by Unknown
It is the first spirit I’ve ever seen in person. Pictures and drawings do them no justice. They are glaring, raw spots of energy, like staring into the arc of a welder. This arc, however, wants to devour us, as Anna said.
We, of course, are here to devour it first.
Ryan is up and moving before Miranda can get clear of the cramped front seat. He is standing on the side rail of the truck, his footing as sure as if it were a flat piece of floor. In his hand is a collection plate, and he has it primed. With a snap of the wrist, he throws it at the spirit. There is an inrush of sound and a feeling of pressure. My ears pop as I see the spirit fold in on itself like a rag dropped to the floor. It vanishes into the plate with a sound akin to a distant shriek.
It all seems to have been so easy. I look around as if to ask what all the fuss is about. That’s when I see Anna, arms outstretched to the right side of the truck. Power streams from her hands, and it actually bends the light to produce ripples in the air. I can see a partial sphere of energy formed in the surrounding sky and an eye-searing spike of light as a spirit tries to burrow through her shield.
“Mine!” Miranda shouts as she snaps a collection plate into place just past the shield. It sparks and fizzles before going dark. The catcher is cursing as she grabs for a backup plate. Ryan is still facing the other way. Her claim that it is her target has given him free rein to prepare for anything else that might come up.
Kat’s cannon roars, and a single aether-tipped round big as a finger slashes through the spirit, scattering it into glowing motes. It slowly begins to re-form, sliding together with a liquid beauty that ends abruptly as Miranda’s second plate opens. With a gasp of released energy, the plate bathes the spirit in emerald fire and absorbs it.
There is a moment of near-silence, broken by the hissing of the truck’s steam boiler. Everybody is looking around. I don’t know what they’re looking for, but I’m looking too.
“Recover,” Hans says. The word isn’t even fully off his lips before Ryan has leaped from the truck. The red-haired catcher turns a graceful flip in the air and is running when his feet touch the ground. Each hand holds a pistol of some kind, and I notice that his arms don’t sway to counterbalance his body as he sprints. The guns are rock solid in his grasp. Seconds later, he is holstering one and snatching up the plate. He pivots on a heel and is running back to us while I’m still trying to analyze his movements.
Miranda has gone to hers as well, though she has empty hands and simply runs without flourish. She is no less graceful but seems to restrain herself.
Five minutes in London. Team 17 has already packaged two spirits.
It’s a busy morning. By the time we stop to rest, there are more than a dozen full plates. I’ve seen enough spirits to know what kind of speed and ferocity they have, and my camera bag grows full with my own type of plates. Hans pulls us into an old fire station to allow the crew to restock from the lockbox in the truck bed. Slade fires a lantern, filling the room with brilliant light, and hangs the lamp on the truck frame.
“You doing all right?” Hans asks. It’s the first chance I’ve had to speak with him. He’s drinking from a canteen and extends it to me. I notice my hands are quivering when I reach for it.
“I can’t remember my mouth ever being this dry,” I say before sucking in a mouthful of the cool water. It feels better in my mouth than I thought possible.
“Goofer dust,” he explains. I arch an eyebrow, and he gives me a sad smile from within his beard. “Burned corpses.”
I gag, and the water spills from my mouth in a deluge of gray sludge. I’ve been breathing in the dust of millions of incinerated dead since the moment we arrived. When I vomit, no one chastises or laughs.
“Aether bombs ain’t kind,” Hans says. He leaves the canteen with me and goes to bum a cigarette from Slade.
“Try a taste of this,” Kat offers, holding out a flask made of hammered steel. I feel my nostrils burn as the vapors reach me, and I thank her. The drink is like a foul-tasting mouthful of flame, and I choke again.
Her brother slaps me on the back with a chuckle. “She brews it in the engine room,” he says.
I don’t doubt it. I look at the unlikely pair, wondering what would bring them to Team 17. I pose the question as Kat takes a long pull off the flask filled with what I now believe must be paint thinner.
“I owed money to a loan shark, and we had to hide,” she says in that thick accent they both share. Lars leans in with a shake of his head.
“She tells a story,” he says. “We contracted for the job to have a real life. After the war, our military scaled back. People who were strictly gunners were no longer necessary. Here, we have jobs.”
“Until we die,” she adds with a throaty laugh.
“You’ll go before me,” Ryan calls from his position in the truck bed. He has finished refilling his bag with plates and is eating something.
It seems a curious moment of normalcy in the middle of a place and situation that could flare into violence without a second of warning. I have to think to remember that we’re actually in London. We could as easily be at a dinner party in Vermont. Everyone is spending a few moments just relaxing. It occurs suddenly that the members of Team 17 are simply taking the opportunity to live. Minutes ago, they could have been killed, and minutes from now, they very well might be. For the moment, they are alive, and they are enjoying it.
Miranda has taken the opportunity to lean back in the front seat. She has a rag laying across her eyes, blocking out the light provided by the lantern. Her chest moves rhythmically as she catches what sleep she can. Anna is perched on the open tailgate of the truck, smiling as she watches the interplay of the others. Her helmet is off, and her bald scalp gleams in the sharp light. An unlit thin cigar is clamped in the corner of her mouth.
Not every team has a mage assigned, which makes Anna unique. Sniffers like Hans are frequent, and many make a fine living back home, but those that can truly wield magic are few. And they are prized. I had asked her about her position back on the Grantville. Her answer was truly descriptive and involved a play on the word “position.” I take a step toward her, intent on asking more about how she discovered her power, but I’m interrupted as Hans shouts out, “Incoming!”
The effect is incredible. Everyone on the team knows exactly what they’re doing, and they take up defensive positions in a flash. Guns point everywhere. Hans is holding some kind of shotgun-thing with a muzzle that gapes like a bucket. Miranda has a long-bladed cutlass, the edge glowing with embedded aether. Even Slade has a pistol. The entire crew is taking the few steps necessary to return to the truck.
I’ve noticed that they never stray far from the vehicle. It is truly their lifeline. With it they can go anywhere, do anything. Even now, the boiler is stoked and the pressure chamber full. Gauges are lined out, and with a press of his foot, Hans will have us rocketing forth to escape whatever is approaching.
“Step lively, new guy,” Slade calls.
New guy. That would be me. Standing slack-jawed as the veterans mount the ride with ease, even with all their collection gear. I’m “that guy”—the one everybody is looking at. They’re all in place, ready to defend against anything, and here’s this idiot still looking for directions. Ryan holds out a hand from his position in the bed of the truck. I shake off the feeling of being frozen and grip his hand. His eyes bug out and I hear three separate shouts from the others on the team.
It feels cold at first, like I’ve submerged my leg in an icy bath. My brain spins and loops in a desperate attempt to figure out what’s going on when suddenly the cold becomes a roaring, searing agony, like acid and flame racing through my nerves. The leg collapses beneath me, and I’m tumbling toward the floor. Behind and above me, the air boils with raw magic and the projectiles of aether guns. Shrieks as collection plates do their jobs. Screams of panic and a sudden concussion as Lars and Kat open up with their cannons, rapid fire.
I’m also seeing something different
but not with my eyes. Flashes of memories that are not my own overtake me . . .
There were hundreds of airships silhouetted in a perfect blue sky. Air raid sirens and panicked voices rang in the air. What looked like flecks of pepper drifted down from the German aircraft. By the time we recognized the flecks for what they were, it was too late, and seconds later, the first explosions began. Weaponized aether bathed the city in that sickly jade-green glow, and the waves of it came closer with every crash of sound. There was nowhere left to run.
I’m lifting from the ground now, and the visions vanish. I recognize Slade as he hoists me up into the air and literally throws me into the bed of the truck. He dives in behind me, and our surroundings blur as Hans opens the boiler to full, spitting a column of steam which quickly fades behind us.
“. . . shock!” I hear Slade shouting. He stabs me with a long needle, and I feel a rush of energy that leaves my fingers tingling. I don’t know what he has done, but—
The world snaps into perfect focus. I can feel everything except my leg. The air passing across my skin. The combined pressure waves with every shot of the big aether guns that the Torkelsenn twins are using to cover our escape. The sharp, ozone-scented eruption of raw power from the fingers of Anna Purevoy.
“On the two!” Miranda shouts, and the truck shudders into a left-hand turn. I see it as we pass: an immense group of spirits, easily a hundred thick with dozens more joining by the second. Ryan throws a random collection plate at the group. It may take in as many as three, but all it can do after absorbing them is whine impotently.
Flares shoot skyward from Miranda’s position, one after another, signaling our distress. I can smell the propellant from them, hear the muffled crump of each shot as she cycles through half a dozen.
“Hold on, news boy,” Slade says. He has some kind of jar in his hand, and when I look down, he is pouring it across what looks like a withered piece of red meat. My leg. I should probably scream, but I don’t see a reason. What was in that needle?
“Reinforcements in ten!” shouts Miranda. Her gaze is cast skyward, and I look up to see two of the Grantville’s titanic walking machines dropping down to us on triple parachutes. Their arms blaze green with sustained fire from the rotating cannon mounts, and I can imagine them ravaging the spirits that had emerged to block our path.
The truck shudders to a stop, and I see a constant stream of collection plates being thrown behind us as everyone but Lars and Kat—and Slade, who is still occupied with trying to save my leg—sail the vessels out in a line, our own little wall of aetheric defense. It is at that moment that I realize I’m not wearing my goggles, and I can still see the approaching wave of spirit energy. It looks different without the aether providing a filter. I can see individual faces, bodies, clothes. These were people once—before the German bombs erased them. Somewhere in that crowd of spirits, if he has not already been collected, is the man whose memories I shared, the spirit that attacked me. I look at Anna, and she looks back, a knowing smile on her face. Then her hands come up and a twisting, spiraling flare of energy blows a jagged hole into the approaching spirit ranks. The plates are absorbing energy in mass quantity, but we’ll soon be overrun.
The walkers land with earth-shaking force, and enormous collectors spring to life in their legs and torsos. Emerald light bathes everything around us. The amount of spirit energy we’re collecting from the dead is enough to power most of the planet for weeks.
The battle stretches for another twenty seconds. The entire area is thick with aetheric waste and the smell of ozone and hot metal. Steam from the walkers, trapped by the humidity of the air, surrounds us in a thin fog. Shell casings are a brass carpet on the pavement. I can no longer make out individual sounds, and the world has become a mixture of discharging guns and screaming spirits.
“Have a little more,” Slade says, his mouth inches from my left ear. He drives another spike into my pelvis. I look down to see the ruin of my leg laying on the shreds of my pants. I start to panic for a moment, but then, the drug hits. Again, the leg doesn’t matter. Whatever he’s giving me is a taste of heaven itself.
Ryan and Miranda are out of the truck now, attending to the plates they deployed. It looks like we used every one Team 17 brought. The massive walkers have closed their collectors as well. The bilious green light has vanished, replaced by the blue-white of the lamps on the huge attack machines.
I reach out a hand toward Anna. She acknowledges me with a nod and a tight smile. She won’t compromise her hands by holding mine as she might need them free to unleash her magic again. Around the truck, there is a whirlwind of activity. I see the crew from Team 9 roll up. They call out greetings and take up positions to defend if anything else goes down. The Grantville is floating overhead, and I see chain lifts being lowered. One of them, I know, is for Team 17.
We’re soon lifted back into the airship for resupply and to deliver the mass quantity of aetheric energy collected below. Slade turns me over to the Grantville medical staff. They know what they’re doing. I’m not the first victim of spirit attack they’ve seen.
“You get better soon, news boy,” Slade says.
I grin, the drugs still playing through my system and keeping the pain at bay. I lean up closer to him before he can leave, clutching at his sleeve for support.
“We did good,” I declare with all the confidence of an outsider. He chuckles.
He tucks a hand-roll into the corner of his mouth and winks at me before speaking.
“Yeah. Not bad for day one.”
T. Mike McCurley lives in a small city in Oklahoma where, indeed, “the wind comes sweeping” and all that. His Firedrake series has now filled three books, with a fourth in the works. He is a founding member of the Pen and Cape Society, an online cabal of authors of superhero prose, and his Emergence setting will soon be featured in Lester Smith’s D6xD6 roleplaying game. His supernatural Western series, The Adventures of Jericho Sims, has seen two short releases so far, with a novel in the works. His works can be found linked at www.tmikemccurley.com.
The Litany of Waking
Scott Fitzgerald Gray
She awoke to darkness and a grinding headache, her teeth buzzing and her hands tingling with the residual power of the flare that had dropped her. She knew no more than that, thoughts reeling within a storm of shadow. She tried to touch her thumbs to each of her twitching fingers, judging whether any had gone missing. She found she couldn’t quite remember how many she’d started with, though.
She ran through the litany of waking, remembering first her name. Sabela. That sounded right. She heard it in her Ma and Da’s voices in her mind and was pleased that she knew them as well. She recalled her age, twelve summers. That was important.
She tried to focus on place and action. Where she was, why she was there. And in doing so, she remembered suddenly the imperative of not moving a muscle where she lay sprawled on her back in the darkness. That was more important by far.
It was the familiar information that focused you, her parents had taught her. When power surged as fire and lightning through an open coupling or along a conduit that had looked well grounded at first glance, it could kill you quick enough. Sabela had seen it happen. What was worse, though, was that same power scrambling your mind and memory. So it was that her Ma and Da had taught her the litany of waking, sharpening the instinct to reset the mind and put it through its paces in response to any unexplained darkness. Making sure everything was where it was supposed to be.
She squinted. In the half-light, she could see bundles of cable that thickened and twisted along dark walls, looping around and through each other like the contents of a butcher’s offal bucket. She counted them and realized that her numbers had come back finally. She counted her fingers. Nine, just like she remembered.
Why have you come, ghost?
The voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once. Sabela felt her mind settle to an absolute silence, her body doing its best to follow. The only sound w
as her blood beating steady in her head.
Ghost. I know you hear me.
The voice hung in the air as light as well as sound, like Sabela had seen once at a town-park concert her Ma and Da had taken her to when she was young. That had been great fountains of blue and red and white arcing through the sky, marking the boom and brass of the orchestra. By contrast, the noise-light of the voice was a single shade of pale gold, shimmering through the shadow of her sight like fireflies.
“Go away, voice,” Sabela said.
Strong words, ghost, but this is my place you find yourself in. You cannot pass through these halls unnoticed and unseen.
When the voice spoke, its firefly light shifted and drifted through the space around Sabela’s eyes. She saw the dark lines of cables and conduits more clearly. She saw condensers set in rows of six by two, hanging limp like sow’s teats and dripping dead oil. As she craned her head, feeling the tug of her hair where she’d plaited it to keep it out of her way while she worked, she saw a straight tunnel behind her and a twisting course leading down.
She still didn’t know where she was, but she had her choice of escape routes. That was something.
“There’s no such things as ghosts.” Sabela heard an echo in her words as she recalled how Nicolau had said that exact thing to her. She blinked at the memory as it fell into place, feeling the headache rattle around a bit. She recalled the others as well and was glad of it. Xabier and Cibran, Iago and Rocha and Illiam. Her fellow scrappers. Nicolau was their master, but him and his pig prod, she would have been happy to forget.
“I’ve got work to do,” Sabela said, but the voice and the shadows gave her no response.
It had been early when Nicolau woke them all, the sky a bruise of blue and gold above the ash fields. Sabela and the rest of the scrappers had been scouring those empty battlefields for the better part of the summer months. Long days spent claiming old iron and bits of mechwork, lost among the smoldering fires that had burned since the end of the war.