Heart of Veridon (The Burn Cycle)

by Tim Akers

  “We hit the falls!” he sputtered. “We hit the cogsdamn falls!”

  “We did,” I said. Above us wood continued to groan, spars popping as they exceeded their tolerances. The anti-ballasts would be crumpling, bleeding lift. No time for mysteries. Control had to be re-established or the whole zepliner was going down. I climbed up to the Primary Chamber.

  The platform outside the cabin was wet with blood. There was another body, the other guard. His chest had been opened, the ribs grinning through. He was on his back, facing the door to the Chamber, like he had turned and died before drawing his weapon. The door to the Chamber was ajar. I could see blood beyond.

  Higgins reached the platform, limping. Standing up was difficult for both of us, the Glory was rising in wide corkscrews, spinning and shuddering as control systems failed. It was like a carnival ride, only slick with blood. Higgins and I braced ourselves on the railing, surveying the scene.

  “Where’s fucking security?” Higgins whispered.

  “We’re it,” I said. I motioned to the body on the floor. “Take his pistol and follow me.”

  I waited until Higgins had the revolver, holding it in both hands, his elbows stiff at his hips. I put my boot against the door and pushed it open, slowly. The room beyond was a slaughterhouse, a nightmare of gore and broken machines. I crept inside.

  The Primary Chamber, when fully functional, is a room of grim efficiency and noise. The captain has no need for luxury or comfort when he’s buttoned in, so the Chamber is stuffed with the machinery of the zepliner. Pipes and gears that serve as the control manifold for the zep covered the walls, choking out all other sound. Burners roared nearby, feeding the anti-ballasts, guiding the zep on its flight. The Chamber is the zepliner’s bursting heart; loud, hot and clamoring with vigor.

  The room was quiet. The gearwork stood silent, the burners guttering, the pipes sweating condensation and blood. Blood, everywhere there was blood and silence. Higgins gasped.

  “The manifold is idle. Coghell, how are we... how is the captain keeping us up?”

  I shook my head and crossed to the Interface. It was a steel cylinder in the middle of the floor, held in place by a network of pipes in the floor. I stepped over the idled machinery and cycled the Chamber.

  The captain’s body was a puzzlebox that had been undone and strewn about the capsule. He was still plugged in to the zepliner, the cables socketed into the pewter eyes, the heart mechanism sprouting from his origamitrick chest, gearwork meshing with the interface of the Chamber, pipes and tubes digging smoothly into his skin to plug into the conduits of his bones. To the untrained eye it looked horrible, like a dissection half done. I had seen this before, though. I had been this before.

  But beyond the usual violence of the Chamber, a greater brutality had been done. His belly had been laid open, burst and hacked apart, revealing the hidden inner mechanisms of his chest. The oil slick blackness of his secondary blood trickled in with the red and white of his dying body. There was a lot of blood in this room, and most of it belonged to this man.

  Higgins stumbled up next to me, took one look at the captain, and turned away from the Interface to vomit. There was a fireaxe wedged between the body and the Chamber’s gears, probably taken from a nearby ready station.

  “Report,” the captain groaned from the room’s vox. We both jumped to hear the voice of the dead man at our feet. “Can control be established?”

  Higgins coughed and spat. He straightened up and looked at the ceiling. His eyes were glazed. “No, sir. I’m - I’m afraid to report, sir, that you are dead. You’ve been killed.”

  The room was silent. Whatever remained of this man was simply an echo, a splinter of consciousness, wandering the soul-manifold that gave the captain control of the ship. What must it be like: dead and still flying, dead and talking.

  “No matter. Get the manifold going. We’ve risen too far to take it down in the Cusp. I’m going to try to get us over the falls, ditch it in the Reine. Veridon will save you.”

  “Sir, there’s no way. Did you hear me, you’re dead. Whatever control you have, whatever remains... you’ll never be able to get us—”

  “Start the manifold. Leave the rest to me.”

  I closed the Interface, the coffin, and turned to the manifold. The axe had been used here, as well, though inexpertly. Mostly smashed gauges and severed vents. I slipped the manual overrides and began winding the primary soul-cog.

  “You’re a Pilot,” Higgins hissed. “You have the implants.” He grabbed me by the shoulder, his eyes wild. “You can fly us. You can save us.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not! Even if you haven’t finished your training, for Cog’s sake, you can keep us from… from dying.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why! Please, please, why?” he sputtered.

  I shrugged him off and threw the cog into motion. The Chamber boomed to life, the burners engaging with hell-bent fury. Glory of Day stabilized, stopped its lazy corkscrew and started rising more rapidly, leveling off into a smooth ascent.

  “Because I can’t, because that part of me is dead,” I said. I picked up the fireaxe and started to leave.

  “It’s bad,” the captain said. Even through the metallic flatness of the vox, his despair was heavy. “Get the passengers to the glideboats. Soon as we’re clear of the falls and a little upriver, evacuate. Veridon will send ships.”

  Just as I reached the door there was a cycle of thumps, the zep shuddering a little with each report. I looked up, then at Higgins.

  “Those were the glides,” I said. “Too soon.”

  “I couldn’t... I don’t know. Someone released them.” The captain’s voice was getting faint. “I’m sorry.”

  “Just get us to the Reine, sir. We’ll swim, or we’ll die.”

  “We’ll die,” Higgins said. His face was slack, the revolver hanging limply in his hand, resting against his knee. I shrugged and left the Chamber.

  Scrambling down the ladder, I took a second to think things through. There were other entrances to the Primary Chamber, mostly service corridors that led from the crew chambers or maintenance shafts. Whoever had done for the captain probably came in that way, then left this way, killing the guards as he went. Probably those gunshots I heard, just as the ship began to lose control. Either way, the killer hadn’t come out into the dining hall. I stopped by the door to the open decks, still unlocked, and pulled my revolver. Killed the guard, climbed down this ladder and gone through this door. I cleared my mind and opened the door.

  The open decks were really little more than a railed walkway that circled the zepliner just under the anti-ballasts. Only used for maintenance and access to the glideboats in the event of an emergency. Only the glideboats were gone and the anti-ballast was damaged. Tatters of it fluttered in the tearing wind, trailing wooden spars. The only light was the dull red roar of the burners, buried deep in the anti-ballasts. It was a peaceful color, everything warm like candlelight. To the front of the zep was the waterfall, slate gray and churning.

  I braced myself against the railing and crept forward. There was blood here, not as much, a wet trail leading towards the empty glide berths. Maybe our murderer had gotten away clean, though he’d have to be a clever hand with the controls to land a glide safely from this height without crashing into the falls.

  Was the crew still preparing the ship for lastrites, even though the glides were gone? They had to know. I was about to give up, to go inside and wait for gravity to take over when I heard a quiet sob, a strangled gasp.

  I saw a boot, a leg, sticking out into the walkway. I snuck up and swung around the corner with the pistol at shoulder height. It was Marcus.

  He sat in a heap on the floor, wedged between two of the joists for the anti-ballasts above. He was holding a pistol weakly in one hand and his guts in place with the other. A wide tear in his belly was leaking out between his fingers. His face was white and his eyes were fever hot and fading.

  �
��Won’t die,” he said, just loud enough to hear. “Won’t fucking die.”

  I casually kicked the pistol out of his hand and put my gun in his face. “Yes, I think you might.”

  His eyes refocused, as if he hadn’t seen me until that moment. He was far gone, shivering and sweating. He put his hand on the gun, touching it lightly like a child in a dream.

  “I thought I was free. On the ship, but he followed. Saw him on the deck. Ran. In the passage, I laid him out. I laid him open.”

  “The captain, you mean? That’s who you laid out, man. No one else.”

  Marcus chuckled and spit blood. “Later. That was later. But it wasn’t enough. Kept getting up, so I ran. Killed the ship and tried to get off. He got to the glides before me though.” He shuddered and sank into himself, his hand to his face. “Oh, well.”

  “Who did? The guy who killed the captain, did he get into one of the glideboats? Is that what happened?”

  “No, man. Glides were empty. He just overrode them and released. I was going to do the same thing, make sure he didn’t follow.” He focused on me again, maybe finally seeing me as something other than a dream. “You’re a Pilot? I know you.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “You do.”

  He fumbled in his coat and I pressed the barrel into his forehead. He ignored the metal and produced something round and shiny. He pressed it into my free hand and smiled redly.

  “Jacob, right? Take this. Take it to the city.”

  “Sure,” I said, and glanced at it. It was the most complicated Cog I’d ever seen. Hard to make out any detail, but it was about the size of my palm and seemed to be slithering inside itself, orbits within orbits, gears sliding beautifully into gears and around. Marcus coughed and I looked up, putting the Cog into my inner vest pocket. “Soon as we land, I’ll take it to the city. So, what happened? Did you kill our captain?”

  Marcus closed his eyes and balled up his fists, then started to sob. He collapsed on himself like a mountain with a hollow core. “Everybody. I killed everybody.”

  “Okay. That’s okay. I’ll take care of it.” Then I shot him, just above the eyes.

  “Who was that?”

  I swung the pistol around, then lowered it. Higgins was standing about ten feet behind me, his hands up. When he saw that I wasn’t about to put a bullet in him, he nodded to Marcus. “Was it him? Did he do it?”

  “Sure.” I looked beyond Higgins. Passengers were boiling up out of the evacuation corridor, lurching down the walkway in their dainty clothes, staring emptily at where the glideboats should have been. “What are they doing?”

  Higgins looked back, shrugged. “We thought out here, maybe they have a chance to swim clear of the wreckage. Maybe.” He turned to me, walked past where I was kneeling next to the still form of Marcus, then went to stand by the rail. He nodded to the wide white wall of the waterfall, gnashing closer and closer.

  “Do you think we’re going to clear that?” he asked.

  “No,” I said, and then we did.

  The waterfall became open air, the tumult sliding away to be replaced by the lights of Veridon. At night, the city looked like a titan’s jeweled shawl casually discarded, spilling out from the river in ripples of street and cut-stone wall. It was built into broad terraces, each level rising higher above the river, frictionlamps along the streets reflecting off the canals and decorative waterfalls that crisscrossed Veridon. The city was stitched in canals and avenues, tiny lights and broad domes, black lines marking where the Ebd and Dunje rivers cut through the architecture, stepping down in occasional waterfalls and control locks to eventually empty into the enormous Reine. The roar of the falls faded, to be replaced by wind ripping by, and the grinding of the damaged spars in the anti-ballast above.

  Glory of Day tipped forward, clearing the precipice and sliding over the river. Distant klaxons sounded, echoing down the slopes of the Torchlight and in the harbor below. The passengers behind me cheered, and then the anti-ballast collapsed and caught on fire. Cheers became cries of terror. I turned to them, to see if there was a way out of this.

  They were mostly still in their formal attire, a couple in regular clothes. They stared down at the water below. Their screams echoed in my head, matching the terror in my dreams, my memories, the screams I felt through my ship as I struggled to keep aloft. I was lost again, falling down. The screams became more desperate, and I opened my eyes.

  Several people had gone over, one old lady trailing a banner of white fur as she fell. A man was forcing his way to the front, shoving others out of his way, heedless of what became of them afterwards. He cleared the crowd and knelt over the ruined hulk of Marcus. Ran his hands over the dead man's chest, ignoring the blood, ignoring the guts that slithered under his fingers. Looking for something. Not finding it, he looked around the deck in a very inhuman manner, like an insect. He stood, paying us no mind, and began to run to the front of the zep. He glanced at me as he passed, our eyes meeting. His face was completely slack, not with fear or calm. Just empty. Eyes like bleached summer sky, blue almost white. He went by before I could stop him, got to the prow of the zep and vaulted over the edge like a swimmer. He was wearing a long cloak, and it fluttered like wings as he disappeared over the railing.

  “That’s all,” the captain said, the closest voxorator barely fluttering open. “That’s all.”

  The Glory burst, the burners screaming to claw one last bit of lift out of the sky, the anti-ballast blossoming and collapsing. The river Reine was before us, flat and black, rushing at us like an avalanche.

  I closed my eyes and waited for the cold.

  Chapter Two

  The Summer Girl

  I HOLD TO old gods. My family is faithful to the Celestes, though their worship has fallen out of favor among the city’s elite. As a child I remember my father sneaking off to the holy dome of the Singer, or the Noble, to pay his respects before dawn, before the streets were crowded with common folk and their new, common God of the Algorithm. Now it was almost illegal to worship in the domes of the Celestes. The Church of the Algorithm had such power, such influence. Eventually, my parents hid their icons of the Celestes, stopped risking even early morning services. We took service at the Church of the Algorithm, like good Veridians. But at night, in closed rooms, in our secret hearts, we held to the old gods.

  Not that I expect much of them, either in this world or the next. I get by with my own help, by my own hand. And when I die, I expect a long, empty blackness. The Celestes teach nothing of an afterlife. Not like the Algorithm, with its infinite pattern, its eternal calculations and the intricacies of their metronomic prophecies. Their lives are a soulless pattern, and their deaths are as well. The holy Wrights of the Algorithm teach of an afterlife of clockwork, the hidden engines of the world swept back to reveal the calculation at the middle, the equation that is God.

  I hold to old gods. Imagine my disappointment, then, when the darkness that took me after the Glory of Day shattered against the cold water of the river Reine lingered only for a while. Light came, and noise. I opened my eyes to a world of pattern, of engine. The world of the Algorithm.

  “Ah, fuck,” I muttered. My voice was husky, like I’d been yelling. The ceiling above me was a twitching tableau of clockwork precision, cogs and escapements and coiling springs that slipped and ticked and groaned loudly. Metal crashed against metal. Not my idea of heaven. I tried to sit up and found myself weak and naked. I looked down and saw that I was bound to a bed, covered only by a thin sheet of white linen. I spat, and a wad of dried leaves scattered across my chest. The taste in my mouth was of dry earth.

  Embalming herbs. They meant to bury me. I looked around. There were other bodies, lined up neatly on either side. Lots of bodies. About as many as you would expect to recover from an airship crashing into a river. I struggled free from my ceremonial bonds and stood up. Behind me, someone screamed.

  There was a door, and a crowd of Wrights of the Algorithm clustered inside it. They shook under their g
rease-lined brown robes. I wrapped the linen around my waist.

  “Can I have my clothes back?”

  They were quick to oblige. I walked out of the Church of the Algorithm with most of my possessions. The pistol was gone, along with my boots. My shirt had been cut off me, but they had been careful with my pants. They were nice pants. Probably some eye-wise Wright saw some quality he could sell, later on. My jacket was intact, too. And, surprisingly, I still had the Cog Marcus had pressed into my hand moments before he died, tucked into the inner pocket of my jacket, the lining still cold and damp from the river. Thank the Celestes.

  “HE DIDN’T SEEM like someone on his way to die,” I said. I held the thing Marcus had given me in the palm of my hand. The slightest movement of my arm set off its internal machinations, spinning gears and flexing cogs in the central complex. I turned it slowly under the light on Emily’s desk. “He just seemed like someone who was on his way somewhere. Like he knew where he was going.”

  She shrugged. She wasn’t really paying attention to me yet, not at this stage of the conversation. This is how it was with us. She was bent over a ledger, marking deliveries and balancing columns. Her fingers were inky. She had her hair up in a bun, but strands had fallen out, and her face was framed in a wispy nimbus of gold, reflected light from the incandescent on her desk. She looked pretty.

  “Maybe he did. Maybe he didn’t want to stick around to get burned up like everyone else.” She glanced up. “Maybe he just wanted a quick end. Maybe he was just anxious to join the Fehn.”

  I shuddered. The river folk, the Fehn, were little more than animated corpses, possessed by some sort of flat worm that haunted the deep currents of the Reine. They talked like the people they had been before they died, but they were something else completely.