Stephen Hunt - The rise of the Iron Moon

'You must trust me on that matter, it is better that you do not know,' said the old Kal, avoiding her question. 'I am aware I am asking a lot of you, attacking the iron moon. Even though your people find violence easier than mine, but there are things that you are far better off not knowing if you are to succeed.'

'They're a strange evil crew,' said the commodore. 'I don't care that they're from our blessed past, it's enough for me that you say that little marble in your hand will stop them.'

'I'm sorry, young Sandwalker,' said Fayris Fastmind looking at the nomad guide, tears in his ancient eyes. 'Do you understand now why this weapon won't help our people? Why I couldn't give it to you when you asked me for it. My little weapon contains the fragment of a cosmic string that can be set vibrating at a frequency that will destabilize the singu-larity's rotation and collapse the time field, destroying the iron moon in a tide of tremendous violence.'

'You're planning to seal the Army of Shadows off in this age,' said Sandwalker.

'Stranding them in our time, without sustenance,' agreed the old Kal. 'The masters are a cancer and any cancer will die after it has consumed its host. We can give the masters no new bodies to feast on. They have made a graveyard of Kaliban and I shall see them entombed alongside our bones before I die.'

Sandwalker spoke slowly, his mind-speech heavy with remorse. 'This is how the Kals are to fight them? With our own sacrifice.'

'No, this is how your people fight!' laughed a familiar voice coming from just outside the chamber's door. Molly spun around. It was the carnivore Tallyle, holding a slat rifle, the black, beetle-armoured bodies of a company of the Army of Shadows' slave soldiers standing behind him. His rifle opened up and a bolt of energy hit Sandwalker square on the chest, burning a smoking hole through his robes. Then the slats were everywhere, their talons flashing menacingly, hissing at Molly, circles of jabbing rifles surrounding the expedition members. Two of the beasts ran to where Fayris Fastmind was hovering and overturned his carriage, spilling the ancient sage onto the floor and smashing his floating chair apart with their rifle butts.

'You fight like a filthy sand-born bean muncher who has never tasted flesh and the kill, who has never sucked the life out of his prey,' laughed the corrupted Kal.

Sandwalker stumbled back, moaning, into Molly's arms and she tried to protect him from the slats coming to seize him, but one slapped her to the floor, leaving a bloody claw gash in her cheek. The other slats howled fanged warnings as the commodore and Duncan bridled. The slats' meaning was clear enough.

Tallyle picked Molly up by her throat and licked at her face. 'So, you're the new breed. Well, more salt in your veins than in the Kals'. Must be your diet.' He tossed her contemptuously against the broken carriage, and turned to grin at Commodore Black and Duncan. 'Yes, I can see you two can fight. Good. Meat eaters. Bring the sand-born to the table.'

Slat soldiers pulled the fatally wounded nomad to a circular table and pinned him down. Tallyle crossed the room, dipped down and unleashed his fangs on Sandwalker's neck and face. The wounded Kal's death throes were thankfully brief as Tallyle tore into him, draining his blood.

Carnivore Tallyle rolled the body off the table and imperiously clicked his fingers, prompting his personal retinue of slats to fall upon the corpse and tear it to pieces. Tallyle turned to Keyspierre. 'Where is it?'

'The woman slipped it into her pocket as you broke in here, compatriot,' said Keyspierre.

Carnivore Tallyle walked over to where Molly was kneeling by the carriage and dipped a hand inside her pocket, triumphantly lifting the great sage's little golden sphere in the air as if it were an eye he had plucked out. Dropping the moon-destroying weapon on the floor he crushed it down under his boot heel into a mound of broken metal filaments.

Commodore Black tried to lunge towards Keyspierre but the slats surrounding the commodore clubbed him to the ground and kept on with their beating until he lay still.

'You filthy jigger,' Molly spat towards the Quatershiftian. 'How much have you sold us out for? Did they promise to give you a set of blood-sucking fangs?'

'Every land needs collaborators,' laughed Tallyle.

'It seemed such a small thing to buy the survival of the Commonshare,' announced Keyspierre, shrugging his shoulders in that particularly Quatershiftian way. 'Giving your nomad friend vegetables laced with an isotope that would allow my new compatriots to track us all the way back to the great sage's location.'

'You've been working with the Army of Shadows since the city,' said Molly in disgust, the truth dawning on her. 'They caught you back there, didn't they? You and Jeanne both.'

'I warned you all once that I was here to make sure the Commonshare was preserved at any cost,' said Keyspierre. 'I found no allies in this land capable of resisting the Army of Shadows' legions. Only a dying race of pacifists that wasn't strong enough to cast off the enemy's yoke at the very height of its powers, let alone now. Sometimes, little author, the only way to destroy your enemy is to make them your friend.'

Commodore Black was trying to rise to his feet. 'Kill you, you mortal shiftie piece of-' He was shoved back down.

'Make them your friends, man?' roared Duncan Connor. 'The commodore was right about you all along. You numpty! Your nation will be made into nothing but a stable of wee slaves and pets.'

Keyspierre went red in the face and grabbed Duncan's travel case, smashing it open across the floor. 'I will take no lessons in strategy from a bloated u-boat tar or an asylum inmate!'

Bones scattered across the floor and the nearest slats seized a couple of femurs and started gnawing at them. Connor of Cassarabia screamed abuse and tried to flail past the circle of slats surrounding him, but they beat him to the ground too. The last word on his lips was a girl's name: Hannah.

Carnivore Tallyle went over and dragged Duncan's unconscious body to where the great sage was quivering, unseated. Tallyle took the dead nomad's pack and removed the queen ant's pheromone tube, tossing it to his slats. 'Cut the clothes from the sage and this human, spray their skin with the contents of that tube, then toss them outside, naked and with no supplies or water.' Tallyle looked down on the terrified sage, whose ancient body looked shrunken and shrivelled without his floating carriage. 'I liked the false ants, that was uncommonly clever of you, Fayris Fastmind. I had to execute a couple of my slats just to get the others to come near your fake colony. Your ant machines are all destroyed, though. You and your bone-collecting friend can go outside and meet some of the real ones now.'

Molly's stomach heaved as the great sage was dragged out whimpering behind Duncan Connor's dazed form; the smell of what was left of Sandwalker's corpse filling the room.

Tallyle jabbed a finger towards Molly, the commodore and Coppertracks and barked orders at his slat soldiers. 'Take the three Jackelians back to the last city. Then seal this dusty useless place off from the world.'

As the slats pushed Molly past Tallyle, the corrupted Kal leant in and seized her by the face. 'You're the future, are you? The future tastes good.'

Molly was losing the ability to understand the Kal tongue, she realized, now that Kyorin's memories had been erased from her mind. She was forgetting their complex singsong cadences. She became aware of this as the corridor the slats were pushing her along turned into a tight tunnel curving past a series of riveted metal doors. Coppertracks was pushed alone into the first cell, the steamman complaining that the space was too small for him as soon as he saw it. A scowling Commodore Black got the second cell, shouting obscenities at the slat soldiers as they threw him inside. Then Molly was forced into the third compartment. A strange alien voice sounded from a grille in the room's ceiling. What was it saying? But it was no good. Kyorin's burden had passed, taking its blessings with it. As had Molly's mission. She had failed. Failed her friends, failed poor, dead Sandwalker. Failed the Hexmachina and failed all of the Kingdom of Jackals. The poorhouse girl sunk to her natural level, a cell – not for stealing a handkerchief or dipping a wallet. But for conspiring in the murder of her entire world.