“Get out of there,” he grumbled, reaching in to scoop it out.
Butch slapped him on the head and reprimanded him.
“Well, I know she’s recovering, but she shouldn’t be in my shirt. Just because I pulled her out of the basket doesn’t make me her mama,” he said. He got another button fastened before the creature crawled in again. When he reached to pull her out, Butch clocked him again. “You know I’m recovering too, Butch. Would you at least hold her until I get dressed proper?”
This was acceptable to Butch, but Nikita clearly had a lower opinion of it, because the instant she was no longer in physical contact with Coop, she struggled and fought to get back to him. He buttoned up his torn and stained shirt just in time for her to pull free from Butch and leap to him.
He heaved a heavy sigh. “You’re going to make things difficult, aren’t you, Nikita?”
Coop cradled the injured creature in one arm as Butch held up his coat for him. Putting it on was a bit of a circus act, requiring him to shift Nikita to the other arm multiple times, but finally he was fully suited up with an aye-aye nestled snug beneath his overcoat. From the feel of its fluttering heart, the thing was finally beginning to calm down.
“Long as I don’t upset her, you reckon we can see what this little thing knows about what went on down there?” Coop asked.
Butch indicated the affirmative, and Coop made his way up to the main deck. The sun was already setting, giving the sky a beautiful orange hue and casting long shadows from the scraggly trees to which the ship was moored. When Gunner saw the heartwarming sight of the recovering aye-aye poking its head out of Coop’s coat, his face lit up with fiendish glee and he opened his mouth to speak.
“You better watch what comes out of your mouth next, or you’re liable to have a fat lip,” Coop growled.
“Is that thing ready to talk?” the captain asked.
“You tell me. I could never get the hang of all of that tapping. Just a bunch of noise half the time,” Coop said, pacing over to the railing on the port side, which was the only part of the ship facing open sky.
Wink, who had been up in the rigging keeping an eye on the surroundings and performing his original function as inspector, finally decided that the presence of what was essentially a business associate couldn’t be ignored any longer. He climbed down, hopped up on the railing, and came practically nose to nose with Nikita. She peered out and sniffed him a bit, then pulled back inside.
She tapped out a message against one of the buttons of Coop’s coat.
This inspector wanted to know if that inspector was the inspector for this ship, she tapped.
This inspector was the inspector for this ship. This inspector was named Wink. That inspector repeated its name, Wink tapped.
This inspector was named inspector 55655, she replied.
“That bit was about names, wasn’t it?” Coop said. “What was that about?”
“She says her name is 55655,” the captain said.
“No, Nikita. Your name’s Nikita now,” Coop said.
The aye-aye looked up to him.
This crew understood what these inspectors said, Nikita said. This inspector reported this to the fug folk.
No, 55655 did not report this to the fug folk. This crew learned. It was a secret to the trainers and the fug folk. 55655 didn’t tell anyone. 55655 stayed out of sight. Wink did these things. Wink was rewarded with good food and good treatment. 55655 might have been rewarded, too, Wink said. 55655 understood. 55655 agreed.
The newcomer looked uncertainly at Coop and the rest of the crew.
No, she tapped. 55655 did not agree. This inspector was named Nikita. Nikita agreed.
“That’s what I like to hear,” Captain Mack said. He fished into his pocket and fetched a waxed paper pouch filled with slices of overripe breadfruit. He gave one to Wink and held one out to Nikita. She reluctantly took it and nibbled at it. “Real team players, these inspectors. I wouldn’t mind if I had a whole crew of them.”
“Now that’s an image,” Gunner said.
“Nikita, did you see two surface folk down there in the fug recently?”
There was a surface woman. She had black skin and leather clothes. There was a second surface woman. She was dressed like this crew. They were loaded onto a cutter ship. The cutter went to the Phylactery, Nikita said.
“I heard a mishmash of letters at the end there,” Coop said.
“She said she saw them and they went to the Phylactery,” Gunner said.
“I ain’t never heard of that.”
“I don’t think any of us have. What’s the Phylactery?” Mack said.
Nikita didn’t know, she said.
“Where is the Phylactery?” Gunner asked.
Nikita didn’t know.
“Well, then what good does that do us?” Gunner asked.
“It does us plenty of good. It lets us know the girls were alive, and it tells us the name of the place they got sent,” Mack said.
“But she said they were loaded into a cutter. You know how fast those things are. By this time tomorrow they could be anywhere in the fug,” Gunner said.
“But they’re alive. That’s enough to know we don’t give up searching.” The captain turned to Nikita. “Why did they have you down there?”
The fug folk were on the ground for a long time. One of the fug folk was a trainer. The fug folk had to wait. The cutter couldn’t stay. Nikita listened for a message. The message came, the cutter came. The fug folk climbed in the mountain. The fug folk came back with the surface folk. The fug folk broke things in the camp. The fug folk burned things in the camp. The fug folk burned Nikita. The fug folk shot at Nikita. Nikita ran. This surface person found Nikita. This surface person was good. Nikita stayed with this surface person.
“Yeah, well, you’re in luck, because once the captain gets his hands on an injured inspector, they stick around,” Gunner said. “Sounds like you’ve got a partner, Coop.”
Nikita stayed with Coop.
“Why did they try to burn you?” Coop asked.
The fug folk said there was no ship. The fug folk said an inspector with no ship was suspicious. The fug folk didn’t want that.
“Where did you come from, Nikita?” Mack asked.
Nikita was in training. Nikita was put on a cutter. Cutter already had an inspector. Nikita was brought to Pendercrook. Nikita was put on a new cutter…
“Pendercrook. What’s that?” Gunner said.
Nikita didn’t know.
“Well, what did it look like?”
There were many ships. There were no places where fug folk lived. There were many places where ships moored. There was much equipment and food and water.
“Sounds like a supply point,” Mack said. “Do you know where Pendercrook is?”
Nikita heard the navigator when the cutter left Pendercrook, seventy-five miles west-northwest.
Mack turned and headed for the wheel, dictating orders. “Then we’re heading seventy-five miles east-southeast. Get us unmoored, and then masks on. We’re doing this under the fug. Once we’re on the way, I want fore and aft cannons loaded with grapeshot, and then I want everyone on deck and heavily armed. Nikita, remember that from now on you deliver no reports. Wink, you keep her honest. Pendercrook is our only clue right now. When we get there I want eyes open, ears open, everything. We are going to use that place to find Nita and Lil. Maybe it means spotting a cutter and trailing it. Maybe it means breaking in and finding some travel orders. Maybe it means kidnapping the man in charge and pulling the information out of him with pliers.” The crew had already snapped to action, but before he put his hands to the controls, he paused and turned to them. “I’m about to take an undermanned ship that can’t be repaired into enemy territory. There’s more ways this can go wrong than ways it can go right. If anyone wants out—”
“Just get moving, Captain,” Gunner said irritably. “We all know if anyone drops out now, the ship won’t have crew enough to do what it
needs to, and none of us are going to leave Nita or Lil in the hands of the fuggers.”
“That’s the right answer,” Captain Mack said, turning back to the wheel. “Pull them ropes up and let’s get our crew.”
Chapter 5
Nita’s eyes fluttered open. Her head ached terribly, like she had the most wretched hangover of her life. Wherever she was, it was at least a small mercy that the light was dim, because she didn’t think she could handle sunlight at the moment. As her vision slowly cleared, she started to make out details of her surroundings. The light was yellow-green. A phlo-light. She was cold, too. Not the icy cold of a winter night, but the skin-deep chill of medicine swabbed onto a scrape. She stiffened. She knew that sensation. It was the fug. She was in the fug.
She fought to focus her eyes, and to work out what had happened. A mask was cinched painfully tight around her mouth, one of the filter contraptions that surface folk had to wear when journeying down into the wretched fumes that blanketed most of Rim. It made breathing difficult, but not nearly as difficult as it would have been without the mask. Her hands were bound behind her back, from the feel of it by stout metal shackles. Her ankles had similar restraints as well. They seemed to be in a large wood-paneled room with a heavy door. From the subtle motion she felt, she was in some sort of vehicle, almost certainly an airship. There were no windows, save a barred slit at eye level on the door, and the only furniture to speak of was a pair of wooden planks affixed to the opposite walls. Nita was laying on one of them, and across from her, Lil was still unconscious on the other.
“Lil,” Nita croaked.
It was clear that these masks weren’t designed with the same usage in mind as the ones the Wind Breaker crew usually deployed. The Wind Breaker masks were rather ingeniously designed, allowing voices to be surprisingly understandable. This mask muffled her voice almost to the point of incomprehension.
“Lil!” she called again, more loudly, and was quickly punished by a throb to her head from the exertion.
Nonetheless, the cry did the job, and she could just barely make out Lil’s eyes opening. It said something about the deckhand’s personality that her first action upon discovering her situation was to mutter some muffled expletives and struggle at her chains rather than attempt to puzzle out where she was.
“Damn fugger scum,” Lil mumbled.
“Lil, are you all right?” Nita asked, struggling to sit up and swing her restrained feet to the ground.
“I feel like I put away a gallon of the cap’n’s rotgut. But yeah. I’m breathing,” she said, shaking her head. “Why’re we in the fug? Why ain’t we dead?”
“I’m sure it wasn’t charity or good will,” Nita said.
Lil shook her head, then uttered a moan of regret for doing so. “You seen any of the rest of the crew?”
“I just woke up. You know as much as I do.”
“They took my gun,” Lil said.
“No surprise there. My tools are gone as well.”
Lil swung her feet out and sat up, tipping her head from side to side with a crackle. “Got a crick in my neck something awful.” She pressed the back of her head against the wall, set her feet against the floor, and arched her back to lift her bottom off the seat. A few awkward twists and turns got the chain of her manacles down to the back of her mid thigh. She then sat and pivoted, flipping her legs up and sliding the chain along them. The manacles got caught briefly on her leg irons, but she managed to shake them loose and pull them the last few inches up over the edge of her heels, leaving her with hands restrained in front rather than behind.
“You would certainly make a fine dancer,” Nita observed.
“If being a dancer means not waking up in a situation like this, then I might be willing to give it a try,” Lil said. “You know anything about picking locks?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Coop’s always been the one with the knack for that. I never could get around a fugger lock. Not that we have the tools for it, regardless. Guess I’ll just try and bust them.”
Lil began smashing the manacles against one of the metal supports for the plank. Now that her mind had recovered enough, Nita began to feel the flutter of fear. In the heat of battle, or at least when there was something to be done, she seldom felt even a flash of anxiety. What concern she felt always fell a distant second to the job at hand. The feeling of helplessness, though, was something else entirely. She needed to do something, to make some progress toward escape, or she knew panic wouldn’t be far behind. There didn’t seem to be anything else to do but attempt to imitate Lil’s feat of flexibility. She got the chain as far as her ankles when it became clear that she wasn’t quite as lithe as her cellmate. Lil glanced over at her while Nita was trying to decide if she should continue forward or abandon the effort.
“Having fun over there?” Lil asked with a snort.
“I may have overestimated my suppleness,” Nita said.
“Hang on. I’ll bet you’re plenty supple. You just need a little help is all,” Lil said.
Lil stood and shuffled over to Nita and turned aside, propping her hip against the back of Nita’s thigh. “You let me know if I need to let up, all right?”
Nita nodded and Lil shoved a bit, helping to fold Nita just a bit further in half. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was enough for her to get the chain up over her leg irons and, with some difficulty, past her own heels. The ship chose that moment to lurch aside with a sharp turn, and with both of the girls in a somewhat precarious position, they lost their balance and tumbled to the ground in a tangle. They were just untangling when the ship shifted again, this time with a steady and constant tilt in one direction.
“Feels like they’re bringing this thing to a stop,” Lil said, struggling to her feet and helping Nita to do the same.
“What do you think they mean to do with us?” Nita said. “They must not want us dead, or they wouldn’t have put these masks on us.”
“That just means they don’t want us to die from the fug. I reckon they have something more elaborate in mind for us. The fuggers are always real fond of making examples of folks, and we’d be a couple of good ones.”
She shuffled to the door and stood on tiptoe to look out through the slot.
“There’s… two, three… five guards along the hall there. I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many in one place before. Kind of makes you feel good, knowing how many they think it’d take to keep us in line,” Lil said. “Hey! You twisted, stinking purple-breathers! You know who you got in here, right? We’re the crew that knocked that dreadnought of yours out of the sky! And we weren’t even trying! What do you reckon we’re going to do to you? What do you reckon the cap’n’s gonna do when he finds out you took two of his finest? I’d sleep with one eye open, boys, because the Wind Breaker’s coming for you. Mark my words!” She turned to Nita. “Never hurts to let them know who they’re dealing with.”
The tilt of the ship finally seemed to even out, and there came the subtle rocks and jerks of a ship being moored. Nita joined Lil at the door to look upon their guards. Each of them shared the almost interchangeable features of their race. They were all terribly thin, their skin tight, drawn, and papery. Long, skeletal fingers and tall, hunched postures made them seem frail, but anyone who had come to blows with one knew that they were no weaker than their surface-dwelling counterparts. The guards were layered with dark blue uniforms that were generously padded to protect against the sort of things that Lil no doubt had in mind. They also wore helmets and dark goggles. While the bulk of the uniforms made them appear almost imposing, it also underscored the apparent frailness of their hands and faces. Each was armed with a stout wooden baton.
“Heh. All they got is sticks,” Lil said. “We can take them, easy.”
Nita couldn’t tell of Lil was joking, which she supposed was likely for the benefit of the guards. There was something surreal about a short, scrawny young woman trying to intimidate a cluster of tall, scrawny men. The strangeness w
as interrupted not long after when a door at the far end of the hall opened. The person who entered was clearly the commander of the group. He stood a bit taller than the rest, dressed in an outfit that seemed to have been devised as an attempt to combine the attire of a businessman and a general. The suit was impeccably tailored to the fug person’s serpentine physique. It was gray, with matching vest and bow tie, but black braiding had been added to the shoulders, and an assortment of awards and commendations had been pinned to the left side of the narrow chest. The whole of the ensemble was topped by a sharp-brimmed hat with a flat, backward-sloping top and an insignia depicting a winged cage on the front. He was notably the only one in the hall to be armed with a firearm, a small but ornate pistol that peeked out from the bottom of his jacket.
As tended to be the case on airships, the hall was only truly wide enough for at best two people to walk side by side, and that was being generous. With guards on either side, the maneuvers necessary for the newcomer to approach would have been comical if they hadn’t been so expertly choreographed. As he approached each pair of guards, they would turn and step back, standing at attention and pressing against the wall at the same time, thus creating enough of an opening for him to step through.
The newcomer came closer, allowing them to notice a few additional details. He wore a mustache, a thin strip of white hair almost invisible against his equally white skin. An etched nameplate labeled him “Asst. Warden Blanc.”
“So, the prisoners are awake,” said Blanc in a clipped, impatient tone. “I was beginning to think we would have to tote their worthless carcasses along with us.”
Lil turned to Nita and whispered, barely able to be heard through her mask, “Make sure you get to the gun first.”
Nita didn’t have a chance to request clarification before the guard nearest to the door began to work at the lock with his key.
“Back away from the door,” Blanc ordered.
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