by Lee Bond
“You give one of them the occasion to choose your punishment for you, squire, it’s always the same.” Idle Eric answered woefully. If only Slamford hadn’t panicked and took a swipe at Andrew. A fifty-fifty chance of getting ‘At the Wall’ meant there was a small chance you’d bounce hard and fast enough to get Bit only a little. It happened from time to time, and gearheads as bounced and lived, well, sure, they weren’t all the way there anymore, mayhap an arm or a leg or whatnot would fall off, but at least you’d be alive.
And there were always a use in the back alleys for them as were still fully Ironed but mostly empty ‘tween them ears, hey?
“Over the Wall?” On-stage Andrews’s helpers, also playing to the crowd, hauled Tricky Slamford over to the steam-driven cannon like parents manhandling an unruly five year old.
It was one of the most disconcerting things he’d ever seen in his life. If Slamford was remotely like Nicked Jimmy, he was a powerhouse of Dark Iron-driven strength and rage and yet he was being hauled around by people half his size and with no discernable source for their own power.
What in the fuck were Obsidian Golems? From the look of them, Garth gauged that they’d been ordinary Arcade City natives at one point or another. What could they have possibly done to themselves to transform into … whatever they were?
Most interesting was their … normalcy. Why weren’t they twisted like their weaker cousins?
“Oh, aye.” Idle Eric shook his head wistfully as Melissa and Trevor stuffed Slamford into the cannon. His loud, bleating shouts of fear went all echo-y. Eric couldn’t count on his hands the number of times he’d cautioned his friend against falling in love with Missy Dollop, and then, when that’d failed, about doing anything else but putting the moves on her. “Over the Wall, indeed.”
But no, the dimwitted sot had grown convinced that their love, his love, would transmute the ordinary girl into someone capable of enduring his advances.
At Andrew’s urging, the crowd grew silent. Spinner Square filled with the sounds of the cannon’s steam engines working up to power and poor Slamford’s terrified shrieks. Impossibly enough, the gearhead did nothing to free himself from the confines of the big gun, though, even though the chamber he was trapped in would literally fall apart in his hands.
Andrew’s assistants started cranking the cannon upwards, counting down from ten. The crowd joined in the fun. Andrew pranced and bowed and acted precisely like Damon Killian from Running Man, working the crowd into a frenzy.
“If he asks ‘who loves you, and who do you love’, I’m going to fucking shoot myself in the fucking head.” Garth muttered. The more time he spent in Arcade City, the more he saw, the more that was revealed to him, the more impossible it grew.
“Squire?” Eric was hopping nonstop now as the crowd was swelling to three times it’s normal size; word of an Over the Wall auto-punishment spread through Ickford like nothing else. People from the far end of the city would be rushing to see what happened, e’en them as had seen it a thousand times before.
“Nothing. Never mind.” Garth trained his eye on where skill calculated Tricky Slamford would crest the Wall; the presumption he was making –based on the name of the death sentence- was that unlike Barnabas’ claims, there was a point where the Wall would not or could not grow any further.
Crowd and assistants reached zero.
The cannon shrieked once, a steam whistle warning that it was fully pressured. Slamford issued one last sorrowful bellow.
The cannon belched steam from exhaust ports and Tricky Slamford went sailing nearly straight up.
The crowd oohed and ahhed and chanted nearly incomprehensible words of pleasure.
The Wall, driven by King’s Will aka nanotech, lurched upwards at blinding speed, pacing Slamford’s upwards progress inch by inch.
The crowd held their breath. Would this be the day that the Wall finally managed to catch up to and pass a poor old gearhead? The silence was deafening.
Alas, that possible day was not today. The Wall stopped growing, Slamford started shrieking once more, though this time, they were howls of pain. The gearheads in the audience shifted their gaze, their hands and legs twitching.
Garth recognized the tortured sounds for what they were; the inverse of that first agonizing kiss of Dark Iron through your soul. Whatever else the Wall and it’s Bite did, it ripped the Vicious Elixir from you and made you suffer for it the whole time.
Nearly three hundred feet in the air, Tricky Slamford exploded in a puff of greasy black ash.
“Well, squire?” Idle Eric turned to look at Garth, who still stared upwards, watching bits of Tricky Slamford drift downwards. “You wanted to know how Agnethea keeps the peace, hey? Now you know.”
Andrew and his helpers had disappeared. The crowd, feeling guilty or ashamed of their rabid pleasure from just a moment ago, began to disperse.
Garth watched the Wall shrink back down to normal size. “Oh yeah. I wanted to know for sure. This place is fucked.”
That was something Idle Eric could agree with. “Oh aye,” he said sadly, “’fucked’ indeed.”
2. The Tendrils Have Spread Too Far, the Q-Gun Fires, a Matronly Request
In all her years abroad in Trinityspace, Tendreel Salingh had never felt such a feeling of accomplishment. Nor for that matter, dare she even think it to herself, such a sense of camaraderie; though she’d only been in the Technical Expert branch of Special Services for a very short time –and most of that time had been devoted to piecing together Garth Nickels secret, universe-spanning goal- the other Tech Experts were slowly warming up to her.
Slowly, because the Tech Experts aboard Commander Aleksander’s vessel were the best and brightest to be found in SpecSer, which meant they weren’t stupid. They knew, somewhere deep down in their minds that their commanding officer had picked her, Tendreel Salingh to do something great. Something wonderful. Something only she could do.
And she was doing it, and so well. Hunting Garth through the places he’d been wasn’t necessarily the best way to do things, but in the process of doing so, the emerging pattern was becoming clearer and clearer every day. There was something about Garth Nickels, the legendary Specter, he who could make worlds bow down simply by flying his ship near their sun, something that changed people. In the case of those men he spoke on Tenerek, well, clearly, that wasn’t for the better, but in comrades like those in Armageddon Troop Too, Tendreel suspected something much different.
It was with this in mind that she pushed through the doorway into her private room; yet another way the Tech Specters in her crew knew she was special was by the fact that she hadn’t had her ‘Army’ lodgings sectioned and quartered up to house more soldiers.
“It is an interesting thing.” A dark shadow at the far end of the room said, voice quiet and somehow so heavy that his very words seemed to fall through the floor. “It is an interesting thing,” the voice reiterated, “this ancient computer of yours.”
“Who… who … who are you?” Tendreel stammered, her body turned traitor. She was locked in rigid fright, multiple eyes straining to pierce the shadows that swarmed her room. “If … if you don’t … if you don’t go away right now I’ll summon security.”
Fenris chuckled. Laughter rattled off the walls. He waved his hand, and the screen before him flashed to another accumulation of data, information and secrets better left buried. The most ancient Harmony soldier wondered what in the hell their doughty opposition had been thinking, asking this … this strange mushroom creature to dig into the very secrets of the Universe.
More worrisome, who could’ve imagined that she’d get so far, so quickly, and using such antiquated machinery? Oh, Fenris understood the root cause of why Tendreel Salingh –who wasn’t cowering nearly as much as she ought to be- was using computers and systems hundreds of years old easily enough. The mushroom prophetess and her commanding officer were cagey enough to realize that Trinity would either disapprove of their digging into matters better left un
derstood and respond with critical levels of destruction –no matter that It would lose It’s best chance at getting through the Latelian shield- or It would co-opt the search and use whatever It came across against N’Chalez.
Either option would not work for Aleksander Politoyov, a most intriguing mortal man if there ever was one; smart enough to know that Garth N’Chalez wasn’t exactly a threat to the common state of the Universe, yet wise enough to know that that wasn’t entirely true all the same. A paradox like that would drive some men mad. It would drive others –as was the case with Politoyov- to reach far outside the box and trust where no trust should be given.
Tendreel shuffled forward, several eyes on the bright red emergency button that was a standard feature in all Army ships. She’d heard some of the other Tech Experts laughing, thinking it funny and kind of sad that Army lived their lives like that, and had found herself –in a flash of insight- wondering exactly the same thing. Thirty years in service to Trinity’s Army and never once had she questioned the presence of the emergency button, or what grim distrust it underlined.
“I do not think you want to do that, Tech Expert First Class Tendreel Salingh of the Mycogene-Alzants.” The words rolled off Fenris’ tongue. There was little in the mushroom prophetess’ antiquated machines about her own species, and Fenris wasn’t about to use an actual AI system to dig for more, not in this disembodied form. “If you do, you shall have to explain to all the people who come running so quickly to this little room of yours the presence of the files on this machine.”
Tendreel froze where she was. She opened her mouth to speak, but the man –who she recognized now as one of the beings who floated through the darkness of space, whispering and moaning like the damned- continued. The Myco wondered furiously how he couldn’t gotten aboard Vorpal Cannon without triggering a single alarm. She tried using her innate talents to muster forth some answers to that clue, literally willing those tiny pinpricks of light to shine.
“And not only that…” Fenris stopped midsentence to burst out with laughter, suddenly so amused that he didn’t care if anyone else walked into the room. The prophetess was trying to use her talents on him. The Harmony soldier flicked a hand and the nascent glimmering of brilliance that was the Myco-Alzants pathetic, paltry connection to a deeper truth shattered.
Tendreel gasped as the weave of the Universe disappeared. She wrapped her arms around herself, partially out of fear, but also partially out of pleasure; as shocking and painful as the sudden –and temporary, of that she was positive- loss of the tapestry was, Tendreel had seen in a flash something she might’ve ordinarily missed, given her current state of mind.
The man, whoever he was, however he was ‘present’ in her room, wasn’t truly on the ship. The dark, shadowy figure filling the other end of her room was just that. A shadow. A reflection.
Tendreel steadied herself firmly. She had to be digging in the right direction if one of the … what had Commander Aleksander called them once … Horsemen? Well, the Myco didn’t precisely understand what the horrific beings had to do with horses, but the dread in her commanding officer’s words had been easy enough to understand. Whatever Horsemen were, they were, to humans and their offshoots, a terrible thing. She blinked her eyes rapidly.
If a Horseman was risking himself by projecting an image –one that had the power to interact with things, which was why she planned on treading lightly, even with her newfound intelligence- then she had to be digging in the right direction, plucking on the right threads.
“Not only that, Tendreel Salingh,” Fenris continued once he was certain the foolish little Offworlder could keep herself contained, “but then you would have to explain what you were doing with them.”
“Why did you come here?” Tendreel asked softly. Bereft of her connection to the tapestry, she was finding it difficult to concentrate. Had any one of her kind ever been severed before? Tendreel couldn’t recall a single instance, and she’d sat at the feet of her sporefathers, listening to the stories of long ago and far away right up until the moment she’d left her world.
Until now, Tendreel would’ve sworn on her life that nothing in the Universe could remove or blot out that most precious link. It was humbling.
“I came to see why a foolish Offworlder is fumbling around in the dark places of this festering Existence, throwing light on things better left unseen.” Fenris gestured grandly. In the back of his mind, his brothers were laughing raucously; they appreciated a good show more than anyone, and Fenris himself found he was enjoying this little bit of theatricality quite a bit more than he expected. “Imagine my surprise when I came here, and saw that it was you.”
At this, Tendreel bristled. “I am doing as commanded. To the best of my ability.”
“Ah.” Fenris nodded knowingly at this. Were it not for Nalanata –himself, poking and prodding at the edges of the Unreal Universe as he was wont to do when he was bored- seeing a tiny little thread of Harmony being tuned like an instrument, however unknowingly … left alone, undealt with? Total chaos. Grubby mortals –Offworld and Human alike- could never find themselves in the position to grasp a quarter of Garth’s Grand Plan. “And such an ability.”
Tendreel Salingh stared unblinkingly at the man … no, he was no man, whatever else he was, he was most certainly not that. She was turned all the way inward, trying to find that which he had so easily cast out from her, that spark that gave her and all the Mycogene-Alzants such a wonderful gift. It was hers. Not his to take. Tendreel knew that in comparison to the others back home, her talent for seeing the tapestry was miniscule, barely even a thing worth mentioning.
It was why she’d –why all those Mycos out there in Trinityspace- been permitted to leave the sanctity of her home system. Those with the ability to see deep into the threads that made up the tapestry that was, to listen to one of the ancient sporefathers, the whole of life itself were not only content to stay right where they were, but too important to let go.
But here, now, working on the secret mission for Commander Aleksander, a man who’d shown her common decency, who’d seen in her something worthwhile, Tendreel also knew that no matter what happened, she wouldn’t stop digging.
Her mind was full of stories of the great Garth Nickels, both before and after the perilously dark time when he’d transformed into Specter. She’d read all the files, seen as much of the SpecSer footage as possible. In the beginning, when Garth had set foot on that first planet, he’d been just a man. Inelegant, indelicate, cocky, difficult to understand and even more difficult to control, he’d soldiered forward through the horror that was Gorensystem with nothing more than his intellect and a great deal of luck.
Tendreel would do the same. Here, now, she was confronted with an entity capable of projecting his image across thousands of miles of empty space, through a shield that defied all attempts at destruction or deactivation. This was her Gorensworld. She didn’t know how it’d come to pass, but the Myco knew down to her very mushroomy toes that she was different now, better than when she’d been tested, when she’d been permitted to seek her way in the world outside.
But the Horseman was so powerful. So … present. Dark energy radiated outwards from him, and every time Tendreel tried to open her mouth to speak, to decry him and his efforts at terrorizing her, the flesh, her flesh, failed.
The Tech Expert felt the tendrils that was the slender essence of who she was pull back from her extremities, viral fronds retreating deep inside the core portion of the body that housed the whole of who she, Tendreel Salingh, was; betrayed, by a hundred thousand years of self-interest, the cunning animus that’d given rise to one of the greatest Offworld civilizations in Trinityspace held little trust in her ability to navigate through this trouble with thoughts of Garth and his own triumphs.
It would do all that it could to protect her, and if that meant sacrificing the flesh grown in a farm to do so, then that is what would happen.
Fenris eyed the mushroom prophetess with interest. Th
e poor dear was locked in terror, the sentient virus driving the artfully crafted fungal body battening down the hatches, as it were. “What a marvelous beast you are, Tendreel Salingh. How many people outside this room know what you truly are?”
Tendreel spoke, though with difficulty; it was taking all of her powers of concentration to force the … animalistic tendencies of the viral mind to accede to her demands. “Three. Maybe four.”
Fenris clapped approvingly. “So you are good at keeping secrets.”
Tendreel nodded, the flesh of her neck dry and stiff already. If this situation wasn’t resolved soon enough, her body would ossify into a desiccated husk. “I am. We all are. What is it you want, Horseman?”
As she spoke, Tendreel tried digging around and through the strange barricade her unwanted visitor had thrown around her. Perhaps with her intellect bundled up and free of the demands of a body –however detrimental that might be in the long run- she might just find a way. The Myco had never quite used her mind like this before, and it was difficult.
At being called ‘Horseman’, all his brothers found reason to laugh resoundingly through the Harmony. Fenris joined in the hilarity. The stuff of myth and legend, indeed. If N’Chalez’ venture was truly successful, and the whole of the Unreal Universe was transformed into his idealistic ‘tree’ and it’s endless sheathe of dimensional leaves, concepts like ‘Horsemen’ would ripple through … everywhere. And titans, and men sacrificing eyes for wisdom.
Perhaps here, right here, with that word being spoken aloud by someone as entrenched in the shallowest waters of Harmony as Tendreel was, perhaps this was the beginning of those legends.
Fenris approved. As did Lokken and the others. The First Horseman flashed a quick grin full of grim promise. “Stop what you are doing, Tendreel Salingh of Special Services. Do something else with your time. Devote your considerable intellect and frankly surprising talent to bringing down the shield, or to decoding the encrypted messages being flashed this way. Do anything but what you are doing.”