15.

 

“Bonavitae Clinic, this is the Sierra Madre, please respond,” Winston said, his mouth dry and tasting of copper.

He repeated the call a half dozen more times with silence as his only reply. He turned in to the flow of the slowing winds aiming for the source of the transmission. Carefully, the Sierra Madre picked a safe passage through the skylands as they were drawn toward their inevitable doom at the implosion epicenter.

“Maybe something happened to their transmitter?” Billy Joe guessed.

“It’s possible, but we’re going in anyway to make sure. I’m going to get them out. Nobody else dies because I didn’t go this time,” Winston said.

“But what about H-” Billy Joe protested.

“LaBlanc isn’t that stupid. He probably bolted shortly after we did, and took her with him.” Winston rationalized.

“Maybe. Look, Hoss, Valerie and Emmy weren’t your fault. Nobody coulda saved them,” Billy Joe commiserated, touching the true root of Winston’s reckless choice.

“I said nobody else!” Winston roared back, redoubling his focus on his flight path he’d chosen to reach the clinic.

“Okay, Hoss,” Billy Joe soothed. “We’ll do it your way.”

Winston’s white knuckled fists twisted around the yoke handles, trying to crush them between his fingers as the rage and confusion swirled in his heart. This time, nobody dies because of me, he repeated over and over like a mantra. One part prayer, one part flagellation of his soul.

The debris field became thicker the closer they got to the source of the distress call. Clouds of gravel and avalanches of mud and mangled plant life flew by like smoke in the wind. The Sierra Madre snaked through the tightening gaps, and Winston kept blasting out hailing comms broad spectrum, just in case they were on a different channel.

“Yeah. I think you’re right, Bubby. Good chance their antennae was taken down by debris,” Winston said softly.

“We pull this off and it’s going to be a driver’s room legend,” Billy Joe said, a little prideful.

Winston ignored him, lost in his own mutters.

Finally, Winston tapped open the comms again. “Dunno if you can hear me Bonavitae Clinic, but I’m dragging ten empty cargo containers and we’re fifteen minutes out. Telescope shows your skyland tumbling pretty bad, but looks like you still have local gravity. Get everyone you can to move fast ready at what looks like a central courtyard. I’m going to set down in a coil right in the middle. If you have any security or anti-airship defenses still working, shut ‘em down. If something shoots at me, I will abort this rescue attempt. If you are receiving me, get a light or bonfire going in the middle of that courtyard... anything bright. I’ll see it on your next rotation. Sierra Madre out.”

Winston let out a long sigh. “Well, let’s see what happens now.”

The skyland rolled around once again. No light in the telescope. Just some faint movement of people running about. Then a second rotation with nothing.

“Maybe their receiver is down too?” Billy Joe suggested when there was no sign they had heard their transmission.

Winston slewed around an asteroid that arced across their intercept. “Could be, Bubby, but we’re going in anyway.”

The implosion winds had ended, but Newton’s Laws of motion were still in full effect. Masses as big as skylands would take tens, if not hundreds of thousands of miles to stop from those speeds, but that was a luxury they would not receive. They were destined to become a part of the growing patchwork moon.

They entered final approach and timed their landing with the rotation, Winston saw that the implosion had scoured most of the surface of the skyland. Anything that wasn’t bolted into the bedrock or strong enough to resist the winds was stripped clean off.

As Bonavitae’s skyland rotated around again a hundred or more faint emergency chemlights stuck out from windows on all floors, ringing the courtyard.

“All right!” Winston shouted with joy, and Billy Joe let out an autotuned rebel yell. “Curl her up, Bubby! We’re going in hot.”

He flicked open the comms.

“We see you Bonavitae! Get clear and be ready, we’re going to have containers open toward every side. You just get them in fast. We have no time to play. The debris is getting too thick and in five minutes, we’re closing the doors and off we go,” Winston said.

Then a thought came to him, and he flicked open the comm again. “If you need a quarantine container, use the last one. Let’s not get us all killed a few weeks or months down the line by some contagion you guys have isolated.”

The Sierra Madre contorted in the air like a falling cat, as the zero buoyancy containers whipped around and curled up into a ring before landing. The string of containers fit inside with only a few minor scrapes and blew out the few remaining clinic windows. Winston flipped on the PA system.

“Opening containers in five seconds,” he announced as a wash of falling gravel shot through the top floor of the clinic like an autocannon.

The doors dropped all the way, and ramps extended.

“Go, go, go! Get inside and stay clear of the door once in!” Winston called over the PA.

Staffers opened the doomed clinic doors and patients poured out. Some were pushed on stretchers, others in tanks, but most were able to move on their own, shuffling like herded cattle entering the barn. Equipment of questionable and unidentifiable types followed.

“Take only what you must! Three minutes!” Winston shouted over the PA at a patient pushing a stretcher loaded up with a hoard of personal possessions. “You! You there! Drop the luggage. Only essentials!” An orderly rushed over to gather up the shrieking man, leaving his possessions behind.

Something metal hit on the other side of the building like an artillery shell. An incredible blast shook the skyland as it obliterated a wing of the clinic. The fountain of debris that vomited into the sky hung there till it was caught by the growing gravity well of the freshly forming planet in front of them, and slowly fell away. Winston watched his gauges as conflicting gravity sources made everything slide like it was on the surface of a stormy ocean, the skyland disintegrating beneath their feet as it rotated.

“Bubby, we got a pile up on a ramp,” Winston noted as a crowd of people stopped before the first container, milling around confused. “Get back there and make sure nobody’s getting stupid on us,” Winston ordered.

“Rog dat, Hoss.” Billy Joe went back, cut the spot weld and entered the first container. One person stood at the door, an X-Ray carbine aimed at the patients.

Holly.

“That’s right! You step up here, you diseased meatbags, and I will end you before you can turn your head and cough!” She threatened. Behind her was a stack of crates that had somehow not fallen out of the containers when Billy Joe had dumped the cargo on Blaugarten.

“Miss Holly? How..?” Billy Joe blurted out, jaw dropped low. Then giving himself a shake he ordered, “Ahhh, we ain’t got time! Get these people in there! We only got a few minutes left!

“You see the amount of cheis they’re dragging?” she shouted, gesturing to the medical equipment. “There’s no room!” Holly snapped back.

“Don’t make me do something you’ll regret, Miss Holly.” Billy Joe warned.

“Are you threatening me, Bubby?” she sneered, using his nickname.

“Yes, Miss Holly, I am. Let them in or get out,” he drawled.

“Well bless yo’ li’l heart!” she mocked.

Billy Joe’s face got hard with anger. Suddenly the container wall behind her on the inside of the coil dropped down and her world was twisted sideways as Billy Joe shifted the gravity field. She, and her squirreled away cargo, was thrown out while he remained suctioned to the container. Dazed, Holly looked up from the pile of the weapons and crates she had managed to steal from LaBlanc in astonishment.

“I warned you,” Billy Joe said as the door she was thrown through closed.

“What’s going on? We’re taking too long,” Winston commed back to Billy Joe.

“Had to throw a tramp off our train,” Billy Joe said. “Holly snuck on. She musta squirreled away a bunch of cargo just before we locked up and blasted off from Blaugarten. It’s all off now. Evacuees are almost done boarding.”

“Xiao on a cracker…” Winston breathed.

“Right?” Billy Joe asked. “What kind of blowback is she gonna cause us next?”

“Guess we’ll find out once we get clear of all this,” Winston commed back and closed the link.

The rest of the loading went surprisingly quick as the last of the patients, staff and even a few visitors were on-boarded.

Winston made the Sierra Madre buoyant while Billy Joe went through the containers securing their refugee’s cargo. With a terrifying grinding moan the skyland began rubbing against an even larger chunk of planetoid and began shattering. Fissures opened up through the courtyard and split the clinic in two and the Sierra Madre floated away like a fly before a swatter. Carefully, Winston maneuvered through the tightening debris field as the skylands turned into clouds of boulders and dust. Winston breathed a sigh of relief as they cleared the disaster area unharmed.

Several hours of careful flying later, they worked their way out of the crisis zone and to safety once again. The sensors chirped new contacts and automatically swung the telescope to look at the source. A small task force of Xiao’s warships decelerated from megasonic speeds.

“Got here a little too late, didn’t ‘cha?” Winston gloated, stabbing his finger at the images on the telescope monitor, then quickly put more debris in between the Sierra Madre and the Imperial forces, quietly slinking away. The imperial megajets arced off toward the newborn baby moon, confirming they were not pursuing the Sierra Madre.

“That’s right! Yeah! We were never here, and there’s no more evidence we did our job! Uhn!” His fist pounded his armrest in ecstatic relief.

“And now, let’s just make sure you never notice,” Winston whispered and made a slight course adjustment. The Sierra Madre and her string of containers descended into a cloud layer of dense bauxite dust and vanished in the interference. When the imperial signals fell off the scanners it was the first time in almost a week that Winston felt even a little safe.

The debris fields were now in their wake, and they popped into a clear band of the Dream where the winds were calm and the skies clear revealing the layers of the Dream. Technicolor billows formed a floor and ceiling as the Sierra Madre dove back toward known civilized sky. He wasn’t sure how long it had been before he finally felt strong enough to stand, let alone talk to anyone. Winston set the autopilot for a leisurely slow course toward Consolidated’s nearest container yard.

He popped his crash frame and stood up with a groan. A slow stretch released the pent up tension. He felt it ebb from his body with every roll of his shoulders. He went to fetch his bumblebee and readied to do an inspection of his new passengers and cargo.

“I suppose the polite thing to do would be to greet our passengers,” Winston said to himself. “Not to mention see how Bubby’s getting on.”