by Gwynn White
The plain fact was, they both needed coin to buy food—no more stealing off the carts for Tip, that was certain. But if either of them ventured out into the crowds, Breggy would find them. When he did, there’d be no more escape.
Maybe she should take Derek’s offer of tickets to London.
No. She’d be remembered there. Not by the coppers, mayhap, but by the gangs. When she’d first escaped the orphanage, she’d flaunted her abilities: counting money—and cards—with a glance, predicting the movements of particularly rich-looking mark in a crowd, darting away from pursuers with only inches to spare between her and a fast-moving hansom cab.
She’d been looking for acceptance and approval—but her skills made her a valuable commodity. One of the gangrunners was set on turning her into a thief, sending her into the city’s most prestigious houses to steal whatever she could. Another wanted to dress her like a flash nob—oh, the irony—and make her work Piccadilly right under the coppers’ noses.
Diana couldn’t read the future, but she was smart enough to see that either of those paths ended with her imprisonment and transportation. The gangrunners wouldn’t care—they’d make good coin off her, then toss her away. Bribes to the police wouldn’t outweigh the severity of the crimes they wanted her to commit. So she’d gotten away, careful to cover her tracks, and ended up in Southampton.
She wrinkled her nose against the stench of something dead wafting from a dank alley. Probably a rat, but she wasn’t going in there to investigate.
“Are we going to London?” Tipper asked, as if reading her thoughts.
“I’m not sure.” Of anything.
Don’t trust me, she wanted to tell him. Look at the mess I’ve made of things. Except that she’d managed to pull him out of a jail cell, and that was worth something.
When she’d gone to Mrs. Jones she hadn’t been sure the woman could even be bribed, but she had to try. Diana had brushed her hair out with her broken comb, then braided it, and donned her skirt and shawl. She’d say that Tipper was her younger brother, and she’d promised their Ma she’d look out for him. Plus, there was a goodly bag of coin to sweeten Mrs. Jones’s sympathy.
Diana had held back tuppence and a few farthings, but all the shillings went into the small canvas bag she’d scrounged up at the water’s edge. It was stained and smelled of mold, but it would do.
As it was, the amount was scarcely enough. Mrs. Jones had refused until Diana spilled the coins out into the woman’s hands.
“Please, missus,” she’d said, crying. “He’s me only brother.”
The tears had been easy to muster. Diana couldn’t bear the thought of Tipper being taken away. Life on the streets was hard, but his punishment would be worse. Not to mention her own life, without him.
Finally, she’d prevailed, but fear had tightened her throat up until the moment Derek had unlocked the cell and let Tip go.
Now, however, there were almost no options left that didn’t end in death or jail. For both of them.
The smooth, Yxleti-built wall of the spaceport rose a few blocks ahead, so strange in comparison to the crumbling brick and decayed mortar of the buildings around them. The abandoned square ahead was where they’d part, each to their respective hiding places.
In the tangle of the overgrown hedges, she paused and handed him the ration bar Byrne had given her.
“Keep your strength up,” she said, ignoring the rumbling in her own belly.
“Don’t worry.” Tipper took the bar, then patted her arm. “We’ll be all right, Di. See you in a bit?”
“Yes,” she said, trying to sound cheerful. “I’ve a bit of bread and cheese we can have for breakfast.”
And that was all.
She supposed they could try to kill and eat the rats, or try and fish something misshapen and dubious out of the Itchen, but her stomach turned at the thought. Still, it would be better than starving to death.
Breggy wouldn’t let us starve. The thought came unbidden.
True—but he’d demand things she wasn’t willing to give. Even if her life depended on it. It wasn’t worth trading her little bit of freedom, no matter how hungry and desperate, for a certain and unsavory misery.
Tip gave her a jaunty wave, backlit by the rising sun, and strode off. A night in jail hadn’t dampened his spirits overmuch, and she didn’t know whether to smile or cry at that fact. The boy was so sure everything would come out right. But this wasn’t a fairy tale.
Tasting the bitter salt of her swallowed tears, Diana waited in the hedge until she was satisfied they hadn’t been followed. Then, carefully, she made her way to the ruins she called home.
The roar and shake of spacecraft blasting off had long since ceased to wake Diana from her ragged slumber. Her dilapidated corner in a falling-down building was scant shelter from the elements, but she’d learned to catch what rest she could.
A stealthy approach or a whisper of malice, however, would bring her awake in an instant, hand tight around the hilt of her makeshift dagger. It was just a jagged piece of metal she’d salvaged, with a knotted rag for a handle, but it was still a weapon.
Her father had had a gun, once, a light-pistol that could slice a man’s arm off, or put a smoking hole in his chest at fifty paces.
Long gone, along with the rest of the remnants of her former life. Diana didn’t even have a gold locket with her parent’s picture, or a pocket watch with a loving inscription, or any of the tokens common to novels about abandoned girls seeking their long lost homes and families.
She was awake, woken by Tipper’s light step—but she pretended to be asleep. The day was full of unanswerable problems she didn’t want to rise and face: the grimy reality of the West Quay slums, the ships blasting off out of reach. And all her coin gone. She’d never make it back, now that Breggy had upped the tithe.
“Di, get up. I know you’re awake.”
A toe in her ribs made her roll over and open her eyes. Tipper stood there, silhouetted against the brightness. Behind him, clouds feathered the sky, and sunlight glowed on the grungy buildings. By her reckoning, it was two in the afternoon, or thereabouts. Used to be she knew down to the minute, but without a proper timepiece, she couldn’t be sure.
“Go away, Tip. Wake me up later.”
“Can’t.” The boy squatted down next to her and poked her shoulder with a grimy finger. His grin shone bright as the sunlight. “I finally found it, Di!”
That woke her fully. She sat, letting her hole-filled woolen blanket drop from around her shoulders.
“What did—” She broke off as the roar of a blast-off filled the air.
Both she and Tipper looked up. From the sound of that lift, it was one of the bigger ships; maybe a Fauntleroy 220. The gleaming silver shape arced overhead, catching the light and shining, shining. It was a Fauntleroy, just as she’d guessed.
Soon after she’d arrived in Southampton, hopeful and starving, she’d found that her mathematical talent extended to identifying the ships flying in and out of the Spaceport, scanning the arc of their flights in a heartbeat, gauging velocity and lift, and guessing at their destinations.
If she couldn’t get to the stars, at least she could image others traveling there, and watch them go.
Diana swallowed, aware of the tight clutch of hunger in her belly. Without a word, she pulled out the stale half loaf and hard cheese she’d been saving. Whatever Tipper was up to, it was better to at least take the edge off before they went.
When the sky was quiet, she asked again. “What did you find?”
“The passage—I’m sure of it!” Excitement shone in his eyes.
She finished chewing the last of the bread, then rose and rolled up her blanket, her thoughts spinning. Surely Tipper hadn’t discovered a way into the Spaceport? Despite herself, she found her heartbeat spinning faster with hope.
“Where?” she asked.
He glanced about, eyes sparkling, then lowered his voice. “Hidden in a building near the wall. We’ll ge
t into the spaceport today, Di. For true.”
She couldn’t believe it, not really. Tipper had “found” a passageway once before, that had only ended up connecting to the sewers. Still, she tucked her blanket away into the satchel where she kept her few possessions, then shoved the bag beneath a fall of rubble.
“Tally-ho, then,” she said. Maybe, just maybe, their luck was about to change.
And it wasn’t as though they had any other options.
9
Darting like a mongoose, Tipper led her through the twists of the alleys, through falling-down buildings and past heaps of rubble, until they reached the sheer, shiny wall of the spaceport. It rose a dozen meters into the air, silvery and impermeable, and so clean.
Diana laid her hand against the surface, the alien material faintly cool against her palm. There was no need for a stun current—the Yxleti-made wall was impervious to any human effort. No knife or gun, laser or explosive could even mar it, let alone break through.
Nothing stood close to it. The few attempts people had made in the past to build their way over the wall had always met with destruction. Spaceport Security scanned the perimeter every morning and evening to ensure nothing was being built too close to their precious wall.
There were only two ways into the oval-shaped spaceport district, and both had airtight security. Passengers and those with official business used the front entrance at one end of the oval. Cargo and employees went through the Spaceport Authority processing area on the other end. Between the two, nothing but high, sheer walls.
“Psst.” Tipper waved at her from a shadowy ruin some distance away.
Diana joined him inside the run-down building, and he gave her a wide grin.
“Lookit this.” He nudged a crumbling piece of pressboard aside with his foot to reveal a dark shaft disappearing into the ground.
She leaned over and peered into the blackness. The edges were perfectly straight, the hole just big enough to admit a body. Provided that a person was not afraid of closed-in, dark places. She shivered.
“Where does it go?”
“I waited for you, to find out.”
Diana shot him a look. It wasn’t just the fondness they had for one another that had made him wait, but the sense of self-preservation every streetrat needed in order to survive. It would be sheer foolishness to disappear down that black shaft without anyone knowing where you’d gone, or waiting up above to pull you back up if necessary.
“You’ve got a rope?” She glanced around the ruin. The two partially standing walls didn’t provide nearly enough cover for what they were about to do.
“Sure. And lights. And water and the last of my brat bars, just in case.” He went to the corner and rummaged beneath a piss-scented tarp, emerging with the described items.
“You’re well prepared.” She shouldn’t be surprised, though. After all, this had been Tipper’s dream for as long as she’d known him.
“’Course I am. Been saving things since forever. Here.” He held out one of the foil-wrapped bars.
She shook her head. “I still have one from last night—at the station.”
In her opinion, one was more than enough. B-rations, brats for short, were the lowest-level foodstuffs. Even at her hungriest, she could barely choke down a mouthful of the gluey substance. If it came to that, maybe rats would taste better.
“Nob,” Tipper said, correctly interpreting her look of distaste.
“Ain’t.”
She wasn’t a noble, despite those hazy memories of silky dresses and mathematics lessons and a puppy of her own. That was half a lifetime ago, or more. It didn’t matter now. She patted the brat bar tucked into her trouser pocket, planning to give it to Tipper after they… well. After they found whatever it was they were going to find down there.
“Probably just leads to the sewers,” she said, taking a sniff of the air over the shaft.
It wasn’t as foul as she expected. Dry, not rank, with a whiff of fuel. A jagged shard of hope sawed through her. Could it actually be a tunnel into the spaceport?
Rumor was the Yxleti had used a network of tunnels when constructing the port. But they all had been filled up again, long ago. Even if this was a former passage to the spaceport, it surely ended in an impassable wall of rubble.
Still, her heart raced with possibility.
She helped Tipper secure the rope to the sturdiest beam they could find. He wrapped it around his chest and under his arms, then donned a pair of stained leather gloves two sizes too big.
“Are you sure you want to go first?” She glanced into the hole. “It looks deep.”
“I found it, I get to explore it first. And I dropped a lightstick down there yesterday. Bottom’s not too far.”
He grinned at her. She had the feeling “not too far” had a different meaning, once you were dangling at the end of a rope.
“Speaking of light…” He held a battered lightstick out to her, then tucked a second one into a makeshift headband and settled it over his filthy hair.
Before she could wish him luck, he scrambled over the edge of the shaft and let himself down.
Diana knelt and watched him go down. The shaft was small enough that he could brace his legs and back on opposite sides and control his descent. Once, he slipped, and she swallowed back a cry of dismay as he slid a full meter down the hole before catching himself.
Sooner than she would have liked, all she could see was the lightstick attached to his head. It bobbed up and down, sparking dull reflections from the sides of the shaft. After a while, the light stopped, and the rope jiggled wildly.
“Tipper?” She leaned over the hole, fear clenching her gut.
The rope went slack.
Something was down there, and had eaten him.
Dammit. Without comm devices—which no streetrat could ever afford—she had to guess at what was happening.
Hands shaking, she hauled the dangling rope back up and inspected the end. No blood, no fraying.
“Di.” Tipper’s voice echoed softly up.
She blew the stale air of fear out of her lungs. “Now what?” she hissed down into the hole.
“Going to explore. Sit tight.”
The roar of ascent washed over the silvery spaceport walls. Diana glanced up as the Volux V-class freighter lumbered up into the lower atmosphere. Bound in-system, she’d guess; one of the outlying Jupiterean moons, or maybe just Mars.
“Tipper?” She leaned forward at the flicker of light from below.
“Di! Come down—it’s a passage through.”
She didn’t believe it, though Tipper had never been a practical joker like some of the other streetrats.
“Who’ll guard the rope?”
“I don’t care.” His voice was jubilant. “Hurry.”
She tied the rope around her torso, hoping the knots would hold. Unlike Tipper, she hadn’t brought gloves to protect her hands. It wasn’t so far down that she’d burn her hands terribly—unless she fell.
Diana gave the rope a couple tugs, testing the beam. Solid enough. Gritting her teeth, she lowered herself into the shaft. The coarse hemp bit her palms, and the metal wall was cool against her back. Slowly, she inched down, the pale blue sky overhead becoming a smaller rectangle as the dark swallowed her. The only thing that made it bearable was knowing that Tipper and his lightstick were waiting for her at the bottom.
At last she saw the glow from below.
“The shaft ends,” Tipper said. “There’s a drop of a few meters to the floor.”
Jaw aching from clenching her teeth, Diana’s feet hit empty air. She kicked out, the rope slipping too quickly between her hands, and she hit the unyielding surface below. Her legs folded under her and she sat down, hard, on the floor of the tunnel.
“All right?” Tipper gave her a hand up.
“Well enough.”
She straightened and gave an experimental stretch side to side. Other than what would probably be a spectacular bruise on her tailbone, and th
e rope burns on her palms, she was uninjured. She pulled the extra lightstick out of her pocket and flicked it on.
The straight, dim corridor was nothing special—except for the immense possibility it represented. Feeling a smile stretch her face, she nodded at Tipper.
“Lead on, sir.”
They walked quickly, excitement pushing their pace. Despite that, Diana was still cautious, ticking off their steps in her head. When they were almost to the spot where the boundary wall stretched overhead, she held out her arm, halting Tipper.
“Wait,” she said. “Did you come this far, earlier?”
“No.” He bounced up and down on his toes. “Just far enough to see the passage was open.”
She studied the corridor ahead. It looked safe, but stun currents were invisible until triggered. No streetrat traveled without an assortment of useful items in their pockets. Never knew when one might need a bit of string or graphite. Or, in this case, a pebble.
Diana tossed the stone a few meters ahead of them. It flew past the potential hazard point and kept going to clatter down on the floor. Nothing flared or buzzed.
“Safe enough.” She hoped.
“Milady.” Tipper swept out his hand in a move worthy of a gentleman.
“Coward,” she murmured as she strode past him, winking to show she didn’t truly mean it. He’d been first down into the darkness, after all.
She flinched, just a little, as she passed the boundary, but like the pebble, she passed through untouched. Tipper came up behind her. Their twin lightsticks reflected eerily off the silver walls, the pale yellow glow barely pushing back the blackness. They walked ten paces beyond the wall, then twenty.
“Why do you think they built this tunnel?” Tipper whispered.
She shrugged. Who knew why the enigmatic Yxleti did anything?
A hundred years ago they had appeared from the sky, crowned Victoria Queen Eternal, then stood back. They had allowed humans to use their strange technology to reach the stars, and they never interfered. Only watched.
Some scholars believed the Yxleti wanted to bring stability and prosperity to the human race, like some kind of benevolent overlords. Others argued that the aliens saw humans as an experiment, like creatures under a microscope, or in a zoo.
