Children of the Wastes (The Aionach Saga Book 2)

by J. C. Staudt

  Savannah smiled. “That sounds like her. She was rebellious, wasn’t she?”

  “Only when it was necessary. She realized the importance of the rules, but she was never afraid to forge her own path where the rules didn’t suit. You and your father must have seen that in her.”

  “She and my dad were very in love, although she did challenge him. Sometimes I think that’s what he liked most about her. That she didn’t go easy on him. My dad always liked a good challenge.”

  A pang of jealousy hit Raith at the mention of this other man whom Myriad had loved. All these years, and you still haven’t lost your power over me, he thought with amusement. He had never expressed his feelings for Myri in any palpable way when they were young. Nor had he learned whether she felt the same about him. As for his regret over letting her leave, the time for that was long past.

  “My mother was just the sort of woman to challenge him that way, I guess,” Savannah was saying.

  Raith detected a hint of sadness in the girl’s voice. More than a hint; the loss of her father was still too raw and real and close, and she was searching for a bright side to it all. Perhaps she’d thought her mother’s memory was the ticket to such insight. Now, standing here with this picturesque reflection of the woman he’d grown up with, Raith was sure he had loved Myriad. What did it matter now? Myriad was lost; maybe dead. The memory of her would have to be enough. “She was a challenge to us all. Most of the time she made us rethink our priorities in the best way.”

  Savannah shook her head slowly. “It’s like you… you know her so well.” Tears came to her eyes, and she dropped the hay she was carrying.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss,” Raith said. “For both of them.”

  She made a small movement toward him. Something held her back—propriety, perhaps. He knew she was lonely, and that she hadn’t realized how lonely until now. The scant few days they’d spent together was a short span for two people to feel so comfortable around one another. Though he might’ve stayed here with her, or offered her a place in Decylum, Raith knew neither would happen. “I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’d like to come home with us.”

  She looked at him strangely. “No,” she said. “No. I can’t.”

  It never hurts to ask. Whether Savannah turned out to be a healer or not, Decylum could’ve used another soul with Myriad Ficari’s blood in her veins. There were too few people of their caliber around anymore. “You have a nice home here. It would be difficult to leave it all behind.”

  “The livestock needs managing,” she said. And then, as if searching for other excuses she couldn’t find, she let her mouth hang open for a moment before snapping it shut.

  “I understand,” Raith said. “We must be going soon. Within the next day or two, I should think. Will you take my brothers and me down beneath the shipping yard again before we do? They’d all like to see it.”

  She gave him another strange look. “They must be pretty homesick.”

  “It would do them all some good to know there are other places like Decylum in the Aionach.”

  “Other places…”

  Raith noticed her thoughtful look and asked, “What? What is it?”

  “Those other underground facilities we found record of. What if you led the master-king to one of those instead of Decylum?”

  “An intriguing thought,” Raith said. “But what would we do when we got there?”

  “I guess that would depend on whether it was inhabited.”

  “We’ve long theorized about the existence of other facilities like our own. Maybe there are other societies out there, isolated from all else. Other blackhands…”

  “You’d have to hope it was abandoned, wherever you took them.”

  “Leading the nomads to a fake Decylum might delay our problem, or solve it in the best case, but it would be a breach of the promise I made to the master-king. Ros is ransomed, and I’ll pay any price to have him returned. I would do the same for any of my brothers.”

  Savannah gave him a sad smile. “I wish you didn’t have to go. I’d like to hear more stories about my mom when she was younger.”

  “I’m sure she would’ve done a better job telling them than I have.”

  The girl’s expression changed. She brushed off her hands and gestured toward the stable doors. “Let’s take them down to see the place.”

  An hour later they were stomping down the scaffolded staircase toward the lower level of the complex. When they saw the processing tanks, the vast gardens, and the surrounding laboratories, they spread out with torches and oil lamps in hand, each man gravitating toward the area where he would’ve worked back home. Sombit Quentin and Tobas Baern stayed near the vats and holding tanks near the stairs while Peperil Cribbs knelt in the gardens and Edrie Thronson remarked on the architectural similarities between this place and Decylum. With Savannah’s permission, Theodar Urial entered the laboratory and began sifting through cabinets, where he found everything from expired medicine bottles to more usable supplies like gauze, bandages, tape, syringes, and surgical implements.

  The hunters wandered with no real destination, just to pass the time. Jiren followed Derrow everywhere he went. Ernost Bilschkin and Hayden Cazalet were glued to the storage boxes, poring over the same paperwork Raith and Savannah had already looked through and gleaning what sounded like far more information from it, given their combined breadth of knowledge on the histories and the sciences.

  Gregar Holdsaard tinkered with the doors inside the laboratory, using tools he’d brought from the Glaive Estate. Many of the doors were equipped with keycard access boxes like the one between the gardens and the laboratory. Others were fastened with normal locks. There was one door Gregar found particularly interesting.

  In a rear corner of the lab, behind some shelving units and hidden from view to the majority of the room, stood a smooth steel faceplate with only the hint of a frame visible where it melded with the wall. The door was clean and unmarked, as though it had never been used.

  Gregar went back and fiddled with the thing for a long time. When Raith came around to look, Gregar had removed a large wall panel and was counting the wires behind it. “I don’t know how this big bastard was supposed to open from this side,” Gregar said, “but I think I got it figured.”

  He ignited, scraped a few wires together, and next Raith knew the big steel door was opening. It didn’t swing in or out like a normal door. It didn’t even slide sideways into the wall like some of the doors in Decylum. Instead it lifted into the ceiling and locked there, inches thick and probably heavy enough to crush a man with its weight alone.

  Beyond the opening lay only darkness. Raith approached, holding his oil lamp in front of him. Inside he found a tiny room, three grungy concrete walls and a sewer plate in the center of the floor. The smell wafting from the sewer plate was enough to make both men back away covering their faces. The others around the laboratory began to notice the smell too. They shielded their faces and came over for a look.

  “Just a drain,” said Edrie Thronson, sidling up beside Raith.

  “What’s a drain doing behind a big heavy door like that?” said Gregar.

  “Needed a tight seal to keep the smell out, I guess.”

  Raith heard water running below the sewer plate. He found it curious that such a massive door could’ve been put here solely for the smell. The Glaives had been known for their lavishness during the height of their wealth, but this seemed excessive. Edrie was the expert on such things, so Raith had to assume he knew what he was talking about.

  “I’m going to have a quick look,” said Gregar, holding his breath as he stepped into the room to lift the round sewer plate off its frame. It ground against the concrete when he slid it aside. “Can’t see shit down there. Someone bring me a light.”

  Raith was about to oblige when Edrie nudged him on the arm. “This place is perfect, Raith. It’s exactly what we need. It would take some doing to dismantle it and haul it up to the surface, bu
t if we bring back a crew and some equipment, we could have it excavated in a few days’ time.”

  “Excuse me… what did you just say?” asked Savannah.

  Raith hadn’t realized she was standing beside him. He’d warned the Sons against mentioning the expansion, but it was too late to give the architect a browbeating for it. “Edrie was speaking figuratively,” Raith told her. “We would never have done that without your consent.”

  “It’s all starting to make sense now. This is why you wanted to bring everyone down here. So you could have your experts take the place apart with their eyes. So you could make your plan on how you were going to steal it from me.”

  “Savannah, you’re misunderstanding.”

  “Oh, I understand you just fine. You show up pretending to be lost travelers, you live off me for a couple weeks, you pretend to know my mother so I’ll trust you, and then you take what you really came for. You’re the same as all the other scumbags, only instead of my money and my livestock you wanted a piece of my property. Property I never knew I had. How did you find out this place was down here? Huh? You got your own little Ministry atlas at home that told you where it was?”

  “We didn’t,” Raith said. “We didn’t know this place was down here any more than you did. We honestly were just trying to find a way home.”

  “Well you did that, didn’t you? And now you want a lot more. Please pack your things and go. I don’t want to see you around here again. If I do, I’m calling Arnie, and I won’t stop him from hurting you this time.”

  “Savannah… this is unnecessary. We were never going to take anything from you without your permission. That isn’t who we are.”

  “You have a way home now. Why are you staying?”

  “Don’t push us away. It was never our intention to take advantage of you. We couldn’t be more appreciative of everything you’ve done for us.”

  She was about to speak when a scream from the outer room interrupted her.

  When they emerged from the lab, Peperil Cribbs was kneeling in the gardens. Blood was spreading across the front of his white linen tunic where a bony spike jutted from his sternum. He fell face first into the dirt. Behind him stood a spider-like creature with a scorpion’s exoskeleton and chitinous spikes instead of legs. Two rear limbs, longer and thicker than the rest, stood folded behind it, while thin antennae swayed from the front of its head. A tachylid, Raith knew; one of the Aionach’s more dangerous subterranean denizens.

  Tachylids managed to find their way into Decylum from time to time, through ventilation ducts or waste lines, though they were most often younger and much smaller than the one standing before them now, which was as big around as the sewer plate in the room Gregar Holdsaard had just found. People in Decylum called the things ‘tachies’ and hoped they never woke to find one looking down on them from the ceiling of their hab unit.

  The other Sons across the massive chamber backed away or ducked behind holding tanks while searching their surroundings for more of the things. The tachy sprang from its rear legs to land on the wall twenty feet above Raith’s head. He ignited and felt Gregar do the same. Derrow came running from across the chamber, also burning brightly. Theodar and Sombit ventured into the gardens to retrieve Peperil Cribbs and administer first aid, but the poor man was already dead.

  They waited.

  The tachylid sat on the wall above them, motionless, doing whatever creatures of that sort did in moments like these. Before long the three blackhands had to extinguish themselves. They crossed the raised garden walkway to be with the others, watching over their shoulders and beneath their feet as they went.

  “What do we do now?” asked Gregar.

  “That thing doesn’t look in a hurry to go anywhere,” said Derrow.

  “I say we leave,” said Ernost.

  “I left all my tools in the lab,” said Gregar.

  “And the documents… they’re in unsealed containers,” Hayden added. “The damp will ruin them.”

  Something thumped against one of the laboratory windows, startling them all. Another tachylid perched sideways on the glass, the ribbed chitin of its exoskeletal underside visible from within. Another thump followed, and a second creature appeared.

  “Where are those things coming from?”

  “I dunno. They weren’t in the lab a few minutes ago… were they?”

  “The drain,” Raith and Gregar both realized at once.

  The sewer plate inside was still uncovered, and the laboratory doors were cracked open. Through the space between them scuttled a tachylid larger than any they’d seen yet. It was so big Raith heard the door squeak on its hinges as the creature brushed it aside. Another one crawled out just above the door handle.

  “Shit. Screw the tools. Screw the documents. Let’s go. Everyone out.” Gregar led the way up the stairs while Raith stayed behind to make sure everyone made it.

  Mercer and Brence carried Peperil’s body while Savannah and Sombit carried their torches for them. Raith watched as more tachylids latched themselves to the laboratory windows and swarmed through the open doors. They began leaping across the chamber, attaching themselves to walls, holding tanks, rafters, air ducts.

  As soon as his path was clear, Raith began backing up the steps. He was halfway up the first flight before he looked down to see he’d left his oil lamp on the lowest stair. Slouching to pick it up, he almost didn’t see the first tachylid sail toward him. He ignited his shield just as the creature arrived.

  A splash of green mucous and bits of shell doused Raith’s face and clothes. He stumbled backward up the steps, spitting and wiping goo from his eyes. His shield would’ve severed the scaffolded stairs with no trouble. He had nothing left to do but run.

  Railings and braces clanged as tachies landed all around him. He ignited and dashed up the crisscrossed staircase with the benefit of augmented speed. When he reached the sliding doors at the top, he only managed to close one before the tachies got there. He had to fall back through the opening with the other door still ajar.

  “They’re coming,” he shouted down the hallway. “Keep moving.”

  Raith faced the oncoming swarm with his shield covering him from head to toe. While the shield wasn’t properly shaped to fill the corners of the hexagonal corridor, the tachylids were only of moderate intelligence, and they began to throw themselves at him in a flurry of spikes and antennae. They ruptured one by one, painting the hallway in front of him yellow-green. He backed away while shifting his shield into the corners whenever a tachy tried to squeeze by, often melting through metal and concrete in the process.

  It was Gregar who finally came back for him. Raith’s hands were charred and smoking by then, embered skin peeling away from his fingers. He turned and sprinted down the corridor past Gregar, who ignited to tear a huge ceiling panel into the creatures’ path. Both men sprinted down the corridor and left the tachylids behind.

  “High Infernal, those things will be everywhere by nightfall,” Savannah said when they were all above ground with the hidden door closed behind them.

  “They’ll have plenty of bats to eat down there,” said Tobas Baern.

  “I think they prefer cool dark places to the surface,” said Raith. “Hopefully they’ll stay put.”

  “We can never go back down there now,” Edrie Thronson said. “The whole place is lost.”

  “I’m sure Savannah won’t feel much loss for something she didn’t know she had in the first place,” Raith said.

  “No, I won’t,” Savannah said. “And I’m sorry about earlier. I got a little carried away. It’s hard to trust people when it seems like everyone wants something from you.”

  “We did come here wanting something from you,” said Raith, “and I’m sorry that we—that I—pressured you to give it to us. We truly cannot thank you enough for everything you’ve done for us.”

  The Sons agreed.

  “We’ll leave you in peace now, like you wanted. There’s time left in the day. We can gather our
things, saddle the horses, and meet Borain in the scrubs for a night ride. You can’t imagine how fortunate we all feel to have found a way home, and it’s all thanks to you.”

  “Are you really going to show the nomads the way to Decylum?” Savannah asked.

  “Unless the fates provide us with a way out, it seems that’s our only choice.”

  “Good luck to you, then.”

  “And to you as well, Savannah Glaive. Be well. And take care of yourself, will you?”

  She smiled, standing on her tiptoes to hug him around the neck. “Thank you for telling me about my mother. I’ll never forget it.”

  Raith and the Sons retrieved their horses from the stables and found Borain Guaidir where he was camped outside town. The commscreen lay in Raith’s pack beside the Aionach Atlas and the Decylum documents he’d retrieved earlier. Once they rescued Ros from Sai Calgoar, they would finally be on their way home. If only they could find a way to get there without the master-king and his armies in tow, Decylum might have a fighting chance at a future without the above-world’s harsh influence.

  And so the Sons of Decylum rode on into the wastes. The wastes swallowed them up, and all the hope of the world was with them.

  CHAPTER 51

  Descent

  On a hot, clear day at long year’s end, Merrick Bouchard stood before a crowd of thousands on the steps of the Mobile Operations Headquarters and announced Pilot Wax’s execution with all the emotion of a man setting the table for supper. He’d waffled over the decision, only because he kept wondering whether there was more he could learn from the man who had been Commissar. Wax had tried to kill him, and Merrick understood why. But he also knew that once he went through with this, he would be ruling North Belmond alone. The idea scared him, but the thought of letting Wax hang around to plan his next murder attempt scared him more.

  Wax knelt on the topmost step, daylight and dread forming a dark ring of sweat around his collar. Merrick’s hands hovered on either side of Wax’s head, ready to take it off with a split-second ignition. Raith had taught him there was a difference between his healing energies and his destructive ones; each came from its own unique place within him. All he needed to do was channel the correct one.