Crystal Rain

by Tobias S. Buckell

  Pepper walked around the cockpit and stretched.

  “Something is trying to board the ship,” Ma Wi Jung said. “It is using acid to try and eat through the hull.”

  “Show me.” The front of the cockpit lit up to show a blue tunnel of ice, and the Teotl’s fuzzy face dripping acid against the side of the hull. “Is there any way to stop it?”

  “I have no weapons. My fitting was never completed. But I do have stabilizing jets near this location.”

  “Fire them,” Pepper ordered, and watched. The scene didn’t change for several seconds. Then a wall of steam exploded through the tunnel, blowing the Teotl with it. “Did the creature damage the hull?”

  “No. The hull remains unbreached.”

  Pepper walked out of the cockpit. “Where is the galley?” His tea would be the first small luxury in a long time. Then it was time to try to make the Ma Wi Jung fly. Pepper wasn’t a Pilot, just impatient.

  “Ma Wi Jung,” Pepper asked. “Do I have the authorization to fly?” He walked into the small galley and opened the cupboards until he found a mug snug inside a bracket.

  “You do not have the necessary implants. You are not authorized.”

  Pepper sighed. “What about automatic pilot?”

  “This ship will only fly within planetary atmosphere by automatic pilot. The human pilot in recovery is required for any orbital or extrasolar activity.”

  Pepper smiled. That would do.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT

  The first thing Oaxyctl did was grab the sled on his way out. The shotgun could serve no purpose. He couldn’t shoot the Ma Wi Jung with it, he didn’t even know where under the ice to shoot the ancient machine. There was no game that he knew of on this icy expanse to shoot, but Pepper had let Oaxyctl grip the shotgun when he’d thrown him out the door, so Oaxyctl pushed the weapon under the sled’s supplies. Oaxyctl limped with the sled out onto the ice and slid around as he pushed with his good foot, the whole time glancing over his shoulder, waiting for his death to come.

  After several minutes of slipping around, he paused and looked back at the mound.

  An explosion of steam blew out of the ground. Oaxyctl dove for cover, expecting more displays of power from the device they had found.

  He waited for the next ten minutes until he realized more explosions wouldn’t come, then he pushed the sled out over to the hole to investigate.

  It didn’t take long to find his god. It lay on the snow, mewling, fur burnt off and sheets of skin red and blistered.

  Oaxyctl sat on his sled and watched it squirm.

  This thing had remade itself into a shape that could live on the snow. Large, padded feet, fur, and blubber. Blubber that had been fried and smelled like meat.

  He watched it heal itself.

  The process looked almost as painful as the burns. The skin cracked and tried to reform. Goop spilled out onto the snow. It looked clear after several minutes that this god would not be able to heal itself. It didn’t seem to have the energy.

  It stopped mewling and stiffly turned its newly grown face toward him, a fleshy stalk of eyes and nose.

  Oaxyctl thought about Pepper’s and John’s unconcern about his heresy. He thought about the gods differing with each other on what to do, and the fact that they depended on men to do their bidding. If he was going to die, he was going to try something first.

  Oaxyctl pulled the shotgun out and aimed it at the Teotl’s head.

  He pulled the trigger, wincing from the loud sound, and watched the Teotl’s head explode. It dropped to the snow. Oaxyctl fired again, wiping ooze off his cheeks that had splattered back on him from standing too close. Then he went and looked for the ax.

  He doubted the god could regrow itself after being hacked apart.

  The job wasn’t easy. The creature had bones of metal, and parts that shocked and sparked him. But he kept at it until he could throw pieces of the god out into the snow as he worked.

  When he was done, Oaxyctl packed the gun and ax back on his sled.

  Covered in the blood of one of his gods, he pushed off the ice and into the deep snow.

  The mound behind began to snap and crack. Oaxyctl turned to watch. A five-hundred-foot length of silvered metal broke free of the ice. It looked like a sleek bird, with great wide-open mouths around each of its sides facing eagerly forward into the air.

  The Ma Wi Jung, he thought.

  It rose, hovering with a great rumble that shattered the silence in the air. Then it flew over Oaxyctl, casting a big shadow over him. It sped up until it was no more than the size of his fist, his fingernail, a dot, then gone.

  Oaxyctl turned back to trudge through the snow.

  He had enough supplies to last for almost a week. Pepper had built shelter out of the ice a little over a day’s walk away. He could live this last week well.

  Death didn’t scare him. Nothing scared him anymore.

  Oaxyctl walked across the snow, a small dot in the almost infinite expanse. He knew he was trapped in the ice and would die here. La Revanche was too far away by now, using its steam power to trundle away from him faster than he could walk. He’d known it the second he was thrown out.

  But he still felt a tiny bit exhilarated, free, and a little bit relieved.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-NINE

  A simple question: Who am I?

  “You are John deBrun.”

  What is a John deBrun? What does that mean? What’s happening?

  “You are being repaired. You’ve suffered extensive trauma, frostbite, and cognitive impairment: a retrogade amnesia.”

  How? Why?

  “You ordered it. Your low-level personal nano is being stimulated back online.”

  What?

  “You will understand in half an hour. Exedyne Bio is not liable for any psychosis or personality fragmentation that occurs as a result of this procedure.”

  John lay in a thick soup of some sort.

  “Do you remember the last time you were in a medpod?”

  The block removed itself. The sensation of being suspended by chemicals, tiny machines roving throughout his body to stitch it back together, returned. Radiation damage reversed, trauma reversed. Saline feeds. Yes, he thought. This is familiar. I’ve done it before.

  A survival pod. Extended periods …

  “How long?”

  John accessed that memory.

  He smashed his fists against the pod window and screamed. He heard nothing, fluid filled his mouth and lungs.

  He knew why he’d buried those memories.

  “Please Mr. deBrun, let me help you. Relax. We will help you manage this.”

  His muscles sagged, his throat collapsed.

  That’s right, John, let the nice machine help you, he thought. When it’s done, we can get out. We’re not trapped. We’re not in space. We’re still in the Ma Wi Jung and Pepper is just outside.

  This will only take a few hours.

  Not centuries.

  He relaxed. A bit. He was a strong, mean little shit. Fuck claustrophobia, he thought. I can handle it just a little more. But someone would pay for all this. Pay hard. He wanted people to hurt, and hurt bad, because that’s what happened when they screwed with him.

  No, no, that wasn’t it. He wanted to get back and find Jerome. That was it.

  Who?

  My damn son!

  John lay there, his mind split and groaning under a new, and far more ancient, load.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY

  Commotion spread through the cavern. Jerome watched several women run to the edge of the water as men broke the surface with scudder-fish.

  “Granpa Troy!” someone shouted. “No, no, not him.”

  Jerome ran across the sand, water sucking into the spaces of his footprints. The Frenchi men stood around Troy, whom they’d pulled onto the sand.

  “You should have seen he,” the nearest said. “Them Azteca were burning the house, and he left the water. He had fight them with he hand. He were fast. So fast you coul
d hardly see.”

  Jerome saw at least ten bullet holes. Slashed flesh was everywhere he looked, peeking through ripped clothing.

  “He insist on coming back.”

  “Hey,” someone protested. “Get the child out of here.”

  With dark looks the women surrounded Jerome, but Troy raised a bloody hand. “Bring Jerome here,” he hissed.

  Jerome swallowed. Troy wasn’t like the mongoose-man he’d seen on their table when he’d fallen out of the tree. Troy was still speaking and moving.

  People muttered as Jerome stepped forward and sat next to Troy.

  Troy grabbed his neck. Water and blood dripped down Jerome’s shoulders and collar.

  “You … you like Pepper,” Jerome said.

  “Something like him, yeah,” Troy said. “Only Pepper heal, and I don’t.” Troy leaned his head back on the sand. “Remember what I tell you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Everything I know about we history, it in that desk I show you. Just take John, you father, to the desk and have him talk to it. And remember this, the wormhole is being fix. And them Teotl, they ain’t just coming for this world. They coming for all the world-them that have people living on it. You understand? Tell him the wormhole go be fix.”

  Jerome looked down at Troy. Blood leaked out of the corner of the man’s mouth. “I think I understand.”

  Troy didn’t reply.

  Jerome waited another few seconds until the men pulled him away. He sat in the corner of the cavern, away from everyone, quiet. So much blood, he thought. Everyone dies, even the powerful ones like Troy and Pepper.

  Was no one safe? Even the old-fathers?

  Suppose Dad was dead? If Troy died, what chance did Dad have?

  Jerome cried into his knees, muffling the sound so no one could hear him or come find him in the dark.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  Three mongoose-men guided Dihana through an underground sewer filled with dirty, wet women and children huddled around each other. They piled quietly up against the sewer walls, shoved aside by the mongoose-men as they tramped down the middle. A mongoose-man ran forward, peered around a corner, then nodded. They followed it around into more ragged-looking refugees from the streets, climbed up rusty iron stairs, and Dihana broke to the street level back into hell.

  Spotlights lit up the sky over Capitol City, stabbing out in search of Azteca airships making bombing raids in the dead of night. One by one the Capitol City airships had gone up against the Azteca, but there were just too many, and now only a few struggled to keep the sky over the city safe.

  “This way, ma’am.” A gentle tug on her elbow. Dihana walked swiftly with them down the alleyway toward a makeshift hospital. They were out near the harbor, she could smell the salt on the air. They were near the wall, but apparently the Azteca hadn’t bombed this section much.

  Moaning wounded filled the portable cots that lined the alleyway. The sewers were too dangerous, unpredictable tides swept them clean, and large enough buildings for this many wounded were targeted by Azteca bombs. The alley was the best they could do.

  A woman with her head bound in bloody rags shuffled out of Dihana’s way, but didn’t seem able to focus on anything. Two small children huddled next to her.

  A round whistled far overhead and struck a building. The children flinched at the sound of the impact, and the rain of broken brick afterward.

  Someone’s steady sobs carried over the cobblestones.

  The mongoose-men conferred with a nurse dressed in a long and shabby beige dress. Splotches of blood darkened the plain material. The nurse pointed. “He just down here.”

  Dihana walked past the rows of suffering. Nine rows down she kneeled next to Haidan’s cot and took his hand in hers. He opened his eyes.

  “Edward.” She used his first name, and he smiled. “I came the moment I heard you were awake again. We really need you.” She stroked Haidan’s cheek. The Azteca had pushed the mongoose-men, and any volunteers willing to pick up a gun, back to the last ring. Several times it had looked as if the sheer mass of Azteca warriors would break over the last line, but the mongoose-men held. And they were paying for it.

  And so was the city. They had been naive to think that the walls alone would save them. The Azteca airships constantly tried to fly over the city and drop bombs. Something hit a house several roads over, the ground rumbled. Azteca flares floated down through the air, giving the night an eerie red glow that flickered in the corners and crevices. They were trying to see what damage they might have done.

  Dihana looked up the tall expanse of the city wall, stories over her head. She could see the dim shapes of soldiers moving around, reloading, resting.

  “We go fall soon, right?” the nurse asked.

  “No,” Dihana said, defiant. “The city can hold.”

  “We hope.” The nurse set a bowl of fresh bandages by the bed.

  A fourth mongoose-man ran up.

  “The boat ready?” his companions asked him.

  “What boat?” Dihana asked.

  “Gordon says you should run for Cowfoot Island,” the nearest soldier explained. “You could try and regroup people there. The Azteca ain’t as good with boats like they are with weapons.”

  But the fourth man shook his head. “Azteca have some boat outside Grantie’s Arch. We moving men and cannon out to face the sea.”

  “And besides, the airships can reach Cowfoot just as easily as a ship can.” Dihana clenched the edge of the cot. The city was now surrounded in every conceivable way. She looked at the mongoose-men assigned to protect her. “Go,” she ordered. “Get on the walls. And the boat you would have me run away in, use it. Get guns on it.”

  “We suppose to protect you. We can’t just leave.”

  “There might be nothing to protect come morning. Go.”

  The four mongoose-men broke and left. Dihana took the bandages and helped the nurse lift the sheets from over Haidan. She winced when she saw the bloody, seeping wounds on his stomach.

  He squeezed her hand and drifted away again.

  Hang in there, she willed. Please wake back up. She wanted to talk to him at least once more.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  The pod released John just as the sun dimmed and night fell. Pepper watched John groggily walk into the cockpit and sit down, frowning when the cushions adjusted themselves around him.

  Did he have his memories back? Was he fit? Pepper watched John’s every movement.

  “Where are we?” John asked.

  “Over sea, circling, letting Ma Wi Jung fly herself. She isn’t fully online, so we can’t skip out of the atmosphere just yet. Plus, it needs you for that sort of thing. I can only access autopilot for nonorbital flight.” Pepper smiled. “John, how are you feeling?”

  “You son of a bitch.” John put his head in his hands. “Asshole.”

  “Maybe. But only you can pilot this thing out to the next star system with a wormhole. I want to go home, John. I miss Earth.”

  John looked up at him. The pod had given John a shave, repaired his thigh, and given him a new hand. As far as Pepper could tell, John didn’t seem to be paying attention to the change.

  “You’ve brought it all back. I have memories.” John sniffed and cleared his throat. His eyes wrinkled. “I considered killing you for this. I don’t need this shit.”

  “You were wandering around being a little Pollyanna,” Pepper said. “Oh, look at me, I’m different without my memory. Oh, I have feelings. Oh, I forgot I helped pull the trigger on an entire damned solar system. It was time to set your priorities back in order.”

  “That’s what I didn’t want to remember. I didn’t want any of that back. I didn’t want sitting in the pod back. I certainly didn’t want you back.”

  “That’s a shame. John, I need out of here.” This conversation was going nowhere.

  John shifted in the seat, brushed his hair back, and stared at his new hand. “You’re right.”

  Pepper nod
ded. “Better.”

  “You were right. This ship isn’t the weapon they had hoped for back at Capitol City. But we still need to help them. Capitol City can’t hold out long. You know that. We can’t just leave them to the Teotl and Azteca.”

  Pepper sighed. “I have done more than my bit here, John. I was there as protection with you when they terraformed. I was with you when the first Teotl came through, I helped create a defense. I was with you when we realized there was nothing we could do against them. And, John, I helped destroy the wormholes to gain us time to stop the Teotl. You know where that got me? Over two hundred and ninety-seven years of drifting in space.” Pepper threw the teacup by his elbow at John, a snapping motion so quick his hands blurred.

  John caught the cup with his left hand. A few small drops struck his dirty shirt. A few more stained the carpet, then faded.

  With a faint smile, John looked at the teacup and his new hand.

  Then he set it on the floor by his feet.

  “Two hundred and seventy-one,” he said.

  “What?”

  John blinked tired eyes. “When the wormhole was severed, I floated for two hundred and seventy-one years before the pod could eke its way back to Nanagada. I’ve been living in retirement for twenty-seven years. Six years in Brungstun, sailing, two in Capitol City and sailing north the first time, and nineteen married to my wife. I have a son, Pepper, that kinda shit changes people.” John grabbed the malleable cushion on either side of his thighs with fists. “I’m still here, with the old memories coming back now that you ‘healed’ me, but I know more things about life, Pepper. Twenty-seven more years’ worth than I had before. I can’t get rid of those, and they’re giving me one hell of a headache I can’t ignore.”

  Pepper stood up. “What do I have to do to get you to fly us home?”

  “Home. To get home, Pepper, we will have to fly almost thirty light-years to reach the nearest wormhole. Even there no one lives to help us, it is just a random dead system, a transit point. How long will that take in this ship? More hundreds of years? I know your body will last that long, and the recycling in this ship will handle it just like our pods did. But can your mind?”