Page 69 of The Sunlit Man

He released his breath, and he, Elegy, and Auxiliary flew for a time in silence. He felt oddly at peace as they did. He was stillrunning, of course, still being hunted. Yet he could pretend this was a lull, with nothing to do but climb. After a half hour or so of this, however, he noticed their elevation wasn’t matching up to projections.

They were moving more slowly than he’d anticipated. He pushed the engines to full power, and though they started moving a little faster, the acceleration soon tapered off.

Around them, the cloud cover was falling away, the mountainside coming into full view. Ringlight bathed the landscape.

Are we even moving?

“We are, but slowly,” he said, checking other readings.

He silently urged the ship to rise. And it did, with increasing slowness. He’d miscalculated somewhere. Theoretically they should be goingfasterwith each passing moment, as they burned away more water and ejected it from the ship. Instead they were slowing. Not rapidly, but enough that he doubted they’d make the summit before their water ran out.

Nomad?Auxiliary asked.What’s wrong?

“I don’t know,” he admitted, checking the throttle controls to make sure they weren’t jammed or something. “It could be any number oftensof things. Maybe the seals we used don’t work in extreme low pressure and are starting to leak. Maybe this method puts too much strain on the engines, making them overheat. Usually you discover these kinds of quirks through stress tests and numerous prototypes. But…we didn’t have time for any of that.”

He watched the ominous horizon in the rear distance. Light started to stain it, the sun creeping from its den, hungry.

He felt like the worst of the ten fools in that moment. He’d led these people to their deaths, and he didn’t even know where hismiscalculation was. He knew from sad experience in engineering that these kinds of little problems were numerous—and when one cropped up in an early test, you usually had to use the wreckage to work out what had gone wrong…

Then a wave of relief hit him as he remembered that he’d built in a failsafe for this. He reached over, hitting the button to jettison the first empty water-carrying ship. It tumbled free, and the larger collection of ships jolted at the sudden loss of mass. Beacon’s gyroscopes accounted for the sudden change in the ship’s shape and mass, keeping them level as their speed increased.

Not quickly enough. He checked the water gauges and found that the second container ship was also basically empty. He hit the button to eject that one.

Nothing happened.

He hit it again.

Nomad?

“The unlocking mechanism is jammed on that second ship,” he said, peering through his windshield to see it still latched in place. “We need to jettison it immediately and hope that drops enough weight to speed us up.”

Okay. But…how? Can you hotwire the system?

Nomad took a deep breath. “No. We’re going to have to go out and do it by hand.”

“This could bedangerous for you,” he said to Elegy, moving through the main cab. “I’m sorry. I’ll try to close the door quickly and not lose too much of your air.”

“Why do you care…about me?” she asked, frowning.

He stopped by the door. “Human beings have a natural sense of decency, Elegy. Yours might have been burned away. I know a little of what that’s like, but it’s not how we’re meant to be.”

“You said you used to live for your friends,” she said. “To fight for them. Because of decency?”

“That and so much more,” he said. “Aux, I’m not going to be able to speak out there. You’ll have to do your best to interpret my emotions.”

Understood, trusty valet.

Once upon a time, their bond had been close enough for Nomad to speak his thoughts directly back to Auxiliary. That ability, like several others they’d enjoyed, vanished when Auxiliary had mostly died.

Nomad threw open the door. Of course, that resulted in rapid decompression—but he was prepared. His long coat whipped around him as he jumped out, then threw his weight against the door, slamming it closed and doing up the lock. He wasn’t certain how much air he’d retained for Elegy. Hopefully it—plus her natural Investiture—would be enough.

For the time being, he had to worry about the entire city. He ran to the side of the city-ship and reached the empty water vessel. Slow-moving, weighty, intended to move through fields and water the crops—it now hung tipped to the side, deadweight. He immediately figured out the problem.

Ice. They had moved up through the same icy snow he’d noticed during his solo flight—but had spent much more time in it. The deck was crusted in ice, and the locking mechanisms that held the ships together obviously weren’t designed for such cold environments. They had frozen over, and many refused to unlatch when activated.

He summoned Aux as a crowbar and found one that hadn’t unlatched, ramming Aux in place and throwing his weight against the tool. With some work, he got that lock and the next one undone.

The ship didn’t fall, though all of the latches on the deck were now uncoupled. Storms. The locks underneath the vessel, connecting it to the main body of the ship, must also be iced over.

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