Prima stepped past the box, using her rank to find space at the window, and she stared at a day that was rapidly drawing to a close.
Behind her, panic danced closely with duty and training.
The poise that had served her in public life was surviving. The Archon stared at the empty air and the occasional airship heavy with survivors, shaking her head slowly. A smart voice behind her—not one of the colonels with headsets—was laughing at everyone. “It’s a malfunction, a surge,” he said. “This is nothing, forget it.”
The logic had its charms.
Of course this was a malfunction. If the papio were coming in large numbers, she would hear the sounds of those engines for herself.
With fingertips, the Archon gently touched the reinforced window.
Vibrations played with the glass.
“Quiet,” Prima shouted.
And the command center fell into a forced calm, and everyone listened to a hundred horrible roars washing across them, still distant but already loud, and in another few moments, the papio had arrived.
The Happenstance had served its District for a long while, suffering few failures while enjoying no celebrated distinctions. But then Merit and Haddi produced their sickly baby, and wishing to help that good man, the fletch’s captain sacrificed a pair of royal jazzings. Some voices claimed that the baby wasn’t sick at all, but that didn’t stop the captain from openly taking credit for the child’s survival. Why should any decency remain secret? And as if to prove him right, almost a thousand days later Diamond arrived at the captain’s berth, searching for quick transport to find his father.
The Happenstance and Diamond were lashed together in the public mind. What had been a minor fletch enjoyed its celebrity, and the superstitious captain was judged either an agent of history or the idiot recipient of the worst kind of luck—depending on what those jazzings had bestowed to the world.
The ficklest of the Destinies, Happenstance was a beautiful and treacherous lady spirit. She saw to it that when Rail fell and Marduk fell, her fletch was on duty at the Ivory Station. There was scared talk about abandoning Hanner, and that’s why the ship’s tank was full of alcohol, her corona bladders bulging with hydrogen gas. The crew worked hard throughout that awful day, keeping their vessel ready to fly at a breath’s notice. Eventually the boy’s bodyguard delivered a flight plan that was to remain sealed until night. Tar`ro met privately with the captain, and a little later the captain emptied the hanger’s berth before herding his worn-out crew to their fletch’s bridge, warning them that secret passengers were coming onboard and they needed to keep their eyes on each other, not below.
Of course the boy had to be one of their passengers. Cover the cabin’s rubber windows and demand secrecy, but some truths were apparent. To keep the ship trim and ready, the hiding people’s weight had to be share. Diamond and his friends and the one guard and his teacher, plus Merit, were onboard. There was also one very large second guard. So the secret wasn’t secret, and nobody meant harm when the day was growing old and one or two of the crew mentioned “the famous boy” to the mechanics working on the ship, and to the soldiers protecting them, and maybe a spy or two were standing in their midst.
The papio attacked before darkness. They came exactly as they were supposed to come: a rapid bruising strike with those winged machines that both amused and terrified every fletch captain. Big wings flew beneath the trees, burning fabulous volumes of alcohol even before they climbed toward Danner and the Station. Local airships and tree-mounted gun turrets fired at the blurring targets, and the papio pilots spun and evaded the worst of the gunfire, targeting the worthiest, easiest targets. Fortunes of metal and polished coral were sent flying. Holes were punched through even the toughest corona scales. Late day battles were always the worst. The atmosphere’s high oxygen content meant that fuel tanks ignited with the first spark, while bladders filled with hydrogen gas were bombs waiting for any excuse. Wings shattered and dropped. Airships turned to clouds of flame, their bones littering the open air beneath. But the Happenstance’s captain had his youngest, sharpest-eared crewman listening to the winds, and he launched with the first rumbling of jets, diving into the thickest portion of Danner’s surviving canopy.
Ship and captain roared between branches, shredding leaves and a lot of birds as they fought for distance and invisibility and one last dose of luck.
Then the first mate tore open the sealed flight plan.
“Dirth-home,” she read aloud.
That was a small surprise. They were being ordered toward a keenwood growing on the edge of the District of Districts. It wasn’t an obscure place, but on a table of useful destinations, Dirth-home dangled near the trash can.
“Do we have any followers?” the captain asked.
No papio were visible, thankfully.
The superstitious man had little faith in their prospects. He gave orders about direction and speed, yet he refused to sacrifice the resident baddilick—a golden rat kept for desperate occasions.
“Leave him alone,” the captain said, forcing his crew to shove the angry animal back into its cage.
“But blood could help,” said the first mate. “And it certainly wouldn’t hurt.”
The captain meant to respond. Another moment or two, and he would have explained how their good luck would be someone else’s curse. But a papio flex-wing spied them, diving low and turning its jets to hover long enough to afford two clean shots, and their unarmored engines were instantly turned to scrap.
Twin fires were quenched with smothering gases and foam, but meanwhile the Happenstance drifted into a great old branch, and one of its bladders was punctured, bleeding a fountain of hydrogen.
Of course Diamond could be burned alive and live regardless. Isn’t that what the rumors claimed? The boy was the target, the prize, and that’s why the first wing fell back and fired off flares, signaling its companions. Suddenly three more roaring machines found stretches of bark and walkways where they could set down. Turning to his crew, the captain gave one order, and he meant it, and when nobody reacted, he cursed them and grabbed up the baddilick, throwing the live animal out an open window.
Again, he screamed at his people, “Get out of here.”
But the papio had already reached them. Males and females were the same size, each as heavy as two normal men. They wore the same coral-colored blue-black uniforms. Forcing open both hatches as well as the service entrance, they boarded with the precision that comes only after considerable practice, conquering the crippled ship before another recitation passed.
The top papio was a powerful male with a long rifle and brass pins buried in his ugly face. He looked like a man ready for a fight, the papio mouth proving adept at the human language.
“You will walk me to the cabin,” he told the captain. “You will lead.”
In his life, the captain had never been braver. He was a prisoner, and his ship was crippled, the stink that rode with the hydrogen souring every breath. The carbon dioxide tanks were drained. Any little spark or ill-aimed bullet would ignite that deflating bladder. The little man had every right to feel doomed, and he was pleased to make it halfway to the cabin without collapsing. But his courage felt spent after that, and legs that he had trusted all of his life turned to noodles. He stumbled twice before the soldier picked him up with one hand, shaking him like a monkey, saying, “We want nothing but the boy.”
The captain managed to stand, discovering his voice again. “Why do you want him?”
The rifle barrel jabbed him between the shoulders