Embers of War

by Gareth L. Powell

  FORTY-ONE

  SAL KONSTANZ

  “So, what do you think?”

  “I think he’s full of shit.” Alva Clay shook her head. “Right now, he’d say anything to save his sorry ass.”

  We were in the ship’s circular corridor, a short walk from the galley. I glanced at Laura Petrushka. “And you?”

  She looked up from her chair. “I think he means it.”

  I took off my cap and ran my fingers around the rim. The clean clothes and shower had been an excellent idea, and had done me the world of good. I almost felt human again. “How long have you known him?”

  “A couple of years.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  She hesitated. “Up until this morning, I would have said no.”

  “And now?”

  She smiled. “Now, he’s no longer working for the opposition.”

  “So he says.”

  “I think he’s telling the truth. If he goes back now, they’ll throw him in a hole so deep he’ll never see the sky again.”

  Alva let out a snort. “If he even makes it back.”

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?” Laura said, frowning at her.

  Alva stuck out her chin. “Dude tried to take our ship, and that’s mutiny. We’d be well within our rights to frag him and toss him out the airlock.”

  I worked my bruised shoulder, trying to ease the tautness from it. Childe had made a mistake and, if he meant what he said about joining the House, was genuinely trying to compensate for his actions. I could sympathise with that. Since losing George, all I’d done was try to atone for that one moment of inattention that had cost the man his life.

  “Nobody’s getting spaced.”

  “But, Captain—”

  “No!” There had been enough death on this ship. “We need all the help we can get right now. If Childe’s sincere, he’ll be more use to us alive than dead.”

  Alva scowled, but I could see she knew I was right. Our medic was young and inexperienced, and we were flying into a potentially dangerous situation, facing unknown odds and weaponry we could barely understand, let alone defend against. If we were to complete our mission and escape with our lives, we would need as many proficient crewmembers as possible—and Childe’s insights might well prove as valuable as his medical skills.

  “You can’t use him,” Laura said. “He needs rest. If you keep him on his feet, he’s going to die.”

  I shrugged. “That’s his problem.” I narrowed my eyes at Alva. “But maybe you can help him,” I suggested.

  She blinked in surprise. “Do what?”

  “You’ve both had jungle postings. You know what it’s like. There’s common ground there.”

  She laughed. “Common ground?” She held her palms up, as if waving away gibberish. “This fucker spends a couple of years drinking lichen-flavoured ethanol in a compound somewhere and you think we have common ground?” She turned to Laura Petrushka. “You were on Cichol, weren’t you? What do you think? How does hanging around an airport compare to six months crawling through a sentient jungle, with enemies skulking in every shadow and trees that murmur to you the whole goddamn time, even in your sleep? Can you tell me that, lady? Can you actually make that comparison?”

  Laura shrank back a little in her wheelchair, but her expression stayed stony. “You don’t know what it was like for him.”

  “I can fucking guess.”

  “Then you should be more sympathetic.” The older woman sat up straight, gripping the arms of her chair. “This isn’t a competition, or a game of ‘I’m-more-traumatised-than-you’. That poor sod suffered every moment he was in that stupid jungle, just as you suffered in yours. And if your experience led you to seek refuge here, then you of all people should understand his reasons for wanting to do the same!”

  The conversation broke up. Alva Clay stormed off to the armoury, to oil and polish the weapons racked on the walls. It was how she dealt with stress. Laura Petrushka wheeled herself away in the opposite direction, to contemplate the churns of the hypervoid from the Trouble Dog’s observation deck.

  And I returned to the galley.

  “All right,” I said to the man welded to the deck, “suppose I gave you a chance. What could you offer me in return?”

  Ashton Childe looked up from the floor, his expression that of a man hardly daring to hope. “What would you want?”

  “Complete specs on this hypothetical weapon?”

  “I don’t have them.”

  “Then how about you level with me about the real aim of your assignment?” I put my hands in my pockets. “Because if you were willing to try ’jacking a Carnivore, I reckon it had to be an objective of some pressing importance.”

  Childe laughed. “I was looking for a poet.”

  This was not a response I had anticipated. “Seriously?”

  “I’m afraid so.”

  For a moment, I considered walking out of the room. But curiosity got the better of me. “Why?”

  “I don’t know.” He wrinkled his nose. “Because I was ordered to.”

  “And last night?”

  “A mistake.” He cast around for inspiration. “A terrible misunderstanding. It won’t happen again.”

  I flexed my troublesome shoulder.

  “You threw me across the room,” I said with as much quiet dignity as I could muster, given the circumstances. “Now, I don’t care how fucked up you are, I’m going to need a cast-iron guarantee that will never happen again. Otherwise, I’m going to ask my friend Alva to put a shell from her Archipelago pistol right through the back of your skull.” I drew back. “Do we understand each other, Mr Childe?”

  He smiled up at me. “Of course.”

  “You’re not going to do anything stupid?”

  “I’ve learned my lesson.” He looked solemn. “Besides, you’re my last hope. If I can’t find a place in the House, I’m pretty much screwed six ways to Sunday. I’m not going to do anything to jeopardise that.”

  “You’re sure, now?”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  * * *

  I called Nod to release the welds, and the Druff came grumbling up from its lair in the engine room, its hand-faces padding on the metal deck, its six limbs flailing in unpredictable waves, like the thrashings of a drunk octopus trying to climb a flight of stairs. It smelled like peppermints and seaweed. In one mouth, it clasped a welding torch.

  “Where, want?” it asked with one of his feet.

  I circled a finger at Childe’s recumbent figure. “I think we can release him now.”

  Nod quivered. It raised some of its hand-faces to the air, lowered others to the deck. “Think or know?”

  I sighed. “Matters, how?”

  A trio of coal-black eyes peered up at me from the raised face. “Maybe lots, maybe less.” Leaving four limbs firmly planted on the deck, it curved the fifth around to ignite the torch. The blue flame hissed like the sound of distant surf.

  “Just cut him loose.” It was a risk, but according to the Trouble Dog, we might all be dead soon anyway. And if not, I was going to need every able body I could muster in order to help rescue the survivors from the crashed liner.

  “Yes, Boss-captain.”

  The flame narrowed, paling into virtual invisibility, and the creature moved itself closer to the prone figure of Childe. Soldered joints softened. The scent of hot metal rose, and suddenly the man was free. I watched him stretch his arms and roll his neck, trying to work the circulation back into his crucified limbs. The exoskeleton amplified every movement, and for an instant I wondered if I had made a mistake. I’d already felt the power of that suit, and the ease with which it had allowed him to hurl me aside.

  “You’re serious about joining the House?” I managed to keep my voice steady and businesslike.

  “Yes.”

  “Then I want you in the infirmary.” My tone told him I wasn’t afraid. “I want you helping Preston. The kid doesn’t know much, but he’s eager to learn.�
� I rubbed the tip of my nose. “At least, I hope he is. Otherwise, I’m going to have to throw his indolent butt off this ship, and hire myself somebody new.”

  “Yes, Captain.” Childe touched two fingers to his brow in a casual salute, and walked stiffly from the room, moving like a man trying to remember how to use his legs.

  When he had gone, I sagged against the nearest table. My hands were shaking and my heart rattled like a motor trying to tear loose from its mounting. Nod was packing away the cutting torch and muttering about the smell from the dishwasher. It didn’t often venture into the human-occupied sections of the ship, and I got the impression it would much rather be down in the dirty, grease-smelling bowels of the engine room than up here, breathing the scents of our bodies and food.

  The Trouble Dog’s avatar was watching me from the wall screen. Her computer-generated features had the impassivity of a doll.

  “Do you trust him?”

  She was talking about Childe. I surprised myself with a bark of laughter.

  “No.”

  “Alva wants to eject him.”

  I perched on the corner of the table, one booted foot on the deck, the other dangling. “I know.”

  “He will be passing the main airlock in forty-seven seconds. If you want me to, I can override the safety mechanisms and vent that entire section of corridor.”

  I rubbed my face, and was ashamed to find myself momentarily entertaining the suggestion.

  “No, we’re too short-handed. We need him.” I let my shoulders slump. The sound I made came somewhere between an exhalation of tension and a sigh of regret. “Just keep an eye on him for me and make sure he doesn’t get up to mischief.”

  “And if he does?”

  “Keep a combat drone close to him. Don’t let him see it, but have it there just in case. If he does anything to imperil you or any member of the crew, you can do what you like.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “How are things going with your siblings?”

  “Badly. I’m afraid we’re going to have to fight them.”

  “Can we wait for reinforcements?”

  “They’re killing the survivors of the liner crash. If we wait, there won’t be anyone left to rescue.”

  * * *

  I found Alva in the armoury. She was in the middle of stripping down an antique Managlese plasma rifle, and the various parts of the weapon were arrayed before her on the tool bench. The room smelled of gun oil and metal. When the Trouble Dog had been on active service, it would have held enough weaponry for the ship’s complement of 150 marines. Now, most of the wall-mounted racks were empty, and all the guns here belonged to Clay. I had a couple of automatic pistols for emergency use, but kept them in a locker in my cabin. I walked over to the bench and looked at the half-disassembled plasma rifle.

  “Nice gun.” The Manag were a multi-limbed and warlike race from the coreward reaches of the Multiplicity. I’d never seen one of the creatures in the flesh, but knew aficionados prized the weapons they made for their rugged durability.

  “Thanks.”

  “Are we okay?”

  She didn’t look up. “Depends what you mean by okay.”

  I watched her work a small brush into the rifle’s barrel. She pushed it in and out a few times, then withdrew it and blew down the pipe.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Just okay, I guess.”

  “You’re still the captain.”

  “Was there some possibility I might not be?”

  Carefully, Alva laid her tools on the bench. “I promised myself when I signed on that if you were a complete asshole I’d frag you and take command of the ship.”

  She said it so matter-of-factly that the breath caught in my throat. “And yet you haven’t?”

  “No.”

  “Can I ask why not?”

  Wrists still resting against the edge of the bench, she flexed her fingers. The tattoos on her arms rippled. “You’re not a total asshole.”

  “Thank you.”

  “It’s not a compliment.” There was an edge to her voice as hard and inflexible as any of the guns displayed in this mostly empty room. I stepped back from the bench.

  “From you, it sounds like one.”

  “Well, it’s not.”

  We stood in silence, neither wanting to be the first to speak. Finally, I cleared my throat and asked, “So, are we okay? Can we work together?”

  Alva looked down at the dismembered rifle. “You mean, am I going to frag you and throw you out the airlock?” She finally looked me in the eye. “No. You’ve been trying hard since George died. You got us out of Northfield in one piece, and that took some balls. I never thought you’d let the ship cut loose on a civilian population like that.”

  “You don’t think it was the wrong decision?”

  She shook her head. “Hell, no. Those cretins were shooting at us. They deserved everything they got.”

  “Live by the sword…”

  “…die by the high-impact, armour-piercing round.” A smile disturbed her lips like a breeze ruffling palm leaves, there one instant and gone the next. “You get everything you deserve,” she said, “if you’re idiot enough to shoot at a Carnivore.”

  My stomach felt suddenly hollow. I stuck my hands in the pockets of my jumpsuit. “You do know that’s exactly what we’re about to do, don’t you?”

  Clay nodded. “The difference is, we’re ex-soldiers, and we’re in a Carnivore.”

  * * *

  I walked back around the circular corridor, taking the long route and savouring the empty cabins and darkened workstations. As I walked, I trailed my fingertips along the wall. The knowledge that we were heading into a fight lent everything a heightened poignancy, and I found myself wondering if any of these silent bunks would ever hold another sleeper, or these vacant offices and meeting rooms another conversation. In the light of the coming conflict, it seemed simultaneously impossible and yet frighteningly plausible that, in a few hours, this little town might be destroyed, these solid walls and floors torn asunder, this cool, endlessly recycled air scattered to the careless vacuum. At this moment, my feet might very well be the last to ever walk these sections of corridor, my eyes the last to appreciate their stark, functional beauty.

  If we survived the next few hours, I made a vow to spend more time prowling the ship. Maybe I’d even decorate, adding a few human touches to the sterility. This ship was my home, and I was only really starting to understand the fact now, as we stood together on the lip of a yawning precipice.

  Of course, I had known other homes. For an instant, my thoughts turned to Sedge, and the three months we’d spent in that villa on Naxos. Those perfumed nights. Before Trouble Dog, that villa had been the closest I’d had to an adult home. Since my parents died, I’d never really belonged anywhere. My life had been lived out of a suitcase. I spent time in dorms at the Academy, and then on a variety of ships, but I was always passing through. I never put down roots, not until I got here. For the past three years, the Trouble Dog and her crew had been the one constant in my life. They gave me the solitude I craved, and company only when I really needed it. The ship’s cabins and bridge had become as familiar to me as the rooms of the house I lived in as a child, and I couldn’t bear the notion they might soon be destroyed.

  I stopped walking, tempted to tell the Trouble Dog to stop, to throw all engines in reverse and flee for Camrose. But, even as the thought formed, I knew I could never give such an order. We could not come all this way only to turn tail and flee. There might be crash survivors depending on us. The least we could do would be to scan the wreck for signs of life, even if we had to fight off a barrage while doing it. By attacking us, the Trouble Dog’s former comrades would implicate themselves in the downing of the Geest van Amsterdam, and thereby implicate the Conglomeration as a whole in an act of aggression against a civilian Outward vessel. Such behaviour couldn’t go unpunished.

  And I couldn’t get away from the thought that there had been hundreds
of people on that liner. Hundreds of potential casualties. I felt my fists clench, my resolve harden. The passengers and crew of the Geest van Amsterdam had not been military personnel. They were civilian men, women and children, and if they had been unlawfully killed, they deserved to have their killers brought to justice. And if any of them were still alive—still somehow clinging on a week after the attack—I knew in my heart that we had no choice but to do everything in our power to locate and rescue them, even if we died in the attempt.

  PART TWO

  THE MARBLE ARMADA

  They prepare for death, yet are they not the finish,

  but rather the outset,

  They bring none to his or her terminus

  or to be content and full,

  Whom they take they take into space

  to behold the birth of stars,

  to learn one of the meanings,

  To launch off with absolute faith,

  to sweep through the ceaseless rings

  and never be quiet again.

  WALT WHITMAN, “Song of the Answerer”

  FORTY-TWO

  ONA SUDAK

  After three days of flight, my jail cell dipped towards the inner surface of what appeared to be an abandoned city. A ten-kilometre-tall ziggurat stood at the centre. Against any other backdrop, it would have appeared huge. Here, it barely registered as a blip on the darkened landscape. Fashioned from the same material as the rest of the structure, it appeared to be a node of some kind. A starburst of tubes and conduits radiated from its base in all directions, forming the web-like skeleton of the surrounding city. Points of light speckled the ziggurat’s slab-like sides and, as we drew closer, I saw these lights to be doorways identical to the one from which I had embarked. What first appeared to my tired eyes to be flickers on my vision resolved into a midge-like cloud of flying rooms, each following its own trajectory, and all of them coming and going from the doorways in the ziggurat like buses coming and going from a central bus terminal. Their activity gave the building the appearance of a beehive and I began to feel truly apprehensive. Until now, I had been more concerned about the humans following me, and had assumed the internal structure of the Brain to be as stark and derelict as its surface. But if the flying boxes I was seeing turned out to be more than simply forsaken relics acting out automatic routines, if they were in use, then maybe I was about to meet the inhabitants of this strange and barely comprehensible artefact.