“Do not associate yourself with the sister, remember?” She gave him another hard prod in the back, forcing him forwards. “Each person plays their part.”
Mohab could hear the blockers laying down tools and muttering into their chests.
“All is well,” Sister Eva was insisting. Moments later, there was the sound of breaking glass followed by the sister’s effulgent apologies. Mohab couldn’t help risking a glance; Sister Eva backed away from the broken vials, pistol hidden in the lengths of her sleeves.
“You!” Officer Hockle pointed at one of the blockers in the pit. “Clean up that mess.”
The man did as instructed, shaking out a hand when he nicked it on broken glass.
“Sure you are okay, ma’am?” Hockle leaned on the rail of the balcony and squinted down at the sister. Why the Commandant General abided those witches in his camp, Hockle would never understand. After all, the Lord Gothendore was an old wives’ tale, left over from the dark ages before the Skystorm. Why hadn’t the new age swept away all these ridiculous superstitions?
When the sister didn’t answer, he unhooked his beater and knocked it against the rail.
“Sister!”
The crone lifted her head. “I have spoiled the samples. These hips of mine crack and moan in this desert heat. I feel the bones splintering inside of me.”
Hockle understood the sentiment, except it wasn’t his bones which suffered but his mind. The horrors of Abbandon never came close to healing.
“Go, sister. Fetch your fresh supplies. There’s enough time left to collect your samples aga…” He broke off. His eyes were stinging. No, burning! His throat flexed and threatened to close. “I’m feeling… unwell,” he said between breaths. “I need the nurse.”
Collapsing against the rail, Hockle pointed a trembling hand at the prisoner, Groff. Something had a hold on him, something sudden, violent and profoundly terrifying. Warmth trickled down the corner of his mouth. Hockle put a finger to his mouth and brought it away. The streak of blood felt inevitable. His lungs began to scream.
Hockle’s arms swung over the side of the rails. Below he could see the prisoners staring up at the guards’ balcony, tools in hand. He made out the shapes of the other guards nearby. Some had collapsed onto the metal walkway. Others clung to the rails as he did, necks distended against the wracking agonies in their throats and lungs.
Why were the Vary so still? Panic scrambled his understanding of their environment. Why didn’t the men below help? His eyes – his burning eyes! The pain was pure white heat. Molten tears streaked his face. Below, the filmy gas was just visible, coming from the broken vials and rising.
This was death, then? The fact clutched at Hockle’s heart like a fist. It hurt him utterly, this sudden dissolution when Giselle was still a squeeze of softness on his knee. His wife too, so much life to her yet, the crow’s feet only just beginning at the corners of her eyes.
His throat was completely closed now, his eyes tucked behind swollen lids. ‘I wanted to outlive this madness,’ his mind whispered. Faces came to him – High Judge Titian beneath a raging midday sun; Commandant Superintendent Joltu, stolid and unbending; Lieutenant Kali Titian, shining with a core of golden light; and Giselle. Solemn Giselle, who rarely smiled and who nested into the nook between his neck and shoulders.
The air turned stale in his lungs. Hockle kept his mind’s eye on his daughter’s face and slipped below.
The guards slumped over the balcony railings or collapsed on the walkway. Safe from the rising gas, the prisoners below stayed quiet, watching the dying. Only the blockers reacted. They ran at one another, demanding answers. It didn’t take long for them to start pointing at the broken vials and then the sister. The mix of the hydrogen fluoride concentrate and air had seen sulphuric acid rise into the upper reaches of the holding bay. The idea had been Groff’s, his nursing qualification belying the true extent of his knowledge of chemicals. Kali had witnessed the man’s intelligence when he assisted as her Second in the holding bay and in their moments of hushed conversation in the barracks. ‘The Vary will be safe below,’ he had assured Mohab, a prediction proving true.
Kali pressed a hand to Groff’s shoulder. “Your chemical weapon worked. We don’t have long. Avoid the blockers. Avoid the guards. You should go rescue your charge.”
Groff had tears in his eyes. Now the moment was here, it was overwhelming. “I have murdered men,” he said quietly.
“Yes.” Kali leaned in, examining his face intently. “Do not think about it or the wound will fester. Now go, Groff!” She gave his shoulder a squeeze. “Be outside. I cannot wait for you.”
He nodded and broke free of her. Making for the door, he was approached by a blocker brandishing a makeshift beater.
“Get back!” shrieked the male.
A shot rang out and the male froze, arm raised. His look of astonishment turned to agony.
The blocker fell forward, revealing Sister Eva standing a few feet away, holding out her smoking pistol.
As Groff slipped out of the door, Kali felt the atmosphere crack and was struck by a sudden tide of noise. The Vary had been spurred into action by the sound of the firing pistol. Brandishing hammers, wrenches and torque bolts, they ran at the blockers, who lost all pretence of restraint. They went for the prisoners with their teeth bared. Kali had seen the same frantic anger in the wild cats her battalion used to capture for food. She would feel a jolt of pity to see the creatures hissing and snapping in the traps. But she would slip her blade into their throats just the same. It was no different with the blockers. She joined with the Vary and charged, a bolt gun in one hand and a mallet in the other.
She ran at the nearest blocker, offloading slugs from the bolt gun. The male crumpled inward, hands clutching his head. She drew back her arm and drove the mantle up under the male’s chin. The head ricocheted back. Knocked unconscious, the blocker fell back and sprawled on the ground. Kali didn’t hesitate; she brought the mallet down on his skull, crushing bone into soft matter.
Extra rations and preferential treatment meant the blockers stood their ground. Vary broke under their makeshift beaters. Kali didn’t let up. The timeline was tight and, despite the blockers being stronger, the Vary outnumbered their betrayers five to one. Wild-eyed, the Vary punched and lashed out with hunks of metal. Kali aimed two slugs at a blocker beating on Mohab. Staying true to her military training, she went aimed for the pressure points – the groin, the eyes, the throat. The blocker pushed Mohab aside, raising his arms against the blows.
Kali stayed true to her military training. She went for the pressure points – the groin, the eyes, the throat. The blocker pushed Mohab aside, raising his arms against the blows. Once Kali would have balked at his long Vary limbs. Now she just saw a tall man with a generous reach.
A quick flick of the wrist and she switched to driving her mallet up into the man’s belly. He stumbled back a couple of steps, recovered, and charged at her full pelt.
Kali had seen that expression of rage before, on the faces of soldiers during her training. The recruits were always the most unhinged. The gangly Vary was no different. A couple of shots from the bolt gun took out a portion of his skull. He grappled with her a few seconds more, clinging to life. Kali put up with his attack, feeling handfuls of hair ripped away and the pressure of the male’s thumbs at her collarbone. The grip went slack. The blocker fell to the floor and bled out.
“Kali!” Mohab was on the nearest riser rig, hand outstretched. “Leave the blockers to the men. Keep to the plan.”
Easier said than done for Titian’s daughter. Trained to conquer. Trained to kill. All around, Vary prisoners and blockers locked weapons, bellowed and bled. The sight made Kali bare her teeth. Not so long ago she had brought the Vary to heel. Now she was to be the one to save them. She should have felt relieved, but was disappointed to leave the battle behind.
“You’d think the blockers would try to muscle in on an escape attempt,” she said, breathing heavily as
she joined Mohab on the riser rig.
“Blockers have been turned against their own for so long they’ve forgotten what it means to be Vary.” Mohab spat to one side as the rig took them up. A few moments later, it shuddered to a halt alongside the gunner. Kali entered the keycode into the gel pad. The airlock decompressed, and the door slid in and sideways.
Lights rippled down the length of the internal corridor.
Once, a very long time ago, when Grizmare was five or six years old, she had been taken to the museum by her own grandmother. The day had been hot, she remembered. Similar to the scorching white heat she had experienced up on the roof of the Red Orchid Hotel more recently. All those years ago, her grandmother, who had also been a formidable woman, shoed her into the temperature controlled cool of Geno museum. While so much of Bleekland’s second city was still built into the rock, the museum was one of a number of new buildings, built above ground and cooled by turbines powered by the same flowing magma which made the city bake from beneath. This Grizmare had learnt from her grandmother, in-between their examining all the museum had to offer locked behind glass-sheet.
One display she remembered more clearly than the others. “Pre-Firestorm,” the data recorder had informed her, in a clear female voice which sounded like it should be telling her to swallow medicine. “These water stones represent the blueprints for the communication stacks and energy rooters of early Vary settlements. While most examples of Pre-Firestorm technology were destroyed, these stones were unearthed at a quarry on the outskirts of Nilreb.”
Even as a child, Grizmare had been in awe of the complicated patterns set into the strange metal bricks. Only as an adult, standing at the entranceway to her son’s data farm, did she finally get to see the technology in action.
The warehouse was the height of two floors, she guessed. In place of fire lamps on the walls, small circles of low light were set into the smoked and textured glass-sheet underfoot. The farm itself was comprised of banks of tall stone monoliths. Each stone was etched with geometric designs – the same complicated patterns she had seen all those years ago in the museum. Only, now they were synched to one another using gel – that new-world constituent – instead of water. Every channel flowed with green-gold gel like blood through veins, which she supposed it was.
Staring at the data farm which was Bleekland’s communication bank, Grizmare knew she was looking at her son’s true heart. Here was the thing she had given birth to all those years before. Power to control. Power to suppress. Power to wage war.
She felt as if the room swelled and contracted around her. At the same time, the atmosphere was tight as a drumskin. If a single droplet of sweat had fallen onto the black glass-sheet floor, she could have sworn she would have heard its splash. No one rushed to throw her out. Instead the chamber resonated around her as Grizmare forced herself to walk forwards, the click of her cane echoing with every step.
Her mind filled with numbers – deliberately so since she didn’t want to lose momentum, or courage, and run away screaming. As if making moves across a games’ grid, she passed between the silent stones… Or were they? Now she was amongst them, she thought she detected a very deep, very soft vibration, like a universal hum which she might have heard as much through her bones as through her ears.
‘Any moment they will find me.’ The thought infringed on her steps. She brushed it away forcefully, pushing on against the doubt.
The keystone wasn’t easy to find. She had been looking for something impressive, a match to the size of the towering stones, perhaps, or painted gold to indicate its significance to the entire nation. As it turned out, the keystone was a small, ornately carved oblong… No, a pair of oblongs, slotted so close together that their inner workings meshed. Water plates. Original Vary technology from the Pre-Firestorm period. Dug out of the earth and used for the blueprint on which her son had built his dalma plate datastream and, with it, an empire and space force.
“History that was not yours to steal,” she said firmly, as if chastising a child.
She stared down at the ornate cane in her hand, its etched metal a match to the great rocks of the data farm. High Judge Titian had gifted her the cane all those years ago now. A design of ultimate strength, he had told her at the time. Minutely flexible so as to reduce jarring to the hand bones. Lightly weighted to aid momentum and sustain balance. “A precious and unique artefact for the Mother of our Holy Nation,” her son had said. It was the equivalent of a blood diamond, Grizmare realised, overcome with agony and bitterness. Her son had made her carry a symbol of his grand dishonour and she had never thought to question it.
Now, there only seemed to be one appropriate response. 94 and Eva and the rest of the Resistance wanted her to infect the data farm with a tiny bug stored on a gel chip in her pocket. But Grizmare had never been good at subtle. Instead, she raised her cane as high as her age-crumbled shoulder would allow, then brought it hammering down between the stones. A great seismic pulse radiated out from the spot as the water stones cracked apart, surfaces ruptured. She stood back and watched as the gel ran between them like life’s blood.
Twenty-Seven
Hurrying to the medical suite, Groff thought about the other children in the camp, how their eyes were always bloodshot and syrupy. It wasn’t enough to patch them up or sing them lullabies. None of that made any difference when doctors sliced them open. Abbandon’s medical suite was an adventure playground for sadistic whitecoats and Groff was their golem.
But now there was a chance to change one child’s fate. His own too.
The block chief was on guard duty. Seeing Groff, he put his hands on his hips and tugged on the smokestick between his lips. He spoke out a corner of his mouth.
“Afternoon, Suckgap.”
“Chief.” Groff put a hand on the door handle and was about to go inside when the man blocked his way with an arm.
“I thought you were at the factory in the pm this week.”
“Mostly, but Doctor Harris instructed me to come back this afternoon. He is concerned about one of his subjects showing signs of septicaemia.”
“I couldn’t give a fuck if they were shitting gold.” The block chief shook his head. His makeshift baton clinked against his knee, tack nails shining in the sunlight. “Shut the door after you. Doctor Harris has been complaining about the ground ash getting everywhere.”
Groff opened the door just wide enough to squeeze through and left the block chief on the doorstep.
Inside, he made the pretence to scrub up at the stone sink as usual. Through the glass-sheet door, he saw the two doctors from earlier mulling around the children’s ward. A pair of Gothendore Sisters led a riser cart between the beds, administering medicines – or toxins. The same pitiful children occupied the beds. Given more time, Groff would have made angels of them. And devils of their tormentors.
He rapped on the door and one of the sisters floated over.
She spoke through the glass. “Back so soon, Groff?”
Groff nodded. “There’s a caustic leak in the holding bay. Officer in charge sent me back here until it is cleared up.”
The sister peered through the glass-sheet. He half-expected her to bare a set of fangs.
She keyed the code into the gel pad and the door slid aside. The smell of iodine and soak rag flooded out. Groff walked through the ward, keeping his focus dead ahead. Out the corner of his eye, he saw the doctors glance up then look away again. Sometimes it paid to matter so little!
At the far end of the ward, he heard a child call out to him from the nearest bed. ‘I don’t know your name,’ he thought, keeping on walking. ‘I know only Shola Ricks.”
Shola Ricks was born two weeks early, to a young actress with a theatrical ensemble based out of the Eastern Rivers district of Nilreb. In the absence of the stone-wool trader who had provided his seed, Shola’s mother attempted to raise her daughter amongst the scenery flats and pan stick. For the first two years of her life, Shola hadn’t even guessed there w
as a world outside of those noisy streets, especially not one as barren as the desert surrounding Abbandon. Instead, there were sunrises and sunsets, rabbles and market squares, fireworks and silhouettes, and seats filled with strangers. Occasionally, Shola’s mother cooked a grey-beak stew. Mostly, though, the pair tucked into grit biscuits and gravy from a tin can attached to one of the market carts.
Groff knew none of this, only that Shola Ricks had got to him. The mule boy kicked up his hooves but Groff took no notice. The child lizard splayed her claws against the glass-sheet and licked her eyeball with her tongue. Groff ignored her. If Mama Sunstar was on his side, he might just rescue Shola. He could manage no more. Besides which, he couldn’t imagine putting such children out into the world. One little fox girl? Maybe he could tuck her away.
“You come now, Shola Ricks,” he said at the glass-sheet door to her cell. He flicked on the lamp. Shola lay in a foetal position on the cot. Her hair was shorn. One distended ear was visible, crisscrossed with infected stitches. Groff tongued the new gap between his teeth. Harris’s operations were little more than a death sentence.
“I am feeling none too well, Mister Groff,” said Shola in the familiar way which had got to him in the first place. She sounded so tired. Tired and resigned.
Groff entered the memorised keycode and the door slid open. He was hit by the sour smell of festering wounds and stale air. Hurrying over to the cot, he scooped Shola up into his arms. “Better to die trying than wait for death here,” he told her as the other hybrids knocked on the glass-sheet walls of their cells and begged him to let them out in their catcall of howls and hissing. “Hush!” he demanded with the angry tone the doctors used daily. The children fell silent.
“Be patient. We will liberate you too,” he said at the doorway to the lockup and, in some small way, believed it.
Rise Page 19
