by Adam Rakunas
The cab had just enough room for the three of us. Banks and Jilly crouched into the tiny storage space behind the single seat. “Easy peasy,” I said, slipping my feet into the pedal baskets as I fired up the crane’s power. The Univoice greeted me, reminding me to put on my restraints. “We can ride this sucker straight to Wash’s office if we want. Right into it, even.”
“Is that wise?” said Banks.
“Probably not, but it hasn’t stopped me before,” I said. “You might want to hang onto something.”
The chair’s headrest gave a little bit, probably from Banks squeezing the life out of the poor thing. “Is this going to be over soon?” he said. “I’m not crazy about confined spaces.”
“That why you didn’t go frozen?” I asked, gripping the joysticks.
“Mostly,” he said as the crane’s servos whined to life.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I’ll be gentle.” And then I stomped both pedals and the crane shot fifty meters straight up in ten seconds.
“Ohgohdohgohdohgohd,” said Banks.
“Don’t you dare puke in here,” I said. A twist of the joystick, and the crane caught onto a crossrail, its magnetized track zipping us away. The ground flew by as I guided the crane through the girder highway above Steelcase.
“This is a little fast,” said Banks, his voice quavering.
“What, you’re scared of speed, too?”
The Univoice warned that our equipment was not rated above ten kilometers per hour. We shot a gap between two loaded cranes, their backup beepers dopplering away behind us.
“I am now,” said Banks.
“Look, there’s no way we’re going to crash,” I said, “and even if we did, these things are bulletproof.”
Something smacked into the cab’s windshield. “What the hell was that?” said Banks.
“Probably just a pilot gull. They’re slow and stupid and–”
Another bang on the windshield, turning it into a spiderweb of cracked caneplas. A sixteen-centimeter construction spike stuck out of the middle of the hole.
“Are they also metal?” said Banks.
I slowed the crane down, then leaned forward to get a closer look out the unbroken parts of the window. I didn’t see any construction crews, and no route closures showed up on the crane’s computer. “Weird,” I said. “Someone’s gonna get an earful for letting this slip. Guess I’ll have one more thing to prod Wash with–”
Four more spikes joined the first one, and flecks of caneplas peppered my face. I yelled at Banks and Jilly to duck as I threw the crane in reverse. My heart threatened to pop out of my rib cage as I ducked low to watch the rearview mirrors to make sure the track was clear. No one behind us, so I lowered us to the bottom of the trellis to look above for whatever had shot at us. Holy crap: someone had shot at us.
The crane traffic hummed along, carrying flats of molasses barrels and other cargo. I couldn’t see anyone on the rooftops, or anyone in the trellis. “That wasn’t another accident, was it?” said Banks. “Someone actually shot at us?”
“Sh,” I said. “We need to stay calm.”
Another spike hit the roof, then three more actually punctured. “Screw calm!” yelled Banks, diving over the seat and shoving the throttle ahead full. The crane lurched, tossing him backwards, but not before his elbow clocked me in the forehead. My head fuzzed, but not so much that I couldn’t see another crane heading straight for us. I stomped on pedals, and we grabbed an upright and screamed three levels up. I looked down through the clear caneplas floor and saw the crane following us. Someone in black leaned out its open window and aimed what looked like a high-compression construction driver at us. I pulled back on the stick, catching a rail and scooting away as the shooter’s crane shot past.
Jilly climbed over the seatback to look through the other windows. “All clear on the other sides, boss.” Good girl.
“Sorry about that” said Banks.
“Just stay still,” I said. “We need to get to Wash, and away from whoever’s shooting at us.”
“You sure it’s not your buddy?” said Banks.
“Wash and I may have had some differences, but not enough for him to try to kill me,” I said. “Besides, he wouldn’t shoot at his own cranes.”
“That’s comforting.”
Three uprights ahead, another crane slipped down to our level and picked up speed. We swung onto a junction circle and looped around to an empty rail. No one was above or below us, but this line ran away from the middle of Steelcase and Wash’s office. “We’re being herded,” I said.
“And shot at,” said Banks.
“They don’t want us to get to Wash,” I said, spinning us around a junction. “Shit! That’s because they know I’ll talk him out of dealing with Saarien.”
“The guy in the white suit?” said Jilly. “What’s his deal?”
“I’ll tell you later,” I said, leaning on the throttle for all its worth. “After we kick the crap out of him.”
The back of the cab rattled from a few dozen spikeshots. A quick glance in the mirror showed both cranes were right behind us, with a third hovering along for added flavor. The mirror then shattered in another flurry of spikes, a tiny shard hanging on. I could feel The Fear hissing in the background, mocking my judgment and driving ability, and my head began to spin. My palms grew sweaty, my right hand slipping off the throttle. Was that the throttle? Or was it the... what did these controls do?
Jilly shook me. “Hey! We’re not gonna take this shit, are we, boss?”
I swallowed back a throatful of bile and fought to clear my head. “We’re not exactly armed.” I turned to Banks. “Are you?”
He shook his head, his face pale. “I hate guns.”
“What about the crane?” asked Jilly. “Can’t we swing it at them?”
I shook my head, the fuzz clearing away. “I am sending you back to school to learn physics just so you can see how dumb that is,” I said.
“School’s for losers,” she said, reaching over before I could slap her hand away from banging the emergency release button on the console.
When I did my brief bit of training as a crane operator, we learned two things: be careful with the cargo, but don’t kill yourself for the cargo. The emergency release was for those rare moments when you were faced with the latter. Maybe the maglev was failing, maybe the winds were too high, maybe a whole horde of palm crabs were clawing up the line to tear your face off. You would press the button and dump the line.
Thing was, we never practiced dumping. It was too much of a pain to reel the line back in, and it happened so rarely that the instructors just pointed at the button and said, “Don’t touch that unless you have to.”
So, I really had no idea what would happen after Jilly hit the button. I felt the line spin away underneath us, the reel vibrating through the cab floor. The length readout spun up until the numbers stopped at 250. A sharp ping ran up from the crane’s belly, followed by a clanking ring as the crane’s jaw bucket clattered along the rail behind us.
“Oh, those bastards!” I yelled.
“What?” said Banks.
I pointed to a line of green lights. “The release didn’t drop the line, it just turned off the brake! We’re dragging the crane!”
“Well, can’t you just, I dunno, claw at ’em?”
I turned long enough for him to realize what a stupid thing he’d said. He shrugged. “I guess I saw the same movies as Jilly.”
I shook my head. “If we get out of this alive, I am going to sit the both of you down and teach about how things work in the real world. You can’t control a loose bucket if it’s flapping away in the breeze. Hell, you can’t hope to do anything with it unless all you wanted to do was tear up the track–”
The lights went on in my head and my hands moved before Jilly and Banks could say anything. Two thumb clicks to open the bucket’s jaws, one more to crank up its magnet. The clanking turned to a shudder that bounced the whole crane as the bucket s
ucked itself toward the rail. “This is gonna get bumpy,” I said, and I clamped the jaws shut.
I jerked forward in my restraints, and Banks and Jilly tumbled against the back of my seat as the closed jaws scraped along the rail. I wondered how much damage this was doing and how much of it was going to come out of my hide. Leaving the tuk-tuk behind was one thing, but tearing up another Ward’s livelihood? That would start street fights and legislation.
In our leftover bit of mirror, I could see our three pursuers still behind us. The bucket’s jaws, however, had knocked enough of the rail’s magnets out of alignment to slow them down to a crawl. “Looks like our movies were pretty good after all,” said Banks as he leaned over my shoulder.
Three bangs on the roof, then a spike punched through the ceiling, its shaft stopping a few millimeters from Banks’s cheek. Overhead, a crane zipped past us; the shooter leaned out the window and fired at us, spikes smashing the windshield. “Your movies suck,” I said.
“Just a little,” croaked Banks, shrinking back. I opened the jaws and killed the magnet, and we shot forward. Not fast enough: the overhead crane was already slipping down the upright and onto our rail. We had no way out; ramming them wouldn’t do a damn thing, and we couldn’t escape up or backward or–
I looked through the caneplas panels in the floor and saw no one below. Oh, you wouldn’t, said The Fear.
Fuck you, I would, I thought, and I just stood on the pedals and pushed down on both joysticks. The crane let go of the overhead rail, and we arced away into space. For a few sickening moments, we sailed in open air until the verts caught hold of the last upright, the screech of grinding metal filling the cabin and rattling my skull. We shook as the magnets’ grip fought our momentum, the crane spinning about its z-axis for a few sickening moments.
But the noise stopped. The crane came to a halt.
I kept still for a moment, my hands still on the controls. I looked behind me; Banks and Jilly stared back with giant eyes, both of them frozen and gripping whatever handholds they could. I eased out a breath and relaxed. “Looks like we stuck the–”
A squeal like a dying whale cut me off, and the crane lurched to starboard, the cabin shuddering as we wrenched loose from the verts. I felt my stomach slide into my ears as we fell, the whole of Steelcase tilted ninety degrees and getting bigger faster–
A warning klaxon sounded, and the entire cabin filled with smoke. I just had time to think we’d caught fire when I smelled vanilla and realized, no, we were safe, but I was still screwed. We thumped to the ground as the crash foam (really just repurposed riot foam, though MacDonald Heavy swore up and down it didn’t cause the same kinds of skin conditions) hardened and soaked up our kinetic energy, blocking out the sunlight. The deceleration still made my guts lurch as we came to a slow and steady halt.
Somewhere, through the hardened foam, I heard the Univoice declare that my operator code had been revoked.
“Is everyone OK?” I said, getting two muffled replies through the dim light. The cabin shook again, then the foam cracked and split. My eyes hurt from the light, and everything hurt worse when heavy hands yanked me out of the cabin.
A group of unhappy people looked down at me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw others extricate Banks and Jilly. A woman with arms as big as babies and a bass clef inked on her cheek cracked her knuckles. “We’re behind schedule as it is, and now we’re down a crane,” she said. “Not to mention the repairs we’re gonna have to do to the lattice. You have any idea how much trouble you’re in? Or how much it’s gonna cost?”
“I don’t suppose we can come to an arrangement, just between us?” I wondered if she meant to take payment out of my bank account or out of my hide. I really hoped it was the latter.
“I’d stop talking to her now, if I were you,” said a warm baritone sax voice from outside the crowd. The people parted, and Wash walked up, shaking his head, like he was trying to get rid of the half-grin on his big moon face. He put his hand on Bass Check’s shoulder. “Next thing you know, you’re going to wind up owing her money.” He sighed and looked at me. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for what’s happened here, but I have the feeling it’s not going to come from you, Padma.”
I shrugged the meaty hands off me and walked to the foamy, smoking wreckage of the crane. A dozen construction spikes as big as my forearm stuck out of the cab’s roof and sides. I yanked one out and tossed it to Wash; it landed at his feet with a bright clink. “I suppose we should figure out who was shooting at me first. Right?”
Wash rubbed the back of his head, then nodded at his crew to get lost. They grumbled back to work, and Wash clapped his hands. “So. Buy you a drink?”
Chapter 13
At the northern edge of the trellis, right on the border of Steelcase, there was a giant archway made of five upturned cargo canisters. They leaned into each other, their ends fast-welded together to make an open-ended pentagon that had been flipped on its edge. The whole structure had been fast-welded over Cholula Street, the main thoroughfare for surface cargo traffic. The arch made for an easy meeting point, since it was such a pain to get anywhere inside Steelhead.
Wash had ushered us into a newer, less-shot-at crane and driven us to a vert next to the arch. He powered down and unlocked the hatch, motioning for us to exit. “You still like heavy mint, right?”
There was a tiny tea shop at the base of the upright, and the waiter, a rail-thin man with faded ink, put a pot and four cups on the table as we approached.
“Someone shot my crane, Wash.”
“You mean my crane, right?” he said, picking up the teapot. “And where did you learn to drive like that? You never drove like that for me.”
“That’s because you never let me race in an updated rig,” I said, taking the seat opposite him. Banks and Jilly sat at my sides.
“With good bloody reason,” said Wash, his broad, flat face wearing the faintest hint of a smile.
I nodded at the teapot. “Isn’t this a little out in the open for a meeting? Considering how someone just tried to perforate me? On your turf?”
Wash pursed his lips as he poured. When he finished filling the last cup, he handed one to me and said, “You know how I would never allow all this to happen here, right?”
“But it did, and I think I know who did it” I said. “Since when do you let Saarien run your Ward?”
He sipped, his eyes narrowing. When he set his cup down, he eyeballed me and said, “That what you think?”
“I’m not sure what to think. You’re the one who’s in bed with him. Why don’t you tell me?”
Wash scratched his face, turning the tips of the twin Kalashnikovs inked on his cheek a bright red. “First, the arrangement I have with Saarien doesn’t mean he gets to influence things here.”
“Really.”
Wash straightened up. “Word of honor, Padma. I don’t know what happened today, but I will fix it. You deserve that much.”
“What I deserve is you giving me the Slots for the people waiting back in my flat,” I said. “We had a deal.”
“For a whole bunch of miners,” said Wash, handing cups to Banks and Jilly. “Not for a handful of broken-down Breaches.” He looked at Banks. “No offense.”
“None taken,” said Banks, huddling over his tea.
“It’s better than nothing,” I said.
“Actually, it’s not,” said Wash, pouring for himself. “Because I actually needed those specific people. I wasn’t just going to drop ’em in the dark to scrub shit out of piping.”
“What were you going to have them do?”
“I got over a hundred holding tanks that are rotting away, and those people were going to bring me some much-needed expertise.”
“Are you kidding?” I said. “You couldn’t find anyone else on this island who can patch holes?”
Wash sucked on his teeth, then started swirling his cup around. “Take a fifty-thousand hectoliter tank, and fill it to capacity with
industrial molasses. Now, have a bolt on one of the tank’s seams corrode, just enough so some of that molasses starts to dribble out. How long until that dribble turns into a flood? How long until other bolts go, disrupting the equilibrium and creating a vortex that sends all that stuff sloshing around like the tea in this cup?”
The tea spilled over the top and splashed on the table. Wash swiped it away. “I needed people who were good at dealing with repairs in a specific environment. Those miners would have been a godsend.”
“You can’t put out a call?” I said. “Are you trying to tell me you don’t have the suction with the Union to make that happen?”
“No, because all of the right talent is taken,” said Wash, pouring more tea. “And three guesses where it is.”
I snorted. “Saarien. That bastard.”
“One of his little creatures was just in my office, giving me the ultimatum. He’ll give me people to fix my tanks, in return I don’t help you. My hands are tied, Padma.” Wash held his closed fists up to his face. There were huge hands, thick and veined. “I got four, maybe five months until I start reaching the failure point. You know the stories from Dead Earth, about that molasses flood that wiped out a neighborhood?” He shook his head. “That happens here, it’s going to be half the city.”
I picked up my own cup; it was the only thing around here that smelled good. Even the cane diesel fumes from the passing tuk-tuks were harsh against the odor of cargo baking on asphalt, the tang of rust and lube from the crane scaffolds. “So what’s he going to do for you?”
Wash leaned back in his chair. “He’s got new facilities with enough capacity to take all the molasses out of Steelcase. I won’t have to be responsible for any of it, and that means more room for shipping other products.”