Skykeep (33 page)

“You want I should shoot this fugger?” he
growled.

“Nah, Coop. He’s all right. Figures we’d find
the only decent fug folk in the prison. Come on. We’ve got to get
Nita loose from him and up to the
Wind Breaker
. Then we’ve
got to set this thing down.”

“He gonna try to stop us? Because I ain’t got
no problem shooting a fugger, but the dog don’t know no
better.”

Nita drummed out a message against the
waterlogged wood with her free hand. Wink skittered across the
walls of the stairwell.

“It is my purpose to keep order. I will not
see you killed, but all the same I will not see you freed,” Warden
Linn said.

There was the quiet jingle of chain.

“So that mean you’re going to stop us,
because I like I said, I haven’t got much time to waste here,” Coop
said.

“The women are my prisoners, and they shall
remain. But you, sir, are trespassing. I offer you one opportunity
to leave this place.”

“Not without the girls,” Coop said.

“I respect that. But it leaves me with no
recourse. Anthus,” Linn said calmly. “Attack.”

The hound lunged, and Coop raised his rifle,
but the monster stopped short as its chain went taut. Linn turned
down the stairwell to see that somehow the loop of his leash had
been thrown over the end of the handrail. Without a running start,
the hound could not muster the strength to tear the wood free, and
it was far too intent on attempting to tear Coop’s throat out to
allow Linn to free it. Wink dashed back to the others, a look of
proud achievement on his face.

“You reckon you can pick this manacle, Coop?”
Lil asked.

“I reckon I got just the tool for it.”

He reached forward and grasped Nita’s wrist,
then yanked it aside, pulling Linn off balance. With the chain
taut, he put the muzzle of the rifle to the portion nearest to
Linn’s wrist and pulled the trigger.

His rifle’s report was deafening, but it did
its work, albeit messily. When the smoke was swept away by the
whipping wind, the chain had been shattered and a large chunk of
the nearest stair had been gouged away. The fragments of wood and
chain took their toll on all in attendance, speckling and scraping
the
Wind Breaker
crew and the hound, but taking their
biggest toll on the warden. His arm and hand were bloodied
horribly.

“So long, Warden,” Lil said, her voice raised
over both the wind and the ringing in her own ears. “You trying to
sic your dog on my brother makes me not feel so bad about all
this.”

The
Wind Breaker
crew made their way
to the rope ladder when it was once again brought into range. With
a roar of engines, the captain lifted them up and away, finally
reunited with their ship and crew.

Landing a prison turned out to be a rather
challenging proposition. Balancing the support balloons by freeing
the opposite one was indeed enough to bring the facility back to
roughly level, but that was only the start. The crew dropped
mooring ropes down and secured them to the deck, using the
Wind
Breaker
as a woefully underpowered tug to keep the facility at
least moderately stable while a few carefully placed rifle shots
produced enough leaks in the remaining balloons to bring the place
down completely.

Touching down was less than graceful. The
prison skidded for half a mile and left most of its bottom two
levels scattered across that distance, proving that keeping
everyone away from the lower floors had been a wise decision. When
it finally settled, the
Wind Breaker
crew cut the rest of
the balloons free and made their way down into the facility to see
about the inmates and guards.

Between the uprising and the landing, blood
had been shed. Most of the inmates were shaken up by the landing,
with every last one of them sporting bumps and bruises, and in the
most severe cases a few broken bones. The only lives lost were
those lost during the battle for the surface. Gunner, Coop, and Lil
secured the facility while Butch saw to Nita’s arm and the more
problematic of the fragment wounds. Then Butch entered the
teetering prison to treat the injuries.

“Here we are! Knew they’d still have our
stuff,” Lil said after kicking open one of the supply room doors on
the second level. “They got your outfit and mine. A good thing,
too. These are my best work britches.”

Nita knelt and picked up her goggles,
slipping them onto her head. “I wouldn’t want to have to explain to
my brother how I lost the goggles he accessorized for me.”

“They sure did hide these good. Glad we had
to pick this place clean to fix up the
Wind Breaker
or we
might never have found them,” Lil said.

“Lil? Nita? You in here?” called Kent from
down the hall.

“Yep, we’re in here. Just getting our
things,” Lil said.

“Your captain wants you outside. We’re done
moving everyone to the surface.”

“Sure thing. We’ll be down shortly,” Nita
said.

They finished reclaiming their personal
effects, and at Lil’s prodding found a dark corner to get changed
into their proper clothes, then navigated the wrecked interior to
the makeshift gangplank they’d rigged to the third floor.

The prison had set down in a marshy field not
far from the remnants of what had been a town prior to the arrival
of the fug. This one hadn’t been repurposed by the fug folk and
thus was almost perfectly intact, save for the wear and tear of the
elements without residents to perform upkeep.

While the injuries were being treated, the
storm had died down to a light drizzle, and now there was only the
scattered patter of rain. The inmates were gathered around the
captain, Blanche, and the grunts. The latter three had become
something of the unofficial spokespeople for the group. To the side
were the remaining guards, each outfitted with a set of
shackles—after first being searched for spare keys. Both Linn and
Blanc were among them. Linn’s hand had been heavily bandaged, but
Butch seemed to have treated it well enough for recovery to be
genuinely possible. Anthus was by their side, outfitted with a
makeshift muzzle.

“Nita here got a message out to us saying you
folks were different from what we’ve come to expect from your kind.
Suppose I shouldn’t be surprised to find she was right. Does my
heart good to know there’s a few of you down here that feel just
about the same as we do about how things are being run,” Captain
Mack said. “There ain’t room on the
Wind Breaker
for the lot
of you to hitch a ride, and I don’t think we could afford to stay
down here that long besides, so I reckon your first order of
business with all this fresh new freedom you got is to figure out
where you’re going to go and how.”

“I know where we are, roughly. About… a
hundred miles up that way there’s a mine. Bunch of grunts like
us’ll be working there. I guarantee I’ll know a few of those guys,
one way or another. There’s always a few people in a mine like that
who’ll be looking for a way to get even with the folks in charge.
Shouldn’t be hard to get an ore barge down here in a day or two to
pick up the inmates.”

“You reckon you can get to the mine on the
steam cart?”

“My first job was operating one of those,”
Donald said, nodding.

“I suppose the rest of us can spend a night
or two in this ghost town until then,” Blanche said.

“And what’ll you do with the guards?”

“Just leave ’em here. We’re not so far from
the old site of the prison that a search party won’t find them
eventually. Maybe if they’re nice, we’ll even set up a flare or
something for after we’re gone,” Kent said.

“That suit the rest of you?” the captain
said.

There was an unenthusiastic but affirmative
murmur from the rest of the inmates.

“And, Captain West, none of us are going to
forget what you did here. One of these days, you’ll hear from one
of us, I promise. You’ve got friends in the fug now,” Kent
said.

“Lord knows we could use them,” the captain
said.

Donald, Kent, Blanche, and the captain
exchanged hearty handshakes.

“So long, grunts,” Lil said, giving the two
of them each a hug and a slap on the back. “Meeting you two was the
best part of being locked up.” She looked to Blanche. “You, I could
take or leave.”

“The feeling is mutual,” she replied.

Lil twisted her head and stepped to the side
to find a small, furry form clinging to Blanche’s side.

“What’ve you got there?” Lil asked.

“This is inspector 34097. Skykeep’s
inspector,” Blanche said.

“These little critters sure do know how to
survive the worst, don’t they?” Lil said. “You better take good
care of her.”

“Him, actually.”

“All the same, take good care. I’m really
getting a soft spot for those rascals.”

A few more good-byes were exchanged before
the captain finally signaled for Lil and Nita to board the
Wind
Breaker
.

“Get on in, ladies. Once the cart’s
unhitched, we’ll be on our way,” the captain said.

Nita looked to Warden Linn. He seemed smaller
somehow, with his hat missing and his suit torn. Nonetheless, he
stood poised and with dignity.

“Just one last thing, Captain,” Nita
said.

She touched Lil on the shoulder and coaxed
her toward the warden.

“Warden, I want to say that I am genuinely,
deeply sorry that it turned out this way. You are an honorable man,
and—”

“Ms. Graus, do not apologize to me. We had
opposing goals. I was to keep you caged, you were to rejoin your
people. You, Ms. Cooper, and your crew bested me and my men. It is
the way of things. If we cross paths again, I will be better
prepared, and perhaps things will end differently.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Lil said. “Oh, and
Blanc?”

She gave the assistant warden a vicious punch
to the arm.

“That was for hitting me with your
stick.”

Their affairs now in order, the ladies
returned to the ship.

In deference to the ordeal the girls had been
through, Gunner and Coop had done the requisite patching of the
envelope. Lil and Nita were thus free to go directly to the galley
after a short stop in the gig bay to fetch Nita’s book of letters
and a box from her things. While they wouldn’t be able to remove
their masks and eat until they were out of the fug, they wanted to
be ready to eat their first proper meal in more than a week the
very instant the fug drained away. At the moment, Butch was
fetching some supplies in the storeroom, leaving Lil and Nita
alone. They sat at one of the tables, dreaming of the meal to
come.

“I can’t
wait
to get my hands on a big
plate of Butch’s biscuits and gravy. Dreaming of them things was
just about the only thing that got me through my time in the box
sometimes,” Lil said.

“I don’t care what we get, as long as it is
warm and fresh,” Nita said.

“You said it,” Lil said. She looked to Nita.
“You know something, Nita… I… I don’t know if I would’ve made it
through this if it was anyone else in there with me.”

“You would have found your way out. Or we
would have found you.”

“No, that’s not what I mean. You… look, we’re
all a crew. All us are like family. ’Cept Coop. He really
is
family. But you… aw, I ain’t good with words. I just feel like you
and me… we’re good together, you know. I’d’ve fallen to pieces if
you weren’t there. I feel like… you’re… you and me… aw, am I making
any
sense at all?”

“Perfect sense, Lil. I couldn’t have said it
better myself,” Nita said, putting an arm over her shoulder.

“Shame we never got a chance to do that night
on the town like I was planning.”

“There’s plenty of time for that. Maybe we’ll
even be able to do it in Caldera. Father has been working hard to
earn you all safe harbor there.” She took her hand from Lil’s
shoulder and flipped the book open. “I didn’t get a chance to read
her final letter. Perhaps it already happened.”

As she was scanning the page, Coop walked
in.

“Here you two are. Figured you’d be looking
for something to eat,” Coop said.

He sat beside Lil and pulled her close. “It’s
going to be a long while before I feel like I can let you out of my
sight again, Chastity.”

“Aw, you knew I’d be fine. And I knew you’d
come get me,” Lil said. “What’s that you got squirming in your coat
there?”

“Oh. That’s Nikita. She ain’t been out from
under there. Little critter’s my buddy I guess.”

“And here I remember you being neck and neck
with Gunner when it came to who hated Wink more. Now you got an
inspector all your own. Don’t that beat all.”

“At least she’s a good one.”

“If that’s Nikita,” Nita said, pulling open
the box she’d brought, “then this is for her.”

She held out a macaroon, reaching across Lil.
Coop leaned back and tugged his jacket open. Nikita pulled slightly
away, then sniffed at the treat. Finally she snatched it, rattling
a quick thank-you on the table before tugging the jacket shut again
to munch at it.

“Oh, speaking of gifts, Nita, might not be
the time for it, but right before what happened happened, I picked
something up for you,” he said, reaching into his pocket.

He pulled out the music box he’d purchased
and set it down beside her book. It was a bit dented, but otherwise
intact.

“You got this for me?” Nita said. She opened
the cover, and an intricate ballerina did a graceful turn to a
simple little tune. “I was thinking of buying one of these! How did
you know?”

“Oh, I just figured it was pretty and such.
And you’re pretty and such. It was pretty near the only thing you
might like that we got.”

“That’s very thoughtful, Coop. Thank
you.”

“I was gonna write you a poem too, but then
what happened happened and it got so I was too busy thinking about
what I’d do to whoever did whatever got done to you.”