by Andrew Post
Some of the paneling wasn’t on all the way, and one of the engines was shoddily tacked on.
The engines were on now, warming, emitting a low hum.
“Uncle?” Flam approached the cockpit, rapped on the tinted glass.
It slid aside. Instead of Greenspire Flam framed there in the window, it was Nigel, staring at Flam as if his head were aflame. “What’re ye doing here?”
“I’m looking for Greenspire. Is he in there with you?” Past Nigel, Flam could see only the tangled mass of Lulomba people and the serrated legs and shiny carapaces of the Blatta, all stuffed in together. He could also hear the flapping of wings—Scooter, Nigel’s parrot.
“I thought he was with ye.”
“Did he say anything?”
“No, he just took off. Not even a minute ago. I figured he was looking for ye, to say good-bye. Look, lad, I might suggest coming with us. Not exactly a lot of room back there but space enough for ye and Greenspire, when he gets back.”
“You have no idea how tempting that sounds right now, but I can’t. Also, I think I might have to ask you to stick around as well.”
Nigel’s substantial brows crushed together. “Haven’t ye been listening to the news? Gleese is at war, son.”
“But Geyser needs you.”
“I’m in a wheelchair, mate. Fighting landed me in it, and I doubt more’s gonna get me out of it—unless we’re speaking in the mortal sense.” Nigel stared at Flam a moment. “But I must say, talk like that coming from ye surprises me. Didn’t think the uniform would fit a lad such as yerself too well, but now”—he tweaked Flam’s badge straight—“can’t say ye’d look quite right without it.”
“Without it,” Scooter contributed.
“Thanks,” Flam said quickly, grateful for the genuinely kind remark, “but I really need the help. We can’t do this with the men we have. We need fighters. Whether you’re in the chair or not, it doesn’t matter to me.”
Nigel nodded. “Aye, aye. Listen, I put some shooters on this bucket in the event we’re not too welcome in the next orbit yer uncle’s pilgrimage takes us to. Tell ye what, until I spot Greenspire, I’ll make a circuit around the island a few times, keep an eye out. But the minute I see yer uncle, I’m only touching down long enough to pick him up. After that, we’re gone.”
“Thank you.” Flam backed away as the engines screeched their first and second rounds of ignition.
As they ascended for the first pass around the city, Flam turned and bolted back through the garage. He slapped aside canvas tents and pushed through the door leading onto Fourth Circle Street.
He stepped out just as Nigel rocketed past overhead. He stole a moment to watch the starship streak the sky—and saw a second coming in toward it. The two nearly collided. The second ship swooped low, spun about, and dove over the edge of the platter, out of sight. Nigel’s ship stopped in midair, hovered a moment, turned, and shot after it.
But in that second when the other ship—a compact, sleek vessel—had slowed, Flam could’ve sworn he saw a handful of figures drop out from the bomb compartment doors.
He estimated where they landed in the city, a few blocks over, and moved that way, readying his rifle. Turning down alleyways, he saw storefront shutters rattle down, windows close, and locks click. Good. At least some of them are listening.
Most of them, anyway. Next to him, from the mouth of an alley, he heard a rustle of feet. “Get to your home!” he shouted to remind whoever was down there.
An auto horn drew his attention away.
When he turned back to see if the alley stragglers had done as he’d ordered, his snout nearly bumped the barrel of a gun.
The individual holding it wore a body suit with a featureless, smooth mask. Behind, another person dressed the same also brandished a pistol. Their suits were black, but viewed from a particular angle, parts of them became invisible, the edges shimmering like oil on water.
Flam tried to very slowly shift around with his rifle, but apparently, even though the masks hid their eyes, they never missed a thing. With deft fluidity, they snatched the gun from Flam’s grasp and sent it clattering onto the flagstones.
“Where’s the steward?” The voice was creaky, robotic through breather filters.
“He’s not at the palace?” Flam said, hands up now.
“No. He’s not.”
“Well, you might want to go look again,” Flam said. “Place is awfully big, and last I checked, the steward’s just a bitty fella.” Play dumb. Frustrate them. Let them give you
an opening.
The gun’s hammer ratcheted. “Stop stalling.”
It’d taken Flam a moment to realize they weren’t in suits for scouting but for sport—specifically speed-skull fencing, a game that involved hopping around invisible in a cube arena, scoring on your opponent by bopping them on the head with a twenty-pound mallet. Weird, rich-people fun. And when the closest one moved again to angle away his compact shooter, Flam saw the emblem on his suit’s chest. The upside down black triangle with the white albatross leaping up, wings spread, a spear in its chomp. Srebrna Academy.
“Listen, if you kids are here as wannabe looters, I’d suggest swinging by another day. Kind of a bad time.”
The figure reached a shimmering hand up and flipped a switch behind the jaw. The helmet face peeled away like a flower blooming, its panels retracting into the high collar.
Flam reeled.
He looked just like Clyde.
Flam’s gaze moved to the second speed-skull suit. Nula? Er—Moira?
Although he couldn’t be sure, with her still wearing her mask, Flam gave them a withering glare. The semi-invisible figures shifted, apparently able to feel the glare’s heat—or read his thoughts, if it was Moira. Right then, anyone could’ve picked up on his feelings, screaming in his head as they were.
“Yes, it’s her,” the one Flam assumed was Raziel said. “Go ahead. Let him see you.”
After a slight hesitation, the helmet opened: Moira’s true face. Pale, ashen skin, black eyes, lips the faintest of pinks.
The wound in Flam’s trunk ached again.
“We want to save Geyser as much as you do,” she said, small.
“So you can steal it out from under Clyde.” Flam grunted.
Moira seemed unable or unwilling to say anything more.
Raziel watched their exchange, smirking. Just as Flam was about to address him, ask him why he wanted Clyde dead so badly, or just punch him in the face—whichever—a burst of static interrupted him.
“Flam?” came from the radio clipped to his belt. It was Nigel, distorted by engine noise on his end. “I saw that thing take off like the dickens, but I can’t get a steady bead on her. Any of yer men good with hittin’ moving targets? Could use a hand with this one.”
“Our pilot,” Raziel supplied, gesturing to the cloudless sky as the shiny pellet of a starship streaked past again, performing evasive maneuvers always just slightly ahead of Nigel’s pattering shots. “And if he gets taken down, that’s less help against the Odium.”
Flam took the radio off his belt. “Stand down, Nigel.”
“Aye?”
“Yeah, leave that one alone.” He lowered the radio. “You’re going to help us?”
“Yes.” Raziel holstered. Hand now empty, he leveled it toward Flam, the half-invisible fingers spread. “You’ve hurt a lot of people,” he estimated plainly.
“Part of being a guardsman sometimes, unfortunately.”
“No.” Raziel smiled. “Before that. Civility is new to you. Stains of a ruffian’s life still mark you. Many of them were cheats, I see, people you punished for daring to pull a fast one on you. Understandable. But maybe, if you like, I could install some empathy in that big, dumb Mouflon head of yours . . .”
Moira stepped forward. “Raz, stop.”
Raziel glared at the small, pale girl beside him. “Really? Him? I thought you took reconnaissance and subterfuge at the academy. I did. And I remember one bul
let point on the syllabus being Don’t fall in love with your marks.”
She took a step back.
Raziel, smugly satisfied, swung back to Flam. “Look. You need us. If we help, what will you give us to serve as a suitable reward?”
Flam’s gaze drifted to Moira.
“Don’t look at her,” Raziel snapped. “Look at me and name something of value you’d be willing to give. Because we can just call our man to pick us up and leave you with this mess, if you’d prefer. How about my brother? Where’s he, during all this?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then you have nothing of interest to me. Nothing of value at all except what currently stands in your boots. Mouflon custom dictates that if you promise something, you have to stick to it, right? So how about you deposit yourself in the kitty? Your big, smelly Mouflon self that’s bursting at the seams with infatuation for my demure little sister.”
Flam’s jaw tightened.
“I’m not stupid. She cares about you too.” He added inwardly, “Can’t imagine how you’d feel about her after seeing her do some thorough interviewing with someone, but there it is, the blindfold we don for love.”
“What are you saying, then?” Flam said. “You want me to give up any feelings I had for her? Because hate to break it to you, but those pretty much went out the window when she stabbed me.”
In his peripheral vision, Flam could see Moira stand up straight. Flam would’ve liked to think what he’d just said was true, that he felt absolutely nothing for her still, but he did. The affection was stuck in there deep, wedged between the bones, more painful than even her sword’s bite.
Raziel smiled, looking at Flam and then Moira. “So go on. Name it.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say here,” Flam shouted.
A few people in the surrounding buildings were now watching from their windows, peeking out from between shutter slats.
“You’re the speck in my sister’s vision that refuses to blink free—ever since she was planted here. Even after she ran you through and we collected her, she’s had this silly lovesick look to her. Sighing constantly, requiring me to say her name two or three times to get her attention. It’s annoying. And since she can skim a mind like a Mouflon would a dessert menu, she knows you felt the same way. Which is even harder for her, I’m sure. Isn’t that right, Moira?”
Moira said nothing, dark eyes downcast. Flam wanted nothing more than to pull her toward him right now, forget everything she’d ever done to him or anyone else and rocket off someplace where Raziel could never find them. But his hooves remained planted on the cobblestone. “Fine.”
“You do understand what we’re agreeing to here? I know Mouflons aren’t exactly the sharpest bunch.”
“If you help save Geyser, my life is yours.”
“Okay, okay, let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. I want to make this deal a little more interesting than that. I don’t want to be the one to kill you, Sir Flam. I want her to do it.” He gestured to Moira. “Because apparently one thing she missed at the academy was the importance of finishing one’s assignments. I’d like to play the tutor, like a good big brother, and help her with that.”
CHAPTER 18
Right on Time
It was almost comical, Aksel leading the pirates around the dead city in a serpentine circuit—running through abandoned buildings, hopping through broken windows, weaving aisles of forsaken shopping centers. He ate bullets and fired them over his shoulder when he could, but every pause he took would yield a barrage of gunfire. He opted to just keep sprinting, trying to draw them far from Clyde and Nevele.
Out on the street, a silhouette raced his way. He trained his DeadEye on it, backlit into near invisibility by the suns’ glare bouncing off the vacant buildings’ windows. It stopped, raised hands, gasping, “It’s me. It’s Nevele!”
He retracted the bronze shaft into his skull. “Go!”
She didn’t need to be told twice. Together they bolted, retracing her fresh footsteps in the sand.
Sweat stung his eye. He shot over his shoulder at the men in dogged pursuit.
Return fire whizzed over their heads, nearly parting Aksel’s hair. He followed Nevele as she dodged around the corner of a sand-drowned building, nearing the crashed Praise to Her.
“What do we do?” Nevele said, dropping next to Clyde.
Aksel couldn’t help but feel a cold finger on his spine at the sight. The pale man’s mouth hung slack, head drooping to one side.
“Clyde,” Nevele shouted into his face, “open your eyes. Come on. Clyde! Open your eyes!”
One slow inhale, another. Bright red striped Clyde’s face, sand sparkling where it’d stuck. He had a half-foot gash on his side. Blood squeezed through the network of sutures, working only to slow his inevitable bleed out. Nevele pressed her hands onto it, and still it pushed through her bloodstained digits.
Aksel positioned another bullet between his lips and bit down to load his jaw hopper. The taste of brass and lead was bitter, commingling with a realization.
If Clyde was anything like his siblings, he didn’t eat or drink or sleep but got nourishment using his fabrick. Nevele seemed to already understand this before Aksel did, and even though her fiancé’s life was in the balance, she was hesitating, lips open but not saying something. Whatever it was, whatever she had to say to him, it was clearly ready. She made half a dozen half starts, stammering, the words trying to force themselves free, but she kept biting them back before they could escape.
Aksel turned to face the bottom of the hill, DeadEye ready. Instead of men’s footsteps, a distant rolling rumble of starship engines kicked up. Dancing out into the sandy street came little yellow tornadoes. “Whatever he needs, you’d better give it to him quick. They’re going to be on us in a minute.”
“I . . .” Nevele stammered. “I don’t know how.”
“Figure it out. We need him mobile.”
“Clyde,” Nevele began, “I have a confession to make.”
The Odium starship rumbled into view, low, horrible, shaking what few panels of glass remained in the surrounding buildings’ frames. The pirates behind their flying hunk of armor, the cheaters, were probably smiling. Guns sprouted from its nose cone and slanted wings. It swept forward, nearly overhead so the gunfire would be economical.
Nevele talked over the plasma-scented gales of exhaust. As she did, Clyde continued to fade. His fluttering eyelids seemed determined to close. She held his hand in both of hers. The stitched lines crossing her face caught her tears, steering them toward her chin.
“. . . and I came back to the shipyard, and Zoya’s dad was in the cage . . .”
A screech preceded overamplified words from the starship’s loudspeaker: “Hungry, Bullet Eater? How’s about a nibble? Tuck in.”
A patter of gunfire, deliberately off mark. Aksel knew—from experience, sadly—this was just them playing the cat. Dangle death, then steal it away. The three-round burst, inches from Aksel’s feet, threw a spray of sand ten feet in the air, the sharp grains raining down a moment after.
“Like that?” The voice cackled brokenly, overloading the speaker. “How about another?”
The ground was pelted at Aksel’s feet again. He didn’t move.
Knowing it’d be pointless, Aksel still focused on the ship’s nose cone and fired his DeadEye. The shot smacked the ship’s armor and ricocheted away. A tiny scuff, not even a noticeable ding among the myriad badges of other fights the ship already bore.
“That’s it?”
Aksel reached into his pocket for another bullet to eat and felt only his slacks’ cotton lining. Great.
Behind him, Nevele said, “And there were some bubbles. I had time to pull him back up. I could’ve, if I wanted to, but I didn’t.”
Aksel expected this to be it, their end, but the next burst pounded the Praise to Her’s blackened hull instead, inches from Nevele, who was bent over Clyde. She didn’t even seem to notice.
It was pointless. Even if they did get him to his feet, they’d be gunned down the minute they tried to run.
Aksel, spreading his arms, shouted at the starship. “Get it over with!”
Just laughter, blasting down from tinny speakers.
But as Aksel whispered an apology to his sister, Vee, for being such a lifelong headache, the scuff he’d put into the nose of the starship began to . . . fade. The one he’d put there disappeared, then the few surrounding it. Dents popped back out, long scratches courtesy of poor piloting reversed, unmarred steel restored.
Was Clyde doing this? Aksel watched as more damage erased until the starship looked factory new. And then it began to shed even more of its wear. Then components of the ship itself, the nonfactory stuff, vanished—poof, gone.
A panel of the hull disappeared.
One of the engines winked away without a trace, leaving only weld lines where it’d been tacked on. And, soon following, those too vamoosed, gray wobbly lines slipping, undrawing themselves.
Apparently the occupants had become aware something very strange was going on. They tried to turn and tear off at full thrust, but as they did, the ship was wholly unmade.
Steel leaped away, crumpled up, and became lumpy, misshapen hunks of raw ore. One by one they fell to the sand as the starship, piece by piece, quicker now, disassembled. Soon so much was stolen away that the men inside were visible. They appeared appropriately frightened and confused, guns drawn, looking around for the cause of this impossible thing, barking for answers and aid from their goddess.
The ship—now just the simple frame and some seats—slammed to the ground, one man crushed as it rolled. The two surviving the fall got to their feet and zeroed in on Aksel, Clyde, and Nevele on the hill. Small-arms fire came.
Aksel was ready to carry Clyde if need be but saw he was already up. Moments ago he’d been limp as a dead fish, but now he looked about as fresh as a daisy. The blood-spattered wound on his narrow trunk, a gaping mouth in his abdomen seconds ago, had healed to a wrinkly line.
