Rebel Skyforce (Mad Tinker Chronicles)

by J. S. Morin

  There was a knock at the door. She looked up, but said nothing. Her pencil stopped mid-line.

  “It’s me,” Sosha’s voice called through the door.

  Chipmunk reached to the bedside and drew her coil pistol. “Don’t even try coming in here.”

  “I’m just trying to—”

  “GO AWAY!”

  She listened as Sosha’s footsteps faded down the corridor.

  It took a moment for Chipmunk to slow her thoughts enough that she could lose herself in her work once more. Drawing wasn’t the same as working in steel, but she could envision the result from the lines on paper. She had progressed past the stage of wild imaginings and had moved on to practical schematics to hand over to the welders and mechanics.

  There was another knock at the door. “Who’s there?” she snapped.

  The door opened before she thought to draw her coil gun. It was her father. “Why’d you chase Sosha off?” Erefan stepped inside and shut the door behind him.

  “Because my Eziel-damned foot is killing me,” Chipmunk replied. She slammed her pencil down on the bed. It lacked the satisfying snapping sound she would have preferred to punctuate her statement.

  “That doesn’t make any sense. You haven’t got a—”

  “Because that butcher cut it off!” Chipmunk shouted. “And yes, it still hurts; gut me if I understand how.”

  “Maybe you should try asking that one to your Veydran friends. They’re the ones who nearly got you killed.”

  “No thanks to you,” Chipmunk replied. “At least Dan was willing to try.”

  “At full risk to you,” Erefan replied, crossing his arms. “He wasn’t in any danger, but he nearly baked you alive.”

  “I knew the risks.”

  “Yes, but you didn’t understand them,” Erefan said. He sat down on the end of the bed. “You’re pestering the forces of the universe, and they’re going to swat you like a fly. You don’t work around live spark without rubber gloves. You don’t weld without goggles. What make you think a rusted bucket of water was going to protect you from aether. You might as well have kept an onion in your pocket for all the good it would do. Stupid, superstitious nonsense, all of it.”

  “All I know is Dan tried to help me and Sosha cut my damned foot off.”

  “I heard you gave Captain Toller a time of it about letting Jamile aboard the Darksmith.”

  “You can thank my Veydran friends for that one, too. They convinced me to let you deal with her when we got home. Dan kept me from shooting her when I woke up.”

  Erefan scanned the bedside. Before Chipmunk could guess ahead of him, he picked up the coil gun and held it out of reach as she made a grab for it.

  “Gimme that back.”

  “Why, so you can shoot Sosha when she comes to change your bandage? Rynn, you’ve got to get this temper of yours under control. People are looking to you for guidance—Eziel help them—so you can’t go sulking off by yourself when unpleasant realities crop up.”

  “Unpleasant realities?” Chipmunk grabbed her collar and lifted her chin. “This is an unpleasant reality. You want to help, find a way to get this thing off without killing me. This,” she whipped back the blankets to show a bandaged stump just below her knee, “is Sosha’s incompetence and a missing foot. She’s no physician, and I don’t want her for a nurse, either.”

  Erefan studied the coil gun idly as he sat. “You know, I found myself in Tinker’s Island, sketching up plans for mechanical legs the other night.” He set the gun down in his lap and sighed. “My only daughter is maimed, and all I can think of is to make replacement parts. I don’t know what to do for you, Rynn. Sosha does. Jamile does. If it hadn’t been for her, you’d be dead by now twice over. Once from the black rot, and once from the burning blood.”

  Chipmunk glanced down to her arm, where a scabbed puncture wound by the crook of her elbow reminded her of the transfusion of blood she’d received. Missing limbs, someone else’s blood coursing through her ... there was nothing natural about medicine.

  “Any of the leg designs seem promising?” Chipmunk asked.

  “Not yet,” Erefan admitted. “I won’t go a half-measure on this. We don’t have the facilities here, but once we get the world-ripper running, I’ll have one through from Tinker’s Island.”

  “We’re not running.”

  “I know.”

  “Want to see what I’ve been working on?” Chipmunk asked. She turned the drafting board away from Erefan, pending his answer.

  Erefan made a pretense of trying to peer over the top, but he had no angle to see from where he sat. “Two days of secrecy, and suddenly you’re eager to share?”

  Chipmunk hooked a thumb at the side table. “Reports are saying most of the holes are patched. We’ll lift soon if I don’t show you.”

  “What is it?”

  Chipmunk said nothing, but handed the sheet of paper to Erefan. His raised brows told her she had piqued his curiosity. “No vacuum at all?” Erefan asked. He laid the sheet on the bed between them. It showed the two airships joined together by a series of welded scaffolds, with the giant vacuum tanks sectioned into multiple stories of compartments for crew and equipment storage, with stairways down into the gondola.

  “We’re already having trouble keeping enough vacuum to stay aloft. There’s a limit to vacuum we just can’t get past. Levitation runes are the only way we’ll be able to keep these things above cloud level without dumping crew and supplies, and I don’t think that’s how this war’s getting won.”

  “This could take months,” Erefan said. “I don’t think we can remain undetected that long.”

  “We don’t need to do it all at once. I had the ships park this close because I had some inkling of how I wanted to do this. For now, we just need to join the two ships, make sure the walkway between is safe, and get enough levitation runes carved that the vacuum can get us cloudborne. From there, we’ll find someplace remote to set down and finish the work. We’ll get supplies from Tinker’s Island once the machine is ready.” Erefan was bobbing his head along as she spoke.

  “I like it.”

  Chipmunk smiled.

  “I think that’s the first smile I’ve seen from you in days,” Erefan noted.

  “First time I forgot about my foot for long enough,” Chipmunk said. Her smile vanished.

  “Oh, enough of the self-pitying twaddle. You’ll heal up, we’ll build you a proper tinker’s leg, and you’ll get on with running a rebellion. Oh, and just an observation, but ‘General Chipmunk’ sounds like something you call a little girl who wins all her games of Tunnel Hunt. I haven’t laughed out loud in front of any of your troops yet, but I can’t promise I won’t. I’ve heard it from a few others as well.” He stood and headed for the door.

  “I’ll take it under advisement,” Chipmunk replied dryly.

  Erefan held up the coil gun. “And I’ll be sending Sosha along shortly. You need tending to, and she’s the only one qualified. I don’t care if you’re not crying and hugging, but you’re going to remind yourself that she saved your life.” The door closed behind him.

  The book in Chipmunk’s hands was a soggy romance of questionable literary value. It told the tale of a pair of young kuduk lovers kept apart by family politics and bureaucratic tangles that were fifty years out of date. There hadn’t been many books aboard either ship when the rebellion stole them, and it sounded like the best of a bad lot. It had the advantage of possessing a large cover, which Chipmunk held close to her face so she couldn’t see around it. She glossed over the fact that the characters were kuduk, and replaced them with humans in her imagination in an attempt to lose herself in the pages.

  At the far end of the bed, Sosha was tugging, prodding, and washing. It wasn’t happening to Chipmunk, it was happening in another world, a land outside of fictional Sweetrock Deep, where Chipmunk stood beside Melody Steamheart as a magistrate attempted to explain why her marriage application had been referred to the Moral Hygiene Committee. Chipm
unk found herself skipping long passages that detailed the appeals process and why Melody and her betrothed couldn’t get an exemption. She winced as Sosha applied an ointment that tingled, catching her off guard and sucking her back to Korr.

  She knew Sosha was nearly done, so she skipped to the end of the book and skimmed the last few pages. License approval. Wedding plans. Marries Thunder Hardstone. She frowned and flipped back to earlier in the book. Her beloved had been Hammer Deepspike. Chipmunk shook her head. Either the author lost track, or there was some twist in the pages she had skipped. She didn’t care enough to investigate which.

  By the time Chipmunk had wrung the book dry of the faintest droplet of interest, Sosha had finished and Chipmunk’s leg was snug in a fresh bandage—what little of it remained.

  “You sick of this room yet?” Sosha asked.

  “Sick of the company,” Chipmunk replied, still holding the book between them, stuck at the final page.

  Sosha hooked a finger over the top of the book and pulled it down. “You need to get up and move around.”

  “I don’t want anyone to see me like this.” Chipmunk yanked the book free and snapped it shut.

  “What’s there to be ashamed of? You escaped kuduk slavery and were wounded in the effort. You’ve paid in blood. The Tellurak soldiers see that and they know they’re following someone dedicated to a cause.”

  Chipmunk raised her chin and showed off her collar. “This isn’t enough of a reminder for them?”

  Sosha tilted her head. “Our people know what it means; a lot of them wore collars until your father freed them. The Tinker’s troops? They see it, but it doesn’t hit them in the gut. I don’t think anyone knows the frustration of not being able to get a collar off unless they’ve worn one.” Sosha held out a hand. “Come on, show them their general isn’t bedridden.”

  “What, are you going to carry me? I can’t get around on a single crutch with one leg.”

  Sosha winked. “I’ve got a surprise for you.” She stood and slipped out into the corridor. Seconds later, she reentered with a new pair of crutches. They were cobbled, but cobbled by someone who knew their business. They were of slimmer construction than her own crutches had been, though still based in steel pipe. The shaft was jogged so that the welded grip two thirds of the way up was in line with the lower end. Cushions at the top were repurposed from the chair arms from the lounge in first class. She didn’t recognize the rubber ends they’d attached to the bottoms to keep traction on the floor.

  “Who made those?”

  “Do you have to ask? Your father finished them yesterday, but I didn’t want to force you up so soon if you weren’t willing.”

  Chipmunk took one of the crutches and hefted it. It was lighter than hers, partly due to thinner piping, partly due to a single-post design, compared to hers with its two pipes coming together like streams into a river, with the grip across. The grip of the new crutch jutted from the side and was wrapped in cloth tape. She took the second crutch from Sosha and scooted to the edge of the bed.

  Her balance was awkward as she swung herself around; her left side felt too light. She kept the bandaged stump clear of the blankets as she moved, lest she catch it on anything, wary of the pain she expected. It hurt enough already without more help. Chipmunk arranged the crutches under her arms and used her good leg to hop to her feet—or rather, her foot.

  “How do they feel?” Sosha asked, craning her neck around to meet Chipmunk’s gaze as she watched the floor.

  “Right one’s fine. Left one still feels like someone stuck my leg in a furnace.”

  “No, I mean the crutches. Length? Grip? Weight?”

  Chipmunk took a few experimental hops around the cabin, mostly turning since that was all the room there was. “Fine for now. I’ll let you know after an hour or two on them if I feel the same way.”

  “Good, so you will be getting up.” Sosha beamed.

  Chipmunk looked down to her nightshirt. “Well, I’ll need to put something on. Even though it’s warm about, I probably shouldn’t go out like this.”

  “I borrowed a skirt for you,” Sosha said. “I put it in your footlock—I put it in the trunk at the end of the bed.”

  “Foot,” Chipmunk said. “You can say the word. It’s not like I’m going to forget I’m missing one if you don’t say it for long enough. Foot, foot, foot.”

  “Fine,” Sosha replied. She opened the footlocker and threw a clean shirt and the aforementioned skirt on the bed. “Let me give you a hand.”

  “I can dress myself, it’s not like I’m—” Chipmunk stopped herself. She was. Maimed, crippled, an invalid, whatever the term, it fit her now. “All right, just be quick about it.”

  The ends of Chipmunk’s crutches sank into the soft soil each time she planted them. It was easier than navigating the Jennai with its slick metal floors and stairways. The outsides of both ships swarmed with workers, some skilled tradesmen, some just pitching in to help out. She could tell the two groups apart by a moment’s observation.

  It was the largest she’d ever seen one of her drawings become in real life. A lattice of short bars ran between the vacuum tanks of the two ships, angled against one another to prevent twisting and racking. At ground level, a more elaborate scaffold was being constructed between the forward starboard gangplank of the Jennai and the forward port gangplank of the Cloudsmith. When they had more materials, they’d build additional crossings and lay a proper floor, but for the time being they just needed a way between ships other than signaling.

  “Ahh, General Rynn, there you are. We’re having some trouble with the ...”

  “General Rynn, good to see you up and about again.”

  “Excuse me a moment, General Rynn. Can you show me where we’re supposed to put ...”

  There was a trend developing, and she didn’t care for it. There was a hint of artifice in the use of her name among the rebels, the use of her full title when there was no need for such formality. As with most artifice, she suspected her father foremost. He had made it clear upon first hearing her human name that he didn’t care for it. It seemed that he had taken advantage of her convalescence to rewrite the personnel records, starting at the top. Worse, she couldn’t think of a way to reverse the trend without coming across as petty and rude.

  For all the questions and consultations, her plan was roaring into action. It had only been a few hours, and the shape of the combined airship was already taking form.

  “Who’s carving the runes?” Chipmunk asked. She didn’t need to look to know that Sosha was still clinging to her like a shadow.

  “They’re inside the ship,” Sosha replied. “We’ve got a jeweler’s assistant and a cobbler who proved handy with an awl. Your father marked the spots with chalk. I think he put them where you said, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he had his own notions.”

  “Getting to know him a bit, are you?” Chipmunk started moving again, idly touring the ships while getting accustomed to the crutches.

  “The man would tell the sun how to shine if he could find a way to talk to it.”

  “Probably have a way worked out to get it to shine through a cloudy sky, too.”

  “What’s that sound?” Sosha asked.

  Chipmunk paused and listened, straining her ear to catch anything that sounded out of place. She shook her head. “I don’t hear anything.”

  “Just wait.”

  A low droning grew slowly, echoing oddly among the steep hills. There were shouts from the workers on the vacuum tanks, who had the higher vantage, but Chipmunk had already deduced the source of the noise.

  “Is that a—?”

  “Airship!” Chipmunk shouted. “Everyone on board, NOW! Pumps to full. Lift off and prepare to fire once you see them.” She hopped along as quick as she could, using the crutches when she felt overbalanced. It was still slow going. She heard the vacuum pumps aboard both ships kicking on, it wouldn’t be long before they began to lift.

  All over both vessels, workers
scrambled to get inside. The ones working on the vacuum tank lowered their welding gear and slid down the external maintenance ladders. On the ground, rebels swarmed over their hard-won building materials, reloading the cargo holds with steel bars and sheets than had been laid out for the workers.

  A shadow fell over the valley floor. Chipmunk turned her gaze upward to see the Ruttanian army vacu-dirge that blotted out the sun. One of her crutches caught the ground at an unexpected angle while she wasn’t watching her footing, and the ground came up to meet her, face on.

  “Torvar, Beele, get over here,” Sosha shouted from close by. Repeater-rifle fire rattled down from above, sending up clouds of dirt in a neat row not far away.

  Chipmunk tried to keep her grip on her crutches, but someone yanked them out of her hands. Suddenly she was hauled up and two solid-built men lifted her onto their shoulders with her arms around each of their necks. She flew along, borrowed skirt trailing in the wind. They had her aboard the Jennai before half the workers had made it aboard. Sosha tried to follow, but Chipmunk retrieved her crutches and waved her away.

  “Get to the Cloudsmith. Find the runes and get them working quick as you can.”

  “Aye aye, general,” Sosha said with a quick salute before she ran off.

  “Get the coil guns ready and fire on that enemy ship as soon as you have a shot!” Chipmunk shouted to no one and everyone at once as she made her way to the support pylons that attached the vacuum tank to the gondola portion of the ship. She could only hope that her father hadn’t made too many alterations to her plans.

  The rearmost support she had designated was bare of runes and no one was working on carving any. The next was in the same state. She cursed her luck for having started at the wrong end of the ship. At the midpoint of the ship she found the cobbler working with his awl. The rune structure was half-finished and crude.

  “Tell me this isn’t the first one you’re still working on,” Chipmunk said, puffing for breath.

  “No ma’am. I’ll have this one good in five or ten, give or take a few, but the ones up front ‘o here is done drawed up.”