by Glenn Wilson
“Very well,” the captain said, sounding as though he was conceding something not altogether expected. “At the very least, they taught you how to march. It is too bad that isn’t much use once we’re off the beaten path, where our true duties begin. As it is. It’s maybe only three hours of a dry march to Alcatel from here. Let us see how long it takes moving like a proper ranger company. Lieutenant.”
“Yes, sir!” their lieutenant called out, stepping out from his place. “Company, threat high! Coverage!”
With some slight reluctance in the general atmosphere—Ian remembering that, really, none of the privates were probably in the best of shape today—they quickly split apart off the road, fanning out and keeping with their seconds. The two corporals kept a loose proximity to their officers on opposite sides of the road, according to their flanks.
“And keep ‘em low,” the lieutenant said, maintaining a steady stream of detail orders and admonishments as they went.
“Now, to Alcatel—forward!” the captain said with a grand, downward sweep of his arm.
Normally Ian would prefer loose marching to dry marching any day. Today was a notable exception, but he dug his heels into the ground, kept a little bit lower than the others, making sure to pivot and perform his weaving quicker and crisper than the rest. And he was able to succeed too, at least for now. He knew it wouldn’t be fair to judge them all until they had a more consistent day, but he couldn’t help all of it. Rory in particular irked him, mostly because he was Ian’s second. And though Rory seemed to have a good head about how to move and where to be looking—something the captain was especially sharp to watch for—he just wasn’t fast enough to keep up with Ian, especially when Ian was trying to make a showable point. Which he was.
“Come on,” Ian hissed at Rory as he passed, ranging a bit further to the left and scanning that flank, then turning and posting up for the rearguard as Rory advanced past him, glaring at Ian the whole way.
That was it, Ian realized. As he had apparently always separated them in his mind, professionalism was primarily performed within a job, sophistication more so in leisure. The first was usually done with the aim of improvement for one’s profession, the latter more so for one’s own benefit. That was how he’d previously distinguished them in any case.
And in this case, Corporal Wesshire seemed far more primarily a sophisticated man. Ian wasn’t sure, couldn’t really be sure what motives the other man had in their conversation, but it hadn’t been for the company, he knew that much.
Whatever the reasons, Ian needed to be careful.
It was somewhat discouraging, whenever he’d risk watching the other side of the road, to see Corporal Wesshire leading and feinting, moving more methodically, precisely than anyone else in the company—probably anyone else that Ian had ever seen.
Once, the captain caught Ian watching and gave him a rigorous going over, but Ian promised himself that he would be sure to watch Corporal Wesshire very carefully.
* * * *
The day passed much less straightforwardly than the morning. Indeed, it might have taken them a decent deal less than three hours to reach Alcatel, which was evidently their next destination, but their officers ran them through the unending gamut of possible formations and maneuvers. Most of them dealt with road situations, as they didn’t have much cover at their disposal.
It all amounted to an intense ambivalence for Ian. As the hours drew on, his energies began to wane, the mental ones most of all. His feet began to ache up into his knees and legs, unaccustomed as he was to this sort of movement in the new boots he’d been issued. He was also frequently picked apart, to ranging degrees of fairness, by the captain and occasionally their lieutenant, though the lieutenant seemed to be a far more passive critic than the captain. This Ian was able to tolerate less and less, and he grew steadily worse at keeping his thoughts non-dour.
But in other ways, it was also fantastic, a blossoming series of new moments and insights. He had so much to absorb from their company. Their movements with each other were painfully clumsy, and it may have just been because of Ian’s biased perspective, but Rory and he seemed to struggle the most. Rory was just a bit slow, both in his ability to traverse distance as well as his awareness of the company’s movement, and especially of Ian’s. Or perhaps he was just angry at Ian, and his timing was on purpose.
Ian learned, admitted some things about himself too. It wasn’t an altogether new revelation, and no doubt would always be at least something of an ongoing one, but he naturally assumed a lot that probably wasn’t entirely fair.
It was well past growing dark when they first caught sight of Alcatel, which was greatly inferior to Carciti in size. The lights were beginning to come on and continued to multiply as they drew nearer. They were perhaps two miles out when Captain Marsden finally finished their maneuvers and switched them back into a dry, two-column march.
“Double time, then,” the captain called out.
An easy command for him to give, Ian thought, as they fell back in together and doubled their pace. Their breaths, only intermittently employed throughout the afternoon, began to sound strained in the cooling air just above the rhythm of their boots on the road.
Above them, the stars were quickly waking. The freedom of the darkness and the focus on the rate of their pace gave Ian the chance to crane his head back and watch the night skies, which remained brilliant and unmoved by all this commotion beneath them. Though it was difficult to see, swimming in and out of his perception, the colors of the planet’s atmosphere were played out in shifting veins of intricacy in its ancient struggle against so much of the hostile light energy that was being thrown against it. Long and tumbling hues of violet, emerald, and some other colors that weren’t easy to identify grew increasingly bolder the darker it became.
While they took up most of the road, they didn’t yield at all to the bits of people they encountered coming from the city—mostly working-class Chax. There were many though, even some humans, dressed in dark cloaks and difficult to see until they were very close, that didn’t necessarily emit the impression that their working hours were done. And Ian wondered just how many highwaymen they passed in the darkness.
Somewhat to Ian’s surprise, their company swerved off as they drew near the outskirts of the city. He didn’t really know all the details of their arrangements, so he merely contented himself with following, ready for the day to be done.
They drew nearly alongside the city’s wall, its smooth darkness endless in the night. They drew so close that the expression of the Bevish regular watching them from on top of it was discernible, even in the subdued light coming from within the walls. As Ian watched, the regular silently raised his hand in greeting as they passed beneath him.
By this point, the double time was getting hard. They were all well-conditioned, half of them being more or less fresh out of training, but the day of new demands had drained them in a way that Ian could hear with each measured breath they took. The captain most of all seemed to be having trouble keeping ahead of them, the motions of his arms looking minimal in the shadowy blur that he ran in just ahead of their left.
But as they began the slow rightward arc around the city, the darkness in front of them rapidly began to lighten. Gradually, Ian was able to sort out that there was a light shining somewhere outside of the wall. Soon thereafter they passed Ellosians, the first people in quite some distance. Their group consisted of off-duty Bevish regulars, laughing and making their way around the wall into the dark where Ian’s company was leaving. They stepped off the road and made token salutes at Captain Marsden and the rest of them.
It was a welcome sight, the clearest indication Ian had yet seen that this planet was firmly theirs.
Kieran began to lag back into Ian. Gingerly putting out his hand to push the other private ahead, Ian whispered the word steady. Kieran’s back visibly bristled and surged forward, perhaps overcompensating a bit.
Something of a cooperative pull was amo
ng them, a beat to their gasps that ran in between their shoulders that jostled in time together. Concentrating on the smoldering in his legs, the heaviness in his lungs, Ian pushed just a little bit more, a little bit more, ignoring the burning desire for its end by knowing they were almost there.
He was surprised when he looked up again maybe only a couple minutes later. The area, he’d known, was growing exponentially brighter. But as he watched, they came around far enough for the large light shining in their direction to be visible, though it was still some distance away. More and more structures, crates, people, and machines became visible. The well-recognized movement and sounds of a harbor grew, but to a lesser degree than Ian was used to. It was almost quaint if he compared it against the Wilome varieties he knew so well. And this was of a different order, for there were no shuttles, or really space craft at all that he could see. For he could now see the river, wide and reluctant in the light, that ran off somewhere to their left, the northwest as he figured, with the rest of the stream running into the city beneath the heavily fortified wall built to accommodate it. From what he could tell, this harbor was probably only part of a network, but it lay outside the walls and choked almost the entirety of the water with docks and moorings and other such assortments. Several large cargo boats sat along the riversides with people and cranes clambering all along their lengths. One low and almost old-fashioned looking warship stood out nearer the point of the population, quietly watching.
As the path merged into the harbor’s old cobblestone, the captain raised an arm, and they slowed with him to a gradual stop. He turned to face them, and Ian could tell the look of someone trying not to appear winded—and not just because Ian was doing the same.
“Good, lieutenant,” the captain said, looking them over and breathing hard through his nose. “That was a right fine march, I’d say. A fine start. We obviously have many things to work out,” his gaze turned its predictable circuit to Ian, “but there’s nothing here that time and diligence won’t fix.”
Ian noticed a Bevish man briskly walking toward them. His clothing wasn’t altogether familiar, but Ian thought it bore some sort of relation to a Bevish navy uniform.
“Welcome, captain,” the man said as he neared. He held up his yeoman and allowed it to identify them all, though the port and city authorities had probably done that some time ago. The man gave a quick army salute. “Follow me please, if you will. Your accommodations are waiting and will leave shortly.
“Thank you, good sir,” the captain said, only sparing a glance back at them before jolting to catch up with the man, who hadn’t waited for an answer.
Their lieutenant was left standing with the rest of them; whereas, the captain should’ve at least verbally passed the reins to him.
“Right,” the lieutenant said, fumbling for a moment, “warm beds are this way, chaps. Keep form.”
There was a murmuring chorus of the expected ayes from them, groggy as they were. They continued at a regular march that was perhaps a bit loose across the harbor grounds at a sharp upstream angle, away from most of the activity. Their pace was a bit troublesome, as it didn’t seem as though there was any official marching rate that would match their guide’s concerned walk. Ian saw the lieutenant purse his lips in consternation at what to do. Ian was trying to think of what he would order in this situation—and being fairly frustrated at his difficulty to think between the noise and motion around them and the mild pounding at his temples. They couldn’t very well adopt a decent pace without either overtaking the man or losing him and having to catch up at intervals. And there was a proud sensibility that they couldn’t just slouch out any sort of march in front of all these people. A good deal of seamen and workers and even some Bevish regulars were about, and while most of them were preoccupied and a long ways off, their company was attracting a good deal of idle curiosity.
“Thought we were going on a real boat,” Rory mumbled beside him.
Ian peered ahead, trying to guess where exactly they were headed. To Rory’s credit, however, he now noticed that there weren’t really any normal ships in this direction. There was just a dock that led out to something he couldn’t see very well, where men and a crane were loading things onto something—which meant that it must be a boat, and if it was a boat they were heading toward—
Really? Ian thought as they came close enough to the river’s edge, steepened by human engineering into a deep canal with a square drop off. Instead of some sizeable, free-floating boat or some other similar vehicle, the dock they were led to jutted out a good distance, nearly to the middle of the river where a black, rectangular platform was sticking just a few feet above the river’s surface. It was only lit in the middle, roughly where the dock led to, but Ian saw that it was wider than that, and the entirety continued downwards, beneath the water that was quietly flowing around it.
“Right this way,” their guide said, sounding as if he was already onto his next chore. “Step lively now, they don’t like having to fish anyone out. Puts ‘em in a rotten mood.”
The company reached the dock, following their guide who fearlessly trotted along toward the platform. They exhibited slightly more hesitation on their part, especially Rory, who worriedly looked over the edge. They produced a little bounce in the dock construction as they went, which didn’t seem to be so much of the permanently fixed type. Ian couldn’t understand why the top was still wet underneath their boots either—
He looked to the left of them and saw to his surprise a series of lights deep beneath the water, stretching out straight upstream for some distance.
Scaling the dock’s length in short order, their guide stopped at the end and motioned them down to the platform and beyond, giving a steady stream of encouragements as he checked his yeoman.
The captain nodded in acknowledgement of the other man—though the other didn’t see that—and stepped down onto the metal platform with a muted clang. His ranking men followed, and then Ian and the other privates.
A slight pause came as the first of them had to walk around to the other side of the open hatch at the middle of the platform. They then started down the steps that were surprisingly well lit from inside the platform and as wide and gradual as anyone could ask for. They were able to go down two at a time, Ian to the right of Rory.
As he stepped down after the others, Ian glanced to his left to see their guide already well away from them. Ian turned his head back upriver and watched the lights as long as he could as he descended beneath the cold metal.
Here I’m in the water up to my knees, Ian thought to himself. And now my waist … shoulders. And here I’m beneath it all now.
The steps continued down a bit less than a story, and at the bottom, a short entranceway led to an exceptionally durable-looking hatchway. Its top blinked green and slid open, creaking with a good deal of weight and authority when the captain drew near. Beyond was another long, cylindrical room hewn from the same metal. But this one had a good deal of activity, the far half of the room looking to be a casual eating space or tearoom that was sparsely dotted with Bevish seamen, regulars, and engineers. The nearer half of the room they had come into was more of a checkpoint, with several heavily armed regulars and low-ranking officers at hand. To either side of them ran heavy metal barriers with alternating gaps that Ian imagined would be very handy to shoot out of. Both barriers slanted toward the center of the room, where they met at a slender gap only wide enough for one person. Looking up at the ceiling, Ian surmised that this entire area could be securely shut off if need be.
A lieutenant at the checkpoint between the two barriers saluted the captain and quickly pointed his yeoman arm at him, immediately setting off a ping in the captain’s yeoman, the rest of their company’s yeomans getting a different sounding acknowledgement a moment later.
“Welcome aboard, sir,” the lieutenant said, stepping aside as they filed past him. “I think you’ll find all your accommodations in good order. Your drawing compartments are three sections
down and marked out for you. Ring any of the consoles onboard if you have any problems at all.”
“Thank you,” the captain said distractedly as they continued past, perhaps noticing and perhaps purposely ignoring the mild attention they held from the various crew and passengers assembled. In fact, the captain slowed a bit so that Lieutenant Taylor was at his elbow. “Truly remarkable, isn’t it?”
Perhaps indeed, Ian thought.
“Yes, sir,” the lieutenant remarked, “can’t say I’ve ever been on a train quite like this.”
Ian wondered at that. Could all of this really be a train? He supposed it made more sense than the dark and jumbled up theories he had been operating on.
“Quite right,” the captain said, more than loudly enough for them all to hear. “This is a Dervish contraption, mark it. Quite old, too. They’re overly fond of these, the Dervish are. I had the privilege of riding one at Malasiers.”
“Indeed?” the lieutenant said, staring up at the bulwarks with fair interest.
“Yes, though all of that territory is ours now as well,” the captain said, pausing at the door. But then he seemed to remember that they had at least two more compartments to go and brightened a little, waving his yeoman in the opening gesture at the hatch’s yellow light that was flashing questioningly at them.
With a snap and a good deal of creaking, it disengaged from the other car and slid off to the right, revealing a somewhat generous hallway that ran the length of the next car, which looked to be the same dimensions as the one they were leaving. This car, however, had drawing compartments on both sides and down its entire length. The interior was also more gently built. The metal was still very present, but the deep chestnut wood and lazy red blinds of the interior made it seem much less intrusive.
Up above them, perhaps the middlemost half of the ceiling was made of the same tough-looking metal, but was translucent. It was a dark, shimmering movement that swept by above them, contrary to the casual progress of their boots on the plush, blue carpet.