Pirate Sun Read Online Free PDF Page B

photographic image appearing on paper. First to fade in were the platforms where men were working. Silhouetted against hellish flame, the figures were using long metal rakes to roil the chondritic coal in two giant kilns. The kilns were mounted upside-down with respect to one another, and the whole structure slowly spun to provide the gravity that the rendering process required. Now that the platforms were clear, the twenty-foot-wide scoops below the working platforms faded into focus. These were sucking in fresh air and causing one note of the foundry’s continuous low roar.
    Chaison shook out his clenched fists, willing himself to relax. Of course it was just industry, no monster: foundries and factories used prodigious amounts of oxygen, so they had to keep moving. This one was like a huge propellor blade—jet engines below the scoops kept the whole thing spinning—which hove through the clouds at a walking pace, harvesting air and spewing yellow smog behind it.
    “That may be just what we need,” he said, pointing to the clot of shacks and storage lockers at the foundry’s central point. Ladders led from there past the angled stacks to various levels. Aside from allowing the scoops to bring in air, the furnaces’ rotation gave a direction to the flame inside. In zero gravity, fire would otherwise expand briefly in a sphere then choke on its own smoke.
    The shacks would contain supplies—spare overalls, maybe even something that flew better than this damnable fan.
    “Is this a wise course of action?” Richard was frowning at the little human silhouettes that were slowly rotating around them. “What if we’re seen?—Caught?”
    Chaison looked at him levelly. “What if we’re not? Besides, Ambassador, the men at those furnaces can’t see anything beyond their own hands. They’re flooded with firelight.”
    “Ah. Good point. But what if there’s—” He didn’t finish, because Darius was already pedaling madly. The little fan made a farting whir in the air below his feet, and they drifted slowly toward the flame-gouting behemoth.
    Not the most dramatic charge I’ve ever led, Chaison thought wryly.
    Something flickered at the edge of his vision. He whirled, just in time to see a slim gray shape vanish into the darkness behind them.
    “Sharks!” Well, a shark, at least. If it had smelled them, the thing would be well on its way back to its pen in some police cutter. No way they could catch it, even if they’d had proper foot-fins or wings. The things were demoniacally fast. Sometime during the near-mythical creation of this world, their DNA had been sprinkled with genes from bees; even now the little bastard could be doing its directional dance in front of a police inspector. Writhing out how many people it had seen, their direction, distance, and speed.
    The boy redoubled his pedaling. Chaison was afraid he was going to break the frail little contraption, but soon they were gliding up to the rope-and-beam tangle at the weightless center of the foundry. Chaison strained, fingers grasping at a rope—not necessary, they would get there no matter what now, but he was desperate for the touch of something solid. Then he had it and was hauling himself onto the hexagonal plank platform that fronted the shacks. He yanked his sleeve free of Richard’s and drew his sword.
    The foundry was basically a shaft of girders a quarter mile long, spun around its center. The smokestacks that topped the furnaces tipped back and vented into the air behind the foundry’s direction of motion; they helped propel it through the air. At the very center of the beam, nestled among the shacks, was an unlit pilot house. Chaison flung open its door and entered, sword-first. There was no one inside.
    The pilot house was a simple wooden box, eight feet square, that stank of smoke and iron. Under the open window at the front were a set of levers that controlled the foundry’s speed and direction. For an absurd moment Chaison thought