The Northern Star Trilogy: Omnibus Edition

by Mike Gullickson

  “Wake the giant, what does it matter to me? Or you? Your wife is dead, Aadil. Yes, I know you. And she is truly gone. No God, no paradise, just ink black absence,” the Lindo said.

  With all of his strength, Aadil pulled at the decaying arm that covered his mouth. Hatred ran to his core when he heard the death dummy say his wife’s name. In the dummy’s eye—an eye that should have been an expressionless lens—Aadil saw evil. It ran cold and heavy like water at the bottom of the sea. And it was evil of the worst kind. Indifference.

  The Lindo spoke, but Aadil didn’t hear it. His biceps, old and small, were still strong from their years of toil, strong from the graves he had dug twenty years ago, ten years ago, just a few days ago, because of this thing’s indifference. The Lindo’s arm gave. Too long in the ground, too long close to hell.

  “Haq!” Aadil yelled.

  The generator whine of Haq’s body waking filled the air, and suddenly Haq was over them. He grabbed the Lindo and threw it against a crate. It slid down, seated, watching them, its jaw further cockeyed in a sneer.

  “What are you?” Haq yelled.

  The jaw no longer moved. The Lindo’s voice grew as if the ground itself spoke. “I am many things, Abdul Haq. In some places, everything. “God” is a fitting word, but not here. A god creates, and here I can only maintain or destroy.”

  “Why are you doing this?” Haq asked.

  “This world is an empty husk. So I created another, endless. For me, timeless. And while I would prefer to ignore your world, I must control it to keep mine alive. Turn back. Go to your village and govern. I do not care if you live or die, so I offer you life.”

  “This isn’t a life!” Aadil screamed.

  “It is, Aadil. This is the life you have. It is the lot you have been given,” the Lindo said. “If you go past this borough, you are choosing death.”

  The Lindo’s head began to drift toward its chest, as if the Tank Minor was shutting down. But then the head snapped up and looked around frantically.

  “FATHER!” it yelled. It was a woman’s voice. “Find my father! He will know what to do. His name is John Raimey, he knows Lindo, but he doesn’t know—”

  Whatever presence had suddenly appeared in the death dummy was replaced by Lindo.

  “Go home,” he said.

  The death dummy shut down.

  = = =

  Renfro woke up before dawn and walked over with an alarming case of bed head. With his baby arm he held a cup of coffee that he struggled to drink. Aadil was alone. Renfro could hear Haq’s generator whine off in the distance. He was doing something.

  “Good morning,” Renfro said. He offered his cup of coffee; Aadil declined. “There’s more at my camp,” he added.

  Renfro saw pieces of the death dummy scattered about. Haq had made sure that it wouldn’t wake up again. “He talked, huh?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pretty fucked up, isn’t it?” Renfro took a sip of coffee. “What’d he say?”

  “He said he’d spare us if we went home.”

  Renfro laughed. “How magnanimous of him.”

  Aadil laughed too; a cold sound.

  Haq returned carrying thick pieces of metal. “Will you help us?” he asked Renfro.

  “Of course,” Renfro said. He gestured to his damaged frame. “I don’t know how much I can do, but at the very least I could protect Aadil.”

  “I found the armor that was torn from you,” Haq said. “It’s badly damaged, but I think we can repair your chassis at least a little. Are there still blowtorches and fuel?”

  = = =

  The damage that Renfro had endured was extreme, and both his human body and his battle chassis had paid the price. His torso had healed unevenly; even Renfro hadn’t known this. An ugly wound ran up his side like the ragged crescent of a shark bite. Most of it was covered in a swirl of scar tissue, but a broken rib jutted through like a tooth. Pus trailed down from the exposed bone, but remarkably, whatever infection caused that had never spread.

  It was possible that Renfro would have to hydraulshock in battle, and in his current condition the force would undoubtedly tear his body apart. They had to strengthen his battle chassis. Haq scavenged some steel beams and held them against Renfro’s human body; Aadil welded them to the front and back of the battle chassis. He stopped welding when he saw second-degree burns bubble up on Renfro’s skin, but Renfro urged him to continue.

  “That’ll wake you up,” Renfro said when they were done six hours later. The corner of his eyes watered.

  Next, Haq took a sheet of steel from a building and shaped it to fit over the skeleton they had created. Aadil marveled at Haq’s dexterity, the way his huge fingers could manipulate the steel like an origami artist with paper. Haq asked Aadil to soften sections of the steel with the blowtorch, then he tore them off, whittling the fifteen-foot sheet, shaping and forming it to fit flush with Renfro’s body.

  Aadil shivered with a realization.

  Renfro noticed. “What?” he asked.

  Aadil paused. “I had a hard time converting a pool to a fish pond—and now we’re preparing to fight the man who designed you, a man who now says he’s a god. How can we hope to beat him?”

  “We’re preying on his apathy, Aadil,” Haq said. He walked over and placed the finished armored plating over Renfro’s body. It fit perfectly. “He despises this world. He wants nothing to do with it. You cannot have apathy and be vigilant. It doesn’t work that way. He’s underestimating us.”

  Aadil reminded Haq: “He said we would die.”

  “We’re all going to die. Even him. Weld, please.”

  The hydraulshock on Renfro’s right arm was functional. With Haq’s help, Aadil oiled the gigantic mechanism and they removed the empty magazine, which, like Haq’s, had a capacity of six rounds.

  Renfro and Haq argued over how many rounds to load into his hydraulshock. Renfro said two—they didn’t even know if his body could handle one hydraulshock attack—but Haq wanted all six. Haq argued that the magazines were too heavy for Aadil to carry, so neither of them could get a reload anyway. Renfro acquiesced.

  The three ate their last meal in relative silence. Aadil fed Renfro, who could no longer feed himself now that the new armor covered his deformed arm. Then he removed the armor plate on Haq’s back and fed the nutrient pump as well.

  Then Aadil climbed up each of the giants and mounted their helmets. Together they walked the few miles toward the gate. Kadir, big and crazy, monopolized their thoughts. He was a boogeyman more vile than any child’s nightmare. And he was no figment. Somewhere ahead his black heart beat, and he waited as the two giants and the old man lumbered toward his den.

  The gate stood in front of them.

  “My key was on the other arm,” Renfro said.

  Haq unlocked the door. It cranked open like a bank vault, and another dead zone confronted them.

  “Leave the cart,” Haq said to Aadil.

  “What about the hydraulshocks?” Aadil asked.

  “It won’t matter,” Haq said. “Use the bag. Bring the wrench and the food.”

  Aadil did as he was told, and they walked through the decimated memorial of a civilization’s past toward the next borough. Toward the sea and the city of fog.

  IV

  As they walked through the second dead zone, the woman’s voice from the death dummy played back in Haq’s mind. It was a tell, for sure—a sign that Lindo didn’t control everything. Was Lindo even aware of what had happened?

  Haq knew it meant nothing for the three of them, but it meant something somewhere. And the name the woman had called out registered with Haq: John Raimey. He was the first successful implementation of the Tank Major, built nearly thirty-five years before.

  Raimey was a legend. A Tank Major over-engineered to the point of perfection. The Tank Majors who followed, while still remarkable, were never as intricate or powerful as Raimey. Not even Haq.

  The woman had said that Raimey was her father. A puzzle pi
ece . . . and not a reassuring one, dropped thousands of miles away from where it might be useful.

  They reached the next door. Crusted pieces of sand and clay lay at its base.

  “Ready?” Haq asked.

  “Ooh-rah,” Renfro replied. Aadil nodded.

  “I’ll lead. Protect Aadil unless I’m really in the shit.”

  Haq used the key. The door cranked open to a wall of fog as thick as cigar smoke. It made no attempt to encroach into the dead zone.

  “It’s hot,” Aadil said.

  “It’s steam,” Haq replied.

  While the heat hit them like a blast furnace, the wall of fog did nothing but twirl and rise, twirl and rise. The shrill cry of a seagull came from out and below. They could hear the ocean crashing against the bottom of the rocky cliff they now stood upon.

  It felt like a portal to another dimension. To Aadil, a point of no return. Walking into the fog was walking into a certainty. Not of what lay ahead—he had no idea—but of what no longer lay behind. Fear poisoned his resolve. Flight yelled for him to run, but he remembered why he was here: Batrisyla. The boy. What is right. He felt her eyes upon him and his strength returned.

  Without a word, Aadil stepped into the fog. A moment later, the giants followed.

  The constant cry of the gulls alerted them that they were up high, but the fog annihilated all other senses. Aadil left the giants at the entrance and moved ahead slowly on all fours until he found the edge of the cliff. He searched for a way down, and uncovered stairs cut into the rock side. They were precise and large, designed for Tank Majors.

  He pressed himself to the rock wall and called to Renfro and Haq. He kept talking so they could follow his voice. Visibility was so poor that Haq almost ran into him.

  They slowly made their way down the stairs.

  = = =

  The good eye of Kadir, the Moldy Giant, rolled open. He blinked out gray goo until he could see. God was speaking to him again. The voice bellowed over the others. He was face down; he didn’t remember how or why.

  Beneath him the ground was soft. Kadir put his giant metal hands down to right himself, and they sank in. A wet sound escaped—like a meaty whoopee cushion—and echoed in the cave.

  The smell made Kadir gag, and he realized that he had fallen asleep hungry, but had awakened full. God spoke to him, and his voice was like a thousand-watt loudspeaker pressed to his head. He felt his brain swirl; he felt the other voices rise. He grew faint.

  He was told he had visitors and that they must die.

  = = =

  The steam pulsed heat like a heartbeat. Aadil navigated the fog-drenched stairs cut into the cliff on all fours. Terrified of the blind turns, his shirt was soaked from the heat and stress. Renfro and Haq followed closely, tight against the wall, listening for Aadil’s voice as his direction changed. Beads of water rolled off the giants’ battle chassis like waterfalls, and the condensation on their faceshields made it nearly impossible to see.

  “A town can’t be below this. No one can live like this,” Aadil said to himself, but he knew the truth. Kadir was here. People were here. Alive was different than living.

  Halfway down, the fog began to lift, and they got a cataract view of the village. Off in the distance, toward the gray nothing of the ocean, they saw the haloed lights of Chao’s home. It was a massive warship moored at the end of a long pier. Two cooling towers behind it poured steam into the sky like an active volcano.

  “Have you ever seen such a thing?” Aadil asked the giants. In their milky helmets, they shook their heads no.

  Spotlights on the pier swooped back and forth.

  “If they have a destroyer class minigun, anti-aircraft flak, anything, this is going to be a short assault,” Renfro said.

  Their feet touched down into the borough. It was like walking into purgatory. Fog covered the town, soaking it in dew. Water dripped off a nearby railway, off everything, but there was no rain, just a heavy mist. The straw on the nearby roofs was dark and matted, and a thick carpet of mold grew on top.

  “We have to deal with Kadir first,” Haq said as he plodded past.

  The ground was less sand than wet clay. Aadil’s feet sank in, and when he pulled them out they made a sucking sound. He had never seen such a thing in his lifetime.

  A few working streetlamps were scattered ahead. They emitted a blotted glow, but the fog choked out the light, and they revealed nothing except the outlines of the nearest buildings.

  To their left was a house. In a pen, a donkey stared at them wild-eyed as it chewed on hay. Aadil thought he saw similar eyes peeping from the house window, but whether real or imagined, they disappeared back into the dark.

  “People live here,” Aadil said in disbelief. He looked over to Haq, but couldn’t see his face through the condensation on his faceshield.

  Aadil took off his shirt and ordered Haq to bend down. He used it to wipe the dew away. He did the same for Renfro. They continued on.

  Haq didn’t have thermal or night vision—those modifications came after his time—and the fog made it very difficult to see. He hadn’t expected this. Tank Minors could be creeping along the rooftops like spiders at this very moment. Newer, faster Majors could be just out of sight waiting to dismember him with titanic, artillery-sized blows. Fear—an emotion Haq hadn’t experienced in a long time—grabbed hold. He shook it off. It did him no good.

  For Haq, a line had been crossed when he watched the life extinguished from his sister’s eyes. He recognized his hypocrisy. Had it been another woman crushed underneath him, he would have stayed in his underground cave as the radiation ate away at him. But Haq also recognized that in hypocrisy was truth. A slurring drunk telling someone to put the drink down. An adulterer proclaiming that the path to happiness is true love. For Haq, a war machine who had killed thousands, now avenging the sanctity of life. A hypocrite’s glass house is built from the bones of what could have been. Regrets that cannot be undone. Wasted time that cannot be rewound. Hypocrites shout at us through the glass, telling us to not come in. They have taken a sinful path, only to come back wiser and warn us of its peril. But we choose to despise them instead of listen.

  Haq would rather die a hypocrite than live a stubborn fool. And now it was time. Kill Kadir. Kill Chao and any others. Save what children he could for his sister’s memory. For Allah’s forgiveness.

  “I’ll lead,” Haq said to Renfro. “Can you protect Aadil?”

  “Sure.” Renfro knelt down. “Get up here, bud.”

  Aadil climbed up on the giant and sat like a child on his dad’s shoulders.

  “They know we’re here. No reason to be discreet,” Haq said.

  Haq’s body shuddered like an old car downshifting. A low, electric noise deep inside him built slowly. The two thick waist chains spun up in opposite directions. Their speed quickened, and then the two connected. Within thirty seconds they were spinning at a furious pace, so fast they looked like they were floating. Renfro followed suit.

  “Don’t go near the chains,” Renfro warned his shoulder mate.

  Aadil caught movement to the left of him: the donkey had seen enough. Aadil turned back just in time to see Haq disappear ahead of them into the fog.

  Renfro trailed Haq by twenty yards, a standard military spacing.

  “If shit goes down, I’ll put you on a roof or something,” Renfro said to Aadil. “I’ll come back for you afterwards, cool? Play dead, by the way.”

  “For Kadir?”

  “For everyone. We’re so close, I have no idea what will happen. Kadir runs the borough. Chao commands the ship and all the shit going on there. Will the soldiers on the ship wait? Will they come to us? Who knows? They’ve worked together before.”

  Aadil turned to his right. With his head seesawing above the one-story buildings, he saw the gray outline of the ship-base. It was miles away yet still looked huge.

  “Why are we walking away from the base?” he asked.

  “We need to find Kadir. His bunker is
most likely against that cliff wall.”

  As they followed Haq deeper into the borough, it was clear that most of the residents were either gone or dead. Occasionally they heard something scurry or saw a shadow slip across an alley. Animal or human, it was hard to tell. But there were no whispers, no cries from a child. No lights on in the few houses that remained standing. Nothing to say, “We are here.”

  Most of the houses were caved in like rotted Halloween pumpkins left too long on the stoop. It was the moisture. The constant, unrelenting moisture.

  “Look,” Renfro whispered. A man and woman watched them from a window. The man was holding a pitchfork. They were pale and looked confused, their faces framed with black.

  Soon after, Aadil realized they were being followed. Ghostly figures, quiet and filthy, watched them from the alleys. They compounded the dream-like state caused by the fog and made Aadil feel horribly vulnerable. These people moved alley to alley, keeping pace with the giants as they progressed deeper into the borough. Haq paid them no attention; he kept walking for the cliff. But Renfro and Aadil could not ignore them: their humanity had been torn from their souls.

  A woman ran between Haq and Renfro and stopped for a moment to catch her breath. A sagging breast hung out of her shirt. Her hair looked like something pulled from a drain. Her chest rattled. She must have only seen Haq at first, because when she noticed Renfro, she nearly fell before scrambling back the way she came.

  Haq saw the crowd of rat people growing, and he waited for Renfro and Aadil to catch up.

  “These people are broken,” Renfro said.

  A rock flew out of an alley and hit Haq on the helmet, then clanged harmlessly to the ground. Haq turned toward the dark and paused. There was no more retaliation.

  “What happened to them?” Aadil asked.

  “Kadir tried to wipe them out. The people revolted,” Haq replied.

  “How do you know this?”

  “There were crude drawings on some of the houses. They tried to burn him.”

  = = =

  The woman with the exposed breast died immediately when the cold metal hand of Kadir wrapped around her waist. Her organs chose the path of least resistance, exiting from both ends like a run-over frog.