The Tropic of Eternity

by Tom Toner

  “It’s gone,” Maneker gasped, his false eye wonky in its socket. Lycaste wondered why he didn’t just close his helmet. “Perception did it . . . It worked.”

  “Do you think we got them all?” Lycaste asked, his eyes still searching the murk.

  Maneker looked at him. “There’s only one way to know for sure.”

  Eventually the wind appeared to change, blowing the shroud of smoke away across the gully, and the view drifted from grey to green.

  The ancient trees, coated so thickly with moss that they practically dripped the stuff, were gnarled with jewel-studded cankers. Glossy red beetles fluttered from the mulch that squelched beneath their boots, the moss exhaling a succulent mist that shrouded the dense carpet of greenery. What sounded like the gabble of hundreds of thousands of birds echoed across the canopy.

  Lycaste peered through the stands of trees, searching for movement. They were heading back towards the bank where they’d been fired upon, trying to curve past it. He kept his faceplate locked, vision steamed with moisture and sweat. Huerepo rode once more on his shoulders, and the drumming of the little Vulgar’s heart seeped through their various fabrics and metals until it seemed to mix with Lycaste’s own.

  “Look,” Huerepo said tiredly over the comms.

  Lycaste glanced up, following the Vulgar’s gloved finger. Clusters of glinting, gem-laden fruit dangled just above his head.

  “You Amaranthine are a bunch of bloody hoarders,” Huerepo said after a moment’s silence, looking at Maneker. He reached from Lycaste’s shoulders and plucked one of the fruits, pulling it apart to get at the sapphires inside. “All these riches, just lying around.”

  Lycaste glanced at Maneker, who appeared not to be listening as he studied the jungle ahead. His eye had worked loose now, dangling, though he didn’t appear to have noticed.

  “But the Prism come to the Firmament, to your house of embarrassing riches, in desperate need of compassion.” He chewed, counting through the blue stones in his palm. “But you never have anything to give.”

  Maneker shook his head, cupping the eye and replacing it before closing his helmet. Lycaste heard the grating sound as he screwed the collar shut, the muffled thump and swearing as his eye fell out again.

  They were descending, their footing unsure on the slippery moss. Lycaste braced himself against trees as he moved downwards, working his way into the misted hollow of an unguessably large space.

  “Will the lights even be on?” Lycaste asked. “I thought the Foundry was never used these days.”

  “There shouldn’t be a problem,” Maneker said. “The Firmament has run on perpetual motion for six thousand years. These Vaulted Lands will work perfectly until the day they collapse in upon themselves.”

  Lycaste glanced up through the trees. “When do you think that’ll happen?”

  “Oh, we’ve got a while yet.”

  He looked in Maneker’s direction. Only the glimmer of his single wonky eye shone through the polarised plastic of the eyeholes.

  The Amaranthine slowed, Lycaste following suit and staring into the trees. Sounds were filtering out of the jungle ahead.

  Single thumps, some seconds apart, were falling across the jungle like the striking of a huge hammer. They rose in volume as the three crept nearer.

  “Someone’s made it,” Maneker said. “They’ve started up the machines.”

  They followed a winding valley between green hills of stashed junk so thick with moss that only their sharp angles gave their foundations away. Thick, elderly-looking trees shot through with twisted metal barbs sprouted from them, suggesting to Lycaste that the waste pile they wandered through had been here for a very long time.

  He stumbled, his footing abruptly disappearing from under him, sinking up to his waist in the moss. Huerepo grabbed Lycaste’s ears to keep from falling, cursing.

  Maneker took his elbow, levering him slowly out. Lycaste checked his legs and examined the hole he’d almost fallen through. For a moment, his head swam.

  “Old ship parts, stacked high,” Maneker said, hurrying on.

  Lycaste nodded, following more carefully. He’d not been able to see the floor of that underground world through the hole that nearly claimed him, but the dribbles of water from the broken moss were probably still falling back there, into darkness.

  They came to an expanse of flat moss at least half a mile wide, stippled with scraggly trees. Lycaste opened his faceplate, drinking in the cool air; out across the misted land was a vast, dim cavern, a demi-hexagon punched into the jungle hills. The entrance to the Foundry of the Greater Interior.

  They walked into the shadow of the hundred-foot arch, the booming of the mechanisms drowning their footfalls.

  Lycaste peered into the dimness. A series of giant cogs, arranged

  into a toothy ramp, led down into the gloom. He would have to climb each tooth himself and then hoist the other two after him.

  Maneker and Huerepo sighed as they observed the drop, the Amaranthine glancing in Lycaste’s direction.

  “Imagine if I’d stayed on the Epsilon,” he said, flashing him a weak smile.

  Maneker stared at him a moment, a scowl forming, before breaking into a grin of his own. Lycaste almost slipped and fell at the sight.

  A breeze rose from the tunnel to greet them, warm and foul-scented with whatever death lay down there. They turned back to the darkness, Lycaste sensing something watching them.

  Come on.

  “Percy!” Huerepo cried. “You fine fellow!”

  Maneker pushed Lycaste aside. “What do you see down there, Perception?”

  I’ll go on ahead, sniff them out.

  Perception travelled down and down through darkness, a blacker shade of shadow darting through arched stone caverns the size of temples of old, unspeakably pleased to have found Lycaste and his party at last.

  At a junction, it whispered to a stop, coiling its fingers into the stone and hanging there, awed.

  The place truly had been built to a monumental scale.

  In a white chamber perhaps twenty-five miles from wall to wall stood a frame of massive star-shaped gantries, each possessed of twenty-four points in the image of the Firmamental flag. Hung from each were row after row of glossy cupolas that shone green and blue like oil; what Perception took to be the engine cowlings of the fabled Amaranthine dreadnoughts. The Spirit absorbed the sight, tingling. Never had it seen anything built to such a monumental, inhuman scale. Each of the hanging cowlings must have been more than two miles across, the size of a small Prism city. Those odd, apparently sentient sparks swarmed the place in a hot white flurry, moving in indecipherable weather patterns across the room and coiling back under some mighty convection, illuminating the vast place in a harsh glare. The Spirit extended itself and caught one, observing its angry, sputtering little light, then dragged its gaze away, peering through the gantries to a gigantic orifice of an opening: the Star Chamber, the place where everything of any consequence in the Firmament had been made.

  Perception detached from the ceiling and dropped the ten miles to the chasm floor, spying minuscule Pifoon going about their tiny business all around him. It would take Lycaste and Maneker all day to cross this place, at least, assuming they sprinted without a break and carried that little Huerepo all the way.

  Sounds brought its attention back to the Star Chamber’s distant entrance.

  There just wasn’t time. If it was going to do this, it had to do it now.

  The Satrap Alfieri’s gunships soared overhead, pursued by a squadron of Lacaille jets. Another blinding flash illuminated the clouds, tearing them away like washed ink and revealing the other side of the world at last. Lycaste craned his neck, marvelling at the steaming rainfall. The Satrap must have detonated the skycharge.

  Huerepo, still seated on his shoulders, tapped him on the side of the head. “Honestly now, Lycaste, it’s time to go.”

  “I know, I know.” He turned from the scene and bundled Maneker into his arms.
The Amaranthine went willingly enough, his beady eye staring into nothingness, chest rising and falling quickly as Lycaste climbed down, dropping the last few feet to the next cog. The scent of death, sweetish and musky, grew stronger immediately.

  Abruptly, the Immortal’s lips began to move, whispering something in the dark.

  The teeth of the cog they stood upon started to roll, trembling and squealing as the mechanism ground through centuries of disuse. Lycaste braced himself, making his wobbly way to the next tooth as it rotated into view.

  “There is an Amaranthine down there who knows more secret Incantations than I,” Maneker said as they moved. “You must stop him before he has a chance to speak.”

  Perception travelled beneath a line of huge vices, snaking between the sparks, extending itself into a ribbon. It hesitated as it came to a gigantic set of templates strung across the gantries, a place where molten iridium could be spun like glass into the most delicate of shapes, and floated in among them, listening keenly. Far below, the floor of the Foundry was thronged with the dots of a crowd. Perception could make out their little Pifoon faces, all turned in the direction of the Star Chamber. It accelerated hard, wriggling the last few hundred feet to the great hole itself and pausing at the entrance.

  Hui Neng stepped down from the Ignioz and craned his neck to look up at the open StarMouth, framed now in a column of black smoke from the Grand-Tile’s sudden demise. Draped from the distant ceiling were one hundred enormous Firmamental banners hanging some miles above his head, memorials to a greatness that he’d helped create. Around him swarmed the elite, cobalt-armoured Op-Zor Lacaille, Eoziel’s knights-in-training, taking up defensive positions throughout the Star Chamber, the Satraps Downfield and Nerida busily screaming directions. He glanced at Elise, Satrap of Port Elsbet, nodding to her. She looked emptily back at him, a Pifoon at her side trying to get her attention. Hui Neng smiled grimly. None of them had ever liked him much.

  He turned, his skin prickling. The shadow of the Long-Life watched him from the Ignioz’s hatch, his Shell-shaped pendant catching a gleam of light.

  Hui Neng moved to help him but the Caudipteryx refused his hand, throwing down its cane and stumbling on ahead, past caring. Hui Neng stood to watch, painfully aware that he and all the Amaranthine, humanity and even Prism life alike were at this moment gone from the being’s thoughts.

  Aaron, staring around himself in wonder, dwindled to a hobbling speck, his long reflection lost among those of the all the blue knights on the Foundry’s polished floor. Hui Neng followed his gaze. The cavernous place had played host to a display once, for the Venerable Empress Abigail, with all the military might of the ProtoFirmament arranged on this very floor for her inspection. Hui Neng remembered the lumbering craft lifting out of the StarMouth and darkening the air, rising to join their fellows inside the hangars of the dreadnoughts that waited in the clouds.

  Now his attention turned to the preparations the Pifoon here had made, ready for their arrival.

  *

  Huerepo scuttled beside Lycaste’s great lumbering footsteps. Slowly, very slowly, the dimness of the place receded, replaced with a soft golden glow, revealing the full extent of the cavern around them. Sturdy shelves as high as the eye could see towered over them, their mysterious contents illuminated by floating Amaranthine sparks. Huerepo ran his eye along the dark alleyways to either side of them, his pistol clutched tight, trying to comfort himself with the thought that Perception must have come this way already. At the antechamber’s far edge was a vast, slowly brightening disc of light, the entrance to the Foundry proper, looming on the horizon like a smog-dimmed sun. Huerepo felt almost pinned to the floor by the size of the interior space; he’d never been anywhere so cavernous, so out of scale, and his little body shrank at the sight. He looked away from the great arches of the ceiling, noticing Lycaste’s sensitive ears twitch: floating from that gaping mouth of light came the percussive sounds of a fight.

  Maneker dashed ahead, his grubby cloak trailing through the puddles. The constellation of glowing sparks that suffused the higher reaches began to bob and spread, a few of their number drawn to Maneker’s presence and descending quickly to hover over him, lighting the way towards the Star Chamber. Huerepo felt his little heart aching, wishing for some rest. It wasn’t as if he or any of them could stop or even slow what was to come.

  “Lycaste!” he called, watching the giant stumbling on ahead. “I’m sorry, I—”

  “Not to worry,” the Melius rumbled, spinning to scoop him up. He settled Huerepo gently on his shoulders and strode on, catching up with Maneker in a pace or two. Huerepo patted his shoulder, listening to the Amaranthine’s ragged breathing at their side. “You’re a good lad,” he whispered, wishing Lycaste had stayed behind, where it was safe.

  The Satrap Alfieri directed his gunships towards the StarMouth, gaping and luminous beneath them. Perception had given peculiar orders to do as little damage as possible to the place once the Grand-Tile had been dispatched, but he would follow them to the letter.

  “I think it’s your turn now, my friends,” he said into his helmet. “So it is,” came the static-heavy reply.

  Alfieri twisted in his seat, observing through the cockpit as a magnificent storm of Jurlumticular craft came roaring past on either side, the screams of their acceleration cutting out his helmet feed.

  The arrow hulls popped the sound barrier as they raced through the clouds, falling towards the jungle and loosing trailing phosphorescent charges. They dropped through the Mouth and into the Foundry, deluging the Star Chamber with a blinding mist of light.

  Maneker recoiled from the sudden flash. The seething crowd of Pifoon that had been jabbering at them did the same, staring off towards the huge entrance to the Star Chamber. A ribbon of molten metal dribbled from the apparatus above, falling slowly through the gantries and splashing across the floor.

  Hui Neng found himself huddled beneath the Ignioz’s nose, his thoughts muddied, the world stained white. Booted feet thumped past, drawing his attention to the blazing mess of the Star Chamber itself. The Op-Zor never had a chance.

  The entrance to the Star Chamber, ringed by a stupendous, rusted rib of dismantled hollowing lathe, flashed a searing white, the thunder of arriving ships booming through the vast space and loosing more of the molten metal from the ceiling. Lycaste’s eyes recovered in time to see the arrival of the Satrap’s ships, glowering rifle-shaped shadows dropping through the miles of smoke that shrouded the great hole in the Chamber’s ceiling and opening strobing pink fire onto the masses down below. There must have been thousands already in conflict, an exchanged glitter of a hundred neon flashes. Lycaste’s ears closed with a wet pop, shielding themselves as one of the ships absorbed a broadside, gouting flame.

  Sparkers arced over the stew of soldiers, illuminating them within the shade of the great fighting ships, which cast dark clouds that dimmed the whiteness of the huge place and allowed Lycaste’s eyes to adjust. A detachment of Jurlumticular came striding up, surrounding Maneker and Lycaste and taking them off to one side, to one of the enormous sculpted feet of the gantries that bracketed the doorway. The sparks, hovering low over the Amaranthine and sputtering like indignant little dogs, appeared to object.

  “Stay here, Amaranthine,” one of the Jurlumticular rumbled, hoisting a Prism weapon Lycaste hadn’t seen before and babbling to his squad. They took cover at the huge, machined edges of the doorway, looking out across the quarter-mile of floor to those at the other side, the frequencies in their suits crackling with quick conversation. The conflict was still so distant that it resembled the roar of waves on a beach, beating and breaking and sighing back, funnelled into the next chamber by the vast tunnel of the doors.

  Maneker escaped the cordon of Jurlumticular to peer around the gantry, his mechanical eye working in its socket. Someone, most likely an Immortal, ignited a swathe of the fighting troops in white, blinding fire. A bolt whined past, bent off course by the repulsive force of his coppe
r pauldrons, and the Jurlumticular grabbed him back.

  A Lacaille ship came powering through the gap, roaring overhead into the darkness of the factory space, lumen pulses trained on whatever pursued it. It banked and swept away, off into the dim distance from which Lycaste and the others had run, a dark little shape zipping through the caverns.

  “All right,” the Jurlumticular said, bustling them out. “We go.” Lycaste followed their hurried, clumping steps into the open, between the doors, his head ducked. At the bottom of a steep ramp, the battle raged, armies of thousands surrounded by the vast expanse of blinding white.

  “Go!” the Jurlumticular repeated, pushing Lycaste from behind, a phalanx of riflemen bringing up the rear. He staggered forwards, packed between them, a full head taller than anyone else.

  “Lycaste,” Maneker cried over the noise, “let me sit on your shoulders!”

  He gave the Amaranthine an awkward leg up, staggering a little under the man’s wiry weight as those behind him pushed on, some of the Jurlumticular beginning to object. Huerepo climbed into the crook of his arm, struggling as they began to jog.

  Maneker wobbled on Lycaste’s shoulders, the shield wall of Jurlumticular continuing their push down the slope of the ramp. The smoky breeze ruffled his hair, his artificial eye taking in the surge of fighting down below. Fuming pink clouds of sparker smoke drifted across the scene, the massed thunder of yells and shouts punctuated by the Satrap Alfieri’s gunships firing messily into the surging armies beneath. A bolt bomb detonated in the far reaches of the chamber, deluging the tumultuous crowds with shrapnel, soon followed by an eruption of cheap splinter bombs hurling slivers of wood and the steam of boiler cannons flooding over the crowds. The Jurlumticular, in response, were busily employing Perception’s ghastly weapons, and Maneker could see snipers nearby unloading their venomous bullets into the distance.

  He steadied himself, shifting his weight fully onto the back of Lycaste’s neck, and searched the periphery of the conflict for lone figures. He remembered this place from millennia past, a recurring stage upon which his dreams had played out. His eye moved across the Star Chamber to a large recessed rectangle patterned with Firmamental sigils and the dots of panicked Pifoon workers milling around it. He backtracked, sighting along what must have been the straight-est line from the fight, and found him. A figure, no more than a suggestion of shadow on the bright floor, was working its way towards the bay.