Chapter 6 of 89 · Book 7, This Inevitable Ruin

Chapter 6 — Party Planner

Book: This Inevitable Ruin · Part: The Ceasefire · Previous: Chapter 5 — Dante; Sir Rendlegore · Next: Chapter 7 — Donut Holes; the Semeru dwarf · Floor: Floor 9 — Faction Wars · Series: the series

Opening

Louis’s celestial box came with a pair of items.

Summary

Louis's celestial box: an Airship Portal, a tier-three guild upgrade that lets Imani as guild leader mark three personal spaces as airports — any saferoom with open air above it, the college tower included — with a dimensional hangar, a mechanic to hire, and a physical trap door on the saferoom's roof that can be destroyed like the stairwell doors were; the install warned that no airships will be allowed on the tenth floor. Elle says the tenth has never felt so far away; Donut stiffens on Carl's shoulder, and the thing nobody has discussed since the tiara went on her head sits there unsaid. Waiting for the elevator, Carl sees tinsel on the floor that survived the memory simulation, so must have been looted on an earlier floor, and the ground drops an inch under him: a simulation of a simulation, real consequences colliding with make-believe, Pater Coal's remembered 'We all have our limitations', Lightning Lou the gas-station dog he curled up beside on Christmas Day while he weighed the edge of a precipice, and Paulie's 'Be sure it's your only option.' The eye on his chest blinks. The hangar holds Party Planner, a fifty-foot silver tube on chopper skids with a tinted B-29 nose and a glass belly, a tilt-rotor with eight propellers that fold out of the fuselage, run on a silver-cased soul crystal like the Twister — named for what Firas wanted to call the Twister and Louis called stupid. Its card, with the stealth off: Casket in the Sky, Tilt Rotor Stealth Light Bomber, tier-three Armor for Faction Wars purposes, owned by Army Air General Louis Santiago 2, 'a lighter-than-air, long-range death delivery system' that is 'one of the final waypoints on the this-is-how-they-killed-themselves list': fast, low, stealthy, lightly armed, and every bomb it drops gains fifty per cent yield, more with custom bombs — and a warning that future floors may not allow airships at all. Room for a crew of five, Samantha claiming the ball turret without knowing what one is. Donut has read the rules: a team may start with ten Armor, but anything stolen after the fighting starts is kept, so 'steal all the other airplanes'; Florin, whose general's rank has given him the rulebook, wants to know what the other teams have and how it is paid for, and reads the ramp-up phase's timed restrictions as the thing to plan around. He, Elle and Imani head for the base; Carl's next move is a reunion.

Characters

• Louis and Firas — Louis's Party Planner, named for a joke he once called stupid; a pilot of a casket.
• Carl — Tinsel from the wrong reality; the eye blinks; Paulie's warning in his head.
• Princess Donut — Stiffens at the tenth floor; has read the Armor rules.
• Florin — The general who wants the enemy's hardware list first.
• Elle McGibbons — 'I've never felt as if the next floor was so far away.'
• Samantha — 'I call the ball-turret!'

Locations

• Larracos — The college saferoom's roof is now an airport.
• Party Planner — The hangar; a sleek silver bullet-train car of a bomber.

Motifs

• Faction Wars — Armor: ten at the start, more by theft; the ramp-up's timed restrictions.
• The failsafe — 'It's the end of everything' — the precipice Carl nearly stepped off beside a dog.
• The Crown of the Sepsis Whore — Unspoken since the tiara went on; the tenth floor is the hard thing ahead.
• The tenth floor — No airships allowed there; Elle has never felt it so far away.