Karl Schroeder - Ashes of Candesce - Book Five of Virga

Antaea was waiting at the main hatch with a sizable crowd of airmen. They were all holding the straps of packs that were bigger than they were--carrying tents, heaters and stoves, gas supplies, guns big and small, ammunition, food supplies, extra clothing, blankets, and personal items. They looked ready to settle in for a long stay; good.

"What's that for?" Antaea pointed at two men who were struggling with a huge reel of rope.

Jacoby grunted. "When we triangulate the direction of that nest of Guard ships, we'll unreel that behind us as we go, to make a road back. We're bringing black cloth to make a blind we can hide behind when we get close enough to watch them."

"Ah. Clever."

"We wouldn't have to be clever if the Guard trusted you better," he said. "Then you could have just asked them what they were up to."

She scowled at him. With one last look at the readiness of his men, Jacoby swung out the hatch and into the darkness of the lost city.

The air smelled of stale ice. One by one the others left the warmth of the ship behind, gathering in a knot around Jacoby. There were already several crewmen out here manning searchlights and telescopes; the telescopes were aimed into the black-on-black geometry of the city, but the searchlights were roving over the tower that they had stopped next to. This was cylindrical, with one band of glass windows that spiraled around it from its base to its crown. The windows were unbroken, and Jacoby had seen no wreckage drifting in the air. Whatever ancient event had caused its citizens to abandon the place, it seemed not to have been a war.

"Find a way through that glass," he said. "If you have to break it, then break it. I want this tower thoroughly searched and secured within one hour." Then he turned to Antaea. "Can you fly a bike?"

"Mine is in the hold, remember?" He heard the eagerness in her voice, and smiled.

"We have six. Break 'em out, boys!"

The bikes were simple: wingless jet engines with a saddle and handlebars. Each was capable of accelerating hard enough to knock its rider off, and cruise fast enough that the headwind would snap your neck if you poked your head out from behind the windscreen. Jacoby had no special ambitions for them today, of course; they were convenient for reconnoitering the ruin. He and Antaea each took one, and some of his men doubled up on the other four. They growled and grumbled into the grasp of the towers, listening to echoes murmur back from dead walls.

One of the men quickly spotted a set of big square doors gaping at the base of the docking gantries. He swung his headlight in. "Sir? Can we?"

The boys were nervous, and that was making them dare one another to go farther. Well, Jacoby could play that game, too. He turned to Antaea, who expertly straddled her bike a dozen feet away. "Shall we?"

"You brought rope?" He nodded. "Then let's not waste time," she said. "Remember, the Guard may be on its way here."

They lashed the bikes at the base of the docking gantries, and left the icy air of the outdoors for even colder inside air. One of the crew whistled as he played his little magnesium lantern around the walls.

From the maw at the base of the gantries, the passages and veins of the dead city corkscrewed away like the inside of a nautilus's shell. From the first long curving chamber--like the inside of a hollow horn--large openings like the maws of great arteries branched away. Other smaller ways branched and rebranched into impossible complexity like some system of capillaries. All the open spaces were crisscrossed by cables that one could swing or jump from. Doors and windows were scattered over the walls in patterns; great dark lamps hung like dead jellyfish in the open air.

And everywhere, there was debris. It clotted the dark air, flicking into visibility as the lantern's light found it: chairs, books, picture frames, wicker storage balls full of china plates--the whole inventory of a living city, vomited into these spaces and left to drift and assemble in strange clouds. Spiderwebs and skeins of fungi held some of the collections together.

They moved in, casting their lights in side passages as they went, but keeping to the main way. This corkscrewed but maintained a steady direction, heading toward Virga's outer wall.

"I saw no town wheels," said Mauven after a long silence. "Nothing to spin at all. What did these people do for gravity?... Sir? What's that?"

He looked to where the first mate had aimed his lantern. At first this artery seemed like the others they'd come through--but no, Mauven had spotted something affixed to one wall. It looked like nothing so much as a great fist, made of a substance disturbingly like cuticle or horn. The thing was eight feet across, and it clenched the wall so strongly that the ancient metal surface was furled and torn.

Jacoby swung his own lantern around and looked back the way they had come. His heart sank as he saw that they'd already passed a number of the things, but had missed them in the jumble of junk that choked the round corridor.

"I hate to say this," said Antaea, "but those look like eggs."

One of Jacoby's men swore suddenly and loudly. Jacoby followed the light of another lantern and felt a prickle of shock down his spine.

The lamplight played across a galaxy of corpses, all hanging in perfect stillness in the center of the passage ahead of them.

The sight was paralyzing, but as soon as Jacoby saw how it had stunned everyone else into silence, he shook himself and forced himself to take a more dispassionate look at what they'd discovered. The bodies were frozen, many showing huge and distressing cuts and slashes; beads of frozen blood hung in the air next to them. They were dressed like airmen, in a style he hadn't seen since he last visited some of the more backward nations of Spyre.

"So now we know why no one comes here," he said heavily. "But who did this? I don't like it; we'd better get back."

They had been drifting down the middle of the corridor, but now they all tried to stop themselves by grabbing ancient pedestrian ropes or wall rings. Mauven, however, was in the middle of the way and had nothing to grab on to; he kicked his feet into the stirrups of the spring-loaded wings mounted on his back, and they flapped once. The burst of wind caught the cloud of bodies, and the corpses began to move languidly. Less massive, the frozen beads and balls of blood began colliding and spinning away. The passageway filled with a strange, rapid-fire clicking sound as a wave of movement spread through the blood cloud.

Jacoby heard himself say, "Let's get out of here," and there was no disagreement. But as they turned to go back the way they'd come, the clicking sound was suddenly drowned out by a dry crackling noise.

One of the ominous growths that lined the wall was rocking. It was thirty feet up the corridor--in between them and the way out--and just a gray outline in the penumbra of their lanterns' light. It shook again, and then with a shattering sound it burst, and bright metal and splintering crystal flew through the air. Something scrabbled out of the wrecked cocoon and in seconds the passageway was filled with screaming and the sound of gunfire.

8

MAERTA WAS WAITINGin the glass-walled gallery. Both her bodies were here, and six other large multi-armed shapes hovered in the dimness behind her. "Keir, what are you doing?" she asked.

The Virgans all stopped, looking around uneasily. Keir stepped up, meeting Maerta's gaze with a level look of his own. "This is their only way out," he said defiantly. "If they can break through the cordon on the other side, they'll be home-free. The guard bots won't be able to follow them into Candesce's field."

"I understand that," she said gently. "That's not what I asked. What are you doing?"