Driftmetal II

by J. C. Staudt

  The people of Pyras didn’t have the luxury of relocating to another floater if their city’s infrastructure collapsed. Well, they did… but they were primies. And as far as most people in the stream were concerned, primies were scum. For them, the increase in danger to themselves and their families would be like moving from a gated community to the slums.

  Dark thoughts began to run through my mind. I felt the medallion surge, sending another dose of its psychic anesthesia to keep me distracted from my injuries. I was running on pure adrenaline—or whatever you’d call adrenaline’s technological equivalent. It was the first moment I remember thinking that maybe the medallion wasn’t following me, acting on my body’s commands; maybe I was following it. It was telling me what it wanted. It was leading me. It had its own awareness—maybe even its own sentience.

  Somehow, I didn’t let that theory get to me. I wanted to know the device’s motivations, if it had any. Why had I wanted it so badly from the moment I first laid eyes on it? Why didn’t anyone else see in it what I saw? Everybody seemed to either ignore it or despise it, as if I wore the thing for decoration, or just to make them mad. Was the medallion provoking my darker tendencies for justifiable reasons? Or did it only want disorder, at any cost?

  The ship began to fill up as the crew brought refugees and hospital patients aboard in droves. Stretchers, gurneys, wheelchairs, and even hospital beds were soon crowding the deck. I’ll admit that all the moaning and complaining hampered my concentration a bit. But it didn’t stop me from getting the job done in time, just as I’d promised.

  “There are so many people in that hospital. I feel like we’re barely making a dent,” Sable said. With the boat filled to capacity, we had entered her quarters for a quick rest. She was flushed and out of breath, and I could see the wear on her tiny frame from carrying all those people and equipment.

  “A dent that weighs a few thousand pounds,” I said. “Did you find a doctor?”

  “A couple of them. And some nurses, too.”

  “You still think it was a good idea to come here?”

  She frowned. “Why wouldn’t I? We’re helping people.”

  “We’re trying to help people,” I reminded her. “The turbines are installed, but all we have to go on that they’re not lemons is the word of the guy who sold them to me.”

  “If you’re not convinced your flight checks were adequate, then we need to test them again.”

  “I have no doubts about my testing,” I said, throwing her a stare. “But will the engines hold up when it counts? We’re dealing with unpredictable wind patterns, or no wind at all; the chance that we might fly into the side of a building—hopefully one that isn’t half-ruined already—and we’re carrying a much heavier load than usual. The runners might not give us the relative lift we need. The turbines could rupture, or explode, or surge, or one could cut out and send us into a tailspin. No matter how well I wired them up, there’s nothing I can do about any unknown defects inside the engines themselves. We’re in it up to our ankles, Sable. There are too many possible points of failure to make me happy we decided to do the upstanding thing here.”

  “It’s a good thing you’re not the one making the decisions then, isn’t it?” she said.

  “What’s gotten into you? Why the cocky attitude all of a sudden?”

  “Because I’m allowed. You’re not the only one around here who can get away with being rude to people.”

  “I’m rude because everyone expects it. You just want to get a reaction out of me.”

  Sable smirked. “It worked, didn’t it?”

  “Yeah, I guess it did. Well done. And if you crash the Galeskimmer into a building and spill fifty sick people overboard, I hope you’re finally willing to admit I was right.” I turned and went for the door.

  “I hope you’re not leaving, Mr. Nordstrom. Because I haven’t dismissed you yet, and unless you can read my mind, you don’t know my orders.”

  I turned back and let my head hang to the side, agitated. “Orders, Captain?”

  “I don’t plan on crashing into a building, because I’m not the one who’s going to be flying. Take the helm, Mr. Nordstrom.”

  One surprise after another today. I never thought I’d see the day when she let me lay a finger on her precious Galeskimmer. “Why the change of heart?”

  “More a change of mind than heart,” she said. “I’ve been wanting to see what you can do. You think a lot of yourself, Muller. But are you as good as you say you are?”

  “I’m sure you’d like to think my overconfidence is a mask for my feelings of inadequacy, or something,” I said, “but that’s just not true. I’m every bit as brave, reckless, and wonderful as I claim.”

  “Take the helm and prove it, Mr. Nordstrom,” said a nasally little voice from behind me.

  I gave a start. “W-what the hell?”

  Nerimund was nestled inside one of the built-in shelves next to the cabin door, scrunched into the space like a sardine in a can. He fit perfectly—a squat, pointy-eared souvenir, as if someone had designed the nook for his exact height and girth. He’d been there, right behind me, the whole time. I hadn’t even noticed him when I’d gone for the door just a moment earlier. When he saw me looking at him, Nerimund turned his eyes straight ahead and froze, as though it would make me forget he was there.

  “Where did he come from?” I said.

  I turned back to find Sable doubled over. I thought she might’ve been feeling sick to her stomach, until she sat up straight and let out a gale of laughter. She was red in the face; she’d been trying to stifle her giggles while I was recovering from having the living death scared out of me.

  “You… you are… so brave…” Sable managed between gusts.

  “What do you do when people pop out behind you in a closed room? I was wondering why you’d perked up all of a sudden. I guess Neri’s doing better now, huh?”

  Sable gave herself a moment to recover. “Neri’s powers are just as unpredictable as you feel like this situation is. They can have dire consequences at times. This time, we were lucky, and they weren’t so dire. When Neri saved our bacon this morning, I started remembering how my Uncle Angus used to be. How he inspired us all by being sure of himself—even when he had to be hard on us, or tell us the things we didn’t want to hear. I’m softer than he was—is. I’ve got to toughen up. It’s better for the crew that way, if I stay positive and don’t act afraid.”

  “You’re afraid?” I said.

  She smirked again, a tiny dimple creasing at the side of her mouth. “Scared out of my mind. Aren’t you?”

  I didn’t respond.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I forgot about how brave you are,” she said.

  “If I’m brave at all, it’s only because I trust myself. I’m the only one I do trust, most of the time. I’ve never led myself somewhere without knowing exactly where I was headed. If you want your crew to respond to you the same way they responded to your uncle, you have to always let them know where they’re headed. And the best way to do that is to know it yourself. Now, enough with this sappy wisdom crap. I have a ship to fly.”

  “A ship-to-fly,” said Nerimund. It was the first time he’d ever repeated me, and I felt strangely honored.

  I headed for the quarterdeck. This turned out to be a more arduous journey than usual, what with the main deck being clogged with rank upon rank of the sick and infirm. I noticed a doctor tending to Rindhi, which gave me at least some peace of mind. I’d have to thank that man when this was all over.

  I stepped gingerly through the prostate masses, giving abrupt greetings when necessary and ignoring pleas for help whenever possible. The truth was that I didn’t have the patience to exchange pleasantries or practice my bedside manner right now. I was about to perform a difficult maneuver with a boat I’d never flown before, running on engines whose only vote of confidence had come from a man with more grease in his hair than a Roathean mobster. And I had half a hundred lives to think about while I was doing it
. How I kept finding myself in a position to play the hero was beyond me. Just try not to make a habit of it, I told myself.

  Any pilot worth his salt will tell you that when you lift off from a floater, it’s going to keep on moving without you. It’s like jumping up and down on the hood of a speeding motorcar: you don’t truly feel how fast you’re going until you disconnect your body from the vehicle that’s carrying you.

  Most of the time this is a phenomenon that the airship pilot doesn’t need to think about. But when you’re boxed in by tall buildings and you’re docked in the middle of a busy street, one false move is going to put you in harm’s way. As soon as we broke contact with the ground, those buildings were going to start coming at us like trucks on a highway.

  The Galeskimmer was a gaff-rigged cutter with a single mast and three sails. I already knew I couldn’t rely on the wind to take us out of there. If there was any wind, it would start carrying us on a starboard tack before we’d cleared the tops of the buildings. Bad news.

  That left me with few viable options for how I was going to get us out of there. I could hoist the sails and pray that there was enough wind to clear us, but not enough to blow us over the side; I could disengage the clinkers and send us rocketing straight up in a hurry; or I could rely on the new engines to turn her leeward and start running with the wind.

  “All hands,” I shouted, straining to be heard over the din.

  The crew took their places, Thorley beneath the main mast, Dennel and Eliza at the bow. I didn’t see how they were going to manage to set the sails properly with so many bodies crowding the deck. At least if they slipped up, I could partially blame whatever tragedy befell us on someone else.

  “Bend the jibs,” I called.

  Eliza and Dennel hauled in their lines, raising the two triangular sails at the bow.

  “Set the sails.”

  Thorley unfurled the mainsail while Eliza and Dennel pulled the jibs taut.

  Dear Leridote and Kolok and Ilenyar and all the rest, I pleaded. If you’re up there… don’t let me make a fool of myself. I flicked a switch and breathed a sigh of relief when I heard the turbines roar to life. The engine noise built to a high-pitched whine that drowned out everything else.

  I listened for a moment. I knew the sound of turbines better than I knew the sound of my own voice. Nothing was amiss—not yet, at least—so I gave the throttle a nudge and listened again. The whine changed to a deep growl, the kind of lion’s roar that would’ve made any man pitch a tent in his trousers. I nearly did.

  The engines sounded just the same as they had during my flight check several minutes earlier. Okay, so they could put on a good show. They could strut and swagger with the best of them. Now it was time to see if they could back up the noise with some proof.

  I activated the clinker arrays, which began to hum alongside the engines. I looked up, searching the clogged skyline for a clear path through the tudor storefronts and church steeples and manor houses. There was no easy avenue of escape. I decided there was only one way to get clear without hitting something. “Hold onto your keisters, everybody,” I shouted, as loud as I could. People were about to start holding on, alright—whether they’d heard me or not.

  I released the clinkers. The Galeskimmer surged upward, though not as fast as I’d expected. Our passengers wailed in surprise as Clokesby fell away below us, and it made me smile. We were rising fast when the shape of a clock tower loomed off the starboard side. I wanted to make a lame joke and ask if anyone knew what time it was, but everything happened too fast for punchlines.

  I gunned the throttle and eased by, thinking I had managed to avoid the tower. But the ship’s boom smacked the edge of it as we passed. The cleat ripped free of its bolts and the sail swung wide, leaving the canvas flapping loose in the breeze.

  We soon rose above the rest of the town. Wind slapped me in the face, but with the boom arm hanging free off the port side, the sails did little to move the ship. I didn’t engage the clinkers to slow our ascent until I was sure we were in the clear. A loose mainsail would be bad news if the turbines broke down. Thankfully, when I eased the throttle forward, the twin engines purred like kittens. Kittens who could roar louder than lions.

  Sable emerged from her cabin and joined me on the quarterdeck, no doubt alerted by the sudden jolt and my sharp evasive maneuvering. “What was that all about, Mr. Nordstrom? I’ll have you know I spilled my wine, thanks to your blundering around up here.”

  I could see the pink stain on the thigh of her pant leg. “You should’ve offered me some.”

  “You should have the sense not to drink and fly.”

  “There are a lot of things I should have the sense not to do,” I said.

  “The engines seem to be working well,” she said.

  “So far, so good.”

  “How would you like a job as the ship’s engineer?”

  “About as much as I’d enjoy sawing my own head off with a soup spoon.”

  “That was awfully exaggerated,” she said.

  “It’s true,” I said. “Why would you want me as your engineer?”

  “Because you’re better at fixing boats than you are at flying them.”

  I frowned at her, but there was a smile hiding beneath it. “I’m better at flying than I am at holding a job. Where are we headed?”

  She looked out over the deck to assess the condition of our passengers. “I was thinking we could go back to Lowell’s Market, but since it’s the closest town to Clokesby I think everyone else will probably have the same idea. I doubt they have the personnel there to handle more than a few boatloads of refugees. I say we make for Everwynd instead.”

  I smiled. “Perfect.”

  Mr. McMurtry and the others helped me rein in the ship’s boom so we could regain control of the mainsail. It involved a bit of stepping over and around people, but we had the sail back online in no time. We crossed over the Heights’ northern mountain range and caught a headwind, so we lowered sail and ran the turbines the rest of the way. The engines behaved themselves, I was pleased to find. They would need a tune-up as soon as I had a chance to give them one, but they were holding their own against the weight of threescore people for now.

  I docked the Galeskimmer at the Skywalk Jetty, a high platform with steel piers jutting off at every angle. It was the largest boatyard in the sleek, deco city of Everwynd. I donned my disguise and paid the dockmaster for a night’s stay as volunteers flooded in to help offload the refugees. I’d given little thought toward hiding my identity, and I was sure some of the passengers had recognized me, but if the Civs wanted to arrest me while I was in the midst of doing a good deed, then I hoped Leridote had something unpleasant waiting for them in the afterlife. Then again, I hoped that anyway.

  I’d never seen such sexy architecture as the stuff in Everwynd. It lived up to its name; a polished metropolis of ribbed chrome and noir underlighting on the windward northern edge of the Heights. I hadn’t been here in years, but now I remembered how overwhelming it was. And for once, my wanted poster wasn’t plastered to every street sign and lamppost.

  Everything was bigger and faster in Everwynd. Impossibly-long motorcars prowled every street; women wore feathers in their hair and pranced around in slinky dresses gilded with beads and sequins. The city even had its own railway system, complete with sweeping overpasses and locomotives that looked more like bullets than trains.

  Thomas accompanied Rindhi to the hospital at Sable’s behest, and we agreed to meet them there after all the commotion had died down. Sable tried to force me toward the hospital with them, but I compromised by letting Eliza throw some bandages over my wounds and we left it at that.

  I should point out that I was still against carting Thomas and Rindhi all the way to Darigal when we could just as easily have given them a few chips to find another ride. But Sable was adamant, and what the Captain wants, the Captain gets. It wasn’t until much later that I’d regret letting her have her way.

  6 />
  It was easier to get lost in the hustle and bustle of a big city like Everwynd than in a small town where the Civs can watch every door and window. Again, I insisted that Sable and Mr. McMurtry allow me to go off on my own to sell another portion of our gravstone and take care of some other business. I also reminded them, holding back no great amount of ridicule, how poorly they’d done as salesmen in Lowell’s Market. I told them I had a few contacts here in Everwynd, and that things would go more smoothly if I could hustle them alone.

  In a dark-lit lounge called the Copper Club, I sat on a padded chrome stool and admired the hammered brass fanwork below the cherrywood bar. It was like another world, this place; too ritzy for folks like me. People wore their augments like ornaments, and I was reminded of how much my medallion seemed to fit in with the lifestyle of excess people lived here. I considered taking off my shirt to show it off, but certain citizens of class might’ve had me thrown out on my keister for violating the dress code.

  My contact took the empty stool next to me and scooted up to the bar without looking over. He cleared his throat. “Martini on the rocks,” he told the bartender. Then he whispered, “Come into something spicy, have we?”

  “Hotter than you know,” I said.

  “Care to allow me a sample?”

  “What do you think this is, a fashion show?”

  “Still as careful as always, I see. Meet me out back in five minutes.”

  I gave a slight nod.

  He took his martini and shrank into the shadows.

  Five minutes later, I found myself standing alone in a dirty alley, being hissed at by a mangy orange cat with a notched ear and wet discharge coming from around its eyes.

  The man materialized, and we shook hands. “Been a long time, Mull,” he said.