by D L Frizzell
The other hint he gave me – at least I think it was a hint – was just as enigmatic. Brady said something about the world needing help. Best I could tell, he was exaggerating, like he used to do when we told each other stories at the drinkery in Celestial City. Dogleg sat in the middle of the flatlands, isolated from the rest of the Plainsman Territory, and had little to offer besides agricultural products. What could this little town possibly have that was so important to the world? Could the militia be engaged in some kind of intrigue to confuse an emerging enemy? Maybe they fashioned a narrative about some mythical tunnel in the southern latitudes to misdirect…whom? The Alliance Council? I wouldn’t put that kind of thinking beyond Colonel Seneca, who was strangely absent for such a huge mobilization. No, the militia had committed too many resources to relocate their yonderguns to Dogleg, a move which would certainly leave them vulnerable in other parts of the territory.
Even if this was a move to draw suspicions away from some other activity, then why go to such lengths to keep it a secret? Not even the townsfolk had a clue what was going on. All things considered, this was a bona fide military operation. The thing I couldn’t figure out, was whether it had to do with Jarnum, bandits, the T’Neth, the Alliance Council, or even the Jovians somehow. I had information, but no links to join the facts together. If anything, I had not only failed to narrow down the possibilities, they had actually increased in number.
I rubbed my eyes tiredly. Where do you begin when your search includes the entire world? Then I remembered something Brady mentioned. Electro-geysers are fairly common in regions that suffered geologic upheaval during the Great Cataclysm, but there would be few places on the plains that were susceptible to such disruptions. Maybe that narrowed the possibilities in and of itself.
I looked at the map again. Dogleg rested on a fault line where a tectonic shift sheared the region into equal halves during the cataclysm. The northern and southern halves of the plain barely moved in relative terms, only thirty meters or so, but the damage happened so quickly that the two halves slid with minimal destruction. The crack had weathered over the millennia, leaving no trace of its existence save for a few peculiar landmarks; zig-zag-shaped lakes and things like that.
I noted a few points on the map with my pencil. There was a split hill to the southeast called Broken Heart. To the northwest was the backbone ridge I crossed a few weeks ago. There had been a similar geologic shift in the ridge at one location, which I had fortunately noted for future reference.
I pulled out my revolver and laid it on the map. The barrel was a pretty good straight-edge, so I used it to draw a line between Broken Heart and the backbone ridge.
The fault line went right past Dogleg. If that wasn’t a lead, then I was in the wrong business. I holstered my pistol and ran my finger from one end of the line to the other. Electro-geysers could flare up anywhere along that fault line, depending on the concentration of iron in the area, or thickness of the bedrock, or any number of scientific explanations that were lost to history. Nobody could definitively explain why these disruptions happened. What we did know was that the affected areas did not vary. If a guster flared up in a particular spot, you could bet your last slim it would happen there again, even if you couldn’t predict when it would happen. It could reappear in a day, a month, or a century. That’s not to say we didn’t have a few clues as to where they could be expected. These anomalies occurred most often in parts of the world where underlying tectonic shifts had damaged Arion’s crust. The trouble was that these places weren’t always self-evident. I smiled to myself. I could spend a whole year mapping the borders of the local tectonic plate, but I wouldn’t have to. The militia had already found it. Something had happened near Dogleg that revealed the location of the disruption point, which scientists called magnetic nodes. Based on Brady’s hints, the node – and therefore the tunnel - would be found within striking distance of the militia’s yonderguns.
There was a triangular symbol on the map, just a few kilometers east of Dogleg, that intersected the line on my map. I stared at the symbol for a long minute, and then laughed out loud. Could it be that obvious? I put the map back in my duster and prepared to leave. Since I was going to be sneaking around for a while, I decided not to take my pack along. Better to travel light, I told myself. I checked my cargo pockets for ammunition and climbed through the window with my Longarm in hand. After quietly climbing down a water pipe to the ground, I hurried into a nearby corn field that provided cover for my movements. From there, I ran between the rows toward a place the locals referred to as the scrap yard.
When I reached the end of the cornfield, I continued through a wheat field beside it. When the wheat field ended, I was dismayed to find that I would no longer have crops to hide in when I emerged onto a road that ran the length of the wheat crop. The contrast was as stark as it could be. On the other side of the road there was nothing but ruin.
This must be the place, I thought, looking dourly at the depressing change of scenery. Scorched clumps of charred grass dotted the blackened soil, while the carcasses of rotting animals lay at random intervals beyond the road. Only it wasn’t a road, I realized. It was a last-chance warning that said, if you cross this line, you’ll get cooked. A long line of burned posts, the sooty remnants of a fence that couldn’t stand neither the test of time nor electrical forces, stood as the last vestiges of a protective barrier.
That’s where I saw what I came to see. Rising above this dead zone, perhaps a kilometer away, the scrap yard dominated the landscape. I’ve seen Founders’ junk before. It’s everywhere, really, but this chaotic pile of tangled refuse and technology bore all the hallmarks of a modern-day nightmare. Steel beams, torn and twisted, thrust into the sky like half-melted swords in the final throes of a battle. Interlaced between them, dog-eared metal plates swayed back and forth violently, despite the fact there was no wind. Sparks erupted whenever they clashed together with warbled, tinny cries. In contrast to their high-pitched screeches, there was a grinding bellow, like rocks churning over one another in a metal drum. I couldn’t see what the source of that sound was, but whatever it was, it was powerful. The entire scrap yard seemed to sway in time with its moans.
Unable to believe that I was actually doing it, I took my first step off the road and made my way toward the scrap yard, which seemed more and more like a living thing as I got closer. It can’t be alive, I told myself. This is no different than the tractor at the abandoned farm. Errant magnetic fields push on the ferrous materials in the junk yard, which oscillate differently depending on the direction of the magma in Arion’s core. It was small comfort to recite the science to myself, though I imagined it was even less comfort to the Founders.
Five hundred years ago, after landing crafts brought settlers down from orbit, magnetism fried the inner workings of their computerized devices. The effects were more drastic than sparks on their circuit boards, however. The magnetic pull from the nodes was so strong that, not only would they destroy any piece of technology, but would eventually drag it physically toward the node’s powerful center. Depending on a node’s strength, one could expect to see anything from thimbles to aircraft crammed together within it. Eventually, people accepted that magnetic nodes destroyed anything that ran on electricity but would helpfully move the ruined technology out of their way as well. Magnetic nodes on the surface of Arion worked much like a black hole in outer space in that regard. They were both destroyer and cleanup crew at the same time.
The smell of ozone wafted over me and the hair on my arms stood up as I neared the first piles of junk. As the metallic litter rocked and wobbled on the dead soil, I tried to remind myself that human beings were not metallic objects and I’d have nothing to worry about. As long as there weren’t any flying metal objects, I reminded myself darkly.
As I closed the distance to the scrap yard, I noticed the outlines of jagged rocks beneath all the metal wreckage. It looked like the ground had exploded, leaving a mighty collection of bedrock
slabs pushing upwards in the middle. Most nodes would be centered around some kind of geologic oddity, I thought, and this fit the bill. There were all kinds of Founders’ Tech leaning against the slabs, from the rusted hulks of airplanes and agricultural machines to ancient power generators and computer cabinets. This junk would be a historian’s dream were it not for the bolts of electricity crackling across the gaps between the objects. I didn’t see any soldiers milling around, which I wouldn’t expect anyway, and had serious doubts about my safety should I proceed further.
Well, I was never the type to shy away from a bad idea, I thought, and walked onward.
I heard a rustling noise in the remains of a grass clump nearby. I looked for the source, thinking perhaps those scavenger birds had followed me, but it turned out to be nothing more than a rock the size of my fist, rolling toward the scrap yard in the kind of hurry I wouldn’t expect from an inanimate object. I picked up the rock and felt the invisible tug of magnetism on the trace amounts of iron inside. Curious to see how strong the pull really was, I tossed the rock straight up. It immediately arced toward the scrap yard, accelerating until it came back to the ground a dozen meters ahead of me. It bounced three times and then slid along the ground once again, digging a furrow in the dead ground until it collided with a rusted automobile. The car responded with a clang and leaned into a levitated collection of mainframe computers tethered by their frayed power cables. Several more stones rolled by me on their way to the node, slowing down only when they reached an uphill slope or impacting other junk.
By the time I reached the edge of the scrap yard, the ground was vibrating. Junk rattled in an ominous clanking cacophony. An eerily human-looking robot protruded from an elevator car, its few remaining skin plates weathered and tarnished. Thanks to the local magnetic fields, the ancient robot wagged a broken steel finger toward the center of the node, its one remaining eye protruding from its socket in the same direction.
I soldiered on, giving as wide a berth as I could to anything that looked remotely hazardous, which was pretty much everything. When I reached a gap between two giant slabs of upturned bedrock, I noticed a change in the noise level. Most of the electrical noises died down, as did the rattling sounds from loose objects. In their place, a constant howling, low at first, but increasing in pitch as I moved toward the center of the yard. Remembering my experience at the skeleton ridge in Rekeire, I took extra care as I stepped forward. When I reached a clearing at the end of the rock slabs, I realized the sound was nothing more than the wind.
Still being cautious, I circumvented a few pieces of junk digging lazy circles in the loose dirt around me. The hair on my arms still stood, and there was the same smell of ozone in the air, but there were no more signs of static discharge. In the center of the clearing there was a hole, maybe ten meters across with a dirt ramp leading down into the darkness. To the right, Founders’ junk had been pushed to the sides to make a road through the middle of the scrap yard. Parallel furrows of compacted soil, complements of a track-laying vehicle, led to the hole after winding a route through the surrounding rocks and junk. There were a few burn marks where electro-geysers had erupted around the hole, but otherwise I got the impression that people had been spending a great deal of time here.
Movement caught my attention. My hand was on my pistol in a flash, but relaxed just as quickly when it turned out to be a piece of paper dancing through the air. Following its path, I saw that the paper came from a wooden table with piles of documents held down by rocks. It must have worked loose, I thought. Whoever left that paperwork wasn’t worried about electrical disruptions, so maybe I didn’t need to, either. I watched the loose paper catch the wind and soar, only to dive like a falcon into the hole in the ground.
This must be the right place, I thought.
I didn’t get a chance to investigate the hole because something hit the back of my head with a resounding thud. I fell face-first into the soft dirt. As I tried to recover from the pain radiating through my head, footsteps approached me from behind. I tried to get up, but was immediately forced back down. A sharp sting in my neck was the last thing I felt.
Chapter Eleven
Sometime later, a vaguely familiar smell lured my mind toward consciousness. I couldn’t place it, but thought I should have been able to. I sniffed, or tried to, and discovered there was no feeling in my face whatsoever. Was I frowning, smiling, or drooling? I didn’t know. As I lay there dumbfounded – I was lying down, I realized - another one of my senses reported in with new information. A sound. I wasn’t sure if it was a word or a grunt, or even if it was close by. I might have made the sound myself for all I knew. My mind was far too muddled to tell. At that moment, something resembling a thought crossed my mind, though it slipped into the blackness without stopping to introduce itself. I followed it into the black and stayed there for a while longer.
I jerked awake. Half awake, anyway, and unable to see. I tried to rub my eyes, only to discover my hands were shackled behind my back. Dizzy, apparently blindfolded, and still lying on my side, I strained to clear my head.
A careful testing of my limbs gave me limited information. I lay on a padded bench with my feet lashed to an armrest. Muffled screeches and squeals of machines penetrated an enclosed metal space around me, a space I decided must be a cabin. Frequent jarring motions threatened to knock me off the seat, but there was also a subtle pitch and roll motion I would describe as fluid-like. My sense of smell slowly sharpened, as did my mind, and I soon recognized the smell that woke me up.
“Hello, Norio,” I mumbled. “Nice day for a train ride.”
“Our guest is awake,” Norio announced.
“Should he be?” That was Major Hathan-Fen. She didn’t sound angry this time, just wary.
“I believe we are safe,” Norio replied. “You had better tell the others to come in. I will stay here with Alex.”
“Just be ready to knock him out again,” she warned.
I heard a metallic door bind and creak upon unlubricated hinges. Hathan-Fen had to yank it twice to get it loose. Beyond, the mechanical sounds grew louder and more distinct as the door opened. Were those linkages grating back and forth? The smell of burning sap and petroleum drifted in. I could see blurs of light underneath my blindfold, but no details. Darkness returned when the door slammed.
Norio pulled the blindfold off my face. The first thing I saw was a small chemical lamp dangling from a piece of twisted wire overhead. Norio sat across from me on a similar bench to mine with his gloves off, a pouch of salve lying open beside him. He set my blindfold on the bench. It seemed to go in and out of focus as I stared at it.
“Can you see me, Alex?” He asked as he used two fingertips to scoop a dollop of pearlescent goo from his pouch.
“You lost another fingernail?” I asked. My lips were strangely numb, so I wasn’t sure if he understood me. My vision wasn’t so great, either.
“One less to care for,” he replied. “Try to talk slower for a few minutes.”
“What’s going on?” I mumbled.
“Do you know where you are?” he asked. He still had that infuriating habit of answering a question with a question.
It took me a moment to focus. “Didn’t I just tell you?” The rocking motion and the distant sound of wind swirled in my head. I thought I’d been clear, but my speech could be as blurry as my eyesight.
I took a few deep breaths. My lungs complained about the smoky air, but the blurriness dissipated. Norio was applying the goo to his scarred arms, a daily routine in the decades since the skin below his elbows got burned off. I watched for a minute, but had to lay back so I wouldn’t fall off the bench. I wondered if what I just felt was a wave of vertigo. I wasn’t sure because it was something I’d never experienced before. Ever.
My eyes wandered to take in new details about the cabin I was being kept prisoner in. Tarnished steel plates were welded, hinged, and in some places riveted together with mismatched blue metal components. Opposite the door,
metal bands crisscrossed the compartment, only slightly more illuminated than the cold darkness behind them. Near my feet, a metal door protested on ill-fitting hinges. “This is a train, isn’t it? What do you call it?” I asked.
Norio stared for a moment as if it took effort to understand me. “I do not know if it has a name.”
Major Hathan-Fen shoved the creaky door open and stood there, steadying herself with hand straps hanging from the ceiling of a narrow corridor. Framed by a halo of chemical lights in the smoke behind her, she wore a necker over her face. “The driver is going to start slowing down in a minute,” she announced to us. “We should talk before we reach the station.”
“Can I sit up?” I asked. “Maybe get my hands free?”
“When I said that we should talk,” she clarified, “I meant that you will listen. Not that you’d make any sense right now, so don’t even try.”
“We couldn’t talk at Dogleg?” I asked.
She sat down next to Norio, kicked the door shut with a painfully loud clang, and pulled her necker down. She then pulled out a canteen and took a swallow. She didn’t answer the question.
“Can I have a drink, at least?” I asked.
Hathan-Fen poured some water in the canteen’s cap. “You can only have a little.” She held it to my mouth and I sucked it down. It tasted either like copper or chocolate, two things which I dimly acknowledged should taste nothing like one another. That was strangely funny, so I laughed.
“Did you expect him to act like this?” Hathan-Fen asked Norio.
Norio shrugged.
The door creaked open again. The unmistakable figure that stood there blocked most of the light due to his size.
“Sonofabitch!” I shouted, and then kicked my shackled feet against the armrest.
