Lotus Blue

by Sparks,Cat

  The old woman pressed up close, poking and prodding until she found what she was looking for: Star’s mesh-embedded arm. She seized her wrist, held her arm up high for all to see. Star cringed but she couldn’t pull away. The old woman was far stronger than she looked, her grip almost as powerful as Quarrel’s.

  Star searched from face to face, desperately looking for Grieve.

  He wasn’t there. He’d bolted like a rabbit into the darkness, into safety. A survivor.

  Star became enveloped in swirling green. She was vaguely aware of arms beneath her, lifting her off her feet. Pressure pushed on her ribcage, her heart hammering underneath it. There was an overwhelming scent of putrefaction, soil and smoke. Light as silk, she was passed from hand to hand, an intoxicating wash of words pushing her upwards, upwards, dumping her like a tidal surge. The old woman leered in her face. Above and behind her, grinning out of the darkness, the giant face returned, its eyes now sapphire blue, its gaze intense, unwavering. No longer interested in the old woman.

  “You belong to me,” said the Lotus Blue.

  = Fifty-five =

  The drones are small, their cameras puny, and the vision they provide is jerky and uneven. Riding their crude sight makes the General nauseous, but, like rats, these drones can slip down deep inside the crevices. The things that only they can see make them precious beyond all reckoning.

  He expects something valuable as he hacks inside the old woman’s feed. She’s been such a pushover, so easy to influence with his vast supply of digital imagery that has been stored away in his bunker’s deep reserves, etched in crystal, saved up for a rainy day of the kind this land will never see again.

  His images give her power over those who follow: peasants, obedient as dogs, willing to believe in anything offering hope beyond the barren dust. If he’d realised it would be this easy, he’d have focused on the little humans earlier

  He’s been curious to get a look at her, to see if her face jogs any latent memories. The old girl might have been one of his own command, or a relative, descended from one of his children. He hasn’t seen anyone he recognises since the battle of Crysse Plain. Curiosity is beginning to win him over. He consideres himself prepared for anything, anything at all, he thinks—but he is wrong.

  The drone’s eyes reveal the Temple’s precious Sanctum, a gloomy chamber illuminated by candles and the glow of monitors. The heat of human bodies cluster around the cobwebbed edges. The old girl is standing near, her body swathed in fabric, but she cannot hide the truth of what she is. Even without the benefit of scanners and precision sensors, he can see she had once been a Templar soldier, always would be, even if her broken mesh has fallen dark and silent, her body crooked from battle scars. The only way out for her is death.

  And beside her, another, younger Templar, a girl, her mesh bar illuminated via infra red. She has been initiated, yet is not fully functional.

  Unusual. He’s not encountered one of these in the field before, although he knows the history of the pods and caches, the back up plans, the contingency operations from the days when they thought the Wars would last forever. In the later years, automated factories deep underground had churned out more weapons than the wars could use. Stockpiles spilled over, gathering dust in deep-sunk storage vaults. Most would never see the light of day, and the ones who’d caused their manufacture were all scuttled off underground.

  The General’s reminiscence is cut abruptly short. Writhing at the feet of the old Templar he spiee yet another one of their kind, one he’s already been prodding and poking at, has attempted to ride half a dozen times but has always been cast off—the damn thing puts up a hell of a defence. Here is a Templar older than the wars themselves, down and out and wriggling on the ground, screaming crazy, thrashing like a dog in acid rain. Messed up, broken, past all its use-by dates.

  The general pauses. Something . . . he is missing something.

  The girl.

  The revelation hits him like a blast. He tugs the drone back, slams it into a better vantage point. The General cannot take his electronic eyes off her—the most beautiful sight he’s ever seen. She was perfect. Everything he never knew he needed is standing right in front of him—aside from that great big ship, of course. The Razael—he needs that as well. With both of them and an honour guard of loyal, speeding tankers, the General can leave his prison tomb. Go wherever he wants to go, travel the world from grid to grid, find the others, the ones he only half remembers: Lotus Yellow, Lotus Red, Lotus Purple, Lotus Orange. Other colours, his brother and sister generals—trapped under tonnes of sand and gravel, digging their way on upwards towards the sun.

  He will find them, help them, dig them out. Brush them off and dust them down.

  The girl. Maybe there are others like her? Maybe he can build himself an army?

  = Fifty-six =

  Jakome glanced back over his shoulder at the Razael. The vessel had a haunted feel to it. They’d been safe when they were on that ship. Even rogue tankers had treated it with respect, with its sturdy beams and powerful canvas sails. How vulnerable it now looked, wedged in sand, all but abandoned now, alone under the green and sickly sky.

  The four of them walked slowly towards the bunker, single file, with Tallis in the lead. Kian and Allegra were in the middle, Jakome brought up the rear. They’d armed themselves with weapons taken from an onboard cabinet. Finely crafted rifles chiselled with engravings of animals Jakome was certain did not exist anymore.

  He clutched his weapon between sweaty palms, overwhelmed by the enormousness, the sheer unbelievable size of the dark shape protruding from the sand ahead of them. The bunker resembled a giant spider emerging from a sand trap. Surrounding it was a staggering assemblage of flesh and mecha, all labouring side by side in the baking sun. He’d seen digging machines at work before, back home, gnawing away at Axa’s underground tunnel extensions. But this was different. The bunker almost seemed like a living creature. He’d never seen anything like it. Nobody had.

  Led by Kian, the others pushed ahead, pausing when drones were spotted to take cover in the shadow of an enormous broken down digging contraption. Jakome hurried to catch the others up, flustered by the constant, frenzied motion all around them; metal relics gouging, raking, stabbing at the sand. Noise and more noise, sand choking up the air.

  His heart pounded, expecting at any minute to be discovered and fired upon, either by drones, or an army of Templar diggers. This excavation was not the work of men. It was as if the massive granite bunker itself was sentient, digging itself free from its interment.

  “By all that is holy,” exclaimed Tallis. No need for him to point, the others had seen them too. Metal creatures digging alongside Templars: like men with the flesh stripped clean off their frames. Skeletal reliquaries without faces, yet standing on two legs and radiating the authority of men.

  “Hammer of God,” said Kian. Jakome nodded, remembering his history lessons. How the last of the Hammer-of-God platoons were supposed to have been wiped out in the Lotus Wars. Proto-Templars, forged before some hive of generals thought to experiment with melding flesh and mecha.

  Jakome slung his rifle over his shoulder, where it would not get in the way. He’d never been much of a fighter, not even for sport. He pulled a map from beneath his shirt—the only one they needed. He’d taken the time to pore over all three precious artefacts, but he could only get so far without the code that unlocked the next level. The girl had assured them she possessed the code and she was far too smart to let it slip for nothing. As long as she had it, the others would fight for her.

  But maps were useless if they could not find a way inside the spider-bellied bunker. So many obstacles lay between them and their destination: a fallen wall, great curling sheets of rusted corrugated iron. Things he didn’t know the names of. Drones and Templars and those faceless mecha diggers. So far, their luck had
held out, but Jakome was not one to take such things for granted. He’d never considered himself a taker of risks, but the aboveground world turned out to be so much bigger and more terrifying than he ever could have imagined.

  Allegra, on the other hand, seemed comfortable amidst so much strangeness. She so obviously itched to get inside the belly of the beast, despite the dangers, perhaps even because of them. She and Kian made a formidable team. If they did not end up killing each other, theirs could prove a powerful partnership.

  The belly of the beast. Even only partially excavated, the bunker was much larger than it had appeared from afar. Not one structure but several, sitting in close proximity. But the spider-like central mass was the one they needed. A sequence of identical dark rectangular openings marked its middle, many of them jammed with sand.

  They waited impatiently in shadow until the last of the drones passed overhead. It was hard to tell if the flying relics were armed or dangerous, but one could never be too careful.

  Kian turned suddenly to face him. No need to speak, Jakome knew what he was going to ask. He was about to remove the map from his shirt so all could share in the decision of what came next, when without warning Tallis leapt to his feet and made a run for it.

  Jakome called out after his brother, a reflex action. Kian silenced him with a shove. No time to think. Allegra leapt to her feet and followed, past the diggers, dodging around embedded obstacles, squeezing through gaps in the ragged corrugated iron sheets like rats.

  “See you on the other side,” said Kian as he tore after Allegra.

  Poor impulse control, thought Jakome, was what had gotten them into this mess in the first place. Kian’s inability to mind his own business in the Axan court, where every uttered word was of consequence.

  He followed his cousin—what else was he supposed to do? By the time he was through the iron barrier, Tallis had made it to the bunker itself. Jakome looked up to see him vaulting through one of the openings, recklessly, feet first.

  Nobody stopped them. Templars and mecha men apparently cared for nothing but the tasks they’d been assigned. They would simply dig and haul and scrape and throw until their bodies could perform the tasks no longer.

  Jakome followed his brother through the hole and landed in a cloud of sand and rubble. They were in a corridor, a single shaft of dusty light steaming into it. The other three crouched nearby, waiting impatiently. Not for him but for the maps he carried. Allegra held out her hand.

  “She has the code,” reminded Kian.

  Allegra nodded smugly. Reluctantly, Jakome passed her the precious artefact. She took the slender sheet of plastic in her small and delicate hands, a mysterious wonder from an age when practically anything had seemed possible. Nobody living knew how such objects had been manufactured. Not even the scholars of Axa. Kian and Jakome had spent hours discussing such things.

  The three men stared as Allegra poked and prodded at the map, turning it over and over again.

  “Do you know what you’re doing?” asked Jakome coldly.

  “Don’t interrupt,” she snapped without looking up.

  They’d all witnessed the girl’s father whispering that code into her ear. Whispering something—for her sake, Jakome hoped the father had not lied. Kian might have fallen for her charms but he and his brother prided themselves upon being practical men.

  Allegra bent forward suddenly, as if in prayer, pressing her lips up against the plastic sheet.

  She sat back on her haunches, holding her breath as the plastic map came to life. Coloured squiggles leapt into the air, splashing across the bunker’s cement walls. Jakome sucked in his breath and held it. The others made no attempt to hide their astonishment and awe.

  “I will carry the map,” said Allegra.

  “No.” Kian snatched it from her hands.

  “I have only unlocked one layer,” she said sternly. “So don’t go getting any stupid ideas.”

  Nobody asked about the other two maps, which Jakome kept in his Impact suit for safety.

  They got to their feet and headed down the gloomy corridor, Kian in the lead, Allegra only a couple of steps behind.

  Jakome sidled up to Tallis and whispered, “See the trust he places in her?”

  Tallis grunted. “She came through, didn’t she? That map appears to be functional.”

  Jakome fell into step a few paces behind his brother. Not too far—it would be easy to get lost in such a place. He would not be giving that girl any more attention than he had to. He would not be turning his back on her, or trusting her to carry anything sharp.

  Allegra’s excited chattering filled the corridor as she and Kian attempted to make sense of the map’s glowing, moving squiggles. Different colours denoted different things, if only they could figure out what they meant.

  “Father will come around eventually—you’ll see. He is old, that’s all. He’ll see the light. He doesn’t get it, his head’s stuck in the past.”

  Jakome knew he needed to be the one who kept a clear head from this point onwards. The map was amazing. Everything in this place was beyond incredible, but the bunker frightened him. He recalled the fat man’s warnings, how genuinely terrified he seemed to be of the creature that lay within its bowels, the Lotus Blue. The old man was rich, which implied he wasn’t stupid. It would take a lot of skill and cunning to hang on to wealth in a place like Fallow Heel. Plus, he’d been outwitting Axa and its rival fortress cities for the best part of thirty years.

  Jakome’s cousin’s eyes shone with such obvious lust and greed. Kian was never interested when it came to people telling him things he didn’t want to hear. He was quick to anger, quick to overreact and lash out. Such reckless speed and scanty foresight was what landed them here in the first place. A dangerous mission, one originally intended as a punishment, to scout the coastal Sand Road and its peoples. They had almost made it home before that blasted Angel fell out of the sky, infecting Kian with grandiose ideas. Now they found themselves in an underground bunker way out past the edge of civilisation. A bunker that could easily become their tomb.

  But the wonders they had seen!

  Strangest things of all, the sight of people riding mobile junk heaps, chasing battletankers across the sand, hunting them down and tripping them over. Crawling inside and scooping out their ops. He’d never realised how their back home lights and comms relied completely on such desperate, crazy acts. The scholars of Axa, for all their superiority and attitude, did not know how to make the mecha blood and circuitry on which their underground city thrived. They could crow and preen as much as they liked, talk up the superiority of life beneath the sand, but the truth was they were not so far removed from the barbarians of the plains. Barbarians whose insane bravado had rendered them well equipped for uncertain futures.

  Kian cared not for amazing evidence of lost technologies and civilisations. He cared only for finding new ways to shift the power balance back in Axa. Of besting old enemies—his uncle most of all—of crushing them under foot and under his thumb. He wasn’t taking in the wider world, the vastness of the open sky, a world so much bigger than any of them had understood existed.

  The others didn’t know it yet, but Jakome had made up his mind. He would not be going back to a life of pointless luxury lived deep underground. To the dull inevitability of the Axan court, its petty politics, high starched collars, easy offences and bitter reprisals. If they ever made it out of here and back across that crazy stinking slab of cracked flat Black, Jakome was going to find another home.

  = Fifty-seven =

  The mud brick cell was fourteen paces long and eight paces wide, evidently not often used—it smelled of dust and damp and rot. There was no furniture except a sleeping pallet crawling with sand lice and a dented metal bucket in the corner. No food or water. A barred window embedded high in the wall let
through a little moonlight, but not much.

  Hours had passed since the old woman’s guards had pushed Star through the door and bolted it. Her head was still buzzing with images that were not her own. Images from Quarrel’s life. Awful memories of bloodshed and carnage, things he had seen and done.

  But Quarrel had infected her with more than just images. He had crawled inside her head and planted something deep within. A fiery seed, something she could feel rather than see. A message, a whisper, a poison, a sickness . . . she didn’t know the name for it, only that it was important—the future of the Sand Road depended on it. And that meant she had to find a way out of her cell.

  Mud brick walls. She slapped her palms down hard against their gritty surface. With a knife or jagged splinters of wood, she might have been able to scratch her way to freedom, given enough time and patience. But all she had were fingernails—they’d taken the knives from her boots. She broke two of them giving it a go, then sat hugging her knees in the centre of the room, the soft blue moonlight bathing her dirt-streaked face.

  As the hours passed, the violent images in her head began to dissipate. Chill air seeped through the thin fabric of her tunic. She rocked back and forward, trying to make sense of it all. How far she had come, how far away she was from anything familiar, how many things she had lost along the way.

  The old woman was barking mad, the Lotus Blue had her tightly in its clutches, and Star knew it would have her too before much longer. The seeds were in her—both from Quarrel and the Blue—she could feel them. All it would take was time.

  She didn’t blame Grieve for abandoning her. A born survivor, that was Grieve, always one step ahead. Always looking out for number one, no matter who else got lost along the way.

  She pictured the old woman’s arm and its horrible disfigurement. Marianthe, she had called herself. She was a survivor too. Had she built this place as a refuge from the wars? Relief from the Sand Road’s relentless barbarities? She offered shelter, hope, and dreams in exchange for labour, only the dreams had taken over and now the woman couldn’t tell the light from the dark. Didn’t recognise the nightmare blooming on her doorstep. What was broken could not be fixed. The world could not be re-made the way it was. The Lotus Blue had woken and now it was too late for all of them.