by J. C. Staudt
“So between those two modes, it’s the perfect weapon,” I said.
Chaz made a face. “Far from it, unfortunately. The amount of power these things require is astronomical. There’s a supercharged battery for each of the rifle’s energy modes, but the plasma mode is unique.” He tucked his hair behind his ear, then picked up a slim, elongated box about the length of a finger. There was an opening along one side, through which I could see a neat row of small metallic spheres.
“That doesn’t look like any battery I’ve ever seen,” I said.
“That’s because it isn’t. This is a magazine—a smaller version of what you’d find in an automatic weapon. These beads are the ammunition. They’re made of an incredibly strong graphite matrix composite, reinforced with carbon fiber.”
“You’ve lost me,” I admitted.
“Okay, forget about that. Here’s where the technology gets pretty amazing. These beads are hollow. You know what’s inside?”
“Orange juice.”
“No, seriously. Guess.”
“Cow dung.”
He frowned. “Nothing’s inside. Or actually, not nothing. Air. Just plain old, everyday, breathable air.”
I looked at the magazine. “You need a lot more air than that to breathe.”
“Yes, but not to create a ball of plasma. Without these reinforced carbon fiber spheres to carry the plasma to its target, the ionization field would disperse before it got anywhere. Plus, it would be way too bright—possibly even blinding—to look at.”
“Why are you telling me all this?”
“Why do you think? Because I want to put one in your arm… as soon as it heals up all the way, of course.”
I shook my head. “You know I don’t do internal explosives. It’s my first rule of augmentation. That’s just asking to get blown up. Besides, this is the arm you put the crackler box into, and look at it now. It’s a shadow of its former self. After I get this stupid cast off, no more augments until it’s back to normal.”
“Don’t you understand what I just told you?”
“Not really. I thought I mentioned that.”
“It’s air, Muller. It’s a magazine full of tiny balls of air. There’s a plasma cell that handles the ionization process, and a fusion battery to power it all. That’s it. The worst that could happen is the battery ruptures and you get a few acid burns. You’ve had more serious injuries than that within the last week.”
I folded my arms, tender on my injured one, and stroked my chin. “Drawbacks. Go.”
“Range is the biggest. The carbon eventually wears out because of the extremely high temperature. After a few hundred feet, your target is basically going to feel a warm breeze.”
“Go on.”
“The second limitation is supply. Each of these magazines appears to hold roughly two-hundred rounds. Blaylocke did a lot of shooting back at the palace. Ostensibly, the robots used the weapons prior to that.”
“What’ve we got left? Hit me with it.”
“About eighty rounds.”
“You’re forgetting one thing, Chaz ol’ buddy,” I said. “The eighteen Evelyns in the cargo bay each have a weapon just like this one.”
“Hmm,” he said. “I didn’t think about the probable design similarities between the operatives’ weaponry and that of the automatons.”
“It’s worth checking out,” I said. “Excellent work. I’ll be back tomorrow for more good news.”
I left the workshop before Ezra could pull me aside and ask whether I’d talked to Sable yet. Where I went next made me feel like a real wussbag, since it wasn’t to find her. I convinced myself these other things were worth putting off my talk with her. They weren’t.
I’d put Mini-Max under the tutelage of Thorley Colburn so the young heir could, quite literally, learn the ropes. My plan was to let him spend time at each of the various posts around the boat in an effort to force some usefulness out of him. He was going to be around a little while, and if we found Pyras it would be best that he blend in with the other sailors. Nothing ought to incite thousands of primitives like knowing the ruler of the world is right in front of them.
Max and Thorley were working on their knots when I found them at the ship’s bow.
“How’s it going, Max?” I asked.
“Well,” he said.
I raised my chin toward the mast high above. “You ready to get up on the ratlines and show us what you’ve got?”
His eyes widened. He shook his head.
“Relax, I’m teasing you.” The kid’s as jumpy as his old man, I thought.
“Rigging safety was the first lesson I taught him,” Thorley said. “He didn’t enjoy my stories about people who didn’t follow safety rules.”
“Listen to this guy, Max,” I said. “He knows what he’s talking about. They getting you fed downstairs and everything?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You don’t have to call me sir.”
“Mother says I must mind my manners if I’m to be Regent one day.”
“Swashbuckling vagabonds don’t need manners, kid. Just call me Muller and him Thorley. And don’t even think about calling any of my crewmen ‘sir.’ The last thing we want is them thinking they’re respectable.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Okay. I’m doing more harm than good here. Keep me up-to-date on his progress, Thorley.”
“Aye, Cap’n.”
Before I could leave, Max spoke up. “I was wondering if I might ask you a question, sir.”
“Sure.”
“Where are we going?”
I thought for a moment. “You’re old enough to understand the difference between primitives and techsouls, right?”
He nodded.
“I’m trying to help some primitives who have been taken advantage of.”
“Why?”
“Well, because they saved my life, first of all. But also because I think it’s wrong that so many techsouls hate them.”
“I mean why were they taken advantage of?” he said.
“Oh. Because they trusted a techsoul, and he wasn’t a nice guy.”
“I always thought father was harsh on the primitives,” said Max.
“Yeah, he was pretty harsh. You don’t agree?”
Max shook his head. “They’re only a little different from us. People shouldn’t hate them for that.”
“You should tell that to my parents,” I said.
“Huh?”
“Never mind. I’ll see you around, kid.”
With no other errands to distract me from my ultimate goal, I found Sable in the storage hold, the cargo bay’s smaller counterpart, where the more readily accessible supplies were kept. Supplies like Nerimund’s wooden statue, which Sable was sitting beside now. She glanced at me when I came into the room, then looked away.
“I wanted to—”
“You were right,” she said, almost a whisper.
“I don’t think I was. But if that’s how you feel, I—”
“I mean about Nerimund. He’s alive. Come here. Touch him.”
I crossed the room and put a hand on the statue’s head.
“Do you feel that?”
“It’s… warm.”
The charred black patch where Nerimund had been burned was almost gone. All that remained was a small brown spot the size of a chip.
“Thank you for noticing him.”
“It’s amazing, the things you notice when you’re being dragged through town by a pair of eight-foot-tall robots,” I said.
Sable wasn’t in the mood for levity. “I’m just glad we found him.”
“Me too,” I said.
We were both silent for a long time.
“Okay, I really hate this. I’m terrible at feelings. Having them. Talking about them. Thinking about talking about them. So I’ll give it my best try, but I apologize in advance if it doesn’t go well.”
“I understand,” she said, “but a little explanation about the other night would�
�ve been nice, instead of just leaving me to wonder this whole time.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do now,” I said. Tires were already squealing in my head, the proverbial getaway vehicle I was using all my willpower to resist.
“Okay, so…”
“You knew from the moment I set foot on the Galeskimmer that I was the kind of guy you shouldn’t trust. With your heart, or anything else.”
“You risked your life for me, Mull. Why would I doubt you?”
“It’s not that you should doubt me. It’s that you deserve better than me.”
She stood. “Oh, please. That’s the biggest load I’ve ever heard. Do you really think this is about what anyone deserves? What about the way I feel? I know you feel the same way, so why are you fighting it?”
“Because I’m… afraid. I don’t want to make you a promise I can’t keep. And because there’s so much else going on. Chaz and Blaylocke need to get home, Yingler needs to be brought to justice, and I need to figure out a way to beat Maclin once and for all, so we can put the Regent back on his throne. He’s going to be different than his father. Better. I can already see it in him.”
“Let me help you,” she said.
“You will,” I said. “Just not in the way we both might want. Not yet. There’s also Tom, my parents, the gold I buried in the Kalican Heights, and finding Pyras. There are so many problems to solve, and no clear way to solve half of them. I just need some time alone to figure things out.”
Sable’s eyes welled up. She bit her lip and nodded.
“I’m sorry. I know this isn’t the answer you wanted.”
Through her tears, Sable gave me one of her trademark smirks. “You screwed up the whole world, Muller.”
“Yeah, well… screwing stuff up has always kind of been my thing. Case in point.”
She sniffed. “You’re wrong. Your thing is getting things done. In the short time I’ve known you, you’ve accomplished more than anyone I’ve ever met. You managed to find a lost city of primitives, steal millions of chips’ worth of gravstone, fend off an entire tribe of ridgebacks, sell the aforementioned gravstone, kidnap a baron, infiltrate a high-security floater to rescue a man you’d never met, break us out of prison, overthrow the Regency with an army of robots, and escape the ensuing battle with nothing but a few scratches.”
“Very bad scratches,” I pointed out. “And to be fair, you and your crew helped me with a lot of those things. Most of them, in fact.”
She smiled. “My point is that you’re overwhelmed. And that’s okay. But the Muller I know doesn’t let anything hold him back for long. Not even a whole list of things.”
“Oh yeah? And what does the Muller you know do to get over something like this?”
“He admits when he’s in over his head. He stops trying to always be the one rescuing everyone else, and he lets his friends rescue him for once.”
“I don’t need rescuing,” I said. “I need solutions.”
“There you go again. Doing it all on your own. Why can’t you just ask for help?”
“I ask for plenty of help. Chaz is doing his thing. The rest of the crew is doing theirs.”
“Ordering your subordinates around isn’t the same as asking them to help you solve a problem. It’s okay to need people, Muller.”
“I guess neediness isn’t in my blood. If you don’t believe me, you should meet my dad.”
“I was wondering when you were going to introduce us,” she said.
“No, I meant in a figurative sense. Please stay away from my parents.”
She looked hurt.
“Not because I don’t want them to meet you,” I clarified. “I would just rather you not meet them.”
“Your Ostelle is a pretty big boat,” she said. “But it’s not that big.”
I sighed. “Okay, fine. I’ll introduce you. Just avoid eye contact and stick to yes or no answers.”
She laughed. “You make them sound like dangerous criminals.”
“I’m a dangerous criminal,” I said. “They’re worse. They decorate the ship for holidays.”
“Something’s wrong with you,” she said.
“Tell me about it. Listen, I don’t want things to be weird between us.”
“Neither do I.”
“Right now, if you want to help, help me find solutions.”
She nodded.
“So can we save this whole ‘us’ thing until after this is all over?”
She wiped her cheeks, then said, “Sure,” sounding anything but.
“I want you with me, Sable. I do. I just didn’t think past the whole invasion-rescue scenario.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “For a minute there, I didn’t think we’d make it either.”
As the days passed and my Ostelle sped toward the Heights, where the air was thin and crisp and clean, I witnessed the gradual decline in Sable’s morale as the toll of her losses continued to weigh on her. My standoffishness—a.k.a., my unwillingness to get over myself—was starting to weigh on her, too. She was never mean or spiteful towards me, but she wore her sadness like a veil. I should’ve been there for her. I wanted to. But I was selfish; I was completely absorbed in my own problems.
When we made it to the Kalican Heights, we headed straight for Everwynd, staying clear of both Torag Canyon and Clokesby. We docked at the Skywalk Jetty, from whence I sent the crew on shore leave so they could blow off steam. Everwynd was a great place to blow off steam, even with the thousands of Clokesbian refugees clogging the streets. Clokesby had lost significant square mileage in the collision with Obernale, and the rebuild was going to require further intrusion into the floater’s vast moorlands.
That was where I went while my crew was carousing—into the moorlands to find my buried treasure. I brought only those both able-bodied and trustworthy—Sable, Chaz, Thorley, and Ezra, though he was borderline in the able-bodied department. Dad volunteered to go on this secret mission of mine, but I refused him. I knew he’d tell Mom the second he saw all that money. If Mom found out, I might as well broadcast it to the whole crew. We brought plenty of supplies and three days’ rations, though the trip wouldn’t take more than a day if things went well.
They didn’t, of course. Things never go well for me, unless you’re referring to the forces working against me. In this instance, those forces were the dense fog that rolled in across the moors about an hour into our hike. Everwynd disappeared behind us. Everything went white. Soon the fog was so dense I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.
“Freakin’ Heights. Always with the fog,” I grumbled. “We have to stop, guys. I can’t see a blasted thing.”
“Where did you say the treasure was again?” Chaz wanted to know.
“I buried it when I thought I was about to go to jail for the rest of my life,” I said. “Remembering its exact location for later wasn’t my top priority at the time. I’ll recognize the spot when I see it. Possibly.”
“I guess we’re stuck here until this blows over, then,” Chaz said. I heard his pack thud on the ground, followed by the scraping of flint and steel as he set about making a fire.
“The fogs up here can last for days,” Thorley said. “Even weeks.”
“Can you build a really big fire, Chaz?” I said.
“If the sun isn’t cutting through this fog, nothing will,” he said. “This’ll keep us warm, at least.”
“So what are we supposed to do, sit around the rest of the day?” asked Thorley.
“Got a better idea?”
He didn’t.
We waited all afternoon, but the fog stayed put. Chaz’s pocket watch said it was time for dinner, so we fumbled around for a while, trying to pass food and water back and forth. Someone dropped one of the canteens and spilled most of it. I think I ate a piece of bread off the ground at one point. It’s hard to remember anything when you can barely see.
By nightfall, the fog was finally starting to work its way off. I was ready to turn on my eyelight and contin
ue the search, but everyone else was tired and a wussbag, so we stayed put. The moorlands were a much creepier place on a foggy night than I would’ve given them credit for.
Morning came, and no one had been eaten by anything. Whatever may have haunted those moors, it had left us alone. When the sun had baked off the last of the fog, we set out in the general direction of the treasure whose location I was only roughly sure I remembered. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have visions of a gaping hole where the treasure had been buried, wherein lay a note that read ‘Sucker!’ in sloppy handwriting.
There was no such hole, however. At least not in the places we were looking. Which, as it turned out, were all the wrong ones.
3
“How much money did you say it was?” asked Thorley Colburn, panting as he leaned on his shovel.
“A fortune,” I said. “A blasted fortune.” One-point-six-five million chips, I thought with despair, gazing into the pit we’d spent the last few hours digging, of which there were now several in the surrounding area. I still couldn’t think of a way I could’ve marked the location of my buried treasure without tipping anyone else off. It’s not like I could’ve planted a bluewave beacon. At the time, I had figured either I’d be in prison forever and it wouldn’t matter, or I’d avoid prison somehow and be back to get it before the earth dried.
Neither of those scenarios had been how things worked out. I could’ve taken the money and gone into hiding, left Sable and the Galeskimmer’s crew in jail, left Angus to lead Maclin’s attack on Roathea, and been none the wiser about any of it. Instead, I had gotten involved in the world’s problems. Regret filled me like a third helping of dessert.
“So what do we do now?” Thorley asked.
“The only thing I can do is pretend the money never existed,” I said, “because if I keep thinking about it, my head might explode.”
“How deep did you bury it?” asked Chaz.
“A few feet, maybe. I didn’t have much time.”