Skybuilders (Sorcery and Science Book 4) (20 page)

“What’s this for?” he asked.

“That’s for your levers.”

“My what?”

“Your levers,” she repeated. “Whenever the thrusters are nonfunctional—as when the city is over the Elition Wilderness zone, for instance—the Hellean standard procedure is to send technicians to the thruster rooms. There, a valve positioned next to each thruster can be opened or closed manually. Closing it prevents fuel from reaching the thruster, which means the city cannot correct its position. That’s why we’re stealing the levers. We need to remove each and every one.”

“How do we remove them?” Ariella asked.

“I’ll demonstrate in a minute,” Marin said. She tapped the ‘180’ line on the drawing. “Here, in the thruster room next door. And this is also where we will start. From there, we’ll split up.” She tapped the ‘0’ on the opposite end of the city circle. “This is where we will meet up again before jumping out of the city.”

Marin looked at Leonidas. She traced her finger left from ‘180’, following the curve. Over the next thruster room, she wrote ‘L1’ over the 165 degree mark.

“L1?” he asked.

“Short for ‘Leonidas-1’,” she explained. “That’s your first thruster room. You will take the lever, then follow the hallway along the left side of the city, taking the lever from each room.”

Ariella watched her write ‘A1’ over the first thruster room along the right side of the city, then asked, “And I’m to start there?”

“Yes, you will remove the levers from the thruster rooms on the right side of the city as shown in this drawing.”

Marin buried her hand inside another box and pulled out three watches. Black with a digital readout face as wide as Leonidas’s wrist, right now they each displayed a series of red zeros. Leonidas slipped his on with no other thought in his head than how wretchedly it clashed with his outfit. When Marin offered one to Ariella, however, the Elition looked at it as though it were poisonous.

“Is that thing really necessary?” she asked.

“Yes.” Marin tossed her the watch, then buckled on her own. “And this brings us to the complicated part of the plan.”

“You mean there’s more than stealing these levers?” Ariella asked, fastening her watch so quickly her hands were a blur. Maybe she thought it would spontaneously sprout teeth and bite her if she allowed her fingers to linger. She was glaring at it as though it still might.

“You had to have known no Marin plan would ever be so simple,” Leonidas told her.

“I fear you are right about that.”

She gave them the evil eye. “Instead of teasing me, you should be concentrating on this plan.”

“I was.”

“Uh-huh. Let’s see how well you were paying attention then. Leonidas, what is Hellean standard procedure when their computer control of the thrusters fails?” she asked him.

“Ummmm…”

“No, that wasn’t it.” Exasperation clung to the heavy sigh Marin let out. “The correct answer is the control room will send technicians to the thruster rooms to control the city’s position through the manual release of fuel from the central tank.”

“Right, that’s why we’re taking the levers. So they can’t open or close the valve,” Leonidas said, turning to her with a triumphant grin.

Rather than faint in awe that he’d remembered that tidbit, Marin merely sighed again. “It takes a lot of time to steal twenty-four levers. What happens if the technicians were to figure out what we’re doing before we’re done?”

“I’d get to practice shooting with some Hellean fancy gun you’re about to pull out of one of these mystery boxes?” he asked, leaning to look at the rack behind her.

“Funny.” Marin’s expression told him she thought otherwise.

“Perhaps they won’t figure it out until it’s too late.”

“As soon as my update goes through, they'll send technicians. The priority will be to check the valves here.” She pointed to the three thruster rooms closest to their current location. “And here.” She indicated the three corresponding rooms on the opposite side of the city. “They'll ensure the valves on the west side are open to counteract the wind—and that those on the east side are closed so as not to add to the force pushing the city toward the continent.

“While we are aiming for the exact opposite. The first thing we'll do is make sure the valves here on the west side are closed. That’s before stealing the levers in those three rooms. Close the valve in every room before stealing its lever. That goes all the way until the three on the east side. Those we will open before stealing the levers.”

“You mentioned technicians?” Ariella reminded her.

“Yes. After the control room loses communication with the thruster rooms, the technicians will head to those two parts of the city. That is, unless we're already keeping their technicians busy.”

“Busy,” said Ariella. “Why do I have the feeling I won’t like this?”

“Don’t worry. It’s actually quite simple. I take it you’ve used scissors before?”

Ariella gave her a look that said she had a few ideas of what she could do with a pair of scissors. Marin backed up, bumping against the storage rack.

“Here.” She pulled a pair of wire cutters from a box and handed them to Ariella. “They’re like scissors for wires.”

She turned to Leonidas, ostensibly to hand him a pair of cutters as well, but really to avoid the dark look Ariella was aiming her way.

“Ok, now on to our watches. Around forty-five minutes after we set out, your first alarm will go off. That is five minutes after I've sent my update to the city systems. It will take a few minutes to go into effect. During this time, I want you each to open a few panels in your respective thruster rooms and cut some cables. It’s important to cut these cables
before
the update finishes. We want the control room to be alerted to something wrong in those rooms. They will send technicians to investigate, which will keep them busy and away from the rooms key to our plan. By the time they get there, my update should have gone through, and the control room will be unable to see—or counter—our next actions. Continue taking levers from the remaining thruster rooms on your route. I’ve calculated this operation should take seventy minutes.”

“Why that?” Leonidas interrupted.

“The left and right outer loops around the city circle are each 4.8 kilometers. That’s four hundred meters between each thruster room, then add in—”

Leonidas yawned. “Sorry I asked.”

“Well, you
did
ask,” she shot back. She wrote numbers along the side of the paper, starting at one and going all the way up to fourteen. “Each number represents five minutes. Two minutes to run the four hundred meters…”

“Two minutes?!” spluttered Leonidas.

She ignored his protest. “…and three minutes to remove and store the levers in your pack. I’ve allowed five minutes to cut up the cables, and there are a few waiting periods to keep our actions all in sync.”

“And what will you be doing while the two of us are running laps around the city?” he asked Marin.

“Running under the city.” She traced her fingertip in a straight line from one side of the city to the other. “One level down, there is a service tunnel that cuts through the city. We’ll all head over to the thruster room next door in just a bit. I’ll demonstrate how to remove a lever, then we'll split up. As you two go left and right, I'll go down one level and run through the service tunnel to the opposite side of the city. Then, I'll upload the update and wait. At sixty-five minutes, the second countdown on our watches will hit zero. We'll assist the wind’s push of the city toward the continent by simultaneously opening the valves on the east side of the city. Then we'll remove the levers to prevent the technicians from issuing a counter push.

“After that, we’ll meet up in the storage closet over on that side of the city, and take the ladder to the hangar on the city’s lowest level. By the time we’re ready to jump out, the combination of the wind and those three open valves will have pushed the city over the Wilderness, where it will lose all power. The city’s technology will not work until they can bring the city back out of the no-tech zone, a problem that will keep them very busy while we're free to escape.”

Ariella frowned. “King River won’t be happy if you crash a city into Elitia.”

“I won’t be happy if it crashes into me,” added Leonidas.

“It won’t crash,” Marin assured them. “We’re just going to nudge the city close enough for the systems to go haywire for awhile. The Helleans will find a way to move the city away, but by then we’ll be long gone.”

“I hope you have a plan on how to get us off the city and back on the ground,” Leonidas said. And that this plan didn’t entail jumping to their deaths.

“Flying suits. The Helleans keep them in all the hangars.” Marin really did have an answer for everything.

“A storm is brewing below,” Ariella said, tapping the glass pane.

“Are there any buildings in the area that we can use for shelter?” Marin asked.

“That depends on where we land. Ice Palace, the castle of Everlast, is not far, but the temple at Winter’s Gate would be better. The Everlast Elitions are weird when it comes to outsiders.”

“Humans?” asked Leonidas.

“
All
outsiders. Anyone from outside of Everlast—even other Elitions,” said Ariella. “I’ll lead us to Winter’s Gate. From there, we can take the portal to Laelia.”

“There are Selpe soldiers in Laelia,” Leonidas pointed out. He didn't want to escape just to be captured again. Selpe soldiers would arrest him on sight. Or just shoot him in the head.

“Usually there are only five soldiers in all of Laelia. A consequence of our alliance with the Selpes.” Ariella frowned, as though the thought made her ill. “But they aren't allowed in the Gateway, which is where we'll enter Laelia. The Elitions standing guard there will not deter us. It will be fine. The hard part is getting there.”

Marin took a deep breath. “Ok, follow me to the thruster room next door. I’ll demonstrate how to remove the levers.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

~
Twenty-four Levers ~

526AX August 23, Blizzard’s Point

MARIN WASN’T SURE her plan would work, but it was better than just sitting around waiting to die. She tried not to sag her shoulders as she led Leonidas and Ariella to the thruster room next door. For the purposes of her plan, she had designated it ‘180’, but the slender black plaque on the white door read ‘TCRV-005’. It was precisely the sort of name the Helleans would have chosen. Like everything about them, their naming code was about brevity rather than beauty.

The thruster room was hardly larger than the storage closet. Between the machinery and exposed piping, the three of them barely squeezed through to the back. A fat lever was mounted to the outward-facing wall, right beside a porthole identical to the one next door. Marin pulled an electric screwdriver out of her bag, then slid it into the holster at her hip.

“What kind of gun is that?” Ariella asked.

“The kind used for attacking screws.” Leonidas chuckled.

Ariella turned her back on him and looked at Marin. “Do you have a more sensible explanation?”

“Leonidas is a doofus,” offered Marin with a shrug.

Demonstrating all the maturity of a two-year-old, he stuck his tongue out at her.

“It’s not a gun,” Marin told Ariella. “It’s an electric screwdriver. Here.” She handed one to each of them. “We’re going to use these to remove the levers.” She tapped on the lever. “Which look like this.”

Ariella looked even less pleased to get the screwdriver than she had the watch. “Give me a normal one. I’m faster than a human. I can do it by hand.”

“Can you remove a ten centimeter long screw in three seconds?” Marin removed her screwdriver from its holster and held it up. “Well, this can.”

“Surely, you are exaggerating, Marin,” Leonidas said.

“I
never
exaggerate. This electric screwdriver can do two thousand rounds per minute. The very best ones we had at the Orion Explosives lab only did fifteen hundred. And one of my coworkers liked to hoard those at his desk. I usually got stuck with the ones that went around one thousand. Every technician in every Hellean city has one of these beauties,” she said, smiling at the screwdriver.

“Do I need to remind you that these Helleans you adore so much are trying to kill us?” Leonidas said.

“Not out of wrath. They were simply hired.”

“Oh, hired killers. That makes it all right then.”

“I’m only expressing my appreciation for the manner in which they equip their workers. The Selpe government makes sure their soldiers have nothing but the best weaponry, but they sure have a lot to learn about how to treat their own scientists.”

“Let’s leave the debates for later and just concentrate on our escape,” said Ariella, turning the screwdriver over in her hands.

Marin nodded. Ariella was right. And besides, keeping her mind busy was the only thing stopping her from succumbing to the knot that had been tightening in her chest ever since Silas disappeared through that portal.

“You two will be using the screwdrivers so often that it’s best to keep them close at hand,” she said quickly, before her mind could wander in that direction. She smiled at them. “After all, we’re on a tight schedule.”

Leonidas lifted his hands in the air. “Ok, ok, Marin. I’m listening. Now please just put away that murderous smile.”

As Marin tried to mold her face into a neutral expression, he and Ariella took the proffered holsters. They fastened them around their waists, then slid the screwdrivers in.

“Good. Now, remember that you only have about three minutes to get through each thruster room, possibly open or close the valves, remove the lever, store it in your bag, and return to the hall.”

Leonidas knocked his fist on the lever. “These things look pretty sturdy. And heavy. Do we really need to collect them in our bags?”

“If you don’t take them with you, the technicians will just reattach them and use them to open or close the valves when they lose computer control of them. There are many things in the supply closets, but these levers are not among them. It’s rare that a lever needs to be replaced, so the extras are stored three levels down in one of the gigantic storage bays. With the levers missing, in order to use the valves the technicians will need to climb down a few dozen stairs, locate the correct bay, then run through dozens of aisles to track down the correct box. Then, they'll need to bring one lever to each valve they want to control, reattach them, and only then turn them into the open or closed position. Do you know how long that will take?”