Iron Drumbeat Chapter 13

Not going to lie. Things are still rough. I'm doing my best, though. Hope everyone enjoys the chapter. Thanks for reading, and thanks for being patient.

Oh and CW for like, body horror and repeated death and a casual bit of self-unaliving.

The pipe burst with a short-lived scream, then a whoosh as awful dark red fuel poured forth from the hole.

“Fuck!” I swore, beginning to panic as precious fuel sprayed out onto the grated metal floor. We couldn't afford to lose this fuel!

The fumes danced back up through the mesh from the steel beneath as the dark red fuel began to wisp and evaporate into its natural state as a gas. The fuel we used was not a safe substance to come into contact with. It howled and screeched like a living, hating thing, and yet, according to Tink, the “developed world” used it as a primary fuel source for heavy mechanicals like our mech transport.

Almost a second went by as the precious, evil liquid spilled out of the broken pipe, before I grimaced and made a decision.

Stepping forward into the stream, I whimpered with pain as the red liquid hit my skin. From the moment of contact, it tried to rip the meat from my bones—but that wasn't enough. It wanted more, I could feel it clawing, tearing, begging for me to give in to its deep hunger—and yet, I couldn't even if I'd wanted to.

Any parts of me that were eaten by the red mist would evaporate into fog soon enough. It was, however, still bloody painful when I shoved my whole arm into the burst pipe. I think I screamed, then, but I wasn't sure. Nah, actually, I definitely screamed, but the memories of the damned ain't ever really solid enough to make binary judgement calls on little things like who made what noise with their mouth.

The edges of my vision veered drunkenly in and out, like my consciousness was gagging, but not quite vomiting me into oblivion. Vaguely, I was aware of the sounds of tools working, and then the howling began to quieten, until it was nothing more than a dry rasp from my aching throat.

Tink stood on the burst pipe, having wrapped an emergency valve around the pipe. For a heartbeat, my pain-broken mind wondered how the valve could work through the pipe, before I began to fully comprehend the state I was in.

My right forearm was nothing but clean bone surrounded by stray wisps of fog. At my elbow, my flesh was dancing in a breeze that only the fog could feel, because that's what it was. Unlike with the fog entities in the scrapyard, who'd parted my flesh with blades, or bludgeoned it with fists, the fuel had destroyed the material of my body utterly.

My arm was definitely the worst of it, but all over my body were streaked holes, where fog danced like snipped cobwebs. Blood was also coming out of the wounds, but not nearly fast enough. It was another reminder—invasive as an AI street hawker—that I was no longer fully human.

A human, after all, would be dead as shit right now, and yet here I stood— actually, ‘standing’ was a strong word in this context. I leaned against a bulkhead, looking like a realistic soft toy that had been used as target practice—white fluffy stuffing hanging out and trailing off me in clumps.

“We lost too much.” Tink signed, their ears drooping with worry. They weren't even looking at me or the state of my body.

I wasn't surprised, either. It'd been a month since we'd left the scrapyard in our affectionately named ‘Scarabass’, the walking mech transport. During those four long weeks with nothing but eld-fog beyond the portholes, I’d had to fight, and in many cases die, to protect our lumbering home.

The ghouls and other small-time horrors of the fog were dangerous, but the bigger, more alien things that shadowed us were the true threat. The one time that a greater abomination actually tried to assault Scarabass, I went out in the mech and fired as many bullets as possible into its dark, looming shadow.

We never really saw what it was—only its many chitinous spiked appendages as they crashed down from above to screech alarmingly off the hull of the transport. Damn, but those old civilisation boys had built our Scarabass to take a hit.

We got away from the massive monster, but I could only imagine we’d frustrated it enough that it decided to leave, rather than because we’d defeated it.

A light but insistent touch jerked me out of the horror festival in my mind, and I looked down to see Tink staring sympathetically back up at me, one hand wrapped around my non-ruined wrist. “Nirad, you are hurt. Choice? Medical attention, or death?”

I coughed out a pained laugh, then looked down at myself. The hungry red fuel had ripped chunks off me here and there, leaving only my artificial parts unscathed. Looking at myself, and at the amount of damage I’d taken, I let out an awful, gurgling sigh.

Not being all that confident in my ability to speak, I used my very basic understanding of their sign language, “What death number?”

“I think this would be eight,” said my fluffy little tinkerer friend.

“Great,” I signed sarcastically with my ruined hand, which was mostly bone and could only move thanks to wisps of fog pulling at things like puppet strings. My other hand reached for the gun at my hip.

Waiting for your body to recongeal out of the fog was both a long, and short process. The time it took was barely the blink of an eye, but without my senses, I was floating in the void. Spirits, but it was a strange experience — and it weren’t just because of the no eyes or ears thing. Nah, you got disconnected from all those weird squishy bodily impulses that poke you into this or that action. Even your hormones and shit — no adrenaline to pump you up — freak you out, and no melatonin to tell you how sleepy you are. Just… thoughts, memories, and the recollection of what those missing sensations used to feel like.

Then, one chunk at a time, your bits would get reconstructed and all of that crap would reassert itself, and you’d forget what it was like to have that moment of clarity.

Taking my first deep breath, I found, to my surprise, that I didn’t actually care about this death. It’d been clean — a bullet through the brain — but still… I reckoned that there should’ve been more to it than a simple breath and a shrug.

I hadn’t actually done that shrug yet, of course, so I did, and was reminded of how fuckin’ cold it was out in the eld-fog. Hugging my miraculously restored work clothes to my thin frame, I pressed over to where Tink already had the outer airlock door open. Spirits, she was a good little fluffy monkey-cat alien. If she were human, I’d be catching feelings.

Another week went by, and our situation grew worse. The fog reminded me of a kid from the gang — Cube. He’d just yap and yap about the weirdest shit, in a never ending cloud of noise that dulled your senses. The fog was like that too — it went on forever and turned your brain to mush from boredom. Of course, every now and then some abyssal horror would attack the Scarabass and there’d be excitement for a small period. I guess, to fit with the analogy, the abomination attacks would be akin to when Cube took a breath.

Anyway, with the fuel we’d lost from the three or four leakage incidents, we were looking at the horrific possibility that we might get stranded in the fog. That was basically a death sentence — a true death sentence, even for us Neons. All things that existed in the fog would eventually be either consumed utterly by the fog, or be twisted into some horror beyond comprehension.

Sitting with Tink in the cockpit one day, I asked a question that I should’ve asked when we first embarked on our journey through the fog. “Hey, Tink.”

“Hey, Nirad,” they said flippantly with one hand. That, in turn, caused another question to suddenly appear in my brain.

“Actually first, when we spoke, did you say your pronouns were they/them, or she/her? I can’t remember and I’ve been flip flopping between both,” I told the fluffy creature at my side.

Tink glanced sidelong at me, then took both hands off the yoke in exasperation. “Your language lacks terms to adequately describe the genders of my species. At birth, I was categorised as a child-bearer, but with the capacity for a seed-sower, or early-nurturer, if I so chose. When my second growth arrived, I did not like the idea of the trinary. It was too rigid, and it did not define how I wished to lay out the path of my life. Forced by biology to choose, I chose the form of child-bearer, but I set off to define myself as more than that. I became a creator, a scientist, with aspirations of becoming an engineer, a respectable calling that all burrows hold in esteem.”

Wow. That was the most I’d ever gotten from the furry little mechanic. It was so interesting, too, learning about their species and culture. Still, they hadn’t answered my question…

“In your language, and in your culture, women have fought to broaden what a woman actually is, and so I feel comfortable with the pronoun of ‘she’ since it is one of strength, but also femininity. Others within your culture have sought to throw off the yoke of your binary altogether, and have chosen ‘they’ as their pronoun,” Tink continued, stopping between sentences to make small course corrections. “I admire such individuals, because their struggle sings in unison with my own. So, in summary, I do not mind either. She, or they, both are fine. Perhaps, you could use whichever best describes your view of me in that moment.”

I sat for a long minute, digesting what she’d said there. It was very interesting, to hear my culture examined so clinically, but also wow was her species complicated. What the heck was the difference between whatever all those categorisations she was on about. The part where they said fuck you to all of the norms was very on-brand for Tink, though.

“Spirits, that’s a lot to take in,” I said, staring out the window and into the wisping, churning fog.

Tink’s hands formed a reply, but I leaned forward with a sudden frown. The fog… it never moved around much — unless.

“Tink! Look! There’s wind! It’s coming from… uh… slightly off our left side,” I said. In my excitement, I’d stood up from the seat to get a better look, then almost smacked my head on an instrument panel.

On legs that were far more nimble than they appeared, Scarabass changed course, heading into the wind. If I was right, we’d be out of the fog soon! Holy styx, we were saved!