Pirate Sun (17 page)

Chaison glanced around. Absurdly, he found himself hesitate—the semaphoremen were intent on their tasks, the pages were flying about on angels’ wings, equally focused, and a steady stream of photographers and other reconnaissance personnel were hopping on and off bikes at the circus ball’s entrances. At last they were starting to look like a team.

“All vessels to your fallback posts!” he yelled as loudly as he could. “Everybody else—inside!
Now!
” Chaison dove off the T-bar and yanked the flags out of the hands of a startled semaphore-man. “
Now!
”

There was no time to turn and look, but his imagination served him better than sight: flares of light would be appearing now around the expanding dot of the distant cruiser. Each orange star would last just a few seconds, but in that time the missiles would approach the speed of sound. They would be here just…about…

Something flickered in his peripheral vision, and an explosion scraped half the wicker footing off the circus ball.

A wall of shocked air washed Chaison into the sky.

THE UNDERSIDE OF
the motionless town-wheel had become a wall. Antaea blinked and shook her head, then realized she was flying at it at more than a hundred miles per hour. She would hit the tangle of pipes, struts, and guy wires in seconds.

Cursing, she reached down to unclip her wing restraints. The feather-lined wings snapped out and back, nearly dislocating her shoulders. Instantly she went into a spin—the wings were designed this way, to create a stable shuttlecock for rapid braking. Antaea threw out her arms to moderate the motion.

Something struck her hip, and before she could react, her arm was knocked numb. Antaea hit herself in the face with her own bicep. Her feet struck something solid and she crumpled as best she could, hitting shoulder, jaw, and ear in turn.

Dazed, she hung in the air for a while, vaguely aware that she was surrounded by gigantic gray limbs and birds’ beaks. A forest and birds made of…metal? She groaned, spat blood, and turned her head cautiously.

She was tangled in the understructure of the town-wheel. These big metal ones routed all their plumbing under street level and the pipes and pump stations were streamlined, which explained the strange birds’ heads: metal teardrop-shaped bunkers where men could work were mounted under the wheel.

Thunder tore the air. Antaea grabbed a taut cable with her right hand—her left arm was still numb—and pulled herself past the pipes. The formerly empty airspace where she had lined up her squad was speckled with clouds of smoke, debris, and the instantaneous red lines of tracer fire. At the heart of it all were four ships, one drifting, another aswarm with men who were pulling a tree-sized dart out of it; and two more with their engine wash facing her. These were making straight for Chaison’s bunker and were firing rockets as they went. Through the heat-distorted air she glimpsed explosions in the distance.

The nagging, rational part of her mind—the part that never shut up—told her that she still had leads. If she’d lost Chaison Fanning, she might still track down his men, Darius and Richard, and find the key through them.

She hated herself for thinking this way.

Using her feet and right hand, she monkey-swung her way through the forest of pipes until she came to an egg-shaped pump house. This had a little hatch on it, probably never used before based on how hard it was to open. Prying it back, she climbed in and found, as expected, a shaft and ladder leading toward street level.

Antaea swam along the shaft, trying not to hear the coughing rumble of distant explosions.

THE CITY OF
Neverland made its move. All morning it had closed its suburbs like the claws of a giant hand, encircling and devouring Stonecloud; but it had paused, its boxy houses a hundred yards from the nearest Falcon dwellings. People of both cities fixed frightened gazes on their sudden neighbors from behind curtains and hastily hammered barricades. The vista stretched for miles: a thousand cornices and shingled walls turned to present now this, now that glass surface to the sunlight—and from behind all of them, eyes watched.

The military was elsewhere. In the case of Falcon Formation, it had never been here. There were rumors of a new city council, of some famous general or admiral guiding the work gangs that had broken up the city. Out in the arteries that fed the local neighborhoods, bikes and cargo haulers moved purposefully; few of the residents knew who they were answerable to or what they were doing.

The citizens of Neverland knew the Gretel navy was there…somewhere. They could hear the battle progressing—everyone could, it crashed through the clouds of housing like close thunder. Many of Neverland’s people had attended the rallies, knew they were expected to subdue their new neighbors, by force if necessary. They were to take up makeshift weapons, whatever was at hand, and pound on the doors or smash the windows of the foreign houses, demanding surrender. The prospect was terrifying.

The navy had promised to be here. There were supposed to be lieutenants on bikes to direct them but apparently they were stretched too thin, or distracted. As the first neighborhood began its final move, some people crawled out onto the sides of their houses, clutching their broom-poles and knives, and stared around, looking for leadership. The houses were being pushed forward by fans, jets, and other contrivances, but the men running these were simply following distant semaphore instructions. They had no authority nor any idea of what to do if they lost sight of those faraway flags.

By chance it was two apartment blocks that came into contact first. The Falcon building was brick shaped and made of unadorned concrete, the Gretels’ a windowed torus festooned with gingerbread carvings. As the buildings closed the last few yards their windows began opening and men appeared at them, armed with whatever was at hand. They stared at one another—and for miles in every direction, every eye, and every binocular and telescope was trained on them as well.

There was a gentle bump as a corner of the rectangular apartment touched its donut-shaped counterpart. Attackers and defenders were close enough now to see the fear on one another’s faces. For long seconds, nobody moved.

Then someone stretched up out of a window on Falcon’s side. He held no weapon, just a white cloth that he waved ahead of himself as he swung onto the side of the building. It was Corbus. With a gentle push of his feet he let go of his home and drifted into the small angle of open air that remained between the facades.

A murmur of recognition spread down the side of the flat-sided apartment. As everyone watched, the squat, heavily muscled Falcon man took a deep breath and bellowed, “The people of Stonecloud have no quarrel with the people of Neverland!”

Another murmur spread, this time on both sides. “We are the same!” continued Corbus. “Pawns in the hands of men who would destroy our two great cities!

“Do you really believe,” he asked the people peering at him from Neverland’s apartments, “in your heart of hearts do you believe, that Neverland could swallow a foreign city and yet be unchanged?” He shook his head. “You know better. Whether you win or not, your great city will be annihilated in this change. Hasn’t it already been, in large part?”

He’d struck a nerve there. Neverland’s former arrangement—even its traditional locale in relation to its neighbors—had been erased for this attack. Corbus had judged correctly the resentment this would cause.

“But this need not be.” He rolled each word out, like a line of heavy stones. As in Stonecloud’s stadium days before, he thrust out his arms and legs to make a star shape, and said, “Join us, your neighbors! Not as conquerors or slaves, but as equals! Together we can say no to this pointless war. Restore our cities to their former glory. Live in peace together!”

His words echoed out then died in the distance. For a long moment there was silence, and stillness, up and down the plane of converging buildings. Then a window opened opposite Corbus.

An old man emerged. He too was weaponless, and held a single small scrap of paper in his hand: a bill of the mysterious rights currency that had recently begun circulating in both cities.

He drifted out. The two men came together in the air, and slowly each reached out. They clasped hands.

A gasp went up; a light of hope appeared in the eyes of those who moments before had been cowering behind their windows, awaiting an attack. Hesitantly, they began to gather, and point and murmur.

Then:
“Traitor!”
someone screamed. A lone figure erupted from a window on the Gretels’ side, rifle raised. A shot sounded and the old man convulsed and let go of Corbus’s hand. More shots, and Corbus roared and put a hand to his ear, where a spray of blood was darkening the air. He grabbed a rope and hauled himself back toward the apartment window.

Shouts and roars of fury washed away from that central point like ripples on a lake. Suddenly there was gunfire everywhere; and as the rest of the buildings crunched together, chaos and madness descended on the cities of Stonecloud and Neverland.

ANTAEA EMERGED INTO
a weightless street. As she climbed up the access shaft she’d imagined she was moving horizontally, gliding over the rungs of the ladder; that meant that when she pushed aside the metal street-cover and poked her head out, she found herself looking down (or up) a vast wall of cobblestones. Bereft of a ruling direction, the street was as vertiginous a surface as she’d ever seen.

Behind the shop window across the street, baguettes and bread loaves hung in the air like some magician’s trick; the shingles on the shop’s roof had risen up like the raised hackles of a frightened animal. A little ways down the road, a rocking chair hovered four feet above the cobbles; and everywhere, a haze of dust, pebbles, and grit that had accumulated on every horizontal surface over the years, was breathing itself slowly into the air.

She closed her eyes, concentrated, and imagined a new up and down, one in which the street was laid out flat and everything just happened to be weightless. It helped a bit; when she opened her eyes she was able to pretend she was stepping onto an ordinary road, but with the added ability to fly.

Everything was groaning, popping, and creaking as it eased out of the gravity-bound state it had been in for so long. What with this and the distant thunder of explosions, Antaea almost didn’t notice the sliding sound behind her. She turned to find a rifle being aimed at her from an open second-story window.

She raised her hands. “I’m with the city,” she shouted.

There was a pause. Then a slightly panicked voice yelled back, “Which city?”

“I’m defending Stonecloud,” she said slowly and loudly. She kept her hands in plain sight.

“You’re not from Falcon,” said the other. “You’re a winter wraith.”

Antaea’s natural wryness asserted itself. “How astute of you to notice,” she said. “But that makes me just as much a foreigner to the Gretels as you. And I’m trying to help
you.
”

“Why?”

That one stopped her. She opened her mouth to laugh and say, “I have absolutely no idea,” then thought better of it. As she drifted into the air she got a better view of the man behind the window; he looked like he was in his mid-forties. The bedroom behind him was wallpapered with yellow floral designs.

“My man is from here,” she said at last. This wasn’t the case, but the truth was near enough that it felt like she was confessing something true. It wasn’t a comfortable feeling.

“He insisted on staying and fighting,” she said. “What could I do? Leave him?”

The rifle wavered. “Where is he then?”

She jabbed a finger over her shoulder. “Do you hear those explosions?”

There was another pause while he thought about that. Then: “You’d best be going to him, then.”

“Yes. Thanks. Um…” She was now hovering at rooftop height and the streets were becoming a strange maze below her. “Where can I get a bike?”

The house’s defender waved his rifle to the right. “I saw some of our boys go that way a little while ago. Somebody said there’s a rich fellow holed up in his house that way.”

“Ah. Well, thanks.” She cast about for something clever, or at least reassuring, to add. “Good luck!”

He snorted and slammed the window.

Nursing her sore arm, Antaea flapped in the direction he’d indicated, wondering at what moment she had decided that, yes, it was Chaison she was going to try to find, rather than some means of escaping the city.

CHAISON AWOKE TO
the sensation of a small hand on his wrist. He blinked into alertness, and found himself staring into an abyss of fire and twirling debris framed by incongruous forested park-balls. The hand tightened and he was pulled in the other direction; he looked up and met the gaze of a page-girl, no more than twelve years old, who held his arm in one hand and a rope in the other.

He grinned at her but she was all business, hauling on the rope so they sailed back through smoke and drifting grit to a half-open door on the half-peeled circus ball. Chaison managed to make it through under his own steam, although out of respect and gratitude he let her keep her grip on his arm until they were inside. Then he gently disengaged himself.

“Thank you,” he said, resting a hand on her shoulder. Now that they were indoors she indulged an impish smile, then hopped away. Chaison would have said more but the place was losing another layer of decking under renewed rocket fire. Splintering chaos raged through the inner levels while men and women covered their ears and cowered.

Chaison made his way to the iron-sheathed central chamber, where the carefully constructed model of the city had turned into a drifting cloud of wooden blocks. Men and women were crowded in here. Minutes ago they had been a functioning military organization; now they had returned to what they’d been two days ago—citizens, mothers, workers. Panicked and still, they turned their eyes to Chaison as he entered.

“It’s not safe in here!” Chaison shouted. “You have to escape while you can.” There wasn’t more than a couple minutes’ time to get everyone out of the building safely; after that the approaching cruisers would be able to circle the building and pick off anyone coming out the back.

“No!”

Corbus had appeared in the doorway. The former Atlas, strongman, and now ad-hoc mayor of Stonecloud was bleeding from a cut over his ear, and his pale face held an expression of horror. The men who’d left with him surrounded him now, all of them grim. One of the circus acrobats held a repeating rifle in his hand, and it was loosely pointed in Chaison’s direction.

Corbus spread his huge hands, his face projecting an expression of eloquent, tragic sorrow. “Our city,” he cried. “No one but us can save our city.”

“You can’t do that if you’re dead,” said Chaison, speaking as bluntly as he could to try to puncture Corbus’s theatrics. “Staying here is bad tactics.”

Corbus shook his head. “Look at them,” he said, pointing past Chaison as if he could see through the blockhouse walls. “There’s only two ships inside! Only two! The rest have been destroyed.”

Shaking his head, Chaison climbed down the wall to join them. “Not destroyed,” he said, pitching his voice so that everyone could hear. “They’re just bottled up. We might have disabled two, if we’re lucky. Meanwhile, Neverland’s suburbs have us surrounded.”

The acrobat peered at him shrewdly. “What do you suggest we do, then? Surrender?”

“There are degrees of surrender,” said Chaison. “That’s the only advantage we’ve ever had in this fight. Their navy’s taken some losses—probably more than they expected. Now is the time to negotiate a settlement. Keep your neighborhoods intact, ensure that Stonecloud remains a distinct city rather than being absorbed—”

He was interrupted by one of the semaphore men bursting into the chamber. The man’s flags were stuffed into a pack on his back, and they danced in the air behind him making it look like he’d been pierced by a dozen absurdly big and bright arrows. “The squadron we hit with the houses…it’s free,” he shouted. “And undamaged.”

Chaison nodded. “They’ll be on us in minutes. We have to leave
now.
”

With great dignity Corbus drew himself up and stared down his nose at Chaison. “Admiral Fanning, thank you for your help. The citizens of Stonecloud will take it from here.”

“Take it where?” was all Chaison could think of to say. Realizing he suddenly looked foolish, he scowled and said, “At the very least, a tactical retreat to a new command center—”

But it was useless. Chaison heard the sound of big jet engines closing in, and knew that everyone would be hearing them too. At least two cruisers were now circling the blockhouse.

“We have to take that ship!” shouted Corbus. “Destroy the ships and the cities—the cities will…” He seemed to remember something with a start, and for a moment his expression was deathly. Then he frowned, as though abandoning all sympathy for his own thoughts, and thrust a fist in the air. “For Stonecloud! For our city! Join me now, and save our city!” A tentative cheer came from a few throats, and as he turned and vanished down the corridor some men followed him.

The acrobat watched him go, then turned to look sadly at Chaison. “Keep them safe,” he said. Then he jumped after his mayor.

Chaison waved the remaining people closer. “You need to get into the most defensible chambers, close the door, and stay there,” he said. “One way or the other, this will all be over soon.”

“Then we’ve lost?” asked one of the pages.

“We won’t win.”

THE ONLY AVAILABLE
bike was bright canary-yellow and festooned with iridescent stickers that proclaimed
BEST SPICE POCKETS IN TOWN
! The stickers glittered like beacons in the shafts of sunlight penetrating the sky-high wall of buildings. This visibility was a shame since Antaea was flying straight toward the Gretels’ cruisers. It was only a matter of time before she drifted into the crosshairs of some slow-witted but sharp-eyed gunner. The prospect made her hunker closer to the hot curve of the jet.