Dead of Veridon (11 page)

"The girl, Wilson," I said, then I noticed the way he was staring past me. Back to where the girl was. Had been. Was gone.

"Oh, hell," I whispered. I stood up. A room full of ghost machines and black shadows, the floor littered with the dry shells of bugs. "Just get to the door. Go."

"Jacob, this is getting weird fast. Maybe we should..."

"Go!" I yelled, pulling my revolver out and giving the anansi a shove. He stumbled gracelessly, then gathered himself and skittered off toward the galley door. His footsteps pattered and echoed off the high rafters. Another sound, too. Smooth, even, soft. Another set of feet. Hard to tell where it was coming from.

"Wilson, quiet for a second. Quiet!"

"What?" he hissed, loudly.

"Be quiet!"

He was. We stood twenty feet apart, immobile, but I could have sworn I could hear his heartbeat. Nearly as loud as mine. No other sound. Nothing. We stayed that way for a half-handful of heartbeats, then I nodded at him to continue. He crept off, much quieter this time. I could barely hear it. And then, footsteps. Over there.

I pulled myself quickly up onto the machine I had been hiding behind to get a better look. The girl's strange head bounced smoothly into view, moving along the far wall, one hand against it. I took an off-balance shot that got nowhere near her. She went down.

"Get her?" Wilson yelled from somewhere close to the door.

"No," I yelled back. "I think she knows we're here, though."

"Yeah," Wilson answered.

My eyes were getting used to the light of the factory. I squatted down and moved laterally, edging closer to where I'd seen our lovely pursuer. Away from Wilson, in case she decided to follow the anansi. Give me a chance to sneak up behind her. And if she followed me, then he had more time to get the door open. Quietly, I crept from machine to machine, my feet barely dusting the floor. I held the revolver in front of me and stepped around a corner, sighting into the darkness.

Abruptly, the revolver was no longer in front of me, and a moment later pain registered throughout my hand. The hand was no longer in front of me, for that matter, and then the pain was in my jaw and chest. Dimly, I recognized the sound of a pistol clattering to the floor and sliding some distance away. Also a boot, moving through the air in a way I usually associate with birds of prey. I was on my back, scrambling away like a crab. She came around the corner. In the darkness the lenses of her eyes glittered like lightning through distant thunderheads.

"Wilson!" I yelled, although it wasn't as loud or as urgent as I wanted. I tried to get to my feet while still retreating, and only managed to cartwheel flat on my back. Dust haloed around me and the breath left me. Twice in one day. Good times. I got the heels of my hands under my back and sat up. She stopped, just out of reach, weight on her back heel, the toes of her front leg barely off the ground. Like an insect, a spider, tasting the web. Waiting to strike.

The lights came on, accompanied by several rolling
booms
around the perimeter of the factory floor. Smoke rose up. I threw my arm over my head to shield my eyes from the sudden brightness. The girl didn't move, other than to cock her head to one side.

"Badge!" a machine-enhanced voice rolled out from all sides of the building. "We have the room surrounded and all exits blocked. Come out and submit yourself to the Council's justice!" The words echoed through the building, crashing against each other and distorting in the high places of the factory. Carefully, I got to my feet, never taking my eyes off the girl.

She ignored me. As soon as the noise of the machine-voice settled down, a wave of crashing boots shuffled through dozens of doors that we couldn't see. They were in the building, all sides of it, from the sound of it. She gave up her fighting stance and stared at the ceiling for two heartbeats. I saw my pistol, under the fluttering sheet of the machine just behind me. Decided not to go for it yet.

The girl stared at the machine behind me, then the next one, then another. She walked to the last one with stiff determination. She ripped off the sheet that covered it, revealing an antique-looking control panel, all switches and valves and dials that looked like they hadn't been used in a generation. Without pause she began throwing switches, going from lever to lever like it was a memorized routine and she was being timed. The switches threw with a satisfyingly mechanical clack, like primitive musical instruments. She went through a half-dozen complicated motions, then put her hand on a throw-wheel and looked back at me. I had been going for the pistol. I stopped; she looked from me to the revolver, then back to my face. I couldn't read anything in that iron mask. I wasn't even sure she was alive, the way she moved. Like a routine, like a show. Finally she spun the wheel.

The factory roared into wild mechanical life. The sheets blew off the machines or were consumed and shredded, spewed up into the air like linen snow. The sound was tremendous, the tearing of cloth, the grinding howl of engines that hadn't been maintained, suddenly awake and shuddering with disuse. With a clattering moan, the track that crisscrossed the factory floor lurched into motion.

The engine that I was standing next to unfolded like a spider on its back. I rolled to the ground, scooped up my pistol and scrambled, face to the floor, away from its spinning arms. When I got to my feet, the girl was gone. The Badge, though, was everywhere.

They took the restart of the factory as some kind of initiation of hostilities, and were taking no chances. The tiny open space where I stood was pinned in on three sides by whirling machinery, going through the motions of assembling and production. The fourth side was bordered by the rattling assembly track. Beyond, I could see a unit of Badgemen advancing, shortrifles leveled, ballistic shields strapped to their arms. They hadn't seen me yet. In fact, they seemed to be advancing on a pile of crates that had somehow survived the animation of the engines around them.

I hunched below the lip of the assembly track, creeping as close as I dared without risking getting caught in its gears. The air was filled with shreds of linen, floating down like confetti. Some of them were alight, and there was a great deal of smoke billowing up from the floor. Either a friction fire, or exhaust from the primitive engines, I wasn't sure. A large section of sheet slumped to the ground near the patrolmen, temporarily blocking their view of the crates. The girl hopped out from where she had apparently been hiding, landed near the still collapsing sheet, and then charged through its fluttering edges and into the Badgemen. Chaos and gunfire ensued, and then she was past them, bounding between machinery to disappear among the burning linen and screaming engines. The patrol was a shambles, several of them down, more still trying to react to the sudden assault. They huddled like a tortoise, shields out, shortrifles flicking back and forth. Yelling. Lots of yelling.

"There's one here," from behind me, and I turned. Three officers on the other side of the whirling spider-machine. "Come on out, lad," they said from behind the barrels of their weapons. I jumped up on the track, thinking to make it to the other side and try my luck with the frightened tortoise. But the track was not smooth, and not to be jumped on lightly by someone like me. The iron girl probably could have managed it. The surface was articulated, a series of thin levers that depressed and gripped whenever pressure was applied. I applied pressure with my foot, and the thing ate my leg up to the shin. I stumbled, went down, submitted hands and elbows and face into the hungry track. Metal pinched flesh and drew blood. Bullets sang off the track around me, and then something sharp and unyielding went into my ribs, stitched a line up to my shoulder. I finally got free, to see that I was in the process of being unmade by the newly awakened factory. The track had traveled a good bit while I was struggling with it, and the tortoise was too far away to be much more than a nuisance. It was the factory itself that I had to worry about.

This part of the track was the most heavily populated with machinery. There was no friendly shore to hop off, no clearance on either side of the track. Engine after engine lurched at me, some still wrapped in the burning remains of their covers, some so far out of balance that they were just twisting and thrashing at the conveyor. I ducked under an array of fitting arms and right-sizers. And then one of the machines downtrack of me stopped its assault, seized up and collapsed across the track. Like a branch across a river, and I grabbed for it. The metal was still hot, and bits of smoldering linen burned my skin, but I pulled myself free of the track and onto the machine. Gasping for my breath in the smoke-thick air, I slumped onto the factory floor and lay there, looking up at the ceiling and wondering how I'd gotten to this horribly uncomfortable stage in life. Wasted childhood, perhaps. I know there's some way to blame my father for all this. Surely.

Groaning, I pushed myself into a sitting position and looked around. I had no idea where Wilson had gotten to, where the girl was, or how I was going to get out of here. The Badge was everywhere. Although none of them could see me, I could hear them calling out to each other, tightening their search. The machine-voice was still booming incoherently over the cacophony of the awakened factory. I got to my heels, squatted and drew my revolver. At least I still had that. I looked up, into the eyes of the iron girl.

She was hidden in the lee of a particularly large machine. It was all boiler and flywheel, the moving parts safely on the other side of the engine. She was folded neatly into the gap below the tank. It must be terribly hot there, but she didn't seem to mind. What she did seem to mind, however, was my attention. It seemed like she was glaring at me, through those matte black lenses. Impossible to tell, really.

I yelped and stood, bringing the iron up to fire. She was on me in a breath, slapping the revolver to the side and striking across my chest and legs. Treated me just like she had the control panel, each movement as if she had choreographed and practiced it her whole life. Fist came down on my leg moments before I was able to balance on it, elbow against my throat a heartbeat before I could yell, knee striking forearm once, twice, each blow disrupting my aim just enough to keep the barrel of my gun away from her. I fired anyway, but the blast did more to distract me than to bother her. Finally she set her heel behind my leg and shoved me in the hips and shoulder, and I was impossibly overbalanced. As I went down she snatched the pistol from my flailing arm. I was on my back, looking up at my own pistol.

She stood there for a moment. I finally detected the slight movement of breath in her chest. So she was alive, at least. A pleasant change, considering the last day. When she was done glaring down at me, she flipped the revolver in her hand, slapped the chamber open and emptied the shells harmlessly onto my face. Then she brought her hands together, did something complicated, and when she spread her arms again the pieces of my revolver scattered across the floor. Like a party trick. With her hands still wide, she backed away. Right into Wilson's tackle.

The anansi came over the top of the big boiler she had been hiding under, the six long, thin limbs that sprouted from his back carrying him up and over the cast iron dome. His regular hands were empty, and his clothes looked a little charred. Must have been working on the door when the Badge made their appearance in force. The din of the factory drowned out the sound of his approach. He pounced, as only a spider can.

He hit her in stride, and they went down in a heap of legs and iron. She rolled to her feet, but Wilson swiped them away, first one then the other. She did this odd hopping dance, regaining one foot as he took the other, three or four times as he kept striking and she kept recovering. It would have been funny if not for the look on Wilson's face, the frustration and fear. Finally he gave up on unbalancing her and turned his many-armed attention to doing the girl harm. Eight arms in all, six tipped in sharp talons, two hard as rocks. Something about anansi bones made them super dense. For all that Wilson was a tall, skinny, bookish looking guy, he was incredibly strong. And that strength came out and he struck with the six arms that hung over his shoulders, each one darting in, only to be brushed aside by the girl's close defense. She didn't move an inch more than she had to, deflecting each attack with armored forearms or the knife-edge of her hands. Each talon that flashed past her whipped back to strike again, to be deflected again, to whip back again. It was dizzying to watch.

The iron girl was moving backwards, herded by the ferocity of Wilson's attack. Smoke was getting heavy in the air. Something was burning, and not just scraps of sheet and cranky gearshafts. I rolled heavily to my feet, abandoned the dissected remains of my stolen revolver, and tried to find something that could make a difference in the dazzling melee that was going on before me. Needn't have worried. I heard a shout and looked up to see Wilson drawing back, bloody on the tip of one of his talons. His eyes were on fire with hungry triumph. The iron girl's sleeve was torn, the dark tan skin beneath gashed open. Wilson howled and redoubled his attack.

Several more blows landed in the next few breaths. The iron girl was tiring, pushing the attacks farther away than was absolutely necessary. Hard to imagine using this word to describe the nearly mechanical precision of her actions, but she was getting sloppy, and Wilson was taking advantage.

It was the Badge that saved her, and nearly finished us all. The two combatants were making enough noise now to draw the attention of even the most casual of patrolmen; the guys coming at us in riotplate were not terribly casual. They ignored me and set up a firing line on the other side of the assembly track. They couldn't have had more than an obscured view of the fight, but it was enough to convince them this was one of those 'shoot first, questions later' kind of situations. They shot.