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Chapter 2 - A Gift for Rask
Copyright © 2024 by Levi Michael Strauss
Niles managed to get the old rig into gear and back onto the main tracks just in time, the shouts of the grey-cloaked officers fading into the distance behind him as the rig picked up speed along the winding tracks. Soon, the City of Industry, HighWall, loomed in the distance, its towering spires bathed in moonlit steam. A long steel structure stretched from the city edge and over the crater, casting a dark silhouette against the night sky. It was an unsightly sight, symbolizing Duke Fuston’s grand vision: constructing a bridge spanning the 5-mile chasm and linking the city with the tower. The bridge would provide safe passage over the treacherous gravity at the tower’s base, hidden among the trees, and allow direct condensation extraction from its surface. However, construction had been hindered by unexpected tremors, causing frequent delays and forcing engineers to constantly revise their plans to navigate through the hostile and ever-changing landscape.
As The Hermit neared the Spectra Mining Core Hangar directly beneath the bridge, Niles tossed aside a piece of chewed grass and hooked up hoses to drain that day’s payload from the main tanks. The sun was nearly fully set over the distant horizon, casting shadows over the crater’s edge as he made his way purposefully toward the green-skinned tally-man.
The Boz Vogli man’s tattoos shimmered subtly under the flickering yellow light of his alley booth. His eyes were fixed on a stack of paperwork on the desk. “Niles!” Rask said without looking up. “Been a while since I’ve heard the ugly stomp of your boots ‘round these parts.”
“Lost an Operator to a shit-fall,” Niles said. “Took me a couple of days to find a new one.”
“That’ll happen,” Rask said as he licked his thumb and turned a page.
“I knew you’d miss me, though. So I got you a gift. "
The Boz Vogli man looked up at Niles then, tiny glasses perched on the end of his pointed nose. “Niles Forever-Lost has managed to find me a gift, has he?”
“Yes, it looks like this.” Niles held up his new prosthetic in a fist, and then, with a clicking noise, a single finger sprang up from its center.
The green man’s bushy eyebrows went high before he showed a row of gray, jagged teeth in a burst of laughter. “Finally got that rusty bird claw replaced, did you? It’s about time.”
“I knew you’d like it.”
“A gesture I shall cherish for the rest of my days. Now, to business.” Rask shifted his gaze to the meter on the wall that fed to the scale beneath the tanks. His whiskers twitched as he blew a low whistle. “Skyman, shoot me dead. Looks like you’ve had a busy day.”
Niles shrugged. “Got a lucky stretch of sun. How soon can you get me a new set of drill bits?”
Rask’s pointed ears turned upwards as he shrugged. “Couple o’ weeks. Spectra will charge you a premium for them, though. Better off just goin’ up to a smithy shop and havin’ some hammered out for you topside, cheaper and faster.”
Niles glanced upwards, the distant din of industry audible even just a short lift above. “I’ll wait. A couple of weeks is fine. Just dock the bill from my pay.”
“Credit or coin?”
“I’ll take the coin. Seventy-five percent, as usual.”
“She must be something else, this Tenspoke woman, for you to still be leaving her twenty-five percent of your cut?” He paused as he rifled through a stack of papers. “Two years now?”
“If by ‘something else’ you mean a loud, whining, insubordinate pain in the ass, then yeah, sure.”
Rask shrugged as he marked down the tallies. “Everyone’s got their type, I suppose.”
Niles collected his share, coins rattling as he stashed them in an inside pocket. He paused momentarily, fished out a couple of shiny gold circles, and pushed them back across the counter. “While you’re at it, open a second account for a new orderly, Progenus name: Siggot, first name Gage. Convict #854, put those down for him.”
“Whatever you say,” Rask said. “Even if it doesn’t make sense.”
“You say that as if you don’t spend your days sitting under a thousand-some pounds of hanging steel,”
The old man just shrugged, his eyes fixed on his paperwork. “When you get to my age, kid, you learn to stop looking up.”
Niles chuckled and was turning to leave when Rask spoke again.
“One more thing,” He said with a casual flip of a page. “Them Grey-cloaked militia boys came by today. Asked about you specifically. One in particular was especially adamant.”
“A bald head shining bright as Solis itself?”
Rask nodded slowly before flipping another page over. “Like a walking light-bulb.”
“Jonnery Honnerall, really?” Niles muttered under his breath. He narrowed his eyes “And just who, exactly, was he asking about?”
Rask looked up again, the light above his head seeming to dim. The lines around his mouth and eyes turned downward, and his voice lost all traces of humor as he spoke in a slow, deliberate tone. “He was asking about you.”
“I see,” Niles gritted his teeth. “And what did you tell him?”
Rask returned to his papers. “I told them my job is counting, not meddling in the affairs of the lost, dying, or dead.”
Niles let out a sigh of relief.
“Thanks, Rask, I -.”
Rask’s ears perked up suddenly. He casually flipped another page and said, “Sounds like we got company.”
Just then, a group of gray-clad officers rounded the corner, staggering, drunk.
“Shit,” Niles hissed, hunching his shoulders as he pulled the collar of his jacket high. The group was blocking the only exit; the best he could do was try to act inconspicuously and hope they moved on.
Crimson Hells, if that ain’t the biggest bastard I’ve ever seen,” a slurred voice drawled.
Niles growled, a low rumble of frustration. So much for inconspicuous.
Rask slid a pen and a sheet of paper across the table with a soft scrape. “Time to put that fancy new prosthetic to use.”
“And do what? Write a letter to the Bloody Bleeders?” Niles whispered sharply, “Besides, I can’t hold a pen yet—I’ve just learned how to make a proper fist with it.”
Rask kept his gaze down. “Just make it look like you’re busy using it. All they’ll see is your arm moving from behind.”
Niles stood for a moment, blinking dumbly. Then, with a metallic clink, he picked up the pen, closing his metal fist around it, and started scribbling in the clumsy, hesitant manner of a child on their first day of class.
“What? Where?” One of the officers slurred again.
“Over there, by the tally booth,” another officer chimed in.
The first officer whistled. “A fella that size gotta turn sideways just to fit through a door, I reckon.”
“Hold on a tick,” another officer said. “You think that’s…you know who?”
“I’ll admit that I’m seeing double of most things at the moment, but he looks like he’s got a right hand to me”
“Could be a prosthetic. Big business, them things, these days,” another officer suggested.
“Someone should go ask him,” the first officer suggested.
“Ask him? For what? A handshake?”
“I don’t know! If it is him, Jonnery’ll have our heads if we let him walk away,” the first officer muttered.
“Let who walk away?” A new voice asked. haughty and full of self-inflated pomp, bald shiny head like the world’s most pretentious balloon.
“Major Jonnery! We were just… discussing…” one of the officers stammered.
“Discussing the location of the nearest whore-house?” Jonnery said with a scoff. “Well, you’re in tough. That Mazer bitch ran them all out of town years ago.”
Niles gritted his teeth at the blatant lie. Selling your body for others’ use wasn’t illegal as long as it was your choice. It was the underground ring of individuals who were buying and selling others’ bodies that she had put the boot to. Some of R.E.D.’s highest-ranking officers were men and women who she had saved from…
Niles shook his head, letting the thought wither away. He needed to focus; his internal self-argument was distracting him from what was starting to resemble a toddler’s interpretation of a face with a disproportionately large smile.
“Heavy Skies, I hate this city. Stinks like hells, muckmen everywhere, and no whores,” one of the officers grumbled.
“You think I want to be here? Jonnery snapped. “We’re here for one reason only, to find…” There was a long pause, and then the slow, steady plod of footsteps approaching.
“Hey, you there. Care to spare a moment to -”
Niles gave the brim of his hat a quick twist and, with a leap, launched himself over the tally booth, into the shadows, and towards the cliff wall. Where a row of five steel pipes ran up the cliff wall like metal snakes. It wasn’t hard to tell which steel pipes were currently active, the ones glowing orange with radiant heat generated by the liquified condensate currently being sucked up to the refineries above. Niles scanned the closest cluster of pipework.
“Shit. Shit. Shit!”
Irony, always the foe and never the ally; his unusually large haul had sent all pipes into high gear. All five pipes were turning from dark steel to glowing amber as the condensate made its journey to the top.
Niles flexed the fingers on his prosthetic, a small spurt of steam hissing from one of its vents. Gage had said to recharge it every night or risk losing power halfway through a condensate cluster or fifty feet up a sheer cliff wall in a 3x gravity environment. A bitter laugh escaped Niles’ lips as he envisioned himself and Oliphar sharing the same pitiful epitaph—swatted like bugs by the Unseen hand. At least Niles would die with his trousers all the way up if he could help it.
The sound of heavy footsteps on cobblestones made his decision for him, and with another leap, he grasped the nearest pipe with his prosthetic and began to climb, yanking himself upwards with one hand, using the uneven stone surface with his feet and free hand. He blinked furiously to keep the sweat out of his eyes, not from the effort of the climb but from the radiant heat of the pipes themselves. Mercifully, a small set of staired maintenance catwalks fastened to the cliff wall revealed itself, tucked into a crevice in the cliffside, and he scrambled onto it.
“There! I see him on the wall!”
“Climbing? Has he lost his mind?”
“By the authority invested in me by the Bleeding Crown as a commanding officer of the Honnerall-Truant Militia, I, Major Jonnery Honnerall, command you to halt and submit yourself for immediate questioning!”
Niles looked down. He had made it perhaps thirty feet. Even in the shadows of dusk, he could still make out Jonnery Honnerall below. Niles cleared his throat. “Little busy at the moment. Been a little short-handed at work, you see.”He winced at his clumsy pun. “Working overtime. Come back tomorrow?”
“And what line of work is that?” Jonnery’s voice echoed back.
“Pipe Inspector,” Niles replied, deadpan.
Murmurs rippled through the officers below, followed by Jonnery’s sharp retort. “Oh shut up. You don’t inspect a bomb after you’ve lit the fuse, do you? Those pipes are hot enough to make Solis blush.” He gestured upwards dramatically “Look at him; he’s nearly seven feet tall and made it halfway up the wall in minutes, all the while managing to avoid touching the pipes with his hands.” Jonnery paused. “Or should I say, his hand?”
Niles groaned. The hand thing was becoming a muti-front issue. His prosthetic was rapidly expanding from the heat exposure, the brass casings warping, and the digits flopping over one another. A hacking cough of steam hissed from the tiny angular vents before letting out a final sputtering wheeze. The powerless prosthetic fell limp at his side. “Sorry, Gage,” Niles muttered, hoping that he hadn’t damaged his new hand beyond repair. I just had bad luck with my limbs; what can I say? He had wished, however, that Gage had warned him that the steam battery self-ejects when depleted. He watched helplessly as the steam battery self-ejected, tumbling down to the streets below and rolling to a stop right in front of Jonnery’s feet.
“Skyman, shoot me dead,” The Major said as he scooped up the dead battery, his fluttering voice echoing off the cliff walls. He unholstered his firearm, an expensive-looking piece of work, a dark matte grey revolver with gold-plated trimmings featuring a stylized rendition of the Honneral Raging Bull inlaid into the barrel. Jonnery pulled out a small telescopic viewfinder and mounted it on top before extending his arm, barrel pointed skyward. “Come down and present yourself to your superior officer, Captain. That is an order.”
Niles gripped a nearby guard rail with his free hand and pulled himself up to an awkward crouch. The maintenance catwalks were clearly of Bozling design, allowing for a generous five feet of head space between floors of the small scaffolding. He hugged the cliff wall. Jonnery and his goons were just visible through the grated metal flooring, the moonlight glinting of holstered weaponry.
“Don’t play dumb. I know it’s you, Indion!” the Major shouted, frustration creeping through his pompous facade.
“Only my mother calls me that!” Niles shouted back.
“Does she now? She called you dead when I asked her myself just this morning!”
“It’s…uh.. complicated. You know how it is with family.” Niles replied, stalling for time as he slowly worked along the wall towards the scaffolding ladder at the far side of the catwalk.
“You may be a civilian, but you’re still bound by martial law!” Jonnery shouted. “Insubordination is a crime! I’ll make you a convict if I have to!”
“Promise?” Niles replied, his confidence swelling as he reached the ladder and saw that at the top of the maintenance stairways, tucked into a crevice in the cliff wall, there was more zig-zagging scaffolding leading up and out to the city above. He stopped for a moment, took off his hat, and stepped to the outer edge of the platform, in full view of the officers below.
“Captain Indion Ironsights died that day on the bridge ten years ago. I cut him loose and let him plunge into the raging river below, my severed hand tumbling after him. But Indy Ironsights? He’s still breathing, and he’d sooner die than rejoin the army.”
“Well, lucky for Indy, draft evasion is a capital crime worthy of capital punishment.” The Major said as he reached into his coat and tossed a small box toward a heavy-lidded officer slouched against a storage crate. The box thudded against the man’s chest, startling him from his half-slumber. He fumbled it about with clumsy hands as if he’d just been tossed a freshly boiled potato until it slipped through his fingers, tumbling through the air, bouncing from one drunken fool to another, before finally skidding across the cobblestones.
The sight of the box clattering to the ground, coupled with Jonnery’s exposed pistol, seemed to jar the men into a semblance of sobriety. They fumbled for their weapons, making a staggered attempt at standing at attention.
The sleepy one cleared his throat. “Ahem, yes. Orders, sir? Shall we open fire on the deserter?”
Jonnery pinched the bridge of his nose, gun still raised, eyes fixed on Indy above. “He didn’t…You can’t just….,” He let out a dramatic sigh. “You know what? Brilliant idea. Let’s go ahead and discharge live rounds inside the protectorate boundary of our second-largest city, using an honorably discharged veteran as target practice. Perhaps afterward, we shoot up the local orphanage and then, if we’re still not satisfied , a good old-fashioned group execution of the elderly and terminally ill at the nearest hospice. How’s that sound?”
The officer darted at his comrades, who offered only helpless shrugs in return, then back at Jonnery. “So… we shouldn’t shoot?”
“He has civilian rights, you hapless baboon! We’re not here to kill him, just incapacitate him. We’re authorized for non-lethal ammunition only. So pick up that box of rubber slugs, load six into your revolver, point it in his general vicinity, then yes, fucking shoot! "
Indy watched the scene unfold from above. He knew he should have moved on long ago, but the grin tugging at his lips at the Egg-headed Major’s frustration was the most fun he’d had in weeks. He couldn’t help but wonder how these so-called officers had ever passed the rigid gauntlet of exams he had endured at Black Peaks. If this was the state of the army now, it was no wonder they were re-conscripting.
Alcohol was no excuse and had flowed plenty freely in his day, too. Hells, they’d even made a game of it. Simple, as far as games go. A quick kill, followed by a quick swig. The first one to drain their flask earns a break to fill it back up before getting back to killing and drinking.
Indy chuckled at the memory of Morgan Stockend, newly promoted to lieutenant, sprawled atop a pile of bloodied, armor-clad corpses, baking in the afternoon sun, drunk as a lord, a snot bubble in one nostril, snoring despite the ceaseless roar of cannons gunfire, and clashing steel that consumed nearly every waking moment of their days. Indy’s laughter grew as he recalled Morgan’s rage later that night when he stormed into Indy’s tent, face red as sin, skin peeling, demanding to know why Indy had not woken him or moved him to the shade. But Indy was already lost in a fit of gasping hysterics by the abrupt scolding he was receiving from this angry tomato in an officer’s uniform and couldn’t explain that he would have helped if he hadn’t been preoccupied keeping a swarm of angry Templar knights from skewering Morgan during his much-deserved nap.
An odd but not unfamiliar sensation snapped Indy back to the present. Like a cool breeze tickling at his skin, a subtle but drastic shift in perception came over him. What he could smell, he could touch, what he could see, he could taste, what he could taste, he could hear, and every permutation in between, all five senses merging into one as if his body had been repurposed into an instrument capable of processing information at imperceptible speeds.
Odd, but not unfamiliar. The thrill of the experience had long ago faded. There was no rush of adrenaline, no thundering heartbeat, no excitement or anticipation—just a vague acknowledgment mixed with a splash of annoyance at the inevitable drain of energy. It was shortly after he had turned thirteen when he made what would be his first and last attempt at articulating the sensation to someone, likening it to the tickle at the back of your nose right before a sneeze that warned of a sudden, unexpected, and most importantly, unavoidable event in the very near future. His mother had looked at him like his head was on backward, so Indy never mentioned it again, not to her or to anyone else. He might have brought it up to his father, but unfortunately, being in the same general vicinity as the person you wish to converse with was one of the baseline requirements for said conversation to occur. So Indy never had much opportunity in that regard.
Besides, it was a flawed comparison, anyway; a sneeze came and went relatively quickly, was generally harmless, and, most importantly, didn’t signal that one was seconds away from being victimized by some imminent, life-threatening, do-something-about-it-now-or-die type of danger.
Indy felt the distinct texture of rubber on his skin, a stinging bite of black powder lingering on his tongue. He didn’t have to look to know that, no further than arms-length below him, a small black sphere hung suspended in the air, a .55 cal rubber bullet moving ever so slowly along a thin line that pulsed with a soft, shimmering polychromatic light. Like a comet with two diametrically opposite tails connecting the barrel of Jonnery’s pistol to the center of Indy’s forehead. It was the type of visual indicator that had become typical fair during these extremely atypical moments. He had been unable to come up with a proper word for it, and so he simply hadn’t.
Whatever was trying to kill him was almost always highlighted in this way, its past, present, and future visible and laid out before him.
‘Seeing’ time. It sounded so damn stupid. But sounding stupid was one of the easiest ways to piss off Shine, a specific and somewhat dangerous discipline in which he had proudly garnered an impressive level of expertise.
But letting himself get shot in the face by Jonnery fucking Honnerall? That didn’t just sound stupid; it was stupid.
All he knew was that whatever rules or laws, if there even were such a thing, that governed these bizarre moments, like the one currently keeping the bullet suspended in mid-flight, never seemed to apply to Indy, and he moved freely about, spotting a nearby stash of spare railing connectors and fished out a four-foot section of rounded steel, gave it a few quick tosses end over end with his left hand to get a feel for the weight, stepped back to the edge of the scaffold, and without a moment’s hesitation, raised it over his right shoulder and brought it down in an arcing backhanded swing. A resounding smack echoed into the valley as steel connected with rubber, the removal of the threat instantly bringing Indy’s senses back to normal just in time to watch Jonnery’s custom scope shatter as the rubber bullet tunneled through it before hitting him right in the middle of his big, shiny head.
The Major stumbled backward, flailing wildly, sending his revolver, or what was left of it anyway, flying off into the shadows. Jonnery’s knees buckled, his body going limp as a rag-doll as he collapsed in with a heavy thud in a mangled heap, the sheen on his pate dimmed by the cake of blood, rubble, and dirt.
That’s one way to turn off a light...is what Indy would have said had Shine been around. He could almost hear her groan, ruby reds rolling with a dramatic flair.
“What the hell was that?” one officer shouted in confusion.
“Major Jonnery? Crimson hells, man down! Man down!”
“Friendly fire? Who the hell is shootin’ at us?” another yelled, panic spreading through the ranks.
Indy seized the moment of confusion to scramble up the ladders, disappearing into the shadows of the crevice above and up the remaining ascent topside to the city above.
***
Indy remembered when the Head office building of the freshly founded Reclamation and Extermination Division had been the tallest structure in the fledgling military base at the apex of a cliff wall rising out of the Well. And so, in her typically clever fashion, The Director-General had dubbed the new settlement as HighWall Point. No one could have anticipated that just three short decades later it would become perhaps the most important city in the entire nation.
Too far south from the Capital at Skymans-Landing to serve any sort of logistical purpose, plus its proximity to the Tower and its relentless press of gravity made daily life too uncomfortable for many mid-bloods, who were better suited for the mid-land areas of the gravity gradient, and plain inhospitable to the newly liberated. It was a place where only those born into Progenus bloodlines hardened by decades, perhaps even centuries of progress, could exist.
His mother’s ancestors were liberated by King Siggurat, the great-grandson of King Joten himself, nearly seven hundred and fifty years prior. She had been granted the rare gift of duplicate progeny, the pair of walking mosquito bites that were his younger twin siblings. Indy was Asher’s progeny, and therefore inherited 90% of his ancestral imprint from his father. It was one of nature’s many drunkard laws that no one really understood, but the simplicity of it allowed for the Ancestral Archivists to keep records of every unique Progenus bloodline from the day of liberation when a Sol Cabal prisoner earned their place as a Truant citizen by surviving “The Skyman’s Test”; A torturous process of gradual gravity exposure that shattered the skull of most long before it did the stasis ring fused to it. Those lucky enough to survive were granted a thick scar across their temples along with the title of Progenus. This title was carried with intense and patriotic pride as they began their generational journey on the quest to shed the scar from their bloodline.
And there was the rub. The existence of Asher Ironsights was a paradox that had yet to be solved.
Firstly, there was no record of Progenus Ironsights anywhere in the Ancestral Archives. He simply just appeared, seemingly out of the ether.
Secondly, standing at over seven feet tall, possessing a combination of strength, speed, and agility bordering on the supernatural whilst wielding a revolver capable of such unfathomable lethality that many believed could only be supernatural. Asher had single-handedly driven back the Eater infestation that had blindsided the Truancy a few short years before Indy was born, driving the horde all the way from the Capital at Skymans’ Landing back here to HighWall. This led to the formation of R.E.D., who, despite his departure shortly after, has diligently ensured that such an attack will never happen again.
Thirdly. He bore no scar upon his temple, an ascended scarless. The peak of human potential. A feat that even the nation’s oldest Progenus had yet to achieve. However, since Asher had no proof that he or his ancestors were ever bound by the stasis halo. The Ironsights name remained as just that, a name.
Fourthly. For all his heroic deeds, he just so happened to be the most stubborn, reclusive, secretive, and spiteful arse hole Indy had ever had the displeasure of meeting. Fortunately that number he could count using the fingers on his one good hand.
Fifthly…Well, he couldn’t think of a fifthly at the moment. But he knew there was one, and it was pissing him off all the same.
Spending any amount of time topside was enough to put him in a sour mood as it was, from his perch atop a dormant factory rooftop, where he had spent the past thirty minutes lying in wait to make sure that he somehow had not been followed by Jonnery’s idiot task force. The R.E.D. HQ across the valley was barely visible, dwarfed by the sprawling city that had grown in the course of just under thirty years from a simple military outpost to a sprawling mechanical beast, its iron spine of interconnected factories and plants stretching across the horizon. Towers of blackened steel and bronze rise like trees, crowned with stacks that belch thick plumes of smoke, staining the sky in unnatural pink, green, and sickly yellow hues, filling the air with the acrid scent of sulfur. In just thirty short years, a simple outpost originally meant to be the first line of defense against the tower-spawn infestation had transformed into a gluttonous, smoking beast with an insatiable appetite for condensate.
He stood up, spit out the soggy remnants of his last blade of nic grass, and began his descent back down to the bottom of the cliff wall, back to The Hermit. There, he squeezed himself into the tiny storage compartment he had shoved his mattress into. He thought of the blade of grass from earlier, floating gently in the wind beneath his feet, disappearing into the crater, never to be seen again, until eventually, he fell asleep.