Tearing Down The Statues

by Brian Bennudriti

  Amelin’s voice betrayed his concern, “He broke radio silence…”

  There was a flame in Peri’s eyes, “Hag! Get back in position! Get in position or so help me, I’ll kill every last one of you and your families. Respond!”

  Amelin looked at her face then, perhaps trying to gauge her threat’s truth and deciding she meant it after all. The view window was showing the Hag to be headed for a sidewalk, perhaps a shop window – there were papier mache mannekins staged in a macabre dance scene from preparations for the holiday, colorful and bright but haunting now with leering smiles and crisp wrinkled eyes staring.

  “Mallow…mark status!”

  She widened the view to see the street map again, timing the approach of the enemy vessels. They were upon them and under fire already. The viewbox maybe showed the shop window in pieces and the gunship wedged inside. It was difficult to tell. Peri closed her eyes and bowed her head in disappointment, resting a moment to try and stoke her fires again to recover. A shirtless soldier had crawled from the vessel with blood across his mouth and chest and on his hands, and was pressing his grinning and smeared face into the camera – a huge bloodshot eye swelled to fill the window.

  Amelin spoke first, “Mallow’s dead. The Red Witch got to his gunner.” Hesitating, feeling it important to state what she was thinking already, “Your entire fleet is compromised.”

  Peri dropped her head further, steadying herself. She didn’t need to hear this from him.

  “Any one of your ships could go rogue at any moment.”

  She rubbed her palm harshly against her forehead, thinking. After blinking a couple of times, she looked back up to the streetmap, seeing the swarm piling up. Peri was perhaps going through options and strategies, recalling experiences like this which could offer insight into a way forward yet discounting them all one by one. Her face showed abandonment. Stendahl stepped closer to the map silently. It was bad; and it felt that way.

  Peri at last lifted her face, tired and looking older somehow, “All right. Here’s what we’re going to do…”

  Quite suddenly and unexpectedly, a shout came from the comms, “Surface, boys! Get up in the light o’ day and start poppin’ some heads! You heard me, you soft fatties. Surface and open fire!”

  It was a familiar voice; and Peri’s eyes widened at its sound yet not in joy, more of anger and a striking of horror. She charged the map again and touched a finger to one of the Choke Watch quicktanks only just in time to watch a camouflaged submersible arise from the canal in a boiling torrent of whitewater, firing glowing slugs of lightning into the sky like a runaway firework.

  Amelin surged, “Datastream shows mini-subs rising from the canals in several places throughout the city, with a mass at Bethani.”

  Peri pointing at the swirling neon screen before her with the face of someone terrified and falling through clouds, “That’s Velo Boneghost!”

  There was laughter from the comms, maniacal and eerie laughter. Peri nodded, certain now who it was, “What’s he doing out of prison?! In my subs?!”

  She looked at Stendahl furiously, “We executed his son! He’s a traitor and a killer! What have you done!?”

  Stendahl waited to answer, as if giving her a chance to understand had she not yet what would become of Peri’s line at Bethani and the entire tide of battle now with these additional and well placed forces, “I did what you did not.”

  Amelin uncomfortably interjected, not liking the expression upon the Lady Commander’s face, “They were in prison cells, Peri. It’s unlikely the Red Witch could get to them.”

  The war engine went softly quiet for a time as the three of them watched the battle play out further, as the swarm began to cluster tighter and start moving in the direction of Vangeline Park where an ambuscade awaited. The line was holding; and the plow was working. Peri at last put her eyes on the young Talgo there beside her, looking at him with wonder and fascination, perhaps with anger. Loyalty to that family was deep and strange and not the sort of thing people of those times would be able to explain if asked. Stendahl picked his lip idly, only watching her from the side of his eyes without looking directly at her. He hummed as the mogs crashed and danced as if he were listening to the conflict as a majestic song soaring with violins and crashing with cymbals. At last he grinned strangely and turned to face her.

  “Peri, I am the new Judge of Alson; and you are Commander of my fleet.” It was a bold claim to the title, not at all legal or understandable apart from the family into which he was born.

  Amelin’s surprise caught his throat; and he made an involuntary grunt of surprise, quickly looking to his Commander to find her reaction. She would have been upholding her duties and pledge to the city were she to have dragged him into a prison or put him on a martial law trial for seizing the Judgeship without the mandate. Instead, she watched him as one would a dangerous storm best not viewed at all yet enthralling for its darkness and might. He was calm and held the tone of someone acknowledging a light rain.

  Amelin was lost in this, “You can’t just-“

  “You will maintain Alson under lockdown with everyone in their homes and proceed to Spenecia with every Watch you have, leaving behind two quicktank squadrons under the command of the Chaselord.”

  Stendahl’s expression was fierce, electric. His eyes were piercing as he assumed control of the room, as if he were swelling in size and importance right there before them. Incredibly, very much a point of discussion for historians to come in character studies and debates, Peri only nodded. She nodded and gave him control of the entire city and the Judgeship. Like that.

  “Instruct him to reactivate the suicide chambers throughout Alson – all of them; and make it known through the patrol loudspeakers and the news.”

  At that, both Amelin and Peri grimaced with disgust, having no doubt hoped those nightmares were never to return to service. Perhaps stranger than this, it was then Stendahl’s face turned vicious like a snarling hound, “And inform him that before nightfall every Rauchka among our fleet is to be hanged. No delays or trials. Hang them all.”

  Peri’s eyes squinted, even more confused at this new turn, “Rauchka? I have good men who are Rauchka!”

  Stendahl only looked at her imperiously a moment, with older and more soulless eyes than to which she was accustomed, “Hang them, Commander. And don’t let anyone past Spenecia.”

  When he placed his head in his hands like a man enduring pain, she glanced again to the streetmap and flashing battle histograms and data, then back to the young Talgo, “I’ll stop them at Spenecia or die there.”

  He nodded though failing to withdraw his head from his hands, “And Boneghost I will go to the Augur.”

  Peri’s eyebrow rose curiously, “It was Cassian who hired the Red Witch. He’ll be the one at Spenecia.”

  Stendahl spoke again from within his now whitening hands, “He didn’t hire them. There is a third hand playing the strings; and as always, the Rauchka are betraying us.”

  “How do you know that? Sure enough to hang them all?!”

  He turned his eyes up to her as if to burn her down with them, exploding, “Because that’s all they’re capable of!” The suddenness of his retort shocked her.

  “And what’s the Augur going to tell you?” Peri’s voice was weary, drained and compliant. She’d heard this Talgo hatred of the Rauchka before and knew of the Old Man’s long and ugly history with them.

  Stendahl gritted his teeth angrily, his stare wicked, “Nothing at all. I won’t even ask a question.”

  Peri pulled her head back from him as if stepping away from a fire, seeing something more now coming over the young Talgo – something not to be near.

  He faced her, “Every time there’s a revolution, the Augur is at its heart; and I tire of that. And so I will end it.”

  “What’s happened to you?”

  “You will kill our attackers; and the Chaselord will kill our betrayers. The lunatics will kill themselves. And when the one behind
all of it is laughing in his circle, thinking himself phantom enough to escape more killing, I will put an end to all of it.”

  Stendahl stood taller, towering over Peri and looking for all the world like an avenging spirit, “We were violated; and I will have vengeance. And I will have a lasting settlement to cower those who pick bones from the ashes of our violaters: a terrible settlement to stand for generations against anyone who’d plot again to assault these mountains. I am the Judge; and I will slaughter and destroy and never leave from bleeding them till all who’d cry mercy know there is to be none.”

  He looked at her with a terrifying familiarity, “I’m going to the Augur; and I’m going to kill it.”

  21 A NEW WARMASTER

  The maintenance shop smelled of old grease and acetone, draped about its battleship gray walls with dusty sheaves and belting, random electronics, and odd bits of ProMat frozen in jumbled geometries. Thessany was shoving his head into the machine belly of a tornado engine when Cassian walked in. He only glanced up to see who’d entered, then without acknowledging his Marshal, stuck his greasy head back into the steel cavity and among the flights and cabling therein.

  Cassian watched a moment, “Don’t you have people for that?”

  The Twister Corps Commander was quiet a moment, then, “We can’t all wander aimlessly. Shouldn’t you be running the government or something – or does Grebel do all your thinking for you?”

  “I need to talk to you.”

  “Talk.”

  “Get your head out of there. I have to face you for this.”

  “Bot in-feed chutes don’t straighten themselves, Talgo. This is where I entrain them. If that doesn’t work, I can’t control the twisters and they fizzle out. You ought to know something about fizzling out.” He chuckled to himself.

  Cassian held his temper, “I’m going to name a Warmaster.”

  Silence. Thessany stayed inside the cavity, though likely he stopped working to listen. There hadn’t been a Warmaster since the final days of the War of the Rupture. It was a position of incredible authority and importance, seizing control of a nation’s entirety of resources for war; and whoever inherited this title now was following the Old Man himself in succession.

  “It will be effective immediately; and the new Warmaster will be commanding all the forces at Spenecia as well as forces arriving next week from the Steel Horde and Vendle.”

  Thessany whistled, “Talgo, how big a freaking war are you trying to start?”

  “It’s coming unplugged now, Commander. The Frost Troops and fleets from two other provinces are joining Wentic’s forces. All the jealousies and grudges are coming back out. This is the sort of thing I was worried about; but it’s getting way too late to stop it now.”

  “Right.” He grunted as he pried a steel bar against something.

  “Thessany, get out of that machine and face me.”

  Taking his time, Thessany did at last withdraw from the cavity and slowly slide off his thick work gloves. He rubbed his palm against the side of his head, either straightening a shock of hair or wiping grease, then leaned back casually against the engine, grinning.

  “I’ll be your hacksaw. You don’t have to beg – it would be unseemly for you.”

  Cassian watched him unpleasantly, as if tasting something sour and not to be swallowed, “You’re not my first choice.”

  “And you’re not mine, rich boy. But your babysitter isn’t here, so…”

  After a moment, Cassian took a few steps toward the vortex engine, its gargantuan mouth worn in streaks. He couldn’t bring himself to say something, so he was working up to it and occupying himself in idleness while he did so. There were still some splattered wads of bots stuck fast inside the cavity, clots of computronium goo running software to sense wind speed and direction, to emit millions of tiny puffs for course and temperature correction, and all of it in a fiercely complex network designed on a large scale to sustain and guide tornadoes in combat. Cassian wiped a smear of it across his pants leg; and it sparkled as it tried to boot up.

  “I want to know what you think about the Salt Mystic. Is she coming back? Is she somehow behind all this?” He turned to look again at Thessany, maybe to gauge his first blush reaction. Thessany grimaced in frustration.

  “You’re a clown.”

  Cassian gritted his teeth and spun to stare the Commander down, “I’m your Marshal; and you will show me respect!!”

  Thessany frowned, “You’ve always been a clown. The Old Man should’ve just picked one of you and handed the whole thing over rather than leaving us this mess. I mean…we’re rolling to battle…right now. And you’re clucking about fairy tales and nonsense.”

  He held out his hands as if pleading, “Honestly, who cares – one way or the other? If you mope around like you always do and give the bumpkins time to think about it, they might all switch sides! I would. A better idea, you embarrassing gilt-headed flimsy – how about you strike everywhere fast enough to make them dizzy and leave them wondering who’s sticking with you? They’ll be too scared to even talk to each other. That’s the sort of strategy the Old Man would have put to it.”

  Cassian’s eyes were growing cold and vicious, “And you two were pretty close, yeah?”

  “I never met him, Talgo. All I’ve ever heard is he was a scheming, backstabbing liar who’d slice your ear off if he could sell it. But I’d give a year’s salary if he was here instead of you.”

  With a terrible elephantine shout, Cassian rushed into Thessany, knocking him into a bulkhead. His first punch entirely missed Thessany’s chin; but the second, weaker punch contacted him in the neck at the adam’s apple. Although choking for breath, Thessany drew up his wrist to block another strike, then drove a knee furiously into the Talgo’s stomach. It was clear the Twister Corps Commander hadn’t expected such a reaction from his Marshall and had been surprised by the sucker punches; but he was more seasoned in such situations.

  Cassian tried to sieze Thessany by his hair and drive his head into the wall; but Thessany slapped both hands, palm open, onto the Talgo’s ears as if clapping. The sudden pressure change and pain froze and disoriented Cassian long enough for Thessany to drive his knuckles into Cassian’s left eye socket. It sent him falling backwards and to the deck where Thessany drove a boot into his stomach further depleting his breath. Thessany swung his next kick a wide arc into Cassian’s side, then fell on him like a predator bird.

  Following two more punches to his mouth, Cassian suddenly shielded himself by placing his hands over his face. When Thessany tried to peel them apart, Cassian managed to strike like a snake and twisted his hands around, jamming his thumbs into Thessany’s eyes deeply. The Commander tried to break free, to slam his fists into Cassian’s forearms to break the pressure; but he couldn’t push away. At last, Thessany rolled off to relieve the pain; and when he did so, Cassian contacted a bloodying punch to Thessany’s lip. Following on from this, the two went at each other shouting and hurling insults another moment, with Thessany slowly gaining insurmountable advantage. Then when Thessany was kneeling over an exhausted Cassian, poising to drive his knee into the Talgo’s injured side again, bashing his face viciously again and again and drawing thin splatters of bright red blood, there was a tap on Thessany’s shoulder.

  Grinning a wide nightmare grin, an Interrogator stood watching the Twister Corps Commander, his ghostly head cocked to one side curiously. This was of the sort who’d executed Revin, of the sort in common use in the Old Man’s time. He was not chained. Thessany’s reaction was immediate and one of a man avoiding plague-soaked rags, jerking back to seek distance.

  “What is that doing here?! He’s not chained. Talgo! What’s wrong with you?!” Thessany was scooting backwards in a panic.

  Cassian sluggishly arose from the deck and wiped his bleeding lower lip, at once watching Thessany’s fright with very little relish. The Interrogator was ignoring Cassian and stepping closer to Thessany, ever grinning and with eyes as blank as fresh paper.
Thessany was backed against the bulkhead at that point, desperate to be away from this maniac and his wicked clown smile. His eyes darted across and about the Interrogator, looking for weapons and watching his flicking hands.

  “They don’t stop, Talgo! Once you give them a name. Get some men in here, now!!” His voice squeaked in its intensity for at that moment, Thessany truly feared for his soul.

  Quite suddenly, like sparks popping from a fire, an inexpressible joy shone in the Interrogator’s eyes. He inhaled sharply and clenched his fists. Thessany slid along the bulkhead rapidly, still seeking distance.

  “How could you take him off the chains?! Don’t you know what happened to your mother?! Call him off!”

  Cassian smiled thinly, “You’re my new Warmaster. I’ll see more respect from you moving forward. Yes?”

  Thessany gestured to the advancing Interrogator, “You gave him my name. You gave him my face, Talgo. They don’t stop. What are you gonna do about him?”