Lotus Blue by Sparks Cat

Author:Sparks,Cat
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Publisher: Talos
Published: 2016-12-06T22:19:28+00:00

= Thirty-six =

Quarrel’s mesh stopped itching once they’d passed the last of the broken Sentinel towers. Telemetry from Nisn had been growing weaker by the mile, and the incessant ping and scratch, like the pestering of bugs and rats, was fading. No mind or matter. The mesh hadn’t told him anything he could not figure for himself from the surrounding landscape. The ordnance he carried was built into his bones. The bits he’d let his crew folk see had barely been the half of it. No matter what they didn’t see and didn’t have to know. So long as they kept the old crate rolling towards their destination.

Those priests of Nisn didn’t own him anymore. Old Quarrel was on a mission of his own, to prove he wasn’t anybody’s soldier.

Out this far, the Black was rent and buckled. Poison pooled beneath the surface, hot rocks and lava bubbling deep within the cracks and crevices. Belching toxic fumes and sour gasses. Enough to kill the lot of them if the crew didn’t steer around the worst of it.

But they were good, this ragged gang of coin-greedy misfits. Quarrel crossed himself and spat for luck, praying to no god in particular that the Dogwatch might manage to hold together across the final leg. That the broken blister weeping in the sky was no more than it seemed. That the Lotus Blue was no more crazy that any uploaded five-star general consciousness was likely to be so long after the wars. With a stroke of luck, its memory might be turn out to be fragmented, its weapons powered down and locked on standby. The Lotus Blue, rendered impotent and harmless—and Quarrel rendered obsolete by default.

He moved to stand by the portside bow, gripping a handful of rigging to hold him steady. The ship was rolling, slow but steady, its castors taking them around the worst of the cracked obsidian and its bleeding toxic fog.

He had gotten used to the sulphurous stink. No matter if it scalded his lungs, they only had to last a couple more weeks.

Quarrel closed his eyes and felt the acid sting of chem-laced breeze against his cheeks. Not long now and then he would sleep forever, dreaming of the world and all it had lost. Dreaming of a girl called Manthy, his girl, his love, his one and only. The things he’d had to do to set her free.

He felt a sharp stab behind his eyes and he opened them wide, shocked fully into consciousness. The pain was a pattern, repetitious, running through his mind, a sensation like steely fingers poking around in his head, prodding with surgical precision and intent.

It wasn’t Nisn this time. Something else. The thing he’d been afraid of. Something best not mentioned to the others.

He slammed down his internal defences and flushed the intruder from his parietal cortex. It worked, but the pathway had now been gouged. Such an attack would come much easier the next time, and the time after that.

Quarrel looked over his shoulder, in search of the skinny girl with the growing mesh.

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