They watched as Harmer and Shon Tooms loaded their firearms, the latter with the assistance of a grinning technician who handed him a tin of copper cased cartridges. With the exception of the signalmen, everyone had stopped working and come out to see the show.

While Tooms clumsily pushed his rounds one at a time into a grooved hole on the side of the Suppressor’s receiver, Harmer took out a paper cartridge from the box at her waist. The markswoman tore off the end, emptied the powder down the muzzle, and shoved the wad of paper after it. She then slotted in a slender, six-sided projectile which fitted perfectly against the unique polygonal rifling of the barrel. This was in stark contrast to the cylindrical, conical bullets used in the standard infantry musket. Harmer tamped it all down with her rammer, replaced it, then set a percussion cap onto its nipple. Noticing Tooms still struggling to load in his last few rounds, she faked a yawn and commented:

“Took you long enough. I’ve been ready to roll for ages now.”

“Cocky today, aren’t we?” Tooms grunted.

“Say! We haven’t agreed on the terms of our wager. Range?”

“Shall we say…350 meters?” Tooms suggested.

“Fine. That ought to give you a sporting chance,” Harmer adjusted her side scope for distance, “What are you betting?”

“Loser cleans the winner’s rifle and shines their boots for the next eight weeks whenever they asks,” Tooms said, “I’m letting you off lightly.”

“Nuts to that! Don’t you have any money, Tooms?”

“No, I don’t, and neither do you. Where you been, girl? They haven’t paid us since last month.”

“The little weasel probably spent it all a-whoring,” muttered Beans. He let out a noisome burp and started chewing on a piece of sugarcane. Beans always kept a stalk of the sweet grass on him, claiming they helped settle his weak stomach. Tooms shooed him away, saying:

“Go stand over there, Beans. I don’t want to undergo spontaneous combustion here.”

“Up yours!” Beans said, taking offense, “Just for that, I’m betting on Harmer. Half a day’s wages—anyone up for it?”

“I’ll take that action,” Cooly said loyally, unwilling to bet against his partner, “You wanna get in on this, Leming?”

“Gambling is a sin,” the scholar replied, adjusting his spectacles, “But on the other hand this is almost like an empirical test. Empiricism is a core tenet of the creed, and is therefore, divine.”

Satisfied with his own justification, Leming dug into his pockets for spare change.

Technicians walked out and set up two wooden targets onto which Amit profiles had been printed, the central nerve clusters marked out in yellow circles roughly ten centimetres in diameter. Harmer and Tooms got into position behind a line that Deschane eagerly drew in the sand.

“I think you’ve got him all wrong,” Ven said suddenly.

“Do I now?” Pretty Boy replaced his dirk in a scabbard hidden along the inner part of his forearm, “Just to clarify: are we talking about Deschane or Nong here?”

“Both,” Ven replied, “Deschaine wouldn’t throw in his lot with this conspiracy unless he was convinced of Nong’s sincerity. They both believe with every fibre of their being that this Engine of theirs exists.”

“And what do you believe in?” Pretty Boy dug at her.

“Me? I believe in artillery,” she said, evading the question.

Pretty Boy cackled, slapping the hilt of the heavy cavalry backsword he wore on his right hip alongside a short stabbing weapon that resembled a metal stake.

Ven wasn’t laughing. To tell the truth, she was ashamed of herself. What she really ought to have said was:

“I believe in Sollem Deschaine.”

So why hadn’t she?

From far away in the Nothern Hinterlands came a rumbling as of distant lightning storms amassing their strength. The afternoon suns were just beginning to rise above the karst formations, enrobing them in bands of velvety blue and mauve, the high ridges presenting themselves like the walls of an impossible black citadel.

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Seeing it now, Ven could not shake the idea that somewhere behind that wall of undiscovered country, her world ended where another one began. Her musings were interrupted by a flicker of movement at the furthest extremity of her vision, mere dots wheeling about the bald peaks of the mountains.

What was that? A flight of birds? It couldn’t be; their wings had flashed as they had turned towards the sunrise. A scourge of daggergnats more likely, though if so, they were larger than any subspecies she had ever seen before.

Meanwhile on the firing range, Deschane waited for the techs to clear out before he began the contest.

“Ready!”

Harmer cocked her Hex. Tooms pushed on the large trigger guard, which swung down as part of a lever that he folded back up again with a satisfying: ka-chink!

“Aim!”

They rested their stocks against their shoulders, Harmer easing slowly into her stance. Deschaine suddenly drew his cycler pistol and emptied several of its chambers right next to their ears as he gave the command:

“Fire!”

Harmer didn’t even blink. The markswoman’s rifle spat once, striking the nerve cluster dead centre and sending woodchips flying. Initially rattled by the navigator’s fusillade, Shon Tooms shot twice before he fumbled at the lever, struggling to eject a smoking shell.

He still managed to put three more rounds into the target while Harmer was occupied with ramming down her second bullet. She was squinting down her scope again by the time Tooms had racked in his thirteenth cartridge.

Phwut!

The hexagonal bullet made a distinctive whistle as it spun. But Ven was disappointed to see that no new hole had appeared on Harmer’s target—this time the markswoman had missed the Amit completely.

Shon Tooms ejected his last, unspent round and lowered the Suppressor with a smirk.

“Cease fire. Cease fire on the firing line,” Deschaine said, and everyone strolled up to the targets to inspect the results.

“...eleven, twelve, thirteen,” Nong finished counting the holes on Toom’s target, “Every round in the fatal spot. Well done, private!”

“Should I be worried?” Deschaine asked Harmer. She spread her hands in a graceful admission of defeat, saying:

“Toom may have gotten the better of me this time, but don’t think for a moment I’ve gone cross-eyed. A girl’s got her pride, you know?”

Deschaine re-examined her target, feeling at the one hole with his forefinger. It had an ovaloid shape as opposed to the perfect circles on Toom’s target, and Ven soon worked out what had happened: Harmer had put the second bullet into almost the exact same spot as the first. Toom’s bullet holes also had a relatively tight grouping of four centimetres across, though it was nothing compared to Harmer’s freakish accuracy.

“Show-off,” Tooms offered the markswoman a handshake, “Shall we call it a draw?”

“Away with you,” Harmer slapped it playfully aside, “A deal’s a deal. I’m still not trading in my Hex for that newfangled contraption of yours.”

Tooms tilted his head in a token of respect. The other pathfinders rushed in to slap him on the back, ruffling his head fondly. Cooly pushed through them all, lugging his favourite 17.5 mm shoulder cannon.

“Oy, loader!” he barked at Tooms, “Stop playing the hero and help me set up. I want to squeeze a few off before we ship out, get me groove on.”

“Right-o,” said Shon Tooms. He turned back to Harmer and gave her the Suppressor, “Give this a shining, would you?”

“Aye aye,” Harmer said, performing an elaborate curtsy.

“Oh, and do my boots too, while you’re at it. I’m kidding, I’m kidding!” he added quickly as Harmer threatened to take a swing at him.

Tooms took his accustomed position behind Cooly. The mobile artillerist was easily twice the size of his assistant, and he needed to be—the smallest shoulder cannons weighed upwards of twenty kilograms when loaded.

Everyone got back behind the firing line. Cooly balanced the heap of brass on his powerful frame and knelt for added stability, right hand on the rear grip and left on the fore grip, face pressing into the cheek weld, the burlap-padded stock nestled tight against his shoulder.

“Load charge,” Cooly ordered. Tooms turned the hand-crank that exposed the breech by means of a cam, the action of which also cocked a hammer on the side. He opened the waterproof ammo pack strapped to Cooly’s back and took out a complicated package that combined three components: a flannel bag containing the powder charge, a pointed lead slug and a wooden sabot disc sandwiched between them to align the projectile. Tooms loaded the shoulder cannon and closed the breech with another turn of the crank.

“Loaded,” Tooms confirmed.

“Brace.”

“Braced,” said Tooms, holding Cooly by the shoulder blades and leaning into him.

“Firing!”

A fist-sized hole appeared on one of the targets, the slug smacking into the side of the mountain where it caused a small avalanche in the process. A cheer went up from the audience and the enthusiastic techs went around exchanging high fives with the pathfinders; Ven got the sense that they didn’t get much in the way of entertainment out here. Even Greymoss looked up from his nap with a drowsy smile.

“Shakka-lakka!” Cooly thumped his chest like a war drum, “Did you all see that?”

Ven couldn’t stop herself from grinning. Rene would have loved this. This whole excursion was beginning to feel like a holiday.

While everyone else was making merry, a tech burst out of the tent carrying a single piece of paper which he delivered straight into Nong’s hands. The commissioner took one look at the message and pulled Deschane aside, whispering urgently into the navigator’s ear. At once the pair of them slipped back into the depot, the crowd oblivious to their disappearance

Here it comes again, Ven thought. The bubbling disquiet in her gut had returned, along with a raw and overpowering urge to tuck into the nearest hole and hide.

“It’s begun,” Pretty Boy said softly, and Ven knew that he felt it too. And that, more than anything else, frightened her.