Thresholder, ch 177, Conflict

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This is not how one wants to read/write a web serial, I'm aware of that. (Agares should be publishing its next batch soon, I regret introducing submarines, and I am aware that this is a stupid reason to stall on writing.)

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Perry felt a wave of relief when he realized that they weren’t fighting each other.

Hella had gone glowing and was fighting in full superhero mode, and the Walkers were firing their guns, but their targets were only a horde of giant spiders.

“Oh, is that all,” said Perry.

The spiders ranged in size from those that weren’t much bigger than a dog to those that were similar in size to vehicles. They were hairy, like tarantulas, and there were enough of them that they couldn’t possibly be fought off, but by god were the Walkers trying. Two of the horses had already been killed, and unless Perry was mistaken, at least one of the men was down.

Hella could fly, and she could simply have left if she wanted to, but she was landing in among the spiders, punching them with her full force, which was considerable. Maybe she was worried about the integrity of the ship if the spiders got to it, but they seemed to be focused on the people.

Perry came in hot. He nabbed the laser rifle from storage, hooking it into the suit’s power, not slowing down as he ran, and when he was close enough, he unleashed the laser’s full power, aiming at the biggest ones first. It wasn’t a matter of whether he could kill them — one fell easily enough and he doubted that they could get through his armor — but how quickly and efficiently he could kill them.

He slipped the laser rifle to his left and drew the sword with his right, an amount of weight that would have been uncomfortable if he was an unaugmented human, but still almost nothing for him. He pointed the rifle where Marchand indicated to point it, with the trigger mechanism under Marchand’s full control, their coordination wordless, and Perry swung the sword through chitinous bodies. His full attention was taken up by the combination of movements, rifle and sword moving not in harmony but toward totally divergent goals.

The laser rifle had been designed for taking down insects, and these were smaller than the largest of the bugs on Esperide, their exoskeletons thinner and weaker. With Perry there, the tide turned immediately, and the horde of spiders was pushed back or killed. It felt good to be in a fight again, a real fight, up close and personal.

The laser rifle fired off to his left as he slashed to his right. He put himself in the way of one of the larger spiders, which was advancing on a man with a rifle — the bullets already spent, reloading time too far away.

Perry wasn’t completely successful: one of the spiders ripped a woman’s guts out, in part because she’d been separated from the others, and the laser rifle fired on the spider a moment too late, once the mortal wound had already been delivered. But the battle was handily won, and the horde of remaining spiders moved off, leaving behind only bodies and ichor.

When Perry was finished, he went over to the huddled men and women. Hella had returned to her position beside the ship following her part in the battle, no worse for the wear, but she gave Perry a curious look.

“Holding up?” Perry asked.

Amanaco stared at him.

Perry let go of the sword, letting it float on its own, and unhooked the laser rifle from where it hooked into the power armor. He placed it inside the shelf space, then put his sword back in his sheath.

“I’d say that was some mighty fine shooting,” said Amanaco, “But I don’t know what that was.”

“Sorry I wasn’t able to save your people,” said Perry.

“Last time I was in a spider rush, I lost half my men,” said Amanaco. “They’re damned rare.”

“They might have been drawn by the ship,” said Rynn. “Or by these people.” He looked at Hella.

“Either way,” said Amanaco. “We owe a debt of gratitude.”

“Then I’m going to need to move the ship,” said Perry. “And I’m going to need to do it soon, because if we are drawing something, then we want to be in a defensible position.”

Rynn snorted. “If you’re drawing something, better not to bring the ship to our towns.”

“The ship will be able to fly,” said Perry. “That takes us away from the worst of the problems.”

“The worst problems in the Dusklands can fly,” said Amanaco. He looked Perry over. “But you’re more capable than you looked.”

Perry narrowed his eyes, which in the suit meant nothing, because his face was obscured. “I’d thought that I looked plenty capable.”

“That sword is something,” said Amanaco. “And that gun that wasn’t shooting bullets? I’ve seen a few of those, but none so powerful.” He paused. “That’s the power of the other worlds?”

“It is,” said Perry.

“It wasn’t shown to us,” said Rynn. “Show me, now.”

Perry cast the memories forward without much fuss, showing some of the largest fights he’d been in. He wasn’t trying to make himself look good, that wasn’t the point, so he included moments when he’d taken big hits, the times he had almost died.

“Such power …” said Rynn.

“Power we can use?” asked Amanaco, raising an eyebrow in Rynn’s direction.

“Yes,” said Perry, before Rynn could answer. “They’re hoping to establish trade, a circle of worlds in contact with each other, and there are things known in those other worlds that will translate here. The laser rifle I used? That can be mass-manufactured. You could have one of them for every one of the Walkers.”

“A devil’s deal,” said Amanaco, shaking his head. “And beyond my pay grade. But fine, bring your people and move your ship. We need to take our wounded anyhow, and I’m worried you’ll bring something worse down on us.”

“Good,” nodded Perry. He opened up the shelf space and started letting people out. If Amanaco felt any surprise at that, he didn’t show it on his face.

Perry stayed outside while the rest of the group went into the ship, Hella included. Amanaco’s people had stayed with the ship for a while, before the spider swarm had come, but there was no way they could stay, not with the wounded.

The Walkers left in a hurry, but Amanaco stayed with his horse beside him. He watched his people go, then turned to Perry.

“You know, in a battle, I’m not sure we’d stand a chance against you,” he said.

“Me, or our team?” asked Perry.

“You,” said Amanaco. “Hella, she’s something, but you’re a terror.”

“The K-men are pretty strong,” said Perry. “You have Peonies among your people?”

“Both,” said Amanaco. “But when push comes to shove, you have all sorts of tricks up those metal sleeves, don’t you?”

Perry nodded. “We’re not your enemy. We’re here to trade, to engage in diplomacy.”

“‘We’?” asked Amanaco. “Or ‘they’? You’ve used both.”

“The nature of the movement through worlds is that I’ve been on my own for long stretches,” said Perry. “But I back them, in this mission.”

Amanaco looked out over the wide plains.

There was a path forward, a conclusion to Perry’s journey as a thresholder, and he didn’t know whether he was going to follow it. Richter was dead, but she could be brought back, and what would happen then? Would she still love him? For her, it would have been only a moment, if everything went right. And then … he didn’t know. The idea of settling down had lost its appeal. He wanted something to do, someone to be, but what were his options? A guard who spent 99% of his time sitting on his ass? A policeman of some kind? A soldier in the culture’s army? A cog in some ineffable machine?

Mette emerged from the wrecked ship. “I need March,” she said. “He’s going to have to reprogram some chips for error correction.”

Perry nodded, then looked at Amanaco. “You’re staying here?”

“Might as well,” said Amanaco with a shrug, as though it were no big thing. Perry didn’t buy that for a second. “If we have more trouble, I might duck in, I just want to make sure that’s understood.”

“You’re welcome to,” said Perry.

Amanaco tipped his hat.

Inside the ship, the bridge was busy, but Perry didn’t have much to do, all Mette wanted was the armor and a data cable to plug into the central computer. The conversation went over his head, but apparently it was difficult to reprogram a CPU, or update microcode, or bootload it, or whatever the hell they were doing.

“Four hours for the computer, but most of it can be automated,” said Mette. “We’re lucky that these systems run on essentially similar architecture. And you can unplug in another half hour or so, Marchand will buzz you about it. After that, the clone of Marchand will have a signal up and everything will be broadly capable of running.”

“I want tracking sooner than later,” said Perry.

“That’s going to be a challenge,” said Mette. “For a start, we don’t have proper tracking. We can’t use the tricks we used in the past. We can look into the past, approximately, but we’re going to have to trace the worldline forward, and we’re going to have to do that manually.”

“I know where Queenie was,” said Perry. “So long as she’s not teleporting, we can track the worldline forward. I’m not worried about that.”

“It’s going to be a pain in the dick,” said Mette with a sigh. “But I’ll make it a priority.”

“There’s a decent chance she tries to move on us,” said Perry. “If we’re stationing near a town … I don’t think we can go to Charlonion, we’d be too conspicuous, and maybe that’s fine when it comes to the authorities, if you can distance yourself from me or talk to the local government, but you’ll stick out like a sore thumb. Queenie is a sniper. She’d have no compunctions about shooting every person on this ship in the head from a mile away.”

Mette sighed. “I hate thresholders.”

“Last one though, right?” asked Perry.

“No,” said Mette. “The plan is, we alter your trajectory to point at Earth 1.”

“What?” asked Perry. “Earth 1? Why? Why not Earth 2?”

“Maya,” said Mette. Perry stared at her. “Maya, like you, is from Earth 1. That means that we have at least two viable punches there, one leading down your path, one leading down hers. It also seems likely that Earth 1 would be a valuable addition to the loop.”

“Alright,” said Perry. He had no idea what that would look like. He didn’t think about Earth 1 often. It was home, the place he’d spent most of his life, and what was he there, a missing person? Had they combed the woods looking for his body?

“Dirk and I are dating, by the way,” said Mette.

“Gross,” said Perry. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” sighed Mette. “Why does anyone do anything?”

“And that’s how you feel about him?” asked Perry.

“I can’t explain it,” said Mette. “Hopefully it’s not weird for you.”

“It’s just weird, period,” said Perry.

“Yeah,” sighed Mette. “I’m off to do my job and Eggy’s job, you sit tight and don’t play with the cable.”

Perry sat tight and didn’t play with the cable.

“Alright,” said Dirk some time later. “Let’s talk about our strategy with these people.”

“You want a beachhead,” said Perry. “You want, at a minimum, a place where you can send your ships where they’ll have safe harbor before going to the next world. That’s the toehold, that’s easily doable if your ships are going to have engines like the Farfinder, and so long as you can have them fitted so they can come in without a crash landing. And in exchange, you offer them the world, right?”

“We offer them the most pro-social technologies we have,” nodded Dirk. “We offer them social technologies, systems that are proven to work across societies. We lift up the lower classes, by hook or by crook. It’s proven easiest to get people comfortable first, to give them food and clothing, to have a volunteer economy, but we’re going to run into labor problems here, parasite capitalists. And we want to keep them from being wise to our strategy for as long as possible.”

“They have slaves,” said Perry.

“We’ve faced slave societies before,” said Dirk.

Perry spent some time describing the Leased, and showed a vision of them to Dirk. Marchand supplied some background information, mostly things from books, but some from the extensive canvassing. Dirk’s face fell as this continued.

“A perfection of slavery,” said Dirk. He let out a long breath. “Fighting a war against these people will be difficult. Costly. I’m not sure we can bring in the soldiers we need, even if we equip every one of them with armor like yours.”

“Seems untenable,” said Perry. “Earth 2 could manufacture them, I guess, but I don’t think they’d sanction military action.”

Dirk shook his head. “Slavers.”

“Technically the workers are selling themselves into servitude,” said Perry.

“Right, so much better,” said Dirk.

“There’s also the possibility of doing something else,” said Perry. “There are natives here, people who are probably closer to your way of life. You could go to them instead. They’d fight back, if they had the tools for it.”

“Proxy war?” asked Dirk. “Seems dirty.”

“I didn’t say proxy war,” said Perry. “But if you can bring in weapons, you have people who have long-standing grievances with the Commission. It would be easier, logistically, to side with Charlonion, they have a giant city with rooms for rent and provisions for purchase, as well as an organized central government. But they’re detestable.”

“Shame,” said Dirk. He heaved a sigh. “Just so you know, Mette and I are kind of an item now.”

“Oh?” asked Perry.

“It’s not a big thing,” said Dirk. “I just thought you should know.”

“Sure,” said Perry.

“She’s everything I ever wanted in a woman,” said Dirk.

“Really?” asked Perry.

“Smart, driven, high libido, hates my guts,” said Dirk. “She’s got it all.”

Perry laughed. “Well, so long as that’s working out for you. Seems like a bad call on a cramped spaceship, but what do I know?”

“No hard feelings?” asked Dirk.

“No,” said Perry. “Don’t worry about it. She’s from a culture where courtship is different. And whatever happened between us … it wasn’t serious.”

“It seemed serious,” said Dirk.

“Did she tell you it was serious?” asked Perry.

“No,” said Dirk.

“Then it wasn’t serious,” said Perry. “Her people don’t do pair bonding. They float around. It was with her sister before, that was serious, we have a kid in the next world over, I guess — wasn’t supposed to be possible, you know how it goes.”

“Not really,” said Dirk. “And you’re going back to her?”

Perry winced. “I mean, yeah. Eventually. If we’re establishing trade routes, then yeah. Not sure how I’m going to explain myself.”

“Well, we’ve got time,” said Dirk. “You know the engineers, they say it’ll take three months and it winds up taking nine.”

Mette came back into the bridge, wiping her hands on a cloth. “Engines are back online.”

“What?” asked Perry. “That fast?”

“Sometimes things work out,” said Mette with a shrug.

Hella followed her in. “We need to decide on where we’re moving this thing. There’s a big city, as I understand it?”

“Better to go somewhere that has less power,” said Perry. “A place that doesn’t have hundreds of people to throw at us, where word isn’t as likely to get back to Queenie. And we need to start tracking her as soon as possible, and that’s where we want to go.”

“I think we lay low,” said Hella. “Give her a wide berth, as much as possible. Can she track you?”

“No,” said Perry. “Or at least, not that I know. She has a psychic scarf, and I have a piece of it, but if she can use it for tracking, she hasn’t yet, and we can easily toss it away if I want to break the link.”

“Do that,” said Hella, nodding.

“There’s more I want to hear from her,” said Perry. “We’re swapping stories.”

“Respectfully, I don’t give a shit,” said Hella. “Anything that she could use to find us, that’s gone.”

Perry frowned. “Sure. I’ll chuck it. But I was hoping that we could use it to find her, somehow.”

“We have a proven way to find her now,” said Hella. “Or we will, when it’s ready.”

Perry felt himself bristling, internally, at least. Outside, he was cool as a cucumber, second sphere masking anything he felt. “It’ll be gone.”

“We’re aiming for a town then?” asked Mette. “Flying someplace that we’re not too terribly outnumbered? And … taking that man with us?”

“He has a horse,” said Hella. “He can find us later, if he wants to.”

“We want good relations,” said Dirk. “We should at least offer.”

“Dirk is right,” said Perry. “We outnumber him, he wants to see the interior, that wouldn’t be giving away much.”

“Invite him in,” said Hella.

“Me?” asked Perry. “I’m not a member of this crew, not formally.”

“You need me to welcome you aboard?” asked Hella, raising an eyebrow. “You’re the one in armor, and whatever the hell you’re in trouble for here, your job is to get in the good graces of the locals so that we’re in the good graces of the locals.”

Perry slipped his helmet back on and went out of the ship. Hella was dealing with a lot, he could tell that. The ship had crash-landed, Eggy was injured, and while it wasn’t a worst-case scenario, it wasn’t all that far off.

Amanaco was whittling a stick outside, and looked up when Perry emerged.

“Good news,” said Perry. “The engines are back online, which means that we’re getting out of here. We wanted to offer you a ride. We can cover distance faster than a train can. There’s just barely room for your horse.”

“Mmm,” said Amanaco. “And that thing is going to fly, is it?”

“Yup,” said Perry. “That’s the plan.”

“Hrm,” said Amanaco. “Doesn’t seem right to me, going through the air like that, but I suppose I’ll give it a try.”

“There’s room for the horse,” said Perry. “We’ll be going slow.”

Amanaco laughed. “He’s too smart to get on that thing. No, he’ll find his way back to me.”

Perry looked skeptically at the horse and thought about the horrors of the Dusklands. “If you say so.”

“He’s a special horse,” said Amanaco. “You’ll see.”

He went into the ship, and Perry followed after, taking a last look at the unassuming brown horse as he went back into the ship.

They all strapped in on the bridge, save for Mette, who was tending to the engines down below, something that she didn’t want to do by wireless in case there were issues. She had the werewolf blood, she would be fine, but Perry still felt a flicker of worry for her.

The ship rose slowly and seemed to drift through the sky more than actually fly. Hella was at the controls, moving them gently, listening to the ship as it sped over the ground. There were flying threats, Perry knew, and he hoped that they wouldn’t run into them, but he and Hella could both greet enemies in the air if need be.

“Holy hell,” said Amanaco from his seat. His fingers were gripped tight on the armrests.

“Alright, where are we going?” asked Hella.

Amanaco stared out the window, eyes wide.

“That was for you,” said Perry. “She needs directions. A small town, somewhere unobtrusive, as far from Charlonion as we can reasonably get, at least for now.”

Amanaco looked at Perry for a moment. The gears were turning, but he was their guest now. “Straight on ahead, you’ll hit a river soon enough, follow it south, that’s probably Gordon’s Ranch — not a ranch, you understand, but a town near the ranch, named after the man. Three hundred people, is that too many for you?”

“Not at all,” said Hella. She pushed the control stick forward and the ship began to vibrate from the higher speed, which made her pull back just a bit with a wince. The ship would obviously need more repairs until it was in good shape, but it was already faster than a train.

“You all have this kind of thing?” asked Amanaco.

“No,” said Perry. “This ship is special.”

“Not anymore,” said Dirk. “J-class engines proved easy to replicate. There’s a fleet of nearly fifty now. Restricted use, so far, but it’s not far off from an airship.”

“Your people aren’t worried about the fabric of their society?” asked Perry.

“Like I said, restricted use,” shrugged Dirk.

“We could claim the Dusklands with a thing like this,” said Amanaco. “No more beelines. Can you imagine shooting from a thing like this?”

“The ship has guns,” said Hella with a smooth tone.

Amanaco’s eyes went over the land as it swept beneath them, perhaps imagining what it might be like to rhythmically fire into a crowd of people or chase down a bandit on horseback. Maybe he was thinking about the spider attack, and how the Farfinder could have no-sold it by simply hovering a meter in the air. It was impossible to say.

For his part, Perry was thinking about the Yuuksen and what was likely to happen to them if the Commission started churning out their own fleets of ships like this one, not to mention all the other tools that the Farfinder was promising.

Perry was going to have to do something about that. It was practically a moral obligation. Unfortunately, it seemed like it was likely to be out of his hands.

They found the river quickly enough, and it wasn’t another twenty minutes before they came to a small town beside the river, just as Amanaco had said.

Hella set the ship down some distance away, in a barren patch of land that didn’t seem like it was used for anything, and when men on horses with rifles came up, Amanaco was first out, and raised his hands high.

“I’m Commission!” he called to the men with their rifles. “We have some mighty strange business here, but nothing to be alarmed about, and there’ll be money for your goods and a few nice beds!”

Perry stayed back, out of sight, not wanting to rile anyone up.

“Do you have a room for me?” Perry asked Hella.

She laughed. “We’re short dimensionality, you haven’t seen the cramped quarters we’re stuffed into right now. We’re bunking.”

“Fair,” said Perry. “I have the shelf space anyway, but I think Mette wants me to keep out of it and be connected to the ship while March works, and no way in hell am I taking off the armor.”

“You can have my room, if you’d like,” said Hella. “I’ve slept in the captain’s chair more than once.”

Perry looked over at it. It reclined, but didn’t look comfortable. “If you say so.”

“You’re worried about this Queenie character showing up?” asked Hella.

“I’m worried about what she’s doing right at this very moment, whether she shows up or not,” said Perry. “That weapon she has … it would destroy you if you couldn’t get out of the way in time, and you might not even know it was happening. If you feel it, fly as fast as you can away from the source. That’s what I did.”

“Nice of you to worry about me,” said Hella. “It’s that bad?”

“Seems like it to me,” said Perry. “You’d lose what makes you the person you are.”

“And we don’t have a way around it?” asked Hella.

“No,” said Perry. “Not unless Grayspear has something for it. I need to check on her, we’re staying here?”

“Unless there’s a problem,” said Hella. “Amanaco seems to be smoothing things over with the locals.”

“Did you have indigenous people on your Earth?” asked Perry.

Hella nodded slowly. “We had horrors like your own.”

“You agree we can’t let that happen here?” asked Perry.

Hella frowned. “I don’t know how much say we have in that. I don’t know these people. And it’s not the Wild West, it’s something else, something deeper, stranger. The similarities are surface, aren’t they?”

“Some,” said Perry. “But I don’t want the Commission to have flying ships with guns strapped to them. They have their own forms of indentured servitude, their society is sick in a dozen different ways, and they’ll do genocide if they have the tools to — they’re already on their way.”

“We’ll talk strategy later,” said Hella. “Until then, we give them nothing we can’t ungive them, and we stay out of their clutches. If Amanaco brings in reinforcements, I’m lifting this ship right away and maybe laying down fire.”

“You were serious about the guns?” asked Perry. “I didn’t know the ship was armed like that.”

“They didn’t send us without defenses,” said Hella. “I’m just hoping we don’t have to use them.”

Perry went into the shelf space, making sure that it was stuck open so that Marchand could communicate with the computer over wifi. The computers would be online soon, and the clone of Marchand would be able to take over.

Anaksi came to him, and he took a step back when he saw that she had blood on her.

“Grayspear is dead,” she said without preamble.

“How?” asked Perry. “Why?”

“I dozed off,” said Anaksi. “She attacked me.”

“Show me,” said Perry.

Anaksi turned to go to the corner of the space, beyond the shelves, and Perry grabbed her by the wrist.

“No, show me with the power,” said Perry. “Give me the memory.”

“You don’t trust me?” asked Anaksi. Her eyes went down to his hand on her wrist, then back to his face. He stared at her, dead-eyed, wondering whether to give anything away. His helmet was in his other hand, and he wished that he had it on — with it in place, he would have nothing to fear from her, but his head was unprotected.

“I want to see how it went down,” said Perry.

“Because you don’t trust me,” said Anaksi. “It happened how I said it did. I’ve been guarding her for you. I slipped up. I didn’t have a choice.”

“Show me,” said Perry.

Anaksi stared at him. “I was exhausted,” she replied. “I fell asleep. What is there to see? The moment I drove a knife into her throat?”

“I’m trying to help you, and your people,” said Perry. “I’m an ally. We needed Grayspear for her expertise, and I won’t deny that she was a complication, that she was complicit in whatever it is Queenie is up to now, and was up to earlier — that she shared responsibility for what happened to your tribe. But to take matters into your own hands, to kill her, I can’t abide that.”

“And what will you do?” asked Anaksi. Her eyes were hard. “Throw me out? Turn your back on my people? Kill me?”

“We’ve known each other for a week,” said Perry. “I shouldn’t trust you. Show me what happened.”

Anaksi glared at him, then thrust the memory at him.

It was black — he hadn’t known a memory of sleep would be like that — but then they were standing in the shelf space where Anaksi had fallen asleep sitting up on the couch not far from where they were in the real world. Grayspear was free, and she had a knife in her hand, Anaksi’s knife. When Anaksi’s eyes snapped open, they both went into motion, and in spite of just having woken up, Anaksi was the faster of the two. With a single motion, the knife was slicing through Grayspear’s throat while still in her own hand.

Anaksi leapt up and back, hands up, ready for a knife fight if it came to that, but Grayspear’s blood was flowing in fast spurts from her neck, and she slumped to the ground not long afterward. Anaksi was slow to approach, and when she did, it was to snatch her knife back up. She contemplated the body for a moment, then went to where the manacles were undone, staring at them for a moment, then back at the body.

The memory ended. Anaksi was staring at him, arms folded.

“Well,” said Perry.

“I should have been awake,” she said. “That’s all the fault I bear.”

She turned away from him and went to a different corner of the shelf space.

Perry played through the memory again, watching it from a different angle, seeing the reaction of Anaksi, the expression on her face after the act of self-defense.

He still didn’t fully trust it, for whatever reason, and maybe that had something to do with needing to admit that he was wrong.

With Grayspear dead, the dream of becoming a K-man seemed dead too, as did the hope of finding a cure for what her machine had done. Maybe keeping her prisoner hadn’t been tenable in the long term, and maybe she wouldn’t have been able to do anything anyway, but a piece of his plans had died with her.