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  “Nothing solid. Raestan still won’t move against Titian without the Augland Neutrality Patrol entering into active alliance. There is a summit coming up in York Central. We wait on the outcome.” Sister Eva counted off her beads as the bone cart arrived. A blocker climbed down and hoisted the body on top of the rest. Sister Eva drew a finger across her chest in honour of Gothendore, All Immortal. Secretly, she let the movement flow into a tiny circle and faint flex of the fingers. Barely perceptible, the sign of Mama Sunstar.

  “Show me the next one.”

  Mohab led the way past the guards, who muttered into their coffee jars about the sister’s poor choice of assistant. Their hatred for Mohab ran deep, but Sister Eva had the final say over who worked as her whipping boy. No one questioned the erratic ways of the Sisterhood, at least as far as their interactions with the infidels was concerned.

  A dead boy, no more than eight years old, had been left to rot in the sun. Mohab stared down at the body. Sister Eva drew her finger across her chest prematurely.

  “We have found a pilot,” she said in a whisper.

  Mohab waved away the flies as he squatted and tried to rearrange the child’s arms. The bones had already set. He yanked on the bare wrists, heard something snap like dry tinder and worked to control his gag reflex. Faces haunted him, those of his sisters in the final days before the lungrot took them. Skin, the colour of clay. Cheeks caving.

  “This pilot. They any good? Needs to be once the bastard guards start shooting up the sky.”

  Sister Eva muttered over her beads. She nodded to the far end of the quarry, where the gate lay with its twin guard towers. “Those will have to be taken out at the first opportunity. In truth, I’ve no idea if Titian’s daughter is any good as a pilot. She was a decorated member of the Bleek military and she’s all we’re got.”

  “Lieutenant Kali Titian is the pilot?” Mohab’s disbelief read hard in his eyes. “Has she really embedded herself so thoroughly? The woman tore apart families, ordered executions, decimated Resistance cells.”

  “Precisely. The Lieutenant has been in combat and she has survived!”

  The nun fell silent as the bone cart rattled up. Cradling the boy’s body, Mohab tossed it up on top of the other bodies.

  As the cart moved off again, Sister Eva beckoned a water boy over. She gulped down a cup of water and insisted the cup be refilled for Mohab. He drained the cup and the nun waved on the boy, who was no older that the body they had so recently stacked amongst the others.

  Mohab tried to process the idea of Kali Titian assisting with the plan. Kidnapping a gunner at the precise moment it was restored but not yet rerouted to the war effort already struck him as a desperately dangerous prospect. Confiding that plan to a former Lieutenant Colonel of the National Guard – not to mention, an immediate family member of High Judge Titian himself – was suicide, nothing less.

  “I might as well bite chunks out of my own wrists.”

  Feeding her hands inside her bell sleeves, Sister Eva grimaced. “The Resistance has already found a chink in High Judge Titian’s armour. It is very risky, a shot in the dark really. I do not want to say more. We both know that secrets tend to buff up and shine brighter the more people who handle them. But if the sabotage does succeed, it will greatly aid our plan.” She titled her chin. Sunlight filled her exceptional eyes. “You’ve already entrusted the stonemaker relics to Titian’s daughter. She has not betrayed you. More than that, she stood beside you against her father.”

  Mohab thought about the ancient stones he had unearthed at the quarry. Dalma plates, the Lieutenant had called them. He had wanted nothing to do with his discovery at the time – just as he had wanted nothing to do with his ascension to the role of his people’s Speaker. The stories were his father’s burden. So many twisting helixes of words, like a genetic restructuring, until every last molecule of the father Mohab had yearned for was gone.

  Except, then his father had died, and he – and, yes, Kali as well – had eased his father’s remains onto a slab that had housed so many thousands before. In those final moments before he fed the body to the flames, Mohab had finally seen his father freed of the weight of words and he had looked light as dust.

  “The Lieutenant cannot atone for the sins of her past. But she has been abandoned by her own kind. And while she will never be like us, she is like me.” Mohab snorted. “In that no matter how much we might despise the fact, we are both destined to lead armies.” He took a deep inhale and nodded. “The Lieutenant has kept my secrets these last few weeks, as you say. If she is our only real option for a pilot, we must trust she can keep more.”

  Nineteen

  “Where’s Groff?” Kali glared at the blocker, who slung his hands into his pockets and leaned back, groin presented to her like a handshake.

  “Suckgap? Fuck knows.” He used his makeshift beater to push Mohab forward. “This one’s bust up from working the quarry but there’s muscle enough to last another fortnight. One of the sisters sent him and I’m not going argue with one of those soul suckers.”

  Kali hissed through her teeth. “I’ve spoken to the Commandant Superintendent about keeping the same men on the job. It’s wasteful to dispose of quality workers.” What she wanted to say was ‘I’ve grown used to Groff and now my kind may have killed him and I want to kill you in return.’

  Apparently, she didn’t hide her intent too well. Mohab put his hands on his hips, intercepting her path to the blocker. “Groff’s been assigned to the medical suite permanently.”

  Reassured to know that Groff was still alive, Kali winced as the blocker brought his beater down on Mohab’s shoulder. The Speaker’s son cried out and stumbled sideways.

  “Bastard chatterbox! It’s none of the bitch’s business where Suckgap has fucked off to.” The blocker leaned in by Kali’s ear. He grabbed her hand and rubbed it against his crotch. “At least unless the Commandant Superintendent tells me otherwise.”

  His breath was stale. Aware of Mohab’s gaze on her, Kali didn’t flinch but let the guard rub and buck against her until the nausea became too much. Snatching her hand away, she glared at Mohab and tossed him the wrench she had booked out. “We’re using the second riser rig. You’ll need a tool roll.”

  “Stupid cunt.” The blocker moved off in the opposite direction.

  Kali pressed a hand to her throat to keep the bile in.

  Mohab massaged his shoulder, bruised to the bone. For a moment, he looked as if he was about to say more. But then he turned his back and walked off to join the tool roll queue.

  Even as a child, Groff had been a peacemaker. If there was a fight between some boys in the neighbourhood, he would wait for all parties to exhaust themselves then suggest a game of Odd Ball, with him as the target. Weaving in and out of their legs, he would unite the squabblers in their mutual pursuit of him. This ability to placate had led him into nursing, where, to Groff’s mind, a body’s physical state of illness was a form of conflict in itself. His job was to alleviate suffering. Sometimes he nursed patients better. Other times, he held their hand as they slipped away.

  But now that he was set to work in the medical suite, Groff had neither the tools nor mental capacity to ease the suffering of those tortured within. The senior medical officer was a Doctor General Tristan Harris, newly arrived at Abbandon and yet to wear the expression of regimental boredom which characterised those Sisters and guards about the place

  As far as Groff could make out, Doctor Harris selected patients according to his erratic criteria and the ever-changing pool of Vary available to him. He chose the strongest males for sub-volcanic immersion and children for chemical stunt agents. Those individuals with lighter skin, birthmarks or above average intelligence were given over to the gas chamber and dissection. The children he singled out were subjected to the cruellest experiments.

  Unlike the rustic shed of the infirmary, the medical suite was a series of pristine and sanitary wards located in the grounds of the factory. Unlike the i
nfirmary with its promise of respite, the medical suite was a direct road to deformity and death. To Groff’s mind, it was an evil place.

  “You will arrange for the child to be bathed then place her in the chair.” Harris nodded towards a girl perched on one side of a riser trolley, legs dangling.

  Groff reached out to the child. “Come on, bumblebee. Legs up. Time to get clean. Warm water too. And soap. It smells a bit funny. But it kills those itchy lice.” Leaving the doctor to finish his round, Groff guided the trolley to a shower block where a sister waited for them. Lifting the girl down, he steadied her on her feet. “Go on in.” He nodded encouragingly towards the shower block. The child pattered over the bare tiles and the sister followed after, rolling up her black sleeves.

  Groff exhaled heavily and leaned back against the trolley. The ward was quiet now the doctors had moved on. A couple of beds were occupied by children wearing eye patches. At the opposite end of the ward was a boy with bandaging around his chest where his underarm lymph nodes had been removed. He cried at night according to the sisters; they would be glad when his ‘treatment’ was complete.

  Otherwise, the ward was empty. Groff was glad. He hated his work in the medical suite. It was worse than being spat on by blockers in the factory or witnessing the sisters’ cruelty in the infirmary. He suspected that, overall, Harris preferred to protect members of that so-called holy order from the detritus of his experiments. Groff, though, was not only medically trained but Vary, which meant he was useful if disposable.

  The eye-op children whimpered in their sleep. Shuffling onto his side, the lymph node boy kept his eyes tight shut; no doubt it was preferable to pretend the outside world didn’t exist. Left alone with those suffering little children, Groff realised that he was the only adult in the room. Tears pricked his eyes. This must be how it feels to be a free man! Just standing here in this room, breathing air. Forced to witness these emaciated children with their tears and imposed monstrousness, his mind remained in chains.

  “She is ready.” The sister ushered the child out from the shower block.

  Groff felt his shoulders tighten. The girl was naked. Her starved body was anatomical where the bones showed through. He found a spare shift and dropped it around the girl, who shivered despite the heat.

  “There may be lice on her yet. Tell Doctor Harris. Her head needs shaving.” The sister floated away. As she passed his bed, the lymph node boy cried out in pain. She kept walking. In her stiff black habit, she reminded Groff of a spook from one of the Speaker’s son’s tales – the sort that sucked the life from the lips of sleeping children.

  The pen vibrated as Mohab kept pressure on the handheld operator switch, guiding the riser rig up and around the gunner’s outer walls. From that height, it was possible to finally get to grips with the scale of the thing. The surface tiles shimmered in the sunlight, the blue-black diamantine reminding Kali of her grandmother’s house. She marvelled at the geometric skim and bruise blocks left proud of the surface and designed to act as shock absorbers if the craft encountered turbulence. She didn’t entirely understand this new model’s schematics; it had been years since she passed out from the Military Academy in Nilreb. She was a reasonable engineer, a better soldier. All the same, she longed to roll back the door which sat flush with the epidermis and lose herself inside the gunner.

  “You’ve Seconded an engineer before?” She nodded at the riser’s operator switch in Mohab’s hand.

  “I’ve used a riser rig at the Nedmac Traps when I was collecting lava samples.” Mohab squinted at her. “I taught geology at Geno Universium.”

  Kali pointed to a hole in the gunner where the tiles had buckled at impact. “Take me in.” Mohab guided the riser alongside the hole. Up close, the edges of the impact looked melted rather than punctured.

  “Log out the scrappers. Both of them.”

  Securing the riser rig, Mohab knelt and undid the tool roll which opened out into a flat bed of tools with its own data screen. He logged out the scrappers and handed them over. Kali trimmed the nearest fold, using the scrappers to pare back the constituent.

  “Why hasn’t the hull repaired itself? I thought the point of the tiles was to create a self-healing environment.” Mohab snorted. “I thought it was meant to be Titian’s not-so-secret bargaining chip with Jonet and Greater Sangolia in exchange for their support?”

  “The metal-matrix is artificial bone, meaning it’s fantastically lightweight and, yes, living cellular material with the capacity to mend itself. But only if the underlying weft is intact. Now, hand me the swarthe light.” She passed back the scrappers, waited for Mohab to log the tools back in and took the swarthe light when he handed it up. The handle was telescopic; she whipped it out in front of her, protracting the beam into the dark wound in the hull. “The arterial layer has been compromised,” she said, taking in the damage to the tube twists and avionics. There was a bad smell coming off the hole, like something rotten and left to the flies.

  “You ever worry we’re so busy messing with nature that we’ll give up our flesh and turn back into stardust?” Mohab stood close behind her. Kali felt his proximity as a physical pressure.

  “I don’t worry. I hope,” she said, and snapped off the light. “I can’t do anything from the outside. You’ll have to take us further in.” Sheltering her eyes against the glare off the sunlit gunner, she turned to the guard platform opposite.

  “We’ve got to fix her from inside! Once it’s done, we’ll use the crawl space behind the epidermis and exit via the slush shoot.” She prayed the craft’s youth and recent damage meant it had been brought in before the slush shoot could impact with waste.

  A guard held up his arm with its glinting wrist cuff. Kali understood his meaning; the nicks had rubbed her skin into fat callouses over time but the blades could still punch in any time they were activated.

  Mohab leaned out over the railing. “We need another swarthe light! It won’t let me log a second out.”

  The guard knocked elbows with his neighbour, who shook his head and drew on a smokestick.

  “We will manage with one.” Kali nodded at the tool roll. “Bring that. They’ll have to let me log out the weft agent and hook anyway. If we’re lucky, there may even be a drag tool to clean down the walls of the slush shoot before we use it.”

  “There won’t,” said Mohab.

  Kali flicked out the swarthe light. “No, there won’t.”

  Groff made it a rule never to ask a child their name. The heart had a finite capacity for pain; swamp it and the veins got saturated. He led the girl out of the ward and did his best not to look at her. Her hand was flimsy in his. He could feel her birdlike bones.

  As they walked down the corridor, he became aware of a tug on his sleeve.

  “Will they cut me?”

  The question was matter-of-fact. Groff didn’t mean to, but he was so taken aback that he looked down. “It is a small operation. They will give you anaesthetic.” He hoped Doctor Harris didn’t make a liar of him.

  “Will they wake me again after?” She stared up at him, eyes unusually blue. Her teeth looked big in her mouth where the fat had dissolved from her face and lips.

  Groff wished he had something soothing to say, but all he thought was, ‘Is it her eyes they want? Will Harris store them in a jar like lumps of polished glass?’

  The girl gripped his hand tighter. Her palm felt damp. “My name is Shola. Shola Ricks.”

  The name was out before he could shush her. Groff’s stomach knotted. ‘Don’t remember the name,’ he told himself. The niggling, sadistic part of him repeated ‘Shola Ricks’ over and over until the name was engraved into his mind.

  “I am nine,” said Shola. “Mama and I lived in Geno. I had a chuckle bird. His name was Laurel Lee. I used to fetch him bugs from the balcony of our apartment. Big whistlers, fat as your finger. Spiders too. I caught them in my shoes.” She stopped walking in front of a pair of opaque glass-sheet doors. Shaking off Groff’s hand, she pat
ted one of her shoulders and stroked the air there. “Laurel Lee doesn’t like it here.”

  “Come on.” Groff didn’t want to use her name, but when the girl made no attempt to move, he relented. “Come on, Shola. It’ll all be over soon and you’ll be back in your bed.”

  Shola turned her strange eyes to him and shrugged. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  “The Commandant Superintendent. Why do you go to him?”

  “More light.”

  Mohab brought the swarthe light closer. Kali worked a set of clamps between the tube twists.

  “Do the two of you have an arrangement? It can’t be in exchange for rations or kind treatment. You’re as broken as the rest of us.” He knelt, directing the beam up into the mess of the gunner’s innards and catching Kali in the eye so that she was forced to squint. “Is it possible you like it? Like him? Is that it, Lieutenant? Do you like the Commandant Superintendent? Was he your plaything even before you came to this camp?”

  Kali logged out a small blade and focused on paring the severed ends from two of the tubes, ready for soldering. The Speaker’s son had a mouth on him. It had been easier to work with Groff.

  “He was not… is not my plaything,” she said evenly.

  “You certainly aren’t his. It’s not as black and white as that with you.” Mohab dragged a hand back through his hair and sighed. “Look, I don’t give a fuck who you like, Lieutenant. It has no bearing on me or any other Vary. But one thing I do know.” He dipped his head under the mess of tubes. Closing in, he put out a hand and laid it flat against her breast, above the heart. “No matter how hard you work to sweat it out, you’ll never get clean of sin. It bleeds black from the pores. Your only option is to live with it.”

  In that moment, Kali despised the Speaker’s son. He was right, of course. She would never work her way free of the stain. But he’d misinterpreted the sex.

  “I fuck the Commandant to get clean, not because I live among swarms of Vary, but because he is fat with life. There are threads of citrus flesh caught in his teeth from breakfast; I root them out with my tongue. I stick my nose into his armpits; he stinks already where the heat gets to him. But I can still make out the slicks of frangipani grease. The bones of his arse don’t bite at me like the Varys in my bunk.” She brought her face millimetres from Mohab’s and felt his breath on her lips. “His cock is very pale and has a small mole near the shaft. When I suck it, he tastes of brine soap.” Her hand went to his groin. “You would not taste so sweet.”