Zhe #02 - Chains of Tartarus

by Drew Dale Daniel Bryenton

  Kaito was shocked speechless. Like every child of Elysium he'd been weaned on stories about the bomb, about the horrors of the burned rad-lands. Of the unholy trinity of proscribed technologies which Kronos kept from its thralls nuclear weapons were the most reviled. And this so-called holy man, this preacher who appeared on screen every week lamenting the city's moral decay was packing a bigger nuclear arsenal than many of the nations of Old Earth.

  Worse, the Electromagi had given him the launch codes. Kaito's adopted tribe were complicit.

  "You were actually going to use them? After you've seen what it's like out in the dead zones?"

  His voice cracked with horror, but Deut' just sighed.

  "You don't know the history of it, Kayzi. The purges were terrible..." for a second his eyes grew dim, recalling atrocities. "We were allied to the Ashishim during that whole dark century, and in the end we planned the Reclamation together. My granddaddy met with the Illuminatus right here on board the Archangel to seal the deal. Pope Vespasian the Reclaimer never knew he was cannon fodder, or what would happen if the assault failed..."

  Kaito knew all about the Seven Hours War, and now he imagined the armies of the Outlanders crashing up against the steel rock of Elysium, shattering, rolling back. He imagined the missiles falling like rain, bursting open to vaporize the Last City and every living thing within...

  "I don't know to this day whether I'd have turned the key. Even if they were all destroyed, I don't know if I could have gone through with it. That doubt's the only thing that lets me know I'm not a monster."

  Deuteronomy suddenly looked all of his hundred and ten years, worn down by a lifetime of running and hiding. He stared out through the scratched plexiglass dome at Elysium burning on the horizon, at the mad, desperate fleet of refugees swarming across the ocean toward them. And his eyes narrowed, his fists clenched at his sides.

  "Are you a religious man, Kayzi? You, Jaqub Hassan?" That fervent look was in his eyes again, as though he was nothing but a living receiver for the will of his God.

  "Why?" asked Kaito, still numbed by the image of nuclear fire "Is that a dealbreaker?"

  Deuteronomy Jones strode over to the periscope and pulled it down on its oiled rails, squinting into its oculus for a second. He turned back over his shoulder to fix the young Magus with a look that could slice diamonds.

  "Maybe not for you, son. But as for me...I'm a man of God. Some would say I'm nothing else. And sure as I don't think I could have turned the key back then I don't think I can stand idle now. He'd never forgive me."

  The captain turned his eyes skyward for a second, then his hands were all over the control boards, plotting a course through the refugee fleet to the shores of Ashishim territory.

  "I suggest you get down to the drydocks, boys. There's gonna be a need for extra hands to help the survivors aboard. I'll open a channel to the ship's datanet so Mister Kayzi can guide you."

  Jaq felt the immense bulk of the Archangel Uriel shudder beneath him as he followed Kaito down the ladder, back into the echoing metal bowels of the great ship. The last thing he'd seen as he dogged the hatch shut was Deut' Jones standing tall at the periscope, a grim smile on his face.

  "I still think he's completely insane." he said to Kaito as they climbed. "But at least the mad old bastard's on our side."

  Kaito snorted in the red-lit gloom below him, trying to keep his feet on the slippery rungs.

  "If he's insane, and we're following him, what does that make us?"

  The Archangel Uriel steamed onward through the night, its batteries of guns creaking around to bear on the steel mountain of Elysium, its armories loaded with a cargo of fully operational nukes. If Deut' wouldn't let them loose, Kaito was sure that the enemy could. The thing in Verlaine's head had possessed all the morality of a starving shark.

  He just hoped that Abdulafia had made it home in time...

  DOCUMENT INSERT- MULTIPLICITY ARCHIVES DEPARTMENT

  The Universal Substrate -

  That underlying structure of the multiverse which lies beyond the waveform-collapse threshold, at a scale of 10 to the power of -33 centimeters.

  This is the primary stuff of all creation, a sea of endless potentiality made up of (depending who you care to believe) strings, super-strings, wavicles, or trousers.

  Immense potential and unfathomable energy is bound up in the substrate, but despite its sheer fundamental nature it can be affected by observation, and even by conscious thought.

  It is worth noting that in some places the substrate is thinner than in others, and more susceptible to the thoughts and, indeed, the emotions of sentient beings. Thankfully, 99.9999 per cent of these 'fray zones' are situated well away from inhabited worlds. When operating on or near one of the remaining 0.00001 per cent, however, it its worth noting that you DON'T WANT TO FALL THROUGH.

  Technic Academy Training Manual 0001/C/Alpha - 'The Bumper Fun Book of Quantum Anomalies'

  The Shantung Ryu cut a swathe through the refugee fleet as it powered out toward the flycam's signal, overturning makeshift rafts in its wake and swamping the few unlucky vessels foolish enough to stray into its path. Captain Jiang might be a slippery pirate bastard, but he wasn't lying about his ship's turn of speed. Under the deck four ethanol-powered turbine engines hissed and roared, lashing the water to foam. A trio of Celestial techs hustled in the red-lit gloom, burning incense and chanting prayers in cantonese as they worked with wrenches and spanners and oil to wring even more power out of the ancient machines.

  Much as she hated to admit it, Lady Alvarez could do nothing but wait. As an aristocratic scion of Elysium she'd had nothing to do with the ocean, and as the most telegenic outlaw in the Last City her only use for it was as a repository for dead bodies. Jiang, on the other hand, seemed right in his element, standing tall at the ship's wheel as salt spray lashed the screens in front of him. As soon as they'd cleared the docks the rest of his shady crew had rushed to their battle stations, bolting down heavy machineguns and undogging hatches from which cannon turrets sprouted. In the space of a minute or two the Shantung Ryu had been transformed from a derelict-looking fisherman into a fearsome corsair.

  Not a second too soon, either - it seemed that the Celestial Emperor wasn't too pleased about the numbers of citizens his little empire was hemorrhaging into the ocean. Behind them the first salvo from the C.K guns had blown apart a junk full of refugees, scattering burning bodies and salvaged belongings across the waves in a grisly slick.

  The roll and crackle of gunfire was almost constant behind them now, as the Son of Heaven's troops tried desperately to keep his people contained.

  Shantung Ryu was simply too fast for them. As soon as Jiang saw those first muzzle flashes he jammed the throttles wide open and his ship leaped forward, bows in the air and screws blurring. Ruby and her boys had to hold on tight as he tacked hard, dodging a rain of explosive shells which shattered the smaller boats around them. Aitken Straw looked positively green behind his mask, and the Tin Man had clamped himself to the treadplate deck with magnetic grapples. But Jiang was smiling, spinning the wheel wild, using his long, lean gunboat like an oversized jet-ski. Pretty soon the shells were falling far behind the transom, and the Celestial gunners turned their attention to easier prey.

  "I hope you city folks are all right back there!" hollered the captain, his mandarin hat rakishly askew on his head. Ruby saw the coiled dragon tattoos inked into his shaven scalp as he leaned out over the rail. "There's herbal tea in the galley - if you can walk that far!"

  Big Leon growled, but it became a nauseous groan halfway through.

  "Ooooohhhhh... This wet stuff is bad, yes, very bad. I want to go back now!”

  Lady Alvarez herself couldn't have put it more succinctly.

  The Scarecrow had managed to snap open his laptop, and now his eyes flickered across the screen, tracking their little insect guide.

  "We're almost right on top of it now, Ruby. I'm calling it in."

  Sure enough, t
he flycam found them easily. It spiraled down out of the night to land on the tip of Aitken's finger, preening its carbon-mesh wings with a pair of hair-thin silver legs.

  "But if that thing's here, then where...."

  Ruby didn't get a chance to finish her sentence.

  "The sonar's gone crazy!" yelled one of the Celestial pirates, popping up from belowdecks with a screed of paper in his hand. "Captain, there's something big down there - right below us!"

  Jiang grabbed the readout from his crewman and scanned it swiftly, his jaw dropping open with shock.

  "Surely not! There's not a reef or seamount in this whole area that I don't know about! The machine must be faulty! I...."

  Then something scraped down the Shantung Ryu's keel with a sound like rending claws. The ship heeled over, spilling cargo and crew and the Emerald City Gang up against the rail in a cursing, bleeding pile. All but the Tin Man, leaning hard into his magnetic clamps.

  "All ahead full! Hard a'starboard!" roared Jiang in cantonese, struggling back to the wheel. Beneath the deck the engines whined and thumped, straining at their mountings. The pirate ship cut into the waves, coming about hard as something rose out of the water beside them...

  It was a giant steel crucifix, erupting from the black Atlantic like a grave marker for the drowned.

  "Another one off the bow!" shouted one of Jiang's gunners. "More to port!" yelled another.

  And indeed, all around them the surface of the ocean was sprouting a forest of metal crosses, wire and chrome and rusted iron, some of them flashing with beacon lights, others reflecting the fires of far-off Elysium. The Shantung Ryu was trapped.

  With a grinding, tearing sound the entire ship tipped forward in the water, and a screaming Celestial pinwheeled down the canted deck, his arms and legs snapping like brittle twigs as he caromed off the rails. Jiang was hanging onto the wheel like grim death, expecting the waves to come crashing in at any moment and drag his vessel to the bottom.

  Instead they began to rise.

  The Shantung Ryu had beached itself atop a giant three-barreled battleship gun, its keel wedged between two of those mighty cannons. As the Archangel Uriel broke the waves around them they were carried higher and higher aloft, rising up with the main battery of the Pentecostal behemoth until the thrashing screws of the pirate ship were suspended a hundred feet above the water.

  They'd been at the very arrowhead of the refugee fleet, otherwise hundreds of other makeshift vessels would have been stranded high and dry with them. As it was the Shantung Ryu hardly stood out among the crenelations, turrets and bulbous domes of the Uriel, a limpet clinging atop a whale.

  Ruby Alvarez was first to stir from the slop of bilgewater and blood in the stern of the Shantung, cursing a blue streak as she scrabbled for her lost railpistols. The Tin Man clumped stiffly across the deck to join her at the transom, contemplating their predicament with his usual stoic silence.

  "That's some great sailing, Jiang!" growled Ruby, looking down at tier after tier of dripping guns. Some of them were moving now as the crews within took aim on the slopes of Elysium, grinding the turrets around with the sound of ancient machinery. "But this is just about where we get off. Aitken, bring the Flycam, and start jamming the security network of this beast. Leon, carry the heavy weapons. And Tin Man - you get to take point, as usual. We're going to find those sub-scum bastards, make the hit and get back out before our noble captain here can get his ship stuck any worse."

  They could hear clattering and banging sounds coming from beneath the stranded Shantung Ryu now, as a very confused team of Pentecostal gunners tried to work out what was weighing down their turret. A slim steel periscope snapped up out of the riveted hide of the sub, turning to stare straight into the C.K. chop on the pirate ship's bows.

  "Take my advice, Jiang. Tell 'em you're an honest fisherman. I'm sure they'll buy it."

  Ruby fastened a zipline around the rail of the boat and perched on the edge for a second, surveying the drop down to the crazed topography of the Uriel's living modules. Below her the rest of the gang were in position, huddled close to Aitken Straw and his laptop, concealed in a bubble of static from the cameras which dotted the huge vessel's hull.

  "And if you're still around by the time we're through, you'd better have figured out how to get this thing back in the water. I paid you for a round trip."

  With that she fell backward over the rail, just as a hatch clanged open on the other side of the ship. Pent' marines with sabers and pistols swarmed out, goggling with amazement at the strange catch they'd netted. One of the Celestial crew went for his pintle-mounted machinegun, but Jiang stood him down with a curt gesture. They were ten against a hundred, with no way of getting off this mountain of metal.

  Much better to play it ignorant and safe...

  "Many humble apology, sirs!" shouted pirate captain, in his very best imitation of an ignorant C.K. refugee. "Sorry to be park this boat, but we are no sailor! We escape from city, from bad things and fires!" No doubt his bloody, singed mandarin costume helped - the marines didn't even notice that it was woven from riotmesh.

  "Zeke, Jerrad, check the whole boat for infection!" barked the Pentecostal commander, a burly man with red sideburns and a crucifix tattoo blazoned across his face. "Mahoney and you others, take these poor saps downstairs. And strip this tub of weaponry - God knows that we need it more than they do!"

  Jiang grinned and kowtowed gratefully - and his crew caught on, babbling in cantonese and holding out their hands imploringly to the white-clad Christian sailors.

  Behind his gap-toothed smile the Celestial pirate was fuming. This little excursion might just have cost him his pride and joy, and if Lady bloody Alvarez wanted to get out of here alive then she was going to have to salvage the Shantung Ryu herself.

  Under his feet the gun turret bucked and rattled as deck after deck of cannons began to fire, a vast broadside arcing up over the sea, illuminating the refugee fleet with phosphorus flares.

  The big guns were powerful enough to lob their man-sized shells all the way back to Elysium, stitching a neat row of fire across the Celestial Kingdom docks. Even from this far away Jiang fancied he could see the sea-wall battlements erupt into flames, tiny bodies blazing as they fell. The batteries of cannons penning the Emperor's people in fell silent as a whole section of the R.T. collapsed on top of them.

  But this was no humanitarian strike. The smaller guns of the Archangel Uriel were kicking up plumes of white water as they fired on the refugees themselves, surgically destroying a raft here, an overloaded barge there...

  There was something aboard those unlucky vessels, something black and oily and moving, struggling as it burned. The Uriel's gunners were using incendo rounds, burning them down to the waterline.

  Jiang's blood ran cold for a second as he realized he'd cut right through that desperate armada, passing close enough to touch those heaving abominations which keened and shuddered and died in the burning sea. As he came down the gangplank of his ship a trio of Pentecostal techs passed him, armed with flamethrowers and thermal-scopes. Their full-body suits were marked with biohazard trefoils.

  Infection...

  Perhaps, thought Jiang, it was time to forget the Shantung Ryu, and forget his old masters in the Last City. He wondered whether the Christian God would welcome the soul of an incorrigible pirate...

  The spillway heaved with a tide of humanity.

  Those at the back of the crowd pushed and struggled, desperation giving them strength. There were things stalking through the dark places of Elysium, down amid the manufactoria and sunless habs which were terrible enough to drive men mad.

  But those at the front had nowhere to go. The warlords of the Pit commanded a swathe of sand under their antiquated guns, and a ramshackle wall of corrugated iron, rusted vehicles and sharpened stakes barred the road out to the rad-lands. Anyone who was pushed out onto that killing ground was mercilessly cut down by a hail of bullets, taking many others with them as slugs chewed
into the tight-packed throng.

  One checkpoint was open, a single-file line which funneled the desperate refugees between walls of tangled razorwire, down to a concrete tollbooth where the rich were sifted from the destitute. In order to pass through the gates and into the dubious safety of the Pit you had to be packing serious currency - 'tech, precious metals, weapons...

  cash was useless down here, and drifts of it blew in the hot wind like chaff. At the seething centre of the mob people desperately scrambled for the bills, tearing at each others' throats like animals.

  This was the exodus of the subcity, and it led nowhere.

  Clinging to the side of a shattered concrete tower B-Zerk saw it all and despaired. He'd gotten this far - crawling through sewers, dodging the clicking, whirring death-machines Kronos had unleashed - and other things far worse. But of course he wasn't quite himself anymore - under the ragged shawl which whipped around his thin