Skykeep (27 page)

Mack crossed his arms. “I think that’s about
as close as we’re going to get. Everyone know their prep?”

“I’ve got to convert some burn-slow into
burn-fast,” Gunner said.

“I’ve got to ditch the gig and hoist up its
replacement,” Coop said.

Butch muttered something irritably.

“If I wasn’t going to be busy at the wheel,
I’d do it myself, but I’ve never been good with a needle and
thread,” Mack said.

Wink found Nita and Lil, tapped Wink.

Nikita followed Wink, Nikita added.

All eyes turned expectantly to Gunner.

“… Why are you looking at me?”

“This is right about where you do your
naysaying,” the captain said.

“Is it going to do any good?”

“No, but best to get it out of the way,” Coop
said.

“Fine. I would be remiss if I didn’t point
out that this fever dream of a plan began as a jailbreak and has
become the most absurd heist ever conceived. I will be frankly
astounded if anyone survives. And that includes the inmates. I
am
understanding it correctly, right? We
are
planning
to
steal
the prison.”

“Nah. Just borrow it,” Coop said.

“Ah. Well, then I retract my objection.”

“Noted. Now get to work,” said Mack.

He nodded, and the crew scattered dutifully
to their tasks.

I thought of this question. The Wind Breaker name
sounded like something to you when you heard it first. You told me
what it was, Lil tapped.

Once their message had been sent to the
Wind Breaker
, at first Nita and Lil had tapped out messages
to one another sparingly. After they’d heard the guards joking
about all of the “nervous jitters” coming from the cells, though,
they realized it wouldn’t matter how much they tapped; the guards
would never assume it was anything more than evidence of weakness.
If there was one thing the fug folk could be counted on to do, it
was assume the worst of the surface folk. From that moment they
tapped away to one another, sometimes to share information,
sometimes to plot and plan, but mostly just to preserve their
sanity. The only time both of them were in their cells were moments
like this, when the remaining Ebonwhite was taking his turn in
isolation.

The name was poetic. Words that said it was
fast, Nita answered. That was what I thought of.

Not me,
tapped Lil.

You told me what you thought it was.

Farts.

Nita couldn’t help but giggle at the
unexpected reply. The sound of laughter drew the guard’s
attention.

“Quiet down in there,” the guard grunted.

The laughter descended into a genuine cough.
Depending on the day and the whims of the breeze, the air was
almost too dense with fug to breathe at times. The guard had two
sets of temporary breathers, but he’d only once felt the need to
deploy them. Nita had learned to breathe shallow until the air
seemed clear, and in a way almost looked forward to her time in
isolation. At least up there she could breathe deep, and she got a
glimpse of unfiltered sunshine on the way in and out. Of course,
isolation also meant that she was only getting regular meals two
days out of every three. Today, though, neither the box nor the
cell would be particularly tolerable. The wind outside her window
was wailing, fat raindrops pattering against the windowpane.
Another storm. The wind forced cold air and fug through the poorly
sealed window and would make the isolation box a freezing and even
more stomach-turning experience than usual. She didn’t even want to
think about what yard time would be like in wind like this.

You didn’t mean that,
Nita tapped,
pulling her mind back to the conversation.

Yes I did. Wind Breaker. Broke Wind. I
thought our ship’s name sounded like someone with bad gas. Made
sense. Had a big bag full of gas.

Neither of them “spoke” for a moment, and
Nita turned to the window. Telling time through a residue-encrusted
window half-immersed in the fug was a bit of an art, and doing it
during a storm was even more difficult, but it was amazing how
quickly one’s sense of time adapted to one’s conditions.

Nearly lunchtime, Nita tapped.

Nearly my turn in the box, Lil replied. You
knew what today was. One week. The grunts owed us muffins. You made
sure you collected.

Noted.

The same horrid food was served to them a few
minutes later, and a few minutes after that the surface guard came
for Lil to tuck her away in the box for a day. The deckhand
couldn’t even muster the energy to object or resist. She simply
forced down the last of her meal, tapped out
Talk to you in two
days
, and presented her hands for restraint. The guard, dressed
in a drenched poncho and appearing even more irritable than usual,
wrestled with his keys.

“Seems like I’m always the one who gets put
out there during a storm. Guess I’m just lucky like that,” Lil
said.

“Oh,” remarked the surface guard as he
clicked the manacles in place. “The warden has canceled yard time
for the day. He says the surface is too dangerous.”

“But not the box?” Lil asked.

“The isolation cell is tethered. You won’t be
in any danger of being blown free.”

Lil sighed. “Figures.”

The whole exchange went through without anger
or rebellion. It was no doubt precisely how the warden had intended
it to happen. In just a few days, the routine had taken the fight
from them. In a few days more, he might decide they had learned
their lesson and would behave themselves for good. And he might
have been right.

#

In the pouring rain and buffeting wind, Coop,
Gunner, Wink, and Nikita sat atop the platform of a device they’d
first been exposed to during their warehouse heist four months
before. It was a cart with a steam engine attached and quite
possibly the most convoluted control system ever devised.
Everything from steering to acceleration was controlled by an array
of unlabeled levers and valves. Nita had done a fair amount of
fiddling and trial on the steam cart they’d stolen during their
brief visits to Cache Island, and like all other areas of her
expertise, she did her best to teach the others, but it wasn’t
until this precise moment that the value of those lessons became
clear. It didn’t help that the one they’d stolen from the warehouse
didn’t
quite
match the one they’d stolen from
Pendercrook.

“Are you sure we’re okay keeping them bombs
this close to the boiler?” Coop said uncertainly. He pulled his
rain gear a bit closer. It was a heavy leather coat, and snuggled
beneath it was not just Nikita but Wink as well.

“They are quite inert until I insert my
detonators, Coop,” Gunner said.

“And what about after you put the detonators
in?”

“Then we have a precisely calibrated time
before they detonate.”

“And you’re
sure
you’re sure?”

“I am certain.”

“As certain as the first time you blew a
finger off, or as certain as the second time you blew a finger
off?”

“More certain than both of those times
because I learn from my mistakes. And now is not the time to have
your doubts about my pyrotechnic capabilities.”

“I ain’t worried about all that. I’m just
worried you ain’t as good with bombs as you think.”

“Well don’t be. We’re getting close.”

Gunner adjusted some valves to bring down the
speed of the steam cart a bit as the rain hissed against the boiler
beside him. They had been moving along the remains of what had been
the main road leading to Shuttermill for several minutes. Now they
could see the looming remains of the buildings come into the dimmer
than normal light of a stormy noon beneath the fug. Bad weather had
a whole new meaning beneath the surface. Falling rain mixed with
the toxic atmosphere and struck the skin with an even more potent
chill, like pure alcohol. And then there was the lightning. It was
like something out of a nightmare. Something about the fug seemed
to attract the stuff. Wind whipped the surface of the fug into
twisting spires, then lightning would strike them, sending a jagged
lance of bright violet light that lingered in the air for tens of
seconds after the thunder had died away. It was like the lightning
left a ghost behind, a branching replica of the bolt, which was
quickly pulled apart into a fading blur by the wind.

Visibility was practically zero, but even so
there was no doubt they’d come to the right place. While they
hadn’t yet reached their base, the four chains that secured the
prison were visible rising up to the very surface of the fug,
silhouetted whenever lightning struck. They pressed on, moving
farther into the city, and watched as the dismantled frameworks of
a few dozen homes and businesses whisked by them. Ahead, they could
see what the fug folk had made of the city.

“Those are big guns,” remarked Coop with his
usual penetrating insight.

Anchors for each of the chains were visible
now. They were house-sized blocks of cement. A dozen or so yards
away from each one of them was a defense cannon. As the crew was
well aware, the islands of Caldera were defended by massive guns,
and in their monthly decisions to risk those cannons, the crew had
gotten an excellent look at them. Though updated frequently and
well maintained, the cannons were first built long ago and showed
their age in their massive size and crude design—magnificent
artistic embellishments not withstanding. These defense cannons
were lean, efficient, and undoubtedly a match for the deadliness of
their Calderan counterparts. Their barrels were as long as the
Wind Breaker
and actuated by precision-ground gears that
were almost half that size. Near the base of each was a complex
arrangement of struts, chains, and linkages, which could only have
been used for reloading the weapon, thus allowing it to be entirely
manned by a single operator. Around each gun and its stockpile of
ammunition was a fifteen-foot fence.

“One shot from any one of those would punch a
hole through three
Wind Breakers
,” Gunner said in awe.

“Makes you wonder why they don’t have them
defending every town they got,” Coop said.

“One would imagine cost is a factor. Let’s
just be thankful for it.”

The anchors, and thus the guns, were set
several hundred yards apart. This gave the prison a very wide and
stable foundation. Even the gale-force wind barely caused the
floating fortress to rock. It also meant that the guns were far
enough apart that if they piloted the steam cart through the
center, they would probably not be seen through the downpour. They
would still have to approach each of the anchors, though. That
would put them within a few dozen yards of each gun, but that
portion of the mission could be done on foot. They worked their way
through the streets of the deserted city until they found one that
led directly between two of the anchors and trundled onward.

Closer to the anchors, the remains of the
houses were more and more picked clean, in some cases offering
little more than foundations to show where once there’d been a
cottage or inn. The section of the city directly below the prison
was wiped completely clean, even the foundations filled in to form
a single sprawling courtyard. Once they had maneuvered the cart
into the center of the courtyard, they breathed a brief sigh of
relief through their masks. The guns were pointed away from the
courtyard, so unless the operators decided to turn and look, Coop
and Gunner probably wouldn’t be seen despite the lack of cover.

Coop peered up at a structure that, if not
for the storm and the fug, would have blotted out the glow of the
noon sun like some sort of man-made eclipse. “Every day I get just
a bit more worried about the sort of shenanigans these folks could
get up to if they had the notion to…”

“Well then, let’s not waste any time showing
them what sort of shenanigans
we
can get up to now that
we’ve
got the notion to,” Gunner said.

“Wait… what do you suppose happens when that
thing gets struck by lightning?” Coop asked.

“I imagine they’ve worked that out, or else
it wouldn’t have lasted past the first storm.” He peered around
them. “That eastern pylon looks badly charred. I suppose the
lightning gets wicked over to that one somehow.”

“So what would happen if we put a bomb on
that one and it got struck by lightning?” Coop asked.

“… I suggest we do that one last,” Gunner
said. “Now let’s get moving.”

Coop grabbed a small bundle from the cart,
and they set off toward the first of the anchors. They moved low to
the ground while Coop tried to ready the inspectors for their part
of the plan.

“You first, Nikita. I know you like chumming
around with me, but if you’re going to be a member of this crew,
you have to earn it, and Nita and Lil would do the same for
you.”

“Would you keep it down?” Gunner hissed.

In a bit of a test of coordination, Coop
managed to slip the harness onto Nikita. It was strapped with a fug
mask, a small knife, and what the captain liked to call a “boot
gun,” which was a palm-sized firearm good for two shots. Once the
harness was held to Nikita’s back like a little pack, Wink got the
same treatment. By the time they were both suited up, the group had
reached the anchor. A thick tube spiraled up along the chain, the
speaking tube that would feed the gunner the coordinates of his
intended target. Presumably it would also feed the prison warnings
of attack, so before anything else, they carefully and quietly
attached a clamp to the tube, crushing it shut to mute any
communication.

“Up you two go,” Coop whispered, giving them
each a boost. “Make sure to tell the girls what’s coming. Lil’s the
one that looks like me only smaller, and Nita’s the one with the
dark skin.”