by Andy Remic
Nienna struggled against her ropes, and she could see Kat crying, pulling on her vest and trews.
“Kat! Over here! Get the axe!”
The remaining four woodsmen had grouped together, pooling weapons. With a scream, and as a unit that displayed previous military experience, they charged across the fire at the canker which growled, hunkering down, crimson eyes watching the charge with interest, as a cat watches a disembowelled mouse squirm.
Kat grabbed the axe and, still sobbing, half crawled, half ran towards Nienna. She swung at the rope, missed, then swung again and the sharp blades of Ilanna sliced through with consummate ease. Nienna hit the ground, and Kat helped her get the ropes from her wrists to the backing track of screams, thuds, gurgles, and most disturbingly, the solid crunches of impact, of gristle, of snapping bones.
The girls half hoped the woodsmen had won; but then, they’d have to face the prospect of rape and murder.
But what would happen with the canker?
Kat pulled on her boots, and something smashed off into the forest, a woodsman, picked up by the canker, slamming an axe into its back again and again and again as it charged through the forest with his legs in its jaws. There came the smash and crack of breaking wood. A gurgle. Another crack; this time of bone.
Nienna and Kat stood, shivering, wondering what to do.
Slowly, the canker emerged from the gloom, lit only by the flames of the fire. Blood soaked its white fur, and congealed gore interfered with fine cogs and gears, splashed up its uneven, distended eyes. Skin and torn bowel were caught in long streamers between its claws, and it made a low churning sound as if about to be violently sick…
“Back away,” mumbled Kat, as Nienna hefted the axe and they started to retreat into the forest.
Nienna stood on a branch, which snapped.
The canker turned, slowly, red eyes watching them.
“Is it going to charge?”
“I don’t know.”
“Don’t move!”
“It’s already seen us!”
“Stop talking!”
“You’re talking as well!”
They stopped. The canker stopped. They eyed each other, over perhaps fifty yards. Then, with a wide grin-which looked like the creature had peeled the top of its head right off-it let out a howl, a howl to the fire, to the forest, to the moon, and lowered its head with a grinding snarl and with a shift of gears, a mechanical grind of cogs, the canker leapt at the girls…
SEVEN
The Watchmakers
“Don’t do this,” said Anu, backing away, her face an image of horror as Shabis’s fangs gleamed, her claws flexed and she leapt. Anu somersaulted backwards, away from the attack, landed lightly, and as Shabis leapt again, claws tearing the carpet, oil gleaming in her eyes, so Anu leapt, kicked off from the wall and flipped over Shabis’s head. She landed in a crouch, unwilling to reveal her own killing tools, unwilling to fight her sister.
“Shabis!”
Shabis whirled, mad now. “You will die, bitch!”
“With what poison has he filled your head? What lies?”
Shabis charged, claws swiping for Anu’s throat. Anu swayed back, brass and steel a hair’s-breadth from her windpipe, then punched her sister in the chest, slamming her back almost horizontally where she hit the carpet on her face and coughed, clutching her chest, pain slamming violent through heart and gears and clockwork…
Anu’s eyes lifted to Vashell. “Call her off.”
Vashell backed away, tongue wetting his lips. She could see the bulge in his armoured pants. He was getting a thrill out of this: out of watching two sisters fight to the death.
“Stop her!” shrieked Anu, as Shabis crawled to her feet, the corners of her mouth blood-flecked.
“No,” he said, voice barely more than a growl. “This is the final trial. Don’t you see? This is the final…entertainment. A repayment, if you like, for all the pain and suffering you have caused. Shabis.” Shabis looked at him, the rage in her eyes flickering to love. “If you kill her, then we will marry, we will spend a glorious eternity together; you will never have to work again, we will languish in a blood-oil rapture; just you and I, my love.”
Shabis turned to Anu, head low, eyes dark. She let out a snarl and charged at Anukis who was crying, great tears flowing down her cheeks, soaking her golden curls, and Shabis leapt like a tiger, both sets of vachine claws coming together to crush Anu’s head and Anu swayed, ejecting a single claw which swiped down, sideways, as Shabis sailed past. There came a tiny flash, an almost unheard grinding sound, and Shabis hit the ground hard, rolling, wailing, her clawed fingers coming up to her face where blood and blood-oil mingled, leaking from her severed…fangs.
Anu had cut out Shabis’s fangs. The ultimate symbol of the vachine.
“No!” wailed Shabis, blood-oil pumping as the cogs in her head, in her heart, ejected precious blood-oil. “What have you done to me, Anukis?” She climbed to her feet, ran to Vashell, who put out his arms to comfort her as she sobbed, her blood-oil leaking into his clothing and his eyes lifted to read Anukis who stood, face bleak, as she retracted her single claw.
“Now you need another assassin,” said Anu, triumph in her eyes.
Vashell nodded. “You are correct.” With a savage shove, he pushed Shabis away, drew his brass sword, and with a swift hard horizontal swipe, cut Shabis’s head from her body. Blood and blood-oil spurted, hitting the ceiling, drenching the walls and bed in a twisting shower of sudden ferocity. Shabis’s head hit the sodden carpet, eyes wide, mouth open in shock, pretty features stained. Anu could see the clockwork in her severed neck, between the fat and the muscle, the veins and the bone, nestled and intricate, bonded, and it was all still spinning happily, now slowing, as cogs could not mesh and a primary shaft failed in its delicate spin. Shabis’s eyes closed, and her separated body folded slowly to the carpet, as if deflating. Her vachine aborted. Shabis died.
“No!” screamed Anu, running forward, dropping to her knees beside the corpse of her sister. Her head snapped up. “You will die for this!” she raged.
“Show me.” Vashell still held his sword; it was a special blade, specifically designed for slaying vachine; for the killing of their own kind. It had a multi-layered blade, and carried a disruptive charge. It wasn’t so much sharp as…created to cut through clockwork.
Anu’s eyes narrowed. “You are a V Hunter?” she said.
“Yes.” He smiled. It was a sickly smile, half pride, half…something else. Amongst the vachine, the V Hunters were despised; it was a rank handed out by the Watchmakers, and a V Hunter’s sole role was to hunt down and exterminate rogue vachine…to cleanse and, essentially, betray their own. Amongst the population they were feared and loathed. Their identities were kept secret, so they could work undercover throughout Silva Valley. They reported directly back to the Watchmakers, and indeed the Patriarch, and answered to no Engineer.
“You have been hunting me all this time?”
Vashell laughed, and sheathed his sword. He turned, running hands through his hair drenched in the blood-oil of Shabis. He turned back, and stared down at Anu. “Don’t be so naive. What would I want with you, pretty little plaything?”
“What do you want, then?”
“I want something much more precious. I want your father, Anukis. I want Kradek-ka. He has gone; fled. Left you to suffer, along with…that.” He stared, a snarl, at Shabis’s corpse. “Now, you will take me to him. By all that is holy, by all the relics of our ancestors, you will take me to Kradek-ka.”
Anukis overcame her fear, and snarled with fangs ejecting, and leapt; Vashell dropped his shoulder, and with an awesome blow backhanded Anukis across the room where she hit the wall, cracking plaster, and hit the floor on her head, crumpling into a heap. She groaned, broken, and her eyes flickered open.
“I’ll leave you to clean up the corpse,” said Vashell, and leaving footprints in Shabis’s blood, he stalked from the room.
Anu stared f
or long, agonising moments, her eyes seeming to meet those of her dead sister. Tears rolled down her cheeks, her body slumped to the ground, and her eyes closed as she welcomed the oblivion of pain and darkness.
It began as a ball. A tight ball; white, pure, hot like a sun. And that ball was anger, and hatred, and rage so pure, so hot, that it engulfed everything, it engulfed her concept of family and name and honour and duty and love and spread, covering the city and the valley and the Black Pike Mountains; finally it overtook the world, and the sun, and the stars, and the galaxy and everything broiled in that tiny hot plasma of rage and Anu’s eyes flickered open and it was dark, and cool, and she was thankful.
She lay on a steel bench. She was dressed in plain clothes, and boots. She looked down, and started, and started to weep. Her vachine claws had been removed, the ends of her bloody fingers blunt stumps. She reached up, and winced as she felt the holes where her fangs should have been. Inside her, she felt the heavy tick tick tick of clockwork, in her head and in her breast; and she cursed Vashell, and cursed the Engineers, for they had taken away her weapons and she would rather be dead. It was what they once did to criminals before the Justice Laws, and just before a death-sentence was meted out. It was the lowest form of aberration. The lowest form of dishonour; beyond, even, the transformation to canker. Even a canker had fangs.
Winter sunshine bled in through a high window, and Vashell emerged smugly through a door. He wore subtle vachine battledress, skin-armour, they called it, beneath woollen trousers and a thick shirt and cloak. His weapons, also, were hidden. His eyes shone.
“Get up.”
“No.”
“Get up!” He ejected a claw, and held it to her eye. “Anukis, I will take you apart limb by limb, orb by orb, tooth by tooth. I will massacre you, but your clockwork, your mongrel vachine status, will keep you alive. We know Kradek-ka made you special; you think us fools? You think the Engineers haven’t been inside you? Examined every cog, every wheel, every tiny shaft and pump? Kradek-ka did some very special things to you, Anukis, technology we didn’t even know existed. First, we were going to kill you. It was fitting. You are an abomination. But then a specialist discovered…the advanced technology, inside of you. You will help me find Kradek-ka. I promise you this.”
“I don’t know where to look,” she said, voice low, staring at the razor tip of Vashell’s claw.
“I have a start point. But first, I want to show you something.”
Vashell tugged on a thin golden lead, almost transparent, and scaled with a strange quartz mesh; sometimes, it could be seen, rippling like liquid stone; other times it was completely invisible, depending on how it caught the light. Anukis felt the jolt, and realised it was connected to her throat. Another humiliation. Another vachine slight.
Vashell tugged, and Anukis was forced to stand. She growled, tried to eject her fangs by instinct but only pain flowed through her jaws. She wept then, standing there on the leash. She wept for her freedom; but more, she wept for her dead sister, wept for her lost father.
“Follow me.”
Anukis had little choice.
“Where is this?”
“Deep. Within the Engineer’s Palace.”
“I did not know these corridors, and these rooms, existed.”
“Why should you? Even Kradek-ka would not tell you everything. After all,” he smiled, eyes dark, filled with an inner humour, “you are female.”
The corridors were long, and the more they delved into the Engineer’s Palace, the deeper they penetrated, conversely, the more bare and more undecorated it became. Gone were carpets, silk hangings, works of oil-art. Instead, bare metal, rusted in places, became the norm. Deeper they travelled, Anukis trotting a little to keep up with Vashell’s long stride.
They walked for an hour. Behind some doors they heard grinding noises, deep and penetrating; behind others jolts of enormous power like strikes of lightning. Behind others, they heard rhythmical thumping, or the squeal of metal on metal. Yet more were deadly silent beyond, and for some reason, these were the worst for Anukis. Her imagination could create Engineer horrors worse than anything they could show her.
Vashell stopped, and Anukis nearly ran into him. She was lost in thought, drowning in dreams. She pulled up tight, and he looked down, his look arrogant, his eyes mocking, and she thought:
One day, I will see you weep.
One day, I will watch you beg, and squirm, in the dirt, like a maggot.
One day, Vashell. You will see.
“We are here,” he said.
“Where?”
“The Maternity Hall. Your father’s creation.”
“Maternity Hall? I have never heard of this.” A cold dread began to rise slowly through her, and Vashell pushed at the solid metal door, grey and unmarked, and Anukis found herself led into a huge, vacuous chamber which stretched off further than the eye could see. It was filled with booths and benches, and the air was infused with the cries of babes.
Goose-bumps ran up and down Anu’s spine. She stood, stock still, her eyes taking in the bleak, grey place.
She walked forward, as far as her leash would allow, and Vashell tugged her to a halt. Obedience. She stared at benches, where babes lay, squirming, their cries ignored as Engineers worked on them. In the booths which drifted away she could see what looked like medical operations taking place. Many of the babes were silent, obviously drugged. Around some, a cluster of Engineers worked frantically. Every now and again, a buzz filled the air, or a click, or a whine.
Anu stared up at Vashell. “What are they doing?” she whispered.
“Welcome to Birth,” said Vashell. “You don’t think the vachine create themselves, do you? Every single vachine is a work of art, a sculpture of science and engineering; every vachine is created from a baby template, the fresh meat brought here shortly after birth to have the correct clockwork construct grafted, added, injected, implanted, and from thence the true vachine can grow and meld and begin to function.”
“So…we all begin as human?”
“Yes.”
“But we feed from human blood! The refined mix of blood-oil! That makes us…little more than cannibals!”
Vashell shrugged, and smiled. “Blood of my blood,” he said, sardonically. “I find it hard to believe Kradek-ka never explained it to you. He kept you in a bubble, Anukis. He created this; this structure, this schedule, he elevated the systems of clockwork integration to make us better, superior, to elevate us above a normal impure flesh. With vachine integration we are the perfect species. Can you not see this, Anukis? This is your family’s life work. This is the creation of the vachine.”
Anu sagged, leaning against Vashell, her mind spinning as she watched a thousand babies undergoing vachine integration. She saw scalpels carving through flesh, through baby chests and into hearts, replacing organic components with clockwork, replacing valves and arteries with gears and tubes. Babies cried, squealed, and their wails were hushed by pads held over mouths until they lost consciousness. Blood trickled into slots and was carried away to be further refined and fed back into Blood Refineries in order to create the blood-oil pool.
“We are vampires,” said Vashell, staring down at Anu who was pale and grey, a shadow of her former self. “Machine vampires. We feed on the human shell; revel, in our total superiority.”
“What we’re doing is wrong, ” snarled Anu.
“Why? The creation of a superior species?” Vashell laughed. “Your naivety both astounds and amuses me. Here, the rich noble daughter, blood-line of our very own vachine creators-and you do not even understand the basics?”
A babe squealed and there was a chopping sound. Anu saw the flash of a silver blade. The tiny head rolled into a chute and was sucked away. The corpse was thrown into a bag, and an Engineer moved to a distant cart and slung the body aboard, along with all the other medical waste.
“So,” said Anu, fighting for air, “every babe that is born, here in Silva Valley, it comes here? It
comes to be formed into vachine?”
“Yes. But more than Silva; the vachine have spread, Anu. We are breeding soldiers in other valleys. We are growing strong! We grow mighty! Our time for domination, for expansion, for Empire, is close.”
“But-” said Anu.
Vashell frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Something is wrong,” said Anu, with primitive intuition. “What’s going on, Vashell? What’s happening here?”
“We need to find Kradek-ka.” He scowled. He would say no more.
For an hour Vashell dragged Anukis through the Maternity Hall, and she saw things so barbaric she wouldn’t have believed them possible. The babies were operated on, implanted with clockwork technology-in their hearts, in their brains, in their jaws, in their hands. Even at such a young age they were given weapons of death, using blood-oil magic, clockwork, and liquid brass and gold, silver-quartz and polonium, in order to control and power and time the mechanisms of the vachine.
“How many work?” she said, at last, exhausted.
“I do not understand?”
“How many babes…become vachine? Successfully?”
“Fifty five in a hundred successfully make it through the-shall we say, medical procedures. Fifty five in a hundred accept the clockwork, accept the fangs, and can grow and meld and adapt and think of themselves as true machine.”
“What about the others?”
“Most die,” said Vashell, sadly. “This is a great loss; if we could improve the rate of melding, our army would be much larger; we could advance so much more quickly.”
“And?”
“The cankers?” Vashell laughed. “They have their uses.”
“Take me away from this place,” said Anu, tears on her cheeks, fire in her part-clockwork heart.
“As you wish. I thought you needed to know, to understand, before we set out on our quest.”