The Fires of Yesterday (The Silent Earth, Book 3)

by Mark R. Healy

  “Captain Ocano,” one of the soldiers said, “we have another one to be placed in the lock-up. Came straight from Cabre himself.”

  “Another one to join the family,” Ocano said with mock sweetness, pushing away from the wall. He walked over and looked me up and down, then flicked his fingers at the soldiers.

  “Dismissed.”

  “Yessir.”

  Without another word they stomped back down the hallway, leaving me alone with Ocano.

  “Name?” he said sharply.

  “Brant.”

  “And what did you do to piss off the boss man?”

  “You’d have to ask him that yourself.”

  Ocano grunted. “Maybe I’ll do that.” He punched a code into a keypad on the wall and a door slid open, revealing another corridor. He gestured politely with one hand. “After you.”

  I walked on ahead and Ocano followed a short distance behind. “The truth is, I didn’t do anything wrong,” I said earnestly.

  “I see. Doesn’t matter in the end though, does it?” Ocano said.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Guilty? Innocent? Those terms mean nothing anymore. If Cabre wants you in here, then this is where you’ll stay. I’m sure he has his reasons.”

  “So how is that fair?” I slowed and turned to look at him but he prodded me sharply with his fingers to keep me moving.

  “If you’re looking for fairness, you’ve come to the wrong place, fella. There’s no such thing here.”

  “Except if you’re part of Ascension. Then you get special treatment, right?”

  “Hell, no!” Ocano said, laughing gruffly. “You think it’s fair that I’m stuck in here, playing babysitter?”

  “Huh?”

  Ocano scratched at his withered face. “Do you know what was happening here in the lock-up while the soldiers out there were fighting to save the city?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I sat on my bony ass and waited to see who walked through the front doors at the end of it all. Wasn’t sure if was going to be a Duster or someone dressed in grey, and I had no control of it, neither.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  “Hell, yes, it’s a bad thing.” He gripped my shoulder with fingers of granite and halted me before the door at the end of the corridor, rapping his knuckles loudly upon it. The face of another soldier appeared through a small pane of glass on the other side, the thin shape of it reminding me of a weasel. He nodded, then stood back as Ocano disengaged the electronic locking mechanism. The door swung open.

  “Captain Ocano,” the soldier said, his voice pinched and nasally.

  “Weekes, we got some more fresh meat, here. Goes by the name of Brant. Go and unlock a spare cell, will you?”

  “Yessir,” Weekes said, and he moved away quickly, walking with a pronounced limp. Inside the room a row of four small cells were aligned along the wall, one of which was occupied by a sour-looking clank seated quietly on the bench at the rear of his cell. He watched impassively as Ocano led me across the room.

  “And here’s why it’s a bad thing,” Ocano went on, picking up our conversation where we’d left off. “Because it’s an insult to a soldier like me to be stuck in here while there’s fighting to be done. I belong on the front lines with the others.”

  “So why not ask to be reassigned?” I said.

  “Because I’m being punished,” Ocano said, pressing his lips together. “I made one tiny mistake and now I’m stuck in here for good.”

  Weekes indicated for me to enter the last cell, located by the wall, and then slammed it shut behind me. He locked the door and limped back to his post by the door while Ocano remained outside my cell, glaring at me through slitted eyes.

  “I led over seventy missions for Cabre over the years, and only failed once,” he said. “Got ambushed crossing through Faulkner, or what was left of it. Down south. Lost our cargo. That pissed Cabre off like you wouldn’t believe. There were good reasons why things went bad, but he didn’t want to hear it. He demoted me and put me in here to a station well below my old rank, to watch over you sad sacks. Took away the only thing in this world that I loved.”

  “I’m having a hard time feeling sorry for you,” I said.

  “I don’t want your pity,” he said. “I just want you to know the simple truth – we’re all prisoners here. You either find a way to live with that, or you don’t.”

  He clanged his knuckles against the cell bars as if in farewell, then walked away and left me to wait for the inevitable.

  I spent the next couple of hours stewing over my predicament in silence. Strategies for escape came and went, one idea after another discarded until my inspiration had run dry. At the end of it all I was left hollow and defeated, slumped against the wall, cursing the decisions I had made even though there was no way I could have foreseen what was going to occur.

  I tried not to think about what was going to happen to me when they led me out of this cell. Not only could I expect to undergo torturous pain and agony as my mind was corrupted and ripped apart, but I would also be losing all the things that made me who I was – all those memories of my time spent alone in the wasteland, everything I had gone through with Arsha and the embryos, the joy of holding the children in my arms – it would all be lost.

  I didn’t know what sort of existence awaited me as one of those monstrous drones, but it couldn’t be anything pleasant. I imagined it would be a kind of living hell where the emptiness I’d once experienced in the wasteland was magnified a thousand times.

  “Hey,” someone whispered nearby. The prisoner in the cell next to mine had sidled along his bench until he was almost within touching distance. “What are you doing in here?”

  Skinny and unkempt, the prisoner’s shock of black hair was matted against one side of his face, and his clothing was torn and grimy. Despite his unruly appearance, there was a certain keenness about his eyes, which he never lifted from the floor as he spoke. The soldier standing guard by the door, Weekes, was out of earshot and did not hear him speak.

  “Waiting to die, I guess,” I said softly. Weekes glanced over and I quickly returned my eyes to my lap. “Is there anything else to do?”

  “What’s your crime?” the skinny clank persisted. “You kill someone?”

  “No.”

  “Could you?”

  “Huh?”

  “Could you kill someone?”

  I glanced surreptitiously at him. “I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”

  “If it came down to someone standing between you and your shot at freedom, would you have it in you to put them down?”

  I watched him carefully. “If I had to. I’ve done it before.”

  “Thought so. You have that look about you.” He scraped some mud from his shoe with a bony finger.

  “What look is that? The look of a killer?”

  “The look of someone who’s been in a few fights and can handle himself.”

  My eyes darted over at Weekes again, who was scrutinising something on the end of his finger.

  “What exactly are we talking about here?” I said.

  “The name’s Vance,” the clank said by way of answer.

  “Uh, okay. I’m Brant. Nice to meet you.”

  “So, this is just a friendly heads-up that I’m not hanging around in here much longer,” Vance said. “Thought you’d like to know.”

  “You made parole?” I said sarcastically.

  “Don’t need to,” he said, leaning his head back against the wall. “Not when you have the right friends.”

  “I hope one of those is Cabre. Otherwise I don’t see you getting out in a hurry.”

  “No. My friends are not so well known, but just as powerful in their own way.”

  I would have dismissed him as a crackpot had his voice not been so measured and his demeanour so calm and assured. He spoke in the way of someone who knew exactly what was at stake and was supremely confident in what was going to oc
cur.

  Realisation came over me. “You’re one of the insurgents,” I said.

  He nodded, making no attempt to hide the fact.

  “So you’ve heard of us.”

  “Whispers, nothing more. I wasn’t sure if you guys were even real.”

  “We’re real.”

  “So what are you doing in here?”

  “We made a move during the end of the Marauder invasion,” Vance said. “Tried to hit them while they were down. Kill two birds with one stone, y’know?” He grinned without humour. “How good would that have been? To be rid of Ascension and the Marauders on the same day.”

  “What happened?”

  “We rushed The Midway, but they’d reserved more numbers than we anticipated. We thought we’d be up against a skeleton crew, but it was far more than that.”

  “How many of you were captured?” I said.

  He grimaced. “Just me. The others who were cornered gave themselves a permanent brain wipe.” He held his thumb and forefinger to his temple and dropped his thumb to mimic a gunshot. “But I fucked up. Couldn’t go through with it.”

  “Then it’s only a matter of time until your comrades are dead,” I said.

  “Huh? Why?”

  “They have a contraption over at The Midway… a machine that extracts information from a clank’s neural core. Once they use it on you, they’re going to know everything you know.”

  “We figured they had something like that. Heard stories passed down by some clanks who’d heard about it from someone else. Almost seemed like it was a spook story. But I guess when you’ve seen the things we’ve seen, you know that nothing is beyond these bastards.”

  “What have you seen?”

  “Hey, you’ve seen Cabre and Targen in action, right? You’ve heard them speak?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Then you don’t need any further explanation from me.”

  “I guess.” I looked at him ruefully. “I’m sorry, but once they use that thing on you and download your memories, the insurgents are finished.”

  “It won’t come to that,” Vance said adamantly. “If the other insurgents don’t get me out, they’ll flatten this building. They were never going to trust me to reach that interrogation room, anyway.”

  “So why are you telling me this? How do you know I’m not an Ascension plant who’s been put in here to gain your trust?”

  “It wouldn’t matter if you were. They won’t stop us, whether they know we’re coming or not. And I figure if things get heavy, it might be useful to have someone covering my back as I try to get out of here. That’s assuming you want to get out of here too.”

  I considered the implications of what he was telling me. Although I didn’t relish the thought of being crushed under the weight of this prison when the insurgents took it down, there was at least a glimmer of hope that I might make it out with Vance if they staged a rescue mission. I wasn’t sure of how they were going to do this, however, since they’d failed to break through Ascension’s defences during the Marauder attack.

  The lock-up, although guarded by a few soldiers, was not as heavily fortified as The Midway. Perhaps they would have more success here.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll–”

  There was a rap on the door and Weekes jumped as if he’d been poked by a cattle prod. He moved over to the door, then stood back as it swung open.

  “Another one?” he said. “Busy day today.”

  “Not entirely,” Ocano said, stepping through the doorway. Then he turned and beckoned irritably to someone behind him.

  Malyn stepped cautiously into the room and my heart sank.

  Oh, Malyn, not you too, I thought.

  Weekes began walking toward us, flipping through the keys on his belt. “You want me to unlock the last cell–”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Ocano said, halting the other soldier in his tracks. “This one won’t be staying long.”

  Weekes scratched his head, dumbfounded. “Well, if she’s no–”

  “She’s visiting,” Ocano said brusquely.

  “But Captain, General Cabre gave instructions that no visitors–”

  “I know what Cabre said,” Ocano growled. “So what’s he gonna do? Demote me further?” He turned to Malyn and jabbed a finger at her. “You have sixty seconds to say goodbye to loverboy. Not one second more. Then we’re even.”

  Malyn nodded and her eyes scanned the cells, finally coming to rest as she saw me walking forward. A palpable sense of relief washed over her and she moved hastily over to the stand before the bars of my cell. Although initially appalled to see her here, I had to admit that it felt good to see her again, even in these difficult circumstances.

  “You’re still alive,” she breathed. “Damn, Cleanskin. I thought they might have gutted you already by now.”

  “Malyn, what’s going on? Why are you here? It’s not safe.”

  She snorted. “Don’t you think I know that, man? I had to see you. Elias saw them dragging you in here and came and told me.”

  “How did you get in here?”

  She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. “I tagged along with old Ocano on a few missions a while back. Saved his skin one night during a skirmish. He said he owed me one, so now I’m calling it in.” She shook her head. “Forget about that. There’s no time.”

  “Malyn, you have to go. Ascension are rotten to the core. The things I’ve seen–”

  “Why haven’t you told them what you know about the Grid?” she said.

  “I tried to, but Cabre’s holding a grudge against me now. He blames me for the Marauders getting the jump on Ascension during the attack.”

  “What?” Malyn spat. “That’s bullshit.”

  “I know, but try telling that to Cabre.” I leaned through the bars as far as I could, lowering my voice. “Malyn, he’s got a machine that sucks data right out of a clank’s neural core. Takes all of your memories and downloads them, then leaves the mind a steaming pile of mush afterwards.” I took a moment to collect myself. “He’s going to use it on me.”

  “Isn’t there anything that you can do?” she said.

  “Twenty seconds!” Ocano called out, folding his arms across his chest.

  “I tried to bargain with them. It’s useless. I’m telling you, get out of the city while you still can. Lunn was right. You don’t know who they’re going to turn on next.”

  “Dammit,” she said, pressing her hand to her forehead. “Okay, if that’s the way it is…”

  She glanced back at Ocano, unsure what to say. I managed to force a smile.

  “Hey,” I said, “what did Ocano mean when he called me ‘loverboy’?”

  Malyn flushed, embarrassed and unable to meet my eyes. “I had to give him a reason why I wanted to come in here,” she explained. “I said you and me were… y’know…”

  My eyes widened in surprise. “You said that you and me were–”

  She stepped toward me unexpectedly and her hands gripped my shirt through the bars, slamming me forward and against her body as she pushed up to the other side. Her lips pressed against mine, hot and salty, and I could taste the desperation, the longing within her as she held me tight. Then, almost as soon as it had begun, her embrace was over, and she pushed herself roughly away and stalked back toward the exit.

  “I’m done,” she said scornfully, marching past them like she owned the place, like she knew that every eye in the room was upon her.

  “Damn,” Weekes muttered appreciatively, scratching his head again and watching her hips as she strutted past.

  The corners of Ocano’s mouth tilted upward as he stared at me. “Something to keep you warm through the long, cold night,” he said, then turned and followed Malyn out the door.

  I staggered backward toward the bench at the rear of the cell, reeling from the suddenness of Malyn’s embrace and the sensation of her lips against mine. In a moment of despair and hopelessness it had been an unexpectedly pleasurable moment, and I
felt a surge of gratitude that she had taken the risk to come and see me, to give me one final moment of joy before my world fell apart.

  As I lowered myself to the bench I felt an unusual pressure in my hip. My fingers edged down and reached into my pocket, and with a start I realised something was in there. It was cold and metallic and smooth, and it hadn’t been there a minute ago.

  Malyn had handed me a flip.

  24

  I turned my body to shield the flip from Weekes’ view, cradling it in the palm of my hand. My fingers shook as I reached down and swiped across the display. Although the flip was battered and its screen cracked, it was still working. It began to glow softly and after a few moments a message appeared, the lettering of the font radiant and white against a dark background.

  If you are who I think you are, you’ll know what to do with this.

  I stared, uncomprehending, then swiped again to dismiss the message. As it disappeared from view, a standard user interface appeared on the screen, complete with icons for messaging, games, Grid browsers, the built-in camera, and so on.

  It seemed to be just a standard flip. I’d half expected instructions or a comms link that might offer some kind of help, some kind of guidance for getting me out from behind these bars. Yet as I scrolled through the icons I found nothing of the sort.

  So why had she given it to me? What good was it going to do in here, apart from allowing me to whittle away my last few hours of freedom by dabbling in solitaire?

  If you are who I think you are…

  Who did she think I was? Did she expect me to use this to call for help? Who could I possibly call? It didn’t make sense.

  As I watched, a message popped in at the top of the screen: Grid connection established. From that, I could deduce that Cabre had activated the Grid spire again. I’d be able to use the flip to communicate with other Grid capable devices in the area. Was I supposed to try calling or messaging Malyn on the outside? There were no contacts listed on the flip whatsoever, so that couldn’t be it.

  …you’ll know what to do with this.

  How would I know what to do with it? How was it going to help my predicament? I wasn’t some kind of hacker–