Steel Frame Read online

  STEEL FRAME

  Andrew Skinner

  First published 2019 by Solaris

  an imprint of Rebellion Publishing Ltd,

  Riverside House, Osney Mead,

  Oxford, OX2 0ES, UK

  www.solarisbooks.com

  ISBN: 978-1-78618-228-9

  Copyright © 2019 Andrew Skinner

  The right of the author to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owners.

  ONE

  THE AIR IS heavy with sweat and moist with shipboard rot, mixed so thick that I’m starting to think I’d rather choke than keep on breathing. Hell, there are times I think I might try it just for the change of pace.

  The clammy atmosphere settles slick across my skin, presses in on my eyes and ears like I’m halfway drowned already. It dulls my hearing until all I have left is the heartbeat-throb in my temples, and the deep echoes the air seems to carry all on its own. The ringing of our chains and the rumbling press of our bootsoles on the deck. The tremors match a marching count, just like everything else down here.

  In this place, the march is all that matters, and there’s nothing we could do to challenge it that wouldn’t cost us blood or broken bones. We could try to hold our ground, maybe shake the order if we were brave or stupid enough, but the shackles will always hold it better.

  And the chain gang does the rest.

  It’s a beast built on all of our worst impulses, running on fear and fists and clawing fingers. It’s a warden’s work done by prisoners, and it’ll beat the fight out of you every day. You can resist, of course, but the gang will chew you up, break anything that will not bend, and fight itself ragged over what’s left. The best choice is to comply, but you have to abandon any hope of making it out the way you arrived. Worse, you have to join in. The rules are simple, but they only work if everyone pulls their weight, and once you understand that—once you know your place among the cogs and grindwheels—you become part of the machine.

  We understand. I understand. I’ve been part of a machine before. I hold the beat because I know better than to try anything else.

  It only takes one. One of us to miss the step, to lose our place, and the rest of the gang topples over us. Through us, if our luck’s running low. Chances are, the steel is the only thing that’ll have a say in how it all turns out, and you can do better than hoping the chain will show you mercy. This old tether wraps everybody on this stretch, holds us straight, and keeps us from fighting back. It makes us measure every step, forces us to set our movements to the rhythm, humming a tune that’s just enough to keep us all in line and all in time.

  The loudest hum comes from a big Palmirran by the name of Salt, dead ahead, the next one up the chain from me. He’s colonial gene-stock, engineered around a chest full of lung and muscle. More muscle than lung, but his airways have more power than the rest of us stitched together, even singing for our lives. He shakes the space around him, setting the whole world to a song that only he seems to know for certain. The chain gang has caught the tune now, and it follows us everywhere.

  It came with us off the barges from Kiruna, and now it trails us through mouldy corridors and acid-etched spillways, past pressure heads locked with massive hydraulics, between huge magazines and air-gapped blocks of armour plate.

  A squad of long jackets guides us deeper, matching our pace and setting the path ahead. They belong to the company; you can see it on shoulders stitched with NorCol’s heavy logo-blocks, sleeves tracked with unit insignias and assignments, cuffs embroidered with a warden’s gate.

  They watch us through breathermask goggles, and swing steel batons from their hands, not speaking unless we give them reason to. We don’t, for the most part, but I can almost hear them carrying the song on the other side of their filters. It seems Salt’s odd tune is infectious.

  And the echoes get longer with every step.

  Long enough now that we’re starting to lose the returns. We’re floors deeper now than where we began, though I couldn’t tell you how far. There’s nothing keeping track, and the bowels of this old ship look the same as anything NorCol has to offer. The same grey paint, thick and prone to flaking, streaked ruddy where rust brews and blisters underneath. Cloudy bulbs mark the walls on every eleventh step: every one that’s still alive is matched by a neighbour that flickers and spits, and another that leaves its sector in the black. The moist air puts a sheen on everything and a haze around every source of light.

  There’s no sign of where we are in all this murk and shadow. I could take a chance, ask the wardens, but I prefer to keep my face in its current configuration. I swing my step but keep the rhythm, swaying left when the chain sways right, and craning for a sign of the boat we’ve landed on. A name would be good, but I could use a number just as well, maybe trade it up and down the line until someone recognised it. Anything’s better than what I’ve got, and what I’ve got is close to nothing. A general sense of size. The length of corridors, and the height of hatches.

  From what I can see and hear, we’re somewhere under the maindecks, aboard a tub that’s got reason to have more than one kind of deck. An assault carrier, or maybe a big destroyer. A shellboat, maybe, but I don’t think I’ve gotten quite so lucky. The walls don’t have company markings yet, but wherever we are, NorCol wants us in line and out of trouble.

  They’ve certainly put the effort in. It takes two to beat a chain gang: one to hold the nose and the other to whip the tail. The wardens know that just like we do, but they’ve surrounded us with company boots, and made our escorts into a statement of intent. They’re here to watch us walk and kick our shins when we start edging off the narrow.

  They’ve been with us twenty, thirty minutes now, if I had to guess. We’ve come most of a K from the hangar where we arrived. The going is slow, but we could’ve stretched that distance if it was what we meant to do. We didn’t, and we don’t. Wherever we’re going, there’s something like death waiting near the end. And even if there wasn’t, there’s an art to moving in chain, and slow is the only way to do it that doesn’t cost you skin.

  There are two heavy rings round my ankles, joined in the middle. The chain runs up from there and around my throat, where it’s cinched with a padlock. The lock rubs against my chest, an anchor that’s been left in the water a little too long, gone to feathering rust and sea-green scale so thick you’d have to crack your way in just to reach the keyhole. Not that it would do you any good without the Christs-damn key. I’ve never seen it; not on the day they put me in chain, standing on the block in Kiruna’s lime-and-concrete quad, and not any time since. I’m starting to think it doesn’t exist.

  Chainlinks run back down from my collar, and connect to another pair of ankle hoops in front of me, tight around Salt’s huge shins. It’s the warden’s insurance; if Salt tried to make a run for it, the line would pull tight around my throat and drop me to the deck face-first. Assuming he didn’t topple in the process, he’d have to carry me, deadweight and dragging, gagging on my collar. On another convict, that would be a problem, but Salt’s nearly twice my size, and heavy even by colonial standards; he’s got muscle enough to drag me for several K in any direction he decided to go. I’m lucky. He chooses to be here, as much as anyone chooses to be anywhere. Looking at him, you know they wouldn’t have gotten him into shackles unless he’d meant them to.

  Even now, he could snatch a warden before the others caught up, snap a spine or crack a skull before they could do anything to haul him short. And he knows it, and knows they know it too. He knows to save the threat for when he needs it, and spends the rest of the time walking to the same tune as anyone else; carefully, and with a little extra chain in one hand. The slack comes from the part of the line that joins his feet to my neck, gathered up loose and wrapped around his fingers. If something snagged when he took a step, he’d let it swing, and save me from scraping myself up off the floor. I do the same for the con behind me, and he does the same for those behind him. The links go both ways; you do what you can, and the others won’t go tugging at your feet.

  “Chain gang,” comes the call from up ahead, “halt!”

  We’re tethered throat and ankles, the first strung forward and the other one back. There is no stop—not any more than there’s a go. If we want to walk, we have to work our way up to speed, and wind our way down again before we come to rest. Even with a cliff edge up ahead, momentum would carry us four steps and change before we could stop ourselves, and that’s without the little hobble at the end.

  The jackets wait us out, but they’ve done this all before. When we’re finished dragging our feet, they herd us tight together, and someone shuts an airlock behind us, one of the sergeants testing seals on a door up ahead. We’re pressed tightly now, and I can’t see much past Salt’s shirtless back. I watch his ink instead.

  His skin is almost the colour of clay, and colonial tattoowork looks down on me from between the crags of his shoulders. There are tallies and banners for every war he’s fought, and dark marks for every rebellion he’s helped put down. Odd symbols trace lineage down his spine; a dawning sun for his home fleet, and a curved eclipse for his home ship. From there, it trails into stars and constellations, showing his place among the squads that were once his brothers a
nd sisters. Those last few end in ragged scars, skin and ink lifted out with a combat knife.

  There’s a hiss, and I yawn through the change of pressure in my ears. The airlock is obvious now that we’re in it, built just shorter than a whole gang standing on top of each other. It’s narrower than the corridor behind us, but wide enough that a pair of NorCol jackets can push their way past, jangling keys to hand. The cons keep clear, rest their shoulders on the nearest wall, and give me a moment’s eyes on where we’re going.

  MAS-HANG C

  says a yellow stencil on the door, whatever that’s supposed to mean.

  [ALL BERTHS]

  AUTHORISED PERSONNEL ONLY

  The two jackets get working on the locks ahead, and the rest of their squad walks the line, rattling our shackles and checking the links around our necks, reminding us who’s in charge.

  Thunder stops them dead, shaking the floor beneath our feet. Somewhere on the decks above us, something huge roars to takeoff.

  I trade glances with Salt over his shoulder, and look back over my own. The man behind me meets my eyes. He’s another ex-jockey, just like Salt and me, but this one looks like he hasn’t seen a steady meal in years, or a shower in twice that. His skin is sickly pale, and his muscles run rangy. Lear, he’s called, to match the ugly look in his eye.

  “Hangar,” he says.

  “Burning hard,” I reply. “Big enough that it needed launch-assist.”

  “Big bird,” he agrees. “Wide throat like that, probably a corvette.”

  “Or a lander. LCA Scudderbox.”

  “The only reason to fly a ’box is if you’ve got marines on station.”

  “Which means there’s a garrison.”

  He clicks a finger. “Which means we’re riding a carrier, at least. Big enough to haul wings and armour.” He spreads a grin, and crews it with ugly teeth. “Maybe they have birds for us.”

  As the engine sounds subside, I can just about hear the edge of something else.

  “What was that?” I ask.

  Lear blinks at me. “What was what?”

  A low rush, almost a whisper. This time from around us.

  “That.”

  Salt turns as far as he can manage and offers us a smile. “Didn’t you hear?”

  “Hear what?”

  “They say there are clouds outside.”

  THE JACKETS DON’T leave me time to ask. They’re winding us up already, and the line responds on instinct, working through the beginnings of another halting march.

  The back of the line decides it. When the second-last con has slack on the neck behind them, they punch the shoulder ahead. Half a second more, and the next con does the same. A shiver works its way through the line until each of us has checked lengths, and made ready for the walk.

  The front stamps a boot.

  One, two.

  The rest of us join in, eyes closed.

  One, two.

  We wait for the beat, let it carry us along. Salt wakes his ancient tune again.

  “Chain gang,” comes the call, “march!”

  One, two.

  Right foot, left.

  The first in line steps wide, and the rest of us shuffle along behind, more to keep the timing than because we’re moving yet. The next steps out, and the chain keeps creeping.

  When we were still new to this, we’d put our hands out, waiting until the one ahead was a full arm’s distant before we leant into the stride. Now we do it by feel and tempo. Heartbeats pump and bootsoles roll like tank tracks. We are the machine.

  The wardens steer us through the stencilled door I saw before, and then another, sealing each one shut behind us as we go. A few steps in darkness, then light creeping in from ahead: at first, it’s barely as bright as the halls we’ve been crawling through, but it warms quickly, becoming a sunrise up ahead.

  We stop before it dawns. There’s a groan and a shuffle, too sudden for comfort. We bump and stagger and trip. A few collide, or scrape knees and knuckles. Judging by the shouting, someone has fallen over themselves near the front, and the line has to wait while they find their feet, find the rhythm all over again. Another two steps, and there’s another stall, another stumble.

  Twelve steps after that, and I see what’s cut them short.

  Christs above and below.

  Where the hell are we?

  Our little tunnel ends on a doorstep, and our low ceiling cuts away. We go from a cramped hole to a cavern, the ceiling suddenly a thousand metres up. We manage to keep the march for a few more beats, but the sudden rush of air and noise rips the song away, leaves us lurching across the threshold and blinking at the bright and chaos.

  The hangar is bigger than anything I’ve ever seen, under NorCol’s name or otherwise.

  Hot winds blow thick with engine wash, pierced by screaming gunship throats and the guttural flares of shuttles, clouds of fighting craft taxiing through the iron heights above us. Thrusters glow hot enough that I can feel them on my skin, nearly half a K away.

  Steel canyons spill out across the horizon, warships nestled within. I count six corvettes in dry-dock, and one massive destroyer at rest: Okula, by the markings on its upper decks. A demigod of Open Waters, guns stowed for now. Its hull sparks with welding lights, and its char-black engines gape. Service drones whir and wheel between its masts, swarming around the six-limbed assemblies that climb its cliffside plates.

  I don’t realise that I’m staring—none of us do, not until there’s an angry jacket yanking on our chain. Even then, the wardens have to work to get us moving. Salt has lost his song, and with it any chance the rest of us had of holding firm. We are lost without the marching-count, and every movement ends in a stutter or a trip, grazes smeared bloody on the deck. The jackets stamp alongside us, trying to force a little rhythm back into the line, but it doesn’t do us any good, and so they drag us out instead.

  Out between the scaffold-limbs of giant cranes, and under a rail-engine that rolls on electromag tracks as wide as I can step. We cross a yard full of flatbed hulks, bunkers full of fuel and one-eighty tonne pallets stacked with munitions. The cranes reach above us, trading monstrous caskets through the air.

  After the yard, four lanes of active rail, but the wardens have to hustle to get us across. Huge hauler-engines tear past, forcing us to stagger and choke to clear the path before they catch us. One whips past so close it singes hair and skin in a gale of acid-tinged exhaust.

  Halide arrays hang from gantry-tops, arranged like temporary suns, lighting roads and alleys in selective daylight, limning huge hulls in silver. Red strobes mark the legs of the cranes and the bodies of the engine-cars, and add a little crimson to the smog. Nighttime fills the places where the lamps can’t reach.

  We drop in and out of huge shadows, and march past lines of NorCol marines in bluegrey battledress, all squared up and waiting for the gunboats circling overhead. We pass pillars of steam, duck through sheets of rain from the clouds brewing near the ceiling. Containers rise in patchwork cliffs on either side, stencilled in the marks of a thousand minor companies, dotted here and there with the crests of the great corporations that marshal the darker parts of human space. The gods of old Steyr and ancient Raytheon, of powder-makers and wars that never end.

  We stumble through it all, struggling to find a beat. Our ears ring with all the noise, and our sweat runs thicker in the steam. It’s been a while since any of us has had anything to drink.

  There’s more concrete and tar and bonded plating, machines bigger than anything I’ve ever seen, but most of it’s forgotten as soon as we’ve passed by. My eyes are clouding, merging everything together into a parade of storms and shadows.

  Somewhere in the middle, we cross into a clearing. A little circle of open deck, rimmed by scaffolds and ringfence and barbed-wire coils. A line of metal hoops has been welded to the floor.

  “Chain gang, halt!”

  But we’re already slowing. This is different. The wardens are pulling away.