Chapter 9: The Under-Sky
The next twelve hours were the longest of Lyra's life.
Twitch's workshop was a sealed tomb, the heavy steel door locked against the rest of The Gutter. The only sounds were the high-pitched whine of Twitch's plasma-cutter and the hiss of Kaelen's rivet gun. He was helping with the repairs, his movements economical and precise. He was, Lyra realized, as much a mechanic as he was a pilot.
"You're an idiot," Kaelen said, not looking up from the power conduit he was re-splicing. It was the first thing he'd said to her in two hours.
"It worked, didn't it?" Lyra shot back, her voice defensive. She was perched on a crate, her father's datapad in her lap, her pack clutched tight.
"It 'worked' because you gambled with a myth," he snapped, yanking a wire tight. "You got lucky. Don't ever confuse luck with skill, kid. Luck runs out. And out here, when it does, it runs out fast."
"My father's research wasn't a myth."
"He's dead, isn't he?" Kaelen's words were brutal, but not unkind. Just factual. "Chasing myths gets you dead."
"What are you chasing, Kaelen?"
He paused, his hands still. "Nothing. I'm running. There's a difference. Chasing means you think you'll find something. Running just means you don't want to be found." He went back to his work, his message clear: Conversation over.
Lyra looked down at the Lodestone in her pack. Its throb was steady, patient. She pulled it out, cradling it in her hands. The violet light was soft, the intricate rings turning in a slow, complex pattern.
"What is that place?" she whispered to it. "Aethelgard. What is it?"
Kaelen sighed, stopping his work again. He rubbed his grease-stained hands on an equally greasy rag. "You really don't know, do you?"
"It's a sanctuary," Lyra said, reciting her father's belief. "The place the Architects fled to when the Miasma came. A place the Fall... missed. A working, stable world, above or below all of... this."
"It's a bedtime story, kid," Kaelen said. "It's the 'big rock-candy mountain' for scavengers. The one place in the sky that isn't actively trying to kill you. It doesn't exist. The Architects are gone. They died, just like everyone else. All they left behind was junk, poison gas, and ghosts."
"My father believed in it. He said this Lodestone was the key."
"Your father," Kaelen said, walking over to her, "was probably a good man. But he was obsessed. And obsession is a vortex. It'll pull you in, and it'll pull in everyone around you. You'd be smart to dump that thing in the nearest Miasma pit."
"I can't," Lyra said, her voice small. "It's all I have left of him."
Kaelen stared at her, his expression unreadable. He looked at the Lodestone, its impossible light glowing on his weary face. Finally, he just grunted and went back to the ship.
"Twitch! How's that patch?"
"It's ugly as sin, but it'll hold air," the mechanic's voice echoed from the hangar. "Engine's hot-wired. You're fueled. You're paid. Now get this Miasma-cursed ship out of my bay."
The twelve hours were up.
Kaelen did a final check on the console. "Systems are green. More or less." He looked at Lyra. "Hood up. Eyes down. Stay behind me. And this time, actually be mute."
He unsealed the workshop, and they walked back into the main hangar.
Rhox was there. He wasn't smiling. He was flanked by six of his heaviest enforcers, their weapons held ready.
Kaelen tensed, his hand dropping to his rivet-gun.
"My crew just pinged me," Rhox rumbled. His yellow-lit temple implant was pulsing. "They're at your coordinates. It's a Miasma-storm, just like you said. A real ship-breaker."
He took a heavy step toward Lyra. "But... their deep-scanners are picking something up. Something big, inside the storm. Architect-grade. Metal signatures so dense it's screwing with their sensors."
He wasn't happy. He wasn't angry. He was... calculating.
"You're lucky, little bird," he said, his voice a low growl. "Lucky I got a real prize to hunt now. A prize that'll probably get half my crew killed."
"A deal's a deal, Rhox," Kaelen said, his voice hard. "We're paid up. We're leaving."
Rhox stared at them for a long moment, then gave a curt, sharp nod. "Go. But I see you again... I see that screaming rock again... I'll take it. And I won't care what fairy tales you tell."
His men parted, creating a path to the Rust-Wren.
"Don't run," Kaelen muttered. They walked, every step measured, up the ramp and into the ship. The ramp sealed with a hydraulic hiss, and Lyra felt like she could breathe for the first time in a day.
"Strap in," Kaelen ordered.
The Rust-Wren's engines roared to life, and Kaelen didn't waste a second. He shot the ship out of the hangar, scraping the doorframe, and punched the throttle, not stopping until the chaotic, glittering mass of The Gutter was just a bad memory behind them.
They flew into the empty, quiet blackness of the debris field.
"Right," Kaelen said, his knuckles white on the yoke. "Bazaar is out. The Gutter is out. And thanks to your little performance, Rhox has probably put a bounty on us, just in case that cache is empty. So. Where to now, map-maker?"
Lyra unstrapped and went to the co-pilot's seat. She pulled the Lodestone from her pack and set it on the console.
The throb was strong, insistent. The violet light was bright in the dim cockpit. But it wasn't pointing at the star-chart anymore. The rings spun, and the beam of light shot out, pointing straight down. Through the floor of the cockpit, into the endless, swirling purple Miasma below.
"What's it doing?" Kaelen asked, wary.
"It's not pointing at an island," Lyra said, her eyes wide. "It's... I think it's pointing through the Miasma. To a lower layer."
Kaelen's face went pale. "The Under-sky."
"You know it?"
"It's another myth, kid! A story scavengers tell when they're drunk. A whole other layer of islands below the Miasma. They say it's where the old world really is, preserved. They also say it's full of monsters. No one who's ever gone 'diving' that deep has ever come back."
"My father's cache was real," Lyra said, her voice gaining strength. "Rhox's sensor was real. This is real." She looked at him, her gaze unwavering. "We're going down."
Kaelen stared at the violet beam, then at Lyra's determined face. He let out a long, slow breath that sounded like a dying engine.
"Kark," he swore, softly. "I'm really starting to hate you."
He grabbed the yoke and angled the Rust-Wren into a steep, terrifying dive, straight toward the toxic purple sea. "You wanted a pilot. You got one. Hold on."
The ship shuddered as it hit the first layer of Miasma, and the world outside the cockpit dissolved into a violet storm.