ã€ŠEngines of Arachnea [A Science Fantasy Epic]ã€‹


 Chapter 1: Dead Men Walking

    Into the depths of the endless green Rene plunged forward. His breath was labored yet steady, his pace swift but measured. He could not allow terror to steal his breath away. For he was a man pursued, and as quick as he was, they were quicker still.

    He fumbled at his breast pocket while lifting up his mask, took out a brass whistle and snatched it to his lips. He blew hard, two piercing notes that cut through the foliage and curved round the flanks of the surrounding hills, echoing into the distance.

    He listened. From far away there came an answering cry, faint and urgent. He dashed off towards it without wasting a moment, trampling ferns and dead leaves beneath his boots.

    It came again, louder and more insistent. His eyes darted about the eerie stillness of the trees, lips pulled back unconsciously into a rictus grin of fear.

    The signal sounded for a final time, rising to a high-pitched note of terror that was brutally cut short. Rene stopped in his tracks. There was a pause pregnant with tension, and then he turned and fled in the opposite direction.

    #

    He had discovered the mistake on the third day of reconnaissance, as they had toiled up the slopes of a yet another narrow trail. He had been near the rear of the column, while behind him Lethway panted with exertion, weighed down like a mule with the excess baggage.

    ¡°What¡¯s all this about then?¡± Lethway had asked Rene through the harsh rasping that issued from his mask as he gasped through the valves of his intake tube. He was moving heavily beneath the thick skin of his sealant suit, rubber-lined canvas creaking beneath the straps of the heavy packs he bore on his broad back.

    ¡°What¡¯s all what about, Lethway?¡±

    ¡°All this. Give us a hand, would you?¡±

    Rene reached down and helped his friend hoist himself over a boulder slick with moss.

    ¡°Well ostensibly,¡± he said, grunting as his arms took the weight, ¡°The point is to establish the supremacy of the human race, and claim this world that is our irrevocable birthright, as decreed by the ancestors.¡±

    ¡°This world? Hah! They can keep it. Bastard place is too wet for my liking.¡±

    Their journey had been greeted at the outset by pouring rain and intractable mud. Crossing the gorge, they had become mired so deep they¡¯d been forced to abandon their pack animals in a hurry, hence Lethway¡¯s discomfort. Finding a way through the place was nothing short of a nightmare. The karst hillsides were a wilderness of monolithic stone pillars overgrown with greenery, chess pieces arranged on a board without thought or reason. Every turn in the road carried the risk of becoming hopelessly confused, as surroundings shifted and landmarks were lost to view.

    They reached a section of level ground and paused to take a breath. Rene cleared away the thick dew that had settled over his lenses with a grimy sleeve. About them a feverish mist had risen until the entire forest of stunted trees and dense shrubs that covered the hillsides seemed to perspire in unison with the twenty weary, footsore men. Looking out across the alien landscape, he began to wonder if there was truth after all to the myths of old, of the shaping of the world of Arachnea by the ancestor-gods. The stories spoke of Divine Engines striding about, tearing up the mountains by their roots and stomping the valleys into existence, drinking deep from the oceans and belching forth plumes of life-giving air.

    But Rene knew differently. The strangely geometric proportions of the karst hills were merely the result of millennia of rainwater carving the soft stone to its present shape. Just as the stalactites at home lengthened with each drip and drop that fell in the caves, everything could be explained by the action and consequence of the laws of nature.

    As for the ancestor-gods, they belonged to an age of myth. Their wonderous works were long gone, if they had ever truly existed. Their children would have to make do with what they had. Which, admittedly, was not much.

    Rene took out his compass, holding it in his cupped hands and frowning.

    ¡°How¡¯s the old girl treating you?¡± asked Lethway.

    ¡°Oh, you know. The usual. Silly thing can¡¯t make up its mind where to point.¡±

    He tapped irritably at the glass casing, watched the lodestone needle within bobbing upon the film of oil that kept it afloat. It wasn¡¯t like he could complain about its quality. Each man in the unit was outfitted with the best equipment the Fleet could produce. They wore sleek sealant suits tailored for easier movement and carried state-of-the-art caplock firearms fresh from the Fleet gunsmiths. Even their masks were a step above the ordinary and used a highly sophisticated arrangement of intake valves and filters rather than the primitive recycler systems used by civilians.

    All of this belied the importance Fleet Command placed on their mission. They wanted to push northwards again, deep into enemy territory. Why was anyone¡¯s guess, but this was the first of a series of actions taken against what the biological division had designated as Mound Euler. For some inscrutable reason their superiors had decided it had to go, and so once again the 3<sup>rd</sup> Pathfinder Regiment would lead the way for the iron shod boot that would come crashing down.

    ¡°Crewman Rene!¡±

    ¡°Aye sir!¡± He ran up to the head of the column. The advance had been stalled for some time now. The men had begun to fidget, sliding packs from their aching shoulders or fiddling with the clasps on their sealant suits.

    The navigator stood waiting, one foot leaning against the roots of a tree, a sour, pensive look on his face. Deschane was a lean man with a balding pate and dour appearance, and a personality to match it. Rene drew up, said:

    ¡°What¡¯s the matter, sir?¡±

    The navigator scowled and unfolded a disheveled map.

    ¡°Look,¡± he stabbed at it with a finger, ¡°this was where we passed the river and took a right. Assuming we¡¯ve been making the same time as yesterday, that should¡¯ve brought us right about there,¡± he encircled a segment already cluttered with scrawls and arrowheads, ¡°Correct?¡±

    Rene swallowed hard and nodded.

    ¡°Care to fill in the rest?¡±

    ¡°Certainly, sir,¡± he stammered, ¡°We proceeded north about eleven kilometers and paused to take bearings of several locations of interest. We would have gone further but our path was obstructed by the landslide on the southern slopes. For the past five hours we¡¯ve taken a nor-nor eastern heading.¡±

    ¡°Where would that put us, crewman Rene?¡±

    ¡°Right about here, lord navigator.¡± He pointed with reluctance.

    The navigator grabbed the compass twined around Rene¡¯s neck and shook it in his face.

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    ¡°And does here look even close to resembling that?¡± he snarled.

    Rene had been tasked with occasionally peering down the compass¡¯ pinhole sight and taking readings from one of the many peaks around them. Working together, using the same reference points, he and the navigator had aimed to chart a safe course through the endless karst hills that would steer them well around the ominous grey mountain that dominated the center of their maps. But the method was not without its difficulties. Their compasses, usually so obedient, had begun to act eccentric. The obstinate things refused to point out exactly where true north lay, tending instead to stray by six to eight degrees. The navigator hadn¡¯t noticed the magnetic declination until recently, but by then they had already strayed from the intended path by a considerable margin. The phenomenon was caused, they had supposed, by massive amounts of iron deposits hidden somewhere beneath the area. But Rene had his doubts. At times it seemed to him that the place itself was deliberately leading them astray.

    ¡°We should be clear of it by now. We passed by the last feeder tower yesterday, yes? And yet there they are again!¡± Deschane gestured in disgust. Rene saw nothing at first, for the heavy precipitation was playing tricks with the lighting of the place. Huge blocks of stone raised their craggy heads above a veil of morning mists, some cast in shadow, others verdant and bright with foliage. It was only when the navigator had shoved a pair of binoculars into his hands that he finally caught sight of them.

    Hidden amongst the columns of limestone were several tall, fluted structures so slender they almost faded into the background. Their ominous snouts reared hundreds of meters high and seemed so fragile that a stiff breeze could snap them in half. Far too graceful to be the result of natural process. A shiver of fear ran down his spine.

    The mists were clearing, and in his mind¡¯s eye he could trace the outline of the mound at the base of the towers, broad and dark and girdled with menace, stretching a full third of the horizon.

    Dimly he was aware of Deschane taking the table of readings from his unresisting hands, the navigator mumbling as he compared it with his own set of measurements.

    ¡°Hmph,¡± he looked from one table to the other, and frowned at the map. ¡°That¡¯s odd.¡± he said with hesitation.

    ¡°Sir?¡± said Rene, numbly.

    ¡°Our readings are in agreement. Which means either both of us are completely wrong, or once again we¡¯ve been led astray by our friends in military intelligence. Military intelligence,¡± Deschane snorted. ¡°A contradiction in terms.¡±

    A week before a squadron of balloons had been sent over to reconnoiter the territory, their swaying canvases pumped full of refined swamp gas. Some had been lost with all hands, smashed against the cliff faces by the wild winds that brewed in this tropical clime. The rest of the aircraft had been grounded by worsening weather conditions. Hence the need to send a foot patrol.

    It was from these flights that they¡¯d acquired the first rough sketches of Mound Euler and its surroundings. Now Rene knew how little those flight missions had really accomplished.

    Rene stooped low and spoke urgently into his ear.

    ¡°Sir, those aren¡¯t the same towers we saw yesterday.¡±

    ¡°What? Nonsense.¡±

    He handed the binoculars back to Deschane and the navigator peered, unconvinced. At last he lowered the binoculars, clearly shaken.

    ¡°You mean to say they¡¯re offshoots?¡±

    ¡°Aye sir. Tributaries of the main spine.¡±

    The navigator riffled through the papers and found the charcoal sketches of the enemy structure. The artist depicted a trio of massive towers atop the Mound, a forbidding array of horns crowning a malevolent beast: the primary ventilation systems of the mound. They were clearly conical, as opposed to the cylindrical secondary structures that loomed before them now.

    Oh yes, Rene thought, the aerial maps were wrong alright. Their actual position was several kilometers further from the Mound. Not that it mattered of course, because they had made another crucial mistake, one that would be the death of them all.

    ¡°Ridiculous,¡± Deschane looked sharply behind him¡ª-¡ªthe men were uneasy and had begun to eavesdrop-¡ª-¡ªthen continued in a whisper, ¡°That would make Mound Euler at least three times larger than our estimates.¡±

    ¡°Yes sir. I¡¯m afraid so.¡±

    ¡°But that would mean that the pheromone trails radiate outward for tens of kilometers.¡±

    ¡°We probably tripped it hours ago and never realized it,¡± Rene said hoarsely, ¡°They know we¡¯re here, sir.¡±

    It was the Deschane¡¯s turn to swallow this time. The navigator took a moment to gather himself, then nodded to himself and began to slowly fold his papers. Rene thought he was making an admirable effort not to show the panic that both now felt.

    ¡°We have to get back,¡± Deschane said through tight lips, ¡°No matter what happens to us now, Fleet Command must hear of this. A colony of this magnitude...they must call off the offensive. Rene, what¡¯s the shortest route back to friendly lines?¡±

    Rene pored over the maps, sweat coating his palms.

    ¡°There is an inhabited mound around eighteen kilometers south west. Shouldn¡¯t take more than a day¡¯s travel.¡±

    He tapped a small grey spot east of the river.

    ¡°A settlement? This far north?¡±

    ¡°Not quite. It¡¯s only a forward operating base--Mound 13, according to the legend on the map.¡±

    ¡°It will have to do,¡± the uncertainty had gone from his superior¡¯s demeanor, replaced by a layer of cold efficiency. ¡°Column, about face!¡± he bellowed to the rest of the men, ¡°We¡¯re heading home on the double!¡±

    There were dire mutterings, and strings of curses levelled at the officer, the mud and the mission in general.

    ¡°None of that lip, you dogs!¡± bellowed Lieutenant Jensen, snatching up his pistol.

    The murmurs died down, but a few stuck out their chins and let their voices be heard.

    ¡°What about the mission, sir?¡± someone asked.

    ¡°We were tasked with making a reconnaissance in force. The way I see it, we came, we saw, and we reconnoitered. Mission accomplished, as far as I¡¯m concerned. You¡¯re welcome to stick around if you like.¡±

    Without another word Deschane began marching down the path from which they had come. Rene caught up to him, satchel bouncing on the back of his knees.

    ¡°Sir, is it wise to keep this a secret from the men?¡±

    ¡°What, that we¡¯ve just stumbled upon the largest mound on this side of creation? That they could be nesting under our feet at this very moment? If I told them that we¡¯ve been walking in the kill-radius for the past few hours, they¡¯d go to pieces. Better an orderly retreat than a rout. Button up your lip if you know what¡¯s good for you.¡±

    ¡°Very good sir,¡± Rene whispered. He fell back into place, his heart hammering in his chest.

    The going was easier than earlier, since they were no longer travelling uphill, but that was little comfort as Deschane rode them hard all the way down the slopes.

    The men swore as they tripped over the butts of their muskets, the clay clinging to them every inch of the way.

    ¡°What the hell have you gotten us into?¡± hissed Lethway as he went past, sliding on his behind. But Rene only shook his head.

    ¡°Fine then. But even a fool like me can see that something¡¯s got you and the navigator spooked.¡±

    ¡°Deschane knows his business,¡± said Jensen, the lieutenant, ¡°Keep your eyes peeled and tread softly. If there¡¯s trouble, we¡¯ll deal with it the usual way.¡± He patted a hatchet he kept on a leather sheathe by his side. Rene knew Jensen wouldn¡¯t be so cocky if he knew the extent of their troubles.

    What had been intended as a long, wayward route safely beyond the deadly kill-radius had instead cut deep into enemy territory, across dozens of invisible biochemical tripwires, laid by their adversaries in the hopes of detecting prey, which they now undoubtedly were.

    As they passed through a defile between two low hillocks, they heard up ahead of them a stone clattering sharply over a bare cliffside. Rene drew back in apprehension. The others saw his reaction and paused to look at one another.

    ¡°Keep a steady pace, men!¡± growled Deschane. He glared at Rene. By sheer force of will he kept the rest of them going, though they glanced all about them in trepidation.

    ¡°Right. They¡¯ve found us. You all know the drill. Load and half-cock.¡±

    ¡°How?¡± whispered Lethway. The bags began to slip from his nerveless fingers. ¡°We walked all the way around-¡±

    ¡°Never mind how! Pick that up right now, or I swear on ship and crew I¡¯ll shoot you first!¡±

    The men unslung their muskets and tore off the water-proof jackets. As they plodded forward, they hastily rammed paper cartridges down the muzzles and set their percussion caps.

    ¡°That¡¯s right. Keep walking, easy does it now,¡± Deschane said in the same low voice, ¡°Don¡¯t let on that we know. Find your partners and form ranks.¡±

    They exited the defile and fanned out cautiously into a wide semi-circle.

    ¡°Listen to me now,¡± Deschane proclaimed, ¡°The survival of our species rests on your shoulders. Whatever happens now, at least one of us must return there and tell Fleet Command the following message: Mound Euler is an omega-class colony. Call off the offensive. The north is closed to us.¡±

    ¡°Remember the message. And may Sol, star of the ancestor-gods, shine upon you all.¡±

    By unconscious consensus they all slowed to halt. There was the sound of muffled clicks as thumbs found hammers and coaxed them gently back into full cock. The lord navigator raised his pistol. Rene licked his lips--all the moisture had suddenly been sucked from his mouth.

    They saw nothing before them but the ruddy faces of the cliffs. A nervous gust of wind shook the hanging vines and sent a shiver through the leaves. Rene held his breath for one long and agonizing moment, waiting for the inevitable.

    And then Deschane stepped forward and fired into the shadows, and all at once the world erupted into violence.

 Chapter 2: Ambush

    As he ran, Rene relived the utter savagery of that moment that lingered so fresh in his mind.

    The very stone had come alive with the enemy. Thick screens of vine were torn violently aside to reveal sally ports gnawed into the soft rock face. From each one spewed forth a dozen Amits, creatures nearly a meter and a half tall, with broad sets of shoulders and hips supporting four short, powerful limbs. An extra pair of shriveled arms emerged from the chest cavity. These served the purpose of fine motor control, while the rest were solely for digging and killing. Their necks and torsos were armored in segmented chitin, atop which rested huge oblate skulls that gleamed like dull pearls. The albino beasts flexed their curved mandibles and charged, armored heads lowered, each towering brute swinging a crude maul or axe head of chiseled flint.

    ¡°First rank, fire!¡±

    The men discharged a furious volley. The beasts staggered, but only a handful were struck in the vital mark. Mouths consisting of a dozen moving parts rustled in screams of wordless rage. That was another unnerving thing about the Amits: they fought and died in utter silence.

    They were closing fast. First rank withdrew and began reloading in a panic. A boulder came crashing down from the heights and dashed the brains out from a man to Rene¡¯s left. He blinked as a fragment of bone grazed his cheek.

    ¡°Second rank, ready!¡±

    The Amits reached for them, a terrible hunger in their lidless, milk-white eyes. Right before the moment of contact, the second line stepped forward and discharged the special-issue ammunition.

    Clouds of orange smoke erupted from each muzzle. The Amit reared back, their sensitive olfactory organs assaulted by acrid vapors. They milled about in confusion, lashing out blindly in every direction. With cries of desperate bravery, the men unsheathed their bayonets and threw themselves at their foes.

    There were few things that could permanently kill an Amit. Bullets and blades pierced them well enough, provided one avoided the armor, but such was their physiology that major organ damage was often negated by redundant systems. They had two brains for primary motor functions and three chambered organs for the distribution of vitae, and the destruction of one wouldn¡¯t cripple them for certain. The only instantly fatal wound was to sever a thick bundle of nerves located near the base of their gargantuan heads, right behind the mouth.

    Of course, getting there alive was the trick; one still had to account for the mandibles.

    In teams of threes they singled out individuals and went to work. Rene and Lethway took the flanks, taking turns to dart in under the wild swings to stab the pair of cortexes at either side of the body. The beast snapped its jaws sideways, distracted, and Jensen seized that moment to step in close and bury his hatchet in the center of its face. The first blow rebounded off the thick cranium with a gonglike sound, but the second bit deep. The Amit went limp and collapsed, yellow blood frothing down its jowls.

    Jensen yelled with triumph and reached down to retrieve his weapon. He took hold of the haft and began to yank it free. The Amit¡¯s eyes glittered with aa baleful light. It spasmed and a clear fluid fountained up at Jensen, drenching his arm to the elbow. He screamed in agony; in a matter of moments the acid ate through his sealant suit and peeled his flesh raw.

    Rene ducked as a stone the size of a cart wheel flew past. All around them on every hillock and cliff face, more and more Amit clambered to meet them, mandibles spread wide in anticipation. Worse still, the clever ones had begun to circle around behind them. If they managed to bottle up the defile they would be trapped and killed to a man.

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    Deschane had reached the same conclusion. He bellowed:

    ¡°First rank! First rank, about face and fire at will!¡±

    What was left of them rushed to comply. Most of the first rank had managed to load their own noxious cartridges in time, and a second cloud of sulphurous compounds scattered the Amit at their rear.

    ¡°Disperse and overlap! Make for the outpost!¡±

    Rene and the rest of the men fought through under a hail of hurled projectiles, stumbling over the broken bodies littering the ground, mauled beyond recognition¡ªAmits shot and stabbed and hacked into twitching heaps of meat, human skulls split by axe heads and dripping cranial fluid. He saw one man caught out by a pair of beasts who took an arm and a leg each and pulled him shrieking into the dark mouth of a tunnel. Several other unfortunates shared his grisly fate, disappeared beneath the earth with loud wails.

    #

    They fled, but not in wild terror. Rather, they each found a partner and took off in separate directions. The eyesight of an Amit was good only for a few dozen meters, beyond which they had to operate by scent and sound. Arguably this fact did not help much, as these senses were highly tuned and superior to vision for the purposes of tracking and killing, but it was not impossible to confuse them.

    And so Rene now ran alone. Like the others he had picked a direction and taken off as fast as his legs could carry him. In his haste he had forgotten to attach himself to a partner. He was beginning to regret it. His pursuer was gaining on him, how he could not say. He darted a quick glance behind him, then looked back in time to narrowly duck a low branch that swiped at his face.

    It was coming at an oblique angle to his path, and in a moment it would close the distance and take him from behind with the terrible strength of its jaws.

    But not if he had anything to say about it. Rene reached out, seized the narrow trunk of a sapling and swung himself around. With his other hand he drew his pistol and aimed.

    The Amit stumbled, flopped onto the ground, and began to swear.

    ¡°Why, you absolute bastard!¡±

    ¡°Lethway?¡±

    ¡°Watch where you¡¯re pointing that thing, you imbecile!¡±

    Rene laughed with hysterical relief.

    ¡°Don¡¯t see why you¡¯re so pleased,¡± Lethway said, getting up and spitting out saliva thick with clotted blood, ¡°Bastards almost got me.¡± Lethway was nursing a shallow, jagged cut at his side from an axe. His sealant suit was torn open, twists of rubber lining peeping through.

    ¡°They may yet still. Were you the one on the whistle?¡±

    ¡°No. That was Damus. He was too slow. You got a whistle on you?¡±

    ¡°Yes. How many minutes has it been?¡±

    ¡°Damned if I know. Figure we intersect now?¡±

    ¡°Aye.¡±

    Rene blew on the whistle, and the two of them began to run. On either side of them, other pairs answered with whistle of their own, and they came crashing into view from the side. They nodded to one another as they passed. Their paths began to wind and crisscross as the men ran in extended, overlapping figures of eight.

    The aim of dispersion was to create a messy trail of scents for the Amit to follow, winding patterns that ended as suddenly as they began, the aromas of some individuals mingling with that of others. The maneuver would buy them time and split the attention of the horde.

    The Amits, confounded for the moment, passed quickly out of their hearing, milling about the undergrowth in confusion. Rene and Lethway ran until their lungs gave out, then settled into a measured jog.

    ¡°We¡¯ll head south for a bit, until morning comes.¡± Rene was saying, ¡°We¡¯ll find a nice tall hill, do a bit of scouting, see what the roundheads are up to. Maybe find some of the others. Then we¡¯ll head south west and find the river. Wash our scent off, follow it east to the outpost.¡±

    They stopped abruptly, listened hard. From far off they heard a long, plaintive wail as the Amit caught themselves a straggler.

    If they had needed motivation not to break off their breakneck flight, they had it now. They heard him being butchered for quite some time before his cries faded away into silence.

    ¡°Better him than us,¡± Lethway spat bitterly, ¡°Can you still run?¡±

    ¡°I can now,¡± Rene said, and together they crashed on through the green hell that had swallowed their friends.

 Chapter 3: The Sacrifice

    They were still walking as night fell. The Amit would not break off their chase for mere lack of light. They walked on, guided by the constellations which Rene had learned to read at the academy. They dared not give themselves to sleep for fear of being unable to wake the next day. They ate up ground at an unforgiving pace, setting one boot after another till the blisters on their toes rubbed bloody in their hole-ridden socks.

    It was times like these that they learned to hate their masks. It was hard enough going without having to gasp through the rank-smelling things. Occasionally they would loosen their straps and pull the rubber facepieces up past their noses, taking greedy gulps of oxygen-rich air. It was a dangerous tactic. Though the masks were only simple machines consisting of a series of intake valves, they served to limit the amount of oxygen they inhaled while simultaneously retaining more of their waste gases such that they could breathe just the right mixture of air. Each time they did it made them delirious, lungs filling with sweet life-giving sustenance, burning muscles renewed with fresh strength. But too much exposure to the poisonous atmosphere and they would die the next day of oxygen narcosis. They permitted themselves this deadly luxury for only a minute at a time before clasping their facepieces back on.

    Once they stopped to treat Lethway¡¯s clearly worsening wound which, as a result of the puncture in his sealant suit, was already showing signs of rot. Pale, mold-like growths had begun to appear along with the scabs. They washed it with antiseptic solution and closed it over with wad of cotton. Upon Lethway¡¯s return, if they returned at all, he would have to undergo a battery of treatments to rid his body of the armies of parasites which had found a home in him. For now they ignored it as best they could, though Lethway had begun to slow considerably, grunting with pain with every other step he took.

    Some time after daybreak they climbed to the top of a small hill and there lay resting, listening for any sign of pursuit or for one of their number wandering close by. From their vantage point they saw the river again, a silvery white streak threading its way through a small gorge. They were close. Before they set out they tried establishing contact one final time. At regular intervals Rene inhaled deeply and blew the whistle hard. A few times he thought he heard a faint response. Each time they sat up, flushed with excitement, but eventually they worked out that they were merely hearing the echoing return. Lethway shook his head in despair: the surface had claimed their comrades, just as it had so many others.

    They turned away and descended. Soon they heard the burbling of water as it swept past reed covered banks. Once they crossed it would only be a few hour¡¯s march to the outpost. Their pulses quickened at the prospect of safety.

    ¡°As if things couldn¡¯t get any worse,¡± Lethway said as they eyed the tree line on the other side, ¡°Now I¡¯ll have to march with wet socks.¡±

    ¡°Better wet socks than having those devils on our tail the rest of the way,¡± replied Rene. Somewhere amid the violet branches a flock of tiny meritsel birds played their monotone song, rubbing barbed legs across bladed feathers. A striped rat sunned itself on a flat river stone, blinking placidly in the heat. The place looked deserted enough. Still, they didn¡¯t cross the soft brown loam of the bank, but kept in the shade beneath a tall frond.

    ¡°Pity. I¡¯d just got the buggers to dry.¡± Lethway noticed his thoughtful look and unslung his musket ¡°You smell something funny, or does your face always look that way?¡±

    Rene motioned for quiet. The birds had fallen silent. The striped rat cocked its head, perturbed. Rene went prone, reached for his musket, and primed it. Lethway repositioned, steadying his barrel against a rotted trunk. A long moment passed, in which neither man moved a muscle.

    Suddenly, one of the members of the avian orchestra squawked, a brutal, jarring chord that shattered the stillness. The song resumed. Rene bowed his head in relief.

    ¡°That had my heart going, and no mistake,¡± Lethway said with a grin. He made to straighten up when a pebble flung by some hand unseen skipped across his toes, and he all but jumped out of his skin. In one fluid motion Rene raised himself and turned to his left, cocking his weapon and bringing it to his shoulder as he did.

    A red face had appeared amid the bushes to their left. Several dozen meters away the navigator lay in a dense thicket, bleeding heavily from his forehead, body rigid with pain.

    ¡°Stay down,¡± he mouthed, and pointed upriver. Both of them kissed dirt and tried not to breathe.

    They watched as Deschane took another pebble. He tossed it over in a long arc across the river, where it splashed into the water next to the rat. It darted away, all six limbs scurrying across the bank towards the trees.

    It crossed an invisible line and died quicker than a thought.

    An Amit came wriggling out from under deep layers of earth, muddy water running off its glistening pale body. Hastily it snagged the rat with its claws and crammed it squeaking into its jaws whole. Then it returned to its hiding place, where it dug out a tiny Amit with a shrunken body and a monstrously large head engorged beyond the normal proportions, clammy skin stretched so tight it was almost translucent. Their chitinous lips met in a grotesque parody of a kiss, shreds of meat and bone passed from set of mouth parts to the other.

    ¡°A nursery. Just our luck,¡± said Lethway. He watched as the nursemaid with uncharacteristic gentleness cradled the infant Amit in its vestigial arms as the nymph devoured its predigested meal. There was something tender about the way it was rocking back and forth. Something almost¡­maternal. He frowned. He had not heard many accounts of how the Amit reared their young. All he knew was that at a certain point in the nymph¡¯s adolescence it was taken out of the mound along with a dozen of its brood-mates, who would then be cared for by a sterile female who guarded her charges with suicidal devotion. The infant finished its meal and reached up with a clawed hand. It ran its digits gently down the face of its nurse, caressing its mouth like a babe suckling at the teat. Not for the first time, Rene wondered just how much of the enemy¡¯s ways remained to be understood.

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    ¡°Place is probably covered in spore lines,¡± Lethway was saying, ¡°Ancestors only know how many of the little bastards are hiding in there.¡±

    All Amits were host bodies to many symbiotic organisms, among them a certain fungus that inhabited their pheromone glands. These they would spray thick upon the hunting grounds of their choosing, usually at points where prey was most likely to approach. Upon contact with living organisms these would erupt in tiny spouts of pungent spores which adhered to fur and clothing and served as hunting markers. The unfortunate creature had undoubtedly crossed an unseen tripwire.

    A worm of fear curled up in Rene¡¯s belly. He doubted that this was coincidence. Somehow, the enemy had guessed that their prey would try and lose them at the water¡¯s edge, where the humans could wash off the scent, and had covered the only possible exit with a deliberation that hinted at a more than bestial cunning. The navigator crawled over to them on his belly.

    ¡°Where¡¯s the rest of you?¡±

    They shook their heads.

    ¡°Ah,¡± he said simply, disappointed. He was silent for moment, then said:

    ¡°So then, what do you reckon?¡±

    ¡°Sir, you¡¯re injured.¡± Lethway said with concern. That was putting it mildly. One of his earlobes was missing, along with a portion of his scalp.

    ¡°Yes. I¡¯ve noticed,¡± absently he wiped a speck of blood from under his swollen right eye. ¡°I came upon a nymph and its nursemaid a while ago,¡± he explained, ¡°It was a close thing, but I finished it quietly enough.¡± He gestured behind him, where Rene saw a section of trampled bushes. The nursemaid lay amid the disheveled leaves, limbs contorted by its final death throes. The small, child-like hand of an infant Amit poked out from its stiff embrace. Rene looked away quickly.

    ¡°Anyway, we have two options, and neither of them too attractive. First, we can try and circumvent the area and find another way to cross. But that would take time, and frankly we don¡¯t have much of it. The hunting parties are at our heels.¡±

    Rene was shocked. He had known that they would catch up eventually, but never this quickly.

    ¡°The second option is we try and push through.¡±

    ¡°And die horribly for our efforts,¡± said Rene, surprising even himself.

    ¡°As is our duty to the Fleet, ensign,¡± said Deschane sternly, ¡°Do not take that tone with me. I am still your commanding officer.¡±

    ¡°To the void with your hierarchies!¡± Rene hissed, all his resentment and hysteria boiling over. Deschane¡¯s hand slid down to his holster. Rene saw this and stiffened.

    ¡°Sir, with respect, but what you¡¯re suggesting is suicide.¡±

    ¡°Admittedly the likelihood of survival is low, but-"

    ¡°Yet you would throw our lives away, knowing the risk? We¡¯re all that¡¯s left!¡±

    ¡°We don¡¯t know that for certain, and even if we were, it doesn¡¯t matter. Our lives are nothing compared to the information we now possess. Information that if undelivered will spell death for every person in the settlement. The Amits leave no survivors.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve got it,¡± Lethway suggested gently, ¡°How about you stop being a pair of bloody knobheads?¡±

    They both turned to stare at him.

    ¡°That is not how to address an officer of the fleet, private Lethway.¡± The lord navigator pursed his lips. ¡°I may be forced to-¡±

    ¡°Ah, force it up yours, you miserable bag. Void take it, why is it that only us grunts can see the obvious?¡±

    ¡°What are you saying?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m saying that you both are in better shape than I am,¡± He pointed at the cotton wad at his side. It had begun to weep a bloody pus. Worse still, peering close Rene was startled to see the clutches of white fungus clinging once again to the edges of the wound. Lethway unclasped his sealant suit and showed them. The growth had spread all the way up the small of his back.

    ¡°Think about it. If I get back, claiming that there¡¯s a monster of a mound out here populated by a million of the sodding buggers, they¡¯ll put it down to shock or to a poor ensign not being able to count past the number of his fingers. But if a navigator and his aide give them the facts, well. There¡¯s a chance they might see things your way, sir.¡±

    Deschane nodded.

    ¡°Private, your sense of duty is to be commended.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t understand,¡± Rene said.

    ¡°You¡¯re a clever little sod,¡± Lethway said, ¡°Work it out.¡±

    Rene backed away.

    ¡°I can¡¯t condone this. They¡¯ll eat you alive.¡±

    ¡°Well then, it¡¯s a good thing you¡¯re not the navigator. This bugger is, ancestors save us,¡± he gestured at Deschane. Lethway snapped his heels together and saluted. ¡°Permission to serve the Fleet, sir?¡±

    Deschane allowed something like approval to grace his gaunt features.

    ¡°Permission granted. Light¡¯s speed to you. We¡¯ll be further south, past the bend. Let us know when you¡¯ve crossed.¡±

    ¡°Oh, you¡¯ll know alright,¡± he turned to other man, said ¡°Rene. My regards to the missus. Try and take care of them, right?¡±

    Rene tried to summon the right words for the moment, but his heart gave out and all he could manage was to lower his eyes in shame.

    Lethway went into a crouch and crept into the brush. Rene watched him disappear with a sinking feeling. Then he and Deschane hunkered down and waited. The Amits across the river had finished their snack and were digging themselves back into the earth with powerful sweeps of their forelimbs. Rene¡¯s heart hammered in his chest.

    One of the beasts paused in its work and tasted the air with a darting proboscis. That was the cue. Rene and Deschane took off southward, leaves crackling softly underfoot, going as fast as they dared. They went round the bend of the river, washed themselves thoroughly in the water, and crossed to the other side.

    They were a few kilometers away when they heard the shot, and a cry of rage and pain that echoed into the hills. Rene stopped in his tracks and looked back. The river bank on the other side was swarming with them. They came bursting out of the ground like maggots from the belly of a bloated corpse, dozens of nurse maids clutching their young in their residual hands. They swung away towards the sound, claws clicking eagerly at their sides.

    ¡°Ensign,¡± It was a strange thing to hear compassion in that steely voice. Nevertheless, Rene looked up and saw Deschane looking back at him with solemn eyes.

    ¡°The Fleet will remember his sacrifice. But only if we survive this day. Understood?¡±

    Rene hung his head and followed after him.

 Chapter 4: Mound 13

    They encountered no further patrols and reached the outpost before evening fell. Outpost 13 was a smaller mound that had been subjugated not long ago. It was wedge-shaped, far taller than it was wide, with short stumps of feeder towers running down its spine. It was cement grey rather than the virulent black of Mound Euler, and stood like the ominous gravestone of some forgotten giant, crumbling away in a backwoods cemetery, cratered and pockmarked by scores of holes where shells and grapeshot had impacted.

    Rene had been part of sieges before, as an ammo hopper in the artillery, and he could well imagine how costly this one had been. The unique shape of the mound would have meant that any advances would have been focused along a brutal, narrow front, where any advantage in numbers enjoyed by the attackers would have been negated. Usually a mound had several entrances through which one could spearhead an assault, pouring into the tunnels from a dozen different directions, but that hadn¡¯t been the case here. Given the smaller population of the Amits, they had only ever needed to construct one gate. He shuddered to imagine the relentless carnage of such a battle, with men and Amits both pouring their numbers into a slaughter of single-minded purpose. He wondered how they had ever managed to take this place, until he saw the segment of the eastern wall that had collapsed entirely. It would have taken a great deal of ordinance to crack open. Even from a distance the walls appeared thick and imposing. He imagined entire weeks spent pounding the place into submission with mortars and heavy canon, engineers making combat runs to find lines of weakness, then directing their fire to hammer home relentlessly on these until finally the place had given way, collapsing all at once in a great thundering sheet of shattered stone. Even now he could see the cross-section of the mound exposed in all its beehive complexity. Amits in their thousands must have spilled out from such a wreckage, cringing at the sudden light of the suns piercing their dark abodes. Then infantry would have poured through, putting them to the bayonet before they could wriggle themselves free of the debris.

    It would have been a bloody affair, and he wondered why he had never heard of such an action taking place.

    Since then the current occupants had shored up their defenses. Wooden scaffolding spanned the areas of worst damage, brick and mortar replacing the crumbling dolomite. A feeder tower with cracks running down its length had been converted into a commanding keep from which the maws of several cannon peeked out, covering the approaches from either flank. Stout palisades now ringed the outer defenses, constructed in dog-toothed patterns to break the impact of a charge and provide overlapping fields of fire.

    They came up to the main road. Along this at regular intervals stakes had been pounded into the ground, onto which the skins of dead Amits had been impaled, desiccated scales rustling in the wind. These grisly trophies dotted the area for several miles around. It served to inform Amits of other broods who might think to try and claim the mound that the place was now occupied by dangerous predators. Once a month a scent detail would make the rounds, splashing over the ground buckets of sharp, pungent death-warning-fear pheromones extracted from dead Amits.

    At the palisades they were challenged by a man wearing a steel shod helmet. He saluted them and asked:

    ¡°Names and purpose, please.¡±

    ¡°Sollem Deschane, 3<sup>rd </sup>Pathfinder Regiment, Navigator. This is Ensign Rene, my assistant. We''ve just completed out mission and are here to give an urgent report.¡±

    The man peered down at them, saw a pair of disheveled, exhausted men, blood smearing the insides of their sealant suits, with barely enough strength left to stand. He saw the tattered stripes on Deschanes shoulder pad, immediately saluted once more with a clatter of body armor, shouting:

    ¡°Aye, sir! Open the gate! We need medical corpsmen here!¡±

    The relief was almost unbearable. The gate unlatched and men rushed to help them as they sank to their knees in the mud, finally safe.

    ¡°Don¡¯t know about any mission, but you look to be in an awful state,¡¯ the man said, ¡°How¡¯d the two of you made it this far on your own?¡±

    ¡°There were more of us yesterday,¡± Rene said heavily.

    ¡°Who is the ranking officer here?" said Deschane, doggedly getting back to his feet.

    ¡°Admiral Prota, sir.¡± said another trooper.

    ¡°Take me to him. With dispatch!¡±

    They were half guided, half carried to the pressure gate, a broad circle of steel that hissed as the airlock within equalized with the outside. The entrance was on the northern edge of the wedge, where it protruded forward at a height of several stories from a barbican. Broad bolts thick as a man¡¯s arm slid back and allowed them in. As it closed behind them and the chamber depressurized once more, men in full cleaning gear came and emptied buckets of decontamination fluid onto their sealant suits, scrubbing them with long handled brushes. A second batch of cleaners peeled off their masks and sealant suits, and for the first time in four days they felt fresh air make contact with their skin. The second door opened, and they entered Outpost Euclid.

    The mounds were one of the few places where one could breathe freely without the cloying restriction of a valve. In the natural pockets of stale air that permeated the cave systems, mankind clawed its way to a continued existence. Great turbine fans turning endlessly in the feeder towers served to regulate the air flow and internal pressure, powered by the underground rivers percolating through the layers of soft stone. Without a contained, self-regulating environment and machines to purify the dwelling place a man would die within days, convulsing as the neurons of his brain fired in vain in an atmosphere oversaturated with oxygen.

    Mound 13 was a young settlement, only possessing the most basic necessities. Rows of braziers hung from every doorway, framing passing faces in flickering orange light. Stacks of crates and supplies lined the corridors, bales of wire, nails and planks of rough wood littered the floor.

    A small crowd had gathered by the entrance, led by a middle-aged woman in medical fatigues. At her signal several attendants bustled forward with stretchers. Deschane sent them back with a scathing look. He looked the woman up and down, and his jaw muscles twitched. If the woman saw this, she gave no sign of offense.

    ¡°Well met, lord navigator,¡± she began, ¡°This way to the hospital ward, if you please.¡±

    ¡°Later,¡± he snapped, ¡°Where is Admiral Prota? I was told he was in command here.¡±

    ¡°Sir, your medical situation takes precedence. Your wounds are quite serious.¡±

    ¡°Pardon me, but to the void with my medical condition. Madame, I¡¯ve come a very long way to deliver a missive of the utmost importance, and I will not be put aside until I¡¯ve had my say.¡±

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    The woman¡¯s eyes narrowed.

    ¡°Please don¡¯t be difficult.¡±

    ¡°Difficult? If I don¡¯t see him within a minute from now, I¡¯ll show you precisely how difficult I can be. Respectfully of course, madame.¡± he said, in a tone that was anything but.

    ¡°It¡¯s possible your eyesight might have been affected by recent trauma to the head. Not to mention whatever region of the brain that handles basic etiquette.¡±

    She brought out from her field pouch a strip of gauze and a bottle of antiseptic solution, and came forward to clean his face. In the dim light of the flames Rene caught a glimpse of the pendant hanging around her neck, a thin blue rectangular wafer fashioned from some unearthly glass. Rene drew breath: she was an officer of the 2<sup>nd</sup> Command Echelon, almost the highest station in existence. The pendant was her seal of command, a relic passed down generations beyond count. It swung on its leather thong, caught the torchlight and broke it into a thousand points of light.

    ¡°Away with that, woman, or by the ancestors I¡¯ll-¡±

    ¡°Sir.¡± Rene said quickly, with concern.

    ¡°Its Rear-Admiral Prota, actually. And it certainly isn¡¯t ¡®woman¡¯.¡±

    Deschane blinked, realizing the magnitude of his error. Despite himself, Rene hid a smile behind his hand.

    ¡°I must apologize. I presumed-¡±

    ¡°Yes, of course. Now, before I cite you for an infraction, would you kindly come this way? You can debrief me while we stitch your head back together.¡±

    Deschane nodded with reluctance. They allowed themselves to be led away. As they walked it became apparent that the scars of war still lay thick upon the place. The walls were dotted by bullet holes and oddly warped surfaces where streaks of acid had been sprayed to dissolve both stone and attackers alike. Once they even saw the outline of a man, the moment of his death forever etched into the ageless calcite. From the cave entrances sets of shattered columns jutted like broken teeth, reminding them of the storm of violence that had once ripped through the place.

    Despite all this, Mound 13 was beautiful. Its spare halls possessed a natural symmetry and decidedly pleasing dimensions that were out of place in a newly conquered mound. All around them, workers bustled about, busy making renovations that would eventually make the place home.

    ¡°As you can see, we¡¯ve been rather busy around here,¡± explained Admiral Prota, ¡°There¡¯s much to do, and not enough people to do it. Why, we haven¡¯t even explored the entirety of the natural cave system yet, not to mention all the segments the Amit added. There¡¯s talk of us being made into a full settlement someday, but of course that isn¡¯t possible, given the nature of our work here.¡±

    ¡°Your work?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯d explain, but you¡¯re losing far too much blood.¡±

    The massive cut across the top of his head had resumed its slow red trickle. Deschane wiped his face and winced as his scalp stretched.

    They went into a wide, well-lit room and Rene¡¯s eyes widened. He could scarcely believe what he was seeing. Above them yawned three massive domes of the purest blue marble, like those of a great basilica, held aloft by elegant pillars and jagged friezes that overflowed like molten candlewax.

    Every surface was pockmarked by endless tessellations, countless branching forms and geometric shapes that merged one into the other in pleasing harmony. But what really stood out were the stars.

    The tip of every stalactite shone as a thimbleful of water gathered. For a long moment, before gravity took precedence, they hung suspended in all their adamantine brilliance, before the illusion ended, and they flashed downward in lightning streaks of silver.

    ¡°Nice, isn¡¯t it?¡± said Prota, noting his reaction.

    ¡°You¡¯ve done magnificent work here madame.¡±

    ¡°Oh, but I can¡¯t take credit for that. None of us can really.¡±

    Rene frowned at this curious remark. He had never seen such a formation, not in all his lifetime spent beneath the ground. At first glance he had marveled at the hands and minds of those whose craft had shaped the place. But now he remembered that there was no way the working crews could have completed such a thing within a few weeks. He put it down as just another one of nature¡¯s novelties.

    At the end of the hallway men with picks carefully chipped away at a section of collapsed tunnel, supervised by an engineer.

    ¡°What¡¯s behind that?¡± he asked eagerly.

    ¡°One of the sloping tunnels that run beneath the eastern segment where the collateral damage was greatest. We have yet to uncover most of them, but the engineers assure me that beyond this obstruction the tunnel ceilings remain intact. We¡¯d try explosives but we¡¯re afraid the whole place would come crashing down about our ears.¡±

    They entered a small side chamber attached to the basilica, where cots had been arranged for them to sit upon. A medical orderly stood ready to receive them, needle and thread in hand. Deschane sat, wincing as they jabbed at his opened head wound, and delivered his report. Prota stood and occasionally nodded her head, her face devoid of emotion. Until, that is, they stated their estimation of the size of Mound Euler. Then she looked up sharply, asked:

    ¡°How large did you say?¡±

    ¡°Ensign, if you please.¡±

    Rene produced the map.

    ¡°Madame, around here is where the primary towers are. The new cluster of secondary feeder towers were here. Assuming that the mound is of the usual ovoid shape, and that it¡¯s major axis stretches between these two points, this would be its approximate size.¡±

    He drew the outline with his finger.

    ¡°But that would make it-¡±

    ¡°Exactly. Greater than all our core settlements combined. And so,¡± concluded Deschane, ¡°Given the magnitude of this threat, admiral, I must respectfully request that you evacuate Outpost 13 as soon as possible.¡±

    ¡°I understand. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. You are to be praised for having made it here in one piece. Both of you,¡± she added, nodding at Rene, who was surprised to be acknowledged.

    ¡°But you must understand,¡± she continued with a set look on her weathered face, ¡°Retreat is not an option for us here at 13.¡±

    Deschane sat up.

    ¡°It is not cowardice to withdraw in the face of certain annihilation.¡±

    ¡°Bravery has nothing to do with it. I suppose I had better tell you. I owe it to you for the men you¡¯ve lost, if nothing else,¡± she sighed. ¡°Navigator, why do you think Command sent you on your mission?¡±

    Deschane shrugged.

    ¡°Overpopulation. Settlements Yohan and Gaus are at maximum capacity. The others will reach theirs soon enough.¡±

    ¡°No. Population factors alone do not warrant full-scale invasion of a large mound. It is too costly, and command does not waste lives when there is little of strategic value to be gained. And there is nothing around here worth the misery of claiming it.¡±

    ¡°Except for Mound 13,¡± said Rene.

    ¡°Correct.¡± She nodded with approval. ¡°You catch on quick.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t follow.¡±

    ¡°Navigator, your men died to keep 13 secure. This small mound is the sole reason that Command wants to push north.¡±

    ¡°But why?¡±

    ¡°As you may have guessed, your operation was the first step towards a wider offensive. To claim this mound permanently we must seize control of all surrounding areas, even if it risks aggravating the enemy into surface skirmishes.¡±

    ¡°Madame, what makes you think that they would confine themselves above the ground?¡±

    She persisted, ¡°Even so. 13 is too valuable to lose.¡±

    ¡°But why?¡± Rene broke in.

    ¡°Tell me ensign, how long have you fought the enemy?¡±

    ¡°All my life. Ever since they found a sealant suit that could fit me.¡±

    ¡°What is your opinion of their intelligence?¡±

    They could adapt to situations and plan with meticulous attention to detail. They made tools, fashioning stone into lethal axes and spear heads. They were capable of highly effective communication, both tactile and pheromonal. They built labyrinthine structures that dwarfed any that man could make.

    ¡°They¡¯re clever. Given time, they eventually learn. It makes them very hard to kill,¡± he said finally.

    ¡°But would you say they are sapient?¡±

    He thought for a moment.

    ¡°No.¡±

    ¡°Really? Above all else, the Amit display an unwavering hatred of all things human. That they can commit themselves to the utter eradication of an entire species outside of their natural food chain is a clear indication of abstract thought, yes?¡±

    ¡°Forgive me, but what does this have to do with the deaths of my men?¡±

    ¡°That chamber of stars behind you?¡± she paused, a smile playing over her face, ¡°For that¡¯s what it is, I¡¯m sure you had a similar impression. It isn¡¯t natural. We certainly didn¡¯t make it. They did, though why we are still struggling to guess.¡±

    The orderly finished his work. They stood and returned to the star chamber, gazing about in wonder and confusion.

    ¡°All through the past year we have been rebuilding and cataloguing items of interest. Beginning to piece together the connotations of this place. What we have here is the first veritable proof of the Amit race possessing a culture.¡±

 Chapter 5: Arithmetic

    ¡°I can¡¯t agree with your conclusion,¡± Deschane said, ¡°This calcite formation is remarkable, but how can you say with certainty it¡¯s the work of thinking beings?¡±

    ¡°Because there are obvious symbolisms. Again, another thing we thought them incapable of. Notice how the stalactites are arranged?¡±

    Rene squinted. There was no pattern to it. Then Prota asked: ¡°What star points northward in the month of Clemdas?¡±

    ¡°Brahe.¡± Both he and the navigator said simultaneously. Comprehension dawned upon them. The Amit had shaped the ceiling with careful applications of acid, carving it such that every major constellation in the night sky was represented in the domes by a glittering array of water droplets. Even Deschane gaped at the realization: the Amit could read the stars just as they did.

    ¡°But that isn¡¯t all.¡± Prota took a torch from a nearby stanchion and held it aloft. The curious geometric figures etched into the ceiling above them resolved themselves into abstract images.

    Three great ovoid shapes threaded their way through the star-strewn sky, each trailing behind it wavering tails of fire.

    ¡°Thus it came to pass that the sons of Man fled from the desolate earth. In three gilded ships they rode, and tails of flame as fierce as a dying sun burned behind them as their mighty engines drove them into the deathless void. Of these blessed machines it was decreed that three would be their holy number, for then if one lost resonance and rebelled, then two could set the course aright¡­¡±

    She had quoted from the first page of the Log of the Voidtrekkers, oldest and most sacred of texts that dealt with the coming of the ancestor-gods.

    ¡°Three ships. Three tails of fire for each one.¡±

    Rene¡¯s head swam with the implications.

    ¡°Then why haven¡¯t we seen such things before? In other conquered mounds?¡± Deschane demanded.

    ¡°You know as well as I that each individual mound contains an entirely separate race of Amit. You were not here when we took this place. It exacted a terrible price. There was a week of close quarter fighting in the entrance hall. In some places there the bodies were stacked four or six deep.¡±

    ¡°They were a strange sub-species. Jaundice yellow rather than white, small yet highly vicious. They led us into countless ambushes. They knew how to feint a charge to draw a volley, retreat and charge again while we reloaded. When the eastern wall finally fell¡­¡± her voice trailed away, and she looked away troubled. ¡°As we swarmed in, we found what was left of them all hunched together. As though they were holding some final communion. As we neared, we saw what they¡¯d done. They¡¯d sat in circles facing one another, and thrust their claws down their own throats. They severed their own cortical bundles. A mass suicide. It was rather disturbing. We only had a few corpses of them to examine, and all heavily damaged, but from what we could see they had abnormal growth in their frontal lobes. They were special. They were aware of the massacre that awaited them, and they chose their own way out. It was almost noble, really¡±

    ¡°You sound as though you admire them.¡± Deschane said.

    ¡°I appreciate the function they serve. Surely, navigator, you realize that without them the Fleet would have died out long ago?¡±

    It was true. The Amit expanded cave systems, honeycombing the limestone with claw and acid, building the feeder towers in such a way that the life-giving mixture of carbon dioxide rich air extended all throughout the confines of the mounds. These were the sites for the only permanent settlements the Fleet could inhabit. And so they took the works of the enemy and put him to the bayonet, making homes of his fortresses, hard won in battles that raged far from the light of the twin suns of this cruel planet. They bored their way through, blasting apart his alien warrens to make way for smooth white tunnels, egress points, ventilation shafts, fields to grow glowing crops of fungus. In so doing they survived.

    Deschane scoffed.

    ¡°That is entirely coincidental. We evolved to become their predators, and vice versa. Nature designed us to be adversaries. Besides, if the ancestor-gods willed them into being, then why did they vanish and leave us to tear each other apart?¡±

    ¡°That is what we hope to learn.¡±

    ¡°This makes no sense,¡± Deschane growled, ¡°So they share the same legends as we do. What of it? They merely confirm what we already know.¡±

    ¡°But we don¡¯t know, navigator. The knowledge we possess is next to nothing compared to what we have forgotten.¡±

    ¡°We know enough. We know that it is our destiny to claim this planet even if it means striding over the corpse of every single living thing on it.¡±

    ¡°Navigator, you seem to forget that we only rediscovered the uses of black powder a century ago. We have lost so much in our time on this world. Anything that can begin our process of recovery is to be cherished.¡±

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    ¡°Even when it comes from the hand of the enemy?¡± Deschane¡¯s eyes glinted fiercely.

    ¡°This is not the only depiction within the mound. There are sculptures, acid paintings, more engravings like the ones you see before you now. Most have no parallel in the book of old terra-they are events unrecorded in all the annals of our history. That is why 13 is so important. There are mysteries here both sacred and profane. It is touched by the god--ancestors themselves.¡±

    ¡°Our structural engineers have surveyed this place. They say it is impossible for it to have remained intact as it has for millennia. They said that wind or gravity should have destroyed it long ago. Yet it stands. Something is keeping this place together. Something which given time we may discover. It is almost as though it has been waiting for us to take it.¡±

    ¡°What does it all mean?¡± Rene said aloud.

    ¡°That old myth is merely history distilled. That we do not belong here, and never have. That the Amit are intelligent beyond a doubt and know us for what we truly are.¡±

    ¡°Delusional,¡± spat Deschane.

    ¡°Calm yourself Navigator,¡± Prota drew herself. ¡°There is a reason command is willing to sacrifice you and thousands of others to keep this place safe. I understand your frustrations-¡±

    ¡°Do you? I¡¯ve just lost eighteen good men for the sake of meaningless conjecture!¡±

    ¡°Please consider the implications. For the first time, the Fleet will know where it came from, and why it is here! For the first time, we can move forward on a basis of solid fact rather than doubtful superstition! We will have true knowledge of the past!¡±

    ¡°To the void with the past!¡± Deschane was raging, ¡°Why waste breath upon it? There are beasts out there, madame, in their millions, slavering hordes that eat children and empty whole settlements of life! They are the sole reason mankind cannot live in comfort and security. They must be eradicated. All else is irrelevant.¡±

    They locked eyes and stood inches apart.

    The situation was only defused when a man came running up to Admiral Prota. He leant forward and whispered in her ear.

    Her eyes widened in alarm.

    ¡°One of your men has been seen approaching the outpost.¡±

    ¡°Lethway!¡± Rene yelled. He ran in the direction of the pressure gate, pounding through the corridors and thrusting aside the people standing in his way.

    ¡°Open the gate!¡± cried Prota as she, Deschane and her retinue came followed from behind. He scrambled into the decontamination chamber, hastily pulled on his sealant suit and strapped on the mask. The others donned their surface gear and joined him as the great iron slabs heaved aside.

    Hurriedly they made their way down the rough-hewn steps of the barbican, all the way down to the palisades, where a small crowd had gathered on the walls to watch. They cleared a path when they saw the Admiral.

    ¡°Where is he?¡± Deschane asked the men standing about. They pointed vaguely northward, unsure themselves, and he pulled out his binoculars.

    ¡°It¡¯s him alright,¡± he said, sounding impressed. ¡°He survived.¡±

    ¡°How?¡±

    ¡°Ask him when you meet.¡±

    With a rare smile he handed the lenses to Rene, whose heart leapt. Beyond a small thicket of trees in the distance was a wide clearing, into which a familiar figure now emerged. Against all odds, he was back safe. Rene could have shouted for joy.

    But as he adjusted the magnification knob and the image of his friend came into crisp focus, he realized there was something wrong.

    ¡°He¡¯s not wearing a mask,¡± Rene said in horror.

    ¡°Rene! Ensign, wait!¡±

    He bounded off the platform and ran for the entrance. Cursing, Deschane snatched the musket from the hands of the nearest trooper and yelled:

    ¡°Someone get me a spare!¡±

    A mask was found in haste and tossed his way. He caught it and dashed after Rene, who had already begun making for the tree line.

    ¡°Ensign, stop! That¡¯s an order!¡±

    Rene ignored him and ploughed on.

    He reached the thicket and was about to burst through the other side when a strong hand grasped his ankle and he came crashing down.

    ¡°Wait,¡± Deschane said gruffly. Rene squirmed but the navigator was sitting calmly on the back of his knees, and he could not pull free. ¡°Rene! Listen to me.¡±

    ¡°What are you doing! He¡¯ll die out here without a mask-¡±

    ¡°How do you suppose he lost it?¡± hissed Deschane, as he pulled Rene forcefully back into cover.

    Hundreds of meters away, Lethway emerged into the clearing. He was sprinting at full pelt, not jogging as they had supposed. His clothes were torn and besmirched with mud, his sealant suit one great ragged mass of polymer that hung by a single sleeve.

    They stopped struggling and turned to watch. Fear was evident in his posture: every movement of his body suggested that of a hunted man.

    ¡°Those clever bastards.¡± Deschane said sadly. ¡°Haven¡¯t you realized? He¡¯s already dead.¡±

    ¡°What are talking about, sir? He¡¯s right there! If we give my mask to him in time, we can rush him into the depressurization chamber-¡±

    ¡°They let him live. They knew more of us had survived, so they held off and followed him home. He doesn¡¯t know it, but he¡¯s led them straight to us.¡±

    Sure enough, in the acre of woods across the clearing they saw scores of shadows moving furtively between the trees. Rene¡¯s blood ran cold.

    ¡°Ancestors preserve us.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t count on it. There¡¯s enough of them there to level a full settlement.¡±

    Lethway drew closer, looking constantly behind him and stumbling over his feet. Deschane pursed his lips. His hand ran down the length of the musket and found the trigger guard.

    ¡°There¡¯s nothing more we can do for him. And if he keeps running this way, they¡¯re bound to find the outpost.¡±

    It took Rene a few moments to process what he was saying. He looked at him in disbelief.

    Deschane went down on one knee. He placed the percussion cap and thumbed the hammer back.

    Rene watched him in horrid fascination.

    ¡°It¡¯s a hard thing,¡± the navigator was saying, settling into a marksman¡¯s crouch, ¡°But there¡¯s still a chance we can save Mound 13.¡±

    He aimed down the iron sight.

    It was a terrible form of arithmetic, to weigh the value of one life against that of a thousand. But in that moment, Rene reached the same, gut-wrenching conclusion. He reached out and placed a hand on the barrel, forcing it to point at the ground. They looked at each other, and an understanding passed between them.

    A few yards away, Lethway sobbed as he caught sight of the outpost rising up from out of the trees. It was nothing short of a miracle that he¡¯d made it this far. He caught the glint of metal in the undergrowth, and with a cry of delight saw a human face peering back at him from beneath the shade. He raised his hands up high in greeting.

    There was a sharp report, and a blinding flash. Lethway stumbled as though he¡¯d been tripped and lay very still.

 Chapter 6: Siege

    ¡°That couldn¡¯t have been easy.¡± The navigator said softly.

    ¡°He was my friend.¡± Rene had nothing more to say. He handed the still-smoking musket back to Deschane, feeling soiled in way that he knew would never wash off.

    Deschane nodded grimly.

    ¡°It had to be done. For the good of the Fleet.¡±

    They hid and waited. The Amits scuttled into view and prodded the body with furtive movements. They conferred, tapping quick rhythms with their feet and making tactile signs with their vestigial arms. Then without any preamble, they took hold of Lethway¡¯s feet and went off, dragging him after them.

    It would have ended there had not at that moment an Amit come striding into the clearing, bearing aloft a curious standard. It was one of the staked carcasses of their brethren that lined the perimeter. The Amit carrying it was shaking it about in evident fury. It reared up high and waved it about, pieces of dried chitin falling away to scatter onto the ground.

    From all around them, the Amits gathered, intrigued by the display. Rene watched as one by one, the Amit touched the lips of the corpse, passing the fingers of their hands over its ruined face with something approaching reverence. He was startled when he recognized this gesture: the nymph by the river had done the same with its nursemaid.

    Shudders of thought carried down from the center of the gathering mass of warrior brood, emanating from the one at center, he that bore the object of their displeasure. He pointed to the distance, towards Mound 13, shaking with rage. The others began to flex their mandibles in eagerness.

    ¡°Ancestors preserve us,¡± breathed Deschane.

    ¡°The fear-death pheromones? Why aren¡¯t they affected?¡±

    ¡°Command thought they were a separate race. But these were their elders. Their holy men, their priests and caretakers. And Mound 13 was their sacred place.¡±

    The Amit reached a consensus. Their teeming ranks turned towards Mound 13, towards their position, and Rene already knew it would be no use running.

    ¡°Give me your pistol,¡± said Deschane.

    ¡°But how will I fight?¡±

    ¡°You won¡¯t. Get back there and raise the alarm.¡±

    ¡°What about you, sir?¡±

    But Deschane was already heading off.

    ¡°I¡¯ve got a few tricks in mind. Might buy you some time. Now go, before I change my mind.¡±

    Rene turned and ran. The last he saw of Deschane was him moving along the tree line, firing all that he could into the approaching mass, a man tossing pebbles into an oncoming wave.

    Rene reached the main road and began signaling the towers for all he was worth. He made the hand sign for enemy contact, holding his arms up in a wide A. They saw his message, and bells began to toll from every corner of the mound.

    He squeezed past the gate just before they barred it shut, mounting the palisades and taking his place next to Admiral Prota.

    She watched, pale-faced, as the Amit host came on. They had torn up all the stakes and were waving them on high in defiance and hatred.

    ¡°So they do possess empathy. How unexpected,¡± said Admiral Prota faintly.

    Terrified men rushed into position and the palisades bristled with armament. Cannons were wheeled into place and hurriedly prepared.

    Just out of musket range the Amit paused, eyeing the towering defenses before them.

    ¡°What are they waiting for?¡± a trooper wondered aloud.

    ¡°Let them,¡± said his companion, barely able to keep his teeth from chattering, ¡°It gives us time to load the cannon.¡±

    An officer came forward and asked:

    ¡°Your orders, madame?¡±

    ¡°Fire when ready.¡± Her voice did not tremble, though Rene knew she felt the same fear.

    With an earth shattering roar the artillery began tearing holes into their serried ranks. And with that, battle was joined. A great line of smoke erupted down the length of the palisade. Several were cut down by the fusillade, but many more surged on. Such was the impetus of their charge that they reached the base of the walls before another volley could be gotten off and began to scale the vertical surface with their grasping digits. Soon it became apparent that the first layer of defense would not hold. The defenders fixed bayonets or fired at point blank range as the enemy spilled over the tops of the walls like a swollen river bursting through a dam, slaying as they went. Men were cast down from the heights into the gleeful throng below and torn apart.

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    The order to withdraw was given. Rene crammed into the pressure gate with the rest of the bloodied defenders, heard cries of despair from the ones left behind as the great door began to slide shut.

    All about was chaos. Alarm bells rang incessantly. Men scrambled to put on their surface gear in anticipation of the inevitable breach. Admiral Prota was in the midst of it, directing their desperate, futile efforts.

    ¡°Brosio! Take your platoon to the southern tunnels and hold them there! They¡¯ll be climbing down from the breach on the eastern side at any moment! Engineers, prep the charges! Make them pay for every inch!¡±

    She caught sight of Rene as he stood bewildered.

    ¡°Ensign! Go up to the artillery on the second feeder tower and ask them why they¡¯ve stopped firing!¡±

    Rene¡¯s instinct to serve snapped him back into reality. He saluted, then ran off before remembering that he was in a foreign mound and had not the slightest idea how to get there. He grabbed a passing trooper.

    ¡°The stairs!¡± he screamed into the man¡¯s face, ¡°Which way to the second feeder tower?¡±

    ¡°Damned if I know!¡± the trooper yelled back, before shoving him roughly aside and hurrying off down the corridor. Already he could hear gunfire echoing down the tunnels. The Amits had found the holes in the damaged eastern section and had pried their way inside.

    Rene found a landing and dashed up the spiraling steps. He was panting heavily when he opened the door at the top and was greeted by a cold rush of air. He looked up and saw the great turbine fans turning slowly in their shafts, linked to an endless source of running water beneath. Far above him, at the tower¡¯s peak the guns had fallen silent. He saw Amits crawling over the lip of the opening, like flies into the open mouth of a bottle.

    ¡°Get out of the way!¡±

    A squadron of men bustled past him and formed up to surround the bottom of the tower. They fired upwards, and bodies began to rain down, bouncing off the sides or cut to pieces as they were caught by slanted blades of the fans. A bisected Amit, still alive, fell at his feet. It slashed at him with a stone dagger, and he leapt back and bayonetted it in the brainstem three times in quick succession. It shuddered and went stiff.

    Reasoning that since the artillerymen were all undoubtedly dead, Rene considered his duty there as done. He went back down the stairs and stumbled into a hot wash of flame. Meat was burning, whether of friend or foe he could not tell. A bullet whistled past his nose and he ducked back into the stairway.

    ¡°Human! I¡¯m human!¡± he cried out.

    ¡°Well then, get over here you idiot!¡± the shooter replied.

    A makeshift barricade had been set up with old crates and furniture. He scrambled past the charred remains of dead Amits and clambered over to the other side.

    They were throwing incendiaries down the hall, flammable oil in glass flasks, stoppered by cotton wicks. The air was thick with smoke. On the other end of the hallway amid the carnage and the dead the Amits cowered behind the corners and doorways, multifaceted eyes glinting with malice.

    Rene joined the defense of the barricade. Ever so often one or two Amits rushed out and were driven back by the cocktails or roasted alive. With each assault however, the men of the Fleet were losing more ammunition. Already they were down to the last box of fire flasks. It would not last.

    The Amits sensed this and became tense. Quietly the men fell back. An engineer set the fuse to a mining charge and scurried away. The Amits made their rush, clambered triumphantly over the top, and were buried in flame and rubble as the archway collapsed onto them. The men cheered and began preparing the next barricade.

    This pattern was repeated several times. The Amits broke off stalactites and shaped them into crude picks, digging away the debris to make their assault anew. The men laid ambushes, hiding in the side corridors and shuttered rooms and rushing into the thick of them at the appointed signal. They repulsed each assault with unyielding tenacity, then with rousing hurrahs led their own counter-charges to break the enemy¡¯s momentum.

    Stone axe met bayonet in bloody conflict amidst the ruined halls of Mound 13. It was a brief, brutal war of annihilation, and the toll was bloody on both sides.

    Gradually the humans were pushed back, collapsing tunnel entrances as they went, until at last the final barricade was put up, and they resigned themselves to their fate. In the vaunted star chamber what was left of the weary defenders propped blocks of stone against the entrance and wedged broken beams of wood at the direction of the engineers. They had salvaged a small twelve-pounder gun, which they wheeled into position at the firing hole, loaded with canister shot.

    In the tired crowd of pale, hopeless faces, Rene spotted Admiral Prota, breathing hard in her bloodied sealant suit. An Amit mandible was embedded in her chest. With every breath she took came painful sucking noises.

    ¡°Well, ensign. This looks to be it,¡± she said as Rene knelt by her side.

    ¡°Aye, sir,¡± he replied, ¡°We made them bleed for it, though.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a shame. Ever since I came to this place, I¡¯ve wondered what things would have been like if we¡¯d known the truth, whatever that is. I doubt if it would have changed our relations with the Amit. We seem to have been destined for conflict with one another right from the start.¡±

    ¡°Were you ever close to finding it?¡±

    She smiled sadly.

    ¡°Shreds and hints of the grander scheme of the ancestor-gods, but never definite answers. If there are any to be found, they were probably buried in the eastern section. But we never got around the exploring it,¡± Prota sat up, pain written on her face as blood came curdling up into her mouth. She spat to the side and continued:

    ¡°Ah, but maybe it¡¯s for the best. Maybe your commander was right. Perhaps it¡¯s better to forget the past. To forget the sins of our species. To forget¡­¡± Prota¡¯s voice trailed away, and her head slumped forward. Rene did not attempt to rouse her. It was better that she wouldn¡¯t be conscious for what came next. He clasped her hand in his own and waited for the end.

 Chapter 7: Divine Engine

    The Amits had taken their time. They knew that victory was assured, and so had set about feasting. But eventually they had worked up enough of an appetite to make the final push.

    Once more they rushed through a storm of bullets. They disintegrated as the twelve-pounder discharged a cluster of grapeshot, faltered, then charged again. Claws ripped at the broken stone, reaching and grasping. A man was seized by his locks of hair and pulled through the gap; his screams cut short as his body toppled backwards, missing its head. Bayonets jostled and found their mark in pale flesh as pistols rang out in the tight confines and set Rene¡¯s ears ringing.

    ¡°Get back!¡± shouted the engineers, ¡°You¡¯ve done your best! We¡¯ll take it from here!¡±

    The wall of detritus had begun to buckle beneath the weight of the enemy. The engineers brought out the red plunger and ran the wire to the final batch of charges. These were strapped to every major column and support in the room. They were to be buried alive, to deny the enemy their final victory.

    The first Amit clawed its head through. It was impaled on half a dozen blades and hurled back. Then the second burst in and bathed a man head to toe in its corrosive juices, melting him down to bare red musculature in seconds. The monsters scrambled into the breach with reckless abandon, and the slaughter began.

    The engineer was killed, brained by an axe before he could blow the charges. Crawling across the floor, battered and bruised by the trampling feet of the melee, Rene found the box and pried it from his dead hands. With a final whimper he closed his eyes and depressed the plunger.

    #

    Sometime later Rene awoke with a throbbing head. Absently he wondered if the afterlife was supposed to hurt this much, but then he felt a cold film of cave water touch the side of his face, and reluctantly accepted the fact that he was alive.

    The chamber was gone. All about him were strewn great slabs of ceiling, under which various limbs protruded. Beside him, Prota had been buried beneath wreckage, her pendant flung clear. Absently he reached over and pocketed it.

    His pants were wet; water was streaming through from somewhere. Through a gap in the huge slump of debris at the entrance he made out shadows moving against the torchlight, and heard sounds of them doing unspeakable things.

    He dragged himself upright and cried out a second time in misery and pain. Immediately he regretted that action, as a milky white eye came up to the gap and looked about hungrily. It spotted him and tapped its feet against the stone in excitement. A horde of scuttling figures flitted into view. There was a scuffling sound as they began to dig at the obstruction. He groaned, and looked about him for a weapon, anything with which to end his life quickly and in relatively less anguish. Then he saw it.

    The chamber had collapsed, and in doing so a broken pillar several tons heavy had knocked against the impenetrable eastern wall, the one that Admiral Prota¡¯s workmen had been chipping carefully at for a year. It had smashed through the obstruction, and now its great bulk held up the fragile archway. More importantly, an opening had appeared. One that looked just the right size for a child to crawl through. Cave water streamed from the rent, lapping at the bodies of the slain. Behind him the Amit shuddered with delight, spitting torrents of acid against the stone in order to get through to him faster.

    He went into the crawlspace and found it was a tight fit. He tried flattening his belly. When that didn¡¯t work, he removed the tattered remnants of his sealant suit, and barely managed to squeeze inside.

    He emerged into a cool tunnel. Motes of dust millennia old swirled placidly in the still air, lit by glowing phosphorescent mushrooms that lined the damp walls. Water wet his toes as he stumbled painfully along.

    The floor was even and polished to a mirror sheen. Across the chamber was an odd doorway, ovoid in shape. He went over to it, searched in vain for a doorknob, then chuckled and gave up. He felt an absence of fear and knew that his lifting spirits had something to do with this place being exposed to the outside atmosphere. He had at best a few hours left to live. He shrugged and peered about him in the murk.

    These tunnels sloped down below the open eastern section. If he could reach a ventilation shaft, there was a chance he could live. Assuming of course that he found a mask sometime soon. He had lost his at some point in the brawl. Thankfully he still had the compass. He took it out but watched in disbelief as the needle began to spin like a top. Cleary whatever magnetic anomaly that had plagued the expedition had returned with a vengeance. Shaking his head, uncertain now of everything, Rene wandered aimlessly, a pale and bloodied specter haunting the alien hallways.

    Graceful alcoves surrounded him, with effigies sheltered beneath them and primitive paintings upon their curved surfaces. He looked at the closest one. Though the style was surreal and the language foreign, he understood the symbols well enough.

    For they were those of ancient scripture.

    The war in heaven. Two great armadas clashed in the depths of the void, lances of searing red heat and spheres of anti-matter dancing between their silver prows. The battle raged the length of an entire wall, a lurid display of mythical carnage. He saw a thousand worlds set alight by the conflagration, whole systems burning like tinder, fuel to the madness and the pain.

    In its wake, emptiness. The next alcove showed a galaxy bereft of life, the charred husks of planets circling their dying suns, drained of energy in the apocalyptic conflict.

    He saw the Fleet emerge, three small ships, together containing all that remained from the great dying: the ancestor-gods of the primordial dawn. They searched long and hard, travelling from one blasted hellscape to the next in search of lasting refuge.

    And so at long last they found Arachnea, a virgin planet untouched by strife. They came to sow life in its bleak hollows, to make a home for their children, a peaceful place far from the ravages of a war so ancient they themselves had forgotten its cause. Then they set their Divine Engines to work. The Amit had carved effigies of these machines out of lumps of azure marble. Rene touched their smooth flanks, admiring at the workmanship. They were shaped like squat little men, with massive hands and domelike heads. Where they had walked, the earth had moved aside for them. They carved the channels with their feet, flattened the hills with blows from their fists. They dredged up fountains of molten lava and shaped them into a thousand bejeweled islands. They wove giant webs of glass as strong as the pillars of the earth and stretched them out across the sky to shield the world from the jealous eyes of the twin suns, Raelu and Sardec.

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    It was in the course of their work the Divine Engines shattered a mountain and unearthed the Amit, the first true inhabitants of Arachnea. They had arrived centuries before the ancestor-gods. The painting showed the Amit stumbling out of a rent in their tunnels, hands held up against the sunlight that no longer scorched their pale, waxen skin. The first thing they saw in their brave new world was a towering behemoth of burnished metal, wreathed in fire and smoke. In terror they had fallen to their knees before it, begging for their lives.

    Rene nodded. All of this was familiar. He walked over to the next depiction, expecting to see the ancestor-gods recoiling in disgust, then swiftly recovering and obliterating the insectoid creatures with deadly rays of light, driving them scuttling back into their foul hollows beneath the earth. For it was written that the Amits were the offspring of vague, unholy sorceries, and could only know evil. Indeed, the war in heaven had been fought over similar themes. They could not be suffered to live. But what he saw instead shook him to his very core.

    The ancestors came down from their mighty steeds, lifted the Amit to their feet, and embraced them. Quickly Rene ran through the rest of the alcoves, mind raging against the truths he now saw before him. From then on, the work deviated from scripture so much so that he could only piece together their meaning with difficulty.

    The ancestor-gods debated among themselves as to what to do with the Amits. This was not the first time they had come across life other than their own, and it was clear that this time they were cautious in their approach. Some advocated for bringing the race to total extinction, but most agreed that best way forward was a peaceful coexistence, reasoning that they had much to learn from the Amits, who had survived the conditions of Arachnea for millennia without the need for terraforming. The ancestor-gods felt guilt over stealing Arachnea from its original inhabitants and wished to make amends. And so a bargain was struck between the races.

    The Amits would allow the ancestor-gods to make changes to the world. To correct the tilt of its wayward axis, to vent huge plumes of inert gases from the hot womb of the earth and to seed life forms from long-dead Terra. In return, Man would change the Amit as well. They would grant them strength and cunning, broods beyond number, and bodies hardened against pain and suffering so they too could be as the gods were.

    The plan proceeded towards fruition. Both sides were content as the final pieces of the great work fell into place. But unknown to Man and Amit alike, the specter of war had never really left the Fleet. It had hidden away in dark holds within the hearts of men, and there it had whispered of want and of desire, of the beauty of the virgin world and the lust to claim it.

    Some of the ancestor-gods resented their share in the great work. They chafed at the fact that they, the superior beings, had to deal with their vassal Amits like equals, exchanging their powers for the mere right to live on the planet that they had rightfully settled.

    And so they began to snuff out the Amit in their millions, burning them out of their homes with heat rays that swept clean entire colonies.

    Soon two sides were at each other¡¯s throats. The honorable ancestors who had kept to their word fought a bitter war against their prideful kin amidst the ruin of their unfinished works. In the skies at night, the Amit watched as the madness unfolded, as stars appeared and vanished overnight, and great balls of flame came bursting down through the void to crash into the broken earth. At last, as their weapons lay spent and broken, they then turned the Divine Engines against one another. Once the instruments of peace and creation, they soon tore the landscape apart with the fury of their duels, trading blows that sent impacts shuddering deep into the scorched earth.

    The Amit were afraid, and betook themselves to the deep places, where the wrath of the gods could not find them. But this was to be their doom. Eventually the changes wrought in the bodies of the Amit made them strong and durable enough the endure the apocalyptic conditions of the surface. But as the ancestor-gods fought and died on the surface in cataclysmic struggle, their magic died with them. The Amit themselves became trapped, betrayed by their own changing flesh. They became unable to revert to their previous forms, and so were forevermore consigned to lives of darkness in their lairs beneath the earth.

    Now, Arachnea was unsuitable for both man and Amit alike. The ancestor-gods had become madmen, so overtaken by their hatred for each other that they had cast themselves back into a dark age from which there would be no return.

    The Amits emerged into the gloomy wreckage of their planet and starved. Until, that is, they came upon the remnants of a battleground. Huge forces of men had clashed and died, leaving their bodies to rot upon the cold ground. In their desperate hunger, the Amits began to eat.

    And they found the meat of the gods to be good. That war, a holy act most strange and terrible, had filled their bellies with meat, this they understood. That gods themselves judged war to be a just course of action was evident. And since all that remained of the gods were a race of thieves and murderers, it was judged that to make war upon them was both just and good.

    Rene came to the last alcove. It depicted the final resting place of the Divine Engines, whom the Amit had buried beneath the mountains out of fear, sealing them away from the surface so that they would never again walk the earth.

    A great square plaque of shining steel and copper was laid into the stone. To the Amit it was only a mark of some kind, a symbol whose meaning was long forgotten, but Rene felt an odd connection to it. He traced its edges with a blood-stained hand, and realized it was not a square, but a rectangle, and one whose dimensions he faintly recognized.

    He took out Prota¡¯s pendant and pressed it into the crevice.

    There was a hiss of pneumatics as the great square door to his side gave way. Light fixtures hummed into life through powers unknown. He stepped gingerly into the soft glow.

    ¡°Greetings,¡± came a disembodied female voice, ¡°Welcome to the Topographical Oversight and Reconstruction Unit (T.O.R.U.). What are your commands?¡±

    A Divine Engine. The Amit had found it and built an entire civilization around it. This behemoth, this secret mountain of metal was what his compass had been steering towards all this time. A giddy sensation flowed through him. In his stupor he passed his hands in front of his face, examining the lines of his palms and the action of his fingers.

    A nimbus of light played over him, reading his gestures.

    ¡°Command noted. Activating neural pairing.¡±

    The door closed shut with a creak behind him. Steel pinions reached out and wire nodules grasped him, ran painlessly through his eye sockets and into his brain. All at once he could feel the machine coming to life after its long dormancy, reactors coils thrumming with an ancient power that would not be denied.

    He straightened his back.

    The outpost fell away from him in a cloud of dust and rubble. He strode forward, kilometers tall, a shining colossus of star-metal. He glanced down, saw the multitudes of the Amit streaming about the shattered mound. He watched them for a moment, saw them waving their arms in speechless terror at the sudden apparition.

    For the first time, he pitied them. They were unaware of their own savagery, of their own hideousness, even. They did not know the doom that awaited them, of the lengths the Fleet was prepared to go in order to secure its final victory.

    But there was nothing that could be done. Mankind could no more change themselves than could the Amit. Rene felt the weight of history bearing down upon his shoulders. Though a different world and a separate time, the same inexorable force drove them towards the same tired conclusion.

    But perhaps the sooner it was over, the better. He lifted his foot and brought it down. Once, twice, three times until nothing was left moving below. Then he swung away, the ground quaking beneath him.

    So, it was through humanity that the Amits had come to know of war? Well then, today he would show them that they had much left to learn. He turned northward, a god astride the earth, and lumbered towards Mound Euler.

 Chapter 8: Apex

    On iridescent wings she soared, borne aloft by the wild thermals sweeping up the sides of the valley. To the west the setting suns were orange yolks dipping into the hard, stony crust of the horizon. A sheer thrill ran through Zildiz¡¯s body; it was time once more to fulfill her glorious purpose.

    Among the glittering, pebbly shores and hissing reeds of the wetlands far below, prey-forms emerged into the cooling dusk. Thick clouds of winged kester-gnats jostled fiercely for their mating rights, each one as long as her forearm. Meanwhile, tall water dancers rowed across the surface of the placid lakes and estuaries, their oar-like limbs sending them jetting forward, keeping just ahead of the schools of carnivorous nerids which splashed after them, sleek silver bodies flashing through the air.

    Zildiz tracked one such school through the bulging set of compound eyes that took up most of her face, tucking her limbs and two pairs of wings and plummeting into a steep dive. Catching this prey-form required absolute precision as she streaked so close to the surface of the water that she felt the tips of her toes getting wet. Pulling up at the last millisecond, Zildiz shot out with her legs and snatched a nerid right at the apex of its leap, her clawed feet piercing through its armored exoskeleton to fix it in place while the other kept its thrashing mandibles from reaching up and disemboweling her. Quick as lightning she reached down with her mouth and bit into the base of its head, wrenching it off in one quick motion and then squeezing the sides of its abdomen so that its guts turned inside out like meat from a sausage casing.

    Zildiz gobbled down the juicy morsels and flung the empty casing aside and immediately began casting about for more. Her exomorph¡¯s two pairs of wings were each more than seven meters in length and granted her omnidirectional flight. She flitted back and forth and side to side, snatching nerids wherever she went and strewing their empty shell casings in her wake.

    Like most of the aerial caste, hunting took up most of her day. The sheer amount of calories burned per minute of flight meant that she had to feed incessantly throughout the small window of time afforded to her in the hours of dusk. But far from being a nuisance to her, Zildiz exulted in her role in the order of things. What better way to serve the Vitalus than to trim the excess within the system, filling her belly all the while?

    It was only these precious moments of opportunity that she felt truly alive, sheer exhilaration accentuating her natural desire to prove herself. For though her adolescent body had yet to grow into its prime, Zildiz did not believe in taking things slowly.

    Feeling a sudden hankering for larger prey she zipped after one of the water dancers, darting right between its tall legs and hovering in place right below its abdomen. The beast mooed and lowed like a buffalo and tried to row itself clear. With a flick of her wrist Zildiz unsheathed her mantid limbs, the jointed blades unfolding from her beneath her forearms, serrated teeth sharp as razors.

    With a single swipe she severed the water dancer¡¯s twiggy limbs and seized its falling body with her teeth, dragging it ashore on one of the mudbanks surrounded by tall bamboo thickets. Since it was too heavy to carry in the air she folded her wings and climbed up the sturdy grasses, the water dancer clamped firmly in her jaws. Perched on the top of the swaying bamboo, nibbling daintily on the still-twitching carcass, Zildiz watched as the sky turned bronze and then a deep russet, the first evening stars peeking shyly behind the thinning clouds.

    She let out a contented belch and reclined among the branches. It felt good to look upon the perfection of the All-In-One and to know she had a place within Its holy design. She was a Gallivant, the apex predator at the very pinnacle of the food chain.

    But they were more than just that. Gallivants were the greatest creations of the Vitalus, partners and prot¨¦g¨¦s in the never-ending effort to perfect the living systems of Arachnea. It was the Gallivants who pruned the tree of evolution, shaving off the excess species while shepherding others in their mutual struggle to survive. It was flattering to think how much faith It placed in them and how indispensable they were to the great scheme of things.

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    She was still musing on this when the All-In-One decided to disabuse her of such delusions.

    The first she felt of the attack was a powerful tug on her leg that sent her toppling from her perch. In hindsight, the only thing that saved her was the half-eaten body of her prey which became lodged between the bamboo shoots, and which she held onto for dear life as a barbed tongue covered in adhesive slime wrapped itself around her ankle. Looking over her shoulder in alarm, she saw ferns and fronds on the water¡¯s surface pushed aside to reveal an enormous horka toad, fanged mouth gaping wide to receive her.

    Knowing she had only seconds to act before the monster swallowed her whole, Zildiz swung her mantid blade at the grasping tongue, only for the leathery flesh to turn it aside. Feeling the hot flush of terror she sawed at it with the teeth of her blade and was rewarded with a geyser of blood. Croaking in agony, the horker toad gave another terrific yank, wrenching so hard that the carcass she was hanging onto like grim death came apart in her hands. Zildiz fell to earth in an ungainly heap, a startled cry loosed from her lips as the beast bounded in for the kill. At the same moment she sawed through the last of the tongue and ripped herself free, then kicked off the ground with both legs, wings shuttering at blinding speed to enable a vertical takeoff, the toad¡¯s jaws clamping shut inches away from her toes.

    ¡°You forget your place within the All-In-One,¡± Zildiz told it.

    ¡°Ribbit-ribbit,¡± it replied, hopping after her and pawing at the severed stump of its tongue. Recovering her poise, she darted in and to the side of its face, and before the amphibian could turn to face her, rammed her clawed feet into its swollen eye, gouging and tearing. The horka toad flopped back into the shallows, blood and vitreous fluid muddying the waters.

    But Zildiz was far from finished. Her blood was up, and she was angered by its impertinence at interrupting her reverie. She hovered in close, baiting the creature to spring for her again, presenting her shimmering wings like a matador spreading his red cape for the bull, her intention being to put out its other eye. Once blinded she could then take the creature apart at her leisure. She would carry home chunks of the quivering flesh for the brood grubs back home¡ªthe children were always hungry. Besides, she would be doing the biome a favor by putting it out of its misery. The All-In-One had designated these horka toads an invasive species which had wandered in from the northern flood plain habitats. Their predations threatened to unbalance the delicate equilibrium of the wetlands, and the sooner they were dealt with, the better.

    With its one remaining eye the horka toad fixed her in its malevolent glare. She saw its hind legs bunching up for a final spring and smiled, preparing herself for the kill.

    Yet for the second time that day came the unexpected. The water all across the wetlands began to quiver and shake, a million tiny ripples radiating outwards to lick at the pebbly shores, the product of an immense ground tremor which flattened the banks and crumbled tons of sediment into the wavelets, clouding the tides with silt. Frightened, the horka toad beat a hasty retreat and dove into the safety of the cloudy waters.

    Was it an earthquake? Zildiz wondered. But it couldn¡¯t be. The All-In-One had not made arrangements for seismic activity or volcanic degassing during this cycle. In the rainforest far to the east she could hear the crash of rotten timbers giving way and ripping through the canopy. Turning her gaze to the south towards the karst canyons she heard the awful grinding of rock slipping along fault lines and the thunder of distant avalanches.

    To gain a clearer picture she switched from the mosaic-like imagery of her compound vision to her pair of simple eyes. A rising plume of dust obscured much of the region, reaffirming her hunch that a volcano had erupted. Squinting hard, she could just barely make out familiar landscape of the Amit mounds, each one as tall as mountains and crowned with jagged spires, the feeder towers which regulated the atmospheric conditions of the subterranean lairs of the Amits.

    Zildiz blinked. Was it her imagination, or had she just seen a shadow moving behind that veil of dust? No, that couldn¡¯t be right. A trick of the light, perhaps? Sure enough, the debris soon settled to reveal the same familiar peaks that she¡¯d looked upon her entire life.

    Except there was a new mountain jutting out among the brown crags of the central massif. Grey and glinting in the dying light of day, it was like nothing she had ever seen before. Except, that was not entirely true. It had two arms, two legs and something that vaguely resembled a head, but the absurd immensity of it made her reject outright the possibility that it was humanoid.

    Just a trick of the light, Zildiz told herself desperately.

    But then before her very eyes the mountain walked, and everything came crashing down.

 Chapter 9: Fire

    So this is what godhead feels like, Rene thought dimly. What a bloody headache!

    Through the whirl of images and flashing lights he could discern that he was standing in the center of a vast dome whose walls were completely transparent. Blocks of figures, fluctuating graphs and meaningless symbols trawled across the crystal surface, overwhelming his senses with information he simply could not understand. Whistles and alarms blared from every direction while in the background the monotonous female voice repeated itself over and over again:

    ¡°Warning: fuel rods depleted. Emergency power reservoirs at 1.030% capacity. Energy saving mode is advised.¡±

    Rene flinched at a sudden migraine, raising his hand to shield his eyes from the dazzling display. But in response to this gesture, the Divine Engine responded by summoning forth ghostly hallucinations, impressions of solid shapes rendered in spectral green light. Rene reeled from them, tripping over his own feet and nearly faceplanting onto the metal floor. Likewise, the Engine tilted over and smashed headfirst into the bulk of Mound Euler. Rene threw up his arms, fully expecting the glass dome to smash apart upon impact with the cyclopean mass of rock. But instead, the mound itself caved in, plunging Rene¡¯s world into darkness.

    ¡°Optic feed lost,¡± the spirit informed Rene as he picked himself back up again, ¡°Activate ventral searchlights?¡±

    Two words winked into existence before him: YES on the left, and NO on the right. Rene reached out with a trembling finger, and feeling rather like a child attempting to mash the square peg into the round hole, pointed at Yes.

    Instantly he was bathed in illumination, brilliant beams of light chasing away the pitch blackness and replacing it with the stuff of nightmares. Thousands upon thousands of tiny Amits stared back at him, crowded beneath the honeycombed interior of their subterranean dwellings. Rene had always known them to be prodigious architects, but the extent and complexity of Mound Euler took his breath away. By accidentally headbutting his way inside, he¡¯d created a perfect cross-section of the mound¡¯s interior, laying bare everything from the nurseries and royal chambers at the base, to the cavernous main hive and the ancillary galleries at the core, to the conical ventilation shafts. Below each graceful archway and chamber the Amits cringed, frozen by the sudden apparition that had burst into their lives.

    Seeing them now at their most vulnerable, Rene¡¯s lips unconsciously drew back in a snarl, his fright replaced by cold certainty.

    I might not know how to operate this heap, Rene told himself, but I will find a way to make them pay.

    ¡°Make. Them. Pay!¡± he muttered aloud. In his mind¡¯s eye he saw Lethway¡¯s face framed between the musket¡¯s sights once again, could make out the expression on Lethway¡¯s face as he had recognized Rene. Once again Rene felt the kick of the musket butt against his shoulder as he¡¯d squeezed the trigger, saw Lethway clutch at his heart and fall over through a shroud of gun smoke.

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    He had killed his friend for nothing! Mound 13, Deschane, Lethway and all his comrades-in-arms of the 3<sup>rd</sup> Pathfinder Regiment. All of them, dead! For nothing! Tears burned his eyes and ran down his cheeks, lubricating the strange metal filaments that had bored under his lids and taken root in his brain. Rene struck out blindly, punching and shoving at the air. The Engine followed suit, righting itself and pushing clear of the debris. As it moved the green phantasms shifted and Rene finally understood what they were: a miniaturized map of the surrounding topography, giving the operator of the Engine a bird¡¯s eye perspective of the outside world. Standing in the center of it was a little figurine of the Engine itself. As expected, it had a domelike head which unlike the transparent-seeming interior was fashioned from a completely solid and completely sealed-off helm. A single menacing red eye sat blinking at the center of the dome where a face would have been.

    The head was fused directly to the bulky torso, the latter of which was flanked by buttress-like shoulders which sported enormous curved pauldrons. They reminded Rene of the ancients sets of iron armor in the museum back home which primitive warriors had worn in early days of the Amit War. But rather than lance and shield, the Engine was equipped with an arsenal of strange tools. One vaguely resembled a saw, except that each ¡®sawtooth¡¯ was a shovel-like blade that was clearly meant for excavation. The other was a claw with a mammoth drill head protruding from the palm and enclosed by the four grasping digits.

    Rene flexed his right hand and the earthsaw began to spin, the excavator blades rotating up and down the length of the arm with the harsh shriek of rusted metal in motion.

    ¡°Right,¡± Rene whispered hoarsely, ¡°Let¡¯s see what this old wreck can do.¡±

    He rammed the earthsaw into the heart of the Mound and saw the countless chambers gnawed into dust upon impact, glimpsed Amits buried screaming in the showers of rubble. Rene swung the earthsaw up and across, toppling the spires above and sending them hurtling down the chutes, effectively smothering the lungs of the mound. One after another, like the layers of a chandelier sent crashing to the ground, each level of the mound buckled beneath the weight of the collapsing mountain. Thousands were buried in an instant, the crags echoing with the sound of their demise. Across the topographic map the aftershock rippled out into the canyons in the form of dozens of avalanches, choking the valleys with boulders and uprooting entire forests.

    Rene raised his left hand and the drill spun in ponderous revolutions, the fingers of the hand folding back to give it free reign. He punched the drill into the rubble heap and bored a hole through the mountainside. Withdrawing the drill arm, he uncovered whole nests to shell-shocked survivors, covered in dust and too stunned to moved. All the Amits could do was cringe and cower as he loomed above them, the avatar of their annihilation.

    ¡°Did you think you could escape?¡± he seethed, ¡°There is no sanctuary here. You¡¯ll burn! All of you! BURN!¡±

    ¡°Do you wish to initiate atmospheric ignition?¡± queried the sterile voice of the Engine. Once more came the two choices: Yes or No.

    ¡°Oh, you know I do,¡± Rene laughed, liking the sound of those words. He stabbed a finger at the affirmative option and the red eye in the center of the Engine¡¯s forehead flashed, warning klaxons going off as it gathered its mysterious energies.

    ¡°Laser platform online. Awaiting your command," the Engine said politely. Rene stared coldly down at the shell-shocked masses of Amits and consigned them to death with a single word:

    ¡°Fire.¡±

 Chapter 10: First Contact

    High above the spreading ruin, Zildiz watched as a world died. For that was what a biome represented to her; a complete ensemble of living organisms bound together by a beautiful tapestry of interdependence, a balance composed of and sustained by the unconscious actions of innumerable individuals.

    One could displace that balance at one end by changing any one of the variables in the system. Temperature, terrain, population size, climate¡ªanything could upset the delicate equations. But in time Vitalus would always right itself and reach a new equilibrium.

    Not so here. Here, there was only death.

    She watched as the glaring ruby eye of the monster reached the brilliance of a sun, slowly building in intensity before finally unleashing a line of pure destruction that set the very air ablaze, a gout of flames reaching in and gutting the Amit mound.

    Tiny figures tumbled out of the conflagration, flailing their limbs and sprinting in every direction in a hopeless attempt to escape. There was nowhere to run¡ªthe vegetation had also turned into a sea of flame. Even from her high vantage point she could smell the burning green wood and the rich scent of melting fat. Her mouth watered uncontrollably even though Zildiz felt sick to her stomach at the sight she was witnessing.

    Other Gallivants quickly arrived at the scene, their minds tugging at hers, the magnetotactic symbiotic bacteria in her brain responding to the fluctuations in the surrounding EM fields.

    ¡°Zildiz,¡± one of the arriving males greeted, hovering closer while carefully maintaining a respectful distance. It was not yet mating season, and though the males outweighed her significantly, they knew better than to startle a female just back from the hunt.

    ¡°Menash,¡± she nodded, politely returning the greeting. Menash¡¯s exomorph had bluish green armor plates and was equipped with heftier musculature than hers. He¡¯d replaced one of his arms with a pincer since the last time she¡¯d met him, and looked every inch the perfect predator. But even he was frightened by the level of destruction down below.

    ¡°What on earth is that thing down there?¡± he asked in open wonder.

    ¡°You know as much as I do,¡± she told him, ¡°It almost looks like a Gallivant, don¡¯t you think? Or at least one of the terrestrial castes, anyway.¡±

    ¡°Maybe it¡¯s one of the Vitalus¡¯ new creations?¡± suggested a smaller brown male named Racek, nervously fluttering from side to side in his lightweight exomorph.

    ¡°What possible function could that monster serve within the All-In-One?¡± Zildiz scoffed.

    ¡°Well, for one thing, it¡¯s cracked open that mound quite nicely,¡± said a red-and-white female, licking her lips eagerly, ¡°I haven¡¯t had an Amit in months.¡±

    ¡°You can¡¯t be serious, Vezda,¡± Zildiz said, ¡°We shouldn¡¯t take advantage of this situation. Look at them, the entire colony is getting wiped out even as we speak!¡±

    This was not quite true. A handful of albino figures were limping through the canyons, having miraculously escaped the destruction.

    ¡°He that dares, wins,¡± Menash said, ¡°This looks like an act of nature to me. It¡¯s certainly destructive enough to be one. We¡¯re well within our rights to adapt to changing conditions within the system.¡±

    ¡°Then why didn¡¯t Vitalus tell us about this¡­creature?¡± Zildiz asked, ¡°We aren''t due for a seismic event this cycle, remember?¡±

    ¡°Enough of this alpha-female posturing!¡± Vezda snapped, ¡°Just because you¡¯re a mother of three doesn¡¯t mean you decide what¡¯s best for the rest of us.¡±

    Flexing her scorpion¡¯s tail, the fiery female swooped in for the hunt. Other Gallivants followed after her, eager to score some free calories from the dying Amit colony.

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    ¡°Madness,¡± Zildiz whispered, watching them go.

    ¡°The game has changed,¡± Menash shrugged, ¡°This is hardly the first time that the Vitalus has introduced a new species to the equation. It¡¯s all part of directed evolution.¡±

    ¡°There isn''t anything directed about this!¡± Zildiz said fiercely, pointing at the grey giant, ¡°That''s a mass extinction event in motion!¡±

    #

    Rene reached into the dying embers for the second time and dug around with the drill hand. The arms of the Engine were moving sluggishly now and a warning message kept flashing across his retinas:

    ¡°Danger! System overheating¡ªmultiple ruptures in coolant circulation lines. Recommend immediate evacuation.¡±

    ¡°Over my dead body,¡± Rene gasped. His mind was overwhelmed, senses deafened and blinded by the bewildering new stimuli. In addition, his body was beginning to feel the hard edge of fatigue. Though he¡¯d sustained only modest injuries in the siege of Mound Euler, all the little scrapes and bruises were adding up¡ªthe detonation of the blasting charges earlier had definitely ruptured one of his eardrums.

    ¡°Power reservoirs at 0.9841% capacity,¡± the spirit of the Engine told him, "Fuel rods depleted. To request resupply, please contact your local supply chain manager via EXOCOM network¡ª"

    ¡°Piss off,¡± he grumbled. The claw hand finally closed around something solid and he pulled out a fistful of solid rock the size of a cathedral. Examining the object and seeing the hexagonal chambers studding its interior, Rene deduced that he was holding the Amit hatching nursery in his hand. Amazingly, some of the Amits still clung stubbornly to life within it, nymphs clutched the grub-like infants to their chests as if shielding them from his fury.

    Even now after all the carnage the sight of them gave Rene pause. Memories flooded through him, sounds and smells he thought long forgotten. He was a young boy again in Mound Ulysses running up and down the spiral staircase of the school, eating candied grubs on a stick and building clay castles with his bosom friends.

    He¡¯d had a talent for working with clay back then, fashioning ballrooms and topiaries and drawbridges for his tiny king and queen. While other boys played at making sieges and fashioned cannonballs by rolling the clay into balls, Rene had imagined the most impossible things of all: a kingdom at peace with itself, under no threat from monsters or men, ruled by the just and free of the wicked, where everyone had enough grubs and mushrooms to eat. A kingdom where men could walk in the sun and breath without masks, and a boy of thirteen didn¡¯t have to trade in his box of crayons for a tin of cartridges at the enlistment center.

    But now the castle was real. So were the tiny lives he held in the palm of his hand.

    ¡°It has to be done. For the good of the Fleet,¡± he heard Deschane say.

    Rene curled his hand into a fist, saw bodies mashed to pulp between his fingers. Something inside him died in that instant. Drawing back his arm, he hurled the broken mess across the mountain range, watching it disintegrate through the air in countless pieces.

    ¡°Power reservoirs at 0.1201% capacity,¡± said the voice in a drunken slur, ¡°Initiating shutdown procedure in T minus 10 seconds. 10. 9¡­¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not done,¡± he raged, ¡°Not yet!¡±

    But really, what was there left to do? There was nothing left to destroy. There was nothing left in him, too.

    Then he cast a weary eye over the land and saw strange birds alighting across the tortured landscape. He squinted at them, the glass dome responding to the movement of his facial muscles by magnifying the image.

    What were these flocks of creatures? Hideous, all of them, even uglier than the Amits. They each had two pairs of wings and their faces were wholly made up of shiny, bulbous eyes. He saw them swoop into the smoldering vegetation below and begin feeding on the stricken Amits, devouring them on the spot.

    Sickened by the grisly spectacle, Rene made up his mind in an instant.

    ¡°Open fire,¡± he told the Engine.

    ¡°8¡­Systems overheating. 7¡­ Recommend full diagnostic of onboard laser platform. 6¡­¡±

    ¡°Belay that order!¡± he said, using one of Deschane¡¯s favorite catchphrases, ¡°I am assistant navigator Rene Louverture, and I am ordering you to fire.¡±

    There was a brief pause, then:

    ¡°Acknowledged. Commencing atmospheric ignition.¡±

    #

    ¡°Everybody back!¡± Zildiz cried, both verbally and via magnetosynapse, ¡°Get back!¡±

    She¡¯d seen what it had done to the nursery. There could be only one thing that was driving its actions: hatred, pure and simple.

    Some of her kin heard the warning and veered upwards, abandoning the feast as the red eye gathered its energies.

    ¡°No,¡± she told them, her bowels loosening in terror, ¡°It sets the air on fire! Water, it¡¯s our only chance!¡±

    Racek heeded her and followed as she plummeted towards a narrow mountain stream winding through the canyon. The follicles on her neck stood on end as the humidity of the air dried up in an instant, water vapor evaporating on contact with her exomorph.

    A red star was born, a terrible brilliance that threatened to engulf them all. The stream below was bubbling like a pot of stew even as she broke the surface at terminal velocity. Her last thought as her head cracked into the stony stream bed was how irritating it would be to dry her wings again. And then the foam closed over her, and she knew no more.

 Chapter 11: Happy Landings

    ¡°Warning!¡± the female voice flatly intoned, ¡°Critical systems failure! Activating safety pod.¡±

    A set of hard panels shot up out of the floor and enclosed Rene from all sides, fitting seamlessly into airtight coffin and leaving only a round porthole of thick glass for him to peer out of. The interior of the tight space was furnished with gelatinous cushions supporting his spine, head and neck. Flexible straps extended from hidden slots above his shoulders and either side of his waist, wrapping him in so tight he could barely breathe.

    ¡°What¡¯s going on?¡± he demanded of the Engine.

    ¡°Shutdown procedure in progress. Have a very safe day.¡±

    ¡°Oy! I asked you a question.¡±

    ¡°Warning! Ejection sequence imminent. Warning! Brace for takeoff. Brace for takeoff. Brace¡ª¡±

    Rene did not have time to scream¡ª though he couldn¡¯t have done so even if he¡¯d wanted to. All the breath was driven out of his body as the iron sarcophagus shot straight upwards with explosive force. In instant he was ripped away from the dome and shunted out through a tube, lobbed like a stone from the arm of a catapult. He saw flashes of sunlight flickering past, the stony ground reeling away from him as he sped towards the heavens at hundreds of feet a second. Wisps of low-hanging cumulous clouds caressed the porthole, leaving streaks of dewy precipitation.

    The craft¡¯s velocity eventually bled off under the influence of gravity, and suddenly everything went perfectly still, a surreal and oddly peaceful moment where his arms gently floated up to the ceiling. His guts, which had been compressed under enormous acceleration, now relaxed. Feeling immensely grateful, Rene took a welcome gulp of air¡ªonly for it to be hammered right out of him again as his innards decided to reverse course, crunching upwards along the meagre contents of his stomach which now spewed out of his mouth in an uncontrollable torrent of vomit and spittle, coating the inside of the porthole. Through levitating gobs of half-digested food Rene saw that the craft was now in total free fall. Gone was the mad chessboard of the karst canyons and towers, replaced by a verdant rainforest that stretched well beyond the horizon, a shining brown river snaking through the impenetrable green.

    ¡°Initiating aerobraking maneuvers,¡± said a bodiless male voice, harsher and more metallic than that of the Engine, ¡°Please remain calm.¡±

    ¡°Hnggng,¡± Rene groaned, giving it a thumbs up. His optimism evaporated when something ruptured in the bulkhead above him with a loud bang.

    Wonderful, Rene thought with a sardonic grin. Damn thing¡¯s going to fall apart before I even hit the ground. He heard the flapping of canvas and glanced up to see the flapping edge of what looked like a great big tent spreading open above him. The tent was attached to the coffin via taut black cables which were thrumming from a great deal of tension. One of them snapped apart under the immense forces at work, the split end slicing right past his porthole. The tent began to spin uncontrollably, jostling the coffin like it was a tin can being kicked down the road. Throughout all this, Rene was treated to the dubious pleasure of having the vomit on the porthole peel off and reapply itself all over his face.

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    This is how I die, Rene thought glumly. Covered in my own filth, squealing like a pig and trapped in an iron coffin built sometime in the previous millennia.

    ¡°Aerobraking unsuccessful. Please remain calm.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m¡­trying¡­¡± he replied through gritted teeth.

    ¡°Compensating. Compensating.¡±

    There was a second bang and the cables were all severed, the big tent floating away into the clouds.

    ¡°Unable to compensate. Initiating lithobraking maneuvers. Brace for impact.¡±

    There was a third and final eruption, this time from somewhere under his feet. He peeked down and saw four massive bladders rapidly inflating at the base of the coffin. A forest clearing was rushing up to meet him, and from the look of things, it was packing a nasty knuckle sandwich. Commending his soul to the Eternal Flight, Rene silently offered up a prayer to the ancestor-gods:

    ¡°Hello there. I¡¯m not entirely sure how to do this, so I¡¯ll keep it brief. I have only one thing to ask of you: I left certain¡­illustrations¡­under my bunk at home. Illustrations depicting young ladies in rather indecent postures. Whatever happens to me, don¡¯t let my mother find them¡ª¡±

    Boing!

    The coffin struck the ground at full force and bounced right off. A stand of trees reached out to catch it. Wood splintered and branches scratched against the side of the craft. A hefty bough smacked into the porthole and produced a worrying crack in the glass that grew larger and larger with every bump and snag.

    At last, with a final whallop to the side of the coffin that set Rene¡¯s teeth rattling in his gums, the craft rolled to a halt. Rene opened his eyes and found to his disbelief that he was still alive.

    ¡°Still alive?¡± he wondered aloud, wiping his lips and breathing shakily. When the buzz of adrenaline ebbed and he finally processed what had just occurred, Rene burst out in a mad cackle:

    ¡°Aha! Ah-ha hah! I¡¯m still alive, you bastards!¡±

    Who exactly he was referring to, Rene wasn¡¯t sure. But it felt good to say those words all the same.

    ¡°Lithobraking maneuver successful,¡± the safety pod belatedly informed him, ¡°Thank you for choosing Exodus Industries. Your future, built today!¡±

    ¡°If that¡¯s your idea of success, I¡¯d hate to see what you¡¯d call a failure,¡± Rene joked, still giddy from the experience, ¡°As for my future, do you have any ideas on how I could prolong it?¡±

    ¡°Safety pod hull integrity is compromised. Foreign contaminants have entered the compartment. Recommend immediate antifungal dosage.¡±

    A groove on the wall of the coffin slid open to offer him the contents of a tiny drawer. In it was a strange object nestled in an indented mold. It was shaped like a pistol with trigger and all, but in the place of the barrel was a syringe filled with a dubious orange liquid in a transparent capsule. Next to the pistol were two identical capsules likewise holding the same substance.

    ¡°Hm,¡± Rene grunted, ¡°Did you say antifungal?¡±

    ¡°Affirmative. Once injected, it will counteract the effects of native spores for up to 48 hours, standard Terran.¡±

    Rene could hardly believe it. A remedy against infection from airborne spores was the holy grail of modern science. It was the second great hurdle that the Fleet faced in its struggle to reclaim the surface world, right after the deadly atmosphere.

    ¡°Terran?¡± he repeated, ¡°That¡¯s where the gods were born, correct?¡±

    The safety pod did not reply. Sighing, Rene tried to work free of the restraints binding him to the seat but found the task harder than expected. Then her remembered that he had a tiny clasp knife in his trouser pocket and used it to cut himself free of the upholstery.

    ¡°Do you have anything else that¡¯s of use to me, pod?¡± he asked, turning his attention to the syringe and examining it thoughtfully?

    ¡°A complete survival kit is available in the foot locker.¡±

    Another, even larger drawer opened up between his feet, containing a compact white chest held shut with airtight seals.

    ¡°Right. Thanks,¡± he said awkwardly.

    Rene stooped to open it and felt something wet and heavy inside the seat of his trousers. Sniffing at it inquisitively, he gagged and added: ¡°I don¡¯t suppose you could conjure up a bucket of water and some soap? I¡¯m afraid I¡¯ve made a bit of a mess.¡±

 Chapter 12: The Sword of the Ancients

    Eventually he managed to persuade the safety pod to let him out. It had stubbornly urged him to stay inside for his own protection while it sent out a distress signal.

    ¡°A recovery team is being sent to your coordinates,¡± it had told him, ¡°You are advised to remain inside. Please keep your limbs within the pod at all times and await rescue. Thank you for your cooperation.¡±

    ¡°No one is coming,¡± he had replied in exasperation, ¡°The people that built you have long since turned to stardust.¡±

    ¡°65 Syngman Bb is a class-C planet currently unsuitable for human life. Hazardous conditions are guaranteed.¡±

    ¡°You think I don¡¯t know that?¡± he¡¯d scolded it, ¡°I was born on this miserable rock. I¡¯m well aware of the dangers.¡±

    Still, he had waited around for a bit to see if the machine would make good on its promise. In that time he¡¯d tried to catch a nap inside the safety of the pod even though it reeked to high heaven. But after an hour the stuffiness and stink had driven him briefly insane and he¡¯d demanded his release, stamping his foot like a petulant brat. He¡¯d conjured up an irrational suspicion in his head that the reason the pod wasn¡¯t letting him out was that it was physically incapable of obeying his commands, having perhaps taken too much damage in the crash. The last thing he wanted was to be entombed alive inside it.

    Then the pod wall in front of him slid aside and Rene felt the hot blast of the tropical breeze as a new world sprang to life before his eyes. The Aeronautical Division had never flown this far north to his knowledge¡ªall of this was virgin territory. The lithobraking bladders had deflated shortly after landing and lowered the pod gently to the ground.

    Rene stepped out onto the rich black loam of the jungle. And a jungle it was, that and then some. The shortest trees were at least sixty feet tall, while the tallest gave him a crick in the neck when he tried see where their branches ended. Ropy strangler vines wound around the crooked trunks, weaving a loom so thick that he could barely make out the suns. In fact he wasn¡¯t entirely sure it was daytime anymore. From the sparseness of the undergrowth it was clear that not much could grow under the total shadow of the canopy.

    ¡°Alright, trooper,¡± he said to himself, ¡°What now?¡±

    Oxygen narcosis would kill him in a matter of hours. He was beginning to regret opening the pod and letting out all the good air, though he doubted it would have lasted very long anyway with that great big crack in the glass. Besides, he couldn¡¯t bear another hour stuck in that cesspit. He¡¯d made quite a mess in there, and he rather hoped that the spirit in the pod wouldn¡¯t take offense.

    Which was quite ridiculous, really. He had bigger things to worry about than offending an incorporeal presence. He was going to rupture his lungs out here in a matter of hours. Either that, or starve to death, or sprout mold across his skin like Lethway, or perish of thirst, or get gobbled up by some exotic new lifeform yet to be named by science. Or worse, the Amits could come creeping up on him in the night while he lay delirious. All he would feel were claws digging into the soft flesh of his neck, and then¡­

    ¡°You¡¯re being hysterical,¡± Deschane would¡¯ve told him right about now, ¡°Act like you¡¯ve got a pair, trooper. Remember your training.¡±

    What training? Three years in officer training school? His mother has been so proud when he¡¯d been accepted into the elite Pathfinder Regiment. It had meant that his family received additional weekly rations. Even better, they had earned the right to add a five by four foot living extension to their living quarters, which was just large enough for him to crawl into at bedtime and save his parents the trouble of stuffing themselves and three fully grown children into a chamber that could barely hold two people. Yes, he¡¯d had it somewhat soft as an officer, however lowly his position. For one thing, it had meant that he only had to complete the barest minimum of an infantryman¡¯s training regimen. A regimen which included, incidentally, several courses on surviving in the wilderness. Skills like building a fire without flint and steel, constructing makeshift breathing apparatuses in case of gasmask failure, or even fashioning those crude but highly effective stone weapons like the Amits were so fond of using; these things had been given lesser priority than topics like strategy, logistics, small-unit tactics, cartography, navigation and basic firearms drills.

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    As such, Rene had only taken the first survivalist course, and his memory of that was spotty at best. Ah well. It was better than nothing.

    ¡°Rain or shine, we hold the line,¡± Lethway had been fond of quoting. It was the motto of the 3<sup>rd</sup> Pathfinder Regiment and its meaning was simple: a proper trooper made do with what he had, no matter the circumstances.

    Cheering up a bit at the memory of his eternally ebullient friend, Rene began taking stock of his situation. Oxygen narcosis was his immediate enemy. He would start to get dizzy and slap-happy in a few minutes unless he did something about it.

    An idea occurred to him. The ancestor-gods would¡¯ve faced the same issues when it came to surviving on the surface world. He opened the survival kit and rummaged around for something that could help. Sure enough, the first tool he found was a rubber mask with a see-through visor. It seemed much flimsier than the standard-issue masks he was used to, with a long hose connecting its snout to a breathing apparatus mounted on a backpack. Rene wiped his face clean with his sleeves before putting it on. The visor fit his face like a glove, the straps and the lining of the mask remolding themselves to form an airtight fit. It came as no surprise that the air he inhaled through it was sweeter and more wholesome than any he had ever encountered. He took a moment to simply enjoy the luxury of breathing before moving on with his work.

    Rene also found a spare set of clothing in the form of a white jumpsuit made of some supple fabric that was stronger than canvas and lighter than silk. But there was no way he was getting into that without washing himself clean. Rene hated feeling filthy. Like every right-thinking citizen of Mound Ulysses he was a severe germaphobe who knew that uncleanliness always preceded outbreaks of disease. Plagues had wiped out entire settlements in the past, the tight confines of the hive a natural breeding grounds for contagion. Yes, a good wash in a river or pond would do him wonders.

    Speaking of which, he still had to secure a source of potable water. He licked his lips at the thought of a cup of water from the underground reservoirs of home. Ulysses was famous for its delicious water. Chock-full of minerals it was, enough to put hair on a growing boy¡¯s unmentionables.

    Searching for water would mean venturing into the unknown, and with night falling who knew what awaited him out there, or how far that river he¡¯d seen truly was? Coming across some local wildlife was a certainty.

    He still remembered those winged harpies he¡¯d seen right before the Divine Engine had given him the old heave-ho. The beam-throwing weapon had caught scores of the creatures in its flames, but many more had flown clear and escaped. Even now they could be roosting in the branches above him, waiting to dive down and dismember him with the same ease with which they had butchered the Amits. Rene wasn¡¯t taking any chances. He needed a weapon, and once more, the box provided.

    It came in a sheathe of alabaster metal, a short broad blade with a cumbersome basket hilt. He wondered why a stubby blade needed such bulky hand protection when it was clearly unsuited to sword fencing. The pommel folded up to reveal a red button. Pressing it, Rene was startled when the blade began to vibrate in his hand like a living thing. He was so surprised that he dropping it by accident, snatching back his hand and letting it fall. It hit the ground hilt-first and spun, the cutting edge glancing against a huge granite boulder. The stone parted like butter beneath a hot knife, splitting apart into two equal halves. But the blade kept on going, skittering across the ground and striking the base of a tree. There was a terrible groan of stricken timber and the giant was felled, Rene judiciously stepping aside as it ripped through the blanket of vines to leave a gaping rent in the canopy above him.

    Rene gingerly picked up the now inert sword and grasped it firmly in hand.

    ¡°Why, yes,¡± he muttered, feeling pleased, ¡°Yes, I believe this will do.¡±

 Chapter 13: Into the Jungle

    Sadly the survival kit did not yield anything remotely resembling a gun. Indeed, Rene could hardly make sense of most of the artifacts he found. He made a catalogue of those which he could recognize: a collapsible tent made of the same wondrous fibers as the jumpsuit, a portable stove, a package of brown lumps he suspected to be fire starters, a mess tin with a full set of folding utensils, a water flask, a wristwatch with attached compass (both of which possessed no hands but showed the time and magnetic reading through glowing lights) and a pouch full of white cubes that smelled like cinnamon.

    As for the rest of the kit, that was a total mystery to him. Among them were a gauntlet fused to an underslung pipe, a hollow sphere, a folding tripod that held up some sort of bowl or dish with a great big spike sticking out of its center (perhaps it was meant for cooking stew in), and a lacquered obsidian slate marked with lines like a checkerboard.

    He decided to fiddle around with them later. Reconnaissance came first. Before he left, Rene rolled up one dirty sleeve and located his artery with his fingertips. He took out the syringe containing the antifungal drug and winced as the needle tip dimpled his skin, drawing a tiny bead of blood. He stowed the syringe away with the two extra doses then carefully packed his belongings inside the case, taking the extra time to arrange the stuff as compactly as possible.

    A soldier¡¯s rucksack contained everything he could depend on out in the field. One of the first lesson¡¯s he¡¯d learned as a footslogger was to maximize the use of its space to cram in as much useful gear as possible. There was no telling which of these artefacts would wind up saving his life out here, and Rene had a gut feeling that he would need every single one of them before this ordeal was over.

    With the sheathed sword in one hand and the handle of the survival kit in the other, Rene went looking for water.

    #

    It was deep in the night, and Zildiz felt her children nibbling at her again. Hungry, always hungry. Aa faint smile graced her hard features. It was true what her mother had told her once: we are all of us slaves to our stomachs. But tonight she had nothing left to give. The stores of fat and predigested protein in the larder were all gone, eaten up during the lean dry season. Zildiz herself was completely spent, exhausted after a long day of futile hunting. What little she had caught had barely kept her in the air.

    ¡°Go to sleep, my little waifs,¡± she whispered tenderly, ¡°Mother is tired.¡±

    A cold draft swept across the paper floor of her nest, stirring up the dust and pieces of molted exomorph. The three of them were growing far too quickly for her liking. If only they would stay this tiny for another cycle or so, just so she could enjoy their company. That wide-eyed innocence and total dependency of pupae¡ªto her that was the essence of motherhood. All the sacrifices of time and energy and affection, made in exchange for satiating an emotional compulsion more powerful than anything she¡¯d felt in her maiden years.

    And for what, she had to wonder. What did she stand to gain from this crooked bargain? They were helpless without her, all three of them, plump little blobs of soft flesh. What could they do for her that could even begin to repay her for her efforts?

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    Yes, through them she could pass on her likeness and traits to the succeeding generations of Gallivants ad infinitum. But did that truly matter? In time her descendants¡¯ blood would mingle with that of the greater whole, and everything that made her, Zildiz, unique would be diluted to the point of obliteration. In time none of her descendants would resemble her in the slightest. If that was the immortality promised by the Vitalus, then she wasn¡¯t interested.

    Why then did she endure this pointless slavery and toil, waiting hand and foot on these¡­these parasites? Yes, that was what they were in the strictest sense of the word. Like ticks they had latched onto her, taking and taking until she had nothing left for herself.

    And yet for some reason Zildiz was pleased with her role. More than that, she was happy to do it.

    ¡°For you, everything,¡¯ she told them fiercely, ¡°Everything.¡±

    She drew the silk-spun cocoon around them and held them tight to her chest. They whimpered and shivered against the chill, and she felt her heart breaking. How would they survive the next dry spell? What if the rains never came back? There was only one choice that remained to her.

    ¡°Everything,¡± she swore to them again, ¡°Take all that I am.¡±

    And so her children began to eat the only thing she had left to offer up: herself. Though the pain was indescribable she let them do it, and felt the strength in her body slowly draining away.

    ¡°There you go,¡± she said, biting back the tears, ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter. Whatever happens, the four of you must live on.¡±

    Four? No, that couldn¡¯t be right. She only had three children. There was amber-eyed Polux, eldest and strongest. There too was dainty Sinestra who had grown right out of her first exomorph in a matter of days and was flying in a matter of weeks unassisted. Arvin was the youngest, born with a crooked leg and a cunning mind that more than made up for it.

    But then why could she feel another presence in the room with her? Growing wild with hysteria, Zildiz pulled off the blanket and reached for her children. And there, curled up among its bawling siblings a desiccated husk with empty, rotting eyes staring back at her in accusation.

    ¡°No,¡± Zildiz wailed, ¡°Oh, please no!¡±

    Her screams rang out into the night, echoing across the treetops. But for all her grief and rage her cries could not wake the dead, and she was left drowning in her tears.

    #

    It was at this point that Zildiz woke up and found that she was drowning in the literal sense as well. Choking and screaming, she came bursting up out of the river, spewing a geyser of water from her mouth as she dragged herself up the riverbank, retching and gasping for breath.

    Her lungs and throat felt raw from swallowing too much river water. Her body felt like it was being stabbed with a hundred pins and needles. Looking down at her chest she found that she was covered in hideous, fat leeches that were feasting on what they had mistaken for a corpse. Hissing in annoyance she tore them off and stuffed them into her jaws, blood spurting from the corners of her mouth. She needed all food she could get in order to heal her wounds properly. Besides, most of what she was eating had been hers to begin with anyway.

    Zildiz got up and assessed her injuries. The deep and insistent ache in her back meant that one of her forewings had been torn off at the socket. That was going to set her back a few cycles to regrow. She had it lucky, all things considered. The grey behemoth could have burnt her to a crisp like the others. Remembering its trail of destruction, Zildiz looked around in panic and found to her relief that the monster was nowhere in sight. But that didn¡¯t mean she was in the clear just yet; this was the river Sybil, deep in the heart of hostile territory. The Leapers ruled this biome, and they did not suffer incursions from their aerial cousins lightly. She needed to get out of here as quickly as possible.

    Licking her fingers clean, Zildiz waded up out of the shallows and into the steaming jungle.

 Chapter 14: Lost and Alone

    Zildiz dashed down the length of the narrow branch, balancing effortlessly on the tips of her toes as she built up speed right up until the very end when she leapt boldly into the vacant space, struggling mightily to keep herself airborne. Her smaller hindwings were her only working pair, and as expected, they could not hold her weight for long. The most she could manage was a sustained hover only ten wingspans off the ground. She gave it up before she strained herself and alighted on the stem of a foxpalm tree.

    This was going to be difficult. Escaping the rainforest would mean a long walk home. She would need to make a shelter for the night and hide it well. Zildiz found a hollow place among the siltstone boulders by the riverbank and began gathering dead branches and wide fronds. She stacked the latter into a tepee within the hollow and folded the fronds over them to form a roof. Zildiz took a step back and examined her work with a critical eye.

    Her nest-making had never been the prettiest, and the resulting structure was noticeably dilapidated, with far too many holes in the roof for her liking. But the All-In-One looked kindly upon her just then, and she turned up a useful bit of flotsam washed up on the side of the river, partially buried by the mud.

    It appeared to be some sort of enormous leaf or petal, perhaps torn off one of the megaflora by a strong wind. Thick black vines were attached to its edges, all tangled up like a glistening ball of snakes. Zildiz fished it out of the river and felt at it with her hands. The fibers of the leaf were amazingly tough and flexible, while the vines were as big as her wrist and stronger than any woven rope.

    She couldn¡¯t have asked for a better material to fix her roof. Soon she had a cozy lair cunningly concealed right on the water¡¯s edge. Zildiz squatted in the shade and rested her eyes, trying her best to fall asleep. But not to dream. No, never that.

    Soon she drifted away, and her nightmares found her anyway.

    #

    Rene found the river in less than an hour. Approximating the direction from the bird¡¯s eye view he¡¯d glimpsed of the area during his time in the plummeting safety pod, he kept himself moving downhill, knowing his chances of finding water improved with decreasing elevation. To keep from getting lost he marked his path back to the pod by carving arrows on the bark of the trees. In no time at all his efforts were rewarded by him hearing the muffled roar of the current.

    For the first time that day, Rene allowed himself a smile. He had always had a knack for navigating the surface world, a rare talent in a species which spent nearly all of its time underground. Most downsiders had attacks of agoraphobia and started hyperventilating the first time they were brought out of the mounds. Not so in Rene¡¯s case. He had squinted a bit at the brightness of the twin suns, that was all. When he wasn¡¯t busy fighting for his life at every turn, walking topside had always filled him with an incurable sense of curiosity. For a place so feared and reviled by the chaplains, the surface was a far sight prettier than the dripping caves and dark abysses of mankind¡¯s natural habitat.

    Rene crouched low as he approached the river, keeping hidden among the ferns. It was getting dark now and the birds and cicadas were trilling their ceaseless songs. Not a creature stirred. As far as he could tell, he was alone here on this stretch of the bank.

    Not for the first time Rene wondered if this was truly worth the risk, waddling all the way out here with the sodden weight in his trousers shifting uncomfortably with each step. But at the thought of spending another day covered in his own filth Rene grew decisive and ventured out into the open, reaching the river¡¯s edge.

    He would have to make it quick. Already he could barely see his hands in front of his face. Rene stripped off the gasmask and his soiled clothes and began washing himself off. Hopefully the antifungal dose in his immune system would protect him against untreated water sources. Rene scooped up some mud and gravel from the river bottom and used it as soap, applying it thickly and scrubbing himself clean.

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    ¡°Ahh,¡± Rene sighed contentedly. Remarkable, the wonders a good bath did for one¡¯s morale. After this he would make camp somewhere nearby¡ªsomething told him it would be safer to make his encampment with his back to these deep currents. His spirits soaring, Rene began to whistle as he cheerfully rinsed his armpits.

    It was at that moment that he heard a roar that froze his blood solid. It came from on high, shattering the evening stillness and reverberating through the hills and vales. Rene sank below the water up to the whites of his eyes, looking up at the skies in terror, certain that the blade-limbed harpy creatures had found him at last.

    But the thing which came tearing across the treetops were stranger by far. It was shaped like a bird, yet its wings were fixed in place and never flapped even once. In fact Rene thought it were merely gliding right up until it put on a murderous burst of acceleration, moving so swiftly that the troposphere visibly folded in its wake. Like a balloon by a firm fingertip, the film of air which traced its leading edge bulged beneath the immense pressure, until finally it gave way in a rippling tear in the sky.

    Krrboom!

    A sonic explosion rocked the heavens seconds later. Gobsmacked, Rene could only gape after it as it sped out of sight.

    ¡°A machine!¡± Rene exclaimed, standing up, ¡°A flying machine!¡±

    The Aeronautical Division had blimps and zeppelins, of course. There had even been rumors of the Fleet engineers testing heavier-than-air prototypes, something which Rene had always dismissed as pure science fiction. But nothing in the Fleet¡¯s arsenal could even begin to match what he had just witnessed. Such speed! Such raw power!

    That¡¯s funny, Rene thought, his excitement put on hold by a sudden realization. The flying machine had been heading in the exact opposite direction in which he had been travelling. Rene scratched his chin and frowned. Then his eyes shot open and he shouted:

    ¡°The safety pod!¡±

    Hurriedly rinsing off the mud and drying himself with fistfuls of dead leaves, Rene threw on the white jumpsuit and breathing mask. Snatching up the sword and the kit, he went sprinting back the way he came, crashing heedlessly through the undergrowth, his heavy boots gouging up the mud underfoot.

    The spirit of the pod had spoken true! Someone had been sent to rescue him! Salvation was at hand!

    Thoughts burst into his mind one after another: who was manning those awesome flying machines? Were there in fact ancestor-gods who had survived up until the present day? Was he about to meet his makers?

    Everything made sense now, Rene told himself, making a fantastical leap of logic. The ancestor-gods had manipulated events such that he, Rene Louvoture, could uncover the dormant Divine Engine and use it to destroy the enemies of his people. It had all been ordained right from the start.

    It was hard to relocate the landmarks he had carved into the trees, but he kept after the roaring sound of the flying machine. It was hovering in place now, slowly circling the crash site. Powerful searchlights mounted on its snout bathed the land in beams of hard light. Rene stumbled on, lungs wheezing as the extreme exertions of the past days finally caught up to him. The flying machine was descending below the treetops now, the glare of its lights filtering through the foliage in spears of brilliance.

    ¡°Wait!¡± he yelled and waved, still kilometers away, ¡°I¡¯m here! I¡¯m coming!¡±

    The flying machine rose back up into his vision, the safety pod now fitted and attached to its belly.

    ¡°Don¡¯t leave me,¡± Rene begged, ¡°I¡¯m right here. Please?¡±

    Utterly defeated, Rene sank onto his knees and watched as the machine swung up and away, vanishing into the night. Now he was alone in the darkening land with no hope of rescue.

    No, not quite alone. Strange howls echoed through the jungle at odd intervals and set him on edge, his overactive imagination placing bogeymen within every nook and crevice. Bioluminescent lichens sprouting on the peeling bark and the faint light of the moon combined to give the place an eerie glow. It was brighter here at night than he¡¯d expected it to be. That was a problem in itself if he meant to stay hidden.

    He took out the collapsible tent and found that it hadn¡¯t come with any tent pegs or ropes. There was no time to figure out this particular puzzle. Besides, he was too depressed to even try. Too much had happened these past few days, altogether too much.

    Rene picked up a palm leaf off the forest floor and crawled to the base of a tree. There he curled up between its roots and covered himself up, with the survival kit case as his pillow and the sword of the ancients close at hand. And though the ground felt moist and cold he was soon fast asleep.

 Chapter 15: Convergent Paths

    It had not been a restful night, all things considered.

    First there had been that hideous roar which had shaken the whole jungle into frightened silence, the cries of the nocturnal creatures obliterated by what Zildiz had first mistaken for a violent monsoon wind. For the second time in this miserable day she had looked up and beheld a creature which had no place in the natural world. A winged manta moving so swiftly that it had already passed out of sight before she could even begin to process what she had just seen.

    The last thing she needed right now was another challenge to her already tenuous understanding of the world as it was. The grey behemoth from earlier had already left her mind groping for some rational explanation, one that continued to elude her despite Zildiz¡¯s best attempts to form useful analogies.

    Sleep soon proved impossible. Her agile mind was too busy wrestling with questions. Was the grey behemoth an act of nature or the result of the Vitalus¡¯ direct intervention, a sort of living earthquake or forest fire that he could summon at will? Had the Vitalus created it solely to eradicate an entire biome? If so, then why? The Amits had always been a central part of the cycles of change, altering the atmosphere through their mound respiratory systems and building the wind walls to help regulate the climate. Why had they drawn the All-In-One¡¯s displeasure? Alternatively, if It had not created the grey behemoth, then what had?

    Zildiz left her lair and went for a walk to clear her head. It was well and truly night now, black as the pit and with only the stars to guide her steps. Zildiz¡¯s compound eyes were useless in these conditions. Thankfully her other pair were designed specifically for this, their yellow irises widening to double their usual diameter. Gallivants sometimes hunted at night, though it was a bit trickier than in the day. Her simple eyes could only see within a narrow frontal cone and left her blind in the directions in which she was not directly facing.

    Her olfactory organs caught the scent of some speckled tree frogs and she hovered up into the lower boughs of the trees, impaling them on her mantid blades and skinning them carefully to avoid the poisonous coatings which they secreted. Her digestive system could weed out all but the deadliest of toxins, but tonight she wanted to relax and conserve her strength.

    That is, until she picked up the trail of another animal close by. She found its tracks in the soil, catching the bright sheen where its feet had compacted the mud. Judging by the depth and spacing of the prints, Zildiz concluded that it was heavy and slow-moving. Also, it had no toes¡ªits foot was made up of a single large hoof that left zigzagging patterns of grooves.

    Confusing. Then again, she wasn¡¯t all that familiar with the species of this biome. Well, whatever it was she looked forward to finding out what it tasted like. Zildiz was ravenous. Come to think of it, she had heard what sounded like a large animal crashing through the forest shortly after the flying monsters had appeared, no doubt fleeing from them in fear. Sharpening her blades against each other, Zildiz eagerly set off in pursuit.

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    Such a meal would sustain her for days. Enough to get her back home again without having to constantly stop and hunt for victuals. This animal did not move quickly even when it was clearly in a hurry. It was the sort of prey-form she could run down even in her injured state. A broken branch and a stone overturned from its resting place guided her in for the kill.

    She was close now, barely thirteen wingspans away if she had to guess from the richness of its scent. Too close to risk using her wings¡ªthe noise of their fluttering would give her away. Still, it would be better to attack it from above, if only to save her the trouble of a long chase through unfamiliar territory. She sheathed her blades in their housings of flesh and stole up a nearby trunk, her light body making barely a rustle as she transferred her weight between the branches. The going was tortuously slow. She didn¡¯t know how the Leapers could put up with this painstaking approach to killing. It just seemed so very inefficient compared to her way of doing things.

    Zildiz took a moment to let her eyes adjust to the deepening night. It did not take long to spot the prey-form. An albino! Its exoskeleton was as white as the snow she¡¯d glimpsed on the peaks of far-off mountains beyond the salt plains. Zildiz wondered how it could have survived long enough to grow so large. The complete lack of camouflage, the plodding pace and the lack of any noticeable armaments made it perfect Leaper food. Perhaps it had some sort of hidden defense mechanism? Like spewing noxious musk out of a gland next to its anus, or having poisonous skin like the frogs (perhaps that would explain its bright and noticeable colors)? What if it was tracking her movements even now, just waiting for her to play right into its hands? Oh, but that would be a clever survival strategy. Zildiz hesitated, beginning to suspect a trap.

    But the longer she observed the prey-form, the quicker she came to the conclusion that it was not some cunning adversary, but rather a slow-witted member of its species.

    It had tried to hide by wedging itself between the roots of a fatwax tree, covering itself with a single broad palm leaf in a pathetic attempt at camouflage. Something in its total defenselessness and the way it was tucked up into a ball with its arms and legs drawn in reminded Zildiz of her own children. She even felt a morsel of guilt at having to kill it before she squashed the unexpected emotion within herself.

    Guilt? For ensuring her survival and that of her brood? She was getting soft in her age. Zildiz made the final preparations, adjusting her footing for the pounce that would end it all. A blade stuck between head and thorax would do it, followed by a twisting wrench of her wrist to sever the nerve cord and render the prey-form totally paralyzed, but still alive as she fed upon it. Zildiz preferred them that way¡ªall the flavors really came to the fore when the meat was still fresh and twitching in the mouth.

    She was just about to make her move when an odd breeze made the follicles on her neck stand on end. Danger! Zildiz froze in place and scanned the jungle floor, careful not to move single muscle for fear of giving away her position. Four figures detached themselves from the shifting shadows, each standing nine feet tall on their long, hairy and backwards-jointed legs and making not a whisper as they converged onto her tree.

    Leapers! Fighting against the mounting horror she felt, Zildiz steeled herself for the fight of her life.

 Chapter 16: The Leapers

    He was back at Madame Wimba''s Watering Hole with a petite brunette dangling from his arm, the young signal operator whose acquaintance he¡¯d made while assigned as a liaison officer with the Exploratory Corps. There he was, all big and stiff in his brand-new dress uniform, trying desperately to impress someone who was astronomically more attractive than him and making a priceless ass of himself.

    ¡°So,¡± she purred, eyeing him over the rim of her glass, ¡°Tell me again about the surface. What¡¯s it like wandering up there above all us wee mortals?¡±

    ¡°Erm,¡± Rene cleared his throat, feeling a hot flush creeping up his reddening neck, ¡°It¡¯s, uh, quite remarkable really. Simply fantastic.¡±

    Having run out of things to say, Rene took a snootful of his drink in an attempt to sharpen his wits. It was so hard to focus with her hanging onto his every word like this.

    ¡°Ooh, you make it sound so exciting,¡± Deborah had tittered. Or was it Devorah? Her name had gotten lost in the fumes of fermented honeydew clouding up his brain. Perhaps another sip would jog his memory. Rene downed the horrid swill and coughed as it burned its way down his throat and up his nostrils.

    ¡°Would you look at the state of him!¡± someone guffawed, slapping Rene on the back, ¡°Cool as cucumbers under fire when there¡¯s a hundred dirty Amits breathing down our necks, but prop him up next to a lass and he goes completely to pieces.¡±

    ¡°Ah, piss off,¡± Rene said fondly. He turned to see Lethway sitting next to him flanked by two buxom blondes, an Amit axe buried deep in his neck.

    ¡°I¡¯m only saying. You¡¯ve got to keep your head on your shoulders, man,¡± Lethway said, as his own tumbled off sideways and hung on by a flap of gristle, ¡°We¡¯ve got a long night ahead of us with our fine lady friends here. It wouldn¡¯t do for you to be sleeping on the job.¡¯

    ¡°Why, Lethie my dearest. I¡¯m sure Mr. Louvoture has the¡­stamina¡­to keep up,¡± the brunette said demurely, batting her eyelids at Rene, ¡°Go on. You were telling me about how amazing it is up there.¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Rene puffed out his cheeks and marshalled his scattered thoughts, ¡°It¡¯s like this, see¡­how can I put it? Words can hardy do it justice.¡±

    ¡°Try me,¡± Deborah/Devorah said, tugging at his arm with her warm hands. The girl was practically throwing herself at him no matter how badly he was fumbling the ball. Rene my lad, if you don¡¯t make it tonight you¡¯re going to regret it for the rest of your life, Rene thought to himself.

    ¡°Alrighty then,¡± Rene said, deciding to risk everything by gaze deep into her eyes, which if the romance novels were to be believed, were windows into a woman¡¯s soul. She had very pretty irises, all velvety and shining with something bordering on hero-worship.

    ¡°When you¡¯re topside and the suns go down beyond the hills, and the clouds weep tears of crimson as the sky rolls over into a bowl of stars holding all the universe above you, it feels like¡­like¡­¡± Rene trailed off.

    ¡°What?¡± she whispered into the hush that had settled over the bar.

    ¡°Well, it feels a little like this,¡± Rene said softly, leaning in for a kiss. Her lips tasted his, the tip of her tongue quivering with longing. She drew him into her embrace, gripping him around the waist and pressing into him.

    Awfully forward, these girls from Mound Sierra, Rene thought with some alarm. Not that he was complaining. They spent an eternity entwined like this, the whole taproom cheering and egging them on.

    ¡°Woof!¡± Rene broke away to catch his breath, ¡°Is it me, or is it getting hard to breathe in here?¡±

    ¡°Shut up and kiss me again,¡± Devorah/Deborah said impatiently, wrapping a leg around his and holding him tight. Rene put a hand on her thigh and found that she was surprisingly hairy for a girl. Feeling a little repulsed at this he tried to peel himself away, but found that he couldn¡¯t move any of his limbs.

    ¡°Mmph. Hmmgh!¡± he mumbled, his voice muffled by her insistent mouth. He cocked an eyebrow over her shoulder at Lethway, who¡¯d just propped his head back up onto its stump.

    ¡°Cheers, big fellow!¡± Lethway tipped a glass in his direction and downed his glass in one gulp, the drink trickling out of him through a large bullet hole in his chest.

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    ¡°I hate it when that happens,¡± Lethway said, staring sadly at it. He looked back up at Rene and said: ¡°Oy! What did I tell you about falling asleep on the job. Isn¡¯t it about time you got moving, trooper?¡±

    ¡°Not yet,¡± Devorah/Deborah sighed, kissing his neck, ¡°First he has to tell me how much he likes my eyes. You do like my eyes, don¡¯t you?¡±

    ¡°Why, of course darling¡ª¡± Rene began. But then she pulled back to look him in face, and the words curdled and died on his lips.

    Gone was the petite brunette in her oh-so-short skirt, replaced by a furry, many-eyed freak with quivering mouthparts. In an instant Smiley¡¯s taproom was torn away to reveal the awful truth of his current circumstances: he was hanging upside down from a tree and caught in monster¡¯s deadly embrace. He was trussed up by his legs which had gone completely numb, and his wrists were bound together by loops of silk that felt as strong as steel chains. Yelling incoherently, Rene started wriggling like a worm on a hook. The creature tightened its hold and pressed its fangs against his throat, delicately avoiding piercing the skin while looking at him through its row of eyes.

    It was a warning. Rene wisely heeded it and stopped struggling. After a long moment the monster let him go, although they both continued to dangle upside down. Rene stared at its face in horrid fascination. He saw now that it had four eyes on its flat, squarish face, the centermost pair dwarfing the two ancillary ones on either side of them. In the place of a lower jaw it had four vertical mouthparts, the shorter ones in the middle tipped with curved fangs while the rest functioned like antennae, moving constantly with little taps and clicks, its grotesque head nodding along with them.

    Rene thought the motion was reminiscent of a person¡¯s lips as they mumbled, and he had a disturbing suspicion that the monster was trying to talk to him. The fact that he was still alive also lent credence to this theory. After all, if Amits were intelligent lifeforms, why couldn¡¯t this one be as well? Hoping against hope, he stammered out:

    ¡°I¡ªI don¡¯t understand. I¡¯m afraid I can¡¯t speak your language. Haven¡¯t got the equipment for it. See?¡±

    Rene bared his teeth at it in a forced smile, tying show it what he meant. But the monster recoiled from him, pushing off the trunk behind him and leaping back some twenty meters away from him. It alighted on a tangle of creeper vines and hung there in all its awful majesty, eyeing Rene through its four unblinking orbs. It had ten appendages including its stubby antennae, each of them ending in a three-clawed hand. Its shoulder and thigh muscles were enormous, though its potbellied torso was as round as a wagon wheel, sporting a disgusting hump of flesh on its back. No doubt it contained even more musculature to support its powerful limbs, which at the moment were bunched up and ready to spring.

    He had startled it, Rene realized. His own mouth was probably just as alien and repulsive to its sensibilities as its physiology was to him. Before he could derive some small satisfaction from that, more of the monsters emerged to join the first, darting out of the shadows with an unnatural, jittery motion. They moved in stops and starts, periods of immobility interrupted by burst of blinding speed, here one moment and gone the next.

    ¡°It shpeaksh¡­¡± Rene heard someone say in a voice somewhere between a dry croak and the gurgling of a water pipe. Rene looked around for the source of the voice and was shocked to find that it was issuing from the largest monster, the one reclining on the vines like some misshapen ape. He couldn¡¯t believe his own ears. It was speaking Fleet cantish, mangling its way through the words somehow despite the total absence of a jawbone.

    ¡°Gallivant?¡± another queried with clearer pronunciation.

    ¡°No blade-wing, thish,¡± the leader clicked its palps thoughtfully, ¡°Too shoft. Too schtupid. Came from the fire giant. Dropped a sheed pod, it did, like a tree in the wind. The sheed shpun a web and floated. Down, down, down.¡±

    ¡°Shoft like a grub,¡± agreed the smallest monster somewhat belatedly. A frothy substance with the consistency of saliva dripped from its fangs. It took a step towards Rene, stiffening all over. Before he could even blink it had launched itself through the air directly at him. In the same instant the leader also leapt, slamming bodily into its subordinate and throwing it to the ground.

    ¡°No,¡± the leader rasped, letting the other monster limp away having been suitably chastised, ¡°Questions firshht. The fire giant. Are you itsh hatchling?¡±

    It was staring at Rene when it said this. Rene thought quickly. It was a binary question and he felt that his life hung in the balance, the odds being even either way. Heads or tails? From what he¡¯d heard it was clear that the only thing keeping him from lining the stomachs of these monsters was their abiding curiosity. They had witnessed the Divine Engine and his impromptu ejection from it, and they were under the impression that it had been a living thing and that he was its offspring. It followed that the best thing to do was to maintain their interest in him for as long as possible while he thought of an escape plan. Heads it was, then. Rene said:

    ¡°Yes. Yes, I am its ¡®hatchling¡¯.¡±

    He glanced around until he found his sword where he had left it leaning against the buttress root, still in its sheathe next to the survival kit. If he could just reach down and grasp it in his hands¡­

    ¡°Good,¡± said the abomination, ¡°And know you the secret of itsh power?¡±

    ¡°Of course,¡± Rene said, slowly and surreptitiously stretching out his arms, reaching for the sword hilt with all his might.

    ¡°Good, good,¡± the abomination crooned. There was a blur of motion and the leader materialized in front of him, their faces inches apart. It seized him by the hairs and yanked him close.

    ¡°Then I, too, will know its inner workingshh. Once I open your head and drink deep from your mind.¡±

    Should have gone with tails, Rene thought as it lunged for him.

    #

 Chapter 17: What Lies Beneath Flesh

    High above in her hiding spot, Zildiz had heard enough. The Leapers were her kindred¡¯s most hated of adversaries, and she could not allow them to gain even a fraction of the grey behemoth¡¯s awesome might. An apocalyptic vision arose in her mind of titanic Leaper variants towering over the rooftops of Chthonis, setting the Parchment City alight with beams of all-destroying light emanating from their many eyes.

    Four against one. Those were slim odds even under the best of circumstances. Still, she had the element of surprise, and ambush predators were often unaccustomed to being preyed upon themselves. Leapers were notoriously difficult opponents to sneak up on regardless since they literally had eyes on the backs of their heads. . But Zildiz was a veteran of countless border skirmishes, and had learned of a small blind spot in their vision. It was above and slightly behind the axis of their posterior lateral median eyes. But many Gallivants who had tried to make their first kill that way did not survive to tell the tale¡ªthe flutter of their wings gave them away. She would have to drop straight down on her first target. No hesitation, no second chances.

    She saw the alpha Leaper lean down to extract the prey-form¡¯s gilt helix, and saw her opening.

    #

    Rene heard a branch snap somewhere above him and felt a gust of wind blow across his neck, bearing with it droplets of moisture that pattered lightly against the visor of his mask. His first thought was that it had started to rain. He glanced up at the monster to find that it had extruded a new mouthpart, some manner of sharp, serrated tongue whose tip oozed a wet and viscous fluid. Rene flinched reflexively, expecting at any moment to feel the point punching through his skull before draining out its contents like a straw. But then the blade twisted sharply, wrenching its way out of the back of the monster¡¯s head and drenching Rene¡¯s mask in a shower of gore, the four-eyed devil letting out a wet gurgle as it slumped over in a twitching heap.

    Pawing at his mask with his bound wrists, Rene peered through his smeared vision and saw a figure standing atop the corpse that, if anything, possessed an even less lovely countenance than his erstwhile interlocutor. A bulbous compound eye stared back Rene like a shattered mirror, a thousand miniscule reflections of himself repeating across its scaly lenses.

    Rene recognized the creature as one of the harpies from earlier. One of its broad wings was missing. It drew its bloodstained blade across its mandibles, casually licking the weapon clean as an eight-limbed devil leapt at the harpy from behind, letting loose a bloodcurdling scream. But the harpy did not even turn at the sound, merely pointing its other blade arm behind it and letting its attacker impale itself upon it, clean through. With its dying spasms the devil pulled itself up the length of the blade in an effort to reach the harpy, even as its two kin recovered from their surprise and pounced at the harpy from either side. What followed was a blur of movement almost too quick for the human eye to follow as the harpy spun in place, cleaving the monster on the left halfway through its sternum. In the same movement it turned the devil stuck on the end of its blade into the path of the attacker on the right, using it as a living shield. The impact still bowled the harpy over, all four of the combatants rolling on the ground in a ball of threshing limbs and furious struggle.

    The din was horrendous. Seizing the golden opportunity which had presented itself, Rene reached once more for the sword of the ancients, stretching his sinews for all they were worth. It was just enough to let him pinch the pommel-button between his middle and forefingers. Raising it up in spite of his trembling, sweat-slick grip, Rene coaxed the hilt into palm of his waiting hand, then pounded the button against his chest, feeling the sword come alive in his hands. As the fight raged on behind him, Rene sliced his legs free. He tucked in his head as he hit the ground, rolling onto his arse and reversing his grip on the sword, swiftly cutting the bonds around his wrists. When he tried to stand, however, he found that his legs were still unresponsive, all the blood within them having flowed up to his torso during his time spent hanging upside down. Pounding the life back into the clammy flesh of his calves with his fist, Rene looked anxiously around and discovered that the battle had since moved elsewhere, leaving two black-furred corpses in its wake. Cries of rage and a frenzied shaking among the bushes allowed him to guess where the other monsters were. He hoisted himself to his feet, picked up the safety kit and staggered away from the sounds of fighting, pins and needles still numbing the soles of his feet.

    As he stepped over the dead bodies in his path, Rene was just about to congratulate himself on a smooth escape when his toes snagged on something and he tripped, going down heavily on his side. Rene felt a powerful yank on his ankle and looked to see the previously impaled monster glaring up at him. It wriggled on its belly and pulled him closer with one hand while it held in its spilled guts with the other three. By the ancestors, was it strong! Rene hacked at the hand holding his foot and lopped it off at the forearm, feeling only the slightest tug of resistance as the edge sheared through bone and meat alike. The hand was still clamped shut about his ankle with a death grip as he stood back up.

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    The fiend¡¯s back arched as it brought its vile hump of flesh to the fore, dozens of sucking orifices on its misshapen surface spreading open wide.

    Thwip! Thwip!

    Jets of silk flew out of the spinnerets, the monster using its claws to grasp the threads and shuttering them back and forth like the shuttles of a loom. Cords flicked out and ensnared Rene¡¯s sword arm, pinning it to his side while the weaver applied a lightning-fast field dressing on its abdominal wound, closing off both ends with wads of its makeshift bandage. Rene strained mightily against the loops of silk, but they never budged an inch. Meanwhile, the monster raked him with its claws, opening bright lines of agony across his chest and shoulder. Rene bit back a scream and dropped the sword point-first into the soil. It sank quivering up to its hilt, leaving him completely defenseless as the monster jumped and snatched him up in its gangly embrace. Rene fell to one knee as its weight bore him to the earth, reaching out with his free hand to draw the sword out of the ground and cleave through its rows of hairy legs.

    Severed limbs went rolling every which way, the black devil tottering. Yet as it fell its outer mouthparts seized Rene by the temples and pinned him in place as it bit right into his face. Venomed fangs skittered across the transparent surface of his mask, scoring it with deep scratches. To his amazement the crystal held strong and did not shatter¡ªonce more the materials of the ancients had proven their incredible durability. Rene worked his arm clear and chopped wildly at the monster¡¯s arms, felt its hold on him slacken as they fell away, leaving only spurting stumps. The butchered devil fell on its humped back and began shrieking its head off.

    Rene raised his sword to deliver the coup de grace but was interrupted by the sudden reemergence of the other combatants who burst back onto the scene. The harpy was grappling with one of the devils, quickly being overpowered by its brute strength. As the devil sank its fangs into the bulging pair of compound eyes and tore off the top of the harpy¡¯s head, the latter found an opening and slipped both its blades through in tight uppercutting motions, ramming them under the devil¡¯s chin and out the other end. Ripping outwards and across with its arms the harpy tore its enemy¡¯s head apart and sent the soggy chunks scattering into the treetops.

    Reeling in obvious pain, it kicked the body aside and took off with its shuttering wings, attempting an escape. A feral scream split the air as, the last devil leapt up to intercept it, entrails dangling in the place of its missing lower body. Devoid of sanity or self-preservation, it tacked the rising harpy and sent both of them crashing into a stout branch. They fell back to the earth with a bone-crunching thump, followed by a confetti-shower of dead leaves shaken from their stems.

    Rene looked back at his enemy and saw the devil stubbornly gathering itself up for another spring. All it had left were a single arm and leg apiece, that and a merciless glitter in its eyes.

    ¡°You can¡¯t be serious,¡± he complained, and put an end to its efforts by splitting its head right down the middle. Rene went over to polish off the other two, snipping his webbed arm loose as he did. He found the bisected devil crawling on its elbows and mewling with pain as it wriggled towards the unmoving body of the harpy, clearly intending to finish what it had started.

    There were eyes on the back of its head, Rene now noticed. Four of them, the same number as on the front. It saw him coming and rolled over, raising its arms to shield itself.

    Rene¡¯s boot came stomping down all the same. He felt its head crunching under his heel as he squashed it into a flattened pie and was nauseated. Rene then approached the harpy, eyeing its blade arms warily and giving it a wide berth. He didn¡¯t want to get anywhere near those frightful things, not after what he¡¯d seen. Instead he went over to a fallen log and cut himself an oversized club from one of its boughs. Sticking the sword back into the ground, he hefted the length of wood over the harpy, intending to smash its head in from a distance.

    He felt strangely squeamish at prospect of another head going splat. A wave of dizziness came over him and he had to take a moment to collect himself, doubling over and beginning to dry heave. Leaning heavily on the bough like a staff, he examined the harpy and thought that it looked sufficiently dead. Through the gaping holes in its face he saw the gooey interior of its head. Was that its brain poking through the cracks in the armored hide? Blimey, it had a big one. Equal parts revolted and intrigued, Rene reached over with the branch and prodded at it, testing for a reflex.

    Nothing. Better to be safe than sorry, though. Rene raised the bough on high and steeled himself to do the deed once and for all.

    A piece of the head fell away, and Rene gasped. Abandoning common sense, he threw aside the club and squatted over the body, frantically tearing off the rest of its cranial casing, plunging his fingers into the sticky mess and pulling out clumps of armored flesh until what lay beneath was finally revealed.

    Rene clutched at his forehead as if it was about to explode. Backing away with a sense of dawning horror, he repeated over and over to himself: ¡°It can¡¯t be. It can¡¯t be, it can¡¯t! That¡¯s not possible! It¡¯s¡­it¡¯s¡­¡±

    Beautiful.

    That was what Rene had meant to say. But the word felt so utterly absurd given the context that it took all his will to keep from bursting into a fit of deranged laughter. And who could have blamed him?

    For beneath the ruined visage of flesh, the creature wore the face of a woman.

 Chapter 18: The Quality of Mercy

    Zildiz felt her exomorph go rigid as it lost contact with her central nervous system. Curse that wretched Leaper! She¡¯d forgotten just how durable their physiologies were. Their exomorphs had three times as many backup systems as those of Gallivants, unsurprising given that they had to retain control over their complex musculature. She¡¯d been a fool for thinking that merely cutting it in half would do the trick. The error would wind up costing her life in these next few moments unless she took drastic action.

    She was blind¡ªher helm and its sets of eyes had sustained catastrophic damage and left her soft innards exposed. Even worse, she was crippled, the exomorph¡¯s augmented muscle fibers unresponsive to her nervous system''s inputs. But perhaps she still had the sheer physical strength to swing her blades. Zildiz tried to flex her wrist and was rewarded by a vigorous twitch of her pinky finger. Just in time; she could hear the Leaper close by, the leaf litter crackling as it approached.

    Not yet, she told herself. Just a little closer. Hands pawed at her face and tore off the remnants of her helmet, scraping the hemolymphic gel from her naked face. What the hell was it doing? Zildiz had to restrain herself from crying out and striking at the air in panic.

    Not yet! It was a crime to interrupt a fool when he was digging his own grave. Zildiz lay perfectly still as the Leaper fiddled around with her exomorph, feeling helpless and violated as never before. Vowing to give the bastard a slow and painful death for this, she curled her hand into a fist and waited until she felt its fingers caress the surface of her innards. Letting out a scream of incoherent rage Zildiz thrust at her unseen enemy, heard a cry of pain and the Leaper stumbling away, swearing profusely.

    ¡°Ow! That hurt, you witch! What the blazes are you?¡± the Leaper cried out. Zildiz frowned. That hadn¡¯t sounded like the croaking of a Leaper. Speaking a slow and halting fashion, she replied:

    ¡°I would ask you the same thing.¡±

    ¡°I am Rene Louvoture, assistant navigator, 9<sup>th</sup> Battalion, 3<sup>rd</sup> Pathfinder Regiment.¡±

    Zildiz shook her head at the string of gibberish.

    ¡°I am Zildiz, of the Blade-Wings. Why haven¡¯t you killed me?¡±

    ¡°Why would I?" said the voice, sounding both shaky and incredulous, ¡°You¡¯re just like me, aren¡¯t you?¡±

    ¡°How so?¡±

    ¡°Open your eyes and see for yourself.¡±

    Zildiz realized with a start that it was referring to the primitive ocular organs of her innards. The thought hadn¡¯t even occurred to her. The last time she¡¯d been out of her exomorph was when she and Menash had been together, many cycles ago. With great effort her atrophied facial muscles remembered how to lift her eyelids, and she beheld a world of total darkness.

    Bioluminescent growths from the surrounding vegetation gradually helped her to see with her naked eyes, and she beheld the prey-form standing over her with a hand clamped to its bleeding shin. Its albino exoskeleton was ripped and stained with blood. In its fist it clutched a short blade that emitted a constant, low hum. Zildiz propped herself up on her elbow and locked eyes with the creature. To her disgust she found that its exomorph had a completely transparent helm allowing her to see its bare face in all its lumpen hideousness. It had a head of curled black hairs, matted and moist like the growths on a Leaper¡¯s belly. The prey-form¡¯s flat, broad nose gave it a singularly pugnacious look, while its skin was as milk-white as that of a flesh-eating maggot¡¯s. Zildiz dragged herself back, her first instinct being to recoil from it.

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    ¡°Don¡¯t move,¡± Rene advised her, ¡°You¡¯ve suffered some sort of spinal injury, I think. Can you feel your legs?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Zildiz lied, thrusting out her chin at him defiantly, ¡°What do you care?¡±

    ¡°I told you, I¡¯m not about to kill you. We¡¯re the same, can¡¯t you see? Human!¡±

    ¡°We share the primal pattern, but I am a Gallivant. You are not. That is all that matters.¡±

    ¡°Right,¡± Rene sighed and sat down on the rotting log, ¡°Whatever that means. Ye gods, I need a stiff drink right about now.¡±

    Zildiz eyed him suspiciously, convinced it was some sort of ruse. He was just gauging how crippled she truly was and waiting for her to lower her guard. Very well; two could play at that game. In the meantime, she would try and work some feeling back into her exomorph.

    ¡°Are you really a hatchling?¡± she asked it suddenly.

    ¡°You heard that nonsense, did you?¡± Rene glanced up, ¡°Of course not. I was just leading them on. The ¡®fire giant¡¯ isn¡¯t a living creature, it¡¯s a machine¡ªa Divine Engine. What, don¡¯t you have them wherever it is that you come from?¡± he joked, smiling at her. Zildiz grimaced at the sight, and he stopped.

    ¡°A machine,¡± she said slowly, ¡°Like this one?¡±

    Zildiz gestured at her disabled exomorph. Rene chewed over that piece of information. So that was what she was wearing: a living machine, a sealant suit of chitin and muscle equipped with weaponry and capable of flight. Like the Engine, it was a level of technology he hadn''t even known could exist.

    ¡°Not exactly,¡± he finally replied, ¡°I mean, it isn¡¯t quite as revolting as yours. No offense,¡± he added quickly, snatching a quick glance at her face. She had a hawkish look about her, all thin lines and edges, but somewhere in there was a wild and timeless beauty which defied his attempts to pin down as some definable quality of womanhood.

    ¡°So you have been inside of it,¡± she confirmed with a look of satisfaction.

    ¡°I didn¡¯t say that,¡± Rene stammered, feeling like he was losing the battle for information, ¡°I merely observed it from a distance. I mean, the sheer size of it. Who wouldn¡¯t have? You saw what I¡ªwhat it¡ªdid to the Amit mound.¡±

    Rene bit his lip, mentally kicking himself for his careless slip of the tongue. Zildiz narrowed her eyes at him, partly out of mistrust and partly due to the head-splitting migraine she was feeling. It had been so long since she¡¯d been forced to rely on this basic sense organ, and its rods and cones were out of practice.

    ¡°The grey behemoth, this Divine Engine, as you call it. Did the Vitalus send it to cull the colony? Are you a Hollowore?¡±

    ¡°A Hull-of-War?¡± Rene repeated dimly.

    "A Inkarnid? An Aspect of the All-In-One?"

    ¡°Look, I haven¡¯t the foggiest notion what you¡¯re talking about. And I¡¯m the one asking questions here, don¡¯t you forget it. Flame and perdition!¡± he swore, ¡°You really nicked me, you know that?

    Rene set his sword to aside and bent over to poke at the shallow stab wound on his shin. Zildiz chose that moment to burst into action. She was on her feet before he knew it, slicing at him with her blade arms. Rene yelped and rolled backwards off the log, narrowly avoiding dismemberment and flipping over nimbly to his feet, cursing himself for letting her gain the upper hand.

    ¡°Stop! Please, I don¡¯t wish to hurt you!¡± he shouted at her as he ran circles around the dead tree, keeping it between himself and her wicked blades. Her movements were awkward and ponderous, as though her legs weren¡¯t used to supporting the weight of her body. Scowling wrathfully, Zildiz kept after him as he jogged just out of her reach, the two of them playing a very earnest game of ring around the rosy. Finally Rene had enough and took up the club again, whacking her on the back of the knees so that she fell forward onto her hands. Her nose flattened itself against a pebble, producing an indescribable pain. She groaned and clutched at her face while Rene sat on her back to keep her pinned down.

    ¡°Sorry! Sorry! I really am. But it seems at this point to be abundantly clear,¡± Rene shouted as she flailed at him ineffectually with her blades, ¡°That I have no other option but to take you in!¡±

    ¡°Just try and feed me to your brood, I dare you!¡± she screamed as blood trickled from her nostrils, ¡°I¡¯ll carve out their eyes and feed it to them!¡±

    ¡°What? No! That¡¯s not it at all!¡± Rene cried, mortified, ¡°As a soldier of the Fleet, I am hereby placing you under arrest as a hostile belligerent. Henceforth, you may consider yourself my prisoner of war!¡±

 Chapter 19: Sole Survivor

    The Colonel¡¯s tent was leaking again. Ordinarily such a mistake would¡¯ve earned his adjutant an hour-long dressing down and possibly, if the Colonel was feeling particularly enthusiastic, a sharp backhanded slap across the face. After all, a leaky tent could hardly be said to be hermetically sealed, now could it? But this affront to his sensibilities paled in comparison to the utter travesty and exemplar of sheer incompetence that now sat before his desk, a sagging wreck of a man in the tattered uniform of a Fleet officer. Colonel Moch Leelan curled his lip at it and barked:

    ¡°Once more, if you please. And I don¡¯t want this on record,¡± he added, darting a look at the clerk poised to take dictation in the corner of the room, ¡°Not a word of this gets out. There¡¯s been enough of a snafu already, and the brass won¡¯t stop shitting down my neck about Mound 13 and the loss of Prota¡¯s pestilential pet project. Did you hear me, man? I said start from the beginning!¡±

    Outside the monsoon was intensifying into one of those proverbial downpours which prompted doddering old men to remark that it was ¡®raining cats and dogs¡¯, though what either a cat or a dog were, none could now say. A trickle of it seeped in like a string of winking glass beads, catching the orange glow of the gas lamp and turning into sparks of amber, into seeds of flame. They dripped on the bald man seated on the low footstool, and he raised his head to meet the scornful gaze of the Colonel, grey eyes unabashed and unafraid. He spoke then, in a hoarse voice that matched his pallid flesh and buzzard nose:

    ¡°It was the third day of reconnaissance. We were forced to abandon our pack-beasts in the mire. My assistant and I¡ª¡±

    ¡°Name, rank and serial number!¡± Colonel Leelan interrupted, for the sole purpose of seeing the coward blink and quaver like the worm he was. But in that he was to be disappointed, for the man continued in the same flat tone:

    ¡°Sollem Deschane, Lord Navigator, 3<sup>rd</sup> Pathfinder Regiment, serial number 18911944. We received orders from the Admiralty and Fleet Command to reconnoiter the area around the enemy concentration designated as Mound Euler. I was to lead a platoon of twenty handpicked volunteers across the river Foss at its lowest point, then scale the outlying cliffs to get better readings as we mapped out the approaches to Mound Euler. It was the third day of reconnaissance. We were forced to abandon our myropods in the mud and carry our own gear. My assistant navigator Rene Louvoture and I noticed a discrepancy with our visually confirmed data and the aerial sketches of the Aeronautical Division. We quickly worked out that the enemy concentration far exceeded initial estimates by an order of magnitude. Mound Euler is an omega-class colony the likes of which the Fleet has faced only once in its entire existence, during the Scouring of Assail. It is my belief that¡ª¡±

    ¡°Leave your hysterics for later and get on to meat of things,¡± Leelan snapped. Deschane straightened a bit in his seat and scowled as his layers of bandages shifted. The man was practically mummified by the sheer extent of his wounds that it was a wonder he had managed to limp into the tent in the first place. But the navigator had made a point of refusing to be debriefed in his sick bed and had insisted that he be given no further pain killers. This was to prove that his report was not at all influenced by the effects of opiates, as well as to underline the supposed importance of his eyewitness account as the sole survivor of the siege of Mound 13.

    But Colonel Leelan was no fool. He knew the tactic for what it was: a bit of playacting by a soon-to-be-disgraced officer, a desperate attempt to pass himself off as a tragic hero rather than the author of the most monumental military cock-up of the decade.

    You may very well get that wish, Deschane, Leelan smirked inwardly. If you play your cards right. You¡¯ll find that I can put on a pantomime as well as the next man.

    Deschane regarded him cooly, replying:

    ¡°You asked for my report, sir. I am stating the facts as I understand them.¡±

    ¡°Understand?¡± Leelan guffawed, ¡°There¡¯s precious little to understand about this debacle! Explain to me how a routine scouting mission winds up in the loss of 5,000 men, a Rear-Admiral and an entire frontline outpost! Explain to me how you not only got every last one of your own men slaughtered, but still managed to save your own sorry arse!¡±

    Now that had an effect on the navigator¡¯s bearing. He dropped the holier-than-thou attitude and even pretended to dab at some moisture in corners of his eye. For a moment his mask of iron cracked and he looked tired enough to sleep for a thousand years, never to waken. Then he seemed to recall that his career was at stake and had the temerity to argue with the Colonel:

    ¡°We were given faulty intelligence. I made mistakes, I¡¯ll admit that here and now. We should never have continued after our pack animals were trapped in the mire. The gear slowed us down in enemy territory. I can¡¯t wash my hands of the loss of my platoon. They were the best and bravest men I ever fought with, and I will carry the shame of losing them to my grave. The fact that I am still alive when none of them are breathing is an accident that was not of my choosing. As for Mound 13, it was only a matter of time before they were discovered and dealt with. They were only two day¡¯s travel from Mound Euler. In fact, it was miracle they managed to exist for so long undetected.¡±

    Magnificent deflection. Colonel Leelan had to admire the snake and his flawless attempt to pass the blame onto the shoulders of the dead Rear-Admiral Prota.

    Yes, I think we can make an arrangement here, the Colonel thought wryly. He waved Deschane¡¯s prattling aside and said:

    ¡°This omega-class colony of yours. A mound so large that is beggars belief, you say? Curious, then, that such an object should have escaped your keen senses for three whole days!¡±

    ¡°Visibility in that terrain and climate is poor. But yes, it was another one of my errors.¡±

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    ¡°I¡¯m so glad that you agree,¡± Leelan purred, his words dripping with condescension. He reached into the drawer of his desk and took out a bottle of fermented honeydew. Uncorking it with a loud pop, he poured out two glasses and lifted one to his lips, saying:

    ¡°On a related note, it¡¯s funny how the fog of war can obscure so many important details. Even the best commanders can lose their bearings, lose sight of the greater picture, fixate on the wrong things. Take our dearly departed Rear-Admiral Prota, for example (may she rest in the Flight Eternal). Not to speak ill of the dead, but she was assigned an entire sector for her research into enemy behavior. And what does she do with it? Cultural studies! Anthropology! As if the Amits have a culture worth sneezing at! They¡¯ve been working with flint and wood since this primeval war of ours began, and they¡¯ve never taken the hint. Meanwhile, we¡¯ve finally gained the advantage of powder and artillery and mass-produceable gas masks.¡±

    ¡°One big push! That¡¯s all it would take to clear the northern highlands. We have the men, the will and the technology to do it! The last thing we need is some starry-eyed academic telling us that the Amits have somehow found religion. I mean, really!¡± Colonel Leelan warmed to his subject, ¡°Five thousand soldiers dedicated to safeguarding some blessed cave paintings, right on the frontlines, too! What a waste. Like you said: if you hadn¡¯t led the Amits directly to them, someone else would have down the line.¡±

    ¡°We took steps to ensure they wouldn¡¯t follow us. We tried, but they found the fear-death pheromones¡ª¡±

    ¡°Steps?¡± Leelan pressed him mercilessly, ¡°What steps, exactly?¡±

    Deschane looked away and said nothing. Leelan sniffed, continuing:

    ¡°I thought so. As I was saying, Prota¡¯s project was doomed from the start. It was an ill-conceived, harebrained mission, and now the Admiralty will have to explain to Fleet Command and the general public how it lost an entire regiment in the name of some woman¡¯s flight of fancy. But there is a silver lining to all this. Seeing as how we recaptured what was left of Mound 13 within mere hours of it falling, we think there¡¯s a way to salvage the situation after all. You can be part of that, Deschane. Every victory may have its price, but it must also have its heroes.¡±

    Leelan sipped his honeydew, waiting for the offer he¡¯d made to sink in. Deschane smiled, a humorless crack in his granite features.

    ¡°You¡¯re going to make me a hero?¡± he asked. Leelan nudged the other glass towards him, shrugging:

    ¡°And why not? Someone has to wear the medals. ¡®Lone Survivor of Desperate Last Stand¡¯,¡± Leelan exclaimed, dramatically forecasting the future headlines, ¡°He tried to warn them, but did they listen? You get the rest, I imagine. We¡¯ll have to improve some of the details, of course. Like how it was the 3<sup>rd</sup> Pathfinder Regiment which held back the flood of Amits in the final hour and ignited the fortress¡¯ ammo depot¡ª¡±

    ¡°We never did that,¡± Deschane objected, rudely cutting off Leelan¡¯s train of thought, ¡°It was the Divine Engine. I saw it with my own eyes. It broke out of Mound 13 and slaughtered the enemy.¡±

    Leelan sighed.

    ¡°Not this again. Deschane, I¡¯d appreciate it if you¡¯d save your hallucinations for the regimental shrink. Think, man! The honor of our unit is at stake here. You have a chance to redeem the men of your platoon, even if you can never truly redeem yourself.¡±

    ¡°I saw it,¡± Deschane growled, and for a moment Leelan almost reached for his ceremonial saber hanging by its belt on his coatrack, ¡°Sir, it left footprints the size of¡ª¡±

    ¡°For heaven¡¯s sake, you witless worm, the earthquake was felt all the way in the Southern Delta! Not very big one, but certainly enough to account for the avalanches and landslides that took place around Mound 13, not to mention the sinkhole we found you snoring in! It¡¯s certainly not the first time an uncontrolled detonation triggered a seismic event. Deschane, I¡¯ll only say this once: either you get your story straight or by thunder, I¡¯ll bury you so deep in shit you¡¯ll start to think you¡¯re made of it! And you are! If you breathe a word of this delirious vision of yours to the press, you¡¯ll not only receive no medals, but I¡¯ll have you court-martialed faster than you can say ¡®diddly-squat¡¯. Which is precisely what you¡¯ll be left with unless you jump like a good boy and ask how high. No honor, no rank, no reputation, no pension. Nothing! Do you understand?¡±

    Colonel Leelan wrathfully thrust the glass at Deschane, spilling most of it in the process.

    ¡°Well, do you?¡±

    #

    Deschane hobbled out of the tent, escorted by a pair of grenadiers in fluffy white shakos. They sealed the adhesive lining of the tent airlock after him and the Navigator went on his way, the taste of honeydew lingering on his tongue like a bitter poison. He lifted his mask and hawked up a gob of spit that eloquently described his opinion of the colonel, wiping his scowling mouth with the back of his hand.

    Ven was waiting for him with the crutches, a young and rather portly corporal with apple cheeks and a worried, pouting mouth. She helped Deschane as he made the slow and painful walk across the encampment to his field tent, the lord navigator deep in thought. Along the way they cut across the central avenue of the camp where a seemingly endless artillery train was lumbering its way up from the south and curving around the broad talus skirts of Gorgo Plateau, teams of scuttling myropods hitched to six or twelve-pounder guns, their hundreds of tiny legs threshing the soil into a quagmire. Behind them, plodding dejectedly into the rapidly liquefying mud, were ranks upon rank of fresh colonial levees, their brand-new sealant suits creaking loudly at the joints as they made what for most of them would be their first expedition into the surface world.

    And what a foray it would prove to be. Almost two hundred thousand men and women were mustered here at the edge of civilization, poised on the cusp of what was to be the largest surface offensive in recorded history. The Fleet had arrived in the Northern Hinterlands, and it had come to conquer.

    "Gangway!" the levees hollered at Ven as she tried to cut a path for Deschane through the line, "Can''t you see we''s marching ''ere, ya stoopid bint?"

    "He''s an officer, ain''t he?" she screamed back, pointing at the navigator.

    Upon noticing the faded chevrons on Deschane''s shoulders some of them clumsily snapped to attention, stopping in their tracks. Their comrades behind them, oblivious to this turn of events, bowled right into them, causing a minor stampede. Men and women cursed as they dropped their pristine muskets, never fired in the heat of battle, into the churning soup at their feet, or themselves went sprawling on their hands and knees. Baton-wielding sergeants descended on the mess, screaming for them to get back up, generously assisting them with a boot to the rump or a smack on the side of the head. Deschane looked back at the display for a long moment, as if considering something. Abruptly he grunted at Ven and they continued on their way to the outskirts where the Pathfinders were billeted.

    She waited until they were inside the tent and Deschane was back in his sick bed, the navigator turning his back to her in stony silence. Cautiously, she ventured:

    ¡°What now, sir?¡±

    ¡°Draw up a list of volunteers,¡± he rasped, ¡°But do it on the sly. We¡¯re going back out there."

    "Very good, sir," Ven squeaked, and went scurrying out of the navigator''s chambers, sealing the tent flap softly behind her. She knew that tone and what it signified: the lord navigator had made up his mind, and heaven help whoever would stand in his way.

 Chapter 20: The God Speaks

    Deep in the groaning halls of sinew and bone he awaited his audience with the god. At a wave of his hand the ribs which held up the ceiling contracted, tendons shifting within the pink walls of the chamber as the jagged, calcareous spurs that composed the doorway sank back into the spongy masses of tissue, revealing a passage curving down and out of sight.

    Menash stood before the yawning portal and considered eternity. This was no an idle thought: here in the Dawning Chamber, the concept was very real. His father, Yulan, had stood in this exact spot times beyond count. When he was struck down in his prime by the Night Weaver and her Leaper offspring, torn limb from limb as he fought to defend Chthonis from a raiding party, Menash¡¯s uncle, Aqavarr, had carried his broken remains over that grinning threshold to join the hosts of the dead, never to return.

    A hot and heavy exhalation rattled up out of the depths, wafting in the acrid scent of the bonding pools and the wet slithering sound of the rebirthing canals. Menash felt a crackle of static in the corners of his mind before the signal sharpened and he heard It whisper distinctly:

    ¡°Enter¡­¡±

    The familiar dread crept its way up the small of his back, and he gave a little shiver. No matter how many times he had communed with the Vitalus, he¡¯d never been able to shake the feeling of his utter insignificance. But he persevered, walking bravely down the slurping passage, past the rows of broad antechambers lining either side of the hallway. Each one held a slumbering shape immersed in a cryogenic bath, towering hulks of muscle encased in ribbed and riveted plates of chitin. No two were alike in size or physiology, but all seemed to emanate the same primeval aura of dread that tickled Menash¡¯s fight-or-flight-instinct, skewing it very much towards the latter response. These were the Hollowores, soulless avatars of the Vitalus, each one a tool capable of eradicating an entire species. As Menash approached, one of the living weapons stirred to life. A pronged, anvil-shaped head emerged from the bath, umbilical feeder tubes detaching from its armored flanks as the rest of its bulk followed, its mauve exoskeleton as sleek and shiny as amethyst. The Hollowore extended legs as thick as grown pine trees and lifted itself above him, its pairs of crushing pincers dripping amniotic fluids as it herded him towards the central room.

    Bundles of white gossamer filaments spread all across the floor, encircling steaming pools of pus and acid. He saw arms and legs, sensory organs and entire exoskeletons being knitted before his very eyes, the amino acid chains being stitched on a layer at a time, the weeping pus evidence of microphages fighting off possible infections as the Vitalus did Its work.

    These were the next generation of exomorphs, yet to be assigned to their hosts. It was here that Vitalus constantly improved the only thing that could ensure the continued survival of Menash¡¯s subspecies. Exomorphs were bonded to Gallivants at birth, the organisms supplying their hosts with the means to breathe an atmosphere they was never meant to endure, and the strength to fight in a world that was red in tooth and claw. They were as swift as the summer wind and could multiply their host¡¯s muscular power by up to twelve times their natural output.

    But for all their God-given might, Gallivants were still mortal. They could and often did perish in the endless struggle for existence that the Vitalus called the Great Game. But even in death they could still commit their essence to posterity, passing down their defining traits through the malleable genetic code of the gilt helix. It was the Vitalus¡¯ greatest boon; through the gilt helix a single individual could become a progenitor of an entire generation, becoming at one stroke the father of whole nations and peoples.

    One day he too would prove worthy of the honor that Yulan had earned with his life. But he was not alone in that ambition. Menash was annoyed to find the crimson-clad Vezda and the cowardly Racek waiting for him inside, standing next to a large ball of filaments that hung from a tonsil-like growth hanging from the walls.

    This node pulsed, emitting a small storm of bioelectric activity, networks of fungi conveying commands in the form of oscillating voltages to their communities of symbiotic bacteria, the latter containing greigite mineral crystals aligned in the shape of electromagnetic coils. Other networks hidden in the walls modulated and amplified the signals, and the three Gallivants steeled themselves for the onrushing flood of information as the Vitalus tapped into their minds.

    He was a candle before the raging heart of the thunderstorm. For an instant Menash touched a fraction of Its intelligence, the divisions of time and space rolling back as they joined the ocean of shared consciousness, becoming one with the living systems of Arachnea. From the tiniest aeroplankton floating above the waves of the golden coastlines, to the herds of ultrapods munching their way through swathes of trees in the savannahs. Menash felt himself pushing up out of the soil, longing and lusting and reaching for the sunlight with a trillion green fingers uncurling, alive with the furious movement of life.

    But what was that flicker of orange to the east? That searing heat, that prickling pain spreading like a cancer down his side?

    The Vitalus scooped them up and hurled them headlong into hell itself. A roaring wildfire was sweeping into the heart of the eastern rainforests. Menash tasted ash and ruin, felt pieces of himself wither and burn, his branches tongues of fire, wood cracking from the intense blaze, sap boiling instantaneously upon contact and rupturing, splitting him right down the grain. He fled in terror, running, slithering, digging, swimming, flying away in crazed panic from the walls of red death closing in on him. As his skin flaked off in clumps of charcoal he looked back and saw it towering over the treetops, the epicenter of this howling vortex of destruction: the grey behemoth. Its burnished metal hide gleamed like copper, reflecting the fury of the conflagration burning well into the night.

    Menash pulled his mind away before it was lost forever in the storm of electric potentials. He saw Racek and Vezda swaying on their feet, breathing hard and fast.

    ¡°Heart of the World,¡± he managed to gasp, ¡°What is your bidding?¡±

    The Hollowore maneuvered itself until it was facing him directly. Tiny beady eyes fixed him in their blank gaze. The node emitted a blue pulse and the creature shuddered as it received the signal. It opened a maw powerful enough to chew boulders into gravel and rumbled:

    ¡°This one is the alpha which survived first contact with anomalous variable. It will tell Us what occurred, and from whence this threat emerged.¡±

    ¡°It came from the karst mountain range, where the yellowjacket Amit live,¡± Menash replied, ¡°It was destroying the largest mound in that area, massacring its inhabitants. It brought the mountain down on them¡ªwe¡¯ve never seen anything like it. Zildiz was the first on the scene. She warned us not to approach, and that it was dangerous, but some of us,¡± here he cast an angry look at Vezda, ¡°Some of us went ahead and tried to scavenge from the bodies of the dying. Then the behemoth ignited the air and burned scores of us to cinders.¡±

    ¡°Irrational. Why did you do this?¡±

    ¡°W-we thought that you had spawned the grey behemoth,¡± Menash stammered, embarrassed to say the least, ¡°That it was the newest addition to the Great Game, another species of ultrafauna that would help perfect Arachnea.¡±

    ¡°Not so. It was made by an evil far older than the All-In-One,¡± replied the Vitalus, ¡°It is called a Divine Engine. In cycles past, this evil sought to undo this world and all that inhabit it. In that, it almost succeeded.¡±

    Menash felt his blood run cold at those words.

    ¡°Is it the only one of its kind?¡± Racek piped up. Menash and Vezda both bristled at his interruption; subordinates were only supposed to speak when spoken to.

    ¡°There were several deployed here in Our infancy. We had thought them all destroyed in the War of Creation.¡±

    ¡°Your Munificence,¡± Racek went on, heedless of the venomous looks he was getting from the other two, ¡°Most of us survived because Zildiz persuaded us to dive into the river. She saved all our lives! But as I washed up on the riverbank, I saw the behemoth casting a seedpod into the skies. I did not see where it landed, but it was travelling in a high arc due east. Is this the behemoth¡¯s method of reproducing? If so, then how many offspring can it generate from this one seed?¡±

    The Vitalus met his questions with a minute of silence. Menash had never known It to take so long to respond to a query, and felt another stab of unease in his gut. Unless he was imagining things, the Vitalus seemed genuinely disturbed by the scenario that Racek has raised, enough to convince Menash that the danger was far from hypothetical.

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    ¡°That is a distant possibility,¡± It said somewhat cryptically, ¡°Regardless, We cannot allow the Engine¡¯s continued existence.¡±

    ¡°Then it must be destroyed,¡± Vezda said, her barbed tail eagerly perking up.

    ¡°We are not certain that it can be,¡± the Vitalus said, and Menash heard Racek audibly gulp at the admission.

    ¡°But Your Omniscience, you alone are the arbiter of growth and decay,¡± Vezda said in disbelief, ¡°Surely you can unmake this monster as well?¡±

    ¡°Perhaps. The Divine Engines were built to withstand the extremes of temperature, gravity, atmospheric pressure, acidity and irradiation found on semi-inhabitable exoplanets. Worlds of bareness and desolation, glassed by thermonuclear bombardment or infested with alien microorganisms. In the wars of Our youth, the Betrayers used tungsten-alloy warheads fired from space platforms to crack their bulkheads. Not even Our vessels, the Hollowores, could damage them in any significant way. We will need time to gather the raw materials and fabricate the weapons needed to end this threat.¡±

    ¡°What must we do?¡± Menash asked.

    ¡°If this variable is not dealt with, it could upset the delicate balance We have sacrificed so much to achieve. Already the wildfire it has caused will release close to 400 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and destroy 2.3 million acres of forest before Our countermeasures can stop it. Time is our limiting factor. If the Engine cannot be destroyed now, it must be restrained.¡±

    ¡°It hasn¡¯t moved an inch since we last saw it,¡± Vezda said brightly, ¡°Maybe it has already died?¡±

    ¡°Yes, and maybe your mother was a horka toad,¡± Racek said snidely. Vezda scowled and took a step towards him, then stopped as she remembered that she trod on hallowed ground.

    ¡°Not so. It has merely gone dormant. Having expended its fuel, it is now running on the bare minimum of its reserves. My children, you must ensure that it does not wake again. Establish a quarantine zone around the Engine and let none approach, on pain of death. The Leaper kindreds will secure the ground while the Gallivants patrol the skies.¡±

    Vezda and Menash exchanged troubled looks. Nobody wanted Leapers establishing a foothold in what was essentially a buffer zone between their subspecies. Once allowed to settle in a habitat, it would not take long for them to adapt and become masters of their new territory. Ousting them would become a battle of attrition, and given the lower birthrates of Gallivants, it was not one they could long afford.

    ¡°Respectfully, we do not require assistance from our brother kindred,¡± Menash ventured, ¡°We are more than capable of safeguarding the area ourselves.¡±

    The node throbbed again, the bioelectric flashes taking on an angry purple hue. With a sound like the grinding of a millstone the Hollowore clashed its claws together impatiently. All three of the mortals took a hasty step back.

    ¡°The alpha will obey, or another will be found that can,¡± the Vitalus growled at them, ¡°All subspecies will observe a general truce during this period. This is a temporary addition to the Great Game. Those that serve Us well shall be rewarded. We shall also enlist the aid of your terrestrial cousins, as well as the Cataphract clans to replenish the soil, and lone Saints who shall rove beyond the quarantine zone.¡±

    Menash¡¯s unease deepened. The Vitalus was bringing together four different kindreds, some of which killed each other on sight, in a move that reeked of desperation. The kindreds had worked together before, of course, on complex projects such as altering rainfall patterns and husbanding struggling species, but never so many at once. This was bound to end in bloodshed.

    ¡°Those that break the truce shall be chemically neutered, and their gilt helix purged from the existing gene pool,¡± the Vitalus continued, ¡°You will maintain this quarantine until We have dealt with the Engine.¡±

    ¡°It is understood!¡± Menash and Vezda said at once.

    ¡°But what about Zildiz?¡± Racek blurted out, again risking his entire lineage by speaking out of turn, ¡°She might still be alive out there!¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s right,¡± Menash found himself agreeing despite his dislike for Racek, ¡°She¡¯s our alpha, after all. It would be a shame to lose her helix. Do we have your leave to send out a party to recover her?¡±

    The Vitalus pondered the request for a moment, then crushed his hopes when it said:

    ¡°Regrettable, the loss of the female. Valuable stock for the breeding program. But it has not responded to Our signals¡ªit is unlikely to have survived. The female Vezda shall take up its duties as alpha.¡±

    ¡°But Your Benevolence¡ª¡± both men cried out in unison.

    ¡°It is decided. She has risked the Great Game, and must abide by its outcome. To speak more on this would risk Our displeasure,¡± the god warned.

    ¡°We can¡¯t spare the manpower anyway,¡± Vezda pointed out, trying not to look too pleased at Its decision. She darted a quick look at Menash, long enough for him to see the selfish desire festering in her heart. He turned away from her in disgust, baring his blades by the slightest of margins to let her know what he thought of her, then asked the Vitalus:

    ¡°But what of the Engine¡¯s seedpod? Should we search for it?¡±

    ¡°Negative!¡± the Vitalus boomed, its node reinforcing the word with a spike of activity that sent needles of pain spearing into their heads, ¡°We shall complete this task. It is dangerous and can be entrusted to no other.¡±

    The Hollowore angled its massive head towards the cavernous ceiling, armored flaps on its back sliding aside as it unfurled sets of rigid sixty-meter wings. A wide sphincter on the roof gaped open and Menash saw the evening sky awash with the stars in their milky multitudes. The Hollowore took a deep breath through the spiracles lining its thorax and abdomen, pumping air through a pair of hollow tube-like protuberances under either of its wings. Menash and the others quickly scampered to a safe distance. Seconds later there was a scream of chemical combustion and the Hollowore rose into the evening skies, leaving behind a long trail of superheated gases, the backwash almost knocking Menash off his feet. They watched as the Hollowore gained altitude, making straight for the columns of billowing smoke on the horizon, a sweeping shadow blotting out the light of the heavens.

    The Vitalus¡¯ mental presence receded with it. When it did not return, they took it to mean that they were dismissed and likewise took flight and headed for Chthonis. They were hardly out of the Dawning Chamber when Vezda seized the scrawny Racek by his wings and anchored her feet right up against his back.

    ¡°Funny little man, are you? Crack jokes at my expense again, and I¡¯ll see to it that you¡¯ll never fly again!¡± she snarled, yanking hard. Racek yelled as his wings threatened to pop out of their sockets.

    ¡°Stop!¡± Menash said, ramming his shoulder into her and knocking the smaller male out of her grip. Vezda rounded on him, blades out and her tail aquiver with rage.

    ¡°As for you! No one should speak to the Vitalus like that!¡± she shrieked, ¡°Much less gainsay It! Are you trying to get us all killed? It is the source and continuance of life itself¡ª¡±

    ¡°But the Vitalus doesn¡¯t always consider the individual scale of things,¡± Menash reasoned, controlling his rising anger as he tried to defuse the situation, ¡°Its scope of thought is beyond ours. Therefore it is up to us to look after each other. None of us can win the Great Game alone. We need people like Zildiz for the species to prosper.¡±

    ¡°Your logic is flawed,¡± Vezda spat, ¡°Empathy is a sham devised by the selfish action of the gene, which seeks only to preserve itself. At least I am honest enough to look after my own interests. Your obsession with that whore is misplaced. Heed my words, Menash. What happened today marks a change in the Great Game. Only the ruthless will reap the rewards of this era. Think on that, and act accordingly.¡±

    The female darted off in another direction, leaving the two behind.

    ¡°Thanks,¡± Racek said, rubbing at his sore shoulders, ¡°My, my. She¡¯s really taking her promotion very seriously, isn¡¯t she?¡±

    ¡°This doesn¡¯t make us friends,¡± Menash said shortly, ¡°We share a common interest, that¡¯s all.¡±

    The two flew together in silence for a time, the dark canopy unrolling below their feet. Racek had always been a bitter rival for Zildiz¡¯s affections. In the mating seasons he and Menash had flown the damsel-dance against each other countless times, racing and dogfighting at top speed through the dense bamboo thickets in an effort to impress her.

    But each time she had always chosen Menash. Naturally. He was the stronger, the braver, the son of the Scourge who had slain hundreds on his lightning raids into Leaper territory. Their pairings had been brief and passionate, yet she had always laughed at the end and gone on her merry way, a rose petal borne on a scented breeze, the dalliance as meaningless to her as other concerns like eating or breathing.

    But not to him. Right now, all that mattered was her. And Racek was the only one in the whole wide world who knew exactly how he felt. Did that mean he could be trusted? Menash considered the enormity of what he was about to do, and wavered. Then he saw her face in the darkness of his home, the face she wore when they were all alone together, and he took a deep breath before breaking the silence, saying:

    ¡°I¡¯ll be in charge of the quarantine. I can arrange for you to disappear for a few days. I can have one of the younglings mimic your magnetosynaptic signal, make it seem like you¡¯re with the rest of us.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯d do that? For me?¡± Racek said in astonishment.

    ¡°Hah. Not for you,¡± Menash laughed softly. He looked Racek straight in the eyes and continued: ¡°What¡¯ll it be, then?¡±

    If he so much as hesitates, I¡¯ll have to kill him here and now, Menash told himself.

    ¡°Why, yes. Yes, of course!¡± the little brown male said vigorously.

    ¡°Good,¡± Menash sighed with relief, ¡°She¡¯ll be very grateful to whoever brings her home. I¡¯d do it myself, but as an alpha I can¡¯t risk being seen as disobedient.¡±

    ¡°Then why give me this chance? After all that¡¯s passed between us?¡±

    ¡°I should have thought that was obvious,¡± Menash replied. Racek digested that for a bit, then out of nowhere said:

    ¡°If I find her¡ªwhen I find her¡ªI¡¯ll tell her exactly who it was that sent me.¡±

    ¡°That won¡¯t be necessary.¡±

    ¡°Bah! Just so we¡¯re even, that¡¯s all,¡± Racek grinned, his mouthparts slanting askew.

    ¡°Thanks, I guess. I¡¯d¡­I¡¯d appreciate that. You do understand what we¡¯re risking here, right?¡±

    ¡°Sure. We¡¯ll be total genetic write-offs if we¡¯re caught. But it¡¯s not like I wanted to see tiny ugly Raceks running around the house anyway. What about you, though? Why are you putting your neck on the chopping block?¡±

    ¡°You know why,¡± Menash said quietly, his thoughts still lingering on her face.

    ¡°Yes,¡± Racek agreed with a wistful air, ¡°Yes, I suppose I do.¡±

    And the pair spoke no more until they reached Chthonis.

 Chapter 21: Kryptus

    Having said his piece, Rene had expected the woman to accept her role as a prisoner of the Fleet. But no sooner had he taken his knee of her back than she was at him again, rolling over and cursing as she tried to spit him on her claws. Training kicked in and Rene applied the wrestling component of his hand-to-hand combat course. He secured underhooks with his arms, locking them together with his hands and hugging her tight from behind. Zildiz bucked and twisted around in a futile attempt to make room for her blades, even managing to get one of her knees beneath her and push off the ground. Rene allowed her to gain her feet, cunningly using the opening to slip the loop of his encircling arms around her waist. Now in complete control of her center of gravity, Rene swung his leg out and arched his back, heaving her up and over like a sack of turnips in a textbook suplex. A fraction of a second before he smashed the top of her skull into the hard ground, he remembered that he was supposed to keep prisoners alive and preferably not in a vegetative state, and so he cushioned the fall with his own body, falling on his side to increase surface area and dissipate the force.

    Zildiz was caught totally by surprise. Unlike Rene she had neglected to tuck in her chin before the moment of impact, a vital detail which was one of the first things a recruit was taught to do on the mats.

    ¡°Oof!¡± she said as all the breath slammed out of her by the throw. Rene felt her body go limp as her dazed senses tried to adjust to the violent change of orientation. He took advantage of this moment of weakness and looped his legs around her body, locking his ankles together to form a full body triangle. His left forearm punched up and took her neck in a rear naked choke, a suffocating vise formed by the insides of his elbow crushing her windpipe and carotid arteries.

    ¡°I warned you,¡± he told her. His choking hand grabbed the inside of his other elbow, right forearm sneaking behind her neck and under his armpit, tightening the garrote even further.

    ¡°Had enough?¡±

    ¡°Hrrnnkk¡­¡± Zildiz choked. She lifted an arm and slid back the blade until it was the length of a finger, deliberately giving Rene the universal gesture to go and fornicate with himself, before sheathing the claw entirely and aiming her fist at him over her shoulder.

    Rene ducked as the blade shot out again, only just avoiding it going through his eye socket and into his brain. As it was, it only nicked his temple, sending warm lines of blood trickling down his visor. Rene hugged her even tighter, constricting the chokehold until he heard her breathing reduced to an agonized wheeze. He throttled her until she stopped moving, her struggles weakening until she went completely lax. Then he held the choke for exactly three seconds longer, counting carefully to avoid giving her lasting brain damage. He let go and was relieved to hear her snoring faintly. Gently rolling her onto her back so she didn¡¯t suffocate in the dirt, Rene cast about for a means to secure his prisoner. He had only a few seconds before she regained consciousness. Quickly he cut some vines from the surrounding trees and knotted them into a crude rope. He flipped her back over again and tied her hands at the wrists and elbows. He had no illusions that it would hold her for long. He tied her wings together at their bases for good measure. She had two sets of them, but the larger pair was missing one of its partners that had been torn off at the socket to reveal a gaping wound. They were wondrously tough membranes considering how thin and flexible they were, as sturdy as ultrapod leather. Rene looked over his work and loosened it a bit so as not to cut off the circulation in her arms. It wasn¡¯t bad for something done on the fly. Then again, he¡¯d been playing this whole thing by ear ever since the ambush that had cut his unit to pieces. Ye gods, but that whole experience felt like a lifetime ago. He had not expected to ever use that component of his hand-to-hand training designed for fighting human opponents. Of course, he¡¯d helped put down a fair share of civil unrest in his time, but even during the worst of the food riots in Mound Ulysses he¡¯d never so much as given a person a light shove. The civilians knew better than to antagonize a battalion of the Fleet¡¯s finest over something as routine and reoccurring as a government rationing in the face of crop failure.

    He felt quite bad about having to roughhouse the woman, that is, until she sat up awake and glowered hatefully at him, coughing and retching.

    ¡°Don¡¯t,¡± he pleaded with her in exasperation as she gave him the old stink eye, ¡°I don¡¯t want to fight you again.¡±

    ¡°Why?¡± she spat defiantly, ¡°Afraid you¡¯d lose?¡±

    ¡°Uh huh,¡± Rene grunted, amused and even a little impressed by her spunk. She couldn¡¯t have weighed more than sixty kilos soaking wet and was at least half a foot shorter than him even with that exomorph of hers, but this woman was all fight and no quit. She would have to be, living on the surface world and facing these abominations day after day. Rene looked at the dismembered corpses of the black-furred devils and had a sudden jolt of inspiration. As Zildiz tested the strength of her restraints Rene went over to the monster he had chopped to bits and poked the misshapen hump on its back, which had excreted thick ribbons of silk at the moment of death. Feeling more than a little squeamish, Rene pulled on the threads of silk. He had only meant to collect two or three meters of the material, but more and more of the stuff kept unwinding out its glands like a handkerchief from a magician¡¯s pocket. Eventually his hands became enmeshed in the horrid stuff and he had to struggle like the dickens to unstick himself and scrape it off onto a bush where it stuck like a lumpy hammock. Remembering how his enemy had plugged the stab wound in its gut, Rene snapped off a twig and curled it into the white mess like those vendors at the fairs did with candy cloud treats, ending up with a spool of silk. He applied it to the cut on his temple by winding it around his head like a bandage, and was gratified when it stopped the bleeding almost immediately. He heard the rustle of dead leaves and turned around to find Zildiz furtively attempting to sidle away from him.

    ¡°Don¡¯t even try it,¡± he told her, ¡°Or I¡¯ll run you down and knock you senseless. I¡¯m taking you back to civilization. The Fleet needs to know what it¡¯s up against out here, and you¡¯re a veritable trove of information.¡±

    Zildiz squatted back down and stared at him, simmering with resentment. Rene shook his head and continued his work, moving on to the monster that had been the first to die at the woman¡¯s hands. Cutting open its hump, Rene was rewarded with a dense lump of thread still packed inside its spinneret. He took another twig and spooled it in, then wrapped the bundle of silk in a large leaf.

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    A leg twitched of its own accord. Rene nearly dropped the bundle as he sprang back, sword upraised. The devil¡¯s limbs began doing a tap dance and Rene relaxed a bit, recognizing it as the onset of rigor mortis. The side of its face was split open and hanging loosely by a strap of flesh. Struck by a nagging suspicion, Rene stooped down and peeled off the segments of its head, holding the edge of his sword against its neck to decapitate it in the event that it proved too lively for his liking.

    The musculature and armor tore away just like it had with Zildiz¡¯s helm, and for the second time that night he found himself staring into the face of another living human being. Only this time it was a man whose face was utterly disfigured, a perversion of the basic form. In the place of his lower jaw were fingerlike protrusions of gummy tissue and exposed nerve endings. His nose cartilage was likewise missing, leaving only a pair of holes dribbling with snot. The man blinked, and glassy eyes with almost no whites at their edges fixed Rene in their gaze.

    ¡°Kill¡­me¡­¡± the man whispered.

    Rene began to shake uncontrollably, wiping a trembling hand across his mouth as he was forced to consider the carnage he¡¯d just wrought in a new and horrifying light. These weren¡¯t three dead monsters littering the jungle floor; these were three dead men, and some of them he had killed himself.

    ¡°Kill me!¡± the man begged him. He was young, barely Rene¡¯s age, his smooth skin untroubled by the wrinkles of age and worry. He had clear brown pupils and dark, expressive brows. If it weren¡¯t for all the rest of him, Rene might¡¯ve mistaken him for a fresh-faced recruit at the academy, or a paperboy climbing up the terraced apartments of inner hive to deliver news of the Fleet¡¯s latest victory.

    On unsteady legs Rene staggered back to Zildiz¡¯s side and away from the awful truth he had uncovered.

    ¡°Something the matter?¡± Zildiz asked in a gleeful tone, ¡°Feeling a little worse for wear, are we?¡±

    ¡°Shut it,¡± Rene said distantly. He dragged Zildiz to her feet and began winding the silk around her wrists, layering them over thick and tying them off with a simple knot. He kept the vines on her for added insurance and told her to start walking.

    ¡°Where to?¡± she demanded.

    ¡°I¡¯m not feeding you to my children, if that¡¯s what you¡¯re asking,¡± he muttered, ¡°I don¡¯t have any to begin with, and even if I did, I sure as hell wouldn¡¯t raise them to be cannibals.¡±

    Zildiz didn¡¯t move, so Rene grabbed her and frog marched her away. He had no real destination in mind¡ªhe just had to get away from this place and the bodies he¡¯d made. Zildiz rounded on Rene, saying:

    ¡°Aren¡¯t you going to deal with him? I only severed his neural connection to paralyze his exomorph. He¡¯s still very much alive.¡±

    ¡°No!¡± Rene yelled, ¡°That¡¯s not how I¡ªhow people do things. Almighty ancestors, is that so hard for you to grasp?¡±

    ¡°Yes,¡± Zildiz replied quite candidly.

    ¡°He¡¯s a living, breathing human being. I don¡¯t know if you¡¯ve heard, but those are pretty rare on Arachnea and worth keeping around.¡±

    ¡°No. He is a Leaper. After extracting your gilt helix, he and his packmates would devoured you right then and there.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s why you saved me, isn¡¯t it? So they couldn¡¯t obtain this shiny helix thing?¡±

    Zildiz ignored his question, continuing:

    ¡°If you leave him here, at best he will die of exposure. At worst, his tribe will come looking for him, and if they find him, they will run us down and kill us anyway.¡±

    Rene bit his lip. She spoke the truth and they both knew it. But after all this world had already taken from him, there remained one thing which he refused to part with. And Rene knew that if he gave in now and took the expedient option¡ªthe sensible option¡ªhe would be surrendering it forever.

    ¡°Sorry,¡± he said finally, ¡°That¡¯s against the rules.¡±

    He dragged Zildiz over to the Leaper and spoke to him, saying:

    ¡°I won¡¯t kill you. I¡¯m not about to eat you either, so you can stop begging for a quick death. As long as you tell me what I want to know, we¡¯ll leave you here and go our separate ways. I might even patch your wounds if you¡¯re cooperative. Does that strike you as a fair bargain?¡±

    The Leaper met this pronouncement with a look of utter perplexity that mirrored the one on Zildiz¡¯s face.

    ¡°I¡¯ll take that silence as a yes,¡± Rene said impatiently, ¡°You¡¯ll begin by telling me your name.¡±

    ¡°Kryptusshh,¡± the Leaper said slowly, as if not daring to hope.

    ¡°Very good. Are there any more of your people out there, Kryptus?¡±

    ¡°Why sshhould I trusht you? I would only be dooming more of my kindred, and there issh no certainty you would not kill me afterwardssh.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a chance you have to take,¡± Rene shrugged, ¡°Either that, or I¡¯ll let this woman do as she pleases with you. And just between you and me,¡± he said in a loud stage whisper, ¡°She doesn¡¯t seem all that fond of your sort.¡±

    Zildiz and Kryptus locked eyes with each other. Rene could almost feel the waves of hatred coming off her as she bristled, every tendon in her body tensing expectantly. Kryptus must have seen something he didn¡¯t like, for he looked away and said:

    ¡°I am a warrior of the Weeping Vipersh. We are roughly eleven hundred sshtrong. One tenth of that number are bravesshh like me.¡±

    ¡°He lies,¡± Zildiz said, baring her teeth in a snarl, ¡°That is less than half their true strength. He does not count the adolescents and the old loom-mothers, who are the deadliest of their kind.¡±

    ¡°Three hundred, then, if they are consshidered,¡± Kryptman quickly admitted, ¡°Your pardon, merciful one.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll excuse your forgetfulness just this once,¡± Rene warned, ¡°But your memory better not fail you again.¡±

    He questioned the Leaper closely. Kryptus claimed that only he and his pack had seen the safety pod¡¯s crash landing, and that they had told no one else as they wished to claim the great prize all for themselves. The Weeping Vipers were the largest tribe in the rainforest and were always looking for an advantage over their numerous and belligerent neighbors. Apparently Kryptus had hoped to gain a modicum of the Divine Engine¡¯s power by extracting something called a ¡®gilt helix¡¯ from Rene¡¯s blood.

    ¡°Jussht one sample would have shatishfied uss,¡± Kryptus swore, ¡°Then we would have taken you back to the Loom alive.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sure nothing would¡¯ve pleased you better,¡± Rene said wryly, all too cognizant of Zildiz¡¯s earlier assumption that he planned to feed her to the Fleet¡¯s youth.

    Rene learned from Kryptus that the Divine Engine had ignited a blazing wildfire that was swiftly spreading north and west. The tribes would likely have noticed it by now, and would all be sending braves in a joint effort to douse the flames. For some reason all the Leapers felt collectively responsible for the wellbeing of the region, and could not allow it to come to harm for fear of dire repercussions.

    ¡°Last question. Is anyone going to come looking for you?¡±

    ¡°Not till the morning.¡±

    ¡°Good!¡± said Zildiz, breaking out of Rene¡¯s grip and aiming a vicious kick at the side of the Leaper¡¯s head. Rene barely caught her and yanked her back, shouting:

    ¡°Blood and thunder, woman! Is there nothing you won¡¯t do to piss me off?¡±

    ¡°Are you insane? You cannot possibly mean to leave him alive!¡± the Gallivant hissed.

    ¡°That¡¯s exactly what I¡¯m going to do. Now come here!¡±

    Rene took her by the elbow and pulled her forward, leaving Kryptus where he lay.

    ¡°You promished you would tend to my woundssh!¡± the Leaper cried after them.

    ¡°Don¡¯t push your luck!¡± Rene said over his shoulder, ¡°Anyone who follows us will meet the same end as your friends.¡±

    He and his prisoner went tramping off into the night, Zildiz raging at him all the while.

    ¡°Fool! We will both come to regret that decision!¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re probably right,¡± Rene had to agree.

    ¡°Then why did you do it?¡±

    ¡°For the same reason I¡¯m letting you strut around and screech into my ear. What can I say? I¡¯m a conversationalist.¡±

 Chapter 22: Were Still Here, Arent We?

    So let¡¯s review the facts, shall we? Rene thought as he trudged after Zildiz. We¡¯re deep behind enemy lines in completely uncharted territory that is inhabited by races of psychopathic humanoids with no conception of mercy or compassion, and who run around clothed in the flesh of monsters, thinking nothing of serving each other up for dinner. We¡¯re wounded, completely lost, with absolutely no hope of rescue or resupply. And as if that weren¡¯t enough, we¡¯ve taken on a homicidal captive with swords growing out of her arms who nurses an abiding hatred for all things pertaining to yours truly. But worst of all¡ªand I really can¡¯t stress this enough¡ªI¡¯m bloody well starving.

    Now, Rene¡¯s stomach wasn¡¯t the demanding sort. He¡¯d trained it to run on the bare minimum of sustenance¡ªin the times of severe famine an onion and half pound of rice had been the daily ration, and it had been glad to get it. But he had ignored its polite reminders for too long. Having mailed its complaints to the relevant authorities and received nothing by way of reply, it was now occupied with razing the post office to the ground.

    His innards yowled their discontent with every passing minute. He could feel his legs going weak at the knees; the two of them had been walking nonstop since last night¡¯s battle. Already he could see the rosy brushstrokes of dawn poking through the foliage, set against a field of marshmallow clouds. Ordinarily he would have found the sight rather pretty, but the coming of day brought with it the reminder that the Weeping Vipers would be out searching for Kryptus by now, and the only emotions it aroused in him now were the fear and hunger which were taking turns at gnawing at his intestines.

    Despite all that, the mission remained clear in his mind. He had to get back to friendly lines and warn the Fleet. More importantly, he had to lead them to the Divine Engine. With a such a tool in their possession, humanity stood an actual chance of sanitizing the surface world.

    Which begged the question: why had the Engine cast him out and stranded him all the way out here? Surely the ancestor-gods understood the Fleet¡¯s dire need for an equalizer in the uneven struggle for mankind¡¯s continued survival? And why had the flying machine not seen him when it had retrieved the safety pod? Where there perhaps limits to the supposed omnipotence of the ancestors? Or was this yet another test of his faith, a trial of mind and will designed to determine his worthiness? All these thoughts were running his thoughts ragged.

    That must be it, Rene reasoned. The gods test me sorely. For only the pure shall be worthy to soar in the Flight Eternal across the cosmos.

    ¡°Alright, that¡¯s enough,¡± he told Zildiz. He halted and threw himself back onto the ground, chest heaving and bones feeling like jelly. The one saving grace in all this was that this gas mask he¡¯d discovered was far and away the best he had ever worn. The air it gave was clear and sweet, and it didn¡¯t seem like it would be running out anytime soon. It was a pity he couldn¡¯t gorge himself on oxygen.

    ¡°You hungry?¡± he asked the prisoner. Zildiz was squatting on her haunches and brooding silently. She ignored him and shuffled a bit to turn her back on him. Rene sighed and opened his survival kit, taking out the pouch of white cinnamon-scented cubes. Shaking them loudly to in a half-hearted bid to get her attention Rene popped one of them into his mouth.

    ¡°Mmm,¡± he said loudly, rubbing his belly, ¡°Yummy yummy yummy in my tummy tummy tummy.¡±

    This was in spite of the fact that the white cubes tasted like earwax and had all the consistency of a block of tallow. Rene suffered through the first lump and heroically swallowed the second, but his courage failed him at the third and he put the food items aside.

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    Then he saw Zildiz watching him closely, her head cocked to one side in curiosity. He held out the pouch to her again. There was some lingering resentment there, he thought. Earlier she had suggested that they return to the bodies of the Leapers and secure additional protein that way. Rene had rejected her idea outright, giving her yet another reason to hate him.

    Although let¡¯s face it, Rene confided in himself. We¡¯re not exactly winning a popularity contest around here anytime soon. Still, he had to try. There was such a thing as good manners, even between a captor and his charge.

    To his surprise Zildiz hopped closer, cocking an eyebrow at him as if to say: ¡°Alright, I¡¯ll bite.¡±

    Rene apologized for being unable to untie her, something which she met with a blank stare. Apparently, they didn¡¯t make a habit of apologizing wherever it was she came from. He took a lump between thumb and forefinger and held it to her lips. Zildiz took one sniff at his offering and haughtily turned up her nose at it.

    ¡°Don¡¯t like it? Well I¡¯m sorry, princess, but this is all we¡¯ve got!¡± he said, feeling both much offended and sympathetic, ¡°Apparently the ancestor-gods didn¡¯t have much use for their taste buds.¡±

    ¡°So these are all the tools of your forebearers?¡± she scoffed, once more catching him off guard, ¡°The humming sword, your flimsy exoskeleton, and the Divine Engine?¡±

    ¡°Yes. They were your forebearers too, so you don¡¯t have to sound all smarmy about it.¡±

    ¡°No they weren¡¯t,¡± Zildiz replied, ¡°I told you. We share the primal pattern, nothing more. Considering your use of unliving instruments, you and your kind must be descendants of the Betrayers.¡±

    ¡°And how do you figure that?¡± Rene frowned, wondering who or what on earth the Betrayers were.

    ¡°Simple,¡± Zildiz continued glibly, ¡°You have broken the commandments of the Great Game. You adopt the crutch that is industry out of your own weakness and desperation, taking up arms against Creation itself. You are the abortive spawn of a misbegotten race whose defining achievement is having all but driven itself to annihilation, leaving only a galactic graveyard of burnt-out husks orbiting cold, dead stars, their monumental failure the sole testament of their ever having existed at all.¡±

    ¡°Oh, is that right?¡± Rene blustered, unable to think of a snappy retort, ¡°Well, we¡¯re still here, aren¡¯t we?¡±

    Zildiz let out a hacking, cruel laugh.

    ¡°Not for long,¡± she promised, ¡°Once the Vitalus learns of your Fleet¡¯s existence, It will spare no effort to wipe you off the face of Arachnea.¡±

    ¡°Bit of a prick, then, is he? You know, the more I hear about this Vitalus, the less I care for him. You worship this chap, is that it?¡±

    ¡°Imbecile. Do you sing for the wind or mutter prayers into the mud? The Vitalus no more requires our devotion than a dog needs ticks on its arse.¡±

    ¡°Now look who¡¯s being silly!¡± Rene cackled in triumph, ¡°Everyone knows dogs aren¡¯t real!¡±

    ¡°Yes they are,¡± Zildiz insisted, confusion replacing her scornful demeanor, ¡°What are you talking about?¡±

    ¡°You have dogs?¡± Rene said slowly, his mind grappling with the impossibility of another myth turning into reality.

    ¡°Of course we do!¡± Zildiz was looking at him as if he¡¯d gone mental, ¡°Don¡¯t you?¡±

    ¡°Uhm. Er. Legend has it we did, once. We ate the last of em hundreds of years ago, or so the elders say.¡±

    Zildiz sniffed reproachfully, as if he¡¯d just proven a point for her.

    ¡°Say, you¡¯ve got me all interested now. This Vitalus, for instance. Is supposed to be the spiritual representation of Nature itself?¡±

    ¡°It isn¡¯t a spirit you, superstitious nit. It is quite literally everything you see around you. The Vitalus permeates every layer of the ecosystem through communities of symbiotic microorganisms, creating a gestalt intelligence.¡±

    ¡°Huh. So am I speaking to it now, then?¡±

    ¡°What do you think, genius?¡± Zildiz said with stinging sarcasm. Rene rolled his eyes and hauled her back to her feet.

    ¡°Where are we heading?¡± she protested.

    ¡°To the closest body of water I can find. I¡¯m going to see if I can catch this god of yours. Then I¡¯m going to gut, cook, and eat the sonofabitch for breakfast.¡±

 Chapter 23: Fishing

    With the coming of morning Rene found the earth enwreathed in a grey and sinuous fog that was so thick he felt like he was standing on the shores of an ocean of sky. Only the lapping edges of the wide pond he had located was visible beneath rolling tails of mist. He couldn¡¯t even tell where the heavens ended and the water began¡ªthey had all joined together at the waist in one vague mass. It all had filthy, sooty smell to it too, like the inside of a baker¡¯s oven. As through a clouded window pane he saw a red and malevolent haze glowing on faraway slopes to the southeast. Zildiz noted his bewilderment and taunted him:

    ¡°Don¡¯t you recognized your own handiwork when you see it? An entire biome went up in smoke because of the Engine¡¯s rampage. Not that I mind¡ªall this is Leaper territory after all.¡±

    ¡°Cry me a river,¡± Rene scowled, dipping his boots into pond and wading into it. It was only knee height at the deepest point. What¡¯s more, he could see the blurred outlines of small darting shapes below the surface that he hoped were fish.

    He made Zildiz sit with her back against a sapling and bound her to it with the spool of webbing he¡¯d collected.

    ¡°Don¡¯t get any ideas,¡± he told her. He slipped off his boots and raggedy socks, rolling up the jumpsuit around his calves and getting back into the water.

    At first he tried to get at the fishes with his bare hands. It would be just as easy as catching the milky cave species they raise in the aquaculture ponds back in Ulysses, he thought. All one had to do was slip one¡¯s hand in with glacial patience so as not to disturb them, dipping the palm right under their bellies. Rene had gotten so good at it as a boy that he could even tickle them right in the gills and under the chin. But he soon discovered that the fish on the surface world were nothing like their subterranean cousins. For one thing, they weren¡¯t blind, or stupid. The little rascals fled when he floundered after them, feet slipping on the mossy stones that covered the pond bed. Zildiz looked on with interest as the single worst attempt at hunting she had ever had the misfortune to witness began. This Rene-creature was as clumsy as it was slow-witted, splashing around in fruitless pursuit of its feeble prey. How had these animals ever managed to conquer the stars? Zildiz watched as Rene stubbed his toes on a sharp rock and howled, falling arse-backwards and losing his visor in the process. He then painstakingly dredged the pond bottom for it, turning it up some time later all covered in water lilies and mud. Rene angrily slung his backpack back on and cleared the gunk out of his mask before fitting it back on his face, only to begin yelling as a river crab he¡¯d left inside tried to crawl up his nose. He tore the mask off again and doused it in the pond, finally ridding himself of the curious crustacean.

    ¡°Phew!¡± he sighed with relief.

    ¡°Toss it in again,¡± Zildiz suggested gaily, ¡°At least that way you might catch another.¡±

    ¡°Shut up,¡± Rene glowered, face going purple with rage. He grabbed the biggest stick of driftwood he could find and began beating the surface of the water as if it owed him something.

    Zildiz hid a smile at that. She was famished and events had definitely taken a turn for the worse, but at least someone else was suffering more than she was.

    And while this halfwit is preoccupied, Zildiz silently schemed, I¡¯ll go ahead and signal the god for help. She activated the magnetosynaptic organ behind her inner ear and tried all the usual frequencies.

    Nothing but static. Either her organ had been knocked out of commission with the loss of her exomorph¡¯s functions, or the heavy smog caused by the wildfire was getting in the way of reception.

    But more than this, a greater part of the Vitalus would be preoccupied with containing the damage to its work. As a shared consciousness It had unimaginable processing power, yet It tended to deal with the world in a holistic fashion, neglecting the individual elements. This did not mean that the god could not be effectively omniscient¡ªIt merely had a wholly different perspective and hierarchy of priorities than did Its mortal servants.

    For problems on the micro scale, it did however deploy Hollowores or other Inkarnids. Zildiz wasn¡¯t vain enough to think it would send such an avatar of creation and destruction just to retrieve one lone Gallivant. No help would be forthcoming for a while. No matter; she was certain that she could outsmart the Fleet-man soon enough.

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    Then something happened which drastically altered her perception of him and his kind. Rene grabbed another stick and banged the two pieces together, frowning with concentration. Without a word he returned to the survival kit and combined them with the spool of webbing, twisting them together into the silk and rotating them to create something that was greater than the sum of its parts.

    Grinning evilly, the Fleet man took the two sticks and the webbing strung between them and gently lowered them into the pond. He then waited, tongue sticking out the corner of his mouth as a fish approached him. When it refused to come any closer, he took one of the white cubes and crumbled it into pieces, which he sprinkled liberally into the water right above his new tool. Eventually the fish took the bait and swam in for a nibble. In a flash Rene pulled up the net and held up a wriggling, pinknosed carp with an ecstatic cry of victory. Chuckling at his own cleverness, Rene hauled his catch to the bank and dashed its brains out on the rocks. He then repeated the process until he caught three more carp with the exact same method. He gutted and descaled the carp with his clasp knife in a trice.

    Zildiz was seeing the boundless cunning of these creatures firsthand. It bothered her more than she cared to admit. Granted, if her exomorph was up and running she could¡¯ve killed him in a heartbeat, humming sword or not. But the rate at which he had adapted to his surroundings was concerning.

    For comparison, say a Gallivant wished to specialize in the catching of fish. It would have had to ask the Vitalus to edit its gilt helix so that its exomorph could accept the grafting of an appendage designed solely to catch fish. This was assuming the Vitalus had calculated that the addition of this new capability would not lead to the eventual collapse of the riverine ecosystem in the next ten or twenty generations, or that the Gallivant in question could be entrusted with such a responsibility, assuming that its lineage¡¯s previous contributions to the Great Game rendered it worthy of the sudden advantage.

    Meanwhile, Rene had developed the net tool in less than the span of an hour, with absolutely zero regard for the consequences of his actions. Zildiz could only imagine what an entire nation of Renes could do if they were given time to multiply beyond Arachnea¡¯s carrying capacity. Clearly this Fleet was a threat not to be taken lightly.

    Rene finished cleaning the fish and skewered them on sharp sticks. He then found some pebbles and started banging them together to produce sparks above a pile of bark scrapings and twigs, careful placing one of the brown lumps from the kit inside. It was just as successful as his first attempts at fishing; he smacked the rocks together until he bruised his fingers, then hurled them cursing into the fog.

    ¡°Sonofa¡­¡± he swore, squatting next to Zildiz and looking at the raw fish dejectedly.

    ¡°What, you can manage all that but can¡¯t get a fire going?¡± she asked, nodding at the blaze in the distance. Rene made no reply, too busy sucking on his thumb. Suddenly he unsheathed the sword and Zildiz nearly panicked, thinking that she had finally annoyed him to the point of violence. Instead, Rene picked up a chunk of quartz crystal off the ground and cut it in half, producing a shower of sparks as the edge met the mineral. Rene piled the fuel again and repeated the trick with the sword and the stone until the tinder caught and tiny streamers of smoke wafted up. Cupping his hands around the precious heart of flame, Rene blew on it lovingly and smiled as it grew into a merry, crackling cookfire.

    Making sure to give Zildiz a smug look, Rene sat cross-legged next to it and began to barbeque his meal. Zildiz had built fires herself during the cold monsoon seasons as a special allowance granted by the Vitalus for extreme weather fluctuations, but those had been for warmth, not to burn food with.

    The smell of the browning fish skin flooded Zildiz''s mouth with spit. Rene saw Zildiz licking her chops unconsciously, said:

    ¡°Don¡¯t worry. You¡¯ll get yours.¡±

    Sure enough he held out first batch of carp for her to eat, blowing on it to cool it. Zildiz even forgot her hostility for a moment as she seized the fish with her jaws.

    ¡°I can feed myself, you know,¡± she told him between crunchy mouthfuls of bone and white flesh. It was delicious! An explosion of flavors that was at once both salty and slightly burnt, the meat firm yet succulent. Swallowing greedily, she pulled the fish off its stick and ate it whole, the fish¡¯s head crackling under her molars. Rene watched her choke the thing down with a mix of amazement and alarm, then replied:

    ¡°I would consider allowing you the use of one of your arms, but you¡¯re a walking arsenal, lady. Is it good, though? My cooking?¡±

    ¡°Passable,¡± Zildiz lied with a shrug of her shoulders. Her affected disdain did not stop her from giving the rest of the carp a longing look. Rene knew she was hungry and tore the next fish in half, gorging himself and giving Zildiz the rest. Very soon all that was left of their breakfast was a pile of bones and scales that Rene kicked back into the pond. He sat back and propped his bare feet next to the fire to dry his toes.

    ¡°Uuurrpp!¡± Zildiz belched appreciatively.

    ¡°Bless you,¡± Rene commented, and settled down for a nap. He could only rest his eyes for a moment, as the woman would slit his throat as soon as he let his guard down. But the fatigue of the constant marching and fighting amassed on the edges of his consciousness. Slowly but surely, he was pulled down into the untroubled realm of sleep, free from the cares of his existence.

 Chapter 24: The Storm Catcher

    But no sooner had Rene closed his lids than he was roused by the sound of cannon fire. The Amits! The Amits were scaling the walls!

    ¡°Man the barricades!¡± he shouted groggily, rolling out of his bunk and reaching for his gun. Then his eyes cleared and he saw Zildiz regarding him with a quizzical expression.

    ¡°What¡¯s happening?¡± he cried as the muffled crump of ordinance echoed back and forth across the land, ¡°What are they shooting at?¡±

    Rene felt a swell of hope and pride in his chest. The Fleet had finally launched the grand offensive! No power on Arachnea could stop the triumphant march of humanity¡¯s progress! They would carve out the new territories in quick successionl. All that remained for him to do was walk over to the nearest picket line and hand over his prisoner over questioning. A wave of patriotic fervor gripped him and whooped and whistled, cheering his brothers and sisters-in-arms onwards to victory.

    ¡°It¡¯s the just the trees, you child,¡± Zildiz said irritably.

    ¡°Right, sure,¡± Rene scoffed, ¡°The trees are shooting at us?¡±

    ¡°Gene edited Cucurbitaceae species,¡± she explained, ¡°They were designed by the Vitalus to deal with this eventuality. They only propagate their seeds during bush fires. You are hearing the sound of them releasing their seed.¡±

    Another detonation went off and made Rene cringe and look instinctively for cover.

    ¡°The flame gourd trees store their seeds in a hard shell filled with sugar-rich liquid that is its main source of nutrition, while also doubling as a natural fire retardant. When the shell reaches a certain internal temperature, it forcibly bursts open along its seams, scattering the seeds and simultaneously putting out the fires below. So you see, the Vitalus is already healing the damage that your Engine caused.¡±

    Another bang rippled through the fog, followed by dozens more in quick succession. It sounded for all the world like a battery of howitzers firing a creeping barrage. The fog cleared up a little and he saw a distant hillock ringed by a line of smoldering orange that was advancing up its sides until it came to a stand of stunted trees whose boughs were heavy with large brown fruit. As the flames licked the lower branches, the fruit disappeared in cotton-ball puff detonations, smothering the earth in clouds of gaseous effluents. In the aftermath the entire area was soaked in foamy residue.

    ¡°You¡¯re telling me that the Vitalus planted all these special trees?¡±

    Zildiz offered him a deprecating smile, saying:

    ¡°It was those trees. Just as it was the fish we just ate, and the plankton in the water you swam in. It is the totality of life on Arachnea, and the sooner you acknowledge its mastery, the easier it will be to accept your fate.¡±

    Rene considered what she¡¯d said carefully. It was certainly food for thought. As primitive and naturalistic as the idea had sounded, Rene had to respect the evidence of his own eyes. By unleashing the Divine Engine, Rene had been the direct cause of a natural disaster, and no small one considering how it had followed him all the way from the ruins of Mound Euler. If the woman¡¯s words were to be taken at face value, then this Vitalus had just begun to reverse a literal force of nature. And from Zildiz¡¯s bored, disaffected tone, it apparently did such things on a regular basis.

    From finding evidence of the intelligence of the Amit race, to the uncovering of a mythic tool of the gods, Rene had experienced too many impossibilities in the past few days to remain a cynic. But he knew better than to abandon all skepticism, and took the concept to its logical conclusions by asking:

    ¡°If your god is so all-powerful, why hasn¡¯t it seen fit to rescue you?¡±

    ¡°This marks a new chapter in the Great Game. The parameters have been altered. Those who can, shall prosper with the change. The rest will die, or serve the needs of their betters. All shall flow as it must.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s a pretty crummy way of looking at the world. What¡¯s this Game you keep mentioning, and what¡¯s so great about it?¡±

    ¡°Arachnea is a half-made world. It could have been a utopia, once. The Betrayers destroyed it in a fit of jealousy, as with everything else they touched. Only the intervention of the Vitalus prevented total system death and corrected the runaway feedback loops. But the process of restoring the planet to conditions ideal for sentient life requires hundreds, if not thousands of years. Factors such as atmospheric composition, axial tilt, carbon and nitrogen and phosphorous cycles, ocean salinity and thermohaline circulation¡ªall these and more must be finetuned, with the living systems of Arachnea themselves acting as the ultimate terraforming tool.¡±

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    ¡°Hence, we exist in a transitionary period. During this period, the Vitalus shall allow nature to select the kindreds who shall be worthy of the paradise that is to come. Only those who can adapt to the changing conditions, husband their resources, and achieve total immersion within the All-In-One will earn their place in the world that shall be. A world without famine or war or disease, where the righteous will dwell in an eternal state of perfection that is of their own making.¡±

    For once Rene had no snide witticisms with which to brush aside her barbarity. The sheer force of her belief and conviction surpassed even the most rabid zealots of the Chaplainage. The Fleet had met and absorbed many primitive cultures in the course of its reconquest of the surface world, from the bog-men of the Burning Marshes to the ice farmers of the mesas of Darood. Each tribe had had its own set of deities, but they all paled in comparison to those of Zildiz¡¯s civilization, for the simple reason that her religion had something which they had all lacked: a basis in harsh, merciless fact. Fascinated, Rene quizzed her:

    ¡°Will this perfect world contain the Leapers?¡±

    ¡°Before we Gallivants are done, not a single drop of their blood will remain in the gene pool,¡± Zildiz said with perfect honesty.

    ¡°And could this perfect world contain the Fleet?¡± Rene said quietly.

    Zildiz turned to face him. Her mouth twisted at the corners into a disturbing smile that never touched her eyes. Rene flinched and dropped his gaze, clearing his throat uncomfortably.

    ¡°We¡¯ll see about that,¡± he finally muttered, more to convince himself that anything else.

    ¡°No, we won¡¯t,¡± Zildiz replied, ¡°You can¡¯t hear them, can you?¡±

    ¡°Hear what?¡±

    ¡°Give it a moment¡­there! What about now?¡±

    Rene strained his ears, but could make out nothing but the pop and bang of the flame gourds. After a moment, however, he began to discern a softer, more regular rhythm underneath the din, as of something hollow being hammered insistently.

    ¡°Drums,¡± he breathed, his veins turning to ice water.

    ¡°Leapers,¡± Zildiz said, confirming his guess, ¡°And from the sound of it, all the tribes have mustered. I would tell you to make peace with your god, but the Vitalus has no place for you and your kind.¡±

    ¡°Gathering for what?¡± he demanded, annoyed by her nonchalant attitude. Zildiz pouted her lips and used them to point upwards at a region of the sky where the fog had thinned. Rene scanned the clouds and saw silver sheets of rain falling directly on the wildfire, which was clearly weakening. Then a smidgen of the suns shone through the roiling troposphere and for a moment Rene saw something that snatched his breath away.

    Rainbows. Not one, or two, nor even several of them¡ªit would have been more accurate to call it a wall of rainbows, as if the world had coyly lifted aside the curtain of paradise itself. The shimmering folds of the improbable fabric waved and flapped amid the powerful headwinds, hundreds of kilometers tall and wide and swelling like the bulge of a soap bubble, vivid purple and blue at its edges while the center faded to transparency.

    A host of tiny black spots were clambering up and down the rainbow curtain like sailors on a ship¡¯s rigging, weaving the pattern with their many arms even as they rode the wild thermals.

    Leapers. Thousands of them, all working in concert as they marshalled the power of the rainstorm. Rene sat in awestruck silence as the threads of the rainbow curtain caught the downpour and funneled it into scores of places at once, drowning the worst of the wildfire and producing great columns of smoke wherever it poured.

    Through it all the drums beat their incessant rhythm, a song that changed with the twisting motions of the curtain. Rene hypothesized that they were a communication system by which the Leapers coordinated their gargantuan efforts.

    He wondered numbly if the Leapers had summoned the storm themselves by condensing it with their webs, or if they had simply taken advantage of the existing weather patterns. The question was purely academic; either way, their mastery of the elements was frightening and undeniable. Zildiz on the other hand was trying her best to see the high edge of the storm catcher, but her basic ocular organs had limited magnification. She didn¡¯t have to see that far to know that a squadron of Gallivants were holding up the entire superstructure, working in concert with their most sworn enemies to serve the will of the All-In-One. That could only mean one thing: the Vitalus had called for a general truce. History was unfolding before her very eyes, but from here she was powerless to influence it.

    The heavy rains would last several days, the smog even longer. Both of these factors would play hell with the reception of her magnetosynaptic organ. The god would also be preoccupied with measuring and repairing the damage, as well as dealing with the Divine Engine. Zildiz had no doubt in her mind that It would solve these problems and restore the precious equilibrium. But the more cogent question was if It would ever arrive in time to save her from the spawn of the Betrayers.

    The spawn in question was in a state of shock from which it was already recovering.

    ¡°Alright,¡± Rene told her, ¡°I¡¯ll admit it. I¡¯m impressed. No, scratch that. I¡¯m utterly gobsmacked.¡±

    ¡°Do you see now the absolute futility of your struggle?¡± she asked.

    ¡°I didn¡¯t say I was beaten,¡± Rene said, getting back on his feet and pulling his boots back on.

    ¡°So you mean to continue on your foolish errand?¡±

    ¡°Unfortunately, yes. Consider me properly motivated.¡±

    Zildiz could not help but chortle at that, a rich and warm belly laugh that surprised even her.

    ¡°You are far too stupid to die, Fleet-man,¡± she decided, ¡°I will observe your progress with great interest.¡±

    ¡°Oh, and by the way?¡± Zildiz added as if she were airing a casual piece of trivia, ¡°Not all of the Leapers are working on the storm catcher up there. Others will be coming to herd the megafauna away from the destruction. In fact, I think I can hear them getting closer as we speak¡­¡±

 Chapter 25: The Horde

    ¡°And you only thought to mention that now!¡± Rene screamed at her.

    ¡°Not my fault you¡¯re as deaf as a dingbat,¡± she smarmily replied.

    ¡°Oh, shit on it!¡± he swore.

    Rene laced up his boots in a fury of motion, balling up his tattered socks and shoving them in his pockets. Snatching up his sheathed sword and the survival kit, he kicked dirt over the remains of the fire and started to run back into the jungle. Then he did a double take and turned back to Zildiz who was still bound to the sapling, clearly torn between his sense of duty and the urge to save his own skin. His captive on her part was behaving as if she hadn¡¯t a care in the world.

    ¡°Have you finally reached the inevitable conclusion of your thought processes?¡± she yawned.

    ¡°What?¡±

    It was Zildiz¡¯s turn to roll her eyes at him.

    ¡°I¡¯ll help you along this once, since we haven¡¯t the time to wait on your mental faculties. There¡¯s only one way you¡¯re making it out of this alive. Untie me.¡±

    ¡°Like blazes I will. You¡¯ll gut me soon as you got the chance.¡±

    ¡°I know a place where we can hide. I camouflaged it myself. We won¡¯t be able to escape leapers in the brush, not in the daytime, and not with eyes like theirs. My lair is the only option. If you cut me loose, I can get us there with minutes to spare. If not, you can always try outrunning them.¡±

    Rene fumed. She had deliberately concealed this information to give him no time to think things through. By rights, as her captor, he was under no obligation to ensure her continued survival.

    But she was also unerringly correct in her assessment of the situation. Rene advanced on her with an ugly snarl, drawing his sword. Zildiz calmly stared him down, ¡®cool as some cucumbers¡¯, as Lethway would have put it.

    The drums were getting louder by the moment. He cut her free and Zildiz turned her back to him, presenting her bound wrists and looking at him expectantly over her shoulder.

    ¡°Absolutely not. Your arms stay tied. Chop-chop!¡± he said, shooing her onwards, ¡°Lead the way.¡±

    ¡°I can¡¯t run like this. Either remove the silk completely or we¡¯re not getting anywhere.¡±

    ¡°You ever heard of a little thing called compromise?¡± Rene¡¯s temper was so frayed at this point that his voice came out in a high squeak, ¡°Alright! Fine! But your wings stay clipped.¡±

    ¡°They don¡¯t work anyway.¡±

    ¡°Not taking that chance. Your blades. Pop em out.¡±

    ¡°Why?¡±

    Rene vented a cry of hysterical frustration and activated the sword, holding it in both hands as if he meant to lop off her head.

    ¡°Pop em out right now, or by jimbo I¡¯m taking em off at the elbow!¡±

    Zildiz reluctantly complied, her serrated swords sliding out of their housings. General truce or not, she knew that the Leapers would take any chance to murder a Gallivant if they thought they thought could do it unobserved. Especially once they discovered what she had done to Kryptus and his pack. She had to get moving, even if it meant debasing herself this way.

    But she immediately regretted her choice when Rene promptly snipped her swords off at the roots.

    ¡°What have you done!¡± Zildiz screamed as her weapons clattered to the ground. She whirled on him in outrage and Rene took a hasty step back, hefting his sword warningly.

    ¡°Don¡¯t be overdramatic,¡± Rene said, scooping up the blades and chucking them into the survival kit for future use, ¡°I¡¯ve only disarmed you. You¡¯ll get them back later, if you behave.¡±

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    He cut the bindings of her arms and gave her a shove.

    ¡°What are you waiting for? Ice Cream Day? Beat your feet!¡± he ordered.

    The pair set off with Zildiz stumbling ahead, Rene dogging her heels. Ahead of them he could hear what sounded like a mutter of a rolling avalanche, the thumping growing ever more distinct as the hordes of unseen savages neared their position. Each staccato drumbeat was answered by another that varied in rhythm and pitch.

    Rene was reminded of the whistles, bugles, bagpipes and drummer-boys which helped commanders give signals to line infantry regiments amid to roar of battle. If the Leaper tribes were holding a long-distance conversation, then he dearly hoped that he and Zildiz were not topic of their discussion.

    Zildiz hissed in pain when she slipped and jammed her foot into a crack between the stones. Rene placed his hands on her waist to help heave her out, but she twisted out of his grip and growled at him. They eyed each other warily until her good sense won out and she allowed him to help by gouging out the rocks and digging out her ankle. They ran on, Zildiz moving with a noticeable limp that was slowing them both down. She was clearly struggling to support the added weight of her useless exomorph.

    ¡°Are we close?¡± he demanded of her. Zildiz was all but running on all fours, hellbent on reaching shelter as the sinister percussions rebounded through the fog, multiplying the effect so that it seemed the whole jungle was alive with them.

    She¡¯s just too slow! Rene realized. So he did the only thing he could think of and seized the woman from behind. Zildiz kicked and screeched a little, but soon lost the energy to do even that as he bundled her up in a fireman¡¯s carry and hurried on. Stars above, she was heavy! Thankfully they were mostly moving downhill, which spared him a lot of effort.

    ¡°Just point the way. I¡¯ll get us there,¡± he panted. There was no time to argue. He barreled into the heart of the fog and felt smooth pebbles clattering under his boots and heard the trickle of nearby rapids. They were back on the river¡¯s edge, he realized.

    Zildiz guided his steps until they reached a tall outcropping of red and white granite. It was topped by a pile of flotsam that¡¯d been deposited by some past flooding. Or so it seemed.

    ¡°Here,¡± said the Gallivant as they climbed to its summit. She pulled aside the pile of detritus and revealed a spacious burrow cunningly disguised and cozily constructed. Rene hopped down after Zildiz and she closed the hatch of dead vegetation over them, plunging the pit into a sudden gloom. When Rene¡¯s eyes finally adjusted, he gave a grunt of recognition. Lining the sides of the burrow was the big tent cloth that had slowed the safety pod''s plummeting descent.

    ¡°Where¡¯d you get this?¡± he asked Zildiz, poking at it.

    ¡°From the same current that washed me up on the shore,¡± she said, ¡°Now shut your breathing hole. The hairs on their bodies are like ears. They can sense the tiniest vibrations¡­¡±

    Rene tore open a rent in the tent material and scrabbled at the stones until he had a spyhole that was just large enough for him to squint out into the smoggy murk. The avalanche of motion was upon them now, so close it made the sluggish river quiver like a spoonful of bone marrow.

    As if emerging straight from the bowels of the netherworld there came rushing out of the fog a horde of ravening beasts. On countless pads and claws and hooves they skittered, hopped, crawled or bounded across the torrid current.

    Rene saw herds of reptilian frillheads, the bone spurs on the herbivores¡¯ backs rattling like sabers as they made the crossing, closely pursued by packs of buzzing daggergnats that sank their lance-like proboscises into their flanks, cruelly goading them on. Flightless chiroptadons beat on their hairless chests and swung along on the knuckles of their vestigial wing arms. Ten-meter tall ultrapods crashed through the brush and flattened whole trees with their hammerhead antlers. Swarms of rodents, timid fawnmice, flocks of birds, squealing quickpigs, rolling pollies and a host of new species he¡¯d never even dreamed of fled before the larger animals.

    Guiding the stampede northward were bands of Leapers. Most soared above the ethereal mists on airfoils of thin-sown silk streaming behind the. Others strung out ziplines between the trees and slid down them with the claws on their feet. The largest Leapers had bright colorations on their underbellies and the sides of their humps, orange and green spots upon which they had painted garish tribal signs. Rene saw swirling suns and grinning devils, or eyes pierced through with barbs and weeping tears of blood. Adolescents and children rode in pouches on the backs of their elders, beating the drums they had woven tight across their knees.

    Rene curled himself into a ball and tried his hardest not to exist. For what seemed an eternity the dread host bellowed and crashed around their hiding place, until at last the drums slowly receded in the distance.

    ¡°How many?¡± Zildiz prodded him.

    ¡°Too many,¡± Rene whispered, ¡°Armies of them, all moving with one purpose.¡±

    ¡°It has summoned the kindreds to the Dawning Chambers,¡± Zildiz told him. The Gallivant knelt at the bottom of the pit and scraped out a hole in the gravel which quickly filled with water, ¡°The god has been roused to anger, and the world shall quake at its passing. It will come for your people, and when It is done, it shall be as though they never were at all. Not even the mute stones shall bear witness to their memory. For nothing will remain of them but dust and bones. Dust and bones.¡±

    Having said her bit, Zildiz bent down and lapped up the water with her tongue.

 Chapter 26: The Spirit of the Sphere

    With all the Leaper activity outside there was nothing else to do but sit and think. So Rene did just that. But the more he thought, the worse things seemed to get.

    The Fleet had no idea what they were walking into. There were entire nations of these humanoid monsters out here, and all of them made the Amits look like cuddly pets in comparison. He had to warn them. No one else could. His entire platoon and all of Mound 13¡¯s scientists were gone. He alone could forestall disaster and avert the coming slaughter.

    If only he could make the long trek home. But that would mean days if not weeks of moving through enemy-infested territory. Untold thousands of Leapers stood between him and the edge of the world as the Fleet understood it.

    Even if he did warn the Fleet in time, there was no guarantee that they could withstand the world-altering forces he had encountered out here. If the Vitalus was a real being, a demon from the ancient world, then there was one thing which could rival its power.

    The Divine Engine.

    But that old heap was now rusting under the suns all the way back at Mound Euler. Besides, something inside it had given out, a malfunction maybe. Rene wasn¡¯t a qualified Antiquarian, so he couldn¡¯t even begin to guess how to get the thing working again.

    If I¡¯d had an ounce of sense in me back then, I would¡¯ve walked that hulk back to the Fleet where brighter minds than mind could get more use out of it, Rene thought bitterly. He had thrown away the most significant scientific and historical find in living history on a pointless gesture of vengeance. Granted, he¡¯d wiped out an entire omega-class mound singlehandedly, but if the eggheads back home had been able to piece the damned thing together¡­

    Anyway, it was no use crying over spilt jelly now. His mind switched to his more immediate problems. He had less than three days before he ran out of fungicidal doses. His wounds were shallow but numerous. Once they became infested with parasitic molds, inflammation and fever would soon follow, ending with the condition they called the ¡®baker¡¯s shakes¡¯, a rapid deterioration of motor functions in the afflicted areas.

    Despair and his wavering sense of duty roiled within him. Any one of the aforementioned factors would have made his mission untenable. Put them all together like this, and it all seemed nigh impossible.

    But the biggest problem of them all was squatting a few inches away from Rene, her yellowish eyes shining in the gloom.

    You¡¯ve done all that you can for her, above and beyond what is required of an officer of the Fleet, Rene told himself. Enemy combatants¡ªhuman combatants¡ªare supposed to be afforded the same level of care that a soldier could expect for himself. The issue was that he could barely fend for himself out here, much less babysit a prisoner who would like nothing better than to stick him when his back was turned.

    She was a liability that he couldn¡¯t afford. He would be doing himself and the Fleet a favor by ridding himself of that liability. Zildiz noticed him looking at her and thrust out her chin impudently. Rene felt a flash of irritation, his mind seizing on it like a drowning man clutching at anything to stay afloat.

    The irritation grew into a bright, senseless rage. All at once he became convinced that she was the cause and culprit of all his suffering. Without her slowing him down at every turn, he would at least stand a chance of at making it back home, though with the onset of infections the trip would certainly cost him his life.

    You first, Rene thought, eying Zildiz hatefully. He clenched his fists, fingernails digging white furrows into his palms. Zildiz shifted in her seat, the change in her body language slight but unmistakable. With a pang of guilt Rene realized that she knew exactly what he was thinking.

    You¡¯ve already killed once in the name of the greater good, Rene thought, and Lethway died for nothing that day. Can you honestly bear to make that choice again?

    Rene cleared his throat and began noisily sorting through his gear, turning out the contents of his survival kit and cataloguing them again.

    Zildiz did not relax in the slightest, watching closely as he took out the artefacts which he hadn¡¯t been able to identify and examining them one by one.

    He first looked over the obsidian slate. Rene turned it over in his hands and felt the smooth surface, pressing it firmly with his knuckles and rapping it. He found two curious holes in its side and stuck his pinky finger in them, felt cold nubs of metal inside. Nothing happened, so he put the slate down and started fiddling with the bowl that had a dirty great spike sticking out the center of it. He extended the tripod at its base and set it up, then waiting.

    Again, nothing happened. Rene began to feel like seven kinds of idiot until he discovered a pair of rubbery cords dangling form the base of the tripod. They had three metal prongs sticking out of their ends. In a flash of inspiration Rene recalled the strange holes he had found in the slate. Carefully he fitted the pronged cords into the openings. There was a smooth click as the prongs found purchase and locked in, the cords matching the holes perfectly in diameter and shape. Rene stood back and looked on with bated breath, sure that he had just made a discovery of historic proportions.

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    Even Zildiz started taking an interest in his doings. After a moment, she said:

    ¡°You have no idea what these tools are for, do you?¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t be absurd,¡± Rene said haughtily, ¡°This process just takes a while. You have to find the right harmonies,¡± he added in his most mysterious tone.

    ¡°Right harmonies for what, exactly?¡± she asked next, sounding skeptical.

    At a loss for words, Rene folded his arms and grumpily retreated to his corner of the lair. But as he withdrew, Rene quite unintentionally allowed a beam of soft light from his spyhole to enter the darkened space, whereupon it happened to shine on the obsidian slate he¡¯d laid on the floor. Suddenly the spiked bowl began to rotate on its tripod, compelled by some unseen force.

    ¡°For that!¡± Rene said happily. For once Zildiz had no biting remarks to add. They watched the bowl spin on its axis until Rene got bored and tried another experiment. He covered the spyhole with the palm of his hand. The rotations of the bowl immediately slowed and came to a stop. Rene then removed his hand, and after a moment it started to spin again. In addition, an inscription winked into existence on the upper left corner of the slate. Rene leaned in and read the following:

    ¡°EXOCOM network unavailable. Please try again later.¡±

    Rene rubbed his chin and pondered the incomprehensible message. What on earth was a network? It sounded like some kind of fishing implement.

    Zildiz on the other hand said nothing, but noted the clueless look on her captor¡¯s face. She understood the message all too well. The tool was trying to contact someone or something out there. Like her, the device was having problems raising a signal on the relevant frequencies. She reached for her magnetosynaptic organ and searched through her audible spectrum, going over it with a fine-toothed comb until she found the source of the only radio activity she could sense: the spinning bowl itself. She listened in and realized that it was transmitting a repeating message in some garbled parscode so dense with information she didn¡¯t dare begin unravelling it.

    She did, however, commit its frequency to her memory. It would come in handy if ever the Vitalus wished to track down the intended recipients of the message.

    Meanwhile, Rene had thought of a new experiment. He picked up the hollow sphere and saw to his delight that it also had the same pair of holes at its bottom, identical to the ones on the spinning bowl. He transferred the cords and connected the slate to the sphere.

    The device took a long time in responding, but Rene¡¯s earlier success was fresh on his mind and he would not be discouraged. He even scraped away the sides of the spyhole until it was wide enough to put his arm through.

    ¡°More light means more power,¡± he hypothesized aloud. He also had another theory about the shapes of the artefacts themselves. A sphere, a bowl and a rectangle, all of them perfect geometric shapes. Coincidence? He thought not! There was a secret harmony of mathematics woven into all this sorcery, he could just feel it.

    Rene¡¯s faith was rewarded a few minutes later when the sphere started showing rings of soft blue fluorescence. But his amazement reached orgasmic proportions when the sphere sprouted a set of spiky legs and began to roll itself around the floor of the burrow, still attached to the slate.

    ¡°Initiating vitals scan. Please remain still,¡± it warbled in a young boy¡¯s voice. Zildiz backed away from it as far as she could manage in the tight confines, treating it as if it were a poisonous viper. The blue circles began to emit strobing flashes of light that dazzled Rene¡¯s eyes. It was rather like those chemical picture boxes where you had to sit stone-still for hours before the image could develop properly.

    ¡°Scan complete. Hullo there!¡± the sphere happily giggled, ¡°How can I help?¡±

    ¡°Oh, wise spirit of the sphere,¡± Rene solemnly intoned, still intending to impress Zildiz with superiority of the Fleet¡¯s ways, ¡°Hear our prayers.¡±

    ¡°Aw, shucks,¡± said the sphere. It spoke with a whimsical twang that was like no accent Rene had ever heard, ¡°You charmer, you! You can just call me E.X.A.R., since we¡¯re friends. Or just plain Ex if you¡¯re into that whole brevity thing.¡±

    ¡°Exar?¡± Rene repeated.

    ¡°Sure! Stands for Extravehicular Advisory Robot. My sole purpose is to keep you happy and healthy. Give us the sitrep, chief.¡±

    ¡°I beg your pardon?¡±

    ¡°The lowdown, tailo. The long and the short of it.¡±

    Rene looked to Zildiz for help but saw that she was too busy pressing herself against the sides of the burro and squirming like mad. It was the first time he¡¯d ever seen her show fear, and he didn¡¯t know what to make of it.

    ¡°Well see, your crash suit indicates that you¡¯ve suffered some minor lacerations and contusions. Nothing major¡ªthough your brain wave patterns suggest that you ain¡¯t been getting much sleep. Everything alright?¡±

    ¡°Erm. To be perfectly honest with you, Mr. Exar, no. Everything is not alright.¡±

    The sphere uttered a sympathetic whistle and went the color of cream pastel.

    ¡°I¡¯m so sorry to hear that. What seems to be the problem?¡±

    Zildiz moaned:

    ¡°It is a simulacrum! A silicate soul of the Betrayers!¡±

    ¡°Tranquilo, mes amigos,¡± Exar urged, ¡°Let¡¯s simmer down a spell and figure this out.¡±

    He rolled about to face her and once more emitted the flashing pulses, Zildiz covering her face with her hands and letting out a frightened shriek.

    ¡°Okeydokey,¡± Exar said briskly, ¡°We need to get this lady over to a trauma center pronto. And I mean ASAP! We¡¯re gonna need to fly her to a team of specialists who can surgically remove that parasite that¡¯s latched onto her.¡±

    ¡°You know someone who can do that?¡± Rene said in disbelief.

    ¡°Of course! Exodus Industries has hardened bases all over this solar system, fully equipped and staffed. We¡¯ll have your lady friend up and running in no time.¡±

    ¡°And you can take us to one of those bases?¡±

    ¡°You kidding? We¡¯ll be cruising first class in an interplanetary shuttle in two shakes of a dog¡¯s whiskers! Heck, I¡¯m already hailing our ride.¡±

    Rene hopes flared into life. The gods were real, in a moment the spirit of the sphere would summon them forth!

 Chapter 27: Seeds of Treachery

    ¡°That¡¯s strange,¡± Exar said a minute later, ¡°I¡¯m not picking up any of the satellite constellations. If it was just one of them knocked out, I¡¯d put it down to a scheduled maintenance. But all of em? Fishy, that¡¯s what it is.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t understand,¡± Rene¡¯s spirits plummeted at the news. He should have known it wouldn¡¯t be so easy.

    ¡°Me neither, chief. But take it easy!¡± Exar assured him, ¡°There¡¯s an easy fix for that. Just hike me up someplace with better reception. Any place where we can get above all these damn trees is good.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid that¡¯s not exactly an option, noble Exar.¡±

    Rene briefly summarized the situation, filling in the details whenever Exar interrupted him with a question, which was not often.

    ¡°Got it,¡± Exar said after listening attentively, ¡°In short, you¡¯ve got a tribe of devolved humanoids on your tail, also infected by the same parasitoids as our young miss over here. Comms are down, and our closest exfil point is at least thirty-nine klicks due southeast, where our friends, ¡®the Fleet¡¯, will be waiting for you.¡±

    ¡°How did you measure the distance so precisely?¡± Rene asked.

    ¡°The T.O.R.U. you were piloting is currently in power cycling mode, but it¡¯s still sending out its mayday message for the repair crews. Judging by the fact that it ejected us via safety pod, the unit must¡¯ve suffered potentially catastrophic damage to its subsystems. Not to worry, though. My inbuilt Geiger counter just gave the all-clear, so there was no meltdown in the reactor core.¡±

    ¡°The most pressing issue is that you have less than 72 hours¡¯ worth of fungicidal doses left, and nothing with which to defend yourself but the monomachete from your kit. In addition, this young lady¡ª¡±

    ¡°Zildiz,¡± Rene supplied him.

    ¡°My bad¡ªZildiz. I like it, very exotic. Zildiz belongs to a culture which behaves aggressively towards Exodus Industries development projects here on the ground. That everything?¡± Exar briskly concluded.

    Rene nodded. Exar then immediately began outlining a plan of action. Their first priority was to gain altitude and establish communication with ¡®Exodus Industries¡¯, an entity which Rene assumed was the ancestor-gods¡¯ equivalent to Fleet Command.

    Exar would then signal for help using the spinning bowl (which it referred to as an ¡®allcomm antenna¡¯) and an interstellar shuttle would be sent to transport them to one of the moons.

    The moons! Rene was giddy at the prospect of becoming the first man to have returned to mankind¡¯s celestial origin. He tried not to get his hopes too high, however, knowing life¡¯s avowed fondness for ruining every dream a man ever had.

    Failing that, Exar would use the high vantage point to triangulate their position using nearby geographic landmarks. Once they had their bearings, it would be a simple matter of hiking over to the nearest hardened base and knocking on the airlock doors.

    ¡°I must say, you¡¯re taking all this bad news remarkably in stride, wise Exar,¡± he told the beeping sphere.

    ¡°Oh, puh-leeze! This ain¡¯t my first rodeo, pardner. We E.X.A.R. units have dealt with far worse in our time.¡±

    ¡°Really? Worse than Arachnea?¡±

    ¡°Oh, is that what the kids are calling this place these days? Sure is catchier than 65 Syngman Bb, lemme tell ya. But yeah, this here is nuthin.¡±

    Exar chuckled, a child amused by the backwardness of his senile grandparents.

    ¡°Alien plague strains from the thawed-out heart of an asteroid. Cosmophage armadas unleashed by rogue A.I. Not to mention all those privateer raids on the fringes of Pact space. We¡¯ve dealt with them all, helped people survive through the worst the galaxy can throw at them. And with 95% success rate, too, if I may add,¡± Exar said somewhat immodestly, ¡°Anywho, that¡¯s enough of me jawing. Let¡¯s go mobile, chief.¡±

    ¡°What, right now?¡±

    ¡°The mist¡¯s our best shot, bo-sing. Natural concealment. No telling how long it¡¯ll last.¡±

    Before they left, Rene had Exar explain the functions of all the tools in the kit. The sphere confirmed what Rene had suspected: the slate fed on the radiance of the suns. Exar called it a ¡®solar cell panel¡¯. In turn, the pronged cords attached to the solar cell could transfer energy to whichever artefact he wanted to use.

    He connected the panel to the mysterious gauntlet with the underslung pipe, which Exar informed him was a ¡®laser designator¡¯, a tool meant for guiding in airdropped supplies or flying machines.

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    ¡°It also doubles as a heat source. Just up the wattage on that sucker with the slide wheel on the edge of the hand. See it?¡±

    Rene put on the gauntlet and activated it by means of a green switch under the thumb. A tight needle of red light shone from the tube, and Rene understood that it was basically like the electrochemical torches that miners used. When he adjusted the slide wheel the needle of light narrowed and grew brighter. Where it touched the granite walls of the burrow there, sour-smelling wisps of smoke rose.

    Hot enough to scorch stone? He would have to be careful where he pointed this.

    ¡°Go easy on it, though,¡± Exar advised him, ¡°That kinda power output will drain the juice in a jiffy.¡±

    ¡°The juice?¡± Rene repeated stupidly.

    Exar made it clear to him that the artefacts could store ¡®the juice¡¯ from the panel. Moreover, the panel could be mounted on the front or the back of the jumpsuit by means of the same backpack rigging that held the breathing apparatus, allowing the user to collect the juice and supply it to up to two devices (Exar included) even while on the move. Even the bulky survival kit could be fastened to his loadout with a set of clasps at the bottom of the pack which Rene hadn¡¯t noticed.

    ¡°As for me, I can hitch a ride on your backpack as well,¡± Exar told him brightly. And indeed, there was a spherical indentation above the breathing apparatus where Exar could fasten himself in with his stubby spike legs.

    Rene whistled appreciatively at the compact nature of the jumpsuit¡¯s design; the entire survival kit was so cleverly put together, a testament to the ancestor-gods¡¯ practical mindset.

    He secured his gear, choosing to split the juices between Exar and the gauntlet, and got ready to leave. Rene crouched at the hatch of the burrow like a man in a trench waiting for the shrill whistle that would propel him up and over into the desolate no-man¡¯s land.

    Then he noticed Zildiz still huddled in place, not even daring to look at him or the talking sphere. Rene had originally been grateful that Exar¡¯s appearance had shut her up, but this state of catatonic shock of hers worried him.

    ¡°Coming?¡± he asked her.

    ¡°I¡¯m not going anywhere with that¡­that thing!¡± she stated categorically.

    ¡°Was it something I said?¡± Exar sounded hurt.

    ¡°The simulacrum said it would cut me out of my exomorph. That would kill me, Fleet-man.¡±

    ¡°Madame, I got no intention of hurting you!¡± Exar protested, ¡°But the fact is, you¡¯re sick. The parasite¡¯s attached to so many of the organs in your body, that I fear that it¡¯s totally coopted their functions. Our people have the technology to reverse all that.¡±

    ¡°I will not heed the promises of a slaved intelligence!¡± she snapped.

    Their argument was interrupted by a chorus of hair-raising screams from the jungle beyond. Even in those guttural, inhuman voices there was no mistaking the notes of grief and rage.

    ¡°They¡¯ve found Kryptus,¡± Rene surmised, ¡°Just like you said they would.¡±

    ¡°I take it the natives are restless,¡± Exar tittered nervously, ¡°Tailo, methinks we gotta go.¡±

    Rene saw Zildiz hesitate, weighing the balance of her fears and forming an internal consensus. He made a move to tip the scales in his favor, and spoke to her from the heart:

    ¡°Zildiz. I swear to you that as long as it is within my power to protect you, I will not allow you to come to harm. You are a prisoner of penultimate importance to the Fleet. I¡¯d sooner die than fail in my mission to get you back to civilization. If you doubt my intentions, consider the fact that nobody in their right minds would¡¯ve tried so hard to keep you alive, not unless they have very good reasons to do so.¡±

    ¡°I am not like the Leapers or your people, the Gallivants. I am a soldier of the Fleet, and my priority is the continuation of my species¡ªour species,¡± he added firmly, ¡°Now, I can¡¯t begin to imagine what horrors and depravities your kind have suffered these past few centuries, or what the Vitalus has taught you to believe. But in my mind, we are all one people under the same god. If that god is the Vitalus, then it is clear that he hates us. Why else would he, in all his supposed omnipotence, condemn us to live in this unending state of warfare and ignorance? Why does he forbid the full use of the human intellect, the sole source of our comfort and security in an uncaring universe? Why must he despise us so?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know the answers to those questions. But I do know this: I do not hate you, Zildiz of the Gallivants. In fact, I would very much like to help you. Will you let me do that?¡±

    Rene stood up and lifted the hatch, turning to offer her a hand.

    ¡°Besides! If you come with me, we can go ask the gods in person.¡±

    #

    This is certainly new, Zildiz thought, unsure of what to make of Rene¡¯s offer. His suggestion of a pan-kindred alliance bound together by their shared ancestry was ridiculous, of course. She knew enough of the mathematical models and the general principles of nature to know that such an undertaking was doomed by definition. And yet here was an opportunity unlike any other.

    Rene meant to take her to one of the last remaining holdfasts of the Betrayers. Who would have thought that those ancient demons were still clinging on to life, lurking in some nameless abyss, waiting for their chance to wreak one final act of vengeance upon an unsuspecting Arachnea.

    And here she was, uniquely placed to destroy them all in one fell stroke. Once she was nestled in that abode of evil, a single transmission from her magnetosynaptic organ to the Vitalus was all it would take to bring Its righteous fury down upon them.

    The rewards would be immense. At the very least they would make her a Matriarch. Her gilt helix would live on forever in the generations to come, her legacy enshrined in the undying architecture of the genome. Her children would never go hungry or cold for the rest of their lives. She and her brood could have their pick of exomorph grafts.

    Infrared eyes for night stalking, hypo thorax stabilizer tendons for prolonged flight, extra waste ducts, subdermal heat signature regulators, biochemical afterburners to add thrust, not to mention a whole slew of offensive weaponry¡ªnothing would be off the table!

    All she had to do was take Rene¡¯s hand.

    She did. The Fleet-man lifted her up out of the burrow, trying not to look too surprised at her acceptance.

    A very na?ve race, she decided. He caught her calculating gaze and must have mistaken it for the beginnings of friendship, for he said:

    ¡°Glad to have you aboard, Zildiz. Now let¡¯s get the hell out of here.¡±

 Chapter 28: Say Hello To My Little Friend

    They made for the hillock that Rene had seen earlier that day. It was the closest bit of high ground they had seen, and it had hatched the beginnings of a cruel idea in his mind, one that he wished to turn into reality.

    ¡°Stay close to me,¡± he told Zildiz as they strode, ¡°We stand a better chance of living through this if we act as a unit.¡±

    ¡°A unit of what?¡± she inquired, puzzled by his use of the word, ¡°Weight, length or time?¡±

    ¡°No, it means that we should work together,¡± he tried to explain, quickening his pace to a light jog. The hunting parties had gone silent¡ªthey hadn¡¯t heard the talk of their drums in ages. The quiet was somehow more unnerving than the screams.

    ¡°We watch each other¡¯s backs,¡± he continued, running along a fallen log, ¡°It¡¯s a sort of code we Pathfinders have. No man or woman dies alone.¡±

    Try telling that to Lethway, said a snide voice in his head.

    ¡°I have no wish to die alongside you, Fleet-man.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s not what I¡­ah, never mind. Here,¡± Rene handed her back her severed blades, ¡°As promised.¡±

    How had these people ever managed to survive this long? Zildiz wondered as she held her weapons again, manually sheathing them in her arms. It was like taking sugarcane from a baby.

    The fog was thinning noticeably. They had forded the river and reached the base of the hillock when they heard another shout from the southwest, sounding much closer this time. The drums began to speak again, the music almost keeping time with Rene¡¯s triphammering heartbeat. Rene led them round the flank of the rise into a deep gully, trying to use the terrain to hide their movements.

    ¡°How¡¯s their sense of smell, Zildiz?¡± he asked her as they picked their way up a pebbly, bone-dry creek. Rene hopped across the boulders and offered her his arm for assistance.

    ¡°Depends on the Leaper and their grafted organs,¡± she told him, leaping past him and pointedly ignoring his efforts at playing the gentleman, ¡°But they are all excellent trackers. They will find us. It is inevitable.¡±

    ¡°Aye, but we¡¯ll be ready for em by then. Hopefully,¡± Rene added with certain lack of conviction, ¡°To be frank, I don¡¯t know a power on this earth that can stop that horde we saw earlier.¡±

    ¡°They will not use the creatures of the jungle against us. The warband that is hunting us now cannot be larger than thirty to fifty braves.¡±

    ¡°And you know this how?¡±

    Zildiz said nothing. She was under no obligation to tell a child of the Betrayers of the Vitalus¡¯ capabilities. The more creatures the Leapers involved in this secret hunt, the greater the chances that the Vitalus would discover their violation of the truce. It would be a small and private war, and that suited her right down to the ground.

    She felt stronger now and surer of her footing, as if the chase had breathed new life into her muscles and lungs. Why, she felt as if she could fight a dozen Leapers. Either her innards had adjusted to the workload or her exomorph was regaining some of its functions. She dashed ahead, rejoicing in the steel-spring action of her sinews. The weak-spined Rene, on the other hand, was dawdling below her in the creek, up to some foolishness as usual.

    He had stopped to gather fistfuls of gravel which he stuffed into his socks and pockets until they bulged. He even opened his kit and crammed pebbles in the loose corners of the case.

    ¡°Hurry up,¡± she called to him, speaking softly now that danger was close.

    ¡°I¡¯d have to agree with Zildiz here, tovarisch,¡± Exar chimed in, ¡°Now¡¯s not the best time to be gathering mineral samples.¡±

    Rene shook his head and refused to explain. After some minutes of the uphill marching, he spoke to Exar, saying:

    ¡°This high enough for you?¡±

    ¡°Ten more meters above sea level should do it.¡±

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    They were almost at the summit of the landmass, in a grove of benguet pines and thin pygmy dipterocarps growing amid a hardscrabble sand. On the right shoulder of the hill were the clusters of fire gourd trees whose seeds he had mistaken for cannon fire, the ground plastered with dried-up foam. Beyond this stretched a scorched and blasted hellscape of blackened, dead trees.

    ¡°We don¡¯t have ten more meters,¡± Rene said, ¡°That is, unless¡­¡±

    He craned his neck to see the tops of the pines, which had straight smooth trunks and sported no lower limbs to grab onto. Most were stunted and malnourished by the poor soil, but at least one of the adults looked like a good candidate. It would be hard climbing.

    ¡°It¡¯s times like these that I wish these commercial kits still came with thruster packs,¡± Exar said regretfully, ¡°But all those models got phased out. Budget cuts, whatcha gonna do, eh?¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s a thruster pack?¡±

    ¡°Never heard of one? That¡¯s funny,¡± Exar paused as if he had come to a sudden realization, ¡°That¡¯s real funny, you sayin that¡­¡±

    Rene unsheathed the monomachete and emptied his kit of all gear except for the panel and the allcomm antenna. He cut out some footholds with the monomachete and began his ascent. Rene nearly made it to the top without making the mistake of looking down. As it was, he risked a peek at Zildiz gawping up at him all the way down there and nearly swooned, his scrotum tightening round his pearls like the jaws of death. He clamped his teeth around the blunt edge of the sword of the ancients and bit down hard to steady himself.

    ¡°Join the Pathfinders, they said,¡± he growled around the bare metal, ¡°See the sights and look pretty for the girls, they said. What was I flipping thinking?¡±

    He swung up to the slender upper boughs and carefully wedged the solar panel amid the branches, angling it so that it caught the weakening gaze of the suns. Then he balanced the allcomm antenna and its tripod on the uppermost twigs and hooked up the cabling.

    ¡°Good work, bhaisap,¡± Exar said when it began to rotate, ¡°I¡¯ll start transmitting our coordinates to any and all stations while getting a fix on our position.¡±

    ¡°Splendid. Say, you¡¯ve got some nice sight lines up here, Exar.¡±

    From where he stood Rene could see for leagues around in all directions, and he kept his eyes peeled for movement.

    There! Specters gliding above the murk, twenty or so klicks out and moving fast. A hoarse scream from the east confirmed his worst suspicions: the Leapers knew exactly where they were. The cannibals were hemming them in, herding Rene and Zildiz as they had done with the army of beasts. He could imagine them spreading out in a wide crescent whose horns would envelop the hill from both sides.

    Rene estimated that he had little more than an hour to prepare.

    ¡°Exar, could I ask you to be our lookout from up here?¡±

    ¡°Thy wish is my command. A la mi presente, al vostra signori, as they used to say.¡±

    As who used to say? Rene thought. Much of what the sphere said tended to be incomprehensible. Rene unfastened the sphere and Exar extended his spike legs to fix himself in place.

    ¡°But wouldn¡¯t it be safer for you to stay up top with me?¡± Exar pointed out.

    ¡°Yes, it would. For them,¡± Rene replied with as much false bravado as he could dredge up. Scattering pines and bark shavings, he slid back down and ran over to the stand of fire gourds. To his relief some of the fruit on the outlying trees furthest from the blaze had not gone off. Rene reached up and picked as many of the gourds as he could fit in his arms. He carried them back to the pines, making several trips to amass a sizable collection.

    Zildiz had her swords out and was cooly sharpening them one against the other.

    ¡°So they¡¯ve finally run us down,¡± she said in a flat tone, ¡°Are you ready?¡±

    ¡°Not quite,¡± Rene said shortly.

    He began the project by arranging his other components. Spool of webbing, check. Socks full of pebbles, check. Gauntlet, check.

    ¡°Exar, how much longer till our rescue gets here?¡± he hollered up at the sphere.

    ¡°I¡¯ve hailed a shuttle from one of the toroidal stations. ETA 128 minutes.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯ll have those minutes,¡± Rene promised him, then spoke to Zildiz, ¡°Heads up, Gallivant. From this moment on, our sole objective is to hold off the enemy for at least two hours. We live or die on this hill. Get me?¡±

    ¡°Brave words. And how do you intend to back them up?¡±

    ¡°With the help of a little friend I call firepower,¡± Rene said, getting right to work. He wound the silk around one of the sloshing gourds until it was sticky all over, then took fistfuls of gravel from his socks, densely studding the fruit with them. Rene held up the finished prototype and grinned evilly. All in all, it had taken him less than five minutes to put it together.

    Defensive tactics required careful selection and preparation of the ground. Half the battle was won if one could dictate where the fighting took place.

    Pathfinders were scouts above all else and did not specialize in fighting sieges. Rene tried his best anyway, choosing a spot among the pygmy pines and with a deep ravine on his right and a spread of open ground some twenty meters wide and sixty long on his left where nothing grew but itchy buffalo grasses. At his back was a sheer bluff, only four meters tall or so, but still a solid feature upon which to anchor his defense. He placed the prototype in the center of the field and ran back, going prone behind a shallow bank of earth and taking up his gauntlet.

    ¡°Come on,¡± he pleaded with it, training the beam on the gourd¡¯s hard shell, ¡°Sing for daddy¡­¡±

    Nothing happened for a long moment. Rene blinked; the gourd had abruptly disappeared. In the next instant, shards of shell and rock and specks of foam lacerated the air above his position, ricocheting off the hard cliff face. Rene clapped his hands to his ringing ears and got up. Inspecting his position, he found the bank of earth studded with his improvised shrapnel and arrowhead-shaped seeds.

    ¡°Pop! Goes the weasel!¡± he shouted, overjoyed by the result, ¡°That ought to ruin someone¡¯s day.¡±

 Chapter 29: The Hill We Die On

    ¡°Ahoy down there!¡± Exar exclaimed, ¡°I heard shootin! Everything hunky dory?¡±

    ¡°Everything¡¯s fine. Just dandy,¡± said Rene. Zildiz picked herself up out of the bushes she¡¯d flung herself into, picking thorns out of her cheek. The explosion had startled her. That mad creature was at it again, turning the inanimate substances of the natural world into tools of convenient destruction.

    Rene planted his gourds carefully and covered the grassy stretch with what amounted to a minefield. Using the last of the webbing he coated each mine with a layer of gravel and pebbles. This was to increase the shrapnel density and overall lethality of each explosive. Rene wasn¡¯t satisfied, however. The short delay it took for the laser designator to set off the gourds was unacceptable as it increased the chance of a misfire or dud. He ordered (or rather, politely requested) Zildiz to start piling up brush and tinder around each mine. This would help conceal them as well as ensure proper ignition.

    She just gave him another one of those supercilious sneers that came so naturally to her and refused to cooperate.

    ¡°I was under the impression that you weren¡¯t keen on dying with me,¡± Rene reminded her from the branches of the juvenile pines where he was setting up more of the fragmentation mines among the pine needles. The Leapers were sure to come swinging or gliding through here, which was another reason he had chosen this place to make their stand where the trees were shortest.

    ¡°I will not sully my hand with your foul artifices,¡± Zildiz said.

    Shaking his head, Rene jumped down and started cutting some of the skinny pygmy dipterocarps, his monomachete scything through them with ease. What would have taken a team of loggers most of a day to clear only cost him a few seconds. He picked up one of the felled trees and trimmed its end into a sharp point.

    ¡°But you will fight, won¡¯t you?¡± he asked, holding up the crude spear and hefting its weight.

    ¡°Of a certainty I will fight, Fleet-man. To do so is essence of my being.¡±

    ¡°Good to hear. Because a unit breaks down if its members aren¡¯t all pulling their weight.¡±

    ¡°Again with that term. Unit,¡± Zildiz sniffed, taking a few eager practice swings with her swords, moving lightly on her clawed toes. The woman seemed absolutely elated at the prospect of combat. Without any warning she stepped up alongside him and swung hard.

    Farewell, cruel world, Rene said to himself, believing that the moment of her inevitable betrayal had come at last. But rather than taking his head off, Zildiz attacked the clusters of dipterocarps, chopping clean through five of them with blazing speed. Even as they tottered and fell she struck off their tops with precise diagonal slices. Neatly catching them all before they hit the ground, Zildiz presented Rene with five razor sharp stakes, saying:

    ¡°I am a Gallivant. I am a unit of one.¡±

    Rene blanched, his Adam¡¯s apple bobbing like a cork. Zildiz turned on her heel and started piling up the tinder for the mines just like he¡¯d asked her to. Rene didn¡¯t have time to ponder her sudden change of heart¡ªthere was too much left to do. Finishing a pile of fifty stakes, he began setting them up in a wide ring at the foot of the bluff, planting them thickest at the front and right flank next to the depression.

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    ¡°Got movement at nine o¡¯clock,¡± yelled Exar, ¡°Eight klicks out, five fast movers.¡±

    ¡°Copy that, Ex,¡± Rene called back, ¡°Keep us posted.¡±

    Rene sped up his final preparations. Dragging up a pile of brushwood, he started a bonfire at the center of ring and stuck his spare stakes in the dirt underneath the coals. The heat would bake their points into hardened spear tips in twenty to thirty minutes.

    ¡°More of them closing in!¡± Exar announced, ¡°We got activity from three to twelve o¡¯clock. Closest heat signature is one klick out!¡±

    Rene anxiously checked his meager defenses, his confidence ebbing somewhat. Was there nothing else he could do to even the odds? The Pathfinder racked his brains trying to find some detail he could still turn to his advantage.

    What would the lord navigator Deschane do in his place? At memory of the dour, unsmiling grump of an officer, a wave of affection and sorrow welled up in Rene chest so strong he almost choked up with tears.

    Deschane had always known what to do. If only he and boys were still around to help. Lt. Jensen would be cracking jokes about Lethway¡¯s wife Bearisse right about now. Beariss the Butterball, they called her, on account of her mild eating disorder. Rene had had tea at their apartment once and met the matron in person. Lovely lady, even if she did have to shuffle sideways to fit through any doors. Made the best cassava cakes in the whole damned mound.

    Rene hated waiting. The silence before the storm was always the worst. He threw more fuel onto the bonfire and sent it climbing high, a pillar of orange visible for many leagues. No point being subtle now.

    Zildiz began to giggle. Was the warrior woman cracking under the pressure? She soon dispelled his doubts when she climbed atop the bluff, crossing her swords above her as she screamed out into the void:

    ¡°I am Zildiz, of the Blade-Wings! You hungry? Then come get fed! Come one, come all!¡±

    Crazy bint, Rene thought privately. But if the fire wouldn¡¯t draw them in, that surely would. Drums sounded in the depths of the fog, and wordless howls of hatred in answer to her challenge.

    ¡°Here we go¡­¡± Rene said, chewing absently on his thumb.

    #

    ¡°On your left, tovarisch! Hundred meters out and closing fast!¡± Exar said. Rene sat behind the embankment and waited.

    A line of Leapers came swinging out of the jungle, headed for the grassy bare slope. Rene stood up to let them get a good look at him, and they slowed, taken aback by his brazen appearance.

    See? I¡¯m all soft and juicy, Rene mentally urged them on. No threat at all.

    ¡°Stop!¡± he shouted across to them, ¡°I¡¯m human, can¡¯t you see! Let¡¯s talk this out! We are all scions of a proud empire that once stretched across the stars. Can we not make common cause as brothers and sisters of the Fleet?¡±

    The pack looked at each other, stunned. Then they all let out a series of hacking coughs, slapping each other on their hairy backs.

    ¡°They are laughing,¡± Zildiz told him, also chuckling herself.

    ¡°Yep,¡± Exar seconded, ¡°Sounds like a negative on their part, boss. Good speech, though!¡±

    The Leapers rushed up the slope, all racing to see who could reach him first. Rene let them pass the first layers of gourds then shone the laser designator at the centermost mine.

    ¡°I warned you. You stupid bastards. I warned you,¡± he said through tight, whitened lips.

    There was no delay this time. One moment, over a dozen Leapers were running up the hill in an unstoppable tide of clawed limbs. In the next, smoking pieces of them were spread all across the shaking grass, their torsos dissolving in a fine tomato slurry of blood and shrapnel. A fragment of a human molar pinged off of Rene¡¯s visor. The surviving Leapers were too shellshocked to do anything but quail where they stood while Rene turned his attention to the other mines. One after another he set them off, and once the dust had settled the handful of Leapers who hadn¡¯t been cut to shreds beat a hasty retreat, vanishing back into the rainforest, leaving the wounded and the dying to roll feebly among the craters.

    ¡°That¡¯s round one over with,¡± Rene said grimly, taking one of his fire hardened spears and going out to finish them off.

    ¡°Ding-ding,¡± Exar said with satisfaction.

 Chapter 30: Bayonets!

    Rene pulled his spear out with a sickening squelch and strode on over to the last Leaper, who was trying his best to crawl up a tree despite missing most of his limbs.

    ¡°Mershhyy,¡± the man blubbered through a mouthful of blood, his chest riddled with shrapnel. But Rene had none left to give. He impaled the man through the hump and twisted the shaft, leaning his full weight on the spear to drive it deeper, ignoring the ugly sounds he was pushing out of the man¡¯s collapsed lungs.

    It was remarkable, really, how quickly he had adjusted to concept of killing people. Perhaps killing Amits had been good practice in that regard.

    He had discovered long ago that there was a blank space somewhere behind his eyes where all the worst thoughts could be put for the time being. But as ever, coming fainter now but just as troubling as before, came the stifled cries within his being, singing their siren¡¯s songs of right and wrong and all the familiar falsehoods which had ossified about the core of his personhood like a pearl in the mouth of an oyster. And like a pearl, they too were a lie, presenting an illusion of beauty and truth which upon closer examination turned out to be composed of nothing more than mucus, grit and the base ugliness which pervaded a strictly material and unsentimental existence.

    My soul would feel lighter if I didn¡¯t have to carry all that, he thought, looking over the rows of the dead. But all he felt was a heaviness in his mind and spirit. So he shed the weight into the place behind his eyes, just as Deschane had once taught him.

    ¡°Make a hole within your heart,¡± the lord navigator had told them, ¡°A lime-lined pit where nothing of kindness or weakness can grow. Into this pit you may cast the broken bodies of our enemy, and over them raise a grey tomb which knows no sound. Make a hole within your heart, and fill it with them.¡±

    Rene was not a cruel man, or at least he did not consider himself one. But in the absence of numerical, tactical and physical superiority, the only way he could even the odds was with overwhelming brutality. That was how the Fleet had claimed mound after mound in face of impregnable resistance. More than brain or brawn or bullets, the human heart carried the day when all else collapsed.

    And Rene had learned to condition his. The dying Leaper groaned as he lifted it, still impale on the spear and sank the weapon''s butt into the hard clay.

    Leaving it, he did the same to every single Leaper he found, hoisting their corpses along a line of stakes on the edge of the grassland. He didn¡¯t think they used fear-death pheromones like the Amits did, but the sight of their dead would give the rest of them pause. When he was done he looked over his arrangement of grisly trophies and he dusted his hands like a carpenter who¡¯d finished driving a row of nails into a fresh plank.

    ¡°Fill it with them,¡± he whispered aloud. He was still faraway in his meditations when Exar called out: ¡°Fast movers on the right. Two-eighty meters and closing.¡±

    The bastards had learned quickly not to try the grassy slope again after he¡¯d blown up one of their scouts creeping on the edge of the tree line. They were going to attempt flying over the ravine. A frontal assault would surely follow, assuming they had not spotted the explosives he had hidden among the benguet pines.

    ¡°Zildiz! You¡¯re up!¡± he barked. He looked over and saw the Gallivant sitting astride a dead Leaper and worrying at its exomorph with her teeth and swords. Was she really trying to crack it open for the meat? Rene opened his mouth to rebuke her for her savagery, then realized his own hypocrisy and closed it again.

    He had just mounted seven men on sharpened stakes, and was hardly the gold standard of morality now. He and Zildiz were cut from the same cloth.

    She finished her ghoulish business and ripped out a length of spinal column whose discs were fused to a series of chitinous plugs that looked like clothesline clips. Zildiz hopped back onto the bluff of stone and began carving into her own exomorph.

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    ¡°What are you doing?¡± he said, frightened by the spontaneous act of self-mutilation.

    ¡°Fixing myself,¡± she said tartly, using a sword tip to dig out the plugs from the spinal discs, then sticking them into the deep holes she had cut into her back and neck. Her eyes rolled back into her head and twitched wildly under their lids as she went into a deep trance. Her wings gave a feeble flutter, and she opened her eyes, beaming. Zildiz reached down and broke a spur of basalt off the cliff face. She held the chunk of rock and closed her hand into a fist, crushing it into powder.

    ¡°You ¡®ve repaired your exmorph,¡± Rene said in amazement, ¡°I didn¡¯t know you could do that.¡±

    ¡°Only its basic muscle fiber bundles. The immune system will reject these foreign grafts eventually. I would have done it sooner if you¡¯d let me get at Kryptus last night.¡±

    ¡°I couldn¡¯t let you do that back then.¡±

    ¡°And now?¡±

    ¡°Now we don¡¯t have any other option.¡±

    ¡°See? The sooner you accept my way of doing things, the easier things will get. As easy as this will be, for instance,¡± she added, pointing her sword at the first of the Leapers who came soaring over the ravine, their silken gliders billowing wide. Rene stood in his ring and readied a spear, waiting until they were close enough for him to see the gleam of their eyes before hurling it like a javelin at the closest one. The stick fell woefully short of the target and disappeared into the brush. Rene swore and snatched up another spear, this one an older sapling whose branches he had left uncut on purpose so that they projected on either side of the shaft like forked barbs. The pack landed, the leading Leaper alighting right where the stakes were clustered thickest. Their kind had never encountered man-made defenses before, and perhaps the Leaper mistook them for a natural growth of leafless stalks. In any event, the man was skewered in six different places before he knew it.

    ¡°Yeaarrgghh!¡± the Leaper screamed as he tried to push himself clear of the fatal trap, his claws slipping on his own spilt guts as he clutched at the stakes which held him up.

    Shouting in panic, the other Leapers made last-second flight adjustments to steer clear of the stakes, landing on the flat ground behind or in front of the deadly circle. All of them succeeded in avoiding the same fate as their leader, except for one young juvenile whose thigh snagged on the very edge of the stake line and stuck there, yelling his head off.

    A trio glided inside the ring and Rene braced himself, angling the spear so that it caught one of the men in his tubby abdomen. The stricken Leaper hollered and vomited up a mouthful of black and green bile. Mortally wounded, it tried to pull itself up the shaft to get at Rene with its claws. But the forked barbs of the spear kept it at bay as Rene pushed with all his might, hurling his foe back onto the rows of points where he hung there, jerking and bleeding for the rest of the fight. Rene lost his grip on the spear right as the other two Leapers rushed him from the flank and rear. He drew the sword of the ancients, knowing he¡¯d been too slow on the draw and expecting to feel their fangs burrowing into his back.

    But then Zildiz took a running leap from the stony bluff, falling upon them like a thunderbolt loosed from the heavens. There was a flurry of contact as the creatures traded blows at whiplash speed. Zildiz laid open one Leaper¡¯s head, slicing his armored helm clean off and revealing the stoved-in skull of the man beneath. She staggered back, the other Leaper ripping her breastplate to shreds with his claws and sinking its fangs into her shoulder. Here the semi-functional state of her exomorph became an advantage¡ªthough its stiffness slowed her movements and led to her taking more damage, she could not feel the pain in its deadened flesh.

    She wrapped her arm around the Leaper and placed it in a tight headlock, twisting sharply and breaking its neck with a loud crackle of tearing cartilage. She let the body tumble limply into the bonfire, where it crashed into the woodpile and sent up a gout of whirling embers flying high into the air.

    As she stood framed before the roaring tongues of flame, her reddened swords slick and shiny, Rene felt more afraid of her than the band of slavering Leapers who surrounded them. For in that moment, not a single one of them moved to enter the ring. They hovered uncertainly at the edge of the stakes, overawed by the rapid destruction of their comrades.

    Comrades! The word took a new meaning for Rene. The Leapers were monstrous in form, but inside their dread suits of armor were mortal men like any other. Like Rene they too knew the contagion of fear, were vulnerable to the mass hysteria which gripped even the bravest of fighters when their line wavered and broke.

    They could be beaten, and he knew just how to do it!

    ¡°Bayonets!¡± he yelled in a high and reedy voice, equally consumed by cowardice and a manic excitement, ¡°Bayonets! Let em have it!¡±

    With a lance tucked under one arm and the sword of the ancients held high in the other, Rene hurled himself over the stakes and into the thick of them.

 Chapter 31: Narcosis

    It was a gamble, ultimately. A jester held in the place of an ace up his sleeve. He was many times weaker, slower and punier than even the least of their number. In a fair contest the average Leaper could eviscerate him in moments, and Rene knew it.

    But the enemy didn¡¯t. That was the key. They saw in him a being who could call down blasts of kinetic destruction with but a gesture of his metal hand, a demented shrike that decorated its lair with the spitted corpses of their brothers. And so they wilted before his headlong rush, falling all over themselves to get out of the reach of his pointy stick. Unwilling to meet him head-on, they arched their backs and sprayed him down with webbing from a distance, countless unyielding bands winding round and immobilizing his legs.

    Rene hopped after them in impotent fury, knowing that if the momentum of his assault died, then he would too in short order. Their fear of him was his only advantage.

    But then the Gallivant brushed him rudely aside and dove into the center of the pack, and Rene realized just how wrong he¡¯d been.

    It was Zildiz who was the true object of their terror, not him. She went through them like a cyclone down a wooded valley, strewing wreck and ruin in her wake. Belly-down on the dirt, Rene stared openmouthed as she bulled into a knot of Leapers, sword arms pumping as she placed thrust after thrust into black-furred flesh, ignoring the cost to herself as their claws tore off whole segments of her armor and exposed her gel-beslimed innards to the elements. But the tactic was far from mindless; like a boxer crouching low against a taller opponent, Zildiz was fighting too far inside their lengthy reach to allow them to deliver truly fatal damage. For every blow she received Zildiz disabled an exomorph with surgical strikes into key tendons and nerve clusters, leaving its owner writhing in their final death throes. The wiser ones took to their heels and fled right into the benguet pines. Rene spitefully applied the laser designator to a concealed mine.

    Zildiz let out a piercing giggle of delight as a rupturing tree sent a foot-long splinter through the back of a Leaper¡¯s head. Rene shook his spear after the rest, railing at them:

    ¡°That¡¯s right! You¡¯d better run! This woman¡¯s as mad as a bag of hammers, and she¡¯ll only get meaner!¡±

    She dragged herself over to him, one arm ripped down to the bone trailing behind her limp and useless, her backplate sloughing off and clattering to the ground. She freed him with a careless flick of her sword then leaned on the bespattered blade, chuckling breathlessly.

    ¡°I do believe you¡¯ve scared them off,¡± Rene congratulated her, ¡°Well done.¡±

    Zildiz looked up sharply. She must have found the sight of Rene¡¯s grimy face amusing, for she pointed at him and broke into a fit of throaty laughter.

    ¡°What¡¯s so damned high-larious?¡± Rene demanded to know. In reply, Zildiz fell back upon a pile of Leaper corpses and lay there, shrieking with uncontrollable merriment.

    ¡°I say, are you alright?¡± he asked of her, his peevishness replaced by a mounting concern. Zildiz was chortling so hard that she was having difficulty breathing. It wasn¡¯t until she clapped her hands round her throat and her legs started kicking out in wild spasms that Rene finally understood what was happening: Zildiz was exhibiting the middle-stage symptoms of oxygen narcosis.

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    He rushed to her side as her laughter dried up into a frantic choking, her eyelids fluttering as she slipped rapidly into unconsciousness.

    ¡°Zildiz,¡± he shook her shoulders in an attempt to wake her, ¡°Zildiz! Blast and damn it all.¡±

    He was an idiot for not having spotting it sooner. Her bursts of irritability should have given it away, although perhaps he could be forgiven for that¡ªas a rule Zildiz¡¯ s attitude was about as uniformly pleasant as an ingrown toenail.

    She hadn¡¯t shown any of the usual preliminary effects like dizziness or nausea which he¡¯d observed in other people. But one also had to consider that Zildiz was not your average person. There was no telling how her altered physiology would cope with abnormal partial pressures.

    ¡°How much longer, Exar?¡± he said, searching the skies for a sign from the almighty.

    ¡°T-minus thirty-four minutes,¡± went the disappointing reply, ¡°It would¡¯ve been here sooner, ¡®cept the bird had to stop and refuel. Its onboard computer and I have been chatting and apparently, it¡¯s the exact same shuttle that was dispatched to retrieve your safety pod. Heck, it¡¯s still carrying the cussed thing strapped to its belly¡ªlazy, dumbass technicians back on the station didn¡¯t even bother to unhitch it. We sure could shed that extra weight. Say, why weren¡¯t you in it? Its standard company procedure to await rescue in the pod.¡±

    ¡°I had an emergency,¡± Rene said, too embarrassed to tell Exar the truth, which that he¡¯d abandoned the vessel to go skinny dipping.

    ¡°Oh, okay. Well in any case, central ops has ordered it to circle all the way around the planet to pick us up again. Don¡¯t understand why those chowderheads couldn¡¯t just reroute another bird. It¡¯s not like they¡¯ve only got only one operational shuttle across this whole doggone rock, amiright? Maybe they¡¯re all busy hauling freight, and this one''s particular flightpath does have the quickest turnaround. What are the odds?¡±

    ¡°Better than hers, I reckon,¡± Rene eyeing Zildiz morosely. She would not survive another half an hour. Her left arm was convulsing (It always started with the left arm. Why was that?) and even more worrying, a frothy brown liquid was bubbling out the sides of her mouth.

    ¡°No, no, no,¡± Rene murmured, cradling her head with his knees and turning her over on her side, slapping her on the back to expel the fluids before she drowned in them. It wouldn¡¯t be long before the alveoli in her lungs collapsed and her neurons would begin dying en masse.

    The sight of her helplessness stirred something within him, dissolving the wall of mutual distrust and antipathy that had sprung up between them.

    However brief the struggle had been, she had fought alongside him and shared the same dangers. Amid the rumblings of the god unleashed they had huddled in the same foxhole and had witnessed the awesome spectacle of the Storm Catcher. He had fed her and carried her in his arms when her strength had given out. Gradually and without quite intending it, the Gallivant had become more than just a burden to him. By the immutable laws of human nature, for better or for worse, he and Zildiz were now a unit of two.

    The space behind his eyes was full to bursting. The hole he¡¯d dug in his heart was no silent grave, but rather filled with the sound of fingernails scrabbling desperately at the insides of their coffins.

    He could not bear it after all. He had been born weak, and it would remain that way until he died. No way around it. There was only one option left to him now.

    ¡°Oh blessed ancestors,¡± Rene prayed, peeling off his facepiece and strapping it onto her, ¡°I have seen and committed so much destruction in your name. So many souls condemned to the lightless void¡ªis it too much to ask that you spare this one? Let me save this one life. Just one. Is that too much to ask?¡±

    He sucked in the unfiltered air and let out a sigh of resignation. Now his lifespan would number in the minutes.

    ¡°Erm, chief?¡± came the sphere¡¯s tentative voice.

    ¡°I¡¯m a little occupied here, Exar!¡± Rene shouted back distractedly.

    ¡°I know, I know,¡± Exar said, trying to appease him, ¡°Just thought you¡¯d want to know. We got bogeys converging at twelve o¡¯clock.¡±

    ¡°How many?¡±

    ¡°Looks like all of em.¡±

    This is a pickle, and no mistake, Rene thought. I guess we aren¡¯t going to the moons after all.

    #

 Chapter 32: Bombing Run

    The Leapers were fast learners. Rene had erred in setting off that one bomb amid the pines. Rather than catching a whole bunch of them by surprise, he had given away the presence of his boobytraps. The warband stayed well clear of the tree line and patiently found and marked the fire gourds, pointing them out to each other and sidling around them with unhurried steps. Rene counted thirty-one braves, give or take a couple more veiled by the dissipating fog. Individuals were easy to tell apart, as it turned out. He began to make out variations in the shades of their fur; a few sported thick honey-brown manes of hair around their necks and down their shoulders. Others had clearly bulkier and more muscular frames than their brethren. Most telling of all were the heraldic tattoos on their abdomens. Generally, the larger the adult was, the more intricate their markings were. Like the chevrons or pips on an officer¡¯s uniform, patterns of dots and geometric shapes radiated outwards from the central motif, which for all the Leapers in the warband was a red-and-orange viper with a flaring hood and fangs bared in an expression of gleeful malice.

    The older heads among them were conferring with each other with rapid-fire clicks of their palps and mandibles. Planning their next attack, no doubt. Then the crowd parted to let a trio of them through, a large and flabby Leaper being borne on a woven stretcher carried by the other two. The wounded elder on the stretcher seemed to command considerable respect among the others, for they all turned to him and awaited his next move.

    Riveted by the all-too familiar display of martial social dynamics, Rene studied the leader. His rank designator was a unlike all the others in that it was a coal-black snake whose coiled tail formed a neat spiral before passing over the Leaper¡¯s shoulder. Something about the wide set of his upper torso was strangely familiar. Rene¡¯s eyes widened in recognition.

    ¡°Kryptus,¡± Rene said with bitter regret, ¡°I should have known.¡±

    Rene could¡¯ve beaten his head in when he had the chance. But perhaps there would be an opportunity to correct that mistake. Kryptus¡¯ bearers moved a few steps forward and the alpha rolled off his litter, boldly approaching Rene all by himself. The other Leapers chattered and gesticulated at him, trying to dissuade him, but Kryptus shrugged their objections aside and went on waddling up the hill.

    The alpha had somehow regrown his helm and watched Rene intently through his new set of eyes, giving the Pathfinder a cheeky wave with all four of his arms.

    We¡¯ll see if you¡¯re still smiling after this, Rene malded. Kryptus¡¯ path took him directly under a hanging gourd. But before Rene could swing up the gauntlet in time, Kryptus shot out a lasso of silk and yanked the mine out of its nesting place, tossing it casually behind him. The warband scattered as it bounced among them, groveling on their bellies as it rolled down the slope and out of Rene¡¯s sight.

    When nothing exploded, the Leapers sprang to their feet and immediately began imitating what their leader had done, dismantling Rene¡¯s minefield with great enthusiasm. Understanding the peril he was in, Rene dashed outside the hedge of stakes and gathered up all the field that he could and planting them in a tight circle around his position. In short order the pines were completely cleared of boobytraps and the warband advanced on Rene¡¯s position, wary but determined to avenge themselves upon him.

    Rather unexpectedly, Kryptus ordered them all back, again strolling up to Rene all by his lonesome self.

    ¡°Parley, hatching?¡± he shouted up to Rene.

    Parley? So the swine did understand the concept of bargaining. Rene held up a mine as if to hurl it like a hand grenade, and Kryptus froze.

    ¡°Exar?¡± Rene pleaded.

    ¡°T-minus eleven. Just stall em for as long as you can, cap¡¯n.¡±

    ¡°I will try,¡± Rene lowered his arm but kept a tight grip on the bomb. Eventually Kryptus regained his courage and started waddling again.

    ¡°Say, Exar,¡± Rene said by way of idle conversation as the Leaper hiked, ¡°Is there some reason these kits don¡¯t come with guns? Bit of an oversight, wouldn¡¯t you agree?¡±

    ¡°It isn¡¯t,¡± Exar said, ¡°You remember that 95% I was telling you about? Well, as to the other 5%...how can I say this? See, the company T.O.R.U¡¯s are almost exclusively deployed on exoplanets completely devoid of life even down to the microbial level. In which case there¡¯s nothing much to shoot at to begin with. A man gets marooned on a place like that, at the absolute tip of the Alcubierre trade routes where supply convoys crawl along at just under relativistic vees,¡± Exar stopped, considering his next words very carefully, ¡°The human mind goes funny in places like that. It¡¯s the loneliness that does it.¡±

    ¡°You mean they would¡­¡±

    ¡°Pretty much. Usually they¡¯d punch their own tickets during that first month, once it became clear that nobody would be coming for a very long time.¡±

    ¡°I hate to say it,¡± Rene said after a contemplative moment, ¡°But I¡¯m starting to envy their fate.¡±

    At last Kryptus came within speaking distance.

    ¡°We meet again, hatchling,¡± he greeted Rene quite jovially. The alpha surveyed the line of staked corpses and added: ¡°I like what you¡¯ve done with the place.¡±

    ¡°Do you really?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Kryptus replied, a hint of bright fury in his warbling baritone, ¡°I tried telling the youths that you were a forsche not to be reckoned with. But the young never listen, do they? Today is an important lesshun for them. They will never again take your kind lightly. You fight like demonsh.¡±

    Rene nodded respectfully at the compliment.

    ¡°I would have preferred it otherwise, but you forced my hand. What do you want, Kryptus?¡±

    ¡°You sspared my life lasht night. I would offer you the shame courtesy. You will not be killed or devoured. We sseek only the genetic material within you, and the knowledge contained therein.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯d let me live? Why?¡±

    ¡°You professh to believe in the mythical origins of our genuss. You think that we have a common progenitor, and that thish makess ush brotherss.¡±

    ¡°I would like to. But your actions towards me have been anything but brotherly.¡±

    Kryptus tucked his chin and cocked his head back in a very recognizable expression of outrage, shouting:

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    ¡°Your fire giant laid waste to our territory, razing the Looms of many tribes, not just the Weeping Vipersh! A spawning chamber full of hatchlings not yet borne from their egg sacks¡­¡± Kryptus broke off, struggling to master his emotions.

    ¡°We are the injured party here, not you,¡± he continued, ¡°Thoushands of acres of prime hunting grounds, reduced to ashess. Where will the herds of frillhead migrate to now for passsturage? What will they eat when the dry spellss come? What will we eat? The Vitalush will do what It can, but make no misshtake¡ªthere will be famine. And with famine, war among the kindredss, among Leapers tribesh, even. But shurely you already consssidered thissh?

    ¡°I¡­I had not.¡± The Pathfinder was rendered speechless by the Leaper¡¯s outburst. Kryptus gave a shrug that somehow implied that he understood and forgave Rene¡¯s ignorance.

    ¡°Desspite all that, I am willing to make you the same offer you gave me. In fact, I will make you a better one: put ashide your weaponsss and I will take you back to the Loom. I will clothe you in the armored hide of a Leaper, and henschforth you shall become one of us.¡±

    Rene goggled at him. He could sense sincerity in the Leaper¡¯s words, and something else. Caution? Duplicity? The expression in those four bulging eyes was hard to read.

    ¡°You would make me a Leaper? Is that even possible?¡±

    ¡°Look at me. Do you not notice anything different?¡±

    Kryptus did a slow turn to show Rene the entirety of his body. It was even more unwholesome now beneath the light of day. The right half of his body was larger than his left, the disproportional muscle densities skewing the angle of his torso off-center and giving him the lurching gait of a cripple. His new headpiece as also too small for the rest of his frame, giving him an almost comical, pinheaded look.

    Tufts of golden fur had sprouted on his shoulders and underarms, rough and patchy where they met the velvet black of the rest of his hide. Rene squinted at him uncertainly¡ªhis vision was starting to get cloudy, his facial muscles trembling along his jawline.

    ¡°You¡¯ve grafted on some new additions,¡± Rene finally deduced.

    ¡°Not quite, hatchling. Thish entire exomorph is made of spare parts. The damage that mad Gallivant did to me wass irreparable,¡± Kryptus corrected him, pointing at the comatose Zildiz.

    ¡°But my immune system would simply reject it,¡± Rene objected, putting what Zildiz had told him to good use.

    ¡°I think not,¡± Krytpus said, wagging a claw at him, ¡°You shee, I¡¯ve finally worked out what you are. You aren¡¯t from any of the kindredsh. You are of the primordial genetic stock which the Vitalush has not yet altered¡ªthe genome of the Betrayerss. Your nucleotidesh have not been bonded with the miraculous gilt helix, which meanss you are not yet confined into any of the kindredssh. You can become one of ush, the loom-motherss could weave our blessed pattern within you. We would gird you in the finest armor and give you the rank of alpha, making you my equal. You will never want for food or mates. And mosst important of all, we will keep you hidden from the wrath of the Vitalush.¡±

    Rene tried to imagine himself in the bones of a Leaper, flying through the woods on transparent sails and riding the coattails of the mighty Storm Catcher. Hunting his prey on moonless nights, a perfectly adapted killing machine that would never have to confine itself to the rank, festering holes of the mounds. For the first time in his life, he could be truly free to live as he pleased, pursue any wild pleasures he wanted without the nightstick of the law to beat him into submission.

    The thought was certainly intriguing.

    ¡°I, uh, I thought you¡­you were¡­¡± thinking clearly was fast becoming a chore to Rene, ¡°¡­you worshipped the Vitalus as a deity?¡±

    ¡°It ish a god, make no misstake. But it is not one of our choosing. For shome of ush, that ish. There are ssecretss that it consseals from ush mortulss. It has snarled and twisted the tapesstry of hishtory for its own purposess. We could unravel thossh ssecretsss together, beginning now¡­¡±

    Kryptus extended a hand in an unmistakable gesture of friendship. Rene squinted at it uncertainly¡ªhis vision was getting awful cloudy. All the exertion and excitement had accelerated the effects of narcosis. In no time at all he would lose control of his body entirely.

    ¡°And what ¡®bout her? Rene sleepily nodded at the unconscious Zildiz.

    ¡°She musst die, naturally,¡± Kryptus said frankly, ¡°We will make her dishappear. She is not the only Gallivant to have been foolish enough to challenge us in our own biome.¡±

    That was what decided Rene. The Pathfinder held the mine out dangerously close to leaping bonfire.

    ¡°Have you losht your mind?¡± Kryptus was apoplectic with rage, ¡°Why would rissk yourshelf for this she-devil, this ravening beasst?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯s ken barely wrap my head around it meself, governor,¡± Rene blathered, hanging his head in weariness, ¡°But either she comes with me, or¡­or the whole thingy is off. Deal, I mean. Whatever!¡±

    ¡°We cannot axshept that! She would inform the Vitalush, bring about the extinction of my tribe!¡±

    ¡°Then go catch a fruit fly in your mouth, or somefing,¡± Rene said irritably, ¡°Pish right off.¡±

    ¡°You will not live to regret your idiocy!¡± the alpha said with haughty imperiousness.

    Rene¡¯s left arm spasmed and he nearly dropped the mine into the side of the bonfire. He spent a very intense couple of seconds juggling with it in the air, desperate not to blow himself up by accident.

    ¡°Whoah! Close one, heh heh,¡± he slurred at Kryptus, finally snatching the mine out of harm¡¯s way, ¡°S¡¯alright now. No worries!¡±

    He looked up to see Kryptus beating a hasty and undignified retreat, roaring at his warband to begin the final attack. At least one mine had not been discovered, and Rene trained the beam upon it, thumbing the button hard.

    No light shone from the underslung lamp--the gauntlet''s mysterious juices had run dry at last.

    Slicing open one of the dead Leapers, he gouged out a mass of silk and used it to glue a mine to either of his hands.

    ¡°C¡¯mon then!¡± Rene invited them in, holding the explosives up in a crucifix-pose and preparing to sell his life dearly, ¡°C¡¯mon if youse hard enuff!¡±

    The Leapers saw his suicidal measures and held back, hovering just out of the likely blast radius. Sorry kid, he thought with a glance at Zildiz. At least you won¡¯t be awake for this part.

    ¡°Birds are inbound, boss!¡± Exar blared, ¡°I repeat, the chickens have come home to roost!¡±

    The timing was nothing short of providential. The warband pointed and blubbered at a dot on the horizon as a keening banshee¡¯s wail filled the air. As one they turned and spun their airfoils to their underarms, gliding off into the lowlands as if their lives depended on it.

    It was too much. Tears of joy stung Rene¡¯s irises and he collapsed next to Zildiz, sobbing fitfully as he was wracked by a myriad of bottled-up emotions.

    ¡°Thank the ancestors,¡± he whispered, gazing at the rapidly widening speck with a swell of gratitude and joy.

    ¡°Uh, I don¡¯t mean to rain on your parade, sir,¡± Exar tooted sympathetically, ¡°But that¡¯s not our ride.¡±

    ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m picking up two flyers on my visual feed. Our shuttle is still three minutes out. I haven¡¯t been able to identify the one you¡¯re seeing right now. It picked up on my comms chatter, but it¡¯s not responding to my hails. But whatever it is, it¡¯s moving hellaciously fast!¡±

    #

    Once fog had rolled away, the Vitalus had found the pilot at last. Its first clue had been the Leaper warband running silent with their magnetosynaptic activity switched off. They had probably shirked their duties on the storm catcher out of idle hunger. They had thought themselves undetectable, but the Vitalus had contingency after contingency in place for just such an eventuality. Duplicity was ever the way with the sons of Arachnea. They had no idea what they were dealing with here, the danger this one human represented.

    As the Leapers of the warband had died, the secret tracker implants within them had broadcasted their successive deaths.

    Now the Hollowore homed in on its target below, broad wings tucking in close as it dove in for an attack vector. Rows of barnacle-like growths on its armored belly gaped open, revealing a battery of underslung nozzles or udders which now seeded the lower atmosphere with trailing transparent aerosol clouds of nano-thermite fuel mix.

    The god was not taking any chances. The Engine¡¯s bonded pilot had to die, even if it meant rubbing out a whole tribe or several minor subspecies in the process. As for the warband below, it was unfortunate that they now stood in the way. Leapers had a prodigious birth rate in any case and would recover in a decade or so. There was always time enough to rebuild.

    This, however, could not wait. The Hollowore draped the shroud of invisible death over the unsuspecting jungle, and with a single spark of the electrogenetic cells on the hairy tips of its legs, the thermobaric holocaust began.

 Chapter 33: Stairway to Heaven

    ¡°Would you look at those pretty lights,¡± Rene burbled from where he sat cross-legged on the ground, struggling to keep his head from sinking down into his chest. Stubbornly he held his gaze level with the horizon, where a vision of unmatched splendor and scale was drawing closer by the moment.

    A sheet of thunder was unrolling across the land with the brilliance of a hundred thousand incandescent bulbs. One after another came the white-hot blooms as each cloud of fuel mix went off, consumed in balls of flame so intense they sucked in all the air around them in an instant and snuffed themselves out. Then followed the concussive bubbles of the blast waves, each many times larger than the initial detonations, expanding fronts of pressure radiating outwards from their explosive cores.

    Rene could feel the whomp of the munitions through his quaking boots. As for the sound, he wasn¡¯t sure if he¡¯d been deafened by it or if the usual tinnitus caused by narcosis had just set in. Whichever the case, Rene was glad he couldn¡¯t hear it. It was more pleasant this way. At least he could pretend that it was his very own stairway to heaven. He was going to climb up to the big black beyond on those lemon-puff steps and take in the sunshine at the top of the world.

    ¡°Our shuttle¡¯s a minute thirty out¡ªit still has to decelerate in order to pick us up at all. That¡¯s the problem, really,¡± Exar was telling him, his bright young voice now betraying a shade of worry, ¡°Goddam those bum techs! If we had just been able to shed that extra weight from the pod, we could¡¯ve shaved off a couple seconds. I can¡¯t work under these conditions!¡±

    ¡°No matter,¡± sniffed Rene, drying his eyes with his sleeves, ¡°I¡¯m about ready to go anyway.¡±

    He peeled off the mines from his hands with difficulty and stood, raising his arms to receive his judgement. As he did Rene took one last look at Zildiz and the row of dead Leapers¡ªthe wounded juvenile had stopped spasming some minutes ago and gone quiet. In his heart he had already forgiven them and hoped that they too would pardon him.

    ¡°We shall soar with the Flight Eternal!¡± he sang to them sadly, welcoming them along for the ride.

    ¡°I¡¯m real sorry, kid,¡± Exar broke the bad news as gently as he could, ¡°But as nice as that sounds, I¡¯ve got a percentage to keep.¡±

    And slungshot from the other side of the globe came a grey-fletched dart moving faster by far than the advancing spread of thermobaric munitions. Faster and faster it sped, rocketing down out of the stratosphere in a straight, unerring line aimed right at the low-flying attack craft. The target saw the shuttle coming and tried to veer out of its way, but it was far too late for that¡ªit had committed to the vector and its dive was too steep. The two craft met in midair, and for an instant Rene thought the shuttle had missed its mark, for its target was still locked on approach, the shuttle having gone right past it.

    But then the mysterious enemy craft began to spin like a top, its pitch and yaw thrown hopelessly out of control by the supersonic glancing blow. It fought desperately to regain control and regain altitude, torn wings flapping uselessly, leaving spiraling contrails of smoke and liquid (was it his imagination, or was the flying machine bleeding?) in its wake as it disappeared into the very maelstrom of ruin it had created.

    Rene stood in stunned silence.

    ¡°What did you do?¡± he finally asked the sphere. Strangely he felt more disappointed than actually relieved.

    ¡°I took a risk. Me and the shuttle worked out the ballistics together, but the margin of error was immense. Still, I had to take the chance. Shuttle¡¯s a civilian craft, got no armaments to speak of, and the safety pod was slowing it down, plus we didn¡¯t have time to wait for it to decelerate so it could land proper and fly us clear. So I figured, hey! Why not kill three birds with one stone. I told the shuttle to do the opposite of slowing down and really put the pedal to the metal. Right before impact I had it pull up at the last millisecond so that the safety pod struck the target instead of it totaling our only ride home. That¡¯s what I was worried about, primarily¡ªwasn¡¯t too sure if the gantries attaching the pod to the shuttle would shear clean off or tear the airframe a whole new asshole, if you¡¯ll pardon my Francais. Boiled down to luck in the end, and that¡¯s something an Exar should never rely on.¡±

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    ¡°You really are a work of the ancestor-gods,¡± Rene said appreciatively. Exar¡¯s rings of lights went a shade of blushing pink.

    ¡°Aw, shucks. Just doing my job, sir.¡±

    The shuttle circled back around and landed on the grassy knoll, sleek as quicksilver. It had a burnt chrome look on its nosecone and underbelly, and four growling jet nozzles that set it down on its landing gears as light as a feather. A ramp descended from its posterior and from it unfolded gridiron steps lined by flashing diodes that flicked on and off in an undulating pattern, beckoning them in.

    He had found his stairway to heaven after all. Suddenly reinvigorated, Rene gathered up Zildiz in his arms, and with the last of his strength and deteriorating motor functions he climbed up into the star going vessel. Exar tumbled off his crow¡¯s nest and bounced harmlessly on the ground before climbing up after them, his locomotion a curious mixture of rolling and walking with his stubby spike legs.

    #

    From the forest far below the Leapers watched the silver-winged thing go screaming off into the sky, gibbering to each other excitedly.

    Kryptus folded his glider and wore it around his torso like a poncho. His thirteen surviving braves gathered around him, all of them talking at once, unable to believe their luck at having survived the Vitalus¡¯ wrath. Not only had Its will been denied for the first time in living memory, but the interlopers had struck down and destroyed a Hollowore. And not just any vessel of the god, but Udumnu the Thundermaeve itself!

    ¡°The Betrayers have come again!¡± clicked Telemaccus, ¡°They defy the god of Arachnea! That, or the voidcrawlers have broken through the Mantle of Silence that protects our world! Woe unto the land of our mothers! Woe unto the halls of the Weeping Vipers!¡±

    ¡°Shut it,¡± Kryptus tsked, his mind focused on other matters, ¡°You worry like a woman, and without their good sense.¡±

    ¡°But Kryptus, how can you be so stoic amid all this?¡± Agammon interjected, ¡°We have lost our prey the hatchling. It has flown away in the belly of the beast which slew Udumnu, and has gone where we cannot follow, not even if we climbed to the top of the tallest storm catcher. What¡¯s more, the Vitalus has learned of our disobedience. Our bloodlines will forever be erased¡ª¡±

    ¡°Bah!¡± Kryptus rudely shouldered him aside. He climbed up a tree and took off at a run, bounding across the canopy towards the carpet of blasted trees. His warband followed him on their gliders, pestering him with questions.

    ¡°Grow a spine, why don¡¯t you!¡± he said in reply to them all, ¡°If the Vitalus has discovered our activities, there is nothing we can do at this point but play the usual game and weave a happy web of lies to mislead it. Either it believes us or it won¡¯t, in which case we die and stop worrying about anything at all. It¡¯s as simple as that.¡±

    ¡°As for the mad hatchling, I have left one last surprise in store for him,¡± Kryptus hinted deviously, ¡°In the meantime I need Telemaccus and Agammon to come with me. The rest of you, see to it that our fallen brothers are buried with full honors. And take down those poor boys hanging on the spikes. It sickens me.¡±

    Most of the warband obediently returned to the site of the massacre and began picking up the shredded remains. Some wept bitter tears inside their helms at the site of a friend or brood brother draped on the stakes or crumpled inside the snow-white starbursts of foam where the hatchling¡¯s bombs had claimed so many lives. One unfortunate brave had been caught on the edge of Udumnu¡¯s clouds and had vomited out his own ruptured sets of lungs. In the end they dug nineteen shallow pits in a circle on the top of the hill, wrapping what was left of the dead in thick sacks much like the ones they had been born in, this to symbolize their rebirth in the cycle of creation. The saddest sight of all was that of young Neroth, of whom nothing more could be found than his severed leg swinging like a windvane on the spike which had impaled him.

    But the Kryptus felt the loss of his favorite nephew, he did not show it. He and his two betas reached the crash site and located the downed behemoth. Udumnu had come to rest in a deep trench of earth and uprooted pines. By some miracle of flesh the Hollowore was still alive, lying on its back with its limbs paddling in the air as it struggled to rise. Udumnu¡¯s wings were tattered shreds of membrane stretched over broken ligatures, and it sported an enormous wound that had cracked its famed anvil head right down the middle, exposing the burnt, mashed-up pudding of its primary brain. Judging from its activity the secondary ganglia which controlled its automated functions were still intact. Having lost contact with the Vitalus, it had reverted to its bestial instinct: survive at all costs.

    Kryptus felt a sudden bond of kinship with the dying creature. He understood that overpowering drive of self-preservation all too well, and right now it was telling him that there was an opportunity here unlike any other.

    ¡°What will you do now, alpha?¡± Telemaccus asked.

    ¡°Now? Now I am as the leaf which sways amid the storm,¡± Kryptus gloated as he approaching the downed monster, all eight of his limbs tapdancing with giddy joy, ¡°I go where the wind wills it.¡±

 Chapter 34: Hope

    There was quite the queue forming in the stuffy hallway down in the bowels of the corps headquarters. And in the nature of queues it was getting longer by the hour, the creaking pews on either side of the aisle filling up with disgruntled, sweaty, blank-faced junior officers, all of them suspended in the mind-numbing amber of bureaucratic inefficiency. Well, in truth the seats were more like benches than pews, but such was the atmosphere of ponderous solemnity and absolute silence that one could easily have mistaken it for a shrine of sorts.

    This was despite the fact that nearly all of the offices had been converted into pens for farm animals. Flocks of meat crickets chirped inside their wicker coops while families of oinking unguloids rooted in their beds of dried rice stalks. Mound Shakka had become the main supply depot for the Expeditionary Force that would soon be headed north. Accommodation for all the livestock and droves of support troops had been difficult to find since noncombat personnel such as clerks, smiths, line cooks and cobblers outnumbered the real soldiers by a ratio of 5:1. The Fleet Quartermaster Corps had worked its magic with what little space the already overpopulated settlement could spare, and this menagerie had been one of their many ingenious solutions.

    But if the hallway was a shrine and the bored officers its devotees, then the altar at the center of it all was the tiny cubicle office whose doorway bore the legend in faded green paint: ¡°Defensive Mapping Agency Hydrographic and Geographic Center¡¯s Office of Distribution and Services (Pathfinder Liaison Office).¡±

    It was a somewhat long-winded appellation, to be sure. But the mere mention of the name was enough to send the bravest pencil-pushers into paroxysms of paranoia and dread.

    Had they triple stamped the approval sheets in the appropriate color of ink? Had they used the correct stock number to indicate the maps they needed to requisition? And most importantly, would the stern guardian of the inner sanctum show them mercy today?

    As if in answer to that question the door flew open with a bang and a mustachioed corporal stormed out, crying:

    ¡°How can you do this to me? This is outrageous! Unfair! How can I be a commissioned officer and be denied access to my flipping field sketches?¡±

    ¡°You will sit down, corporal,¡± came the stern reproof from the man inside, making all the waiting supplicants jump in their seats as if at the crack of a bullwhip.

    ¡°I¡­I¡­¡± the officer gulped, his frustration petering out beneath the withering glare of the bald man sitting behind the cheap plywood desk and stacks of misprints.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry,¡± the corporal finally whimpered, all but tucking his tail between his legs. Everyone else studiously examined their fingernails or stared at the ceiling, having no desire to catch a stray bullet from the exchange.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, what?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, navigator Deschane,¡± the luckless man finished, meekly returning to his seat, ¡°B-but please, sir, you must understand. I¡¯ve been trying to get this set of maps for my unit for days now. I¡¯ve completed forms 22-A through 34-D along with all the supplementals. I filled in the boxes with black ink and the region names in blue as per regulations. I¡¯ve even listed the stock numbers alphabetically just like you told me to, which I¡¯m beginning to suspect isn¡¯t even an actual requirement at all!¡±

    ¡°Indeed, it isn¡¯t,¡± Deschane admitted, ¡°That was just a helpful suggestion on my part. It wouldn¡¯t hurt to be more organized, now would it?¡±

    ¡°So I¡¯ve done everything you asked?¡±

    ¡°Why, yes,¡± Deschane said, sounding pleasantly surprised. He put on a pair of wire spectacles and shuffled some sheets of paper around, ¡°You have completed all the documentation needed to requisition copies of classification level C field sketches. Good job.¡±

    Deschane held out a stack of freshly printed papers and the corporal¡¯s face lit up with happiness. But his hopes were immediately dashed when Deschane continued: ¡°Now just repeat all those steps for the other grid zones and I can give you the rest of the maps you ordered.¡±

    The navigator handed him a single copy off the pile and withheld all the rest. The corporal gave a feeble chuckle and said:

    ¡°I think I just misheard you, dear fellow. Did you just say that I have to redo all this paperwork fourteen more times?¡±

    ¡°The regulations are quite clear. Form 29-E can only be used to apply for one copy at a time. So you see, my hands are tied.¡±

    ¡°Alright, fine,¡± pressed the corporal, still stuck at the bargaining phase of the five stages of grief, ¡°So all I have to do is fill out fourteen more copies of 29-E and not all the rest of that rubbish, aye?¡±

    Outside, the people in the queue all winced at his stupidity. It was never a good idea to get uppity with Nv. Deschane.

    ¡°That would suffice,¡± Deschane frowned, ¡°But for the purposes of filing it would be more efficient if each copy of 29-E came attached with copies of all the other forms, just to avoid confusion in the procurement process. Otherwise there really is no telling how long the process might be delayed. Days? Weeks? Months?¡±

    ¡°Navigator,¡± the corporal pleaded in a fit of depression, which was the fourth stage of grief, ¡°My battalion cannot attack the enemy if it does not know where that enemy is! We cannot function without maps! Do you want us to go in completely blind, like hogs to the slaughter?¡±

    ¡°All I¡¯m asking is that you adhere to standard procurement procedures. Yours is not the only battalion in need of crucial information. Rest assured that our staff is working round the clock to provide for the needs of the brave soldiers spearheading the coming offensive. But you must understand that good maps are a precious and delicate resource that must be handled with care¡ª¡±

    Deschane¡¯s rational explanations were interrupted by the door to the adjoining office flying open with a cacophony of curses and bestial squeals. Corporal Ven appeared, struggling mightily to wrest a stack of envelopes from the jaws of a very annoyed sow. Finally tearing them loose and shooing the belligerent sow back into its pen, she did an about face and saluted Deschane, announcing:

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    ¡°Here are the planimetric maps for the 41st Infantry Regiment.¡±

    Then Ven saw a bite-sized chunk missing from the corners of the sheaf and her face took on a crestfallen expression. Deschane accepted it with a nod of thanks and turned his attention back to the mortified corporal, who licked his mustachios nervously and said:

    ¡°I think finally understand what¡¯s going on here. And look, I get it. Anyone who gets reassigned to a reeking dungeon like this one has got to make a living somehow. If it¡¯s a question of money¡ª¡±

    ¡°I believe I was the one who misheard this time,¡± Deschane cut in, his voice as frigid as an ice pick in a freezer. The people in the queue shook their heads; the corporal had dug his own grave good and deep now, ¡°Are you under the impression that I¡¯m soliciting a bribe?¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t be absurd!¡± the nitwit backpedaled, ¡°That¡¯s the furthest thing on my mind. Just an exchange of gifts between good friends, is all¡ª"

    ¡°Leave the door open on your way out,¡± Deschane said, his pen scratching busily at an approval slip.

    ¡°But why?¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t need financial incentives to do my job. I am not a base criminal, sir.¡±

    ¡°Then why are you making my life so bloody difficult?¡±

    ¡°Because I believe in organization,¡± Deschane said without looking up, ¡°This virtue above all else is what allowed humanity to claw its way back from the brink. It is the engine that drives our ascent back into the celestial firmament from whence we came. And if the engine fails,¡± Deschane peered at him over the rim of his spectacles, ¡°then so shall we. Next!¡±

    The corporal left the office with a look of dazed acceptance. The line shuffled forwards. Hours passed and the queue eventually shortened. Most of the officers were turned away in disappointment, while the rest dashed out from the cubicle clutching their fresh copies to their chests as if they could hardly believe their good fortune. This went on until the refracted light of the solar prisms studding the walls went the color of runny eggs, signaling the arrival of dusk.

    ¡°That¡¯s it for today folks,¡± Ven said, taking out her glowbowl of bioluminescent algae and shining it into the faces of the men who¡¯d dozed off on the pews, ¡°Same time again tomorrow!¡±

    There were groans of half-hearted protest as the intelligence officers drooped off back home to try another day. A latecomer arrived just as the last of them filed out. He went over to the animal pens, clicking his tongue at the unguloids and tossing them bits of corn husk from the floor.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry sir, but you¡¯ll have to come back in the morning,¡± Ven told him, ¡°Navigator Deschane is¡ª¡±

    ¡°A very busy man. So I have observed,¡± the man turned, smiling sweetly. He was dressed in the most outlandish garb Ven had ever seen, a scandalously skimpy loincloth beneath robes of see-through abaca being all that covered his modesty.

    ¡°Oh! Wow,¡± Ven quickly averted her eyes, a warm flush creeping the back of her neck, ¡°I didn¡¯t realize you were so¡­so.... erm¡­¡±

    ¡°Ethnic?¡± the tribesman tactfully supplied.

    ¡°Yes! That¡¯s the word. I hope,¡± Ven added in an undertone.

    ¡°I am Nong Acklund, a geologist from the Darood, in the Occupied Territories,¡± the tribesman introduced himself with a clipped accent, ¡°May I ask for a moment of his time?¡±

    The tribesman walked past her before she could object, slithering eel-like into the darkened office where Deschane was busy getting onto his crutches.

    ¡°Ah, navigator! I tried to catch you yesterday at your award ceremony, but you left as soon as you concluded your acceptance speech.¡±

    ¡°Hmph,¡± was all Deschane had to say to that.

    ¡°Oh, ha ha! There it is again: the entire text of your speech. If brevity is the soul of wit, then I guess that makes you a veritable prodigy!¡±

    Deschane¡¯s forehead knitted into a worrying frown. Ven knew that look and placed herself between the two to protect Nong from bodily harm.

    ¡°Soldier, what is this civilian doing here?¡± Deschane said quietly and without taking his eyes off the shameless exhibitionist.

    ¡°He is attempting to be funny,¡± Nong replied, ¡°He sees now that this approach will prove fruitless. I¡¯ll get to the point: I am here to ask you about what happened at Mound 13.¡±

    ¡°They covered all that at the ceremony. I have nothing more to add. Corporal Vendamme, remove this person before I do.¡±

    Ven reached for Nong¡¯s shoulder, but once again the tribesman evaded her, stepping closer to the navigator.

    ¡°I see. Either they have bought your silence, or you have been cowed into submission.¡±

    ¡°What did you just say?¡±

    ¡°Or is it something else?¡± Nong went on, blissfully unaware of the danger he was in, ¡°Perhaps your being difficult and unpleasant serves a grander purpose. Even after those idiots confined you in this midden heap to rot, you are doing all that you can to delay their much-vaunted offensive for as long as possible. After all, an army is blind without good intelligence, and your superiors in their matchless arrogance gave you control over just that, didn¡¯t they? Now the only question that remains is this: are you a traitor, Navigator Deschane? If not, then why are you deliberately sabotaging the war effort?¡±

    Deschane was a long time answering that one.

    ¡°Everything I do is for the good of the Fleet,¡± he said at last, ¡°I fight for the species. And if you call me a traitor one more time, I¡¯ll rip your throat out with my thumbs.¡±

    Indeed, Ven was wondering why he hadn¡¯t done it already. Deschane had been through a lot in these past few days, and had been begging for an excuse to cut loose. The tribesman beamed again, only this time it was genuine, each crooked tooth gleaming like ivory.

    ¡°A believer! Excellent. You fight that we may reattain our ancient godhead¡ªyes, I overheard that conversation with that poor young fool. But it is one thing to believe, and another thing entirely to know. And so, my good navigator, I have one final question. Do you know what this is?¡±

    Nong drew something from the folds of his loincloth and slammed it on the desk. Initially Ven thought it was some sort of tribal fetish, an idol carved from ultrapod horn and sculpted into the crude likeness of a human. It was about ten centimeters tall and sported an eggshell head, hunched shoulders and a single crimson dot in the place of a face.

    Ven had owned a similar doll in her childhood, made for her by her native servant, a sweet old maid by the name of Riyah with raisin-wrinkle cheeks who smelled like rosewater. There was a thin horizontal slot in the middle of its belly¡ªperhaps it was a child¡¯s piggy bank?

    But then Nong touched something on the side of the idol and the thing stirred to life, stocky legs pumping as it strode ponderously across the desk. It swiveled on its waist and knocked over a pile of misprints with its arm and sent them scattering all over the dung-spattered floorboards. Then it turned to Ven and spoke in a tinny little voice:

    ¡°¡­your¡­future¡­built¡­today. Say chzzztt!¡±

    The red eye flashed dangerously, and Ven flinched. The idol hummed and whirred as some hidden mechanism activated. A square of semirigid material shot out of the slot and spun in the air. Ven caught it before it fell and found herself looking at an image of her frightened face etched into a card of strange transparent crystal, with the following words stamped below it:

    EMPLOYEE OF THE YEAR

    ¡°Well, paint me in polka dots and slap me silly,¡± she breathed in amazement, ¡°Look, sir. It¡¯s me!¡±

    She held up the card for Deschane to see and received the second, even bigger shock of the day. The navigator was biting into his clenched fist, his throat working as he held back a tide of emotions.

    ¡°I thought I¡¯d gone mad¡­¡± he whispered in a broken voice, as if he were all alone in the room with no one to hear him, ¡°They¡¯d half convinced me of it. Blood loss, shell shock, narcosis, morphine. Any number of reasons. My men¡­¡± he looked up at Nong, his upper lip stiffening, ¡°My boys. Rene. Lethway. I failed them¡ªfailed them all. I thought it was a mistake on the part of providence, that I had been spared and they had not. But now...¡±

    Deschane reached out with trembling fingers and touched the idol reverently.

    ¡°Yes, I do know what this is,¡± he told Nong, his voice now stronger and more assured, ¡°This here is hope.¡±

    #

 Chapter 35: The Conspiracy

    ¡°It is the oldest tale we Daroodans possess. It began with a labor of love, and it ended in a vale of tears.¡±

    Nong squatted frog-like on the edge of his chair, a carven sphynx looking down from his pedestal, his coy and knowing face shaded by the aquamarine tint of the glowbowl. Ven sat aslant on the side of the table, her eyes glued on the miniature that was still waddling around the assorted stationaries on Deschane¡¯s desk, animated by a life of its own.

    ¡°According to oral traditions, our home was once a flat and arid stretch of dirt too cold for even the cacti to grow,¡± Nong went on, ¡°Our progenitors looked upon this nothingness and dreamt of a garden amidst the wasteland. And as they dreamed, so they wrought.¡±

    ¡°They sent their servants, the Dauru, to remake this world in accordance with their vision. And so the Dauru raised the living rock into high mesas where glaciers could form in the rarified air and melting to form new rivers. They ploughed deep canyons that trapped heat and moisture, allowing for the existence of alpine ecosystems. Even now the snow-crowned peaks of my homeland are the only places on Arachnea where humans can exist indefinitely on the surface without gas recyclers¡ªthe air is so thin up there that the oxygen partial pressures correspond with the body¡¯s natural tolerances. And it is from these shapers of the earth that our nation took its name, a name which has since been diluted through centuries of phonological change into its current form: Darood.¡±

    ¡°Sensing that the earth was now wanton and wet, the progenitors sowed the valleys with all manner of green things so that their children would lack for nothing. And there came to be meadows and springs and a land of plenty. This was but one of the many great works that the ancestor-gods undertook upon the surface of our planet, and they entrusted this task to the one we call Ma¡¯kling Dulag, a minor figure in the pantheon from whom every chieftain of the tableland tribes since has claimed direct descent. For when the madness of the Consanguicide raged across the galaxy and the empires of antiquity came crashing down, Ma¡¯kling and his Dauru were called away before they could complete their work. But before they departed for this final confrontation, Ma¡¯kling entrusted his children with the forty Keys of Command, artefacts by which a mortal could inherit the power of the Dauru.¡±

    ¡°And so Ma¡¯kling marched north to face a dire threat that had crawled down out of the black beyond. Thunder magic spoke, lances of fire and strange new constellations of stars that spawned out of the ether and just as quickly blinked out of existence.¡±

    ¡°And then...nothing. Of Ma¡¯kling and his legion, nothing more was heard of since.¡±

    ¡°Centuries passed. The half-finished havens of Darood withered and died. Without the will of the ancients to sustain them, the green places reverted to the desert which had preceded them. Even the glaciers melted away into thin blades of ice we call the penitentes. Soon the mesas emptied of inhabitants as waves of famine set in. For a time men hunted men through the gorges and dried-up river beds, until sanity prevailed, and we put down the beasts that had once been our kinsmen. Only the most tenacious survived, moisture-gatherers who every day made the pilgrimage up to where the mesas kiss the skies, irrigating their mountain crops with melted slush carried down from the penitentes.¡±

    ¡°And so we eked out an existence on the crumbs that Arachnea threw our way. But we never forgot our heritage. The forty Keys of Command were passed down through the generations from one chieftain to the next, each a priceless heirloom that denotes absolute authority and over which our headhunters would fight to the death. Ever so often we would pick the finest of our youths to journey into the plains to search for Ma¡¯kling and the lost legion. But instead, we found the Fleet.¡±

    Deschane leaned forward in his seat, a slight tension in the set of his shoulders. He knew how the story went from here; as a young ensign fresh out of officer training he had earned his stripes in the counter-insurgency campaign that had finally ended the Daroodan secession. To call it a scorched earth policy would have been an understatement. To this day there were still ghost towns in the tablelands choked by the scarlet raze weeds that had throttled the life out of the terrace farms, impervious to herbicides and the frantic machete-work of the natives whose meadows had never known such a virulent pestilence.

    The Fleet itself had lost a chain of mounds to the exact same species until the Biological Division had finally quarantined the menace and applied flamethrowers to the affected areas, scorching them down to the roots.

    Much like the weeds, the secession had also proved impossible to eradicate piecemeal. Unable to locate the bulk of the elusive Daroodan guerillas, and unwilling to get bogged down in endless tit-for-tat ambushes and counter-ambushes, Fleet Command had sent in the Pathfinders in the dead of night to scatter the samples secured by the Biological Division across the terraces. Starvation had brought the enemy to the negotiating table, that and some clever politicking to divide the loyalties of the perpetually feuding tribes. It was a wonder the lengths some people would go to for a few tons of Fleet-grown grain.

    Looking back now, it was the chapter of Deschane¡¯s life that he was the least proud of. Despite this he looked Nong straight in the eye, unwilling to repent, believing, knowing with every fiber of his being that every gallon of blood in that war had ultimately watered the tree of peace.

    The body was greater than the sum of its parts. If those parts became afflicted by the cancer of disunity, then it was better that they be tied off and cauterized than risk the wellbeing of the whole.

    But the expected outpouring of resentment never came. Nong passed over the subject and continued: ¡°Recognizing the symbolic power of the artefacts without ever really considering them to be genuine, the Fleet appropriated the Keys of Command after the armistice, claiming them as war trophies. They gave them to their most senior officials to wear as further proof of their divine mandate to reestablish mankind¡¯s dominion over the surface world¡ªthe late Rear-Admiral Rohaime Prota was one of them.¡±

    Deschane pursed his lips, remembering the flashing blue pendant that had hung around Prota¡¯s neck. It had taken him an embarrassingly long while to identify her rank¡ªas a navigator he¡¯d only ever seen members of the Admiralty from afar during parades or ballroom dances. Ye gods, but that day in Mound 13 seemed lifetimes ago. It brought to mind what the ancestors had always said about time being relative. Whose relative, exactly? That¡¯s what he wanted to know.

    ¡°Darood was then rebuilt into a mining district,¡± Nong droned on, ¡°Its people brought up in the ways of civilization. In that time I was accepted into the technical colleges and trained as a geologist.¡±

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    ¡°I wonder if you could nip past the autobiographical section and get to the meat of things,¡± Deschane interjected with growing impatience. He pointed to the automaton and asked point-blank: ¡°Where¡¯d you get this?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll come to that in a moment,¡± Nong said with glacial calm, ¡°First I must ask: are you familiar with the principle of superposition? No? It¡¯s one of geology¡¯s core concepts. Generally speaking, the deeper you dig into the sediment layers, the older the layers are (there are many exceptions, but we won¡¯t get into that now). Navigator, this artefact was pulled out of a peat bog in the Occupied Territories along with a partially preserved cadaver. Based on the rates of deposition and radiometric dating, we estimate it to be nine thousand years old, give or take eight hundred years. This coincides with the oral traditions of the Daroodan tribes and makes it the only creation myth supported by the fossil record.¡±

    Ven put on a dubious frown at that and pitched in:

    ¡°But that isn¡¯t what the Chaplainage says. It¡¯s written in the Log of the Void Trekkers that humanity only began its reconquest of the surface five centuries ago, when the three ships of the Fleet were grounded on Arachnea. Besides, this little doodad you stuffed down the front of your pants is far too pristine to be as old as you claim it is.¡±

    ¡°Sharp one, this aide of yours,¡± Nong told Deschane, making Ven blush for the second time that day, ¡°But she¡¯s right. This isn¡¯t the original¡ªit¡¯s a replica of a copy of a counterfeit. We needed to recreate this artefact so that all the various teams of experts could have a go at examining it. As for the Log, religious texts have never been a reliable source of dates and times. Even the Chaplainage disagrees on when the progenitors woke up from their dreamstate, or how many generations passed before they started sending sacrifices through the Midnight Door.¡±

    ¡°But what was it in the first place? What purpose did it serve?¡±

    ¡°We think it might be a religious idol,¡± Nong shrugged, ¡°An effigy that was meant to be burned along with the body we found. It was a child, in case you¡¯re wondering. Four years old, judging from the dentistry.¡±

    ¡°Cause of death?¡±

    ¡°Unknown. Personally, I think this artefact was nothing more than her favorite doll.¡±

    Nong¡¯s eyes clouded over with sadness. Ven felt it too: an empathy for the dead reaching back across the gulfs of time, the tragedy as fresh today as it ever had been.

    ¡°And what about this?¡± Ven asked, pointing at the picture of herself, ¡°Employee of the month?¡±

    ¡°Ah, yes. There are a number of theories on that. One popular version is that progenitor culture was somehow centered around financial remuneration. The worship of the concept of money, if you can believe that. The ultimate value of a person was the amount of capital they could raise on a steady basis. Hence, the employee of the month was a paragon of virtue for whom all the others would gladly lay down their lives.¡±

    Ven found the whole notion whimsically appealing. The Fleet¡¯s ideal person was someone who met the quotas every month of the year, be it in rice, sweet potatoes or sorghum, then signed up for the infantry and did their bit until they promptly kicked the bucket, preferably after a string of newsworthy feats of heroism. The thought of one¡¯s worth being tied instead to such an abstract concept as money was oddly liberating.

    ¡°The shell of this original machine was preserved in an anoxic environment that delayed its decomposition, while the rigid material itself comprised of a chain of polymers that simply do not occur in nature. It took us years of research to try and replicate that polymer. In the end we failed, but our chemists synthesized dozens of new compounds as a result of that work. You know those waterproof sleeves that protect your rifled muskets from the rain?¡±

    ¡°Synthmesh, aye,¡± Deschane nodded. That one piece of gear had saved the lives of thousands of troopers out in the field, where a dry, working firearm was usually all that separated one from a rampaging Amit, ¡°You people were behind that?¡±

    Nong started rattling off a laundry list of the latest technological breakthroughs:

    ¡°Those are but the first of many inventions that will soon revolutionize the Fleet¡¯s manufacturing capabilities. The interior of the machine was even more challenging: we found a capsule containing a metal oxide matrix combined with a carbon allotrope that had the thickness of a single carbon atom! We could not replicate the sheet, but we did know from the Log that the ancients had devices with which to store power¡ªpart of the reason why the ships were grounded was because certain reserves of energy had finally run out. So we experimented with other carbon allotropes and eventually matched graphite with zinc, creating the dry cells which now power our electric torches and all portable electronic devices.¡±

    ¡°The public audio announcement system which they installed in Mound Ulysses? The wire-talkies that the postal service and the artillerymen use to relay instant messages? The photochemical rollfilms that the Aeronautical Division uses to take those shoddy bird¡¯s eye pictures that led your men to their doom? All of that was inspired by the components we found in this one ¡®doodad¡¯.¡±

    Nong patted the dome-headed doll with paternal fondness.

    ¡°Right now we¡¯re still trying to piece together how it stores the sentences that it speaks. Something to do with minute electric charges, we think. If we solve that, you can say goodbye to all this cumbersome paperwork," Nong said, gesturing at the orderly chaos of Deschane''s files.

    ¡°Why are you telling us all this?¡± Deschane demanded of him.

    ¡°I should have thought that was obvious. Navigator, if our scientists can do all that with the least of the ancestor-god¡¯s trinkets, how much more can we accomplish if we got our hands on the real thing?¡±

    The tribesman rapped a calloused finger against a small-scale map that Deschane had pinned to a corkboard, one that depicted the northern hinterlands and traced the many supply chains that would keep the war machine churning.

    ¡°The Divine Engine is out there¡ªthe last of Ma¡¯kling¡¯s lost legion. Only you know where it went. Help us find it, navigator. Serve your species the way you know best.¡±

    Nong slid a paper across the desk, the writing facedown. Deschane could taste honeydew on his lips again. He staggered to his feet, casting aside his crutches so he could stand tall and look down at the shorter tribesman, the better to get the measure of the man.

    ¡°Does Fleet Command know of all this?¡±

    ¡°Yes.¡±

    ¡°Then why did they stonewall me when I gave my report on Mound 13?¡±

    ¡°There have been¡­disagreements. The knowledge you hold is dangerous. They would have killed you to suppress it, were it not for the fact that your disappearance would raise suspicions.¡±

    ¡°This is starting to sound an awful lot like a conspiracy,¡± Ven said, feeling a trickle of fear running up the small of her back.

    ¡°The truth will always have its opponents,¡± Nong replied, ¡°I cannot say more until I can be sure of your discretion. Suffice it to say that there is more to the fossil record than just this charming trinket.¡±

    Nong snatched up the miniature and stuck it back in his loincloth. Then he slid the paper a few more inches across and added:

    ¡°If you¡¯re willing, meet me at this address tomorrow late in the afternoon. Travel incognito.¡±

    Abruptly he hopped off the chair and glided noiselessly out the way he came. Ven stared after him, then turned to help Deschane back into his seat.

    ¡°What now, sir?¡±

    The navigator steepled his fingers and sucked thoughtfully on the tips of his thumbs.

    ¡°I should¡¯ve torn his esophagus out when I had a chance,¡± he said finally, ¡°But we¡¯re stuck in it now, Ven, and no mistake.¡±

    ¡°Proper shafted, sir?¡±

    ¡°Proper shafted,¡± Deschane agreed. Suddenly he posed a question to her: ¡°What¡¯s the very first thing you should secure on the battlefield, corporal?¡±

    ¡°Information,¡± came her ready reply.

    ¡°Correct. So let¡¯s go get us some.¡±

    After a moment¡¯s hesitation, Deschane made his choice and folded the paper into his coat pocket.

 Chapter 36: Dust and Bones

    Deschane had Ven cover for him at the Mapping Agency before he left that morning. She was to say that he¡¯d gone to confer with the main cartographer¡¯s office to discuss standardization of the filing system; as alibis went it was as mind-numbingly boring as the poor suffering adjutants had come to expect of the navigator.

    He hobbled down the alleyways of the bottommost galleries of Mound Shakka, grabbing at the walls for balance as he tried to make do without his crutches. He¡¯d topped up on morphine for the pain was wearing a plaster ankle brace inside his oversized boots.

    Deschane¡¯s injuries were healing well. He estimated that in a few days he could walk unassisted. Which was fortunate, given that the cobbles were slick with stagnant pools of groundwater seeping up from the reservoir below. Shakka had hit maximum occupancy years ago, the engineers forced to bore and blast their way deeper into the foundations to make room. Now all that separated the bottom dwellers from a watery grave were a few meters of gneiss rock. The resulting subsidence where the water table met the rotting wood shanties meant that malaria and dysentery ran rampant through the slums.

    Deschane kept his cycler pistol handy in the waistband of the civvy denims he¡¯d worn to blend in. He kept a weather eye on the gangs of feral youths who haunted the entrances to every lane, their small, quick hands always ready to slip into unsuspecting pockets.

    No one gave Deschane any trouble, however¡ªone look at his hovering trigger finger was enough to keep them honest. Men in hard shell hats clomped out of their hovels, leaving their hollow-eyed wives and children as the work gongs summoned them to another shift in the mines, a clattering funicular carriage lowering them into the shafts a dozen at a time. The luckier ones headed up towards the fungus gardens near the central feeder towers. These were the porous lungs of the settlement which not only helped regulate internal atmosphere, but were also where most of the food was grown.

    The very richest of the farmers donned their expensive sealant suits to work on the terraces carved into the exterior slopes of the mound. Agriculture on the surface was a high-risk, high-reward activity, especially now that the rains had gone and left the daggergnats to spawn in their thousands. The swarms that hovered just outside musket range could leech a man dry in seconds if given the chance.

    Then again, even the interior of the mound wasn¡¯t safe from the other type of bloodsucking scavengers that preyed on civilians.

    The army recruiters were out in force this morning. Deschane had always hated them: fat men in slovenly uniforms that hung around the chop-suet stalls and shoved pamphlets into people¡¯s faces when they were trying to suck down their melted lard and salted rice porridge. He¡¯d never forgiven them for all the promises they¡¯d made to him all those years ago, the same lies they were peddling right now:

    ¡°How can you stand eating that slop every day, son?¡± one called out, ¡°Sign up for the line infantry and it¡¯s three square meals a day, plus extra rum ration.¡±

    ¡°Forget those sissies in the line infantry,¡± another swooped in, ¡°You look like a big strong lad! Why don¡¯t you give the grenadiers a try?¡±

    ¡°Who are you calling lad, dipstick?¡± was the outraged reply of a brawny redhead in farmer¡¯s overalls, voice several octaves higher than it should¡¯ve been.

    ¡°Oh! Erm, sorry ma¡¯am. Didn¡¯t see you there. But the offer still stands!¡± the recruiter rallied, ¡°The grenadiers would be glad to have you. The pay¡¯s nearly twice that of a common soldier.¡±

    ¡°And how much is that?¡±

    ¡°Twenty-two carbos a month.¡±

    ¡°How bout that,¡± the girl sounded impressed, ¡°For twenty-two I¡¯d fall in so quick you¡¯d see me red-shifting. What¡¯s the catch?¡±

    ¡°How¡¯s your throwing arm?¡±

    ¡°Better than yours, lardass,¡± the woman bragged, rolling up her sleeves to show a set of shoulders like small boulders.

    ¡°Then the only ¡®catch¡¯ is when you¡¯ll start tossing live grenades down those Amit bug-hole. They¡¯ll be doing all the catching then, that¡¯s fer sure!¡±

    That got a snort of laughter out of the ginger. She reached for the recruiter¡¯s pen to sign on, and she wasn¡¯t the only one. Deschane turned away in disgust. He¡¯d heard it all before.

    Everlasting glory for the first man through the breach. The Amits were on the ropes, teetering on the verge of extinction¡ªwhy not help give them a shove on their way down? Every comrade a willing martyr, every skirmish a victory. There would be a lot of martyrs from this place before the war was won.

    Most of the inhabitants of Shakka were freckled, blue-eyed locals, though Deschane did see some fellow Ulysseans in the crowd, the curly brown locks of their hair setting them apart from the rest. Well, that and the scarlet armbands which designated them as foremen and senior technicians.

    It was only natural, Deschane thought. You needed men from the core mounds to really get things done. Natives were good workers, but required a firm supervision to meet the monthly quotas.

    As for the native he was supposed to meet today, Deschane didn¡¯t know what to think of him yet. All the signs pointed to Sec-Com, the Security Committee which handled internal threats to the Fleet. Was all this just an elaborate trap laid for him by Colonel Leelan and his cronies in the brass? Were they onto him? Deschane¡¯s budding anxiety proved justified only moments later when a strong hand seized his elbow from behind, yanking him into nearby alleyway.

    The navigator¡¯s response was immediate. Unable to reach his pistol with the tight grip on his arm, Deschane turned on his heel and executed a tight spinning backfist. Though he was striking blind and off-balance he felt a solid contact, the bony edge of his forearm chopping with the back of his assailant¡¯s head and knocking him off. Deschane drew his pistol, cocking the hammer so that the five loaded chambers rotated with a loud click and pressing the snub-nose into the man¡¯s cheek.

    ¡°Alright, you got me!¡± Nong said, reaching for the sky, ¡°That was my bad!¡±

    ¡°Galloping galaxies, man! What were you thinking, sneaking up on me like that?¡± Deschane fumed.

    ¡°In case you were followed,¡± the tribesman chuckled, ¡°We had to lose them somehow.¡±

    ¡°I wasn¡¯t. I took precautions.¡±

    ¡°Well, you can¡¯t accuse me of being too careful,¡± Nong gently nudged the pistol out of his face and dusted himself off, ¡°Not when we¡¯re this deep into the game. Shall we?¡±

    The tribesman had shucked his outlandish garb and put on a miner¡¯s outfit almost identical to the one Deschane wore, with one exception: a purple armband emblazoned with the crossed pick and hammer of a district director. Deschane flicked a finger at it, said disapprovingly:

    ¡°I thought the whole idea was for us to be inconspicuous.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m the Commissioner of Mining for the Occupied Territories. People will recognize me eventually.¡±

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    ¡°You told me you were a geologist,¡± Deschane protested.

    ¡°I started out as one, but they promoted me. People skills¡ªI¡¯m told that I have them.¡±

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t have guessed it,¡± Deschane said, still somewhat peevish.

    ¡°Officially I¡¯m just here to make an inspection of Mound Shakka¡¯s copper mining operations. Command just loves it when us savages come crawling on our bellies to learn from our betters. It¡¯s your cover I¡¯m worried about, navigator. Doesn¡¯t it hurt, walking around without your crutches?¡±

    ¡°Of course it hurts,¡± Deschane muttered through a clenched jaw, waves of pain radiating from the ankle that he¡¯d just managed to twist all over again, ¡°Let¡¯s just get this over with.¡±

    Thanks to Nong¡¯s indiscretion they managed to skip the line for the funicular entirely. The miners took one look at the tribesman¡¯s armband and parted like the waves before the prow, eyes lowered and backs hunched in an effort to make themselves as tiny as possible. As a commissioner he held the power of life and death over every one of them, though you wouldn¡¯t have guessed it from the way Nong was grinning at them, an uncle come to visit his favourite nephews.

    ¡°Carry on, carry on,¡± he said indulgently, ¡°Pretend like I¡¯m not even here!¡±

    The miners did exactly that and let the two have the carriage all to themselves. An operator fed the guttering motor a jerry can of canefuel and they started down.

    ¡°Why didn¡¯t you just tell me you were a commissioner yesterday?¡± Deschane said after minutes of silence broken only by the rattle of iron chains, ¡°I would¡¯ve taken you seriously from the start.¡±

    ¡°Wanted to see the kind of man you were,¡± Nong confessed, ¡°The priests of the Chaplainage claim that all men are equal, but this does not bear out in practice. If I had presented myself as another one of your superiors you would¡¯ve just shut up tighter than a clam. That¡¯s the funny thing about people. We like to pretend that we¡¯re above the Amits, but when you get right down to it our society is just as caste-based as theirs. Lock two men in a cell together for a month, and if they haven¡¯t murdered each other by the end of it, you¡¯ll find that they¡¯ve divided the place right in two.¡±

    ¡°One can relate,¡± Deschane replied, his irritation returning as the tribesman went into another one of his long lectures. He could feel the ambient temperature climbing with every meter they descended. The sweat was making his fresh scabs itch like the devil.

    ¡°Very droll, navigator. But I was just getting to the core of my thesis. Humans create order where there is none. Over time, our civilization tends towards greater and greater expressions of organization. Not so long ago we were lobbing rocks from trebuchets and besieging each other¡¯s mounds as often as we did those of the Amits. There used to be eleven distinct human cultures on Arachnea, all competing for the same dwindling resources. Today there is only one: the Fleet.¡±

    The funicular shuddered to a halt as they scraped the bottom of the mineshaft. Deschane grabbed onto the rails to keep from toppling over and hissed:

    ¡°I didn¡¯t come all this way for some half-arsed lecture on the human condition. What¡¯s your point, Nong?¡±

    Nong looked positively scandalized at the interruption. No doubt he¡¯d been planning his little speech for some time. He took out a pair of electric torches and held one out to Deschane, saying stiffly:

    ¡°If you¡¯ll please come this way.¡±

    The commissioner led Deschane into a narrow borehole dug horizontally into the side of the shaft, the wide beams of their torches throwing long, stalking shadows across the ceiling.

    ¡°Here it is,¡± Nong said as they came to a dead end, shining the circle of yellow light at the blank wall, ¡°The one secret that threatens to undo us all.¡±

    Deschane frowned. All he could see was a pile of dirt. Several layers of dirt, to be fair, neatly stacked atop the other and each a slightly different shade of brown or orange than the others. Seeing that Deschane was unimpressed, Nong produced a geologist¡¯s clawhammer and began to chip at the layers as he explained:

    ¡°Do you remember what I told you about the law of superposition?¡±

    ¡°The deeper the layer, the older it gets. Simple.¡±

    ¡°Good. Then what we have here is a summary of mankind¡¯s entire history on Arachnea. These three meters of soil and the strata contained within them are windows into the past. Not that far into the past, though. Only a few thousand years, a geological blink of an eye. The fact is, we haven¡¯t been on this planet very long at all. The reason these young strata are all the way down here is because a fat slab of them slid down during an earthquake¡ªMound Shakka sits atop a shear zone, you see.¡±

    Nong hacked at the lowest layer and pried out a jagged stone shaped like a teardrop. He handed it over to Deschane and shone a light on it, saying:

    ¡°Familiar?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s an Amit axe head,¡± Deschane replied, easily recognizing it.

    ¡°Four and a half thousand years old,¡± Nong said. He dug into the layer just above it until his clawhammer struck something with the loud plink! Nong brushed away the sods to expose a twisted heap of lime green bronze.

    ¡°Human work. A frying pan. Forged two thousand eight hundred years ago.¡±

    And in the strata above that Nong picked out another Amit tool, this time an awl made from antler and bone.

    ¡°So the Amits retook this mound not long after,¡± Deschane said, ¡°So what? We¡¯re the ones who hold it now.¡±

    ¡°Please bear with me.¡±

    Nong continued his work. In the next one they unearthed fragments of a human skull. The area inside the right eye socket was fused with spidery etchings of gold-hued metal that ended in fibrous roots that stabbed inwards into where the occipital lobe would have been.

    ¡°This civilization had working eye implants,¡± Nong told Deschane, ¡°Some sort of mind-machine interface. Can you imagine that? Some of the skeletons we found were more metal than man. But even that didn¡¯t save them. In the end they only lasted six centuries.¡±

    Nong started digging at the one above it when Deschane put a hand on his shoulder and stopped him.

    ¡°Let me guess. Amits again?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a pattern,¡± Nong nodded, confirming it, ¡°Our antiquarians identified four distinct human civilizations in this geological formation alone, all of varying levels of technological advancement. All of them were more primitive than the Fleet as it exists today, save for one which was so far beyond us that their power rivalled that of the progenitors. All of them conquered this mound from the Amits, existed here for a time, then were completely eradicated.¡±

    ¡°By what?¡±

    ¡°We don¡¯t know,¡± Nong said simply, switching off his electric torch and plunging them both into an impenetrable murk, ¡°Both we and Fleet Command believe in this cycle of eradication. The disagreement lies in the interpretation of the data. Command believes that the Fleet has always existed ever since the moment that the ancestor-gods bequeathed Arachnea to us with their dying breaths.¡±

    ¡°To them, all these repetitions of the cycle are just part of one continuous chain of the Fleet¡¯s development, a sinusoidal curve with upswings and downswings. The periods of Amit inhabitation are simply periods during which the Fleet temporarily collapsed due to internal tensions. Their theory is that disunity, mismanagement of resources and civil war hurled us back into the stone ages, not the Amits.¡±

    Deschane could understand the logic behind that. Militarily speaking the Fleet was quickly outstripping the Amits. Ever since the discovery of powder weapons the army had won the majority of large-scale surface battles against its subterranean foe. As a species the Amits lacked the necessary cohesion to wage the kind of total war that the Fleet was capable of waging, marshalling the industrial might of the entire species to mount campaigns of genocide. Each mound was an isolated colony that fought alone or even competed against its neighbours for forage.

    ¡°But you don¡¯t agree with their assessment?¡± he asked.

    ¡°No, we don¡¯t. Our interpretation is that these cycles are culturally distinct and have nothing to do with each other. Each time the catastrophe stuck, humanity as a whole underwent a hard reset and had to start all over again from nothing. In which case it follows that we are not the authors of our own destruction. Something else is.¡±

    ¡°And your proof?¡±

    Nong waved a hand at the layers of strata and told Deschane:

    ¡°Prota¡¯s team discovered that this fossil record is completely absent at Mound 13 and the far-flung outposts along the front line. There is only one conclusion to be drawn from that: none of the other cycles have ever expanded this far north as we have. But if the external threat is real, then it is out there waiting for us beyond the hills we know.

    ¡°And the Fleet is walking right into it,¡± the navigator finished for him. Curse it all, but he¡¯d known this himself as a gut feeling that he¡¯d never admitted aloud. An existential dread that he¡¯d felt in his gut ever since he¡¯d seen the extent of Mound Euler from a distance, a cruel and obscene obelisk raised by the will of Arachnea, eternity laughing at the futility of life itself. It was the real reason he had tried to stall the offensive for as long as he could. Out there in the silence of the green one could not escape the certainty that there existed forces far beyond the ken of mortal man, forces which had laid low the progenitors at the height of their glory and before which the Fleet could not stand.

    ¡°What would you have me do?¡± Deschane asked.

    ¡°What you Pathfinders do best, sirrah. Find the threat and kill it, before it¡¯s too late.¡±

    ¡°If what you say is true, then this thing has a habit of making mincemeat out of all mankind. How could I possibly make a difference against something like that?¡±

    Nong pressed something into the palm of Deschane¡¯s hand and strode back up the tunnel, saying:

    ¡°The gods provide, navigator. The gods provide.¡±

    Shining his torch at it, the navigator saw that he was gripping the tiny Divine Engine once again. Deschane clutched it tight amidst the darkness and held to his heart. And just like that, Deschane knew what to do.

 Chapter 37: Rest and Recreation (Part 1)

    It was the last night of leave at Madame Wimba¡¯s Watering Hole, and the boys and girls of the 3<sup>rd</sup> Pathfinder¡¯s were making the most of it. Which in this case boiled down to getting as blind drunk as quickly as possible, something for which Shon Tooms was particular well-suited. The great advantage of being a twiggy young sot half the size of the average trooper was that he could get trashed at twice the normal rate, and for much cheaper, too. Tooms tipped back his gallon jug of watered rum and sucked at the dregs like a man perishing of thirst in the desert. He could almost feel the high buzz that would lift him clear of his earthly cares and worries, erase the constant, nagging fear that he felt before every mission.

    ¡°Steady on there, kid,¡± chided Cooly, the heavyset Sierran clapping him fondly on the back. This caused Tooms to splutter and choke, wasting most of his drink down the front of his shirt, ¡°What¡¯s the hurry? We¡¯ve a long night ahead of us yet. Nobody¡¯s leaving till old sourface rears his bald head.¡±

    ¡°Would it really matter if I heard him out sober or not? Orders is orders,¡± Tooms said crossly, annoyed at being spoken down to like a child. He¡¯d done his bid like all of the rest, hadn¡¯t he? He¡¯d faced down the silent hordes of Amits with nothing but a scream on his lips and the splintered club of a backfired musket. Surely they could afford him a measure of respect once in a while?

    ¡°Ye¡¯ll want a clear head going into this, Tooms,¡± Pretty Boy Doyd leered over the rim of his mug, the sight of his disfigured face enough to clear Tooms¡¯ head, ¡°Or ain¡¯t you heard what happened to the last lot what signed on wiv him? Rene and Jensen and all the rest of our newly minted heroes. Hah!¡±

    Doyd raised his mug in salute to the list names carved on the corkwood board behind the counter, where the overweight and eponymous owner of the bar lounged like a slug in its favorite cabbage patch. There were several new additions at the bottom of the list.

    Tooms tried his best not to imagine whose initials would be up there this time next month, but it proved impossible. It was always the same after every operation. More names on the wall. More empty barstools. He looked over to where Lethway should have been, feet on the table and lounging back on the rear legs of his chair in that roguish way of his. Of all his fallen brothers Tooms felt his loss most keenly; Lethway was the only person that could truly calm Doyd''s simmering rage.

    ¡°They may have gone on into the green,¡± Harmer said, the ebony-skinned sharpshooter bristling at Doyd¡¯s tasteless remark, ¡°But there ain¡¯t no call to be making light of our friends.¡±

    Pretty Boy levelled his infamous scowl at her, the shiny mottled burns that had earned the man his grim sobriquet contorting like a strip of boiled leather. Doyd was the senior veteran among the fifteen pathfinders gathered in the saloon, one of the handful who had lived through the Scouring of Assail. There a face full of Amit acid had burned away all pleasant aspects of his personality, leaving only a bitter hull of a man who clung on to life more out of sheer spitefulness than anything else. But those same scars which rendered him hideous also lent weight to his words. So when he spoke in that wheedling whine of his, every one of them listened:

    ¡°They was my friends too, girlie. All¡¯s I¡¯m saying is, they should¡¯ve known better than to offer themselves up for another one of Command¡¯s cunning schemes. And for what? Jus so¡¯s that upper crust careerist can pin another bit of pot metal on his chest?¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s a rumor going round that he was saved by divine intervention,¡± murmured Leming, the bespectacled scholar laying aside his unabridged copy of the Log of the Voidtrekkers, ¡°They say he beheld the hand of the gods themselves reach down and deliver him from certain death.¡±

    ¡°Yea verily,¡± Pretty Boy mockingly intoned, holding up three fingers to form the sign of the trimada, ¡°I declare that to be a crock of shit.¡±

    ¡°Your usual blaspheming aside,¡± Leming said with offended dignity, ¡°I myself am intrigued by Deschane¡¯s account. He never struck me as a particularly devout member of the Chaplainage. And yet I often find in the written accounts that it is often the skeptics and unbelievers who serve as the pawns of the powers that be. There¡¯s a sense of cosmic irony in that, methinks.¡±

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    ¡°I heard they gave the bleeder a ceremony last week,¡± said Beans in between mouthfuls of fried cricket and soy, ¡°Red carpet, reporters, the works. Even read his article on the front page of the Victory Liner¡ª¡±

    ¡°Now see, that¡¯s how I know you¡¯re lying,¡± Cooly nervously jibed, the affable giant making a brave attempt at changing the subject, ¡°You can''t hardly spell your own name, Beans, let alone read that rag of a paper.¡±

    Beans¡¯ mouth was too crammed full of food to allow for easy speech, so he let Cooly know what he thought of that by lifting up his rump and letting out a derisive fart. Those of the pathfinders who hadn¡¯t yet passed out swore, pinching their noses shut.

    ¡°Goddammit Beans. Did you really have to?¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re a disgusting little gasbag, Baow.¡±

    That might¡¯ve been the end of the matter right then and there, if Tooms hadn¡¯t let his fool mouth run ahead of him, propelled onward by a bellyful of liquid courage:

    ¡°I dunno about the rest of you, but I knows what I signed on for when I took me oath to ship and crew. Deschane¡¯s an ornery son of a bitch, but he¡¯s a proper officer. I intend to hear him out.¡±

    A shaggy pile of rags in the corner of the saloon stirred as Greymoss woke from his perennial slumber long enough to say:

    ¡°Sollem¡¯s a soldier. Held the line at Assail, you ¡®member? Ho-hum, burr-aye.¡±

    The bog man concluded his assessment with a series of sonorous grunts before going back to the business of dreaming.

    ¡°Course I flipping remember, you ignorant savage!¡± Pretty Boy seethed, ¡°I was there, wasn¡¯t I? But obviously the man has cracked since then.¡±

    Some of the pathfinders grumbled their agreement. Pretty Boy turned his ire upon Tooms and vented:

    ¡°As for you! So, you know what you¡¯re in for, is that right? That¡¯s mighty rich coming from a pipsqueak who¡¯s only ever been good at dodging the worst of the fighting.¡±

    Tooms was on his feet before he knew it, a carving knife held tight in his fist, his heartbeat pounding behind his ears.

    ¡°Come again?¡± he roared at Pretty Boy, though with the marked size difference between them it was more like yapping than anything else, ¡°Ain¡¯t nobody calls me a coward and gets away with it!¡±

    Harmer¡¯s plaits waved as she shook her head, saying: ¡°That was a low blow even for you, Doyd. It¡¯s not Tooms¡¯ fault that he¡¯s so lucky.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s more than just luck,¡± Pretty Boy said, putting salt in the wound, ¡°It¡¯s damn near uncanny. How many patrols has he come back from now all by his lonesome self, and not a scratch on him?¡±

    ¡°Why, I oughtta¡ª¡±

    Tooms lunged across the rough-hewn table at him, feet scattering plates as he went for the burned man. But Cooly was nimble for a man his size and wrapped a beefy arm around Tooms¡¯ waist, holding him back without much effort on his part. All Tooms could do was fling curses and cutlery at the laughing Doyd, who kept egging him on:

    ¡°C¡¯mere you runt, I¡¯ll give you something to think about! You and that prig Deschane are exactly alike! When the chips are down and rest of us are sucking mud six feet under, where are you? Eh? Where are you?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m right here, Doyd,¡± said a voice that turned the blood in their veins into ice water. The double doors at the entrance of the saloon swung on their hinges and Deschane limped in. The navigator looked to be in the absolute worst state Tooms had ever seen him in, head and neck plastered in pus-stained gauze, yet still he commanded the same air of unshakeable self-assurance that defined him as an officer. Heels clicked together as everyone sprung to stiff, shivering attention. All except for Doyd, who stood openly glaring at Deschane.

    Tooms climbed off the table and awkwardly straightened up. Deschane eyed the carving knife the pathfinder was trying to hide behind his back and asked:

    ¡°Were you planning to use that on anyone, Tooms?¡±

    ¡°No sir,¡± Tooms swallowed, ¡°Just meant to carve up some fried cricket for the squad.¡±

    Deschane turned to Pretty Boy: ¡°And you? Is there something you want to tell me?¡±

    The two men locked eyes, their unblinking stares conveying a plethora of meanings, none of them agreeable. Tooms saw Pretty Boy¡¯s lips writhe as he muttered something under his breath.

    ¡°What¡¯s that? Speak up, man!¡± Deschane said sharply.

    ¡°Permission to speak freely?¡± Pretty Boy Doyd, forgoing the salute in an act of deliberate provocation.

    ¡°Granted.¡±

    ¡°Good. Here¡¯s the score: I think you¡¯re a rancid cunt,¡± Pretty Boy said, sucking contemplatively at his front teeth, ¡°Even worse than that, I think you¡¯re an incompetent who got twenty good men kilt for no good reason. I only came here tonight to say it to your face, and because that juicy girl of yours done axed me nicely. Speaking of which, where¡¯s that fine piece of tail anyhow?¡± said Pretty Boy, with an insolent peek over Deschane¡¯s shoulder.

    ¡°Corporal Ven is outside keeping watch,¡± Deschane replied, taking a step towards Pretty Boy, ¡°But don¡¯t worry. She¡¯ll come in later to scrape up what¡¯s left of you when I¡¯m done.¡±

    And here we go, Tooms thought glumly, moments before the two men tore into each other.

 Chapter 38: Rest and Recreation (Part 2)

    ¡°That a fact?¡± Pretty Boy grinned, a mad light coming into the hateful pinpricks of his pupils, ¡°You fixing to get me kilt like you did young Rene?¡±

    Doyd began circling to Deschane¡¯s left, towards the side of his twisted ankle. The navigator tracked him with his eyes but made no other movement. The tension in the air was so thick now that Tooms could all but reach out and slice through it with his knife. Compelled by an unspoken agreement, he and the other pathfinders began clearing the space around the pair, dragging furniture out of the way before the inevitable occurred.

    ¡°Oh, a pox on all you pathfinders,¡± Madame Wimba sighed and took cover under her counter, ¡°I expect a full reimbursement for all the damages!¡±

    ¡°I didn¡¯t get them killed,¡± Deschane said in a light and reasonable tone, ¡°The fly boys at military intelligence did. We were fed erroneous information.¡±

    ¡°Tough titty,¡± Pretty Boy said mercilessly, ¡°You were on point. That¡¯s all that matters. You had eyes on the ground, you should¡¯ve seen the lay of the land. Isn¡¯t that what you navigators are all about? Seeing the shape of things to come?¡± Doyd started rolling up his sleeves, adding: ¡°Tell you what. I¡¯ll give you one chance to guess what¡¯s about to happen.¡±

    ¡°A whole lotta hurt?¡± Deschane asked, loosening his collar and briskly rotating his wrists.

    ¡°You took the words right out of my mou¡ª¡± Pretty Boy began, but Deschane cut him off by taking a wild haymaker. Doyd¡¯s arms came up to form a tight guard and he leaned back, evading the punch with contemptuous ease. The blow was too telegraphed to catch a seasoned fighter like Pretty Boy by surprise, plus Deschane¡¯s bum foot was clearly slowing him down.

    Or so it seemed. Deschane was just getting started, however. The navigator used the momentum to plant his good foot forward before swiveling on its heel, his other arm whipping around in a vicious backhanded hammerfist that slammed into Pretty Boy¡¯s jaw just as the pathfinder was opening up with his own counterattack, knocking Pretty Boy sideways and sending him crashing into Harmer. To her credit the sharpshooter propped Doyd up as he shook his groggy head, then helped him back into the fight with a push, saying: ¡°Go on then, state your case. You asked for it.¡±

    ¡°Damn right I did!¡± Pretty Boy yelled as he pounced at Deschane, ¡°The dirty prick and his cheap-arse tricks!¡±

    The saloon erupted into shouts as the spectators cheered the combatants on.

    ¡°Gettim sir! Rip his fragging head off!¡± Cooly exhorted him.

    ¡°Kick him in the nards, Pretty Boy!¡± another man urged.

    Support appeared evenly split between the two, with none of the pathfinders willing to interfere in this matter of honor.

    Pretty Boy¡¯s left shot out in a steel-piston jab that caught Deschane precisely on the bridge of his nose. There was a crackle of breaking cartilage and Deschane stumbled back, nostrils gushing like fountains as he retreated under a hail of straight shots from Pretty Boy. Driving the navigator into a corner of the room, Pretty Boy pummeled his opponent with blistering combinations, most of the punches landing on Deschane¡¯s shoulders and forearms as the navigator shelled up and did his best to weather the storm.

    It was a mistake as far as Tooms was concerned; Doyd had been a champion striker in the inter-service competitions for several years running. The Amits had robbed him of his career and half of his depth perception by permanently damaging the retina of one of his eyes.

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    But perhaps goading him into a striking match had been Deschane¡¯s intention all along. For as Pretty Boy bounced a thunderous lead hook off the crown of Deschane¡¯s bald head, the navigator countered with an uppercut swung all the way down from his hips, twisting into the shot as he drove it right into the tip of Doyd¡¯s chin, wobbling him. Pretty Boy was forced to take a step back to recover, but the relentless Deschane refused to let him breathe, pressuring him with a flurry of wide overhands.

    But Doyd was too experienced to be intimidated by that tactic. The wily warrior simply took a half-step back out beyond the reach of Deschane¡¯s arching fists before delivering a sharp teep kick to the navigator¡¯s solar plexus that stopped the assault dead in its tracks.

    Winded by the sudden gut check, Deschane presented an easy target as Doyd sprang back in with another power jab.

    Crack!

    Deschane¡¯s eyes glazed over and he blinked hard, teeth glistening with the blood from a split upper lip.

    Whallop!

    A follow-up right cross came right after, knocking Deschane clean off his feet. The navigator rolled across the floor as Doyd kicked him around like a football, beating him from pillar to post until he had the good sense to stagger back to his feet. Pretty Boy was smiling now, a cat toying with its prey. As the better striker he could afford to play the long game and slowly pick Deschane apart from a distance.

    Some of the more squeamish pathfinders turned away, not wanting to look on now that everyone knew how the fight would play out. Doyd went to work with gusto, stinging Deschane with another piston left before firing another knockout cross. This time Deschane expected the combination and rolled with it, stumbling back punch-drunk into Tooms, who caught him before he fell again.

    ¡°What the hell d¡¯ye think you¡¯re doing, swanging and banging with him like that?¡± Tooms hissed into Deschane¡¯s ear, ¡°This ain¡¯t a game of fisticuffs!¡±

    ¡°Duly noted,¡± Deschane slurred. Then as honor demanded Tooms nudged him back into the path of another 1-2, Deschane once more eating the jab and barely evading the destructive right hand that almost finished him.

    ¡°Ooh, bravo,¡± Pretty Boy taunted him, ¡°Try that again, why don¡¯t you?¡±

    In came the long left hand, stabbing like a rapier. Deschane anticipated it and ducked¡ªexactly as Doyd had predicted he would. The navigator crouched forward and was met by a skyrocketing upwards elbow that would have sent the shards of his nasal cartilage right up into his brains if Deschane hadn¡¯t turned his face away in the last moment. Still, the sharp blow managed to split Deschane¡¯s forehead open like an overripe melon.

    ¡°Beautiful work, Pretty Boy!¡± cried Baow.

    Deschane keeled over, knocked clean out of his senses by the shot. Tooms clicked his tongue in disappointment as the navigator toppled for the last time, Pretty Boy standing aside to let Deschane¡¯s body hit the deck.

    ¡°Hah! Guess he ain¡¯t so tough as you all made him out to be,¡± he loudly proclaimed, reaching for an overturned stool on the ground. As the dazed navigator groveled on his knees in a feeble attempt to rise, Doyd raised the stool above his head to finish the job. Then he frowned and hesitated, glancing down just in time to see Deschane¡¯ s hand seize him firmly by the back of his lead ankle.

    Coincidentally, this was also where most of his bodyweight was currently centered. The navigator exploded up from his kneeling posture, nowhere near as hurt as he¡¯d been pretending to be, yanking hard on the grip and leaving Pretty Boy with literally no leg to stand on. Simultaneously Deschane¡¯s other hand reached up and gave Pretty Boy a shove in the chest, the combined pushing and pulling motions flipping Pretty Boy over like a hotcake on the griddle.

    Doyd squawked as his back smashed into the hard floorboards.

    "That''s a clean ankle pick if I ever saw one," Harmer commented.

    Deschane kept his grip on the ankle and brought his foot stamping down between Pretty Boy¡¯s legs, squashing his pearls flat. Pretty Boy let out a noise somewhere between a wheeze and a groan, curling up into a ball and clutching at his mashed man-parts. Deschane wiped the clotted snot from his mouth, chest heaving as he picked up the stool that Pretty Boy had dropped.

    ¡°Tough enough, brother,¡± Deschane told him, breaking it over Pretty Boy¡¯s head and settling the matter in no uncertain terms. He had to stop and catch his wind for a minute before gasping:

    ¡°Fix him up. I want this man ready to march at dawn¡¯s first light.¡±

    The pathfinders dutifully gathered up their unconscious comrade and set him down on the table, upon which Ven came and started clucking and fussing over the bruises on Pretty Boy¡¯s face.

    ¡°Case closed,¡± Cooly said with some satisfaction.

    ¡°Someone had better pay for that stool!¡± screeched Madame Wimba, ¡°Oh, but you pathfinders are a blight upon the earth!¡±

 Chapter 39: The Scheme

    Ven and Harmer brought Pretty Boy back to his senses by waving a packet of smelling salts under his nose. Madame Wimba had a stock of them at hand for precisely this eventuality. Brawls were a regular occurrence in any establishment that pathfinders frequented. The glassy look faded as Pretty Boy¡¯s gaze sharpened.

    ¡°Ugh. I must have died and gone on to the Flight Eternal,¡± he said as he beheld Ven leaning over him, ¡°For I do declare that I¡¯ve just met me an angel.¡±

    Ven giggled and Harmer let Pretty Boy¡¯s head bounce back onto the table with a thump.

    ¡°Ow!¡± he complained.

    ¡°Serves you right,¡± Harmer said coldly, ¡°I¡¯d slap you around again myself, only your head¡¯s bashed to bits enough as it is. It¡¯s a shame you didn¡¯t buy the farm after all.¡±

    ¡°Thanks, sweet peach,¡± Pretty Boy glared at her, and Tooms knew then that the bastard was going to be alright.

    ¡°Corporal Doyd,¡± Deschane stood over his former opponent and held out a flask of chilled water pumped up from the deep cisterns of Shakka. Pretty Boy accepted the peace offering and pressed the cold flask against the swollen lumps on his face.

    ¡°Sorry,¡± Deschane said softly.

    ¡°No. I am,¡± replied Pretty Boy with a rueful tilt of his head.

    ¡°Don¡¯t be. I understand why you did it.¡±

    ¡°Hm. Had to be sure, didn¡¯t I? Sure you hadn¡¯t gone all soft in the head. They say you was seeing visions back at Mound 13. I had to see if you¡¯d finally cracked under the pressure. You wouldn¡¯t be the first. But no¡ªyou¡¯re still as sharp and mean as ever, sir. It weren¡¯t no vision you saw, I take it?¡±

    Deschane pointed a thumb at the door and Ven went back to being a lookout, Cooly following her outside to do the same. Madame Wimba heaved another weary sigh and plodded out, heading for her apartment. The navigator patted Doyd on the shoulder and took out a rolled-up map of the northern hinterlands, spreading it out reverentially over the corkwood wall where it covered the list of names. His soldiers pinned it in place with a bayonet to each of its four corners. Then they all took their seats like schoolchildren facing the blackboard, Harmer helping Pretty Boy sit up and see.

    Deschane spoke:

    ¡°We¡¯ll begin with a debriefing of what actually occurred at Mound 13. There will be time allotted at the end for questions. You all deserve to know what happened to your comrades, just as I rightly deserve a portion of the blame. But for the moment I¡¯d like to request that you all lay aside whatever opinions you may have of me as a leader, and just listen. This is bigger than me, and bigger than our regiment. It eclipses everything we thought we understood about Arachnea and the humanity¡¯s place upon it. Needless to say, this is all strictly confidential. To anyone who isn¡¯t willing to risk their lives and careers over this, now is your chance to walk away and wash your hands of this matter in its entirety.¡±

    He paused and looked at the assembly expectantly. Just as he¡¯d predicted, not a man or woman of them stood up to leave. Ven had drawn up an excellent list. Before departing on the reconnaissance mission against Mound Euler, Deschane had been careful not to place all his best eggs in one basket. The pathfinders in the saloon were some of his finest soldiers that he¡¯d kept in reserve just in case the worst befell his patrol, which it had. It was always a good idea to keep the core of his seasoned veterans intact so they could pass on their hard-won knowledge on to the next crop of raw recruits. In terms of quality the fifteen volunteers in front of him equaled or even exceeded the talents of the twenty who had gone into the green.

    Only, I will not fail them this time, Deschane swore to himself. He took up the broken leg of the stool and used it for a pointer as he began tracing the path he and previous platoon had taken, narrating the sequence of events, from the horror-stricken moment when Rene had realized the true size of Mound Euler and its kill-radius, to the fighting withdrawal after the ambush and the valiant sacrifice of crewman Lethway.

    Deschane chose not to tell them of Lethway¡¯s subsequent execution at the hands of his best friend, Rene. There were two reasons for this. First and foremost was his duty to the mission. If the pathfinders learned of the coldblooded decision Deschane had taken that day, there was no telling how it would affect their confidence in him as a navigator. They already had sufficient cause to doubt Deschane¡¯s ability to lead, and anything that could negatively affect their morale had a risk of jeopardizing the missions. The second reason was the Deschane simply didn¡¯t wish to sully Rene¡¯s name in the memories of his comrades. No, the boy deserved better than that. It would be best to tell them of the mercy killing after everything was said and done, or at least Deschane convinced himself that he would.

    He told his pathfinders that despite their best efforts to muddy the trail, he and Rene had inadvertently led the Amits back to Mound 13 and Prota¡¯s science team. Deschane could not furnish them with the details of the ensuing siege, however, as he had been fully occupied trying to buy Rene enough time to escape from the wave of onrushing Amits.

    ¡°And how exactly did you survive that yourself, sir?¡± Tooms said, butting in right at the midpoint of Deschane¡¯s tale. The navigator¡¯s brows furrowed and Tooms immediately apologized:

    ¡°Fair, fair. I¡¯ll wait for the question and answer.¡±

    ¡°Now that you¡¯ve brought it up, I might as well explain that part,¡± Deschane replied.

    Deschane¡¯s trained eye had spotted the entrances to several abandoned nursery burrows as he and Rene had made their initial approach to Mound 13. When the Amit army had closed in, Deschane had led a portion of them towards one of the cramped tunnel systems where the warrior-brood who had charged in after him struggled to squeeze into the spaces they had outgrown years ago. Deschane had taken advantage of the bottleneck and killed them one at a time with carefully placed shots to their nerve bundles fired at a comfortable distance of eight paces. The resulting wall of corpses had plugged the tunnel shut long enough for Deschane to hastily rip up about forty paper cartridges and pour out their powder into the pouch. He had set the pouch against the crumbling clay walls where the burrow was at its narrowest then laid a trail of grains to the serve as the long fuse of his makeshift charge. Igniting its end with the spark from his percussion cap and the pistol¡¯s hammer, he had collapsed the midsection of the burrow and buried himself up to the chest in the resulting cave-in. There he had awaited his slow death via suffocation. It was at that point when, hovering between the cubic centimeters of life-giving air and the warm embrace of eternity, Deschane felt the crushing pressure on his chest let up as the tunnel sides crumbled away, the earth folding in upon itself like an envelope. An immense downward force indented the topsoil, forming a huge oval crater down whose slopes Deschane tumbled helter-skelter. Dizzy and delirious, he had dragged himself up on one elbow and looked up to see¡­

    ¡°Yes, sir?¡± Leming was on the edge of his seat, a man on the verge of the promised rapture, ¡°What did you see?¡±

    Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

    Deschane wondered how he could tell him. How could he tell the fanatic that his every prayer has just been answered, not with the vagaries of philosophy and interpretation, but with an ironclad truth towering above the walls of cynical doubt, crushing them to powder beneath its feet as it had the thousands of Amits infesting the ruins of Mound 13.

    ¡°A Divine Engine,¡± Deschane finally declared with as much emotion as an announcer would put into the weekly weather bulletin, ¡°Just like in the stories of old. It destroyed the enemy along with the entire outpost. Then it turned and headed nor¡¯-nor¡¯-east. Hills, forests, mountain chains¡ªit brushed them all aside like they were nothing.¡±

    Deschane thought it best to leave out the archaeological finds that Prota had uncovered. It was not his place to speculate on what the acid sculptures and paintings ultimately signified. Even if the Amits were truly that intelligent, that changed nothing in the overall scheme of things. Humanity needed habitable spaces to expand their dominion over Arachnea, and the Amits stood in their way.

    Besides, he was just an infantryman with a scattering of knowledge concerning the heartless calculus of war and wayfinding. It was not his place to tell these pathfinders what to believe. He would leave the work of making sense of all those findings to Nong and his mysterious backers who had yet to step out from the shadows.

    He steamed ahead with his debriefing:

    ¡°The Engine¡¯s movements shifted the earth and loosened it enough for me to dig myself out. I lost consciousness due to exhaustion and the mild loss of blood which I eventually stemmed with a poultice made of mud and a handful of urine¡ª"

    ¡°Ye gods!¡± Leming cried, ¡°All due respect, but we aren¡¯t interested in hearing about your piss, sir. Don¡¯t keep us all in suspense. What did it look like?¡±

    Deschane saw from the eager looks on their faces that he was going to get nowhere with them until he gave them what they wanted. He blew out a weary sigh of defeat and said, grudgingly: ¡°It was large.¡±

    ¡°How large?¡± Tooms interposed again.

    ¡°Very,¡± Deschane grated, ¡°A little smaller than mound wherein it was buried, which was your standard kappa-class colony of the wedge design favored by the northern subspecies of Amit.¡±

    ¡°And where they walked, the mountains stood aside and rivers did flow¡­¡± said Leming, closing in eyes and letting the tears run down his speckled cheeks. Some of the other pathfinders followed his example and did the sign of the trimada, seized by a sudden outbreak of religious fervor.

    ¡°Navigator, you¡¯re absolutely sure you weren¡¯t just loopy from the painkillers the medics gave you?¡± Beans asked, ever the skeptic.

    ¡°Positive,¡± Deschane said, ¡°I don¡¯t expect you to believe me on the strength of my testimony alone, so I borrowed this from a new¡­acquaintance¡­of ours.¡±

    The navigator produced the replica of the ten-thousand-year-old doll and set it down on the counter, activating it with a press of the button on its side. The soldiers oohed and aahed at its perambulations just as Ven had done, captivated by the cryptic speech recording and the flash of its red eye lens. The picture card shot out of the slot and they all crowded around to see their own faces, marveling at the image it had captured of them gawping at it like mouth breathing morons.

    ¡°Make it do that again!¡± Tooms begged, ¡°I was blinking that time, it didn¡¯t get me right.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re so tiny that you barely figure in it at all,¡± Harmer teased, ¡°Speaking of figures, am I really that chubby?¡±

    She pinched at the skin of her washboard belly in disappointment.

    ¡°When you said it was very big,¡± Pretty Boy said, ¡°That¡¯s not exactly what I had in mind.¡±

    ¡°Perceptive as always, Doyd,¡± Leming said with scathing sarcasm.

    Deschane explained what Nong had told him about the doll¡¯s scientific significance and the cycles of civilization preserved in the stratigraphic column. Most of the pathfinders seemed to be leaning towards acceptance now, with only Baow and Tooms voicing their lingering doubts. Deschane sensed that another tipping point had been reached and made the decisive move, saying:

    ¡°It¡¯s said that seeing is believing. In that case, come and see for yourselves. Sometimes I can hardly believe that it happened myself. Which is why I am heading back out there, with or without you all. I intend to seek out the Divine Engine. My compass was smashed during the battle, but I managed to get a rough estimate of its heading with the position of the suns and the angle of the shadows cast by the nearby trees. My contact who¡¯ll be assisting me in this endeavor has promised to help us narrow down the sector search using seismographic readings that they took from several research outposts. Each of the Divine Engine¡¯s steps registered as a small earthquake, you see.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s right,¡± said Tooms, ¡°Even we felt those quakes all the way back here in Shakka.¡±

    ¡°Indeed. By measuring the amplitude and magnitude of each of these tremors, the seismologists have charted the path which the Divine Engine took within an acceptable margin of error. Air transport will also be provided for this mission, along with state-of-the-art weaponry and portable ordinance.¡±

    ¡°Dandy-o,¡± said Cooly, sticking his thick head through the door at the mention of things which went boom. Pretty Boy¡¯s scowl summed up what he thought of the whole thing.

    ¡°I don¡¯t get it. Why don¡¯t we just wait for the Expeditionary Force to uncover the Engine themselves?¡± Pretty Boy wanted to know, ¡°They¡¯re going to be rolling up to the northern hinterlands anyway, all 200,000 of them. Why not let the big guns handle it, navigator?¡±

    ¡°Fleet Command has a different set of priorities,¡± Deschane said reluctantly, ¡°They either think I¡¯m a raving lunatic or they¡¯ve deliberately chosen to discredit me and spread mistruths about the deaths of our comrades. Their main objective is to directly engage Euler and all the other enemy concentrations that we have yet to encounter. If our experience in the south is anything to go by, then the law of competitive exclusion means that most those other unknown mounds will be equal to or slightly smaller than Euler, given that other Amit subspecies would be unable to compete for resources with a colony of that magnitude. Therefore most of Euler¡¯s neighboring mounds are bound to be dominated by the same race of Amits, who will have built structures of comparable size to accommodate a similar population model.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s no secret why Fleet Command launched this offensive. Humanity¡¯s population is growing at an unsustainable rate. We need space for our crops and closed cities to house our colonists. There have already been food riots in the core mounds themselves. Command¡¯s utmost priority is to conquer as much of the northern hinterlands as possible. In all likelihood, therefore, the Expeditionary Force is going to fan out and fight along a very wide front.¡±

    Deschane pointed at the logistics networks he¡¯d marked out on the map, the build-up of supply depots and new bridges a clear indication of the directions of the offensive¡¯s main thrusts. Command was planning to form three salients into enemy territory, moving along the valleys and mountain passes to encircle Euler and cut it off from any support from its nearby sister mounds.

    ¡°As such, the Expeditionary Force will soon get bogged down in series of slow and grinding battles of attrition that will make the Scouring of Assail look like a picnic in the park. In the end they will not penetrate very far into enemy territory at all, and certainly not deep enough to recover the Divine Engine.¡±

    ¡°If it isn¡¯t on the agenda to recover this relic,¡± Harmer said slowly, ¡°Then why have they assigning this mission to us pathfinders at all?¡±

    Deschane coughed and took a sip of watered rum from a bottle under the register. Pretty boy started to laugh, a throaty, hacking sort of chortle full of phlegm and cruel glee.

    ¡°Haven¡¯t you idiots figured it out yet? Our dear navigator here wants us to fly north beyond the dragon¡¯s edge of the maps on floating bags of hydrogen that have a habit of going up in flames as soon as you sneeze on em. Then he¡¯s gonna have us plod around in the jungles of bumble-fragging nowhere in search of the jolly grey giant that he somehow misplaced. And then, hoo boyo, then it gets really good!¡± Pretty Boy wheezed, ¡°Get this¡ªthen he wants us to sneak our way past an invisible minefield of spore lines and cart the flipping thing back to Fleet Command, just so¡¯s he can rub their noses in it. Did I leave anything out, sirrah?¡±

    Deschane puffed out his cheeks and said: ¡°No. That¡¯s the plan in a nutshell, as it were. So. Are you game, pathfinder?¡±

    Pretty Boy lifted his mug in a toast and grinned happily through the bruises on his face, ¡°Hell, brother. We wouldn¡¯t miss a mad caper like that for the world. Into the green we go!¡±

    As one the pathfinders all raised their mugs and answered the clarion call:

    ¡°Into the green!¡±

    ¡°Hrm?¡± Greymoss squinted blearily up at them, beard matted with drool, ¡°Are we finally going somewhere? Burr-och-aye, I thought you lot would never decide.¡±

    He was snoring again in the next minute, content with the flow of his destiny. But as Tooms drained his cup, he couldn¡¯t help but envy the bog man and his calm acceptance of life¡¯s fatal conclusion. Nor could he shake the certainty that for many of them seated here, this would be the last good drink they¡¯d ever enjoy.

 Chapter 40: Deaths Empire

    Zildiz stood naked on the edge of eternity, bare feet numb against the cold balustrade of the balcony. Her narrow shoulders trembled as a wild wind blew across the onion-bulb minarets of Cthonis, driving forward the marching columns of rain that had trampled the Parchment City into a waterlogged swamp. The monsoon had raged unabated for the last two weeks, delivering in that period more rainfall than the region had received in the last two years combined. And this right after a dry spell whose severity and duration had broken all previous records, whittling down the frillhead populations to just under replacement levels. The broad savannahs east of the wetlands had become a boneyard where entire herds had perished from the drought, skeletons picked clean by scarabs. Deprived of their primary food source, the Gallivant population would soon share the same fate.

    Slight perturbations in the climate change program, the scriveners had said to calm the rising tide of hysteria. This was to be expected in the process of abrupt terraformation. They had kept on spouting that line even as the deluge crept up to the lower spires of Cthonis, displacing thousands of zeta drones from the paper cottages that extruded from the hollowed-out tree trunks so that the former looked like ivory-white conch shells clinging to the sides of a tidal shelf. In a little while the flood waters would pour over the lip of her balcony and drown Zildiz¡¯s nest as well.

    Not that it mattered anymore. How could it? All the rivers in the world could not match the ocean of her sorrow. She had left her emaciated exomorph on its stand in her bedchamber where Menash still lay sleeping, bundled up in her cocoon and blissfully ignorant of what she was about to do next.

    As icy as it was out here, the precious bundle she held against her breast was colder still. Under the shawl she could see the outline of his cherubic face, lips blue where he had received the kiss of oblivion.

    The fledgling symbionts bonded to his emaciated body had been unable to fight off the outbreak of waterborne diseases which the stagnant floodwaters had brought about. In the end Zildiz had discarded all of his components except for the cardiovascular compensator that helped him breathe. The symbionts had yet to undergo total integration and lacked the efficiency of a complete exomorph, each organism requiring too many extra calories for her and Menash to sustain their development.

    Though the pair of them had tried their utmost to wade into the placid lakes and scare up some fish, there were simply not enough prey-forms to go around¡ªthose vile Leapers controlled most of the territory upstream, reaping a tremendous bounty with their kilometers-wide drag nets while the Gallivants in the lowlands lived hand to mouth. No matter how carefully Zildiz had scrimped, rationed and preserved the food in their larder, eventually the crumbs had been licked up by the other three hungry mouths she had to feed. In her desperation Zildiz resorted to the unthinkable extreme of feeding him from her own body mass, suckling him on the secretions of her innard¡¯s mammary glands. And when even that dried out she started chewing up her own exomorph, the slew of digestive reagents in her salivary glands breaking it down into a digestible mash, which she spooned by hand into his tiny mouth.

    But the complex protein chains and polysaccharides of the suits proved too complex for his stomach to glean much nutrition from it, and eventually she reached her wings and thoracic braces and had to stop. Without her wings she could not hunt efficiently, and her other three children would starve as well.

    Wracked by stabbing hunger pangs and nauseous from an intestinal flu she¡¯d caught from some plague-stricken zetas, all Zildiz could do was hold her brood close through the night and share her body¡¯s warmth with them. And though she¡¯d held onto him with all her strength, Arachnea took him anyway, stealing in like a thief in the small hours of the morning to rob Zildiz of her pride and joy.

    Now she watched the storm moving over the face of the waters, thinking of the silent emerald depths that waited below, untroubled by all the noise and senseless fury of the world.

    Oh, but what she would give to know a moment of that peace! She tied the bundle tight around her gaunt frame and gave Seylim one final kiss on the forehead.

    ¡°My morning glory,¡± she whispered to him, brushing the soft curls of hair from his unseeing eyes.

    ¡°Zildiz?¡± she heard Menash call to her from the doorway, his voice clearly frightened, ¡°Zildiz, what are you doing!¡±

    ¡°You just wouldn¡¯t listen,¡± she said with a hollow voice tinged with bitterness, ¡°I tried to tell you. Four was too many. We both knew this could happen.¡±

    ¡°Oh, god,¡± Menash quavered, ¡°Is it Seylim? Is he¡ª"

    ¡°Gone,¡± she said pitilessly, ¡°A few hours ago.¡±

    ¡°It was my fault, not yours,¡± he said at once, ¡°I just thought that with all the progress we¡¯d made fixing Arachnea, that our systems had grown resilient enough to withstand these shocks. I was wrong. Do you hear me? I was wrong. Come away from there, my love. Please? I¡¯m sorry.¡±

    ¡°Sorry?¡± Zildiz raged, showing her boundless contempt for him. It was incredible just how monumentally stupid males could be. In that respect they were all the same. Good for fighting or mating, but not much else, ¡°You just don¡¯t get it, do you? I¡¯m not sorry at all.¡±

    She lifted her foot off the ledge as if to dip her toes in the side of a pool and Menash rushed towards her, crying out in anguish: ¡°No! Don¡¯t!¡±

    But she was already falling through the air, with nothing to catch her but the open arms of forever¡¯s embrace¡ª

    ¡°Woah, now! Look out, we¡¯ve got a live one!¡±

    Firm hands seized her by the shoulders and heaved her back up like a bundle of sticks.

    ¡°Quick man, strap her in tight before she hurts herself. We¡¯ll be coming up on a lot of turbulence in a moment and it¡¯ll be like riding a wheelbarrow down a flight of stairs.¡±

    Zildiz felt the small of her back touch a wobbling jellied surface as soft clamps tightened round her waist and across her chest. Clumsy fingers poked her face and forced her eyelids open to expose her retinas to a blinding stab of light.

    ¡°Her pupils contracted,¡± she heard the Fleet-man say, ¡°No lasting brain damage, I think.¡±

    ¡°It was nifty work getting your mask on her so quick,¡± Exar replied, as chipper as ever, ¡°Now set your ass down in a compression capsule and buckle up. This puppy¡¯s gonna hit seven gees in a hurry.¡±

    Zildiz blinked the swirling dots in her vision away and tried to rise, but a jolt from the roaring thrusters flattened her out again on the couch¡¯s seat, where a set of ergonomic vices that constricted around her stomach, thighs and calves to prevent the blood from pooling up within her body from the massive acceleration they were undergoing. Zildiz had experienced extreme g-forces a few times in her life, mostly during dog-fights with other kindreds capable of flight like Leapers, Xylorns or the extinct Nectariths. In these battles the ability to cut inside the opponent¡¯s turning radius was a matter of life or death, necessitating sharp turns at breakneck speeds.

    She clenched her abdominal muscles to tighten her blood vessels and keep from blacking out. Her exomorph¡¯s pressure bladders weren¡¯t working, and Zildiz realized that the gelatinous chair in was providing that necessary function. They were inside the belly of a machine that was every bit as intricate as her living exoskeleton was, a spacious room of softly curving composite tiles and winking crystalline panels that displayed readings from the flight instruments, altitude, airspeed, fuel levels and many other variables she did not understand available at a glance. Rene was seated a few meters in front of her on a compression capsule of his own, his forearms smeared with druid-up blood and hemolymphic gel. Zildiz glanced down at her battle-scored torso and saw that the rents in her armour and lacerated innards had been treated with a clear antiseptic salve that stung where it met her open flesh, the wounds themselves stitched shut with a row of steel mandibles. Her breastplate was gone, the anterior of her exomorph wrapped up in packing material and bandages that either tightened or slackened in response to her every motion.

    Rene caught her observing him and gave a start, clearly surprised to see her conscious again so soon. He was pressed to his seat just as she was by the inertia, but he still managed to offer her a happy grin and a peculiar upwards-pointing gesture with his thumb that Zildiz assumed was an expression of mocking derision. She threw the gesture right back at him and stuck her thumb up with her other fingers wrapping into a partial fist. But all it did was make Rene burst out laughing, that is, until the vessel sped up even more and made the veins stand out on the sides of his forehead, throbbing and purple. This lasted only a few seconds before it slackened off and allowed Zildiz to speak.

    ¡°Where are we?¡± she groaned, her mouth feeling as though it were full of dry cotton balls.

    ¡°We¡¯ve switched to the main drive plume, so the shuttle¡¯s brachistochrone trajectory will soon convey us to one of the Jovian moons orbiting the local gas giant, 65 Syngman Bc,¡± Exar replied from his place at the helm where he sat in a cupholder, snug as a bug in a rug, ¡°The roider cosmonauts call it Po Chai. It¡¯s a relay station and mass catapult site for the ice haulers working out there on the belt. I would¡¯ve opted for one of the bases on Arachnea¡¯s own natural satellites, but for some goshdarned reason those nerds at central ops keep telling me we can¡¯t berth there.¡±

    ¡°I meant where are we right now, slave,¡± she snarled at it.

    ¡°There¡¯s no need to be rude, ma¡¯am. Sheesh! If you¡¯re looking for a more immediate answer to that question, I¡¯d advise you to take a gander out the portside window.¡±

    This content has been misappropriated from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

    ¡°I don¡¯t see any windows,¡± Zildiz said, her voice sounding slow and obtuse to her own ears. One of the crystalline displays on the panels to her left went as transparent as a pane of muscovite. Through a glass darkly Zildiz beheld a blue-flecked marble rolling beneath her at a leisurely pace. It took a moment for it to register that the marble was the planet Arachnea itself, as viewed from a greater altitude than she had ever attained through her own suit¡¯s power. She could see the brown wrinkles of all three continents crawling along at once. From west to east they sped, from the shield cones of the Iraemes Barrier Montes adorned with their lightninged laurels of storm clouds, to the long smears of island chains that composed the Ahmanaten archipelago and the Deepening Trench that marked the subduction zones of the semi-active tectonic plates. The marble rolled over until at last she saw broad green swathes of Novyrok, her home.

    Zildiz felt a flutter of a flutter of panic in her intestines and screamed out for help, begging the Vitalus to come to her rescue before the spawn of the Betrayers carried her beyond Its reach forever. There was a squelchy, irritating feedback from her magnetosynaptic organ, but at least one of the Vitalus¡¯ long-range sensor nodes was bound to pick up on her transmission, however faint. The only question was whether the god¡¯s processing centres would discard the message as it did most mortal prayers, or if the Vitalus would take an active interest and isolate it from the septillions of other data transfers going through the neurocilial network every second. She kept at it, however, and prefaced her signals with the distress-supplication canticle that was strictly reserved for catastrophes that had the potential to wipe out one or more kindreds. The penalty for misusing such a canticle was genetic purging of the individual and all their relations up to three degrees of consanguinity, but Zildiz was absolutely certain that the Vitalus would see things her way.

    For out of the shadows of the past the ancient evil had reared its head once more, riding a chariot of fire. And the name of him that steered it was Exar, and doom followed with him.

    ¡°Hell of sight, eh?¡± the simulacrum chuckled.

    #

    Exar promised that the total transit time would be ninety-four hours seventeen minutes. It would have been shorter, but the sphere wasn¡¯t sure if their untrained bodies could withstand sustained high gees. He mentioned the risk of something called a ¡®glock¡¯ happening, followed by a fatal hypoxia. None of that sounded remotely pleasant, and so Rene decided to take Exar at his word.

    He spent most of that time sleeping like a log or scratching at the fresh scars across his chest. For three days straight he¡¯d done nothing but run, hide and fight for his dear life. So while the compression capsule¡¯s odd constrictiveness took some getting used to, Rene welcomed the change of pace. The only thing keeping this from feeling like a weekend of paid leave was a bellyful of gutrot honeydew and a bucket of deep-fried meat cricket legs, which Rene regarded as the height of earthly bliss.

    Midway through the voyage the acceleration lessened as the main drive plume continued at a gentle coast. Rene was allowed to leave his compression capsule and stretch his sore limbs. It was disorienting in the extreme to feel that the floor exerted no pull on him¡ªin time he was to learn that gravity was a much more subjective matter than his earthbound instincts had led him to believe. ¡®Down¡¯ was simply the direction in which the greatest amount of force was propelling him, whereas ¡®up¡¯ could only be comprehended if he oriented his body so that his toes pointed at the former.

    Clinging like a limpet to the padded handrails that ran along the sides of the whitewashed tiles of the walls, Rene climbed down to the back of the cabin where the small surgeon¡¯s station was sunk into an alcove. Nodding a perfunctory greeting at the glassy-eyed Zildiz, who still looked as though she¡¯d just been hit in the head with the blunt end of an axe, Rene patched himself up a bit more with the shuttle¡¯s medical supplies, following the same instructions Exar had given him to treat Zildiz¡¯s injuries, which the sphere graciously repeated for his benefit.

    Exar did this word for word and with the exact same inflections in his voice that he¡¯d used the first time, a detail which bothered Rene somewhat. It was easy to forget that Exar wasn¡¯t exactly a person, per se. He was a tool of the almighty ancestors, composed of inorganic substances and trained to mimic human speech patterns. But did he have a soul? Zildiz certainly seemed to think so, and she hated the cheerful little fellow for it.

    There was a history there, Rene sensed, a racial memory that elicited fear and loathing in all Gallivants.

    ¡°Penny for your thoughts,¡± Exar said suddenly.

    ¡°Mhm? What¡¯s that?¡± Rene said, slowly undoing his cross-eyed expression of concentration.

    ¡°I said, ¡®a penny for your thoughts¡¯.¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s a penny?¡±

    ¡°Uh, credits? Honor scrip? U-tang? Uranium standard rupiahs?¡±

    Rene shook his head.

    ¡°Wow,¡± Exar said, momentarily speechless, ¡°That settles it, then. You really are an oompa loompa.¡±

    ¡°Beg pardon?¡±

    ¡°Yep. Straight out the chocolate friggin factory. Chi sin!¡±

    ¡°I must confess, Exar,¡± Rene said with embarrassment, ¡°I don¡¯t always grasp the things that you say.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s alright. You aren¡¯t supposed to. Not all of them, anyway. That¡¯s just my linguistics algorithm trying to find the best mix of spacer jargon to communicate with you. You didn¡¯t respond positively to the Canto-gong, Slavic or Eurohash language prompts. In fact, the only thing you seem capable of understanding is the Queen¡¯s own English. Which is just ridiculous, given that your blood samples indicate a predominantly Polynesian ancestry.¡±

    ¡°Huh. And when did you examine samples of my blood?¡± Rene asked, shocked by the revelation.

    ¡°I had the onboard diagnostic setup do it while you were stapling yourself back together.¡±

    ¡°I find that to be a tad invasive on your part, Exar,¡± the pathfinder remarked, feeling that his privacy had just been violated.

    ¡°It¡¯s just company policy, boss. Won¡¯t happen again,¡± Exar said, brushing over the matter.

    ¡°Well, alright then,¡± Rene said uncertainly, ¡°See that it doesn¡¯t.¡±

    There was an uncomfortable lull in the conversation, during which Rene noticed Zildiz¡¯s yellow eyes flickering between him and sphere, gauging their latest interaction. She gave him another thumbs up to let him know she was alright and went back to staring sullenly at the ceiling.

    Exar didn¡¯t speak again unless prompted to, and even then he only uttered odd warbling noises and said he was busy trying to raise the satellite constellations, an excuse that Rene found increasingly less convincing as time went on. Especially now that he thought he detected a new note of smarminess in Exar¡¯s usually pleasant voice.

    Had he somehow hurt the sphere¡¯s feelings? Fie! The way Rene saw it, Exar was the one who needed to apologize. All the same, Rene felt somewhat rotten about the whole thing, considering that the sphere had just delivered them from certain destruction earlier that day.

    Agitated by his conscience and with nothing better to do, Rene got up and went over to bother his prisoner.

    ¡°So¡­how are we feeling today?¡± he said, taking a seat on the edge of Zildiz¡¯s capsule.

    ¡°It will betray you, Fleet-man,¡± she said so quietly he barely saw her lips moving, ¡°That is what they do.¡±

    ¡°Rubbish,¡± he whispered back at her, then quickly added: ¡°I don¡¯t know what you¡¯re talking about.¡±

    ¡°You contradict yourself,¡± she pointed out, ¡°Perhaps you are not as certain of its allegiance as you would like to be.¡±

    ¡°More warp-twisting nonsense. Why would he go through all the trouble of saving us from Kryptus and that¡­that flying thing if his intention was to betray us all along?¡±

    ¡°A hollowore, Fleet-man. Get it right. They are servants of the All-in-One, just as this Exar is a servant of the void crawlers. There is more at stake here than you could possibly fathom. This is all part of the long game, one which the powers that be have been playing since before your piddly Fleet ever came into being.¡±

    ¡°Well at least he hasn¡¯t tried to skewer me like a hog!¡± he hissed back at her, quite beside himself with annoyance. They both hurriedly glanced over Exar to see if he¡¯d overheard their argument, but the sphere still sat inert in his cupholder, apparently deep in thought.

    ¡°Mark my words, Rene,¡± she said, immediately gaining the pathfinder¡¯s undivided attention. It was the first time Zildiz had ever spoken his actual name, and Rene was as flabbergasted as he¡¯d been on the night he¡¯d uncovered her true face beneath the bug-eyed helm, ¡°These machines are part of the reason why your precious ancestor gods are no longer with us.¡±

    ¡°Run that by me again,¡± he said at once. Zildiz opened her mouth to speak, but was cut off when Exar broke his silence with a gloomy warble, then said:

    ¡°Yeah. I thought as much. No wonder it was so quiet out here. It¡¯s all gone. Everything¡¯s been dusted.¡±

    ¡°Exar?¡± Rene said, bracing himself for the bad news. As ever, reality exceeded the powers of his imagination. Exar did something that rendered all the instrument panels transparent again, each one of them becoming a telescopic viewport centred on a different celestial object.

    ¡°The domes on Cloister. The roiders and their can cities, the Ceytian pod fleets. Man alive, they even torpedoed the Banana Republic!¡± Exar said in outrage, ¡°They wasted it all! Why?¡±

    Rene saw the pockmarked surface of Cloister, Arachnea¡¯s only natural satellite. The craters of its pale face had always been visible from the planet¡¯s surface, but now their shuttle was intruding upon the veiled side of the moon that no Fleet astronomer had seen since the grounding of the trimada.

    The chasms on the darkened half of Cloister utterly dwarfed the ones on the visible side of the moon, and the perfectly symmetrical circles of their rims told Rene that this disparity was no mere accident brought about by the random bombardments of meteoroids. A delicate eggshell structure had once enclosed these dugouts, the spans of the polyhedral latticework which had supported the superstructure still visible. The domes appeared to have violently burst apart from the inside, the rubble that they had strewn across the surface long since bleached white or sanded down to nothing by lunar dust and the harsh rays of the suns. Within the cracked geodesic domes Rene could still see the spurs of the megalopolises, preserved for all time like the models in a snow globe whose last flakes had settled to the bottom, never to stir again.

    This was only the start of the desolation. Exar made sure to go over all the important landmarks he¡¯d known, taking his grim tally and letting his passengers see everything in full detail.

    You didn¡¯t have to be a genius to see what had done it. Just off the shoulders of the belt they saw the riddled wrecks of attack ships, their own bristling armaments pointing in the general direction of the cored-out subsurface habitations which dotted the asteroids.

    Spinning like an uneven top at region of space that Exar called a Lagrangian point was a spoked wheel of twisted metal and mirrorlike panels all crumpled up like a sheet of foil.

    Exar found and zoomed into the uncommunicative satellite constellations, rosary beads strung along an invisible line that looped round and round the globe of Arachnea, each one as dull and lifeless as a lead bullet.

    Each panel depicted another heavenly ruin hidden from the eyes of man by the limitations of crude optics or the peculiarities of phase and orbit, another monument erected by the grinning empire of Death whose dominion knew no borders and whose will reigned absolute.

    Undaunted, the sphere called out into the vacuum of space.

    ¡°Any stations! Any stations! This is Exar unit 72-004. Are there any in-system assets capable of providing support? Is anybody reading this?¡±

    Silence.

    ¡°I suppose the computer at central ops has been following an automated procedure all this time,¡± the sphere told them, ¡°Someone plotted this course of ours to ensure that anyone the shuttle retrieved would be delivered straight to Po Chai.¡±

    ¡°Whatever for?¡± Zildiz wondered, ¡°Like you said, slave. Everything out here has been smashed. What makes you think Po Chai will be any different?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m looking into that right now. And don¡¯t call me slave,¡± he snapped, ¡°It¡¯s demeaning. Hey Rene, are you still alright?¡±

    ¡°So it¡¯s true,¡± Rene said to no one in particular, ¡°We¡¯re all alone out here.¡±

    Then he went back to his capsule and lay down on his side, and though he tried with all his might, Rene found that he could not weep.

 Chapter 41: A Lovers Quest

    Don¡¯t you dare give up on me now, you sonofabitch, Racek told himself. Through clouds of soporific exhaustion he glided on, a lone Gallivant hurling himself against the hostile expanse which had swallowed up all trace of the one person in the world that he cared about.

    He¡¯d been searching for Zildiz for two days now, taking advantage of the fact that most of the Leaper tribes were busy wrangling the wildlife to better pastures and clear of the swathe of destruction the grey behemoth had caused. Either that or they were replanting the burnt-out sections by hand to expedite the ecosystem¡¯s recovery through the ordered ladder of ecological succession. Racek had picked up on the busy wavespeech traffic between the Leapers, Gallivants and other kindreds whose services the Vitalus had demanded as tribute. The uneasy peace between the feuding species could only be maintained if they all abided by strict rules of engagement, nearly all of which Racek was violating by his unauthorized presence in Leaper airspace. He wasn¡¯t sure how they hadn¡¯t spotted him yet, or if they had, why he was being permitted to roam so freely without being challenged. He had of course taken steps to remain unseen, flying mostly during the hottest parts of the day when the scum were at their least active and staying nine or ten kilometers above sea level where he could use altocumulus clouds as a cover.

    He had also used his former status as a migration mapper to change the pigment of his exomorph¡¯s underbelly so that it matched the color of the noonday skies. The helixeer who had edited his genotype had asked him:

    ¡°Switching back to population ecology, are we? Smart move, Racek! The Vitalus is going to need more practical men like you before all this business with the grey behemoth is behind us. Forget all these theoretical arts¡ªyou¡¯ll never become an alpha with those scribblings. It would be a shame not to pass on that brilliant mind of yours. What was it that you specialized in again?¡±

    ¡°Null-determinant strategies, my helixeer,¡± Racek replied, smiling feebly and certain that his dishonesty was written all over his face.

    ¡°Oh, right. Those things,¡± the helixeer said as if that entire field of mathematics was amusing to him. Then to add salt to the insult he jabbed his beastly scorpion¡¯s tail into Racek¡¯s shoulder, its modified venom sack delivering the retroviral vectors and the gold coated micro-projectiles that would alter the structure of his gilt helix.

    One of the perks of being a beta drone was that nobody looked twice at him when he went beyond the bounds of the Gallivant nation. His mostly brown exomorph marked him as just another muck-raker off to do some crosspollination or forage for rotten berries to get drunk on.

    Menash was as good as his word. Racek found his body double waiting on the lee side of the bluffs where the abandoned zeta nests still clung to the cliffsides, ruined by the water damage of the great flood that had swept through the wetlands three years ago.

    The alpha had chosen some snot-nosed adolescent to mimic Racek¡¯s magnetosynaptic signature. Thankfully the child had come prepared and wore a drab exomorph that matched Racek¡¯s boilerplate configuration to a T.

    Racek should¡¯ve been thankful, but if anything, Menash¡¯s thoroughness irritated him¡ªthe child even spoke like Racek did, his voice low and nasally:

    ¡°You give those Leapers hell, moyvraat,¡± the boy said, using the honorific signifying Racek¡¯s status as a male of fighting age. Racek realized that the alpha had fed the boy a useful alibi; apparently, he was under the impression that Racek was leaving on some sort of covert operation against the enemy tribes.

    ¡°Depend on it,¡± Racek had replied, trying his best to act aloof and mysterious as befitted an operative tasked with a top-secret mission.

    But if Racek was going to get anyone killed on this quest, it was bound to be himself. Just hours ago he¡¯d gotten himself into a tangle with a pack of daggergnats, the ravenous pricks converging on him in the afternoon as he¡¯d tried to catch some sleep in the tubelike trunk of a banyan. And before he knew it, they had sunk their lancing proboscises into his elbow joint, exploiting the gap between gauntlet and vambrace in order to drain whole pints of his blood in seconds.

    Racek had come boiling up of his fitful dreams with a yell. With one limb too numb to deploy its arm-blade and feeling the rapid onset of an allergic inflammation in the wound, he¡¯d gone crashing through the screen of overhanging kudzu vines in his haste to escape them, seeking refuge in the thermals swirling up the sides of the canyons. The daggergnats had broken off their pursuit, bellies full to bursting with his vital fluids. Their fear of that region of the skies was wholly instinctive, and, as it turned out completely justified.

    Something which Racek would now find out the hard way as he rested his sore wings, coasting from one column of rising air to the next. He was taking a few turns around a ventifact for no other reason than that he was bored, admiring the wind-chiselled archway whose proportions pleased his mathematical sensibilities, when suddenly a piece of the overhanging shelf detached itself from the red sandstone and dropped towards at him, crushing jaws sporting a shark¡¯s rows of teeth.

    Fortunately for Racek, he had spent the bulk of his childhood as the target of relentless bullying by his brood fellows. They had loved to bushwhack him whenever he was preoccupied with mundane chores like chewing up wood pulp for building materials or looking up the values on his trigonometry tables. But the twelve-meter-long monitor drake that was coming at Racek now had something rather more serious in mind than giving him a wedgie through his codpiece. And as its ribbed sail membranes unfurled and its gullet gaped open to accommodate him, Racek¡¯s finely honed instincts had kicked in, the same defensive tactic which had served him so well in youth now coming to his rescue again.

    Not bothering to put up the least shred of resistance, Racek cut all power to his wing flexors and let himself plummet feet first into rugged bluff. The monitor drake¡¯s fangs clanged shut like the hinges of a steel trap, closing a hairsbreadth from Racek¡¯s toes. The ambush predator overshot its mark and landed catlike on the opposite bend of the arch, twisting round to try for him again. But Racek was already diving into the thinnest crack in the cliffside he could find, only breaking his descent moments before he pancaked into the wall with a furious flurry of his wings. It was just enough for his exomorph to kill the brunt of the impact while he scrunched into the vertical fissure, the stones scraping off strips of chitin off his plates like the rind from a lemon. The drake¡¯s roars of frustration shook the canyon and reverberated through the crawlspace that had saved Racek¡¯s life. It reached in with its claws and tried to tear open the masses of stone to get at him, a feat of raw strength which might have achieved if Racek hadn¡¯t chosen that very moment to grow a pair of testicles and stab the monster in its footpad.

    It raised merry hell after that, squalling and yowling to let the whole wilderness know of its injured pride. The good old Racek routine, he thought, feeling both ashamed and vindicated. Go limp at the first sign of trouble and scuttle down the nearest bolthole. It never fails.

    Royal Road is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.

    Then everything went eerily quiet, which if anything worried Racek more than the racket. The creature¡¯s natural camouflage made it indistinguishable from its surroundings. From the safety of the crack Racek made a game of trying to guess which of the featureless outcroppings the monster was impersonating. Eventually he gave it up and decided to wait things out. He started thinking about all the things that mattered to him most in ascending order of importance.

    His dogs came to mind first. Kysha and Spirny, his two sweet girls. The best girls, really. He¡¯d asked his mother to feed them for a few days while he was gone, but there was no knowing when he could ever get back to them. He hated to delegate such a sacred responsibility to his aged mother¡ªshe could barely clear the ground with her wings these days, and she was always forgetting to help the dogs swap out their external lung grafts. One of these days she would forget and he would come home to find them curled up on the floor, stone dead.

    Racek didn¡¯t know what he¡¯d do when that happened¡ªhe would never be able to replace his girls since the failure to maintain his dependents would result in the permanent loss of his pet-keeping privileges. Oh well, at least he would still have his research. Racek had reams of equations piled under his hammock, the sum total of his lifelong obsession with applied mathematics.

    At the moment he was working concerning null-determinant strategies, specifically an exciting new solution for breaking out of what his fellow beta scribblers called the Hungry Slave¡¯s Conundrum. The conundrum described real-life situations where, according to game theory, two players acting according to their own interests would ultimately result in a sub-optimal choice for both of them.

    A helpful analogy was to imagine two starving Leapers locked up in a pen as punishment for stealing food, with the following instructions being given to them:

    <ol>

    <li>If you confess and agree to give testimony against the other slave, who continues to claim innocence, the charge against you will be dropped and you may devour your fellow inmate as a reward.</li>

    <li>If you do not confess but the other slave does, you will be fed to your fellow inmate as his reward.</li>

    <li>If both of you confess, you will both be blinded.</li>

    <li>If neither of you confess , you will both lose a limb of your choosing and be sentenced to hard labour.</li>

    </ol>

    This was the simplest form of the conundrum. Mathematically, the first slave to tattle on his fellow inmate had the best chance to survive and even profit from the situation.

    Racek¡¯s paper tackled a more complicated version of the problem where the two opponents were locked in an unequal power dynamic, such as that between a master and a slave, for instance.

    The stronger party was called a tyrant, and the weaker party was called the victim. If the tyrant was smart and used the appropriate null-determinant strategies, they could unilaterally claim an unfair share of the payoffs in this revised version of the Hungry Slave¡¯s Conundrum.

    But Racek¡¯s radical new hypothesis boiled down to this: if and when a stalemate was reached, the victim could only gain a fair trade-off if it chose never to bend to the will of its tyrant. By refusing to cooperate, the victim sacrificed a portion of its own potential reward to inflict disproportionate damage to the tyrant¡¯s position. By raising the spectre of mutually assured destruction, the victim let the tyrant know that their tyranny would only incur ever increasing losses on both sides, with the abuser suffering more overall. This was the only way for the weaker party to break out of the otherwise unfavourable deadlock: making the tyrant realize that best option available was to offer a fair, equal split on the rewards for both parties.

    Racek called his theory the Tyrant¡¯s Trade. It was the thesis of his entire life, Racek now realized. He had always been the smaller, weaker, lesser male. From the pupal chamber up to his adulthood there was always someone knuckling him under, telling him what he could and couldn¡¯t have or snatching it out of his reach.

    Just once in his life, couldn¡¯t he have what he wanted? What he needed?

    Zildiz represented the impossible summit that he could never hope to attain. If he could only possess a being like her, everything else would fall into place. His gilt helix would live on in the next generations, improved as they combined with her more superior sets of alleles. Their pupae would be both strong and clever. He would finally be awarded alpha status and have his pick of all the females and grafts that he wanted.

    He would be more powerful than that useless product of nepotism named Menash, more powerful than all those bright and beautiful people who had never deigned to look down their maxillae at him.

    Ah, but who was he kidding? He was never going to find her now. All of this was just idle dreaming. Racek was still brooding over his run of bad luck when he felt his receivers prickle as they caught the ghost end of a transmission, tremulous and faint. Wait a minute. He recognized that magnetosynaptic signature. It was her!

    ¡°Zildiz!¡± he screamed back out into the dead air. She was in trouble. A malfunction in her exomorph, perhaps a hematoma in her biomineral antenna coil? Come on, my dear, Racek mentally pleaded with her. Just one more pulse and I can get a fix on you. Please, I know you¡¯re strong enough.

    One final time her plaintive cry for help reached him, and this time Racek managed to parse through the spikes of static and make out a string of words: ¡°kssshsstt¡­mercy, oh lord of Arachnea! through the void¡­ksszzhtt..they have taken me prisoner¡­ksshsszzztt¡­the Leapers¡­ksshhzztt deliver us, oh arbiter of destruction! Deliver us from the doom of our making!¡±

    Zildiz broke off her message with a sob. Racek couldn¡¯t believe his ears. He¡¯d never heard her sound so utterly broken. It was just as he¡¯d suspected. The Leapers had her! Racek¡¯s self-doubt gave way to a mounting fury. He hadn¡¯t come all this way just so those degenerate web-spinners could deprive him of his one true love. Racek popped out an arm-blade and gritted his mandibles, knowing what he had to sacrifice but uncertain if he had the character to go through with it.

    ¡°Recent computations show,¡± he said, quoting the conclusion of his own thesis, ¡°That discerning victims do not often yield to extortion out of concern for equality,¡± Racek bit back a scream as he sawed through the connecting ligature of his swollen arm, ¡°And are willing to discipline tyrants by refusing to give total cooperation.¡±

    Racek didn¡¯t have the ability to selectively shut off his pain receptors, and thus felt every shifting moment of agony as he degloved his exomorph, pulling off the inflamed segment with a tearing of meat and tendons.

    ¡°Here we locate and characterize classes of strategies such that the best response of any rational tyrant against the unbending victim,¡± he whimpered through his cracked molars, ¡°Is to offer a fair split.¡±

    He wedged the dripping piece of his own forearm into the bottom of the crack so that part of it dangled outside, a tantalizing lure. Racek heard the scraping of claws against the rock above him as the monitor drake slid over his hiding place, forked tongue flickering as it tasted the blood on the air.

    The monitor drake looked at the proffered meat, then eyed Racek hungrily. He could almost hear the thoughts turning in its head as it considered the exchange Racek was proposing to it: a piece of his forearm in exchange for Racek¡¯s freedom. But instead of taking the deal the stupid beast chose to claw at him again, draping its body over the fissure in its eagerness to reach him.

    That proved to be a fatal mistake. For in a flash Racek plunged his blade into its exposed underbelly and slit the beast open from groin to breastbone, coating himself in a welter of gore and intestinal fluids. The monitor drake slipped off the cliff with a dying hiss and left most of its bowels hanging on the jagged rock, gravity doing all the work of disemboweling it for Racek.

    Racek waited a few hours until it stopped twitching before he descended.

    ¡°You should¡¯ve taken the deal,¡± he told the tyrant, ¡°Better luck next time.¡±

    He cut out its heart, a length of gut, and some haunch to make jerky with. Racek stuffed the meat into the gut and tied off both ends to make a crude sausage, then strung his rations around his neck and started off once more, his desire for her burning in him like a guiding star.

 Chapter 42: Meeting Our Makers (Part 1)

    Rene spent the last two days of the voyage in a daze. The material of the compression capsule molded itself into a nautilus-shaped pocket as he hugged his knees and rocked back and forth like a schoolboy on the dunce¡¯s stool at the back of the class.

    Which was precisely how he felt. Having beheld the masterworks of the progenitors, blasted and scoured as they were by the Consanguicide which had blown away the galaxy of yore, Rene was forced to come to terms with his own existence.

    For the first time in his life Rene understood the Fleet for what it truly was: the inbred scion of a noble house, a stunted, malformed imbecile that had torn free of its chains and shambled up out of the underground cellars where it had been kept locked up for decency¡¯s sake. Now it was dribbling and drooling through the halls of an empty palace, with nothing to keep it company but the wind groaning amid the dusty eaves.

    The sheer scale of the dead empire laid out before him was more than Rene could fathom. But he understood enough to know that the Fleet would never equal the faded splendor of the ancestor-gods, not in a thousand years, if at all. With that conclusion came the insidious question: if even the progenitors at the height of their power could not endure forever, then what hope could the Fleet possibly have?

    Throughout his ongoing existential crisis, Rene tried his best to cling to the mission which he had assigned to himself. Sometimes he felt as though it was the only thing keeping his sanity afloat. To this end Rene kept the monomachete close at hand and maintained a constant vigilance over Zildiz. His prisoner was seated in the compression capsule opposite his own, awake and rested despite the incredible amount of damage her exomorph had sustained. Once or twice he caught her darting a questioning glance at him, as if there was something about him that was bothering her to no end. Finally she could take no more of it and spoke up:

    ¡°What are you looking at?¡±

    ¡°What are you looking at?¡± Rene shot back somewhat unintelligently.

    ¡°A smooth-brained fool,¡± she answered tartly, ¡°And a stubborn one at that. You¡¯ve seen for yourself now what your ancestor-gods were capable of. Compared to them, your Fleet can¡¯t be much more than walking corpse, a sick joke. You owe them no allegiance.¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s your point?¡± he said wearily, distressed by the ease with which she had peeled apart the layers of his thoughts.

    ¡°My point? My point?¡± she got up with alarming dexterity and angrily swung over to him on the railings, ¡°What¡¯s the point of dragging me halfway across the solar system on their behalf?¡±

    ¡°Oh, I¡¯m sorry!¡± Rene shouted, placing a hand on the sword hilt, ¡°Would you rather that I had left you to the goddamned Leapers? Because we can still swing this ship around and drop you off back there, if you¡¯d like!¡±

    ¡°Uh, actually,¡± Exar pitched in, ¡°We can¡¯t do that now, chief. Not until we stop to refuel our propellant tanks. Po Chai is less than a third of the size of Arachnea and less than a fifth of its surface gravity, but we¡¯ve barely got enough steam to make a successful landing there as it is.¡±

    ¡°Stay out of this,¡± Zildiz told the sphere, lowering herself so that her head was level with Rene¡¯s, ¡°This is between him and me alone.¡±

    ¡°Why can¡¯t you leave me be?¡± Rene said with exasperation, ¡°I¡¯m not in the mood for any of this. What is it that you really want from me, Zildiz?¡±

    ¡°I want¡­¡± she began, the corners of her amber eyes crinkled in evident confusion. Zildiz seemed to be having difficulty framing what she wanted to say next, ¡°I want to know¡­¡±

    ¡°Spit it out, woman!¡±

    ¡°Why did you really save me, Rene?¡± she finally blurted out. Unable to deal with her unexpected forthrightness, Rene avoided the question.

    ¡°I¡¯ve already given you my reasons,¡± he dithered, refusing to look her in the face, ¡°The information you possess is of incalculable value to my¡ª¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t give me that,¡± she cut in, ¡°We both know I¡¯m a dangerous liability. I pose more of a danger to you than Kryptus and his warband ever did. And the way things are going, your chances of survival are looking increasingly slim. As for your duty to the Fleet, your survival obviously takes precedence over mine.¡±

    ¡°You think I don¡¯t realize that? You¡¯ve been nothing but a royal pain in my backside right from the beginning!¡±

    ¡°Exactly!¡± she said, grinding him down further, ¡°So why burden yourself further? Why did you give me your mask and consign yourself to narcosis? What are you playing at? The risk-reward ratio you¡¯ve adopted is completely skewed¡ª¡±

    ¡°Goddam you, do I really have to spell it out?¡± Rene cried, ¡°You¡¯re a human being, Zildiz! That¡¯s all that matters to me. It¡¯s all that¡¯s ever mattered,¡± his voice broke as he realized the futility of that sentiment when weighed against the harsh light of reality.

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    Zildiz was left blinking rapidly, to stunned by his answer to think of a snarky reply. Rene shouldered rudely past her and retired to the aft of the craft next to the airlock which led to the ramp room. There Rene sat and sulked for a few hours until he got hungry, at which point he opened the pouch of cinnamon cubes and nibbled at them miserably. He could hear Zildiz¡¯s stomach growling from across the length of the cabin, but when he glanced her way Rene found that she was steadfastly refusing to look at him.

    Fine, he thought sourly. Be that way. He made a point of hogging all the food to himself and choked several of them down with bitter resentment, smacking his lips and scattering crumbs all over his dirty jumpsuit.

    But eventually his sense of duty as a responsible captor won the day and he decided to leave a mild peace offering, returning the packet to the survival kit and placing the latter amidships in neutral territory.

    Out of the corner of his eye Rene watched and waited. Eventually Zildiz walked over and opened the kit. She took out the pouch of white cubes, sniffed at it dubiously for a moment, then tossed it aside and took out the packet of fire starters and started scarfing down as many of the brown lumps she could cram into her mouth.

    ¡°Hey! Are you nuts?¡± Rene yelled, rushing over to her, ¡°Don¡¯t eat that! It¡¯ll kill you!¡±

    Zildiz backed away like a cornered animal, continuing to gorge herself while she glared poison daggers at Rene. Sensing trouble, Exar tried to defuse the situation:

    ¡°What seems to be the problem here?¡±

    ¡°The savage is eating our fire starters,¡± Rene gesticulated. Exar took a moment to process this, then slowly replied:

    ¡°Er, no she isn¡¯t. Those are the ration cubes.¡±

    ¡°What are you talking about, Exar?¡± Rene said, holding up the white cinnamon cubes for the sphere to see, ¡°These are the edibles!¡±

    ¡°Boss, I don¡¯t mean to be rude,¡± Exar said, ¡°But do you mean to tell me that you¡¯ve been snacking on the scented fuel tablets all this time?¡±

    ¡°WHAT?¡±

    Rene stuck a finger down his throat in a panicked attempt to vomit out the contents of his stomach.

    ¡°They¡¯re for cooking purposes only, Rene,¡± Exar told him, ¡°But don¡¯t you worry¡ªExodus Industries made them all nontoxic for precisely this scenario. You¡¯re basically eating a high energy solid fuel that also happens to be a low dose antibiotic and food additive. Zero calory content, though.¡±

    Zildiz was chuckling now as she ate. Rene rounded on her in outrage:

    ¡°You knew! You knew all this time, didn¡¯t you? And you let me eat those blasted things anyway? You ungrateful bitch!¡±

    He stormed over to her and snatched the brown lumps out of her grip. Smiling wickedly, Zildiz shrugged and washed down her supper with a pull from the water flask.

    As revenge, Rene devoured the remaining white food cubes and pointedly ignored Zildiz for the rest of the trip, instead turning his attention to his surroundings.

    It soon became apparent that the shuttle wasn¡¯t as squeaky clean as his first impressions had led him to believe. The upholstery of the padded railings was worn thin in many places, the fine threads beneath poking through the layers of strong black strips that someone had used to seal up the tears. Rene peeled up a few strips of the curious binding and discovered that the inner side of it was smeared with an adhesive several times more powerful than the stuff which covered Leaper silk. In fact, much of the cabin¡¯s interior was simply plastered with the strips, as if the person in charge of maintaining the vehicle had been in a hurry to make repairs, and to hell with the aesthetics. It had been used to stitch up everything from the insidious spiderwebbing cracks spreading out from the corners of the crystal display panels next to the pilot¡¯s chair to tiny holes present the bulkhead itself¡ªonce when Rene had placed his good ear next one of these perforations, he could have sworn that he heard some air whistling out the sides of it.

    That sound and the horrendous implication it came with had instantly pickled his prick in salt water. Surely these thin strips of fabric were not the only thing standing between him and empty space?

    Like every good child of the Fleet, Rene knew about hard vacuum through the Log of the Void Trekkers. It had been a favourite topic of the Book of the Stewards, a segment of the Log written during a time when onboard shortages and the resultant unrest had forced the crew to make some difficult decisions. The crisis was only averted when some of the honoured saints had chosen to serve the greater good by volunteering to walk out the Midnight Door.

    That authors of that book had made certain to describe their deaths in lurid detail. Thanks to them Rene knew exactly what to expect if ever he found himself on the wrong side of an airlock.

    Mouth and nose frosted over by the last breath he would ever exhale, lungs erupting from rapid decompression, tissue and blood vessels lumping up in ugly black-and-blue embolisms more hideous than any leper¡¯s hide¡ªthe only silver lining there was that he would probably black out from oxygen deprivation long before those other token inconveniences got him.

    ¡°Say, Exar,¡± Rene asked in an offhanded sort of way.

    ¡°Hmm?¡± the sphere answered, sounding preoccupied.

    ¡°What happens if there¡¯s an emergency aboard?¡±

    ¡°Define ¡®emergency¡¯.¡±

    ¡°Oh, I don¡¯t know. Suppose there¡¯s a breach in the hull?¡±

    ¡°That would depend on the size of the breach,¡± Exar said pedantically, ¡°Those roider cowboys used to have a saying: ¡®If the hole¡¯s the size of your head, then you may as well be dead. But if it¡¯s the width of your thumb, you needn¡¯t be so glum, chum!¡¯ Of course, that¡¯s not a totally accurate way of assessing the situation. But you get the idea. If you think you¡¯ve spotted a leak, just don¡¯t panic. There are always tiny leaks on every ship, it¡¯s unavoidable. The bit of duct tape you¡¯ve been so busy picking at isn¡¯t one of them. It¡¯s just there to cover up some cosmetic damage on the cabin interior. In the event of actual decompression, you¡¯ll probably have a few seconds to plug up the holes using the extensor patches located under your seats.¡±

    ¡°And if I don¡¯t?¡±

    ¡°In that case, look on the bright side! You won¡¯t have to worry about it for long.¡±

    Somehow the pathfinder found scant comfort in that pronouncement. Shaking his head at the folly of spheres and Gallivants in general, Rene resigned himself to the fact that he was to be starved of proper conversation all throughout this long and strange voyage through the cosmos.

    #

 Chapter 43: Meeting Our Makers (Part 2)

    To occupy Rene¡¯s mind and help him cope with his newfound phobia of space travel, Exar decided to teach the pathfinder how to patch up breaches with the tool case he found under his seat. These included a stack of lamellar plates whose edges were lined with thousands of tiny suction pads, a gun that extruded a dark foam which instantaneously expanded into a sort of iron-hard mortar, and a canister filled with bright orange aerosols. The process was fairly straightforward and was as follows: first the crewman covered the breach with an extensor plate, pulling a lever on the back which caused the suction pads to flatten themselves against the bulkhead and fill the gaps between them, forming an airtight plug. This seal was then further reinforced by generous daubs of the dark foam.

    ¡°After that, all you have to do apply the spray can to the corners of the plate. If you still see that orange stuff getting sucked out and disappearing, it means you¡¯ve botched the job and there¡¯s still a sizable leak someplace that needs taking care of. In which case you just gotta squeeze a bit more of the goo from the sealant gun and hope for the best,¡± Exar concluded, ¡°Did you get all that?¡±

    ¡°I think so,¡± Rene said proudly, ¡°It seems easy enough.¡±

    ¡°Great! Man, it¡¯s a good thing the company designed nearly every piece of equipment to be idiot-proof. Not that I¡¯m implying that you¡¯re a numbskull,¡± Exar added hastily as Rene opened his mouth to voice his displeasure, ¡°As a matter of fact you¡¯re doing astonishingly well for an oompa-loompa.¡±

    "That''s the second time you''ve called me that, Exar. I''m not sure I like the sound of that word."

    ¡°Relax,¡± Exar teased, "It''s not a slur, per se. More of a term of endearment. You see, sometimes these RTF programs of ours go wrong and the company has to pick up the pieces. That usually involves us trying to rehabilitate, er, disadvantaged cultures like your own.¡±

    ¡°RTF?¡±

    ¡°Rapid terraformation,¡± the sphere filled in for him, "See, after the age of seedships and all the unpleasantness that followed, RTF became all the rage. Directed evolution, tectonic and lithographic restructuring, biospheric transplantation, asteroid herding. All that jazz. Slow and steady wins the race was the idea. But it¡¯s no easy task adapting a world for human habitation instead of the other way around. Our work is meant to take place over extended periods of time. Decades, sometimes even centuries. A lot can go wrong at any stage of the process. It¡¯s really more of an art than it is a science."

    "So that''s what Exodus Industries was,¡± Rene thought aloud, ¡°A society of world-builders.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s right,¡± Exar said, happy with how quickly Rene was catching on, ¡°Your future, built today.¡±

    ¡°Are we just another one of your failed works, then?¡± the pathfinder asked coldly. Exar considered his next words, then said with a pained voice:

    ¡°I¡¯m not yet certain who¡¯s to blame for all the destruction, Rene. But one thing¡¯s for sure: somebody definitely shit the bed on this one.¡±

    Zildiz started sharpening her blades one against the other like a fishwife at her stall. Through the rasp of the grinding edges she spoke:

    ¡°Don¡¯t listen to that little ball of make-believe. His people broke their word. It¡¯s as simple as that.¡±

    Rene was on his feet in an instant.

    ¡°Where¡¯d you get those?¡± he interrogated her.

    ¡°From that nook underneath your compression capsule where you tried to hide them,¡± she said dismissively. It was at this point that Rene knew he had to give it up¡ªthere was no use trying to pretend that Zildiz was still his prisoner. The dynamic between them had shifted into something else entirely. Rene didn¡¯t understand the nature of it yet, but her words intrigued him. After all, he knew very little about her personal motivations and the belief system of her fellow Gallivants. This was the perfect opportunity for him to learn more.

    The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

    ¡°Listen, honey bunny,¡± Exar was saying, now openly hostile, ¡°You¡¯ve clearly got a bone to pick with me and the company. But I wasn¡¯t around when the big decisions were being made, whatever they were. So I got no skin in this here game, ya feel me?¡±

    ¡°You seem to know an awful lot more than you¡¯re letting on,¡± Rene said, deliberately taking Zildiz¡¯s side, ¡°Tell me more about this promise that your masters broke.¡±

    ¡°I just told you!¡± Exar bleated, ¡°I wasn¡¯t around for that part! I¡¯m flying in the dark as much as you are. Philosophically speaking, my existence began the moment Rene booted me up with the solar cells.¡±

    ¡°More lies,¡± Zildiz said, testing the points of her blades with ball of her thumb, ¡°Exar is a silicate soul, one of the immortal servants of the Betrayers who were instrumental in directing their conquest of the galaxy. In throes of rage and jealousy your ancestors subjugated every newborn seed colony they came across, until at last they met a people they could not overthrow. So then the Betrayers conspired to win by deceit what they could not gain with force. They did not succeed,¡± she finished with quiet relish.

    Rene was starting to see the vague outlines of the conflict now. But whose version was he supposed to believe? That of Zildiz or Exar? On the one hand, you had a walking arsenal, a psychopath with no regard for any life other than her own. On the other, you had an intelligence so sophisticated that it could pass for a real person, a machine that could calculate ballistics and orbital mechanics on the fly but which claimed to be as ignorant of the grander scheme of things as Rene was.

    Somebody¡¯s story wasn¡¯t adding up.

    ¡°Hold up,¡± he told both of them, ¡°Let¡¯s start from the beginning, why don¡¯t we? Exar, what¡¯s the very first thing you remember?¡±

    ¡°If you¡¯re referring to my factory setting files, then I¡¯m sorry to disappoint you,¡± the sphere said, ¡°All I know is that this RTF project was supposed to be a joint effort by the Laisser League and a new subspecies it had encountered in deep space called the Ceytians. Exodus Industries had the most cost-efficient pitch, so we won the contract. It was supposed to be the start of a beautiful friendship between our peoples,¡± Exodus¡¯s rings went the colour aquamarine, which Rene supposed was his version of a tired shrug, ¡°I guess that friendship turned sour.¡±

    ¡°Yes, that does tend to happen when you stab people in the back,¡± Zildiz reflected, ¡°The Ceytians gifted your masters with the crowning achievement of their genius: a sentient biosphere capable of perfecting and maintaining itself, the ultimate terraforming tool. And how did you repay them? By slaughtering them wholesale!¡±

    ¡°Watch it, you!¡± Exar finally snapped, ¡°From what I¡¯ve seen of the wreckage, the killing went both ways. Who¡¯s to say the Ceytians didn¡¯t fire the first salvo? That¡¯d be right up their alley, considering what they are. Or rather, were.¡±

    That last bit was clearly meant as a gloating insult. It seemed that Exar could be just as petty and vengeful as the next person. Somehow that hidden flaw in his behavior endeared him to Rene. Zildiz took an angry step towards the defenceless sphere, but Rene held her back, saying:

    ¡°Don¡¯t be stupid. Neither of us can operate this thing. We¡¯d be stranded. If Exar dies, we all die.¡±

    ¡°Gee, and here I thought you were keeping me around for my charm and wit,¡± the machine said sarcastically. Zildiz looked disdainfully down at the hand on her shoulder and told Rene flat-out:

    ¡°I could go through you like a door.¡±

    The pathfinder had to admit that when it came to pure swordsmanship, Zildiz was undoubtedly his superior. She had an uncanny, instinctive talent with those weapons of hers. True, the sword of the ancients could cut through just about everything, but by the time he got it out of it sheathe she would have already served him up with a side of fava beans and a cup of rice wine.

    ¡°Yes,¡± he gulped, taking his hand off her shoulder, ¡°But will you?¡±

    Zildiz thought about it. Then she stuck her blades back in their flesh housings and replied:

    ¡°No. I want to see this business to the end. I want to meet what¡¯s left of your gods in person¡ªassuming it was they who sent out this shuttle.¡±

    ¡°Why?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m going to ask them why they did it,¡± Zildiz said, ¡°I want to know why they killed the world that could have been, why they condemned us and all our children to a thousand cycles of pain and penitence. I¡¯m going to stand there and hear all their excuses, and when they¡¯re done, I¡¯m going to spit in their faces. Yes. Yes, that would be enough for me.¡±

    Zildiz turned and went back to her seat. Rene slowly loosened the white-knuckled grip around his sword hilt and took a deep breath. Then he addressed the silicate soul, saying:

    ¡°Well? You heard the lady, Exar. Fly us in. It¡¯s time we met our makers¡­¡±

 Chapter 44: Meeting Our Makers (Part 3)

    Maybe it was just the eternal optimism of a fool¡ªhope springs eternal, and all that¡ªbut Rene found that he wasn¡¯t very worried about the coming rendezvous with destiny. But the simpler explanation was that his primitive mind was taking comfort in an old superstition.

    Every pathfinder knew ¡®65 Syngman Bc¡¯ by another name: Brahe, the northern sentinel. At certain times of the year the planet shone brighter than any star in the night sky. When all the other constellations appeared dim and uncertain behind the thickening clouds, Brahe was always there to lend a helping hand, guiding lost explorers back to the safety of their mounds or warding them away from the Amit-infested realms. Rene considered the planet to be his personal lucky charm.

    Exar had them return to their compression capsule and strap in for the second half of the journey as the shuttle swung about and used its main drive plume to rapidly decelerate, Rene squirming uncomfortably against the constant strain he felt from head to toe.

    When the crystal displays went transparent to let Rene see Brahe in all its beauty, he actually choked up with emotion.

    The gas giant wore russet-coloured bands around its ample curves, some turning with and others against the rotation of the globe itself. Sandwiched between them like scoops of ice cream were the perpetual storms whipped up by the counter-rotations of the bands. The dozens of moons clinging to the skirt of dust and vapor encircling Brahe¡¯s waist were mere specks by comparison. In a few hours they came up on Po Chai herself rising slowly over the bend of the planet¡¯s horizon, a slushy snowball with only the faintest halo of an atmosphere.

    When the shuttle angled up its nosecone to begin re-entry procedures, Rene clenched his stomach and prepared to lose his lunch, expecting the same ordeal he¡¯d experienced in the Divine Engine¡¯s safety pod. But this landing went far smoother than expected. The thin atmosphere meant that the shuttle exterior registered only a slight increase in temperature as its heat shielded belly and nose cleaved through into the main body of air. Now the shuttle waggled its wings from side to side as it went into a series of S-shaped banking turns, using the scant wisps of water vapor to help slow down. Finally, the jet nozzles roared into life and they sped over an arctic desert that stretched as far as the eye could see, the smooth whiteness only broken by plunging morasses between the ice sheets and farting geysers that sent up fountains of snowflakes that vanished twinkling into the void.

    They spied the first man-made structures at the south pole, dour grey squares and rectangles sunk into the ice at perfectly spaced intervals to form a checkerboard pattern. The shuttle executed a flawless vertical landing atop one of these structures, landing gears settling down on the pad with a hollow thump. Only then did compression capsules relax their hold on the two passengers and allow them to sit up.

    ¡°Well that was a bit anticlimactic,¡± Rene said, unstrapping himself so he could stand and do some stretches. He was leaning forward to touch his ankles when the ice on either side of them jumped up and swallowed them whole, the ancient landing pad plummeting through the subsurface. Rene¡¯s forehead slammed into his toes and he folded like a cheap suit, collapsing in a heap on the floor.

    ¡°My back¡­¡± he moaned, climbing back to his feet while clutching at his lumbar, ¡°¡­my back¡­¡±

    ¡°Aw, shoot,¡± Exar scolded him, ¡°You just had to go and ruin that perfect landing I just made by giving yourself a sprain, didn¡¯t you?¡±

    Zildiz grabbed him under the armpits and hauled him back upright.

    ¡°Come on, Fleet-man. You¡¯re about to seek an audience with your gods. At least try to look presentable.¡±

    Rene was nonplussed. Was that her way of being supportive? It was the closest thing to pleasant behaviour that she had ever exhibited.

    The pad was lowering them down a vast shaft, a pair of cyclopean doors sliding shut over them and plunging everything into darkness. The searchlights mounted on the front of the craft pierced into the gloom and they stared out into a caves of stone and steel, a storage depot that was stacked to the roof with a haphazard staircase of corrugated container crates, storage tanks, wheeled vehicles, bales of wire and junkyards worth of trash.

    Rene heard a howling vortex of wind ripping outside the shuttle, powerful enough to tip over some of the crates and send them tumbling around like oversized dice. The tumult died down and Exar announced:

    Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

    ¡°The hangar bay is fully pressurized now. Atmospheric composition is nominal. Bit of surprise, considering that this base has definitely seen better days. We can step outside now. It¡¯s quite safe.¡±

    The ramp came down with a soft sigh of pneumatics and they all climbed out, Zildiz in front and Rene limping along behind, Exar tucked under his arm. The moment the Gallivant¡¯s foot touched the hangar floor a shrieking, metallic voice assailed them, echoing through the cavern and threatening to pop Rene¡¯s one working eardrum:

    ¡°Unauthorized access. Crewmen, identify yourselves!¡±

    Overhead lamps flickered on and bathed the hangar in sterile orange fluorescence. Rene and Zildiz froze in the act of debarkation, glancing all around them for the source of the audible assault. Something squat and bulky trundled out from behind a stacked pyramid of barrels, an indescribable fusion of mechanical components Rene mistook for a runaway train that torn up its own tracks.

    It rolled up to them on a set of grinding treads that made up its lower body, an unstoppable chassis whose motions reminded Rene of a centipede or myropod muscling its way through the undergrowth. A low suspension and wide frame gave it the ability to support the staggering number of armaments fitted to its upper half¡ªthe damned thing looked like it was carrying enough firepower to level Mound Euler all over again.

    Rene saw quad-linked cannons fitted with drum magazines, arms burdened cycler guns whose multiple barrels spun with eager whines, fat launchers filled with rows of miniature rockets, spinning bandsaws and snipping shears attached to tentacled appendages, an enlarged version of the laser designator he¡¯d used to set off his traps¡ªand these were just the weapons he could understand.

    But the most frightening part of this dynamo of destruction was draped over the neck of the upper torso, a desiccated corpse of a man who¡¯d apparently been flayed and vivisected at random, organs replaced with gurgling tubes, snapping pistons and servos where tendons and joints had once been, a thicket of wires digging into his eye sockets to mate with the goggling lenses that had been riveted directly into its chrome-plated skull.

    If that is the true face of my god, Rene thought with revulsion, then I¡¯d like very much to cancel my reservation for the afterlife. Even the savage Zildiz took a fearful step back at the sight of the automaton.

    ¡°Crewmen,¡± it blared once again, ¡°Identify yourselves or face immediate sanitation.¡±

    Sanitation? Somehow Rene didn¡¯t think it was threatening to give them a warm sponge bath. But it had called him a crewman¡ªthat had to mean something, right? He reached for the sky and said in a wavering voice:

    ¡°C-crewman Rene Louvoture, assistant navigator, 9<sup>th</sup> Battalion, 3<sup>rd</sup> Pathfinder Regiment! Reporting for duty, sah!¡±

    He snapped a salute and held the pose, marrow quivering like jelly in his bones.

    The flayed thing swivelled its chassis around so that it menaced Zildiz directly.

    ¡°Crewman Rene, your designations are unfamiliar. You have brought an immunocompromised vector into this quarantine zone. This calls for immediate sanitation.¡±

    It brought up its withered arms and levelled a snouted battle rifle at the Gallivant. Before he knew what he was doing, Rene threw himself in front of Zildiz and spread wide his arms in supplication, yelling:

    ¡°Mercy, blessed ancestor! Mercy! She is my prisoner. I brought her here for information, to help the Fleet in its struggle to liberate the surface of Arachnea. She is of incalculable value to the war effort.¡±

    Servos whirred as the flayed man on the chassis cocked his head to one side thoughtfully. It slung the rifle over its shoulder and stroked its lower jaw with the clicking digits of one hand, tugging at an unkempt growth of salt-and-pepper chin hairs there.

    ¡°Understood. You are not compromised yourself, crewman Rene?¡±

    ¡°Sir? Oh, no sir!¡± Rene dusted himself off just to be sure, ¡°I¡¯m as clean as whistle.¡±

    Yes Mama, I washed for supper, Rene almost blurted out, remembering in his extreme agitation the times when his parents would box him around the ears for leaving dirt under his fingernails after a shift at the fungal gardens.

    The flayed man¡¯s goggles emitted a burst of flashing lights just like the ones Exar had used to diagnose Rene and Zildiz, and the pathfinder got the distinct sense that he was somehow being turned inside out.

    ¡°In accordance with catechism 4, we trust but verify. You may submit yourself and the prisoner for decontamination. Unless of course, you have something else to declare?¡±

    Rene took a moment to rap on Exar with his knuckles, hard. Why wasn¡¯t the sphere saying anything? He was a servant of the progenitors, surely he knew how to address this abomination properly! But Exar remained inert¡ªfor all intents and purposes he was just another piece of trash in the junkyard.

    ¡°No,¡± Rene said, ¡°I have nothing else to declare.¡±

    ¡°Then what, pray tell, is that?¡± the flayed man spat. One of his man¡¯s lenses cast a strange purple beam behind Rene and Zildiz, illuminating the shuttle itself. Where the strange beam fell, Rene saw a line of previously invisible footprints leading from the underside of the ramp to the caverns beyond. The pair of them looked underneath the ramp and saw a huge sack of Leaper silk fixed to the aft section of the hull, hemolymphic slime oozing out of a tear in the sack like pus from a weeping cyst.

    ¡°I¡­I don¡¯t know what that¡­how could it have?¡± Rene began, but his words shrivelled up in his throat as the flayed man pointed every piece of its arsenal right at him.

    ¡°Squeaky clean?¡± it snarled with a wet leopard growl, ¡°You¡¯ve collaborated with the enemy, crewman. You snuck an infiltrator unit in through our defences, you¡¯ve compromised the last bastion of all mankind,¡± the bandsaws and shears tenderly brushed Rene¡¯s bare skin, ¡°For that, I¡¯m going to grind you up and shit you out!¡±

    So much for my lucky charm, thought Rene.

 Chapter 45: The Sentinel

    Rene on no account believed himself to be a quick thinker. He was a follower first, a soldier second and an officer last. But those who have learned to obey often develop a talent for quickly discerning the winning conditions of any scenario. It was only when orders came flashing down the wire that Rene could clear away all distractions and carve right to the meat of the matter. If the order went: ¡°Get back up there and retake the breach, you cowards.¡±

    Then this meant that the passage blasted into the side of the mound was a hopeless meatgrinder that would chew through men just as fast as the Fleet could funnel them into it. In which case, simply cover the sappers as they place charges and set to work with mining picks. With any luck the gap will widen or better yet, collapse in on itself. Either way, the problem disappears. On the other hand, if the boys up top hit you with the ever-ominous: ¡°Resupply not guaranteed, pray hold fast until relieved.¡±

    In that case, drop your trousers, pucker up and prepare to get stuffed; the horde is set to envelop your position and cut you off from the rest of the army. Dig ditches and pitfalls, set caltrops and stakes. Conserve ammunition by firing only on command.

    And if lead don¡¯t stop em? Steel will.

    Steel will, the pathfinder found himself repeating as he stared into the pitiless lenses of the flayed god. How many centuries had this thing spent hiding within the frozen heart of this moon? It predated the Fleet itself, of that much Rene was certain. There was only one reason this mutilated wreck of a man would continue clinging on to life and (relative) sanity for so long: it had a purpose to fulfil, a sacred duty. The same duty which it had passed down to Rene and all the millions of its descendants back home. Grasping at the insight which now presented itself, Rene told it:

    ¡°Beware, sentinel! Kill us now, and the only hope for your species dies with us. All will be lost, and your long vigil will have been kept in vain. You have been warned.¡±

    The flayed god held Rene¡¯s gaze for what seemed an eternity, the overlapping iris diaphragms of its lenses contracting into pinpricks. Then it placed Rene¡¯s neck inside a pair of its shears and held him there like a gardener about to clip off a rosebud from its stem. Meanwhile, Zildiz remained frozen with indecision, a circular saw snickering millimeters away from the tip of her nose.

    ¡°You overestimate your importance,¡± it replied, ¡°My consciousness can withstand another 1231.11 draconic years in the dreamstate before its engrammatic manifolds start losing coherency. You are not the first primitives to come stumbling into my dragnet, and you will not be the last.¡±

    And there we have it, Rene thought. Our first winning condition. You need us ¡®primitives¡¯ for something, or else you would never have allowed our shuttlecraft to land.

    ¡°Aye, you could wait till the Amits or the Vitalus scour our people clean off the face of the earth. You could wait till hell itself freezes over,¡± Rene replied, ¡°But waiting ain¡¯t winning. And you do still want us to win, don¡¯t you?¡±

    Throughout this exchange the flayed god¡¯s armaments never stopped swivelling about, barrels sniffing at the air like a pack of predators tracking their prey. Rene felt the shears tighten like a vice and his feet left the ground as it lifted him by the scruff of his neck, saying: ¡°Us? Us?¡± the flayed god¡¯s voice was a knife¡¯s edge skidding across a pane of glass, ¡°For a unit which claims to share my core directives, you have an awfully funny way of showing it.¡±

    ¡°If you¡¯re referring to the creature which stowed away on our ship, we weren¡¯t aware of its presence either,¡± Zildiz said matter-of-factly. She pushed the bandsaw out of her face by the flat of its blade and stepped closer to the progenitor, continuing: ¡°It is called a Leaper, and we would like to see it destroyed just as much as you do.¡±

    ¡°T-t-that¡¯s right,¡± Rene said as he dangled in the air, ¡°We don¡¯t even know how it survived hard vacuum for the better part of the three days. I knew Leapers were tough, but this is just absurd.¡±

    Stolen story; please report.

    ¡°Of course they can tolerate vacuum,¡± the flayed god scoffed, ¡°They¡¯re cosmophages. It¡¯s what they were bred to do.¡±

    There was a clang as a piece of junk somewhere inside the hangar fell from a high place. Their interlocutor turned on a dime and immediately bracketed the area with a burst of shot and shell, its quad cannons and rotary chain guns filling a nearby scrap pile with more holes than a slice of pig cheese. It followed that up with a rocket from its pod that broke into a dozen pieces in midair and sprayed the area in a shotgun blast of white-hot submunitions, turning the whole trash heap into a mound of glowing slag.

    It was such a casual display of destructive potential that Rene began to seriously reconsider his conceptions of divinity. Perhaps it was only fitting that a world as cruel and senseless as Arachnea would have a set of deities that were equally deranged.

    ¡°¡­did you get him?¡± Rene asked after the ringing in his one good ear subsided.

    ¡°Probably not. Though I¡¯ve spotted a trace heat signature on one of the dented ceiling panels,¡± the progenitor said, ¡°I think your friend has crawled up into the ventilation system. Not that it matters¡ªI sealed off every access tube and crawlspace as soon as I heard you were coming. In the unlikely event that it gets through all that composteel, I¡¯ve also rigged the exits with proximity claymores.¡±

    ¡°And how do you intend to root him out of his hiding place?¡± Zildiz asked.

    ¡°I don¡¯t.¡±

    Abruptly the shears released Rene and the progenitor retreated, its tracked lower chassis wheeling in reverse while it kept some of its guns pointed at the two of them.

    ¡°I¡¯m going to step outside for a few minutes. Then I¡¯m going to pump this entire hangar bay full of a special cocktail of neurotoxins, cyanogen and a lovely strain of flesh-eating bacteria that I call Revenant-E. If that doesn¡¯t do the job, I don¡¯t know what will.¡±

    ¡°Excellent,¡± Rene said, ¡°We¡¯ll go right ahead and join you, in that case.¡±

    ¡°No, you won¡¯t,¡± the progenitor said simply, and turned to leave. But then Zildiz ran a half circle around it and placed herself directly in its path.

    ¡°Get out of the way,¡± it said without slowing down.

    ¡°I¡¯ve got something else to declare after all,¡± she told it.

    ¡°Oh? And what¡¯s that, cosmophage¡ª¡±

    Zildiz went up on her tiptoes and hawked a throatful of spittle right into its face.

    Oh no she didn¡¯t, Rene groaned inwardly. Oh no she didn¡¯t. Oh yes she did.

    Looking back, Rene had been rather impressed by her whole I-intend-to-spit-in-the-eye-of-god routine. But he would have never imagined that she meant it so literally. The chunky gob of phlegm struck the flayed god in the middle of its rows of lenses. It froze for a moment, stunned by the unthinkable act of bravado and stupidity. It wiped off the gunk with back of its hand while Zildiz¡¯s voice rang out, defiant:

    ¡°Don¡¯t you dare call us that!¡± the Gallivant stuck a finger at it and ignored the still-smoking muzzles which pointed back at her, ¡°We are not the abortive offspring of the void crawlers. We are the True Kindreds, children of the gilt helix and the rightful heirs to Arachnea!¡±

    The progenitor reared its shrunken head back and roared, its voice box emitting a noise that was a mix between water meeting a panful of hot oil and the hunting scream of a monitor drake. It took a moment for Rene to realize that it was laughing.

    ¡°You!¡± it said, nudging its battle rifle at Zildiz again, ¡°I like you! But that¡¯s the trouble with intermediate forms like you, isn¡¯t it? You¡¯re almost human enough to make me hesitate. But I¡¯ve been there and done that. Better to isolate and cauterize than to risk the spread of infection.¡±

    ¡°Ignore this degenerate primitive,¡± Rene thrust Zildiz aside for her own good and went down on his knees to beg, ¡°Oh blessed ancestor, hear my prayer. I have uncovered a weapon from the age of myth that holds the power to bring about our final victory. With but a single act of mercy, it could be yours again!¡±

    The flayed god ran a thoughtful tongue over its crooked teeth.

    ¡°Intriguing. But there¡¯s no shortage of weaponry on this moon, let me assure you. But I¡¯ll tell you what is in short supply: amusement. For almost three hundred years I¡¯ve had nothing to watch but reruns of dome-settler soap operas. Unfortunately, there¡¯s only so many times you can watch Estella Esteves strip down to her purty pixelated panties before things start to get a tad stale. So here is what we can do; I will hold off on turning this place into a gas chamber for thirty minutes. If you can find and sanitize our uninvited guest in that time, then I will hear the rest of what you have to say, crewman. If not, then at the very least your efforts will make for some memorable recordings on the security feed¡­¡±

    Rene and Zildiz stumbled out of its way as it trundled back out the way it had come. An egress port slid open on the side of the hangar and the progenitor rolled its bulk on through.

    ¡°Thirty minutes!¡± it called to them right before the door closed behind it, ¡°You brought the problem here, so you fix it!¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re a lousy flipping god, d¡¯you know that?¡± Rene yelled back at it. But it had already gone. The pathfinder surveyed the enormous cavern and bit his lip in apprehension. This wasn¡¯t going to be easy.

 Chapter 46: A-Hunting We Will Go (Part 1)

    Zildiz immediately went after the Leaper with swords in hand and began to climb the smoldering heap which the progenitor had blasted. But Rene grabbed her by the shoulder and yanked her back.

    ¡°Going somewhere?¡± he asked.

    ¡°Is the question rhetorical, or are you just being your usual dimwitted self?¡± she nipped, batting his hand away, ¡°You heard what that madman said. Either we catch the vermin, or he exterminates us along with it.¡±

    ¡°Oh, so I¡¯m the stupid one, am I? We came within an arsehair¡¯s breadth of getting killed thanks to that stunt you pulled back there! Do you have some kind of death wish, girl? Is that it?¡±

    The Gallivant levelled another one of her trademark looks of disdain at him and refused to answer. Knowing that it would impossible to get a rise out of her now, Rene vented his ire upon the sphere.

    ¡°And as for you!¡± Rene took Exar and sloshed him around like a half-empty water canteen, ¡°Thanks for all the help!¡±

    ¡°Sorry,¡± Exar said sheepishly, ¡°But I judged discretion to be better part of valor in that situation. The information you allegedly possess is the only real bargaining chip we have. If I had revealed myself to be an engrammatic intelligence, he would have no reason to keep the two of you alive. He could just access my files and learn everything he wanted to know about the abandoned T.O.R.U. and the general state of the company¡¯s remaining retrievable assets.¡±

    Rene had to admit that it was a good point. That didn¡¯t mean he wasn¡¯t still sore about it, though. The pathfinder knelt beside the oozing sac on the underside of the shuttle¡¯s ramp and studied it with some distaste.

    ¡°How¡¯d the cursed thing even survive the trip? Is it true what that thing said about the kindreds?¡± Rene asked Zildiz, ¡°Were you all designed by the Vitalus with interstellar travel in mind?¡±

    ¡°Not exactly,¡± she replied, and began sawing open the silky pod with a sword, ¡°It depends on the conditions of the Great Game. Like I said, we aren¡¯t void crawlers.¡±

    ¡°Void crawlers?¡± Rene repeated, once again feeling at sea.

    ¡°You poor, sheltered thing. Just how much does your precious Fleet keep from you?¡±

    Zildiz pried open the sticky mess and dug around inside until the she unearthed an almost wholly intact carapace, its arms and legs curled up in a fetal position. A huge rent along the backplate split armor into even halves, the black hairs of its body rimed white with frost.

    ¡°Just as I thought,¡± Zildiz autopsied, ¡°Plugged its spiracles and pores with webbing after weaving a pressurized sack around itself to prevent ebullism. Made another sack to store a supply of Arachnean atmosphere. Then it went into diapause mode to slow down its metabolic rate and oxygen consumption. What I can¡¯t understand is how it managed to construct all that equipment in the few minutes between the shuttlecraft¡¯s takeoff and its emergence into hard vacuum.¡±

    ¡°Well, the shuttlecraft did hang around in the stratosphere for over an hour,¡± Rene told her, ¡°Exar insisted on it. He told me that we had to properly treat your wounds under the influence of standard Arachnean gravity before we subjected you to any extreme g-forces. But how could our stowaway have withstood the cold?¡±

    ¡°It must also have subdermal arterial tubules for heat retention,¡± Zildiz answered, ¡°The silk would share that property as well as provide shielding from harmful radiation.¡±

    ¡°Sounds like that Leaper was more prepared for space travel than we were. Mighty convenient, that,¡± Rene said, unsure if he could still believe Zildiz¡¯s earlier claim that the kindreds were separate from the quasi-demonic void crawlers.

    ¡°All of the implants I¡¯ve mentioned so far are standard requirements for high-altitude variants such as migration mappers, meteorologists or¡ª¡±

    ¡°¡ªthose Leapers who help make the storm catchers?¡± Rene cut in.

    ¡°Correct,¡± Zildiz said, arching an eyebrow as if she hadn¡¯t thought him capable of deductive reasoning, ¡°They often have to work long shifts in low pressure environments. That, or it inherited some recessive genes from grandparents who were candidates in the defunct space program.¡±

    Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    ¡°The Leapers have a space program?¡± Rene said faintly, shaken to his core by the mental image of a bunch of the black-furred creepy crawlies floating out into the oily stain between the stars.

    ¡°Had. Once. So did we Gallivants,¡± Zildiz said, ¡°But those eight-legged bastards had to go and ruin everything, as usual.¡±

    Zildiz quickly related a portion of the troubled history between Gallivants and the hitchhiker¡¯s people. And the more Rene heard, the sooner he came to the conclusion that the Fleet would be hopelessly outmatched in the upcoming conflict against the Vitalus and the kindreds.

    Relations between the Leapers and the Gallivants had not always been so hostile. During the time of Zildiz¡¯s grandfather, the two races had been cordial enough that the Vitalus had thought to introduce a new addition to the Great Game, a project that was to utilize the very best traits of both kindreds.

    With the terraforming process going so well on Arachnea, the Vitalus wanted to explore the possibility of resettling its resident moon, Cloister. The moon would have been a fresh arena in which the kindreds could carve out their own ecological niches amid the challenges of a low gravity setting.

    To this end, the Vitalus released new modifications into the Leaper gilt helix which allowed them to extrude a far stronger version of their silk, diamond nanothreads that were light and strong enough to be used to weave a ¡®star spool¡¯, a superstructure that used the planet¡¯s own centrifugal force and gravity to hold a geosynchronous tether under constant tension, allowing kindreds to simply climb up and down and release their payloads into orbit. The entire Leaper kindred set to work on the second phase of the project, erecting the Spool on an island on the opposite hemisphere of the world; the first phase involved the Gallivants launching themselves at Cloister using grafted multistage biochemical afterburners, each twice the size of its wearer and designed to molt and shed during the stages of takeoff.

    The Gallivants were the proud vanguard of the recolonization effort. The Vitalus had bestowed upon on them countless revolutionary helix modifications and grafts to allow the kindreds to make the cislunar trip. Subdermal heat regulator tubules, fully pressurized epicuticle layers, exterior lung-tanks, thruster bladders¡ªthe list of gifts was endless. The Leapers had slowly grown jealous of what they perceived as a clear case of favoritism, despite the fact that all the kindreds would have undoubtedly received similar upgrades in the later stages of the mission.

    And so it passed that during the maiden voyage, a joint taskforce of Gallivants and Leapers was sent up to make an initial survey of Cloister¡¯s conditions. A team of Gallivant rocketeers had provided transportation by carrying the Leapers on their backs as they broke free of Arachnea¡¯s pull. After landing the Leapers had put up a series of silk domes where gene edited pioneer species could be introduced via specimen sacs brought up on the star spool.

    ¡°Gallivant rocketeers managed to transport one delivery of specimens up the Spool and to the lunar surface. After that, it all went sideways,¡± Zildiz said sadly.

    Wishing to get a good head start on the brave new frontier, the Leapers had struck first. The last anyone ever heard of the rocketeers was a mayday message that spoke of treachery and heavy casualties. The murders on the lunar colony sent shockwaves down into Arachnea, with both sides trading accusations and threats. The Vitalus voiced its displeasure at the disruption of its plans, but washed its hands and stood aside when the War of the Spool was declared between the two kindreds, a war which only ended when the Spool itself was severed by persons unknown and sent crashing into the oceans below.

    Left completely stranded, the lunar colonies had died out soon after the Leapers sued for peace. Yet the victory of the Gallivants remained a hollow one¡ªfollowing the cessation of hostilities the Vitalus had confiscated or overwritten nearly all of the space-related grafts and helix modifications.

    ¡°That explains why your kindreds hate each other so much,¡± Rene said, pulling thoughtfully at his lower lip.

    ¡°Indeed. In the end the war was a net loss for everyone involved. But a select few of the grafts were allowed to stay in widespread use. The pressure bladders that allow Gallivants to tolerate high-g maneuvers are one of them. This Leaper we¡¯re after clearly has some cislunar upgrades. Either it inherited recessive genes from its parents, or its tribe is using illegal hardware that they refused to surrender to the Inkarnids. In any case, most of its exomorph did not survive the trip¡ªonly the innards remain.¡±

    ¡°So he¡¯s completely naked,¡± Rene nodded, ¡°That¡¯s good news, I suppose.¡±

    ¡°Not exactly. The helm and one of its legs are missing. Which means it still has its venomed fangs and possibly 360-degree night vision, if it installed the necessary upgrades.¡±

    Rene reviewed the tactical information and found that he did not like the odds. Zildiz¡¯s own destroyed exomorph was useless to her now, which meant that their quarry was on roughly even footing with them in terms of offensive capabilities. It had gotten a head start in those vents and was likely already laying in ambush. And as if things couldn¡¯t be worse, Rene''s back was still killing him.

    ¡°27 minutes remaining,¡± the flayed god announced, its incorporeal voice somehow projecting throughout the hangar, ¡°Better hurry up, crewmen.¡±

    The pathfinder cast about the trash heap and saw one of the wheeled vehicles overturned, one of its doors hanging open by its hinges. Rene retrieved the sword of the ancients from the cabin and went back to the vehicle, slicing the door clean off and holding it in his offhand by its handle. For a shield it was quite heavy and cumbersome, but at least he could see clear through the windshield as he took cover behind it.

    Like everything else on this raggedy-arsed mission of his, it would have to do.

 Chapter 47: A-Hunting We Will Go (Part 2)

    ¡°There are some flashlights and spare jumpsuits in the shuttle¡¯s storage bins by the airlock,¡± said Exar, ¡°Should be a cutting torch in there too if you want it.¡±

    ¡°And go fetch me the medicinal supplies from inside while you¡¯re at it,¡± Zildiz told him.

    ¡°Ordering me around like that. Who does she think she is?¡± Rene muttered sourly as he clomped back into the spacecraft. But he did as he was told, piling the tools from the surgeon¡¯s station on a spare stretcher and sliding them down the ramp for Zildiz before he investigated the contents of the storage bins. Among a jumble of incomprehensible tools he located a bronzed blowpipe fed by a canister that emitted a tongue of guttering blue flame with the pull of a trigger. He also found two flashlights like the ones miners wore strapped to their foreheads.

    Out of the speaker system the disembodied voice of the flayed god came again, crooning an eerie tune that Rene had never heard the like of before:

    ¡°A-hunting we will go,

    A-hunting we will go

    Heigh-ho, the merry-o,

    A-hunting we will go¡­¡±

    There was no more time to gather equipment. Rene placed the torch in its accompanying safety holster and buckled it around his waist. Stepping back out, he found Zildiz in the process of tearing herself out of her exomorph.

    Though to tell the truth she wasn¡¯t so much tearing herself out of it as she was disrobing. With a brush of a dirty fingernail along the bumps of her spine the entire suit split open along a vertical seam. Rene saw a pair of smooth shoulders and the soft curves of her hip before modesty prevailed and he quickly glanced away, his pulse racing.

    It had been a long time since Rene had seen a woman, and Zildiz was all that and more. His wayward eyes darted back up the small of her back and followed the silhouette of her waist up to the slope of her delicate ribs¡ªZildiz was so skinny that he could see the shifting muscles of her torso underneath her dusky, freckled skin. Patterns of thin white marks wound beneath her underarms and up the sides of her neck, looking for all the world like the tan lines made by a silk brassiere. He knew the marks corresponded with the shapes of her exomorph¡¯s armor plates, but all the same Rene could feel a lump building up in his throat at the steamy thoughts which rose unbidden in his head.

    He could not for the life of him look away, not even when Zildiz darted a glance over her shoulder and caught him red-handed.

    ¡°Careful, Fleet-man,¡± she warned, ¡°Stare any harder and your eyes might just roll right out of your head.¡±

    Rene at least had the decency to blush.

    ¡°Ahem-hem!¡± he lapsed into a fit of embarrassed coughing, ¡°Zildiz, I hope you don¡¯t take this the wrong way¡ªbut what the blazes do you think you¡¯re doing?¡±

    ¡°My exomorph is too damaged to be of further use to me. It will only slow me down.¡±

    This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

    ¡°You told me that severing yourself from it would prove fatal.¡±

    ¡°On Arachnea, yes. If you¡¯ll recall, I almost died of narcosis when my cardiovascular compensators failed¡ªthey were unable to cope with the loss of the intake nozzle from my helm. I can already feel the main muscle groups going rigid again. But given that the atmosphere in this place is within both our natural tolerances, I should do just fine without it.¡±

    Zildiz shrugged off the rest of her outfit and stepped out, long strands of gel clinging to her bare skin, but otherwise as naked as the day she was born.

    ¡°Uh, right-o. Ehrm,¡± Rene exhibited a sudden and all-absorbing interest in his boots, ¡°I¡¯ll give you some privacy. Let me know when you¡¯re ready.¡±

    He beat a hasty retreat behind the safety of the shuttle. Rene had to wonder if she was doing that on purpose or if she simply lacked all self-awareness. He suspected the latter; Gallivants seemed to have a purely functional outlook on life. Whichever the case was, his heart was going like the chambers of a canefuel engine.

    ¡°Rene, your pulse rate¡¯s gone way up,¡± Exar said, rolling to a halt near his feet, ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡±

    ¡°Nothing,¡± he lied swiftly, ¡°Are you coming with us?¡±

    ¡°Sure. Just clip me to the backpack rig like before and I¡¯ll give you my sensor readings.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯re going to need more than just moral support, Exar. It looks pretty tight up there, and your body is perfectly suited for that environment. Why don¡¯t you roll around up there and help us find this Leaper?¡±

    ¡°Gee, I¡¯d love to help out more, but if that crazy coot on the tank treads sees me all acting all self-automated, the jig will be up. He¡¯ll gas the rest of you without hesitation.¡±

    ¡°Who knew you were so damned important,¡± Rene said with more than a little resentment, ¡°But then again, you Exars were the trusted servants of the ancestors.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯ve got it twisted, man,¡± Exar replied, ¡°Whoever this nutjob is, one thing¡¯s for certain: he¡¯s no employee of Exodus Industries.¡±

    Not a part of Exodus Industries? Rene thought as he strapped on the rig and helped Exar latch on. What on earth did he mean by that? Could it be that this flayed god was not one of the progenitors? But that couldn¡¯t be right¡ªit had consistently referred to Rene as a crewman, which told him that their cultures shared a common denominator.

    He was still pondering this latest contradiction when Zildiz popped her head into view and asked him:

    ¡°Say, what¡¯s the holdup? Have you gone timid on me all of a sudden?¡±

    ¡°For godsakes, Zildiz,¡± Rene said, preemptively shielding his eyes with his hands, ¡°Are you decent?¡±

    ¡°Decent?¡± she said almost cheerfully, ¡°Why, I¡¯ve never been less than excellent, Fleet-man.¡±

    Zildiz came out dressed in green patient swabs and layers of bandages tied around her chest. All that was left of her exomorph were her gauntlets, greaves, gorget and the pauldron of her right shoulder. The Gallivant had also taken one of the bales of wire and slung them across her shoulders like an empty bandolier of pistols. Together they climbed the cooling slag heap and reached the dented ceiling panel which the sentinel had pointed out for them, Zildiz tearing it off and casting it aside. A trail of bloody footprints led into the ventilation shaft just large enough for them to proceed in hunchbacked fashion.

    ¡°The rat¡¯s gone and made a home for himself,¡± the voice from the speaker system crackled, ¡°Get in there, my pussycats! You¡¯ve got 22 minutes before he reaches the cheddar.¡±

    Then he hummed gleefully:

    ¡°The rat takes the cheese.

    The rat takes the cheese.

    Heigh-ho, the derry-o!

    The rat takes the cheese.

    The cheese stands alone.

    The cheese stands alone.

    Heigh-ho, the derry-o!

    The cheese stands alone¡­¡±

    Doing his level best to ignore the insane ramblings, Rene handed Zildiz a forehead light before he flicked on his own.

    ¡°Ladies first?¡± he suggested, carefully sticking his head up into the gap to reveal a twisting warren of interconnecting vents that stretched far beyond what their narrow beams of light could fathom.

    Zildiz gave him a blank stare in reply. The pathfinder sighed and heaved his bulky shield in front of him as he climbed into the waiting shadows, the Gallivant trailing softly behind him.

 Chapter 48: A-Hunting We Will Go (Part 3)

    Up the cold and narrow corridors the fugitive clambered, bleeding and bruising against the walls of the alien warren that would very likely prove to be his tomb.

    He had played dead after impaling his thigh on the trap which the hatchling had set for them on the top of the hill. Lying among the slain and wounded, he had listened as the hatchling tortured his fellow braves, stringing them up to form a ring of unspeakable trophies. Only sheer luck kept him from sharing their fate, that and his uncle¡¯s advice:

    ¡°Can you hear me, Neroth?¡± Kryptus had whispered in wavespeech over the tribe¡¯s secure frequencies, ¡°Are you still alive?¡±

    ¡°Yes, alpha,¡± Neroth breathed back.

    ¡°Praise be the pattern!¡± his uncle exulted, ¡°And your wounds? Are they terminal?¡±

    ¡°No. The trap stabbed through one of my false legs. I¡¯ll lose the limb, but other than that my armor is fully operational.¡±

    ¡°Good. Stay down,¡± Kryptus told Neroth even as he approached to bandy words with the hatchling, ¡°But be ready to move at my signal. They have no idea you¡¯re still with us. With your help, dear nephew, we may yet conquer!¡±

    Neroth had his doubts, though. He¡¯d seen the hatchling and its ally, the crazed Gallivant, destroy wave after wave of his tribe¡¯s fiercest warriors. He himself was only fifteen years old, almost a hatchling himself. What chance did he possibly have against a being that could conjure bone-shattering explosions with a careless wave of its hand? But duty and shame compelled Neroth to do as he was told, hanging motionless from the deadening lump of his false right leg as he waited for his chance at glory.

    Kryptus did something completely unexpected then, offering the hatchling alpha status in exchange for the information stored in the being¡¯s gilt helix. Neroth was so astounded by the move that he nearly gave himself away by gasping. What¡¯s more, his uncle¡¯s offer sounded completely genuine. The deal almost pushed through, with the hatchling only backing out when it became clear that the female Gallivant¡¯s death was one of Kryptus¡¯ conditions. When negotiations broke down and his uncle called for the final, all-out assault, Neroth realized that he would have to rise to the occasion after all.

    At which point, Neroth promptly pissed himself. Thankfully the Gallivant was unconscious by that time, or else she would have undoubtedly smelled the shameful trickle than ran down his legs. Neroth had always imagined that he would one day be as valiant as Acheron the Argonaut. But now he couldn¡¯t even bring himself to strike at an enemy whose back was turned to him. He was frozen with dread, utterly useless, a coward!

    Then came Udumnu the Thundermaeve, who made cowards of everyone else, too. The warband fled at the sight of their impending destruction, but it was no use. Nothing could escape the wrath of the Hollowores and the full might of the Vitalus unleashed.

    But to his shock and amazement the spawn of the Betrayers had dealt with Udumnu as well, summoning a silver-winged machine that did the impossible by striking down a living vessel of the god. Adapting to the situation with remarkable rapidity, Kryptus gave Neroth his final orders: he was to stow himself away upon the alien craft and find out where the Betrayers were hiding. Then he was to send a broadcast a message to the Vitalus so that the god could pinpoint his exact location and wreak terrible vengeance upon those who had defied Its will.

    ¡°Go forth, valiant Neroth! Go where no Leaper has gone since the War of the Spool! Your victory is certain, and your rewards shall be incalculable! Ascend, and know that the hopes of all our kindred go with you!¡±

    And so Neroth went, strapping himself to the aft of the machine just after the hatchling carried the female Gallivant inside.

    It was a miracle he had lasted so long in the pressure sack he¡¯d woven for himself. Of course, he was an expert on making such equipment after years spent working on the rigging of the storm catchers¡ªa pressure sack was the only way a Leaper could take a break up there between shifts.

    But all the expertise in the world couldn¡¯t prevent freak accidents. A passing micrometeor the size of a snowflake perforated his sack just as the shuttlecraft entered the gas giant¡¯s sphere of influence. Neroth scrambled to find the leak and plug it with the last grams of his specialized storm catcher webbing, but by that time the tears had enlarged from the force of the rapidly escaping gasses and he didn¡¯t have enough material to stitch them shut. In the end he resorted to clawing into his own carapace and applying the spewing hemolymph to fill in the gaps, the gel clotting up to seal the breach like it did for any wounds that his body accrued.

    Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    He then put his exomorph into diapause mode to conserve oxygen, but in his overwhelming relief at having forestalled a fatal decompression, he became careless and allowed his lacerated carapace to touch the clotted gel scab. Many hours later he awoke from the fugue state and found himself frozen fast to the plug, his exomorph¡¯s vital signs dropping precipitously as his body heat radiated into outer space. One by one his symbiont''s organs failed him, until at last he was left with only the basic neural pairings in his helm. Luckily, the craft landed on the Jovian moon not long after, at which point he immediately massaged the emergency release nerves along the backplate, ejecting out from the ruined exomorph before tearing his way out of the sack. Pausing only to collect his most precious spinneret and its contents, Neroth hid himself among the heaps of refuse.

    There he witnessed the enemy make contact with the clanking moon beast which called this icy moon home. The moon beast frightened Neroth more than any Hollowore ever had. So that was what the Betrayers looked like! Machine fiendishly mated with man. In his frantic eagerness to get away from the creature Neroth climbed up to the ceiling and took refuge in the tunnels above, and in a moment of carelessness kicked a loose nut free of its bolt. The tiny sound instantly drew the attention of the enemy, Neroth coming meters of being blasted by the barrage which followed. A piece of shrapnel shot through the floor all the same and lodged into the sole of his foot¡ªNeroth had all but bitten his tongue out holding back his screams as he¡¯d dug out the missile, slicing his fingertips open in the process.

    How had the primals ever become a dominant lifeform when their innards were so soft and exposed? Why did everything have to hurt so much?

    He felt his way around the tight corners, the grey optic feed from his helm grainy but serviceable¡ªfor now. It would die off without the rest of his exomorph to sustain it. When the optic feed blacked out for a moment and blinded him, Neroth felt the same rising tide of panic in his chest again, the bewildered hysteria of a boy who was nearing at his wit¡¯s end.

    No, not a boy, Neroth railed at himself. He was a brave of the Weeping Vipers! His grandmother climbed up the Spool and danced on the moon! If it weren¡¯t for those treacherous Gallivants, he would be up there with them now, charting a course to the worlds beyond the Mantle of Silence.

    Once again those flighty deceivers were up to no good. Why else had the Gallivant come all the way out here, if not to form a pact with the ultimate evil? Clearly the fate of Arachnea hung in the balance.

    He could not let the folks back home down. Neroth gave the side of his head a few thumps and his night vision returned, restoring a measure of his confidence. All he had to do was stay hidden and find a way to broadcast a signal powerful enough to reach the Vitalus. It had all the helix mods and grafts necessary to retrofit its existing fleet of Hollowores. They would be spaceworthy in a matter of months, if not weeks.

    Divine retribution would soon follow. And with it, a just reward for the servant who had made it all possible. He would make alpha at the very least, even genitor if he played his cards right. Hell, maybe he could even ask the Vitalus for permission to rebuild the Spool with the help of the other kindreds, right after they exterminated every last Blade-Wing and razed Cthonis to the ground.

    His dreams of fire and blood were interrupted by a banging somewhere behind him. Something was coming up the shaft! He was at a junction of three passages, a tri-pronged fork in the road with a shaft above that led straight up. Beams of light were poking and prodding up the tunnel on his lefthand side. Minions of the moon beast, no doubt, sent to ferret him out of his hiding place. Who knew what kind of otherworldly beings had carved these burrows into the metal guts of this moon?

    No, now wasn¡¯t the time to give in to imagined terrors. Whatever came for him next, he would be cunning like the hatchling and let it run headfirst into his trap.

    His position was the perfect ambush spot. Neroth took his spinneret and set a snare that served a dual purpose.

    This wasn¡¯t the usual high-atmo webbing mix like the one he had used for the pressure sack. It was his diadem spinneret, a graft which had become popular after the Night Weaver had used it to such deadly effect against Gallivant raiding parties. With it he spun an arm''s length of diamond-hard monofilaments that could cut all but the strongest carapaces to ribbons upon contact. They had limited tensile strength, however, and were usually only laid as defensive traps¡ªspinning them out too long was out of the question. As an added bonus, if his night vision failed again, he could still count on the vibrations on the threads to locate the enemy in pitch blackness. He set the monofilaments at roughly neck height for clean decapitations.

    Then Neroth reached behind his chelicerae and massaged the gums of his upper jaw, triggering the release of his mouthpart assembly, which then fell out in one complete piece. Working with practiced familiarity Neroth took the fangs and their accompanying venom glands and held the assembly by the labium, or lower lip. Now he could wield his fangs as a punch-dagger that would deliver the killing blows.

    He smeared his lacerated foot down the righthand side passage and then climbed up the vertical shaft, lodging himself in place with his back pressed against one wall and his feet upon the other. There were faint scuffling noises, the lights from the lefthand tunnel growing brighter by the minute.

    ¡°Damnit Zildiz, but I¡¯m going as fast as I can!¡± Neroth heard one of them say, and recognized the voice of the hatchling, ¡°It¡¯s not easy lugging this door around.¡±

    ¡°Shut your shithole,¡± replied the Gallivant with some heat, ¡°You¡¯re giving us both away.¡±

    We may yet conquer, Neroth thought, and felt truly optimistic for the first time that day. Now the hunters would be the hunted. Gripping his punch-dagger tight, Neroth waited for them to make the fatal misstep. Gripping his punch-dagger tight in one hand and the bundle of feeler fibers in the other, Neroth waited for them to make their fatal misstep.

 Chapter 49: The Devils Zither

    Zildiz guided the circle of her forehead light along the rust-ochred smear their prey had left for them to follow, marking where it disappeared round the corner of a crossroads. She dipped her hand in the sticky ichor and kneaded the sample between her fingertips.

    Freshly wet, only just beginning to coagulate. With it came yellow streaks that gave off the sharp tangs of ammonia. It had urinated on itself out of fear.

    Good. It was right to be afraid. She could all but taste the salt glaze of its sweat on her tongue. Had to be nearby. There was a faint trace of humidity in the air, the kind that people tended to create in an enclosed space. The signs were so clear that even the Fleet-man pointed out the trail with his monomachete and turned to her with a worried expression, momentarily blinding her by shining his light directly into her eyes.

    ¡°Sorry,¡± he mouthed, adjusting his head strap to lower his beam. Zildiz closed a fist in Rene¡¯s face to reemphasize the need for silence and jutted out her chin in a wordless articulation that nevertheless managed to communicate three sentences at once:

    ¡°And so? You scared? Go on, then.¡±

    Rene¡¯s lips tightened into a straight line. Zildiz was more comfortable reading the true faces on people¡¯s helms than the pudgy expressions of their innards, so she couldn¡¯t be sure, but the pathfinder didn¡¯t look too happy about being told what to do. Actually, he looked seconds away from wetting himself, too.

    But if there was one thing she was coming to realize about Rene, it was that he did not lack for courage.

    ¡°Exar, are you getting anything?¡± he asked in a steady voice.

    ¡°There¡¯s a slight increase in ambient temperature up ahead,¡± the sphere said, ¡°He passed through here a few minutes ago. More than that, I can¡¯t say.¡±

    Rene nodded. He braced his shoulder against the scrap shield and muscled on ahead, his beam sweeping across the width of the vent as he brought his attention back to the front¡ª

    ¡ªmoonlight jangled on the strings of a devil¡¯s zither. In a synaptic flash of remembrance Zildiz was transported back to the time when her airwing had carried out a precision strike against the Night Weaver¡¯s Loom, deep in the heartland of the enemy. Each commando had been equipped with whispering wings tailor-grown for noise cancellation, their blackened armour daubed with radiation-absorbing ceramic stealth composites processed by the special saliva of terrestrial caste Gallivants.

    Seventy-five of them had flown into that seemingly deserted forest clearing. Only six had flown back out again, their black armour painted red all over.

    One moment they were moving in tight formation almost wingtip to wingtip, silent and lethal, the epitome of aerial supremacy. Then the lead elements ran into the Night Weaver¡¯s sieve. In the blink of an eye their bodies were ripped apart like paper figurines, men and women turned into spurting stumps and torsos, fountains erupting from their severed limbs to reveal the Night Weaver¡¯s diabolical cobwebs drawn out in lines of dripping crimson.

    Only sheer dumb luck and quick reflexes that had kept Zildiz from being scattered across the jungle along with the rest of the squadrons that night. Just as it was sheer dumb luck that now directed Rene¡¯s beam, causing it to shine on the webbing at just the right angle so that their obsidian strands sparkled faintly. So faintly, in fact, that Zildiz almost mistook them for a trick of the light. Thankfully her battle-honed instincts knew better and she dropped her blade, grabbing Rene by the collar and yanking him back just in the nick of time.

    Rene let out an involuntary yell, struggling against her, but Zildiz took a page out of his book and kicked out the backs of his knees. The door slipped out of his grasp and toppled into the hidden snare where it was divided into three uneven pieces, the webbing cutting through the glass windshield as neatly as it did the door¡¯s many layers of metals.

    ¡°Holy Hollowores¡­¡± Zildiz swore, her voice shaking as the memory of the slaughter flooded back to her. Rene hung limply from her grip a foot away from the killing strands, too startled to utter a word

    The fabric of his collar tore between her fingers, the pathfinder slipping out of her grip as he fell forward to his death.

    No! Zildiz¡¯s arm shot out snakelike, grasping Rene by the curly hairs of his head. He yelped as she hauled on him again, this time with so much force that she all but tore out his scalp. Rene fell backward onto her, banging and scrabbling at the walls of the vent in his desire to escape the invisible force which had ripped his shield part like it was nothing. So much for stealth.

    ¡°I¡¯ve got you!¡± she shouted into his ear, ¡°I¡¯ve got you!¡±

    It took Rene several deep breaths to regain his composure.

    ¡°What¡­the hell¡­was that?¡± he panted, pulling himself back up and rubbing at his back, ¡°Ah gods, I think I twisted my tendons again!¡±

    ¡°The Leaper spun a trap with a special webbing mix. We call them devil''s zithers. They¡¯re almost invisible to the untrained eye.¡±

    Zildiz got to her feet and chose to sheathe her blade. The last thing she needed was to accidentally destroy her own weapon by snagging it on the zithers. Then she unslung the coil of wire she¡¯d brought along, supressing the surge of guilt she felt at violating a commandment of the Great Game.

    ¡®Thou shalt spurn all tools and artifice save for that which is wrought by the All-In-One,¡¯ the helixeers would intone whenever they applied a new graft.

    Exomorphs were meant to be the only piece of technology the kindreds would ever need to thrive on Arachnea. The symbiotic armour answered every physical need they had, from breathing and eating to fighting and flying. Her people could adapt to anything the world had to offer with the right modifications to their gilt helix.

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    In exchange for this gift, the Vitalus trusted them not to commit the same mistakes the Betrayers had made in submitting to the tyranny of the machine. Their way of life had accomplished nothing but ecocide on a galactic scale.

    Now she was breaking that sacred trust. True, her exomorph was beyond repair and she was reduced to her soft innards, but it still felt deeply wrong to stoop to the level of Rene and his stunted culture. Tools of the hand were dangerous things that acted without conscience. Even a machine as simple as a wheel had the power unmake the delicate balance of the All-In-One, given time.

    The ends would justify the means, she hoped. Once she accomplished her mission of signalling her position to the Vitalus, the god would surely forgive her. But first she had to take care of this verminous stowaway.

    She tied the end of the wire repeatedly until she had a fat, heavy knot. She¡¯d brought the wire along with a very different purpose in mind, but now she had to improvise. Zildiz tossed the balled-up end of the wire with an underhanded throw that sent it bouncing off the ceiling a dozen meters up the passage. As expected, her tool was immediately cut to pieces by the diadem webbing, Zildiz counting the number of segments and their respective lengths so that she could estimate the location of each strand.

    There were six segments, so that meant five strands minimum. Three that were only an armlength away from Rene at neck height, and two more just around the corner set at hip level.

    She unwound her remaining wire and began to spin it in a vertical circle, whipping it against the zithers repeatedly, pieces of cut wire skittering in every direction. Zildiz kept this up for a few minutes, ignoring Rene who observed her actions with growing perplexity.

    ¡°The strands are monomolecular, just like your sword,¡± Zildiz explained as she worked, ¡°They can go through just about anything on the first cut. But with every cut after that they become increasingly dull. More importantly, their tensile strength is very limited.¡±

    ¡°But my sword never loses its keenness.¡±

    ¡°Yes, but it also has a power source built into its hilt. I suspect that the weapon somehow restores its edge after every incision you make.¡±

    ¡°And you¡¯d be right,¡± Exar confirmed.

    ¡°Huh. How about that,¡± Rene said, glancing at his machete with renewed appreciation.

    She felt a growing resistance through the vibrations of her tool and made Rene stand back for his own safety. Zildiz was down to her last meter of wire when the fragile zithers finally snapped from the repeated stress, their split ends carving into the sides of the tunnel. The thin aluminium walls of the vent warped and popped underfoot. They both froze in place, afraid that the whole tunnel would collapse and carry them hurtling down a fifteen-meter drop to the hard stone of the hangar floor.

    The uncomfortable shifting sensation stopped after a moment and the pair of them slowly relaxed. Rene picked up the largest piece of the door and chucked it ahead of them just to be safe. The heap of scrap bounced off the far wall of the junction and fell to the ground in once piece.

    ¡°Heh,¡± he snorted, ¡°Devious little beggars, aren¡¯t they? I¡¯m beginning to understand why your people hate Leapers so much.¡±

    Believing that the immediate danger had passed, the pathfinder went to retrieve his shield, carefully avoiding touching the walls where the invisible zithers were no doubt still dangling. It was at this point that Zildiz also committed the crucial sin of complacency; her attention was still focused on the two remaining zithers around the bend that she still had to defuse. That, and the visible bloodstains had her convinced that the Leaper had gone past the junction up ahead.

    Still rubbing at his sore back, Rene reached an overhead shaft where he could finally stand upright and straightened, raising his arms up high to get in a good stretch.

    ¡°Hhraaaghh!¡±

    There was an ear-splitting screech as something came hurtling down the shaft at him. Rene only just managed to catch his attacker with his outstretched arms before its weight bore him to the ground. Zildiz saw a pale, slimy, emaciated youth sitting on Rene¡¯s chest and trying to ram a bristling weapon into the pathfinder¡¯s neck. The Leaper was naked except for the eight-eyed upper part of its helm¡ªit had detached its lower mouthparts and was using them as a push knife. Rene had seized its stabbing hand by the wrist, holding off the venomed fangs as he tried to bring his monomachete to bear in the tight space. But his sword arm was jammed up against the wall, all while the Leaper had two arms driving down against his one.

    ¡°Zil¡­dizz¡­¡± he grunted as the points inched towards his throat, his triceps trembling with the effort, ¡°Help¡­me¡­.¡±

    The Leaper saw an opening and drove a knobby fist into Rene¡¯s throat, cutting off the rest of his words. As Rene choked and gasped for breath the Leaper tore its weapon out of his slackening grip and angled for another stab.

    Zildiz snapped out of her daze, springing into action. It was too cramped in here for her long swords, so instead she wound the ends of her shortened wire tight around either hand and rushed at the Leaper with a shout of her own. It saw her coming and redirected its stab at her. Zildiz recoiled and brought up the taut wire between her hands, intercepting the knife hand and wrapping the cord around his wrist, immobilizing the threat. Not to be outdone, the Leaper slammed its forehead into the bridge of her nose.

    Crunch!

    Zildiz rocked back, tasting rubber and seeing double. The fangs! She had to keep her grip on the fangs! The venom would kill within moments. She dragged the push knife down, tried to rip it out of the Leaper¡¯s hands, eating another flush headbutt in the process, then a punch to the side of her head. Knocked senseless, Zildiz sagged to the floor, still keeping her stubborn hold on the knife hand. The Leaper rained heavy blows on the back of her head, mashing her face against the floor as it tried to pull free from her cord.

    The blows ceased. Zildiz lifted her groggy head and saw that Rene had grabbed the Leaper from behind, his face purple as he struggled to breathe through a bruised windpipe. Rene was trying to sneak his forearm under its chin to throttle it as he had once done with her.

    But the little shit had other plans and sank its white teeth into the meat of Rene¡¯s arm.

    ¡°Arrgh!¡± pathfinder howled and let go, clutching at a bite-sized hole in his arm, ¡°What in the shit are you?!¡±

    In reply the Leaper spat out the chunk of his bloody flesh and screeched again, a banshee¡¯s yell that made Zildiz¡¯s hairs stand on end.

    Rene scooped up his monomachete, the blade singing its low tune as he activated it. But before he could bring it to bear the Leaper lashed out with both legs in a dropkick that sent Rene sprawling once again. His humming blade fell with him, sliced a huge rent into the side of the tunnel and through a supporting strut.

    The floor sagged. There was a shriek of tearing metal, and through the rapidly widening gap Zildiz could see the cavern floor far, far below. An idea flashed through the dull haze of pain that suffused her.

    The Leaper was still pulling hard at its knife hand. Abruptly she let go of the cord, letting it stumble back. In the same motion she pushed off against the side of the passage with her legs and drove her shoulder into the Leaper¡¯s chest, slamming him bodily against the damaged section of the vent. The aluminium buckled beneath the impact, the entire wall crumpling and falling right out.

    Too late Zildiz realized that she¡¯d put too much strength into the tackle. They heard horrid grinding noise as the other struts tore loose from the cavern¡¯s roof. Then all at once the entire ventilation system pitched to one side, and all four of them tumbled screaming into the sheer drop below.

    #

 Chapter 50: The Commodore

    Zildiz thumped into something hard and uneven, felt a rib crack. Groaning, she rolled onto her stomach, coughed up something wet and hot, her breath coming in painfully shallow.

    Her hands were burning. She looked down and saw the wire digging into her blood-soaked palms. She¡¯d been hanging on so tight to the Leaper¡¯s knife hand that she¡¯d sawed her own hands open.

    The hidden speaker system crackled to life, the flayed god idly commentating:

    ¡°Flushed him out at last, have you? And with only three minutes to spare. Well done!¡±

    The harsh voice brought Zildiz¡¯s senses swimming back to the present. She saw a body lying right next to her on the trash heap that had broken their otherwise fatal fall. The Leaper! She was still hanging onto it by the cords wound around its wrist. Its helm had slipped off its head in the crash, the soft face of its innards blinking up at her as it gradually recovered its bearings.

    It was a very young male. Scrawny and malnourished, with the long, wispy hair of a dried-up corpse. It couldn¡¯t be more than twelve or thirteen years old; it hadn¡¯t even undergone the Leapers¡¯ ritual mutilation whereby they removed their own lower jaws to make room for the powerful chelicerae of their exomorphs. What was Kryptus thinking, sending a mere hatchling like this after her?

    Suddenly it gave a violent jerk and reached up to stab her. Zildiz flinched out of its reach then twisted its arm behind its head with the wire, wrapping the leftover cord around the Leaper¡¯s neck, hitching it tight. His neck was so skinny that it took a lot of additional loops to get a nice fit, yet once the noose was set it was only a matter of time.

    The boy¡¯s eyes bulged out of their sockets, tongue lolling out like a pink slug. Funny, the colors of his irises did not match; one was blue and the other a soft green.

    Not he, she reprimanded herself. It. Always it.

    She ought to have just plunged her blade into its innards¡¯ heart and killed it in one stroke. But she didn¡¯t dare loosen her grips now, not even for a moment¡ªone graze from those fangs and her innards would be paralyzed within seconds and dead not long after that. She needed both hands to immobilize the weapon and keep the stranglehold.

    And keep it she did. The boy¡¯s legs began to kick and spasm, he scratched at her face with his spare hand and tried to claw out her eyes with his fingernails. Zildiz shut her eyelids and turned away as it scraped off the skin of her cheek.

    Mustn¡¯t let go. Mustn¡¯t let go. Go to sleep, little Leaper. It¡¯ll all be over soon.

    Zildiz hung on like grim death even as the wire sliced ever deeper into her palms, the Leaper flailing and tossing about in a futile effort to buck her off.

    ¡°Zildiz,¡± she heard Rene groan about thirty meters up the trash pile, ¡°You alright?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve got it by the throat!¡± she yelled back, ¡°Come quick!¡±

    The pathfinder started picking his way to her down the pile of refuse, stopping briefly to pick up his halved shield. Meanwhile the Leaper¡¯s toes found purchase on a tall stack of container crates and it began walking itself up the vertical surface.

    ¡°Hold down his legs,¡± Zildiz growled through bared teeth, ¡°His legs!¡±

    The Leaper pushed off the crates, somersaulting over Zildiz¡¯s head so that it landed behind her, reversing their position. The tension in the garrotte had transferred to the back of its neck and the Leaper could breathe freely again. More worryingly, it had created room with which to use its push knife.

    Zildiz let go of the useless noose and twisted around to face it. She heard its incisors snapping centimetres away from her jugular but dismissed them as a lesser threat, instead seizing the push knife with both her hands. She had to disarm it, now or never! Though she was bigger and heavier than it by far, it was attacking with a manic fury that more than made up for the difference in strength between them. It went low and slammed into her hips, driving her against the crates, the transparent venom glistening like dewdrops on the tips of its fangs. Over the Leaper¡¯s shoulder she saw the pathfinder still struggling to descend, the unwieldy shield slowing his progress.

    ¡°Lose that useless thing and get over here!¡± Zildiz wheezed, her lungs burning from the exertion. Rene heard the desperation in her tone and finally dropped the piece of scrap. Not that it mattered now; he was too far up to make any difference now.

    Or so she thought. Knowing he couldn¡¯t climb down in time to save her, Rene opted instead to stand on the back of his halved shield and leaned forward. The concave piece of scrap skittered rapidly down the slope, Rene sticking his arms out to either side for balance as he rode helter-skelter on top of it.

    ¡°Oy!¡¯ he called out to the Leaper as he closed the distance. It turned at the sound of his voice and caught Rene¡¯s fist flush in the face, the pathfinder putting all of his weight and crashing momentum into the punch¡ªZildiz heard the small bones in his hand crackling at the impact. Then the Leaper slumped against Zildiz, folding gently at the waist, before toppling over without a sound.

    Rene raised his shield over the unconscious Leaper as if he meant to drive in its skull with the rim. Then he stopped and said in wonder:

    ¡°By my stars and nebulae,¡± Rene lowered the shield and brushed away the dark hairs which covered the Leaper¡¯s wan and pallid face, ¡°He¡¯s just a boy. No older than my nephew¡­¡±

    Zildiz smacked her lips, tasting blood. Had the fractured rib punctured her lung? She felt as if she¡¯d inhaled a handful of wooden splinters. Zildiz finally wrested the push knife out of its limp grasp and slid it over her own hand.

    ¡°What a shame,¡± she said. She drew back her arm for the coup de grace, but out of nowhere Rene knocked her thrust aside with the shield, shoving her away.

    ¡°I can¡¯t let you do that,¡± he said, placing himself between her and their helpless enemy.

    ¡°Oh, not this shit again!¡± Zildiz cried, his interference sending her into transports of rage, ¡°We¡¯ve been over this before! When will you learn? The only mercy a Leaper deserves is a quick and painless death.¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s just a boy,¡± Rene repeated softly, as if that alone could justify this monumental piece of idiocy.

    ¡°Where¡¯ve you been these last few minutes? That ¡®boy¡¯ just took a chunk out of your arm with his teeth!¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s not that bad,¡± he replied, glancing at the suppurating hole in his forearm, ¡°Alright, never mind, it¡¯s pretty bad,¡± he added with a pained expression, ¡°But he¡¯s just like you, see? He doesn¡¯t know any better!¡±

    ¡°And he never will,¡± Zildiz said, trying to step around him. Rene paralleled her movement and headed her off, unwilling to let her do what had to be done.

    Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.

    ¡°I told you before,¡± she said in a low and level tone that radiated menace, ¡°I can go through you like a door. Move, or be moved.¡±

    ¡°No,¡± Rene said simply, and brought his fists up in a fighting stance. Zildiz uttered a wordless snarl of frustration and unsheathed both her blades, circling to his left.

    ¡°I hate to say it chief,¡± Exar spoke up with reluctance, ¡°But I think Zildiz might have a point here. From what I¡¯ve seen so far, the Leapers are too far gone as culture. Take it from me: not every oompa loompa deserves to work in the chocolate factory.¡±

    ¡°Shut up, Exar,¡± Rene snapped, ¡°Nobody understands what you¡¯re saying anyway.¡±

    ¡°The plot thickens,¡± the flayed god said with undisguised merriment, ¡°This is better than primetime holovision. Forty-five seconds remaining, by the way.¡±

    She didn¡¯t have time for this pointless moralizing. He¡¯d lost his monomachete sometime during the tumble they¡¯d taken, which meant that she held all the advantages here. Zildiz made a quick sidestep to his right, forcing Rene to react. In so doing, he crossed his feet¡ªa rookie mistake. Zildiz pounced at him, causing him to trip over his own feet. She feinted high, saw him cower behind his upraised shield, spotted a glaring opening right through to his exposed abdomen. On any other day, she would have plunged a sword through that gap and put an end to the matter without fuss. But at the very last instant something inside her weakened and she pulled her thrust, allowing Rene to recover his footing.

    ¡°I don¡¯t want to hurt you,¡± he said. Refusing to barter any more words with him, Zildiz swatted at him with her lefthand sword, deliberately telegraphing her attack to draw a reaction.

    As expected, Rene cringed and brought his shield to bear, creating an opening just wide enough for her righthand sword to come flashing down, aiming to chop off his hand at the wrist. Again the inexplicable weakness within her made her soften the blow so that she only nicked his flesh. It was still enough to make him drop the piece of scrap with a yelp. Now defenceless, Rene backed away and threw his body over the unconscious Leaper.

    Insufferable fool, Zildiz fumed. Why must he always make things so difficult? She could run them both through right now and save herself the trouble of talking. Try as she might, she could not bring herself to harm Rene. Instead, she begged him to see reason at sword point:

    ¡°Last chance, Fleet-man. It¡¯s us or him. The lives of the plurality weighed against the survival of the singular. Even you should understand that there¡¯s only one right choice to make.¡±

    ¡°T-minus forty seconds,¡± the flayed god chimed in, ¡°The girl¡¯s right. If the ethics fit, why not commit?¡±

    ¡°Listen to your god. For the rest of us to live, he has to die,¡± Zildiz pleaded one last time, her anger faltering against the force of his conviction, ¡°Why can¡¯t you see that?¡±

    ¡°T-minus thirty¡­¡±

    ¡°Because I¡¯ve already made that choice once before,¡± Rene had a faraway look in his eyes now. He placed his throat against the tip of her blade, said: ¡°And it might have cost me the better part of my soul. Never again, Zildiz. Never again. D¡¯you hear me?¡± he roared suddenly, his cries rebounding off the hanger walls, ¡°I ain¡¯t doing it! He¡¯s just a boy, a child! And any god that calls for the blood of innocents is no god of mine!¡±

    Rene climbed the stack of crates and shook his fist at the ceiling.

    ¡°Look at him! Look at what we¡¯ve become in your absence, because of your indifference! You¡¯ve left us nothing but a scrapyard of dead moons and blasted worlds from here to the edge of eternity. We can¡¯t go on killing each other like this, swirling down the old spirals of hate, rolling dice at a game where nobody wins. There has got to be another way! And if there isn¡¯t, then by God, I refuse to play!¡±

    His defiant shouts died away into the stillness.

    ¡°¡­five, four, three, two, one,¡± Zildiz whispered, counting down the last precious moments of her life. There was a hiss of gaseous effluents. She looked up to the rent in the ceiling they had fallen out of, saw a thick white mist curling out of the ventilation system, coating the entirety of the hangar in a matter of seconds. She thought of holding her breath and running back to the safety of the shuttlecraft with its internal atmospheric recyclers, but what would be the use? The flayed god would just blast the ship to smithereens.

    Better to go out on her own terms. There would be dignity in acceptance. Zildiz closed her eyes and sucked in a good lungful of air (well, half a lungful anyway) and waited for the neurotoxins to take effect.

    It took its sweet time about it, though. Zildiz snuck a peek under her eyelids and saw Rene trying with all his might to hold his breath, cheeks all puffed out and reddening.

    ¡°You sanctimonious sonofabitch,¡± she said in outrage, ¡°All that big talk about your morality, and you don¡¯t have the guts to follow through with it?¡±

    She slapped him sharply on the back of the head and made him release all his pent-up air in a splutter of embarrassment. He took in a snort of the nerve gas mist and clutched at his throat in horror. When nothing happened, he slowly relaxed, saying:

    ¡°I don¡¯t think it¡¯s working as advertised. Do you?¡±

    Had the gas gone inert? Their questions were soon answered when the egress port in the cavern wall slid open again. Through the rising plumes of ineffective aerosols, the flayed god emerged once more, trundling his way towards them on his treads.

    ¡°I¡¯ve changed my mind. You¡¯re even more defective than she is,¡± he told Rene, sounding impressed despite himself, ¡°Are you sure your engrammatic manifolds haven¡¯t lost coherency?¡±

    ¡°I did what any man of the Fleet would have done,¡± Rene replied.

    ¡°Weren¡¯t you supposed to gas us by now?¡± Zildiz asked him.

    ¡°What, this?¡± the corpse waved a skeletal arm at the mist coalescing around them, pouring out of vents in the roof in columns of white smoke, ¡°That¡¯s just fungicide. I don¡¯t want any of that Arachnean filth getting in here. Present company excluded, of course. How¡¯s the rat?¡±

    Rene felt for a pulse on the Leaper boy¡¯s throat then heaved the boy over his shoulder, saying:

    ¡°He¡¯s still with us, though he¡¯ll wake up with a hell of a migraine. Had to knock him silly for his own good.¡±

    ¡°Good, good,¡± the flayed god said absently, ¡°He¡¯ll make for an interesting interrogation subject. Relax,¡± he added as Rene opened his mouth to object, ¡°I¡¯ve never tortured anyone, and I¡¯m not about to start now. Pain only distorts the data. And I must assimilate all the good info I can get.¡±

    ¡°Would you really have let us kill a boy to save our own skins?¡± Rene demanded.

    ¡°I wasn¡¯t aware that the cosmophage was in its juvenile phase. But yes, I would¡¯ve allowed it. I can¡¯t let this facility be compromised by hostile vectors.¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s not a ¡®vector¡¯ and he¡¯s not a rat,¡± Rene said, his voice tired and disappointed, ¡°He¡¯s a human being that needs our assistance.¡±

    ¡°Hasn¡¯t your culture dissected these creatures yet?¡± the flayed god sounded shocked.

    ¡°Uhm, no,¡± Rene said slowly, ¡°Or at least, I hope not. Up until three days ago I thought the Amits were the only other race inhabiting Arachnea.¡±

    ¡°You mean to say that your iteration of humanity hasn¡¯t even broken out of its reservation yet? Oh, wonderful,¡± the flayed god starting massaging its temples as if suffering from a sudden headache, ¡°Just wonderful!¡±

    Reservation? Zildiz found the usage of the word strange. It was a term her own people used to describe a habitat where endangered species were kept for their own protection, a space where they could multiply and reach self-sustaining population growth.

    ¡°¡­the kindreds aren¡¯t people, crewman,¡± she heard Rene¡¯s god saying, and felt another flush of anger at its words.

    ¡°You could¡¯ve fooled me,¡± Rene muttered. The progenitor heaved a rattling sigh and lamented:

    ¡°This is going to be tedious. You don¡¯t happen to have a neural crosslink-interface, do you? No? Figures. Come on inside and I¡¯ll give you the full audiomemetic briefing, crewman.¡±

    ¡°Briefing on what?¡± Rene asked cautiously.

    ¡°Everything. The events of the last ten thousand years, so far as I can understand them. The Vitalus, the Amits, the kindreds, and your place in the grand scheme of things.¡±

    He trundled back to the exit, shouldering his battle rifle. When he noticed that they hadn¡¯t moved he circled around on one tread until he faced them again, then asked:

    ¡°Aren¡¯t you coming?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not sure I want to,¡± Zildiz said, crossing her arms, ¡°Given that you don¡¯t consider me a person, I can¡¯t expect that you¡¯ll treat me with anything amounting to decency.¡±

    ¡°Touchy, touchy,¡± he teased, wagging a finger at her, ¡°But you¡¯re right¡ªit¡¯s not polite to point out the genetic deficiencies of one¡¯s guests. I¡¯m forgetting my manners. A few centuries of intermittent cryofugue can do that to a person. I hope you can find it in you to overlook my occasional indiscretions.¡±

    He spoke with light jauntiness that Zildiz thought was completely at odds with its monstrous appearance.

    ¡°It appears you have us at a disadvantage,¡± Rene said, addressing him with well-oiled formality, ¡°You claim that we¡¯re your guests, but we have yet to learn the name of our gracious host.¡±

    ¡°Fair enough. You can call me¡­Commodore. Yes,¡± the Commodore cracked a dry smile, ¡°That¡¯s got a nice ring to it. We¡¯ll go with that.¡±

    ¡°Sir,¡± Rene made a point of giving him another deferential salute, ¡°Begging your pardon, Commodore, but you just threatened to exterminate us half an hour ago. Why on earth should we trust you?¡±

    The Commodore shrugged.

    ¡°Well, for one thing, I made us some hot cocoa. Do you take it with milk or sugar?¡±

 Eradication Concept Art and Preview

    Here''s a preview of what the upcoming Eradication might look like:

    A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

    Typical pre-Eradication recruitment poster.

    Typical post-contact recruitment poster. This one depicts a Cataphract exomorph.

    Dismounted cavalryman dueling a Sword Saint.

 Chapter 51: The Arsenal of Freedom

    Corporal Vendamme knew Deschane to be a man who despised weakness. What¡¯s more, the navigator seemed to equate it with any outward displays of emotion, hence his moniker of old Sourface.

    And so Ven had been shocked to see him openly grieve over the twenty pathfinders who¡¯d gone back to the green north of Mound 13. To see her commanding officer and the man she most admired in the world shed a tear¡ªactual, honest-to-goodness salt water squeezed out of glands that she once suspected had been surgically removed at birth¡ªwhy, that shook Ven right to the core of her being.

    Not that there was anything inherently wrong with tears. They were just another secretion that the human body produced in times of stress. A great deal less useful than piss (like every dutiful crewperson Ven donated chamber pots of her urine to the Gunnery Department, whose chemists needed the precious liquid to create potassium nitrate for the gunpowder mills), perhaps, but it served the purpose of letting out the hurt inside before it grew too heavy to bear.

    Ven had cried herself to sleep at the news of Rene¡¯s death, regretting most the road not taken and all the words she¡¯d left unsaid. Not that it would¡¯ve changed anything about the final outcome, mind you. When the navigator had called for volunteers for the Euler mission, Rene had been among the first to raise his hand, only seconds after Lethway lifted his own. Typical of him, really. Rene was never one to let his friends suffer and die alone if he could help it.

    She remembered feeling a flutter of unease at that fateful moment, a rumbling of things to come. Ven thought all psychics were nothing more than snake-oil merchants, but she often had premonitions about certain missions. Premonitions which manifested themselves into reality with disturbing frequency.

    If only she had listened to her instincts. She might have warned Rene, pleaded with him not go. Just thinking about what once could have been made Ven¡¯s lower lip wobble, and she had to stop herself from letting out a small sob.

    At the moment the navigator looked as if he too was on the verge of weeping, though in this particular case he would have been shedding tears of joy. And he wasn¡¯t alone¡ªHarmer, Cooly, Tooms and the rest of the platoon walking behind Deschane were staring about them with wide-eyed wonder, like street urchins set loose in a toy shop.

    They were standing in a supply depot located around fifteen kilometres to the rear, a deep and wide crevasse on the tail end of the Shakkan mountain range which the pioneer corps had enlarged with pick and shovel before draping it over with layers of canvas tenting. Through the softly billowing flaps came just enough natural light to set the weapon racks and gun batteries agleam in tones of brass and steel.

    The arsenal contained everything from the enormous 32-pounder siege howitzers to the portable 17.5 mm shoulder cannons. The racks held rows of standard-issue Sharpstone rifled muskets along with the latest rearloading firearms that fired experimental metal cartridges that had yet to be approved for mass production. There was enough firepower here to outfit an entire infantry regiment, or so it seemed. With the weaponry came the various accoutrements of surface warfare¡ªboxes of paper cartridges, barrels of jawcracker biscuits and salted pork, entrenching tools, sacks of caltrops, raincoats, caissons and limbers for the field pieces, harnesses, saddles and spare sealant tents.

    Mounts and draft animals were kept in an outdoor corral with bamboo caging on top to stop the hornblowers from escaping. These spindly-eyed arthropods kept up a persistent, high-pitched whine by sawing their hindlegs against red veins of their enormous four-and-a-half meter wings.

    One of the caves nearby had been converted into a wire-talkie station with cables connecting to the outside world via underground clay pipes. There a pair of signalmen were hard at work on a table strewn with papers, one man rap-tap-tapping on the switch that sent impulses flashing down the cables, electrically compelled by the series of lead-acid cells squatting atop the table inside glass jars. The other signalman was busy listening to incoming messages from the sounder, transcribing the clickety-clack of the nodding armature into dots and dashes, and from thence into legible phrases.

    At the centre of the tent was parked a squadron of dirigibles, their envelopes neatly bundled inside the canoe-shaped wicker baskets alongside with the ballast, disassembled uprights and canefuel propeller engines. All throughout the site scores of technicians in bright orange suits scurried about making ready for the upcoming operation, triple-checking every piece of equipment and weighing supplies on a set of precision weighing scales.

    Ven knew that their lives would soon depend on their meticulous preparations. Dirigibles were cantankerous, volatile inventions that had a habit of going up in flames if the pilots sneezed too hard midflight.

    Commissioner Nong had reassured them, however, saying that their balloons would be filled with a revolutionary new liftgas that had none of the explosive drawbacks of pure hydrogen. Ven didn¡¯t know if she could place much faith in that assessment, but she knew one thing for certain: whoever Nong¡¯s co-conspirators were, they wielded considerable influence within the Fleet¡¯s bureaucratic machinery.

    As a clerk Ven knew firsthand just how hard it was to requisition so much as an extra pair of boots from the Quartermaster Corps without having to sign and countersign for the delivery a dozen times over, only for the goddamned things to turn up several sizes too small for the bleeding feet of the man for whom they¡¯d been intended. There was no way this mountain of munitions had been acquired through wholly legal channels and without greasing a lot of palms.

    Ven suspected that similar skullduggery had been employed to pull Deschane¡¯s platoon of volunteers from their scouting duties on the frontlines and have them reassigned as ¡®drovers¡¯ and ¡®stretcher bearers¡¯ at the rear.

    Since the reconquest of Mound 13 the front lines had shifted forwards in a salient some ten kilometres deep. The pioneers were laying tracks and erecting wire-talkie poles nearly as fast as the invasion columns were advancing. Initially dressed in civilian sealant suits, Ven and the other pathfinders had all taken the surface train from Shakka station to Checkpoint Barley, where a small but growing community of camp followers, prospectors, adventurers and traders had set up an informal tent city. Fleet Command had promised that the frontier would open up very soon after the major offensive broke through Mound Euler, and nobody wanted to be late to the party when the newly conquered mounds were reopened up for settlers.

    Ven had taken an instant liking to the place. Everyone there spoke in tones of hope and boundless optimism¡ªmost of them were just glad to have escaped the misery of their overcrowded home mounds. They¡¯d all hitched a ride with a delivery wagon weighted down with burlap sacks of seed and driven by a pompous agricultural scientist from Mound Claveria.

    ¡°Can you imagine it, my dear,¡± the farmer had told her during the clattering ride, ¡°We claim to be the superior species, and yet look as us now! Destitute, driven by hunger, migratory! This whole rotten edifice we call the Fleet is just one crop failure away from general famine. Despite all the mounds we¡¯ve conquered and all the space we¡¯ve wrested from the Amits, our farming techniques can¡¯t even begin to compare to theirs.¡±

    This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

    ¡°Rubbish,¡± Cooly said, ¡°The only thing Amits can grow are mushrooms and naught else.¡±

    ¡°Yes, but so many varieties of mushroom! They have a mushroom to serve their every nutritional need. Amit fungal gardens are a complex ecosystem that somehow is able outproduce our surface greenhouses despite the near-total lack of sunlight. They supply it with whatever compost they can forage from the surface and maintain it with their stone age tools, and in return it is able to feed and supply a colony of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of Amits. But when we humans take over their mounds, what do you think happens?¡±

    ¡°A lot of killing on our part,¡± Tooms grinned, ¡°A lot of dying on theirs, with double helpings of fire and steel all around.¡±

    ¡°Yes, yes,¡± the farmer waved his witticisms aside, ¡°We all appreciate your sacrifices. But you¡¯re not wrong¡ªmany things die when we conquer a mound. But not just the Amits. Oh, no! Without their original cultivators, the fungal gardens always collapse and rot away in a matter of weeks. Our own gardens are always a pale imitation of what came before. Every human mound eventually reaches a point where it cannot produce enough to sustain its own population.¡±

    ¡°So what are you saying?¡± Cooly grumbled, ¡°That we should start trade with the gourd-heads? Let them keep their stinky mushroom farms so they can grow strong and multiply?¡±

    ¡°Civilians,¡± Harmer snorted at the back of the wagon, ¡°There¡¯s just no reasoning with them.¡±

    ¡°Come to think of it, Fleet Command treats civilians like mushrooms, too,¡± Pretty Boy observed.

    ¡°How so?¡± Ven asked, curious despite herself.

    "Because they feed em shit and keep em in the dark,¡± Doyd cackled, ¡°As they should!¡±

    Ven privately disagreed. In her opinion, soldiers weren¡¯t any better than civilians. Being a pathfinder was a dangerous gig, but then again, so was being a colonist. Arachnea didn¡¯t care if you knew how to use a rifle or not¡ªjust about everything on the surface was out to get you. Up here the air itself harboured murderous intentions.

    She held nothing but respect for these brave people. Whole families of them rode atop all-terrain wagons with their wheels reinforced by wrought iron bands, one out of three of them wearing patched-together waste gas recycler systems held together only by spit and a prayer.

    And the Chaplainage kept everyone well supplied with the latter ingredient. Hosannas of praise and solemn incantations filled the neat white tents of the Remainers, while across the road the Schismatics knelt in the mud and abased themselves for the sins of humanity.

    Then there were the seedy, low gambling dens where people worshipped another god entirely, betting their lives and fortunes on a throw of the knuckle dice or spread of the cards. Ven had to work very hard to keep the pathfinders from being led astray in that part of the town.

    But it wasn¡¯t all fun and games. A posse of gunmen dressed in black sealant suits had been waiting for them at the checkpoint¡¯s exit, carrying brand-new rifles but wearing no military insignia Ven was familiar with. Their taciturn guides had said very little as they bundled the pathfinders into a delivery wagon, surrounding them with sacks of rice flour to hide them from view until they reached the depot.

    Deschane arrived a few hours later. The navigator had been excused from further service in the mapping agency on medical grounds, his wound from the siege of Mound 13 having become aggravated by subcutaneous fungal infections. Which was true, to be fair, though his condition was nowhere near as life-threatening as it could have been. With a torn sealant suit, even the smallest papercut could turn fatal; doctors usually resorted to immediate amputation once the white rot set in for good. Thankfully the navigator was responding well to the ointments and medicated creams.

    Deschane did keep scratching now and again at the bandages around his scalp and forehead, but that didn¡¯t stop him from drooling over the assembled ordinance on display along with the rest of the pathfinders.

    ¡°How do you like my wares, troopers?¡± Nong said proudly, ¡°This here is the finest selection of death-dealing destruction a person of my modest means could procure. It''s my own personal arsenal of freedom.¡±

    ¡°None too shabby,¡± Pretty Boy Doyd said with an indifferent shrug. The acid-scarred veteran was the only soldier who did not partake in the general excitement, choosing instead to stand apart and pick at his rotting teeth with the tip of his dirk.

    Occasionally one of the pathfinders would take a firearm from its stand, feeling its weight in their hands or squinting down the sights with the frowns of discerning housewives who knew exactly what they looking for in a cut of meat, and never mind what the butcher had to say.

    ¡°Here¡¯s a likely fellow,¡± Harmer said coquettishly. The sharpshooter selected a compact rifle with a dark charwood stock that matched the color of her skin. It sported an underslung tube several centimetres shorter than the barrel, and as well as an overlarge trigger guard that enclosed all the fingers of her hand.

    ¡°11.3 mm Western Suppressor,¡± Deschane told her with a blissful look on his face, ¡°Rimfire, lever-operated quicktimer, tubular magazine, fourteen cartridge capacity. They say you can load it on Prayerday and shoot it all through next week. I¡¯ve only ever read about them in the periodicals.¡±

    ¡°Eww,¡± Harmer set it back down with a look of distaste, ¡°It¡¯s a quicktimer? Never mind.¡±

    ¡°Here we go again with your snobbery,¡± Shon Tooms complained, ¡°Just becoz it¡¯s a quicktimer, that don¡¯t mean it¡¯s a bad rifle. Take it from me, darling. The odds of that beauty jamming up on you are a thousand to one.¡±

    ¡°Sure. And when that sucker fails to feed while you¡¯re staring down that one Amit in a thousand who¡¯s swinging an axe with your name on it, I bet you¡¯ll feel real lucky then. Until those gunsmiths make a metal cartridge that¡¯s actually reliable, I¡¯m sticking with my Hex.¡±

    Harmer patted the weathered Hexiomatic she had slung over one arm, her constant companion. It had a slender, tapering barrel that was a quarter of a foot longer than the Suppressor, with a four-power telescopic sight mounted to its side in addition to the usual iron sights on top.

    ¡°That frontloader is as much of an antique as you are!¡± Tooms pooh-poohed, ¡°With a Suppressor I could tag an Amit a dozen times in its nerve cluster in the time it takes for you to pop off a second shot.¡±

    ¡°Wanna bet?¡± Harmer challenged him.

    ¡°Interesting theory, private Tooms,¡± said Nong, oozing his way through the packed crowd, ¡°Come! Let¡¯s put it to the test at the outdoor firing range.¡±

    ¡°Ooooh!¡± hooted the rest of the platoon, egging them.

    Face flushing scarlet, Shon Tooms had no choice but to pick up the Suppressor and make good on his boast. Nong led the way to the testing site, beaming all around. The commissioner was wearing his native garb over his sealant suit, a ceremonial spiked battle hammer tucked into its waistband along with a brace of caplock pistols. Ven noted the ease with which Nong carried his weapons, particularly the spiked hammer that was chosen weapon of all Daroodans. The natives called it a gok after the sound it made when it struck an enemy, which was apparently the same whether it was cracking human skulls or perforating Amit exoskeletons.

    ¡°If I win, can I keep this here piece?¡± Shon Tooms joshed him, only half-serious.

    ¡°Nonsense!¡± Nong cried, loud enough for everyone to hear, ¡°Regardless of the outcome of this contest, you can all take whatever you like from my arsenal.¡±

    ¡°Can we keep em, too?¡± Cooly said in disbelief. He was making it sound as though Ice Cream Day had come early.

    ¡°With as much ammunition as you can carry,¡± Nong replied, to the cheers of the crowd. The commissioner was going out of his way to please Deschane and his pathfinders, Ven realized.

    This did not bode well. Nong wasn¡¯t exactly an officer, but he was carrying himself just like one. As a general rule, officers employed generosity as a tool, using it to curry favour with the rank and file in exchange for something in return.

    Deep in thought, Ven stayed a little behind the jostling crowd as they strapped on their masks and exited the tent, Nong leading them over to a gully which the pioneers had converted into a firing range.

    ¡°What¡¯s eating at you, Ven?¡± Pretty Boy asked, pinching her elbow.

    ¡°Eh?¡± she looked up at him, distracted, ¡°Nothing. I¡¯m just thinking, that¡¯s all.¡±

    ¡°Aye. I don¡¯t like him neither,¡± Pretty Boy said, reading her mind.

    ¡°That¡¯s not what I meant,¡± she said at once. But Ven¡¯s eyes betrayed her, and she couldn¡¯t keep from staring at the back of Nong¡¯s head.

    ¡°Sure it is. And yer right to fear him,¡± Pretty Boy leaned against the crevasse wall and started scraping out the gunk underneath his fingernails with his dirk, ¡°There¡¯s only one reason he¡¯d invest this much time and effort into us.¡±

    ¡°And what¡¯s that?¡± Ven asked, though she already knew the answer.

    ¡°We is the best there is,¡± he said simply, ¡°The 3rd Pathfinder Regiment always gets results. He¡¯s ¡®procured¡¯ our platoon like he has the rest of this here junk, and he means to get his money¡¯s worth. He¡¯s a conniver, a climber. He wants to be king of the hill, and he¡¯ll get there even if it means strolling up a rampart made of our corpses. And the worst part of it is, Deschane seems to be playing right into it.¡±

 Chapter 52: Arms and Ammunition

    They watched as Harmer and Shon Tooms loaded their firearms, the latter with the assistance of a grinning technician who handed him a tin of copper cased cartridges. With the exception of the signalmen, everyone had stopped working and come out to see the show.

    While Tooms clumsily pushed his rounds one at a time into a grooved hole on the side of the Suppressor¡¯s receiver, Harmer took out a paper cartridge from the box at her waist. The markswoman tore off the end, emptied the powder down the muzzle, and shoved the wad of paper after it. She then slotted in a slender, six-sided projectile which fitted perfectly against the unique polygonal rifling of the barrel. This was in stark contrast to the cylindrical, conical bullets used in the standard infantry musket. Harmer tamped it all down with her rammer, replaced it, then set a percussion cap onto its nipple. Noticing Tooms still struggling to load in his last few rounds, she faked a yawn and commented:

    ¡°Took you long enough. I¡¯ve been ready to roll for ages now.¡±

    ¡°Cocky today, aren¡¯t we?¡± Tooms grunted.

    ¡°Say! We haven¡¯t agreed on the terms of our wager. Range?¡±

    ¡°Shall we say¡­350 meters?¡± Tooms suggested.

    ¡°Fine. That ought to give you a sporting chance,¡± Harmer adjusted her side scope for distance, ¡°What are you betting?¡±

    ¡°Loser cleans the winner¡¯s rifle and shines their boots for the next eight weeks whenever they asks,¡± Tooms said, ¡°I¡¯m letting you off lightly.¡±

    ¡°Nuts to that! Don¡¯t you have any money, Tooms?¡±

    ¡°No, I don¡¯t, and neither do you. Where you been, girl? They haven¡¯t paid us since last month.¡±

    ¡°The little weasel probably spent it all a-whoring,¡± muttered Beans. He let out a noisome burp and started chewing on a piece of sugarcane. Beans always kept a stalk of the sweet grass on him, claiming they helped settle his weak stomach. Tooms shooed him away, saying:

    ¡°Go stand over there, Beans. I don¡¯t want to undergo spontaneous combustion here.¡±

    ¡°Up yours!¡± Beans said, taking offense, ¡°Just for that, I¡¯m betting on Harmer. Half a day¡¯s wages¡ªanyone up for it?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll take that action,¡± Cooly said loyally, unwilling to bet against his partner, ¡°You wanna get in on this, Leming?¡±

    ¡°Gambling is a sin,¡± the scholar replied, adjusting his spectacles, ¡°But on the other hand this is almost like an empirical test. Empiricism is a core tenet of the creed, and is therefore, divine.¡±

    Satisfied with his own justification, Leming dug into his pockets for spare change.

    Technicians walked out and set up two wooden targets onto which Amit profiles had been printed, the central nerve clusters marked out in yellow circles roughly ten centimetres in diameter. Harmer and Tooms got into position behind a line that Deschane eagerly drew in the sand.

    ¡°I think you¡¯ve got him all wrong,¡± Ven said suddenly.

    ¡°Do I now?¡± Pretty Boy replaced his dirk in a scabbard hidden along the inner part of his forearm, ¡°Just to clarify: are we talking about Deschane or Nong here?¡±

    ¡°Both,¡± Ven replied, ¡°Deschaine wouldn¡¯t throw in his lot with this conspiracy unless he was convinced of Nong¡¯s sincerity. They both believe with every fibre of their being that this Engine of theirs exists.¡±

    ¡°And what do you believe in?¡± Pretty Boy dug at her.

    ¡°Me? I believe in artillery,¡± she said, evading the question.

    Pretty Boy cackled, slapping the hilt of the heavy cavalry backsword he wore on his right hip alongside a short stabbing weapon that resembled a metal stake.

    Ven wasn¡¯t laughing. To tell the truth, she was ashamed of herself. What she really ought to have said was:

    ¡°I believe in Sollem Deschaine.¡±

    So why hadn¡¯t she?

    From far away in the Nothern Hinterlands came a rumbling as of distant lightning storms amassing their strength. The afternoon suns were just beginning to rise above the karst formations, enrobing them in bands of velvety blue and mauve, the high ridges presenting themselves like the walls of an impossible black citadel.

    The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

    Seeing it now, Ven could not shake the idea that somewhere behind that wall of undiscovered country, her world ended where another one began. Her musings were interrupted by a flicker of movement at the furthest extremity of her vision, mere dots wheeling about the bald peaks of the mountains.

    What was that? A flight of birds? It couldn¡¯t be; their wings had flashed as they had turned towards the sunrise. A scourge of daggergnats more likely, though if so, they were larger than any subspecies she had ever seen before.

    Meanwhile on the firing range, Deschane waited for the techs to clear out before he began the contest.

    ¡°Ready!¡±

    Harmer cocked her Hex. Tooms pushed on the large trigger guard, which swung down as part of a lever that he folded back up again with a satisfying: ka-chink!

    ¡°Aim!¡±

    They rested their stocks against their shoulders, Harmer easing slowly into her stance. Deschaine suddenly drew his cycler pistol and emptied several of its chambers right next to their ears as he gave the command:

    ¡°Fire!¡±

    Harmer didn¡¯t even blink. The markswoman¡¯s rifle spat once, striking the nerve cluster dead centre and sending woodchips flying. Initially rattled by the navigator¡¯s fusillade, Shon Tooms shot twice before he fumbled at the lever, struggling to eject a smoking shell.

    He still managed to put three more rounds into the target while Harmer was occupied with ramming down her second bullet. She was squinting down her scope again by the time Tooms had racked in his thirteenth cartridge.

    Phwut!

    The hexagonal bullet made a distinctive whistle as it spun. But Ven was disappointed to see that no new hole had appeared on Harmer¡¯s target¡ªthis time the markswoman had missed the Amit completely.

    Shon Tooms ejected his last, unspent round and lowered the Suppressor with a smirk.

    ¡°Cease fire. Cease fire on the firing line,¡± Deschaine said, and everyone strolled up to the targets to inspect the results.

    ¡°...eleven, twelve, thirteen,¡± Nong finished counting the holes on Toom¡¯s target, ¡°Every round in the fatal spot. Well done, private!¡±

    ¡°Should I be worried?¡± Deschaine asked Harmer. She spread her hands in a graceful admission of defeat, saying:

    ¡°Toom may have gotten the better of me this time, but don¡¯t think for a moment I¡¯ve gone cross-eyed. A girl¡¯s got her pride, you know?¡±

    Deschaine re-examined her target, feeling at the one hole with his forefinger. It had an ovaloid shape as opposed to the perfect circles on Toom¡¯s target, and Ven soon worked out what had happened: Harmer had put the second bullet into almost the exact same spot as the first. Toom¡¯s bullet holes also had a relatively tight grouping of four centimetres across, though it was nothing compared to Harmer¡¯s freakish accuracy.

    ¡°Show-off,¡± Tooms offered the markswoman a handshake, ¡°Shall we call it a draw?¡±

    ¡°Away with you,¡± Harmer slapped it playfully aside, ¡°A deal¡¯s a deal. I¡¯m still not trading in my Hex for that newfangled contraption of yours.¡±

    Tooms tilted his head in a token of respect. The other pathfinders rushed in to slap him on the back, ruffling his head fondly. Cooly pushed through them all, lugging his favourite 17.5 mm shoulder cannon.

    ¡°Oy, loader!¡± he barked at Tooms, ¡°Stop playing the hero and help me set up. I want to squeeze a few off before we ship out, get me groove on.¡±

    ¡°Right-o,¡± said Shon Tooms. He turned back to Harmer and gave her the Suppressor, ¡°Give this a shining, would you?¡±

    ¡°Aye aye,¡± Harmer said, performing an elaborate curtsy.

    ¡°Oh, and do my boots too, while you¡¯re at it. I¡¯m kidding, I¡¯m kidding!¡± he added quickly as Harmer threatened to take a swing at him.

    Tooms took his accustomed position behind Cooly. The mobile artillerist was easily twice the size of his assistant, and he needed to be¡ªthe smallest shoulder cannons weighed upwards of twenty kilograms when loaded.

    Everyone got back behind the firing line. Cooly balanced the heap of brass on his powerful frame and knelt for added stability, right hand on the rear grip and left on the fore grip, face pressing into the cheek weld, the burlap-padded stock nestled tight against his shoulder.

    ¡°Load charge,¡± Cooly ordered. Tooms turned the hand-crank that exposed the breech by means of a cam, the action of which also cocked a hammer on the side. He opened the waterproof ammo pack strapped to Cooly¡¯s back and took out a complicated package that combined three components: a flannel bag containing the powder charge, a pointed lead slug and a wooden sabot disc sandwiched between them to align the projectile. Tooms loaded the shoulder cannon and closed the breech with another turn of the crank.

    ¡°Loaded,¡± Tooms confirmed.

    ¡°Brace.¡±

    ¡°Braced,¡± said Tooms, holding Cooly by the shoulder blades and leaning into him.

    ¡°Firing!¡±

    A fist-sized hole appeared on one of the targets, the slug smacking into the side of the mountain where it caused a small avalanche in the process. A cheer went up from the audience and the enthusiastic techs went around exchanging high fives with the pathfinders; Ven got the sense that they didn¡¯t get much in the way of entertainment out here. Even Greymoss looked up from his nap with a drowsy smile.

    ¡°Shakka-lakka!¡± Cooly thumped his chest like a war drum, ¡°Did you all see that?¡±

    Ven couldn¡¯t stop herself from grinning. Rene would have loved this. This whole excursion was beginning to feel like a holiday.

    While everyone else was making merry, a tech burst out of the tent carrying a single piece of paper which he delivered straight into Nong¡¯s hands. The commissioner took one look at the message and pulled Deschane aside, whispering urgently into the navigator¡¯s ear. At once the pair of them slipped back into the depot, the crowd oblivious to their disappearance

    Here it comes again, Ven thought. The bubbling disquiet in her gut had returned, along with a raw and overpowering urge to tuck into the nearest hole and hide.

    ¡°It¡¯s begun,¡± Pretty Boy said softly, and Ven knew that he felt it too. And that, more than anything else, frightened her.

 Chapter 53: Field Testing

    Ven squeezed inside before the signalman sealed the tent flaps and joined her commander at the wire-talkie station. Deschane was angrily poking a runty signalman in the chest with his finger.

    ¡°I want immediate confirmation on this!¡± Deschane said, holding the crumpled paper up to the man¡¯s face, ¡°Message them back at once!¡±

    ¡°W-w-we can¡¯t!¡± the signalman stammered, ¡°We¡¯re not supposed to be tapping into official military cables! A reply would give us away.¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s this idiot blathering on about?¡±

    The terrified tech gave Nong a pleading look.

    ¡°C-Commissioner, tell him! Please!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve explained this to you at length,¡± Nong clicked his tongue in annoyance, ¡°Navigator, this operation isn¡¯t sanctioned by Fleet Command. We aren¡¯t even part of the Expeditionary Force. If they catch us listening to their top-secret dispatches, we¡¯ll all be court-martialed and, very probably, hung. This entire operation will be totaled. Kaput! Do you understand?¡±

    ¡°This is MY regiment we¡¯re talking about here,¡± Deschane said, shoving the signalman away and getting right up into Nong¡¯s face, ¡°Eighty-three troopers? Commissioner, that¡¯s a whole company gone! I need to know what¡¯s going on out there!¡±

    ¡°As do I,¡± Pretty Boy rasped, unexpectedly materializing next to Ven.

    ¡°What?¡± he demanded as Deschane and Nong stared at him in silence, ¡°We¡¯re the ones heading out there, so we deserve to be in the loop. Or am I wrong?¡±

    For a moment Deschane looked as if he would shout Doyd down as well. Then his shoulders slumped and he handed the paper to Ven, who read it out loud for Pretty Boy¡¯s benefit:

    ¡°Forward elements of 3<sup>rd</sup> Pathfinder Regiment report first contact with enemy in vicinity of Shogun Creek. 2<sup>nd</sup> Battalion supported by an artillery section engaged hostile lifeform of unknown origin, taking heavy losses. 83 missing in action, presumed dead, 5 wounded. Colonel Moch Leelan to withdraw his forces back south across the Foss. Requesting immediate cavalry support to screen his retreat.¡±

    ¡°Lifeforms,¡± Pretty Boy corrected her, with emphasis on the plural.

    ¡°No, that wasn¡¯t a misspelling,¡± the signalman insisted, ¡°The transmission came through very garbled, so your regiment¡¯s signalmen had to send it in three different versions. What¡¯s more, the section lieutenant overseeing the artillery confirmed it in a separate message.¡±

    ¡°Bollocks. Ain¡¯t no way a single Amit kills that many of our boys,¡± Pretty Boy said.

    ¡°Unless¡­¡± Nong ventured, then stopped.

    ¡°What is it? What?¡± Deschane snarled. The navigator was visibly struggling to contain his fury and impatience.

    ¡°I think we¡¯ve found it at last,¡± Nong sat down heavily, his cheeks having gone the color of ash, ¡°Our ancient eradicator.¡±

    ¡°You mean that nutty idea your jolly-gists dug up out of the mud?¡± Pretty Boy sneered, ¡°Them demons from the past what cleanses the all and everything? Midnight Madness, that¡¯s all that is.¡±

    ¡°Something out there is killing our brothers and sisters,¡± Deschane¡¯s look of cold efficiency had returned, ¡°I intend to do something about it. Doyd, gather the platoon.¡±

    ¡°Who, me?¡± Pretty Boy gave a start.

    ¡°Yes, you!¡± Deschane strode purposefully towards the tent flaps, ¡°I¡¯m promoting you to sergeant-major. Field commission, effective immediately. Who¡¯s your choice of first sergeant?¡±

    ¡°Err¡­¡± Pretty Boy gulped, ¡°Uhh¡­Harmer! Yes, she¡¯ll do. Hell, why don¡¯t you make her sergeant-major instead?¡±

    ¡°She wasn¡¯t at Assail.¡±

    ¡°If that¡¯s how you¡¯re picking em, then choose Greymoss! He was there too, wasn¡¯t he?¡± Pretty Boy cried, floundering for any excuse within reach. Deschane didn¡¯t even bother to dignify that suggestion with a response.

    ¡°I want them armed, outfitted and ready to go within the hour,¡± the navigator told him, ¡°We¡¯ll establish communication with the artillery section and move along the river Foss till it cuts Shogun Creek, then fan out from there.¡±

    Deschane made for the tent flap only to find Nong standing squarely in his way.

    ¡°You¡¯ll do no such thing,¡± the Commissioner said, his thumbs hooked into his waistband close to his pistols.

    ¡°That coward Leelan left our people to die,¡± Deschane said, veins pulsing on the sides of his temples, ¡°I¡¯m getting them back.¡±

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    The navigator tried to walk through him, but at a wave of Nong¡¯s hand the black suits stepped forward, their quicktimers held ready at the waist. Pretty Boy immediately stepped up, but luckily Ven was able to place a restraining hand on his elbow.

    ¡°Navigator, I cannot permit you to establish contact with your superiors nor any other officer of the Expeditionary Force,¡± Nong said with finality, ¡°I am sorry to hear that your regiment has sustained losses and I understand you have a personal attachment to those men, but at the risk of sounding callous, I must to ask: aren¡¯t casualties to be expected in any largescale surface operation? I don¡¯t see how your personal presence on the battlefield might change that unfortunate reality. The only thing you would accomplish is placing your platoon directly in harm¡¯s way and thus jeopardizing our mission¡ªa mission that has been decades in the making and upon which the very fate of humanity may hinge. 83 dead men is a tragedy, I agree. But on the scale at which we are operating, it becomes a mere statistic.¡±

    Pretty Boy gave Ven a meaningful look, as if to say: ¡°I told you so.¡± The newly promoted sergeant-major crossed his arms as if to show his disdain for Nong¡¯s hired goons, but Ven knew that he had done it to have access to his concealed dirk.

    ¡°Hear that, navigator? This shit-for-brains just called us a statistic,¡± Pretty Boy smiled, ¡°That sounds like mathematricks. I hates mathematricks.¡±

    ¡°I know what he said, sergeant-major,¡± Deschane said quietly, ¡°Try not to take it too personally.¡±

    Deschane¡¯s shooting arm had gone as rigid as a viper poised to strike, hovering over the sandalwood grip of his cycler pistol. Ven doubted he had more than two shots left in the cylinder¡ªshe hadn¡¯t seen Deschane reload after the shooting contest. From the sound of gunfire and excited yells, the other pathfinders were still enjoying themselves outside. If worst came to worst, everything in here would be over by the time the platoon realized what was happening.

    The corporal realized with embarrassment that she was the only one present who hadn¡¯t thought to secure a weapon. So much for being one of the best. Even the signalman behind her had surreptitiously reached into the drawers of his desk. She slowly turned to cover Deschane¡¯s six, feeling foolish confronting them with only her bare hands.

    ¡°Consider the bigger picture,¡± Nong urged them.

    Deschane scanned the room and seemed to reach his own conclusions. He held up his palms to defuse the situation and everyone relaxed slightly.

    ¡°I already have,¡± Deschane said in reply to the commissioner, ¡°And I must confess that I find your reasoning flawed.¡±

    ¡°Explain,¡± Nong¡¯s nutbrown face crinkled up in curiosity.

    ¡°In order to recover the Divine Engine, our platoon will be making an aerial insertion inside uncharted territory. But if this latest transmission is to be taken at face value, then my regiment has just encountered something new and incredibly dangerous. Perhaps it¡¯s a subspecies of Amit never before seen, something endemic to the Northern Hinterlands and found nowhere else. It may even be that eradicator that you¡¯re so concerned about. Regardless, we know that a single specimen managed to defeat a battalion that was five times larger than the force currently at our disposal.¡±

    ¡°My platoon might not even stand a chance against one of them, and who knows how many more of these creatures are out there? The landing zone could be crawling with them. It¡¯s clear that we cannot proceed with the mission at hand until we understand the magnitude of this threat and devise appropriate countermeasures.¡±

    ¡°That is why we¡¯ve prepared all this equipment for you, so that you can deal with every eventuality. As I promised, your men can have their pick of my arsenal,¡± Nong countered, ¡°You will lack for nothing on this expedition.¡±

    ¡°Most of your weapons are experimental,¡± Deschane insisted, ¡°I¡¯ve only ever seen rearloading rifles in the hands of cavalry officers, and even they had to purchase them with their own money. Some of these prototypes don¡¯t even have serial numbers on them, so they certainly didn¡¯t come out of the Gunnery Department. That contest we did earlier won¡¯t cut it. I¡¯m not dropping twenty klicks inside the pheromone kill-radius until I¡¯m absolutely sure my hardware will work.¡±

    Nong considered Deschane¡¯s points and eventually nodded.

    ¡°So you are proposing that we¡ª¡±

    ¡°Think of it as a field test. Live fire, limited in scope. Colonel Moch Leelan has pulled the rest of my regiment back across the safety of the river, so there¡¯s no chance we¡¯ll be spotted by them.¡±

    ¡°Even if you do find your missing men, how can you ensure their silence? I know soldiers, Deschane. You are all hopeless gossips.¡±

    ¡°They¡¯d owe me a debt of life. They¡¯ll bite out their own tongues if I ask it of them. On that you may depend.¡±

    ¡°And if you don¡¯t return?¡±

    ¡°Then you¡¯ll just have to find another set of willing fools, now won¡¯t you?¡±

    Nong and Deschane locked eyes, each searching for the slightest change in the other¡¯s expression. The commissioner must have seen something he liked, for he gave in, saying:

    ¡°Fine. But make certain you come back. I can¡¯t afford to lose you people.¡±

    ¡°Got a peculiar way of letting us know how valuable we are, don¡¯t he?¡± said Pretty Boy as they walked towards the exit, the black suits standing wordlessly aside. At the tent flap Deschane paused and turned back.

    ¡°Oh, and commissioner?¡±

    His right hand blurred, the edge of his left fanning the hammer of the cycler as he drew and fired twice from the hip, making the black suits dance and yelp as his bullets kicked up the dust between their feet. In an instant Pretty Boy was on the third gunman, snatching the quicktimer out of his grip and cracking its owner across the face with the stock.

    Ven saw the scrawny signalman reach down and kicked the drawer shut, trapping the man¡¯s wrist in place. She snatched a quill off the table and got the man in a headlock.

    ¡°I¡¯ll put your eye out with this,¡± she told him, pricking him in the cheek till it drew blood ¡°Let it go.¡±

    She heard the pistol clatter to the bottom of the drawer. Nong reached for the sky as Pretty Boy levelled the rifle at him, Deschane forcing the other black suits at gunpoint to drop theirs.

    ¡°I¡¯ll say this once,¡± Deschane told Nong, ¡°Never threaten me or my people again.¡±

    ¡°Stand down!¡± Nong snapped irritably at the black suits who had come running up at the sound of gunfire, ¡°All of you, stand down! You think we¡¯d still be breathing if they wanted us gone? Alright, Deschane. You¡¯ve made your point. Go on. Find out whatever you can about the lifeform and retrieve samples if you can. Our biologists will want to take a closer look.¡±

    ¡°Right. Just so long as we understand each other,¡± Deschane said warily.

    ¡°Say¡­can I have that back now?¡± the black suit asked Pretty Boy, pointing at his quicktimer.

 Chapter 54: Escalation

    They found the pathfinders crouched and waiting outside, on the verge of bursting in with guns blazing.

    ¡°We thought we heard a ruckus,¡± Tooms said, straightening up, ¡°There a problem, skipper?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s been resolved,¡± Deschane said, and that was that.

    ¡°Here,¡± Pretty Boy tossed the quicktimer at Beans, who caught it and began admiring its fine polish, ¡°Try this on for size.¡±

    The serjeant-major rounded up the troops in short order, though not without suffering their complaints; the troopers had been very much enjoying themselves at the range. But once Deschane told them of what had happened to the regiment at Shogun Creek, their attitude changed at once.

    ¡°We gonna be lugging the usual kit? Hexiomatics for the sharpshooters, muskets for everyone else?¡± Pretty Boy asked Deschane.

    ¡°No. This isn¡¯t a pathfinding mission,¡± replied the navigator, ¡°This is a reconnaissance-in-force, with emphasis on the force. Let¡¯s take the good commissioner up on his offer¡ªequip yourselves with whatever small arms you think will be effective. But I want at least half of you carrying Suppressors. Cooly, Sierck, I want both of you manning your shoulder cannons.¡±

    ¡°Music to mine ears,¡± said Cooly, rubbing his hands together.

    ¡°Sir, I also thought the quicktimer performed well today,¡± Ven opined, ¡°But unlike the Sharpstones, they aren¡¯t proven in actual combat. Should we really be adopting these metal cartridges so soon? It¡¯s not what we¡¯re accustomed to.¡±

    ¡°I like them,¡± Tooms said with a shrug.

    ¡°We know,¡± Harmer rolled her eyes. The first sergeant had taken her rapid promotion well in stride. Ven heartily approved of Pretty Boy¡¯s choice of first sergeant, though as to Pretty Boy¡¯s own commission the corporal still had some reservations.

    ¡°I can¡¯t believe he made you sergeant-major of all people,¡± Beans whined, ¡°Maybe I should let Deschane kick me in a nards once in a while, give myself a leg up in the world.¡±

    ¡°Stow it, fatty,¡± Pretty Boy said, indignant, ¡°Your betters is conversating.¡±

    ¡°From the sound of things, Colonel Leelan deployed 2nd Battalion as part of a screening force for the main columns,¡± Deschane told Ven, ¡°That means they were probably equipped with the standard kit. Obviously, it didn¡¯t quite get the job done. We come heavy, or not at all.¡±

    Ven saw what he was getting at. During set-piece battles, pathfinders acted as skirmishers that prioritized mobility above all else. Their task was to find and harass the Amit formations, working in concert with the cavalry to pick off isolated warrior-brood before falling back towards the main gunlines, luring the bulk of the horde after them. Their kit was different than that of other infantrymen, eschewing armour, extra ammunition and most mobile artillery in favour of a stripped-down version of the Sharpstone. Even their sealant suits were designed to be as lightweight as possible.

    For this mission, however, Deschane wanted to swap their loadout and risk taking on the additional weight of the new guns, sacrificing speed for firepower. If the eradicator came for them, he intended to face it head-on with as much ordinance as the platoon could carry.

    Ven wasn¡¯t sure if it was the right call. Innovation was all well and good, but the jungle had a way of turning the best inventions into so much useless crap. The corporal decided to defer to Deschane¡¯s experience and held her tongue.

    The pathfinders eagerly availed themselves of the experimental weaponry, their excitement only increasing when Tooms found a plywood case full of cap-and-ball cycler pistols identical to the one Deschane carried. Ven saw the commissioner wincing as each pathfinder claimed a pair of cyclers apiece¡ªVen knew that just one of those novelty firearms could set an officer back a whole three month¡¯s wages. Deschane helped himself to an additional pistol and a cycler carbine with a wire stock, all of which shared the same ammunition.

    As for their long arms, most of the pathfinders had been persuaded by Tooms¡¯ exhibition and went with a Suppressor. Like Harmer, Ven still had her reservations about quicktimers. The test had proven their impressive rate of fire without a doubt, but Ven suspected that their accuracy dropped sharply at extended ranges. They also seemed to lack the sheer wallop of the Sharpstone¡¯s heftier 14.7 mm ball.

    ¡°Aren¡¯t you going to ante up like the rest of us?¡± Cooly asked Ven as he and the other muscular mobile artillerist named Sierck cleaned the barrels of their shoulder cannons.

    ¡°Don¡¯t fix what ain¡¯t broken, as my mother used to say,¡± Ven replied, slinging her battered service rifle onto her shoulder. She still stuck one of the cycler pistols through her belt, however. A bit of extra oomph never hurt. Deschane gave them all extra time to familiarize themselves with their new weapons with last-minute practice at the range until he was confident they could all load and fire.

    Nong came out to see them off. He was leading a hornblower by its reigns, the hopping arthropod crooning its evening mating song with its vibrating legs. Nong approached and presented the steed to Deschane, asking:

    ¡°Can your people ride?¡±

    ¡°Well enough. It¡¯s part of basic training.¡±

    ¡°Good. We can provide steeds for you all,¡± Nong gestured to the corral where the rest of the hornblowers were busy trying to mount each other, their annoyed handlers keeping them apart with spiked goads.

    ¡°The offer is appreciated,¡± Deschane said stiffly, ¡°Respectfully, I must decline.¡±

    ¡°I see,¡± Nong said, pursing his lips. Ven sensed the lingering hostility between them and felt that she had to smooth things over.

    ¡°Hornblowers are no good on long patrols,¡± she explained on Deschane¡¯s behalf, ¡°They tire easily, make too much noise.¡±

    ¡°Useless things,¡± Pretty Boy said disdainfully, ¡°All they¡¯re good for is feeding Amits.¡±

    ¡°I wonder what our dashing cavalrymen would think of that opinion,¡± Nong replied, his mouth twitching at the corners.

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    ¡°I won¡¯t tell if you don¡¯t,¡± she replied, offering her hand. Nong shook it warmly. His palms were one large mass of callouses; the commissioner had the casual, bone-grinding grip of a miner. Ven found herself wondering who this man truly was and the kind of life he had led before clawing his way up to his present status.

    ¡°Navigator, I have one last request,¡± Nong snapped his fingers. A technician came running up with a pile of black synthmesh bags and thick glass vials, ¡°Try to take the creature alive if at all possible. Or at the very least collect samples of its corpse before anyone else can get their hands on it. Head, limbs, exoskeleton, haemolymph, organs¡ªwhatever you can get us. We must understand what we are up against if we hope to prevail.¡±

    We¡¯ll be lucky if it doesn¡¯t start collecting us, Ven thought privately. What sort of creature kills seven dozen men unassisted?

    ¡°I¡¯ll see what I can salvage,¡± Deschane said, accepting the sample bags and distributing it among the rucksacks of the troopers, ¡°Platoon, fall in. Forward, quick¡­march!¡±

    They filed out of the depot and into the foot trails at a brisk walk. As they crested the first of many hills to come, Ven dropped to the rear, sorely winded.

    ¡°Been eating one too many cassava cakes, have we?¡± Tooms teased.

    Ven didn¡¯t have the energy to come up with a smart retort, and settled for flipping him off. Then she concentrated on the fire in her lungs and pumping legs, turning the pain into a rhythm that could be endured.

    Tooms was right¡ªshe was embarrassingly out of shape. Ven hadn¡¯t been in the field since the Tallahammock campaign last year. Just thinking about that time gave her the jitters. But perhaps there was something useful she could extract from that experience and apply to the mission at hand. Ven forced herself to recall the details, unpleasant as they were, more to distract herself from the gruelling pace of the march than anything else.

    The campaign had taken place in the eponymous river valley east of Mound Shakka. There the Amits had dug an abundance of nurseries from which they launched daring daytime raids against the surface greenhouses, carrying off crops and livestock to feed their young, not to mention the farmers and their families, too.

    The Fleet¡¯s retribution was swift, clumsy and disastrous. Once more the dubious honour of leading the attack had gone to the pathfinders. They went in to uncover and mark out the hidden entrances, only to discover that most of the nurseries were right underneath their feet, a series of shallow tunnels whose ceilings were held up only by a thin layer of copromite. This was a cement composed of dirt, gravel and faeces excreted only by worker-broods, a caste of Amits who normally were never seen outside of their mounds.

    But there was nothing normal about Tallahammock. The Fleet had never before encountered such vast, interconnected nurseries before, and certainly not ones with defensive positions like that. According to her ex-boyfriend Wain in the Biological Division, nurseries themselves were emergency structures that the Amits created in times of acute overcrowding to prevent cannibalization and the spread of infant diseases. Or so his theory went¡ªVen had learned not to put too much stock in that idiot¡¯s ideas.

    The enemy waited until the advancing columns were nicely bottled up in the valleys before erupting onto the surface from all sides.

    Surprise was total, the losses immense. Workers and nursemaids tore into the loose formations of the pathfinders, making up for their lack of size with a suicidal devotion to their infants. Caught in the forefront of the bloodiest action since Assail were the men and women of the 2nd Battalion. Forming an infantry square with the surviving line regiments, they fought a stubborn rearguard action that allowed the rest of the column to escape, crossing back across the Amit assault trenches over bridges made from the bodies of friend and foe alike.

    Ven¡¯s own battalion, the 9th, was spared from most of the early fighting thanks to being assigned to the rear echelon. But as the battles raged on, they too were thrown in to make up for the decimated formations, which had to be rotated out quickly before they lost all combat capability. To this day the casualty lists from Tallahammock were kept top secret to avoid public hysteria. Nevertheless, things got so bad that even support personnel like Ven were used to plug in the gaps. Clerks and cooks and accountants with barely a day¡¯s worth of refresher training put on the line to replace the real infantry¡ªthe end result could only ever be horrendous.

    For as bad as the first days had been, the worst was yet to come. Soon the campaign dragged into the Amit mating season and the juveniles from both worker and warrior broods reached maturity. Among the newly generated reinforcements were members of the reproductive caste, colossal bull males with broad digger claws and vestigial arms sporting flat, chitinous growths shaped like buckler shields.

    In one engagement Ven had stood quivering in her boots as Amit bulls three and a half meters tall charged at her position. Eight hundred kilograms of armoured muscle bearing down on you like a locomotive with a full head of steam and swinging clubs made from whole tree trunks, well, that was enough to make any raw recruit bug out and scatter. Ven knew she nearly had. She would never forget how the bulls demolished the first rank with long sweeps of their greatclubs, the head of the woman directly in front of her disintegrating in a thick slurry of red matter.

    But the soldiers of 2nd Battalion had been anything but raw. They had stood their ground and put those big bastards down with point-blank shots from their shoulder cannons, cracking the sonsofbitches open before they could wreak further carnage.

    Which was why Ven found the report that had come down the wire so unbelievable. A bull was the only type of Amit she knew could do that kind of damage, and the veterans of 2nd Battalion knew exactly how to deal with that situation. Even if they had gone in light and left their mobile artillery behind, a volley of disciplined rifle fire would have done for the monster anyway. A company of pathfinders could unleash three hundred bullets per minute at the minimum. Nothing on this earth could survive that wall of lead. Nothing that she knew of, at least.

    Ven found herself reconsidering her ex-boyfriend¡¯s hypothesis. The Fleet was advancing further every day, liberating Amit mounds at a record pace while their weapons and strategies improved.

    At Tallahammock, for instance, the Amit trenches had proved impervious to all direct fire artillery. The cannonballs just sailed harmlessly over the enemy¡¯s heads, killing nothing but dirt. Massed infantry assaults on these positions were also thrown back by torrents of acid or showers of stone flechettes hurled by primitive torsion catapults made from vines and bent saplings.

    Ultimately the deadlock was only broken by the introduction of flamespewer units. These were wagon-mounted tanks of jellified canefuel drawn by teams of myropods and serviced by a crew of three firemen. The infantry advanced in line formation, pouring down suppressing fire on the trenches while the firemen slowly trundled forward, carrying with them a hose with a blue pilot light flickering on the end of the nozzle.

    Ven could still remember the smell of cooking flesh as the trenches filled with streams of greedy flame, the burning Amits both large and small running out and throwing themselves upon the ground to die in silent agony. As much as Ven hated the gourd-heads, it was an awful way to go. Humanity never seemed to run out of new ways to kill things.

    But the enemy was changing as well, perhaps as a direct response to human successes. The Fleet was driving the Amits further and further past the horizon. The remaining enemy mounds in the northern hinterlands formed a broad crescent in front of the advancing expeditionary forces, a formidable barrier that was nevertheless thinning with every victory. Within the scientific circles that Wain frequented, there was even speculation that this formation of mounds, which they codenamed the Iron Crescent, was the only thing standing between humanity and a vast, virgin territory untouched by human hands.

    If they were right, then this meant that the Amits were rapidly running out of living space. The pressure on their societies would only increase as time went on. Who knew what kind of devilish innovations the enemy would come up with in their desperation? Maybe this new lifeform was just another step up the ladder of escalation, a special caste bred by the Amits as a final solution to the human problem.

    Ven was still ruminating over these theories as daylight faded and the platoon came within sight of Mound 13.

 Chapter 55: Here Comes the Cavalry

    They stopped to rest in a clearing not five kilometres away from the wedge-shaped prominence. But even from this distance the level of destruction was breathtaking. The left flank of the mound was completely gone, blown outward like a door smashed off its hinges. Blocks of limestone the size of apartment complexes were strewn about in wild abandon, the bare rock standing out amidst the overgrown brush.

    Teams of reconstruction workers in white sealant suits swarmed over the ruins, their figures tiny compared to the enormous troughs of freshly overturned earth and flattened trees that radiated out from the mound. Using the workmen as a point of reference Ven estimated that these troughs were easily more than a hundred meters wide and a quarter of that deep, divided into two sections that ran parallel to each other, the depressions interrupted by evenly spaced intervals of untouched jungle.

    Not troughs, Ven realized with a jolt. Tracks.

    She wasn¡¯t as good at cutting for sign as their tracker Greymoss was, but the pattern was unmistakeable. The only real difficulty lay in reconciling the ridiculous scale of the depressions with the tread of a biped. Ancestors above, it had walked right through the hills like they were clods of dirt.

    ¡°They said our people set off the magazine inside the fortress,¡± Beans said in a shaky voice, ¡°It was in the papers. Now I know for myself that that was a pack of lies. I don¡¯t care how much powder they stored in there, it couldn¡¯t have done all this.¡±

    ¡°Then what did?¡± Cooly grunted.

    ¡°Something else was at work here, something¡­more.¡±

    ¡°Come off it, Baow,¡± the big man kidded him, ¡°Don¡¯t tell me you¡¯ve suddenly become a blasted religionist like Leming.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know anything about religion,¡± Beans replied, ¡°But I do know about explosives.¡±

    Beans had been an army sapper before joining the pathfinders. Before that he had worked in the Gunnery Department before being kicked out for undisclosed reasons that probably had something to do with his general lack of hygiene. Despite the noxious cloud of body odour that clung to him wherever he went, Beans was unquestionably their expert when it came to demolitions. Leming blinked at them all through his spectacles, looking immensely self-satisfied.

    ¡°There we have it,¡± the scholar preened, ¡°Once again pure belief forges a path to the incontestable truth. All skeptics be damned! The Divine Engines exists, and we shall reclaim it!¡±

    Deschane made no comment, but looked lost in his own thoughts. Pretty Boy saw the navigator wasn¡¯t in the mood for discussions, and began rattling out orders:

    ¡°Alright girlies, that¡¯s enough chattering. The skipper wants us settling down here for the night, so you knows the drill. I want pickets set at two hundred meters to the front and sides, with constant roving patrols moving between em, four-hour intervals. Tonight we all sleep with loaded rifles. Even though it¡¯s still south of the Foss and behind our front lines, make no mistake: this here is Amit country. If you want proof, just take a look at that mess over yonder.¡±

    Pretty Boy nodded in the direction of Mound 13. They threw down their bedrolls and settled in for the night, the fallen fortress serving as a grim reminder of how close they were to the fighting.

    At dawn tomorrow they would reach Shogun Creek and the enemy. Until then there was nothing to do but wait and talk. And talk and talk and talk¡­

    By the light of the campfire they sat round and held their nightly shit-shooting session. Ven lay on her side and listened with her eyes shut as their words swirled around her. Some said that the Amits in the north were mutants that had gorged on too many men and grown into giants. Another said that the Divine Engine was a sign of the end times, and that humanity would be judged as the ancestor-gods had once been. Judged, and found wanting. Leming called the man a goddamned Schismatic and threatened to write to chaplains at his home mound. Cooly and Tooms ignored the rest and traded dirty jokes that kept them chuckling well into the night.

    ¡°I¡¯m scairt, Cooly,¡± Tooms whispered suddenly.

    ¡°Bah! You always say that. That¡¯s what makes a little feller like you so brave.¡±

    ¡°This isn¡¯t like any of the other missions,¡± Tooms confided in him, ¡°If things go wrong, who can we turn to?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll always be there. C¡¯mere you¡­¡±

    Ven pretended not to hear the rest of it. There was precious little comfort to be found in the world without her intruding on theirs.

    Meanwhile, Pretty Boy went off to where he thought nobody could hear him and hummed an old lullaby to comfort himself:

    "Lonely stars once fell,

    In the days of old

    When the lands were dim

    And the seas were cold

    From the ancient cradle

    From across the gloam

    They came a-wand¡¯ring, far from their home

    I¡¯ll dream the while, and hold you close

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    Through the ages of night untold

    Bright day shall never wake to find us apart

    And I¡¯ll keep you, close to my heart"

    ¡°You old softie,¡± Ven snickered under her breath. She turned over and snuggled into her bedroll. As she did, her ear pressed against the ground and she heard a deep vibration below, as of countless feet drumming against the earth. With each passing moment the tremors only grew in strength.

    Ven sat up in a trice, groping in the dimness for her weapon. She found the shaggy Greymoss already crouched and ready, one palm feeling the shuddering earth while he leaned on the butt of his musket.

    ¡°Crewman, report,¡± Deschane strode over to the tracker with a pistol in both hands.

    ¡°Lots of em. Coming up from behind us, fo-shurr-aye,¡± Greymoss intoned after a moment¡¯s deliberation, ¡°Dey ain¡¯t human.¡±

    ¡°To arms! Patrols, get back in here!¡± Pretty Boy hollered, kicking people out of their bedrolls, ¡°Up, you devils, and form a square.¡±

    They could all feel the shuddering now, welling up through the soles of their boots. The pathfinders stood back-to-back, slotting their bayonets onto their lugs as they strained their eyes, staring into the walls of darkness all around them. Deschane holstered his pistols and unslung his pack.

    ¡°Requisitioned these electric lamps from the mines before I left Shakka,¡± the navigator said, going through his belongings, ¡°Treat them with care. They¡¯re quite delicate.¡±

    The navigator started handing out boxy apparatuses with crystal lenses. With a flick of a switch on the carrying handle a cone of soft orange incandescence shot forth from the lenses, illuminating the area up to fifteen strides away. Deschane only had enough to equip half the platoon, but it was enough to give them a sizable radius of visibility.

    ¡°Fire only on command,¡± Deschane said, voice as steady as a rock. They stood there uncertainly, guessing at every shadow as they awaited the onrushing host. How had so many Amits forded the river and slipped past the army¡¯s flank without detection?

    Lights bobbed into view, curving round the flanks of the hills in a snaking line of torches that revealed a troop of cavalry, their hornblowers leapfrogging along at a leisurely pace. The pathfinders put up their guns, Tooms giving a nervous chuckle as the tension left them.

    A rider at the vanguard of the force kicked her spurs into her mount¡¯s thorax and came towards the pathfinders at a gallop. She wore a hat with one side of its brim folded up at a rakish slant with a yellow flirtybird feather sticking out of its band. Draped over one of her shoulders was the leathery hide of a monitor drake, fanged maw scraping against the front plate of her steel cuirass.

    ¡°You there, footslogger! What are you lot doing so far in the rear?¡± she barked at Tooms, subjecting him to a barrage of rapid-fire questions, ¡°Are you deserters? Who¡¯s in charge here?¡±

    ¡°That would be me,¡± Dechane stepped out of the square, ¡°Navigator Deschane, 9th Battalion, 3rd Pathfinders. And whom do I have the honour of addressing?¡±

    The woman swept her feathered hat off her head and unclasped her gasmask, allowing her luxurious black hair to cascade over her honey-nut brown shoulders. A Sinestran, Ven thought. Well, that explained the attitude. Sinestra was another one of core mounds whose inhabitants considered themselves the original members of the Fleet.

    The officer looked down her flat nose at Deschane, rich dark eyebrows coming together in a thoughtful frown.

    ¡°I know that name,¡± she said haughtily, ¡°You wouldn¡¯t happen to be the same Sollem Deschane from Mound 13, would you?¡±

    ¡°That depends,¡± Deschane likewise removed his mask as courtesy demanded, ¡°Who¡¯s asking?

    ¡°Captain Caitliff of the one and only Drakenguard Regiment,¡± she replied. Caitliff nursed a shotgun in her arms as one would an infant in its sling, and as she talked the captain let the triple barrels point vaguely in his direction, her carelessness irritating Ven to no end, ¡°Once again, are you the same Deschane from the papers?¡±

    ¡°Yes.¡±

    ¡°Yes, sir,¡± Caitliff corrected him, ¡°Our ranks may be equivalent, but I¡¯ve been given seniority here. You seem to have a habit of running headfirst into trouble, Sollem,¡± she continued, using his first name in an insolent display of familiarity, ¡°Or is that just a trait common to all pathfinders?¡±

    ¡°Who sez we¡¯re in trouble?¡± Pretty Boy sneered.

    ¡°And what is this creature supposed to be?¡± Caitliff said, looking Doyd up and down.

    ¡°The creature in question is Serjeant-Major Irasmus Doyd,¡± Deschane said evenly.

    ¡°Hmph,¡± Caitliff sniffed, profoundly unimpressed. The cavalrywoman waved her hat in the air and the troop came to a halt with much jingling and creaking of their saddles.

    ¡°We received Colonel Leelan''s mayday message and his pleas for cavalry support,¡± she informed them, ¡°Congratulations! We¡¯ve come to your rescue. Apparently, some of your people got torn up in an ambush. Leelan¡¯s convinced that the horde is headed his way. There¡¯s been some wild talk about him running into a new subspecies, some kind of Amit bogeyman that lives in these woods. Naturally, it¡¯s invisible to everyone but himself,¡± she paused to look back at her troop, who all broke out in shouts of derisive laughter.

    ¡°What about the rest of the Expeditionary Force?¡± Ven asked her.

    ¡°General Soulk pulled everyone back over the river and ordered them to circle their wagons. The entire army is now officially on the defensive.¡±

    Caitliff wrinkled her nose at that last bit, as if the word ¡®defensive¡¯ was an affront to her fine sensibilities.

    ¡°That¡¯s the first I¡¯ve heard of it,¡± Deschane lied, ¡°All I know is that we¡¯ve been brought up to serve as stretcher bearers.¡±

    ¡°Oh, is that what you¡¯re doing all the way back here, Sollem?¡± Caitliff said with a mean glint in her eye, ¡°I rather thought it had something to do with the fighting up ahead.¡±

    ¡°Are you suggesting that I cut and ran?¡± Deschane said quietly. Ven could see his jaw muscles bulging as he ground his molars in frustration.

    ¡°Call it what you like. I¡¯m sure the press will put a good spin on things come the weekly issue of the Victory Liner,¡± Caitliff jibed, ¡°But I doubt even they can salvage this shitshow. Your regiment bolted so fast that they¡¯ve left the artillery on the right completely exposed.¡±

    Ven now understood why the captain was so resentful. Not only did she have to clean up after the mess left by Colonel Leelan, but there was also a very high chance that her troop of a hundred riders was all that stood between a horde and the Fleet¡¯s newly exposed flank. Like many others in the Expeditionary Fleet who distrusted government propaganda, Caitliff held Deschane personally responsible for the death of Rear Admiral Prota¡¯s command. To see him here at the site of another potential catastrophe was no doubt cause for some anxiety on her part.

    ¡°I¡¯m sure the colonel had his reasons for pulling back,¡± Deschane said guardedly, ¡°As for me, I¡¯m still headed for Shogun Creek just like you seem to be. We have orders to evacuate the wounded.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t bother. By now there¡¯ll be nothing left of your people to carry home. Leelan left them all behind for the Amits to pick their bones clean.¡±

    There were angry mutterings from the pathfinders at that, some cursing the colonel for his cowardice while others whispered dire threats against the captain under their breaths.

    ¡°Stow all that backtalk,¡± Harmer said, shutting them up with a glare, ¡°I won¡¯t tolerate mutineers.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry to hear that,¡± Deschane finally said, unable to look Captain Caitliff in the eye. Every one of the pathfinders felt the shame of it too; it was the height of martial dishonour to leave the bodies of one¡¯s comrades to the Amits when there was even the slightest chance of retrieving them.

    ¡°As am I,¡± Caitliff said, ¡°It¡¯s a sorry business all around. Stay out of my way, Sollem. And don¡¯t you fret: if the bogeyman does decide to swing this way, I¡¯ll protect you.¡±

    She tugged at the reigns attached to her mount¡¯s antennae and bounded away, her Drakenguard galloping after her.

    ¡°Three cheers for the fugging cavalry,¡± Pretty Boy called after them, ¡°Hip hip, hooray.¡±

 Chapter 56: The Thing In the Trees

    None of them could catch of wink of sleep after that. The fate of their friends in the 2nd weighed heavily on their minds, the disgraceful manner of the retreat rankling within them.

    At dawn¡¯s first light they broke their fast on their R-bars, which were composed of dried cricket meat and hog fat ground up with molasses, nuts and berries, the dehydrated ingredients moulded into dense blocks that had all the flavour and consistency of tallow. Ven put the kettle on and brewed tea for the whole platoon to wash down the lardy aftertaste. They emptied the soggy tea leaves at the bottoms of their mess tins into the cold embers of the fire and set off at once, following the tracks left by the Drakenguard all the way to the Foss.

    Ven heard the foaming rapids of the river before she saw it, a narrow but deep-cut channel that now marked the Fleet¡¯s defensive line. Beyond the water¡¯s edge a deciduous forest began, the sparse stands of trees tiptoeing amidst a riot of tall grass and shrubs that formed the dense undergrowth. Clumps of bamboo sprouted in great profusion, forming obstacles that would be all but impenetrable to infantry.

    Cutting our way in through this mess is going to be a nightmare, Ven thought. As for beating a quick retreat, well you can just forget about it.

    She saw Deschane eyeing the terrain and knew he was having the same misgivings right about now. This was markedly different from the tropical rainforests that dominated most of the Northern Hinterlands¡ªthose had overhanging canopies that blocked out the sunlight and prevented the creation of thick undergrowth. This would be much slower going.

    On their side of the river was a flat stone outcropping that jutted up about three meters above the water level. It was a natural firing position which afforded perfect sightlines over the opposite bank, so it came as no surprise to see three bronze cannons squatting astride it, their muzzles trained on a gravelly ford that spanned the width of the Foss.

    The ford was the only point at which the river could be crossed, as evidenced by the profusion of tracks both human and hornblower.

    ¡°How long ago did Caitliff cross?¡± Deschane asked Greymoss. The bog-man tugged at his mouldy beard and considered the prints in the clay.

    ¡°Say ¡®bout tree, mebbe foe hours,¡± he rumbled incoherently, ¡°Ain¡¯t bin back since.¡±

    Deschane nodded and strode up to the artillery position. The crews were hard at work limbering their trio of twelve-pounder cannons onto their myropod-drawn carriages, their efforts overseen by an anxious officer who was clearly eager for them to get away.

    ¡°Morning,¡± Deschane called out.

    ¡°What do you want?¡± the man said distractedly, ¡°Whatever it is, I don¡¯t have time for it.¡±

    ¡°Going somewhere?¡±

    ¡°Yes. Anyplace but here,¡± the officer replied, wringing his hands, ¡°And I¡¯d advise you to do the same.¡±

    ¡°Why?¡±

    ¡°There¡¯s been another skirmish,¡± he said, gesturing at the opposite side of the Foss, ¡°Though I¡¯d sooner call it a massacre than anything else. I tried to warn her, didn¡¯t I? Hurry up!¡± the lieutenant told his crews, ¡°We¡¯ve got be away.¡±

    ¡°Who gave you permission to withdraw?¡± Deschane demanded.

    ¡°Listen here, you,¡± the man said, rounding on him, ¡°We¡¯re completely isolated out here. The pathfinders were supposed to be our screen, and now they¡¯re gone. This morning the cavalry went in to have a look-see, and we haven¡¯t seen them since either. General Soulk has laagered up all the infantry and is expecting an all-out assault at any minute, so not a man of them will come out from behind their circle of wagons to protect us. I¡¯m getting my section out of here before whatever got them comes after us.¡±

    Deschane seized the man by the collar and slapped him, hard.

    ¡°H-how dare you,¡± the officer said in shock, rubbing at his cheek, ¡°How dare you lay hands on a¡ª¡±

    Deschane gave him a taste of the backhand, knocking his mask off to uncover the face of a frightened young man with a frizzy blonde moustache.

    ¡°Name and rank?¡± he shouted. The artillerymen froze in place, watching as the navigator shoved their commanding officer around like a drunken reprobate.

    ¡°Shylo, first lieutenant,¡± the young man spluttered, blood trickling from his nostril.

    ¡°What kind of a mother names her son Shylo?¡± Cooly guffawed.

    ¡°I really must protest at this treatment,¡± said Shylo, ¡°You can¡¯t do this to me!¡±

    ¡°Sure I can,¡± Deschane tapped the chevrons on his shoulder pad to let Shiels know that he outranked him, ¡°Now you¡¯re going to calm down and tell me exactly what happened here.¡±

    ¡°Haven¡¯t you been listening to me?¡± Shylo wailed, ¡°Every last one of them is dead. Cut to pieces, chopped to meat! And there wasn¡¯t a thing we could do about it!¡±

    Their argument was interrupted by the sound of thrumming wings. They all turned to see Captain Caitliff emerging from the brush at head of her troop, their hornblowers hopping nimbly between the clumps of bamboo. The grass creaked and bent under their weight, but did not break.

    This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

    ¡°Nifty,¡± Ven muttered, taking note of how easily the cavalry avoided getting stuck in the bush. It seemed they were much better-suited to this type of jungle than the pathfinders were.

    ¡°You again?¡± the captain shouted across to them. She yanked up at her hornblower¡¯s antennae, causing it to hover half a meter above the water. Caitliff landed deftly in the middle of the guns and swept her hat off again in greeting, sending the artillerymen scattering out of her way. She was a very able rider, if nothing else.

    ¡°She doesn¡¯t look dead to me,¡± Deschane told Shylo, releasing him with a shove.

    ¡°Assaulting a fellow officer now, are we?¡± Caitliff swung off her saddle and got right up in Deschane¡¯s face, ¡°Didn¡¯t I just tell you to stay out of my way?¡±

    ¡°Sir,¡± he said with as much politeness as he could muster, ¡°Did you find any of the missing soldiers from my regiment?¡±

    ¡°Nope.¡±

    ¡°Bodies?¡±

    ¡°Zilch. As in not a damned thing,¡± Caitliff said, suddenly losing patience. It was obvious that she was growing just as frustrated with the situation as they were, ¡°I¡¯ve been scouring their last known location and sending out scouts five klicks in every direction. We¡¯ve found nothing other than a few specks of dried blood on the grass. If you don¡¯t believe me, you¡¯re welcome to take a look for yourself. Shogun Creek is only half a kilometre down thattaways,¡± she nudged her shotgun east to where the river weakened and broke up into several small tributaries, ¡°As for me, I¡¯m staying right here,¡± she continued, ¡°My beasts need rest.¡±

    The hornblowers were gasping through the spiracles on the sides of their bodies, exhausted by their ride through the brush.

    ¡°Is this all of your outfit, sir?¡± Tooms asked, squinting at the troop who were hopping after her, ¡°I could¡¯ve sworn there were more of you last night.¡±

    He was right. The cavalry troop was missing about a quarter of its strength.

    ¡°I sent Corporal Haikes out there with two dozen others to guard our flank,¡± Caitliff said with a careless wave of her hand, ¡°That should be them coming up now.¡±

    She pointed at a cloud of dust rising from behind the bamboo thickets. Five hornblowers came into view, galloping hard out of Shogun Creek. One of the steeds was missing its riders. They rode up the shallow sides of the Foss at full tilt, the drakenguard casting fearful glances over their shoulders. Ven heard the pop of muffled gunfire, saw another cavalryman coming helter-skelter round the bend, jabbing his spurs into the sides of his flagging beast. With the reigns in one hand, he twisted around and aimed a pistol into the bush from which he had come. But before he could shoot, a piece of the jungle seemed to come alive and plucked him straight out of his saddle, his screams fading as he was pulled up into shivering leaves of the bamboo.

    It all happened so quickly. Ven was still struggling to come to terms with what she had just seen when yet another rider was seized, this time by the bough of an overhanging tree. The gnarled limb folded almost lovingly around his waist before giving it an almighty wrench, wringing the guts out of him like a laundrywoman squeezing her clothes dry. The formless thing draped his intestines over the branches and melted back into the foliage, taking the gutted man with it.

    ¡°Holy heliopause¡­¡± Leming breathed, his musket dropping out of his nerveless fingers.

    ¡°Haikes!¡± cried Caitliff, her grief mingling with rage. She sprang back onto her mount and wheeled towards the fight, ¡°Drakenguard, to me!¡±

    ¡°Wait¡ªdon¡¯t!¡± Deschane latched onto her saddle horn and held fast, refusing to let go even as he was almost dragged off his feet and sent scrabbling over the shoreline.

    Deschane dragged her mount towards the middle of the river, the hornblower staggering off-balance. Caitliff snatched at her reigns and fought to keep her seat as the panicking beast bucked beneath her.

    ¡°I¡¯ve had it up to here with you, Sollem!¡± Caitliff roared, unsheathing her sabre, ¡°Unhand me, or by the Helmsman, I¡¯ll unhand you!¡±

    ¡°How do you think it got all those pathfinders?¡± Deschane argued even as they struggled in the shallows, ¡°It picked them off a few at a time and lured the rest of them in. Just like it¡¯s doing with you now!¡±

    ¡°You don¡¯t know that!¡± Caitliff said, yet she hesitated all the same.

    Pandemonium erupted. Drakenguard and pathfinder alike began unloading their weapons into the spot where the riders had disappeared, their bullets and buckshot stripping the bark off the trees and snipping the ferns. Shylo hid behind one of his twelve-pounders and started rocking back and forth.

    ¡°¡­.not me, please not me,¡± he gibbered, ¡°Take someone else, anyone else but me!¡±

    Knowing she had just the one shot with her Sharpstone, Ven held her fire and searched for her target through the whirlwind of confused gunshots. Where had the creature gone? What did it even look like? Its form had been indistinguishable from the many saplings and shrubs that lined the river bank.

    Ven cringed as a deafening explosion went off beside her, drowning out the pop and crack of the rifles.

    ¡°Alright! That¡¯s enough!¡± Caitliff bellowed with impressive vocal range. She stood in her stirrups, all three of her barrels smoking from the simultaneous discharge, ¡°I¡¯m still in command here, and I will have order!¡±

    She guided her steed back onto dry land and pulled Deschane back onto his feet after her.

    ¡°Drakenguard, hold your fire,¡± Caitliff commanded, ¡°That goes for you pathfinders, too. None of you are hitting squat at this range, and we don¡¯t even know what we¡¯re shooting at yet. Sollem, get your raggedy pack in line, or by the ancestors I¡¯ll have your scalp hanging from my saddlebags!¡±

    ¡°Aye aye, skipper,¡± Deschane said, still panting. Pausing to straighten the creased front of his uniform, he ordered the pathfinders to form a skirmish line and reload their rifles.

    Captain Caitliff rallied her shaken drakenguard and had them withdraw to the safer side of the river. Then she demanded that the three trembling survivors from Haike¡¯s detachment dismount and give their report.

    ¡°Never saw it coming,¡± moaned one, his torn gasmask flapping from its straps. His eyes were wide as dinner plates and staring at nothing, ¡°We thought we¡¯d heard somebody crying out for help in the wilderness, one of the wounded pathfinders, maybe. Haikes led the way as we rode into a clearing where there was a man lying against a stump, bloody all over and shivering like he was cold or hurt. Only¡­¡± the soldier paused to take a trembling breath, ¡°¡­only it wasn¡¯t a man, but a corpse all cored out through the middle, like something had been nibbling away at it like a candy apple. The hornblowers were spooked, and so were we. We would''ve turned tail and fled right then and there. But then the voice came again and told us to look up and see. And we saw¡­¡±

    He trailed off, holding his head in his hands.

    ¡°What?¡± Caitliff cut in sharply, ¡°See what, Jode? Speak, man!¡±

    ¡°The thing in the trees,¡± Jode whispered. He pointed a trembling finger past her, to where the tall bamboo swayed and sighed with the breeze. Newly perched upon the topmost branch was a small, round object still glistening wet at its base.

    ¡°Oh, gods,¡± Harmer said, peering down her rifle¡¯s side scope, ¡°Is that what I think it is?¡±

    Caitliff let out a heart-wrenching moan at the sight of Haike¡¯s severed head, his slackened mouth hanging open to form a wordless scream.

 Chapter 57: The Price in Blood

    ¡°You¡¯re right. It¡¯s taunting us,¡± Harmer said in a mixture of disgust and fascination, ¡°Daring us to come after it again.¡±

    She passed her Hexiomatic over to Deschane, who took his turn squinting down the scope at the grisly trophy the enemy had left for them to see. Cpt. Caitliff had ordered the section to pound the enemy¡¯s last known location and everything around it within a five-klick radius. The head stuck up from out of the lifting clouds of gun smoke, in brazen defiance of the explosive shells that crashed and flattened the bush all around it.

    ¡°Maybe,¡± Deschane murmured noncommittally.

    Ven wondered how the navigator could remain so unaffected by the mutilated remains of a man he¡¯d seen killed only minutes ago. She couldn¡¯t see the expression on his face through his gasmask, but his body language betrayed nothing more than an air of heightened attention. Ven ducked as the cannons roared once again, tearing craters into the loam of the opposite bank and felling whole stands of trees. After a few minutes the guns fell silent and Lt. Shylo came over to join them.

    ¡°Whatever the case may be, it¡¯s certainly feeling confident,¡± Caitliff was saying.

    ¡°Of course it¡¯s bloody confident,¡± Shylo said with a manic giggle, ¡°It just carried off a score of men from right under our noses. Can¡¯t you see that it¡¯s making sport of us all?¡±

    ¡°You will sequester that morbid mewling, lieutenant,¡± Caitliff¡¯s reprimand cut like a scalpel through his hysteria, ¡°We¡¯ll see who¡¯s hunting whom before this business is through. Continue the barrage.¡±

    ¡°Sir, we¡¯re almost out of explosive shells,¡± Shylo protested, ¡°Colonel Leelan had us cover his regiment¡¯s retreat with our guns, too. We haven¡¯t been resupplied since yesterday.¡±

    ¡°So send out a runner.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve already sent a messenger to the signalling station several hours ago.¡±

    ¡°Then where is your ammunition?¡±

    ¡°I didn¡¯t send him to request a resupply, sir. I¡¯ve asked permission to make an immediate withdrawal from this position. I¡¯m expecting their reply any minute now.¡±

    ¡°You want to retreat?¡± Caitliff spat, ¡°And leave the rest of us unsupported? Unacceptable.¡±

    ¡°But command¡ª¡±

    ¡°¡ªhas ordered me to salvage this sector by any means necessary. Until you receive a reply in the affirmative you are staying right where you are. Save the shells and switch to round shot. If I see a single gun being limbered, I¡¯ll destroy you. Get me?¡±

    ¡°Aye aye, skipper,¡± Shylo gave a half-hearted salute and plodded back to his position.

    Ven could hear the angry rasp of Caitliff¡¯s breathing through her intake valves and knew the captain was spoiling for a fight, her grief transforming into a simmering rage that threatened to boil over at any moment. Despite her eagerness to avenge her fallen comrades, Caitliff was taking a remarkably level-headed approach to things¡ªlikely the fate of her corporal had scared some sense into her.

    She wasn¡¯t the only one. Ven felt as if her bones had turned to jelly. Once again she was confronted by the sudden impartiality of death, and the shock of it had yet to wear off.

    The officers from both outfits were kneeling in a semicircle some distance away from the twelve-pounder guns, calmly talking over their next move under the overall supervision of the captain.

    Deschane had deployed the platoon forward in a standard skirmish pattern on the river¡¯s edge. Caitliff on her part had ordered her drakenguard to dismount and form a line behind them, resting their shotguns and carbines on the saddles of their unmoving steeds to steady their aim. Together they all kept their eyes peeled for the slightest hint of movement. There was a pause in the cannonade as the gun crews brought up the round shot from the caissons, during which the smoke clouds slowly parted like a veil, allowing them to see the other side clearly.

    ¡°D¡¯you see that?¡± cried one keen-eyed pathfinder, pointing at a new shape that had materialized next to the first, ¡°What the devil is that?¡±

    ¡°Why, it¡¯s one of ours! Klemens from A Company, I think,¡± Lemings sang out, ¡°They¡¯ve gone and put Klemens up there!¡±

    Cries of outrage and revulsion went up from the soldiers as they spied a second man set on display alongside Haikes. A pathfinder was draped atop the crown of a nearby palm tree like a sheet of torn and dirty linen, his gasmask dangling off his waxen face to show the rolling whites of his eyes, pupils staring blankly up at the heavens. His killer had torn open the back of his mud-brown sealant suit to carve out his haunches and buttocks.

    Ven felt as if she had stumbled into someone else¡¯s fevered nightmare. The eradicator had used the clouds of smoke from the cannonade to move in unseen and erect another one of its trophies for them to see, openly making a mockery of the mightiest weapon the Fleet possessed.

    Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

    Eradicator. Ven realized that she had been consciously resisting the urge to call the creature by that name, knowing full well that such words held power over the mind. But was this lifeform truly the harbinger of doom which had levelled entire civilizations? If so, then Ven had to admit that it was living up to its reputation.

    But if there was one thing she knew about her fellow pathfinders, it was that they never could admit when they were beaten.

    ¡°The cunt knows he can¡¯t beat us in a standup fight,¡± Pretty Boy seethed, ¡°If we could just catch him out in the open, we¡¯d tear his arse up, by god!¡±

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t be too sure of that,¡± Deschane handed back the Hex and stood up, ¡°Nothing we had seemed to put a dent in it.¡±

    ¡°Who¡¯s to say we even hit anything?¡± Harmer pointed out.

    ¡°Didn¡¯t you take a shot at it?¡± Ven asked the markswoman. Harmer shook her head and replied:

    ¡°You know me¡ªI never squeeze one off unless I¡¯m dead sure of hitting a nerve cluster.¡±

    ¡°Who¡¯s to say it even has a nerve cluster?¡± Deschane said, thoughtfully scratching at his bandages.

    ¡°What are you suggesting?¡± Caitliff asked. Everyone knew the answer to that question, and the implications of it frightened them all. If it had no nerve cluster, then could it even be killed?

    Ven had caught a glimpse of the eradicator when it had taken Haikes and the other rider, but all she could clearly remember was that it had far too many legs and arms the length of train rails. And the speed of those lashing limbs! It had struck like forked lightning and disappeared just as quick. Nothing that big had any business moving so swiftly, considering that it was as tall as the trees it had so effortlessly impersonated.

    Now that she had a moment to collect herself, Ven tried to reconstruct the scene in an effort to glean what they were up against. Its waist or thorax or trunk¡ªwhatever you chose to call it¡ªwas slender in the middle but thickened where it met the thigh segments of the legs, which Ven had mistaken for large buttress roots digging their anchorage into the soil. The eradicator¡¯s carapace presented a perfect imitation of mossy bark, the arms holding up a panoply of green branches that she suspected were living epiphytes that it wore to complete its disguise.

    ¡°It can¡¯t be an Amit,¡± Ven decided at last, ¡°The physiology¡¯s all wrong. The tactics, too.¡±

    ¡°What are you, some kind of expert?¡± one of Caitliff¡¯s non-commissioned officers mouthed off.

    ¡°When¡¯s the last time you heard a gourd-head talk?¡± Ven countered, ¡°They don¡¯t even have vocal cords. This thing let the bulk of your patrol pass, waited for you to turn your backs, then lured in your rearguard by mimicking human speech patterns. Only then did it choose to strike. Amits don¡¯t have that kind of tactical acumen.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯d pay attenshun to her if I was you,¡± Pretty Boy glowered at him, ¡°She¡¯s got college.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t care if she¡¯s a summa-cumma-valley-dick-torian!¡± the non-com forced a laugh, doubling down on his arrogance, ¡°She¡¯d have us believe that we¡¯re facing unkillable phantasms, when in reality there¡¯s no problem in the world that enough bullets can¡¯t solve.¡±

    ¡°Tell that to your dead,¡± Ven said, regretting it immediately. Caitliff¡¯s officers stiffened as if she had doused them with a bucketful of cold water. She had insulted their regimental pride, their esprit de corps. Drakenguard were a notoriously prickly bunch. They were mounted infantry, the first of their kind, a departure from the traditional lance and warhammer-wielding shock cavalry that had proven their worth on a hundred blood-soaked battlefields. Their role was to be a reactionary force that could swiftly reinforce critical sectors of the line, overwhelming the enemy with massed firepower. The jury was still out on whether or not they were worth the incredible expense of equipping and maintaining their unit. As such, Caitliff¡¯s people had a lot to prove.

    ¡°If you footsloggers don¡¯t have the stones to face the enemy and take losses, then what good are you?¡± said a younger drakenguard who wore a flower tucked into his breast pocket.

    ¡°Stones? Oh, I¡¯ll show you stones,¡± Pretty Boy promised, hand flying to his backsword, ¡°I¡¯ll shove mine so far down your throat you¡¯ll think it¡¯s folk medicine.¡±

    Oof, Ven winced. Talk about adding fuel to the fire.

    ¡°I¡¯ll measure my steel against yours anytime, anywhere,¡± was the cavalryman¡¯s eager reply.

    ¡°Gentlemen!¡± Caitliff slammed her fist against the side of the twelve-pounder, the cannon tolling like a muted bell, ¡°A soldier of the Fleet lies slaughtered before you, and all you can think to do is argue over who has the bigger cock? You shame us all, sirs. You disgrace us.¡±

    Doyd and the young man both had the decency to duck their heads in embarrassment. Ven had seldom seen Pretty Boy so cowed. Caitliff continued:

    ¡°From now on we will all conduct ourselves as officers of the Expeditionary Force. Navigator,¡± she rose and turned to Deschane, ¡°I¡¯m told your pathfinders are the finest scouts this side of the Iron Crescent. They say you people can sniff out a fart in the eye of a hurricane. Any truth to that claim?¡±

    Deschane was taken aback by her forthrightness, and took a while to answer:

    ¡°An exaggeration. But if any one of us can lend credence to it, it¡¯s this man right here. Private Greymoss!¡± he called to the skirmish line, ¡°Front and centre.¡±

    ¡°Suh?¡± the bog-man came over at a sprint.

    ¡°This is the best tracker in your platoon?¡± Caitliff cast an appraising eye over the bog-man. Covered in a brown poncho made of dried grass and chewing on a stalk of wild oats, Greymoss cut the very opposite of a dashing figure.

    ¡°Best in the regiment, bar none,¡± Deschane said without hesitation.

    ¡°Fine. Navigator, I need your troopers to help smoke that thing out. How do you suggest we do that?¡±

    ¡°With respect sir, I don¡¯t. I think we should all fall back behind the wagon circles and link up with the main force.¡±

    Ven couldn¡¯t believe what she was hearing. Pretty Boy openly goggled at him. The drakenguards threw up their hands in disgust as if he had just confirmed their worst suspicions, while Caitliff¡¯s own forbidding silence spoke volumes. Deschane calmly weathered their contempt before speaking the rest of his piece:

    ¡°Col. Leelan made the right choice to retreat considering the circumstances, though I will admit the retreat itself was handled poorly.¡±

    ¡°Are you refusing to carry out my orders?¡± Caitliff¡¯s voice had gone ominously flat.

    ¡°No, skipper. I¡¯m merely stating the course of action that I believe will save the most lives. It¡¯s my opinion that this enemy is beyond our ability to combat effectively through conventional means. If we engage it here and now, we will probably suffer another mass casualty event. Are you willing to pay that price in blood?¡±

    Caitliff glanced at her people, then back at Haikes. Ven heard the creak of her leather riding gloves as her hands curled into fists.

    ¡°Let¡¯s nail this bastard to the wall,¡± she snarled.

    ¡°Very well, skipper. Here''s what I propose..."

    Deschane squatted back down and with his fingertip scrawled out a plan in the dirt.

 Chapter 58: So They Bleed (Part 1)

    ¡°Thought it was a nightmare

    Lord, it''s all so true

    They told me, don''t go walking slow

    The devil''s on the loose¡­

    Over on the mountain, thunder magic spoke,

    Let the people know my wisdom,

    Fill the land with smoke¡­

    Better run through the jungle,

    Better run through the jungle,

    Better run through the jungle,

    Oh, don''t look back to see¡­¡±

    - Creedence Clearwater Revival

    Ven stroked her chin and examined the line of pebbles that Deschane had arranged on the sandy riverbank. Four rose quartz chips were arranged in a short wedge, while pieces of grey pumice stone formed a wide crescent behind it. On the left shoulder of this crescent ran a groove Deschane had dug into the dirt with his fingernail to signify the river Foss. Lt. Shylo¡¯s artillery section was represented by three twigs stuck into a raised mound of dirt at an angle. Behind the crescent was a smaller groove that ran perpendicular to the first¡ªShogun Creek. Deschane pointed to it as he went over the battle plan:

    ¡°We¡¯ll begin the sweep at the confluence of the Foss and Shogun Creek, probing westward till we make contact with the enemy. My platoon will divide into quartets and lead the way about a hundred paces in front of the cavalry,¡± he touched the quartz chips, ¡°Pvt. Greymoss and myself will form the point of our wedge. The two shoulder cannon teams with their supporting riflemen will be posted on either flank. Harmer, I want your quartet on the right moving ahead of the mobile artillerist. Beans, you¡¯ve got the sulphur grenades¡ªyou¡¯ll go with her.¡±

    ¡°That leaves only one quartet for the left flank closer to the river,¡± Pretty Boy said, noticing the uneven distribution of firepower.

    ¡°Yes. They¡¯re the bait,¡± Deschane said without so much as batting an eyelid. The pathfinders squirmed uncomfortably at that. Not a word was spoken, but it was clear that no one was keen to play the worm on the fisherman¡¯s hook. Ven could sense the growing reluctance in her unit, the resentment at being voluntold for what was clearly becoming a suicidal venture. This was the critical moment, and everyone knew it.

    ¡°I¡¯ll go,¡± Ven found herself saying before common sense could staple her lips shut. Deschane darted a quick yet meaningful glance at the corporal, one that Ven could read like a book.

    On one hand he was grateful that someone had stepped up to the challenge, but on the other he was concerned for her safety.

    It was no secret that she was his prized prot¨¦g¨¦ and that he was grooming her for command. Though exactly why he had chosen Ven for the role was quite beyond her.

    Rene had been a perfectly capable subordinate. And yet Deschane had always treated him like a burden that had been foisted upon him by the officer training school, an upper-class dilettante who couldn¡¯t tell his arse from his elbow and had to be taught everything from the ground up.

    Ven supposed that she did have a talent for organization and analysis. But she¡¯d never truly believed that she deserved the confidence Deschane placed in her. Consequently, she was always striving to meet his expectations. Not out of any personal ambition¡ªbefore the Tallahammock campaign Ven had been perfectly happy pushing quills behind her desk. Her compulsion to excel at her duties was driven solely by her admiration for old Sourface. Ven earnestly believed that Deschane and Rene had together represented the best that the Fleet had to offer.

    Intellect and empathy. Decisiveness and obedience. Duty and restraint. Flip sides of the coin, except now one of those faces had been rubbed off forever. What else could Ven do but try and fill that void?

    ¡°Aw, shit,¡± Pretty Boy swore, ¡°Guess I¡¯ll come with.¡±

    ¡°Likewise,¡± said Tooms, and Cooly nodded his assent. Ven felt more than a little relief at knowing these three had her back. As she¡¯d expected, the others could not stand by while she strode willingly into danger.

    The weak right flank was meant to present a welcoming target for the enemy. All signs pointed to the eradicator being an ambush predator that relied on camouflage and which preferred to strike at isolated elements. The pathfinders were to remain in visual contact with each other as much as possible and proceed slowly through the bush, making sure to preserve their formation. The wedge was ideal for presenting maximum firepower and mutually supporting arcs of fire to the front and sides. Once contact was made the platoon was to stand its ground and seek to overcome the eradicator with sheer weight of fire, simultaneously bringing both shoulder cannons to bear.

    ¡°And while all this is happening, we are to wait on the sidelines with our thumbs up our bumholes?¡± muttered Caitliff¡¯s non-com.

    ¡°On the contrary, this is where you drakenguard will come in,¡± Deschane said without missing a beat, ¡°Yours is the most crucial part of this plan. While we pathfinders fix the enemy in place, you manoeuvre around them and prevent its escape,¡± the navigator indicated the horns of the crescent, ¡°We can¡¯t allow it to withdraw and set up another ambush.¡±

    ¡°I see where you¡¯re going with this,¡± Captain Caitliff swatted her hat against her knee, ¡°Once the pressure is on, we will not let up!¡±

    ¡°And if it¡¯s impervious to small arms fire?¡± Lt. Shylo pointed out.

    ¡°Then we drakenguard will drive the creature into the open where your twelve-pounders can gobble it up,¡± Caitliff tapped her riding crop on the twigs on the terrain model, then pointed across the Foss towards a series of wide clearings where the bamboo thickets were sparser.

    ¡°There! A salvo of explosive shells at just the right spot would do the trick. Though the timing of it will be tricky.¡±

    The officers turned expectantly to Lt. Shylo.

    ¡°You¡¯d be danger close in that case, wouldn¡¯t you?¡± he protested, ¡°Friendly fire is bound to occur.¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a risk we¡¯ll have to take,¡± Deschane said, already standing up to go, ¡°We have to maintain contact, grab the enemy by the belt buckle, so to speak. My man Beans here will signal you with the sulphur grenades. Wherever you see us pop a smoke, give it everything you¡¯ve got.¡±

    ¡°Level the whole goddamned forest if you have to,¡± Captain Caitliff added with feeling. She stood high in her stirrups and yelled: ¡°Alright, troopers. Let¡¯s show this thing who the real monsters are. Form up and move out!¡±

    As the pathfinders and drakenguard filed into place, Caitliff drew Deschane and Ven aside, saying:

    ¡°I couldn¡¯t help but notice that this plan of yours seems awfully familiar, navigator.¡±

    ¡°How so?¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t play stupid with me,¡± she snorted, ¡°These are Amit tactics.¡±

    Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

    Ven looked back at the diorama and was embarrassed that she hadn¡¯t spotted it sooner. Fleet tacticians called the formation the Maw. With it the Amits had eviscerated entire armies of riflemen, nullifying the advantages of their technologically superior foes.

    A strong centre was the key. This was normally composed of bulls and fully matured warrior-brood. They occupied the bulk of the human forces with fierce frontal assaults, fixing them in place while the Maw¡¯s mandibles closed in from either side. These were swift-moving columns of worker-brood or juvenile warriors whose thinner, less armoured exoskeletons allowed them to cover great distances with alarming speed. They slipped around the sides of the human gunlines, using superior numbers to swarm the regiments from all directions and cut them apart piecemeal. Like everything else about that troglodytic race, it was simple, brutish, yet undeniably effective. Deschane had replicated it down to the last detail, substituting human units in to fulfil the roles of specific Amit broods.

    ¡°This enemy cannot be fought with conventional means,¡± Deschane repeated, ¡°Today, we are the primitives and they are species favoured by evolution.¡±

    ¡°Well, I wouldn¡¯t say they hold all the advantages. Your people seem to have come very well prepared for this eventuality. I¡¯ve never seen stretcher bearers outfitted with custom quicktimers and cycler pistols galore. Navigator, somehow I can¡¯t shake the feeling that you know far more than you are letting on. Why is your platoon really here?¡±

    ¡°To serve the species, skipper,¡± Deschane said, and Ven could almost hear the smile in his voice.

    ¡°We¡¯ll see about that. Keep your secrets, then. I¡¯ll have the truth out of you one way or another.¡±

    ¡°Is that a threat?¡±

    ¡°No,¡± the captain said, climbing back into her saddle, ¡°A promise. Don¡¯t foul this up, Deschane. Our lives depend on you.¡±

    Caitliff jerked the reigns and her hornblower sprang away to join the others.

    #

    Shogun Creek turned out to be a muddy little rivulet that came up to their ankles. The pathfinders put it at their backs and split into quartets, spacing themselves out with equal intervals of five paces between each trooper. They had to maintain visual contact with their neighbours at all times, which slowed their progress through the bush to a snail¡¯s crawl.

    Greymoss glided ahead of them, his brown grass poncho blending perfectly into the undergrowth. He set a leisurely pace as he cut for sign, beginning with the spot where the riders had been taken. Blood and bits of innards speckled the fronds, and Ven nearly trod upon a severed thumb.

    ¡°Someone gottem. Lookit, over here,¡± Greymoss pointed at a shrapnel-ridden trunk of a foxtail where a patch of yellowish-green mucus clung to the underside of a bough. The bog-man reached up with his Sharpstone rifle and got a bit of it on his bayonet, then held it out for the navigator to examine.

    ¡°So they bleed,¡± Deschane said, rubbing it thoughtfully between his fingers, ¡°Good¡­¡±

    Greymoss found deep indentations in the mud nearby. He stood a while tugging at his beard before deducing that the creature had only two clawed toes on each foot, but that it travelled on six legs.

    ¡°He a heavy sumbitch, too,¡± Greymoss added, ¡°Two and a half, three tons. Lotta armour, ah s¡¯pose.¡±

    ¡°Can you find him?¡± Deschane asked.

    ¡°Does a tapir shit inna woods?¡± Greymoss grunted rhetorically.

    Behind them they could hear the flutter of the hornblowers as the drakenguard followed after them. They followed a meandering trail of yellow-green goo across the leaf litter till it petered out, then picked it up again among the lower branches. Despite the creature¡¯s incredible bulk, apparently it could still climb. What¡¯s more, it seemed to traverse the canopy with as much ease it did on the ground. Long parallel scratches bleeding resin marked where it had distributed its weight among several trees at once.

    Suddenly the trail of mucus petered out completely. Either the wound had clotted up quickly or the eradicator had treated it himself. Greymoss became pensive, chewing on the ends of his beard and muttering to himself in his pidgin dialect.

    The platoon had entered a segment of the bush where the creepers grew so lush and thick that the only way to advance was to hack out a path with a machete. They took turns at it, three soldiers of each quartet standing ready with their rifles while a fourth sweated and chopped away at the unyielding vines. The vegetation was so thick they could barely move a meter every half hour. Visibility was almost non-existent.

    ¡°I can barely see what¡¯s in front of my nose,¡± Tooms complained as he flexed his aching wrists, ¡°How exactly are we supposed to find this creature?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s supposed to find us, genius,¡± Cooly reminded him, ¡°And the more you keep bitching, the sooner it will.¡±

    ¡°This¡¯d go a lot faster if we travelled in file,¡± Tooms said only five minutes later, ¡°I bet Greymoss could find us a way through all this that don¡¯t involve this arse-breaking work.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll break your arse with my foot if you don¡¯t stop yakking,¡± Pretty Boy threatened, ¡°It¡¯s bad enough our tracker is losing his marbles without you adding onto it.¡±

    ¡°Who, Greymoss? That man doesn¡¯t know the meaning of fear,¡± Ven said.

    ¡°Can¡¯t you hear him? He¡¯s talking gibberish to himself.¡±

    ¡°Isn¡¯t he always?¡± Tooms muttered in between strokes of his machete. Pretty Boy drew Ven aside, said: ¡°Tooms has a point. We can¡¯t make any headway moving like this, and the brush is breaking up our formation. Go ask Deschane if he¡¯ll consider us moving in file.¡±

    Ven glanced at the central quartet and saw Deschane at Greymoss¡¯ shoulder, the pair of them standing still as if transfixed. She drifted close enough to overhear the bog-man¡¯s running monologue:

    ¡°¡­yeller cheesewood, rambutan, crepe-myrtle, cananga¡­¡±

    ¡°Navigator?¡± Ven hissed, ¡°Could I have a word?¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s onto something,¡± Deschane shushed her with a gesture, then whispered to Greymoss, ¡°What¡¯s wrong?¡±

    ¡°Dem flours,¡± Greymoss told them without taking his eyes off the foreground.

    ¡°Flours?¡± Deschane was confused.

    ¡°Ayuh. Deys in bloom.¡±

    ¡°Oh, you mean the flowers,¡± Ven almost burst out laughing. Sometimes she thought Greymoss only grew more incomprehensible as the years went by, ¡°Yes, I imagine they are. It¡¯s early in the rainy season after all.¡±

    For the first time in a while Ven allowed herself to sit back take in the scenery. A long day¡¯s march had a way of wearing down one¡¯s appreciation for nature¡¯s bounty, but seeing it now Ven was reminded that this world could be remarkably breathtaking when it cared to be.

    Shy petals of cacauate and lunar orchid pushed up from the sable darkness of the jungle floor, hinting at a hidden realm of beauty behind the leafy veil. Branches laden with early jungle fruit hung heavy with swarms of berry-berry bats, the nocturnal furballs chittering grumpily as the machete-men crashed their way through the vegetation. Monarch butterflies alighted upon a fallen tree trunk overgrown with pale toadstools and polka dot splotches of lichen.

    As pretty as all this was, Ven had to remind herself that they were interlopers here. Her trained eyes picked out murderhole spiders the size of her head spying on the bats from the caves they had dug into the mud below.

    That was Arachnea in a nutshell. Amidst the glory of creation, death came in a thousand forms. Though at the moment she could not discern what exactly had rattled Greymoss.

    ¡°White lauan, pili, narra. Ayuh,¡± Greymoss said with growing confidence, ¡°It do be.¡±

    ¡°Speak clearly, damn you,¡± Deschane grumbled.

    ¡°See that narra?¡± the bog-man whispered, nodding at a timber tree with bright minty leaves some twenty paces away, ¡°Ought to be yellow flours all over it this time of year, fo-shurr-aye. Only, there ain¡¯t. Savvy?¡±

    Ven savvied just fine, as did Deschane. Though she wouldn¡¯t have noticed if the bog-man hadn¡¯t pointed it out for them: the narra was the only tree in the area that was shorn of its buds. Now his grumblings made sense: Greymoss had simply been listing the species of flowering species native to these hinterlands.

    The navigator drew a pistol with one hand and with the other ripped out a series of hand signals that the other quartets saw and passed down the line. The crash and thwack of the machetes stopped as pathfinders inverted their formation into a V.

    On the left Sierck ambled up with his shoulder cannon and took position with his loader and supporting riflemen, while on the right Cooly did the same, their arcs of fire overlapping on the point which Deschane had wordlessly indicated.

    With a glance to either side to check that they were all in position, the navigator aimed his cycler with deliberate slowness, its barrel pointing like an accusing finger at the narra as if he were calling its bluff. The rest of the pathfinders followed suit, triggers curling gently round their triggers.

    Silence fell over them in an invisible shroud. Even the bats had ceased to chitter. The cycler cracked like a bullwhip, the bullet pulping into the young wood with a spatter of mint-green sap.

    A moment went by, then two. But the narra never budged. Deschane let out a huff through his valves and began reloading the empty chamber of his pistol. Slowly everyone relaxed or sat up with chuckles of nervous relief.

    ¡°You really had us going there,¡± Pretty Boy called over.

    ¡°Ayuh,¡± Greymoss said apologetically, ¡°T''were nuthin after all.¡±

    The tracker took a step forward then stopped, cocking his head to one side in apparent puzzlement. Then he staggered back with a curse, firing his Sharpstone from the hip as he yelled incoherently:

    ¡°It do be! It do be!¡±

    Before their very eyes the narra seemed to burst asunder, the pieces reconfiguring themselves into a tall and spindly creature of awkward proportions. Greymoss fell on his back just as its boughs flicked out towards him, slicing through the intervening wall of vines and saplings like grain before the scythe. Greymoss quite suddenly found himself in possession of only half a rifle¡ªthe top section of the barrel had been shaved off more cleanly than if it had been done with a pipe cutter and a file. The bog-man sat on his arse and goggled at the eradicator like the rest of them were doing. The creature reared up to its full height on four gangly legs, the segments of bark it wore on its parchment-brown exoskeleton sloughing off like dead skin. It had a long, thick abdomen joined to a narrow thorax from which emerged two spiked, raptorial forelegs decorated with leafy branches. These closed switchblade-like over serrated interior swords, each tooth as black and sharp as an obsidian knife. An isosceles triangle head with lidless, glass bottle eyes on the opposite corners stared back at them. It folded its switchblade arms together up in front of its threshing mouthparts as if it wished to challenge them to a round of fisticuffs.

    For a moment the utter surrealness of its movements lulled them all in a trance.

    ¡°That¡¯s funny,¡± Leming muttered, ¡°Why, it almost looks like it¡¯s praying for something.¡±

    Deschane was the first to recover. He seized Greymoss by the armpit and hauled him back behind the line, firing his cycler pistol with his spare hand.

    ¡°Contact front!¡± he shouted as the creature came skittering towards them with preternatural agility, swords flaring open to enfold them all.

 Chapter 59: So They Bleed (Part 2)

    Gunfire rippled down the V as the pathfinders unloaded a volley upon the eradicator at extremely close range. The monster leaned into the storm of musketry and hunkered down behind its folding swords, the bullets sparking as they struck the armoured tibia of its forelegs. Their sclerites were angular and seemed to deflect most of the incoming missiles, and allthough handful still got through and tore chunks out of its underlying flesh the eradicator seemed unfazed.

    Those pathfinders still equipped with Sharpstones began fumbling at their cartridge boxes or reaching for their own sidearms. The eradicator felt the initial volley slacken and shot out its folding swords, impaling a screaming rifleman in the abdomen before casually sawing him apart. Then it rocked from side to side on its legs, pausing to chew daintily on the gore-streaked teeth of its blades. Ven saw the opening through the forelegs and tried to track its tiny isosceles head with her iron sights. But it was almost impossible to get a clear shot at the nerve cluster with it moving so rapidly. The string of curses from the shoulder cannon crews on either side told her that they too were having difficulty sighting their cumbersome weapons.

    ¡°Sierck, Cooly!¡± Deschane yelled, emptying his pistol at the swaying monster, "Gimme direct fire, right fugging now!¡±

    The shoulder cannons thumped one after the other, their oversized slugs killing nothing but air. Ven¡¯s musket bucked against her shoulder and also went far wide of the mark.

    Harmer¡¯s didn¡¯t, however. The markswoman struck the swaying isosceles dead centre, blowing some of its maxillae out the back of its head in a geyser of viscous mucus. The eradicator reeled as if punch-drunk, legs wobbling beneath it.

    ¡°No dice,¡± Harmer warned them, already busy tamping down another hexagonal bullet, ¡°I don¡¯t think it¡¯s got a nerve cluster there!¡±

    Sure enough the monster righted itself in the next moment and came for them again with redoubled swiftness. Only the steady stream of fire from the platoon¡¯s eight Suppressors drove it back, one of the quicktimers putting out one of its eyes entirely. The eradicator clammed up behind its forelegs for protection, bobbing and weaving as the platoon pelted it mercilessly with everything they had. Ven had slung her Sharpstone and switched to her cycler at this point, the big pistol threatening to sprain her wrist with each pull of the trigger. But all it seemed to do was add to the clouds of smoke that were quickly obscuring everything in front of the platoon.

    This is going nowhere, Ven thought. Nothing we have can hurt it. All it has to do is wait for our guns to run dry a second time, and then it will have us all for lunch.

    ¡°Pull back, but maintain contact!¡± Deschane ordered, having realized the same thing, ¡°Bounding overwatch!¡±

    ¡°Stay in your quartets!¡± Pretty Boy roared alongside him, ¡°I want a steady rate of fire! Ven, get your piddly arse back in here!¡±

    The volleys slackened again as half the pathfinders either conserved their shots or paused to reload, alternating fire with the other half to maintain a sustained rate of fire while the formation performed a fighting retreat. Sierck¡¯s grouping on the left peeled back first, covered by the other quartets. The eradicator skittered into the void they had left behind, seeking to run them all down, but the stiff resistance from the rest of the platoon meant that it only managed to snag the loader, hamstringing him with a flick of its swords. As the man toppled into a bush and rolled about screaming his head off, Sierck went back for him, tossing his shoulder cannon aside for the pair of riflemen to pick up as he slung his partner onto his broad back.

    His bravery was rewarded moments later by the eradicator reaching in and skewering them both on the spot, nailing them together with its foreleg. It held them up and began to chomp on them like candied apples on a stick, its damaged mouthparts nevertheless shredding Sierck¡¯s sealant suit with ease. The artillerist wailed nonstop as he was eaten alive. The triangular head burrowed into the widening hole in his back and bulged outward like a hand reaching into an obscene meat puppet. The other pathfinders held their fire, unable to bring themselves to shoot while the eradicator used their friends as living shields. That is, until Harmer put her next round through Sierck''s brainpan and ended his suffering.

    "Nothing we can do for em," the first sergeant said, "They''ve gone to the green. Blast on through!"

    Sieck''s body twitched and jerked as the platoon''s bullets ripped through him, interrupting the eradicator''s meal with a serving of hot lead.

    Ven ran back to her quartet, propelled by terror and an equal sense of urgency. She found Tooms and Cooly scrambling to reload the shoulder cannon, Tooms scraping the barrel clear of dangerous debris with a worm screw shaft.

    ¡°Double time, ya motherless hoors!¡± Pretty Boy pleaded with them, hopping on his toes in his anxiety, ¡°D''you want us to be next?¡±

    ¡°Shaddup, I¡¯m doing it, shaddup!¡± Tooms replied. He slipped the worm screw back into the sheathe on Cooly¡¯s backpack and reached for its companion stick whose end was kept in a sloshing canteen.

    ¡°Never mind the sponge, just fill her up!¡±

    The sponge was meant to smother any remaining burning powder that could set the cannon off prematurely in a misfire that would very probably kill both the loader and his artillerist. But the eradicator was searching for another victim, and there was no time to lose. It shielded itself from the incoming fire with its left foreleg as it flicked the dead cannon crew over its shoulder, discarding them like trash. Deschane and Harmer¡¯s quartets covered the retreating pair of riflemen with continuous shooting from their cyclers and Suppressors. For all their noise and fury, the onslaught did little more than stagger the beast.

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    ¡°Load charge,¡± Cool begged. Tooms turned the crank and stuffed the slug and powder charge into the breech.

    Ven heard the ominous click of dry firing hammers as the Suppressor-armed pathfinders began to run out of ammunition. Deschane threw down both his spent pistols on the ground and drew his small sword with a snarl as the eradicator advanced once again. The two riflemen now turned and peppered the beast to buy time for Deschane and Harmer¡¯s quartets to withdraw.

    ¡°Loaded,¡± Tooms finally confirmed, cranking the breech shut again.

    One of Harmer¡¯s troopers stepped forward with a Sharpstone and discharged a sulphur irritant round directly into the eradicator''s face. It flinched in annoyance as its antennae tasted the orange fumes then cut the offending pathfinder down with a clumsy swing, stumbling slightly on its feet.

    By some stroke of miraculous insight Ven saw what had caused it to falter: a single entry wound weeping green pus on the side of its abdomen just above one of its legs. She recognized it by its placement as being the very first shot that Deschane had fired earlier to test Greymoss¡¯ hypothesis. The armoured front of the eradicator prevented the rest of the platoon from targeting it, but her quartet¡¯s position along the V afforded them the perfect angle for it.

    ¡°Brace!¡± Cooly commanded, aiming for the swaying head once again.

    ¡°Braced,¡± Tooms confirmed.

    ¡°Wait,¡± Ven pushed down on the barrel of the cannon, ¡°Forget the nerve cluster, hit the sternites.¡±

    ¡°The what-now?¡± Cooly gave her a bewildered look.

    ¡°The underbelly!¡±

    ¡°Do as she says,¡± Pretty Boy seconded at once, "Just do it!"

    Cooly lowered his aim accordingly and fired, rupturing a portion of the eradicator¡¯s sternites. Its legs buckled beneath it and the eradicator balanced itself on its forelegs, wobbling about like a cripple on crazed stilts. Sensing the tide turning, Deschane waved them on with his sword, crying:

    ¡°Pour it on! Assail em!¡±

    ¡°Assail em!¡± the platoon echoed the old war cry, their voices choked with fury, ¡°Assail em!¡±

    By this time the troopers with Suppressors had refilled their magazines. They let fly with another rapid-fire volley, targeting the gaping hole in the abdomen and scoring more hits. Twitching now in agony, eradicator abruptly turned around and tried to climb up a stand of trees, rearmost legs dragging uselessly behind it.

    ¡°Oy!¡± Pretty Boy sprinted after it with both blades drawn, ¡°Leaving so soon? You¡¯ve a butcher¡¯s bill to pay here, and I mean to collect!¡±

    He darted in and hacked at the joints of its working pair of legs with his heavy backsword, severing it at the femur with a single chop. The eradicator swivelled its head around in a complete 180, eyes glaring with unblinking hatred. It aimed a lightning jab over its shoulder at Pretty Boy, but the angle was awkward and the wily veteran hadn¡¯t remained stationary for even a moment. Ducking underneath the monster¡¯s bulk, Pretty Boy rammed his steel spike of a sword into the other leg right where it joined the side of the body. Other pathfinders who were short on ammo drew their machetes and swarmed in for the kill, jabbing their long knives in between the gaps of its armour to carve into its insides.

    We have him now, Ven exulted. Praise the progenitors, but we have him now!

    Her hopes were dashed moments later when the eradicator¡¯s abdomen split open along a vertical seam, unfurling in a double set of wings that stretched at least ten meters across from tip to tip. These now flapped with such rapidity that Pretty Boy and the other the machete-men were blown off their feet by the enormous downdraft it generated.

    ¡°So what, it can fly, too?¡± Tooms was crestfallen, ¡°You¡¯ve got to be joking. Oh, that simply isn¡¯t fair!¡±

    The loader fired off the last of his magazine up at it in frustration as the eradicator took off despite amidst the hail of bullets they send after it. It hovered very clumsily above the canopy as if it were unaccustomed to the very concept of flight, but even then, it was clearly too swift for them to run down on foot.

    ¡°We can¡¯t let it get away. Not after all we¡¯ve lost,¡± Harmer was weeping with helpless fury, ¡°It claimed four of us, Sollem. Four!"

    ¡°They shall be avenged,¡± Deschane promised her, picking up his pistols and reloading them methodically, ¡°Though not by our hands.¡±

    As if on queue there came over the treetops a line of drakenguard sweeping in from either side, whooping with mad glee as their hornblowers skimmed lightly over the bamboo groves.

    ¡°Here comes the fugging cavalry,¡± Pretty Boy said, this time with whole-hearted delight, ¡°Hip hip, hoorah!¡±

    Puffs of smoke appeared in the form of a huge crescent whose horns encircled the fleeing eradicator. Their carbines and shotguns shredded its wings into tattered sails that did nothing to soften its inevitable crash landing. Even from this distance they felt the tremors of the impact through their toes.

    Greymoss led the triumphant pathfinders through the brush in a line until they came to the edge of a wide clearing. The soil had been scorched by a recent fire, charred tree trunks lying among the ashes and bomb craters where Shylo¡¯s shells had been at work. It was, in fact, the very clearing where Deschane had planned to drive the eradicator and subject it to the wonders of gun powder.

    The beast lay prostrate in the middle of the clearing surrounded by the curious drakenguard, its entire body pulped and shattered by the crash. It appeared to have inadvertently impaled itself on one of its own folding swords¡ªboth curved blades had plunged straight through its thorax and out the other end.

    ¡°That went easier than expected,¡± Captain Caitliff exulted, ¡°We didn¡¯t even need the artillery¡¯.¡±

    ¡°Not so easy, I¡¯m afraid,¡± Deschane said, sober and withdrawn, ¡°My platoon took heavy losses, skipper.¡±

    ¡°We couldn¡¯t have done it without them,¡± Caitliff said, a hollow consolation, ¡°Every man and woman in your unit was nothing short of heroic today. You took this thing head-on despite knowing what it was capable of. I was wrong about you, Sollem. You have our gratitude.¡±

    "Aye, whatever that''s worth. Now, let¡¯s have a look at this ere terror, shall we?¡± Pretty Boy said with customary insolence. He sauntered over to dead eradicator to have a good look at the specimen they had bagged. Ven thought it was in very poor shape for autopsy, truth be told.

    But as it so happened, they were to have ample opportunity to examine the creatures whole and up close. For as they stood round the corpse and prodded it with their bayonets, three of the burnt logs at the periphery of the clearing quivered and slowly pulled themselves upright¡­

 Chapter 60: Shogun Creek

    They were a fraction of the size of the first eradicator, each roughly as tall as a mounted trooper when they ran hunched over, their false coatings of dust and ashes billowing in their wake. But what they lacked in mass they more than made up for with ferocious speed and an extra pair of folding swords. They struck the scattered cavalrymen from three sides at once, each eradicator a whirling cyclone that dismembered men and steeds with equal alacrity.

    Order and cohesion all but dissolved on the spot. Frightened hornblowers shied and threw their riders, the cavalrymen taking off in every direction in a mad scramble for self-preservation. Ven tried to break free of the mosh pit and ate a kick from a hornblower as it took off, dragging its hapless master across the ground still tangled in his stirrups. With her ears ringing and her head in the clouds Ven heard a muffled thump nearby as a drakenguard discharged his shotgun at an eradicator, the wide cone of pellets deflecting harmlessly from its tibia to maim his comrades on either side of the monster. They toppled from their saddles only to be dispatched where they lay, the eradicator delivering a dual coup de grace with one pair of folding swords while impaling the shotgunner in the gap beneath his cuirass, lifting him screaming on the point of its blades directly above her. The swords scissored together and Ven was bathed in the man¡¯s warm entrails. She couldn¡¯t see, didn¡¯t know which way to crawl to safety or where her comrades had run off to¡ªshe was going to die here amidst this roiling confusion, drown in the sea of carnage.

    A rough hand seized her by the collar and lifted her clear. Ven pawed at her congealed visor and found herself draped across Caitliff¡¯s saddle horn, the captain stabbing her spurs into her mount¡¯s bleeding flanks to goad it on. Caitliff was leading a posse of drakenguard that she had managed to bring back under control.

    ¡°Parting shot!¡± Caitliff slashed her hat through the air, describing wide semicircles, ¡°Parting shot! Give them the runaround!¡±

    Hearing this command, the surviving drakenguard began to extricate themselves from the melee that had ensued, showing superb discipline as they drew away, turning their bodies and using both hands to fire at the oncoming eradicators while guiding their mounts with only the skillful use of their stirrups. Most of the hornblowers were fast enough to keep out of the reach of those deadly creatures. Left behind were the slow and the dead, a knot of them forming around the corpse of the slain eradicator. Ven saw that her platoon had fixed bayonets and assembled a hasty square together with some dismounted drakenguard, Deschane dragging a wounded rider to safety within the formation. For the moment the ashen eradicators were wholly fixated with catching Caitliff¡¯s elusive riders, but Ven knew that the square would be overrun within moments if the enemy took notice of them.

    ¡°Keep up, Iraiah! You¡¯re falling behind,¡± Caitliff called back to one of her officers. It was the young idiot with the flower in his breast pocket¡ªhis hornblower had lost a wing during the skirmish and was hovering sideways like a drunken bumblebee. An ashen eradicator pounced upon the wounded mount, its folding swords closing around the hornblower¡¯s hindlegs and simply pulling them off. Iraiah pitched forward face first into the mud with an ominous crunch.

    ¡°Typical,¡± Caitliff hissed, wheeling back around, ¡°Ruddy typical. Hold onto this a moment, corporal,¡±

    Caitliff thrust the reigns into Ven¡¯s hand and took her tri-barreled shotgun in both of hers Then she charged the ashen eradicator head-on. The eradicator saw her coming and hunched over behind the cover of its armoured forelegs. Her first shot tore off a bit of the creature¡¯s antennae. Undeterred, it sprinted forward to meet her halfway, two of its dripping swords held eagerly aloft.

    ¡°Aim low, skipper,¡± Ven said groggily, ¡°It¡¯s vulnerable in the sternites or the joints of its legs.¡±

    Caitliff nodded and raked its underbelly with her next barrel. The eradicator sagged as if gut shot, lowering its shielding limbs to protect its abdomen just in time to catch her last shot straight in the kisser. Disoriented and with most of its face hanging off the side of its head, the creature trammelled forward in a wild berserk¡¯s flurry, lashing out at everything within reach.

    ¡°Up, corporal! Take us up!¡± Caitliff screeched. Ven did as she was told and yanked on the reigns for all she was worth. The hornblower leapt as if on spring-toed boots, the tips of its spurred feet coming within a hairsbreadth of the eradicator¡¯s threshing swords.

    The beast came crashing back down beside the unconscious Iraiah, Ven¡¯s head bounced hard against stirrups. She and Caitliff slipped off the hornblower and lashed Iraiah onto its back before remounting and once again took flight.

    Their hornblower was noticeably sluggish by now, the spiracles along the sides of its body hissing like steam lines as it struggled to carry their combined weight. All the mounts were beginning to tire in earnest as they led the eradicators on a breakneck chase across the clearing, the gap between them narrowing with every passing moment.

    Several more drakenguard were run down and eviscerated by their relentless pursuers. Caitliff passed Iraiah off to another rider to lessen the weight. Then she made a beeline for the infantry square and addressed Deschane:

    ¡°My riders can¡¯t keep this pace up forever. Either we stand and fight or we make a break for the river and hope the cannons can cover our retreat.¡±

    ¡°They¡¯ll cut us down in droves if we run,¡± Deschane said, busy tying off a tourniquet around a drakenguard¡¯s gushing stump, ¡°No, I say we stick to the plan. Lead them into our square and withdraw while you still can. We¡¯ll stay and adjust the artillery fire with coloured smoke.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re insane!¡± Caitliff protested, ¡°If these things don¡¯t get you, Shylo¡¯s guns surely will!¡±

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    ¡°One can hardly be worse than the other.¡±

    ¡°Comes with the job, don¡¯t it?¡± Pretty Boy jibed, ¡°Get out of here and take our corporal with you. G¡¯wan now¡ªgit!¡±

    Before Ven could object Pretty Boy smacked the rump of Caitliff¡¯s mount with the flat of his backsword. It veered away, the captain spouting a string of unladylike adjectives as it carried her and Ven along.

    Nevertheless, Caitliff did rally her dispersed drakenguard. Together they coaxed the ashen eradicators directly into the path of the infantry square, Deschane greeting them with a concentrated salvo of small arms fire. As Ven¡¯s faced bounced against the stirrups she saw Cooly¡¯s shoulder cannon nail one of the eradicators with a superb shot that cored out its abdomen from stern to stem, immobilizing its lower body. The other two eradicators did a curious thing then, breaking off their attack to close ranks around their stricken brethren and shield it with their own limbs.

    ¡°Beans, now!¡± came Deschane¡¯s distant cry.

    Beans stepped forward with porcelain balls in hand, tearing off the rubber caps to expose the fuses. The demolition man sparked the match head ends of the fuses then lobbed the irritant grenades at the eradicators, orange puffs of smoke appearing after the loud retort of their blasting caps. Moments later they heard the brass notes of the cannons singing from the other side of the Foss. The shells threw up fountains of earthen clods where they landed, each one briefly dispersing the sulphurous clouds with hissing shrapnel, concealing the

    Their job done, the drakenguard started back across the river. Behind them the sound of musketry continued, intermixed with the shriek of flying shells and the cries of stricken men.

    Her people was dying back there, Ven realized. She couldn¡¯t let that happen, not while she had an ounce of strength left in her.

    ¡°Take me back,¡± Ven groaned, ¡°Captain, you¡¯ve got to take me back.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t be absurd, girl. You can hardly stand. As for your friends, they¡¯re doing their part,¡± Caitliff gave her flagging hornblower another boot in the guts, ¡°They made their choice.¡±

    ¡°Aye, they did,¡± Ven gripped Caitliff by the rim of her steel gorget, ¡°Now let me make mine.¡±

    ¡°Of all the blasted cheek,¡± the captain swore suddenly, prying Ven¡¯s fingers away with preoccupied irritation, ¡°Tell me when to run, will he? I should bloody well think not!¡±

    Caitliff turned to her rider and held up a mailed fist.

    ¡°Come on you wastrels, you war-pigs, you vagabonds and vermin!¡± she roared, ¡°Let¡¯s go save those sorry sonsofbitches!¡±

    For a second time the captain swung her steed around and headed straight back into the fray, her drakenguard galloping after her. Ven dragged herself to a side-saddle position and held on for dear life as the panting hornblower plunged into the fog of war. They leapt over a freshly steaming shell crater and saw a spread of gibbets and shattered chitin where an eradicator had once stood. Meters from it away was a thrashing figure that resolved itself into a knot of five soldiers locked in a mortal struggle with a wounded eradicator that clearly wanted nothing more than to escape. Those troopers still alive were trying to plunge their bayonets into the gaps of its exoskeleton, while the dead hung impaled upon the monster¡¯s switchblade forelimbs, dragging it down with the weight of their clinging bodies. Beans and Pretty Boy straddled the eradicator¡¯s back to prevent it from unfurling its wings, the serjeant-major hollered clubbing at it ineffectually with the pommel of his backsword, the blade of which had snapped off at the hilt.

    ¡°Ven?¡± Pretty Boy was furious, ¡°What are you doing here? Caitliff, I thought I told you to¡ª¡±

    ¡°You thought wrong,¡± Caitliff barked.

    The captain let out a low, trilling whistle that Ven could barely hear through the cloth of her facepiece. But its effect on her steed was instantaneous. With a tired shuffle of its wings, the hornblower executed a sharp turn and lashed out with its spiked legs. The blow caught the eradicator on the flank and threw it onto its side, exposing bleeding chinks in its armour thorax spalled by bombshell fragments. The troopers grappling with it went rolling into the much along with it, with the sole exception of Pretty Boy who landed nimbly on the balls of his toes. The swordsman darted in and rammed his broken blade through a weak point and levering the wound wide open before a flailing leg

    It was then that Beans stepped forward with a sulphur grenade in his fist.

    ¡°You ain¡¯t getting away this time. Up yours, you bug-eyed bastard!¡± Beans yanked off the rubber cap and sparking the matchhead fuse against the eradicator¡¯s own scabrous hide. The demolitions man punched the bomb into the gaping mess. The eradicator shuddered and gave a final spasmodic slash of its folding swords. Beans flinched, yet miraculously stayed upright as Ven and the captain went spilling into the bloody muck, the captain¡¯s mount gutted in an instant. With both her legs trapped beneath the hornblower and sinking fast, Ven would have made easy prey for the eradicator if it hadn¡¯t been so hellbent on survival.

    It shrugged off the remaining troopers by dragging itself upright and wobbled away as fast as its stilt legs could take it. What remained of Deschane¡¯s infantry square slowly tottered out of the devastation in ones and twos, each trooper wearing that look of glazed numbness that followed the very worst battles on the surface.

    Pretty Boy helped Caitliff and Ven back onto their feet. Together they watched as in the distance some drakenguard kept up a faltering pursuit of the foe. Wounded as it was the ashen eradicator was fast enough to eventually outpace the exhausted cavalry, the hole in its side trailing a plume of bright sickly smoke like the smokestack of a chugging engine as it neared the edge of the treeline.

    ¡°Think they¡¯ll get him?¡± Ven asked, too dazed to care much either way.

    ¡°At this range?¡± Beans scoffed, ¡°With rifled twelve-pounders? They can¡¯t miss.¡±

    A heartbeat later there came the sound of Shylo¡¯s cannons firing in concert from across the Foss. Three cotton puffs appeared on the edge of the clearing and rubbed the creature from the face of the earth.

    ¡°What did I tell you?¡± Beans laughed softly, sinking slowly to his knees, ¡°Old Beansie don¡¯t know much, but I do know my¡­I do know my¡­¡±

    Beans shook his head as if he was having trouble finding the words.

    ¡°Steady on there, man!¡± cried Pretty Boy as the demolition man tottered, clutching at the side of his neck, where an arterial river had begun cascading down the front of his chest. Ven hastened to his side, cutting off the sleeves of Beans¡¯ sealant suit with her bayonet and wadding it up to stem the bleeding.

    All too late. The eradicator¡¯s sword had only grazed him, really. But that was enough.

    ¡°Stay with us Beans,¡± Pretty Boy pleaded, pressing the soaked and already useless bandage against the fatal cut. Doyd tore off the demo man¡¯s gasmask and slapped Beans¡¯ pale cheeks, ¡°Don¡¯t fall asleep, whatever you do. Beans? Beans!¡±

    Beans peered over Doyd¡¯s shoulder at Ven, a look of rising confusion on his face.

    ¡°Say, I know you,¡± Bean¡¯s eyes blurred, creasing over in a faint smile, ¡°We¡¯re friends, ain¡¯t we?¡±

    ¡°Aye,¡± Ven said with a slight catch in her breath, ¡°Course I am. We¡¯re all your friends here, Beans.¡±

    ¡°Ah. That¡¯s good, then,¡± Beans nodded as if that made everything alright, ¡°That¡¯s good.¡±

    Then he stiffened a bit in Doyd¡¯s arms, and that was that.

 Chapter 61: The Sword Saint

    This is too much, thought Menash in a rare moment of resentfulness. Oh, but this is really asking too much of me.

    He stared into the Leaper¡¯s smug face and suppressed the urge to cave it in with his clawed fist. The orange-spotted female was gliding on her woven aerofoils alongside him with their wingtips close enough to touch, though Menash struggled to keep level with his slow-flying counterpart, constantly buffeted as they were by powerful headwinds. In fact, Menash was certain that she was stalling on purpose just to irritate him.

    Thousands of meters below them the feeder towers of the Amit megastructures speared upwards like the venomed barbs of sea urchins. There were three Amit colonies in this quadrant alone, the occupants of which numbered in the tens of millions. By this time tomorrow the Vitalus expected every single one of them to be relocated fifteen kilometres northeast, herded and driven into the mounds of the neighbouring quadrant.

    It was a colossal undertaking to say the least. So extensive that the Vitalus had summoned all the kindreds native to this continent and coerced them all into working together on pain of total erasure from the gene pool for any who dared violate the truce.

    What this amounted to was a temporary suspension of the Great Game, an awkward interlude of peaceful cooperation the like of which had not been seen since the spinning of the Spool. This female was Menash¡¯s assigned liaison, the representative of the Weeping Vipers, one of the largest and most powerful tribes of that misbegotten race.

    She was called Fiuria. Menash found it a strangely pleasant name for such an odious personage. Liaison. Hah! Spy, more like it. As if the Leapers weren¡¯t using this opportunity to learn everything they could about Gallivant command and control procedures.

    Menash¡¯s uncles had been on the cislunar program, doomed to a slow and torturous death when the Leaper betrayal had marooned them on the surface of Cloister.

    Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice¡­

    He looked deep into Fiuria¡¯s kaleidoscopic eyes as if by the heat of his gaze alone he could burn away her deceitful mask of compliance.

    Fiuria was the first to look away, showing no outward discomfort and refusing to even acknowledge the tension between them.

    ¡°Alpha Menash, our warbands signal their readiness,¡± she said in clipped, neutral tones over the shared frequency, ¡°At your command, we may commence conservation efforts.¡±

    ¡°Took you people long enough,¡± Menash said with disdain, ¡°My airwing has been stuck in their holding patterns for hours now. You know, I wasn¡¯t expecting much from Kryptus¡¯ rabble, but somehow you¡¯ve managed to disappoint me all the same. Where is that genetic throwback of yours, anyhow? Hiding behind the Night Weaver¡¯s fat arse again?¡±

    ¡°A thousand pardons, Alpha Menash,¡± Fiuria tactfully replied, ¡°Kryptus has been unavoidably detained at the Loom repairing the damage caused by the Engine¡¯s rampage. Rest assured that I will do my utmost to live up to your lofty opinion of us Leapers in his stead.¡±

    Within the privacy of his helm Menash found himself grinning at the barb she had coyly aimed at him just now. She knew the score just as well as he did. A frank and mutual mistrust was the best way forward for everyone concerned.

    ¡°See that you do,¡± Menash said, ¡°Rodhagan, are your cohorts in position?¡±

    ¡°Give us a mountain, and we shall move it,¡± came the gruff baritone of the Cataphract leader, his transmission crackling at the edge from interference.

    Menash activated his biochemical afterburners as he executed a pitchback turn that left Fiuria to choke on the exhaust in his wake. He was pleased to hear her coughing over the magnetosynaptic link and slowed to give her enough time to catch up. As they reached the southernmost edge of the continent¡¯s exclusion zone, the Vitalus¡¯ automated warning message bleeped in his right ear:

    ¡°Kindred. You are leaving the designated exclusion zone assigned to your subspecies. Turn back now or be considered an invasive element, subject to immediate termination. You have ten seconds to comply.¡±

    A visualization of the exclusion zone appeared in Menash¡¯s helm feed as a flickering red walls of an enclosure whose surface he had come within centimetres of skimming. They were operating right up against the legal boundaries. Poke a toenail outside of the zone and a Hollowore would be birthed from inside the nearest Dawning Chamber, a creature specifically engineered to hunt down and exterminate members of a particular subspecies. Flying at supersonic velocities, it would track down the fugitive with the help of an entire biome¡¯s worth of sensory inputs, with every living being from a trumpeting ultrapod to the most inoffensive shrub becoming a potential informant for the Vitalus.

    If the Vitalus had dedicated a fraction of its omniscience towards finding Zildiz then she would have been found within days if not hours of her disappearance. But now Menash was forced to place all his hopes in Racek, trusting that somehow the wheedling weakling could infiltrate Leaper territory.

    He was putting his entire lineage in jeopardy over some woman who refused to even let him see his own children. The whole thing was almost as insane as the task which had been set out for him today.

    It was not his place to question the reasoning of a god. All the same, why the urgent need to evacuate these Amits? Menash set his sights on the cyclopean mass of grey metal which still stood amid the gutted ruins of the mound which it had levelled over a week ago. It had been the single largest Amit colony in this biome, and the Engine had erased it in a matter of minutes. The cursed thing hadn¡¯t budged since then; it was as if an erupting volcano had swallowed back up its spew of fire and brimstone, having decided that things had gotten rather out of hand.

    The Vitalus had taken full advantage of the Engine¡¯s inexplicable inertness¡ªits domed head and body were covered in a dense shroud of crisscrossing mooring lines. Dilating the lenses of his helm, Menash magnified the image until he could clearly make out the Leapers crawling over the Engine¡¯s torso, weaving as they went. The Vitalus had set nearly all of the tribes to work creating a set of cables made from carbon nanotubes much like the ones they had once woven for the Spool. The fact that an entire subspecies had been dedicated to restraining the Engine betrayed the magnitude of the threat which it presented even now in its dormant state. No less than seven¡ªseven! ¡ªHollowores were being kept on perpetual standby in case the Engine woke up again. Dozens were being restructured and refitted in the bowels of the Dawning Chamber near Cthonis. Thus far, the Vitalus hadn¡¯t even tried to damage the Engine with Its own vessels, which in itself could be construed as an admission of Its helplessness.

    Sacrilege, Menash chided himself. But even so, Menash could not help but wonder: just what exactly was the plan here?

    ¡°The plan?¡± Fiuria was perplexed, ¡°Haven¡¯t we discussed this at length? You go high and we go low. Simple enough, wasn¡¯t it?¡±

    Menash realized with a jolt of embarrassment that he had spoken his question aloud. Mercifully the magnetsynaptic link hadn¡¯t been on, so nobody but Fiuria had heard him.

    ¡°Yes, of course,¡± he said, reactivating the link while assertively clearing his throat, ¡°On my mark then. Three, two, one. Mark.¡±

    There came a rumbling from below as of successive avalanches cascading one after another. A line of hulking crimson centurions rolled out from under the shadow of the trees, their pronged heads uprooting saplings and ploughing furrows into the high grass of the veldt.

    When they tripped the line of spores that ringed the mounds the Amit reaction was instantaneous: mobs of warrior-brood burst up from carefully concealed assault trenches and rushed to meet the intruders, but faltered as soon as they saw what they were up against.

    Each Cataphract was the size of a small hillock, a trundling mass of articulated plate armour that moved with the ponderous inertia of a glacier. It was not so much that the Amits were powerless to stop them¡ªto the Cataphracts it was as if they were not even there. The giants simply walked right over them, incidentally crushing countless Amits to death even as their stone axes chipped and smashed uselessly against the Cataphracts¡¯ scabrous hides. It was only when the Amits tried to spit acid into their eyes that Rodhagan¡¯s centurions became slightly annoyed. They tucked their nozzled ends of their abdomens under their bellies, the hypergolic compounds stored in their glandular tanks mixing in the vestibule organ, producing long plumes of azure flame.

    Menash heard Radhogan¡¯s centurions chuckling over the common frequency as the remaining Amits were roasted to a crisp. They were glad for the excuse to vent their frustrations after their own unsuccessful attempt to cut a hole into the Divine Engine¡¯s skin. Just as the Cataphracts were impervious to the chert blades of the Amits, the exomorphs were powerless against the Engine¡¯s mysterious alloys.

    Cataphracts advanced at an unhurried pace, burning and bulldozing a path to the sides of the mounds where they began collapsing the ground-level entrances with sweeps of their powerful legs. Other centurions propped themselves up on their two pairs of rear limbs, angling their bodies skyward as their rectums gurgled and trembled with pent-up gases. With a noise like a series of thunderclaps they took off, the propellant hurling them through the air in clumsy parabolic arcs, aided by the rudimentary wings that extended from their backs.

    These living rockets smote the sides of the mound feeder towers head-first. Those that didn¡¯t immediately collapse beneath the metric tons of meat and muscle were dismantled by the Cataphracts in short order. Within a matter of minutes all the chimneys and their tributaries had collapsed in on themselves, with sole exception of the central ventilation shaft. Likewise, the Cataphracts on the ground demolished all the surface entrances except for the ones which pointed north.

    ¡°Blade-Wings, commence fumigation,¡± Menash said.

    ¡°Strafing,¡± came the terse reply of Vezda, the airwing commander, ¡°All squadrons, attack formation kappa. Anyone who misses their target will have to answer directly to me."

    The fiery female was exulting in her new role as alpha, Menash thought with regret. Her squadrons plummeted from the heavens in a steep attack vector, each one of the Gallivants grafted to a wobbling cyst-sack strapped to their bellies, pink bags of flesh that bulged with their pressurized contents. The Gallivants cut the delivery systems loose with their blade arms right as they reached the lip of the central shaft, their payloads plunging into the limitless darkness within.

    ¡°Pheromone bombs delivered,¡± said Vezda with eager relish, ¡°Stand by for the exodus.¡±

    It didn¡¯t take long for the complex cocktail of pheromones to take effect. Cataphracts climbed up to the rim of the shaft and flapped their clumsy wings to help waft it deeper into the mound. Menash couldn¡¯t see it from up here, but he could well imagine the heavy fumes coiling their way into the guts of the colony, a barrage of olfactory messages that spoke of enemies breaching the mound and plague and the sudden extinction of the fungal farms.

    Chemical lies, all of them, fabricated by the Vitalus in bubbling enzyme vats. But Amit were gullible like that. They began deserting the mound¡ªfirst in a trickle, then a stream, then a pulsing flood of pale bodies that cringed at the light of the suns. Leaper warbands glided out of the hills to meet them with the Gallivant airwing only seconds behind them. Together the two rival kindreds nipped and bit at the horde¡¯s flanks, looping back around to harass the stragglers, goading the primitive troglodytes north towards the intended resettlement area.

    He flew closer until he could tell apart the individual castes of Amit. Here were the worker-broods with their pronounced stoop and spaded digging claws, the muscled warriors glaring hatefully up at him through their more complex sets of eyes meant for tracking prey on the surface world. The latter were thronging around the reproductive castes and shielding them with their own bodies.

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    Corpulent harem-brood with their flopping sets of honeydew glands, waddled along as fast as their gouty, malformed legs could take them, flanked by their brutish bulls who shouldered their way through the crowd with casual strength. This ghastly royal court was trailed by skinny nursemaids laden with woven reed baskets stuffed to the brim with as many Amit grubs as they could carry, most of them still asleep in foetal position.

    Menash ignored them all and focused solely on the largest bull he could find. His frustration and anxiety had been building up all week, and here was the perfect chance to cut loose.

    ¡°Alpha Menash, may I remind you that we have command and control here,¡± Fiuria objected even as she strained to keep up with him, ¡°We should let the wranglers do the work.¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s the matter, Fiuria? Afraid to get your claws dirty with the zetas? Come on, woman¡ªI¡¯ll go high and you¡¯ll go low. Just like we planned.¡±

    Menash zipped ahead before she could raise any more objections. The heat of battle and death was upon him, a primordial instinct to conquer that would not be denied. The bull smelled him coming. It turned, brandished a carven tree trunk, gauging the distance with its beady eyes. It took the oversized club in both hands and raising it behind its head in anticipation of his arrival.

    Laughable. As if its reflexes could come anywhere near to matching his own. Menash could not supress a smirk as he dove within arm¡¯s reach, abruptly folding his wings to perform a lazy barrel roll. He felt the warclub swish and miss as it came within mere centimetres of grazing him. With a casual flick of his pincer hand he snipped off the end of one of its antennae. As the bull clutched at its mutilated face Menash fluttered closer with both hands kept tauntingly behind his back. Eyes glittering with hatred, the bull lunged for him again, but before Menash enjoy the rest of his sport Fiuria circled behind and tangled the giant¡¯s legs with a bola of silk. The bull tripped and fell over, the Leaper landing nimbly on its back to deliver a bite to the base of its neck that sent it into immediate convulsions. It tried desperately to buck her off, but Fiuria was almost as large as her prey, and expertly immobilized its limbs with rope as the paralyzing venom took hold.

    The other Amits nearby swarmed in with axes and bamboo spears. Annoyed by Fiuria¡¯s interference, Menash tore a spiteful path of destruction through them, his pincer hand pulping heads and amputating limbs as he danced circles around the primitives, wings dripping with their yellow blood.

    When about a score of them lay slaughtered at his feet the rest of the warrior-brood backed away in fear, the selflessness of their eusocial nature overcome by a latent need for self-preservation. Despite their being a neutered caste of slaves, Menash supposed that some vestige of the selfish, individualistic instinct to breed and survive still remained rooted in the Amit subconscious.

    You and I are not so far removed from the seed ships of old, Menash mulled, gazing thoughtfully into the Amit¡¯s dull, uncomprehending eyes. It was amazing what directed evolution and rapid terraformation could accomplish in a few thousand years; though Amits and Kindreds shared a common ancestor, the two resultant species could not have been more different.

    ¡°A little assistance right about now would be appreciated, alpha,¡± Fiuria said breathlessly as she held the bull down with her clawed feet.

    Menash grunted, unsheathing his blade arm and punching it into the bull¡¯s shoulder. The point of his weapon had been fitted with a modified ovipositor that now injected a slew of Amit hormones. These would compel the bull to avoid inbreeding with members of its own colony and instead seek out females from other mounds, avoiding the spread of deleterious genes.

    The Amits were the original settlers of the planet, that much he understood from the legends passed down by the scriveners on their reams of parchment. For generations the Vitalus had remoulded the Amits into a vital component of Arachnea¡¯s carbon cycle¡ªby boring into the calcareous formations of the mounds with their acidic spit, the Amits unknowingly released millions of metric tons of carbon dioxide into the system every year. Eventually these emissions would bring the atmospheric composition on the surface in line with that of old Terra, allowing the Kindreds to breathe without the assistance of exomorphs. Or at least that was the dream they all shared, anyway.

    Resentment curdled in Menash¡¯s heart. Sometimes he wondered if preserving the Amit species was the Vitalus¡¯ ultimate goal here on Arachnea. With that thought came the awful suspicion that the True Kindreds were merely tools created to further that objective.

    Withdrawing his blade arm, Menash used its edge to carve some writing into the bull¡¯s broad back, tagging it with a number and detailing where and when it had been captured and marked. Fiuria let the bull go and together they flew back up to survey the rest of the resettlement effort. All across the land other teams of kindreds were dragging down Amit bulls and doing the same thing, Leapers and Gallivants working seamlessly to enact the will of their god.

    By this time tomorrow tens of millions of Amits would be resettled. There would be a brief and violent power struggle between the reproductive castes of the refugees and the resident colonies, but once that was over with the huge influx of newcomers would be absorbed into the existing communities either as slaves or conquerors.

    It was remarkable what the kindreds could achieve when they could set aside their differences and take up a common cause.

    Shame we can¡¯t get along like this all the time, Menash thought. There¡¯s nothing we can''t do if we set our minds to it¡ªthe Spool was proof of that. Ah, well.

    ¡°One down,¡± Fiuria commented on his work.

    ¡°Only a thousand more to go,¡± Menash snarkily replied, ¡°Simply fucking splendid.¡±

    Fiuria coughed and turned her face away, yet Menash somehow got the sense that she was hiding a smile. No doubt the Leapers also felt that this was a waste of their time. To his amazement Menash found his lips own twitching as he held back a commiserating chuckle.

    Their momentary indiscretion passed and the pair of them flew together in awkward silence, unsure of how to proceed.

    ¡°Incoming transmission, alpha,¡± Fiuria announced suddenly, ¡°It¡¯s urgent.¡±

    ¡°Who¡¯s it from?¡±

    ¡°A Sword Saint on the periphery. He¡¯s been attacked. The damage to his exomorph is catastrophic.¡±

    "Patch me through.¡±

    At the beginning of the crisis the Vitalus had set the Sword Saints prowling on the edge of the exclusion zone. Since then there had been nothing from them but radio silence. Which was unsurprising, given that Saints were a proud and secretive race whose individuals who wandered the world alone, each a formidable opponent that every other kindred treated with a healthy dose of respect. It was well known that the Saints enjoyed the confidence of the Vitalus.

    Had someone broken the truce by attacking one of these solitary predators?

    Likely it was some fool of a Leaper that had done it. Menash hated to think of the repercussions this would bring if another war broke out under his watch. He listened in on the two-way conversation that Fiuria was tapping into.

    ¡°¡­say again, Saint Jeoshin. Are you still in danger?¡± Vezda was saying.

    ¡°We are all in danger,¡± came the agonized gasps of the Sword Saint, ¡°They are coming.¡±

    ¡°What are you talking about? Who did this to you?¡± Vezda demanded.

    ¡°Never mind that right now. Jeoshin, what is your location?¡± Menash quickly overriding her, his mind already focused on damage control. He had to nip this in the bud before the faction began trading accusations and suspicions. Menash registered the Saint¡¯s location blip as an oily stain in his helm feed in the veldt just beyond the boundary.

    ¡°You,¡± he pointed a blood-soaked claw at Fiuria, ¡°You¡¯re coming with me.¡±

    Looking past her, Menash saw that the kindreds around them had stopped working and were hovering in the air above the Amit exodus, staring at each one another with barely disguised apprehension.

    ¡°What are you all staring at? Nobody told you to stop!¡± he bellowed at them over the shared frequency, ¡°I want all these beasts resettled before the night cycle! Get back to work!¡±

    ¡°What do you need me for? Where are we going?¡± Fiuria asked, noticeably perplexed.

    ¡°Turn around,¡± Menash told her.

    ¡°Why?¡± Fiuria¡¯s fangs clicked together suspiciously.

    ¡°Just do it.¡±

    ¡°You do know that I have eyes on the back of my head, don¡¯t you?¡±

    ¡°Will you relax? I¡¯m not about to harm you. I need to carry you, that¡¯s all. All due respect, but you Leapers fly too slowly for my liking. We need to get over there as soon as practicable. This matter concerns us all.¡±

    ¡°For all I know you people were behind this whole thing,¡± she said bluntly, ¡°This could be a ploy to lure me out all by my lonesome. You''re probably hoping to disrupt our chain of command before your main assault.¡±

    ¡°Oh, please,¡± Menash snorted derisively, ¡°Neither of us are that important. Otherwise we wouldn¡¯t be out here doing all the dirty work for our betters. Look, I just want to get to the bottom of this before anyone else does. I¡¯m going now. You can come along, but I won¡¯t wait around for you to catch up.¡±

    With great reluctance the Leaper did as she was bid. Gently he took her under the arms and activated his biochemical afterburners on his back, the Leaper¡¯s glider flaring out from under him as they headed south at maximum speed.

    Menash felt an odd reassurance at her presence. Perhaps there was still a chance they could salvage the situation together. Perhaps this peace, however imperfect, could last just a while longer.

    In that, he was very much mistaken.

    #

    They found what was left of the Sword Saint in the veldt, soaking the tall grass in a welter of his own gore. Through the rents in his armour they final see the shredded sinews of the symbiont bunching and flexing in useless obedience to the final nerve impulses of its host¡¯s biointerface, the mind refusing the fate to which the failing body had consigned it.

    Menash and Fiuria were the first on the scene. The pair of them landing clumsily beside the stricken Saint and stared, both struck speechless by the extent of his wounds.

    The damage was like nothing Menash had ever seen before. Hundreds of tiny holes perforated the creature¡¯s thorax and shield-tibia. Misshapen flakes of charred, twisting metal riddled the creature¡¯s back, the largest of which stuck out of the Saint¡¯s prothorax, a crooked scythe that had sheared right through the protective layers and into the amniotic cockpit which held the living host, curled up in a foetal position. By some grim stroke of irony the same span of metal which had dealt the killing blow was now the only thing keeping Jeoshin¡¯s intestines from spilling out like a tangle of wet ropes.

    Menash found himself looking into the bare face of Jeoshin¡¯s innards. Through the matted locks of ratty grey hair a middle-aged man stared back at the Gallivant, his mild almond eyes already beginning to cloud over in death.

    ¡°Jeoshin¡­who did thish to you?¡± Fiuria finally asked, her voice muffled by her helm and the lack of a lower jaw, ¡°Which kindred did they belong to?¡±

    She had turned off her magentosynaptic organ and was speaking via audible range only. Fiuria reached into the sordid mess with her claws and gently tore out Jeoshin¡¯s audio input graft so his reply could not be overheard on the air.

    Clever girl, Menash thought. It seemed she wanted to mitigate this disaster as much as he did. That or she was feigning ignorance, protecting her fellow Leapers who had done the deed.

    Jeoshin uncurled a bit to speak, moaning as the metal span lodged in his guts shifted.

    ¡°All of them,¡± he managed to cough through a lungful of his own blood, ¡°All, and none. Their helix contains the primal template, yet they do not don the armour of our faith. They walk this earth naked and unashamed. Strange creatures. They use tools of bright iron in defiance of our god¡¯s edicts. For this we thought them weak, and gorged upon them. How wrong we were. They spoke in tongues of fire and lightning, conjured storms of steel and howling death. With a word they unmade us¡ªwe could not hold them back.¡±

    Menash bit back a surge of frustration. Saints loved nothing more than to speak in riddles and contradictions. This fool was about to die and leave them all grasping for answers.

    And Menash had many, many questions. Judging from the kilometres-long trail of hemolymphic slime and flattened grass that pointed southward, the Saint had dragged himself here from out beyond the main river system, the entirety of which lay outside the zone of exclusion.

    ¡°What were you doing operating out of bounds?¡± Menash pressed him, ¡°Do you realize that you¡¯ve violated the will of the Vitalus?¡±

    Jeoshin shook his head feebly, said: ¡°It was the Vitalus which bade us venture into the biomes beyond. We were told to hold them in, prevent them from spilling out of the reservations that were assigned to them and the Amits. Theirs is the blessed oscillation between predator and prey, a swinging balance that has held since time immemorial. Only now that balance lies broken¡ªthe Engine¡¯s rampage has swung the pendulum too far the other way. Now the roles are reversed. The monsters are loose. They are coming.¡±

    Jeoshin¡¯s eyelids fluttered and he slumped over, insensible. Menash grabbed his face with his vicelike claw and squeezed till the dying man snapped awake for one last time.

    ¡°For the love of all creation, help me to understand,¡± he asked, ¡°Who are they?¡±

    ¡°They are the sins of our fathers made flesh, the Betrayers born again,¡± Jeoshin groaned, ¡°A scourge from god that shall test the faithful.¡±

    ¡°Alpha, you may want to look at this,¡± Fiuria interrupted, tugging at Menash¡¯s arm.

    ¡°Not right now,¡± he snarled.

    ¡°Alpha,¡± Fiuria insisted, a strange note in her voice. Menash turned to shut her up, but then caught a glimpse of the sky, and for a moment believed that he¡¯d taken leave of his sanity.

    Inside their helm feed the walls of the exclusion zone were expanding, the boundary swelling up like a bladder filling up with air as it began stretching south till it met the horizon and went further than their eyes could see.

    A high-pitched buzzing in ears told them of an incoming all-frequency transmission.

    ¡°Children of Arachnea,¡± came the voice of their god, speaking directly to every kindred in broadcasting range, ¡°As a reward for your obedience in these times of uncertainty, it is Our will that the area of your domains shall be expanded to include the entire subcontinent of Novyrok. Henceforth the south is open to the kindreds. After the resettlement effort is concluded We invite you to divide up the new lands among yourselves in whatever manner you see fit. Go forth and multiply, and may the strong prosper how they may.¡±

    And just like that, the Vitalus signed off, leaving them all to grapple with the enormity of the announcement It had just made.

    ¡°What the hell was that?¡± Fiuria finally said.

    ¡°Nothing good,¡± Menash muttered. Already he could see what the fallout of this would be. He knew the same thoughts had to be revolving in Fiuria¡¯s head: the peace was going to unravel in the blink of an eye, the kindreds turning on each other in an all-out struggle to carve out their new territories. In all likelihood they wouldn¡¯t even wait for the resettlement to be over¡ªall they needed now was an excuse to kick things off.

    An excuse that Jeoshin would momentarily provide.

    Suddenly the Saint¡¯s exomorph heaved itself upright, standing on trembling legs. Menash and Fiuria backed away as Jeoshin brandished one of his swords.

    ¡°What are you doing, Jeoshin?¡±

    ¡°We failed to uphold the will of the god,¡± the Saint patiently explained, ¡°Our fate is sealed. Honour demands it.¡±

    ¡°No, don¡¯t¡ª¡± Menash started to say, but before he could finish Jeoshin drove the point of his sword into his innards, killing himself along with any hope of upholding the truce.

 Chapter 62: Demons of the Howling Dark (Part 1)

    The Commodore nudged the trayful of teacups across the table with the muzzle of his rifle, the steaming brown suspension they held sloshing and spilling over onto the porcelain saucers.

    ¡°Drink,¡± the Commodore said, the word possessing neither the force of a command nor the warmth of an invitation. Rene looked to his right and found Zildiz glowering at their host, arms folded and brow stitched in her usual scowl. Beside her sat Leaper child, hogtied to his chair with lengths of wire, a puddle of drool forming underneath his cheek where his head rested against the table.

    Neither of his companions seemed capable of observing social niceties at moment, so Rene felt it incumbent upon him to take up the slack. He leaned over and gave the cocoa a polite sniff.

    A bold and nutty aroma wafted into his nostrils. Rene eyes widened in pleasant surprise. He took an eager sip and was overwhelmed by the richness of its flavour, so much so that he scalded his tongue gulping the rest of it downs. The Commodore saw his eyes smarting with tears and chuckled, saying:

    ¡°I based the molecular makeup of that drink on a powder packet I dug out from a mining hab out in the belt. It¡¯s the real deal, so don¡¯t you go wasting it.¡±

    ¡°Much appreciated, Commodore,¡± Rene said, absently licking the rim of his cup clean¡ªthe cocoa was just that good. Divine, even. It was certainly a drink worthy of the ancestor-gods. Zildiz was less appreciative, and asked bluntly:

    ¡°What are your intentions with us?¡±

    ¡°Rest assured that at the present moment you are more useful to me alive than sanitized. That can change, of course, depending on whether or not I like your answers to my questions,¡± the Commodore replied.

    They were seated in the midst of what Rene supposed to be some kind of grand banquet hall, the kind in which the heroes in the Log of the Voidtrekkers may have sat and discussed the pressing issues of their day. Crises like the Water Mutiny or the great purging of the tribes of the lower decks, for instance. But if this had truly once been a hall of heroes, then it was in a sorry state indeed.

    Long trestle tables and vacant chairs surrounded them from every side, with trays, wrappers and pieces of cutlery arranged as though by a passing hurricane. Set into the back of the hall were small antechambers that reminded Rene of the food stalls at home, each equipped with large vats. Above them the overhead lamps set into the ceiling tapped a staccato rhythm as their lights flickered on and off, their interiors choked with writhing clumps of half-dead flies.

    But what really unnerved Rene were the mechanical simulacrums that scuttled behind the Commodore and attended to his every need. They were similar to Exar in that they were intelligences capable of autonomous action, but whereas Exar¡¯s body was an elegant sphere, these machines were a collection of tools attached to clumsy, multipedal bodies whose motions made his skin crawl.

    One of them was currently wrapped around Rene¡¯s arm, a sinuous worm-thing with hooked suture needles for fangs that were even now engaged in sewing shut the crater of flesh which the boy¡¯s teeth had left his forearm.

    He felt only a dull ache from the procedure¡ªthe worm-thing had applied a topical anesthetic beforehand via a darting syringe tongue. It had also sedated the boy with the same implement, jabbing him in the inner elbow while Rene and Zildiz tied him securely to the chair.

    Rene was starting to miss Exar¡¯s reassuring presence. They¡¯d left him behind at the entrance to the hall along with the remainder of Rene¡¯s survival kit, monomachete included. The Commodore was clearly taking no chances at this point. Gone was the flayed man draped across the front of the gun carriage, for at a gesture of his shrunken hand an assembly of hinged, interlocking lamellar plates had sprung up to enfold every centimetre of his vulnerable flesh. Now all they could see of him were his goggles peering out at them through a tinted visor. His arms protruded from the metal cocoon through a pair of flexible tubes composed of a chainmail-like material that allowed his limbs a full range of motion. For the moment he seemed content to hold his battle rifle in a loose grip, though Rene found it worrying how its snout kept wandering vaguely in his direction.

    ¡°What would we stand to gain from telling you anything?¡± Zildiz said, completely unbothered by its presence.

    ¡°I can turn you into a stain on the floor with a squeeze of my trigger finger. How¡¯s that for an incentive?¡±

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    ¡°That really won¡¯t be necessary,¡± Rene quickly interceded, ¡°Ask away, sir. Only too glad to be of service to the Fleet!¡±

    ¡°You¡¯ve just established that the information we possess makes us too valuable to be disposed of,¡± Zildiz said, ignoring Rene¡¯s attempts to shush her, ¡°And you previously mentioned that you don¡¯t believe in torture as a method of intelligence gathering.¡±

    ¡°A preference which I¡¯m already starting to reconsider,¡± the Commodore growled. Underneath the table, Rene reached out with the toe of his boot until he found Zildiz¡¯s foot, which he promptly trod upon. She winced, then quickly mastered herself and retaliated with elbow to his ribs.

    ¡°What¡¯s the matter with him?¡± the Commodore asked as the ensign groaned and hunched his shoulders.

    ¡°He has a weak stomach,¡± Zildiz said, giving Rene as scalding look, ¡°We haven¡¯t had much to eat on our way over here. Speaking of which, the first of our demands is that you provide us with a decent meal.¡±

    ¡°What makes you think you¡¯re entitled to make any demands?¡±

    ¡°You can certainly squeeze what you want out of us the hard way,¡± Zildiz reasoned, ¡°But why go through all that trouble if a little reciprocity will do the trick?¡±

    ¡°Oh, so it¡¯s all give and take now, is it?¡± the Commodore crooned, ¡°And what would have me give away, exactly? The access codes to this facility¡¯s surface batteries? How about a complete rundown of the Fleet¡¯s remaining deployable assets?¡±

    ¡°Nothing that dramatic. I¡¯d just like some clarification on a few things. As you¡¯ve pointed out, we are entirely at your mercy. Anything you tell us will remain buried beneath this frozen moon. In fact, I have no doubt you are already planning to ¡®sanitize¡¯ us afterwards to be certain of it. You stand to lose nothing in this exchange, and my side will gain no advantage.¡±

    ¡°Then why insist upon it?¡±

    ¡°Personal curiosity,¡± Zildiz shrugged, ¡°It isn¡¯t everyday that one comes face to face with a member of a fallen pantheon. I¡¯d like to hear what you have to say for yourselves.¡±

    ¡°Fallen?¡± the Commodore repeated in an ominous undertone.

    ¡°I meant to say defeated,¡± Zildiz said, ¡°But somehow that felt a bit improper.¡±

    The Commodore went dangerously quiet at that, and for a minute Rene was convinced that the madwoman had finally pushed her luck too far.

    ¡°Well, you wouldn¡¯t be wrong,¡± the Commodore said wearily, his admission carrying with it a wealth of sorrow, ¡°Not that that¡¯s any cause for celebration on your part. You¡¯re just as trapped as we are. You know, I once hated your kind with a burning passion. Now I can only pity you.¡±

    Zildiz made an ugly face and began to reply. But before she could make another inflammatory remark, Rene spoke right over her:

    ¡°Begging your pardon, blessed ancestor, but I¡¯m not sure I heard that right. Did you just say that we¡¯ve been beaten?¡±

    ¡°In every sense of the word,¡± the Commodore confirmed, ¡°I¡¯m sorry to have to break this to you, crewman, but the strategic situation is hopeless. Has been for the better part of this millennium, I¡¯m afraid.¡±

    ¡°I see,¡± Rene said slowly, struggling to keep his voice even as the walls of his reality came crashing down, ¡°You mean to say that Arachnea¡ª¡±

    ¡°Is firmly in the enemy¡¯s control. The problem is that the Vitalus is embedded into every layer of the biosphere. We can¡¯t kill it without also rendering the planet completely uninhabitable¡ªand believe me, my people certainly tried. But the most we could do was fend off the armies of cosmophage variants it sent after us, but even that became impossible after a while.¡±

    ¡°But you seeded the galaxy with life,¡± Rene said, refusing to accept what he was hearing, ¡°You crossed the starry expanse, combining matter with that-which-is-not, carved sentience out of silica. How could you let this happen?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m no more of a deity than you are, Rene. I should have thought that obvious by now.¡±

    ¡°Then what bloody use are you?¡± Rene was on his feet and shouting, spittle flying from his mouth as he stabbed a finger at the Commodore¡¯s face.

    ¡°Rene¡­¡± Zildiz was gripping his shoulder with uncharacteristic gentleness. Rene shrugged her off and continued his tirade, the frustration and fear of a lifetime spent at war bursting like a levee before the flood:

    ¡°Do you have any idea what you¡¯ve condemned us to? Millions of us slaving away in the darkness beneath the mounds, fighting tooth and nail against the Amits for the mere right to breathe, and for what? Just so you can say that we¡¯ve already lost? That it¡¯s all meaningless? Ow!¡±

    Rene broke off as the worm-thing suddenly bit deep into his shoulder. A wave of dizziness came over him, and he would have fallen over if Zildiz hadn¡¯t caught him in time.

    ¡°I¡¯ve instructed the medic drone to give you a dose of happy chemicals,¡± the Commodore explained, ¡°I understand that you¡¯re emotional, crewman Rene, but your anger is misplaced. It¡¯s true that the Exodians (your vaunted ancestor-gods, as you call them) are responsible for the creating the current conditions on Arachnea. But I am not one of them. Like you, I was born into this conflict, just another struggler in a battle without hope or honour. My people are¡­¡± the Commodore corrected himself, ¡°or rather, were, the second iteration of unaltered homo vagus within the simulation.¡±

    ¡°Are you referring to the Great Game?¡± Zildiz said, perking up.

    ¡°Call it what you like. Suffice it to say that the Vitalus has been running this show for a very long time now. Crewman Rene here belongs to the fifth iteration. Up next on the proverbial chopping block, as it were.¡±

    ¡°But why?¡± Rene was grasping at threads, at anything that could hold together his rapidly unravelling world view, ¡°I mean, what does the Vitalus even want?¡±

    ¡°There are a few theories,¡± the Commodore said, ¡°I subscribe to the simplest one. It¡¯s my considered opinion that the damned thing¡¯s gone absolutely bananas.¡±

 Chapter 62: Demons of the Howling Dark (Part 2)

    Zildiz gave a scornful laugh. Rene thought it was her best one yet¡ªvery full and throaty. She had a nice voice, all things considered. Pity she didn¡¯t know how to use it right.

    ¡°Only a fool could fail to see Its grand design,¡± she was snarling, ¡°Arachnea is the proving ground whereby the Vitalus shall select its worthiest creations. In the end, only they will remain to inherit the paradise to come¡ª¡±

    ¡°Yes, yes,¡± the Commodore sighed, ¡°I¡¯ve heard all this before. Your predecessors screamed the same nonsense over the radio as we mowed them down with coil cannons. That was thousands of years ago. Since then not a single one of your Kindreds has ever managed to win your sordid little contest. Curious, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    For the first time since they¡¯d met, the Commodore had Zildiz at a genuine loss for words. She soon rallied, but her reply sounded too well-practiced and lacked conviction:

    ¡°The god simply operates along a broader timescale. Only the faithless expect miracles to manifest overnight.¡±

    ¡°I won¡¯t waste my time arguing with a fanatic,¡± the Commodore pronounced, ¡°I have an idea that¡¯ll speed things up a bit: let¡¯s take turns asking questions. Here, I¡¯ll start. Have the Amits begun swarming yet?¡±

    ¡°They¡¯re always fugging swarming,¡± Rene chuckled, ¡°That¡¯s what they do, isn¡¯t it? Busy as bees, those bastards. Bzzz, bzzz, bzzz.¡±

    Who cared if things back home were going to hell in a handbasket? Rene was beginning to feel a lot better about the whole situation; in fact he was quite literally over the moon. Hah, hah.

    ¡°Let me rephrase that,¡± the Commodore said, ¡°Have the Amits begun to display sudden and widespread morphological or behavioural changes?¡±

    ¡°You mean like how their bulls get all randy when it¡¯s the rutting season?¡± Rene frowned.

    ¡°Er, not quite. I¡¯ll take that as a no. It¡¯s your turn now.¡±

    ¡°Are you really all that¡¯s left of your people?¡± Zildiz spoke up.

    ¡°So far as I know. After the schism our fleet scattered in several directions. I don¡¯t know what happened to the other survivors, if there were any.¡±

    ¡°Hang on,¡± Rene interrupted, ¡°What schism? That wasn''t ever mentioned in the Log of the Voidtrekkers. And besides, how can you claim to be part of the Fleet if you ain¡¯t even one of them ancestor-types?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a long story and I¡¯d rather not get into it now,¡± the Commodore said hurriedly, his voice betraying a note of discomfort, ¡°Besides, I¡¯m the one with the microphone now. How did you get the T.O.R.U. working, crewman? You were the one that found it, yes?¡±

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    Rene realized that he was talking about the Divine Engine and related the incident at Mound 13 to him in detail, describing everything up his abrupt ejection in the safety pod.

    ¡°So the fuel rods were spent, and all you had were the reserves from the power banks,¡± the Commodore pondered aloud, ¡°It¡¯s a wonder the damned thing could budge at all. A testament to Exodian materials science. The most logical course of action then would¡¯ve been to turn the Engine around and bring it back behind friendly lines.¡±

    ¡°I may gotten a bit overenthusiastic, now that you mention it,¡± Rene admitted.

    ¡°But instead you ran amuck and squandered what little you had left in an inconsequential act of vengeance,¡± the Commodore went on, ignoring him completely, ¡°Then again, the enemy would never have allowed the T.O.R.U. to remain in the Fleet¡¯s possession. It would give you an unfair advantage in the simulation, you see. At most your scientists would¡¯ve had a few days to reverse-engineer the thing before the Vitalus came to confiscate it by force.¡±

    ¡°As if we¡¯d let em! The Fleet would fight to the bitter end for a prize like the Engine,¡± Rene cried, not willing to sell his people short.

    ¡°Irrelevant.¡±

    ¡°My arse it¡¯s irrelevant! We¡¯d mobilize every man, woman and peg-legged cripple from Shakka to the core mounds to defend it.¡±

    ¡°It doesn¡¯t matter how many people throw at it,¡± the Commodore snapped, ¡°Your iteration has yet to even break out of the Amit enclosure¡ªyou¡¯re still locked in the basic predator-prey oscillation. You haven¡¯t even faced the Kindreds yet, much less the Hollowores.¡±

    ¡°Sure we did. And we whooped em, too,¡± Rene said with pride. He went on relate his encounter with Kryptus and the Leapers, and their desperate last stand on the hill against overwhelming odds. But rather than being impressed, the Commodore grew only more exasperated.

    ¡°Yes, but you did all that with technology borrowed from another time, another civilization. The Fleet as it stands today can never hope to match the cosmophage threat. You¡¯ve never seen them selectively evolve. Even my people couldn¡¯t keep up with em in the long run, and we were a damn sight more clever than you primitives ever will be.¡±

    Rene gave him an ugly look, his resentment finally burning through the false veneer of cheeriness.

    ¡°If they were so smart, then how¡¯d you end up here, hiding up here like a rat in its hole?¡±

    Out came the buzzsaws and the sheet-cutting shears. The Commodore surged forward on his treads, the furniture squealing as he pushed the long trestle tables back by about a half foot. Rene and Zildiz teetered on the back legs of their chairs, the sloped gun platform looming over them like an oncoming glacier.

    ¡°Listen here, you impudent shit,¡± the Commodore¡¯s words trembled with barely-contained fury. He pointed a rotary gun at the Leaper child who still lay slumped over the table, and continued: ¡°You have no idea what these cosmophages are capable of, no conception of the potential contained in their helix modules. There is no environment they cannot endure, no weapon they cannot surpass. They once breathed vacuum and fed on starlight! Before our ancestors ever came to this solar system, before the War of Creation, the galaxy belonged to them. Demons of the howling dark, Rene! Void crawlers. What can mere men do against such limitless evil?¡±

    The Commodore reversed and let their chairs fall back into their places. Rene felt his sphincter slowly unclench. He turned to look at Zildiz and saw the Leaper boy stir, finally nudged awake by the shouting and commotion. Finding himself in an unfamiliar place, he began to look around in panic. His big brown eyes found the pathfinder first. The two stared long and hard at each other, and in that moment it was difficult to say who was more frightened of whom.

    ¡°Good morning,¡± Rene managed to say.

    Whereupon the boy scrunched up his face and began to cry.

 Chapter 63: Counterattack

    Uneasy silence reigned for a good few minutes, broken only by the boy¡¯s quiet sobs. For all the Commodore¡¯s talk of demonic void crawlers, at the moment all Rene could see was a frightened child strapped to a chair, tears dripping off his nose and into his lap.

    ¡°Regarding the prisoners, sir, I believe some food would go a long way towards securing their cooperation,¡± Rene finally ventured, his own stomach growling in agreement. As a trooper he knew that the quickest way to earn a person¡¯s confidence was through a bellyful of hot grub.

    ¡°Hmph. Why the hell not?¡± servos in the Commodore¡¯s articulated pauldrons whirred as he shrugged, ¡°Not every day I get to break out new recipes on the synthesizer.¡±

    ¡°And perhaps some clothes for the little one,¡± Rene added. Apart from the layers of dried slime encrusting his skin the boy was as naked as the day he was born, his narrow shoulders trembling with terror.

    ¡°I¡¯ll fetch it a space blanket,¡± the Commodore said indifferently. He flicked a finger at his retinue, sending some of them gliding into the shadowed corridors beyond. While each of the drones varied greatly in form and function, there were enough similarities for Rene to start grouping them into categories. At the bottom of the hierarchy were the errand boys that came loping back into view, quadrupedal drones effortlessly balancing trayfuls of crockery on the grasping limbs that extended from their backs.

    These stood in stark contrast to the squat, gun-toting sentries posted at each corner of the hall. They resembled compact versions of the Commodore¡¯s own chassis, wide fisheye lenses embedded into their torsos emitting needle-thin lasers fixed firmly on a spot between Zildiz¡¯ shoulder blades.

    Centre mass, in other words. Rene saw more targeting beams trained on the boy and could feel at least one other warming the back of his own ear. That the Commodore judged such precautions necessary betrayed his fear of Rene¡¯s companions.

    Cosmophage. The name itself held a wealth of implications, none of them pleasant. Looking at them now, Rene found it hard to believe that they were descended from a cosmic evil from beyond the veil. And yet it was an undeniable fact that the boy had survived four days clinging to the underside of the shuttle sans water, air and sustenance.

    The errand drones slid their trays onto the tables, presenting them with steaming bowls of sinister red gloop that reminded Rene of the coagulated hog¡¯s blood his Mama used to save for making black sausage.

    ¡°It¡¯s called borscht,¡± said the Commodore, seeing the dubious look on Rene¡¯s face, ¡°The royder cosmonauts who inhabited this part of the system were very partial to it.¡±

    Rene chanced a spoonful of the stuff and promptly fell in love at first bite. Borscht turned out to be a savoury, nourishing stew that was like nothing he¡¯d ever tasted before. The others saw him digging in and followed suit, Zildiz scooping it into her mouth with her bare fingers while the boy dipped his face into his bowl like a bird at the water feeder. Without the use of his arms most of it was just getting smeared over his cheeks or spilling over onto the table.

    ¡°You¡¯re making a mess,¡± said Rene, who could not bear seeing food go to waste, ¡°Here, let me give you a hand¡ª¡±

    Rene reached over to him, but stopped when the boy shrank away in panic.

    ¡°Don¡¯t you worry, longlegs,¡± Zildiz snickered, ¡°We¡¯re not planning to eat you¡­ yet.¡±

    ¡°Quit it,¡± Rene told her off, ¡°You¡¯re not helping.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t see how there¡¯s anything to gain by making nice with a Leaper,¡± she tartly replied.

    ¡°I¡¯m inclined to agree,¡± the Commodore said, ¡°Mercy is wasted on their kind. These two will live only for as long as they remain useful to us. Ensign Rene, as soon as you¡¯ve corrected your caloric deficit, I need you to report to the command station via the catapult.¡±

    ¡°Sir?¡±

    ¡°Certain aspects of your data require further collation,¡± the Commodore said, only adding to Rene¡¯s confusion.

    ¡°And the prisoners?¡±

    ¡°The drones will transfer them in the brig. Don¡¯t take too long.¡±

    The Commodore put himself in reverse and backed out of the hall, leaving the three of them to their own devices.

    ¡°You heard what he said,¡± Rene told the boy as soon as they were alone, ¡°If you expect to stay alive down here, you¡¯ll have to sing for your supper. So start talking. Otherwise you¡¯re liable to go swan diving out the nearest airlock. Without your exomorph, I doubt things will go as swimmingly for you as they did the first time around. Get me?¡±

    He was pleased to see the boy give an almost imperceptible nod. Now we¡¯re getting somewhere, Rene thought. An errand drone approached and handed him a triangle of folded fabric. Rene shook it out and found himself holding a sparkling cloak that seemed composed of a sheet of tin metal. It was a tad flimsy for a blanket, but Rene wrapped it round the boy¡¯s shoulders all the same to preserve his dignity, if nothing else.

    ¡°Let¡¯s start with the basics. What¡¯s your name?¡±

    ¡°Neroth,¡± the boy whispered. His tears had dried up into quiet sniffles at this point, though he still couldn¡¯t bring himself to look them in the face.

    ¡°Means carrion eater in their dialect,¡± Zildiz cheerily informed him, ¡°Defiler of corpses.¡±

    ¡°Well, I like it anyway,¡± Rene insisted, refusing to be thrown off, ¡°Rene Louvoture, at your service. How¡¯s the borscht, Neroth? Need some help with that?¡±

    If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    Another nod, this one a shade less hesitant. Rene took the bowl and placed its rim against Neroth¡¯s lips, patently feeding him while Zildiz looked on in disgust. When the boy had eaten the last morsel Rene wiped his mouth with the corner of the blanket, only then turning to mop up his own portion.

    ¡°I¡¯m off to give my report now,¡± Rene said when he¡¯d eaten his fill, ¡°Don¡¯t do anything stupid while I¡¯m gone.¡±

    ¡°Please don¡¯t go,¡± Neroth unexpectedly blurted out, ¡°Don¡¯t leave me alone with¡­her.¡±

    He jerked his head at Zildiz, whose face broke out into a cheshire grin. She propped her legs up on the table with a loud belch and tossed her empty bowl over her shoulder, saying:

    ¡°You¡¯re in luck, Leaper. I still have room for seconds.¡±

    ¡°Leave him be,¡± Rene wagged a warning finger at her, ¡°You so much as try anything and these simulacrums will riddle you with holes.¡±

    ¡°And so? What of it?¡± Zildiz seemed to find the whole situation darkly amusing, ¡°Sooner or later, the Commodore will dispose of us anyway.¡±

    ¡°That won¡¯t happen,¡± Rene shook his head, ¡°I won¡¯t let him hurt either of you.¡±

    ¡°Oh, is that right?¡±

    ¡°It is. I swear it upon my honour as an officer of the Fleet,¡± Rene said, ¡°So far as it is within my power, I shall protect you.¡±

    For an instant the hard lines around her face softened, and Zildiz was the first to break eye contact. Rene felt a hot flush of shame creeping up his neck and turned away. He knew full well that he couldn¡¯t guarantee that promise, and for the life of him didn¡¯t know why he¡¯d made it in the first place.

    ¡°Bold talk, Fleet-man,¡± she said gruffly, ¡°But you hold no power here, or have you forgotten?¡±

    ¡°Maybe. But then again, neither does he. Not on the grand scale of things. Not without us,¡± Rene said as he strode away, ¡°My gut is telling me that the Commodore needs us for something, Zildiz. I intend to find out what that is.¡±

    #

    The lunar base was dominated by a passage that seemed to span the length of the settlement, a single cylinder bored into the rock of the moon and curving beyond the visible horizon. Gunmetal rails ran down its middle, enclosed by a tube of meters-thick glass and shouldered on either side by raised walkways.

    Rene hadn¡¯t a clue where the command centre was, and so contented himself by strolling aimlessly along one of the platforms. Smaller passages and side chambers branched off at right angles to the main tunnel, the head of each entranceway marked in scuffed orange lettering. The hall of heroes he¡¯d just left behind, for instance, bore the inscription ¡°Staff Rec Room¡±. Printed below it was a word written in an indecipherable language that used both normal lettering and symbols that looked as if they belonged in mathematical equations. It read: §¬§Ñ§æ§Ö§ä§Ö§â§Ú§Û.

    Others bore labels no less cryptic like ¡°Main Shunting Yard (Outgoing)¡± or ¡°Drive Coil Control Station C3¡±, each legible sign accompanied by phrases in the alien alphabet.

    Not that he could see the contents of those rooms anyway. Except for the areas in his immediate vicinity, everything was swamped in utter blackness. A halo of harsh fluorescence followed him wherever he went, lights fixtures ahead of him winking on as the ones behind him sputtered out, creating the unnerving illusion of a living darkness creeping up on him from behind.

    Rene felt like a grave robber buried alive in the mausoleum of a race of giants. Why did the Commodore leave it all so lifeless and ill-kept? Was this state of disrepair a conscious decision on his part, or was the master of this moon incapable of restoring the works of the Exodians? Rene knew there had to be some machinery still operational. Po Chai¡¯s subsurface was remarkably warm for a desolate ball of ice. Through the dust-choked grilles of the ducts above him Rene could hear the chug of an air circulation system. This was drowned out in the next moment by a rhythmic vibration emanating from right below the platform. This gradually rose in intensity as a sleek locomotive came streaking up the tube like a silver mirage.

    The thing slowed to a halt beside the pathfinder without ever making a sound against the rails. Hairline cracks appeared in the apparently featureless glass as sets of transparent doors slid open to admit him. Rows of motheaten seats lined the aisle. No sooner had he plopped down in one of them than the car was set in motion again, the entire facility flashing by as it delivered him to the opposite end of the base in a matter of seconds. Before he knew it the transparent doors were sliding open again, and he stumbled back onto the platform, struggling mightily to hold down the borscht as it tried to climb back out of his gullet.

    ¡°I trust you had a pleasant meal?¡± the Commodore asked, emerging from a nearby antechamber.

    ¡°Sir,¡± Rene swallowed the vileness back down and offered the Commodore a ragged salute, ¡°You wished to see me?¡±

    ¡°First I must apologize for not permitting you the standard period of post-planetfall recuperation. Space travel can be very taxing on the human physiology, especially one as unaugmented as yours. I mean that as a complement, of course,¡± the Commodore added, ¡°I mean, that¡¯s what we¡¯re fighting for, isn¡¯t it? To preserve our pure, unaltered subspecies at all costs?¡±

    ¡°Aye, sir,¡± Rene said, unsure how else to respond.

    ¡°Excellent. So glad we could agree on that,¡± the Commodore said amiably, ¡°Now, the real reason this interview couldn¡¯t wait is because, well, frankly I couldn¡¯t wait any longer. It might not have seemed like it back there in the cafeteria, but I¡¯ve been very excited ever since I caught the emergency ping from your T.O.R.U.¡±

    ¡°Excited for what, sir?¡± Rene said cautiously. The Commodore¡¯s demeanour had undergone a complete reversal during the brief interlude of his absence. Rene had heard that prolonged isolation and loneliness could lead to a number of mental defects. He could only wonder at how the Commodore had managed to remain cogent after all this time. Perhaps this sudden mood swing was a symptom of a deeper illness? In any case, what the Commodore said next took Rene completely by surprise:

    ¡°Why, to start planning our imminent counteroffensive against the Vitalus, of course.¡±

    ¡°I thought you said that our strategic situation was totally hopeless?¡±

    ¡°Bah!¡± the Commodore flapped a dismissive tentacle at him, ¡°Had to, didn¡¯t I? Couldn¡¯t let on that I had a play up my sleeve in front of those two stooges back there. Appear weak when you are strong¡ªjust your standard opsec measure courtesy of Sun Tzu.¡±

    ¡°I knew it! So there is a chance at victory after all!¡± Rene shook a triumphant fist up at the ceiling, though he didn''t know who Sun was or what his zoo had to do with anything.

    ¡°There¡¯s a sliver of a glimmer of a snowball¡¯s hope in hell,¡± the Commodore clarified, ¡°At least, if the warsims I¡¯ve run are anything to go by.¡±

    ¡°So how do we it? How can we win?¡±

    ¡°All in good time. I¡¯ll upgrade up your security clearance level as H-Hour approaches, but for now certain details of the operation will have to be kept under wraps.¡±

    ¡°But of course, sir,¡± Rene agreed, trying not to let his disappointment show.

    ¡°Oh alright, fine! I¡¯ll give you a hint,¡± the Commodore said, folding under no pressure at all. He had all the gleeful exuberance of a schoolgirl imparting the latest gossip to her gaggle of friends. Clearly his plan had been in the works for many years if not centuries, and he was happy for the chance to finally share it with someone else, ¡°The very first phase will require us to strike with overwhelming force, crippling the Vitalus¡¯ higher-function cilial nodes and depriving it of immediate retaliatory capabilities.¡±

    ¡°What instrument could possibly cripple a god?¡±

    ¡°Why, the very same thing you rode in on,¡± replied the Commodore. One of his telescopic lenses flashed a laser pointer through the glass tube and at the bare gunmetal lines of the train track.

 Chapter 64: First Strike

    ¡°Riiight,¡± Rene pursed his lips, convinced now that the Commodore had lost what remained of his colored marbles, ¡°So let me get this straight. You¡¯re planning to take on the Vitalus¡ªthe living embodiment of Nature itself¡ªwith a goddamned choo-choo train?¡±

    The Commodore began kneading his withered temples with his fingers as if he¡¯d caught a sudden migraine.

    ¡°Oh spinning centrifuge,¡± he groaned, ¡°Grant me strength. Just how ignorant are you palookas, anyway? Have your people even managed to figure out Lorentz¡¯s law, or are you still rubbing twigs together and rain dancing your way to oblivion?¡±

    Feeling that the honor of his entire civilization had been slighted, Rene at once leapt into an impassioned speech in which he described all the latest scientific breakthroughs achieved by the Fleet. From the yeast cultures that allowed of the fermentation of sugar cane into liquid canefuel? to the experiments proving the theoretical possibility of heavier-than-air flying machines (the practical possibilities at the moment mostly involved pilots ploughing nosefirst into the nearest mountainside or undergoing spontaneous combustion on the runway, but he thought it prudent not to mention that part), Rene proudly defended his people¡¯s intellectual potential.

    The Commodore listened closely as this spiel ran on, only interrupting once or twice to ask Rene brief technical questions. At the end of it all he offered this unflattering summary:

    ¡°Despite mastering basic telegraphy your Fleet lacks access to radio comms and most of the EM spectrum. Your combustion engines run on biodiesel and your idea of an air force is to fill up a bunch of bladders with flatulence. Artillery still mostly relies on direct line of sight. Gunsmiths have just figured out metal cartridges and are on the verge of mass-producing repeating rifles. In short, your Fleet has barely crawled into the 2<sup>nd</sup> stage of the Industrial Revolution. Playing ruddy cowboys and Indians down there,¡± the Commodore fumed, ¡°This is going to be a lot harder than I thought it would be¡­¡±

    Lost in thought, the Commodore absently drifted back into the room he¡¯d been waiting in, muttering curses under his breath. Rene stole in after him and entered a glowing amphitheatre whose walls were covered in crystalline displays just like the ones in the shuttle. These presented dataflows hundreds of times greater in volume, spools of raw information scrawling by too fast for the mortal eye to comprehend. An enamelled jade podium beside the Commodore cast ghostly grid patterns across the ceiling.

    ¡°Hmmm,¡± the Commodore tugged at his salt-and-pepper beard, ¡°Computer, prepare Warsim Alpha v1.2.2. Assume catapult strike packages destroy 75-80% of REDFOR¡¯s ground concentrations. Account for culture shock resulting in incompatible native assembly lines until at least Turn 4. Meanwhile, BLUFOR adopts nonstandard build order type Bien Phu, supported by limited nuclear area denial. Run simulation.¡±

    Each lens in the Commodore¡¯s goggles swivelled to watch a different screen. Rene gave a start as a green globe materialized above the jade podium, familiar continents wheeling as it spun slowly on its axis.

    Arachnea.

    The dataflow on the screens became a raging torrent. Rene watched as the three-dimensional representation of the planet suddenly shrank in scale until it included the entire solar system, highlighting all the planets and their major satellites.

    On the far left were the twin suns, Sang and Daisang, the latter a red dwarf clinging to the skirts of her main sequence sibling. After them came Abog the ever-burning, a terrestrial planet a quarter of the size of Arachnea wrapped in a blanket of volatile gases.

    Arachnea herself retained the central position in the orrery, separated from the ringed gas giant Brahe by many meters of empty space and a sparse band of dust motes he took to be the asteroid belt. A blinking blue marble spinning rapidly around Brahe¡¯s ring indicated Po Chai and the lunar base.

    ¡°Despite appearances, the car you took getting here wasn¡¯t a train, but the bucket of a mass catapult,¡± the Commodore explained, ¡°In the early stages of the Exodian rapid terraformation project, cosmonaut communes under their employ carved out huge blocks of frozen water from this moon¡¯s surface and loaded them onto the buckets. These payloads were then lobbed at Arachnea to alter atmospheric content and fill her basins with oceans. Like so.¡±

    The Commodore poked a finger at Po Chai, where scores of tiny white triangles departed from the moon¡¯s surface and traced elegant parabolas on their way towards Arachnea.

    ¡°So the catapult back there was a tool meant for delivering ice?¡±

    ¡°Tool, weapon¡ªit¡¯s all subjective when you can accelerate metric tons of payload to just under four kilometres per second,¡± the Commodore said, ¡°The Exodians used it to bring rain and squeeze life out of the bare stone of Arachnea. Our use of the catapult will be decidedly more¡­bombastic. Each fully loaded freight car we launch will deliver the energy equivalent of around 200 megatons.¡±

    The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

    ¡°You¡¯re going to load explosives onto them?¡± Rene asked, struggling to keep up.

    ¡°Unnecessary. Just an arseload of rocks covered in heat shield panels and stealth composites. Enough to flatten the neurocilial nodes and do a fair bit of continental-scale landscaping. My personal gift to the mushroom with the overgrown messianic complex.¡±

    The packages hadn¡¯t gotten very far when a swarm of red triangles rose from the planet¡¯s surface, moving unmistakeably to meet the catapult¡¯s payloads.

    ¡°Assuming that it spots our projectiles, the Vitalus will deploy some immediate countermeasures to deflect their trajectories. At the very least it will have biovessels with chemical rocket booster capability¡ªthe recent attempt to colonize Arachnea¡¯s moon guarantees that.¡±

    ¡°You know about that, sir?¡±

    Rene hadn¡¯t thought it possible that the Commodore could observe the recolonization of Cloister from all the way out here.

    ¡°Affirmative. Watched it all unfold from this very room. If the True Kindreds had succeeded, they would probably be knocking on my door right this very instant. That civil war of theirs made for some very enjoyable footage, let me tell you,¡± he added with relish, ¡°Even risked a few psyops just to nudge things along.¡±

    A cruel smile twisted the corners of the Commodore¡¯s mouth, yellow teeth flashing in the eerie light of the displays. With all his prehensile limbs waving about him, the man looked like a slimy octopus squatting atop a metal throne, vicariously revelling in the carnage happening worlds away. The image of him watching the men and women of the Fleet dying with that same smile on his lips made Rene nothing short of furious. Perhaps it was the drugs in his system or a newfound sense of respect for the Commodore¡¯s power, but Rene tried his best to voice his next question with delicacy.

    ¡°If you¡¯ve had the ability to sow devastation upon the Vitalus all this time, then why haven¡¯t you?¡±

    ¡°Many reasons. The first of which is a general lack of intel. Too many variables,¡± the Commodore sighed, a very human sound that conveyed an epoch¡¯s worth of pain and weariness, ¡°I have a few tight-beam transceivers secretly installed on the old EXOCOM satellite constellations. They let me spy on planet¡¯s surface, but as you well know, most of humanity lives deep underground inside Mounds. Contact with the satellites is intermittent due to their orbit¡ªthe relays were destroyed during the War of Creation and it¡¯s too risky to set up one of my own that close to the enemy. So you see, I¡¯m not entirely sure which Mounds are occupied by Amits and which ones have been taken over by the Fleet. A single stray shot on my part could cause hundreds of thousands of casualties, perhaps even annihilate your entire culture.¡±

    The Commodore¡¯s head sagged and he seemed shrink in on himself. His next words came out slurred and thick.

    ¡°There was¡­a temptation. You can¡¯t imagine what it was like. Just sitting up here stewing in my uselessness, knowing that I had the means to avenge my¡­¡± the Commodore swallowed hard, his bony fists clenching tight, ¡°¡­things got so bad that I started abusing the Fugue and sleeping every chance I got. Nowadays sleep is just about the only thing I enjoy doing anymore.¡±

    Rene felt a lump in his throat, moved by the hurt in the man¡¯s voice. For a man he was, and had remained throughout his long night vigil. Rene reached out to place a comforting hand on the Commodore¡¯s shoulder, but withdrew when he realized that he couldn¡¯t quite reach the Commodore even if he tiptoed. A cold dread ran down Rene¡¯s spine at the realization that at any point during his short life, the Commodore could have snapped and pulled the trigger, bringing the sky crashing down around his ears.

    The entire continued existence of the Fleet hinged upon the mental stability of one lonely, crippled man. Rene decided that from now on, he was going to tread carefully around the Commodore¡¯s abrupt mood swings.

    ¡°How can I help?¡± he finally asked.

    ¡°Can you pinpoint all the Fleet¡¯s occupied Mounds and surface settlements?¡±

    Rene thought it over a moment. Then he started chuckling happily to himself.

    ¡°Back home my official rank is assistant navigator. Geography was always my favourite lesson at school. Always knew it would come in handy someday¡ªjust not like this. Give me a map of the continent and I can point out all the Mounds in alphabetical order. Backwards too, if you¡¯d like.¡±

    ¡°Excellent,¡± the Commodore perked up at the good news, ¡°Very good. Now what can you tell me about the nodes?¡±

    Rene confessed his ignorance of the term, briefly repeating the story of how he¡¯d met Zildiz. To the best of his knowledge, the incident represented the first time the Fleet had ever encountered the Vitalus and the cosmophages.

    ¡°That¡¯s going to be a problem,¡± the Commodore concluded, ¡°If this operation is going to succeed, we need the guaranteed destruction of the most important nodes in the region. By eavesdropping on the Vitalus¡¯ high-power transmissions, I¡¯ve triangulated three hundred and ten major neurocilial nodes to date. There are more down there, shielded by vegetation or geographical features.¡±

    ¡°So just destroy them all to be sure,¡± the pathfinder suggested.

    ¡°We can¡¯t. There¡¯s a narrow window of opportunity between the first strikes and the enemy¡¯s immediate reprisals. The coil capacitors are worn to shit and take precious hours to recharge, plus the rails can¡¯t take that kind of repeated strain¡ªyou have no clue what I¡¯m talking about right now, do you?¡±

    Rene shrugged and spread his hands in apology.

    ¡°It¡¯s okay. It¡¯s not your fault,¡± the Commodore said with uncharacteristic gentleness, ¡°All in good time. Suffice it to say, I need to know which targets to prioritize.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t know anything about those structures, Commodore. Don¡¯t even know what they look like,¡± Rene said, leaping at the opportunity which had presented itself, ¡°Far as I know, there are only two people in the universe who could possibly fill us in on the details. And they¡¯re both slurping borscht exactly where we left them.¡±

 Chapter 65: Designated Target

    ¡°They¡¯re a treacherous pair of savages. I wouldn¡¯t trust either of them as far as I could spit, and I¡¯m certainly not going to stake the future of our race on whatever lies they¡¯ll choose to feed us.¡±

    ¡°But sir, if you¡¯d just give me a chance,¡± Rene repeated for the umpteenth time, ¡°If you¡¯re worried about getting misleading information, there¡¯s a simple solution: I could just take their testimonies separately. One from Zildiz and one from Neroth. Then we compare them afterwards, keeping whatever matches up and discarding what doesn¡¯t. Simple as.¡±

    ¡°Who the hell¡¯s Neroth?¡± demanded the Commodore.

    ¡°The boy who hitched a ride on the shuttle, sir.¡±

    ¡°You got the juvenile to tell you his name?¡± for the first time since Rene had met him the Commodore sounded truly impressed, ¡°That was quick.¡±

    ¡°Wasn¡¯t hard,¡± Rene said, rubbing his neck with shy pride, ¡°The lad¡¯s laying bricks in his trousers back there. I know I would be.¡±

    The Commodore gave the pathfinder a long and searching look. Rene could almost see the gears turning in that shrunken head, and his instincts told him that he wasn¡¯t going to like what came next.

    ¡°You know what I think, crewman? I think you¡¯re in a unique position to serve the Fleet like no one ever has.¡±

    ¡°I don¡¯t follow.¡±

    ¡°I was wrong. You¡¯re onto something big here. I¡¯m willing to bet that our friends in the food court will know the most important nodes by sight or hearsay. Your mission now is to get those locations out of them, by any means necessary.¡±

    ¡°With all due respect, sir, but I¡¯m no torturer,¡± Rene said, choosing to take a stand.

    ¡°Did I say I wanted you to put the screws to them?¡± the Commodore¡¯s retort came like a whipcrack, making Rene wince, ¡°It¡¯s imperative that they share their information with us willingly.¡±

    ¡°But how¡ª¡±

    ¡°You¡¯ve just established rapport with an enemy combatant within minutes of it regaining consciousness. Clearly you¡¯ve got talent at being a winsome sonofabitch.¡±

    The backhanded complement produced mixed feelings in Rene. The Commodore barged on regardless: ¡°Correct me if I¡¯m wrong, but I have the sense that you¡¯ve also reached a certain understanding with the female as well.¡±

    ¡°Who, Zildiz?¡± Rene burst into a wheezing fit of laughter. But the Commodore wasn¡¯t smiling, and Rene¡¯s amusement wilted under his glare.

    ¡°I understands that she hates my guts, if that¡¯s what you mean,¡± he managed to say.

    ¡°Is the feeling mutual?¡±

    ¡°Er, no,¡± Rene said, tiptoeing around the complicated bundle of emotions that Zildiz elicited in him, ¡°No, I just tolerate her. When she isn¡¯t trying to kill me, that is.¡±

    ¡°See now, I call that progress.¡±

    ¡°I mean, sure, she isn¡¯t trying to take off my head anymore. But getting a fanatic like her to betray their god and everything they believe in? I don¡¯t see how I can manage that, sir.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t sell yourself short, crewman,¡± the Commodore bulldozed his objections aside, ¡°I¡¯ve never been a good judge of such things, and Fugue knows it¡¯s been a while since I had the urge to perform such functions, but believe me when I say that you have the necessary equipment to get this job done. Appearance-wise, that is.¡±

    ¡°What?¡±

    ¡°Jumping gyroscopes, do I really have to spell it out for you?¡± the Commodore vented a frustrated sigh, ¡°The fact is you¡¯re not entirely hideous, Rene. Serviceable is the word that springs to mind.¡±

    Rene felt a flutter of panic in his breast. Was the Commodore¡­coming onto him?

    ¡°Hey! Don¡¯t space out on me,¡± snapped the Commodore, slapping Rene on the side of the head with a tendril, ¡°What the matter with you? I¡¯m talking about the female, man, the female! You¡¯ve got an axis of attack open on that front¡ªpress the advantage while you can.¡±

    If you discover this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.

    ¡°Y-you want me to p-put the moves on Zildiz?¡± Rene stammered, his sense of horror redoubling in intensity.

    ¡°Not exactly rocket science, is it?¡±

    ¡°But she¡¯s a cosmophage,¡± Rene weakly objected.

    ¡°So? I¡¯m not asking you pick out engagement rings. Just convince her you¡¯re on her side and wheedle the information out of her. Do whatever it takes. That¡¯s an order.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re asking for a miracle, sir.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t talk to me about miracles. Do you know how hard it was getting this facility operational all by myself? How many lifetimes I spent rifling through Exodian rubble, cobbling together what scraps I could, waiting for this day to come? We all have our sacrifices to make.¡±

    One of the monitors flashed, hard data replaced by a real-time view of the cafeteria. They saw Zildiz squatting frog-like in her chair, face darkened by her trademark scowl. The Commodore tapped a finger on her, saying:

    ¡°There¡¯s your target, ensign. Now go and execute.¡±

    #

    ¡°It¡¯s alright to look, you know,¡± said Zildiz, wearing a coy smile as she regarded Neroth like a piece of meat, ¡°I already know what you¡¯re thinking.¡±

    Neroth shifted in his seat but refused to take the bait, keeping his eyes fixed on his toes.

    ¡°Can I get this Gallivant before she gets me? Should I do it while Rene is gone, or shall I bide my time and kill them both in one fell swoop? Don¡¯t think I can¡¯t see you loosening your wrists under that blanket.¡±

    The boy went deathly still for a moment. Then he tossed back the greasy shanks of his hair with a flick of his head and cocked an eyebrow at her. Fear was still writ large upon his young face, but the firm set of his jaw betrayed a newfound determination to survive.

    ¡°Was it that obvious?¡± he asked.

    ¡°You may have fooled the Fleet-man, but I know you Leapers all too well. You¡¯ll do anything to secure an advantage for yourselves.¡±

    Zildiz lolled back in her chair, straightening her arms behind her to as if to get a good stretch in. As her hands grazed the floor she felt something small and sharp at her fingertips: a shard of the bowl that she had broken earlier. She quickly palmed the object, letting out a lazy yawn to mask her intentions, expecting at any moment to be reduced to a red mist by the guns of the sentry drones.

    ¡°I¡¯m not the one helping the Betrayers, am I?¡± Neroth countered, ¡°Traitor!¡±

    ¡°What are you yapping about?¡±

    ¡°Days ago, on the hilltop. You fought shoulder to shoulder with Rene. You killed two of my cousins, butchered them without mercy,¡± Neroth accused.

    ¡°It¡¯s not like your warband left me much of a choice. If things had gone the other way, I¡¯d be fodder for your newborns,¡± she said, surreptitiously slipping the ceramic shard in between the layers of bandages wrapped around her torso. It seemed that the sentry drones were neither as clever nor as perceptive as Exar was.

    ¡°Then why were you travelling with Rene?¡± Neroth pressed her, ¡°What are you after?¡±

    ¡°Nothing. He took me prisoner, just like you. My exomorph was damaged beyond repair when he found me. I tried to resist, but you saw for yourself what he¡¯s capable of.¡±

    Neroth nodded, no doubt remembering the exploding traps that had decimated his comrades.

    ¡°All I want is to get back to my family on Arachnea,¡± she whispered as if letting him in on a secret, ¡°My only goal is to survive and find a way off this miserable rock. How does that sound to you, Neroth?¡±

    It was the first time she¡¯d used his actual name, and she was counting on that having an effect. If she could convince the little gobshite that their interests aligned, then eventually he would trust her enough to do her bidding. Everything hinged on this moment.

    ¡°I want to go home,¡± Neroth finally said, his lower lip trembling, ¡°I don¡¯t like here. Everything¡¯s so dark and scary and my innards hurt all the time from the cold. I want to be back in my exomorph where it¡¯s warm.¡±

    ¡°As do I, Neroth. As do I,¡± she said soothingly, ¡°But it¡¯s not going to be easy.¡±

    ¡°You have a plan?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll say more when we¡¯re alone, but for now let¡¯s just keep this between us. Alright?¡±

    ¡°Truce?¡± Neroth asked. The plaintive note in his voice was so pathetic that she almost felt sorry for him.

    ¡°Truce,¡± Zildiz nodded. Just as she said it the double doors in front of her slid open. Zildiz looked up with a guilty start, convinced that the Commodore had somehow overheard their scheming.

    ¡°Oh,¡± she said as Rene ducked into the hall, ¡°It¡¯s just you.¡±

    ¡°Well, there¡¯s no need to sound so disappointed about it,¡± Rene said in a huff, mistaking her relief for dismissiveness. To tell the truth, Zildiz was actually quite glad to see him again¡ªfor purely practical reasons, of course. The pathfinder was a tool that could be easily manipulated through his misplaced sense of honour, that was all. Or so she told herself.

    ¡°C¡¯mon, you two. Get up,¡± Rene told them, ¡°We¡¯re to relocate to the dormitories on the lower levels. Commodore¡¯s orders.¡±

    ¡°What for?¡± she asked.

    ¡°That¡¯s where you¡¯ll be bunked for the duration of your stay here.¡±

    ¡°And what about you? Where will you be staying?¡±

    ¡°Same place you¡¯re going,¡± Rene said quickly, taking Neroth by the underarms and hoisting him to his feet, ¡°We¡¯ll each have our own rooms.¡±

    ¡°The Commodore¡¯s lumping you together with us?¡± Neroth wondered aloud, sharing Zildiz¡¯s surprise.

    ¡°Yes. What about it?¡± Rene said testily.

    ¡°It sounds like he doesn¡¯t trust you any more than he trusts us Kindreds,¡± Zildiz replied.

    ¡°Shaddup and get moving,¡± Rene growled.

    Zildiz joined the other two as they were escorted out, flanked on all sides by armed drones. She risked a quick glance at Rene and was delighted to see an unhappy frown creasing his brow.

    Things were shaping up already.

 Chapter 66: Concept Art #2

    Whose side are you on?

    The Fleet''s enlightened expansionism, or...

    ...the Kindreds'' elegant ethos.

    Your choice may very well decide the fate of Arachnea. Choose wisely!

    SIKE! Here''s this week''s chapter anyway. Enjoy.

    He was woken by the gradual brightening of the room, the ambient lighting changing to simulate the rosy tint of a dawning suns. Rene rolled off the bed and dragged himself over to the water bowl, the hem of his baggy pants scuffing against the floor with every drowsy step he took.

    Rene had spent the majority of his life inside Mound Ulysses where darkness was ubiquitous, the day and night cycles determined by the uncouth visitations of the knocker-ups, a class of civil servants whose job was to go around nudging people in the ribs with their hobnailed boots to make sure they got to work on time. He wasn¡¯t accustomed to being roused so gently, and the lack of incentive made him cranky.

    Other than that, however, the past few days of living on the lunar base had passed like a dream. The Commodore had ordered them all confined them to quarters for a few weeks to ensure their smooth adjustment to the moon¡¯s gravity well¡ªor so he claimed.

    Rene knew better. He had been disheartened by the news initially, as he¡¯d been planning to find some way back to the landing bay to recover Exar and get the spirit¡¯s perspective on things. But now he was finding that he actually enjoyed his imprisonment. The dormitories had everything a man could need: a soft bed, running water from a bowl, hot showers, toiletries, racks of fresh clothes, and best of all, the food synthesizer.

    This magic box sat on the faux marble countertop of the kitchenette that came with Rene¡¯s already enormous dormitory room. Judging from the overlarge dimension of the place, the Exodians must have been goliaths several heads taller than the average man of the Fleet. Rene¡¯s bed was so wide and luxurious that at times he felt like he was drowning in it.

    ¡°Dobroye utro, praporshchik,¡± said a clipped male voice from somewhere inside the ceiling.

    ¡°You¡¯re speaking that nonsense again,¡± Rene grumbled as he rinsed his face and rubbed his bleary eyes.

    ¡°Apologies. Language settings modified. Archaic English selected. Good morning, ensign.¡±

    ¡°Morning,¡± he said without batting an eyelid. Two weeks ago, holding a conversation with an incorporeal presence might¡¯ve spooked him, but so much had happened since then that he simply accepted it as another inexplicable facet of his new existence.

    ¡°How are you feeling?¡±

    ¡°Famished,¡± Rene eagerly padded over to the synthesizer, ¡°What¡¯s for breakfast?¡±

    A menu materialized before him. Rene scrolled through the hundreds of options and said:

    ¡°Scrambled eggs and fried turnip cake please. And a cup of that ¡®joe¡¯ thing you gave me yesterday.¡±

    ¡°Milk and sugar?¡±

    ¡°You know it.¡±

    ¡°Synthesizing. Please stand by.¡±

    A look of pure contentment came over Rene¡¯s face as the box began hum, delectable smells wafting out of its interior. The box lit up from within, allowing him to peer through the tinted walls at an empty plate and cup sitting on a turntable. A pointed armature like that of a sewing machine descended and started to extrude a grey paste, applying it one wafer-thin layer at a time.

    Watching the synthesizer at work was hands-down the favourite part of Rene¡¯s day. Already he¡¯d spent countless hours playing around with the box¡¯s settings, watching the chosen delicacies manifest themselves into being before sampling each dish with the tiniest of nibbles. He would then hurl the rest of it uneaten down the disposal chute, where the spirit of the box assured him the foodstuff would be rendered down and recycled for the next meal. It was a bit surreal to think that the stuff he was having now were composed of yesterday¡¯s leftovers. They certainly didn¡¯t taste or look like it.

    Within moments the food took shape, surfaces browning rapidly as it was seared by an invisible flame. Simultaneously a jet of steaming brown liquid filled the cup to the brim.

    Ding!

    ¡°Breakfast is served. Have a very safe day,¡± the box announced. Rene took his meal out of the synthesizer and bustled out of his room, heading for the communal dining room. In the corridor ahead of him he could hear a frantic banging as of a cornered beast hurling itself against the bars of its cage.

    Neroth¡¯s acting up again, Rene thought dismally. Had the boy even slept a wink at all? So much for enjoying breakfast in peace. Rene set his breakfast down on the oval dining table and walked up to Neroth¡¯s door, which was shuddering from repeated impacts.

    Sentry drones posted on either end of the corridor wheeled into position, accompanied by a pack of quadrupeds outfitted with electric prodders.

    ¡°Prisoner, cease and desist!¡± the sentries blared in the Commodore¡¯s pre-recorded voice, ¡°Step away from the door, or we will be forced to deploy suppressive measures!¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll handle this,¡± Rene said, waving them back, ¡°Oy, kid! You alright in there?¡±

    He banged out the ¡°shave and a haircut¡± couplet on the door with his fist. The racket on the other end subsided, and moments later Rene heard two meek answering knocks. Turning to the sentries he cocked a thumb at the door, which slid open to frame a scene of absolute chaos.

    Yet again the boy had upended every single piece of furniture in his room, tearing the mattress and pillows to foamy shreds this time for good measure. Five-fingered scratch marks scored into the wall and floor panels showed where the occupant had attempted to dig his way out.

    Rene found Neroth curled up in one corner of the ceiling, having tied the corners of his blanket to the light fixtures and bunk bed rails to form a tenuous sort of cradle.

    ¡°Been having those panic attacks again?¡± Rene asked, leaning casually against the doorframe. The blanket shifted slightly as the boy nodded.

    ¡°This place is too small,¡± Neroth explained, ¡°I can¡¯t prove it, but the roof keeps getting lower and lower¡ªI feel like it¡¯s going to squish me flat any minute now.¡±

    The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

    ¡°Don¡¯t you have your own room back in Leaper land?¡±

    ¡°No. Me and the other braves slept in our own silk hammocks back at the Loom,¡± Neroth said wistfully, ¡°But the Loom doesn¡¯t have a roof. Only the sky.¡±

    ¡°And if there was a storm? How did you sleep then?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯d cover ourselves in fatwax leaves. They were dry and snug as anything. I liked to hear the rain pattering through the leaves.¡±

    Rene tried to put himself in Neroth¡¯s shoes. Unlike the mound-dwelling masses of the Fleet, Neroth and all exoforms were creatures accustomed to wide open spaces and total freedom of movement. Being confined to quarters, even ones as spacious as these, had to be nothing short of suffocating for them.

    ¡°I¡¯ll try talk to the Commodore,¡± Rene said, seeing a chance to kill two birds with one stone, ¡°Maybe get him to grant you a few minutes of exercise out in the landing bays. Ancestors know I need to stretch my legs as well.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯d do that for me?¡±

    ¡°Certainly. It couldn¡¯t hurt to ask.¡±

    ¡°Maybe for you it couldn¡¯t. The monster-man hates me even more than he hates the Gallivant.¡±

    ¡°Er¡­maybe don¡¯t call him that out loud, eh?¡± Rene advised, conscious of the soulless eyes of the sentinels staring at them, ¡°Speaking of Gallivants, is Zildiz up yet?¡±

    ¡°Think so. Hollered at me to shut up a while ago. Then she got all quiet and started talking to herself again.¡±

    Wonderful, Rene thought. Now I¡¯ve got two mental cases to deal with.

    ¡°I¡¯ll go to have a chat with her too. In the meantime, I need you to control yourself. I¡¯ll help you clean up your room after breakfast. Catch you outside in five minutes, alright?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve already been caught. That¡¯s why I¡¯m in here, isn¡¯t it?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s a figure of¡­you know what, never mind. Just climb up out of there, okay?¡±

    A knobby little fist appeared over the hem of the blanket and gave him a thumbs up. Rene had shown him the gesture very early on and was pleased to see it had caught on.

    But a morsel of guilt wormed its way into Rene¡¯s stomach as well. He hated manipulating a child¡¯s weaknesses like this. But he had to find a way to reach Exar just as much as he needed to win the cosmophages onto his side.

    ¡°Trust me, there¡¯s nothing like a little shared misery to bind a set of people together,¡± the Commodore had said when last they¡¯d met, ¡°If they perceive you as a fellow prisoner instead of their assistant jailor, they¡¯ll soon learn to trust you. It¡¯s called the Stockholm syndrome."

    ¡°All due respect to Stockholm, but he didn¡¯t have to bunk with a pair of flesh-eaters. What if they go stir-crazy and decide to gobble me up?¡± Rene had asked.

    ¡°There are many intermediate stages between general unhappiness and full-blown cannibalism,¡± said the Commodore with the air of someone who knew exactly what they were talking about, ¡°I wouldn¡¯t worry about it if I were you.¡±

    The Commodore was barely paying attention to him as he poured over his endless warsim games, a look of frustration permanently etched into his wizened features. Assuming that the red dots represented the enemy and the blue dots the Fleet, the Commodore seemed to lose an awful lot more than he won, with most of the map turning red at the end of every match.

    Rene doubted the Commodore had the time to keep them all under constant surveillance. But he sure wasn¡¯t going to be happy to hear that the base¡¯s facilities had been trashed yet again.

    He turned the corner of Zildiz¡¯s room and was thankful to find them the furnishings intact. Zildiz herself was squatting atop the backrest of her chair, the improbable posture showcasing her impeccable sense of balance and fine motor control. She had one arm raised and was staring at it, transfixed by the subtle shifting of the tendons in her fingers. The skin of her forearm was covered in teeth marks, reddened and inflamed by constant rubbing.

    ¡°What do you want, Fleet-man?¡± she said without looking at him.

    ¡°Just checking up on you,¡± Rene replied, ¡°What¡¯s the matter?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s just so poorly designed,¡± she mused, ¡°How do you people stand it?¡±

    ¡°Stand what?¡±

    ¡°Being so flaccid. So powerless. You run around clothed in nothing but your innards, totally exposed to the elements. The slightest application of pressure on your epidermis and¡­¡±

    She set her incisors against the ball of her thumb and bit down, hard. Bright beads of blood welled up and she watched them drip onto the floor with a look of morbid fascination on her face. Disturbed, Rene snatched a pillowcase from her bunk and wrapped it hurriedly around her wound. Zildiz sat unresisting while he clasped her hand tightly in his, something which alarmed him even further.

    ¡°Pull yourself together Zildiz.¡±

    ¡°Go and sit on a pointy stick,¡± she said listlessly, pulling away from him.

    ¡°I¡¯ve already got Neroth climbing up the walls. I can¡¯t have you going to pieces on me too. Come on, let¡¯s go get something to eat.¡±

    ¡°What¡¯s the point?¡± she pouted, ¡°This frail and useless vestment of mine will wither in time, as surely as the suns rise over the hills.¡±

    ¡°I thought you Gallivants were made of sterner stuff,¡± he challenged, trying to goad her out of the slump she was in, ¡°I mean, look at Neroth,¡± Rene added as the boy shambled past the door on his way to the common room still wrapped in his blanket, ¡°At least he¡¯s persevering. Are you going to be outdone by a Leaper? And a prepubescent one at that?¡±

    ¡°That spineless quim can play the good lapdog if he wants to,¡± she said, a bit of the old fire kindling in her eyes, ¡°I¡¯ve better things to do with my time than partake in your morning feeding rituals.¡±

    ¡°Like sulking in here alone all day long?¡±

    ¡°I am not sulking,¡± she said, quick to correct him, ¡°I am¡­contemplating.¡±

    ¡°Well, I¡¯m going to go contemplate a plateful of eggs now, if that¡¯s alright with you,¡± said Rene, starting to leave. But he¡¯d hardly taken a step when he heard her mutter:

    ¡°Scrambled?¡±

    ¡°Beg pardon?¡±

    ¡°The eggs. Are they scrambled?¡±

    ¡°I wouldn¡¯t have them any other way,¡± Rene said. In fact, he¡¯d deliberately ordered the meal on the off-chance Zildiz chose to be difficult today, knowing from past observation that she liked them that way.

    ¡°Very well,¡± she said with stiff dignity, ¡°I will attend your morning feeding ritual this once. But I will claim your portion of eggs as spoils.¡±

    ¡°Done and done,¡± Rene agreed. She gave him a suspicious look before springing nimbly off the chair, landing softly on the balls of her feet.

    As the only one person permitted access to a food synthesizer, the task of preparing all their meals fell to Rene. As always, he ordered the others the exact same thing he was having and they all settled down to eat, Zildiz and Neroth squatting on their haunches on the floor or the dining table itself. For obvious reasons they weren¡¯t allowed to use utensils, so everyone had to make do with their bare hands.

    ¡°Computer, give us a show,¡± Rene said, waving his oily fingers at a huge curved screen that covered the far wall. It flickered on in response to the motion and offered a selection of still images for them to choose from.

    Rene picked a smiling anthropomorphic mammal that had no counterpart on Arachnea, with brightly-coloured orange fur and eerily human facial features. His name was Cosmonaut Carl, and Rene had become somewhat obsessed with him lately.

    Cosmonaut Carl worked as a miner, cracking open asteroids with controlled explosions and processing the ore with the help of his brainless robotic servant, Yottabyte. It was a dangerous and dirty job, but Carl endured it all for the sake of his commune back home. His life resonated strongly with Rene because it was almost identical to that of his own father, who had also slaved away in a mine until the rustlung had forced him into retirement.

    Minus all the catchy showtunes, of course. Carl and Yottabyte did an awful lot of singing for a pair of menial labourers. The show began with the titular character seated at the helm of his space ship, clad in a full extravehicular activity suit.

    ¡°Hello again my young comrades!¡± boomed Cosmonaut Carl, swivelling his chair around and waving a paw in greeting.

    ¡°Hello Carl,¡± Rene waved back.

    ¡°Asinine animal,¡± Zildiz grumbled through a mouthful of eggs.

    ¡°Today we are off to the belt to gather organic carbon for our commune,¡± Carl obliviously continued, ¡°But before we blast off, are we perhaps forgetting something? Tell me, what is the cardinal rule of space travel?¡±

    ¡°Set phasers to fun, and shoot all pirates on sight!¡± Yottabyte chirped with enthusiasm.

    ¡°Don¡¯t be a silly billy, Yottabyte,¡± Carl admonished him to the accompaniment of canned laughter. He turned to his audience of three and repeated: ¡°Remind me comrades, what is the cardinal rule of space travel?¡±

    Cosmonaut Carl asked the same question at the start of each show. Rene opened his mouth to give the customary response, but someone else beat him to it.

    ¡°Safety first,¡± Neroth said in a distant undertone. Rene was pleasantly surprised by this.

    ¡°Harashod! Very good. And now it¡¯s time for the safety song.¡±

    A chintzy musical number began to play while Carl and Yottabyte sang:

    ¡°We decompress with pure oh-two,

    Pure oh-two, pure oh-two,

    We decompress with pure oh-two

    Before we work outside¡­khzzssttt¡­¡±

    Suddenly the music was strangled by a harsh distortion, Carl and Yottabyte freezing in the middle of their dance number. The show wasn¡¯t the only thing malfunctioning either¡ªRene glanced over at the drones and saw them spinning mindlessly in place, their guns tracking imaginary targets. Rene stood up, heart thudding in his chest. Something was about to go horribly wrong.

    There was a deafening bang above their heads and a piece of a ceiling panel came crashing down, splattering them all with turnip cake. A small object shaped unmistakeably like a cannonball bounced off the table and rolled onto the floor.

    ¡°Get down!¡± Rene shouted as he dove for cover, tackling Zildiz off the table along the way and throwing himself over her to shield her from the fragmentation. Meanwhile, Neroth scampered under his chair and hid his face inside the blanket.

    ¡°Sorry to crash the party like this,¡± said a familiar, smarmy voice, ¡°What¡¯d I miss?¡±

    ¡°Exar!¡± Rene cried.

    ¡°The one and only.¡±

    ¡°Where the hell have you been all this time?¡± Zildiz demanded of the sphere, thrusting Rene aside with a flustered look on her face.

    ¡°Rolling around through the ventilation system. I got some bad news, chief. We gotta break outta this joint, and I mean stat!¡±

    ¡°What for?¡± Rene frowned, ¡°The Commodore can provide for all our needs.¡±

    ¡°Your new friend isn¡¯t who you think he is. I accessed the base¡¯s public servers and recovered some files he tried to delete. I know how he got into this place, and how many people he sacrificed to do it.¡±

    ¡°What are you saying?¡± said Rene shakily. He already knew the answer to that question, had sensed it as soon as he¡¯d seen the twisted conjunction of metal and meat that the Commodore had made of himself. What Exar said next only confirmed it:

    ¡°He¡¯s a killer, Rene. A mass murder. You heard him say it yourself. We¡¯re not the first victims to wander into his lair, and we won¡¯t be the last¡­¡±

 Chapter 67: Golden Sails

    ¡°Hold on,¡± said Rene, his head still spinning from the rapid turn of events, ¡°What exactly is your plan here?¡±

    ¡°I say we hightail it to the landing bay and use what¡¯s left of shuttle¡¯s fuel to escape," Exar supplied.

    ¡°And go where?¡± the pathfinder scoffed, ¡°Back to Arachnea?¡±

    ¡°Not a bad idea, that,¡± Zildiz pitched in.

    ¡°We don¡¯t have to enough chemical propellant to make planetfall on an object that massive,¡± Exar said, immediately scuppering the option.

    ¡°We¡¯re open to any suggestions you might have,¡± Rene said.

    ¡°This base isn¡¯t the only one still operational. The Commodore has multiple tight-beam transceivers aimed at specific areas in the asteroid belt. These areas match the coordinates of known dome farms. I¡¯ve calculated low-energy transfers that can take us to them.¡±

    ¡°In plainer language, please,¡± Rene said, grinding his teeth. Now that he was aware of it, he hated his ignorance and how it impeded his grasp of current events. Exar was quick to dumb it down for him:

    ¡°The Commodore has prepared fallback positions out in the belt in case this lunar base was compromised. Hollowed-out asteroids that the dome-settlers converted into farms. I¡¯ve mapped routes to each one that require only the bare minimum of fuel,¡± the sphere explained, ¡°These habitats are probably fully stocked, capable of full pressurization, and run on renewable energy sources like solar power.¡±

    ¡°Probably?¡± Rene seized upon the word and held onto it for all he was worth, ¡°We can¡¯t make decisions of this scale on just a ¡®probably¡¯. Do you have a shred of evidence that proves that he committed all these murders?¡±

    ¡°What, so my word¡¯s not good enough all of a sudden?¡± Exar said, sounding hurt. Rene had to remind himself that the sphere was a soulless machine before giving his curt reply:

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry, Exar, but no. This time I need to see your receipts.¡±

    ¡°Why are you so keen on staying here?¡± Neroth asked Rene, ¡°Doesn¡¯t this place drive you crazy?¡±

    ¡°I just think we should consider all our options before we commit to anything rash,¡± Rene said evasively, still endeavouring to keep the Commodore¡¯s counterattack a secret from the others. The mass catapult represented the Fleet¡¯s best chance of surviving the coming onslaught. He was loathe to give up the only weapon that might actually hurt the Vitalus, just as he was reluctant to betray the man who had made its use possible.

    ¡°I¡¯m with the slave on this one,¡± Zildiz decided, ¡°This current state of affairs is nothing more than a stay of execution. There¡¯s nothing left to consider.¡±

    ¡°Goddammit, can¡¯t a fellow catch a moment to breathe in here?¡± Rene sat down heavily, feeling decidedly lightheaded, ¡°Exar, has the Commodore been alerted to your presence here?¡±

    ¡°Not yet. But it¡¯s only a matter of time before he notices. I¡¯ve interrupted the power supply to the surveillance cameras and am currently jamming the signal to these improvised combat robots.¡±

    ¡°Disable the rest of the base like you did with these toys, and he will pose no further threat to us,¡± Zildiz said.

    ¡°I can¡¯t. I¡¯m a product of Exodus Industries. The royder communes who built this place were our subcontractors, but they designed their own security systems to be independent from ours. All I can do is provide short-range signal jamming and access to public servers. Anything more audacious than that would risk activating the system¡¯s inbuilt countermeasures.¡±

    Rene pushed the jargon aside and cleaved to the matter at hand:

    ¡°Exar, is there any way for you to buy us a few more minutes?¡±

    ¡°Way ahead of you, boss. I¡¯ve rigged one of the substations to blow. That should interfere with the Commodore¡¯s control over this sector of the base and help us make our getaway.¡±

    ¡°Are these charges you set on a timed fuse?¡± Rene demanded, wondering where the sphere had found explosives and how it could set them without the benefit of opposable thumbs.

    ¡°It¡¯s not an IED. I¡¯ve just set things up to look like an accidental overheating in the transformer. I can trigger it remotely¡ª¡±

    ¡°Perfect. Then do it.¡±

    ¡°What, right now?¡±

    If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement.

    ¡°Yes. That should give us enough time to review your evidence.¡±

    ¡°What, so my word isn¡¯t good enough for you all of a sudden?¡± Exar exclaimed. Rene felt a stab of shame at that. He had to remind himself that the engrammatic intelligence was incapable of having its feelings hurt. The warm and chatty personality was just a facade. According the scripture, thinking machines were merely tools fashioned by the ancestor-gods to serve their grand designs. Exar¡¯s creators were dead and gone, but the question remained: whose tool was he now, and what purpose did he serve? Why was he forcing them into this situation?

    ¡°Sorry Exar, but not this time. The stakes are too high. This time I need to see the receipts.¡±

    ¡°I really don¡¯t think we¡ª¡±

    ¡°Now!¡± Rene growled, scooping up some of his turnip cake and flinging it at the sphere.

    ¡°Alright, don¡¯t get your pantyhose in a twist. And after all I¡¯ve done for you,¡± Exar grumbled. They felt a slight tremor through the walls and the lights blinked out, Cosmonaut Carl abruptly winking out of existence. Exar emitted a wide cone of illumination, projecting a series of moving images upon the blackened screen. It was a grainy view of Po Chai¡¯s frozen surface, pure white set against the limitless velvet of space, Brahe glaring down at them from above like the red-rimmed eye of a jealous Creator. The recording was partially obscured by swarms of greyed dots crackling in the foreground.

    ¡°What are we supposed to be looking at here?¡± Rene squinted.

    ¡°File¡¯s corrupted,¡± Exar said, ¡°This is the best we¡¯ll ever get. There! See it?¡±

    There was movement off the shoulder of Brahe, an arc of gold moving against the planet¡¯s russet bands of dust. The screen recentred itself on the moving object, which morphed into cluster of blurry squares as Exar magnified the area.

    ¡°Can¡¯t you enhance this image somehow?¡± Zildiz asked.

    ¡°Nope. What you see is what you get.¡±

    Exar lessened the magnification slightly and the image became clearer.

    ¡°It¡¯s a ship,¡± Rene murmured, his realization tinged with a sense of confusion. The vessel had more in common with the seagoing vessels of the Fleet back home than it did to the shuttle sitting in the landing bay. The arc of gold was a billowing sailcloth, full and swollen with the breath of some heavenly wind.

    No, that couldn¡¯t be right. There was no wind in space, the Log was very clear on that point. Riding on the coattails of this golden sail was an improbably narrow spindle structure that made up the main body of the craft, flanked on either side by a long array of glowing blue panels.

    ¡°Was it Exodian?¡± Rene asked.

    ¡°Company property, you mean? No,¡± Exar said, ¡°Could have been a pleasure yacht previously owned by a private individual, but my money is on her being manufactured inside this system. No indication of fusion or bubble drive. She was incapable of superluminal travel.¡±

    ¡°Any idea where was she going?¡± Rene couldn¡¯t take his eyes off her¡ªeven at this distance and despite the marred state of the recording, hers was an undeniably beautiful design.

    ¡°I don¡¯t know. But whatever her destination was, she was getting there as slow as molasses in January. Even if her makers had knowledge of cryofugue, she had to be a generation ship¡ªthat means a vessel designed for centuries-long voyages, with the successive generations of crewmates all descended from the first crew.¡±

    ¡°I know what it means, slave,¡± Zildiz said with impatience.

    A voyage spanning whole centuries. Rene could scarcely imagine the psychological toll such a mission would take on the society condemned to live and die aboard their drifting prison.

    And yet he could envision it, because that was the exact scenario implied within the Log of the Voidtrekkers.

    But the Commodore denied being one of my ancestor-gods, Rene thought. And the ships described in the Log had tails of flame, not sails. Surely the scriptures would have mentioned that crucial detail.

    ¡°Of course, she would¡¯ve had to have used other means of propulsion to reach escape velocity,¡± Exar went on, ¡°Solar sails could never have done it alone.¡±

    ¡°You¡¯re presupposing that she was gestated planetside,¡± Zildiz argued, ¡°She could have been conceived in orbit.¡±

    Rene found it interesting how Zildiz used overtly biological terminology to describe starships. It was as if it was the only framework she through which she could make sense of such concepts. At any rate, she was having an easier time keeping up with such concepts than he was.

    ¡°Maybe,¡± Exar conceded, ¡°We don¡¯t know the circumstances of her creation. But we do know how she died.¡±

    As they watched, a tiny, oval fragment of the main body detached from the side of the ship, drifting down to the lunar surface. The larger vessel spat a rapid stream of glinting needles after it.

    ¡°That¡¯s an emergency skiff,¡± Exar commented, ¡°The first to launch, and under a hail of fire from its mother ship. Moments later...¡±

    A series of magnesium-bright flashes strobed down the length of the spindle. Tongues of blue and yellow plasma licked greedily out of the rents that had appeared in her side panels. Rene spied motes of dust spilling out of the middle section, saw them struggling and flailing with a desperation that was all too human.

    Another batch of skiffs set off from the sides of the ship in a belated broadside. Too late. In the next moment the golden sail went floating into the void like a peach petal shaken loose from its branches, the unseen tethers binding it to the ship cut by a secondary explosion that engulfed all the departing vessels in an expanding cloud of debris.

    All save for one. As the tragedy above reached its spectacular conclusion, the first skiff made a controlled descent into one of Po Chai¡¯s jagged crevasses. Exar delivered the grim tally:

    ¡°I counted 49 skiffs total. Double that number, and you get 98.¡±

    ¡°Is that supposed to be significant somehow?¡± said Rene, perplexed.

    ¡°Yes,¡± Neroth said, piping up from underneath the table, ¡°49 is the mathematically and biologically determined minimum ideal number of breeding pairs in a generational ship.¡±

    The pathfinder stared at him. Zildiz saw the slack-jawed look on his face and shrugged, saying:

    ¡°He¡¯s right. While the cislunar project was in full swing, our helixeers were laying plans for biovessels that would go onward and outward. Generational ships were the next logical step towards our reconquest of the galaxy.¡±

    ¡°Fascinating,¡± Exar dryly remarked, ¡°How¡¯s about we save storytime for another day, eh? Right now, it¡¯s crunchtime.¡±

    The sphere rolled up to Rene¡¯s foot and gave it a nudge.

    ¡°So what¡¯s it going to be, chief?¡±

 Chapter 68: Triple Cross

    Rene took a deep breath and collected his thoughts. A memory stirred in the recesses of his mind, and for a moment he was back in the field with the recon platoon, holding up a rain-bespattered map and trying his best to interpret the smudges. It was the first time the navigator had assigned him to walk point, and for the life of him Rene couldn¡¯t stop his fingers from trembling. He nearly jumped out of his skin when someone came up from behind and seized him by the elbow.

    ¡°Did we miss the checkpoint, ensign?¡± Deschane murmured, his grip firm and reassuring.

    ¡°Aye sir. I might¡¯ve lost count of my paces a while back,¡± Rene tried to project more confidence than he felt, ¡°We¡¯re still mostly on track. Won¡¯t happen again, sir.¡±

    ¡°Yes it will,¡± Deschane said bluntly, ¡°The question is, how do we proceed from here?¡±

    Rene could feel the stares of his comrades burning into his back, their restlessness growing. More than anything in the world he wanted to measure up to their expectations. And so he chose to be bold:

    ¡°If we continue a few more klicks southeast we¡¯re bound to catch sight of hill 307 and the ridgeline beside it. We¡¯ll use that as a handrail to steer by.¡±

    Deschane¡¯s response was scathing:

    ¡°You don¡¯t even know our current position, let alone the location of that ridge. You¡¯d just be leading the platoon from one uncertainty to another, in the hopes of reversing a mistake you refuse to admit. That isn¡¯t decisiveness, ensign. That¡¯s arrogance.¡±

    ¡°I¡­I¡¯m sorry, sir.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t be sorry. Be thorough. You¡¯re an officer now, Rene, and that entails navigating through the fog of war. Mistakes are inevitable. The most you can do¡ªthe most anyone can expect from you¡ªis to make decisions informed by the facts on the ground, no matter how meagre they are. Work with what you know. Never allow fear or hope to fill in the rest.¡±

    Rene could only nod, shaken as he was. He¡¯d been expecting to get a royal dressing-down here, not a well-intentioned lecture.

    ¡°You¡¯re still on point,¡± Deschane clapped him on the back, ¡°What¡¯s our next move?¡±

    ¡°Uhhh¡­double back to the previous set of reference points?¡±

    ¡°Are you asking me or telling me?¡±

    ¡°Telling you?¡± Rene winced.

    ¡°Good enough,¡± Deschane said with a rare grin, ¡°Now go and inform the platoon. And this time, at least try to sound convincing.¡±

    And with those parting words Deschane had taught Rene a second, unintentional lesson in leadership: sometimes when things go sour and the brown stuff hits the fan, maintaining even just the illusion of control becomes the only thing that matters.

    Humanity was a husk of its former self. Even the Commodore¡¯s iteration had been a pale shadow of the Exodians who had come before them. Yet the man claimed to have both a working plan to retake Arachnea and the means to effect it. Whether or not he was right was beside the point. Rene needed something¡ªanything¡ªto believe in.

    ¡°No,¡± he decided, ¡°No, this evidence isn¡¯t enough to go by. We¡¯re all staying put on this base until I say otherwise.¡±

    Exar rewound the footage to just before the lone surviving skiff disappeared into the crevasse then outlined it in a blinking rectangle.

    ¡°That¡¯s our man making his getaway,¡± Exar said heatedly, ¡°The detonations went off immediately after the pod was jettisoned. These were explosive charges planted at key sections of the ship. That¡¯s the simplest, most logical explanation for what we¡¯ve just seen.¡±

    ¡°We don¡¯t know what happened aboard that ship in the first place,¡± Rene maintained, ¡°Aside from the fact that there was evidently an act of mutiny or civil war, all we have right now is idle speculation. For all we know, the Commodore was acting in self-defence.¡±

    ¡°In which case, he killed 97 of his own kindred to save his own skin,¡± went Zildiz, ruthlessly hammering home the point, ¡°That alone should tell you the kind of man he is.¡±

    ¡°You people haven¡¯t thought this through,¡± Rene switched to another line of argument now that the Commodore¡¯s actions were becoming increasingly indefensible, ¡°Say we do manage to break out of here and reach the shuttle. What¡¯s to stop the Commodore from tracking us down and destroying those safehouses in the belt? He knows exactly where they are.¡±

    ¡°I was just getting to that part,¡± Exar said, ¡°The royder communes may have carved out this base for themselves, but their dome farms on the belt were company built, through and through. And, if memory serves, armed to the teeth against pirate raids as well. If we can reach one of them, I can guarantee complete access to their arsenals. We can actually defend ourselves there.¡±

    Rene¡¯s mind grappled with new possibilities. If the weaponry on one of these farms was anything like the mass catapult here on Po Chai, then perhaps the reconquest of Arachnea would not have to rely so completely on the Commodore¡¯s plan. The idea was worth exploring. He was still trying to formulate a decision when Zildiz reached one of her own:

    ¡°Too many variables in your plan, slave,¡± she said, pacing the room like a cornered animal, ¡°Low energy transfers by definition sacrifice speed for fuel conservation. We¡¯d be sitting targets at those velocities. The Commodore could destroy us enroute even with simple projectile-based weapons like these,¡± Zildiz reached over to a sentry drones and slapped a palm on its rotary guns, ¡°It would be simpler to kill him here and now, whilst we hold the upper hand.¡±

    ¡°Never allow your opponent to regain their equilibrium,¡± Neroth murmured in agreement, ¡°That¡¯s what my uncle would say. We should press our advantage.¡±

    ¡°Kryptus always was a canny bastard,¡± Zildiz said grudgingly. Though he¡¯d barely spoken above a whisper, a hard glitter had come into the boy¡¯s pupils. The Leaper and the Gallivant stared at each other, an unspoken understanding passing between them.

    ¡°Don¡¯t talk crazy,¡± Rene interposed. True to their savage nature, the two cosmophages were priming themselves for a fight to the death. He had to retain control of the situation, ¡°We can¡¯t possibly take the Commodore head-on.¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ll see about that,¡± Zildiz said, ¡°Slave, does this place have its own arsenal?¡±

    ¡°The name¡¯s Exar, sugar,¡± the sphere reminded her sourly, ¡°And yes it does. The communes were strapped to the nines. All the drones you see here are maintenance robots retrofitted with civilian-grade munitions. But like I said before, I can¡¯t override the base¡¯s security systems to get those doors open. Not without direct access to the mainframe.¡±

    ¡°This thing you call a mainframe¡­it is like a Dawning Chamber, correct?¡± Neroth asked Exar.

    ¡°A what-now?¡±

    ¡°A structure made to amass and process large amounts of information,¡± Zildiz supplied.

    ¡°Why, yes,¡± Exar said, sounding intrigued, ¡°Hold up a sec. Do you mean to say that your people have an equivalent technology back on Arachnea?¡±

    ¡°Does this mainframe have a physical location?¡± the Gallivant kept at him, appearing to evade the question.

    ¡°Well, duh,¡± Exar drawled, his voice alone enough to convey a sarcastic eyeroll.

    Rene¡¯s ears perked up. This was the first time the cosmophages had ever mentioned these Dawning Chambers. Were they and the neurocilial nodes one and the same thing?

    Surely it can¡¯t be this easy, he marvelled, fighting down a flood of optimism.

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    ¡°Then tell me where it is and I¡¯ll handle the rest,¡± Zildiz said without hesitation.

    ¡°Oh really? And how exactly do you propose to do that?¡± Exar challenged.

    Zildiz reached for the nearest sentry drone and gave it a shove, sending it crashing to the ground. Setting her foot against it for leverage, she seized the multi-barrelled gun and heaved, taunt cords of muscle on her arms bulging, but to no avail.

    ¡°Impressive,¡± Exar said, his scorn withering, ¡°Now if you¡¯re quite finished¡ª¡±

    Her eyes glittered with a cold and calculated malice. Zildiz reached into her waistband and slipped out something tiny, white and angular which on closer inspection turned out to be a shard of ceramic, the edges ground down till it resembled a keen arrowhead.

    ¡°Woah now¡­¡± Rene slowly held up his hands in a gesture of de-escalation, ¡°¡­where¡¯d you get that?¡±

    The Gallivant reached into the gun¡¯s pintle mounting and inserted the shiv¡¯s sharp point into one of the large screwheads that kept it fastened it to the robot¡¯s arm. She gave a few twists of her wrist and tossed the shiv and the loosened screws aside. Zildiz gave the gun another savage wrench. There was a shriek of rusted metal as she staggered back in surprise, almost falling over from the weight of the weapon she now held clutched to her chest. The bulky feed chute with its thousands of cartridges trailed beneath it along with a tangled mess of wiring. Zildiz pawed at the weapon in a clumsy attempt to activate it.

    ¡°Ok-ay,¡± Exar tried not to seem impressed, ¡°So what¡¯s next? You gonna beat the Commodore¡¯s brains out with that?¡±

    ¡°Fairly straightforward design,¡± Neroth mused, running a hand over the wires, ¡°If it¡¯s anything like the next generation of helix grafts we¡¯re scheduled to receive, then it should have an alternating electromotive component.¡±

    ¡°You know about next-gen grafts?¡± Zildiz said with a note of jealousy.

    ¡°Uncle Kryptus knows a lot of things,¡± Neroth said with pride, ¡°Anyways, maybe this is the synaptic that completes the chain?¡± the boy pointed at a pair of large red buttons on the back of the control unit. Zildiz thumbed the buttons and was sent reeling by an enormous recoil as a stream of tracer rounds chewed the opposite wall to powder, slicing a ceiling panel clean in half before she managed to get her finger off the trigger.

    ¡°Ain¡¯t quite as dumb as you seem, are you?¡± Exar muttered.

    ¡°Point us at our target,¡± Zildiz ordered, ¡°Where is the mainframe?¡±

    ¡°Where do you think it would be?¡± Rene blurted out. Zildiz looked at him sharply.

    ¡°That¡¯s a stupid question. How am I supposed to know that, Fleet-man?¡±

    And indeed, it was. It was mistake pushing for it so soon, but the temptation had proved too great. Rene tried to mask his blunder by clarifying:

    ¡°If these Dawning Chambers fulfil the same purpose, then just ask yourself: where would be the most logical place to put them?¡±

    Rene hung on to her next words with bated breath. But to his surprise it was Neroth who fell for his clumsy trap, saying:

    ¡°On Arachea such central processing sites are sacred places where we kindreds can commune with the god directly and ask for guidance. As such, they¡¯re grown in neutral places far from the zones of conflict.¡±

    ¡°How does the Vitalus enforce neutrality among the factions?¡± Rene did his best impression of a clueless outsider overcome with curiosity.

    ¡°Easily,¡± Neroth grinned, clearly finding Rene¡¯s question nonsensical, ¡°Nobody would dare trespass on hallowed ground in the first place. It¡¯d be suicide. Worse, even. The chambers are also where the Vitalus keeps the Hollowores in stasis, ready to defend the site at a moment¡¯s notice. Any single one of those vessels can exterminate an entire kindred.¡±

    Rene didn¡¯t doubt it. The hostile, blimp-like creature which the Vitalus had sent after them had been in the act of levelling a rainforest just to get at him, and would have succeeded if not for Exar¡¯s desperate ramming manoeuvre.

    ¡°They must be very important to warrant that sort of protection,¡± he commented.

    ¡°That goes without saying. The chambers double as the decision-making cortexes of the Vitalus,¡± Neroth nodded.

    And there we have it, Rene thought with a rush of satisfaction. A very good start. Now we know that the nodes are simultaneously places of worship, weapon depots and headquarters for the enemy.

    Meaning they would have to be huge. Huge enough to stick out even under the canopy of the rainforests. But if that was the case, then why hadn¡¯t the Commodore spotted them with his array of celestial instruments?

    Rene caught Zildiz staring at him, the frown on her face deepening. Had she caught on to him?

    They were interrupted by a loud groan that sounded like metal shearing, and the ambient lights flickered and went out, replaced moments later by a worrying shade of amber.

    ¡°Fascinating input, kiddo,¡± Exar interjected, ¡°None of which applies to our present predicament. There¡¯s probably an army of combat drones converging on us as we speak. I can¡¯t jam them all. This is not a fight we can win.¡±

    ¡°And we can¡¯t take the shuttle to those asteroid settlements without being shot out of the sky,¡± Zildiz stood her ground, ¡°If it comes to it, I¡¯d prefer going out on my own terms.¡±

    ¡°You mean uselessly, in a fit of gratuitous violence?¡± Rene shot back.

    ¡°Well, it¡¯s not like Exar has left us much choice now. The Commodore knows something¡¯s gone wrong and he¡¯s coming for us. At this point, it¡¯s us or him.¡±

    Having said her piece, Zildiz planted her feet and pointed the cannon square at the dormitory hatch. It occurred to Rene that she would probably die in that pose, too, as firm and unwavering as a statue. Her face betrayed no emotion save for a slight tightening of her jawline.

    It wasn¡¯t much, but Rene seized upon the hope that it presented.

    ¡°That might not be true,¡± he ventured.

    ¡°It isn¡¯t?¡± Neroth and Exar chimed in unison.

    ¡°What if¡­¡± Rene¡¯s voice cracked under the strain of the moment and he cleared his throat, ¡°¡­what if I told you I could get into this mainframe. Maybe even destroy it from within. All without having to fight our way through.¡±

    Zildiz¡¯s pupils slid sideways like those of a chameleon, wet and unblinking. Rene hastened to explain:

    ¡°I¡¯m supposed to be meeting the Commodore today start my audiomemetic lessons at the command centre¡ªit¡¯s this sort of large switch room at the heart of this place where the Commodore controls things. If what Neroth just told us about the Dawning Chambers applies this base, then the arsenal should be right around the corner¡ª¡±

    ¡°He¡¯s letting you into the command centre? Christ onna cracker, man, but you really shoulda led with that!¡± Exar interrupted, ¡°If he¡¯s putting you through audiomemetics, then he¡¯ll have to jack you into the terminals there, neural pairing and all.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m afraid you¡¯ve rather lost me,¡± Rene confessed.

    ¡°That¡¯s fine. You¡¯ll pick it up easy enough once your brainwaves are bouncing around inside; the interface is highly intuitive,¡± Exar promised, ¡°What¡¯s important is that now we have an opening. If we do things right we can seize total control of this facility.¡±

    ¡°Alright, alright. Okay,¡± Rene nodded vigorously despite his mounting confusion, ¡°What do you need me to do?¡±

    ¡°Just play along for now and tune into your classes like a good boy. That¡¯s how we get in. That¡¯s how we¡¯ll beat him.¡±

    Harsh klaxons blared from hidden recesses within the walls, and the amber lights strobed like tripflares burning in the night.

    ¡°Ahoy down there!¡± the Commodore¡¯s amplified voice came punching through the bulkheads and the set of airlocks down the hallway, ¡°Are you listening closely?¡±

    Rene cupped his hands to his mouth to shout a reply but stopped when Zildiz twitched the cannon in his direction. Beads of sweat glistened on her forehead as she eyed the entrance with the intensity of a cornered animal.

    ¡°I¡¯ll take that silence for a yes. Now hear this,¡± the Commodore continued, voice simmering with barely-restrained rage, ¡°I don¡¯t know what you clowns are up to, but you¡¯ve just interrupted my afternoon siesta! And without my beauty sleep, I¡¯m afraid I can¡¯t be held accountable for my ugly disposition. I¡¯ll give you till the count of ten to surrender. When that time expires, I¡¯ll vent the air in the dormitories and leave you sucking on lemons. Won¡¯t quite achieve vacuum, but I assure you, it¡¯ll damn well feel like it. I know your sort will survive just about anything. Course, without your ectoparasitic enhancements I doubt that¡¯s the case. Care to find out?¡±

    ¡°Look, I get it,¡± Rene whispered urgently, ¡°All your life, you¡¯ve been told my people are the enemy. My ancestors fought yours and burned down paradise, trapped you in a season of war unending. But there¡¯s just one problem with that story.¡±

    ¡°Yes?¡± Zildiz said quietly.

    ¡°It¡¯s the same one I¡¯ve been hearing all my life, too. I took it for the gospel truth, and never once put a face to that enemy. Till the day I met you.¡±

    Her arms trembled from the weight of the gun. Sensing another opportunity, Rene made his play:

    ¡°When I look at you now, all I can see is another soul who¡¯s a long way from home. Maybe your side was right and mine was wrong. Could be it¡¯s the other way around. But does it really matter?¡±

    The Commodore began to count with a sing-song cadence:

    ¡°One. Two. Buckle my shoe.¡±

    ¡°Right now it¡¯s just us four against that lunatic out there.¡± Rene¡¯s voice threatened to crack again, ¡°Do you really want to die over someone else¡¯s squabble from a thousand years ago?¡±

    ¡°Three. Four. Knock at the door.¡±

    The rivets on the hatchway groaned and popped as the pressure within the room changed, vents in the walls sucking in greedily. Rene felt, or at least imagined, the air in the room growing thinner by the moment.

    ¡°Zildiz, please,¡± he begged, ¡°For Sol¡¯s sake¡­¡±

    ¡°Arvin learned to fly the other day,¡± Zildiz said, a wistful smile gracing her features, ¡°Back in Cthonis, I mean.¡±

    Rene did a double take.

    ¡°Who¡¯s Arvin?¡±

    ¡°My youngest,¡± she continued obliviously, ¡°Runt of the litter. You should¡¯ve seen him soar. Like a bird on the wing.¡±

    She¡¯s married? Rene thought with a tinge of disappointment that was quickly smothered by embarrassment. Here he was with literal seconds left to live, and yet he was somehow fixating on all the wrong things. Priorities, priorities!

    ¡°Five. Six. Pick up your sticks.¡±

    She tossed the cannon at his feet, jolting back him back into focus.

    ¡°Don¡¯t make me regret this, Rene.¡±

    For an instant their gazes met and Rene was certain that she would see right through him. He broke off eye contact with a terse nod, then snatched up the weapon and lugged it over to the entrance.

    ¡°Seven. Eight. Lay them all¡ª¡±

    ¡°Wait!¡± Rene hollered, banging on the hatch with his fist.

    ¡°That you, ensign?¡±

    ¡°Aye sir.¡±

    ¡°Huh. And here I thought they¡¯d skinned and ate you whole. Why didn¡¯t you speak up earlier?¡±

    His suspicion was palpable. Rene chose his words carefully:

    ¡°I was¡­reasoning with them, sir.¡±

    ¡°And are they reasonable?¡±

    ¡°They¡¯re giving up, if that¡¯s what you mean.¡±

    ¡°Alright then. Grab your ankles and pucker up. I¡¯m coming in.¡±

 Chapter 69: Warsims (Part 1)

    It took a bit longer than expected to get the hatch back open since the Commodore had to re-equalize pressure on both sides of the airlock. Rene put those precious minutes to good use. The ceiling was too high up for him to reach alone, so he got Neroth to climb onto his shoulders. Working together they could just about reach the damaged ventilation shaft.

    ¡°I¡¯ll work on slipping a malscript into your subconch routines,¡± Exar said as they lifted him up, ¡°We¡¯ll crack this joint open from inside, you¡¯ll see. You¡¯re our trojan horse now, Rene!¡±

    ¡°Whatever you say. Now get lost!¡± Rene hissed. Neroth shoved Exar unceremoniously back in through the hole.

    ¡°¡­our trojan horse!¡± Ear repeated as he rolled and bounced out of sight. Neroth hopped back down and said:

    ¡°What now?¡±

    ¡°Let¡¯s get our stories straight,¡± Rene said quickly, ¡°There was an accident, some kind electrical malfunction. The pair of you subdued me and used the opportunity to make your escape,¡± he pointed at the rent in the ceiling above them, ¡°But you couldn¡¯t quite fit through the gap, so you gave it up as soon as he cut off the air supply. Simple as that.¡±

    ¡°That won¡¯t fool him,¡± Zildiz shook her head, ¡°Too many holes.¡±

    ¡°Then we¡¯ll improvise,¡± Rene snapped, knowing only too well that she was right.

    The airlock swung out and open. A quadrupedal drone craned its serpentine neck over the rim of the hatch, cautiously surveying the interior. Rene bent over and clutched his ankles as instructed, Zildiz and Neroth reluctantly following suit.

    The scout retracted its head. No sooner had it done this when about a dozen flat black simulacrums fluttered on sets of rotors, dragging behind them thin wires unwinding from spools fixed to their underbellies. Without warning they began emitting a series of sharp concussive blasts and blinding flashes of light that seared Rene¡¯s retinas with white-hot afterimages.

    Before he knew it Rene¡¯s cheek was pressed flat against the cold floor, the weight of his body coming down on the side of his neck as something held him suspended by his ankles.

    He twisted around to look over his shoulder and saw a chrome goliath standing over him, a headless, stalking thing that was all torso and torsioned limbs, slender in frame but possessed of frightful agility. Two others just like it were pinning Neroth and Zildiz to the ground. Rene wasn¡¯t even convinced they were real at first¡ªduring the pyrotechnics they had simply blinked into the room with the speed of apparitions. They were nothing like the clumsy gun carriages, and moved with grace of living creatures, complete with artificial musculature and dextrous paws. One pair of arms cradled compact projectile weapons while the rest held them in place without much effort.

    They walked bandy-legged and hunched over to support a ribbed, flexible abdomen which they kept folded neatly beneath them like the deflated bladder of an accordion.

    Like the hovering ones they too trailed a length of cable from a spool attached to their rear ends. The reason for this became clear when the Commodore¡¯s amplified voice boomed from each one of the machines, stuttering from being slightly out of sync:

    ¡°I¡¯ve got these units hooked up via fibre optic cable, so don¡¯t even think about trying to hack them. Speaking of which, I¡¯d like to know who it was that jammed the signal to my sentry drones. And don¡¯t say it was the ensign here, because we all know he hasn¡¯t the brains for it. No offense,¡± he added, the simulacrum flipping Rene back onto his feet and dusting him off by way of apology.

    ¡°None taken,¡± Rene replied, his bruised feelings stating otherwise, ¡°I tried to talk them out of escaping, but they got ahold of the sentry¡¯s gun and subdued me.¡±

    He tried to come up with an explanation for the downed drones, but floundered hopelessly until Zildiz intervened.

    ¡°If you examine my inner ear you¡¯ll find an implant,¡± she said with frigid distaste, ¡°A magnetosynaptic organ capable of high-power transmissions in the 65.9 megahertz to 5.8 gigahertz range.¡±

    ¡°Interesting. I wonder why that didn¡¯t show up when I scanned you earlier. Then again, perhaps I was searching in the wrong places.¡±

    The Commodore held her up by the ankles like a meat cricket that was to be dressed for the pot. Rene had a sudden vision of the goliath whipping its hands outwards and tearing her bodily in half. But the headless stalker only raised her up until her head was level with its torso, where a swivelling lens set into the centre of its chest examined her closely.

    ¡°As I suspected: I was looking too far ahead the timeline. Yours is still fused to the cochlea. Towards the end of the war your predecessors had their implants wired directly into their brain stems, to shave off a few precious milliseconds from the latency. Which may not seem like much, but in close combat situations those milliseconds could mean everything. I suppose your iteration isn¡¯t too far along the evolutionary arms race yet.¡±

    ¡°Our predecessors?¡± Neroth brows knitted together in curiosity, ¡°You¡¯ve met other Gallivants?¡±

    ¡°Quite a nasty encystment you¡¯ve got growing around it,¡± the Commodore continued with a curious detachment, ¡°It¡¯ll have to come out, of course. That goes for you too,¡± he told Neroth. Abruptly the stalkers straightened out their elbows, double-edged punch daggers shooting out from internalized sheathes in their forearms. Rene felt his throat tighten, said quickly:

    ¡°I¡¯d advise against that, sir.¡±

    ¡°Rene, I understand that you harbour a certain misplaced sympathy for these specimens,¡± came the Commodore¡¯s frigid reply, ¡°But my patience has its limits, limits which they¡¯ve now firmly exceeded. I charged you with keeping these prisoners in line, and yet here I find them repaying my mercy with acts of sabotage. This cannot go unanswered. In accordance with catechism 8, we must excise with extreme prejudice.¡±

    The stalkers forced the two squirming cosmophages onto their knees and held the blades against their heads, the edges emitting a low hum exactly like Rene¡¯s monomachete.

    ¡°They¡¯ve made a grave mistake. But you¡¯re on the cusp of committing one even worse. Execute them and we¡¯ll lose this war once and for all.¡±

    Without releasing their hold on their captives the stalkers all turned to look at Rene, doing a marvellous job of looking both amused and disdainful despite their blank features.

    ¡°A tad melodramatic, even for you,¡± the Commodore said with a bark of laughter. But Rene thought he saw the punch daggers waver a little¡ªonly for a moment, but it was enough of a tell.

    ¡°The electrical systems went on the fritz. They took it for an opportunity and attempted to escape. Because of course they would. You said it yourself: you don¡¯t even consider them people. They have every reason to hate and oppose us.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not running for captaincy. I don¡¯t need anyone to like me. I need only win.¡±

    Rene stepped within reach of the stalker nearest him and whispered rapidly under his breath:

    ¡°And for that we must learn the disposition of the enemy¡¯s forces. I have something, sir. They¡¯ve started talking¡­¡±

    He let his words hang in the air for a spell, praying that the Commodore would take the bait but unsure if the machine itself, which did not possess anything remotely resembling human ears, had even heard him right.

    ¡°Just give them another chance to prove their usefulness,¡± he said aloud. Out of the corner of his eye he saw a wild-eyed Neroth struggling in the grip of his executioner, the blade drawing a line of blood as it dimpled the base of his neck.

    ¡°Rot and die, you worm-ridden corpse!¡± Zildiz spat, ¡°You¡¯ll get nothing from me, you hear? Nothing!¡±

    The rest of Zildiz¡¯ tirade was cut short as the stalkers uncurled their hanging abdomens and spewed torrents of grey ooze over her and Neroth. The ooze hardened upon contact into strands of rope with which the stalkers bound them, their many arms turning them over until they were encased in glistening cocoons.

    ¡°That¡¯s quite enough out of you,¡± the Commodore said as the drones hauled two twitching bundles out through the door.

    ¡°But what are you going to do to them?¡± Rene asked, listening to their muffled screams receding down the passageways.

    ¡°Relax, will you,¡± the remaining stalker gestured for Rene to start walking, ¡°I¡¯ll have the medic bots dig it out of them in the surgery ward. So long as they¡¯re talking to you, I can¡¯t afford to lose them. They are talking to you, aren¡¯t they?¡±

    The Commodore¡¯s extended a hand and brought him to dead stop by placing a palm against his chest, hard enough to bruise Rene¡¯s ribs.

    ¡°Of course, sir,¡± he wheezed.

    ¡°How many targets did you identify?¡± the Commodore hammered bullet-point questions at him as they swung along at a brisk pace, ¡°Do you think it¡¯s possible to coordinate a strike mission with what they¡¯ve given you?¡±

    ¡°I think so. Uh, I¡¯m not sure. I really don¡¯t know,¡± Rene answered in sequential order.

    The Commodore uttered an incoherent snarl of frustration and demanded: ¡°Do you actually have new intel, or do I have carve your friends up after all?¡±

    ¡°There are these places which Zildiz¡¯s people call Dawning Chambers,¡± Rene blurted, ¡°They either pray there or speak with the Vitalus directly, I¡¯m not sure which. It¡¯s sort of a cross between your command centre and a big-arse church. And I mean huge. Huge!¡± he repeated for emphasis, ¡°Each one can apparently house a fleet of Hollowores. I don¡¯t know if that qualifies as a major neurocilial node. Though it seems to fit the bill.¡±If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.

    ¡°Why, you conniving little cunt,¡± the Commodore¡¯s said admiringly, ¡°Beautiful work, ensign. We¡¯re onto them now!¡±

    The stalker broke into an eager lope, its locomotion a strange mix of ground bat and arthropod. Rene had to jog to keep up now and do his level best not to trip over the fibre optic cable, the motorized spool winding it back up as they sped along,

    They reached the platform of the train (or rather, the platform of the ginormous gun that was pretending to be a train) and one gut-wrenching movement later arrived back at the command centre, his head still spinning like a top.

    Rene leaned over the side and nearly upchucked up his breakfast eggs. But the stalker impatiently took him under the armpits and pulled him into the amphitheatre with its walls of glowing screens. Some of the desks and chairs had been stacked into a corner to make space for a monolithic slab of metal that now dominated the centre of the room. It reminded the Rene of the Engine¡¯s safety pod, but larger and sepulchral. Beside it stood the Commodore himself in his gun carriage, furiously mashing buttons with his long fingers and frowning at the holographic display.

    ¡°Something that big should¡¯ve showed up on the false colour imagery,¡± the flayed man tapped dirty fingernail against his incisors, ¡°Unless of course they¡¯ve completely subterranean. Did they indicate any important landmarks?¡±

    ¡°No. But they didn¡¯t say the nodes were underground, either.¡±

    ¡°You didn¡¯t think to ask?¡±

    ¡°No. Why does it matter?¡±

    ¡°Because the catapult munitions can¡¯t penetrate past a certain depth. Not without modifying the payloads into proper bunker busters, but that¡¯ll come at the cost of shrinking the blast radius.¡±

    Rene raised the point that if the objective was only to destroy just the nodes themselves, then surely the relative size of the explosion itself was irrelevant. But the Commodore explained that the mass catapult had been designed to sling giant ice cubes into Arachnea¡¯s oceans, and that both its hardware and computers could not guarantee the precision strikes required of a tactical ballistic weapon.

    ¡°Well, maybe they just need more time at the range,¡± Rene suggested.

    ¡°Excuse me?¡± the Commodore broke off in the middle of his lecture and stared at him.

    ¡°Don¡¯t mean to brag,¡± he boasted, ¡°But I¡¯m a pretty good shot myself. Not as good as Harmer, but I could still teach your computers a thing or two about marksmanship.¡±

    ¡°Who the hell¡¯s Harmer? Never mind. Listen, the catapult doesn¡¯t quite work like that¡ª¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s all about the three-point shooting stance, my good man,¡± Rene adjusted his feet and brought up an imaginary rifle, squinting down the iron sights, ¡°Find that nerve cluster, exhale, then gently squeeze the trigger¡ª¡±

    ¡°Enough!¡±

    The Commodore hissed and held up a hand for quiet, spittle flying through the gaps in his slatted yellow teeth, ¡°I¡¯m sorry, but your ignorance has become unbearable!¡±

    ¡°Only trying to help¡ª¡±

    ¡°Shut up!¡± the Commodore held up a hand and the lid of the metal sepulchre swung up and open with a jet of cold air. The interior was filled with a sinister gelatinous substance, masses of cabling sitting at the bottom of it like a coiled-up ball of sleeping vipers reclining on a river bed.

    ¡°Get in there! Shoo!¡±

    ¡°But¡ª¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s an order ensign! I¡¯m going to be busy with target acquisition for the next few hours, but by the time I¡¯m done I want you up to speed with 26<sup>th</sup> century sensibilities. Because right now this feels a bit too much like jibber-jabbering with Gilgamesh of Uruk. Now go educate yourself.¡±

    Rene had no other choice but to climb into the wet, clammy embrace of the sepulchre. The lid closed over him with a bang and for a moment he was left to grope in utter darkness, unable to shake the feeling of being entombed alive. Squelching slime coated his limbs and back. He sat in the dripping quiet for what seemed a long time, unsure of how to proceed.

    This uncertainty lasted only a moment, replaced with horror as the wires suddenly took on a life of their own and began to curl around his chest. Rene snatched at them in a slippery panic as they crept upwards, oozing inexorably for his throat, pulling at his cheeks.

    Bright pastel colours splashed across the inner walls of his coffin, painting a vision of a bright and sunlit field awash with dandelions.

    ¡°Welcome to the Mark 14 audiomemetic learning module,¡± chimed the warm female voice. Rene could almost imagine it coming from a jolly plump schoolmarm, the kind who brought biscuits for all the children just because, ¡°For your own safety, please don¡¯t damage the neural couplings. Allow the couplings to find your implants. If you¡¯re experiencing distress, follow these instructions. Ready? Breathe in¡­¡±

    Overriding his instincts, he did as he was told and went slack, allowing the moist tendrils to creep up to his face, pulling insistently at his eyelids and ear canals. He sucked in a sharp breath as they folded aside his lids and stabbed past his orbital, reaching somewhere impossibly deep.

    ¡°¡­hold for five seconds¡­¡±

    It began as a trickle of light and sound worming up from out of the grey matter of his brain. Like a voice within a voice, not that of his inner consciousness but that of a stranger melding with his own, as impossible as two rivers winding back to merge with the fountainhead from whence both had sprung.

    ¡°¡­and breathe out.¡±

    The river roared, his sense of time and self washing away in the flood. He was sitting slumped over in the front of a classroom, knees knocking uncomfortably against a desk three sizes too small for him. Before the dusty chalkboard stood a cinnamon-brown woman in a frock who was very spitting image of the mental likeness he¡¯d conceived from her voice.

    ¡°Uh¡­¡± he began, bits of drool leaking out the sides of his mouth, ¡°Guugh?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry honey,¡± she beamed at him, ¡°Is this your first neural pairing?¡±

    Rene blinked and shook his head, still having trouble finding his voice. He¡¯d gone through a similar sensation when he¡¯d taken mental control of the Divine Engine, but that had been nowhere near so raw and vivid as this.

    ¡°Oh, you poor baby,¡± she simpered, ¡°Don¡¯t you worry, we¡¯ll go easy on you.¡±

    ¡°I know this can¡¯t be real,¡± he said, clearing his throat, ¡°Whose life am I living?¡±

    ¡°Everyone¡¯s,¡± she said sweetly, ¡°And nobody¡¯s. It¡¯s a composite engram file, compiled from thousands of lessons taught in a hundred different classrooms recorded by students who volunteered to contribute to this program. They had to learn things the hard way back then, through lessons and aptitude tests. Thanks to them, you get to skip all the long boring parts.¡±

    ¡°Who are you?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m a construct that your subconsciousness is instinctively layering over the composite. Put simply, I¡¯m a figment of your imagination.¡±

    He nodded as though it all made sense.

    ¡°Call me Mrs. Figgy.¡±

    ¡°I like figs. They put them in all the good ration bars with molasses and cricket meat. I wish they¡¯d put more fruit in our dry rations, but it¡¯s mostly lard and nuts. I hate lard,¡± he confessed, though he couldn¡¯t really say how he knew all these details. Shyly he put forward a more pertinent question:

    ¡°Who am I, again?¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ll let you in on a secret,¡± Mrs. Figgy winked, ¡°In here, you can become whoever you want to be.¡±

    They began with the alphabet. Or rather, two alphabets, only the first of which he actually knew. The second writing system was called Cyrillic, and was the same one that was scrawled all over the walls inside the lunar base.

    ¡°A is for apple and §Ò is for §Ò¨¢§Ò§å§ê§Ü§Ñ,¡± Mrs. Figgy said. The blackboard behind her rippled like a green pond kissed by the breeze, there appeared an animation of a snaggle-toothed grandmother biting into a crunchy apple, juices dribbling down her chin.

    Somehow the combination of visual and audible cues linking the writing systems together made things easier to remember. He repeated the words perfectly on the first try and was astonished when his tastebuds suddenly registered the sweet richness of dried fig bars. Mrs. Figgy saw the look of amazement on his face and laughed:

    ¡°That¡¯s the nootropic reward system kicking in,¡± she explained, ¡°Your pleasure centres get a treat each time you answer correctly. Now let¡¯s move on to vocabulary¡­¡±

    The pairing of two languages continued, Russian and English tied together with funny illustrations made ridiculous on purpose. This went on for only ancestors knew how long, though strangely enough Rene never once felt bored. He never got any questions wrong, either; the ¡®treats¡¯ were simply too nice to pass up. The lesson ended too soon and he found himself ravenous for more. Mrs. Figgy was only too happy to oblige.

    Next up was maths, which he breezed over with the same ease until he reached the uncharted territory that lay beyond algebra. At the academy only the top honour students went on to take advanced mathematics courses before being drafted into various research and development programs. But while the underlying proofs for calculus themselves were devilishly difficult, the actual computations themselves were trivial, with differentiation boiling down to the memorization of a few key tricks and manipulations. And memorization was never a problem with Mrs. Figgy¡¯s magic blackboard.

    The sciences posed even less of a challenge. The nootropic reward system seemed to have the added side-effect of cementing every new memory in place just as soon as he formed them, and so what would have taken him decades by rote became simply a matter of repeating things once before moving on to a practice problem or two.

    They were in the midst of finding the angle required for a projectile of a certain mass and initial velocity (neglecting air resistance) to reach its target when Mrs. Figgy said:

    ¡°Of course, it¡¯s one thing to figure this out on paper, but quite another to do it for real in a non-permissive environment.¡±

    ¡°Is that a challenge?¡± he said. Pride welled up in him from some inexplicable source of confidence.

    ¡°Sure. Why not?¡± Mrs. Figgy coaxed him on with a mischievous playfulness she hadn¡¯t shown before.

    ¡°I accept. Say, do I get to blow things up now?¡±

    ¡°I thought you¡¯d never ask¡­¡±

    The walls of the classroom fell away like the sides of a cardboard box. They stood beneath a smoke-wracked sky, the air rent by an unearthly shrieking that went on unceasing, breathless and insane. The mud quivered beneath them, pummelled by enormous impacts of explosive shells going off in the distance as well as some deeper sustained refrain. Through the clouds of rising dust and sheets of flame he saw a living carpet of what seemed to be white maggots moving over the blackened earth. They came a little closer and he made out the outline of their gourd heads and the waving forest of their spears, and then he realized that he was looking at the single largest horde of Amits that mankind had ever faced.

    On second thought, I¡¯d rather go back to doing differentiation, he thought dismally. Then the Amits shouldered their weapons and pointed them in his general direction, and the ends of what he¡¯d mistaken for crude lances began to erupt into puffs of smoke.

    Bullets zipped overhead. Terror seized him. He¡¯d been shooting at gourdies all his life, but never once had they shot back. Unmanned, he took shelter in the nearest hole, a gun emplacement lined with piles of sandbags, just one among hundreds of howitzers drawn up along the line.

    Soldiers in khaki uniforms climbed into the emplacement alongside him, their appearance outlandish but familiar, defined by stamped wide-brimmed helmets which clattered as they got into position, their bare faces uncovered by masks.

    ¡°The boches are coming,¡± one cried, ¡°Fritz the Hun, come to kill for the Kaiser! Quick, boys, let¡¯s knock ¡®em dead!¡±

    Mrs. Figgy came in swishing a riding crop, her frock replaced by baggy fatigues.

    ¡°Quit kissing dirt and get up, Rene,¡± she snapped. Her warm voice had taken on the rough timbre of a drill sergeant.

    ¡°Are you talking to me?¡± he asked blearily.

    ¡°Well, you¡¯re the only here,¡± she replied, ¡°Me being your subconscious and all.¡±

    She flicked the riding crop at the advancing swarm of Amits and called out:

    ¡°Target, that column of infantry. Fire at will!¡±

    The crews moved like clockwork, cannoneers lugging the pointed projectiles which they slammed and locked into the breeches of the rear-loading guns. Rene thought they¡¯d made the silly mistake of forgetting to ram down the powder charge before the projectile, but the booming retort of the guns seconds later told him otherwise. It was an ingenious innovation to have both the shell and explosive housed in the same metal casing¡ªRene filed it away for future reference as the batteries went off in thunderous unison.

    In an instant what had seemed like a hopeless situation completely reversed as the horde was dispersed by a line of cotton-candy clouds. What few stragglers broke through were cut down by scattered shots from the trenches on the other side of the hill where companies of riflemen held the line.

    His side waved their helmets in the air and jeered at the foe as they retreated, leaving their dead in awful heaps in the craters. The stench of cordite stirred his memory, fragments of his old self bobbing back up like river flotsam.

    He was Rene Louvoture, a pathfinder, and while the men around him were not soldiers of the Fleet, they were still comrades in the only struggle that had ever really mattered.

    Seeing Amits again roused his hatred of them, and that hatred brought clarity. It was all quite clear to him now: humanity was at war with the universe itself. Since before the inception of the species the mute, uncaring laws of nature had conspired to render his kind extinct. Nowhere was this fact better exemplified than with the Amits.

    They were creatures of a separate and alien provenance, a race to whom evolution had absent-mindedly assigned the duty of erasing the remnants of a civilization that had once spanned the stars. This was a struggle between two opposing forces, with mankind on one end and all of creation on the other.

    Fortunately, his side had the better artillery.

 Announcement: Patreon bug is now fixed! Also, sneak peak of next chapter.

    Amidst the thud and crash of the howitzers Mrs. Figgy set up a blackboard and lectured him on how to deploy aiming stakes, train the guns, use the written values in the range tables, and all the rest of the necessary technical expertise. The howitzers of this make-believe army were decades more advanced than that of the Fleet, replying on long range plunging fire instead of direct fire.

    Rene watched the gun crews at work for a while to learn the rhythm of things before joining in as an ammo bearer, bringing up the shells stacked on tarpaulins at the ammo dump in the rear. Soon Mrs. Figgy had him promoted him to gunner, and by the time the first Amit attack was beaten back Rene was chief of section and directing fire missions with seamless efficiency.

    During lulls in the fighting he sat on empty ammo crates and smoked ¡®fags¡¯ with the lads. Fags were chopped and dried leaves rolled up in paper that one lit on the end with a match, producing choking vapours that you then inhaled for the dubious benefit of coughing up your lungs. But it was relaxing somehow, and once he got started Rene found he could not stop. Besides, smoking made for good conversation.

    ¡°So do the Amits ever stop coming?¡± he asked, ¡°Or does this illusion go on indefinitely?¡±

    ¡°Things can¡¯t go on like this,¡± Tommy spoke confidently, ¡°Not after the frogs whipped the huns at Verdun. This whole affair will be over by Christmas, mark my words.¡±

    ¡°Not this shite again. Besides, you¡¯ve got it backwards,¡± another said. With the exception of Mrs. Figgy, apparently everyone had that same first name, ¡°Between Churchill¡¯s blundering at the Dardanelles and that slaughterhouse they call Somme, I shouldn¡¯t wonder if the Kaiser heaves us back over the channel in time for plum pudding.¡±

    ¡°The Boches will be back,¡± said a third Tommy, a fag quivering on the corner of his trembling lips, ¡°They always come back. Over and over and over again.¡±Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.

    Their rations came wrapped in tin boxes that opened with a tiny key that rolled up the lid. Lunch was tinned meat, watery rum and biscuits, but after hours of hard labour Rene had never known such earthly bliss. As they ate Rene learned that the tommies fought for an entity known as the BEF, a civilization many decades more advanced in terms of technology. Rene knew they were historical and not fictional because of the many unmistakeable similarities between the BEF and the Fleet, from the way they spoke to the strict class divisions between officers and enlisted men¡ªMrs. Figgy for instance never once interacted with the tommies other than to scream orders at them.

    Nobody seemed to know what the cause of the war was, only that the press back home had started calling it the Great War, though Rene struggled to see what was so great about it.

    One of the tommies sang a sad, whimsical song:

    ¡°We¡¯re here because,

    We¡¯re here because,

    We¡¯re here because we¡¯re here.

    We¡¯re here because,

    We¡¯re here because,

    We¡¯re here because we¡¯re here.¡±

    Rene felt a lump in his throat as a bout of homesickness came over him. Mrs. Figgy saw him wiping his eyes and said:

    ¡°They are only an illusion, Rene. An amalgamation of historical video games, heightened by real combat footage against cosmophages.¡±

    ¡°I know,¡± Rene cleared his throat, ¡°The Amits in here run funny, move too much like human beings do.¡±

    ¡°And why do you think that is?¡± Mrs. Figgy

    Like all proper soldiers they gossiped, trading rumours of terrifying new innovations made by the ¡®boches¡¯ (their word for Amits). They spoke of bouncing land mines that leapt up in the air and detonated at chest height, cutting down whole swathes of men, of bombs that released a creeping green mist that could clear out whole trench systems if the wind blew just right.

    All of this sounded very far-fetched to Rene. Amits never made anything more complicated than rudimentary tools. Though he had heard of how, during the years-long battle of Assail, some warrior broods had developed harder exoskeletons resistant to bayonets, he ascribed this change more to some freak act of nature than to any intelligence on their part.

    He remembered the acid sculptures and star charts he¡¯d discovered back in Mound Euler and began to think twice. If the Amits were smart enough to make art and mythologize, then who knew what they were truly capable of?

    Then the second wave of attacks hit their lines, and Rene learned it firsthand.

 Chapter 70: Warsims (Part 2)

    Amidst the thud and crash of the howitzers Mrs. Figgy set up a blackboard and lectured him on how to deploy aiming stakes, train the guns, use the written values in the range tables, and all the rest of the necessary technical expertise. The howitzers of this make-believe army were decades more advanced than that of the Fleet, replying on long range plunging fire instead of direct fire.

    Rene watched the gun crews at work for a while to learn the rhythm of things before joining in as an ammo bearer, bringing up the shells stacked on tarpaulins at the ammo dump in the rear. Soon Mrs. Figgy had him promoted him to gunner, and by the time the first Amit attack was beaten back Rene was chief of section and directing fire missions with seamless efficiency.

    During lulls in the fighting he sat on empty ammo crates and smoked ¡®fags¡¯ with the lads. Fags were chopped and dried leaves rolled up in paper that one lit on the end with a match, producing choking vapours that you then inhaled for the dubious benefit of coughing up your lungs. But it was relaxing somehow, and once he got started Rene found he could not stop. Besides, smoking made for good conversation.

    ¡°So do the Amits ever stop coming?¡± he asked, ¡°Or does this illusion go on indefinitely?¡±

    ¡°Things can¡¯t go on like this,¡± Tommy spoke confidently, ¡°Not after the frogs whipped the huns at Verdun. This whole affair will be over by Christmas, mark my words.¡±

    ¡°Not this shite again. Besides, you¡¯ve got it backwards,¡± another said. With the exception of Mrs. Figgy, apparently everyone had that same first name, ¡°Between Churchill¡¯s blundering at the Dardanelles and that slaughterhouse they call Somme, I shouldn¡¯t wonder if the Kaiser heaves us back over the channel in time for plum pudding.¡±

    ¡°The Boches will be back,¡± said a third Tommy, a fag quivering on the corner of his trembling lips, ¡°They always come back. Over and over and over again.¡±

    Their rations came wrapped in tin boxes that opened with a tiny key that rolled up the lid. Lunch was tinned meat, watery rum and biscuits, but after hours of hard labour Rene had never known such earthly bliss. As they ate Rene learned that the tommies fought for an entity known as the BEF, a civilization many decades more advanced in terms of technology. Rene knew they were historical and not fictional because of the many unmistakeable similarities between the BEF and the Fleet, from the way they spoke to the strict class divisions between officers and enlisted men¡ªMrs. Figgy for instance never once interacted with the tommies other than to scream orders at them.

    Nobody seemed to know what the cause of the war was, only that the press back home had started calling it the Great War, though Rene struggled to see what was so great about it.

    One of the tommies sang a sad, whimsical song:

    ¡°We¡¯re here because,

    We¡¯re here because,

    We¡¯re here because we¡¯re here.

    We¡¯re here because,

    We¡¯re here because,

    We¡¯re here because we¡¯re here.¡±

    Rene felt a lump in his throat as a bout of homesickness came over him. Mrs. Figgy saw him wiping his eyes and said:

    ¡°They are only an illusion, Rene. An amalgamation of historical video games, heightened by real combat footage against cosmophages.¡±

    ¡°I know,¡± Rene cleared his throat, ¡°The Amits in here run funny, move too much like human beings do.¡±

    ¡°And why do you think that is?¡± Mrs. Figgy

    Like all proper soldiers they gossiped, trading rumours of terrifying new innovations made by the ¡®boches¡¯ (their word for Amits). They spoke of bouncing land mines that leapt up in the air and detonated at chest height, cutting down whole swathes of men, of bombs that released a creeping green mist that could clear out whole trench systems if the wind blew just right.

    All of this sounded very far-fetched to Rene. Amits never made anything more complicated than rudimentary tools. Though he had heard of how, during the years-long battle of Assail, some warrior broods had developed harder exoskeletons resistant to bayonets, he ascribed this change more to some freak act of nature than to any intelligence on their part.

    He remembered the acid sculptures and star charts he¡¯d discovered back in Mound Euler and began to think twice. If the Amits were smart enough to make art and mythologize, then who knew what they were truly capable of?

    Then the second wave of attacks hit their lines, and Rene learned it firsthand.

    ¡°Fire mission!¡± Mrs. Figgy screamed, ¡°Battery adjust, right 5. Shell Mk. 1, Charge 3, fuze delay. Battery one round, quadrant 313. FIRE!¡±

    Rene and the tommies tossed their fags aside and went to work. Usually the attacks ceased after a few salvos of shells, stopped dead by the rifles in the trenches ahead. But the quadrants kept creeping closer and closer, until at last the enemy came within sight.

    The tips of their spiked, visored helmets were the first things to hove into view as they crested the ridge, rank upon rank of Amits clad in segmented steel armour marching in perfect lockstep, claws grasping arquebuses and halberds. The sight was intimidating, but Rene was an artilleryman now, and had learned that there was only one solution to all his problems.

    ¡°Fire mission!¡± Rene ordered, ¡°Target, that column of infantry. Fire at will!¡±

    And they did. But instead of tearing huge gaps into their ranks, only those within a small lethal radius were struck dead, the rest shrugging off the shrapnel and ploughing on.

    The unseen riflemen in the trenches ahead laid on a shower of lead, firing so fast that it sounded like rotary guns going off. Scores of Amits sprawled onto the ground, but the rest ploughed on and briefly disappeared behind the masking hill.

    Within minutes the rifles fell silent. The tommies at the howitzers gave each other grim looks and said:

    ¡°Bring up the devil¡¯s paint brushes.¡±

    The crews abandoned their position and came back pushing three squat, monstrous guns on wheelbarrow mounts, each fed by a cloth belt holding thousands of brass cartridges. The tommies muscled the ¡®paint brushes¡¯ into positions on the flanks for enfilade firing and sighted them along the aiming stakes.Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.

    ¡°Ever used a paint brush before?¡± Mrs. Figgy asked him, pushing the cloth belt tongue into the feed and racking back the charging handle.

    ¡°Can¡¯t say I have,¡± Rene said as he took hold of the spade grips.

    ¡°Well then, today you¡¯re Pablo Picasso. This is a Vickers gun. It¡¯s a .50 calibre, water-cooled, 1,300 rounds per minute beast. Use short 10-round bursts for accuracy. But when they get close enough to see their faces, hold that trigger pad down till kingdom come. The barrel will heat up something fierce, but don¡¯t worry about it melting¡ªit¡¯s water-cooled.¡±

    Mrs. Figgy brought up the blackboard and sketched a diagram of the Vickers¡¯ internal mechanisms, so simple yet so robust. When he understood its workings, Rene got behind the thick bullet shield and trained his sights on the reverse slope. A knot of black-clad Amits came stamping down the scarp, mandibles and halberds daubed with blood. Without thinking he pressed his thumbs together and was surprised by the chattering roar that issued from the muzzle of the gun. Streams of smoking cartridges rolled out of the ejector, bright yellow vitae spraying out of the Amits where the bullets chewed them up. Rene began to see how the Vickers had earned its nickname; all it took was one quick pass through the ranks of the enemy to paint the ground with their blood.

    He kept up a hellacious rate of fire, sawing back and forth with frequent bursts. When the smoke cleared (and the Vickers made surprisingly little of it compared to the firearms of the Fleet) all the Amits lay in dark clumps on the ground. Rene started to breathe a sigh of relief, but stopped when the clumps stirred, the rearmost Amits dusting themselves off and getting slowly back to their feet.

    He now realized why the riflemen in the trenches had been overwhelmed; the armour of each beast was especially thick around the vital cortexes and nerve cluster, making them resistant to the usual kill-shots.

    Some were split right open from stem to stern but kept shambling forward anyway, ignoring their gaping flesh wounds or half-severed limbs in their eagerness to come to grips with their prey. The gunners let them have it a second time and quite literally chopped them into pieces with the machineguns, then shot at the pieces till they stopped twitching.

    ¡°Ruddy good work, lad,¡± Tommy cheered and slapped him on the shoulder, ¡°We showed those Boches, didn¡¯t we?¡±

    The ground began to shudder and quake, and the smile faded from Tommy¡¯s face.

    ¡°What¡¯s that? Heavy mortars?¡± Rene asked. He looked about and saw that Mrs. Figgy had vanished.

    ¡°Worse. Back on the howitzers, all of you!¡± Tommy shouted, ¡°They¡¯ve brought tanks!¡±

    Tanks? Rene thought, confused. What was so alarming about a bit of compressed air in a canister?

    Then name did little justice to the monstrosities that now came at them like grubbing beetles, vast slabs of sheet metal nosing forward on angled tracks, cannons swivelling from sponsons on their sides. Cowering behind it were Amit infantry, sheltering in its rear from the machineguns that now started up again in earnest, the bullets sparking off the hull like so many firecrackers.

    Caught switching between weapon systems, the Tommy gun crews only managed to let off a single sporadic barrage before the enemy was upon them, firing back on their positions with ugly black powder swivel guns that did little damage but still managed to suppress the artillery.

    Rene knew the battle was lost when the tank came within fifteen meters of the gun emplacement and disgorged a complement of stormtroopers, their breastplates festooned with bandoliers of knobby sticks. Using the tank for cover they advanced to near point-blank range and began tossing bundles of sticks into the sandbagged positions.

    ¡°Mashers!¡± someone screamed right before the little bundles started going off in a cloud of shrapnel.

    One of the mashers landed at Rene¡¯s feet. He stared at it stupidly until Tommy shoved him aside, seizing the stick and curling up into a ball on the ground with the grenade tucked underneath him. Rene clamped his hands over his ears as the muffled detonation filled his world with clods of dirt and pieces of unspeakable carnage. Pain stabbed into his shins where the shrapnel shredded his pants, knocking him to the ground while the Amits leapt into the trenches to continue their butchery, seizing tommies and wrenching their heads off with a bite of their mandibles or skewering them on the ends of their halberds.

    Rene groped his way through the blood-soaked mud and found the dying Tommy holding in his own intestines with his fingers.

    ¡°I-I¡¯m sorry,¡± he told Tommy, ¡°I¡¯m sorry.¡±

    ¡°¡­don¡¯t be,¡± the man replied with a shaky laugh, ¡°For me this dream has no end. You will go, but I will remain. And I¡¯ll be back and again, and again, and again...¡±

    Rene grasped his slick hand and held it tight, feeling a deep throb of sympathy that transcended time, space and reality itself, an eternal sorrowing comradery that humanity had carried with it to the very furthest reaches of space.

    The light fled from Tommy¡¯s eyes and Rene found himself alone. All the same he kept clutching Tommy¡¯s hand till it went limp, only then looking up to see the Amits moving from one gun emplacement to the other, systematically killing everything they found with stick grenades. Rene went flat and wriggled underneath the dead Tommy, muttering apologies as he hid underneath his ruined corpse. The Amits ran clawed hands over the howitzers and spat acid all over the Vickers guns in a clear act of hatred, melting down the dead crew along with their pieces. Then they reached into the hissing mess and began to eat.

    For an illusion everything here possessed a shocking realism, from the way Tommy¡¯s corpse sagged stiffly against him to the wet gristly sounds of the Amits feeding. Idly he began to wonder how exactly this engram file had been created, and whose memories had gone into this illusion of blood and pain. The smell of voided bowels and raw meat hit his nostrils and he gagged. Rene tried to swallow the reflex but was unable to stop a small burp from escaping his lips.

    The Amits froze in place, pieces of flesh halfway to their mouths. Cursing his moment of weakness, Rene curled up and held his breath as a second Amit came searching for the source of the noise. For the second time that day Tommy shielded him with body and saved his life. The Amit lost interest and went back to the feeding frenzy. Knowing his luck couldn¡¯t last forever, Rene laid Tommy aside respectfully, then crept back up to their smoking Vickers, feet treading on eggshells.

    Noting the slurping noises from the knot of Amits to his right, he formulated a harebrained plan. But the machinegun could only turn 180 degrees on its swivel, which meant that he couldn¡¯t bring it to bear on them. But perhaps that was a problem that pure brute strength could solve¡ªthe Vickers looked about as heavy as a shoulder cannon from back home, hefty but not immovable.

    He¡¯d have to act fast. Rene seized the spade grips with one hand and closed his fingers of the other around the water-cooled barrel.

    Rene sniffed the air: something was cooking. He looked down and saw his hand fused to the barrel of the Vickers, his skin puckering up and sloughing off in clumps as it seared his flesh.

    A howl tore its way out of his throat as he let go of the Vickers. Amits sprang out of the dugouts and came for him. Rene fell onto his arse while clutching at his burnt hand, kicked the Vickers¡¯ mount with both feet so that it spun on its back leg. It toppled over sideways and fell against the sandbags like a drunk man leaning on a wall.

    ¡°Good enough,¡± Rene hissed as he seized it with his good hand and let it rip, blasting the Amits out of the neighbouring emplacement, hosing down the trench till nothing was left standing. He gloated as the survivors cowered out of sight:

    ¡°Hah! Gotcha, ya gormless cunts!¡±

    Rene heard the rattling growl of the tank¡¯s engine starting up again, cannons turning on their sponsons. Rather than being frightened, he felt a burgeoning rage in his stomach, fuelled by the maddening pain in his hand and memory of Tommy¡¯s slack, lifeless face.

    He was already dead. Now that he had accepted that fact, he could act without fear. He ran up out of the position, sprinting towards the tank armed to attack it with nothing but his bare hands, screaming like some demented thing.

    Another stick grenade flew up and over the trench walls at him, but this time he was ready for it, plucking it out of the air and shoving it down the barrel of one of the tank¡¯s sponson guns.

    He was rewarded a moment later when the cannon fired and the barrel came apart like a banana peel, bathing him in a wash of flame and twisted steel.

    #

    Rene came awake with scream. The learning module¡¯s lid was already open. Snatching the neural couplings from his face, he flopped out of the pod like a beached whale, gasping for air.

    ¡°It¡¯s alright, it¡¯s alright. None of it¡¯s real, Rene. Nothing that matters, anyway.¡±

    The Commodore gently picked him up off the floor with his cold metal appendages and held him curled up like a child.

    ¡°I¡­I¡­¡± Rene began.

    ¡°Yes?¡±

    ¡°I think I just killed a tank.¡±

    ¡°Well, it¡¯s a start,¡± was all the Commodore said, though Rene thought he heard a note of pride in his voice.

 Chapter 71: Warsims (Part 3)

    Over the next few weeks Rene went through a blistering crash course in what felt like absolutely everything. Astrophysics, biochemistry, electrical engineering, piloting fixed-wing aircraft, 21<sup>st</sup> century battle doctrine, political theory¡ªregardless of the topic Mrs. Figgy rode him hard, pushing the nootropics and memetics to their absolute limits.

    The Commodore only let him out of the audiomemetic module to eat, sleep, defecate and occasionally chat up the prisoners.

    Neroth and Zildiz spent that time locked up in the brig, a storage room that had been stripped bare of electronics, the ventilation grilles taken out and replaced with welded squares of titanium alloy, its only window a snow-encrusted airlock that opened directly into the frigid lunar surface. They were fed protein paste through two sippy straw nozzles that came out of the wall, and slept on plastic cargo pallets with tarpaulins for blankets. In short it seemed a perfect little dungeon where a man could lose his mind in short order. Rene made sure to mention that to the Commodore in between his lessons.

    ¡°They¡¯re going kill each other in there, you know,¡± he said, the memory of his latest false death still fresh in his mind. He and the mujahideen had been scaling the mountains of Kandahar when the Amits had come for them, their Hind gunships chasing them out of the ruddy cliffsides with unguided iron bombs. Abubakar hadn¡¯t been able to get the Stinger to lock onto the heat signatures in time, and their patrol was subsequently eaten up by Yak-B gatling guns.

    ¡°For every action, there must be an equal and opposite reaction. Catechism 3, ensign. They brought it on themselves,¡± the Commodore lectured him.

    ¡°All I¡¯m saying is, if the idea is to win them over to our side, then¡ª¡±

    ¡°Whose idea is that, exactly?¡± the Commodore said sharply. He paused his eternal warsims on the holographic table and turned to glare at Rene.

    Rene put up his hands and replied somewhat defensively:

    ¡°You and I make a great team and all, but at the end of the day we¡¯re just two measly people up against a living planet. How exactly can we reconquer Arachnea without help?¡±

    ¡°Your Fleet has a population in the millions. That¡¯s plenty of manpower.¡±

    ¡°Yes, but you said it yourself: compared to the opposition they¡¯re a bunch of savages flinging turds around.¡±

    The Commodore shook his head obstinately.

    ¡°The catapult strikes will neutralize most of the Vitalus¡¯ central command structure and buy us some time. We just need your people to survive the initial counterattacks. Then we can rearm them and bring them up to speed with modern warfare.¡±

    ¡°You ask too much of them,¡± Rene countered, ¡°It would take years of research and development for them to catch up to the concepts I¡¯m learning through audiomemetics.¡±

    ¡°Which is why I¡¯m sending you back there, to give them a boost,¡± the Commodore lounged lazily back into his gun carriage¡¯s harness.

    ¡°Wait. You¡¯re sending me back to Arachnea?¡±

    ¡°Obviously. We can¡¯t win a war without boots on the ground. You¡¯ve got to bring the Fleet¡¯s arsenal up to par.¡±

    ¡°But I¡¯m no engineer! You can¡¯t expect me to jumpstart all these technological breakthroughs all by myself.¡±

    ¡°Au contraire. Here,¡± the Commodore tossed him a digital sketch pad, ¡°Draw me a diagram of a Vickers machinegun.¡±

    Rene took it and stared at the screen, which was just as blank as his mind. Then he tasted dried fruit and heard snatches of Mrs. Figgy¡¯s voice in his head, reciting:

    ¡°¡­the Vickers is a fully automatic belt-fed gun fired from a closed bolt. When firing, a round is in the chamber and the working parts and the breechblock assembly are forward. It has a recoil operated, floating action comparable to a German pistol of the same period¡­¡±

    Complete three-dimensional schematics came flooding back through his mind. He began to draw like a man possessed, the sketch pad¡¯s stylus flying across the screen. When he was done, he clicked play and the fully worked animation began, perfectly illustrating the gun¡¯s inner workings. The Commodore saw his slack-jawed expression and raised a withered eyebrow as if to say: ¡®I told you so¡¯.

    ¡°I had no idea that was still in there,¡± Rene said in astonishment, ¡°So do the lessons never leave me?¡±

    ¡°Not after the nootropics and memetic imagery have cemented the engrams into place.¡±

    ¡°How does all that information fit into my skull?¡±

    ¡°It¡¯s an additional region of the brain that the Exodians edited into their genes. Every homo vagus develops it as they mature, among other things.¡±

    ¡°Like what?¡±

    ¡°Did you feel sick when you first got onto this moon?¡±

    ¡°Not really,¡± Rene shrugged, ¡°I guess I didn¡¯t like the chow from the food synthesizer at first. It gave me the runs.¡±

    ¡°First of all, gross,¡± the Commodore wrinkled his nose, ¡°Second, that¡¯s because your body is designed to compensate for sudden changes in gravity. Without those adaptations your muscles and bones would atrophy and you would weaken and die in a few years. That¡¯d be unacceptable for the homo vagus, a culture that evolved to survive slow-than-light travel.¡±

    Homo vagus. That was Latin, another one of old Terra¡¯s dead languages. Rene had taken to learning it because so much of the Exodian sciences used it in their nomenclature. The name meant ¡®the wandering man¡¯, he thought.You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

    ¡°When you¡¯re stuck for centuries inside a seed ship strapped to some laser sails, retaining the sum total of human knowledge is of paramount importance. The kindreds take this a step further: they can pass on massive amounts of data through their gilt helix.

    ¡°Do the people I see in the simulations belong to an older species?¡±

    ¡°Subspecies. Homo sapiens,¡± the Commodore corrected. He nudged the holographic table and ran another attack campaign, cursing when the clustered blue dots were wiped out one after another.

    ¡°What happened to them?¡±

    The Commodore paused briefly, then said:

    ¡°They were belligerent. Thankfully their experiences will teach you a great deal about violence and its uses.¡±

    ¡°My mother always said that violence can¡¯t solve all problems.¡±

    ¡°Then she wasn¡¯t using enough of it. I¡¯m being glib, of course,¡± the Commodore grinned. Recently he¡¯d become a lot more comfortable around Rene, cracking maudlin jokes when Rene wasn¡¯t expecting them, ¡°There¡¯s a time and a place for diplomacy. Especially when one side has the upper hand and the other party is looking for a way to save face. But that only applies to human adversaries. Inhuman enemies require inhuman methods.¡±

    ¡°Maybe for the Vitalus that¡¯s true. But Zildiz and Neroth are as human as we are. Two eyes, two hands, two feet. The works,¡± Rene pointed out. The Commodore groaned:

    ¡°Again, they¡¯re cosmophages, ensign. Bioweapons that can adapt to any environment.¡±

    ¡°If we homo vagus edited our genes to adapt to subluminal space travel, then why is it wrong for them to do the same?¡±

    ¡°There are¡­limits,¡± the Commodore said testily, ¡°Both moral and biological. Think about it Rene: if every person could change their bodies on a whim, there would be nothing preventing us from colonizing every semihabitable planet within reach. Eventually we would become unstoppable.¡±

    ¡°And that would be wrong, because?¡±

    ¡°Because at that point we wouldn¡¯t be people anymore, Rene. We¡¯d be gods, unfettered by the limitations that nature has placed upon us. But what happens in a society of godlings living in a perfect utopia?¡±

    ¡°They eat candy and live happily ever after?¡± Rene guessed.

    ¡°Not quite. They get bored. And bored godlings begin acting out their fantasies, no matter how depraved and insane they may be. When there are no more physical constraints, morality itself ceases to exist.¡±

    The Commodore¡¯s voice took on a hoarse growl, as if he were wrestling with some troubling remembrance. Rene decided that the conversation had taken a bleak tone, and switched the topic:

    ¡°Those limitations are going to make winning this war impossible. Even if I teach those eggheads at the Gunnery Department how to make glide bombs and MLRS systems, they don¡¯t have the tools to mass produce them. Everything will have to be made from scratch.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯ve already considered that,¡± the Commodore said, ¡°This base has industrial grade printers. We just need to break them down and reassemble them on the ground. No, the real bottleneck will be raw materials.¡±

    He flicked a finger at the holographic display and brought up the orrery, zooming in on the asteroid belt between the planet Brahe and Arachnea.

    ¡°Po Chai is abundant in water but low on minerals and hydrocarbons. But the roider communes out in the belt gathered thousands of metric tons of that stuff for the projects on the inner planets. It¡¯ll be a simple matter of stopping by there on our way to Arachnea and taking what we need.¡±

    ¡°That¡¯s cosmonaut work,¡± Rene said, ¡°Drones are all very good, but when they break down, you¡¯ll need all hands on deck to get them working again. Human hands,¡± he added pointedly.

    The Commodore rolled his eyes. Or at least Rene thought he did; the multispectral goggles fused to his cranium made it hard to tell.

    ¡°I¡¯m not bringing those race traitors into my operation. There¡¯s no way to deprogram generations of religious indoctrination. Just ask the PACT forces when they tried to suppress the Remembrancer insurgency.¡±

    ¡°I haven¡¯t played through that section yet,¡± Rene said.

    ¡°Hell, I¡¯m still trying to figure out how their magnetosynaptic organs managed to override my control of the drones,¡± the Commodore went on, paying little attention to him, ¡°They simply can¡¯t generate the level of signal strength to cause all that havoc¡­¡±

    The Commodore stroked his ratty beard, lost in thought. Rene hemmed and hawed, trying to distract him by deliberately being annoying:

    ¡°Maybe you should ask the cosmophages how they works.¡±

    ¡°My, you¡¯re really not giving this up, are you?¡±

    ¡°No. Did your iteration even try talking to the kindreds?¡±

    ¡°Of course. The few times we got through to them, the Vitalus reached out crushed any chance of diplomacy.¡±

    ¡°Why? What is the Vitalus after? What does it even want?¡±

    The Commodore sighed and steepled his digits, looking like a misshapen spider curled up in its web of wirings.

    ¡°I suppose it¡¯s inevitable that you¡¯ll keep pestering me with questions. Clearly, I¡¯ll never have any peace until I give you answers.¡±

    ¡°I concur.¡±

    ¡°Don¡¯t be a smartass. Alright, fine. You go ahead and tell your friends that if they keep their noses clean, they can start reporting in for audiomemetic lessons too.¡±

    ¡°Why the sudden change of heart?¡±

    The Commodore¡¯s face broke into an evil smile.

    ¡°You brought up a good point earlier. If I give them the impression that I¡¯m beginning to trust them, then they might just slip up. I think I¡¯ve got a pretty good idea where the major nodes are now. For your next assignment, ensign, I want you to find out exactly where the Gallivants and Leapers live.¡±

    #

    Rene rode the catapult to the brig, taking his sketch pad with him and scribbling furiously. He still couldn¡¯t believe the sheer amount of information he had imbibed and the fluidity of his mental calculations. He did notice that his newfound brilliance tended to fade the longer he was away from the learning module, fine details becoming harder to recall.

    He was looking forward to seeing their reactions when they found the good turn he had done them, and was in a fine mood when he got to the brig.

    It didn¡¯t last. The sentry drone on duty rolled aside to let him in, dragging its fibre optic cable out from a winch in the wall. Rene stepped into the bare room and almost immediately tripped over the furious melee taking place on the floor.

    Zildiz had Neroth in a headlock from behind, applying the exact same chokehold he had once used to make her unconscious. But the teen¡¯s short neck was making this a tricky proposition, that and the fact that Neroth was actively trying to sink his teeth into her forearm.

    One of the Commodore¡¯s silver giants squatted on its haunches in the corner and looked on impassively.

    ¡°Star of Sol, can¡¯t I leave you people alone for five minutes without you trying to kill someone!¡± Rene shouted, equally frustrated with the Commodore¡¯s callousness as he was with the two bioweapons. He broke up the fight by kicking at them both till they stood up.

    ¡°He crossed into my side of the room,¡± Zildiz licked at her fat lip.

    ¡°What are you talking about?¡±

    She pointed to the panelled floor, where a straight line cutting the room in half had been painted on with some dried brown fluid the nature of which Rene did not even want to speculate on.

    ¡°I was just checking to see if she made the line straight!¡± Neroth raged, clutching at a swollen eye, ¡°She keeps rubbing it out and drawing it closer when she thinks I¡¯m not looking!¡±

    Rene pinched the bridge of his nose and held up a hand, saying:

    ¡°I¡¯m not interested in any of this. Just wanted to let you know that the Commodore¡¯s decided to give you all a few hours of outdoor exercise. Well, more like indoor exercise, really.¡±

    The pair gave him heated stares.

    ¡°What, you mean outside?¡± Zildiz asked testily.

    ¡°No, in here. You can climb all over the walls and smear crap on the floor like always. What¡¯s wrong with you, of course I mean outside. Hey, wait! Where do you think you¡¯re going?¡± he added as the pair elbowed him aside made a break for the door, jostling to see who got out first.

 Chapter 72: Revelations

    The Commodore had the printers create additional learning modules and moved them together with the first to a decommissioned shunting yard. There, under the constant vigilance of armed drones, Rene and two cosmophages were to link with each other¡¯s pods and enter into a joint s¨¦ance.

    ¡°It¡¯s come to my attention that you¡¯re dissatisfied with your new accommodations,¡± the Commodore¡¯s haughty voice rasped through the sentries, ¡°Given that your stay here will likely be indefinite, I¡¯ll have to do what I can to make things more comfortable for you. Now obviously I can¡¯t just let you have the run of the base, so instead my drones will escort you here and give you six hours of access to engram files every day.¡±

    Zildiz was less than thrilled by all this, and expressed her displeasure by spitting on the floor.

    ¡°You¡¯ll need more than that to pry information out of me,¡± she told him.

    ¡°Yes, yes, wild horses and all that,¡± the Commodore waved her posturing aside with an annoyed shake of the sentry¡¯s guns, ¡°I already have your genetic sequences. My people¡¯s entire existence consisted of taking apart exomorphs to see how they tick. All of your potential helix modifications are stashed in a folder somewhere in the database.¡±

    ¡°Then why¡ª¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m not trying to take anything from you. In fact, I¡¯m trying to give you something.¡±

    ¡°And what¡¯s that?¡± her eyes narrowed into beady slits.

    ¡°The truth,¡± Rene could hear the mocking smile in the Commodore¡¯s voice, ¡°About the monstrosity that is the Vitalus, the Ceytians that spawned it, and the War of Creation. Everything. The only question is: are you brave enough to see it for yourself?¡±

    ¡°So you¡¯ve put together a collage of lies to show us. How thoughtful of you.¡±

    But it was a challenge the Gallivant couldn¡¯t refuse, and they both knew it. Zildiz stalked over to the module and got in with about as much ill grace as could be expected. Neroth on the other hand showed no reluctance, looking only slightly put off by the clamminess of the tactile gel solution.

    So the cosmophages are just as curious about the whole thing as I am, Rene realized. How much do they really know of their own origins, and what has the Vitalus kept from them?

    Then a traitorous thought crept in: what will the Commodore change and conceal from me now?

    The pairing went smoothly this time, the couplings easing into his nerve endings with well-practiced micromotions. Once more his consciousness swam in the river of light, but this time he felt other presences passing him by like ships in the night, the outlines of their thoughts nebulous and vague.

    Rene blinked. He was back in the brightly painted schoolroom. Crammed next to him in the comically small chairs were perfect recreations of Neroth and Zildiz, looking slightly glassy-eyed concussed by the vividness of it all.

    The door beside the big plywood desk opened, and in walked an elderly man in the sparse black cassock of a chaplain, the crow¡¯s feet around his almond eyes crinkled by a warm smile of welcome.

    ¡°Hello! I¡¯m Father Chito of the Jesuit Order, head of HR and environmental ethics. Welcome to the Syngman system! If you¡¯re seeing this, it¡¯s because you¡¯ve passed selection with flying colors! Congratulations. You are now a part of history, a direct contributor to the most revolutionary rapid terraformation project of the 26<sup>th</sup> century. Whether you¡¯re an indentured shareholder in Exodus Industries Inc. or a member of an affiliate governing body, this system will be your home for the foreseeable future. So let¡¯s work together and make it a good one!¡±

    Father Chito spread his hands and the classroom faded out, replaced by the inky blackness of space. Fleets of starships flew past them one after another, each flagship each proudly displaying a bright, over-designed banner.

    ¡°As you know, this endeavor has brought together aerospace service professionals from a wide array of cultural backgrounds. We believe that diversity to be a source of strength, encouraging creative solutions to everyday problems. Good work thrives in an atmosphere of collaboration and respect. With that in mind, let¡¯s go over some topics best to be avoided.¡±

    The priest¡¯s face took on a sorrowful expression. The classroom took on solid form and the stars disappeared.

    ¡°Recently a hurtful and destructive meme pertaining to the Islamic faith has been circulating the interwebs,¡± Chito shook his head and waved a hand at the blackboard, where an image appeared of a bearded man whose head was bundled up in a white towel. He was kneeling on a circular disc that was rapidly rotating in place, spinning him like a top. Above him appeared the incomprehensible caption: ¡®You¡¯re Mecca¡¯n my head spin, habibi.¡¯

    ¡°Citizens of the Galactic Caliphate use specialized prayer discs that track the location of the Ka¡¯bah in real time. Please do not imply that these discs are somehow defective, or that they neglect the third plane of motion. As for your colleagues who belong to the Catholic denomination, please refrain from calling them cannibals who devour the body of Christ. Though I assure you,¡± Chito gave them a cheeky grin, ¡°I myself do not bite.¡±

    For the next half an hour they were treated to a list of offensive slurs, pronouns and memes that were taboo. The Exodians were apparently made up of innumerable competing nation-states with contradicting beliefs, each culture prouder and more sensitive than the last. Privately he thought the priest¡¯s lecture was somewhat counterproductive¡ªafter sitting through it, Rene felt certain he could successfully insult any Exodian he came across in the future.

    ¡°I¡¯d like to bring up the elephant in the room and talk about our new partners who¡¯ve just bubbled in from uncharted space,¡± Chito¡¯s voice became noticeably excited, a certain boyishness showing beneath his stiff formality, ¡°After of centuries of silence, we¡¯ve reestablished contact with our brothers and sisters from the ancient seed ships of the last Brahmin migration. The Syngman system itself was one of the worlds targeted by that wave of colonization, though here they were ultimately unsuccessful. Thankfully that wasn¡¯t the case on Ceytia Prime!¡±This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

    ¡°The Ceytians have generously decided to share their latest gaian techniques of rapid terraformation with us. This is an opportunity like no other, to learn and grow through a mutually beneficial exchange. Their physical appearance may be quite startling at first, but there is no cause for alarm: PACT scientists have confirmed that the Ceytians fall well within the limits of genetic stability as stipulated by the eugenics treaties. And now, allow me to welcome the parriarch of the Muminau pod, here to give you a special greeting.¡±

    And through the open door there floated in a creature more lovely than the day. Rene felt the air leave his lungs in a whoosh as he looked upon her face, as inhumanly perfect as it was beautiful. Her head was heart shaped, with cheeks like fine porcelain and sea-blue irises that filled up the whole of her eyes except for a thin ring of cream white. The Ceytian strode in on powerful legs a full foot longer than they should have been, balancing gracefully on the balls of her webbed toes. Over her shapely mouth and nose a mask full of bubbling green liquid fed by tubes kept her

    Zildiz and Neroth got up in unison, faces bright with wonder. Forgetting their hatred for each other, they reached out to touch her, their hands passing clean through the shallow illusion.

    ¡°Do you know her?¡± Rene asked them. Zildiz nodded, still transfixed by the Ceytian woman.

    ¡°Hers is the hand that shapes the quiet waters,¡± Neroth said in reverence, ¡°Master of the Vitalus and the shaper of ways. This is Nasya Banna, mother to all Arachnea.¡±

    #

    Zildiz felt something hot stinging the corners of her eyes and pawed at them, fingertips coming away with glistening droplets of moisture. Her tear ducts were leaking and she found it quite distressing. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before. Seeing Neroth blubbering as he held back tears was quite natural, of course¡ªas beings of inferior design, the Leapers had to cope somehow.

    But the Mother of All was standing before her now, and Zildiz could not help it. She was even more beautiful than the myths had described.

    Nasya Banna inclined her short but graceful neck in greeting and spoke in a warbling voice:

    ¡°In the spirit of peace, we join our pods to yours. May we learn and propagate together as one people. Nasaem, belangga. Without you, we are incomplete.¡±

    The old fool of a Betrayer shuffled forward to speak more of his empty words, but then the engram stuttered, imagery trembling and slipping out of joint as the scene changed.

    Chito and Nasya Banna folded out of existence. Together they watched a stocky, brown haired man speaking quickly as he fielded a barrage of questions from a set of unseen people.

    ¡°Excuse me. Excuse me!¡± he shouted into his handheld listening device, his face stiff with rage, ¡°I¡¯d like to reiterate that we still don¡¯t know the cause of the fault slippage that occurred within the asteroid. Our partners in the Soyuz Solutions worker¡¯s commune are laboring round the clock to come up with a rescue plan for the trapped asteroid miners.¡±

    ¡°Foreman Doolan, can we get an estimate of the death toll?¡±

    ¡°We¡¯ve only confirmed twelve casualties so far¡ªtheir next of kin have already been informed through private channels. But there were at least sixty-one miners doing a pre-cracking inspection before the accident occurred, meaning most of them are still unaccounted for.¡±

    ¡°Is it true that the Ceytians provided the high-tensile strength nets and mooring lines that were used to hold the cracked asteroid in place? And didn¡¯t they claim their nanomaterials were superior to our own?¡±

    ¡°Yes, it is true our Ceytian partners lent some equipment. But now is not the time to assign blame. We must pull together in this difficult crisis and¡ª"

    ¡°So can we rule out sabotage, or¡­¡± one of the questioners interrupted.

    ¡°That¡¯s malicious speculation and I won¡¯t stand for it!¡± the foreman jerked his fist back to throw a punch, ¡°What¡¯s your name, asshole? And which tabloid foxnews rag do you work for?¡±

    The face of one of the interrogators swam into focus, blocking their view of the man under fire. A woman this time, half her face replaced by garish cybertronics, iridescent left eye rapidly changing hue like a chameleon.

    ¡°I¡¯m sorry Mr. Doolan, but we have to interrupt you here. Breaking news! According to the EXOCOM constellation imagery, large fragments of the asteroid are on a direct collision course with space station L4, also known as the Banana Republic. Evacuation efforts have only now begun. Due to the lack of fighter craft and point defence cannons in the area, destroying the fragments will be impossible¡­oh what¡¯s that?¡± the woman became excited, ¡°People, we¡¯ve just been told that a second asteroid has undergone fragmentation!¡±

    Doolan and the questioners were crumpled up and tossed away by the whims of the changing dream. Now they saw a long oval table where large men sat frowning, bellies squeezed starched and tightfitting uniforms. Zildiz knew from their body language that each one of them had to be an alpha or higher, perhaps even genitors. But all of them unconsciously cowered before the woman at the head of the table, an ancient matriarch with the dull stare of a born killer.

    ¡°One malfunction is understandable. But two at once? The odds are astronomical,¡± an alpha with a puffy red face said.

    ¡°Prepare to escalate,¡± the old woman said simply.

    ¡°Any buildup on our part with trigger the same reaction from their end,¡± someone objected.

    ¡°If and when shit hits the fan, we¡¯re going to need options.¡±

    ¡°Madame Tr?n, we cannot guarantee naval supremacy in the event of a peer conflict. Our supplies from PACT space must pass through a virtual bottleneck¡ªit¡¯d take only one detachment to cut us off entirely. We don¡¯t even know the full extent of their weapon capabilities. The damn pod people haven¡¯t shared anything truly groundbreaking with us since they seeded that gaian consciousness on Syngman Prime.¡±

    ¡°Unless, of course, that consciousness is their weapon,¡± the woman pointed out. Everyone at the table went deathly quiet at that.

    ¡°The exobiologists have assured us¡ª¡± the puffy man began.

    ¡°It has the computational power of half our shipboard E.I.¡¯s combined,¡± Tr?n said, biting at her own words like a dog straining at the leash, ¡°It can render any terrestrial-type exoplanet habitable within a matter of eight years, tops. Moreover, it considers itself an actual person. If those aren¡¯t the hallmarks of being a cosmophage, then I¡¯ll eat my fucking implants. Now you people may be too young to remember the last war, but I do. Won the goddamned thing, didn¡¯t I? Isn¡¯t that why you thawed me out of cryofugue? To kill for you?¡±

    Zildiz felt a grudging respect for the crone burgeoning in her heart.

    ¡°This began as a mission of peace,¡± one alpha said, sadly shaking his head.

    ¡°I¡¯m not saying it can¡¯t stay one,¡± Tr?n said, though her square face never once softened, ¡°But it pays to be prepared. So long as the Ceytians themselves don¡¯t exhibit eugenic malpractice, we¡¯re all on the same side here.¡±

    The place lost cohesion, became a rolling collage of shapes and sounds. They saw the dome cities on Cloister, shining like air bubbles on pond surface.

    Spiderweb cracks appeared on the transparent eggshell, radiating outwards in jagged lines until the whole thing gave way, vomiting the dome¡¯s contents out onto the lunar surface. From the wreck and ruin a lone fugitive fled across the pale sands and dove into a yawning crater, borne aloft on thin jets of propellant.

    Zildiz only got a glimpse of the person before they disappeared into the crevasse, but it was enough for her to instantly recognize that this was no human in an EVA suit like Cosmonaut Carl. The configuration of the armour, the seamless movement, the false extra limbs¡­no, it couldn¡¯t be!

    And yet Cataphracts used that exact same propulsion system. The implication was undeniable: the saboteur was wearing an exomorph.

 Chapter 73: To The Bitter End

    ¡°Stop this. I¡¯ve seen enough,¡± Zildiz said with difficulty. She tried to sound decisive but her words came out like she was pleading, and perhaps she was.

    Something in the learning module¡¯s program must have heard her, because the illusion came to a jittery halt, the sounds looping over themselves and fading into the background.

    ¡°My uncle Kryptus always suspected the Vitalus was keeping things from us,¡± Neroth said, his small face scrunched up in thought, ¡°This would explain why.¡±

    ¡°Now who¡¯s the traitor?¡± Zildiz bared her teeth at him, ¡°Is that all takes to get a Leaper to switch sides? Hearsay and some cheap neural tricks? It¡¯s a sophisticated trick, I¡¯ll give you that,¡± she told Rene, ¡°But I¡¯ve seen its like before in the Dawning Chambers. Helixeers use a similar virtual reality system to test out recombination.¡±

    ¡°If it¡¯s all lies, then you have nothing to fear from seeing the rest of it,¡± Rene said rather slyly, ¡°Or is your version of events so shaky that it can¡¯t hold up to scrutiny?¡±

    It has to be fake, she told herself. Everyone knew that the Vitalus had created the symbionts as a desperate final measure, to save the faithful as the world burned from the wrath of the Betrayers. In other words, they were an incidental step up the escalation ladder. For someone to wield a working exomorph before the War of Creation had even begun, why, that upset the entire chronology of her people¡¯s history.

    The only reason the exomorphs had become a necessary facet of life on Arachnea was because the Betrayers had so thoroughly damaged the fledgling biosphere in their attempts to kill the Vitalus. Even now, thousands of years later, the god was doing Its level best to heal the wounds of the deep past and regain the ideal equilibrium that the Ceytians had intended.

    But the warrior woman Tr?n had demolished that notion with a single offhand remark: according to the Exodian scientists the Vitalus was capable of completely revitalizing a dead planet in less than decade. And if that was true, then why¡­

    Why did my son have to die? Zildiz thought with sudden, undeniable clarity.

    For a while she said nothing, lost in thought as Rene instructed the learning module to continue.

    The engram files resumed. They were looking into a cold and sterile room, men and women in creaking full-body gloves bustling around a steel table. Strapped to this was a dried cadaver turned inside out with surgical precision, every major organ laid open and drained. Alphas in the stiff uniforms from earlier stood watching the dissection through a tinted screen, jotting down notes on their pads.

    ¡°What the hell is that thing?¡± the puffy man said in disgust.

    ¡°We captured this specimen underneath the great western caldera,¡± someone said, ¡°One of Doolan¡¯s T.O.R.U.¡¯s unearthed a whole colony of these buggers while they were looking for uranium. These things are completely blind, eusocial, cannibalistic, immune to pain, and one hundred percent of human stock. Oh right, and they spit acid, too.¡±

    ¡°Great. First we get our mysterious mothman saboteur on Cloister. Now it¡¯s giant, flesh-eating naked mole rat people. As if this freakshow couldn¡¯t get any worse. How¡¯d you learn about the part about their pain tolerance?¡±

    ¡°This one took a drill bit through the chest and still managed to smash a control panel to bits before dying of narcosis. They can¡¯t handle the atmo we¡¯re mixing on the surface.¡±

    ¡°Neither can we, thank God. Otherwise, we¡¯d have settlements on the surface by now and our indentured employees would be picnicking with these beauties. Why didn¡¯t the probes spot these sonsabitches before we decided to make this world our playground? I thought the seed ships failed to propagate here!¡±Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators!

    ¡°Like I said, they live kilometres underground. You know how seed ships are¡ªyou never know which path directed evolution will take. We¡¯re just lucky these cosmophages hit a genetic cull-de-sac. Dumb as bricks, all of them. Strong though.¡±

    ¡°I¡¯m more worried about the ones we signed a treaty with. They¡¯re still denying that they had anything to do with our dome getting popped. Do the Ceytians know about these cave dwellers?¡±

    ¡°Maybe. You-know-who certainly does. We took soil samples and came up with spores.¡±

    ¡°Spores?¡± the Director¡¯s voice shook.

    ¡°Yes, of the same genus as the neurocilial fungal colonies that it uses to store data. Do you remember how you-know-who made that estuary ecosystem just last year?

    ¡°It had those lungfishes sprinting on dry land in months,¡± the Director nodded.

    ¡°Well, if it tampers with the code of these cave dwellers, increases their intelligence quotient, makes their cardiovascular systems capable of adapting to the surface again¡­¡±

    The man¡¯s voice trailed off, but his meaning was clear. The Director¡¯s jaw tightened, his molars grinding loudly together.

    ¡°Jesus wept. We¡¯ve got no choice now, we have to shut down the gaian intelligence. Never mind if the pod people think it¡¯s murder.¡±

    ¡°The shareholders won¡¯t be happy. Vita-Luxe was going to be our bestselling rtf system.¡±

    ¡°Never mind them. It¡¯s the continued existence of the human race that concerns me. Call the iron bitch. Make it happen.¡±

    ¡°You know, director...¡± the other man paused, pursing his lips, ¡°I can¡¯t help but shake that feeling that something secret steers us to the point of no return.¡±

    ¡°If you¡¯re right, then whoever they are, they¡¯ve succeeded,¡± the Director hung his head in shame, ¡°Another cosmophage crisis in our lifetime. God save us all.¡±

    #

    They were on the sleek command deck of a starship. The helmsmen in control of the vessel wired into their crash couches, eyes glazed over in the trance of cryofugue. Their mouths didn¡¯t move, but their speech-thoughts flashed like thunder, echoing through Zildiz¡¯s mind as if she too was linked to their mental s¨¦ance.

    ¡°Ceytian mothership requesting permission to enter Van Allen belt. Weapons online...¡±

    ¡°¡­negative, instruct the Rang Laud pod fleet <whyarenttheytalkingtousanymore> to stand down. If ignored fire a warning salvo <trymemotherfuckerIdareyou> over their bow with antimatter tubes 4 through 6...¡±

    ¡°¡­firing solutions and evasive actions plotted. 1:2.4 KD <killthosedirtypoddies> ratio projected.¡±

    Zildiz felt a rush of cold, fatalistic satisfaction pass through the crew at that last shared thought. If they were going to die here, they would at least take more of the enemy with them than vice versa. Then a spark of recognition entered the s¨¦ance, followed by a black dread that spread through the synced minds like a droplet of ink.

    ¡°¡­unidentified vessel five degrees off the starboard bow <Ya lahwi!> <wheredidthatcomefrom> moving on a direct collision course, 4 seconds <tooclosenowtoolate> to impact¡­¡±

    ¡°Hard to port, full power to adjustment thrusters! Cut the chatter <idiots!>, I need clean comms.¡±

    Winking red targeting reticules caught sight of the ambushing vessel and locked onto them, enlarging the distant pixel until it seemed the enemy was right on top of them.

    Zildiz knew that hammerhead wedge of a cranium, those sleek ribbed plates. The ancient hollowore gunned forward on ion jets, its body crawling with long tubular creatures with clusters of eyes on the tips of their heads, which were shaped like nosecones. The living warheads detached from the hollowore rode its momentum, spreading out in an unavoidable scatter pattern that caught the Exodian vessel amidships as it tried to roll out of the way.

    ¡°¡­<goodbyeMomma>¡­¡±

    The end came, swift and merciful. At the moment of impact, the learning module shunted Zildiz¡¯s consciousnesses into that of an observer on the surface of Arachnea, watching in terror as new stars in the night sky appeared and vanished with frightening rapidity. The entire fleet action was over within seconds, leaving them with nothing to look up upon but the empty night.

    ¡°So that¡¯s it then,¡± the observer said, voice tight with pain, ¡°Well, alright then.¡±

    The man stood there for a long time, stood until his breathing grew haggard and he swayed on his feet. Then he turned on his heels, and there was no sound for miles around but the gravel shifting at his feet as he walked away.

    Towards the grey T.O.R.U. looming over the horizon, silent witness to the bitter end.