Blood Binds the Pack

by Alex Wells

  Then she took a deep breath and cast around until she found another of her scattered cigarettes. Flame leaped easily to her fingers to light it. Her blood felt alive with fire. On the breeze, she heard other voices now, murmurs of confusion, of wonder, people crying with hoarse sobs. Hob stood and looked at the swath of destruction. No greenbellies to be seen, just drifts of sand that had no business being out this far in the middle of the saltpan. But she knew, suddenly, where it had all come from.

  There was a godling that lived in the Well now, and he’d turned all the greenbellies to sand. She sucked in a deep lungful of smoke, trying to wrap her brain around the thousand ways the world had changed in an instant, even while she still felt the phantom pressure of his lips against hers. “The fuck do we do now?” she whispered, to herself, maybe to him, to the whole fucking world.

  That was all she allowed herself. Because she was Hob Fucking Ravani, and she’d never given up, never stopped. She wasn’t about to start now. She sucked in another lungful of smoke and bellowed, “Coyote! Dambala! Get ’em lined up!”

  Dawn

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  “Mag?” Omar’s voice came low, but urgent.

  She raised her head from the stack of documents she’d been going through in Bill Weld’s office. It was something to do, something that had gotten her away from the never-ending barrage of questions that had battered her since that one, perfect moment when the world sang. What happened? What do we do now?

  The latter question, she’d had an answer to, at least. Go to the other towns. Find the survivors. Make sure everyone had water and food. And always, always – organize. The Bone Collector, whatever he was calling himself now, sweeping the green and blue clean off the surface of the planet wasn’t a forever solution. There was a world out there that had a lot of interest in them, and there were people on this world that needed to be fed and cared for.

  She should say something, she thought. With Clarence gone, people were still looking to her for answers. Even the damn Bone Collector had. “What is it?”

  “Osprey been sighted.”

  A shock of fear hit her, but no, it was impossible. All of the TransRift and Mariposa men were gone. The Bone Collector had promised that. Mag made herself take a deep breath, then another. “It heading this way?”

  “Yeah,” Omar said. “Dunno why.”

  Mag stood, smoothing her skirt. “Guess we’ll find out.”

  She followed Omar to broken pieces of Ludlow’s wall. Every miner who had survived, made whole by the Bone Collector, arrayed around them, brandishing stolen rifles and their own weapons. Their silence broken only by Brother Rami’s murmured prayer to the god in the sky and the new god in the Well, they watched the lights approach in the darkening sky, resolving into a massive cargo osprey… which slowed neatly and lowered itself to the ground.

  No one breathed as the ramp slowly came down, not quite in unison.

  And then Hob walked down the ramp of the osprey, her black coat whipping in the wind, the spark of a cigarette visible against her mouth even at this distance. Relief took Mag and dropped her to her knees. Of course Hob was alive. She was too damn mean to die.

  And behind her, a wave of miners followed.

  The crowd broke out in cheers, and then people began to run across the sand, some toward loved ones they spotted, some to search. Mag struggled back up to her feet, her eyes first fixed on Hob and then… behind her. Anabi was dressed in a strange hotchpotch of clothes, her hair in tangled knots, but she was there. Mag ran faster than she ever had in her life.

  “Mag–” she heard Hob say, and didn’t pause. She threw herself into Anabi’s arms, and they took turns trying to squeeze the breath out of each other. Anabi threw her head back to laugh in silent breaths, tears streaming down her cheeks. Mag pressed her hands on the woman’s cheeks to bring that mouth down to hers, to kiss the salt of it away. Anabi’s hands tangled in her hair, and for that one, blessed moment, the death and tiredness fell away and all was right in the world.

  It was the need to breathe that finally got her to step back, just enough to keep her hands around Anabi’s waist. But she looked around to find Hob, carefully studying the star-scattered sky like she’d just walked in on someone naked. Mag caught a flash, then, of the pale ghost of a shape behind her, but it was gone when she blinked. Somehow, she doubted that Hob even felt it.

  “You said I ain’t ever given up,” Hob remarked, after a sidelong glance to make sure Mag was put back together.

  “Guess you better start believin’ what I say.”

  Mag looked around the massive office, an entire floor of the stupidly tall TransRift tower, with mingled wonder and anger. How the hell did any one person need this much space, this much luxury? she asked herself for the fifth time. How the hell does any one person think they’re that much better?

  By the palatial windows, Hob was a dark, stick-thin figure. She kept pushing the buttons on the wall, watching the curtains open and close, open and close. Mag half wanted to scream at her, but she knew it wasn’t fair. She wanted to yell at Hob because it was the only way she could get around the anxiety already clutching at her gut. And Hob was playing with the curtains for the same damn reason.

  The only reason they were in the sand-filled ghost town that was Newcastle at all was because they’d seen the flimsies dug out of the wrecked manager tents at the wildcat site, and Coyote had helped review them all. He’d pulled out the news about the inspector arriving, and pointed out that the only place to really talk to them was in Newcastle, at the tower. And it was the Bone Collector, a ghost of him in Mag’s mirror that she still hadn’t brought herself to tell Hob about, that told her just what he’d done about it.

  The TransRift tower had been full of little drifts of orange-pink sand, sitting in chairs, in the middle of elevators, smeared across hallways. Mag found it eerie, but also couldn’t find it in herself to feel bad. They’d lost so many people in Ludlow, in the other towns, before the Bone Collector had stopped everything. Hob had lost well over half of her Wolves – it was easier to name off the living than the dead: Geri with his hair gone white, Coyote, Dambala, Hati, Lykaios, Maheegan, Diablo. Mag thought about the dead ones she’d known the best – Lobo and his supply runs, Freki and the ribbon candy they’d shared as children, Raff and his goofy smile – and felt numb. There were too many dead in such a short time for her to feel anything else. She had to focus on the one personal good Hob had brought her, Anabi whole and alive, or she’d get sucked under with despair – and even then, it felt wrong, to think of good when there was so much mourning to do.

  But good was the reason to keep going through all the bad, the hope of it sometimes the only way to keep the heart beating.

  “Think I got it workin’ right now,” Hati said, from under the stupidly massive desk that was the centerpiece of the whole stupidly massive room. “Y’all ready?”

  “I am. Hob?”

  “Don’t fuckin’ know why you wanted me here anyhow,” Hob muttered, but she stopped messing with the curtains.

  “Because you look damn scary,” Mag said. There were a lot of other reasons, ones that she was going to try to lead Hob around later. There were too many open questions right now, about how they’d organize themselves, how they’d make sure everyone was safe and had enough to eat. So many things to vote on. But if anyone was going to be able to run the bandit hunting and do it right, train a militia and do it right, it’d be Hob. She was a legend now, along with the surviving Wolves. She might still play the mercenary card, but no one was fooled by that any more.

  Hob just needed to realize that about Hob, too.

  Mag set those thoughts aside for now and took her spot at the desk. She smoothed down the front of her best dress, which at this point was the one with no blood stains showing on the faded red calico. Hob loomed over her, scowling, hands clutched at the back of the stupid chair. Mag sighed. “Smoke your cigarette if it’ll get you to stop fidgeting.”

  Hob�
��s sigh of relief was almost comical. Once she was more settled with smoke wreathing her head, Mag nodded to Hati. “Go ahead.”

  He did some more fiddling, then crawled out from under the desk, a manual in one hand. He read a bit more, finger tracing over the lines, and then typed some commands on the recessed keyboard. “Ought to work… but we ain’t got that Weatherman here…”

  “It’ll work,” Hob said, flatly. Mag wondered if she could feel it too, the presence of the Bone Collector in the room like an amused ghost, watching them. Probably not. That had never been Hob’s kind of witchiness.

  A screen rose up from the desk; it had been impossible to see before it lifted up, all smooth and perfect. A logo came on that Mag recognized as TransRift’s, with Ship Frequency Broadcast under it. Mag took a deep breath and began: “I am calling to Rift Ship Jentayu, to speak with Captain Santos and Federal Union Inspector Liu Fei Xing. Please respond.”

  Hati, hovering just out of what he claimed was range of the video, snuck in a hand to tap a button. “OK. Now they can’t see or hear you.”

  “And?”

  He shrugged. “And we wait to see if–” A tone sounded from the screen, and the words changed to, Incoming Call, Rift Ship Jentayu TR-0910, Channel Secure. Receive? “Um. They responded.”

  Mag took another deep breath and straightened her spine. “I’m ready.”

  Hati pecked at another button, and the static TransRift logo changed to show the faces of two women. One of them, her skin brown and dark brown hair cut extremely short, wore a blue uniform that Mag didn’t recognize, but figured had to be for the ship pilots. The other wore clothes just as strange to Mag, a type of suit she’d never seen before with no lapels and no tie. She had her long, straight black hair pulled back from her round face, and her expression was severe. She said, “I am Federal Union Inspector Liu. I demand to know by what means and by what right you have conspired to hold my ship hostage in your orbit, and with whom I am speaking.” Her frown deepened as she seemed to examine Mag and her plain work dress from the screen. “I will only speak to the governing authority of this planet.”

  Mag reminded herself that this woman must be frightened; ships weren’t supposed to just hang in one place, but that was what the Bone Collector had done with the Jentayu. But she still felt annoyed. “My name is Magdala Kushtrim,” she said. It felt good to say her name proudly for the first time in months, for herself and for her parents. “I am the duly elected representative of the Tanegawa’s World Laborers’ Union. Behind me is General Hob Ravani.”

  And bless Hob, for not choking at her sudden promotion. She just crossed her arms and glared. Hob was always good at that.

  “Where is Vice President Meetchim?” the inspector demanded.

  “Dead,” Mag said flatly. “This planet no longer belongs to TransRift. It belongs to the miners and the farmers and all those between. And if you want to talk to someone, you’re gonna have to talk to me.”

  “If you want to negotiate, you will let us land,” the inspector said. Still trying to cow her, Mag thought. Maybe being an inspector didn’t call for the same level of sly that being a spy did. Shige had been better at this.

  “You are in our space. If you come with an offer of peace, we’ll hear you and put it to a vote.” She held up a handful of orange-pink dust she’d scraped off one of the chairs in the building’s echoing, empty lobby. “This here used to be Vice President Meetchim. We done this to her the same way we’re holdin’ your ship. So you think about that.” She let the sand pour through her fingers. She felt the Bone Collector’s attention on her like a weight, his amusement and his approval. They’d had a long talk, the two of them, in that timeless moment when the whole universe had changed.

  She could do this, Mag thought, as she took in the expressions of the ship captain and the inspector with outward calm. She would do this. She was doing this. They had organized and fought and bled and died – and now it was their turn to set the terms. “Only a fool would come here lookin’ for war.”

  Epilogue

  He could barely remember his name, he’d had so many. And none of those mattered now. All that mattered was the purpose that drove him. That was what put one foot in front of another as he wandered from salt flat to shifting sand – had he really gone so far? The thirst didn’t matter, the pain didn’t matter, only duty. Finish the job.

  His hand was glued to his side with dried blood, and his tongue had gone to leather with thirst. The eagles weren’t even bothering to shadow him any more, like the desert had baked every last bit of water from his body long ago.

  He remembered dimly, being in a cool theater. He wondered if, when his death was reported, his mother would walk silently away. Her greatest effort, the sum of her strength and dedication, and he’d still failed. It was unfair. He’d never asked to be made, to have the hopes of a political dynasty placed on him, to have the survival of the limping democracy they called the Federal Union placed on his shoulders.

  He couldn’t remember his name clearly, but he could remember Kazu. Hating him. Worshiping him like only a younger brother could. Wishing that he could follow. Never having the will to see that course of action as possible, even as he snuck glances into his file. He’d looked down his nose at Kazu, just like he was supposed to, but in his secret heart he’d been jealous. Kazu was an idiot, a layabout, a troublemaker, shiftless. He didn’t have a right to look as happy as he always had in surveillance files. Madness. How did he have anything to live for, when he’d abandoned everything built for him?

  And how, the wind seemed to ask, shifting to blow dust into his eyes, do you have anything to live for when everything you’ve built has abandoned you?

  It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t true. It was fair and true. He tumbled down the slip face of a dune and lay face down in the shadow of it.

  No. He wouldn’t stop because there was still something he could do. Some action he could take. To what end, he no longer knew, his strategies gone hazy and incoherent. Who would he actually serve? Did the people he had met here, whom he’d killed with his manipulation and conscious inaction, deserve to have what was coming to them? What was deserve anyway? What had any of this meant?

  It would mean, he thought as the sunlight knifed into his scalp and his unprotected neck, what he made it mean. What Magdala Kushtrim and her unwashed miners – they all no doubt smelled better than him now – and that madwoman Hob Ravani made it mean.

  And he reached out to pull himself along. His legs no longer had the strength to support him. But he kept going, because there was still work to do.

  He fell down another slip face and lay gasping at the bottom, trying to gather his strength. And he heard – did he hear, or was it a hallucination? He ought to have been dead days ago – footsteps approaching. He found the strength to turn his head and see booted feet that left no mark in the sand.

  The feet stopped next to him, then shifted as the man they bore crouched down. And a familiar, impossible voice asked, “Thirsty, brother?”

  Acknowledgments

  I’ve written quite a few first books, most of which will never see the light of day. But the book you’ve just finished is the first second book I’ve ever written. Hunger Makes the Wolf took me 12 years and nine drafts to finish; Blood Binds the Pack took one month to outline, three months to write, and four drafts. It was a strange, intimidating, and sometimes exhilarating experience. And it wouldn’t have been possible without the help of a lot of fantastic people:

  DongWon Song, my agent, who gently but implacably cornered me into just writing the damn thing already and did several rounds of proto-editing on my ridiculous, 11,000 word outline.

  Corina Stark, my first reader.

  Phil Jourdan, who did not destroy my soul this time, but instead made me believe I could actually do the thing.

  The rest of the Angry Robot crew: Mike Underwood, Penny Reeve, Nick Tyler, and Marc Gascoigne.

  The historians whose research on the labor wars of the first
Gilded Age provided inspiration and depth for the world I’ve built – in which history is repeating itself just like it is today. Their work is acknowledged individually in the bibliography that follows.

  The fire for this comes from my brothers and sisters and other siblings still fighting every day for fair pay and the basic dignity owed to them as workers in this new Gilded Age.

  Solidarity forever.

  Bibliography

  Andrews, Thomas G. Killing for Coal: America’s Deadliest Labor War. Harvard University Press, 2010.

  Clyne, Rick J. Coal People: Life in Southern Colorado’s Company Towns, 1890-1930. Colorado Historical Society, 2000.

  Green, James. Death in the Haymarket: A Story of Chicago, the First Labor Movements and the Bombing that Divided Gilded Age America. Anchor, 2007.

  Jones, Mary Harris. The Autobiography of Mother Jones. Dover Publications, 2012.

  Martelle, Scott. Blood Passion: The Ludlow Massacre and Class War in the American West. Rutgers University Press, 2008.

  Papanikolas, Zeese. Buried Unsung: Louis Tikas and the Ludlow Massacre. University of Nebraska Press, 1991.

  About the Author

  Alex Wells is a writer, geologist, and sharp-dressed sir. They’ve had short stories in Strange Horizons, Lightspeed, Daily Science Fiction, Shimmer, and more. Alex is a host on the popular Skiffy and Fanty podcast, where they talk about movies and other nerdy sci-fi and fantasy things.

  katsudon.net • twitter.com/katsudonburi