Bastion 2 - Chapter 22

“Are you ready?” I asked Mae.

“As I’ll ever be. I hope this works,” she said with less confidence than I wanted to hear.

I’d trained for a whole week increasing my range with Tuko, and I was confident that we’d make it there and back.

I blew all the air from my lungs then sucked down a cold breath that invigorated my tired mind. Training all week meant I’d been up in the early hours to escape Ko-nah’s watchful gaze and still make it on time to meditation. Today was no different, except I had tied myself to the highest branch of a pine tree that would hold my weight. I checked the binds one more time and, when I was certain they were tight enough to support me if I jumped or moved—as I sometimes did when direct piloting Tuko—closed my eyes.

I exhaled and sought out Tuko lying in wait in Woong-ji’s office. My vision returned, but I was sitting on the metal workbench next to Woong-ji’s massive project. I stretched out Tuko’s many limbs and gained my footing. The adjustments to the length of his legs and body shell had thrown my equilibrium out of balance, but after a week of training I was almost comfortable with it.

I reached for the window latch and clicked it open, then lodged Tuko’s grappling hook into the worn wood of the awning. I descended quietly. The only noises I could ‘hear’ were the vibrations that shook Tuko’s metal casing. I hadn’t discovered a way to install sound receivers on Tuko’s body, so Mae had learned to convert the vibrations in his body to an audible sound in my head—similar to the way she spoke in my mind.

I landed like a graceful spider, and retracted the grappling hook.

Mae assisted my vision by giving distance measurements to the hole in the wall, and another much farther in the distance to the signal location. I followed her direction and made it to the cutout section in the wall Yuri and Cho had made the week before. Tuko’s hooked-claw forelimbs squeezed into the edges of the brick and pulled it loose, then set it aside. I tucked all the limbs but the two up front under his belly, making my profile as compact as possible.

We squeezed through the meter-thick wall, dragging ourselves along with the front limbs, until we reached the next blocking brick. It pushed out easily and I extended the long neck out the hole to check the surroundings. The city around the school was eerily motionless. Some vibrations rattled nearby, but they were generators of some kind we’d identified days ago.

I crawled out and put the blocking brick back into the hole to obscure it. I skittered along the shadowed streets, stopping at every crossing to check for activity. After a few kilometers, I noticed a few drunkards stumbling around, and some escorts on their way home from a night’s work. I’d have to stick more closely to the shadows to avoid detection. Didn’t need anyone calling the sungchal.

The road was slick with ice from the moisture of the bay, but Tuko’s upgraded claws gave him the necessary grip to keep moving unabated. We got to the intersection Mae had marked as the signal location and turned in a circle. All the buildings were closed up, not a single window left ajar.

‘Ideas?’ I asked Mae with my monologue and held Tuko still, conserving munje.

“Roof?”

I angled Tuko’s neck to look up and saw the building was at least four stories tall. It was much too far to grapple our way up, but perhaps I wouldn’t need to. I found a window on the second floor that was shuttered with only two planks of wood and aligned my bulky body with it.

I tilted Tuko’s backside toward with window and let the grapple hook fly. It landed with a thunk I could hear reverberate through the grappling line into Tuko’s body. I reeled it in slowly and walked toward the building to prevent from swinging around with success. When we reached the window, I clamped the claws into the wood to anchor him, and released the hook.

It only took a few minutes of struggling, but I managed to slide his front leg through the gap and unblock the board that had held it in place. The window planks swung inward and us with them.

There was a desk at the far wall and a door on the wall next to it. The other two walls were lined with shelves loaded down by boxes. I climbed the window plank to get a better look at the insignia on the side of one box.

There was a waxing crescent moon in silver, with a sword pointed down that connected at the tip of each end of the moon. The handle of the weapon had five different colored ribbons—one for each munje—and then a sixth ribbon trailed out of the top like it was fluttering on the wind. The sixth ribbon was a silvery-blue.

“I’ve captured this image and stored it in my database,” Mae remarked, and I nodded Tuko’s head absently.

I climbed down the window board and plinked onto the ground with a spring. The tink-tink-tink of my legs across the stone made me worry there was too much noise, but Mae assured me it would barely be audible to any human in the area not augmenting their hearing with ry.

I skittered over to the door and rotated the handle with my front arms. ‘Where to now?’

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

While I didn’t like the idea of getting stuck on the top floor of the building, I guessed it would be a prime spot for sending and receiving the signal. I had noticed over the week of controlling Tuko’s range that the higher I was, the better chances I had of reaching him—hence being in the tree.

We found the stairs and climbed our way up to the third floor. I did a cursory glance around to make sure there wasn’t something of great importance—just more boxes—and then made my way up to the fourth. There were a few more things here, boxes of different sizes, some of which had been opened. Hay stuffing lay about the floor here, dampening the sounds of my feet as I investigated.

Mae hummed. “The indents in the hay look like it held broadcast equipment for sure. They probably shipped it in waves to avoid suspicion. You don’t have any information on boarder customs, so neither do I. Not sure how they’re getting this stuff in, or if it’s just as simple as pulling up to the docks and unloading.”

I grimaced. ‘I hope not.’

I left the room behind after Mae captured a few more images. The stairs to the roof were blocked at the top by a thick metal door. I pressed on it with all the strength Tuko had, but it wasn’t enough to lift even one panel.

We returned to the room on the fourth floor and found another window. The overhang of the awning was too far back to see it, or aim at it, and so I did the next best thing. I spooled out the grappling hook and brought it to my forelimbs. Mae helped me with the math as I swirled the hook around and around in my right arm.

I released it and the hook sailed up and out. When it reached peak tautness, it curved back in and landed on something with a clank. I tugged on it a few times to ensure we weren’t about to clatter to an untimely death, then slowly reeled it back in while stabilizing with my many legs.

The palms of my hands tingled and clammed up as I saw the ground, what looked like a million kilometers away. My vision fuzzed and I felt my control of Tuko slipping. I cut off the vision portion and focused only on reeling in the grappling hook.

I heard the vibrations of his carapace scraping against stone and reached toward the wall with all his limbs as I reengaged the visual connection. We’d made it to the roof, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Half the munje reserves used,” Mae reported, and I redacted my sigh of relief.

I turned us around to see a two-meter spire at the center of the roof.

“That is definitely for broadcasting and receiving radio signals,” Mae affirmed and began capturing images.

The top of the spire had a thick ball that shined unlike any other metal I’d seen. Down the shaft there were little loops with hooks for metal wires that ran between the construct and the edges of the building.

“Bad news, Jiyong. This is just a routing station. The signal origin is not from here, but from another location. Get Tuko over there and touch the spire.”

I walked across the roof with unease. ‘It won’t hurt us or anything, right?’

“Shouldn’t. Touching the spire will allow me to transfer some of your munje into it. I’ll be able to trace the signal origin—I hope.”

It was our only way forward, so there was nothing that could be done. If Tuko was going to get fried up here, at least we’d be one step closer to figuring out who was behind all this. I put a forelimb out and touched the metal rod, watching as a tiny trickle of my ma swirled down the claw and into the spire.

“Tracing… give me a minute.”

The wind shook the spire and wires, sending vibrations all up my arm. There was a single, loud slam that shook Tuko’s legs and my heart skipped a beat. I swiveled Tuko’s head to look around us and I kept my breathing steady through my nose. The visuals shuddered—due to my anxiety no doubt—and I redoubled my effort to keep my focus on Tuko’s body instead of getting lost in the feelings of mine.

Another slam as the wires around me trembled and I jumped, my head smack against the tree trunk behind me. ‘Has it been a minute?’ I asked as I turned my attention from the metal doors on the ground to the edge of the building.

“I have it localized to a thirty-meter radius, but I’ll need to see a detailed city map to narrow it down.”

‘Good enough,’ I thought as I walked to the edge of the building. I looked over the ledge to see the window on the fourth floor had been shut and barred. ‘Tungpah!’

I clamped my claws on one of the many thick wires running to the spire and scrambled over the edge. I pointed the grappling hook at the window, then fired. There was a closer bangand the metal door on the rooftop burst open. Two heads appeared walking up the steps and I let go of the wire with a quick prayer.