The Lost Compass

by Joel Ross

  My stomach soured. He was right. He’d find out eventually. Of course he’d find out.

  “Thousands,” he said, answering his own question. “If you’re lying, there will be a reckoning, Chess. The screams of the falling will ring out across the Fog.”

  My mouth opened, but no words came. At least— at least he was doing this in a crazed attempt to save humanity, right? That’s what I told myself. Sure, he was a monster, but in the end, he’d lower the Fog, right? Right?

  “Now, then,” he purred. “Are you certain you don’t want to make any changes?”

  “Maybe a . . . a few. I—I’m trying to remember.”

  “No more games,” he told me, and walked away.

  My hand trembled as I started fixing the map. I’d show Lord Kodoc how to find the Compass. I’d give him the tool he needed to control the Fog’s nanites. Then he’d lower the Fog—or bury Port Oro and rule us forever.

  As I drew the map, the crayon left red marks on my fingers like blood.

  Pigtails snorted. “Did you really think you could outsmart Lord Kodoc, slumrat?”

  “No,” I muttered.

  “Well, you can’t,” she said. “No stupid kid can—”

  SSSSHHRR! Dozens of vents slid open across the ship, and jets of superheated foggium hissed out. A soldier screamed, and Pigtails spun, turning away from me.

  I didn’t have a plan, I didn’t have a clue, but the instant she looked away, I moved. I grabbed the map and vaulted onto the flat top of the capstan. Pigtails shouted behind me, and her hand gripped my boot. I kicked backward, clipped her arm, and heaved myself across the worn copper lid.

  I slammed to the deck and rolled away, hearing Pigtails clambering after me. She screamed for help, and I rose into a crouch and launched myself toward the railing. I was beyond thought, beyond reason. I was going to hurl myself overboard and . . . see what happened.

  But two airsoldiers stepped in front of me, blocking my path.

  “Hey!” the bald one barked.

  “Get him!” Pigtails screamed.

  The bald guy grabbed my jacket, but I tore free in a desperate twirl. As I turned, Pigtails punched at my face. Instead of dodging, I tried a trick Loretta had showed me: I bowed. Pigtails’s fist hit the dome of my skull, and she gasped at the pain.

  My head rang like a bronze bowl, but I slipped past her—and a bearded soldier shoved me into a wall. The blow knocked the wind out of me, and the map was flung from my outstretched hand.

  It floated back and forth, drifting to the deck. If I’d been in the Fog, I could’ve snatched the map from the air and landed twenty feet away. But I wasn’t in the Fog.

  I grabbed for map—too slowly. A dart fired by a steam-bow thunked into a coil of rope beside me. I jerked backward and rushed at the bald guy, then faked left and spun right. The only bootball move I knew. I scraped past him—but he caught my ankle with his foot, and I lost my balance.

  I flailed and fell to the floor. Pigtails stomped the deck an inch from my face, and I rolled across the deck . . . right into a stairwell.

  The first few steps slammed me; then I grabbed the railing and half slid, half tumbled the rest of the way down. I might’ve groaned, but I also kept moving. Boots thundered behind me, and I staggered through a brass door into a red-tinted room where three massive, gleaming, ticking machines lined either side of a narrow aisle.

  Gears spun and pistons pumped and the heat hit me like a fist. The air stank of exhaust. I sprinted down the aisle, and a wall rose past the last machines.

  A dead end. No way out.

  The door slammed open behind me, and I spun to see Pigtails stepping into the engine room. The other roof-troopers crowded into the hallway behind her. She stalked closer, shaking the hand that she’d smacked on my skull.

  “Kodoc wants you alive,” she growled. “But he don’t care if you’re bleeding.”

  I backed away. Out of ideas, out of luck, out of time. Out of room.

  Pigtails grabbed my throat. “I’m going stomp you into gravy.”

  “Wait!” I gasped.

  She shoved me against the wall with her left hand and punched me in the stomach with her right. Pain spread through my gut, and she tightened her grip on my neck and cut off my breath. My lungs started to burn.

  27

  CAPTAIN’S LOG. START-8 102.123

  AFTER I BUTTONED my jacket, I slumped against the infirmary doorframe with my head in my hands. Pain throbbed in my temples. Blinking back tears, I told myself that the throbs of pain were a drumbeat, urging me onward. Get Chess, get Chess, get Chess.

  “Bea,” I said between gritted teeth, “this all comes down to you.”

  “Y-yes, Cap’n,” she said.

  “Run to the gearslinger garage. Start on the crane and pull-start engine. You’ve got one day to rig a ship like nothing anyone’s ever seen.”

  “What about us?” Swede asked as Bea scampered off.

  “We’re getting a scout ship,” I said. “The fastest in the mutineer fleet.”

  “How?”

  “Your first job,” Loretta told him, “is keeping Hazy on her feet.”

  She’d never called me Hazy before—nobody did but Bea—and at any other time, she would’ve been embarrassed. But at any other time, Chess would’ve teased her. Right now, none of that mattered.

  When Swede stepped beside me, I wrapped an arm around his shoulders. “We need the cogs,” I said.

  Four flights up, Assemblers packed the roof, peering nervously into the distance. Swedish shoved through the crowd like an aggravated bear, and I leaned more weight on him as we climbed the steps onto the heliograph platform.

  The cogs flanked the heliograph—a polished bronze disk that caught the rays of the sun, then flashed codes to a distant target. The heliograph operator waited in her chair, but she wasn’t sending any messages. She was looking through a telescope, just like the cogs.

  “Bonita.” Cog Isandra lowered her spyglass when she noticed me. “I’m so sorry about Chess.”

  “There’s nothing to be sorry for,” I told her. “We’re getting him back. I need a scout ship, the fastest you’ve got.”

  Cog Isander rubbed his glassy white eye. “We don’t have one.”

  “All we have left is floating bathtubs,” Isandra said. “The mutineers are using everything else.”

  Loretta gasped. “They’re still there!” She pointed toward the horizon. “Kodoc’s ships are still in sight.”

  “After he grabbed Chess,” Isander said, “Kodoc started retreating from the Port . . . very slowly.”

  “He’s taunting us,” Isandra explained, her gray dreadlocks bobbing. “He’s trying to draw the mutineers into a battle they can’t win.”

  I scanned the sky with my spyglass. Three dozen mutineer ships trailed the armada, keeping their distance. Still outnumbered, still outgunned. Ignoring the conversation around me, I focused on Captain Nisha’s Anvil Rose and then on Vidious’s Night Tide. Airsailors climbed through the Tide’s rigging, and the aft propellers flashed.

  “Vidious is going to attack,” I said.

  “What?” Isandra lifted her telescope to her blue eye. “That’s suicide.”

  “It’s exactly what Kodoc wants!” Isander said. “None of them will survive.”

  “Maybe that’s the point,” I muttered, too softly for anyone to hear.

  Vidious knew he couldn’t win, so he must’ve been hoping to sink the Predator before he got shot down—with Chess and Kodoc still aboard. Without Chess and Kodoc, the Port was safe. Except there was no way he could take down the Predator with an entire armada around her. And there was no way I was going to let him sink Chess.

  “Send a message,” I told the heliograph operator.

  “What? Pardon? Excuse me?”

  “Do as the girl says!” Isander snapped, the first time I’d ever heard him lose his patience.

  “Tell him we have a plan,” I said.

  The heliograph disk tilted and creaked, an
d a minute later, a reply flashed from the Night Tide: The Subassembly knows nothing about combat.

  “Kodoc wants you to attack,” Isandra said. “Tell him that.”

  We don’t have time for fogheads, Vidious replied.

  “Tell him it’s Hazel,” Swedish said. “Tell him Hazel has a plan.”

  The heliograph tilted and flashed once more. Nothing happened for what felt like a long time. Then the Night Tide spun in the sky, swooping back toward the skyscraper, with Nisha following close behind.

  “Why do they care what some girl thinks?” the heliograph operator asked.

  “’Cause they’re not stupid,” Loretta told her.

  The minute Nisha and Vidious landed on the skyscraper roof, I asked them, “What’s the fastest scout ship on Port Oro?”

  “The Cloudfall,” Vidious told me.

  “Why do you need it?” Nisha asked.

  “You know why,” Vidious told his sister. “To rescue her tetherboy. The question is, how?”

  “Get me the ship,” I said, “and I’ll tell you. Bea’s already in the garage, putting the gear together.”

  Vidious told his lieutenant to commandeer the Cloudfall, then took my arm and led me toward the elevator. “What happened to your face?” he asked.

  “Look who’s talking,” I said, glancing at the scar on his cheek.

  Vidious showed me his lopsided smile. “I cut myself shaving.”

  “What were you shaving with?” Loretta asked. “A harpoon?”

  “Perry whacked Hazel when he snatched Chess,” Swedish told him.

  Vidious’s smile died, and his eyes turned cruel. “Perry,” he said, his voice as soft as a noose. “What does he look like?”

  As we crowded into the elevator, I felt something I’d never expected: pity for Perry.

  “He doesn’t matter,” I told Vidious, my heart beating fast.

  The gears squeaked, the elevator basket swayed, and then Captain Nisha said, “Tell us your plan, Hazel. What’s the scout ship for?”

  I wiped a few braids off my face. “We can’t approach the Predator above the Fog. So we only have one choice.”

  “We can’t fly inside the Fog,” she said.

  “Right,” I told her, “but we can glide.”

  “Turn the Cloudfall into a glider . . . ,” Vidious muttered.

  “Visibility is zero in the Fog,” Nisha said. “It’s impossible to navigate.”

  I shrugged. “Captain Osho’s tools will help.”

  “You’d need a pilot who’s good enough to fly blindfolded.”

  “That’s the easy part,” Loretta told her, putting a hand on Swede’s arm.

  “What about fogsickness?” Nisha asked.

  “The Assemblers cured Mrs. E,” Swedish told her, flushing at Loretta’s touch. “They’ll cure us, too.”

  “She’s in a wheeled chair.”

  “She spent an entire night in the Fog,” I said. “We’ll glide for an hour or two at the most.”

  When we reached the garage, we found Bea slicing the frame of the glide-wing as other gearslingers assembled a “crane-and-sling” to attach to the top of the Cloudfall, along with a disposable, one-shot engine with a long pull cord.

  “You’re not gliding for an hour or two,” Vidious told me.

  “Depends how far Kodoc’s torchships can see,” I said.

  “We’re gliding for an hour or two.” He tucked a braid behind my ear, his touch softer than I could’ve imagined. “My sister and I and a handpicked crew. This is a daring, brilliant, reckless plan. If you go—”

  “You’d die,” Nisha cut in. “But we’ve got a chance . . . a small chance.”

  “No,” I said.

  “We’re not asking,” Vidious said. “This is how it’s going to be.”

  So I started screaming at them. I cursed and raged. I threw a gearbox at Vidious, and even managed to cry a little. Still, Chess would’ve known that I was faking. I needed to make a scene so they wouldn’t suspect what I’d already planned. I was going to steal the glider.

  The gearslingers worked through the night, and Swedish and I spent the next morning practicing tapping signals until Bea finished the Cloudfall.

  It looked like a chickadee with an eagle’s wings. A chickadee wearing a backpack full of cables and tubes: the “skyhook” crane. Two fans squatted beside the engine, and straps and loops for the crew were riveted to the frame, with a saddle in front for the pilot.

  “She’s a little goofy,” Bea said. “But she’s raring to go.”

  “What will you call her?” Cog Isander asked.

  “The Peanut!” Bea announced.

  “Or,” Isandra said, “we can still call her the Cloudfall.”

  Bea wrinkled her nose. “I guess.”

  “Captains Nisha and Vidious are on the way,” Cog Isandra announced.

  For the fifth time that day, I glanced aside to catch Chess’s eye—looking for support, for strength, for feedback—and for the fifth time, loneliness chimed in my chest.

  “We’ll greet them on the roof,” Isander said, “and give them a proper send-off.”

  Once they’d left, the gearslingers trickled from the garage. When we were alone, Loretta jammed the doors with wrenches. We opened the flight panels on the wall, then Swedish widened them with an ax, chopping a hole big enough for the Cloudfall.

  Shouts of alarm sounded in the distance. Fists pounded the locked door of the workshop. I swung into place behind Swedish, and Loretta strapped herself to the hull.

  Then the engine roared to life, and Bea called, “On your mark, Cap’n!”

  “Hit the sky,” I said. “Chess is waiting.”

  Swedish jerked a lever, and we launched from the skyscraper.

  Captain’s Log: Supplemental

  I’m scrawling this on the Cloudfall minutes before we dive down to glide in the Fog. I’m light-headed with fear. Still, the ship is strong, and Swedish responds to my taps with such speed that I almost feel like I’m the pilot.

  I’ve also learned that Loretta sings when she gets nervous enough. She’s been belting out songs for twenty minutes now. We are going to fly in the Fog.

  I’m afraid we’re trying the impossible. I’ve fixed the location and speed of the Predator, which is still barely visible through my spyglass. Now I have to approach her from within the Fog, resurfacing at exactly the right moment to intercept her from beneath. Without being spotted. Without crashing. Without missing. There is no room for error.

  I don’t know if I can do this.

  28

  IN THE ENGINE room of the Predator, the soldier with pigtails squeezed my throat. My breath came in pained gasps. Dots of light swam in my vision.

  Her fist cocked to punch me again when a voice said, “Hey, roof rat.”

  She glanced aside, and through my tear-blurred eyes, I caught a glimpse of Swedish. He sprang forward and head butted Pigtails in the face. Hard. Skull against bone. A nasty crack sounded. It was ugly; it was bloody. It was the best thing I’d ever seen.

  Pigtails dropped like a sack of rust, and I gulped air. “S-Swedish?”

  “I got you,” he said, and wrapped his arm around me, keeping me on my feet.

  Kind of hugging me, too—and I almost burst into tears. Instead, I caught motion near the door and gasped, “L-look out. . . .”

  The bald roof-trooper stalked into the room, aiming his steam-bow at Swedish. “Drop the kid,” he growled. “Hands by your side or I’ll put a dart in you.”

  “Sure thing,” Swedish told him, shoving me aside.

  With a growl like an angry bobcat, Loretta sprang from above, landing on the bald soldier’s neck. She brought him to the ground on the other side of the aisle, and his boots drummed against the floor.

  The bearded soldier burst inside, pulled a hatchet, and sidled toward Swedish.

  “Yaee!” Loretta howled.

  As the soldier spun at the noise, Swedish took two loping steps and body-slammed him into a wooden post.
>
  I stumbled behind the last machine, caught myself on a lever box—and saw Bea sitting cross-legged at a tangle of cables, snipping and splicing, and apologizing under her breath.

  My heart grew seventeen sizes, and my eyes swam with tears.

  Then I heard Hazel’s voice. “Chess.”

  My blurry gaze shifted. Her braids fell around her face, and a bandage slanted across her forehead. For a moment, neither of us spoke. For the first time since Perry had grabbed me, I knew that everything would be okay.

  I wanted to tell her that. I wanted to tell her a thousand things. I wanted to fall into her arms and cry.

  Instead, I said, “Kodoc was going to make them walk the plank.”

  “What?” Hazel’s brow knit in confusion. “Who?”

  “Refinery kids. So I drew him the map.”

  Her lips narrowed. She stepped closer, her eyes glinting. She looked angry—until she gave me a fierce hug. Her skin smelled like home.

  “Soldiers!” Loretta said, trotting around the machine.

  Bea squealed when she noticed me. “Chess!”

  “A whole squad,” Swedish said from behind Loretta.

  “Bea first, then Chess.” Hazel pushed me toward a hole in the wall where they’d removed a grate. “Now! Go!”

  Bea squirmed through the opening, and I followed her into a square tunnel. “What is this?” I asked.

  “Engineering crawl space,” Bea whispered over her shoulder.

  “Whoa.” I’d never heard of anything like that. “Big ship.”

  “Which way now?” Bea asked.

  I frowned at her backside. “How would I know?”

  “I’m not talking to you,” she scoffed, crawling deeper into the ship.

  Oh. Of course. She was talking to the Predator.

  “Not the bays.” She tapped the ground with a mallet from her tool belt and listened to the thooks. “What? No, we want to head down, under the hull. . . . Yes, of course! To your diving platforms.”

  A fist jabbed my butt, and Loretta’s voice said, “Keep moving!”