by Sparks,Cat
“No,” said Kian, flipping the plastic over, running his thumb over the flower symbol before placing it down carefully on the table’s surface. “I will convince him my way. He will never volunteer such information without a mighty powerful incentive.”
“You don’t know my father.”
“And you don’t know what this is. What it means.” He held up the flower symbol for her to see.
She shrugged. “Relics are worth big coin to the right buyers—what else is there to know?”
The relic this map leads to must not fall into any hands but Axa’s. That is what I know.”
She nodded. “Then we are in agreement. We will find this thing together.”
“But your father—”
“My father will come around. I will see to it.”
“ Your father is afraid of it—and you should be too.”
“Perhaps.” She put down the glass she’d been clutching tight against her chest and leaned forward. “We want the same things, you and me. Your people want to get out from under the sand, and I want to get off it. We’re the same people, Kian. The same blood in our veins, so you claim.”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe? You just confessed to as much!”
“Ah, but you see, the thing is, I don’t trust you. For all I know, these maps, impressive as they might be when we crack them open, are merely toys or fakes—that is what you people are best at after all.” He pushed the maps to one side and rested his weight on the table’s edge. “Do you understand what’s at stake here?”
“Reliquary is reliquary,” she answered, eyes upon the three slim sheets of plastic. “Some kind of weapon, I presume.”
“Not just any weapon. If it’s what I think it is, that map leads to a weapon so big and powerful it could change the very face of the sand itself. You get that, don’t you? That relic must not fall into the wrong hands.”
She nodded. “The hands of Axa’s enemies.”
“Precisely.”
She flicked her gaze from the table top to meet his own. “I get it,” she said, “and I’m right there with you. But not if you keep my father bound in chains.”
Thumping and scuffling sounds emanated from somewhere above. More than just the usual creak and groan of timbers created when the Razael was in motion.
Kian slid off the table top to his feet. He’d been prepared to ignore all distractions, until a rifle shot rang out, clear and unmistakable. Others quickly followed, accompanied by shouts and screams. He opened a pocket in his skinsuit’s torso and tucked the three precious plastic sheets inside. “Do not attempt to leave this stateroom,” he told her. “Two guards are stationed outside this door. They’ve orders to shoot if you try to get away.”
“What is it? What’s going on?”
“Nothing I can’t handle.” He scanned the room, and Allegra could tell he was reluctant to leave her to her own devices. But he clearly didn’t have many other options—the thumps and scuffles bleeding down from the deck were getting louder. So he left, closing the door behind him.
Allegra remained seated at the table until his footsteps faded. Then she padded softly to the door, drawing her head close to the wood to listen. It was only when she was sure she would not be immediately disturbed that she then made straight for a tallboy made of lacquered redwood. She tugged at the bottom drawer. Half stuck, it refused to budge until she gave it a swift kick. Once it was pulled free, she groped in the shallow space beneath, and retrieved a wire ring hung thick with keys. And something else—two small daggers, plain and sturdy. She concealed one inside her garments, then put the drawer back where it was supposed to be.
She began walking back to the table, but stopped herself midway and turned to face the back of the room, looked directly at a space on the wall. A place where the wood was cracked and splintered. There was a dark blemish there that she knew was not a blemish but a hole.
“I know you’re watching me,” she said. “I can see your eyes shining in the darkness.”
There was a flicker of movement on other side of the hole. Allegra looped the key wire around her wrist and tucked the second dagger into her waistband. She stepped closer. “Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to tell him you’ve been spying. The Razael will not be his ship for very much longer. Especially not if I can count on you.”
She waited, then took another step towards the wall, the keys jangling as she moved. “What’s your name?”
There was no answer.
“My name is Allegra—but I suspect you know that already, and a great many other things as well, no doubt. Help me and I’ll be forever grateful. I’ll give you anything you ask for in return.”
No answer still, but there was movement beyond the crack again.
“My father is a very wealthy man. Half the Black Sea tanker expeditions are backed by his coin.” She brought a finger up to her lips. “Shhh, it’s supposed to be a secret. The illustration of competition helps keeps the prices paid for heart-and-brains and other bounty high.”
She paused very still and waited, rewarded by another faint flicker of light.
“Once this nightmare is over,” she continued, “my father will be richer still, but right now he’s in terrible danger, as are all of us upon this ship.”
She shook the loop of keys from her wrist, and held it high so the spy behind the wall could clearly see them. “They’ll have stashed my father in one of the cabins along the way. Probably the small one with the bird motifs carved into the door.”
She lowered her eyes to rummage through the keys. Found the one she wanted and held it up. “Unlock that door and cut his bonds. Leave him with this knife, that’s all I ask.” She angled her body so that the dagger’s hilt was showing at her waist.
The spy behind the wall remained silent.
Allegra smiled. “Do this for me and I will be forever in your debt, as will be my father.”
More thumps and shouts echoed from above, followed by something louder, possibly an explosion. She glanced across her shoulder at her own locked door, then moved quickly to the crack in the wall. She held out the keys and pulled the dagger from her waist, offering it to the spy hilt first.
“Quickly, I beg of you. I will not forget your kindness—and your bravery.”
She waited. What seemed like an eternity passed, but eventually a hand reached out through the crack and took the keys and the knife.
= Thirty-nine =
Here and there, the Black lay warped and buckled. Miasma oozed out of jagged rents like puss from a weeping sore. There was a stink in the air that made the crew’s nostrils sting.
Slowly but surely the Dogwatch became enveloped in a thick and glutinous fog. A foul stench like nothing Star had ever smelled before.
“Ain’t fog,” said Lucius, as if he could read Star’s mind.
She cringed away from it. “Then what is it?”
The other tankerjacks were growing restless; they clearly had no idea what to make of it. Only Quarrel remained unperturbed.
The crew covered their faces, but the fabric made no difference. The stink remained pungent and all encompassing, completely masking the greasy stink of the engines which had kicked in once the wind gave out.
Visibility was now down to a couple of feet, and the ship crawled forward.
“Was trying to save that bio-diesel for the journey home,” said Lucius in a low whisper. They had no choice but to use it now. The wind had abandoned them. If the ship came to a standstill they’d be easy pickings, especially with visibility so low.
Eerie silence hung above their heads. Nothing to hear but the creak and groan of straining timbers. Now and then, a far off howl of something living but otherwise unidentifiable.
“What animal makes a sound like that?” Star
whispered.
Lucius shook his head. “Only been this far out before the once,” he admitted. “Folks who was travelling with me didn’t make it home. I shouldn’t have made it either,” he added.
“Air has turned to poison,” said Bimini, loud enough for everyone to hear. “A sickness of the Earth itself.”
Murmurs of agreement from crewmen rendered faceless by the fog, which continued to roll in, thick and heavy. The crow’s nest was now completely obscured. Goja, if he was still alive up there, had fallen silent.
“The Razael is close—we’re on her heels,” stated Quarrel. “They made it through this stretch and so will we. The fog will pass.”
“If it is fog,” said Grellan said.
As if in response, the ship began to slow, then shudder to an abrupt halt. At first, no one said anything, not Quarrel, not the crew. The rigging slapped an irregular rhythm against the wood, wind whistling through ropes and battering furled canvas.
“It is not safe to stop the ship,” said Quarrel warily.
“Too bad. What’s done is done.”
Quarrel shook his big ugly head. “You people have no fucking idea. Not one of you has ever been this far out before.”
“Neither have you,” said Lucius, hand clasped around his stave.
Someone up the back started coughing up phlegm and spitting it over the side.
“My lungs are reinforced with artificial filters—how about yours?” Quarrel said, addressing the entire crew. “How much longer do you want to sit here?”
More coughing ensued before they gave in, shouting and swearing to get the Dogwatch on the move again. But it was too late; the ship refused to budge.
“Something’s fouling up the castors,” yelled Bimini over the side.
“Lantana raze,” said Quarrel.
The green soupy fog continued to thicken and roil. There was talk about lowering a man over the side with a machete to try and free the wheels. Lucius squashed the idea, and yelled at the crew not to touch anything, not to let the deadly, weaponized weed get on anybody’s skin.
All the while, Star was peering through the fog in vain, waiting for plans to be made and approved, waiting for the Dogwatch to start moving again. It was then, through the choking, stinking green, that she started to notice shapes, indistinct and spider-like—big as dogs—scuttling across the Black, darting between the cracks and bulges. She turned to Lucius, but instead found Quarrel, his head cocked at an unnatural angle, like he was listening to something at a frequency beyond the range of human hearing. Grellan was shouting in his face, and Quarrel was completely ignoring him.
“Shut up, Grell, I can hear it too,” said Hackett, suddenly wide-eyed and standing to attention, arm raised, fingers splayed as if trying to grab onto something just beyond the fog. “Tankersong!”
They could all hear it now, high-pitched above the painful crunching and splintering of wood. The groan of metal tearing metal, the death growl of Dogwatch’s engine choking as it attempted to splutter back to life.
Star shrieked as out of nowhere, one of the spider things sprang up from the surface of the Black and landed on the deck, making immediately for the main mast, scuttling up the timber and into the obscuring fog. There was a piercing scream from up in the crow’s nest—Goja. But there was nothing to see, the fog was too thick. Too impenetrable.
Somebody aimed and fired a clumsy shot.
“Don’t, you idiot, you’ll hit him!”
Another spider-thing jumped and landed on the deck. Bimini fired her crossbow and pierced the creature through the centre mass. It slowed but didn’t stop entirely—the thing was made of metal, at least in part.
Another heavy thud upon the deck. Not a spider-thing this time but a fallen body. It was Goja, dead, his right arm completely torn away, those old brass goggles knocked off his face. Star gasped when she realised he didn’t have any eyes, just wires protruding from the empty sockets.
Reverberations shuddered through the ship. Bimini was loading up another bolt when the deck was torn from beneath them, smashed to splinters by a mighty force slamming through roils of fog and choking damp. Harder than a ram raid. Rougher than the wildest kind of storm.
Star fell backwards, knocking into Lucius, who was suddenly beside her, grabbing on to him with both hands. Together they stumbled over disintegrating timbers, up and over the side of the ship, fumbling to climb down rather than jump but failing completely, knocking shins and elbows as they tumbled together, unable to see the ground through the fog and splinters. Star landed painfully on her side on the Black, her grip on Lucius lost. She scrabbled through fog-fouled air, screaming and completely alone.
“Lucius!”
Tankersong sounded again, high pitched and bone grating. Star’s ears felt like they were filled with clanging bells. Her nostrils choked with thick and sour stench.
She grappled to find something solid to cling on to, anything. Disoriented, her mind spinning, she suddenly realised she was on her back, dazed and trembling, that awful sound possessing every part of her: her head, her eyes, her lungs, her guts. She tried calling out for Lucius, but was unable to hear her own voice over the high pitched, guttural inflaming, endless—
A wall appeared, mere feet away, in between her and where the outline of the Dogwatch loomed. A moving wall, streams of sand sloughed off its rocky crust. Not a wall. It was the side of a barnacle-encrusted tanker ploughing through the Black, pushing through cracks and rents in the solidified molten slag. Close enough for her to smell its stink. So close she could have reached across and touched it.
“Lucius!”
She cringed and kicked herself away from danger, scuttling like a crab. Scrabbling on to hands and knees, she pushed herself to her feet as the crazed thing came to a slamming halt, then retreated out the way it had come in a blur.
A wave of nausea, then the tanker was gone. Star was left wobbling on the Black, the surface around her cracked and brittle, continuing to spew gouts of poison from out of its openings. Before her lay a great and stinking hole, like she was staring right down into Hell itself.
Lucius? Where was Lucius? She screamed his name with all her voice, the gaping hellhole dampening the sound.
An arm grabbed hold of hers and dragged her clear. It was Bimini, screaming at her to run.
“But Lucius!”
“He is dead. I saw him fall into that.” She nodded at the black and gaping void.
“No. I don’t believe you!”
Bimini dug her fingers into Star’s arm. “Old man is gone. You cannot help him. Come with me or die here on the Black.”
Voices shouted in the distance as Bimini let go of Star and ran. Star hesitated, just long enough to stare into the hellhole’s depths, then at its jagged, gaping edges. There was no sign of Lucius, or anyone else.
Star ran after Bimini, the tankerjack already no more than a dark smudge barely visible through the fog ahead of her.
The ship, as she sprinted past it, was a mess of hinges and splinters, jagged strips of torn butyl, material rendered unidentifiable by the ooze. The crew were scattered, at least those that weren’t already dead. But soon all that was behind her, and all that remained was the ragged edge of the Obsidian Sea, the stinking fog, the strewn rocks, smashed wreckage and a select few survivors who had made it through, and were now shipwrecked in the middle of nowhere.
= Forty =
The General has been utilising his time to great advantage, practising generation of polyp storms. They are soft and blue, so beautiful; creations pulsating with gelid light, trailing sensory apparatus from their underbellies, as well as stingers and umbilicals for latching on and drinking power.
The Lotus Generals had once controlled such weapons with their minds. It was their greatest triumph—any old grunt with th
e right configuration of keys and codes could let loose a stream of missiles; all you needed were access, power, and initiative. But the polyp storms were germinated in chambers deep within the earth. Seeded small, then grown and birthed in a blazing ejaculation of terror, fire, and glory. Each one a unique and precious work of art, guided by mimetic ember consciousness, a lust and longing to discharge, to bleed their fiery sting into a target.
Some of these storms get moody. Some of them get lost. The General focuses his fury and births a big one, sends it hurtling across the Black Sea in a howling rage, Johnny scattering in its wake. There’d been other names and terms for enemy soldiers, more denigrating, more insulting, but Jacks and Johnnies are the names that stuck.
The General synchs his sensory apparatus to the storm’s frequency, then deploys initiation codes. He savours the sensation of pressure building, knows it to be an illusion but doesn’t care.
The storm he grows is fierce electric; graceful, delicate, and hungry. The damage it causes is plentiful, but it is not enough.
The General has been working hard, and has many other tricks tucked up his sleeve. He’s forged a method of talking to the battletrucks and tankers—which doesn’t mean they listen, mercy no, but they can hear him—and some of them are relishing a bit of two-way dialogue. A change for the better, their memories are rekindled. They have someone else to do their thinking for them. Long decades racing across the Red have reduced them to their basest animal urges: to fight and flight and slam and scream, sucking sustenance from the mangled corpses of their brethren. They know it’s wrong but they can’t remember how they used to feed.
Do it my way, says the General. Some of them reckon they might as well give it a go, especially when they catch sight of his beautiful storms. So blue and bright. So impressive, especially when the General sics one onto an eight-wheeled armour plated barrier basher, slams it sideways and the whole rig dissolves before their eyes.