by C J Timms
Grace threw an image up on the wall, and it showed a black and white dome extending out from the Infinity Bazaar for at least a kilometre. Crowds had gathered outside it.
‘Admetus.’ Spur rumbled. ‘We should go in.’
‘What are we supposed to do without our Script? Head office is saying to wait.’ Jaz shrieked.
Spur tried to lift his war hammer, and it was so very heavy. He could barely move in his combat gear. He spun a short nail in his hand and downed his instant coffee.
Sometimes distasteful things had to be done.
Spur winked at Grace, ‘Good opportunity for a clinical exam.’
Grace grinned ‘Well what are we doing sitting around with our dicks in hand, let's go punch something.’
‘We shouldn’t do this. Sir this could be...well this could be another Glenrowan.’ Jaz said.
Spur rammed the short nail down into the desk. ‘There is a fracture. We need to fix it.’
The augmented radio flashed, and a brief burst of chatter came through.
‘What is it?’ Spur asked.
‘It's the Unbroken, and they’re making demands.’
‘What do they want?’ Grace asked.
‘Sir,’ Jaz hesitated, ‘they want the Stapes.’
Swan’s jaw cracked to the side. The Unbroken guard shook his fist and pulled back his arm for another blow.
‘Lousy frakkers.’ The guard muttered.
Sterling got another kick to the ribs at gunpoint. He rolled across the floor and coughed up blood. He'd been on worse dates but not by much.
The Unbroken picked Swan up and socked her in the gut. Her breath left her, and the Unbroken threw her to the ground. Swan fell beside Sterling. Sterling coughed up more blood, shuffling over towards Swan.
‘Somethings not going to their plan,’ he muttered. Sterling twitched his head to the side slightly. Two armed guards held a heated conversation, and one of them took off running for the upper levels.
‘Just hold out a bit longer ay? Good chance to impress your date over there.’ Swan said, blowing a chunk of bloody snot from her nose.
‘I’ve had worse dates.’ Sterling tried to grin and winced. ‘Besides I think she’s more interested in you than me. ’
Jean lay passed out nearby. The Unbroken had battered the Paramouran senseless.
‘We need to wreck that Equaliser.’ Sterling said, nodding to the glowing sphere that had started this mess. He was hauled to his feet by one bulky arm. Admetus stared into Sterling’s face.
‘Where are your friends, what have they done to my men?’
Sterling spat in Admetus’s face. Admetus slammed Sterling into the ground. Then he hauled Swan up by the hair.
‘And you, are you smarter than your friend here?’
Swan tried to focus. Her head rang, her eyes flitted around the room, and she saw someone out of place. Gale signalled to her from atop one of the higher balconies. He was holding something bright and pink and a remote control. Someone was with him, the blonde-haired girl he said met on tinder?
A voice came over her communicator in her ear. ‘Swan, give me a distraction.’
Swan glanced hesitantly at the guards and their rifles, could she do this? She’d have to put full trust in Gale, that he had a plan. She was no genius or planner, everything she made broke.
Time slowed down. What would Larc say here? To lead, to be a lady. To be a symbol and be distracting. Swan looked over at the device. Back to the guns on the Unbroken. To Admetus stone-cold eyes.
Awwww hell, she thought. I’m good at breaking things.
She rammed her knee up into Admetus’s crotch.
Admetus grunted and doubled over. Swan pulled a pistol from his waist and jammed it to Admetus’s temple. She grabbed him by the back of his coat, as best she could with her casted hand. She backed away, the Unbroken trained their rifles on her, but she kept moving.
Don’t give them time to think.
‘Drop your guns, or I’ll shoot.’
No one lowered their rifles. They looked to one of the masked figures who favoured one hip, standing at a slant. The guardsmen held up his hand, signalling them to wait.
Swan backed towards the Equaliser. She shoved Admetus away, dropped her gun and raised the Slagblade high. It was so much heavier than usual, a heavy lump of crude metal in a barely functional form.
But it had never broken on her.
Bloody resilient.
Swan went to bring it down on the Equaliser. This close she could see markings on the side. A small symbol, one she might not have noticed if she hadn’t seen it so often. An armoured swan. The mark of her father’s forge.
Swan hesitated.
One of the masked Unbroken, with an antalgic gait, crash tackled her. The Unbroken pinned her and shoved a handgun in her face. Swan froze, time seeming to slow, she realised she was dead.
The Unbroken’s head quirked as though seeing her face beneath the beard. The gun dropped a bit.
‘Jane?’
A high pitched whir came from above, and a bright pink drone shot like a pink missile of death downwards. Admetus, reached for his pistol to shoot it. Shots clanged off the drone, but the momentum was in place. The drone collided with the Equaliser and the world flared.
Admetus turned the gun on Swan and pulled the trigger.
Click.
It jammed. Admetus and Swan both looked at the blue fog of Penumbra that swirled around the firing mechanism.
‘No,’ growled Admetus.
Colour raced back into the world. She was strong again. Swan flipped the Unbroken’s leader into a stranglehold and slammed his face into the ground. One of the guards tried to fire on her, but it misfired, Penumbra sliding around his gun.
A low pitched chuckle came from Sterling. The Unbroken who’d been kicking him around edged backwards. Sterling came up in a flurry of blows. He rolled from punch to kick, twisting around the Unbroken like an acrobat.
Damn that boy was fast, even without an alignment.
The shops, previously locked in place, sped back up. They ripped free and flew wide. The ceiling shattered, and three fracturesmiths fell to Earth. Their Script glowed bright like halos, weapons drawn. The youngest looking missed the landing and fell on his face. He raised a thumbs up.
A professor with a massive war hammer raised it and swung away. He scattered the Unbroken like they were rag dolls. The third fracturesmith, a female who carried a wicked-looking scythe, started carving through the Unbroken’s guns.
‘Mad jelly,’ croaked Swan, keeping Admetus pinned with her good hand.
The female smith threw Sterling a spare war hammer. Sterling caught it with glee and set to work. Kneecaps, after all, were made for breaking. Swan leaned down to Admetus’s ear.
‘Not so tough without your gun, huh.’ Swan said.
Admetus bucked beneath her, but with her Locomotyr strength, he had no chance.
‘Let him up, Jane,’ screamed one of the Unbroken. The one who had hesitated before, the one who’d known her face.
That voice, Swan thought, I know that voice. With a horrible realisation, she remembered the sigil of her fathers forge on the Equaliser.
‘Joseph…what have you done?’
‘What was right.’ Joseph said and spat to the side. Then he leapt into the air and grabbed a platforms that was rocketing past. The platform sped away towards another realms gate.
Swan watched him go. The fight gone from her. They’d spent so much time fighting when they were young. Swan nudged the wreckage with her boot. There was only smoke and ash left, but she was certain she had seen the symbol of her fathers forge.
A prolonged groan from nearby drew her attention. She raced over to Jean and bent over the beat-up sports star. Blood trickled down her chin, her face black and blue.
‘Where are you hurt?’ Swan asked poking different parts of her.
She caught her hands, ‘In the pride…’
‘Let me check. You look like death warmed up.
’
‘You silver-tongued flirt you…’ Jean hacked up bloody phlegm.
‘Shutup and let me check, anyway I don’t look any better.’ Swan was bloodstained, her clothes shredded and the ragged beard was hanging on.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Jean said. Jean reached up and stroked Swan’s beard. ‘You look…fucking gorgeous.’
Then Jean passed out, her hand falling by her side. Swan scratched her beard then rolled her shoulders out, feeling like there was a target between her shoulder blades.
An itch that was hard to scratch.
Gale - Ghosts of the past
Measure twice and hammer once. The broken cannot be put back together, only mended…or replaced.
Spur’s primer for fracturesmith’s 2nd edition.
In the late dark of 3 am, the police finally released Gale from questioning. He’d had to show them his hydrolens recording to prove what had happened. They’d had a lot of questions about that little invention. They’d tried hard to pin this on him, the Trenchborn at the heart of a terrorist attack.
The waters of the harbour were dark and stirred only by the take-off of the airship. The red-eye airship had few other passengers at this time of night, a few miners, some students back from a late night. Gale thumbed through ‘Lifting Great Weight’. He was about two thirds through, and he re-read his favourite line.
‘Never be afraid to ask for a spot. Mates lift for mates. Weights before dates.’
He patted his pocket for a bookmark and felt a scrap of paper. Frowning, Gale pulled out a note.
‘Find the university, become a fracturesmith, stop the Worldflood…keep working on that resume.
Spur.’
The man who’d smashed through the ceiling, it had been him. The fracturesmith who’d started all this, who’d sent him here. The one who knew his father. Spur, author of their frakking textbook. He must have slipped it into his pocket in the chaos after the attack. It wouldn’t kill him to be less cryptic. Gale crumpled up the note and threw it into the sea.
Gale staggered back from the dock to the Lighthouse. At the stroke of 4 am, Gale pushed open the door of the Lighthouse and trudged into the common room. Titus rocketed out of a chair and tackled him.
‘Gale you champion of men.’ Titus’s grapple left him with an unfortunate smell of armpit.
Yip appeared next to him, offering him a cup of tea.
‘Where were you when the cops came?’ Gale said.
Yip grinned from ear to ear. ‘I said not to fall behind, no sense in both of us going down. Don’t get mad. Get better.’
Sterling snored away in one of the lounges. Swan paced in from the kitchen and gave him a half-grin. Then she shrugged and then cast her eyes down to the side.
‘Why are you so happy?’ Gale asked Yip.
‘This should cheer you up.’ Yip winked. He gestured to three large square crates. The outside label read ‘Trav’s topnotch tacos.’
‘I got Titus to carry them out, especially. Go ahead, open them.’
Gale, mind just trying to survive the 4 am fugue, slid the lid off one of the crates. He was not impressed. He pulled out a packet of unsalted corn chips, cracked it open and bit in.
‘Sixteen packets of corn chips and twelve flavour sachets of extra spicy?’ Gale asked. ‘Apart from diarrhoea, what is this supposed to get us?’
Yip stared back at him. ‘No, the gold.’
Gale looked back then gestured for Yip to look.
Yip jumped atop the crate. ‘Where’s it gone?’
‘Where’s what gone?’
Yip dived into the crate, shifting packets of taco mix around. ‘The Unbroken’s payment, we found them carrying fifteen thousand gold, our rent payment and semester fees all covered. Where is it? Where is it?’
Gale pulled the lids off the other crates. Nothing but the cold hard reality of burrito wraps and the stinging bite of high-intensity salsa.
Yip’s head popped up from the crates. ‘Where’s our money.’
‘I gave it away.’ Titus said.
‘What, you ….why?’ Swan yelled. ‘That was our rent payment.’
‘It was blood money, using it would not have been manly.’ Titus said. ‘Nor would it have been honest.’
Yip’s face went bright red, and he threw a book at him that smacked Titus on the head. ‘Honour isn’t going to pay our rent.’
Yip leapt from the edge of the crate and grabbed onto Titus’s shirt, planting his stubby legs on Titus’s chest. He put his face right up in Titus’s face. ‘Who the bloody hell did you betray your mates for. What reef blighted reason could you possibly have had to give up our future.’
‘I would never betray my mates, and I will always have your back.’ Titus said, cheeks flushing red.
‘Then where is it.’ Yip yelled.
Titus went quiet for a long moment. He looked away from Yip and muttered something.
‘Speak up you big knobhead.’ Yip screamed.
‘I…I put it in the box for the Volkstorm appeal.’ Titus said
‘What.’ Yip said. He let go of Titus’s collar and feel to the floor.
‘The charity for the orphanage on Volkstorm. It was right nearby where we found it. So I just put it in. While you were um…interrogating.’
Swan pinched the bridge of her nose, ‘You big lummox, I just wish that heart of gold of yours was good for cash.’ Swan grabbed Titus in a headlock that slowly transitioned to a hug. Then she picked him up and slammed him into one of the crates in a pile driver manoeuvre. She slammed the lid down and sat on it. Banging began on the inside of the crate.
‘That’s got airholes right Swan?’ Gale said.
Swan rolled her eyes and jabbed a nail into the crate and pulled it out. ‘It’s fine. I’m both mad and proud. I’ll deal with him later. I guess we’re not graduating, or going to the winter formal.’
‘Doesn’t sound like a big deal.’ Came a muffled voice from the crate.
‘Open bar Titus, open bar.’ Sterling countered.
A groan came from the crate. Then the sound of corn chips packets being ripped open.
Yip looked up at Swan, ‘Well at least one of us is going to be fine, isn’t that right Swan.’
Swan cocked her head. ‘What do you mean?’
Yip narrowed his eyes, and then murky stepped behind her. Yip swiped a letter from her pocket and threw it onto the table. The letter projected a picture of Jacobian Swan in grainy 3D.
‘Good news Jane, a bit of business came through for us, and I’m sending you enough money for the year. Hope you weren’t worried my little anvil.
Remember, my word is as good as gold.’
‘Where did your father get the money all of a sudden, huh?’ Yip asked. ‘Where did the Unbroken who have no magic, get the Equaliser? Someone stole the Lighthouse beacon. Someone’s been feeding Giltynan information about us, someone told him about the pager.
We should never have trusted you. A Swan’s word is only as good as gold.’
Swan’s face had gone white. ‘You think my father sold terrorists that weapon? You think I betrayed you?’
Yip stalked towards her. From a third of her height, he jabbed a finger at her. ‘You knew one of them, I saw it in your eyes.’
Swan’s face flushed red, and she turned to Gale, ‘You don’t believe this do you? We came through the entrance exam together. We worked night shifts together. We fought a reef-wrecked Hydra together! I have always had your backs.’
It clicked in Gale’s head. What the Unbroken had been talking about in the bar all those months ago. They will deliver the device. A Swan’s word is good as gold.
Gale looked down and away. ‘It's not you I doubt Swan...its your family.’
Swan’s eyes narrowed. She looked over at Sterling who still slumped on the couch. Sterling shrugged. ‘You did seem to know something was coming.’
She gave all of them the finger, using both hands she jammed it in front of their faces.
‘Well frak a
ll of you, my dad’s money should get me into House Laurels. Have fun going down at the end of the year.’
She paused as she brushed past Gale.
‘I thought you of all people wouldn’t judge based on blood.’
Swan stormed out, she slammed the door, and the whole room shuddered.
Silence filled the room. The crate lid dislodged and Titus popped his head out eating a pack of chips.
‘What’d I miss?’
Sterling grabbed Titus’s arm, ‘Come on we’re going for a drink.’ Sterling avoided looking at Gale and Yip. Gale was left alone with Yip.
‘Damnit Yip, what the hell was that. Why do you hate her so much? Is it because of her family? Is that it?’
‘What does she call herself Gale?’
‘Swan?’
‘Yeah, her family name, not Jane. She calls herself Swan because family comes fucking first to her.’
A knock came at the door. Thank the Reef, Gale thought, Swan must have come around.
‘Swan, I’m glad you changed your…’
It was Liam, hat in hand.
‘It’s Ironchurch. He’s gotten worse.’
Gale - Ironchurch worsens
Ironchurch’s body was pale as a corpse. Only his veins showed any colour, mottled purple and crimson threaded dimly through the body. His arms lay limp by his side, his once bulging biceps fading. The curse marks had expanded down the body. The red leaves outside blew past and fell to the street. The dried out leaves curled up in a final supplication to the sky, to some unknown god of change.
‘It's not just him. All the victims of the blood coma are worsening.’ Liam said. The stones holding the curse back had been doubled, reinforced.
Gale gripped the edge of his chair. ‘How do we find the Blood Knight? Why haven’t Charlemagne’s men found him already?’
‘During the war, we learned how to conceal our Script, is it so far fetched to think the enemy has learnt to do the same?’ Liam said.
‘Liam, the man who brought me here, his name was Spur. Did you know him.’ Gale asked
Liam’s eyes flashed. ‘An old colleague, he was a Dredger…but the memories.’ Liam shook his head.