Every face looked tense and brutally tired.
Every face but Diamond’s, she realized. He was still smiling. Standing in that line, helpless as anyone in the world, yet that pale-eyed creature looked as if he was somewhere else entirely.
One fletch was visible, its flat top rising even with the shop floor. Crock hated the bouncy wrong feel beneath her. Hard coral, rough and honest, was what she wanted to walk across. Soon, she thought. Then she found herself looking at Karlan. Why was that? A lot of thoughts had been swirling inside her, and just then, willing herself to use fresh eyes, she finally saw what should have been apparent from the very first glance.
Over the roaring whiffbirds, she shouted, “You’re a little bit papio.”
Karlan turned. He was huge and bold and full of natural bluster, but her words left him mute. This was a revelation.
“It happens,” she said. “It doesn’t happen much, but the species cross. Our blood and bones get mixed with yours. Fifty generations pass, but the bodies remember their nature as they wander. Two tree-walkers meet and mate, and the old blood suddenly shows up in the big arms and legs and the strength that never sleeps. Which is the papio inside you.”
Hearing every word, Karlan was too stunned to react.
And others heard it too. Diamond noticed and turned to look at Crock, something in those words worthy of a near-giggle. Then the strange boy looked forwards again, and Crock saw the fletch hanging close outside and the whiffbirds looked eager to fly—although launching would be a tough trick with so many aircraft bunched together—and that was the moment when Karlan started to respond.
She heard the curse and the first shards of pain coming with his words, and she started to turn back toward the giant boy, wondering if she had made a mess of things, telling him what he didn’t want to know.
That was when an autocannon began to fire.
Every other sound in the world became soft, thin and weak.
The cannon fired three rounds and paused, and then three more. The fletch’s front gunner was aiming high, aiming at one point, trying to punch a big hole through the ship’s hull and first bladder. Crock was running before she gave her legs the order. She sprinted to the edge of the floor and shouldered her rifle, pinning her sight to a young man, and her first shot passed through the bubble and through his face.
Of course she fired. Fletches were flown by soldiers and soldiers had plans, and this had to be somebody’s plan. That’s why she swung her gun to the right, fixing the sight on the next gunner inside his little bubble. He was sitting. He was watching, his expression perplexed and a little irritated by what hadn’t been deciphered by his head, and she managed a fine piece of shooting that left that bubble shattered, its interior painted with blood and brain.
The third gunner was moving.
Crock got her sight pinned him.
But hydrogen was leaking out of Bountiful, and the ship was tipping severely as the engines began to accelerate. She missed her shot and missed again, and meanwhile the final gunner managed to sweep the dock with cannon fire, shells bursting through the walls and closed doors and the one open door, a fat round coming into Crock’s chest and out the backside before it turned into a hammer that pushed her dead body out into the bright rain-washed air.
With the first bark of the cannon, Merit put his eyes and one hand on Tar`ro, shaking him when he yelled, “Keep Diamond safe.”
As if the man needed encouragement.
Tar`ro slipped closer to the boy, hunting for weapons. Papio guns were big and hard to maneuver. He wanted a piece of steel, preferably something sharp. But who would he fight? That perfectly fine question asked itself, and the man wasted another moment trying to piece together some strategy that wouldn’t be impossible two breaths after it began.
The cannon stopped firing, and the papio woman was standing in the open door, firing at fresh targets.
Merit had run to the closest com-line, the receiver to his ear while he screamed to the bridge, “Right center bladders hit. Bleed their gas, drop ballast, open carbon dioxide tanks above.”
It was morning. There was a little less oxygen in the morning air, which helped reduced the threat of fire.
There wasn’t any sign of fire, was there?
There wasn’t, and that jolt of optimism helped Tar`ro think.
The awful monkey was screaming. Soldiers guarding the boy were very serious about their duties. Golden eyes squinted when Tar`ro approached, so the tree-walker pretended to care about the damned pet. Kneeling, he shouted, “You’re fine, I’m here. Bite my hand, you brat.”
The soldier’s interest moved across the room.
The nearest whiffbird was a busy loud machine ready to lift off the floor. Two of its crewmembers were shouting. One seemed to be waving Diamond closer, while the other, the pilot, just as surely signaled for everyone to get away.
The floor had been tilting for several moments.
The woman papio was still firing.
Tar`ro grabbed Diamond by an arm, and Good clamped down on the Tar`ro’s wrist, and then the whiffbird was punched by a cannon blast that broke its windows and set its interior ablaze.
Tar`ro remembered a fat round button painted red.
He punched Good and turned away, trying to recall where the fire-suppression switch was waiting. But Merit was already there, holding it down as alarms sounded and Bountiful listed and various fires were burning around the dock. And then, just as people and the papio began to lose their feet, heavy carbon dioxide poured out of vents built for no other purpose.
Diamond pulled loose of the bleeding hand.
The soldiers weren’t with them anymore. They were running and sliding their way down the rubber floor, stopping where the woman soldier had been. A couple other soldiers were already there, firing fast. The woman soldier was gone. The big fletch filled the long open doorway, dressed in strong scales, engines roaring as it prepared to accelerate. It looked like a beast deciding on the best way to run. Then a new roar arrived, louder still and probably fiercely hot, shaking the air and the floor and every person. The world shuddered as a wing slashed past Bountiful, next to no space between the two machines.
The wing was gone, and the fletch decided on its direction, pulling away.
Fires were burning across the dock, but not so brightly now. Choking gases made smoke and smolder, and Merit shouted something about holding your breath, except it was too late. Tar`ro had lungs full of carbon dioxide, and while he might not burn to death, he was beginning to wobble from a lack of oxygen.
Bountiful kept bleeding through its wounds and out the emergency shunts. Every water tank was opened. Heavy blackwood timbers set onboard when the ship was built were sent tumbling. Then the unrestrained machinery began to slide and fall free. A second door in the dock was opened, soldiers tossing out tools and furniture and several dead bodies followed by pieces of the shattered whiffbird. The airship struggled to remain buoyant, but that wasn’t possible. How could it fly when the central bladders were gutted? The ship was plunging for the demon floor, and that black thought gave Tar`ro encouragement enough to cough hard and find a fresh good breath of real air before looking around the room again.
Diamond had pulled free of his grip. He and the monkey were crawling uphill. The floor had about a two-thirds pitch, and the other prisoners were clinging to anything bolted to the floor as well as each other. Nissim had Elata beside him, and she clung to him. Karlan grabbed his brother in a haphazard grip. Merit was trying to move along the wall above them, the receiver dangling on its wire. The slayer shouted orders to whoever might be on the end of the line. “Leave us crooked, don’t bleed extra. And straight. Push straight for the reef, fast!”
Tar`ro climbed after the boy.
From outside, in the distance and then very close, came the sharp roars of more wings and the hard sputter of guns.