Ninth City Burning

by J. Patrick Black

  Suddenly, Spammers says, “Shit, kid.” He lets out this long sigh and runs his hands over his head and face. “Shit,” he says again. “Torro, kid. You got flipped. Somebody flipped you.”

  The Prips don’t care how we decide who joins the Legion, not as long as we satisfy our quota for soldiers. So if you get drafted but then somehow the quota ends up filled, you don’t have to go after all. “Flipping” is what we call it when you purposely get someone called on demerits, so they’ll have to take your place at the Front. You never hear about its actually happening to anyone, though. It’s mostly just a rumor. Even if a spot does get like miraculously filled, it only helps out the last person called in the draft, and it’s pretty unlikely whoever’s last on the list also happens to know someone they can sell out. But there are supposedly people who’ll like collect information so they can go to whoever’s been picked last and offer to flip someone for them. You can imagine what someone would pay to get out of going to the Front.

  “How’d the list say he got his demerits?” Spammers asks.

  Mersh shrugs. “Smuggling. Theft, trafficking stolen and illegal goods, the whole deal. Sounded like you were really into it, kiddo,” he says to me.

  “Cranely,” Spammers hisses through his teeth. “That sneaky old turd.”

  I go sort of berserk then. I can’t help it. I really can’t. I start like punching the seat in front of me over and over, just slamming my fist at it as hard as I can. I start yelling, too, I don’t know what, I’m going so berserk. Spammers is right. Cranely knew enough to get either of us called up about anytime he wanted. He couldn’t flip Spammers, though, because Spammers’d already flipped himself. So that left me. And you can bet old Cranely made some deal with Ghalo to keep from getting in trouble himself, probably gave Ghalo a cut of the price for selling me out. And all because I was dumb enough to do business with Cranely. I thought I could handle him, but it turns out I’m still just a sucker.

  Spammers and Hexi are trying to hold me down, but it’s hard because I’m going all berserk and whatnot. Eventually, I get tired, though. Going berserk really tires you out. “Easy, kid, just take it easy,” Spammers is saying. But Hexi, she’s not actually trying to stop me thrashing around. She’s just sort of hugging me tight around the neck. I’m breathing pretty hard, and my nose is running, and I guess I’ve been sort of crying a bit. I’m about as tired as I’ve ever felt, so I just sort of curl forward and close my eyes and sit there like that while the train goes on rolling.

  SIXTEEN

  TORRO

  Usually when something goes wrong, I can at least think, like try to work out a way through it, but right now I can’t even do that. Inside my head, it’s just a mess. All I know is I wrecked everything, just totally wrecked everything. I don’t feel like I’m floating anymore. It’s more like I’m sliding forward, or that’s what I think until I realize it’s the train slowing down.

  I raise my head and look around, and it’s true, the outside isn’t whirring by as much, which is weird because I don’t think we’ve been moving all that long. We’ve still got those tall fences running on both sides of the train, just like at Settlement 225, but beyond that it’s all wilderness, trees and fields and hills and everything going on forever. Not a sign of Granite Shore anywhere. I’m thinking maybe I lost track of time, but everyone else looks pretty confused, too.

  “What’s happening?” I say to Spammers and Hexi and Mersh. My voice is real scratchy from all the yelling I was doing, and it kind of hurts to talk.

  “Don’t know,” Spammers says. “We can’t have gone more than fifty kilometers, sixty at the most.”

  We pass through a big gate beneath another very tall fence, then we’re pulling into a station just like the one we left back at Granite Shore, like almost an exact replica, only instead of being surrounded by factories and warehouses and storage yards and so forth, it’s in the middle of nowhere.

  The train stops, and a few minutes later, the doors open, and the train goes quiet, and all you can hear is the wind and some leaves rustling. If there were really skeletons on this train, now’s about the time they’d come out and like chew our heads off or whatever. But that doesn’t happen. What happens instead is the bivvies all get up and walk off the train, just walk right off like it’s nothing, like whatever’s out there can’t be any worse than what’s in here. Suddenly, I realize that’s about how I feel, too. So I climb over the seat in front of me and follow the bivvies out.

  Mersh catches up to me just as I’m leaving the train. “Hey, Torro,” he says, “I’m real sorry for what I said. I mean, I thought you knew you’d been called up.” He looks sort of sheepish, like it’s his fault, what happened to me.

  “I’m not mad at you, Mersh,” I say. “If you hadn’t told me, I’d probably never have found out. Better to hear from one of your boyos, right?”

  That makes him pretty happy, or maybe he’s just glad I’m not still going berserk. “So listen,” he says, “Camareen, she gave me something for you. I would have showed you before but, you know, I wasn’t sure what you’d do.”

  He takes a little envelope out of his jacket and gives it to me. Mersh was right to hold on to it back on the train. I probably would have ripped it to pieces. Inside is a sheet of paper filled with dots and lines. One page of the music I gave to Camareen. At the bottom, in her handwriting, are the words “Come back.”

  I’m not sure why, but seeing those words makes me feel a whole lot better. I know it’s sort of crazy. No one ever comes back from the Front, right? But just then I get the feeling I could be the first one. A second ago, all I wanted was to get off that train, but now I know where I have to go. Home, to Camareen.

  Once we’re out on the platform, I can see the station really is just a few buildings inside a big, fenced-in circle with wilderness all around. Like, the tracks aren’t just passing through to somewhere else. This is the last stop.

  Over at the opposite end of the station, a couple of the smaller Prip flying machines are perched on little landing pads like the one behind the Prefect Building back at old S-225. There’s a bunch of Prips gathered around, along with Naomi and the other kids from the train. One of the Prips, who’s got these real bushy sideburns, is talking to them, gesturing to a bunch of big holes in the ground, more like funnels really, all evenly spaced and ringed in concrete and too deep to see the bottom. As I watch, the guy with the sideburns picks out one of the kids, a boy, and the two walk down into one of the funnels. A minute later, sideburns guy climbs back up, but the kid doesn’t.

  I’m pretty interested to see what’s going to happen next, but some more Prips, four of them, have shown up on the platform in front of us, and they’re telling everyone from the train to form up in rows in an open space down below. They’re pretty polite about it, those Prips, not bossy or anything, but they’re not like making friendly conversation, either. They just follow us over to where this one lady is standing, and say, “Form up, Recruits!” Except for the bivvies, we’ve all been training with the settlement militia for years, so we know how to form up pretty good.

  I guess this is the start of Legion training. I’m not happy about it, but I am just the slightest bit curious. In militia training, the next thing that would happen after forming up was the militia captain would tell us all what worthless turds we were, how we were all like a disgrace to old Settlement 225, and how if we ever went up against real hellions, we’d all probably be skinned alive. So when the lead Prip walks out in front of us, I’m expecting some more of that. She’s not all angry and muscly like most of our militia captains were, though. Actually, she looks more like a schoolteacher, sort of thin, with fuzzy grayish hair tied up in a bun. You can tell she’s in charge, though, just from the way she stands, so I get ready to be shouted at a bit.

  But instead, the lady says, “Welcome, Recruits,” and sounds like she means it, to be welcoming, that is. Her voice is sort of soft, but
you can still hear it pretty easy. I’m close to the back, and I can hear her just fine.

  “My name is Optio Sorril,” she says, “and it will be my job to oversee your training and induction into the Legion of Ninth City.” She pauses and looks us over a bit. “I am aware that many of you are here against your will,” she says, looking right at me, I guess because it’s so obvious ending up here wasn’t part of my, like, plan for the day. Even Spammers at least had a shirt on when the marshals got him. “What I intend to impress upon you in the coming weeks is that your presence here is not some arbitrary whim. The Legion needs you. All of you. Make no mistake—I will turn you into fighters the likes of which you never imagined, but I will have failed in my duty unless, by the end of your training, every one of you considers yourself a volunteer.”

  “Sounds like you’re ready to graduate, Mersh,” Spammers whispers. I don’t know how old Sorril hears him, but she does. If we were back in Granite Shore, Spammers’d probably end up doing push-ups or running laps until he fell over, but Sorril just sort of smirks at him and starts pacing back and forth in front of us, like she’s waiting for something.

  And there is something going on, something real strange. It’s kind of like when there’s a storm coming, only instead of the air swirling around, it feels like the swirling is happening inside of you. There’s a weird smell, too, sort of briny, but also kind of electric, like you get when one of the machines at the factories shorts out. I’m pretty sure everyone else notices it, too. Only Optio Sorril and the Prips standing with her don’t seem very surprised. Optio Sorril has started flexing her hand a bit, like it’d fallen asleep, and the feeling is just coming back.

  “In a few moments, you will board the harvester that will take you to Ninth City’s Limit Camp,” she says. “I suggest you watch as it approaches. Much of what you encounter in the coming days will seem alien to you, but I promise that, like our harvester, in time it will make its own kind of sense.”

  She points upward, and, of course, we all look. At first I don’t see anything, but after a minute I notice something way, way up in the sky. It’s the huge Prip flying machine that always shows up just before the draft, only now it’s so far away, you can hardly see it. It’s getting closer, though, and fast, coming straight down, like a huge boot ready to stomp all of us standing around in the station.

  Just then someone starts screaming. I think it must be one of the recruits, but when I look, I see it’s Naomi. She’s way over by those weird funnels in the ground, and she’s just screaming her head off. A couple of Prips are trying to hold on to her, and she’s kicking and clawing at them and trying to get away. The way she’s screaming, it’s like she’s trying to tell us something, but I can’t hear what.

  The bivvies from the train all hear her, too, and right away they push through everyone formed up in front of Optio Sorril and set off running, going straight for Naomi. Optio Sorril calls for them to stop and come back, but she doesn’t sound angry or even annoyed. If anything, she’s like a little playful. The bivvies don’t look back, though, since they’re getting ready to grab Naomi and rip every Prip in sight to pieces.

  And then something happens I really just can’t explain. All of a sudden, Optio Sorril just crashes right into the pack of bivvies. One minute she’s standing in front of us, looking like some frail old lady, and the next she’s on top of them. She must cover fifty meters in about two seconds. She sends the two bivvies in front flying, though you’d think she’d just bumped into some empty cardboard boxes for how little it slows her down. The other two bivvies, the big guy and the mean guy with the beard, had been going a bit more slowly, still limping on their hurt legs. Now they sort of circle around to come at Optio Sorril from both sides. But she just grabs each one and tosses him on the ground, easy as anything.

  I look at Spammers to see if he has any idea what’s happening, but he’s just watching it all, his mouth a little open. Hexi, too. Mersh has never seen anything so fantastic in his life, you can just tell.

  Somehow, the bivvies get back up. I don’t know how, after the way old Sorril kicked them around, but they do. They come at Sorril, all four at once, and this time they actually hit her a few times, but it’s like she doesn’t even feel it. Even when the guy with the beard lands this real nasty punch, she hardly reacts. In a few seconds, the bivvies are all back on the ground, Optio Sorril just standing over them. To look at her, you wouldn’t think anything had happened at all.

  Little Naomi hasn’t stopped screaming all this time. I was pretty distracted while old Sorril was throwing those bivvies all over the place, but now everything’s gone quiet, and I can hear Naomi again. She was speaking that bivvie language of hers before, but now she’s yelling in Aux, her voice echoing as the Prips try to haul her down into one of those pits. And what’s she’s screaming is: “Run! You have to run! These men are liars! They have brought you here to kill you!”

  SEVENTEEN

  NAOMI

  I have been a fool to trust these people. There were a hundred signs by which I might have known the truth of them, but I closed my eyes to everything save my desperate hope, and now I fear it will cost me my life. I would have gone to my death wholly ignorant were it not for one final warning, firm proof that these are the men who murdered my sister.

  It was perhaps to my advantage that I played such the gawking boob. I had never ridden a train before, and it required an effort to disguise my awe as the landscape outside our windows slithered by. The people of the Principate, as their government is called, were polite and well-mannered, and I convinced myself that my grudge was not with them but with Ghalo and the township of Granite Shore. By the time we arrived at this lonely outpost, I had muffled my misgivings to such an extent that Reggidel’s request that I accompany him into some deep, stone-rimmed pit, which he called an “insulation cell,” did not seem immediately ludicrous.

  Already, I had watched other children who rode with me and our Principate chaperones in the train’s front car go dumbly and trustingly down, and so I followed Reggidel, ignoring all the roaring instincts of an animal cut off from her pack. At the bottom was a metal chair, reclined to point toward the sky, and when Reggidel asked me to sit, I obeyed like the gullible child I am. The chair bore clamps to hold my wrists and ankles, and Reggidel might have succeeded in securing me there had the air not begun to crackle and fill with the smell of ocean and rot and brimstone, every sentiment of my soul swirling like a river bottom churned by a passing fish. If I live to be a hundred, I will never forget that sensation, nor the first time I encountered it, in the Valley of Endless Summer.

  I rolled clear of the chair and struck out at Reggidel, first toward his face, then in a way men taken unawares will find uniquely painful and disabling. I scrambled upward, but my escape was a short one. Hardly had I mounted the lip of the pit Reggidel had intended to make my grave than I was seized by another Principate man. He did not know I was fighting for my life, and this allowed me to break free, but soon more were upon me, and their strength was unlike anything I have ever felt. It would be no exaggeration to say each had the muscle of twenty men. They held me fast as I watched my loyal codesmen, who though I had bargained for their freedom would not let me go to this strange place alone, laid low by nothing more than some bony grandma. I went on screaming my warning, but all my fight was gone.

  I do not know what purpose it serves to bring children all the way to this abandoned place simply to kill us, but I am certain now that we are here for that very reason. And so when the first explosion comes, I am as little surprised as anyone. There is a deep rumble in the earth, and from a nearby pit, where one of my brief acquaintances had been stored, fire erupts as though from the muzzle of some great cannon. A breath later there is a second report, more brittle and sharp in character, and a pit somewhat farther off discharges a blue spray that solidifies briefly into a delicate tree of ice before shattering in a burst of snow.

 
The conscripts from Granite Shore all witness this terrible display and break into panic. Some lie flat on the ground as though under fire while others cut and run in various directions. To my surprise, the Principate men seem just as alarmed. The two who had seized me with such astonishing strength now drop me in the dirt and beat a hasty retreat. Their comrades back slowly away, as though facing down some raging beast, ordering me in strident tones back into my pit. Reggidel has found his way out and begun waving his arms, shouting for everyone to stand clear. Clear of me, he seems to mean. Somewhere close by, the ground shudders with another detonation.

  Above the noise, I hear Reggidel call out, “Stay where you are, Naomi! Just don’t move!” If I was ever of a mind to follow instructions from Censor Reggidel, that time has passed. I break toward the train, thinking it my best chance at concealment. My plan is to scale the walls and lose myself in the woods beyond. The Principate men, rather than giving chase, make way as I pass. From the corner of my eye, I see one pull something from his hip and draw a bead on me, but as I turn to look, someone slams into my side, and I abruptly find myself slung over the shoulder of a running body. I am borne across the quaking ground toward one of the falcon-styled flying machines roosting nearby. Only when I have been thrown bodily inside and the door slammed shut do I discover my captor is none other than Vinneas.

  “You’re heavier than you look, you know that?” He says this in the jaunty way of someone who has suffered a bad scare and wishes to play it off. He inhales deeply, a breath of forced calm, and begins rummaging about the inside of the flying machine. The space is close but comfortable, like a booth intended for meals or intimate conversation. Eventually, Vinneas produces a small can bearing the picture of a redheaded man on the side. “General Ginger,” he explains, opening the can with a pneumatic hiss. “It’s not bad. Mostly just sugar water with bubbles. Reggidel says it settles his stomach when he flies.” He opens a second can and pushes it toward me, then takes a long drink from his. “I don’t think it’s working very well,” he admits, regarding the can askance.