Gaia's Brood

Chapter 26

Since we departed Newtonsteign, with the answer to the second clue contained in my Mother's journal, Scud has hardly moved from the map table. He's trying every permutation of every code he can think of, and some he's made up. Is it a code, a number game, some sort of riddle? We've been bringing his meals to him at the desk. I'm not sure, but he might even have slept sprawled over the table last night.

Fernando took only one brief look at the numbers. "Grid references," he grunted, then wandered off muttering to himself. Mental puzzles aren't his thing.

I still have the disturbing feeling something about the numbers is not right, but again I cannot pin it down, so I'm having another crack at it with Scud. "Could Fernando be right? Grid references?"

Scud shakes his head. "No way—too simple. It's got to be a code of some kind."

We try every secret code we've already tried: letter substitutions, anagrams, number progressions, pig Latin then we reshuffle everything into progressions until we have exhausted each combination. Still nothing.

I suspect that without the third clue all this speculating will prove fruitless, but there's no stopping Scud. I give up in frustration and leave him to slog on. He will continue like a machine until he has either cracked the code or proven to himself that no combination works—he can't help it, once started his world will fall apart if he doesn't finish.

Once, unable to solve a math equation at the academy, I saw Scud start to shake. He panicked and refused to eat or sleep until the equation was solved. The sight of Scud trembling and obsessive terrified me—he might have his oddities, but he had always been reliably odd. In the end, it was the question which was wrong, the one possibility that never occurred to the young Scud. It took him weeks to get over the trauma.

CRACK. Swish. Rrrrrrip.

My heart stops.

Every flight student knows that sound: a semi-rigid ligament breaking free.

Adrenalin floods my veins and I leap into action. "Damn, I should have checked for damage after the storm," I mutter while dragging Scud bodily from the map room. "All stop! Scud, you've got the helm. Everyone else, topside, now! Move it!"

I guide a dazed Scud towards the wheel.

"But Nina, the code."

His world is already crumbling, too much change too quickly. I fold his hands round the rim of the wheel. "Do the code in your head, Scud. If we live you can go back to it later."

The rest of us grab our flight jackets and gloves, and swarm up the rigging into the blimp. We snatch up clamping-belts and catch poles as we burst through the hatch, Fernando in the lead.

"Duck!" Fernando screams as the loose ligament snakes towards us like a whip. I shove Trent to the floor and I dive for safety myself. That thing could take someone's head off.

The ligament cracks harmlessly above us, like lightening.

Rrrrrip.

Another slash appears in the blimp. The fabric of the blimp can take a fair amount of damage, but if the hydrogen reservoirs are punctured the Shonti Bloom will turn into a stone. So far we are lucky.

I leap to my feet. "Okay, let's get to it. Fernando, disconnect that ligament from the power supply. Izzy and I will get clamping, but no heroics—I want you all back in one piece. Trent, you're spotter." He doesn't know the drill so is a liability, best to keep him out of the danger zone. "Call out if that ligament comes anywhere near us."

I ensure we fix safety lines to the gangway rails then Izzy and I scramble toward the ligament, which is still secured to the blimp. I pin down the first stretch of loose ligament with the catching rod, while Izzy snatches a clamp from the pouch on her belt and clamps it to a secure ligament for support. Izzy then pins down the next section which I then clamp. We repeat the drill as quickly as we can, working our way towards the flailing end of the ligament

"Coming your way," Trent yells. We all hit the deck. CRACK. Ping, ping, ping. Rrrrip. All the new clamps fly off.

We start again: catch, clamp, catch, clamp, catch, clamp, as fast as we can. It occurs to me that if Trent wants to do away with us he can just keep his mouth shut and watch our heads roll. This emergency is a good test of his loyalty.

I risk a glance back down the length of the blimp to the power housing. "How you doing with that power supply, Fernando?"

He has a giant wrench secured to a bolt securing the collar of the ligament and is attacking it with a sledge hammer. "You call this air-worthy?" Crash. He brings the sledge hammer down on the end of the wrench. "The blasted thing—" Crash. "—is rusted in." Crash. "I'm gonna have to cut it off with an arc welder."

Bad news: a ligament is akin to an artificial muscle, specially grown in long ropes to power an airship's tail. When properly secured, and supplied with small bursts of electricity, a ligament jerks powerfully back and forth. Supply electricity to an array of ligaments in the right order and they sweep the flukes of the Shonti's tail up and down with incredible force. Unsecured, even without power, it would still twitch for an hour, but while still hooked into the power supply it becomes a deadly thrashing serpent.

Introducing heat to a lose ligament is about the worse thing anyone can do—it turns into a wounded deadly thrashing animal. "Forget it, Fernando, you are more use helping us clamp the thing down. Just leave it."

Fernando gives the wrench one last bash before hurrying forward to help us tame the free ligament.

I duck under a hydrogen reservoir and hear the hiss of escaping gas. I make a mental note to find and patch that hole once we secure the ligament.

If it's hissing, the leak is small; the large silent ones are the deadly ones.

The clamps all ping off for a second time, so we retreat and start again.

The further we clamp towards the tail, the more shredded the blimp becomes. The need to hook and unhook our safety lines slows us down considerably as we weave round each other in our dance of catch, clamp, catch, clamp. But, with large holes in the blimp, a fall here could prove fatal.

"Look out, Nina!" CRASH. The gangway twists and buckles as the ligament attacks like a flailing squid. I grab for the rail, but my hand clutches empty air instead. I topple sideways desperately grasping for anything and watch in slow motion as my safety line slides off the end of the shattered handrail. In my mind's eye I see myself plunging through the Shonti's blimp and falling towards the ground until I shrink to a tiny dot, like the Daughters of Gaia. I shove the image away so I can concentrate on surviving—thinking like that will definitely get me killed.

One hand scrapes along the etched metal footplate of the gangway as I fall past, but I can't quite grasp it. Suddenly, something smooth slaps into the palm of my left hand. I grip it tightly with my bleeding and ragged fingers, thank goodness someone has caught me with their catching rod.

Then the rod comes alive, wriggling like a snake in my clasp, and throws me sideways.

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