Smoke's Fire

by Rich X Curtis

  “How’d it survive the glaciers?” Carter asked, peering down through his foot well window. “They bulldozed most everything in China.”

  She pondered it for a few moments, then shrugged. “Luck, probably.”

  “Impossible,” he said. “City this size should have been flattened, this far north. Something did this.”

  “Warren saved her spot,” Silver said. “Could be done.”

  He shook his head. “She had one tiny complex, and a fleet of trucks,” he said. “No way they saved this place with earthmovers. Something else.”

  “The station would have wanted it preserved, that’s for sure,” she said, nodding to him. “Maybe they wanted it that way.”

  He was about to answer when a shout came from behind them, down the passage. Shah was yelling.

  “Movement, we got movement! Spiders down there, on the road!” He sounded frantic. “Dozens of them, moving south.”

  “Call it in,” she ordered Carter. “I’ll take a pass.”

  She cycled the port fans into reverse, yawing the airship into a wide curve that would bring them around towards the area they had just passed over. It took time, and Shah and his crew kept yelling at her to hurry.

  “Shut the fuck up!” she yelled at them. “Thought you fuckers were soldiers. Report!”

  “Contact starboard side,” the burly redhead called out. “I see ’em. Twenty or so, moving at speed towards the cargo terminal. Want me to take a shot?”

  “Go for it,” she replied. “Fire away.” They were unlikely to be friendly, so it wouldn’t hurt to strafe them if they could.

  She turned then, and saw them. They were on the road ahead of them, she angled slightly to give Red a better angle. She heard the rifle go off, a hollow boom she could feel through her seat. Once, twice, then a steady stream of single shots.

  “Fuck,” Carter said. “Good shooting!” She saw three black spiders, splayed across the tarmac below. She throttled up to try and catch up.

  Something black flew past her, all angles and spiky limbs, meters away. “Fuck!” she yelled. “Airborne contact, airborne contact!”

  She keyed her mic. “Dutchman, Dutchman, we are engaging the enemy. Spiders moving towards your position, twenty or thirty seen, could be more. We have some airborne drone buzzing us, over.” She turned to Carter. “You see which way he went?”

  “He went down,” he said, pointing below him. “Splat. That thing crashed. I saw it.”

  She looked at him. “Jumping. Fuck. From the buildings.” She filled her lungs. “Shah, be ready in case any jump onto the bag! How many of these fuckers are there?”

  A moment later, the reply came back. “Every building! Every building has them on the roof!” Shah sounded frantic.

  She looked ahead, focusing on a building they were passing. It had once been a smooth-faced glass skyscraper, but time and weather had shed most of the glass panels, giving it a cheese-grater appearance. She scanned the roof and saw them, spiky limbed, black, and twitching their way to the edge facing the Dutchman. She watched one brace itself for a leap, and she twisted the yoke, jamming the throttle to full power. The spider twitched, repositioning, but didn’t jump.

  Keeping the airship at the center of the broad ring avenue was key, she realized. Too close to the buildings, and those spiders would jump onto the bag. She grimaced. They could be up there already. Only one way to find out. “Take the wheel,” she snapped to Carter. “Stay to the center of the ring road, otherwise we’ll have a dozen of these fuckers on us. They’re on every building, waiting for us to pass.”

  “What are you doing?” he said, frantically. But he took the yoke and scanned the airspace ahead.

  She didn’t answer, as Shah and his team opened up with the minigun, blasting at the wave of spiders they had seen and passed over. She snatched her rifle and ducked back through the passage. She entered the bay just in time to see Anika lighting the fuse to what looked bundle of road flares sticks wrapped in chain, lean out the open starboard hatch window, and drop it.

  Anika saw her, and nodded. “Fire in the—” she said, conversationally, drowned out by the chumpf-whoof of the bomb going off below them. She snatched another bomb from the black bag at her feet and flicked open her lighter, flashing Silver a wicked grin, before sticking her head out the window and looking for targets.

  Silver climbed the short ladder into the gasbag entrance hatch. The bag was really six tubes inside the main envelope, and a central spine of some kind of machinery she’d never had a chance to truly understand. Probably won’t now either, she thought. The envelope was opaque, and tough, but she knew it was the most vulnerable part of the airship. She had to be sure there were no spiders on it already.

  She wormed her way into the crawlspace atop the central spine. She shimmied along it on her back, scanning the bag above her, trying to gauge how she could even tell if one of the damned things was already on the Dutchman. She clutched the rifle to her chest and shimmied further down the spine. If she wanted to, she could stand up in here, in a crouch at least. But that would not allow her to see as well, and would put her head right below the dorsal surface of the bag. Safer this way, she told herself, licking her lips, and scanning the inner surface of the envelope.

  Dutchman went into a port-side bank, Carter keeping them clear of the buildings she hoped. She arched her back and craned her neck to see further down the inner vault of the airship. She blinked. Four indentations, evenly spaced, dimpling the surface of the bag. They moved. As the airship banked, they did a dancing step. Spider. Ten feet away. As she watched, the spider-feet shuffled again, repositioning. From below, she heard another of Anika’s bombs go off.

  She set her jaw, took a breath, and locked her hands onto the rifle. Rolling onto her belly, she brought the gun up to her shoulder, took aim in between the four dimples, squeezed the trigger, and fired. Brrrrrap, a quick short burst, followed by another. A line of holes chewed through the bag, shafts of light piercing the gloom inside the envelope. She kept the rifle trained on the area, waiting for some sign she had missed, but none came, she must have blown the thing clear of the Dutchman. She nodded in satisfaction.

  The bag above her parted with a rrrriiiip and she felt more than saw the black legs slashing down at her. She rolled off the catwalk, dropping onto the cradle of bags below, bringing the rifle around to bear upwards. The thing dropped onto the catwalk through the rip in the canvas. Another one? The same? It didn’t matter. She fired, trying to center her shots on the spider’s thorax, but it was moving too fast, in a staccato jerking gait, head questing for something, for her, she thought. Her shots went wide, going out through the massive rip in the envelope.

  The narrow head swiveled towards her and stopped, locking on her. She rolled right and a buzz saw of fire spewed out of the spider’s thorax at her. She continued her roll, but the bag she had landed on was torn now, hot air gushing out in a great torrent. The Dutchman yawed and rolled crazily, and she felt them start to lose altitude. She was sliding, as Dutchman nosed steeply down. She struggled with the rifle, the rapidly deflating bag making it difficult to orient herself.

  The spider was thrashing now, lashing out with its burp gun in a wide arc, tearing into the catwalk, the spine below, and the other bags in the airship’s rigid body. The space was a confusion of shots, decompressing bags, and wind from their rapid descent. Silver braced herself on the bulkhead and brought the rifle around, centering it on the spider again. It reared up, questing for her, and she fired, two, then three controlled bursts. Her shots blasted chips off of it and then struck home, ripping a line of holes into the thorax and head. She fired until she was empty. The head split, and the spider exploded, showering the crawlspace with shrapnel.

  More bags split as she sagged back against the decompressing bag she’d fallen on. Dutchman groaned like a mortally wounded beast, fans at full reverse throttle as Carter struggled to maintain control. They were crashing, she knew, and dropped the empty gun. She grabbed a
double handful of the bag’s fabric and wrapped it around herself, pushing herself tight against the remaining inflated portion of the bag, trying to seal the holes long enough to provide some cushion, some protection. She braced for impact.

  Impact came with a crash. She blacked out momentarily, and had only a vague impression of them rolling, and of a long, lingering shriek as the gondola ground on the road surface. Then they were down, and she was wrapped in a burrito of torn airbag. She struggled to free herself. She could hear yelling from below, so she knew someone had survived. She heard Carter’s voice.

  “Carter!” she yelled, kicking at the last of the entangling fabric. They were on the ground, the Dutchman on its side, the envelope partially crushed. She clambered out of the airship to the ground. They had crashed into the broad ring avenue, near to where they had started, she thought. She could see a cloud of smoke ahead, and also to her rear, something was burning. She ran around to the other side of the downed aircraft, to the gondola, trying to find a way in.

  The rear ramp was down, and she saw Shah there, dragging at his comrade, whose face was a mask of blood. As she watched, the man’s head lolled, revealing the red ruin of his chest, and a jagged piece of metal protruding from the center of it. Shah noticed it and set the man down. He turned to her.

  “What the fuck happened?” he demanded. Behind him Carter and Anika were clambering out, each carrying a rifle.

  “Two of them were on the bag. I got one clean but the other one tore shit up bad before I could shoot him,” she said, rapidly. “Carter,” she said to him. “Good fucking flying.”

  Carter blinked at her. “Dog’s dead,” he said, flatly. “I jumped into the galley, but he was tied up in the bunk. It’s all crushed.” He helped Anika down from the wreckage. She looked dazed, but otherwise unhurt.

  “Where’s the other one?” Silver asked. “Red hair?”

  “Dead, I think,” Anika said. “He jumped for it when we were coming in. I think we were too high.”

  “Fuck,” Silver said. “OK, let’s grab what we can and head for the Unit’s position. We can’t stay here.”

  “Dog’s dead,” Carter repeated. He looked stricken. “He was barking when we hit.” He winced at the memory, staring through Silver.

  She nodded to him. “It’s sad, I know. You hit your head, Carter?” she said. She reached for the rifle, taking it out of his unresisting fingers. His eyes were glassy and unfocused. Just what I need, she thought to herself. “You stick close to me, you hear. Stay with me.” She turned, and scanned the area around them.

  They had grounded on the remnants of the ring road. Road was a bad word for it, she thought, more like collapsed road over a tunnel or underground passage. She could see hollows and caverns through gaps in the pavement, all around them. She didn’t want to go poking through those.

  Shah appeared, hauling one of their bags from the interior of the wrecked airship. He squatted, riffling through the bag. He passed what looked like an ammo pouch to Anika, then looped one around his neck. He offered Silver the other. She looked at it, and then took it from him.

  “Will they fit this?” she hefted the bag. It felt like it contained six or seven magazines.

  Shah nodded. “NATO spec,” he said. “We made a factory for ’em. Took a while to get right,” he said, chambering a round in his own rifle. “But we figured it out eventually.”

  She shouldered the pouch. Carter’s rifle was still loaded. Hers was somewhere in the wreckage, and she didn’t relish going back in there. She checked the safety of the rifle, ensured it was ready to fire. “OK,’ she said to the three others. “Let’s move out.” She pointed. “Head for that smoke…that’s where they are, I guarantee it.”

  They set out, scrambling over the uneven ground. She wanted to stay on the surface. Meeting a spider in the underground caverns that they were clearly on top of would be a nightmare. They moved, making decent time. She kept an eye on Carter, shoving him along occasionally. He kept looking back at the Dutchman, its torn bag flapping in the breeze.

  “Contact,” Anika said, voice loud enough to carry the twenty or so paces between her and the rest of them. She was bringing up the rear, constantly swiveling to ensure no spiders were visible. “They’re at the Dutchman.”

  She glanced back. They were a half-mile from Dutchman now, just cresting a rise that led onto less broken tarmac, an off-ramp that looked to slope upwards into the center of the ring. That was where the smoke cloud had been, but looking for it now, she couldn’t see it. Had it dissipated?

  “They’re coming,” Shah rasped. “We should run for it.”

  Silver shook her head. “In good order,” she said. “If we run, they’ll run us down. Those things are fast.”

  “I’ve fought them before, the last time I was here,” Shah said. “I know how fast they are.” He looked back. “We should run, before they swarm us.”

  That made some sense, but she didn’t like running. “Stay together,” she insisted, “or they’ll run you down for sure.”

  “They’re coming,” Anika said, her voice quavering. Silver glanced back and saw them, spiky legged blurs flowing over the uneven ground. She tried to count them, but they were bunched. More than three, less than ten. They were angled straight towards them. “Stand by for ordnance,” she said, voice even and unhurried.

  Anika smoothly plucked an object from her bag. It was a bomb, one of the kind they had been dropping from the Dutchman onto the spider-pack. A bundle of four sticks of dynamite wrapped in chain, and dipped in what looked like pitch. She flicked open the lighter, and gauged the onrushing spiders.

  Silver grabbed Carter by the shirt and hauled him to the ground. Shah likewise went down, but into a prone firing position, covering Anika. Silver saw Anika light the fuse, spin like a discus thrower, and lob the lit bomb towards the rushing spiders. Silver watched its path arc up, but she didn’t have time to gauge its path. She covered her face with her forearms and made herself flat.

  Whumpf, came the explosion. Shah’s rifle spoke, spitting flame. Once, twice, three times he fired. Silver popped up, swinging the rifle around, but there was no need. Anika was walking backwards, towards where the spiders had been, rifle at her shoulder, firing as she went. One spider had survived, and it was crippled, crawling forward on two legs, tottering. Silver watched as Anika pumped round after round into it. Silver willed the nightmare spider to fall, to die, to explode like the one in the Dutchman had.

  Instead it collapsed, falling forward. But it wasn’t dead, just mortally wounded. As she brought her rifle to her shoulder, she saw it fall, tuck, and roll, broken legs flailing towards Anika. It moved impossibly fast, clattering and rolling, a ball of spiky sticks. It reached Anika and unfolded, two operable legs extending, and enveloping the woman. One leg hooked into a spike and stabbed down, once, twice, three times, and it was over. Anika went down underneath it.

  The thing reared up, hunting for more targets, gore glistening from its spiked leg. The narrow head swiveled, tracking her. It saw her. Silver put a single round into its sensor cluster, shattering the head. The thing fell to the ground, flopping and twitching for a moment, then it lay still.

  “Fuck!” Shah said. “Fuck!” His face was a distorted mask of rage. “I hate these things!” He was on his knees, rifle to his shoulder.

  “Up,” Silver barked at him. “Let’s move,” she said, in a slightly softer tone, but still sharp with the snap of command. “Ways to go, trooper.”

  “I’ll get her gear,” Shah ventured, rising to his feet.

  “Leave it,” she said. “Don’t go near that thing.”

  “He could use a gun though,” Shah said, indicating Carter with his chin. Carter had sat up and was staring downslope towards the wreckage of Dutchman, at the prone Anika, still embraced by the spider that had killed her.

  “He doesn’t need a gun,” Silver said. “He just wants his dog.” She helped Carter to his feet. “Now let’s move.”

  Chapter Twenty-
Seven

  Gold hunkered down as they rolled out, trying to stay low as she could, but still see. She was inside the cage atop Truck with Li and Smoke, and looked out of the hatch like an old-school tank commander. She’d never gotten to drive a tank in the War, the second European one, but she’d shot at a few of them. She’d put bullets into tank drivers who stuck their heads out of their great armored beasts for too long. But she needed to see what was up, and it was too uncomfortable to kneel on the iron rebar floor of the cage for long. So she risked it. She wished she had a helmet though.

  She’d pried the metal plate floor up and leaned it against the front wall of the cage. It wasn’t particularly strong metal. It had started life as a decking of some kind, stamped with a diamond traction pattern, and was now pitted and stained with corrosion. But it was better than nothing, and should stop shrapnel and low-velocity projectiles. Direct hits by anything bigger than a rifle would tear through it, but she wanted Li to have as much protection as possible, so it made her feel a little better.

  Truck roared to life as the train reached the station. She did a quick scan as they rolled out, Truck’s great tracks tearing through the brittle concrete streets. A city built around the Elevator complex. A smallish city, she gauged, a central ring of buildings around the socket, as Warren had called it. A main circular road, with spoke streets radiating outward from the socket complex, to better feed cargo and passenger traffic. How many people had gone up there? Was there a huge city at the end of this tether? How much cargo? She shook her head.

  Warren’s troops had deployed into two columns and were moving away at speed, leapfrogging each other in good order. Truck was supposed to be in the rear, covered by a company of troopers led by the big one, the Archer. She suspected he was also there to keep an eye on her: her and Smoke. They were rolling through what looked like it had been a commercial district. Gold saw storefronts and what she guessed had been restaurants. She craned her neck to see if she could find the Elevator. It went into space, she thought, so she ought to be able to see it.