Flotsam

by R J Theodore

  Frozen fingers were fixed around their prize. They’d have to be broken to reveal what the late captain regarded as precious in his final moments.

  Talis wished she hadn’t eaten so recently.

  The brittle joints snapped and the icy digits broke off cleanly. The late captain made no complaint, but Talis felt guilt rise along with the bile in her throat. She forced them both back.

  “Gods rot it.” The curse came out with a fog of sour breath and crystallized in her scarf before it could collect on the glass of her helmet.

  Pressed into the skin of his palm: an iron key. She wasn’t done yet.

  She lifted the key by its embroidered cord and gently lowered the captain back to the glass. Crouched on the edge of the cabinet beneath the window and looked around the cabin.

  In her own quarters back on Wind Sabre, she had several hidden compartments. Some were easier to find; those were the decoys. The less obvious were for her real valuables. Though The Empress was no smuggler’s vessel, chances were fair that this captain had been of a mind with her. She turned her shoulder lamp to shine it along the walls, and it went out.

  The panic that gripped her throat in the dark kept her from cursing. She fumbled with the power pack on her belt, flipping up its crank and spinning it under the palm of her hand to spare her numb fingers. The bulb flickered after a moment and came back on, and she could breathe again. Almost done, she promised herself as she re-secured the crank. Look sharp.

  There. A wall panel over the captain’s curtained bunk. A square, unnecessary seam in the bulkhead, revealed by the tilted angle of the drapes. Cast a shadow that told her one side was raised higher than the other. She jumped for it, over a pile of the captain’s belongings that would have swallowed her up to her knees. The ship lurched as she landed.

  “Almost done,” she said out loud this time.

  The sally bar pried up the panel without a fuss. Behind it, a cast-iron door was installed in the bulkhead, unmarked except for a small keyhole. The dead captain’s key made for a neat match. It resisted turning at first, but she pressed it harder and it slid a last tiny bit into the lock. If she’d had a hand free—and no helmet on—she would have tugged her own prayerlocks for luck. Instead she bit her lip and turned. She felt the barrel inside move, and inhaled a gasp of anticipation.

  With a cold, harsh tink, the key broke off in the lock.

  Talis let out a string of expletives that would have made Tisker blush and grabbed her blowtorch.

  “No you don’t,” she informed the safe. “I’m done with this place.”

  The fuel tank ran out just as the frozen safe door expanded with the bang of flexing metal. She flinched as the door popped free of its casing. Nothing explosive, but her glass-faced helmet had her cautious. Bracing her knees against the angled bulkhead, she gripped the edge of the door and the stump of the broken key, and pulled the safe open.

  As she tallied it, she had to be using up the last of her luck.

  A neat stack of documents bound with Imperial golden ribbon topped the pile of contents within. Beneath that hid a diminutive single-shot powder pistol—a captain’s last defense should he be forced to open the safe against his will. And in the safe’s back corner: a small blue velvet bag cinched with a white silk cord. She was so eager to be clear of this place, she forgot to be disappointed not to find a bonus of gold coin to pad the payoff from the contract.

  Loosened and upended, the velvet bag produced a masculine pewter signet ring. It was scratched and pitted. The pearls set to either side of the worn seal were chipped, the seal itself unreadable. It was beyond the ability of even a Breaker jeweler’s skill to repair. By her experienced appraisal, it was worthless.

  It was exactly what she was looking for.

  Talis tucked the ring back into its bag and tucked the bag into one of the cargo pouches on the outside thigh of her descent suit.

  Her heartbeat pulsed faster in her ears. Time to get off this damned ship.

  Engaging the motor on her lead line to speed her climb, Talis made her way back out of the captain’s cabin, up the sloping middle deck, through the ice-glazed forecastle, and back out the hatch.

  She slipped a foot into the stirrup of the descent line. Clipped the voice tube back into her helmet.

  To her breathless hail, Dug replied tersely, “Got crowded up here, Captain.”

  Talis felt the ice reach her gut as she craned her head back. Two shadows dwarfed Wind Sabre in the sky above. The first was an airship similar in design to hers, but twice as large, and without any pretense of stealth. Its crisp canvas lift balloon and gold-painted hull gleamed with self-importance. A Cutter Imperial patroller. It was tied off alongside a completely foreign shape that Talis only recognized from newspaper illustrations: the round, balloon-less Yu’Nyun exploration ship.

  The two vessels huddled together as if sharing a secret.

  Someone knew something, for sure. No way coincidence put both those ships right there, right then.

  She felt the line tighten and she began to ascend.

  Chapter 2

  The line reeled Talis up toward Wind Sabre’s curving bulk. She knew every dent and nick in the wooden airship, every scratch in the paint, like the lines of her own scars. Experience, proof of being alive.

  The ship’s size and shape and presence always comforted her. It wasn’t the most impressive private airship in the skies—just a single lift balloon, a handful of cannons, and room for a small crew. But it was hers. You didn’t get to have or keep much in this world. Not at the bottom where she lived. Folks at the top—or rather, at the center, on Diadem and the capital district’s other larger islands at Horizon—they had whatever they wanted. More than they needed. But they didn’t have freedom.

  Talis didn’t want estates and servants and finery. Well, maybe a little finery. But she didn’t want anything that would strip her of what Wind Sabre provided. The skies. Just being out here. Running sometimes, well, sure. At least she was free to run.

  She yanked off the helmet and let it fall to hang from its tether on the shoulder of her suit. Breathed in the cold clean air. Smelled the wood and oil and tar of her ship.

  Dug, tall and dark-skinned, and Sophie, petite with a freckled honey complexion, made an odd pair as they met her at the lower transom to help her climb back aboard.

  “We need to get moving,” Sophie said. Her eyebrows were wrinkled under the messy fringe of short dark hair that framed her round face. The younger woman kept nervously glancing overhead as though she could see through the mass of their ship’s hull to the two new arrivals up above them.

  Talis put a hand on her shoulder, both for comfort and to support herself as she started to yank off the descent suit.

  “Ain’t that always the way,” she said, and grinned.

  If Talis had any sense, she’d have been frightened. And she had been at first, as the winch brought her up from flotsam. But with the ice fields safely below her and the run ahead of them, she decided she was feeling lucky. She tugged on her prayerlocks in thanks now that the helmet was out of the way, sending a silent request to Silus Cutter that their luck would hold. She had the ring. One tiny object in all that desolate mess below, and they’d found it. Easy as that. For now she ignored how ‘easy’ wasn’t always a good sign. They had their prize. Time to trade it for a payday and keep her ship in the air for a good while longer.

  “We do not believe they have seen us,” Dug said. Always formal. Always on business. Or at least so long as their enemies were out of range of a fight. “The Yu’Nyun ship arrived first, but the Imperials followed behind them a short time later.”

  “And which one of them was following us, do you suppose?” Talis, free of her suit, tossed Sophie the ring in its drawstring bag. “Stow that, please.”

  Sophie caught the bag in cupped hands and flashed Talis a triumphant grin before gripp
ing it tight and running off. They’d been promised a bit of a vacation once their client paid up. And this job promised the coin to make it a good one.

  Talis could certainly use a vacation. And if they spent all the spare cash they made on this trip, beyond what they needed to resupply and repair, that would keep her crew content enough to stay on for the next contract. With Sophie especially, Talis did whatever she could to delay the inevitable.

  A stiff breeze made Talis’s damp skin prickle, and the sleeveless thermal shirt and twill cotton pants she’d worn under the suit did little to ward off the chill. She stuffed the cumbersome gear into the deck box near the descent line’s winch. It would be smarter to air it out on deck before stowing it, but they needed to move, and she didn’t want it flapping around in their way. She had no doubt she’d regret that the next time she smelled the thing.

  “Okay, Dug,” Talis said to her first mate as she yanked her boots back on, cinching the laces tight and tucking their loose ends into the tops of the calf-height leather uppers. She pulled her hair loose from the ponytail that had kept it out of her way under the helmet and felt the cool air hit her scalp. More goosebumps. She’d pay a ransom for a hot shower. Or at least for that coffee they were supposed to have saved for her.

  Lines creased Dug’s face, puckering the scars around his left eye. He held out her worn leather jacket, which she gladly accepted. It slipped on and settled immediately into place, matched to the contours of her strong shoulders and arms. She buttoned it up against the wind.

  “Imperials,” was all he said as they battened the external hatch and headed for the main deck. Both with disgust and with an almost frightening eagerness. A feral smile shone white like stars against the darkness of his skin.

  The expression brought new chills. She delighted in how fearsome he was. It came in handy when she needed to make a show of force, especially considering that there were only the four of them on Wind Sabre. He could make just about any Cutter person think twice about whom they were dealing with. Most Cutter could go their entire lives without ever seeing one of the goddess Onaya Bone’s towering people. Schoolchildren were taught about them as part of the general history of Peridot, but none were ever really prepared for the sheer intensity of the slender, muscled warriors. Even their spiritual leaders were dangerous. Beneath the wool jacket Dug wore to protect against the cool air, he was a tight coil of steely fibers, begging for combat.

  Unfortunately, the Imperial airship up there outmatched their cannons five to one. She had full faith that Dug could take down every bastard on the ship if he could make it onto the railing with his knives drawn, but she wasn’t looking to get the entire Cutter Imperial fleet after them. If they could sneak away without being seen, she’d like that just fine.

  She clapped him on the biceps, and her icy fingers stung. Fixed him with a wry smile. “Let’s see if we can’t get away quietly this time, my friend. But you help Tisker get us out of here and I promise, you and me will go get into a nice brawl somewhere after this. First three rounds are my treat.”

  He slowly nodded, and his hungry grin hardened into something else. A brawl with Cutter civilians was a paltry trade for the chance to deal a blow to some Imperial ship. “Of course, Captain. I was referring to their presence at this particular location, at this particular moment.”

  “Yeah,” she said, dropping the smirk. “I was thinking about that on the way up. Jasper certainly didn’t mention we should expect a party.”

  The deck pulled under her feet and she instinctively shifted her weight to compensate for the motion. Tisker had stayed at the helm rather than greet her return, no more willing to linger than she was. He was getting them out of there, now that Wind Sabre’s captain was back aboard.

  They reached the weather decks, and Talis held out her hand, her gaze fixed on the pair of ships hanging silent in the sky off to port. Dug, without pause, handed her the glass scope he kept in a leather pouch on his belt. Raising it to her right eye and closing the left, she examined their guests.

  The silver sphere hung in the sky, silent and surreal. It looked more like the finned and glowing sirenia that grazed open atmo than a vehicle meant to convey passengers. Any other day, Talis might have been eager to finally get a true glimpse of the Yu’Nyun ship. Everything she knew about the aliens and their vessel came from newspaper illustrations and scuttlebutt in the ports where they stopped for trade. She hadn’t gotten a clear idea of what the visitors looked like, just heard unsettling descriptions that had to be half fiction.

  The aliens came from somewhere far beyond the thinnest edges of Peridot’s atmosphere, and their ship’s hull was sealed tight to keep the air in. There was only a small line of translucent portholes on the top half of the round hull, at the wrong angle to allow Talis a view inside. Instead, the bubble windows were silhouetted against the skies, lit from within, like the glowing eyes of some amphibious cave dweller.

  The airship—only that wasn’t right; the papers called it a ‘starship’—had no external markings. No flags or banners. No lift balloon, sails, or rigging. No propellers or turbines. Talis wanted to ask Sophie how she figured the thing could stay aloft, but there was no time to get her engineer started. Get that girl close enough, and give her a screwdriver, and Sophie’d have the ship in pieces. Then maybe she could tell Talis how it worked, if Talis could follow what the young woman offered in the way of explanation.

  The sight of the starship was unsettling and mesmerizing at the same time, but the Yu’Nyun weren’t the real threat here. Despite the long, thin ventral cannon mounted on the starship’s bow below its nose, Talis had never heard of it actually attacking, or even posturing. Enormous, yes. Sent shivers up Talis’s back, for certain. Still, the aliens were only a potential nuisance, not the prime threat.

  Talis pursed her lips as she fixed the scope on the Imperial ship. It was one specimen of the enormous fleet deployed across this half of the world by the Cutter government, and a far more immediate concern. Patrol ships, hunter ships, service ships, and war ships peppered the skies like acne. Ostensibly their presence protected the Cutter folk, aided stranded airships, assisted in civil emergencies, and guarded the borders of the Cutter territory.

  But it wasn’t just because Talis was perpetually on the wrong side of the law that seeing them up close put a knot in her gut. The Imperials were bullies. Guardians of the status quo. They kept rich bureaucrats rich and paupers poor by enforcing not only judicial law, but moral and trade laws as well. Taxes, tolls, and tariffs. Fines for indecency or disturbing the peace. All of them excessive unless you knew the right bureaucrat. The Cutter folk who couldn’t eke out a living for themselves and their families got overtaxed on the barest profit and fined when they couldn’t pay. Bankrupt, they’d be compelled into mandatory labor (or civil service, as it was called by those who’d never have to serve it) to pay their debts.

  The alien starship blocked enough of the view that Talis couldn’t see the Imperial ship’s designation, but she wouldn’t know the airship by name anyway. The design of the hull and rigging was unfamiliar. Something new. It was larger than most patrol vessels she’d encountered since she left the service. Gun ports were packed tightly in neat rows across five decks, almost enough for a warship twice its size.

  Dozens of small maneuvering and stunsails were rigged along the equator of the airship’s twin lift balloons. Six turbines crowded around its rudder—more than enough power to rip their own ship apart if they gave her all she had. Add the excessive propulsion to the size of that lift system, and it was a safe bet that the wooden hull was reinforced with iron, and strong enough to take any beating that Wind Sabre’s nine-pound cannons could dole out. It had twice as many securing lines leading from the hull to the lift balloon, and so many sets of ratlines leading up to it, that the deck reminded Talis of a cage for some flighted animal.

  The Imperial ship was outfitted for a fight, not a patrol. It c
ould easily staff seventy hands, maybe a hundred, plus rifles enough to arm them. And from the silence that hung in the short distance between it and the Yu’Nyun, it was clear that it wasn’t the starship they were looking to engage.

  Both ships sat motionless a few lengths above and several hundred lengths toward Nexus from where Wind Sabre was positioned. There was a fairly good chance their small black hull hadn’t been sighted yet. Then again, the fact that the Imperial ship was out here in the nothing reaches at all, and lingering close to where Jasper had told Talis she would find the ring, meant nothing good.

  “Much as I itch to be away from those ships,” she said, handing the scope back to Dug, “better we don’t move any faster than the flotsam. Stay a shadow against it. No sudden movements. Those Imperials sight us, they’ll run us down without effort.”

  “And the Yu’Nyun?” He snapped the scope back into its pouch and tucked his hands under his arms. Dug’s tribe came from humid jungles and warm breezes, and he did not enjoy the biting gusts of open air. When they got their cargo back to Subrosa to exchange it for money, she’d tell him to spend some of his cut on a pair of gloves. “If they see us?”

  Talis leaned her head back to try to relieve some of the tightness in her neck, which ached from her time in the descent suit. Coming back up to two unwelcome guests hadn’t helped the tension. The aliens had a reputation for being curious, and something about Peridot fascinated them. Since they’d arrived months ago, they’d been exploring the ruins, libraries, and cities across all four territories. They could be a nuisance when they interrupted business or got invasively interested in someone who would prefer to be left alone. All the races had tried to be friendly and cooperative, warned against seeming rude by their governments. But if the aliens got in the middle of Wind Sabre’s escape… Talis made an attempt to massage her own shoulders.