“Ours did. We’d smuggle stuff onto mech carriers. See, one mech city would give us fake supplies. Made up so looked like real thing. We’d slip in, get it onto a convoy headed from the outside fact’ries into the big cities.”
“Impressive,” Killeen said respectfully. “How?”
“Wear no metal. Crawl through the convoy’s detectors real slow.”
“Sounds pretty slick.”
“Was. Kept us alive.”
Killeen said, “His Supremacy did all that?”
“Yeasay. Started out cuttin’ a deal for just his Family. Mechs they’d work for would give ’em protection. Once we seen how it went, whole Tribe was his for the askin’.”
“I saw some mech cities pretty well done in.”
“We did that. We’d smuggle in bombs, plant ’em.”
“Dangerous work.”
“With mech help we could get through the traps.”
“We never learned that,” Killeen said, hoping to keep drawing her out.
“Easy, once you know. We’d grab fancy stuff, ’quipment. Wish it’d gone on like that.”
“What happened?”
“All sudden, no mechs aroun’. Least not many. Seemed like most were up in orbit. We’d see ’em at night….”
“Maybe they had more important business. Cybers.”
“We figured.”
“When was that?”
“A while back, maybe two seasons—not that we had a decent summer, not with the clouds coverin’ the sun most times.”
“And you skragged the mechs good,” Killeen prompted her. She kept looking alertly around, a habit Killeen knew never left you after you had spent years running in the open.
“His Supremacy, he said this was our big chance. We raided mech cities ourselves. Knew the tricks, see.”
“Ah,” Killeen said appreciatively.
“Hit ’em hard. Just when we’re seein’ our way clear, there comes five nights when there’s big lightballs goin’ off up there”—she gestured with a gnarled hand skyward—“and thunder comes down sometimes. All over the sky, loud as you please.”
They were passing a large roaring bonfire with hundreds of people packed around it. Killeen could feel the heat snapping off the flames. A low moaning song rose in the surrounding murk as the last traces of twilight ebbed. It was unfamiliar and yet carried a mournful bass solemnity that reminded him of the Citadel, long ago, and Family songs unheard for many years.
The Sebens’ Cap’n walking beside him made a gesture, crossing from shoulder to hip, through the belly and back to the opposite shoulder, evidently a sign of respect. The crowd blocked the path and they stopped.
She whispered, “So then after that we don’t see mechs much anymore. But Cybers we get plenty.”
“You ever see Cybers before these times?”
“Naysay. Family Jack say they fought some Cybers long ’fore this, but my man Alpher says Jacks, they’re always yarnin’ on ’bout things they dunno ass-up ’bout. And he’s right.” A closed look came into her face. “Not that I’m sayin’ anything ’gainst another Family united under the Supremacy, you understand.”
Killeen nodded. “So the Cybers beat the mechs, you figure?”
“Looks like.”
Killeen considered telling her about his experience in the Cyber nest and decided he hadn’t sorted it out enough himself to make good sense. Instead he started working his way around the close-packed crowd. They were singing their slow song more rhythmically now, punctuating it with unnerving shrill wails that made his scalp prickle. All faces turned toward the crackling flames, eyes unfocused and tear-filled. Killeen sensed the gravity of this Family ritual but it was unlike any he knew. A large red insignia on a man’s shoulder told him they were Eight of Hearts.
The three of them circled around and reached the rutted path just as a small cart emerged from the gathering amber dusk, drawn by six women. Killeen stepped aside for them to pass and at that moment the crowd saw the cart and a collective sigh rose. Twisted, anguished cries filled the gloom.
An honor guard flanked the cart, weapons at port arms. People swarmed around, pressing Killeen against the cart. He saw three bodies arranged formally on the flatbed, their arms at their sides. Each stared open-eyed at the night above, faces unlined and dispassionate above bodies that belied their calm. Two were women—scrawny, their skins puckered and lacerated. And each bore a massive bruise that spread down from her prominent collarbone to her belly.
But it was not truly a bruise, he saw. The purpling had spread up into the women’s breasts, pushing up ridges of yellowing flesh. The edge of the wound was crinkled and warped, as though something inside had tried to escape by prying off the chest of each woman, and finally had failed, and so was still lurking within them, the pressure of it forcing the ribs apart and making of their bellies and lungs a great swollen blister that peaked in a watery, transparent sac.
The male corpse between them lay face down; ragged hair covering his head entirely. A bulge split the back of his uniform. Another glossy, stretched dome. His was ringed by a crusted brown scab like dried mud.
The three were laid close together, just fitting into the width of the cart, so that the bodies could not roll and burst the tight, shiny, grotesquely bloated wounds.
Killeen felt his mouth water with incipient nausea. He turned away, sucking the air through his teeth to take away the sudden foul taste that came through the air like a slap. Pushing out against the press of bodies, looking directly into the eyes that stared past him without seeing, he made his way back to the path. The two women were waiting. He whispered, “What…what caused…”
“Cybers,” the talkative woman said. “They do that sometimes, when they can get in close.”
“But…what…”
“Infested, that’s what those people are. His Supremacy says they must be cleaned, purified. Dealt with right.”
