Page 70 of The Sunlit Man

That’s…bad, isn’t it?

There was only one solution. He had to find a way to undo the latches on theundersideof Beacon. While flying. He dismissed Auxiliary and ran to his cycle at the edge of the city-ship. They hadn’t refilled the water compartment. Damnation.

Damnation,Auxiliary said.What do we do?

He popped the seat on his cycle, getting out the towline he’dseen Rebeke use earlier. He threw the coil of reinforced metallic rope over his shoulder, formed Auxiliary as a hook and chain, then stepped up to the side of the ship, standing on a portion that wasn’t part of the water ship, just in case it broke free. He gazed down at the ringlit mountainside.

Oh boy, the knight says in a joyless monotone. This is going to be fun.

He hooked Auxiliary in place, then swung down over the side of the ship, descending until he found a secure handhold. He grabbed it, holding on to the metal, then reformed Auxiliary, this time with a knob replacing the hook. He wedged that into a gap nearby in the metal and reformed Auxiliary to fit exactly so that it couldn’t just pull free.

That gave Nomad a secure anchor to climb down farther, until he dangled just below Beacon. He looked out across the underside of the composite ship, where eight jets had been spaced equidistantly around the larger one underneath the hub. The tenth ship was being used for lateral motion, its jet tilted up and firing toward the horizon.

When he’d hit the release button, the water ship’s engine had disengaged. So it had become an even bigger deadweight, now not contributing thrust to the flight. He hung there for a moment, peering past the brilliant red-orange engines spitting superheated steam in geyseral jets, thinking about the careful balancing of thrusters that was required to get all these engines working in concert. Too much thrust on one side would have flipped the city, but the Beaconite machinery compensated for that distribution instinctively. Zeal had mentioned, when he’d asked, that the Chorus helped somehow.

Did they have something like a rudimentary Awakened difference engine doing these calculations? Fashioned by a shade? That would be…

He shook out of it. No time for such thoughts. If he didn’t break that deadweight free, the entire city would slam into the mountain—leaving them all stranded until they were engulfed in a deluge of sunlight that would melt the city-ship to slag.

He would have to reach those locks, which meant traversing across thebottomof Beacon until he reached the proper location. It was mostly flat, though it had plenty of nooks for him to lock in Auxiliary’s hooks. However, moving around down here would take him uncomfortably close to at least one of those scalding jets.

At least he wasn’t deafened by their roar. It was barely there in this thin air. The near vacuum would also insulate him from the worst of the heat, as long as he avoided direct contact, which was another small comfort. He grabbed the bottom lip of the side of Beacon, then dismissed Auxiliary, hanging by one hand—for a few heart-pounding moments—above a drop of hundreds of feet.

By now, the people of Beacon might be getting light-headed from the lack of oxygen. Some might be slipping into unconsciousness already. So if he fell here, they’d never wake up. And his long run would be stopped not by the Night Brigade, but by the day’s deadly sunlight.

He reformed Auxiliary into a chain with hooks on both ends, then swung under the ship and hooked Auxiliary on a valve. Then he took the other end of the chain and used that to swing by one arm to latch that hook into another location. Each time he swung, he would make the end fuzz to indeterminacy and then reform, locked into place in an indentation on the bottom of the ship.

It was eerie, doing this in silence, Investiture helping his body compensate for the low pressure and lack of oxygen. He couldn’t do that indefinitely, as his stores would eventually run out, but hehad plenty for this task. Keeping him alive, renewing his muscles so they didn’t fatigue and drop him. He used this arm-under-arm swing to maneuver slowly around the nearest of the jets—a blinding column of superheated steam and light, violent and powerful, that could be felt as infrared radiation in the vacuum.

The fact that he felt anything from this jet was an indication of just how much energy was pouring out of it. He rounded it and reached the place where the deadweight ship was locked onto the rest of Beacon. There, he hung for a moment to gather his wits.

Once, he’d found it difficult during moments like this not to gasp for air, but his training had often required him to hold his breath. The power that had fed him during his youth escaped when he breathed, so he learned to hold it in, even during frantic moments of battle.

He started forward again, eyes on the first lock just ahead. He undid his left-hand hook and swung out—but his right-hand hook had not been latched in as well as he’d thought. In a moment of visceral terror, he felt it slip. Storms! In a panic, he seized the chain with both hands as it went taut.

He jolted, clinging to the tenuous chain, the sweat on his skin instantly vaporizing in the low-pressure environment and boiling away. The chain ground on the steel above him, slipped, then caught again—but that second jolt made him drop a little farther, his fingers barely clinging to the end of the chain.

Damnation,Auxiliary said.Nomad. Hang on. Please.

Nomad tried to stabilize the hook, mentally commanding it to grow wider—but his mistake had been placing it on a little rim that Auxiliary couldn’t easily form around to get a proper grip.

Beneath him, the bleak slope of the mountain was getting ever closer. And in the distance, the very first lights of false dawn grew on the horizon.

Nomad,Auxiliary said.It may be time to do something drastic. I have…strength left. You could fly again. Only a little, but perhaps enough to—

No.NO!He thought it forcefully.

They both knew this truth, but had never said it out loud. In the past, he’d burned away Auxiliary in a moment of power, ignorant of what he’d been doing—of what he’d been capable of doing. His body had sought whatever energy it could find, and his friend—made of pure energy—had been too convenient a source.

All these years, Auxiliary had existed as a mere remnant of what he’d once been. But it was the most important fragment—Auxiliary’s personality and mind—that remained. Fuel, if needed.

Never,Nomad thought.

I can’t let you die,Auxiliary said.I can’t let the city crash. If you could fly—

In response, Nomad started climbing. Hand over hand, determined, feverish. With cracked, dry hands, trembling at the thought of…of again…

Auxiliary fell silent, but Nomad knew what his friend would do if the chain slipped. The unspoken horror.

---