by J. C. Staudt
That sounded like a bunch of hogwash to me. But the more I tried to believe everything I’d done was the medallion’s fault, the more I realized it had been me all along. The medallion had only ever pushed me toward things I would’ve done already, if not for the emotional blockade that would’ve kept me from doing them.
This explained how the medallion’s technology had improved the automatons’ logic drive. It explained my visions, my improved reaction time, and my flashes of insight. But I still didn’t want to believe my own desires had been driving me this whole time.
“Learning who I really am?” I asked. “You mean… who I am without the capacity to feel.”
“You still have that capacity,” said Gilfoyle. “Now, you have the ability to ignore it. Soon, you’ll want to. If you haven’t come that far already.”
I wasn’t sure how far I’d come. I didn’t know how much of my recent behavior had been me, and how much had been filtered me. Regardless of how much power the medallion had over me yet, its hold on me was stronger than ever. Strong enough that I couldn’t let go. “I want to see Chaz. Have your thugs bring him here. I’ve got two million in notes for you if he’s unharmed.”
“Thugs? Heh.” Gilfoyle lifted his comm. “Oakland?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Have you taken anyone alive?”
“Just one, sir.”
“Bring him.”
“On our way.”
Thirty seconds later, the thugs dragged Chaz through Gilfoyle’s living room door and tossed him onto the patio. Looking at him, I wouldn’t have called him unharmed. His temple was split and crusted with red blood. His cheek was bruised, his ear was cut, and the right side of his jaw bore the imprint of a set of knucklespurs.
I went to him, lifted his head into my lap. “Chaz, ol’ buddy. Tell me it isn’t bad.”
He gave me a crooked smile. “I did my best, Mull. Never have been a fair match for a techsoul.”
I really couldn’t stand those thugs. Seeing Chaz this way made me want to rage out and kill them all. I didn’t care that they’d only done what Gilfoyle had hired them for. I was mad at myself for thinking Chaz could handle them. I guess my confidence in his genius had spilled over into my confidence in his physical prowess.
I heard a sound on the roof and looked up to find two members of my crew standing there, helping Thorley harness himself into the rope hanging from my Ostelle. In a day or two, he’d be no worse for the wear. Chaz was a different story.
“Anything major?” I asked, examining Chaz’s abdomen for more serious wounds, “or did they just rough you up a bit?”
“I feel pretty roughed-up,” he said.
“Okay, Gilfoyle. I’m going to call my boat down and land on your platform. Then we’re going to give you your money and get out of here.”
“Be my guest,” Gilfoyle said.
“Mr. Sarmiel, land the Ostelle on Gilfoyle’s platform, please,” I said through my eavesdropper.
“Aye, Cap’n. Just got to haul in Mr. Colburn.”
“Take your time.”
My boat settled down with a bowel-shaking rumble.
“Your vessel looks like it’s been through hell,” Gilfoyle said.
“It has. Repairing it is the next order of business.”
“If you only got two million for the gravstone and you’re giving it all to me, how have you got anything left for the repairs?”
“You’re not my only source of income, Gilfoyle. You’d feel pretty special if you were, wouldn’t you?”
He gave me a dry look.
I helped Chaz up, and together we limped down the patio steps and onto my Ostelle. “Get him to the doctor,” I told Sarmiel.
I retrieved two million in notes from my cabin, then added fifty thousand extra and brought it out to him.
Gilfoyle opened the bag and inspected its contents. “This is real money,” he said. “You really do believe in Pyras.”
“I believe its people deserve a fair shot.”
“Let’s hope your primitive friend survives long enough to see his home again.”
“I hope you mean that. So long for now, Gilfoyle. Maybe I’ll see you around.”
“I should hope not. And I do mean that.”
“There’s a lot of gravstone coming your way if I can work out the other end of this deal.”
“In that case… take care of yourself, Mr. Jakes.”
“I always do,” I said.
Gilfoyle’s left eye twitched. I wasn’t sure the gesture was intended as a wink, but that’s how I chose to see it.
Back on board, Dr. Ditmarus shoved cotton up my nose to staunch the bleeding. Rindhi came to ask about Thomas, who’d been locked up since the heist in Seskamode.
“The next time you bug me about Tom, I’m throwing you in there with him,” I said.
Rindhi shut up and went away.
We located a nearby floater called Gladewood and settled into a docking bay, where the crew began the week-long process of getting my Ostelle back to normal. Chaz, Blaylocke, Thorley and I all spent that week resting. By the time we’d finalized plans for an excursion to the Churn to have ourselves a little search-for-Pyras party, we were all feeling the better for it. As we were saddling up on our rented hoverbikes for takeoff, Ezra came running up from the infirmary.
“She’s awake,” he said, more to Thorley than to me. “Sable’s awake.”
8
After the others were gone, I took Sable’s hand and gave it a squeeze. I was still decked out in my webgear and pack, but I’d forgotten all about that. She was alive and aware, her eyes staring into mine with familiar recognition.
“I missed you—”
“I’m sorry,” I said. We’d both tried to speak at the same time. “Go ahead.”
“No, you.”
“I’m sorry for this.” I placed a tender hand beside the bandage on her head.
“You’re not about to say you shouldn’t have let me come, are you? I’m feeling well enough to smack you if I have to.”
I smiled. “No. I’m glad you were there. I just wish I’d been able to keep this from happening to you.”
“There was nothing you could’ve done.”
I knew that wasn’t true. I could’ve grabbed her when the platform began to shift instead of Chaz. I could’ve made sure that operative was fully out of commission before we left the bank’s rooftop. I could’ve cared less about losing the money, or the plasma cutter. Of course, I also could’ve blamed my misaligned priorities on the medallion. If it was really me in there—some streamlined, emotionless version of me—blaming the medallion was the same thing as blaming myself.
“You’re going down to the Churn?” Sable asked.
I nodded.
“I want to go.”
“I want you to come, too,” I said. “But you’ve got to rest.”
“I’ve been resting for… how long has it been? A week? A month?”
“I know you’re feeling stir-crazy, but you haven’t even stood up yet. Listen to the doc and do what he tells you. If you feel dizzy, or confused, or forgetful, let him know. I’ll be back soon.”
She frowned. When I tried to stand, she took my hand and wouldn’t let go. “If you do find Pyras, be careful. They tried to kill you last time.”
“Chaz and Blaylocke won’t let anything happen to me,” I said. “Plus, I have a bargaining chip.”
I tried to stand again, but Sable held on. “They’ve betrayed you once before, Muller. Don’t forget that. At the end of the day, they’re primies.”
“What are saying?”
“I’m always willing to give people the benefit of the doubt,” she said. “But it’s different when you’re putting your life in someone’s hands. I want to believe Chester and Gareth are our friends. Just don’t take that for a given.”
I considered this. It felt strange to be warned against subversion by the usually accepting and sympathetic Sable. “I’ll be careful,” I said.
She finally gave me m
y hand back.
“Feel better,” I said, and left the infirmary.
On the maindeck, I mounted my hoverbike and powered up. I donned goggles, helmet and protective facemask, and flexed my fingers inside my gloves. “You folks ready?”
They nodded to me in turn. Thorley wore a brown leather jacket and flight cap, while Chaz and Blaylocke wore stiffer padded gear to protect their feeble primitive bodies.
I activated my eavesdropper. “Can everyone hear each other?”
We took turns speaking, then flight-checked our bikes before we shoved off. The displacers whined as we soared over Gladewood, a small but thickly treed community with earthen influences in its stonework and dark brick structures. We hit the floater’s edge and descended toward the nearflow.
The best method for conquering the windstorm of rock and dust was to fall into step alongside it, like motorcars on a busy highway. The smallest particles tended to move the fastest, so if we maintained our speed we could outrun most of the bigger ones. The downside was that they’d be coming at us from behind, no matter their size. I cranked the accelerator and dropped altitude until I was a few yards above the nearflow, watching chunks laced with gravstone and driftmetal clash and crack beneath my feet. Blaylocke and Thorley were behind me, Chaz lagging behind them.
I went lower, searching for a way through. A floater the size of a grizzly bear careened into a smaller chunk and split apart an arm’s length below me. I climbed to avoid the wayward shard that nearly lodged itself in the bottom of my chassis. When I glanced over my shoulder, all I could see past the masks and goggles were my companions’ eyes, but there was no mistaking their sobered expressions.
Finding a path through millions of flying particles that don’t care whether you’re there or not is a feat in and of itself. Guiding four hoverbikes and their riders through such an obstacle without casualty struck me as near-impossible. So naturally, I sped up.
Easing off the elevator pedal, I let the hoverbike descend. I was keeping pace now, stones dancing and spinning and colliding beneath me. Debris brushed the tail end and pattered on my back like heavy raindrops. Stopping or slowing down now could transform my hoverbike into the most expensive anvil known to mankind.
Descending was a delicate balancing act. Too shallow and I’d never get through; too steep, and the displacers might choke on the debris. I slid behind a big truck-shaped floater and drafted in its wake. Behind me, rocks clunked against the other bikes, but there was no time to look back. I had to get beneath the floater I was following, but I couldn’t see around it to know whether anything was coming.
“Everybody okay?” I tried to shout, but there was too much noise.
I’d just worked up the nerve to descend when the big floater slammed into something. The collision wasn’t severe enough to break it, but the right-hand side swung back at me like a slow propeller. I veered left and gunned the throttle, zipping forward as the floater spun to follow me. I angled right again, but not fast enough. The edge struck the back of my hoverbike and sent me into an angled slide, like a motorcar fishtailing on slick pavement.
I was heading straight for a big chunk of rocky driftmetal, and I was going to hit it unless I did something. I stepped hard on the elevator. The displacers stalled out, snuffing like gas burners. I watched the chunk pass by inches above my head.
I was falling forward, collecting debris in the big concavities of the bike’s displacer shrouds. My stomach was in my throat. When I turned the ignition, the engines gave a sputtering report but didn’t come on. I could survive a fall from this height, but I wouldn’t survive the Churn. I wasn’t worried about the rented hoverbikes, for which I’d signed a rental agreement that included repayment of up to thirty thousand chips apiece if I didn’t return them in satisfactory condition. Should’ve just bought the stupid things, I thought.
Mere feet from the bottom of the nearflow, the bike’s front end struck a chunk of rock and flipped backward. I let go, but not before the handlebars pummeled me in the gut. I fell away from the bike, which began to spin end over end. The trick I had used to stop myself from falling last time wasn’t going to cut it now; there was no big debris I could catch in my flecker shield, nor was there time to attach a shield to my wrist port to catch it with. We fell into the calm beneath the storm, the open-air space between the nearflow and the Churn, hazy with dust.
Something latched onto my shoulder and yanked me back. The dead hoverbike kept going without me. I watched it stab into a patch of sandy soil and sink halfway in. It sat there for a moment, giving me false hope that we might be able to retrieve it. The ground squeezed the chassis until it burst like an egg in a vice.
There was a piercing explosion. The bike sprayed fragments of metal and fiberglass, then disappeared beneath the boiling surface. Blaylocke waved down at me. His hoverbike was leaning to one side where I hung from his electromag cable. Chaz and Thorley were a few yards behind him, waiting for me to climb up and take a seat, which I did. It was quieter down here, so we could talk over the eavesdroppers again.
“Isn’t this snug,” I said.
Blaylocke cleared his throat. “We don’t speak of this to anyone.”
“How about we find Pyras so we don’t stay butt-to-nut any longer than we have to? What’s the plan, Chaz?”
“I’ve designed some new scanners that should allow us to pick up the magnetic interference from the city’s stabilizer rods. But these will only work if we can get close enough.”
“How close?” I asked.
“Within a couple miles.”
“We’d have to cover the whole planet to have any chance of finding it,” said Thorley. “Pyras must have a crow’s nest. Why can’t we just bluewave them?”
“What’s with you and bluewaving people all the time?” I said. “Basic communication is never as fun as doing things the hard way.”
“Pyras doesn’t have a crow’s nest anyway,” Blaylocke said. “Nor do we answer radio signals from the outside.”
“We can narrow the area of our search because we know the city tends to keep to less-active areas of the Churn,” Chaz explained. “Plus, we’re starting in a low-activity area close to where the city was last time we were here. It can’t have gone far.”
“That makes no sense,” Thorley said. “What kind of floater doesn’t have a crow’s nest?”
“It’s not like we have to worry about collisions from other grav cities,” said Blaylocke.
Thorley smirked. “True.”
We spread out and activated our scanners, leveling off about a hundred feet up from the Churn to avoid some of its potential dangers. Then Blaylocke, a seasoned hoverbike operator thanks to his time in the Pyras City Watch, opened her up. Even through the dust haze and the cloaking field, we’d see the city from a distance, so we were free to move as fast as we wanted to. Blaylocke wanted to move very fast.
I didn’t enjoy holding onto him to keep from falling off the bike, but he must have. Blaylocke was that kind of dude. He also hadn’t seen his wife in months, so I’m sure he was aching to feel a pair of strong arms around him.
“You’ll have to introduce me to her,” I said. “I never got to meet her last time.”
“You stay away from her,” he said.
We cut across the Churn like jets across an open sky. Dust clotted in our goggles, our clothes, our lungs. Wind whipped at every patch of exposed skin. By the time the scanner gave its first blip, we were far from our entry point.
“Got something,” I shouted.
“I see it too,” said Chaz. “It’s big.”
The city’s massive form materialized through the haze, the cloaking field glowing atop its rocky underside like a fat blue ice cream cone. Blaylocke sped up. I could sense the urgency in his posture, the forward lean of yearning.
“How do we get through that barrier?” I asked.
“Pyras’s hoverbikes have their own cracklefield generators,” said Blaylocke. “I’m guessing these don’t, Chester?”
“That’s something I didn’t have time to conjure up,” said Chaz. “We’ll just have to try getting someone’s attention.”
“If the City Watch is any good at its job, that shouldn’t be difficult,” I said. “Just fly around the dome and someone will notice us.”
We didn’t even make it that far. Before we were within a hundred yards of Pyras, a swarm of hoverbikes melted through the cloaking field and shot toward us. Their riders were hooded and masked, wearing the heavy black trenchers of the City Watch. We slowed down, and Chaz and Blaylocke signaled to them.
“Hey there,” Blaylocke shouted, removing his mask.
The Watch surrounded us and brought their hoverbikes to a halt.
“Gareth?” said one, squinting through his goggles.
“Oscar. Yeah, it’s me… and Chester Wheatley.”
“We’d just about taken you guys for dead. Who are these two? And where’s Vilaris?”
“Long story,” said Blaylocke. “We need to talk to the Council.”
“No can do. The whole city’s on lockdown until old man Malwyn gets back.”
“From where?”
“The stream.”
“Councilor Malwyn went to the stream?”
“No, not Randolph Malwyn. Briar Malwyn. His father. He claimed to have connections from the old days. Said he was going to try to make a new trade deal. Times have been tough lately.”
“I’m sure they have,” I said. “I’ve got something that’ll help. Several million somethings, in fact.”
The watchman turned his masked head to study me. “Who’re you?”
“The name’s Mulroney Jakes. Blaylocke is right; we need to speak with the City Council immediately. I’ve got information vital to Pyras’s survival.”
“Sorry, pal. I’m under orders—”
“Listen, pal…” I pointed at him. “We’ve been out here for hours trying to find you. I’ve got a boat full of gold that belongs to Pyras, but if you’d prefer I keep it for myself and tell the Council you were the one who gave it away, be my guest.”
I detected the watchman’s frown even beneath his mask. “You vouch for this guy, Gareth? He looks like a tool to me.”
