by Sparks,Cat
“What the hell—run for it!” he hollered.
They ran.
Grieve slung his rope in a wide lasso, threw it and hooked a rocky encrustation on the tanker’s chassis high above the wheels. Looked across to her and shouted, “Come on—hurry!”
But Star had already flung herself upon the beast, had scrambled for handholds and had started clambering up the side, like she was scaling a cliff. Straight up the side, grappling for purchase, as the tanker was already starting to pick up speed again, slow and steady, grumbling and grinding its way around the rocky platform in a slow suicidal spiral.
Grieve hauled himself up just in time as the tanker increased its speed. “Look at that!”
Higher up, a section of the tanker’s rocky casing had been bashed open, and exposed wires and cables spilled out like animal guts. Little creatures made of metal burst out of the hole, then up and over the side of the moving tanker, cowering just out of arm’s reach.
Grieve used the taut rope to steady himself, and he held out his hand to Star even though she didn’t need it. Riding a tanker was no different to riding wagon top—and she’d had seven long years practise at that.
The bashed-open casing looked like a rough, raw wound. “Wouldn’t go putting your hand in there,” Grieve shouted over the noise.
“No fear.” She climbed up closer and crouched down low to investigate, covered her nose with her hand. Beyond the wires and the stench of rot sat globs of fleshy substance glistening wetly. Sporadic hisses, fizzes, and sparks warned her not to touch anything.
Grieve steadied himself and moved in closer, crouching beside her, his weight supported by the rope.
“Never seen anything like that before.”
“I have,” she said grimly, remembering Remy and his stupid, daring, and deadly final mistake.
Grieve peered in closer. “Never would’ve believed in such a beast if I didn’t see it myself—hey!”
He reeled back in alarm as a small mecha creature, like a cross between a metal spider and a rat, sidled up and prodded him with an elongated appendage. It scuttled away in response to his reactionary jerk. “What in all the flaming— Shit, there’s more of them!”
“Kick them away if they get too close,” said Star. She withdrew the pair of red-handled pliers and gingerly lowered her hand inside the opening.
Grieve, balancing against the tanker’s speed and motion with the aid of the taut rope, raised a boot threateningly as another of the creature-contraptions became too bold. “Don’t even think about it, ya little monster . . .”
The thing swivelled its nub of a head, observed the raised boot, then turned tail and scuttled away. Grieve looked pleased with himself until he noticed Star leaning forward, one arm deep inside the foul-smelling opening, past her elbow.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to—” A random spark ignited in a shiver of luminescent red and green. “Ouch!” She pulled her arm back out again. “Wish I did know what I was doing.”
He opened his mouth to offer a suggestion but he didn’t get the chance. Star lunged, ploughing her arm back in, grabbing the thickest of the cables, lifting it to see if the movement made a difference. It didn’t. She coiled it gently and placed it back inside the creature’s brain cavity—if that’s what it was. Same with the other exposed cables, one by one.
When she touched the dirty yellow one, the tanker shuddered, almost toppling Grieve. It let out a ear-grating shriek, then swerved, breaking free of its circuit.
“You did it!” he said.
“No I didn’t. I didn’t do anything, the tanker’s driving itself—all I did was tweak a nerve.”
The tanker faced directly into the wind, then accelerated. Star and Grieve dug in and hung on tight.
“Only way to travel,” he shouted, grinning from ear to ear.
“Careful,” she shouted, but she smiled too—she couldn’t help herself. Riding atop a killer tanker with the wind in her hair and hope in her heart . . . she felt an enormous sense of freedom, like she could take the whole world on single-handedly. Like they might actually stand a chance of shutting the Lotus down if they could only get to it in time.
The landscape blurred past in a flash of dune and rock and ruin, things half glimpsed, half recognised. The tanker showed no signs of slowing down.
They passed over a small dune, and then there it was: a dark shape up ahead, not a tanker carcass, something else, something unbelievable—the Razael, distinct and unmistakable, castors jammed with sand, one mast snapped and pointing out across the open Red like an accusatory finger. The Razael, sitting directly beneath the churning sky blister. The tanker was heading straight for it.
“Never thought I’d see that thing again,” said Grieve. “But our tanker’s coming in too fast—how do we slow it down?”
Star didn’t answer. She’d been wondering the same thing. She couldn’t talk to it and she couldn’t make it stop, nor was she certain it would stop of its own accord. It wasn’t unreasonable to consider it might be on a suicidal mission of its own, racing towards a violent conclusion for them all.
“We’re going to have to jump,” she shouted over the fury of the wind, like leaping off a belching, shuddering, semi-sentient sand barnacle encrusted tanker was something they did everyday.
“Jump—are you crazy?”
They had both sailed way past the halfway point of crazy. Star knew how to jump and roll. She’d done it off the Van a hundred times. Grieve would have to watch and copy. He was a survivor. He’d be alright.
But the tanker was travelling at a speed no Van could ever manage. “Climb down lower,” she said.
They both descended as far as they safely could, Grieve still clinging tightly to the rope. Star watched the sand go swooshing by. They’d have to jump far enough to land clear of the wheels. Not easy, but not impossible.
She looked up to see Grieve staring at her face intently. “You ready for this?”
“Ready as I’ll ever be.” He pulled out his blade to cut the rope—a terrible waste, but unhooking it would not be possible.
But before they had a chance to do anything, the tanker emitted another high-pitched blast of tankersong, enough to make them sick to their stomachs. They clung on tightly as the tanker changed its course, swerving in a wide arc, away from the ship and whatever lay behind it.
It had to slow in order to turn.
“Now or never,” yelled Star. “Don’t break your leg!”
Too late—he’d cut the rope and jumped already,
screaming all the way, laughing hysterically as he landed in one piece, the damage no worse than a mouthful of gritty sand.
She jumped and rolled, came to a stop and paused in a crouch to catch her breath.
The tanker did not react to their departure. Star stood up and watched it lumbering off on a unknown mission of its own, ignoring the ship, not following the others of its kind.
Grieve lay on his back, arm thrown across his face to shield his eyes from sunlight. “That was intense.”
“Get up. We’ve got work to do.”
“Lighten up, we just got here!”
But Star was already up and walking towards the sand-jammed ship.
Grieve got to his feet once he realised she was on the move. “Careful,” he shouted. “The men who took that ship weren’t fooling around.”
“Don’t I know it.”
The sand was thick and they quickly tired of walking.
“They’ve got plenty of weapons,” warned Grieve.
She nodded. They were out in the open under a strange and sickly sky, but it could not be helped. The ship lay across their path, and there was no time to find a safer way around it.
She’d expected to see guards p
osted upon the deck, but up closer, they could see no people, no movement.
A ghost ship.
They split up and walked from stern to keel, scouting for the faintest signs of life, but nothing moved aside from the damaged sails and rigging, which grew taut and slackened alternately in the wind.
On the farthest side of the Razael hung two rope ladders and a spindly ladder of metal rusted through in several places.
Impatience got the better of Star. She climbed the metal ladder, hand over fist, not waiting to consult with Grieve, not expecting him to follow her up, though he did.
At first it seemed the ship was indeed empty, and had been abandoned in great haste, with equipment strewn all over the deck, along with spilled grain and a large wet bloody stain. There was a corpse in a torn red jacket, its arms and legs akimbo.
Star drew the larger of her boot blades.
A wooden block and winch dangled in front of her, caught up in torn rigging, slamming rhythmically against the broken mast. When she moved, broken glass crunched underfoot.
Then, as she moved across the deck, came the sound of a deep and hacking cough. Star and Grieve exchanged glances before separating, creeping up on the foredeck from opposite sides, treading lightly, the wind humming through torn rigging making enough noise to mask their careful footfall.
Grieve pointed with alarm when he noticed the drone hovering. They both froze.
They watched as a fat old man propped up on cushions coughed up something dark and wet into his palm, then smeared it on his trouser leg without looking at it too closely. The drone had apparently woken him. It hovered uncertainly above his head, like it feared being contaminated if it got too close. Something resembling the end of a spyglass set into its front widened, contracted, then widened again. It wobbled.
The man took a feeble swipe at the drone with the tanker lance gripped in one hand. “Get away from me, you wretched little thing,”
The drone elevated suddenly and swivelled its spyglass eye in Grieve’s direction.
The man seemed too exhausted to move. He shouted, “What is it now, you jumped up piece of junk? Who goes there?”
The drone hovered, emitting a gritty hum from its bug-like wings.
The man pushed himself onto his knees and angled his body around far enough to attempt to see whatever the drone was seeing. He blinked at Grieve, then sat back down, his energy drained from the effort, then attempted to prop himself up higher for a clearer view.
Star approached cautiously, then reached forward and snatched the lance from his hand. He slumped back down against the plush fabric as she raised the lance and took a wild swing at the drone. It jerked out of reach with an irritating squeal.
The old man gave a wheezy chuckle. “Good for you, girl, that little bastard has no manners.” He peered up through a sheen of sweat and frowned at the sight of her.
“Check that out,” said Grieve, pointing, beyond the bow to the sand ahead lay an all-too-familiar excavation site spread out beneath the pus-and-purple sky, the scabbed cloud-cancer blooming directly above it.
“My daughter is down there and she is lost,” the old man said bitterly. “They are all doomed—the lot of them.” He closed his eyes.
“This man is Mohandas and this is his ship,” said Grieve.
Star flicked her attention back to the old man. “You are Allegra’s father?
“They’ve all gone,” said Mohandas, ignoring her question but opening his eyes once more. “All gone chasing after buried treasure, all following the lead of those three stupid boys, my daughter the most stupid one of all. It’s my own fault for raising her without a mother. I should have married again, I should have paid more attention. The girl ran wild, and now she does whatever she wants, like she always has . . .”
“Go see what you can find below deck,” said Star to Grieve.
Grieve hesitated. “What if they’ve left some guards on board—”
“Then you’ll have to deal with them.”
Star knelt down beside Mohandas and patted his arm. “We’ll fetch you more water—this ’skin is almost empty.”
“Bring me whisky and a pistol if you truly want to be of use,” the old man shouted after Grieve.
“We’re going to find your daughter,” Star said.
“You? What could you possibly do to change any of this?” His ruddy face was pinched with misery. “I should have destroyed those blasted maps. Dropped them into a volcanic fissure where they could do no harm to anyone.”
“Maps? What maps?”
Too late. He wasn’t listening anymore. Grieve returned with water, cheese, and biscuit salvaged from down below. They ate and drank in earnest silence, not knowing if or when they’d get another chance.
“She’ll come back for me,” Mohandas said defiantly. “She won’t leave her father here to die.”
“What if something happens and she can’t make it back?” said Star gently.
He stared at her, completely uncomprehending. As if there could be no other truth aside from the one he’d chosen to believe.
= Sixty-nine =
Marianthe stared at the terrible sky, sky wounded like a dying animal, like she was looking straight into the eye of a restless, angry god.
The walk across the sand was killing her. Without the support of her Benjamin, she never would have managed a single step—not with her mangled tendons and ground down cartilage, hacked-up flesh with missing pieces that had been cut out by her own blade long ago. Her Benjamin’s mind was a messy ruin but his stamina was in tact. Eyes shining with glazed intensity, he hoisted her upon his back to cover the final miles to their destination.
Marianthe was so startled by this piggyback manoeuvre, she almost dropped her stave, managing to cling on to it at the last minute and wedge it between his broad back and her front.
He babbled poetry, recited recollected field manoeuvres, miscellaneous details of a life spent fighting other people’s wars.
“Pull the bastards out into the open. Stalk ’em, flank ’em, hit ’em before they know you’re there.”
The constant chatter kept him focused, kept him plodding along methodically in a straight line. Sometimes she had to yell at him to detour around rocks or ruins poking from the sand. But obstacles did not trouble him. Even without her commands, he would have kept on clambering, right over the tops of them.
The abandoned ship took her entirely by surprise. They were not the only ones, apparently, to have come this way in recent times. That a ship had travelled so far beyond the Black filled her with wonder. They’d built them solid back in the good old days. It was hard to believe, but yes, she was seeing it with her tired old eyes.
The ship’s big wheels were buried underneath the sand piled up on either side of the hull. The ship sat crooked, right out in the open—she must be dreaming, surely it wasn’t real? Surely it must be a mirage?
Her Benjamin would have walked on past it. Once seen and noted, he dismissed it as irrelevant. Kept muttering the same word under his breath: bunker bunker bunker bunker, over and over, hoisting her higher, increasing his speed. Bunker bunker bunker bunker. A man with a mission, good old supersoldier, reliable to and beyond the very last.
The ship appeared to be deserted, which was just as well. Their merry band consisted of two broken Templars and three battered drones, not one of them up for self defence, or even ducking out of the line of fire.
“Not long now,” she told them all. Her drones required constant reassurance. Loyal little things they were, but they’d been forced to travel a long way from their home and the unfamiliar landscapes made them nervous.
She sent one over to take a close look at the ship. “It’ll all be over soon,” she said to the others.
“Bunker bunker bunker bunker.”
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She closed her eyes. Two halves of her life had come together. Not far to go now, and then she could sleep forever.
= Seventy =
We should have forced that old man to come with us,” said Grieve, shouldering his pack, which had been filled with supplies salvaged from the Razael.
Star didn’t answer. She looked back out across the sand that had almost swallowed them. They trudged across it in silence, towards the bunker and the jerking mass of movement surrounding it. Mecha were excavating, shifting great quantities of sand, vortex winds snatching and scattering it with random blasts.
Both stopped short when they saw Templars digging rhythmically beside their fully-mecha counterparts, using shovels, slabs of metal, and even their own flesh-stripped hands.
Star was certain one of them would sense her presence—that all of them would turn and come after her with shovels raised as weapons. But the Templars and the Mechas kept on digging like she wasn’t even there.
Grieve nudged her in the ribs. “We’re ghosts here,” he whispered. “Maybe we’re dead already—have you thought of that?” He flexed his own hands and stared at his fingers.
Star wasn’t listening. All she could see was the large grey shape half buried in the sand. The resting place of the Lotus Blue, so much larger and more menacing than it had looked on the old woman’s wall of glass boxes. Dark and dense, like it was sucking in light from the surroundings. Perhaps this place had been a kind of city once, although there were no towers or even houses to be seen, just weird mecha constructs she had no name for. Whatever it had once been, now it was a fortress, something akin to the Vulture, complete with its own Sentinel tower, far bigger than any she had ever seen before.
“Look on the bright side,” said Grieve cheerfully. “We made it! Never thought I’d see this far from home—or so many wonders.” He punched her lightly on the arm. “Look at that thing, what do you reckon it’s for?”