Planesrunner (Everness Book One) (26 page)

“And the ocean is strange, Mr. Singh. The strangest thing there is. I think that's what scares me most. We slept, I don't know how, and the great storm flicked its tail and turned back into the west again and left us bobbing like a cork. I woke to calm waters and clear skies and the sun shining on my face through the porthole. And there was a ship out there. But it wasn't the RGS survey ship, which had been tracking my beacon through the night. And here is the part I know you will have difficulty believing, though the evidence is staring you right in the face, Mr. Singh.” She rapped the table with her bruised knuckles. “Not a watership at all, an airship, lying about three miles south of us at about three hundred metres, trailing landing cables in the water. Just hanging there, engines dead, nothing on the Common Channel. A ship, Mr. Singh, in dead air. This ship.
Everness
. I could tell you long about how I caught her by the landing line, and shinnied up in a climb-cradle, and found her empty—not a soul, Mr. Singh. I could tell you about how I brought her home, and the mysteries at Jane's Airshipping Registry, and the Court of Salvage, and how I came to be the owner, master and commander of an airship that didn't exist. I could tell you, Mr. Singh. I don't need to. The evidence is all around you. What you need to know is that I watched the
Fairchild
burn and fall from the sky, and Sen's mother and father with her, and in that moment, I became Sen's family. I'm not a superstitious or particularly religious woman—no more or less than any Airish—but I feel in my bones that
Everness
was given to me to be a home for her.

“Sen's never told you about her family. I know you've been asking. She tells me these things. She never will tell you, Mr. Singh. The nightmares have gone—it's been a couple of years now—for both of us, but they're never far. I've done my best for her; I'm not her mother, I'm not a mother. But Matts and Corrie, they gave me a family and a home, and I've given her a family and a home. As I said, Mr. Singh, family is what works.

“And that's why I am going to help you. You might have heard around—maybe even from Sen—that I have an amriya; an unbreakable vow in our palari. If I do, it's one I've taken on myself. I promised myself that I would give as I had received. I'm nowhere near the end of that yet. I will help you. My ship and crew are at your service. There's an accounting to be had as well, for poor bugger ‘Appening Ed. We may bicker and fight among ourselves, but if anyone offends one of us, they offend all of us. Madam Charlotte Villiers needs to learn that we are not her servants. And you helped me. You saved my ship, I hear.
Arthur P
would have left us out there on the Goodwin Sands, another broken wreck. Now I help you.”

There was a great singing noise in Everett's head. It was different from the great singing noise when he was laying out his big ask to Captain Anastasia. That had been the high-pitched noise you get in your head when you are doing something you absolutely must do but absolutely hate doing, when you hear yourself saying the words and hate the words and hate your voice saying them and hate the hateful way they make you feel. This was the noise—very different—you hear when you have convinced yourself that they are going to say no, that everything you have said can only lead up to a no: and then they say yes. Yes: so small you miss it, and then trip over it like an unseen crack in the pavement and have to go back and actually see that there is something there that sent you sprawling. Yes. Everett rocked on his feet. Yes. He could feel the bones in his eye sockets. His face was flushed. He thought he might cry. She had agreed. She had said yes.

“You could thank me, Mr. Singh,” Captain Anastasia said.

“Thank you.”

“Thank you what?”

“Thank you, ma'am.”

“You're welcome, Mr. Singh. The bridge, sir. Call the crew to posts. I shall follow you up shortly. I need to put on a bit of slap first. We arrive in Hackney in short order, and by the Dear, we'll look airship-shape and
damn
hot. Away with you.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“L
ift to holding altitude,” Captain Anastasia said.

“Aye, ma'am.”

Sen slid forward the elevation levers, and
Everness
rose soft and silent as a prayer from her docking cradle. Snow from the east and the season of the year had driven Great Hackney indoors. This was Christmas Eve, when people close their doors and pull down their shutters on the world and turn to the lives of others. Those few out—the chestnut sellers, the coffee stalls, the brass band of the mission to the Airish playing carols by the Clapton Viaduct, the late revellers heading out with their party clothes under their heavy winter coats, the early drunks reeling home from the corner pubs and the half-repaired Knights of the Air—looked up at the hum of impellers, the slight displacement of air as something huge passed through it. No matter how commonplace, no matter how many ships lifted and landed each day, there was no soul in Hackney Great Port too small to look up at the touch of an airship shadow, and smile. Everett knew he would never tire of standing by the great window of an airship and seeing the world laid out at his feet. Never tire and never forget, because after this night, after this flight, he would never do it again. He would never come back to this world—he could never come back to this world. In a short time—less than an hour—he would see his dad. That was an excitement so huge it was almost a dread. It made him feel sick. It seemed so long—weeks, months—since he had waited outside the ICA on the Mall in another London and seen Charlotte Villiers's agents knock him off his bike and take him away to this world. It was little more than a week. It was so easy to mix up space with time: a few days became mixed up with the distance of whole universes. Excitement he felt, and anticipation, and dread, and also loss. His reunion with his dad would be his farewell to the crew of
Everness
, Mchynlyth and Miles O'Rahilly Lafayette Sharkey, Sen and Anastasia Sixsmyth. They would go back to their ship and take flight for a safe port beyond British extradition treaties. He and his dad would go their way, out across the worlds, to a place they could never be found. Everett wished he could bring the crew of the
Everness
back to his Stoke Newington. How much easier would it be to explain to Laura that they would have to flee to another universe with a two-hundred-metre airship hanging over Roding Road. It couldn't be. Only individuals could jump between worlds.

Sharkey at his station, one earphone pushed up on top of his head. Everett didn't doubt that the shotguns were still tucked into the lining of his coat. Sharkey the talker, quick with the word of the Lord and the manners of a Southern gent. And how much of those were true? When you're far from home, when you're an exile, you cover yourself with stories.
Weighmaster, soldier of fortune, adventurer, gentleman
, he'd called himself.
Goalkeeper, mathematician, traveller, planesrunner
, Everett had replied. Say it enough and it will come true.

Mchynlyth: out on the hull under this crystal sky, swinging on his line high above the spires of London, laughing like a devil as he worked the engineering trickery they would need to fool Dunsfold Air Traffic control. Mchynlyth: Glasgow-born but not Scottish; Indian DNA but not Punjabi.
Airish
. You are what you choose to be.

Captain Anastasia: grace, power, and dignity even with half her ear ripped off. Sassy, classy, daring. She terrified Everett; he adored her. He could bring her hot chocolate with chilli forever. You are everything I admire, Everett thought. I would love to be like you. I would love to
be
you.

Sen. He couldn't look at her. So light and frivolous, decking
Everness
out in Christmas decorations—lights blinked from every hook and nook on the bridge. So serious and focussed at the helm, guiding the ship over the Christmas lights of London. Her sulks that broke into grins; her cunning and her spontaneity; her pride that spun on its heel into offence. Her delight in everything shiny and bona.

Family is what works
, Captain Anastasia had said. Would his family work when he pushed it all back together again, on some world that looked enough like the one they came from for some version of the life they had to be possible? But that life hadn't worked. His mum and dad had split up. Who was he to force them to try again, in a whole new world? Would they split again? Would Laura even want to come with them? Would he just cause the ultimate split: Mum and Victory-Rose, Dad and Everett, forever apart in separate universes? It was a deep, dark shock, a fist clenched around the heart, for Everett to realise that every decision he had made, every action he had taken, had caused someone to pay a high and terrible price. It was never like that in the action movies. There were never any consequences.

“Mr. Sharkey,” Captain Anastasia ordered.

Sharkey thumbed a switch.

“Dunsfold Control, Dunsfold Control, this is LTA
Everness.”

“Roger,
Everness
, this is Dunsfold.”

“Request flight plan Hackney Great Port-Bristol Great Port.”

“Roger that; is Captain Annie going home for Christmas?” the air-traffic controller said. He had a cocky, knowing voice. Everett could hear cheering in the background. Captain Anastasia pulled down a microphone on its boom arm.

“No, Dunsfold. Repair docks.”

“Don't they have repair docks in Hackney?” said the cheeky controller.

“Not as cheap,” Captain Anastasia said. More laughter in the air-traffic control. On
Everness's
bridge, the mood was serious and edgy.

“Okay,
Everness
, you are clear to proceed initial bearing two-sixty-eight degrees, twelve minutes, thirty seconds to Bristol Air Traffic handover; standard western flyway altitude,” the controller said. “By the way, Captain, I don't know how you did it, but whatever you did to
Arthur P:
fantabulosa, as you'd say.”

“Thank you, Dunsfold. Out.” Captain Anastasia clicked off the radio. “Make it so, Miss Sixsmyth. Two hundred metres. Mr. Sharkey, activate our radar beacon. We don't want to graze the paint-work of any of those fine, shiny passenger liners.”

The lights of London wheeled before Everett as
Everness
turned on her axis. As she turned she gained altitude. Sen played the impellers as sweetly as a musical instrument.
Everness
came on to her heading; Sen pushed forward the thrust levers and the great ship. Two hundred metres was tower-top height, skyscraper-scraping height. Everett held his breath at the parade of winged Victories and Nemesises with swords and shields and blindfolded Justices with scales all crowned with the recent snow, domes and crosses and spires and globes, seemingly just beneath his feet. He could look down into the street and see the steely shine of the city—ahead was the floodlit dome of St. Paul's, dazzling under its cap of snow, now Fleet Street and the Strand bright with flickering Christmas neons. He could see the cars, the trains, the people pushing on through the late snow, the river darting with fast hydrofoils and hovercraft. Sen touched the controls and nudged
Everness
a hairsbreadth towards the elegant terraces and snow-white squares of Bloomsbury. Light beamed up through the glass dome of the British Library. Ahead, the Tyrone Tower rose like a steel hand, its buttresses and gargoyles and cornices lit ghost-blue by floodlights. A single shaft of light stabbed skywards from its summit.

“Take us in, Sen,” Captain Anastasia whispered. “Easy does it. We are supposed to be crippled.” Tottenham Court Road was a slash of neon; to the south, Soho a glowing knot of light. A few stray snowflakes blew across the great window and fell sparkling through the street glow; winter was closing in again. “Full stop, Miss Sixsmyth.” Sen pulled all the levers back. They clicked into neutral.
Everness
hung motionless half a kilometre east of the Tyrone Tower. “Mr. Sharkey, declare the emergency.”

“Dunsfold, Dunsfold, LTA
Everness
declaring an emergency,” Sharkey said into the microphone. “We have lost main power. We have no motive power.”

“
Everness
, we read,” said the Dunsfold air-traffic controller. It was the same man who had congratulated Captain Anastasia on her defeat of the Bromleys. He did not sound so chirpy now. “Are you drifting?”

“We can hold station,” Sharkey said.

“Notify us of your position.”

Sharkey read out a string of digits.

“Thank you,
Everness
. We have your radar beacon as well. Do you have an estimate?”

“Two hours to restore main motive power,” Sharkey said.

“We will issue a standard navigation hazard warning to all air traffic. At least you picked a quiet night for it,
Everness
.”

“We'll notify you when we restore power. Out.”

Captain Anastasia waited for two breaths, then picked up the intercom.

“Mr. Mchynlyth, we're ready for you. Deploy the drone. Mr. Sharkey, on camera please.”

The overhead screens lit, but Everett, in his favourite place by the glass, had the clearest view. The drone darted out from underneath
Everness
, hung a moment in the open air, then swivelled its fans and, under Mchynlyth's guidance, buzzed towards the Tyrone Tower. It was a little insect-like inspection drone, designed to go to those places on the outside of the ship unsafe for humans. There was no place that Mchynlyth considered unsafe, but he kept the drone because it was a clever, well-made piece of technology and he liked clever, well-made things. In design it was almost identical to the camera drone Everett had seen on the video clip Colette Harte had given him; jumping in from an aerial survey of E2: four fans, legs, and a processing core. Functional design was functional design, whatever the universe.

The drone towed a line, a nanocarbon filament thin as a hair, strong as diamond. When Mchynlyth had shown the reel to Everett he had warned him to keep his fingers away from it. “Take them right off, snick-snack,” he said. “So clean you wouldn't even feel it.” So fine it was invisible on the low-resolution cameras, but Everett thought he glimpsed a gleam of light, like sun catching a strand of spider silk, as the line crossed one of the floodlight beams. Now the monitors switched to the drone camera. Mchynlyth brought it in low and low to the twenty-second floor and dropped the grapnel at the end of the line around the shoulders of a severe-looking helmeted warrior woman standing beside a shield. He cast off.

“Mr. Sharkey, Mr. Singh, to the cargo deck.”

Everett had never heard Captain Anastasia's voice so solemn. Now. The time was now. He wasn't ready. He had to prepare himself; he had to think himself into what he was going to do. No time. He had to be ready. There were words he had to say. There were good-byes; huge good-byes. He saw that Sen realised this too, that the time had come for them to be parted forever, that in a few moments he would walk off the bridge and be gone.

“Everett Singh!”

He had never seen a face so white, eyes so ice-pale.

“Sen…”

“I'm coming with you.”

“Stay here!” Captain Anastasia thundered.

“I'm coming. I want to be with Everett.” Her jacket was buttoned up, one glove already pulled on, her shush-bag slung across her shoulder.

“Stay with the ship.”

“No!” She stepped away from the controls.

“
Everness
is yours, Miss Sixsmyth. You have the command.”

The bag slipped from Sen's shoulder to the floor. She stepped back. As mother, Anastasia could not have stopped Sen. As captain, without even issuing a direct order, Sen could not disobey her. This was the ship. Her eyes looked as if the darkest thing in the world had reached through them and torn her heart out. Her lips were open in incomprehension.

“Mr. Singh.” Captain Anastasia's grip on Everett's shoulder was iron as she pushed him onto the main catwalk. Almost, he thought to tear himself free, to break every one of her fingers, scream into her face. Almost he thought of looking back to Sen stunned, heart cracking on the empty bridge against the winking Christmas lights. That would have killed him inside. Anastasia Sixsmyth was right. All good-byes should be sudden. Then he saw the look on her face, her mouth tight, the corners of her eyes bright with moisture. It wasn't about him or Sen. It was about her keeping her daughter safe, the kid she'd rescued from the destruction of the
Fairchild
, keeping the promises she had made on that burning hulk. She understood that none of them might return to her.

Mchynlyth had lowered the cargo hatch a metre to allow the drone to slip out. The drop down was easy; the greater drop beyond, to the teeming traffic wheeling around Grafton Place, would have frozen Everett rigid only a few days ago. Since then he had run rooftops, leaped alleyways, swung from containment netting over sharp-edged steel, jumped across empty air to land on a ribbon of nanocarbon no wider than his outstretched arms. He landed easily. Mchynlyth had already rigged the zip-line harnesses to the fibre. They looked alarmingly as if they were hanging on nothing. Everett reached up to test the harness. Mchynlyth slapped his hand away.