She accepts this with a sigh. "I'll die."
"We're coming back," I promise her, though I know it may be another lie. "We're a chord. You be strong for us and we'll be strong for you."
"I'm already gone, Me," she says, then she stands and points, shifting gears abruptly. "I'll put telemetry receivers here and here. I'll build your map. Just don't forget me."
"Never," I say, but resist saying more. I want to, but there's nothing to say, and every second counts now. She drifts away amongst her heaped heads setting up equipment.
Ray's hand comes on my shoulder. Doe stands beside me, the huge cannon now mounted on her left shoulder. It almost looks comical, with only the suit exos serving to hold it up. If she fired it and the accelerator at the same time she'd be thrown into a somersault.
I almost laugh, but dial it back. The bonds are getting to me too.
"We have to go," Doe says.
I nod.
I shoot my grapnel and lead us to the plain black ceiling. Directly above the Deathgate Doe rigs a second candlebomb, and without further ado triggers the blast. Nothing falls out this time; there's hardly even any smoke. I look back to So a final time, moving amongst her severed heads like a memory. Another tone in the chord lost to save the whole, I think, to save Ritry Goligh, then I shoot a grapnel up through the ruptured gap and ascend into-
-darkness.
It feels like being pushed through a slimy soap bubble; resisting my body until it pops and the world reverberates like a plucked string. I feel dizzy and sick in the dark; something just happened but I don't know what. I blink and the tracers halt as I hit a yielding ceiling.
My visor is dark; it takes me a few seconds to realize the suit has powered down. I give the command to restart and my suit lights fire up, illuminating some kind of pinkish, organic cave around me, with five twisting tunnels stretching away from me.
I turn and stare. The tunnels are roughly circular in cross-section, a mottled pink with spidery purple lines, like I've ascended into the veins of a giant body. The tunnels flex and shift in time to a distant thumping pulse, like blood pumping from a great heart.
thump thump
thump thump
But it's not blood. I feel it in the vibrations, like I can feel the churn of the Molten Core. Something is coming.
"Me, come in, answer me now!"
The voice in my HUD slaps me alert and I switch on blood-mic. "I'm here, Doe, what is it?"
The relief in her voice is palpable. "Oh, thank Goligh. Me, what happened? Where did you go?"
"I'm inside," I answer, slinging my feed of the pulsing tunnels. "What happened?"
"What happened? You've been out of contact for ten minutes."
I check my suit feeds, but the internal clock has reset. Ten minutes? "It felt like seconds to me, I-"
"What the hell is up there?" Ray interrupts. "What are we looking at, Me?"
"Tunnels," I say. "They look organic, like this whole thing is alive and we're inside it. Get up here."
"Roger," says Doe, "inbound."
The signal cuts and I wait for two more grapnels lines to shoot into the ceiling beside me, but they don't come. Time lag, I think.
thump thump
thump thump
I unharness and drop onto the tunnel surface; it bows beneath my weight, the meat of the floor indenting under my feet.
"Doe, Ray," I bark into blood-mic. "So?"
No answer comes.
I look down into the hole I came through but there is nothing to see, only a well of inky darkness. I switch on the suit's telemetry aerials and they start recording then transmitting the sonar map of this strange, undulating place back to So.
"So, get me that map as soon as you can."
thump thump
thump thump
The sound grows louder. The vein-tunnels throb harder. I lean in to study the veiny surface of the nearest wall; it glistens and shrinks away at my touch. I've never seen anything like this before, and I don't know what it means.
A sudden voice in my head startles me.
"Me?"
It's So, I realize, forcing myself to be calm. She sounds faint and whispery, like a ghost.
"So, can you hear me? Come in, So."
After a five-second delay of hazy white noise, she answers. "I have you, Me. Do you have me?"
She sounds so plaintive. "I do. So, I'm sending telemetries, are you receiving?"
"Yes." There's a pause. "Me, did you send Ti here?"
A chill steals over my heart. For a second I think I must have misheard her. "Come again, So, did you say Ti?"
"She's here," So answers, her tone sing-songy and frail. "She's just looking at me."
My throat seizes up. "That's not possible, So. Ti's dead."
"Oh. She's here. What should I tell her?"
There are no words. I gulp. I just left her behind minutes ago, and she wasn't this bad. But I don't know. Nothing abou this place makes sense. I force a calm I'm not feeling into my voice. "It's OK. You don't need to say anything. La's one of us, she knows this is important." I stare down at the inky hole; still no grapnels. "So, do you see Ray and Doe?"
"Ray and Doe? No. They went up. Aren't they with you?"
They went up. Of course they did. I focus; So can't help me with that, but I still need her.
"Do you have a map for me?"
"A map," she muses, and the image comes to me of her floating like flotsam on a slow tide. She sounds so lost. "Yes. Ti, what do you think of this? Are my calculations correct?"
"Send it to me," I manage, choking the words through my tight throat. "Don't worry about Ti."
"Sending," So murmurs. The line crackles then an image slings into my HUD; a wireframe schematic of a multi-shelled sphere riddled with passageways and odd little nodules. A red dot flashes in the outermost layer.
"And the route?"
"La's here now too," So whispers. She sounds like a child version of herself, murmuring in the moments before drifting off to sleep. "They're holding hands, Me. They want me to come with them."
"Don't go with them!" I snap. "So, I need you. The rest of the chord needs you. Stay with me!"
A long pause follows. "They're upset with me. They're eating the heads. Me, I don't want to eat the heads."
"Then don't. Give me the route, So!"
"Yes. The route. It's a rotational maze, Me," she explains, turning business-like again. "I took the flat map on your chest and spun it to a globe, like a concertina. It should match what you see around you. Here." A red line appears like a long worm folded through the map, leading to the center. "Don't step off the route. I can't predict what would happen if you stray."
"What would happen?"
She laughs; a tinkling, simple sound. "I can't predict, Me. You're silly."
"Then we won't," I say, trying to brace her with my own conviction. "I promise, now So-"
She interrupts. "They're calling, Me! We'll throw bodies down the shaft. It's a game! Last one to bed's a sore loser."
"So," I call, "stop, that's an order."
She kills the blood-mic connection. I blink away the map and try to force the link to go through, but just then two grapnels shoot up through the inky hole and dig into the pulsing roof above. Doe, Ray and Far follow.
"Holy shit," Ray says, blinking in the dark, powered-down confines of his HUD. He doesn't look great. "That felt weird."
thump thump
The tunnels contort around us as a heavy pulse hits.
"There's a time lag coming up," I say, guiding them on to the fleshy floor. Ray looks at his feet in disgust as they sink in to the meaty floor, while Doe takes in the tunnels silently. "You'll have to power your suits back up; give yourself a moment to adjust."
They do it; their suit whitelights flicker to life and the inner-HUD illumination shows me their pale, sweating faces. I notice strange weals marking Far's face and neck. "What happened to Far?" I ask.
Ray lifts the boy slightly from his side-h
olster to peer at his face through the visor. "By Goligh. It looks like he's been branded. Those marks weren't there before."
I shudder. Coming up through the soap bubble darkness was unpleasant. "Far, are you all right?"
He just stares back at me blackly. I log into his suit to read his vital signs; they look a little faint, but solid enough. I'm about to say something else when Doe puts a hand on my arm.
"We need to move right now."
Another pulse hits that almost knocks me from my feet.
thump thump
Doe steadies me and points down one of the tunnels, where the walls seem to be distending. As we watch they bulge inward to meet in the middle. Orders catch in my throat as the walls conjoin seamlessly then split apart like an over-ripe peach; the tunnel edges form a sucking black mouth at the head of a worm-like body. It begins to slither back inside itself, toward us.
I stare in horror.
thump thump
Its lips smack in time with the hard rhythm of some strange Soul's heartbeat, peeling the tunnel walls into itself like a tube inside a tube, and finally I get the word out of my frozen throat.
"Run!"
I sling up So's map and lead the chord at a mad sprint along the red line she marked out, deeper into this branching network of heaving tunnels that sway with their own life. Our feet pummel the moist floor and the worm slashes closer behind while Far starts screaming again on blood-mic. I scan So's map for shelter as I take a sharp left into what looks like the ventricle of a heart, followed by an inclined left down into a sludgy low-ceilinged cave.
"Hurry, Me!" Doe shouts over Far's wailing.
I chance a look back; the snake-worm thing is gaining on us. I find what looks to be a triangular room just ahead and-
thump thump
The pulse grows thunderous and knocks me off my feet. A gush of viscous fluid washes over me, carrying the gnashing worm on a tide, and I slip, try to pull myself up on the wall but there is no purchase to be gained.
"Stay down," comes Doe's shout, then-
BOOM
I feel the cannon ball rush over my head like the trim tanks venting in magma, skidding off the intestinal walls to impact solidly against the worm's face. It tears a gout of white meat away and thick blood spumes out, sending the pulse haywire.
thump thump
thump thump
Doe fires again.
BOOM
Then Ray hoists me up and I'm in the lead again, running along So's route and directly toward another gnashing worm's mouth.
The route's cut off. I shoulder my musket and fire a continuous stream of lead balls at the smacking lips, peppering it with purple weals that spit dark blood, even as I spin So's sphere in my HUD searching for another place to hide.
I find a circular module off to the right, off the route, but I don't see any choice now. Doe's cannonballs aren't stopping them.
thump thump
BOOM
Another cannot shot from Doe wins us precious seconds and I lead us off the route to a palpitating mass of wall where the entrance to the nodule should be. I stab my musket into the glistening flesh and slice it down like I'm undoing a zip, releasing a shower of slime.
Ray drives his bayonet in beside me and zips in parallel as twin worms thump toward us with Doe just barely out of reach.
thump thump
thump thump
I force the gouge open to reveal a dank circular room, and Ray dives through the gap.
"Go," I shout, and Doe follows him through, then the lips are upon me and I finally grasp what they are; lethal cousins to the Lag. At once I know what I have to do, and toss the memory of Ti into them like a grenade.
It explodes and their mouths rupture in a spray of pink mist. I dive through the gap and into the circular chamber beyond, where Ray slams a rusted metal hatch closed behind me.
I pant and Doe lifts me to my feet.
It's a round and rusted metal room, and every surface is stamped with a stippled pattern of initials.
RG
I snort. Ritry Goligh.
thump thump
thump thump
The rusted hatch bucks inward; Ray leans his weight against it without needing to be told. The worms are coming still. I don't know what there is to say, as various understandings flood through my mind; I just threw something at the Lag, some memory of myself, but I don't know what it was. The hole it made aches inside, though, like I gave up part of myself.
"Ti," Far says. He's not screaming anymore. I look at him, trying to frame words around that word 'Ti', like it's a concept I can't understand. I don't know what it means; then it is gone, and I can't even remember what he said. Memories are ammunition, and when they're gone they're gone.
I blink and scan the room again, and finally notice the book.
It is enormous, bound in red leather and filling the space like a shock-attack lowboat. The title is written across its front in embossed gold.
VEN
But who is Ven? I do not know; I can't remember.
The lips smack at the door behind us, the thump thump pulse burrs through the tin floor. We have moments only. If memory is a weapon, we need to gear up.
RITRY GOLIGH
9. GODSHIPS
It takes four hours before the first of the godships comes into sight. They are a dirty brown smudge on the clay-gray horizon, rusted hulls split like rotten bananas on a garbage patch of dark rock, barely emerging above the waves.
I try to count them, but the bucking of the speedboat against the rough water prevents me. There have to be dozens; maybe the whole fleet. I see half a hull sticking up at a diagonal here, a tilted glimpse of white-above decks there, a bulbous prow jutting proudly up like a long nose. It's a vast ocean graveyard, and the closer I get the bigger they are.
I shake my head to clear it, and am greeted by the drilling pain of my Arcloberry hangover. A thousand brain cells dead with every sip. My shoulder stings in the salt wind where Don Zachary's bullet grazed it, though the cut has long dried over. My stomach throbs where it met his bat.
I need to lie down.
The godships draw closer, looming like brown cliffs, spotted in places with the sheen of intact glass. Several hulls have their backs broken over the rocks, left upturned like drooping brown slugs. There are forecastles skewed at wild angles like dirty wind-blown icicles. There's a gossamer network of cables, threads and walkways strung between them, like spiderwebs shining with winter dew.
The fuel gauge on the speedboat blips. The dial has sunk down below the halfway mark, and I wonder if it'll be enough to take me back to the Skulks.
I choke the engine down beside one of the bigger, more intact ships, so close I can smell the iron stink of its rust and hear the wind whistling through its cracks and broken portholes. It is completely upended in the water, a cragged brown wall of hull leading up to the keel. The rear end has sheared away, perhaps torn by the tsunami that fated it, or one that followed. One of its propellers though remains nearby, wedged like a sparkling star in the rocks and scoured a bright silver by decades of corrosive saltwater.
I can read the ship's name, stenciled in paint almost too faint to make out, upside down toward the underside's bulbous nose.
SAINT AQUINAS OF YLEP
From the proto-Rusk federation. I look around at the others, representatives of all the major nation-states who united in faith before the global tsunamis hit: Afri-Jarva, the Gaullic Federation, Sino-Anglica, the draggled remnants of the Texarchy. All were gathered up by the unstoppable pulse of tsunami waves and dumped here.
The Ylep shows signs of recent habitation. At the top there's a line of slipshod timber walkway bolted into the great ship's keel, leading along to a few tiny huts beaten out of ship's tin, within one of which glimmers a bright reflection.
I recognize the pattern of a Fresnel lens, signifying a lighthouse. We often ported these lenses through the War and dropped them in four-man payloads on strategic rock outcroppings or old
oil-rigs, before submersing again. Focused light from the Fresnels was unjammable, with a range of over fifty nautical miles; far enough to get a signal back to our base ships moored at the War line.
There is no sign of any life here now. Perhaps the last wave fifteen years ago cleared them all out. The walkway sags, and the haulage rope hanging down the Ylep's side no longer reaches the water.
"Hello!" I call.
No answer comes, only the lonely echo of my own voice. I lean in to guide the speedboat through a maze of rocks toward the Ylep.
Rounding the great ship's cloven middle, I can clearly see the damage wrought when the rear half was torn away. The hull in cross-section is warped; several decks lower down have been crushed while others have popped too wide. It's like looking at a dollhouse with the front wall open, with all its brickwork and plumbing laid bare; elevator shafts with cars hanging like cans of beans on strings, corridors that are holes leading into darkness, one end of a grand hall where the chandelier lies broken on the floor that was once the roof.
I imagine people from the past moving inside, servants and masters, dancers and lovers, leading their lives. They are thick in the air like ghosts, and perhaps it is the hangover, but I feel the weight of them pressing down upon me.
I nudge the speedboat forward, down a channel in the rock that leads into a berth at the Ylep's base. It grows gloomy as I enter the makeshift garage and bring the speedboat to a halt.
There are other small craft here, two jet-skis and a tug barge resting on a metal platform above the water. There is graffiti on the walls, written in the jagged proto-Rusk alphabet that my old memory implants translate faithfully.
MEN'S HEAD
WOMEN'S HEAD
I kill the engine and step out of the speedboat. The metal harbor is solid, and I scan the walls for a route heading up, finding a sprayed red sign indicating BRIDGE and pointing to stairs.
The stairwell is bright and broad, with regular portholes letting in floods of light. I climb peeling plaster steps that were once the ceiling, my feet clanging loudly on metal, and it gets lighter and breezier as I rise, with the cracked portholes let in sighing sea air. Arrows for the BRIDGE point me upward, while others appear alongside them.
Soul Jacker Box Set Page 9
