“Thank you for bringing her, Darby,” he said. His voice was cordial, but it oozed authority, and I once again felt like a child talking to a parent. I also noticed that his tone was relatively soft, but it cut perfectly through the muttered conversations and machinery buzz. The man turned his body so that it faced me directly, and I noted his solid, stocky build. I also spotted several medals pinned to the chest of his jacket, as well as a chain that was surely attached to a pocket watch.
“You must be Miss Silver,” he said, offering me his hand. It wasn’t quite as big as Reinhart’s, but his powerful grip still made me feel like a toddler when shaking it. “Captain Benjamin Bragginton.”
“Pleased to meet you, Captain,” I replied, giving him a slight nod. His presence was intimidating, but I didn’t want to appear weak. Steeling myself, I looked up into his pale blue eyes. He was smiling politely, wrinkling the corners of his mouth a bit. His jaw was quite square, and covered in a layer of greyish stubble. He looked like he would have been very attractive in his younger years.
He made a powerful first impression.
“Are you all right?” he asked me, raising one slightly scarred eyebrow in concern.
I shook my head, trying to appear nonchalant. If I spoke again, I was afraid it would come out in a squeak.
He smiled again, but I had the feeling it was only to try and make me feel more at ease. There was too much going on behind his eyes for it to be authentic.
“Thank you for…letting me land here,” I said after a moment, trying to force away the awkward silence.
The captain nodded. “I’m sure you’ve heard how cautious we are of outsiders. But for you, I had to make an exception.”
I felt a bit flattered at this comment, but mostly confused. “Why is that?” I asked him.
He glanced sideways at me, his lips playing with a smirk. “You know…just about everyone who meets me addresses me as ‘sir’.”
The awe that I felt for him before was now joined by a sudden indignant flare. “Well, I’m not everyone else.”
He let out a chuckle and then motioned to the elongated table in the center of the room. “No, certainly not. That’s exactly why you’re an exception. Come have a look at this, Miss Silver.”
I paused for a moment, but eventually stepped over to the table with him. As I did, I immediately discovered why it had been glowing. The surface of the table was smooth glass, but underneath, there was a large, green grid design backlit underneath the glass. Over it, there were dozens and dozens of small electronic lights, shining white against the dark green background. The white dots were mostly centered on four hubs, but there were a handful that were out by themselves, and they were all moving. It looked like four colonies of glowing insects had taken hold of the table.
“What is this?” I asked.
“Transponder signals,” the captain answered immediately. “Archons have tables like this, too. It’s how the Dominion keeps track of every ship that it can. That’s how they follow the racers in between cities.”
I nodded slowly. Now I understood. The table was like a digital map of all of the Dominion territory. The four hubs were cities: Adams, Rainier, New Eden, and Shiloh, and all of the tiny dots were individual ships.
“But you don’t have any signals,” I realized, staring over the map.
The captain shook his head. “No, we don’t. You need one to enter the race-”
“But I turned mine off long before we got here,” Darby said from behind me. I had almost forgotten she was there.
“Good to know,” the captain said. “The mechanics will have it removed when it’s time, as well.” He stood straight and clasped his hands together behind his back, giving his thickly built body a very straight posture.
“As the Dominion refuses to recognize Ravencog as a city, we refuse to recognize their rule over us,” he said, his gaze turning hard.
“Can you do that?” I asked in amazement. “Can you just…opt out like that?”
He turned to me with a stiff smile. “Not exactly, no. Why do you think we don’t give off signals?”
“Because…you don’t want to be found,” I concluded.
The captain nodded. “We keep ourselves small and localized. We do business quietly, and we stay off the radar. We’re small enough that the Archons disregard us. They don’t deem us a threat, and for that, I’m grateful.”
I peered over at him, noticing that his face look almost devious, like a card player who was holding a great hand. Did he believe that they really did pose a threat to the Dominion?
As I pondered this, I glanced down at the table once more, staring at all the dots that represented different ships, and I couldn’t help the curiosity that came over me.
“Do you know which ones are the racers?” I asked.
He looked at me knowingly, and then double-tapped a portion of the table. Instantly, the screen zoomed in, and a small group of dots became larger. He did it again, and they became the entire focus of the grid.
“Touch one of them,” he told me.
I couldn’t help but do it. The technology of the screen was new and fascinating to me, even though the table itself had the wear and patina of something that was very old. I touched one of the dots, and a small square popped up beside it, listing the ship’s tail number and its name. It was the Amber Sphinx.
“Grace,” I whispered, feeling anger surging within me.
Ahead of her by a few clicks was another dot, and I tapped it gently. The text box appeared beside it, and I sighed with immense relief. It was the Alpha Red. It was Rigel. I felt a terrible weight evaporate from my heart. He was alive, he was still racing, and he had somehow even got ahead of Grace. Ahead of him, I presumed, was Audra. One click of her transponder light confirmed it. Somehow, she had gained the lead once again. There was something wrong, though. Someone was missing. As I looked over the length of the table, I didn’t see any other dots in the area.
“John Deseo is missing,” I said. “His ship is called Jacob’s Prayer. Have you seen it?”
The captain nodded, but his solemn look was very telling. “When the Mistress overtook it, it went offline.” He said this bluntly, simply, with no hint of flowery sugar-coating. “She must have taken him down.”
I sighed heavily and leaned my weight against the table. I knew this hand to be true. If Audra came upon him, and then he suddenly went dark, that meant that John was dead. I blinked in disbelief. It didn’t hit me particularly hard, other than the fact that I had just spoken to him earlier in the day and now he was gone. I had dealt with death too many times to be affected very much. Part of me was surprised that Audra would kill a fellow Shiloh resident, but the rest of me knew she would kill whoever she needed to. She had no value for the lives of others. She had made this abundantly clear.
“What a waste,” I breathed. John was a decent fellow. He hadn’t deserved to die, least of all for the stupid race.
“It’s nothing more than a propaganda machine,” the captain said, his voice mirroring the bitterness that I felt inside. “Every few years, they march out the banners and the fanfare, and give people a reason to cheer for themselves. They put such effort into making sure that people are as rabid for the race as they can be, so that they will welcome the tragedy and the thrill of it just to feel alive.” He folded his arms across his chest and gazed down at the table screen. “The race is nothing more than a way for the Archons to flex their power, to keep the masses blinded and entertained.”
I stared at the man with wide eyes. This was exactly how I felt about the race. It was incredibly satisfying to hear it coming from someone else, especially someone in a position of power, like the captain of a city.
“But we’re not blind, are we, Silver?” he asked, looking over at me with a pointed gaze. “You know this truth as well as I do, don’t you?”
“I do,” I answered immediately.
He nodded, giving a small satisfied smile. “Excellent.” Adjusting one of the pins on
his jacket, he stepped close to me and put his hand on my shoulder, and I felt my skin breaking out in goosebumps. “I’m very pleased to hear that,” he said.
I didn’t meet his eyes, however. I was focused on the pin that he had been fidgeting with. It was fastened above his left breast pocket, and I could see the Dominion logo on it. Underneath it, stamped in the metal - which also looked quite old - was the word “Helios”.
I stared at it, my mouth slightly agape. There was no doubt that he had done it intentionally. He had wanted me to see it. As I tilted my head to look up at him, he seemed almost amused by my reaction. After just a second, he stepped past me, and I wondered if anyone in the room had even noticed the tiny interaction.
“You’re more than welcome to stay in Ravencog for the night,” the captain said, looking over a small screen readout from one of the machines behind me. “The racers will be completing a challenge for their next clue. It will take them most of the night, as well, so you won’t be very far behind in the morning.”
“You know what their next challenge is?” I asked skeptically. After the Helios pin, I was scrutinizing his every move, his every facial expression. He must have anticipated this, because he would no longer meet my gaze.
“Of course,” he said. “When you’re as well-informed as we are, you hear plenty of things.”
Now I was downright suspicious. That was exactly the same thing that Sparks had said to me in Shiloh when he told me he’d known that would be the halfway point of the race. Maybe it was something he had picked up from the captain, or maybe it was something else. I had no idea what, though.
Before I could give it any real thought, the door that I had come through suddenly burst open with a loud metallic squeal, startling everyone in the room. Through the hatch, a man stumbled past the guard, his narrow chest heaving with each breath. He had white hair, which didn’t make much sense, because he was probably no older than thirty, but his clothes were in considerably better shape than most of the other Ravencog citizens I’d seen. I wondered if he was under the employ of the captain.
“Cap’n!” the man shrieked, his bloodshot eyes searching the room. “There’s an outsider here! They’ve let an outsider dock in the hangar! We need to-”
His sentence died in mid-air as his gaze fell upon me. He stood there, frozen in place, staring at me like I was some sort of monster.
“Thank you, Edmund,” the captain said, sounding almost bored. “But as you can see, I am already aware of the situation.”
Edmund, whoever he was, straightened himself and smoothed down his blindingly white hair. “Didn’t know we were taking in strays,” he said, his face turning into a scowl. “You know what you’re doing by bringing her here?”
“Do I have to have you escorted from the bridge again?” the captain asked.
Beside me, Darby grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the exit. I followed without question. Whatever argument the two were about to have, I didn’t want to be around. The captain obviously was fine with me being here, but I didn’t know exactly what Edmund’s problem was. As we stepped around him, he pointed at me angrily.
“Don’t let her go!” he shouted to no one. “You’re risking us all by having her here!”
Gerard had already pulled the door shut behind us, so I couldn’t hear the captain’s reply, but I hoped it was in my defense. Gerard handed me my revolver and gave me a nod, and Darby led me back through the winding passageways until we were in the hangar once again.
“Don’t worry about Edmund Albright,” she said. “He has it in mind to be captain one day, so he likes to butt in and try to control every situation he can.”
“Sounds like a real charmer,” I said, rubbing my eyes with the backs of my hands. “So I guess I’m here for the night.”
Darby nodded as we made our way across the maze of catwalks toward my ship. “Yeah. I would invite you to my apartment, but I really think it would be safer for you to stay with your ship. Edmund has a bad habit of riling people up, and I wouldn’t want anyone barging in to throw you out.”
“Fair enough,” I said, grimacing at the sight of my missing roof harness. As we made our way down a staircase, one that was more like a ladder, we emerged onto the platform that the Cloud Kicker sat on. Reinhart, alongside a handful of other workers, had pulled out several burned up wires, which were sitting in a pile, all four of my hydro thruster tanks, and some boxes. They had practically removed everything that wasn’t bolted to the hull. On the platform under my starboard wing, I recognized the metal remains of my roof harness.
As we approached, Reinhart raised his massive metal hand and gave us a friendly wave. “Ren, tell her what you found.”
From the hatch of the Kicker, an athletic man - presumably Ren - poked his head out and looked over at me. He hopped out of the door and made his way over, wiping his blackened hands on a cloth he had hanging from his waistband. He was my height, probably about five-foot-six, or so, and he had short black hair, which was full of dirt and ash. From his pocket, he produced a pair of bifocals and put them on.
“You were almost killed,” he said shortly. “Or I assume as much, anyway.”
From behind Ren, a tall, thin, dark-skinned man emerged from the hatch, pointing down at one of the boxes on the ground. “Unless you make a habit of carrying bombs around.”
I was taken aback. “I - what? A bomb?”
The dark-skinned man, who I would later find out was named Moore, knelt down by the wooden box nearest to me and gently lifted the lid of it. “Take a look.”
My eyes and mouth were already wide open. Inside the box, there was a complex system of gears and other clockwork. In the bottom of the box, I could make out some small grey blocks of what looked like clay, but they all had wires protruding out of them. On the surface closest to me, there was a strange curved hourglass with the sand mostly emptied into one side.
“We guessed it wasn’t yours,” said a third voice. I looked up at another man, even taller than Moore, but still smaller than Reinhart. He was thin and wiry, and had long blonde hair that was swept to one side of his head.
I tried to remember the names that Reinhart had called out to help him earlier. “Um…Noah?” I asked.
He nodded, flashing a smile that was perfect enough to look like it belonged in Shiloh. “That’s me. But anyway, Ren’s right. You were probably two minutes from this thing going off.”
I stared down at the bomb in front of me, shaking my head. How did this happen? Who had put a bomb on my ship? And when?
“What stopped it from going off?” I asked, still incredulous.
Ren knelt down and pointed to the curved hourglass. “Basically…this thing is the timer. It was built in here to sit on a trigger lever.”
Moore nodded, rolling his shoulder. “Once enough sand drains into the bottom part, it has enough weight to press down on the trigger.”
“And you light up like a solar flare,” Noah finished. “Lucky for you, the box tipped over and the sand stopped draining.”
I blinked my eyes, somehow unable to comprehend just how close I had come to death. The box had probably tipped over when I had gone through the turbulence of the thunderstorm, the same one that had knocked out my electrical systems. I had a sudden realization, and I turned my head toward Darby, who had the same dumbfounded look on her face that I did.
“Killian,” I breathed. “That’s what happed to him. That’s why he suddenly blew up!”
Darby’s forehead wrinkled. “I thought it was because of Grace Buchannon.”
I shook my head. “No, I…I think she was just there to make sure things went off as planned. She had a gun, but she couldn’t have made a ship just ignite like that. Not unless she was a perfect shot.”
“She didn’t hit any of the rest of us,” Darby said, her eyes focused on the distance. “Which means she’s not.”
“So Killian must have had one of these on board his ship!” I exclaimed. Unfortunately, this raised more questions.
“Why just him?” Darby asked, voicing them. “Because he associated with you? If that’s true, then why not my ship? Or Rigel’s?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I really don’t.”
Moore put his hands on his hips and clicked his tongue as he thought. “I think a better thing to wonder is…why someone is trying to kill you.” he asked, looking directly at me.
I sighed and reached up to rub the back of my neck. This was insane to me. Someone was trying hard to kill me! I knew that the race was dangerous, but this was a whole new level. I felt like I was actively being hunted, conspired against. My insides turned to mush at the thought, and I shivered with a chill that had nothing to do with the hangar temperature
“I don’t know,” I answered quietly, staring down at the bomb. It wasn’t entirely true. I had some idea, but I didn’t want to discuss it freely with these men. Maybe I could get some time alone with Darby to hash it out.
The men in front of me exchanged looks with one another, and then slowly began gathering up the burned out components from my ship. “Well, you’re good to go on electrical systems,” Ren said. “We were able to cannibalize the roof apparatus to get the parts we needed.”
“That means you won’t be able to fly from the outside anymore,” Noah said, looking as sympathetic as he could. “Sorry about that.”
“That’s okay,” I replied, still in a haze of dread. “Thank you. All of you. I really appreciate the help.”
They all suddenly reminded me of the cooks after I had thanked them, their faces surprised, but flattered. They gave me their best nods, and then shuffled away with the junk scrap in their arms. Moore even volunteered to take away the bomb. I didn’t know what they planned to do with it, but as long as it wasn’t on my ship, I didn’t really care.
After they had gone, Reinhart sauntered over toward me, his enormous boots sending small vibrations through the platform with each step. “You’ve pissed somebody off,” he rumbled. “Watch your back. No matter where you go. Don’t tell a soul, but we put you an extra radio with your old one. It don’t use megahertz like the normal ones. We use gigahertz. It’s trained on the frequency that we use here in the Cog. It’s a high frequency, so you won’t have comms on it until you’re about a click away.”
The Blood Racer (The Blood Racer Trilogy Book 1) Page 28