Driftmetal Read online

me up to Bannock and back to my streamboat was fair game, at this particular juncture. I had to get across that platform. But first, there was the small matter of this melodramatic do-gooder in my way.

  “You’ve terrorized these miners for the last time, Jikes,” said the dark-skinned man, proving that he was indeed a melodramatic do-gooder.

  “Everybody wants to be a hero,” I said, rolling my eyes. I stomped down hard to shove the solenoid back where it belonged. The metal clangor resounded along the platform, and the landing lights around the border gave a flicker.

  The dark-skinned man didn’t have time for small talk. I felt his grapplewire wrap around my legs before I realized he’d shot the thing. He yanked hard on the line, pulling my feet out from under me. I hit the deck and started sliding toward him. He extended a boot, doing me the courtesy of providing a brake for my momentum. I shoved off sideways with my hands and forced myself into a slanted roll, twisting counter-clockwise to unwrap my legs. I tried to grab the wire, but when I came around on the last twist it ripped free of my calf and took a nice chunk of flesh and pants with it.

  I rolled to a stop in an almost-seated position. The man shot his wire again, but I raised a hand to shield myself. The grappler pierced my palm and came to rest within an inch of my eye. When he yanked on the line, the spring-loaded prongs flicked out and bit into the back of my hand.

  He began to reel me in, so I turned down my heels and let him lift me onto my feet like a water-skier. I went airborne just before I reached him, straightening out like a wooden plank and plunging my feet into that law-loving face of his. He would’ve gotten a solenoid through the skull too, if I’d been able to trigger the blasted thing on cue. I followed through the kick, intending to land on my feet and send him sprawling. Problem was, I was practically holding the guy’s hand, so we tumbled across the deck together like a pair of broken chairs.

  I managed to end up underneath him somehow. The grappler was still tugging my palm toward his wrist, its motor chugging like a stuck wind-up toy. Lucky for me, his brain was still knocking around in his skull. All he could do was give me a woozy stare as I shoved him off me and worked my hand free of the grappler.

  I took off toward the hovertrucks, my hand a mess of bloodstained metal, sliced veins flopping out like thin plastic tubing. With the same hand, I punched through the driver’s side window and climbed into the first hovertruck, wiping glass shards off the seat.

  After a moment of fiddling, the engines growled to life, and the hovertruck lurched and rose. More staggered than rose, really. With the dark-skinned man getting to his feet on the platform below, it felt like I was driving through a vat of maple syrup. Come on come on come on come on. These things were easy to hotwire, but they moved slower than cold boogers.

  I should probably mention that I came up working as a mechanic in my dad’s shop. That was before I learned how to make a dishonest living. Dear old dad, I thought, without missing him one bit.

  I heard the undercarriage clank as the dark-skinned man’s grappler bit through the truck bed. The hovertruck faltered and the man was floating up, up on his line, holding onto his hat while his purple duster slapped at his knees. I lost sight of him under me, cursing the hovertruck for its lack of see-through flooring. I’m a good driver, and I can fight, but fighting and driving at the same time is a feat best left to stuntmen and cityfolk.

  I shuffled through the glove box, searching the cockpit for something heavy. I could hear the soft metallic clinks of hands and feet along the chassis. A shame I hadn’t gotten the dark-skinned man’s name, since I liked being able to brag about who I’d killed. I took off a boot and kissed it. When the man’s arm came through the open window, I grabbed his wrist and punched the grappler through the sole of my boot, triggering the prongs. Then I kicked the door open and cut the engine.

  I bailed, using the boot as a step and holding onto the wire like a rappelling line. The dark-skinned man writhed against the door frame, my weight holding his arm through the window. The winch inside his forearm began to smoke as it tried to reverse the direction. Which it did, after a couple seconds. Shucks. That did not go like I wanted it to. Next I knew, I was being hauled up toward the truck. Now the engine was off, and the truck was coming down.

  I let go of the wire and fell. I hit the platform from two stories up, an awkward landing that made my teeth rattle like pebbles in a landslide. The hovertruck was listing sideways and falling past the platform, fast. I could see the dark-skinned man, caught against the underside with nowhere to go, my boot gliding up toward him on the wire. There was a rush of wind as the truck tumbled past, and then he was gone.

  When the hovertruck hit the Churn, the fireball wasn’t as big or impressive as the hovercell’s had been. Just an uninspired puff of flame and a brief column of gray smoke that blew away in the wind below the first platform. The dark-skinned man’s hat drifted down and swayed to rest in front of me. It had been a shame to ruin a good pair of boots, but at least I’d gotten an ugly hat out of the deal. A fitting end to the life of another law-lover, I thought.

  The next hovertruck in line was just as cumbersome to drive as the first, but it had the benefit of being lighter by one law-lover. I tailed Bannock for a while, following in the drift-town’s wake until I could land without causing a scene. The guys in the crow’s nest could suck on my solenoid if they wanted to clear me first. I knew they were just doing their jobs, but I didn’t care about their jobs. I’d been avoiding the life of an honest working man for years. And I’d been away too long to fool with procedure; I had to get back to her.

  The town was a clockwork mass of sprawling gothic architecture and spooky manor houses as old as the patch of ground Bannock had been ripped away from. In the ages since, the inhabitants had built all the way out to the edges in some places. For the less faint of heart, there were side-bolted apartments overlooking the Churn.

  I was a wanted man, but I made my way through the cobbled streets as though I wasn’t. The stream was whipping my hair around my face as I came around to the edge of the floater, and there she was.

  Ostelle, my rusty clunker of a streamboat. Gorgeous as the day she was born, if a little worse for the wear. I came aboard and entered the captain’s quarters to find it rank with a sour-smelling crowd. My crew. Everything went quiet when I entered the room.

  “Why are there so many people in here?” I wanted to know.

  “Cause we’re havin’ a meeting. Where you been all day, ya lackwit? And what’s with the stupid hat?”

  My dear old dad, always the charmer.

  I flipped the old man an obscene gesture. “I’ve been getting pinched and almost beaten to dust in the Churn. The hat’s a souvenir. Where’ve you been?”

  “Well shoot, son, I been right here, runnin’ things while you were out playing dress-up. Why didn’t you bluewave us?”

  “Couldn’t, on account of they stole all my tech. I could’ve been rotting away in a Civvy prison, for all you knew. I’ve been gone a whole night and day and you couldn’t send one guy after me?”

  “I thought you done took off with one of them tavern wenches and left us,” dad said, nonchalant.

  “You know I’d never leave my boat on purpose, dad.”

  “Your boat? Who keeps this bucket of driftmetal together, is it you? Cause last time I checked—”

  “Alright, shut up. Our boat.”

  “Cap’n Jakes?”

  “Yeah,” my dad and I both said at the same time. We glared at each other, then at the man who’d spoken.

  Mr. Leigam Irkenbrand hesitated, his beetled eyes darting back and forth between us. He was the boat’s bluewave radioman; our mouth in the stream. He had been frail and thin, even back then, with a prominent cleft chin, a small nose and a thick head of gray locks pulled back into a tight ponytail. “Marshals are on the comm. Chatter about a couple of hovertrucks reported missing.”

  Dad looked at me. Every crewmember in the room looked at me.

  I shrugged
. “Yeah, it was me.”

  I’d expected the place to erupt with cheers and smiles, but the news only brought silence.

  “Sounds like you’re in a bit of trouble, son,” Dad said. “Didn’t run off with no tavern wench after all. What’d you haul in?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “Except for this hat. I was close to bringing in something really big this time.”

  Expectant silence became murmured disappointment.

  “The marshals are asking if we have any information on the thefts,” said Leigam.

  “One’s parked outside town,” I said. “The other… they ain’t gonna find the other.”

  Dad was irked. “Get below, son. Mr. Sarmiel, make ready to lift off. Stations!”

  I made my way belowdecks, hungry as a dog and still aching, my bloody hand in need of patching and my left leg due for a tune-up. Merton Richter and Dorth Littage were stationed at the coal furnace, doing more sitting than shoveling. As soon as they saw me, they started pretending otherwise.

  “Slackers,” I said as I passed. “Liftoff soon. I’ll kick your teeth in if we fall behind because of you jackwagons.”

  “Aye, cap,” they said.

  Merton thumbed over his shoulder and gave me a knowing look. “Cook’s in the galley.”

  I frowned at him and trudged off in that direction.

  “There’s my sweet little boy,” said the cook when I sat down.