side and cut across the living room. His foot slipped when he stepped up onto the coffee table. He went stumbling over the back of his oxblood sofa and landed on the hardwood floor behind it with a thud. I made a diving leap across the room, tackling him in mid-air as he was getting to his feet. He may have been wearing the medallion, but he was drunk, his reflexes slowed. We toppled to the floor and I pulled myself on top of him. I began to beat him, slamming my fist into his face until there was a rush of blue blood and the gleam of telerium-laced bone shone through on his cheeks and forehead and chin.
“Gareth… use the crackler,” I heard Vilaris say.
“I can’t,” Blaylocke said. “I don’t have it anymore. The night we escaped from Mallentis, Muller swiped the remote and destroyed it. I haven’t had control of him since.”
“Are you joking? He could’ve walked away any time he wanted? Or worse… he could’ve murdered us in our sleep.” There was something different in Vilaris’s voice. A commanding indignation I’d never heard him express before.
“He wants his share of the money first, I’m sure,” Blaylocke said.
Vilaris laughed. “There’s no share in any of this for him.”
I stopped hitting Gilfoyle and let his head clunk to the floor. I turned around, not believing what I’d just heard. My hand was smeared with Gilfoyle’s blue-violet blood. Telerium was showing through the broken skin on the tips of my knuckles. The three primitives were standing there in the living room, spectators on the far side of the sofa.
I didn’t know what to say. They were speaking as if they barely knew me. Like I was some rabid animal they’d been forced to share a cage with for the past month. These weren’t my friends. Why had I started to think we were alike? Humans—primitives. With red blood and brittle bones and muscles that strained and tore like paper. We weren’t the same, and they’d known it for themselves all along. I saw it now: the clandestine brotherhood they shared. A brotherhood that I wasn’t a part of. The three of them stood together like a flock of gossiping hens, observing me. Studying me. Judging me. I was a tool to them, after all. Only a tool.
“What did you just say?” I asked, standing.
“I said there’s no share for you,” Vilaris repeated. “You belong in a Regency prison, and so does the entire crew of the Galeskimmer.”
“You’re not making any sense,” I said.
Gilfoyle lifted his head, eyes swollen and bloodshot behind a faceful of blood. His eyes grew wide when he saw Vilaris standing there. “Lafe?”
I looked at Vilaris again, then down at Gilfoyle.
“Hello Alastair,” said Vilaris.
Gilfoyle was bewildered. “What are you doing here?”
“Renegotiating our contract.”
“Hold on a minute,” I said. “Vilaris, what’s going on? He called you Lafe. As in, Lafe Yingler.”
“You can call me Lafe too, if you’d like,” Vilaris said. “It’s my name. And if you let me finish, I’ll tell you exactly what’s going on.”
Chaz and Blaylocke were backing away, putting distance between us. Had they known Vilaris and Yingler were the same person? Or had they been just as clueless as I was?
“Go right ahead,” I said, holding out my bloody hand. “You just better finish with a good reason why I shouldn’t do worse to you than I just did to Gilfoyle, here.”
“A reason like that doesn’t exist,” said Vilaris… and Lafe Yingler. “You should want to tear me limb from limb, Muller. I never needed the crackler to control you. You’ve been the perfect pawn from the very beginning—a wanted man with nowhere to turn; desperate for the promise of a little coin in exchange for doing what you do best; and eager for a chance to take revenge on the man who tried to have you killed. I was lucky you fell into my lap the way you did. Years ago, when I first came to Pyras, I knew I was being given an opportunity. One I would be crazy not to take. Pyras saw the immediate effects of my presence there; I opened every avenue of trade for that city and made them more prosperous than they’d been in a hundred years. Primitives loved the idea of a techsoul who advocated for them so much that they accepted my existence without rancor. But the truth is that Lafe Yingler is more myth than man. I remained a recluse, revealing myself and exerting my influence through the persona of Clinton Vilaris. And now, thanks to you, I’ve become just as prosperous as the city itself. Gilfoyle did pay me for the gravstone. And he’s about to pay me a second time… by giving it back.”
“You’re a maniac,” I said. “Did you sabotage the Clarity too? Some kind of test to see whether I’d save your life?”
“Unfortunately… no. If only I were so bold and audacious as all that. I’m afraid Councilors Malwyn and DeGaffe have been plotting my demise for some time now. When we discovered the half-severed rigging lines, they were the first suspects who came to mind. I’ll straighten all that out when I return to Pyras.”
“What makes you think this is going to turn out in your favor?” I asked. “You’ll be as wanted as I am, both in Pyras and in the stream, when the Civs find out what you’ve done.”
“No one in Pyras will be the wiser. And as for the stream… would you mind telling me what I’ve done that’s against the law? Did I break into the house? Did I take a hostage? Did I strike a blow, or make a threat? You did all those things, Muller. You did them very well, as a matter of fact… so well that I feel I should repay you. As thanks for your dedicated service, I’ve taken the liberty of reuniting you with your parents. I’ve also given them a gift I think will aid in that family reunion. If you’ll take a look out the window, just there.”
A dark shape was hovering in the fog, no more than a dozen yards from the platform. I’d know that shape anywhere. It was my ship. My Ostelle. A manned pulser cannon swiveled on the ship’s bow in place of the old gun platform. It was swiveling in my direction.
I knelt and ripped Gilfoyle’s medallion off his chest. One long dive took me through the window and sent me crashing to the platform below in a hail of shattered glass. Around my neck, the medallion latched itself to me, tiny prongs snaking deep into my skin. My body came alive with a warm, fresh feeling, like waking from sleep and clearing your sinuses and taking a dump all at once. My mind began to hum like a sewing machine, a thousand tiny impulses turning my regular thought patterns into a smooth, flowing harmony. I’d known this medallion was worth more than all the gravstone money could buy. Gilfoyle was an old man, pudgy and out of shape. He’d used the medallion to sharpen his mind more than anything. In someone who could use it to its full potential, an external mod like this could be so much more.
The first pulser burst crashed into the platform and spread across the deck. I vaulted sideways, rolling over my shoulders and back to my feet. Blue arcs raced outward from the burst before sputtering to an end, the tips crackling in my toes. Ostelle fired again. I dodged, not as fast this time. The outer burst caught my leg, and I felt the pinprick spiders shooting up to my knee. I cursed, hopping. Triggering my solenoid, I leapt over the side without touching the platform as the third pulser burst erupted in blue along the edge.
I was falling again, gripping the smaller chunk of driftmetal like some beloved habit I didn’t want to break. The numbers appeared before long—not directly below me, but a little to my left, their blocky white lettering stark against the dark gray metal of the platform. I was slowing down again as the smaller ingot neared its altitude of equilibrium. Chaz had counterbalanced it perfectly, using careful calculations of body mass and velocity—or something like that. That’s why he was the gadgeteer and I was the muscle. The lackwit muscle, as my dear old dad might’ve said. I wondered how long it was going to take dear old dad and his crew of morally-confused pirates to find me in the fog.
I came to a stop, hanging by my chest pouch like some kid trying to finish a chin-up in gym class. Platform 22 was at an inaccessible distance now that Gilfoyle had cut off my grappler. Jerk. And speaking of jerks, where the heck were Scofield and the Galeskimmer? Blaylocke was the one holding t
he bluewave comm we’d planned to signal them with. I still didn’t know whether Blaylocke and Chaz were in on Vilaris’s—Yingler’s—plans. Maybe Blaylocke had told the Galeskimmer to leave. Maybe Vilaris had overpowered him and Chaz and done it himself. My guess was as good as mine…
Platform 22 held Gilfoyle’s processing facility, a rectangle of corrugated sheet metal with a shallow roof and two smokestacks at the far end. The stuff we needed was inside. Payment or no payment, the primies weren’t my concern anymore, and neither was Gilfoyle. Lafe Yingler had seen to that. From where I was sitting—or hanging, as the case may have been—they were all traitors. I had the medallion now, and I wasn’t giving Vilaris/Yingler the satisfaction of another win. If anyone was going to steal that gravstone, it was me.
I can’t just hang here forever, I told myself. I have to make it to that platform. I began to build momentum, tucking my legs and swinging, using the driftmetal ingot as a fulcrum. If I couldn’t inch my way over to the platform, I could at least make a jump for it. And if I missed, maybe I’d be lucky enough to hit another platform on the way down.
I had built up a good tempo, my legs going almost horizontal on the upswing, when I heard engines through the fog. The high, thrumming whine of turbines, and the deep