Faster Than Falling: The Skylighter Adventures

by Nathan Van Coops

  As Marlow turned to grab for her, one of the relics on the floor lit up. Just for a split second. It was to the side of Marlow, just out of his view.

  The flash of light was a clue. Atlas knew it.

  Samra saw it too. She scrambled to her feet and backed away from Marlow, drawing him toward her. Eric Savage was closing in from behind her. “Grab it! Now!” Samra shouted.

  Atlas sprang across the floor, sliding to his knees, and snatched the cube that had just lit up. Marlow turned around, just as Eric closed in on Samra.

  But she was ready. She crouched low, then jumped.

  The Skylighter girl blazed bright white as she flew into the air and flipped herself up to the ceiling. She landed feet-first, upside down at the apex of the domed room. Eric Savage could only stare up at her in amazement.

  Atlas knew what to do. He leapt to his feet, cocked his arm back, and hurled the relic into the air. It sailed to the ceiling and into Samra’s waiting arms.

  “No!” Marlow screamed. He spun around, his face a mask of rage, and raised his cutlass. There was no mercy in his eyes as he swung. The blade arced directly for Atlas’s face.

  The clash of steel happened right in front of Atlas’s eyes.

  The captain’s sword stayed rigid, but her arm shivered from the force of Marlow’s blow. She was holding her cutlass with both hands. She gave Atlas one quick word.

  “Run!”

  “Arrgh!” Marlow snarled and swung his blade in the air again, and Atlas moved, darting around the female captain and sprinting for the passageway. Samra was matching his movements from the ceiling, running hard upside down and making for the exit.

  Time to go.

  Eric Savage scrambled backward to block their path. He spread his legs wide to stabilize himself from the rocking of the still turbulent ship and raised his cutlass to attempt to block Samra’s exit. “You won’t escape,” he shouted. “Now give me the—”

  Atlas sprinted directly at him and dove straight between his legs. He slid across the floor and rolled to his feet on the other side of the man, just in time to see Samra drop to the floor.

  Eric scowled at him, then spun around, his eyes on the ceiling, still expecting to see Samra there. By the time he located her again, it was too late. Her foot swung upward in a flash of light and connected between his legs. He groaned and keeled over in pain. Samra raced by him before he could stop her.

  Atlas reached for her.

  She made it to where Atlas was standing and grasped his hand but paused and turned around.

  Marlow Savage and his daughter had reached an impasse. Their swords flashed in a few quick parries as the captain kept Marlow from pursuing them, but their sword skills were apparently equal, and neither seemed willing to strike the other a mortal blow. Marlow glowered from beyond her. “Eric,” he roared. “Stop them!”

  Eric straightened up with a grimace as the last few relics shook themselves from the walls. The ship was pitching violently now, horrible groans echoing from its core. The myriad relic cubes on the floor slid back and forth and congregated in dense clusters around the room.

  Atlas pulled Samra toward the exit but her eyes were behind them.

  “Captain Savage! Come on!” Samra yelled.

  The captain glanced their direction briefly but kept her cutlass pointed toward her father. “Go! Get out of here!”

  The ship trembled beneath Atlas’s feet.

  Samra, clearly unhappy with the captain’s solution, furrowed her brow and held up the relic cube. “Is this all you people care about? Then fine! Take it!” She let go of Atlas’s hand, took a quick step, and hurled the cube past Eric. It flew through the air toward a pile of its contemporaries. Marlow Savage dropped his sword in his attempt to catch it, but missed the catch and the cube tumbled to the floor among the others.

  “No!” Marlow shouted, and fell to his knees in front of the pile. He sought to unearth the proper cube from its companions.

  Eric immediately ran to his father to try to help. Samra gestured to the captain again, waving her toward the doorway. Atlas grabbed Samra’s arm and pulled. “Let’s go!”

  They turned and sprinted for the exit.

  When they found the hole they had climbed in from, the view outside was completely different. The sky was full of dust and sand, and airships were chasing each other around the patch of remaining balloons. The upper hemisphere of the starship was now parallel with the lip of the dig site, and the retaining wall lay just below them.

  Something was very wrong with the ship. The rear of the sphere was flashing blue lights but also smoking. Exhaust ports coughed sand in spurts and blasted jets of gritty air. The ship was doing something, but it wasn’t flying. A massive whine kept cycling from the perimeter of the vessel as it choked, wheezed, and shuddered.

  “Come on!” Atlas yelled. He grabbed Samra’s hand and ran down the slope of the ship. He released her hand as he reached the edge, realizing she was much better off without him to weigh her down. One last step, then he leapt, soaring through the air and clearing the gap between the ship and the wall. He plummeted past the wooden retaining beams and landed in the dune of sand on the far side. He sank up to his chest.

  That was a bad idea.

  Atlas spread his arms wide and struggled to extract himself from the sand. He only sank deeper, coughing some of the grit out of his mouth. He stretched for something to grab on to, but every motion made things worse. By the time he stopped moving, he was buried up to his armpits.

  Then Samra was there. She landed gently just ahead of him and grasped his hand. “Hang on. Help is coming!”

  He looked up to see an airship, twin envelopes shaped like silver sharks, descending from the sky above them. A red-haired man was leaning over the bow and shouting something to someone behind him. The man dropped a coil of rope to Samra, who quickly strung it underneath Atlas’s armpits. A matter of moments later, he was pulled from the sand and hoisted aboard the ship. He sprawled onto the deck, pouring sand from every pocket and fold of clothing he had.

  Samra was staring off the bow toward the starship. Atlas got to his feet to see what she was looking at. The female captain was standing atop the sphere, staring at the airship and its crew, but she wasn’t running. She wasn’t waving for help either. She wasn’t moving at all.

  Samra turned to Sunburn and shouted above the noise. “Get closer! Pick her up!”

  Captain Savage was just standing there, her gaze swiveling back and forth from the Restless Fury to the hole in the starship. What was she doing? Was she still worried about that stupid relic? Was she afraid to leave it?

  The starship was groaning from somewhere deep inside and the cables and ropes attaching it to the column of lift balloons were far fewer than when they first arrived. Loose strands of cable and attaching lines were strewn across the retaining walls, cast off from somewhere overhead. The lifting tower had thinned considerably, and through the dust cloud above them, Samra could make out clusters of globes drifting freely into the sky.

  The ship was going to fall.

  “Come on!” Samra shouted. She waved frantically to the captain.

  Sunburn heaved a rope over the side and it landed cleanly atop the starship. Ylva was doing her best at the cockpit controls, trying to get the airship positioned over the captain. But why wasn’t she moving?

  Samra reached inside her shirt and extracted the faintly glowing cube. She held it aloft for the captain to see. “I still have it!” she shouted. “I switched them!”

  Atlas’s mouth dropped open in surprise next to her. He immediately started grinning. Samra shook the relic at the captain. “Come on. We’ve got it!”

  The captain was smiling faintly now, too. But she still wasn’t moving toward the rope.

  “Erin! Grab the line!” Sunburn shouted. He grasped the rope with both hands, waiting to pull her up.

  The captain shifted her gaze to him. “Get these kids to safety, Connor.”

  “Captain . . .” Sunbu
rn stammered.

  “That’s an order,” she said. She turned around and returned to the hole in the starship.

  “Captain!” Samra shouted. “What are you doing?”

  Captain Savage lifted her head again. “Take good care of my ship, Samra.” She took one last look at the airship, then dropped into the hole.

  “Wait!” Samra stretched a hand out but there was nowhere else to go.

  Another blast of sand erupted from the side of the sphere. A line snapped overhead and came whipping by the ship, slicing past the bow mere feet from Samra’s head. Sunburn pulled her away from the bow. “Come on. We have to get out of here.”

  “But the captain!” Samra objected. “What’s she doing?”

  “Family first,” Sunburn said, echoing the words waving from the ship’s flag. “She still honors her family’s words. And we have to honor her orders.”

  “But her family is terrible!” Samra argued. “Do you think either of them would go back for her?”

  “No,” Sunburn replied. “That’s why she’ll always be the better captain.” He guided Samra and Atlas to the cockpit door. “Get in there. We need you on the controls. It’s time to leave.”

  Ylva vacated the pilot seat as Samra approached, visibly grateful for the relief.

  “You know how to fly this thing?” Atlas asked.

  Samra tossed him the relic and took the controls in response, pulling the power levers into full reverse.

  Atlas slid into the navigator’s position beside her.

  Out the bow windows, another tether on the starship snapped, and its lights flashed. A blue, shimmering orb appeared around the hull of the vessel and the whole tower of lift balloons suddenly broke free, guy wires snapping, launching itself into the sky. The starship hovered in the air for a moment, jets of smoke churning around it. It even rose a few feet, blue fire thrusting in long, beautiful jets from vents along its bottom half. But then they flickered. The jets blinked out and the starship fell.

  Samra watched the ship plummet back into the hole in the ground with horrified fascination, and her body tensed waiting for the impact. Then it came. A resounding boom reverberated from the dig site and a plume of sand fountained into the air. A moment later, the blue orb of energy bloomed up from the pit. The retaining walls gave way and planks of wood erupted skyward as a shockwave ripped the timber joints apart. The desert itself undulated from the blow, sending a massive tsunami of sand rippling into the desert. The expanding blue orb crackled and fizzled out, its energy dispersed through the cloud of dust and sand it had created.

  “Turn us around! Turn!” Atlas yelled.

  Samra jammed hard on the controls, forcing the power levers forward and banking the craft hard to the left. The lift envelopes rose of their own accord in the wave of air that surged underneath them, raising the ship a few hundred feet and hurtling them away toward the mountainside.

  Samra immediately saw that they weren’t alone. Dozens of airships were fleeing ahead of her, big ones and small ones alike, all racing for the safety of the mountain pass as the desert behind them swelled and roiled.

  The Restless Fury surfed the shockwave, the ship’s engines churning hard to stay ahead of the cloud of sand rising behind them. The Fury was already gaining on the other ships and passing some of those who’d gotten a late start. Atlas shouted and sprang to his feet, pointing toward the desert floor where a small, fish-like craft was struggling hard to keep up with the others. Its tail fin was whipping back and forth and it looked to be occupied by a single pilot.

  “That’s my Sun Dragon!” Atlas said. “She’s in trouble.”

  The pilot did indeed look to be in trouble. She was kicking hard and using the tail fin to try to propel the craft, but it was clear that she was lacking in any other type of propulsion.

  “It’s out of air!” Atlas shouted and immediately dashed out the door to the bow.

  Sand was raining on the Restless Fury by the time Samra was able to drop down to the smaller craft’s altitude. Sunburn and Atlas hurled lines across to the other ship, to drag it abeam the Fury. They had no sooner managed to attach it, than the pilot of the little craft was on her feet and shouting. She kept jabbing a finger in the air and pointing to something high overhead. Samra couldn’t make out the words she was yelling, but she followed the girl’s gesture skyward and spotted the object sailing alone in the wind. It was a huge bundle of netting jam-packed with globe sons. And there was someone dangling from the bottom of the cluster, a small green figure hanging on like his life depended on it. He was too far away for Samra to see his face, but she would have recognized him anywhere.

  It was her best friend.

  40

  THE STORM GATE

  “Grab that line. Get him aboard!” Sunburn was shouting to Atlas, who had climbed to the top of one of the envelopes to grab Kipling. Samra angled the Restless Fury below the massive bundle of globe sons, waiting till Atlas had hold of Kipling, then she turned to Ylva.

  “Can you take the controls? I need to see my friend.”

  Ylva stepped over to the helm but Samra didn’t wait till she was seated—she raced out the cockpit hatch and up onto the bow deck. She wasn’t patient enough to wait for Kipling to come down from the top of the ship. She lit herself up and leapt, sailing into the rigging, first kicking off the opposite engine nacelle and soaring up to the envelope where Kipling and Atlas were now standing. She collided with Kipling in a flying tackle and knocked him over. If he hadn’t already been holding on to the ship’s rigging, she was sure they would have gone flying overboard, but she didn’t care.

  “You’re here! You came to find me!” Samra exclaimed.

  Kipling was smiling beneath her, struggling to rise. “You don’t have to kill me for it.”

  Samra grinned back. She grabbed his face with both hands and planted a kiss on his cheek. “I knew they’d send the best in the patch after me.” When she released him, he was glowing faintly.

  “All right, get off me already,” Kipling said. He was smiling, despite her assault on his dignity.

  Atlas had tied off the massive globe son bundle to a cleat at the upper ridge of the ship’s right lift envelope, but the drag from the globes was pulling the whole ship to the right.

  “Let that thing loose!” Sunburn yelled. “It’s slowing us down.”

  “No!” Kipling shouted. “Don’t do that! We need those. They’re important.”

  Atlas stood by the long, taut line leading up to the bundle. The drag from it had now pulled the nose of the ship all the way into a ninety-degree turn, giving Samra a clear view of what Sunburn was worried about.

  The desert behind them was a steadily swelling cloud. The fall of the Starfire had stirred up a whirling column of sand that was more than just some residual spray. The cloud was now spreading toward them at an alarming rate, seeming to pick up more and more strength as it grew.

  Marlow’s lifting tower was gone, carrying whatever ships and citizens that had still been aboard high into the atmosphere. Hazy forms of Air Corps ships were still circling around the space the tower had occupied, like so many bees searching for their missing hive, but the airships were rapidly disappearing into the cloud of dust rising from the desert floor.

  An army of smaller ships was still trying desperately to keep ahead of the storm—fleeing for the mountains—many of them buzzing past the Fury at full speed. The ships were loaded with dig workers.

  The girl pilot they’d picked up in the Sun Dragon shouted from her spot on the deck next to Sunburn. “We’ve got to go! Now! They’re going to collapse the Storm Gate!”

  The news galvanized Samra into action. She dropped to the deck and landed next to Sunburn. “Can we make it?”

  Sunburn was watching the oncoming sandstorm with jaw tight. Atlas was working hard to secure his smaller airship to the back of the Fury and keep it from flailing about in the wind. Sunburn turned to Samra. “I’ll do what I can to reduce the drag. I’ve got to keep that load from p
ulling us all over. Get in the cockpit and give this thing all she’s got. We’ll deal with the rest.”

  Samra nodded and raced for the cockpit. Ylva was struggling to keep any kind of heading with the nose of the ship being yanked around by Kipling’s bundle of globe sons.

  “Sunburn needs help!” Samra said as she moved to the controls.

  “Thank the gods,” Ylva said. “This is like trying to wrestle a pack of wolves. Just when I think I’ve got one thing right, there are ten more to fix.”

  Samra jammed the rudder controls to the left and gave full power to the right engine to steer the ship out of its turn. “We’ve got to make it work.” She set her eyes on the mountains. More ships were passing them, ragtag bunches of workers dangling from the rigging. One ship swung out of formation and pulled ahead of the Restless Fury. A longhaired, muscular man was piloting the ship from the stern. His tight dark curls fell over his shoulders. A flag with a single hammer on it flew from the stern. A woman emerged from below decks with a coil of rope and she looked like she was aiming to throw it to them.

  “Landy!”

  The shout came from overhead and the girl they’d picked up in the Sun Dragon ran to the bow deck.

  Samra looked closer and saw that it was indeed the Fury’s missing pilot. Landy had her hair tucked into a green canvas cap, and was wearing a durable workman’s jacket, but the morning sun glinted off the piercings in her nose and ears. She heaved the rope through the air and the girl on the bow caught it. She tied the rope off to one of the bow cleats.

  The Restless Fury was already straightening out. Sunburn and the boys had managed to relocate the tether line from the globe sons and the bundle was now secured between the two shark-shaped nacelles in a more streamlined position for flight. The Fury was steadily picking up speed. The aid of Landy’s skiff was working, too, helping to offset the drag.