The Wind Merchant (46 page)

Foster would have to go through Ras.

Meeting up with Foster, Ras leapt for the gun, but found a grapple-gun-fortified left arm plant firmly into his stomach.

Ras threw his head forward, smashing Foster squarely in the nose as both of Ras’ arms focused on wresting the gun away. It pointed up, firing into the last set of balloons, starting
The Winnower’
s
final plummet toward the Time Origin. Ras dove into Foster in a flying tackle as the two men lost their footing and began sliding over the edge.

“No!” Callie’s faint cry barely made it to Ras’ ears as he fell over the edge with Foster.

Foster fired the grapple gun toward the side of
The Winnower
, anchoring himself as the pair swung over the cusp and slammed into the side of the city.
 

Ras had a good grasp on one of Foster’s legs, but received multiple kicks from the other. Ras reached up to Foster’s belt, pulling himself up as Foster began retracting the cable.

Looking up, Ras saw that
The Kingfisher
still hung in the air. Dixie, Carter and Elias had made it aboard. The fact comforted Ras as he clung to Foster and the grapple gun brought them back to the edge of the doomed vessel.

Hauling himself up, Ras landed a punch squarely into Foster’s stomach, then was instantly reminded of the armor that had saved Foster’s life earlier as a throb of pain echoed from his hand to the rest of his arm.

Foster fired another Energy shot into Ras, failing to notice Ras working the cable release on the grapple gun. The snap of their lifeline immediately sent them both into free fall.

The Winnower
’s descent was nothing compared to their Lack-aided fall, and soon the men careened toward the sideways glass dome covering the middle of the city.

Spinning Foster around to take the brunt of the collision, Ras pulled himself tightly into a ball as they smashed through the glass dome. Their descent slowed as shards rained down around them.

Now on the underside of the dome’s curve, they rolled down until Ras lost his grasp on Foster. He continued his slide down the glass as Foster joined
The Winnower
in its slowed fight against the friction of Time. With nothing to hold onto, Ras did his best to slow himself with his palms and boot soles, but continued to slide faster than Foster.

The end slope of the glass dome led to the interior ring of
The Winnower
, and while it was full of pipes and sharp bits of machinery that Ras bounced into, he was thankful it didn’t lead to more open sky. Rolling to a stop, Ras looked up, spotting Foster in his own floating tumble along the dome. It would be a minute until he would reach Ras.
 

Time for a breather. Ras closed his eyes for a moment and took a deep, pained breath. He needed to get the grapple gun from Foster. Without something to anchor him, he’d fall to his death or die of dehydration on
The Winnower
.

Foster still slid as he loaded up another grapple charge. To Foster,
The Winnower
was crashing with him, which didn’t afford a man much time to think, let alone plan.

Ras willed himself to stand. He had to use his relative speed to his advantage to get the grappler from Foster.

“You can do this,” Ras said to himself, then began running up the glass slope, his boots gaining enough traction to reach Foster.

For a moment, Foster entered Ras’ equilibrium, falling faster before he swept Ras’ legs and sent both men back into a slide.

Ras used Foster’s disorientation to undo the gun’s body harness strap before receiving a punch to his temple, knocking him aside and slowing Foster once more as Ras tumbled back down to the dome’s edge. He stood and prepared for his second run up the glass.

Foster turned and trained his silver pistol on Ras.

“How many times do you have to shoot me before you realize that doesn’t kill me?” Ras asked, fully knowing how silly it would sound in a sped up voice to Foster.

Foster dropped his aim from Ras to the glass just beneath the wind merchant before firing. The beam melted a hole underneath Ras, who suddenly realized suggesting other targets hadn’t been the best idea.
 

Ras dropped, only to save himself by a tenuous grasp of thick, jagged glass.
 

Staring down at the Time Origin brought back Ras’ vertigo, shaking his existence. His arms trembled as he tried to pull himself up to no avail. The curved glass distorted his view of Foster as the man slid closer to Ras, but he could make out the man in gray’s rolling to avoid falling into the hole.

Finally sliding to the edge of the glass, Foster stood and sauntered over to the edge. His slow speech gave his voice a more authoritative sound. “I suppose at this point I’ll have to take pleasure in the small victories.” He lifted a leg to stomp on Ras’ bleeding fingers.

“You kill me, you lose your ticket home!” Ras shouted.

Foster lowered his leg. “Go on.”

“You drop with me, I can get us safely to the ground and walk you out,” Ras said, struggling to retain his grasp. “You stay here, you’ll be stuck in Time forever.”

Foster laughed a deep, booming laugh. “If I keep riding this, the next thing I know my Lack squad will be picking me up.”

“Wait, wait, wait!” Ras said. “But how many years will pass before that happens? What will happen to Atmo during that time? I can get you out now.”

“No, thank you,” Foster said in mock appreciation, then raised his leg to stomp.

The boot came down, crunching Ras’ left hand against the sharp glass. With a cry of pain, Ras released the glass and grasped Foster’s stomping foot, then he allowed the weight of his body to pull Foster through the hole with him, and both men continued their rapid descent.

“No!” Foster cried out as he struggled to bring his left arm about to grapple
The Winnower
, but Ras worked to pin the arm down.

Ras threw a right hook into Foster’s jaw, then worked to undo the grapple gun strap by Foster’s elbow, struggling to overcome the slippery addition of blood into an already difficult process. He received a knee to his stomach.

“Why. Won’t. You. Die!” Foster wriggled his left arm free as they passed by the last of
The Winnower
’s surface and swung around to aim at the gigantic structure.

The grapple charge fired, but the cabling tangled in Ras’ sphere and didn’t shoot forward to meet
The Winnower
. Instead, it launched into a haphazard coil that only began to straighten itself out as the weight of the two men pulled down on it, slowing their fall with its drag.

All around them floated flaming debris with bits of cloth, metal, and smoldering wood. Ras looked down to see the back half of
The Brass Fox
thirty feet beneath them, facing forward to reveal the Windstrider engines and the open door to the Captain’s quarters. Its balloon dragged above it.

Ras swung his weight to line them up with his ship and clung to Foster’s left arm, then worked the cable release.

The snap returned the two men to free fall. Foster wrested Ras away with a stern kick that sent Ras into the embrace of the collapsed balloon, breaking his fall as Foster’s stunted trajectory led him to the hold.

Caught in the patched up balloon, Ras thanked his ship for once more taking care of him. Gravity pulled him out of the canvas envelope and through the open door leading to the Captain’s quarters.

The cannonball-riddled wood on the back wall protested at their collision, but didn’t give. He looked around the sideways room at the chairs and broken dishes collected on the back wall with him. The side walls illuminated the room with their near-frozen flames, giving off a nearly unbearable heat.

“Thanks, girl,” Ras said, patting the wall he lay on. “I’m sorry about all this.” His hand grazed something metallic. Callie’s typewriter.

He wondered if Hal had the necessary accouterments to care for her wound aboard
The Kingfisher
as he cautiously made it to his feet. Bending over, he collected the small typewriter, then dug around until he discovered the bag of stolen artifacts from Foster’s office.

Dumping the contents of the bag onto his upended bed, he surveyed his resources. The dueling pistol looked to be the only thing he could use against Foster, so he tucked it into his belt.

Ras hefted the typewriter into the old leather bag and slung it over his shoulder. He slid his bed frame on its end, then climbed up until he could reach the bolted-down table in the middle of the room. After a precarious balancing act, he stood on the metal base of the table, giving him enough of a reach to grasp the door handle. Using the leather bag to catch the edge of the frame, Ras hauled himself out of the room.

Standing on the wall next to the door, Ras saw Foster glide down into the hold. Ras held out the dueling pistol, but pulled back. The shot needed to be fired in close quarters to not waste his one opportunity.

The formerly patched hole in the deck created at Framer’s Valley acted as Ras’ vertical entryway into the hold. Foster came crashing down into a pile of broken container glass next to one of the Windstrider engines.

The Brass Fox
knew how to accept intruders.

Ras slid over among the glass shards and pinned Foster to the makeshift ground with his knee. He aimed the pistol at Foster’s forehead. “Welcome to my ship,” Ras said. “Now give me the grapple gun.”
 

As Ras focused on working the final strap of the device loose, Foster took a shard of glass and slashed Ras’ chest before kicking the younger man away.

The dueling pistol clattered to the ground and Foster rolled over to grab the gun. He slowly stood, shaky from his thirty foot fall, and aimed the gun at Ras.

“Was I not good enough?” Foster asked. “Did I not try hard enough for you?”

“What?” Ras asked, quickly inspecting his new wound.

Foster stumbled, leaning against the sideways Windstrider mounted to the floor. “I did everything you wanted. Every single thing you said.”

Ras noticed the pool of blood in the shards of glass where Foster had landed. As Foster shambled forward, bits of glass fell from him. “Hey, it’s okay,” Ras said in an attempt to defuse the situation.

“Is it, dad? Why is it okay?” Foster asked, jutting the gun forward.

“Because you did the best you knew how.”

“You said that wasn’t good enough.”

“I was wrong.”

“That’s a first,” Foster said, faltering. Tears formed. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s all right,” Ras said, taking a step forward with his hand outstretched to grab the pistol.
 

“I tried,” Foster said. He jerked his arm, pulling the trigger. The bullet lodged itself in Ras’ right shoulder.

The jolt of pain sent Ras stumbling backwards, leaving Foster to gracefully collapse face down. In a brief moment of clarity, Ras realized what brought Foster to delirium: spikes of glass stuck out of the back of his head and neck.

Ras breathed heavily, nursing his right arm. He leaned in next to Foster’s body and rolled him over. Arguably the most powerful man in Atmo lay in the hold of his ship, and all Ras could think about was unlatching the last strap to the grapple gun, which he did.

Sliding his arm into the hard won device, he rested his hand on the Windstrider engine.

He walked to the edge of the ship, leaned over, and saw a long drop still ahead of him. The grapple gun didn’t have much cabling left on the spool. In order to not fall too far he’d have to be precise about when he fired the last charge to anchor the cable into Time.

Ras looked back over the remaining half of his burning ship. He opened his mouth to speak, but instead nodded and patted the wall before hoisting himself up to the ledge where the bay door formerly resided.

Dangling his legs over the side, he tugged one last time at all of the grapple gun’s restraints before looking back at Foster’s body.

With little inspiration or desire for any ceremonial words, Ras hopped off the edge before his vertigo could suggest he take more caution.

The Time Origin grew larger as gravity pulled. He needed to wait a bit longer lest the last of his cable leave him hanging way too high.

Five…four…three…two…

Ras squeezed the grapple trigger and cable spooled out frantically, its friction slowing Ras as the ground rushed up. He held on dearly with both arms. Yards and yards spun out, slowing him as he passed alongside the tip of the crystalline spire.

A loud thwack resounded as the last of the cable snapped free from the device, leaving Ras to fall the remaining twenty feet.

With no cloth balloon to comfort his fall this time, Ras collided with the ground and collapsed with a sick crack in his leg.

Sprained, or worse.

As he looked up at the sky from the ground, he saw his ship and, far above that,
The Winnower
on its inevitable path directly toward him. The Collective was ruined. Foster was gone. He was alive, and his wrecked body wouldn’t let him forget it.

A laugh escaped his lips, surprising him.
 

He attempted to stand on his good leg, but the unbearable pain brought him back to the ground. Taking a deep breath, he tried to push himself along with his working leg. The pain shooting throughout his body overwhelmed him, causing waves of nausea and the horizon to curve in ways it shouldn’t. In an attempt to return equilibrium, he squeezed his eyes shut. Unconsciousness beckoned. Now was not a time for rest.

Opening his eyes, he surveyed the Time Origin.
This is it
, Ras thought.
I die in the shadow of the fountain of youth
.

His breathing became ragged and he fought the urge to fall asleep. This couldn’t happen yet.
Callie needs her typewriter
. Ras shook his head clear, then glanced down at his right arm clutched to the gash across his chest. The bracelet almost mocked him.

Don’t give up
. He would just close his eyes and think of Callie.

No!
Ras opened his eyes.
Don’t give up…