fierce. Just this great load of nothing out under us, like a bank of steam far as I could see,” Powlo said. He placed a hand over his chest. “Take my eyes if I saw a bit that looked like anyplace I’d ever been. It was weeks ago, but I got it stuck in my head like a news flashpop. Still gives me the night frights.”

“The heading,” Draksgollow said. “Which way was the ship going?”

“Off at the sun, as I recall,” Powlo said. “Maybe not straight at it, but close enough.”

“The time of day? Was it morning or evening?”

“Can’t say I was looking at a clock, sir. Wasn’t exactly on shift, so I wasn’t worried about the time.”

Draksgollow glared down at him, breath hissing through gritted teeth. “So weeks ago, above the clouds, you were on an airship that may have been mostly going east, or west.”

“Don’t know much about east and west, sir.”

“You’re useless.”

Powlo didn’t dare raise his glance above the kuduk’s knees, but he had a fine view as those feet spun themselves about and stepped to the door. When the rush of fresh, cool air blew in from the corridor, Powlo spoke up. “Please sir.” The kuduk paused mid-step, but didn’t turn. “I was stolen. You’d get good coin for me, sending me back to Mr. Genrech. He’s in Bessel Deep, like I said. It weren’t bad there, really, and I miss home. Just tell him I was stolen and I won’t be no trouble.”

The door slammed behind the departed kuduk, and Powlo smiled at his side of it. “Well, stuff my hat and call me a banker, he bought that painted-up turd wholesale.” He worked his jaw, wondering how long it would be before the ache subsided. However long it took, it was worth the price.

Chapter 16

“For as long as man has dreamed of flight, he has had nightmares of falling. Anyone who would dare build a flying machine must not dream.” –Captain Sebbius Narant, of the sea ship
Tamegale

The engines of the
Jennai
hummed, a constant droning which was the only sign that they were in motion. In all directions below them, a bank of clouds stretched out to the horizon, providing a rain-soaked day for the lands below though they basked in the sun. The scale of the clouds was one of the things about air travel that had surprised Rynn. She had never given them much thought, leaving idle musings about the sky to Madlin and her world. But seeing them up close, she realized that they were mountains all their own, tiny white puffs that kept growing and growing as her airship climbed to meet them, until they dwarfed the
Jennai’s
little hull.

Rynn’s vantage was an eight-seat balcony that had been constructed on the inboard side of the left-front gondola of the combined airship. Her welders had cut a hole in the hull, excising one of the large windows from the starboard dining hall of the original
Jennai
and making a door of it. Rynn sat with her foot up on the railing, sketching on a piece of paper clamped to a portable desk in her lap. She was left to her designing with seven empty chairs for company.

While the
Jennai
and the
Cloudsmith
had been joined side by side and nearly touching, they were only that close by the vacuum tanks. The crashball-shaped monstrosities were several times the width of the gondolas below, and the space between gondolas had been filled with a steel-plate platform that served as a road between ships. Down in that plaza of welded steel, a number of rebel workers milled about, puttering at minor tasks. Rynn watched them walk, concentrating on angles of hips and knees and ankles through all parts of a stride. She watched them bend and crouch and occasionally break into a short jog. All these motions transformed into simplified sketches in pencil line.

Holding tight to the stack of pages with one hand, Rynn unclamped them and reordered them, leaving a blank page at the front. When they were secure again, she resumed her sketchwork with more complex shapes—mechanisms with gears and pistons, or gears and springs, or springs and runes, or belts and chains and gears. Through the light fabric of her trousers, she felt along the muscles and tendons of her one good leg, noting locations of attachment, lever arm distances, rough estimates of dimensions. Rynn had no demarcated calipers to take proper and accurate measurements, but for draftwork her eye was good enough.

A new sound joined the drone of the airship’s engines, higher pitched and growing in volume. Rynn reached inside the door and set her desktop on the floor away from the wind’s grasp, then tucked her pencil over an ear. The arm of her spectacles got in the way, but she managed to keep the pencil from falling by wedging a lock of hair in with it. She took up a spyglass and looked to the aft end of the ship.

The small liftwing that the
Jennai
carried appeared as a bird in the distance, just a pair of jutting wings silhouetted against the sky. As it grew in size, it was clear to see it was no bird; its wings did not flap, nor did they arc with the graceful curves of nature’s animals. It approached from the starboard side of their aft, where the gap in ships was large. From the port side, the gutted hulk of the
Sulfurous
trailed nose-to-tail behind the original
Jennai
. The smaller airship approached gradually, faster than the
Jennai
, and overtook her, but not by any wide margin.

“Taking bets?” a voice from behind startled Rynn. It was Bosley, first of many who were filing in to fill the seats around her.

“This is no betting matter,” replied Rynn.

The deck crew scrambled into action. The center of the plaza was cleared in seconds, with roughly half of the workers taking shelter in the shadow of the gondolas on either side. The liftwing wobbled in the air like a child’s toy held by the tail and flown with pretend engine noises—an illusion of stillness brought on by the relative speeds of the crafts, large and small. The pilot leveled the wings as the liftwing drew near and eased the vessel up over the plaza, slowing down and eventually matching the speed of the
Jennai
so that it hovered in the air.

Rynn held her tongue and let the crew foreman shout the order to move in. She cringed as two workers from each side scuttled close with grapples and hooked the liftwing by the wing struts and landing gear. One false twitch of the control stick by the pilot could crush any of them in a second. But the grapples caught, and their throwers scrambled out of the way as other workers manned winches, then pulled the lines taut and forced the liftwing down onto the artificial airstrip in the sky. The liftwing’s engine spluttered and the propeller spun to a gradual stop.

“Not good enough. Mark the pilot seven of ten. Emergency duty only. I want to see him touch down in half that time, and none of that shaky stick-work on the approach. My guts were in knots watching that. We’re going to get people killed if these ships don’t dock smooth. Whoever the pilot is, schedule him for another training run tomorrow.”

“Her,” Bosley corrected. “That’s Mayci in there.”

“Well, still not good enough, but I’m impressed,” said Rynn. “I didn’t think any of the one-worlders would take to it. I guess piloting farm tractors isn’t so different as I thought.”

The crew rotated pilots, and a new candidate climbed into the front seat of the liftwing. Rennon remained in the instructor’s seat in back, ready to go again.

“I don’t know how he does it,” said Bosley. “I’d be heaving my guts out putting my life in a rookie’s hands time and again. You’d have to pry my fingernails out of the seat to get me to move again.”

Rynn shrugged. “I bet most of you would shy away from filling your body with magic fire to patch the runes back up, too. I’d be surprised if we don’t have a few around who’ll shit themselves when they first see a gun pointed their way. Takes all kinds.”

“Except your dad, huh?” Bosley said a quick chuckle. “All the years I’ve known him, I’ve never seen
him
shy from anything.”

“You must not have been close enough to see his face when I put a hole in his precious machine.”

Bosley smirked, then looked around self-consciously and leaned in close. “How’s he doing with the new one?” he asked into her ear. “Last I heard was him blasting holes in it a few days ago.”

“He’s got some muck-brained idea to give it a jolt by storing up energy in a flywheel. I’m putting runes on the blasted thing the minute I’m home.”

“Won’t be a moment too soon,” said Bosley. “Want me to grab you anything from the kitchen? No matter how much I eat, Toller’s stomach is still making me hungry.”

“Gut you, bastard,” Rynn whispered. “I’d managed to put Madlin out of my head for a few hours. Now I’m starving again. Yeah, bring something meaty, and a mug of coffee or tea or whatever we’ve got left.”

Bosley stood at attention. “Yes, General,” Bosley said loudly. He lingered a few moments until the next pilot had taken off from the plaza and departed to the interior of the ship. The rest of the gallery wasn’t far behind.

Rynn reached through the door and retrieved her sketchwork.

Twenty three. It was more than Sosha had hoped or dreamed. Twenty three humans who had at least the skill with aether needed to activate a simple levitation construct. She toured the gondolas of all three ships, even the hazardous wreck of the
Sulfurous
, with a detailed diagram in hand. On its pages were the locations of all the installed rune plates, as well as locations of where the rest were planned to go.

She stopped at the middle pylon of the
Sulfurous
and checked her map. Two. She did a circuit of the tank support pylon and confirmed two rune plates had been beaten to match the cylindrical surface and welded into place. Sosha took a deep breath and let her eyes unfocus. The world slipped away from her, and a new world of blue and white whorls took its place. The metal of the ship vanished, but she could see the vague outlines of human forms nearby, brighter than the surrounding ambient mist. The runes stood out as well, though she could no longer see the pylon. They appeared to be aether filled and functioning. She closed her eyes, but her eyelids did nothing to block her vision of the world of aether. A few deep breaths and a bit of concentration, and the world went dark. She opened her eyes, and after a moment’s dizziness, she was seeing properly once more.

Sosha made two check marks on her map of the ship’s runes.

Navigating the
Sulfurous
was a chore. Anyone who went over to the derelict portion of the ship while in flight wore a rope harness with two long tethers, each ending in a carabineer. One of the tethers was to be secured to something sturdy at all times. Already there had been two incidents of rebels found dangling below the
Sulfurous
, needing to be pulled back up. Only Erefan was both arrogant and stubborn enough to go without. Sosha admitted to herself that Rynn would have refused the tethers as well, had she been sound of body.

“Sosha!” the voice echoed around the corners of bare steel walls, hollow and distant.

“I’m here!” she hollered back. There were no enemies aboard the
Jennai
. It was like Tinker’s Island borne aloft, in that respect.

“Ship’s rocking,” the voice replied. Sosha still couldn’t identify whose it was.

“All right. Wrap up for now. Back to the
Jennai
.”
We really need a new name for that part of the ship, or a different name for all of it.
Rynn was fond of the name, but practicality told her that the redundancy could not be allowed to last.

Once they balanced the ship with runes, they could let the mechanics bleed a bit more air into the vacuum tanks. When the runes were completely filled, the ship would grow much larger as Rynn’s plan to build within them went into effect.

It was hours later and dusk was threatening to steal their sunlight. Rynn had watched another dozen attempts to make a clean landing on the plaza of the
Jennai
, using the downtime in between to draw ever more sophisticated versions of her designs. Some had revealed unforeseen flaws when developed in greater detail and were discarded. Others grew in complexity. A few of the designs branched off and spawned siblings with minor details differentiating them.

“Rynn!” her father’s voice shouted from within the ship. She heard his footsteps, quick-paced, impatient, growing louder by the step. With a few quick flips of the clamps and a hasty shuffling of papers, she hid her day’s work behind a false front of sketches showing arrangements for the interiors of the vacuum tanks, once they were no longer needed for buoyancy.

The footsteps stopped just outside the door, where the familiar knot of itinerant onlookers was already gathering to come outside with her. “You lot, find something to pass your time. If you haven’t seen enough airships land yet, just wait ‘til you see a fleet of them buzzing through here.”

Erefan lowered himself sideways into a seat with an empty chair separating them. He slung an arm over the back of the middle chair and leaned in to see Rynn’s sketchbook. “What’s that? Already planning on making us fully rune-dependent?”