Valley of Fires: A Conquered Earth Novel (The Conquered Earth Series) (21 page)

She nodded but didn’t smile, just stared down at what was left of the small town, nothing but flames now. The amount of power that had just been brought to bear at her command made her more than a little—

The sound of roaring engines filled the air.

The cheers died as everyone looked west. A flight of shapes soared through the sky, headed right for them. They closed the distance fast, and as they did, Mira saw strobic flashes as the plasma cannons on the aircraft burst to life. A volley of yellow shot downward, but not toward the mesa or even the walkers or the White Helix. It was aimed at the huge metallic bridge that spanned the river.

“What the
what
?” Dresden asked, stupefied, then everyone flinched as the ordnance hit.

Explosions flared up and down the bridge, shooting streaks of orange into the air, and there was a horrible groaning sound as the whole thing, its supports decimated, crashed under its own weight into the river in a mass of burning, warped metal.

Then the airships banked sharply and headed back west in formation, without firing another shot. Raptor gunships, blue and white. Mira listened to their engines scream as they withdrew, lost in the horizon in just a few seconds.

Everyone stared at where the bridge had been, stunned.

“What the hell just happened?” Conner yelled angrily nearby.

“We just lost our route west,” Dresden replied.

He was right, their forward progress had been completely halted. Surely there were other crossing points, but the loss of this bridge so soon after their victory stung badly.

It begged certain questions too. Why wait until the end of the battle to destroy the bridge? If the Assembly had the ability to take it out so easily, why not just demolish it beforehand? Why not just demolish every single bridge up and down the river, for that matter? And why didn’t those gunships participate in the battle while it was going on?

None of it made sense, and the look Dresden gave her said he agreed.

“What do we do now?” she asked.

“There’s other crossing points,” he said. “We’ll have to follow the river south, but it’s going to cost you time.”

He meant time off the two weeks the Wind Traders had given her, time that was quickly running out. If she didn’t make it to San Francisco by then …

Mira looked to the river, watching it wind south, flowing until it disappeared from sight. It felt like starting over again. In a way it was, but she had done that enough times in the last few months, hadn’t she? She would just have to find a way.

One step at a time, she told herself. One step at a time …

16.
CAN OF WORMS

MIRA SAT CROSS-LEGGED
at the front of the
Wind Shear
as the ship rumbled south, following the curving line of the river. All around were other Landships, heading the same way, the biggest fleet ever assembled, but the sight had lost its impact. Every time she looked now, Mira only saw the ships that
weren’t
there, the ones which had been lost. The weight was getting harder to bear.

“Your dog knows Nemo’s a boy, right?” Taylor asked. “And … also a cat?”

Behind her, Taylor, the
Wind Shear
’s helmsman, a stocky kid of about seventeen, stood at the wheel with Parker next to him. Nemo lounged on top of one of the Grounders, ignoring Max, who stared up at him with his usual fascination. Mira wasn’t sure what it was about the cat, but at least it kept the dog occupied and out of trouble.

Mira smiled. “He just doesn’t run into anyone his own size that often. And, again … not
my
dog.”

“Right, we forgot,” Parker said. “He’s your Menagerie boyfriend’s dog.”

Mira stifled the anger she felt. “Holt wasn’t in the Menagerie.”

“He thought about it, and that’s enough for me,” Parker replied.

“What’d he do to piss them off anyway?” Dresden asked. He stood next to her, along the railing, watching the fleet moving as one through the desert. “Heard the guy’s got a death mark.”

“He killed Tiberius Marseilles’s son,” she answered simply, and felt a satisfaction at the way they all stared at her.

“And he’s going
back
there?” Parker asked with incredulity.

“He has a letter of assurance,” Mira said.

“A ‘letter of assurance.’ From Tiberius Marseilles.” Dresden sounded highly skeptical. “Well, he’s got more guts than I do, I’ll say that.”

“More guts, less brains,” Parker said.

Mira tried not to think about what they were implying. Holt was in danger there, no question, but he’d believed it was the best choice. Of course, that was before he saw the Landship she was supposed to be on explode in a fireball. With the state of mind he was no doubt in, that made it much worse.

If only there was some way to get word to him, to let him know, but there wasn’t. She was locked onto her path now, and he was locked onto his.

“Hey,” Dresden said, looking apologetic. “Didn’t mean to worry you. If he’s as resourceful as you say, I’m sure he’ll be fine. Parker’s sorry too. Right, Parker?”

“Yeah, sure,” came the detached reply.

Mira smiled for the first time today. When he wanted, Dresden could be sweet. He moved to the edge of the deck, standing along the side railing, and pulled a pair of binoculars from his belt. He aimed them eastward, past the fluttering sails of all the other moving ships, staring intensely at something.

“What’s out there?” Mira asked.

“Old highway, running parallel to us.”

“Is it a problem?”

“Not sure,” he said. “They can be.”

Mira looked over the railing and saw the road he was scoping. Like most, it was full of old rusted cars, crashed into one another or left abandoned.

“How do you get a Landship through something like that?” It seemed impossible, all the cars would make it a near-impenetrable barrier for something as big as the
Wind Shear.

“You either route around them or use one of the pass-throughs other ships have made,” Dresden answered. “Problem is, Menagerie like to hide out on highways, their dune buggies and jeeps blend right in. Once you get close, they come screaming out. I just like to be careful.”

While he continued scanning, Mira looked back down to the artifacts in front of her. Three Barriers, a Zephyr, and two Aleves, as well as a few dimes and quarters. The coins were from her own stock, but the combinations had come off different ships, and they all bore one thing in common. Each was a charred, blackened mass, all fused together, the components barely recognizable.

Mira had only seen it one other time, back in Currency, in the Shipyards, with the Dynamo that had exploded. She assumed that incident was some sort of freak mishap, maybe a focuser or something had been aligned wrong, but now she was sure it was much more.

She picked up one of the quarters and held it in her palm. The usual, slight vibration from a Strange Lands coin wasn’t present: it sat in her hand like any other coin. With a sinking suspicion, she threw it hard against the deck.

Strange Lands coins were volatile, imbued with arcane energy that would release if they were thrown. Some kids even used them as weapons, firing them from slings and such, but this one just emitted a light spark and a fizzle and that was it. Mira watched it slide off the deck and disappear.

“You’ve been looking at those things all day,” Dresden observed, still sighting through his optics. “What’s going on?”

“Something’s wrong,” Mira said. “They’re weakening much faster than they should, and it’s not just combinations, it’s individual components too. I thought it was a coincidence at first, but it’s not. It’s why the Barriers on the ships have been failing.”

“They’re dying,” Dresden said. “Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes,” Mira answered. All the evidence pointed to that one grim conclusion.

Dresden glanced back at Parker and the two shared a dark look. Something about what Mira had said bothered them.

Dresden slipped the binoculars back on his belt and moved to where Nemo lay across the Grounder. The cat lazily hopped onto his shoulders, and Max whined, watching the feline.

The Captain motioned for Mira to follow him. “Let me show you something.”

They moved toward the rear of the ship, Max following along, his stare on Nemo. If the cat noticed or cared, he gave no indication.

Mira and Max followed Dresden and Nemo down the stairs, which led to the
Wind Shear
’s cargo hold, a big, open-ended room with an oval ceiling made of polished red wood beams, and floors striped in patterns of steel and oak. Shelves had been built into the walls, and boxes and crates filled most of the floor, packed together in ways that made paths through them. Dresden moved to one of the crates, and as he did Nemo leapt off onto another and scaled to the top, staring down contemptuously at Max.

Dresden opened the box and nodded toward it.

It was full of coins, all denominations, each wrapped in plastic in the way all Strange Lands coins were stored. They seemed to just barely wiggle and writhe there, as if trying to push away from each other, but as always Mira could never be sure it wasn’t a trick of the eye.

Dresden looked at all the crates, studying each in turn. “Everything inside these is an artifact.”

Mira’s eyes widened. There were hundreds of containers here, it meant an artifact collection of amazing scope, and represented a fortune on the open market. “You’re kidding.”

“You know the Coterie?” Dresden asked.

Mira nodded. The Coterie was a small thieves’ guild, one of the few Menagerie competitors, and it operated mainly along the old Canadian border.

“Parker and I found it all in an old barn outside Jackson Hole,” Dresden said, moving among the boxes. “It was marked with Coterie symbols; who knows how long they’d been collecting and stashing it. Seemed a shame just to leave it there, so we loaded as much as we could into the ship. It was right before we were called back to Currency for the Grand Bargain.” Dresden looked at her sourly. “What you’re telling me, though, is that everything in here is either worthless or soon will be?”

Mira studied him back just as seriously. This cargo was clearly important to him, and she hated to be the bearer of bad news, but it was what it was. “Yes.”

Dresden didn’t react immediately, he just stared back, a whole host of thoughts flashing through his head … then he turned and kicked one of the crates as hard as he could. The whole stack came toppling over and shattered on the floor, spilling out batteries and paper clips and pencils and springs. Nemo retreated upward out of the way.

“We were going to finance two new Landships with this haul. Parker would have taken one, Conner’s XO the other. Tone’ll take all of us before we have another chance like that now.”

Mira just listened, didn’t say anything. It only seemed to make him angrier.

“I could trade this right now, if it wasn’t for this stupid Grand Bargain!” he roared.

“Yes,” Mira agreed.

“I could just leave,” he said, fuming. “I
should
leave. Trade this off before everything goes to hell.”

“You could, but now that you know, you’d be making a dishonest trade, which, as I understand it, is … kind of frowned on in Wind Trader circles.”

He stared at her another moment, then kicked another box, putting his boot all the way through it. Mira winced. When he withdrew it, his boot was scratched. The sight seemed to cool him off. Dresden liked his boots. “Damn.”

“I’m sorry, Dresden.” Mira meant it.

He studied the boxes and crates like he was already looking at the past. When he spoke his voice was calmer, he’d blown off his steam, only simple frustration remained. “So why’s it happening?”

“It must be the loss of the Strange Lands,” Mira answered. “The artifacts were tied to them and now they’re gone, so they’re dying too.” Maybe it was like what Zoey had told her, on top of that old building in Bismarck. “Order from chaos” she had said. Maybe the artifacts losing their powers was just another way the universe was putting things back the way they were supposed to be.

“If that’s the case,” Dresden said, “we’re all in a hell of a lot of trouble.”

He was right. In a world that had become as dependent on artifacts as this one, it was a chilling proposition. Landships needed them to make the wind to move across the ground. Survivors used them for light and power, heat and cold, everything from Aleves to Magnatrons would no longer work, and every city in North America would essentially have its reset button pressed. It also meant her way of life was over, she suddenly realized. There would be no more Freebooters, because there would be no more artifacts.

“So what does it mean for
us
?” Dresden asked.

Mira guessed what he meant. What she was thinking about before was in the future. There were concerns in the present to worry about too. This entire endeavor, the journey west to find Zoey, ran on artifacts. Just the Reflection Box alone was a major part of the campaign. If it failed …

And what about the Antimatter crystals? The White Helix’s weapons she and Holt were using as bargaining chips? If they lost their power, they would have no way to earn the cooperation of the other groups, much less fight Assembly combat walkers.

“We’ll have to make more combinations, more often,” she said, thinking it through. “Monitor them, keep records of how fast they fail, compare the data. That way we can see if it’s accelerating or constant.”

“And if it’s accelerating?”

She looked up at him. “Then, in a few months … the world’s going to be a very different place.”

Dresden stared back at her soberly. “A can of worms.”

Then they both rocked forward as the giant ship began to slow, the vibrations under their feet softening. The
Wind Shear
was slowing down, and the look Dresden gave her said it wasn’t planned.

“Now what?” he asked, and they both moved for the stairs.

*   *   *

THE PROJECTIONS THAT HIT
Mira when she stepped back onto the deck were the strongest she’d ever felt from a single source, so powerful it would have reached her from the other end of the world. It was fear, but not the normal anxiety Mira usually felt from the Assembly, this was
mortal
fear, potent and sharp, and a wave of dizziness almost overwhelmed her.