Arbelos Chapter 4: Footsteps on Metal
By Max Brooke
“The things down there just aren’t accounted for. Not in our military doctrine, not in our legal framework, not in our laws of physics, and certainly not in our social contract. It’s all jagged and uncertain. But people still have to make choices, and I have to believe that I witnessed choices that mattered.”
-Excerpt from In the Serpent’s Maw: The Secret Conflict on the Icano Peninsula
Within the halls of the Coalition Prefab, every one of Hazhlet’s footsteps echoed uncomfortably. She’d been inside a dozen of these decommissioned bases during training, and she’d always hated the way the sound followed her over their rusting metal floors. She hated it even more now that she was sheltering in the prefab with dubious allies, waiting to see if Auglez would live. In a drill, the attention that noise brought would mean getting tagged with a soft round. But she was in the Drop again, and she’d seen what excess noise could bring on her first expedition, months ago. The amber glow of the base’s emergency lights threw long shadows, and Hazhlet’s fierce glare chased them back into every corner.
Her jaw tensed as she stepped down with a clang yet again. But she pressed on to keep stride with Riston as the two carried Auglez, following the stranger in front of them. The Astiagen reporter’s black hair might be turning grey, but his step was quick and decisive. Auglez, for her part, was pallid and taciturn. Hazhlet had seen her cautious or even afraid before, but never weak. She disliked navigating this new emotional territory.
Riston had been talking to the researcher in the lab coat since she’d opened the massive bay doors to let them roll their beleaguered vehicles inside. Now, Hazhlet began to listen again, her eyes still sweeping the depths of the corridor.
“And what kind of research is it that brings you out here?” Riston asked.
“I can’t discuss our work without Doctor Etaic present, I’m afraid.” The researcher’s tone was pleasant, but Hazhlet heard a firmness beneath. Apparently Riston did, too, because he changed the subject.
“What’s it like living out here? I can’t imagine there’s much of a nightlife.”
She laughed a bit, perhaps not just out of politeness. Hazhlet imagined the solitude of living here in this crumbling base from an ancient war, deep in swirling mists. Like living at the bottom of a deep, vast river.
“Oh, we manage. This is our longest stint yet, but we’re not staying much longer. We almost have the datasets we came here to gather. Then we’ll need to resupply.”
“What sort of equipment are you using to gather the data?” Riston asked, hopeful. Hazhlet shot a glance at the reporter, and saw Auglez doing much the same. The researcher ignored the question and approached a sealed door, entering a combination into the lock to open their way into a brightly lit room. A scant collection of medical supplies lined the walls, and a table sat in the middle.
“After me, if you please. We need to look at that head injury. I’ve spent months looking at protein folds, but I still remember some anatomy classes.”
Hazhlet and Riston turned to squeeze into the narrow room, then hefted Auglez onto the padded table.
---
Hazhlet and Riston stood in the hallway, waiting as Auglez was treated. The injury hadn’t looked that bad, but Hazhlet remembered that Liaison Borread had said all head wounds in the cockpit needed to be reported to medical immediately. Auglez’s pupils had been uneven, and her gait unsteady when she’d emerged from the hauler.
“I think Doctor Norv will take good care of her, Hazhlet.” Riston said, putting a hand against the bulkhead.
Hazhlet made note of the name she hadn’t registered before. The reporter’s shameless curiosity had some advantages, she supposed. It had given her ample opportunity to observe, and to avoid providing any details about the advanced military hardware they’d casually rolled into the loading bay. Was Riston covering for her, or was this just his nature?
“She said there’s twelve researchers on the base, most with advanced degrees, I’d guess, based on her own credentials. The labs we passed that weren’t locked up had some pretty specific instruments – not cheap stuff, and not light to haul out. Fluoroscopes, radiographs. That room over there is a cyclotron, I think. They’re running some cutting-edge research here.” Some of the Varallen technical terminology Riston had rattled off slid in one ear and out the other, but she understood the gist of it. It wasn’t what had her attention, though.
“The doctor carries a gun.” Hazhlet said. “Concealed, under her coat.”
“I figured she did,” Riston replied. “I didn’t get as good a look, I guess. You ever heard of this Doctor Etaic?”
Hazhlet shook her head. She’d met some scientists and engineers as part of training in the Irregulars. They’d run all sorts of physical tests on the pilots, monitoring heart rate, balance, and breathing in the M-Traks. But most of them were Astiagens like Borread and Riston. Well, not like Riston. The reporter was atypical.
“I hope we get to—“ Hazhlet held up a hand, cutting Riston off at the sound of footsteps on metal in the darkness. Steady, she forced herself to think, focusing on the shapes instead of the memories of that first, disastrous foray into the Drop. These aren’t ambushers. If they wanted to shoot us, they’d just do it.
A moment later, silhouettes formed in the amber light, the first of which emerging in the form of a man. He was tall, but gaunt, his hair fully grey and mostly gone anyway. Where his hands emerged from his lab coat, his skin was flecked with small freckles of age. He smiled. Hazhlet saw Riston shake free of his own resting wariness to shake hands with the doctor, but her eyes stayed on the murky shapes of the pair of armed guards a few paces behind him.
“So, you are our unexpected guests, then? Our dear courier’s friends? I am Salinon Etaic.” He spoke with the diction of a schoolteacher and the accent of the western province. He took Riston’s outstretched hand, then locked eyes with Hazhlet and nodded, a gesture she returned instinctively.
Pleasantries were exchanged, Hazhlet allowing Riston to steer the conversation once again. The reporter was certainly keeping the discussion away from the M-Trak.
“And what are you researching out here? Doctor Norv said she couldn’t discuss it without you.”
Doctor Etaic looked over Riston appraisingly, then turned his gaze to Hazhlet. His eyes lingered on the Irregulars patch at her shoulder.
“First, I must ask something of you two, and I’m afraid I must be indelicate. Are you here on behalf of the Astiagen government? I have it on good authority that they wish me to enter their custody, and I will not go alive.” As he spoke, the two guards behind him tensed.
Hazhlet looked at Riston and he noticed, giving her a sidelong glance. He seemed to be fighting to keep the tension from his own stance.
Riston spoke. “The Astiagen government? No. The Astiagen people, yes, and others too. I’m a reporter.”
“As you say,” the doctor replied, “and I believe I’ve read some of your past writings. You reported on the Oberect famine relief efforts in the Koros plateaus several years ago, did you not? The Astiagen government was quite critical of your work, breaking from the party line to report the complexities of the situation. But that does not prove you aren’t standing here on their behalf now. Loyalties, like wavelines, can shift when observed.” He turned to Hazhlet. “And you?”
“I’m with the Varallen Irregulars. We don’t report to the Astiagen government.”
“Not strictly, no. But I’m given to understand that you do take orders from their officers.” He reminded her of a teacher once again, staring down an errant pupil.
Hazhlet stood firm. It had been more than two years since she’d been a student. “Our liaison is dead. I’m the operating commander of this expedition. Ask Auglez. She’ll verify.”
“I intend to. In the meantime, avail yourselves of our hospitality here.” He nodded to the two armed guards, who did not look particularly hospitable at all. They approached as he knocked on the door to the medical room, then stepped inside.
---
When Doctor Etaic emerged a few minutes later, Doctor Norv came with him, and he gestured for the guards to stand down. The pair relaxed visibly.
“What’s Auglez’s condition?” Hazhlet asked.
Doctor Norv looked tired. “She’s suffered a concussion for certain. I believe there’s a fracture as well. She may need surgery, and we’re not equipped to provide that here. I was a medic for a while in the war, but this is a serious injury that needs the right tools and expertise to address.”
Hazhlet nodded. “Where is the nearest medical facility where she can get the treatment she’ll need?”
Norv began to speak but cut herself off, seemingly uncertain if she should say. Etaic nodded, and she continued.
“There’s a field hospital for the Essonite People’s Front about five kilometers from the rim of the crater. It’s in the old city, just beyond the blast line.”
“The Essonite People’s Front will kill us.” Hazhlet said flatly. “They don’t recognize the Kost government, and they’d rather the Oberect—"
Etaic cut in. “They’ll help you if you tell them we sent you. Though I can’t recommend driving up in a state-of-the-art Astiagen war machine, or wearing that uniform. We can give you some clothes. Approach in that hauler you have; everyone has machines like that from after the War, and it won’t raise suspicions.” He turned to Norv. “Colonel Bolit owes me that much at least. He won’t ask questions if they arrive under our name.” Hazhlet hoped he wasn’t reassuring himself, too.
A voice came from within the room. Norv spoke again. “Ah, your friend said she had something urgent to discuss. She is lucid enough, but try to keep the conversation short.” The doctors departed, their footsteps mingling with those of the departing guards in the cramped darkness of the corridors.
Hazhlet and Riston stepped within to see Auglez had pulled herself up to a sitting position. She shuddered slightly, but her voice was touched with ice. “We have to kill that thing.” The thing in question needed no elaboration.
Riston spoke in quiet shock. “Kill that thing? We barely got out alive! We go toe-to-toe with that monster again, we’re dead. We can’t pick that kind of fight and live.” Hazhlet felt a bit of surprise to hear “we” and not “you,” but said nothing.
Auglez let out another shuddering breath and turned to lock eyes with Hazhlet. “Hazha… That thing cannot be allowed to leave here. If it reaches Barican… tens of thousands of people live there…”
Hazhlet’s mind snapped back to hours before. The distorted, electronic gurgle. The sight of the crimson ghosts feasting on machines and men. The thrum of blood in her temples. Time counted not with the tick of a clock, but the hammering of her M-Trak’s autocannon.
Riston continued his tone shifting to calm. “Listen Auglez, that machine is way out of our league. We’d be throwing our lives away. I understand that you…”
Auglez cut him off. “I don’t think you do understand. This is our country. These are our people. That thing’s weapons weren’t just biophagic, they ate through steel and glass. We have no defense against it. Nobody has a defense against it.”
Riston raised his voice this time, spine straightening as a bit of old military mettle found its way back into him. “This isn’t your operation.” Then he paused and let out a slow, measured breath.
“And it isn’t mine either.” He turned to Hazhlet. “I guess you have to decide.”
“Don’t know why you thought we’d count your vote anyway. It’s not like you Astiagens counted ours…” Auglez muttered. Riston cracked a grim smile.
Hazhlet paused to consider, looking from one to the other. This is my operation now, Hazhlet realized. What the hell do I do?
She turned and stalked from the room.
---
Hazhlet had been slinking through the treacherous corridors for an hour. She had passed the hangar several times, where Riston repaired the hauler and talked. As she looped the base again, she could hear the hiss of the torch alternating with the stream of questions and answers. However he had managed to secure Dr. Etaic’s blessing, it had opened the scientists’ lips, and several had flocked to the bay like wastedrifters on a fresh corpse. The reporter must have been right about the lack of a nightlife. Clearly everyone on the base was bored enough to show up and gossip. Hazhlet caught a few words here and there. “Dimensional aperture,” “waveline cascading,” “fractal growth patterns in the plants.” She’d walked by the dozen or so labs several times now, her eyes flitting inside.
The gist was clear enough to her. The Icano Disaster Area was much more than just a desert left behind by Herunock biophagic weapons. She’d seen that with her own eyes. The glistening, green water that flowed uphill and turned to fire. The subtle cold that pervaded everything. And, of course, the horrible machine. Something had gone truly wrong here, she thought. Those details are for the scientists to discover. My mission should be simpler. Protocol says extract with the M-Trak. Why am I hesitating?
She rounded the corner to the medical room and stopped instinctively. The door was cracked, and voices came from within. She slid along the wall to listen, and heard Etaic’s even, erudite tones.
“I hope that I can repay the favor you did me a year ago, my friend. The Astiagens would have paid a lot more handsomely than I could have, had you decided to simply turn me over. I’ve always wondered why you didn’t.”
“Money’s not everything…” came Auglez’s voice. “Oh, I need to eat to live, but so does our country. If your work can restore the Icano delta… we can get things back on track. Without the Astiagens, without the Oberects… our own….”
“I can’t promise I’ll solve this,” replied Etaic. “The rift is far deeper than anyone else knows. When the rupture device detonated here, something went awry in a way we still don’t fully understand. We suspect that the displacement cut a two-way path, and something flooded back in. It is integrating into the world, but it seems to be testing our very laws of physics in the process. When we’ve ventured out far enough, we’ve found plants that can grow in ice, samples of seemingly familiar metals that oxidize to dust in minutes, and crystal structures that should be impossible. And the flow is increasing. I fear we’re dealing with things far beyond the Astiagens and the Oberects now. You saw one yourself, from the sound of it.”
“You will restore it. You must.” Auglez’s voice wavered.
“I won’t give up on trying,” came the doctor’s voice. “I have you to thank that I’m not chained to a desk at some Astiagen university, drafting plans for ever-larger bombs. I won’t forget that.”
Hazhlet stepped away from the door and slunk back to the darkened corridors, mind racing. This was much bigger than her unit. Maybe bigger than Varall. What could I possibly do?
For some reason, she thought of Tahl and Lodi, imagining them stranded in the sands in the shadow of the horrible machine as it glutted itself on the metal of ruined traks. They might not have been consumed. They could still be alive. She tried not to remember flesh peeling from bones, focusing instead on the machine and the swirling red ghosts. Did a thing like that need to eat? Could it starve? Or… be poisoned?
Perhaps there is nothing simple about this mission at all. She heard Etaic’s footfalls and hesitated briefly before stepping into the light in his path.
“Ah, Hazhlet, was it?”
She nodded. Maybe this interruption was lucky. “Doctor, I need your assistance. Did Auglez tell you about the unidentified machine we encountered?”
Etaic met her gaze. “She did. A grim discovery. Who would have thought one horrific weapon would so politely open the door for another?” His words were laced with irony, and Hazhlet couldn’t quite decide if he was being patronizing or merely theatrical.
Hazhlet pressed on. “We witnessed it… sustaining itself. Harvesting metal and corpses and repairing itself in the process.”
“An intriguing hypothesis. Hard to test, of course. But let us assume you are correct. What then?”
“It would have to integrate those materials into its body, wouldn’t it?”
“To replace lost matter? Presumably. Though we’re talking about a technology most would place solidly in the realm of the theoretical. The mechanisms involved would be… staggeringly complex, to say the least. Still, you said it ‘harvested’ metal and biological matter, yes? If it were truly capable of miraculous transfigurations of matter, it could chew up sand and spit out diamonds, or steel, or sugar lace if it pleased. So the matter it consumes must, well, matter. You are what you eat, I suppose.” He really did have the air of a schoolteacher now.
Hazhlet nodded. “What if we fed it something… unstable?”
“Did you have something specific in mind?” Etaic’s interest was obviously piqued.
“What about something you found out here. Like a rapidly oxidizing metal.”
The doctor held a closed hand up to his face and thought for a moment, his eyes wandering. “Ah, you heard that? An interesting proposed application for that peculiar find. It seems like an unremarkable alloy to all of our tests, save one important feature. Take it away from its site of origin, and it starts to break down in the presence of oxygen at an alarming rate. The correct mixture of inert gases can keep it stable, but obviously that makes transport awkward.” Then he snapped back to focus, smiling. “Indeed, I may have just the thing to serve as your poison pill.”
Etaic paused, thoughtful, then spoke again. “But you’ll have to get very close to this hungry machine to feed it. I understand why Auglez fears this thing. I might even share her fears. But I must ask, before I turn my hands again to building weapons: why is this so important to you?”
Hazhlet searched, and found her answer.
---
The hauler’s engine spat and sputtered for a moment, then wheezed to life, and a cheer went up from the room of assembled scientists. Riston slid out from beneath the machine and pumped his fist. Auglez looked on from a stretcher nearby, ready to be loaded in for departure.
Hazhlet surveyed their little convoy. The hauler was functional again. Her M-Trak’s jammed tread had been cleared, too, and a polysynth tarp cinched around the ominous payload secured to her machine’s left arm. The “poison pill,” a long rod of metal sheathed in glass and obscured by the tarp. He had made her promise it wouldn’t leave the Serpent’s Teeth.
Borread had always said something before a mission began, claiming it was necessary to rouse spirits among the troops. Hazhlet usually hadn’t listened to his hollow platitudes. Now she wished she had some hollow platitudes of her own. Riston’s eyes fell upon her. No point in delaying it.
“We’re going back the way we came, then then moving to reach the rails as originally planned. If Tahl and Lodi are alive, they would move to rendezvous along that route. We have to give them that chance.”
Riston and Auglez looked on. Hazhlet saw acceptance in their tired faces. She wasn’t sure if that was the same as approval, but she pressed on.
“We won’t go looking for the unidentified machine, but we’ll be entering its observed territory. So we may have no choice but to fight. If we do…” She paused. After the rush of the life-or-death battle and the gloomy pacing of the last hours, this decision felt disconcertingly light. “…we’ll destroy it.”