Driftmetal by J.C. Staudt Read Free Book Online Page B

They were serious about making sure I didn’t
find a way to seduce some primie woman and breed my way into their
perfectly preserved gene pool. I got dirty looks whenever I went
out in the streets, so I focused on designing a killer set of tech
and spent all the time I could in the workshop with Chaz. It felt
like imprisonment, but it sure beat rotting in some Regency
prison.
    My new kit wasn’t the collection of sought-after
tech I’d lost to Gilfoyle and his men, but when Chaz and I were
done tinkering, I was satisfied. I felt confident again too,
something I hadn’t felt since the night they took it all away. And
I was heavy , unused to being weighed down with so many extra
components. If I’d wanted to shoulder a fuel tank the size of a
cow, Chaz said, he could turn my feet into a pair of hover engines.
Or if I wanted a turbine for a hat, he could make me a man-sized
airplane. He had the idea of turning my fingertips into a swiss
army knife, each one a different tool, and the one about putting
driftmetal in my calves and rigging up a set of gravstone clinkers.
He insisted that I install a few weapon mods until I told him any
moron knows you never store explosives inside your body. If there’s
one thing a techsoul knows, it’s how to exploit the tender spots on
another techsoul. So I said ‘no thanks’ to all those things, but
yes to a whole slew of others that I was planning to test before we
got into the thick of things. As it turned out, I never got the
chance.
    On departure day, a sparse crowd had already
gathered in the city square by the time we arrived to find a small
airship waiting to bear us aloft. An envelope of thick canvas skin,
the sausage-shaped gasbag was an unremarkable beige color. Rigging
lines attached it to the boat beneath, an aerodynamic wooden craft
as slender and graceful as an old seafaring vessel. Rotating prop
engines were mounted to its sides, and it had a windowed command
bridge at the fore.
    “She’s a beaut, isn’t she?” Chaz said proudly.
“ The Secant’s Clarity .”
    I hated airships. Slow, unwieldy things. Like
flying a turd on crutches , Dad used to say. “You built
her?”
    “Designed, built, and flight-tested,” said Chaz.
    “How’s she gonna hold up when we get rammed by a
streamboat full of pirates?”
    “You’re the captain, not the gunner. You leave the
ship’s defenses to my more capable hands.”
    Chaz wasn’t afraid of me anymore, and I wasn’t sure
I liked it. By the time the ship was loaded and ready to lift off,
the streets were jammed with people. We stood on deck and looked
out over the throngs, the four of us breakfasted and dressed in the
finest trimmings Hildebrand’s Haberdashery had to offer. An
entire city full of primies , I thought. I still couldn’t
believe it. I basked in the attention, knowing I was a hot
commodity. So what if half the city hated me and knew I was doing
this against my will? The other half didn’t. I couldn’t help but
observe the fairer sex amongst Pyras’s citizens. I don’t care
what anyone says—primie girls are just as gorgeous as techsoul
women . I decided not to share the thought with my companions,
though.
    I had the jitters, but they were a different kind of
jitters than the heart-pounding, clammy-handed thrill of pulling
off a big score. They were the jitters of knowing thousands of
people were relying on me. Suddenly the whole thing stank of helping people . But what could I do? Chaz had installed that
sub-signal shocker, bolted it into a compartment near my wrist that
he’d locked with a cipher key. They could reduce me to a quaking
pile of synth whenever they wanted. Blaylocke had convinced Chaz to
let him hold onto the remote—even more reason to be on my worst
behavior.
    “You never did take me to see that techsoul
councilor of yours,” I said. “Think he’ll show up for the big
send-off?”
    Chaz wrinkled his mouth. “Maybe.”
    “Councilor Yingler runs most of our errands to the
stream,”