Embers of War

by Gareth L. Powell

  Behind me, the avatars from the Adalwolf and Righteous Fury stood on either side of a crude wooden table. The Adalwolf had reverted to its default portrayal of a young, thin-faced man with unruly black hair, gaunt cheeks and smouldering eyes. A dark robe streamed and snapped around his emaciated frame. In contrast, the Fury’s avatar was a muscular and vengeful god, in the style of the Ancient Romans. A pristine white toga wrapped his bronzed, muscular torso. Gold ringlets tumbled across his shoulders, held back from his face by a platinum band. His thick fingers grasped the shaft of a golden trident with prongs shaped like lightning bolts, and his eyes were the startling, timeless blue of the Mediterranean Sea. When he opened his mouth to speak, his voice boomed like surf on a pebble beach.

  “I speak for the Conglomeration Navy.”

  Arms folded, Adalwolf looked distinctly unimpressed. “As do I.”

  “No.” The Fury made a cutting motion with his free hand. “Not any more.”

  “We were sent here to guard the contents of the Objects. Our mission—”

  “Your mission was to prevent anyone else discovering the existence or nature of those contents before we could send a fully equipped expedition.” The Fury drew itself up. “And in that, you have spectacularly failed.”

  Adalwolf uncrossed his arms. Standing there in his black robe, he seemed like the yin to the Fury’s yang, the darkness to the other’s light. “We intercepted the Outward scout ship that made the original discovery, and crashed it before it could make a full report.”

  “But then you took it upon yourselves to take down a liner carrying nine hundred foreign citizens. Did you really think nobody—” he inclined his head in my direction, “—would come looking for it?”

  Adalwolf glanced at me. His expression was one of contempt. “You appeared just as I was about to neutralise this… this… traitor.”

  “Then it is a good thing I stopped you,” the Fury rumbled, “considering this ship numbers among its crew the only child of Admiral Menderes.”

  “Menderes?” The wind blew across the top of the tower. High above, a bird called out with a lonely and desolate caw. For the first time, the Adalwolf looked shaken. The fire flickered in his eyes. “I was not aware.”

  The Fury stood against the wind, as solid and immoveable as the tower beneath its sandalled feet. “The crew manifest was freely available. All you had to do was check.” He flicked his thick-fingered hand, dismissing the matter. “But all that pales into insignificance,” he said, “compared to your other folly.”

  Adalwolf’s own hands were at his sides, bunched into almost skeletal fists. “What folly?”

  He glanced at me again, and I realised his natural exasperation at being rebuked was being immeasurably heightened by having it happen in front of me—a ship he no longer considered worthy of his respect or association. I allowed a smile to dance across my lips. It served the arrogant bastard right.

  The Roman god ignored this byplay. He banged the butt of his trident against the stone floor and thunder shook the skies. “You almost killed Ona Sudak.”

  Adalwolf, braced for something else, seemed taken aback by this revelation. He opened and shut his mouth a few times. “The poet?”

  “Yes.”

  He gave a mystified shrug. “So what?”

  An unpleasant smile spread across the Fury’s face, revealing teeth like ivory monoliths. “Sudak is only her cover identity. When she was in the Fleet, you two morons—” for the first time, he included me in the conversation, “—knew her as Captain Deal, commander of the Conglomeration Fleet, and your direct superior at the Battle of Pelapatarn.”

  Adalwolf put a hand to his chest. He had firm control of his avatar’s expression, but I could hear the surprise in his voice. “Captain Deal’s alive?”

  Anger rose within me. It had been Deal who’d issued the order to commit the monstrous crime of burning the sentient jungles. Although I bore my share of culpability for following that order, I had at least attempted to make amends for my actions. I had quit the Fleet and devoted myself to the preservation of life at all costs. But Deal hadn’t issued so much as an apology. As soon as the ceasefire had been signed, she’d run. And the only statement she’d left had shown no signs of either shame or remorse, just a terse communiqué stating that she had done what she felt was necessary to end the war. My siblings and I had been the instruments of Pelapatarn’s destruction, but we had only been fulfilling the function for which we had been designed; it had been her finger on the trigger. She had been acting under orders, but it had still been her lips that had uttered the order to kill. And the only reason I hadn’t sought retribution against her was that I had heard the rumours, both official and unofficial, that circulated in the weeks and months following her disappearance, saying that she had been mortally wounded and was probably already dead—rumours that had apparently, in light of this new revelation, been entirely inaccurate.

  “Alive,” the Fury rumbled, “under my protection, and not in the best of tempers.”

  “Why?” the Adalwolf asked. “I mean, how?”

  “The details aren’t as important as the fact you almost killed her.” The Fury’s brow furrowed with displeasure. “And it is only by the purest good fortune that she survived.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  My mind whirled while they argued, but I kept quiet. They would get around to deciding my fate sooner or later, and I felt no great compunction to hasten their eventual decision by speaking out. Instead, I devoted my attention to finding a way out of the situation. I had no doubt at all that they would kill me if the admiral ordered them to. Escape would be my only hope of survival; but if I couldn’t make a run for it, I had to find some other means of evading their weaponry.

  In desperation, I used a tight-beam targeting laser to sweep the surface of the Object below, tracing the whorls of the canyon network that had given the sculpture its name. According to my measurements, the wider canyons were just about broad enough to accommodate me, but I immediately discounted the idea of using them for cover. Assuming I could reach them without being shot from the sky, what then? I’d be stuck at the bottom of a hole with nowhere to go, vulnerable to bombardment from above. My hull was simply too lengthy to safely negotiate the intricate twists and turns of the canyon network. I wouldn’t want to get wedged in a corner, so I would be trapped like a fish in a barrel. If we’d been in orbit above one of the other Objects, such as the Inverted City or the Broken Clock, their confusing irregularities would have offered multiple hiding places. The canyons of the Brain, however, were next to useless.

  Still, with nothing better to do, I swung the laser back and forth across the surface, mapping and cataloguing every niche and fissure. I scanned the wreck of the Geest van Amsterdam, in case there was some way I could hide in its debris field. I even investigated the crater from Fenrir’s destruction of my shuttle, but could find nowhere large enough to conceal my bulk.

  For the first time in my life, I almost envied the humans. Their bodies may have been vulnerable and easily damaged, but they were also small and flexible and able to wriggle into the smallest of cracks. And, despite all my speed and power, I envied them that.

  I was about to abandon my survey when I picked up a signal compressed into a beam no wider than a human hair, centred precisely on my primary communications array, and apparently originating within the Object below. As I was looking down, something else was looking up at me.

  I checked my two companions, but they were still locked in dispute and neither showed any awareness of the signal.

  Wary from my encounter with the Fenrir, I created a quarantine file and downloaded the transmission there, where it couldn’t access any of my systems. Then, tentatively, I scanned it.

  It was a text file, and it consisted of four words:

  We need to talk.

  SIXTY-SIX

  ASHTON CHILDE

  Clay sat up.

  “Holy shit!” She clasped a hand to the bud in her ea
r. “I’ve got a signal, but it’s very weak.” She gestured at her pack, holding out her other hand. “Quickly, get the communicator in the top pocket.”

  I bent over and did as I was told. After I straightened up, I tried to hand it to her but she waved me away. “You do it.”

  She was insistent, so I held the unit and fiddled with the settings for a few seconds. Eventually, static filled the elevator in a discordant grey roar that ebbed and fizzed for a moment before dying back like a receding wave.

  “Alva?” the captain’s voice swam through the noise. “Is that you?”

  Clay, Preston and I exchanged glances. The relief was palpable.

  “It’s all three of us,” I said.

  “Are you okay?”

  I smiled. “We’ve been better.”

  “Okay,” the captain was sounding tired. “Me too. But listen, I don’t know how the ship’s done it, but it’s been chatting with something living down there, and whatever it is has agreed to let us communicate.”

  “How are things up there?”

  “Lousy, I’m afraid. We destroyed the first Carnivore, but a Scimitar turned up and now we’re stuck.”

  “A Scimitar?” I didn’t know how to react. If the Fleet had arrived, they might consider me a deserter and put me in front of a firing squad.

  “Can you ask Preston to talk to them?” Konstanz asked. “Their main man’s his father. Can he convince him to let us go?”

  I ran my tongue around the inside of my mouth. “It’s worth a shot.”

  “We’ve got nothing to lose. The Conglomeration know there’s something inside the Objects and they don’t want anyone else getting near it.” She gave a frustrated sigh. “I’m sorry if you don’t want to hear this, Childe, but it was they who shot down the Geest van Amsterdam, and unless you can convince them otherwise, they’re going to shoot us out of the sky.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I wish I was.”

  I raked my fingers through my hair. This was it. Decision time. Had I really defected to the House, or was I going to throw myself on the mercy of my former employer? Preston and Clay were both looking at me, waiting to see which way I’d jump. Preston rubbed the back of his neck, looking anxious. Clay’s eyes were narrowed, and I couldn’t help noticing the way the fingertips of her right hand had dropped to the knife hilt protruding from her belt.

  “Okay,” I said. In my heart, the decision had already been made, and I knew I couldn’t go back. “I can’t promise anything, but I’ll ask the kid to give it a try.”

  “Thanks,” Konstanz said.

  “Patch us through.”

  “Roger that.”

  The audio dropped for a second. I heard a busy signal, and then the line cleared. A gruff male voice snapped, “Yes?”

  I swallowed. “Admiral Menderes?”

  “Who the fuck is this?”

  “My name’s Ashton Childe, of the Intelligence Service.”

  “Childe?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You were ordered here aboard a Reclamation Vessel.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, an hour ago, that same RV took down one of our Carnivores.”

  Orange sunlight filled the elevator. I felt sweat break out between my shoulder blades. “Yes, sir. But I have someone here who wants to talk to you.”

  “Is it my son?”

  I glanced at Preston. The kid was fidgeting from one foot to the other. Pinned by indecision, he shook his head. Then he grimaced, and gave a nod.

  “Yes,” I said to the admiral. “He is.”

  “Can he hear me?”

  “He can.”

  “All right, then.” The admiral cleared his throat. “Preston?”

  The kid froze, paralysed like a deer caught in the lights of an oncoming train. “Y-yes, Father?”

  “Preston, listen to me very carefully, boy. I am hereby giving you a field commission. You are now a lieutenant in the Conglomeration Navy.”

  “A lieutenant!” The boy’s voice came out as a cracked falsetto, pitched halfway between amazement and indignation.

  “I told you to listen.”

  Preston lowered his head. “I’m sorry, Father.”

  “Just pay attention. You are now the senior officer on the ground. I want you to take Childe and proceed to the attached coordinates, where you will find a woman named Ona Sudak. You will then escort her to the surface, ensuring her safety at all times. Do you understand?”

  “Ye-es.” Preston looked helplessly at the bubble of vacuum beyond the elevator’s glass door. “But—”

  “No buts.” People were shouting in the background. I heard an alarm, and the call to battle stations. The admiral raised his voice to a parade ground bark. “Get it done, boy. No excuses. Righteous Fury out.”

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  SAL KONSTANZ

  “The Fury has a missile lock,” the Trouble Dog reported. “She can fire on us whenever she likes.”

  I felt my stomach flip. Nod was doing what he could to hold the hull plating together, but we couldn’t take any more damage. “Are the defence cannons primed?”

  “Spun-up and ready.” The avatar shrugged. “Although there’s not a great deal they can do at this range.”

  I chewed my thumbnail, mind racing. The first of the incoming Multiplicity ships would be here in minutes. If Menderes wanted to silence us, he would have to kill us before they arrived—and this missile lock only confirmed his plans. We had no way out. If we tried to run, the Fury would anticipate our course and rake us with her cannons. We’d be perforated like a teabag, and still travelling less than half as fast as we needed to, by the time her missiles caught us.

  I looked at Laura Petrushka. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’ve really screwed this up.”

  She shook her head. After hours at our posts, we were both bedraggled and dog-tired. “No,” she said. “You did okay, given the circumstances.”

  “I got us all killed.”

  She twitched her shoulders. “There wasn’t anything else you could have done. And to be honest, we’ve lasted a lot longer than I expected us to.”

  I turned my attention back to the main screen, half expecting at any moment to see the flare of a torpedo launch.

  “Shall we run anyway, just to be difficult?”

  Laura clapped her hands together and rubbed her palms. Her eyes were slick, and reflected the overhead lights. “Well, why the hell not? I don’t think there’s any sense in making it easy for them, is there? If we’ve got to go, we might as well be as awkward about it as we can.”

  “Okay, then.”

  I saw the Trouble Dog’s avatar was watching me. “Are the engines ready to go?” I asked.

  She smiled. “Of course.”

  “How far can you get us before the torpedoes catch us?”

  “If we burn for open space, not far. If they fire as soon as they see us accelerating, we’ll barely have broken orbit when the first warhead comes within effective range.”

  I slumped down in my chair, feeling like a deflated balloon. “So we’re completely fucked?”

  The Dog regarded me with default impassivity, her angelic, almost androgynous face devoid of emotional content. “There is one other option.”

  “What?”

  She showed me a real-time view of the Brain’s surface. “We go down.”

  A red crosshair appeared over one of the deep canyons, accompanied by readouts of range and depth.

  “We wouldn’t have time,” I said, feeling my strength ebbing away. “We’d have to slow down, and they’d catch us before we reached the surface.”

  “Not if we were accelerating.”

  I laughed bitterly. “We’d hit like a meteor. There wouldn’t be enough left of us for their missiles to lock onto.”

  “No.” The view expanded. A dark patch on the shadowy canyon floor resolved into an oval-shaped aperture that looked to be at least five hundred metres across. “Not if we aim for this.”

&n
bsp; I frowned. The Dog was offering me a lifeline but I was too sceptical to take it, too frightened of disappointment to entertain hope. “Where did that come from?”

  “It has just opened.”

  “Can we reach it before the torpedoes reach us?”

  “At full burn, we stand a reasonable chance.”

  I wiped a hand across my eyes. “And how fast will we be travelling when we hit the hole?”

  “Over eight thousand metres per second.”

  “Is it deep?” If we were going that fast, we’d need plenty of room in order to stop. That hole would have to be at least a hundred kilometres in depth, maybe more.

  “Deep enough.”

  I drew myself upright. “This isn’t just a way to cheat the Fury by killing yourself before she can kill you, is it?”

  The Dog’s expression rearranged itself into an irony-dripping smile. “Perhaps.”

  I glanced at Laura. She raised her palms in a shrug. “Makes no difference to me,” she said.

  * * *

  The Nymtoq warships arrived first, dropping out of the hypervoid much further out than we had been expecting. They were being cautious, but the Graal battle cruiser wasn’t far behind, and they weren’t known for their timidity.

  As soon as the newcomers flashed up on the tactical display, the Fury launched three missiles in our direction. I opened my mouth to tell the Trouble Dog to go, but she was already accelerating straight down, following her insane flight plan.

  In our rear view, the torpedoes changed course, tracking us, each carrying enough nuclear firepower to level a small city. I took hold of the arms of my chair and kept my eyes fixed firmly on the forward view, where the twisting gorges of the Brain were rushing at us.

  A proximity alarm rang, but I didn’t know whether it was alerting me to the missiles on our tail or the giant mass of solid rock in our path.

  “Five,” the Trouble Dog intoned.

  I couldn’t even see the hole we were aiming for.

  “Four.”