The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives) (9 page)

             
“Sophie and your dad?” Reece interrupted, planting his feet to keep from getting sucked into the pressing tide of people.

             
“They're with Tutor White! He took us into his basement laboratory just after it started—I left them there!” He looked devastated. “Reece, the others are here! I saw them out the basement window, but they were gone by the time I got out…Gideon and Mordecai and Nivy!”

             
“What? Why would they—” Another
boom
tilted the ground, and Reece and Hayden ducked together as a hot rush of hair—foreign feeling, in this cold—blew over their heads.

             
“I know, but they're here!”

             
“Then they'll be headed for the museum! This way, come on!”

             
With a hand twisted in the fabric of Hayden's coat, Reece turned and plunged into the madness. The crowds were thinning—people were catching on to the idea of getting underground—but those who remained on the surface ran around like a bunch of spinning tops, without order or direction. It felt wrong, leaving them behind when his conscience screamed at him to find some way to help. There was nothing for it but to grit his teeth and plow on, dragging Hayden.

             
At the museum, the boys stumbled to a stop and stared. The glass doors were too congested to pass a piece of parchment through; there was no way to get in, short of walking on the crowds' heads.

             
Reece was about to roll up his sleeves and wrestle his way into line when he spotted Gideon standing with his back to them a short distance away, scanning the crowd with one hand in his jacket, no doubt on his revolver.

             
“Gid!” Reece screamed.

             
Gideon spun.              He looked like he'd taken a mud bath. The only bit of color left to him was in his sharp blue eyes, pinched tight at their corners to show he was worried. Nothing else gave him away.

“
Back door, Cap'n. There ain't no way we're gettin' in up here,” he said when he joined them.

             
“What happened?” Reece asked as he jogged, hauling an out-of-breath Hayden.

             
“The bombin' started in Praxis an hour ago. They started on the wrong side’a the moon and worked their way here. We made it out by the skin’a our teeth,” Gideon said grimly, leading the way to the back door that would serve them one last time. He unceremoniously kicked it in on its hinges and continued past it without slowing down. “Borrowed an automobile off'a one of Mordecai's friends and pulled in not five minutes ago.”

             
“The Vee?”

             
Gideon smiled savagely. “Gave him a knock on the head that should have him sleepin' a week and dumped him in an alley.”

             
Crowded though the entrance and the stairwells were, the lobby was empty—probably by the duke's design. Reece couldn't help but look around for one last glance of his father as he ran for Aurelia's rear cargo hatch, which opened onto the lobby floor like a ramp. Nivy and Mordecai stood astern of the ship, every bit as filthy as Gideon.

             
“What's the plan, Cap'n?” Mordecai asked, calm but stone-faced.

             
“We leave. Now.” Reece marched past them as another explosion purred in his chest. He felt his way to a lever on Aurelia's wall and heaved it up, flooding the empty cargo bay with white auxiliary lights. “Have Po warm her up. We're out of Atlas in five minutes and in the Euclid Stream in ten.”

             
“But…Po's not here,” Hayden said, looking around the cargo bay with an expression of dawning horror.

             
Panic spiked in Reece, and he thrust it down with a growl. He turned on the ladder he had begun to climb and looked out over the bay as if hoping that little white head would pop out of a hatch somewhere.

             
“She'll be at the docks with her brothers,” he realized. The docks were a good three miles from here. He couldn't expect her to have found her way here through all the chaos—and what if she'd been hurt? He couldn't leave without his mechanic!
Bleeding—

             
“How fast can you make it to the docks?” he asked Gideon, climbing until he reached the mesh metal bridge crossing to the sleeping quarters.

             
Gid was already pulling a white drop sheet off one of the bims parked in the corner of the bay. “Fast enough.”

             
“I think I can get the ship started up for ya,” Mordecai offered. “Seen Po fiddlin' around enough to have a mind for how the thing works.”

             
Reece considered, then nodded and said flatly, “Ten minutes, Gid. We can't wait much longer and hope to make it out of this in one piece.”

             
Rather than answering, Gideon kicked the bim to roaring wakefulness, then rolled back on the handlebar so greasy grey tendrils curled up from its exhaust funnel. Shifting up, he shot down the ramp, careened to the left so his back tire slid along the marble, and was gone.

             
Ten minutes and counting.

Jaw clenched, Reece charged the bridge, racing the auxiliary lights as they popped on down the wooden corridor. He heard footsteps and glanced back at Nivy as she joined him in his mad dash, her black ponytail lashing her face.

              They reached the bridge together, and it was a mark of Reece's determination that he took to the leather pilot's seat without stopping to look around at the bridge that was officially his. He had daydreamed about this moment, imagining taking the yoke calmly and switching toggles one at a time so Aurelia woke up with a deep, dramatic breath, and everyone applauded.

             
His hands sped over the flightpanel, snapping buttons and turning knobs almost without thought. Nivy sat in the co-pilot’s chair, buckled herself into the crisscrossing harness, and lowered the brass headset down over her hair, tapping each earpiece. Reece followed her example and shoved his own headset into place.

             
“Alright,” he sighed into the mouthpiece, “here's hoping we don't explode.”

             
With a sweaty hand, he reached up, latched onto the horizontal leveler pump over his head, and eased it down with a hiss. Then he found the engine pedal—a long flat bar at his heels—wrapped his ankles over it, and drew it towards his seat. With a cough and a snarl, Aurelia began vibrating. Nivy's chair squeaked and rocked on rusty springs. Reece started to grin—

             
—and then stopped as Aurelia powered down with a whine of complaint. Nivy's chair stopped bobbing. They looked at each other.

             
“Not good,” Reece said needlessly. “That should have done it.” He repeated his steps, and again, Aurelia grumbled with promise and then abruptly, almost stubbornly, went quiet. “What the bleeding—”

             
He glanced sideways at Nivy, doing a double take when he saw she'd drawn her Heron gun. She handed it to him without explanation, and he took it dumbly and turned it over in his hands. It fit nicely, the smooth, curved grip nestling in the groove of his palm. His eyes lingered briefly on the front sight on the barrel, overlarge and peculiar. He'd always thought the gun had resembled a—

             
Nivy tapped his arm and nodded at the flightpanel. He gazed over it blankly for a moment before he saw what she was nodding at: a small hole behind the yoke shaped almost like an apple, an oblong circle with a stem coming off it. Reece had thought one of Aurelia's sold parts had once sat there, an atmospheric gauge or a pressure-ometer. With the gun in his hand, he suddenly knew
exactly
what it was. A keyhole.

             
He leaned forward, turned the gun up on its barrel, and plugged it into the hole so its front sight fit the stem of the apple-shape. The gun clicked into place.

And Aurelia roared with power, roared like two waterfalls combined. Reece's head jerked back against his seat, but he couldn't help laughing. So
this
was why the gun was so bleeding important—Nivy could never have returned
The Aurelia
to her people without it! And as for The Kreft…Reece rather liked the thought of them sitting keyless on the bridge, staring blankly at one another and scratching their ugly white heads.

             
The lights on the bridge faded out, and the colorful buttons and gadgets strewn over the flightpanel began glowing. Steam hissed through a pipe by Reece's elbow, and a puff of it gasped over his head, wetting his hair.

             
“Oxygen lockdown in four seconds,” Reece said as he thumbed a square orange button. “Sealing the bridge.” He grabbed the speaker com on the curly-cue wire dangling over his head and pulled it down to his mouth. “Mordecai, any sign of Gid and Po?”

             
He waited, listening through the headset. Static. Ever since that fateful day he had crashed his Nyad, static had made him nervous, made him feel like something bad was about to happen. Captains were allowed their superstitions too.

             
“Mordecai?”

             
No answer, but Aurelia was running, and that meant Mordecai had at least prepped the engine for take-off. It was probably some small communication glitch Po could fix in a blink once she got here.
If
she got here.

             
Five minutes and counting.

V

The Cost of Doing Something Great

Six miles in ten minutes should'a been easy on a bim. Gideon hadn't counted on gettin' to The Owl's docks and findin' what he did.

              His rear tire squealed as he peeled around a corner and onto the pebbled drive leadin' to the docks. Airships’a every size and kind sat against a wall’a towerin' evergreens like prize antlered horses ready to race, but the docks were empty except for where a small crowd had gathered around a sleek gold Nyad that sat crookedly, leanin' on one’a its wings.

             
Downshiftin', Gideon swung the bim off-road and pushed it through the snow so it fountained around his spinnin' wheels. A few in the crowd pulled away to look back at him—they were mechanic students, he recognized their jumpsuits—and through the gap in their ranks he saw a pale blonde head lyin' on the ground.

             
Somethin' jumped inside’a him. Leanin' the bim up against a tree, he rushed forward with a growl for anyone who tried to keep him back.

             
It was Po, alright, but a quick scan showed she was fine, or as fine as could be expected. She was stretched over Tutor Agnes, cryin'. Agnes's blue eyes stared up at the golden wing as if she was inspectin' it, and they were glazed with death. Gideon couldn't see her wound, but the snow around her middle was stained a sparklin' red, like a spurt'a rubies.

             
“What happened?” he asked Tilden, who was standin' off to one side, wringin' a cap in his hands.

             
The freckled Trimble shook his head. “We were loadin' the ship for inspection when everythin' started. There was a flash'a light…the Nyad slipped, and the chains broke. She got pinned under the wing. Died right away.”

             
People said that expectin' it to make everythin' better. It didn't, Gideon knew for a fact. In the end…someone was still dead.

             
Hesitatin', he crouched down beside Po, almost touchin’ her arm. “Po Girl, we gotta go. Cap'n and the others are waitin' at the museum. If we ain't there in five minutes, they're leavin' without us.”

             
Snifflin', Po leaned up. She dragged her sleeve over her reddened nose and looked at him. “She was a good person. Maybe the best I knew. I can't believe…she was just standin' there. I saw her. She was fine. And then…and then she wasn't.”

             
“We'll take care’a her, Po,” Gus promised, leanin' out from behind his thickset brother.

             
Po drew a shaky breath and accepted Tilden’s hand up. “Alright, then. Guess I…gotta keep this short. Tilden, Gus…just…just take care’a yourselves. And don't work on that Flutterbee till I get back.”

             
She hugged them both briefly, her shoulders shakin', and let Gideon lead her back to the bim at a jog. She settled down behind him on the bim and immediately locked her arms around him so tight he had to cough.

             
“Sorry,” she apologized as they took off through the snow. “I ain't used to engines that don't come with a set’a w-wings.” She sniffed, and he could feel the heat in her face as she rested it against his back. The girl had just seen death, maybe for the first time. She would have a hard time forgettin' it. It stained the mind like blood stained hands.