Mr. Ruins: A Thriller (Ruins Sonata Book 1)

by Grist, Michael John

  RG 4 V 4EVA

  Who were these people I wonder, as I run my gloved fingers over the marks they've left behind. Were they like Ti, marines who could never make it any further, who died to bring us this far?

  I should stop thinking about her, I don't remember anything about her more than a flash of dark hair. I have responsibilities to the living.

  I give orders to Doe, La, and So for a peel patrol to recon the Solid Core, and they roger it. With grapnels and steel rope they start away, traversing the rough black ceiling through leaps and swings, spiraling outward from our starting position, each on a slightly different vector. Doe is most capable, my lieutenant, so she gets the sharpest gradient, taking her further away fastest. So is shallowest, La is in the middle, like three strands in a genetic weave, with the ones to come later filling in the corkscrew gaps left by the others.

  Peeling the apple.

  Far is tucked in beside me, and Ray is singing him a simple song. Ray is always good at this kind of thing.

  Looking down I stare into the sea of Molten Core, yellow striated with red like the fibers of a glial cell, orange bubbles of liquid rock bursting lazily on the surface. This is the heart. I touch a hand to the thin-leafed mission document tucked into my lava suit, and wonder about its meaning.

  Ritry Goligh – proto-Calico

  The first seems a name, the second a place, but I have heard of neither. I'd look at more now, but I want Doe and Ray both to be here when I do. With vanishing words, it's the best way to get the clearest remembrance.

  "Do you know someone called Ritry Goligh?" I ask Ray.

  He stops singing to Far, who's already nodding off, and looks to me with a raised eyebrow. "No. It sounds familiar though. What is it?"

  "First words of the mission pack."

  He nods. "You found it then."

  "Yeah. And Calico."

  A blank look, and a moment passes.

  "I shouldn't say this, since I'm your second lieutenant, but I don't even know what I'm doing here, Me." A long pause. "Do you know?"

  I don't, not any more than him, not any more than the reality before us, but I'm the captain and can't show that indecision. "Inveigling the Solid Core," I say.

  "Right, but beyond that? I don't remember anything before waking up in the sublavic, but I know you, and the others. Even this kid," he nudges Far. "I feel like we're a team, but I don't know why."

  "We're a chord," I say. "And it hurt me to lose Ti too."

  Ray looks away. "I didn't even speak to her," he says. I don't know how I know him, couldn't tell you his birthday or what city he's from, but I do know this is a way Ray grieves, as if we've seen a thousand deaths before.

  He turns back. "Do you think it's an effect of the forging?"

  I think back to those first moments in the sublavic, wreathed and pinned by forging fire. "I've thought about that. But I can't remember ever being forged before. I've got nothing to compare it to."

  Silence for a while, broken only by the distant flare and fizz of magma below. It's been long enough now, and I tongue the blood-mic on. "Report."

  "Recon 1, no breaks," Doe comes back to me, her voice a fuzzy crackle. I look out across the sweep of the black ceiling, on the vector she took. It doesn't seem a ball this close, now it is a black landscape with only a slightly curved horizon, broken by a wealth of uneven struts, gables, and bracing stanchions. I begin to think it must have been welded by a child, or a parent before some wonderful Christmas, layer after layer tacked on with ribbons and bows, a loving surprise.

  "Recon 2, So, any sign of an ingress?" I ask.

  I can just see So's frame still, the slack on her guide-rope swaying down with the motion of her body. She fires the grapnel to the next metal ridge over, lets herself drop and swing, then ascends smoothly on the suits in-coil. Even with my HUD filters maxed out, I can't resolve any detail on her for the glare of the molten ocean behind her. She is just a black silhouette.

  "Nothing," So says. "Only more ridges, and rivets missing. What pulled out these bolts?"

  "Roger that, keep looking. La, anything?"

  "Nothing like a door here either," she comes back. "Writing in a different tongue, I think though. Gaulic."

  I frown. By my side Far shudders, and Ray tamps him down with soft words.

  "What does it read?"

  "'Arrete! C'est ici l'Empire du Mort.' It's spread out in a spiral, like it's all separate initials, but they're bigger, and scored more deeply. Do you know what it means?"

  I don't. Doe comes back. "It means 'Stop! This is the Empire of the Dead.'"

  The line goes quiet for a while.

  "Depth gauge it," I mic back to her.

  "One sec," La says, and I imagine her rustling for the gamma-clamp, suctioning it into place against the grooved black metal and switching it on to scan the Solid Core's interior like the sublavic's sonar.

  "Still nothing," she comes back. "Either it's solid all the way through or this metal's impenetrable to radiation."

  I frown, look at Ray. The kid is sleeping now, webbed tightly into a crook in the structure like a tiny fly in some vast spider-web. Ray shakes his head, of course he hears the conversation through blood-mic too. He knocks on the metal, a compact thwack sounds out. A suggestion.

  "Try hitting it," I tell La. "Sound it for hollowness."

  She does, and her suit's external mics capture the sound of it, a hollow bonging like some old clock tolling time.

  "It's a way in," I say.

  "Not the way in, if it's sealed off," says Ray beside me, his blood-mic off. I tongue mine off too, look at him.

  "Not the way but maybe the only way. Any better ideas."

  He shrugs. I tongue the blood-mic back on.

  "Plot it and keep peeling the apple," I tell La. "So, keep on your bearing, Doe too. I don't want to get infiltrative unless I have to. There could be a portal around the corner. Bang the hull every leap, plot the harmonics. I want to get a good idea for the density of this thing."

  "Roger that," they say. "Though there are no corners, chief," Doe adds.

  "Out," I say.

  Ray is smiling when I look back at him.

  "Look at this," he says, and softly prods Far's nose. The boy makes a funny gulping sound.

  "Stop that," I say, though my heart isn't in it.

  "It's great," says Ray. "Every bit of his face makes a different tone." He prods the boy's forehead, and Far gulps a little higher. "We could play a concerto off him, if we wanted."

  I sigh, because a moment ago we'd been debating who we all were, and now Ray is playing games. "You'll give him bad dreams."

  "Ha," snorts Ray. "Like he's not going to have those already. Just listen."

  He plays the first few bars of a song I recognize but can't name, off Far's face. Nose, forehead, left ear, right, nose, chin, forehead.

  "Why does he even swallow?" I ask, getting into it despite myself.

  "Flies," says Ray confidently, then gestures at the ropes webbing us in position. "For this web. I bet I can get him to burp out the tones, if I find the right spot."

  He starts poking at different bits of Far, the back of his neck, his chest, his arms. One of them causes a sneeze.

  "Whoa!" says Ray. "Big time."

  I smile, because there is no harm in this. Ray is a goofball, when he's not deadly earnestly serious. I like him, he reminds me of someone I used to know. Or perhaps he just reminds me of him.

  I pull out the mission document. The hot wind flutters its pages, and I hook an elasteel line from my waist belt through the binding hole in the corner. It clanks satisfyingly. I look over the front page, where the title faded a lifetime ago in the sublavic.

  "Mission goods?" Ray asks.

  I nod, feeling the weight of the pack in my hands, wondering if I'm making a mistake to wait to read it, wondering there might be something we need to know right now.

  "You should wait to share it with Doe," Ray says.

  "I will," I say, and to
ngue on the blood-mic. "I'm going to read out loud the first page of our mission brief. I want you all to listen, but keep peeling."

  They Roger it, and I lay my suited fingers at the hermetic-sealed edge of the document pack. I look at Ray, then peel back the first page like skin sucking off a fresh apple, and open my mouth to read.

  DO NOT READ THIS ALOUD

  ONE OF YOUR CHORD WILL KILL YOU ALL

  I say nothing, instead close my mouth slowly as the words steadily fade from red to pink, from pink to nothing.

  "Well?" says Doe through the comm.

  Ray is looking up at me with a mixture of amusement and surprise, like this is a much better game than playing Far.

  "We'll wait, on second thoughts," I say to the blood-mic. "Keep up the peel. Out."

  Ray starts laughing. "That's embarrassing."

  "It's unnerving," I say. "How did they know I would read it out loud?" I turn over the mission pack and look at the back as if there might be answers there.

  "Maybe they didn't. Maybe it's standard. How many of those have you opened before?"

  I strain to remember, because I know I've opened some, many, but where, and when? Was I inveigling then as well? Was it in the depths of the Molten Core, or some frozen one?

  I tuck the pack back into my suit.

  "So who do you think is the traitor?" Ray asks. "And what are they going to do?"

  "It could be you," I say.

  He shrugs. "Or it could be you."

  There's not much more to say after that. Ray goes back to playing Far, and I look down into the molten blaze below, trying to think back on everything I know about the others.

  But there's nothing. Names, a few traits, a sense about them, but that's all. We could be complete strangers for all I know, not even really tones in the same chord at all.

  Four hours, and there's been no sign of an entrance. Doe finally reaches the far apex of the Solid Core.

  "I feel I should plant a flag," she says through mic.

  "But nothing hollow?" I ask.

  "Nothing."

  So and La chime in with the same result, by gamma or banging. The peel is not yet complete though, but will be soon enough when Doe spirals back to meet them.

  Ray and I wait, flicking bits of rust off the black metal. It's odd that the rust is black, and that the metal under the black is black as well.

  "Is this even rust?" Ray asked at one point.

  "Maybe it's sweat," I say. "This black ball is actually alive and it's waiting to eat us, then it'll sweat us out like this."

  Ray rubs a piece of black between his fingers. "As soon as we find its mouth. Not much of a predator, to have no mouth."

  "Neither's a spider," I say. "It waits for its prey to come to it." That shuts him up for a while.

  Two more hours, and the ladies have all convened at a point a third of the way round the Solid Core. "No hollows, no doors, no windows," Doe says, "and we're sweating while you've been taking it easy."

  "Roger that, we'll rope for the Gaulic zone."

  "See you there, out."

  Ray is already untethering Far, strapping the boy in to his side-holster like an armament. Far wakes up in the middle of this, whimpers something.

  "Shh," Ray tells him. "We'll be there soon."

  I unclasp all three of the hooks holding me in place bar one, twist so both of my legs are dangling down the great girder's side, and get the grapnel shot in place, the rope all affixed.

  "You first," I tell Ray.

  He nods, his sharp blue eyes already looking into the distance, and fires. A percussive slap smacks the air, and his grapnel shoots off to loop around another girder far along the Solid Core's gentle curve.

  "See you at the Deathgate, Me," he says, locks the grapnel rifle in to his suit, and shuffles off the girder.

  Together he and Far fall, begin to arc like a pendulum. I hear the boy's long wail call out like a siren fading, growing deeper. They are a dot against searing lava, the rope slimmed to nothing by the bending of light.

  The blood-mic cranks on. "Yee-haa!" It is Ray, raucous. "You never said it was this much fun Doe," he calls. In the distance he's on the backswing now, already half of the cable raveled in, nearing the latch-point speedily.

  "Say it's fun after another hundred swings," Doe comes back. "Over."

  I wait for Ray and Far to reach their latch point, hook and unhook, fire, and launch off again, before I ready my grapnel. In the last moment before I fire, I look back down at the lava, hunting the indistinguishable point where the sublavic was lost, where Ti is probably still buried, cooked within the can as it melts.

  I can't help but feel I am leaving a part of myself behind. But the rest of me is ahead, and that is the only way now. I fire the rifle, the cable shoots out and snags on the same latch-point Ray used. I shuffle off, and am flying.

  The Solid Core loops away, the orange-red screams up at me, then the rope catches and pulls me into a pendulum swing. Hot air rushes over my HUD, exhilaration swarms through my body driving out the cramp of squatting to wait, and I let out my own wild whoop, of course off-mic.

  Even as the first swing reaches apex, the haulier in my suit kicks in and starts to reel me in, a tasty tid-bit on the end of a long slim tongue. The swings get sharper and faster as the length shortens, then in moments only I'm clamping round the latch-point to sit on the edge, refastening my cables to fire.

  In the distance standing at the next projection, Ray is holding out a hand with one thumb up.

  "The only way to travel," he says through blood-mic, then dramatically falls backward. I watch him arc down again, and follow.

  It is less than a hundred to the Deathgate. We pull up to find Doe, So and La hanging from a brace of three wires strung tautly across an open expanse between stanchion girders. Ray is latching in when I reel in. I feel the slight flex in the latching wires as they take my weight.

  "Welcome," says Doe, "to the Deathgate."

  I look at the sheer black metal here, and see the carving truly is remarkable. The Gaulic words are arrayed in a spiral, each letter as big as my shin, scored so deeply into the black that they shimmer silver.

  I reach into one of the depressions. "What alloy is this?" I ask, flicking up my HUD and looking at So.

  "Something poly," she says, brushing black hair out of eyes. She looks to La for confirmation.

  "Anhedronic," La goes on. "Bound not with the weak force, but something else."

  I frown. My molecular chemistry is weak, but not that weak. "But it's made up of elements, correct? How can it be anything but the weak force?"

  La reaches through the tangle of our bodies, hanging ungainly there like bats in hammocks, to pass me a readout. I look at it, see numbers. "This just says its gravometric."

  She nods. "They're gravometric bonds, working at an elemental level."

  "It's not possible, we know," Doe says. "But here's the really interesting thing. The silver metal is different from the black stuff diametrically. Which is to say, they're opposites."

  Now I look to her. "Like I and O."

  "That's right. Or matter and anti-matter. They can't exist in a molecular form, when held by weak bonds. But here, like this? They can."

  I am still getting used to the idea. "But gravometric is for heavenly bodies. Planets, not at this scale."

  Doe shrugs, the motion barely captured in her suit, and enough of a motion to start us all bobbing from the cables above like ducks floating on a ripple. "So we're at that scale, or we're not. What it comes down to, is there might be a black hole on the other side of this metal."

  I nod. "Can we blow it?"

  "I thought you'd never ask. Yes we can, but it'll take most of our candlewax, and almost all our fusing. I don't want to be anywhere near this hole when the blast goes up. The whole sphere could lose integrity. Hell, if it's a black hole we'll just get spaghettified in an instant. But if it's something else…" she trails off.

  I look around at the chord. Ray has flic
ked up his HUD and is running his swarthy fingers through the metal.

  "Who would carve something like this," he says quietly.

  I look back to Doe. We're marines after all, and the Solid Core is our mission. "Set it up."

  They affix three quarters of the candlewax bomb to the heart of the Gaullic spiral using gamma-clamps, lead it with fuse, then we all swing back to the last gantry-girder. There we cluster together like crows roosting on a single aerial.

  Doe is at my side, her white hair pasted to her cheeks in sweaty clumps. Ray reaches over and pats the hair away. She eyes him curiously, as though she can't quite comprehend what he's doing.

  "Excuse me," he says.

  Doe frowns, then holds out the fuse, while I unjack a periscope lens that hangs down five feet beneath us. It gives me an unobstructed view around the curve of the Solid Core to the glistening pack of candlewax at the detonation point.

  "T-minus 10," Doe says, "10 minutes lead time." She holds the gasjet barrel of her rifle to the fuse, it sparks, and she lets it go.

  It drops away from us, and Doe begins a quiet, barely voiced countdown.

  Far wriggles by my side, and Ray pats his head quiet. I see So and La are holding hands. Ray rests his free hand on Doe's thigh, and she does not push him away.

  I watch the spark race along the fuse through the dangling periscope, like a shooting star against the black Core. I wonder what we'll find inside, and I wonder how many more of the chord I'll lose before the job is done.

  Doe's countdown reaches one minute. I feel the others either side of me clamp their grip tighter to the metal. We're supported by cables spun three girders back, but that's no replacement for holding to the solid metal underfoot.

  "Five, four, three, two, one."

  The spark strikes the candlewax, and the explosion bursts out like a vast aquatic body surging upward from the icy depths, like the sublavic emerging from molten metal. Black gouts of shrapnel blow outward and down in a broad trajectory, a fireball inflates in a split second, like some miniature version of the lavic sea around us, then with a staccato snap sucks back into itself.

  B-

  The sound crashes over us, my HUD quickly renders it silent, then the pressure wave hits and we all sway, but the clamps hold us in place. Throughout, I watch the freshly wrought hole into the Core, beaded so tightly I dare not breathe, so I clearly see the shape that falls out from inside, an instant after the blast rang out. I watch it fall and struggle through the smoke, down and down until the lava claims it with a hiss and a pop. I have long enough to focus, to be certain that what I think I'm seeing is in fact what it is.