Far shucks me out of this body, I see the glinting dust and crackling purple stars of the aether for a few brief seconds then I'm zooming in to a landing.
4. SUPRARENE
I open my eyes in the suprarene's belly.
It's dark but for low yellow downlights illuminating the floor. Reorienting myself briefly, I look up at the riveted ceiling, etched with the faint shadows of bolts. This is the deck where King Ruin once kept his glass menagerie. Now we keep the spare hands here, lying in subterranean dark to wait for the moment we call them to service.
I click back the glass lid of my pod and a hiss of gas escapes. There's no one to welcome me in, but then this is the fourth time I've done this and I don't need a welcome party. I send a silent thanks back to Far but he's already gone, jacked ahead to a temporary hand on the Wall deck above.
I climb out of the pod feeling like a marine freshly forged in the Bathyscaphe, my new copper skin near-black in the low lights. Padding to a plastic trunk nearby I find the standard gray jumpsuit of all hands waiting for me. The clothes smell fresh as the day they were woven, probably three decades past. I pull them on, snap the captain's star into place then take a long swig of water, which should help with the migraine.
Too many jumps, Far would say. Every jump you expose yourself. It worries me, but the brood still haven't managed to jack the bridge, though they've been trying for a year. Some came close but they all flamed out at the Solid Core blast door, unable to handle the enormity of the aether. Each time we felt them burst like rotten fruit, their deaths washing over us all.
They're learning, Far warns. But then so are we.
I head to the deck elevator and step by step my Soul locks into command of this new nervous system, pushing the migraine aside. I take a last look back at the hand-pods stretching into darkness behind me, taking up a whole deck of the suprarene; they're half empty already. Soon we'll run out of pre-cored hands, and I don't like to think about what we'll do then. We have to finish the King and the brood before we reach that point…
The elevator arrives and I crank the grille open, step in and set it grinding up toward the Wall, feeling the buzz of excitement in the bonds fuming down from Yena and Ray and So, along with the thump thump of the Wall. Decks pass me by with stenciled signs:
HABITATION
HYDROPONICS
ARMORY
HOSPICE
In a minute I'm there, looking out over the dim blue glow of the Wall. It encompasses a whole deck; a networked array of one hundred bulky Electro-Magnetic Resonance machines, all locked into a unified cycle that thumps like the pulse of a giant and charges the air with a molten flow of electrostatic.
THUMP THUMP
THUMP THUMP
THUMP THUMP
A hundred of the King's survivors man it, each lying in the donut hole of their own EMR with an operative watching on, each trained in basic Soul jacking techniques. It affords us our main defense against attack on the bonds, blotting us from prying eyes.
Faint blue light spills from each EMR monitor station, outlining the block-grid of alleys between these hulking plastic-metallic machines like the pathways through a Skulk. Through floor-to-ceiling windows at the edges the desert burns like a russet torc as the sun goes down.
There's no more time to waste.
I stride between the EMRs, each as big as a forging pod, to find Ray, So and Yena standing in person around a holograph desk, with Far, La and Ti present through hands. They're all looking at an interweaving cloud of lights hovering above the desk; some kind of map. Yena looks up and I feel her excitement on the bonds.
"We've got him," she says, her dark eyes wide and lustrous. "This could be it."
"Tell me," I say.
So taps the desk and the complex holograph simplifies to a three-dimensional representation of the aether, with thousands of purple points of light representing Souls, many now shrouded with shimmering gold shields.
"I never learned to read this," Ray mutters suspiciously.
"This is Far's map of the aether," So says, even as she expertly works controls to set the map spinning. "As we all know, the King used to be at the center." The middle of the map highlights, and the ghosts of two spiraling suns appear within. A swift animation plays out, as the tiny figure of Doe approaches one of the Suns and explodes, triggering a blast wave that leaves only one Sun remaining, which fades then simply winks out.
So looks up. "We've been looking for where that half of the King went ever since Doe killed his twin, but we were acting on bad information. Pieces of the aether, pieces of the real world, but never enough to correlate the two. Now though we have a physical trace from the last Court, and we have Far's hook on the aether."
I raise one eyebrow. "You've got the correlation?"
"Yes," says So, and brings up a map of the Hollow Desert to overlay the aether; dunes, rock and villages over stars and bond-lines. She works a few controls that warp the two maps, bringing them into some kind of union. I watch in awe as the maps ripple and flex organically, latching on like an octopus' suckers. "It's more art than science," So goes on, "but you're looking at it." She looks up at me and grins proudly. "I'm confident we can infer geographical location from topographical locus in the aether."
I look at Ray. He's grinning widely too. I'm not sure either of us understand this wholly.
"Give it to me plain."
"We found the King on the aether," So says. "He's right here."
A spot on the map flares red. It doesn't mean anything to me, but it could be everything. I stare at the purple hues continually blurring and bending over sand as the map realigns in line with some unseen algorithm.
My mouth is dry. "Where is that?"
"Lefkandi," says So, a word I don't recognize. "It's an ancient town on the Ohkotsk Sea at the edge of the Hollow Desert, just seventy kilometers from here. Once it was a graveyard of empires, thousands of years ago. All that remains are some ruined statues to ancient heroes, buried in the sand. Here." She sweeps away the twisting flow of the aether, leaving only the desert and the spot at the edge glowing red.
I try to frame words. We've searched for so long.
"It's a locus of extraordinary strength in the aether," So says, "massively shielded and incredibly dense, one of just a few such sites anywhere. We're confident this is him. But it's not only him." A second red dot flashes up alongside the King; exceeding his brightness. "This doesn't correspond to any brood member we know, but it's a very powerful Soul. Its probably the reason we haven't been able to track the King; this location doesn't correspond to any escape vector the King might have taken on his own, but…"
My excitement surges as the missing piece falls into focus. I can see it in the twin flashing blips, like new orbiting Suns. We've been reading their growth on the bonds all this time and watching them surge; this Soul was just the first and the best.
"You're telling me the King didn't escape on his own. One of the brood dragged him here."
"Exactly," So says. A moment passes as this sinks in. "The strongest brood-member we've yet seen."
I gaze at the map's flashing dots and feel something close to divine grace fall upon me. Maybe this is it.
"Ritry Goligh," I murmur.
"That's what I said," says Ray.
I look up at Far. "Do they know we know?"
He shakes his head. "I doubt it. They haven't passed through the bridge yet, so they've no way of knowing what we've seen and what we haven't."
I lick my dry lips, thinking all the ramifications through. This is what we've been waiting for. This is the closest we've come to their heart, enough to blow the old network of bonds to shreds and break them all in one fell swoop. I gauge the distance on the map, then look up and see all eyes on me. Seventy clicks by Dactyl would make us too visible, would take an hour at least and they'd have time to relocate. The suprarenes would take all day.
I turn to La's hand, thinking of her subthonic burrowing deep underground. "Can you do it
in a day, La? Can you surface silently?"
"I can do it in a night," she says. "Come up hard with the dawn. We'll be on them while they're taking their morning piss."
This is it, then. One more night and the war could be over. "Do it. I'll lead the attack." I turn, building out the whole of the assault. "Ray, merge the suprarenes into a standard defensive diamond right here, giving nothing away. Ti, you'll be on high alert for reprisals. Far, prepare to throw more hooks out; I'm done hunting and I don't want any of these bastards to escape again."
I look round at them. They look back at me.
"It's just another Solid Core," I say. "We've done this a thousand times before. Any questions?"
There are no questions.
"Get ready. Get some rest, if you can. Tomorrow we end this war."
I stride out of the hall.
Two decks up I stand on the suprarene's open top. The night air smells like desert orchids and distant thunder. I walk along the metal grille amongst my Dactyls, their cooling engines clicking soothingly in the night air, to the forward prow platform. There I look out over the dune horizon, faint and dark but crested with silvery lines of moonlight glinting off sand, like froth on the Arctic waves.
In a day we may have King Ruin. It's hard to imagine. We've come so far since the days of the Skulks. Words from the last Court come back to me.
RITRY GOLIGH IS NOT MY GOD
They write it at the scenes of their orgies when all they really want is a god to lead them forward. I've tried to reason with them but they won't listen. I've killed them and they've killed me and the battle line barely changes. King Ruin's empire cannot be reasoned with or tolerated in some diminished form; it can only be destroyed.
I'm going to have to wipe them out.
The dunes are beautiful like this, but they do nothing to change the darkest secrets they hide, a thousand Courts buried underneath. How many innocents will die before it's done?
Yena comes to stand by my side. She can't read my thoughts, she knows nothing more than what I show from the outside, but here she is.
"So many stars," she says, leaning her head against my shoulder. This simple action stirs a welter of emotions and I turn to her. She is beautiful for her strength, an example to us all. In many ways she is stronger than me. She survived in the glass menagerie for years, driven by hope in the face of all-consuming despair.
I stop thinking and kiss her. She folds into my arms like she has always belonged there. We are both so damaged that it feels like communion. This is what being a tone of Ritry Goligh should feel like; this is the love we all seek. In these moments I don't think of Loralena or my children waiting halfway across the world, I only think about Me.
They will wait for Ritry Goligh. One day when we win this war I'll try to go back, to Become some version of Ritry Goligh again and go home, but for now I need this. In my quarters a deck below we kiss and sink onto the bed, and into each other, and begin to move in slow, sweet, aching tandem.
5. ERUPTION
I wake long before dawn, stirred by the movements of the chord. Far is deep through the bridge and scanning the aether, So is intent upon her maps, Ray is running checks on all the suprarene cannon and La is drawing close to Lefkandi in her subthonic.
I nudge Yena's leg from my own and rise. It wouldn't be fair for her to wake and find this body unconscious beside her, absent my presence. I kiss her on her cheek, she murmurs, then I'm out and padding down the dark metal corridor toward the Wall.
"Report," I say through the bridge as I ride the slow industrial elevator up from the barracks.
"T-minus ten kilometers," La replies. "We're rising at fifty feet per hour, so far avoiding bedrock. I think we're on course to surface in thirty minutes, an hour before the dawn."
"Good," I reply, "are you ready for me?"
"Your chord's laid out."
"Far?"
"Ready," he says.
It's enough. My heart starts to thump, pumping adrenaline into this body. Today I'm going to see King Ruin again. He tore me to pieces. He's the reason Doe had to die. Now I'm going to keep all the promises I made while he tortured me in his white room, and tear him to shreds.
The elevator opens on the Wall, still at this hour but for the immense thump thump of so many EMRs. Ray is waiting for me, big and dark though he's not so big and not so dark anymore. He pulls me into an embrace with no need to talk.
"Yena?" he asks.
"Sleeping," I say. "Are we in position?"
"Tanks are in a standard defensive diamond well within our territory, nothing that should raise suspicion. Unless they've got radar that can see underground they'll have no idea we're coming."
I nod. He nods.
I get into the nearest EMR and pass through the bridge, opening my eyes near-instantly in another hand, in the subthonic one thousand feet underground with La looking down at me.
"Captain," she says.
"La," I answer, rolling out of the bay. There's no headache because I haven't fully crossed over, keeping my Soul back on the suprarene. This is more like remote controlling a hand than occupying it. It means a little delay in my motor control, but that's the price I pay for the element of surprise.
I look down and see they've decked me out in segmented black armadillo armor already; I may as well have forged to life inside the Bathyscaphe.
I look around the subthonic's hand-bay, a place I've only faintly sensed through La before. It's dark, dank and squat, rimmed and shaped by pipes, even tighter than our sublavic. The grind of the forward drill reverberates dully through everything, traveling at nearly twenty knots through clean sand. I can feel how happy La is to be here, this place that so closely resembles our old ship. She even looks different, having taken a new body since Becoming. She didn't want to look like her sister anymore, just another reaction to the King. Now she's short, handsome, and I believe she's more promiscuous than Ray, though I try not to pry.
"Your chord," she says, and points to the ten bodies lying in bays either side of me. I reach out and into them, feeling them move beneath my commands. For a moment there is the standard dizzying impetus of so many eyes, ears, and skins flooding into my mind, but in seconds I acclimate. I've done this so many times with so many hands that they just feel like another combat suit.
"Good," I say. "Take me to the con."
"Yes, sir."
My chord and I troop in tandem, following La. I run them through minor calisthenics as we pass up the subthonic's long thin body, stretching their bodies and minds. I have them draw rifles, mime tossing mindbomb grenades and practice sheltering from ideation mines as the grind of the forward drill grows louder.
"We're above the alimentary canal," La shouts over the dull roar. In her mind I see schematics of the subthonic laid out; a Lag-like machine with a heavy jaw-drill at the front, a long hollow tube bored through the middle and out the back, through which chewed-up debris is propelled outward. "We eat sand and shit gold."
I laugh. Another change in La since the Sunken World is she's cruder.
"As long as it gets us there."
We climb a low inclined metal ramp, breathing in the smells of diesel oil and burnt tar, then emerge into the deployment hangar. It's long and low leading up to the conning jaws at the front, with weaponry hanging from webbing in the walls and filled with dark assault vehicles parked in a neat square.
"We've got three groundhogs," La shouts over the drill's roar, patting the haft of each semi-armored vehicle as we pass it; camouflaged orange and brown troop carriers with howitzer mounts on top. I already envision splitting my chord three to two groundhogs each and four to ride with me in the lead.
"And one Jeriko tank," La goes on, striking hard the flat shank of a great hulk of beige metal, spiky with guns, howitzer mounts and a central Bofors cannon. The hollow machine makes a deep bonging sound. "I'll drive it to lay down covering fire."
I look around the bay and feel the adrenaline start to pump afresh. King Ruin is not
expecting this. King Ruin and whoever is helping him are going to die today.
La grins, then points up to two great pistons at the far end of the hangar, culminating in huge ball bearings.
"The jaws," she shouts. "Assault plan dictates the the subthonic surfaces at forty-five degrees, the bottom jaw drops to ground level and the top lifts wide to give us clearance. We'll have a straight shot out onto sand."
"Like a shark," I say.
"A full-metal shark," La adds, "spitting out baby sharks. We'll be on them before they even know we've broached their perimeter."
"How many arenes have you got?" I ask.
"Twenty battle-ready that can ride along with you. Ti and I will control them."
It's more than any raid we've gone with since we took Calico. I'd like Dactyls for the sheer maneuverability, but that would show our hand too much. It'll have to be enough.
"So?" I call through the bridge.
"No movement on radar, Me," So answers. "If they know we're coming, they haven't shown it through any major movement."
"Far?"
"The King's still there, and the brood-member with him," he answers. "The aether hasn't shifted."
This is it. I climb my chord into the groundhogs as the subthonic grinds us closer to the surface and the rattling gets louder.
"T-minus one minute," La shouts over the roar. "Brace for eruption."
--.
A. ALONE
The Bathyscaphe is silent.
I wake in my forging pod slumped against the wall, with a stinging pain in my throat and no memory of where it came from. Breathing comes to me raggedly, and I have to labor to get the oxygen in.
I look around, becoming aware of the stillness. The forging pod's flame is long gone and I feel only half-birthed. I'm not all here. I look down and see my black sublavic combat suit stretching down to arms, legs, feet, hands, but something is wrong. There is yellow writing across my chest, written upside down as if it intended for me alone to read.
Soul Jacker Box Set Page 42
