World-Ripper War (Mad Tinker Chronicles Book 3) (2 page)

“I’ve got this all worked out...mostly,” said Madlin. She took a pencil and a sheet of paper from the console—Cadmus always kept a supply close at hand—and began to sketch. “I’ve had plenty of time to think lately, and I’ve knocked this idea around in my head enough that it’s got bruises. The moon moves, but astronomers know
exactly
how. They can predict its location years ahead of time. We can convert that to equations and from there to a mechanism to adjust the net location of the dials—build that right into the guts of the world-ripper.”

“I suppose …” Cadmus allowed. Madlin took the lack of resistance as permission to plow ahead.

“There’s probably no caverns since there was never flowing water to carve them. Instead, we steal an auger, a big mining one that barely fits through a world hole. We carve out a warren from this side, just sticking it through the hole and extracting the rock. We’re over sea, so we just dump the rock overboard. Air’s going to get sucked in from Korr but not enough to breathe.”

“A minor problem,” Cadmus muttered sarcastically.

“We’ve got three world-rippers in pieces, just waiting to install once you get off your arse and pick a spot for them. I plan to use all three. Two of them will stay open on a semi-permanent basis, on opposite ends of a canal we’ll create, targeted a few  inches apart and facing opposite directions in a river. We’ll get fresh air from the top half, fresh water from the bottom. We’ll wire fence the openings, so animals don’t get through. The third world-ripper will keep to its normal function.”

Cadmus’s eyes went blank. Madlin knew the look. There were calculations going on within that skull, merits being assigned values and drawbacks being subtracted. Probabilities for any eventuality were assigned and factored into the equations. It was all rough math, but it was what kept the Mad Tinker ticking. He needed the numbers.

“Even if they think of the moon, he’ll never find us,” Cadmus murmured.

“It’s settled then. Start planning the modifications to the machine. We’re claiming the moon as our own.”

Chapter 2

“If you are reading this, please tell them I am sorry.” –Anonymous inscription, carved on the wall of a cavern beside a skeleton

Harsh spark light kept the gloom of darkness away from the caverns below the farthest reaches of northern Korr. The gloom of melancholy that had settled over the outpost was not so easily expunged. A contingent of thirty-five had manned the hidden facility, thirty-four kuduk and a single aging daruu. Now only five remained. A few had died in the ferocious assault that had taken them by surprise from the other world. The rest had succumbed to the deprivation that came with being stranded in a desolate wasteland of ice and rock. The caverns and the few pieces of heating equipment kept them warm enough, but nothing grew, nothing lived, above on the surface. The supplies that once had stocked the larder had dwindled to the point where even rationing was just a stalling tactic.

When the first day had passed with no aid, it had been discouraging. The first week brought desperation. The end of the first month had wrung the hope from the last of them, until only the hardiest remained.

“Would you stop that pacing?” Draksgollow snapped in a weary drawl. “You wring the strength from me just watching you.”

Kezudkan ignored the request. The old daruu plodded around the idle machines and discarded tools of the outpost’s workshop. With each step, his joints ground like a mortar and pestle.

Draksgollow raised his voice. “I said—”

“I heard you,” said Kezudkan. “I just see no reason to heed you. It’s your fault we’re in this mess in the first place. If you’d engendered a smidgen of loyalty among your workforce, they’d have opened a world hole and retrieved us.”

“Me? You’re the one who had us attack that human settlement. We could have opened a hole, blasted their machine to scrap, and closed it. Done. Finished. Back to mining worlds for our fortune.”

“And they’d have rebuilt, if we didn’t kill off all Erefan’s associates and destroy every copy of his production notes,” Kezudkan countered. “Can you really be that shortsighted?”

“Shortsighted? Look what your brilliant planning has gotten us: starving at the top of the world, halfway past nowhere. Forgotten.”

Kezudkan stopped in his footsteps and turned to regard Draksgollow. The half mechanical kuduk tinker had become a wretched thing. He slumped in his seat, a rotogun lying idle below a dangling hand, ready in case he decided to split the rations one way fewer. The fire had gone out of Draksgollow. His recriminations were bile and vitriol with no hint of resolve to lend them strength.

There was no point in answering. There had been no point in starting the argument in the first place, but it happened daily at the least. Draksgollow blamed Kezudkan. Kezudkan blamed Draksgollow. Each day there were fewer workers to overhear the bickering. One day Draksgollow himself would succumb, and the bickering would end. Perhaps today was that day. He certainly looked ready to give himself over to despair and let starvation win.

The thought that any of the kuduks would outlast him never occurred to Kezudkan. Old and infirm though he was, he was daruu. He was of the rock. Stronger and hardier than any kuduk could imagine, he would harden to stone before starvation ever took him. For while the foodstuffs they had stocked for the outpost had been for everyone, the stone itself could sustain Kezudkan for some time. It was a hollow nourishment, no better than broth, though much more substantive in the belly. But it kept the pangs away, if not the craving for real food. It also accelerated Kezudkan’s ossification. His ancient joints wanted nothing more than to cease their lifelong toil and rest in one position, and his diet of nothing but stone only sped the process. Still, it was better than the gnawing feeling of his own guts devouring him from within, as the kuduks must have been feeling.

And so, to keep the ossification at bay, Kezudkan paced.

Hours passed uncounted. The fitful rage of a hunger-mad worker had smashed the only working clocks. The unchanging illumination of the spark lights made the caverns a monotonous prison. There were old mining tunnels to meander along, a whole workshop to tinker in, a surface world to explore. But facing the approach of death, tedium with companionship was preferable, even if that companionship was surly and bitter.

The mind was capable of many tricks. The want of something could make it appear before you when your mind oozed its way free of brain flesh. The desert heat was notorious for mirages, as were the trackless waves known for beguiling sailors adrift at sea. Hunger could put ideas in a man’s mind just as surely. Kezudkan knew these facts, and so it was with a scientific dispassion that he beheld the first signs of his own madness.

A shimmering spark crackled briefly in the air before splitting wider and forming a hole in the middle of the workshop. Through it, Kezudkan saw the factory where Draksgollow’s machinists had been working on a new world-ripper before their present misadventure had thrown their plans through a sausage-processor.

Kezudkan glanced away and continued his pacing. Dementia be dratted, he refused to be wrung free of his senses so easily.

“You see that?” Draksgollow asked from his chair.

That was enough to give Kezudkan a sniff of hope. “I might.”

“Hullo in there?” a harsh voice whispered through the world-hole. “Come on, we haven’t got lots of time.”

Kezudkan steered his pacing more purposefully, aiming his ambling waddle for the world-hole, delusion or no. “Who’s there?”

“Anvernus, sir. We’ve had a bit of trouble getting to you. Just get through quick and we’ll explain.”

Draksgollow stirred in his chair, but failed to rise. The steamworks that kept half of him animate had cooled and could not be restored to functioning without repair. “He’ll need a carry,” said Kezudkan. “I’m in no condition.”

Avnernus shouted to others on his side, and three kuduk workers hustled through, tucking away pistols in their belts and vest as they came.

“What’s this all about?” Draksgollow asked as his workers hoisted him to his feet. He dangled limply from their shoulders.

Kezudkan did not wait for any answer. Whatever the reason for the furtive, armed rescue, he preferred to deal with it from the civilized side of the world hole. He stepped through and into the welcoming dimness of Draksgollow’s workshop.

“This wasn’t a majority decision, sir,” said Arvernus. “But we want things back the way they were.”

“Just what’s been—”

“There’s no time, sir,” Arvernus snapped. There was a hunted look in his eyes. Kezudkan stepped away from the world hole and backed himself against the control console of the machine. The cane that was his constant companion found its way into a sword-like grip in Kezudkan’s hand.

“It’s night,” said Kezudkan. “This isn’t working hours. What’s going on?”

“There’s no time,” said Arvernus. The kuduk worker stared through the world hole as Draksgollow was dragged through. He moved to the controls and put a hand to the switch that would shut off the machine.

“There are three more still back there,” Kezudkan noted dryly. He suspected by Arvernus’s manner that no delay would be forthcoming. “Just a couple chambers down the main tunnel.”

“There’s no—”

“No time, yes, I know the refrain,” said Kezudkan. “But we’re saved now. It seems that whatever problem you’re having with the machine, we can remedy them should anyone else be stranded.”

“It’s not the machine. It’s Tolby.”

“Tolby?” Draksgollow discovered newfound strength of voice as he heard the name. His bearers carried him through into the Cavinstraw Deep workshop but did not set him down immediately. They kept him on their shoulders and carried him onward, heading for the far exit of the workshop.

“He’s taken over since Mr. Draksgollow has been gone,” said Arvernus. He pulled the switch, and the machine no longer bridged the span of over half of Korr. He pulled another, and the room went dark as the world-ripper did. “We’ve got rooms in the city. We’ll get you there. Don’t worry.”

“This Tolby fellow, he live in the worker barracks?” Kezudkan asked.

Arvernus shook his head. “He’s taken over Mr. Draksgollow’s suite.”

“Well, then,” said Kezudkan, setting the tip of his cane firmly against the floor. “It looks like I’ll be having a word with Mr. Tolby.” He trundled off down a different corridor from the one the workers were using to carry off Draksgollow.

“No,” Arvnernus whispered harshly. “We’ll regroup, come back in force.” Kezudkan ignored him. After several more entreaties, the loyalist kuduk gave up and attended to his employer, leaving Kezudkan free to roam the halls.

Despite his apparent rashness, the old daruu was far from reckless. There was no tell-tale clop of cane as he walked, not any great sound from his heavy footfalls. The stone of the halls gave way like wet sand beneath his tread; the tip of his cane left shallow indentations. Kezudkan’s old ears were a poor judge, but he doubted anyone behind a door would hear him approach.

The worker barracks were a warren of free rooms provided to Draksgollow’s more miserly workers, who preferred a few saved coins a month to respite from their workplace. Never one to show interests outside his business, Draksgollow lived nestled among them, though in finer accommodations. The halls were plain stone, worked with a desire to remove obstruction, not create anything of beauty. It was not a distinction that the kuduk drew, but Kezudkan saw no reason that the creation of a simple passageway had to have been ugly. It was a simple matter of finesse with the stone that came intuitively to the daruu.

It was that intuition that Kezudkan was counting upon. As he ambled down the corridor, he paused at each door. All of them had frames made of grey-painted steel set into the stone wall. With a gentle hand, Kezudkan wiped at the rock, causing it to flow and shift like clay over the door handle of each door. By the time he reached the end of the corridor, every other door in the barracks was sealed shut.

Kezudkan took a moment to ponder his entrance. Trying the handle, he found the door locked. The steel was no finer than the rest of the doors along the corridor, but like those others it was solid and thick, at least an inch of metal barring his way. He nodded. Putting a hand to the stone beside the door, he felt his way inside, to the heart of the stone. Would it mind, kindly, removing itself from his way? The stone was only too happy to comply. It receded from the steel frame holding the door in place like a sea at low tide. With the tip of his cane, Kezudkan toppled the door inward.

The crash of metal on stone was fit to wake statues. The room’s occupant gave a wordless cry and scrambled upright in his bed. A paltry light from the corridor back-lit Kezudkan. His own shadow hid the kuduk’s features from him.

“Get out of here!” the kuduk shouted. “Who are you?”

Kezudkan was already lumbering over the fallen door and closing the distance to the kuduk traitor. The kuduk lunged over the edge of his bed, but Kezudkan’s cane caught him on the way down, barring him across the collarbone. Feeling under the edge of the bed with a boot toe, the old daruu fumbled with something concealed there and finally kicked a rifle into the light.

“Is this what you were after?” Kezudkan asked. He pointed to the rifle. The kuduk made a stretch to get around the obstructing cane, and Kezudkan made no move to stop him. Instead, he rested a foot atop the weapon. When the kuduk’s fingers tried to pry it from the floor, the rifle might well have been bolted to the stone.

“It’s you. How’d you get back?”

“I swam,” Kezudkan replied. “How is it that you thought you inherited this place when we had an equipment failure? You were
supposed
to have opened a world-hole and brought us back. Even if I hadn’t heard him tell you in no uncertain terms, you ought to have been clever enough to figure that part out for yourself.”

“I just ... I mean ... I can explain everything.”

Kezudkan lifted his cane, along with the kuduk draped over it. He deposited Tolby into Draksgollow’s bed and used the tip of the cane at the kuduk’s throat to hold him down. “Oh, I think I understand without requiring explanation. You thought you could dispose of us, take everything for your own, and be as rich as we’d planned to be. Admit it.”

The kuduk gave a sickly smile, lost in the scraggle of an unkempt beard. “No hard feelings, I hope, Mr. Kezudkan?”

Kezudkan pressed down. Tolby gagged and clutched at the cane with both hands. Just as it seemed that the kuduk would free himself from the cane’s crushing tip, Kezudkan leaned into it. The gagging turned horrible, the kuduk frantic. “No. None at all.”

After a moment, the kuduk fell limp. Kezudkan gave a final shove, then allowed the cane to return to its normal duties. With no further need for stealth, he clopped his way back to the door, pausing momentarily at a tray of last night’s dinner leftovers. There was a half a fruit tart remaining. Though there was no pride in the act, Kezudkan broke away a corner that bore no tooth marks and shoved it into his mouth.

“Best I’ve had in weeks,” he muttered to himself as he went to find himself something to go with his snack.