The Tropic of Eternity

by Tom Toner

  Lycaste felt a shiver crawl through him, the distant memory of the shark hunt reflected perfectly in the unfolding scene. Here he was, manning the weapon aboard a small, juddery craft, his two companions gazing anxiously upwards, rather than down, for some beast to descend from the heavens. It was as if life were nothing but a series of mirrors and sets, constantly recycled and reupholstered; a spinning drum of kaleidoscopic chambers, everyone falling from one to the next, cursed to repeat and repeat and repeat.

  Lycaste blinked the sweat from his eyelashes, his view misted over. Mirror or no, his old life was gone. He could never revisit it.

  The Foundry itself was still some miles distant, and Lycaste swung his gun to look around him. Some suggestion of movement crowded the clouds beyond, and up in the thunderheads flashes of light were almost penetrating the mists.

  “Look!” Maneker yelped, excitement yanking his voice into a higher register.

  A vast bulge had begun to push through the thunderclouds ahead, parting them in ragged strips like something ripping through grey silk, a shadow making its stately way across the storm, also heading for the great open star of the Foundry entrance.

  “Is that—?”

  “That’s it. The Grand-Tile.” Maneker’s feverish breathing grew faster in Lycaste’s ears.

  The clouds swelled, rolling over the battleship’s hidden bulk. The flurry of rain turned on them suddenly, slapping hard across the tiny jet and rattling them in their seats. White iron towers shone through the cloud ahead: a ramshackle city disgorged from the storm.

  The Colossus burned through its wrapping of mist directly over the Foundry. It was both vaster and more dilapidated than Lycaste had imagined. He narrowed his eyes at the seething lightning storm, realising with a start that the flashes contained within them the discharges of thousands of weapons: Maneker’s hired forces were swarming the Grand-Tile leaving trails of flashing vapour, vortices of rain catching the light of their munitions. Dark smoke suddenly peeled across the sky as something scored a hit on the one of the Grand-Tile’s outer towers, and hundreds of cannons all along its parapets returned fire in florets of smoke, deluging the jungle with a rolling slap of sound that penetrated Lycaste’s closed comms and thundered through his bones. The jet stuttered as the force of the sound hit them, juddering up and down like a boat in a gale.

  Huerepo squealed amid the din, almost falling out of his seat. The jet puttered and screamed in response, dropping quickly, Maneker slamming his fist against the controls. The dark moss world below rose to meet them.

  “The river!” yelled Huerepo over the roar of rushing air and cannonade. Lycaste’s stomach and heart swapped places as Maneker swerved the jet violently, directing its wild fall towards the white smear of the water. The river swelled until Lycaste could see the shards of black rock among its rapids. He pressed his body back, as if doing so would somehow break their fall, and tensed, eyes squeezing shut. Just then, he felt their forward momentum increase as the jet accelerated with a scream. Lycaste opened his eyes to see Maneker pumping the motor and leaning back almost into Lycaste’s seat, both hands on the stick. They swerved, skimming the water in a rush of spray and barrelling into the bank.

  They hit, jarring every bone in Lycaste’s body. The jet’s left wing instantly tore off, rolling them over and spinning them through the edge of the jungle. Branches raked across the fuselage, squealing. The jet bounced through and back down onto the bank, spinning again, sliding across the mud and diving into the water to lodge with a crippling crunch against a shard of rock.

  Lycaste rolled sorely in his seat. Maneker appeared from the foot-well, where he’d cleverly wedged himself. Lycaste glanced to the nose of the jet; it was almost entirely missing. Water frothed around it, and yet they appeared to remain buoyant. Before Lycaste could think clearly, their metal hull was grabbed and bobbed by the onrush of water from behind, tearing it away from its mooring against the rock and barrelling them downstream.

  Lycaste glared at the crumpled remains of the nose, unable to register what he was seeing. Cream froth surged over the front, shoving them from side to side, tumbling the broken jet almost side-on through the rapids. A jutting rock intercepted them with a bang and bounced the jet further down the river towards another. Each impact almost rolled the jet before it bobbed back up again, unsteerable. Twisted pieces of wreckage from the battle in the sky rained down across the jungle and splashed into the river. A scorched-looking Lacaille ship barrelled in, streaming smoke from its stubby wings, clearly aiming for the river as they had. It dived past, skimming the water, and exploded across the bank.

  “Bugger it!” screamed a bubbling little voice from behind. Lycaste wrenched around in his seat and with bleary relief saw Huerepo swept along in their wake. He reached and pulled the Vulgar in by the scruff of his collar, dumping him between his legs and pushing quickly off another rock that scraped past. The black water boiled white around them, hurrying the little jet downstream and beneath the looming spectre of the Colossus.

  Maneker wrenched the stick with all his weight and ruddered them quickly between some viciously sharp rocks. Lycaste saw their jewel-studded surfaces skim by before his gaze was distracted by flashes from the bank: some scrofulous-looking Lacaille emerging from the jungle. Lycaste patted Huerepo on the head and gripped the gun stock, hauling it around in the direction of the bank. Bolts whizzed by, one or two ricocheting from the fuselage and skimming back into the water.

  “What the hell are you waiting for, Lycaste?” Maneker raged, ducking down.

  He sighted as best he could while they barrelled along, taking aim over the water and squeezing the triggers. The far side of the river erupted with exploding silt as Lycaste’s lumen bolts whizzed into the jungle and raked the bank. Huerepo climbed past him and back towards the nose, which was steadily taking water. Lycaste shot a glance at Maneker, who was still pressing all his power into the stick to try and steer them to safety.

  “Give it to me!” Lycaste cried, raking the far bank with a final line of fire before releasing the triggers. He scrabbled out of his bucket seat, tipping them dangerously in the rapids, and clambered across until he and Maneker found themselves occupying the same footwell.

  Maneker cursed, trying to swap places and falling against the inside of the jet. A collection of rocks squealed by, spinning the jet as they clambered over one another. Lycaste fell onto the stick, forcing it down with both hands and splintering it. The bank drew closer. The jet tumbled, dragged through the water. Lycaste flattened his ears as a new hail of bolts fizzed into the rapids around them, one or two pinging from the jet. At last, the fuselage crunched into silt. He reached out and grabbed at a rock, steadying them, and climbed quickly from the craft, dragging the wreckage of the jet after him.

  Maneker and Huerepo hopped out, collecting what they could. The river roared beside them as Lycaste stared fearfully along the bank and into the dark fringes of the jungle. He glanced back, feeling bruised to his bones, knowing he would miss the battered little jet. Huerepo was limping and bleeding from one earhole; Maneker wiped his bloody mouth: he’d lost a tooth.

  The Immortal spat a glob of blood onto the bank and swept past them, his mechanical eye crackling. “No time, no time.”

  *

  The Epsilon India dropped through a tunnel of flashing cloud, rain tearing at its fins and swirling in a glittering vortex. A strand of Perception sat atop its cockpit like a rider at the reins, pummelled by the storm, the rest of its form twined throughout the ship and controlling its every function. The Spirit’s features, had anyone been able to see them, were set in a permanent, gleeful grin as it manipulated the ailerons and aimed the guns, cycling their massive shells into newly cast chambers, ready to fire.

  It soared deeper, bursting through the sound barrier. The Hasziom, with Poltor once again at the helm, chattered over the shared frequency, some miles away at the head of the Satrap Alfieri’s division and closing the distance fast. Perception gazed through the cloud
and singled out the massed ranks of the Jurlumticular vessels, a motley swarm of patchwork ships arranged at the Spirit’s say-so in a precise and unfathomable formation, each vessel graded on its speed and the power of its artillery. Perception sorted them in its mind swiftly, pleased, then angled the Epsilon’s body and soared right, staring up at the slowly arriving mass of the Grand-Tile, messily displacing the cloud-like bathwater. Perception saw that the Colossus battleship had already opened its single great hangar in a glow of magnesium light and was busily deploying its first ships, their exhausts fuming as they were batted around by the battleship’s turbulence.

  Nothing it couldn’t handle. Perception steered the Epsilon away and dived through the cloud, spiralling down to spy friendly ground forces massing in the jungle around the Foundry’s huge entrance. The Grand-Tile was trying to get as close to the hole as possible, to land, perhaps, and settle into a defensible position. Its underbelly, a sagging collection of irregular exhaust tunnels, was pumping thick black smog as the battleship steadied, a haze of fly-like ships drifting around it. The six hundred Jurlumticular vessels rose in a glittering swarm, soaring up into the open hangar and engaging the first defending ships in puffs of smoke and flame. Something detonated with a flash in the mix, showering slow, bright firework trails among the conflict. Perception watched for a moment more, recognising each individual Jurlumticular ship, then looked away as the Colossus’s forty-foot guns opened up, observing through the dashing rain as the Satrap’s rifleships came barrelling in and opened fire on the turreted upper towers. Lumens flashed, scoring the rain. Ships detonated, showering the battleship with wreckage and smearing soot across the clouds. Perception swerved away, its fingers poised on the trigger, waiting, watching, dodging the odd lumen zap as it scorched past. A white Lacaille carrier hove into view, dogging Perception’s tail with a smattering of fire. The Spirit growled and darted into a spin, popping off a single shell and blowing it to smithereens.

  The Grand-Tile’s every vibration shivered through King Eoziel as he stood upon the flight deck in the battleship’s highest tower, his bony hands clasped and clammy, heart fluttering. It felt as if the Colossus was rattling itself to pieces around them. He looked at his handful of Lacaille knights, the Op-Zlan, as they stood and sat around him, and attempted once more to lower the pitch of his voice while somehow raising its volume as he spoke.

  “If it comes to a boarding,” he continued, “they’ll lose.”

  “You think that’s their aim?” asked the indolent-looking knight Fiernel as he put out a hand to steady himself. “To get inside?”

  “Why not?” retorted Jhozua. “The Grand-Tile cannot be destroyed; to capture it would be a superb feat.”

  “If they can get it, they deserve it,” grunted Scarred Pitur, the oldest of Eoziel’s knights, close enough for Eoziel to get a whiff of his reeking breath. “And I for one shall be the first to congratulate our foes when they come to take us prisoner.”

  “You shall do nothing of the sort,” snapped Eoziel, his little voice momentarily squeaking. Pitur smiled condescendingly at him.

  Eoziel cleared his throat, riding out a judder of the Colossus. The knight Pitur, the wealthiest of them all, would have become king if not for a deft bit of manoeuvring on Eoziel’s part. Eoziel looked at him. “The legions I garrisoned near Cancri should be here any minute.”

  Pitur stepped closer, straightening from his stoop. He was a big Lacaille, more than half the height of an Amaranthine. “If they were coming,” he sneered, “we’d have received word.” He turned to the others. “Look at us. We could be in Filgurbirund by now, striking the final blow against the Vulgar. Instead, my king, you’ve dragged us here on your vanity quest while others reap the spoils.” A rumble of assent echoed from the other knights.

  Eoziel stared between them, feeling his delicate grip slipping. “I pledged allegiance—”

  “Yes, of course,” growled Pitur, “for the fortunes of all the Lacaille. But we know what you really wanted, don’t we?” He reached out and poked Eoziel in the belly with his clawed finger, prompting gasps from the others.

  “Imm-or-tality.”

  The ground forces must have reached the Foundry’s entrance: drifts of smoke were coiling from the jungle at the lip of the great star-shaped hole. Perception circled, darting among falling wreckage, soaring into the air again to take in the land below, clean, cool rain pummelling the Epsilon.

  All right then. Perception cracked unseen knuckles. Enough now. The Spirit went through a final checklist, readying the twisted heap of tubes in the Epsilon’s snout and angling towards the chaos of the Grand-Tile.

  A thought struck it, and it was suddenly afraid.

  Perception disentangled its fingers from the equipment, taking the Epsilon on a wildly looping course as it banked and swerved through a hail of shells and darting, flaming ships.

  Where was the jet? It searched hard, picking through individual trees and scouring the mossy, shadowy undergrowth. Where was Lycaste?

  “Percy!” Poltor bellowed over the comms. “Have you done it yet? We’re not causing enough damage.”

  Where’s Lycaste? Perception replied, twisting in the air. Has he checked in?

  “Nothing!”

  Shit. The Spirit glanced back in the direction of the sinking Grand-Tile, spotting a ponderous-looking Lacaille ship making its way down through the scrum and darting straight for the Foundry’s entrance.

  Perception was out of time. It unlocked the mechanism again, invisible fingers caressing the trigger.

  Eoziel backed away from Pitur’s out-thrust finger, the muttering of the other knights drowned by the surge of detonations and falling shrapnel striking the tower. Fiernel had already made his way out, and Eoziel felt a flash of hideous anger. Nothing but greedy, useless—

  “There never was a more disappointing king,” Scarred Pitur said, leaning close, his fermented breath steaming into Eoziel’s face. Eoziel felt himself unable to move, to speak, his indignation frozen with fear and humiliation. Pitur looked him up and down one last time, and turned to follow the others.

  But the turn had broken the spell. Eoziel unsheathed his sword, wavering only a moment before he jammed it as deep as he could into Pitur’s pale neck.

  Remember that signal I was blathering on about? Perception said to every last friendly ship and helmet channel. This is it. Get out of here.

  It waited, watching the thousands of craft booming swiftly up and away from the Grand-Tile, heading deep into the clouds. A clear and very visible mystification overcame the defending ships as they eddied and banked, droning after them.

  Too late for that. Perception’s invisible smile widened with a pyromaniac’s glee.

  It squeezed the trigger.

  At first, nothing. Time enough for its racing mind to half-consider the possibility of failure. Then a hail of black grit like buckshot appeared, Bilocated from the battleship’s long tail out in the Void and sent straight to the interior pole, where it had hung, caught and held by the magnetic spin, until the Spirit’s command.

  The mass of comet shards fell straight down like a dark rain, tearing into the Grand-Tile. Larger bodies, dropped after them, pummelled the Colossus in waves, a noise like rifle cracks slicing through the air. Wider, denser comets followed, ripping shreds out of the battleship’s flanks until it was pocked with smoking holes, the ruins of towers gouting fire.

  The Grand-Tile faltered in the sky, the Spirit saw, and began to drop. A tongue of flame curled out from the enormous hangar, fed by internal conflagrations.

  Perception twisted to watch.

  At first, the Colossus appeared to stall in mid-air, towers bent and crumbling. A sudden detonation ripped through its lower decks as an ammunition store caught fire and the battleship angled, tipping away

  from the gulf of the Foundry and towards the jungle. It tilted almost horizontal, engines screaming as they blared smoke and heat across the land.

  Eoziel levered himself up until he c
ould see, his furs sticky and scarlet. Pitur’s body slumped beside him, skewered like a fish.

  The shadows tipped around him, light spilling into the chamber. The jungle swelled, rising, the king’s stomach joining it.

  Far below him, the outermost exhausts struck the jungle, a silent quiver running through the battleship’s length and whitening the plastic of his window. Eoziel dropped to his knees, entranced, hands trembling against the bulkhead as he watched the Grand-Tile’s body deform, crumpling as it drove itself into the ground, the crackling rumble rising. Then something burst in the lower reaches, the flash searing his eyes.

  Perception gawped. The Colossus hit the jungle with a slap, a bellow of enraged metal peeling apart, towers crumpling, shearing away. Its great white body bent and popped, throwing shrapnel into the air, until something detonated inside its hangars with a dazzling flash. Perception drank in the sight: an erupted glitter of stupendous, rolling flame, flinging every atom of itself for miles around in streaming, sparkling trails.

  They watched its screaming fall. Lycaste covered his ears. The blast was like something consuming the world. The gloom of the jungle brightened instantly, revealing every strand of branch and wet clump of moss, before darkening almost to night as smoke rolled overhead and choked the air.

  They stumbled through the smoke-dim jungle, pausing as great waves of the stuff churned through the trees, washing over them.