The Wind Merchant (40 page)

“Hi,” Ras said in a groan from the fall. For a moment he wished he had prepared something witty, but in hindsight he appreciated that the swift kick to his midsection he promptly received would probably have been far worse if he had done something along the lines of insulting one of their mothers.

“It’s the Lack!” one of the men called up to the officer on deck. “The idiot came to us!”

“Then who is flying his ship?” another man asked.

“Doesn’t matter! His ship don’t have guns, right?”

A rat-tat-tat issued from above, lending uncertainty to that assumption. Small cannonballs ripped through the gunship’s balloon, impacting onto the deck and sending the crew running for anywhere they assumed wasn’t about to receive a projectile.

Ras balled himself up to lower his profile and reeled in the cabling as quickly as possible while loading up one of the magnetic charges. He knew the sound of an Elder fighter’s weaponry, and it sounded like his ticket to the Elder fleet.

He scrambled over to the railing and scanned the skies for the fighter when he heard a click of a musket hammer being pulled back behind him. “If we’re going down you’re going down with us.”

Ras slowly lifted his arms to the sky and turned around to see two men with their rifles mounted. “What?” he asked. “It’s not like I’ve got anywhere to go.”

“We know how that grappler works. We ain’t dumb,” said one of the crew members, oblivious to the Elder fighter lining up a strafing run far behind them.

“I’m not saying you aren’t, but if there’s one thing you’re
ain’t
, it’s perceptive,” Ras said, nodding to the rapidly approaching bogey.

The gunship blared its cannons and the Elder ship spun in a corkscrew maneuver, lithely dodging the incoming fire. Ras mouthed a countdown as the fighter approached a grapple-able range with its cannons blazing.

Four, three, two—
It buzzed over the top of the balloon and Ras adjusted his already raised left arm, firing into the air where he expected the Elder ship to pop out on the opposite side.

Connection.

Ras jerked away from the deck, his grunt alerting his former captors. They spun back around and fired inaccurately at the now moving target.

As Ras watched the Collective gunship sink,
The Brass Fox
chased after the Elder ship but was absolutely outclassed.

The nosedive of the fighter cut short any of Ras’ mental celebrations for being on the path to find Callie. “No! What are you doing?” Ras shouted into the howling wind. “No! Up! Up!”

Deaf to Ras’ instructions, the pilot continued his descent, slowing his ship’s speed. Ras found a small amount of solace in the idea that
The Brass Fox
now stood a chance to catch up and that if he had to face an Elder, he wouldn’t have to do so alone.

Ras touched the ground first and he quickly cut the cable before the ship could drag him along. He loaded up a magnet grapple charge as the fighter landed and wheeled around in a semicircle to face him.

The cockpit hatch popped open and a large machine man exited. He stood at least seven feet tall and kept a constant gait toward Ras, who aimed his grapple gun as menacingly as possible.

“Drop your weapon,” the machine commanded in a low tone.

“So you can beat me to death?” Ras asked, letting the machine get a bit closer so he wouldn’t need to aim quite as much. He glanced,
The Brass Fox
flew toward him, but it looked like the Elder would reach him before Elias. “I’m…I’m warning you! This thing is electrified! And you…really…don’t want that,” he said.

Without giving the machine a chance to respond, Ras squeezed the hand trigger and the magnet flew at its intended target, clipping the top of the Elder’s head, but the metal hunk stuck. In an attempt to throw his opponent off-balance, Ras flung himself backward with the taut cable.

Ras expected to feel a tug instead of falling straight to the cracked ground with a cloud of dust.

“What have you done?” a man’s voice called out in a decidedly non-robotic tone. The “head” lay on the ground between Ras and the Elder, revealing a familiar face.

“Carter?” Ras asked, “What are you—”

“Stand back! Illorians can’t be this low—AAARGH!” he screamed, falling to his knees. His eyes glowed purple before he froze into place.

The Brass Fox
finally caught up with gangplank already lowered.

“Hurry up, get in!” Elias said.

Ras noted that Carter’s bubble didn’t extend far enough to encompass
The Brass Fox
or Elias. “It’s all right, I got this.”

“Be careful.”

“I’ll be right back,” Ras said. He strode up to the helmet while spooling in the cable before cutting it, leaving the magnet and small clip of cabling sitting atop the metal headpiece like a tiny hat. Scooping it up, he placed it over his head and turned back to his father. “How do I look?”

“Like the stuff of nightmares?” Elias asked, uncertainly.

Ras walked up to Carter and placed his hand on the Illorian’s neck.
 

After a moment, Carter’s frame loosened up and he jerked to look at Ras. He grabbed the helmet from Ras’ head and slid it quickly over his, sealing it in place.

“What? How did—? I thought I was gone,” the mechanical voice said with more relief than Ras thought possible from a giant robot.

“I’m full of surprises,” Ras said, smiling. “Well, one surprise that I keep having to use again and again.”

“You reclaimed me.”

“Re-what now?” asked Ras.

“You’re The Reclaimer!” Carter said emphatically.

“I like the sound of that a lot better than ‘The Lack.’”

Elias called out from the bow of
The Brass Fox
, “Ras, do you know an Elder?”

“I’m not a true Elder,” said Carter. “My great-grandfather was. This was his suit. The Elders were only around during the war with the Outsiders…or frozen in the cities, waiting to be saved by The Reclaimer,” he said. “This is perfect!”

“Hold on now, I’m just trying to find Callie—”

“Yes! Callie!” His tone turned grave. “You must come with me, now.”

“You know where she is?”

“I’m afraid I do. She is being used as the last weapon against the Outsiders and it’s going to kill her.” Carter looked back at Elias. “Your brother is welcome to come.”

Inside the enclosed cockpit, three of the four seats were occupied. Carter looked like the parent, escorting the two undersized children who filled half of their seats. Ras’ eyes were fixed on the scene ahead.

Two fleets hung motionless at different altitudes. Even from here, their intentions were obvious: they were engaged in silent negotiations, each one underbidding the other in an effort not to go down in history as the instigator of the Second Clockwork War.

“I don’t understand how you’re flying this thing,” Elias said. “There’s barely any Energy out here.”

Carter huffed in amusement. “Our engines don’t run on Energy,” he said, “The friction of Time is sufficient.”

“How can she be used as a weapon? All she can do is freeze the area around her,” Ras said.

“Maybe the rest of the Illorian fleet wants to be preserved to prevent a war,” offered Elias.

“Hardly,” Carter scoffed. “We would never let Outsiders have the Time Origin. It’s an Elder’s sacred duty to protect it at all costs.”

“All right, but how does Callie—” Ras stopped as the two fleets off in the distance suddenly launched their opening volleys. Tiny flecks of fighters poured in from either side, and the advantage definitely went to the Elders on that front, but when it came to the capital ships, The Collective mixed with Bravo Company heavily outnumbered the last Illorian battalion.

“If Callie is the weapon that will ‘
save Illoria
,’ why are you bringing us to her?” Ras asked.

“The Elder Council voted unanimously against using any form of Time against our adversaries in the last war, even at the cost of losing,” Carter said. “The Outsiders shut us in, secluding us with Time and preserving our cities until someone like
you
could unfreeze our people.”

“Is that the deal, then? You trade Callie for me unfreezing all of Illoria?” Ras asked.

“No, that is your choice and yours alone,” Carter said. “However, I would mention that Fleet Commander Archer would be far more likely to offer up his only weapon in exchange for freeing his long-frozen countrymen to aid him in battle.”

“But it is his choice,” Elias said as though there were still an option.

“The Outsiders have finally opened the main gate, letting Time once again spill out to the rest of the world instead of bottling up here, but it will not thin the air nearly enough for the Conduits to be reclaimed.”

“I reclaimed you, so are
you
a Conduit, Carter?” Ras asked.

“Every Illorian is to one degree or another when brought too close to the Time Origin, but Callie is a true Conduit…sensitive enough to be set off and power the weapon,” Carter said.

Ras looked about the Elder fleet. There were no obvious leading ships. “How do we know which one she’s on?”

A Collective frigate shot a green beam at one of the Elder’s larger vessels, disintegrating a quarter of it, and it began to falter.

“What in Atmo?” Elias exclaimed.

“We must hurry,” Carter said.

Every Elder ship simultaneously launched its volley back at The Collective’s fleet. The beam-firing frigate received only one of the dozens of cannonballs. The ball impacted on the surface, then stuck.

The frigate halted immediately, along with a couple nearby biplanes.

“They’re using it!” Carter said. “I don’t think she’ll be able to handle too many uses.”

By now they had entered the radius of the battle. The initial beam strike from the frigate had been merely a warning to the Illorian fleet, but since the Elders had something that posed a true threat, The Collective’s full assault began.

Beams filled the skies, decimating Elder fighters and airships alike. Several Illorian ships huddled around one ship in particular, providing cover as another set of volleys froze a cluster of smaller Collective ships.

“There! Is she on that one?” Ras asked.

“No, the cluster is a decoy,” Carter said, pulling back on the fighter’s controls. “Commander Archer needs a higher vantage point. She’s with him.” Carter pointed up at a lone ship that launched another set of shots. The resulting impact froze a pair of gunships.

It was difficult to tell whose side the tide of the battle favored. The Elder fleet swarmed to provide moving targets for their opponent’s one-shot-kill weapons while much of The Collective fleet hung completely still or rocked back and forth, their weapons recharging. The only telltale sign were the frozen cannonballs and fighters stopped outside the freeze radius. Their numbers hadn’t thinned visibly, but they were far from full strength.

Carter’s fighter flew toward the flagship as he brought the comm unit to his mouth. He spoke in Illorian.

A female voice squawked back through the comm unit.

“They won’t let us land,” Carter said. “I’ll tell them I have The Reclaimer onboard.” He spoke once more into the transmitter. The woman’s voice was joined by a gruff, curt man’s voice. Carter responded adamantly. A pause.

“What is he saying?” Elias asked.

“He says that if I have The Reclaimer, then I should be flying to our capital city.”

“Not without Callie,” Ras said. “Can you ask about her?”

Carter spoke again, then received a response. “He says she’s not doing well.”

Ras slammed the dash. “Tell him I won’t reclaim anything unless—”

A bright beam penetrated the flagship.

CHAPTER TWENTY

The Getaway

Ras couldn’t peel his eyes away from the carnage. Half of the command ship’s engines had failed, tilting the vessel until its propulsion sent it listing wildly to the side before flipping it over entirely.

“No!” Ras shouted, then looked back to his father, who just stared agape out the front window.

Escape shuttles began breaking away, and Carter pulled on the controls to avoid colliding with one of them as the flagship dropped beneath their altitude.

More beams shot through the sky, intercepting one of the escape shuttles and forcing Carter to pull the fighter into further evasive maneuvers.

“You’re sure she was in there?” Ras asked, gripping his restraints.

An Illorian voice squawked over the comm unit.

“We’re retreating to the rally point,” Carter said, “I’m sorry.”

“What if she’s still in there?” Ras shouted. “We have to at least check.”

“How?” Carter asked, still pulling the ship into a climb.

“If she gets too low, she’ll overload and the ship will freeze,” Ras said. “Then I can get in and save her.”

“But as soon as you do, you’ll both fall to your deaths,” Elias said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Carter said, “the weapon she fueled contained any overloading inside itself. We’re going to have to hope they brought her to a shuttle.”

The rally point consisted of the fifteen remaining Elder vessels hanging just outside the perimeter of a city twice as large as
Derailleur
. Most of the city lay preserved with airship traffic halted above it, awaiting their Reclaimer.
 

Several of the ships sitting at the edge of the bubble over the Illorian capital city hung half preserved, half aged, delineating the boundary.

The newly designated command ship looked quite similar to the one Ras had recently watched fall, and after a quick landing of Carter’s fighter atop the command vessel’s deck, the Veirs followed the hulking machine as he led them inside the ship and down to the bridge level. The doors whisked open, revealing two Elders standing guard.

One of the guards asked Carter something.

Carter pushed Ras forward. “He wanted to know which one of you is The Reclaimer.” He turned to Elias. “You’ll have to stay here.”

The guard’s counterpart clasped his hand on Elias’ shoulder.
 

“I’ll be fine, Ras,” Elias said.

“Tell him The Reclaimer needs him,” Ras said, nodding to Elias.