King Ruin: A Thriller (Ruins Sonata Book 2) (9 page)

BOOM

The candlewax blows behind them, and the sound is amplified a hundredfold within the contained space. The percussive shock knocks La into a wall, giving her a brief HUD-light glimpse of nonsensical patterns carved into the stone. Then the tsunami strikes above and all around, and the pyramid thrums a low bass note, which Ray matches.

But the rubbled entrance holds.

Along with Doe and Ti, La drops to kneel on the dusty floor, plugs her shock-jacks into Ray's suit, and holds to the others tight in the darkness, while the flood storms on overhead.

Time passes in silence, disturbed only by the steady movements of my crew. Many of them are sleeping, where I sent them. It is easier to keep a leash upon them that way.

Hours have passed, and no sign of pursuit has come. All comms to the skulks and other ships were cut from the moment we left the bunker-bay. I haven't thought my way beyond the walls of this hull since ordering Don Zachary's suicide.

I sit in the captain's hutch, my head in my hands. It aches, some kind of migraine. I already took Helicomol to tamp it down, but still it hammers like an Arcloberry hangover. I can still feel the shredding, as Don Zachary's bunker was torn apart and everyone inside died.

The skulks may have gone too, I don't know. The quakeseed was ratcheted as low as I could make it, but it was still a quakeseed. Could it have broken down the tsunami wall? Could I have just destroyed Calico, and along with it extinguished my wife and children?

I don't know. The pain throbs and hammers. I am not worth this much, I think. I should not have fought. I should have gone quietly, and so many men, women, and children would still be alive. At times though I swing the other direction, and try to mount a defense. Perhaps this is wholly a good thing, killing a bunker full of ex-skirmishers and Black-Hawks who were planning to murder the world.

At each swing, the noose constricts a little tighter around my neck, and I feel myself sink, hating my pathetic efforts to rationalize. It was Don Zachary's plan, and most of the skirmishers I touched knew nothing of it. They were not good men, but few of them had dreamed of genocide, yet I killed them so I might escape.

So I might see my family again. And who am I to weigh their lives in the balance?

It doesn't feel good. There's a bottle of subglacic vodka on the captain's table before me, a glass fully poured, but I haven't touched it. For ten years I never touched a drop, but for the year that followed it was all I lived for. Battered in the skulks, it was my refuge, the last hole of a lost and broken man.

It calls to me now.

We are cruising slow and low, far beneath the subglacic's operating depth. The metal around me groans and squeals to reflect that. Heclan always told me these ships could take far more pressure than they were gauged for, but what does that mean now? Why am I even trying to hide?

I laugh.

"Who the fuck are you?" I ask out loud. "Who the fuck?"

One of the Don's men comes in. His face shows mild confusion.

"Sir?" he asks.

"Who the fuck are you?" I ask him.

"Uh, Algehriel, sir," he says.

"What is that, old-Alab?"

"Mohammen," he says. "Of the Durai plains."

It doesn't mean anything to me. "You fought in the desert skirmishes, a sand-man," I say, and he nods. "Were you looking forward to blowing up the whole world?"

He looks at me blankly. "Sir?"

"Don Zachary's quakeseeds, were you looking forward to surfing the global killer wave around the world?"

A gentle frown creases his forehead. He must be around my age. I sense he left three children behind in the bunker, all by different women, each long gone. This man cared for them, reluctantly, but he did. He took a job with the Don to pay for them. He is not a bad man, perhaps he is what I might have been. The quakeseeds were never part of his plan.

Did I really kill his family?

I rest my head in my hands. I can't get any consolation this way. I can't help this man, and I can't get his forgiveness. What then should I say?

"I'm sorry," I tell him.

"Sorry for what, sir?" he asks.

I haven't the heart to say. I am too much the coward to say. I should lift the bond of compulsion off him and let him kick me to pieces, but I'd probably not be able to. I am too weak to lay back, too soft to surrender. I would fight back, and I'd win, and I'd only hurt him more.

What the fuck kind of person am I?

"Just go," I say.

He does, and I hear his footsteps clack back to the con. Probably he'll stand there for a few minutes now, wondering what he ought to do next. I'm having a hard time keeping hold of all these minds.

"Go to bed," I call out down the hall.

A moment passes. "Me, sir?"

"Go to sleep," I repeat. "You're tired."

Another moment, then he clacks away. Perhaps he was the last. I'm too tired to reach out and see. I'm too tired to get up and go look. I think of the subglacic captain who foundered his own vessel, all because his lieutenant didn't love him back.

How many thousands have I just killed?

I can't escape from it, can't hide from it. I did it, and it was real. I was callous and cold, and I sent every order. I planned it before I even reached out through the bonds. On some level, I knew I was going to do it, if I had to, as though that compulsion is some kind of excuse.

A year alone on the skulks has changed me. Mr. Ruins has made me a different man. I was such a fool to hope I could see my family again, so childish to think happiness could ever come to such as me.

I have fucked it all up.

If Mr. Ruins was with me now, sucking air through his tube, his pulse metered by his artificial womb, I would punch in every fucking bone in his face, because I have hurt too many of the wrong people. I would hurt him even more to make it right, and I wouldn't care that that made no difference. I'd only care afterward, when the massive futility of it settled on me like polluted gray snow.

I groan. It comes out of me low and grows, because we are low and slow now, and they haven't found us, but perhaps they should. Perhaps I need to be stopped, because how far will I go? What am I now, if I can't go back to my wife, and now that I am what I am, how can I ever go back to my wife again?

I am a quakeseed in the wind. I am fucking poison to this world. I was born a freak, seven-toned in my abortive womb, and a freak I should die, bombed down to the sea-floor with every mercenary bastard aboard my stolen ship, down to live on the scum-black rime of this ocean's Sunken World.

This is not the world I thought it would be. I am not the man I thought I was.

I pick up the glass of vodka and knock it back. I pour another and do it again, and again.

Let them wake up and mutiny. Let them tie me to the fucking periscope and dive so deep my eyes pop. I don't care. I didn't ask for this, and I don't want it anymore.

Goodbye Loralena, goodbye Art, goodbye Mem. I loved you so much, and now I have to go. I can bring you nothing but pain, and I cannot stand to do that again.

Goodbye.

Rocking, rocking. I am in the darkness, surrounded by the chord. They are each distinct, their forms gathered around my body as I lie splayed across the floor of the captain's hutch.

They are watching me, and I know I have let them down. I have let Far down. Me looks down at me with pity. In Doe, so influenced by Ven, there is contempt.

"He's given up," she says.

"I understand," says Ray. He's kneeling by my side, his ghostly touch on my brow. "I feel for him. He's lost everything, even who he thinks he is."

"He has us," Doe says.

"He is us," say La and Ti at the same time.

I want to reach up and hug them. I want to beg for their help.

"Help me," I want to say, but I can't make any sound. "Please. I don't know what to do."

"He's weak," says Doe. "It means we're weak."

"We've always been weak," says So. "Can you only see that now?"

Ray looks up. "He's a man, only. That's all."

So shakes her head. "He was supposed to be more. He was supposed to make himself more."

"But he can't," says Doe.

They stand as though at a funeral, and the anguish of their sadness hurts me worse than anything.

"It means we're weak too," says Doe again. There are now tears in her eyes, as she looks to Ray. "So's right. It means I'm weak at the core."

"You're not weak," says Ray. He stands up and reaches out to her, but she pushes him away.

"I am," she insists. "If all I'm built on is this, then what am I? Push me enough and I'll crack too. What is that? How can I go on, knowing this is what's at the Core?"

"I died for him," says La. "I threw myself on their bayonets, for this."

"I died in the screw room," says Ti, "for him."

"I died in the outer ring," says So, "and this is his repayment."

"I'm sorry," I want to sob. "It's not what I wanted. I've let you all down."

"He's nothing," says So, and turns away. She disappears. Ray shakes his head, full of pity and sadness, then he too leaves. Ti and La follow, sobbing now, hand in hand. Last of all is Doe, disbelief in her eyes.

"Will you really do this to us?" she asks. "We fought for you from the beginning. We kept you alive. Would you do this to us now?"

Then she too is gone, and I am alone with Far.

His eyes burn with anger. I look into them and feel afraid.

"I am no part of this," he says. He points at the vodka bottle smashed on the floor by my side, the smear of blood where I have ground my hand against a fragment of glass. There is congealing spit leaking from my slack mouth. "This is not what we are, Ritry."

I start to sob, though my figure on the floor doesn't make a sound.

"This is not our Core," he says. "Don't you think I know our Core better than any? I built it. We built it together before we could even think. The others don't know because they weren't there, but we were, Ritry! We were there. We Lagged them all, when we were nothing but a gleam beneath all the scars they heaped us with. We killed all our mothers and our fathers, because we deserved a chance at life. And more are coming now, so what? We'll be ready. What are you crying for? Why are you sniveling? This is not the time to ask for forgiveness. Now is the time to roll out with all the fury in the world. Now is the time to make those fuckers pay. Do you understand me?"

I can barely breathe for my tears.

"Far," I say. "Far."

"I'm right here," he says. "I'm not leaving you Ritry. I never will"

I want to pull him close, but I can't move. This sullen boy, this broken boy, this boy that killed and saved us all, I want to hug him but I can't move.

Instead he lies down at my back. He wraps his arms around me, and presses his cheek against my shoulder.

"I'm here, Ritry," he says. "I'm always here."

The sobs well up and out of me like a geyser. I can't stop them. I am not alone.

In the flicker of the hutch's strip-lights I wake hard, and now my head is really throbbing. Thank the Lag I don't need to puke. I push myself up, feeling the sting in my left hand where the broken glass grazed it.

This pain is alright, because I have earned it. I'm lucky to have my fingers. I'm lucky to be alive. It's time to be done with whining. I am not helpless and I never was. I killed people not because I wanted to, or because I was selfish, but because I was forced to.

They are hunting me. They killed those people, by forcing my hand.

I know it is a justification, but still it is true. I am no Don Zachary, I would never have done this if I had not been forced. I am a good man who only hoped to see his family again.

They've taken that away from me. They should not have done that.

I call the crew.

There's no need for them to gather, or for me to give a rousing speech. They do what I tell them, when I tell it, and now I'm feeling more resolved they do it fast.

These marines are like my hands and my feet. By reaching out through them I can handle the whole subglacic. It is similar to the partitioning I do every time I dive the Molten Core, splitting myself between the tones of the chord, though that is unconscious.

Doe, Ray, Me, Far, So, La, Ti. When I'm them, I am them. I become seven streams of thought, seven views of the world, complete with their own minds. It is not quite the same with the Black Hawks, and I struggle to consciously divide my attention into more than one at a time, but I manage. I leave an order like a silvery engram needled into their gray matter, then move onto the next. I cycle through them fast, setting all the paths in motion.

We're going to the rock.

I dare not reach out to it, for fear the thick beam of thought will feel me. I only hope it wasn't able to pin down my search to that one point already. If it did, then this effort is over. But something in the sense of it tells me it did not. Rather it was somehow attuned to all the lines of its past at once, like a spider at the center of its web, waiting for a shiver. It doesn't know me wholly, not yet.