Far Called Trilogy 01 - In Dark Service (30 page)

From the distance, the echo of a single lonely shot drifted on the wind. Sheplar craned his head but there was no more gunfire from within the forest. ‘What was that, I wonder?’

‘A little bad justice,’ said Jacob. ‘And time for us to travel on. I have a feeling there are dog-riders nearby.’

The three of them walked back to the tree line to pick up Wiggins’ body and carry him towards the train.

There was an explosive crack of wood as Carter blocked a blow that would’ve caved his ribs in if it had struck true. The flat rear of the transporter was a tumult of jostling, thrusting bodies, the advantage of raw strength telling in the cramped confines of the small aerial vehicle. And that edge lay with their huge attackers. Carter heard a yell of pain from Kerge as the praying gask was knocked off his knees, falling sideways with the impact of a bat. Duncan and Owen were lost behind the mass of swinging, jostling brutes dropped into their transporter’s open cage. Carter could no longer see Anna in the cockpit at the front, still weaving and swooping their craft as hard as she could, attempting to shake off the two enemy transporters dogging their tail. Whatever nation these hostiles came from, their country sure turned them out large. Carter gripped his handle with both hands, thrusting it at the face of the man-mountain confronting him, but the slave whipped to the side and rotated his own club, bringing it around against Carter’s hand, cracking into his clammy fingers. Carter yelled in pain, fingers numb and dead and his weapon dropping towards the craft’s metal deck. The miner from the rival house moved around for another crack at Carter’s ribs, but Carter stepped forward and seized the handle first, only to be shoved back against the transporter’s mesh wall.

‘You’re all they’ve got?’ snarled the slave, crushing his handle against Carter’s chest. His words were exotic and guttural, the meaning only coming to Carter a second after the man had spoken, the brute’s breath hot and fetid.
What do they feed them on in the other station?
‘Your territory will belong to us when the next eruption leaves you with nothing but dust.’

Carter had nothing to say. Nothing he
could
say, as the slave’s pickaxe handle moved down, slowly, inexorably towards Carter’s throat. The Northhaven man couldn’t stop it. The muscles along the slave’s bare arms bulged as hard as iron. He was at least twice as strong as Carter.

‘Little chicken, little chicken,’ clucked the brute, ‘let’s see how well you peck after I’ve crushed your windpipe.’

Carter hollered in rage, the heavy length of wood forcing him down, his knees close to buckling under the weight upon him. If he fell here he would only last the few seconds it took the giant slave to kick him to death.

‘Cluck, cluck, cluckkk-
aahhh!
’ The brute’s ruddy face froze solid as his mocking call throttled in his throat. The silence was filled by an inhuman cry – a strangled screech like the fox-song that haunted Northhaven’s woodland after sundown. It came from Kerge, the gask coming into view as the enemy slave slid sideways, gask spine needles embedded in the back of the man’s skull. Not the only one dropping towards the deck either. All five enemy borderers tumbled down, puppets with their strings cut.

‘Wash me,’ yelled Kerge, standing in the centre of the bed of corpses, his voice strangled and pained. ‘Water!’

Carter grabbed the ring of canteens under the equipment bench, throwing one apiece to Duncan and Owen as he tore a cork out and tossed its contents across the gask. Uncomprehending, the other two did the same, Kerge’s wild trembling body calming as he was soaked.

Owen watched the gask sink to his knees, moaning and whispering to himself. ‘Saints’ blood! What was that?’

I guess father was right.
‘An angry gask,’ said Carter, watching the twisted young man wailing with some degree of sympathy.
It wasn’t his fault – it was these fools’.
‘Pain makes gasks sweat something that sends them into a killing fury. Kerge needs water to wash it away and regain control.’

‘I thought the forest nation were peaceful,’ said Owen. ‘Good with machines and—’

Anna’s transporter banked steeply and the four of them nearly spilled off their feet. They were still being pursued. Carter unlocked the rear door of the transporter’s cage, careful he wasn’t thrown out into the sky. ‘Toss the bodies over the side.’

‘I’m sorry,’ wailed Kerge as he helped to drag his victims towards the craft’s open rear. ‘This is shameful.’

‘This is just survival,’ Carter gently told the twisted man, hauling a dead slave towards the back. ‘I reckon they would have pulled out every spine you’ve got, along with our teeth, to find out where our ground sensors are hidden.’

‘They have made a beast of me! They have made beasts of us all.’

‘I’ve seen cattle face down a wolf when their calves were threatened,’ said Duncan. ‘That’s just the way it is. You saved us all, Kerge. Think on that, if you have to dwell on something.’

‘Don’t speak of this,’ Owen told the other two men, assisting Carter and Duncan in lightening the transporter’s load. ‘Not to anyone back on the station. He’s the only gask the Vandians have taken. If they find out what he can do…’

Carter saw the problem. The imperium didn’t even allow their slaves metal axe heads to fight with. The Vandians would have their own solution for Kerge, and it wouldn’t be anything good for their friend. With the last of the attackers’ corpses jettisoned, Carter was locking the transporter’s door when he heard a cannon-loud crack, then a second and a third report. His eyes darted around the sky, trying to locate the pair of dodging enemy transporters – but they were still weaving in and out behind Anna’s tail. Neither had the ordinance to account for the cannonade. As Carter looked on, humid clouds of vapour around them began to be punched through by black, bird-sized projectiles, hot steaming trails of smoke scratched behind each dart.

‘Brace!’ screamed Anna. ‘Brace for shield flying!’

Carter had just processed their pilot’s words when the deck began to slide underneath him.

‘Grab the benches!’ yelled Owen.

Carter and the others followed Owen’s example, arresting their slide as the vehicle’s angle of inclination increased. The transporter engine’s pitch changed; two of the rotors slowed, the remaining pair screeching angrily as they spun fast, close to burning out. Around them, the thick cloaking clouds of vapour were split by hundreds of flying pieces of rock. Most no bigger than coins, all burning white hot, bigger pieces crackling as they punched past.

‘It’s a proto-eruption,’ yelled Owen. ‘Hold on tight. We’re flying the transporter like a shield all the way back home.’

‘Saints,’ whispered Carter, digging his feet into the bench opposite and tightening his hold as the craft’s deck sloped even steeper.

‘Lucky,’ called Owen through clenched teeth. ‘If those dogs hadn’t chased us off, we might have been too close to the stratovolcano to survive this.’

Yes, lucky. I guess this is what luck feels like, when you’re a slave.

To the side, Carter saw the two enemy transporters angling away, heading for the safety of their own territory. The pattering of rocks against the underside of his vehicle grew louder, heavier, turning from a hail into an angry, blazing mad hammering. Off in the corner of the sky, Carter watched the nearest of the enemy transporters dip into a spin, smoke and flame pumping from the rear of the craft. Then, suddenly, the flames leapt higher and brighter, engulfing the transporter, tiny burning figures tumbling off the rear of the platform as though it was no more than a tree shedding leaves in autumn, before the craft was lost inside the thick cloud cover.

‘Fuel feed holed,’ said Owen. ‘It’s pumping out flammables like a cut artery.’

Those sky miners had been coming after Carter and the rest of his party, looking to murder the Weylanders in a cold-blooded ambush. Still, he couldn’t find any pleasure in their fate. What choice did the slaves have? Back home they might have been labourers, mill workers or shopkeepers. Here, they were merely meat to advance the ambitions of their Vandian masters. A mangled whine sounded from below, an abrupt shaking, and then Carter’s craft started to shudder under his sandals.

Duncan Landor twisted around to try and locate the vibration’s source. ‘Is that—?’

‘Propeller blown,’ Owen called. ‘Burnt out, or holed by ejecta mass.’

The air was becoming increasingly inhospitable. The ubiquitous smog giving way to a hot, burning dust, stinging every piece of Carter’s exposed skin, clinging to his branded shoulder and scorching like hell. Anna Kurtain’s comments about how Carter had arrived to look after the pilot floated back into his head. She was going to save them all, with her flying; either that or send them all crashing towards the ground, where Carter’s present difficulties weren’t going to matter a whole lot anymore. Carter was nearly blinded by a steaming chunk of ejecta mass twice as large as their transporter. Passing yards from the craft on their port side, the rock’s surface whistled with escaping gases as it creaked and cooled in the air. It was followed by a drumbeat of smaller rocks against their slanted hull, the dying scream of one of their remaining rotors chasing the sound of the volley. Carter’s aerial platform started seesawing violently from side to side. He dug his feet and hands in deeper on the rapidly failing transporter. ‘Can we fly on two rotors?’

‘We can crash gracefully,’ said Owen.

‘There!’ shouted Duncan.

Below them, the clouds had cleared enough to reveal the station’s roof, marker flags whipping around from the turbulence of the eruption. There was something docked in its lee – a Vandian warship, smaller than the
Primacy of the Sky
, but still close to the width of the station she was attached to. Carter just caught Anna’s words over the whining pitch of their last two propellers. ‘Not – enough control – to land – in the – hangar – we’ll ditch – on top.’

Corkscrewing towards the station, the four passengers were whip­ped around. Hanging on desperately for dear life, Carter tried to keep the contents of his stomach down as they spun crazily, lashed at by the eruption’s opening salvo, the tiny craft aiming for the rapidly closing-in wall of rock. Ramming the station was their only chance. A miss would launch them into the magma-tossed inferno below.

The maintenance train rattled above the rails at a fair old speed. Jacob, Sheplar and Khow had uncoupled the third car, leaving it behind with a small fortune in iron rails and repair equipment. They sped forward at a rapid clip; an engine car capable of dragging an entire train pulling just a single carriage. Forests that stretched to the horizon surrounded them on either side, the dark rise of a basalt mesa hiding the sinking sun. Khow had been able to get the engine car moving. The gask had climbed into the train’s cab, running his fingers over the dials, levers and control wheels and firing up the engine. Before they left, Khow had helped Jacob and Sheplar push a spare antigravity stone from the maintenance flatbed into the carriage. He had activated it, leaving it floating above the floor. After a few minutes it had grown as cold as winter ice on a lake, as Khow had known it would with no load to tax it. They’d laid Wiggins’ corpse on its flat surface, the constable stretched out, his arms crossed by Jacob as if the policeman were the main attraction at an open casket funeral. Jacob could hardly bear to step in the back and sit with the body, with the guilt that he felt about the constable’s death.
The old man would be alive if we had followed his instincts
. Jacob tried to set his remorse aside. Khow had his prayer mat unrolled, a rough bamboo oblong embroidered with odd-looking flowers nested inside each other. He was on his knees fiddling with his calculator. Three times a day, as regular as clockwork.

‘You know,’ said Jacob. ‘In my time I’ve seen travellers come into town with religions that pray to the north, the east, the south and west. But I swear, I’ve never seen you go to your knees in the same direction twice. Is that all part of worshipping chance?’

‘It is not chance I bow to, manling Jacob. It is the great fractal tree, from which all branches flow. And the direction I face is the true direction of the universe. We are all required to move towards our true direction.’

‘Maybe we are, at that.’

‘And this is not prayer, as such. It is mindful consideration,’ said Khow. ‘The fractal tree extends as myriad branches and we must carefully choose the branches we walk. Especially when the numbers are so against us.’

‘Well then,’ said Jacob. ‘That’s a pity. I figure we could do with a prayer or two. Just enough of Landor’s coins left to buy third-class passage at Talekhard; the troopers meant to be protecting us aiming to kill us… and our children are lost on the other side of beyond. But we’ve got the three saints standing behind us, the great fractal tree, and enough wind spirits to fill a Rodalian canyon.’

‘We have our minds,’ said Khow.

‘And we have our hands,’ said Sheplar, glancing at the twin guns belted around Jacob’s waist. ‘Where did those come from? The guardsmen?’

‘No. From a dead man,’ said Jacob. But how much longer will he stay dead? ‘
As long as he needs to
,’ a voice inside answered.

‘A dead man,’ said Sheplar. ‘This is not a simple matter. I realised as much when we discovered that peculiar radio device. I do not think it wise to trust anyone in Weyland to assist us with our mission from now on. No, I do not think so.’

‘Fight to win and only fight what you understand,’ said Jacob. ‘And hell, we were running away to start with, right?’ He held a pair of fingers up. ‘Two stops. One to bury Wiggins, when we spot the first Weyland border flag fluttering by the trackside. The second to ditch this maintenance train in a siding close to Talekhard. We’ll walk in and do our damnedest not to look like a country pastor, a mountain flier and a gask, right up until we’ve booked a flight south.’

Khow finished his prayer, or whatever he called the mantra. ‘You have changed, manling. I don’t need to examine the numbers on my calculator to know this – I can see the hardness around your eyes.’