Planesrunner (Everness Book One)

by Ian McDonald

  “This is a thumper. You've been on the end of one of these,” Mchynlyth said. “Hurts like buggery, don't it, but it don't put holes in the engineering. Nonlethal.” With his gun he pushed aside the tails of Sharkey's coat. Shotgun handles gleamed. Mchynlyth tutted. “Oh, and one of these.” He handed Everett an ornately curved handle. A skin-ripper. “You got to get in to get out. Up to cut, down to bond.” Mchynlyth flicked open a walkie-talkie. “We're ready and raring down here.”

  “Give me a code word so I knows it's youse for pickup, ” Sen said. Sharkey and Mchynlyth looked at each other.

  “Tottenham Hotspur,” Everett suggested.

  “I'm over Arthur P,” Sen said.

  “Hold on to your arses,” Mchynlyth said, and pressed the control button. Winches whined. The solid deck beneath Everett's feet lurched. A crack opened. Icy air blasted in. The crack widened into open air, into naked sky. The blizzard screamed and shrieked around the descending cargo platform, setting it rocking on its winch cables. Beneath lay the snow-covered upper hull of Arthur P.

  “'And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers,'” Sharkey said as he descended through the whipping snow. “'And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.'”

  “I know that one,” Everett said. “Pulp Fiction. It's a movie in my world. Samuel L. Jackson says it just before he kills someone.”

  Sharkey grinned. With the wind streaming his hair out behind him and the light in his eye, Everett could believe every dark tale told of him.

  “Thirty seconds,” Mchynlyth said into the walkie-talkie. Everett wrapped an arm around a cable. Arthur P was so huge its hull dwindled into snow-blind invisibility forward and aft. The upper hull was wide and gently curving, but snow compacting to ice made it dangerous. Miss a footing here and you'd toboggan screaming all the way down to the sea below. The lift jolted against Arthur P's skin. “The omis have landed,” Mchynlyth said. “Everett, follow me and try not to get thumped.”

  Mchynlyth loped down the hull, bent low against the wind. Everett glanced over his shoulder to see the cargo pallet retract and Everness lift and turn away and vanish into the grey.

  “Yah!” Mchynlyth flicked out his skin-ripper, stabbed it deep into Arthur P's skin and quickly cut a square. He peeled it back and peered inside. “Aye. She'll do. It's only a wee drop down.” And he was gone. A hundred metres up-hull, Sharkey cut his own entry and dropped down into Arthur P's interior. For a moment Everett was alone on top of the airship. Then he grasped the edge of the hole, lowered himself into the gloom, and dropped. He hit the upper catwalk hard, let his knees fold and rolled like he'd been taught in judo class. Mchynlyth beckoned him. They ran at a low crouch to the central staircase between the huge spheres of the lift cells, then sneaked down the spiral staircase to the central crosswalk. Everett felt something under his foot. The brass plate that marked the centre of gravity, the heart of Arthur P. Mchynlyth pointed down over the railing. A tiny figure in hi-viz orange patrolled the cargo deck. Everett produced his thumper.

  “Too far,” Mchynlyth whispered. “They're on a wee string, so you can get them back after. Economical. Here.” He pulled over a couple of drop lines. Everett looped wrist and foot into the straps.

  “What do you think the captain's doing?” Everett whispered.

  “Fighting,” Mchynlyth said. “That French kickboxing yoke's mighty fancy, but I wouldn't count on it to save you on a Saturday night on Argyll Street. Now, I don't have the controls for these, so it's a free drop. They're on an inertia reel, so it'll not be too bad. On one. Two. Three.”

  They leaped over the rail. Everett felt a moment of freefall; then the inertia reel caught the line and lowered him through Arthur P's cavernous interior. He braced for impact and landed soft and sure as a cat. In two steps he was in cover among the containers. Mchynlyth was concealed behind the opposite container. He gestured for Everett to move. They closed up on the crewman, one container at a time.

  Cover me, Mchynlyth mouthed, and moved into thumper range behind the crewman.

  Two gunshots rang out from the forward section of the hull. They echoed from Arthur P's spars and struts. The crewman looked around, startled. He saw Mchynlyth and shot in the same breath. The thumper bag hit Mchynlyth in the stomach and knocked him flying into the side of a container. The crewman stepped forward to immobilize his victim. Everett stepped out of cover, aimed the blunderbuss muzzle at him, and pulled the trigger. The bag took him in the face. He went straight down. Everett darted in and swiftly cuffed him to a railing with cable ties. He went to Mchynlyth, who lay winded against the container.

  “You okay?”

  “No, I am not sodding okay.” He tried to sit up and bared his teeth in pain. “Ah the Dear ah the wee man. My ribs…Look, Everett, Sharkey's shooting the place up like he's refighting the Battle of Bull Run. You need to do it, man. Take her down. Bugger the Arthur P.”

  “How do I do that? I don't know what to do.…” And as Everett was looking around at the batteries beneath him, the cargo containers around him, the catwalks and the gas cells above him, he did know. It all began with the forklift truck. Everett had watched Sharkey during the loading of Everness and knew how to hit the latches to unlock Arthur P's containers from the deck. Now, the forklift. It was easy to start; it was never designed to work anywhere but on ship so there was no security to unlock. It was easy and fun to drive. Everett backed up to get a good long run.

  “What the sweet suffering are you at, wee lad?” Mchynlyth shouted, struggling to his feet.

  Everett rammed a container. It shifted a few centimetres. He backed up and rammed it again. A few centimetres more. Again, and again, and again; each time, a few centimetres. A few centimetres was all he needed. A few centimetres would kick it off. Physics would do the rest. The Arthur P deckhand had recovered, and he lunged at Everett on the forklift. The cable tie snapped him up short. He reached for a walkie-talkie. Mchynlyth trained his thumper on him.

  “Now, behave.”

  But Everett was done down on the cargo deck. He hooked on to a drop line and jerked, triggering the inertia reel. High above in the roof of Arthur P, smart-metal springs flipped to an alternative shape. Everett was snatched into the air. He hurtled up past the central spine. He heard Mchynlyth's call from far below among the unsecured containers.

  “This had better be pretty damn brilliant, Mr. Singh.”

  Timing. Goalkeeper timing. Everett jumped from the line as it whisked him past the upper catwalk and dropped onto the carbon mesh as neatly as if he'd just scooped in an in-swinger bound for the top right corner of the net. Net. It was all about nets. Nets and containers, and that tiny brass medal at the centre of gravity.

  More shots, flat and fast and closer to where he had left Mchynlyth now. He should have taken the walkie-talkie. No time for that. Look. Work it out. Think in three and more dimensions. See. There. The third gas cell up from the CoG. Everett climbed up on the railing, jumped, and grabbed two handfuls of containment netting. He wrapped his left arm through the weave and freed the skin-ripper. Up to cut. Carbon nanofibre was carbon nanofibre, whether it was ship skin or gas-cell netting. He slid up the switch and in one move cut a metre-long gash in the netting. The gas cell, as huge to him as if he were a fly on a football, creaked and shifted. Everett crab-walked across the net and cut another gash behind him. Again he scrambled across the netting, again he cut, again and again. The gas cell strained against the weakness in the netting. Cut and cut again. The cell bulged from the split. A few more cuts…The nanofibre netting was tough, but the pressure the gas cell exerted was enormous. The net tore with a sound like multiple gunshots. Everett clung for life as the torn net, with him on it, peeled away from the cell. He hung from the shredded net thirty metres over the cargo deck. The gas cell forced itself out of its confinement and found a new position squeezed into the gap between the two forward cells. It was a movement of a few metres,
but it was enough. The centre of gravity shifted. Arthur P went prow up. It was only a degree or two, but it was enough to set Everett's carefully positioned cargo container sliding. It slid into the next container down, one Everett had unlatched from the cargo deck locks, started it sliding. Container struck container. From his web high above, Everett watched the slow avalanche of cargo containers. The deckhand, lashed to a railing, gaped in amazement as containers slid past him. The farther they slid, the more Arthur P's nose pitched up as she became more and more unbalanced.

  Everett felt the netting lurch. He clung tighter. Then, slowly, jerkily, he began to move upwards. He looked up. Mchynlyth was on the upper catwalk, hauling in the torn netting. His smile was huge and shining.

  “Yah wee stoater!” he shouted. “Yah wee stoater!”

  Everett presumed that was a good thing. Mchynlyth hauled him up to where he could grasp the railing and clamber onto the catwalk. The world sloped.

  “How are the ribs?” Everett asked.

  “I'll live.”

  “Next two?” Everett said. Mchynlyth nodded breathlessly, and produced his skin-ripper. He slid the switch up. “You go right; I'll go left.” Everett crawled under the free gas cell—it had wedged itself across the catwalk—and climbed up the netting of the next cell forward two-handed, the skin-ripper in his teeth. He glanced across to see Mchynlyth plunge his skin-ripper into the net and slide down the outside of the gas cell, leaving a long gash behind him. Arthur P groaned as the net snapped and the gas cell burst free. Everett's followed. The huge airship lurched. From below came a shriek of metal on metal and a series of loud bangs as latches snapped and the log-jam of containers gave way and they all slid at once, catching on other containers farther aft.

  “When they go,” Mchynlyth yelled. Arthur P hung at an angle of thirty degrees, tail-down. Everett dangled from cell-netting over a fifty-metre drop. He hauled himself up to the catwalk, now more like a ladder.

  “Two more,” Everett said. Mchynlyth nodded. They climbed the catwalk, using the handrails as rungs. Every muscle in Everett's shoulders, upper arms, forearms, hands, thumbs screamed in pain. He clung. He climbed. He cut. He could do nothing else. To admit the pain, to relax, meant the long fall to sharp steel death on the containers below. But it hurt; it hurt like nothing had ever hurt before. With the last of his strength he dragged the skin-ripper down through the net. With the pressure of three gas cells piled behind it, the net gave way. The net gave way and dropped Everett on the end of a three-metre strip of webbing. He swung out across Arthur P's interior. The catwalk and safety were out of his reach. He tried to swing, but he no longer had the strength. He couldn't hold it. He must hold it. And every second, Arthur P swung towards ninety degrees. Forty-five degrees, sixty degrees. Eighty degrees…

  “Oh the dear God,” Mchynlyth shouted down from his handhold up on the catwalk. There was pure awe in his voice. Arthur P was vertical. The piled containers finally spilled free in a booming, clanging roar of steel. They smashed into the steering gear, tearing away walkways and gantries, rebounding from ribs and spars.

  “Mchynlyth!” Everett shouted. “I can't—”

  Then a figure dropped from between the wedged gas cells overhead, a man on a drop line, coattails flying, a jaunty hat on his head.

  “'Out of the depths I have cried unto thee, O Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy and with him there is plenteous redemption,'” Sharkey cried. He dropped down level with Everett, grabbed a fistful of net and started to swing. “Hold on with every fibre of your being, sir.” With each swing Sharkey brought Everett closer and closer to the catwalk. “Now!” Everett loosed a hand and grabbed the railing. “The bonder, use the bonder,” Sharkey said. Everett understood at once. He looped the dangling tail of the strip of netting around the railing, slid the trigger on the skin-ripper down and with the last of his strength sealed the loop onto itself. Secure, tied to the catwalk, which had become a vertical ladder. Mchynlyth had climbed down and extended a hand to Everett. As he took it the skin-ripper fell from his fingers. He watched it tumble down through the huge cylindrical pit Arthur P had become.

  “I'm impressed, Everett Singh,” Mchynlyth said. “You have rightly buggered this wee ship.”

  “Did you see the captain?” Everett asked Sharkey.

  “She can look after herself.” He released the brake drop line and sailed down to the crosswalk, now turned ninety degrees on its side.

  “And that's our ticket out of here,” Mchynlyth said. “Right sunshine, down and out.”

  They climbed down the handrails. It was an easy climb, but Everett's muscles were trembling with strain and fatigue. He wasn't safe yet. Put one foot beneath the other, one hand beneath the other. Don't look down, Sen, Queen of the Rooftops of old Hackney, had said. He looked out, at the world-turned-sideways inner architecture of the capsized Arthur P. Sharkey was waiting for them down on the crosswalk. Mchynlyth took out the walkie-talkie.

  “Everness, Everness. Our job is done.”

  “Fantabulosa,” Sen crackled on the radio. “Oh man, you should have seen it.”

  “We saw quite enough,” Mchynlyth said. “You've young Mr. Singh to thank for all that. Ready for pickup, port-side gallery.” He passed the walkie-talkie to Everett.

  “Tottenham Hotspur,” Everett said.

  They made slow but steady progress out along the crosswalk, stepping carefully from rung to rung, holding onto the stanchions overhead, a monkey-walk over the big drop to the smashed tail section below. Mchynlyth opened the hatch. The wind howled in, blinding Everett with snow and cold. The gallery was turned on its side, the gap between the hull and the far railing enough to be intimidating. But then the snow parted and out of it came Everness, dead ahead. Everett could see Sen in the lighted strip of the control room, her hands feathering the controls, dancing Everness in on its damaged impellers. Nearer. Everett clung onto the gallery rail, blinded by snow, buffeted by wind, aching and shivering. Behind him the hull of the upended Arthur P rose like the tower of a dark lord. Sen swivelled the engine pods and gently dropped the airship until its nose was level with the gallery. The nose hatch undogged; the boarding ramp extended. It came to within a metre of the gallery. No farther. Two jumps then—one to the rail, then the other, over open sky, onto the boarding ramp.

  “Come on, Everett,” Mchynlyth said. “It's a doddle, see?” He went from hatch to gallery rail to boarding ramp. He beckoned Everett on.

  “'But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint,'” Sharkey said. And Everett leaped. He caught the rail, caught his breath, caught his courage. He had battled the Bromleys and beaten them. He had wrecked their flagship. He had crossed universes. A metre of air was just that; air. He swung around the edge of the rail, positioned himself, and jumped. He landed soft as a cat on the ramp, and in twenty steps he was in Everness's docking lobby. Sen was backing Everness away from the stricken Bromley airship when he made it up onto the bridge.

  “The captain?”

  “Annie's all right,” Sen said. She nodded at the window.

  Arthur P stood upright in the air, equilibrium fatally disrupted, as tall as a skyscraper. Her docking ramp was extended from her nose like a radio aerial. And there was a figure climbing that spike, a figure in tan breeches and boots and a white shirt, hauling itself up the rungs, lashed by storm winds and ice but dauntless. Captain Anastasia Sixsmyth saw her ship appear out of the blizzard and waved.

  “Mchynlyth, open the cargo bay doors,” Sen said into the intercom.

  “Aye, ma'am,” came the reply. Sen looked at Everett.

  “You hear that? Ma'am. Bonaroo.”

  Captain Anastasia had made it to the end of the boarding ramp. She stood upright, daring the wind and the winter, arms spread wide, welcoming in her ship. And Sen brought Everness in so sweet, so light and gentle and precise, that all she had to do was step from ramp to cargo ba
y.

  “Captain on the deck!” Sharkey cried as Captain Anastasia strode onto the bridge. She was grazed, bruised; her white shirt was bloody. Sen almost skipped with delight.

  “Miss Sixsmyth, I relieve you of command. Stand by for orders. Mr. Mchynlyth, make her airworthy. Mr. Sharkey, hail Arthur P. Inform her commander that she is to be taken in tow as lawful salvage. Those Bromleys owe me a coat.”

  The snow came in from the east. It drove across Kent, dropped ten centimetres of white on the promenades and piers of Deal and the towers of Canterbury Cathedral, the towns and villages of the Medway, the commuter trains flashing along their lines carrying office workers and civil servants and shoppers to home and hearth. It sent flakes whirling round the vortices and thermals that boiled up from the stacks and vents of the Smoke Ring; it sent forerunners out to dust the Albert Docks and the Isle of Dogs with silver and a promise of whiteness to come.

  In the heart of the snowstorm Everness was coming home. A slow passage it was, limping on four of her eight engines. She towed a heavy burden. Half a kilometre astern lay the hulk of the Arthur P, ghostly in the storm; sometimes visible, like a skyscraper at the end of a fishing line, sometimes hidden so that Everness's tow cables seemed to dip into nothingness. The Bromleys' shame could not be hidden from radar. Air-traffic control picked up the anomaly coming in from the Channel instantly and within seconds it had gone out across the Airish community, from Paris to Copenhagen, Aberdeen to Amsterdam. Even the snooty and superior passenger liners, who never soiled themselves with the doings of the disreputable merchant fleet, heard the news and threw their smart caps into the air. Anastasia Sixsmyth had defeated the mighty Bromleys. Not just defeated. Wrecked ruined crushed humiliated the Bromleys. Hackney Great Port readied fireworks and train hooters and loud music to welcome back Everness. There would be the mother of parties. Until engineers restored equilibrium, Arthur P would hang tail-down over Hackney like a giant exclamation mark. The custom was that the crew of a defeated ship be hosted by the victor. Ma Bromley spat at the very idea. They would stay with their ship, in discomfort, turned ninety degrees, and be damned.