Driftmetal

by J. C. Staudt

  “She’s a beaut, isn’t she?” Chaz said proudly. “The Secant’s Clarity.”

  I hated airships. Slow, unwieldy things. Like flying a turd on crutches, Dad used to say. “You built her?”

  “Designed, built, and flight-tested,” said Chaz.

  “How’s she gonna hold up when we get rammed by a streamboat full of pirates?”

  “You’re the captain, not the gunner. You leave the ship’s defenses to my more capable hands.”

  Chaz wasn’t afraid of me anymore, and I wasn’t sure I liked it. By the time the ship was loaded and ready to lift off, the streets were jammed with people. We stood on deck and looked out over the throngs, the four of us breakfasted and dressed in the finest trimmings Hildebrand’s Haberdashery had to offer. An entire city full of primies, I thought. I still couldn’t believe it. I basked in the attention, knowing I was a hot commodity. So what if half the city hated me and knew I was doing this against my will? The other half didn’t. I couldn’t help but observe the fairer sex amongst Pyras’s citizens. I don’t care what anyone says—primie girls are just as gorgeous as techsoul women. I decided not to share the thought with my companions, though.

  I had the jitters, but they were a different kind of jitters than the heart-pounding, clammy-handed thrill of pulling off a big score. They were the jitters of knowing thousands of people were relying on me. Suddenly the whole thing stank of helping people. But what could I do? Chaz had installed that sub-signal shocker, bolted it into a compartment near my wrist that he’d locked with a cipher key. They could reduce me to a quaking pile of synth whenever they wanted. Blaylocke had convinced Chaz to let him hold onto the remote—even more reason to be on my worst behavior.

  “You never did take me to see that techsoul councilor of yours,” I said. “Think he’ll show up for the big send-off?”

  Chaz wrinkled his mouth. “Maybe.”

  “Councilor Yingler runs most of our errands to the stream,” said Vilaris. “He’s the one who used to trade directly with Gilfoyle. I don’t think he’d like you very much. I think if he wanted to meet you, he’d have arranged it by now.”

  “Oh come on, everyone likes me,” I said.

  Blaylocke snorted.

  “Everyone who’s not an idiot,” I said.

  “You really think you’re capable of finding us a crew?” Vilaris asked. “Reliable, honest techsouls?”

  “Yes and no,” I said. “Yes to the first question. No way to the second. You want sailors crewing this boat, or nannies? Reliability and honesty come second to skill and know-how.”

  “He can’t do a thing,” said Blaylocke. “We should’ve sent him on this fool’s errand by himself.”

  “Yeah, well I’m thrilled about having you along, too,” I said.

  In the stream, hanging out with primies is like wearing a bathing suit to a wedding; you might as well ask to be ridiculed. Primies are nothing but Churn-scum to most techsouls. Some techsouls even hate primies so much they’ll go out of their way to kill them, so the way I saw it, having three primies along didn’t help my chances of staying out of trouble.

  “I’ll give you something to be thrilled about,” said Blaylocke, patting the sub-signal remote in his pocket.

  “I swear, Blaylocke, give me one more good reason to pop you in the jaw and I’ll make sure you never carry another conversation without a paper and pencil.”

  We spoke to each other out of the corners of our mouths, all the while standing at the railing, smiling at the crowds and giving them the occasional wave or thumbs-up. Vilaris and Chaz had gotten used to my animosity toward Blaylocke over the previous weeks. I didn’t like the guy, and I’m not the type to pretend I like you unless there’s something in it for me. I couldn’t put my finger on what I found so abrasive about him. I just knew I hated his face and everything that came out of it.

  “Cool off, Muller,” said Vilaris, eyeing me. “We’re not even off the ground yet and you’re antagonizing him already.”

  “I’m getting an early start,” I said. “You gotta run laps before you can finish the marathon.”

  I wasn’t sure where we’d find our future crew, of course. Most of the sailors I’d worked with were my father’s men now. My poor Ostelle was on the Regency’s payroll, commissioned to hunt thieves and wanted men like me.

  We’d thought ahead in that regard. Chaz, Vilaris and Blaylocke had made themselves honorary techsouls at my behest, in secret from their friends and families. Techsouls and primies look alike until you get under the skin, so I’d shown the haberdasher how to make techsoul clothing. The pants had velcro panels in the inner thighs, the shirts and jackets had flaps that opened down the shoulders, and the boots had heel and toe ports. My companions were still human weaklings underneath it all, but at least they wouldn’t stick out like ticks on an albino. As for rustling up a real crew—it was time to find out if I had any true friends left in this world.

  4

  Airships like The Secant’s Clarity are nothing like streamboats. In a streamboat, the only way you’ll ever fall out of the sky is if you lose your driftmetal runners. You’re more likely to get an unwanted dose of ‘up’ than one of down. An airship, on the other hand, is just a big bubble. And bubbles can be popped.

  In my capsule at the fore, I hunkered down over the controls of The Secant’s Clarity as we rose toward Pyras’s protective cloaking field. Through the wide glass panes that Chaz had assured me were unbreakable, I could see out from the belly of the beast in every direction but behind me. The crowds below were sending us a deafening farewell. Far above the nearflow’s dark maelstrom, a pure blue sky awaited us.

  Chaz had suggested we each take a section of the controls to divide up the work, but that could wait until we hit clearer skies. He’d designed the ship so a single person could control everything from one seat in case the need arose. Since my reflexes were faster, and since I didn’t have the patience to shout out my orders and wait for them to be followed, I decided I’d shoulder the burden myself.

  As soon as the topmost portions of our craft breached the dome, I began to feel the vibrations from the debris smacking the gasbag’s envelope like fingers flicking a rubber balloon. Did anyone in Pyras consider the implications of flying an airship through a hailstorm of magnetic stones, or is there somebody down there who wants us to fail? Chaz didn’t strike me as the type of guy who would’ve overlooked this in his design, but I supposed it was possible. The even more disconcerting thought was that if someone had planned to put us in an unsuitable ship as an act of sabotage, they were probably going to get away with it. Was that why Yingler hadn’t wanted to meet me? Quit being paranoid and fly the blasted thing, I had to tell myself.

  Wind hammered the Clarity and threw us into a tilt. The entire craft leaned so far sideways I could’ve waved to the crowds without bending at the waist. When I passed through the cloaking field, the roar of cheering voices went silent. All I could hear in its place was the nearflow’s skirling. I could only imagine the peoples’ cheers turning to gasps as the wind swept us up like a broom over a breadcrumb. I struggled for lift while the nearflow spit rocks at my windows. The air was as thick as dirt, my companions gathered around me and clinging to the girders like a pack of stranded rats. Vilaris and Blaylocke were grim-faced; Chaz was equal parts terror and nausea. It made me laugh. That was probably because I was all kitted out with new tech now. I didn’t have as many reasons to be afraid as they did.

  “You’ve got to take her higher,” Chaz managed to shout above the din. “The exterior skin can only take so much punishment.”

  “I’ll get us there,” I yelled back. “Keep your crotch in your chair and let me fly.”

  I flicked my pedals and took us hard to port, letting the nearflow push us instead of trying to fight against it. I could’ve made a nice tight turn in a streamboat like my Ostelle, but the best I could do in this tub was wobble in a lazy arc as the stone-laden wind buffeted us. The windows sounded like they were about to burst,
the constant tap-tap-tap of smaller rocks interrupted every now and then by the whack of a stone the size of a melon. I thought I was going to stomp the port-side turning pedal through the floorboards by the time we finally straightened out so the nearflow could wash us along in its tide. I turned the elevator wheel, watching the dials on my instruments quiver and spin.

  “Watch your ballast gauges. We’re flying too heavy,” Chaz sputtered.

  “Would you like to take over, or are you gonna shut up and let me drive?” I lifted my feet off the pedals and raised my arms into the air, like I was hanging from a set of stirrups.

  “Drive,” they all shouted.

  I got back down on the controls, shaking my head and swearing to myself as the airship shuddered. Buncha sissies. I’d get us out of this—but as usual, I was going to do it my way. I hit the engines full speed and level, pushing us downwind. With the nearflow at our backs, the engines were getting blasted. I could hear the metallic clanging of the propeller blades slapping rocks aside. One sharp stone at just the right angle was all it would take before we’d find ourselves dealing with irreversible damage. Soon the ship began to falter and lag behind the speed I needed to reach to escape the nearflow. The torrent was so strong it was stunting the propellers’ rotation.

  Chaz’s airship came with a few surprises, though. Surprises I’d had the foresight to ask him about previously. Now that we had some momentum, I cut the engines to prevent them from taking further damage. Then I opened the front ballonet valve, letting air out of the forward-most of the two internal sacs designed to act as counterweights. We nosed up while the wind pushed us forward. Soon we could see clear blue above us, and I twisted the rear ballonet valve open to level us out.

  We had almost cleared the nearflow when there was a loud snap. The whole cabin shook and tilted forward. Anything that wasn’t bolted in slid to the fore and clattered to rest in the window well. Chaz fell too, lost his seat as the cabin tilted vertical. He tumbled down head-first, slamming hard onto the glass. My heart skipped like a stone, boots slipping off the pedals as my weight shifted forward. Through the windows I could see in startling detail how high we’d risen. The airship’s entire undercarriage was dangling from the balloon like a thumb pointing down from a fist, the nearflow pelting it even as the balloon itself ascended to cleaner air. Lucky the engines were cut, or they would’ve been pushing us downward.

  “What the blazes do we do now, genius?” Blaylocke screamed, his ire directed at Chaz. Blaylocke was still in his chair, scrabbling for purchase and unused to his techsoul footwear. Vilaris had managed to climb around behind his chair and was clinging to the back of the seat.

  Chaz didn’t respond. Loose junk and a spatter of blood decorated the window below him. His unbreakable glass was the only barrier between himself and gravity. The rocks pinging the bottom of the hull were lessening in force now. The windows were caked with dust, obscuring the outside world in a dull brown film. The floor was sloping forward at around sixty degrees, I guessed. At least the ship was still rising.

  I’d seen plenty of airships travel between drift-towns, but I’d never seen one take off from the surface and climb all the way through the nearflow and into the stream. There was one problem inherent in our current situation, which I was now coming to realize: there’s no way to put eyes on what’s above you when you’ve got a pudgy balloon in the way. Being the genius was Chaz’s responsibility, not mine. So naturally, I beseeched him for advice.

  “Chaz, you alright buddy? We need you. Stay with us, huh?” I called down loud and firm, clinging to my seat.

  Chaz blinked. I hadn’t noticed the awkward positioning of his body before he blinked. I heard him take in a deep breath. Okay, I told myself. Time to put some of this fancy new tech to good use. I spun halfway around and slid down to him, scraping to a halt on the retractable toe and wrist spikes he’d designed, leaving deep gouges in the deck.

  “Chaz, ol’ buddy,” I said. “It’s about time we found someplace to land. You with me?”

  He looked up, groggy and half-awake. I was reaching toward him, my upper body anchored by one wrist spike, when the ship quaked. I heard something rasping along the canvas skin of our balloon, and I knew we must’ve run into the bottom of a big floater. The balloon was dragging us up the rocky underside. If it burst, we had seconds—seconds, before we dropped out of the sky.

  Chaz took my hand. I hoisted him to his feet, my hydraulics hissing to afford me the strength. When the balloon cleared the edge of the floater, the undercarriage slammed against it and began to scrape up the side. The cabin’s port-side wall disappeared in a storm of wooden splinters. Before I had time to do anything, another rigging line snapped. We tipped sideways, thrown toward the gaping hole in the side of our hull. Vilaris lost his feet and hung by his chair’s armrest; Blaylocke’s body whipped around, but he managed to keep a one-armed hold and found himself dangling above the chasm. Chaz slid into the corner window. I stayed where I was, anchored to my spikes like a fly on the wall.

  We stuck. Some jut of rock snagged the hull somewhere, and we stuck there with the balloon above and the undercarriage dangling with us inside it. Through the splintered hull I could see the floater’s rocky underside sloping away from us like the prow of a ship. Below us the nearflow blew the stones past in a dizzying sprint; below that, the Churn. Chaz propped himself up on his knees, subdued and too calm in light of the situation. Blood flowed from a wound in his head, dark and copious, matting his black hair to his scalp. Vilaris and Blaylocke had managed to gain some traction and were perched on the sides of their seats like frightened birds.

  “Hang on,” I told them, knowing how redundant a thing it was to say. Let’s find out how unbreakable this glass really is.

  It was a strange sensation, climbing a vertical floor toward the starboard side of the hull. When I got there, I gave the window pane a series of sharp strikes with my wrist spike. The blows left scratches; the glass trembled in its frame, but it held. I flexed my wrist. A steel dart about four inches long quivered in the wood beside the window. Again. Another dart sprouted beside the first. I drew one of Chaz’s gravmines from a pocket in my webgear and rested it between the two darts. It was a squarish box the size of a child’s building block. No explosive components, but a marvel of electromagnetic tech if ever there was one.

  “Look sharp, fellas,” I yelled down. I uprooted my climbing spikes and let myself slide down to Chaz again. “Sit tight, buddy. I’m gonna get you out. Promise.”

  The flecker wasn’t a marksman’s weapon; an approximation of aim was all I needed. I pointed straight up and fired. When the flecker particle skimmed over the gravmine, there was a familiar clink, like the sound of a streamboat’s runners. The window pane blew off its frame and spun away in one piece. Unbreakable, but not immovable. The cabin shifted again. We were swinging away from the floater, loosed from whatever had snagged us.

  I didn’t waste time climbing. My grappler bit into the hull and took me upward. When I clambered out of the open window frame, we were beside the floater and rising. I can jump that, I told myself, doubting it was true. The longer I waited, the less true it would be.

  I crouched and leaned into my jump, grapplewire trailing behind me through the air, breath caught in my throat at the sheer amount of open sky between me and the floater. At the pinnacle of that leap I knew I wasn’t going to make it, so I locked the winch and jerked downward, knocking the hull sideways. I reeled myself up the deck, hoping I hadn’t jarred any of my companions loose. On top of the hull again, I withdrew the grappler from the hull and took another leap. This time I shot my wire at the floater from above, latched on, and swung in below it, slamming against the underside.

  The pain lanced through me, but I set the winch to reeling. Maybe I should’ve let Chaz build me those hoverboots, I thought, as I lifted myself onto solid ground. I wanted to lie there in the grass and catch my breath, let my body recover from the shock, but The Secant’s Clarity was getting away. As
soon as my grappler punched through the deck I let the wire slacken and ran across to the far side of the floater. I planted my feet there and staked myself in with a pair of shiny new solenoids.

  A long, nerve-wracking few minutes later, I had reeled the Clarity to within reach. Vilaris and Blaylocke came tumbling out through the gash and helped me moor her down. I ventured inside and set the ballonets to refilling. Presently the wounded airship settled to rest, and we found ourselves alone in a sea of clouds, drifting along somewhere between the stream and the nearflow. I pulled Chaz outside with me and collapsed next to the two City Watchmen, who were hugging the ground as though they hadn’t seen a patch of it in months.

  “Well that was interesting, huh?” I nudged Chaz with my foot.

  Chaz said nothing. Just smiled at me, a vacant smile with the corner of his mouth making a little upward twitch.

  I sat up. “Chaz,” I said. “You hit your head pretty hard. I need you to say something to me. Are you okay?”

  Nothing. Just the same empty smile.

  “Guys, Chaz ain’t doing so well.”

  Vilaris lifted himself into a seated position. “Chester? Chester. Professor Doctor Elijah Chester Wheatley. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes,” said Chaz. “I hear you. Make me a tray on the seventh form of Kalican Heights with the gorge betwixt a jollity and his motes of singe-gutter. Can I hasten to gewgaw…” He stopped in his tracks, mouth hung open and staring. His jaw raised into another smile, something sinister in it.

  Had it been anyone else, I would’ve seen fit to make a joke. But it was Chaz, sweet innocent Chaz, and for the first time in longer than I could remember, I felt guilty. I’d frightened him; tricked him. Shoot, I hadn’t stopped using the guy since the moment I met him. He wouldn’t have come on this little adventure if I hadn’t insisted. Not that I was blaming myself. I never blame myself, even when I deserve to. Chaz was a brilliant man, with more potential in one breath than any dozen copies of Blaylocke. Yet here we were, stranded, with no way to get him the help he needed.