LEGACY BETRAYED (12 page)

The young guard who had ushered her through the gate and shut it again behind her continued his stroll up and down the interior dock, leaving her to her business.

Legacy sauntered along the dock, intending nothing more than to catch another glimpse of Old Earth and wait for the police to fall off her scent. She raised the scarf over her head and wrapped her hair in it, then removed her frock coat and turned it inside out before slipping back into it. Now her face and hair were completely disguised by the white swath, and her frock coat was no longer black, but amber-colored with a floral print.

She leaned on the railing and dared to gaze down. From this degree of closeness – as close as she physically could be, without falling down to it – Old Earth appeared in great detail. She wondered how the captains of these airships explained away to themselves the dome below. Did they believe it was simply for freight? And if so, how was it possible that the people of New Earth deemed it a dead planet, if it was still rich in resources? Then, there were the roads, so heavily cracked it was visible even from this height; the distant cityscape, overgrown with mosses, collapsing into disrepair; faded billboards fringed in webbing; and the scattered bogs, purplish and shadowed. The extensive root system of the mangroves, like bleached veins of wood. Of course, it was only the afternoon right now, and so the monsters were probably underground, hiding, sleeping. There was little movement on the surface, save a few stationary vehicles, neither here nor there. They weren’t at the dome. They weren’t in the swamp. They weren’t at the freight lift. She wondered what they might be doing down there.

She supposed she may never know, and would have to make peace with it, as she’d made peace with never visiting Celestine, and never marrying Dax.

Legacy sighed. She didn’t want to have to gaze across yet another thing she couldn’t fix, so she squinted out toward the setting sun. It was so huge and bright, so sharp, un-muffled by the thick, triangular panes of glass. She had to look away, dazzled and blinking.

Most of the airships out here were typical. Aristocratic families owned these – certainly, one of these moored belonged to Dyna Logan – and they were of sleek, modern dirigible design. Legacy walked at an ambling pace along the dock, observing the row of gently bobbing ships. Amber-colored, leathery blimps accounted for their buoyancy, merged with cabins of sophisticated aerodynamic design. They bore names like
Cloud Queen
and
Divine Sunrise
. If you looked closely, the movement within could be accounted for not by human beings but by the automata that kept these dirigibles in running condition year-round, while their owners arrived to use them a week or two out of the year. Perhaps a summer voyage to a smaller city with more space. Perhaps an expedition to Old Earth, if they dared. Legacy had heard that such people existed. Wealthy, eccentric explorers.

As she sauntered along the dock, approaching the very end of the row, one final ship suddenly manifested as if it had been cloaked by a swath of fog.

Legacy blinked and glared.

Had it been? Had it been somehow hidden behind a very small cloudbank?

No, though . . . she would’ve seen it, and the sun just now was low and bright. There wasn’t a tendril of mist in the sky.

It had just appeared as she’d approached, like magic.

And it was nothing like any other ship on the dock.

With a junkyard, potbelly design, the ship was patched and soldered in a million places – more places than not – and strung up beneath a weathered old balloon by a system of leather straps and ropes which would’ve made most wary to travel by. Gills arced out from either side. No other ship on this strip of dock had gills. Screw aerodynamic design, too. This thing was bulky and modeled after the aquatic ships of yore. Several small, circular windows were cut into the deep cabins below. It had rudders and masts, all the beauty of a more classically fantastical dirigible, unlike the modern counterparts by which it was surrounded. The word
Albatropus
was painted along the stern.

But the most telling aspect of all was the appearance of Vector Shannon on the deck.

“Leg –Hey!” he called, gesturing. “You made it! I wasn’t sure if you got Rain’s message! Come aboard, brave traveler!”

The words caused Legacy to swallow, but she approached, and Vector lowered a set of steps for her to ascend.

“I was afraid this place was going to get staked out,” he confided as she stepped onto the gently tilting deck, “but I guess it was a good thing I got put in the hosp–”

Legacy threw her arms tight around his neck. “I thought you were dead!” she cried.

“Dead? Pfft,” Vector said. “Why would you think that?”

“I thought everyone was dead!”

“No, no, no. In a coma for a few days, but not dead, no big deal.” He waved off the coma as though this were frequent for him. “In all honesty, though, I thought you were dead too, of everyone who should be dead by now, you know? Dyna Logan wouldn’t stop talking about how everyone and everything was ‘looking’ for you, but no one and nothing had ‘found’ you. I mean, I did find out you were alive, about ten minutes ago, because I got to hear your lovely voice blasting the Duke on
CIN-3,
but then all I heard was crashing, banging, and yelling, oh, the yelling, Dyna Logan? Not the most pleasant person to listen to yelling. So, I don’t know, of all the times I thought you might be dead, the past ten minutes definitely ranks in the top three. You’re funny, Legacy. You’re always suddenly alive, then probably dead, again and again.”

Legacy swallowed. “I got lucky,” she confessed. “I grew wings and I had this glue cannon my dad made. You’d actually love it.” She unfastened her blunderbuss and passed it to him for inspection. “Now that I think about it, you’d love my dad. Is anyone else here? I don’t know who –You know Trimpot defected, don’t you?”

“Yes, I know,” Vector answered. “Rain told me. Dax told her.”

Legacy didn’t have the time or the patience anymore to smolder at the mention of Dax’s name in conjunction with Rain’s. She’d lost him. She knew it. And it was time to move on. There were important things afoot.

“Then you know headquarters were raided,” she went on, clearing her throat.

“Yeah,” Vector replied. “They got all my stuff. All our stuff. Except the Contemplator, which I had in my hat. It’s all at the police station now, being analyzed and pulled apart, if it’s not at the Taliko castle itself. It’s . . . I hope it all goes all right, you know, because some of that stuff is pretty dangerous.”

“Hey . . . have you heard from Dax in the past few days?” Legacy tested. “How’s he . . . doing?”

“You don’t know?” Vector asked, as if Legacy were asking the boy how she herself was doing, and if he’d heard from her lately. “Oh.” His cheerfully curious expression faltered and fell as he realized what must have happened. Why two inseparable friends-turned-lovers would suddenly have no idea how the other one was doing lately. “I, uh –yeah. I’ve heard from him. We had a good talk about stats and probability yesterday, when he first came over to the ship. Rain and I managed to convince him to bring some stuff over. Just in case. But anyway!” He scratched at his temple, made uncomfortable by casually discussing such a sore subject for his friend. “Let me give you the tour! This is the deck, which is outfitted with cameras of all sorts, I mean,
CIN-3
would just die to get their hands on these models, but we’ve got distance scopes, we’ve got slow motion, we’ve got heat detection and remote view and instant replay, but okay, up there is the forecastle, where you’ll likely find some other blokes too, because it’s great for your general relaxation, too, you know, counting stars, playing cards, whatever you want to do aside from the tedium of rebellion, and down below that is the berth, which is where everybody’s been staying.”

Even now, she saw shadows moving across the glass. “So, who all is here?” she asked. “How long have you been here?”

“Ah, they released me, like, two days ago? Yeah, two days ago, and I wish that someone had told you, but I’m sure you’ve been crazily busy.”

Legacy thought about Kaizen, Dax, and Liam, all bearing terrible news, all more than willing to dip in and out of her life with stressors to add like ingredients in a soup, and she shook her head. “A little,” she confessed, “but –I’m here now.”

“Not everyone came back,” Vector went on.

“Yeah.” Legacy winced, thinking of that terrible scene with Dax again. How he’d said that the numbers were too disheartening to garner his support anymore. Did others see the same, or had they defected in favor of immunity, an elevated station, or gifts, as Trimpot surely had? “I know.”

“Inside, we probably have about thirty people right now,” he added proudly. “So it’s not much of the old crew, but! As I said, the
Albatropus
has only truly been operational for, maybe, forty-eight hours? Since Rain found me in the recovery ward under Doctor Howell and I could give her some instruction on how to open the damn place. The keyhole involved finding a red bauble shaped like a ladybug, and then you have to lift her wings in a certain pattern to make the little gold ball rotate and even show you the hole, and don’t get me started on what you’d have to do to find the key. I can’t believe she found the key, and it only took her all of Tuesday night. Anyway, most of these guys are still living at home, you know. Most people haven’t had their identities exposed. That they . . . know of. But! But, I’m encouraging everyone to just come aboard and cut the cops to the chase, because you know they’re eventually going to get all our names and addresses. I don’t know why Rain keeps going in to work. She says they ‘need’ her. That coronation, Legacy . . .”

Suddenly, Vector’s demeanor completely changed, drawing tight and dark.

“It was a madhouse.”

Legacy nodded, swallowing. “I’m s–”

“Anyway!” Vector interrupted sharply. “It’s only been forty-eight hours. I’m sure more people will show up to check in as time passes.”

“You . . . don’t think the police might show up here, do you?” Legacy had to ask. “I mean, not just because I’m here, but Rain told me this was the contingency plan . . . and so, I assume Trimpot knows that, and he’s not averse to giving it away for, I don’t know, a peacock feather for his top hat.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, but you saw the cloaking device, I’m sure, and so as long as no one tries to take this spot, and they wouldn’t because it is reserved for my barge here, we should be fine; I didn’t mention to Trimpot about the cloak, you see,” he went on with a smirk. “Just in case, you know, I didn’t tell anybody. I didn’t tell anybody until I had to tell Rain and, well, I trust Rain’s judgment, and she’s been letting word-of-mouth do the work. Besides, if the cops do just show up, we’re already in an invisible boat, aren’t we?” he asked rhetorically. “Really, it’s the best possible situation in which to be caught by the police, don’t you think? Come on up to the forecastle and take a look at all my nifty inventions from up there. You’ll be able to see the helm, too, which is great, where you’ll find the wheel and the map and some gauges of gases and whatnot, probably. Oh, and then you can go greet everyone who remains downstairs.”

Vector jogged up the staircase which led to the sweeping second deck, a polished and open checkerboard pattern. A grid in the floor – no, a trapdoor which shone down into the berth – and a gleaming windlass and chain stoppers, systems of tethers looped every which way around them, were the only aspects to distract from the possibility that this was a giant chessboard.

“Seems sleek and savvy, doesn’t it?” Vector asked, leaning casually on the windlass, its tethers creaking with his weight. But Legacy knew him well enough to know that nothing was as “quite simple, really” as it appeared to be. “Well, it’s not just a matter of design, you see, but also a strategical strong p–” His eyes suddenly focused over Legacy’s shoulder, onto the air dock. “Dax!”

Legacy whirled, her scarf coming loose, and observed as Dax thundered up the companionway and onboard
Albatropus.
In his arms were several golden sheaths of parchment, two satchels, and a dangling, rusted automaton, queerly familiar, clutched in one hand. He was, as Legacy saw him all too often now, white as a sheet and covered in a fine sheen of sweat beads. “Hey,” he panted, staggering up the forecastle and dropping to his knees. There, he let all the papers and satchels spill like guts, dozens of coins tinkling and spinning in the aftermath.

Legacy and Vector both lunged for him.

“Oh my god,” Legacy said, crouching to touch his shoulders. She scooped a palm beneath his chin and tilted his eyes up to peer into hers. They were dazed, the pupils enlarged.

“Are you okay?” Vector asked, fanning Dax with one of the golden leaflets, covered in written word.

“I’m . . . fine,” Dax wheezed. “Had to . . . run . . . cops.”

“Don’t talk,” Legacy told him, pulling him back from his haunches and onto his bottom, cradling him against her torso and running her hand tenderly over his damp brown hair. He let himself go slack, and for a moment, in a sick way, it was . . . great. It was great to just be there for him again, even if it was only under the duress of incapacitation that he allowed her to touch him. “Just relax and try to breathe.” She hated when this happened, though. She hated every time this happened – which had been more than she cared consider in their history. He’d overexerted himself to this specific point throughout their teen years together, though no further. No further, anyway, until the night of the coronation, when Rain alone had revived him, serviced by some slipshod medical equipment, at the hollowed copper mountain in Heroes Park.