The Infernal Lands (The Aionach Saga Book 1) (27 page)

The long corridor of elevators jutting off the atrium’s north
end looked pristine by comparison. Merrick goaded his captive into the
sweltering concrete stairwell, and together they trudged up the sixteen flights
of steps to the ninth floor. They made it past another pair of guards with
little more than the obligatory questions about Merrick’s hands, and entered
the reception area of Pilot Wax’s offices through a set of heavy ironwood doors
with burnished brass handles.

A slender brunette in a striped blouse and a pencil skirt
shuffled papers at a desk, and a third pair of guards stood at the mouth of the
interior hallway.

“Can I help you?” the woman asked. Her hair and skin were
soft and clean, free of oils and blemishes, as though she’d just bathed. She
was as close to a picture on a billboard as any live person Merrick had seen in
a long year.

“Prisoner to see Pilot Wax. His cousin.”

“His cousin,” the woman said, smirking. She gave Dashel a look
through darting cloud-blue eyes. “One moment.”

Rising from her plush black chair, the receptionist strutted
down the hallway. When she walked past the guards, their nostrils flared and
their chests rose like air balloons. Thirty seconds later, she reappeared with
Pilot Wax at her heels. Wax’s hand fell from the base of her hip as they came
into view.

“You told them you were my cousin?” Wax said, his face
scrunched up with incredulity.

“I would’ve told them you were my grandmother if it kept me
from getting shot.”

So you did lie
, Merrick wanted to say. He’d
half-expected it, anyway.

“You should’ve shot this coffer,” Wax said, grinning. He
looked at Merrick’s hands. “I hope that didn’t hurt too much, whatever it was.”

Merrick shook his head. “Nope.”

Wax looked at Dashel Thomrobin for a long moment. “Come on
back, you slippery bastard. You look a right Mouther. I bet you fit right in at
the old basilica. What’ve you got for me?”

When Merrick moved to follow them, Wax raised a hand. “Not
you. You wait here.”

“I’ve got big news,” Dashel said.

“I coffing hope this is worth it,” said Wax. “You’re tracking
mud on my carpet. Cath, get this cleaned up.”

Cakes of dried mud were crumbling from the Mouther’s slippers
as he walked. Cath sighed, grabbed a brush and dustpan, and began to sweep up
the dirt clods while trying to stay ladylike in her skirt and heels.

“So, how are my friends in the Order these days?” Wax was
asking, as the two men disappeared down the hallway.

Merrick flung himself into one of the upholstered armchairs
and stared out the plate glass windows. The windows were all intact, an upgrade
from what he’d seen on the rest of the building. Minutes dragged by and the
shadows lengthened across the cityscape. His eyelids were beginning to droop
when he noticed the first hint of a dust cloud on the horizon.

At first he thought it might be a sandstorm or a cyclone on
its way, but the pillar was too short and narrow for that. The fading daylight
made it difficult to discern any details at this distance, so Merrick raised
his rifle and looked through the spyglass.

“Hope you’re not planning to use that in here,” Cath said.

The guards tightened their grips on their own rifles.

Merrick ignored her. The dust cloud was moving toward the city.
Vague shapes began to appear within, still too far away to make out.
That
isn’t a storm. It’s a group of travelers
.
A pretty big group, by the
looks of it. Maybe a trade caravan? No, a big train just came in two days ago.
A nomad war party?
The nomads knew better than to come so close to the
outskirts near Bucket Row. They always stayed well south of the dividing line.
Unless
they’re… attacking us. They’d never do that, though. Would they?

The first shapes that came into focus as the dust dissipated
were the dozens of ruddy-skinned, bare-chested men riding slender, long-legged
corsils.

“Savages,” Merrick said to himself. He’d seen a larger group
of nomads entering the city south from his birdhouse a week before.
They
must be banding together to stage some large-scale strike
.

“What was that?” asked one of the guards.

“Savages, I said. They’re coming in past the border. Are you
seeing this?” Merrick motioned them over and handed off his rifle. “Right out
there, six or seven blocks north of Bucket Row.”

“What’s going on?” Cath asked, worried.

“Get Wax. Get him now. I think the city north is being
attacked.”

Cath kicked off her shoes and took off down the hallway.

“
Coffing Infernal
. That’s corsils, alright. Mobile Ops
needs to know about this.” The guard returned Merrick’s rifle.

“I’ll send out the alert. Make sure Wax sees this.”

Merrick left the Hull Tower and raced down the street toward
Mobile Ops command. The extra pounds he’d put on made him feel like he was
running with weights strapped to his belt. Mobile Ops command was inside an old
museum, a monumental building of carved limestone. A daunting staircase rose
from its base at street level to the column-flanked mouth of its entrance. Merrick
took the stairs three at a time, ignoring the hot coals that were smoldering in
his lungs. The guards escorted him up the back staircase to a set of offices
with windows facing the southeast.

Standing in the doorway of the furthest office was Captain
Malvid Curran, Merrick’s former commanding officer. He was a short, solid man
with warm brown eyes and combed brown hair. He smiled when he caught sight of
Merrick.

“Corporal Bouchard. It’s been a long time. I was sorry to
hear about what happened. You were one of my best men, and I was sad to lose
you. Robling is treating you well, I hope? What brings you by this evening? I
was just heading home, actually. My goodness, what did you do to your fingers?”

“Captain Curran, listen. There are riders approaching the
outskirts right now. Savages on corsils, about six blocks north of the Row. I
was in the Hull Tower just now and spotted them. I didn’t get a good count, but
there must be at least a few dozen.”

The Captain’s relaxed demeanor snapped to attention. “You
sure? How long ago was this?”

“Five minutes ago, maybe. Yeah, I’m sure.”

Curran yelled for his assistant. A green-faced private, not
two weeks out of ingress training by the looks of it, appeared at the door and
came to attention. Older than Merrick, he was thinning up top and probably
weighed the least he had in his adult life. Ingress did that to you.

“Yessir,” the Private answered, stiff as a board.

“Aldie, I need you to dispatch word to the Lieutenants. I
want platoon four in the outskirts northeast of the Row in twenty minutes. Tell
them they have authorization to fire on these nomads if they come any closer.
We are on high alert, soldier. Get moving.”

“Yessir,” Aldie repeated, and was gone.

“Come with me, Corporal Bouchard. I’ll take you up top so we
can watch the firefight.”

Captain Curran led Merrick down a corridor and through a narrow
closet-sized door. An equally narrow staircase led up to a landing, where a
workman’s ladder was leaning against the wall. They climbed the ladder and came
through a square hatch onto the roof terrace. A rain-eaten banister of carved
limestone ringed the terrace, which was less than ten feet in diameter.

Merrick looked toward the outskirts. This rooftop was far
from the highest around, but he could still make out the eastern horizon below
the darkening sky. “Hard to see anything now, with evening coming on.”

Captain Curran leaned on the banister. “You’ll see better in
a minute. Once the fighting starts, we’ll have some extra light. So, how
are
you doing in the Sentries, Corporal? Getting along okay over there?”

“I coffing hate it.” Merrick had always felt comfortable
enough around Captain Curran to speak his mind.

Curran laughed. “Oh, I didn’t expect you’d
like
it. I
wanted to know how you were dealing with it. But I guess that answers my
question.”

“I’d be back with Mobile Ops in a second if I could,” Merrick
said.

“If only I had the power to make that happen.”

Gloom was descending now, both on the horizon and in Merrick’s
soul. If even Captain Curran couldn’t get Merrick back into Mobile Operations,
maybe he was stuck in the Sentries for good. Minutes passed in silence, and Merrick’s
thoughts wandered toward despair. The sounds of distant gunfire began to crack
through the night air, and there were tiny yellow bursts of light in the ruins
near the outskirts. Merrick could no longer see far enough to tell what was
happening out on the sands, but he doubted the attacking nomads were enjoying
it.

“There’s the Fourth, givin’ ‘em the business,” said Captain Curran.

A phosphorescent red orb winked to life in the desert. The
breeze was making Merrick’s eyes water. He rubbed the tears away, then raised
his rifle and squinted through the spyglass. Wreathed within the orb’s
flame-like glow was the figure of a man, a black shadow standing alone in a red
bubble. Two more orbs burst to life. Then a dozen more. The orbs were pulsing
like drums, highlighting the figures inside them like neon signs against the
backdrop of night. Merrick flinched when the first of the orbs sprang forward
and hurtled toward the city.

The sounds of the comrades’ rifles intensified. The orbs
shook and wavered, making strange pinging sounds as the Fourth pummeled them
with gunfire. It was then that Merrick knew these were no ordinary savages, and
this was no simple raiding party. Maybe they weren’t even men. Whatever they
were, the Fourth Platoon had awakened their ire. Now they were coming, bounding
toward the city like fiery clouds on a stormwind.

Merrick moved his spyglass in time to see one of the orbs
come crashing into the side of a building and wink out. He watched as many of
the other orbs did the same.
Maybe the Fourth is beating them
, he
thought. He was halfway through breathing a sigh of relief when he heard the
first of the screams.

It was a scream so shrill and tortured it made the hair stand
up on the back of his neck. Soon the orbs had all winked out, and in place of the
gunfire, the night air was filled with the screams of the dying.

CHAPTER 25

Strokeplan

To the heat-stained Sons of Decylum, the skeletal tips
of Belmond’s derelict skyscrapers were a gleaming paradise. The city was bathed
in sunset, caught in those lingering moments between daylight and starshine. To
the casual observer, the skyline was gray and fragmented. But to the weary
travelers who’d spent weeks in the desert, it sparkled with promise. Salvation
lay over the next horizon—a wonderland filled with resources ripe for the
taking.

The oncoming gloom will shelter us
, Hastle Beige
reckoned.
We’ll be able to take what we need and start home before morning.
Before anyone knows we’ve been here
.

Long days of heat and worry had bludgeoned Hastle’s spirits.
So many of the men had fallen ill that they’d begun to fill up part of a second
flatbed. That left less space for the raw materials they needed to gather
tonight. And yet, there was hope in the prospect of ending the first half of
their journey.

The thought of returning home was the only thing that
could’ve lifted Hastle’s spirits. Laden with treasures and greeted with glad
cheers, they would make a grand entrance in Decylum and free these sick men
from the light-star’s torment at last.
How proud Imogen and our children and
grandchildren will be
, he thought,
that I’ve taken the reins of command
during Raith’s incapacity and led us to a successful journey’s end. This is how
I’ll be remembered; not as the headstrong young man who wandered off into the
wastes, only to crawl back to Decylum a few years later, steeped in shame. This
is the most meaningful contribution I could ever make toward my family’s future
and Decylum’s prosperity. The fates are smiling on me tonight
.

Forty years had passed since Hastle last beheld the sight of
Belmond. His final memory of the city was from the day he left, a glance over
his shoulder at its hazy image in the distance. Seeing the cityscape now was
like reuniting with an old friend after years apart; all the same features were
there, but the veneer was weathered. It was hard to describe the way it made
him feel, at once nostalgic and disgusted. He’d come here to seek his fortune,
expecting to make a new life for himself. But he’d found only hardship and the frail
infrastructure of a city on the verge of collapse.

Hastle could see the Jerigan Building, poking its head
through the smog downtown. He’d been up on the fifty-eighth floor the day it
was finished. Tripplehorn Highway, the main artery that ran straight through
the heart of the city, was less than a horizon away. The Greater Belmond
Community Hospital, the first project he’d been assigned to when he got his job
with Glaive Industries, was probably still standing somewhere beyond all those
neighborhoods and storefronts, with their dusty brown yards and shattered
driveways. Worst of all, though, was the HydroPyre station.

Tucked away somewhere on the other side of the city, that
wretched old thing had gone down every other week, it seemed. Every time the
power grid failed, he and his co-workers would have to jumpstart the thing like
an old man with a heart problem, until they were patching up the HydroPyre
station with what amounted to little more than tape and wire.

Hastle would never forget the way the others had laughed and
joked about him. To them, he was the strange pale-skinned foreigner from back
east. That was before Infernal had given him the enduring cherry-colored
complexion he’d had ever since. His only friend, a meek young man about his age
by the name of Cole Halstrom, had helped him stand up to the other workers who
gave him trouble. Hastle had always been a burly man, but that didn’t stop them
from trying to get a rise out of him. He and Cole had taken a good clobbering
together on more than one occasion.

The ridicule had only gotten worse when Hastle began to complain of
intense pain in his hands. The other men accused him of faking his injuries so
he could get out of work. Back then, the Ministry was only a few years
disintegrated, and everyone still thought it was going to make a comeback. When
it didn’t, people stopped acting as though they were being watched, and started
acting out instead.

After a few months of working for Glaive Industries, Hastle had
stopped feeling sorry for his friends and relatives in Decylum. Life out here
wasn’t the party he’d thought it would be. Whenever he tried to talk about
home, those obtuse blowhards either didn’t believe him, or they didn’t care.
Soon he stopped talking about home altogether. If they refused to believe the
Ministry had left behind a generation of genius-level scientists dedicated to
its work, then they didn’t deserve to know about it.

Neither do any of the surfacers who roam the dead city
today
, Hastle realized.
Raith was right; Decylum is worth holding onto.
Forget the rest of the Aionach; forget the privileges Cord Faleir and his
minions on the council seem to think we deserve. Let them all rot up here. They
can have the surface world if they want it. Decylum is a special place, and it
deserves to be protected
.

An immaterial glow quivered from within the hollows of the
city as the Sons of Decylum came nearer, orange specters that bent and swayed
and threw shadows into the dark. The inhabitants of Belmond were alive and
well, it seemed, though their intentions were as obscured as the city itself.
Hastle and his men would have to be careful to avoid drawing attention to
themselves, but he knew they were more than capable of that.

Hastle produced Raith’s commscreen and charged its power cell
with a lingering touch. When the picture flashed to life, there was an
unsettling pause while the device cycled through its routines. The CONNECTING
message appeared and froze, stuck there like a fly in honey. It stayed on the
screen for so long that Hastle started to wonder if the machine had
malfunctioned. Then, instead of flickering to Kraw Joseph’s hab unit, several
rows of boxes filled the screen. Each box was linked to a video feed from one
of the facility’s public areas.

Hastle flicked through each feed. First was the hangar, its vehicles
and machinery dark and lifeless. The hydroponic gardens, their rows upon rows
of planter beds awash in artificial daylight. The atrium, five stories of
walkways and benches and darkened convenience food outlets, with people
scattered throughout. The council chamber, a high-ceilinged utility room
stripped down to the bare walls. Empty.

When Hastle came to the laboratory feeds, the screens were
black. These had been converted to private hab units decades ago, he knew. He
tried Kraw Joseph’s connection again, but the line was still dead.
If the
council isn’t in session, and Kraw isn’t within earshot of his commscreen,
where is he?
After a few more minutes of waiting, Hastle decided he would
try again later. Once they’d loaded up the flatbeds with salvage and were on
their way home, he’d have that good news to share as well.

Hastle gathered the men around him, beckoning the riders from
their mounts and the footmen from their perches on the flatbeds. “Compliments
are in order. We’re here. Half the journey is behind us. I’d ask you to applaud
yourselves, but I’ll refrain, for reasons you can already guess. We’re almost
at the outskirts. It’s fortunate for us that we got here at dusk. The cover of
darkness is exactly what we need to stay hidden while we work. And it’s
easier than slaving away in the daylight. I know we’re all tired, but one night
of solid labor is all that lies between us and home. Take heart, and remember
that this is the point where everything comes to fruition. We turn back only
after our assignment is complete.

“Now, I want everyone spreading out across this section of
the city. We’ll start harvesting as soon as we get into the outskirts.
Blackhands, don’t bunch up. You’re the keys to this operation. The others are
going to need you. If anyone comes across any city dwellers, leave them alone
unless they’re hostile. In that case, use whatever threat you think is necessary
to turn them away. Try to keep it quiet, of course. I’ll send messengers to
notify everyone of our departure. If you don’t receive word by two hours before
dawn, withdraw, and we’ll regroup in the wastes. We have to leave ourselves
enough time to get over the horizon before daylight. Everybody clear?”

Either everybody was clear, or they were all too nervous to
say otherwise.

The flatbeds dispersed, and the men formed a line several
hundred feet wide. When Hastle gave the signal, they began their slow trudge
toward the city, moving with the reluctance of some meager battalion in the
face of an insurmountable foe.
They don’t want bloodshed
, Hastle knew.
Half
of them don’t even expect it. But before the night is done, some may find it
forced upon them—though I hope it doesn’t come to that
. The hunters were
the only ones who’d had to kill before, and most of them would admit that
killing animals for food wasn’t the same as defending themselves from hobos and
drifters.

The flatbeds squeaked and the animals grunted, but those were
the only sounds that cut through the chirrups and trills of insects in the
night. After a few minutes of walking, they reached the crest of the horizon,
where they could see straight into the city at ground level.

Then the starbursts began.

They dawned and receded across the cityscape in bright yellow
flares, as swift as vanishing flowers. The feeling was faint and benign at
first, as if the denizens of Belmond were putting on a light-show for their
visitors’ enjoyment. A vast garden had already bloomed and died by the time the
storm fell on them.

Metal split flesh, zippered it open. Bees buzzed and stung,
spat from the throats of shouting mechanisms like hearts beating rapid-fire.
The sounds came as a torrent of distant cracks like leather striking concrete.
Lightburned skin helicoptered away attached to chunks of flesh. Wet. Everything
was wet. Dark stains in the sand. Splashes, glistening in the starlight.
Horrific screams, shrieks of distress from the horses and corsils, who were
bolting off and launching into fits of wild agony. Shapes were writhing in the
sand. The forms of diminished men, squirming and crying and shitting themselves
and spurting on thirsty ground.

Hastle had been quick. Or maybe just lucky. He’d fallen on
his face when he saw the first muzzle flashes, too shocked to cry out and warn
the others. Men were snapping and spinning loose like thread, unwinding and
toppling down around him. Some were dying. They were the fortunate ones. Others
were tattered, conscious and breathing, torn apart and waiting for a death that
wouldn’t come, their hearts still beating with the pain of life and life and
life and life. Terror wrapped its claws around Hastle’s throat, and he did the
only thing he could think to do. He ran.

But not away. He lifted a knee and came to his feet,
spreading his fingers and flexing every muscle he could spare. Light blazed
from his hands, dim yellow that passed through orange and red on its way to
white, until his fingertips were throbbing. A red sphere like half a gigantic
soap bubble parachuted out in front of him, electric oils dancing across the
surface. His legs churned the sand like pistons, and he hurtled toward the
city, picking up speed.

Though his boots sank against the shifting dust, he was fast
enough now to reach the outskirts in half the time it would’ve taken him otherwise.
Bullets began to drum against the orb’s surface. With each strike, a trembling shockwave glinted
across the shield, and a jolt of energy tingled in his fingers. Hissing globs
of molten lead scattered asunder. His shield brightened. The feeling made him
smile a grim smile.

As he neared the outskirts, Hastle’s desperation turned to
rage. Decylum’s sons were dying. He’d been careless and overconfident. The
feeling began to haunt him, pulsing stronger with every step. He began to feel
the warm current of the other blackhands as they brought up their shields
behind him, and he was comforted to know he wasn’t alone.

When he was close enough to make out the shape of one of the
gunmen, he leapt. Bullets smacked his shield and spattered. In the instant
before they touched, Hastle blinked off the shield. His broiling hands met
clothing and flesh on the far side of a low brick wall. The two men tumbled end
over end until they came crashing to a halt against the far wall of the ruin,
smoking like doused firelogs.

Hastle shook off the impact and clamped his glowing hands
around the gunman’s skull. Skin and hair melted away, and there was a sharp,
black smell. Hastle ignored the man’s tortured cries as he twisted the neck
around. The spine dishragged, bone splintered and peeked through skin, and the
throat opened in a fleshy wet spray.

Hastle’s senses rose on the wind, as sharp and vibrant as
daylight. Even as he dropped the lifeless body at his feet, he triggered his orb
to stop another bullet. The subsequent barrage sailed in, but his shield turned
them to slag and sent him a coinciding set of helpful jolts. He whirled to face
his new assailant and made a pushing motion. A wave of heat issued forth from his
hands, and the next muzzle flash ignited like a cloud of gas in a backdraft.
The gunman shrieked, dropped his weapon, and began to beat his burning face and
jacket with furious hands. Hastle lit on him with a fury of his own, and the
man was dead before he’d found time to extinguish himself.

More gunshots echoed from above. Hastle left the burning body
where it lay and swung himself onto the sloping edge of a ruined wall.
Tottering up to the second floor, he bounded across the gap to the next
building and crouched against a stair access wall. There was a prone gunman
firing on the unprotected men out in the dust. Gravel crunched under Hastle’s
feet as he sprinted over and drove a fist into the man’s back. A smoldering
crater of splintered ribcage and collapsed lung replaced the mottled gray
camouflage of the man’s shirt fabric. Hastle lifted the gunman and tossed him
over the side. The body landed head-first with a sickening crunch.