Driftmetal (17 page)

“Sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” Gilfoyle said,
“but that’s not what happened. Our contract expired and Lafe
Yingler chose not to renew it. Then he raised the price and said
he’d bring me one last shipment if I was interested. I said yes and
paid him in full—exactly the price he asked.”

“Which was…”

“Four million. I had no choice but to move my
operation after that. Without a contract giving me exclusive rights
to Pyras’s gravstone, that area isn’t worth mining anymore.”

“
Four million
chips? Yingler jacked up the
price by an entire million and you agreed? Didn’t you find that
weird or suspicious?”

“I didn’t like paying extra, but gravstone is
gravstone. You get it where you can. And as for being suspicious of
Yingler, I had no reason to. I’ve always dealt with Lafe. He’s been
Pyras’s go-between for as long as we’ve done business together. I
never thought to second-guess him.”

I didn’t like the look of desperation in Gilfoyle’s
eyes. “That’s a lie,” I said. “You’re covering your tail so you can
send us on a wild goose chase and disappear again.”

“Let’s settle this,” he said. “Let my daughter go
and I’ll give you whatever you want. My family has nothing to do
with this situation. Leave them out of it.”

I knew he was right. I released the girl’s arm and
let her run, sobbing, into her mother’s arms. The woman fled the
kitchen in the opposite direction I’d come from, into the formal
dining room and down the hallway beyond.

“There. Your daughter’s safe. And Pyras is out four
million chips that Lafe Yingler never delivered. Give us the chips
now, and you have my word that if we find four million in Yingler’s
possession we’ll return the difference.”

Gilfoyle sneered. “You expect me to part with four
million chips based on the word of a common thief?”

“You said if I let your daughter go—”

“I know what I said. Takes a thief to know a thief,
doesn’t it? But there’s one thing you didn’t account for, Mr.
Jakes. I will always be a better thief than you are.”

“Well, naturally,” I said. “I hold myself to a much
lower standard.”

I dove at him. He sprang onto the counter and
flipped over the island. I followed in lockstep, launching myself
into the air and firing my grapplewire after him. He lifted an arm
to let the wire zip past his side, then sliced it in two with a
single stroke, using the razor-sharp thinblade on the side of his
wrist. My grappler crashed into the dining room wall, the severed
length of wire whipping to a standstill behind it like a trapped
snake.

Gilfoyle ducked to the side and cut across the
living room. His foot slipped when he stepped up onto the coffee
table. He went stumbling over the back of his oxblood sofa and
landed on the hardwood floor behind it with a thud. I made a diving
leap across the room, tackling him in mid-air as he was getting to
his feet. He may have been wearing the medallion, but he was drunk,
his reflexes slowed. We toppled to the floor and I pulled myself on
top of him. I began to beat him, slamming my fist into his face
until there was a rush of blue blood and the gleam of
telerium-laced bone shone through on his cheeks and forehead and
chin.

“Gareth… use the crackler,” I heard Vilaris say.

“I can’t,” Blaylocke said. “I don’t have it anymore.
The night we escaped from Mallentis, Muller swiped the remote and
destroyed it. I haven’t had control of him since.”

“Are you joking? He could’ve walked away any time he
wanted? Or worse… he could’ve murdered us in our sleep.” There was
something different in Vilaris’s voice. A commanding indignation
I’d never heard him express before.

“He wants his share of the money first, I’m sure,”
Blaylocke said.

Vilaris laughed. “There’s no share in any of this
for him.”

I stopped hitting Gilfoyle and let his head clunk to
the floor. I turned around, not believing what I’d just heard. My
hand was smeared with Gilfoyle’s blue-violet blood. Telerium was
showing through the broken skin on the tips of my knuckles. The
three primitives were standing there in the living room, spectators
on the far side of the sofa.

I didn’t know what to say. They were speaking as if
they barely knew me. Like I was some rabid animal they’d been
forced to share a cage with for the past month. These weren’t my
friends. Why had I started to think we were alike?
Humans—primitives. With red blood and brittle bones and muscles
that strained and tore like paper. We weren’t the same, and they’d
known it for themselves all along. I saw it now: the clandestine
brotherhood they shared. A brotherhood that I wasn’t a part of. The
three of them stood together like a flock of gossiping hens,
observing me. Studying me. Judging me. I was a tool to them, after
all. Only a tool.

“What did you just say?” I asked, standing.

“I said there’s no share for you,” Vilaris repeated.
“You belong in a Regency prison, and so does the entire crew of the
Galeskimmer
.”

“You’re not making any sense,” I said.

Gilfoyle lifted his head, eyes swollen and bloodshot
behind a faceful of blood. His eyes grew wide when he saw Vilaris
standing there. “Lafe?”

I looked at Vilaris again, then down at
Gilfoyle.

“Hello Alastair,” said Vilaris.

Gilfoyle was bewildered. “What are you doing
here?”

“Renegotiating our contract.”

“Hold on a minute,” I said. “Vilaris, what’s going
on? He called you Lafe. As in, Lafe Yingler.”

“You can call me Lafe too, if you’d like,” Vilaris
said. “It’s my name. And if you let me finish, I’ll tell you
exactly what’s going on.”

Chaz and Blaylocke were backing away, putting
distance between us. Had they known Vilaris and Yingler were the
same person? Or had they been just as clueless as I was?

“Go right ahead,” I said, holding out my bloody
hand. “You just better finish with a good reason why I shouldn’t do
worse to you than I just did to Gilfoyle, here.”

“A reason like that doesn’t exist,” said Vilaris…
and Lafe Yingler. “You
should
want to tear me limb from
limb, Muller. I never needed the crackler to control you. You’ve
been the perfect pawn from the very beginning—a wanted man with
nowhere to turn; desperate for the promise of a little coin in
exchange for doing what you do best; and eager for a chance to take
revenge on the man who tried to have you killed. I was lucky you
fell into my lap the way you did. Years ago, when I first came to
Pyras, I knew I was being given an opportunity. One I would be
crazy not to take. Pyras saw the immediate effects of my presence
there; I opened every avenue of trade for that city and made them
more prosperous than they’d been in a hundred years. Primitives
loved the idea of a techsoul who advocated for them so much that
they accepted my existence without rancor. But the truth is that
Lafe Yingler is more myth than man. I remained a recluse, revealing
myself and exerting my influence through the persona of Clinton
Vilaris. And now, thanks to you, I’ve become just as prosperous as
the city itself. Gilfoyle
did
pay me for the gravstone. And
he’s about to pay me a second time… by giving it back.”

“You’re a maniac,” I said. “Did you sabotage the
Clarity
too? Some kind of test to see whether I’d save your
life?”

“Unfortunately… no. If only I were so bold and
audacious as all that. I’m afraid Councilors Malwyn and DeGaffe
have been plotting my demise for some time now. When we discovered
the half-severed rigging lines, they were the first suspects who
came to mind. I’ll straighten all that out when I return to
Pyras.”

“What makes you think this is going to turn out in
your favor?” I asked. “You’ll be as wanted as I am, both in Pyras
and in the stream, when the Civs find out what you’ve done.”

“No one in Pyras will be the wiser. And as for the
stream… would you mind telling me what I’ve done that’s against the
law? Did I break into the house? Did I take a hostage? Did I strike
a blow, or make a threat? You did all those things, Muller. You did
them very well, as a matter of fact… so well that I feel I should
repay you. As thanks for your dedicated service, I’ve taken the
liberty of reuniting you with your parents. I’ve also given them a
gift I think will aid in that family reunion. If you’ll take a look
out the window, just there.”

A dark shape was hovering in the fog, no more than a
dozen yards from the platform. I’d know that shape anywhere. It was
my ship. My
Ostelle
. A manned pulser cannon swiveled on the
ship’s bow in place of the old gun platform. It was swiveling in my
direction.

I knelt and ripped Gilfoyle’s medallion off his
chest. One long dive took me through the window and sent me
crashing to the platform below in a hail of shattered glass. Around
my neck, the medallion latched itself to me, tiny prongs snaking
deep into my skin. My body came alive with a warm, fresh feeling,
like waking from sleep and clearing your sinuses and taking a dump
all at once. My mind began to hum like a sewing machine, a thousand
tiny impulses turning my regular thought patterns into a smooth,
flowing harmony. I’d known this medallion was worth more than all
the gravstone money could buy. Gilfoyle was an old man, pudgy and
out of shape. He’d used the medallion to sharpen his mind more than
anything. In someone who could use it to its full potential, an
external mod like this could be so much more.

The first pulser burst crashed into the platform and
spread across the deck. I vaulted sideways, rolling over my
shoulders and back to my feet. Blue arcs raced outward from the
burst before sputtering to an end, the tips crackling in my toes.
Ostelle
fired again. I dodged, not as fast this time. The
outer burst caught my leg, and I felt the pinprick spiders shooting
up to my knee. I cursed, hopping. Triggering my solenoid, I leapt
over the side without touching the platform as the third pulser
burst erupted in blue along the edge.

I was falling again, gripping the smaller chunk of
driftmetal like some beloved habit I didn’t want to break. The
numbers appeared before long—not directly below me, but a little to
my left, their blocky white lettering stark against the dark gray
metal of the platform. I was slowing down again as the smaller
ingot neared its altitude of equilibrium. Chaz had counterbalanced
it perfectly, using careful calculations of body mass and
velocity—or something like that. That’s why he was the gadgeteer
and I was the muscle. The
lackwit
muscle, as my dear old dad
might’ve said. I wondered how long it was going to take dear old
dad and his crew of morally-confused pirates to find me in the
fog.

I came to a stop, hanging by my chest pouch like
some kid trying to finish a chin-up in gym class. Platform 22 was
at an inaccessible distance now that Gilfoyle had cut off my
grappler.
Jerk
. And speaking of jerks, where the heck were
Scofield and the
Galeskimmer
? Blaylocke was the one holding
the bluewave comm we’d planned to signal them with. I still didn’t
know whether Blaylocke and Chaz were in on
Vilaris’s—Yingler’s—plans. Maybe Blaylocke had told the
Galeskimmer
to leave. Maybe Vilaris had overpowered him and
Chaz and done it himself. My guess was as good as mine…

Platform 22 held Gilfoyle’s processing facility, a
rectangle of corrugated sheet metal with a shallow roof and two
smokestacks at the far end. The stuff we needed was inside. Payment
or no payment, the primies weren’t my concern anymore, and neither
was Gilfoyle. Lafe Yingler had seen to that. From where I was
sitting—or hanging, as the case may have been—they were all
traitors. I had the medallion now, and I wasn’t giving
Vilaris/Yingler the satisfaction of another win. If anyone was
going to steal that gravstone, it was me.

I can’t just hang here forever
, I told
myself.
I have to make it to that platform
. I began to build
momentum, tucking my legs and swinging, using the driftmetal ingot
as a fulcrum. If I couldn’t inch my way over to the platform, I
could at least make a jump for it. And if I missed, maybe I’d be
lucky enough to hit another platform on the way down.

I had built up a good tempo, my legs going almost
horizontal on the upswing, when I heard engines through the fog.
The high, thrumming whine of turbines, and the deep rumble of
thrust. From beneath the platform, the ship’s prow appeared. The
point widened to its full width, emerging like a predator from its
den, sliding past the battened sail and the mast, and finally to
the quarterdeck, with its wheel and control array. From above I
could make out the forms of the crew as if I were looking down on a
set of figurines. Dennel McMurtry’s top-hat and protuberant belly;
Thorley Colburn, all shoulders and blond hair; Eliza Kinally’s hips
and wild red mane; Scofield’s balding pate and faceful of
snow-white; Nerimund’s hunchback and pointed, drooping ears. I
couldn’t see Sable’s thick braid or Neale Glynton’s gaunt boyish
frame anywhere. Something had gone wrong.

When the
Galeskimmer
was under me, I released
the ingot. The deck cracked beneath my boots, straining against the
force of my landing. Muffled words rang through the bluewave comm
Mr. Scofield was holding up to his ear, but the turbines were so
loud I couldn’t make out the voice or its owner. We were in place
below the facility, staring up at the wide barn doors where all the
deliveries entered.

“Where are the others?” Dennel McMurtry asked,
reaching out to make sure I was steady on my feet.

 “Backstabbers,” I said. “We have to tell
Scofield… everything’s changed.”

I moved for the quarterdeck, but Scofield took his
hand off the wheel to level a finger at me, and shouted, “Restrain
that man.”