David: Savakerrva, Book 1

by L. Brown

  Drifting minutes later, he had his answer, it most certainly could.

  Pressed in all sides, Garth reclined not just with Eylahn, but with her mother and father and every guest, the entire snoring pack. Hoping for privacy, their own little web, he instead hosted a sleep-in, some ceremonial repose.

  “Mooz,” murmured Eylahn, and invading the usual pocket, she tugged out the earphones. And then, a quizzical look wrinkling her brow, she pulled out a Casbah souvenir, a slag carving of three black cliffs flecked with orange.

  “Oh,” said Garth, the scene coming back. “The old guy, the beard?” Pantomiming whiskers, he tried to explain. “Well, he died. Was killed tonight, and I saw it, the poor guy just — lost it, I suppose. He was yelling at the J’kel, then tried to hit it with this, but—?”

  Someone grabbed the carving. Hand shaking, holding it aloft, Eylahn’s father eyed the cliffs.

  “Hala,” whispered M’la. Her stare starting to thaw, Eylahn’s mother wrapped her hands around her husband’s. “Hala,” her husband repeated, and as both held the slag carving of cliffs, Eylahn’s mother began to tear.

  Eylahn sighed at this, rolled her eyes like she’d seen it before. But ‘Hala’ resonated with Garth, for it not only echoed Merlin’s last shout, it reminded of Dahkaa, something he said.

  “Hala?” asked Garth. “Isn’t that — a city, some kind of—?”

  Eylahn touched his lips, her usual request for quiet, then snugged an earphone into her ear. But as thoughts of Dahkaa came back, so did waves of memories, things never said. And though Garth suspected she wouldn’t understand, he needed to be honest, unpack his past.

  “Eylahn?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Okay, well, I know you won’t get it, but the reason I’m here — I mean, it’s crazy, just very weird, but there’s this guy named Dahkaa, see? And he and his friend, this G’mach, they—”

  “G’mach?” snapped a guest, jackknifing up.

  “G’mach?” repeated more, eyes suddenly wide.

  “No!” whispered Garth. “Kek G’mach, kek!”

  The pack groaned, and Garth felt a kick from a cleat. An accident, no doubt, but as Garth rubbed his shin, he decided to forget his backstory, just let it all go. Yet if Eylahn deserved the truth, then regardless of what little she understood, he had to try.

  “Anyway,” Garth resumed, “what I’m trying to say is, I was sent here because they said I’m the son of a king, some guy named Kel Vek.”

  Eylahn paused, looked up from the iPod. “Kel Vek?” she repeated, and though others stayed quiet, Garth felt tension in the net, a stilling of breath.

  “Kerrva Kel Vek?” Eylahn asked.

  “Kerrva?” said Garth. “What, like a king? Yes, oove, Kerrva Kel Vek, and since Dahkaa said I’m his son, well, something else he mentioned — the Promise, I think — some legend said I might help you survive, so that’s why they sent me, that’s why I’m here. Understand? Somewhat?”

  Eylahn stared. Smiled. Then looked at the iPod and hit ‘play.’

  “No, me neither,” Garth sighed. “It’s just some epic mistake. But I had to tell you, at least had to try. Though mistake or not, I’m glad I’m here. Way more than glad, I mean, if I wouldn’t have come—?”

  Eylahn abruptly covered his mouth; and looked, to Garth, like she was intently focused on her earphone, the song within. “Name?” she asked.

  “Huh? No, listen, the song can wait, I need to—”

  “Name!” she insisted.

  “I just want to tell you—”

  “Mooz name, Dahveed? Yes, please? Okay?”

  Enthralled by the song, some enigma not previously heard, she offered the other earphone with an irresistible pout.

  “Fine,” Garth relented, now plugging in. “Ruin the moment, but I just want to say—?” Pausing now, Garth narrowed his eyes and listened to the tune. “Huh,” he grunted.

  “’Huh’ — is name?”

  “No, kek, it’s not called ‘huh,’ it — I don’t know what it’s called, I’ve never even heard it before, how’d I get this?”

  “No name?” Eylahn asked.

  “Sorry,” he replied, now tugging out his earphone, “not that I know. But listen, all that matters is you know the truth, because with you, I can’t be someone I’m not. So you should also know, I’m not ‘David,’ my real name is Garth, and — well, I’m supposedly a Son of a King, so my middle name? They called me ‘Savakerrva.”

  His past finally exposed, Garth smiled and relaxed.

  “Savakerrva?” Eylahn asked.

  “Yep.”

  “Savakerrva?” rasped Eylahn’s father, now sitting up.

  “Uh, yeah, but that’s just my middle name, I—”

  “Savakerrva?” queried a guest, “Savakerrva?” buzzed several more, and as Garth watched tired heads turn his way, he wondered, vaguely, what he’d just done.

  “Kel Vek, Dahveed?” asked Eylahn’s mother, taking his face and turning it toward hers. “Tehr — Savakerrva?”

  Sensing misunderstanding, his clear explanation twisted entirely wrong, Garth set his jaw and steeled his voice. “Kek,” he answered. “I’m no one but me, and my name is—?”

  Shocked by an awful blare, the klaxon horn rang. Wrong time, way too soon, but most unnerving, the quick, short blasts were nothing like the sustained call usually heard. Then even worse, the horn still blasting, loudspeakers crackled with the graveled distortion of a G’mach.

  Garth couldn’t decipher the message, what the ugly words meant, though by the panicky roil shaking the nets, he suspected not just bad news, but — even worse to the herd, a break in routine.

  Eylahn’s father yelled something, so did hundreds more, and as a shoving descent down through the nets replaced all sleepy repose, Garth guessed the meaning of the garbled command as an urgent return to work! But regardless of the urgency shown, it apparently wasn’t enough, for now without warning, sleep net support cables twanged with release, and as every stomach flipped, five stories of humanity shrieked in freefalling descent.

  “Dahveed!” cried Eylahn. Garth pulled her in close, but sensing the real danger was less the crash below and more the crush from above, he lunged for a spot less clouded by bodies and just in that instant, they hit.

  Slammed by impact, Garth and Eylahn and hundreds more plowed into the flesh and ice below, breath-sucking collisions capped by the top two nets pounding them flat. But Garth’s lunge had dodged the worst of the overhead weight, and though stunned, he and Eylahn were already moving, groping through bodies all tangled in rope.

  “M’la!” Eylahn screamed. “T’filj!”

  Her father responded, called from beneath, but Eylahn’s mother just cringed, cradled her arm. Roused by their plight, Garth and others struggled against the rope, cut it with slag-blade shivs so those still conscious could crawl out.

  But again they lagged, at least according to Shark. So by his phlegm-grated command, weapon sleeves whooshed green flame and screeched with ballistic discharge, a lethal screed stampeding the herd. The able trampling the impaired, they fled toward the Machine periphery, the great steel skirts starting to rise. But as Garth helped Eylahn and her parents, as they dodged the fire and fled with the rest, something distracted, pulled his gaze outside.

  No longer just a frozen gray waste, the ocean of ice glimmered red, green, and blue. Dumbfounded at first, ignorant of the cause, Garth discovered the frozen ocean just reflected the sky, the stormy flashes between near-missing moons. But while that explained the dazzle, it didn’t account for the haze, the dark coil of cirrus descending, approaching the Machine.

  Pressed to his periscope in the speed-shivered hull, Tusk’s unblinking eye glinted with reds, greens, and blues.

  “G’mach?” asked Gator.

  Wrapped in his vaalik, the X-blade thief crouched sweaty and tense. And so did the rest, the nine others similarly wrapped with Z-rifle guns. Tusk could have briefed them, painted a picture of just what he saw, but in some bat
tles, only one thing matters, defines the trial for all.

  “Atta Ra.”

  The last news expected, the name tightened every jaw and hackled vaalik fur, turned the vessel from quiet to morbidly still. Until, from the back, the silence broke in ratcheting clacks.

  A steeled glint of storm in his twenty-year eyes, a man with a tumbleweed thicket of long yellow hair loaded his Z-rifle, cocked it one deliberate clack at a time. An action, apparently, now easing the strain, for man-by-man, the others armed their rifles in a rising clatter of clack.

  Tusk grabbed a wooden lever, then watched Yellowhair. Z-rifle primed, the warrior donned ragged leather goggles, then crouched by a rear bulkhead door. Meeting Tusk’s gaze, he then grabbed a rope and gave a nod.

  Tusk yanked the lever hard and winced from the blast, the in-rushing wind through the opening rear door dropping like a ramp. Still gripping his rope, Yellowhair eased back, and on thirty-inch skates, he joined the flash of the blurring-by ice.

  Garth shivered, couldn’t stop, and neither could anyone else. Shoulder-to-shoulder outside the Machine, the herd waited under the lunar storm, the rumble and flare between the two moons. But unlike the rest, Garth didn’t quake just because of the cold, he shook because of the haze, because whenever the high lightning flashed, it unveiled the gunship, the rakish asymmetry hiding within.

  “Dahveed?” Looking for courage, for the fearless warrior who beat back assassins with sparking X-blades, Eylahn instead found a boy, a face shakey and pale. Then the gunship’s airlock arm swung down, and as its hatch pincered open and escaping mist swirled, Eylahn felt Garth nearly pass out.

  First came the chains, their indigo glow. Then came wood, the long, crooked stick. Déjà vu all over again, Atta Ra emerged from the airlock and floated over the ice.

  Their signal to advance, the Machine’s entire uniformed horde jogged out in formation, fifty First and Second Progress G’mach. Shark led them, but when this Third Progress commander greeted his Ninth Progress sovereign with a weapon-sleeve salute, Atta Ra ignored.

  He floated there a moment, stared down at the two-thousand slaggers and haulers from twenty feet up. But instead of approaching, he extended his arm and opened his metal-mesh hand.

  Responding immediately, the gunship projected a vision, a forty foot canvas of light. Static interfered, jitter and flicker seemd in synch with the storm, but as clarity grew and the image took form, the herd began to stir. Pixels from earth, an image of Garth at the old train station shimmered into a massive hologram, an electric poster for the most wanted life on C’raggh.

  “Hok mehr — Savakerrva!” brayed the loudspeaker voice.

  Eylahn gawked between Garth and his forty-foot self, her parents did as well, and now, so did the Woman in Black. Struck by the match, she soon saw nothing but her chance for revenge.

  But before she could speak, a G’mach yelled. Firefly, by his goggled look, and as Garth peeked between heads, the G’mach pulled three teenage boys from the lines.

  Shark eyed the herd. “Savakerrva?” he asked.

  No one spoke, no one looked.

  Shark glanced back at Atta Ra, waited for his command. But the Wraith said nothing, just descended to the frozen ocean, then stopped inches above. In no hurry, stretching the seconds for tormenting effect, he raised his crooked stick, then struck the ice.

  Firefly’s reply came fast, and as his weapon sleeve barked, the three boys spun into dead, twisted heaps. Garth buckled, nearly fell, but as for the herd?

  No one spoke, no one looked.

  Shark yelled another command. Firefly grabbed three more. But now they chose teenage girls, and as they cried and begged, Shark again addressed the herd.

  “Savakerrva!” he roared.

  But the result stayed the same, no one stirred. At least not at first, but then a woman began to plead. Perhaps a mother of one of the girls, she begged and beseeched, but she pled her case alone. None added their voice, the herd huddled as one, and as all embraced nonviolence, Shark turned to Atta Ra.

  The Wraith lifted his stick, started the last second count, and Garth couldn’t cope, he simply shut down. Nothing he could do, this wasn’t his fault, so turning away and biting his tongue, he knew this was it, the moment he joined the herd.

  Then for some reason, perhaps the first spark of courage, he quit.

  “No!” Garth bellowed, and his shout turned every head. But as every face stared, whatever courage had sparked within Garth now just cooled into shiver, into cold, quiet dread.

  “Geh tel!” shouted the Woman in Black. Blood in the water, her slake of revenge finally here, Hollywood’s former paramour, perhaps one of a few, now pointed to Garth. “Savakerrva!” she triumphantly cried.

  A dozen G’mach now hurried her way, so they scattered, those near Garth, the herd fell back.

  Except, by the look, for a last few, Eylahn and her parents stood fast. They refused to retreat, and though that could have given Garth strength, it instead just multiplied his defeat. He knew the G’mach, what they could do, and against such beings, a race so progressed? Standing as one would save none.

  “Zahlen!” rasped a voice behind Garth. But before he could turn, the Manager yanked him to a windbreak plate that never rose; a spot, for the moment, hidden from the G’mach. “Vee, Savakerrva,” the Manager implored, nodding toward the under-Machine world. “Vee!”

  Unaware of the word’s precise meaning, Garth understood more the shove to his back. Lunging without a plan, he fled, by habit, toward the trench.

  Shooting followed fast, weapon-sleeve rounds first chipped the ice at his heels, then intersected his path. Blocked from the trench, from its sheltering depth and shrouding steam, Garth veered toward the tool racks, a duck and weave that left him intact. But as bullets shrieked and chipped all about, as he somehow evaded their strike, he wondered at their goal, if they were just trying to pin him down.

  He wants me alive.

  Garth dodged toward the J’kel furnaces, the five infernos insanely ablaze, then slid for cover behind. Catching his breath and wondering what next, he knew as big as the Machine was, he’d soon run out of places to hide.

  And then?

  Trapped. G’mach pursued behind, the Great Wall of Ice rose to his left — and with Atta Ra to his right, that meant ahead was the only option, the ice and wind and empty trench. At least it should have been empty, so perhaps it was only sweat, some blurring tear, but as Garth squinted ahead, he glimpsed a flash of yellow, some straw-tinted blur.

  He would have looked again, but when bullets fractured the nearby ice, he dove behind a steel beam, then zigzagged through rows of hanging motors and sweaty boilers of heat. Still alive, still a theoretical chance, but to escape one place, you must have a next, and like the bear on a limb, they had him tree’d. And when that sank in, so did his cleat, his left toe snagged a wire. Crashing hard, he slid to a stop in the Tool Zone, the last stop for the useless and cracked.

  “You’ve changed, David.” Oddly distorted and malevolently deep, a new loudspeaker voice snapped Garth from his daze.

  “No longer an infant, nearly a man—” Invading his mind and rattling his bones, the voice evoked a presence both foul and cold. A voice, Garth knew, perfectly suited to a Wraith in Chains.

  “And becoming, perhaps, the Savakerrva foretold. Are you him?”

  Unable to stand it, the voice of his dreams, Garth tensed for a last, desperate sprint.

  “The answer, David, lies in your mind, we must unlock the secrets within. And after fourteen years — shall we at last begin?”

  Garth quailed like prey pressed between jaws, for now, just like his dreams, he would die by the hand of Atta Ra. Utterly alone, no help coming and completely cut off, he wrestled with the fugitive’s dilemma, surrender or run. Then he wrestled nothing at all, just cocked his head toward a cry from outside.

  A cry nearly lost in the havoc and shouts, he wondered if he imagined it, at least that’s what he hoped. But when he heard it again, w
hen Dahveed! flew in on the wind, fear of Atta Ra vanished in his sprint back out.

  Maybe she’d tried to interfere, maybe her stand by his side was reason enough, but whatever the cause, nothing mattered but saving Eylahn from the G’mach, from Shark dragging her away.

  “Stop!” Garth yelled, now weaving through the herd. “Leave her alone!”

  Shark ignored, just dragged her along, and when Garth finally raced onto uncluttered ice, two G’mach rushed his way. Weapon sleeves hissing, they shot green fire to warn him back. But Garth saw only Eylahn, and showing no pause, he charged the first lash of flame.

  Which now sputtered, no longer blocked. An unexpected result, but when the second flame died as well, Garth noticed both G’mach shake from a gun’s angry bark. Yet the apparition approaching seemed more fantastical still, for wrapped in a vaalik and speed-skating his way, a straw-haired Viking blasted a rifle bent like a Z.

  “Mo-tahh!” Yellowhair roared, and that was enough, the herd broke in stampedes, fled every which way. Driven by cries of “Zahlen!” and wild-eyed shriek, slaggers and haulers fled the warrior and many incoming more, a skate-borne fury of shot and flash that panicked Yak into Garth and knocked him flat.

  But when he heard her again, when Dahveed pierced the mayhem once more, Garth staggered up. G’mach weapon sleeves screeched and Zahlen Z-rifles boomed, but somehow through the din, somehow he saw that half-shell hat skitter over the wind-whipped ice.

  “Eylahn!” Garth shouted, nearly breaking his lungs. But hearing no Dahveed, he stumbled blindly on with his body going numb from every flash-blinding blast. He would find her, he knew, hold her to the end, but then for no reason, at least none he could see, hundreds of the herd surged his way in a high tide of scream. A wild retreat, they fled the phantasm now looming, a storm-flashed outline in rakish dead black.

  Led by Atta Ra, his gunship followed like an obedient wolf, a rumbling terror invisibly leashed.