Waybound

by Cam Baity

  “That chainsaw dude didn’t think you were all that vital.”

  “I…” Dollop hugged his foil bundle and hurried away. “I have to get back to my—my duties.”

  “Wait!” Micah called after him. “That ain’t what I—You’re vital to us and stuff!” Dollop’s footsteps echoed away down the tunnel. “Geez Louise, I was tryin’ to be nice!”

  Bony fingers clutched Micah’s arm and drew him back.

  “We have to talk,” Phoebe whispered.

  “Look, I didn’t mean to hurt the guy’s feelings, I just—”

  “No, not Dollop.” Her eyes darted to the doorway, making sure they were alone. “The Ona.”

  He lowered his voice too. “Oh, you mean the whatsit we’re supposed to be findin’ for her? The…the Occulips.”

  Phoebe giggled. His old, familiar anger at her snootiness bubbled up again, but it dissolved in the sound of her laughter. For an instant, he saw the real Phoebe glimmering behind her mask of grief. It was a little victory.

  “Occulyth,” she corrected. “There’s got to be a reason we can’t talk about it,” Phoebe whispered. “Here’s what I think we—”

  The rhythmic stomping of the Covenant training overhead came to a halt. A familiar musical wail groaned down through the ore. It was that weird windup device from the funeral.

  “The fusion chant,” Phoebe said. “Axial Phy is expecting me.”

  “But wait!” pleaded Micah. “What were you gonna say?”

  Phoebe headed for the exit and turned to face him. “Let’s talk tonight. I’ll sneak out. Meet me at the stables.” She lowered the cowl of her rusty shawl over her head.

  “Stables? What stables?” he cried out, but there was no reply. Phoebe was already gone.

  The lantern-blue darkness seemed to sharpen Phoebe’s senses. The air was awash in a damp earthen scent, and her skin prickled at the slightest breeze. She pulled the whist tight around her like a blanket as she snuck through the camp, weaving between dome tents that buzzed with sleeping warriors.

  Did mehkans dream? The question had not occurred to her before. Of course they did, and apparently they snored too.

  A deep harmonic sound drew her attention. She followed it, making her way past the tents and across the practice field, rutted with scars from the day’s training. Phoebe descended to the lip of an abrupt slope that led to trenches and tunnels below. Within them, she saw dozens of pale salathyls, the subterranean behemoths like drill-headed squids. Their pearly bodies and flowing tentacles made them look like ghosts.

  A joyful fluting passed between the giants. She spied a young salathyl, nearly transparent, diving into the ore as if it were water. The adults slapped the ground playfully with their striated tentacles, and the baby sprang out in a somersault, then disappeared underground again. The salathyls emitted a bubbly sound that Phoebe could have sworn was laughter.

  “There you are. Whoa, whoa!”

  Behind her, boots skidded on loose ore as Micah came sliding down to join her. She grabbed him to steady his descent and noticed something clunky on top of his metal-fiber coveralls. He had outfitted himself in rust-and-gray-camouflaged combat gear made of interwoven triangular panels. The pieces were mismatched, oversized, and almost certainly on backward.

  “Thanks,” he said, regaining his balance. He noticed Phoebe eyeing his bulky ensemble and self-consciously adjusted the straps. “Had some time to kill while I was gathering supplies in the storehouse, so I decided to suit up. Can’t be too careful.”

  She offered a little smile.

  “Anyway, I been lookin’ for you but wasn’t sure what stables you meant. All kinda weirdo critters holed up around here.”

  “They’re not critters,” she said. “Salathyls are people. Axial Phy said they are very intelligent, and that they believe in Makina. That’s why they help the Covenant.”

  “Where I come from, you live in a stable, you’re a critter. But whatever,” Micah said with a shrug. “Listen. I think I got it all worked out—this whole Occulyth thing.”

  Phoebe held a finger to her lips, and Micah glanced around.

  “It’s a weapon,” he whispered. “The Ona said it’s mega-important, and that it’ll save Mehk, so what else could it be?”

  Phoebe shook her head. “Then why can’t we talk about it?”

  “’Cause it’s a secret weapon,” he said with a wink.

  “But that doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Neither did most of what she said. All that babble about a ‘Bearing’ and a ‘white star.’ I hardly understood a word.”

  “But why send us to get a weapon?” she wondered.

  Micah chuffed a little laugh. “’Cause she wants to kick some Foundry butt, obviously.”

  “She has an army. If it’s so important, why send us?”

  “I dunno, maybe…” But he didn’t have an answer.

  “No,” Phoebe began, working through it in her mind. “It must have something to do with the Way. Maybe it’s something—”

  The salathyls’ melodic tones shifted, becoming discordant. Phoebe looked down at them. The mehkans seemed to be annoyed by her and Micah’s presence.

  “We should go,” she spoke over the rising salathyl voices.

  “Yeah, what’s up with them?

  The agitated beasts lurched. The adults gathered up their child, wrapping it in writhing tentacles. Beneath the shrill cries, there was another sound, a growing moan underfoot.

  An earthquake?

  The kids scrambled back up the incline. The salathyls were thrashing now, trumpeting as their tentacles whipped dangerously through the air and pounded into the ledge.

  Phoebe and Micah dashed into the practice field. There were chaotic Rattletrap voices. Members of the Covenant were bolting from tents and perches, shouting orders.

  Were the salathyls attacking? No. They were fleeing.

  Then the world went purple-white.

  WHOOMF.

  A gale of ore. A salathyl lifted off the ground, tentacles flailing. Like a violet tidal wave, a magnetic detonation hurled everything back, including Phoebe and Micah.

  Geodrills. Blinding searchlights shattered the darkness, and the caustic reek of engines singed the air. Then came a hailstorm of bonding rounds as the Foundry opened fire.

  Phoebe and Micah found their feet and ran.

  Covenant warriors streamed from tents. Others flocked from above, scurrying down the canyon walls and soaring through the air. Frightened salathyls spilled out from the trenches, crashing through the Covenant’s ranks.

  The kids rushed into a labyrinth of tents as a nearby mehkan war machine blasted out jets of liquid fire. An explosion knocked the kids off balance. Micah bolted to the right.

  “What are you doing?” Phoebe hollered. Acrid smoke pooled around them, obscuring everything and burning her throat. She chased his silhouette down a narrow path and into a tent.

  The instant they stepped inside, a strobing light blinded them—the lethal spit of rifle fire. Micah yanked Phoebe down, and they covered their heads as bullets shredded the tent wall.

  “Oh n-no! I’m so s-sorry!” Dollop sobbed. The smoking Dervish rifle shook in his grip. “I th-thought you were—You could ha-have been—Sweet Mother of Ore, are you all r-r-right?”

  “Are you nuts?” Micah ripped his rifle from Dollop’s grip. “You coulda killed us! You okay, Plumm?”

  Phoebe checked herself for bullet holes, then nodded. Dollop was pressed against the wall, eyes wide, body rattling in terror.

  A brilliant purple boom erupted outside, another magnetic explosion. The tent convulsed as if in a cyclone, and they held on tight. Then came a dazzling orange blast and horrid screams.

  “Last time I leave you behind,” Micah grunted.

  At first, she thought he was talking to them, before realizing that he was actually addressing his rifle. Micah strapped a field pack on to his back that looked like the shell of a giant pill bug. Phoebe glanced around and saw deadly weapon
s piled everywhere. Micah had taken enough from the storehouse to turn his tent into an arsenal. He thoughtfully perused his stash.

  “Micah!” she hollered, nervously spying a bunch of explosives in a heap. “We have to go!”

  He was about to snatch up a sinister machine gun that was as tall as him, but he held back with a sigh of disappointment.

  “Right,” Micah said, strapping on a tarnished copper combat helmet instead. “There’s a path that leads to the jungle floor above. Scouted it earlier. We can get out that way.”

  Phoebe nodded. Dollop stared, catatonic.

  “Stay right on my six, okay?” Micah asked.

  “Your six?”

  “Behind me. Let’s roll.” With that, Micah poked his head out of the tent to scan with his rifle, then raced out into the smoke.

  He’s actually enjoying this, Phoebe realized in disbelief.

  She hurried close behind with Dollop clutching on to her flowing whist. Through the gloom and the deafening crunch of metal, they made their way to a jagged stairway of knobby branches that wound between tahniks. There was no railing, just plank-like paths with the promise of a fatal fall for any misstep.

  The three of them made their way up, ascending from globe to globe. Phoebe ignored Dollop’s whimpering and her sinking stomach to focus on the rickety steps. The air was fractured with battle cries and jarring blasts that made it hard to concentrate. She peered down into the camp to try and make sense of it all, but dense tahniks and thick smoke obscured the scene.

  They were so high now that Phoebe began to feel dizzy.

  A shearing metal shriek from above. The roof of the camp tore open. A blaze of light.

  They spun to retreat, scrambling back down as fast as they could. A breathtaking blast of purple from below. The network of walkways shifted and groaned around them. Above, a tangle of growth broke free and plummeted. It smashed down, shredding the suspended paths beneath them. Trapped.

  Hydraulic arms descended from hovering Aero-copters, punched through the ceiling, and lit up in a rapid flurry of fire.

  Dollop motioned down to the tendrils twisting from growth to growth. Now that the walkways were gone, their only option was to climb down those branches. They scooted over the edge of the tahnik, slipped down, and grabbed a limb. Then they scurried across it to another orb, slid down a tendril like a firefighter’s pole, and worked through the growth with Dollop leading the way.

  An explosion. Tahniks jostled like ornaments on a tree.

  The limb that held Dollop broke. Phoebe tried to grab him.

  He fell.

  But his body extended. As the shattered tendril dropped beneath him, Dollop unfurled his form. His legs wrapped around the nearest bough, and his arms stretched across the gap. In a split second, he had replaced the severed branch between dangling tahniks with a ladder made from his own body.

  “How did you—” Micah said.

  “Just G-G-G-G-GO!” came Dollop’s chattering plea. No time to hesitate. Phoebe crawled gingerly across the chain of limbs, feeling Dollop wobble beneath her. Then came Micah, scrabbling across. But his body armor was too heavy. Dollop lost his grip.

  Micah lurched forward. Phoebe yanked him to safety. Dollop retracted his string of disjointed parts, and they all slammed together in a human-mehkan jumble.

  They were back on their feet in a flash and ventured into the haze, climbing lower and lower. The heat of battle crackled against their skin. The scorched ore came into view, strewn with rubble and the fallen.

  Thirty feet away. Now twenty.

  Their vision flashed purple-white—a resonant blast. Tendrils cracked, globes twisted. The suspended system of tahniks and walkways bowed. Iron squealed. Formations tore loose.

  Phoebe and Micah dropped. They smacked the ground and slammed into a shallow indentation in the canyon wall.

  The network of tahniks collapsed like shelves of glacier ice.

  BOOM—Massive orbs—BOOM—thundered to the ground. BOOM—Like a—BOOM—meteor shower.

  CRASH!

  The kids took shelter as the world tremored in a barrage of tahniks. The colossal boulders settled. Phoebe and Micah coughed, fumbling for the facemasks built into their coveralls.

  With the hoods sealed, they peered out through their visors. The Covenant camp was an unrecognizable hellscape. The symphony of war continued unabated.

  “Dollop!” Micah shouted, plunging into the haze.

  Phoebe realized their friend was no longer with them.

  “DOLLOP!” he screamed again.

  “Micah, wait!” she pleaded, trailing after him.

  A shape emerged from the smoke ahead, lit in dreamlike flashes of distant fire. The figure was tall, stalking with precision.

  A Watchman soldier. He was facing away.

  Micah snarled and fumbled for his gun.

  “No!” Phoebe reached out to stop him.

  But it was too late. Micah’s rifle flashed to life.

  The Watchman whirled sharply out of the way.

  Micah had missed. He released the trigger, and his spinning barrels whispered to a stop.

  “What are you doing?” Phoebe shouted.

  Micah had given away their position.

  Bonding rounds pocked the ground around them as Watchmen returned fire. Six enemy soldiers charged. Micah bolted, dragging Phoebe with him. They stumbled behind a fallen tahnik that sang with ricochet.

  A silvery-blue tornado enveloped the enemy from behind—a demon of whirling blades, born from the smoke. Her scythes flurried between the legs of a Watchman, sundering the group of attackers and sending them reeling. Her rings hooked around another’s midsection, using the victim as a shield to soak up rifle fire before lashing out in a swirling dance.

  Watchmen fell to sparking pieces before Orei. One of those thrashing mehkan worms that powered the Foundry automatons wriggled free from a mechanical brain casing and slithered away.

  “Follow,” Orei commanded.

  “What about Dollop?” Phoebe insisted.

  Orei turned her hollow, unreadable face to the kids. The apparatus of her shifting body measured them.

  “Headed to stables. With Overguard Treth.”

  Phoebe looked at her, unsure.

  “Follow.”

  Overguard Orei inverted her body and raced back into the smoke-swollen dark. They sprinted after her. Phoebe and Micah faltered over the cratered ground, but Orei was effortless in her flight. She swept charging Watchmen from her path with wide, arcing slashes to open an escape route.

  Mist swirled around the kids. A brilliant flash of white blinded them completely.

  Micah grabbed Phoebe’s sleeve. “Stay close!”

  “Orei!” Phoebe shouted. As her vision returned, she thought she saw a glimpse of the Overguard, just a flicker of movement. But her shifting and twisting silhouette was impossible to follow, and it was soon swallowed in dust and gunfire.

  The kids stumbled away, tripping on roots and wreckage. They hit the canyon wall and felt their way along its surface, finding a tahnik sphere embedded in the cliff face. The kids wedged in beside it, hoping for some cover.

  A crack in the wall gave way. Phoebe fell back, toppling into a nest of jungle growth. Micah helped her up.

  There was a narrow crevice behind the embedded tahnik. A gust of sweet, soot-free air hit their faces.

  Phoebe wriggled in, trying to scramble around the obstruction and up into the cramped crawl space.

  “Wait!” Micah rasped. “We gotta stick with Orei!”

  They glanced back into the battlefield behind them.

  A wall of Watchmen advanced toward them.

  The kids crammed into the crevice, ripping through the undergrowth. Another purple blast. Approaching thunder, spheres flung across the camp like marbles. A wrecking ball tahnik smashed through the wall, closing the path behind them.

  Phoebe and Micah coughed, clawing their way up and up.

  Above the thicket and the dust glimmered a trick
le of light.

  A way out.

  A Foundry soldier presented a polished pewter mug to Goodwin, who savored the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. It was a well-earned luxury after a strenuous, yet exhilarating night. Goodwin surveyed his surroundings and sipped himself awake.

  What was once a circular courtyard marked by gentle sloping mounds was now a pit of smoldering debris. Masses of mehkan bodies had melted during the intense heat of battle, fusing into a grim knoll. It reminded Goodwin of the skin of corpses that once cloaked the Citadel—a fitting, even poetic payback to the Covenant for its destruction.

  “Your instincts appear to have served you well, James.”

  “This time,” cautioned another voice in his earpiece.

  “Although you exceeded your authority.”

  “Of course. My apologies,” Goodwin said with a smile.

  He did not need the Board’s commendations. They knew the significance of this victory. Goodwin had caught the boogeyman. He had smashed the Covenant, and now he felt a sense of completion.

  Goodwin took another drink of coffee, enjoying the fullness of its flavor. Through the gauzy atmosphere, he saw Watchman soldiers march another mehkan prisoner to a magnetic corral where captives snarled in their grating language. There was no telling what intelligence he would gather once the translator arrived and interrogations began.

  “Have you identified the remains yet?”

  Goodwin approached the dark, crumbled plinth at the back of the courtyard where a tarp-covered form awaited. He pulled away the sheet to reveal a body burnished in gold with a crusted red mark on its chest. Goodwin recognized this bizarre mehkan rite, but he never imagined it might be done for a human.

  “Dr. Plumm is dead,” Goodwin announced, his voice heavy.

  It was a solemn prize. Jules may have been a traitor, yes, but he had also once been a friend.

  There was a soft click, followed by a moment’s silence. Then his earpiece came alive once more.

  “That will be all. Return to the Depot with a full report.”

  Goodwin ground his teeth in annoyance. The coffee cup quivered in his hand. “I have only just begun. There is still—”