The Gang of Legend

by Robert J. Crane

  I jerked around. The deck was a mad frenzy, bodies flying. The dazzling luminosity of the force field was near-blinding. Strongest where the plumes gusted into the Velocity, it cast everything on this side of it into a dark silhouette.

  I squinted into the face looming down at me.

  Borrick.

  I grabbed for him, my new anchor.

  “Manny is—” I started.

  The Velocity shuddered again. Downward, it was pushed, and so I was suddenly rolling, hand in hand with Borrick. Then it canted even farther south, so the deck left me—I was falling—we were all falling—

  One of Tyran’s men hit the force field.

  At almost the same instant, the Velocity pinged upward again.

  The net effect was that it tossed this poor man backward, like he were nothing more than a wad of rolled-up paper in the hands of a schoolboy, flicked across a classroom—or rather, at me and Borrick.

  I had a second to see it coming, a second of panic—

  Then the man careened headlong into me.

  My hold on Borrick was lost. I sailed backward, roaring—

  The force field whined madly—

  I slammed against the deck. Not sure of the angle, but it must’ve been an oblique impact, because I bounced up—the man who’d crashed into me disappeared in a flurry of pirate garb, his shouts lost—and then something snatched me out of the air.

  “Got you, Miss Mira,” Bub rumbled, his voice distinct from the shrill scream of the force field generator solely because of its bassiness.

  He hunkered me down on the deck again, and held me there.

  The ship bucked—

  Bub was dislodged, but barely. I think his feet must have left the deck, a fraction, but he was so heavy, in body and even moreso in armor, that the sheer force of Storm Jericho battering us couldn’t shift him far. He held me stationary, enduring the latest in a frantic back-and-forth shove as the Velocity powered through the storm’s edge.

  At least, I figured we were powering through the storm. Shunted so dramatically by it, I couldn’t be sure we hadn’t been turned around, now on course for a swift exit—or if we’d been thrust down far enough to sink into Harsterra’s roiling, dense core.

  “Where’s Manny?” I asked, in a shout, craning for him. “I can’t lose him!”

  “He is safe, Miss Mira,” Bub rumbled.

  “Where—?”

  “Carson has him,” he said.

  I tried to peer around Bub’s vast armor to see. With the storm raging, though, and the force field gone crazy, its color ramped all the way up to eleven, turning the chaotic jumble of the deck into nothing more than dark streaks, I couldn’t work it out. And with the Velocity still bucking like a crazed bronco, by the time my brain had discerned one tangled shape into a person, everything was flung sideways again.

  Another jerk of the ship.

  My sense of direction was gone. The fluid in my inner ear had been churned into a freaking whirlpool or something. I had no clue as to what direction was what anymore. Were we going up? Down? Around and around, circling in a death spiral? All I could do was brace myself, below Bub’s hold on the deck, as best I could. And when the force field screamed louder and louder still, the bright blue glare enveloping the entire deck, turning a pure, brilliant white, I had no choice but to fling one arm over my eyes, to twist my head to try to block one ear against the deck, the palm pressed hard against the other to stifle the endless, awful shrieking—

  And then it was over. All at once, it just—stopped. The noise vanished. The light of the force field flashing madly overhead gave out.

  My frenzied heart skipped, maybe three or four beats all missed in one panicked instant. Had the force field generator given out under the terrific bluster of the storm?

  But no—it was silent, completely, or rather quiet except for the hum of the engines. Near-deafened as I was, those were basically silent now, hardly a whisper against the ringing in my ears.

  No wind flowed over the deck. Which meant either the force field still held—or we’d passed through a kind of cliff wall, where Storm Jericho gave over to perfect calm.

  I opened my eyes slowly.

  Bub frowned around us.

  “Bub,” I said.

  “Oh. Sorry.” He released me, and scooted back.

  I scuttled onto my feet. Or rather, I tried. The spinning fluid in my inner ear made it hard—I pushed up and then careened sideways, as though the ship were still moving in all directions. The world swum. The hull canted, one side raising above the other. But I didn’t slip; the Velocity was not teetering at all. I was.

  We were. All about the deck, Tyran and his men and my own friends were slowly shifting to their feet in the same drunken sense of disarray. There was Heidi, sporting a profusely bleeding forehead. Tyran had become entwined with Borrick, and was mostly disengaged, although Borrick’s jacket had become whipped up into a rope and lashed the two together by one arm each. Carson had somehow kept Manny from the worst of it—the two of them cowered. Manny had pushed up onto his hands; Carson let himself fall onto his back, breathing heavily.

  I jogged over—stumbled, sorry—damn this swimming sensation.

  “Are you okay?” I asked. My voice sounded far away to my own ears.

  “F-fine,” Carson huffed. Coated in sweat, but deathly pale, he breathed like he’d run a marathon but looked as though he’d come over with a very bad case of the flu.

  Manny’s nose was bleeding. It dripped onto the deck, the claret spatters looking like the tumult of gases upwelled by Storm Jericho, condensed into a deep, dark liquid.

  “Could be better,” said Manny. He lifted his head and smiled grimly at me. The whole bottom of his chin was coated, blood from his nose leaking down around his lips. “But I’ve woken up to worse things.”

  “Come on, dude,” said Heidi. “You think your sister really wants to know that sort of thing?” She meandered over, pulling her shirt off. “S’cuse this, but …” She spun it into a strip of fabric, then tied it up around her hairline, where she was leaking her own liquid crimson.

  Carson spluttered, and rolled over and rose, pointedly averting his gaze from Heidi stripped down to her sports bra.

  “We should get to the medical bay,” I said. “You’re all hurt.”

  “I can manage,” said Manny. He sounded distinctly nasal though, like he had a cold, his sinuses blocked. Glancing to Heidi, he said, “You might want to get a top or something, though.”

  “Men,” Heidi huffed. “Think you’re the only people in the world who can show some flesh. Well, the female form is not something to be ashamed of, and I will not cover up because certain pig-headed men cannot help but treat women like a piece of meat—”

  “All for that, honestly I am,” Manny cut across. “I was just thinking that … you know.” He pushed back onto his knees, and jerked a thumb at Carson, whose back was turned. His whole body had gone incredibly rigid, like he was reinforced with steel beams.

  “Oh.” Heidi blinked. “Right. Uh … well, I’ll just manage.” She removed her impromptu bandage. Shaking it back out to its proper form, now rimpled and bloody, she slipped back into it and buttoned it up.

  “You can look now,” said Manny to Carson.

  “I’m good,” was Carson’s strangled reply.

  So, we were all accounted for, and all of us remained in one piece, copious bleeding aside.

  I pivoted toward the front of the deck. “Tyran,” I began—and then my words stopped dead.

  Just now untangled from Borrick’s long coat, he had a harried look about him. But on hearing me, on seeing my gaze past him, at the cloud, he turned to follow it—and then he twisted back, a winsome grin upon his face.

  “Oh, yes,” he said, sounding pleased, and gesturing at the vast, layered mountain rising up out of the cloud cover. “It’s quite something, isn’t it? I present to you the Peaks of Pote-K’ah—our last stop on this journey.”

  23

  The Peak
s of Pote-K’ah were a grand series of layered mountains. Somewhat like the Way-Crossing, they appeared to have been carved, split into disparate parts and levels centering about one last, final peak. Strange, thready lines connected the peaks at oblique angles, glowing faintly blue from end to end. Guns were mounted on the higher peaks, huge cannons that could blow the Velocity out of the sky with one blast.

  Overhead, the sky was clear. No cloud cover, nothing—just the perfect midnight shade of space, speckled with a tiny cluster of bright stars.

  Carson murmured, “Where do they come from?” He craned, but without coming anywhere near to the ship’s prow, he couldn’t see what lay below. I doubted he wanted to.

  “There’s a rock layer below the Peaks,” said Tyran easily. “The whole thing floats—quite amazing it is, too.”

  “But—how heavy are they?”

  “Oh, staggeringly, I’d expect. Whoever built it—Brynn Overson, I expect—outfitted the foundation layer with anti-gravity generators to keep it aloft. At least, I believe they’re anti-gravity generators. Big metal apertures, anyway, with a very pretty blue glow. Come, have a look—you can see them now,” Tyran said, strolling to the Velocity’s edge and peering down.

  Carson’s grip on his manbag tightened. “Y'know, I'll pass. I’m okay right here.”

  I followed Tyran, my own curiosity piqued. Heidi came too, and Borrick.

  “I’ll stay with you, Carson,” Bub rumbled kindly.

  “Me too,” Manny breathed. He did not seem quite his normal adventurous self just yet.

  The Peaks did indeed rise from a rocky layer below. It reminded me almost of a series of crystals, the sort you got in weird knick-knack shops in coastal places like Devon. The crystals were polished, but came attached to the lump of rock they’d been chipped out of a cave wall with, knobbled and uneven.

  True enough, huge metal apertures pointed downward, into the gassy core of Harsterra. They shone with a pale blue light, less neon than the force field and more gentle—and quite similar, surveying the entire disconnected landscape, to the thread-like tubes running between peaks.

  “Enormous, aren’t they?” said Tyran. “We haven’t flown down that low yet, but going by the sheer scale of the thing, I daresay each could swallow the Velocity ten times over.”

  “Fifty,” Heidi muttered.

  “How much of this have you explored?” I asked.

  “Not a great deal, I confess,” said Tyran. “We have deployed drones a few times though.”

  “And what did they find?”

  “Very little. The guns blew most of them up.”

  I gaped.

  “Sorry,” said Borrick, his eyebrows pressed together and a comma between them, “you did just say that your drones were shot by those guns there?”

  “Yes,” said Tyran, nodding. “Obliterated, completely and fully. Atomized, one might even say.”

  “And that’s where we’re flying right now.

  Another nod. “Quite so.”

  We all stared, the three of us, in abject horror.

  Tyran caught on. “Oh! No, worry not, young ones. The defenses only guard the upper peaks.” He swept a hand over the mountains, indicating the tallest of them, arrayed about the central core. “The drones I dispatched to the lower levels were fine. There are landing bays there, in fact, do you see?” He pointed, indicating several pads around the bottom edge of the range. They looked minute compared to the mountains they were set into. “Of course, the one we want is that one.” He pointed, to one dead ahead. “Actually—we should be descending now. We are descending, aren’t we, Commander?”

  “Yes, Captain,” Greco confirmed.

  “Good.” Turning back to us, and grinning smugly, Tyran said, “I have done my research. You’re in safe hands here.”

  Heidi smeared her hand across her bloody forehead. Palm coated with blood, Heidi considered it distastefully. “Right.”

  “Err. Let me ping Fiennes. He can take care of you in a jiffy.”

  Borrick appraised the landing pad we were moving toward. It crept up painfully slowly—I guessed we were a solid ten, fifteen minutes away from getting near to it. Which made me wonder just how big Storm Jericho was to enshroud this place, considering the Velocity was likely now going flat-out again, with the force field generator turned off.

  Hadn’t Carson said Jupiter had a storm that could swallow the Earth, though?

  “No sign of my father yet,” Borrick said quietly.

  “There does not appear to be,” Tyran agreed, nodding sagely, “although—how is he getting around, do you know? It’s possible, of course, that he could have simply cut through to the entrance itself.”

  “Maybe,” said Borrick. “But I doubt it.”

  “You think he’s commandeered a ship?” I asked.

  Borrick frowned. “We’ll see.”

  “I don’t suppose there’s any chance of us, I don’t know, bypassing the keygate and snatching the spoon before Daddy Borrick arrives?” said Heidi.

  “I doubt it very much,” I said.

  Tyran’s lips thinned to a line. “Regrettable.” He considered his bandaged hand a moment—fresh bandages on again, with no traces of leaked blood marring it. His fingers were not so swollen today too, although there were traces of a bruise creeping up all the digits at the base. He grimaced, looking it over moodily—and then he turned a winning grin at us, lined with pearly, gleaming whites. “Nevertheless, we will overcome whatever challenge he presents and win this day as I win every day. Our prize? Granulated Organic Oatmeal from Borgwais. I just signed a new endorsement contract with them.”

  I nodded, mostly because I didn't know what to say to that. No one else did, either.

  “Anyway,” said Tyran. “We have some time yet. Perhaps you should visit Doctor Fiennes?” he said to Heidi. “He could stitch you up, have you fighting fit for the arena before us.”

  “Don’t want to solo it then?” she asked drily.

  “Oh, of course I could. I am, after all, Tyran Burnton, the GOLDEN KING OF THE SKIES!” He posed, fists on hips, pouting like the hunky lead of a boy band about twenty-five years past their heyday.

  “Right.”

  “But,” said Tyran, holding up a finger. “It wouldn’t do to bring you all along, and then have you sit on the sidelines, now would it? You’d all like to get involved in the fun too, I expect.”

  “Well …”

  “And I would not do you the disjustice of depriving you of it.”

  Heidi raised an eyebrow. “‘Disjustice’?”

  Tyran paused. “Misjustice?”

  “Injustice.”

  He repeated, “Injustice. Yes, right.” He clapped—loud—and then winced—but overcame it to say, “Let’s get you to Doctor Fiennes, shall we?” And he strode off, expecting Heidi to follow.

  “Whee,” she said flatly. “Guess I’ll see you soon.” She followed Tyran a step, then paused and looked back. “Enjoy your alone time.” She winked, and meandered off, pausing only to say to Manny, “Up, Brother Brand—hospital time.”

  “It’s okay,” he said. “My nose isn’t bleeding much anymore.”

  Heidi shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She grinned to Carson, a devilish smile—he spluttered, and twisted away—and then trotted back into the ship behind Tyran’s golden receding back.

  “How do you endure her?” said Borrick.

  “She’s good with a sword.” I shrugged. “She’s my friend. Anyhow, you ‘endured’ her before—you teamed up, for a while.”

  He harrumphed. “It wasn’t much like teamwork.” Looking back toward the mountain range, suspended in the air under a clear circle of sky peering out to space, he fell silent. I wondered if he was thinking about his father, but I didn't want to press.

  “Alain?” I took his hand, and squeezed it, trying to impart as much comfort as I could. “It’ll be okay.”

  Borrick glanced at our hands together. “Maybe,” he muttered, looking away, back out over the mountains, and t
he landing pad we continued our gradual descent toward. “Maybe.”

  24

  The landing pad Tyran guided us toward was terrifically vast, enough that five copies of the Velocity could be arranged in a row, with another row behind it. However, the Velocity did not land on the stone platform carved out in the mountainside: instead, it lowered until its deck was level with the bay.

  “Here we are,” said Tyran cheerfully. “Let’s get off, shall we? Me first.”

  He strode off, a little bit of a leap in his step to carry him over the eight-inch gap between the Velocity and the landing pad.

  Commander Greco was more of a gentleman. He stood aside, waving me to pass first. I nodded my thanks and followed. Heidi, whose forehead was now taped up, came next, then Borrick. Bub and Manny guided Carson over the gap, one hand on either arm at the elbow. Only then did Greco and a complement of Burnton’s men follow, spilling out onto the landing pad with us.

  The air was cooler here, I guess because the atmosphere had parted above the peaks, some of the residual temperature bleeding off into space now that there was no cloud cover to hold it inside. Little odor in the air either, none of the slightly chemical scent that usually pervaded Harsterra’s atmosphere—or, fortunately, the pee-like stench of upwelled gases dragged from down below by Storm Jericho. It had a sensation of wetness in the air, but only faintly—like the moisture that crept into the night, eventually condensing into dewdrops on grass and bushes, and beading spiderwebs with diamonds.

  The parking bay was empty. Nothing parked here; and no people either.

  Preston Borrick had not yet arrived.

  “You’re definitely sure we can’t just head him off with one key?” Heidi asked.

  “It never works like that,” Borrick lamented. “I wish—but no.”

  “Never mind,” said Tyran. “The challenge is much more exciting than just strolling in and winning. Remember our race for the Lamina Ambroscus? It was thrilling, hurtling neck and neck through the arena.”

  ‘Thrilling’ hadn’t been the word for it, I thought. ‘Stressful’ was more apt. ‘Terrifying’ perhaps came even closer, considering one of the metal panels had fallen away under my feet and left me dangling in this gas giant’s air, hanging in place only thanks to my line launcher. Ridiculously lucky that I’d been able to pull that one off at all—it was, like the million-world clock, one of my somewhat frivolous purchases after acquiring my share of the lost treasure of Ostiagard. Well justified after the fact, absolutely—but definitely not thought through beforehand.