by Cam Baity
Not yet. She could not allow herself to falter.
Phoebe’s feet fell in sync with Micah’s, each step bringing them closer to the ominous meeting. Dollop marched along, exuberant as could be, unaware of the weariness that had settled upon Loaii. Passionate chanting grew louder, and the crowd grew thicker. Everywhere they looked, mehkan warriors saluted Dollop. How far he had come since they had last seen him, when he was nothing but a whipping boy in the Covenant camp. The wind picked up and parted the curtains of smoke.
Makina towered above them all, standing atop the flattened remains of an enormous cylindrical building at the center of the Depot. She was a god of swirling storm, a pillar of white cloud and golden fire stretching into the heavens.
Hundreds of chraida were prostrating themselves in a massive semicircle at the foot of the Great Engineer, barking and moaning, gyrating and swaying in unison. Even they had been won over by the spectacle of Makina. Around them stood hundreds more mehkans of every species. Some had the red dynamos of the Covenant, but others did not, and still more trickled in from every direction, pilgrims climbing the fallen ramparts of their long-hated enemy to pay homage to the Mother of Ore.
The masses parted for the kids and Dollop, who was also praying, swept up in the fervor of the moment. Phoebe felt the strange, loving warmth that Makina radiated, and her nose was filled with the intoxicating scent of roses. She noticed a few dozen mehkans standing at rigid attention, shoulder to shoulder, with huge golden dynamos embossed on their torsos. They held fists to their chests, and each gripped a living, copper-red weapon that breathed, wriggled, or fluttered. The camouflaged cloaks on their backs rippled, blending in perfectly with the environment.
The Aegis. They were the Ona’s silent-sworn. She was near.
“So it is true,” said a fluttering voice nearby.
“Orei!” Micah exclaimed, before quickly curbing his enthusiasm. Dollop saluted with a fist over his chest, and she returned the gesture.
“Still drawing breath,” the Overguard said as the dizzying apparatus of her body spun, measuring the seen and unseen.
“Good to see you too, Orei,” Phoebe said with a twitch of a smile.
“Vital signatures diminished.” Her sensor rings sped up as she approached Phoebe. “Something in you is…wrong.”
Phoebe clutched the seed at her throat, hidden by her coveralls. Movement within Makina drew their attention. The slow motion hurricane of Her form picked up speed.
The Great Engineer knew—Phoebe could feel it.
She and Micah followed the current with their eyes and saw a channel of light open inside Makina’s radiant body. A silhouette emerged from deep within the bright rays and celestial mist, floating on an outcropping of cloud, as if it weighed nothing at all.
The Ona.
She descended like a golden leaf drifting from a mighty tree. Phoebe could hear the crowd stir. Their prayers rose to a fever pitch as they prepared for the Ona’s arrival.
Micah stiffened.
“I’m gonna end this right here, right now,” he muttered so that only Phoebe could hear. “With a bullet between her eyes.”
“No,” Phoebe responded, noticing Orei’s sensors adjust and focus on Micah. “No more death. No more killing.”
Down came the ephemeral figure, a golden prophet lowered by her creator upon a pulpit of swirling white. Her iridescent fins parted to reveal her to the glorious ovation of a thousand mehkans.
“We have to convince her to spare Meridian,” Phoebe said.
And prayed that she could find a way.
“So all the viscollia in yer inner-tubes made you bounce when you hit the locomotive?” Mr. Pynch said with a chuckle to the Marquis as they wended their way through the Depot. “Then what?”
Flickery-flashy-flick-flash.
“Aha! I postulated you’d end up at the Foundry port,” the balvoor replied. “I was strategizing an ingress when I got bushwhacked by Tchiock and his mudge-eaters.”
The Marquis shot up a few feet and blasted back a message.
“Yep, that Tchiock. Made yer poor associate a crank-slave on his wryl submersible for a time. It was a…” Mr. Pynch’s wandering eyes clouded. “A melancholeric tale for another cycle perchance.”
The lumilow’s shutters sagged, and he threw a consoling arm around Mr. Pynch. His opticle went red, and he shook a gloved fist.
“Not to worry, me dapper fellow. Ol’ Tchiock got his comeuppance, to be sure. But back to yer own saga.”
Blinky-blinkers-flick.
“For truly?”
Flickery-blink-blinks.
“You don’t say! Well, if yer going to sacrifice yer beloved umbreller, may as well be in service of such a courageous escape.”
Flash-flashy-blinky-flickery-flare!
Mr. Pynch burst into full-bellied guffaws, drawing the attention of nearby mehkans.
“My dear Marquis,” the jolly balvoor said, wiping tears from his wonky eyes, “I never observated the resemblance until now! So how did you manage to disguise your noggin as one of their cameras and your body as a Watchman simultaneously?”
The Marquis went on, explaining in flickering detail, as the two partners clambered over the toppled outer walls of the Depot and looked out upon the expanse of mesas, wavering in the hot day of a hundred suns.
“Once you were relegated to storage and transportated back to this compound for repairs, that’s when the Covenant struck?”
The lumilow nodded.
“I do say, concealing yerself in their battle paraphernalia and absconding amidst the turmoil was a stroke of genius.”
The Marquis bowed to his partner.
“And a stroke of fate that you were able to emancipate our wee compatriot Dollop in the process.”
Flashy-flicker-flick?
“Well, I used to postulate that faith in fate was for the fickle of mind as well, but recent events…” Mr. Pynch glanced back at the luminous shape of Makina towering over the Depot. “Well, I’m not rightly certified what I believe anymore.”
The Marquis considered this. He held out his hands and fluttered another question.
“Indeed,” the balvoor said, his nozzle ticking, deep in thought. “What…now?”
The two partners stared out at the unforgiving landscape, pondering the fortune of their reunion. And it hit them. Mr. Pynch turned to the Marquis, who looked back.
“You cognizating what I’m cognizating?” the balvoor said.
The lumie’s opticle was glowing brighter by the second.
“We could do it, you know. Resuscitate our ambitions and entrepreneurialize.”
Flick-flashy-flick.
“What better time than the present? We have the connections. We know the players. It be an actionable plan and a long time coming.” Mr. Pynch swept his mitt across the wide-open landscape. “Mehk be ours for the taking. What do you say?”
The Marquis was in.
“That settles it, then.” Mr. Pynch beamed and shook hands with his compatriot. “The Associates be in business!”
Flashy-flash-blinky.
“Agreed. It be long overdue. We don’t need unscrupulous racketeers and shadowy, swindling submarkets. The Associates seek customer satisfaction with charisma and gusto! Must procure you some new duds. And a replacement for yer much-mourned bumbershoot, of course.”
The Marquis looked at the red paint plastering his Durall tuxedo and pointed at the ruined necktie tourniquet cinched around Mr. Pynch’s arm.
“Time for me to accessorize afresh as well. It be decided then. Let us avaunt!”
The Marquis nodded.
And didn’t move.
Mr. Pynch grinned broadly. “Onward and upward, I always dictatorate. Off we go, to more auspicious horizons!”
But he didn’t move either.
Blinkery-flickery-flishflash-pop.
“Me thoughts exactly!” The balvoor sighed in relief. “As the newly formed Associates, our first order of business should be attending to M
iss Phoebe and Master Micah.”
Flashy-blinky-flash.
“That goes without saying!” Mr. Pynch dismissed with a wave of his hand, as if the idea were absurd. “Only to exploit for new and prosperating prospects.”
The two companions promptly turned around and marched back to the Depot.
Blinkery-flick-flash.
“Of course, we shall safeguardarate them! They are our investment. I merely elucidate that we can utilize the opportunity to explore theoretical avenues for—”
The Marquis leveled the shutters of his opticle at Mr. Pynch.
Blickety-blank-blank.
“Hey, don’t you go accusating at me, you wobbly lamppost!”
Flickety-flick-flash!
“Who you calling ‘blotated absquatulator’?!”
The mehkan horde clamored with praise as the Ona, resplendent on the outcropping of cloud, descended from Makina’s divine form and came to rest a few feet above the ground. She looked down upon Phoebe and Micah, her golden fins and veils drifting dreamily, making her body seem almost as fluid as the Great Engineer’s.
Two sets of slender, feathery hands emerged from inside the Ona’s drifting fronds, although more limbs remained obscured. She pressed the four hands together in reverent prayer, and the crowd fell silent. The Ona’s face was transformed, like centuries had been polished away in the days since Phoebe had seen her in the Coiling Furrows. Before, her metal skin had been worn in deep and ancient crags, but now it was taut and gleaming. The lattice of gears that formed her tranquil expression was as bright and yellow as a sunflower. But there was a hollowness around the eyes and a stony quality to her expression that was unsettling.
A mask, Phoebe realized. The Ona’s Bearing.
Framing the innocent, childlike face was a regal headdress of sculpted plumes and curled tendrils that was truly imposing. The mask was the same rich golden hue as the Ona’s skin, which shone beneath a brittle membrane that covered most of her body and flaked away in sheets of bleached gold leaf like a molting serpent.
“Loaii,” the Ona purred in that strange, fluid voice that seemed to defy both age and gender. Her luminous white eyes were deep and piercing, marbled with copper and gold. Phoebe could read no expression within them. “You have returned.”
Phoebe stepped forward, holding out one hand to indicate to Micah that he should stay back. “Are you surprised?”
“I have seen much in my epochs,” the Ona replied. “And I have come to learn that there are no surprises in Her infinite and infallible plan. Not you. Not the turning of the tide that has brought us to this place.” She spread four, five arms wide, as if to embrace the destruction of the Depot that surrounded them. “All is as it should be. As the Great Engineer has meant it to be.”
Phoebe looked up at Makina—Her fluid eyes had dripped down to pool and focus on the exchange taking place below.
“You won,” Phoebe said to the Ona. “You beat the Foundry. If you seal the tunnel for good, Mehk will be free.”
“The choice is not mine. I am but a vessel, Loaii, a servant of Makina’s will. She speaks through me, and Her voice rings clear.”
The Ona gestured beyond the walls, and a soft shower of gold leaf sloughed off from her body like a twinkling snowfall. The kids looked in the direction she was pointing, where the sky was peppered with Foundry aircraft prowling in the distance.
“Will they honor our freedom?” the Ona asked Phoebe. “Humans are driven by greed and a lust to conquer. But our deliverance is nigh. She will purge the evil from them, from all of them, with Her sacred fire.”
“You don’t understand,” Phoebe said. “The Foundry may be guilty, but humanity isn’t—no one else even knows about Mehk. But we can tell them. Please, come with me, back to my world. Let’s show them the truth.”
“You believe the truth will sate their hunger?” The Ona shook her head with a crinkle of flaking metal. “Humans have grown fat on our misery. And now they must face Her judgment.”
“Don’t do this,” Phoebe pleaded. The acrid smoke from burning steel mixed with the scent of roses. It was a horrific combination. She imagined it spreading throughout Albright City as everything she had ever known and loved was incinerated. “Hasn’t there been enough suffering?”
“That is for the Everseer to decide,” the Ona said. “She commands, and I obey.”
Phoebe looked to Dollop. He was staring up at Makina, his wide eyes filled with rapture. All the mehkans were transfixed by the Engineer and Her prophet.
“We did everything you asked,” Phoebe said, stepping back to stand by Micah’s side. “All we wanted was to save Mehk.”
“This She knows.”
“So then why did you try to kill me?”
As Phoebe had hoped, Dollop startled. She noticed a reaction in a few others and prayed they also understood her language. She needed to win them over. Phoebe looked for any sign from Orei, but the kailiak was unreadable. The Ona didn’t respond to the accusation. Her golden veils continued to sway, as if moved by a gentle breeze.
“Loaii was immolated for the glory of the Great Engineer,” the prophet said. “Her death banished the darkness and illuminated the night forevermore. And so it is with you who have been blessed with her name. Through your sacrifice, the Children of Ore bask in the light of their Mother once again.”
Phoebe struggled to break through. She had vowed to never speak of the mission the Ona had given to her and Micah, but that promise had died when she did.
“Then why did you need us to get the Occulyth?”
Again, the Ona showed no reaction to Phoebe’s attempts.
“As I lay near death, weakened by Albright’s CHAR,” the prophet said, her brilliant marbled eyes gazing up at Makina, “I did ever dream of the white star, Her light made manifest. Over the years, many were sent to retrieve it—humans like you, captured by my Aegis and sent to Emberhome.”
“That bone I found,” Micah gasped. “I knew somethin’ wasn’t right. How many did you send down there, huh? How many did you murder?”
“None.” The Ona cast her hypnotic eyes upon Micah for the first time. “They chose to die down there rather than help spare Her sacred machine. So the Occulyth remained lost, until a rare human of noble heart saw the truth and sought to end our suffering. He was the first to volunteer to go into Emberhome.”
A cold chill seeped into Phoebe’s body. Icy anger hardened her resolve.
“My father,” she gritted through clenched teeth. “That’s why the Covenant broke him out of the Citadel. So he could get the Occulyth for you.”
“May his golden ember blaze. Alas, he perished before he could embark on his mission, and I feared that our last hope of salvation had died with him. But the Gears of Fate offered us another chance. Makina chose you to pick up his mantle.”
“So I get it for you, and you try to kill me to keep it secret? Why? What’s so important about the Occulyth?”
“Loaii was the most naïve of Makina’s children,” the Ona replied. The cloudy platform on which she stood rose, so that she appeared to grow taller. Her voice became louder, darker, filling with ominous harmonics. “Yet her ember was pure, unlike your own. Despite the gifts that have been bestowed upon you, in contempt of all you have seen, you still do not believe. You defy Her with your every stolen breath.”
“I never wanted this!” Phoebe called out, trying to match the Ona’s rising tone. “All I want is peace between my world and Mehk. All I want is to prevent more death!”
“Yes!” thundered the prophet, and the mehkan masses began to quake. “And this is how you have betrayed Her.”
“No, you betrayed us!” Micah cried. “We trusted you!”
At a sharp order from the Ona, two Covenant warriors seized the kids. A many-fingered hand of tightly woven strands pulled Phoebe’s coveralls open at her neck.
The golden seed shone for all to see.
“From rust, you have returned. You curse Her name by consorting with the Ua
xtu!”
Even those who didn’t understand Bloodword shuddered at that dreaded name.
“Don’t listen to her!” Phoebe pleaded futilely. “She’s lied about them as well!”
“You cannot hide your sins from the Everseer,” proclaimed the Ona. “By consorting with the ember-reapers, you have defiled the Shroud. Against all of Her just decrees, you have cheated rust.” She threw her arms out in a gesture of resplendent power. Her voice resonated through every corner of the Depot as she repeated her speech in Rattletrap.
The crowd was turning on Phoebe. Shouts rang out, seething with hatred.
Phoebe looked to Dollop for help, and her heart sank. He stared back at her with a mixture of loathing and profound revulsion.
“Dollop,” Micah tried to explain, “it ain’t like that, chum.”
“The Uaxtu aren’t demons,” she assured Dollop. “They saved my life. They aren’t ghosts, or monsters, or anything like you’ve been told.”
“Behold!” the Ona blasted. “The heretic calls the Accords a lie! There is but ash where your ember once lay.”
The Ona raised her arms, spreading her fins wide like a great golden bat, and made a declaration in Rattletrap. There was a unanimous snarl of assent from the masses.
She turned to the kids and spoke harshly in their own language. “By decree of the Great Engineer, you are hereby stripped of the sacred name Loaii. We banish thee. Like the Uaxtu, be thou cursed to eternally wander, shunned by all Her Children.”
As the Ona translated these words, the crowd of worshippers moved as one, all turning their backs to Phoebe in a single rippling motion. The Ona pointed to Orei, and in low tones, muttered another command. The Overguard bowed in compliance, her apparatus glinting dangerously. The pair of nearby Covenant warriors roughly grabbed the kids. Micah kicked and spat but was powerless against them.
