Ten Thousand Thunders

by Brian Trent

  “There’s a town about eight miles due east,” she told them when they caught up to her. “I saw it on my descent from the airship.”

  “Why didn’t you go straight there, then?” Keiko demanded.

  It was Jack who answered, and he sounded irritated. “A stranger floating down from the sky into your town? They would have shot her like a clay pigeon, Keiko. She’s probably as much a foreigner to these parts as we are.”

  “I’m just saying—”

  “Enough.”

  Incredibly, Keiko shut up. Gethin was awed. What does it take to rile Jack Saylor? Poor night of sleep? Or is he one of those guys who comes to a slow boil, cool under fire until things reached critical mass? Either way, when you riled a giant, you stayed out of its way.

  Then Gethin glimpsed Celeste as she was crawling uphill, flattening herself at the crest to peer into the next valley. Her legs coiled, her ass thrust out, she put her chin into the dirt. Jack’s breathing changed and color flushed into his cheeks.

  Ah! Gethin thought amusedly. Maybe the call of the wild is dividing loyalties among the Prometheans. Merciless Aphrodite.

  The next valley led to a forgotten highway. Asphalt showed through the forest, and knobby streetlamps – shorn of their ancient height – dotted the Turkish wilderness. The next few miles were flat and steady along the old freeway pass. Gethin had seen antebellum videos of highway traffic in the days before the compact nature of arcologies forever changed the philosophy of city construction. This old highway must have afforded a quaint view of the wilderness, back when it scuttled with personal vehicles.

  Where the highway terminated, the road dipped steeply into another valley. A high-walled town lay nestled in that deciduous enclave.

  “That it?” Jack asked.

  Celeste nodded. A distinct line of defense bunkers ringed the town wall like minarets, familiar from her descent as she’d clung ferociously to the Mantid’s pseudopod. She’d only had a quick glimpse of the town from altitude before the rescue drone dipped below the canopy, running low on battery juice. She hadn’t liked the look of those minarets then, and she didn’t like them now. They exuded hostility.

  She ordered the arkies to withdraw into foliage. From concealment, she studied the gates and barricade. There was no telling who governed the town. They might be insular maniacs, itching to shoot any foreigner on sight. But few Wastetowns were so self-sufficient that they could afford outright xenophobia anymore.

  Then again, it might be the case that only approved traders and caravans, bearing specific standards, were allowed to approach Turkish towns. The Brasstown megaplex in Hartford observed such rules; a stranger in the dark, creeping up to their front door, was fair game for someone’s target practice.

  Celeste sighed, a nervous ache in her chest. One thing was certain: they could not stay out here in the woods tonight. Too cold, wet, and far too many howls. She remembered once, in the ash-bowl Wastes of Minnesota, she and Jeff had been camping when they heard a discordant symphony of beastly ululations. Jeff looked at her with large eyes. “Dogtown,” he said. In other words, no place for humans.

  She pointed to Jack and Keiko. “Your mud wore off. You look like two Prometheans caught in the rain. Yamanaka, give me your flashlight.”

  While they re-dirtied their clothing, Celeste continued. “We can’t let anyone think we’re arkies. Only humanitarian groups are tolerated by Outlanders and that’s because they arrive as virgins. Most arkies are stuffed with wetware. Outlanders want that shit.”

  Keiko cocked her head. “Then why not pretend we’re humanitarians?”

  “Sorry, none of you can pull that off. But we could fake being a squad…though that would mean acting like a tightly knit group of soldiers who respect and trust each other.”

  “Ouch,” Gethin breathed.

  “Just follow my lead. Look people in the eye, but don’t challenge them to a fight. There’s a pecking order. Outlanders know it. Be alert, not anxious. Don’t wear your emotions on your face. Turn to stone, comprende?”

  She had their attention. As long as they kept quiet, let her do the talking, they might just pull this off.

  She broke cover, striding to the town gate with a boldness she didn’t feel.

  The highway switched to gravel closer to town. Celeste activated a flashlight in her left hand and moved it in a sweeping arc, back and forth twice.

  From the gate came an answering flash.

  Good, she thought in relief. At least some customs were universal. She was worried enough about what to say when she got there. English was the lingua franca, but there were a million dialects and no Rosetta Stone for Outland slang.

  At the gate, Celeste held up her right hand, palms out. “Cabin and food for the night! Tradestuff will pay!”

  A man’s face appeared above her. A surprisingly handsome, youthful gatekeeper. She was accustomed to leathery-faced town guardians, jaded and world-weary. This kid looked like a band front man.

  “How many in your party?” he asked. In English.

  “Four.”

  He studied her face. Celeste felt good about it; let him see the grime, the lean features, the scars. She kept her expression neutral.

  “What tradestuff, lady?”

  “Packaged arky meals. Tech-stuff. Medkits.”

  “Where did you get it?”

  “We…” Celeste hesitated a fraction of a second at this break in Outland protocol. “There’s an airship crash forty miles west of here. Practically came down on our heads. We stripped what we could. You must have felt the explosion here.”

  The kid considered this. “Call your party out.”

  Celeste signaled with the flashlight. The town’s spotlights snapped on, cut through the rain, and located the arkies in golden lances as they appeared over the ridge. The arkies halted at the gate, looking grim and dangerous.

  “Weapons,” the kid prompted.

  Celeste saw her comrades hesitate. “Weapons!” she barked. “Now!”

  Gethin forked over his rifle. He was let through the gate while Jack and Keiko followed his lead. The guards inspected each person with a handheld scanner. Celeste guessed it searched for microtech trackers, killbots, and explosives. She’d heard of a town in the Wichita Wastes that once bought a dozen crates of grenade-rockets only to discover too late the casings were crammed full of waspbots. The grisly lessons of Troy repeated.

  “You too, sister,” the guard said. “You chief?”

  Celeste noticed he had warmed considerably to her. She softened her features as she passed her multigun to him. “Yes.”

  “Name’s Howd.” He handed her a hard plastic red ticket with a chipped “67” in white paint. “Hold onto that to get your weapons back. Welcome to Haventown.”

  * * *

  Haventown was akin to places she’d seen in America: an Outland community with plastic tarps stretched over the jagged remains of concrete buildings. It was as if an unthinkably large spider had cocooned the forlorn relics of man. Seen from the inside, the barricade was built from similar detritus: smashed cars, piled tires, and stunted pylons. Armed guards lounged in lawn chairs, cigarettes burning tiny holes in the night.

  Within the barricade, the town sprawled as a collection of corrugated shanties, plywood commonhouses, and residential burrows like ancient baseball dugouts, all awash in the Halloween glow of barrel fires and kerosene lamps. Rain tinkled into gutters and trenches.

  Celeste’s heart ached in unexpected nostalgia. She was suddenly a pre-teen again in the dinner lines, content to lose herself in the obscurity of ragged crowds who put aside their troubles for a turn at the fifth-rate replovats and cooking pits. She remembered the thudding radio beats during those gatherings…festive music only possible from mortal beings. What did arkies know of real music? What could they? Jeff liked to say that art would never survive among immortals,
and from what she’d heard in Athens and Babylon – with their stale, precise recordings and pompous harp strummers, her love had been right on the money.

  For her companions, the Wastetown was a vivid realization of images glimpsed from afar. Classroom virtual tours treaded the gutter-strewn paths of the Outlands; you saw the suffering of the damned, sick, diseased, and dying. You watched traders brave dangerous roads to mountaintop bazaars. You yawned at farmers toiling in the dirt. You glimpsed a screaming child searching for its mother. Sometimes it moved you. Sometimes it didn’t. Either way, the classroom bell would ring and the virtual tour would end.

  Celeste located the local food pit. A noisy replovat chugged away, strips of vat-grown meat dripping from the spigot. People took sidelong notice of the newcomers. They saw what she wanted them to see: a trader or hunter with her posse, just passing through. If anyone toyed with the idea of picking a fight, they were quickly discouraged by a look at her hardened face and the dried blood she wore with disinterest.

  The people were primarily Turkish in breed, mixed with the darker-skinned stock of India. What shocked her was the sight of a Zulu on the woven bridge above the pit. He was carting away a malfunctioning replovat, but he glanced her way, locked gazes across the distance, and gave a friendly nod. She nodded back. Refined bone structure from prime nourishment. His left collar sported a faded, sideways Y.

  It was a historical irony that for all the African wars over diamonds, oil, gold, and ivory during the antebellum, it was Africa which had dissolved tribal lines to form a single state…while Europe, America, and Asia collapsed into cannibalistic in-fighting. When Apollo the Great began his unstoppable conquests, the Zulus readily joined forces, essentially handing an entire continent to his cause, becoming the first pillar of what would become Earth Republic. Since then, the Zulu had become emissaries of peace and stability, the classic embodiment of order over chaos.

  “Don’t look so nervous,” Celeste whispered to her crew as they gathered around an umbrella-shielded table. “What the fuck are you scared of, anyway? If these people rape and kill you, you’ll just wake up in a squeaky clean regen center.”

  Jack and Gethin exchanged looks. “Maybe not,” Jack said. “The IPC controls all Save clinics.”

  Celeste considered this.

  So we’re finally even. Sort of.

  After a few minutes, the Zulu approached them.

  “You came from the crash, eh?” he asked.

  “Me look like airship rider?” she said, mirroring his accent.

  “You no local girl.”

  “No. Loco girl.”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “No doubt, sister!”

  “You got network here?”

  The Zulu’s eyes shimmered at this. “Sure. But come straight. You from Paradise?” It was what Africa’s sprawling cities were collectively known as.

  “No, but me longtime friends with Zulu,” Celeste said, speaking in half truths. She had interacted with his people from time to time, when they descended to the Outlands bearing humanitarian aid. Decent folk, as arkies went.

  Her attempt at diversion failed. The Zulu gave her a meaningful look. “You tell me where you from?”

  “Odessa,” she lied. Odessa was King D.’s birthtown, where he first established his rep by unifying the street gangs of the Ukraine. “You trader-man ’round here?”

  He nodded, gazed past her shoulder to her companions. She used the moment to look around for a ship – the scintillating African ships that brought aid to the despondent. But there was nothing in sight. Most likely, a Paradise vessel would swing by in a few days to bear him away.

  “We salvage from airship crash. Medbot program. Arky prepmeals. You buy?”

  The Zulu inspected the items she dug from her coat. “These good. What you want?”

  “Meals for squad, two days’ worth. Place to stay one night.”

  “Just one?”

  “We make for Cappadocia tomorrow.”

  The Zulu smiled and yelled an order to the replovat counter. Sweet, Celeste thought. One arky meal buys two or three plates of replovat crap. A fair enough exchange rate.

  A fresh-faced pit worker carried a tray to Celeste’s table; she caught the aroma and guessed it was grown from cattle stock.

  “Got these too.” Celeste showed him the medkits. The Zulu inspected them, quickly found the nanite infusion clips, and wrinkled his nose. Nanite infusions were illegal in the Outlands. Could regrow bone, tissue, vessels, organs, and limbs…but deadlier applications were possible in the hands of skilled reverse-engineering labs. Turn a plaque cleaner into a brain chewer.

  “Bring these to Doc Tiptree,” the Zulu said, and he gave an ironic smirk. “Just follow the gravel path to town center.”

  “Good.”

  “Cappadocia strange choice, woman,” he added. “They no deal with outsiders. But you take the old highway when you go. It be neutral ground for all. Just wait for daylight and you be safe.”

  She caught the troubled undertone in his voice. “Glops at night?”

  “A real problem ’round here. We lose more to them than to spats, you best believe that.”

  “Dire dogs?”

  His smile slipped. “Me, I don’t advocate the killin’ of Earth’s beautiful beasts. But these woods hold nothing beautiful. Nothing true-beast.”

  She thanked him, feeling a twinge of guilt at the realization that if she did discover he had a ship around here, she might have to kill him for it; the Mantid was running dark again, and she knew her only chance to escape back to King D. was out here, where the arkies were at a disadvantage. “Hey,” she said, “You got commonhouse for travelers?”

  “Passed it on your way in.”

  She thanked him again and turned away.

  “Hold on,” he said. “My name is Siyanda. You looking for work? Less risk here than scavenging.”

  “Like what?”

  He indicated the entirety of Haventown with a sweep of his arm. “All this will be a state in six years. Outland Charter, you know? We got schools in operation now.”

  Celeste felt a thrum of vicious rage, and had to fight to keep the smile on her face. “You going Republic?”

  “We have need of new teachers.”

  She laughed caustically. “Do I look like a teacher to you?”

  “We all learners and teachers, sister.”

  * * *

  Some arkies got bitten by the Wastes. Like children in love with dinosaurs, bugs, or birds, there were people who obsessed with the colored history of the Century from the Final War’s nuclear holocaust to Enyalios’s blood-drenched conquest of the Americas and subsequent global unification. Lots of pirates, dynastic struggles, conquerors, biowars, sordid affairs, and civil strife wove a tapestry of events that fascinated some people.

  Jack was one of them.

  “Warlord Eyeblaze made his famous wedding attack around here, somewhere on the outskirts of old Istanbul,” he was saying, speaking between spoonfuls of soup. “After thirteen years of fighting with neighboring clans he finally agreed to a truce. His enemies wanted a mass marriage to unite the tribes, so an entire city square was prepared for the wedding. But Eyeblaze learned it was a ruse. His enemies wanted to lure him under a banner of truce, and then assassinate him and his entire staff.”

  Keiko stirred her soup listlessly, not really interested. However, listening to him was better than thinking about this peasant meal of old replovat protein structures and a meat program almost certainly grown from local fauna. She needed the calories for tomorrow’s march. Gethin had already scarfed his meal down and was leaning back in his chair, observing the town with a calm, thoughtful gaze.

  “So what happened?” Keiko asked.

  Jack tapped the table with his fingers. “Eyeblaze performed one of the most stunning feints in history. The day of the wed
ding, his enemies arrived with their military entourages. They saw Eyeblaze at the head tent, laughing and drinking, seemingly ignorant of what they had planned. But it wasn’t Eyeblaze at all. He’d rigged a hologram of himself. The real Eyeblaze was miles away, looking down on his own wedding ceremony with binoculars. At a prearranged moment, his staff snuck into a bunker. Then Eyeblaze gassed the entire party with cyanide. Killed everyone.” Jack snapped his fingers. “Just like that. The next day, he mounted up and walked into their respective kingdoms.”

  Gethin groaned. “And a few years later, his own brother poisoned him, ripped out his colorful eyes, and hung them, optic nerves and all, from the palace until his wife killed him, chopped him up…”

  “My point,” Jack insisted, “is that if Eyeblaze had lived, he might have united Europe two generations before Apollo was even born.”

  Gethin shrugged and finished off the last of his water. “Maybe. Who cares?”

  Jack gave him a quizzical glance. “I figured you would find that period interesting. Aren’t you a history professor?”

  “Doesn’t mean I like every era.”

  “Sure, but—”

  “Want to know a disadvantage of immortality? You’re never quite so far from the ugly past. What is it, just a half dozen generations since Eyeblaze?” He broke off his editorial as Celeste returned to relate her conversation with Siyanda.

  “And there’s a doctor in town,” she added. “Last chance to get fixed up before the march to Cappadocia.”

  Gethin stood, eager for whatever medical ministrations this town could provide. Then he hesitated, remembering the tattoo on Saylor’s stomach. “Eyeblaze,” he said, “created a special order of bodyguards to protect him.”

  “The colossi,” Jack said.

  “Right, the colossi. As I recall, anyone under six foot five need not have applied. Eyeblaze himself was a large fellow and he wanted his escorts to match.” Gethin gave a small, genuine smile. “The Saylors have done well for themselves since those grim days, haven’t they?”