by Stephen Hunt
‘The way you talk,’ said Carter to Owen, ‘people’d think you were responsible for feeding the whole station.’
Owen turned around, a look of seriousness visible behind his mask’s visor. ‘The person behind you, the person in front, that’s all you have to count on in the sky mines.’
‘I am the person behind him,’ said Duncan.
Carter nervously swapped his pickaxe handle between his hands. ‘And that about sums up my situation.’
Owen shrugged at the pair of them. ‘You’ll learn to work together, or you’ll die out here. One of the two.’
Shouts echoed down the hangar, orders passed from slave to slave. ‘Tails up,’ called Anna, banging the side of the transporter.
‘If we make it back, try aiming for the hangar this time,’ said Owen.
‘Hell,’ laughed Anna, adjusting her mask and pulling a poncho-style cape over her body as protection. ‘I crash another transporter, my next assignment’s going to involve a blunt shovel and a real narrow shaft.’
A warbling drone rose up around Duncan, then the rotors’ updraft as they lifted off. They flew out of the station, the loud clatter of rocks falling on their newly installed roof.
Owen jabbed a finger towards the ceiling. ‘More rocks coming down than going up. This is early ejecta mass. Same stuff that we were pushing through to get back to the station. Just coming down, rather than going up.’ He indicated a clip on his leather tool belt; identical to the belt Duncan had been issued with, and then pulled out a line from under the bench. ‘Tether up like this. We’re hunting high, and I don’t want any of you Weylanders floating away on me.’
Duncan did as he was ordered, connecting his line to his belt. Owen and Kerge squatted at the back of the transport, hunched over a nest of unfamiliar-looking machinery bolted into the survey craft’s floor, all pertinent to the business of finding and evaluating a new stake. Racks filled with surveying gear. A steel console with buttons and levers and dials; telescope-shaped tubes on tripods surrounded by thick, coiling cables. Evil-looking needles protruded from saucers that hummed with electrical power. Half of their crew were hitters. The remainder were older hands with experience in the evaluation of stakes, the slaves that Duncan and Carter were along to protect. A squadron of transporters followed Anna as she climbed for altitude, other formations banking away to sweep adjacent sectors for claims. Also pulling away from the station was one of the vast metal craft that belonged to Princess Helrena.
‘That monster’s following us?’ asked Duncan.
‘Only to ensure no rivals stray into the princess’s territory. We bring a rock back; the princess’s enemies will get real motivated to snatch it out from underneath us. Her ship can’t venture out into the free sky to support us. We’re on our own until we return. The emperor might be playing a game of divide and rule, but he doesn’t want the fruits of his noble loins openly shooting it out up here.’
‘So we do the dying for them,’ observed Duncan.
‘Slaves to do the digging, slaves to catch the blunt end of a pickaxe handle. Rich people back home keep staff on retainer to do the fetching and carrying for them. Except for our lack of choice in the matter, it’s not that different here.’
And I was one of them, Duncan thought. It was a measure of guilt made worse by the longing for his old, comfortable life. I just want to be home with Willow and Adella. Carter’s very presence was a reproach to him. You want to be home, but you’re not willing to risk anything to do it. Damn you for a coward, Duncan Landor. They climbed higher and higher, running into banks of thick rolling clouds. Anna navigated solely using her instruments, now; only brief glimpses of the squadron following through the fog bank. Duncan felt the increasing lightness of gravity’s embrace. The mask he wore sensed the thinness of the atmosphere, its canisters releasing squirts of air into his leather mouthpiece. The transporter bounced in the currents. Duncan jolted up from the seat and came down so slow he swore there was a layer of invisible cushioning between him and the bench’s surface. His gut filled with queasiness, riding this high, freed from gravity’s tyranny. The sound of rotors died away, and the transporter’s movements became gentler, gliding. The pelting of ejecta mass on the roof fell away too as their transporter moved with the whistling wind, buffeting fingers reaching out for the fuselage and toying with their aircraft.
A large rock suddenly peeled out of the cloud cover, coming straight for them, and Anna threw the transporter up, barely clearing stone by ten feet; a complaining roar from their engines at being overtaxed. With a shock, Duncan realised this find wasn’t from the eruption – it was a mining station, sides embedded with antigravity stones to give it additional lift, the roof pockmarked with rusty air vents and a topside landing hangar, its doors half open.
‘What the hell’s that doing floating out here?’ yelled Duncan. ‘In unclaimed sky? We could have flown straight into it!’
‘Station sixteen,’ said Owen, pointing to white rubble piled across the rocky landscape below. ‘The ghost station. There was a slave revolt there, long before our time. The Vandians left it anchored here as a warning to the rest of us. Position must have shifted with the push of the ejecta mass; our charts show it to the south of here.’
With horror Duncan realised the white debris was bones. Hundreds of dead slaves littering the station’s roof. ‘The Vandians assaulted the station?’
‘Just cut off water deliveries and blockaded it,’ said Owen. ‘Why waste bullets and blood on slaves when you don’t have to? Legends say the Vandians’ patrol ships kept on dropping cans of food for the slaves, though. Real good stuff, the kind of rations we never ever see up here. Salted beef, salted fish. Alcohol too. Anything that would make them thirstier than they already were.’
‘Bastards!’
‘If you look real hard among the bones, you’ll see the remains of the transporter fuel drums they were drinking from by the end. If it had been me, I would have jumped before it came to that. But I guess everyone’s different when you’re choosing how to die.’
‘I can hear something,’ said Carter, gripping the transporter’s cage sides opposite Duncan. ‘Whistling?’
‘Air vents left locked in open position,’ explained Owen. ‘Funnelling the wind. Just a bit of theatre for the rest of us rubes in the sky. You don’t really believe in ghosts do you, Northhaven?’
‘I believe that Vandians make them out of their prisoners.’
Owen nodded grimly. ‘That, at least, is no campfire tale.’
Duncan watched the ghost station pass behind them, claimed by the clouds. Maybe that was the true purpose of the mines – a mill to process the Vandians’ slaves into the shades of the dead. Even after death the unfortunate slaves still served their masters, like corpses swinging inside a crossroads gibbet.
Anna called something out from the cockpit. Kerge and Owen started to rotate a tripod-mounted piece of surveying gear. Duncan realised the team had come across their first potential sky mine: a large grey slab tracking upward through the almost non-existent gravity. Their transporter slowly circled the rock while the rest of the squadron took up a holding pattern behind them. The stake appeared little different from their home station, although the rock’s surface was still boiling hot – surrounded by a trail of steaming moisture as it rotated its way through the thick clouds. After a minute attending the survey equipment, Owen turned round and attracted Anna’s attention, making a cutting gesture across his throat. ‘Nothing to justify a ground survey. Next…’
They banked away, leaving the mass to waste a rival crew’s time. Similar results were discovered from a smaller rock, a real smoker moving fast as it scratched skyward. Owen and Kerge located signs of iron ore inside, but at that size, the strike wouldn’t last long enough to keep the princess happy, so they cut it loose too. Anna shrugged and banked away in search of another strike. Their third find, though, that was the charm. A rock so hefty that the cloud cover was left clinging to its margins, concealing its true
width.
Owen punched the air, whooping. ‘This is the one! Copper, iron, silver, gold, platinum. It’d be easier listing all the metals she doesn’t contain.’
‘You getting paid commission?’ asked Carter.
‘We bring this stake home; there’ll be well-fed Weylanders in the station for a year. That’s as much a pay packet as we ever get to see.’
That probably didn’t cut much ice with a bull-headed fool like Carter Carnehan. Brave, bull-headed fool, a voice noted inside Duncan. Shut up. What one man calls bravery, a wiser man would label as recklessness.
Owen rummaged under the bench and withdrew a flare, pulling its firing pin, billowing green smoke left trailing in the transporter’s wake. Shortly after his signal, the rest of the squadron went into action, not landing – just hovering above the rock’s surface as teams of men dropped out of the transporters’ rear, lugging the antigravity stones they’d need to stabilise the stake against gravity’s eventual summons. At the same time, other men leapt from the platforms with spear-long rods of steel topped with thick hoops. These were driven into the rock with hammers, cables unwound from the mining crafts’ fuselage and clipped into place. Anchors to turn the squadron into a flight of tugs. It was amidst this flurry of activity that Anna’s transporter set down, settling on the rock’s surface just long enough for Kerge and Owen to offload their survey equipment. As soon as Duncan, Carter and the others had helped drag the gear out, Anna lifted off in a cloud of dust, heading for the rock’s edge where towing cables were being secured. Heat seeped through the thick soles of Duncan’s survival suit, making his feet itch. It was hellish hot at this altitude. Like standing above a spit roast and volunteering to be steak for dinner.
Duncan and Carter rested against their wooden clubs, looking to Owen for what was to come next.
‘We’ve got to secure this claim fast,’ Owen told Kerge and the two men. ‘Help me shift the gear. No need to watch the skies yet. Anybody planning to jump our claim will let us do the hard work of fixing antigravity stones and anchoring it before they move in and try and snatch it.’
Duncan lifted up one of the cases. Not heavy at all in the light gravity. He followed after Owen, every step given an extra spring by their altitude. The wind had picked up by the time he got to Owen’s camp location. Eddies of burning dust carried around Duncan, whipping his tunic and making him glad of the mask’s protection. ‘Quite a gust.’
Owen pointed to the clouds above. ‘That’s where we’re heading. High altitude trade winds all the way to heaven, from here on in. We need to get this rock stabilised and heading down again real quick.’
Duncan didn’t last long before he had to raise his mask and spit out the grime seeping through its seals. Sure would be good to take a swig from my canteen about now. Instead, he helped Owen, Kerge and Carter drill holes large enough to accommodate survey sensors. Owen appeared satisfied that the ground equipment backed up his preliminary findings. That was of less concern to Duncan than the tornado-strong gusts he had to fasten his feet against. But the sound and fury of the winds they were rising into gradually abated as more and more transporters leashed to the rock, beginning to drag the stake back down. Finally, a tipping point was reached when gravity’s natural course worked for them rather than against them. Cries echoed around the rock, and the sky miners’ antigravity stones activated at the buoyancy point. The rock’s passage through the volcanic storm had become a simple matter of being hauled by their transporters.
Duncan spotted a transporter dipping above them, marking its passage with red flare smoke. One of their own craft spotted the intruder and peeled away to chase it off. ‘Why do I think that’s not Princess Helrena signalling there’ll be a red carpet laid out for us when we get back to the station?’
‘Birds in the air without a nest, Northhaven. They’ve spotted us and they’re going to try to take ours.’
‘I don’t want to do this,’ said Duncan.
Owen laid a hand on his shoulder. ‘I feel exactly the same. Everyone here does. But what we want, well, that doesn’t count for a whole lot. The princess’s enemies will try to land near the anchors, cast off our cables and then attach their own tugs.’
Carter made a noise in the back of his throat that mirrored what Duncan felt.
‘Kerge and I will remain here and protect the survey equipment,’ said Owen. ‘If it’s any consolation, you’ll find it easier to defend your rock after the hostiles have landed and are trying to add a few busted ribs to the injuries you received on your last outing. Until then, just think about your sister and girl and everyone else back at the station. Stay alive for them.’
Shouts echoed from all over the rock, Weylanders congregating at the rim, bunching around anchor points. There was a bounce in Duncan’s step that didn’t reflect the way he felt. His heart as heavy as lead he walked towards the edge.
‘This is wrong, Carter.’
‘There’s nothing personal in it. The same as when the miners attacked us down by the volcano.’
‘We’re not animals.’
‘Isn’t that exactly what slaves are? Men have choices, slaves don’t. Protests from us are no more worth listening to than a swine squealing as it’s hauled to the abattoir.’ Carter looked meaningfully at Duncan. ‘That is, as long as you accept being a slave. If you’ve changed your mind about that, maybe you want to throw in with me after all.’
‘I don’t want to get Willow killed. And what the hell are we going to do about Adella?’
‘We’re not children anymore. Everyone in the sky mines can make their own minds up. Willow and Adella too. A man’s got to die of something, right? That’s what my old man used to say. Those Vandian bastards, they’ve stolen more than our bodies. They’ve snatched our hope. Made us think we’re just possessions to sweat and die at their pleasure. If the road home is all that’s out there, I’ll take my end on it. Chased, pursued, hunted. At least it’ll be the death I’ve chosen, not getting my skull cracked by another poor sod starved into desperation by the Vandians. So are you in, or out, Mister Landor?’
‘We’ll see,’ said Duncan. ‘We’ll see.’ He looked up at the sky. Waves of enemy transporters broke through the filthy clouds, a web of red smoke trailing in their wake, too many invaders for their own aircraft to discourage. ‘I reckon the hitters on the back of those birds are fixing to solve all our problems for good.’
Jacob’s hand rested on the window of the hansom cab as it pulled through the crowded streets of Talekhard. Sheplar Lesh was right about one thing. With the pungent smell of the bard in their carriage, the first order of the night when they got back to their cheap hotel would be to get the traveller a bath and avail themselves of the establishment’s laundry service. With the evening approaching, more aircrews spilled into the street; merchants and travellers the worse for wear after their carousing. The two horses up front shifted slowly through the press of carriages and carts, oblivious to the siren cries of women leaning from doxy house windows, yelling obscene suggestions to the crowds below. Jacob sat next to Sariel, the vagrant humming and tapping his walking staff on the cab’s floor. Khow was lost in thought opposite, next to Sheplar, who was doing his best to ignore the tramp. A hatch opened in the cab behind the gask’s head, the cabbie on their driving step bending down to speak. ‘Roads are thick with drays heading for the warehouses. Your hotel is only at the end here. It’ll be quicker for you to get out and walk the rest of the way. Could take me ten minutes to push through this traffic.’
Jacob poked his head out of the open window. Carts piled with barrels and bales stood stalled all the way up the street, the impatient clatter of hooves on cobbles as traffic waited along the boulevard. Jacob spied their cheap lodgings ahead. A gang of street vendors weaved through the carts, beseechingly lifting trays of food and knickknacks up to captive riders and wagoners. Jacob saw what he wasn’t meant to, as well. Three men sitting at a table outside the eatery next to their hotel, incongruous among the families seated a
round them, gossiping over evening meals. A carriage had drawn up down the street, its driver feeding his two horses and waving away a prospective passenger trying to buy a ride. The canvas bundle tied up top, just the right length to hide rifles. The two men pretending to window-shop at the general store opposite. Six outside the hotel. How many inside, to close the trap? ‘Take the turning over there,’ said Jacob, pointing to the next street corner. ‘We’re not going back to our rooms. Head for the airfield.’
‘What is it?’ asked Sheplar.
‘A feeling in my water,’ said Jacob. He patted his pocket, touching the tickets Sheplar had negotiated for them in the packed lobby. ‘There’s an ambush waiting for us outside our hotel. That strange radio set we found on the guardsman… I don’t think the receiving set is limited to Major Alock’s hands. I reckon there’s one in town, too.’
‘Enemies in front of us, enemies behind,’ said Sheplar. ‘This conspiracy runs larger than a single corrupt regiment.’
‘Which explains why the weight of numbers is against us,’ said Khow, holding up his abacus machine. ‘The branches of the fractal tree are far narrower than they should be.’
‘Do you speak of skels, Your Grace?’ said Sariel.
‘Maybe their common pattern equivalent,’ said Jacob.
‘What do the tardy-gaited mites want?’
‘They’ll settle for taking the money in our pack and putting a bullet in our heads,’ said Jacob. ‘But it’s the why of it that’s bothering me. If I could see how whoever is behind this is benefiting from the situation, I’d be a lot more comfortable about taking them on.’
‘I can see you are a master strategist, Your Grace,’ said Sariel. ‘You realise the need to understand your enemy and battlefield to triumph. I once served in the staff of the Grand Marshal Fourou. That courageous officer won many battles with the assistance of my suggestions.’
‘And what fount of advice do you have for us here, smelly one?’ asked Sheplar.