Dead World

II | Sun Engine

II | Sun EngineThe dispatch runner arrived almost breathless and leaned close to Valdus at the bow gunwale. “Enemy spotted—a ferryman and his charge. They’ve just passed the Stygian Flowstones.”

Valdus lifted his binoculars and peered upriver, saw a black speck just rounding the curvature of the great cavern wall. “Excellent, corporal. Lector, the sun engine...”

Lector looked up from his gauges and readouts and shook his head. “Still charging. The test burst drained more energy than we could have anticipated.”

“How long?”

“At slow charge—about an hour, at least.”

“b****y hell ...” Valdus stood and paced the length of the machine. “And a fast charge?”

Lector and his assistant exchanged nervous glances. “As I said earlier, my lord, a fast charge could jeopardize the integrity of the containment field. And energized plasma is nothing to trifle—”

Valdus slapped on hand on his shoulder, his thumb touching his neck. It was a comradely but vaguely threatening gesture he used often. “How long, Lector?”

“I—it is difficult ...” He examined the complicated machinery. “About half that, if the hydrogen flasks seat properly. You must understand, my lord, that an incorrectly seated flask can cause the weapon to explode the instant it is fired.”

Valdus tightened his thumb on his neck. “I don’t speak the language of ancient machines, Lector. How long?”

“Gurn will help me with it. Perhaps ... one-quarter of an hour.”

“Fast charge it, then.” He looked at Gurn, who seemed suddenly frozen with terror. “I will be beside you. We shall share the risk, as we shall share the spoils of a free Ursathrax. The Revolution will not be won by prudence but by audacity.”

A deep voice boomed from the stern, where reflected water danced in the dark. “And no one is more audacious!”

Valdus smiled as General Hirth strode toward him across the foredeck, his armor clinking, his weapons jangling, and saluted them, then motioned for his superior to join him at the starboard gunwale, where they both stood facing the interior of the cave.

“Look at what your leadership has accomplished, my lord. And this but one of twenty such bunkers ...” They watched as a group of men rolled a giant spindle of steel blasting net along the dock, where many other such spindles were piled, and Valdus nodded approvingly, especially when he saw Fenris swing his lantern up to inspect the great door winches. The massive winches were vital to opening and closing the Cyclopean rock door which had been dressed to blend with the cliff face on the outside. “So many weeks spent blasting out this largest port yet ... I would hate to see all that work come to naught, sir.”

Valdus looked at him sidelong and arched an eyebrow. “You as well, Hirth? A man whom I once watched h****k a barge full of armed sailors by himself, and leave not a one of them standing?” He smiled rakishly. “You disappoint me, comrade.”

“My lord, it’s just that ...” Hirth turned and nodded at the sun engine. “Well, look at it.”

Valdus did so, casually. Certainly the ancient machine was intimidating—with its great, gunmetal-gray barrel and its tangles of white-orange hot coils and its exhaust vents like the gills of some monstrous fish and all its cooling ducts and exposed wiring and gauges and readouts—but he did not see it as, how had Hirth put it earlier? “A thing not of this earth.” He saw it only as a machine, no different, ultimately, than, say, the paddle wheel of a barge. But then, Shekalane had always said of him that for all his brilliance, there was a blind spot—a place within him where a poet might put words or a painter might put colors, but for him could only be filled with raw data. And what form that data took, she’d said, she couldn’t begin to conceptualize. The statement had stung him, even though she’d made it within the context of a compliment to his strategic abilities. It stung him still.

“All I know,” he said, pushing the memory from his mind, “is that Lector believes it capable of penetrating the shields of a ferryman’s gondola. Which is something we are about to test.”

Hirth gazed out over the water. “And the ferryman’s raven?”

“I leave that to your bowmen,” said Valdus.

“They’re passing beneath the orbis lunae, my lord.” —it was Crith, his second lieutenant.

“Indeed ...” Valdus strode back to the bow gunwale, where the lieutenant was propping himself up by his elbows and peering through binoculars at the River Dire. The man passed the scopes to Valdus, who snatched them eagerly and pressed the eyepieces to his face. “Let us see who our ferryman is transporting,” he said.

The gondola swam into focus as he worked the thumbscrew, but because they were positioned at a wide section of the River both the boat and the figures aboard remained small and difficult to assess. Still, the petite form seated on the center bench could have been Shekalane—he’d still received no word from the dispatch runner he’d sent to Jaskir—but it was more than likely another woman, or even a small man, from farther upriver, Tanerune, perhaps, or Litz. Otherwise, why would she not have activated the ring?

Lector stepped up beside him. “There remains the problem with the focusing ring, sir. If they are not sufficiently separated, the ferryman and his charge ...”

Valdus lowered the glasses, thinking. “Narrow it as best you can. And hurry. Time is of the essence.”

“If she is on that boat, it ... Plasma is not known for its neatness, my lord.”

Valdus began to speak but paused, then raised the binoculars again. “You have your orders.”

He watched the little boat, and as he did so, he reached down to his belt and triggered the signal for Shekalane to activate the ring. If she has it, he thought. For he did not know if his dispatch runner had been able to deliver it to Milkweed or not.

He adjusted the binoculars to focus on the great, iron door across the river, which he knew to be grated on the bottom to allow for the flow of water—one of the vetitum portas, the gateways to the f*******n Channels. Such was the real reason for his insistence on killing a ferryman while the Lucitor’s actual soldiers posed the greater threat; for he knew also that the ferryman wore about their necks the key to those very gates—although he had spoken of it to no one, not even Hirth. The power to be gained from accessing those channels, which some believed might provide a back door to the Lucitor’s mansion itself, was simply too great to risk it falling into anyone’s hands but his own.

I will rescue you if I am able, my love. But the benefit of all Ursathrax must come first. Power to the Revolution.