The air was thick with disbelief. It was done. Whatever Meran planned to do with Helsim Breaker, Lindent Vein, and Arthel Rak, the crew’s part in it was over.
A heart-wrenching crack rippled through the air and the deck tilted as Wind Sabre’s two aft lift lines failed under the stress. The thick cords of twisted rope and wire snapped like cheap thread, whipping free of their anchors and dangling, useless, from the lift balloon above.
Chapter 41
The deck lurched, jarring Talis, forcing her to take a step to keep from falling.
“We have to go,” she said, loudly, trying to hide her panic behind the command. “Where’s the nearest port? Farm, anything, I don’t care as long as the crust isn’t lifeless.”
Until a few moments ago, the effects of Nexus on the body were enough to keep anyone from settling the smaller bits of crust that hung in the skies close to the gods’ domain. It was practically taboo. Moreover, it was terribly uncomfortable.
Tisker looked at Talis from his place at the wheel. He braced his grip with his forearms. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the chill and the wind. He shook his head. This wasn’t any sky he knew.
In Cutter territory, the next ring of cities would be the high-society islands with expansive estates, ostentatious gardens, and pristine cities with sparkling towers and stable economies. Not the sort of place they made a point of visiting, but that hardly mattered. If they were in Cutter skies, she’d gladly run Wind Sabre aground on someone’s manicured lawn and deal with the consequences. But that was around the other side of Nexus.
Hankirk’s face was a paler reflection of Tisker’s. The blood loss from his arm was taking its toll. He trembled as he tried to stand. Not much more damage he was likely capable of bringing upon her. The damage to the ship mattered far more.
“Stanch that,” she said, not kindly, to Hankirk. He was bleeding on her deck again.
To Dug, she said, “Get these two to the med bay. They can treat themselves, or each other, or die there, but at least they’ll be out of the way. Then go help Sophie with the fires.”
Let Hankirk fade off, and she’d finally be able to put him over the railing like she ought to have done days before. If his arm hadn’t come up to block the knife, she’d have done so less than an hour ago. But no, she was sending him for medical treatment.
She allowed a moment to marvel as she watched Dug and Hankirk gather up Scrimshaw, supporting the one-legged alien on either side. The three of them just minutes past fighting each other for survival. She eyed Hankirk. The grave injuries he’d caused. His arm. Scrimshaw’s leg. Dug’s faith. The blame for those traced directly back to his misguided actions. There was no time, with the ship an inch from sinking, for any more foolishness. She trusted him to be smart enough to know that.
The thought of trusting him at all made her jaw clench, which at least kept her teeth from chattering with panic.
She turned her back on them and jogged to her cabin. She let the door swing wide open on its hinges behind her as she pulled up the vellum charts showing the nearest territories. She overlapped the translucent sheets and lined up the territory edges. Cutter, Bone, Rakkar skies. The Vein had only a small pocket of islands carved out within the Bone and Rakkar borders, and that was farther out than Wind Sabre could likely limp.
She ran her finger in a spiral out from Nexus, looking for any named island. If it had a name, there was generally someone there to care what it was called. She’d prefer a port. Something with a dry dock for repairs. Gods only knew what the hull looked like. First was the matter of finding someplace near enough.
They’d come to Nexus on a straight course from Fall Island, answering Onaya Bone’s call, and were still in Bone skies.
The deck shifted under her feet again. Items rattled in a cupboard behind her as the ship tilted to starboard.
Fall Island was an option. The temple had been built as near to their goddess’s home as the body could stand. All the other Bone islands were scattered in the outer reaches of Peridot’s atmosphere or gathered up along the borders to keep pushing at them. But Fall Island was more than a day away, and there wasn’t much in the way of a dry dock. Not to mention, Talis had kinda left a scorched alien ship and no shortage of bodies there.
There was Subrosa, but she wasn’t confident of crossing back over the Cutter border, either. Unlikely that anyone with a direct line of sight on Nexus had missed what just happened. Cutter Imperials would want to question the whole crew before allowing them across, and they’d let her ship fall out of the sky while they pressed for information. There’d be no alien escort to get them past patrol ships this time—better off for that, of course—but Wind Sabre wasn’t up for another regatta through the storm-cloud gauntlet.
Rakkar settlements dotted the charts, a quarter way around Nexus from their position. But, at this radius, an arc was a shorter distance than the straight line back to Talonpoint. Plus, with the distral tailwinds, they’d get a bit more distance out of the effort.
Her finger paused on a small island. Absurdly close to Nexus. It had to be a mistake. Or an ancient site with nothing but ruins.
“Heddard Bay,” she read its name aloud, her voice strange in the quiet of the cabin. It wasn’t the old Rakkar language, from the days of their inverted underground pyramids.
A bay meant moorings and docks. The Rakkar were agoraphobic, but that didn’t mean they didn’t want for trade goods. And if they didn’t have a formal shipyard, she at least knew that even a
