Mr. Ruins: A Thriller (Ruins Sonata Book 1) (11 page)

Will this be a ruin too, someday? I wonder how it will look crushed beneath the next great wave, driven to the bottom of the tsunami wall. Will divers who come to pillage stop and think as they kick through my living room, wonder who once lived here and how he felt? Will they sense the bonds of memory I've left scattered about everywhere? Will someone write an entry on a piece of paper about me and my forgotten life?

Out the door, I can feel something beginning to change. It is not a purpose, not yet, but something close, something more defined than I've felt since the bounty was the only thing that mattered to me, back when loyalty seemed to have some meaning.

I'm going to dive my own head, Lag be damned, and remember the man who calls himself Mr. Ruins. Then I'm going to find him, and make him answer for what I've become.

BONDLESS D

Ray is first to start running back around the cottage, bolting on his HUD as he goes, bringing up his parabolic and QC rifle. Doe and I sprint after him, as Far in the distance screams again.

"What is happening?" I call urgently through blood-mic, "So, La, report," but I get only fritzing static back, mingled with Ray's heavy breathing.

Ray hits the tree line and dissolves amongst the thick plastic branches. I follow with Doe right behind. With the chandelier cut I can barely see anything beyond the nearest green-leafed boughs, reflecting my suit lights harshly back at me. Instead I flash through the ultras in my HUD until I fall upon infra and the world phases purple and green.

Now Ray is a hot orange silhouette driving forward through cold blue brush, toward something terrible happening ahead. I can see to the clearing where we left them behind, the hot shapes of So, La and Far clear, and surrounded by a range of advancing blue and purple figures.

My blood runs cold, as I watch either So or La fall to the ground beneath the encircling horde. The other figure is standing and dispelling QC particles in recurrent waves, each a tiny red blip on the screen.

"They're waking up!" Doe shouts on mic, even as I see something purple loom at me out of the trees. I tongue back to holistic vision and see one of the soldiers striding toward me, his rifle held out with the bayonet sparkling in my suit lights. His face is motionless but for the mouth, which is a black and champing nightmare that stretches down and through his neck. There's blood stained from a bandaged wound in his head, and he's almost upon me.

I disassociate him with one blast of the QC, but he doesn't flay apart like he should, only staggers backward. I reach him and drive the haft of the parabolic into his solid plastic forehead with a thunk, followed by a suit-enforced thrust-kick that sends him wheeling back into the screen of trees.

"The QCs are ineffective," I call on blood-mic as I run on. "Use the suit exos."

"Roger that," I hear Ray huff. Far's scream rings out louder now, then I emerge into the clearing beside the hole where we started.

There must be 50 of the soldiers gathered in a rough circle around the tree where I left Far. Their backs to us, red coats and blue tunics pressed close in together like they've called a truce and are huddling for warmth, against a pale red dome rising up in their midst. I breathe a brief sigh of relief, that the twins had the sense to erect the lava shield we brought from the sublavic.

It ripples like a film of oil on water, and I wonder how long the power supply can hold back the plastic soldiers. I can't see if it's So or La at the center, but unlatch my QC and start firing as fast as the parabolic will charge, into the mass.

"Carve a path and we evac," I call out on mic. "Report!"

Ray is already ahead of me and pulling at the soldiers with his hands, tossing them backward with the suit exos. "Carving," he calls back. "Do something about the ones I've cleared."

"Roger that," I answer and stride up to one of the ones he's hurled and unload a stream of QCs into its mouth. Even at this range though there is no dissociating effect. If anything the black jaw starts to champ faster.

Far screams again, and I hear the breathy voice of So on blood-mic. "Help, the QCs do nothing, and they have La. Help us!" I'm thinking fast on how to clear them, as Ray hurls more aside only to have them rise again and lurch back toward him. Then Doe is by my side and unshouldering the bondless cannon, a heavy chunk of black metal that contains a compressed atomic accelerator.

"Cut a path for Ray," I tell her. "I'll keep them out. Ray keep doing what you're doing."

Doe nods as she assembles the weapon and sets the tripod braces into the ground. Ray calls a grunting, "Roger" as he hurls more soldiers aside.

I pull out my grapnel and fire one hook around the nearest tree. It catches and I pull the line taut, then start to run, weaving between all the soldiers rising back to their feet and making for Ray. They champ their teeth at me but do little else as I circle them each, wrapping them in the cord like a spider wrapping flies in its web.

I enfold ten, perhaps fifteen, before their collective drag begins to pull me with them. I cut and re-head the elasteel rope end, then fire it back to the same tree with an automatic haulier. The hook locks in and begins to wind, and the soldiers caught in my web are jerked off their feet and dragged toward it, bundling tight.

I turn to Doe, see she's sighted behind the cannon, aimed squarely at Ray's back buried three soldiers deep into their ranks. "We're coming," I rasp into mic for So and Far, then to Doe, "Now."

The percussive shock is nothing next to the recoil, as a golden spray of bondless atoms jet out of the accelerator cannon's funnel end. Doe is knocked flat on her back, as the atoms slip off their sheaths of non-reactive gold and affix to the plastic backs of the soldiers and rip chunks out of them in instant bond-creation.

They stagger, several drop, but not nearly as many as should have. Ray leaps into the shallow breach, protected by the ion-charge in his suit which repels the bondless atoms. He kicks off their bodies as they fall in the dirt and resurge, and I follow after him with another grapnel trap hooked behind me and the rope drawing out from my waist-spool. I loop in every fallen soldier and all the ones Ray tosses away, until we've clear a path through the dumb press of bodies, and can just see the black-suited form of La lying underneath their feet ahead.

I fire the grapnel again, my last, and it drags the cannon-pitted soldiers away to join their fellows struggling at the trees, but still Ray can't quite reach La. She's too entwined amongst the soldiers' feet, and most of our efforts now are spent keeping the tunnel walls he's carved through the soldiers' ranks from collapsing in on us.

"Help me, Me," he calls, and the fear in his voice terrifies me.

"Again," I shout to Doe, and feel the second atomic shotgun blast peel out. The gold sprays like party dust around me and a few more bodies fall ahead, dropping across La's prone body.

Ray darts in and snatches her up. "I've got her!" he shouts, then lofts her lolling body to his shoulder. A blue-tunicked solider grabs at his knee but I drive it off with three targeted QC particles. Together we drive back down the carved path as the walls close in.

Doe lets loose another blast with a curse, just enough to ease us free of their grasping arms. "It's not doing anything," she grunts, as the wall of bodies reseals. Far's screams have gotten weaker, and I only hear the intermittent whuff of So's QC parabolic cutting through the lava-storm shield.

We lurch to a stop beside Doe, and Ray drops La at our side. I can see at once that she's in hideous shape. There are bayonet gouges in her midriff through which blood has leaked, though there's no way any normal blade could have gotten through the armor. There's a deeply cracked pockmark in her shoulder where a musket ball must have torn it away, like an impact crater, again impossible for any normal projectile to effect.

"It's the bonds," Doe says, leaning over La's prone body and running her fingers across the resealed wound. She looks up at me. "They're just more solid than us."

"Do something!" comes So's cry through blood-mic, and I turn to see the top arc of the storm-shield sputtering. Again it is impossible, something bayonets and rifle fire should not be able to achieve in a million years, but it's happening before my eyes.

Bonds.

I toss my QC to the floor and scour the fake grass until I spot a fallen musket. Three steps and I pick it up, then I'm at the soldier wall and driving the bayonet into the back of the nearest soldier.

It sticks in like I'm carving wet clay, deep in past the blade's edge and halfway up the rifle barrel, to shear out the soldier's front and stab into the back of the one in front of him.

They both give a sigh, their champing jaws stop, and they drop. I let go of the buried musket as they drag it down with them, staring for a moment. So solid. Then I snatch both the muskets from their hands, toss one back to Ray who's already at my side, then dig in with the other.

"Doe keep it coming," I shout.

Gold dust erupts around us like a cloak, and side by side we stab a path through the soldiers, dropping them with sighs to the ground and stepping on their bodies when they fall. For long desperate moments that is all I do, stabbing soldiers through the backs and heads, chests and faces. I stab them two and three at a time like skewer kebabs, slice them like meatloaf portions, even as I watch the flickering red shield ahead sputter, fade, and die.

We burst through the final rank of soldiers and into the inner circle seconds after the shield cracks. So is there with a musket in her hand, fierce determination writ over the desperation. Far is curled up with his hands over his eyes at the tree's base, and all around us are the pressing ranks of the soldiers, advancing. Still there are too many and I know that they'll soon overwhelm us, like ants swarming a scorpion.

Then So cranks one of the muskets and points it at the nearest soldier, depresses the trigger, and

CRACK

The musket ball shears through the model soldiers like the QC should have, felling a handful in a straight line. She cranks it again, takes aim, and nods at me.

"Get a cannon Doe," I call over blood-mic. "A real cannon."

So's next shot cracks out and a half dozen more bodies fall and don't get up. I crank my own musket just like So had, aim it at the nearest bulge in the mass of pressing plastic, and fire. Soldiers tumble all in a line.

Soon Ray, So and I are back to back to back in a triangle, all shooting, adrenaline buoying us up as we pick soldiers off in straight lines, stepping in to drive our bayonets through any stragglers. Their numbers never seem to end though, and I'm tiring fast.

BOOM

The cannon-shot compacts the air like thunder, and abruptly half of the soldiers are blown to smithereens. A great gap appears in their ranks, and I see Doe on the other side with a fuse in her hand and the cannon at her side.

We stab at the remaining half, until Doe levels them too with another blast. We pick off the remnants with bayonets, a massacre with no screams or blood.

Afterward there is a curious absence of sound, beyond the ragged breathing of our chord and Far's quiet sobbing. I am sweat-slicked and exhausted, but the battle is over. We won. 

I turn, taking in the scene. Far is still huddled by the tree, So, Ray, Doe have their HUDs off and are all steaming. So has a wild, fractured look in her eyes. Around us there is a mandala of dead plastic bodies and parts spreading outward like the layers of the Molten Core. Occasionally one of them champs at the air.

"Did we kill them all?" comes Ray's voice.

A long eerie moment passes as we each sweep the trees around us, waiting for more to emerge. None do.

The chord look to me. I am the captain, and my job is to lead, so I blink away the uncertainty and start giving orders.

"Ray help Far," I say. "Doe walk a patrol." My voice sounds strange after so much violence, like I should be more altered somehow, though I'm still the same. "Everybody take your shock jacks." I tongue the shock jack myself, releasing a stored flow of my own body's chemicals, designed to counteract the numbing, sickening after-effects of combat. At once I feel the impact, becoming more relaxed, more attuned to the world. My sense of smell returns, the fog in my hearing clears.

My orders are followed, and Ray goes to Far, Doe lifts a musket and starts for the tree-line perimeter. That leaves only So.

I turn to her. The wild look is still in her eyes. I walk over and take her by the hand, and I lead her to La.

THE DON E

Mid-afternoon, and the crulls are flocking through the blue-tarp park. The homeless marine is out, and so is an old mad women tossing seaweed crumbs. I watch them at their efforts as I circle the sagging lake of algae-scummed rain water.

He wants meat, and she wants companionship. That's what we boil down to, I suppose.

I nod to him, he nods to me, our ritual. I can see he's trapped a crull, is already wrapping it in old newsprint blown over from Calico. Roasted on an open flame of dried algae, the paper will come away with the feathers, leaving broiled and gamey meat.

I walk on, through the park and the outer slums, until I come to the skulk's main alley. It's quiet at this time, awaiting the night when more brave souls from massive freighters carrying Arctic hydrates will dare themselves to on-shore in the lawless skulks.

Of course the trade for these freighters is with Calico, though there's usually a cut for us. Some enterprising sailor will have siphoned a little of their load, and come to sell it to us directly, a barrel-full maybe, the dregs that nobody will miss.

Walking down the shifting alley, feeling the barrels bend and bob underfoot, I think about how much we're like the algae on the pond. One hole poked in the bottom of the pond-canvas, and we'll all flush away. We are saprophytic, living off the ruins of past skulks beneath us, off the scraps Calico doesn't even know it's lost, fallen away from its great estuary mouth.