Warp World (52 page)

Ama looked at the steadily advancing CWA raiders, then down the street to the slideway and nodded.

They dashed toward the intersection, crouching low behind the parked trans on the curb. The screeches and thuds of spines piercing metal trailed them as they rounded the corner. Seg pointed to a low stone divider. “That will cover us most of the way to the station.”

A shot whizzed by and she fired back before dashing to the divider. Seg fell in behind her and they made quick but careful progress as more shots carved open the air. Before long the protective cover came to an end. They would have to cross the final thirty meters to the slideway station in their enemy’s direct line of fire.

“We have to run for it,” Ama said.

“Not a chance.” Seg pulled back from a glance around the barrier. “You’re not their target, I am. I’ll double back, draw their fire, you make it across and warn Fismar.”

“No.” She shook her head. “I won’t leave you here. We can make it if—”

A loud blast silenced her. The section of barrier behind them exploded, debris flew and Seg and Ama ducked to escape it. A moment later, coughing and dusty, they looked up again and saw a gaping hole. They were pinned behind a small section of stone—exposed on either side.

Ama raised her chack. “Trapped. Son of a—”

She was interrupted again, this time by piercing screams.

Seg risked a glance above the barrier and then gaped at what he saw. Arel and his raider allies had charged directly into their attackers, turning the firefight into a close-quarters brawl. An unortho maneuver, which came at a deadly cost judging by the fallen bodies. The odds were against Arel’s crew, but they were still fighting and keeping the CWA troops occupied.

“GO!” Seg shoved Ama forward, toward the station. Above their heads, the amber signal light burned, indicating the slideway was shut down. He ignored the warning as they sprinted the short distance into the deserted building.

They ran, without daring to look back, down the sloping ramp and around the corner, to the doors that led into the station.

Ama halted and Seg nearly slammed into her.

“Nen’s death,” she gasped, panting for breath as she stared at the thick metal doors of the station—sealed tight. A glowing sign announced the station was temporarily closed due to Storm activity and would re-open in the morning.

Ama banged her fist against the unyielding surface.

“Don’t waste your time,” Seg said. He moved past her, around the side of the building. Leveling the micro chack at the service doorpad, he triggered a burst that sawed through the locking mechanism. “We need to see how close the Storm is,” he said as he pulled open the door and slid into the narrow pathway reserved for technicians and service caj.

Ama followed. The walls pressed around them, the only light a faint amber glow from some indistinct source. “What is this place?” she whispered as they picked their way around sharp metal and ducked beneath pipes.

“Maintenance space. Where crews go to keep the slideway working.” He bounced off a pipe that cracked him in the shoulder. Ahead, a sealed door with a crank wheel was bathed in soft green light. He spun the wheel and forced it open, then glanced outside. There was sky ahead of the slowly advancing front, but the Storm would arrive soon. He assessed for a moment, and then stepped through the doorway and onto a narrow ledge. “We have time.”

Between the ledge and the beam was a wide gap that plunged down into a deep chasm. Seg reached across the gulf, grasped a cable and stepped onto the beam. Above their heads, a long metal forest, the guts of the slideway, extended outward, across the deep crevasse to Old Town. Behind them, the shield shimmered.

He stepped lightly across the beam, one foot directly in front of the other, sliding his hands along the cold metal cable. Far below, the bones of caj moldered in the dust, casualties of a lack of concern for safety measures in system maintenance. The technicians would never have ventured out above this precipice to conduct repairs or maintenance, but caj were plentiful. And expendable.

Ama took a long look at the precarious beam stretching over the gulf below. Ordinarily, heights didn’t worry her, but there was a strong wind blowing and Seg had said the Storm was on its way. Even on solid ground, the Storm was to be feared.

Once on the beam, she grasped the thin cables on either side. There was nowhere to keep her chack in the flimsy dress, so she held both it and the cable awkwardly, unwilling to surrender her only defense. The width of the support dictated small, slow steps. Seg’s long legs were no asset in this environment and Ama easily kept pace with him. She wished she had paid more attention on her last journey across. How far was it to the other side? Impossible to say in the enveloping darkness.

One of Seg’s boots hit an object on the beam, perhaps a forgotten tool, and slipped out beneath him. He tilted wildly to one side and Ama gasped as he fought to stabilize himself. When he regained his balance, he moved forward more cautiously.

Down below, a low rumble was building.

“What’s that noise? Is it the slideway?” Ama asked.

“Fauna wave. As the Storm approaches, animals with no lairs run ahead of it. Entire species that have adapted to running ahead of the Storm. Including perasuls—flying predators, similar to your bintas.”

The distance seemed to stretch out forever. Ama’s hands and arms cramped from gripping the cable. The slow movements were stiff and uncomfortable and the rising wind and fine dust choking the air slowed them even further. It felt like hours they had been stuck out on this tiny walkway, and the end was still not visible.

The two of them were so close together they were nearly touching but they were silent. The grit in the air blasted Ama’s exposed skin and dathe. She stopped to cough, as the dust choked her. Below, she heard a loud
whoosh
, then another. She turned her head to try and find the source and was confronted by a black, winged outline.

The creature drove into her shoulder with a leathery smack, knocked her sideways, and yanked her off balance. “SEG!” she shouted, and her feet slipped off the beam.

He wrapped one arm around the cable and lunged with his other, catching her under the arm. One foot swung in the air as another perasul ricocheted off him. He dangled half on the beam, half off, sagging under their combined weight.

Ama felt his knee flex and they dropped further. Her dress whipped against her legs in the relentless wind.

Just as Seg started to pull upward, there was another loud flap of wings. A dark shape circled and then darted at Ama with a piercing screech. Helpless, she watched as the creature opened its long beak and clamped down on her arm. Hundreds of needle teeth pierced her flesh; she thrashed and screamed.

Unable to let go of the cable, Seg could only yell at the perasul. “Get off! OFF!”

The creature raised its head at the disturbance; Ama clawed at its tail, managed to get a grip and pulled hard. It screeched once more and flew off.

With a guttural cry, Seg pushed upright, lifting her high enough for her feet to find the beam once more. She gripped the cables, dismayed to notice her shoes and the chack were gone, swallowed by the blackness below. She was alive, at least, though scarcely able to breathe. Her “Thank you” came out in a thin breath, as her chest heaved. She was beginning to understand Seg’s people’s dependence on that otherworldly shield.

Hot blood ran down her arm but she was in no position to examine the wound. “Tell me that thing’s not venomous.”

“Not venomous, but its bite is filthy, prone to infection. We’ll need to get an auto-med on you as soon as we can.”

“How much farther do you think?”

He nodded ahead, where a wan green spark flickered in the distance. “That’s the service light for the other side. We’re almost there.” He stuck his head past the overhead cables, pipes, and belt pulleys, and looked out. “And so is the Storm. Just a little farther to the shield. Come on.” He moved again, swinging his feet widely and grasping the cable one hand at a time.

Behind him, Ama moved as fast as she dared. The noise of the stampeding animals below echoed the beating of her heart.
Almost there
. What waited on the other side of the shield was unknown, but at least they would be sheltered and on stable ground.

At the end of the beam, Seg jumped the open span and onto the narrow lip of the platform. He spun the wheel to open the door while the Storm rumbled ominously. Close now. He turned and saw a shimmering orb drift through the air, less than a handwidth across. A naturally forming warp. It would surely dissolve in the next few seconds. But on the other side of that little globe was an entirely different world, likely one his people had never seen.

This delicate bubble was the warp in its rawest form manifested on the World, and no hazard. Any other time, he would have taken a moment to watch and study it.

Ama scrambled behind him, clinging to a piece of machinery. She coughed continuously, as her dathe protested the particulate invasion. “Hurry,” she said, catching her breath for a moment.

At last he tugged the door open, stepped to the side and let one foot dangle in the air as he hung onto the wheel. Sliding inside, he pulled Ama with him. A gust of wind seized the door and slammed it shut behind them with the loud clang of metal against metal. “Once we make it through the maintenance passage, we’ll be under the shield. There’s a good chance the CWA have already struck the warehouse. They attacked us in Cathind—tantamount to a declaration of war. On me, perhaps even on the Guild.”

“They aren’t dead. I know it,” Ama said. They made slow progress through the narrow tunnel. “I don’t understand. Your raid was successful. You gave the CWA what they wanted—vita and slaves.”

“When I forced my way back into the raid planning, I made an enemy of one of the most powerful People on the World, and a few others in the process.”

He reached the maintenance door and keyed it to open. They burst out into Old Town, the city ablaze with lights under the protective glow of the shield.

“No shots being fired,” he said. “Quieter than where we came from, at least. Come on.” He had just started to walk when a sound tore through the air like the dying scream of a wounded beast. Over their head, the shield began to dissolve, shattering into bursts of starlight. Lightning forks from the leading edge of the Storm stabbed at the flickers of artificial light, spattering them out of existence.

Seg froze, staring at the sky of a city facing the Storm with no protection. Unthinkable. Impossible.

“No,” he whispered.

Ama gaped, silent, staring skyward.

Even if Fismar and the Kenda were still alive, they would not be for long.

No one in Old Town would be.

“T
hey’re going to kill everyone.” Seg turned to face Cathind. The shield on that side of the slideway remained intact—a glowing, comforting dome of copper. With the comms down, none of the Citizens underneath that shield would know what was happening here, that thirty thousand People and more than two hundred thousand caj were about to be exterminated by the Storm.

“What’s happening?” Ama asked. Her eyes were so wide he could see white around the entire iris.

“I don’t know.”

“You said shields can’t fail.”

“They can’t.”

“Then why—”

“It doesn’t matter right now.” Seg double checked his chack to ensure the abler was flipped and the battery had charge. “We have to get to the warehouse while there’s still time. Can you keep up?” He gestured to her feet, now bare, her shoes lost somewhere far below the slideway.

Her answer was to set off at a run. It didn’t take long for him to match her pace. He kept slightly ahead, since he held their only weapon.

Without the shield, the full force of the wind battered the street. Dust from the wasteland descended in swirling masses. The ever-present hum of the Old Town’s defense system was replaced by a thunderous and continuous howl as the black wall of the Storm bore down on the city. Crimson lightning arced along the Storm’s front with sizzling cracks.

Inside the scattered residences, a few lights flickered on. Ahead, Seg saw a man step out of a doorway, awakened from sleep to face a very real nightmare. It was too dark, the air too filled with dust and sand, to make out the man’s features but Seg could imagine—gaping mouth, saucer eyes, muscles slack with disbelief that would soon turn to terror.

“Stop!” the man shouted to Seg and Ama as they ran past. “Where’s the shield?”

Ama looked back over her shoulder. He knew what she was thinking, but there was nothing they could do. The slideway was sealed, Old Town’s only escape route cut off. “Keep moving!”

He coughed as he inhaled a lungful of grit, but forced himself to run faster.

Behind them, a high-pitched scream signaled the beginning of the hysteria. The dust cloud was getting thicker. Half-blind, Ama hit a toppled public comm station and Seg turned just in time to catch her before her head hit the concrete.

“I’m okay.” She had to shout to be heard.

He paused just long enough to make sure she had her balance. Hunched against the pounding wind, he could see the ground was already strewn with debris—broken glass, chunks of concrete, and detritus blown out of recycling bins. When Ama stepped forward, she left behind a bloody footprint.