Tethering the Sky-Beast

Can an overloaded steam-skiff with a blown steering vane survive the slipstream of a creature the size of a mountain? Juro slammed the ancient pneumatic core back into his chest harness, clicking the heavy brass locking clamp shut against his sternum before planting his heels against the vibrating forward gunwale. His fingers worked quickly, loosening the safety catch on his heavy pneumatic anchor launcher. Below their rattling keel, the collapsing pagoda had vanished into the churning sulfur clouds, but the titanic beast rising in front of them offered no clear sky. Amber vapor streamed off colossal ribbed scutes that stretched half a league from dorsal ridge to fin-tip.

"Tamaki!" Juro shouted over the deafening hiss of escaping pressure. "Tell me we have enough steam in the reserve tank to clear that starboard fin!"

"Reserve tank?" Tamaki's furious voice echoed through the copper deck tube, punctuated by the metallic clatter of an iron wrench. "I used the reserve to blow the steering vanes off Gento's cutter! The main boiler is sitting at three hundred pounds and dropping fast! If you want altitude, flap your arms!"

The skiff hit the beast's outer thermal wake. The wooden deck pitched violently forty degrees to port.

Ayame caught the center mast with one arm, her twin pneumatic sabers already latched securely to her hip harness. "It is not an attack. The beast is simply riding the seasonal aether thermals toward the upper shelf. We are a flea drifting into its gills."

"A flea about to be crushed into scrap," Heizo rumbled. The former champion leaned his back against the capstan, one hand pressed firmly against his ribs to steady the internal tremor left by his concussive strike. His skin was pale from the exertion of the Mountain Spine, but his footing remained rooted. "The slipstream will roll this hull within ten breaths. We cannot outrun the displacement."

Juro adjusted the brass vernier scale on his forearm launcher. The ancient pneumatic core rested inside his chest rig, its bronze casing warm against his sternum. They had the prize, but keeping it meant surviving the next thirty seconds.

"Who said anything about outrunning it?" Juro grinned, though the rush of sulfur wind made his eyes water. He hauled the heavy iron-spooled anchor cable from the deck locker and slapped the reinforced collar into his launcher’s breach. "We take the express line."

"Juro, no!" Tamaki’s shriek surged through the speaking tube. "That reinforced harpoon line is tempered brass alloy! Do you have any concept of what a replacement coil costs in the rim bazaars?"

"Put it on my tab!" Juro racked the charging slide.

He drew a sharp breath, cycling the Second Breath of the Five Breath Cycle. The Iron Lung technique hardened his diaphragm, matching the internal gas pressure of his body to the screaming gales ripping across the bow. His pulse steadied. His hands stopped shaking against the cold iron stock.

The leviathan’s dorsal plates rose through the smog like tiered granite battlements. Great plumes of scalding exhaust erupted from venting spiracles along its flank, creating localized tornadoes of amber vapor. Between two jagged shell segments, three hundred paces ahead, a thick seam of fibrous cartilage flexed with every beat of the titan's massive pectoral fins.

"The shell will deflect a direct hit," Ayame warned, squinting through the tearing spray. "You must strike the connective membrane beneath the sixth scute."

"I see it," Juro said. "Heizo, help me stabilize the launcher cradle! If the kickback shears the deck mount, we go overboard together!"

Heizo stepped forward without hesitation. Drawing a measured breath, he planted his heavy boots into the oak floorboards and wrapped his calloused hands around the rear tripod legs. "Cradle secured. Shoot true, salvager."

The skiff plunged into the turbulent trough behind the leviathan’s left fin. The ship rattled violently, rivets squealing in their sockets as the wind shear threatened to tear the canvas sails to ribbons. Juro tracked the rhythm of the titan’s breathing.

One beat: the spiracles blasted white steam.

Two beats: the dorsal plates slid shut.

Three beats: the scutes parted, exposing four yards of dark, rubbery cartilage.

Juro tripped the main valve.

The heavy launcher roared with a concussive crack that rivaled Heizo’s staff strikes. A three-inch thick harpoon, trailing a gleaming braided line of woven alloy, leaped across the void. It cut cleanly through the sulfur gale, whistling across two hundred paces of empty air, and buried its barbed head deep into the tough connective ridge of the beast's shell.

For a heartbeat, the line hung slack in the sky.

"Brace!" Juro yelled, diving toward the main mast.

The cable snapped taut with a sound like a snapped bowstring.

The entire skiff lurched forward so violently that the stern lifted six feet out of the air. Tamaki let out a muffled curse from the engine pit as tools tumbled across the lower deck plates. But Heizo’s grip held the mooring bitts fast, and the reinforced harpoon line sang with ferocious, vibrating tension.

The leviathan gave no sign of pain; to a creature of that magnitude, the anchor was little more than a burr caught in its hide. But its immense forward momentum caught the light wooden vessel and dragged it straight out of the falling debris vortex.

The dying pagoda, the shattered courtyard pillars, and the swirling sulfur clouds dropped away beneath their keel in a blur of gray mist. The skiff cut upward through the turbulent thermal boundaries, ascending at a dizzying angle. The suffocating pressure of the lower rift gave way to crisp, thin air that bit their lungs with sweet clarity.

Ayame let out a sharp breath, her knuckles white where she gripped the deck rigging. "We are clear of the fracture zone."

Tamaki poked her grease-streaked face up through the hatchway, coughing on a mouthful of exhaust smoke. She glared at Juro, then at the vibrating cable stretching into the bright expanse ahead. "The hull didn't crack. I don't believe it. The hull actually held."

"Never doubt a master salvager," Juro said, wiping grime from his brow with his sleeve. He patted the warm cylinder resting safely in his chest rig. "And we brought back the jackpot intact."

Heizo stepped to the bow, leaning on his staff as he looked out across the ascending horizon. "Do not celebrate yet, Juro. Look to the upper reach."

The leviathan broke through the uppermost layer of nebula clouds, surging into the crystalline brilliance of the open aether.

Spread across the golden expanse of the Great Shard Shelf, five leagues ahead, hung a sight that froze the air in Juro's throat.

It was not a solitary patrol cutter. Floating in strict battle formation above the next cluster of ancient dojo ruins was an entire armada of the Rokan Iron Sect. Massive ironclad dreadnoughts, bristling with pneumatic siege cannons and trailing dark industrial smoke, cast vast shadows across the floating islands below. At the center of the fleet, a colossal flagship bearing the iron furnace insignia of Commander Danzo hovered like a steel fortress in the sky.

The leviathan's migration path was carrying their little skiff directly toward the teeth of the war fleet.

Juro reached slowly for the cable release lever, his mouth tightening. "Tamaki... how long until you can get the main boiler fired back up?"

"Ten minutes," she whispered, staring at the distant armada. "If I push it until the pipes melt."

"Start pushing," Juro said.