Excerpt: Sleepwalker

The first sign of something wrong was when the prison didn’t stop, its long chicken legs highstepping through the sand towards the larboard docks. The city had come to a halt by then and the post throwers were already hammering in the new posts, the reverberations echoing off the sand in hard slaps. But the prison kept going.

The chatter came through the radio in Marselis’s skimcycle, buzzing under the rippling crack of Katya’s rifle and the heavy beat of the music from her skimcycle. Mar gestured to her and turned up his volume.

“—Assemble at the Lardocks immediately. I repeat, Unit Two assemble at the Lardocks immediately.”

Katya eyed the dunes below them and put up her rifle, turning off her music. “Did they say Unit two?”

“That’s us.” Mar leaned back and hooked his own rifle in the gun rack on the back of the skimcycle.

“Damn it, I didn’t get him.” Katya nosed her skimcycle down, bringing her rifle up onto her shoulder again. “Shut up,” she added, although Mar hadn’t said anything. She pulled the trigger again and a hundred feet below them a tiny figure scratched its death throes onto the dune. “There.”

“Race you.” Mar opened the throttle and the skimcycle leapt forward, away from where Katya was strapping her rifle to her gun rack. Her shout faded into the distance.

Mar made it to the city legs before he heard Katya’s engine roar behind him. To his left, the aft horn, a brass thing shaped like a lion, howled with the wind. The starboard horn, far to his right, let out a thin counterpoint.

Mar’s skimcycle drove in between two thick wooden posts pitted with age. Here, under the old city where the posts were still wooden and had to be moved by crane, Mar liked to think it was like one of the forests of Baria, tree trunks stretching high into the canopy. There was a mandatory six-foot clearance between the posts, which gave Mar enough room to maneuver. He banked a sharp left, then right to duck between two more posts.

Fragments of sunlight filtered down between walkways and buildings above him. A stream of some evil-smelling liquid dripped steadily from a reclamation tank overhead. An air conditioner rattled to life and a snatch of conversation came on the wind.
Katya’s engine roared somewhere to his left, a stuttered echo off the posts and the sand one hundred feet below them.

“The fact that you cheated is only going to make it sadder when I beat you,” Katya shouted, gunning her engine.

Mar threw his weight to the right and slid by a post so close he could reach out and touch it. “Wasn’t cheating,” he called back when he could spare a second of concentration. “You need to be on guard at all times. It’s practice!”

Her laugh echoed. A post came up suddenly ahead of him and Mar jerked his skimcycle to the side, flinging his weight to the right. The bike tipped sideways and Mar tightened his thighs on the seat, his weight hanging on the foot straps. The post skimmed by his foot.

Katya hit her radio again and tinny Barian music came blaring out. The music stuttered through the posts to Mar. He could see flashes of her between the posts, her UDW tan-and-golds bright in the shadows.

The first of the metal legs came into view, dull gray posts with wide feet and locked knees. The echoes of sound turned metallic. Katya’s engine throttled up and her music pulled ahead of him. Mar throttled up too, leaning forward on the bike to give himself more control. The posts were flashing by almost too fast to process and Mar threw himself to the left and the right without even seeing the posts.

The back of his skimcycle clipped a post and Mar swore, thrown off course. His back end sideswiped another post, sending him spinning. He rapidly shifted down and wrestled the cycle into control, forcing it out of its spin. His elbow bumped another post hard enough to bruise and then he got control of it, stopping it before it could hit the next post. Katya’s engine was far ahead of him now.

Something squealed in the sand below him. Marselis reached out with his foot and planted it on a post, stopping his sideways drift, then looked down. A hundred feet below him, a small creature was waist-high out of the sand, its palms pressed to a metal leg. It looked up at him.

“Wasn’t cheating,” it called up at him, then coughed. “It’s practice!”

Mar leaned back in his seat and unclipped his rifle from the gun rack. He hefted it onto his shoulder and aimed down at the thing. Middle of the forehead, he thought, letting out a breath and squeezing the trigger. The thing jerked and fell back, red blood spraying onto the sand. Mar methodically strapped his rifle back to his skimcycle.

When he emerged out from under the city on the other side ten minutes later, most of Unit Two was already there standing on the foremost of the Lardocks. A giant skyfreighter was docked next to them and workers were scurrying to strap everything down so it could be moved. Katya‘s skimcycle was put up next to the others in a neat row. He landed on the dock and pulled his bike in next to hers.

Division Head Belen Durst was talking with a dock worker, which meant that Mar wasn’t late. He hurried into line next to Katya, who gave him a withering look.

“You’ll never win the races if you can’t even beat me,” she muttered to him under her breath. He ignored her, craning his neck to look down the lines.

There were twenty five rank ones, ten rank twos and two rank threes in Unit Two, thirty-seven soldiers in all. It looked like nearly everyone was here. Unit Two covered defense of the city, which meant that when the city walked, they were dispatched around the outskirts in case something happened.

Division Head Durst broke off conversation with the dock worker and turned to them all, her expression grim. She was a thin woman with close cropped black hair that was just visible under her sand veil. Her goggles had been pushed up on her forehead and there were still faint goggle marks under her eyes.

“Alright. This is going to have to do. We can’t wait around any longer.”

For the first time, Marselis noticed the sand rising in the sky behind him. It wasn’t the dissipating sand cloud from the city’s move—it was a new cloud, billows of white and gold. The bulk of the skyfreighter blocked out where it was coming from, but if Marselis had to guess, it was in the direction of the prison, which should have stopped moving by now.

“We have a situation at Chartrain Fell,” Division Head Durst said, confirming Mar’s suspicion. “If it continues in this direction, it will collide with the Lardocks and the port warehouses.” Her voice was tense. “Our objective is to evacuate the docks, secure the prison, and power down the legs. We have thirty minutes.”

She made a quick gesture to the ten people on the end of the line. “You’ll be evacuating the docks. I want everyone out from here to the slave market. I don’t care where you put them, just get them out of here. The rest of you, gear up. Dismissed.”