Faster Than Falling: The Skylighter Adventures

by Nathan Van Coops

  Samra rose from the wooden deck, only vaguely aware of Marlow’s men in her way. It was only a fraction of a second, and then she was upright and running, aiming for the place where the boy had disappeared. A man in uniform lunged for her, meaty hands—the garlic man who had struck her. His fingers snatched at her hair.

  But then Sunburn was there. Red, fiery Sunburn, his fist connecting with garlic man’s jaw and sending him sprawling into his companions. They stumbled backward as they caught him.

  Samra was only vaguely aware of Marlow and Eric Savage, standing on the dock watching her. Not comprehending. They could stare if they wanted. It was going to be something to see.

  Breathe out.

  Breathe out hard.

  Samra flung herself off the dock and plummeted.

  The first impact.

  Not the ground.

  Atlas careened off the surface of the little patch of globes and flipped over as he fell. The second impact was with the side of a man-made balloon. A gasbag, light-canvas maybe? His fingers only brushed it long enough to graze the texture. Not long enough to grab hold. He bounced off.

  He kept falling.

  He could see straight down now.

  It was a long way to the surface, but getting closer.

  He spread his body as wide as it could go, stretching. Hoping.

  Lift decks whipped past. People on airships. Someone screamed.

  He wouldn’t yell. He wouldn’t scream.

  If he was going to die, he’d go with courage.

  But it was still such a long way down.

  Don’t breathe, don’t breathe, don’t breathe.

  She was closer. Gaining on him.

  Almost there. Her eyes fixed on his back, hands stretching. A hundred feet? Two hundred? He hit another patch of globe sons. Another bounce. Hands searching for something to grasp.

  Almost there.

  Hard to see. Blackness closed in on the edges of her vision.

  Don’t breathe. Just fall.

  Don’t breathe.

  She was there.

  Falling toward him out of the sky. Wild hair bedecked with feathers.

  Was this a dream? He’d fallen so many times in dreams, but never like this. She was plummeting right at him, eyes nearly closed. Hands stretched.

  Fourth impact.

  He grasped at her, clutched her tightly. A Skylighter to the rescue.

  Something was wrong. Her eyes were closed.

  “Wake up!” he shouted as they fell.

  She was limp in his arms, her hair flying around his face.

  No. She was a Skylighter. She had to fly. She had to fly.

  She had to breathe.

  Samra opened her eyes. The boy’s mouth was on hers. Breathing into her lungs. His eyes opened, too. She gasped.

  He was holding on tight.

  She grasped at his jacket.

  She glowed.

  The light flashed out of her so brightly he had to shield his eyes. She lit up the whole world around them. The last docks, the last clusters of globes. Surprised faces on airships. The ground was coming fast. They were slowing, but not fast enough.

  “Get. The. Chain.” She hissed the words between gasping breaths, straining to keep them airborne. They were spinning now as she lifted him by the jacket. Her light sent shadows whirling across the balloons above them. He could feel the chain around her waist, just beneath where his arms were wrapped around her.

  “Don’t drop me!” he yelled.

  She had ahold of his jacket by the collar and their legs were entwined, but his heart still raced as he released one arm from around her and yanked the key from his neck. The lock at her waist was resting on her hip. He grabbed it with his other hand and freed the lock as they tumbled. The chain came loose and he flung it away into the darkness.

  They were still falling, down, down into the pit in the desert. Wooden ramparts whirled around them. Massive retaining walls. Marlow’s great dig. Samra strained to keep the boy aloft, but he was just too heavy. Her face was burning. Every part of her was glowing. She’d never been so bright. But she was almost at the end of her energy. She could feel it. A few more moments of lift and she’d burn out. A brilliant end to her final fall.

  And then they hit.

  36

  THE ATTACK

  They were too late.

  The Restless Fury was through the Storm Gate.

  Kipling and Quimby had raced down the mountain as fast as they could fly, but the city was nearly empty. A ragged convoy of house-ships and floating docks was being ferried through the opening in the mountainside, loosely overseen by men in dark uniforms patrolling in armed guard ships.

  Kipling spun around in the cockpit of the Sun Dragon and faced Quimby.

  “We have to go after her. We have to follow them.”

  They hovered near a rocky outcropping of the mountainside and watched the parade of ships bobbing past.

  Quimby tapped a couple of the air gauges on the dash and frowned. “It’s a long way to the dig site. If we make it, we might not make it back.”

  “I’ve come this far,” Kipling said. “I can’t stop now.”

  Quimby turned around and studied the mountainside in the direction they’d come.

  There was no evidence of the secret fleet’s movement, but Kipling suspected that if they were doing things right, there wouldn’t be. Dex had moved the ships through the front side of the mountain, ready to spring the attack at any moment. It had taken Quimby a long time to bring the Sun Dragon around the mountain. The fleet might already be in position.

  “Okay, we’ll try it,” Quimby muttered. “But if we run out of thrust, I’m blaming you.” She eyed the patrol ships. “We still have to get past the Air Corps.”

  “We can just blend in with everybody else.” Kipling pointed to the dilapidated skiffs and floating boats making up the tail end of the flotilla. As he spoke the words, he realized that, with its colorful, fish-like design and smoothly running thrust fans, the Sun Dragon didn’t exactly fit in with the crowd. The remaining city ships were hodgepodge amalgamations of tube metal and lift balloons, cobbled together with second-hand parts from other aircraft. They belched smoke or steam as they clattered inefficiently through the air. These aircraft were far less elite than the high-class ships he’d first spotted in the valley, and had been left to the end. These craft looked a lot more like airships in the secret fleet.

  “Oh smash it!” Quimby said, and slid down into her seat, keeping her head low.

  “What?” Kipling asked, pivoting around to see what was wrong.

  “It’s my sister!” She jabbed a finger toward the sidewall of the cockpit.

  Kipling looked the direction she indicated and spotted the ship. The secret fleet had made their move. They were gliding through the tail of the convoy, about a hundred yards to the rear of their position, employing the same strategy that Kipling had suggested. Kipling spotted Landy aboard a craft made up to look like the other cargo haulers around it. She was steering expertly around the ships in her way and gliding steadily closer.

  Quimby edged the Sun Dragon into the flow of traffic and likewise began dodging the aircraft in her way, headed toward the Storm Gate. She poked her head up only when in danger of a collision—otherwise she kept herself low in the cockpit.

  “Dex is going to kill me if he finds out I’m here.”

  Kipling glanced back at the ships behind them. They’d lost Landy temporarily in the crowded airspace. Quimby was trying to keep the airship in the center of the convoy, but in her haste to avoid her sister she had to dodge a lot of traffic. As they neared the opening to the gate, a particularly slow ship piloted by an overweight man in a ragged top hat was blocking their path. He was steering from the rear of his ship and could only see around the mass of clutter he had accumulated on the foredeck by means of a periscope fixed to his pilot seat. He was shouting instructions to someone else aboard, but the crewmate couldn’t be spotted amid the heaps of refuse.

/>   Quimby popped up to survey the situation and swore, then banked the Sun Dragon to the right, running along the blocking ship’s starboard rail. She jammed the power levers forward and sped past the obstruction, darting ahead to enter the gate. The maneuver was effective, with the significant problem that it brought them into full view of one of the patrol ships, hovering high overhead. Kipling made accidental eye contact with one of the Air Corpsmen and the man’s expression warped into a scowl as they sped past. Kipling turned in his seat and saw the patrol ship release its tether line and drop, descending into the flow of ships behind them.

  “Um, Quimby? I think you’ll want to speed up.”

  “Why?” Quimby was busy dodging more traffic in the tunnel and steering around stalactites threatening them from the ceiling. She pushed her goggles back on her head to see better and rose out of her seat to see what Kipling was looking at. She turned in time to see the patrol ship racing through the crowd, its pilot closing on their tail. “Oh,” she muttered as she spotted it. “Yep. Time to go.” She slid back down and pressed the power levers full forward. Kip tipped back into his seat and held on.

  A piercing wail erupted through the cavern. The guard ship behind them was issuing some sort of signal via a hand-cranked siren.

  It was answered from ahead in the tunnel.

  “That’s not good!” Quimby shouted from the rear seat.

  An echoing ‘chunk’ sound came from somewhere ahead and a harpoon flashed directly over Kipling’s head. It missed the aircraft but trailed a line that fell across the top of the ship and wriggled like a worm as the harpoon vanished into the half-light behind them. A second ‘chunk’ followed and another harpoon flashed from the left. This one struck home, piercing the top of the nose and passing through the right side. Someone shouted and the line went taut, wrenching the nose of the airship around to the left. Kipling was slammed into the right wall of the cockpit and he let out a grunt.

  The Sun Dragon was still flying, but it was listing badly to the left and being pulled toward the ship that had fired the harpoon. Quimby had to reduce power to keep from tearing something loose on the ship. To Kipling’s horror, he spotted a second harpoon launcher turning their direction from the bow of the ship and several men standing by with grappling lines ready to board them.

  Kipling leapt to his feet and unslung his warhook.

  The rope attached to the harpoon took two hard slashes to get through, but then snapped away, leaving the barbed shaft still imbedded in the nose. Kipling eyed the Air Corps ship and brandished the warhook. “We rise forever!” he shouted. The man at the launcher narrowed his eyes and aimed the harpoon directly at him.

  Kipling balked.

  There was nowhere to escape.

  The man reached for the release lever.

  The weapon gave its distinctive ‘chunk’ but the man yelled as it did. The harpoon sailed high, flashing past Kipling’s head and imbedding itself in the side of an unfortunate craft beyond them. When Kipling looked back to the patrol ship, he saw why the shot had missed. The Air Corpsman was still at the launcher but his hand was pinned to the weapon by a long metal rod, another harpoon fired from somewhere behind.

  A tremendous shout went up from a craft to their rear and Kipling spun around to find Dex at the bow of a skiff behind them, brandishing a handful of harpoons.

  “Now!” Dex shouted toward the top of the cavern.

  Kipling looked up and discovered that the upper supports of the tunnel were lined with workers—miners and citizens of the underground, armed with nothing more than stones. But they had a lot of stones.

  The cavern echoed Dex’s shout and it was taken up from all corners of the ceiling. Rocks rained down on the patrol ships and the Air Corpsmen immediately ducked for cover. Men, women, and even children were reaching into pails and sacks and hurling stones with all their might.

  The attack had begun.

  Quimby pointed to the ropes laid overtop the ship. “Cut those! We’ve got to go!”

  Kipling worked fast to free the ship from its entanglements, using his pruning knife to sever the limp ropes. He tossed the lines away from the ship and Quimby applied power again. She sped them around the final bend in the tunnel and aimed for the open air of the high desert beyond.

  But they weren’t out of danger yet. A trio of patrol ships was blocking the exit, evidently in response to the siren being sounded in the cavern. Rocks from above were already bombarding two of the ships, but as Quimby ratcheted in the lateral fins and dove the Sun Dragon for the space beneath the guard ships, the center ship followed. Quimby gave a whoop as the airship rocketed past the guards, but the Air Corps ship rolled to follow.

  The motor on the pursuit ship roared, belching smoke as it came to life, and trailed a cloud behind it as it turned. The ship pursued them into a dive toward the rocks on the desert floor.

  This desert had teeth.

  Rocky spires stabbed from the surface like twisted fangs intent on devouring the airship. Quimby yanked back on the controls and the Sun Dragon pulled out of its dive, just in time to miss three shards of light that streaked beneath the hull.

  “What was that?” Kipling yelled.

  Quimby pointed to a floating balloon high overhead. “Fire arrows!”

  A figure in the floating balloon was lighting another round of projectiles in a wicked looking contraption mounted to the edge of the beacon’s gondola.

  “Whoa,” Kipling exclaimed. “Fly faster!”

  Quimby banked away from the beacon balloon and steered wide of the path of the other airships. The bottleneck at the gate had slowed the flow of ships there, but out in the open, the line of aircraft ahead was spread out over a number of miles. The airships were gliding high, safe from the rocky teeth of the desert, and climbing at a steady angle into the slowly brightening sky.

  A touch of blue was illuminating the eastern horizon, but the light did nothing for Kipling and Quimby. The Sun Dragon dipped and dodged through shadows near the desert surface, fleeing the pursuit ship churning through the air behind them.

  “I’m going to try to lose them in the rocks!” Quimby shouted. She banked the craft hard right and narrowly dodged an angled outcropping of wind-carved stone. The pursuit craft roared ahead and left, dodging the obstruction. The men in the Air Corps ship were at a disadvantage here. Their ship was bulkier with far more drag, but it kept up its speed anyway, a cloud of thick smoke billowing out the back as its motor raged. It spun twin propellers off its rear deck, forcing the ship through the air by brute force.

  “What are they burning?” Kipling asked, amazed that the ship could maintain such a pace.

  “Fuel oil!” Quimby said. “They get it from the mountains.”

  Kipling had never heard of someone being able to burn a mountain. But Skylighters never spent time trying. Whatever secrets the Grounders had discovered deep below these mountains were certainly serving them well. The airship was gaining on them. The rigging lines holding the envelope to the hull were straining from the speed. The men on the bow of the ship stood ready at their harpoon weapon.

  “I have an idea,” Kipling said.

  “About time!” Quimby shouted, dodging another rocky spire.

  “Aim closer to one of those pillars,” Kipling said.

  “Closer?”

  “Yeah, I’m getting out. Swing around and get them to chase you. Bring them back by me!” Kipling didn’t have time to explain anything else as another of the twisted rock spires was nearly on them. Quimby banked hard and shot the Sun Dragon around the rocky outcrop, nearly scraping the lateral fins against it. Kipling waited till the pursuit ship was just out of sight. Then he leapt.

  He flew through the air and impacted the side of the spire, his fingers scrabbling at the pitted surface as the momentum of his exit from the Sun Dragon flung him sideways. He grabbed hold, took a deep breath, and scrambled upward, the warhook bouncing on his back.

  The pursuit ship roared past his position without any of
the crew noting his presence and continued its relentless hunt for the Sun Dragon.

  By the time Kipling reached the top of the spire, Quimby was on her way back. She dodged another round of fire from one of the beacon balloons and banked steeply toward the spire in a teardrop turn.

  Kipling steadied himself atop the rocks as she aimed the ship low and dove for the surface. She was slowing down, giving the bigger and less nimble ship a chance to complete its turn. She cruised right past the base of the spire, nearly skimming the sand. The Air Corps ship leveled out laterally, then dipped its nose to dive after its prey. It wasn’t coming nearly as close to the spire as the Sun Dragon had, but it was close enough.

  As the ship dove for the desert surface, Kipling took a running start off the top of the rock spire and launched himself toward it. He exhaled hard and dropped onto the nose of the ship’s envelope. He rolled on landing but came up to his feet with the warhook in his hand.

  Kipling swung hard as he moved up the slope of the airship’s nose, digging the warhook deep into the fabric and through the tops of the lift bags. He let go of the handle and dragged the warhook by its tether cord, pulling it through the top of the ship, plowing a ragged tear as he ran.

  Escaping gasses hissed and then erupted from the top of the ship as he tore his way along the ship’s surface. He stopped to extract the hook twice when it hit rigid structure, but dug it in again each time. He hadn’t hit every lift bag, but he’d done enough. The airship was sinking.