Secrets of the Fire Sea j-4

by Stephen Hunt

  'They look as if they mean business,' whispered Boxiron.

  'None that is good for us, I fear, old steamer,' said Jethro.

  Stom urs Stom raised a large paw to stop them, close enough to Jethro's face that he could smell the well-worn leather of her Pericurian war jacket. It would have been a mildly pleasant smell under other circumstances.

  'No need to go any further, Jackelian.'

  'Good captain,' said Jethro. 'I presume your employer is interested in another update on our progress?'

  'Not this time,' said the hulking ursine. Two of her mercenary fighters stepped forward, seizing Jethro while the other two levelled their massive weapons at Boxiron, the copper segments of the gas pipes on their turret guns jangling as loudly as the steamman's limbs jerking in surprise. Boxiron scanned the soldiers intently, looking for any break in their concentration.

  'Do not attempt to interfere,' the mercenary officer warned Boxiron. 'You may possess the strength of the life metal, but the steel pitons in our rifles will drive through your body as easily as they would man-flesh.'

  'What is the meaning of this?' demanded Jethro.

  'Your letter of credit was found lodged with a merchant in support of the outfitting of a recent expedition which left the capital. One led by the Jackelian trapper Tobias Raffold and crewed by various Jackelians who arrived with you here.'

  'Yes,' said Jethro resignedly, adding, 'what of it?'

  'Your letter of credit has the backing of your church, and more specifically, the militant order known as the Circlist League of the Rational Court.'

  Jethro groaned to himself. He was a fool. Of course someone with the First Senator's resources could trace the origin of Jethro's funds within the capital's banking system.

  'The recent expedition is on a mission of sabotage, one which the First Senator has discovered is acting as a tool of foreign interests.'

  'This is ludicrous,' spluttered Jethro. 'You have my word that my friends have embarked on an archaeological expedition, no more. You cannot believe these accusations…'

  'What I believe is not at issue,' said the mercenary commander. 'The First Senator has requested that I sever both your arms as a statement of his disappointment and displeasure at your betrayal of his trust.'

  Jethro struggled in the grip of the two soldiers while the other two jabbed Boxiron back with their turret rifles' barrels.

  'Where is the process of law in this?' demanded Boxiron.

  'The First Senator is invoking the ancient law of extraterritorial reciprocity,' said the mercenary commander. 'In this case, the Jackelian law where the ruling monarch has their arms incapacitated to stop them being raised against the people.'

  Jethro groaned in agony. The massive paws were pinning his arms in place, as tight as iron bands. Extra-territorial reciprocity was intended to automatically trigger corresponding trade duties when a foreign power slapped extra tariffs on a category of goods, but the mad ruler of Jago had obviously found a loophole to stretch a particularly nasty Jackelian tradition to him.

  A curious crowd had gathered on the canal-side street. There would be no shortage of witnesses to the First Senator's savage revenge – even if it wasn't going to be quite up to the standards of the baying mob that assembled in Parliament Square to see the surgeon royal remove the new Jackelian monarch's arms.

  'I demand to see an official from my embassy.'

  'My apologies, Jackelian,' said Stom. 'This is not personal. You may crawl up to the embassy circle after we have fulfilled our liege-lord's orders.'

  The two mercenaries on either side of Jethro shoved him down onto the cobbles and Stom drew out her short sword from the scabbard strapped to her leg. She raised it high. It looked every bit as sharp as the First Senator's wrath. Drifting clouds of steam distorted the terrifying howls of the ursks circling around the expedition, as though a siren tied to a cable was being spun around their camp on the hilltop. Tobias Raffold's trappers held their nerves and their fire, not expending ammunition into the white sea that surrounded them, waiting until the ursks exploded roaring from the mist, launching themselves at the camp from multiple directions.

  Then the noise was unbelievable – the shouts of the trappers intermingled with Raffold's barked orders through the speakers in Hannah's suit as magnetic catapults exploded into action all around her. Hannah held her fire as she had been ordered, but tried to direct her target sight onto the ursks breaking out of the mist. There were fractional seconds when the crosshairs coincided with the position of one of the massive black shapes leaping towards their camp – but they were more accidental than intentional, despite her best efforts. Short of holding down the trigger and keeping it depressed until the ammunition drum on her arm was depleted, Hannah wasn't going to hit a thing with her magnetic catapult.

  The wolds opposite their camp ran dark with loping ursks diving down into the mist of the surrounding valley. Again and again they came at the camp, heedless of the whining arcs of flying steel cutting them down and sending them flying back into the mists. The expedition's defiance just seemed to enrage the ursks more, as if they expected the trappers simply to lie down and let the horde overwhelm them.

  Hannah heard the warning yell over her speakers just as a dark shape covered her skull dome. The ursks must have found a weak spot in the circled RAM suits! Hannah could feel the extra weight of the suit's left leg as she swivelled, trying to throw off the beasts clawing at her – and she remembered the head trapper's warning. One of the creatures was trying to gnaw through the rubber seal of her knee joins, trying to bring her suit crashing down onto the rocks.

  Someone else's suit came lumbering past Hannah, a leg lashing out and briefly clanging off hers. The ursk on her leg was sent flying and then the dark mass clambering over her head unit was picked off and tossed flailing into the mist of the valley. Hannah saw the pilot in the RAM suit that had rescued her. It was Ortin urs Ortin. She mumbled shocked thanks into the voicebox on her pilot frame, but the sound was lost in the roar of stone chips flying up and ricocheting off both their suits' armour. More ursks had broken through and the trappers were firing their magnetic catapults down towards them. Hannah joined in the shooting in a mixture of panic and revulsion; as though madly brushing off insects crawling up her legs. Was she hitting anything? It was impossible to tell, but there was shrieking as her razored disks found targets among the river of maddened fur flowing around her legs.

  Tobias Raffold shouted a command to cease fire and a relative silence fell, leaving only the muted growls and whines of dying ursks and the crackle of recharging catapult arms. Ursks were still circling them down in the mist-covered valley, but their attempt to overrun the camp had failed. Hannah looked over at the distant wolds and saw more and more ursks flooding towards them. The next attack couldn't be far away.

  'Retreat back to the steam tap, lass,' urged the commodore's voice. 'You too, Nandi.'

  'Ammunition count,' ordered Tobias Raffold.

  Shouts rang out with the number of disks each suit had left in their ammunition drums. Hannah glanced at her dial – its hand had rotated around to red. She was empty! And she wasn't the only one.

  'The ammunition crates are next to the steam tap,' announced Tobias Raffold.

  Hannah glanced back to the pile of supply bales and crates that had been slung around the trappers' suits during their march.

  'Lowest charge goes down.'

  The truth of the situation dawned on Hannah. They were going to have to send someone down there, out of their suit, to crack open the crates and load up the drums. The manipulator claws that acted as the RAM suits' hands were fine for lifting heavy loads, but the claws didn't have the flexibility needed to break open the crates and slide the rolls of steel disks into their ammunition drums. There was a cruel logic to the choice of the poor unfortunate who was going to have to slide their canopy open – the RAM suit with the lowest battery charge was least likely to survive being pursued by the ursks.

  Their lu
ckless candidate selected – one of the trappers – the other RAM suits formed a tight circle around the crates, giving the trapper as little ground to cover as possible.

  Then Tobias Raffold shouted a command that Hannah didn't catch, but the cage on the back of one of the RAM suits sprang open and a handful of terrified ab-lock cubs leapt for the ground and scattered in all directions. As the mad diversion was released, the selected trapper slid his canopy open and began scrambling down the handholds on his suit's chest, leaping the last few feet towards the supplies below. The tenor of the ursk song rising up through the mist changed, indicating their confusion as the sudden outbreak of ab-locks pelted past them in the valley. There was a truly hideous screeching sound as some of the young ab-locks fell to the claws of their much larger adversaries.

  'Hold fire,' Tobias Raffold ordered. 'Let's keep the ursks focused on the bloody abs, not us.'

  Once the first of the ammunition crates was cracked open, the RAM suits lowered their catapult arms towards the ground, the trapper on foot striking the top of each drum to spring them open, then frantically pushing rolls of razored disks into the rotation feeders that lay exposed inside. The trapper had reloaded perhaps half of his colleague's catapults when the feint came, three ursks running in from the west side of the hill. The suits' catapult rails roared in answer, spitting spinning steel at the charging beasts. Seconds later, and almost too quickly to follow, another black shape flashed between their legs and the loader vanished without even a cry. Hannah moaned. The ursks' second assault began in earnest.

  Hannah raised her empty catapult arm towards the creatures' attack, as if the whine of the magnetic accelerator alone would be enough to stop them.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Jethro looked up, near hypnotized by the shining steel short sword about to be brought down on his shoulder by Stom urs Stom. From nowhere a spinning bottle knocked the mercenary's blade aside and yells of anger erupted from the watching Jagonese crowd, breaking Jethro's focus.

  'Filthy wet-snouts!'

  'We don't need your justice here, we're a civilized people!'

  'Go home, you jiggers!'

  One of the mercenaries holding Jethro released her grip on him and raised her turret rifle towards the swelling mob, threatening a response to the growing hail of garbage and the insults of the locals. The mercenaries menacing Boxiron with their weapons glanced nervously between the steamman and the rabble surrounding them.

  Just as it seemed as if the situation was going to boil completely out of control, Colonel Knipe and a group of police militia stepped out of the crowd, pistols drawn from the belts under their velvet-lined cloaks.

  'Do not hinder us,' Stom urs Stom warned the police militia. 'This is the will of the First Senator.'

  'I have no doubt it is,' barked the colonel. 'But those that hold to the police oath follow the laws of two millennia of Jagonese civilization, and you can remind Silvermain that the staff of office his senatorial rod carrier bears for him is not yet a dictator's sceptre.'

  'Your orders?' the mercenary pinning Jethro down asked Stom. The ex-parson had a painful view of the barrels facing each other to either side of him. Hand-sized police pistols versus the mercenaries' massive turret rifles. He knew who would come off worse if matters escalated on the street. Jethro and Boxiron's rescuers would be cut to ribbons.

  'Your writ only extends to guarding the battlements and the coral line,' snarled the colonel. 'Hermetica's streets are still under police jurisdiction, unless the senate wishes to vote for martial law to be imposed.'

  There were loud ugly bays of agreement from the mob standing behind the militia officers and Jethro sensed a riot about to break out if the Pericurian officer didn't back down.

  'Withdraw,' said Stom, sheathing her short sword. Her mercenary fighters kept their weapons trained on the crowd and the militiamen as they backed away. 'You can be ordered to follow the will of the First Senator as well as I, colonel.'

  'I'll be sure to follow any legitimate written order of the senate, as long as it bears the high judiciary seal of three judges. We're not Pericurian savages here, ursine. Vendetta and assassination are classed as murder on Jago, not politics. Now sod off back to your master like a good little wet-snout.'

  The mercenaries warily withdrew back down the street, the colonel's officers forming a line of connected staffs to prevent the mob of townspeople from following after the soldiers. Jethro felt the tension leave the Jagonese crowd as if it were air escaping from a balloon.

  Boxiron lurched over to where Jethro was picking himself up from the cobbles. 'I am going to need to have my body seriously upgraded with heavy plate if we're to be dodging turret-rifle fire, Jethro softbody.'

  'Be sure to buy a couple of pounds of reinforced steel to cover my arms,' said Jethro.

  Colonel Knipe approached the pair. 'What have you been doing to have the First Senator set his pets on you, Jackelian?'

  'I'm afraid, good colonel, I have entirely failed to discover the identity of the cabal of plotters intent on destroying the First Senator's new cities.'

  'There's a coincidence,' sighed the commander of the militia, nervously tapping his mechanical leg with his pistol barrel, 'you won't find those plotters inside our cells, either. It'll take the First Senator about a week to fix the judiciary list to have three of his lickspittles sitting on the court bench at the same time. That's how long you've got to leave Jago unless you would see your soul following that of the archbishop along the Circle.'

  'Sound advice, good colonel.'

  'Take it, Jackelian,' urged Knipe. 'Otherwise the wet-snouts will be feeding you to the creatures beyond the wall and all I'll be able to do about it is try to find that drunken sop of an ambassador your people have posted here and urge him to lodge a diplomatic protest about your treatment.'

  With the colonel's stern rebuke ringing in his ears, Jethro was following Boxiron as he used his bulk to push open a path through the Jagonese crowd – still jeering after the departing mercenaries – when he spotted Father Baine moving through the crush towards them.

  'Jethro Daunt!' The priest raised a hand through the jostling mob. 'Over here.'

  Moving to the side of the street, Jethro listened to the young father's description of a panicked message from Chalph urs Chalph and how the ursine was desperate to find him.

  'I sent Chalph looking for you at the records office,' the churchman concluded breathlessly. 'Do you have any idea what he might have meant by the things he said, Mister Daunt? What letter he was talking about? He is always quick to anger, that one, but I've never seen Chalph looking so out of sorts before.'

  Jethro glanced at Boxiron, then at the young priest. 'It is nothing that augurs well, I fear. We'll search for him back at the records office, then at our hotel. You look for him at the trade mission, good father, and anywhere else you think he might be.'

  'Is this to do with the archbishop's murder?' asked Boxiron as they ran back towards the records office.

  'More than our young ursine friend realizes, I believe,' said Jethro. 'We need to find him as badly as he thinks he needs to find us.' 'Running low-'

  'I'm out-'

  'There's one on your leg-'

  Hannah flailed an iron foot at the pair of charging ursks, her leg inside the pilot frame having to push twice just to get the RAM suit's limb to move – she was leaking hydraulic fluid from a torn knee seal, flecks of black oil splattering her skull dome as the suit's foot finally responded and piled into the snarling monsters launching themselves against her.

  'Get behind me, lass.' The commodore's voice echoed inside the cabin, his suit looming up by her side. 'Old Blacky's still got a couple of these wicked sharp disks left.' As if to prove his point, a rotating silver shard cut down one of the ursks trying to clamber up her leg. 'And I don't need the sights on these metal coffins we've been fitted for to see my aim true.'

  'We've got to get out of here!' cried Hannah. 'The trappers are almost out of ammunition.'

>   'Not down there, Hannah,' said the commodore. 'Don't ask that of me. If the mist did not hide their terrible sight from us, you would see the valley's running black with ursks. Ah, I've faced many dangers before, but this is as dark as any of them. My brave body stuffed into this strange foreign walking machine like a juicy filling in a steak pie for thousands of wicked sharp-clawed monsters to pick at.'

  Hannah was about to shout back that the expedition's camp was only seconds away from being completely overrun, but an eerie wail sounded over the brow of their hill, cutting her words off, followed by another wail answering in the distance. Then another and another, each further away.

  The commodore's voice echoed in her cabin. 'What in the name of the seventeen seas is that fearful racket?'

  Tobias Raffold laughed. 'That's what the hollowed-out skull of an ursk sounds like when you blow a tune through it, you old sea dog.'

  Was it Hannah's imagination, or were the waves of ursks coming at them abating? Yes, the attack was tapering off, the shapes skirting the edge of the mist slinking away. Then, a sudden wave of bamboo spears came leaping out of the mist like flying fish. An ursk rolled into sight at the edge of their hill, growling ferociously at two adult ab-locks, the pair of abs howling back and thrusting at the ursk with their bamboo spikes. Hannah realized that the trappers' release of the ab-lock cubs from the cage earlier had been more than a temporary diversion – they'd been sending terrified adolescents reeking of ursk scent back to the ab-lock caverns nearby.

  'Stow your supplies,' ordered Tobias Raffold. 'Pack up the steam tap. The abs and ursks are running on instinct now, and we need to take off while their lust to taste each other's blood is still running stronger than the urge to crack open a handful of RAM suits.'

  The grips on the large iron feet of Hannah's suit started slipping on the gore of the slain ursks littering the cold basalt around the camp. Hannah was never gladder to pack up her share of supplies and follow the line of trappers into the whirling white cover hugging the wolds' slopes. Leaving behind the muffled echo of a full-scale battle between the ab-locks and the ursks rising from the hidden depths of the valley. Everything east of the wolds where the ab-locks made their home was virgin territory to the trappers, becoming colder and colder the further away the expedition travelled from the shores of the Fire Sea. Their progress slowed as the trappers had to scout out suitable blowholes for their portable steam tap to recharge the RAM suits. Occasionally Tobias Raffold would stop and point towards some track or rock and make noises indicating that another party might have passed this way a long time ago.