Faster Than Falling: The Skylighter Adventures

by Nathan Van Coops

  “Have it your way then!” the man shouted. “You could have died like a man. Now you’ll die like the little beast you are.” He lifted a whistle to his mouth and blasted three sharp tones. Air Corpsmen appeared on the decks above, searching for the source of the sound. Admiral Orloff pointed to Kipling and shouted at them. “Eliminate him!”

  The Air Corpsmen only hesitated briefly, then brandished their harpoons. Some had crossbows.

  Kipling ran.

  Bolts and harpoons thudded into the deck around him as he sprinted for the cover of the lift globes. He didn’t get far. One of the Air Corps airships had just docked at the far end and deployed its contingent of airmen. Kipling slid to a stop and immediately changed direction. He sprang off the dock and soared across the gap to the nearest bundle of tree nodes and lift pods. No sooner had he landed in the netting than a crossbow bolt struck the tree node in front of his face, puncturing it cleanly. Sap and goo erupted from the ruptured node as the lift gases escaped, splattering Kipling in the process. He lost his grip from surprise and fell.

  Kipling resisted the urge to inhale and instead let himself tumble, plummeting past the dock where he had left Admiral Orloff. Two more docks blurred by before he gasped and filled his lungs. He arrested his fall and grasped the rigging of a civilian airship in one of the lower slips.

  He groaned a little as he hauled himself upright again. That’s when he heard his name.

  “Kipling! Help!”

  The shout was somewhere above and to the north side of the tower.

  “Quimby!” Kipling leapt off the airship and onto the dock that was mercifully clear of Air Corpsmen. He raced along the long spoke of the dock that faced northward and sprinted to the outboard end, searching the open sky for Quimby. He spotted her immediately.

  The Sun Dragon’s lateral fins were punctured by harpoons with lines running to two separate Air Corps airships. The tail was caught in a similar fashion from a harpoon emplacement on the tower itself.

  Quimby was struggling to reach one of the lines with a knife, but the Air Corps had hit the ship in places she couldn’t reach. One of the crews was reeling their ship closer to the Sun Dragon by means of a winch, and a man on the bow was twirling a grappling hook. He was preparing to board.

  “Leave her alone!” Kipling shouted. He readied himself to leap to her aid, but a crossbow bolt whizzed directly past his head and made him stagger back. The men on the closest airship lined up along the port side bulwark and trained their weapons on him. There were far too many. He’d never make it to the Sun Dragon.

  Quimby had spotted him. She waved him away. “Go! Run! There’s too many!” She spun around as the grappling hook landed in the front cockpit and caught hold. The first man in the boarding party slid down the rope from the ship overhead and landed atop the little aircraft, causing it to bob wildly in place, despite the multiple lines ensnaring it. The Air Corpsman drew his cutlass and brandished it at Quimby with a snarl. He never got a chance to do anything else, because the business end of a harpoon suddenly pierced through his chest.

  “Don’t touch my sister!”

  The third airship hovered just beyond the first two and Landy was standing on its bow, her face a mask of rage.

  The man hit by the harpoon went rigid, his cutlass falling from his hand and his fingers stretched to find the weapon in his back. He flailed at it feebly for a moment, then teetered and fell, tumbling into the open air on the long drop to the desert floor.

  The rest was chaos.

  Shouts went up from the Air Corps ships as men shifted from one side of their airships to the other to counter the new threat.

  But Landy wasn’t alone. The secret fleet had arrived with her and they were ready for action. More ships were rounding the tower and rising up from the desert surface.

  The air was suddenly thick with projectiles. The airship with the boarding party found itself bristling with arrows and immediately started losing lift. Kipling dodged arrows that passed cleanly through the ship’s envelope and ripped gashes in the fabric as they exited. Quimby ducked low in the Sun Dragon’s cockpit.

  “Quimby!” Kipling shouted, and clambered up the tower. When he reached the level of the airship, he soared across the gap and landed on the lateral fin. Quimby was still cowering in the pilot’s seat. Kipling seized the grappling hook and tossed it overboard. “I’ll get you free. Hang on!”

  Quimby reached up and grabbed his arm. “Does she look mad? What’s she doing?”

  Kipling, surprised by the question, looked up to where Dex’s airship was forging its way toward them. Landy had crouched to make herself a smaller target, but was still on the bow of the ship, eyes watching the Sun Dragon.

  “Umm. She looks determined,” Kipling said.

  “Determined to kill me?” Quimby asked. “I’m in so much trouble right now.”

  Kipling scrambled his way around the aircraft and hacked the remaining harpoon lines free. As he severed the last one on the nose, the ship began to sink. The metal harpoon had punctured one of the smaller lift bags in the bow and Kipling could smell the lift gases leaking out.

  “Hey! Grab this line!” Landy shouted. The aircraft she was aboard was now overhead and only a few yards away. She hung over the bow and dropped a line to the rear seat, directly into her younger sister’s lap. Quimby reluctantly grabbed hold of the line. “Tie it off somewhere,” Landy said. “We’ll tow you to safety.”

  “I have a mission still!” Quimby yelled. “We’re not finished.” Quimby looked to Kipling and spoke a little quieter. “Are we?”

  Kipling glanced at the lift tower and the big bundle of globe sons bobbing near the top. He’d freed some of the globe sons into the atmosphere, but it was anyone’s guess if they’d find their way to the Globe Mother or her daughters. What he really needed was to free the big bundle and buy them some real hope.

  “One more,” Kipling said. “If I can get that big one, I think it might be enough.” He pointed to the bundle near the top of the tower. “That’ll end the mission.”

  Quimby nodded and looked back to her sister. “I’m almost done!” She stood up and lofted the coiled end of line over the side of the cockpit.

  Landy’s mouth fell open, then she shouted back. “We don’t have time for this! The crews are already picking up the workers. We’ve got to get back through the mountain before they bring down the Storm Gate!”

  Quimby slid into her seat and applied full power to the controls. “It’s okay! We’ll be right behind you!” She dumped what was left of the forward water ballast to compensate for the lost lift in the nose and aimed them skyward. The Sun Dragon climbed past Landy’s ship and Landy was forced to duck and retreat to the cabin as her ship came under fire from an arriving squadron of Air Corps craft. Kipling watched Dex maneuver their airship away to avoid more damage.

  Quimby guided the Sun Dragon up and away from the lift tower to avoid fire from its lower harpoon turrets, then angled back in again once they’d reached the altitude of the big globe son bundle. Up close, Kipling saw it had even more of the precious pods than he had suspected. He mentally cursed at himself for not going straight for this cluster from the start.

  The tower was swarming with Air Corps now and it looked like some of the civilian ships were joining the fray as well, but it was hard to tell if they were looking to fight or merely avoiding damage. Dex’s secret fleet was darting about the excavation site, taking on workers from all areas of the dig.

  Far below them, Kipling could make out the top of the buried ship emerging from the excavation site. The lift tower was doing its job. Quimby glided the Sun Dragon in toward the tower and Kipling once again climbed onto the nose. He scanned the bottom of the netted globe son bundle and readied his warhook. The bundle was much larger than the others he had liberated, and this one was anchored by three separate tethers. Quimby aimed for the nearest one and got Kipling right up next to it.

  The dock next to the bundle was empty. No Air Corpsmen in s
ight. A battle was raging among the airships below them but this dock was eerily quiet. Kipling scanned the area but could spot no signs of trouble.

  Perhaps this was going to be easier than he expected.

  He jumped aboard the tower and landed near the first tether. He immediately began sawing through the line. “Keep clear and watch for trouble!” he shouted to Quimby. She nodded and moved the airship away, gliding backward and scanning the sky above them for attackers.

  The tether line snapped away and Kipling moved to the second. He worked fast to carve through it, and the cluster of globes shifted in their confinement. There were at least a hundred of them, possibly more. Enough to pollinate most of the globe daughters in the Northern Sky. The line snapped away and he raced to the third and final tether.

  He was going to do it. With a few more passes of the warhook, the bundle would be free.

  “Kipling! Look out!” Quimby’s shout made him look up. She was standing in the cockpit pointing at something behind him. He turned, but it was too late. The net fell over him and heavy ropes dragged him off his feet. He crashed to the dock in a heap.

  He was suddenly swarmed by Air Corpsmen. Several secured the net while more ran past and lined up at the end of the dock to take aim at the Sun Dragon with crossbows.

  “Kip!” Quimby shouted.

  “Go!” Kipling yelled. “Get out of here!”

  The corpsmen started firing and Quimby was forced to reverse the little aircraft even farther away from the tower to get away. Several crossbow bolts ricocheted off the intake fan shroud and she ducked into the cockpit as she moved out of range. Kipling squirmed in the netting but couldn’t free himself. As he peered through the holes in the netting, he spotted the shiny boots and poised figure of Admiral Orloff striding toward him from across the dock.

  “What’s this we’ve caught, boys?” Orloff asked. “A mighty raptor? A terax? Maybe a dreadwing?” He leaned over the net. “Ah. Pity. It’s just one of these pesky Skylighters. Thought we might get to deal with something dangerous.”

  Kipling hissed at him through the net and struggled to get the warhook untangled. He got it through one of the holes in the net. If he could just hack his way through . . .

  “Uh, uh. Let me help you with that,” Orloff said. He leaned down and clasped Kipling’s wrist, bending his arm and applying pressure to the joint till Kipling cried out in pain, letting go of the warhook. The weapon clattered to the deck and fell at Orloff’s feet. The admiral kept hold of Kipling’s wrist, continuing to squeeze it as he bent down and picked up the warhook. He lifted the weapon and finally released Kipling’s arm.

  Kipling fell back to the dock and winced as he rubbed his wrist.

  “Very strange,” Admiral Orloff said, examining the symbols on the warhook. “Such a beautiful weapon. Am I to assume that you are a great Skylighter warrior?” He smirked at Kipling. “Mighty defender of weeds maybe? Keeping your people safe from . . . what would you protect a floating vegetable home from? Ladybugs?”

  The men around him laughed.

  “This is really the best your people can send into a fight?” Admiral Orloff said. “A boy, with a chunk of jagged bone as a sword?” He brushed a finger along the symbols carved into the weapon. “Well, I suppose we ought to see what you can do then.” He gestured to the men holding the net ropes. “Free him, lads.”

  Kipling ducked as the net was pulled off, but he stayed down, lying on his back, propped up on one elbow. Overhead, the bundle of globe sons was swaying wildly, bouncing off the rest of the lift tower, its single, partially severed tether tugging at the deck where the last retaining ring was anchored. The boards creaked from the strain.

  Admiral Orloff loomed over him, brandishing the warhook. He held it above Kipling. “You want this back? I’ll bet you do. After all, what’s a mighty warrior without his weapon?”

  Kipling scowled at him. He worked his right hand underneath his body, reaching for his lower back till his fingers touched the rough handle of his obsidian pruning knife.

  “Come on, plant-boy. You want to prove you’ve got what it takes to be a hero? All you have to do is grab it from me. See if you can take back what I took from you.” Orloff grinned and unbuckled his own sword belt from his waist with his free hand and passed it off to one of his men. “I’ll even up the odds for you. You want to show me how fierce and mighty the sky peoples are? Here’s your chance.”

  Kipling had a firm grip on the handle of his pruning knife now. He held onto it tightly and studied his enemy. A quick jab to somewhere vital? His throat maybe? Could he do it?

  The Admiral took a step back and gestured for Kipling to get up. He continued to hold the warhook out in front of him, even going so far as turn the weapon handle-out. “Come on, kid. Be a hero.”

  Kipling got to his feet. He faced off against the bigger man and brought the pruning knife out in front of him. The sight of the glassy, stone blade only made the admiral’s smile a little broader.

  “Yeah, now we’re talking,” Orloff said.

  “You’re right about one thing,” Kipling said, brandishing the pruning knife. “I’m not a hero. Or a warrior. But I’m someone just as important.”

  Orloff squinted at him. His mouth quirked with a question, but Kipling answered it in action, spinning around, grabbing hold of the globe net tether and slashing hard with the knife. “I’m the gardener!”

  The tether snapped away and Kipling was launched into the sky as the lift pods soared upward. Orloff and his rapidly shrinking men could only stare as the cluster of lifting globes was caught by the wind and sent streaming skyward, headed north toward the mountains. In a matter of moments, Kipling was no longer able to even see them.

  He dangled from the tether at the bottom of the cluster, still clutching his pruning knife, and spotted the tiny shape of the Sun Dragon far below, working hard to catch up.

  It wasn’t going to make it.

  The tail fin was moving fast but the forward momentum of the ship was far less than he was used to. He didn’t have long to puzzle over the problem, because, far below, just above the level of the desert floor, the spherical ship was lighting up and rumbling. Smoke poured from its vents and vibrations shook the entire excavation site, sending sand and sections of wooden retaining wall cascading into the cavernous hole below it.

  Despite the years in the desert—despite what Kipling knew must be some of the worst possible conditions—something incredible was happening.

  The ship was lifting off.

  39

  THE RELIC

  Marlow’s cutlass teased her neck. Samra wanted to fight but she could think of few options that didn’t include getting her throat slit.

  “Hand over the relic.”

  Atlas was still pressed against the wall, cradling the cube he’d received from Mira. The glowing woman was still there, too, but she was simply looking on, seemingly unperturbed by Samra’s sudden crisis.

  Footsteps echoed in the passage. Samra couldn’t see behind Marlow, but she recognized the voice when the woman spoke.

  “Father, what are you doing? She’s just a child.”

  Captain Savage.

  “I told you to stay outside,” Marlow hissed. He pivoted slightly and Samra could now see behind him. Captain Savage was in the doorway holding a cutlass. “This is my prize,” Marlow said.

  Eric Savage emerged from the passage also, panting and out of breath. “Father, they’re attacking the tower! They’re tearing it apart.”

  “What? Who?” Marlow said. He spun to look at his son.

  “Miners. And more of these plant children,” Eric gestured to Samra. “There’s a sky boy up there freeing the lift pods.”

  Kipling.

  Samra’s heart leapt in her chest.

  Kipling was up there, fighting. It had to be him.

  The news made her incalculably proud. He’d come to rescue her. And to rescue the patch.

  Marlow growled something inaudible. He spun back around and sn
apped at Atlas. “Now, boy. I’m done playing games.” He clenched Samra tighter to his chest and pressed the cutlass blade to her skin. “She dies.”

  “No!” Atlas extended the cube toward him. “Take it.”

  Marlow had to sheath his sword to reach for it. He did so, placing his other hand on Samra’s throat to keep her captive. He stretched to take the relic, then, quite suddenly, Mira was there. She vanished from her place beside them and reappeared directly in front of Marlow and overtop of Atlas’s outstretched hand. The cube and his hand were now squarely inside her glowing chest.

  “Ahh!” Atlas shouted and dropped the relic. It thudded to the floor at Marlow’s feet.

  Mira was smiling.

  “I’m done with your little tricks, woman,” Marlow said. “Your illusions don’t fool me.” He crouched to reach for the relic.

  “You haven’t seen them all yet,” Mira replied. And as she did, the floor shook. A deep rumbling vibrated through the walls and echoed down the passageways. The room tilted. Captain Savage caught Eric as he teetered toward her. Marlow likewise lost his balance and staggered back a step. The relic cube on the floor slid a few inches his direction, but as he righted himself and reached for it, a tremendous boom reverberated through the ship. The walls shook and rained relics from the alcoves.

  Atlas ducked and covered his head as they cascaded around him.

  “No!” Marlow shouted. The master relic was suddenly surrounded by dozens of identical cubes. It stopped glowing and was now indistinguishable from its counterparts. “Where did it—How do I—”

  Samra stopped listening to Marlow’s exclamations because in his confusion and desperation he had let his grip loosen on her throat. She clamped her hands around his wrist and did the only thing she could think of. She bit him.

  Atlas lifted his head to find the room in chaos. Mira had disappeared. The floor was a sea of fallen relics and Samra was struggling with Marlow. She chomped on the raider’s hand and he shrieked in pain. His other hand came up to grab her, but she was too quick for him. She dropped to her back and rolled away, dodging his grasp and scattering relic cubes in her wake.