by J. C. Staudt
“Prisoner to see Pilot Wax. His cousin.”
“His cousin,” the woman said, smirking. She gave Dashel a look through darting cloud-blue eyes. “One moment.”
Rising from her plush black chair, the receptionist strutted down the hallway. When she walked past the guards, their nostrils flared and their chests rose like air balloons. Thirty seconds later, she reappeared with Pilot Wax at her heels. Wax’s hand fell from the base of her hip as they came into view.
“You told them you were my cousin?” Wax said, his face scrunched up with incredulity.
“I would’ve told them you were my grandmother if it kept me from getting shot.”
So you did lie, Merrick wanted to say. He’d half-expected it, anyway.
“You should’ve shot this coffer,” Wax said, grinning. He looked at Merrick’s hands. “I hope that didn’t hurt too much, whatever it was.”
Merrick shook his head. “Nope.”
Wax looked at Dashel Thomrobin for a long moment. “Come on back, you slippery bastard. You look a right Mouther. I bet you fit right in at the old basilica. What’ve you got for me?”
When Merrick moved to follow them, Wax raised a hand. “Not you. You wait here.”
“I’ve got big news,” Dashel said.
“I coffing hope this is worth it,” said Wax. “You’re tracking mud on my carpet. Cath, get this cleaned up.”
Cakes of dried mud were crumbling from the Mouther’s slippers as he walked. Cath sighed, grabbed a brush and dustpan, and began to sweep up the dirt clods while trying to stay ladylike in her skirt and heels.
“So, how are my friends in the Order these days?” Wax was asking, as the two men disappeared down the hallway.
Merrick flung himself into one of the upholstered armchairs and stared out the plate glass windows. The windows were all intact, an upgrade from what he’d seen on the rest of the building. Minutes dragged by and the shadows lengthened across the cityscape. His eyelids were beginning to droop when he noticed the first hint of a dust cloud on the horizon.
At first he thought it might be a sandstorm or a cyclone on its way, but the pillar was too short and narrow for that. The fading daylight made it difficult to discern any details at this distance, so Merrick raised his rifle and looked through the spyglass.
“Hope you’re not planning to use that in here,” Cath said.
The guards tightened their grips on their own rifles.
Merrick ignored her. The dust cloud was moving toward the city. Vague shapes began to appear within, still too far away to make out. That isn’t a storm. It’s a group of travelers. A pretty big group, by the looks of it. Maybe a trade caravan? No, a big train just came in two days ago. A nomad war party? The nomads knew better than to come so close to the outskirts near Bucket Row. They always stayed well south of the dividing line. Unless they’re… attacking us. They’d never do that, though. Would they?
The first shapes that came into focus as the dust dissipated were the dozens of ruddy-skinned, bare-chested men riding slender, long-legged corsils.
“Savages,” Merrick said to himself. He’d seen a larger group of nomads entering the city south from his birdhouse a week before. They must be banding together to stage some large-scale strike.
“What was that?” asked one of the guards.
“Savages, I said. They’re coming in past the border. Are you seeing this?” Merrick motioned them over and handed off his rifle. “Right out there, six or seven blocks north of Bucket Row.”
“What’s going on?” Cath asked, worried.
“Get Wax. Get him now. I think the city north is being attacked.”
Cath kicked off her shoes and took off down the hallway.
“Coffing Infernal. That’s corsils, alright. Mobile Ops needs to know about this.” The guard returned Merrick’s rifle.
“I’ll send out the alert. Make sure Wax sees this.”
Merrick left the Hull Tower and raced down the street toward Mobile Ops command. The extra pounds he’d put on made him feel like he was running with weights strapped to his belt. Mobile Ops command was inside an old museum, a monumental building of carved limestone. A daunting staircase rose from its base at street level to the column-flanked mouth of its entrance. Merrick took the stairs three at a time, ignoring the hot coals that were smoldering in his lungs. The guards escorted him up the back staircase to a set of offices with windows facing the southeast.
Standing in the doorway of the furthest office was Captain Malvid Curran, Merrick’s former commanding officer. He was a short, solid man with warm brown eyes and combed brown hair. He smiled when he caught sight of Merrick.
“Corporal Bouchard. It’s been a long time. I was sorry to hear about what happened. You were one of my best men, and I was sad to lose you. Robling is treating you well, I hope? What brings you by this evening? I was just heading home, actually. My goodness, what did you do to your fingers?”
“Captain Curran, listen. There are riders approaching the outskirts right now. Savages on corsils, about six blocks north of the Row. I was in the Hull Tower just now and spotted them. I didn’t get a good count, but there must be at least a few dozen.”
The Captain’s relaxed demeanor snapped to attention. “You sure? How long ago was this?”
“Five minutes ago, maybe. Yeah, I’m sure.”
Curran yelled for his assistant. A green-faced private, not two weeks out of ingress training by the looks of it, appeared at the door and came to attention. Older than Merrick, he was thinning up top and probably weighed the least he had in his adult life. Ingress did that to you.
“Yessir,” the Private answered, stiff as a board.
“Aldie, I need you to dispatch word to the Lieutenants. I want platoon four in the outskirts northeast of the Row in twenty minutes. Tell them they have authorization to fire on these nomads if they come any closer. We are on high alert, soldier. Get moving.”
“Yessir,” Aldie repeated, and was gone.
“Come with me, Corporal Bouchard. I’ll take you up top so we can watch the firefight.”
Captain Curran led Merrick down a corridor and through a narrow closet-sized door. An equally narrow staircase led up to a landing, where a workman’s ladder was leaning against the wall. They climbed the ladder and came through a square hatch onto the roof terrace. A rain-eaten banister of carved limestone ringed the terrace, which was less than ten feet in diameter.
Merrick looked toward the outskirts. This rooftop was far from the highest around, but he could still make out the eastern horizon below the darkening sky. “Hard to see anything now, with evening coming on.”
Captain Curran leaned on the banister. “You’ll see better in a minute. Once the fighting starts, we’ll have some extra light. So, how are you doing in the Sentries, Corporal? Getting along okay over there?”
“I coffing hate it.” Merrick had always felt comfortable enough around Captain Curran to speak his mind.
Curran laughed. “Oh, I didn’t expect you’d like it. I wanted to know how you were dealing with it. But I guess that answers my question.”
“I’d be back with Mobile Ops in a second if I could,” Merrick said.
“If only I had the power to make that happen.”
Gloom was descending now, both on the horizon and in Merrick’s soul. If even Captain Curran couldn’t get Merrick back into Mobile Operations, maybe he was stuck in the Sentries for good. Minutes passed in silence, and Merrick’s thoughts wandered toward despair. The sounds of distant gunfire began to crack through the night air, and there were tiny yellow bursts of light in the ruins near the outskirts. Merrick could no longer see far enough to tell what was happening out on the sands, but he doubted the attacking nomads were enjoying it.
“There’s the Fourth, givin’ ‘em the business,” said Captain Curran.
A phosphorescent red orb winked to life in the desert. The breeze was making Merrick’s eyes water. He rubbed the tears away, then raised his rifle and squinted
through the spyglass. Wreathed within the orb’s flame-like glow was the figure of a man, a black shadow standing alone in a red bubble. Two more orbs burst to life. Then a dozen more. The orbs were pulsing like drums, highlighting the figures inside them like neon signs against the backdrop of night. Merrick flinched when the first of the orbs sprang forward and hurtled toward the city.
The sounds of the comrades’ rifles intensified. The orbs shook and wavered, making strange pinging sounds as the Fourth pummeled them with gunfire. It was then that Merrick knew these were no ordinary savages, and this was no simple raiding party. Maybe they weren’t even men. Whatever they were, the Fourth Platoon had awakened their ire. Now they were coming, bounding toward the city like fiery clouds on a stormwind.
Merrick moved his spyglass in time to see one of the orbs come crashing into the side of a building and wink out. He watched as many of the other orbs did the same. Maybe the Fourth is beating them, he thought. He was halfway through breathing a sigh of relief when he heard the first of the screams.
It was a scream so shrill and tortured it made the hair stand up on the back of his neck. Soon the orbs had all winked out, and in place of the gunfire, the night air was filled with the screams of the dying.
CHAPTER 25
Strokeplan
To the heat-stained Sons of Decylum, the skeletal tips of Belmond’s derelict skyscrapers were a gleaming paradise. The city was bathed in sunset, caught in those lingering moments between daylight and starshine. To the casual observer, the skyline was gray and fragmented. But to the weary travelers who’d spent weeks in the desert, it sparkled with promise. Salvation lay over the next horizon—a wonderland filled with resources ripe for the taking.
The oncoming gloom will shelter us, Hastle Beige reckoned. We’ll be able to take what we need and start home before morning. Before anyone knows we’ve been here.
Long days of heat and worry had bludgeoned Hastle’s spirits. So many of the men had fallen ill that they’d begun to fill up part of a second flatbed. That left less space for the raw materials they needed to gather tonight. And yet, there was hope in the prospect of ending the first half of their journey.
The thought of returning home was the only thing that could’ve lifted Hastle’s spirits. Laden with treasures and greeted with glad cheers, they would make a grand entrance in Decylum and free these sick men from the light-star’s torment at last. How proud Imogen and our children and grandchildren will be, he thought, that I’ve taken the reins of command during Raith’s incapacity and led us to a successful journey’s end. This is how I’ll be remembered; not as the headstrong young man who wandered off into the wastes, only to crawl back to Decylum a few years later, steeped in shame. This is the most meaningful contribution I could ever make toward my family’s future and Decylum’s prosperity. The fates are smiling on me tonight.
Forty years had passed since Hastle last beheld the sight of Belmond. His final memory of the city was from the day he left, a glance over his shoulder at its hazy image in the distance. Seeing the cityscape now was like reuniting with an old friend after years apart; all the same features were there, but the veneer was weathered. It was hard to describe the way it made him feel, at once nostalgic and disgusted. He’d come here to seek his fortune, expecting to make a new life for himself. But he’d found only hardship and the frail infrastructure of a city on the verge of collapse.
Hastle could see the Jerigan Building, poking its head through the smog downtown. He’d been up on the fifty-eighth floor the day it was finished. Tripplehorn Highway, the main artery that ran straight through the heart of the city, was less than a horizon away. The Greater Belmond Community Hospital, the first project he’d been assigned to when he got his job with Glaive Industries, was probably still standing somewhere beyond all those neighborhoods and storefronts, with their dusty brown yards and shattered driveways. Worst of all, though, was the HydroPyre station.
Tucked away somewhere on the other side of the city, that wretched old thing had gone down every other week, it seemed. Every time the power grid failed, he and his co-workers would have to jumpstart the thing like an old man with a heart problem, until they were patching up the HydroPyre station with what amounted to little more than tape and wire.
Hastle would never forget the way the others had laughed and joked about him. To them, he was the strange pale-skinned foreigner from back east. That was before Infernal had given him the enduring cherry-colored complexion he’d had ever since. His only friend, a meek young man about his age by the name of Cole Halstrom, had helped him stand up to the other workers who gave him trouble. Hastle had always been a burly man, but that didn’t stop them from trying to get a rise out of him. He and Cole had taken a good clobbering together on more than one occasion.
The ridicule had only gotten worse when Hastle began to complain of intense pain in his hands. The other men accused him of faking his injuries so he could get out of work. Back then, the Ministry was only a few years disintegrated, and everyone still thought it was going to make a comeback. When it didn’t, people stopped acting as though they were being watched, and started acting out instead.
After a few months of working for Glaive Industries, Hastle had stopped feeling sorry for his friends and relatives in Decylum. Life out here wasn’t the party he’d thought it would be. Whenever he tried to talk about home, those obtuse blowhards either didn’t believe him, or they didn’t care. Soon he stopped talking about home altogether. If they refused to believe the Ministry had left behind a generation of genius-level scientists dedicated to its work, then they didn’t deserve to know about it.
Neither do any of the surfacers who roam the dead city today, Hastle realized. Raith was right; Decylum is worth holding onto. Forget the rest of the Aionach; forget the privileges Cord Faleir and his minions on the council seem to think we deserve. Let them all rot up here. They can have the surface world if they want it. Decylum is a special place, and it deserves to be protected.
An immaterial glow quivered from within the hollows of the city as the Sons of Decylum came nearer, orange specters that bent and swayed and threw shadows into the dark. The inhabitants of Belmond were alive and well, it seemed, though their intentions were as obscured as the city itself. Hastle and his men would have to be careful to avoid drawing attention to themselves, but he knew they were more than capable of that.
Hastle produced Raith’s commscreen and charged its power cell with a lingering touch. When the picture flashed to life, there was an unsettling pause while the device cycled through its routines. The CONNECTING message appeared and froze, stuck there like a fly in honey. It stayed on the screen for so long that Hastle started to wonder if the machine had malfunctioned. Then, instead of flickering to Kraw Joseph’s hab unit, several rows of boxes filled the screen. Each box was linked to a video feed from one of the facility’s public areas.
Hastle flicked through each feed. First was the hangar, its vehicles and machinery dark and lifeless. The hydroponic gardens, their rows upon rows of planter beds awash in artificial daylight. The atrium, five stories of walkways and benches and darkened convenience food outlets, with people scattered throughout. The council chamber, a high-ceilinged utility room stripped down to the bare walls. Empty.
When Hastle came to the laboratory feeds, the screens were black. These had been converted to private hab units decades ago, he knew. He tried Kraw Joseph’s connection again, but the line was still dead. If the council isn’t in session, and Kraw isn’t within earshot of his commscreen, where is he? After a few more minutes of waiting, Hastle decided he would try again later. Once they’d loaded up the flatbeds with salvage and were on their way home, he’d have that good news to share as well.
Hastle gathered the men around him, beckoning the riders from their mounts and the footmen from their perches on the flatbeds. “Compliments are in order. We’re here. Half the journey is behind us. I’d ask you to applaud yourselves, but I’ll refrain, for reasons you can alrea
dy guess. We’re almost at the outskirts. It’s fortunate for us that we got here at dusk. The cover of darkness is exactly what we need to stay hidden while we work. And it’s easier than slaving away in the daylight. I know we’re all tired, but one night of solid labor is all that lies between us and home. Take heart, and remember that this is the point where everything comes to fruition. We turn back only after our assignment is complete.
“Now, I want everyone spreading out across this section of the city. We’ll start harvesting as soon as we get into the outskirts. Blackhands, don’t bunch up. You’re the keys to this operation. The others are going to need you. If anyone comes across any city dwellers, leave them alone unless they’re hostile. In that case, use whatever threat you think is necessary to turn them away. Try to keep it quiet, of course. I’ll send messengers to notify everyone of our departure. If you don’t receive word by two hours before dawn, withdraw, and we’ll regroup in the wastes. We have to leave ourselves enough time to get over the horizon before daylight. Everybody clear?”
Either everybody was clear, or they were all too nervous to say otherwise.
The flatbeds dispersed, and the men formed a line several hundred feet wide. When Hastle gave the signal, they began their slow trudge toward the city, moving with the reluctance of some meager battalion in the face of an insurmountable foe. They don’t want bloodshed, Hastle knew. Half of them don’t even expect it. But before the night is done, some may find it forced upon them—though I hope it doesn’t come to that. The hunters were the only ones who’d had to kill before, and most of them would admit that killing animals for food wasn’t the same as defending themselves from hobos and drifters.
The flatbeds squeaked and the animals grunted, but those were the only sounds that cut through the chirrups and trills of insects in the night. After a few minutes of walking, they reached the crest of the horizon, where they could see straight into the city at ground level.