by Steven Bohls
“Whatever.”
“Well, wrap up the conversation before the fleets come and blast us down, steal our tug, and ship us off to the iron prisons.”
“Would they really do that?”
“Definitely. Coppers are just crazy. Irons? They think they’re ‘righteous’ and ‘noble’ and that murder, robbery, and forcing people to dig for them is all for the greater good of the sovereign.”
Jed tried to decide if he was being serious.
“Tell you what: Chitchat with any scrap of food you’d like once Bessie’s plump with loot. You can have all the privacy you want. I bet Shay would love to join. Just you, Shay, and your can. How does that sound?”
“I wasn’t talking to a can,” Jed muttered as he tucked the pie filling into his pack with an armful of other cans without even checking the labels.
“Good choice,” Captain Bog said. “Nice talk.”
Jed turned and stalked back to the ship. He emptied the pack in the mess.
Within an hour, the shelves were stocked so full that Pobble had to pile cans on the floor.
“Cans to last a month!” Captain Bog said. “Everyone unload, and take one more trip for batteries.”
By the time Bessie lifted into the air, the mess was a mound of cans, and the crew had so many batteries that the cooking bathtub was half-full of them.
“Take us out,” the captain said.
“What’s our heading?” Sprocket called.
Captain Bog lifted his chin. “Dawndrake. Let’s celebrate.”
“Aye, aye!”
“Drinks on me!” The captain scooped a handful of batteries from the tub and tossed them into the air.
Bessie sailed at one-tenth of quarter speed as the crew patched up what was left of her. “Run the engines just enough to keep us from falling,” Captain Bog told Riggs. By nightfall, the ship still had so many holes that Jed had to hop along the main deck more than he walked. As he hammered a tin cookie sheet over a cavity in the smokestack, he smiled to himself. It wasn’t too hard to fix a thing made from junk to begin with. The next morning, they worked most of the day scooping junk and patching holes. The red light had returned on Spyglass’s face, and Jed considered using a nail to permanently fasten it down.
When the sun began to fall, Sprocket called from the stack nest. “Dawndrake township, ahoy!”
A huge mass floated against the sunset. “That’s Dawndrake?” Jed asked no one in particular. It looked more like a copper iceberg plucked from the ocean and hung in the sky.
“Mm-hm.” Pobble nodded. “Best pubs in three townships.”
Hundreds of propellers—each as wide as Bessie—spun at the base of the township with blurring speed.
“But it’s in the air,” Jed said.
Pobble nodded. “Where else would it be?”
“On the ground? Does every town fly?”
“I suppose some are on the ground. Scrap place to put one, if ya ask me. Don’t last too long, what with the junkstorms. One storm’ll bury you before you can blink.”
Sky ships buzzed around the town: schooners like the tinker’s, oil rigs, two-man shuttles that looked like rowboats with a rear propeller, and even a bulky steamboat. They docked beside a long strip of decking that protruded from the town like a ship’s plank. Sprocket engaged the sky prop and set the ship idly hovering. Riggs roped the stern to the dock.
“Isn’t there a place to land?” Jed asked.
“Dawndrake would need twice the undertown propellers if every ship sat on top of it,” Pobble said.
The captain cleared his throat. “All right, let’s see who’s staying with Bessie.” Something rattled between his cupped palms as he shook them. “Riggs, you first.”
He parted his thumbs an inch. Riggs plucked out a battery slathered in black paint. The captain moved to Pobble, who picked a black-painted battery. Shay clapped her hands at the game and reached to take one. Captain Bog grinned. “You think I’m leaving you with the tug after you snatched my favorite blanket? Not a chance. I’d come back missing my pillow!” He looked at Shay with warm eyes. Protective, even.
One day on the tug and she’s already charmed the very bear of a man who wanted to toss me to my death for a bit of “evening entertainment.”
Sprocket reached in and pulled out a black battery. “Down to you and me, Ki,” the captain said, shaking the last two batteries together. Kizer concentrated as if willing the right battery to come to his fingers. He pinched one and plucked it free. Red.
“Ah. Bad luck, Ki,” Captain Bog said, closing his fist around the last battery.
Kizer scowled and flicked the battery to the floor. “Third time in a row.”
Captain Bog patted Kizer’s shoulder apologetically. “Next time.” He turned to the others. “Everyone take one handful of batteries. Let’s celebrate.” Everyone dug into the bathtub, carefully lifting a heap of batteries as if trying to redefine the volume of “one handful.”
As they left the ship, Captain Bog fidgeted with something in his pocket. He smiled at Jed and revealed the tip of a second red battery.
“Shh,” he whispered.
Jed grinned. There’d been two red batteries the whole time. It was brilliant. If Bog always picked last, he’d never be stuck on watch.
They walked in a line along the thin strip of dock to the main town. The junk below was an indiscernible brown blur.
“Watch yourselves here,” Captain Bog said to Jed. “Dawndrake’s a copper township.”
“What does that mean?” Jed asked.
“It means everyone who lives here is crazy. And not just regular crazy. Full-on gutter-clunk crazy. Light-buildings-on-fire-and-run-through-them-naked crazy. All of them.”
Sprocket folded her arms and glared. “Hey! I was born here! What does that say about me?”
“You’re right,” Captain Bog said. “Sprocket’s not that crazy. She’s worse. Much worse.”
“That’s right, I am,” Sprocket said with a satisfied nod. “And don’t forget it.”
“Crazy how?” Jed asked.
Captain Bog thought for a moment. “Let me put it this way: I’ve never seen a group of people who want so badly to die.”
“That’s not true,” Sprocket said. “I don’t want to die.”
“Oh, so then you haven’t competed in the new gauntlet in Jysterfield?”
“They put up a second gauntlet?”
Captain Bog shook his head. “You wouldn’t be interested.”
Sprocket gave him an offended scowl. “Why not?”
“Because it’s insane, that’s why. They call it the Juggernaut. The course runs more high-speed death fans, acid-cloud bombs, and suicide spikes than even an iron battle cruiser could hold! Only four javelins out of a hundred even survive the run!”
Excitement fluttered in Sprocket’s eyes. “I’ve got two weeks’ shore leave saved up. I bet if I leave after—”
Captain Bog held up his hand. “You telling me you want to use your time off to run through some death gauntlet that I made up just now to prove a point?”
“Wait.” Sprocket opened her mouth. “There is no…” She glared at him, and her shoulders slouched. “Way to build up a girl’s dreams, then crush them in your ugly sandpaper hands!”
Captain Bog turned to Jed. “See what I mean? Just wait till we’re inside the township.”
They walked along the dock until it connected to a network of streets that squiggled into the giant cluster of buildings. The buildings nearest the town’s edge were only a few stories high, but the deeper the group went toward the center, the higher the buildings reached into the air.
The narrow structures couldn’t have been more than one room wide, yet each was easily twenty stories tall. Jed imagined tipping one over with his bare hands. That was when Jed began to understand what Captain Bog had meant.
Thousands of cables, ladders, catwalks, and zip lines connected buildings together in a rickety network of scaffolding. Copper townspeople leaped from
tip to tip with nothing but air below them. They sped recklessly down zip lines, lazily holding on with just a single hand. The catwalks had no railings. The ladders wobbled unsteadily. And the web of zip lines tangled together—one giant collision waiting to happen.
“They’re so skinny,” Jed said to Pobble.
“What are?”
“The buildings.”
“Buildings? You mean the spikes?”
“Is that a spike?” Jed asked, pointing to one of the pencil-like towers.
“Course it is. Don’t you got spikes in Denver?”
“We call them buildings. Or houses. We’ve got lots of houses, but they’re not very tall at all. Sort of short and fat.”
Pobble thought for a moment. “Then you stack ’em on top of each other?”
Jed laughed. “No. Just next to each other.”
“But if there’s lots, how do you fit them all in Denver?”
“Denver’s on the ground. We can build houses wherever we want.”
Pobble shook his head. “Not here. Towns would need more propellers if they had Denver spikes.”
“Is that why they’re so tall and skinny? So they don’t weigh as much?”
Pobble shrugged. “I ain’t the magistrate. I couldn’t tell you.”
The coppers looked like a colony of bees, swarming wildly through the town. Some rode coils of copper rail that spiraled around the spikes. Others hopped on pulley platforms that yanked them up into the sky.
Jed read the copper lettering on the black double doors of a spike:
BILLY BRISTLE’S MAPS
ACCURATE AND UPDATED WEEKLY!
The next shop advertised ALL THINGS SHATTER: CUSTOM SPINDLES, HIGH-CAPACITY BATTERY DRUMS, AND QUALITY FINISHES. The shop after that was a maintenance bay boasting two-hour engine tune-ups for any standard S-four or T-one block. They passed a 24-HOUR BUNK and an ALL-FRUIT-CAN SNACKERY. Jed saw a customs declaration office, permit registration buildings, smokestack repair shops, and a sign for CLEAN BUBBLES DECK-SCRUBBING.
They reached a platform, and Captain Bog opened a metal control box. A dozen empty slots numbered one to twelve were marked with names of businesses. The captain plugged batteries into slots all the way to the fifth one, which read COPPER ROSE, and pressed a button. A waist-high gate slid into place, and the platform rose up the side of the spike.
At the fifth floor it halted, and the expended batteries hissed and dropped into a waste barrel below the panel.
Before them stood an elaborate set of double doors. The wood was carved into intertwined roses. In the center of each door, the roses were coated in a film of copper.
“Ah, the Copper Rose,” Captain Bog said.
Pobble opened his mouth. “The Copper Rose? I’ve never stepped one foot in there.”
“Well”—Captain Bog smiled—“you’re rich now, so step both feet in.” He pushed open the doors.
If an opera house could be a restaurant, this was it. When he was ten, Jed’s father had taken him to the opera. “Women appreciate a man with culture!” he’d said. “Now hide these bottles of root beer in your coat. They don’t allow drinks at the opera. That’s why I always pay extra for a curtained booth! I hope your mom remembered the roast beef sandwiches. Root beer’s not the same without ’em, after all.”
Everything about the Copper Rose reminded Jed of that night: Scarlet curtains ruffled around private booths, their thick fabric bunched in the center with gold rope. Plush chairs with buttoned cushions. Roman columns. And just the right amount of amber-tinted light to make everything look like aged gold.
For once, nothing felt like junk. Chair matched chair. Table matched table. Waiters wore matching tuxedos with tails and white gloves. Jed pictured the tinker here, perhaps wearing a monocle and laughing the way rich people did over trivialities. It was a distinct sound, somewhere between a “Ha!” and a “Ho!”—always in threes and often followed by a “Well said, chap!” or preceded by an “I say!”
A chandelier hung overhead. How had the crystal even survived a junkstorm?
“Your best table, miss,” Captain Bog said to the hostess.
She led them to a booth enclosed by a red curtain.
“What can I start you off with?” She snapped cloth napkins in front of them in the air, then draped them across their laps.
“Pineapple juice,” Captain Bog said, studying the menu in front of him. “Aaaand…split pea soup.”
Jed nodded to himself. At least someone might appreciate the eleven different kinds of canned peas he had found. Either that or the captain was just trying to sound fancy.
“Do you have strawberries in syrup?” Sprocket asked.
“Of course.”
“Then two cans for me,” she said with a smile.
Riggs ordered maraschino cherries and applesauce. Shay ordered pickles and a can of Burstin’ Cheddar’s Easy-Cheese. Pobble ordered three cans of chicken, two cans of peaches, one can of chili, and a can of sugarcane syrup to drink.
“And for you?” the waitress asked Jed.
“Just pineapple juice, thanks, perhaps with a splash of guava nectar? Unstirred.”
“Might I say that’s an excellent choice?”
Jed smiled. “You may. Thank you.”
She left and returned a few minutes later with their order. She passed Pobble a porcelain gravy boat of sugarcane syrup, a thick crystal parfait dish filled with the peaches, and a fancy ashtray with the chili.
Jed forced himself not to laugh—even when Pobble lifted the gravy boat, his pinky outstretched, and sipped syrup from the spout.
Captain Bog lifted his goblet of pineapple juice. “Here’s to Jed.” They cheered. “Here’s to a new life of endless riches!”
Jed’s smile disappeared. “Endless?”
“As long as that thing keeps running,” Pobble said.
Jed stared at the smiling faces. “I appreciate all you’ve done for me—I really do—but I’m not here to look for treasure. My parents are missing, and I need to find them. They could be in trouble, or hurt, or…” His voice stumbled.
The crew looked at one another, smiles fading.
“Where do you plan to start?” Captain Bog set down his drink.
“I don’t know.”
“Then what’s the harm in biding your time? Scooping up bathtubs full of batteries?”
“I’m not here to get rich!” Jed slammed his drink on the table. Pineapple juice splashed around it. “I’m sorry.” He drew an unsteady breath. “I didn’t mean it to come out like that. But I can’t just wait around, hoping I’ll bump into them. I need to search.”
“Search how? Walk?” the captain asked.
“If that’s what it takes.”
Captain Bog leaned back. “Here’s what I see: you need a boat, a crew that knows the terrain, and resources to travel. I happen to have two of the three. But like any crew, we need gears for the engine, oil for the pistons, and food for the men.”
“Just the men?” Sprocket asked. “Then what am I supposed to eat?”
Captain Bog rolled his eyes. “Deck planks.” He turned back to Jed. “We can help each other out.”
“You’re going to help me look for my parents? Like you helped me look for my grandfather? That didn’t work out so well for me. Thanks, but no thanks.”
The captain leaned forward. “Take us to one junkstorm a week and my ship’s yours for the other six days. You point; Sprocket’ll fly.”
“How do I know you’ll actually do that after a storm?”
“You already found one. The next six days are yours.”
Jed paused. “Wait, really?” The captain nodded. A ship to himself. That was more than he could hope for on his own—by a mile. “Deal.”
Captain Bog grinned, and his scars stretched over his face. “And if you keep cooking, that makes you part of the crew, and crew gets equal share of the plunder.”
“I’d cook whether I got a share or not. I have to eat that scrap too, you know.”
“I’ll drink to that!” Pobble lifted the gravy boat and took a swig of syrup.
Captain Bog chugged his pineapple juice, then clapped the glass down. “Who are we looking for? Give me their names.”
“Ryan and Mary.”
“Ryan and Mary what?”
“I can’t say. They told me not to tell anyone my last name.”
“What scrap advice is that?” Riggs said, wiping cherry juice from his lips. “How are we supposed to find them?”
“So we don’t know exactly who we’re looking for, where they are, what happened to them, or who took them?” Captain Bog asked. “Did I miss anything?”
“I know that’s not much to go on,” Jed said.
“What about friends? Enemies? People who wanted to hurt them?”
Hurt them? Who would want to hurt them? “No. No one.”
“What about motive? Were they rich?”
Jed’s parents had never really talked about money. They didn’t seem rich—but they weren’t poor. Although…weeklong vacations every few months my whole life? Normal people don’t have the money to do that, right? But their house wasn’t big—or new. The cabinetry was outdated, the linoleum scuffed, and the carpets smelled faintly of whatever wet dog had lived there before them.
“No. I don’t think they’re rich.”
Riggs pointed at the watch. “That’s something to go on. Where did they get it?”
“How many times do I have to tell you? I have no idea where it came from. Okay?”
Riggs raised his hands as if Jed had pulled a knife. “Just trying to help.”
More like fishing for clues.
Captain Bog tapped the rim of his empty glass. “I need more. Trying to find two people somewhere in the junkyard with nothing to go on is like…” He thought for a moment. “Ah, scrap it all. That doesn’t need a comparison—it’s like trying to find two people somewhere in the junkyard with nothing to go on!”
“If I knew anything else, I’d tell you!”
“Ah, that’s good to know. Then what are their last names?”
Jed glared. Captain Bog winked.
“Ryan and Mary,” the captain repeated to himself. “Hmm. I suppose we could start in Yillond, and then—” He paused. “Shay! What are you doing?”
Shay was squirting lines of Easy-Cheese in an oval over the tablecloth. “Dot, dot, dot,” she said, speckling dots of cheese inside the shape. “It’s a lemon! Now I have yellow!”