Far Called Trilogy 01 - In Dark Service (26 page)

‘All that we’ve got now, I reckon, is each other,’ said Carter. ‘You bunk down here if you want. As far as I’m concerned any fight we had is behind us, in Northhaven.’

‘I’ll stay where I landed,’ spat Duncan, trying to keep hold of his temper. ‘And if you get Adella hurt or dead in your wild schemes, we’ll find out how far our fight travels.’

‘You’re still a Landor, all right,’ said Carter. ‘Nurse a grudge for a million miles.’

‘You’ve got the distance about right, if nothing else,’ said Willow.

‘We’re a long way from your family’s fine and mighty name, Willow,’ said Carter. ‘The slave drivers running the sky mines don’t care if you’re a Landor or a Smith, just the tonnage you can dig out for them.’

‘At least they care about something that
matters
.’ Willow tugged Duncan away, back into one of the connecting tunnels. ‘Leave them. This isn’t helping anything.’

Duncan followed reluctantly, another lump taken out of his pride. Willow shook her head, exasperated. ‘Of all the stubborn, pig-headed…’

‘I can’t believe that man,’ said Duncan. ‘All this way, so far from Northhaven and he still treats her like a gun dog on a hunt. Only fit to trot along behind him, while he makes up his mind which way he’s going.’

‘I think you should take a second look at which one’s the master and which one’s the hound,’ said Willow. She seized him by the arm. ‘I need your head fixed on staying alive in this hellhole, Duncan.
Please
. Not a single thought or tear or regret wasted on Adella Cheyenne. Not with us held prisoner here, no better than stolen ponies.’

She was right. They were still family, still together, whatever else fate threw at them. ‘I’ll look out for you, Willow. You have my word on that.’

‘We’ll look out for each other, and I mean more than just the two of us. Because if we really are alone out here, every Northhaven man and woman on the station is going to need to pull together.’

Hell, I couldn’t even save us back at home, could I? All three of us plucked from the riverbank by slavers. It’s no wonder Adella feels safer with Carter. I’ve driven her back into the arms of that blockhead. And, eventually, he’s going to give these Vandian slavers all the excuse they need to toss her corpse into their ugly damn volcano.

SIX

A RUDE AWAKENING

A heavy splash of icy water brought Jacob back to a groggy conciousness. His hands had been bound behind his back, his legs tied tight near the ankles with rope. The pastor’s first thought was that he must have been captured by dog-riders, but as his eyes focused on the surroundings; he saw he was seated in a forest clearing. A line of army tents in Weyland colours had been pegged out in front of a rocky outcrop, four or five royal guardsmen on sentry duty. A groan to Jacob’s right drew his attention. Wiggins was tied to a tree with coils of rope, his face a patchwork mess of blood and bruises. Beneath the constable, Sergeant Nix was building a pile of kindling. Each of the trees in the clearing held a body, blackened and burnt remains of rail guild uniforms smouldering on the corpses.

‘What the hell is this?’ coughed Jacob, the hands of a soldier reaching down to grab Jacob’s black duster and drag him across the grass towards Sergeant Nix. The soldier emptied the rest of the cup of water in Jacob’s face by way of an answer.

‘This, Father,’ grinned Nix. ‘Is what we call… an interrogation.’

‘Where’s Major Alock?’

‘Oh, he’s gone back to the train to announce that you all died as heroes, courageously attempting to bring back the railway men’s bodies.’

Jacob stared in horror at the burnt corpses ringing the clearing. ‘Sheplar, Khow!’

Nix just laughed. ‘The leatherneck and your Rodalian friend are still snoring off the sleepy juice we slipped into your canteens. Don’t want you all awake at the same time.’ He raised a piece of kindling. ‘Only got two hands to work with, ain’t I? Roused Stumpy here first, thought he’d tell me what I need to know, and then we could just put bullets in the rest of your sleeping heads, do you the favour of a dog-rider bonfire
after
you’re dead.’

‘You’re a real friend,’ spat Wiggins, from the tree. His voice sounded hoarse, probably exhausted from screaming.

‘Sure I am, Stumpy. Remember you can stop it if you talk to me.’

‘I talk and you’re going to kill us all anyway.’

‘True enough,’ Nix smiled. ‘Otherwise you’d only go and tell everyone how those two money chests on the train weren’t lost to the dog-riders when it was taken to ransom the guildsmen.’

‘You’re ex-cavalry,’ spat Wiggins. ‘How the hell can you do this to us?’

‘Only served a year on the frontier,’ said Nix. ‘But that was all the time we needed to show the bandits it was healthier for ’em to move on to parts foreign.’

‘What are you talking about?’ coughed Jacob.

Nix turned around and booted Jacob in the stomach, sending him rolling across the grass. ‘That’s not how a questioning works, is it, Father? But I’ll tell the both of you, just so you know how far this is going to roll. A few years ago we were a mercenary regiment, Weyland men, fighting in the Burn for princes, dukes, barons, bishops – lots of fancy titles and most ruling over not much more land than the range of their best brutes’ guns. They called us the Army of
Bad Justus
. That’s a play on words, right. Bad justice. In the end we got ourselves more than just a name, we got an offer from the government at home too. To come back to Weyland with full pardons for all the shit we’d done over here that had made us cross the sea in the first place. All we had to do was get rid of the nomads, raiders, bandits and ne’er-do-wells plaguing the country out east. Easy work, because the one thing you get out in the Burn is an education in real soldiering.’ He indicated the blackened corpses tied to the tree trunks. ‘You think this was hard? Radioing ahead, getting a few friends to come down from Talekhard to bushwhack a train and that patrol of amateurs from Ivah? Taking a torch to a living soul is nothing compared to what we did in the Burn. Land’s seen centuries of blood spilt on the other side of the water, warring just for the pleasure of it. Hell, we really got to hone our craft.’ Nix plucked out a long, heavy lump of wood from the kindling under the constable. ‘Here’s the thing, Stumpy, I know you won’t talk to save yourself. I can tell the sort of man you are. But how about you watch me work the pastor over, just Mister Oak and me, before I light you up? Will you talk to save the churchman?’

‘You’ve already stolen a fortune in rare metals,’ said Jacob. ‘What the hell else do you want from us? The recommendation of a good bank back in the capital to stash your plunder?’

‘I need to know who’s supplying you with the skel slavers’ location. Not much to ask, is it? Don’t like leaving mysteries behind us, not the sort that might come looking for a couple of pilfered money chests.’

‘You can keep our money,’ pleaded Jacob, ‘but in the name of God, leave the four of us alive. I have to find my son. Please, I’m the only chance he has…’

‘Alive,’ snorted Nix, amused. ‘Your boy’s dead meat and you know it. So are you, your way or mine. Hell, none of my men are going to do it your way. We didn’t survive years soldiering in the Burn to die for you on a suicide mission.’

Jacob hating pleading with this murdering thug. He knew what the answer would be, but he had no pride left. They had to stay alive to find Carter and the others. They
had
to. ‘Just let us go back to the train.’

‘It’s already left with the major. The six of us will be heading back on the maintenance train after we’ve finished “unsuccessfully” tracking the dog-riders. You and your friends only got two choices, Father. Slow or quick. Which is it?’

Jacob moaned, rolling over across the grass. ‘I’ll tell you how we were tracking the slavers. Bend down, so I can whisper it – your men must never know.’

There was a spark of greedy curiosity in Nix’s eyes as the sergeant knelt down in the clearing’s damp grass.

‘I wrote the answer down on a piece of paper. Then, last night, I crept into the barracks car and stuck it up your arse.’

Nix stood up, face grim, and tested the heft of the wooden club in his palm. ‘All you’ve got to waste is my time, Father.’

He whiled away the rest of the afternoon on Jacob’s body.

Carter sat in his dormitory, still savouring his moment of triumph when Duncan realised that Adella had no intention of following the big man of Northhaven. His reverie was broken by the arrival of more station staff. Sky miners had arrived to allocate work to the newcomers, one of the slaves carrying a machine on a strap around his neck – a scanner able to read the marks tattooed on their forearms and match slaves to their names and previous occupations. The sky miners showed great interest in Kerge – the gask’s mechanical talents meant he was a perfect candidate for the engineering pool – helping keep the station’s machinery oiled and running; as well as operating the survey equipment. Even Joah in the bunk opposite attracted their attention with his stone mason’s training, though with Joah’s shortsighted gaze peering at them through his thick spectacles, a more unlikely miner was hard to imagine.
So, what opportunities are there for Carter Carnehan, son of a churchman and a reluctant librarian?
He didn’t have to wait long to find out. Two sky miners stopped by his cot – the woman maybe four years older than Carter, the male slave the same age. The man carried the arm-scanning device while the woman had a pad of paper with work assignments listed. The female slave didn’t look old enough to be a sky-mining veteran. Adella eyed the woman suspiciously from the bunk next to his. Was it apprehension at the duties she might allocate Adella, or a hint of jealousy at the new woman’s sharp, beautiful cheekbones, her skin as dark as polished ebony? That was one thing even an unobservant lunk like Carter had cottoned on to… as far as Adella was concerned, other women were always potential competition, never a potential friend.

‘Don’t worry, darling,’ the female slave told Adella. ‘Just hold your arm out, the scanner won’t burn you. You’ll be glad enough to get scanned when you’re mining. Those bars on your arm will match you up to your team’s quota. The harder you work, the better you’ll eat.’

Adella nervously extended her wrist. The male slave raised the gun and flashed a beam of red light against her skin, then checked the readout. ‘Adella Cheyenne. Apprentice seamstress. Biological age, eighteen. Blood type, AB. Clean for diseases, predisposition to diabetes beyond the age of fifty.’

‘May you reach that age, Adella,’ smiled the other slave woman. She felt Adella’s arm as if she was evaluating horseflesh at a fair. ‘May we all.’

‘How do you know my family has a history of diabetes?’

‘The imperium can read your blood sample like a book,’ said the male slave. He sported half a beard, dark stubble on his jutting chin and the outline of a moustache. The hair on his head was as dark as Carter’s own, but thick and bushy, as were the eyebrows over two narrow, clear eyes – like fire slits in a fortress. ‘A lot of the tricks they can do seem like magic to us.’

‘But they’re not magic, are they?’ said Carter.

‘You’re damn right,’ said the slave. ‘Even if their science sometimes appears that way. The ironic thing is, it’s not even the
imperium
’s science. Most of the empire’s technology is traded by other nations in exchange for the minerals blown out of that stratovolcano smoking down there. Anything new in the world gets to be traded here for a couple of tons of gold and iron, eventually.’

‘What work am I going to be given?’ asked Adella.

‘Only two sorts of labour for women in the sky mines,’ said the female house slave. ‘Working the processing belts, grading and sorting rocks; or climbing into shafts too small and narrow for men to work. You’re lucky, darling. Too tall and light for serious digging, so your butt is going to be warming a conveyor belt’s stool.’

‘There’s a third sort of work too,’ said the man. ‘But you’ll want to keep your head down for that duty.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘He means,’ said the woman, ‘when one of Princess Helrena Skar’s celestial-caste friends comes to the mines, checking up on our quotas and work, the pretty ones like you could get selected as house slaves. Get yourself bumped up to upper-hostile caste, although what you would need to do to earn the promotion isn’t anything a decent Weyland girl should contemplate.’

She seemed amused at Adella’s look of repulsion, and pushed Carter back down on his cot as he rose to complain on Adella’s behalf. ‘That goes for you too, pretty boy. Though with that weal across your face, you’re probably an acquired taste, now. That’s a slaver’s whip, right? I think I already have you marked down here somewhere, as the
feisty one… trouble
.’

There was something about the woman’s voice and manner. Carter suddenly realised that he recognised this woman – or at least, he knew
of
her. ‘You’re Anna Kurtain, aren’t you? James Kurtain’s sister?’

Her jaw dropped, as shocked as if Carter had tried to punch her. ‘How—?’

‘Your brother was on the skel carrier plane that raided Northhaven, working as an engine mechanic and tending the slave pens. I gave him my word I’d look after you in the sky mines.’

‘James!’ She wiped away a sudden spill of tears rolling down her smooth cheeks. ‘When I couldn’t find him here, I thought he’d died in transit. Just wastage. He’s really
alive?
All this time…’

‘Alive and well,’ said Carter. ‘Way he told me, he was taken from the pens when the skels found out he was a clockmaker. They put him on engine maintenance duty and kept him for themselves. He’s still flying around up there in the clouds.’

‘James! He was always lucky. I’m glad he’s not here. If he’s keeping that bandit carrier in the air, he’ll be alive long after our corpses have been tossed off the station.’

‘I wish I could let James know you’re still alive,’ said Carter.

‘So, you’re going to look after me are you? Let’s have your arm and I’ll read your tea leaves for you. Bushy-tail here, his name is Owen Paterson. He was with me when we were attacked back home.’ Carter held out his arm and the male slave, Owen, scanned his forearm while Anna examined the readout on the device’s screen. ‘Yeah, you’re down here, Carter Carnehan, gold-grade trouble. Got a mark from an upper-celestial on your ticket for you and your friend, Duncan Landor. A little too feisty and full of beans? You’re both down as hitters.’

‘Hitters?’

‘There are only three real stages in the sky mining process, Northhaven. Finding the rock, keeping the rock, mining the rock. Hitters do the “keeping” part. There’s one good piece of news; after you’ve completed your general training, your specialist training is going to be real quick. As in: take stick, swing stick. Training complete.’

‘Don’t listen to her,’ said Owen, playfully prodding Anna in the back. ‘You’ll get plenty of training in how to fight to stake a claim. She thinks that anyone who can’t fly a transporter is only fit to swing a stick.’

‘Why the hell would I fight with just a stick?’

‘You’re sky mining labour, Northhaven,’ said Anna. ‘You think the empire’s going to give you a gun out here? You’ll get a pickaxe minus its axe head, because imperial law states no slave can fight with a bladed or ranged weapon outside the arenas, either that or called up as cannon fodder for the legion.’ She mimed swinging with a bat. ‘So, which celestial-upper marked you down for that duty?’

‘Princess Helrena Skar.’

Anna Kurtain snorted with amusement. ‘And you’re planning to look after
me
? Damn, we’ll see how that works out.’

Adella watched the two slaves moving on down the line of cots allocating work details, her eyes narrowing in anger. ‘She’s haughty
and
obnoxious.’

‘She knows her way around. Three years jump on us, learning how to stay alive in the sky mines. Time to work out the escape routes too, maybe.’

‘Escape? The woman’s still trapped after all those years, isn’t she, Carter? Just like us. Don’t trust her so easily.’

‘We’ll see.’
Going to have to trust someone
, said a voice in Carter’s head.
Survival is a team game
. It sounded a lot like his father’s.

Carter turned up to the hitters’ training session with low expectations that might just be about to be exceeded. Owen Paterson was one of the old hands allocated to train the intake of new sky miners. There were more survivors from the previous batch of miners arriving in the station now, experienced workers reassigned from other holdings to bring the new recruits up to speed. Weylanders for the most part, with a handful of other nationalities mixed in. Carter was a little shocked to realise how long Weyland had been raided for slaves. And angry too. That his nation hadn’t proved better able to protect its people. But then, bandits, brigands, pirates, nomads and slavers always picked away at the margins of Weyland’s vast territory, especially along the eastern frontier. You never really thought about the victims until you became one yourself. The green Weylanders lined up in the high heat of an empty chamber to learn the craft of bashing in skulls; murdering other slaves to ensure their mistress won in the claim-jumping stakes. Like the others in the room, Carter clutched a pickaxe handle without its metal head attached.