by Amy Lane
Taern was strong enough to hold him up.
“You take care of yourself, Nyx. I don’t know what you’re planning, but if I’m not there, it can’t possibly be sensible.”
Dorjan broke away from the hug and turned to leave. He winked before he threw open the curtains and led Areau back through wherever he’d come from. “Don’t worry, Cricket. I’ve got Areau for backup. We’ll be fine.”
“Speaking of which,” Areau was saying as their voices grew fainter, “I’m worried about the gas to solid ratio….”
His voice went away, and Taern fell back against the pillows.
He must have closed his eyes and slept for a while before what felt to be a sudden change in air pressure woke him up. He lay there, eyes wide open in the faintly lit black of the asteroid mine, his heart pounding and sweat slowly soaking through his hair, sliding down his chest, saturating the sheets at his back.
A deafening roar rocked the floor beneath the bed and shook the entire room Taern was in, and that alone sent Taern to his feet. He grabbed the sheet to wrap around his naked waist before pattering barefoot along the hard, stony ground in search of wherever Areau had come from and Dorjan had disappeared down.
He found what appeared to be a tube, with a ladder in the middle. He bent down and pushed tentatively on the sides of the tube, deciding it appeared to be some sort of vegetable matter. The air coming through it seemed to be heated somehow, and the explosive roar of something burning hot and fast could be heard as well. Taern was too tired and achy to hop, but he could still climb a ladder, especially one like this one. Although it was held together with ropes, it was made with side slats and silken cords, including a sort of corded handrail that made lowering himself through the tube to the ground almost as easy as lying in bed, worrying himself to death.
The tube was fairly long, and he was leaning a lot on the handrails at the end, but finally he hopped into the snow beneath the opening and ducked, emerging from the womblike atmosphere of the asteroid and blinking hard to accustom himself to the gray daylight and the cold. And then the giant orange ball of fire about half a league away stole all of his attention—and all of his breath.
Standing halfway between Taern and the ball of orange, which was slowly collapsing on itself in a jagged black implosion of burning gas and matter, was a lone figure in black. As Taern watched, the figure sank slowly to his knees, his face in his hands, his shoulders shaking as though he were sobbing his life away.
Taern found himself running, heedless of the soreness of his body and his bare feet on the snow and the cold, and ignoring the burning ash stinging the air and the acrid smell of combusting gas.
The Glorious Redemption
THE train ride was interminable. First Areau worried about Krissa and then about Taern, and then about Dorjan because if Taern didn’t make it, Dorjan’s heart couldn’t take it.
Then he remembered why Dorjan was so fragile, why Taern was his last hope, why so much of the world’s future rested on the shoulders of one strong, worn battling man.
And then he worried some more. He worried about his experiments and he worried about what Krissa had told him before he left and if he could become the man she would need. He worried about how sad his people would be with the loss of their friend. He was driving himself to distraction with worry, his breath coming in pants, his body craving some sort of violence to it to calm him down. When he realized he’d used his nails to score the back of his hands bloody, he laced his fingers together and took a deep breath.
He needed to think about something else.
He thought about science. He thought about the science of the mines. He thought about the gases present in the air humans breathed and he thought about the incremental changes in those gases that made them volatile and susceptible to flame.
He thought of the stability of the asteroids and how even the most hollowed-out orbs had walls a good six hands thick, and about how combustible the gas would have to be to have the smallest thing—a boot heel striking off a hard granite or slate surface—in order to ignite it.
He busied himself doing calculations on the window of the millipede, ignoring the clackety clack of the legs rising and falling with the torque bars across the iron wheels, and every calculation he did led him to the same conclusion:
Broken, not dead; destroyed, not annihilated; no certainty of success, only certainty of failure.
What would happen to Kyon’s Keep if the wrong people survived what they planned?
He practically ran out of the train station, looking around wildly for the cricket Dorjan had promised. It was there, driven by his father, and Areau had a moment of disorientation. What was Coreau doing there, driving a cricket?
It wasn’t until he went to haul himself up that he saw his father had lowered himself off the machine and was standing, his weathered face hopeful, his arms open. Areau realized that his father was waiting for a proper greeting.
How many years had they arrived home, and Areau had ignored his father to rush back to his rooms and sulk? He’d hated visits home—he and Dorjan would bond in the asteroids, and he would have to admit that Dorjan’s flesh was not hateful, and he’d have to give over his body to something pleasant, and he’d have to admit the abomination of what he’d been doing to Dorjan in his unspoken addiction.
He’d taken it out on everybody, hadn’t he?
He took a moment and embraced his father, clutching him tightly and not fearing, not this time, for the disappointment he must have been. Krissa loved him. He would be worthy.
He pulled back and smiled, putting his heart in it. “I take it Dorjan preceded me?”
Coreau nodded. “His young man—it’s touch and go. The niskets are all aflutter—I think they like him very much, and you know how they worry over Dorjan.”
Areau nodded. “Well, we managed to beat the Forum here,” he said thoughtfully. “Dorjan and I have a plan.”
Coreau grimaced. “You’re both too quick for me, son. I’m afraid to even ask.”
Areau smiled brightly. “Oh, it’s easy enough, father!” He shrugged. “Put all their eggs in one basket, and then step on it!”
Areau had forgotten how wonderful his father’s laugh was, how deep and resonant, how it made children want to laugh too, and put adults at ease. Spontaneously, he embraced Coreau again, gratified when his father returned it. He pulled away suddenly, not embarrassed but hurried.
“I need to stop home,” he said, and then felt bad. “Not to see Mum, although that will be a plus, but I need something there from my lab.”
Coreau nodded. “Well, your mum will be happy to see you.” He smiled, and it was Areau’s smile, plus a few years and a lot more practice. It was even teeth in tanned skin, and blond hair that had gone white and black with age. It was Areau’s blue-eyed gaze, the one he thought he’d never be able to look in a mirror again, looking out at him with affection and hope.
Areau thought the hope was what hurt the worst. Oh, Da, can I earn that? Please, give me time to earn it!
The trip home had never been so long.
His mother embraced him, and his pregnant sister too, although he gave her a hard time about not having enough room in her lap to hug anybody, much less him. His other sisters were at Dre’s keep, and had been, he learned, since Dorjan’s message to them after he had beaten a leather punching bag to powder, distraught at the loss of so many good men. Kyon’s Keep had sent as many people and supplies as they could ship out, because so very many of the soldiers who had died, betrayed by their country, had come from either Dre’s keep or Kyon’s, and Kyon’s had help to spare.
The cricket was set on leap, and as they soared over full grain silos and storehouses stocked with preserved vegetables, Areau found a moment to be grateful for the farsightedness of Dorjan and of the hale, intelligent man at the controls. As he’d done his calculations in the millipede on the way over, he’d seen fields lying fallow that should have been made ready for the spring. He’d seen hexacows
, gaunt, unfed, untethered, wandering around on six legs that were not all sound, rooting in the snow for grain or any source of sustenance, and they would surely not produce meat nor milk come spring. Suddenly all of Dorjan’s anxiety over food, and how much the keep had, and how many of the civilians had been conscripted into the military, began to filter into Areau’s thick head. None of those soldiers were able to help produce food—what would people eat when the snows melted?
Areau’s friend and father had been part of making sure that at least their family and friends would be able to answer that question, and Areau was proud.
After the cricket made its final leap and landed in the courtyard of the sprawling villa of Kyon’s Keep, Areau scrambled down the side of the thing and ran to the kitchen for his greeting, and then he sprinted to his room for the tiny instant flame he’d used to light his burners and candles as well as the bundle of fuses he hoped was still good. He ran back and hugged everybody again, harder, regretful because he didn’t have time to talk, which was a shame. He was longing to sing happiness about Krissa, about her news, about finally being a brother and a son and a true lover and not just a pitiful addict dragging his family down to worry.
He hopped back on the cricket still smelling vanilla and flour from his mother’s kitchen, and giving his father last-minute instructions.
“They’ll arrive here—don’t let them settle down. Tell them if they’re planning on taking over, they need to visit the mines first. They have their own conveyances—like rabbits, but autonomously powered. They make a horrific stink; I saw them exiting the city. Direct them to the northernmost mine. I’ll be there to direct them inside.”
“Then what?”
Areau grimaced. “Well, there will be miners coming in through the hexacow fields—get them under cover as quickly as possible. I, uhm, whatever happens next, it’s not going to be safe.”
Coreau’s eyes widened. “Be careful, son! Take good care of our keeper, as well!”
Areau nodded, shame stinging him. “For once, I can promise that with a whole heart.” And with that he waved one more time and engaged.
He asked the niskets to guide him to Dorjan, somehow just needing to think of his friend to see the tiny line of flickering lights that led to the southernmost asteroid. It was the one with the smallest cavern, Areau thought, and it was the one the farthest from where they were going to lead the threescore Forum Masters and Triari who had taken to vehicles and gone off to conquer their own province.
He had a moment, when the cricket was in midleap, to think of what a glorious sight the asteroids were. They were black-brown-and-gray rocks, which matched the bright winter-gray sky in a way, and snow crusted over their craggy asymmetrical surfaces. They looked like winter flowers bobbing slightly with the wind, snow coating their odd-shaped tops, as they clung to the earth by the umbilicals Areau’s mother used to say the niskets spun out of dreams and wishes.
It was still daylight, but not for long, and in one of his leaps, Areau saw an exhaust cloud over the horizon and knew that he might have gotten there in time but that it was still going to be close.
He was sincerely glad to see Taern alive, that spun-sugar nonsense about them needing each other sounding substantial and true when he spilled it out, and Dorjan’s half smile was well worth the effort. But as they scrambled down the umbilical to earth, Areau knew he needed to bounce his newest idea off of Dorjan to see if there was something they could do.
“The gas ratio?” Dorjan asked, squinting. He did look terrible. Areau thought he might have been bled nearly to death in an attempt to save Taern, not that he’d admit it.
“Yes—if the asteroid’s not ready to just float away on its own, we need a way to make it combust.”
Dorjan grunted. “Slow, slow—why must I always be so slow!”
Areau grimaced. Dorjan was only slow compared to Areau himself. “Science was not your strong point,” he admitted, “but that doesn’t mean you don’t have good ideas.”
Dorjan’s gimlet eyes glaring in his direction told him he hadn’t made things better, but then Dorjan grunted and got back to thinking.
“We would need to pump the asteroid with more than just its share, then,” Dorjan said thoughtfully. “Gas compresses, right?”
Areau nodded. “Yes—that’s the blessing. If we have the niskets swarm the entrance after the gits have gone up into the cavern, we can compress the gas. But how do we make sure it will explode once they cut the umbilical? Compressed gas doesn’t float, Dorjan—it sinks, becomes liquid. It may freeze them all to death or even asphyxiate them, but not in the time it’s going to take that thing to crash to the ground, and there’s no guarantee it’s going to crash with enough momentum to do more than rattle them around like marbles in a cookie tin. And then we’d really be cooked, wouldn’t we, because they’d be alive and pissed, and we’d have to give them the secret just to keep the family alive, and—”
“We will never give the secret,” Dorjan said, striding to the cricket.
The crickets used here no longer needed steam armor to power them. It was an innovation Areau had programmed. Even when he’d been at his worst, he’d been able to imagine an independent steam power source. He’d sent the specs to his father, and he reckoned that Kyon’s Keep had the only civilian crickets on the planet.
Dorjan put one foot in the stirrup and wrapped his hand in the pull strap, then went to push himself up—
And fell back down, swearing and clinging to the strap at the pommel. Before Areau could ask him if he needed help, he tried again and this time succeeded before offering Areau a hand up.
Areau put his feet in the stirrups and wrapped his arms around his friend’s waist when he didn’t have to. “How close was it?” he asked, near Dorjan’s ear, no longer afraid of the intimacy or what it would mean to his manhood if he enjoyed the closeness, enjoyed giving his friend the strength Areau had not had to give in so very long.
“It was damned close,” Dorjan breathed, relaxing into his arms for a moment. “The niskets flat-out refused to take any more blood from me.” The breath of bitter laughter shook them both. “Little bastards. Seemed to think I was being impatient.”
“You were, you git!” Areau said gently. “Now come along. Let’s clear out the mines before those bloody awful fossil fuel conveyances get here!”
They did, leaping the cricket from mine to mine, telling the workers (there were only a few per mine because the niskets liked space to work, and they could be dangerous when they clouded) to jump on the crickets, paddle-cycles, or electric sleds gathered at the root of the umbilicals and hurry back to the keep as fast as they could. Areau directed them to go around the building proper and take the back gate, the one that led through the hexacow fields—yes, even though that meant tracking shite to the keep, it was worth it. At each mine, as they powered the cricket for another leap, they saw a gratifying trail of men crawling down the ladders like ants down a flower stem, getting ready to flee to the safety of the keep.
Finally, at the last mine, the men were scurrying away behind them, and Areau hopped off the cricket. “I’ll conduct them inside,” he said, gesturing nervously to the line of exhaust trailing the big buses that were heading their way. “You climb up and hide in this one.” He gestured to the asteroid next to the last one.
Dorjan nodded, then said, “Wait, Ari—your hair. Pull it in front of your face there. If they don’t see the scars, they won’t wonder.”
Areau blinked and then grimaced. “Hells, for a minute, I’d forgotten they were there!”
“I never see them,” Dorjan said, smiling weakly. “I was just worried about you, and I remembered.”
Areau looked at him, hanging on to the cricket by force of will. “Well, I’m worried about you! Climb up—hurry.”
“Are you sure you have a long enough fuse?” Dorjan asked.
Areau nodded, but inwardly he was worried. The fuse was left over from his days experimenting with steam versus combustion pr
opulsion. He and Dorjan had launched countless rockets, and part of each launch had been painstakingly wrapping sulfur and saltpeter in laboriously measured quantities into thin strips of resin-soaked cloth in order to make the fuse. He’d had some left—enough to launch a rocket from a safe distance away, but not, he feared, enough to launch an asteroid.
“I’ll call you down when we need to get the niskets,” he shouted and then hopped down and took the cricket to the last asteroid mine.
The Forum Masters were a rude lot, he decided as they all pushed past him imperiously, yammering about how they would have to find a more convenient way to access the mines were they to make visits a regular occurrence. The rudeness included Septra himself, whom even Areau could recognize after seeing him so often as a cadet. Dorjan was right. The fucker had aged damned well. Areau kept his eyes averted and introduced himself as a mining foreman, and nobody looked twice at him.
“They said we’d learn the secrets to mining in here,” Septra said, surprising him as they waited for the last of the other Masters to go up.
“Aye, Forum Master,” Areau muttered, keeping his eyes down.
“I’m a Triari, you simpleton. Do you not know what it is?”
Areau looked up the umbilical to where the last Forum Master was disappearing into the center of the cavern. Then he looked Septra directly in the eyes, his hand playing with the long knife he’d palmed from his room when he’d needed to cut the last of the fuse off the spool. “I know exactly who you are, you nutless fucker,” he said, thinking he owed Taern a debt of thanks. Swearing had never been so fun. “You’re the man who sicced an army on a defenseless keep and let untried boys massacre innocent people in the name of your own greed.”
Septra’s eyes widened, and he sneered. “I see even the peasants are educated in Kyon’s Keep—how very egalitarian of them. Shall be the first thing I change.”
“I invented your cricket, you arse-reaming git. I powered your entire army, and I spent ten years paying for the sin of believing a… a bureaucrat had the honor of a soldier. Go ahead. Go up and learn the secret of the bloody mines. Don’t think you don’t have your own lessons to learn.”