Stephen Hunt - The rise of the Iron Moon

'That's a mortal fancy name for a duel,' said Commodore Black. 'But if you've a plain taste for a little simple murder, I'll give you satisfaction and we'll see which of us is planted in the soil after the dark deed is done.'

'That's enough,' ordered Molly. 'You two can lock horns after we've saved Jackals and-' she looked meaningfully at Keyspierre '-Quatershift.'

Sandwalker shook his head in dismay. 'Your friends bicker like slats fighting over the finest cuts torn off one of the city-born.'

'Our people do that when our nerves fray, when we lose people we were fond of,' said Molly. 'Apologies. It is unnecessary.'

'Well,' said Sandwalker, 'then you have all come to the right land. Kaliban is the realm of the unnecessary. Lie down and I shall attempt to ease the pain in your skull.'

Molly did as she was bid and Sandwalker laid his blue-skinned fingers on her forehead, the throb inside rising then easing and pulsing back to something more bearable.

'The very desert we trek through is unnecessary,' continued Sandwalker, his fingers browsing her scalp. 'Every grain of sand, every electrical storm, every dry riverbed: all the products of our masters, a mentality that gorges itself until the cycle of life is broken with no hope of repair. The light that burns the soil, the storms that now ravage the world, the waves that lap no longer in our seabeds, they once gave my people the energy they needed to live peacefully within the cycle of life. But the more sophisticated your civilization, the more fragile its structure, the more you rely on the cooperation and specialization of the Kal who stands beside you. Millions upon countless millions died on Kaliban when the masters and their slat legions arrived. Almost everything we knew was lost, much of the rest looted and wrecked by the Army of Shadows. No more living machines to be raised as crops. No more learning permitted to our children. Now, thousands of years later, all we are left with are paltry splinters of knowledge. An imperfect remembrance of the fact that the objectionable existence we find ourselves trapped in is a cruel, needless perdition compared with the paradise we had created for ourselves. A paradise we would have willingly shared with the masters and their slat armies if they had but asked.'

'You sound like a professor friend of mine,' said Molly. 'Back in Jackals, she's an expert on a classical fallen civilization called Camlantis. I think the Camlanteans had a little of the life you remember. At about the same time as your civilization, too, I think. They fell to our own barbarians, though, the Black-Oil Horde. We didn't need the slats to destroy our land's paradise.'

'How very sad,' said Sandwalker. 'How much better if our two peoples had met in those ancient days, rather than like this, in the ruins of the Kal civilization. What marvels might we have achieved together as friends?'

'Kyorin showed me how the Army of Shadows flies like locusts from sphere to sphere, reducing the land to a husk before moving on.'

'I once heard the great sage theorize that they are getting better at controlling the convulsions of our world as they consume it. Who knows, with enough millennia to practise, perhaps they will have learnt how to live within the cycle of life by the time they reach the very last unharvested celestial sphere that spins around the sun. They will have all our ghosts to teach them.'

'It won't come to that,' insisted Molly. 'We'll stop them, Sandwalker. Trust me. It's what my people do best, killing and fighting.'

'Carnivores,' sighed Sandwalker. 'Well, we have tried everything else over the centuries. Now it seems we shall have to trust your people to do what they do best.'

After the nomad had eased away the worst of the pain inside Molly's head, she went to sit next to Coppertracks, who – if the swirling patterns of energy inside his skull were anything to go by – had something occupying his own mind.

'A penny for your thoughts, old steamer. Are you worried about Quatershift's involvement with the expedition now that you know the truth about Keyspierre and Jeanne?'

'No I am not, Molly softbody. That Quatershift would involve someone like Keyspierre in the expedition is wholly predictable of that paranoid nation. I have a deeper concern, one concerning the rituals of Gear-gi-ju.'

'I saw you calling your ancestors' spirits earlier today,' said Molly. 'You need to be careful how much oil you shed at your age.'

'Calling, indeed, but calling without any answer at all, dear mammal. I have never experienced the like of this before – ignored for one calling, yes, but like this? Night after night, day after day of complete emptiness as I toss my cogs. It is as if the Steamo Loas have, to speak plainly, completely forsaken me here.'

'There is the distance to consider,' said Molly. 'How many million miles are we from the Steammen Free State here on Kaliban?'

'Physical distance means nothing to my ancestors,' explained Coppertracks. 'They exist outside distance in the realm of the spirits. No, there is something else to account for this void, something that I am missing. I cannot believe the people of the metal's ancestors have abandoned me in this land. So much is strange about this wasteland the Army of Shadows have created. There is something terribly wrong here, and it is staring me directly in my vision plate, yet I cannot see it.'

Molly had no answer for her friend.

If even the gods of the steammen had forsaken Molly and her friends in the dark wastelands of the Army of Shadows, what did that say about the expedition's chances of success on Kaliban, now?

Sandwalker was leading the expedition along the dunes in the welcome shade of fluted columns of basalt – giant anthills towering as high as any Middlesteel tower – when Coppertracks stopped, his tracks entangled in something. As he pulled at what was caught up in his caterpillar treads, a series of cables was revealed and a black box fell out of the side of the crumbling rock of the basalt, yanked free by the steamman's efforts.

Seeing what had happened, Sandwalker came running back. 'Don't touch the box!'

Coppertracks gingerly placed it on the sand.

'Is it a snare or the like?' Duncan asked, helping the steamman untangle the cable from his treads.

The Kal nomad shook his head. He picked up the box and examined it, then pushed it back into the face of the basalt rise. 'An old fibre communication line. Our tribes had them hidden around the desert, but the Army of Shadows discovered the cables and adjusted their machines to detect the mechanism of light transmission we had believed was secure. It was centuries ago, but we lost half the free Kal before we realized how the slats were suddenly finding our caravans and hidden bases.'

'I wonder if they were doing the same back in Jackals?' said Molly. 'Reading our crystalgrid messages before they attacked, learning about us?'

'Undoubtedly,' said Sandwalker. 'The masters do not like to leave such things to chance when they lay their plans.'

'Fate has been blessed unkind to your people for you to live like this,' said the commodore. 'Scuttling across the sands, always an eye open for the enemy, fearful even of sending a message, where every stranger of your race you meet might be hiding a fearful set of fangs to sink into your flesh.'

'It is certainly not any way of life we would wish for our young,' smiled Sandwalker. 'Stop here for a rest. Eat your food but conserve the water, we have little left.'

In the lee of a rise now, the expedition members did not need further urging. Even sitting in the shade they found the arid heat draining. They were travelling day and night, trying to keep ahead of the slats. Molly brushed the sand off her billowing white trousers and made her seat on the gravel of the rise.