I set off a couple of alarms, but without the blobs, no one comes rushing.
When I make it back to the gambling floor, that same scuzzy little Szz is holding drinks up. “Well, look who was too good for a pink yesterday!”
“What?”
He points.
I touch my chin. Bits of pink dust come away. My first impulse is to lick them off my hands. No.
“You think you’re so good, but today you’re high as five suns! Heh, heh, why not have more, then? Drink a pink from a poor peddler.”
“Why not?” Rashiya’s ghost asks me.
“No!” I say. “Look, where would I find the fighters? I’m a manager.”
He doesn’t answer that, but his eye stalks point at my soulswords. “You en’t supposed to have them swords.”
I lean over and whisper, “You see any guards around here?”
Those eye stalks twist around, scanning the whole floor. The blue spheres that were so everpresent on the gambling floor yesterday are nowhere.
“Show me to the fighters’ locker room.”
Smart little scab. He does so.
There’s one blob at the door to this place. I stop, wait, afraid of what this blob might do, but he only gurgles something that sounds profoundly uncomfortable, and a large mass of blue mucus slides off him to spatter on the floor. The translator doesn’t even try with that.
“Ah, I’m the manager, remember?” I wave, trying to keep my soulswords hidden.
The blob buzzes me in.
Yes. This is working. This is going to work. I walk in to the smell of steam, coming from what must be the locker room showers. I’ll just grab Z and X, and with any luck, there’ll be few enough guards that we can get back to our ship and go and meet Jaqi and the others, and—
Z steps out from the steam, totally unmarred, and entirely naked.
“You healed fast,” I say. Not a scratch on him. Not a burn, or a bandage, or the signs of synthskin gel-packs.
What’s more, on his leg, where the geysers burned him, his tattoos are faded. Like new skin’s grown over them.
“Wait a minute,” I say. “How did you heal so fast?”
“The ancestors bless me,” he says.
Whatever Jaqi did to him, it seems to have lasting effects. “Grab some raggy and let’s get the hell out of here. Boss Cross is out, but the NecroSentry will know I did it. Come on.”
Z nods. “One moment.”
He returns with pants on, and X comes with him, looking much the worse the wear for her fights—she’s got several still-gelled patches of synthskin on her shoulder and arm, and a bandage around her leg, pants now cut off at the knee.
“What did you say of the Faceless Butcher?” X asks.
“I force-fed him drugs,” I say. “He’ll be out cold for a bit, but that NecroSentry will know it was me. Pathogen’s working, though. Hardly a blob to be seen out there. We’ll get to our ship and—”
They have stopped walking, and are standing there in the hallway. Z is fumbling at a locker.
“What are you doing? What could you possibly have in there?”
“Weapons,” Z says. “To help us.”
“We’re fine! We don’t need weapons! Let’s go!”
Z opens the locker, and tucks something into his hand, the details of which I cannot quite see.
“Let’s go!”
Z walks up to me. “This troubles me, Araskar. We carry our victories to the ancestors at the River of Stars. Today, both Xeleuki - an - Thrrrrr - Xr - Zxas and I carry much honor. But we would lose all that honor, and be in greater debt, if we left the Faceless Butcher alive.” He sighs. “You truly could not kill him?”
“Z, the mission,” I say. “Think of what Jaqi would want.”
“It is honorable to kill John Starfire, Araskar,” X says. “But more honor is gained for our people if we kill the Faceless Butcher. I was once like you, Araskar. I joined the Resistance. I learned the purpose of the Red Peace. I lost my honor, fighting for dishonorable causes.”
I want to slap their stupid tattooed faces. “Look, there’s a lot more honor in taking down John Starfire than—”
Z interrupts. “Our ancestors would disagree. You have no ancestors, so I will seek to explain it. Though John Starfire curses the whole galaxy, the Faceless Butcher has offended our people in particular. I know you do not understand honor, but you understand degrees of vengeance, surely?” He holds his hands up at different levels, like he’s giving a lesson to children. “Here is the wrong John Starfire has done. While it is great, it affects us less. Here is the wrong the Faceless Butcher is done. These are called the degrees of vengeance, and the ancestors—”
I am so very very sick of Zarra. “There’s no goddamn ancestors waiting to carry you anywhere! They’re all dead, like we will be too in a moment! You’re the only person in the entire damn galaxy that ever came back from the big Dark, Z, don’t you go wasting it. Follow the mission!”
Z wants to rip my arms off, I can tell. But he settles for words. “Do not mock my honor, soldier. How many innocents have you killed?” He leans forward, horns down. “You had best hope that the ancestors do not greet you at the River of Stars, for they will carry the cries of those innocents you murdered.”
Rashiya’s ghost stands next to him, to remind me of all the dead. “You want to shut your mouth,” I snap.
“You soldier.” Z spits on me. “Follow your orders, and what have they gotten you?”
It would be stupid to hit him.
Araskar the responsible soldier of the Reckoning, the smart one who saves lives and survives battles, wouldn’t hit Z. Araskar the responsible soldier needs to reason with them, get them to remember their commitment to Jaqi and to . . .
Araskar the out-the-airlock idiot has a hell of a headache, and just spit out his first hit in weeks. And this guy’s an asshole.
I punch Z in the chest.
Ow.
My hand crumples, and I think for a moment that I might not be able to hold a soulsword for a while, and the pain shooting up my hand is almost enough to drown out the pain from my head.
Z’s eyes go red, and his cheeks blow in and out, and then he picks me up, throws me head-first at the wall. I roll off the wall. Jump back on my feet, and duck his blow, but I’m too dizzy, and he’s fast—I can’t avoid getting caught by him in a crushing wrestling grip, but I punch his ribs over and over with my one free hand, doing little good—
X grunts from behind me.
A sudden rush of pain, followed by a cooling sensation like cold water, washes over me.
Z lets go of me and I can’t stand up. I flop over like a drunk.
“They gave us drugs to help ease the pain of battle,” he says. “Taking them would be dishonorable, so they should suit you. We will put you in a place where you will be safe, until our task is done. Then we will escape this place.”
I can’t move a muscle as they pick me up and shove me in the locker, then close the door.
I’m finally high. High as five suns and it doesn’t even feel good.
-12-
Jaqi
“JAQI!”
“Yeah?” I say back to Kalia, through the comm in my helmet. This is the first time she’s talked to me about anything save religion since Trace.
“This is”—she’s talking in bursts—“the grossest”—big pause—“thing in all space!”
Although there’s atmos pumped into this tunnel—helps the burn—we are talking between helmet radios, given as we’re swimming up through the sea of lung-meat, a sea of pink fleshy flaps.
“Yep. En’t many scabs can boast of what we done. We went right up the bug’s butt, and now we’re swimming through its guts.”
Toq giggles. “We’re in its butt-guts!”
“Evil big butt-guts, that’s right.”
“Ew! Ew!”
Thick pockets of the tissue honeycombed with holes like the tunnels out of an ecosphere; splatters of rotten, cut-out bits cascading down ev
ery time we make a hole to climb up. Normally the incinerators would be blasting away, burning these bits as they fall in.
Above us, Taltus’s soulsword burns bright blue as he carves his way through the mess. “We have reached the bottom of some kind of funnel now,” he says. “It is widening, sss, on a slope. I will attempt something.”
Taltus fires a harpoon. A pop, audible even in here, a flash and more bits rain down, cut apart by the shard in the tip of his harpoon, and Taltus hands down a line to Kalia, who hands it down to me. “I think I have gained purchase on something above this incinerator with the harpoon,” Taltus says. “Hang on to the line.”
“Swez, you hear me?” I speak into the radio. Them Kurgul scabs are still back in the ship.
“I hear you, female cross.”
“Oh, I done stepped up from just female, drone? Aiya, scab, you know how to treat a girl! You keep this up, we’ll go all the way to ‘female cross with the hair.’”
“Do not waste my time, female.”
I know I shouldn’t worry at a Mataka, but damn is it fun. “Might have an all-clear in a minute,” I say. “Now hang on till I give the signal. Taltus,” I call out. “Let me come up to you.”
I climb the line past Kalia, pulling Toq up with me, leaving him with his sister as I kick my way through rotten meat-bits, slide my body around a big piece. Looks a bit like a steak.
Bill would laugh. I’m hungry again.
Taltus pulls me close, so our helmets are touching, so my vision is just filled with that bone mask under a visor. I switch off my comm. He does the same.
I speak, letting it vibrate through our helmets.
“Once they get the ship up and out of this mess, them scabs might shoot us. I mean, they’re bound to shoot us eventually, but I can’t say whether they’ll do it now or wait till we’ve finished the job.”
“I will die for you, and the children, if needed.”
“That’s a fine sentiment, but that en’t what we need.” Taltus’s eyes shine from under that mask. The eyes of a believer. Aiya. It’s a good thing he en’t in no position to bow.
“Listen,” he says. “Listen, Jaqi, there are things you must hear me say, without anyone listening.”
This slab going to pledge his fealty to me or some crazing like that? “Taltus—”
“Our swords are different than those given to the Resistance. Beaten steel, by hand, a thousand blows for the thousand blows Saint Thuzera struck against Belial. They are not mass-produced, sss.” He takes my hand in his huge clawed one, moves my hand to the sword’s hilt. “You see? They are part of us. Each of us.”
“Oh . . . kay.” Why this, now? In this midst of the butt-guts, hearing each other only by dint of our helmets being up next to the other?
“Each sword, for each adept, is named and remembered on our homeworld. If I fall, Jaqi, you must take my sword to the Llyrixa system. In-system, hold it and speak and the Council will hear you, through our great central blade. You need not fear. They will heed you, once they know you bear the sword of a fallen adept.”
“Nothing’s gonna happen to you , Taltus.”
“They will listen if you come to them, sss.” Hisses rattle the glass between our heads. “It has been many years since the Order was at our greatest strength. The Empire and Resistance both cursed us for failing to take a side. More than that, we cursed ourselves, sss. We argued long among ourselves about the meaning of the scriptures, until some of us sought to do what was right nonetheless, and protect the innocent, and, sss, sss . . .” He is breathing heavily. “I sought to fight. I went against the Order by doing so. Now, if I fall, you must convince them to aid the Reckoning.”
“So they may or may not agree, and may or may not use their might for our side. Thanks?”
Thing about the religious types—they don’t know sarcasm. “You are welcome. Jaqi, remember—what is fated will come to pass, but you must ensure you, and your people, are prepared for it.”
I clench my own soulsword. Not sure how well this works through a spacesuit, but it don’t matter as I don’t get no answer to Araskar, you there?
Nothing. Again.
Up we go.
Taltus pulls us up the line, up, up, us squirming and wiggling through the layers of flesh.
“Ew, ew, ew!” Kalia shouts.
“I figure on steak tonight,” I say, and she groans. “Steak and entrails! I like a good bit of entrails.”
“Stop it, Jaqi!”
“Don’t judge a girl because she likes some entrails.”
This is an improvement over the not-talking we been doing, I guess. Back to teasing her.
Taltus’s grapnel pulls us through the fleshy bits, up and up—and then, just like that, we pop out the top.
The mining operation is above us. It’s all flesh, honeycombed with holes, endless piles of tissue, lit by thousands of ring lights. There’s a massive machine in the center, a gravity centralizer that lets folk way up there stand on the “ceiling.” Way above us.
We’re standing on a pile of butt-guts stuck in the maw of a funnel, a big funnel that sits at the bottom of tunnels and slides and every trash-dumping apparatus I ever done seen.
Other funnels around us are empty, material slipping down into the fire, but our funnel is evil full, stacked up in mountains of this nasty meat.
Taltus hooks me and the kids to the line he’s shot. The grappling hook wraps around a metal tube above. Tunnels and stairs all connect to a maintenance door, one of dozens set in the walls of flesh and plasticene.
“Be, sss, careful,” Taltus says, getting on the radio. “I see Reveks already coming to check on this incinerator. They must have gotten an update about its failure to operate.”
Sure enough, the maintenance door we need to go into opens, and a few little ratlike Reveks scurry out, along metal pilings and fleshy walls both. I take a minute to thank God, or the Starfire, that Shadow Sun Seven didn’t trust the Suits with maintenance.
He hands me and the kids the grapnel, lifting us up, toward that metal tube. Once we clamber on top of the tube, out of sight of them Reveks, I take my helmet off. And I’m sorry I did so—it smells evil awful in here, like all the rotting meat in the galaxy mixed with some fresh turds—but I motion for the kids to take off their helmets, so they can hear me, without Matakas listening in.
“Ew, ew, ew, ew,” Kalia mutters as we cling to the top of the tube, and Taltus comes up on the grappling hook below, scrambling his big lizard body up to the top of the tube.
“We gotta get in there,” I say, pointing to the maintenance door. The Reveks already closed it. “These swords cut through mag-locks, Taltus?”
“Don’t worry about it, Jaqi,” Kalia says. She raises a funny-looking little bit of tech, a little spidery black thing. “I have the Pet.”
“You have the what?” Miss This-Is-Gross-Where’s-My-Tea? She’s got something to aid the mission?
“I’m not useless,” she says, giving me a look that says she knows what I’m thinking. “Let me through.”
“All right, then. Never said you was useless, Kalia.”
She doesn’t look at me. I let her scuttle by on this slick tube. She gets her way up to the tunnel and presses her little pet against it, and the door hums a bit, like the Pet trying to open it.
“Where’d you pick that up?” I ask as we scuttle up to her. Toq climbs in through the tunnel. I can just barely get in there. Taltus—that’ll be the trick. He’s eyeballing it, looking for all the world like the seven-foot lizard he is.
“The Engineer,” Kalia said. “I had a little talk with him when you and Z did takeoff prep, back on the Suits’ planet.”
Huh. I don’t want to tell her that Pet’s a Suit of its own notion; probably some organic bits in there to help maximize whatever it does, and if it had a chance, it’d turn her brain into a database. “What’d you give that fella in return?”
“Data. Same thing they always wanted.”
“What sort of data?”
She don’t answer. The maintenance door slides open and I reckon anyone but the kids’ll have a hard time in there. I’m just skinny enough to get in that. Taltus—both Kalia and I turn and look at him.
“I will have to find another way in, sss,” he says. “I will not fit.”
That’s when it all goes to hell.
A roar, a pop, a thunderous explosion—and them pink fleshy bits fly everywhere, spattering hot and messy across our suits. More than that, though—metal screams, and sentients scream, and wires and pipes are ripped free. The tube we’re standing on rocks, shakes back and forth, and I grab Toq and toss him in that maintenance door, Kalia scrambling in after him, and I fall and slip, and Taltus grabs me to stop me plunging back down into the butt-guts.
Our incinerator has just come on—and the Matakas’ ship caught in it.
The ship screams and shoots a column of fire high into the mines. Heat washes over me—and then my vision’s obscured by the splattering bits.
I yell to Taltus, “Matakas! I thought you told them to shoot their way out of there!”
“I did, sss. They must not have made it in time.” He struggles to get up, to get a foothold on the pipe we’re on. It’s shaken now, and we’re about to slide down. Below us, there’s fire still shooting out of the top of the incinerator, the ship’s explosion having pretty much ruined everything—the Reveks, those that survived, are doing the little rat-scramble to get back up.
Matakas are dead? Can’t say I’m going to miss them, but they was our ride out . . .
And then shards flash down there. All the poor little Reveks who climbed down there to manually activate the incinerator take shards. They scream and join the mess of meat down there. Oh hell.
Matakas, in their own spacesuits, climb up out of the ashes.
They’re much reduced, but I recognize Swez’s voice screaming at us in the radio. “Female, you betrayed us! We barely escaped our ship in time!”
Of course they did. “It en’t my fault, drone—”
I’m hanging half off the pipe, from one of the maintenance handholds, so of course, one of the Matakas fires right at me. The shard hits the pipe, rocks me back and forth. I scramble to the top of this pipe, hug it to try and hide. The handholds are meant for Reveks and I can barely get two fingers hooked in. Taltus’s grip is looking even worse, as he tries to dig his claws in through the material of his spacesuit. “I told you, it weren’t on purpose, Swez!”
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