Cargo (The Ascendants Book 1)

by V. M. Law

  The light grew larger, dancing in her vision as she bumbled through her maze. She was sure now that the temperature rose, and her eyes played tricks on her; all around, the pipes glowed red hot, shimmering with a vigor that let Kasey know she must be hallucinating. Faster, she thought. Faster.

  Her breath came heavy, hard and sharp, like cold wind in the lungs, or a broken rib. Edgar’s satchel caught itself again, and in her anger she tore the strap from its hold, screaming and hearing the cloth rip. The force threw her forward, tumbling and tripping over pipes until she crashed to the ground, hitting her head.

  Warmth spread from the point of impact, and the moisture on her fingers when she brought them to the wound smelled of blood. Kasey kept moving, increasing the speed of her feet and the grasping of her arms, swinging through gaps and landing solidly with both feet. She welcomed the increasing amount of space to maneuver, springing up again to clear another pipe or rolling to duck a rafter. Cool air graced her face, and when she looked up, the light that seemed far off when she first guessed at its presence in the dark practically blinded her. Cool air. Conditioned air. Purified air.

  Closer now, she could make out the light.

  A broken board, probably dislodged during the Ides’ assault, revealed a crack in the surface of a wall, just wide enough for her to slip her fingers through and take a breath of cool air.

  In the enclosure, the temperature rose even higher, until Kasey could no longer pretend that she did not sit trapped in mortal danger. There has to be something, she thought, searching for a grate, an opening of any sort. When she didn’t find any, she thought of another plan.

  Yanking and pulling on the closest pipe, she shook back and forth, rattling it in its socket and screaming to match the force of her shaking. The pipe gave, and again she fell backward, hitting her head and slicing her shirt, but sprang up, holding her new tool.

  She rushed to the gap where cool air snuck itself into the havoc of her escape from peril, reminding her, even in the frantic deluge of thoughts that ran through her mind, of picnics above the surface, the smell of soil in the rain.

  Running forward, not caring where on the ship she would emerge, not knowing if she would emerge anywhere, she flung herself at the light that had grown so large, so blinding, in her trek out of the deep of the Age of Discovery. She forced the pipe into the gap, prying on the metal board with all of her strength, until the rubber soles of her shoes gave way on the surface and, for a third time, she fell.

  No time. Get up, she thought, also considering the pleasure of lying back to sleep in the warmth of a womb, unbelievably comfortable until the final moment, which would really only be a miniscule instant, a meaningless amount of time in the progression of the universe. Nothing would matter.

  GET UP!

  The thought screamed in her ears, seeming to echo. The voice of Corbin Lee, ruddy from cigarettes and dust, asbestos and grime that killed so many of his generation before the Annexes were excavated.

  GET UP RIGHT NOW! BREAKFAST IS READY! And he would crash into her room with a greasy pan and a wooden spoon, spooking her where she sat, already wide awake and waiting for the ritual.

  In the depths of the Age, Kasey opened her eyes. She resumed her prying, bending back the metal that held her pinned in the wall an inch at a time.

  She stuck her arm into the gap, up to her shoulder, and screamed for help, uncaring of who would respond as long as they would not let her be roasted alive with her grandfather haunting her thoughts.

  Back to prying. The metal bent easier now, weakened by the strain of her working it with the pipe. Just a little more. The metal screeched, now, as it bent, and soon Kasey fit both arms into the opening and let her body weight sink down, feeling the heat of the steel floor on the seat of her pants. When the metal panel reached the apex of its arch and remained suspended in the shape Kasey had bent it to, she forced her entire body through the gap, scraping her skin and tearing Edgar’s satchel further until the blood and sweat of her effort made her skin shine slick in the new light.

  With an exulted scream, Kasey plopped onto the floor in an unknown galley somewhere in the Age of Discovery. Couches and tables sat with a film of dust on them, and as she moved through the room, inspecting vending machines that did not work and fans that hung immobile, she clutched her pipe of salvation and looked around at the empty expanse, never wondering where everyone was, or how badly she bled, but only whether or not anyone watched her from the shadows cast by the red emergency lights that painted the scene before her with a sinister glare.

  Chapter 10

  Pitch black—the complete absence of light, the deep, endless expanse of the universe condensed into a broom closet with the smell of cleaning chemicals and sweat—gave way to a blinding flash of brilliance, a sheer explosion of white light that burned his retinas and made him cry out. He lunged forward toward the fresh air, forgetting the braces that bound him to the pipes and feeling his veins bulge as the ties drew tighter around his wrists and biceps. His voice cracked, his scream carrying the frenzy of a bleeding animal. After a short while, he grew quiet.

  Ajax Hardmason took a step forward and sat on his haunches, inches away from Llewellyn Mantiss’ face. He cocked his head, trying to effect the look of a chicken that plucks inquisitively at a new hand.

  “Have you changed your mind, boy?”

  “Fuck you,” Mantiss said, trying to spit on the floor at Hardmason’s feet, but succeeding only in sending one solitary rope of spittle to rest on the stubble that had taken over his chin. “Fuck you,” he repeated, verging on hysteria.

  “You can be free, Llewellyn. I have no problem taking on a new crewmember. God knows I’m busy. What about you? Are you keeping busy?” Ajax cast his glance around the shelves and clutter that Llewellyn had been tied to, as if to suggest that the quarters he had been given were something exemplary.

  Mantiss looked about, his eyes adjusting as he opened them wider, focusing on the silhouette of his captor looming over him like a hulking executioner, hooded, anonymous, but whose stench of butchery and death revealed to his victims his exact identity.

  “I told you everything I know,” Mantiss said, hanging his head and feeling shame wash over him at the memory of Kasey’s name exploding from his mouth, ringing louder with each turn of the screw that Gustav had driven into Llewellyn’s palm. Looking at his hand, he felt the heat of being bested, of being manipulated and moved around on a game board. In the week that had passed since his hand had been screwed to the arm of a chair with a drill, he had thought of nothing but Ascendency assassins asking about Kasey on far off moons and in the Monoliths that housed a million people each.

  “I’m tired of that story. The janitor, snooping around, hearing me, her captain, plotting treason. You’ve told me that story. What I want to know is why you came out to play.” His eyes pierced through Mantiss.

  “I—I found your Vitrol.”

  Ajax chuckled. After a long exhalation, he unfastened Mantiss’ appendages and extended his hand. “Come with me.”

  Mantis looked at his captor with confusion painted on his face, as if he could not comprehend the purpose of the hand extended before him.

  “Come on, boy. There is something you should see,” said Ajax, before foolishly withdrawing his hand with an apologetic shrug and offering the other. “Truly sorry. Forgot about your hand there. One grows accustomed to extending the right hand, even if it might not be the correct hand.” He laughed at his witticism, eliciting a stare of disbelief from Mantiss.

  He reached up and grabbed the hand offered, relishing the feeling of blood coursing through the lower half of his body. “Are you going to throw me from the gangways?” He sneered, as if he would invite nothing more than a quick death.

  Again Ajax chuckled. “No. I wouldn’t do that. Just come with me and you will see why I am coming all the way down here to fetch you from storage. Needless to say, this is not a social call.” With that, he hoisted Mantiss to his feet and braced the
man’s shoulders, standing square with him, and shook him once, hard. “You’re not going to do anything stupid, are you?”

  Mantiss thought about spitting again, but his mouth was still arid and he had no energy for it anyway. He met Ajax’s stare and nodded.

  “Good.” the captain patted Mantiss’ shoulder and told him to follow, turned on his heels and walked away, exposing his back to his prisoner and making no attempt to monitor his movement.

  Confused, but curious, Mantiss followed. Walking came strange, but did not seem as jarring as the prospect of talking. The blood slowly pooled in his buttocks and quadriceps, and with each step, he felt rejuvenated, more alive, like a man being released from prison.

  From ahead, where Ajax marched at an uncomfortable pace, forcing Mantiss to hobble on his sore and disused feet, the captain’s voice called, “I do apologize, by the by, for Gustav. He is a surly fellow, and I always try to get him to be a little more social, a little more—friendly. Of course, he is a brute and we all have to deal with him. I’ve been telling him for years that if he doesn’t lighten up he’ll have a heart attack, or a stroke, or a seizure, I don’t know, whatever happened to our ancestors when they grew tired of life. Anyway—”

  He prattled on as they snaked their way through the ship, meeting no one and hearing no footfalls. Strange, Mantiss thought, his brain focusing on the minutiae of his walk, active and rabid after so much time pent up. Where is the crew? Who’s flying this thing?

  Ajax, who seemed to pay no mind to the absence of, well, everyone, told Llewellyn all about how sorry he was, how brutish Gustav could be, and why everything would shortly make sense. He talked at such length that Mantiss began to fancy the stroll as a new form of talking torture, and in his mind he wanted to scream at the fool to shut his yapping trap and put a bullet in his head.

  Security cameras followed them as they patrolled the halls. Mantiss could not tell where they were going. He did not know where in the ship his broom closet was located, and therefore, had no bearings. Based on the width of the halls and the sleek shine of the floor polish, the arch of the hallway that screamed of artistry over architecture, they were high. Really high. Close to the bridge. He felt awake. Alert.

  They walked together, and after a short distance, came to a door that swooshed open as Ajax approached its threshold. Mantiss couldn’t help his gaze as it bounced around the room, taking in everything, all the computer banks and the fantastical technology that ran the Age of Discovery. This technology did not appear in the lower reaches of the ship, where crew members still smoked real cigarettes and still wore denim pants to work.

  He had never seen anything before that even resembled the bridge of the Age, and as he walked through the towering computer banks—now black and powered down—he could not help but feel the vacuity left behind by the departure of almost the entire crew.

  “Who’s flying this thing?” he asked, vocalizing now what he had been too afraid to say earlier.

  Ajax said nothing in response, but walked briskly up the steps to his cabin and motioned Mantiss to follow. When he reached the top of the staircase and entered the office and cabin of Ajax and Gustav, no food spread waited for him. The only objects in the room that caught his eye were a monitor, upon which the dull and torpid scenes of the abandoned Age rotated through their endless array of security camera footage. The other was a chair, similar to the one he sat on in the broom closet—empty and broken and calling to him with a power so strong that he wanted to turn and run from the cabin, disappearing into the bowels of the ship or throwing himself from the gangways that overlooked the engines.

  Ajax stood before the chair with his heels locked together, his chest thrust forward, accentuating his middle-aged stomach. His left arm unfurled, beckoning Mantiss to his new seat facing the monitor. A thousand torture methods screamed in his brain and he again had to check the urge to run from there, regardless of the consequences. “Do sit.”

  He did as the captain told him, placing his hands on the arms of the chair, wanting to resist when Ajax fastened him with metal handcuffs to the arms but not having the strength or the will to overpower his opponent. For the first time since his imprisonment began, Llewellyn Mantiss became acutely aware of the hunger and weakness of his musculature. His blank gaze drifted over to Ajax as if to ask why he had been removed from his seclusion in the cellar, and the captain responded that it certainly did not happen randomly, and that he truly did apologize for Gustav’s excessive actions.

  “If you will turn your attention to the screen before you, you will find that the answer to your question needs not a spoken word to answer.” He said all of this with his eyes closed and his head tilted slightly back, like an academician discussing his own theories.

  Mantiss, untrusting, shot a glance around the room, trying to penetrate its darker corners and wondering where Gustav might be.

  As if he had read Llewellyn’s mind, Ajax said, “He’s not coming, Mantiss. Do not worry. I have sent Gustav away for this meeting.”

  “What do you want?” His voice carried with it a tone of dejection that he had been trying to suppress since his kidnapping. “Why am I here, what are you doing?

  The questions came faster, the words indistinguishable, until Ajax had to stay the stammering mechanic with a hand on the shoulder and a finger extended toward the monitor hanging before them. “We are going to watch some cinema, as our ancestors said.”

  “What?” Fury replaced his dejection as he lashed out against the absurdity of the old man hovering over him, who kidnapped him and allowed his business partner to drill a hole in his good hand and now wanted to watch the security monitors with him.

  Ajax shushed him, his eyes locked on the screen, watching nothing. “As I’m sure you know, MarsForm captains do not handpick crews; the task itself would be insurmountable, impossible, delusional. It would take longer than our missions. Yes?”

  When he didn’t get an intelligent response from Mantiss, who still raved and pulled furiously on the cuffs that secured him in his seat, Ajax continued his arbitrary speech, telling Mantiss all about how the company developed an algorithm over the course of decades that sifted through the incalculable number of employees and applicants. It searched for the combination of fifteen or twenty five thousand individual test scores until it discovered a dynamic perfect for the mission at hand, optimizing safety and maximizing speed, ensuring that every member would be active and useful, knowledgeable in the field of their expertise.

  In the droning lull of his meaningless words, Mantiss felt his shoulders slump and his head start to dip. He began to meet the wall of sleep gladly, and he only half heard the rest of Ajax’s speech, which went on to inform him that sometimes, every once in a while, out of the blue sometimes, a captain was granted the privilege of picking a small percent of people that he or she would love to see advance. Ajax, of course, picked a few people. Gustav being one of them. Marlo Cunningham being a second. He purposely rejected his prisoner’s brother, Edgar Mantiss, because he did not approve of the man’s work ethic.

  At the mention of Edgar, Mantiss ceased his yelling, feeling curiosity and rage for his captor slip into confusion, which in turn became a dread fear for the last of his family. “Where is he?”

  “Ah! I see I have your attention. We don’t know where your brother is.”

  “The German.”

  “Gustav? You are asking for Gustav,” Ajax said, feigning surprise before continuing with an embarrassed laugh of a man caught in a lie. “Oh, you don’t actually think I sent him to do your brother harm? Do you? Really, I cannot stress enough that I am not a warrior. I loathe violence, actually, and I, like yourself, want this whole dread ordeal to come to a clean end. That means no unnecessary loss of life.”

  “Just tell me what you want.”

  “I want your friend, Llewellyn.” He looked Mantiss in the eye with malice, his finger again comically extended toward the monitor, where one solitary figure skulked through the ship, shiveri
ng, taking minuscule steps that seemed a response to shock more than an attempt to gain ground.

  Chapter 11

  Smoke rose from the gaping doors of Hangar 3W, merging with the plumes pouring from the outpost’s other structures. It formed a cloud of pumice and brimstone, the leftovers of a volcanic eruption or an asteroid impact, that smelled of sulfur and burning hair, blanketing the sky and making the Ides warships seem to Morgyn Farrow as if they were made of glass, brittle and translucent. As if one blow from a carelessly thrown rock would send them tumbling from their skyward perches into the dust of the dead moon below.

  On the surface, they ambled, cackling and leaning on their bent and misshapen legs. The sun reflected brilliantly off of the slime of their skin and their brass-looking armor, and from the office where she had lectured Ajax Hardmason a few hours previously, their reflective aura turned the desert into a sea shimmering as the sun dips its rays in the water along the horizon line. She smelled salt on the air, knowing that it existed only in her memory. A phantom, a face glimpsed in a dream whose features hung before her, remaining outside the grasp of her recognition. Behind her back, she wrung her hands, unable to avert her eyes from the puncture wound of blue sky that shone through the gray mass of smoke and dust overhead. The hole through which the Age escaped, and with it, her hopes of an easy return to the planet.

  “It’s here,” said Kovel. “Waiting outside.”

  “You shouldn’t keep our guest waiting,” Farrow said, affecting a tone of patronizing authority that set those who heard it directed toward them trembling. She held her gaze on the amorphous blue spot in the cloud rising from the hangars.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She waited with dread for the artificial Australian accent of Nigel, who resembled to her a toaster oven that her grandmother had when she still needed to dress with the assistance of a mother; a rusted piece of scrap metal polished by a craftsman until it shone again, but still retained the dented and cracked appearance of a bygone amalgamation of circuits and light bulbs.