“That was uncalled for,” she said, spitting up loose threads of distressed denim.
“They’ve all gone,” I relayed.
She gave a mighty burst of effort and withdrew herself from the cylinder the way a cat does from a kitchen sink after you turn the tap on, landing on the ground in an alert crouch, scanning the surroundings. Meanwhile, I lowered myself gently and dropped onto the ground beside her.
“Trac,” I said, to fill the silence. “I knew they didn’t make their signal boosters that obvious. Should’ve realized.”
“Yes, you should,” said Warden, dusting off her knees. “So where is the signal booster?”
I exposed my bottom row of teeth and released a frustrated sigh through them. “I don’t know. It could be anywhere. I’m a little more confused about why they didn’t attack us. They must have realized we were there. They must have.”
Warden looked up at our little unused siege tower. “Apply logic, McKeown. If this tower was truly intended as a decoy, then the purpose of a decoy is to engage the enemy elsewhere while your forces pursue their true agenda unchallenged.”
“Which means . . .”
Although we lacked the benefit of being part of the same emotionless hive mind, Warden and I could demonstrate remarkable synchronicity at times. In this case, with no planned choreography whatsoever, both of us turned our gazes to the valley path the Malmind forces had taken, then grabbed each other around the shoulders and yelled in each other’s faces.
“THE CAMP!”
Chapter 21
Somehow, the journey along the valley felt like it had been a lot shorter when we were leisurely walking it in the early morning cool. Running at full sprint under the increasingly baking sun made it an arduous cross-country run for which my body was even less suitable than it had been for pull-ups. I tried not to think about the rockfall traps we saw untriggered along the way.
The Malmind were not as hampered by human limitations as us and must have gone into their fastest speed-lurch mode the moment they left the village, because we failed to catch up with them. And by the time we arrived at the camp, they’d already been and gone.
All the possessions and sleeping equipment remained, but there was not a single sign of life, and everything was scattered and torn, as if a multitude of heavy feet had stomped pitilessly through it. The ashes of last night’s fire were scattered across the ground like a comet tail.
Warden and I picked through the wreckage, but we didn’t find a single body, alive or dead. With the Malmind, this was about the worst possible sign.
“Jemima has been taken,” said Warden gravely.
“Alice, too,” I added, punching my palm.
“Yes, willingly or unwillingly.” She met my gaze.
I waved an arm in irritation, letting my hand flap loosely like a surrender flag. “Let’s not think about that straightaway. We need to know what direction they headed. Look for tracks.”
That was easier said than done. If we’d been surrounded by a nice sandy desert, whipped over the centuries into smooth, undisturbed dunes, then the trail would have been so obvious they might as well have paved it. But these were the rocky plains. I could just about hazard a guess that they were heading northwest, toward the cliffs that the valley opened out into, and that was only from the direction indicated by the campfire ashes.“They cannot have gone far, McKeown,” pointed out Warden.
“I know!” I put my hands on my hips and searched the horizon, but there was nothing so helpful as a rising dust cloud or neon sign. “Things would be so plying different if I had a ship, right now. We could spot them easily from the air.”
“What about Alice’s ship? Could you get it working without the keys?”
“Nah, can’t do that.”
“Why not?”
I was about to reply “because I just can’t,” but that didn’t seem like a satisfactory answer, even to me. The truth was, I probably could get it going without keys, especially if it was an older model from before the recent updates in security measures. Pretty much anything more than six years old I could get inside with nothing more than stiff wire and half a tennis ball. But that wasn’t the point.
“I just . . . feel weird about taking it.”
Warden dropped the torn bedroll she was checking under. “Are you serious?”
“It’s a pilot thing. I . . . it’d be like wearing someone else’s flight jacket. It’s just. Eurgh. Not something you do.”
“McKeown.” She trotted smartly up to me and jabbed a finger into my sternum. “You may have regressed into that stupid cowboy code-of-honor fantasy life you used to lead, but I, personally, do not wish to attempt to explain that to the president when she finds out what happened to her daughter. So we are going to take that ship. Understand?”
I sheepishly backtracked out of finger-jabbing range. “All right, all right. I know. Was just kinda hoping I could get through my entire life without breaking every single one of my principles.”
“Good.” She began striding for the valley.
“So,” I said, jogging a little to keep up. “Having walked all the way to the village and back, the plan at this point is to walk all the way there again?”
“Barring alternatives,” she replied through her teeth, without slowing.
“Right. What an absolute plying model of efficiency this whole operation has been.”
It was rubbing up against noon by the time the village was back in visual range. We were making our way back through the valley this time, rather than along the side, for the sake of being close to the stream. This was doing very little good for my feet, which seemed to have gone up two or three shoe sizes since I’d woken up that morning.
“‘Stupid cowboy fantasy life?’” I asked, when it occurred to me to do so.
“Let it go, McKeown,” murmured Warden distantly. She was probably doing even worse, with those sensible shoes in this terrain, but she was courageously holding it all behind the façade of emotionlessness. Beads of sweat gave it away.
“What would you plying know,” I said, more to myself than to her. “At least we had a dream. At least we were trying to be part of something bigger than ourselves.”
“And what was that? Your ego?”
“It was about helping the weak! It was about justice! It was about showing people less advantaged than us that they didn’t have to cave in to being brutalized.”
She grabbed me around the throat and slammed me against the valley wall. She wasn’t strong, but the attack had caught me off guard and I lost my balance. I thought she might have been trying to make a point, but she kept me pinned there, one hand on my chest, as she peered around a nearby outcrop, a finger to her lips.
“They’re in the village,” she reported.
“Who are?”
“Who do you think? The Malmind.”
I edged my way behind her, inserted my head into the space just above hers, and peered around the wall. Sure enough, I could see the little black dots of Malmind cyborgs patrolling the village, just as they had been doing before. Even at this distance, they could be easily identified by the way they walked like stunned ostriches queuing up at the lunch trough.
“It’s not possible,” I whispered.
“And yet, there they are.”
I let myself fall backward away from the outcrop and leaned on the cliff wall, thinking. “There’s no way they could’ve gotten back to the village this quickly without us noticing.”
“Do they have much stealth capability?”
I gave her a withering look. “Warden, look at them. They move like dinosaurs with their feet trapped in buckets.”
“Then the only explanation is that they must have another means of getting into the village. Other than the valley path or descending from the cliffs, either of which, as you say, we would have noticed.”
Even as she said the words, I could feel a couple of loose threads in the depths of my mind, straining to reach each other. “Wait a second,” I said
, pacing in as wide a circle as I could manage without walking out into the open. “Alice said the Malmind came out of nowhere when they first took the village.”
“If we can trust her version of events.”
“Stop it. So if we assume they didn’t attack from the front, or from above, then that leaves . . .”
My finger waggled in front of me, chopping the air up into thin slices. “Yes?” prompted Warden.
“Well.”
“Well what?”
“Well. In the little courtyard we rappelled down into. There was a well.”
“Well?”
“Yes. A well.”
“I meant, well, as in, where are you going with this?”
I stopped the waggling of my finger and pointed it skyward as I met her gaze. “Why would there be a well? The village is plying built around a dirty great watering hole. They don’t have any need for a well. As well.” I dropped my finger to symbolize the dropping of this extremely good point.
“So perhaps it wasn’t a well,” said Warden, her speech slowing as she came around to my line of thinking.
I think it was me who started running first.
The pains in my feet temporarily forgotten, I headed away from the village and then took a left turn out of the valley, following the cliffs to the area that the scattered campfire ashes had been vaguely pointing toward.
I almost walked straight past it when I found it, as it was naturally hidden behind a sort of S bend of extruding rock, but the draft gave it away. There was an entrance to some kind of cavern network that seemed to slope downward under the valley.
“I knew it,” I said as Warden trotted up to see. “This is where they took the others.”
“There must be caverns running under the village,” said Warden, panting a little. “And the well must have been an access point.”
“Right. Maybe the Ruggels use them as a tomb or something. I’ll bet the real Malmind signal booster is down here somewhere.”
“And presumably also the prisoners. Surely they won’t have been converted so quickly. We can rescue them.”
“Right!” I held up an open hand. “High-five.”
“Stop it. Let’s go.”
Although hard to spot, the cave entrance was surprisingly wide, enough to walk two abreast. The tunnel widened even further once we were in.
I had some experience with Cantrabargid’s caves, and had always found them rather disappointing, as natural features go. I’d rarely seen one that was more than just a pathetic little crack in the side of a mountain, scarcely of use for much more than a weapons cache.
But this cave was about as accommodating as they get. It was a flat tunnel that maintained a semicircular roof along its entire length. Which gave credence to the idea that it was manmade, or at least Ruggel made, but at the same time, the walls were rough and the tunnel snaked weirdly. Perhaps it was a natural tunnel that had merely been widened.
A short way into the tunnels, what little light came in from the entrance had faded to nothing, but we could see a glow from the corner just ahead, which we swiftly found to be coming from a series of laming torches marking a path that someone must have very recently taken.
“The Malmind can see in the dark, I think you said?” asked Warden, inspecting a flame warily.
“Yeah, so I guess if they were the ones that lit these, then we know they were moving prisoners through here.”
We continued, following the illuminated path. I was losing faith in the idea that the Ruggels had dug this out. It was far too big, and the torches were old, used, and placed too high for a sloth to reach. I supposed the tunnels must have predated them, and that was confirmed when we found an ancient stone casket in a recess in the wall.
“Well, you were half right,” said Warden, inspecting it with hand on hip. “Someone used these tunnels as a tomb. Rather large for a Ruggel, of course.”
She wasn’t exaggerating. The casket would have been rather large for a family of four. Weathered lettering was carved into the side, each character about eight inches high.
“Wait a second,” I said, crouching nearby. I ran my fingers along the carving, finding the lines that were obscured by time and meager torchlight. “I recognize this language.”
“What does it say?”
“Um. When I say I recognize it, I mean I know what it is, I can’t translate it. It’s Zuviron.” Cantrabargid’s warrior race had a famously inefficient written language. I couriered a couple of messages for them during the war; they had each weighed two tons and had to be carried with the winch. “So I was right. This is Cantrabargid and this is Zuviron land. So what the hell happened to them?”
“McKeown,” said Warden, hushed and urgent. She had gone on ahead a few yards. “I hear something. Just ahead.”
We crept to the far end of the current length of tunnel, where it opened up onto the second level of a vast, cylindrical chamber, which presumably had to be this large to accommodate the many Zuviron tributes to the dead carved into the walls.
I can’t imagine that the Zuviron dead would have been mollified by them now, not after their tomb had been abused into its current state. The lowest level of the chamber, below our perch, was absolutely swarming with Malmind cyborgs. Some were patrolling, some were standing perfectly still, and others were queuing politely at one of the six nutrient-dispensing cylinders scattered throughout the crowd.
In the very center of the floor was a sight that I only recognized from rumors. It was a tulip-shaped tower of mysterious electrical components, trailing black cables like the numerous tentacles of an eldritch abomination. At its base was a range of screens and keyboards that had much of the church organ about them, ringed by a humming server farm laid out like a druidic stone circle.
“Well,” I said, after swallowing hard. “Now we know why they didn’t need a signal booster in the village.”
“Why?” asked Warden, not looking away from the spectacle.
“Because this is the Malmind central core. From which every Malmind unit in the entire galaxy is controlled and monitored. I heard it tends to move around a bit. I guess it’s currently on Cantrabargid.”
Warden put a hand on her hip again. “Well, let me congratulate you a second time on what a thorough job you did saving this planet from them.”
“It was years ago!” I barked, before reflexively ducking, checking, and double-checking that the Malmind hadn’t heard me. I continued in an urgent whisper. “What was I supposed to do? Become their king? They used to bite each other’s noses off as a greeting!”
“Doesn’t seem to have helped them.”
I felt a pang of guilt at that and became uncomfortably aware of the desecrated Zuviron tombs all around us. But that made me wonder why I hadn’t seen any Zuviron cyborgs. It was hard to assume that the Malmind couldn’t see the usefulness in a few battalions of brick trac-houses. Maybe they were too useful and were all off-world conquering planets as we spoke. Or maybe the Zuvirons hadn’t let themselves be taken alive. That seemed very “them.”
But as my gaze, driven by my thoughts, ran along the walls of Zuviron memorials, I saw something. A little way along the elevated path that ran around the room’s perimeter, I could see that several sarcophagi had been hauled out of their recesses, and the spaces were now blocked off by fizzling force fields.
I caught Warden’s eye and cocked a head toward it, then the two of us made our way along the path, staying close to the perimeter wall. When I reached the first improvised cell, I could almost feel the buzz from the force field generator as a physical thing sandpapering across my nerves. There must have been enough charge in it to atomize a pregnant Zuviron tribe mother.
But as I peered through it, I saw a huge number of closely packed, fearful Ruggel eyes staring back from the darkness. Then there was a sudden eruption of furry bodies, and Jemima appeared, looking a little sunburned but otherwise unharmed.
“Oh my god!” cried Jemima, almost running straight into the force field
to greet us. “They said no one would ever find us here!”
“Where is Alice?” asked Warden suspiciously, inspecting the other cells and finding only Ruggels.
“She escaped,” said Jemima. “None of us have been converted because they’ve been busy trying to get her back.”
“Escaped? How?” Warden was inspecting the force field generators and saw as I had that they completely covered the mouths of each recess with no gaps.
“I dunno,” said Jemima. “She wasn’t in this cell.”
“Wait a second,” I displayed a finger. “Who said no one would ever find you here? Because I know Malmind cyborgs, and they’re not chatty.”
“He did.” Jemima pointed toward the lower floor of the chamber as best she could without sticking a hand through the force field.
I knew who she meant even before I looked. There was a human figure at the bottom of the control tower, so small between the huge, glowing screens and components that I hadn’t noticed him earlier. He was sitting in a rather ordinary wheeled office chair, his hands rattling dexterously on the many keyboards. To my own self-disgust, I felt momentarily starstruck.
It was him. Malcolm Sturb. The former boy genius turned teen software mogul turned adult galactic scourge. By now, he was in his late twenties or early thirties, and was of average height and average build, save for a paunch consistent with a white-collar worker unaccustomed to exercise but very much accustomed to having a Danish pastry with their morning coffee. He was wearing an ordinary polo shirt, slacks, and a massive, ornate metal crown constructed from geometric shapes.
The man who had created the Malmind—ostensibly after growing bored with VR war games—was right in front of me. The brain. The master controller.
And I had a gun.
I pulled it from inside my jacket to coincide with my thoughts, and my excitement rose. Jemima’s bulging eyes shone out from the darkness like a pair of headlights. “Are you sure about this? Is there any charge left in that?”
“There’s more than enough,” I said distantly. “And yes, I’m sure. I know what would be the best use for it.”