by M. R. Forbes
Another trife moved in. Hayden took a step back, swinging his mechanical hand as hard as he could and slamming it into the creature, bouncing it into another. He backpedaled, getting closer to the apparent escape while still facing off with the trife.
One of them jumped up, turning over and hitting the ceiling, using it to spring off and dive toward him, at the same time another came in from his left in a synchronized attack. He dove to the side, barely avoiding the claws of the first creature as he hit the ground, scrambling to get back to his feet as quickly as possible.
The second trife jumped on him, claws digging into his leg. He cried out in pain, throwing a metal fist into the side of the demon’s head and knocking it away. He pushed himself up, on his knees when another trife slashed out at his neck. He barely got his metal hand up in time to block it, falling onto his back as he did.
The trife were hissing at one another, communicating their excitement and urging the first trife on. It approached Hayden slowly at first, and then darting forward with its face, teeth leading in for the kill.
A large chain hit it dead on, shattering its teeth and snapping its head to the side. Chains cried out in time to the blow, covering Hayden. “Get up, Sheriff.”
He didn’t need another invitation. He dragged himself to his feet, facing the trife. They had fallen back a few steps, lining up in the tunnel while they tried to judge the best method of attack.
A sharp series of cracks sounded behind them, and then a line of chipped cement kicked out from the tunnel between Hayden and the trife. The creatures dropped back a few more steps; their attention turned to the source of the assault. Hayden turned his head around again, too, finding the muzzle of a rifle jutting out from an open hatch in the ceiling. It flashed as the shooter opened up again, dropping four of the trife in a strong barrage.
A dark hand reached down from the hatch, at the same time Sia reached up. It took hold of her, pulling her up and through the hole. It returned a few seconds later, taking Abjit out of the tunnel.
“It’s like the grepping hand of fate,” Chains said.
“Let’s hope it’s the hand of an ally,” Hayden replied.
The continued backing to the hatch as the dark hand reached down and took them out, one at a time until only he was left.
He stared at the trife. They stared back at him. As the hand came down one final time and he reached up to take it, the creature in the front bowed its head.
Respect?
Hayden began to rise up and through the hatch.
The trife hissed once at him and then began to walk away.
The hand kept lifting him, its other one grabbing him beneath the shoulders as he cleared the twenty centimeters of cement between the tunnel and the space above it. He was facing outward, away from his savior, looking directly into a graffiti-covered wall.
He swung his legs to the side, finding purchase on the ground. As soon as he was clear, a metal lid was dropped over the hole, the access point sealed and locked. The hands pulled away from his body.
He turned around.
He recognized the robot in front of him immediately. It was the same one, or the same version of the one that they had encountered in Huston’s hideout. It was rusted and dented and looked like it had seen better days, but then what didn’t?
Beside it, a man in dark fatigues extruding from a roughspun robe, the eagle and star logo printed on his cheek. He eyed Hayden like a predator, his face tight.
There were four more Scrappers behind him, holding Jake and Chains at gunpoint. Abjit and Sia were laying on the floor in separate pools of blood, their throats cut.
“I’m Commander Nathan Ales,” the leader said, his eyes dropping to the plastic star on Hayden’s coat, and then to his mechanical hand. The blades were still extended beyond the cuff. “A stranger missing a hand escaped from one of our excavation sites a few days ago. Your features match the description I received from one of Oversergeant Pig’s subordinates.” The Commander smiled. “He isn’t referring to you by any chance, is he?”
28
“HOW DID YOU FIND US?” Chains asked. She was positioned behind Commander Ales, held roughly by one of the Scrappers.
“Broken Sword is going to be known as Crumbled Sword from now on,” Ales said. “Whatever Huston detonated in there, it took out the entire building.”
“That’s not an answer,” Chains said.
The Commander nodded slightly, and one of the other Scrappers slammed the butt of his rifle into Chains’ stomach. She grunted, wincing in pain.
“I don’t owe you an explanation,” Ales said. He looked back at Hayden. “You should be glad we found you. You should be thankful I’m in command of King’s resources in Haven. Most of the Oversergeants here wouldn’t have the moxie to have come looking for you. First I heard that you escaped and that you killed Oversergeant Pig, an enviable accomplishment. Then I heard there was some trouble at Crossroads last night. Then Broken Sword collapsed.” He looked back at Chains. “I’m not an idiot.”
“No comment,” Chains said, earning another shot to the gut. She refused to make a sound the second time.
“I knew the old tunnels were down here. The south side has been blocked off for a long time, so if you made it out of the building, you would have had to go north, through the trife. I’ve been hesitant to clean their nest because it keeps people out of the tunnels. Once the shooting started, you were easy to locate.” His smile somehow managed to get a little wider, a little more malevolent. “The trife would have killed you, pilgrim,” he said, his use of the ship’s name surely intentional. “I saved your life. All of your lives.”
“Not theirs,” Hayden said, motioning to Abjit and Sia. The Commander thought the south side was blocked? Well, it was now.
“They were plotting a rebellion against King.”
“I was with them.”
“A fact I’m willing to overlook. As I said, I’m not an idiot. I can smell the value you would be to King. You escaped from the site. You came from Inside. I still can’t completely believe the colony is intact. King knows what treasure is there. He has records of the asset deployments. The damage to the upper structure is going to make retrieving it a bit more difficult, but then you can’t control the goliath, can you?”
He paused as if he was waiting for Hayden to answer the question. When Hayden remained silent, he continued.
“We recovered one of the trucks at the site and the equipment that was abandoned during the rush to escape the planet. It will be sent to Sanisco, to the Fortress, as a gift to King. So will the three of you.”
Hayden still didn’t speak. He glanced over at Jake and Chains. Ales was sparing their lives when he didn’t have to. Why? Maybe Jake would be valuable as a Borger. What about the Driver?
“Take them out to the transport,” Ales said to one of his underlings. “We’ll wait here for the rest of the convoy to arrive.”
“Yes, sir,” the Scrapper said. “You heard the Commander. Move your asses.”
The Scrappers were anything but gentle, holding Jake and Chains by the arms and pulling them from the room, out into a graffiti-covered hallway. The exodus left him alone with Ales and the robot.
“My wife,” Hayden said. “Ghost has her. Do you know what happened to them?”
Ales was amused. “The Engineer is your wife? Is that why you’re out here? I have a wife, too. She’d love it if I did something like that for her.” He motioned to the robot. “Take him.” Then he looked back at Hayden. “I wouldn’t.”
The robot reached out and took Hayden by his mechanical arm, holding it tight and lifting him to his feet.
“You didn’t answer my question,” Hayden said.
Ales shook his head, and then punched Hayden in the gut. Hayden winced, the bruises there throbbing from the blow, but he didn’t cry out. He kept his head up, eyes on the Commander.
“You think you’re strong, do you?” Ales said. “We’ll see. King sent the Engineer north to Ports w
ith Ghost. If the Scrappers don’t kill her, the trife will. Get him out of here.”
The robot dragged Hayden forward, past the still amused Ales. Hayden turned his head, looking back at the Commander. He could see in the man’s eyes that he wasn’t joking about Ports. He really did expect Natalia to die there.
He was led down a long, worn corridor, around the corner and out the door of an old utility substation of some kind. There were four Scrapper vehicles already waiting outside. Three were large, big-wheeled cars that had been pieced together from other salvage, open-framed vehicles with large engines and placements for soldiers to ride and defend the convoy. The fourth vehicle was ten meters long, a rectangular shape, with barred windows lining each side, and extra metal plates added along the flanks and down over the wheels. A pair of metal turrets had been added to the rooftop, and a pair of Scrappers were already positioned there, rifles in hand.
The robot led him to the transport, its heavy feet thudding with every step, its worn servos and hydraulics hissing and grinding. It didn’t speak. Hayden didn’t know if it could speak. He had never seen anything like it before. An ancient creation, yet completely new to him. It was frightening and amazing at the same time, and he could imagine how much Natalia would love to get a look at its inner workings.
It released him from its grip at the edge of a doorway leading into the vehicle. He considered trying to run, but only for a second. The Oversergeant inside stuck a revolver in his face.
“Come on in, Insider,” he said. “We’ve got a great party going in here.”
Hayden entered climbing a few steps into the transport. He found Chains and Jake already tethered to the vehicle, heavy chains binding their hands and locking them in. The four Scrappers were standing around them, sticking their clothed groins into their faces, laughing and leering and doing their best to make them uncomfortable.
“Have a seat,” the Scrapper said, waving him to a seat across from Chains.
He went to it and sat. As soon as he did, they produced another heavy chain and wrapped it around his wrists before locking it to a pole in the center of the transport.
“Wait here,” the Oversergeant said.
All of the Scrappers filed out of the vehicle.
“Well, this sucks,” Chains said, looking at him.
“It’s your fault we’re here,” Jake said to her. “If you hadn’t insisted on making the delivery-”
“Nobody told you to come,” Chains replied, interrupting his accusation. “You could have waited for me and avoided the whole situation.”
“It’s my fault,” Hayden said, speaking over them both. “I shouldn’t have let either one of you get involved.”
“Bullshit,” Chains said. “I wanted to be here. I’m so sick of the grepping Scrappers and the way they get to do whatever the hell they want. They grepping eat people!” Her face paled as she wrinkled it in disgust. “I know why they didn’t kill me. I’m a hell of a lot prettier than Sia was.”
“So much for modesty,” Jake said.
“Screw you, Borger. I’ve been through this shit before. It’s the reason I left Carcity.”
She looked back at Hayden. It was the first time he had seen her afraid.
“We’ll find a way out of this,” Hayden said.
“Are you kidding, Sheriff?” Jake replied, holding up his bound hands. “How are we going to get out of this?”
Hayden looked at his own hands. He pulled against the chains, yanking them tight against his wrists. He kept straining with the replacement, testing to see if the added strength of the metal limb could weaken the links.
It couldn’t.
He gave up, leaning back against the seat, quickly losing hope.
“Damn,” Chains said. “If you could get a piece of metal out of that thing, I could probably pick the lock.”
Hayden raised an eyebrow and looked over at Jake.
“There are a few pieces you might be able to dislodge,” he said. “But you’ll have to do it with one hand, and without the Scrappers noticing. And then you’ll have to pass it to Chains without them noticing. And then she’ll have to pick the lock without them noticing.”
Hayden considered for a moment.
“Have either of you heard of Ports?” he asked.
They were both silent. Staring at him.
“What about it?” Jake said after a few tense seconds.
“Ales told me King sent Natalia there with Ghost.”
“Geez,” Chains said. “He’s out of his damn mind.”
“Why?”
“Ports is in the middle of trife central. At least, trife central in this neck of the woods. The goliaths don’t walk up there, so the buggers multiply out of control.”
“I heard he had managed to get a line going through to the old city,” Jake said. “But it costs a lot of soldiers to keep it going. If he sent your wife that way, there has to be something valuable up there. Something he needs an Engineer to retrieve or fix.”
“Not just any Engineer,” Chains said. “If he’s willing to risk your wife on it with what she knows, he has to be pretty sure it’s going to pay off in a big way.”
“If she makes it,” Jake said.
“King sent Ghost with her.”
“That might help. I don’t know. I’m sorry to say this, Sheriff, but I want to be completely honest with you. It’s more likely Ghost will wind up dead, too.”
Hayden eyed them both. He wouldn’t give up hope. He shook his mechanical hand in the chains.
“Tell me how to break this thing.”
29
IT DIDN’T SURPRISE Natalia all that much when the transport broke down. They had been on the trail north to Ports for most of the day, and some piece of the machinery had started clanging and thumping from the bottom of the vehicle, signaling that it needed some sort of repair.
Ghost kept it going for an hour after the first sign of trouble, pushing them through an area of thick growth, certain that it would be a bad place to be ambushed by the trife. Not that there had been any sign of them all day. They liked to reproduce during daylight hours, and only the sentries and scouts were out in force when the others were copulating and feeding.
Natalia quizzed him further on the subject, and he explained that the trife were fueled by energy, like the radiation of the sun, not matter. In many places, they would gather in the thousands in a sunny place for an hour each day, and afterward retreat to often subterranean nests to reproduce. Where there wasn’t enough sun, they could often be found near old reactors that were still giving off heat and radiation, or massed around the few that continued to function, year after year, despite the fact that there was no one to tend to them.
They finally did stop when they reached a more open section of the trail, a clearing in the growth where a makeshift bridge had been constructed to allow the transport to clear a stream. Natalia spent minutes peering out of the slit in the side of the machine, watching the water flow freely along its course. She had never seen so much water.
That was the hardest thing. Experiencing this world, their homeworld, which they thought they had left behind. So much of it was so beautiful, even after the trife and the goliaths. And at the same time, so much of it was so ugly. She missed Hayden. If she had to be alive in this world, she wanted to share it with him. She wanted him to be alive, too.
“Do you think you can fix it?” Ghost asked, leaving the driver’s seat and coming to the back of the transport.
“I don’t know. It’s probably not all that different from the Medical transports in Metro. Wheels and a motor, right? Are there tools on board?”
“There have to be, somewhere.” There were compartments under the seats. He started opening them, looking for the tools.
Things had changed between them after they had left the bunker. Natalia wasn’t sure why. Maybe because Ghost knew she needed him, and so he felt more comfortable around her. Maybe because his infatuation was growing stronger. He was more relaxed. More talkative.
Less restricted. He was treating her like a partner instead of a captive, a friend instead of a prisoner.
The level of humanity within him had surprised her. He had admitted he didn’t believe in everything King was doing, though he would in never question or disobey his father. He told her stories of kindness, and ways he had helped the people of Sanisco and Haven, and in some instances had spared them the violent abuse of the Scrappers. He had never eaten human meat, and he claimed it was a practice he abhorred. The whole thing had started for King’s soldiers to prove they weren’t afraid of anything, and to show dominion over their enemies. That there were no taboos that could stop them from claiming what they wanted. No rules to bind them to anything beyond their conscience, which many didn’t seem to have. It had become a rite of passage for the soldiers, and any recruit who refused to taste was beaten or killed. Of course, some of them found they enjoyed it and added it as a regular part of their diet.
Whatever the reason for Ghost’s change, Natalia could feel the shift.
Now she had to decide out how best to use it to her advantage.
In the back of her mind, she already knew. If she could get Ghost to turn against King, she would have a much easier time getting close to him. If she could get close to him, she would have a much easier time killing him. While the Courier had already said he wouldn’t help her, maybe she could change his mind if she could finish changing his heart? The idea of it was sickening to her, and she had spent half the ride in turmoil with the decision. Even now, it was twisting her stomach in knots.
“I think this is it,” Ghost said, pulling out a solid box and unlatching the front. He flipped the top open, revealing multiple levels of tools. “It is.” He looked at her and smiled. The smile started to fade when she saw her nervous expression. “What’s wrong?”
Natalia shook her head. “I think I’m just motion sick,” she replied. “We’ve been cooped up in here all day.”
“I was starting to feel the same way. Some fresh air will help.”