by R J Theodore
Praise for Flotsam
Peridot Shift Book One
“Combining the best elements of steampunk and space opera, placed in a lavishly detailed and imagined world, FLOTSAM will hold you firmly till the final page.”
—Cat Rambo, author of Beasts of Tabat
“FLOTSAM tosses you headfirst into a fast-paced world of noir swashbuckling and intrigue. Airships, renegades, and plenty of action await within.”
—Scott Warren, author of the Union Earth Privateers series
“FLOTSAM sucked me in and wouldn’t let me go. R J Theodore is a fresh voice who will soon be on your must-read list!”
—Jennifer Foehner Wells, author of the Confluence series
“This author can paint a picture as vividly as if she had acrylics and a brush in hand and she isn’t afraid to use a cutting sense of humour . . . I can't wait to find out where the story goes next.”
—Tracey Stuart, Goodreads
“A powerfully imagined world which sucks you in, and a cast of characters that make the journey enjoyable.”
—Alan Brenik, NetGalley Review
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Herndon, VA 20171
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Flotsam
Copyright © 2018 by R J Theodore
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, magical, photocopying, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder.
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[lawyerly catawumpus]
ISBN 13 978-0-9976613-7-8
Ebook ISBN 978-0-9976613-6-1
Cover art by Julie Dillon
Cover typography and interior illustrations by R J Theodore
Print design and typeset by Catspaw DTP Services
Digital Design by Parvus Press
Author photo credit Riley J Esposito
For my grandfather.
Ted, you never doubted me.
Chapter 1
The layer of trash below Talis’s feet sparkled as she descended toward it. Frost coated the generations of detritus and caught the light as it slowly shifted. She hung in open skies, a tiny dark figure on an impossibly thin thread. Her airship lurked in the shadow of a small island above her. Around her, the shrapnel of Peridot’s tectonic crust peppered the skies, tiny islands not big enough to park a chair on.
A soft click sounded in the comm of her helmet, and Dug’s voice cut through the quiet sounds of her heartbeat and steady breathing. The voice tube transmission made him sound small and far away. “Progressing well, Captain. How much farther do you need?”
Talis unclenched her jaw to answer. “I’d guess I’m just about halfway down. Can’t make out any details yet.”
“Understood. There is plenty of length on the winch.” Her first mate’s voice was low and even, though he clipped his consonants the way he often did when he was tense. Dug was worried about her.
The bulky descent suit didn’t make it any easier to see the view below her. It was a one-size-fits-all antique, big enough to wear over her clothes. Big enough that Dug could have worn it, if he was so worried. It was designed to keep her body heat in, and it was certainly doing that. The musty wool lining felt moist after the short time she’d had it on. Her breath fogged the glass dome that protected her from the thin air, even though she wore a scarf over her mouth. At the same time, her fingers were still getting stiff with the cold. She could have worn thicker gloves if she was just going down to strap up a large object to tow out. But this time her quarry was smaller than that, and thinner gloves provided better dexterity.
From this distance, the garbage below her looked deceptively beautiful. A lazy flow of icy shapes caught the green light from Nexus, and their reflected light sparkled through the fogging on her helmet. It wasn’t hard to imagine why there were so many stories about treasure down below.
And there was treasure down there. Or she wouldn’t be dropping into it. The flotsam layer was where the dead went to be forgotten. Dead people. Dead ships. Dead technologies. Gravity trapped it all there. Kept it from dropping out of Peridot’s atmosphere on the bottom side and drifting off into the stars.
If things went wrong, Talis would be trapped, too. But the contract for this salvage made it worth the risk. She could make a lot of overdue repairs on Wind Sabre with the payoff. Her crew—Dug, Tisker, and Sophie—had been enthusiastic about the operation when she proposed it, knowing what kind of money a salvage might bring in. Better than the jobs they’d scrounged up recently. None of them had volunteered to make the descent, though.
“You’re the reckless one, Cap,” Tisker told her at the time, his eyes sparkling. The cheeky helmsman got away with the comment. He always did. His infectious grin made every gibe seem like a morale boost.
Details emerged, just a couple lengths away. Large shapes at first. Broken hulls of ships tangled in their own lift canvasses. A roof, a wagon. An old tree trunk. Anything organic or burnable should have been composted or used for fuel, not pitched over island edge. But those hadn’t always been the rules. Seventy-something generations back to the Cataclysm that fractured Peridot and the Recreation that made it what it was now, for better or worse. Seventy-something generations of garbage and waste swirled in the gravity trap. And nothing ever decayed down here.
Evidence of that: she got close enough where she could see the faces. Glittering frosted skin with closed eyes. Dead open eyes on others. Mostly Cutter folk. Some Vein. Even a Rakkar. The Bone fed their dead to the ravens and kept the bones, but still, she saw some here and there. Likely lost with their ships. No Breakers, of course.
“Almost there. Slow it down.” She didn’t want to end up waist-deep in the flotsam. There was always the danger of her descent line catching on something sharp.
“Aye, Cap.” That was Tisker’s voice on the other end now. He relayed her orders to Dug somewhere out of range of the mouthpiece. Talis felt the feed of her line slow.
Thick as the trash was gathered, she could still see through it in spots. Dark beyond, with pinpricks of light, before the garbage would shift and close the view off again.
There. The bow of an airship. The familiar pointed shape jutted up from the mass around it, its aft sinking into the accumulated garbage. The hull’s dark green paint looked faded under a velvet coat of ice. But her name had been painted in white, nice and stark against the dark background. Talis held her breath, and after a moment the glass sphere of her helmet cleared enough to make out M-P-R-E-S-S above the shape of an old sofa that had cozied up against the hull.
“Spotted it. The Emerald Empress.” She pointed a finger, in case any of them had a scope on her.
“How much line do you need?”
Talis sighed, and the glass fogged again. She spared herself a small curse.
“Afraid it’s more complicated. The wreck’s ahead of us. We came in a little late, looks like. You’ll need to reposition Wind Sabre.”
“Wanna come back up? I just put some coffee on.”
She could barely feel her fingers. Of course she wanted to go back up.
“No, just keep it steady as you can, please.”
“Aye, Cap.”
“And Tisker?”
“Aye, Cap?”
; “Make sure you save me a cup.”
She could just about hear his grin as he signed off the horn and returned to the helm. If the ship’s engines could run on coffee it would nicely complete the crew’s dependence on the brewed beverage. Some of her strictest policies were on the matter of proper coffee etiquette. Topping the list: If you take the last of it before the glow pumpkins were full-on orange, you’d better be damned sure there was another pot put on to brew with haste.
The descent line tugged her sideways as Wind Sabre began to move. She leaned back to watch her ship, and to move her neck against the crick that was settling in above her shoulder. The enormous pumpkins above, cultivated on stations spaced out across Horizon, glowed the deep purple of night. The auras around the pumpkins shifted softly as their gaseous bodies bobbed on the vines, their light reflected off swirls of mica hanging in motes around the stations’ cliffs. Though not as bright as the golden candescence of their day cycle, it was still enough to highlight the edges of nearby islands. And the edges of her airship’s contours.
Gliding in gentle loops through the shimmering motes, mantas fed off the duskfey that flitted in sparse clouds around the islands’ edges. Against the shadow of the island, their bodies imitated the purple glow. Against the brighter shape of the pumpkins, they were a barely visible flock of shadows darting after mites that nibbled the delicate flesh of the vines and fruit. Innocent activity, no danger to her ship, but every movement in her periphery looped another knot of worry in her chest.
“Skies still clear up there?” she asked, not for the first time.
Dug’s voice came back, “Yes, Captain. Sophie is on watch. No ships moving in the area, Imperial or otherwise.”
Talis watched the slender shape of Wind Sabre emerge from beneath the shadow of her hiding spot. The faded canvas of the ship’s lift envelope, stretched over the light framing ribs beneath, was black, as were its numerous patches. The smooth carrack hull was stained black. Shutters closed over the glass expanses of the great cabin and even the ventral observation deck to avoid reflecting light from any angle and all shipboard lanterns were doused. An observer looking from the Horizon altitude might only see a slight shadow pass against the glitter of flotsam below. But from where Talis hung, their ship stood out from the skies, conspicuous against the aquamarine and lavender pre-dawn light and the field of unmoving islands. Their forward and pectoral sails were furled tightly, and the only propulsion came from a pair of steel-sheathed turbines mounted to either side of the rudder. Talis caught herself holding her breath again, certain that if she could hear the hiss of the ship’s steam and the hot breath of her engines, someone else would, too. But the only sound in her suit was the creak of its leather as she craned her head and adjusted her grip on the line. Wind Sabre was mute at this distance.
As Tisker navigated around the islands above, the impetus traveled down the line and caused Talis to spin slightly. She turned her attention back to The Emerald Empress. Kept her eyes on it.
“How is our course?” Dug again.
“Catching up nicely. Move a point or two anti-Nexus and I should get my toe on it in a minute.”
“Captain.”
Talis felt the course correction and saw her angle was good.
“Speed on the wreck’s less than a half degree. Slow us down to match…” Her toe touched the railing. “Now.”
Delay from message to action was just right. Her movement synchronized with the dextral spin of the flotsam layer as she lowered the last meter to settle on the derelict galleon’s forward section. She unclipped the pin in her lead line.
“Okay, good speed. I’m moving.”
“Be safe, Captain.”
“Aye, Dug. Talk to you in a bit.” She unclipped the voice tube from her helmet and hopped down from the descent line.
Her boot slipped in the frost, and she grabbed for the railing. If she landed on her backside, the deck’s steep angle would send her sliding into the flotsam that covered the aft end of the ship. She detached the grapple from her tool belt, fixed it to her lead, and hooked it around a decking brace. A couple hard tugs, and it stayed attached. She was thankful for the thinner gloves as she fed out her line slowly.
Half-walking, half-sliding, she let herself down to the deck hatch that would lead to the forecastle. The latch indicator dial read ‘UNSEALED,’ but the frost had done the job as well as if it had been battened from within. Talis pulled the sally bar free of her heavy tool belt and chipped both wood and ice away at the frame edge with its flat end. She gritted her teeth and strained against the ice’s grip on its hinges. Nothing.
Frowning, she surveyed the layer of flotsam just below the forecastle’s railing. Twisted bits of the ship’s collapsed lift balloon, the trailing reinforced lines, and jagged edges of other ruined trash. Hazardous to try and push through in her suit, and likely to tangle up in her own line. Worse, something sharp and unseen in that mess might sever it entirely.
Imagining worst-case scenarios triggered her captain’s paranoia, and she looked up. Nothing felt good about being this far from her ship and crew, and without comms. But the skies were clear. Wind Sabre was still alone up there.
She flipped the bar around in her grip and gave the iced hinges an angry whack with the sally bar’s hammer end. Frost flew off in chips, but the metal itself only dented. Flattened hinges wouldn’t rotate any better than frozen ones. She put the bar away and cursed its failure under her breath. There was also a portable blowtorch on her belt, but it didn’t have a large paraffin tank. She’d meant to save it in case she ran into a vault door below, but if she couldn’t get that far, there was no use in having it.
A small jet of blue flame popped to life as she opened the torch’s valve and hit the striker. With the line wrapped around her elbow to keep it out of the way, she worked the torch back and forth over the frozen hinges with one hand and pulled on the stubborn hatch with the other.
The ice gave up its hold quickly, and Talis pushed the hatch open all the way. Darkness below. The lamp on her shoulder came to life at a flick of a toggle switch on her belt. To reduce the height of the drop, she sat with her legs dangling into the forecastle cabin. Took a big inhale, as though about to drop into a pool of water, then let herself down into The Emerald Empress’s dark interior.
There were a couple of possible ship designs that would have placed the great cabin at the bow, but she wasn’t that lucky. From the multitude of hammocks, this was clearly crew quarters. Something crunched under her boot, and she looked down. Her light fell across the brittle frozen wrist she had stepped on. She shuddered. Instinctively tried to kick the body away, but frost had sealed it to the deck. She closed her eyes for a moment, tried to pretend she was anywhere else. Her breathing slowed.
Assuming the ring was with The Emerald Empress’s captain, and assuming the captain was in his quarters, Talis needed to make her way aft. After a self-indulgent look back up at the open skies above, she secured her line on a hammock cleat to keep it from rubbing on the edge of the hatch.
With a kick, the door swung out—or rather, down. The layer of loose garbage was thickest overhead, giving her clear space to rappel down the slope of the ship’s middle deck. To either side, over the railing, there was more to see of open skies than if she looked up. Shadows from the shifting debris crawled across the deck, only allowing a teasing dapple of light. She left her lamp on. Her breathing, it occurred to her, sounded a little uneven. From moving in this gods-rotted heavy suit, she told herself.
The ship creaked as she landed against the central deckhouse, sending a ripple of noise through the air. The echoes ricocheted off the frozen field of trash above her. She stood, muscles tense, until they stopped. Nothing else moved or shifted, and she turned back to the cabin at the stern and its handsome wooden door. The great cabin.
The frost thinned and disappeared as she continued aft. The humidity was low in the thin
atmo here. No chance for surfaces to collect the sparkling ice as they froze. Though her suit was even more cumbersome as it got colder, the extreme chill was a blessing in its own way. Hinges turning properly, the heavy door opened outward and fell back against the cabin wall. The impact sent echoes skittering across the ship again.
The regal wooden furniture of the great cabin was either bolted down or secured on ratcheting rails, but everything else had been rearranged by the deck’s sickening tilt. Bedding and personal items piled against the cabinets along the decking. The captain lay silhouetted against the wide window built along the stern, his head turned to one side. Only the glass separated him from the twinkling stars beyond. He was laying on his right arm, with his left hand out as though he’d attempted to brace against the tumble. The fingers splayed against the thick glass.
Talis let her line out to cross to the aft window. Tried not to look beyond the windowpanes. She was as skysure as any Cutter, but the emptiness outside Peridot was something else entirely. Infinite, soulless, the vacuum beckoned to her.
She braced her feet against the frame of the window to avoid stepping on the glass, which already had a diagonal split running across it. Death pallor faded the captain’s skin, as the frost had muted the paint on the hull outside. The knotted prayerlocks of Cutter religion were tangled around his head. A cream-colored ribbon still looped around a few of them at the nape of his neck. Must have come loose during whatever tragedy sunk The Emerald Empress.
His forehead had a blunt-force wound corresponding to the starburst center of the crack in the glass. Dark blood streaked his face.
Lucky bastard was dead before he could freeze.
Lifting him up by his torso, she turned him over. His uniform, pale cream trousers and dark green jacket, was formal but still within the realm of contemporary fashion. The ship hadn’t sunk all that long ago.
His right hand was tucked into his jacket’s inside breast pocket. Talis sent a silent prayer to Silus Cutter that she was nearly finished here as she fumbled with the stiff fabric to free his arm.