by Nate Crowley
“Promise you won’t hurt him.”
“I promise I won’t do anything until I have to, Mouana. Now go and see to that door.”
Mouana trudged to the gate housing, and tried not to think about what was going to happen when Dust arrived. The wind sang around the cable, and she remembered how it had sang that night in the tent, blending with the howls of the injured ’drick. Then, she had thought herself the only one hard enough to put the thing out of its misery. Now, she wanted nothing less.
At least she had a problem to solve. Frowning up at the immense doors, she wondered what she wouldn’t give for a decent artillery piece. But she wasn’t out of options yet—what had appeared to be a featureless surface from a distance was stippled with panels and protrusions, and she would just have to start prying some of them open. She had gotten plenty of obscure tech working in her life, and saw no reason to stop now she was dead. Mouana sighed with her useless lungs, and got to work.
YOU NEVER TOLD me, you know.
“What’s that, lad?” said Fingal, turning to face the casket as he puffed on his pipe. If he was surprised to hear Wrack’s voice in his head, he didn’t show it. And if he had realised Wrack had heard everything he had said to Mouana, he didn’t show his fear.
How my father died. We never found the time to talk about it.
“I’m sorry, Wrack... in all the chaos as we left the city, it slipped my mind. We should have talked. I—”
How did he die, Fingal?
“He... he... it was all a mess, Wrack, when we rose up against the Chancellor. He caught a ricochet in ’Mander’s Passage, holding it against the militia on day one. It... it was quick for him.”
Oh, said Wrack, leaving plenty of time for the pause to ice over.
“You were, ah, you were a good lad, what you did for him.”
What do you mean, what I did for him?
“Your sacrifice. When you agreed, you know, you agreed to be found with those pamphlets, to take the heat off him so he could keep on operating. I’ve not said it to you before, lad, but you did more for the Pipers than you knew, with that. The militia was on the edge of turning your old man over, when you stepped in for him.”
That’s very interesting, said Wrack, because it was. He had never agreed to be arrested. Remembering his human life now was like fishing broken glass from thick mud, but he was certain of that much. When they had arrested him it had come as a total surprise. He had been caught with his father’s pamphlets, and that had been that. An unhappy accident. He had taken the sentence and not said a word all the way to the execution chamber, as he hadn’t wanted them to punish his father for his failure. At no point, though, had he been in on any plan. Fingal’s talk of an agreement was... fascinating. Keeping his tone casual, he continued.
I’m not sure I understand, Fingal. Do you mean to say that he planned for me to be found with the pamphlets?
“Well of course—you remember, mate, don’t you?” said Fingal, a note of agitation in his voice. He had moved along the side of the casket now, sauntering all too unsubtly towards the mine. When he spoke again, his words were hurried. “That was always the plan. You were a hero for agreeing to it, lad. And you never said a word during the trial, neither. City thought... thought you’d been the one distributing the things, and never thought to raid your dad’s place after you were gone. If you, ah, hadn’t offered yourself up, that might have been the end of the Pipers.”
Wrack had never agreed to anything. He had not sacrificed himself.
I don’t think you’re giving me the truth, said Wrack, and Fingal scrambled to his side. So I am going to take it from you.
The dead rebel shrieked as Wrack plunged into his head. He had eased gently into Mouana’s mind, but he tore through Fingal’s like a rusty saw through bone.
Fingal in his father’s study, sneering at a boy playing with toy ships; wondering when the old man was going to hand the reins over to his useless son.
Fingal in the library at night, stuffing the shelves with pamphlets.
Fingal in an alleyway, whispering to a man in a uniform.
Fingal in the pub, his hand on his father’s shoulder as he wept for his lost son.
Fingal in ’Mander’s Passage, with a gun to the back of his father’s head.
Fingal’s hands, scrabbling to reach the mine embedded in his side before he discovered the truth.
That’s really is all very interesting, said Wrack.
MOUANA WAS ON her hands and knees, peering in amongst the mouldering remains of the door’s workings, when the blast hit her. She had managed to prise the cladding off what seemed to be a scanning mechanism, and was brushing cobwebs from its interior.
Inside were racks of glass tubes, and in them were scraps of flesh. She had no idea what they did, but she thought she recognised the look of them. Whatever they were made of came from the same anatomy as Teuthis, the mind Wrack was trapped in. No wonder Wrack had been able to feel this place; it contained what appeared to be pieces of him.
Wrack was the key to this door; she was sure of it. She was just getting to her feet, opening her mouth to shout Fingal’s name, when the meat-scraps began writhing in their tubes. Then her head filled with thunder.
The detonation knocked her from her feet, screaming as if every ugly moment she had ever lived were racing through her head in the same instant. She blacked out, came back, and blacked out again, her back arched in agony. When she was finally able to move she looked back, expecting to see Wrack’s casket blown open. But something very different had happened.
Fingal was being dragged into the ground by skeletons. They were erupting from the earth in a spray of soil around him, clawing at his body, gnashing at his flesh with age-greyed teeth. Their bones were picked clean, but strung with strange black filaments—the strange physical changes inflicted by miasma, laid bare by the complete disintegration of soft tissue.
Fingal screamed, but was cut off as he disappeared into the maelstrom of ancient bone. By the time the crew had picked themselves off the ground, there was nothing of him to be seen beneath the thrashing cadavers. Then the blast came again, knocking her flat on her back, and she knew it for what it was: Wrack’s black pulse, but stronger and more feral than she had ever felt it before. As it washed over the clearing the ground quaked, and a fresh thicket of skeletal arms sprung from the soil. Even prepared for it, it was all she could do to stay on her feet.
“Wrack!” screamed Mouana, staggering towards the frenzy, but it was too late. When the skeletal throng withdrew, nothing remained of Fingal but his pipe, smouldering on the broken ground. Hunched and chittering, the skeletons loped towards Wrack and clustered around the base of the casket, their mouths gaping in rage. More and more were joining them, climbing from the ground and scampering towards the growing pile with inhuman gaits.
GET BACK, shrieked the forest of skulls, half in her head, and half in the whicker of bone on bone. GET BACK AND LEAVE ME.
“What did he do?” pleaded Mouana, keeping her distance.
BETRAYED ME. USED ME. TRIED TO DESTROY ME.
“How?” she begged. “What do you mean?” It had all happened so quickly.
SEE, commanded the bone-mass, and light exploded in Mouana’s skull.
The visions came with sickening speed, a zoetropic fever dream that hammered at her sense of self. Studies and tin ships and books and pamphlets, pipe smoke and rain and anger and courtrooms, cobbles and grief and guns. When they withdrew she was reeling, but the light came again, a star bursting in the centre of her mind.
Then darkness, and cold. A clinging chill that seeped into every pore. Deep water, that stretched forever beneath her feet, and silence. After what could have been hours, she became aware of something in front of her. A deep red glow, on the very edge of blackness, cast the edge of something vast into silhouette. A leviathan shape, hanging motionless in the abyss.
PREYMEAT, said the darkness.
“This isn’t you, Wrack,” said Mouana,
ice-water flooding her lungs as she spoke. “Please, friend, come back.”
COME BACK FOR WHAT, MORSEL? SO YOU CAN USE ME? SO YOU CAN LIE TO ME?
“Maybe that’s who I was once, Wrack. But not any more. You’ve been in my head. You’ve seen the worst of me, and the best. And you’ve seen how I feel about you. I don’t just want you back, I need you. Because you’re my brother now, and I can’t bear to see you hurt like this.”
I AM NOT A TOOL, said the shape, mind-voice blasting like the heat from a furnace.
“No, mate; no, you’re not. But you’re acting like one. And while we’re at it, you’re not a bloody squid either. You’re my friend, Schneider Wrack, and you’re being a fucking silly boy.”
I... I AM NOT A TOOL, said the dark again, but with the hint of a question in its tone.
“No. That’s exactly what I’m trying to save you from becoming, so come back.”
Somewhere in the distance, a trumpet blew, and Mouana clenched with horror. The sound was coming from outside the vision.
“Wrack...” said Mouana, voice flattened with dread. “She’s here.”
The trumpet sounded again, and the vision collapsed.
“GOOD MORNING,” WHISPERED Dust, from the edge of the clearing. Behind her, filling the railway avenue from edge to edge, was an army of the dead. There were thousands of them, ranks upon ranks, their grey faces haggard and hopeless as they stretched back into the morning mist. In the distant fog, huge shapes loomed; beasts or machines or worse. It was an army fit to level cities.
Mouana looked to Wrack’s casket. The mass of skeletons had collapsed, little more than a heap of twitching bone on the ground around it. From the casket itself came a weak, muffled sloshing, but nothing more. And around it, shaken still from Wrack’s blast, the shivering remnants of her crew looked across the clearing at their doom.
“I see you managed to get my prize working, Mouana,” said Dust, still motionless. “I’m impressed. And intrigued, frankly. But you should know I came prepared for this. Look what I have brought.”
Dust gestured behind her, as a strange mass struggled forward from her ranks. It staggered on beetle legs, moving painfully with the dull clank of ceramic plates. Its upper surface was smooth armour, open in the centre to reveal a throbbing mass of wire-studded flesh. Blue lightning arced and crackled across the exposed meat, while liquid gases dripped from its underside, splashing onto the sodden turf in sheets of ice.
“There are always countermeasures, Mouana. The number of old machines you’ve played with, you should know that, just as I do. Powerful though the prize is, it remains—alas—the mind of an animal. And all animals can be leashed.”
Dust’s eyes bored into Mouana, and she knew the general was right. While Wrack was lost in the throes of whatever madness Fingal had set off, he was an animal, and there was nothing he or any number of skeletons could do for them. It was just them, a hundred or so exhausted bodies, against an army. Against Dust. It was over.
“Time to give up, commander,” said the general, almost kindly, and Mouana hung her head. Her thoughts raced. The mine on Wrack’s casing was just a few yards away; Dust was fast, but there was every chance Mouana could reach it, and put him out of his misery, before the general was halfway across the clearing. Then it would at least be over for him, if not for them.
Tassie’s shriek echoed in her mind as she took a step towards the casket. Then, as she repeated Dust’s words to herself, she stopped. Why should she let anyone else, let alone Dust, tell her when it was time to give up?
For all her preparation, and all her prowess, Dust had no idea of what had happened on Tavuto. As far as she was concerned, the thing in that casket was the senile remnant of an old monster; an animal indeed, with nothing human to it. Mouana knew better, and she refused to think so little of Wrack. Whatever relic Dust had dredged up from history, she was willing to bet it was geared to constrain the mind of something so simple as an alien gigapredator. Faced with a sarcastic librarian, it had another thing coming.
“Right you are,” called Mouana to Dust, raising a hand in casual surrender. “Just give me a moment to say goodbye.” She turned to the crew. They looked utterly bewildered, but were looking to her with cautious hope, as if she could stand between them and annihilation.
“Form up around Wrack,” said Mouana, as she met each of their eyes. “There may never be time to explain what just happened, but I need you to trust me.” Every head nodded. “Eunice, I want you out in front. Kaba, you lead the dead. And Pearl?” The woman nodded, clutching her rifle along with the living crew. “You take the living, and run. I know it’s not much of a plan, but there’s no point you staying here.”
“Not a chance,” said Pearl. “We’re dead anyway out there, and we’d rather be dead with you.” The other sailors nodded, and Mouana gave them a tight smile.
“Okay, then,” she said softly, “I suppose I’d better indulge the general.” She turned to Wrack’s crab—limp, now, like an appalling parody of a child’s doll—and grinned at it. “I don’t know if you can still hear me, mate, but watch this if you can. It’s going to be a hell of a show.”
Mouana walked out in front of her bedraggled crew, staring right into Dust’s eyes, and doing everything she could to pretend fear didn’t exist. She spread her arms wide.
“Alright, then,” said Mouana. “You win. But let me ask you something.”
“Go on,” said Dust, as near as Mouana had ever heard to showing irritation.
“Do you really just want to march that lot over here and overwhelm us? Because let’s be honest, you’ll manage it in a heartbeat. Or whatever it is that happens inside your chest. I think you can do better.” Mouana spat on the floor, then thumped a massive hand against her breast.
“Come on,” she roared. “I’m the woman who fucked you over, after all those years of training. I ruined your clever plan, stole your prize, and made you take your whole army through a thousand miles of fucking mud and mosquitoes to get it back. I’ve made you look like a clown, general—and if I was you, I’d want to settle this in person. So come on, why don’t you come over here and make a scene for the history books?”
“You’re assuming that wasn’t already my intention,” said Dust, nodding once and starting to walk slowly across the field. Her troops began to advance morosely in her wake, their shambling footsteps making the ground tremble, but she held out an arm to stop them. “No one is to take a step forward until I have the prize,” she commanded, unsheathing her blade. “I need no army for this.”
The rest of the distance she walked alone, her gaze never breaking from Mouana’s. When she got to within twenty yards, Mouana spoke again.
“Right. Rush her, lads.”
And so they did. Eunice stormed past her like a freight engine, growling as she came, but Dust dodged her without so much as looking aside. Her armour sang with the impact of rifle fire, but nothing even registered. She did not speed up, she did not change her expression—she just strolled towards Mouana with blank rapture on her face, drinking the moment. Mouana fired a harpoon as she came within ten feet, but the general ducked it with the slightest twist of her waist.
Then she was upon her, and Mouana was blocking swipes of her blade, monstrous blows that came almost too fast for her eye to track. Shards of metal flew from her armour and only Eunice, flying in from behind with a wild left hook and forcing the general to dodge, saved her from the stroke that would have taken off her head.
Then the rest of the crew joined the fray. They came on, howling, with no regard for their own bodies, and swarmed the general. Dust danced through them, hewing the dead as if she were thrashing through mist, but there was no way she could dodge them all.
One arm seized her, then two, and then twenty—they kept piling on, weighing down her limbs as fast as she could cut through them. She slowed despite her unnatural strength, and for a moment, it almost felt like they might take her down. But only for a moment.
“Eno
ugh,” said Dust, gesturing with her hand. Lights flashed on her armour, and something invisible rushed into the soil. The ground seemed to compress, to sink for a moment, then burst upwards and outwards, flinging Mouana high into the air. She crashed to the ground, bodies tumbling around her, and felt a wet crack as her body broke inside the armour.
Still she tried to struggle up, but before she could even raise her head from the floor, Dust was on her, springing up nimble as a cat and kneeling on her body. The general clicked her long fingers, and a sphere of light appeared around them.
“This will only last a minute, but that will be all I need to cut you free. After that I shall finish off the rest, and you and I shall be free to spend all the time in the world together.”
Dust’s blade hummed; it glowed white from hilt to tip, and she rammed it into Mouana’s torso. The sword slid through the warbody as if it were gel, and settled deep in Mouana’s chest. It sizzled, and filthy steam gushed from the collar of the armour. Even as Mouana felt herself cooking from the inside, she smiled. This was exactly the moment she had been hoping for.
“Hey, Wrack,” said Mouana, voice hoarse as her core began to boil. “I’ve got a joke. You’ll love this one.”
Dust’s eyes narrowed and her head jerked back, in what Mouana suspected was the first genuine surprise in her life.
“What does it take to make a squid laugh?” wheezed Mouana, and waited a long moment before winking at Dust.
“Ten tickles!” she shouted, steam leaking from her mouth, gaping at Dust with a foolish grin.
Something changed, then, in the world. There was something there that had not been there before. Something Mouana would never have been able to detect without having spent so long feeling its opposite. It was barely there at first, but it built and built, until the air trembled with it, and then broke like white water from a breached dam.
