So they decanted from the room. The last to leave were youths in their early teens. They furiously protested about the inclusion of the romantic film. And yet they were the ones who lingered. They wanted to catch a glimpse of the pretty girl onscreen and the boy who falls in love. Those teenage warriors of Bastion complained that they weren’t being given a monster story. They declared that they hated films with romance and kissing. Even so, there was a wistful glint to their eye. They’d just passed through the stormy waters of puberty. Though not a single boy would openly admit the fact, girls were starting to become strangely interesting.
* * *
—
I hadn’t even realized that the raucous assembly in the canteen had been a court martial. At least, I hadn’t realized I was being tried for going AWOL until Mott stated I’d committed a crime. After the guilty verdict they sent me to wait in the corridor, while the people in the canteen decided my fate.
The death penalty? A few hours ago I’d have laughed away the possibility of facing a juvie firing squad. Not now, though. I’d seen their anger. They were genuinely appalled by my attempt to escape Bastion.
“Not that I’m leaving Bastard Bastion,” I muttered to myself in the corridor. “There’s no way out. We’re buried here under the fucking ground.” I kicked the canteen door. “Did you hear that, you idiots?”
My emotions were jumbled. I was angry with the situation. I had bouts of homesickness. Was my family going crazy with worry? After all, I must have vanished from the face of the earth. I was angry at the way the other kids were treating me. I got all uppity and contemptuous of the way they took themselves so seriously as sawn-off soldiers. Boy warriors. Juvenile GIs. Call ’em what you want.
I felt sorry for them, too. Like me, they’d been ripped away from their home life. They’d been transported here to do dirty work for the individuals who owned the factory machines. These kids risked their lives for a cause they knew nothing about. Some had sacrificed themselves for a bunch of anonymous losers.
The Bastion Boys were self-deluded. That’s the worst part. They were so proud of their uniform, their comradeship, and their willingness to fight. They couldn’t see what I saw: that they were slaves.
The kid with the spectacles appeared. He was solemn. Nevertheless, he couldn’t resist a contemptuous shake of the head as he looked down on me from the top of self-righteous mountain.
“Inside, Karroon. Stand to attention while you hear your punishment.”
I walked into the center of the canteen. Everyone stared at me with eyes that could kill—not only kill but mutilate, then bury my wretched flesh and damn me to hell. At least, that’s how it appeared to me.
Mott gave me the Arctic-cold eye treatment, too. “Karroon. You are guilty of going absent without leave. You are guilty of defamation. You are guilty of falsely accusing this army of not being real soldiers. However, we take into account mitigating circumstances. You are new here. New arrivals get disoriented. Also, we have to take into consideration that you got blasted by the Nitro blowout. That will have caused mental confusion.”
Shit. They’re going easy on me. So…no firing squad. Then Mott told me the punishment. They weren’t going to be so lenient after all.
He spoke in that disconcertingly adult way of his. “Karroon. This is your punishment. We have decided that at precisely sixteen hundred hours you will leave the protection of Bastion.”
“Fuck you!” I remembered the Fluke. The damn thing had nearly fried my mind. “Fuck all of you!”
Mott continued in that decisive way he’d adopted for sentencing the criminal.
Me.
“John Karroon. At sixteen hundred hours you will exit onto the Factory Floor. You will then proceed to remove viper ivy where required. Do you understand?”
“You’re sending me out there to die!”
From Bastion Wars:
Combatants were ignorant of how they came to arrive at Bastion, how they were selected, and which masters they were serving. Ignorance was endemic. Asking pertinent questions was incredibly rare until the arrival of John Karroon. He proved to be an unusual conscript. For reasons that are unknown, he possessed a fully functioning memory. Karroon was to have an enormous impact on the lives of Bastion’s defenders. When they hear the name John Karroon, survivors of Bastion still flinch, as if they expect a bomb to explode in their faces.
* * *
—
They didn’t send me out alone. Mott came, too. There were two other boys: a twelve-year-old with a shaved head and a tall, thin kid of about fourteen, with shaggy, black hair, and a peculiar way of hanging his head down low so he looked as if he was on the verge of dozing off. Skinhead went by the name of Grunt. Shaggyhead was called Gonzalez.
I wasn’t alone in punishment duty. Grunt had put apple pie in someone’s boots for a joke. Gonzalez had repeatedly slept late, missing sentry duty. I found out that Bastion Boys never stole from one another. Bullying was rare—usually even that was attributable to teasing that got out of hand. Soon after my arrival I realized these combatants had strong bonds of loyalty. They treated others as they’d expect to be treated themselves.
Mott, Grunt, and Gonzalez armed themselves with Nitro Lances. These were metal poles about six feet in length, with a nozzle at one end and a cylinder of liquid nitrogen fixed to the other.
“Don’t I get one?” I asked
Mott shook his head. “After what you did to your face with the Nitro Musket? We’ll look after you.”
They were still being cool toward me. Politely cool would be the most apt description. I carried the cutting tools in a backpack. They were pretty much like the kind of long-handled sheers used by gardeners to lop branches. There was also a saw for tougher blighters.
A sentry unlocked a massively thick steel door and hauled it open; we passed through, then the hunk of metal slammed shut behind us.
We were out on the Factory Floor. The humidity made it seem like I was inhaling warm soup. There was a smell of wet vegetation, almost a boiled cabbage odor. There was also the tang of thousands of monster engines. I picked up the scent of oil and the sharper nostril-pricking smell of ionization from what must be huge voltages passing through all this hardware. The most noticeable sound was the hiss and rumble of moving parts. Those engines were always busy.
“Stick together,” Mott told us. “You, John, walk in the middle. Grunt, you stick to our tail, keep checking behind you.”
We walked along the dead-straight pathway that led between the machines. I stopped counting those rumbling behemoths when I got to a hundred and fifty. The strange realm known as the Factory Floor stretched out for miles ahead. Its roof was maybe a thousand feet above our heads.
I glanced back at Bastion. There were three slablike bunkers with the horizontal firing slits. Behind them, three dome-shaped cupolas standing on the highest part of the fortress. From the cupolas poked the muzzles of the artillery pieces.
So far, there was no sign of Flukes.
We moved past the factory giants. Wheels spun. Iron beams rocked up and down, seesaw-style. I glimpsed silvery drive shafts that were the size of tree trunks. Some machines were dead pieces of junk. Most worked, though. These were busily making…what?
I didn’t have a clue.
As we walked I spoke to Mott. “I’ve been thinking.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“There’s stuff on the Internet about the CIA building secret cities all over the world. I’m wondering if this is one of them.”
“You saw it on what kind of net?”
“Internet.”
“You’re a dreamer, John.”
“Haven’t you heard of the Internet?”
“Haven’t you heard of loyalty to your buddies, Soldier?”
I took this as a refere
nce to attempting to get the hell out of Bastion. “I’m not going to be a stinking slave here.”
Grunt shoved me in the back. “Hey, we’re not slaves. We’re soldiers.”
“This could be a secret city,” I persisted. “The CIA build them underground in case terrorists blow up nuclear power plants.”
“Doesn’t your brain ever stop, Soldier?”
“My dad’s a TV reporter. He asks questions for a living. I must get it from him.”
“You don’t say.”
“I still wonder what happened to Casie Fitton. He was there in the next bed when I went to sleep. Next morning. Fffttt! Gone.”
“Casie Fitton will have been redeployed.”
“During the night?”
“No. I’ve already told you. He went months ago.”
We walked past an engine that was the size of a house. Through a glass panel pistons could be glimpsed going up and down.
“Do you have a high casualty rate?” I asked.
“We’ve lost good men.”
“Can you remember their names?”
He scowled, a troubled expression flitted across his face. “Lots sacrificed their lives to protect Bastion.”
“Names. Give me specific names.”
“Why should I single out individual soldiers when they all died as warriors?”
“You’re being evasive. Can you remember a single name?”
“John.” His voice dropped to a hiss. “I got you out of serious trouble earlier by persuading everyone you were still puddled from the Nitro blowout.”
“Puddled?”
“Confused, scrambled, fucking screwy.”
“Oh.”
“Look, I’m trying to help you, kid. So stop asking questions that draw attention to yourself.”
“I remember my life before I came here, and I remember that Casie vanished, so it’s only natural to ask questions to find out what’s happening.”
“Try to forget,” he snarled. “Or at least pretend to forget. Life here will get easier for you.”
“Fuck you.”
Mott spun around. He swung the lance with a ferocious yell.
I ducked. And I ducked knowing that I’d been brought out here so I could be murdered.
Even as the thought blasted through my head, I heard thwukk!
The lance had struck a hard mass—not my head, thank God.
A black body the size of a crow fell to the floor. A pair of wings that were an iridescent turquoise made a burrrr sound as they thrashed against the concrete. I saw a long black stinger jutting from the creature’s rear.
“Keep your eyes open,” Mott warned us. “The Bog Hornets are getting active.”
The bug’s wing fluttering stopped. I tapped it with the toe of my boot.
“Don’t worry, it’s dead,” Gonzalez said. “Mott got it before it stung you.”
Mott stared at me for a moment as if he expected something. Then he sighed.
“Don’t mention it, John. Any time.”
“Thanks,” I said. “And thanks for saving my neck back in the canteen, too.”
“All right, Soldier.” He smiled again. “Let’s complete this assignment, then we can all go back and eat.”
* * *
—
We headed deeper into the Factory Floor territory. Soon we reached the zone where trees grew right out of solid concrete. White birds flitted in the branches. Thankfully, no more Bog Hornets buzzed us. Nor was there any sign of Flukes.
We reached a vast engine that seemed to be more moving parts than static ones. Wheels within wheels, piston rods going in-out, in-out, drive shafts turning—and there were slabs of metal the size of garage doors spinning on axles.
The movements were labored, though. The reason soon became obvious.
Mott pointed. “Viper ivy. See how it’s trying to get into all the apertures. It’s even wrapping itself ’round the drive shafts.”
The moving parts hissed wearily as they chafed against the thick vines.
I got busy. Without being asked, I pulled out the long-handled cutters. Viper ivy consisted of vivid green tendrils that were as thick as my wrist. Shiny leaves of the same shade of green dangled from shoots that forked away from the stem. A pale yellow juice ran from the vines the moment I started to cut. They were tough, very tough.
“It’s harder than cutting off a gorilla’s arms,” I said.
Yeah, a nonsensical comparison, but the others laughed. That lightened the mood. None of the three seemed that angry with me anymore. I worked hard. I wasn’t afraid to get my hands kakked by the yellow juice. I even risked getting mulched by the mojo when I scrambled into the big machine to cut vines that snaked their way into its inner workings.
“Brave bastard, isn’t he?” said Gonzalez.
“Yeah, just be careful.” Mott sounded worried. “Don’t make us have to carry you back in three different sacks.”
Grunt chuckled. “Look at John go. He’s declared a one-man war on the viper ivy army. Power to your elbow, John!”
Gonzalez laughed. “You get ’em, trooper!”
That’s when the change occurred. I stopped being the mouthy outsider. We became a team. I climbed all over that damn engine. Cutting, snipping, hacking, cursing. I attacked those thick, fibrous vines. And let me tell you, victory was mine!
Grunt kept lookout for the enemy—in whatever shape they took. Gonzalez and Mott used the lances to fire blasts of liquid nitrogen at the stems of viper ivy where they erupted from solid concrete. Moist, green flesh turned black.
Mott explained. “We can freeze-kill them, but we still need to cut the vines away from the machines because they clog the workings.”
By this time, I’d reached the top of the steel housing. The three guys were twenty feet below me. I had great views over the Factory Floor toward the lake. From here I could make out black dots, which I figured were Bog Hornets, hovering over the marsh that bordered the lake. So far no more of them seemed inclined to take the trip across here.
“You’ve cleaned the buggers out,” Mott told me as I hurled the last piece of vine down onto the floor. “Well done, Soldier.”
As I climbed down from the throbbing steelwork, Mott gave orders to the others: “Finish up blasting the stems here. I’ll head over there with John to check the machines in J8.”
I carried the long-handled cutter over my shoulder. Yellow juice dripped from the blades. I grinned, feeling pleased with myself. And pleased that I’d won the approval of my buddies, too.
When we were out of earshot of the two blasting the stems with gas, Mott turned to me.
“You’re not the only one to ask questions, you know?”
“I don’t suppose I am.”
“For a long time I’ve been asking myself where our food comes from.”
“And where does it come from?”
“It’s produced by our neighbors.”
“Neighbors?” My voice rose to a shout of astonishment. “We’ve got neighbors!”
“Shush, Soldier, not so loud.” He grinned. “You’re the first one I’ve told.”
“Where—”
He put his fingers to his lips. “Come on. I’ll show you what I’ve found.”
From Bastion Wars:
One fact they knew perfectly well was this: The Flukes saw the Bastion Boys as prey. So the defenders used the weapons available to them to destroy the Flukes. Nitro Lances were used in close-quarters combat, although they were astonishingly hazardous. They often caused as much damage to those wielding the weapon as the enemy.
* * *
—
Mott pointed the Nitro Lance at my face.
Then he asked this question: “Do you tru
st me?”
“Sure I do.”
The red-haired teenager gave a solemn nod. “Okay, follow me into the machine.”
I stared at him like I hadn’t heard him properly. We were beside one of the biggest engines on the Factory Floor. This stood three stories high. Hundreds of axles were turning. Silver wheels spun within nacelles. There were turbine blades spinning so fast they blew gusts of air into my face.
“You’re asking me to go in there?” I asked.
“Sure am, Soldier.”
“That thing’s like a food processor. It’s going to shred us.”
“Not if you step where I step.” He gave a grim smile. “Just don’t stick your face into any moving parts, all right?”
“Is this a trick? Do you want me dead?”
“I told you I was going to show you our neighbors, John. That’s what I still intend to do.”
“Okay. Show me.”
He reached down and pulled open a metal hatch at the base of all that whirling steelwork. “I found this by accident,” he said. “This biggie got infested by viper ivy. The green stuff was catching on the turbines. The whole thing started to shake like it was going to explode. We spent all day cutting out the weed. When the others had gone, I saw a vine creeping out of this hatch.” His eyes gleamed; Mott was excited by what he had to tell me. “I climbed into the machine, chopped out the vine, then I found the…well, you wait and see. It is absolutely amazing.”
He had to crawl into the belly of the engine on his hands and knees. I followed. The place was gloomy. Hot air blasted my body. A rich smell of oil crowded into my nostrils.
“Where does this go?” I asked.
“You’ll see.”
Bloody images of me falling into threshing blades did their best to unsettle me. They worked their disturbing magic. Because, dear God, I was truly unsettled. You wouldn’t climb into the high revving components of a sports car. This seemed just as suicidal.
Volume Ten Page 5