Through the tower they went, a series of square rooms filled with weaponry, desks, and irate House Chimera guards. Skarx stared ahead fixedly, and a moment later they stepped out into the skycrane yard proper.
Scorio had been warned not to gape. A great expanse of flat ground was piled high with crates, baskets, bales, and boxes, while an intricate dance was orchestrated by Chimera operatives with flags, who blew whistles and directed carts and wagons in a complex interweaving, somehow keeping everyone moving and preventing accidents at the same time.
But it was the wall of machinery that edged the blue sky that drew his attention. House Chimera owned a dozen skycranes, each twenty yards tall and anchored by huge counterweights to the very edge of the city. Huge gears turned, teeth interlocking, causing the skycranes to revolve and reach out into the void, where he saw them mirrored by other cranes lowering goods into their clutching maws.
Each of the other three blue segments boasted their own complement of cranes. It seemed importing goods was of prime importance to ever House.
Bastion, he’d learned, was a cylinder buried like a well in the Rascor Plains, the first and largest expanse of hell. Gravity pulled those within the city toward the curving sides, but once you emerged into hell proper, gravity would pull you down in the direction of the Dead Portal. Stepping out over the lip was an extremely disorienting experience, and an inexperienced traveler could find themselves trapped at the forty-five-degree angle, pulled in both directions, but having lost momentum, unable to break free until rescued.
Hence the skycranes.
Even as they marched through the busy yard, Scorio watched one of the massive, ungainly machines reach out into the void and close its huge mouth around a large bundle of barrels that were netted together and lowered down by a sister skycrane mounted over the edge. The skycrane secured its grip on the cargo, the other released and retracted its long neck. The Bastion-side crane then drew back, rotated, and lowered the barrels onto a loading bay.
It was disorienting just to watch, much less to imagine crossing over.
“Here we go,” said Skarx, voice pitched low for them alone. “Try and look halfway alive.”
An inside team had prepared the groundwork for them, setting a crate just large enough for a full-grown man to curl up inside by a wall, two carrying poles stacked upon it. Skarx stood facing outward, hands on his hips, as four of their team took up the poles and slid them through the hoops mounted atop the crate. They lifted the poles to their shoulders, and then set out after Skarx toward the loading bay.
Audacity would see them through, Skarx had explained. “Expensive goods are taken straight from the loading bay to high-security warehouses by teams of ten. Unless you’re willing to start an open war in the streets, there’s no way of taking Chimera’s prize goods once they leave the loading bay.”
The bay itself was raised a good six yards above the yard, fenced off and dominated by the skycrane, which was operated by a team of engineers. These stood on a platform and called out instructions to a large team of men who goaded massive oxen into turning a driving gear, while others operated the levers that managed the maws.
Skarx led their team through the broad gate into the private confines of the loading bay. It was fairly crowded, but everyone here was dressed in House Chimera greens. Recently off-loaded goods were being carted out by house porters, and the action was thick enough that Skarx was able to lead them to one side of the bay and there stand at the ready, ignored by everyone who seemed to stare right through them.
Affording Scorio ample time to stare out at those broad blue skies. Clouds a mile away drifted past, wispy and dreamlike, and he fought the urge to break ranks and move right to the rim, to peer out and down at the Rascor Plains.
“Here it is,” said Skarx. “On my mark, move in fast to retrieve the target.”
A large crate was being lowered to the stone bay by the skycrane, whose huge, clutching head opened once it had settled. Porters stepped in with crowbars and efficiently popped out one end, revealing tightly packed contents. Immediately a line of men began to empty out the goods, moving some here, others there, until at last their target was revealed.
A small crate, two feet wide, and marked on the top with the official House Chimera crest. Paperwork was checked, and the small box was carried to a priority area where it was deposited on a large, red-painted square.
Scorio tensed at the sight of the crate. Not because it was their target, but due to some intangible reaction to its presence. It called to him, somehow.
“Watch for the factotum,” Skarx hissed at Scorio, and marched up to the guards overseeing the priority area, saluted, and without asking moved to retrieve the crate.
Scorio scanned the crowd for the official. The one man who’d cry foul if he spotted them taking hold of the crate. Chimera greens, he’d been told, with a green sash across his chest.
He wasn’t in sight.
“The trick,” Skarx had explained, “is to try and steal something valuable but not too valuable. Something worth the effort, but not so important as to be truly guarded.”
Which this box wasn’t, it seemed. Skarx hefted it and brought it back to their team.
They immediately popped open their own crate and removed an identical box from its interior, an exact duplicate of the one they were going to steal.
One of their team moved the box back into the red zone while their target was placed inside the larger crate and sealed up.
“You do anything with enough confidence in the yards,” Skarx had said, grinning widely at them all only hours ago, “and nobody will bat an eyelid. Look bored, look purposeful, look the part, and everyone’ll assume you know what you’re about. Easy.”
The four men lifted the carrying poles to their shoulders and began marching out of the loading bay, down the broad ramp to the yard below.
Everyone swirled around them, purposeful, focused, bored. How many of them were imposters like their team? Any or all of them.
They got as far as the security fence around the foot of the loading bay when someone shouted the alarm.
“Fast trot lads,” said Skarx through gritted teeth. “Only sprint if I say so. And don’t look back.”
Their team began to hustle through the suddenly turgid crowd, spearing toward the distant gate which suddenly seemed a mile away.
“There!” The voice was pitched in outrage. “Those men! Stop those men!”
“All right,” called out Skarx, “let’s try that sprint.”
They barreled forward, but Scorio knew they were done for. The crowd scattered before them, alarmed and confused by their uniforms, but the guards at the main gate were turning to look, faces closing in anger, and there were far too many of them to simply shove their way through.
Scorio heard men coming pounding up behind them. He glanced back, saw a dozen Chimera guards in green running through the loading bay gate after them.
Shouts of alarm and screams of panic began to spread through the crowd, which drew back, most of them confused, nobody seeming to understand what was going on.
Scorio’s second job was to buy the team time if this worst-case scenario took place. How he was then supposed to get out after hadn’t been specified.
Skarx stumbled to a halt, the rest of the men crowding in behind him, and Scorio saw a large contingent of guards coming their way.
“We’re done for!” shouted one of the men, and unshouldered his pole to tear off into the crowd.
The crate listed to the side, half-slid down the rear pole as one end dropped to the ground, and then completely unbalanced and crashed to the ground.
Scorio had moments in which to act. He could tackle the guards, try to hold them off, and no doubt be swarmed immediately. Or—
He stepped up beside the toppled crate. The impact had jarred it open. Kicking the lid off, he crouched down and wrenched off the smaller crate’s top.