World-Ripper War (Mad Tinker Chronicles Book 3) (10 page)

The halls of the Royal Palace of Azzat filled with the sounds of gunfire, steam tank chains gouging into the stone floors and humans screaming. If the primitive human weapons could have even scratched the paint on the steam tanks, the drivers would never find out. Roto-gun fire hewed down guards like practice targets before they had a chance to get anywhere near the vehicles. There were bumps in the smooth stone of the corridor when the steam tanks crunched their bulk over human corpses.

The stairs were the most harrowing portion of the raid thus far, with the incline tilting the center of mass dangerously close to tipping as the steam tanks swarmed through the human structure. Drivers leaned forward in their seats and prayed to the manufacturers that they had kept the balance point low enough. But one by one each steam tank made its way without fail. The humans fought bravely, or at least presented themselves to be bravely turned into shredded meat. They shouted unintelligible battle cries, with fury in their eyes as they charged, pointy sticks against armored roto-gun vehicles, with predictable results.

The work was growing routine by the time the convoy of destruction reached the main floor. Preventing non-combatant escapees was promising to be the most difficult task the steam tanks would face.

The ground shook. Once might have been a coincidence, but it shook again and again in a rhythm too like footsteps to be anything else.

Drivers covered their ears as a roar thundered through the palace. The thing that made that horrid scream showed itself, stepping from a side corridor with a form forged from nightmares. It stood easily twice the height of a kuduk, dark as coal ash and made of wrinkled leather. Its head was a nest of horns; its eyes red with a dull glow to them.  A wide mouth parted to show fangs like thunderail spikes, and its clawed hands resembled grappling hooks.

The creature spoke, dust falling from the stonework as its voice shook the building. Its words were meaningless, but their intent was clear and unwholesome. Roto-guns fired from all angles, from steam tank and foot soldier alike. The creature threw an arm up to shield its eyes, and faint blue flashes glimmered around its skin where bullets pelted it to no avail.

“Fall back! Keep firing! Fall back!”

The creature cocked its head. “You speak daruu,” it said.

The revelation was of some small curiosity to the fleeing forces. It was far less important, however, than escaping the monstrosity that shrugged aside bullets. As steam tanks backed away and spun on their chains to make their way back to the world hole, spark lanced from the creatures fingers, crackling through the steel vehicles and fusing control sticks, gears, and parts of their drivers as the heat of the unnatural spark melted the metal.

One driver, untouched by the spark assault, sped on his way, but the shaking floor behind him was his only warning before the creature grabbed the roof of his steam tank and lifted it from the ground. Chains clattered in the air as the machine fought to move with no purchase on the ground to make such motion possible. The gunner fired in a panic, but the roto-guns had no angle to aim at any part of the creature. With a snarl, it tore the guns away and threw them across the room. With its free hand, it plucked the driver free of the vehicle by his neck.

“What are you? You’re no daruu.”

“I’m ... kuduk,” the driver replied, gasping for breath.

“What was that?” the creature asked. It relaxed its grip from lethal to merely inescapable.

“Kuduk. I’m a kuduk.”

The creature put its face close and sniffed the driver. Its lip curled in a sneer. “Mixed blood. My children would never rut willingly with the stone folk. You are a foul creature indeed. Where have you come from? How did you get here?”

“Down ... down by the vaults, a hole between worlds.”

“Oh?” the creature’s voice still held a note of anger, but its curiosity sounded almost human. There was that lingering high pitch at the end that could be heard among the slaves, at least when they talked among themselves. “What world?”

“Korr,” the driver replied. It sounded ridiculous. The week before, he had never considered the possibility of other worlds. Now he was giving directions to an otherworldly creature.

“Let us see about this ‘hole’ of yours.”

The creature set off through the halls of the palace, still clutching the kuduk driver by the neck. When he noticed a few paces later that he had inadvertently snapped the kuduk’s neck, the creature let the body fall and kicked it aside.

Draksgollow sat back in his chair, the metallic fingers of his tinker’s hand massaging the muscles of his fleshy one. The last of his troops were through the world hole, and the first of the runners just coming back against the flow of foot and chain traffic.

The runner pressed himself against the corridor wall as the last steam tank drove past, then stepped through and into Korr. “No meaningful resistance, sir.”

“Good. Send the next runner back when you reach the main body. I want constant updates.”

The runner saluted and put his rifle over his shoulder as he hurried back through the world hole to Veydrus to catch up with his comrades. Draksgollow blew a long sigh as he found himself alone once more.
Shouldn’t be long. First things first though.
It was sorely tempting to start a crew plundering, but he wanted to be sure to clear the building first. Better to hold it as a defensive structure than worry about anyone coming upon their salvage crew directly. Caution. That was one of Kezudkan’s words, though he meant something different by it than most kuduks Draksgollow knew. The old daruu wanted things thought through, not rushed into half-assembled. His caution still allowed for using a machine in its technological infancy to conduct cross-world raids. Heeding the old daruu’s advice seemed to be paying dividends though. The human structure would be fully within his control before long and the vast treasure vaults free for the taking.

The first of the flood of soldiers quashed Draksgollow’s hopes. The distant sounds of gunfire and the gentle hum of far off steam tanks grumbling were drowned out by an awful bellow. Draksgollow had not been to a zoo since he was a boy, but he could recall no animal that could make such a noise, and he had seen no machine in Veydrus that held such a sound within it. His hired soldiers scrambled through the world hole with wide eyes and heaving chests. Most had their rifles, but not all had bothered bringing their weapons with them in flight.

“What’s going on out there?” Draksgollow demanded.

Heads shook. Shoulders shrugged. “I ain’t heard nothing like
that
before,” one soldier admitted. “Weren’t stayin’ to find out what it was.”

As more of his troops returned, including steam tanks that had backed their way down the corridors, Draksgollow plied his men for information, but nothing concrete was forthcoming. “I heard the order to retreat, so I did.” It was the best answer he got.

The sounds coming down the hallways were horrible. Kuduks screamed, the human screams having long since ended. Spark crackled. Metal smashed against stone. A tinker’s imagination held a variety of sounds and could piece them together into scenes of what might cause them. Draksgollow’s could put nothing together that allowed him to diagnose the situation.

One last soldier rounded the corner, blood slicked feet sliding out from under him. The soldier scrambled on hands and knees until he was able to regain his feet. Though the world-ripper insulated Draksgollow’s side from the vibrations in the floor, he could see the corridor floor shaking and heard the ram-piston footsteps approaching.

Draksgollow reached back for the switch to close the world-hole. The kuduk soldier still had several paces to make the world hole, and Draksgollow wanted to give the man a chance. When the creature came around the corner, Draksgollow’s guts clenched. It was a nightmare wrapped in flesh, the sort of creature meant to chase poor sleepers through a shadowed dreamscape, only to wake them screaming when its claws tore into their flesh. This creature was nothing imaginary. Its horns threatened to scrape the ceiling; its claws were drenched in blood; it was faster than the kuduk soldier but did not appear fast enough.

Draksgollow gritted his teeth, rooting silently for the soldier to make it through in time. The creature paused in its tracks when it saw the gathering on the Korrish side of the world hole.

“You will pay for my children’s lives,” it roared. Its hands came up, claws pointed through right for Draksgollow, or so it felt to the kuduk tinker.

The soldier was two paces from the aperture when Draksgollow opened the switch. The hole turned back into merely a view of a distant world. Flames poured silently from the creatures outstretched hands—if those clawed appendages could even be called such—and tore down the corridor. Draksgollow and the few kuduk troops who had made it back to Korr looked on in horror as the stranded soldier was burnt to cinders before their eyes.

There were sighs of relief, and a few kuduks collapsed in fear-soaked exhaustion. Draksgollow let out a shuddering breath that he had not realized he was holding. His hands shook as he wiped a sleeve across his sweating brow.

Through the viewing frame, the creature looked all around. Kuduks backed away from the world-ripper frame as it stepped right up to the view and stood staring. Its reddened pits that passed for eyes did not betray where its gaze fell, so everyone imagined it was looking straight at them, individually. Draksgollow gave one of the control knobs a quick twist, and the view pulled back a few paces down the corridor.

The creature stepped forward.

In the air before it, letters appeared, clear as a spectacle lens and in impeccable Korrish script. Each glowed an angry red as if scorched into the very air itself.

I am Xizix, and you have killed my children. I lust for your deaths, daruu mongrels.

Draksgollow pulled another switch, and the image disappeared. Veydrus was hidden from them once more.

“What was that?” Gederon asked, pointing through to the scene of Draksgollow’s workshop in the wake of the creature’s message.

Kezudkan chuckled. “It was a life lesson in caution, patience, and looking a bit harder for the guardian of a pile of gold that size. Draksgollow’s lucky to come out of that alive.”

“But we still know where the treasure is, right?”

“Sit,” Kezudkan ordered. Gederon complied, fixing his grandfather with an eager look. “Have you any idea how to deal with a creature like that? Didn’t think so. Well, I don’t either, and unless that changes, we look to yellower veins. Hmm ... maybe not
yellower
—doubt we’ll ever find a vein that rich again—but certainly something less likely to get us all killed. No, I took something much more important from that little message.”

“What’s that?”

“We’ve got kin in that world somewhere. That creature knew of our kind. Might be worth our while finding out where they are.”

Chapter 9

“You can tell a real tinker when he doesn’t wash his hands before a meal. He’s got grease in his blood, what’s a little more in his stomach?” -Cadmus Errol

The ceiling of the cavern was cut into furrows where successive passes of the auger had left parallel circular channels. Spark lights anchored to the walls with rock bolts cast striped shadows along the ruts. It might have seemed like a Korrish deep except for a two important differences. For one, the rock was pale grey, with a chalky texture to it; no kuduk architect would think to build a city through it. The other was not apparent to anyone observing through a world hole but unmistakable to anyone present.

Madlin bounded across the world-ripper room of the new secret headquarters of the rebellion. With each step she lofted into the air head high and floated back to the floor like a puff of dandelion.

“Would you stop that?” Cadmus snapped. “This isn’t a nursery.”

“I don’t see why we can’t enjoy the gravity. Besides, it’s the quickest way to get around. I’ve been testing it.”

“Rusted nuisance is what it is,” said Cadmus. He twisted himself to get beneath the control console of one of the three world-rippers that the headquarters now boasted. With six dynamos, an array of spark lights and other modern spark conveniences, and a small workshop with two of every piece of equipment they might need, the third world-ripper was the last item to check off before the base was functional.

“Is that your excuse for not being done yet?”

“I took on the least ready of the three. Of course, it’s a slower job.”

“I still got two of them operational and calibrated before you finished yours. Want a hand? I can show you how to—”

“If you don’t mind, I’ve got work to do. Go ... recheck your wiring or something.”

“Air getting too stale for you? I can open a hole from here now ... using one of the rippers I just fixed.”

Cadmus pulled his head out from under the console. “That reminds me. If you’ve still got enough of a connection to Rynn, have her scramble the dials and disconnect the lunar compensator. We won’t be needing it anymore. All travel will be initiated from this side.”

“Oh, you know what? That would be a great idea,” Madlin said sarcastically. “Let me just have Rynn reinstall it and set it back to our coordinates so she can do that.” Madlin huffed. “The
Jennai
is already decoupled from the locking runes and under power. If we’re going to be cooped up together in here, you’re going to have to stop treating me like I’m an imbecile.”

“Since when have I ever?”

“Just now. I’m not six anymore; I have this all under control.”

“Just like when you nearly killed yourself playing crashball with those meat-for-brains soldiers?”

“That was field testing!”

“And how’d that work out? I could have told you that plan wouldn’t hold pressure.”

Madlin fought the temptation to throw a screwdriver at Cadmus. It felt feather-light in her hand, but its mass was unchanged. She could hurt him with it, just as she might on the surface at full gravity.

“Well, I guess you should have said something. If you don’t need me here, I guess I’ll go try out the stove and make some soup. Call me if you can’t figure it out.”

Cadmus muttered something under his breath as he climbed back under the console, but Madlin had to use her imagination to fill in the words.

“Oh, one other thing,” Cadmus shouted, his voice echoing from inside the steel enclosure. “Figure out how you’re going to generate the extra power we’re going to need with only one sixth of the gravity for the waterwheels.”

“Already have some thoughts,” she replied. Perpetual motion with two world-rippers was one of the key innovations she had planned for the base. If she could get it working, they could cut their reliance of building aether-powered dynamos.

“You just won’t like them,” she added under her breath.

The crew quarters aboard the
Jennai
had come a long way in the time Dan had been aboard. Every day, more and more rooms were constructed inside the giant, hollow steel bulbs that used to keep the airship aloft, and not all of them were mere bunk-rooms. Stuff  so many men into one area, and no matter how dedicated they might be to a cause, you had to keep them occupied. The workers had built in kitchens, pubs, rec halls, wrestling rings, and a firing range. Dan preferred the casino.

It was an informal title, but one of the pubs had taken to catering to the dicers and card players among the rebels. Dan found his games among the Tellurakis and the twinborn. He would be gutted before he bothered learning daruu just to talk to people he intended to be rid of at his earliest opportunity.

“Aren’t you young for whiskey?” they had asked, his first night there.

“Where I’m from, they say a soldier earns himself a free drink for every man he kills in battle. I think if I’m old enough to earn ‘em, I’m old enough to drink ‘em.” No one could argue his point, so they let him drink. It didn’t matter that the story was complete manure, straight from the horse’s arse. Dan was from Veydrus as far as they knew, and none of them could tell Veydrus from a fairy story.

The rebels drank well. When the world-ripper crews pillaged, they pillaged top of the line. Dan held his cards in one hand and a wooden cup of Takalish whiskey in the other. It was Tenik Faii, and nearly as old as Dan, and some of the Takalish that worked for Errol had enough class to know that wood brings out the flavor. The cards were worthless, the dwindling pile of coins in front of him were a testament to how poorly the game was running for him. Dan hadn’t been cheating, mostly because he had been enjoying his drink and the bawdy humor of the soldiers.

When the jokes quieted, and the soldiers choked back laughs unfinished, Dan knew something was coming their way. He heard the thumps and tiny hisses and creaks approach from behind him, watching his fellow players’ eyes.

“Can I help you, General?” Dan asked. He took a sip of his whiskey and leaned way back in his chair, hooking a foot under the table to keep from toppling over. Rynn appeared upside down in his field of vision, and he gave her a sloppy grin.
Go away. Let me drink in peace.

“I need to talk to you about something.”

“Pull up a chair. I’m sure we can make room.” The table was packed, but there was no way that the men around it were going to quibble over making a space for their general.

Rynn smirked. “Last time I played Crackle with you, you killed everyone but me and the barmaids.”

Dan didn’t take his eyes from Rynn, but he heard the scrapes of chairs, the muttered excuses, the departing footsteps. He watched Rynn watch his fellow players slink off to other parts of the pub or remember pressing duties that needed attention.

Dan let his chair thump back onto all four legs. “You are, without a doubt, the most boring person I have ever met. Do you do anything but work? What have I done that warrants this latest interruption of my attempts not to die of boredom on this flying barge?”

Rynn leaned close, bending awkwardly without moving her legs. “I need to see you in private.”

“Should have thought of that before you installed the rat trap,” said Dan, nodding toward Rynn’s tinker’s legs. “Wouldn’t have you, now. Gotta think of my safety.”

“Would you quit fooling around for once?”

“Your father made it quite clear what
not
joking with you would get me. World-ripper. Black-powder. Sleeping warlock. Torch. Boom!” Dan opened a fist into a spread of fingers to punctuate his comment.

“This is serious. I need your help with something.”

“Anyone bleeding to death?”

“No.”

“About to?”

“No.”

“Pretty sure I’d have noticed if we were under attack.”

“Probably.”

“This sounds like it can wait until dinnertime.”

“I’m General of the Rebellion. I can’t bend my schedule around your mood.”

“Maybe not, but I’m drunk,” said Dan, lifting his cup and downing the last of its contents. “I’ll be a bit more use once I’ve dried out a little.”

Rynn crossed her arms, and Dan could see the tendons stand out as her fingers dug into her arms. “Fine. After dinner then. No more booze for you until then.” She snatched the bottle of Tenik Faii off the table.

“Dinner in your quarters. Have that chef of yours cook us up something better than the slop-line chow.”

“That ‘slop’ is better than most of these fighters ever ate in their lives.”

“Yeah, so what? I’ve had better and I know the difference. Vaulk and Greuder make the only real food I’ve seen on this wreck. I’m not one of your rebels, and I don’t take orders, so if you want my help you’re going to need to wipe that look off your face and try asking me for help over dinner instead of expecting me to come begging at your door after you dine like a princess.”

Rynn gritted her teeth. “Fine. Dinner’ll be at six.”

“Six-thirty would suit me better,” said Dan. Rynn scowled immediately, but Dan continued before she could object. “But I am happy to bend
my
schedule around to accommodate you.”

Once Rynn had stormed off in a jangling cacophony of mechanical apparatus, Dan leaned across the table and grabbed one of the bottles left behind by his departed opponents. The label claimed it was a cheap Acardian ale, popular among the north-blooded Tellurakis, who preferred brewed to distilled.

“Mostein Hills, huh?” He eyed the bottle dubiously but lifted it to his lips anyway. Too bitter. Still, it was on the table and little else left looked any better. Downing a swig, he decided he could stomach it. Dan shook his head. “If she were a man, I’d have gutted her like a fish by now.”

Madlin sat basking in the borrowed sunlight from Tellurak’s Savage Lands, her chair pulled over next to the viewing frame of one of the working world-rippers. The other world-ripper she had tuned stood idle but was ready at any time if she needed it. The last, Cadmus appeared nearly done with. It lay at the far end of a semi-circular canal that ran the length of the chamber, with a viewing frame set into the floor at either end. The view was lush, filled with greenery and shimmering water from the river whose waterline was just below the top edge of the canal. The cross section of the water gave Madlin a view of the river fish as they swam unaware of the bizarre sight they were about to witness. The scene would have been worthy of a painting if not for the mesh protective screen erected across where the world hole would form, giving the frame the appearance of a fan housing.

“I didn’t brew enough tea for this if you’re going to be much longer,” Madlin called across the room. Cadmus ignored her and continued his adjustments.

Madlin turned her attention to the wildlife, watching some movements in the underbrush and wondering whether she could catch a glimpse of what creature was concealed within. She had never paid much attention to the out of doors, and Tinker’s Island had few native species. Rats, cats, horses, dogs, and birds, all other creatures were meals or stories. Madlin had eaten her share of fish but had never given them much thought as a source of amusement. The colorful creatures in the muddy shallows of the Telluraki stream were like something from a fairy story, too alien to be real. Someone must have drawn them with ink and brought them to life with magic.
I wonder if that isn’t just what Eziel did.