Everything twirled past Adan in a dream-like haze. Then the world came rushing up from below. His body crashed into the scrap-filled sand. The last thing he saw was the swift chaotic sky descend upon him, burying him in darkness.
Five
Between Two Storms
Adan came to a short time after the crash. The storms were nearly upon him. Visibility was down to a couple hundred paces. The lev lay bent and in ruins close by. Gavin was nowhere to be seen.
The left side of Adan’s head was splitting with pain. When he touched it his hand came back splotched with blood. But the pain and his injuries did not occupy his mind long. An enormous ballast cruiser floated towards him not fifty paces away, loaded down with figures in garricks.
Adan reached out with his mind to Gavin, but sensed nothing, not even the minds of the figures on the ship. They were either the same kind of somatarch that had captured him and Will in the compound or the storm was interfering with the connection.
The ballast came to a stop in midair. Several figures leapt from the deck onto the sand, rushing towards him. Adan shot to his feet, pain slicing down the side of his head. He was about to take off when something caught his eye in the sand: the cutter. He scooped it up and shoved it on his arm as he ran towards the oncoming storm. He thought he could spot bits of shiny debris flashing in the dust clouds ahead—scrap from the ruins most likely, but it didn’t matter; he would have to go through it.
The somatarchs were running hard to close the distance, sand flying up from beneath their feet. They already had metal pinions in their hands. These short javelins were the favored weapon of the Waymen and in the hands of a somatarch they rarely missed.
Adan stumbled over some pipes jutting out of the ground, but caught himself before he fell. A pinion thudded into the ground next to his foot. He ducked as another shaft whizzed over his head. Because of his misstep, his pace fell off. The three somatarchs closed to within thirty paces. He sprinted towards some hunks of abandoned machinery, hoping he could lose them there. But he was nowhere close to reaching them when he felt a terrible pain stab through the back of his calf. He went down in a tumbling heap.
He rolled on his side and saw one of the pinions jutting out from the back of his calf, his blood trickling into the sand. He tried to get up, but the movement lit up his leg in searing pain. He screamed and fell back to the sand. He had no choice; he suppressed his senses with his bioseine and the pain disappeared.
He reached down and slid the pinion from his leg. Though there was no pain, his hand came back solid red. He would have passed out had his bioseine not been in control of his body. Even with the bioseine, he had to staunch the wound quickly or risk losing too much blood.
Frantically, he unfurled his kaff. His hands were a blur as he set to wrapping the wound. He was pulling the cloth tight just as the first of the attackers closed in and dove on top of him; two more joined in, pinning him to the ground.
“I told you he wasn’t a gear-head,” sputtered the first one in the Wayman tongue. He was panting heavily. His voice sounded incredibly human for a somatarch.
“But he was on one of their ships,” said the second.
“It doesn’t matter, whoever he is—let’s finish him,” said the last one.
While the others held Adan down, the first one pulled out a shiv from his belt. Adan struggled to free himself and avoid the death stroke, but the blow never came. Instead, he heard an awful sound, one he had hoped to never hear again—the whispering blast of an oscillathe.
Two of the men vanished, their garricks deflating beside Adan. The shiv thudded into the sand. The third attacker hurled one of his pinions back across the desert before he turned and ran. Adan followed its trajectory and watched as it clattered harmlessly off the attack skiff heading straight towards them. The man sprinted across the sand to avoid the skiff’s deadly weapon, but a moment later the unnerving whisper caught him and he vanished as well.
The skiff, bearing two somatarchs, sped past Adan before turning and doubling back around. Adan jumped to his feet and darted into the maze of machinery nearby. Another whisper streaked past, incredibly loud and incredibly close, but it shot out beyond the machine in front of him. More whispers came on all sides. His enemies were firing randomly now, hoping to hit him with a blind shot. The ruins offered no actual protection from the whispering blasts, but they kept the somatarchs from knowing where he was. Adan heard the whispers, sometimes close, sometimes far, but he ran off in a random direction after each shot, managing to stay out of the oscillathe’s path.
He could hear the hum of the skiff closing in. He was still hidden by the wreckage, but once the somatarchs passed over, they would spot him.
Just as the ship was about to fly overhead, a wild notion seized him. He spun the cutter dial to full and leapt on top of a nearby hunk of metal, thrusting his arm as high in the air as he could.
The skiff passed right through the energy beam. The blade sliced one of the wings clean off and sent the ship spiraling out of control. The two somatarchs shot from their ship, their bodies crashing into a metal monolith jutting out of the ground. The ship itself careened past them, burying itself in a thick bank of sand.
Adan took off running again, away from the crashed ship and away from the ballast cruiser, still hovering in the same position, firing its guns in all directions in a tapestry of light. They were not firing at him. They were targeting the white-robed somatarchs with their hover skates and small ships. The somatarchs were swarming around the larger ship, firing their whisper cannons at the figures on the cruiser in synchronized fashion so that it looked more like they were engaged in a performance than a battle.
Both sides suffered in the exchange, but the white-robed somatarchs took the worst of it. Every time they vaporized one of the gunners, another appeared in his place. And the regularity of their attack patterns made them predictable and easy to target. Though most of the attacks got absorbed by the skiffs’ invisible shields, the skaters got picked off quickly and eventually, one by one, the yellow pulse beams sliced through the somatarchs’ ships. They could not last long, and yet they showed no signs of retreating.
Adan realized another thing then. The men on the cruisers must be actual Waymen. Somatarchs would never attack each other like this.
Whatever the result of the conflict turned out to be, Adan did not plan on staying around to find out. He took off across the dunes, his bioseine allowing him to continue on his wounded leg, though he couldn’t run as fast as before. He did not look back, running with reckless abandon away from the fray. The storms closed in on him from both sides. For once, he prayed they would overtake him. Getting lost in the storm was his only hope of survival.
His gait unsteady, he fought for every step in the shifting sand. If he still had the lev, he would have already been safe by now, but all he could do was ramble forward, hoping his injured leg would hold up.
Thankfully, the Waymen and somatarchs were more interested in killing each other than in hunting down a lone straggler fleeing the battlefield. Unpursued, Adan plunged into the wall of billowing sand and lost sight of the battle.
Bits of sharp debris tore into his skin from the moment he entered. He held his arm in front of his exposed face and tried to find a large piece of machinery to block the wind, but the storm was too fierce. Without lentes, he could only see a few paces in front of him. As he crested a dune, several lights materialized out of the storm off to his left. The swirling metal shavings cut into his forehead. They threatened to slit open his eyes, but he risked a glance to find out what was happening.
The lights grew brighter and larger. He saw now that they were the lights which ran along the barrels of the guns of the ballast cruisers. They weren’t firing at him yet, but that was probably because they hadn’t seen him. He took off down the opposite slope, but his foot slipped on a piece of smooth metal scrap. He tumbled down the sandy dune, a human piece of scrap himself, about to join the others. He banged his head o
n something as he fell, but his bioseine blocked out the pain.
He slid to a rest at the bottom of the slope. Rolling over and looking up, the enormous outline of the ballast cruiser emerged from the chalky clouds surrounding him. He rose and started up the new slope, but the sand was too thick to build up any speed. The ship, unhindered by the desert terrain, easily overtook him. As he turned, four Waymen leapt out of it, landing almost on top of him. Adan stumbled forward on his bad leg, but only got three steps before the Waymen caught him.
They dove on top of him, driving his face into the sand. He lifted his head, spitting the grit from his mouth and struggling to get free. One of the Waymen yanked off his cutter and tossed it aside while the others wrestled his arms behind his back and bound him with metal clamps.
Adan could offer no real resistance as they tossed him up and several hands pulled him onto the deck of the cruiser. At least twenty other Waymen were present on deck, but only a handful paid any attention to his arrival. Two men dragged him into a cramped compartment at the back of the ship. Inside, they chained his bonds to a ring in the floor. This forced him to sit next to it. They disappeared without a word, bolting the door shut behind them.
The small room had two round pillars in the middle, making it seem even more cramped than it was. The metal walls looked old and cobbled together, just like the outside of the cruiser. The place reeked so strongly of sweat and flesh that even with his bioseine dulling his senses, Adan got some sense of how awful it must have been.
A few moments later the door opened again. Three new Waymen stepped inside, slamming the door behind them.
Their khaki garricks were in better condition than most of the Waymen he’d seen, and looked to be better made. They wore their kaffs unwound, revealing their close-cropped hair and surly, stubble-ridden faces, though one of them, the tallest, had a short beard that was more well groomed. The same man also had a purplish scar that looked like a jagged knife running beneath his right eye. The eye was also a little swollen so that it bulged, augmenting the effect of his glare.
He looked Adan up and down as if trying to place him from somewhere. The longer he stared at Adan without speaking, the more unsettled Adan became. He began to wonder if the man was trying to decide whether he should kill him or interrogate him.
“You know we almost killed you,” the man said in the Wayman tongue. His tone was accusatory, as if he were attempting to blame Adan for his recent brush with death.
“Who are you?” Adan asked, but the man just stared back at him with that bulging eye of his.
“Lucky for me those first shivs botched the job,” he continued, failing to acknowledge that Adan had spoken. But at least it didn’t sound like he wanted him dead—for now. He had some purpose in capturing him, though Adan couldn’t think what that might be.
“What do you want with me?” Adan asked.
“Our Reeve has been looking for you. He says you know what’s happening out in that machine city,” the man answered sharply, continuing to bore into Adan with his lopsided gaze.
“And?”
“And he wants to know what you know.” The Wayman gave him a look as if Adan owed him an explanation by virtue of the fact that the Waymen hadn’t killed him.
“What makes you think I’ll tell him?” Adan asked.
“Oh, it doesn’t matter if you want to tell him anything or not,” the man said. “You can’t hide anything from the Reeve. No one can.” He gave Adan a sneering smile and his scar seemed to glisten, as if it were about to come to life.
Adan’s hopes withered beneath the man’s long, intimidating glare.
“And who is your Reeve?” Adan asked, his voice muffled by the tightness in his throat.
“You’ll meet him soon enough, shim. Soon enough. That’s all for now.” With that the Wayman turned and rapped on the door.
The bolt slid away and the thick metal portal swung open. The group exited into the sand-filled winds on the deck and the scraping bolt went back into place.
Adan surveyed his wounded leg, knowing it would only get worse with time. He had a deep gash on his forehead and a dozen small nicks over the rest of his face from the storm. He needed medical attention, but he had been so pre-occupied with the Waymen he had forgotten to ask for it. He called out to them several times, but no one answered.
As the day wore on, his wounds, and the bleak outlook of his situation, drifted to the back of Adan’s thoughts. Instead, he wondered what had happened to Gavin. A sickening feeling welled up inside him. If Gavin had not died in the crash, it was likely he’d been killed either by the somatarchs or the Waymen.
Despair worked on his heart, greasing the bolt that held back his panic, but then he checked himself. In the midst of the dank, unclean room, he remembered there was one thing he could still do. He closed his eyes and began to pray.
Six
Hull
During the next two days, Adan survived on kern and the brackish water which the Waymen brought to him twice a day. Though he still thought often about Gavin, he had placed the fate of his friend in Numinae’s hands and it no longer tempted him to despair.
What did worry him were the wounds to his face and leg. Not because they were getting worse, but because they were getting better. When the Waymen brought him his cup of water and three strips of kern on the first morning, he had begged them to bring a healer to take a look at his wounds, but whether because there was no healer on the ship, or they didn’t think it worth their time, all they brought him was a fresh scrap of cloth to bandage his leg around midday. He braced himself for a gruesome sight as he unraveled the original bandage, but instead found that his wound had closed up completely. Some reddish discoloration and puckered skin around where the pinion had pierced his calf were the only signs the injury had even occurred.
He checked his bioseine to see if it had done anything while he slept, but it gave him no explanation as to why the wound had healed so dramatically. He couldn’t see the wounds on his face, but his bioseine informed him that those were rapidly disappearing as well. Clearly, something unnatural had happened inside his body, and not knowing what it was frightened him.
Worried that the Waymen might notice and ask questions if he removed the bandage entirely, he wrapped his leg with the new cloth anyway. Of course, he couldn’t do much to hide his face, but it was coated with enough dust and grime that he hoped they wouldn’t spot the change.
As much as the sudden improvement in his health troubled him, he was glad to be able to disengage his bioseine. He never liked the dulling of his senses which the pain suppression caused. The reek of the cabin was hardly a welcome change, but he preferred to have the full use of his senses.
On the third day, the gentle gliding of the ballast stopped with a shudder, as if the ship had bumped into something. A commotion erupted outside the compartment. Were they being attacked again? Was the ship malfunctioning? Adan couldn’t tell, but all sorts of terrible possibilities ran through his mind.
A short time later, the door to his room opened and two Waymen stepped inside.
“Time to move,” one of them said.
One man stood watch by the door while the other unchained Adan from the ring in the floor. They led him out onto the deck. As Adan blinked away the bright lights, he could see that the ship was docked next to a long platform with a ramp leading down to the ground. At least half the Waymen were already off the ship, milling about below and talking amongst themselves.
All around lay a sprawling city. Hundreds of buildings the size of Will’s compound could have fit inside of it, perhaps more, for in some places Adan couldn’t see the end of it. It was surrounded by a continuous, haphazard-looking, metal wall. The wall was higher than the cruiser in most places, but lower in others. Its patchwork metal paneling had been soldered together in rudimentary fashion. In several places the exposed inner framework was visible, but around every such breach, crews worked on creaky scaffolding to fill in the gaps. At the top of the
wall, naked beams stretched skyward, leaving open the possibility of expanding the structure even higher.
The outer wall was connected to the interior buildings in many places by sectioned walkways. Other walkways connected the buildings themselves. Some of these were completely enclosed, while others consisted of nothing more than a few exposed planks, similar to the bridge system Adan had seen in the Basin, the enormous cavern within the Viscera where the Welkin lived.
Most of the inner structures were in far worse shape than even the walls or walkways. Crews labored to repair these as well; almost every structure had some level of damage to it. The entire settlement looked like one enormous piece of scrap salvaged from the desert.
Scattered amongst the buildings were groups of tents separated by sandy paths. Given the unfinished state of the buildings, Adan guessed that was where most of the city’s inhabitants actually lived.
“Where are we?” he asked, but the men with him just shoved him towards the ramp. A lev hovered at the bottom. It was half filled with crates and barrels, but there was still plenty of room for passengers. They herded Adan onto it. His escorts boarded after him, and the transport lurched into motion with a sudden jerk.
The lev was far more beaten down than the one Adan and Gavin had ridden in. A pair of Waymen stood next to the thick steering column, attempting to drive it. They didn’t seem to know exactly what they were doing. At any given moment, one or both of them took hold of it and twisted the column in a different direction so that the transport swerved wildly from one side of the path to the other. Though they weren’t going much faster than a brisk walk, the city was so packed with buildings, tents, and people, chaos broke out wherever it went. Weaving in and out of the crowds, people dove out of the way to avoid being run over. The pilots nearly came to blows several times over their inability to control where the ship was going. Adan had to concentrate to keep his feet steady and avoid being mashed by the shifting crates and supplies stacked at the back of the vehicle.
The Chronotrace Sequence- The Complete Box Set Page 40
