by Martin Kee
All the rage, all the hate she has for the Poacher, she feels directed at Veerh now. The fact that he could betray her after all this time, making her consider an impossible choice. As he stands here, speaking these awful words into her ear, his body rotting from the bad patch of Scoop’s skin…
“You want Scoop.” Bex finds herself surprised that she hadn’t thought of this before. “You wanted him all along.”
Veerh glances down at the patch, then back at her. “I want him, and I want to talk to him.”
“You can’t talk to him. I’ve tried. I don’t see how—”
She breaks off as a smile creeps across the old soldier’s face, obscured by plates and horns. He nods slowly, rubbing the blistering patch of skin with a small sub-hand.
“I don’t have much time,” he says, voice so low it may as well be a whisper. “I want answers. I want to know what this strange, tenuous connection means. I want to communicate with your giant before this chance is gone forever.”
“And then what?” she asks. “Then we all go off into the city? We sell the other giant for Scoop’s freedom?”
“That’s exactly what we do,” Veerh says.
“I’m waiting for an answer,” the Poacher says.
Bex studies his face, the determination, the pained, poisoned misery that thinks he’s hiding from her. He knows he only has this one chance. He’s dying.
It pains her to do it, but she nods. He turns to go, but she grabs him by a spike, pulling him gently back to her. “You have to promise me that Scoop won’t be harmed, that he will remain with me. Don’t let them separate us, Veerh. Even if you have to make the poacher sign it in blood.”
The Preserver places a small hand on her own. “I believe that Ak’klin, for all his misguided life choices, is a man of honor. I will insist. And in return, you must go with him to the city, to the Ameer. It is not a matter of consideration.” He points a spiked limb out through the trees. “The village, the Bone Sea, all of this. It means nothing in time, not with a war looming. It will be the villages and the plains that are overrun first. In the city you will be safe. I know this.”
She sees something in his eyes she’d never noticed before, some glimmer of tenderness she never thought a Preserver capable of.
“Veerh,” she says. “What are you planning to do?”
“I am doing my job,” he replies. “I am keeping you safe. I am keeping the last good thing in that forsaken, backwards village safe. But right now, you need to promise me one thing.”
“Me? What about me?”
“Promise that you won’t let your label define you. It will be your downfall.”
Veerh breaks away, his manipulator hand clinging to hers just a moment before he steps up to the poacher. The guards loom, watching as Veerh speaks to the Poacher in a low tone. Ak’klin listens, his eyes contemplative. He nods, slowly at first, but then more and more as he starts to understand. He looks up and speaks louder, so that she may hear him.
“Tr-Bex. You have my word, on my honor as a hunter and last of my bloodline. You will be kept safe, as will the animals under your care. Should we obtain the monster, your Scoop will be protected by me and any powers I have. No harm will come to him. Now, will you please come along so that we can recover the giants before they kill more innocents?”
They ride through the forest. Once Veerh has pointed out the tracks, it’s only a matter of time before the poacher locks onto the trail, sniffing and peering at details Bex can’t see. He motions the guards forward as Bex, riding Bindo, joins the group. They pass through a canopy of shadowed trees, though more of the small, pink flowers as Ak’klin searches and sniffs. He stops at one point, moving in a slow circle until he catches the trail again, leading them to a break in the trees. She sees the footprints now. Huge. Clearly two sets. In her mind’s eyes, Bex can imagine Scoop and the other breaking through the trees in flight, crashing through the brush into a clearing.
Leaves and pedals fall all around her as the party clears the forest. Shadows play on the ground, cast by the swaying trees behind them.
“There.” Ak’klin points.
She steps out into the sun where the harshness of the desert eats away at this last little patch of oasis vegetation. Beyond the shade lies kilometers of high desert that seem to stretch into endless arches and natural, wind-formed shapes. Horns of the World grow here, some a kilometer high, piercing even into the Godcloud as the ceaseless wind blows dust devils and sand along the ground. It is a landscape of natural beauty, marred by one shape that simply doesn’t belong.
Atop one of the Horns, suspended perhaps twenty meters in the air is a structure she’s never seen before, something that can’t possibly exist. If Pequesmattl were real, this would be his flier. It hangs in the air against the sky, an insect pinned to a collector’s tray.
And below it, walking in the shadows of the arches and cliffs, are Scoop and Kloe’l’s murderer.
Chapter 35
“THIS IS fucked,” Chaz hisses. “Fuckety fucking fucked.”
They peer out from the shade of a sandstone column, looking down the steep slope of the crater. A white spire sprouts from the sand, stretching skyward. People mill around the perimeter of the spire, some in robes, some with pack animals. They’ve erected tents made of hides and cloth, circling the giant tusk-shaped structure. They write symbols along the outside of the great column. From where they hide along the ridge, Kendal can still make out the symbols, visible halfway up the giant tusk-shaped column, hundreds of feet in the air. And at its peak, barely visible beyond the strange cloud that covers everything like an eternal overcast, Kendal can just make out the outline of the Luxemburg.
“How did it even get up there?”
“Grew, probably,” Chaz says.
“Grew?”
“They draw those symbols on that—that tusk or whatever it is. It grows, carries everything up. Look—” He points and Kendal sees a faint trench leading to the crater, left by the ship.
“The hell?” Kendal shields his eyes from the sand. “You’re saying it lifted the ship?”
“This goddamn planet—” Chaz shakes his head. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s a tree of some kind. Either way, it’s a hell of a thing to grow right up under the ship.”
“What do we do?”
“Don’t worry,” Chaz says. “I had a plan, but I didn’t expect the ship to be so far up. I’ll explain after we rest.”
Below them, at the base of the crater, figures move along the wall of white ivory, carving their symbols. Kendal can just about make out their songs as they swirl around the towering structure, too distracted by the ritual to look up and see him.
Chaz taps him on the shoulder and he scoots back.
Kendal follows him back from the crater’s edge, away from the spire until they come to a rock outcropping. A small cave yawns out from the slanted slabs of rock, just big enough for them to each sit inside, hidden from the creatures below. Even from this distance, the spire dominates his view from inside.
“I passed a couple of those columns before I found you,” Chaz explains. “They’re alive, I think. You can hear them grow if you’re quiet. Sounds like corn stalks.” He takes off his boots and empties a pile of sand from each one, stretches his toes. Kendal watches from the corner of his eye as he goes through his backpack. “I couldn’t stay close to them for long, mind you. Little fuckers flock to those spires from time to time. No idea why. Maybe it’s religious.”
He pulls out some dried meat and offers it to Kendal.
“No thanks.”
“Come on. Eat something. We’ve been hiking all day, ran into locals, had a fight, made up. Take it. You need your energy.”
Apparently, not talking since the run-in with the children means that they’re friends again in Chaz’s eyes. But Kendal doesn’t want the meat, doesn’t even want to imagine where it came from.
“I don’t want it.”
Chaz pulls back slowly, like a man afraid of a dog that mig
ht snap. He takes a bite, watching Kendal carefully as he chews. “Suit yourself.”
“What’s your plan?” Kendal asks. He sits, small pebbles digging into his legs. The air in here feels too warm, stuffy.
Chaz finishes eating the chunk of meat, swallows, then nods. “Well, let me show you why you haven’t been carrying this pack, first.”
He unzips another compartment of the bag and pulls out what look like little bricks of clay, each one with HEP-2500 printed on a plastic wrapper. Kendal counts about a dozen of them. High Explosive Putty. The kind of explosive miners use to blow holes in mountains.
“Where did you get that?”
“Storage in one of the pods. It was a supply pod we came across, used to deploy into construction sites.” Chaz zips the compartment back up and pats it gingerly. “Don’t worry. This stuff needs an igniter. Compression and kinetics won’t do the trick. That’s why I kept this safe.” He opens another pocket and Kendal sees the barrel of a gun similar to the one on Chaz’s hip. He pats the one he’s wearing. “This was Val’s gun. I kept my own safe in case I needed it when we got back here.”
Kendal looks up at him. “Back here?”
“Since we’re being straight with each other, kid, I guess it’s time to come clean too. I knew about this spire a long time ago. Val and I came across it in our first few weeks here. The spire had already lifted it a few hundred feet, but the locals hadn’t discovered it yet. We didn’t have anything to climb with, so we decided to come back. I was lucky I found you, actually. I had just about given up finding another pod or person.”
“So the headaches?” Kendal asks, a creeping shiver running down his spine. “Do you even have an implant?”
“Oh yeah, I have one,” Chaz says. “It drives me crazy every day. In fact it’s nice to be here, someplace familiar again. It’s complaining a lot less now that it’s seeing things it knows.”
Kendal stares at the man, almost not sure what to believe anymore. How much more has he lied about?
“I can see you’re upset, kid,” Chaz says. “And believe me, I’d be the same way. But let’s be frank for a moment—I didn’t know you a week ago and you didn’t know me. You can’t say you trusted me either, and I have to say, I felt there was something you hadn’t been sharing either. So as far as I’m concerned, we’re even, okay? You and me, we’re maybe the last human’s left on this world. We’re an endangered species. We have a duty to help one another until our ride picks us up. We don’t have to like each other, but we do have to help each other.”
Something in the man’s words rings true, as much as Kendal hates to admit it. They are all that’s left. Still, those explosives, he thinks. Kendal imagines what could have happened if the HEP-2500 had gone off accidentally, and feels his stomach knot.
“What are you going to do with those?” He points at the volatile bricks tucked away in the backpack.
“Good question,” Chaz says. “My survey implant says that the spire there is made of some kind of calcium carbonate, like a shell or a horn. It’s rare to see something like it growing so huge. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s similar to coral in that there are microbes building it and rapidly dying off, leaving their shells in some sort of structure strong enough to support its weight.”
“So you’re going to blow it up.”
“Only part of it. I’m going to plant these explosives along the base and cause instability. Gravity should do the rest. Or would have. It’s going to be hard now that all those little guys are around.”
Outside the cave, he still catches a melody of birdsong. Synchronized. He wonders if it’s some kind of hymn.
“And the servers?”
“If they survived the crash, they can survive another tumble to the soft sand. I’m not worried. Now, however, we need to figure out how to get down there unseen.”
“Any ideas?”
Chaz shakes his head. “I’m going to sleep on it.” He looks outside at the encroaching dusk and yawns. “You’d better get some sleep as well. It’s going to be a big day tomorrow.”
With that, Chaz pats down a sleeping area and curls up.
Kendal waits until he hears the steady, heavy breathing of sleep before he feels for the backpack. Finding the hidden pouch, Kendal pulls the tablet from inside, faces it towards the dirt and turns it on. He digs through the backpack and comes up with a pair of wireless earbuds, shoves one into his left ear. The tablet’s screen shines like a floor lamp in the darkness, giving him a clear view of the rocks and sand as he makes his way towards the back of the cave where the light will be better hidden. Even with the brightness adjusted all the way down, Kendal still finds himself glancing at Chaz with every little sound.
He starts the video.
A new date hovers over the display a moment, one week later—though it’s a universal dating system, one that could be off from this world’s natural cycles. Trees and brush fill the screen, whipping by as a hand occasionally strikes out, pushing them aside. Chaz appears a few paces in front of her, his limp still bad, but he’s hopping now, making good time in spite of the injury.
“Are they still following?” Valerie asks. Kendal can hear the restraint in her voice, the steady tension.
“I don’t know, but if we stop they’ll catch up.”
Chaz still wears his ship uniform. It looks new, almost freshly fabricated. There’s a bloody tear at the knee. Kendal only catches glimpses of his clean-shaven face when he turns. Mouth downward, drawn in a rictus of fear. Eyes wide.
“I think I just heard something,” Valerie whispers.
The camera turns to more bushes rustling, birds chittering. Kendal knows the song. They were the same calls from before, from when they came for him. A hunting call, a predatory missive.
Chaz whispers, “Let’s go. Go, go, go.”
They rush through the dense trees and strange juxtaposed branches. The camera mounted in Valerie’s retina compensates for that sudden movement, fixing the frames, making the video smooth so that every frame can be viewed in detail. But it makes the motion ghostly, surreal.
“Chaz,” she calls, her voice ragged, panting.
Through the video, Kendal can see the back of Chaz’s head, vanishing and appearing between the trees and branches as the birdsong follows them.
“Chaz! Wait!”
Valerie stops, tugs on her breather mask, letting it flush the alien atmosphere from her system. She manages only a breath or two. The bushes beside her rustle; she breaks into a run again. There’s a moment where Kendal thinks that she’s done, that they’ll simply overwhelm her, but they keep sticking behind, always chirping whenever she stops.
A trap. That’s what it is. They’re corralling them. Kendal’s skin goes cold. Running. Panting. Stopping for a few gasps of air. Then the sounds start up again and she looks around, fleeing the momentary respite.
Valerie bursts from the trees to find Chaz kneeling along the ridge. Behind her, birds chirp their fatal warnings.
Beyond the clearing, sand stretches out before them, dark and dimly lit in the dusky light. Sandstone pillars rise like lonely windswept guards around the crater and scorched sand-trough. Chaz stares off at the distant crater, at something there along the bottom.
It’s the ship.
The nose section is cracked like an egg. Sensors and gear peek through like the beaks of newly hatching chicks. Shattered and empty windows line the fuselage, their glass scattered along the sand like jewels. There’s nothing beyond the bridge and forward hull. The ship ends, truncated in a bouquet of blackened carbon fiber and ceramic metal plates.
A pillar spears the Luxemburg from beneath, a single, massive claw holding the ship above the sand and rocks below. A white tip peeks out from the roof, a sliver of ivory on a crusted metal shell.
“Oh, my God…” Valerie says. “That’s the ship.”
Chaz glances over his shoulder. “Hurry.”
There’s a good hour of footage then, of Valerie and Chaz trudging through the
sand. Kendal skips through in fast forward, watching the ship grow steadily larger. He stops it when the cave appears.
The same cave he’s hiding in right now.
Valerie stares down the slope at the ship, hovering only a hundred feet from the sandy floor of the crater. “How do we get in?”
“I don’t know.” Off in the distance, the birds call again.
“You go,” he says to her. “I’ll hold them off.”
“Me? Why me? We should both go.”
“You’ll be safe in the ship,” Chaz says. “Go and hide. I’ll catch up.”
He can hear the hope in Valerie’s voice. “Okay… okay, I’ll go.”
“Hurry,” Chaz squeezes her hand.
Valerie stumbles and slides down the hill, the camera software doing everything to steady the picture as rocks and sand grab at her ankles. But before she reaches the base of the crater, even Kendal can see that the ship is unreachable, the spire already lifting it like the vine from Jack and the Beanstalk. It towers above her, five floors of sheer white ivory.
Valerie turns back around, looks up at Chaz, and waves at him. “Come on,” she mutters. Chaz only stares.
“Come on, Chaz,” she calls. “You can still make it.”
His mouth dry, his hands sweating, Kendal already knows how this ends, and he can feel Valerie does too, the realization seeping in slowly. The air is silent. No more of the chirping, no more hunting calls. She can still make out Chaz, edging back until he’s almost hidden, just watching her.
“Chaz?”
Her arm lowers, and though Kendal can’t feel it, he hears a sharp grunt as something strikes her. Valerie looks down, her hand fumbling with a dart made of bone. She tilts it this way and that. Kendal can even see the subtle craftsmanship, the carvings doused in blood.