But I look at Terina now, and she looks just as disturbed by this storm as we are, as what it implies is sinking in for all of us.
“Do the morning winds ever blow like that, your highness?” my father asks her, trying to make it sound like an idle question.
“Not like that,” she measures out her words. She, too, is staring apprehensively south, in the direction of what she calls the Boundary: the ten-kilometer-wide gap that partially joins the roughly parallel North and Central Blade valleys. “The wind currents do come from the south-southeast across the Boundary, funneled from the Central Blade, but they’re rarely so strong, and never with so much dust.”
That dust swept over us like a moving cliff wall, eliminating all visibility for several minutes. Now the green around us is all frosted with fine rust-colored grit, as are we all. I watch as Terina gathers some of the dust from a Graingrass leaf the size of a man’s arm, playing it between her fingertips, then tasting it.
“Magnetite. Maghemite. Ulvite,” she gives the assessment of a master geologist. “This came from the Grave.”
“And we’ve seen dust blows like this before,” the Ghaddar says what many of us are certainly thinking.
“Stormcloud,” Murphy agrees grimly.
It’s not unexpected, given what Terina’s told us has been happening here in her homelands. But the storm implies that Chang may be done rebuilding and is ready to fly again. Unless…
“But it only lasted a few minutes,” I try, “and it just rose and faded.”
“Perhaps a test, assuming this is a new fortress he’s building,” the Ghaddar allows.
“Hell of a test,” Murphy appraises. “It looked like it filled the whole Blade and the one next door.”
“Have there been other unusual dust storms like this, your highness?” my father asks Terina.
“There was a strange storm when the Black Clothes first came in their flying machines, but that storm was not nearly so big or so blinding. We could see them pass, even from our Mountain: A half-dozen large cross-shaped vessels with big fans underneath, followed by a similar number of long tubes filled with gas, also moved by fans. We saw them all land inside Lucifer’s Grave. They would make clouds again, usually when the ships came and went, but only a haze.”
“Probably just enough to defeat the Unmaker satellite eyes,” the Ghaddar guesses.
“Did you see where the ships went?” my father asks.
“Usually east or south, not west or north, and not toward my city, and only at night. Each time they returned, days later, they were carrying large loads of what looked like colony scrap. A bigger storm came when they made their city-ship fly, though it did not fly very far: Just up out of the Grave and down again. It was many times bigger than their other flying ships, but it looked skeletal, mostly framework, unfinished. But even then, the clouds barely filled the belly of the Blade, and soon were blown away by the Sun Winds, thin. Not like this.”
“It’s getting closer to operational,” the Ghaddar assesses.
“Assuming it isn’t already,” my father considers the worst.
“Could it have passed over us in the cloud?” I wonder.
“The storm would have shifted, moved with it,” the Ghaddar discounts. “It didn’t pass by us. It faded away.”
“Perhaps he moved east down the Fork, away from us,” I guess again.
“Which would be good for the locals,” Murphy considers. “Maybe he’s packed up and moved on…” He trails off when he sees Terina turn east, in the direction we’ve been heading. Her big eyes are wider with fear.
I open my map, look over the annotations I’ve made based on Terina’s descriptions: the regions known as the North, Central and South Blades; Lucifer’s Grave, in the Central Blade; the rough borders of the Pax Lands in the North Blade; and the Home Mountain, the east-west island range they call the Spine of the Fork, where Katar lies, protected in a box canyon on the far east end of that range (now only a dozen klicks or less from us—we could be there by sunset, even in this terrain, our long journey ended).
I trace a flight-path: If Chang did move south from the Grave, he’ll pass within a few klicks of Katar. If his bot or human patrols have found Terina’s home…
I feel a fresh sinking in my gut. I think I understand why Erickson ran into the storm.
“He’s headed for the Grave,” I think aloud, then clarify when I realize I’m being paid attention to, the others gathering around to look at my map. “Carter. He’s gone after Chang. Maybe Azrael did, too, if he detected anything before we woke up.”
“If Chang is gone, our young Jinn is headed for an empty hole,” my father assesses. “If not, he’s headed into an army of bots, Jinn-killers.”
“So do we follow him?” Murphy repeats his earlier question.
My father digests our options, but we all have the same look on our faces: Urgency balanced against fear. The smart choice, the safer choice, would be…
“No,” my father decides. “We keep moving on our current course, keep to this side of the Spine Range, get our people—and the princess—to Katar, to safety…”
“Assuming Chang isn’t there,” I surprise myself by blurting out. Terina’s eyes lock on me, letting me know I’ve spoken her dread.
“We’re still safer on this side of the mountains, out of sight-line,” my father focuses on immediate concerns.
Murphy is ignoring us. He’s checking his revolver load.
“I’m going after him.”
“To drag him back, or to get a look at the Grave yourself?” the Ghaddar confronts him. He gives her a little lopsided grin that reminds me of Colonel Ram. “Either way, you’ll need help.”
My father looks frustrated, ambivalent, torn between protecting our people and what he really wants to do. Then I make his choice more difficult:
“I want to go, too.”
He looks like he’s going to say no. His eyes narrow. His face hardens and his brow wrinkles like he’s in pain. Then he surprises me by nodding his consent.
“Go with God, my son.”
I want to burst. I want to embrace him. My vision blurs with tears.
“I can show you the way,” Terina eagerly volunteers.
“No, Highness,” my father stops her. “Please. If your home is in danger, we are on the quickest route. And we need you to vouch for our passage.”
She stands frozen, divided. I realize she’s looking into my eyes. Wishing me luck? (Success? Or safe return?)
“Come on, lad,” Murphy prods me. “We can’t get too lost.”
I give my father a reassuring nod, grab spare canisters and ammo, and jog into the green with my two braver and far more dangerous companions.
We quickly decide to try to follow Erickson’s trail through the maze of wild plant-life. Otherwise, we only have a general direction to the place known as Lucifer’s Grave, roughly south-southwest of our camp and perhaps five kilometers across the Boundary into the Central Blade. The Ghaddar and Ambassador Murphy are both excellent trackers, though Murphy has far more experience hunting enemies in dense greenery from his service at Tranquility (and even that was usually limited to the inside of the Cast Dome). Thankfully, the dusting left by the storm leaves obvious signs of Erickson’s hurried passing—even a child on his first scouts could follow it like the path had been drawn for him.
Within minutes, we cross the Boundary into the Central Blade, a border conveniently drawn by a semi-buried Feed Line. I feel a pang of frustration as I realize we’re moving away from the goal we’ve been seeking for the last three weeks.
Those weeks replay now as I weave and climb through the daunting and disorienting green, as if I’m weighing a wasted effort: We weathered the cutting winds of the Narrows, then the heights and drops of the terraced and fissured Badlands (thankfully with Terina as our guide, otherwise we could have been finding our way for many weeks, with thin air and sparse local resources making the trek more desperate). Then it was down into the unbelievably thick
growth of the North Blade, the Pax Lands. Unchallenged (except by the dense green), we crossed the gap of the Boundary, paralleling it, careful to avoid the attention of bot patrols (which we have yet to see, despite Terina’s warnings), finally making it yesterday evening to the western tip of the Spine Range, the Home Mountain of the Katar.
We haven’t seen another living soul despite Terina’s vague but adamant warnings about the Pax and their absolute control of the North Blade, but she would stop us in our tracks every few klicks, starting as we came up upon the ruin of the original Pax colony, and its fantastic swarm of giant “butter-flies”. She would warn us to keep our weapons lowered, then find a relatively clear spot to stand, bare her long left forearm and hold it overhead, showing the forest an ornate circular tattoo on her dyed-red skin. After several minutes of silence she would gesture us to move on. If anyone was close enough to have seen us through the growth, even the Ghaddar didn’t sense them. (Though Azrael did seem to become more alert just prior to each of Terina’s stop-and-gesture rituals, his blue eyes scanning like he could actually see through the plants.)
“Pax Hunter Party,” she explained on the third such pause. “They know I went to seek aid, but you are not who they expected me to return with. They will let you pass in peace if you do not linger or stray from our course.”
It would be easy to assume she was just bluffing to maintain her control over our direction and intention, that there was no one watching us, but then we would find small gifts of fresh food left inside our camp each morning despite our sentries’ best vigilance (including mine, when it was my shift). Terina would bow to the forest before collecting these bundles, which contained bread, nuts and fruit in packages made of large Graingrass leaves. I could only imagine trying to fight an enemy that stealthy, in growth too thick to see past point-blank range and too strangling (and noisy) to move effectively through if retreat was required. If Terina hadn’t been with us, we could have been facing an enemy even more dangerous than the Silvermen, and probably would have been decimated in ambush as soon as we approached the unmarked Pax borders. If we had not managed to rescue her, to befriend her and make our pact, our quest would have ended in massacre.
But when we began to travel the length of the Boundary, I started to see Terina actually look afraid for the first time, and she didn’t show fear even facing torture, death and perhaps worse at the hands of the “Black Clothes” at Concordia. She regularly told us that we were lucky to avoid the bot patrols, telling tales of the slaughter of hunting parties (and then war parties) by monsters that by her descriptions sound like variations of the Boxes and Bugs that Chang used against us in Melas, machines specifically designed to fight far stronger and hardier enemies like the Jinn or Colonel Ram and his kind. Perhaps their absence is sign that Chang has indeed packed up and moved his base elsewhere.
Still, we kept well to the north side of the Boundary, only approaching to tap the line for what we needed. Terina started breathing easier when we made camp last night at the base of western tip of the Spine Range, on the northern side, as if being out of sight-line of the Central Blade (her people’s territory, at least until Chang drove them from it) was a modicum of safety.
All that was left was to travel the length of the Spine Range, then pass into Katar with Terina’s permission.
She hasn’t said much about her city, her civilization, possibly still wary enough of us to not want to reveal their numbers, defenses or assets (only to say that no force has ever passed the “Gate Wall”). She has called her father “War King,” but has spoken in passing of other co-rulers: A Merchant King, an Art Craft King, a Science King, possibly making up a council representative of different occupations, perhaps familial castes. She’s given no indication of a single supreme leader over the others. I can only barely imagine a place beyond anything I’ve yet seen in my travels, including the partner-civilization of Tranquility. A fantastic place in a fantastic land, populated by fantastic people (and beautiful, if they are all of Terina’s quality).
(She’s also not answered any of our questions about the Pax. Either the two neighboring peoples keep secret from each other, or sharing such details with strangers would be a breach of trust.)
As if a graphic reference could make me feel more comfortable in my disorientation, I keep checking my flashcard.
On my satellite image maps, the Trident is rather lopsided and bent: The North Blade is broader overall than the Central, if only because it’s partly open to the rest of Coprates on its north side, making its boundaries less-defined. Both North and Central are roughly twenty klicks long, and around ten wide at their broadest points, while the South Blade is a steep-walled, narrow gorge that cuts west-southwest into the Divide Rim. Inside that gorge lays the site of Eureka Colony, fate unknown, but if it faired as badly as any of the others we’ve seen, there’ll be nothing there but stripped and buried ruins.
Each Blade’s western end forms a sharp tip, a fracture-gorge cut kilometers into the surrounding Rim slopes. Azrael says it reminds him of the “paw-print” of some three-toed clawed terrestrial beast, as if he’s seen such things in more than just ancient teaching files. (Is he a Jinn, old enough to be from Earth? Or is he like Ram, slept from before the Apocalypse? Or possessed by the mind of a being from an undone future? He says he is none of those, but what else can he be?) And the entire “head” of the fork looks bent toward the south, out of true with the “spine”, perhaps twenty degrees.
The Spine Range itself does not form the “shaft” of the Trident—this is a narrower and shearer-walled extension eastward of the Central blade, the Spine Range forming its north slopes, while the Divide Rim is its southern wall. Beyond the eastern tip of the Spine Range, the Shaft valley begins to open and branch out again, eventually forming the eastern fork of the Vajra, thirty klicks or so past Katar. (That means the defined lands of the Pax and Katar are much smaller than our traditional territories in the open Melas desert, much smaller than the territory controlled by the Silvermen, but much richer in terms of obvious resources. It may be that the Pax and Katar have no need of larger territories, or perhaps have only managed to hold these boundaries against others we haven’t heard of yet.)
As for our immediate goal: What Terina indicated as Lucifer’s Grave is best visible on the older images, before the greening masked the terrain in the valley floor. There’s an odd rise in the middle of the Central Blade that looks like a right hand, seen from the thumb-side, making a half-grasping gesture, the “arm” stretching along the central line of the Blade east-northeast, as if reaching for the Spine range from the “claw tip” of the Blade. On the “greened” map, the semi-circular crest of this rise—the thumb and index finger—can be seen as more sparsely covered, apparently rising above the denser forest floor. On the old bare-ground map, this “hand” rises several hundred meters or more above the valley floor. In the semi-circle of its “grip” is a depression a klick-and-a-half across, possibly a large crater or some kind of ancient geologic sink—how deep isn’t clear on my maps, but it looks lower than the surrounding valley floor. (There are a number of old meteor impact craters in this region, more than in Melas or Western Coprates, suggesting the terrain has somehow preserved them against wind erosion, or perhaps this place was victim to a focused shower sometime over the eons.)
Terina was apparently able to identify the dust from the site due to uniquely rich concentrations of certain iron compounds. (The fact that she could make this determination with her physical senses alone suggests that mineralogy and perhaps metallurgy are important studies for her people.) I wonder if this has anything to do with the place’s naming: Lucifer’s Grave might imply the impact point of a great falling star. I suppose we’ll know soon enough. If we keep traveling at this pace, I calculate we’ll come upon the sink by…
The Ghaddar has stopped still, holding up her hand at me. I realize I’ve let myself get distracted between referencing my maps and letting my mind spin away from the current moment. St
upid. I shut down my card, crouch and become still, use my eyes and ears, shut out everything else. Look and listen for a target, a threat.
I see the Ghaddar carefully pull aside her mask. Murphy does the same. It’s an old stealth-trick: Mask filters make a distinctive sound when inhaling and exhaling. Thankfully, the air is thick and rich enough here that light-headedness can be staved off by a passive oxygen bleed under the nose, so a talent for extended breath-holding isn’t necessary. (It also allows our canisters to last three to four times longer than they would in the deserts of home.)
We have a problem significantly worse than noise, of course: Our cloaks, patterned to blend into the Melas deserts, are bright ruddy beacons in this green world. We have to cling to the growth, get under the leaves and vines, and that makes its own noises.
But I already hear other noises: Rustling. Crushing. And then the unmistakable sounds of machinery. Motors. I can’t tell how far away—sound doesn’t travel the same through green as it does through open desert air. The growth muffles it, blunts it. But whatever’s moving doesn’t seem to care about stealth. It also doesn’t seem to be coming closer, more like moving across our path.
We hold, wait. Breathe quietly.
I consider bringing up by binoculars, or my rifle scope, and trying infrared. Then I remember that Chang’s machines don’t radiate much heat.
But we do.
This thought hits me just as I hear the crunching and motor sounds suddenly go silent, stop. A few long seconds pass without any breathing. And then I hear a different motor noise.
“DOWN!” the Ghaddar shouts, and I dive into the vine-laced ground. Full-auto fire cuts over my back with the deafening buzz that I know is a motorized cannon. It effectively saws through the foliage, sweeping at us. I realize we have no solid cover, nothing that can stop bullets. I try to make myself as flat as I can, but feel my cloak ripped across my back. I can’t even see what’s…
The God Mars Book Four: Live Blades Page 13
