Planesrunner (Everness Book One) (24 page)

“You know fine well we can't refuse you,” Ma Bromley said, and Everett could hear the bile and loathing in her voice. She's got you, he thought. She's played you at Queen of Hackney Great Port, the heart and soul of the old ways, and trumped your old tradition with an older one. She's beaten you. But what exactly has she won?

“We'll meet aboard your ship in five minutes,” Captain Anastasia said. “Then I shall have satisfaction.” She signalled to Sharkey to cut the transmission.

“Of course, you're right. I can't win and they won't fight clean. Mr. Sharkey, Mr. Mchynlyth, did you get that?”

“Yer insane, woman,” came the voice from down in the belly of the airship. “But I'm with ye.”

“You fought what you thought was a fight for my honour once. I didn't need it then, but I need it now. I need all the fight you have, gentlemen. I'm there to buy time. You're there to do the maximum amount of damage you can to
Arthur P
. And I'd imagine you can do a lot. Mr. Singh!” Everett started. He had been half-hypnotised by the play of snow across
Arthur P
's nose. “I need every able body. Sen, I'll need you to fly the ship. Mr. Singh, you're on the crew manifest; you fight for the ship. Mr. Mchynlyth will equip you. You feeling handy, omi?”

T
wo airships faced each other across ten metres of airspace, holding themselves in the chaotic heart of the snowstorm with delicate touches of their impellers. Ten metres, kissing distance. The docking gantries had been run out. Mchynlyth and
Arthur
P
's engineer were at work in the swirling clouds of snow, locking them together. From the out-port bay Everett thought the long, spindly bridges looked as crazy as butterfly tongues. Mchynlyth came scampering back into the bay. He gave Captain Anastasia a thumbs-up. Captain Anastasia turned up the collar of her coat. She picked up the intercom.

“Miss Sixsmyth, you have the con.
Everness
is yours.”

“Yes, ma'am. Ma…” Everett thought he heard tears in Sen's voice. It could have been the intercom, the howling of the wind drawing notes from the stanchions and beams, piling snow against the bulkheads. Captain Anastasia quickly cut the connection.

“Gentlemen, raise hell itself.”

Then she turned and strode out along the slender air bridge, high over the clashing waves of Goodwin. Her coattails billowed behind her. Then the snow swept in and Everett could see her no more. An amber light lit on a panel by the hatch. Mchynlyth thumbed a switch and retracted the air bridge.

“Clear.” Mchynlyth swung the bay door to and dogged it shut.

“Hold on,” Sen announced on the public address system. “This could get bouncy.” Everett lurched towards the exit hatch as
Everness
kicked back and away from
Arthur P
. Sharkey and Mchynlyth were already halfway down the spiral staircase to the cargo deck. Everett reeled against the handrail as Sen spun the ship with what remained of its engines and steering. The cargo deck loomed; then Everett pushed himself back from the drop. Sharkey and Mchynlyth were already pounding across the cargo deck. Captain Anastasia had reckoned she could extend the formalities to five minutes at the most. Sen had that long to get
Everness
into position to drop a raiding party. Everett reeled again. The deck tilted. If he lost his footing he could roll the entire length of
Everness
to smash into the rudder mechanisms in the tail. The ship shivered. Sen had opened up the other two starboard side engines, trading vibration damage for speed. Everett smelled the ozone-y burn of straining electrical systems beneath his feet. He went in four different directions as he crossed the last dozen metres to the cargo hatch. Sharkey had already armed himself. Mchynlyth handed Everett a dozen cable ties and what looked like a pistol with a blunderbuss bell-shaped muzzle with a plush-toy stuffed in it.

“This is a thumper. You've been on the end of one of these,” Mchynlyth said. “Hurts like buggery, don't it, but it don't put holes in the engineering. Nonlethal.” With his gun he pushed aside the tails of Sharkey's coat. Shotgun handles gleamed. Mchynlyth tutted. “Oh, and one of these.” He handed Everett an ornately curved handle. A skin-ripper. “You got to get in to get out. Up to cut, down to bond.” Mchynlyth flicked open a walkie-talkie. “We're ready and raring down here.”

“Give me a code word so I knows it's youse for pickup, ” Sen said. Sharkey and Mchynlyth looked at each other.

“Tottenham Hotspur,” Everett suggested.

“I'm over
Arthur P
,” Sen said.

“Hold on to your arses,” Mchynlyth said, and pressed the control button. Winches whined. The solid deck beneath Everett's feet lurched. A crack opened. Icy air blasted in. The crack widened into open air, into naked sky. The blizzard screamed and shrieked around the descending cargo platform, setting it rocking on its winch cables. Beneath lay the snow-covered upper hull of
Arthur P
.

“'And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers,'” Sharkey said as he descended through the whipping snow. “'And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you.'”

“I know that one,” Everett said.
“Pulp Fiction
. It's a movie in my world. Samuel L. Jackson says it just before he kills someone.”

Sharkey grinned. With the wind streaming his hair out behind him and the light in his eye, Everett could believe every dark tale told of him.

“Thirty seconds,” Mchynlyth said into the walkie-talkie. Everett wrapped an arm around a cable.
Arthur P
was so huge its hull dwindled into snow-blind invisibility forward and aft. The upper hull was wide and gently curving, but snow compacting to ice made it dangerous. Miss a footing here and you'd toboggan screaming all the way down to the sea below. The lift jolted against
Arthur
P
's skin. “The omis have landed,” Mchynlyth said. “Everett, follow me and try not to get thumped.”

Mchynlyth loped down the hull, bent low against the wind. Everett glanced over his shoulder to see the cargo pallet retract and
Everness
lift and turn away and vanish into the grey.

“Yah!” Mchynlyth flicked out his skin-ripper, stabbed it deep into Arthur P's skin and quickly cut a square. He peeled it back and peered inside. “Aye. She'll do. It's only a wee drop down.” And he was gone. A hundred metres up-hull, Sharkey cut his own entry and dropped down into
Arthur P
's interior. For a moment Everett was alone on top of the airship. Then he grasped the edge of the hole, lowered himself into the gloom, and dropped. He hit the upper catwalk hard, let his knees fold and rolled like he'd been taught in judo class. Mchynlyth beckoned him. They ran at a low crouch to the central staircase between the huge spheres of the lift cells, then sneaked down the spiral staircase to the central crosswalk. Everett felt something under his foot. The brass plate that marked the centre of gravity, the heart of
Arthur P
. Mchynlyth pointed down over the railing. A tiny figure in hi-viz orange patrolled the cargo deck. Everett produced his thumper.

“Too far,” Mchynlyth whispered. “They're on a wee string, so you can get them back after. Economical. Here.” He pulled over a couple of drop lines. Everett looped wrist and foot into the straps.

“What do you think the captain's doing?” Everett whispered.

“Fighting,” Mchynlyth said. “That French kickboxing yoke's mighty fancy, but I wouldn't count on it to save you on a Saturday night on Argyll Street. Now, I don't have the controls for these, so it's a free drop. They're on an inertia reel, so it'll not be too bad. On one. Two. Three.”

They leaped over the rail. Everett felt a moment of freefall; then the inertia reel caught the line and lowered him through
Arthur P
's cavernous interior. He braced for impact and landed soft and sure as a cat. In two steps he was in cover among the containers. Mchynlyth was concealed behind the opposite container. He gestured for Everett to move. They closed up on the crewman, one container at a time.

Cover me
, Mchynlyth mouthed, and moved into thumper range behind the crewman.

Two gunshots rang out from the forward section of the hull. They echoed from
Arthur P
's spars and struts. The crewman looked around, startled. He saw Mchynlyth and shot in the same breath. The thumper bag hit Mchynlyth in the stomach and knocked him flying into the side of a container. The crewman stepped forward to immobilize his victim. Everett stepped out of cover, aimed the blunderbuss muzzle at him, and pulled the trigger. The bag took him in the face. He went straight down. Everett darted in and swiftly cuffed him to a railing with cable ties. He went to Mchynlyth, who lay winded against the container.

“You okay?”

“No, I am not sodding okay.” He tried to sit up and bared his teeth in pain. “Ah the Dear ah the wee man. My ribs…Look, Everett, Sharkey's shooting the place up like he's refighting the Battle of Bull Run. You need to do it, man. Take her down. Bugger the
Arthur P
.”

“How do I do that? I don't know what to do.…” And as Everett was looking around at the batteries beneath him, the cargo containers around him, the catwalks and the gas cells above him, he did know. It all began with the forklift truck. Everett had watched Sharkey during the loading of Everness and knew how to hit the latches to unlock
Arthur P
's containers from the deck. Now, the forklift. It was easy to start; it was never designed to work anywhere but on ship so there was no security to unlock. It was easy and fun to drive. Everett backed up to get a good long run.

“What the sweet suffering are you at, wee lad?” Mchynlyth shouted, struggling to his feet.

Everett rammed a container. It shifted a few centimetres. He backed up and rammed it again. A few centimetres more. Again, and again, and again; each time, a few centimetres. A few centimetres was all he needed. A few centimetres would kick it off. Physics would do the rest. The
Arthur P
deckhand had recovered, and he lunged at Everett on the forklift. The cable tie snapped him up short. He reached for a walkie-talkie. Mchynlyth trained his thumper on him.

“Now, behave.”

But Everett was done down on the cargo deck. He hooked on to a drop line and jerked, triggering the inertia reel. High above in the roof of
Arthur P
, smart-metal springs flipped to an alternative shape. Everett was snatched into the air. He hurtled up past the central spine. He heard Mchynlyth's call from far below among the unsecured containers.

“This had better be pretty damn brilliant, Mr. Singh.”

Timing. Goalkeeper timing. Everett jumped from the line as it whisked him past the upper catwalk and dropped onto the carbon mesh as neatly as if he'd just scooped in an in-swinger bound for the top right corner of the net. Net. It was all about nets. Nets and containers, and that tiny brass medal at the centre of gravity.

More shots, flat and fast and closer to where he had left Mchynlyth now. He should have taken the walkie-talkie. No time for that. Look. Work it out. Think in three and more dimensions. See. There. The third gas cell up from the CoG. Everett climbed up on the railing, jumped, and grabbed two handfuls of containment netting. He wrapped his left arm through the weave and freed the skin-ripper. Up to cut. Carbon nanofibre was carbon nanofibre, whether it was ship skin or gas-cell netting. He slid up the switch and in one move cut a metre-long gash in the netting. The gas cell, as huge to him as if he were a fly on a football, creaked and shifted. Everett crab-walked across the net and cut another gash behind him. Again he scrambled across the netting, again he cut, again and again. The gas cell strained against the weakness in the netting. Cut and cut again. The cell bulged from the split. A few more cuts…The nanofibre netting was tough, but the pressure the gas cell exerted was enormous. The net tore with a sound like multiple gunshots. Everett clung for life as the torn net, with him on it, peeled away from the cell. He hung from the shredded net thirty metres over the cargo deck. The gas cell forced itself out of its confinement and found a new position squeezed into the gap between the two forward cells. It was a movement of a few metres, but it was enough. The centre of gravity shifted.
Arthur P
went prow up. It was only a degree or two, but it was enough to set Everett's carefully positioned cargo container sliding. It slid into the next container down, one Everett had unlatched from the cargo deck locks, started it sliding. Container struck container. From his web high above, Everett watched the slow avalanche of cargo containers. The deckhand, lashed to a railing, gaped in amazement as containers slid past him. The farther they slid, the more
Arthur P
's nose pitched up as she became more and more unbalanced.

Everett felt the netting lurch. He clung tighter. Then, slowly, jerkily, he began to move upwards. He looked up. Mchynlyth was on the upper catwalk, hauling in the torn netting. His smile was huge and shining.

“Yah wee stoater!” he shouted. “Yah wee stoater!”

Everett presumed that was a good thing. Mchynlyth hauled him up to where he could grasp the railing and clamber onto the catwalk. The world sloped.

“How are the ribs?” Everett asked.

“I'll live.”

“Next two?” Everett said. Mchynlyth nodded breathlessly, and produced his skin-ripper. He slid the switch up. “You go right; I'll go left.” Everett crawled under the free gas cell—it had wedged itself across the catwalk—and climbed up the netting of the next cell forward two-handed, the skin-ripper in his teeth. He glanced across to see Mchynlyth plunge his skin-ripper into the net and slide down the outside of the gas cell, leaving a long gash behind him.
Arthur P
groaned as the net snapped and the gas cell burst free. Everett's followed. The huge airship lurched. From below came a shriek of metal on metal and a series of loud bangs as latches snapped and the log-jam of containers gave way and they all slid at once, catching on other containers farther aft.

“When they go,” Mchynlyth yelled.
Arthur P
hung at an angle of thirty degrees, tail-down. Everett dangled from cell-netting over a fifty-metre drop. He hauled himself up to the catwalk, now more like a ladder.