Skykeep (29 page)

A rifle is not a favored close range weapon
for any number of reasons, and it was rare that one would assign
more than one sniper per nest for many of the same reasons. In
their attempts to pivot toward and target Lil’s most likely
position, the gunmen spent more time clashing rifles and thumping
each other than actually aiming. By the time she appeared at the
door opposite where she’d dropped down, the nest was a hopeless
tangle of three lanky gunmen. She drove a boot into the side of the
nearest knee, grabbed the rifle that tumbled to the ground as a
result, and put it to work as a club with far more success than she
would have as a gun. In a tornado of confusion and chaos, Lil
managed to disable and disarm a second gunman. The third and final
chose to strategically retreat, dropping down through a hatch in
the center of the floor and pulling it shut behind him. She gave a
quick tug, found it tightly secured, and surveyed her handiwork.
The two gunmen still in the room were in no position to mount an
offense. Now was as good a time as any to take a moment to plan the
next move.

“You okay in there?” Lil said, peeking down
through the neck of her shirt.

Nikita stared back up at her, eyes crazed
with fear, but otherwise unharmed.

“Well, maybe ease up on the grip just a bit.
You’re fixing to draw blood,” she said. She slipped her head
through the strap of the sniper rifle and slung it around her back,
taking care not to interfere with the grip of her passenger, and
pointed her boot gun at the downed riflemen. “You boys really
should stay down. I’m having an awful bad day because of you and
pulling a trigger is starting to seem like it’d do me a world of
good. Best not to tempt me.” One man complied. The other attempted
to grab for a weapon and got a bullet in his thigh for his trouble.
“Told you not to test me. Now if either of you folks has a ring of
keys, that’d be handy. Otherwise I’ll just take all the bullets you
got. Then you may as well give me your firing pins and hidden guns
and such. Wouldn’t want you taking pot shots at me once I hop over
the side…”

#

The first three charges had been set on the
anchors of the prison, and thus far nothing had exploded. As far as
Coop was concerned, this was over and above expectations. Now they
were on the trickiest of the anchors, the one that seemed to be the
designated lightning-magnet of the group. While Gunner suggested a
bolt of lightning “might not set off the bomb,” that didn’t stop
him from being particularly diligent when it came to getting this
charge set.

“What’s the time?” Gunner asked.

Coop pulled out his watch and squinted at it.
“About seventeen minutes since you set up the first one.”

“I’m going to require something more precise
than ‘about.’ We are synchronizing these, remember?” Gunner
said.

“Well, I busted the second hand on my watch a
while back, so ‘about’ is all you’re gonna get,” Coop said.

Gunner grumbled something under his breath
and continued clicking and cranking the timing mechanism. Coop
scanned their surroundings, mindful of being discovered, and
stopped when he saw something illuminated by the fading glow of a
distant bolt of lightning.

“They told us to watch out for hounds,
right?” Coop said.

“Yes. Have you spotted any?”

“I don’t know what it is I spotted, but if it
spotted us, I’m in favor of running.”

Gunner clicked a final switch and looked up.
Just barely visible in the dim light and pounding rain was one of
the massive fug hounds, standing stone still, eyes on the
crewmen.

“Maybe they’re blind. The fug does strange
things to—” Gunner began. He was interrupted when the creature
threw its head back and released something that sounded like four
howls combined into one horrific, ghostly sound.

The baying of the hound caused three more to
emerge from the ruins of the city, each stalking up to the first.
Coop and Gunner raised their pistols and began to back slowly
toward the cart.

“I’m not too keen on shooting dogs, Gunner,”
Coop said.

“I’m not either, but I’m not sure the term
really applies anymore. They look more like carnivorous
horses.”

“I’d still rather not shoot ’em.”

“Well, I’ve grown attached to my throat, so
if they start running, I’m going to start shooting.”

The pair moved cautiously backward, and the
hounds began to stalk toward them. They weren’t running, but they
didn’t really need to. Their long, thin legs covered ground
quickly. Both Coop and Gunner knew dogs well enough to know the
moment either one of them ran, the dogs would run as well.
Eventually, with a few strides left before they would reach the
cart, the hounds became impatient and broke into a sprint. Rather
than attempt to take all four of them down, both Coop and Gunner
chose instead to mount the vehicle and hope that the cart was
faster than the hounds. Gunner vaulted into the seat and cranked
open every valve. The wheels spun wildly and threw up globs of mud
and chunks of chewed-up cobblestone before the front end finally
lurched into the air. Driving on the two rear wheels, it roared off
down the road, not slamming back down until fifty yards later.

“How does our speed compare to theirs?”
Gunner asked, fighting to keep them on the road.

“This as fast as we can go?” Coop asked.

“As far as I can tell,” Gunner said.

“Then it don’t compare too well,” Coop said.
“They’re gaining.”

The monstrous hounds charged after their
prospective meal as it veered off toward the main road that would
take them back to the distant and hidden
Wind Breaker
.

“Well then
kill them
!” Gunner
said.

“Unless you can make this ride smoother, I
ain’t hitting nothing that’s not a much bigger target,” Coop said.
“I got a better idea. Keep heading toward that closest gun
operator.”

Gunner veered aside, the first pylon whipping
past them as the hounds galloped ever closer. The howling of the
hounds had been enough to alert the gunners, and the nearest had
dismounted the gun seat and was standing at the fence of his
enclosure, pistol in hand. Coop grabbed Gunner’s monstrous shotgun
and targeted the fence. The operator dove for cover just before
Coop fired, pulling the fourth trigger. Rather than one of the
barrels firing,
all
of them fired. This produced enough
recoil to nearly launch Coop off the cart. A monumental cloud of
shot struck the hinge of the fence’s door, causing the door to
crumble to the ground. Suddenly all four hounds realized a far
easier meal was now available. They skidded to a stop and turned to
the undefended gun operator.

“Warms my heart to see two wrongs make a
right like that, Gunner,” Coop said.

“And it makes my skin crawl that a pack of
monsters attacking one of their masters warms your heart,” Gunner
replied.

“Then we’re just different is all,” Coop
said. “About how long you figure before we can get back to—”

A deafening roar split the air, and the area
around them filled with a blinding violet glow. Lightning had
struck the prison, and thus the careful timing of their final bomb
was rendered moot as it detonated in a secondary flash and boom.
The force was enough to turn the anchor and a ten-foot section of
courtyard into pulverized rubble. The slacked chain immediately
lurched upward, and high above them the prison subtly began to tilt
while bits of stone and chain rained down around the crewmen.

“Dang, Gunner. You know your bombs…”

#

A moment ago Lil was sprinting across the
upper deck of the prison, heading for the nearest staircase toward
the inside of the facility and hoping anyone who still had a gun
wasn’t any better at seeing through the rain than she was. Now she
was on her hands and knees, trying to use her scrambled mind to
work out how and why the whole world seemed to have been made of
light, heat, and noise. She turned her shaken head toward the tower
and saw a thick metal cable running down the pole, down the tower,
and out of sight along the courtyard. She’d never noticed it
before, but now it was hard to miss, because it was glowing
brilliant red and sizzling. She shook her head and crawled along
the slick planks of the deck toward the stairs.

Nikita was still under her shirt but now
clung to her back. The little creature had reflexes that bordered
on precognition, it seemed, managing to scurry aside in time to
avoid being crushed between Lil and whatever she was colliding with
next.

“Well, little thing… that was about as close
to lightning as I ever care to get again,” she called out to the
creature clinging to her. She was only barely able to hear her own
voice. “Guess you can count your lucky stars I didn’t go sprawling,
or you’d’ve been in a bad way.”

She made it to the stairs and hauled herself
to her feet with the banister in time for her hearing to finally
clear enough to make out a general groan from the prison’s
framework.

“Feels like this whole place is tipping. This
is gonna be
real
fun…”

#

Nita had reached the belly of the prison and
was lurking in the hallway trying to work out how she would
distract the guards, when a call came out through the ship to
report to the yard due to an escaped inmate. It could only have
been Lil. The call had sent nearly all of the prison guards
sprinting for the stairs. She’d narrowly managed to slip into a
supply room to avoid being seen. Then came a blast that could have
been nature and could have been Gunner. She didn’t care, because it
was enough to chase the rest of the guards from the level. Now she
could move freely through the most densely populated floor in the
prison. She paced out into the aisle and fitted a key into the
first cell, which happened to belong to Donald and Kent.

“Nita… no… are
you
doing all this?”
said Kent.

“Not me, but people working on my behalf,”
Nita said, pulling open the cell door.

“Did you… make it rain, too? Can you people
do that?” Donald asked, his tone suggesting that even
he
thought it might be a stupid question.

“No, Donald. That was just luck,” she said.
“Or maybe timing.”

“Well, what’s the plan? How are we getting
down from here?”

“First thing’s first. We’re getting everyone
out of their cells. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to need
to take the guards out of the equation. Right now the best I can
come up with is overwhelming them with numbers. Then we’ll see
about getting us off the prison.”

“But what about the cannons?”

“One problem at a time,” she said.

Each row of cells had its own key, so Nita
pulled the chain apart and handed off keys to the others to speed
up the process. In the back of her mind, she couldn’t help but
notice the facility seemed to be shifting a great deal more than it
ever had before, but as she’d said to the others, one problem at a
time.

“Where’s Lil?” Kent asked as the twelfth cell
was opened, finishing the floor and unleashing nearly half of the
population.

“She was in the box. But now I guarantee
she’s in the middle of the largest concentration of guards she can
find, giving them all the reason they’ll ever need to kill her. You
and Donald think you can help me find her?”

“We’re your men,” Kent said.

As the freed prisoners flooded the other
floors, unlocking every occupied cell and overwhelming what few
guards they encountered to earn weapons and more keys, Nita and the
grunts ran upstairs, listening with blast-weakened hearing for
anything that might be Lil. When they reached level two, they found
what they were after. Six guards had formed a human wall, crowding
the hallway full, and in the corner with her back to the wall was
Lil, rifle leveled.

“I know you fuggers are thinking I can only
kill one of you with this thing before you can get to me,” she
growled. “But with you bunched up like that, I’m betting I can get
two of you, easy. That means if you take another step, that’s a one
in three chance it’s the last decision you ever make. You like them
odds? Because I like ’em plenty.”

The guards were still weighing their options
and waiting for one of their cohorts to be the first to act when
she noticed Kent and Donald approaching from behind them.

“Oh well, boys. Guess you waited too long,”
Lil said. “Looks like the cavalry’s arrived.”

Now faced with the possibility that she was
bluffing or that there was indeed a second threat behind them, the
assemblage of guards seemed further lost for what to do next, which
was just as well, because it didn’t really matter. Donald and Kent
bowled into the group, knocking them to the ground and putting
their fists and feet to work until it was clear they’d be staying
there. Nita stepped over the tangle of fug folk and ran up to
Lil.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“All right? Come here, you!” she said,
sliding the rifle around behind her and throwing her arms around
Nita. “I’d hug you tighter, but it’d mean crushing my little friend
here.” She patted the lump under her shirt. “It’s being a little
shy. I don’t think it’s used to our kind of excitement.”

“How are things looking up there?” Nita asked
as Donald and Kent began harvesting keys from the groaning and
dazed guards.

“Weather’s got everybody holed up in the
central tower. Unless those boys are real good at looking for
firing pins in the rain or got a couple spares around, I’ve got all
but maybe two of the snipers disarmed. The others locked themselves
out of their perch, but I reckon by now they figured out I ain’t up
there no more and let themselves back up.”

The pounding rain and howling wind were a
steady noise to those inside the prison, punctuated occasionally by
a peal of thunder. Three sharp pops, like cannons firing, broke
through the din and heralded a rough tilt that threw Nita, Lil, and
the others off balance.