Sly Mongoose (27 page)

Some deals one just didn’t take. Still. “Do you think that offer would have come if I wasn’t here?”

Itotia didn’t respond, she gave a command, and someone closed the hatches. “We won’t know now.”

Necalli strode across to them. “I gave the order to destroy the airship. It’s not worth the risk trying to board it.”

A few minutes later the heavy repeated thud of an antiship gun filled the docks. The Swarm airship crumpled and ripped off the end of the docking tube, taking several dock lines with it as it fell.

“What kind of people are we,” Pepper said, “if we just hand it all over and accept the price the Swarm wanted?”

He left them on the docks, but Itotia cornered him in Heutzin’s workshop. “Why don’t the Ragamuffins just come to protect us all?”

“This is the DMZ,” Pepper said. “It was expensive enough to fight the League to agree to leave this area alone, and that the Raga should be allowed to be independent, separate. And now, they don’t want another war with the League. We’ll break ourselves, on both sides.”

“But why the aliens?”

“The Satraps destroyed most of their refineries, and we’re clever monkeys, but not clever enough to get deep down in those black box machines to figure out what makes them tick. We have no idea how to use most Satrapic technologies. And when we rose up, we killed many of the Satraps, and many of the rest either committed suicide, or just disappeared.

“The problem is that we’re like a bunch of tribesmen. We stole the guns from the invaders, and we can use them, but we don’t know how to make them, or the replacement gunpowder. And we’re running out.
Some of these aliens are going to ground, they know more about Satrapic technology than we do. They may even be hiding a Satrap.”

Itotia shook her head, disgusted. “Our lives are weighed against fuel and technology.”

“Of course.” Pepper looked at her. “Civilizations live and die by power and technology. If New Anegada throws its best, uses all its resources, to fight here, they leave that whole planet open and undefended. There would have to be an incredible payoff to risk the home planet.”

She sighed. “So it’s just us versus the Swarm.”

Pepper nodded.

A
n hour passed before Achmed pulled the ore carrier out of the dive. The airship chasing them flew far overhead, but far enough behind them that it couldn’t drop any more charges.

The infected crew’s fevers had passed. Timas and Katerina walked down to watch as they stirred through the thick glass of the airlock. Their movements were jerky, as if their bodies were being controlled by strings.

The nearest two staggered to their feet and flung themselves at the glass, beating it with loose and awkward fists.

Timas jumped back. “They look possessed.”

“They are.” Katerina stepped forward and looked. “It’s just like Pepper described.”

“But maybe there is still something deep down, human. Maybe they can be fixed.”

As an answer, Katerina tapped the airlock’s control panel. Through the window they could see the outer lock door slide open. The Swarm inside threw themselves against the door and silently continued pounding against the glass. “They’ve destroyed entire cities, millions of people, and have almost taken all Chilo for their own. Our world, Timas. And they’ve done it in a timespan of days. We have to act quickly. You were right up there, when you said it was us or them.”

The air inside had become a muddy brown. The infected finally dropped to their knees, gasping for air that had fled, replaced by Chilo’s own poisonous mix.

“At least they don’t change to breathe Chilo’s air,” Timas said, finally looking away.

“If they did, there wouldn’t even be a chance for us.”

Katerina walked over to a small locker on the other side of the antechamber and dug around in it. “Here.” She handed him a small ear-piece the size of a seed. He slipped it into his ear.

“Hi.” Katerina’s lips didn’t move, but her voice came through in his ear.

“Welcome to the public channel,” Achmed said.

“Thanks. Do you hear me?” Timas wasn’t sure.

“Yeah, if you can hear yourself we can, too.” Katerina’s lips still didn’t move. Creepy. “Achmed, is there any way to tilt the processor to its side?”

“Yes.”

“Let’s dump the infected out like that and make sure we don’t get any surprises. I’d hate to open the door and find out they can hibernate or something.”

Timas agreed, and they both found corners to press against as the entire ore processor tilted over.

Once on their side, Katerina nodded. “They’re all out.”

The processor slowly righted itself again.

“We have another problem,” Achmed reported. “That airship is catching up. It’s also dropping down.”

“How much lower can it get?” Timas asked.

“Not too much lower before it starts getting crushed.”

“And if it keeps going, it’ll overtake us soon?” They were level again. Timas looked out of the airlock and into the haze.

“Half an hour. Then they can drop more charges.”

“Buy why? What do we have that it wants?” Timas asked. “Now that we’re escaping, it should just leave. We’re just a few extra bodies for it.”

“If it plans on spreading and taking the whole planet, the fewer humans in airships running about, the better,” Achmed replied. “There’s another cloud layer, it’s at thirty-five thousand feet. We can lose them there for sure.”

Katerina looked up, alarmed. “You said forty thousand feet was the edge of the processor’s limit.”

“At best, yes.” Achmed cleared his throat. “I think it’s our best option. And there’s another issue. We can’t do it too quickly. We can drop fast initially, but we’ll need to start adding buoyancy back as we get lower, or we’ll drop even faster. We could overshoot, or stress the hull.”

“How long?” Katerina asked.

“Slightly less than thirty minutes. It’ll be close. I wouldn’t ask you two to try for it without a Consensus here.”

“But this is your ship, and you’re the oldest.” Timas shook his head.

Katerina made a sour face. “We have the right to decide how to risk our lives. They’re every bit as important as his, don’t you think? What is age but some demarcation? Today you are twenty years and can have input on something that impacts your life, but yesterday you were nineteen and couldn’t?”

“Do you people sit around and vote on everything? Sometimes something just needs done.” Timas started walking back to the control center of the processor.

“With the right technology, it’s second nature and takes almost no time. We’re just being polite to you.”

Timas swallowed. “But he knows more.”

“Which means we should pay close attention to his advice.” Katerina looked out the airlock window. “I say we run deep and risk it.”

Achmed agreed. Now they both waited on Timas, even though they had the majority. “Okay, sure. Let’s drop.”

Katerina shut the outer door to the airlock. “We should probably be in the control room.”

“Why is that?”

“More bulkheads between us and the outside, more sealed doors.”

Timas followed. They closed thick doors and dogged them tight behind them as they went. It took five minutes to get to the control center, and by the time they did Timas noticed that he had started to sweat. “It’s getting hot.”

“The heat exchangers are getting overloaded,” Achmed said. “It’s pretty nasty outside. We’ve done most of the drop already.”

“We’re at the edge. From now on, it gets dangerous.”

“Slow and steady.” Achmed grimaced. “And with much prayer on my part.”

For Timas, that sounded like a good idea.

The entire processor creaked, and in the distance, echoing down corridors, pings and snaps made both Katerina and Timas jump.

Achmed closed his eyes, sweat rolling down his forehead. He was focusing on safely taking them into the clouds once again. The heat got unbearable, even the consoles got too hot to touch.

Timas kept swallowing. His clothes were drenched. His exposed skin stuck to the chair.

“Six thousand to go.”

An explosion shook the ship. Timas jumped. “What was that?”

“The balloons just burst. We’re falling a bit fast, but I’m dumping ballast, I anticipated this happening. Just falling a bit fast.”

Another explosion jarred the processor. Timas wiped sweat away from his eyes and gripped the chair. They weren’t going to make it. If the balloons kept bursting like that what would keep the processor up? Its natural air inside?

Achmed looked up. “Without the balloons we can keep altitude at this height: the
Triple-Two
is built to level on its own air at fifty thousand. We’re dropping below, that’s a risk, yes, but as long as our hull doesn’t break, we should be able to climb back up with our safety balloons. Just shoot them up ten thousand feet or so with lines attached and inflate.”

“But then the Swarm airship sees us.” Timas gripped the chair even harder as they lurched again.

“So we run low until we’re sure we dodged them.” Achmed clutched his panel as they fell again. “That should be the last of them.”

“The Swarm airship, something’s wrong with it.” Katerina tapped and a screen by Timas lit up. The tiny dot of an airship jumped, zoomed in, and resolved to show the cigar-shaped pursuer.

The pressure had shoved the skin so hard inward Timas could see the understructure of the airship. Then he saw the cabin, shattered and destroyed. “The windows all broke.”

“I think so. They must all be in the airbag, if they survived.” Katerina shook her head.

Then, as they watched, a hole appeared, widened, and, as if being crushed by a hand, the entire airship folded in on itself.

“They just committed suicide trying to follow us down.” Katerina put her hand on the console, as if trying to reach the dying airship as it fell.

“It’s not suicide to the Swarm.” Timas kept watching the airship fall. “It was like losing a fingertip, maybe. Not people, just pieces.”

An explosion rocked them, this one louder and closer than any other.

“Hull breach!” Achmed ignored the plight of the falling Swarm airship and closed his eyes.

“Is it bad?” Timas felt his stomach flip. This was it. They’d come this far, and the hull had finally given out just as he’d gotten hope back.

“It’s a hull breach, what do you mean ‘is it bad’?” Katerina snapped. The processor began to fall as air fell prey to Chilo’s heavy atmosphere rushing in, weighing the processor down, boiling it, trying to drag it down to its surface.

Timas felt that he’d always known he would die on the surface, he’d imagined it countless times at night in his bed. He’d never counted on falling out of the sky onto the surface to die, however.

J
ust walking around the docks Pepper counted a hundred airships. A bedraggled armada. Straggling airships from all around Chilo clustered around Yatapek in holding patterns, drifting with the city. Many of the Aeolian Consensus’s finest had fled aboard anything they could as the Swarm fixed its hold throughout the floating cities.

They came to Yatapek with its promise of being Swarm-free. And because Yatapek had prepared itself for the battle.

At least here, many reasoned over ship-to-ship radio, they had knowledge of what approached. And they had time to prepare, as well as a place to catch their breath.

But it also gave the Swarm time to plan, time to consolidate itself in the cities and root out any survivors or resistance, and time to slip a ship of its own into Yatapek’s armada to keep an eye on the resistance.

Pepper stopped thudding around the docks and gripped a railing. He needed to stop pacing.

Heutzin found him there, half an hour later, still gripping the railing and looking down into the loading bays where dockworkers prepped food for transport to airships full of quarantined Aeolians.

“They’re telling me the Aeolians are getting their Consensus going again, right here around us,” Heutzin said. “Zombies are zombies.”

“As long as the quarantine holds who cares what they do.” Pepper looked over at him. “What do you need?”

“The xocoyotzin are back.”

“And?”

He already knew Heutzin’s answer, or Heutzin would not hesitantly be standing there with an apologetic, and somewhat desperate, look on his face. “Nothing.”

Pepper bent the railing. “And has the importance of finding something been really, really impressed upon them?”

“They’re as desperate as any of us.”

“Give them the map, have them fill in where they searched for me.” A formality.

So that was that, then. He’d armed them with billhooks, given them the best warning he could, and figured out why the Swarm was here. And he’d done it with minimal violence.

What more could anyone have asked of him?

It was time to confirm his escape route. He had three hours of continuous power in the suit left. What could he really offer these people here? Not much.

Pepper had Heutzin take him back to the communications room. Operators packed the tiny space, taking messages from airships. A small board hung in the center of the room with airship names, designations, crew numbers, and quarantine status.

Pepper took his seat at the old radio, with a new mic. He found the right frequency using the old-fashioned dial.

The
Midas Special
still waited up there for him. “Got a lot of people worried for you.”

“How much time you giving me, Jack?”

“Ten hours.”

Pepper signed off. Ten hours before he needed to get into the emergency ball and head for the sky, giving up on all this.

The phone rang. It got handed to Heutzin, who stood. He hung it up and walked over. “Timas and the Aeolian avatar are back.”

Pepper was intrigued. “The pirates returned?” They had Scarlett jailed here, much to his annoyance. But what was the sense in worrying about negotiating with pirates when the Swarm approached? Scarlett was the last thing on anyone’s mind.

Maybe the pirates would prove a valuable ally.

“No. They escaped. They returned aboard an Aeolian ore processor.”

Itotia had a very plucky son. With a slight grin Pepper turned to Heutzin. “Take me there. I want to talk to Timas.”