Chapter 33
From a distance, Ari spied the first evidence of the lost Jungle Swathe. The upper hulls showed on the horizon of this sea of tree tops. As if to keep the landships from escaping, huge vines wormed across the upper structures, grappling the ships in an obscene embrace of metal and plant.
Where uncovered, the naked metal sparked sunlight, except on a few smaller structures and towers. The Mekkers’ superior metallurgy had largely triumphed over rust.
Stomping onward, the warbug forged a path through undergrowth and a thick forest of trees and vines that overshadowed it at times by twice its height. The side doors had to be closed due to branches whipping and groaning past, snapping off, and flinging yard-long splinters. Before the last door could be shut, a few animals jumped or flew in, but the jaggs had snapped up and swallowed them before anyone could identify them. Bloody smears and feathers on the floor were all that were left.
When the warriors ventured to the ground, Ari was allowed to join them. They fought their way past obstructions, with blades and sheer force, through to the main ship of the swathe. The rumors and the map had been accurate. For much of the forest journey, Sawyer walked beside her, and she was grateful.
“Stay with me,” he’d said. “There are big things with big teeth in here.”
She’d raised a brow and almost laughed. Martha and Arthur were the worst predators she knew of, barring men like him.
It was true, however, that a knife was a poor defense against something large and predatory.
JI, on the other hand, often trundled off to examine the trees, the animals, the ground on which they walked. He’d not been in a forest for many years and was like a child in a new play area. Nothing would eat the eight-feet-tall mech. The worst possibility would be if a branch damaged the connection to his mechling brains, and the armorer had reinforced those weak points.
Finally they found metal looming above, exposed in gaps between plants. The sky and the sun were distant, forgotten elements; light filtered down in a desultory fashion, painting irregular splotches on upturned faces.
Sweating and panting, they gathered below the hull of this first landship. Past gigantic sunken treads and wheels, past a climbing tangle of vines, a landing bay big enough to swallow five warbugs gaped. Black inside there. The ship seemed to breathe out the hole, emanating the scent of crushed plants, ripe fruit, and decaying flesh.
At the front of the party, Osta out-flung his arms, axe in fist, his legs spread. He intoned, “We have found her!”
A flock of startled birds flew from the open maw to vanish among the trees, screeching their discontent. Leaves fluttered down, gold, brown, green. Osta rested his giant axe at his feet, leaned on it. Weapon belts crossed his back, a long gun strapped there also. “Bring the ladders and ropes so we can scale the wheels!”
“See.” Sawyer leaned close to her and pointed up at the hull and a tall row of faded mauve numbers. “Those say we have the main landship.”
She nodded. “Then we are where we aimed to be. I hope whatever lies inside is not the death of anyone.”
“Indeed.” JI arrived behind them. “Indeed, Ari. When beggars die, there are no comets seen; The heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes.”
She turned and frowned at him. “What is that from, JI?”
“Shakespeare and Emery. She taught me much about life and Shakespeare. Princes...” he mused. “I don’t think we have any princes here, do we?”
“Osta is about our closest, for anything like a prince,” Sawyer muttered. “I don’t think he fancies dying.”
It was late morning when they pulled themselves over the lip of the bay and entered the ship.
Osta paused here, several yards in, while his tech man slid a box-like device from his pack.
“This was at the base where we found the warbug,” Osta explained. “It detects the material inside DRAC missiles. This ship...” He waved a hand at their surroundings. “Has already shown a strong reading. Our best theory, based on strategies listed in an archaic war manual, is that a trap was laid. An array of missiles were set to blow when a swathe passed over them. They said...back then, we were inferior in missile tech, and so nothing could get near a swathe. Their idea was to bury them deep enough to escape detection, in the path of a swathe. When the mining scoops and teeth hit them, they’d explode.”
Osta swung in a slow circle so that all could hear his words.
“They had a pattern for these traps. If this ship hit one, the location of the destruction will tell us if it was such a trap...and if it was, we hope to find other similar but unexploded DRAC missiles. Then, we will dig them up! We will take them back to the Royal Swathe! And we will destroy those murderous scum!”
The man had kept this a secret. Had he been afraid it would be a false trail?
The cheers echoed from the metal walls, somewhat ominously, Ari thought. Killing never had a good outcome, from her past experiences. People died then more people died.
One day someone must find a way to negotiate a peace.
“Move on!” Osta set out, leading by example, as always. He was brave. He had vision. He inspired. He was a man who killed his pleasure slaves, JI had told her. More than one. So many deaths could not be an accident.
She followed him, of course. They expected her to help repair such missiles.
“How can he expect buried missiles to be intact?”
She’d said it almost to herself but JI answered. He’d been clanking along at her right shoulder but she was used to the sounds and had barely noticed.
“Apparently, your people scavenged some of our Mekker missiles and replaced the insides with something new that targets a swathe far better. No one seems to know what was inside them. I have seen a DRAC myself—”
“What?” Sawyer spoke from behind her and she jerked. Her heart stuttered.
“Where did you come from?” She spun. She’d thought him gone ahead and had perhaps been too busy trying to decipher shadows in case they hid evil things.
“Here,” he said, absentmindedly. “I was watching your ass. JI...you saw a DRAC? When? How?”
“Mako used it to blow up my true JI-mech 34 body to mislead the Mekkers into thinking I was destroyed. The radiation disrupted me for a short while, but I was quite distant from the blast. How far? I can’t remember...sorry.”
“So you have no new info?”
“I do recall it looking remarkably shiny for its age. This supports what Osta proposed – Mekker casing, at least. Which means they might have survived, if not in direct contact with soil and water.”
She wouldn’t be good at repairing the internals of a Mekker construct, would she? Brains were different. They’d make her try.
This landing bay was enormous.
Enough dirt had blown in, enough droppings and leaves were on this floor, that plants grew from mounds of debris. Vines had also crept in through the bay door, sneaking across the walls and ceiling. They wrestled with the lights and ducts up above. Animals had made homes here too. She spotted dung and small bones, hair, even a few paw prints.
The pungent smells encountered, as the party crept and stalked through the long-abandoned corridors, said creatures had died here recently. Perhaps it was from old age. She hoped.
The corridors went on and on. The device led them toward the front of the ship.
“No one’s been here for a long, long time,” Dayne ventured, as they turned a corner.
The blue from the pole-lights showed they’d found a large open space.
“A park? A factory? A warehouse?” Sawyer said.
They fanned out, spreading the light, revealing...
Sassik and Dayne came up on her left shoulder just as Osta stepped out. The man with him carried a light-stick and the blue flooded the floor, revealing a multitude of low mounds and scattered objects.
Bones. Bones and covered skeletons and skulls that rolled when Osta brushed one with his boot.
“A place for the dead,” murmured Sassik, scratching at his curly locks. “I pity them. Long dead but I feel their sorrow.”
She sucked in a shaky breath. Many of these people had died in rows on low beds. Some of the skeletons were small. Children, these were children. Machinery beside the beds suggested they were being treated? Or examined after death. “Was this a hospital?”
Sassik said, “Either way we are here long after any of this, so it can’t be infectious.”
“When Mekkers stop moving, they die.” That was Dayne, lean, mean, and practical. “Mother Aerthe got them. Bastards.”
“Come!” Osta waved. “Our instrument says the missile is close and forward of here!”
They found the site where a missile had struck. The rift in the ship’s hull was small, considering the entire ship had been halted. This was at the bow, and the destruction had started low then had blown upward, obliterating the floors above where they stood, peeling open a broad triangle of the ship all the way to sky. It’d come up through the belly.
“Definitely a trap missile,” the tech told Osta, tapping his teeth and kneeling at the edge of the primary hole in the floor. “The particles of leftover explosive are scattered all through here.”
“Should we be here then, if it’s still active?” someone asked. “Sir?”
Osta replied. “The manuals say this is a short-lived anti-Mekker radiation. What is detected is inactive and unexploded material. We are immune to this radiation, in any case. I am sorry, I should have told you all that. I apologize if it was worrying anyone.”
The man cared for his people? He was a puzzle.
It is all through here. Ari turned. She could see no pieces of any missile. Here was like the landing bay, big – except more overgrown with jungle.
Greenness abounded. A few trees had grown. Birds flew in circles hissing and calling. Two shredded floors above her, where the sun could reach, large yellow flowers drooped from the vines, decorating the wound in the ship. Destruction made pretty.
Something leaped from a nearby hillock of leaf mulch and curled and torn ancient metal, to drag a man away by his leg, screaming. The lightstick he’d carried rolled off, casting a shuddering light until it ceased to move.
The warriors had barely raised their weapons when Martha leaped on the predator and gulped it down in two bites. The legs she’d snapped off twitched on the floor. Arthur scoffed them down.
“Physician!” someone yelled.
Sawyer ran toward the commotion and that...was when she noticed JI was missing.
Where was he?
At the very back, where they’d entered this area, she glimpsed him, red sensors glowing. He paused, head up, as if he sniffed some tantalizing smell. His head wobbled rapidly in that spasm that’d been afflicting him more and more. He paused again. Then he slipped away through the door.
Perhaps he was glitching badly.
She jogged over to the light-stick the wounded man had dropped and picked it up then turned and jogged toward where she’d seen JI.
She might not have followed him...
If she hadn’t been worried...
If Martha hadn’t tagged along, and if anyone had noticed her walking away, but the screaming distracted them.
She might not have followed, if Arthur hadn’t arrived at her right side, meaning Sawyer followed also.
Wasn’t much in this ill-omened, derelict place that’d make the jaggs hesitate to eat them.
Though the walls might fall in on her.
Okay, she was still scared, her heart was speeding, but JI had become a friend, again. They’d been having what he called agony aunt talks. They soothed her. They made her think about this situation and JI...and Sawyer. Also they talked about life, death, and cocks.
Crazy funny how he obsessed about those.
Failing him again would be a sad indictment of her bravery.
She wouldn’t stop for Sawyer, but she appreciated his presence. Perhaps he thought she was running away again? Here? She almost laughed.
Fuck this place was frightening.
“JI!” she yelled, as she walked through the doorway. Nothing, just the clanking and clicking sounds of his feet on the floor. Just the blue wash of her light making creepy shadows. He was moving rapidly. But, she had back up and she had...Ari flicked aside her coat and checked the knife at her waist then broke into a jog.
She had a big knife.
Stupid mech.