The Nine Read online

  He hit the deck of their skiff, his spine crunching beneath him. He felt a ruin come upon him that was beyond the sensation of his physical self, it was inside of him, and a part of him, a part of his mind.

  My shield!

  The double blast from both Stuber’s gunpods, and the enemy’s, had reduced his shield to the sensation of fizzling sparks in his mind. It was completely obliterated—at least for the moment. Would it recharge? And how long would that take?

  Perry rolled, struggling up to his feet and gasping air through a throat that felt scorched and raw. His lungs smarted as he filled them, like they’d been burned. Through his ringing ears, he registered Stuber cursing everything and everyone in one breathless litany.

  The world around him pitched and rolled, and he thought that his balance was off until he blinked and realized they were plummeting through the air, the skiff yawing violently as it did, branches crashing against the sides and rear.

  Perry grabbed the siderail and clung to it. “Whimsby!”

  “One moment!” Whimsby’s amplified voice called out.

  All around them, the mountainside whirled by in a blur of gray stone and green pine.

  Perry struggled against the forces pulling him in every direction and looked upwards. The sky spun over his head, the enemy skiff about a hundred yards above them, dropping just as fast, though more controlled.

  Perry realized that the longstaff was no longer humming in his hand. The sheer panic of the explosion and their sudden descent had ripped him out of the The Calm.

  “Perry!” Stuber’s rough voice yelled.

  Perry managed to right his vision, all the world a tilt-a-whirl in the background.

  Stuber clung to one of the gunpod controls, his teeth bared, his eyes wide, his face a mask of blood. And that, perhaps more than anything else, injected a dose of fear straight to Perry’s heart.

  “Shoot the motherfucker!” Stuber bellowed, thrusting a finger skyward.

  I can’t! Perry thought, but didn’t have the breath for.

  He had to slow his brain down. He had to calm himself. He had to get back to the red…

  The skiff under his feet stopped its flat spin. Stabilized. Alarm klaxons blared out from Whimsby’s station, but his voice came through calm: “There we go. Hang on.”

  Calm.

  The skiff shot forward, and up.

  The enemy craft roared past—close enough that the passing wake of airflow ripped Whimsby’s jacket around him. His hat flew off of his head, but he snatched it with a lightning quick hand before it got more than a foot from him and rammed it back on his head.

  They were tilted up, rocketing skyward at a steep angle. The deck beneath Perry’s feet became forty-five degree slide, his feet shooting out from under him.

  Underneath them now, the enemy skiff pivoted and roared after them, bringing its guns to bear on their aft.

  Perry let go. Of the siderail, and of the fear in his gut.

  He was weightless for a moment, sliding down the deck on his ass…

  But the red. It came swooping back into him.

  His longstaff vibrated in his grip.

  His feet hit the rear rails of the skiff, which had now become his floor.

  “Keep it steady!” Perry shouted at Whimsby, and then leaned out over nothingness.

  The enemy skiff pursued, matching their angle, its gunpods rotating up to target them. How was a single demigod doing that? Could they control the gunpods from the aft console?

  They’re in the aft.

  Perry couldn’t push his shield more than ten feet in front of him. Could this demigod do any better?

  Perry thrust his longstaff out over the side of their skiff, his eyes locking onto the enemy gunpods, and the longstaff seemed to adjust itself in his grip to match his aim. He fired.

  A bolt of green lightning burst from his muzzle.

  The enemy skiff tried to swerve, but the bolt of energy travelled too fast. It struck the port gunpod in an electrically-charged explosion, the head of the gunpod shearing clean off and spinning way into the air, trailing black smoke.

  “Excellent hit, goodsir,” Whimsby said, casually. “Hang on to the rail, if you please…”

  Perry just had time to grip the rail at his feet in one hand when Whimsby busted them into a hard right, and dropped altitude.

  “Hit them again in the side!” Whimsby urged, uncharacteristic excitement in his voice.

  The maneuver gave Perry two seconds of a good shot, before the demigod spun their own skiff about and fired a round from their remaining gunpod. It was a haphazard shot that screeched through the air just off their starboard side and impacted the face of the mountain a second later. But Perry had missed his shot.

  “Master Perry,” Whimsby sounded disappointed. “Your reaction times will need to be honed. Next time I tell you to fire, do it immediately when I say.”

  “Well, give me some fucking warning, next time!” Perry yelled at him as he fought to pull himself down against the G-forces that wanted him in the air.

  “Very well,” Whimsby sighed. “Stuber! There’s an auxiliary cable to the left of the port gunpod controls. Do you see it?”

  Stuber, still clinging to the controls, gaped at Whimsby, but then fought himself upright and looked. He seized a thick, black cord and brought it up. “This?”

  “Yes, that. Standby for further.” Whimsby looked over his shoulder. “Master Perry, are you prepared to fire on the enemy skiff?”

  Perry had negotiated himself into a position that allowed himself to cling to the rail with his legs and get both hands on his longstaff. “Yes.”

  “When I execute this next maneuver, fire on them. Ready? Mark.”

  “Mark?”

  The skiff plunged again, but this time sweeping to the left in a tight turn around a mountain peak. To their rear, the enemy skiff swung up into Perry’s vision. Its right gunpod spat flame and another giant round blasted by, this time ripping the rail clean off, just two feet to Perry’s left.

  He struggled to bring his longstaff around, then realized that it would target on its own. All he needed was a hand on it to connect. He focused on the enemy skiff as it positioned itself for another shot, and he felt the longstaff moving in his hands, apparently immune to the centrifugal force that Perry found insurmountable.

  He fired again.

  The green bolt slammed into the right side of the enemy skiff, near the aft. The craft pitched at a dangerous angle, spewing smoke and sparks from the hit.

  “That was their stabilizer,” Whimsby called out. “Well aimed, goodsir. That’ll give us a moment or two.”

  “What do you want me to do with this fucking cable?” Stuber demanded.

  Whimsby leveled their craft and pulled the throttle back to merely-hair-on-fire. “There’s a panel on the front side of your left gunpod controls. Open that panel.”

  With less forces pulling them every which way now, Stuber was able to clamber to the front of the control column. He ripped the panel away and tossed it overboard.

  “Well, we might’ve needed that,” Whimsby mumbled to himself, and then, louder: “Right. Insert the male end of the cable into the matching female plug.”

  Stuber’s eyes peeked up over the console, brows raised. “No time for sexy talk, Whimsby, this is serious!”

  “No,” Whimsby sighed. “I mean—”

  “He knows what you mean,” Perry said.

  Stuber stood up. “It’s plugged in. Can I shoot now?”

  “Just the left gunpod,” Whimsby answered. He glanced at Perry. “Your friend is odd.”

  “You get used to him,” Perry answered, looking behind them.

  The enemy skiff had gone into a flat spin when their stabilizer had been destroyed, but seemed to have righted itself now. It had dropped in altitude, and now began to rush up at them again, though it trailed an unhealthy-looking streak of greasy smoke behind it.

  “They’re coming back!” Perry called.

  “St
uber, get ready to target lock,” Whimsby called. “I’m going to swing us around to face them.”

  Stuber launched himself back into the gunpod controls, this time focused only on the left-hand column. “Ready!”

  “Everyone hold on,” Whimsby warned, and then without giving them much time to comply, executed a sphincter-puckering 180-degree turn in midair. Perry was slammed backwards into the aft rails, and Teran and Sagum, already on their knees, slid backwards five feet.

  The second their nose faced the enemy skiff, Stuber’s targeting display flashed red and Stuber fired. There was a horrendous crash of metal on metal. The enemy skiff had taken the round dead center on its deck as it tried to rise towards them. A gaping, ragged hole stood out, the craft nearly ripped in half.

  It began to plummet.

  Whimsby whirled them around again, slamming Teran and Sagum into a pile of limbs against the port siderails. Then he decelerated, and turned to look behind them.

  “Did I get them?” Stuber called out. “Are they dead? Did they die?”

  Whimsby held up a hand.

  He and Perry watched the enemy skiff. It seemed to fall for a long time. Every time Perry thought for certain that it was about to crash into the mountainside, it went a little further. Until it didn’t. By then it was just a dark shape way below them. He couldn’t see the occupant through the billowing smoke. And then it impacted in a shockwave of dirt and shredded trees.

  Whimsby lowered his hand. “Yes. They died.”

  “Oh.” Stuber twitched the gunpod controls around a bit, the big-barreled weapon pivoting about aimlessly. “Okay then. I only got to fire three rounds, though. Kind of a shame.”

  Whimsby glanced at Perry. “Now that was excellent reaction time.”

  Perry rolled his eyes. “I hear it all the time, Whimsby.”

  On the deck, Teran extricated herself from Sagum and stood up, casting a wide-eyed look at Whimsby. “These things need chairs. With seatbelts.”

  Whimsby shrugged. “They’re not really meant for dogfighting, mistress.”

  Sagum staggered to the siderail and leaned over, puking a stream of bright yellow that ribboned out behind them.

  Stuber approached, inspecting Sagum’s spew. “Should’ve eaten that food. It would’ve settled your stomach.” He clapped him on the back. “But I suppose if you ate like a grown man, then you might look like one too.” He walked away, smiling, and winking at Perry.

  Teran stopped him. “Stuber. Your face.”

  Stuber touched his face and inspected the blood on his fingertips. He stuck out his tongue and tasted it, as though expecting it to be some condiment leftover from eating. “Yes. I appear to be bleeding.”

  Teran reached up—she had to stand on tip-toe—and grabbed the ex-legionnaire by the sides of the head, pulling his face down so she could inspect it closer. Stuber allowed it, but looked disgruntled.

  “You got a shard right next to your eye.”

  “Well, I guess I’m very lucky then, aren’t I?” He shot a look towards Perry. “Lucky that Shortstack didn’t kill me with that shield stunt.”

  “You’re alive, aren’t you?” Perry said.

  “Oh, that reminds me,” Stuber said, looking towards Sagum, though he couldn’t turn his head all the way, as Teran tried to dig the piece of shrapnel out with her fingers. “Sagum! You didn’t shoot me in the head! Good job!”

  Over the siderail, Sagum lifted a thumbs up, and then went back to puking.

  “Hold still,” Teran ordered Stuber. “Stop talking.”

  Bent at the waist so that she could operate, Stuber looked skyward, longsufferingly.

  Teran bared her teeth, and plucked a long shard of black metal from the skin of Stuber’s cheek, less than an inch below his eye. She held it up. “That would have blinded you for sure.”

  Stuber looked at Perry. “It would have blinded me, Perry.”

  “Maybe even gone through into your brain and killed you,” Teran added.

  “Maybe even killed me,” Stuber said to Perry. “Did you hear that? Perry? Do you feel bad?”

  “A little,” Perry sighed, slumping against the rear railing. His knees shook. He kept his hands on his longstaff so the others wouldn’t see them trembling.

  Teran took Stuber’s big hand and pushed his finger against the bleeding slit in his skin. “Hold that there. Sit down so I can get the rest of that shit out of your face. Is anyone else injured?”

  Sagum came up for air, gasping and coughing. “Yes. I think something’s broken inside of me.”

  “Something besides your pride?” Teran asked.

  Sagum shook his head.

  It was right about then that another klaxon began to sound from the control console.

  Whimsby looked down at it. “Oh my. Well, dear friends, it appears we won’t be going much farther in this skiff.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  THE CROOKED HILLS

  They got another five minutes out of the charge on the skiff before it began to automatically decelerate and descend. Whimsby pulled it into a small clearing, and then glided it backwards until it bumped against an overhanging tree—trying to hide it from view as much as possible.

  At that point, the skiff gave a sad little tone, as though disappointed with itself, and lowered to the ground.

  Perry slid down off the deck, much easier now that the skiff wasn’t floating. It felt good to have his feet on solid ground again.

  And this ground! This earth!

  He knelt, running his fingers along the grass that grew in clumps here, about calf-high. Half brown, and half green. But it was grass. The entire clearing was grass. “Does someone maintain this?” Perry wondered, gazing about him.

  Whimsby looked down at him from the deck. “No, Master Perry. It’s simply grows wild.”

  “This shit just…grows?” Perry stared at the grass blades. “All on its own?”

  “This land was not scorched as bad as in other places. It took several decades, but life here returned to normal. Or…somewhat normal.”

  Perry pressed his fingers through the grass blades and into the dirt underneath. “It’s wet.”

  “Yes. Dirt is like that.”

  Perry stood up, unable to control a small laugh of wonderment. “Not where I come from, Whimsby. Where I come from we have dust. And it gets wet one of two ways—because we irrigate it, or because we bleed on it.”

  “You could also pee on it,” Stuber called out from where he rummaged around in the storage compartments of the skiff. “Or spit on it.”

  Perry stood up, wiping his hands off on his pants. “Whimsby, what did you mean by ‘somewhat normal’?”

  Whimsby inspected Stuber’s work for a moment, and then looked at Perry. “That requires some explanation. Which I’ll be happy to give you once we’re on the move. For now, suffice it to say, things in these hills are not as nature intended them to be.”

  Sagum poked his head up, still looking a little green. “The hills. Are these the Crooked Hills? I saw that on the map.”

  “Indeed they are,” Whimsby answered. “Stuber, you won’t find much of use in that compartment. In the port compartments, though, there should be emergency rations and water, as well as ammunition for our weapons.” Whimsby hopped down from the skiff. “Obviously, I do not need food or water, but I can still carry supplies for the group.”

  Perry gestured to him. “What about your, uh, batteries?”

  “My core will run without maintenance for five years. Provided our little excursion doesn’t go past that, I should be fine.” He nodded to the landscape around them. “Keep a sharp eye, Master Perry. The Crooked Hills have many oddities. Most of them unpleasant, and many of them unfriendly.”

  Perry looked around them. East of the clearing, he saw no more mountains. If he faced west, he could see their peaks behind them a few miles, some of them still crisp and clear, but most of them hazy with distance. It seemed the land gradually flattened out from their current position.

/>   Which would be great. Particularly given the distance they had to travel.

  “How far are we away from the East Ruins now?” Perry asked.

  Whimsby faced northeast, as though he needed to look in the direction of the East Ruins to judge the distance. “From our current position, we are three-hundred-and-forty-three-point-eight-seven miles from the edge of the East Ruins.”

  Perry patted him on the shoulder. “In the future, you can just give me a round number. Also, you can stop calling me Master Perry.”

  “Stuber calls you Shortstack and Halfbreed. Which is your preferred designation?”

  Perry gave a flat smile. “Just ‘Perry’ is fine.”

  Stuber had now located the appropriate compartments and started heaving over boxes and satchels of supplies. Teran and Sagum hopped down and began organizing what they had into piles.

  “That’s enough, Stuber,” she called after a moment. “We got as much weight as we can realistically carry.”

  Stuber propped himself up on the railing and inspected the piles. “That small pile there. Is that for Sagum?”

  Sagum squinted up at him. “Yes, it is. And that big one is for you.”

  Stuber nodded. “As it should be. Each day we travel, I’ll give you one item from my bag. By the end, you’ll have strong legs like me. You’ll be proud of yourself, the ladies will find it sexy, and you’ll learn to carry your own weight. It’s a win-win.”

  “As we travel,” Teran said. “Our loads will get lighter, because we’ll be eating and drinking from them.”

  Stuber vaulted down out of the skiff. “Ah. You’re right. Smegma, I’ll add rocks to your pack. Don’t forget, I’m supposed to be training you to fight.”

  “Carrying weight makes you a better fighter?” Sagum asked, sardonically.

  “No. Carrying weight makes you less of a bitch. Being less of a bitch makes you a better fighter.”

  Teran squatted at one of the piles, looking up at Perry and rubbing her jaw thoughtfully. “What’s the mile count now?”

  “Three-hundred-and-forty,” he answered.

  She nodded. “Estimating that we keep a three-mile-an-hour pace, walking for at least eight hours every day…” She looked upwards, calculating.