Driftmetal (2 page)

I should probably mention that I came up working as
a mechanic in my dad’s shop. That was before I learned how to make
a dishonest living.
Dear old dad
, I thought, without missing
him one bit.

I heard the undercarriage clank as the dark-skinned
man’s grappler bit through the truck bed. The hovertruck faltered
and the man was floating up, up on his line, holding onto his hat
while his purple duster slapped at his knees. I lost sight of him
under me, cursing the hovertruck for its lack of see-through
flooring. I’m a good driver, and I can fight, but fighting and
driving at the same time is a feat best left to stuntmen and
cityfolk.

I shuffled through the glove box, searching the
cockpit for something heavy. I could hear the soft metallic clinks
of hands and feet along the chassis. A shame I hadn’t gotten the
dark-skinned man’s name, since I liked being able to brag about who
I’d killed. I took off a boot and kissed it. When the man’s arm
came through the open window, I grabbed his wrist and punched the
grappler through the sole of my boot, triggering the prongs. Then I
kicked the door open and cut the engine.

I bailed, using the boot as a step and holding onto
the wire like a rappelling line. The dark-skinned man writhed
against the door frame, my weight holding his arm through the
window. The winch inside his forearm began to smoke as it tried to
reverse the direction. Which it did, after a couple seconds.
Shucks. That did
not
go like I wanted it to
. Next I
knew, I was being hauled
up
toward the truck. Now the engine
was off, and the truck was coming
down
.

I let go of the wire and fell. I hit the platform
from two stories up, an awkward landing that made my teeth rattle
like pebbles in a landslide. The hovertruck was listing sideways
and falling past the platform, fast. I could see the dark-skinned
man, caught against the underside with nowhere to go, my boot
gliding up toward him on the wire. There was a rush of wind as the
truck tumbled past, and then he was gone.

When the hovertruck hit the Churn, the fireball
wasn’t as big or impressive as the hovercell’s had been. Just an
uninspired puff of flame and a brief column of gray smoke that blew
away in the wind below the first platform. The dark-skinned man’s
hat drifted down and swayed to rest in front of me. It had been a
shame to ruin a good pair of boots, but at least I’d gotten an ugly
hat out of the deal.
A fitting end to the life of another
law-lover
, I thought.

The next hovertruck in line was just as cumbersome
to drive as the first, but it had the benefit of being lighter by
one law-lover. I tailed Bannock for a while, following in the
drift-town’s wake until I could land without causing a scene. The
guys in the crow’s nest could suck on my solenoid if they wanted to
clear me first. I knew they were just doing their jobs, but I
didn’t care about their jobs. I’d been avoiding the life of an
honest working man for years. And I’d been away too long to fool
with procedure; I had to get back to her.

The town was a clockwork mass of sprawling gothic
architecture and spooky manor houses as old as the patch of ground
Bannock had been ripped away from. In the ages since, the
inhabitants had built all the way out to the edges in some places.
For the less faint of heart, there were side-bolted apartments
overlooking the Churn.

I was a wanted man, but I made my way through the
cobbled streets as though I wasn’t. The stream was whipping my hair
around my face as I came around to the edge of the floater, and
there she was.

Ostelle
, my rusty clunker of a streamboat.
Gorgeous as the day she was born, if a little worse for the wear. I
came aboard and entered the captain’s quarters to find it rank with
a sour-smelling crowd. My crew. Everything went quiet when I
entered the room.

“Why are there so many people in here?” I wanted to
know.

“Cause we’re havin’ a meeting. Where you been all
day, ya lackwit? And what’s with the stupid hat?”

My dear old dad, always the charmer.

I flipped the old man an obscene gesture. “I’ve been
getting pinched and almost beaten to dust in the Churn. The hat’s a
souvenir. Where’ve
you
been?”

“Well shoot, son, I been right here, runnin’ things
while you were out playing dress-up. Why didn’t you bluewave
us?”

“Couldn’t, on account of they stole all my tech. I
could’ve been rotting away in a Civvy prison, for all you knew.
I’ve been gone a whole night and day and you couldn’t send
one
guy after me?”

“I thought you done took off with one of them tavern
wenches and left us,” dad said, nonchalant.

“You know I’d never leave my boat on purpose,
dad.”

“
Your
boat? Who keeps this bucket of
driftmetal together, is it you? Cause last time I checked—”

“Alright, shut up.
Our
boat.”

“Cap’n Jakes?”

“Yeah,” my dad and I both said at the same time. We
glared at each other, then at the man who’d spoken.

Mr. Leigam Irkenbrand hesitated, his beetled eyes
darting back and forth between us. He was the boat’s bluewave
radioman; our mouth in the stream. He had been frail and thin, even
back then, with a prominent cleft chin, a small nose and a thick
head of gray locks pulled back into a tight ponytail. “Marshals are
on the comm. Chatter about a couple of hovertrucks reported
missing.”

Dad looked at me. Every crewmember in the room
looked at me.

I shrugged. “Yeah, it was me.”

I’d expected the place to erupt with cheers and
smiles, but the news only brought silence.

“Sounds like you’re in a bit of trouble, son,” Dad
said. “Didn’t run off with no tavern wench after all. What’d you
haul in?”

“Nothing,” I said. “Except for this hat. I was close
to bringing in something really big this time.”

Expectant silence became murmured
disappointment.

“The marshals are asking if we have any information
on the thefts,” said Leigam.

“One’s parked outside town,” I said. “The other…
they ain’t gonna find the other.”

Dad was irked. “Get below, son. Mr. Sarmiel, make
ready to lift off. Stations!”

I made my way belowdecks, hungry as a dog and still
aching, my bloody hand in need of patching and my left leg due for
a tune-up. Merton Richter and Dorth Littage were stationed at the
coal furnace, doing more sitting than shoveling. As soon as they
saw me, they started pretending otherwise.

“Slackers,” I said as I passed. “Liftoff soon. I’ll
kick your teeth in if we fall behind because of you
jackwagons.”

“Aye, cap,” they said.

Merton thumbed over his shoulder and gave me a
knowing look. “Cook’s in the galley.”

I frowned at him and trudged off in that
direction.

“There’s my sweet little boy,” said the cook when I
sat down. “What’s with that dreadful hat?”

“Hey, Ma.”

She leaned in, pinched my chin between two wet,
floury fingers, and puckered up. I obliged her, then nodded out of
her grasp. My mother, as beautiful and terrifying a woman as ever
sailed the stream.

“You must be hungry,” she said, returning to her
work. “You missed dinner last night, and you didn’t come home for
breakfast or lunch today. Or dinner, either, come to think of it.
This town isn’t
that
big, Mull.”

The guilt-trips never stopped.
When am I gonna
get away from these people?
“You’ll notice by the hole in my
hand that I kinda got into some trouble,” I pointed out.

She glanced over her shoulder, frowned, clucked her
tongue. “What’d you bring in?”

I slumped my shoulders. “Not a blasted thing.”

“You should be with the Doc, not down here,” she
said, hiding her disappointment with nagging.

“Dad mutinied again. Took command of the ship and
told me to hide below until we shove off.”

Ma huffed. “I’ll call Doctor Ditmarus. Your father,
I swear… we’re supposed to be retired. Doesn’t that man know how to
take a moment’s rest?”

I resisted the urge to point out what a hypocritical
statement that was, coming from my mile-a-minute mom. Instead I
said, “Sometimes I think Dad would like it if I got pinched. For
good.”

A moment’s hesitation. “Don’t be silly,” Mom said,
shoving a long whisk handle into her wrist port and whipping the
bowl of batter like it deserved the punishment. “He loves you.”

“Don’t feed me that crap,” I said. “You’re a better
cook than that.”

She called Doctor Ditmarus on the intercom and set
the bowl aside. “Someone’s a little grumpy tonight,” she said. “Go
lie down and wait for him.”

The whisk shed drops of batter as she waved me
away.

I crossed into the crew cabin and set my ugly new
hat down on a barrel. Then I pulled off my lone remaining boot and
flung myself onto a spare bunk. My mind drifted to the medallion.
My
medallion. Life would be different if I ever got my hands
on it.

I felt the turbines rumble down my spine. My stomach
heaved as the boat pitched off and caught the stream. Building a
good boat isn’t just a matter of throwing a few scraps of
driftmetal together. It has to be balanced. It has to have the
right ingots in the right places, size and mass and purity, all in
equal proportions. My
Ostelle
, she was a good boat. Just
because Dad had built most of her for me didn’t make her any less
mine. I’d financed the endeavor, after all.

Speak of the devil, Dad’s voice came over the
intercom. “They’re stopping us. The Civs want to search the boat.
Mull, if you’re somewhere where you can hear me, make yourself
scarce.”

The marshals caught us?
I thought.
Not a
chance.
Ostelle
can run and gun against anything the Civs
could ever throw at her. Why wouldn’t Dad just haul it out of here
and leave them in the dust? Unless… he’s making it easy for them to
get to me
.

I was the only one in the crew cabin. There was
something eerie about being alone. Maybe it was that I
felt
alone. Abandoned.
But he just told me to hide. Doesn’t that mean
he wants to keep me safe?

Metal planks on the deck above shrieked under the
weight of footsteps. I shouldered a set of webgear and darted into
the galley, where Ma was laboring away at dinner as if there
weren’t half a dozen Civvy marshals coming aboard to take her only
son into custody. When she turned to look at me, there was
something strange in her eyes. Sorrow? No, that wasn’t it.

“Better get out of sight,” she said. “Where do you
think you’ll hide?”

Looking at my mother then, I realized it wasn’t
sorrow I saw in her eyes. It was betrayal. I went numb. I backed
away.
How could you?
I almost said.
How much did they
have to pay you to turn me in?
I could hear the footsteps
spreading fore and aft, crossing decks and clunking down
stairs.

The flecker was in my hand before I reached the
furnace room. Two marshals were questioning Merton and Dorth as the
crewmen leaned on their shovels, enjoying the break. I burst into
the room and fired an erratic barrage, adrenaline pounding in my
chest. All four men held up their hands to shield themselves. The
flecker particles melted over them, searing away synthetic flesh
like a hair dryer over butter.

With their skin out of the way, I could see that
both marshals were heavily augmented, but that was no surprise. I
kept shooting until I saw a clear path, then bolted past them. I
heard them stumbling after me like a gaggle of anodized skeletons,
screaming. I flew up the stairs and across the deck, but stopped
short at the railing.

There were four Civvy sloops and a cruiser docked to
my
Ostelle
. More than a score of them had come aboard,
decked out in the red-and-tans of the Civil Regency Corps. I
couldn’t help but feel honored by the show of force.

“Drop it and come forward, nice and easy,” said
their commanding officer, a dark-haired mustachioed man I knew as
Captain Ludolf Kupfer, the biggest law-lover of them all.

I didn’t budge. “Ah, Kupfer. Isn’t this an
unexpected surprise? How nice of you to drop in and say hello.”

Don’t judge me. Sometimes you have to match a
law-lover’s smugness with a little smugness of your own. Well… you
don’t have to. But it’s more fun that way.

Kupfer gave me a pained grimace, as if my greeting
had been cliché enough to hurt him physically. “We’ve collected
evidence that leads us to believe you’re responsible for the deaths
of as many as eleven missing persons, including three security
personnel employed by a Mr. Alastair Gilfoyle as part of his
Churn-mining operation. I’m afraid you’ll have to come with
me.”

Thirteen
, I would’ve said.
I’m responsible
for the deaths of
thirteen
missing persons.
I wanted to
thank Kupfer for underestimating my murder tally, but I couldn’t
have opened my mouth without correcting him. Plus, I knew better
than to put myself at odds with the two dozen rifles his marshals
were pointing in my direction.

In my defense, the Churn was what did the
killing
, I could’ve said, but didn’t. I thought of the
dark-skinned man, his funny accent and the equally funny look of
terror he’d had on his face while he was falling. And Gilfoyle,
that balding, cane-wielding, gold-ring-wearing rotten apple of a
mining tycoon who still had my medallion. His medallion.
My
…
medallion.

I looked around at my crew, standing off at the
fringes of the conflict, cowering behind the marshals like children
behind their mothers’ skirts. I was pretty sure I knew then what
Dad’s little meeting had been about; why everyone had gone silent
when I’d walked into the captain’s quarters. They’d decided it was
time to vote me off the boat. My crew was no longer mine.