Furnace

by Joseph Williams

  But I was getting closer, and that was a mark in my favor. My legs burned with fatigue but I knew my shots would be more effective once they had a shorter distance to travel. Maybe if I didn’t have to contend with its slashing stingers, I reasoned, I might find a weak spot somewhere along its exoskeleton.

  You will.

  The familiar battle rush had descended upon me, drowning the cries of pain throughout my body. Suddenly, I knew I was going to survive, and not just survive. I was going to kill the scorpion-bug motherfucker even if it took my bare hands to finish the job.

  You will be my vessel, the clown demon’s voice rose in my head unbidden. It stunned me long enough that I nearly tripped over my own feet before regaining my composure and shrieking up at the scorpion-bug’s quivering antennae.

  Whether it fueled my rage or simply reminded me of the stakes, hearing the demon’s voice was like having a branding iron jammed directly into my back. I howled and charged forward with renewed vigor, sensing each swipe from the giant insect’s stingers a full second before they hit. I shot away the blows that I could and parried aside the others with the barrel until I was directly beneath the creature, dancing between a half-dozen spike-legs. It squealed so loudly with rage that even in the midst of avoiding impalement at the end of its stingers, I couldn’t help but remember the screaming wind that had driven Chara to suicide. It felt like about six months had passed since then, and yet I knew rationally that it couldn’t have been more than a few hours.

  Could it? I wondered.

  The surface was fucking with my head. I knew that much. And it was entirely possible that what I’d perceived as a few hours had actually been years back on the Hummel, maybe millennia back in the Milky Way. Aidric Squad—the elite commando unit the fleet deployed on special-forces missions—had dealt with similar temporal anomalies in various points of the galaxy, and it seemed probable that such a spike would be amplified by about a million on Furnace.

  I shouldered aside a swinging stinger and felt the remnants of my armor finally give beneath the pressure. It hurt like hell, but it was better than feeling the burn of its venom again. I could already feel it clawing the skin from my face and burrowing into my bones. It was only a matter of time before it melted my brain.

  And how long will that take on Furnace?

  There was a chance I was still within whatever theoretical bubble existed on the surface.

  Assuming there is one at all.

  It was a terrifying thought, knowing that anything and everything I knew and loved back home could have died while I limped across the wastelands or fought off the red-masked Watchmen in the corpse fields. Earth itself could have wasted away to nothing. The human race could have died out, and I was still slugging my way up the hill, killing monsters.

  Trying to, anyway.

  Another swipe from the squealing scorpion-bug smacked into the back of my right leg. It didn’t cause any major damage, but each blow still hurt like a bitch. I grimaced and shifted the pulse rifle against its soft belly, but the moment the barrel touched its exoskeleton, the creature changed its tactic. Before I realized what was happening, all six stingers descended on me at once. They didn’t slice and dice me, though, and that was especially good because I wouldn’t have been able to dodge them all at once. Maybe if I’d had some warning, I could have used the creature’s temporary vulnerability to deliver the killing stroke. Instead, it scooped me up and leapt high into the air.

  I had a momentary glimpse of the whole terrible scope of the corpse fields, then we were crashing back to the hillside with enough velocity that I still don’t know if my stomach has made it back down from my throat.

  Can’t let it drop me, I thought.

  The scorpion-bug was slowly releasing its grip as we dropped closer and closer to the surface. It intended to squash me, I realized. It was tired of trying to pin me down and had decided to let Furnace’s gravity do the dirty work. I could tell by the triumphant pitch of its squeals that it considered the battle won and was revving up for a warm meal.

  Dropping the pulse rifle, I reached out with both hands and grabbed the stalks of its stingers, careful to avoid their venomous tips. I didn’t need my palms burned away on top of everything else. In response, it started separating the stingers more forcefully, and that made it difficult to maintain a firm grip. I held on though, knowing I only needed to keep myself trapped within the relative safety of its stingers for another few seconds at most. Once we hit the ground and the creature took the brunt of the impact, I could retrieve the pulse rifle (provided the fall hadn’t destroyed it) and try one last time for the kill shot before I’d have to cut my losses and retreat to conserve pulse charges. I had to think about the aftermath. If I spent all my ammo on this one monster, who knew what I’d have to resort to if I encountered something else on the other side of the hill? Something worse?

  Screw that.

  Just before we hit the ground, I threw all my weight to the right and turned the stunned creature a full hundred and eighty degrees. The thrust of momentum only sent us flying a few feet off course, but it was enough. Its massive, thousand-eyed head cracked against a boulder and I was suddenly covered in purple blood from head to toe, holding onto the flailing stingers for dear life.

  Hold…hold…for chrissakes hold.

  I barely resisted the urge to let go and shield my exposed skin from the venom spewing out of the creature’s head as the last shuddering arches of life departed its hideous body. It wouldn’t have done much good, since its blood was burning through my armor wherever it touched anyway.

  After a few moments which seemed to stretch into hours, its stingers finally slowed their desperate lunges. I released my grip and leapt away from the corpse in one clumsy motion, trying to avoid further contact with the giant bug before rolling around in the dust to clear as much of the purple blood as possible. At least the blood wasn’t as bad as the venom. It wasn’t concentrated in its head the way it was in the stingers.

  Once I was satisfied most of my armor was still intact, I rolled onto my back and attempted to catch my breath, cursing the fleet for never creating a combat-sim with a giant scorpion-bug stalking the edge of a corpse field run by demons. They certainly had the means, and they had computers to visualize even the most absurd scenarios, ones which human minds could never have conjured on their own.

  My headache returned triumphantly, worsened by the dull ache where the venom had burned my cheek and nose.

  Hasn’t this been enough? I demanded of no one in particular. Maybe the clown demon, maybe the fleet, maybe God. It doesn’t matter who, because no one felt like answering and my skull was pounding worse than ever.

  I needed stims. Badly.

  INTO THE CITY OF GOLD

  Even with the scorpion-bug dead, I knew I needed to move quickly or I may as well have let the demons tear me apart in the corpse fields. My window for escape was closing just as rapidly as my window for survival. I didn’t have much wiggle room, but if I could just summon the strength to reach the other side of the hills, I sensed the Rockne Hummel would be waiting for me.

  Sensed, or maybe hoped. It was possible my skin would burn away from the monster’s venom before I got anywhere, although the open wound seemed to get better by the moment. It could have been the effects of the poison, though. Numbing the impact area while it went to work disassembling my brain. Maybe it was the same acid that had burned Aziza’s face. Remembering how terrible she’d looked even in relation to our surroundings dropped a lead ball of dread in my guts. As badly off as she’d been, I was probably worse.

  But all I needed to do was reach the ship, I told myself, and everything would be all right.

  For a little while.

  I had no idea what would happen in the long run for those of us marooned on the planet. The natives might eventually find a way to drag us off the ship and crucify us for some imagined infraction or another. More likely, they’d kill us for no reason at all. Maybe we’d hold out long enoug
h to die from starvation or thirst rather than at the hands of demons, but the end result would be the same. I’d held out hope that I would reach the ship again, but even if I did, I wasn’t nearly as delusional about our chances of reaching Earth.

  Focus on the ship, I reminded myself. They’ve got water and med supplies. They can patch you up and send someone else to the surface to watch, assuming they don’t already know what’s happened.

  I found it hard to imagine that the captain wasn’t aware Salib’s team hadn’t reported back, but I also didn’t think he would send out another team after us. If we weren’t back within three hours of our projected arrival, he would have considered us dead like any fleet captain and made his strategic decisions accordingly. In other words, we would be omitted from the ration considerations and both our equipment and ranks would be re-appropriated however the captain saw fit. That isn’t to say the change couldn’t be undone if it turned out that all was well, but I knew the crew would be quicker to write us off as losses on Furnace than they would on a routine mission, where they might have vowed to stay behind until they’d discovered what had become of us.

  I rose groggily to my feet, trying not to put too much weight on any one part of my body now that Sillinger’s drugs had fully metabolized.

  One more goddamned hill, I thought, wincing as the deep gash along my ribcage pressed against the remnants of my armor plating. My chest wasn’t even the worst part, either. The back of my head pounded with an ominous, warm beat where I’d been clubbed. I was bleeding—I knew that much—but I didn’t have the heart to investigate just how heavily. I figured if it was a cracked skull or something comparably debilitating, I would have been unconscious. I was awake, so I assumed it was just a bad concussion and the fog shrouding my every thought would eventually dissipate.

  I took a few painful steps forward, glancing over my shoulder to be sure I hadn’t been followed. There was no sign of pursuit, and the corpse fields had fallen eerily silent. I wasn’t too worried about the monsters of Furnace skulking along in the shadows until they found the perfect opportunity for a strike. The demons were a lot of things, but subtle wasn’t one of them. If any of them were nearby, I figured I would find out sooner than later.

  The hill wasn’t even a quarter the mountain’s height, and yet it seemed at least ten times more daunting now that I’d been so physically and psychologically ravaged in the land of the dead. The first step up the incline sent lightning bolts from my calves all the way to the back of my head. I wound up stumbling three steps backward before my trembling legs caught themselves and locked me in place.

  “One more hill,” I said aloud, trying to squeeze the last drops of energy from my dried-out husk of a body.

  The hoarse croak of my voice startled me more than the pain. I sounded like someone else entirely. It was the mutterings of one of the starved, damned souls I’d left behind, maybe, or the whispering pleas of a powerful ghost. Certainly not the voice of the man, and certainly not me. The lack of conviction in my words sobered me up by another degree. I started to think that I would never make it no matter how close I was to salvation. My body had simply given out. There was nothing left in the tank to burn and no one around to spur me on.

  Wherever you go, I will find you.

  The words rose unbidden in my head and made me shudder. But they got me moving again.

  There were plenty of footholds and resting points along the slope to help me scale the hillside. Even in my poor condition, it took less than a half-hour to reach the top, but that’s where all my hope and momentum abruptly deflated.

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” I muttered.

  The good news was that I could see the Rockne Hummel resting in a massive crater a ways off, and none of the indigenous monsters appeared to be anywhere in its vicinity. The bad—or rather, terrible—news was that the clown demon’s ancient city stood between me and relative safety, and the city was now bustling with activity. I couldn’t make out specifics yet, though. Some of that owed to the perpetual fog of my post-concussion stupor, but the frantic shadow-play across the wide city avenues filled me with dread nonetheless.

  What now? I wondered.

  I sat down to think it through, carefully disseminating my despair into manageable concerns.

  I couldn’t imagine facing even one more man-eating demon before devouring food, water, and an empty bed, let alone an entire city full of them. And that was without acknowledging my physical limitations for crossing another few miles of open land. I’ve never experienced agony like I felt then. There wasn’t a single part of me that didn’t hurt. Shit, I had just about every possible injury in the trenches during the Kalak War, but it was a whole ‘nother animal having all of them at once. In a way, I guess it dulled each individual misery, since it was too difficult to concentrate on any one ailment at the exclusion of others. Was that a silver lining, or just the incomprehensible depths of suffering?

  You don’t have a choice, my rational brain reminded me. You have to accept that it’s going to hurt. There’s no other way out.

  There was, actually, but it wasn’t much of one. I didn’t want to die with the unenviable view of the corpse fields on one side and the haunted city on the other. At least not any more than I wanted to get off my ass and move on.

  Before I could convince myself otherwise or allow indecisiveness to steal yet another critical decision out from under me, I stood and began negotiating my way down the hill. I fully expected to fall to my death each time my weak legs didn’t quite find purchase among the rocks, but going down wound up being much faster than coming up. Within ten minutes, I’d reached the bottom without incident, mostly because I didn’t stop to rest at all. Stopping would have been the end of me.

  The details of the city were a little clearer once I emerged near enough the city walls from the gray-orange haze that even the concussion couldn’t obscure my vision. The city looked much different from a new angle. Decrepit, but not dead like I’d initially thought back when Teemo and I had cowered pathetically behind a rock to view the ancient ruins.

  The stone wall might have been gray once upon a time, but the grime and dust caked over its crumbling surface had bled to a uniform white which reminded me of Greek antiquity, mostly due to the marble columns and stone edifices for which the Mediterranean is still famous. Every few feet, strange symbols adorned the walls in a variety of colors. I took the rainbow murals for paint at first but quickly realized they were actually comprised of blood from the myriad aliens tortured in the lava lakes and corpse fields.

  Sick bastards.

  I couldn’t make sense of the symbols or the inscriptions carved in bone between them, though I easily located the writing implements in the dust beneath each block of text. They were shaved to a point on one end with dried blood smeared over the other. I didn’t want to read the symbols, anyway. In the beginning, back when Teemo and I had first stumbled on the city, I would have been fascinated by the alien script and done everything I possibly could to document the finding. By my second visit, however, I would have pissed all over the symbols if I’d had enough fluid left in me to make it happen. In the grand scheme of things, it would have been a petty gesture at best, but in lieu of nailing a corpse to the wall and desecrating its body, I thought pissing would have sufficed. Besides, brooding over subtle revenge scenarios was the only motivation I had left.

  Skulls lined the base of the walls. Not skewered on stakes the way I imagined the Furnace natives wanted them, but casually tossed from the ramparts of the city watchtowers. The nonchalance of the act and the anonymity of the corpses—the very mundane nature of their deaths—was harsher to behold, I thought, than the almost understandable intimidation methods of conquering armies displaying their kills as a warning not to fuck with them or else. It wasn’t just the mounds that were disturbing, although they were formidable. It was the fact that whoever had murdered those creatures cared so little for life that the remains had been unceremoniously tossed
into the gutter. Not trophies, then, but annoyances. A part of everyday existence. A process.

  I couldn’t imagine living in a world like that, no matter how many battles I’ve seen.

  I shuddered.

  Quit stalling, I thought, then forced myself to keep moving.

  The gates were open and no demons stood guard, so I crept my way along the wall until I reached the entrance. I made sure my pulse rifle still had charges remaining and peered around the corner to assess the situation.

  The stone street leading through the heart of the city was quiet, but there was evidence of recent activity. For one thing, fresh corpses were heaped in front of a short white building, and the few human victims I spotted from Salib’s squad among their ranks didn’t look like they’d been hit by rigor mortis yet. In case that wasn’t enough to warn me off, there were also giant, cloven-hoofed tracks in a zigzag pattern leading down the street. They were wet, so the trail would have been easy enough to follow. I figured it was blood, but didn’t really care one way or the other. I’d grown desensitized to the horrors of Furnace, after all. As if combat hadn’t steeled me enough to the sight of gore already.

  I hesitated for a moment before entering the gates. My training taught me that utter silence on a main street coupled with signs of recent, violent activity screamed of a waiting ambush. But, again, the monsters I’d seen so far hadn’t exactly struck me as the type to set complicated traps for one measly human. You can call it overconfidence on their part, I guess, but I think it’s more general indifference. Same with the lack of guards along the watchtowers. They simply didn’t care if their city was infiltrated by the aliens they captured, because that just made them easier to catch. As far as they knew, there was nothing in the universe capable of overpowering them. They were probably right in that regard.