Driftmetal

by J. C. Staudt

  I vaulted onto the hovertruck’s roof, swung down onto the running board, and cracked the door to pull myself inside. “Where’d you learn to drive, the bloody circus?” I said.

  Neale might have blushed, but he was already so red in the face I couldn’t tell the difference. He gave me the slightest shrug. He was tiptoeing the pedals from the edge of the seat, his chin lifted so he could see over the steering column.

  “It hovers,” I said, grabbing his hand and easing the controls into their neutral position. “You don’t have to stay moving all the time. Press the right pedal and let the left one come toward you ‘til they’re even. Good, now drop the displacers flat.”

  Neale obeyed, bringing the truck to an awkward standstill. I motioned for him to switch places with me. When he crawled past me on the seat, he mopped cold sweat across the back of my shirt. I slid into place at the controls and tipped us forward, shouting through the window for Sable to hold onto her hat. A pulser round spidered across the Galeskimmer’s hull as we approached, rocking the boat on its runners. On the quarterdeck, Mr. Scofield looked over his shoulder in shocked surprise to see my Ostelle creeping from the fog like a phantom.

  I eased the hovertruck to a stop beside the Galeskimmer. “Change of plans,” I shouted. “Get off the truck, you two. Get your boat out of here as quick as you can.”

  Sable and Neale hopped onto the streamboat. “What are you about to do?” Sable asked, eyeing me.

  I would’ve told her, if there were a chance she would’ve agreed to it. “Just get out of here.”

  I veered away and took off toward my Ostelle, determined to distract the law-lovers I called parents for as long as I had to. I swerved into a sideways strafe, the closest thing to an evasive maneuver I could manage in this crippled turd of a hovertruck. The pulser cannon drew a bead on my lame tricks without breaking a sweat, but no shots came my way. Instead, the turret shifted its gaze onto the Galeskimmer and fired. The pulser hit one of the turbines, rattling the whole boat like a beggar’s cup. In light of my distraction’s apparent ineffectiveness, I gunned it straight ahead.

  “I’m sorry baby,” I muttered, taking one last look at my beautiful undamaged Ostelle as she came zooming up to life size. “I’m so sorry.”

  I aimed for center mass, unconcerned with where I landed, as long as I struck her a good one. I felt like an abusive lover, treating my pride and joy like the wall at a bumper car rink.

  The hovertruck smashed into the deck head-on. The air outside my windshield was a mist of splinters and rivets and men I knew, screaming and diving to get out of the way. I was ploughing through layers of decking I’d laid down myself, sweating away in the afternoon sun with a rivetgun and a dream. I wondered if it was really worth it to send my parents and I and their whole crew to the Churn, all for a girl I only kind of knew, and half a dozen other less-endearing souls who were about to steal the fortune that should’ve been mine.

  It wasn’t, I decided. It wasn’t worth it at all.

  The hovertruck’s nose accordioned. Then the whole truck began to flip forward and vault away from the deck, like a fat gymnast attempting a somersault. I gripped the steering controls and locked my arms and legs as the truck inverted itself. I was sailing past a blur of debris toward midship, and the whole world was turning upside down. All I could think was, I’m never gonna get to tell anyone how awesome this is.

  I was facing a sleeping bat’s version of the direction I’d come from when the hovertruck smashed into what I knew must’ve been the hatch in front of the center mast. The sudden stop sent a wave of pain down my spine. I slid off my seat and onto the windshield, smacking my head against something on the way down. I could see belowdecks through the huge hole the hovertruck had ripped in the floor. But my Ostelle was still afloat. Still standing proud. There had been no explosion; I’d achieved no glorious, heroic ending. That meant I still had work to do.

  I kicked open the driver’s side door and flopped onto the deck, ears ringing, head and back smarting. I shot my last dart into Johnny Ralston’s right eye as he came toward me. I didn’t know for sure he was intent on violence, but the way I saw it, everyone on board my ship was the enemy. After all, they’d helped kick me off it.

  I stumbled toward the pulser cannon, watching as the barrel spit another burst into the Galeskimmer’s backside. I felt more crewmembers converging on me, the way you feel every pair of eyes on a dark street.

  Launching myself the last several yards, I slung my grapplewire around the gunner’s neck and yanked him out of the turret chair. It was Norris Ponting, a skilled powder monkey if ever there was one. Norris Ponting was about to become a ‘was,’ unless I got my way. I whirled on the advancing crew and shouted, “Stop right where you are, all of you, or Norris is done for.”

  They did stop, but I got the impression that most of them were considering whether Norris was worth stopping for. As long as they spent some time deciding, that was fine by me; all I had to do was keep them off that pulser cannon long enough to let the Galeskimmer make a run for it. My grapplewire was tight around Norris’s throat, tight enough to make every breath come out wheezing. He was half-drunk, by the smell of him. I’d have bet money he was still a better shot than any other two crewmembers put together.

  Knowing the whole crew on a first-name basis meant that I knew their tech, too. I knew who was augmented and who wasn’t, where their augments were, and how they were likely to use them. I backed toward the turret with them inching toward me, ravenous as a pack of wild dogs. Ma and Dad were nowhere to be seen. I guessed Dad was at the helm, past the hovertruck that was sticking fifteen feet into the air at midship, three of its four engines still idling.

  When my back rubbed against the turret chair, I yanked Norris Ponting around the side with me and sat down in it. I pulled him across my lap so I could reach the controls. We swiveled around in a one-eighty so the pulser cannon was pointed straight at the hovertruck. I was a little surprised the gun had the capability to turn that far, but I wasn’t complaining.

  Norris Ponting was getting squirmy. I had the pulser cannon as collateral now; I didn’t need him anymore. So I planted a foot in his back and shoved him over the railing. He cried out as he fell. One or two of the crew jerked forward, but thought better of coming any closer. Over my shoulder, the Galeskimmer was making ready to cast off. Another twenty seconds, I judged, and she would be on her way toward clearer skies. That was when Yingler emerged from belowdecks, picking his way up the staircase’s wreckage and appearing from behind the hovertruck.

  “I wouldn’t be so hasty,” shouted the man formerly known as Vilaris.

  “Knowing you’re on board is all the incentive I need,” I said, rubbing the trigger button with my thumb.

  “There’s something you should be made aware of, Muller.”

  “I’m already aware that killing you is going to make me very happy,” I said. I eased the controls. The turret swiveled until I had Yingler in the gun sights.

  “Be that as it may… don’t look down. Or rather… do.”

  I did. Half a dozen sloops were rising through the fog below my Ostelle, all of them flying the red-and-tan flag of the Civil Regency Corps. The Civs had cast electronets between their ships like a collage of spider webs. To catch me in case I try to jump again, I realized. Norris Ponting was in the closest of the nets, climbing aboard the nearest sloop with help from the Civs.

  This Yingler was a real piece of work. Not only had he managed to befriend my parents; the scheming wretch was bold enough to show his face to the Civs like they weren’t going to lock him up for what he’d done. Sable and her crew were getting ready to take the money and run, leaving me here to fend for myself after I’d led them to the jackpot of a lifetime. And don’t get me started on how I felt about my parents.

  I’d had it with trusting people, I decided. I’d had it with civility. This was war—even if I was the only person on my side. Even if I was pitting myself against a world full of people who were ag
ainst me.

  I pressed the trigger. Yingler erupted in blue arcs of electromagnetic energy that shot to his feet and spread out across the deck. People dove for cover, unsheathed their weapons, and began to fire them at me. Before Yingler had slumped paralyzed to the deck, I was already swiveling to face the Civs. I trained my sights on the sloop Norris Ponting had climbed into, and fired. The sloops were small; lighter and faster than streamboats like the Galeskimmer and my Ostelle. One pulser shot from above carried enough burst to cover almost the entire deck and fry every techsoul on board.

  I swiveled toward the next sloop and followed up with another well-placed shot. Every member of the crew went stiff as a tree trunk and fell over. The clinkers on the first sloop were going haywire, and the boat shot upward as the driftmetal runners exerted their unchecked force. The electronets broke away, but not before pulling an adjacent sloop so far up that half the crew went sliding over the port railing. I didn’t stop until I’d disrupted every Civvy ship in sight. Bullets and laser bolts and flecker rounds were pummeling the back of the armored turret chair.

  I was creating chaos, and loving every second of it.

  Then someone managed to hit the pulser cannon with a hand pulser. It surged and went dead. At Platform 22, the Galeskimmer was setting off. I had half a mind to shoot it, too. It was a good thing the cannon was out of commission, because as soon as the Galeskimmer left the dock, it turned around and came toward me.

  Sable was at the helm, with Dennel and Thorley and Mr. Scofield and Nerimund manning the four-pounders. They loosed a volley in our direction. The air rushed past my head and the cannonballs crashed and bounded across the deck. They reloaded and fired once more before Sable straightened her out and came across the bow. My parents’ crew was shooting at the Galeskimmer now. Eliza Kinally and Neale Glynton were returning fire with a pair of old muskets.

  Sable eased the Galeskimmer into place beside us and shouted at me above the din. “Are you just gonna sit there, or do you want a lift?”

  I didn’t think twice. I leapt onto the Galeskimmer and rolled behind a stack of crates as she idled past. Sable released the clinkers and took us straight up into the fog, the whole ship rocking and lurching amid a hail of disruptive gunfire. Then I heard something ping into one of the turbines and go clattering around inside it.

  A thousand failing brakes screeched. There was a rush of heat, a fireball, and the sensation of being tossed around like pasta in a strainer.

  When the ship stabilized, we were still rocketing upward through the fog. Something had hit me on the head, and I could see only blue-violet out of my unenhanced eye. The deck was a wreckage of bodies and burning wood, and when I tried to stand, the force of the ship’s upward momentum kept me on my hands and knees. Sweet merciful Leridote, how many shipwrecks am I gonna be involved in this month? I rolled onto my back and stared at the approaching heights, the mast and the furled sail flapping from the yardarm, until it all went from dark and foggy to nothing but black.

  I dreamed at hyperspeed, so I knew I was still alive. I dreamed about Kupfer and Sable and Ma and Dad and Yingler and the shop, and all my kid friends back home in Atherion. I dreamed that Blaylocke was burning alive and Gilfoyle’s daughter was dancing around the flames, singing nursery rhymes, drinking red wine and wearing her bright yellow blanket as a cape. I dreamed my augments were coming alive and building mechanical spiders out of the synthetic tissues of my arms and legs. When my limbs were gone, Chaz was controlling the whole thing, orchestrating it with a remote control in his laboratory, talking to the spiders.

  I dreamed the medallion was putting ideas into my head, making me paranoid and forcing me to believe I was a wanted criminal. But it was Sable’s Uncle Angus—Uncle Angus, whom I’d never met, but who my mind made an image of—plotting at Maclin Automation to commit my crimes for me and drop pamphlets over every floater in the stream telling people about how I ate children and stole loose change from old ladies and put embarrassing clothing on defenseless statues.

  I was staring at the same mast and the same furled sail when I woke up. The sky above was bright and blue, and the fires I’d fallen asleep to had become smoldering pillars of smoke. I stood. We were very high up; the air that was filtering into my lungs was thin and cold and crisp. I was used to air like this. I’d grown up on a floater that was even higher in the stream. The medallion was burning on my chest, its frantic algorithms racing across my mind.

  Sable was beside me, her hand on my back. “Are you okay?” she was asking. “I didn’t want to move you. I didn’t know how bad you’d been hurt, so I made sure you were breathing and I let you sleep.”

  I turned to her. Her eyes were red-rimmed and her cheeks were flushed. “Where are we?”

  “Somewhere above the Kalican Heights. It’s bad. The ship’s completely disabled. One of the turbines is blown to shreds. All the clinkers but one on the starboard side are ruined. Neale and Eliza were on that side of the ship when it blew. They’re both hurt bad, but I think they’ll be okay. But Landon is… Mr. Scofield…” She couldn’t get another word out.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “It’s my fault. You came back to get me. You should’ve left me on my own to face what I had coming. None of this would’ve happened.”

  “Don’t,” she managed, holding up a hand. “I can’t.”

  I took her into my arms, held her. The gesture felt awkward and stilted to me, but Sable didn’t seem to think so. She buried her face in my jacket and whimpered, the kind of thing a child does after they’ve been crying for a long time and there isn’t much steam left. We stood like that for a while until she pulled away.

  “You’re glad we came back for you though. Aren’t you?”

  I allowed myself half a smile. “I’m a little confused as to why.”

  She gave me a weepy grin. “That makes two of us.”

  I laughed. “It’s so you’d have someone to be mean to. That’s why you wanted me around.”

  “I’m the captain. Being mean is what captains do.”

  “Well then, Captain. I suggest you start giving some orders. The wind’s picking up. Just because we have one bad engine doesn’t mean we can’t set sail. We’re filthy rich now, you know. Getting this rig fixed up shouldn’t take more than a few days once we find ourselves a nice secluded floater.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Then hop on the bluewave and start mapping me some coordinates. Thorley, get up on that yardarm and set the mainsail. Mr. McMurtry, take the controls. I’ll tend to the wounded for now. Move it, all of you!”

  We would’ve sailed off into the sunset, but that’s not where the stream was taking us. I knew one day I’d have to face my parents again. I’d probably have to face Kupfer, and Yingler too. Chaz, who I’d liked, but now hated for betraying me—and Blaylocke, who I’d hated but actually started to like… before realizing I’d been right to hate him all along. I’d have to face them all again someday. But for now, the only thing that mattered was that I was a free man. I was a free man in a world that didn’t think I deserved to be. And despite all the terrible garbage I’d been through—that this crew and I had been through—we were sailing on driftmetal runners with the clouds in our hair. And that was a damned good feeling.

  Afterword

  I hope you’ve enjoyed Segment One of Driftmetal. Remember to leave a review at your favorite online retailer to let me and others know what you thought of the book, then sign up for my author newsletter to receive updates on new releases. If you’re eager for more, I have some great news – the adventure continues in Driftmetal II: The Skyward Realm. Thanks for reading!

 

 

 
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