Crystal Rain

by Tobias S. Buckell

  John flattened himself as close to the varnished canvas as he could. He wrapped his legs around the netting and untied his shirt.

  Years of sailing had taught him to gauge the distance without a second thought. The Azteca sharpshooter, used to stable ground, couldn’t aim accurately enough to hit them yet, thanks to the swaying and wind.

  The Azteca airship, though, kept trying to drop down closer for an easy shot.

  John laid the flare gun against his forearm to aim it as best he could. It looked small and not very accurate, but he’d used something similar to fire ropes to other ships. He didn’t fire yet; he waited, getting a feel for the wallow of the airship. Just like at sea. The Azteca airship, above and slightly behind them, sank even closer. John squinted, waited for the great mass of fabric and gas beneath him to shift, and fired.

  He quickly snapped the gun open and emptied the spent cartridge. It spun off with the wind down toward the distant ground.

  Nothing happened. He’d missed. Yes, he saw the flare well over both airships, shining and smoking its way slowly back to ground.

  John slid another flare in, snapped the gun shut, and fired again. They had given him their belly, and he took advantage by aiming for the tanks slung to the midsection of the undercarriage.

  The warrior leaning over the edge started craning around. Looking for John. The Azteca aimed several more shots, but if he couldn’t hit the airship, John guessed only a fluke shot would hit him. So he stayed carefully wrapped around the netting and fired again.

  A fireball exploded out of the side of the Azteca airship. One of the engines caught fire and exploded, the propeller spiraling fire as it fell down through the air.

  “Got them!” John yelled.

  He opened the gun, slid in another flare, and fired at the Azteca gasbag. And then again. That was the last flare, but he saw it melting through a section of the gasbag.

  The fire quickly leapt along the entire undercarriage. One of the warriors jumped from the edge. Spread-eagle, his pants on fire, he screamed as he dropped past John’s airship. Up above, the Aztecan machine staggered in the air as numerous holes appeared in the bag. It dropped. Slowly at first, then quickly.

  Shit.

  John scrambled down the netting. He dropped the flare gun out into the air, not wanting to try holding on to it with only one good hand. He folded his legs around netting and let go with his hand, falling to swing upside down, his head level with the bamboo rail.

  “Go go go go,” he yelled at Oaxyctl. “Go right! They’re coming down on us.”

  Oaxyctl swore in his own language, a long fluid series of vowels, then he spun dials. John jackknifed his whole body and swung out from under the airship as best he could to look up.

  Flames and smoke.

  Something struck the top of their airship and screamed. The whole thing shook. John tensed his leg muscles as he swung back and hit the side of the airship. An Azteca warrior slipped down the side of the netting, grabbing for anything but not succeeding.

  He fell down toward the ground. Though from John’s inverted point of view, it looked as if he fell upward. John pulled himself upright, still watching.

  Things took forever to fall all the way down to the ground, John thought, waiting until the Azteca disappeared into the green. Oaxyctl finally coaxed the speed he needed from the airship, and they aimed down at the ground to pick up speed. John couldn’t tell if his imagination was playing tricks on him, but he saw ripples race across beneath the netting.

  They couldn’t let out that much gas.

  Could they?

  No, the undercarriage swung violently as the airship tilted. They’d been struck. Hoses hissed loudly as Oaxyctl filled them with gas again. It sounded as if he’d spun the valves open as far as they would go.

  They rose into the sky, now. John watched the flaming wreck of the Aztecan airship fall quickly away beneath them. As they rose, he gave himself time to let out the breath he’d been holding.

  But even then he only had time for a breath before Oaxyctl yelled at him.

  “Check for fire!”

  John unhooked his legs and scrambled up toward the top of the airship.

  After several more panicked minutes, John found only smoldering netting. He used his shirt to beat it out. Once he was sure it wouldn’t reignite, John made his way back down.

  When John clambered into the undercarriage, hanging on with a single hand and swinging his feet in, he found that Oaxyctl did not look relieved.

  “There isn’t any fire,” John reported.

  “No,” Oaxyctl said. “But we lost a lot of helium getting out of that. It will be only a matter of time now before we have to land.”

  John strapped himself into his chair. The once creaky and unsafe-seeming undercarriage now felt like firm ground compared to scampering around on the netting.

  “How long do we have?” John asked.

  “Maybe a few hours.”

  John looked up at the material over his head. “Is it still safe to fly, then?” he asked nervously, the image of the large Aztecan airship plummeting to the ground still strong in his head.

  Oaxyctl nodded. “I will fly it until the last moments. Then we land. And hopefully we live.”

  Hopefully? John looked over. He grabbed the straps holding him in. At least they were far away from the advancing Azteca. A small consolation, but he would take it.

  “Any landing we make that we walk away from,” the Aztecan said, “will be a good landing.” Then he muttered to himself, “I truly was born under an unlucky sign.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Oaxyctl had taken the airship as high into the clear sky as he could get it with the remains of the gas in the tanks strapped to the underside of the bamboo carriage. John noticed that they hadn’t climbed high enough to pick back up the strong winds that would take them all the way to Capitol City. They drifted slowly, like a ship without sails.

  Fortunately they still drifted toward the east. One of the two moons was out, barely visible in the daylight.

  Oaxyctl swigged water from his canteen and looked over the edge. “Look at that.” He pointed. A brown, arcing scar in the earth.

  John leaned forward. He knew where they were. “It’s called Hope’s Loss.”

  Oaxyctl folded his right leg underneath himself. “Hope’s Loss?”

  “You’ve never been to Capitol City?”

  “No.” Oaxyctl shook his head. “But I know much about it. I have friends there.”

  “Twenty-two years ago I journeyed through the bush to Capitol City with a friend of mine. Edward. A mongoose-man. A damn good one. He wanted to investigate Hope’s Loss. He wanted to see if the stories were true.”

  “Which stories?”

  “Ah.” John picked up his hook. “You haven’t lived around here long enough.” He slid the cup over his wrist and began to strap the hook on. The leather edges bit into his sore skin. He avoided Oaxyctl’s curious gaze, lowering his eyebrows. “Supposedly, during the last days”—John grunted and levered the hook on—“evil beings rained rocks on this land, killing many people. It wasn’t stopped until all machines of destruction, on all sides, were destroyed. There are other more fantastic stories, but there is one thing they all have in common.” John leaned over and looked at the scars. “They say the land here around Hope’s Loss is poisoned, for nothing will grow there.”

  Oaxyctl also leaned over and looked around. “And is it true?”

  John nodded. “I held four of my friends in my arms as they died, just weeks after walking through there.” John took a deep breath and let it out. “Edward, he always remained sick after that. Just the two of us arrived in Capitol City. As the people said, a poisoned land.”

  “Were you sick?”

  “For some reason, I’ve always been fine.”

  “Lucky.”

  “Yes.” John leaned back against his wicker seat. “Very.”

  “There are similar stories in Aztlan, on the other side of
the Wicked Highs. About cursed lakes that are perfectly round. People from villages that try to settle them, once a generation or so, die. We share a lot of similar history and destiny.”

  John looked over Oaxyctl. “Tetol?”

  “Teotl.” Oaxyctl corrected.

  “Those beings were what the legends say caused most of the trouble. They rule your people, they tried to destroy my people—”

  “My ‘people,’ as you called them,” Oaxyctl said, “are varied. Some of them know no better, as all society is dictated by the Teotl and the priesthood. They know only what is told to them: that only blood can appeal to the gods, only blood brings the food, and only blood ensures your soul’s survival into the afterworld. And even then, many only follow this out of fear from the Teotl and instruments of the priests. There are the Tolteca who have fled over the mountains to live here, and there are also people like me, Azteca who have joined the mongoose-men to fight the people that were once my own.”

  “I’m sorry,” John said.

  “All our ancestors have been cast down from greatness. That is all we know for sure. All else is confused and muddied, because the Teotl, my people, your people, and the Loa that the Teotl have sworn to destroy are all in conflict. And you and I, John, are just tiny drops in that ancient storm.”

  The airship had lost height, but it looked as if they would pass well over the scarred land.

  “Okay.” Oaxyctl’s outburst surprised John. He kept what was on his mind silent: no matter the madness of the circumstances, or history, for him nothing justified the pillaging and disregard for life the Azteca brought to Nanagada.

  Nothing.

  Oaxyctl guided the ponderous lighter-than-air machine down toward the long, rolling upper canopy of Nanagada’s deep inner jungle. He started the engine as the wind pushed them backward.

  “Do you see a clearing of any sort?” he asked, after several minutes of scanning the horizon.

  “No clearing,” John said.

  “Damn.” Oaxyctl looked up at the dials on the wooden panel over his head and bit his lips, seeming to wish for more lift. “We should land now, while we still float. Who knows when it will begin to fall.”

  He aimed them at a lower section of trees, and they sputtered along. Now, as John looked down, he could perceive breaks in the steady stream of green beneath the canopy. Oaxyctl leaned over, shifting the bamboo undercarriage, as he appraised the area.

  “This is as good as anything,” he said.

  John nodded.

  “Hang on then.” Oaxyctl pushed the levers by the side of his seat, forcing the whole motor-mounting behind them to squeak and swivel upward. The airship tilted down, slowly, and then Oaxyctl gunned the engine. The airship settled down toward the trees.

  The top branches, thin and laden with rich green leaves, brushed the undercarriage. It sounded like sand underneath a skiff. Only it got louder as they sank in between the branches and leaves. The soft sifting transformed into a violent scratching. A large limb snapped. The snapping continued. Like firecrackers.

  The airship came to a stop.

  “Can you reach anything?” Oaxyctl asked.

  John looked around at the bowed branches poking through the gaps of the undercarriage. The nearest branch, one of the stronger ones that had stopped the airship, looked large enough to hold his weight. “Yes. You?”

  Oaxyctl unstrapped himself. His actions were careful, he didn’t move any faster than he needed. He moved to a crouch and picked up his pack and spears. “You will have to go first,” he told John.

  John fumbled at the straps. Steady, he told himself, reaching out. He grabbed the edge of the branch with his good hand. Then he slung his hook out over into the branches and hopped off. The branch bowed down, a good four or five feet below the undercarriage. John arched his back and got his feet up around the branch and crawled his way upside down toward the trunk. He grunted and pulled himself onto the crook and leaned his back against the bark.

  “Okay, I’m here,” he called out.

  Oaxyctl swung off. The branch bowed again. The branch cracked. Oaxyctl looked startled and pulled himself up as quickly as he could. John gave him a hand up onto the crook. Far below them the ground peeked out from between the tiniest cracks in leaves, where the sun turned into hazy shafts of light that penetrated the cool shadows.

  “It’ll be hard to see the sun once we are below the trees,” John said. “Do you know where we are?” John’s highly visual internal map was beginning to build a picture for him.

  “Not really, but that’s okay.” Oaxyctl lowered himself down to the next branch. John hung by his hook from an overhead branch and grabbed Oaxyctl’s hand. The mongoose-man half-turned. “What?” he snapped.

  “Watch your step.”

  The branch beneath Oaxyctl’s leather boot crumbled away in a puff of rotted dust. It smashed down through the leaves, shaking loose drops of condensation, seeds, and dirt, which all trickled down through the air in a sifting shower.

  “Thank you.” Oaxyctl swung over to another branch. John followed him down, blinking as everything got dimmer and dimmer.

  Oaxyctl paused to notch a dart into his atlatl. With a burst of energy he whipped the dart at the gasbag, puncturing it.

  “That will keep it from getting into the air again,” he explained, “now that our weight is off of it.”

  The airship, without them in it, had been struggling to rise again.

  At the base of the tree Oaxyctl took out a compass, oriented himself to north by the needle, and shifted his pack and spears. “We’re much further away than I wanted to be. We need to keep moving; our airship will be visible if any other Azteca airships are close and saw all that and are hoping to catch us.”

  He struck off, and John followed. “Would we make that much of an important target?”

  Oaxyctl shrugged. “If we were an airship that had taken photographs showing the size and details of the Azteca army, and of exactly where they are, it might be worth their time to consider sending another airship and small group of warriors to find us.”

  Good point. John picked up the speed of his walk.

  More walking, he thought, brushing aside a prickly vine draped in front of him. But in the right direction.

  North to the city.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  The tracks stretched on for miles, cutting a swath through the muggy green land as they headed down a gentle hill toward the end of the northern peninsula of Nanagada. The sun left a band of mist that hung over everything, giving the edge of the forest by the gray wooden trestles a gloomy feel.

  Tizoc stood by the edge of the tracks, waiting for the mile-long train to thunder past. Pieces of gravel shook down the sides of the sharp slope. The wheels clicked steadily along.

  Then silence fell, the last cab rushing off into the distance. Tizoc adjusted the gray cloak he wore to disguise himself and continued on.

  Huehueteotl, the ancient god that commanded Tizoc’s culpilli, the ancient council of leaders, had given him this task in person. As tradition demanded, ever since the Flower Wars were first formalized thousands of years ago, a warrior-priest would go before the main army to the city about to be captured and ask for its surrender, its gods, its gold, and its subordination to the superior forces of the Azteca.

  Tizoc felt pride that he could walk so calmly toward his death.

  He crested the gentle hill and looked out over the tracks. They led gently down toward a great hill of rock that blocked the peninsula.

  Not rock, Tizoc realized, but Capitol City.

  He stood and slowly realized what he looked at. This “city” of the soon-to-be-conquered was no city. The walls, giant, spread like hills across the entire peninsula.

  How many people lived in there? The dazed Tizoc guessed half a million. The rock face rose into the air, and he could see embankments, even a road, along it. To think that his people could not capture this city would have been sacrilegious, so Tizoc told himself this would be
a fine jewel for the crown of the empire, this Capitol City.

  He had a job to do.

  Tizoc shifted a gnarled and muddy walking stick to his left hand, threw off his dull gray cloak, and walked forward.

  They stared at him. He stood outside the massive walls, by the vendors and stores along the street that curved along the front of the city. They stared at his feathers, the paint that covered his whole body, and the designs woven into his clothing.

  Some knew what Tizoc was.

  Tizoc looked at the traitors who lived in Capitol City, the ones calling themselves Tolteca, straight in the eye. These cowards who had run away from the true land to hide here, they would be first on the altar after the city fell. Their blood would start the new reign.

  He walked forward in the street, until enough people stopped and stared, and the men with tangled hair down to their shoulders stepped forward with rifles.

  “I am the priest Tizoc,” he shouted out loud. “I am Azteca, and I come with words for your commanders and culpulli.” He pointed at the warriors with their guns. “Take me now to your chiefs and priests. I am to deliver the terms of your surrender.”

  A wave of whispers rippled through the crowd along the side of the street. Heads turned to face him. Someone spat into the street at him.

  “Who you think you is?” yelled a woman selling yams piled in a cart across the street.

  Tizoc repeated his words. A rock smacked the back of Tizoc’s head before he could finish. He fell to his knees, but didn’t grab the wound. It throbbed, but he let it bleed freely down his back. A gift for Huehueteotl, he whispered.

  A small crowd rushed in on him. Tizoc did not try to cover his face from the blows. He tasted blood, felt it trickle down the sides of his neck.

  They broke his arm and then a leg by stomping on it.

  I am for you, he told the sky. Any real civilization would have taken him to their leaders, talked the terms, and arranged either a tithing or a proper battle. Not this savagery.