Driftmetal

by J. C. Staudt

  Gilfoyle ducked to the side and cut across the living room. His foot slipped when he stepped up onto the coffee table. He went stumbling over the back of his oxblood sofa and landed on the hardwood floor behind it with a thud. I made a diving leap across the room, tackling him in mid-air as he was getting to his feet. He may have been wearing the medallion, but he was drunk, his reflexes slowed. We toppled to the floor and I pulled myself on top of him. I began to beat him, slamming my fist into his face until there was a rush of blue blood and the gleam of telerium-laced bone shone through on his cheeks and forehead and chin.

  “Gareth… use the crackler,” I heard Vilaris say.

  “I can’t,” Blaylocke said. “I don’t have it anymore. The night we escaped from Mallentis, Muller swiped the remote and destroyed it. I haven’t had control of him since.”

  “Are you joking? He could’ve walked away any time he wanted? Or worse… he could’ve murdered us in our sleep.” There was something different in Vilaris’s voice. A commanding indignation I’d never heard him express before.

  “He wants his share of the money first, I’m sure,” Blaylocke said.

  Vilaris laughed. “There’s no share in any of this for him.”

  I stopped hitting Gilfoyle and let his head clunk to the floor. I turned around, not believing what I’d just heard. My hand was smeared with Gilfoyle’s blue-violet blood. Telerium was showing through the broken skin on the tips of my knuckles. The three primitives were standing there in the living room, spectators on the far side of the sofa.

  I didn’t know what to say. They were speaking as if they barely knew me. Like I was some rabid animal they’d been forced to share a cage with for the past month. These weren’t my friends. Why had I started to think we were alike? Humans—primitives. With red blood and brittle bones and muscles that strained and tore like paper. We weren’t the same, and they’d known it for themselves all along. I saw it now: the clandestine brotherhood they shared. A brotherhood that I wasn’t a part of. The three of them stood together like a flock of gossiping hens, observing me. Studying me. Judging me. I was a tool to them, after all. Only a tool.

  “What did you just say?” I asked, standing.

  “I said there’s no share for you,” Vilaris repeated. “You belong in a Regency prison, and so does the entire crew of the Galeskimmer.”

  “You’re not making any sense,” I said.

  Gilfoyle lifted his head, eyes swollen and bloodshot behind a faceful of blood. His eyes grew wide when he saw Vilaris standing there. “Lafe?”

  I looked at Vilaris again, then down at Gilfoyle.

  “Hello Alastair,” said Vilaris.

  Gilfoyle was bewildered. “What are you doing here?”

  “Renegotiating our contract.”

  “Hold on a minute,” I said. “Vilaris, what’s going on? He called you Lafe. As in, Lafe Yingler.”

  “You can call me Lafe too, if you’d like,” Vilaris said. “It’s my name. And if you let me finish, I’ll tell you exactly what’s going on.”

  Chaz and Blaylocke were backing away, putting distance between us. Had they known Vilaris and Yingler were the same person? Or had they been just as clueless as I was?

  “Go right ahead,” I said, holding out my bloody hand. “You just better finish with a good reason why I shouldn’t do worse to you than I just did to Gilfoyle, here.”

  “A reason like that doesn’t exist,” said Vilaris… and Lafe Yingler. “You should want to tear me limb from limb, Muller. I never needed the crackler to control you. You’ve been the perfect pawn from the very beginning—a wanted man with nowhere to turn; desperate for the promise of a little coin in exchange for doing what you do best; and eager for a chance to take revenge on the man who tried to have you killed. I was lucky you fell into my lap the way you did. Years ago, when I first came to Pyras, I knew I was being given an opportunity. One I would be crazy not to take. Pyras saw the immediate effects of my presence there; I opened every avenue of trade for that city and made them more prosperous than they’d been in a hundred years. Primitives loved the idea of a techsoul who advocated for them so much that they accepted my existence without rancor. But the truth is that Lafe Yingler is more myth than man. I remained a recluse, revealing myself and exerting my influence through the persona of Clinton Vilaris. And now, thanks to you, I’ve become just as prosperous as the city itself. Gilfoyle did pay me for the gravstone. And he’s about to pay me a second time… by giving it back.”

  “You’re a maniac,” I said. “Did you sabotage the Clarity too? Some kind of test to see whether I’d save your life?”

  “Unfortunately… no. If only I were so bold and audacious as all that. I’m afraid Councilors Malwyn and DeGaffe have been plotting my demise for some time now. When we discovered the half-severed rigging lines, they were the first suspects who came to mind. I’ll straighten all that out when I return to Pyras.”

  “What makes you think this is going to turn out in your favor?” I asked. “You’ll be as wanted as I am, both in Pyras and in the stream, when the Civs find out what you’ve done.”

  “No one in Pyras will be the wiser. And as for the stream… would you mind telling me what I’ve done that’s against the law? Did I break into the house? Did I take a hostage? Did I strike a blow, or make a threat? You did all those things, Muller. You did them very well, as a matter of fact… so well that I feel I should repay you. As thanks for your dedicated service, I’ve taken the liberty of reuniting you with your parents. I’ve also given them a gift I think will aid in that family reunion. If you’ll take a look out the window, just there.”

  A dark shape was hovering in the fog, no more than a dozen yards from the platform. I’d know that shape anywhere. It was my ship. My Ostelle. A manned pulser cannon swiveled on the ship’s bow in place of the old gun platform. It was swiveling in my direction.

  I knelt and ripped Gilfoyle’s medallion off his chest. One long dive took me through the window and sent me crashing to the platform below in a hail of shattered glass. Around my neck, the medallion latched itself to me, tiny prongs snaking deep into my skin. My body came alive with a warm, fresh feeling, like waking from sleep and clearing your sinuses and taking a dump all at once. My mind began to hum like a sewing machine, a thousand tiny impulses turning my regular thought patterns into a smooth, flowing harmony. I’d known this medallion was worth more than all the gravstone money could buy. Gilfoyle was an old man, pudgy and out of shape. He’d used the medallion to sharpen his mind more than anything. In someone who could use it to its full potential, an external mod like this could be so much more.

  The first pulser burst crashed into the platform and spread across the deck. I vaulted sideways, rolling over my shoulders and back to my feet. Blue arcs raced outward from the burst before sputtering to an end, the tips crackling in my toes. Ostelle fired again. I dodged, not as fast this time. The outer burst caught my leg, and I felt the pinprick spiders shooting up to my knee. I cursed, hopping. Triggering my solenoid, I leapt over the side without touching the platform as the third pulser burst erupted in blue along the edge.

  I was falling again, gripping the smaller chunk of driftmetal like some beloved habit I didn’t want to break. The numbers appeared before long—not directly below me, but a little to my left, their blocky white lettering stark against the dark gray metal of the platform. I was slowing down again as the smaller ingot neared its altitude of equilibrium. Chaz had counterbalanced it perfectly, using careful calculations of body mass and velocity—or something like that. That’s why he was the gadgeteer and I was the muscle. The lackwit muscle, as my dear old dad might’ve said. I wondered how long it was going to take dear old dad and his crew of morally-confused pirates to find me in the fog.

  I came to a stop, hanging by my chest pouch like some kid trying to finish a chin-up in gym class. Platform 22 was at an inaccessible distance now that Gilfoyle had cut off my grappler. Jerk. And speaking of jerks, where the heck were Scofield and the G
aleskimmer? Blaylocke was the one holding the bluewave comm we’d planned to signal them with. I still didn’t know whether Blaylocke and Chaz were in on Vilaris’s—Yingler’s—plans. Maybe Blaylocke had told the Galeskimmer to leave. Maybe Vilaris had overpowered him and Chaz and done it himself. My guess was as good as mine…

  Platform 22 held Gilfoyle’s processing facility, a rectangle of corrugated sheet metal with a shallow roof and two smokestacks at the far end. The stuff we needed was inside. Payment or no payment, the primies weren’t my concern anymore, and neither was Gilfoyle. Lafe Yingler had seen to that. From where I was sitting—or hanging, as the case may have been—they were all traitors. I had the medallion now, and I wasn’t giving Vilaris/Yingler the satisfaction of another win. If anyone was going to steal that gravstone, it was me.

  I can’t just hang here forever, I told myself. I have to make it to that platform. I began to build momentum, tucking my legs and swinging, using the driftmetal ingot as a fulcrum. If I couldn’t inch my way over to the platform, I could at least make a jump for it. And if I missed, maybe I’d be lucky enough to hit another platform on the way down.

  I had built up a good tempo, my legs going almost horizontal on the upswing, when I heard engines through the fog. The high, thrumming whine of turbines, and the deep rumble of thrust. From beneath the platform, the ship’s prow appeared. The point widened to its full width, emerging like a predator from its den, sliding past the battened sail and the mast, and finally to the quarterdeck, with its wheel and control array. From above I could make out the forms of the crew as if I were looking down on a set of figurines. Dennel McMurtry’s top-hat and protuberant belly; Thorley Colburn, all shoulders and blond hair; Eliza Kinally’s hips and wild red mane; Scofield’s balding pate and faceful of snow-white; Nerimund’s hunchback and pointed, drooping ears. I couldn’t see Sable’s thick braid or Neale Glynton’s gaunt boyish frame anywhere. Something had gone wrong.

  When the Galeskimmer was under me, I released the ingot. The deck cracked beneath my boots, straining against the force of my landing. Muffled words rang through the bluewave comm Mr. Scofield was holding up to his ear, but the turbines were so loud I couldn’t make out the voice or its owner. We were in place below the facility, staring up at the wide barn doors where all the deliveries entered.

  “Where are the others?” Dennel McMurtry asked, reaching out to make sure I was steady on my feet.

  “Backstabbers,” I said. “We have to tell Scofield… everything’s changed.”

  I moved for the quarterdeck, but Scofield took his hand off the wheel to level a finger at me, and shouted, “Restrain that man.”

  “Scofield, listen to me. I’m not the one you need to worry about. Give me a minute to explain.”

  “Sable warned you about what would happen if you lied again,” Dennel said, threatening to grab me.

  “I’m not lying. Dangit, I’m not lying.”

  Dennel lunged at me. The medallion surged, my body harnessing its power. Before he’d gotten halfway to me, I’d slipped out of his reach and he was grabbing at empty air. Taking the quarterdeck stairs in one leap, I drew the knife from Scofield’s belt and pulled the old man against me, holding the blade to his throat.

  “Listen, all of you,” I yelled. “I’m not going to hurt anybody. I just need a second to explain what’s going on. Clinton Vilaris is not who he says he is. He isn’t a primitive. He’s a techsoul named Lafe Yingler who infiltrated the city of Pyras years ago and has been planning its downfall ever since. Yingler is a dangerous man. Whatever you just heard over the bluewave, Mr. Scofield, it was a lie. There’s a streamboat armed with a big pulser cannon headed this way. Now, I know this is a lot to take in, but I’m not the bad guy. The man you know as Vilaris has orchestrated this entire ruse. He’s the one we need to worry about. I’m going to let you go, Mr. Scofield. I apologize that I had to hold you hostage, but please… I’m on your side. They’re not.”

  The second I released my hold on Mr. Scofield, there was a deafening crash behind me. I whirled to see the barn doors on Gilfoyle’s processing facility blow open and crumple like tinfoil. A filthy black hovertruck careened through the opening, yawing sideways and skidding through the air like a bear on a frozen lake. In the driver’s seat, young Neale Glynton was wide-eyed and struggling. A melee was breaking out in the truck bed as Sable attempted to hold her own against a pair of thugs with pulserods.

  “You sent the Captain and the cabin boy in?” I said, shoveling a hand toward the lumbering hovertruck. “I specifically remember putting you and Thorley in charge of the breaking-in part.”

  Dennel shrugged. “Cap’n’s orders.”

  I took aim with my arm, then cursed at the useless grapplewire port. If only Chaz were here to give me a quick fix, I thought, before remembering that Chaz was a dirty traitor. Screw Chaz, I corrected myself. I darted forward, leapt down the stairs, and ran along the deck toward the bow, following the hovertruck as it sped along overhead. I was going to make a jump for it, and there would be no second Galeskimmer to break my fall this time.

  The hovertruck dipped as Neale struggled with the controls, dropping in so close I could smell the displacer engines and feel their heat on the top of my head. The vehicle zoomed past just as I reached the bow.

  Solenoid.

  I was flying toward it with a little extra in my jump, and then the hovertruck dipped again and I was too high, soaring over the top and watching the thugs begin to beat Sable to the floor of the truck bed with their pulserods.

  I spun the cylinder in my arm—not the one with the grapplewire; the left arm, with the darts. I locked in a good one, the readout in my enhanced eye telling me what I was dealing with. I flicked my wrist back, and the dart shot through the top of the thug’s skull. My body was flipping as I flew past the truck bed and lost sight of them, crashing onto the hovertruck’s hood like a thrown wrestler. Little boy Neale smiled at me and gave the controls an excited yank. I bounced up and slammed down hard again. Good thing I wasn’t a primie, or I might’ve broken something.

  Where the hood met the windshield, I clung by the tips of my fingers and tried to get to one knee. We were swaying as we flew. I could hear Sable’s gasps and feel the pulserod zapping her, missed strokes gonging the metal bed and vibrating through the truck. I lifted myself and ran up the hood, letting the truck’s velocity carry me over the windshield and across the roof. I spun around and laid out, driving my shining telerium wrist spikes through the thug’s shoulders and dragging him along with me.

  We crashed down next to the motionless body of the other thug, the one I’d hit with the dart. The live thug fought back all the harder as I plunged my spikes into his face and chest. He was alternating clumsy swings between the pulserod and a closed fist when he caught me on the shoulder. Just a glancing blow, but with a pulserod, even a glancing blow is enough.

  The prickling wave jolted through me. I slumped over, mashing my face against the truck bed. The thug climbed to his feet, rivulets of purplish blood streaming from his puncture wounds like runoff from a sewer drain. Sable groaned and rolled over, still dazed and waiting to regain control of her body. My vision flashed white as the pulserod crashed into the back of my skull, its electric echo radiating through me. The thug reeled back and swung again, bashing my ribcage with another shocking blow.

  Neale must have decided we were getting too far away from the Galeskimmer, because the hovertruck twisted around and everyone slid across the bed like crackers on a fast-moving plate. Cumbersome as these hovertrucks were, the ability of centrifugal force to part your feet from the ground is not something to underestimate. The thug toppled over me, his pulserod spinning away across the bed. I slid toward the back edge; the dead thug slid into me, and Sable into him.

  We were headed back toward the Galeskimmer now, picking up speed but not flying high enough to clear the mast when we got there. If little Neale Glynton wasn’t driving fast enough to snap the mast in half, he was going to wrap this t
ruck around it like a breakfast omelet. I was less worried about our flight path than about the thug who was picking himself up at the back of the truck bed. He had a plasticky face and robotic hands—exposed telerium digits, tension hinges, and optical fibers snaking down his arms. Sable and I were getting to our feet too. Now it was two against one. But that didn’t matter much, seeing as our ride was about to come to an abrupt end.

  What bothered me most, however, was that beyond the far side of Platform 22, the shape of my Ostelle was emerging from the fog.

  10

  I shot the frayed end of my grapplewire into my opposite hand, holding it like I was getting ready to floss a giant’s teeth. Sable began to circle the tiny truck bed, knifeblade at the ready. The thug eyed the pulserod lapping at his heels, judging whether we’d let him crouch for it. No, he decided, and backed up a step to activate his knucklespurs. They slammed out from his clenched robotic fists with a metallic stomping sound, miniature telerium pyramids that made his hands look like dog collars.

  We were speeding toward the Galeskimmer. I didn’t have time for this nonsense. I feinted with the grapplewire. The thug flinched. I shot him with a dart, the same kind I’d used to put a hole in his buddy’s skull. He plucked it from his chest and tossed it behind him, a smug look on his punctured, bloody face. Then his look turned sour. He staggered, buckled over, and flopped off the rear edge of the truck bed.

  Sable breathed a sigh of relief. We turned and peered over the front lip of the truck bed to see where we were headed. The Galeskimmer had docked itself below the crumpled doors of the processing facility. Thorley and Dennel were inside, tossing chunky burlap sacks into the growing dust cloud they’d started on the Galeskimmer’s deck. My Ostelle was coming across the port side, leveling the pulser cannon and making ready to fire. Carrying gravstone on a ship that flies on driftmetal runners is a bad idea of the most monumental kind. But hey, what other option did we have?