by J. C. Staudt
“I’d like to take all the credit for that, but unfortunately, I can’t. But I did contribute toward the idea that we might be better off following you for a while to see if any new evidence turned up. I said if we were going to take you in, we might as well have enough evidence to put you away for ten lifetimes.”
“I never thought I’d be so glad to hear someone say that.”
Sal smiled. “When we got here, I offered to stake out your boat, hoping I’d have a chance to warn you. Then these guys showed up, and I told them who I was.”
“How are you gonna explain your disappearance?”
He shrugged. “I got kidnapped. The Baron and I fell into the same unfortunate circumstances. I figure when he wakes up, I’ll be tied up next to him. The word of a Regency Lord should be enough to absolve me of any wrongdoing.”
It made me laugh how conniving Sal could be, even in the midst of the attack of conscience he’d been having. “You keep letting me get away like this and they’re bound to kick you off the force for incompetence. Or worse—chain you to a desk somewhere. What about your family? What about Trudy?”
“Amelia and the kids are fine. I didn’t have time to tell my superiors anything before they sent me after you. I’ll take care of everything when I get home. If nothing else, I’ve had some time to think about how I’m going to do it. I felt so bad about what happened in Everwynd, I just had to come and help you. I had to make sure we didn’t part company on bad terms.”
“I should be mad at you for what you pulled back in Everwynd,” I told him. “But you’ve redeemed yourself—for now. I may reconsider and throw you overboard later. Just to make an example of you for the Baron.”
Sal looked unsure whether to smile or soil his drawers.
“I’m kidding. But that serum I hit the Baron with won’t last very long, so I’ll be serious about this next bit. Take this man below and lock him in the hold!”
I went to the quarterdeck to talk to Ezra while they were binding Sal’s hands and getting him settled in for his chat with the Baron. The old man was operating the boat like it was second nature to him, and I realized I’d almost forgotten the Galeskimmer belonged to his son.
“You flown her before?” I asked.
“Many times,” said Ezra, with the glint of fond memory in his eye.
“I’m a very rude person,” I said, “so I’m going to ask you an intimate personal question. Why did you and your son stop speaking?”
Ezra raised a hand from the wheel and flexed his mechanical fingers. “You’re looking at it.”
“Your augments?”
“Angus used to help me with these. He put this one in for me, after I hurt my hand and decided it was too old and clumsy to use anymore. For years, I kept at it. More and more, until Angus thought I’d gone too far. You’ll be a robot before you finish, he used to tell me. I kept going, and soon Angus wasn’t joking around anymore. He wanted to know why I insisted on changing myself. Said if I didn’t stop, it’d be the last I ever heard of him. Well, I didn’t take him for serious, but he was. When he left Kilori, Sable went with him.”
“Why couldn’t you stop?”
Ezra gave a wry smile. “They say tattoos are addictive. If that’s so, augments are a way of life.”
I could understand where old Ezra was coming from. Augments were great. But the medallion hadn’t made me want to go get more of them; in fact, it had done just the opposite. It was the only one I needed, and the longer it stayed embedded in the flesh at the center of my chest, the more it made me feel that way.
Gun turrets lined the high concrete walls of Maclin Automation’s headquarters. The company’s monogram was emblazoned across its heavy gates, an affair of bright steel that glinted in the sunlight. A voice came through on the comm as our little fleet approached.
“Maclin Control Tower to unidentified aircraft. Please identify yourselves. Over.”
“This is the Galeskimmer,” I replied. “Requesting permission to land peacefully and not be shot out of the sky.” I didn’t say ‘over,’ because I didn’t want to sound like a nerdy nerd-bag.
A pause. “Your reason for visiting us this afternoon? Over.”
“Business,” I said. “We’re here to give you lots of money.”
A longer pause. “Permission to land. All aircraft use Pad B, please. Over.”
Landing Pad B sat atop the compound’s lowest building, a single-story depot right at the center of it all. Everything around us was plain gray, made of a material that looked like concrete but was reflective and smooth, with graceful curves where hard corners might’ve been in a lower-class establishment. The walls were probably thicker than Sal’s head, too. Even the landing pad’s surface was high-tech—hard and rubberlike, infused with a dormant magnetic grid I could feel as soon as I set foot on it. They planned for the worst around here. A vehicle parked on this pad would stick there if the whole floater did a barrel roll.
To my complete lack of surprise, guards were standing around the borders of the landing pad, holding guns that looked like some strange combination of every class of weapon I’d ever seen. I heard them whirring and clicking like gears as they converged on us. Not the weapons—the guards. They sounded like Ezra’s hand, the bending of every joint giving off a mechanized hum.
The rest of Ezra’s club disembarked from their ships and joined us as an armed escort emerged from the enclosed stairwell near the edge of the roof. More of the same guards, dressed in black jumpsuits and masks, surrounded a tall, sharply-dressed woman well into her thirties with hair as black as their clothing. She eyed us with the shrewd caution of someone who’s always trying not to wear her stress on the outside.
“Thanks for not killing us all,” I said, when she was close enough to hear me above the wind. Her hair had begun to flutter, and she was having trouble keeping up the appearance of a serious professional with it blowing in her face.
“Who are you, and why have you come?” she asked.
“I’m here for Angus Brunswick,” I said, skipping her first question and getting straight to the second.
“I’m… not familiar with anyone by that name.”
“Then maybe you can direct me to someone who is.”
“If he were here, I would know him,” she said.
“Think harder.”
“Do I detect an air of sarcasm?”
“That ought to be the only thing you detect. Listen, I have an incredible amount of money that I’m prepared to hand you as soon as you drag Angus out of his cell and bring him up here. I don’t have a lot of time, so let’s make this trade and move on with our lives.”
She laughed. “His cell, did you say? Is that how you think he’s been spending his time here?”
“Frankly, I couldn’t care less, since—I don’t know if you heard me just now—I’m about to pay his debt in full. Does that make sense? I feel like that makes sense.”
The woman looked annoyed. I silently commended myself on a job well-done. “Your name please, sir?” she asked.
“Nordstrom,” I said. “Haluicious Nordstrom.” I saw the confused looks on the faces of Ezra and his followers, but no one blew my cover.
“Follow me, sir.” The woman and her retinue escorted us inside while some of Ezra’s friends stayed on the roof to watch over the ships. We entered the building through a heavy door and came down a long hallway that felt as stark and sterile as a hospital. After a few more doors, stairs, and hallways, I’d completely lost myself in the depths of the building. We were descending as we went, I realized, traveling further and further underground.
Eventually, we found ourselves inside a long antechamber, facing a wall of windows that looked out over a large room resembling a factory. Skeletal figures lined the conveyor belt running down the center of the room, which stopped and started as each new specimen emerged from someplace beyond the curtain of black rubber flaps that hung down over the doorway. Mechanical arms bent and spun around the figures with precise speed, attachin
g limbs and gadgets to each one in turn.
“This is the production floor where our new line of automatons, the Galvos Mark-Sevens, are built.” She pointed. “There’s Angus Brunswick, right in there.”
Hunched over a low work table cluttered with tools, oil cans, and spare parts, was a middle-aged man in a soiled apron and dingy waistcoats. His hair and beard were bright orange, both long and straggly. His cheeks were flushed with color. Ezra took a step forward and put a hand on the glass, whispering the name of his son.
“Please stay back from there, sir,” said the woman.
“What’s he doing in there?” asked Ezra.
“Your son is a brilliant man,” the woman said. “Be proud of him. He’s helped us make this project a reality.”
“Does he want to be here?”
“We’re getting him out,” I said. “I have the money to pay for his release.”
“Yes, you mentioned that. We can’t spare him right this moment. He’s on the verge of a new discovery that’s bound to be very valuable to us. Far more valuable than your money.”
“And why’s that?” I asked.
“Because it will nearly perfect the design.”
“Of these things? So what? You’ll have a few hundred wind-up toys that can blink and respond to simple questions.”
The woman smiled. “We’ve come quite a bit further than that, sir.” She lifted a guard’s shirt to reveal the gleam of its metal abdomen. I looked at the assembly line, comparing the skeletal figures on the factory floor to the shapes of the guards who’d been waiting for us on the landing pad, and who had escorted us down here. They were the same.
“This thing is… one of those?” I asked, pointing.
She gave me a self-satisfied grin.
“They can walk down stairs, and run, and fire these weapons.”
A slight nod.
“How soon can I give you all my money?” I asked.
“As I said, sir, Angus cannot be spared at the—”
“I’m not talking about Angus. I’m talking about the blasted robots. I want them. I want all of them.”
Everyone in the room looked over at me, most of them staring in disbelief, as if I’d grown a third eye in the middle of my forehead.
“I’m afraid I may not have heard you correctly,” said Thomas.
“You heard me,” I said. “This world is a terrible place to live, thanks to the Regency. I think it’s about time somebody changed that.”
Afterword
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