The Fog Diver (21 page)

I
FLOPPED ONTO THE
sweep deck and stared toward Port Oro. So close—yet we'd never reach it. The nine mutineer warships still looked like toys, while the
Predator
loomed ever larger.

Minutes slipped past, way too fast. I wasn't ready to lose, not yet. I wasn't ready to say good-bye to my dreams, I wasn't ready to say good-bye to my crew.

If only I'd done things differently. If only I'd been born normal. If only the
X-Wing Enterprise
would fall from the stars to save us all. I touched the scrapbook in my jacket and remembered Mrs. E's words.
What if the
X-Wing Enterprise
already landed? What if the rescue party is already here?

“Oh,” I said under my breath.

Maybe Mrs. E meant that nobody would save us . . . so we needed to save ourselves. But how? I didn't know. It wasn't possible. I closed my eyes and lay back in defeat. The deck shuddered beneath me. The shouts of the airsailors sounded far away. The glow of sunlight on my eyelids reminded me of the Fog, and I daydreamed about diving—about the freedom and the speed.

Then a terrifying thought rose in my mind, like a jaguar's growl rumbling through the Fog.
No
. No, it was a dumb idea. A deadly idea.

I swallowed a few times. “Uh, Hazel? We can't outrun Kodoc, right?”

“Right,” she said.

“So either he pounds Nisha's ship and
then
grabs me . . . or he just grabs me. We have to sneak off the ship and hand me over.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Give you to Kodoc?”

“Yeah. To keep the
Rose
out of it.”

“No.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

She didn't answer.

“It's our only choice,” I told her. “Either I surrender, or I dive without a tether.”

Hazel cocked her head and gazed past me, like she was reading our future in the fields of Fog.

“I'm no expert,” Loretta said, “but isn't ‘diving without a tether' the same as ‘jumping overboard'?”

“That's what Chess is saying.” Swedish glared at me. “Even though he knows I'll stuff him in a chest before I let that happen.”

“Wait,” Hazel murmured, her eyes dark with thought. “Maybe that's it.”

“Maybe what's it?” Loretta asked.

“Diving without a tether.”

Swedish squinted at Hazel. “What're you talking about?”

“I think,” she said slowly, “I have a plan.”

“Is it better than Chess jumping overboard?”

“No,” Hazel said. “It's not.”

“Captain Nisha is going to kill us,” Swedish grunted twenty minutes later.

“She'll thank us,” Loretta said. “Are you done with those bolts yet?”

Swedish raised his head from the harpoon. “She's going to thank us for stealing her lifeboat?”

“You're not a pokey little
lifeboat,
are you?” Bea crooned, fiddling with the cargo raft's engine. “No, you're my smuggle-buggy!”

I was too scared to smile at Bea, too numb and nervous. My mind kept snagging on Hazel's plan, especially the part where I surrendered to Kodoc. It had seemed like a better idea before we'd started trying to make it happen.

I spun on my tether to look at Hazel, but she didn't
notice. She was perched in the access hatch that opened beside the lifeboats, her eyes half closed. Plotting and planning as Swedish bolted a stolen harpoon—which I'd lowered alongside the
Anvil Rose
—onto the cargo raft deck.

“That's right,” Bea murmured to the pistons. “You're fast as a greasy cheetah.”

Swinging beside Hazel, I unlatched from the tether and closed my jacket around the harness we'd lifted, along with a pair of goggles. My hands shook too much to work the buttons—because pretty soon I'd be alone on the
Predator,
face-to-face with Kodoc.

“You can do this, Chess,” Hazel said, fastening my buttons. “Swedish, are you done?”

He patted the harpoon. “The pig-sticker is in place.”

“Bea?” Hazel hopped from the warship onto the still-deflated cargo raft. “How's the engine look?”

“One minute, Cap'n! The spark plugs are a weensy bit scared.”

“Well, sweet-talk them—quickly.”

I crouched at the base of the harpoon and pretended to check the long rope coiled there. Trying to look busy instead of petrified.

“How about you, Loretta?” Hazel asked.

“I am awesome.” Loretta flashed a gap-toothed smile. “I get to shoot a harpoon directly up Kodoc's nose.”

“Loretta!” Hazel snapped, grabbing a strap near the
mast. “Do not aim at Kodoc. You only get one shot.”

“I know, I know,” she grumbled. “I'm just kidding.”

“The plugs are happy!” Bea chimed, lifting her head from the hatch.

“Swedish?” Hazel called.

Swede ran his fingers over the steam organ keyboard. “She's just like the salvage raft,” he said with a satisfied grunt. “But slicker than a snail's sneeze.”

“Then everyone fasten down—we're going for a ride!” Hazel reached for the emergency inflation handle . . . then paused. “Um, Chess? Would you please keep Loretta from plunging to her death?”

“I'm fastened!” Loretta insisted, gripping the railing tighter. “Stop picking on me!”

“Well, just in case,” I said.

“Thanks,” she muttered. “How come all this airship stuff always happens in the
air
?”

“In three,” Hazel said. “Two, one . . .”

She turned the handle, and the tank of foggium coughed to life. The hose stiffened for a few seconds, then the cargo raft woke. The mast unfolded on pneumatic hinges, pulling the rigging taut. The propellers straightened, the deck snapped straight, and
whoosh,
the raft's balloon inflated like a frog's throat.

Loretta stumbled, and I steadied her as we drifted free from the
Anvil Rose
. A shiver of excitement ran across my skin, along with an edge of terror. I was on a raft again,
flying over the Fog with my crew . . . and heading for Kodoc's ship.

I lowered Bea through a hatch, where she started scolding and tinkering as the cargo raft dropped through the air. Swedish was taking us beneath the
Anvil Rose,
because we needed to get to the other side, closer to the
Predator
.

“Okay,” Hazel said, chewing her lip nervously. “So much for the easy part.”

“Look on the bright side,” I told her. “Now we're stealing from muties. We've come a long way.”

She raised her spyglass to look behind us. “What's next, mugging the Five Families?”

“Either that,” I said, “or winning a fight with a goose.”

I followed her gaze and caught a glimpse of the nine warships approaching from the Port, closer than ever. “How long before they get here?”

“Fifteen minutes,” she said.

“That's great! We can wait for them to catch up instead of—”

“No,” she interrupted, pointing her spyglass in the other direction. “Look.”

As we flew out from beneath the
Anvil Rose,
the
Predator
swooped into firing range.

T
HE
P
REDATOR'S BIG GUNS
swiveled toward Nisha's airship, and a roar slammed across the sky. A volley of cannonballs barely missed the
Anvil Rose'
s zeppelin—a warning shot.

“Give me the boy!” Kodoc shouted into the sudden silence. “Or the next blast guts your ship!”

“Come get him, you slime-sniffing roof rat!” Nisha shouted back. “If you can.”

“Sweet,” Loretta murmured beside her harpoon. “The captain knows how to sling an insult.”

The
Predator
fired again. The sound of the blast almost split my head—and the impact almost split the
Anvil Rose
's propellers. Smoke billowed and bits of wood and copper rained around us.

“Watch out!” I shouted to Swedish. “It's going to squash us!”

“Not today,” he said between gritted teeth. “That's what
they
want.”

His fingers danced across the keyboard organ, and we zoomed from the shadow of the
Anvil Rose
as flaming debris plunged around us.

“Whoa,” Swedish said. “This thing really moves.”

He spun the wheel and clattered on the organ. With a hiss of foggium, the propellers sliced through the air as explosions and screams sounded high above. A quick glance at the
Anvil Rose
made me wince: jagged holes pocked the hull, smoke poured from two gun emplacements, and the rigging crew frantically patched the balloon.

“Lord Kodoc!” a roof-trooper cried from the
Predator
. “Down there! There are three boys in that raft! Is that him?”

“Heh-heh,” Loretta snickered to Hazel. “They think you're a boy.”

In middle of the fear and the danger, Hazel and I looked at each other and almost smiled. Did Loretta really think that the trooper had mistaken
Hazel
for the third boy?

Then the cannons roared again. “Catch him!” Kodoc roared. “I need him alive!”

Swedish swooped low, speeding away from the Port,
away from the
Rose
—away from the safety of the nine incoming mutineer warships—and dove under the
Predator
. The cargo raft zigzagged, swerving in sharp angles to avoid harpoons and nets, and I closed my mind against the racket, trying to tame my fear.

Then I heard Kodoc's voice directly above me, cutting through the air. “You will never escape me, Chess. Not ever.”

My heart beat so hard in my chest that my ribs ached. I raised my head and saw Kodoc standing on the bridge of the
Predator
forty feet away, pinning me with his stare. I couldn't do this. Hazel's plan was loco. How could I walk onto Kodoc's ship . . . and then defy him?

What if I couldn't stand up to Kodoc? He'd created me. He'd transformed me from a normal baby into a cowardly freak, just like he'd transformed the
Teardrop
into the
Predator,
and I couldn't do this.

The wind of his propellers blew the hair from my face, but I was too scared to even raise my hand to cover my eye. I wanted to scream at Hazel—
Run! Hide! Get me away from him!
—but fear paralyzed me.

Swedish slammed the organ and we veered forward, past the
Predator,
heading away from the
Anvil Rose
. We needed to draw Kodoc as far as possible from Nisha. The cargo raft spun and swooped, swerving so hard that the rudders squealed, staying fifty yards over the highest crests of Fog. Loretta gripped the harpoon, Bea peeked
from a hatch, and Hazel scanned the sky, her jaw clenched.

“It's time,” she said.

I swung from the rigging to the deck as the
Predator
dove from the sky in front of us. Swedish spun the wheel and hammered the organ, and we slewed to a halt.

We were ten feet from Kodoc, with nowhere to run.

A
HEAVY BOARDING PLANK
shot from the
Predator
and slammed onto the deck of the cargo raft. The
crack
sounded like a bone snapping.

Kodoc stood at the far end of the plank, watching me with hungry eyes. “Get over here, boy. You've caused enough trouble.”

“Y-yes, sir,” I said.

My stomach ached as I edged onto the plank with quivering legs. A sour taste rose in my throat, and I forced myself to step forward.

From the crow's nest, Hazel said, too softly for Kodoc to hear, “Goggles down, Chess. Tether free.”

The wind stilled. I paused, wanting to look at her but afraid I'd start crying.

“Dive at will,” she whispered. “And come back safe.”

I ducked my head and crossed the rest of the boarding plank.

The instant I stepped onto the
Predator's
deck, the plank retracted with an ominous scrape. I almost whimpered: utterly alone, cut off from my crew, stranded on a warship with Lord Kodoc, as his troopers hunched over their wicked-looking harpoons and cannons.

The big warship wheeled in the air, turning away from the crew, away from the Port . . . away from the nine mutineer ships that slipped into view behind the
Anvil Rose
.

“The Port Oro navy is ten minutes from firing range, m'lord,” an airtrooper said, watching the warships through a spyglass.

“They're too slow,” Kodoc said. “They can't catch us now.”

My teeth chattered from fear, and darkness dimmed my vision. What if I fainted? If I fainted, I was finished. So I took slow, shaky breaths as the
Predator
picked up speed, starting the long journey back to the Rooftop.

Kodoc looked down at me. “You will find the Compass. My other divers failed, but not you, you were born for this. Now show me your eye.”

“Y-y-yes, s-sir—”

“Stop stammering and show me!”

My mind writhed with terror. Kodoc was the monster who'd chased me every night while I slept, the beast
who'd killed me a thousand times. Now he was standing two feet away. He was
real
. I saw the faint lines on his forehead and the cruelty in his eyes. I smelled the sickly sweetness of his breath.

“Now!” he screamed.

I flinched, then pushed my hair aside.

He grabbed my head and stared at my eye. “So you lived in the junkyard?”

“Y-yes.”

“Hidden by that coward Katherine,” he sneered. “What does she call herself now? I'll find her next.”

Despite my fear, a spark caught fire in my heart. “N-no. You won't.”

“Never say no to me!” Kodoc cuffed me, and my goggles clattered across the deck. “You're not a tetherboy anymore, you're not a slumkid or a bottom-feeder. You're not even human, not anymore. You're just a tool. And I'm going to beat you into shape.”

At first, I almost wet myself with fear. But as he kept ranting, a strange thing happened: my terror started to fade.

Seeing him this close, I realized that Kodoc
wasn't
a monster, he wasn't a nightmare beast who'd created me by snapping his fingers. Spittle flew from his mouth when he shouted, and one nostril hair dangled from his nose like a curly wire. He wasn't a monster—he was just a cruel Rooftop lord with too much power.

For my whole life, I'd been afraid to call attention to myself. My whole life I'd worried that being a freak also made me a coward. But Kodoc was just an evil man, not my creator. Which meant I was not his creature. Just a kid with a freak-eye.

And I was no coward.

“You will obey me,” he snarled. “You
will
dive. You
will
find the Compass. And once the Fog is mine—”

A shrill whistle interrupted him, a sharp note from across the Fog.

Kodoc turned at the sound, and I peered past him. The cargo raft hovered a hundred yards away. Hazel watched from the crow's nest, while Swedish stood at the wheel, and Loretta slouched beside the harpoon, two fingers in her mouth.

She stopped whistling, and Hazel gestured with her spyglass, like she was showing us the entire sky. High above her, the smoldering
Night Tide
limped toward the Port. And far behind her, the nine mutineer warships guarded the
Anvil Rose
.

Whatever happened now, Mrs. E was safe.
Suck pigeon eggs, Kodoc
.

Kodoc narrowed his eyes. “Nine warships could beat me, boy—but they can't catch me.”

“They don't have to,” I said, and kicked him in the shin.

He gave a shout of pain, then lunged at me, but I ducked and raced across the deck.

“Grab him!” he bellowed.

I dodged an airsailor and scrambled onto the railing, balancing at the edge of the airship as Hazel shouted,
“NOW!”
and Loretta fired her harpoon, attached to a long, coiled rope—a tether.

The world moved in slow motion. My heart thudded to a stop and my breath faded to nothing as a silver spear arced through the air toward me, trailed by the tether. A good shot, straight and true.

I tracked the motion with my gaze, my knees bent, my focus absolute. The harpoon flashed under the
Predator,
the rope streaming behind . . . and I jumped.

“Turn the ship!” Kodoc screamed behind me. “Battle stations! Catch him! He's
mine,
he—”

The rush of air in my ears silenced him. The wind whipped my face and ruffled my jacket, and my heart pounded with sudden, thrilling hope. I'd done it. I'd walked onto Kodoc's airship of my own free will, I'd kicked him in the shin, and I'd walked back off again.

Well, I'd
jumped
off. Without a tether. Maybe it wasn't time to celebrate yet.

But everything was going according to Hazel's plan . . . so far. “You're going to dive without a tether,” she'd told me. “You'll jump from an airship a half mile above the ground and catch a rope in midair.”

“What—what airship?” I'd stammered.

“The
Predator,
” she'd explained. “We'll fly you to
Kodoc and hand you over. That'll buy time for the mutie warships to reach us. Then you'll jump overboard and catch the rope.”

“What rope?” Bea asked.

“The one Loretta's going to shoot, attached to a harpoon. Like a tether.”

“No way.” Bea chewed her lower lip. “Shoot from where?”

“From the cargo raft we're about to steal.”

I'd gaped at Hazel. “Are you trying to kill me? You want me to jump from a ship and catch a rope in midair? There's no way I can do that.”

“You listen to me, Chess,” Hazel had said. “I know
exactly
what you can do.”

And I'd seen the truth in her face: she trusted me the way I trusted her, she saw me the way I saw her, as someone special, someone extraordinary. She believed in me, which made me believe in myself.

Except now, falling through the air, I couldn't see the rope. Without my goggles, the wind brought tears to my eyes, and the endless white crests of Fog, five hundred feet beneath me, reflected the sunlight too brightly.

Where was that tether? C'mon, c'mon. . . .

“Yes!” I breathed, spotting the rope below me.

Ha! Can't stop the tetherboy. I spread my arms to catch the tether, and a blow slammed into my shoulder from behind, spinning me off course.

Then a grappling hook sheared past.

Kodoc was trying to fish me from the air.

I lashed out with my left leg and barely caught the tether on the tip of my boot. But when I curled in midair to bring it to my hands, a harpoon shot from the sky and grazed my leg.

I flinched at the pain, the tether slipped from my boot—and another harpoon flashed past. Kodoc was trying to
spear
fish me from the air.

Which was definitely
not
part of the plan.

Twisting wildly, free-falling hundreds of feet above the Fog, I lunged for the tether. A dozen more spears fired at me from the
Predator
as Kodoc attempted to spike me and drag me back on deck. The harpoons burned through the sky. Too many too fast. Too
accurate
. One drilled directly toward my stomach. With a panicked yelp, I arched in the air, and the razor-edged blade only sliced my hip.

I'd lost the cargo raft tether completely, and the next three harpoons were dead on target: two shooting at my chest and one about to sink into my leg. Moving too fast to miss. I couldn't dodge them.

They were three seconds from skewering me. Two seconds, one second—