Gruefield 18 (Tarnished Sterling Omnibus)

by Robert McCarroll

  I fought to rise to my feet. It took the entire time I’d gained by forcing the spirit to re-form. I could get the left knee to lock under me by dragging it along the ground until the limb was straight. The joint itself still bent, but the servos were dead. I guessed I could hobble forward, but the O-6R3 wouldn’t run again without a serious overhaul. I noted with some interest that the spirit only ever re-formed on ground it had previously parched with its presence. That would keep it from re-forming forward and skipping past me. Though, at the moment, I wasn’t sure I was all that great an obstacle anymore. It could probably walk around where I was, and I’d be unable to catch it.

  The spirit had either missed the trouble I’d had standing up, or had a bit of a bull-headed streak, because it resumed walking directly towards me. I fired both shock nets I had left in a double-tap. I knew they didn’t slow it much, but I might just be able to annoy the spirit into wasting more time fighting me. It tore away the sparking strands with a snarl and called out what could only be a foul oath in the language it had spoken before. It didn’t strike the ground again because it ‘knew’ I could dodge that attack. I had to smile. It had no idea how badly it had savaged the mech suit’s knee. Of course, the moment I tried to move, that ignorance would be gone.

  It didn’t matter much, because the first place the spirit struck was the same knee again, knocking the leg from under me and tipping me to the ground. I couldn’t move my arm out of its way fast enough, and it slammed the flail down on the net launcher. The weapon crumbled, and the canister of adhesive webbing inside bubbled out, ropy strands of glue sloshing of their own accord as the net expanded. The flail came down again, this time on the head of the O-6R3. A huge swath of my vision went black. I could see the ground behind me, and to either side, but not the spirit standing astride my armored form. I could infer its position from the clanging of the flail against my armor, and the protestations of the damage indicator.

  The ringing reverberating through the tin can I was trapped in told me I was probably less effective in here than loose. I slipped the control visor off my head and took hold of the operator eject handles. With a sharp tug, I triggered the emergency release. Explosive bolts blasted the chestplate off the O-6R3 and knocked the spirit flat on his ass as it flew free. I rose into the first twinkle of twilight as the spirit rose to its feet. Its height was such that I was barely looking down at it from my elevated position. It released a death rattle groan as I glanced up at the first few stars in the sky.

  “I guess this fight is just getting started,” I said, wrapping myself in shadow.

  Shooting forward, I plowed the spirit back into Alabama. We skidded to a stop in the dirt, its banner frame plowing new furrows in the parched soil. The spirit felt like a dry husk and smelled of old dust. It delivered a sharp shot to my liver, followed by a headbutt to my nose. Having opened up a gap between us, it batted me into the sky with the haft of its flail. Instead of stopping where gravity told me to, I gained even more height before plunging back down at the spirit in a dive. Fists first, I drove it into the ground. The impact raised a cloud of withered stalks, dirt, ash and feathers. The flail haft struck my face as it snarled unpleasant phrases in its native tongue. A second hit to the side of my neck sent me tumbling into the still-living crops.

  If not for the unnatural durability of my shadow form, I’d be a red paste by now. Instead, I shot into the air and came down between the spirit and the wreckage of the mech suit. Warden Ellison’s voice came over my radio. “If you could do this, why did you mess around with the Ogre for so long?”

  “Because it was still daylight,” I said, hurtling forward to drive the spirit back into Alabama again. Its forearms smashed down on my shoulders, driving me to my knees. I grabbed its wrists, but I only ever had my normal measure of strength, and I was not a great impediment to its movements. It did, however, pull me back to my feet and glowing eyes met glowing eyes. My shadow-banishing sight saw infinite depths of hunger within those sparks of light. It could devour the world and never be satiated. A name emerged from those depths, Svält.

  The spirit delivered another headbutt and swatted me into the stone facade of the prison with its flail. Chunks of granite rained down as I peeled myself out of the wall. Svält strode forward, a death rattle groan escaping its rictus lips. As I shot forward again, Svält swatted me with its flail, sending me tumbling off into the sky. The flail came down again, the strike undermining the curtain wall around Rockstead. A narrow crack split the structure.

  Guards on the wall fired glue nets down at Svält. One missed, but the other snagged the creature, eliciting a wail of frustration. I landed near the murder as it reformed into Svält, and grabbed the haft of the flail. It was a futile gesture, as the spirit was far stronger than I. Hauling me from my feet, it rammed a fist into my gut. Svält whispered something to me which sounded terribly ominous in tone. I still had no idea what it was saying. The spirit shook me off and started walking again.

  A white light encircled Svält on the ground, and leafy vines of white energy erupted from it, wrapping around the spirit and pulling it down into a fetal position. I blinked in confusion, then looked up to the wall. There, Ixa raised a hand and gave a slight wave. I returned the gesture as I let the shadow fall from me. Svält howled in anger and frustration, but seemed unable to shatter into his murder of crows. I let out an exhausted breath as the aches and pains of being batted around by Svält broke through the fading adrenalin.

  I stood guard over the tied spirit in case it slipped its bindings until a Humvee pulled up. Tekton didn’t leave the driver’s seat, but Ukar climbed out to get a better look. With the prison floodlights on, the devastation for our battle was still clearly visible, including the wreckage of the O-6R3. Ukar stared, slack-jawed, at the scene.

  “Hi,” I said, not able to keep the weary tone from my voice.

  “You did this?” Ukar asked. His youth was reaffirmed by the inconsistent timbre of his voice.

  “Naw, I did the damage, Ixa did the binding.”

  “You’re Shadowdemon, right?”

  “And you’re Ukar.”

  He nodded. “I’ve heard a lot about you.”

  “Let me guess, the most flattering term used was ‘disappointment’?”

  Ukar gave me a confused look. “Not exactly. Why would you think that?”

  “Rookhound isn’t exactly generous with praise,” I said.

  “He never said anything about you. I heard about you from my dad.”

  “I’m going to guess that he’s a Community member too.”

  “I didn’t find that out until I manifested,” Ukar said. “I thought he was a truck driver, which was why he was away so much.”

  “He probably thought he was protecting you from the life. This isn’t exactly a safe vocation.”

  Ukar looked around again and laughed. “I’ve never been in a fight like that,” he said.

  “A good mentor tries to keep their sidekick out of situations they’re unprepared for,” I said. I didn’t exactly qualify by that measure. Then again, I probably shouldn’t be in the role at my age. My introspection was interrupted by Ixa’s arrival. From her sour expression and the distinct aroma, I knew what she’d just gone through. “Another round of decontamination?” I asked.

  “I’m starting to hate that process,” Ixa said.

  “How about we work on bottling up this spirit?” Tekton said. Ukar hurried to the back of the Humvee to retrieve the jar. Lugging it back to where Svält was growling at us, he was already huffing from the weight. I helped Tekton out of the Humvee and over to where the jar sat. Ixa was circling Svält, drawing markings into the parched soil with a stick. Subconsciously, I held my breath and stepped back. Magic got finicky, and this was a ritual neither had performed before. Tekton fished out a green stone stopper topped with a carved representation of three stalks of wheat. H
e looked worryingly at the worn markings on the iron jar.

  “Without a name, this is going to be a bit more challenging,” Tekton said.

  “Svält,” I said.

  “Where did you learn that?”

  I pointed at the spirit. Tekton measured out the dimensions of the illegible markings and nodded. “It looks to be the right length.”

  “Lets do this,” Ixa said, double-checking her markings as Ukar and I backed away. She knelt down next to the jar and beside Tekton. Beginning the incantation with syllables that seemed impossible for a human throat to utter, she was soon joined by Tekton in a duet of impossible noises. I could feel the energy swirling in as the markings she’d etched in the soil began to glow. They detached from the ground and began to orbit Svält. Tightening around the spirit, they fused with the earlier tangle of energy and flowed into the bottle. The roiling motion reminded me of a video of escaping gasses being played in reverse. The energy carried the spirit along with it, and Tekton jammed the stopper in place. White lettering erupted onto the surface of the jar, glowing brightly. The word ‘Svält’ held particular prominence.

  I let out the breath I’d been holding. “I’m going to go check on the infirmary,” I said.

  “We finished,” Ixa said.

  The serum was a viscous, translucent green fluid that loved to capture small air bubbles that sat suspended in the material. Shaking it only served to trap more air. The only way to get rid of them was to wait for them to float back to the top and pop of their own accord. That happened very slowly. Omicron held it up proudly as if to proclaim his total victory over the forces of nature and the supernatural. However, from the way Donny was now sitting up with his color fading towards normal, I had to admit the showing was impressive.

  “Is that it?” I asked.

  “It has to be kept cold,” Omicron said. “If it warms up too much, it will begin to break down and lose effectiveness. I recommend a thermos packed with dry ice.” He handed off the container to Doctor Song. “It should take care of any future cases of this affliction.”

  “You’ve only been at it for a few hours.”

  “We had most of the information we needed going in,” Omicron said. “We simply had to forge the synthesis.” He turned to leave the isolation chamber.

  “You will have to go through decontamination before returning to your cell,” Dr. Song said. “Everything that has been inside this area has to be. Even with the treatment, we want to minimize exposure.”

  “I understand,” Omicron said.

  I moved next to the plastic. “How are you feeling?” I asked.

  “Like crap,” Donny said.

  “Cheer up, we managed to catch one of the spirits, and you’ve just contributed to neutralizing another,” I said. Donny’s hand went to the brand new bandage on his cheek.

  “I just want to know if I’m going to have a scar from this. That’s a bad place for one, it might show even under the skull mask.”

  Part of me wanted to needle him for his vanity, but common decency prevailed. After coming so close to dying, he deserved a few trivialities. In the end all I said was, “Just get a bigger mask.”

  Donny chuckled. “I should probably get ‘decontaminated’ so I can lend a hand again.”

  “Watch out for the smell, that might just do you in.”

  “Is it really that bad?” Donny asked.

  “Yes,” Ixa said flatly. With her sparing use of hyperbole, it brought an unpleasant expression to Donny’s face. “Just don’t inhale through your nose, and you should be able to make it.” Everyone stood back and gave Donny plenty of space as he moved from the isolation chamber to decontamination. No one wanted to have to go through the process if they could avoid it. Donny was a bit wobbly on his feet for the first few steps, but regained his stride.

  “I should probably wait for him to finish,” Omicron said.

  “That would be polite,” I said.

  “Tell me, did my remote work?”

  I looked at Omicron, the expression of his unmoving synthetic skin unreadable. “No,” I lied.

  “Shame, I thought I had it down.”

  A long, awkward silence fell over the ward until Donny’s return. Since a soaked bandage wasn’t any good, it had been removed. I laughed at the sight of his cheek. “That little pink line isn’t going to leave a mark anyone is going to notice,” I said.

  “You didn’t see it at the height of the infection,” Donny said, touching the side of his face to reassure himself that the horror was really gone. We backed out of the room to let Omicron proceed to decontamination.

  “So, now what?” I asked.

  “There’s still two spirits loose, plus whoever released them,” Ixa said.

  “I guess that means we get in touch with the Regional Coordinator.”

  “You people are pathetic,” Victor snarled.

  “Says the guy chained to a hospital bed because his roomie beat him up,” I said.

  “Code three in Mess four,” the PA blared. “Code three in Mess four.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked.

  “It means someone got shanked,” Victor said. “Code one is a beat-down, code two is a brawl, code three is a weapon injury, and so on and so on.”

  “I see.”

  “A code seven is what’s about to happen next.”

  “What?”

  Victor hit me in the face with his bed, knocking me into Ixa. A knee to Donny’s gut sent him sprawling. He tossed aside a set of iron hoops and chains as he ran out the infirmary door. The object he’d thrown to the floor had been torn from about himself. I took a random guess that it was the mantle both Dr. Song and Warden Ellison had mentioned. I hammered the alarm button on the wall, but the device simply fell off. Unable to trigger the alarm, I ran after the escaping Victor. He spouted an incantation as he ran. I was just shy of laying hands on his back when he slipped between the bars of a gate, his body having been made impossibly malleable by the spell he’d just cast.

  “This is not good,” Donny said.

  Part 10

  Doctor Omicron sat in the interrogation room idly twiddling his thumbs. The view from several cameras fixed him, but he was almost entirely passive save for the motion of his thumbs. We were not in the room with him. We stood clustered around a small bank of monitors at one end of the Rockstead situation center. Off to our right, three semi-circular rows of stations packed with additional monitoring systems filled the half-lit space. Along the long wall, eight large blueprint style plans showed the layout of all the layers within the prison. They were actually displays to show alerts and the distribution of guards and inmates. Warden Ellison scowled. “Arrogant son of a bitch says we should know he wasn’t in on it because it was such a sloppy plan.”

  “It’s probably not his plan, but that doesn’t rule out providing aid,” I said.

  “So far, all we know is that the escapee has not made it outside the prison,” Ellison said. “We’re on lockdown until we find this guy. Every inmate has been returned to their cells, and we’re conducting a head count.”

  “The alarm button in the infirmary was disabled, and someone helped him get out of that mantle,” Ixa said.

  “We’re picking over the security footage from the time Omicron spent in that ward. If he went anywhere near either of those-”

  “He didn’t,” Ixa said. “He went into the isolation chamber on arrival and didn’t leave until he went to decontamination. Victor escaped while he was in decontamination. It is unlikely Omicron disabled to alarm or released Victor from his mantle.”

  “That leaves medical staff and guards,” Ellison said. “He was the only patient in that ward because he was a magnet for violence.”

  “Fantastic,” I said, letting sarcasm seep into my tone.

 
; “There are only two groups of people who’d want to spring Victor from prison,” Ixa said. “Morlocks and the Final Star.”

  “Both of which have an unknown number of members still at large.”

  “Lets focus our attention on new hires since the arrest of Doctor Omicron,” Ixa said.

  “If we just ruled him out...” I started.

  “It’s when we took down the Final Star in Halite and Victor went into the wild,” she said. “Anyone working here before then is unlikely to have any connection to him.”

  “And we’re ruling out simple bribery because?” Donny asked.

  “Victor doesn’t have anything resembling money,” I said. “That leaves ideology and faith.”

  “That’s the last year, give or take,” Ellison said.

  “Why didn’t he just make for the outside?” Donny asked.

  “He thinks he has some way to outsmart our perimeter security,” Ellison said.

  “Or he wants to spring other prisoners,” I said. “Aren’t there demi-dragons among the general populace?”

  “Powered Final Star Fanatics,” Ellison muttered. He pulled up cameras pointed at several cells. A few of the occupants were familiar, I’d crossed paths with them a couple of times. “All are still in place. We’ll keep an eye on the lot of them.”

  “Do you think this had anything to do with the spirits?” Donny asked.

  “I doubt it,” I said. “Our being here complicates his plan. Drawing in a pack of powered heroes is counterproductive. He probably put it into action because he couldn’t call off the diversion and didn’t want to waste his window.”