The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives)

by Courtney Grace Powers

  “It's…” Po confusedly flicked through a few pages, having to brush back a strand of her white-blonde hair to see. Her braid was almost completely unraveled, and there were specks of dirt blending in with her freckles, and a patch of Gideon's blood on the shoulder of her jumpsuit. Hayden sensed he didn't look much better. “It's about cobblin'. Shoe makin'.”

  “Right,” Mordecai nodded, “and not as borin' as it sounds. But turn to the end.”

  Po obeyed. Over her shoulder, Hayden saw, pressed between the final pages of the book, the first half of Nivy's note from the night before.

  “It's instructions,” Mordecai explained. “First from Nivy to Reece, then from Reece to me. See, last night, Reece sent Nivy out spyin' on the mayor. He didn't trust her…didn't like how she'd seemed so curious about the ship. Well, Nivy Girl followed Petric right into The Plant, where she was holdin' a secret meetin' with who Nivy figured for her inner circle…close friends, political colleagues, etcetera. She heard Petric’s whole plan right there, how she was plannin' to bug us all with broadcaster links and whatnot. She could tell Reece wasn't gonna be forthcomin' with her on the matter’a the turbine, and she needed to know how to make Aurelia flight ready again. Once she found that out, she was gonna take the ship and run with it. Leavin' us stranded, or dead…it didn't really matter to her, so long as she got a ticket outta Leto. The only thing was, she couldn't have us arrested till we'd done somethin' wrong, not without some'a her council members comin' down on her head.

  “Now, Reece couldn't just sit back and let all that happen, but he couldn't leave without the turbine. And if he just stole it, he'd be leavin' Leto City without their generator. So they hatched a plan…a dirt good one, I've gotta say. But it required you and Po Girl know nothin' about it.” Mordecai's tone was apologetic, but that didn't soften the blow of his words, even if Hayden had known they were coming.

  “Why?” Po asked.

  “A couple'a reasons. Most importantly, the Cap'n wanted to keep you safe.”

  “Shouldn't that have been our choice?” Hayden demanded, leaning around Po, who had gone pleasantly pink in the face. “We should have been given the chance to help!”

  “You were, boy. I'm gettin' there. Remember, Petric's been listenin' to all'a us since daybreak this mornin', and she would'a been suspicious if at least some'a us hadn't started catchin' on to her. You did that, and you did it more naturally than any'a us, as experienced as we are, could ever have done. It seems a small thing, but it ain't. Po,” she looked up, probably hopeful for more word on Reece, “tell Hayden what the Cap'n asked you to do today.”

  “He…” Po thoughtfully pursed her lips. “He wanted me to start makin' a replacement generator-turbine for the Letoians, so we could bargain with them. But he asked me to walk Gideon through the process aloud, from beginnin' to end. Like I was explainin' to an Eleven, he said. He said Gideon needed to hear everythin', from how to turn it on, to—oh!”

  Mordecai gave her dangling boot a congratulatory pat. “You're catchin' on now, darlin’.”

  Turning to Hayden, who was trying to be patient but couldn't quite seem to squeeze it in between his feelings of frustration and betrayal, Po explained, “The Cap'n used the broadcaster links against her! He wanted me to give instructions so Petric would have exactly what she'd need to make the generator work for Leto City after the real turbine's gone.” She spun back to face Mordecai. “So he's still plannin' on stealin' it?”

  “Stealin' it?” he repeated with a twinkle in his eye. “Why, there's no need. You're sittin' on it.”

  Astounded, Hayden and Po studied the rectangular black crate beneath them. Hayden had assumed it belonged in the cargo bay because he'd seen it before, but looking at it again, he remembered it wasn't the cargo bay where he'd seen it. It had been outside The Plant, standing with Scarlet, Reece, and Petric. He'd taken it for a coffin, the way the dozen guards had born it on their shoulders…the guards, he realized, that were bound and gagged not twenty feet away.

  It was as though the fog dulling his brain suddenly scrolled back so he could see the picture in full clarity. He gasped. “No.”

  “Oh yes,” Mordecai chuckled. “We got them to do the heavy liftin' for us. If we'd tried to steal the turbine ourselves, we would never have made it outta The Plant, likely as not. Petric was just waitin' for the word to have the turbine transported to the ship. So we gave it to her.”

  “I remember,” Hayden whispered, squeezing his eyes shut. “Scarlet…I asked her this morning if the generator was the turbine…and she answered for Petric, didn't she? She wanted Petric to hear, so the order would be given for the turbine to be moved.”

  “That's right. And while Petric sat through negotiations with Reece, thinkin' she was distractin' him from what was goin' on, he was distractin' her from figurin' out that he knew she was distractin' him from what was goin' on. Whew. Sorta makes your head hurt, don't it?”

  “But there's somethin' I still don't get.” Po kicked her feet, her eyes screwed up tight in concentration. “Why'd Cap'n and the others let themselves get caught? And if Petric didn't know about our plan…‘cause we didn't even know about our plan…why'd she come after us?”

  “Ah.” Mordecai tipped his cigar in Hayden’s general direction. “You got an answer for that one?”

  Hayden nodded miserably. “Because Scarlet was taken, and that wasn't in the plan, was it? I wanted to go back for her when she went off with Petric, but Reece…Reece manipulated me!” he burst out, making Po jump and Mordecai's eyebrows shoot back up to where they'd been before. “There I was, telling him everything I'd learned, and he knew it all already! Scarlet knew it all already! They both used me!”

  Hopping off the turbine's crate, Po stood before him and took his head between her hands, stopping it mid-disdainful-shake. “Hayden,” she said gently, “you got used because you're good, and honest, and sincere. Is that really so bad?”

  Hayden wanted to nod, but he had the exasperated feeling if he tried, Po would hold his head in place and not let him. He knew she was right, that he should be glad he had been of help at all…but there wasn't much courage in being of help only because he hadn't known he'd been helping.

  “What else?” Po prompted.

  “Well,” Hayden continued with a sigh, “I'm guessing Nivy's spying didn't turn up anything about Leto's prisoners being offered up to the Rippers. That was news to Scarlet…it made her change the plan on Reece. But when she left with Petric, Reece knew she was going to be arrested, and that he in turn would have to get captured in order to be taken to the mines to get her out. But he couldn't get arrested too early…he still needed to find Po and give us our instructions, to find you. Once he had us together, he purposely claimed he was going to steal the turbine, so Petric would have her excuse to arrest him and get him out of the way. Giving him exactly what he wanted in the meantime, a chance to go after Scarlet. And Mordecai’s part was to…”

  “To be here when the Letoians showed up with the turbine, to peaceably take it in hand.” Mordecai eyed the soldiers thoughtfully—or maybe he was eyeing his handiwork. Hayden could make out at least three broken noses from here. “And then to give you your last bit'a instruction. Po Girl…you think you can get this turbine fitted in a few short hours? 'Cause our shipmates are gonna need a pick up.”

  Running her hand thoughtfully over the crate, Po nodded. “It'll be settin'a record, but I can swing it.”

  “How are you going to get it into the Afterquin, if it took twelve men just to get it on board?” Hayden pointed out.

  Mordecai casually waved at the bundle of soldiers across the cargo bay. “You mean those twelve men?”

  “But they—”

  “I think you'll find,” the old man pulled out his revolver, giving its barrel a neat spin, “they're in a helpful mood.”

  The Letoian sentry tossed Reece out the barred door in the side of the canyon and started drawing its locks behind him before he had even finished his landing slide in t
he mud.

  “Reece!” a familiar voice gasped.

  Reece leaned up, flinging mud off his hands with a scowl, as Scarlet squelched through the mud and knelt beside him. She tried in vain to push back the blonde hair pasted to her face by grey, cracked mud.

  “You're alright.”

  “That depends on your definition of alright,” Reece muttered, twisting and looking around. Karadur, Petric had called this place. Well, Karadur wasn't really a canyon at all—more like a rip in the ground of the desert, maybe half a mile across and a hundred feet deep, walled in tightly on all sides. Wires coiled like roots down the cliff faces and attached to tall poles topped with perfect metal spheres, twenty or thirty in all, standing in the mud all across the gorge. The shadows of the people on their hands and knees in the mud were harsh in the sharp blue light radiating from the spheres.

  Scarlet gave his arm a tug, standing. “Come on. The mud floor is dangerous when lightning strikes.”

  “Am I the first?” Reece asked, following her to the foot of a canyon wall, where there was a rock outcropping about six inches out of the mud they could stand on, though their toes hung over its ledge.

  “Nivy's here. She's scouting the canyon, seeing if there's any way…” Trailing off, Scarlet gazed out across the metal poles with a frown. “Did you send off Hayden and Po, then?”

  Reece turned over his hand, grimly examining the small, circular burn on his palm, given by the electromagnomiter the guard had pressed there to short out his swallowed broadcaster link. Apparently, Petric had deemed any more information he could give superfluous. Lucky for her. Now that Reece was done with his role in the plan, he had some choice words he wouldn't mind transmitting her way.

  “They should be on their way to Aurelia by now, if they figured that much out.”

  “They will,” Scarlet said confidently. “Hayden will. But Reece…they'll never reach us, not down here. They don't have the manpower to force a way in.”

  “Mordecai will think of something.”

  For a long moment, Scarlet was quiet, and they watched uneasily as the workers on the canyon floor dug wires out of the mud and ran them from pole to pole. Some of the workers saw them hanging back and glared; others looked so browbeaten, so ready to roll over and drown in the mud, that Reece knew they were the ones that had been here longest, and had lost the will to care.

  As Scarlet finally opened her mouth to reply, the door to the prison scraped open, and Gideon was heaved into the mud. Muttering curses, he picked himself up, spotted Reece and Scarlet, and started their way with a hand pressed to his shoulder. It was difficult to tell in the stark white-blue light, but Reece thought there was something dark—something not mud—staining his fingers.

  “You're shot,” Scarlet realized aloud, aghast.

  Gid grunted as he stepped up onto their ledge and dropped his back against the rock wall. “Only a little.”

  “You can't be shot only a little!” With an exasperated huff, Scarlet edged nearer to him and tried to pry his hand away from the wound. “Let me look at it, you cantankerous boar. It's going to get infected.”

  His eyes on Gideon's wan face, Reece asked, “What happened? We were supposed to go quietly.”

  “I did,” Gid growled, then paused, and for a second, looked almost sheepish. “I just checked on Aitch and Po first.”

  Reece kept his voice even with an effort; he could feel a tense vein ticking in his jaw. “You checked on—”

  “I know it wasn't part'a the bleedin' plan, but you should'a seen them. They were lost. I couldn't leave them turnin' circles on their own.”

  Watching two huddled prisoners crawl stiffly by, Reece sighed and slumped till he was crouched, his elbows draped limply over his knees. Was this bad captaining on his part, or were all his plans just destined to blow up like a Freherian fireshow in his face?

  One of the two prisoners down in the mud unexpectedly pounced, and quicker than Reece could get to his feet, grabbed Scarlet about her shoulders and pulled her shrieking to the mud floor. Reece leaped after them, sliding to his knees in the muck as he tried to pry Scarlet's attacker off her back.

  “Rich, filthy, gluttonous…”

  It was the girl Raider, the one from the street. She looked no fonder of Scarlet than she had of Po; in fact, Reece wasn't so sure Scarlet's prettiness wasn't working against her in this regard, because as soon as her face surfaced from the mud and she opened her green eyes, the Raider gave a feline howl, elbowed Reece in the sternum, and dove at her again.

  Coughing, Reece roped his arm around her neck and tried to put her in a hold, but someone seized him by the hood of his cloak and hauled him backward with a hiss.

  “Thieving townsfolk!” whoever had Reece from behind spat. “Getting us caught! Getting Guybet killed! All for that miserable morsel in the street!”

  Reece was just comprehending that the miserable morsel must be Po when Gideon joined them in the mud with a snarl, hammering Reece’s attacker across the face with his elbow.

  “Reece!” Scarlet's voice was garbled. She had the girl Raider by two fistfuls of her dark hair, but the girl had her by the throat, and they were grappling, half-submerged in the mud. Reece made a quick assessment—it looked like Gideon was determined to break every last tooth out of the bearded Raider's mouth—and tackled the feral girl onto her stomach. She writhed and screeched beneath him.

  But when a voice outside the scuffle frantically hollered, “Strike! Strike! Everybody off the floor!”, the girl's writhing became less violent and more desperate. Scarlet cried in a hoarse voice, “Reece! Lightning!”

  Growling, Reece thrust the Raider away from him, turned, and with Scarlet, tripped onto the stone outcropping. The Raider girl half-stumbled, half-crawled to the other side of the pit and clawed her way up onto its ledge, leaving her companion lying sprawled in the mud, pinned beneath Gideon's boot.

  Reece could feel the air crackling with static; his scalp tingled, his hair wanting to stand on end.

  “Gid!” he yelled, flailing and catching the back of Gideon's shirt. With a tug and a shout of effort, he pulled Gideon off balance so the Pan was forced to catch himself on the canyon wall. Gid hastily pulled his boots out of the mud…and a blinding branch of red lightning exploded overhead, and violent electricity raced down the wires on the canyon walls, up the metal poles, and into the silver spheres. For a second, thin tendrils and threads of red light rolled across the surface of the spheres, forking out and connecting pole to pole, splitting and branching and multiplying again and again, until with a sudden krchhh, they flashed to darkness. Blue light slowly washed over the gorge, dingy looking after that spectacular display. Red dots danced in Reece's eyes no matter how hard he blinked.

  The bearded Raider was dead where he lay spread-eagle in the mud. Wisps of smoke trailed up from his body, reeking of…well. Just reeking.

  As Reece, Gideon, and Scarlet watched, a pair of goggled Letoian sentries came, peeled the corpse out of the mud, and dragged it out the prison door. But they weren't finished. When they returned, it was for the girl.

  “No!” she screamed, rabidly thrashing as they pinned her wrists together in a square manacle. “No!”

  “What're they doin'?” Gideon asked in a low voice, nursing his shoulder again.

  Scarlet drew her wrist across her mouth, panting, as the girl's shrill screams faded into eerie echoes. “Taking her to the Pool. Any prisoners who incite violence are offered to the Rippers straight away. It's barbaric. I wish I could sit Petric down and school her till she—Nivy!”

  The girl was determinedly trudging through the mud towards them, looking surprisingly clean, compared to the rest of them. Which was to say she was muddy up past her knees and elbows.

  “Find anything?” Reece wearily asked, glad to see she hadn't been mud fried.

  Frowning briefly at Gideon's shoulder, Nivy nodded, put a dirty finger to her lips, and nodded for them to follow her. Reece wasn't the only one who made a face at having to
get back into the mud after that lightshow.

  Nivy led them to the foot of the gorge, where a few exhausted workers were sitting on an island of rock amid the mud, a sphere and pole on either side of them. They watched impassively as she pointed to a thin breach in the stone wall, just big enough for Reece to fit in sideways with his head slightly bowed. Gideon would have to wait outside, but going by his sickly expression, sitting down might be just the medicine he needed. Scarlet offered to stay with him. Her exact words were, “You go on. I'll babysit the bear.”

  Reece tried not to get his hopes up as he squeezed himself into the opening after Nivy, adding a layer of gritty orange dust to his coat of mud. If this was a way out, the other prisoners would have found it long ago.

  As the blue light from the gorge faded out behind him, new yellow light grew to the size of a lantern up ahead. Nivy popped out of the crack, stirring up an orange fog of dust that Reece had to shuffle through with his eyes closed. He sighed with relief and then collapsed into a coughing fit as he broke out into an open cave.

  It was really less a cave a more a hole fit for rodents, snakes, and the like. So it was fitting that none other than Owon should be sitting cross-legged against its back wall, staring at their appearance with a knowing little smile.

  Owon gave him a wry once-over and said, “You look terrible, Reece Sheppard. This pleases us greatly.”

  “And you're still alive,” Reece retorted, shooting Nivy a quick, questioning glance. She shrugged. “What happened, wouldn't the Rippers have you? Or are they not big on mystery meat?”

  “Our meat is still essentially human, Reece Sheppard. Merely a higher caliber. But in answer to your droll albeit asinine question, it is in our favor that these Letoian sentries are spineless decorations. A few whispered words, a glance, here and there…and they fear to even look at us.”

  “And did aforementioned spineless decorations give you that?” Reece jerked his chin at the lantern propped at Owon's side, burning low on its wick.

  “Indeed. As well as the trick to escaping this place. Fear makes all men…pliable.” The Vee looked and sounded inarguably smug as he stroked a long finger down the lantern's glass. “If you wish to leave Karadur, we are your only chance. You are obtuse, but you will have done the math. The gate is guarded by two dozen Letoian sentries, and the walls are insurmountable. There is only one way out of Karadur, and you will only learn of it through me.”