Embers of War

by Gareth L. Powell

  Oh, crap.

  If he’d been messing with battlefield medication, there was no telling how fucked up he was. He could be juiced to the eyeballs on amphetamines and synthetic adrenalin.

  I raised my hands, trying to calm the situation.

  “Let’s get one thing clear,” I said. “I am not flying this ship for you. We are on a rescue mission, pure and simple. You’re just tagging along.”

  I saw the muscles around his left eye twitch as if electrocuted. He looked like death. Supported by the exoskeleton, he rose to his feet in one smooth movement. Behind him, his chair tipped over with a crash.

  “No! I’m not going back. Not for you, not for anybody.”

  His eye convulsed again. He seemed to have lost control of that side of his face. Was he having a stroke, or some kind of fit? I took a step backwards, remembering his enhanced strength.

  “The House of Reclamation is an independent and apolitical organisation,” I warned. “Any attempt to threaten or commandeer—”

  With a roar, Childe lunged. I threw up my arms but he swiped them aside. One hand closed over my mouth. The other clasped my shoulder to stop me from struggling. He was close enough now that I could smell his breath. His servo-powered fingers dug into my deltoid muscle, bruising the skin. The pressure of his grip on my jaw forced my lips into an uncomfortable pout.

  “Shut up!” he screamed.

  Light flickered at the edge of my vision as a screen on the galley wall lit to reveal the face of the Trouble Dog’s avatar.

  “Release the captain,” she said.

  Ashton Childe shook his head. The entire left side of his face had contracted into a knot. His cheek muscles jerked and quivered, pulling up the corner of his mouth. His eyelid flickered in agitation.

  “No way.” Sweat poured down his face, and the tendons stood out on his neck like lengths of high-tension steel cable. “I’m in charge now, you hear? You’re going to be taking orders from me.”

  The Trouble Dog looked apologetic. “I am sorry, but that is not an option.”

  I tried kicking his shins, but Childe simply tightened his grip on my face and shoulder. His fingers were like a docking clamp, and I swear I felt my jawbone begin to sag.

  “I don’t want to have to kill a hostage,” he said. His eyes were wild and strangely unfocused. “But I will if I have to.”

  The Trouble Dog glowered. “And I don’t want to have to vent all the air from the room you’re standing in.” Her gaze seemed to burn through the display. “But I will, if I have to.”

  Childe gave a manic laugh, and I was terrifyingly aware that his enhanced fingers could easily crush my skull. “You’re bluffing,” he yelled at the screen. “You’d never risk your captain.”

  The Trouble Dog raised her eyebrows. “You don’t know the first thing about me,” she said, “or what I’m capable of.”

  “I know you resigned your commission.”

  “Yes, Mr Childe.” The Dog lowered her virtual chin. “I resigned my commission because I became tired of pointless slaughter. Yet, if you recall the events of yesterday, you might remember I shot eleven men and women in Northfield in order to secure your escape. Violence doesn’t bother me when it’s done in defence. In fact, I’m rather good at it.”

  As she spoke, Childe’s eyes were on her rather than me. I reached up and stiffened my fingers, shaping my hand like the blade of a trowel. Moving slowly, I pushed it between the ribs of his suit, beneath the inflatable cast, until the tips brushed the bandages covering his gunshot wound. At their touch, his head snapped around, mouth opening.

  “What are you—?”

  I jabbed with every scrap of strength I could muster, driving my nails into the muscles of his abdomen until I felt something give.

  Childe yelled and threw me from him with a force that picked me from my feet and sent me flying back like a piece of windblown laundry. I rolled across the table and onto the floor, landing with a crash that left me gasping for breath.

  Childe had his hand at his gut. Blood welled through the dressings and between the exoskeleton’s struts. My stabbing fingers had found their target, rupturing the sutures. His eyes were screwed tight and his free arm flailed blindly.

  “What have you done?” he cried. “What have you done?”

  Too winded to move, I lay beneath the table where I had fallen and watched him thrashing around, barging into chairs and tables.

  After a minute or so, Alva Clay stepped into the room. She had a thick wrench gripped in her fist, and moved stealthily.

  As she came within striking distance of her target, we exchanged a look.

  Can I hit him now?

  Go right ahead.

  Ducking to avoid Childe’s flailing fists, she crept forward. Her arm wound back, ready to bring the heavy iron wrench down in a savage blow to the back of his head. But before she could unleash the strike, a gun fired twice—phut! phut!—and Ashton Childe crumpled to the floor in a tangle of limbs and carbon-fibre struts.

  In the ensuing silence, we both turned to see Laura Petrushka in the doorway, a crutch under her left arm, a tiny ceramic pistol clasped in her right hand. She looked at the astonishment on our faces and shrugged.

  “He was being a dick,” she said.

  Clay stood over Childe’s slumped form. The wrench dangled from her fingers. “Is he dead?”

  Laura Petrushka hobbled into the room and lowered herself onto one of the few chairs that remained upright. She held out the small pistol. “These are tranquiliser darts,” she explained.

  “How long will he be asleep?”

  “Three or four hours.” She tucked the gun back into the pocket of her dressing gown. “Depends how much other shit he has in his system.”

  I picked myself up from the floor and brushed myself down. Clay looked at me. “What do you want to do with him, Captain? Throw him out the airlock?”

  I massaged my jaw. Nobody knew what happened to bodies ejected from ships in the hypervoid. If we put Childe in a suit and pushed him into the howling emptiness, he might fall through it forever, endlessly tumbling: an eternal monument to his own stupidity.

  “Tempting as it might be, we can’t murder an agent of Conglomeration Intelligence.” My hands began to shake. I squeezed them into fists. For some stupid reason, I felt like laughing.

  “Then what are we going to do with him?” Clay asked.

  From her chair, Petrushka poked Childe’s shoulder with the rubber tip of her crutch. “Let me try talking to him, when he wakes.” She frowned. “If he wakes.”

  I swallowed back the giggle in my throat. “And if that doesn’t work?”

  Clay turned to me. “I’ll go get my Archipelago pistol, chief. Bastard makes one wrong move, I’ll blow a hole through him.”

  I shook my head, feeling a little giddy. “No, no murders.”

  “Then what do you want me to do, tie him up?”

  I gave a snort. “Something along those lines.” I turned my attention to the avatar on the screen. “Ship, get Nod up here.” With the toe of my boot, I nudged the tangled form of the sedated agent. “And tell him to bring a welding torch.”

  THIRTY-ONE

  NOD

  Leave nest and climb to galley, they say.

  Bring gear.

  Climb up three decks and no one says thank you.

  And galley stinks of human food. Meat and vegetables printed from organic ink. Recycled a million times. Stupid omnivores. They have lost their connection to the World Tree. They have forgotten what they are. And so they fight and strive and overcome their niche. They construct ships with innards as challenging to maintain as the fibres of the World Tree. Ships like Hound of Difficulty.

  And I work and maintain.

  And I build nest and sleep.

  Good nest.

  And then they say, “Nod, can you come up to the galley and bring a welding rig?” And when I get there, they ask me to weld male human to deck.

  Male human stinks of narcotics. Smell
comes from pores. Brains scrambled like churned-up riverbed.

  Place welds at every joint of spindly body. Ankles, knees, hips, elbows, wrists. Fix metal and carbon-fibre skeleton in place, so meat can’t move.

  Stupid omnivores.

  They have lost their niche. They only care for power and territory, as if somehow that makes up for losing comfort of knowing World Tree.

  Humans and Druff both paradoxical, but opposite. Humans social but selfish; Druff solitary but happy to share. Druff prefer to be lonely, but feel unthreatened by presence of other Druff. Humans like to be part of group, but hoard and exclude. Want to be with others, but don’t want to share resources. Don’t want to share world.

  I don’t point out species folly. Instead, I fuse man’s exoskeleton to deck plates as told. Sparks jump and sprinkle like flickering insects. Lance hisses. Smoke curls. Melting metal smell momentarily drowns reek of human food. But still smell humans in room. Smell their undertone through my fingers. Spicy, like vinegar and fetid berries. Greasy like dripping remains of fatty animal caught in forest fire.

  Welding sparks fall like rain caught in shaft of sunlight.

  Pattering onto the world.

  Illuminating.

  Hissing.

  But fingers itch. Hound of Difficulty riddled with silly faults. Needs fixing. Always fixing.

  Repair, replace, work, and maintain.

  Work and maintain, until time comes to return to World Tree. Then maintain World Tree until die.

  Serve ships.

  Build nest.

  Good nest. Probably best nest ever.

  Love sleep.

  Love World Tree.

  Love Hound of Difficulty like own tree of world.

  Understand ship.

  Don’t understand humans.

  Humans all broken.

  THIRTY-TWO

  ONA SUDAK

  The individual stairs were too deep to take at a normal pace. To descend, we had to turn sideways and step down one foot at a time, our cold palms sliding against the smooth, pale wall for support. It was a painfully slow process, and I was constantly aware of the speed at which the crawlers would be able to swarm after us if they reached the opening in the canyon wall. Shadows jumped and leapt in the beams from our torches. My thighs and knees, already fatigued from two days of almost ceaseless walking, burned with the repeated strain of lowering my entire body weight on one leg.

  After several revolutions of the spiral, I called for a rest. I estimated we had made a descent of around ten metres, which put us just below the floor of the canyon network. And, if anything, the temperature down here was colder than it had been on the surface. Our breath steamed where the torchlight touched it. The end of my nose felt numb, and icy to the touch—like a piece of raw meat taken from the refrigerator.

  “Just give me a moment,” I said, inwardly cursing each and every evening I had forsaken additional physical training for wine and verse.

  Adam cast troubled glances at the gloom behind us, fearful of pursuit. He hadn’t had time to drift out of shape. He still had that teenage elasticity that all adults secretly resent losing. The scratches on his hands and face would heal faster than the ones on mine. His bones and muscles were young and flexible, and he could take almost anything in his stride.

  How I hated him for that.

  I stood panting with my hands on my knees while he dithered, hardly out of breath.

  Deprived of anything more satisfying than the energy tablets I’d been sucking on for the past two days, my stomach had knotted itself into a tight, angry fist. I felt old, tired and haggard, but still determined to stay alive.

  “You know,” I said between breaths, “they wanted to shoot me after the war.”

  Adam looked at me but didn’t comment. I hadn’t really been speaking to him.

  “Even though we won, and even though what I did probably saved lives in the long run, they wanted to shoot me. Luckily, I had friends in high places, friends with the influence and means to help me disappear.”

  A sudden sadness crowded in on me. If I had been discovered, if our pursuers knew I was the Butcher of Pelapatarn, it could only mean I had been betrayed by one of those former colleagues. The officers of my flagship, the Righteous Fury, had painstakingly obliterated all the physical and digital evidence of my disappearance. My face, height and fingerprints had been altered, and even sections of my DNA had been changed to prevent identification. The only way I could possibly have been traced would have been if one of my friends had chosen to testify as to my whereabouts.

  “They got me out because, no matter the outcry following the burning of the jungles, they knew I’d done the right thing.” I rubbed my face with both hands. The skin felt waxy and loose. “They fought alongside me. They understood that if a soldier has seen a way to save lives by ending a conflict, they have an ethical obligation to do so.”

  I looked over at Adam. He was fiddling with his sleeve. Even though I’d been talking to myself more than I’d been addressing him, his lack of attention still irritated me.

  “What are you doing?”

  He glanced up. “These suits have short-range emergency radios.” He saw the look of alarm on my face and held up a hand. “Don’t worry, I’m not transmitting. I’m not an idiot.”

  I let out a breath. “You won’t get much down here, anyway,” I said. “Radio works via line of sight, and those canyon walls are a pretty big obstacle.”

  “I thought I might hear something from the crawlers. Or, if something passed overhead, like a ship in orbit, I might pick it up.”

  “Have you had any luck with that?”

  “Not so far.” He raised his face to the white stone ceiling—its ribbed surface formed from the underside of the steps we’d trodden on our last circuit of the spiral. “Of course, that could just be because we’re too far underground.”

  After a few minutes of rest and a quick drink of water, we continued to work our way down the oversized staircase, our ears constantly alert for sounds of pursuit. With his longer legs and lighter frame, Adam found the going easier. The aches and pains in my protesting legs eventually obliged me to shelve my pride and allow him to help. As I eased myself over the lip of each step, he took my elbow and supported as much of my weight as he could, taking the pressure from my knees.

  “Thank you,” I said, feeling like an old woman. He merely smiled, eyes averted with the embarrassment the young feel around the elderly and infirm. It was hard to remember that, only three days ago, we’d been enthusiastically fucking each other’s brains out. Now, he saw me as something quite different. The poet he’d worshipped had changed like clay in his hands, shifting to reveal the face of a medusa—a middle-aged war criminal in a pair of dead girl’s shoes.

  “Is it my imagination,” he asked after a few minutes, “or is it getting lighter in here?”

  I had been moving on autopilot, preoccupied with self-pity. But now Adam mentioned it, I realised the air around us had grown almost imperceptibly brighter. The quartz walls and ribbed ceiling were giving off a faint and milky luminescence—one that increased in intensity as we continued our descent, until, after another twenty steps, our torches had become superfluous. We turned them off and stood blinking at each other in the pale light.

  Adam put a palm against the smooth wall. “It’s beautiful,” he said.

  I couldn’t help but agree. “It reminds me of a full moon.”

  “A full moon?” Adam looked puzzled, and I felt an unexpected pang of sorrow at the gulf between us, and the thought of all the wonders he had missed in his half-lived life.

  “When I was a kid back on Earth,” I said quietly, “we had a little hillside farm with a few dozen goats. The way these walls shine reminds me of the way the moonlight lit up the fields at night.”

  “Ah.” Comprehension dawned. “You mean sunlight reflected from the planet’s satellite?”

  “Yes.” I put my own hand to the wall. The stone felt cold through my glove, and
impossibly smooth to the touch. “But there’s more to it than that. Moonlight has its own quality, its own texture.” I struggled to find the words to convey the childhood magic of being out at night with the moon riding high and proud like a galleon in the sky. How I wished I could be back there now, standing at the door of that humble little cottage with the valley picked out before me in silver and shadow, and be adolescent and blameless again, unencumbered by the burdens of adulthood and able to look ahead with neither guilt nor trepidation. I opened my mouth to say something. Before I could speak, the first echoes reached us. Voices from above; the clatter of armour and weapons.

  We looked at each other, eyes wide with alarm.

  We had been found.

  THIRTY-THREE

  SAL KONSTANZ

  Preston stepped back.

  “It’s fine, I think. At least, the skin’s not broken. You’re probably going to have some bruising.”

  He wouldn’t meet my eye. I was sitting on the edge of one of the galley tables. I pulled my jumpsuit closed and zipped it up to the neck. “Thank you.”

  I looked down at Ashton Childe’s comatose form. Nod had done a good job with the welding torch, and now fat blobs of solder held the man in a spread-eagled cruciform, with his closed eyes and slack mouth facing the strip lights on the galley’s ceiling. According to Preston, he’d taken enough methamphetamine to give a platoon insomnia, and it would be several hours before it could all be purged from his system.

  “Call me when he wakes up.”

  Alva Clay still had the wrench dangling from her fingers. “Why, where are you going?” she asked.

  I pushed away from the table and stood up. “To talk to the boss.”

  I could feel her gaze on my back as I left the galley. I walked around the circular corridor to the nearest elevator. When the doors opened, I stepped inside and let it whisk me “up” to the ship’s bridge, close to the centre of the vessel.

  Lit only by the light of its display screens, the bridge felt like a secure cave at the heart of the ship. The room was armoured, could be sealed off from the rest of the ship, and had its own emergency air supply. Even if enemy fire penetrated the main hull, the command crew would still have some level of protection. They would be able to keep fighting, even as the rest of the ship was blown away around them; and, in defeat, they would be among the last of its crew to die.