Skykeep Read online

  Skykeep

  By Joseph R. Lallo

  Copyright © 2015 Joseph R. Lallo

  Cover By Nick Deligaris

  www.deligaris.com

  Smashwords Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Epilogue

  From The Author

  Connect with Joseph R. Lallo

  Prologue

  Amanita Graus stirred slightly in her hammock, swaddled in plush blankets and rocking gently with the motion of her surroundings. One wouldn’t think the drafty loading bay of an airship called the Wind Breaker would make for a comfortable bedroom. Nita certainly didn’t think so, at least when she’d first become a part of the crew. It was small, its walls unpainted wood festooned with various brass pipes and fittings that ran throughout the ship. In the center of the floor was a large hole through which a small boat was held in place with chains leading down from a pulley in the ceiling. What light there was came from the scattering of portholes on the port and starboard walls, and most spare stretches of floor were piled with boxes and crates stuffed with all sorts of goods.

  In the four months since her first journey, though, the creaking of the wooden walls and the distant hiss and hum of the steam engine had become a lullaby. The cold took longer to adjust to, but a down quilt from her bed at home took care of that. Its astoundingly intricate pattern made the quilt less a blanket and more a work of art, practically a tapestry fit for the walls of a museum. Not for a Calderan, though. Nita’s people felt that beauty and elegance should be found in everything, be it a sculpture in the garden of a palace or a comforter in a forgotten closet. And an elaborate design of rich reds and golden yellows didn’t hurt its ability to keep her as warm as toast and sleeping like a baby.

  The first hint of the rising sun cast its rays through the port side portholes of her makeshift bedroom. Though the light was dim, it was enough to wake her. Somehow Nita had trained herself to awaken at the crack of dawn. It was one of the few times the ship was relatively quiet and free of activity, which meant it was a fine time to see to some personal tasks.

  Nita yawned and reluctantly threw her blanket aside, revealing a somewhat droopy pair of fleece pajamas that had been purchased as a welcome gift for her from the crew after her first official trip among them. It was clear from its poor fit and lackluster styling that it was a product of Rim, the continent that was home to the more industrial portion of society. Like all such products, it served its purpose well enough, even if it lacked the artistry of a Calderan piece. She tugged at one of the sleeves and made a mental note to pick up a needle and some embroidery thread during her next trip home to give it a personal touch.

  She rubbed some sleep from her eyes and reached blindly for the hook beside her bed, finding her slippers there and pulling them on to perform the complex dance of her morning routine. First was the tricky dismount from the hammock, something that had taken more than two weeks to master. Next was the choreographed sequence of steps, leans, and shuffles it took to navigate around the brass workings of the winch mechanism, the piles of crates, and the copious strapping used to secure it all. Finally she found her way to a hinged wooden shelf folded against the port side wall in one corner of the bay. Beside it was a kettle, a teacup, a small bag, and a cask of water all hanging from their own hooks. Above it was a stout brass steam pipe with some simple metal clamps and platforms affixed to it.

  Nita shifted a crate in front of her cozy little corner, took a seat, and unfastened the leather strap to lower her shelf. It was a desk of sorts. Thinner straps held down assorted stationary, most notably two small leather-bound books with silk ribbons marking their pages. On the wall previously hidden behind the shelf were pinned three magnificent watercolor paintings. The first proudly displayed her mother and father, the second her gorgeous twin sister, Analita, and the third her handsome younger brother, Joshua.

  After filling the kettle with water and clamping it in place atop the steam pipe, she turned a valve on a transparent tube on the forward wall just above her, conjuring the distinctive green light of what the members of the crew called a “phlo-light.” She slid a fountain pen from its leather sleeve in the wall and loaded it with ink. By the time she’d loaded it properly and found a blank page, the kettle was bubbling merrily for a badly needed cup of tea. She found a pouch of her favorite blend, clamped a pinch of it into a wire cage, and prepared a nice cup. The soothing warmth and heavenly aroma finally perked up her brain sufficiently to get to the matter at hand.

  Dear Mother, she scrawled in precise and curving letters. It has been three weeks since my last visit. Captain Mack has been attempting to teach me to “smell the wind” as we travel, which is what he claims allows him to navigate so well. I honestly don’t know how he smells anything over those sickly sweet cigars he smokes, but the whole of the crew seems always to know just how far we’ve traveled without so much as a glance out the window, so there must be some knack to navigation. I’m doing my best to work it out.

  A louder and longer than normal creak prompted Nita to snatch up her teacup, hold her pen in her teeth, and hold down her book. The ship tipped and swung, causing some of the smaller crates to shuffle across the floor and spilling some water from her kettle to hiss against the pipe. A moment or two later, the swing reversed itself, and after another minor one things settled.

  For instance, we’ve just made a hard turn to starboard. I believe that means we are nearing the trading post. We should be there in about five hours or so. I’m looking forward to it. Lil says the people along the southern border of Rim make music boxes, just like father used to. This post is very near to the southern edge of Rim, so I’m willing to bet they’ll have some. I’m curious to see how they compare. I’ll be sure to bring you one.

  I’ve just finished reading your second to last letter. Please give Joshua my congratulations on having his sculpture displayed in the mayor’s office. I can just imagine how proud he is. And if things work out properly, I hope to be home long enough to see Lita’s performance in the ballet. It is so wonderful that the opening night falls during one of my visits! You wouldn’t have anything to do with that, would you?

  As you know, I’ve been doing my best to teach the crew how to care for their own ship. After spending their lives afraid to so much as tighten a bolt for fear of angering the fug folk and being banned from further repair, it is difficult to convince them to try their own maintenance. Coop has no interest at all in it, but he follows directions fairly well and is a decent assistant. Lil, bless her, tries her best, but she’s a bit hopeless. She doesn’t quite understand how important it is to do things in the right order. Yesterday she tried taking a pipe cap off without shutting off pressure and bleeding the system. You should have seen how far that cap flew! Gunner, on the other hand, is a natural. It stands to reason since, as he’s so eager to point out, he is the only one with a college education. The problem is, his education is in destroying things. That’s not the sort of person I’m comfortable having maintain a boiler.

  Nita stopped writing and tilted her head, a sound just barely a
t the edge of her hearing catching her attention. It didn’t take long to identify it, and she was already hastily stowing her things when a gruff voice echoed out of a tube on the wall.

  “Wailers! All hands on deck!” the captain ordered.

  Without warning, the ship started to pitch violently to one side, sending crates sliding free of their restraints and across the floor. Nita scrambled to her feet and bolted for the door. She braced herself against the wall and navigated the narrow hallway to the ladder to the next deck, meeting Lil at the top. The petite little firebrand was already dressed, or more likely still dressed, as she tended to sleep in her work clothes. Times like this made it clear why she did so.

  “They better not make a habit of attacking before breakfast,” Lil said, wide awake but with the disheveled hair of someone who had been in bed moments earlier. “I can be right ornery when I haven’t had a good plate of hash yet.” A snore behind her prompted her to duck back into her tiny room and deliver a motivating kick to her older brother, who was still nestled in his hammock. “Dang it, Coop, you’re not sleeping through another attack!”

  Nita sprinted through another few decks until she finally scrambled onto the main deck. The ship was moving at quite a clip, the chilly wind billowing Nita’s pajamas and sending a brisk breeze through some very unwelcome areas. There wasn’t much to see, as the ship was just emerging from a cloud bank and most of the view of the sea far below was blotted out in a field of cottony white plumes. Gunner, who had been on night watch, was already manning the spike gun mounted to the port railing. With a stuttering bark, it sent a string of finger-sized nails—called “fléchettes”—whistling through the air at a distant two-man airship screaming toward them out of the clouds.

  “Gunner, I swear, you keep wasting ammunition on them things when they’re so far off and it’ll be Lil on mounted guns instead of you,” growled the captain as he spun the wheel hard to put the attacker in better position for return fire.

  “I’m ready for it, Cap’n,” Lil said, popping out onto the deck with a rifle in hand.

  Coop clumsily crawled up after her. “How many we lookin’ at, Cap’n?”

  “I’ve got one on port,” Gunner said, firing another string of nails with a grin. “But not for much longer.”

  “Sounds like one more,” Nita called. “I can’t tell if it is above us or below us.”

  There was the distinctive thump of darts biting into the thick fabric of the envelope, then a metallic screech and a hard jolt as the ship twisted under an unbalanced engine load.

  “That’ll be above us then,” the captain said. “Nita!”

  “I’m on it!” Nita said.

  “I’ll go with her. If that’s where the wailer is, she’ll need cover,” Lil said.

  Nita pulled open a large wooden case tucked beneath the railing of the deck and snagged a pack that was within. In one smooth motion she swung it across her back and grasped the nearest rigging, hauling herself quickly up. Lil slung her rifle behind her and darted up another section of rigging. As much practice as she’d had in the last few months climbing up and down the ropes that held and stabilized the massive gas envelope that kept the ship aloft, Nita could never seem to match the nimbleness of the sprightly young deckhand. The girl must have been part squirrel and part lunatic.

  “Hold tight, hard turn to port!” bellowed the captain.

  The lines in Nita’s hands groaned under the stress of the sudden turn, and the deck dangling below suddenly swung out from beneath her. She held tight and tried not to look at the waves a few hundred yards below her, which of course had chosen that moment to peek at her through the thinning clouds. Nita wasn’t precisely afraid of heights anymore. That much had been trained out of her fairly quickly as a result of spending so much time among the clouds. She did sometimes suffer from an acute awareness of heights, however. Fortunately when there was a job to be done, it typically managed to be the first thing on her mind. That was because being the engineer on an airship meant a job that needed to be done would usually send them plummeting into the sea if she didn’t get to it quickly. When the ship swung back and stabilized in its new course, Nita continued up. The stretch of rigging they’d selected brought her to the envelope about midway between the turbines and the envelope’s rear fins, which made for a very windy climb whenever she was directly behind one of the turbines. Nevertheless, she preferred it to being in front of them, since the thought of getting blown away from the spinning blades was marginally more pleasant than the thought of being pulled toward them.

  “Better not be taking your time on this one, Nita. We’re losing the green stuff pretty good,” Lil called down.

  Nita looked up to see the deckhand standing a short distance farther up the envelope. Her legs were in a wide, solid stance, and each foot was hooked under a piece of rigging. This kept her hands free to take aim at a wailer ship, which was much closer than the one Gunner was targeting. The vehicle—little more than a cigar-shaped steam turbine slung under a long, thin balloon—carried two men. Both the ship and the men were referred to as wailers, named for the high-pitched scream of the engine that forced them through the air. Wailers were raiders who wanted to clear out the crew of a ship so that the cargo and supplies would be theirs for the taking, and lately they had been taking an extreme interest in the Wind Breaker.

  The wailer in the rear seat of the ship was lining it up for an attack run. The one in front was manning a gun that was a match for the one Gunner operated below—a precise match, since the Wind Breaker crew had salvaged theirs from a wailer ship that had attacked previously. Judging from the angle of the ship, the wailers were planning to run a string of shots directly toward Lil, but the deckhand seemed unconcerned that she was about to be perforated. She simply leveled her weapon and readied her shot.

  By the time Nita was far enough around the curve of the envelope to set her feet on the surface, the wailers were near enough for her to see their crazed eyes behind their smoked-glass goggles. At the same moment, Lil and the wailer gunner pulled the trigger. A row of hollow tubes traced a line along the Wind Breaker’s envelope, biting deep and sending up streamers of thin green vapor. Lil’s shot punched a neat hole in one side of the enemy ship’s envelope and out the other. It was a good shot, one that would eventually send the vehicle fleeing back to the mother ship that launched it, but at the rate they were filling the Wind Breaker with holes, eventually wouldn’t be soon enough. The shot also startled the pilot enough to send him veering to the left, curving the line of darts away from Lil. One of them punched into the envelope just to the left of her foot, snagging the rigging that secured her. Lil’s left foot slipped free; she lost her balance and began to slide along the envelope. A quick hook of her right foot got it twisted in the supports along the side of the envelope, and she came to a sudden stop dangling upside down by one foot.

  “Lil, are you okay?” Nita said, crouching down to call to her friend.

  “I’m fine, Nita. See to the leaks and don’t bug me while I’m aiming,” Lil said, seeming almost to be unaware of the precariousness of her predicament.

  She clicked the lever of the rifle, ejecting the spent casing and chambering another round while Nita shifted her attention to the nearest of the tubes. The forceful stream of green was escaping phlogiston, the only substance that could keep a ship like this aloft without needing an envelope the size of a small city. The circumstances of the last few months had made it pretty precious stuff, so she knew she had to work fast to cut the losses down. With one hand tightly gripping the rigging, Nita slipped her pack around in front of her and pulled it open. The bag held a variety of swatches of the same cloth that made up the envelope, and a tight-topped tin of black tar. She pinned the jar under one arm and pulled free the lid, which had a built-in brush already loaded with the gooey contents.

  The following task would have been a lot easier if she had three hands, not to mention if she were on solid ground and not being shot at by lunatics. She th
readed her legs through the rigging to free her hands as Lil had, then held the brush in one and grasped the first of the tubes in the other. With a well-practiced sequence of motions, she pulled the tube and discarded it, swiped a thick glob of tar onto the hole as it vented green gas, then clamped the brush in her teeth and fished out a patch to slap over the hole. She repeated the process for each tube she could reach, then repositioned and started over. Above her head, the sound of the wailing engine of their attacker started to draw closer.

  “Lil,” Nita called out warily, keeping her eyes on her work. “Is the wailer on its way back?”

  Lil fired another shot, the thundering crack splitting the air. A moment later the stuttering grind of a stricken steam turbine heralded the accuracy of the attack.

  “Not no more it ain’t,” she called back. The attacker’s malfunctioning ship turned to retreat. “Let’s see Gunner take out a wailer while he’s upside down!”

  The engines subtly changed their hum and Nita instinctively stopped her work to hold a bit tighter. She’d been working on these engines long enough to get a feel for their rhythm, and she knew a sharp turn coming when she heard it. The ship turned and tilted, rolling enough to put Lil almost directly beneath Nita. The deckhand was dangling away from the envelope with one hand clutching the rifle and the other outstretched to catch a piece of rigging. While Nita watched, Lil wrapped her free arm around an upright, hooked her free foot over the same rigging that entangled her other one, and rolled the trapped ankle to free it. Thus released she tumbled forward, her feet flipping down in front of her. The one-armed grip on the rigging held long enough for her scrambling feet to hook back into the rigging below them, and just like that, Lil was righted and facing the ship. The sight was enough to briefly make Nita forget the puzzle of how to reach and patch the remaining leaks and instead work at the riddle of where Lil had learned to do such things.