Page 12 of Under the Iron Sky

The room was deadly silent. Oh, thank the suns and all—

“M-m-message from Command. Will—”

A strangled cry, then a loud clang as the bird collapsed onto the floor, a burning hole in the center of its right eye. The tip still smoking, Soraya lowered the newly fixed sunrifle and stared at the mess of metal on the floor.

Was it a good idea to shoot the bird? No. Was she going to get an earful from Command for damaging valuable resources? Most definitely. But did it make her feel better? No. Not really. The sense of calm she’d expected to feel didn’t come, only a sickly sort of dread that had her clutching her stomach. It just looked so … sad, lying there like that. Its one good leg crumbled, bolts and wires hanging out for the world to see.

She bet it was beautiful once. That it’d belonged to someone who took great pride in caring for it …

Sighing, Soraya swiveled her chair back to the desk and picked up the next sunrifle in need of repair.

She tried to lose herself in the task, in the feel of cool metal and flame at her fingertips, but the workshop suddenly felt too empty. Too quiet. That horrible, lonely sort of quiet that raised the hairs on the back of her neck.

Soraya told herself that she’d done it a favor. That it had no quality of life as damaged as it was. She’d been cleared to repair horses and predators with claws big enough to tear through flesh—and that one shark that’d been hauled in from a nearby port that kept all the surrounding bases fed. Anything that still served a purpose.

But little songbirds like this were useless now. What need was there for merry tunes or companionship when the world had gone to shit?

How it was even still functioning after all this time was beyond her, and she wouldn’t put it past Command to expect this last strenuous journey into her workshop to be the thing that finally fried his circuits for good.

Familiars had been built for sustainability. Unlike weapons that expelled Light and machinery that burned or drained it to operate, all the familiars needed was their initial charge when they were created, and they could run for decades. The basic principle was similar to blood running through veins—the familiars had enough Light coursing through them to keep fully operational, but if they got injured and that Light no longer ran in a closed circuit, if they “bled out,” then they would cease to function unless repaired and recharged.

Their bodies degenerated over time, of course, as all things did, and the machines’ movements gradually grew sluggish, giving the illusion of aging, but the process was slow.

Once, in what had felt like the darkest period of this war—both figuratively and literally—there’d been talk of draining all the familiars to harvest their Light. However, given that they were sentient and self-sufficient, the idea was quickly labeled barbaric and tossed aside—but not without a compromise.

The machines would be left alone, the ones that could fight would, and when the time came that their bodies were so damaged it’d cost a small arsenal to repair them, they were to be left to “die” and stripped for their parts and Light.

Given the bird’s condition, Soraya would have probably found him on the scrap heap in a few days anyway, once a beloved pet, now worth no more than the parts she could forage from him. Better to destroy it now. End his suffering.

But if that was true, then why couldn’t she stop rasping her knuckle-dusters against the table?

“Stop looking at me,” she hissed at the broken bits of metal on the floor. “I gave you more than enough chances. You have no one to blame for this but yourself.”

The bird didn’t respond—because of course he didn’t. He’d never respond again, because she’d blown a bloody hole in his head. Because that was what Soraya always did, wasn’t it? Shoot. Kill. Destroy. She wasn’t even allowed an afternoon to herself before Command forced another assignment on her and she was thrust back into the world to draw blood.

Anger tinted the corners of her vision, and then she was on her feet and marching out of her workshop. Command wanted to see her, did they? Then so fucking be it.

Soraya had never liked this base. Built deep in the Hennon Forest, under a thick shield of leaves and dense fog, it’d been a temple for healing once upon a time. Not that anyone would’ve realized it now.

The once luscious green trees outside were black and barren, most of the tall arched windows were either cracked or broken in completely so there was almost always a draft, and everything electrical had either been shut off completely or turned down to the lowest setting to preserve as much energy as possible. A corpse well and truly picked to the bone.

She’d much preferred the flight hangar they’d used before. That base had been high in the mountains, far away from the ruins of the capital city. Most of the hovercrafts and fighter jets left there had been too old or damaged to salvage, but the air had been much cleaner, and there’d been so many hidden levels and connecting tunnels they’d managed to create some kind of civilization.

They’d had a rehabilitation center for the injured, several farms to keep the population fed on a variety of vegetables other than potatoes and wheat, and even a little nursery and play center in the old rec rooms beneath so the younger generations had some scrap of the old world to cling to.

All of that was gone now, though. No more than food or nests to be divided by the creatures that’d crawled out of the cracks, as was most of their once glorious planet. It was better not to get too attached to anything nowadays, people or material. There was no telling when it could be snatched away.

Soraya strode through what used to be the Trauma Response Unit—now one of the many bedsits. Then the canteen, busy as always, although no one ever really left full. Whether it be medicine or food, there was never enough to go around. She strode past the prayer rooms—always on the west, facing where the suns used to rise, then the armory, the training rooms, trailing all the way down the spiral staircase to what had once been a great library on the lowest level.

Despite the long walk, Soraya’s temper was no less sparking. She stormed through the shelves that had been bursting with books and scrolls just fifteen years ago, now almost completely stripped bare, centuries’ worth of history and biographies and art all forsaken for needing something to burn during the colder months, and threw open the doors to the back office.

Whether that curl in Noreen’s lip was because she was annoyed that Soraya had stormed into her office without knocking or at something one of the two holographic figures behind her desk had said, Soraya wasn’t sure. Didn’t really care as she charged inside, her anger a vicious beast writhing beneath her skin, and stopped on the other side of the desk. “What?”

“Should we reschedule for another time, Commander Tollmere?”

Soraya didn’t need to turn around to know that the holograms were Arlo and Kyan, the leaders of two other Vordellian bases.

Noreen’s eyes didn’t so much as flicker as she said, her voice cold as ice chips, “I’ll call you back later.”