Skykeep

by Joseph R. Lallo

  “Oh, let us see now…” the mayor said, scratching out some more figures. “The last I saw, a full five-pound bag of Calderan salt was good for two hundred victors. That’s… the equivalent of thirty-five thousand bags of salt, or about… eighty-eight tons of the stuff.”

  Mack nodded. “Would you be needing it all up front?”

  “Oh, heavens no. Even someone with your skill and resources wouldn’t be expected to provide us with the full payment immediately. I’m not entirely certain there are that many victors in circulation. I took the liberty of having a word with the president of the bank. Normally… well, you’re what we would call a high-risk investment. But since if you were for any reason unable to pay the full price, we could simply reclaim the island, he is comfortable with allowing you to acquire it with a twenty percent down payment. That would be in victors or in equivalent merchandise. Then there would be the matter of interest, which would be roughly…”

  The captain leaned back a bit farther, eyes drifting to the ceiling as the mayor ran through the numbers. If they played their cards right, haggled properly, and sold every last scrap of stolen goods, the crew combined would just about have enough to buy the island. There would be another year or so of work while he squirreled away the money to live on, but with Nita doing their repairs and the flow of Calderan goods she provided, it wouldn’t be difficult. He just had to survive that long. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a twisted, narrow cigar, clamped it into his yellowed teeth, and lit it.

  “You give me a few hours, and I do believe we’ll be shaking hands on this, Mayor,” Mack said with a grin.

  #

  On the Wind Breaker, things were going about as well as they could be. Gunner was, by a wide margin, their best huckster, able to dazzle the locals with his words and sometimes fetch as much as twice the price that the other crewmen might earn. The captain’s requirement that an additional lookout be stationed turned out to be a prudent one, as three potential customers, upon hearing the price for the products they had their eyes on, decided it would be much more economical to simply sneak aboard. Since that required shimmying up the mooring lines, it wasn’t precisely a subtle affair, and typically Coop only had to take aim and clear his throat to convince them of the error in their ways. The third opportunist was now in the process of climbing toward the ship, and after three progressively louder throat clearings from Coop, it was obvious he was unwilling or unable to acknowledge him. Further motivation would be necessary.

  “You know I can see you down there, right?” Coop said, calling down to the teenage boy who was hanging below the mooring rope, inching his way up while trying to keep his hat from blowing off with one hand.

  The boy ignored him.

  “What’d’you reckon is going to happen once you get up here?” he asked, aiming a bit more intently.

  Still the boy continued.

  “You know the law says I can pull the trigger and it won’t mean nothing but some paperwork, right?” Coop said.

  Again there was no response. The boy had nearly reached the deck.

  “I gotta imagine you’re deef then. I’m gonna have to do this so’s you can feel it.” He leaned forward. “Which might be a mite messy if I don’t do it right, so if you can hear me, you might want to slide back down now.”

  In response, the boy reached the deck and hauled his way up. As soon as his head popped up above the railing, he felt the barrel of Coop’s rifle press against his forehead. Now suddenly very aware of the man he’d been ignoring thus far, the boy froze.

  “This here is a fugger rifle. I don’t know if you ever seen what one of these can do to a turbine, but that ain’t nothing compared to what it’ll do to a head,” Coop said.

  “You wouldn’t shoot me, I’m just a kid,” he said.

  “If you was just a kid, o’ course I wouldn’t shoot. But you ain’t just a kid. You’re also a thief, and shooting thieves is more or less what I’m getting paid to do right now.”

  “I don’t believe you’d pull the—”

  A deafening blast rang out, and the boy’s hat fluttered down to the pier with a brand new hole in it. Now hatless and missing a few inches across the middle of the wild tuft of hair the hat had concealed, the boy was suddenly quite eager to leave the Wind Breaker.

  Coop watched as the boy slid down the line and rushed in a panic through the crowd. Below him, he could hear Gunner putting the demonstration to good use.

  “What you just saw and heard was an example of the peerless workmanship that goes into each and every firearm assembled in the fug. Most days the only chance you’d get to see one of these fine weapons up close would be if you had the fortitude to storm a fugger facility, and even then you’d likely only see them pointed in your direction. But not today, folks. Today you can see them in person because my colleagues and I did the storming for you. And for the right price, you can own one of these fine weapons. Purchase one today and I’ll even throw in the instructions you’ll need in order to fabricate your own ammunition. This procedure was developed and tested by me, a formally trained student of Circa Naval Academy and a crucial member of the very crew that bested the dreaded dreadnought…”

  He continued his pitch, and not long after sold three of the rifles and a fair amount of ammunition for each. A few minutes later the crowd had dwindled, and Gunner decided to reel in the gig and join Coop on the deck. He brought with him the mysterious weapon he’d been tinkering with off and on since the heist.

  “I tell you, Gunner. It’s like you’re a different fella down there when you’re doing the sales routine,” Coop said.

  “It makes me feel filthy. There are such better usages of my time. But it is a necessary evil.”

  Coop looked to Gunner. “Just so we’re clear, that’s a gun you’re fiddling with, right?”

  “I certainly hope so.”

  “For killing folks?”

  “Ideally.”

  “And selling things to folks is the necessary evil?”

  “Indeed.”

  “That’s a special sort of thinking right there.”

  “No offense, Coop, but I’m not interested in a philosophical debate, and you’d be ill equipped to handle one in any case.”

  “I ain’t much for debate anyways,” Coop said, working industriously to dislodge a piece of his lunch from his teeth. “Hey, listen. I was thinking maybe a poem.”

  Gunner stopped tinkering and looked up. “What in the world are you talking about?”

  “For Nita. She likes art and all that. I’m going to buy her something nice, but I know it’ll mean more if I make her something. I can’t paint worth a lick, or draw. I could play the spoons, or maybe dig out my harmonica, but that doesn’t seem like it’d impress her much. But poems aren’t so bad. I could write a poem. Do you think she’d like that?”

  “I need to be certain I understand this correctly. You are going to attempt to win Nita’s heart with a poem.”

  “Not win her heart. Just sort of let her know I might be after it. But why not a poem? Don’t Calderans like poems?”

  Gunner sighed. “This may come as a surprise to you, but a single set of likes, dislikes, and behaviors cannot be applied universally to an entire society. Nita, you’ll notice, is quite different from the typical Calderan as we’ve come to know them. But since I’m not certain there is room in your head to accept people as individuals, let us assume that your premise here applies. Yes. Calderans like poems. They like them so much that some Calderans devote their lives to poetry. They spend hours a day ruminating on the very nature of language. Months are spent attempting to craft the perfect verse and experimenting with different meters.”

  “So you’re saying she’ll like it,” Coop said.

  Gunner sighed more heavily. “Yes, Coop. If you are able to write a beautiful poem, I am sure she will like it.”

  “That shouldn’t be too hard. It just has to rhyme, right?”

  “Poetry need not necessarily rhyme, no.”
/>   “… Well, then how do you know it’s even poetry?”

  “If you can’t tell if something is a poem, then it isn’t a poem. And may I ask how you intend to write a poem when you can barely write your own name?”

  “I don’t figure I’ll have to write my name in a poem, Gunner. Oh, ’cept at the end, so’s people can tell who wrote it.”

  Gunner shook his head and turned back to his work. “Coop, something tells me regardless of what you come up with, people are going to be able to tell who wrote it.”

  #

  Nita and Lil had been making good progress. Despite taking time to make sure Lil understood each step, most of the smaller assemblies were already together after just a few hours. They were just preparing to tackle the safety mechanisms when their food arrived, along with a basin of water and some clean towels to wash up.

  “I’ll tell you what,” Lil mumbled, her mouth filled to bursting with the fourth big bite of sandwich. “These Lock folk sure know how to pack a meal.” She washed the mouthful down with a sip of milk. “Ah… you can just feel it doing you good.”

  Nita took a sip. From her expression, she was less convinced. “It’s definitely… different.”

  “Oh, you just gotta get used to it. This stuff puts meat on you.” She crunched into the sandwich. “I tell you. If Butch could get her hands on a proper kitchen and some good fresh stuff like this, she’d have a restaurant with a line out the door.”

  “It’s true.” She took another small sip and gathered her thoughts. “I’ve got to say, and forgive me if it sounds rude, but I didn’t think very highly of the crew when I first met you all.”

  Lil shrugged. “There ain’t too many high thoughts to be had about us.”

  “But you’ve all struck me with your skills and your work ethic. I wish I could see what any one of you could accomplish if you didn’t have to spend so much time shuttling from place to place and just trying to stay alive.”

  “All of us? I mean, Gunner’s educated and all that. And the cap’n a cap’n. Butch’s good with food and stitching folks up. But what about me and Coop?” Lil asked. “We don’t do nothing but what we’re told. What could we do?”

  “Lil, please. Give yourselves the credit you deserve. The two of you are easily the most capable and dedicated people I’ve ever worked with,” Nita said. “You’re deckhands. Like you told me, you do everything on the ship. I learned so much more from the two of you than I did from the others, and far more than you’re ever likely to learn from me. The question isn’t ‘What could you do?’ The question is ‘What couldn’t you do?’”

  “Well Nita… I’m fit to blush right now,” Lil said.

  “I’m just telling you what you should already know.” Nita took a bite of her sandwich and glanced over the remaining parts. “If we keep going with this pump, we might just get it done today. Would you like to keep at it?”

  “Let’s get to it!” Lil said. She stuffed the remainder of her sandwich into her mouth and sprayed some crumbs as she continued speaking. “You just sit and finish eating and tell me what needs doing.”

  She wiped her hands on her pants and knelt on the floor, picking up the next parts in the pile. Her nose wrinkled. “Got a fresh whiff of the fug just then. They better plug that hole right quick or it ain’t gonna be much fun to work here. But what do we got next? This here’s just a pipe. Threaded on either end. Nothing special about that. This is one of them input valves. We already got some of them, so I guess this one is extra.” She picked up a component that was a veritable contraption, pipes leading in and out and a tall metallic cap sticking up from the middle with a screw protruding from the end of it. “This is… what is this?”

  “Think about it for a second,” Nita said.

  Lil turned it over and twisted it about. “Well… oh… oh wait, this is one of them… it’s a valve, but a special one. The… dang it, what is it… the relief valve!”

  “That’s right. And what’s it for?”

  “For letting steam out when there’s no place else for steam to come out.”

  “And why is that important?”

  “Because steam’s got to go somewhere, and if it can’t go somewhere, it’s gonna go everywhere. That’s when the thing blows.”

  “That’s exactly right.”

  “So then that goes right here,” Lil said, springing to her feet and grabbing a wrench.

  “Wait!” Nita said. “What are you forgetting?”

  “… What?”

  “You need to inspect it.”

  “Oh, well I already did that. Look at this thing. Good and shiny.”

  “I don’t care what it looks like on the outside. The workings are what matters. I’ll put the ugliest piece of mangled metal in that pile onto a boiler if the inside is sound, but if one piece is out of place in a relief valve, the whole boiler is a risk.”

  “So I gotta unscrew this top part then?”

  “Yes indeed,” Nita said, handing Lil a screwdriver from her sash.

  The eager student carefully twisted free two of the screws. As she started on the third, Nita issued a warning.

  “Now you’ll want to put some pressure on the top of that while you unscrew the other two screws. There’s a spring inside there, and it is under compression. You don’t want the top to pop off and send those screws flying. I found that out the hard way.”

  “Hey, I was wondering,” Lil said, putting the gadget down and pressing on the top with one hand while she worked at the remaining screws. “Let’s say your papa does his thing, and it turns out we’re allowed to go with you on shore in Caldera. What do folks do there? What would you want to show us?”

  “Oh, it is a wonderful place, Lil. I’d have to take you to the Dell Harbor gallery. Our family has a whole wing devoted to us. I never made anything worth displaying there, but my brother has a sculpture, and a portrait of my sister is hanging there as well. And my mother’s sculptures… I tell you, she could have filled the wing all by herself. And did I tell you? She’s back to sculpting!”

  Lil nodded and smiled. “Only about a dozen times. Them fuggers make good medicine. That all you folks do, though? Make your own art and look at other folks’s art?”

  “Oh no. We do… well, we do everything you people do out here. It just tends to be a bit more elaborate. More deliberate.”

  Lil removed the final screw and slowly released the pressure on the top. “I thought you said there was a spring squeezed in here.”

  “There should be. For regulating pressure.”

  “It didn’t pop or nothing.” She pulled the top off. Inside was a set of rods holding a cover on an opening in the main pipe.

  “Let me see that,” Nita said.

  Lil handed it over. “Is it broke or something?”

  “It isn’t broken. This never would have worked. The way these pieces are… this was designed to fail.”

  “That’s no good. Where’d’ya reckon they got this, then?”

  “We’re certainly going to find out,” Nita said. She set the remainder of her sandwich down on the tray and paced to the door, opening it. “Matthews! Would you come here please?”

  Lil coughed. “Gosh dang it that fug smell is strong with that door open,” she said, waving the stench away.

  In moments the sound of footsteps echoed toward them, accompanied by the light of a mining helmet. Matthews, in his bizarre mixture of business attire accessorized with mining equipment, appeared at the door.

  “Good evening. I trust the food was to your liking?” he said, stepping inside and shutting the door behind him.

  “That it was, darlin’. My compliments to the cook,” Lil said.

  “May I ask where you got these parts?” Nita asked.

  “Most of them were salvaged from the broken airships of whatever unfortunate soul was most recently banned by the fug folk.”

  “This one is very fresh. It doesn’t look like it was ever used.”

  “It probably never was. Most of the peo
ple banned by the fug folk have their ships returned to them prior to repair work being done. That means a lot of replacement parts are left on board from the prerepair inspection.”

  “Well, this part is very dangerous, and deliberately so. There should be a spring in here, and it was replaced with a solid rod. This isn’t broken. I don’t think there’s any other word for it but sabotage.”

  “Really…” he said, taking the part to look it over. “You’re sure?”

  “This isn’t the sort of thing that could be done by mistake.”

  He looked over the part for a few more seconds, then handed it back. “Here. Take it. I’ll summon the mayor. He’ll want to hear about this personally. Is there any work you can continue to do while I fetch him?”

  “There’s plenty left to be done. As long as none of the other parts are dangerous, we can leave the relief valve for last.”

  “If you would do so, it would be much appreciated,” he said. “I’ll get the mayor right away.”

  He opened the door and quickly shut it behind him. Lil and Nita went back to work, both of them crouching over the remaining parts to look over them with a bit more care in light of this discovery. After a few moments, Lil paused and put her hand to Nita’s shoulder, stopping her as well.

  “What is it?” Nita asked.

  Lil made a shushing motion with her finger and leaned close, whispering in Nita’s ear. “He said he was going to go see the mayor right quick, didn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Nita replied quietly.

  “Then how come I didn’t hear no footsteps?” Lil asked. She brushed her hand against the hem of her coat, lifting it to reveal a pistol on her belt. She raised her voice. “Matthews, you still hanging about?”

  There was no answer. She put her hand to the grip and stood, creeping toward the door. Nita slipped the largest of the wrenches in her sash free and hefted it. Lil reached the door and tried the handle. She turned to Nita and mouthed the word, Locked.

  “Matthews? Would you please come here a moment? I’ve got something else you need to see,” Nita called out.