Rebel Skyforce (Mad Tinker Chronicles) (30 page)

“You activate the runes?”

Jamile opened her mouth, then closed it with a grimace and a shrug. “I don’t—”

“Did you jump out?”

Jamile replied with a sheepish smile that carried no reassurance. “I think so?”

Madlin strode over to the control panel of the machine, removing her hat and gloves as she walked, depositing them on the guards’ table. “You know I’ve never used this thing, right?” Madlin flipped switches and the bulbs around the machine’s viewing frame lit one by one. When the last of the bulbs lit, the interior of the frame dissolved into a view of the
Jennai’s
plaza. “You got lucky.”

Taking her seat at the controls, Madlin spun the view to get her bearings. In halting, jerking twists of the machine’s dials, she stumbled the view around until she found herself in the cargo hold of the
Cloudsmith
, with the Korrish world-ripper.
Even the machine is twinborn
, she mused. Sitting in a chair identical to her own, Madlin watched her father’s hands as they spun dials in lazy circles. He wasn’t in a hurry for anything, it seemed. She would change that, soon enough.

With a wince in case she had missing some key step, Madlin yanked the main switch closed. The dynamo’s hum, which had been relegated to background noise, climbed to a screeching whine as the view turned real. Her first reaction was relief that the process had worked; her second was the shock of seeing rifle barrels in soldiers’ hands, pointed through the hole.

“Get down!” she shouted, and took her own advice, throwing herself from the chair even as Jamile and the guards hesitated. “It’s me! It’s us! Don’t shoot!”

“Madlin?” Erefan’s voice called through the hole from Korr. “What in the rusty scrap heap are you doing there? If you’re awake, who’s commanding that vacu-dirge?”

Madlin peeked out from under the arms she’d flung over her head for protection. The rifles had been lowered. Letting out a shuddering breath she’d been holding, Madlin pushed herself to her feet.

“Sosha’s liftwing went down. We needed to get you a message and start a search.”

“She still alive?” Erefan asked. Jamile hesitated for a heartbeat, but nodded. “Well, the Grangians had some engine trouble and went down themselves. You can take that vacu-dirge low and look for her.”

“I was thinking we could use the world-ripper to look,” said Jamile.

“She thinks she activated her float vest,” Madlin added. “Runes are on the front, so if she’s in the water unconscious, she ought to be flat on her back, floating like a leaf.”

Erefan beckoned. “Get through here, both of you. Let’s get a course figured for her and find a place to start.”

Rynn stood at the helm and yawned. It was the middle of the day, with no excuse for fatigue. Sure, her leg was burning from all the standing and walking she’d been doing of late, but even physical exhaustion shouldn’t have played so heavily on her alertness. The intruding voice in her head had stopped, but daydreams plagued her instead. She wanted a world-ripper of her own, and imagined herself at the controls, flitting around the world with the ease her father displayed when he was the one working the machine. She wondered what intersecting two world holes would do, could do: could a straight bar pushed through two worlds come back and touch itself?

She saw an army betray her. Errol Company soldiers knelt with rifles aimed, ready to tear her full of holes, and not the wondrous sort that the world-ripper made, but the red, leaking holes that looked better in kuduks. She fled from them and was saved.

She saw a speck in the sky, floating upward, a trick no bird could manage. It looked human as she drew closer to it, but it was a trick no human could manage, either. Rynn blinked. It wasn’t a daydream. She pulled her coil gun and used the sight as a spyglass.

“Shit!” she whispered.

Rynn turned and shouted down the stairs. “MORE VACUUM!” The floating figure was approaching too quickly. Hauling back on the throttle lever, Rynn threw the engines into reverse briefly to slow them, then let them drift forward. The vacuum pumps thumped somewhere below decks, sucking at the dregs of air remaining in the tanks. She hoped it would be enough.

“All hands to the windows. Open the cargo doors. Watch for Sosha. Someone grab her!”

The body in the sky was limp, head lolling back, arms and legs dangling. Sosha looked like a drunk held up by the shirt collar, ready to be tossed into the street. The
Kelleb’s
controls were new to Rynn, but made some intuitive sense. She eased the wheel around, feeling the change in course as much as watching it. They could miss Sosha on a pass and try coming around for her, but if they slammed the ship into her it might turn into a recovery rather than a rescue. There was a chance it already had.

The world-ripper’s view streaked over the water, backtracking the flight path of the seven liftwings that had escaped Glenwood Sky Aerodrome. Soldiers stared at Madlin, having seen Rynn disappear through the other machine not so long ago, and looking rather less whole than the girl whose eyes fixed on the view frame. Jamile was the same woman they were looking for, but with longer hair. There was nothing to be done about the discomfort of those one-worlders’ eyes and the ache it must have caused in their brains.

The Sea of Kerum glittered in the sun, catching the light off every swell and roll. There was always the chance that they’d miss her, sweep right by at breakneck speed without ever realizing. “Eyes sharp, everyone,” said Madlin to the crowd of soldiers. She hooked a thumb in Jamile’s direction. “We’re looking for one of these.”

They passed a rocky isle here and there, and to the right, on the horizon, the Grangian coast loomed. The liftwings had trailed alongside it for part of their escape. If Sosha had been over land when her liftwing failed her, the search might well come to an unpleasant end.

While the view skimmed along above the water some twenty or so feet up, the watchers were accorded an expansive view of the sky as well. High above the sea and climbing, they spotted the
Kelleb
. Madlin’s gut twisted at the weirdness of knowing that she was aboard it, in the same world. She wondered if Rynn was looking for Sosha as well. If so, the path before them had likely already been covered in the search. They must have missed seeing her.

Unless she floated up.

The thought hit Madlin like a thunderail. Of course Sosha had floated up. She’d seen it with her own eyes. Or with Rynn’s. At some level the point was academic, because she had a clear recollection of Sosha’s body hanging in midair, drawn skyward as if the sun had hooked her like a fish.

“Bring the view up,” said Madlin, her hard tone marking it clearly as an order. “Check by the airship.”

“You’re not thinking that—” Erefan began.

“She misjudged the runes on her vest. She’s lighter than air and going higher.”

Erefan swore something beneath his breath and made the adjustments on the control panel. The view angled without warning, drawing an eye-sick groan from the soldiers who hadn’t the sense to look away as the world lurched in front of them. Closer and closer, the Grangian airship grew large in the view frame.

“I see me!” Jamile shouted.

Madlin squinted through her spectacles, envying Jamile’s eyesight. There it was, growing dangerously close to the stolen Grangian vacu-dirge. Erefan swooped upward and brought them all closer. Having just meat-fingered her way around the Tinker’s Island machine, Madlin marveled at his mastery of the dials.

“That’s not a good sign,” said Jamile, clutching her hands. “My neck shouldn’t be at an angle like that.”

As they drew close enough to see the runed plate riveted to the front of Sosha’s vest, they saw a rescue attempt in progress. The side cargo door of the airship was open and a score of soldiers crowded the gate. One with a rope around his waist edged his way down the loading ramp; he had a second rope in his hand, tied with a loop at the end. With a flick of the wrist, he launched the loop of rope and landed it around Sosha.

“Thank Eziel we took on some ranch hands,” said Madlin.

Jamile lunged and threw the switch to open a hole to the scene in front of them. Erefan reached to stop her, but pulled his hand away at the last second. He let her activate the machine.

“STOP!” Jamile shouted through the world hole, rushing right up to the aperture with a thousand foot drop a half step away. “LET GO THE ROPE!”

The startled soldier with the rancher’s knack for rope froze in place. He stared with wide eyes at the scene floating in the air not ten paces distant.

Madlin stepped up beside Jamile “Do it!” she ordered.

The soldier dropped his end of the rope and it fell away. The other end hung around Sosha’s neck.

“Damned fool,” Jamile muttered, backing away from the machine’s frame. “If I’m not dead already, that would have killed me.”

“We’re here, we might as well get her through,” Madlin said to her father. “She’s still rising. Just bring us around above her and look down. Ropes for anyone who gets near that thing.”

Madlin and three of the solders roped themselves in and stood ready at the aperture as Erefan looped around Sosha’s limp form to bring the world hole above her. Madlin felt her knees go weak. Just inches away was a shift in gravity that would pull her down to the Sea of Kerum, spread out below them and in front of their faces at the same time.

After chasing airships, Erefan had no difficulty lining up to intercept a young woman floating on the wind and drifting up like a puff of smoke. First through the hole was Sosha’s head, which one of the soldiers cradled as the other two gathered in her body. Madlin stayed at the opening, waiting to make sure she was through.

“Cut it!” she ordered.

Erefan switched the machine off and Madlin kept her eyes on the trailing end of the rope as it fell away, snipped cleanly by the closing of the hole. She’s suspected it would happen, but it was good to know without anyone getting caught in the middle of it to prove the point.

Jamile was upon her twin the moment Sosha was laid on the floor of the hold. She checked her own breathing and pulse. “Alive.” There were gasps of relief from all sides. Madlin watched with a weird detachment. There were differences, but only subtle ones. The hair was obvious, with Sosha shaved bald as recently as two months ago, but there were other changes as well. Jamile was better fed and it showed in the hollows of Sosha’s face. As Jamile pulled off the vest while two soldiers held Sosha’s body down, Madlin saw the calluses around Sosha’s neck and collarbone from years wearing a collar. The vest floated to the ceiling and clung there.

Jamile pushed Sosha’s eyelids open and blocked and unblocked the overhead lights. She felt along arms and legs for broken bones, and finally under the neck. Madlin noticed water dripping from the vest down onto the floor near Sosha.

“She must have hit the water and got knocked out,” Madlin said. “She’s wet.”

“But she was falling up,” said Jamile.

“Momentum.” Everyone turned to hear Erefan weigh in. He had that effect on rooms full of people. “Activated the runes too late, and it took them time to overcome her downward momentum. She probably waited to the last moment to abandon her craft.”

“I kept trying to pull up,” Jamile said, not looking up from her work. “I thought I could save it, not have to jump out. Maybe land it on the water and swim free.”

“You know this now?” Madlin asked. “Cuz before you sure didn’t seem to know what went on.”