Lotus Blue Page 5

  “Nene’s busy,” Star lied, blurting out the first excuse that came to mind. Nene must have slipped back down through four’s hatch before all the trouble started. Probably consulting those ancient books that weighed as much as mud bricks, anything to escape old Yeshie’s crackpot Angel theories. Any minute now the hatch would flip. It should have flipped already. Nene was taking her own sweet time about it.

  Danger passed, Yeshie and Mara soon picked up their good-natured bickering from where they had left it.

  “Spirits do not catch fire! They do not plummet from the heavens.”

  “Falling rocks do not change course. Neither do meteors or comets . . .”

  Travellers relaxed their tight grips on the rings—and each other—easing their way back into the ride.

  Nene knew something about that fallen Angel—Star could read her sister like the sky. But she wouldn’t be climbing down inside wagon number four. Cramped, confined spaces bugged her even more than the boredom of the open sand. Besides, she’d only be given chores to do. Bark to grind or pastes to bottle—and all for nothing because no matter what Star ever did, Nene kept her secrets to herself.

  Kian was staring at her again. She wasn’t sure if she liked it or not, but after a time she decided that she did. No matter that he was another gawking tourist. The three hailed from the coast and that made them exotic. They were headed to the same place she was, a fact she liked the most of all.

  A familiar series of short, sharp whistles sounded from up front. A warning to the rest of them. Star craned her neck to the landscape up ahead, expecting to see another hungry lizard—or maybe even a whole nest of them. Number four’s hatch flew open in front of her, Nene bursting out like their home was on fire.

  “Nene, you missed all the excitement,” Star blurted out. “A lizard rammed five and six—did you not feel anything below?”

  But her sister wasn’t listening. Her attention was focused on a particular set of ruins coming up on the left, a cluster of rusted, jutting struts with bases embedded in weathered concrete. One of them had a bundle attached way up high. A bundle that looked a lot like a human body.

  = Seven =

  The General had dreamed of walking on the surface of the sun. All blinding white and firestorm enveloping him in a cloak of heat and glory.

  He’d crossed the line into the waking world, into stillness, silence. Dark and cool. He cannot feel his arms and legs, see anything, hear the beating of his heart.

  No matter. The dreams have faded. The bombs have stopped. Nothing left to contemplate but the scratching of tiny beasts in cobwebbed corners.

  Odd that he cannot remember his name or the place of his birth or the faces of those who raised him. Nor places—not specifically. Now and then he catches snatches of a previous life. Strings of memory fragments cycle: a seaside; the striped canvas of folding chairs, red and green and blue. Sandcastles, red and yellow umbrellas. Dogs and children paddling in shallow pools. A big city, shiny-bright, looking up at light dazzling off sleek windows. Garish billboards, choking traffic, gutters overflowing with sodden plastic wrappers and cigarette butts. Bicycles and honking cars, bare tree branches festooned with lights like gems.

  Snippets playing over and over, close and personal, events he must have lived and breathed—because how else could he recall them with such clarity? Then white snow static, a flood of data sets and streams, fractal patterns, parallel algorithms, coordinate geometry. Four speed forward, two speed reverse. Obstacle crossing: 49 inches. Fuel capacity: 498 gal (1,885 litres) / 505 gal (1,907 litres). Data punctuated by long periods of eerie silence. The silence unnerves the General more than anything, but it’s comforting to know that he had been someone once, even if he’s no longer certain who that is—and certainly not where.

  If the General concentrates he can hear evidence of sand dunes far away, creeping across the landscape, inch by inch. Dunes that sing to announce their intentions. Now and then the thundering of mighty wheels. Bigrigs, battletrucks, ramblers, and haulers. Vehicles communicating in a language of transmission bursts. Rough poetry, brittle and discordant as glass shards. He knows those tankers, remembers them—possessed of grace and rudimentary intelligence.

  Darkness amplifies modest sounds, like the cracking and crumbling of bunker cement. Insects, mice, and the falling of individual grains of sand. Grains blown in from the outside world—or what he imagines to be left of it.

  Because there had been a war or two—of that much he is certain.

  Let there be light, he says.

  That’s better.

  Now he can see the inside of the bunker. The corridors are empty, the carpet and linoleum rotted, eaten away by mould and bugs and time. Webs and lichen and tiny scuttling things.

  Where did everyone go? He recalls multitudes in crisp blue uniforms, Lotus company insignia displayed upon their chests. Everybody rushing, with buttons to push and jobs to do, a thousand voices talking all at once. Air stinging with electronic hiss and fizz. Skies streaked white with contrails. The power of the storms. Ferocious walls of roiling, building pressure spitting forks of light and white-blue heat. But not now. Now there is only silence and scuttling, empty labs and empty corridors.

  He tries to feel his way back to the dream state, but the moment has passed, is gone forever. The door has closed, so far away now, remote and faint, like trace memories of a memory of a memory.

  The General concentrates, one by one, initiating implanted connective nodes. More than half of them are dead or not responding.

  He’s not sure who to blame for this. An aide, perhaps, or a sloppy maintenance schedule. Perhaps he was attacked while he was sleeping? Perhaps he’s under attack right now and this is all a dream.

  And then, faint pulses of light and heat. A signature. Something out there responding to his call.

  Snap connect, and suddenly he’s way up in the sky, beyond the sky, the clouds, the trade winds, staring down at the ground from the exosphere. Nothing but sand and rock and ruin in all directions.

  What . . . the . . .

  He jumps to, calibrates coordinates, comprehends that although he lies buried under tons and tons of sand, he’s simultaneously squinting down though satellite eyes, primitive but functional. Autoresponding to atmospheric density, adjusting for the curvature of the Earth. Basking in the glorious solar winds. Better than nothing. What happened to the rest of them? The skies had once been thick with satellites.

  The General watches from his lofty perch, trying to gauge what has become of the world he knew. A world encased in armour of steel and stone. There is no movement, just sand and wind and heat. The skyscrapers, the mighty cities, the arterial flow of eight-lane superhighways—what happened to the grids? The lights? The people?

  All lies still.

  Not all.

  There is action across a stretch of open sand. He recognises the tankers by their heat signatures, if not by their appearances, at first. The desert has taken over, he realizes, has become the domain of itinerant war machinery: tanks and barrier busters and sleek recon vehicles. Battletrucks: heavy duty aerospace-tech inner frames connected to drive hubs. Articulated front rigging, faceted armour, hubless wheels. Confusing. Outer casings are no longer silver shiny. Each vehicle appears to be coated in some kind of hardened organic matter. There is no discernable pattern to their movement. No order. No formation.

  These creatures are so familiar to him. Nano-seeded blood flushing through their mecha component systems. Self repairing. Self sustaining, printing themselves new body parts and when that fails, ramming, savaging, cannibalising other vehicles, other mecha.

  The General speaks their language. He can still remember it but they don’t answer. They ignore him, keep on doing what they’re doing, barrelling across the open sand at breakneck speed.

  He isolates the fr
equency, piggybacks from satellite to satellite—Angels they used to call them, he can’t remember why. He listens in to tanker talk. Same lingo, strange inflections. More grunt and pulse than data stream. Crude creatures: dumb, clumsy, rough and random. Dialect is the word that comes to mind.

  He tries to get in closer but the satellite has its limits. It’s only an Angel, designed to hunt and seek and shoot, not spy. He upgrades to another model, a Warbird 47, locked in geostationary orbit. It is not on speaking terms with others of its kind. He would have abandoned it and moved on hours ago, but its nearest brethren contraptions are both blind. Not orbit locked, but not much use as investigative tools.

  The first one he discovers in this condition makes him angry so he slams it hurtling to earth. The thing’s preprogramed self preservation heuristics kick in, and it fires its retro rockets. It still crashes and burns, but not before changing its course. Impressive, to say the least.

  As the flaming Angel falls to Earth, one of the tankers becomes separated from the others. It lags behind the rest of the pod, yet it is not alone. A collection of smaller craft appears to be in hot pursuit. The General does not comprehend the gambit. He pings for clarification and confirmation, but nothing answers. Just the hum and hiss and static of atmospheric interference.

  Time passes. The General comes to realise he is witnessing a hunt. Smart animals working together to chase a tanker down. The tanker does not fire ordnance. Instead it bucks and rolls, but the aggressors soon trap it in a silvery net. They swarm all over it like ants, hack at the outer organic casing. Use crude tools to prise away the modular metal skin. Climb inside, scoop out the blended flesh-and-mecha innards.

  How utterly barbaric. Warfare used to be so sharp and clean. Surgical strikes. Precision hits. How in hell did it ever come to this?

  The General longs to blast the lot of them into dust and atoms but finds he’s impotent and powerless. He piggybacks the Angels but they won’t fire when he commands them.

  The tankers continue to ignore his requests for communication. They do not stop to help their injured brother.

  The General is going to have to find another way. He forgets about the tankers and the smart animal predators, leaves the Angels to their pointless aerial patrol. Begins searching below the ground for tell-tale evidence. Disruptions that would indicate cities. Military establishments. Anything bleeding heat from underground. He locates three, with three others potentially worth investigation, but his range is limited. He will have to do something about that.

  The General watches the tankers race until the Warbird 47 bumps him, severing connection abruptly, like it has something better to do with its time and circuitry.

  Not likely. Not with a Lotus General awake and scheming.

  The General has been flexing his parameters. The General has big plans for his future.

  = Eight =

  A body lashed and placed up high, in full view of the road, was not unusual in itself. Road law was swift and cruel from end to end when it came to bandits, liars, cheats or thieves.

  Nene swung herself over the wagon’s side and jumped down to the sand, accompanied by a titter of disapproval from those clustered whispering up top.

  Star scrambled to her feet and shouted, “What are you doing?”

  Yeshie clutched her dice-and-bones against her chest. Mara put her fingers to her mouth.

  All point riders were back in position, doing the job Benhadeer expected of them. A corpse was no threat in itself—unless it had been placed as a diversion. Lucius shouted something unintelligible from the forest of metal pylons he patrolled. He’d been watching and had seen Nene jump, but was stuck on the Van’s far side.

  He urged his camel the long way around the tail, swinging that lance of his with the grace of a much younger man.

  “Nene!” Star called out, but her sister wasn’t listening. Not to Star or Lucius or anybody else.

  “What’s she doing? What is that thing?” shouted many of the passengers now standing, craning and gawking as each wagon passed up close in turn.

  The thing strung up was not a human.

  It was a Templar soldier.

  An old one, filthy, covered in dried blood. Star stood frozen, not knowing what to do—jump down after her crazy sister or stay where she was safe?

  Others started shrieking at Nene. Do not touch! Don’t get too close! Keep your face covered! Keep away from it!

  Nene ignored them all.

  “Nene—what are you doing?” Star cried out, adding uselessly to the chorus.

  Yeshie grabbed hold of her ankle. “Sit down, girl. Big sister can take care of herself.”

  But Star didn’t sit. Standing gave her the best vantage point. The frames and struts to which the thing was lashed had once been part of a larger structure. A hall or a church, perhaps. Not enough remained to be sure.

  The shadow of the Fists loomed overhead. Point riders kept their distance. One of them made the cross sign above his heart. Best not to mess with a Templar unless you had to.

  The Van kept up its steady crawl. Nene took position at the foot of the tangled mass of frames and struts, staring upwards at the trussed up figure.

  Lucius rode with great caution, his face sweaty with exertion, the beast spitting and angry at having been made to gallop. Nene glanced up at him, and motioned for him to lift her up.

  He jabbed the lance through the saddle straps, covered his nose and mouth with his khafiya. Nene did the same. The wagons lumbered onwards, taking Star out of range.

  “Give me your spyglass,” she said to Kian, knowing he had to have one in his pocket.

  The foreign prince hesitated, but complied.

  Travellers called out curses, wards, warnings to Nene not to touch, that even in death, Templars could be dangerous.

  Through the spyglass, Star watched Lucius haul Nene up into his saddle. The aggravated camel inched closer at his urgings, then snorted, shaking its ugly head.

  It was a Templar all right, lashed to bleached and splintered wood. Carrion birds had already been at its face.

  Wind clawed at its blood-stained tunic, billowing the ripped fabric, making it seem like it was still alive.

  Lucius said something to Nene. She answered back, he hesitated, then tugged his lance free of the saddle and passed it to her. She had to stand up in the saddle to reach. He gripped her legs to hold her steady.

  Nene poked at the corpse.

  Lucius shielded his eyes with his free hand.

  They were out of range. Star could see no more.

  “What is it?” said Kian. “What is she doing?”

  “I don’t know.” She panned the glass across the ruined cityscape, expecting that at any minute a herd of angry, starving lizards—or equally starving scavengers—would charge out from the rubble and attack. That the body placed on high were there as decoy.

  “Sit down, child,” said Yeshie.

  “No!”

  “Whatever will be will be. Oshana—”

  “I don’t give a damn about your stupid god!” Star tossed the glass back at Kian. He caught it with both hands, a surprised look on his face. Turning her back on the lot of them, Star did exactly what Nene had done—clambered halfway down the moving wagon’s side, waited for the right moment, then dropped onto the soft sand below. Knowing everyone was watching, she made sure she landed on two feet.

  How strange it felt to be on solid ground again. She ignored the cries of her fellow travellers, their prayers and admonishments. She knew what she was doing. The ghosts knew too—they were watching her every move.

  She ran past the moving wagons until she was out of breath, keeping an eye out for lizards. But the burnt out cityscape remained still and indifferent.

  Neither Nene nor Lucius noticed her
approach. Both were preoccupied, Nene almost losing her balance as she stood on tiptoes trying to poke the creature’s arm.

  The forest of bare steel struts shook and rattled as the wind picked up.

  “What are you doing? It’s a Templar and it’s dead. Anyone can see—”

  Nene almost fell. Lucius caught her quickly and lowered her to the sand.

  “Get back on the Van!”

  “I’m just—”

  “Get back on the Van!” screamed Nene, the wind tearing her hair loose from its regular ponytail.

  Star took a step back. “What’s the matter? Is it contaminated? Why are you even touching it?”

  Nene stared at her hard as the camel snorted and shifted its stance. “Yes. It’s contaminated. It’s not safe here—now get back on the Van.”

  Star threw up her hands, exasperated. “We’re detouring through Broken Arch—of course it’s not safe! An Angel fell to Earth! Harthstone’s in flames. A lizard slammed—”

  Climb up, both of you,” said Lucius, offering his hand. “No time for arguing,” he added, glancing uncomfortably in the direction of the lizards’s habitat.

  The saddle was made for two, not three, but somehow Lucius made room. The beast wasn’t happy about it, but it headed off in chase of the Van without much need for encouragement. Either it could smell the lizards or smell another Templar in the ruins.

  “I want to know why you were poking at that thing. You’re always going on about infection and safety protocols.”

  “I had to check,” said Nene grimly.

  “Had to check what?”

  Nene paused. “That he was truly dead.”

  Star snorted. “I could see that much from wagon top—and so could you. Why would anyone care about some tainted—”

  “Don’t you use that word,” she hissed.

  “Why not? It’s not as if they’re human.”