by Nate Crowley
Mouana started at her old general’s name, imagining her black figure skittering towards them in a tangle of limbs, but the wall of smoke that heralded her progress was still far away.
“You realise they’ll likely not fare any better with us?” asked Mouana, fixing Fingal with her good eye. “They’d be best off taking what you can and making for Murit or Rhianos, somewhere neutral, somewhere far away.”
“Yeah, I know,” said the scarred man softly, as he passed the flask. “But honestly? I never thought we’d make it this far. I certainly never thought we’d ever step foot in the Ministry. And we wouldn’t have, without what you and Wrack did. And I think we always knew that, if we did manage to storm the place, it would all be over soon anyway. At least this way we get to carry on, and help you try and wreck those last fucking rods.”
Wrack’s casket was suspended in the air now, rotating as the crane bore it towards them, dark against the tranquil immensity of the collapsing city. Already, sailors on their deck were guiding it towards the hastily-widened aperture of their hold.
“What about you, Fingal?” asked Mouana.
“Well, I was wondering if I could join your crew, to be honest,” said the rebel, wincing as he unbuttoned his waistcoat and went to lift his shirt with shaking hands. The shirt was crusted solid with blood; beneath it was a soaked wad of dressings, half-set gore spilling from its edges as the man’s abdomen twitched.
“Gutshot,” he explained. “Took it as we came into the Ministry, but figured with everything so near to finishing as it was, I might as well just neck some speed and forget about it. Surprised it’s not done me in sooner, if I’m honest—I’m pretty chuffed it’s given me long enough to get all this sorted.”
“Your people know?”
“Oh yes—I filled ’em in while you were out, over on the Asinine Bastard,” said Fingal, nodding at the largest of the mutineer ships. “Far as I’m concerned, this ain’t my rebellion any more. And that, mate, is why I’ve been at leisure to sit here and share a drink with you on this fine morning. Now I want to share another drink with you.”
Mouana noticed, for the first time, that Fingal had a cylinder of miasma cradled in his arm.
“It’s not life after death, you know,” warned Mouana. “It’s just death, without the rest.”
“So’s life, if you want to be that way,” murmured Fingal. “Either way, I want to take this stuff and see things through with you. Doesn’t feel fair to die properly until you get your chance too. What do you say?”
“I say you’ve lost your mind,” she answered, as he raised the canister’s nozzle to his lips. “Welcome aboard.”
Mouana leant back against the crate and shut her eye for a time. She felt the boat shudder under her as the chains above took its full weight, heard the crew as they scrambled to make ready for launch. When she opened it again they were in the air, gliding high over the city to where the sea crashed against the ruined docks. Fingal was dead, his head slumped against his chest, his arm round the miasma like a tramp cradling his booze.
She wished sleep could take her, even if it meant another vision of that awful tent. But sleep, like breathing, was a memory—there was going to be no rest until this was over. The boat settled in the water with a soft crash, and the sailors on the deck cheered—Mouana had to go and lead them.
As she began to lever her stiff, bullet-ridden wreck of a body into a position to stand, Fingal turned his head and grinned at her.
“You’re right,” he croaked, before falling into something between a laugh and a coughing fit. “This is horrible.”
“Yes it is,” she agreed absently, and got up to address her crew. As she tried to gather her words and her strength, she was caught by the sight of a hunched shape, crouched on the boat’s stern as it turned to leave the docks behind. A crab, still and silent, with a book clutched in its claws.
Wrack, watching his home city die.
CHAPTER
TWENTY
EIGHT
DUST STALKED DOWN the deck of the beached hulk with a monstrous headache, cutting down everything she came across. Although the zombies had a satisfying give to them as they took her blade, they offered little to assuage the aching dullness the drugs had left as they withdrew.
Their blood was brown and sluggish; it oozed rather than arced as she hacked at the aimless bodies. They offered only sparks and snatches of song behind her eyes, compared with the colours and harmonies that blossomed when a fresh life ended.
And they barely fought back. Slamming her fist through a wretch’s chest as it dithered across her path, she let it slither on her arm for a moment, face to face with her. But there was no rage or fear in its face—if anything, it looked relieved. Dust spat in disgust and pitched it thirty feet across the deck, where it landed in a puff of teal.
Even that faded quickly, leaving the world grey again. Her system was nearing baseline, dangerously drained after the rapture of the breach. She had switched half her brain to dormancy during much of the thirty-seven tedious hours it had taken to fight through the city to the Ministry—it had been the dull kind of fighting—but it had only postponed the crash. Sooner or later, she would have to sleep. The thought disgusted her.
Still, she thought, what was coming would surely compensate for it, would offer her a thrill that would only grow with time. The thought of it swelled, coruscating rose and crimson, in her anticipation.
Something yapped and snattered in the periphery of her hearing, ruining the moment for her. She took it for one of the ship’s filthy carrion-birds, and was about to spin and put a shot through it when she recognised it as language.
One of her officers, a snivel-faced man from the pack trailing nervously in her wake, was wheedling for her attention. She considered putting a shot through his leg anyway, but put the thought away—it would only delay things further. Instead, she tried to make out what he was on about.
It was the Principals, he seemed to be saying, though the fear wafting from his face in green-black waves distracted her from his words. They were calling again, asking for conference, for an update on the assets. Their precious little rods.
Dust thought of the Principals, of their turgid emissaries on the screens, forever asking for ‘updates,’ and snarled. The herald of Kanéla in her tank of orange gas, the grey foreman from Lōhē, always wearing a new face. The fools from Ijinna, who brought new and meaningless questions with each conference, and that elephantine thing from Orcus, which so rarely said anything.
Of course, even that puffy monster would be in uproar if she told them the truth: that she had found the Ministry burned to the ground, had found only the shattered fragments of their rods, cool among the embers of the death-factory.
So she told the man to lie to them, as she had already lied to them once; to say that the assets were secure and being prepared for delivery. It didn’t matter—by the time the dullards became suspicious, it would be too late. She would have her real reward, and the paltry tokens of their commission would mean nothing.
It was so close now. Dust waved the trembling man away to his task, and looked up at the ship’s vast bridge tower, at its name, TAVUTO, painted in unforgiving capitals the size of houses. As she passed through its entrance and began ascending the blood-tacky stairs, the prospect of fresh ecstasy tickled her cortex. Her prize was waiting for her at the top; she fancied she could feel it tickling at the burned edges of her mind already, drawing her up past the drifts of bodies on the staircase.
Her monster, her ancient weapon, summoned just as planned. Captured as she had whiled away the months with the mammoth farce of the siege. Brought to her. It was odd that nobody had been here to present it to her, but no real shame—the fisherman was of no importance next to the catch. She had cast her hook, and here was her leviathan.
Only, as she entered Tavuto’s bridge and saw the sky blazing through the gutted ceiling, she knew she had been betrayed, Her prize had been taken.
Dust stood for
a long time, staring up at the sky and wondering how to feel. At first only confusion came, but as the heat built beneath, shreds of other things boiled to the top. Shock melted into disbelief, and then gave way to bitter admiration as she realised she had been outplayed by a game-piece. The taste was unfamiliar, a forgotten blend, but all at once she recognised the old, rare tang of defeat.
The novelty was quite delicious, but Dust knew bland rage would soon overwhelm the flavour if she didn’t find something creative to do with it. Calmly, as if all was proceeding as expected, she ushered her officers in from their fearful knot beyond the bridge doors, and told them to find her the answer to what had happened here.
As the officers scurried, she stroked the canister of miasma at her belt. It was one of the store they had recovered from the remnants of the Ministry, four thousand silver cases, stockpiled in a cellar and safe from the fire. After a moment’s hesitation, she cranked her synaesthetics up a notch. Really, she knew she should be letting her system cool, but what was coming next would be too beautiful to enjoy without augmentation.
Twenty-three minutes later, two uniforms approached her with a corpse supported between them. They looked at each other with sweat-bleached faces. One tried to tell her they had managed to get the wretch to talk, but was interrupted by the thing itself, suggesting they had not had to conduct much of an interrogation.
The carcass looked her straight in the eye, grinned, and told her all she needed to know. It was lengthy, aggressive and largely indecipherable. But it gave her the answer she had already reached.
“Mouana,” said the corpse.
The word was hot and rancid as it leaked into Dust’s skull, drowning out the flavour of the others. She let the synaesthetics drench her; there was no point postponing the anger any longer, though she did pause to thank the corpse before she clapped its head flat between her gauntlets. After all, it had displayed more character than most of her command staff.
They would, in fact, be much more interesting dead, she mused to herself. After all, they had all just been outperformed by a colleague long-deceased. Really, she was offering them a second chance.
Slowly unscrewing the nozzle of the miasma, Dust told her officers to form a parade line, and to put on their gas hoods. To their credit, only two tried to break for the bridge door when they realised what was about to happen. They were stopped by the pair of piston-limbed Augs she had stationed there during the search, and brought back to the line as the doors were bolted.
The rest didn’t say a word after that. Maybe, she thought, as fear blossomed from the soldiers in gorgeous amber spheres, there was hope for them yet.
Moving to the first man in line, she let loose a blast from the cylinder into the inlet of his mask, and savoured the terror in his eyes as he held the breath, waiting for her blade to come. Eventually, when no violence came, he exhaled in tentative relief.
“Good,” said Dust, and screwed shut the man’s air intake.
Some time later, when the last of the officers had stopped convulsing, she took a seat on an overturned terminal and waited for them to come back. It was beautifully quiet, and Dust sighed to herself as she tasted the moment. Maybe this setback had been for the best. She was tired of the clumsy, protracted business of sieges, and missed the hunger and the fury and the pain that came with a real challenge.
Now, not only did she have a task ahead of her, but a decent opponent standing in her way. And as the very first of her new soldiers began to thrash on the floor, she smiled. It was a beautiful day, and the hunt was about to begin.
THE WATER THRONGED with bright fish, jinking and dashing among the lily stems. Flag-tailed eft cruised between them, feather-gills pulsing, while hornplate catfish jostled one another in the sun patches dappling the pool floor. Leaf scraps whirled in the wash of their heavy tails, rich as tea-leaves in the great warm brew.
Wrack felt the sunlight sink into his back, felt silt trickle through his fingers as he pulled himself along through the shallows. A flight of mottled stingray flapped away in startlement, leaving a plume of disturbed sand behind them. He pushed through and kicked free of the bottom, rolling lazily in the water as weeds brushed his sides.
Swimming through an arch of moss-crusted wood, he watched as jewelled shrimp fussed and picked through their tangled garden, waving glass-clear claws when grazing fish nudged too close. Everywhere he looked there was life, teeming and vibrant.
Then he was out into the river channel, where redtail cats and hump-backed nutcrackers meandered in the slow current. Eels flittered in the distance, while here and there the water surged with the white bubbles of a diving bird. Pink shapes loomed in the soupy distance, and the fish scattered in all directions. Creaking clicks and squeaks filled the water, and bulbous heads pushed out of the gloom—a pod of river orcas, their eyes little more than specks in salmon-coloured skin. They swung their heads at him as they passed, sonar clicking deep against his diaphragm, but were gone as soon as they arrived, in search of the huge worms they were famed for hunting.
As their tails vanished, Wrack found himself alone in the water; he looked around for more fish, but every movement resolved into dead vegetation, or a trick of the light. He saw something creeping along the sediment, but when he swam to investigate, it was nothing but a half-eaten redtail, rolling along the bottom with mouth gaping.
The river’s bottom fell away, and the water grew colder, and darker. The light from above grew more and more distant, and lost its amber glow. The current picked up like the stirrings of a winter gale, and Wrack felt it pulling him along, faster than he could kick against it. It was as if something was breathing him in, something that grew closer and closer, yet remained out of sight as the water darkened.
Wrack flailed in the icy water, tumbled in search of the surface, but it was nowhere to be seen—the water stretched fathomless in every direction, grey and terrible. He was pulled further and further by the current, despite all his thrashing, and he knew he was being dragged down, down to somewhere good fishes did not go.
Blackness rose, and within it loomed two great orbs—eyes, scratched and sightless and deathly pale. Beneath them sprawled a tangle of black glass, a forest of needles sprung from ragged flesh. A predatory yawn, that gaped in measureless hunger and despair. The jaws creaked silently apart to accept him, and Wrack resigned himself to their embrace.
Then a deep, wet crack echoed from the abyss, and the monstrous face jerked sideways. Another, and it convulsed again. It was tugged back violently, and a jet of cloudy filth rose from its maw. Unseen teeth ground in the blackness, and a shiver of awe crept across the crown of Wrack’s head. There was something beyond, something so large and fierce it made prey of the devil-fish.
A deep green light rose from the depths, and Wrack caught sight of it then; a titanic crown of limbs, rolling dark as onyx serpents, their lengths stippled with scars and savage hooks. At their centre, a churning spiral of tooth-rows and horny plates, which dragged in the head of the fish as he watched, snapped shut, and belched a few strands of slimy flesh.
Wrack licked his lips as he hung before the monster, and stretched his arms in satisfaction. That was delicious.
“Saints and knights!” yelled a man, over someone’s screaming.
“Easy, Wrack!” barked another, as metal clattered and more shouting started. Wrack focused, and found he had a hand in his mouth, clamped in his right claw as his mouthparts chewed at the thumb. Below the hand was Waldemar’s book, its text spotted with fresh blood. He was in a ship’s cabin, crowded with people, and it took him a second to realise it wasn’t yet another vision. As soon as he did, he spat the hand out in self-disgust.
Fucking visions, he thought, and started into a rambling apology. To his puzzlement, his words came back at him, read aloud by a synthesised voice with slightly mangled inflection.
All around him were a circle of faces, some living, some dead, all wide-eyed and agitated as a woman retreated, clutching her sliced thumb. One
of the dead men, with a bad eye and a big moustache, looked really familiar, but Wrack was pretty sure he hadn’t been on Tavuto. He was talking, and Wrack supposed he really should be listening.
“—mate, we thought you were just concentrating on your book. Didn’t mean to startle you. Look, we’ve been souping you up some!” The man gestured at a living woman, who held up a mirror with a conciliatory, if slightly forced, grin. In the mirror was a crab, and Wrack cringed—that was never going to feel natural—but he had to admit it was in better shape. His smashed legs had been replaced with wooden prosthetics, while the whole rack had been fixed with steel supports and servos, wired to a cluster of machinery bolted to his shell. The camera he was peering through was now flanked by speakers, which broadcast a thoughtful “huh” as he examined himself.
“I can talk now?” said Wrack, as he tested his legs. He had to admit, being a speaking, mostly-mechanical crab controlled by a brain in a tank was—somehow—more satisfying than just being a crab controlled by a brain in a tank.
“Yes, you can,” said the moustachioed cadaver, nodding at the woman with the bitten thumb. He was achingly familiar. “And you’ve Conwen to thank for that. Used the voice from the Lipos-Tholos trams, which we always used for our radio stuff. We figured you and Mouana could use a break from writing to each other, and you might want a bit more company. Thought it might cheer you up.”
“Thanks,” said Wrack, feeling more human than he had done in a long while. The idea that someone had thought of him in a context outside of mortar fire, naval hyperwar and desperate crusades in search of nightmare technology made him want to well up, though he doubted his renovators had thought to install tear ducts. “And Conwen, I’m really so sorry for trying to eat your thumb. I didn’t know I was doing it. I’m... well, I’ve gone a bit mad, if I’m honest. This is all just a bit much. Thanks for what you’ve done.”