by Nate Crowley
Soon they would have the sailors and materiel off the Bargain, and could really put on speed. With luck, they’d be making transit to Grand Amazon some time after dusk. They had maybe five hundred bodies between the ships, half of them living. As for the dead, they were the wily ones, and the most mobile. The zombies—as she had come to think of those wretches too broken by death to regain even a semblance of humanity—had almost all been left behind. As far as she knew, they were still milling on the decks of Tavuto, or wandering the City’s streets in search of their vanished lives. She hoped, if nothing else, that Dust would give them the rest they deserved.
Something grey surged out of the ship’s wake, and Mouana reached for her pistol, then swore softly as she saw it was only a porpoise. The animals were playing in the engine wash, spinning in the air as they arced through the crashing foam. They were not albino, nor rotten, nor tentacled—just porpoises. The sight of the things brought hope back again; whatever mess they were in, at least they weren’t in Ocean.
Still, thought Mouana, as she glanced at the sun beginning to sink below the water, it wouldn’t be long before they reached a place with no less dark a reputation. While Ocean was feared across the Lemniscatus as one of the most horrible worlds, a place best forgotten and left to devils, Grand Amazon was one of the weirdest. Lost and recolonised enough times to make a mystery of its founding, the place had a habit of eating history: its sweltering forests swallowed human work just as completely as Ocean’s endless grey, and concealed stranger ruins. People, ships, expeditions and cities all had a habit of disappearing there, vanishing into the jungle night.
“What do we expect when we get there?” Mouana asked Kaba, who had appeared by her side at the railing.
“Insects, boss,” replied the woman with a leer, brandishing a jug of the overseers’ preservative grog from the hold. “S’why I’m soaking myself in this stuff every chance I get.”
“And I suppose it’s all just been dumped in the sea on my orders?” sighed Mouana.
“Nah, boss, told them not to do that,” said Kaba, cackling. “You’d have fierce regretted it when you hatched your first boil-wasp.”
“And besides insects?” asked Mouana drily, snatching the jug and pouring a puddle of the piss-coloured stuff on her bad hand.
“Who knows, you know? Jungle changes all the time. I can take you up the Sinfondo, where the long-lasting towns are, and to Rummage on the Esqueleto, where squid-boy says we need to go based on his fancy book. Done that run a few times; Rummage won’t have gone anywhere. Beyond that? Can’t fathom. Don’t know what’s still there, what’s new.”
“You think it’s changed that much since you left?”
“Probably,” shrugged Kaba. “The colonies, they’re not what they were. Lot of the old machines are breaking now. And trouble elsewhere, the wars—they always spill over. Take people, take resources, start fires. And the jungle, she never misses a chance to fill in any holes. She’s been winning for the longest time.”
“And what about High Sarawak?”
“Don’t know boss. My head’s broke like yours, so maybe I knew and I’ve forgot. But I don’t think I ever did. Prospectors’ stories and wurmjäger whiskey-tales, maybe, bullshit over cards by lamplight, but no maps nor signposts. You want to find that place?” said Kaba, as she walked away to deal with the preservative stores. “You want to be talking to all the mad folk you can find.”
“Maybe I do,” muttered Mouana, turning to look back over the boat. She looked over to where Eunice was still prodding and poking at the Ahab suit, and past her to the maw of the hold, where the rough curve of Wrack’s casket brooded in the dark. Feeling she was being watched, she shot a glance at the deck of the Bastard; sure enough, there was Wrack, squatting at a cabin window, staring at her with pebble-black lenses over the edge of his damned book.
Wrack had not spoken with her since they had left his home town. More than once, Mouana had wondered if he had figured out she had lied to him, but she thought it more likely—or at least preferred to think—he had simply cracked. Wrack had been unstable since taking on the burden of his new mind; seeing his childhood disappear under a blanket of war-smoke might have sent him over the edge.
That, and the sheer amount of death and damage they themselves had inflicted, in the name of the uprising he had started. Death and damage she herself had delivered, dragging its wailing progenitor with her. If that was it, then she would not apologise. There was no point in being sorry for anything she had done—it had been the ugly, necessary consummation of the justice they had conceived together in Ocean. If he was too weak to see through what he started, that was not her problem to solve.
But one way or another, she would need him back if she was to continue to see things through. It wasn’t as if she could coerce him through torture, she thought; and cringed at even allowing herself to have the thought.
So far, her best plan had been to set Fingal to the task of bringing Wrack back to the fold. She figured that, given their connection through Wrack’s father, the fact they had presumably known each other at some point in their lives, there might be some bond there. But from the rebel boss’s reports so far, it seemed it was tough going.
Either way, Wrack needed to play on her team. Whatever lay at High Sarawak, whatever ancient weirdness had spawned the technology they were trying to eradicate, she had the strangest notion that her acquaintance was something to do with it. The more she thought about the visions she had been having, the more it made sense. Dust had never been after the City’s weird, filigreed necrods—she had been after Teuthis, the alien flesh that had lain at the heart of Tavuto, and which she thought had power far beyond mere scraps of old machinery. The flesh which Wrack now inhabited.
He was inextricably linked with what they were pursuing, and he was the reason for their being pursued. Just thinking about it seemed to darken the sky, to grey out the sea. There were conclusions here she couldn’t face, memories that would not surface. Implications birthed by her visions of Dust, like the eggs of a parasite beneath her skin.
But they were not to worry about now, she told herself, gritting her teeth as she clenched the rail in her good hand and stared at the porpoises. Those happy fucking porpoises.
Mouana didn’t remember much of her life besides the big fights, but she knew she had spent most of it postponing happiness, thinking that things would get better after the next obstacle, after the next bout of pain and fear. It had been what had kept her on campaign so long.
Perhaps the attitude had persisted after death. It had been what got her through Tavuto, and what had kept her going after victory had evaporated at the Ministry. It would get her through until her body finally fell apart. Maybe she would run into a dead end at High Sarawak—if they even got there—and maybe they would have to carry on fighting. Maybe things would get very, very dark with Wrack. It didn’t matter. Those were problems for later. Solve one thing at a time, Aroha had always said.
The ships were full of sailors, and full of guns. Grand Amazon lay ahead, and Dust some way behind. For now, she was holding all the cards, and if she could at least convince herself that everything would be alright after the next hurdle, she could keep going.
This is how a siege engineer experiences hope, she thought to herself with a laugh, and blacked out at the rail.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“ARE YOU SURE this isn’t turned?” retched Aroha, as he set his spoon back in his bowl.
“Yep,” said Mouana, as she rolled the map out on the main desk of the dugout and weighted it with a wrench. “It just tastes of ’drick, is all. That smell they have, it gets in the meat, and there’s no salting it out. You get used to it.”
“Yeah, well, we’ll have to, won’t we?” grumbled the old captain, curling his lip. “There’s twenty tons of the stuff to get through.”
Mouana shrugged, and scooped the last spoonful from her own tin. It was grey, fibrous like rotten wood, and soaked through with salt, but stil
l tasted like Tassie. After acting as the battery’s mascot in the last days on the plateau, the old beast had taken on a second life as rations for the deployment outside Lipos-Tholos. Having been the one to pull the trigger on Tassie, Mouana made a point of finishing each tin of meat before any of her troops.
“I don’t know, Mouana,” said Aroha, sounding suddenly very old. “I could be eating home-cooked stew soon.”
“Your boy, is he much of a cook then?” she asked, as she began unpacking the battery’s analytic console, cursing under her breath as one screen came out of the crate shattered.
“He cooks shit, same as his old man, far as I remember. But at least it’s home-cooked shit, eh?”
Aroha had been maudlin since they had arrived. When the first mail had reached them, somewhere between Gate transits on the way here, it had brought news that the mother of his boy—the woman he had ostensibly stayed a mercenary to avoid—had died, and left him a lengthy deathbed letter. After years of joking about how good it would be to only have to send half the money back home, he had become a very sentimental man. Mouana could tell he was making ready for one of his reflections, and looked as busy as she could dressing the dugout so as to dissuade him. It didn’t work.
“Maybe we could have repaired things, you know?” wondered Aroha. “Maybe we could have made it a home together again, with Tamati grown up and all. Why did I stay away so long? Why did I wait until it was too late for us to be a family?”
Mouana let him soliloquy, nodding and grunting where appropriate as she swept aside the garbage the Cauldron Company had left behind. No wonder they’d been relieved of the siege, she thought—they’d run this dugout more like a drinking den than a command post, and the section’s lines weren’t in much better shape. From what she’d heard from the other battery commanders, the whole circumvallation was a shambles, and they were going to have to work quick to fix things before the defenders took advantage.
Aroha rambled on. She could sympathise, mind. The letter he’d received had been gut-wrenching, and besides, she knew plenty about staying at arm’s length from family. But a despondent captain was the last thing they needed right now. The man needed to make his mind up, before word made it up the hierarchy and a decision was made for him.
“So go home,” said Mouana, more angrily than she’d intended, and Aroha stopped short. “You’ve been doing this for years, and you’ve already missed one chance at being a family. You’re not going to feel any more of a father to him staying out here, and don’t kid yourself you’ll go home when this siege is over. Given its track record, it’ll outlive both of us. So go home, and make things as right as you can.”
Mouana wondered how she could say these words with a straight face, given how she would scoff if Aroha ever told her the same thing. But then, it was always easier to give others the advice you needed yourself. And anyway, it was different for Aroha. He had joined up to avoid being elsewhere. She joined because she had work to do. Mouana would stay until she was ready to come home; until she knew she had made things right. He’d already stayed too long.
“Right,” said Aroha, fishing a flask from his inside pocket. “So I go knocking on Dust’s wagon, ask if I can go home to patch things up with what’s left of my family? Because besides her boundless sense of empathy, she’s renowned for her expertise in dealing with family issues.”
Mouna gawped, her eyes flicking from the captain’s flask to his face, and then to the shadows of the dugout, as if the words themselves would summon the general. “Affeschiesse, Aroha. Are you pissed?”
“Yeah, a bit,” smirked the older officer. Mouana had no idea how she’d missed it.
“Well, shut up ’til you sober up, before you leave Tamati a bloody orphan.” The captain leapt to his feet, steadied himself on the map desk with a balled fist, but she carried on. “You know what a bad idea it is to gossip about the general. Anyone could walk in here and hear you, and you know word travels. Remember Ludovico, with that campfire song after Three Valleys?”
“Of course I remember—we all remember. Poor shit begged for our help for three days before passing, and none of us so much as looked at him for fear of a bullet in the head. That’s just the sort of understanding leader she is. Why the hell did we sign up to a company run by a complete fucking monster, anyway?”
“Because she wins everything she touches, and because we’re mercenaries,” spat Mouana, flinging out an arm to take in the rat-tracked squalor of the dugout. “Perhaps you’d have been happier pissing your life away with a company like the Cauldron, but I doubt it. And if you’re done with life with the Blades, then go. But don’t start with this kind of talk.”
Aroha was drunker than she thought. The man had discipline like no-one else, but whatever that letter had meant to him, it had rattled him right out of his cage. Mouana felt some relief when he sat back on the bench with a sigh, and got back to the task of wiring up the console. After a few minutes, however, when she was down under the desk trying to find a dry patch for a router, he piped up again, slow and snide, like blood from a stitched wound.
“I suppose you’d know her best, wouldn’t you,” suggested Aroha, punctuated by the slosh of spirit. “Seeing as you’ve been working so closely with her since you shot old Tassie on the plateau. Probably firm friends by now. But don’t forget I’ve been with her for longer, even if I’ve kept my distance. I know we’re not meant to talk about the damned stories, but I’ve heard them all. You know about her home, right, Mou? Someone as invested in sibling rivalry as you, you must’ve heard how they dealt with it back where she’s from?”
Mouana got up from her work, wiped her hands free of mud, and locked eyes with the captain. He was wasted, no doubt about it, and there was going to be no end to this but to hear him out. She just hoped to the Tin King that nobody walked in before he was done.
“I know enough,” she answered, calm as a rainy dawn. “Know the first thing she did, when she took on the Blades, was go back there and wipe the place out for what they’d done. Don’t need to know any more.”
“Yeah, you don’t need to,” said Aroha with a sneer. “But you’d fucking love to, wouldn’t you?”
Mouana folded her arms noncommittally.
“Wasn’t often anyone even managed childbirth, back on Dust,” said Aroha, spitting on the dugout floor. “What with the rads and the poison and the famines. Rarer still anyone made it to full-grown, after those hunts they put them through. But you know what their law said should happen when too many kids came of age in one year?”
Mouana gave the smallest shake of her head.
“They’d pair ’em off. Siblings first, then friends. Pair ’em off, and leave ’em in a cave in the worst part of the desert for two months, far out on the salt flats, where the ichthydaimones spawned. One sack of rations, they gave them. One between each pair. And not rations like these,” he snarled, chomping at the ’drickmeat for effect. “It was that Dust shit—crickets and cave mold and wafers made from sawdust and rat shit and all the rest. And all of it, if you split the fucking waterskins and licked the seams, sucked every crumb from your thin fingers, might keep one of you alive for the duration. But they put two of you in there. Dust went in with her brother.”
Movement flickered at the end of the long tunnel leading into the dugout. Mouana’s eyes widened, and she stared over Aroha’s shoulder. She made the sign, the sign they’d use in the thunder of a barrage to signal an engine overheat, the sign that meant everything had to stop before a boiler ruptured. But Aroha wasn’t paying attention, just carried on with glazed eyes. She had seconds at best before whoever was coming walked into his drunken rant.
“They worked out the maths soon enough,” rumbled Aroha. “Share the food and you’d starve before they came to get you; start the fight too late and you’d die of thirst.”
The bitter scent of herbs came to Mouana, preceding the new arrival, and her heart seized. She knew the smell. It wasn’t just some private come to relay a message
, it was Dust herself, and if she shouted now, there was no way the general wouldn’t ask what the fuss was all about. Mouana dived back below the desk, drew her knife, and snatched at the wires spilling from the back of the dugout’s raid siren.
“It all came down to who found a sharp rock first,” spouted Aroha. “Who was prepared to give up and go full fucking animal before the other. And our dear leader—”
His sentence ran into a wall of sound as the siren slammed on, a piercing wail designed to alert half a mile of trench to an air assault even above the booming of their own guns. Setting it off would no doubt incur a punishment, but the alternative was unthinkable.
Mouana leapt up from below the desk cursing emphatically, just as Aroha jumped up from the bench with a stunned expression, and Dust appeared in the room. They made a strange tableau for a moment; Dust peering at the siren built into the ceiling, then down at Mouana with slightly narrowed eyes, while Aroha stared straight at her, eyes wide in profound thanks.
Calmly, yet quicker than Mouana could register, Dust had set down her tea, drawn her pistol and put a bullet through the siren, silencing it with a choking squawk.
“The state they left this place in,” chided the general, something like amusement smouldering in her expression. “Alarms going off all by themselves.” The sudden silence stretched like a string of drool from an animal’s jaws, and Aroha was clearly fighting not to shake as he stared at the floor. Dust turned her head a fraction towards him, then appeared to think better of it and fixed Mouana with a perfectly neutral expression.