Starfall

by Jamie Sedgwick

  The machines closed in, driving their fists and feet into his body, smashing the gears and components that allowed him to move. They crushed his chest, damaging the tiny boiler that powered him. The synthetic blue-black fur they tore away in shreds, revealing the metal components underneath. These too, they smashed.

  Socrates gave out one last breath of steam and his body went still. The androids lifted his heavy body unceremoniously onto a steamwagon. According to Altaire’s instructions, they carted the automaton’s remains back to the laboratory for disassembly. Part by part, they stripped Socrates down to nothing. The gears and springs went into bins along the wall. The actuators and pistons went to the scrap heap for recycling.

  “What about this?” one of the machines asked its supervisor. In its mechanical hands, the robot displayed what was left of the ape’s skull, stripped of fur to reveal shiny bronze and brass components.

  The supervisor took the skull and looked it over. The android made an odd humming sound, and looked closer, peering into the strange circuitry inside. “I recognize this component,” it said at last. “It is a logic circuit. By far the most complex I have ever seen. I think we may have a use for this...”

  With that, the supervisor wandered off. The laborer went back to work, stripping and sorting the remaining useful components.

  Chapter 23

  Once it had become clear to River that there was no way through the subway’s doors, she began searching for another route of escape. She walked along the tracks, pausing now and then to collect a scrap of fabric suitable to add to her torch, trying her best not to disturb the ancient skeletons piled up in the center of the tunnel. It didn’t seem right to disturb them.

  These were people once, she thought. Humans. Thousands of them. An entire city’s worth...

  River had decided that somehow, the machines in Ironhold had become self-aware. They had risen up against the humans, murdered them, and disposed of the bodies here in the subway. This was the only logical answer. As wild as it sounded, there was a precedent. Before his exposure to starfall, Socrates had been little more than a toy. He had been a machine -no more, no less. But somehow, after massive exposure to the element, the starfall had infused the mechanical gorilla with a life and consciousness that was almost human. If it could happen once, it could happen again.

  When she thought about it, it wasn’t terribly different from the way starfall kept the Legion’s ghouls alive. There was no arguing that the ghouls should be dead, but somehow the element kept their nerves and brains functioning. The machines -some or all, she decided, it didn’t matter- had become self-aware and turned on their creators. It was that simple. And when viewed through that lens, their behavior made sense. The machines would have recognized Socrates as one of their own, another sentient, mechanical being.

  River on the other hand, represented everything that they had sought to destroy. She was human.

  Looking at the piles of gleaming skulls, the remains of so many men, women, and even children, River wondered what could have motivated the machines to hate humans enough to do this. Had it simply been their nature? Had they been born soulless and evil, like the ghouls? That didn’t seem likely. Socrates was proof that it didn’t always turn out that way, and with so many machines in Ironhold, some would have been good.

  Unless they were destroyed, too. That was a grim thought. Perhaps the machines, like the Legion, had simply eliminated any who chose to defy them.

  She continued her slow descent through the subway, until River discovered several abandoned railcars. There were rats here, scurrying in and out of the shadows, hiding under the railcars’ chassis. She ignored them as she stepped into one of the cars. Inside, unsurprisingly, she found more skeletons. There was something different about these ones, though. They were seated on the benches as if they had died while riding the train.

  These people had been going somewhere, she realized. They’d had luggage in the overhead compartments and tucked under the seats. She wondered if this was where it had begun. Was this where the machines had first turned on the humans, trapping them here in the subway?

  River looked into a decaying old bag next to one skeleton and found the powdered remains of what must have been a box of food before the rats found it. Also, she found two bottles of wine, perfectly preserved. River checked the other cars and found them much the same. There was little of use to her: no weapons, no tools, no fuel. If only she had bothered to pack a few powder charges before leaving the Horse...

  A mile or so down the line, River came to another door. It was a massive steel hangar door just like the one at the front of the tunnel. It appeared to lead up towards the ground level. Unfortunately, it was locked as well, and equally impenetrable. The subway was locked at both ends. Her situation was hopeless.

  River sat on the floor with her back against the wall. The torch flickered beside her, casting shadows across the piles of gleaming white bones. Her stomach rumbled and she tried to ignore the hunger pains gnawing at her gut. River couldn’t even remember the last time she had eaten. She closed her eyes and tried to calculate how long it had been since she left the castle. Was it late afternoon? Evening? Already, she was losing track of time.

  The exhaustion of the last few days crashed down on her, and River drifted into sleep. Her dreams were a flurry of images from the last few days: the rotting faces of ghouls wearing mechanical enhancements and carrying spears, bizarre grinning acrobats dancing in the streets of Ironhold, the giant mechanical Iron King sitting on his throne, his dull red eyes gleaming in the darkness.

  River dreamed of food that appeared before her -of banquet tables overflowing with roasted game and aged cheese and pitchers of ale and wine- but the moment she reached out to take something, the entire banquet vanished. Much like the horrifying images in her mind, the hunger was taunting her without mercy.

  When she woke, it was pitch black. River blinked, momentarily wondering if she had gone blind. The darkness was so complete that she began to see things in her vision, as if her mind was somehow projecting its thoughts and terrors into the inky blackness that surrounded her. River felt a small tremor of fear, as anyone might in that situation, but only enough that it caused her to reach down and touch the handle of her revolver. Satisfied that it was there, she slid her hand up to the corner of the wall to retrieve her torch and the shreds of clothing she had saved. She had tucked the flint into her belt pouch this time, so it was easy to locate. With just a single stroke, the torch flared to life.

  The hunger pangs had lessened into a constant feeling of emptiness, and River could feel her energy ebbing as she crawled to her feet. If this went on much longer, she might have to consider building traps to capture the rats she had seen in the lowest part of the tunnel. Not yet, she thought. She could go a lot longer without food. But she had needed something to drink...

  River made her way back to the low point in the subway, where she had found the train cars. She retrieved the bottles of wine and then headed back towards the exit. She didn’t really need to go all the way back to the end of the tunnel, but it was a much cleaner area. There weren’t so many skeletons or rats, and she preferred not to have such as drinking companions.

  River didn’t have a corkscrew, but it was easy enough to push the cork into the bottle. She settled down on the hard stone floor, tipped the bottle to her lips, and took a swig of the cool liquid. Her eyes widened a little as it poured down her throat. She had half-expected it to be vinegar, but it wasn’t. Not even close. It was smooth and dense, like liquid velvet on her tongue, and the aromas of oak and fruit filled her nostrils. She held the bottle up to examine it in the flickering torchlight.

  There was no printing on the ancient label. The ink had long since faded to transparency. The bottle itself had no special markings. She wondered if the wine had been considered special at the time, or if it had been something cheap and readily available. Either way, the decades -possibly even centuries- had perfected the drink.


  This place is a perfect wine cellar, she realized with a grim smile. A bottle of wine stored up above in the city would have long since soured. The hot summer days, the cold winter nights, the changes in humidity would have destroyed it. These things were devastating to wine. But here, underground, the temperature was cool and constant. There was no motion, nothing to shake the bottle and disturb the aging process.

  Of course, despite the lengthy mellowing, the wine remained a potent intoxicant. Or, at least it was potent on her long-empty stomach. After just a few drinks, River could feel the warmth moving through her limbs and the slight tingling sensation on her lips. She probably should have set the bottle aside. She couldn’t quite manage it. To her stomach and to her dehydrated lips, this was food. This was water. This was what her body needed, and it demanded more.

  An hour or so later, River was stumbling around the tunnel with a half-empty bottle (the second one) in one hand, and the almost spent torch in the other. She talked to the skeletons, asking them silly questions like, “Good morning, Sir! And how are you today?” in a mock New Bostonian accent. Or, “Greetings madam. May I take your coat?”

  Of course, the conversation was inevitably disappointing, and not half as fun as taking the occasional pot-shot at a rat with her pistol. It only took a few discharges to teach the rats to avoid her. One shot ricocheted off the hard floor, hit the wall, and ricocheted again through the glass window right next to her. The window shattered, and River turned to stare. It slowly dawned on her that if the bullet had been a few inches to one side it might have killed her. Having learned her lesson, she holstered the weapon and made a silent pact with herself to leave it there.

  It was just as well, she decided. She might need one of those bullets for herself, if this went on much longer.

  A few hours later, River found herself back where she’d started. Having spent the better part of a day wandering through the subway, she had come to realize that her only hope for escape was Socrates. He had to come looking for her. If he didn’t, she was going to die.

  A dark mood came over her as she came to this realization, and she slumped back down in the corner. She let the torch burn down to almost nothing and then tossed an occasional scrap on top to keep it burning. She began to reflect on her life and the strange, wild adventure that had brought her to this place.

  She thought of Tinker and his wondrous creative personality. She thought of Kale, the haughty arrogant warrior who knew her better than anyone else alive. She thought of her mother, who River barely knew, and suddenly wished she had taken more time to get to know Breeze. Why had she left in such a hurry? What was it that had made her run away, instead of facing her fears?

  That’s what it was, she realized. Fear. What if Breeze had been disappointed in her? What if she didn’t accept River? What if she blamed her daughter for leaving her trapped in Sanctuary all those years?

  “I never came for you,” River said in a whisper, and felt the sting of tears brimming her eyes. “I’m sorry, mother...”

  There were others, too: the handful of friends she’d had throughout her life, the crewmembers who had become almost like family to her, and Socrates, who in some ways was a replacement for the father she’d never known. In other ways he was a lot like Tinker. If only Tinker were still alive. She wondered how the two of them would have gotten on together...

  Tears streamed down her cheeks. It was a strange sensation for her. River couldn’t remember the last time she had cried. It had always seemed something useless, a wasteful, silly thing that accomplished nothing. All her life, River had been strong. She’d had to be, growing up in a dirty and violent coastal town under the iron-fisted rule of the Sentinels and the Vangar overlords. River had learned to fight and survive from a very young age, and this sudden overwhelming sense of helplessness caught her off guard.

  She tried to fight back the tears, but images of Tinker and her mother came unbidden into her mind. She thought of her father and the stories she’d heard about him, the way he had sacrificed himself to save Breeze and the others. She found herself wondering for the first time in her life if there really was another world after this one. She’d never spent much time reflecting on that sort of thing. She was a woman of action; a fighter not a philosopher. But now she could sense the end growing near, and she began to wonder and to hope that there might be a next life, that she might see her father there, and that he might welcome her with open arms...

  Weeping overcame her. River slid down on the hard floor, lying on her side as she gazed into the trickle of flames. She saw images there, pictures of places she had seen and people she had known. She saw distant mountains and rings of smoke in the trees, and heard the low rumbling sound of the Iron Horse’s massive locomotive barreling down the rails. It was like thunder, reverberating through the earth, shaking the very foundations of the world...

  River’s eyes snapped open. She had the sudden bizarre notion that the tremors she’d felt were real, that the stones had truly been vibrating against her skin. She sat upright, straining to hear that rumbling again. Seconds passed.

  She had almost given up, when suddenly there came a distant sound like thunder, barely audible even in the silence of the tunnel. She tilted her head, trying to determine from which direction the sound had originated. A moment later, it came again. The sound continued, growing into a steady nonstop rumble punctuated by occasional claps that were louder but tinny; almost brittle sounding.

  River found herself on her feet, pacing. She paused now and then to press her ear to the wall, or to the great metal door. This intensified the sounds, but didn’t make them any clearer. She picked up her torch, refreshed the wrappings, and sprinted back to the beginning of the tunnel. Once there, she pressed her ear to the door and listened. She couldn’t hear much of anything over the drumming of her heart. Eventually, she heard a slight booming sound. It didn’t take long to realize that whatever the sound was, it wasn’t near this end of the tunnel.

  River headed back to the far end, her head spinning. It occurred to her that if the noise came from that direction, it was probably outside the city walls. If that was the case, it might mean that the Legion was on the march. What else could it be, if not their war machines and marching soldiers? And if she was correct, then it was not a rescuer coming for her at all. She was still trapped.

  River was about fifty feet from the door when a thunderous kaboom! shook the tunnel. A hole opened up in the ceiling just a few yards away. Dirt and rocks rained down in front of her. Dust filled tunnel, and dim red light filtered down through the opening. River stared in disbelief for about three seconds before she broke into a run.

  Chapter 24

  River snatched up her pack and climbed to the top of the rubble heap. She gazed up through the opening, wondering what exactly was going on up there. She could hear machinery, voices shouting, gunfire, and explosions. She leapt, grasping for the edge of the hole. It was just out of reach, and she fell short. River landed awkwardly on the rubble.

  “Hello!” she shouted. “Is anyone up there?”

  As her echoing words rang through the darkness of the tunnel, it occurred to her that this was probably not the best idea. If anyone heard her, it would likely be a ghoul. Still, after a moment’s consideration, River decided she was willing to face that possibility. Better to die fighting on her feet than slowly starve in that black pit.

  She called out again, but still got no answer. Kneeling down, she stacked some of the rubble into a precarious step atop the mound. She climbed onto it and found herself a few inches closer to the opening, but still well out of reach. Perched atop the unstable stack, River didn’t dare jump. She’d probably break a leg if she tried. This close to escape, she wasn’t about to give up, though.

  River cried out a few more times, but the only answer she got was the sound of a passing vehicle. A black shadow passed overhead. They’re driving right over me! she realized.

  River scrambled to uncoil the whip hanging at her side
. She flicked it up towards the hole, hoping to catch the undercarriage of whatever vehicle was passing overhead. The whip struck metal and she heard a dull ringing noise before it fell back down. She raised the handle, flipped it around, and made another attempt. This time, the sinewy leather strap closed around an axle. It went tight, she let out a triumphant cheer as it jerked her into the air.

  In a second, she was up and headed through the hole. Dirt pelted on her face. The broken stones of the subway ceiling tore at her, and the sharp edges of stone cut the flesh on her arms and tore her shirt. The whip went loose just as she passed through the opening. River found herself hanging at the edge of the hole, her torso barely over the edge. Her legs flailed beneath her. Overhead, the tank’s engine growled and the tracks made harsh rattling noises as they dug into the earth. She clawed her fingernails into the hard ground, struggling to pull herself up. The tank rolled away, leaving her exposed. River found herself stranded in the middle of the ghoul army.

  Legion soldiers marched around her. They were armed with muskets, crossbows, swords and spears. Their focus was straight ahead, and they didn’t so much as glance down at her. A second tank rolled across the hard landscape off to her left, the tracks grinding into the stone, black smoke pouring into the sky from an exhaust pipe in the back. Another passed by, this one closer, and this time she was ready.

  River snatched the whip handle from the ground next to her and gave it a snap. She lassoed the metal handrail on the side of the tank, and the whip went tight. It yanked her out of the hole with such force that for a moment, she was airborne.

  River came down hard on the ground. The tank pulled her along behind it, oblivious. The ghouls however, finally took notice of her. The first one that saw her did a double take. It shouted something, and several others broke ranks to chase her. River had a split second to make a choice. She could either try to climb the whip and pull herself up on the tank, or let go and take her chances fighting the ghouls. She chose the latter. River knew that in her weakened state, she probably wouldn’t make it to the tank. Better to rely on her firearm to do the hard work.