Skykeep

by Joseph R. Lallo

  The anchors, and thus the guns, were set several hundred yards apart. This gave the prison a very wide and stable foundation. Even the gale-force wind barely caused the floating fortress to rock. It also meant that the guns were far enough apart that if they piloted the steam cart through the center, they would probably not be seen through the downpour. They would still have to approach each of the anchors, though. That would put them within a few dozen yards of each gun, but that portion of the mission could be done on foot. They worked their way through the streets of the deserted city until they found one that led directly between two of the anchors and trundled onward.

  Closer to the anchors, the remains of the houses were more and more picked clean, in some cases offering little more than foundations to show where once there’d been a cottage or inn. The section of the city directly below the prison was wiped completely clean, even the foundations filled in to form a single sprawling courtyard. Once they had maneuvered the cart into the center of the courtyard, they breathed a brief sigh of relief through their masks. The guns were pointed away from the courtyard, so unless the operators decided to turn and look, Coop and Gunner probably wouldn’t be seen despite the lack of cover.

  Coop peered up at a structure that, if not for the storm and the fug, would have blotted out the glow of the noon sun like some sort of man-made eclipse. “Every day I get just a bit more worried about the sort of shenanigans these folks could get up to if they had the notion to…”

  “Well then, let’s not waste any time showing them what sort of shenanigans we can get up to now that we’ve got the notion to,” Gunner said.

  “Wait… what do you suppose happens when that thing gets struck by lightning?” Coop asked.

  “I imagine they’ve worked that out, or else it wouldn’t have lasted past the first storm.” He peered around them. “That eastern pylon looks badly charred. I suppose the lightning gets wicked over to that one somehow.”

  “So what would happen if we put a bomb on that one and it got struck by lightning?” Coop asked.

  “… I suggest we do that one last,” Gunner said. “Now let’s get moving.”

  Coop grabbed a small bundle from the cart, and they set off toward the first of the anchors. They moved low to the ground while Coop tried to ready the inspectors for their part of the plan.

  “You first, Nikita. I know you like chumming around with me, but if you’re going to be a member of this crew, you have to earn it, and Nita and Lil would do the same for you.”

  “Would you keep it down?” Gunner hissed.

  In a bit of a test of coordination, Coop managed to slip the harness onto Nikita. It was strapped with a fug mask, a small knife, and what the captain liked to call a “boot gun,” which was a palm-sized firearm good for two shots. Once the harness was held to Nikita’s back like a little pack, Wink got the same treatment. By the time they were both suited up, the group had reached the anchor. A thick tube spiraled up along the chain, the speaking tube that would feed the gunner the coordinates of his intended target. Presumably it would also feed the prison warnings of attack, so before anything else, they carefully and quietly attached a clamp to the tube, crushing it shut to mute any communication.

  “Up you two go,” Coop whispered, giving them each a boost. “Make sure to tell the girls what’s coming. Lil’s the one that looks like me only smaller, and Nita’s the one with the dark skin.”

  “And be quick about it,” Gunner added. He checked his watch. “This bomb is going to go off in twenty-two minutes.”

  Nikita and Wink scurried up the anchor, onto the chain, and onward toward the prison. Despite the jerking of the chain, the intensity of the wind, and the hammering of the rain, they moved surely and steadily. Conditions like these were what they were bred for. Gunner slapped a lump of putty onto the wall. It was the size of his own head and had a grainy scattering of black mixed in with an otherwise uniform gray color. Once it was in place, he pulled out a clockwork contraption with enough exposed gears and incorrectly sized fasteners to have the appearance of a clock that someone had attempted to repair while blindfolded.

  “You sure that’s going to be enough?” Coop asked.

  “It is in point of fact far too much, but this is not a situation in which frugality is advisable. Now please be quiet. I need to concentrate on the timing mechanism, or we’ll learn just how excessive the payload really is. Keep an eye on the gun operator.”

  Gunner twisted and clicked his cobbled-together mechanism while Coop watched, but no matter how much of a threat the gun operator might have posed, Coop couldn’t help but feel that Gunner’s workmanship was the greater threat. He was grateful when Gunner clicked a final switch and signaled for them to return to the cart to grab the next charge.

  #

  Nita lay in bed. These were the worst times, when Lil was in the box and she was in the cell. She had no one to talk to and nothing to occupy her mind but concern for how her friend was handling matters. Today was worse, due to the storm that Lil would have to endure. Nita had taken to staring out her fug-choked window, squinting at the stormy sky in the distance and trying her best to remain strong in the face of a creeping hopelessness that gripped her more with each hour.

  She was therefore in an excellent position to notice when a soaking wet form skittered past her window, then skittered back and peered inside with a single eye. Nita tried to keep the surprise and joy from her face. Without Lil to split his attention, their designated guard tended to linger directly in front of her cell, and the less he noticed, the better.

  Nita, Wink tapped out on the window, producing a sharp and highly noticeable sound that Nita frantically motioned for him to cease.

  “What are you so jumpy about?” the guard said. He glanced at the window, then back to Nita. “It’s just the inspector. About time the damn thing got down off that pole and started actually inspecting.”

  Nita stood, eager to take advantage of his dismissal of Wink for as long as it would last. “I know… I know but it was startling… It’s been so long since I’ve seen one.”

  She stood and stepped up to the window, coughing lightly, and tapped on the wall in reply.

  The crew came, Nita tapped.

  Wink had a mask for Nita. Knife and gun for Nita. Nikita had same for Lil. Soon Gunner cut chain. After, all… Wink began to rattle off.

  Wait. Wink helped Nita. Wink came inside, was not seen, tapped when close, waited for guard to leave. Wink understood.

  “What are you doing with that thing? Stop distracting it. Do you want the wall to rot out because you wouldn’t let it do its inspection?”

  Understood. Nita told Wink where Lil was, Wink tapped.

  In the box, hung from the pole, on top of the prison, Nita tapped.

  “What did I just say? Back away from the wall,” the guard growled.

  “I’m sorry,” Nita coughed again. She moved back to the bed and shut her eyes, plotting out what she needed to do and how it would be done.

  #

  Wink scrambled sideways along the wind-scoured exterior wall of the prison, quite literally as though he was born to do it, and found his way to where Nikita was searching as he had been.

  Nikita found Lil in box hanging from pole on top, he instructed.

  Nikita darted up the wall toward the surface while Wink climbed downward. He’d been searching from bottom to top and had passed some open and unbarred windows along the way. When he reached the nearest one, he slipped inside. It led to a currently vacant guard quarters.

  He shook away the rain drenching his fur and moved quickly and surely along the ground, not giving a thought to stealth. He didn’t have to. Anyone who had spent any time on an airship or in the fug was perfectly accustomed to seeing an inspector scurrying along the ground or up a wall in any part of the ship at any hour. They had free rein in any vehicle and seldom warranted a second thought. As a species they had effectively become invisible. The only thing that earned him so much as a second glance fr
om the inmates and staff was the bundle of gadgetry on his back, but Wink moved quickly enough to give them no time for a second thought.

  He skittered up the stairs and found his way to Nita’s cell, stopping just before the final turn that would take him face to face with her.

  Here now, he tapped.

  “What was that?” muttered the unseen guard.

  “I think it was just the inspector again,” Nita replied.

  The guard grunted. “I’m getting damn sick of tapping. Between you girls drumming your fingers and the inspector, I’m going to be hearing tapping in my sleep,” he complained.

  Nita began to speak, but it quickly degenerated into a bout of coughing that was a bit more dramatic than those the guard had been accustomed to hearing.

  When she was through, with a rough voice, Nita spoke. “May I please have a glass of water? This air… it’s so thick with the fug today.”

  The guard grunted again and stepped past Wink to a pitcher of water in the corner beside his seat.

  Here. Quickly. Now, Nita tapped urgently.

  Wink darted to her and squeezed through the bars. Nita picked him up, found the knife among his things, and set him on the top bunk.

  “Stay hidden,” she whispered, stepping up to the bars again, and holding the knife behind her back.

  The guard stepped up to her, mug of water in hand. “This is the last time I bring you any extra water. Drink what you need at meal times,” he instructed, handing the mug through the bars.

  “Thank you, I assure you, this is the last time I’ll ask. And I apologize. About that, and about this.”

  She grabbed the water and threw it in his face, then reached through the bars and grabbed his shirt, pulling him toward her. In a lightning-fast move, she flicked the knife out and pressed it to his neck.

  “Don’t scream or I’ll cut your throat. Don’t struggle or I’ll cut your throat. Just drop the keys and kick them through the bars,” she demanded.

  He reluctantly complied.

  “I really am very sorry. Under different circumstances you would have found me a much more pleasant person,” Nita said. “But too many people are counting on me. I can’t sit idle in this cell and hope that it all works out. As it is, my back’s in a corner. I hope you understand.”

  “I’ll see you hang for—”

  Before he could finish his threat, Nita withdrew the knife, shifted her grip to the back of his head, and gave it a good firm smash against the bars. He looked at her, dazed, so she gave him another smash, which was enough to send him to the ground.

  “Wink, if there’s anything else you need me to know, tell me, because in a moment we’re both going to be very busy,” Nita said. She pulled the mask from his back and strapped it on, allowing herself three deep, clean, and long inhales followed by painful coughs before stowing the weapons and snatching up the keys.

  Nita and Lil needed to find a way. Took care of the guards and snipers.

  “Nice to know they’ve got such a high opinion of our abilities. Two knives and two guns against an entire prison staff. If I’m going to do that, I need help. Did you say something about Gunner cutting the chain before?”

  Yes.

  “Would that be all of the chains?”

  Didn’t know.

  “… This is going to be exciting. How soon?”

  Soon.

  “Well, then let’s get moving,” Nita said, finding the proper key and unlocking the door. Wink climbed onto her back as she brandished the keys in one hand and the gun in the other. “I’d like to have Lil free and the guards outnumbered before things get too out of control.”

  #

  Lil braced her legs against one wall of the isolation box and her back against the other, doing her best to avoid being thrown around its interior as it swung and spun in the breeze. Years on the Wind Breaker had immunized her to the motion sickness that plagued Nita, but that didn’t make the experience any more pleasant for her. The rain was pouring through the upper mesh, and wind spritzed it through the sides.

  “This is another bad one,” she said to herself. She had to yell just to hear her own voice over the wailing wind. “I sure hope them fuggers are good with knots, because I’d hate for this thing to come loose.”

  Something thumped down onto the top of the box.

  “What now? Hail? That’s just about the only thing left that can make this worse,” Nita bellowed.

  If the rain and wind hadn’t been so deafening, she might have heard a rattling sound on the top of the box, but as it was she didn’t know that she had a visitor until a set of chisel-like teeth began to gnaw a hole through the box’s roof.

  “What the…?” Lil remarked.

  The dim light of the storm filtered through the new hole along with copious amounts of rain. It only took a moment for Lil to realize an inspector was paying her a visit, and it barely took a minute for the powerful teeth and jaws of her would-be rescuer to widen the hole enough to squeeze through. A wet and frazzled Nikita then tried to dive into the relative shelter of the box and immediately got her harness snagged, leading to full-scale panic as the creature realized she was stuck.

  “Calm down, let’s get you in here,” Lil said.

  Another person might have been startled by the sudden appearance of a soaking wet, not terribly friendly creature like an aye-aye. After even a short time in isolation under these conditions, though, Lil was happy for the prospect of having someone to share her plight. A few good tugs at the front of the harness got it free, allowing the drenched creature to slip inside and instantly crawl up under her shirt.

  She yelped. “Getting awful friendly in a hurry there,” Lil squealed at the sudden cold of a creature shivering against her bare skin. With another mighty pull, she got the rest of the harness inside and peered at it in the weak light. “But you brought gifts.” She pulled out the knife, then the gun. “I can tell you and me are going to be real good friends.”

  Lil strapped on the mask, secured the gun in her waistband, and began widening the hole with the knife. It didn’t take long to hack away enough material to almost make an escape hole, but doing so weakened the anchor point of the support rope. When a powerful gale caused it to splinter and crackle, she clamped the knife in her teeth and reached through the hole to grasp the rope itself tightly.

  “Hold on tight, whoever you are. This isn’t going to be easy,” Lil said.

  Nikita held tight, which wasn’t the most comfortable thing for Lil, and the deckhand began kicking and shoving at the floor of the cell. Another gust and a few more kicks caused most of the box to tear free and crash to the ground, leaving Lil and her temporary partner hanging from the rope and dangling in the breeze. A large chunk of the box’s roof was still attached to the rope, making it a bit challenging to haul herself up the first few feet, but once she was past it, she scrambled up to the boom as quickly and easily as Nikita would have. She made a slight miscalculation once she reached the top because, without the box as a counterbalance, as soon as she grabbed the rope on the opposite side of the pulley, it reeled in the slack and sent her swinging toward the pole. Ever the quick thinker, she used it to her advantage, swinging her feet out to meet the pole and then wrapping her legs around it to steady herself. Using a combination of her legs and the rope, she slid quickly down the pole and came down hard upon the roof of the sniper’s nest at its base.

  Now on reasonably steady footing, she hooked an arm around the pole and looked to each of the four towers around the upper deck. The horrid weather had chased the primary snipers down from their relatively precarious perches. That meant if there were any gunmen left, they were directly beneath her in the most stable of the towers. She crept to the edge and looked down to find that two sharpshooters were against the railing, peering down at the wreckage of the box. She couldn’t quite make out their words, but Lil assumed they were arguing about who should go down to see if she’d survived the fall. It seemed cruel to keep them waiting.

  She
jumped down from the roof onto the catwalk surrounding the sniper’s nest and crouched down between the gunners. Before they could make sense of what was happening, she’d hooked an arm around one leg each and stood up, throwing them off balance and sending them tumbling over the railing to smash through the roof of a shack at the base of the tower. Now standing, Lil looked into the sniper’s nest and discovered, to her dismay, that all three of the remaining snipers on duty were armed and ready. There were now three high-powered rifles either pointing at her or shifting toward her. She ducked down and darted below the low wall of the sniper’s nest as two shots punched fist-sized holes through the catwalk where she’d been standing.

  A rifle is not a favored close range weapon for any number of reasons, and it was rare that one would assign more than one sniper per nest for many of the same reasons. In their attempts to pivot toward and target Lil’s most likely position, the gunmen spent more time clashing rifles and thumping each other than actually aiming. By the time she appeared at the door opposite where she’d dropped down, the nest was a hopeless tangle of three lanky gunmen. She drove a boot into the side of the nearest knee, grabbed the rifle that tumbled to the ground as a result, and put it to work as a club with far more success than she would have as a gun. In a tornado of confusion and chaos, Lil managed to disable and disarm a second gunman. The third and final chose to strategically retreat, dropping down through a hatch in the center of the floor and pulling it shut behind him. She gave a quick tug, found it tightly secured, and surveyed her handiwork. The two gunmen still in the room were in no position to mount an offense. Now was as good a time as any to take a moment to plan the next move.

  “You okay in there?” Lil said, peeking down through the neck of her shirt.

  Nikita stared back up at her, eyes crazed with fear, but otherwise unharmed.

  “Well, maybe ease up on the grip just a bit. You’re fixing to draw blood,” she said. She slipped her head through the strap of the sniper rifle and slung it around her back, taking care not to interfere with the grip of her passenger, and pointed her boot gun at the downed riflemen. “You boys really should stay down. I’m having an awful bad day because of you and pulling a trigger is starting to seem like it’d do me a world of good. Best not to tempt me.” One man complied. The other attempted to grab for a weapon and got a bullet in his thigh for his trouble. “Told you not to test me. Now if either of you folks has a ring of keys, that’d be handy. Otherwise I’ll just take all the bullets you got. Then you may as well give me your firing pins and hidden guns and such. Wouldn’t want you taking pot shots at me once I hop over the side…”