Rebel Skyforce (Mad Tinker Chronicles)

by J. S. Morin

  It was just a matter of time now. Maybe he finished the trip, maybe he didn’t. He’d done his job and Cadmus was going to slip him out sooner or later. He liked the tinker, trusted him even. There was just a little matter of pragmatism that told him that maybe he should wait until he was safe and cozy before giving up the location of Kezudkan’s headquarters. Sure, Cadmus might be able to tinker it out with whatever black science he used to figure out things a normal man never could dream, but he’d have an easier time rescuing Powlo than puzzling out the route on his own. Cadmus would get nothing from Powlo but the name of a train and its arrival time. Let the Mad Tinker work backward from there—searching a whole city for one workshop—if he was willing to strand Powlo.

  “Seemed awful dim, to me,” Draksgollow muttered, squirting a bit of grease into one of his joints. It was just the two of them in the room, watching from the Ice Furnace lair in the arse crack of Korr. The view frame showed the workshop they had just launched their assault from, though the steam tanks were all safely ensconced in the not-so-abandoned mines with them, along with much of the loot they had stolen.

  “Dim as he needed to seem,” Kezudkan replied. “You think he didn’t figure it out?”

  “Dim enough not to see it for a trap. Maybe too dim to work out where he was, or care.”

  “And if he was?” Kezudkan turned up his hands. “A few days’ holiday before we get back to work. We’ve earned a good one, I think. We can afford one, certainly.”

  Draksgollow pushed his chair away from the table. He and Kezudkan were the only patrons of a lounge where the entertainment might not show up for days, if at all. Let the daruu while away his elder years in idle vigils. “I’ve got work to do.”

  Kezudkan stared through the view frame. “Of course, of course. You’ve earned a respite, but I won’t force one on you.” He flicked a few fingers in Draksgollow’s direction.

  When the kuduk tinker had departed, taking his whirrs and hisses and grating metallic twitches with him, Kezudkan settled in to relish in the silence. The stone around him was old, welcoming, tied deep to the bones of Korr and little disturbed in decades. He reached into a pocket and pulled out a small figurine, carved from white marble. It was to be part of a set of chess pieces for his grandson, but the rest of the set lay buried in the ruins of his Eversall estate. The human shape of it was bent and weary, pathetic in all ways. Once he had used it as an allegory for Erefan, to warn him to take better care of himself.

  Kezudkan crushed it to powder in his fingers.

  Chapter 23

  “Chess is a game not of gambits, but of patience and preparation. The winner is not the one who moves with most daring, but with more foresight.” -On the Stratagems and Underlying Premises of the Game of Chess, Insights of Lord Arvind Kendelaine III

  The world-ripper ran from dawn to dark of night, sifting the brave from the cowards across southern Korr from the Turmon Republic to Grangia. Rynn’s twinborn agents had been busy, worming their way in among the freeborn locals, sneaking among the slaves, finding out where spirits matched the angry words muttered behind kuduk backs. There were hundreds of them, more than the Jennai could handle, but there were barracks in Tinker’s Island ready to take the overflow until the expansion of the Jennai would let the agglomerated airship hold them all.

  Erefan was a great lover of order, of systems, of plans. He took the list of sites where twinborn agents required transport and moved from one to the next, sweeping north to south, nudging the controls east, then sweeping south to north. They had been a day already in scooping up new rebels, shuffling them off to orientation lectures and the beginnings of basic training as soldiers. It would be the rest of the day and beyond before they were finished.

  “Yellowcorn’s next,” Rynn said to Erefan. “Should be like old times here in a bit.” She had spent more of her time among the recruits than with the world-ripper, but she had been waiting for this retrieval since they began calling their flock back to the nest.

  Erefan spared a glance over his shoulder, making sure she saw just how amused he wasn’t. Rynn and her father had settled into a comfortable disagreement over her prior involvement with the rebels; neither budging from their opinions. That didn’t usually stop them voicing them. “I’ve got necks to wring, that’s for sure. Maybe you can take over on the controls while I show them around the ship.”

  Rynn smirked, imagining Erefan giving a tour with particular focus on the edge of the plaza and just how far down it was. Hayfield was twice Erefan’s size, but it was never wise to underestimate a man with such an abiding respect for leverage as the tinker.

  “You ever play crashball when you were little?” Rynn asked. “Or am I scraping away at the Mad Tinker mystique by asking?”

  Erefan let the question hang for a moment as he guided the viewfinder across the Ruttanian landscape. Hills gave way to straw-yellow fields of wheat, stretching on as far as they could see to the horizon. “Not good for a young head, getting knocked around like that. That’s what your grandmother said, at least. By the time I was old enough to think of telling her different, it was already clear I wasn’t cut out for that sort of game.”

  Erefan let the view hang motionless as he turned to fix Rynn with a mild look. She had braced herself for fire in his eyes, but he looked wrung dry. “I should have told you the same thing about running around with rebels when you were still too young to—”

  “Don’t finish that!”

  “—to be running after boys.” Rynn didn’t know if she had steered him clear of the vulgar, or if she had just gotten too used to the proclivities of soldiers.

  “Just go find Yellowcorn and be done with it.”

  Erefan grunted in reply and returned to the controls. In moments, they had slowed down at the outskirts of Yellowcorn Sky, with its plowed fields surrounding a loose mesh of roads, smaller farms, and houses that spanned miles. Rynn tried to identify landmarks: a courthouse, a tiny aerodrome with one vacu-dirge sitting idle, a scattering of municipal pump stations. They paused in the air as Rynn took stock of the city and Erefan referred to his notes. I wonder how Bouo would look from above? It’s got to be nearly this size. She filed that note away for when she had an idle moment to play at the controls herself.

  Erefan took the view to a small farmhouse by a barren field. Whatever the locals planted there was either out of season or had failed to thrive. Just like the humans who live here. It wouldn’t be that way much longer. Places like Yellowcorn would become the great cities, places ruled by humans, peopled by humans, defended by humans. The deeps would be the ones to suffer hunger after a poor harvest; Human Season was about to bloom.

  On the back porch of a whitewashed farmhouse, Rynn recognized half a dozen familiar faces. Kinmi and Syr were her own agents, newly met in Korr but old acquaintances on Tinker’s Island. They were like cousins, infrequently seen but welcome and familiar. The others were her brothers, as much her family as Erefan was. Towering Hayfield, with his deep skin so well suited to the sunlight of Yellowcorn Sky, eased himself against one of the porch supports. He had grown up in a place like this. Buckets shuffled a deck of cards, his twitching glances betraying impatience cooped up in a body too young to contain it. Pick leaned in the shadow of the farmhouse wall, tucked back as far as he could get from the glare of noontime. He looked like a man who needed the deeps. Rascal appeared the most at ease. He sat alone on the porch steps, feet sprawled in front of him, taking shade beneath an oversized hat. The bleach-white clothes on his back made him look gentrified, but he held a scattergun slung over his shoulder, gripping it by the barrel. Though it was cracked open, ready to load and not to fire, it still gave him the impression of a dangerous man—a gentleman outlaw.

  “Open it,” said Rynn. She stood centering herself in front of the viewing frame, arms crossed and with a smirk set carefully in place.

  Rynn didn’t look back, but heard the thunk of the switch closing and the whining strain of the dynamo. The figures on the porch stirre
d and all turned their attention toward the hole as it ripped its way from the Jennai to Yellowcorn Sky. The wafting scent of manure greeted her and wrinkled her nose before anyone said a word.

  Rynn waved a hand below her nose; there was no mistaking it for a greeting. “And you fellas thought the sewers smelled bad.”

  “Chipmunk!” Buckets was first through the hole, all exuberance and no caution, as if he’d been hopping halfway across Korr through hole-ripping machines all his life. He crushed Rynn in his arms like a lost sister and picked her up. “Oof! You’re eatin’ here, ain’t ya?”

  As the test subject had survived passage, the rest of Rynn’s friends ducked through as well. Hayfield clapped his maimed hand on her back. “Not bad, kid. Ya done good.”

  Pick slunk in with a nod and kept himself aside. Rascal came through last, after letting Kinmi and Syr pass through to offer perfunctory salutes to their general.

  Rascal shook his head, his eyes taking a tour of the cargo hold while a bemused grin kept a place on his mouth and words failed him. “Can’t hardly believe it. Father’s mercy, this place is beautiful.”

  Rynn tapped a finger against Rascal’s scattergun. “You can toss the pepper shaker. I promised you boys real guns, and you’re gonna get ‘em.” She pulled the coil gun from her holster and pressed it into Rascal’s hands.

  With eyes ready to well up in tears, Rascal handed his scattergun to Rynn and inspected the weapon. “Don’t hardly weigh nothin’. Fancier than your first one, too. And always arm thyself for war, and take with you the weapon that overmasters that of your foe. Blessed Father, I think we’ve finally obeyed you.”

  A harrumph from the control panel turned everyone’s attention to Erefan. “Nice to know someone still remembers.”

  “Remembers?” Rascal asked. His eyes widened. “You know, don’t you?”

  “All of us do,” Rynn said. “Rust and iron, if I’d known you knew, I’d have said something years ago. I didn’t want to risk smashing your cookie jar if you’d thought Eziel was some shepherd of lost humans.”

  Hayfield scratched the scruffy new beard making its way down his chin. “Coulda tackled me with a five-year-old when I heard. Always thought our Pious Henlon here was a sham to keep the knockers off his scent. He was too easy with a gun for a holy man, I always thought.”

  “If you read the scriptures—the real ones—I oughtta really be a swordsman. But they wrote them books a long time ago. Ain’t kept up with times. I’m sure if they wrote new ones, they’re’d be a whole chapter on pistols and another on long guns.”

  “I heard you got a proper cook,” Buckets said, throwing the switch for a different track.

  “Gahwin’s cookin’ ain’t good enough for ya?” Hayfield asked. He cuffed Buckets upside the head.

  Rynn headed for the door, leaving Erefan with Kinmi and Syr to scrounge up the less well-connected rebels of Yellowcorn. “Come on, we’ll stop by the dining hall on the way. You guys are going to pop a gasket when you see what we’ve got here.”

  The torrent of chatter that followed Rynn from the cargo hold died away as she showed her friends around the Jennai. None of them had seen an airship up close before, and no one anywhere had seen the likes of the Jennai. They all gawked up at the vacuum tanks towering above the plaza, even though only the Kelleb was still holding a vacuum. She walked them past the stolen liftwings and let them run their hands over the hulls. Buckets wanted to climb into the cockpit, but Rynn forbade it. By the time they took a meal in the dining hall—with its wide-windowed view of the Sea of Kerum so far below—they had grown somber.

  “All this ... yours?” Hayfield asked. They sat crowded around a table with a panoramic view of Korr spread before them. They were high enough that land was visible to the far south, and more water than any of them had imagined possible spread out below.

  Rynn shook her head. “I run this asylum. I don’t own it. Food was tight for a while, but now that the machine’s working, we eat like cooks. Don’t be shy about portions; you’re not getting special treatment on my account. Everyone eats their fill.”

  Pick elbowed Hayfield in the ribs. “Be back to playing weight in no time, huh? Maybe the leagues will pick you back up.”

  Hayfield grunted through a mouthful of pork. “Was muscle back then. Ain’t eatin’ my way back to muscle.”

  “So what do we do here?” Rascal asked. He was the only one not struck dumb each time she showed them a new wonder. “Doesn’t look like you’re short of hands.”

  Feet maybe, but not hands. Rynn smirked at her own joke. “You might be surprised. You’ve all killed more kuduks than any of this lot.” She shot Buckets a glare. “Except maybe you. The ones from the other world are soldiers, but they don’t know kuduks. The freemen are willing, but they’ve never fought. The former slaves have plenty of want-to, but they need training. We’ve got a few rabble-rousers we’ve picked up here and there, but we’ve got a lot of rabble.”

  “You want us teachin’ ‘em to fight?” Hayfield asked. “I ain’t much for teachin’.”

  “You taught me,” said Rynn. “You taught Buckets.”

  “We taught No-Boots, too,” Pick observed.

  Rynn shrugged. “He knew his business. Hanged is better than collared, but nothing beats free.”

  “Syr said you’d tell us how you got pinched,” Pick said. “She wouldn’t give us particulars.” Pick’s version sounded more like puh-tick-lers.

  “No.” Rynn shook her head. “I got pinched. I got collared. I got away. That’s all anyone needs to know.”

  There was a hollow thump under the table. “Can you at least tell us how you got the fancy leg?” Buckets asked. Rynn looked under the table and he kicked it again.

  “Stop that. Got cut bad escaping, and it took septic. They cut it off just below the knee.” Sosha cut it off. She didn’t see the need to get into blame in her story, but she hadn’t quite forgotten, either. “I wasn’t going to let a missing leg stop me, so I tinkered one up.”

  “Can I see it?” Buckets asked. His eyes were lit with a boyish love for the macabre and the weird.

  Rynn frowned, the sort that sent her soldiers scurrying off to be elsewhere. It just made Buckets smile. “You always go around asking to see under girls’ pants?”

  “Yup,” Rascal answered.

  “He’s gettin’ worse by the day,” Hayfield added.

  “Hey!” Buckets looked to his friends, first one then the other. Rynn couldn’t tell if his indignity was feigned, but they all laughed at his expense, Rynn included.

  Rynn sighed, then ordered another round of drinks. She’d planned to take them all over the ship, brag about all the things the rebellion had been able to do. Instead, she found herself lulled into a comfortable torpor by familiar company.

  “So how’d you end up with ‘em, Buckets? I thought Tabby had you trussed up in church-day clothes, keeping clear of us ne’er-do-wells.”

  “Kid’s got a sniffer on him, that’s how,” Pick said. “I taught him too good, and he tracked us down. Can you believe that?”

  “How’d Tabby take it?”

  “I left her a note,” Buckets replied. “Ain’t seen her since.”

  “Think you could send that step-through circle over to get her?” Hayfield asked. “Might not be safe in Eversall, if folk get to puttin’ pieces together.”

  “My father’s got a grid laid out, back and forth, up and down across the continent. We were already past Eversall when we picked you boys up. I can see about stealing some time tomorrow to go say ‘hi’ to her.”

  “Do I have to be there?” Buckets asked, shrinking down and looking up at Rynn with baleful eyes.

  Rynn twisted her mouth up sideways and frowned as she studied Bucket’s expression for hints of sincerity. “No. You should be there, but I won’t make you. I could use you there, though,” she said to Hayfield. “You always had a way with Tabby.”

  Pick snickered. Rascal elbowed him in the ribs.

  “What?”
Rynn asked, looking from one to the other, then to Hayfield.

  Hayfield grimaced and scratched at his head. “Yeah, she’s had her way with me, too.”

  Realization dawned and Rynn’s eyes opened wide as her spectacles. “But—but I never—”

  Rascal chuckled. “Yeah, you were always a bit dense about that sorta thing, and you were too young for her to talk to you about woman stuff.” The rest joined in, leaving Rynn the butt of the joke this time.

  “I’ve missed you guys,” Rynn admitted as the laughter at her expense died down.

  “Yeah, I saw the way freemen is lookin’ at you,” said Pick. “You ain’t got no one ‘round here who knows you for real.”

  Rynn opened her mouth to object, but nothing came out. I have Sosha. Who was as similar to Rynn as a lap cat is to a mouser. Father. No, not him either. Rynn and her father were alike—too alike for the comfort of either, yet with enough differences in all the wrong places to make it grate when they argued. The other twinborn were her father’s friends, colleagues, underlings. They saw her as General Rynn or Miss Madlin, depending on the time of day and which world they were awake in.

  A freeman rebel dropped by with their next round of drinks. On impulse, Rynn hoisted hers toward the ceiling and made a toast. “To having a bunch of low-born tunnel rats around, willing to tell me to piss off when I need it!”