[Tristan]

Two pairs of hands grabbed me by the uniform jacket and dropped me unceremoniously on the rampart deck. Agatha was already there, sitting cross-legged, a venomous expression on her face.

"Feeling alright, kid?" one of the Tarasque Self-Defense Corps soldiers asked me.

I didn't answer.

I was mesmerized by the view.

Not the aerodrome facilities, which were quite ordinary if immense. Endless rows of barracks, hangars and fuel depots for what looked like whole acres, all painted in drab colors under the dim light of Hawaiki and Jotunheim.

It was the airship.

It was a beauty.

A giant cigar-shaped envelope bathed in the aerodrome floodlights, painted in the cobalt-blue hue of the Awakening League Air Force, chromium-plated engine pods gleaming in the night, long and slim gondola from which ropes and ladders reached down to the ground. The lettering on the tail vertical fin read Stargazer.

The airship looked ready to slice through the sky.

But the most impressive part was the tip of the envelope, which was a huge cone-shaped glass pool filled with clear water, where an octopus floated idly.

The Helmsman.

I had already seen hundreds of pictures of airships before, and I had watched quite a few landing at or taking off from the aerodrome, but always from far away, and looking at a Helmsman in the flesh was intimidating.

The Helmsmen had appeared in the middle of the Age After, roughly six centuries ago, shortly after the Faraway Bridges had started deteriorating and the side effects of transit had begun to leave the airship and train crews so sick that they lost control of their vehicles. The Guild of Machines, the custodians of the Bridges, had been aware of the situation for decades, but the decay of the machinery of the Bridges was apparently beyond their power to intervene. Then a team of Guild scientists had discovered that a certain breed of octopus that lived in the Ligeia Sea on Eridani was immune to the side effects of the transit, so the Awakening League and the United Kingdom had formed an alliance with the octopi and devised the devices that allowed the octopi to pilot airships and trains and communicate with the human crews.

Within a few decades, boarding an airship or a train with a Helmsman at the wheel at the moment of the crossing had become the only way to pass through a Faraway Bridge.

During the last two centuries, however, the Bridges had deteriorated further, to the point that the Guild of Machines had to devise protective gear to wear during the crossing as people had begun to have internal bleedings and seizures, and nowadays, even in transit suits, you came out on the other side feeling sick to the bones.

Or so I had heard people say back at the Shamrock Inn. I had never been through a Faraway Bridge.

"Kid, are you alright?"

I nodded. I realized I had been looking open-mouthed at the airship for quite a while.

"Yes, thank you," I managed to say.

"Good. Now down you go, you're getting late for your reprimand."

***

[Agatha]

The duty officer met us halfway between the aerodrome wall and the first line of barracks. He was a barrel-chested man, with wide shoulders, a shaven skull, an impeccably pressed League Air Force uniform.

And a big gun in a polished leather holster.

Two League Army privates were with him, with rifles in their hands, not quite pointed at us, but neither at the sky.

"So, these two are the latecomers?"

"Sir, if I may..." Tristan began, but the duty officer silenced him with a withering look.

"Yes, sir," one of the soldiers of our escort said.

"Are we done with drinking for tonight?" He looked me in the eyes. "You, little twerp. Have you partied enough?"

I didn't reply.

"Is that a challenging look I'm seeing there? Are you challenging me?"

And faster than lightning he grabbed me by the lapels and lifted me up. I looked down in horror as the first two buttons of my uniform came off and fell to the ground, showing the Bridge transit suit underneath.

He glanced at my chest for a split second, then let go of me.

The duty officer had seen the transit suit.

Damn.

He stared at us with utter disdain for some moments more, then shook his head and turned around, heading back to the barracks.

"Take this scum to the interrogation room," he called over his shoulder.

***

The privates marched me and Tristan through a line of low and dark buildings and into a broad stone-paved apron. In the middle of the apron, a hangar and a warehouse were surrounded by a circle of searchlights and rocket batteries. Both the hangar and the warehouse looked like they had been built to withstand an earthquake. The buildings dated probably back to the Storm Ages like the wall and had been retrofitted to be used as a fortified garrison house.

The privates threw me and Tristan into a windowless room that was totally empty except for a table and three chairs, two on one side of the table and one on the other.

A yellow caged lightbulb was hanging from the ceiling.

They slammed the door shut and left us alone.

I sat on a chair.

Tristan opened his mouth to say something, but I shook my head. Luckily for him, he got the hint.

***

Some time later the door slammed open, and the duty officer stepped in.

"Sit down, loser."

Tristan looked at him.

"I said sit down!"

Tristan sat on the chair across from me. The duty officer grabbed him by the arm and threw him on the chair beside me, then kicked the door shut.

I rolled my eyes.

The duty officer sat down. His eyes were cold and sharp as steel.

"You're wearing a Bridge transit suit under your uniform. There are two members of Stargazer's crew still AWOL, the Abominations are canvassing Tarasque searching for Manticore Library runaways, and what a coincidence, two never-seen-before airmen pop up and manage to enter the aerodrome without showing their papers to the idiot at the gate. I'd be sorely tempted to say you are the Manticore survivors we're looking for."

I said nothing. Tristan opened his mouth. I stomped his foot as hard as I could without being too obvious.

He closed his mouth.

"Yet there's something off. I heard the fugitives are a group of frightening brutes and a gorgeous girl. Neither of you fits the bill."

"Thanks a bunch," I grumbled.

"Is there anything you can say to help me shed some light on the situation?"

We kept our mouths shut.

He nodded. "Thought so. Then I'll have to do this the hard way. Gentlemen first, by the way." He glared at Tristan and began to roll up his sleeves. Tristan's eyes widened in terror.

"Leave him alone," I sighed. "You got me. I'm a boarding school student from Manticore Library. Throw me in jail and let the loser go."

But the duty officer grinned broadly. "Kids, that was close."

I stared at him nonplussed.

He mocked a military salute. "Field Agent Neberu York of His Majesty's Clandestine Service. Very nice to meet you. But you better call me Lieutenant York, Awakening League Air Force, for the time being."

***

[Tristan]

"The captain asked me to stay behind to check on the newbies, because tomorrow we are scheduled to take off at six a.m. and Tarasque has quite a reputation for raucous nightlife on Karolina the Wise festival. That was a major setback since my mission is rescuing Manticore Library survivors and exfiltrating them. As the inner guardhouse called me saying there were two airmen who wanted to enter the aerodrome and hadn't shown their papers, I had a hunch something was going on, so I decided to investigate."

"That's why you grabbed me by the lapels," Agatha said.

"Yeah. The reports said the survivors had been spotted with their transit suits still on, so I checked. Sorry for the bad manners, by the way."

"You said your mission is exfiltrating Manticore Library survivors."

Agent York nodded. "The fall of Manticore Library caught the Kingdom unprepared. We were expecting the garrison to hold on for a few more weeks as the Clandestine Service organized the evacuation, but the League deployed a lot more gunships and Abominations than we expected. So here we are, trying to get as many survivors as possible to safety."

"And take them where the stuff in their heads can be extracted," Agatha added with a scowl.

Agent York looked ill at ease. "There's that, too. But don't be too harsh with the Clandestine Service. The alternative is being interned in the labor camps of the Awakening League. They're not familiar with the hypnosis techniques the Order of Remembrance employs, so they use drugs and torture. Moreover, once the information in your head has been extracted, you won't be of any interest to the League anymore."

I thought about the labor camps and shivered. I had seen a few pictures in a newspaper some months ago, in an article by a journalist who had managed to sneak into and, more remarkably, out of a camp. The camps were on the ice fields of Adiri, flimsy canvas tents in temperatures well below zero, a pale, yellow dot of a sun hanging low over the horizon and the giant mud-colored shape of the companion planet taking up half of the sky. Platoons of guards in arctic gear shoving prisoners in jumpers and overalls.

Life expectancy in the camps of Adiri was measured in weeks.

I had promised to keep Agatha safe, and I was going to keep my word.

"If you pardon me the question, what in heaven did you have in mind sneaking into the aerodrome in stolen League Air Force uniforms?"

"I thought of everything," I said, sticking my chest out. "The plan was sitting tight and waiting for the League airships to leave and a Kingdom airship to land."

"Stupidest plan I've ever heard."

Agatha stifled a laugh. I glared at her.

"How do you plan to get us out anyway?" I asked.

"Now that's the tricky part." Agent York slumped his shoulders. "As I said, Manticore Library fell much earlier than the Clandestine Service expected. None of the assets we were planning to use for the exfiltration are in place yet."

"So?"

"So, for now I'll take you to Castle Vostok with me."

"Are you perhaps talking about the place infested by the monsters from the Unholy Realm, where people usually die within a few days of deployment?" Agatha asked in a mock-breezy tone.

"That's what usually happens to the shock troops, yes. But you aren't shock troops."

"Now I feel a whole hell of a lot better."

Agent York sighed. "I wouldn't do it if there was any other way, believe me. I'll give you a better cover, anyway. You can't pretend to be airmen. You know nothing about airships. I'll swap your Air Force uniforms for Army ones before dawn. You will disguise yourself as volunteer artillerymen. There are already twenty conscript gunners on Stargazer's flight manifest, none of whom has any prior military experience. You'll blend in. I'll get in touch with the Clandestine Service and try to arrange your exfiltration from Castle Vostok before the end of the boot camp."

"What can we do to help you?" I asked.

"Stay out of trouble until I figure things out."

***

[Agatha]

The morning air was chilly. The moons had already gone down, but the pale sun still didn't seem able to warm up this dump of a place. Half past five in the morning of an early spring day, with only black coffee and stale bread for breakfast. My idea of hell. Stargazer was still moored, but now she was floating only a dozen feet off the ground to facilitate the loading operations. On the apron, wagons full of boxes and drums were lining up in front of the airship tail, where a crane was lifting load after load of cargo into the gondola. Rubber hoses connected the Helmsman's tank to a horse-drawn tanker, changing the water in preparation for the journey to Castle Vostok.

Tristan and I were queuing up along with the rest of the crew, waiting for the maintenance teams to clear the boarding ladder. In our breast pockets, two brilliantly forged letters of commission declared us volunteer artillerymen deployed to Castle Vostok. Apparently, the letters of commission made all the difference between the stupidest plan ever and a clever one. Privates O'Malley and Antonov, the rightful owners of our Air Force uniforms, were in lockup for public intoxication, and at the suggestion of Lieutenant York the airship captain had decided to fill the empty berths with much-needed ground combat personnel for Castle Vostok.

Lieutenant York was waiting beside the boarding hatch of the gondola with a logbook in his hand, ticking off crew names from a list.

As I set foot inside the wood and steel innards of the airship, he handed the logbook to an aide and beckoned me and Tristan to follow him. "The captain wants to see you."

I frowned, but he winked.

We followed him through a series of narrow companionways, with metal tubes and bundles of wires running along the walls and small caged light bulbs hanging from the ceiling. The portholes were wide, though. Airships and trains operated by Helmsmen never take part in combat. The United Kingdom and the Awakening League have an ad hoc treaty to keep vehicles piloted by Helmsmen out of any kind of conflict. Some rogue city-states had caused trouble at first, but after the Kingdom and the League had joined forces a few times to annihilate everyone who tried to do any damage, even the most hardcore troublemakers had got the hint, and Helmsmen had been off limits so far.

The only combat situation they have to face is against the monsters, and the monsters don't have artillery or rockets, so there's no need for bulletproof portholes.

The command deck was big, as wide as the whole gondola and equally deep. Every surface seemed to be covered with switches, buttons, gauges, and dials. Six airmen in leather helmets and blue-tinted goggles were monitoring the equipment.

In the center of the bridge stood a console with a teleprinter, out of which came a long paper strip. An airwoman was operating the console.

The captain shook my hand vigorously. He was a big and burly man, with a long steel-gray beard. He looked like a bear, but from up close I could see the broken capillaries on his cheeks, his bloodshot eyes, and the ashen color of his skin. The typical complexion of someone who had too many Faraway Bridge crossings under his belt, according to something I had heard during a science lesson back at Manticore Library before dozing off.

"It is an honor, kids," he proclaimed, crushing Tristan's hand too in his grip. "As soon as Lieutenant York told me we were to embark voluntary artillerymen for Castle Vostok, I told him I had to meet you. I already met some of your conscript colleagues and let me tell you, I'm less than impressed. Recalcitrant cannon fodder, all of them. But you are here of your own free will. There should be more youngsters like you. You are an example of courage and selflessness."

I did my best not to raise my eyebrows.

Ticking from the teleprinter.

"Sir?" the operator said, a freshly printed paper strip in her hands.

"Go ahead," the captain nodded.

"The Helmsman welcomes the new artillerymen on board and wishes them a pleasant trip."

More ticking.

"The Helmsman wishes them best of luck for their deployment to Castle Vostok too."

The captain and the teleprinter operator looked expectantly at us. They were waiting for an answer. I elbowed Tristan in the ribs.

"Um, well, thank you very much," he stammered. The operator nodded and typed the message as the captain saluted us. I could only hope the operator had omitted the "Um, well" part.

We saluted back awkwardly.

***

NEXT UP: Tristan and Agatha take a flight to Screaming Hell (spoiler: the the nickname is well deserved). Agatha makes an unlikely, weird, eerie new friend. A Ghost comes in.