“I guess so. My people could build to last, but still...” I let my voice trail off, thinking about risk and reward. “Clear the door. I’ll open.”
Silk and Mira split to either side, guns ready and torches high. With my boot, I pushed on the door, taking deep breaths in case everything went to shit.
The door swung open easily, as the sound of falling water reached my ears. “A waterfall?”
I looked around the door, gun ready—and stopped in my tracks, too stunned to move. Mira peeked over my shoulder, then I heard Silk’s noise of surprise. “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“Another garden?” Mira asked.
“More than that. It’s a greenhouse, and I think we just found the way to build our life,” I said.
The room was huge, brightly lit, and filled with the smells of life. Three long raised beds of dirt were crowded with young trees, flowers, and vegetables, all green and healthy.
“How...?” Mira asked, but I just pointed to the panels above.
“Water power from there,” I said. The water wheel turned at a steady pace, a falling stream entering from a tube in the wall. The water made power, lighting panels on the ceiling, and then filled an irrigation system of copper tubes that ran to the end of each huge bed. “It’s a greenhouse and a power system. It’s the seed of life. I wondered where they got the trees.”
“Why plant them here?” Silk asked.
“Too hot up top. Get everything started down here, cover it, protect it, and you can keep producing food and trees, all to make the oasis bigger and bigger. It’s brilliant. It’s also way beyond that idiot Velarus, which means this was set up by someone a long time ago. I bet Velarus got the wheel working by unclogging the spring. Once the water flowed, he had a way to start all over again.”
“Look—bones,” Mira said, lifting a small animal bone from the nearest bed.
“Fertilizer. Velarus was descending into the state of an animal, but he wasn’t always like that. They brought the soil back, planted seeds, and made a garden in the Empty. I bet there’s a record of the original one if we read all of the notes left behind,” I said.
“What are all these plants?” Silk asked.
The farthest bed had few trees, but a lot of vegetables and even some fruit bushes—berries shining like beacons of a life that the Empty hadn’t seen in a long time.
“Food. A future, reborn. Velarus did some good things before he got greedy,” I said.
“Greedy?” Silk was confused by my answer.
“He was like Taksa and Senet. Wanting too much power, too much change with medicine and tech he couldn’t hope to understand, and now he’s dead.” I walked over to a tomato plant, and it smelled like life itself. When I turned back to Mira and Silk, my smile was unstoppable. “So much good here.”
“This is a nursery, sort of?” Mira asked, running her fingers over the leaves of a young oak tree. There were hundreds of them, from knee high to well above my head and everywhere in between. As much as they would help, the working water power was even more important. The greenhouse was worth more than anything else in the world right now, because I was here, and I knew what to do with it.
“It is. We think Taksa will come from the west, if he follows the route from Alatus. That means we need a way to peel the slaves away so they don’t get caught in the crossfire,” I said, staring at the saplings. An idea took shape, and if it worked, we would need a few hours to make it happen. “Back up top. We need all hands to find the wagons and—” I stopped in my tracks, lifting my nose to smell the air beyond the water wheel. There was something sharp underneath it. A familiar scent, but so unexpected, I walked as if in a dream toward the end of the greenhouse, looking for another doorway.
I found it to the left, almost hidden behind a thick group of blackberry bushes in the farthest bed of soil. It was was one in yet another series of doors, but larger and made with two panels. “Smell that?”
“Sort of like...the still where Wetterick makes his shitty liquor?” Mira asked.
“That’s it,” I said as the memory clicked. Like a distillery. I held only my gun now, pushing at one side of the door. It wasn’t locked, but a small stopper held the panels closed. With a flick, I kicked the wedge of wood to one side and the door opened slightly. “I’m going in, but we need—wait, no torches. Open the door as wide as it will go. There could be fumes.”
Mira helped open both sides of the door wide enough that light flooded the room beyond. “It’s another growing place?”
“Smaller but sort of,” I said. There was a smaller bed filled with different plants, none of which appeared to be fruits or vegetables. My eyes played over the space, taking in a long series of shelves, a large distillery, and something else. “Holy. Shit.”
“What?” Silk asked. They fanned out behind me as I moved into the room. The air was heavy with rot and chemicals.
“It’s a distillery, alright, but not for booze.” I pointed to the most beautiful sight I’d seen since Mira and Silk.
Fuel cans. More than a dozen, at least five gallons each, and they looked full, their metal sides bulging with potential.
Silk ran her finger over one of the cans, its side labeled with a flame. “My girls have heard about this before, but I’ve never seen it. Not in my lifetime, at least, and not this far west.”
“You’ve heard of people making fuel? For what?” I asked, shocked to think that the world had kept more than just nanobots and solar panels in working order.
“I heard about a mining outfit that used a train engine to dig. Way out west, they’re tearing through a small series of hills left from an old city that burned. It’s too slow using people, so they have a giant screw, powered by an engine. Been out there for years. They produce more metal than anyone in their area, and I think they still forge weapons, too,” Mira said.
“I’ve heard that as well. Ruins of Danvar. Huge place, I’m told by my sources,” Silk said with a grin.
“I bet your sources told you anything you wanted to know.” I know I would sing like a canary if I had any secrets to keep. It was a good thing she was on my side.
She gave a lazy, sensual smile that told me she was thinking of our time together. That made two of us.
“Why here? Why wouldn’t we know about this if there was a—I don’t know, a train, or mine, or something else here in the Empty?” Mira asked.
“Something tells me we’re going to find out. Once we secure this place, there are a lot of mysteries to solve, not the least of which is why they’re producing biofuel for a system that doesn’t seem to be here.” I drummed my fingers on a fuel can, listening to the liquid slosh. “We’ll find out. I guarantee it.”
“How?” Mira asked, curious.
“Because engines run out of fuel, and we have it,” I said with a smile of satisfaction. If we controlled a fuel source, then we would have power over whatever tech was using it. I liked our new home more with each passing minute, and we hadn’t even cleared a single wing of the facility.
“Can you make fuel?” Silk asked. She considered the process before her, taking in tubes and cans that would be utterly alien to anyone who didn’t understand basic science. Fortunately, I did.
“I can, and we will. As long as we have filtration, we can make fuel indefinitely. How much, I don’t know, but just having this as a resource means we can build things that will make life easier. A safer existence means more people, and a better life. We can do this. It’s a huge leap forward,” I said.
“You’ll have to teach us. Both of us. We should never fail to pass secrets on, in case anything happens to us,” Silk said. Her eyes were distant. I wondered what information she knew was lost because of people failing to share.
“I will. Promise. I have goals, and they can’t happen without other people sharing the same knowledge. Nobody really understood my society’s tech, even though we used it all the time. We lived with it but as to how it worked? It was beyond most people. This,” I said, waving at the distillery, “
is easy. We’ll share it, we’ll tell it. People will know, and we’ll all grow because of it. We start with three of us, and move on from there.”
“Three it is,” Mira said, but there was a hint of sadness behind her eyes. I knew she thought of Bel and wished the number was four. I did too.
“Three it is,” Silk confirmed. “I’m going up top, to help look for the wagons. If things like this are down here, then we need everything we can find to protect it. I don’t know what the Harlings left behind, but I’m sure it’s something we don’t have.”
“Let’s all go. This will keep until after we make our stand,” I said.
“To the sun again,” Mira said, and I knew she was fighting to leave her sister’s ghost behind.
“To the sun,” I agreed, feeling the weight of my gun. Some things were worth fighting for, and what we found was more than a greenhouse and fuel. It was the future.
34
“Jack! Jack!” Natif shouted, pausing only to gasp, bent over with his hands on knees. Lasser came into view from the south, hailing us with a wave. The sun was setting, a scarlet flare on the horizon with only a hint of clouds to the west. Tomorrow would be clear and hot, with good visibility.
“Catch your breath, big guy. I take it you found the wagons?” I asked him, holding out a waterskin.
He nodded, drinking deeply then wiping his mouth with a small hand. “There are four, and something else, too, but he would not let me see. He said I was too young!” Natif said with the kind of indignation only a pre-teen can manage.
“Let’s wait for Lasser and see what it is. You get under the shade and fill that skin again at the spring. I don’t want you overheated. I need you for tomorrow and the next day, okay?” I told him.
He ran off, skin swinging and shoulders high with purpose. I shielded my eyes from the sunset, waiting for Lasser to approach. His body language was grim.
“What is it?” I asked.
When he paused to gather his thoughts, I tilted my head as a distant hum ran through my blood. Lasser was an experienced man. He’d seen things. That meant this was something new, and most likely terrible. I wasn’t wrong.
“The wagons are untouched, even unopened. They’re filled with goods and close enough that we can bring everything here in small loads. As to the crew, and what was left of the Harlings—”
He paused to rub his face as if he could erase a memory, but I saw his eyes, and there was no leaving the horror behind. Lasser was shaken, badly.
When he spoke, his voice was cracked with emotion. “It’s best if Natif doesn’t see. In truth, it’s better if no one sees, but you have to. We have to, so we understand what they are. What they will do to us. To everyone, given a chance. They have to be utterly wiped out, Jack. Not one bit of their poisonous tradition can continue past tomorrow, no matter the cost.”
I turned and lifted my voice so Natif could hear at a distance. “Start a fire, Natif. We’ll be back shortly, and hungry.”
“Got it, Jack,” came Natif’s piping answer.
“Okay,” I said, my thoughts as dark as the coming night. “Show me.”
The wagons were ten minutes south, hidden so skillfully behind an outcropping I would have never suspected they were nearby. There were four wagons in all, in good order and bright in the last rays of the dying day. Their wheels were heavily built, the yokes drove into the sand to keep the wagons still.
“Other side,” Lasser said. He made no move to join us. Silk and Mira looked at each, wondering what lay ahead, then stepped forward with me into the sandy depression just past the line of wagons.
There were three children, staked upside down in positions of agony so real, I knew they’d died in the air, lashed to crude crosses with their feet to the sky and shattered arms dangling. Their fingers were gone, their tongues as well. They were untouched by animals, their bodies blackened by sun. The smell was a nightmare, the sight a horror like hell itself. There were two girls and a boy, and they had all been younger than Natif. Blood pooled beneath each in a rusty stain, and the pall of evil hung over the entire place in a suffocating cloak. I fought the urge to vomit right there. Mira did, wiping her mouth and spitting onto the sand, naked fury on her face.
“What the fuck kind of animal could do this to a child?” Silk asked in a stricken whisper.
I swallowed my hate, letting it burn all the way down. “You know, I was going to spare the guards. I was going to give them all a quick death with the bullet. But now?” I shook my head in such disgust I had to fight the urge to scream at the stars. “We’re not using guns on anyone. I’m going to use my hands on every last one of them, and I’m going to go slow.”
“Jack,” Mira whispered.
“What?” I tore my eyes away to see tears sliding down her face.
She drew her knife, gleaming in the final glow of the sun. “Save some for us.”
35
The blood chickens were delicious, but I picked at mine in a careless way, haunted by the sights from the hidden caravan. It was a silent meal, save for the natural chatter of Natif, who was nervous about the coming fight but excited to be a part of it.
When the fire died, and Natif slumped to one side, sleeping, I motioned that we put him on a blanket under the trees, safely tucked away from our discussion.
“They will be here in the morning, or before dawn if I’m any judge of their tactics. I’m too pissed to sleep, but you all need to rest. Our plan was going to be rings of defense in depth, but there’s no need, not now,” I said.
“We still snipe at a distance?” Mira asked. She was an excellent shot, and her aim would be welcome.
“I don’t know how common guns are, so your goal is simple. If they have a gun in the open, take them out. If they don’t, leave them alone. We want to spare the blood of the slaves, and we can’t do that turning the western approach into a killing ground,” I said.
“Jack, what if they run?” Silk asked. Lasser grunted at that, having thought the same thing.
“I’ll catch them.” I looked at the rippling muscles on my augmented legs and knew that no wagon or shaman could outrun me.
“And then?” Silk asked. It was a short question, but loaded with meaning. She wanted to know if we were going to torture Taksa and Senet to death in the open air, close to the place where we would build our new world.
“Guards first, guns first, then we open the Black Room but only after Taksa and Senet are down. They’re brutes and cowards. They’ll have a failsafe of some kind, and it’s up to us to get behind them and stop that. You’ll all attack from the front, and so will I—but I’m going to break off, circle around, and close off their escape,” I said. “When that happens, the real fight will begin.”
“Won’t they be helpless then?” Mira asked.
“I doubt it. They’re animals. They won’t surrender, and I wouldn’t accept their surrender even if they offered it,” I said.
“Good,” Silk hissed.
“That doesn’t mean I won’t have...questions,” I said.
“Even better,” Silk agreed. “You’re not sleeping at all?”
“I’ve slept for two thousand years. I’m done sleeping for now. You all get some rest. I’ll wake you before dawn, and we can eat and drink. We’ll need it,” I said.
There was no argument, and Lasser went to lay near Natif after a fatherly check of the boy. Silk and Mira unrolled blankets near the fire, curling up with their faces to the last coals. Above, the stars watched over us as I planned, fumed, and wondered if this world could be saved.
36
I crouched near the most distant sapling of any size, letting the light desert wind blow over my skin. It was cool and dry, and the horizon began to turn iron gray, shade by shade.
I walked to Silk and Mira, reaching down to shake their shoulders and rouse them for the fight.
My hand stopped as the scent reached my nose. It was something you never forget, a stench so cruel that to smell it once means you would never send s
oldiers to fight again. Death. It filled my senses, rotten and vile, carried to us on the wind from the west like a messenger crying out the Black Room was coming.
Mira’s eyes opened, her nose lifting like hound. “I smell it,” she whispered.
I woke Silk, who wrinkled her nose, ever delicate. “They’re here?”
“They’re coming,” I said, slipping away to wake Lasser and Natif.
In seconds, we were chewing cold blood chicken and swigging water, eyes all cut to the west in a fevered state.
“Weapons?” I asked, knowing the answer.
“Ready,” came the chorus. There was no need for talking. I touched Natif on the shoulder and pointed to a tall oak. “Climb that. Kill anyone who tries to hurt you. Stay safe.”
“I will, Jack.” He hugged me, light as a feather against my side, then pelted away to begin climbing the tree in silent assent.
“You’re our second set of eyes,” I told Lasser. “You know what to do.”
“I’ll protect him if things go wrong. If things fall completely apart, I’ll take them with me when they come,” Lasser said and I believed him.
“Good luck,” I said, squeezing his arm. He smiled, grim but determined. “With me to our spots,” I said with a wave. Silk and Mira fell in, guns out and eyes focused on the silent desert.
“Use your vision and give us a heading,” Mira said, settling on a rock, her rifle pointed to the growing dawn.
With a calming breath, I let my eyes focus into the distance, fighting a cringe at the rising smell of corruption. There. Three shapes. Three columns, and then the hint of a sound, metallic and fighting to be heard over the breeze. “Hear them? Chains.”
“I hear it,” Mira said. “I see them now, too. Silk, over there. Ogres.”
“Got ‘em,” Silk replied. The day grew brighter as the ogres came closer, their long strides slow but steady. “Look behind them.”
Mira’s rifle cracked, startling us all. “One guard down.” She paused a beat, and her rifle spoke again. “Make that two. Where are the rest of them?”
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