Landquaker

by Dean F. Wilson

 She sighed. “No matter how many I save, I keep wishing I could have saved him. I guess I keep thinking that if maybe I save a thousand lives, it will somehow make up for it. I know it won't, but I keep trying all the same.”

   “Well, don't stop trying. We could do with more people sealing wounds instead of making them.”

   She nodded, before reaching into her inside coat pocket. “You don't mind if I … ?”

   “Go ahead,” Jacob said. “Mudro's already stunk up the place.”

   She took out a little pouch and dipped her finger into the white powder inside, before licking it up.

   “What are you doing?” Jacob asked. “I thought you meant a pipe or something. You can't take that stuff here.”

   She looked up at him. “Where else will I take it? I'm not exactly going to retreat to a Hope-house.”

   Jacob tutted. “Why is it that most of the women I meet are taking Hope?”

   “Maybe you meet a lot of demons.”

   Jacob raised an eyebrow. “One or two.”

   She ingested more of the powder, which even now looked a little tempting to Jacob. To many, Hope was the real demon. Once it bit you, it never let go.

   “Well, I'd rather you didn't take it around me,” Jacob said, looking away, looking out the window to the sky, where even the clouds reminded him of the drug.

   “Don't tell me it offends you.”

   “It doesn't.”

   “You're not an addict, are you?”

   “Not an addict, no,” he said. “Are you?”

   “My body needs it, Jacob Black. But it's different for me, for us 'demons'.”

   “How? I never really got your … food.”

   Lorelai laughed. “Food. Yeah. It's not as simple as that. It's more like medicine.”

   “Medicine for what?”

   “We've got a sickness, Jacob,” she said, sighing as she spoke, and there were years of labour, of toil and struggle, of searching for a cure, in that sigh. “The Iron Plague. It struck our people over five hundred years ago. We hoped to find a cure, but every time it seemed to go away, it would just come back again—and it would come back stronger. We lost so many to it. You don't want to see what happens when we don't take our medicine. Our skin blackens and hardens. It almost turns into iron. And it flakes off, and people just … people just fall apart. Right in front of you. Bits just …” She sighed again. “It's no wonder we got the name 'demon'. Some of our people, some of the most desperate, came through the Portal, and they looked so monstrous, how could anyone think they were anything else?”

   “Hell,” Jacob said. He could not really think of anything else to say. Sorry just did not cut it.

   “Hell,” Lorelai mused. “You say that's where we came from, but it isn't true. Our original world was called Mes Marana. You call us demons, but we have our own name for our people. You are humans, and we are marans. No matter how many lands and realms we've been through in our endless search, we still know in our hearts who we are, and where we hail from.”

   “So why impersonate humans?”

   “To fit in, I guess.”

   Jacob scoffed. “Hell, you haven't done a very good job of that. Look at this world now. If you had been here before the Harvest, you wouldn't recognise the place.”

   “I was here before the Harvest,” she replied. “I was a Pilgrim, a scout sent to survey this world, to decide if it was a good place to come.”

   “You better not let Rommond or Taberah hear you say that, because it kind of sounds like you helped spell our doom.”

   “I helped my people slow down our own.”

   “But you still haven't got a cure,” he said. “And, you know what, there are people like Rommond who might say that your people are our disease. You're wiping us out, faster than that Iron Plague is doing to you.”

   “We all do what we have to for survival.”

   “So then maybe the general's right not to let you sew him up. I mean, what's to stop you trying to kill him?

   She scowled. “I'm trying to save people. This whole thing has just … gotten completely out of hand. I'm not the only one who thinks. Many marans now question the Iron Emperor. They just don't do it openly, because that's when you get the kind of knock on your door that you don't want to get.”

   “Damn,” Jacob said. “Well, I think I need another drink.” He paused. “Here, before I make Gus any richer,” he added, flicking a coil into the air before passing it over to her. “Tell me something. What does this inscription mean?”

   “I don't think you want to know.”

   “Try me.”

   She held the coil up to the light, and read the words. “Alantra, dorsk ianalan calol. Dorsktra ianalan, dorsk ru calol. It's maran for: To heal, we must conquer illness. To conquer illness, we must conquer all.”

   “Doesn't that say a lot?” Jacob asked.

   “I don't know. What does it say?”

   “I think it says it all. Your Iron Emperor … well, he's a warlord.”

   Lorelai sighed. “We've been fighting a very long time. All this war. All these people dead and dying. I've been trying to do my bit to help alleviate the pain. But it just keeps coming.”

   “Then this war has to end, and I don't think it'll end with the Iron Emperor still sitting on his throne. So long as he's leading, he'll lead your people into war. I get that you're looking for a cure, but five hundred years of war hasn't unearthed one.”

   “Maybe he's just not looking hard enough,” she said.

   “Maybe he isn't looking at all.”

   Lorelai placed the coil back down on the counter, the back side up, so that the Iron Emperor's eternal gaze could not be seen. Maybe he really was not looking for a cure, but to many who saw his visage on that currency, it definitely felt like he was always looking.

  The door creaked open, and in stepped a man who looked more than a little familiar. Jacob looked at him from over his shoulder. He was a little surprised to see anyone frequenting this place at all, but he was more surprised by the man's attire. He looked awfully like a sky pirate.

   “Jacob Black,” the man said.

   Jacob turned around fully. He glanced at the gun strapped to his thigh. He did not feel up for a fight. He did not think the whiskey would help.

   “Who's asking?”

   “My name doesn't matter,” the pirate said. “I'm here for El Abra.”

   “He's dead.”

   “That's why I'm here.”

   Jacob knew it. Revenge did not have a time of day or a place of residence. It could come anywhere at any time.

   The pirate reached inside his pocket, and Jacob reached for his gun.

   “You can put that away,” the pirate said. “I didn't come here for a fight.”

   “What's that you've got?” Jacob asked.

   The pirate pulled a little wooden toy horse from his pocket, and held it up. “This is something the Snake wanted you to have.” He placed it on the counter next to Jacob.

   “Seems you got a birthday you're not telling us about,” Lorelai said. “First the coils, now this. Maybe I should have baked a cake.”

   Those were the kind of lines Jacob might have said, and might have laughed at, were his focus not stolen by that little mahogany horse on the counter. He picked it up. His eyes welled immediately. Who knew that the dam could be broken so easily, with such a little thing? He was only a little thing himself when he last saw it.

   “He kept it,” Jacob said. “He kept it all these years. We could not play with the toys we were forced to make. So one day he stole one from the conveyor belt. He got in so much trouble. Olbaron beat us anyway, but he got ten times the beating then. They searched high and low, but they couldn't find it. I thought he'd gotten rid of it.”

   “Well,” the pirate said. “Now it's yours. It took me quite a while to find you. I came here a few days back, but they said
you left. I figured you'd be back at some point. When you're in El Abra's crew, you quickly learn about honour. He made me promise to get this to you, and I had to honour my word.”

   “Thank you,” Jacob said. “It means a lot.”

   “I only wish he was still around. The seas and the skies are a lot quieter now.”

   “Why did he do it?” Jacob asked. “I mean, why did he join the battle against the Black Barge?”

   “I guess he felt he had to honour his friendship with you. He took a nasty wound from that landship, but he doesn't hold grudges, not like the Masked Menace up north. He knew he was going to die. I guess he felt he should do something good before he went out. He knew it was his swansong. It's why he gave me this task before he set sail that final time.”

   Jacob stared at the little wooden horse. He did not know what to say. He was struggling to stop himself from crying. For so many years, he was a slave. Now he was free, but he still felt like the chains wrapped around his heart.

   “Anyway, good luck, Mr. Black,” the pirate said. “There's rumours going 'round that you's are taking on the Iron Wall. El Abra never was one for the land. He used to say it was cursed, and I suppose after the Harvest it kind of was. Hopefully you have better luck than he did, and hopefully that little trinket is worth something to you.”

   In a shop, it was not worth even an eight of a coil, but it meant so much more to Jacob. He stared at it as the pirate patted him once on the back and left the inn. He turned it around, remembering how he had to turn thousands of them around each day. Then his eye caught the dull shine of the coil on the counter. He pulled it over, and heard the sound of it in his mind.

   “You know, I guess there's a reason I like the chink so much,” he said. “It buries the memory of another metal sound, the chink of an iron key in an iron lock, trapping me inside the tiny room I slept in when I was in the workhouse. The room, not my room. There was nothing there that was mine, not even the hours of the day, when I slaved away, and not even the hours of the night, when I dreamt I was still a slave of the system. This is why I don't like to stay in small rooms now, because for all my efforts to make my fortune, to pay and buy my way out of the system, I sometimes feel like the chains have never severed. They might have been broken from my feet, but not from my heart.

   “But then I met these people—Whistler, Taberah, Rommond—and they showed me that maybe I'm bringing those chains around with me. Maybe there's something comforting in the feel of the manacle, because it keeps you tethered, tells you where you are, limits where you can go, so you don't wander, and you can't get lost. That shackle is called fear. Fear of the unknown. Fear of love. I lost my family once, but I found a new one in the Resistance.”

   He had not quite realised that the tears were streaming down his face. When he noticed them, he blushed and looked away. He was glad the inn was empty. People went there to drown their own sorrows, not to drown in his.

   Lorelai placed her hand on his and forced a smile.

   “And you,” Jacob said, wiping the final tears away. “I guess you're part of the family now too.”

   She reached in and tried to kiss him, but he backed away. “Woah,” he said, holding out his hands.

   She bit her lip. “Well, this is awkward. I thought … never mind.”

   “Sorry, I didn't mean to give you the wrong impression. I'm a one-woman man.”

   “The red-head. Is that your woman?” she asked.

   “Yeah. Well ... kind of.”

   “You go for the crazy ones then.”

   Jacob smirked. “You should see the other one.”

  19 – PROJECT TRIDENT

  By the time Mudro made it back to the decoy deployment, he knew they were already late to roll out. He gave them a final once-over as two of Rommond's lieutenants stared through spyglasses into the distance. They were new lieutenants, only recently promoted, and the extra pips on their uniforms did little to hide their fear.

   The decoys were arrayed upon a giant wooden platform, one hundred metres square. It was propped up on many tracks salvaged from old landships, and the platform itself was covered with sand, making it virtually imperceptible from a distance.

   Mudro gave the order and watched as the platform rolled forward. It went at a snail's pace, but that did not matter. In fact, that was a good thing. The enemy only had to see an advance. Mudro did not want them seeing the decoys up close. Without the Copper Vixens, he was really short on his promised manpower, forcing him and his team to slap together the fake landships as quick as possible. Some of the paint was still wet, though the sun would make short work of that.

   The platform rumbled forward, and because it was on real tracks, it made an audible rumble, just like real landships would, and because it was also powered by steam, fed by two crewmen who shovelled coal inside a furnace disguised as yet another landship, smoke billowed into the air, and it came up through fake flutes and chimney stacks, enhancing the deception.

   Mudro sat perched in the back of a truck that trailed behind the false platoons. The lieutenants were there to join him, as were the handful of soldiers left with them. A few men propped themselves inside the decoy landships, popping their heads out of the hatches and making overly dramatic signalling gestures to add a little authenticity to the trick. It was all a marvellous ploy, but Mudro was not keen to judge it just yet—the real judge was the audience, and he did not yet hear the applause.

   Mudro knew that at this pace it would take an hour before they were visible enough to the enemy, and by that stage they risked the iron ire of the Landquaker. If the Regime had moved the railway gun down to the south to shore up those defences, defences it did not really need, then a single shell could obliterate Mudro's phantom host. On the stage, under a single spotlight, sleight of hand was usually quick. Distraction with one hand, the real action with the other. But on the battlefield, where the sun was the spotlight, illuminating all, the sleight of hand was painfully slow. Worse yet was being the distraction. If the hand was caught, the audience booed, and Mudro knew that the Regime's heckles would be the sound of launching shells.

  In Blackout, Rommond drew large red arrows on the battle map, all pointing into the east, where a stamp read: Project Trident. It was a new map, with revised markings, for a new army and a revised plan.

   “This will be a three-pronged attack,” he said. “Mudro's decoys should have already begun rolling out. They need the extra time. Taberah's team will set out next, with the help of the Dust Riders, following the northern trails, where hopefully we can secure a carriage train.”

   “Then we will take north,” Sitting Stone said. “Their reserves will crumble.”

   “Good,” Leadman remarked. “We'll have enough to face with the Landquaker. We don't need them shoring up the Gate.”

    “The rest of us,” Rommond continued, “which is now a decent number with Leadman's support, will lead the central prong. We're throwing most of forces there, because it needs to look like that's our main objective, to outgun the greatest gun this world has ever seen. All three prongs are sharpened, and now we just need to thrust the trident into place. In the south, we will distract them. In the centre, we will deceive them. In the north, we will destroy them.”

   “What if Taberah's team fail?” Leadman asked. “I never did have much faith in her.”

   “Well, I do,” Rommond said, “and she has the best of the best as a boarding party.”

   “The best of the best?” Leadman wondered. “How come you don't have them?”

   “I'm the one holding the trident.”

   “Well,” Leadman said. “I'll pick it up if you let it fall.”

  The grand planning ended, and each tactician turned to the little details with their crew. The secret mission in the north was the most valuable of them all, so that is where Rommond spent much of his attention.

   Jacob was back in uniform—a Regime uniform. The general
made him try it on, and shook his head in disapproval.

   “Notice anything?” Rommond asked.

   “What? How dashing I look?”

   “Give me a salute.”

   Jacob complied.

   “No. A Regime salute.”

   Jacob followed suit, placing his hand on his left shoulder. “Ah,” he said, when he did not feel the patch with the Regime emblem there. He reached to his other shoulder, feeling the patch there instead.

   “Dear Lord, I thought we had these made up to exact specifications,” Rommond griped. “Get me a sewing needle.”

   “I'll do it,” Lorelai said. “I'm good at sewing things up.”

   “Make sure it's done right then,” the general said. “And while you're at it, check for any other oversights.”

   “Yes,” Taberah added. “You should be good at that. You've seen a lot of Regime uniforms in your time.”

   Lorelai bit her lip as Rommond and Taberah left. She got working straight away on the patch.

   “Quite the volunteer,” Jacob teased. “Or were you just looking for an opportunity to rub my shoulder?”

   She prodded him with the tip of the needle, and Jacob cried out.

   “That's one hell of a bedside manner you got there,” he said. He smirked to himself. “Or one pretty tiny pitchfork.”

   “Ha ha,” Lorelai replied, drawing out the words. “It's all devils and demons with you, isn't it?”

   “Hey, I'm not the one shovelling Hope down my gob.”

  Rommond met with each of the people on Taberah's team, walking them through the plan. He met them as a group, and then one by one, going over everything in meticulous detail. There was no opportunity for a screw-up, and he made sure they were aware of that. He also made sure that they knew that they might have to carry out the plan alone.

   When Rommond visited Taberah, she was not happy with the choice of who was on her team.

   “I don't trust her,” she said, “and I'm surprised you do.”

   “Well, I'm surprised you don't see this for what it is—a tactical decision.”