Planesrunner (Everness Book One)

by Ian McDonald

  “She's gaining on us,” Sharkey said. “Ground speed one eight five.”

  “Match velocity, Miss Sixsmyth. Everness will not be seen dawdling like a sow to market. Inform me of any changes in Arthur P's speed, Mr. Sharkey.”

  “Aye, ma'am.”

  Sen turned to the throttles and gently pushed them forward until the readings on her green magnifier screens matched.

  “Nineteen minutes to destination,” she said. This was a Sen Everett had never seen before. Her focus and concentration were total. No flip answers, no casual palari, no look-at-me grand-standing. Everett had never quite believed her when she said she was Everness's pilot—she was a natural exaggerator—but she was, and she was magnificent. She controlled Everness with every part of her being. They were over Kent now. To the left were the Isle of Sheppey and the wide expanse of the Medway and Thames estuaries, grey and dismal as cold iron. To the right and forward, Everett thought he could see the cross-shaped plan of Canterbury Cathedral; towers throwing long winter shadows across the rooftops. Dead ahead a line of cloud, dark and yellow-tinged as a bruise, ran from horizon to horizon. “What do you make of that, Mr. Singh?”

  “I'd say it's a weather front, ma'am. Coming from the east, at this time of year, it could be snow.”

  “I would concur, Mr. Singh. Mr. Sharkey, weather report. Unlike your air-o-planes, Mr. Singh, we can't fly over the weather. We fly with it. A good captain can use the winds, and the pressure gradients, and the thermals, and the down-draughts, to her advantage.”

  “South Sandettie automatic weather station as of fourteen hundred hours,” Sharkey said, one hand cupped to his headphone like a DJ. “Winds east-nor'east backing nor-nor'east, thirty knots, snow, visibility one hundred metres, pressure 105 millibars and falling.”

  “Excellent!” Captain Anastasia announced, rubbing her hands. “Maintain heading and velocity, Miss Sixsmyth. Take us down to standard cruise.”

  Everett stepped up to the window. He put his hands on the glass. Here, like a figurehead on the prow of a sailing ship, he could imagine he was flying free, borne up by winds and pressure, driven into the heart of the storm whirling in from the coast of the Low Countries. They were coming up on the coast now; another horizon line. Flakes of snow whirled and smashed to cold grains of ice on the sloping window. Everett shivered; the cold was reaching into Everness.

  “Our rival, Mr. Sharkey?”

  “Maintaining speed and heading.”

  “Take us down to two hundred, Miss Sixsmyth. Engage autopilot.”

  Everness crossed over seaside Deal, its sea-front promenade and antique pier twinkling with wind-whipped fairy-lights. Everett saw dog-walkers look up as the huge dark mass of the airship passed silently over their heads. The size of a skyscraper, but light as air. And away, out over a greying, wind-whipped sea. The sun was gone. Grey above, grey beneath, grey flecked with swirling white snowflakes ahead. The snowstorm, curled, coiled, waited, then broke over Everness in a howl of whipping sleet. Everness quivered but drove on, deeper into the blizzard.

  Captain Anastasia raised a beckoning finger. “Sen, Mr. Singh. It's important you see this and pray the Dear that you never see it again.” Sen locked on autopilot and joined Everett and her mother looking out into the featureless, fractured grey of a blizzard at sea. Snow was building up in the corners of the window panels. Everett could feel the cold beyond the glass. He saw a lighter grey on the deep grey; a place where the waves were breaking white. There were shoals beneath the surface. The shallows was tinged green; Everett could map the shifting contours of the sandbanks. Here was a more regular pattern, the water flowing around a line of ribs that looked like the skeleton of a fish, buried like a dinosaur fossil in the sand. The whirling snow, the grey-on-grey, the white-flecked waves made it difficult to judge scale; then the wind eddied the snow away for an instant and Everett saw that it was huge, a hundred metres long. It was the skeleton of a long-dead airship, swallowed by the shifting sands. A second ship-skeleton drew a pattern in the sand, a third crossed it, ahead lay a fourth, a fifth; more obvious as the water grew more shallow and sandbars rose out of the sea. Tangles of ribs and spars, some broken like a snapped spine, some reaching up out of the sand like the fingers of a drowned airshipman, the running tide water foaming around them, scraps and rags of ship-skin fluttering in the snow-laden wind. Now the sands were exposed and gulls rose up and fled from Everness's shadow, crying in their dead-soul voices. Dozens of airships had died here and been dragged down into the ever-moving sands. This was their graveyard.

  “The Goodwin Sands,” Captain Anastasia said. “The duelling ground of the Airish. Sen, the cards.” Sen took the Everness tarot from the place next to her heart. Captain Anastasia shuffled the cards, then cut them one-handed, three times. She returned the deck to Sen. Sen's pale face was blank, her eyes dead as the dead ships down in the swallowing sand, as she laid out five cards in a cross on her command post and turned them, one by one.

  The top card of the cross: A child in a seashell drawn by turtles. The child looked out of the card, beaming sunnily, oblivious to the lightning storm crackling in the background of the card. “The Cockle-child,” Sen said. “Innocence under threat. Ignorance ain't bliss. Big peril.”

  Everyone on the bridge had gathered around Sen's station.

  The bottom card of the cross: Two swans with crowns around their necks. The crowns were joined by chains. “Swannhilde and Swannhamme,” Sen said. “A lifelong partnership or union of some kind. It could be broken. Swans mate for life. If one dies, the other dies not long after.”

  The left side of the cross: An old, bearded man, sitting with his knees drawn up to his chest, staring out of the card with wide eyes. Snow was piled up around him, to his neck. “The Winter Watcher,” Sen said. “Cold. Hunger. Want. Will spring ever come? If it's November or February: death of an old person. They're the killing months.”

  Now she turned over the card on the right side of the cross. A man in eighteenth-century hat and breeches set out along a path that wound into the depths of the card, leaning on his staff, face serious with intent. Everett again wondered how Sen had come by these cards, who had taught her their names and interpretations, who had put them together. “The Traveller Hasteth in the Evening,” Sen said. “The time is short and the hills is dark and I's got miles to go before I sleeps. It is no easy road.”

  Sen flipped up the corner of the final card, the card at the centre of the cross. She put it down again. Captain Anastasia reached out and boldly turned it faceup. The sun and its planets, in the jaws of an all-devouring wolf. “Season of the Wolf,” Sen said. “The lowest throw of the dice. The bad guys win. The sun is eaten. The world is given for a season to the forces of darkness, and there is no light.”

  “So be it,” Captain Anastasia said. “We make our own luck here. To your posts. We've work to do. Mr. Sharkey, our enemy?”

  “Nothing on the cameras, ma'am. Then again, we can't even see our own tail in this weather. The radar's throwing up all kinds of spooks and false readings.”

  Captain Anastasia held up her hand. There was silence on the bridge. She held herself completely still. Everett held his breath. Slowly, slow as a glacier, Captain Anastasia turned to her left. Her eyes went wide. “Sen! Hard to starboard!”

  Sen threw the wheel over as something huge, world-crushing, all-devouring loomed out of the storming snow. The wolf, Everett immediately thought. The wolf that ate the sun. No: worse. An airship, coming straight towards them at ramming speed.

  “Take us to the floor,” Captain Anastasia shouted. Sen pushed the levers to the end of their travel. “Brace!” Everett reeled into the window as Everness wheeled and dived. The whole of Everness's two hundred metres shuddered as Arthur P grazed along her left flank. For an instant Everett imagined the whole structure coming apart, the lift cells breaking free and fleeing into the upper atmosphere, the skin unwinding like orange peels, the nose splitting off and spilling him towards the snow and the sea an
d the impaling ribs of the dead airships below. Then Sen brought them out of it into clear air. It's as if she heard, Everett thought, watching Captain Anastasia pull out the intercom. Something in the air, some vibration, some pressure shift she felt through the skin. She heard them coming. If she hadn't…

  “Mr. Mchynlyth, damage report.”

  The engineer's voice came through a shriek of wind from down in the belly of the airship.

  “Bassards took out number three and five impeller pods!”

  “How long until we get full power back?” Captain Anastasia asked.

  “Captain, I canna get full power where there's no engine….”

  “I have it on camera,” Sharkey said.

  “On my screens please.”

  The pictures were grainy and snow-smeared, but Everett could see the snapped spars, the spray of sparks from the severed power lines, the violation of the purity of Everness's sleek lines. It felt like he had lost a finger for each engine. Captain Anastasia's face was grim. Her ship had survived, but she had been hit hard.

  “Sen, shut down numbers four and six impellers. I'll not have her shake herself to bits. And bring us up. It's death down there. Mr. Sharkey, I want whatever sense you can make from the radar. I want to know where Arthur P is.”

  “There's nothing on the radar. It's like she's disappeared.”

  “Airships do not disappear, Mr. Sharkey.”

  “I'm getting nothing but snow and seagulls out there.”

  “On my screen.” Captain Anastasia slid zoom lenses over the magnifier screen, looking deeper and deeper into the video snow that speckled the screen. Arthur P had come out of nothing, sideswiped Everness, and vanished into nothing again. Two hundred metres of cargo airship. Impossible. Irrational. This was a ghostly place, but there was nothing supernatural at work here. As goalkeeper for Team Red Everett had enjoyed a reputation of being spooky, superpowered, a Jedi. It was cool to be a goalkeeping ninja, but that was magical thinking. All he did was look at all the possibilities, the probabilities, look in three and more dimensions.

  “Maybe it's not out there,” Everett said. “Maybe it's up there.”

  Capitan Anastasia's eyes went wider than Everett had ever seen.

  “Mr. Sharkey, vertical scan.”

  The radar pinged, sending its beam down and up rather than forward and aft. At once Captain Anastasia's monitor showed the great shadow of Arthur P, directly overhead. Directly overhead, and descending fast. She meant to crush Everness, drive her down onto the spines and spikes of the wrecks beneath.

  “Ahead full!” Captain Anastasia yelled. Sen rammed the drive levers forward. Everness moved, but she was big, and cumbersome, and slow slow slow with half her engines out of commission. Everett watched the shadow of Arthur P loom to fill the radar screen. Thirty metres. Acceleration in a machine the size of Everness was feeble. Twenty metres. So much inertia to overcome. Ten metres. Everett could feel the vibration of the straining impellers through the hull all the way into his molars. “Come on,” he whispered. “Come on come on come on.” Clear. Almost clear. A shock ran the length of the ship. Everness groaned in every spar, every nanocarbon fibre. The floor began to tilt. Arthur P had Everness by the rudder and was pushing her tail down, prow up. The empty chocolate cup rolled across the bridge and fetched up against the bulkhead. Everett grabbed for a stanchion.

  “Hang on, I's bringing her nose up,” Sen shouted, pulling back the attitude yoke. “I hope you strapped that cargo down, Sharkey.” The impellers screamed again. Everness pitched up more steeply. The magnifying lenses swung free from their monitors. Mchynlyth's voice rattled on the intercom.

  “That wee girl is killing my ship!”

  Sen held the yoke, teeth gritted. Then Everness's tail swung out from underneath Arthur P and she drove into clear air.

  “Bring us round, onto Arthur P,” Captain Anastasia ordered. “Hold station, fifty metres off her bow.”

  “Yes, ma'am.”

  “Mchynlyth!”

  “We're still airborne, the Dear alone knows how. It'll take me a wee while to get back to have a look at steering.”

  “No need, Mr. Mchynlyth.”

  Sen swung Everness round, bringing her to bear head-on to Arthur P, levelling out from its crash-descent. Captain Anastasia went to the glass window, leaned against it, peering into the grey-scape.

  “Kyle Bromley could never handle a ship like that,” she said. “That's Dona Bromley herself on the quarterdeck. And she means to wreck us, leave our bones for the gulls and the squid and the cold Goodwin sands. If she cannot have Everness, no one will.” Captain Anastasia pulled down the intercom again. “Can we fight, Mr. Mchynlyth?”

  “Are you lallygagging? I doubt we can even keep aloft.”

  “I'll take that as a no. Well, you've fooled me once and you've fooled me twice but you won't fool Anastasia Sixsmyth again. Mr. Sharkey, hail Arthur P. Dona Bromley is not the only one knows the old ways.”

  Sen held station in front of Arthur P, moving Everness backwards in perfect synchronisation with its enemy's advance. Everett looked out at the heraldic crest on the prow, the strip of window beneath it, half-seen through the snow.

  “Everness, this is Arthur P,” said a woman's voice, harsh and crackling.

  “Dona Bromley,” Captain Anastasia said. “You fly bona.”

  “Captain Sixsmyth. I wish I could return the flattery, but, oh dear; your reputation greatly exceeds your ability. Perhaps not the wife I'd hoped for Kyle,” Ma Bromley said. Everett saw Sharkey's jaw tighten, his lips twitch with anger. “As well then that I plan to drive you down in the dirt where you belong.”

  “I call on you, Dona Bromley,” Captain Anastasia said calmly. “I call upon you and all here present, that you shall at this time and in this place, meet me in single combat.”

  Sharkey was on his feet. Sen's face was paler than her usual white. Everett heard himself gasp. He'd never thought people did that, gasp with amazement. Captain Anastasia raised a hand to silence her crew.

  “Kris is old, but the right of single satisfaction is older. And I believe that once called, it can't be refused. Am I right, Dona Bromley?” There was a long static-filled silence. Everett thought he saw silhouettes move against the cabin light in the other airship. “Either you or your nominated champion. As I ain't in the habit of fighting old ladies, I'll accept your son in your stead.” Captain Anastasia took her thumb off the transmit button.

  “They'll kill you!” Sharkey shouted.

  “I was taught La Savate by the legendary Maitre Gastineau of Marseilles,” Captain Anastasia said.

  “That's not gonna…I mean, Kyle Bromley…he's…he's…”

  “A man?”

  “Yes.”

  “As opposed to me, a woman.”

  “Polones shouldn't fight omis.”

  “I've always had a problem with that little word, ‘shouldn't.' Ugly, snivelling little word.” Captain Anastasia pressed down the talk button. “Have I an answer, Dona Bromley?”

  “You know fine well we can't refuse you,” Ma Bromley said, and Everett could hear the bile and loathing in her voice. She's got you, he thought. She's played you at Queen of Hackney Great Port, the heart and soul of the old ways, and trumped your old tradition with an older one. She's beaten you. But what exactly has she won?

  “We'll meet aboard your ship in five minutes,” Captain Anastasia said. “Then I shall have satisfaction.” She signalled to Sharkey to cut the transmission.

  “Of course, you're right. I can't win and they won't fight clean. Mr. Sharkey, Mr. Mchynlyth, did you get that?”

  “Yer insane, woman,” came the voice from down in the belly of the airship. “But I'm with ye.”

  “You fought what you thought was a fight for my honour once. I didn't need it then, but I need it now. I need all the fight you have, gentlemen. I'm there to buy time. You're there to do the maximum amount of damage you can to Arthur P. And I'd imagine you can do a lot. Mr. Singh!” Everett started.
He had been half-hypnotised by the play of snow across Arthur P's nose. “I need every able body. Sen, I'll need you to fly the ship. Mr. Singh, you're on the crew manifest; you fight for the ship. Mr. Mchynlyth will equip you. You feeling handy, omi?”

  Two airships faced each other across ten metres of airspace, holding themselves in the chaotic heart of the snowstorm with delicate touches of their impellers. Ten metres, kissing distance. The docking gantries had been run out. Mchynlyth and Arthur P's engineer were at work in the swirling clouds of snow, locking them together. From the out-port bay Everett thought the long, spindly bridges looked as crazy as butterfly tongues. Mchynlyth came scampering back into the bay. He gave Captain Anastasia a thumbs-up. Captain Anastasia turned up the collar of her coat. She picked up the intercom.

  “Miss Sixsmyth, you have the con. Everness is yours.”

  “Yes, ma'am. Ma…” Everett thought he heard tears in Sen's voice. It could have been the intercom, the howling of the wind drawing notes from the stanchions and beams, piling snow against the bulkheads. Captain Anastasia quickly cut the connection.

  “Gentlemen, raise hell itself.”

  Then she turned and strode out along the slender air bridge, high over the clashing waves of Goodwin. Her coattails billowed behind her. Then the snow swept in and Everett could see her no more. An amber light lit on a panel by the hatch. Mchynlyth thumbed a switch and retracted the air bridge.

  “Clear.” Mchynlyth swung the bay door to and dogged it shut.

  “Hold on,” Sen announced on the public address system. “This could get bouncy.” Everett lurched towards the exit hatch as Everness kicked back and away from Arthur P. Sharkey and Mchynlyth were already halfway down the spiral staircase to the cargo deck. Everett reeled against the handrail as Sen spun the ship with what remained of its engines and steering. The cargo deck loomed; then Everett pushed himself back from the drop. Sharkey and Mchynlyth were already pounding across the cargo deck. Captain Anastasia had reckoned she could extend the formalities to five minutes at the most. Sen had that long to get Everness into position to drop a raiding party. Everett reeled again. The deck tilted. If he lost his footing he could roll the entire length of Everness to smash into the rudder mechanisms in the tail. The ship shivered. Sen had opened up the other two starboard side engines, trading vibration damage for speed. Everett smelled the ozone-y burn of straining electrical systems beneath his feet. He went in four different directions as he crossed the last dozen metres to the cargo hatch. Sharkey had already armed himself. Mchynlyth handed Everett a dozen cable ties and what looked like a pistol with a blunderbuss bell-shaped muzzle with a plush-toy stuffed in it.