by Sparks,Cat
Time to hit the road, Quarrel old man.
A sharp stabbing pain lanced through his arm. His mesh had been pinging softly, barely audible above the fury of the wind. The longer he ignored it, the less threatening the thought of it became. It was foolish to have dreamt himself beyond Nisn’s striking range.
He yelped in pain as a second jolt of fire seared his nerves, those Five-Star-Gs reinforcing their terms and conditions. Clouding his mind with useless data streams. He didn’t need data. He knew exactly what he was dealing with. What he didn’t know was when. How many years had passed since the end of the Lotus Wars? Nisn, in its wisdom, had decreed all events before the Second Pulse Genocide as “classified.” Battles had been renamed in honour of favoured generals and outcomes.
Now could be anywhen—after all, he’d been powered down for decades longer than the priests confessed. The only thing he knew for certain was that everyone he’d ever known was gone. Dead and desiccated, bones turned to dust and blown away on the winds. Including hers.
That polyp storm was on the move, its translucent centre heating crimson red, and trailing tentacles of livid raw blue power.
Quarrel licked his lips and ventured closer. His mesh pinged at him angrily, but it was merely irritating this time, the sting of a bee against the tough hide of a thunder lizard. “You’re going to have to blow me up,” he said to it out loud. He wanted no truck with polyp-kind, but felt the need to know what it was doing, where it was going, why it was attacking a skeletal metal structure in the middle of nowhere. There were no soldiers present here. Just a kid with a mesh bar in her arm. A baby Templar, uninitiated, untrained, useless. No bounty. No reward. Just a rag tag assemblage of what looked like refugees in mismatched Vans of scavenged wood and steel. Not that he’d encountered humans of any kind outside the fortress city. Spies, perhaps? Mercenaries hiding amidst human shields?
He did not get close enough for answers. Wind-whipped sand slammed against his sunburned cheeks, the only part of his flesh not completely covered. Thick goggles protected his eyes. He slapped the mesh to stop its annoying itch, but swerved in the direction it wanted him to go, leaving the storm and its victims to their fate.
The buzz from his recent fix was fading. Quarrel picked up the pace. So what if he’d drained the power from that Sentinel? Polyp storms and mesh-bar girls were not his problem. He had problems of his own. Like hunger, a deep insatiable need. A need much greater than the fear of dying. He’d been effectively dead for two hundred years and yet here he was, walking onwards, forced to carry out their mission against his will. Life like it always had been, life like it continued still.
The mesh said Nisn wanted him in the tanker port of Fallow Heel as soon as possible. More Angels had fallen at a distant point beyond the town. He was tasked with securing transportation to retrieve samples and investigate. Veer off course again, it warned, and they’d fry his brain.
Alrighty then.
His coat weighed heavy with strips of gold ingots, each one stamped with the Temple crest and sewn into the lining. With gold you could buy anything or anyone, so the white-coats had told him. Unless the world had changed utterly beyond recognition while he’d slept, but that was something he doubted less and less the more he walked.
= Eighteen =
When dawn came, almost nothing remained of the Van’s thirteen wagons. Just scraps of cloth, shattered boards and scattered cooking utensils. Long black curls of shredded butyl the wind had shaved clean off the wheels. Thirteen wagons, completely obliterated. Only the Vulture and the Sentinel remained.
The unthinkable had happened—a storm had crossed the Verge. The kind of storm no one had suffered through since the Lotus Wars. They weren’t safe on the Sand Road anymore. The Sentinel was useless, its power gone, its ancient reliquary no longer protecting anyone.
Van people stood around staring at the wreckage. Some were silent. Others wailed, a thin note with little substance to it, watching the last breaths of dying wind scatter sand between the Vulture’s struts.
Star and Nene clutched at each other, staring at the patch of churned-up sand, both too shocked to speak. The distant dunes were still and soundless—a dramatic contrast to the dying wind. Nene’s eyes were fixed upon that sand. She said nothing for a long time, only stared, mesmerised by the loose grains playing across its rippled surface.
Star wanted to say something soothing and wise, but the right words wouldn’t come. So she said nothing. Better nothing than the wrong thing. Eventually the silence became too overbearing. “Let’s go,” she whispered, gently squeezing Nene’s arm.
Nene pulled away, marching across the sand, pushing through the scattering of shocked and aimless people whimpering and picking over the wreckage, searching for evidence their wagon had once stood there. Star followed, sensing the great grief welling within her sister. Nene’s brown hair spilled across her shoulders. Harsh desert light revealed bruises and scrapes along her arms.
“You’re hurt,” said Star. “Let me—”
She reached out but Nene shrugged her off and increased her pace so that she walked a full shoulder length ahead. They trudged through red-and-yellow sand as an eerie quiet settled across the barren landscape.
Cold set in and Star began to shiver, the coarse sand sucking the heat from her bones.
Everything had been destroyed. Bodies lay battered into the sand—those not fast or fortunate enough to make it inside the Sentinel. Star’s throat constricted as she realised she could identify the dead by their clothing rather than their faces: Reya, who baked their ember bread. Baz, the camel doctor. Jon and Eroli, the couple who were always fighting. Their son Hank, one of the Van brats always hassling foreign tourists for small coins. All dead, many of them burned beyond recognition.
Battered pots and pans were strewn in all directions. Star stood still, overcome with the horror of it all.
When she moved, she tripped over a chunk of jutting timber. It still bore the name Varisan, carved in wide, cursive script. Varisan the shaman, Yeshie’s arch rival. A man with seventy years experience of telling people things they longed to hear, all his dreams and reassurances gone now, drained away into the sand, along with his blood.
Nothing remained of Nene’s green and blue wagon, not a vial of herbs nor a splinter of wood. Star wiped moisture from her eyes and kicked a broken window frame aside. Beneath it lay an orange enamelled cooking pot she recognised as their own. The pot Nene used for boiling her stinking brews. Star’s heart began to thump. Their wagon had stood right here upon this spot. She bent to pick up the pot. Its sides were warm—probably from her own imagination. She hugged it tightly to her chest as she wandered dazed through the carnage, kicking aside chunks of debris.
Unbearable as the procedure was, the wreckage had to be searched for food, waterskins, tools, and weapons—anything that might help them survive the dangerous trek they now had to make on foot to the nearest settlement.
Lucius was already at it. He worked methodically in stony silence, stopping now and then to mop up sweat, tossing useful items into a pile: blades, containers, cloth.
Two dead camels lay tangled in a mass, their glassy eyes staring into space, necks twisted sharply at unnatural angles, tongues protruding between blackened lips. Griff’s father’s camels, Hanna and Addu.
Bile flooded Star’s mouth. She snatched the khafiya away from her face, dropped to the sand and retched. Climbed back on her feet, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, glancing around uncertainly. Kian and the others. Teddy’s father. She had not had the chance to tell anyone what had happened.
Already carrion birds were circling. Four legged predators wouldn’t be far behind.
Many hands were set the task of digging a burial pit. Children and the elderly gathered the stones to use as markers. Arguments broke out immediately—what were they supposed to di
g with? Shovels, mattocks, even crowbars—everything was gone. Either scattered to the four winds or sucked up into the sky.
A cry went up to burn the dead. What with? was the answer to that. There was plenty of busted wood for fuel, but a pyre would signal their dire predicament to other Vans—and predators. They might be lucky, attracting friends, not foes, but they were on the back road now, the detour just past Broken Arch. Slavers were not unheard of in these parts. And what of the lizards they had chased off through the ruins? The scent of burning flesh might tempt them back.
Eventually the dead were dragged into neat rows, what was left of their faces respectfully covered.
Star moved to a nearby group and went from survivor to survivor, checking for serious injuries. Some had been lucky, protected from flying missiles by their sand cloaks. Now they were waiting, knives securely in their boots, water skins or gourds slung over their shoulders. Prepared to leave at a moment’s notice.
The wannabe tankerjacks hung around in groups, smoking the last of their seaweed cigarettes and muttering. The storm had knocked the bravado from their swagger.
Old Lucius nudged Star as he passed her by, dragging the body of a dancer. “That lot might as well lay down beside the dead,” he said. “Ain’t a one of them’s gonna survive a day out on the Black. One angry tanker’s all it’s gonna take to make short work of ’em.”
He was only talking like that to keep focus. Trying to put his own fears in their place. Trying to cheer her up. But she wasn’t the one who needed the familiar.
Nene still hadn’t moved. She remained in the exact same place Star left her when she’d made her triage recce, a blank and hollow expression on her face.
Still standing where their wagon once had been, Nene hugged her shoulders, staring at the sand. All around her, wagon mates were sifting sand or tending to the dead or injured.
A sombre collective joined the children gathering cairn stones. Star watched them picking up dark rocks. They were heavy, and hard to come by, but doing something was better than doing nothing.
“Come on Nene, there’s people who need us.”
Nene gave no indication that she had even heard her. Nene . . . Strong, reliable Nene who never flinched, never shirked, never let the bad times get her down. This was not the Nene Star knew.
Her tattered field kit was slung across her sister’s body like a bandolier. Gently, Star lifted it over her head and carried it over to a sand-smoothed boulder. She checked its contents: salves and ointments. Needles and thread. The pair of old red-handled pliars good for pulling shrapnel out of wounds. Scalpels and tightly rolled bandages, none of which would last long. More and more of the survivors were gathering, revealing injuries.
Star was halfway through splinting a third broken arm when the glaze faded from Nene’s eyes. She didn’t speak to Star at first, but sent some of the younger ones out to scavenge for more splints, and cloth scraps clean enough to be torn into bandage strips.
“We’ve lost everything,” she whispered, not to Star, but to the vast expanse of sand they were going to have to cross on foot.
Benhadeer and his right hands pored over a faded vellum map in the scant shade cast by a crooked and tattered awning. A consensus had been reached. The Van survivors would set out on foot when the sun was a couple of hours past its zenith. Not optimum conditions, but they had little choice. A trail of rest points and oases might see them home, but the way would not be easy. If they could get to Crossroads, rides could potentially be hitched on other wagons in exchange for costs and consequences. But most were smart enough to hear the meaning beneath the spoken words: some of them would not survive the journey.
Nene had recovered her wits enough to tend to people’s wounds, but only barely, and Star was worried. Her sister seemed so weak and distracted. Star had never seen her behave this way before.
She noticed a crowd was gathering in a dip out beyond the Vulture. People were abandoning their scavenging to go see what was going on. Star left Nene resting on a rock, ripping shirts into bandages, rolling them and placing them into a little pile.
“I’ll be back,” Star whispered. Nene didn’t answer. Several people called out her name but she didn’t answer them either.
Star hurried over to investigate what all the fuss was about. The crowd’s curiosity heartened her—perhaps they had found something good? Such as one of the camels miraculously alive.
But when she pushed her way to the front she found Remy standing on a massive boulder in a hero’s pose. A bandolier slung across his torso weighted heavily with tools. Leaning on a tanker lance. Not his lance—as far as she knew, he didn’t own such a thing.
The boulder was the size of three wagons end to end, jutting out from a puckered ridge of sand, its gnarly surface encrusted with sun baked sand barnacles. Remy stamped his foot on its thickened crust and whooped, forming a fist and punching the air with his free hand.
Realization crept upon Star slowly, sending chills and shivers through her belly. That thing Remy was standing on was not a boulder.
It was a tanker.
Star had never seen a tanker up close before. Only in the far-off distance, glimpsed through plumes of sand and dust. Thundering alongside other creatures of its kind. It was always difficult to make out details via scratched and borrowed spyglass, but she’d seen enough across the years. Enough to be coldly certain this was one of them, wrenched free from its territory and pod, dragged and dumped here by the killer wind.
“Remy, get down from there,” she called out. Her voice sounded much weaker than intended.
Remy ignored her. Anj climbed up beside him and raised a hand axe. No, not Anj, but her little sister Kaja. Only eighteen moons between them, the two looked so alike. Star had last glimpsed Anj scavenging alongside Griff. She’d not seen Teddy since she’d broken the awful news about his poor, dead father.
Remy stood there grinning like an idiot.
“Get down off that,” Star yelled this time, stepping forward, approaching the creature with great caution. “That’s a tanker!”
The gathered crowd gasped collectively and shuffled away from the thing. Not far enough to make a difference if it rolled.
“Get down!” she cried again. “It might still be living!”
But Remy wasn’t listening. Another of the riders shimmied up the side. Griff—she hadn’t noticed him—wielded a hand axe with a splintered handle. First he used it to help him climb, then he struck a sequence of blows, apparently searching for something hidden beneath the barnacle encrustation. A hatchport. Lucius had spoken of such things. With each blow struck, Star expected the mighty mechabeast to come to life, roll over on its side, and crush them all.
But the tanker stayed as dead as dead. And soon, between the three of them up top, enough encrusted barnacle had been chipped away to expose a section of gun-grey mecha-skin beneath.
Van people crowded closer at the sight of it. Whispers became murmurs. Mecha-skin was worth good coin. Few of them, if any, had been up so close to a tanker before but bits and pieces of the beasts were traded up and down the Sand Road—and beyond.
The hatch was now clearly exposed. Kaja crouched down, eyes shining with delight.
“Remy, Kaja, Griff get down from there,” Star pleaded. “At least wait for Lucius.”
Lucius would know for certain if the tanker was dangerous or not, as would others amongst the vanhands. The quiet ones who’d joined with Benhadeer in an effort to forget their lost and wasted years spent lingering on the fringe of the Obsidian Sea.
Remy brought the lance to rest, leant his weight on it, sweat streaming down his neck. “Tank’s mine,” he said loudly. “I saw it first.”
Kaja nodded. She always agreed with Remy. She’d been in love with him for as long as Star could remember.
“T
hat thing’ll kill you, and you can’t be sure it’s dead. Lucius—where is Lucius? Let him check first. He knows what he’s doing.”
“Thing’s dead as stone—and the salvage rights belong to me and Kaja and Griff.”
He stared directly at Star when he said Kaja’s name. She looked away, down to the tanker’s barnacle encrusted hide. Now that the outer layer had been cracked open, the thing stunk like a dead camel. Worse than that. More pungent. More revolting.
Kaja snatched the lance from his hands and jemmied away at the hatch. Grey metal was eventually prised away, revealing a deep, dark void beneath. The stench increased tenfold, and the crowd backed off, further this time, covering their noses with their hands and khafiyas. All but Star. She stepped up. As close as she could get without touching the deadly thing.
Two older point riders broke away from the crowd, one of them grabbing her roughly by her arm. “Leave off,” he said. “Kid found the tank. It’s his.”
“The damn fool’s gonna die in there,” she pleaded. “Come on, Remy, you’ve heard the stories. You don’t know what you’re doing.”
The second rider muttered something the rest of the crowd couldn’t hear. They laughed. So did Remy.
“Please—I’m begging you, Remy. Come on, Kaja all of you. Wait for Lucius! Somebody go and get him, bring him here before it’s too late.”
She looked around, hoping that the big man had somehow sensed that he was needed, had abandoned his salvaging to come and sort this out.
Nobody moved. No Lucius in sight.
“Back off, Star. Nobody cares about that beat up old man’s glory days. This bounty’s ours an’ he can keep his thievin’ hands off it.”
Remy shielded his eyes from the blazing sun, searching first through the gathered crowd, then across the surrounding debris-strewn sands to the figures picking over the Van’s remains.
