“DAAARRRnaaan!” the voice rang clear and bright as a peeling church bell on Sunday morning. There was no immediate response.
“DARNAN!” and the chime struck harder, more strident.
Darnan Palanna sighed wearily but made no real effort to move. She’d found him pretty quick this time, he thought. Maybe he was getting too predictable.
He was a well set up young man of some five feet and ten to the top of his head —tall for the times— and dressed for hard work, though he was currently doing no such thing.
His rough, white, collarless shirt was wrinkled and sweat-stained and his brown canvas dungarees muddied halfway to the knees and frayed at the ankles. The heavy brogans on his feet showed more mud than leather, for the sky had been spitting rain off and on all day long. Only the bright red suspenders holding up his pants gave him any real color, although they too showed the occasional darker stain. A faded tan newsboy cap perched atop his head, its bill giving shade to his half-lidded eyes.
“Over here, Mailyn!” he called over his shoulder without moving more than his head.
Mailyn Entigh flounced over the rise behind him, following his voice — all five and three of her, swaddled in heavy, grease-stained blue coveralls three sizes too large, a clanking tool belt slung from her hips, and hobnailed boots that seemed over-large on her small feet.
One of the long barreled Norbertson flechette rifles that no colonist dared leave the built up areas without was balanced casually over her shoulders, one hand draped loosely over it on either side, in the manner of a shoulder yoke, minus the hanging buckets.
She was nearly seventeen —not that you could tell it beneath the baggy clothes— and she was either Dar’s best friend, his accomplice, or his sidekick, depending on who you asked, what the pair had been up to most recently, and how much evidence had been left behind in their wake.
“They’re late again, aren’t they?” she asked, plopping to the grass beside him with a soft bounce and jiggle that he really should have noticed.
“Very,” Dar rose up on an elbow and pointed down and to the northeast, well out beyond the jagged green edge of the island and much lower in the sky. “They’re just now coming up to leeward.”
A silvery shape cut the air only twelve or fifteen hundred feet above the roiling fog of the mist sea. One of the Westerling heavy packets, slender and long, and running a good eight hundred feet lower than the minimum altitude her rating called for. The eight engines flanking her shining hull vibrated at their maximum RPMs, pushing hard against their cruise and lift ratings. Their huge, multi-bladed metal propellers whirled the scattered streamers she was cutting through into long corkscrews behind her as they struggled to push her up and into the prevailing westerly winds.
“Hmph!” Mailyn snorted merrily. “Late, low, and slow.”
“I’ll say,” Dar answered. “And look up there.”
He pointed up higher and closer in, at a darker, squarer, deeper ship tracking along the same heading, but up at the twenty-two hundred foot mark that the Westerling should be maintaining and nearly five miles to the fore. “They’re going to lose their escort if they aren’t careful.”
Mailyn watched the destroyer’s shape cut the scattered streamers of low cloud — watched the smoke trailing from multiple exhausts as her powerful diesel engines hurled her along through the air at a good forty knots.
“You mean the escort’s going to run away from their charge if they don’t start paying attention,” she said dismissively.” Who is that anyway?” although she already knew.
“Looks like Kestrel,” he said. “See,” he leaned in close so she could follow along his pointing arm. “She’s only got six banks of fifty millimeter automatic cannon along her quarters, instead of Peregrine’s eight, to make room for the extra main battery mounts. And three extra four inchers on her upper decks to chase the high flyers.
“She mounts three ventral turrets along her centerline instead of two, see? And twin mounts to boot. Add those to the three dorsal turrets, and she carries twice Peregrine’s main battery guns. five inch by fifty-four calibers, too, not those antique four-point-sevens. Those five by fifty-fours can reach right out!
“And Kestrel has room for two extra Lampreys in her launch bays. And the new MK IV’s at that.” He was almost giggling. “She’s almost more a pocket cruiser than any old backwinds destroyer!”
Mailyn curled around to rest a hip on the grass and prop herself up on a stiffened arm. Leaning her head against his upper arm, she made a big show of sighting along it, assimilating the information while oohing and aahing appropriately. Dar could pick out every ship in the Imperial Ninth Western Fleet at range, just by the way it shouldered the wind. He never tired of waxing prolific about them and she never tired of listening to him do it. This despite being well able to match the feat ship for ship, gun for gun.
“What do you suppose they’re carrying?” she asked casually without moving her head.
Dar shrugged. “Hard to say,” he said. “Take a lot of weight to drop a ship that big twelve hundred feet. If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say ore of some sort. Not iron, I don’t think — not with Kestrel for an escort. Silver maybe. Maybe even a mixed cargo with some gold from the Federly mines. We’re close enough to Eastmarch now for that. Although... I’d think they’d have a couple of Lampreys flying CAP if they were hauling gold, wouldn’t you? In case they got jumped?”
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She snorted. “What pirate is going to jump a falcon class RN destroyer, Dar?” she laughed. “Do they even make that much liquor?”
They sat that way for awhile, quietly watching the packet struggle along under her unusually heavy burden, before Dar thought to remember why it was that Mailyn might be here when she was supposed to be working for her father back at the garage. Turning to her, he noticed her head still resting on his shoulder and stiffened, his nose nearly touching hers.
Feeling his reaction, she jerked her head clear and sat up straight, making a production of straightening and retying the mop of her unruly black hair away from her blushing face — pretending great concentration to cover her embarrassment.
“Your father sent you?” Dar’s voice didn’t quite crack.
“Well,” she said in a subdued voice, “he did sort of wonder where you and his shipment of sweet grain had gotten off to.”
He sighed again, looking at his wristwatch and drawing in a sharp breath. Tarnation! Maybe she hadn’t found him so quick at that. Had he really been out here for more than three hours already? Damn! He’d have to hurry if he was going to make the scheduled delivery time.
He stood slowly, brushing dirt and grass from his dungarees. He reached down and helped Mailyn to her feet, somewhat distractedly, still half watching the destroyer and her charge sailing the sky against a backdrop of cloud banks and far-off islands, their shadows undulating along the variegated and roiling surface of the mist sea far below.
“Tell your father that I’ll have his grain in the silo by dusk, as promised,” he told her seriously, still holding her hand.
She nodded, leaning in very close, looking up at him. Close enough that he could smell her breath. She’d been chewing mint or something, he thought.
Her sloe eyes were close enough that he could pick out the details of their irises — almost feel the phantom tickle of her long lashes against his chin. When had her eyes gotten so deep and so green? And this close, pressed up against him the way she was, the baggy coveralls no longer hid the fact that she was growing up. And when had that happened?
He shook himself clear of the improper introspection and backed a pace, face flushing.
“Dusk,” he repeated hoarsely.
“Dusk,” she whispered somewhat breathlessly. “Did you want to—?”
“No!” he said quickly. “No, I won’t have time. I have... lessons tonight.”
Her eyes got very bright. “Ooh, can I come?”
“What?” he leaned back. “No! Lessons, I said.”
“Well I know what ‘lessons’ means when you say it like that, Darnan Palanna!” she shot back happily. “You’re going to visit the old pirate to learn more piratey things!”
“He’s not a—!” he got control of himself quickly, taking a deep breath and another backward step.
“Nobody knows exactly what he is!” Mailyn retorted gaily. “He could be a pirate for all that you know!”
“No!” he shot back.
“Can I come?” she pressed closer.
“We’ve been over this, Mai,” he insisted. “He isn’t somebody who just takes to anybody who happens along. You don’t even know him.”
“I’ve seen him around,” she sniffed. “I’ve even spoken to him. Once. In any case, I know what you’re learning from him. I can see it in the way you carry yourself — the way you look at things differently than the rest of us. Like it’s all some sort of challenging game and you’re a master gamesman sorting through the possibilities. And I want to learn too!”
He was growing angry. She’d been pestering him about this forever, it seemed. “Then why not ask him yourself?” he demanded for perhaps the thousandth time.
She flipped her hair mischievously. “Because he’s scary,” she giggled. “Besides,” she added airily, “I’m not his student.”
He squinted at the non-logic of that. “It is precisely because I’m his student that I cannot ask him.” he insisted, “and precisely because you’re not that you should.”
She leaned in very close again and smiled, eyes sparkling. “But I’m not his best friend, Darnan,” she said sweetly.
He sighed again. “No,” he insisted, trying with little success to ignore her suddenly all too grownup body pressing against him.
Taking in a breath that was all but a gasp, he took her by the upper arms and pushed her away, trying to clear his suddenly swimming head.
“You can’t come. It would be rude of me to invite you, and *Kisêyiniw isn’t someone you want to be rude to. Not if you value your hide.”
“But...?” she clasped her hands together and locked her elbows, pressing her hands down between her legs and leaning in still closer.
Had she been wearing coveralls that fit, the tactic might well have been more successful. Given her close proximity, however, and built upon her previous efforts, it was successful enough. He leaned back, giving her space. She’d been watching her older sisters at work again, it seemed. She was trying to manipulate him like a regular girl would. That it was working made him even angrier.
“I’ll ask,” he told her quietly, measuredly, finally. “If he says it’s alright, you can come with me next time. Is that good enough?”
She smiled broadly and skipped forward to plant a peck on his cheek before he could react. “Perfect!” she laughed.
And then she was off over the hill to reassure her father that his cargo would be in the proper place at the proper time after all, pausing only long enough to scoop up her Norbertson gun on the fly.
Dar turned his flushing face to cast one last look over his shoulder at the airships and froze, realizing abruptly that he’d backed nearly to the edge of the island. Holding his breath, he took a long, deliberate step inland before turning back to face the mist sea some thirty-two hundred feet below. He felt a small shudder run through his body.
The edge was fairly stable here, it was true. But it wasn’t like Plubenda was a ship, was it, forged from high steel or crafted of mistwood? It was mostly New Victorian highrock, like every other island in the sky, its very bones laced with the ore that kept everything drifting above New Victoria afloat.
Pieces could and occasionally did break free and float off. Chunks were known to come loose and shoot upward like bullets for several or a hundred feet before achieving neutral buoyancy, cold-cocking anybody in the way with some considerable force.
People, however, didn’t float so well. It would be a long, cold fall down to whatever mystery lay beneath the mist, did something down in it not eat him on the way.
Gathering himself, Mai's sudden and befuddling burst of femininity completely forgotten, he bent down for his own Norbertson and plodded determinedly over the rise, pushing the heavy packet, the destroyer, the mist sea, and his dreams of adventures above it from his mind.
He was a teamster again, with all of the breathtaking excitement which that entailed. And that would have to do him. For now, at least.
* with the ê pronounced like the "e" in "berry"