Rebel Skyforce (Mad Tinker Chronicles)

by J. S. Morin

  “What was that?” Erefan asked.

  “Nothing. I just said we were lucky to have—”

  “Not that! It’s that foot still, isn’t’ it? Sosha mentioned you were favoring it badly back at the thunderail.”

  “It’s getting better. I was just careless and put my whole weight on it.”

  Erefan’s eyes scanned her. Chipmunk felt like a misbehaving bit of clockwork that he was trying to troubleshoot. “I’ll send Sosha over to have a look at it.”

  “No, it’s fine.”

  Erefan walked from the cargo hold, holding his hands up in mock surrender.

  In the privacy of her own cabin, Chipmunk fumed. She lay on her bed, bootless and with her foot propped on a pile of pillows. The overhead light was enough to read by, but hardly kept the whole of the room well lit; Chipmunk preferred the curtains drawn. Even with her cabin a story up from ground level while they were landbound, she feared that surreptitious looks might come through the cabin window out of curiosity mixed with ingenuity.

  “I told him it was fine,” Chipmunk protested as Sosha unwound the bandage from her left foot.

  “And you’ve told me that three times before when I’ve found stitches ripped out. This foot is never going to heal if you don’t keep off it. I can only imagine the scar that—”

  Chipmunk had been intent not to look while Sosha worked, but she propped herself up on her elbows to find out what had caused Sosha to break off midsentence. “Scar that will what?”

  Sosha didn’t answer, but instead stood and drew open the little curtain covering the cabin window. “I need better light.” Chipmunk shielded her eyes against the afternoon glare that came in through the west-facing glass.

  “What’s wrong? Did I tear another stitch?”

  Sosha shook her head. “Not this time,” she replied somberly.

  “Good, wrap it back up and I’ll get back to the bridge. And you don’t have to sound so glum about being wrong.”

  Chipmunk tried to push herself up to a seated position, but Sosha’s hand forced her back down. “The wound’s gone septic.”

  “What? No.” Chipmunk brushed aside Sosha’s hand and sat up. She grabbed her ankle and twisted the injured foot around until she could see the bottom. The stitches were barely visible amid the swollen, discolored flesh. “But you washed it every time. That’s supposed to stop infections.”

  “Every time you split it open, grime can get in there. I kept it clean as best I could, but you kept reinjuring it.” Sosha’s voice was small, apologetic. She couldn’t look Chipmunk in the eye.

  “Well, cut it open, lance it, whatever you need to get it cleaned out properly this time,” Chipmunk said. “Just get it over with.”

  “It’s not that simple, Rynn. Look at your ankle.”

  Chipmunk shifted her grip where she had taken her ankle in hand. Darkened lines stood out against her pale skin, like rivers on a map. She pulled her hands away and wiped them on her pants.

  “It’s on the inside,” Sosha said. “The blackened blood is showing through the skin.”

  “What do you have to do?”

  “I think you know.”

  Chipmunk shook her head. “No. No, you can’t cut my foot off.” She pushed herself back against the wall of her cabin, as far from Sosha as she could get, swinging her leg over the far side of the bed. She was only a half pace away.

  “You think I want to?” Sosha asked. “Rynn, you’re only going to get worse. This isn’t a joke; if it lingers, it’ll kill you.”

  “There’s got to be another way,” Chipmunk muttered, looking out the window. She turned to Sosha. “You’re not doing anything until I talk to Dan.”

  “I don’t think you’re being rational, Rynn. He’s already said he won’t teach us spells.”

  “Maybe I can burn the taint out with aether. Maybe his world knows a medicine for it. I’m not giving up without at least asking him.”

  The room lurched just then. A shuddering of the walls and floor that had been absent during their time on the ground had resumed: the sound of the pumps and propellers. The Jennai was taking off.

  “Poo!” Sosha swore daintily. “They’re supposed to have waited for me. The Cloudsmith doesn’t have anyone—”

  “They’re not worrying about the runes right now. We wouldn’t be lifting if we hadn’t been spotted. I left orders.”

  Chipmunk swung her perilously wounded foot over to Sosha. “Wrap it, quickly.”

  “You’re not in any condition to go up there.”

  “None of us are going to be in any condition if we get killed.”

  Chipmunk arrived on the bridge with Sosha acting as her crutch. Outside the ship, rifles fired at assailants she could only guess about.

  “Captain Bosley, report!” Chipmunk pushed past the captain and attending officers, and collapsed against the forward railing just in time to see a trio of liftwing airships buzz past. They were of similar design to the ones the rebellion had captured for their use, but they had the original repeater rifles still attached.

  “We’ve got eight of them on us,” Bosley replied smartly, like the sea captain his twin was in Tellurak. “We shot down a ninth.”

  “Have we launched our own yet?” Chipmunk looked out the window to get a sense of the battlefield. This was the first time they’d been caught out in open skies; none of them had battled in the air before. The enemy crafts looked like a scattered flock of birds, and indeed some of the distant figures she spotted might have been birds for all she knew. She drew her pistol and used the optics to get a better view.

  “No ma’am,” Bosley replied. “Seemed like we’d be sending Rennon to his death, setting the dogs on him nine-to-one.”

  Chipmunk nodded. “Good. You were right to keep him in. Those are better suited to hitting slow-moving targets.”

  “Like us.”

  “Like us,” Chipmunk agreed. “Any damage to the vacuum tanks?”

  “Hard to say. Pump gauges say we’re evacuating just fine, but we won’t be able to tell for certain until we’re closer to full vacuum. For now, we’re climbing at least.”

  “Well, we’re already shooting at them. Nothing more to do for now but hope we get them all before we take too much damage to keep vacuum.”

  “Aye aye,” Bosley acknowledged.

  Chipmunk stood and watched along with Sosha and the bridge crew of the Jennai as the Ruttanian airships danced around them in the sky. They looped and climbed, dove and spun, raking the two rebel airships with their repeater rifles with each pass. The bullets plinked against the reinforced walls of the vacuum tanks, trying to turn the stadium-sized chambers into sieves. There was no way to judge the damage except by the vacuum gauges and their altitude. It was possible that the bullets were deflecting off the thick steel plating required to keep the vacuum pressure from caving in the tanks. It was just as likely that each pass jabbed a row of holes into the Jennai and the Cloudsmith like a sewing machine.

  It was a surreal sight, beautiful in a way that only a layer of intervening glass could make it. They were spectators watching a theater performance of acrobats and knife-jugglers. Then on one pass, a Ruttanian airship lined itself up to make a run straight for the bridge of the Jennai. Chipmunk saw it through the sight of her pistol and drew back, startled. She looked through the window without the sight and confirmed that one was headed right for her position.

  “Stand back,” Chipmunk said to everyone. She looked through the sight and located the airship at greater magnification. She needed one hand to hold her balance, so keeping the gun steady gave her trouble. The airship grew larger by the second in her view.

  Sosha put a hand on her shoulder. “Rynn, what are you—”

  “Stand back!” Chipmunk shouted, shouldering Sosha aside and quickly reacquiring her aim.

  Click.

  The forward window of the Jennai shattered, allowing the wind and noise of the outside onto the bridge. Chipmunk watched through the sight, momentarily losing her t
arget as she jumped at the sound of breaking glass. The Ruttanian airship was gone.

  Leaning out the now-open window, Chipmunk watched the pieces of airship scatter as they fell. Her shot must have connected with the engine block for it to have torn the craft apart like that. She had worried briefly that her coil gun might have been too powerful to do major damage, that it might have just made a small, neat hole.

  “Rynn, what were you thinking?” Sosha asked. Broken glass crunched underfoot as those on the bridge rushed to have a look at the falling airship.

  “Nice shot, General,” Captain Bosley commented.

  “Thanks. Get someone to sweep up this mess.” Chipmunk stood in place, not daring to set foot on broken glass again, even with proper boots to protect her feet. By the amount scattered on the floor, most of the glass shards had been blasted overboard to become a hazard to some scrub-farmer’s harvest. Had the Jennai been hovering instead of motoring full ahead, hardly any would have blown back inside.

  Chipmunk took a few more shots out the window to be thorough. A volunteer was already at work sweeping up broken glass with a silver-plated dustpan and a wood-handled brush from the janitorial supplies in first-class. Only the top and back of the sweeper’s head were visible to Chipmunk as the man bent over his work. She didn’t know his name. It was not so long ago that she had been the nameless peon who toiled at floor level, now she ordered others to do such work for her. She made a mental note to learn his name once the bullets were done flying; it was exactly what Mrs. Bas-Klickten would never have done, and that made it worth doing.

  Footsteps hammered the stairway up to the bridge. “General! General Chipmunk!” The voice grew louder as the footsteps approached. The door of the bridge flew open and a panting Innin stumbled in. “Two of the Ruttanian airships are breaking off the attack.”

  Chipmunk slammed the butt of her pistol on the railing. “Damn those cowards! What heading?”

  “South-southeast, about oh-nine-five,” Innin replied.

  “Rennon’s going to have to go after them,” Captain Bosley said.

  Chipmunk shook her head. “They have a head start. There’s no reason to think our airship’s any faster than theirs. It’s the same model.” Her mind whirred. Captain Bosley got half a word of comment out of his mouth before Chipmunk’s raised hand cut him off. The crew remained silent as the wind blew around them and the propellers hummed.

  “I’ll go,” Chipmunk said. “I can try overloading the runes and see if I can make it go faster than they were designed.” She hobbled along the railings and headed for the door.

  Sosha cut her off, blocking the railing and offering no assistance as a shoulder to lean on. “No, Rynn. You’re in no condition to be walking, let alone flying.”

  “It’s either you or me,” Chipmunk replied. “And I know you won’t pull the trigger even if you can catch them.”

  “General Chipmunk,” Sosha said, relenting on the use of her official title, “it is inappropriate for you to risk yourself on a dangerous mission with low prospects for success.”

  “I’m afraid she’s right, ma’am,” Captain Bosley agreed, sounding relieved not to have been the one to broach the subject.

  Chipmunk searched the eyes of the crew for signs that she had support on the matter. Each man and woman met her gaze, but what she saw was support of a different sort: hard, stoic eyes, firm set jaws, unwavering attention. She wasn’t one of them—she was their leader. Perhaps they admired her willingness, but she saw no sign that any of them were eager to let her run off to pilot a liftwing after the fleeing kuduks.

  She hobbled back to the broken window and looked out to the northeast. The low-lying foothills of the Homespires beckoned, promising safety if only they could couch themselves among the rolling landscape without embedding themselves in it first.

  “Slow to quarter speed. Set a heading two-nine-zero. Signal the Cloudsmith to do likewise.”

  “Yes ma’am. Into the mountains,” Captain Bosley replied. He took the wheel as one of the officers cranked back the engine power to the propellers.

  “Not that far. We just need to find a place to put ourselves back together a bit. We need lift, and we can’t get it without some upgrades. Set us down in the first valley deep enough that we can’t be seen from the plains.”

  “Aye aye, General,” Captain Bosley acknowledged.

  “Do you ever get the impression that we’ve mixed up our jargon a bit there, Captain.”

  “A bit, maybe,” Captain Bosley agreed. “But I won’t worry myself over it unless I start calling you Miss Errol, or General Madlin.” He winked.

  The western half of the valley was already blanketed in shadows as the eastern rises clung to the sunset light. The Jennai and the Cloudsmith had set down so close together that their vacuum tanks were dangerously close to touching. Chipmunk had ordered them rearranged five times before they were parked to her satisfaction. Crews were already on the access ladders, checking for damage, and would continue until the evening light failed them.

  Chipmunk stood off to the side of the airships, watching the work by her father’s side.

  “Your plan had merits, Rynn,” Erefan admitted. “But we didn’t put off enough weight for it to matter.”

  “Enough to maneuver the foothills, at least.”

  Erefan shrugged. “In, yes. Out, we’ll have to see about.”

  “We’re going to have to use runes.”

  Erefan glowered at her in reply.

  “You’ve seen what my coil guns can do. Why do levitation runes bother you?”

  Erefan plucked Chipmunk’s gun from her holster before she could object. “If this little trinket fails, what happens? No shot. Buoyancy rune fails, we fall from the sky.”

  “And if this one fails,” Chipmunk pulled down her scarf, baring her slave collar, “my head comes off. When did you become such an old woman?”

  “I started worrying more when I realized you’d stopped altogether. You’re letting this General Chipmunk business get to your head. When I’ve gotten the world-ripper on Tinker’s Island built, we’ll be able to get around easily. Until then, we just need to keep ourselves safe.”

  “You don’t trust magic, but you’ll trust that machine of yours?” Chipmunk asked. “You can’t tell me that thing isn’t magic.”

  “It’s just a science we don’t understand. Kezudkan used a rune-powered dynamo for the spark, but the device is scientific in nature, I’m sure of it.”

  “If I hook a bunch of dials and switches to the runes, would you feel better about levitation? That’s all I saw on your machine.”

  “Before you blasted it.”

  Chipmunk’s brow knit. “It was a magical device, controlled by comforting little dials from a lab-grade spark supply box.”

  “Sosha told me about your foot,” Erefan said, lowering his head. Chipmunk took the change of subject as a victory, since her father rarely admitted a lost argument directly.

  “It’s her fault. If she’d sewn it up better—”

  “She warned you to stay off it, and look what it got you,” Erefan snapped.

  “Well, I’m going to take a crack at it myself, once I’ve slept,” Chipmunk shot back. “Sometimes it feels like I’m the only one around here actually trying.”

  “What, you think you’re a better nurse than Sosha now? You let your foot go septic without even noticing.”

  “Well, I’m going to see if my Veydran friends can help. Korr and Tellurak don’t seem to be offering me any options.”

  Erefan crossed his arms. “Magic isn’t a cure-all.”

  “You know, from what I’ve heard, it is.”

  Chapter 5

  “An understanding of metallurgy is fundamental to the tinker’s trade. Without suitable materials, dreams remain trapped in the mind.” –The Tinker’s Handbook, Vol 1., Foreword

  The new workshop had been just another old warehouse two months ago. It had been repurposed; the barrels and crates that had cluttered the corn
ers had been replaced by the trappings of a new sort of industry. A smelter took up one corner, smaller than the one in the foundry and made for processing a single material: copper. The workshop was devoted to the single purpose of working copper, drawing it out into long, thin strands, or casting it into shapes of cunning design.

  The transformation had taken place with all the focus and relentless drive that Cadmus Errol was known for. He had laid the groundwork for the facility over years of sketching and figuring in his head. Because his timeline in Korr had been greatly accelerated by Kezudkan’s eagerness, he had been forced to focus on preparing his people for the great escape, which ended up not happening quite how he’d planned it. In an ideal world, Cadmus would have been ready with a second machine before he ever made use of the one in the daruu’s workshop. But neither Tellurak nor Korr were ideal worlds.

  The Mad Tinker stalked his newest factory, peering over the shoulders of workers and stopping to confiscate production orders long enough to peruse them before handing them back. Nothing exceeded his expectations, but nothing fell short of them, either. He knew his people. There were mechanics among the twinborn who had worked with copper in Korr, who knew the workings of a wire-pulling machine, even some who had worked with spark before—not that there was any spark on Tinker’s Island yet.

  One of the twinborn foremen approached from across the factory. “Morning, Cadmus. How’s Rynn?”

  It sounded odd hearing his daughter’s Korrish name on his men’s lips. They’d always called her Madlin, even when talking about Rynn. It was often easier for everyone to use names from a single world, but those days were fading to distant memory as the distinctions became important.

  “Morning yourself, Mr. Grandle. Rotten,” Cadmus replied. “She’s off on some miscalibrated trial to find magic that’ll fix that foot of hers.”