by Jacob Magnus
Chapter 10
Flint paced back and forth along the grassy verge at the edge of the cliff. At night the tower shone from within, and cast a pearly glow on the longhouse, the slumbering rigs, the way that swept south to the city, lights shining across the bay, and east to the inland places, to Jerethy, Nathor, and Caerlion’s rendezvous. The air tasted sweet and salty, he heard the crash of water against the base of the cliff, and saw white foam dance on waves in the bay. On any other night he would have appreciated the view, for the sea seemed to reach off into space, no borders or walls, just pure flowing freedom. The sea, he felt, was the opposite of the jewels the girls wore; you couldn’t chain the sea, and no price would buy it. But these thoughts flew from him tonight, for the tension of the wait absorbed him. Diana had persuaded him to eat some food, a sandwich or something, he couldn’t remember what, and she’d all but forced him to sleep at gunpoint, telling him the other riggers would watch for Jerethy’s return, and he had allowed himself a brief nap, but visions of shadows and fire and hook-tipped blades had torn him from sleep, so now he paced along the cliff under the pale light of the tower, and watched, and waited.
Jerethy had been right, he told himself. Jerethy had been right, though he hated to admit it. The Eagle had such a powerful engine and such a streamlined frame, for her size, that only two other rigs had ever been able to keep up with her in a straight race. He frowned. No, that wasn’t true. The Ambrels had a rig, too, the Star, but it had sat and gathered dust for years. Buck Ambrel had married late, fathered a single child, and had not, it seemed, been willing to break tradition and raise his daughter as a rigger. But the Star couldn’t help them now; the only person in the city capable of driving it was Vistor himself, and the mere idea rocked him with bleak humour.
Jerethy had been right, but what would he do when he caught up with the Comet? He couldn’t just ram it. Yes, he could probably rip the other rig in pieces, but what about Nathor? What about his hoard of bombs? Jerethy had looked ready to thrash Nathor when Flint had arrived at the tower, but a fistfight was one thing, and an explosive murder-suicide was another. Jerethy probably viewed him with dark suspicion, he considered, and perhaps that was another reason he’d taken off by himself. He didn’t want Flint anywhere near the action, didn’t trust him not to set the Comet up somehow, set it up and wreck it, regardless of who got hurt.
He stopped, faced the sea, and scowled across the bay. He hadn’t killed Burl for the fun of it. The act sickened him, made him feel dirty all over, and he felt that if he could wash himself clean with a dive into the sea he would take it. Yet he couldn’t do it, couldn’t turn away and tend to his own soul, not now he’d learned about Vistor’s plan, seen Caerlion’s malice, and faced the dirt that covered the city itself. He couldn’t stop now. He couldn’t turn his back, leave Diana to the care of the other riggers, abandon them all to their fate. Ties bound him to the city, ties as strong as the titanium surface of the Rhino. That was why he paced in the dark, waiting for Jerethy. The other man might succeed or fail, but the fight wouldn’t end until he saw Vistor in flames.
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The growl of an approaching turbine pulled him away from the cliff, and he turned and ran to the way, and watched the light grow in the distance, but the nearer the rig drew, the lower his heart sank, for it sounded, not like the powerful roar of a lion, nor the smooth hum of a well-maintained machine, but like the hacking coughs of a broken beast, torn and frantic in the jaws of a steel trap. He watched it limp back to the tower, and the sight told him the story even before Jerethy staggered out of the door. The Dragon’s left wing hung crooked from her flank, which had buckled in, as if kicked by a giant. A spiderweb of cracks glistened across the front window, and the left antenna had snapped off.
Jerethy stepped out of the open door and stumbled. Flint moved to help him, but Jerethy shoved his hand away. “Bastard.”
Flint took a step back, hands wide. The sound of the Dragon’s approach had woken other riggers, for they began to stream out of the longhouse.
Jerethy shook his head and rubbed his eyes. The pale light of the tower cast deep shadows under those eyes, and made him look wasted and weak. “Bastard tricked me,” he said, almost speaking to himself.
“Caerlion’s a monster,” said Flint.
Jerethy twitched, and looked deep into his eyes. “Not him, Nathor.”
Flint narrowed his eyes. “But… Nathor?”
By then a small crowd had gathered around them. Jerethy moved closer to Flint, winced, then grabbed Flint’s shoulder, but he didn’t follow it with a blow. Instead he leaned on Flint, gasped, and spoke low into his ear. “Filthy lying scum. He called me up, said he’d turned the tables, got the man in the head with a lump hammer. Said he’d dumped him in a canyon with a time-bomb strapped to his belly. If I wanted civilised justice, I could pick him up and take him back to the bay, but he was gonna turn back and finish the race.” Jerethy clawed at Flint’s shoulder. “What was I supposed to do? I wanted to see him hang, but I couldn’t leave him to die, not like that. That’s not who I am.”
Flint grimaced. Part of him was furious at Jerethy, but another part questioned whether he would have acted differently, and if he had, he asked himself, what would that have said about him?
Jerethy coughed a few times, and then got his breath back. “So there I went, dumb as rocks, where he said.”
“Nobody there?”
“He was there all right, saw him in my lights, sitting a ways back in the canyon, but I had to pass through a narrow stretch, and as soon I got the Dragon between those rock walls, the whole damn world exploded.”
Flint rubbed his forehead. “Nathor’s bombs.”
Jerethy nodded. “He’d planted them on the right, and the blast flung my rig against the side of the canyon. Cracked the window, punched in the side, good as tore off the wing…” Tears rolled down his face. “Crippled the Dragon.”
Flint shook his head. “Jerethy...”
“But that’s not all.” He made a fist with his free hand. “After that, I see the Eagle skim in from the other end of the canyon, Nathor gets out, and he brings the other guy back into his rig. They sit there for a bit, and then he gets on the chat, asks me if I’m okay. So I tell him what I think of him, and he tells me, if I want to settle things I can just follow him out of the canyon. But first he wants to show me something. So he swings the Eagle round, points the tail at me, and opens the right-side cargo door. Tells me his new friends gave him a load of special fuses for his bombs. Proximity fuses, he calls them… Get too close, and up you go.”
“That’s how he hit you on the Pig, and when you entered the canyon.”
“And he did it again. He just dumped a load of bombs right in front of me.”
Flint frowned. “How did you get out of there?”
Jerethy stared at him, hollow-eyed and shaking. “I don’t even know.”
Flint gazed at Jerethy, lost in the man’s pain, and felt his hopes crumble. He didn’t know what was true any more, whether Nathor was really Caerlion’s partner or whether he’d made some kind of deal to get the knife away from his neck. He wanted to believe Nathor had always been in league with Caerlion, because the thought that Vern had betrayed him hurt too much to contemplate, but the false tutor had sounded so sincere, and he’d made Nathor bleed for everyone to see.
“What the hell do we do now?” asked Delby, a scrawny rigger with a weak jaw and a blue hat.
“We have to catch up to Nathor,” said Tridens, a sleepy-eyed man with a droopy moustache and a long leather coat.
“No way am I chasing him,” said Delby. “He’s riding the Eagle, and he’s got a hold full of bombs. You can see the Dragon right there.”
“Then back to the city, back and grab Vistor.”
“We can’t grab him, he’s an elder citizen, he’s an Ambrel, and he doesn’t have any weapons, not yet. Grab him, come off it, we don’t even have any evidence.”
Tridens eyed Delby. “If you’ve got
brains to spare, then what do we do?”
Flint snarled. “We stop the bastard, that’s what we do.”
The crowd fell silent, and Flint realised they had all turned to face him. Delby adjusted his hat. “You got a plan?”
Flint felt their eyes on him, and he didn’t like it. He felt exposed and vulnerable, but he saw the same chaos playing out among them that he felt within, the chaos that threatened to drown his hopes and certainties in a morass of confusion. He had spoken out because to remain silent was to sink, as they were sinking, and he could not allow himself that corrosive luxury.
“Have I got a plan?” he said, and forced himself to stand tall. “No, I’ve got something better. I’ve got the greatest riggers in the world.”
“You got most the only riggers in the world,” said Tridens.
He breathed in through his teeth. “Well... I guess that’ll have to do.”
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