by Cam Baity
“Chairman Obwilé will be overseeing the Covenant camp.”
A spark ignited in Goodwin’s blood. His ingenuity had led to the discovery of this camp. He had orchestrated the assault and secured a cache of Covenant materials, including military plans and maps that charted unknown territories. Goodwin alone deserved the credit, and he would not forfeit his spoils so easily.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, addressing the Board with complete emotional control. “I have uncovered evidence that the enemy’s network extends far beyond what we previously imagined. Give me time to exploit my discovery and—”
“You have your orders, James.”
The coffee had gone sour. Goodwin tossed out the remnants and stroked the coarse stubble on his cheek.
“Acknowledge,” demanded a voice of the Board.
Goodwin did not unclench his jaw. “Right away.”
Within seconds, two Watchman soldiers were flanking him, their dead, black gazes fixed upon him from behind glossy face shields. He was escorted out of the ravaged courtyard.
Goodwin crunched over the scorched ore, fuming at this newest humiliation. He passed under a Mag-tank, its coil-tipped cannon humming as it was recharged by a generator. The loud rumble almost caused him to miss a nearby croaking voice.
“Ashtal incorrieki il gha Phoebe t’lar Loaii.”
He stopped short and turned to find who had spoken.
The words came again, and this time he found their source—the glowing purple corral occupied by Covenant prisoners of war. Mehkans were gathered around a diminutive creature clad in tattered veils. The wounded thing’s face was hidden behind a headpiece of golden chains, adorned by that symbol he had seen throughout the camp—a circle bisected with a jagged line.
“Ashtal incorrieki il gha Phoebe t’lar Loaii!”
The words meant nothing to Goodwin, but the girl’s name was unmistakable. Fumbling, he withdrew his Scrollbar, slid it open, and recorded the peculiar phrase.
The crumpled creature pointed a clamp claw at Goodwin as it growled the words again.
“Ashtal incorrieki il gha Phoebe…”
The mehkan slumped back into its comrades’ arms, spent.
Far above, the smoke parted as an Aero-copter arrived to return Goodwin to the Depot, dousing him in a brilliant bath of orange morning light. The clouds parted in his mind too.
The children had been in this camp.
Goodwin was beginning to see a way forward.
And his future was bright.
Phoebe awoke in the fetal position, the whist encasing her like a silent womb. Time was a deck of scattered playing cards, moments strewn haphazardly across her mind—climbing after Micah through the crevice, stumbling through the jagged jungle. Then finally, fragments of fitful sleep.
The air was humid with a loamy scent. Phoebe peeled back her whist and heard the distant thrum of Aero-copters mingling with the groans of suspended metal and a drone of insects.
She lay in the muddy ore, surrounded by iron vines that trailed across the ground. Above was a dense tangle of tahniks, ebony planets fringed in a canopy of red, swordlike fronds that permitted only a few drops of light.
Micah was perched a dozen feet above her, playing lookout amongst the tahnik branches. Phoebe did not stir. Her body felt heavy and lifeless. She wished she could drift off to sleep again.
He saw her rousing and started to make his way down, that idiotic body armor and helmet of his clanking like pots and pans. Of course, Micah had that stupid rifle with him too, as if simply lugging it around made him somebody. She wanted to rip it out of his hands and throw it off a cliff.
Instead, she rolled over and turned her back to him.
“You up?” Micah said, landing with a clatter.
She ignored him.
“So…what now?” he asked.
A long moment passed while he waited for her to respond. Phoebe heard his footsteps plod around to face her.
“Come on, I know you’re awake. We gotta figure this out.”
She pinched her eyes shut and didn’t move.
“That how it’s gonna be? You just gonna lay here in the mud like some kinda—”
Phoebe pulled the hood of the whist over her head to silence his words, but he tugged it back.
“Oh no, you don’t,” he warned.
“It’s over.”
“Bull crap it is!”
She didn’t budge.
“Don’t be all…” Micah gnawed his lip, clearly trying to turn his words into a whip. “It ain’t over till I say it is. Now get up.”
“They’re dead. Axial Phy, Dollop, all of them.”
“No way. Dollop’s fine. He was with that big ol’ Treth guy.”
“She lied,” Phoebe breathed.
“Say what?”
“Orei was lying. She didn’t see Dollop at the stables. He fell right near us. She lied so we’d follow her.”
“But…” Micah said, considering her words. “You don’t know that. Anyway, we can’t stay here. It’s crawlin’ with Foundry.”
“So what?” she whispered.
“So we gotta go, that’s what,” he said, raising his voice. “The Doc told me to protect you, so that’s what I’m gonna do.”
Phoebe’s lids slid open, unsheathing honey-brown daggers.
“Like you did back in the camp?”
“What’s that s’pposed to mean?” he said, his hand flexing on his rifle’s grip.
Her voice was barely a flutter. “Pretty sure using your popgun to lead the bad guys to us doesn’t count.”
Micah’s face pinched up. “Why you little—”
“If that’s protecting me, I’d rather just die here.”
“Shut your mouth!”
“Learn how to shoot,” she said blandly, neither fearing his rage nor savoring it. “Better yet, give up now.”
Micah shook in place, bristling, then he stomped out of view in a clash of body armor. She lay there, listening to the mehkan insects buzz in harmony with the Aero-copters.
“I…” she said, not caring if he was listening. “I’m done.”
The words sank in, hearing them as if from outside herself.
“I’m done. I just want to—”
“You, you, you!” Micah hollered, marching up to her again. “You haven’t changed one bit, ya know that? I thought your little liodim stunt back in the Vo-Pyks was somethin’, but you prob’ly thought that was all about you too. Well, guess what. It ain’t. None of it is. So get over yourself!
“Do it for the mehkies. Do it for…” Micah’s prepubescent voice broke. “Do it for the Doc, who died to save them!”
He released an animal growl and stormed out of sight, splashing through a trickle of vesper.
Phoebe stared into the crimson canopy above. Her heart was tight. Heat scalded her cheeks. She felt her father’s spectacles in her pocket, weighing her down like an anchor. With tremendous effort, she pulled her body up to a sitting position and glared at Micah, concocting how best to cut him down.
And then she realized why she was so angry. Not because of what he said. What galled her more than anything was that he was right. In fact, he had never been more right.
Phoebe barely recognized herself.
“My greatest secret. Tell no one,” she said quietly, reciting the Ona’s words. “You alone can. Make the descent. To the heart of prayer. Where my Bearing once lay…”
Micah joined in, and they spoke the rest together.
“Retrieve the white star. My Occulyth. And Mehk will. Prevail.”
The kids locked eyes for a hard moment.
“It’s not enough,” Phoebe sighed. “The Ona didn’t get a chance to explain it to us. We don’t know anything.”
“Yeah, we do,” Micah argued, taking a few tentative steps toward her. “If she wants us to retrieve it, it’s gotta be some sorta object, right? Not a star in the sky or anything tricky like that.”
“And we know we have to go down somewhere t
o get it.”
“Down into some kinda holy place,” he finished. “We know that much, even if the rest is gobbledygook.”
“But where? Where are we supposed to go, Micah?”
“Dunno,” he said honestly. “Away from here.”
“But we don’t know where here is,” she protested. “We don’t have a map. Or food, or water. We won’t last out here for…”
Phoebe couldn’t believe it. The twerp was actually smiling.
“What?” she demanded.
Micah opened a compartment on his hard-shelled pack to reveal two tubes, one orange and one clear, then he knelt down by the trickle of vesper. He hit a button, dipped the orange tube into the oily liquid, and put the clear one in his mouth.
“You were sayin’?” he said between gulps.
Phoebe was speechless.
“A soldier’s always prepared,” he declared, tossing off his pack and retracting its segmented steel casing. Inside there was a heap of rifle ammo and a crinkling nest of Wackers bars. It was a ten-year-old boy’s treasure trove—bullets and candy.
He offered the tube to her. Without a second thought, she snatched the line, and water spurted into her mouth, sweet with a vague citrusy flavor—the remnants of purified vesper.
Phoebe looked at him, stunned.
“Called a VooToo. Vesper to H2O Conversion Unit,” he said, grinning proudly. “Saw it when I was goin’ through all that junk in the camp. Pretty standard Foundry issue and—”
She kissed him.
It was a spasm of chaos. Spontaneous combustion. A tart, wet punch of lips on his grubby cheek. It lingered.
Two seconds. Three.
Now it was Micah’s turn to be struck silent. He stared into space like an invalid, flushed and utterly frozen.
“I’m sorry, I…” she said, taking a few steps back. “I just…”
Half of her wanted to collapse into a mortified heap, and the other half wanted to bolt away screaming into the jungle.
“I…I really thought we were going to die here,” she burbled.
“Figured you might need somethin’ to protect yourself with,” he muttered as he dug around in his pack, trying with all his might to continue as if nothing had happened.
Phoebe’s self-consciousness gave way to concern for Micah’s health. He was turning as red as a boiling lobster—how was he even breathing? It looked like he might burst.
“Since you ain’t all that into guns,” he said, thrusting a stout piece of metal in her direction. His hand was trembling.
She fought an unwelcome urge to burst into laughter. Well, now she knew his greatest weakness. All she had to do to win the next argument was give him a kiss.
Then Phoebe noticed that she was shaking too.
“Thanks,” she said, trying to grab the thing nonchalantly.
It was a survival knife in a matte black case, and much lighter than it looked. Phoebe slid open the magnetic snap, and a dark steel blade hissed out. The weapon was layered in pleated geometric patterns like a feather.
It probably was a feather, Phoebe thought ominously.
“Multi-Edge,” Micah mumbled, taking the knife from her. He adjusted a ring marked with little icons around the base of the hilt. With a series of clicks, the tiny layered plates of its blade danced into a new shape. In half a second, the Multi-Edge had become a hacksaw. Then with another twist of the knob, it became a pair of scissors. Click—a fork. Click—a trowel.
She fished around in the hidden pockets of her skirt. Phoebe’s hand grazed her old sniping supplies, but now they felt childish to her, as if they belonged to some distant stranger.
“Not bad,” she smiled. “But it’s no match for…a needle and thread, a packet of itching powder, a ball of rubber bands. Oh, and a receipt for…a self-counting coin purse from T&S Finch.”
Micah’s volcano of a face was going dormant, and he chuckled. She couldn’t help but notice the shiny smudge on his filthy cheek—an excruciating reminder of her regrettable gush.
The guttural chug of an Aero-copter got louder, and the red-bladed jungle canopy shivered. Phoebe and Micah took cover beneath the nearest tahnik sphere.
They stood still until the sound faded.
“Seriously,” Micah whispered, “we gotta move.”
Phoebe was about to ask him where, when she looked down at her oversized boots. The trickle of vesper ran between their feet. She followed it with her eyes as it slithered through the jungle like a strand of orange yarn.
“In our world, people gather where there is water,” she said.
“Yeah?”
“Maybe it’s the same in Mehk. Maybe if we follow this,” she wondered, pointing at the stream, “it’ll lead us to a river.”
“Where there might be a buncha mehkies.”
“Which isn’t necessarily a good thing.”
“Considerin’ our options…” Micah pondered, screwing up his face, “I say it’s our best bet. ’Cause we ain’t stayin’ here.”
He whipped a couple of Wackers bars out of his pack before strapping it on again. Tossing one to Phoebe, he marched off.
“Good work, Plumm,” he said over his shoulder.
Phoebe wiped the dirt from Micah’s cheek off her lips and tucked into the candy bar. A savory-sweet taste of home.
Home, she thought.
“You too, Tanner.”
“It be running subterraneally along this thoroughfare,” Mr. Pynch said, his disc of nostrils ticking. “Me nozzle never lies.”
He and the Marquis were three blocks from an imposing Foundry compound that was protected by a glowing barricade. The cluster of buildings stuck out like a buzzing purple cyst in the heart of Sen Ta’rine. Its powerful magnetic field had affected the growth of the nearest mehkan skyscrapers so that the golden sendrite trunks bowed away.
The Marquis was on lookout, twirling his umbrella in an attempt to appear nonchalant to the passersby, swiveling his lenses on their stalks to peer down every street. He fumbled the umbrella and whopped Mr. Pynch on the back of the head.
“Watch that blasted bumbershoot, will ya?” He rubbed his scalp as his partner flickered an apology.
Mr. Pynch flashed his grimy gold teeth at a few nearby mehkans in an ingratiating smile, trying to not draw attention.
“Stop yer paranoiding,” Mr. Pynch grumbled under his breath. “Just don’t get observated by any bleeder-types, seeing as how we are most assuredly on the Foundry’s wanted list. As for the Covenanters, they be in hiding, waiting for us to do their dirty work. They don’t know yet how much you’ve fouled it up.”
Blinky-flicker.
“It most certainly was yer fault!” grumbled Mr. Pynch as he sniffed his way into a narrow alley. He fumbled inside his overcoat and pulled out the floppy, hairy thing the Marquis had mistakenly stolen. “Whaddya call this monstrosity?”
Flash-flash-blink-flicker.
“No, I said steal a headset!” he blasted, cramming the thing back into his pocket. “Not this revoltilating…whatever it be! The bleeder’s headsets all have a door-lock release sensor.”
Strobe-flash-glare-flicker-glare-blink.
“Fortunately for yerself, I have an alternate infiltratory plan.” He kicked at the ground and took a big sniff. “Right under here.”
Mr. Pynch extended a clump of quills from his mitts and scraped a hole into the ore, revealing a fat black pipe.
Flashy-flick.
“Got a better idea? This tube leads directly inside. Now strip off yer duds. If we don’t deliver on our side of the bargain, the Covenant will never let us go.” Mr. Pynch unscrewed a hatch on the pipe and gagged at the stench of human sewage. He pulled out his nozzle cap to affix it, but it slipped from his grasp and clattered into the darkness of the foul pipe. “Puddlemudge!”
The Marquis took off his gloves and his jacket, dusted off a spot of ground, and laid his clothing in a tidy pile. He paused before removing his pants, his opticle light turning pink.
Mr. Pynch roll
ed his eyes and turned away to offer his partner some privacy. “When you return, knock three times and I will reopen this here conduit. Then our debt will be paid, and we can scarper off to more prosperous territories.”
He turned back to the Marquis, who was standing naked, dipping one elongated toe into the pipe like a swimmer testing an icy pool. His body consisted of a single flexible tube that bundled into a dense anatomical muddle in his torso and snaked out to form his hose-like limbs. The Marquis looked sharply at Mr. Pynch and flickered a rude message: Flashy-blink-blink.
“Well, I won’t fit, so it has to be you. The faster you get in there and do what the Covenant be demanding, the faster we can wash our hands of this whole demeaning affair.”
Heaving a deep sigh, the Marquis plunged his foot into the narrow opening. The long coil of his body unraveled like a cheap sweater. In five seconds, he had vanished into the sewer pipe, wriggling through it like a metal noodle.
Mr. Pynch slammed the hatch in place and screwed it tight. He wiped his greasy brow and pressed himself into the shadows, his wonky eyes scouring the alley for signs of trouble.
How long would it take the Marquis to navigate his way inside? Like all lumilows, he’d been raised in the pipes and firkins of Dyrunya, so it shouldn’t take more than five ticks, ten at the most. Time dragged on. Mr. Pynch picked at his teeth with a protruding quill, willing himself not to worry.
“What here you do?”
The garbled Rattletrap words snapped Mr. Pynch alert. The bald Foundry bleeder charging toward him had probably learned them phonetically. Two armed guards were with him.
Mr. Pynch composed himself and offered his pleasantest smile. “Salutations, me friends!” he said, noting with pleasure their shock at hearing him speak Bloodword. Clearly, they didn’t know that balvoors had a knack for languages.
“State your business!”
“I was merely on a constitutionary stroll, when I stepped into this shadowed recess to escape the overwhelming torridity.” His words seemed to confuse the guards, so he added, “Rapturous day, but a modicum too hot for me particular penchant.”
The bald guard looked at the hole in the ore and the exposed sewer pipe within it. “You been digging?”
