rumble of thrust. From beneath the platform, the ship’s prow appeared. The point widened to its full width, emerging like a predator from its den, sliding past the battened sail and the mast, and finally to the quarterdeck, with its wheel and control array. From above I could make out the forms of the crew as if I were looking down on a set of figurines. Dennel McMurtry’s top-hat and protuberant belly; Thorley Colburn, all shoulders and blond hair; Eliza Kinally’s hips and wild red mane; Scofield’s balding pate and faceful of snow-white; Nerimund’s hunchback and pointed, drooping ears. I couldn’t see Sable’s thick braid or Neale Glynton’s gaunt boyish frame anywhere. Something had gone wrong.
When the Galeskimmer was under me, I released the ingot. The deck cracked beneath my boots, straining against the force of my landing. Muffled words rang through the bluewave comm Mr. Scofield was holding up to his ear, but the turbines were so loud I couldn’t make out the voice or its owner. We were in place below the facility, staring up at the wide barn doors where all the deliveries entered.
“Where are the others?” Dennel McMurtry asked, reaching out to make sure I was steady on my feet.
“Backstabbers,” I said. “We have to tell Scofield… everything’s changed.”
I moved for the quarterdeck, but Scofield took his hand off the wheel to level a finger at me, and shouted, “Restrain that man.”
“Scofield, listen to me. I’m not the one you need to worry about. Give me a minute to explain.”
“Sable warned you about what would happen if you lied again,” Dennel said, threatening to grab me.
“I’m not lying. Dangit, I’m not lying.”
Dennel lunged at me. The medallion surged, my body harnessing its power. Before he’d gotten halfway to me, I’d slipped out of his reach and he was grabbing at empty air. Taking the quarterdeck stairs in one leap, I drew the knife from Scofield’s belt and pulled the old man against me, holding the blade to his throat.
“Listen, all of you,” I yelled. “I’m not going to hurt anybody. I just need a second to explain what’s going on. Clinton Vilaris is not who he says he is. He isn’t a primitive. He’s a techsoul named Lafe Yingler who infiltrated the city of Pyras years ago and has been planning its downfall ever since. Yingler is a dangerous man. Whatever you just heard over the bluewave, Mr. Scofield, it was a lie. There’s a streamboat armed with a big pulser cannon headed this way. Now, I know this is a lot to take in, but I’m not the bad guy. The man you know as Vilaris has orchestrated this entire ruse. He’s the one we need to worry about. I’m going to let you go, Mr. Scofield. I apologize that I had to hold you hostage, but please… I’m on your side. They’re not.”
The second I released my hold on Mr. Scofield, there was a deafening crash behind me. I whirled to see the barn doors on Gilfoyle’s processing facility blow open and crumple like tinfoil. A filthy black hovertruck careened through the opening, yawing sideways and skidding through the air like a bear on a frozen lake. In the driver’s seat, young Neale Glynton was wide-eyed and struggling. A melee was breaking out in the truck bed as Sable attempted to hold her own against a pair of thugs with pulserods.
“You sent the Captain and the cabin boy in?” I said, shoveling a hand toward the lumbering hovertruck. “I specifically remember putting you and Thorley in charge of the breaking-in part.”
Dennel shrugged. “Cap’n’s orders.”
I took aim with my arm, then cursed at the useless grapplewire port. If only Chaz were here to give me a quick fix, I thought, before remembering that Chaz was a dirty traitor. Screw Chaz, I corrected myself. I darted forward, leapt down the stairs, and ran along the deck toward the bow, following the hovertruck as it sped along overhead. I was going to make a jump for it, and there would be no second Galeskimmer to break my fall this time.
The hovertruck dipped as Neale struggled with the controls, dropping in so close I could smell the displacer engines and feel their heat on the top of my head. The vehicle zoomed past just as I reached the bow.
Solenoid.
I was flying toward it with a little extra in my jump, and then the hovertruck dipped again and I was too high, soaring over the top and watching the thugs begin to beat Sable to the floor of the truck bed with their pulserods.
I spun the cylinder in my arm—not the one with the grapplewire; the left arm, with the darts. I locked in a good one, the readout in my enhanced eye telling me what I was dealing with. I flicked my wrist back, and the dart shot through the top of the thug’s skull. My body was flipping as I flew past the truck bed and lost sight of them, crashing onto the hovertruck’s hood like a thrown wrestler. Little boy Neale smiled at me and gave the controls an excited yank. I bounced up and slammed down hard again. Good thing I wasn’t a primie, or I might’ve broken something.
Where the hood met the windshield, I clung by the tips of my fingers and tried to get to one knee. We were swaying as we flew. I could hear Sable’s gasps and feel the pulserod zapping her, missed strokes gonging the metal bed and vibrating through the truck. I lifted myself and ran up the hood, letting the truck’s velocity carry me over the windshield and across the roof. I spun around and laid out, driving my shining telerium wrist spikes through the thug’s shoulders and dragging him along with me.
We crashed down next to the motionless body of the other thug, the one I’d hit with the dart. The live thug fought back all the harder as I plunged my spikes into his face and chest. He was alternating clumsy swings between the pulserod and a closed fist when he caught me on the shoulder. Just a glancing blow, but with a pulserod, even a glancing blow is enough.
The prickling wave jolted through me. I slumped over, mashing my face against the truck bed. The thug climbed to his feet, rivulets of purplish blood streaming from his puncture wounds like runoff from a sewer drain. Sable groaned and rolled over, still dazed and waiting to regain control of her body. My vision flashed white as the pulserod crashed into the back of my skull, its electric echo radiating through me. The thug reeled back and swung again, bashing my ribcage with another shocking blow.
Neale must have decided we were getting too far away from the Galeskimmer, because the hovertruck twisted around and everyone slid across the bed like crackers on a fast-moving plate. Cumbersome as these hovertrucks were, the ability of centrifugal force to part your feet from the ground is not something to underestimate. The thug toppled over me, his pulserod spinning away across the bed. I slid toward the back edge; the dead thug slid into me, and Sable into him.
We were headed back toward the Galeskimmer now, picking up speed but not flying high enough to clear the mast when we got there. If little Neale Glynton wasn’t driving fast enough to snap the mast in half, he was going to wrap this truck around it like a breakfast omelet. I was less worried about our flight path than about the thug who was picking himself up at the back of the truck bed. He had a plasticky face and robotic hands—exposed telerium digits, tension hinges, and optical fibers snaking down his arms. Sable and I were getting to our feet too. Now it was two against one. But that didn’t matter much, seeing as our ride was about to come to an abrupt end.
What bothered me most, however, was that beyond the far side of Platform 22, the shape of my Ostelle was emerging from the fog.
10
I shot the frayed end of my grapplewire into my opposite hand, holding it like I was getting ready to floss a giant’s teeth. Sable began to circle the tiny truck bed, knifeblade at the ready. The thug eyed the pulserod lapping at his heels, judging whether we’d let him crouch for it. No, he decided, and backed up a step to activate his knucklespurs. They slammed out from his clenched robotic fists with a metallic stomping sound, miniature telerium pyramids that made his hands look like dog collars.
We were speeding toward the Galeskimmer. I didn’t have time for this nonsense. I feinted with the grapplewire. The thug flinched. I shot him with a dart, the same kind I’d used to put a hole in his buddy’s skull. He plucked it from his chest and tossed it behind him, a smug look on his punctured
, bloody face. Then his look turned sour. He staggered, buckled over, and flopped off the rear edge of the truck bed.
Sable breathed a sigh of relief. We turned and peered over the front lip of the truck bed to see where we were headed. The Galeskimmer had docked itself below the crumpled doors of the processing facility. Thorley and Dennel were inside, tossing chunky burlap sacks into the growing dust cloud they’d started on the Galeskimmer’s deck. My Ostelle was coming across the port side, leveling the pulser cannon and making ready to fire. Carrying gravstone on a ship that flies on driftmetal runners is a bad idea of the most monumental kind. But hey, what other option did we have?
I vaulted onto the hovertruck’s roof, swung down onto the running board, and cracked the door to pull myself inside. “Where’d you learn to drive, the bloody circus?” I said.
Neale might have blushed, but he was already so red in the face I couldn’t tell the difference. He gave me the slightest shrug. He was tiptoeing the pedals from the edge of the seat, his chin lifted so he could see over the steering column.
“It hovers,” I said, grabbing his hand and easing the controls into their neutral position. “You don’t have to stay moving all the time. Press the right pedal and let the left one