The Wind Merchant (42 page)

He had a future to fight for.

The door flung open as Elias stormed in, “Rise and shine, kiddos,” he said before spotting them. “Oh.” He laughed awkwardly. “When you two get a minute, I’m sure the impending doom above us will still be there.”

Ras and Callie looked at each other. “Well, that kind of kills the mood,” Ras said. “What is it?”

Elias opened the door wide enough for them to see out to the horizon and the city-sized machine that filled it. “Good news. They brought
The Winnower
.”

Callie stood and Ras attempted to do likewise but fell back onto the bed thanks to his still sleeping legs. “I was wondering how they would harvest Time,” Callie said. “Why is that good news?”

Ras laughed heartily. “If we free the Illorians, they’ll destroy
The Winnower
, which means The Collective won’t control Time
or
Energy.”

“Wait,” Callie said, “So if
The Winnower
isn’t harvesting Energy right now, the Energy Origin is flowing out to the rest of Atmo.” Her eyes went wide. “Ras, you saved
Verdant
!” She leapt to hug him. “I knew you could do it!”

“Dad started it,” Ras deflected, but accepted the embrace. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”

“You think I had any clue?” Elias asked.

Callie released. “But what happens after
The Winnower
is destroyed? What’s stopping The Elders from attacking Atmo again?” she asked. “It’s not like they’ve had any time to think about what they did.”

“That Energy beam should even things out,” said Elias.

“So the goal is just to hope they bloody each other to the point that neither can control Atmo, and
The Winnower
needs to fall?” asked Callie.

“That pretty much sums it up, yeah,” Ras said.

“I think I miss sky pirates.”

“Oh, they’re up there too,” said Elias.

Callie nodded, then stared ahead, lost in thought.

“You all right?” Ras asked.

“Oh, yeah. I’m just not sure I like our options.”

“Can you think of any others?” Ras asked.

She looked at him. Sadness filled her eyes and she shook her head.

“I fixed up the jetter last night,” Elias said. He led Ras and Callie to the cracked ground outside the open bay door. The jetcycle looked like an entirely new beast, polished and detailed.

“Can’t have my boy saving the world in a dirty jetter, plus now with Energy filtering in here finally, it should run better.” He beamed. “I’ll stay a few miles out of the perimeter so I don’t get your ship stuck.”

Ras looked at
The Brass Fox
. “I’d better not see a scratch on her.”

“You’re going to hurt yourself squinting,” Elias said.

The jetcycle beckoned. Ras threw his leg over the seat but waited for Callie to settle in before firing up the ignition and revving the engine several times.
 

“What’d you do to her?”

“Nothing you wouldn’t have done eventually,” Elias said. “You better get going.
The Winnower
has a head start.” He tossed Ras the grapple gun.

“Thanks, dad.”

“You better keep her safe,” Elias said, nodding at Callie. “Mr. Tourbillon always scared me a little.”

Callie gave Elias a look and then jabbed Ras as he laughed.

The jetcycle shot forward on its wheels, leaving behind a contrail of steam as it accrued enough speed to lift off. The handling was better than he expected.

“Can you tell which way the Time Origin is?” Ras asked.

She pointed a little to port.

“You can tell even next to me?”

“It’s the only source in the world,” she said. “It’s like my internal compass. I’ve always known which way it was, even was before I knew it existed.”

The Winnower
grew in size as they approached it. Ras spotted Caelum in the distance, but couldn’t take his eyes off the massive flying structure, now adorned with scores upon scores of balloons and propelled forward with engines similar to
Derailleur
’s.

Dozens of airships escorted it, and as Callie quickly pointed out the curved contrails, Ras noticed several jetcycles had altered course to head directly for them.

“Hold on tight!” Ras said, opening up the throttle as half a dozen jetcycles fell in behind them. They had nowhere to hide above the plains. Their only hope was that Elias had eked out every last ounce of speed from the machine.

Callie looked behind them. “They’re gaining!”

“I see!” Ras glanced at the side-view mirror, then saw Caelum and the Illorian fleet as they slowly grew in his sight.

“We’re going to have to lose them in the city.”

“But it’s frozen!”

“Only half of it. Look!” She was right. The right side of Caelum had ships still in pristine condition stuck above it.
 

Ras dropped altitude to pick up a little speed. “Can you see the Time pockets?” he asked as they soared above a flat paved surface. Skiffs sat in scattered clusters.

Their pursuers pulled in low behind them, and the leader fired a shot from a front-mounted gun.

“Yes, pull up!”

Ras pulled back on the handlebars and they rose over a group of stopped skiffs below. The leader’s jetcycle halted suddenly in the invisible bubble.

“Nice!” Ras shouted. He noticed the preserved areas of road were the ones containing the skiffs, but couldn’t coax the remaining five pursuers to maintain a lower altitude to chase him.

She leaned in tight. “Get them to go through those arches!” Ahead at the borders to the city were series of five-story tall arches acting as gateways into the metropolis. “Line up with the one that still has grass on the ground and change at the last second.”

Racing toward the city gates, Ras had only a moment to appreciate the old architecture and the imposing stone statues staring disapprovingly down at him from the buildings. He spotted an arch with vegetation instead of cracked dirt and accelerated toward it.

With only a moment to spare he swerved to port and two of the five followed, avoiding the trap that snared three of their comrades.

Small arms fire ricocheted off of the back of Ras’ jetcycle, prompting Callie to shout. “I don’t see any more bubbles!”

Ras turned a corner and entered a pathway between two large sets of golden buildings. The Collective fleet and Bravo Company hung above, awaiting the approach of
The Winnower
.

“If we just go into the big bubble, they’ll get stuck!” Ras said.

“We’ll get thrown off at this speed,” Callie said.

He looked behind him and loaded up a magnet-to-spike grapple as they roared down a straightaway, two jetters still in pursuit.
 

Leaning back over Callie, Ras lined up a shot that struck the jetcycle behind the leader, then fired the spike into the building on the opposite side of the path. The cabling clotheslined the leader, unseating him and ripping the second jetcycle from its course, slamming it and its rider against a wall.

“Yes!” Ras cried out. “Now, where’s the biggest bubble? I don’t want to run into it. If you stay close you won’t overload.”

“It’s further down this path,” she said, and Ras felt dumb for asking the question, as up ahead there stood a public square with a fountain in the middle, half stuck in mid-flow and half parched.

Ras slowed the vehicle down and brought it to the ground just up alongside the unfrozen half of the fountain.

Callie hugged him tightly for a long moment, then released. “I think there’s another option to save the world,” she said.

Ras dismounted from the bike and looked back at her, offering his hand to help her down. “What’s that?”

“I always wanted to see the world, and you gave me that,” she said.

“What are you talking about?”

“I can’t bear to let everything I’ve seen get destroyed by one side or another.”

“There’s always going to be some sort of evil in the world,” Ras said.

“Yeah, but the world can wait to see them again,” Callie said, quickly shifting forward to the driver’s seat of the jetcycle. She kicked it on, peeling away from Ras.

“Callie! What are you doing?”

The bike shot forward down the road before lifting off. “Buying the world some time,” she shouted as she rocketed toward
The Winnower
.

Ras watched the jetcycle stop abruptly in the midst of The Collective Fleet
.
They wouldn’t make it to the Time Origin for millennia if not longer.

Callie Tourbillon had saved the world.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The Winnower

Ras strolled through the city of Caelum, a ghost among a population that would never notice his visit. Children played in the streets, men and women dined in restaurants, not knowing the next time they would find themselves living in equilibrium with the rest of the world.

Everyone in the city craned their necks, looking up to the sky as they had for the past century, probably wondering why the alteration of day and night was flashing about them in a strobe pattern. Ras assumed it was the only hint to them that something was amiss.

Does she even want me to save her?
She placed herself in a situation where he couldn’t grapple up to her or fly
The Brass Fox
high enough to jump down to her.

He didn’t want anyone else unfreezing Callie hundreds of years from now, if not thousands. It was his job, and so far he had been able to fulfill his duties.

Imagining not figuring out a solution until he was a geriatric scared him, and an eighty-year old Ras popping in behind her on the jetcycle probably wasn’t what she had envisioned.

Ras knew if he didn’t have a plan that would end the war with Atmo intact, she would just find another way to refreeze herself, this time with resentment.

He couldn’t free the Elders with Callie’s power in effect, but he probably
could
do some damage to
The Winnower,
which might be enough to convince Callie not to insist on being the lone wrench in The Collective’s gearwork. Ras just needed another wrench.

Or a gun.
Dr. O’s gun.

The technology had brought down a dreadnaught, and
The Winnower
couldn’t be so much different.

Ras sprinted back in the general direction of
The Brass Fox
, exiting the metropolis of Caelum.

Miles later he arrived at his ship, hopelessly out of breath.
 

A clanking sound repeated in the hold.

“Dad?”

The clanking stopped and Elias walked out, sweaty and covered with grease. “Sorry, I was just fixing the Windstrider, I didn’t hear the jetcycle pull up…” he said, trailing off. “What happened?”

“She picked the third option,” Ras said. “She stopped them. All of them.”

Elias stepped out of the hold, looking back toward the fleet. “That wasn’t the plan…”

“I’m getting her back.”

“You’re going to unfreeze The Collective?” Elias asked.

“I’m going to save Callie. Where’s Carter?”

“He went back to his ship,” Elias said, “How exactly are you going to rescue her?”

“I’m going to need an Elder,” Ras said, walking past his father and up to the helm. The gauges on the engines read that enough Energy had finally filtered through the air to make the Windstrider scoops usable once again. “Let’s see if we can’t reach a willing party,” Ras said, lifting the comm unit. “Attention any Illorian craft on this frequency, this is The Reclaimer. I need a lift. Over.”

The comm crackled back, “Reclaimer? That’s a myth. Who is this?” The voice had a familiarity to it but wasn’t Carter. He couldn’t pin it.

“Erasmus Veir, who is this? Over.”

The voice changed to another familiar tone. “Ras! You made it!”

“Hal!”

“Send me your coordinates, I’ll be right down!” A youthful laughter erupted, then looped and sped up until Ras smacked the machine. Elias ascended the steps up to the bridge.

Ras read from his instrument panel and received confirmation from Hal.

“So why do you need an Elder ship?” Elias asked.

“Tropo-capable flight. He can probably get me higher than Callie’s bubble and drop me down.” Ras smiled, then ran to the quarters and returned with Dr. O’s gun, tucking it into his waistband.

The Kingfisher
descended from high above, settling easily next to
The Brass Fox
. Its ramp extended, and the procession of the crew covered in Elder attire was led by a clockwork giant who Ras assumed to be Hal. He stopped, halting everyone on the ramp. “It’s good to be home!” he said. “Used to be greener.”

The Veirs disembarked, meeting Hal’s entourage between the two vessels. At the sight of Elias, Hal exclaimed and threw his arms wide. “It worked!”

Elias nodded. “Sorry it took so long.”

“For as long as I’ve been trying, a decade is a trifle. Where’s my grandson?” Hal asked.

“Grandson?” Ras repeated.

“Morris is hurt badly,” Elias said. “He’ll need attention immediately after unfreezing.”

“Hmm. Where is Callie?” Hal asked.

“She stopped the war,” Ras said.

Hal looked back at The Collective fleet hovering over Caelum.

“You left her alone this close to The Time Origin?” Hal’s rage flared through the speakers on his suit.

“She left me, sir, and I need your help getting her back.”

“You’d save her and restore your greatest enemy?” Hal asked.

“I would,” Ras said.

“Excellent. Best deal with them now rather than later.”

“Callie won’t let me unfreeze Caelum.”

“I’d rather you not, actually. Not yet. The Council is likely still set on ravaging the rest of the world. Gives me a chance to talk to what’s left of the Illorian nation. I’d wager their blood has cooled since The Clockwork War.”

“If I can reclaim Callie, I can disrupt
The
Winnower
’s Energy intake and damage its engines. It should slowly sink after that.”

“Not if I can convince the rest of the Elders to see past our differences and move to sever its balloons,” Hal said. “A fall like that should be sufficient to render it irreparable.”