Rising Tide

by Rajan Khanna

  “Welcome to the Argus,” Miranda says.

  “Mal’s ship?” I ask, remembering what Chang had said.

  She nods.

  “Is he here?”

  Miranda shakes her head. “He’s still down on the Phoenix.”

  I hold up my hands. “None of this makes sense. You’re going to have to explain all of this.”

  “Fine,” she says. “As much as you want. But we have to get out of here first. Before they figure it out.”

  I look to Sarah. “You know anything about airships?”

  “Not a thing,” she says. “I’ve just ridden on them.”

  “Okay, then. You find a place to stash yourself. Stay out of my way, okay?”

  She nods moves off deeper into the ship.

  “I’ll be right back,” Miranda says. “Going to detach the anchor.”

  “You know your way around this ship?” I ask.

  “Better than you,” she says, before disappearing through a door at the back of the gondola, leaving me alone.

  The Argus’s gondola is mostly dominated by a central bank of consoles with a series of intact black screens in a grid pattern at its center. Three seats surround the central area.

  I’m figuring out which seat I need to sit in to fly this thing when my back explodes in pain, right in the area of my right kidney. I feel a hand on the back of my head and it slams my face down toward the console in front of me.

  I manage to brace my hands against the console, so instead my face and nose smack hard into my knuckles and I see white for a moment.

  Pushing down with my left hand, I swivel right, aiming my elbow back. It connects with something, but a knee takes me in the belly and a fist glances off my jaw.

  I push back with both arms to get some breathing room and see that my attacker is a pale man, thin and blond, wearing some kind of blue, one-piece uniform from the Clean. He doesn’t give me much time to look, though, because he comes back at me with fists swinging. I hold up my arms to protect my face and catch a fist on the forearm, then one on my shoulder.

  This has to stop.

  I arc forward, leading with my head, but he drops back, which is okay because I keep going, thrusting forward with both of my fists, colliding with him and slamming him up against the wall of the gondola. I pummel him in the midsection, getting a good blow into his solar plexus, which makes him choke. Then I grab him and smack him back against the wall again. The back of his head hits hard.

  Then I hear Miranda’s voice—“Ben!”

  I spare a moment to look and see her toss me something small and black. I catch it just after realizing that it’s my father’s revolver. By the time my attacker is recovering, I have the revolver pressed against his chest.

  “Stop,” I say.

  He freezes, his hands flapping at his sides like flags. “Don’t shoot.”

  “Don’t move and I won’t have to.”

  “What are you going to do with him?” Miranda asks.

  “Sarah!” I call. She appears a moment later. “See if the cargo area has any life jackets.”

  She raises her eyebrows but goes to check. She returns a few minutes later and nods.

  “Good,” I say. “You and Miranda are going to take our friend here back with you and fit him with one. Then, when I take us out from over this boat, you’re going to push him out of the ship.”

  The man’s eyes widen.

  “Don’t worry,” I say. “You should survive.”

  Miranda looks at me questioningly.

  “I’ll take the ship lower,” I say.

  “Miranda, take the revolver,” I say. Sarah is better with one—she’s had more training, but the thing is I don’t trust her. Miranda takes the revolver, keeping it level on Mal’s man. “C’mon,” she says, waving him toward the back of the gondola.

  I wipe the blood from my nose and turn back to the series of seats, wincing at the pain where the man hit me.

  Miranda points to one corner of the console with her free hand. “Flight controls are over there.”

  “That’s just what I thought,” I said, settling into the seat. The setup looks fairly simple to operate. Simple steering yoke, throttle controls, rudders, and so on. I look out of the windows of the gondola and can’t make out much outside of the moonlight. Have to worry about the lights later.

  It’s my first time at the controls of a ship since the Cherub exploded over both of our heads. “Hello,” I say to the ship. “Let’s be friends.” Then I fire her up and grab hold of the yoke.

  Easy now, Ben, I tell myself. I want to tear away from the ship, at whatever top speed this ship is capable of, but it’s best to ease out. Not draw undue attention to ourselves. I remember the five other ships I saw on entry with the Raven. Six ships, I correct, including Whistler’s. All flying close.

  I pull out and let us drop closer to the water. It will let Miranda and Sarah do what they need to do and also hopefully will let the Phoenix help break up our shape.

  It’s achingly slow, but I keep her steady.

  Then Miranda and Sarah return to the gondola. Miranda stands by me and Sarah falls into an old, worn chair covered in pitted and ripped plastic.

  “You got rid of our extra weight?” I ask.

  “Yes, sir,” Sarah says.

  “He should live,” Miranda says. “Though he’s going to raise a fuss on the boat.”

  “Then I should pick up some speed,” I say. “How do you turn the lights on?”

  “No,” Miranda says. “No lights.” She walks over to me, leans down, and switches on a screen set into the consol. It comes to life in brilliant light. Circles of light. It pulses.

  “Is this . . .”

  “Radar,” she says. “C’mon, Ben. Take us out.”

  I look at the radar display and see several bright dots, which I assume are the other ships. I’ve heard of radar, of course, but I haven’t ever used it before. Most ships had them back in the Clean, but maintenance was difficult, and on most ships they broke down. Mal must be the luckiest bastard in the world to find a ship like this. Not to mention the Phoenix down below us.

  “What kind of ship is this?” I ask out loud.

  “Surveillance,” Miranda says. “Hence all the screens.”

  Makes sense, I think. Right now, though, all I care about is putting as much distance as I can between us and Mal.

  It takes just a few minutes of movement for the feeling to settle over me. This is it. This is where I belong. Where I should be. Not in a cell. Not on a ship. Not on the ground. I belong on an airship. Flying an airship.

  This is what I’m meant for.

  Of course I’m aware that this isn’t mine. That this isn’t the Cherub. But the Cherub is dead. I killed her.

  “Miranda,” I say. “You got us out. You did it.” I had been racking my brain for a way to get us out and Miranda did it. “Thank you,” I say. I realize right then how I was dreading being returned to my cell.

  “We’re not clear yet,” Miranda says. “I did my part. The next step is all yours.”

  I continue to pull away from the Phoenix, accelerating ever so slightly while also increasing our elevation. “Mal is not going to be happy,” I say.

  “It won’t change much,” she says. “He’ll still hate you. He’ll just hate me, too.” She shrugs. “We have somewhere we need to be. People who depend on us. People who might be in danger. We needed wings. I got them for us.”

  She’s absolutely right about that, and hearing her say that, the way that she says it, makes something swell in my chest. I want to grab her and kiss her right now.

  Then I think of what she just said. “Did he . . . did he tell you why he hates me?”

  “He told me enough,” she says. “He says you left him for dead.”

  I think of that vision of Mal splattered in blood as Tess, Claudia, and I pulled away in the Beast. How our eyes locked.

  I consider lying. Just for a split-second. But for some reason I can’t. “It’s the tru
th.”

  I can’t look at her. I know it for the cowardice that it is, but I still can’t look.

  I expect . . . I don’t know, something from her. Reproach. Disappointment. Anger. Instead she just carries on as if it wasn’t brought up.

  “He talked to me quite a bit,” she says. “I think he took a liking to me.”

  “Who wouldn’t?” As I say it, I look down at the radar and for a moment think I see a blip moving on the edge of the outer circle.

  “He brought me up here. Showed the ship off to me. He said it was an old surveillance ship that he found.”

  “Mal always was good at ‘finding things,’” I say. There. Again. The hint of moving blip. The engines feel steady but I have no idea how fast they will move us or how quickly we’ll be able to accelerate. The shape of this thing is unusual to me. I keep us moving slowly, almost inching us through the sky. Based on the arrangement of blips, I calculate the best exit. I move us up and to the right.

  “I’ve heard of ships like this,” I say. “They used them in the military, I think. Meant to float up in the sky and look down on people. I think many of them were unmanned. Remote operated. I heard of a guy, I think he was called the Hyena. He got hold of one and stripped out a lot of the equipment—the computer stuff that didn’t work and the cameras. Fitted it for people. Course they had to make it extra-large for him.”

  “On account of he laughed a lot?”

  I frown. “No, on account of he was fat.”

  “No, why he was called the Hyena.”

  “Oh. You got me,” I say. “It could have been because of his hygiene.”

  “It’s true,” she says. “I read it. Hyenas were known for their laugh.”

  “Sure, maybe. I didn’t know the man. But he had a ship like this.” The moving blip blinks, then drops off of the radar. So far, so good.

  “Malik said that it was used during the outbreak,” Miranda says. “This one was specifically designed for a team. They would chart the progress of the virus over cities—report on any breakdowns in the system.”

  “They must have been really busy,” I say.

  “Yeah. They camouflaged it, too, though I think that might have been before it was tasked to monitor the virus. It has some special kind of envelope. It’s supposed to help it blend in with the sky.”

  “Nice trick,” I say.

  Miranda takes the moment to put my father’s revolver down next to me on the console. “How did you get that?” I ask.

  “Malik had it. He kept it up here. I saw it on my visit. I thought you might want it back.”

  “I do,” I say. “Thanks.”

  “That’s two you owe me,” she says.

  She holds up two fingers, but my attention is drawn to the radar screen and the blip that’s reappeared there. Moving toward us.

  “Shit. We’ve got company.”

  “Where?” she asks.

  “I don’t know.” I can hear my voice getting louder. “That way?” I point in the general direction the blip is moving. “Does this thing have any weapons?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  Shit.

  Then I remember that we’re running dark and that will help. If this was used when the shit came down, when the Bug scribbled all over the book that was the Clean, it should have automated gas distribution. The controls look familiar, so I start shifting gas and ballast so that we’ll drop closer to the ocean. I’m estimating here, and I can’t see very well, but I set it for as close to the ocean’s surface as I can get without spilling us into it.

  Then I run to the opposite end of the gondola.

  The thing about gondolas is that you can’t always see well out of them. Even if you’re surrounded with windows, you typically have this massive structure above of you, blocking out anything that’s not on your level or below. In the Clean, they used to use cameras to see where they were going, cameras and instruments like the Argus’s radar. But not a lot of cameras have survived the Sick. A lot of us get around this by rigging up mirrors and other ways to see what we normally can’t, only I can’t seem to find any of those and don’t even really know where to look. For all I know, some of these screens still work and Mal uses them. Or maybe he has so many escorts when he travels that they help spot for him. None of that helps me.

  “There!” Sarah’s voice. She’s pointing out the side of the gondola, behind the control room. I see lights moving toward us.

  “Keep your eyes on it,” I say. “Tell me what’s happening.” Then I return to the controls.

  We’re nearer the water’s surface now. I can’t tell how close, but closer that I’d usually like to be. “What’s she doing?” I call back to Sarah.

  “Looks like she’s coming after us.”

  “Down?”

  “Yeah.”

  Bastard must be crazy. I suddenly think it must be Whistler, Chang, and the rest of them. Of course they must be used to flying over water. Must do it all the time.

  So it’s time to get creative.

  Mal, I think, I hope you kept this ship in good condition.

  If that is the Raven coming after us, then I know she’s got the two large guns on her sides. I don’t want to come under fire from those. I don’t know how well this ship will stay together.

  I get as close as I can to the water and then level off.

  “She still dropping?” I ask.

  “Yes!” Sarah yells. “Right on top of us.”

  I watch the blip advance on the radar. Try to get a sense for the other ship’s speed. I keep our speed constant, but I make sure to keep all the engines up and running.

  “Miranda, do you know how to turn the lights on? Outside this thing?”

  “I think so. But is that a good idea?”

  “Trust me. Get ready. All of them.”

  “Okay.”

  The other ship gets closer and closer. By now they should be able to open fire on us and take us down, but my guess is that they’re not so eager to do that. Not this ship. Not the boss’s ship.

  I hear the report of gunfire. Heavy caliber. And I jump. Maybe I was wrong.

  “Any hits?”

  “I don’t think so,” calls Sarah.

  Miranda shakes her head.

  “She’s right on top of us!” Sarah yells. “Oh my God.”

  Then I do it. I signal to Miranda to hit the lights and I push the engines hard, straight up, cutting our forward speed. To give the ship a boost, I dump all of our ballast. In a ship like this, much of the ballast is held in tanks. As water. As we dump weight and the engines push hard, we gain lift and, at least relative to our pursuers, soar above them.

  They’re coming in at a steep angle and shouldn’t be able to correct so well.

  I can only watch it on the radar screen, watch as our two blips overlap for a moment. I steel myself for the scrape and shock of impact, but it doesn’t come. Instead we slip through the night as water gushes from our hold and falls beneath us, on, I’m hoping, the other ship. If so, it might help push them into the water, and getting out of that would be chore for anyone.

  “Cut the lights,” I say. And as we go black again, I change course and push out back toward the mainland on a different trajectory than before.

  I spare a look out the gondola window to see the lights of the other ship remaining where they were, either stuck in the sea or else struggling to regain control.

  “Why the lights?” Miranda asked.

  I shrug. “I thought our sudden appearance from out of the darkness might give them a moment’s hesitation. Slow their reaction time. I think I was right.”

  I scan the radar screen. We don’t appear to be pursued by anyone else.

  “Where are we headed now?” Miranda asks, and I know what she’s really asking. We can’t really go to Tamoanchan with Sarah. Tamoanchan isn’t too fond of strangers, and I’m already on thin ice. Not to mention that Sarah would be trapped there once she knew its location. She seems like a decent kid, but I don’t know her. Don�
�t trust her. And that naval base was fucked to all hell. No, not Tamoanchan, unfortunately. Not yet. But I can put her down somewhere safe. Somewhere she can travel from probably pretty easily.

  “Lord Tess.”

  “Huh?”

  “The knowledge broker. She’s who I visited to get help for Mal in the first place. I owe her anyway, for the information. Only thing is now some of Mal’s people know where she is. They might expect that I’ll go back to her.”

  “Will that put her in danger?” Miranda asks.

  I chew on my lip. It’s a good question. “I don’t think so,” I say. “Tess is pretty well protected. And she’s neutral. But that brings up another reason to go there.”

  “What’s that?”

  “She knows where the island is.”

  “What?”

  I shrug. “She knows things. Learns things. Finds out secrets. Someone who needed something must have sold out the location.”

  “So she can sell it to someone else?”

  “Theoretically. But she’s not like that. That thing back then. With Mal. Tess was there. I got her out. Her and Claudia.” I think I see something, I’m not sure what, flit across Miranda’s face.

  “Are you sure about that? Her not being like that?”

  “Well,” I say. “I wouldn’t mind reminding her of that fact.”

  “Then Lord Tess it is,” she says.

  I plot our course.

  What I told Sarah was that we were going to see Lord Tess and that she traded in information. Also that Tess had asked me for information on the naval base. I figured that if Tess wanted what information I had, that she would pay much more for the information that someone like Sarah had.

  “Pay me what?” Sarah asks.

  “What else? Information.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Information—about settlements you could go to. Ships you could hook up with. Reliable captains to ferry you around. Sources of barter. Whatever you need. It may not seem like it, but that’s a lot of value.”