by Sparks,Cat
“Remy, get down. You don’t have anything to prove.”
He laughed. “Look around you, Star. Everything’s gone. Everyone’s desperate for coin—only we scored first—and big.” He smiled, the kind he always saved for her. “But don’t you worry. Stick around an’ I’ll see you right.”
His face changed suddenly from smirk to grim. “Back off,” he shouted. “You’ll get your chance when we get to Heel, like all them others. Back off, else you’ll be walking across the desert on your own. Ya hear me?”
Star soon understood he was not speaking to her, but to a group of men with unfamiliar faces who’d nudged and jostled their way to the front of the crowd. Two of them clutched lances. Cruder weapons than the one possessed by Lucius, but no doubt equally effective.
The murmuring died down once more. Everyone waited for Remy to say something.
Star realized she’d paid so little attention to the group of tankerjack wannabes riding wagontop when the Van was rolling. The ones who had not been as handsome as Kian and his offsiders. She saw them now for what they were: scruffy ‘Steaders and undernourished farmers escaping dried-up fringes of the Verge, selling everything they’d ever had for passage, betting all their cards on Fallow Heel. What was to stop them surging forth and claiming this tanker’s bounty for themselves? Could Benhadeer do anything to stop them?
Lucius—where was Lucius? Things were about to turn ugly. Dead or alive, that washed up tanker could get a good many of the storm survivors killed.
“Remy—please wait!”
Griff unwound the coil of rope slung across his shoulder. He and Kaja fastened it around Remy’s waist in a rough harness as the lance-armed wannabes looked on.
Nobody was listening to anybody else. Random members of the crowd shouted encouragement as between them, the three up top used hammers and chisels to widen the area around the black and stinking void. Star couldn’t look but she couldn’t not look either. She flinched when Griff thrust his arm inside, felt around, then pulled it out again.
“Still warm,” he called out to the nervous crowd. They cheered.
The heart-and-brains was what they were after. The things that made the tankers tick, kept them running wild across the desert sands centuries after their creators had turned to dust. It enabled them to communicate with each other, so people said. But tanker heart-and-brains were wired with protection. Tricks and traps designed to maim and kill. The docks and taverns of Fallow Heel were filled with mutilated ‘Jacks who’d tell you all about it for a drink. How they lost an arm, a leg or half a face. . .
Star turned, pushed past the riders, and squeezed out through the crowd. She ran back towards the ruined camp, shouting “Lucius!” at the top of her lungs, boots encumbered by the slippery sand.
Lucius met her halfway, stripped to the waist, sweat streaming down his face and torso. He’d been digging by the looks of things. Perhaps they’d decided to bury the bodies after all.
“What is it, girl. What’s wrong?”
“The idiots . . . they don’t understand . . . they don’t believe . . .”
“Believe what?”
Star tried to catch her breath. “There’s a tanker washed up and they’re trying to harvest it. Got no idea of what they’re doing. You always told me—”
The words had barely tumbled out when a girl’s high pitched, shrieking split the air. Shrieking with no end to it. Kaja.
Star took off at a sprint back the way she’d come, Lucius at her side. The thick sand dragged at their feet. They pushed their way upfront, but it was too late. More of the tanker’s gun-grey skin had been chiselled away.
A pair of wildly thrashing legs protruded from the tanker’s hatch. Remy’s; blood stained, entangled in a mess of silvery snakes. More of the snake-things spewed out of the void to writhe and coil upon the sand below.
Remy’s two point rider friends were desperately trying to reach him, but the silver snakes lashed out and cut like whips, lunging and slapping the weapons clean out of their hands. Atop the tanker, cowering out of range, Griff clung on to the still shrieking Kaja, his hands and arms a bloody mess.
Star launched herself at the tanker but Lucius grabbed her arm and held on tight. “Get down off there,” he bellowed at the two Van brats up top.
The sound of a familiar voice shocked Griff into action. He and Kaja tumbled down into the agitated crowd, which dispersed as more of the silvery snake-things dribbled down from the hacked and jimmied hatch.
“Let me go!” said Star.
Lucius tightened his grip, so hard his fingers dug into her flesh.
She stared at the snake-things—more like entrails than snakes. The writhing things did not have heads and they stilled after a couple of minutes on the sand.
Sand that was now liberally splattered with Remy’s blood. His legs no longer kicked. They jutted like the branches of a tree.
“Don’t look,” said Lucius. “Nothing you can do.”
The big man turned his attention to the wannabes, who had stood there through the whole ordeal, saying nothing, offering no help. Unable to do anything but gawk and whimper, same as all the others.
“Go back to your farms and ‘steads,” spat Lucius at their faces. “There’s nothing out beyond the Black for you.”
There was nothing to be said to that.
Kaja continued to sob uncontrollably. Griff said nothing. He stared at Remy’s still, protruding legs, his face pale as stone.
The silvery snake-things were beginning to disintegrate in the bright sunlight. Lucius ground one to powder beneath his boot.
“Take that girl to your sister,” he instructed Star. “I’ll take care of this.”
The show was over. The rest of the gawking crowd had slunk away, gone back to picking over debris, praying to indifferent gods or arguing about what would likely happen next.
Star couldn’t help but feel sorry for them—these had been good people, once. She did not know all their names, but she knew enough of them to care. Good people pushed beyond their limits, now wandering the desert sands in shock.
She, Griff and Kaja walked a little way, with Star fighting the urge to glance back over her shoulder.
They found Nene still sitting on a rock beside a little pile of rolled up bandages. The sight of Kaja sobbing and Griff’s bloodied hands snapped Nene out of her dreamlike state.
Her brow furrowed. “What happened?”
“Remy’s dead,” said Star, the dry words sticking in her throat.
She busied herself tending to Griff’s wounds. There were not as many cuts as she expected. Most of the blood belonged to Remy. Remy who was dead.
Kaja’s own skin was pale and clammy. Once she started talking she couldn’t stop. “He went down in after heart-and-brains,” she said, each word choked out like an obstruction in her throat. “Head first. Knife out. We held onto his legs. There was rope, but. . .”
“What was in there? Did you see anything?”
She didn’t answer, just shook her head and trembled uncontrollably. Whatever was in there, she was still seeing it.
“Drink,” said Nene, pressing a flask into her hands. The girl managed a few swallows before coughing most of it back up. She couldn’t hold the flask herself, her hands were shaking too violently.
“We can’t stay here,” said Nene, staring up at the Sentinel, its useless needle stabbing at the sky, as if she was seeing it properly for the first time since the storm had smashed the Van.
Within the hour everyone was on the move, their dead abandoned along with all the pointless arguments about how they should be marked or honoured. The longer the survivors lingered, the greater the danger would be. The Vulture would guard the ones who hadn’t made it, forever marking that place as a tomb.
Th
ey hit the trail in strict formation. Old and young, the weakest at the centre, strongest front and back and flanking sides. Not a single camel had survived the storm. Star picked up a squalling child when she noticed a mother struggling with two others. The little girl quietened after half a mile, content to be carried piggyback, small eyes focused on the dunes on either side of them.
Star turned back to the Sentinel for one last look. Yet one more thing they could no longer rely on. The Sand Road was dying, no matter what Nene had to say about it. The sooner they left it all behind, the better.
At least Nene’s mind had returned to some semblance of proper function. She kept glancing at Benhadeer, as if they shared some terrible secret between them. Something Star could only guess at.
There were things she needed to ask her sister, but she would have to wait until Nene was much stronger. Until she was her regular self again.
= Nineteen =
Kian pushed his way through the crowded streets, pleased to at least be out of the searing desert, even if he had wound up in this dirty, stinking place. Fallow Heel, they called the port—what sort of name was that? What manner of people inhabited its streets? Damaged ones, by his first overwhelming impression.
Kian felt as though he’d travelled back in time, to an age before the birthing of machines. Yet he knew this tanker port to be post-Ruin. Almost as contemporary as the Impact suit protecting his life and limbs. There had once been a massive city here, blasted from orbit, melted and spread across the sand like butter on bread, if you could believe the Axan scholars.
He saw no trace evidence of such a city. Just a junkyard town built of scrap and sun dried bricks. Barely a stick of wood in evidence. All the trees had dried up long ago.
They should never have come this far, but what had that Warbird been, if not a sign? A sign that Kian was destined for greatness; something he’d suspected all his life. The three of them had been banished to the Sand Road for drunken insolence. Punishment for standing up to his haughty uncle and small-minded associates. Cast out for daring to point out the inefficiencies of the Axan status quo.
The fortress city had been profiting for decades from the onsold, scavenged operating systems of tankers sourced and hunted through this port. Relics traded through the underground like opium and gold—and taxed just as heavily along the way. Old tech able to be adapted, but not back engineered. Not so far. Not unless scholars could get their hands on more reliable, high quality supplies.
For even suggesting such a thing, Kian and his cousins—bodyguards really—had been cast out to scout the Sand Road’s southern stretch, to sniff out its pathetic townships, and inventory whatever each miserable outpost had to offer. You are just the men for the job, his uncle sneered, no doubt presuming they would not survive the experience.
Little they’d seen could be of practical use to Axa, as his uncle surely would have known. The Vans moved up and down the Road, transporting nothing but unwashed savages, displaced homesteaders, and relic-hunting coastal folk. The Vergelands had been picked clean long ago, and travelling had become a dangerous business. So dangerous that all Axan explorers had vanished without trace. Such a fate would not befall Kian. When he returned to Axa with the heart-and-brains of a fallen Warbird, everything would change. Important people would start taking him seriously.
He passed the forge, with its incessant hammering. Grubby children running underfoot. Old women sitting cross-legged on mats beside woven baskets made of lacquered grass and faded plastic. He peered into one, glimpsed dried skinks and scorpions, chunks of something fried and unidentifiable.
Hunks of meat sizzled on a skillet beneath a sheaf of drying snakeskins. He watched a woman hacking off bits, frowning until he worked out what it was: a sand barnacle, still twitching. Enough to make his stomach turn. He’d heard tales of those things latching on to fallen travellers, drinking their blood, attracted by body heat. The tankers were apparently covered with them.
A stranger slammed against his shoulder, cursed when he barked at her to look where she was going. The women here were uniformly ugly—raw, tanned skin freckled, and permanently aged. Not like the porcelain beauties of the Axan underland. These local drudges had rough, calloused hands from backbreaking outdoor toil, and coarse dialect to match, spitting and swearing and shouting at each other. Chewing baccy and betel nut, staining their cracked teeth brown and red.
Fallow Heel was turning out to be such a disappointment.
As he walked, he felt the weight of curious eyes. Kian placed his hand on the hilt of the weapon concealed beneath his sand cloak. Best the barbarians never learn that scouts from Axa walked amongst them. Best they believe the mighty fortress city still cowered from the toxic air and centuries of warfare residue.
He had sent Jakome ahead in search of muscle and Tallis for supplies—and information. He had managed to glean a little already: that fallen Warbirds were not highly prized. That they were considered puny, insubstantial things, not worth risking lives for like the mighty tankers. The fact that they potentially carried centuries of data meant nothing to these people, scratching their livings in such primitive conditions.
Buildings lined along the docks were jammed up against one another for support; inventive patchwork assemblages: doors, walls, calico panes of glass. Graffiti symbols and crude pictures he didn’t understand. Walls of mud and dung and scrap and. . . Kian almost tripped over his own feet.
The front wall of the building on his immediate right was embedded with a slab of tanker skin, held in place by a mixture of mud and filth. Tanker skin! Kian had to force himself to keep on walking, for to stop and stare would draw unwanted attention.
The doorway of the next hovel along had been reinforced with multiple gun barrels, a variety of shapes and sizes, each one worth a fortune back home in Axa. Did these people not comprehend the value of such artefacts?
A chorus of hammering blacksmiths intruded on his thoughts. He hurried past, his mind still reeling from the possibilities. Now he could see evidence of tanker salvage everywhere he looked: ventilators, lifting rings, air cleaner manifolds. Track idlers inset in sub-baked mud as decoration. These people were even stupider than he’d thought.
As if on cue, a one-legged man, half his face a mess of scar tissue, held up something shiny for Kian to see. A triangular chunk of burnished metal hammered smooth, an image etched upon its surface. It took a while for Kian to work out what it was: a sand ship, masted with proud sails. It was crude in its execution, but he had never seen such a thing before. He pressed a coin into the man’s hand. Too much, judging by the speed at which the seller hobbled off into the crowd.
He looked up from the etching just in time to see its real-world counterpart on the dock ahead of him, casting off on giant butyl tires. The crew, a formidable bunch of savages, wrapped up tight against the wind and other foes. Setting out to bag themselves a tanker—or die trying.
He examined the scrimshaw’s graven ship more closely. The execution was not crude, in fact, but a faithful rendering of the genuine article. These sandcraft were the antithesis of the ocean-going vessels berthed along the coast. Those ships were magnificent constructions, fabricated and maintained by proud artisans.
These vessels, designed to skim the Black, were made of hammered scrap: lopsided, precarious, and deadly.
A tide of grubby urchins and street vendors swirled around him, waving their wares after seeing him pay the crippled beggar. Kian swatted at them like bugs, hurrying for the shelter of a tavern ahead. He pushed past the rough folks milling around the steps. Some moved begrudgingly out of his way, others deliberately edged in close to crowd him. He climbed, then shoved the door with his shoulder, and was rewarded by a warm blast of stale alcohol, sweat, and indeterminate cooking smells. He glanced back at the docks, then froze, unable to believe what he was seeing—and wondering how he could possibly not have not
iced it before. A mighty wooden ship on giant castors. Three masts, furled sails, standing tall and proud.
Two angry drinkers sent him tumbling, yelling abuse at him for blocking the tavern’s entrance. Kian ignored them, picked himself up, not even worrying to brush the filth from his garments. That wooden ship held all the answers to his problems. The three of them would seize control of it. They would travel out across the Black and bring an Angel home. Return to Axa, successful and triumphant. Raise a mercenary army, march back in to take possession of this godsforsaken town. Within a year, he’d be the richest man alive.
The tavern doors swung outwards. A familiar form emerged, Tallis, reaching out to offer help.
“The ship!” said Kian.
Tallis’s face flushed with excitement—he hadn’t even heard Kian’s words. “You won’t believe what I’ve found out—who I’ve discovered living in this town.”
“Who? What are you talking about.”
Tallis didn’t answer. Instead he dragged his cousin away from the tavern’s busy entrance, and down to the jetty in search of a private place to talk.
= Twenty =
The outermost dwellings of Fallow Heel shimmered like a mirage. Barefoot children ran out to greet the exhausted travellers. Each child was a welcome sight carrying a bulging waterskin, in some cases almost a third of their own size. The children handed skins to the weary walkers, staring in fascination as each one gulped great thirsty draughts.
The children had been sent from the curve of double-storey, whitewashed buildings known as the Twelfth Man caravanserai, a place of rest for many Vans that passed through Fallow Heel.
Benhadeer and the fifty who remained with him had been walking for several hours. Many of the other exhausted, dehydrated Van folk had dared not chance the last leg on foot. They lingered back at Hollowpoint, a miserable outpost struck up by the Crossroads oasis well. Benhadeer had promised faithfully to send back transportation. He was known as a man who kept his word, so they sat and waited in the shade of scrappy palms, praying nervously that the locals would keep their distance, knowing that the two point riders left behind to protect them were far from adequate.
