Eden Descending by Tony Peak

Author:Tony Peak [Peak, Tony]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Aethon Books
Published: 2021-02-15T22:00:00+00:00

17

Less than an hour after dawn they approached the western lip of the Canyonlands. The alluvial plain terminated in a series of waterfalls that gushed down into the massive gorge. Remnants of a tower sat atop the outlying shoals, the rest of its walls bisecting the flow among the cataracts. At the bottom, the runoff became mired in biomorphic algae and other trash, staining the water bright green before it wended farther south.

“Is there a way down?” he asked Timothus after removing the gag.

“Jump,” Timothus said.

“You first. Look, we know it’s nearby from your bike’s nav cache.”

Thanata scanned the horizon for a moment and then pointed northward. “Up there, in the gorge’s bend. See the bridge?”

After squinting in vain, Reyes had to use Timothus’s binoculars. Sure enough, the struts of a giant viaduct spanned the abyss. Something caused him to frown.

“You see the smoke, too?” he asked.

“What smoke?” Timothus asked, haughtiness replaced with concern.

She nodded. “Four plumes reaching toward the sky.”

“Let’s go investigate,” Reyes said. “I don’t see any other crossings from up here.”

It took another half hour to reach the bridge, having to speed through the swamplands again and avoid the swifter currents closer to the waterfalls. The nearer they got, the more obvious that all wasn’t well on the bridge. More smoke, more flames.

An Orion construction, the bridge spanned at least a kilometer and a half of open air between the gorge’s edges. The drop itself was two kilometers or more at the gorge’s deepest point. Yet the huge struts should have given them confidence of a safe passage.

The western gateway, the one they must enter, was clogged with bodies.

“Oh shit,” Reyes breathed.

Bikes and larger agribus transports were overturned and burning. Dead Cathomen and people wearing only chalk patterns and loincloths lay in the twisted repose of violent death. At least fifty corpses in the entrance alone, sometimes piled three deep. Bullet wounds on the half-naked people, arrows sticking from the Cathomen. More butchery than battle. The stink took Reyes’s breath.

“This fighting was recent,” Thanata said. “Smelling the blood, the gunpowder.”

“The Goddess burn these infidels,” Timothus said as he scowled at the scene. “I warned the Cardinal they would attack us here again.”

“Who are these people?” Reyes asked.

“Wayfarers,” Timothus and Thanata said at the same time.

“Why are your brethren fighting them?”

“It is the Goddess’s will,” Timothus said.

Reyes shook his head and rolled his eyes.

“Help me start clearing a path.” She parked her bike and dismounted.

They dragged bodies from the entrance until their bikes could enter one at a time. Blood and urine smeared on the pavement as Reyes tugged a Wayfarer man aside. Next he pulled away a Cathoman attached to a Wayfarer woman, his teeth still clenched around her earlobe, her hand still clasping a knife in his stomach. Reyes’s boots bumped into a severed head, so bloodied and savaged he wasn’t sure which side it belonged to.

As soon as he set the brutal couple aside he leaned over and retched.

“Ah, the brittle fortitude of a Centralman,” Timothus said.

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