Falling Sky (4 page)

On the other hand, it means freedom. I can go where I want, do what I want. Beholden to no one.

Foraging is my life. I'm good at it. I'd stayed alive this long, hadn't I?

I think I might fly down over Southern California, near the coast. The heat would be nice, and the water. I can't remember how long it's been since I've had a swim in the ocean. That's one nice thing about the ocean—no Ferals. They live near the coast sometimes, but they don't swim. At least not out too far. And the Bug can't live in saltwater. That makes the ocean feel safe. Of course last time I took a splash I couldn't stop thinking about what was swimming beneath me. Unseen creatures in the dark. Probably harmless, but then again, maybe not. I figured they were happy about the Bug. It meant a lot less of them dying. It meant a change in the ecosystem. And many would say a change for the better.

But still. The Bug.

Harrison chugs on in the background telling me all things must pass.

I think about Miranda and Sergei and the others. I try not to think about Clay. I think about how their little house, the Core, might as well be made of twigs and branches. I think about how just one wrong move, bringing in a Feral, for example, could topple it.

I think about all that food. All that clean water. All that potential. Wasted. It makes me angry. So I stop. Stop thinking about it. Stop thinking about all of them.

I reach for what's left in the moonshine bottle and slug it back.

I'm resting my head against the console, the moonshine carving out a nice warm hole inside of me, when I hear the shots.

Despite the alcohol, my body is hardwired to react to that sound, and I'm up in an instant, running to the window at the front of the gondola, then to those at the sides. Cameras rigged beneath me show me what's happening. Another dirigible, coming in at me from the port side, to the southeast. Green envelope with silver trim. Medium sized, rigged for cargo but still pretty fast. But why are they firing at me? And why from that distance? They have to know that the shots won't do anything. And it's not like ammo grows on trees.

Then I see the second airship coming down from above. That's the one that's firing. On the other.

I'm ready to push off, to fly the
Cherub
as fast as I can away from these two airships and whatever quarrel they have between them. Then I see that the aggressor is flying the flag of Gastown. The new flag.

My hand pauses.

Gastown. It was a city, built in the sky. A city made up of dozens of airships and balloons all lashed together, with platforms suspended beneath. A city where people lived and worked. A city where they made helium. But Gastown was more than that. It was progress. It was hope. It was a place that created its own economy. It was a place where a forager like me could barter things I found for things I needed.

Which is not to say that I liked the place. They charged a fucking ridiculous tax just to dock there. And they strong-armed people into working for them. If you wanted to stay independent, like me, you got cheated. Fewer jobs. Less payment for what you brought in. It was theirs to do, of course, but it wasn't what I was looking for in the city of the future.

Only it didn't last that long.

That helium was too valuable a commodity. And the skycity of Valhalla, off to the east, didn't have any. And they wanted it. Man, did they want it. So they took it.

But the way they took it . . .

Valhalla got a bunch of their ships and attached hooks to the bottoms of them. Then they went fishing. For Ferals. Each of them hooked a Feral the way you might hook a fish and then dropped those dying, bleeding Ferals on a city full of people.

In a world where you learn that being in the air is safe, no one was prepared for that. It caused widespread chaos. Fear. Panic. Everyone tried to run for safety. Back to their ships, if they had them. Probably to others' if they could steal them. It was like the outbreak of the Bug all over again. People ran. For their ships, for shelter, for their loved ones. And as they did, the Valhalla raiders flew in and fired on them.

In the end, it was so easy for them. Those who didn't leave were picked off by the raiders. Then it just took a little while for them to wait out the Ferals and to clean off the city. By then who was left to take it back?

I know all of this because I was there. And yes, I ran when I saw those Ferals. I got Miranda and Sergei off with me. And I don't feel bad about it. There was nothing I could do except die. And if you couldn't guess already, I don't aim to do that.

So here is a ship flying the flag of Gastown, which is essentially the flag of Valhalla, and with all that's going on, well, it just pisses me the fuck off.

So rather than turn around, I go toward them.

Which is something of a problem because I don't have any weapons on the
Cherub
. And this ship I'm heading toward does. But it's distracted. And I have a one-track mind.

I raise the
Cherub
so that she's above the enemy ship, which will protect me from its side-mounted weapons. Then I maneuver myself so that I'm going to pass right over it.

It's true the
Cherub
doesn't have any weapons—no mounted guns, no harpoons, no rams. Dad never went in for any of those, and I don't either. She's a fast airship and that's usually enough. But I'm not strictly defenseless.

As I pass over the other ship's envelope, it starts to rise, having caught sight of me, but I'm already pulling up myself, and I move to the exit hatch. I keep a variety of large, jagged things aboard the ship—rocks, twisted pieces of metal, and so on. I take one of these, a roughly round but sharp-edged rock and roll it out of the hatch.

As it reaches the edge, gravity takes hold of it and pulls it down with relentless force. The enemy ship has closed some of the distance between us, but there's still enough to allow the stone to punch a hole through the other ship's envelope.

If it was hydrogen in there, I could blow it to hell. But this is a Gastown ship, which means helium. So I have to improvise.

As rare as guns are, bullets are a little easier to come by these days, especially if you save and refill your spent shell casings. But even easier to come by is gunpowder. Don't get me wrong—it's not like it grows on trees, but you can make it if you have the right ingredients. And one easy way is to just collect a lot of urine, something we had plenty of back at the Core. You can also collect bat guano, which a guy I knew way back used to do. The salts from that and a little sulfur and charcoal make gunpowder.

Bullets are a little harder, because you need some metal. But take some gunpowder, drop it into a tube with a fuse in one end, and you have a nice pipe bomb.

I generally keep a few around for emergencies or for dropping down a Feral nest. I light the fuse on one, hoping that the glowing end will withstand the winds at this altitude. Then I carefully fit it into the crossbow the boffins mocked up for me. Then, aiming carefully, I fire.

My heart seems to stop as the tiny projectile arcs through the air between the two ships.

I only have this one shot. Then I'll have passed over the other ship and it will likely bring its weapons to bear on me.

Then, like it's been swallowed, my pipe bomb disappears into the other ship's envelope.

I run for the controls of my baby, and as soon as my hands find them I push away.

Most of the cameras on the
Cherub
are shot despite the boffin's best efforts, but the one on her belly is still intact. Through the screen, the explosion is visible as a flash inside the other ship's envelope and what I swear is a ripple through the semirigid frame. It doesn't destroy the ship, but it rips through enough of its ballonets that it starts to descend, deprived of a good part of its lifting power.

I pull the
Cherub
away in a burst of speed, the other ship doing the same, and soon the enemy dirigible is just a speck behind us.

My radio crackles to life on the public trading channel that most airship captains set their radios to. I pick my handset up.

“Thank you for the save,” comes a male voice. Deep, smooth.

“I don't much like bullies,” I respond.

There's a crackling pause on the other end. Then he speaks again. “Do you happen to have any medical supplies on your ship?”

I hesitate before answering. I do, supplies carefully cobbled together from the Core, but do I want to tell him that? I size up his ship, its condition. Finally, I say, “Yes. You in need?”

“Afraid so. One of the shots clipped me. We're a little low on supplies. I thought that maybe we could barter you something for them.”

I consider this. Giving up some of my medical supplies doesn't appeal to me much. But he's offering barter. Still, I don't much like that “we” he mentioned.

“Follow me,” I eventually say. “I'll take us to a meeting place.”

I tell myself that I want to meet these people. I want to know what their little altercation was about. I tell myself that I want to see what they have to offer in return for the medical supplies.

But frankly, my love of solitude has atrophied. Which comes as something of a surprise.

I pull the
Cherub
down and ahead of the airship, and it falls behind me.

I lead them to one of my favorite way-places, the US Bank Tower in old Los Angeles. Like most of the tall buildings around, zeps use it as a meeting place. The elevators stopped working decades ago and the stairs have been carefully blocked off. The nice thing about the Bank Tower, too, is that it has a flat top that once was used for helicopters. Makes a convenient meeting spot. Sure, you have to watch for raiders and pirates who often fly by places like that, but nine times out of ten, they make good places to gather.

Okay, maybe eight times out of ten.

We put down, one ship on each side. The
Cherub
's VTOL engines allow me to lower her right to the edge. It's something I don't do on the ground. Too easy for a stray Feral to run up into the ship. But up in the air . . .

The other ship doesn't have the same feature, but the crew members anchor her to one of the large metal rails on the roof and descend by the ship's ladder.

There are two of them.

And suddenly I'm a little worried.

The man is big, well-wrapped and wearing a ski mask, and armed with a rifle of some sort slung across his back. With him is a woman, judging by her size and the way she walks. But she's wrapped up, too, beneath a hat and scarf and a thick jacket that hides any telltale curves.

He's wary as he eyes me from across the roof. His hand hovers near the automatic on his hip. I can't see it in the holster to tell whether it looks well-maintained or not. It's a ballsy move to meet me up here, but then again he's injured. Or at least he says he is.

It doesn't stop my muscles from tensing up.

He opens the conversation. “Thanks again for your help up there.”

I nod at him. “Well, let's just say I'm not overly fond of the folks who were bothering you.”

He nods back. “And the supplies?”

“On my ship,” I say. “But first tell me what you have to barter.”

He nods again. “We have some food—fish.”

“Fresh?”

“Salted.”

I incline my head. I haven't had fish in ages. And my food from the Core will only last so long. Still, medical supplies. “Anything else?” I say. “I have food.”

He looks over at the woman and she shrugs back.

He turns back to me and holds his hands up. “Look, can we talk a bit?” He moves a bit closer and my hand drops nearer to my holster. “Let me show you my arm. I'm going to unwrap it slowly.”

My eyes narrow. I shift them from him to his partner and back. He slowly unravels a wrapping from his arm. Beneath I can see the red, the seeping blood. “They got me in the arm,” he says.

“Why are you showing me?” I ask.

“Because I want you to know that we're telling the truth. We don't want to jump you, don't want your ship or anything else. Just your supplies.”