Lindsay Buroker - Forged in Blood I

He hopped out of the crane, intending to run all the way to the fort, but a massive gush of water sounded behind him. He whirled back toward the end of the dock… and stared. A massive dome shape was rising from the lake, its body blocking the entire view of the city on the opposite shoreline.

The Behemoth.

Amaranthe. Sicarius swallowed. Was she on it? Was she the reason it was coming out of the water? Or had Forge chosen this moment, when the city was all indoors, staying out of the cold night, to move the craft? Maybe they’d captured Amaranthe and decided they had to run before someone else came down after them.

Sicarius had never seen the Behemoth lift off, and he didn’t know what to expect, but the craft had an unanticipated wobble to it. It lurched, half of it dipping back toward the water, then recovered. He backed up, feeling vulnerable on the dock. But the craft wasn’t heading his way. It continued to climb until he could see the city lights again beneath it. He thought it would keep going, disappearing into the starry night, but it lurched again, one side dipping.

Then it plummeted, not back into the lake, but downward at an angle. His breath froze. A northward angle. Toward Fort Urgot.

• • •

Amaranthe didn’t waste words as they raced through the corridors. She simply ran, Books and Akstyr pounding after her, and they veered onto the nearest ramp leading up. Reaching this lifeboat wouldn’t be enough. They’d have to figure out how to get inside and how to fly away. Or swim away. Or… who knew? She had no idea if the Behemoth was in the air, on land, or in the water. The blasted thing could at least have a window here or there.

“That should be it.” Books pointed to a short dead end.

Amaranthe raced to the far wall.

Akstyr hesitated in the intersection. “Are you sure? Those cubes are right behind us. We’ll be trapped if we get stuck down there.”

“Books?” Amaranthe waved uselessly at the wall.

“Oh, I see. I’m the expert here now.” He tapped about, trying to illuminate the runes that should be there somewhere.

“You’ve opened two doors to my none. That makes you a downright professional.”

Books found the runes, this time on the left instead of on the right and in more of an orange color.

“Uh oh.” Amaranthe didn’t recognize any of them.

“Cubes are in sight,” Akstyr called from the intersection.

“Blighted ancestors,” she said, “we’ll have to run, try another lifeboat. If we can find it.”

Books tapped one of the runes and pushed in and turned another. A door slid upward. “It’s the same pattern as was on that cabinet she opened,” he said.

Thank his ancestors for paying attention.

“Is it safe in there?” Akstyr asked, then yelped and raced toward them. “It had better be!”

A horizontal crimson beam burned through the air in the intersection behind him. Akstyr darted through the doorway and into a dark cubby without stopping to check inside. With few other options, Amaranthe and Books jumped in after him. For all she could see, they might have jumped into a cider barrel without so much as an unstoppered bunghole to illuminate the interior. The only light came from outside, from the door still yawning open.

“Uh, we might want to close that,” Akstyr said.

“I’m trying.” Books was patting all around the opening.

The floor tilted again, down to the left, then quickly back to the right. Were they flying? Or floating on the surface of the lake? Amaranthe wished she knew.

The cubes appeared in the intersection.

“Not good.” Amaranthe lifted her rifle.

They rotated slowly, their crimson orifices coming into view. It’d be useless, but she shot at one. What else could she do?

The cubes didn’t bother incinerating her bullet this time. It simply clanged off the front of one, and it ignored it. They floated closer, the holes glowing in preparation.

“There’s nothing in here,” Books cried, desperation in his voice, something that’d often accompanied his words in tight situations early on. They were perfectly justified this time. “I can’t find it anywhere.”

“Take cover,” Amaranthe said, shooting again.

As if there were cover. She flattened herself against one wall, while Books leaned against the other, but their chamber was so tiny, there were only a couple of inches of wall on either side of the door. Akstyr had fallen to the floor.

“Too tired,” he groaned.

Amaranthe almost grabbed him, but he had as much cover down there as she did. The first beam lanced out, slicing through the air in the center of the doorway. It bit into the metal or whatever comprised the front of their supposed lifeboat. Smoke filled the air.

A second beam joined the first, and they started moving, one beam to the left, toward Books, and one toward the right, toward Amaranthe. She patted about on the wall, hoping to find a weapon or controls for the door. Anything, cursed ancestors, anything.

The beam inched closer. She dropped to the floor beside Akstyr.

“I don’t know who designed a lifeboat without a door that closes, but it’s a severe design flaw,” she growled.

Inevitably the cubes drew closer, and the beam lowered toward the floor, toward Akstyr and toward her. From her back, Amaranthe fired one more time, uselessly.

Her bullet landed, not with a clang, but with a concussive boom. The force of the explosion threw her into the air so hard and so high that she struck the ceiling. Or maybe that was the wall-the entire chamber seemed to flip onto its side. Pain bludgeoned her like a locomotive, her hip and her arm pounding into one wall, and then she hit another wall as the world spun again. Had she somehow blown up one of the cubes? How could such a small object contain such an explosive force?

Cries of surprise and pain came from Books and Akstyr, too, and the lights in the hallway went out. Everything went out. Or maybe the door had finally shut. Amaranthe couldn’t see a thing.

The world stopped moving, and she dropped one final time, hitting the floor with her other hip. She groaned and had no more than lifted her head-though what good that movement would do just then, she didn’t know-when a soft thrum ran through the chamber. There was a brief surge-acceleration? — and then a wan gray light entered the chamber.

After the darkness, even the weak illumination made Amaranthe blink, shielding her eyes with her hand. When her vision came into focus, she found herself staring through her fingers at a starry night sky.

“We’re outside?” she asked.

A stupid question, she supposed, but she was so disoriented that she couldn’t figure out what had happened. Amaranthe tried to sit up, to gauge her injuries. She didn’t think she’d broken anything, but in the morning she’d have lumps bigger than those love apples Maldynado was always talking about.

“Books?” She touched a dark form beneath her, and then the other. “Akstyr?”

They weren’t moving. Everyone was crumpled on the floor, their limbs entangled in the confined space. Amaranthe’s earlier assessment, comparing the space to a cider keg, wasn’t that far off. The rounded walls didn’t possess any visible instruments or gauges, though the front had disappeared, replaced by a window of some sort. A translucent barrier, might be a better term, as nothing so familiar as glass shielded them from the outside. She remembered escaping through a similar door the last time she’d left the Behemoth and wondered if that would become the new exit. The old door, the one through which they’d entered this “lifeboat” was sealed shut.

Amaranthe disentangled herself from Books and Akstyr. She was alarmed that neither was moving, but curiosity prompted her to check the view first, to see if she could see more than the stars. What if… She gulped. What if the Behemoth had spit them out on some trajectory that would take them to the South Pole? Or, dear ancestors, another world?