by Sparks,Cat
“It’s early days yet. Early days. If we get in at ground level with the hospital, we could have a real say in what happens to the place. Lucius might come with us. He says the Road’s going bad—and I happen to agree. We’re not safe here anymore. Time to stake a claim before things get out of hand.” She pointed at the route the falling Angel had taken. The vague patch of far off land where it had come to rest.
Star shook her head. She still couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “I’m not going to Solace. I’ve got plans of my own.”
Nene placed her hands on her hips and pressed her lips together. “Star, that rich Heel girl you met last year is not your friend. She isn’t going to help you.”
Star was taken aback. She had never told Nene of her encounter with Allegra. She had, however told Anj, who had likely told her sister Kaja, who . . . There was no such thing as a secret on a Sand Road Van. Apparently.
Nene smiled sadly. “They’re not our people, Star. If that girl was kind to you, it could only have been because it amused her to be so.”
“How would you know—you’ve never even met her!”
“And you only ever met her once.”
Rage boiled within Star’s chest. “You make all the decisions for both of us. You don’t care about me—all you care about are those tainted refugees.”
“Don’t use that word. Don’t call them that. You never used to talk that way.” She nodded to the Vulture’s silhouette. “Those foreigners are giving you airs and graces.”
“Airs and what?”
Nene stopped and stared at her hard. “Nothing. Just something . . . our mother used to say.”
Star stared down at the scuffed sand between her boots. She hated it whenever Nene made mention of their parents, hated that she couldn’t even remember their faces. “I don’t want to live like this. The creeping Red. The dead tree stumps. Everyone who’s smart is getting out.”
Nene stared at the Vulture without really seeing it. “I don’t like the degradation any more than you do. But the answer’s not to run away and hide from our responsibilities. Poor wretches fleeing Harthstone, they don’t know anything of the hardship that lies ahead.”
“And how is their hardship our problem?”
Nene stared at her sister incredulously. “How is it not our problem, Star? We are all the same people. The same blood runs in our veins.”
“The Road is going nowhere,” Star mumbled.
Nene’s frown softened. “This Road’s stood the test of time. When the Ruin came down, those cowards scrabbled for their fortress cities, those with coin enough to buy themselves a place. The Sand Road made a go of it. Built the Sentinels with the last of their old-world smarts. Survived the worst the Dead Red had to throw. We survived because of our ancestors’ sacrifices. We can’t abandon our own people on account of dying trees!”
“It’s not just the trees, Nene. You know it’s not. There’s changes in the way things work round here.” She pointed back the way they’d come, to Broken Arch and beyond. “People aren’t as friendly as they used to be. People are only leaving because they have to.”
“Some of them, maybe—but that doesn’t include us. We have a responsibility—”
“Urgh! There’s no point arguing with you. Those responsibilities are all your choices—not mine. Choices you made years ago—for both of us—and nothing I say or do is going to change them.”
Star strode off in the direction of the Vulture’s skeletal frame. Past the communal fire where a nervous few were gathering, warming their hands and glancing over their shoulders. There were no dogs barking. No sounds but the murmur and hubbub of weary travellers.
“Star!”
Anj. Fellow Van brat, the closest friend she had aside from Lucius. Star kept walking. Anj sprung up from her place by the fire and ran to catch her up. “Where are you going? Wait for Remy.”
When Star didn’t stop, Anj grabbed her arm. “Slow down. Come and eat, then I want to show you something.”
“I’m not hungry,” Star lied. She tried to tug her arm free but Anj held on tight.
“Star—Remy and Griff found something.”
“Leave me alone. I’m not in the mood.”
“What’s the matter? What happened?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
Anj nodded. “Okay, but at least come sit.”
Star allowed Anj to drag her to the fire. They nestled in amongst a group of dancers who were gossiping loudly and passing trinkets from hand to hand, apparently unaffected by the dark mood infecting everybody else.
Anj leant in close and whispered. “So the three of them, yeah, those clean foreign men, they tried to talk Jens into selling them camels! Reckon they have to be in Heel as soon as possible. Reckon it’s a matter of life or death.”
Star frowned. “What’s so important that they need to get there so fast?”
Anj’s eyes widened. “How much coin must they be carrying! Three camels, they tried to score. Three! Like Jens would ever part with a single animal. Like Benhadeer would even consider it!”
Anj leaned in closer still. Her breath was sour and salty. “They’re clueless, Star. Wherever they’re from, it’s nowhere around here. Not from the coast neither. Nowhere we’ve even heard of, I’ll bet my boots!”
Star was about to press Anj for further details when she felt a sharp poke in her ribs.
“Child, you’re gonna have to stop jumping off moving wagons. Nearly gave my heart a proper fright, you did!”
It was Yeshie again, squeezing in beside her even though there wasn’t room, placing a faded square of mat down on the sand. Drawing attention that Star could have done without. “Let’s see if we can’t find out what’s really going on,” she added, and before Star had a chance to speak, the old woman had fished a handful of dice-and-bones from a pouch on her belt. Rubbing them between her pudgy fingers, she blew on them three times, then let them fall.
Yeshie gasped and placed both palms across her heart as soon as the dice-and-bones came to rest. Others began to pack in close to see for themselves and hear the old woman speak. Not Anj—she shot off quicker than a skink.
“Not good,” said Yeshie. “Not good at all.” The bones were etched with writing barely visible in the flicker of firelight. Smooth, old and yellowed. Three had landed together, stacking atop one another. “You can see signs of misfortune there, but this . . .” She indicated the touching ones, each of them black side up. “This speaks of darkness. Much harsher than the work of blood and bile.” She glanced up at the star-scattered night and chewed her lip. “Something waits for us across the sands. Something old and powerful, waking up.”
“What else do you see?” asked a voice from beyond the fire’s light, as others crowded closer. It was too dark to see which of the dancers had spoken.
Yeshie scooped up the dice-and-bones before anyone else could get a closer look.
Star waited for the next bit. The sales pitch in which the old bone caster would offer up amulets for sale. Charms and wards against the coming dark. She’d heard it a thousand times before.
But instead, Yeshie packed away her divination tools and began telling a couple of round-faced dancers a hurried tale about the moon goddess and the havoc her children had caused some relative of someone else’s. One by one the crowd thinned, realising they would learn nothing else useful tonight.
Noting Star’s quizzical expression, Yeshie smiled and patted her hand. “We’ll all be fine, dear. We have the protection of Oshana and that’s what matters.” She went back to her story. Children sitting close by seemed comforted by the repetitious banter. Easy for them to fall asleep. Not so easy for the rest of them.
Star did not believe in dice-and-bones, but even so, she wished Yeshie had kept that particular pr
ediction to herself.
One of the dancers passed Star a wineskin, its heavily spiced aroma pungent even with the stopper in. Toddy, a boiled mess of fermented palm hearts. Star took a deep draught. She was going to need it. Nene was crazy if she thought Star would let herself get dragged to Solace. There would be a better way and she would find it.
Star took another swig, then coughed. “A flaming Angel crossed the sky today and fell into the Red,” she said, leaning in close to ensure Yeshie could hear. “Right in front of us—what have the magic bones to say about that?”
Yeshie patted Star kindly on the cheek. “I have something for Nene. Will you take it to her?”
As she nodded, Yeshie plunged her hand into her pocket and withdrew a lumpen bundle, placing it into Star’s cupped hands. Not divination bones, but delicately-carven beads strung together on cotton threads. Some looked like skulls, others had animal faces. Firelight made some of them seem to smile.
“Knartooth amulets,” she whispered. “The finest kind—not the junk those tourists string round their necks. Very powerful. Very powerful protection, mark my words.”
Star’s fingers curled around the little skulls and faces as Yeshie patted her hand. She nodded, knowing full well Nene would toss them out the window or, even more likely, cast them into the fire where they could do no harm to anyone. She tried to place the amulets back into the old woman’s hand. “I can’t take them, Yeshie. They’re too precious.”
But Yeshie insisted, so Star bundled them back in cloth and shoved them deep into her trouser pocket. She took another swig of toddy and thought about Nene’s words. Everything was changing—she didn’t need dice-and-bones to tell her that.
A dancer passed her a dollop of stew and a hunk of ember bread. Star ate without tasting, chewing quickly, noting that Anj had not returned to sit with the others.
People ate in silence. The detour through Broken Arch had everyone on edge. Nobody was singing. Nobody was laughing loud, or talking up big plans.
And where was Remy? By now he was usually lurking around the fire, trying to catch her attention. Teddy was where he ought to be. Same with Cray and Kaja, passing splifs and poking at the flames with elongated thorns. Filling in time until the call came to hit the road.
Her head was light and warm with drink, the sky deepening from blue to black, soon to be sprinkled with an ocean of diamond dust. No Angels. They wouldn’t come out for several hours.
She spotted Kian and his companions standing by the vulture, silhouettes stark against the pink-streaked clouds. Anj’s words lingered in her mind—Wherever they’re from, it’s nowhere around here. Star stood up and wiped her hands on her shirt. She was tired of waiting for others to make the first move.
= Eleven =
The outpost built to house the Lotus Blue had once been insignificant: small and dull, with nothing much to distinguish it from other bunkers. The Blue had been initiated in the latter stages of the wars. Late in the day, so much ground already lost—so the military strategists and ordnance architects had informed him.
But to the General’s mind, things had just been getting serious. He’d been fired up, keen to give his all to the conflict zones. Brimming with dedication, hungry to unleash his vast, explosive potential.
The Lotus Generals were an extreme innovation. Once human, uploaded when their bodies became too feeble. Old Man Blue, they used to call him. Old Man Blue. Old Man Blue once had a wife and sons. Grandsons, granddaughters, names and faces hovering aggravatingly beyond his reach. All he can source now are images: random faces materialising against intricately realised backdrops.
He remembers fat babies with cherub faces, a pretty girl with long, dark hair leaning against a wall of bright pink bricks; a scene glazed in cheery sunlight—who had such a pretty girl been to him?
Other memories are curious and random: an old white man with a frizz of fine white hair and a thick moustache. Behind him, a chalkboard covered with mathematical scribbles. A middle-aged woman, taut olive skin over muscular arms, strings of ochre beads around her neck, hand clasped around a leafy branch. The forest behind her dappled with light and shadow.
He does not recall their names, nor, recognise their faces. No matter, they are all long dead, their world long fallen silent.
Somebody must have won the Lotus Wars.
The only life signs surrounding him now are the thrum and rattle of those battletrucks with their monstrous oversized wheels and juddering armour plated chassis, thundering across the raw red plains, racing each other—that is what it looks like when he finally finds another set of stable Warbird digital feeds to hijack.
Battletankers, half-drunk on their own fermented nano-infested juices, half wild, all crazy, racing each other across sand blasted flats. The stark red sands have become their domain. The people are all hiding underground.
Not all.
He can hear their whispers, their tappings, their transmissions, weak and paltry, cowering, shielded from potential enemies.
Not so the brazen tankers, barrelling and blaring in full sight of the post-apocalyptic landscape they’d helped fashion. They can hear the General, broadcasting loud and clear, they don’t want to answer, they’re not interested in communication with his kind. Not at first.
After messing with sub frequencies for half a day, he discovers a lone rogue responsive to his suggestions. A dented six-wheeler, top heavy with encrustations—some kind of hardy, sand dwelling infestation. From above, it looks like a moving rock. The General sends it slamming into the side of another vehicle; a tanker twice its speed and girth. The tanker’s gun turrets swivelled round and aimed, menacing but not firing. Maybe none of them possess fire power anymore.
Do it again, says the General. Weak willed, the little tank obeys. Two others set upon it, ramming and rolling right over the top of its rocky crust, slamming and smashing until there’s nothing left but broken wheels and underbelly.
How interesting, says the General out loud, even though there is nothing and no one listening, glad at the sound of his own voice echoing along dusty darkened corridors.
The General toils through cycles of patient diagnostics while musing on the problems of temporality, spatiality, and mobility. There is no date to tell him when, no chronicles to outline the hows and whys and wherefores. What has happened to all the people? Last he remembers, they had the big boys on the run. The boonie rats were bugging out, Johnny was digging, burrowing underground. Who the F was Johnny anyway? He’d known the answer to that one once, but now such details don’t seem to matter. Now everything is still and dead and gone.
The General forces himself to focus, feeling his way, on-off, on-off, flexing nanophotonic circuits, each new forged connection sending tingles through his feeds. Sifting through corroded multicomponent systems, he sets about improving his recognition capabilities, grateful for his makeup of plasmonic nanogap arrays. Ultra capacitor energy recovery systems kicking in, high throughput optical intensity.
The sand has covered advantages he didn’t know he had, like a selection of land-based Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles dug down deep in silos. Minuteman IV, air burst or contact, largely depending on his mood. But are they still operational?
Only one way to find the answer.
He shoots one out the top of a cracked and shattered silo, a first-stage booster motor that fires sixty seconds after launch, all good so far. At stage two it ignites and the shroud ejects, but the third stage motor explodes in a spectacular blaze of glory, raining shards of fire-blasted steel upon the land.
Disappointing, but there are other silos, other weapons, other options.
The main transmitter, Sentinel Tower Zero, sits atop the bunker itself, surrounded by nine equispaced smaller towers, eight hundred feet high apiece, each tower connected via aerial wire forming a series of three concentric
circular loops—all since buried under sand. Sentinel Tower Zero is encased in dense, absorbent sheeting which forms a high, enclosed oblong chamber, an elevator running up the inside of the tower.
The General gets curious—what about the enormous quantities of copper tube and wire ground counterpoise arrays buried beneath the complex? What about the fifty-foot high heavy-duty copper-wire coils supported on Jarrah frames? Sections were lined with stainless- steel sheeting, all buried three storeys deep. Magnifying Energy Transmitters containing induced coil electrostatic waves from discharge. Power stations sucking up borehole gas, storing it in an underground reservoir.
The tip of Sentinel Tower Zero protrudes from the sand. The General experiments with the limited power he’s managed to get sparking, creating a near-blinding, massive high-energy burst of blue-white light that ripples for several seconds, lighting up the cloudless, moonless night.
He imagines that burst can be seen for a hundred kilometres in all directions, an intense ball of orange-ochre plasma, swirling fire in spiral patterns, flames vanishing into a void within the spherical mass. A mass with no tail that makes no sound, nor seismic waves.
All very well, but where’s the sting? It takes some weeks and much experimentation with formula to conjure a true polyp storm of old, the weapons that had razed the battlefield of Crysse Plain, turned the tide and turned the tables, turned the lights off all across the globe.
The General is pleased with his endeavour, ensorcelled by the thing’s deadly ferocity, the way its passage changes the colour of the sky, killing every creature in its path.
= Twelve =
The toddy sat warm and comfortable in Star’s belly, filling her with confidence and a clarity of thought she’d not experienced for some time.
Kian and his two “associates” were indistinguishable from one another at a distance. Up close was different. Kian’s galabeya hung open at the front, doing little to conceal the charcoal skinsuit underneath. Van people apparently held no interest for the three of them—but the Vulture did. The one called Tallis raised a lantern high to view the steel up close. The other one, Jakome, attempted to scratch the light-sucking surface with a knife. Kian stared upwards, drinking in the blue-black night and its fiery constellations.