ALOFT

Shyia’s breath crystalized in front of her. She vigorously rubbed her arms to restore a bit of feeling. The city had flown into a cloud bank earlier that day and frost had been forming on her clothes since the sun had set. Normally she’d have buried herself in her scrap metal and rag hutch by now and been warming herself by her little space heater but the Watchmen had chosen that morning to clean up the streets, her hutch included. Worse, she’d lost her space heater, most likely pinched by one of the other vagrant children when they were all being roughly decamped.

The lights of the Wrought, the city-ship which she, out of a lack of alternatives, called home, were on full blast to stave off any accidental collisions from the rest of the ships in the flotilla should any pilots or sensors become befuddled in the dense cloud bank. Even so Shyia was finding it exceedingly difficult to navigate the city’s junkyard, her last refuge when she was turned out of her regular hovels.

The junkyard was where the city kept the larger pieces of scrap that had to be broken down before it got reprocessed or whatever excess scrap they had when the recycling center and factories couldn’t keep up with the supply. The last few months had led to a glut of materials being bought off junkers and salvagers. What this said about the state of the world at large Shyia couldn’t know but what she did know was that all the junk was making her poorly lit walk through the fog covered yard a more harrowing journey. She’d already received a large cut just above her knee, warm blood traveling down her leg to freeze around her socks. And bits of broken glass or jagged metal stabbed at her feet with every step though none had managed to poke through the thinned soles of her boots quite yet.

She wasn’t exactly sure where she was going, she knew what she was looking for. Something a little roomy and ideally well insulated. A broken down refrigerator would be a lucky find. But Shyia would make do with anything she came across at this point, a sheet metal overhang would do, maybe without too pointy a ground covering.

It had been at least twenty minutes since she started picking her way around the junkyard. It changed a lot week to week as more scrap was dumped in and hauled away but Shyia still had a good sense of its landscape. A few major landmarks like the blown out jet engine of the old Kole freighter hadn’t moved in Shyia’s living memory. An outcropping of reactor struts looked familiar and, as she recalled, was not far from a turned over radio dish she’d slept in not many weeks ago.

Before she could find it, a low clicking sound behind her sent chills down her spine. Without a second of hesitation she was running full tilt into the depths of the junkyard, unconcerned with direction or the cuts and scrapes her unwieldy charge were leaving on her. She dodged and weaved, avoiding open spaces as best she could in the thick fog, dreading that sound of flapping she could expect any moment.

A screech rang out behind her, the screech of a vulture heading in for a kill on a terrified prey. The prey was having none of it and Shyia threw herself to the ground and into a roll, receiving a dozen cuts all over in the process. She heard a scrape of claws and the flapping of wings in the space she’d been not a moment before. That bought her some time while it ascended for another go, but not much.

She picked herself up and without bothering to wipe off the filth of the junkyard floor--it was indistinguishable from her regular filth anyway--broke again into a run. She’d gone ten feet when she slammed headlong into something quite solid. It may have broken her nose but at least she didn’t get any more scratches.

The fog cleared around her and Shyia, for the first time that night, could see. Before her was what appeared to be a small, rusty, cigar-shaped ship. Dinghy, more accurately, but Shyia didn’t have time to think about that. She didn’t have time to think of much of anything as the flapping of the vulture’s powerful wings cut through the night.

Shyia scrambled up the side of the ship, hoisting herself up to the ship’s hatch. She twisted and pulled on it, trying her best not to think about how loud those wing beats were getting. In the moment it seemed a painfully slow process as the rusted latch began to budge. Slowly at first and then all at once, sending Shyia tumbling onto her back as her final tug carried her down. Without missing a beat she picked herself up and dove head first into the dinghy knowing whatever awaited her inside must be better than what was coming for her out here.

She caught herself in the drop and so avoided her second head injury of the day, landing on her hands then knees in a pile of trash. Paper, styrofoam, and a lot of old tin cans. It was not a moment too soon as her crash into the trash was followed moments later by a boom that reverberated through the hull of the dinghy and a loud scratching at the hatch as the vulture struggled to claw its way to its prey. Shyia looked up in horror as the foul bird shoved its sharp, brown beak down through the opening. Her horror changed to relief when it became clear the vulture was unable to reach her either because it could not fit its massive wings down the small entrance or because it suspected it would trap itself if it succeeded.

Either way, Shyia felt safe and allowed herself her first moment of respite that night. She laid there on the pile of trash, as far from the vulture’s reach as she could get, for maybe twenty minutes as the vulture scratched, pecked, and screeched in vain at her. Eventually it grew bored accepting its quarry had eluded it and, not wishing to go hungry, set off to search for an easier meal. She waited another half hour before she felt recovered enough and confident that the predator had gone to pull herself up and quietly but quickly shut the hatch.

Since throwing herself headlong into the dinghy she had not had the chance to take in her new surroundings. Now she did. The inside of the metal cigar shaped ship looked like the inside of a metal cigar shaped ship. It was, after all, just a big tube that petered at the ends. The inside shared the same rust color and some of the actual rust and in a few spots it had rusted through completely. Other than the mound of trash she found herself on, the interior was sparse. At what she took to be the front of the ship Shyia spotted the top of a chair and a control console. There did appear to be enough room for her to stand in the dinghy, even where it began to narrow, perhaps with a hunch. But she was short, even for an eleven year old, even for a malnourished eleven year old. How a full grown adult pilot would manage it she couldn’t imagine. Perhaps it was meant for her size.

Nevertheless, she crawled forward to what she would guess was the front of the ship rather than expend the energy to stand. She was exhausted but felt a spark of energy and not just leftover adrenaline from having very nearly been food. This was a proper junkyard find, the sort the other urchins and junkers could only dream about and would stupidly not resist bragging about. At the front end she discovered a beaten down chair and a control console in a drop down cockpit. This really was a ship.

Shyia took the one foot drop into the slightly lower cockpit. The chair was worn, the padding on its head and back had been ripped out and the metal frame underneath exposed. Something called her to sit in it. She gently lowered herself down. The chair creaked as its joints felt the weight of a pilot for the first time in unknown years. It was hard, uncomfortable, and dug into her back, but it felt right. She reached out to the console in front of her. It was a stretch, a distance meant to be bridged by someone who sat much higher in the chair and with far longer arms. On the edge of her seat, she ran her hands cautiously, delicately over the console’s dust covered controls. Buttons, levers, switches, and, after she dusted it off, a small five by ten inch screen.

Something she hit, a button or switch, she wasn’t sure which of the many she’d bumped her fingers into, activated the ship. The hum of tiny motors and electricity crackling through old circuits filled the stale air, adding to the perpetual hum of the city’s engines that, to Shyia, had long since faded into the background. A row of light panels looping around the inner surface of the ship sputtered to life and she got her first real look at her salvation.

It was just as she deduced in the dark; a real dump. Empty apart from the trash. And riddled with rust, dust, and cobwebs. Her attention quickly turned back to the console, to more technology and electronics than she’d been able to get her hands on her whole life of junking. Her fingers ran across raised letters on a metal plaque welded to the dashboard. She stood up, wiped away the dust and grime, and inspected it. Shyia knew how to read well enough, she’d at least received that much education from her brief stints in the schools the city tried to reopen to the public at large and from her erstwhile guardians back in Beckers. But she couldn’t make out any meaning from this, it read PVJD-340. A registration number.

That wouldn’t do at all for a name, Shyia thought. Then the lights sputtered out and all the hum of a living machine died away, replaced again by the punishing silence of the thick night air and the dull, perpetual hum of distant engines. But Shyia knew that the ship still had life in it, it still worked, it just needed to be fixed. And she felt it, that it just might be her ticket off this city.