World-Ripper War (Mad Tinker Chronicles Book 3) (12 page)

Rynn sat working at her desk, a pile of messages and reports pushed aside in favor of a fresh sheet of vellum. A ruler, compass, and pencil were all she needed right then. It was a sanctuary in a world that ended where the off white of the vellum gave way to the wood grain of the desk. Within that rectangle of space, her power was absolute; nothing happened there but what she wished. Unlike the
Jennai
, which seemed to obey her orders with fingers crossed behind its back, crew and all.

There were times when the whole of the rebellion seemed designed to vex her. Simple instructions were botched with regularity. The welders veered from her plans. Soldiers played crashball instead of training. Even the parts from the workshop were defective now and then, something she had never given much thought on Tinker’s Island, under Cadmus’s watch. Wherever she went, a small pocket of attentiveness followed her. None of the crew wanted Rynn of Eversall, General of the Human Rebellion, to see them lax in their duties. But months on, the rebellion was growing stale for some—no longer the joyous freedom of throwing off kuduk rule, but the dogged, dreary march of daily life working as pieces of a larger machine. Not every cog could see what the whole was doing; it just spun along, teeth tugging the same chain, link after link.

Rynn could sympathize. When she had been just a lookout for Hayfield’s gang—had it possibly been Rascal’s, all along?—all she cared about was spitting in some kuduk eyes, pocketing some coin in the bargain, and getting to work the next morning with no one the wiser. If she needed a night off, a sly word to one of the gang and she was free; they’d plan around her or not go out themselves that night. Now, there was nowhere to go, no escape. The world-ripper made it possible to
go
anywhere, but it needed her, and through some paradox that prevented her leaving it.

Madlin and Cadmus got their freedom, but now I’m the only one who knows how to work it.
There were others who had been trained in the device’s use. Some of the mechanics could even make simple repairs when something broke down. But when it came right down to it, the only one who could strip it to the bolts and get it working, no matter what, was Rynn.

A knock sounded at the door. Rynn looked up from her work, but said nothing. It was a test. The door opened—someone had failed.

Rynn slapped the pencil down against the desk. “Did I say to come in?” she asked, her voice mixing exasperation and sarcasm.

“You’ve got a new batch of papers,” Sosha replied, hoisting the bundle of newsprint she carried as evidence to back her claim. “Forty seven minutes, start to finish.”

Rynn cocked her head and nodded, impressed despite her annoyance. “Not bad. Leave them on the chair.” While gathering newspapers from across Korr was good practice for the world-ripper trainees, the papers themselves were of less concern. It was merely proof that the operator had dialed in the locations of cities across the world and opened discreet holes to snatch the papers.

“I think you’re going to want to read the
Cuminol Chronicle
today.”

“Why’s that?” Rynn asked. She resumed her work on the vellum.

“The rebellion hit a thunderail there,” Sosha replied, slapping the paper down atop Rynn’s pile of mostly unread reports.

Rynn looked at the paper with a frown. “We didn’t have anyone on that. Did we?”

Sosha shook her head. “No, we didn’t. We’re not the only rebellion around anymore, it would seem.”

“Must be Rascal’s people. From what he’s told me, the Church of Eziel was poised and waiting for someone to throw the first punch. They must be shoveling coal on our fire.” Rynn squinted at the flashpop and adjusted her glasses. “Some poor sop got his face in the news. Sloppy.”

“I read the article. His name’s Kupe, and there’s a hunt on for him.”

“Let me guess …”

“Can we look for him?” Sosha asked.

An idiot. Just what we need around here.
No, that wasn’t the right way to look at it.
Another face for the rebellion—one besides mine.
Rynn studied the flashpop more closely. Kupe stood there staring blankly from the dingy grey page, a crate in his hands, its label too small to read. He was older than her, but still young, and not bad on the eyes. A flashpop like that was bound to get pilfered by other papers; a human face for the kuduks to see.
It could work.

“Fine. Just make it clear that we’re not going to be rescuing every brick-headed clod who gets himself caught in the papers.”

It was off hours in the steel mill. The furnaces never went cool, but the workers were gone, save for an understaffed group of night watchmen more concerned about thefts than simple trespassers. Since robbing a steel mill would involve heavy, steam-powered equipment, most of the watchmen dozed through their shifts.

Beneath that negligence, a squad of human rebels had taken temporary refuge in the quenching room. It wasn’t all that far from the railyard, less than a mile of tunnel and a layer down, situated on the outskirts of Cuminol with vent access to the sky. The steel mill used plenty of water, so water lines from the main civic pumping station ran directly to it. The maintenance tunnel had been ankle-deep with stagnant water from various minor leaks—the perfect cover for bloody boot prints.

Kupe sat on his prize. The small wooden crate was battered and worn from years of use, packed and repacked with munitions and dragged across half of Korr no doubt, but it was sturdy enough for a seat. With a wire brush and a pail of water, he scrubbed the soles of his boots clean.

“Ain’t never thought I’d see the day I considered throwing away good boots,” he muttered. “Gonna be watching my own tracks for weeks, checking for blood.”

Kupe wasn’t the only one who had been stepping in blood, nor was he the only one cleaning his boots because of it. The brushes were from the mechanic’s shed, meant for scrubbing rust from pipes and beams. Some poor steelworker was going to come to work to find his tools flecked with blood come morning.

“Ain’t never had boots nice as yours,” Murfy commented. The boy was wearing soft-sole shoes, the kind that only made noise if you scuffed your feet walking. Kupe hadn’t even heard Murfy come up behind him. The boy never seemed to stay put.

“Well, Kupe, you’re a fighter now, not just a news hauler,” Mull said. “Don’t want to be breaking in a new pair when you’re running from a knocker.”

“Them weren’t knockers,” said one of the other rebels.

Mull nodded. “Yep, them were soldiers. We hit us an army shipment, sure enough. Them crates is full of—”

“Bullets,” Kupe finished for him.

Mull pushed up the brim of his cap. “Fancy boy, eh? Can’t help rubbing your reading in people’s faces? Well, if we’re going to be shooting these here rifles, we’re going to need bullets. Lotsa bullets.”

Kupe felt the weight of his rifle against his back. He had only fired it once and hadn’t so much as put a dent in the kuduk he had aimed at. “So … we shoot a bunch of kuduks so we can steal bullets, so next time we can shoot more of ‘em.”

“Ain’t all of it, but yeah,” Mull replied. “We’ll keep ourselves fed, armed, clothed—you want new boots, next time we’re in the markets, just grab a pair. Bust me if that didn’t feel good, watching them stone-hearted blighters take it for once. Makes me wonder why none of us did this years ago.”

“Yeah,” Kupe said, agreeing for form’s sake.  He couldn’t shake the image of that kuduk soldier with the ruined face. Had he been slower, or the other rebels hadn’t been there to save him, Kupe and that soldier could have reversed places. It was a humbling feeling, having your life dangled in front of you like that.

“How long we gotta stay down here?” one of the rebels asked.

“Early-clocker’s’ll be on shift ‘round about five thirty. We gotta be back in the tunnels by then,” Murfy said.

Mull flipped open his pocketclock. “That means we bolt our arses to the floor for another two hours and change.”

“Wish we’d snagged something to eat,” one of the rebels groused.

“Wasn’t our assignment,” Mull replied.

Murfy slinked into a corner of the room, cheeks bulging. Kupe might have been the only one who noticed him, but he didn’t care enough to say anything. He was known. Who was he to snitch on a tunnel rat who knew enough to bring along food. That was how kids like Murfy got by, thinking of survival, first and last. Kupe could always bum a meal at one of the public houses if he had to; that was the sort of thing that being known got you.

Kupe was lost in thought—idly wondering if it was worth trying to wheedle a share of Murfy’s food for himself—when he wandered into a waking dream. At least, that was all he could imagine at first, when a giant window opened up in mid-air. The window, or whatever it was, was larger than the maintenance tunnels Kupe and his comrades had spent the day traversing. Through it, there was a large, metal-walled room, with a line of human soldiers leveling pistols toward Kupe’s squad.

“Bloody, rusted—” Mull began, backing away from the window.

A woman slipped between the soldiers to stand in front. She wore baggy coveralls and a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles. In one hand she held a newspaper, in the other a pistol of her own; she pointed it right at him. “You Kupe?”

Kupe’s eyes went wide and a sudden dizziness crept over him. It was the second time today that he’d found a weapon aimed at him. He wanted to deny her question, to claim he’d never heard of any Kupe. But his tongue was a sack of coal in his mouth, and he couldn’t make it form words.

The woman with the gun flipped the newspaper around and showed him the flashpop above the fold. It was the
Cuminol Chronicle
, and the headline read: REBEL RAILYARD RIOT. The flashpop showed a thunderail car with human rebels crowding out the door, carrying crates and rifles, their faces covered in scarves, hoods, and masks. A lone human stood out, barefaced and gawping, in the fore of the image. “This sure looks like you. You’re even doing that face again.” The woman gestured to him with the pistol.

“What do you want?” were the first words Kupe managed to put together. Everyone else had the sense to keep their mouths shut and edge away from the strange scene.

“Listen, whoever this Kupe is just got made by the papers. If he wants to live through the month, he can come with us. Life’s going to get pretty full of knockers for him if he keeps around Cuminol.”

“Who are you people?” Mull asked.

“My name is Rynn, Rynn of Eversall, General of the Human Rebellion.”

“General?” Mull asked. “Since when do we have ranks? Davlin’s in charge of the rebellion.”

“Sounds like someone I ought to talk to,” Rynn replied. “For now, how about you all come through, and we’ll give you a lift to where you need to be. I can’t imagine you lot will be welcome when that mill opens.”

“Who said we were going with you?” Kupe asked. He glanced to Mull, looking for support for his stand. None of Kupe’s squad had their rifles out, having been taken by complete surprise.

Rynn aimed her pistol for one of the coolant pipes, a monstrosity of plumbing more than two feet across. When she pulled the trigger there was no
bang
, just a crackle of spark and hissing from the barrel, but the pipe rang with the impact. Water spurted from both sides as her bullet punched a hole clean through it. She fired five more shots, and the pipe looked like a fountain, water spraying in all directions.