CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

THE FALL OF BOKKO, ENDRINRIGGER

‘Khenna!’ Bokko howled. Through the gathering gloom, he plummeted. His words were ripped away by the roar of the wind as he fell towards his shipmate. Ghost lights were winking on over the city and all around him in the sky. He did not care about the dead. The only thing he cared about was falling away into eternity.

Bokko frantically snapped switches to perform the ‘Mhornar drop’, the shutting off of all endrin power that kept Kharadron technology aloft. The endrin went out, and he dropped like a stone. It wouldn’t help. Calculations of life and death roared through his clever mind. One of the very first things any prospective endrineer learned was that objects affected by gravity fall at the same rate. He remembered the feather-and-coin lesson at the academy as if it were yesterday. First the master endrineer dropped a coin and a feather into a tall tube of glass. The feather floated, the coin plunged. Then he sucked out the air with a little aether pump, and tipped the tube the other way. Both feather and coin fell at the same rate. The point was, mass didn’t matter. Only air resistance did. He and Khenna were dropping at nearly the same rate. You needed to be grot-stupid not to know that. They’d both reach their terminal velocities long before he reached her. If Khenna was conscious, and had spread her arms and legs to slow herself, just a little, then he might have caught her, but she was lifeless as a sack, turning around and around in the sky. He needed more speed, which meant more energy input. But the buoyancy of his dirigible wouldn’t allow him to angle the back-mounted jet to drive him straight down. He was dropping feet first, like a drowning man, and it wasn’t fast enough.

There was one other way.

Bokko didn’t think. He holstered his gun, disengaged the safety governors on his rig, then twisted knobs upon his harness, to invert the push of the aether force. It was insane to do what he was attempting; a reversed aether field acting in concert with the downward pull of gravity could only square the two. He would accelerate to blinding speed, fast. He might black out. And oldbeards tutted at the Mhornar drop!

‘Grungni, Grimnir and Valaya, watch over me now,’ he said, and re-engaged the endrin.

Warning trills sounded in his helm as the dirigible on his back pushed up, not down, sending him hurtling towards Khenna. The acceleration was punishing. The skin rode up around his face, giving him an involuntary grin. His beard flapped up around his eyes inside his helmet. He had one chance at this. Just one. He gripped his control dial, hooking his thumb under the strap to keep his hand in place.

Khenna sped towards him. Blackness crowded his vision. He could not breathe. When he reached out his free hand towards her, it was as responsive as a lump of lead.

White dots swam round his vision. His suit temperature increased as the air compressed beneath him. He could feel it around his feet, thick like water, and hot.

Khenna came at him. He stretched. Their hands touched, he grabbed her wrist. The speed he hit her yanked her down with him, so they were racing together towards the bottom third of the Fifth Air. The pressure rose steeply. Warning lights flashed on the rig.

With enfeebled fingers, he twisted the lofting knob back. He had to do this carefully, cutting the downward push without immediately re-engaging the gravity-cancelling effects of the endrin. It was so difficult to move his fingers. His hand felt like it was made of rock.

Acceleration ceased. The awful pressures on him receded. He took a deep breath, and carefully reversed the aether field. Now they began to slow. He kept an iron grip on Khenna’s wrist, and upped the loft, until they were floating. He pulled Khenna in tightly, and snapped the ends of a short steel cable to their belts, so she was dangling off him.

There was nothing below them. He looked up, back at the Dead Air. The sky-port was a small shape high above. The upper airs were stained with the last rays of Hysh, but around the Dead Air it was unnaturally dark, and haloed by a pale, fungal glow.

‘Bokko?’

Khenna came round.

‘It’s me,’ he said.

She dazedly smiled at him. ‘I knew you’d catch me.’ She frowned. ‘I should have kept my helmet on.’

An alarm sounded from the endrin globe. WHEEP WHEEP WHEEP!

Bokko fumbled for a pressure gauge.

‘Funti drukk!’ he said.

‘You never swear,’ said Khenna.

‘I don’t usually run out of aether.’ He upped the loft, and they began to rise rapidly. ‘Hang on, this is going to be tight. We’ve got a leak. Duzrekar must have holed me. We need to get back onto solid ground, or we’re done for.’

Drekki and the others made it to the deck to see the Aelsling a hundred raadfathoms out and still moving. It was practically dark, and the luminous shapes were gathering in their multitudes, ready for the night’s parade.

‘He’s got my ship. He’s got my funti ship!’ Drekki shouted. He broke into a sprint towards the tanker. Its endrins were glowing, pulling up and away from the city.

‘Wait!’ Drekki shouted. ‘Wait!’

Nobody heard.

‘Wait!’ shouted Drekki.

Gord stopped, cupped his hands around his mouth and roared.

‘WAIT!’

His shout was deafening. Loose bits of glass came down from the buildings.

The tanker stopped rising. A moment later, Otherek appeared at the side, beckoning them. A net dropped down from the rails.

‘Come on!’ Otherek yelled. ‘Duzrekar’s getting away!’

Drekki and his crew reached the bottom of the net. As soon as they were scrambling up the side, the tanker began to rise again, and set off in stately pursuit of the Aelsling. Curious gheists drifted by, not fully formed, and peaceful yet. That would not last.

Drekki was first over the railing. Otherek helped him up.

‘Blast him!’ Drekki cursed. As soon as he was onto the deck, he hared off down towards the front. The tanker was long, but he was so incensed he covered it before Evrokk had the prow out over the open air. The Aelsling was getting further away with every moment.

The others came puffing up behind.

‘Can’t this funti thing go any faster?’ he yelled. ‘He’s got my ship!’

‘We’re too big,’ said Otherek. ‘We’re too slow.’

Drekki growled. He wrung the shaft of his axe in his hands. For the first time in a long time he felt powerless.

‘We’ve got other problems,’ said Hrunki. ‘Look.’

She pointed to the sky, where the processions of aeronautical Night­haunt were thickening. They shimmered, aurorae of souls, coming together in huge groups.

‘It’s not going to be long before they get uppity.’

Bokko had them rise as quickly as he dared; going too fast would speed up his aether loss. The alarm continued to cry. The needle on the gauge dropped. Barak-Minoz approached. He aimed for the cavities underneath its habitation decks.

‘Go for the Aelsling,’ Khenna said. ‘The dead are waking.’ All above them, the pale shapes of gheists were manifesting. ‘If we land on the port, the dead will kill us. If the ship gets away, even if we survive the ghosts, we will be stuck here, and then the Perimeter Inimical will kill us. We have to get the Aelsling back, Bokko, for everyone.’

Bokko looked off. The Aelsling was moving out across the Dead Air. It hadn’t gone far. Their whole drop and return must have taken only a couple of minutes, though it felt like forever. He checked his gauge. They were nearly out of fuel. But she was right. They couldn’t let the ship go.

‘Hang on,’ he said, and opened up the aether jet on the back of his suit to full thrust.

They raced at the Aelsling. Aether shone brightly in all the endrin-ports, building up to top speed. The clamour of Bokko’s endrin alarm was getting louder, more insistent. WHEEP WHEEP WHEEP!

They were seconds away from failure.

‘We’re not going to make the deck!’ Bokko shouted.

‘Go for the mooring lines! Duzrekar’s ape hasn’t reeled them in,’ she replied. She sounded steely, unafraid.

More calculations. A quick burst, that’d set them on an arc with enough momentum to clear the air between them. Go slower, they’d fall. Too steep an angle, they’d fall. Go too fast, they’d burn the aether too quickly, and then they’d fall. And the thing he was aiming for was a thread of steel that seemed as thin as a beardling’s first beard hair, waving about in the sky. He gave up trying to be clever, aimed up and set the jet to maximum.

‘On my signal,’ he shouted over the aether jet’s roar. ‘Get ready to grab the line.’ More hands the better, the way he saw it. That was a mathematical fact.

Khenna nodded.

He looked at his gauge. ‘Five, four, three, two… One! Hold on!’

The last of the aether burned up. The endrin jet cut. He slammed the emergency release for the suit. Clamps detached around his waist and shoulders, and he pushed backward, unhooking the machinery from its harness. All of it, globe, rudder, jet and the lower control assembly, fell away. He and Khenna described a long, slow arc towards the ship. They passed by the stern, dropping fast. Bokko swiped for the dangling line and missed, but Khenna caught it.

They swung on the steel line, Khenna’s hand slipping down the length. Bokko flailed, then caught hold too, and they came to a halt only a score of grunti from the end. Blood dripped from Khenna’s hand onto his.

‘You did it, Bokko! You did it!’

‘Not me! You caught the line,’ he said, acutely aware he was cuddled up close to the kvinn of his dreams. His face began to burn. He was glad he was helmed and she could not see his skin darken. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, trying to sound as much like a gruff oldbeard as possible.

‘Are you all right? Your voice has gone all deep and weird.’

‘I’m fine. Your hand…’ Bokko looked at the blood trickling down her wrist with alarm.

‘It hurts, but we’re alive.’ She smiled. ‘Thanks to you.’

‘It was both of us,’ he said. ‘You’re amazing.’

Her milky skin coloured red – now they were both glowing like a Hyshset in mutual embarrassment – but she managed to sound all business. ‘We have to get aboard. We have to slow the ship down so the others can catch up. Do you think Duzrekar saw us?’

Bokko took in the hosts of Nighthaunt everywhere. They were in their places in their processions. Their candles ignited, and they began to move.

‘I don’t think we’ve been seen. He’s got other things to deal with. So have we.’