by J. S. Morin
As Sosha got to work shoveling coal into the furnace, Chipmunk took the pocketclock, map, and speed gauge and started doing math.
Chipmunk leaned into the eyepiece of the viewscope, watching through a system of mirrors out the front of the locomotive as the mountains grew larger. The thunderail bounced and jolted along, the speed gauge having ceased being useful when they passed 100 feet per second. Her calculations said they were going to make it. The next train out of Eversall was set to arrive there in thirty-seven minutes. Her best estimate at their actual speed would have them there in thirty-two.
“How you holding up?” she asked Sosha.
Sosha wiped a sleeve across her sweating brow. “I wish we’d kept one of the coalmen.”
“Well, you can take a rest now. I’ve got to judge when it’s time to start braking so we don’t speed clear through Eversall.”
“But isn’t there another thunderail coming in?”Sosha asked. Chipmunk gave her a deadpan look. “Oh. I see. Yes, I can see how not stopping would be bad.”
The problem with math was that it solved problems that existed in a very tidy world. It wasn’t a world that cared much for wind speed and estimates from maps. It wasn’t a world that accounted for gauge calibration or track conditions. It was a world where you needed to know how quickly the brakes slowed down a thunderail. That tidy world was one that didn’t need an experienced engineer; in Korr, those years of experience and training would have come in handy for Chipmunk.
Chipmunk had a thought. It was a messy thought, and the more she considered it, the more likely she realized it was going to come to pass. Under no circumstance could they afford to arrive late. She didn’t mention her suspicion to Sosha, but there was a good chance they weren’t going to stop quite as soon as they’d like.
She started scratching a rune on the brake handle with the blade of a screwdriver. The train’s jostling did her no favors, but the rune didn’t have to work well or long, it just had to function for a little while.
“What are you doing?” Sosha asked.
“Weren’t you paying attention to Dan’s lessons?” Chipmunk replied without looking up.
“Yes, but I can’t read that rune you’re making with the room bouncing around.”
“I’m automating the brake control, so I can keep applying the brakes without having to keep hold of it.” The brake lever stood chest high from the floor of the engine room, and had a smaller hand lever at the top that squeezed to allow the large lever to move. Chipmunk didn’t bother with runes for the smaller handle, just the large one.
“Why would you need to let it go if we haven’t stopped?”
“Because we’re getting off in Eversall, whether this thing stops or not.”
Sosha shook her head.
“If we stop short, we’re stuck running down a tunnel while a bunch of knockers come to see what’s the trouble. I have to err on the side of letting it go past.”
“Can’t you get it just right?”
Chipmunk shrugged. “I’m just guessing. This isn’t science here, this is steel and steam.”
As they thundered down the tracks, Chipmunk kept watch out the door. She tried to remember how long they had been in the tunnels between Eversall and the open sky when Delliah had stolen her away. She tried to think back to how the rails had sounded, then and now, to judge the speed they had been going. When she began writing down figures and making a few rudimentary calculations, she realized that every number she’d used was little more than guesswork. She might well have just guessed any result she liked and gone with that instead. So she did.
The noise of the straining engine echoed back at them as the thunderail entered the mountain tunnel. It was as good a milestone as any, so Chipmunk squeezed the release and hauled back on the brake lever. There was a shriek of protesting metal as the brakes dug in. They barely slowed.
“Why aren’t we stopping?” Sosha asked, a quiet note of panic creeping into her voice.
“Shit, the steam valve! Take the brake handle.” Chipmunk grabbed the wheel that would cut off the steam to the engine and twisted it. The pressure gauge plummeted. She yanked the pull chain and the train’s whistle screamed to herald the arrival of an unplanned thunderail to everyone in earshot. The noise was deafening in the tunnel.
“What are we going to do?” Sosha asked, still clinging to the brake.
“It’s slowing, but not nearly fast enough. Light those runes and get ready to jump with me.”
“You shouldn’t be jumping. You could reinjure that foot of yours.”
“The foot’s going to be my least problem if we’re the front carriage in a thunderail collision.”
Chipmunk peeked out the door. The tunnel walls were well out of reach, but they felt too close going by as fast as they were. Suddenly the squeal of the brake grew even louder.
“It’s done. I’m ... I’m ready.” Chipmunk saw the rune glowing on the handle, making it heavier than if she and Sosha had both hung with their full weights on it. Sosha picked up her bag and case. Chipmunk saw the fear in her eyes, but nowhere else about her. She put an arm around her.
“We’re going to be all right. We’re slowing down. If you can’t keep your feet when you hit the ground, tuck your shoulder and roll. Let go of the bags and we’ll go back for them.”
“Got it.”
Chipmunk kept her gun in hand as they approached Eversall Deep Station, Layer Three. The light from the station grew brighter at the end of the tunnel as they drew near. Chipmunk spared a glance at the speed gauge just before they emerged. It had dipped below 40 feet per second—they weren’t committing suicide, at least.
“You ready?”
Sosha shook her head. Chipmunk ignored her.
“Now!”
Chipmunk jumped first, knowing better than to try to keep her balance with her injured foot. She landed on her good foot and tumbled, releasing the case as she had instructed Sosha—but keeping her gun in hand.
She didn’t see Sosha’s jump as the world spun her about, converting her momentum into dizziness. In the moment she took to reorient herself, Sosha was already by her side, helping her up.
“We’ve got to run,” Chipmunk said as she scooped up her case.
The thunderail continued to slow and to squeal, but showed no sign that it would stop in time to stay in the station. A few observant and quick-thinking passengers followed their example and jumped clear. All around, station authorities were rushing to investigate. No thunderail was scheduled to arrive, and the one that had was heading straight for the 4:32 thunderail out of Cavinstraw Deep.
Chipmunk adopted a galloping gait that kept her from having to flex her foot while still moving along. She probably had a few bruises from the fall, but those wouldn’t be trouble until she stopped long enough for them to stiffen up.
A knot of head-knockers were cordoning off the exits as the authorities sought to seize control of the chaotic scene. Chipmunk was having none of that. She fired off five shots in quick succession and set off a panic that radiated outward from the dead knockers.
“What are you doing?” Sosha asked.
“Getting us a path out of here.”
“But you—”
“Shot a few kuduks, yeah. We’re dead if they take us in. I’m done taking chances.”
Sosha turned to look back at the train platform as they ran.
“No risking getting caught. I’ll take any other risk.”
Apparently the alarm had been raised city-wide. Sirens blared and despite a wave of kuduks and humans fleeing the thunderail station, some kuduks were heading toward it.
The ground shook and the lights in the caverns flickered. The two thunderails had collided. Sosha stumbled into Chipmunk, and the two of them careened right into the path of a squad of knockers.
“She’s got a gun!” one of them shouted.
Knockers weren’t selected for intelligence. They recruited for loyalty, toughness, and quick reactions to dangerous situations. Confronte
d with an armed human girl, they charged.
Sosha squealed and ran, dropping the case with the guns and grabbing for Chipmunk with the hand she freed up in so doing. The hand grabbing for her arm spoiled Chipmunk’s first shot; she pulled free of Sosha’s grasp. The next four each took down a knocker in the order that they approached her. The next time she squeezed the trigger, there was nothing left to fire.
“Grab her, she’s out!”
It hadn’t taken great brains for them to notice that she wasn’t killing them two per second any more. The first one got hold of her by the arm as she tried to swing the lightsteel case into the side of his head. The knocker jerked her forward and made a grab for the gun arm. She twisted and squirmed, but was limited by her other arm being caught fast. She managed to get the barrel of the gun pressed into the kuduk’s face, and pulled the trigger. Despite being empty of ball bearings, it still had aether, and the arcing spark passed right through kuduk flesh. The knocker convulsed and fell to the floor.
The second knocker maneuvered over a pile of his dead comrades and made his own attempt. This one was careful enough to keep Chipmunk’s gun at bay, and took a swing at her with his leather-wrapped club. Chipmunk hopped back, wincing as her foot partially gave way beneath her.
“Would you mind shooting him?” she shouted to Sosha in Takalish. She received no response and no supporting gunfire.
The knocker stepped in and swung again. Chipmunk swung her gun up to meet the club and pulled the trigger just as it was about to smash her tiny weapon out of the way. Instead, the weight of the barrel increased a hundredfold. The club went rotor-blading through the air as the unexpected force tore it from its owner’s grip. The knocker backed away, trying to reconcile what had happened. Chipmunk swung the gun again and timed the trigger for the impact. It crunched into the kuduk’s shoulder, his boiled leather overcoat insufficient to protect him.
“What was that?” Chipmunk asked, turning to Sosha. “They’re not playing a game.”
“I ... I...”
“Never mind,” Chipmunk said. She knelt and popped her case open, swapping her empty and dinged up gun for a fresh, loaded one. “Come on. We have to get out of the tunnels.”
Chipmunk led them to a maintenance hatch and down into the access passages that acted as the veins and arteries of Eversall.
“Can you see where you’re going?” Sosha asked.
“A bit. We’ll stop around the next bend. You still got those goggles I gave you?”
“Of course.”
“Try them on.”
Chipmunk dug hers out of a coat pocket and swapped them for her spectacles. She was able to watch as Sosha put her own on.
“I can see everything now.”
“Good.
“Where are we going? Do you know how to get to your father’s owner’s house?”
“It’s not a house, it’s an estate. And yeah, I know pretty much everywhere around here.”
The trip to the Graniteson Estate took one hour and forty four minutes, according to Mister Ovark’s pocketclock. Chipmunk considered a thunderail engineer’s timepiece to be the next best thing to one of her father’s. Despite her claim to Sosha, she only knew most of Eversall Deep well. The last time she had tried to sneak in and visit her father had been ten years ago, and he had forbade her trying again. So while she knew where the estate was, she was guessing when it came to the passages surrounding it.
“Must be a fancy place to have all its own pipes and vents,” Sosha remarked. After initial misgivings, she had stopped fretting about the tight spaces and cloying odors.
“His owner’s daruu. Crazy old bastard. My father doesn’t talk about him much, but when you get him drunk or in the right mood, the stories are pretty funny. His coin’s mined from old ore, if you know what I mean. Never had to work, so he just buys things to amuse himself, and had my father build all sorts of half-nutted devices he draws up. This looks like the way down.”
Chipmunk had reached a vertical shaft set with rungs. Above them, stretching hundreds of feet up, was a flickering pinpoint of light: the top of the vent shaft and the fan that kept the air flow moving. In theory all of Eversall kept ventilated by convection, with hot and smoky air escaping upward and lower return vents sucking in clean air from the foothills. In practice, most kuduks preferred fans to ensure they didn’t suffocate on smoke.
“What’s that smell?” Sosha asked. It was at least the twentieth odor Chipmunk had been asked to identify.
“How would I know? I’m no cook.”
“I mean, that’s smoke, isn’t it.”
“You’ve got a breather cloth. Now’s the time for it. Should be the kitchens down there.” Chipmunk fished in her pockets, found her own breather cloth and tied it in place. She was sweating beneath her heavy coat, but was glad she’d kept it on just for the storage.
Chipmunk had the coil gun tucked inside that coat. It left her a free hand for climbing while the other fumbled with maintaining both a handhold on the rungs and a grip on the case. Sosha had lashed the handles of her medical bag and the other case together.
The two women climbed down with every intention of stealth, but lightsteel cases and iron rungs don’t make for a quiet descent. When Chipmunk realized that they were alerting whoever was below, she sped her pace. If they didn’t have the element of surprise, at least they could try to reach the bottom before anyone formulated a plan for dealing with them.
At the bottom of the vent shaft was a louvered panel with mouthwatering smoke wafting through it. Even through the breather cloth she could tell some sort of meat was cooking. She kicked the vent with her good foot, but it held fast. After two more unsuccessful attempts, she took a good grip on the rung with her case hand and extracted the coil gun from her pocket.
“Anyone down there, stand clear,” Chipmunk warned. The first shot punched a neat hole in the cover but left it in place. She aimed the second and third shots at corners, and the vent flopped open. She dropped down onto a hot stovetop, scurried out from under the vent and hopped to the floor before her boots burned. She winced as she landed on both feet, not just the good one.
A few cooks were gathered cowering in a corner. None wore collars, she noted. She pulled her goggles up and her breather cloth down. “Where’s Erefan?”
At that moment, the door burst open and four humans in drab grey uniforms brought rifles to bear on her. She was ready to begin firing on them when one of the men spoke. “Miss Errol? Is that you?” The words were Kheshi.
Chipmunk lowered her pistol and they lowered their rifles. She gaped as they broke into grins. “Mister Errol has been waiting for you. A lot of them didn’t think you were going to make it.”
Sosha dropped down from the vent and gaped as well at the sight of humans in Errol Company uniforms. “What’s going on here?”
“I don’t know.” Chipmunk was at a loss.
“Can’t explain it myself,” said the soldier. “You gotta come see.”
The soldiers led the way through daruu-owned halls packed to bursting with humans. Errol Company soldiers were roaming throughout, a few she even recognized. Others she saw looked haggard and wore Korrish clothes but had no collars. Like the kitchen staff, they appeared to be freed slaves. Even fewer dressed in the kuduk style— freemen shavers who made their living among the enemy. She encountered a handful of familiar twinborn as well. They all shooed her along to go see her father. It seemed she was something of a wheel chock that had been holding up whatever plan her father was enacting.
The scene inside the workshop instantly etched itself in Chipmunk’s mind. All around were slaves being freed from collars, which in itself was inspiring, but at the far end of the vast chamber she saw the machine. The incredible complexities of the adjunct systems that powered and controlled it were not lost on her, but they were overshadowed by the view in the giant circular framework.
A cheer rose up and twinborn she had known since she was a little girl called out to her by her Telluraki
name. Their faces were thinned from malnutrition, a few bore scars that their more familiar twins did not, and some she didn’t recognize because of beards, but she knew them at once when she heard their voices.
“I told you she’d get here,” her father shouted over the more jubilant voices.
Chipmunk hobbled her way over to her father and hugged him. “I’ve missed you.”
“I’ve missed you too.” He gave her a final squeeze and pulled away, then took her by the shoulders. “It’s time to go home.” Chipmunk met his gaze and found an expression there she had never associated with her father. His eyes grew distant, as if looking through her, and a hint of a smile tugged at his lips. He turned, and Chipmunk followed his gaze to the framework.
“Where is that?” she asked. The tunnel within the view looked familiar, but she didn’t want to sound foolish if her suspicion was incorrect. Chipmunk wanted to hear her father say it.
“Home. It’s the depleted iron mine just north of our house,” Erefan said. Madlin had run away there on many occasions as a child, playing in the tunnels until one of her father’s agents tracked her down and took her home.
Chipmunk shook her head. “No. That’s not home.”
Erefan grinned. “It’s true, that really is—”
“I believe you that it’s Tellurak,” Chipmunk said. Incredulous as she felt she ought to be, her father was no prankster. “But that’s Madlin’s home, not mine.”
“What? Is this home?” Erefan asked. He spread his hands to encompass all of Korr in his question. “I doubt if Eziel’s heretics face a worse fate than this place. Good riddance.” Erefan walked up to the machine and reached for a large switch. When he pulled it, it was as if the image in the machine’s frame became more real. “Rynn, we’re going home.”
Chipmunk’s eyes opened and her mouth gaped. Word had spread quickly throughout the estate, and people were filing into the workshop in a steady stream. She reached up and opened the switch, and the image glossed over once more.
