Driftmetal V

by J. C. Staudt

  I set my thumb on the button. Clicked it three times. Held down on the last.

  A razor-fin shot toward me out of nowhere, slicing my rigging line and buffeting me in the chest. The line, my only support, withered in my hand. The razor-fin spun up my neck and across my face as I fell. I raised my hands to shield myself from its biting blades. That was the last I felt of it.

  My body jerked to a halt on the rope. The detonator tumbled away into the vast nothingness below. I heard shouts from the deck, muffled and distant now. I was hanging so low I could see the tip of the missile jutting from its cylinder. There was no launch. I’d released the button too soon.

  Above me, another gasbag ruptured. The Ring staggered lower. Chaz possessed the only detonator we had left, and he wouldn’t use it in a million years with me hanging in the way.

  I got a hand on the rain-slicked scaffolding and hauled myself up. My face, arm, chest, and throat were wet and stinging. I could feel the deep slashes in my flesh when I moved.

  “Launch it,” I tried to scream, but the burning in my throat stopped me cold.

  Chaz is still afraid of an electrical short, I remembered. Short-circuiting this thing might be the only way to launch it now.

  With no rigging line to lean on, I pressed myself against the cylinder and opened an access panel to expose the guidance system. I could arm each pod individually like this, but they’d launch one at a time instead of simultaneously.

  A razor-fin shredded the top edge of the cylinder across from me. It separated from its welding, crashed into the scaffolding at a slant, and dumped its contents, gravstone at all, into the storm. I cursed. Everyone was at the rail, Sarmiel included—some shouting and waving at me, others frozen with dread.

  This thing is a hunk of junk, I griped. I ought to cut the whole thing loose and be done with it. That wasn’t an option, though. The payloads had to be armed, and the guidance systems and cloaking fields needed to be operational to avoid detection by Maclin’s gun emplacements. At least that was what we hoped would happen. This whole thing was based on a bunch of hope, and that hope was dwindling every second.

  The scaffolding was hanging from the balloons by fewer than a dozen rigging lines now, the envelope torn, the remaining gasbags exposed. Rain lashed at my face, washing blood into my eyes. I lifted a tired hand, hoping Chaz could see it, and mimed the pressing of a thumb button.

  My vision blurred to a bloody blue murk. I could make out Chaz’s shape, but no details. He wasn’t moving. The Armageddon Ring was. They were hauling me back in. That idiot is trying to save my life, I realized.

  I tried to scream again, to wave and yell and stop them. My cries came out hoarse, my movements lethargic and ineffectual. They docked to the Ring and dragged me aboard. I struggled against the hands that tried to pull me away, gurgling my protests. We have to launch. Now, I wanted to tell them, but either the words weren’t coming out or they weren’t listening to me.

  Somewhere through the haze, I heard Chaz’s voice. “It’s over, Mull. It’s over. You need to get to the infirmary. Dr. Ditmarus will want to have a look at you.”

  I blinked away the blood, smeared a sleeve across my face to wipe my eyes clean. Razor-fins were still buzzing circles around us, embedding themselves in my Ostelle and trying to puncture the Armageddon Ring’s remaining gasbags. Chaz pushed me toward the stairs as a crewmember held each of my arms. The wind and rain were blowing everywhere, glossing the deck and rippling the sails.

  I wrenched myself free and turned on Chaz. He was my last friend in the world, and I turned on him. I swung out and connected with a clumsy blow across his jaw. He stood there for a second, astonished. I tackled him low around the waist and went for his pockets. I felt the detonator on his left thigh, ripped off the pocket by the seams, and went fumbling for the device as it bounced across the deck.

  “Muller, don’t—” He tried to grab it from me, but I managed to pull away from him and run for the winches.

  I turned them loose and watched the wind carry the battered remains of the Armageddon Ring away from my boat once again. This time, I shot each cable with plasma to sever the lines. I flipped open the detonator’s cover to reveal the red button.

  Chaz came up behind me and reached for the button. “Muller, stop. You can’t launch. Don’t do it.”

  I shrugged him off and dropped to my knees. His hands were relentless. I curled into the fetal position, holding the detonator in both hands. My thumb came to rest.

  Click. Click. Click. Hold.

  I held on, concentrating every muscle on keeping that button pushed until I heard the launch sequence start up. Chaz stopped scrabbling at me and turned toward the Ring. It was far off now, floating away. A long moment passed without incident.

  One by one, the red lights on the missile tubes winked on. The third-to-last one—the tube the razor-fins had unseated—didn’t light. There was a distant electric hum that rose in pitch until it was a high, piercing tone. Missiles began to drop in quick sequence, red lights flashing to green.

  I crawled to the railing, still holding down the button, and looked overboard. One after another, the missiles crackled with blue energy and vanished. The cloaking fields were working. The missiles continued to fall until the launch sequence arrived at unseated cylinder, which had dumped its contents earlier. The two remaining cylinders clicked to green but didn’t launch.

  “It worked,” I said.

  The Ring disintegrated in an ear-splitting fireball. Metal pipes, chunks of gravstone, tatters of nylon, and shards of aluminum hurtled from the blast, striking our hull, deck, and sails. Crewmembers went down with objects embedded in their flesh. I hit the deck. Chaz went fetal beside me, arms wrapped around his head.

  We waited until the debris finished raining down around us. Then I stood and looked around. No major damage to my boat, though there were several hurt crewmembers. I barked orders and got them taken care of. Mr. Sarmiel stood stalwart at the helm, blushing with masked fear. Hiring Sarmiel was the thing I was most grateful to my father for. I couldn’t have asked for a better first mate.

  “Mr. Sarmiel,” I said. “Take us down.”

  Sarmiel wiped a trickle of blue blood off his forehead. “Aye, Cap.”

  Chaz was shaking when he stood up. “You didn’t check the panels.”

  “Crap. Sorry.”

  The whole front of my body throbbed with pain as we descended through the rainy gloom. I felt broken and tired. I felt… strange. My heart skipped a beat when I looked down at my chest. Shreds of skin hung loose beneath my open shirt. Where the medallion’s bright brass shell and green gems had once gleamed, there remained only a mess of mangled gears and scarred stones, drowning in blood and rainwater.

  A sound escaped my lips. I wanted it to be a word, but it wasn’t fit to be called anything more than a rush of breath. I fell to my knees, all else forgotten. When I tried to remove the medallion from my chest, its tendrils didn’t retract like usual. I pulled, but the prongs held tight. The device no longer felt like a parasite, feeding off me. It felt like dead weight; useless, lifeless scrap.

  Chaz knelt beside me. “Ouch. Muller, don’t do that. The whole thing’s shot. You’ll have to get Dr. Ditmarus to—”

  I pulled again, hard and steady. Under the constant pressure, the tendrils began to slide. They felt like snakes scraping my veins, peeling through my skin. When they came out, they were caked with half-dried blood. A purple syrup ran out from the holes they left. It was like coming off a drug, heady elation plunging into sober reality.

  I held the scorched, maimed artifact in my hand, watching the rain trickle through it and gather in my palm. I was so transfixed by it that I barely noticed the series of explosions echoing up from below. I thrust the medallion out to Chaz. “Fix it,” I said. “Fix it.”

  He shook his head. “Muller… you know I can’t.”

  “Get me one of the Evelyns’ logic drives,” I said.

  “It’s not the same thing. The logic dri
ves don’t possess the medallion’s exact properties. They’re just… based on it. As far as we know, this thing’s one of a kind.”

  I pushed it closer. He took a step back. The prongs stuck out like the legs of a dead spider. “Fix it,” I mumbled, numb with grief.

  “Muller. Without an exact blueprint, there’s no way to recreate it. I could make something similar, but it wouldn’t be the same. Not even close, probably.”

  My Ostelle came free of the storm clouds. The rain was still coming down hard. Chaz pulled me to the railing with the rest of the crew. Maclin was falling, tilting to one side as it dropped. I had never seen something so huge falling so fast; it felt like slow motion.

  I should’ve been amazed. I should’ve been overcome with gladness—whooping and hollering for joy like the rest of my crew. But all I could feel was the disfigured shape of that stupid medallion in my hand. I kept checking it, like I expected it to mend itself by some inexplicable magic.

  Maclin began to split apart, chunks of earth and stone and metal and deep underground concrete. We followed it for a while, watching its demise like rubberneckers beside a traffic accident. By the time we lost sight of it, thousands of fragments were falling side by side.

  Sarmiel stopped the ship. My crew celebrated; came by to shake my shoulders and tell me how glad they were. Our job wasn’t done, though. There was Roathea to liberate.

  Nothing mattered to me anymore. Not the crew and friends and parents aboard my boat, or the convoy of primies sailing toward a new life, or the Galvos army and its operatives, or the thousands of citizens in the capital, or the thousands more on Maclin who were plummeting to their deaths.

  I felt like I’d lost a loved one. I was romanticizing it, of course. Losing a piece of tech isn’t losing your father, or your uncle, or your sister. It’s an inventor’s sweat and the material it’s made of. Nothing more. The medallion had felt like so much more.

  It wasn’t.

  I thought I knew how Sable must’ve been feeling since Angus’s death.

  I didn’t.

  Chaz noticed my despair and took command in my place. “Mr. Sarmiel,” he said. “I think Muller would like us to set a course for Roathea.”

  Sarmiel understood. He gave the order, then flicked his eyes from me to Chaz.

  “He’ll be fine,” Chaz said.

  Roathea was close, just like Sable had shown me on the navigational charts. Within a few hours, we had escaped the storm and were floating high above the capital—so high that what remained of the Regent’s palace was only a speck. We were out of the long guns’ range and too distant for the missiles to bother with. From what I could tell, Maclin’s army was still firmly entrenched and in control of the capital city.

  Chaz produced the master remote control unit and the list of callsigns we’d learned from our captives at the crash site. He held them out to me. I didn’t take them.

  “Muller. This is it. Maclin is gone. The synod might not even know it yet. We have to strike now.”

  I stared at the lump in my pocket. The medallion’s effects had worn off, but my sense of loss was still severe. I’ll never get over it, I told myself. It’s too hard. I’ll break before I ever come out of this.

  “Fine,” Chaz said. “I’ll do it if you’re too mopey to enjoy it.”

  I laughed. It didn’t start as a cheerful laugh, but it ended up that way. What I found funny was how much he sounded like me. Suck it up, Mull. It’s what you’d tell yourself if you were someone else right now. “You should be the one to do it, Chaz,” I said.

  He smiled. “Mr. Sarmiel? Call everyone out on deck. Even Thomas. We’re making history tonight.”

  We all gathered along the railing.

  “Before we do this,” Chaz said, “I just want to say that regardless of how you feel about tonight’s events, or about primitives in general, I hope you can agree we’ve achieved great things together. Whether or not we one day share this world as equals remains to be seen. Muller will never say this, so I’ll say it for him. You all mean a lot to him. Some of you more than others.”

  Laughter.

  “We’ve been through hell and back this past year. Each of you, in your own way, has contributed to this—has gotten us where we are. Here’s to a new Regency. Here’s to hope. Whoever you are; primitive, techsoul, streambird… the world is never going to be the same.”

  “How many have you killed tonight?” shouted Thomas, still bound by his wrists. “How many more will die if you press that button and take away Maclin’s only chance to rectify this chaos?”

  I looked at him. “Maclin’s chance ended a long time ago, Tom. You know, I’m glad you’re here with us. I wanted you to see this most of all. Go for it, Chaz.”

  Chaz mashed the button. He spoke the names. “Destroy all Maclin and Galvos personnel, machinery, equipment, and weaponry in sight.”

  He released the button and put down the remote.

  Together, we watched the last remnant of Maclin destroy itself. Bursts of light. Pops of gunfire. There would be more death, yes. There would be more damage to the city, and more mess to clean up. But each of us on that deck knew we were watching something that was much bigger than it seemed. We were watching our world become a better version of itself.

  It wouldn’t be perfect, but it would be better.

  It wouldn’t happen overnight, but it would happen.

  I was sure of it.

  Epilogue

  Maxwell Baloncrake, Jr. is a bright kid. Uncorrupted by years of political skullduggery, he’s young enough and fresh enough to make sound decisions based on solid advice, without feeling like he needs to cater to a bunch of bureaucracy. By the time he took his throne, he was thirteen years old and every bit the scholar. He’s since turned his pursuits toward learning the ways of the world and running the government he’s now single-handedly in charge of.

  So what have all my exploits gotten me? For a short while, they got me the one thing I wanted least of all: a job. I stayed on as adviser to the young Regent for a few weeks, just until he got his feet under him. I still visit from time to time, if only to make sure those government snakes aren’t changing him into a monster like they did his father.

  Councilors Malwyn and DeGaffe have each been granted lordships and tracts of land under the Regency’s peerage system. They became the first two redblooded members of the newly enacted House of Lords, in which any island who wishes to be included can send a pair of representatives—one primitive, one techsoul—to a semi-annual Roathean council in which voting members enact new laws and discuss royal policy.

  The old prejudices still exist. But with the Regent’s support, life for primitives in the stream is getting better. This new system still has kinks that need to be worked out. But after the old system, baby steps are in order.

  I don’t get up to Everwynd to see my old pal Sal Dominic nearly as often as I should. I’m glad he’s not running around with Trudy’s kind anymore. But he was wrong when he said crime doesn’t pay. Crime does pay. It just costs a lot, too.

  When it comes to money, I’m worse off than ever. After funding the Armageddon Ring, paying for significant repairs to my Ostelle, and reimbursing Pyras in the amount Yingler stole from them, I was left with a sizeable sum. Unfortunately, I still had to pay for the two rented hoverbikes I’d destroyed and shell out bonuses to my crew.

  So what did I do with the rest? I bought my parents a cottage high in the stream, where the air is crisp and clear, and if you walk out to the edge, you can see the sun rising, hours before dawn.

  That’s right. I’ve traveled the skyward realm, made daring escapes and brave rescues, executed impossible heists, stuck it to the Civs, overthrown an empire, and thrown that same empire back the other way, and all I have to show for it are my scars and a few thousand worthless pieces of plastic, which will eventually go toward paying my crew’s wages. My dreams of floating away with a haul big enough to live on for the rest of my life have dwindled and died before my eyes.
Being an honest guy sucks, but it beats running from the law. I’m sorta friends with the King of the Whole Wide World these days. Pissing him off would be a conflict of interest.

  Ezra Brunswick returned to his quiet life of rabble-rousing on Kilori, which is still a rathole. Thanks to a new law keeping Baron Bert in check, I’m told the parking situation has improved.

  Blaylocke lives with his wife and a few hundred of Pyras’s finest on Gillian DeGaffe’s estate. And good riddance, though I’m sure I’ll swing by to butt heads with him from time to time.

  Thomas and Rindhi are working in Randolph Malwyn’s household as butler and librarian, respectively. Malwyn decided to give Thomas a second chance not to be a moron, and so far he hasn’t blown it.

  Alastair Gilfoyle resumed his trade deal with Pyras, which now operates under legal sanction with the full archive of the Kingsholme preserved under Regency law.

  Eliza and Thorley serve as my Ostelle’s head chef and rigging master. As for myself and the rest of my crew… well, we’re still sailing the stream, looking for trouble—but not too much of it. As it happens, we’re doing something important today.

  “Are you ever going to let go of that thing?” Sable asks, standing beside me on the deck.

  “I’m still thinking about it,” I say. I’m holding the medallion in my hand for what may be the millionth—and last—time. Its tendrils are twisted and cold, devoid of the pleasant warmth I once knew. I hold it for a long time, pushing through that first moment when I’m not sure I can ever drop it. I do, though. I let it slip from my fingers and spill overboard; watch it plummet through endless sky.

  It is as the sharp buzz of normalcy sweeps through me again that I know a piece of myself is gone. When I look at Sable, I can tell she’s proud of me. I can also tell I’m going to be alright. A piece of something else is there to take its place. This is the right piece; the piece that fits. The piece I’ve been evading all my life.

  I’ve been trying to change the world for a long time. I used to think I could do that by rebelling against the oppressive regime that ruled it. Turns out I was right. Kind of. Now it’s time to start thinking about other things. Like where the wind is going to take us next, and what kind of trouble we’re going to get into. Not the illegal kind—not anymore. Nowadays, we only concern ourselves with the kind of trouble I used to be opposed to. The ‘helping people’ kind.