The Iron jackal

Forty-Two

Ain’t right, thought Silo. Ain’t right at all.

The room that Samandra had led them to was no more remarkable than any other he’d seen in this place. But there was a large elliptical hole in the far wall, where once there might have been a window. The raucous noise of machinery came from beyond. And it was through that window that they saw the thing which had got Samandra so excited.

They looked out over a chamber of breathtaking size. It must have spanned the whole width of the power station’s central building, because it was possible to see the massive flanks of the hourglass structures at either end. The sloped sides of their lower halves swirled with gas and lightning, and every few seconds the vast rotating arms that stirred them went swooping by with a low rumble.

The near side of the chamber was taken up with dozens of black oblongs, standing upright and arranged in staggered rows. They were five metres on their longest side. Slow lightning writhed beneath their surfaces.

Beyond them, the floor suddenly dropped away, and a narrow bridge reached over a wide trench to a small semicircular platform. There, Silo could see what looked like a bank of panels and controls. They were dwarfed by the machine that loomed over them, as if they were the keyboard to some monstrous pipe organ. It was the machine that drew his eye and appalled him. A dreadful engine, unlike anything he’d ever seen before.

It was a mass of thrashing movement. Pistons pumped in and out, brass arms rotated, gears clanked and shifted. In amid the more familiar elements were stranger ones. Cylinders of bottled lightning, flickering inside coloured gas. Rows of spikes that tilted rapidly back and forth in sequence, and shot sparks when they came near the conducting rods that stood opposite. Globes that crackled with energy. Fields of tiny connections which shivered and switched back and forth.

The metal parts he could understand. The lightning fascinated him. But that wasn’t the problem.

The damned thing had muscles.

At first he couldn’t be sure of what he was looking at. It was only as he watched them stretch and flex that he recognised them by their movement. They were muscles, giant muscles sewn into the machinery, bulging and loosening with the tug and thrust of the parts around them. Taut diaphragms stretched in the spaces b?tetween the metal. Tendons pulled. The fleshy parts were a deep red-black, and glistened with lubrication.

Pinn watched the muscles pumping, an expression of utter disgust on his face. Eventually, he gave his verdict. ‘That is bloody horrible.’

‘If there was anythin’ needed blowin’ up in this whole city, I reckon it’s that,’ said Malvery.

Samandra pointed down at the bridge, and the small semicircular platform at the other side. ‘There,’ she said.

Silo grunted his agreement. ‘Move out!’ He ushered them towards an oval doorway at the side of the room.

The doorway led to a gallery overlooking the engine chamber, and from there they found steps leading to the chamber floor. The chamber seemed even larger from down here. The vast ceiling had the same dark, supple grandeur of the corridors they’d passed through. He could appreciate the size of the hourglass structures now: their brass-and-bone shells towered to either side of the great machine. The whole place was like a temple, and it might have been wondrous, if not for the repulsively organic engine throbbing and churning at its heart.

Rows of black oblongs stood between them and the bridge. The rows were set irregularly, so they would have to pick their way through. Pinn, who had been one of the first down the steps, was staring into one of the oblongs, watching the progress of the blue lightning as it moved slowly across the darkness.

‘What are they?’ Pinn asked.

‘Batteries,’ said Silo. ‘Best guess, anyway.’

‘Then what are they? ’ Malvery asked. The doctor had turned around and was looking behind them. The wall to either side of the stairs was covered with dozens of strange bulges. They were bulbous at one end and thinned to a point, almost two metres end to end. They looked like seed pods, except that there was machinery integrated into the leathery white exteriors, a framework of metal with many small dials and gauges set into it.

Before anyone could advance an opinion, they heard shouts from overhead. Sammies, somewhere out of sight. Reinforcements.

‘Don’t touch nothin’,’ said Silo, and they moved on into the forest of oblongs. This whole damn place set him on edge. The sight of that engine… It was against nature, against Mother. Metal and flesh, fused. Was it alive in some way?

He spat. Didn’t want to think about the possibilities. What kind of people built a thing like that?

As they moved further into the rows, they saw Sammies emerging onto the gallery above them. One of them aimed his rifle, but another man knocked the barrel aside angrily. Silo couldn’t hear them well enough to ma enough ke out the words, but it seemed to be a heated discussion.

Then, nothing. Nobody fired. Nobody made any move to descend the stairs and pursue.

Silo didn’t like that one bit.

‘Why aren’t they following?’ Pinn asked.

Silo saw something move out of the corner of his eye, further down the row. He spun towards it; but whatever it was, it had moved out of sight. After a moment, he wondered if there had been anything there at all.

‘Keep goin,’ he said, his voice low and wary. He kept staring at the spot where he’d seen the movement, but he saw nothing more. After a moment, he took his own advice.

Better to say nothing. He was supposed to be the leader here. Spooking the troops to no good end would only make them doubt him.

They moved through the oblongs as if through an alien forest, staying close to the silent objects in order to keep out of the Sammies’ line of fire. The guards didn’t look inclined to shoot, but Silo felt threatened all the same. No one wanted to present their backs to the Sammie guns, so they slipped from cover to cover in awkward little runs.

Each oblong was spaced apart from the others, so it was possible to slip through the rows quite rapidly, but it also meant that it would be easy for something to get close to them without being spotted. They trod gingerly, careful not to touch the objects, until Pinn stumbled and bumped into one. When he didn’t suffer any kind of terrible death, they relaxed a little. But only a little.

‘Silo!’ said Malvery suddenly, coming up on his shoulder. Silo turned. The doctor’s face was serious, eyes hard behind his green-lensed glasses. ‘Think I saw something.’

Silo nodded. He looked to his left and right. The Century Knights were prowling up on either side. Bess lumbered noisily past him, oblivious to the Sammies on the gallery. The others were spaced out more widely than he’d like. He opened his mouth to tell them to tighten up, when he heard the clank and scrape of sudden movement from Bess.

He found her looking off to one side, her metal body tensed. She turned this way and that, twisting her whole body because she had no neck. Her agitation was obvious. She’d seen something, or sensed it.

‘Easy, Bess,’ said Silo. Clutching his shotgun, he passed her and moved on to the next row. He looked to his left, and went still.

It was so strange that it took a moment for his senses to untangle it. His first reaction was instinctive repulsion. It looked like a giant white spider, the size of a man. But as it moved, he saw muscle and mechanisms, and a face of sorts, a rounded blank mask studded with a half-dozen lenses of various sizes. It was plated with someted withthing like chitin, but flesh flexed wetly at its joints.

The thing had climbed up the side of one of the black oblongs, a short way along the row. Two sets of spindly legs stood on the floor, a third gripped the oblong’s sides, and its forelegs functioned like arms. Each of these arms split at the last joint into several thin appendages, which ended in drills, pincers, soldering irons and other devices that Silo couldn’t easily identify.

An automaton? No. An animal? Not that, either. It was a bastard hybrid of meat and machine and other arts, something entirely unnatural, like that terrible engine which pumped and screeched nearby.

As Silo watched, the hybrid slid out a section of the oblong from near the top, where there had seemed to be no join at all. It was about the size of a dinner tray, and completely black. The hybrid began tapping at it with one of its appendages. Immediately, Silo noticed a change in the oblong itself. The movement of that lazy lightning had altered somehow, curling and rolling in a different manner to the way it had before.

He couldn’t see what the thing was up to, but he recognised its purpose. Maintenance. This creature was a caretaker, looking after the power station, millennia after its makers had gone.

He trained his shotgun on it as it slid the tray closed. The appendages in its forelegs folded up and retracted and it climbed off the oblong and down to the floor. It appeared to notice him then, tilting its face towards him for the first time. The lenses in its mismatched eyes whirred as they focused in and out.

Then it came walking unhurriedly along the row towards him, moving with a repulsively arachnid gait.

Silo felt the urge to shoot it out of sheer horror, but he mastered himself. He backed up instead, keeping it in view, watching for any sudden moves. He’d only gone a few steps when he bumped into Bess, who was coming through the rows behind him. The golem swivelled, and suddenly froze, like a cat spotting a mouse. She’d seen what he had.

‘Easy, Bess,’ he said again. He glanced up at the Sammies on the gallery, then back at the approaching hybrid. No wonder they hadn’t come down here. They were scared of these things.

The golem moved, a quick, uncertain jerk. She was alarmed and agitated, and that wasn’t good. He wished Crake were here to calm her. Grudge appeared in the next row, autocannon trained on the hybrid; at the same moment, Samandra ghosted in behind it, her shotguns ready. The creature continued on its way, apparently unconcerned by the guns.

‘Say the word,’ said Samandra to Silo.

‘Don’t,’ said Silo. ‘It don’t seem too hostile. Maybe best if we just get out of its w-’

He was interrupted by a roar from Bess. She pushed past him, shoving him roughly asideroughly with the implacable strength of a bulldozer, and lunged forward.

‘Bess!’ he barked.

She skidded to a halt, directly in the path of the hybrid, her shoulders set in a challenge. The hybrid stopped and looked her up and down, eye-lenses whirring.

‘What the spit is that thing?’ Malvery asked, from over Silo’s shoulder.

‘Looks like something I caught off a whore one time,’ Pinn quipped merrily.

Silo paid no attention. Pretty much everything that came out of Pinn’s mouth could be safely ignored. Instead he focused on the golem.

‘Bess?’ he said, as if placating a wild dog. ‘Leave that thing alone, Bess. It ain’t harmin’ us right now. Best not to mess with what we’ve yet to figure out. Let’s just leave it to be about its business.’

There was a long moment of tension. Then the hybrid moved a leg.

Whether it was attempting to attack or just trying to get around the obstruction, they never knew. Bess was on a hair-trigger, and she reacted with violence, grabbing a forelimb in one huge hand and wrenching it off. The hybrid flailed, legs skidding on the floor as it fought to retreat, but Bess’s bunched fist came down on its back like a hammer, flattening it to the floor, cracking its chitin plating.

‘Bess! No!’ Silo yelled. But it was no good. The golem was beyond his control. She raised a foot and stamped down on the hybrid’s head like a child stamping on an insect. Its head split and shattered in a spray of glass and fluid.

When she raised her foot again, the hybrid was still. It lay in a pool of slowly spreading transparent liquid. A sharp, oily stink filled the air.

‘Huh,’ said Samandra, lowering her weapons. ‘Seems your pet didn’t take to the locals.’

Pinn chuckled. Silo didn’t. He had the sense that something very bad had just occurred. He looked up at the Sammies on the gallery, and saw them retreating hastily from the chamber. There was a series of hissing sounds coming from that direction, beyond the obscuring rows of batteries. His engineer’s instincts placed the sound immediately. The hiss of escaping air or gas, such as when a pressure valve was released. The sounds of many things opening.

Then he remembered the odd, podlike structures set into the wall under the gallery.

‘Run,’ he said quietly.

‘Beg pardon?’ Malvery asked.

‘ Run! ’ he cried, now overwhelmed by the certainty of impending doom. ‘Make for the bridge! Go!’

They didn’t question him, not even the Knights. The rare note of urgency in his voice propelled them. They took to their heels and raced towards the monstrous edifice at the heart of the chamber. Silo ran with them, dodging between the strange batteries with their slow blue lightning trapped within.

He could hear a noise growing behind him, a tide of rapid clicks and taps. He risked a glance over his shoulder, and his worst fears were confirmed.

The batteries prevented him from seeing all their pursuers, but some were clambering over the tops of the oblongs, leaping from one to another with insidious jerks. They moved like the spiders they resembled. Each was identical to the creature Bess had killed, except that their mismatched clusters of eyes glowed red. There was no question that these were hostile, and judging by the din of tapping feet, there were dozens of them on their way.

They broke free of the oblongs into an open space, ending in a deep trench not far ahead, and a narrow bridge crossing it. The gnashing, pounding engine of muscle and brass loomed before them. Silo didn’t want to go that way – he knew they’d be trapped if they did – but it was the only defensible place he could see. At least the bridge would form a choke point that would negate their superior numbers. If they were caught out in the open, they were dead.

The Century Knights had reacted fastest to his warning, and they were the first to reach the bridge, just as the hybrids swarmed out of the rows of black oblongs. They took up defensive positions to either side and laid down suppressing fire for the Ketty Jay ’s crew. Silo ran with his head down, bullets and autocannon shells raking through the air around him, and when he got to the bridge he turned and added his weapon to theirs.

There were already hybrid bodies littering the open space behind them. Grudge’s autocannon smashed its targets, tearing them apart in a spray of transparent fluid. Samandra’s shotguns were ineffective against the hybrid’s chitinous plates, but she was aiming for the fleshy parts at the joints: the legs, knees and throat. Those she couldn’t kill outright she crippled and maimed with astonishing accuracy.

Silo did what he could to help out as the others went running past him onto the bridge, but his shotgun was not made for long range, and the best he could do was stun the enemy. He realised that Samandra’s shotguns must have been modified to carry extra ammo: she already seemed to have fired too many times without reloading. But even she ran out soon enough, and in that moment, one of the hybrids got through.

It was Bess who’d been slowest to fo llow, and Bess who was caught. It leaped onto her back, gripping her with its lower legs. Its forelimbs split into an array of smaller arms, tipped with maintenance tools, and it began to drill and hack at her. She thrashed and roared, stumbling towards the bridge while trying to reach behind herself to get it off.

‘Come on,’ said Samandra to Silo. ‘We’re done here. Leave it to the heavy hitters.’ She tugged him towards the bridge.

Silo resisted for a moment, reluctant to leave Bess to her plight, but in the end he went with her. She was right; they would do no good by staying. Their shotguns were empty and there was no time to reload.

They ran onto the bridge, and now Silo could see over the side. Below them was a deep, wide trench, like a dry moat surrounding the massive engine. Its walls were studded with tiny lights and panels of strange machinery. He reckoned these were the guts of the machine, a complex system of unfamiliar technology beyond anything he knew. Small holes ran all the way up the sides of the trench in a regular grid pattern, each as wide as a fist, but he couldn’t imagine what manner of device might be plugged into one.

Grudge had backed on to the bridge ahead of Bess, who came staggering after, pawing at the creature that was trying to drill into her humped back. She caught hold of its leg and flung it away from her. It went spinning through the air and smashed against the side of the trench, falling brokenly to the floor. Bess turned around with a bubbling growl and planted herself; she was wide enough to block most of the bridge. Grudge moved up alongside her, his autocannon held at the ready.

The others had reached the small semicircular platform on the far side of the bridge, and taken cover behind the banks of panels there. Silo and Samandra joined them. The Century Knight began reloading her shotguns while Silo made a quick check on the people left in his care.

Nobody was hurt, but they all had the same grim look in their eyes. They knew what he knew. They couldn’t get off this platform except by the bridge. There were still dozens of those damned Azryx horrors blocking their escape. Grudge’s autocannon would run out eventually, and Bess’s raw strength could only do so much.

He peered out from hiding. The hybrids had halted in their charge. They’d gathered at the end of the bridge, studying Bess and Grudge curiously, tilting their heads left and right. And he’d be damned if they didn’t look like they were calculating, weighing up their opponents, considering tactics.

Silo knew what they were thinking. He was thinking the same.

There was no way out.