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Driftmetal IV

Page 4

by J. C. Staudt


  “The way I see it, you’ve got a huge advantage over everyone else. The worst thing you could do is let that advantage get the best of you. Come on, we’ve got to get moving. Dawn’s on its way, and at this rate we’ll be lucky to make it to Roathea by noon.”

  I paid Pearson’s tab before we left the Timepiece Tavern and headed back to the muster point as the sky reddened with the first hints of daylight. My nerves were on edge about the mission to come, but I couldn’t have been more excited about the immediate future. After a long time away, I was finally about to get behind the wheel of my Ostelle and fly her again.

  3

  To compare the Galeskimmer to my Ostelle would be like comparing apples and watermelons. Each is perfectly good at what it does, but there’s no denying which one is bigger and juicier. My Ostelle was steam-powered; jet turbines like the Galeskimmer’s would’ve been too small for it. Plus, turbines had been a little above my pay grade when I’d finally scraped together enough stolen chips to have her built.

  When Pearson and I were back aboard, I told him to report to John Garotte in the engine room. I said I’d tell Kupfer he was back, and that I needed an extra pair of hands in engineering for the flight to Roathea. If the sun hadn’t been coming up, I swore you could’ve seen Pearson glowing in the dark as he crossed the deck to the hatch amidships.

  Meanwhile, I ascended the quarterdeck stairs and summoned the crew to their stations. I fired up the clinkers and bellowed an order through the voice tubes to the folks down in the engine room.

  “Aye, cap,” came the response.

  A few seconds later, the floorboards groaned and shook as my Ostelle roared to life. The smokestacks went dark beneath billowing gray plumes. Steam chugged through the whistle, like a pipe organ that could only play one note. I began shouting commands to the crew on deck. The sails came down, the rigging lines snapped tight, and the wind picked us up like a feather. I didn’t see my parents waving goodbye from the ground as we left. Then again, I didn’t look very hard.

  Soon Grimsley was no more than a memory behind the sunlit curtain of cloud that guided our ascent. I ran my fingers over the wheel’s oil-smoothed wood, letting myself remember every curve and knot. The wind blew my tangled hair into my face with such relentless force that I soon considered heading below to scrounge up one of dad’s tiebacks.

  “Where’d you pick up that nasty notch on the ear?” Yingler asked. He had come up the stairs and was yelling to be heard over the noise as he approached me.

  “Laser bolt,” I said. “Happened back on Maclin, while we were testing the robots.”

  “Looks like it was a close call.”

  “If my head had been turned any more sharply, the thing would’ve gone into my ear instead of through it.”

  “You were lucky.”

  “Angus—one of the mechanics… he told me that, too. Wasn’t luck, though. If I was supposed to be dead, I’d be dead.”

  “You’ve put that off at least a few times now, from what I’ve seen.”

  “Yeah, just like I’ve put off life in a cell, which is even worse.”

  “It’s where you belong, Muller.”

  “Oh yeah? And where do you belong?”

  “Right where I am—doing my job. Making sure all you bad guys get what you deserve.”

  It was just like Yingler to back me up in that meeting and then turn on me a few hours later. “You set me up, Vilaris. You knew I hated Gilfoyle, so you painted him as the bad guy and pitted me against him. Then you tried to coerce my friends to make me turn myself in. You would’ve let me take the fall for a scheme you and the Regency perpetrated. The Civs spend all this effort trying to trap tax evaders and petty thieves. But in order to do that, they let people like you get away with far worse. How does that make any sense?”

  “You know what they say. If you want to catch a criminal, you’ve got to think like one. Sometimes, you’ve got to act like one too.”

  “No one says that. You added that part yourself.”

  “It’s the way the Regency works, Muller. I learned to play by their rules a long time ago.”

  “How did you wind up in Pyras to begin with?” I asked.

  “I’d been consulting for the Regency for years, taking odd undercover jobs wherever I was needed. Before I got to Pyras, Councilor Malwyn used to be the one who came up into the stream to try to hawk their gravstone. One of the dealers he’d been trading with eventually found out he was a redblood and reported him to the local constabulary. The next time Malwyn surfaced, they sent me in to befriend him. I told him I was a primitive sympathizer, and convinced him I had the right connections to sell his gravstone. Malwyn soon began to feel like it was too risky for him to come up to the stream himself, so I took over as the intermediary. That led to my being invited to Pyras to assume the city’s trade responsibilities in his stead.”

  “And you lived there for over seven years before you finally decided to blow the whole thing wide open? What took you so long?”

  “I haven’t blown anything wide open, Muller. I still haven’t been back to Pyras. I don’t know where the stupid thing is. And I don’t know whether Malwyn and DeGaffe sabotaged The Secant’s Clarity that day because they found me out, or because they felt I’d jeopardized Pyras’s secrecy by bringing you there.”

  “Blaylocke told me you’d been trying to find Pyras,” I said.

  “There’s no way to find Pyras unless Pyras wants you to find it. From the beginning, Malwyn and DeGaffe were very clear about their mistrust of techsouls. Heavy-handed though they may be, they’ve taken no chances at being discovered. So each time I left on a gravstone run, they moved the city. The only way I could get back was to locate it using the sub-signal beacon Chester designed. I knew if I ever tried to bring in a fleet of CRC marshals, Pyras would lock down the shield and disappear.”

  “So you were living in a city full of people you perceived as criminals, but you never got a chance to bring them to justice. And the whole time, you had to pretend you really cared about them. That must’ve been so difficult for you.”

  “I was undercover for a long time, Muller. But I never forgot who I really was. The citizens of Pyras made sure of that. After a while, it did get pretty hard to pretend I cared. Once everyone knew I was a techsoul, I couldn’t walk down the street without catching a dozen dirty looks and twice as many derogatory comments.”

  “Oh, believe me, I know,” I said. “I did live in Pyras for a little while. It didn’t make me hate primitives, though. Once I saw how much they despised the Regency, it made me like them more. They’re just people, like we are. You can’t blame them for being different. For wanting their own space, their safety, and a little privacy.”

  “I blame them for all those things,” Yingler said. “They’re citizens of Esperon, and they’ve got to live in it just like the rest of us. They don’t deserve to live above the law because they’ve decided their island isn’t subject to the same rules. How is that fair to everyone else?”

  I shook my head in disgust. “It boggles my mind that anyone could be so obtuse. Ask any primitive who lives in the stream if their life is fair and let me know what answer they give you. You and Kupfer and the rest… you’re all a bunch of buttholes who have nothing better to do than bother people who don’t want to be bothered. It’s law-lovers like you who make this world such a terrible place to live.”

  “Primitives are the past,” said Yingler. “Techsouls are the future. No one’s going to give them an easy time because they’re vulnerable and facing extinction. Everyone knows they’re on their way out. Would you rather be normal? Would you give up being a techsoul if someone came along and offered you the chance?”

  “No, but—”

  “So then why do you stick up for primitives like this?”

  “Because…” I paused to think, then said, “Who am I to tell someone else he doesn’t deserve to live?”

  The skin around Yingler’s eyes tightened. “You’ve killed dozens of peop
le.”

  “Yeah, I know. And that had nothing to do with whether they deserved it. All I cared about was whether they were in my way.”

  “You’re a techsoul. By their very nature, the primitives are in your way.”

  “No one’s in my way who doesn’t give me trouble.”

  “You may feel that way. But unless you want to spend the rest of your life staring out through the bars of a prison cell, you’d better make sure Chester Wheatley gets out of this alive. He’s the only one with the technical know-how to help me find Pyras again.”

  “He’s never going to help you. Chaz is too smart and too selfless to betray his city. You might’ve been able to gain his compliance by threatening to harm his loved ones while you were in Pyras, but they’re safe from you now. You think Chaz doesn’t realize that if you can’t find them, you can’t threaten them?”

  “There are people Chester cares about outside Pyras. Why, you, for example.”

  “You can threaten me all you want. Chaz knows I can take care of myself.”

  “I’m not threatening you, Muller. I’m offering you a bargain. If you can convince Chester to help us find Pyras, I’ll do what I can to have your prison stay reduced.”

  I scoffed. “The synod has already expunged my record. Are you going to reduce it from nothing to… less than nothing?”

  “Everything that’s happened since Maclin took over is an illusion,” Yingler said. “It doesn’t count.”

  “Okay, then you’re going to reduce it from a dozen life sentences to only half a dozen? No thanks, Yingler.”

  He smiled joylessly. “Assuming you also help us get rid of these Maclin folks and deliver the Regency back into its rightful hands, that in itself is worth quite a lot, where your criminal history is concerned. Both of those redemptive acts put together could add up to a significant reduction in your sentence.”

  “You’re in the same boat with me as you are with Chaz,” I said. “Neither of us has any reason to help you. In fact, we both have every reason not to.”

  For a moment, Yingler studied me like a thing he couldn’t quite understand, yet was fascinated by nonetheless. Then he said, “We’re going to see about a lot of things over the next few days, Muller. I hope you’re ready for them.”

  “Always,” I said. “Now get off my perch. I’ve got a boat that needs flying.”

  “As the captain commands,” he said, inflicting his full complement of sarcasm.

  Dark clouds were hanging over the eastern edge of the capital island by the time we arrived near mid-morning. I knew the long guns of Maclin’s artillery platforms could pick out targets from several miles away with pinpoint accuracy, so I stayed within the cover of those stormy grays and put my Ostelle down on the far side of a dense forest of pines outside the city. We had left Grimsley later than planned. But with the smaller island having matched wind with Roathea, our flight time had been shorter than expected.

  The members of our strike team readied themselves. I made a special request that Pearson be included on the team, so as to save him from being extricated from the engine room by Kupfer while I was gone. Before we left, I packed the contents of Pearson’s duffel bag into my plain old backpack, which was decidedly less waterproof than I would’ve liked. Each part on Chaz’s list had its function, I was sure. Knowing Chaz, even the decoys were there for a reason—meant to be used for some other purpose than altering the way my remote worked. I had to get every piece to Chaz intact, or this whole mission might as well have been over before it started.

  Once I’d gathered my things, I called an all-hands meeting. Once again, I addressed everyone on board from my position atop the quarterdeck. “Those of you who have been serving aboard this vessel since before I was evicted from it are now free to go. And by that, I mean… get out. I regret your years of service, and good riddance to you all. Any one of you I find aboard upon my return will be summarily stripped of his belongings and forced to walk a short plank. May you die alone, and may the Churn feast on your remains.

  “As for the rest of you, I want my Ostelle ship-shape and ready to set sail again by this evening. I know we’re short-handed, but there’s a bonus in it for all of you if you can make it happen. I’ll have new crewmembers with me when I return, which should lighten your load on the way back. Now, everyone who’s not on the strike team, you’re dismissed.”

  The crew filed out to their respective destinations amid much bleak and gloomy talk. They could talk all they wanted, as long as they did what they’d been told. I gathered my small team around me, but before I could quiet them down and start my briefing, Mr. Leigam Irkenbrand accosted me.

  “Eh, Cap’n Jakes… may I speak with you in private?” he asked with a wiggle of his tiny nose. His tieback was so tight I had no doubt about the cause of his receding hairline.

  “Shouldn’t you be packing your belongings, Mr. Irkenbrand?” I asked.

  “Eh, that’s the thing, Cap’n. You see, several of the men tell me they’d prefer to stay aboard. They’ve nominated me to beseech your mercies on their behalf.”

  “My mercies, huh? Who said I had any of those? No, Mr. Irkenbrand, I’m afraid what’s done is done. A traitor does not become less so by saying sorry.”

  “Still, Cap’n, if you’d just listen to what I have to say—”

  “Well I don’t have time for that, now do I? Look at all your Civvy friends, here. You’ve kept them waiting with this beseechery of yours. You wouldn’t want to betray those you’ve pledged to serve, would you? Oh, I’m sorry, I nearly forgot… that’s exactly what you and this law-loving rabble you call a crew did to me. Get out of my sight, Mr. Irkenbrand. And be sure to give the men my unending disregard.”

  “But Cap’n Jakes… most of the men had no say in your father’s decision to turn privateer. We were only going along with the Cap’n’s wishes.”

  “I was the captain of this boat,” I reminded him. “Yet you chose to follow my dad instead.”

  “The men needed the work. When it came clear that Mr. Jakes—eh, your dad, that is—was taking over, we had to choose sides. If you could just find it in your heart to forgive the men, sir…”

  “You say most of the men didn’t have a say. Who did, Irkenbrand? When my father handed down his decision to turn me over to the law, which if the men raised their hands in support? I want you to do something for me. Find a piece of paper and draw a line down the middle. By the time I get back, you’d better have the names of every man who voted against me on one side of that line, and the names of everyone else on the other. I don’t have time for this right now, so I’ll decide what’s to be done then. But the fellas on the left side ought to know it ain’t gonna go pretty for them. They’ve got their chance to leave, they want to take it now.”

  “Aye, Cap’n,” he said grimly, and took his leave.

  “Now… where were we? Oh yes. First of all, I see you’ve ditched the lousy red uniforms. Congratulations, you all look terrible. And yet, I think you’ll soon find that to be one of the best decisions you’ve ever made. What’s the address, Kupps?”

  Kupfer gave me his most peevish look yet, then said, “Forty-Four Hayward Avenue is the place.”

  “Right then. You all heard that. Our map of the city shows Commissioner Fitzsimmons’s house to be well outside the protective circle of automatons guarding the palace, so we shouldn’t have any trouble getting there as long as their lookouts perceive us as ordinary citizens. We’re all strapped up, I see. We’re going to have to pack those guns away nice and snug and out of sight, like we talked about. You are not to reveal your weaponry or engage any robots unless you’re commanded specifically to do so. That means the command comes from me. And if I’m not there, it comes from Yingler. The moment a robot perceives you as hostile, it will take you down. On the plus side, they’re such efficient killing machines that you’ll hardly feel a thing. Any questions?”

  There were several questions, which I answered as briefly as possible before telling ever
yone that if they had any more, they could ask me on the way there. I told Kupfer not to ruin my quarters while I was gone. Then I gave my Ostelle one last pat on the railing before we barreled down the gangway and into the fragrant pine forest, with its trees as straight as arrows and spread apart like fence posts. The air was crisp and cool, but the heavy storm clouds that had gathered overhead were blotting out the sun, and I could smell rain on the way.

  The capital city looked grander from the ground than it had from the deck of the Highjinks. That was because the city’s main arteries were beautified and updated regularly. On foot, you couldn’t see the streets tucked away in the background; disheveled, rat-infested slums and sprawling, soot-stained factories like pimples on an otherwise immaculate face. As long as one stayed close to the main roads, the buildings and people only grew in attractiveness as one neared the city center. I hadn’t been here in years, but the sights, sounds, and smells were like stencils in my memory of the place. It went without saying that the Regency liked to put their best foot forward—while keeping the crippled one tucked away inside a heavy knee-length boot.

  We stayed in a loose group as we made our way from forest to open road, slowing from a swift jog to a brisk walk as the buildings began to rise around us. The city’s premiere archway made a regal entrance, lined with streamers and statues, prim medians, freshly painted buildings, and layered terraces sporting rows of immaculate flower beds. Even with the sky brooding over our heads, it was as if the whole place had been decorated for some huge festival. Though we were traveling in plainclothes, our group still managed to turn heads as we worked our way through the crowds in one collective mass.

  It wasn’t until we were deep inside the city that I discovered our inroad was not going to be as clear as I’d thought. My heart stopped when I caught sight of two hulking automatons stomping down a side street. They were older models, probably Mark-Fours or -Fives, with startling facial features and bodies that moved with less fluidity than their newer counterparts. I stopped short and pressed myself against a wall, medallion surging.

 

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