In Dark Service

by Stephen Hunt

  ‘If you believe that…’

  ‘We know it to be true. And the Hangels believe it. Or they would not now be mustering a force to fight the final battle foretold by the prophecy.’

  ‘It’ll be final, all right,’ said Jacob. ‘Your arrowheads against their repeating rifles…’

  ‘You shall walk the paths of the future,’ said Narlrem. He beckoned behind him and a gad came forward from the crowd surrounding the council. The villager carried two wooden bowls filled with a green paste that looked about as appetising as the crushed insects the gads thought a delicacy. ‘It is said that the twice-born will see the future, while Jok will see the past. Both must remember for the Age of the Seventh Sun to begin.’

  ‘I have partaken of many foreign feasts before,’ moaned Sariel. ‘I have eaten dragon’s eggs as large as boulders to keep Queen Carmella happy at her breakfast. I have eaten worms from the Caverns of Rerald, miraculous creatures which breed and multiply inside your stomach; so you may only eat a single meal and never go hungry for the rest of the year. All without complaint. But here I must draw the line! And you have none of your fine honey wine to wash this pulp down with?’

  ‘You need a clear head to see the past,’ intoned the diviner. He stared meaningfully at Jacob. ‘As well as the future.’

  Sariel reluctantly took the first bowl, while Jacob lifted his from the villager’s hands. The tribes needed to believe what they needed to believe. And the gads were still Jacob’s best chance of killing Major Alock and his troopers before the damned officer executed his secret orders. The strange whistling noise sounded again behind the diviners as villagers whirled wooden sculptures around on the end of twine. Others sang and danced. Jacob scraped the paste into his hand and tasted it. The mixture had a fiery kick, as if the locals had blended chili-peppers into the goo. Jacob had only tasted something this hot once before, and that was the white radish-like mustard the Rodalians served with rice. His cheeks and forehead began sweating. Beside him, Sariel moaned and begged for alcohol. But the bard’s complaints were growing distant, as though he had retreated into an echoing cave. The world swirled around Jacob, colours distorted and running together, a rainbow-whirl. It was as though he was seeing sounds, the windmill whirl of the natives given colour, waves that flexed and flowed through the dark sky. Grass warmed his back and the stars in the sky danced for his pleasure as they spread out, the heavens growing lighter and lighter. Across that blank vault he saw many futures. Or perhaps potential futures; the branches of the fractal tree Khow spoke of. Warriors hiding in the grass flushed out by columns of tanks, enormous iron platforms like galleons-of-the-land, rumbling forward and belching corn smoke from their exhausts. Metal flanks pierced by cannon ports and rifle embrasures, clouds of gunfire as fleeing gads were slaughtered by volley after volley. Hundreds of variations of the same slaughter, all ending with bloody warriors mangled under clanking caterpillar tracks. Jacob turning tail and running. Hiding inside the wreckage of one of the crashed carriers that lay rotting in the grasslands. Chased through what was left of the wooden airframe until there was nowhere left to hide. Or managing to escape. Caught in another country. Captured in the south, the east, the west. Major Alock’s implacable features visible standing over Jacob, a rifle lowered above Jacob’s face, pushed against Jacob’s chest, pushed into his duster’s back, a corpse rolling over, and over… and somewhere distant, his son dying and dying and dying. He was still yelling when the visions’ burning heat calmed and left him lying in the distant savannah; his groggy cries echoed by Sariel’s. The camp fire had died, still smoking gently, as the grey night sky turned to dawn’s first gleaming. Jacob’s grass bed was damp with the dew. Only the old diviner, Narlrem, remained. The rest of the council and villagers had departed with the night.

  ‘It is a hard thing to experience your death so many times,’ said Narlrem.

  ‘You’ve got that right,’ said Jacob, pulling himself upright.

  ‘Diviners learn to control the dreams. It takes many years.’

  Jacob’s body ached, every muscle and sinew spasming after a cold night on hard ground. ‘Once is enough. Reckon I’ll stay a pastor with my church.’

  Sariel came out of his own fug. ‘Sack, I need sack – sweet mercy, but bring me your honey wine. You have poisoned the prince of players! So much lost and what is left clamouring inside my motley-minded brain. It’s killing me.’

  ‘You have merely remembered a little of yourself, Jok,’ said the diviner.

  ‘I need to forget,’ moaned Sariel. ‘I need to travel. I must leave.’

  ‘We will help you, Jok. There are others paths that may be divined beyond the future and the past. The shamans remember them, even if you do not,’ said Narlrem, enigmatically. ‘When your part in the prophecy is exhausted, there may be time to assist you.’

  The ancient diviner extended a hand and pulled Jacob up with a wiry strength that surprised the pastor. Jacob went across to the burnt-out fire and pulled a smouldering stake of wood free. He used it to draw a sketch in the dust of the blackened ground. Jacob finished drawing and looked into the ancient gad’s intelligent eyes. ‘You come across any of these in the grasslands?’

  ‘Occasionally we do.’

  ‘See if your people can bring me one that hasn’t been ruined by the rainy season.’

  Narlrem nodded, seemingly content. ‘Then you have found the truth. You are indeed Ogan, the twice-born.’

  ‘Second time lucky, friend,’ said Jacob. Damned if I’m going to go down a third time without a fight.

  Willow found Kerge in the one of the communal wet rooms, tinkering with a rickety set of pipes that led to the water tanks near the station’s roof. If repairing the ancient plumbing was a menial use of the gask’s talent with machinery, he did not show it. Kerge tackled the job with the same curiosity that he seemed to bring to all tasks.

  Willow wiped the grime and dust on her hands across her dirty slave’s overalls. ‘I’m looking for Carter.’

  Khow reached up to the ceiling, sealing one of the joins. Every drop of water was precious. They couldn’t afford any wastage on the station. ‘He is not here.’

  ‘I can see that.’

  ‘I thought Carter was going to come off-shift at the same time as me. I’m worried about him.’

  ‘Each of us must find within ourselves what we require to keep going.’

  ‘That’s what worries me,’ said Willow. ‘I’m not sure Carter has anything left. I have never seen him like this. It’s as if he’s broken, as though he’s given up.’

  ‘He has not,’ said Kerge. ‘He is allowing himself to feel the pain of others, perhaps for the first time in his life. Another three workers died this morning during a cave-in on the new rock. Too tired to accurately set their blasting charges. Carter removed their corpses and gave them burial.’

  If you can call sliding bodies into the sky’s fumes a burial. Even a pauper back home gets more than that. ‘Carter hasn’t been the same since he was found wandering down by the volcano.’

  ‘In that you are correct. His weight on the world makes no sense to me anymore. He is moving beyond my calculations.’

  ‘He always was beyond mine.’

  ‘No,’ said the gask, his voice turning sombre. ‘I am serious. There is a strangeness inside him, increasing beyond anything that a manling should be able to survive. He is not just changing, he has been changed. I believe something terrible happened to him on the surface.’

  ‘I don’t need your people’s faith to know that. Carter saw our friends shot to pieces by a Vandian patrol. What could be worse than watching people you care about murdered in cold blood?’

  ‘See if he will tell you when you come across him. To me, he will not speak of this.’

  ‘And you think he will to me?’

  Kerge removed a spanner and tightened the pipe’s joins. ‘Asking costs nothing.’

  ‘I’ll find him quicker with your help,’ said Willow. ‘You always seem to be able to
track people down on the station.’ In a way that’s almost uncanny.

  Kerge tapped the broken plumbing system. ‘Little wonder. Your people smell ripe, even when the showers are working.’

  ‘Maybe I’d perspire a little less if I sweated deadly toxins out of my pores,’ said Willow. She didn’t pursue the conversation. It was obvious to her that the gask was trying to keep his people’s secrets from reaching Vandian ears. ‘Help me out, Kerge. Please. I really am worried about Carter. What if he decides to follow one of the bodies into the clouds?’

  ‘He is not currently on the roof,’ sighed Kerge, kneeling on the floor and packing away his tools. ‘Come. I will be your guide, just this once.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Kerge was as good as his word. They discovered Carter in the eastern end of the station. Willow spotted Carter first. Hanging shiftily back inside an empty junction chamber, three tunnels leading off the cave. This was a strange place for the Weylander to be, looking suspicious. A section of the rock where new tunnels and chambers were bored during the slaves’ ‘idle’ time. Enlarging the station for future operations and digging practice tunnels during training. With every slave pulling double shifts, this end of the station saw few workers now. Apart, perhaps, for one exception. Men and women were rumoured to use the empty chambers and passages for assignations out of earshot of their barrack mates. Surely Carter wasn’t out here for that? Willow felt a flash of intense jealousy. With Adella long gone, Carter really shouldn’t have any other women on his mind. Willow almost decided to abandon the fool here and head back, but she let her anger get the better of her. She marched towards him, about to raise her voice, to let him know just what she thought of a man who let off steam by going in search of the type of women who ventured out here; but as soon as Carter saw her, he grabbed her by the shoulders and threw a hand across her mouth.

  ‘Be quiet!’ whispered Carter. ‘You’ll scare them off!’

  Willow heard Kerge coming up behind her. She yanked Carter’s fingers away. ‘You flushing out unmarried fornicators? Is that part of your duties too, now?’

  ‘There’s not much of that going on here,’ said Carter. He glanced at Kerge. ‘I told you I would track down the people who sold out my escape. They’re along here.’

  ‘How can you be so certain?’ asked Kerge. ‘This is becoming an obsession for you, manling!’

  ‘I’ve been tracking the traitors, seeing where they go and who they meet. The rota’s been fixed so that all the informers come off-shift at the same time. Then they head down here and discuss the station’s business. Who’s looking for supplies they shouldn’t be. Who’s been overheard talking about escapes and revolts. Who’s been acting suspiciously. Which slaves might need to meet with a mining accident or be made an example of.’

  ‘Nobody on the station would do that,’ said Willow, shocked.

  ‘Kerge came across a tracking beacon hidden on our transporter,’ said Carter, obviously struggling with excitement to keep his voice low. ‘Just our bird, nobody else’s. Someone sold us out to the Vandians… after that, the informers were watching and following me every step of the way.’

  Willow looked uncertainly at the gask. ‘Is this true, Kerge?’

  ‘I did indeed retrieve such a radio device from the wreckage. The presence of informers inside the station seems the logical conclusion. I thought I would discover a mechanical surveillance system concealed in the station, but there is none here within my understanding.’

  Carter agreed with the gask. ‘That’s as good as saying there is none.’

  ‘Who?’ hissed Willow, barely able to register the implications of what Carter had suggested. ‘Who would give you away?’

  ‘Anna Kurtain, Owen Paterson, a couple of the other old hands too. The ones who always seem to survive, no matter what’s chucked the station’s way.’

  ‘You have to be wrong,’ said Willow. ‘Owen and Anna helped scavenge the food and medicine that kept you alive after your flogging. They could have let you die from your wounds.’

  ‘Can you think of a better way to throw off suspicion? You think the traitors are going to cackle in triumph like pantomime villains during every execution and punishment beating? They pass you the gruel bowl and smile before they poison it.’

  ‘There must be another explanation.’

  Carter pointed down a tunnel on the left. ‘It’s a secret council they’re having down there.’ He lifted up a pickaxe handle he had left propped up against the bare rock wall. ‘If they’re romping around naked, drunk as skunks with their slaves’ rags on the floor, I’ll make my apologies and leave, rather than letting this do the talking.’

  ‘Violence is never the solution,’ said Kerge.

  ‘It might not be yours,’ said Carter. ‘But every corpse I’ve rolled off the station can be traced back to the informants, one way or another. Good people killed by overwork and short rations, because those bastards betrayed us.’

  ‘And how badly will the Vandians punish everyone if you murder their snitches?’ argued Willow.

  ‘I don’t mean to kill them,’ said Carter. ‘That would be far too quick. But I’m planning to leave them with some lumps to help remember the people they betrayed. And then I’m going to tell everyone on the station exactly why they’re being worked so hard and starved on half rations. Let’s see how Owen likes surviving in the sky mines as an outcast.’

  ‘That’s as good as a death sentence,’ said Willow. ‘Someone will slit their throats sooner or later.’

  ‘Then that’s what will happen,’ said Carter. ‘And it won’t be murder, it’ll be justice.’ He looked at Willow. ‘Don’t you feel anger at what’s been done to us? Don’t you wake up angry and go to sleep enraged?’

  ‘I feel sad, mostly. We’re turning on ourselves, now, biting at our own wounds. I thought you were broken, Carter Carnehan. I thought you had given up on life.’

  ‘I came real close to it… a whisker either way, and I might have jumped. When the darkness lifted, I realised my hunt would go a lot easier if the informers believed they really had broken me. A shattered soul doesn’t seek redress for being betrayed.’

  Willow didn’t know if she should feel relief or distress that she had been so easily taken in by Carter’s act. ‘If you’re going down there, I’m coming with you.’

  ‘Don’t be foolish. I’m meant to be looking after you.’

  ‘Duncan isn’t here and you’re neither my brother or my keeper, Carter Carnehan. You can turn around and leave, but if you choose to go through with this, I’m going to be your shadow.’

  Carter looked in desperation at Kerge. ‘Sweet mercy, take her back and let me get on with what I have to do.’

  ‘I can hardly do that while I am also accompanying you… if only to moderate the worst of your people’s behaviour.’

  Carter shook his head in fury, but he had realised he couldn’t create more of a scene without alerting the traitors he hunted. ‘Come then, damn it, and the stealers take you as they find you.’

  Annoying Carter was good sport, if hardly a taxing activity, but Willow soon had other things on her mind. They passed into near darkness. There weren’t many lanterns pinned along the walls, wasting power, not with so few workers to benefit from their light. This passage’s surfaces hadn’t been flattened off, and crags and outcrops tried to trip Willow up, both her hands held out in front of her in case she smashed her skull into an overhang. They advanced in complete silence, Carter in front and the gentle sound of the gask’s breathing behind her. The passage reeked of urine and other less salubrious things. Willow had no trouble believing the things that people said happened down here during the dark of night. After five minutes of edging and half-feeling their way forward, the end of the tunnel grew lighter. Someone had brought a mobile lantern, low voices echoing softly as they talked. It was a long way from the rest of the station and there was no good reason for people to be furtively gathered ahead. Willow felt the fear rise tight in her b
elly. How fiercely would such schemers fight to stop their secret being revealed? At least she would emerge from the darkness, the conspirators’ night vision adjusted to their lantern’s illumination. And Willow would have the element of surprise on her side. The tunnel curved off to the right, an intense yellow light beyond. Carter halted and Willow and Kerge stopped behind him. She followed Carter’s lead and edged around the corner to see what they faced. Just as Carter had predicted, Owen and Anna were inside an oblong-shaped end-chamber, sitting on empty supply crates. A couple of old hands Willow vaguely recognised, senior Weyland men, and a woman who, to her regret, she knew all too well. Hoary old Kassina Hedgepeth, the sorting line’s bad-tempered overseer. All of these people were billeted in different barracks. The only thing they had in common, the fact they had survived while the majority of the slaves taken alongside them had long since perished. Willow noted two pickaxes propped against the wall. They were com­fortable here, they felt secure. The group were too far away for Willow to overhear their conversation properly, but words drifted to her as echoes as the conspirators talked animatedly, hands waving, casting quick shadows on the ceiling from the lamp in their centre.

  ‘Too busy — stealing.’

  ‘Going — to — caught.’

  ‘— to act — now.’

  ‘I told you,’ whispered Carter. ‘Does that sound like a knitting circle in there to you? We’ll get the truth out of them. Rush them when I move in.’

  How many times had these secret meetings been held? Willow felt sick that people she trusted could betray their own countrymen with such ease.

  Carter rushed in yelling, his club connecting with the gut of the nearest seated man, sending him sprawling off the empty supply crate. He converted the momentum into an upper cut, catching the second old hand under the chin with a fierce crack that left the man toppling towards the lantern. Willow sprinted towards the two pickaxe handles even as Carter felled the first conspirator, grabbing one and tossing the other towards Khow. She didn’t know which of them looked the most uneasy about wielding a weapon, her or the gask, but at least the weapons weren’t in the hands of the people plotting inside here. Anna, Owen and Kassina leapt to their feet, startled, the look of shock on their faces at being discovered telling its own story.