Her suit was soon swimming with sweat because the temperature in this ladder well was tropical. Climbing a ladder like this, when her brain was fried and she wore a mask and a butt plug, was more than uncomfortable, it was dangerous. Gio’s hands and feet slipped several times.
The lights glowing at the bottom and a number on the opposite wall softly illuminating the ladder were all that let her see how far she might fall. A small square of metal, at the midway point, was the only place to rest.
“Stop hurrying. There’s no one chasing us anymore.” His mild voice was incongruous.
She’d seen him shoot people. Pop, pop, pop. Same as in the blood-snack room. Was he on drugs or so incurably heartless that he could kill several men and then be calm enough to sound as if he’d been taking a stroll before coffee and cake?
“Good.” She leaned her forehead on a rung, barely feeling the metal through the mask. There were locks at the back of this. She would have to wait for him to remove it. If he fell to his death and she didn’t, getting it off her head would be a basket of fun. So would exploring this place. Wherever it was.
“Where are we?”
“The Underdeck.”
The under what? “And that is?”
No answer.
She began to descend again but slower, watching where her aching feet were going, testing each rung then moving on. Sweat trickled across her brow then into her eyes, and she blinked to clear her vision. How many had he killed? She wasn’t certain because that accuator had blown her mind. Her swollen clit and pussy throbbed in remembrance. Those baboons on Earth with the big red bottoms had nothing on her.
The suit seam crept into her slit and rubbed and slipped about.
If he clicked the controller accidentally, turned that thing on, she’d fall and probably not feel the pain when she hit the bottom and died.
What a plus.
What if she deliberately knocked his feet? She sneaked a look upward. If he fell, she’d be knocked off too. Or he’d recover and do worse things to her.
Maybe it was time to give up her dreams of making good and helping more people than she’d hurt.
Her foot slipped again and she gasped as she swung on her hands but managed to regain the rung. She reached the square of metal at the halfway point, rested a few moments, and continued down.
Time to give up her dream of somehow returning people to Earth. Gio touched teeth on teeth, not quite grinding, thinking lots of swear words. She might be the only human left on this world considering this and even though she was the only one with a chance of achieving it – because no one else had seen how a portal was made, maybe it was time.
To give up.
Her feet touched bottom and she crumpled into a heap next to the ladder, hands propped on the floor.
Sadness flooded her.
“Come.” He urged her to rise and Gio managed to follow, though she limped and left a bloody footprint. Something had cut her as she’d run. No wonder she’d almost fallen from the ladder.
Time to give in.
She shivered even after Ryke unlocked each padlock and peeled away the mask, then stripped off his coat and offered it to her.
“Put it on, Gio. Do up all the buttons. Where we go, I need you clothed decently.”
What was this? Her exhausted brain ticked up a level.
“Hmmm.” He examined her and must have found her wanting, his nose crinkling. He adjusted the coat so the upturned collar covered her neck. Then, to her shock, he knelt and wiped the blood from the base of her foot with a cloth. “Only a tiny cut.” Was that reassurance? “Don’t speak to anyone we meet. Be good.”
She nodded jerkily and followed him through a rusted, rivet-constructed door that must not have been opened for years from the way it protested and the fall of the rust flakes. She was a bedraggled mutt following her master.
Bedraggled and cowed.
Then the door opened fully...
Nothing could have surprised her more than the vista of rolling fields and sunlight. Nothing except maybe arriving at a beach on the Caribbean or finding Santa Claus.
The light warmed her, straightened her spine, fed her muscles.
Far above was a layer of suspended lights and above that an irregular ceiling of patched metal and holes. A few ladders and poles led there.
This wasn’t quite as she’d first seen it. The field was enclosed by distant walls though the area was huge. There were trees but they were small and also distant. The sunlight was overhead lighting. Hydroponics? Except beneath her feet seemed something like soil.
This room must span the width of the entire landship.
She followed as Ryker walked between tall plants bowing with red seed heads.
To one side, at regular intervals, she spotted umbrella-shaped round windows that showed countryside sliding past outside the landship.
Windows?
These were an anomaly. She’d never heard of such hull weaknesses being allowed. Her brain ticked up another level and would likely have hummed if it were possible. It struck her that her brain was bubbling over already with a subtle background of mechling thoughts. Far more of those than she’d felt in the levels above. Mostly they were untranslatable, but the strength disturbed her. More of them? Or a different type of mechling?
“What do they do here?” she asked softly. Producing food was top of her list, but if so, why the quarantine of this level beneath hatches?
“Shhh. No more talk.”
The crop swayed and twitched in places where no humanoid walked and it whispered of mechlings. Were they hiding in the crop?
Give up? Was I doing that? Hell no. Whatever was here was novel and there might be possibilities.
Something odd was here. Please let it be good – let it be a good oddness.
She limped onward, tugging up the coat collar. He wanted it so, yet another anomaly. He concealed her body, her state of dress, and even her neck.
These factors were so damn important.
Wait though, she had to wait. Need more factoids.
The first man they encountered, in faded gray dungarees, was sent running with a message and he soon returned with another man trailing behind. This one had dark hair and eyebrows, his face square, his demeanor that of someone used to giving orders. At first he waited yards back as if afraid of what he saw. Ryke waited too and finally the stranger approached, hand out for Ryke to shake.
“You’re early, brother. You weren’t due for half a year.”
“Yes. I have a small problem, Badh.”
“That one? Her?”
“Yes.”
“She’s a slave, isn’t she? You know that’s forbidden and illegal. Either leave her here to be executed, let her die, or...
“Or I get dispensation from the king to keep her here?”
“There is that. Never considered it, but you could try. A...you intend trying, don’t you?”
Their conversation continued but she was reeling. Slaves were illegal here. Illegal or dead.
This man, Badh, was his brother. He kept sneaking appraising looks at her so his eyesight must be bad. Or he couldn’t believe Ryke had dared to bring a slave? She was the dregs of what that cat dragged in. Blood leaking between her toes again. Coat borrowed and barely concealing her slave collar. Hair plastered to her forehead and her shivering as if she had some disease. Her lip felt swollen, her ass definitely was, and she might just fall over soon.
Today had been too much of everything.
This man though... She stared back. He was blue in parts. Etched blue. She’d thought her eyes wrong, but squiggly lines rode every exposed part of him. Since he wore mid-length white sleeves, a tan shirt, khaki-colored pants, and boots, that left his lower arms, face, neck, and scalp, in her view. His hair was shaven and there the blue crept jaggedly up through his skin. When he blinked she saw how his eyelids bore the color in trickles.
These marks were a bolder version of what she’d seen in Ryke’s facial scars.
His eyes met hers in the frisson, the clash of sexual tension, any woman knew well.
Ryke wound a hand in her hair and drew her close. “You want to see my proof of ownership?”
“I do.” Badh ignored her now, as if the actions of his brother were nothing out of the ordinary.
Rivalry, brotherly rivalry, and she was the focus. This amused her and there was something terribly wrong with that.
“Then let’s go.”
They walked through the crops in single file with her in the middle and she had no idea where Ryke was headed, though they weren’t aiming for the side of the landship. Toward the stern of the ship, she guessed. In the blurred distance, a wall of gold, red, and ivory metal climbed. The intricate design on the structure came into focus as they advanced. Many yards to the left, a circle of railings guarded a hole in the floor. Though curious, she couldn’t deviate from where she was led.
Perhaps it was the coat that made her feel protected and revived her natural inquisitiveness.
Perhaps it was that she had hope again.
A place without slaves? Something here was so delicate slaves could not be trusted to care for it?
They halted before the metal wall. The doors were double and grand in art if not size, for stars and a bestiary of unknown animals decorated the scarlet metal. The handles were ivory wings with feathers. Though scratches showed on the surrounding wall, they were otherwise a perfection of embossed reptilian scales. At the top the wall seemed to merge with the distant ceiling.
“Here.” Ryke tapped a flat circle on the doors, split in half by where they divided. “This is the entry plate.
“Yes.” Badh folded his arms. “You plan to open these? They’ve been closed since the king decided it was unsafe to visit the Underdeck. A century at least, by rumor.
Tucked away in her coat, she was ignored by the men. If she stood still and sucked her arms into the sleeves, they might forget her. If wishes were fishes.
Not a chance, informed the dissecting study Badh swept her with. He was interested in her. Dangerously so? Such interest might spawn another weakness in Ryke.
She made another mental note.
Ryke flattened his palm over the plate, and then he waited...waited. From within came a faint ting then grinding sounds. Metal mechanisms awakened.
After a century of neglect if Badh was correct.
“I assume this door gets power from the core,” Ryke murmured.
“Yes. And you can’t hope to bypass what takes a king’s hand to open.”
The internal noises died away, ceased. Ryke wrapped his hand over the handle and strained. The handle squeaked in protest then moved. “And yet...”
The door swung open enough to allow him to put his head inside. He seemed to observe whatever was within then withdrew.
“And yet you succeed.” Badh frowned. “How?”
“I can tell you why I have the king’s authority on my hand but you will need to keep it completely secret.”
“I’m your brother, fool.”
At that insult, Ryke grinned. “You’re also the Overmekker of the Underdeck. I called for him, you came. Your duty means more than I do.”
“Why’d you shut it?”
“What’s in there is between the king and me. For the moment.”
“And her?” Badh nodded toward Gio.
She tugged the coat tighter.
“Yes. Her, me, the king.”
“A slave?”
“It’s what is necessary. I need to live here off and on, for a while, I think. Depends on the situation above. Events may alter things.”
“So you’re in trouble. King’s authority or not.”
Ryke only inclined his head.
“Very well. You opened what was sealed. I expect that explanation, though.”
“Let’s sit at Gap One then.”
They walked back the way they’d come, but at an angle. They headed for the railings she’d seen. Iron seats with curled backs were spotted about the periphery of this circular gap in the farm area floor. Though the men leaned over the railing, she held back a little, in awe. The depths this overlooked worried her.
A brilliant, iridescent sea moved below, rolling far more languidly than any water. Blue mist wisped upward, reaching at least a story upward from the surface. Floating in that mist were vibrant flecks that twinkled like lost stars. They drifted in currents. Those currents were reflected in the sea sweeping at the base of a giant fiery sphere of blue. In places, the sea curled and vaulted upward only to fall back to the surface and merge, soundlessly, flattening, frothing.
As she dared to step in and gaze to bow and stern, she saw a spiral stairway leading down, walkways that hung partway down to the sea, and several more of the huge spheres in a line, half submerged in the trough of the sea. She counted four though farther along, blurred by distance, was the outline of another.
“What is this?” she whispered, expecting a reprimand, but Ryke seemed disconcerted and also fascinated by the view.
“That is the Engine Sea and the waik cores that power our landship.”
“Amen.” Badh nodded. “Even the Scavs know we adopted waik power long ago. Threw away our star tech for this. Tell me, Ryke, why have you brought a human down here? I also need you to tell me how you’re going to get that collar off her?”
Cold prickled through Gio.
“Because the king wants her here.”
Badh grunted. “I need more than that. Like you said, my duty is to my people, to the Underdeckers. We are crucial to the landship, to the swathe. You want to set a slave and a human loose down here?”
For once Ryke seemed at a loss as to how to answer, or was too preoccupied to think it through. “Loose?” He grimaced.
“It never gets easier, coming here, does it?” Badh said, his voice gentle. “I’m jaded, I guess, though the rebel assholes don’t help.”
Ryke only wrapped his fingers around the rail. Something in that Engine Sea captivated him. A memory, she figured. This was a weaker side of the man, definitely.
“I still need an answer.”
“The king wants to know how to make more portals. She is the only person left who may be able to help us find another portal mage. She was Drette’s assistant and, my brother...I am the King’s Own Lawgiver. I have dispensation to do whatever is needed to get answers from her.”
Whatever is needed. After all the killing, she couldn’t help being afraid. He did lie. It wasn’t improbable that he’d dispose of her in the end, like a used tissue. She was no murderer, blood made her queasy, but she needed to get over that.
If the moment came when she must stick a knife in him or die, could she?
“Stars above. You spat that out like a machine. Portal mage? We’re calling them that now? And you’re the King’s Own Torturer and Executioner?” He positioned himself beside Ryke. “Not denying that?”
“I’m a rumor that most know exists.”
Badh grunted. “So you’re a phantom but you’re above the law, but someone up there is disturbing your dark little playground. Ahhh, the Gathering is coming. The kings in waiting. Political traps and deviousness, and most would give their left testicle for the secret to portals. But...” He turned to Gio. “This girl’s a human. You have a mask in your hand but without the mask and gloves on anyone will know what she is. With them on they’ll see a slave. You can’t let her out here. I also refuse to allow you to torture her.”
Fuck. He refused... Her heart had probably stopped beating. She’d sure stopped breathing.
“No slaves, no torture. Spoiling my fun indeed.” Ryke raised his arm and hugged his brother one-armed. “I can color her hair and nails.”
“Mistakes may happen and people will remember and know she’s human. You and her in there?” He nodded toward the king’s residence. “They’ll know you’re special, but if they sniff that human cunt, I’ll have a riot if I don’t deal with her.”
“Human cunt?” Ryke studied her, his lips quirking, around his eyes wrinkling – the man thought this funny. She wanted to spit on both of them. “You can’t tell except by hair and nails. And of course by sticking your cock in one.”
“So I heard. No wonder you want to keep her.”
“Send Doctor Baxx to me. He can remove her collar. He’s discreet. I believe he’ll be quiet if I tell him it’s on the king’s authority. He’s still alive, I hope?”
“He is. You know you can’t let her out still?” A moment followed where the brothers seemed to exchange a silent communication then Badh sighed. “I’ll send him.”
“Good. I’ve never heard what casualties you suffered down here. Was it severe?”
“From the Scav attack? Yes, but not as bad as it could’ve been. The hole knocked in the hull up near the bow was above the sea. Nearly lost a waik core but we didn’t. Most deckers were working aft. Lost thirteen people to trauma, twenty to the energy that came from the DRAC missile. Mechlings plugged the hull fast. Most of the hull penetrated lost unprocessed, mined earth and nothing else. They hit the right-hand feed from the jaws.”
“We were lucky then.”
“A little. More by clever design though. If I was making a landship, I’d have put the feeds to left and right like we have. A few tons of chewed-up trees, ore, and dirt are a cheap substitute for armor.”
“And no new workers have been sent down?”
“None.” Badh shifted his feet apart, eyed his brother. “It’s why I could do with you helping.”
“I see. Maybe I can. I’m out of practice. It’s been many years since I flew the Engine Sea.”
“A decker never loses his touch, annnd there’s always farming.”
“Fuck off.”
“Not today, thanks. So...you’re just going to lock her up in the King’s residence and wait for what?”
Good question. This situation had been too impromptu for his liking.
Ryke stared over the rail into space. Down there, beneath the Engine Sea, was where his mother lay. Entombed in waik energy, she was as unreachable as the stars were for Mekkers since they came to Aerthe. It rent his heart every time, and he couldn’t stop coming back to look.
The day she’d returned from the desert, he’d healed somewhat. His father was gone, but one parent was enough. He’d run to her and buried his face in her lap.
Peace, for a while. Healing.
Until the accident, when she’d walked into the sea or fallen from her glider, or been taken by the prophecy. All depended on your point of view. His? He knew, and he was a child without his mother.
Again.
Hurts like that never healed.
Coming to the Underdeck gave him solace and turmoil. He transitioned when he came – from man with duty as his foundation, to a man who also understood loss and pain.
Though you could never escape from your responsibilities in the Underdeck.
Here he sat, in the skin he wore in the Underdeck, but he’d brought a woman he was bound to by duty and all that made him the man he now was, to extract secrets from by whatever means necessary. He was stuck between the two states.
King’s Own Lawgiver on the one hand.
On the other hand, he was Ryke, Underdecker, son of the only Mekker who’d ever survived on the surface of Aerthe. Or so it was said.
People said a lot of shit.
He pulled his hands from the railing and stared at his opened palms. Clean palms. He’d be the only decker of the age of thirty-five without a respectable amount of blue.
Being talked about as if she was an object was not new to Gio, not after being on Aerthe as a possession of the Mekkers for many months. It still hit her in the gut and made her eyes sting.
She tried to find some serenity – a center. She wasn’t the strongest woman in the world and never had been, but she could puzzle out most things given enough time. Whatever was going on here, Ryke wasn’t an emotionless robot. He’d sloughed off that rigid shell coming down that ladder and walking here. Something he’d seen in the Engine Sea had bothered him.
This man before her was a man you could stick a knife in and expect to bleed. Above, if he was stabbed she’d expected him to bleed iron filings.
Maybe she could hinder him, ruin him, then escape and do something good for the others here.
Something she’d thought gone was rising. She tasted hope.
With the collar removed, with her hair and nails disguised, she could walk about in this landship and not be recognized as a slave.
Several objects flitted by so quickly it was a while before her eyes could follow and focus. Yellow and brown with a touch of blue. She raised her head, tracking a small flying thing. Birds. She’d heard those had teeth on Aerthe.
Birds!
The hairs on her arms and the back of her neck tingled upright. If a bird could get in here… Other things could get out.
What if she could be both without a collar and free outside, on the lands of this world.
Except that would be selfish, wouldn’t it?
Gio blinked. A lot of people, humans, were relying on her. She was their last resort, though none of them knew it. Most of those who knew of her despised her. She was the traitor. The one who’d brought them here, sort of. Condemned them to slavery, sort of. Ignorance was not an excuse in a court of law on Earth, or here, where there were no good laws.
She wanted to do what was right.
A memory slammed in.
When the Scavs knocked a hole in this landship, the birds might have entered. Might. Might not. Damn. It was something she desperately needed to find out.