Gaia's Brood

by Nick Travers

  Chapter 18

  The Shonti Bloom looms directly below me, hovering in dock G14, like a dirty rugby ball . Fear grabs me as I plummet over the side of the platform. The wind whistles past my ears and my hair streams out behind, this is certain death. I try to rationalize it as the lesser of two evils: death at the hands of assassins or death by my own hand. But I am still alive. I need to stop thinking and focus on action or I certainly will be dead.

  I hit the blimp with a thud and frantically grab anything I can find. A mooring rope catches my hand as I slide over the edge. It’s waxy and smooth—oh no, a new rope. I pray Trent has spliced it correctly or it will part under my weight. More slipping and scrabbling and a burning pain in my hand until I can grab the rope with my other hand too. I ease to a halt. The rope holds.

  Something whistles past my head. No time to look—I have to keep moving. I launch myself away from the bulging canvas of the airship’s blimp and abseil down the mooring rope. I use the arms of the stolen flight jacket like gloves to protect what is left of my hands. The shock on the faces of my crew, as I crash against the deck rail, would have been laughable in less extreme circumstances.

  Something else whistles past my head as I scrabble for a foothold on the rail—the rope is not quite long enough to take me over the rail and I slip off again. “Dive,” I scream at the gormless faces. Izzy slams the Shonti Bloom into a steep dive, the others continue to stare.

  Reacting sharply to the unexpected is not the same as intelligence.

  Scud works through so many logical possibilities in his head, he can be pretty slow on the uptake sometimes; Fernando is just slow in general. The Shonti tilts sharply forward and I, on my rope, slide down the side of the hull towards the bow—making it even more difficult to hang on. Thankfully, my crew is over their shock and scramble to help.

  More missiles whistle past and I look up. The assassins glare down at me from the dock above. Borker draws back his arm and throws another missile. A metal star punches itself into the side wall of the hull. I let go with one hand and cheekily salute him with a grin. Then I slam into something solid and lose my grip.

  Strong arms catch me and haul me onto the deck. I land in a heap and catch a brief glimpse of terror on Trent’s face as he looks up and sees Borker. I see the look of surprise on the assassin’s face too. Then I collapse, and lay there on the steep deck, laughing, crying, and fighting for breath. My lungs burn with the effort of the last few minutes and my hands and legs burn with pain, but I have survived. I have cheated death, again.

  As I lay on the sloping deck, staring up at the fabric of the blimp, relief floods my mind, and I see again Trent’s face when he hauled me in.

  “You knew,” I scream and leap painfully to my feet. I fly at Trent in a rage, smashing him backward with both hands. He staggers, but remains standing. “You knew Borker was an assassin and you never told us,” I yell.

  “No, no.”

  “You recognized the sketch in the journal and you said nothing.” I give him another shove.

  This time he bounces off a wall. He doesn’t try to defend himself: he just looks scared and starts blabbing. “I never pretended I always been on the right side of the law, have I? Do you think your Uncle’s business was always lawful? Yeah, I’ve had my run-ins with Lieutenant Borker—I detest him, but I didn’t know he was no assassin, did I?”

  He stands his ground as I stare him out, he’s lying. “But you knew crossed knives mean assassins, the sketch in the book, don’t you?”

  “Maybe,” he mumbles, like a naughty boy who wants his mothers’ tirade to end quickly.

  “And what about the Krys-knife that killed Uncle Felix,” I yell, finding another crime with which to beat him. I’m determined not to let him off too lightly. “I suppose you been hiding that from us too.”

  “I never saw no knife.” He nods toward Scud. “He hid it away too quickly.”

  I turn away in disgust. “I wonder what else you been hiding.”

  “Would it have made any difference, Nina?” I can’t believe Izzy is springing to Trent’s defense. “We would still have gone.”

  “Yes, but we might have been more cautious about it.”

  “Nina, we were fine,” Fernando scoffs, “until you stuck your interfering nose over the balcony and drew attention to us—’Here we are, look we’re snooping on you.’ The only person to blame for nearly getting us killed is you.”

  “Didn’t see you risking your pretty neck out there—you ran away. Besides, someone had to get a handle on the bigger picture.” You could cut the tension on deck with a Krys-knife.

  “Where is the disk from Gaia?” Scud asks, quietly.

  Oops, I am in trouble now. “I threw it at the assassins when they tried to kill me—”

  “What?” Izzy screeches. “We risk our lives to get our hands on the clue and you casually chuck it away—”

  “—while you were all nice and safe in the Shonti Bloom.” I’m steaming again.

  “—you’re just like your Mother.”

  Surprisingly, that remark brings clarity. As the captain I have to end this argument before it goes too far, regardless of who might be in the right. “Ok.” I raise my hands in surrender. “It’s a series of numbers and I’m going to my cabin, right now, to write them down before I forget them.” I stagger below deck, breathing hard, relieved to get away, but still furious that my crew should blame me for our bad luck.