They covered the distance to the second line and peeked around the corner. Quiet.
Hort was the first one to speak aloud. “Me’em thinks there is a holiday we forgot?”
“Neh.” Tippalon, their youngest, was chewing his thumb nervously. “They very killed it, the Hapha-la. The big snake has been cut.”
They all winced and glared around.
“The next lolly,” Sella said grimly.
They went to the third line, the deepest and most well-kept by far. They were now three hundred yards away from their own trench, and farther north than any had ever traveled. They strolled down the thoroughfare with their mouths open and their guns forgotten. It seemed like they had stumbled into some abandoned city—surely with all these doors and wires, this must be Emsa itself!
“What self-respecting Tacchie would give this up as loot?” Sella asked aloud.
“It’s dead,” Tippalon said.
“Dead,” Hort agreed.
They stared around. The whole line was as dead and vacant as a corpse. The gigantic creature of the front had been squeezed and abandoned. They were standing in the middle of a critical artery on the Haphan side, and nothing was pumping at all.
“Hort,” Sella said, “go back and tell them what we captured. If nothing else, we should keep these trenches and never give them back.”
“Service,” Hort said, fading back.
“Hand follows.” Sella said. He knew nothing of the Haphan trench map, but when the lolly widened and straightened, and he saw cart-tracks and then heavy duck-board like a roadway, he knew they had reached the end of it.
“Zel, walk ahead of us and see if you get plinked. Tippalon, follow and see if he falls.”
The two soldiers edged ahead. After a few minutes where no shot rang out, Sella brought the rest of the hand forward. The lolly trench kept widening, and then let out into a staging area that had been carved into the back of the hill. It looked almost exactly like one of the crater-sized strip-mines outside of Gring. The place had been shorn to the tent-poles, and there would be very little of the wonderful Haphan gimcrackery for them to get their hands on, which was disappointing; new weapons always meant a holiday.
He scanned the edges of the staging area for Zel and Tippalon, and couldn’t find them. Finally, one of his men drew impatient, slapped his shoulder, and pointed straight ahead.
Contrary to what Sella or any sane soldier would have done, his two men had wandered into the immense parade ground and exposed themselves to the thousands of shadows lining its every edge. Any number of enemy snipers could be taking aim at his idiots with puzzled glee.
Tippalon saw him hesitating inside the lollytrench, and waved him to come closer.
Sella shook his head, adding a rude gesture. No way, no fuck would he walk into the open.
A brief but highly gesticulated conference in handsign.
Zel and Tippalon stepped aside, revealing something between them. Sella squinted. It was a chair.
It was a man chair.
A small one; Sella had seen bigger at home in Gring. But he had never thought he’d find such a…gesture in a Haphan staging area, behind three lines of empty trench.
The chair was supported by eight human arms, bound together in pairs with the hands splayed flat on the ground. The spine of a curled-up man, with ribs attached, served as the seat, and also housed the vital organs. A human torso provided several joint sockets for jury-rigging, so the arm-legs of the chair were fused to the body without much art. The back of the chair was composed of three meaty thighs simply snapped together.
At the crest of the chair were the shoulders, arms, and head of a male corpse. He perched upright on the thighs like an avuncular, distended uncle leaning over the back of the chair. His hands were sewn to his scalp and his elbows were tied above his head, so that it looked like his skull had sprouted wings. The pose was called torch-holder, and it summoned a wise ancestor, if you believed the lore.
When a person sat on that chair, he would have his ancestors watching over his shoulder. The chair had to be fresh for the ancestors to visit it. The very best carcassans in Gring could get a pulse going, if only for a few hours. Even if the rest of it was amateurish, this chair was fresh. Most parts of it had been alive this morning.
“That could never be a piece of Haphan furniture,” his second in command whispered, with grim humor.
Sella knew what he meant. “The Sessies want to return to civilization. Send back personally to the boss. The biggest boss. You go yourself.”
The man hesitated, eyes on the man chair. “And tell him what, Sella?”
“Tell him someone finally wants to parlay.”
19
Sethlan
“Nana is not dead,” Diggery asserted. “That would violate everything we know about her.”
The messenger only shrugged. “It’s the general consensus, and it has supporting evidence.”
Diggery turned to Sethlan, perhaps for help. He turned just in time to see Sethlan twitch. It wasn’t a big twitch, at first. They had all seen the like before, on many others.
But then Sethlan jerked backward and staggered clumsily with his palms against his temples. Diggery watched with surprise, and Sethlan could guess his thoughts: his captain, by hell, was finally walking a circle. The captain was at long last going crazy. Women really did drive people insane.
In fact, Sethlan had completely forgotten Nana. He searched out the Voice in his mind. What did you do? I’ve never felt such pain.
~Wasn’t me,~ the Voice croaked. ~I think Lucky Strike is finally suspicious. That means—~
“The safest thing is for us to die now,” Sethlan said aloud.
Diggery answered with a nervous laugh. “Speak for yourself.”
The wave of pain passed.
Sethlan pulled himself together with visible effort. “Sappa, tell me exactly what happened to Nana.”
Sappa hesitated. “Which it will send you further crazy.”
“Just take me through it.” Sethlan tried to sound as calm and sane as he could. “That’s an order.”
“Very well. The dashta had her regular medical call with the other females, the one where the Haphans look at them down there and wiggle their menstruals. Life as normal, like you told us, haut captain. Everything normal until a pair of dashtas walk into the club looking for Nana. They said Nana went into her examination but never came out, and that likely the Happies took her and killed her.” Sappa shook his head in outrage. “Well, those dashtas didn’t take kindly to being called lying whores. They’d brought soldiers to keep them safe, and as soon as the screaming started there was a fight at the door with guns going off. Eventually the older dashta said something in Deep Tongue and brought everyone still.” Sappa’s brow knit and he turned quiet. “Haut Captain, sir, that old dashta said the 314th isn’t a real unit anymore. We’re to be divided up and down the front like a bad box of oggies. She said obviously the Happies are chopping off our heads, one by one. That’s not true, is it?”
~Don’t answer.~
Sethlan said, “If Nana is gone, nothing else makes a difference.”
Sappa continued, “The Observers are arming up to kill a lot of Haphans, and I was sent to find you. But when I got to the trenches, Lieutenant Tawarna said you’d gone missing too. He says to not kill Haphans, if he still gets a vote. Anyway, I was digging through the bodies at the hospital when the orderlies told me you lit out on the suicide cart.”
~Do not listen any more, Sethlan. I beg you. There is nothing you can do, and we’re wasting valuable time.~
“But there’s no more reason to hurry,” Sethlan answered the Voice. “Everything we wanted done is now done, and now I have no use but to—”
Sethlan’s mind exploded with actinic white light, like a chrysanthemum flare bursting right behind his eyes. He glimpsed Diggery’s concerned face as the light flared, and then his vision washed out.
When he returned to consciousness, Diggery was squatting
over him with a hand in one of his coat pockets. The boy, his new lieutenant, already stealing from his corpse.
“You were down for half a minute,” Diggery said, drawing back. “I wish you wouldn’t do that again.”
“Where’s Sappa?”
“He ran away, terrified.” Diggery shook his head. “Your hair was sparking!”
Well?
~Lucky Strike broke my encryption.~ The Voice sounded softer and more diffuse in Sethlan’s mind, as if it was picking itself off the ground and dusting itself off.
I’m sorry your encryption broke.
~Here’s what I mean: I locked myself down when I began to suspect the ship. I scrambled everything I could with my personal code, so that I couldn’t just be lifted out. I thought the ship would try its vortex trick again eventually, and so it did.~
Those were the first pains…
~The ship tried to pull me out. No luck. So it came back just now with a heavy field and did a brute-force decryption. A huge waste of energy, and it’s also a big no-no. I bet it’s feeding lies to the CivGov ship even now, after everyone’s sensors went wild. I doubt it will try that again, and it doesn’t have to because it knows now. Lucky Strike knows that we know about it.~
Sethlan’s eyes drifted up to Diggery. He felt too tired to move, and for once, it simply did not matter whether Sethlan moved or not. The gas attack was never going to be undone—it was indelible, he accepted that now. The atomic bombs were answered. The sweet and discomfiting slight girl was ripped away by the Haphans, taken who-knew-where, and now probably dead.
Honestly, what was left for him to do?
Diggery asked, “What do we do about Nana?”
“I don’t think we’ll learn much more,” Sethlan said.
“But—” Diggery hesitated. “Should I tell you where Nana was taken?”
Sethlan opened his eyes and sat up, as if turned on by a switch. “Yes, Diggery. I think you could share that with me. How do you know?”
“The chief of the secret police,” Diggery mumbled. “She’s my girlfriend, sort of.”
Drivvy was bent on escaping the crazy haut captain lest his insanity be the catching type, but he couldn’t move fast enough on two wooden legs. Sethlan dragged the old wheeze to the steam cart and ordered it back to the city with all haste. Either that, or get shot to pieces starting at his knees and working up. Drivvy laughed at the threat, but Sethlan was actually drawing his pistol when Diggery added that they were saving Nana.
Drivvy had pilfered a stack of the ultra-clean charcoal briquettes as they were extracted from the bomb hoppers. He now stuffed them into the boiler and yanked the lever, reversing the steamcart down the tracks. When the briquettes shortly caught, the engine surged with a power that made the entire tonnage of the steam cart vibrate like a thoroughbred.
“Would the gents like to hear about how the carts were over-engineered by the Ghamse concern, and we are now flying like brainbirds toward a bird-bear? Or are the gents simply content to be crazy?”
Neither passenger answered. Diggery was watching Sethlan closely, no doubt wondering about his sanity, and Sethlan was listening to the voice in his head.
~Lucky Strike knows we know. When the CivGov ship finds me, Lucky Strike is as good as guilty. Meanwhile, we’re heading back into the biggest population center.~
These things are connected? Sethlan had hoped that being discovered meant he was through with the Voice.
~Yes, they’re connected! The ship needs us dead, and it can’t just torpedo the city with CivGov watching. It will vector down some simple personalities into unlucky bystanders, and they will be taken over. Every person on the street can be turned into a Sethlan-killing zombie the moment you come in sight.~
I’ve never heard of that, Sethlan said.
~Of course you haven’t. I can’t help that you’re a planetary primitive. If it were me, I’d try a few people at first, here and there, to end it quietly. If the ship kills us, it can concoct a plausible lie, or at least try for a plea bargain. But if we survive—let’s say you shoot everyone who gets close—then the ship will get desperate. It could turn the whole city against us, for a few hours at least. All because I know what I know.~
So you finally admit you’re a problem to me?
~Are you being cheerful again?~
I guess so. Because of Nana. We have a chance to get her back.
~You want a laugh? You should kill Diggery. I’ve seen him in action, and he’ll be dangerous when Lucky Strike takes over his mind.~
Sethlan glanced at Diggery, who crooked an eyebrow back at him. Sethlan would certainly not want a co-opted Diggery standing behind him…
“Diggery-geh, you might have to die today,” Sethlan said.
The new lieutenant nodded soberly. “Just tell me when and where I need to spend my life,” he said, “and I’ll tell you where you can shove it.”
See? My hands are tied.
The Voice sounded tired. ~I want to be angry, but I’m laughing too hard.~
Drivvy entered Ville Emsa like a banshee, hanging on the whistle to let off a head of steam the cart would never achieve again without another supply of stolen doomsday briquettes. The steam cart barreled off the track and onto the cobblestones. Luckily, Sell Street was a straight shot, otherwise Drivvy would have bounced them off the buildings like a drunk corporal. He emitted a piercing, corrosive stream of obscenity in lieu of steering. Pedestrians scattered like wind-blown paper in front of them.
The whistle paused. “Now that’s odd, innit.”
Sethlan and Diggery leaned out the door and saw the obstruction ahead. A huge baxxaxx, yoked to a six-wheeled supply cart, walking deliberately into their path. The animal studied them with odd intensity, and positioned the heavy wooden cart with unlucky precision.
~Unlucky my ass,~ the Voice said.
“Dodge around it, Drivvy! Don’t get distracted by farm animals.”
Drivvy veered, coming up on the curb, knocking through a pile of garbage. He muttered, “Of course it wouldn’t look strange to a lunatic, but who ever seen a baxxy…”
~Expect more of that. Just remember they are not responsible for their actions.~
If a person lets some voice in his head dictate his actions, he deserves to be shot, Sethlan frowned. Unfortunately he was looking at Diggery while he did so.
“Are you blaming me for that baxxaxx?” Diggery asked.
Sethlan laughed, and Diggery shrank away. We’re going quite insane. It’s sort of liberating, isn’t it?
~Not from my perspective. I’ll tell you one last time, you must shoot Diggery.~
Oh, I can’t shoot him now.
~He’s not your friend anymore. Not if the ship takes him.~
My friend? You don’t follow. The boy has his pistol in his pocket; he’s pointing it right at us.
The Voice seemed to gawp in his head. ~Well, that’s a problem, isn’t it? Can’t we just be killed by the goddamned ship? Do we need Diggery gunning for us too?~
He’s just being smart. And I don’t mean that unkindly.
~You could still kill him,~ the Voice suggested, ~with one of your awesome Tachba feats of martial prowess.~
Sethlan winked at Diggery. I could, but I won’t. He reminds me of Tejj right now.
“The club is coming up,” Drivvy shouted, “and I ain’t stopping.”
“You’ll stop, for Nana’s sake.”
“What I rather meant, sir,” Drivvy continued, “is that I tried to stop already and the brakes are gone.”
Diggery rolled his eyes. “You can slow, can’t you? Open that shunt and bleed off some pressure.”
“Which it will probably cause the cart to veer,” Drivvy muttered, but he pulled the toggle. The shunt wailed. The steam cart shuddered and finally shed appreciable speed.
“It won’t get slower than this,” Diggery suggested, looking out the door.
The through-way to the club flew past. They leapt.
The officers of the 314th watche
d Sethlan with deep suspicion. His hair jutted at odd angles. He was covered in blood. He had a deep limp. He could not stop smiling. Sethlan tried to rein it in, swallowing the hysteria that threatened to change his face into a vast, delirious snarl.
They were in the middle of gearing up. Buttons being closed, belts being tightened—around waists, at the top of boots, under and over the great-coats. Everything battened down and probably overdone as the Observer officers savored the forgotten ritual of preparing an assault. It was different from merely preparing to scout. Heavier weapons, for one. Rifles were pulled out of barrels of oil and shaken out on the floor. Boxes of ammunition were lugged in by the Observers’ new hires, recent deserters recruited off the streets who had been promised the moon as payment. They seemed to admire how the Observers were jumping into a massacre even on their very first day of work.
The unit was preparing kill Haphans—raw madness. Sethlan surveyed their angry faces—truly angry? Or slightly deranged and exultant, like him? It didn’t matter, they were content. And for once, Sethlan wasn’t judging from the outside. He understood what they were feeling, and for perhaps the first time in his life, he felt the same.
He’d been broken down, inside and out. It had started with the Voice, screaming at him in the trench. It had followed with Nana, the parapraxis in her wine and her hands on his skin. With Nana came responsibility: he was answerable to something again, he had something of his own to keep safe. Pile on whole weeks without sleep, the days at the front surrounded by slaughter. Add an exhilarating moment in front of a firing squad, and then atomic bombs stuffed with blessed charcoal and plants! All of it followed bracingly with lightning in his hair and a calculating baxxaxx trying to crash his steam cart.
The biggest surprise was that Sethlan was functioning at all, much less finally feeling like a proper Tachba.
“Who gives us orders?” he asked.
They glanced between each other.
“You do, I suppose,” said Pleural. “Depending on what you say next.”
The Eternal Front: A Lines of Thunder Novel (Lines of Thunder Universe) Page 46