Skyborn

by Eric Asher

  * * *

  A repeated clicking sound eventually woke Jacob up. He squinted against the light coming in from the windows. Smith and Frederick stood on opposite sides of the prototype, flicking the levers and knobs in a precise sequence that made the arm swivel, grasp, and return to its position in a matter of seconds.

  Jacob looked around for Alice when he realized Mary was nowhere to be found, either.

  “They took some supplies to the Skysworn,” Smith said, noticing Jacob’s searching gaze. “Do not worry. I am certain they will not leave me behind.”

  Frederick pointed to the ratcheted swivel. “This is brilliant, Jacob. It solves the tipping issue and the hydraulics provide enough force without any additional lines.”

  Jacob hopped up, shaking out hair that desperately needed trimming. “I got the idea from my leg.” He slid the front panel open and pointed to the limited ratchet just below his knee.

  Frederick slowly shook his head. “Smart. Very smart. We made a mistake last night, though.”

  “We did?” Jacob asked, his heart sinking. If they had to start the prototyping process over, it could be two or three days. He’d used all the spare braces he could find in the workshop.

  “Oh, it’s not a bad mistake,” Frederick said, apparently catching on to Jacob’s souring thoughts.

  “Not at all,” Smith said. “The problem is that ingot weighs four times more than the porous stones at Ancora.”

  “Four times?” The calculations flicked through Jacob’s head. “But that means the original design would have worked. We didn’t need the extra braces. I could have just used the bearings and been done with it.”

  “Don’t you see?” Frederick asked. “This will pull four times the weight now, at a minimum. And unless I’m wrong, I think it will balance with nearly ten times the intended load.” Frederick tapped on Charles’s notebook with enthusiasm. “You didn’t just fix the tipping problem; you fixed the issue that plagued Charles’s original designs for a Titan Mech.”

  Jacob blinked at that. “I did what?”

  Smith clapped him on the back. “You improved on one of the old man’s designs. Not bad.”

  Frederick held up one finger and shook it as he talked. “But not only that. I’ve been thinking about your idea to use this along the rails between Ancora and Dauschen. If you built more of the Titan Mech’s body, you could also use it to build airship docks. A machine that not only moved horizontally along a track, but could climb a track too.”

  “It would save us months of time,” Smith said. He pulled out a length of square brass with a low-profile crank on the side. “I finished this while you were sleeping.”

  “Is that my bolt cannon?”

  “Assembled and ready to go, based on your designs.” Smith picked up a sheet of paper and passed it over. “You can see the few things I had to change to get the loading crank to work. The launching plate is thinner now, but it should still be durable with the additional brace bolted to it.”

  “And if anything breaks, the launching plate can be swapped out now. Brilliant! We just need the springs, and the observatory had a barrel full of them still.”

  “I’ll get a couple dozen built with the help of the locals,” Frederick said. “And they may have some of the springs we need here. Word is they’re wanting to meet me because I knew Targrove.”

  “Just don’t tell them I knew him,” Smith muttered.

  Frederick raised an eyebrow but didn’t question it. Jacob had a feeling he knew why. There was still a bias, or perhaps fear was a better word, against Biomechs. It was still true in a few parts of Bollwerk, though they were far more accepting of Biomechs than Ancora.

  Jacob took the bolt cannon from Smith when he offered it. The older tinker was more refined than Jacob in his joints and welds. Seeing that level of polish on what was little more than a prototype reminded Jacob how much more he had to learn.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  A few hours later, Jacob, Mary, Alice, and Smith all stood along the swaying deck of the Skysworn.

  “Come on, Smith,” Mary said. “Give them some privacy, will you?”

  “Privacy?” Smith said over the shouts of distant dock workers and occasional roars of engines firing. “We have all been living and fighting together for weeks. There is no such thing as privacy.” But he followed her to the cabin nonetheless, waving to Jacob before vanishing inside.

  “I don’t like parting ways,” Jacob said, taking Alice’s hand.

  “I don’t either.” She squeezed his fingers. “But you need to help Dauschen and Ancora, and I need to find out why this stupid war exists. It could be a chance to change things.”

  Jacob took a deep breath. On some level, he knew she was right. If they couldn’t fix whatever history had broken, then only more wars could end the current ones. And that was a terrible thought.

  “I’ll be staying with Mary and Smith. You know I’ll be fine. I can’t imagine we’ll be gone more than a week or two.”

  Jacob nodded. “And I’ll check in. I have their transmitter numbers.”

  “Good. You be safe and help those cities rebuild. You know that bolt cannon alone will help Ambrose. And that portable crane could save lives.”

  Jacob liked that Alice had taken to calling the arm of the Titan Mech a portable crane. In many ways, she was quite right. He hesitated, and then leaned in, kissing her gently.

  Alice threw her arms around him and squeezed hard enough to make his ribs ache. “I’ll see you soon. Now go. Go rebuild our city.”

  With that, she pulled away and headed for the cabin without looking back.

  Jacob waited until her bright hair vanished into the darkness, and then took his leave. He’d normally wait to watch the Skysworn disengage from the docks. But not today. Today there was a great deal to get done.

  * * *

  “We have a surprise for you,” Mary said, dropping two levers before spinning around in her captain’s chair.

  “For me?” Alice said, looking up from her book.

  “I talked to Eva. She’s going to meet us out at the wreck of one of the Ballern warships.”

  Alice frowned. “That doesn’t sound like the good kind of surprise.”

  “It’s the ship you and Jacob shot down. Only right you should get to loot and pillage it yourself.”

  Alice wanted to protest, but if she was being honest with herself, she wanted to see the ship up close. She wanted to see the debris from the people that had tried to kill them. But the idea of seeing bodies churned her stomach. She’d seen enough death in the past weeks to last a dozen lifetimes. She didn’t have the heart to ask how many dead there were.

  “It sounds like it should be safe,” Mary continued, missing Alice’s hesitation. “They’ve captured the survivors.”

  “What are they doing to them?”

  “To them?” Mary asked. “Ah, right, Belldorn doesn’t have the same penchant for prisons and labor camps as the eastern cities. They’ll be held for a time, and then freed to either become a citizen of Belldorn, a spy for Belldorn, or to leave of their own accord.”

  “Just let them go?” Alice asked.

  “I have often wondered about that policy myself,” Smith said. “It would seem those who are freed and allowed to return to their homeland will simply return one day in another attack.”

  “I think you’re wrong,” Mary said. “It may happen some, but I think the stories of those who cared for them and freed them without harm would do more good than ill.”

  The desert passed by below them, patches of color in an ocean of sand until they reached the site of the airship battle. It would have been hard to miss with the scorched and ravaged sand flanked by the charred remnants of three titanic airships.

  “There,” Smith said, pointing toward a far-off destroyer that was mostly intact. A cluster of silver and gray ships sat in the sand around the warship. “One of those has to be Eva.”

  Mary swung wide and slowed the Skysworn. “Drop anchor.
”

  Smith did, the rapid clicks of the unfurling cable drowning out every other sound for a moment until it thunked into the sand. Mary let the ship drift in a wide circle, making sure the anchor was holding fast before locking the control panel down.

  “Here,” Smith said, tossing Alice an empty backpack. “As much as you have crammed in yours, it’ll be easier to use one of ours.”

  Alice agreed, but she still opened her own pack to retrieve the bolt glove from inside. Mary and Smith might have said it would be safe, but Alice had plenty of memories of when something safe nearly killed them all. Alice slid the glove and mesh over her fingers, flexing her hand and checking the cartridge.

  Mary led the trio to the lines, opening a hinge in the railing and dropping two separate lines before handing both Alice and Smith a set of wheels. With that, Mary clipped her own wheels to the line and jumped.

  Alice followed her down, smiling in the wind as the belayer slowed her descent, and she made a gentle landing on a small dune of sand. She froze at the sight of the destroyer. She and Jacob had done that. Blown out the gas chambers and sent the warship into a death spiral. It might have been finished off by Belldorn’s Porcupines, but they’d done much to damage it.

  She had little doubt the soldiers on that destroyer would have killed them if given the opportunity, but it was still gut-wrenching to see the destruction caused by her own hand.

  The destroyer hadn’t looked small when they attacked it, but standing next to it on the ground, it was enormous. The last surviving gas chamber loomed above them, broken away from its restraints and drifting lazily with the wind.

  Mary hopped onto a large stretch of wood and slid down it to the bottom of a sand dune. Alice followed, but she didn’t miss the splash of blood crusted in the sand and smeared across the boards.

  If it had been from the initial conflict, it would’ve been long dry. But this was fresh, tacky, and Alice’s hand flexed around the bolt glove.

  Apparently, Smith had noticed the same thing as he drew a wrist cannon from his own pack and strapped it to his forearm.

  Mary flagged down the nearest of Belldorn’s soldiers, asking where they could find Eva.

  “We had an issue with some scavengers. A Tail Sword and a couple Carrion Worms. They may have come for the corpses, but they got some of our soldiers as well. Eva and her crew have been clearing out the hold.”

  “Thank you.” Mary gestured for the others to follow, heading for the steel ramp the soldier had indicated.

  Alice relaxed a hair. Tail swords and Carrion Worms she could deal with. Their motivations were easy to understand, dangerous though they were. But the idea of fighting soldiers, humans, and their innate unpredictability, was far more unnerving.

  The scent of charred wood and slag permeated the airship when they stepped inside. Alice tried to breathe through her mouth, but the scents still made their way in. She braced herself for the smells of burned flesh and hair and lives lost in the sand-covered hell, but they did not come.

  “What is it?” Smith asked, apparently noticing her expression.

  “I don’t smell anything. I mean, I don’t smell any rot.”

  Mary glanced back at them as they rounded a corner. “They would’ve moved all the corpses by now. Carrion Worms are a large problem in the desert. As you can imagine.” She paused at a map hung in the hallway, a wide thing that held a shape Alice was not familiar with. Far to the east, shrunken to look small, waited the continent she knew. Belldorn and Ancora and Bollwerk, but the rest she only knew from rough sketches and rumors.

  “I want to take that,” Alice said.

  Smith laughed and patted her on the shoulder. “I do not think we are going to fit that in your backpack.”

  “Then I want to find a smaller one,” Alice said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

  Mary led them down the hallway past the worst of the fire damage. What had been dark and ashen brightened to polished bronze and thick copper pipes that ran the length of the hall.

  The floor shifted below them, ever so slightly, but it was enough for Alice to notice. “We’re moving.”

  Mary nodded. “They should have cut that last gas chamber free.”

  “Too much stress,” a voice said as they rounded the corner. “We cut that gas chamber free, and those damaged lower decks are going to collapse.”

  Mary slowed and a wide smile cracked her stoic expression. “Eva.”

  “I didn’t realize we were letting pirates on board,” Eva whispered so none of the soldiers behind her could hear.

  “I’m not one,” Alice said.

  Smith reached out and traded grips with Eva. “You would never know it from the company she keeps. And we did take down our flag today.”

  Eva grinned at Alice. “Now, you all hush. As far as my soldiers are concerned, I invited Smith here to analyze the armory we found.”

  Smith perked up at that. “Did you actually find an armory? Still intact after the crash?”

  Eva nodded. “Follow me.”

  They turned left at another corner, and Alice peered into each room they passed. Some were clearly barracks for high-ranking officers, opulent and unnecessary on a military craft. Two wide cafeterias made up a mess hall. The only other soldiers in the corridor disappeared into the mess.

  Eva paused and looked around, and when she confirmed no one else was with them, she leaned back and kissed Mary. It was as brief as could be, but Mary’s face lit up with a grin.

  “Collard,” Eva said as she escorted them into a square room, every inch filled with dark gray racks. Several of the racks held swords and knives and conventional things. But others Alice didn’t recognize.

  The lone soldier in the room turned to Eva. “Yes, Captain?”

  “This is Smith. He’s one of Bollwerk’s best tinkers. If anyone can help you figure out what these things are, it will be him.”

  Collard frowned. “I still think we could just pull all the triggers to find out.”

  Smith ran his finger across what looked like a simple gray box. A trigger sat on either side of it, guarded with a narrow band. It would make it hard to pull in the best of situations.

  “Do you know what this is?” Smith asked.

  Collard shook his head.

  “Had you pulled these triggers,” Smith said as he turned the gray box over. “You would have released the countdown on this timer. Judging by the dial, you would’ve had about thirty seconds to live before a bomb detonated.”

  Collard’s eyes widened.

  Eva grinned at the soldier. “Like I said, let Smith help you.”

  “Yes, Captain!”

  “Alice, Mary, come with me.”

  They left Smith and Collard behind to comb through the armory. Alice wasn’t sure if Smith was more excited to see the armory, or if Mary was more excited to see Eva.

  While the thought amused her, she sobered as they passed another room. The wall was missing, and dark copper stains coated the floors and ceiling. That kind of carnage hadn’t come from the crash. The way the walls had curled in and were scorched, Alice knew in her heart it was from one of their bombs. She shivered and turned away.

  The next hallway stretched until it ended in a bank of sand where sunlight streamed in. Part of the ship had broken away here, but it was the last room that Eva led them into.

  “Oh, wow,” Alice said as she stepped inside. Maps were pinned to every wall, anchored by magnets where there was no wood available. A small table in the corner had been piled with books. Some of them looked brand-new, while others were worn from being read countless times. But on the floor in front of them was a small pile of scorched tomes.

  “Did someone burn those?” Alice asked.

  Eva shook her head. “We recovered those from the wreck. Figured I’d put them in here with the rest of the books. Feel free to take what you’d like. No inventory has been done of this place.”

  Alice’s first instinct was to ask if Eva was sure. But Eva d
idn’t strike her as the kind of person who would say something she didn’t mean. Instead, Alice crouched down, most interested in the scorched books, as they would have been carried by the crew.

  Some of them were nothing more than textbooks, airship maintenance and the physics of steam engines. Maybe Smith would’ve been interested, or even Jacob, but Alice wasn’t. It was what waited beneath those textbooks that caught her eye.

  The Great Lie. Alice turned the book over, intrigued by the title. There was no description on the back. Oddly, the description was only inside the front cover.

  How the followers of the Great Machines became more than a cult and corrupted the third king of Ballern.

  “Third king?” Alice said out loud.

  “Two rulers ago, I think,” Eva said. “Kings and queens have both ruled in Ballern.”

  Alice continued reading down the page. She was about to throw the book back on the pile when she absently flipped through to the middle. There, nestled close to the binding, was an illustrated plate that looked hauntingly similar to the illustration in the book she’d found in Charles’s observatory.

  Only this one was captioned “Great Machine Alpha, Valley of the Roots.”

  “Where is the Valley of the Roots?”

  Eva pulled a map off the wall and folded it up. “Here, maybe not as detailed as the one in the hallway, but this should help.”

  Alice cringed at the rough folding of that gorgeous map before she took the paper from Eva, tucking it into the book and placing them both into her backpack. She grabbed a few other books. Two journals, and one simply titled Burning Belldorn. Apparently, it was a fictionalized account of Ballern’s assumed victory. But Alice was well aware there were often truths about a people hidden inside their stories.

  “If you want to learn about their history so much,” Eva said, “why don’t you come with me to Belldorn? I can introduce you to some of the more friendly soldiers from Ballern.”

  “Really?” Alice said, glancing between Mary and Eva.