Skykeep

by Joseph R. Lallo

  #

  The first three charges had been set on the anchors of the prison, and thus far nothing had exploded. As far as Coop was concerned, this was over and above expectations. Now they were on the trickiest of the anchors, the one that seemed to be the designated lightning-magnet of the group. While Gunner suggested a bolt of lightning “might not set off the bomb,” that didn’t stop him from being particularly diligent when it came to getting this charge set.

  “What’s the time?” Gunner asked.

  Coop pulled out his watch and squinted at it. “About seventeen minutes since you set up the first one.”

  “I’m going to require something more precise than ‘about.’ We are synchronizing these, remember?” Gunner said.

  “Well, I busted the second hand on my watch a while back, so ‘about’ is all you’re gonna get,” Coop said.

  Gunner grumbled something under his breath and continued clicking and cranking the timing mechanism. Coop scanned their surroundings, mindful of being discovered, and stopped when he saw something illuminated by the fading glow of a distant bolt of lightning.

  “They told us to watch out for hounds, right?” Coop said.

  “Yes. Have you spotted any?”

  “I don’t know what it is I spotted, but if it spotted us, I’m in favor of running.”

  Gunner clicked a final switch and looked up. Just barely visible in the dim light and pounding rain was one of the massive fug hounds, standing stone still, eyes on the crewmen.

  “Maybe they’re blind. The fug does strange things to—” Gunner began. He was interrupted when the creature threw its head back and released something that sounded like four howls combined into one horrific, ghostly sound.

  The baying of the hound caused three more to emerge from the ruins of the city, each stalking up to the first. Coop and Gunner raised their pistols and began to back slowly toward the cart.

  “I’m not too keen on shooting dogs, Gunner,” Coop said.

  “I’m not either, but I’m not sure the term really applies anymore. They look more like carnivorous horses.”

  “I’d still rather not shoot ’em.”

  “Well, I’ve grown attached to my throat, so if they start running, I’m going to start shooting.”

  The pair moved cautiously backward, and the hounds began to stalk toward them. They weren’t running, but they didn’t really need to. Their long, thin legs covered ground quickly. Both Coop and Gunner knew dogs well enough to know the moment either one of them ran, the dogs would run as well. Eventually, with a few strides left before they would reach the cart, the hounds became impatient and broke into a sprint. Rather than attempt to take all four of them down, both Coop and Gunner chose instead to mount the vehicle and hope that the cart was faster than the hounds. Gunner vaulted into the seat and cranked open every valve. The wheels spun wildly and threw up globs of mud and chunks of chewed-up cobblestone before the front end finally lurched into the air. Driving on the two rear wheels, it roared off down the road, not slamming back down until fifty yards later.

  “How does our speed compare to theirs?” Gunner asked, fighting to keep them on the road.

  “This as fast as we can go?” Coop asked.

  “As far as I can tell,” Gunner said.

  “Then it don’t compare too well,” Coop said. “They’re gaining.”

  The monstrous hounds charged after their prospective meal as it veered off toward the main road that would take them back to the distant and hidden Wind Breaker.

  “Well then kill them!” Gunner said.

  “Unless you can make this ride smoother, I ain’t hitting nothing that’s not a much bigger target,” Coop said. “I got a better idea. Keep heading toward that closest gun operator.”

  Gunner veered aside, the first pylon whipping past them as the hounds galloped ever closer. The howling of the hounds had been enough to alert the gunners, and the nearest had dismounted the gun seat and was standing at the fence of his enclosure, pistol in hand. Coop grabbed Gunner’s monstrous shotgun and targeted the fence. The operator dove for cover just before Coop fired, pulling the fourth trigger. Rather than one of the barrels firing, all of them fired. This produced enough recoil to nearly launch Coop off the cart. A monumental cloud of shot struck the hinge of the fence’s door, causing the door to crumble to the ground. Suddenly all four hounds realized a far easier meal was now available. They skidded to a stop and turned to the undefended gun operator.

  “Warms my heart to see two wrongs make a right like that, Gunner,” Coop said.

  “And it makes my skin crawl that a pack of monsters attacking one of their masters warms your heart,” Gunner replied.

  “Then we’re just different is all,” Coop said. “About how long you figure before we can get back to—”

  A deafening roar split the air, and the area around them filled with a blinding violet glow. Lightning had struck the prison, and thus the careful timing of their final bomb was rendered moot as it detonated in a secondary flash and boom. The force was enough to turn the anchor and a ten-foot section of courtyard into pulverized rubble. The slacked chain immediately lurched upward, and high above them the prison subtly began to tilt while bits of stone and chain rained down around the crewmen.

  “Dang, Gunner. You know your bombs…”

  #

  A moment ago Lil was sprinting across the upper deck of the prison, heading for the nearest staircase toward the inside of the facility and hoping anyone who still had a gun wasn’t any better at seeing through the rain than she was. Now she was on her hands and knees, trying to use her scrambled mind to work out how and why the whole world seemed to have been made of light, heat, and noise. She turned her shaken head toward the tower and saw a thick metal cable running down the pole, down the tower, and out of sight along the courtyard. She’d never noticed it before, but now it was hard to miss, because it was glowing brilliant red and sizzling. She shook her head and crawled along the slick planks of the deck toward the stairs.

  Nikita was still under her shirt but now clung to her back. The little creature had reflexes that bordered on precognition, it seemed, managing to scurry aside in time to avoid being crushed between Lil and whatever she was colliding with next.

  “Well, little thing… that was about as close to lightning as I ever care to get again,” she called out to the creature clinging to her. She was only barely able to hear her own voice. “Guess you can count your lucky stars I didn’t go sprawling, or you’d’ve been in a bad way.”

  She made it to the stairs and hauled herself to her feet with the banister in time for her hearing to finally clear enough to make out a general groan from the prison’s framework.

  “Feels like this whole place is tipping. This is gonna be real fun…”

  #

  Nita had reached the belly of the prison and was lurking in the hallway trying to work out how she would distract the guards, when a call came out through the ship to report to the yard due to an escaped inmate. It could only have been Lil. The call had sent nearly all of the prison guards sprinting for the stairs. She’d narrowly managed to slip into a supply room to avoid being seen. Then came a blast that could have been nature and could have been Gunner. She didn’t care, because it was enough to chase the rest of the guards from the level. Now she could move freely through the most densely populated floor in the prison. She paced out into the aisle and fitted a key into the first cell, which happened to belong to Donald and Kent.

  “Nita… no… are you doing all this?” said Kent.

  “Not me, but people working on my behalf,” Nita said, pulling open the cell door.

  “Did you… make it rain, too? Can you people do that?” Donald asked, his tone suggesting that even he thought it might be a stupid question.

  “No, Donald. That was just luck,” she said. “Or maybe timing.”

  “Well, what’s the plan? How are we getting down from here?”

  “First thing’s first. We’re getting e
veryone out of their cells. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to need to take the guards out of the equation. Right now the best I can come up with is overwhelming them with numbers. Then we’ll see about getting us off the prison.”

  “But what about the cannons?”

  “One problem at a time,” she said.

  Each row of cells had its own key, so Nita pulled the chain apart and handed off keys to the others to speed up the process. In the back of her mind, she couldn’t help but notice the facility seemed to be shifting a great deal more than it ever had before, but as she’d said to the others, one problem at a time.

  “Where’s Lil?” Kent asked as the twelfth cell was opened, finishing the floor and unleashing nearly half of the population.

  “She was in the box. But now I guarantee she’s in the middle of the largest concentration of guards she can find, giving them all the reason they’ll ever need to kill her. You and Donald think you can help me find her?”

  “We’re your men,” Kent said.

  As the freed prisoners flooded the other floors, unlocking every occupied cell and overwhelming what few guards they encountered to earn weapons and more keys, Nita and the grunts ran upstairs, listening with blast-weakened hearing for anything that might be Lil. When they reached level two, they found what they were after. Six guards had formed a human wall, crowding the hallway full, and in the corner with her back to the wall was Lil, rifle leveled.

  “I know you fuggers are thinking I can only kill one of you with this thing before you can get to me,” she growled. “But with you bunched up like that, I’m betting I can get two of you, easy. That means if you take another step, that’s a one in three chance it’s the last decision you ever make. You like them odds? Because I like ’em plenty.”

  The guards were still weighing their options and waiting for one of their cohorts to be the first to act when she noticed Kent and Donald approaching from behind them.

  “Oh well, boys. Guess you waited too long,” Lil said. “Looks like the cavalry’s arrived.”

  Now faced with the possibility that she was bluffing or that there was indeed a second threat behind them, the assemblage of guards seemed further lost for what to do next, which was just as well, because it didn’t really matter. Donald and Kent bowled into the group, knocking them to the ground and putting their fists and feet to work until it was clear they’d be staying there. Nita stepped over the tangle of fug folk and ran up to Lil.

  “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “All right? Come here, you!” she said, sliding the rifle around behind her and throwing her arms around Nita. “I’d hug you tighter, but it’d mean crushing my little friend here.” She patted the lump under her shirt. “It’s being a little shy. I don’t think it’s used to our kind of excitement.”

  “How are things looking up there?” Nita asked as Donald and Kent began harvesting keys from the groaning and dazed guards.

  “Weather’s got everybody holed up in the central tower. Unless those boys are real good at looking for firing pins in the rain or got a couple spares around, I’ve got all but maybe two of the snipers disarmed. The others locked themselves out of their perch, but I reckon by now they figured out I ain’t up there no more and let themselves back up.”

  The pounding rain and howling wind were a steady noise to those inside the prison, punctuated occasionally by a peal of thunder. Three sharp pops, like cannons firing, broke through the din and heralded a rough tilt that threw Nita, Lil, and the others off balance.

  “What the hell is going on?” Kent bellowed, slamming the door shut on the cell into which he’d crammed all six guards.

  “I believe our crew has just finished cutting the strings on this balloon,” Nita said.

  “You mean we’re flying loose in the wind?” Donald said. “Why would anyone do that?”

  “Guess Cap’n decided if he couldn’t crack the prison, he’d set it free,” Lil said with a shrug, bracing herself against a wall. “Feels good to be moving with the breeze again. This place didn’t tip and swing near as much as a proper airship.”

  Kent looked to Nita. “Your friend behaves as though all of this is normal.”

  “For us, it is,” Nita said.

  “Oh, hey! It’s a week and we’re not dead. You boys owe us muffins!” Lil said.

  “If you and your crew can get his thing down safe, we’ll owe you a lot more than that,” Kent said.

  “We’ll get it down all right, but safe means different things to different folks,” Lil said. She turned to Nita. “What do you reckon we do next?”

  “I think we’ve got to take the rest of the sharpshooters out of the equation. And I’d be a lot happier if I knew where the warden and his assistant were. Not to mention Ebonwhite.”

  “No telling where the warden would be,” Kent said. “Linn doesn’t keep to a schedule, and with the guard passages that run through this place, he could have got anywhere before we finished clearing it out. The assistant warden would have been in the central tower. They moved Ebonwhite to level one. He’s still there, unless someone let him out. And to be honest, I don’t think any of us like him any more than you do.”

  “All right. I suppose you and the others should do what you can to lock up any guards you run into. No one go to the surface until we work out how we’re going to handle the rest of the snipers.”

  “I don’t think anyone’s going to the surface at all,” Kent said, grabbing on to a bar from a cell door as the prison began to roll in the opposite direction. “Unless they want to go off the edge.”

  “Why do you have an inspector hanging on to you?” Donald asked, clearly having just realized it.

  “Long story,” Nita said. “Lil, you and I are going to level one to check on Ebonwhite. Donald and Kent, I think you should gather the rest of the inmates onto the middle three floors. Move all of the guards there too, and stay away from the outer walls. I don’t want anyone to get hurt, and chances are good there will be some cannons fired before this is over. We’ll come down and get you when the time comes to make a move.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” Kent said.

  Nita and Lil made their way up the shifting stairwell to an entirely vacant level one.

  “Looks like at least one person had a soft spot for Ebonwhite after all,” Lil said.

  “Wink, tell me this. Did the captain have a plan beyond this point?” Nita asked.

  Wink tapped his answer on the side of her mask. The prison was cut free. Captain waited until the guns couldn’t reach. Captain came and dropped Gunner and Coop on prison. Prison rifles gone by then. Crew found controls to bring prison down. Prisoners ran free.

  “Controls to bring it down… Well, I suppose this thing must have phlogiston pumps to adjust the altitude. Unless they were using winches to do it via the chains… and if that’s the case, there’s no bringing this place down softly. Let’s operate on the assumption there are pumps. Where would the controls be? … Probably the base of the central tower… along with all of the remaining armed guards and likely the assistant warden,” Nita said.

  “Well, at least everything we’re after is in one place. That’ll save us a lot of running around,” Lil said. The prison shuddered and rocked. “Just as well, too. I don’t know how much longer this place is liable to stay airborne.”

  Nikita was not hurt, Wink tapped.

  “Who’s Nikita?” Lil asked.

  Wink pointed to the shivering form tucked under her wet shirt. “Oh, this new inspector’s named Nikita? Let me guess, Coop named her. That was the name of one of his girls back in Keystone. Come out from there. Let’s get a look at you,” Lil said.

  Nikita reluctantly allowed herself to be pulled from her hiding place. Aside from looking almost critically frazzled, she didn’t seem to be any worse for wear.

  “She’s only got half a tail. Is that new or old? No, wait, I see stitches. Old then. Same goes for the bald patches. She looks fine to me,” Lil said.

 
“I think maybe we should let these two stay behind. It’s going to be messy up there,” Nita said.

  Wink reached up and tapped at her mask. Wink stayed with crew.

  Nikita shakily pulled herself up and tapped at Lil’s mask. Nikita stayed with crew.

  “Well, that’s that then. The crew stays together,” Lil said. “Now let’s get up there and clear the way for the rest of it.”

  #

  Gunner flipped open the bypass valve on the steam cart as they approached the temporary mooring of the Wind Breaker. They had only just finished hooking it up to the gig winch when the voice of the captain came bellowing down over the roar of the storm.

  “You boys, on deck, now!” he cried. “We need to get unmoored and in the air!”

  Coop scrambled up the chain and activated the winch, then ran to the speaking tube.

  “Hauling Gunner and the cart up now, Cap’n,” Coop said. “What’s the hurry?”

  “Looks like Lil and Nita didn’t share all of the defenses. Last bolt of lightning showed a ship deep in the city, spinning up its blades.”

  “Guess them gun operators had to get here somehow,” Gunner said.

  “It’s a heavy scout. It could be trouble. I want to be moving five minutes ago.”

  “Aye, Cap’n,” Coop said. He ran to the opening. “I’m going to get the lines undone. Cap’n says there’s a scout about to hit the air. You oughta get on guns once you’re up here.”

  Coop sprinted to the upper deck and yanked at the release ropes, pulling them free from the exposed beams that he’d secured the ship to upon their arrival. The wind made it hard to get the slack out. By the time he’d gotten the first rope free, Gunner was on the deck and lent a hand freeing the second rope.