Limpet



Dials spun. Red lights flashed. The siren he hadn’t known existed had roused itself and was making a maddening weewooweewoo noise that bounced around inside his skull. He kicked the useless rudder pedals in frustration, shouted every curse he could think of at the little flying gits that had just chewed through his airship’s outer envelope, and prepared to crash into the Limpet air harbour.

Failing that, he would aim for some other part of the town.

Failing that, he would plummet three thousand feet into the abyss and die screaming.

* * *

“A parrot-chew? What the hell’s a parrot-chew?”

The girl straightened a strand of sweaty hair. “It’s for saving your life. You pull this handle here, and then you survive.”

“Why’s it called a parrot-chew then?”

“It’s Latin.”

“Oh.”

The shopkeeper regarded the girl suspiciously. She was a Forester, you could tell from the harness and the jangling assortment of items that hung from her belt. There was a large coil of rope slung over her shoulder. Wiry and tired, she didn’t look like she had much time for negotiating.

“It’s made by the Yanks, you won’t get a better one anywhere in the Basin,” she prompted. She looked over her shoulder at the crowded market - there were plenty of other stalls she could sell to.

The shopkeeper felt the deal slipping away. “Ten bucks, I can’t give you any more, no parrot I know would chew on that.”

“Twenty.”

“Twelve. Absolute maximum.”

“Twenty.”

“Now look here—”

“Eighteen - do you want me to sell it to someone else?”

“Alright, alright, but I can’t go above fourteen.”

“Eighteen.”

“You’re cutting my throat—”

“Forget it.” She turned to move into the crowd.

“Finefine, eighteen,” he said, grabbing her arm. He peeled a few notes from a roll in his pocket. “Hope it chokes you…”

 She took the money and vanished.

At that moment a little dirty face appeared at his stall.

“What do you want, Veejay?”

“What’s that?” the boy asked.

“It’s a parrot-chew, idiot. Don’t touch it!”

“What’s it do?”

“You pull this and it saves your life.”

Veejay nodded sagely. “How much if I find a buyer?”

“One buck.”

“Deal!”

* * *

Limpet was always doomed to be a shithole. There are three principal reasons for this.

Reason 1: it’s a hundred miles further than the arse end of nowhere.
Reason 2: it’s a shanty town that grew up around a coal mine.
Reason 3: it’s run by the Syndicate.

The Syndicate are the local crime lords. They run a whole festering heap of illegal operations throughout the Vertigo Basin.

The Vertigo Basin is called that for a reason: enormous cliff formations rise out of the steaming jungle, and the only way to get around without dying of horrific jungly diseases or being eaten by horrific jungly creatures is to take an airship. Towns cling to the sides of the cliffs, scratching a living out of whatever blood they can squeeze from the local stones. Mostly this involves mining.

Limpet is the biggest town of them all, even though its mining days are over. Its central position meant it quickly developed from a cluster of mining shacks tacked onto the cliffside into a full-blown air harbour. No one knows how it sticks to the vertical rock face and still manages to accommodate a good ten or twenty thousand scumbags, but it does. Massive struts hold the bulk of the town in place, and then extra bits just get piled on top and hung underneath.

One of the many problems that plague the smugglers, drinkers, gamblers, whorers, whores and layabouts of Limpet is the wildlife. The fauna are varied and unpleasant, but relevant to this particular story is the Snaggle-Toothed Garklebeast, a leathery-winged nasty that has a fondness for sinking its teeth into the smooth, vulnerable sides of airship envelopes. This causes the precious hydrogen inside to whizz out into the surrounding air, and the unfortunate aeronaut to plummet onto whatever happens to be beneath him, which is often dense jungle or solid rock.

In short: bastards, they are.

Now, returning briefly to the history part of this lesson, Limpet’s coal mine was originally powered by the booming slave trade, which is why the Syndicate moved in. They still have some slaves down in the darkness somewhere, but these days they spend most of their time organising the smuggling operations.

And that’s where Two-Plank the smuggler comes in. He got his name when people observed that he was as thick as two short planks. His real name’s Barry or John or something.

Crashing into docking bay nine didn’t do much to help his reputation.

* * *

“You absolute plank,” Bill Gumpy said. Bill was the local inn-keep.

Two-Plank was standing with the small crowd that had gathered to admire the wreck of his airship. One thing you could count on in Limpet was amusement commensurate with the scale of the fuck-up, and Bill was always the first to express his deep lack of sympathy.

“Fuck you,” Two-Plank observed.

“You know, on a scale of one to royally, rip-snortingly fucked you are totally, completely and utterly off the scale.”

“Did you not hear me the first time?” Two-Plank said.

“I mean,” Bill continued, “the only thing I can think of that’s worse than crashing into docking bay nine is crashing into docking bay nine with a hold full of priceless stolen two-thousand year-old bone china vases. So it’s lucky you didn’t do that.”

“They’re actually only about a thousand years old,” Two-Plank said.

Bill ignored him. “But wait - there is something worse, isn’t there? It would be really bad if those vases were owned by the Syndicate. That would be very, very bad indeed.”

“They’re probably fine. Vases cope well with sudden impacts.”

“You are going to need to find a whole shit-load of cash.”

“I suppose some of them might need a bit of glue."

“I reckon you should have at least, oh, half an hour to find it before they chop your balls off.”

Two-Plank returned to reality. “Do they do that?” he asked.

“Oh yes, if you’re lucky. The Syndicate have been known to—”

“Known to what, Gumpy?” A slender figure dressed in black appeared beside them. His pale face twisted into a sneer. “Do you speak for the Syndicate these days?”

Bill swallowed hard. “Bye!” he said, and scuttled away across the harbour to his inn.

Two-Plank watched the crowd evaporate, leaving the two of them on the windswept apron of the air-harbour. “Francis. So good to see you.”

“Likewise. Now, young master Plank, I’d have to check the bill of lading to be sure, but don’t you have a hold of vases that belong to us?”

Francis was almost whispering. Syndicate lieutenants command attention at any volume.

“Well, there might be a slight complication—”

“We’ll be lenient. You have one hour to get the money - or the cargo - to us at the Nest. Failing that, as ever, blood is an acceptable substitute.”

Two-Plank found himself alone, the wind whisking his coat around his ankles.

“What a testicle,” he said.

* * *

Having made a brief examination of his cargo and confirmed that no amount of glue would fix it, Two-Plank resolved to spend the remaining 54 minutes looking for a way to save himself from his impending painful death.

Hitching a lift on a departing airship was the obvious choice, but since the Syndicate inspected everything going out or coming into the harbour, he crossed that off the list. Running away wasn’t an option either, because Limpet was about 1,000 metres above ground level, and ground level was inhabited by large number of toothy, poisonous, hungry creatures.

That left two options: finding thousands of dollars lying about in a suitcase, or somehow surviving his encounter with the Syndicate. He plumped for the latter and headed for Limpet’s market, hoping to find some inspiration.

The market sprawled in a disorganised heap around the outskirts of the air harbour, situated so smugglers only had to haul their cargo a short distance before it could be sold. The dense network of stalls was populated with all the scum the city could muster - mostly smugglers, whores and pirates.

There were also bands of feral children roaming the aisles, little hands deftly relieving the less careful stallholders of their stock. Veejay was one of them, and he scooted up to Two-Plank.

“Can I help ya, mister?” he said.

“Hi Veejay,” said Two-Plank. “Unless you have a way of saving my life, I don’t think you can.”

“Life saving! Of course I can do that. What you need is a parrot-chew.” Veejay beckoned.

Two-Plank assumed he hadn’t heard correctly, and followed Veejay through the throng to a stall that looked even more likely to collapse than the ones surrounding it.

“Still got it?” Veejay asked the shopkeeper.

The man behind the stall wiped his hands on the yellowish vest that was stretched over his belly and shuffled to his feet, lobbing a chicken bone into the neighbouring stall. “Still got what?” he said.

“The parrot-chew.”

“Oh, that.” He picked the package up from under the counter and chucked it in front of Two-Plank. “Parrot-chew,” he said. “Made by the Yanks. For you, 50 bucks.”

Two-Plank examined it suspiciously. It looked like a plain old rucksack, made from canvas, with a metal handle dangling from one of the straps.

“What’s it do?” he asked.

“You pull this handle, and it saves your life.”

“Why’s it called a parrot-chew then?”

The shopkeeper rolled his eyes. “It’s Latin. Now do you want it or not?”

Two-Plank looked at his watch. 20 minutes left until his meeting. Lateness was inadvisable with the Syndicate.

“I’ll take it.” He stuffed his last $50 into the surprised stallkeeper’s hand and put on the rucksack. It had a sort of harness arrangement which he stepped into and tightened up gingerly around his groin. Then he put his long overcoat back on over the top. The hunchback effect was perhaps a little suspicious, but it would have to do.

* * *

The Nest was the Syndicate’s base of operations. Cut into the side of the cliff it leered over the sprawl of the city below, reminding everyone who was in charge. A large gate with a watchtower guarded the entrance, and beyond that tunnels and chambers honeycombed the cliff face, winding up to the summit and down deep into the dark bowels of the slave pits.

Two-Plank knocked on the small door to the side of the main entrance. A toothy face appeared at the grille.

“What do you want?”

“I’m presenting myself for my execution,” Two-Plank said.

The teeth grinned and the door opened.

“Go on through.”

Two-Plank crossed the rubbish-strewn courtyard and stepped into the cave entrance on the far side. Francis was stood beneath a harsh electric light, waiting for him.

“Two-Plank,” he said softly. “You don’t appear to have the cargo.”

“I seem to have misplaced it,” Two-Plank said.

“That’s too bad. Follow me.”

Francis led the way into the darkness, the tunnels punctuated at intervals by the electric lights. Two-Plank wondered if it would be possible to find a way out if he made a run for it, but the labyrinth seemed to go on forever. He shivered.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“To see the master of smuggling. He doesn’t like it when his shipments are interrupted.”

Two-Plank swallowed.

Down two more passages and across an antechamber they emerged into a sort of throne room, with some natural light filtering in from a balcony that looked out over the city below. The room was filled with a cross-section of the Syndicate’s nastiest thugs, and two heavies installed themselves on either side of Two-Plank as he entered. The master was hunched over a chart table in the middle of the room, where two lieutenants were updating him on the most recent movements of smugglers around the Basin.

Francis led the way over to him. “Sir. I’ve brought you the smuggler who destroyed his shipment.”

The master turned, annoyed at being interrupted. “Ugh.” He went over to Two-Plank and inspected him as if he was some sort of overgrown maggot. The man’s face was pale from too much time spent underground, rather like Francis, and his eyes had a sharp gleam to them.

“What do you have to say for yourself, maggot?” he said.

“Uh. Not much.”

“Why do you not have my shipment for me?”

“Because it’s in pieces in the hold of my airship.” Two-Plank felt his fear changing into shaky adrenaline-fuelled anger. “I could have died you know!”

“That would have been to your advantage as it happens.” The master turned to Francis. “Is Agatha available?”

“She is, sir. I think she’s been a bit bored lately. And hungry.

The thug to Two-Plank’s right chortled. Two-Plank paled.

Bill Gumpy liked to tell stories about Agatha, a slave who had been tortured until she went insane. The Syndicate, he said, kept her alive down in the darkness because she had a talent for inventing creative ways of administering painful deaths to any prisoners that were chained up in her cell. Then she ate them. Sometimes the eating came before the death.

Two-Plank had assumed Gumpy had been making it up.

“Excellent,” the master said. “We’ll give Agatha an hour to extract her pound of flesh. That ought to be sufficient.”

Two-Plank’s head spun. Francis was turning towards him. To his left the tunnel beckoned darkly; a route to freedom, or perhaps a route to Agatha.

He made his decision. He was quick, and in a spare millisecond he seized his only option and leapt at the exit. Voices cried out and a hand grabbed his overcoat, but he spun out of the grasp, leaving the coat behind. Somehow he made it to the tunnel and pounded blindly into the dark.

Footsteps hammered off the walls around him, close on his heels, as he took passages at random, vaguely aware and relieved that the route seemed to be heading upwards.

He burst through a door and found himself in a bare circular room with a ladder in the centre. Behind him the footsteps stopped, and he heard Francis’ laughter bouncing off the cave walls.

“We’re coming for you, Plank!” he said gleefully. The footsteps resumed, walking now.

Two-Plank seized the ladder and scrambled upwards until he reached the roof, which was closed off by a trap door. It was padlocked, but he battered a panicked shoulder into it until the lock splintered and he shoved the door upwards, immediately blinded by the sunlight that flooded in.

Below him Francis was looking up from the square pool of light, two figures flanking him. “Where are you going, Plank?”

Two-Plank ignored him and scrambled out into the open air, shielding his face from the sun as his eyes adjusted.

He then saw why Francis had slowed down. He had emerged onto a rocky outcrop near the top of the cliffs, and the only exit was back the way he came. He wandered hazily to the edge, where someone had built some sort of lookout post extending out over the void below. They had forgotten to fence it off.

Limpet was down to his left, twinkling in the sunlight. He could see a bean-sized airship docking at the harbour.

Francis emerged behind him and sauntered forward. “You going to walk the plank, Plank?”

Two-Plank hardly heard. He felt sick. Stars were exploding across his vision and wouldn’t stop.

“Shall I help you decide?” Francis said, drawing his sword.

Two-Plank turned. He was about halfway along the wooden platform.

He met Francis’ gaze. “No need. I’ve decided.”

He stepped slowly backwards.

Francis realised what he was doing at the last second and leapt forward, snarling. He was too late - Two-Plank fell backwards in slow motion and tumbled into the abyss.

For a second Two-Plank felt an overwhelming sense of serenity. He saw Francis’ face peering over the edge, and was pleased at how angry he looked. He turned to his right and saw Limpet flash by in a blur, and saw the cliff whizzing past beyond his feet.

Then the fear kicked in. I’m falling to my death, he realised.

He plunged through the clouds head-first and the trees leapt eagerly up to meet him.

In his last few seconds he became aware of a sharp pain in his testicles. Great last words, Two-Plank, he thought. “My testicles hurt.”

My testicles hurt.

He looked down, which was actually up at this point, and saw the harness. Images flashed through his head; harness, Veejay, pull the handle and it’ll—

The parachute whacked open above him as he yanked the ripcord with all his might. Quickly the plummet changed into a fall and then into a gentle downward drift. He laughed out loud at the thought of Francis’ face, and tears of relief prickled his eyes.

Then he crashed through the jungle canopy and the real battle for survival began.

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