Sly Mongoose

by Tobias S. Buckell

  One of the crew was so pale-skinned that Timas couldn’t help staring. “Where’s he from?”

  Katerina glanced at him. “He’s all the way from somewhere deep in the League of Human Affairs. Rydr’s World.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It’s in the lamina.” Katerina tapped the side of her head. “We’ll have to get you a viewer when we get to Eupatoria, you’ll be able to see all the layers of info. The world won’t be so . . . naked to you.”

  “How long will it take to get there?” Timas changed the subject away from his inability to see hidden information she saw all around her due to his poorer background. It was like being illiterate.

  “Six hours. Settle in.”

  He found a button that let the chair slide back. Six hours. Six long hours to try and figure out how to apologize to Pepper. Six hours to try and get used to the shaking, bumping, and rattling of the airship. Thankfully, it looked like they wouldn’t put Pepper to trial now, at least. So really, Timas had only himself to save, and the honor of his family.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Things, Pepper figured, weren’t completely out of hand yet. They were headed back into the maw of the situation, closer to the range of the Swarm, true, but now he had more information to fight it with.

  And full medical facilities lay in his immediate future. The desperate plan to rebuild the groundsuits to make up for his somewhat limbless situation could be shelved.

  The girl had said the Swarm was hitting whole cities. By now his brethren throughout the Ragamuffin centers of power had to suspect that something was going down on Chilo.

  But could he do anything to buy them time to arrive?

  Pepper thought about the scorched planet that had so awed the crew of the Sheikh Professional.

  It was a glimpse of Chilo’s future. Each and every one of the floating cities would have to get burned out of the sky, and the planet quarantined.

  A lot of human suffering.

  If the other airship passengers thought he leaned back and groaned because of his injuries, that was fine, but it was really the weight of seeing what was to come.

  The drone of the propellers continued on as time painfully inched by, the crew growing more and more agitated. Pepper finally looked back at Katerina. The distant sun glinted off her polished eyepiece, but both her eyes were closed. She wasn’t sleeping, but reading. Her eyes flicked up and down, left and right, processing information. “They’re more nervous.”

  Katerina opened her eyes. She snatched a cup of water and held it until a patch of turbulence passed, then let it sit by itself. “Emergency martial voting sessions all over the Aeolian Consensus. We’re all trying to decide exactly what to do about the Situation.”

  He could hear the capitalized name in her speech. “The Situation . . .”

  “Three cities, of the twelve now. No traffic, and no traffic with the citizenry.” Katerina licked her lips. “We know we face some threat. A quarter of our voting public has just disappeared. It’s unprecedented and we’re in sort of a panic. Alliances and political action groups are springing up all over the place. Debates are everywhere.”

  “Democracy in inaction,” Pepper said. “Everyone has an opinion on what to do, so few have action.”

  Katerina hit the back of his seat, annoyed. “A referendum is being called on creating an action force. We have argued once, why continue?”

  “Because you’re only now finally getting around to creating an army.”

  “Weapons are being fabbed by volunteer manufacturers on citizen pool loan groups in anticipation of an all-out assault. My recording of your story is being widely circulated as a call to action.” Katerina looked out over Timas and Itotia to the porthole. “Don’t underestimate us.”

  “I’m not.” Pepper smiled. “I just don’t want us to show up at the wrong city.”

  “Me either.” Katerina looked down and closed her eyes again. “I’d like to go home, but they just shut their docks down and declared quarantines throughout the city. There are reports of infiltration by these things.”

  Timas had been listening in; now he jerked his head up. “Your family?”

  Katerina bit her lip. “They’re okay for now. But the other cities are only taking essential traffic. There’s nowhere for them to run. The betting and odds pool is calling for my home to be dark city number four.”

  Pepper nodded. “Katerina, is there a pattern?”

  She frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “The cities, in which direction is the Swarm spreading?”

  Katerina didn’t answer for a long moment. “You suggest it is spreading toward us?”

  A bit of turbulence hit. The airship rumbled and kicked against them. Timas gripped the edges of his seat, and Pepper looked around at the crew.

  They were inching toward the portholes.

  Looking for something visible.

  Pepper sat up. “What is it?”

  The airship pitched, gaining altitude in a hurry while doing a slow figure eight.

  “I’m cut out!” Katerina grabbed the backs of their seats. She looked panicked. “I got dropped. I can’t reach anything Aeolian outside the ship.”

  Pepper looked to the front. “Captain!”

  An Aeolian stood up. Pepper remembered her voice from back in the courtyard. “We’re being followed. The blimps won’t identify themselves, so assume the worse. And we can’t get anything out. You’re right, we’re being jammed.”

  The Aeolians all stood now, crowding the aircar as their cloaks shifted around. They pulled up the floorboards, unzipping their large duffel bags.

  “Boarding party? Or worse?” Pepper asked. “And you’re leaving me all trussed up!”

  The Aeolian who’d spoke removed her helmet. Her hair had been completely shaved to let the helmet make contact with skin. Green tattoos of scimitars ran up the side of her neck and the back of her head. Outside of the helmet’s protective visor her brown eyes scanned the aircar with a few blinks. “We caught you, that should speak to our abilities. The boarding party will be in for a nasty surprise.”

  Pepper cocked his head. “You’re really going to leave me to be delivered like a wrapped gift?”

  “You really are so arrogant to assume you’re the only thing of value on this airship?”

  “How often does this sort of thing happen out here, then?” Pepper asked.

  “Not often,” Itotia spoke up from behind him. “There is a lot of smuggling. The Ehactl cities like Yatapek, around the Great Storm, allow the smugglers safe harbor, we often need the goods. But outright attacks like this haven’t happened in years.”

  “Yeah, but you still have guns mounted around the city docks.”

  “Rare doesn’t equal none,” Itotia said.

  Pepper looked back at the Aeolian. She rubbed the top of her scalp and pulled her helmet back on. Green light danced over her eyes. “Tennaes, Andrew, Shella, Joquim, get up in the airbag.”

  They didn’t respond verbally, but the four Aeolians stood up and walked over to the crew. One of them undogged a hatch at the top of the aircar and pulled the ladder down.

  “After you.”

  The four Aeolians clambered up, pulling their bags after them. All without a word.

  Pepper looked back at the woman he suspected led this small group. “Just promise me, if it gets dire, you’ll let me stand for myself.”

  “Of course.” She walked up the aisle to stand behind the captain and looked forward. No doubt she could see more information through her helmet, but that human core that wanted to see out at the situation with real eyes and real senses always overruled, Pepper knew.

  “How did they find us?” Timas asked, his eyes wide.

  “We’re pretty high profile, all they had to do was listen carefully to public Aeolian democracy in action. A kidnap and ransom, with high stakes; whoever is planning this knows things are crazy enough right now.” Katerina looked disgusted and had folded her arms. “They
take advantage of us at the weakest point. As representative, I’m empowered to say that we’ll do everything in our power to hunt them down and bring them to justice, but that we can’t get any official help out to us in time.”

  “Everything is changing around us very quickly,” Pepper said, trying to reassure her. She was feeling left out to dry, no doubt, and regretting that chance had put her here. He couldn’t blame her for the emotions obvious on her face.

  “You live this sort of life.” Katerina looked at him like he was a bug of some sort. “And you’re the valuable resource here. You’ll get ransomed. Timas, Itotia, and me, we all stand a chance of getting caught in the crossfire.”

  Far from being the calm ambassador to the Aeolian body, she was an angry young girl right now, facing the prospect of death by herself without the protective embrace of her entire civilization.

  At least she had a self-defense mechanism, Pepper knew. Timas and his mother didn’t have anything, and both of them seemed calmer to him. They both faced a harder life, and Timas, every time he was dropped to the surface in some ancient, substandard groundsuit, faced dangers that most men Pepper knew couldn’t handle.

  He looked back at her. “You’ll be fine. You’re a living avatar. You’ll fetch a nice ransom.”

  Then he realized what he’d said and glanced at Itotia, who just shook her head at him. Timas, to his credit, bit his lip and said nothing.

  The captain held up his hand and looked back, goggled eyes blinking. “You’ll feel some thumping and shaking. We’re dropping cargo and then chaff.”

  “We’re only an hour away from Yatapek,” Timas said. “Shouldn’t we be returning?”

  “We are.” Katerina pointed at the sun. “Part of the figure eights. Your people already scrambled a couple fighter blimps our way.”

  “Then why are we still climbing?” Timas’s frustration filled the words.

  “So that when they hit us, we’ll have more time to fall,” Katerina said. “They’re underneath, blocking our way to the clouds in case we try and run to hide in them. The heavy metals in the cloud vapor wreaks hell with radar.”

  Itotia fingered a small bracelet and muttered to herself. Prayers for their survival.

  Pepper chose not to castigate her. It was as productive as anything else they could do for the next fifteen minutes as they waited for their predators to rise up to them.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The airship made one particularly hard turn toward the oncoming pirates behind them. The sound of compressors filled the cabin, sucking lifting air into heavy bottles. Everything shivered as the airship props pitched down and struggled to keep them in the air now that the bag lost more and more buoyancy.

  “I’m so sorry. So sorry,” Timas said to Itotia. He’d tried to make his own way, make people pay, and now he’d caught his mother up in the damage he’d done.

  “Don’t apologize. I’m the one who let you down. I let this man into our house.” She gripped his hand, and he squeezed back.

  “Okay,” the captain murmured over the speakers in the cabin. “The oncoming ships are popping up fast and calling for us to heave-to. Make sure you’re strapped in, we’re going to be dropping really quickly any second now.”

  Timas grabbed Katerina’s hand. She looked confused for a second.

  The engines swung back to their normal orientation with a thud. The pilot pitched the nose of the airship down and dove. Timas’s stomach hit the back of his throat, but not in the normal queasy manner he knew all too well.

  Despite a well-snugged belt, he rose off the padded seat. That changed as the pilot angled the nose of the airship down even farther and Timas pressed into the back of the chair.

  Looking ahead at the long sets of chairs and over the back of the pilot’s large chair, he could see through the pilot’s windows. The familiar orange clouds lurked below them.

  “Five thousand,” Katerina whispered.

  “What?” Timas looked over at her. She had closed her eyes tight.

  “Feet. The ones chasing us are just seconds below us at this dive rate.”

  The propellers wailed, trying to help them as they gained enough speed to hopefully flash past the attackers underneath them.

  “Captain says that they’ve stopped ascending now,” Katerina reported. “They figured his tactic out.” The previous announcements had just been for Timas and his mother. Now the pilot was too caught up in his world to remember to voice this out loud.

  Katerina grabbed Timas and pointed ahead. He could see five shiny darts in a loose pentagon. They grew larger as the pilot dove right at them. A bold move.

  Tiny bits of dust twinkled in the air between the approaching airships and Timas.

  “They’re firing on us!” Katerina gasped. At the same time three Aeolians broke out of their chairs and jumped in front of everyone. They threw their cloaks wide open.

  Small smacking sounds filled the cabin. The cloaks protected them, a shield that flared and rippled as if stones had hit calm water, dissipating the impact of weapons fire.

  “Small caliber warning fire with tracers,” the captain said. “They’re repeating surrender demands.”

  “They need him alive,” the woman Aeolian said. “They know we’re armored. They won’t do anything much more serious, but it will force us out of the cabin.”

  Acrid sulfur-tinged atmosphere leaked in through the bullet holes. They’d dropped far enough down that Chilo’s atmosphere pushed in through the tiny punctures. Timas started coughing. Masks dropped from the ceiling with oxygen, and Timas grabbed the first one and took a deep breath. Itotia had hers on, and Katerina did, too.

  The sounds quit, but as one all the Aeolians looked at the ceiling and airbag. All three of them chorused “shit.”

  Distant popping sounds and one minor explosion, the sound of rigging shaking and slapping, made Timas shrink farther down into his chair. The airship struggled to maneuver.

  “We’re through them.” Katerina sounded muffled through the emergency oxygen mask. The acidic air made her eyes tear up.

  The Aeolians behind them leaped up, cloaks spread out, covering them from the rear.

  More popping made Timas jump, but no more shots hit the cabin—they all hit the airbag above. The other ships were trying to get them to lose enough buoyancy to surrender and be taken off, but not enough to send them plummeting into Chilo’s unsurvivable depths.

  Katerina, Itotia, and Timas scrunched down, trying to keep a low profile. Timas heard a chuckle from Pepper in the chair in front of him.

  Gravity hit Timas and shoved him deep into his chair. The airship had leveled and straightened out. “Twenty thousand feet lower now.” Katerina looked out the porthole. “The pilot found some cloud cover.”

  “Go go go.” The Aeolian behind Timas unbuckled his straps and then wrenched him up. “We need to get out of the cabin.”

  Timas took a deep final breath from the mask and scrambled out with Itotia to follow. The ladder had been pulled down again. He was picked up and handed to a pair of hands that yanked him up into the airlock.

  “We stay here, the cabin’s damaged and won’t survive the next trick,” said the soldier who pulled him up.

  Itotia came next, then Pepper, and finally Katerina.

  Pepper slumped in the corner of the tiny airlock.

  Timas looked through the porthole in the upper door. Overhead three large round balloons hung, cradled by catwalks and rigging, pipes and hoses that threaded all throughout. Several large generators sat mounted on bellowslike suspension rigs between each balloon.

  “Coming through.” The Aeolians pushed through the lock and past them up the ladder. They fanned out into the interior of the airship’s giant bag.

  In the cabin they’d been lined up in the chairs and cramped. Now among the trembling catwalks, it felt like just a handful of them were up there, lost in the airship’s innards.

  The pilot shouldered his way up last. His data goggles trailed cables that h
e’d slung over his shoulder. “Come on come on,” he hissed as he shoved past. The airship still dove, but not as rapidly.

  Pepper needed to be pulled through, which the two Aeolians left in the lock did. Once Pepper was up, Timas, Itotia, and Katerina joined everyone.

  “There aren’t any seats.” One of the Aeolians tossed straps and rope at them. “Find a railing, bind yourself to it.”

  The pilot ran toward the nose cone where he sat down on a tiny jumpseat, strapped himself in, and plugged his goggles in.

  Without the insulation of the cabin everything sounded louder, more mechanical. Everything echoed several times inside, bouncing off the sides of the giant balloon. The drone of the propellers outside permeated the air and reached into the back of Timas’s throat.

  “It’s weird,” Katerina said as the three of them huddled around Pepper. His guards lashed themselves to the railings as best they could.

  “That we’re being attacked?” Timas saw that she stared down at the catwalk, and at the airlock they’d just come through.

  “I’ve never been cut off for this long. From everything Aeolian.”

  Timas stared at her. They might both be teenagers, but their worlds were so far apart. She had her perfectly engineered body, modifications available for the right money, and the constant babble in her head that linked her to the ghosts of her entire city and the Consensus it belonged to.

  What a strange thing to be.

  The airship leaned to the right. The catwalk shifted and twisted underneath them. Smacking sounds made Timas jump. “We’re being shot at again?”

  Itotia looked up. “I don’t see any new holes.”

  “No, it’s the pressure, we’re still dropping a bit,” Katerina said. “We’re deep in the clouds now. But this airship isn’t made for it.”

  The skin of the airbag looked like it was being sucked inward. It strained against the metal skeleton. Tiny jets of Chilo’s atmosphere seeped in through bullet holes in the outer fabric. Eventually that would affect the air in here, making it dense, and less able to lift them.