by Joel Ross
“Yeah, I know,” I muttered. “That’s the idea.”
But she hadn’t been talking to me. She’d been talking to everyone. Every angry gearslinger and injured mutineer in this rubbled field seemed to pause. Maybe hearing the command in her voice, maybe struck by her courage, maybe surprised by her beauty, with the red glow of fire against her black skin.
“Do as the girl says!” Vidious roared in the shadow of the Predator on the tannery roof. “Take them down!”
The crowd burst into action. While my ticktocks battered soldiers and pulled airships lower with cables, the defeated mutineers started hurling rocks and swinging fists, swarming toward the boarding ladders of the Rooftop ships.
“Ready cannons!” Kodoc screamed on the tannery roof, raising his sword. “Kill that boy! Fire at my—”
Nisha sprang to her feet and clubbed him with her manacled arms. Blood spurted from his nose, and he staggered backward. A soldier slashed at her, but Nisha kicked him in the gut, then caught another airsoldier’s sword with the chain of her manacle and twisted. The sword twirled away, and Nisha head butted the soldier savagely. Rocks slammed into the airsoldiers around Kodoc, and injured mutineers climbed the sides of the tannery.
“That’s my little sister,” Vidious bragged, before throwing himself into the brawl.
With a silent order, I urged Snout forward—but he veered away, charging toward Hazel instead. No, Snout! I thought. Toward the roof!
He ignored me. That was the problem with a machine that obeyed your thoughts. Instead of doing what you said, it did what you wanted.
“The Predator!” Hazel shouted at me as I heaved toward the irrigation tower. “Stop the Predator!”
“I’m trying!” I yelled back. “I can’t!”
“Why not?”
“’Cause this stupid thing brought me to you instead.”
“Why?” Then she looked at my face again and said, “Aw, that’s sweet.”
I flushed. “Oh, shut up.”
“Hi!” Bea told Snout from the edge of the irrigation tower. “I’m Bea! What’s your name?”
“Get back!” Hazel snapped at her. “No talking to strange ticktocks!”
One of Snout’s knotted antennae snaked around Bea’s stomach and hoisted her in the air. She yelped in fear— then surprise—then pleasure when it set her gently beside me. Another antenna grabbed Hazel and swung her to a rusty hump behind me, the closest thing to a crow’s nest.
A segmented pole unfolded toward Swedish, and he grumbled something I didn’t hear before the pole closed around his chest. Snout squealed and brought Swedish toward us—then shot a braided cable fifty yards in the other direction.
“What’s it doing?” Hazel asked, grabbing a melted iSlate for balance.
I watched the braided cable disappear in the rubble. “No idea.”
“Take Kodoc down,” Hazel told me. “We can’t let him get back to the Rooftop.”
“He can’t even get into his ship,” I said.
The Predator dwarfed the flat-roofed tannery, massive propellers spinning beneath an endless sweep of hull—but dozens of ticktock cables coiled around the diving platform. They weren’t heavy enough to keep the Predator from flying away . . . so instead, they’d spun a web between Kodoc and the hatch leading inside.
He couldn’t retreat into his warship.
Kodoc’s guards fired a barrage of darts at Nisha and Vidious, until mutineers swarmed the roof and attacked with a bloodcurdling cry.
Snout chugged toward them, dragging the braided cable behind us like a skinny tail.
“Not that way!” Hazel grabbed my shoulder. “Up that hill. Ten wisps to the left.”
I didn’t know what she was planning, but I told Snout to change course toward the hill. That time, he listened. The Predator started tearing free from the surrounding ticktocks, and Kodoc grabbed the lowest rungs of the diving platform.
Enraged screams sounded from the crowd, and Kodoc was lofted above the roof an instant before Nisha and Vidious reached him.
47
THE PREDATOR TURNED toward the distant Rooftop. And toward us, on our little hill. Oh. That’s what Hazel was planning. She’d known the Predator would retreat directly above us. I exhaled and—
“Wahooooooo!” Loretta whooped, swooping through the air toward us, clasped by that braided cable. She was filthy, bandaged, and beaming. “Let me at him, fogface!”
It took me a second to realize that she was what Snout had been reaching for in the rubble, and another second to realize that she was calling me “fogface,” and telling me to send her whipping toward Kodoc. Which actually sounded like a good idea.
But Hazel said, “Bea—the diving platform! Show Chess the weak spots.”
“There!” Bea pointed toward the Predator. “There, there, and all over that part!”
I shot cables from Snout as she spoke, hitting each of the spots as she pointed to them.
The Predator swooped above the hilltop, blocking the sun and casting us into shadow. The diving scaffolding swept past, forty feet away, jerking Snout’s cables tight— and Kodoc fired a steam-bow at me with cold precision.
I froze at the hatred in his face, and a dart whizzed past my left ear. Then Swedish tackled me and Bea, shielding us with his body. And as I crashed down onto Snout’s rusty shell, I blasted every cable at the diving platform.
Still, the Predator didn’t slow. And now the cables were fully extended. Snout’s mismatched gears spun, Fog spewed from his hoses, and the warship lofted him—and us—up into the air, like his cables were tethers.
We dangled beneath the warship, with the ground slipping away below us. Swedish rolled off me and clapped his shoulder. The braided cable dropped Loretta beside him, and Hazel kept shouting, Stop him, Chess, stop him.
The damaged Predator headed for the Fog. Harpoons and grappling hooks rained around us, and Loretta said, “Swede, you’re hit!”
He touched the dart sticking from his shoulder. “It’s just a scratch.”
“It’s totally a scratch,” Loretta said, her voice gentler than I’d ever heard. “I’m still a way bigger hero than you.”
“Tear the diving platform off the Predator,” Hazel told me as we rode the dangling ticktock toward the edge of Port Oro. “Before Kodoc gets inside.”
I pushed to my feet and said, “Goggles down.”
Then, with a twist of thought, I jerked all of Snout’s cables at once—and the diving platform ripped free from the Predator’s hull.
We fell from the sky.
The impact slammed me to my knees and smashed a circuit block against my cheek. A fuel tank exploded inside Snout, and tendrils of Fog wafted around us. For a stunned minute, I lost track of myself. Then I heard Loretta say, “I didn’t even feel that,” and watched her faint.
Snout shuddered and died beneath me. His vents and hoses and gears fell silent. After a long, hollow moment, I stood and saw that we’d fallen onto farmland, scattering ticktock parts across the rows of crops that marched into the mist ten feet away. A tangle of beams and catwalks rose from the shallow Fog: the crushed remains of the diving platform I’d ripped from the bottom of the Predator.
But I couldn’t see Kodoc anywhere.
I dropped to the ground beside the lifeless ticktock, and a lump of grief clogged my throat. I touched his scaly plasteel horn and said thanks. A second later, Hazel stumbled beside me, and together we headed toward the wreckage.
“The Predator,” she said, looking upward.
The great warship spun in a slow circle like a stunned animal. Smoke seeped from vents, and gouges scarred her hull.
Then shouts sounded from the Rooftop gunships that were swooping closer—captured by the mutineers—and the Predator lumbered away over the Fog.
“They’ll catch her,” Hazel told me. “That’s Vidious and Nisha in the pursuit craft.”
As I watched the gunships shift into formation, a sunshine warmth touched my face. “Wait a second,” I sa
id. “Did we just win?”
“No, boy,” a slithery voice said.
The warmth turned to ice. I turned and saw Kodoc standing up from the wreckage of the diving platform, waist-deep in the Fog.
“I lost,” he said, pointing his steam-bow at us, “but you won’t win. You’ll never win.”
“Wait!” Hazel said. “Wait, please—”
“I know how to lower the Fog!” I told him.
“We all know now,” Kodoc said. “The Compass controls the ticktocks, and you’re the Compass. The ticktocks lower the Fog, don’t they?”
“Y-yeah. Yes. I triggered them without even knowing it. They’ll lower the Fog! We won’t need to crowd onto mountaintops! There’s enough room for everyone to live without—”
“Without me,” he snarled. “So you must die.”
“No, wait!” Hazel said desperately. “What if I—”
“Will you swear by the Fog?” Kodoc aimed at her chest, his finger tightening on the trigger. “By the silence and the white? Will you do anything to save your friend?”
“Yes,” I said, and reached into the Fog with my mind.
A driftshark erupted beside Kodoc. Terror flashed in his eyes, and he opened his mouth to scream. Too late. Misty jaws clamped his chest and slammed him into the deeper Fog. He disappeared without a sound, without a trace. Without a ripple.
48
THE STARS GLIMMERED overhead. The Predator’s deck swayed beneath me. Loretta played a tune on her flute, while Mochi and Bea swung in a hammock, making twistys together. Swedish bounced a bootball against a gearbox one-handed, his shoulder still bandaged, and Jada knotted ribbons in Hazel’s hair.
Me? I sewed loops onto Bea’s new overalls. She’d outgrown her old pair.
When Loretta finished her song, Bea said, “Tell us the story, Chess.”
“Again?”
“Last time, I promise!” Bea considered. “Until tomorrow. The refinery kids haven’t heard it!”
“We heard it twice,” Quancita said from where she was sitting with the others. “But we’d like to hear it again.”
I tugged on a stitch. “A long time ago—”
“Skip that part,” Hazel told me. “The Smog, the Fog, skip all that.”
“So where do I start?”
“A short time ago,” Bea prompted.
“A short time ago,” I repeated, “a baby was born with Fog in his eye. But he got lucky. He survived. Then he got luckier. He fell in with a crew of cutthroats and chuzzlewits.”
“I know which one I am,” Loretta said.
“We all know which one you are,” Swedish told her.
She grinned—then eyed him suspiciously.
“When the kid learned to control the nanites in his eye,” I continued, “he triggered the machines that lower the Fog. The ticktocks. But he didn’t know that’s what they were, not until he fell off an airship and—”
“You dove off,” Loretta said. “After Bea.”
“Yeah,” Bea said. “If I hadn’t fallen, none of us would be here!”
“Anyway,” I said, “the kid was lost in the Fog, surrounded by ticktocks. Scared out of his boots. But then he saw it. He saw them clearing the mist. They could inhale Fog and exhale pure air. They just needed instructions.” I paused. “And, uh, that’s that. . . .”
“Your ending needs work,” Bea told me. “You’ve got to say that now the ticktocks roam the fogline of Port Oro, chugging away day and night, lowering the Fog.”
“And mention the fleet.” Swedish gestured to the airships behind us, following Vidious and Nisha in the Predator. “Bringing ticktocks to the Rooftop to lower the Fog there, too.”
“And to move the entire junkyard onto the upper slopes,” Hazel said.
“Anything else I should add?” I asked.
“More about me,” Loretta told me.
Swedish laughed. “More about the diamond.”
Loretta patted her belt. “Not too late to start a gang.”
“Sure,” I said. “And is that all?”
“Not even close,” Hazel said, gazing toward the dark horizon. “There are more mountains out there, across the Fog. There are more people out there, trapped and desperate, and praying for help.”
I looked into the distance and wondered what she saw. Sure, the Fog swirled in my eyes—but the future swirled in hers. I sewed another stitch and listened to the propellers spin. Maybe our story wasn’t over. Maybe the world was bigger than I’d ever imagined.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Caitlin Blasdell, Alyson Day, Renée Cafiero, Jenna Lisanti, Lindsey Karl, Matt Rockefeller, and Joel Tippie.
About the Author
JOEL ROSS is the author of The Fog Diver as well as two World War II thrillers for adults (Double Cross Blind and White Flag Down). He lives in Santa Barbara, California, with his wife, Lee Naftali, who is also a full-time writer, and his son, Ben, who is a full-time kid. To find out more information, go to www.fogdiver.com.
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Credits
Cover art © 2016 by Matt Rockefeller
Cover design by Joel Tippie
Copyright
THE LOST COMPASS. Copyright © 2016 by Joel Ross. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
www.harpercollinschildrens.com
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Ross, Joel N., date, author.
Title: The lost Compass / Joel Ross.
Description: First edition. | Broadway, New York, NY : Harper, an Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers, [2016] | Sequel to: The Fog diver. | Summary: “Thirteen-year-old tetherboy Chess and his crew may have escaped the slums, but they cannot escape the Fog. When they retreat to the mountaintop sanctuary of Port Oro, they discover that the deadly white mist will soon swallow the entire city. Will the slumkids be able to save Port Oro, or will they run out of time?”— Provided by publisher.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015029171 | ISBN 9780062352972 (hardback)
EPub Edition © May 2016 ISBN 9780062352989
Subjects: | CYAC: Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. | Survival—Fiction. | Recycling (Waste)—Fiction. | Environmental degradation—Fiction. | Orphans—Fiction. | Science fiction. | BISAC: JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / Pirates. | JUVENILE FICTION / Action & Adventure / Survival Stories. | JUVENILE FICTION / Fantasy & Magic.
Classification: LCC PZ7.1.R677 Lo 2016 | DDC [Fic]—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015029171
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FIRST EDITION
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