Rebel Skyforce (Mad Tinker Chronicles) (5 page)

Chipmunk arrived on the bridge with Sosha acting as her crutch. Outside the ship, rifles fired at assailants she could only guess about.

“Captain Bosley, report!” Chipmunk pushed past the captain and attending officers, and collapsed against the forward railing just in time to see a trio of liftwing airships buzz past. They were of similar design to the ones the rebellion had captured for their use, but they had the original repeater rifles still attached.

“We’ve got eight of them on us,” Bosley replied smartly, like the sea captain his twin was in Tellurak. “We shot down a ninth.”

“Have we launched our own yet?” Chipmunk looked out the window to get a sense of the battlefield. This was the first time they’d been caught out in open skies; none of them had battled in the air before. The enemy crafts looked like a scattered flock of birds, and indeed some of the distant figures she spotted might have
been
birds for all she knew. She drew her pistol and used the optics to get a better view.

“No ma’am,” Bosley replied. “Seemed like we’d be sending Rennon to his death, setting the dogs on him nine-to-one.”

Chipmunk nodded. “Good. You were right to keep him in. Those are better suited to hitting slow-moving targets.”

“Like us.”

“Like us,” Chipmunk agreed. “Any damage to the vacuum tanks?”

“Hard to say. Pump gauges say we’re evacuating just fine, but we won’t be able to tell for certain until we’re closer to full vacuum. For now, we’re climbing at least.”

“Well, we’re already shooting at them. Nothing more to do for now but hope we get them all before we take too much damage to keep vacuum.”

“Aye aye,” Bosley acknowledged.

Chipmunk stood and watched along with Sosha and the bridge crew of the
Jennai
as the Ruttanian airships danced around them in the sky. They looped and climbed, dove and spun, raking the two rebel airships with their repeater rifles with each pass. The bullets plinked against the reinforced walls of the vacuum tanks, trying to turn the stadium-sized chambers into sieves. There was no way to judge the damage except by the vacuum gauges and their altitude. It was possible that the bullets were deflecting off the thick steel plating required to keep the vacuum pressure from caving in the tanks. It was just as likely that each pass jabbed a row of holes into the
Jennai
and the
Cloudsmith
like a sewing machine.

It was a surreal sight, beautiful in a way that only a layer of intervening glass could make it. They were spectators watching a theater performance of acrobats and knife-jugglers. Then on one pass, a Ruttanian airship lined itself up to
make a run straight for the bridge of the
Jennai
. Chipmunk saw it through the sight of her pistol and drew back, startled. She looked through the window without the sight and confirmed that one was headed right for her position.

“Stand back,” Chipmunk said to everyone. She looked through the sight and located the airship at greater magnification. She needed one hand to hold her balance, so keeping the gun steady gave her trouble. The airship grew larger by the second in her view.

Sosha put a hand on her shoulder. “Rynn, what are you—”

“Stand back!” Chipmunk shouted, shouldering Sosha aside and quickly reacquiring her aim.

Click.

The forward window of the
Jennai
shattered, allowing the wind and noise of the outside onto the bridge. Chipmunk watched through the sight, momentarily losing her target as she jumped at the sound of breaking glass. The Ruttanian airship was gone.

Leaning out the now-open window, Chipmunk watched the pieces of airship scatter as they fell. Her shot must have connected with the engine block for it to have torn the craft apart like that. She had worried briefly that her coil gun might have been too powerful to do major damage, that it might have just made a small, neat hole.

“Rynn, what were you thinking?” Sosha asked. Broken glass crunched underfoot as those on the bridge rushed to have a look at the falling airship.

“Nice shot, General,” Captain Bosley commented.

“Thanks. Get someone to sweep up this mess.” Chipmunk stood in place, not daring to set foot on broken glass again, even with proper boots to protect her feet. By the amount scattered on the floor, most of the glass shards had been blasted overboard to become a hazard to some scrub-farmer’s harvest. Had the
Jennai
been hovering instead of motoring full ahead, hardly any would have blown back inside.

Chipmunk took a few more shots out the window to be thorough. A volunteer was already at work sweeping up broken glass with a silver-plated dustpan and a wood-handled brush from the janitorial supplies in first-class. Only the top and back of the sweeper’s head were visible to Chipmunk as the man bent over his work. She didn’t know his name. It was not so long ago that she had been the nameless peon who toiled at floor level, now she ordered others to do such work for her. She made a mental note to learn his name once the bullets were done flying; it was exactly what Mrs. Bas-Klickten would never have done, and that made it worth doing.

Footsteps hammered the stairway up to the bridge. “General! General Chipmunk!” The voice grew louder as the footsteps approached. The door of the bridge flew open and a panting Innin stumbled in. “Two of the Ruttanian airships are breaking off the attack.”

Chipmunk slammed the butt of her pistol on the railing. “Damn those cowards! What heading?”

“South-southeast, about oh-nine-five,” Innin replied.

“Rennon’s going to have to go after them,” Captain Bosley said.

Chipmunk shook her head. “They have a head start. There’s no reason to think our airship’s any faster than theirs. It’s the same model.” Her mind whirred. Captain Bosley got half a word of comment out of his mouth before Chipmunk’s raised hand cut him off. The crew remained silent as the wind blew around them and the propellers hummed.

“I’ll go,” Chipmunk said. “I can try overloading the runes and see if I can make it go faster than they were designed.” She hobbled along the railings and headed for the door.

Sosha cut her off, blocking the railing and offering no assistance as a shoulder to lean on. “No, Rynn. You’re in no condition to be walking, let alone flying.”

“It’s either you or me,” Chipmunk replied. “And I know you won’t pull the trigger even if you can catch them.”

“General Chipmunk,” Sosha said, relenting on the use of her official title, “it is inappropriate for you to risk yourself on a dangerous mission with low prospects for success.”

“I’m afraid she’s right, ma’am,” Captain Bosley agreed, sounding relieved not to have been the one to broach the subject.

Chipmunk searched the eyes of the crew for signs that she had support on the matter. Each man and woman met her gaze, but what she saw was support of a different sort: hard, stoic eyes, firm set jaws, unwavering attention. She wasn’t one of them—she was their leader. Perhaps they admired her willingness, but she saw no sign that any of them were eager to let her run off to pilot a liftwing after the fleeing kuduks.

She hobbled back to the broken window and looked out to the northeast. The low-lying foothills of the Homespires beckoned, promising safety if only they could couch themselves among the rolling landscape without embedding themselves in it first.

“Slow to quarter speed. Set a heading two-nine-zero. Signal the
Cloudsmith
to do likewise.”

“Yes ma’am. Into the mountains,” Captain Bosley replied. He took the wheel as one of the officers cranked back the engine power to the propellers.

“Not that far. We just need to find a place to put ourselves back together a bit. We need lift, and we can’t get it without some upgrades. Set us down in the first valley deep enough that we can’t be seen from the plains.”

“Aye aye, General,” Captain Bosley acknowledged.

“Do you ever get the impression that we’ve mixed up our jargon a bit there, Captain.”

“A bit, maybe,” Captain Bosley agreed. “But I won’t worry myself over it unless I start calling you Miss Errol, or General Madlin.” He winked.

The western half of the valley was already blanketed in shadows as the eastern rises clung to the sunset light. The
Jennai
and the
Cloudsmith
had set down so close together that their vacuum tanks were dangerously close to touching. Chipmunk had ordered them rearranged five times before they were parked to her satisfaction. Crews were already on the access ladders, checking for damage, and would continue until the evening light failed them.

Chipmunk stood off to the side of the airships, watching the work by her father’s side.

“Your plan had merits, Rynn,” Erefan admitted. “But we didn’t put off enough weight for it to matter.”

“Enough to maneuver the foothills, at least.”

Erefan shrugged. “In, yes. Out, we’ll have to see about.”

“We’re going to have to use runes.”

Erefan glowered at her in reply.

“You’ve seen what my coil guns can do. Why do levitation runes bother you?”

Erefan plucked Chipmunk’s gun from her holster before she could object. “If this little trinket fails, what happens? No shot. Buoyancy rune fails, we fall from the sky.”

“And if this one fails,” Chipmunk pulled down her scarf, baring her slave collar, “my head comes off. When did you become such an old woman?”

“I started worrying more when I realized you’d stopped altogether. You’re letting this General Chipmunk business get to your head. When I’ve gotten the world-ripper on Tinker’s Island built, we’ll be able to get around easily. Until then, we just need to keep ourselves safe.”

“You don’t trust magic, but you’ll trust that machine of yours?” Chipmunk asked. “You can’t tell me that thing isn’t magic.”

“It’s just a science we don’t understand. Kezudkan used a rune-powered dynamo for the spark, but the device is scientific in nature, I’m sure of it.”

“If I hook a bunch of dials and switches to the runes, would you feel better about levitation? That’s all I saw on your machine.”

“Before you blasted it.”

Chipmunk’s brow knit. “It was a magical device, controlled by comforting little dials from a lab-grade spark supply box.”

“Sosha told me about your foot,” Erefan said, lowering his head. Chipmunk took the change of subject as a victory, since her father rarely admitted a lost argument directly.

“It’s her fault. If she’d sewn it up better—”

“She warned you to stay off it, and look what it got you,” Erefan snapped.

“Well, I’m going to take a crack at it myself, once I’ve slept,” Chipmunk shot back. “Sometimes it feels like I’m the only one around here actually trying.”

“What, you think you’re a better nurse than Sosha now? You let your foot go septic without even noticing.”

“Well, I’m going to see if my Veydran friends can help. Korr and Tellurak don’t seem to be offering me any options.”

Erefan crossed his arms. “Magic isn’t a cure-all.”

“You know, from what I’ve heard, it is.”

Chapter 5

“An understanding of metallurgy is fundamental to the tinker’s trade. Without suitable materials, dreams remain trapped in the mind.” –The Tinker’s Handbook, Vol 1., Foreword

The new workshop had been just another old warehouse two months ago. It had been repurposed; the barrels and crates that had cluttered the corners had been replaced by the trappings of a new sort of industry. A smelter took up one corner, smaller than the one in the foundry and made for processing a single material: copper. The workshop was devoted to the single purpose of working copper, drawing it out into long, thin strands, or casting it into shapes of cunning design.

The transformation had taken place with all the focus and relentless drive that Cadmus Errol was known for. He had laid the groundwork for the facility over years of sketching and figuring in his head. Because his timeline in Korr had been greatly accelerated by Kezudkan’s eagerness, he had been forced to focus on preparing his people for the great escape, which ended up not happening quite how he’d planned it. In an ideal world, Cadmus would have been ready with a second machine before he ever made use of the one in the daruu’s workshop. But neither Tellurak nor Korr were ideal worlds.

The Mad Tinker stalked his newest factory, peering over the shoulders of workers and stopping to confiscate production orders long enough to peruse them before handing them back. Nothing exceeded his expectations, but nothing fell short of them, either. He knew his people. There were mechanics among the twinborn who had worked with copper in Korr, who knew the workings of a wire-pulling machine, even some who had worked with spark before—not that there was any spark on Tinker’s Island yet.

One of the twinborn foremen approached from across the factory. “Morning, Cadmus. How’s Rynn?”

It sounded odd hearing his daughter’s Korrish name on his men’s lips. They’d always called her Madlin, even when talking about Rynn. It was often easier for everyone to use names from a single world, but those days were fading to distant memory as the distinctions became important.

“Morning yourself, Mr. Grandle. Rotten,” Cadmus replied. “She’s off on some miscalibrated trial to find magic that’ll fix that foot of hers.”

“Hey, I didn’t even believe in Veydrans until a few weeks ago,” Grandle said. “Maybe they’ve got some tricks we don’t know.”

“Tricks?” Cadmus scoffed. “Need more than tricks; Rynn’s gone and got septic rot. I was up predawn, caught myself sketching up mechanical legs.”

“Least we’ve got Sosha. Hate to have drawn lots to see who does the job.”

Cadmus glowered at Grandle. “You always so cheerful about medical butchery? How’s my dynamo?”

Grandle straightened up, reverting to a more subordinate posture. “All to plan, tinker. We’re just waiting for the wire production to catch up to what we need. They’re getting a better yield every day, but it’s still slow compared to the factories in Cuminol.”

“Well, I don’t expect to let a bunch of kuduks show us up. I expect us to be up to full production by the end of the week.” Cadmus gave a nod of dismissal and headed for the door. He had other appointments to keep.

Grandle fell into step behind him. “One other thing, Cadmus. We’re all set to tie into the main shaft for the dynamo, but Rynn had an idea.”

Cadmus stopped short, causing Grandle to stumble to avoid crashing into him from behind. He twisted around and met Grandle eye to eye.

“She pointed out that we’d lose use of the workshops while the dynamo was on if they were all sharing the central shaft,” Grandle said. “She thought it would be worth trying to rune the dynamo to run on aether.”

“I’m not trusting in aether to—”

“She said it could run in either mode.”

“I see you two have discussed this at some length. Anything else you and my daughter have plotted behind my back?”

Grandle reached inside his jacket and withdrew a folded sheet of paper. He handed it to Cadmus as if it might spring alive and attack as soon as the tinker touched it.

“You drew this, runes and all?” Cadmus asked. He looked up, and Grandle nodded. Cadmus crumpled the sheet and stuffed it into Grandle’s hands. “Your penmanship’s like rat droppings and you draw worse than a drunkard with busted spectacles.” Cadmus resumed his path to the exit.

“But sir—”

“Don’t you go sir-ing me. I don’t own you.”

“But Cadmus, Rynn already arranged interviews for the rune carvers.” Grandle blanched as Cadmus whirled on him. “It wasn’t me. She just told me that they were ready to meet you today. She got someone else to gather them up; I don’t know who.”

“Just who’s in charge around here, anyway?”

Grandle sweated a moment as if unsure how—or perhaps whether—to answer. “It seems more of a bi-world arrangement these days. You run Tinker’s Island, Rynn commands our forces in Korr.”

Cadmus let his breath vent through clenched teeth. He hated liars, bootlicks, and lackeys. As much as he might wish it otherwise, Grandle was technically correct. It was a sort of correct he had to respect, even if he didn’t like it.

“Fine. We’ll rune the dynamo—just as a contingency!” Cadmus shook a finger for emphasis. “I’ll meet with the carvers once I’ve seen about getting us more copper.”

Cadmus took as few meetings in his office as possible. It was a cluttered place, filled with paperwork that would be collected by his assistants at day’s end whether he looked at it or not. A small stack of important documents set to one side required his attention—contracts, treaties, and the like—but the rest was merely for his perusal. Like a castle’s torture chamber, it was a place for the unpleasant necessities of leadership that a civilized society would have been better off without.

The Mad Tinker perched on the edge of his seat with his elbows on his desk, chin resting on his interwoven fingers. Across the table sat a younger man, hale and full of vigor, trying to slink below the tinker’s view. His visitor was the son and trade representative of Mr. Amin Sutz, a shipper whose vessel had just delivered copper ore that Cadmus had been long anticipating.

“Say that again, more slowly, Mr. Sutz. I’m hoping that I may have just misheard you.”

Jaffry Sutz reached a finger inside his collar and tugged it away from his neck. “I’m ... I’m afraid not, Mr. Errol. You see, there’s a new wing being built for the Kheshi royal palace, and they want it out of copper, to match the rest.”

Cadmus pounded a fist on the table, causing Jaffry to flinch. “Rot them! I’m paying five times what it’s worth as it is. You can’t tell me they outbid me.”

“My father made the commitment before your order. He had his trade license in Khesh to think of.”

“You get that ship sent here instead of Khesh and I’ll make sure you won’t need to deal with them anymore. I can keep you in coin ‘til the end of days.”

“I’m sure my father wouldn’t like to see his trade with Khesh cut off entirely. He wouldn’t—”

“I’m not talking about your father. I’m talking about you. Mr. Sutz, you strike me as a man being forced to play against weighted dice. If it were up to you, would you sell me the ore, or deliver it to Khesh at a fraction of the price?”

Jaffry stood, straightening himself and smoothing the front of his shirt. “This is my father’s legacy to me. I can’t soil the family name on a single deal, especially one with this importance to the Kheshi royal family.”

Cadmus swiveled in his chair and faced the window. He could see the harbor below, where his copper ore was being unloaded from the
Kimba’s Pride
. It would be the last ore to arrive at Tinker’s Island for over a month, and unless he acquired a substantial supply soon, production would have to be suspended. Copper was the cheapest and most widespread conductor on Korr, and Kezudkan had procured it in vast amounts for the first world-ripper machine’s construction.

But Kezudkan had fallen on hard times. Copper was the cheapest reasonable conductor, not the only, nor even the best.

He spun his chair back to face Jaffry. The young man had his hands clasped in front of him, fidgeting. “What about silver?”

Jaffry cocked his head and blinked. “Silver, Mr. Errol?”

“Yes, shiny stuff, prone to tarnishing, used in tea sets, tableware, and hundred-fonn coins. Your father deals in all manner of ore. Does he have any silver?”

“Well, yes, I suppose. How much are you talking about?”

“Same as the copper. Silver’s heavier by about fifty percent, but the same volume would do.”

Jaffry’s mouth opened, but no sound issued forth. He stayed like that way for a moment. Cadmus could envision the gnashing gears in the man’s head as his brain came to a halt.

“Mr. Sutz,” he prompted.

Jaffry licked his lips and came around. “I don’t know our silver holdings, but we haven’t got
that
much, I’m sure.”

“I’ll take all you’ve got. Ore, coin, trinkets, all at standard market value.”

“I ... I can’t even calculate what that would cost. I don’t know how much credit my father would be willing to extend, even to you, Mr. Errol.”

Cadmus stood and strode around the table. Hooking Jaffry Sutz by the arm, he took the young trader in tow as he left his office. “Allow me to show you something.”

Jaffry said nothing as Cadmus led him through the halls of the Errol Company headquarters. They passed offices, clerks, accountants, and supervisors; anyone who caught Cadmus’s eye gave a nod of greeting as he passed. Jaffry elicited a few second glances, but no one questioned what the Mad Tinker was doing with the Acardian gentleman in his grasp. Farther into the facility, they passed guard posts with locked metal doors and men with rifles. The exchanges with the Errol Company security personnel were brief, direct, and impersonal.

Within the bowels of the building, three stories down and reachable only by steam lift, they came to a set of steel doors and another, less formal guard post. Anyone who had made it thus far was past the point of dealing with armed resistance.

“Orris, open the vault,” Cadmus called out as the lift gates opened.

Orris looked up from his book and took his feet down from the desk. “Really, Cadmus, I take shifts down here for the quiet. Can’t you awe the merchant brats with your dragon’s hoard on Averi’s watch?” Despite his complaint, Orris stood and took a ring of keys from his pocket.

“Averi’s not half the showman you are,” Cadmus shot back as Orris fiddled with the first of a half dozen locks.

“So this is a gawk-show, then?”

“Mr. Sutz here was balking at extending us credit for a shipment of silver.”

Orris looked over his shoulder as he turned one of the keys in a lock. His brow knit in a perturbed frown. “When did we start buying on credit?”

Cadmus didn’t answer, but watched Jaffry’s face as Orris unlocked the vault. He rarely took anyone down to the vaults, especially not suppliers. It was a fit of pique as much as any practical reason, Cadmus admitted to himself, after having his financial means questioned. Seeing the expectant wonder in Jaffry’s eyes made him wonder why he didn’t do it more often.

“Behold!” Orris said with a melodramatic sweep of his arm as he pulled open the door. “Cadmus Errol’s treasure trove.” Cadmus gave Orris credit for keeping a straight face, despite a smile that looked ready to burst from his lips at any moment.

Cadmus pulled Jaffry along, but the younger Mr. Sutz balked. Inside the vault was not a haphazard hillside of gold as dragons were known to sleep upon in fairy stories, but a warehouse of coin. Shelves lined the walls, stacked with strongboxes. Crates covered the floor, and the one nearest the door was open to reveal that it was filled halfway to the top with trade bars, the finger-sized gold currency that rich men used to buy horses and ships. Most impressive of all were the kings’ bars, gold bricks large enough to pass as masonry in a chimney. Too heavy to lug around, they were deemed too heavy for common theft as well. Kings’ bars were meant to be stored, not spent, and the only time anyone used them in barter were for payment to mercenary armies, the purchase of land, or as tribute to foreign rulers.

Cadmus let Jaffry gape for a long while.

“There’s not much in there besides gold,” Cadmus said. “It’s denser, so it takes up less room than silver or minted coin. If you can sell me enough silver that I can’t pay you in coin,
then
we can talk about my credit.”