“We are the hands that grip the shield, the blades that sever the tendrils, the cannons that loose the salvo. We are the resolve of men. We form a phalanx behind the battered door, humanity at our backs, ready to shatter the world’s intruders.”
—Cry of Emergence, Verses XIV - XVI. Author: Lieutenant General Herbert Gauss. Author’s note: In the likeness of the Lament.
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Her Soaring Guardian, the Rumblehood, dangles along the intercontinental ropeway cord, carrying with it the Kaskit Emergence Corps’ 2nd battalion to the Hyrnlak Archipelago. By the time the vessel reaches its destination, the 1st battalion, already there, will be nearly eradicated, and the 2nd will become the new 1st. The 1,000 men arrayed in the Rumblehood’s hold plow onwards for six weeks, oblivious to this impending reality.
When James Anthem first stumbles into this hollow cavity that occupies most of the gondola, he wonders if he’ll die before setting foot on the distant archipelago. Most of the souls pressed forward into this yawning cave are younger than him: late adolescents, early sophomores, some faces he may recognize from Galt Alese, but most strangers, yet all alike in their longing to be anywhere else.
The provisioners outfit them, their lieutenants array them into manageable chunks, their bunks are assigned, and the men have already started forming cliques with strangers—souls they will need to trust intimately to survive.
One morning in the cavernous hold, a lieutenant paces. “2nd platoon!” His voice is hoarse from all his incessant screaming, and he’s barely audible over seven other lieutenants voicing the same speech to their men. “Like you’ve a dagger, runts!”
Anthem repeats the Emergence Corps salute as the banged-up war vet screams. A long stitch runs from the top of his forehead to his jawline. Scars slash his neck from where maligned claws raked, and punctures from inoculations pock his arms. He says things, maybe some of which are important, but Anthem has left his mind back in Kaskit.
Two provisioners follow the lieutenant’s words by wheeling in a rack of vesicles. They’re the same as the ones his students wear at Galt Alese, and their purpose isn’t apparent to everyone besides Anthem. “The air in Hyrnlak holds a thousand strands that will crawl down your windpipes, nest in your lungs, and set up shop if you don’t take active steps to stop them.” He shakes the tank. “This mixture will kill the most disagreeable strands and stop the rest from passing through your cellular walls. Breathe from this at least once every hour and twice as much if you’re on the march. Clip the respirator on your shoulder like so.” He shows them.
Anthem tunes out halfway through the lieutenant’s explanation and remembers, from the year before, dissecting the tank-like portion of a vesicle to reveal its light inhibitor and neutralizer mix inside. The inhibitor portion of the mixture was half as effective as Kaskit’s atmosphere, contained in the enclosure surrounding the city’s inner core. Anthem lived under that protective backdrop all his years, leaving it only to study at Galt Alese’s Medical Zoology campus. Now, seeing the city as a fading tangle of ropeway cords through the hold’s aft observation window, he learns he took that secure atmosphere for granted.
The lieutenant turns around, allows his assistants to strap the tank to his back, and becomes the image of a deep sea diver with a soldier’s tunic. Once the device is fastened, a dagger appears in the lieutenant’s hand, flicked by experience or some mechanism in his shirt sleeve. He holds it to the lifeline. “If your lifeline rips and we are in battle, we will not fix it.” He slams the dagger into the tubing, cuts it, and shows the severed end to everyone like it is a hunter’s prize. “If enough strands get in, you will turn, and we will burn you on the spot.”
Anthem does his best to keep a straight face at the stupidity of burning someone with a compressed tank of gas on their back. Yet more fundamental questions come to him. “What if your lifeline catches and tears? What if it gets tangled with others? Not to mention you’re holding roughly 2000 psi of compressed gas.” Well, he said it anyway.
The 2nd platoon’s portion of the hold silences as Lieutenant Fletcher regards Anthem for the first time. Right, that’s your name.
“We’ve thought about all this shit before, private,” says the lieutenant. “You don’t tangle your lifeline, you don’t let the jungle tear it, and you don’t shoot someone in nor apply heat to their vesicle.” A few laughs rise, the loudest from someone far to the left.
Anthem’s just glad to hear that applying heat to the tanks is a bad idea. Still, as a weapon, it may be effective. “Just seems unorthodox for a neutralizer with a mix that’s more or less useless. Is this Corps engineering at its finest?”
Fletcher performs an obvious scan of Anthem. “Are you gonna make a habit of complaining in front of the platoon? Prayers for any poor sods who end up in your squad.” He picks someone from the lines. “Private? You have something to say?”
Anthem doesn’t bother turning to see who speaks. “I just know who I’ll be burning first, LT,” the private says.
“Funny,” Fletcher says, but doesn’t laugh.
“What’s funny about infighting in your ranks?” Anthem asks.
The brutish private who had spoken chooses that moment to stumble out of the line, glaring at Anthem as he takes one of the vesicle tanks from the rack, gripping it with two hands, lifts it, and holds a triumphant smile plastered across his dumb face. “Doubles as a club, right LT?”
“Get back in line, private.” Fletcher orders one of his provisioners to swipe the device, and the soldier gives it up with chagrin.
It could be the droning hours of the impending dangling journey or the promise of a painful strand-induced death at their destination. It could be the drills he will suffer, the training exercises performed in a cramping gondola’s hold. It could be the prospect of being criticized by his lieutenant and the conversations in whispers Anthem will no doubt hear of. It could also be Evi Haricot sitting in the front row of the lecture hall—that insufferable wench. It seems fate had conspired against Anthem the moment he had taken her by the wrist. Any of these points could be why Anthem chooses not to drop the issue. “Seems like this meathead only has the capacity to operate clubs anyway,” he says and mimes an early human smacking a club against a rock. He puts on his best droopy face.
Silence.
“Pardon me?” asks Fletcher.
What comes next needs to be said. “Because this meathead is infused with the Ape strand, I may give some leeway. It bolsters his courage and bravery by increasing his pain tolerance and dampens his fear response, too, sure, but it strips the brain of advanced functions in the interim. There has not been a single Ape-infused man who has invented anything or has lent any significant contribution to the fields of science, history, mathematics, medical zoology, or any worthwhile pursuit beyond those of the body. An Ape is a workhorse and nothing more.” Anthem points at the red-headed Ape-infused private and turns to the other men in line. “Do you guys think he’s aware that the Ape strand bent his right eye and receded his hairline? He’s not a day past twenty-one, but he looks twice that.”
The lieutenant’s smile is full of both scorn and humor. “Quite the chatty sod, aren’t you?”
The Ape, however, isn’t as patient. He wobbles in the line like a statue about to break before stepping out again and snapping a vesicle tank off the rack. He raises it above his head. “See what happens when he tries to catch it.”
“I’m not sure if he has the mental capacity to throw a stick at a target standing still three feet away,” Anthem tells the men.
“You fucker!” The Ape winds his arms back, ready to throw the vesicle.
“Private,” Fletcher says, one hand still clutching the dagger. “If that thing leaves your hands, I will insert this knife into your jugular, and we will write home to your chapter house that you died attempting to destroy valuable equipment belonging to the Emergence Corps.”
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It will take more than a throw to destroy the tank, but the Ape gets the idea. He fumes between clenched teeth, a snarling dog behind its cage. He places the tank back onto the rack.
“That meathead’s name is Frine,” whispers one of the soldiers to the right after the tension has more or less dissolved.
Anthem can hear plainly from the deep tone of his voice that this soldier hosts the Ox. The strand feeds testosterone, protein, and carbohydrates into its host. “Ox man,” Anthem says.
A cheeky smile, a bit of playful aggression, but nothing to fear. “Unwin.”
Upon closer inspection, this Unwin has survived the edge of that Ox infusion but came out better for it. The Corps probably had to tailor a uniform specifically for him, as he is approaching 7 feet tall. Yet there is something else in the shape of his jawline, the way his shoulders hunch too far forward, the bumps on his chin that should not be there, and the gray cast marring his throat. “Some of the Peregrine strand, too,” Anthem says. “Just a bit living right inside your lung. Left lung. That’s why you hardly need to chew your food, I’m guessing.”
Unwin smiles sheepishly as if to confirm his analysis. He looks down. “Do you always do this to people when you meet them?”
“Do what?”
They form into squads shortly after that, Anthem following the Ox-infused, his only semblance of an ally in this place. He keeps on the other side of their section, as far away from the meathead as possible while he awkwardly stares Anthem down from across the room. Men pace, carousing each other, making an effort to grow accustomed to the packs hanging off their sides and the Emergence Corps vesicles, their tanks triple the size of those Kaskit issues. When it is Anthem’s turn, he lets the provisioners connect the lifeline and finish their inspection before he takes a whiff. It’s a stale vapor that claims to be flavorless, but all Anthem can taste is a tangy tinge not far from blood.
“This the chatty one?” asks another soldier. His head is shaved, and his gleaming smile of white might hold an ounce of sarcasm. The insignia on his chest is different from the others. “Sergeant Nedland to you, private.”
“Anthem,” says Anthem, and fires off a limp salute, not caring if the imaginary dagger slips out of his grip. “Sir, then.”
Nedland doesn’t seem to care much for form, instead picking out men seemingly at random from the press. The squad fills to ten before the last soldier walks up to theirs, and Anthem imagines what it would be like to meet an old friend from Galt Alese. This could be the beginning of a tale where the heroes reunite, but instead, the last of the litter is a scrawny youth Anthem doesn’t recognize. “Sergeant Nedland, sir?” The boy squeaks like a mouse would. “Rupert Hamill, sir.”
Sergeant Nedland doesn’t seem to care that the man looks barely old enough to have hit puberty, let alone serve in the Corps. However, this is likely due to an Olm strand that planted itself early, reducing Hamill’s metabolic rate and, by extension, his caloric intake and stunting his growth.
Nedland only nods his acknowledgment at the boy. “Take a look around you, boys,” says the sergeant, “we are the 3rd squad.” The mood of christening a gondola settles. “I don’t want to be here as much as you do, but stomach me, and I’ll put up with you lots. No complaining. If you got something to argue about, say it, but if you don’t, then my word is law, alright?” Nedland looks at the sorry group arrayed in front of him, this collection of doomed souls. “Just let me know if I’m doing something wrong.”
Judging from the shouts and drills the other squads suffer, Nedland is the only sergeant sporting humility in their platoon. Maybe it’s a weakness, but Anthem considers himself lucky.
In the ensuing months, the men adopt the squadron identity as comfortably as a new jacket three sizes too large. They lumber around awkwardly, going from forgetting each other’s names to remembering them like rashes that won’t go away. The hold becomes three-quarters of their life; they train in it, practice reloading in it, beat each other to bloody pulps in it, dine in it, and laze together in it. They learn the fundamentals of operating the compressors to fill the vesicles, the boilers to heat the water, and the culture vats to grow food from cells using Replicator strands. Anthem finds the latter lessons the most interesting but tries not to dwell on home as he listens with one ear.
They explore the confines of the Rumblehood, memorizing every pocket of the lumbering vessel as if it is an extension of their body. They spend their off-hours watching the passing Kaskitian countryside, counting the support towers and losing track after a thousand and something. They gather as their home city’s municipal boundary transitions to Lapasia’s, just as the ropeway cord changes its northern trajectory to the west. They dangle along until they reach the Swathe, the mostly drained ocean surrounding Salvarin. When that time comes, the landscape below changes to dried-out seabeds akin to craters on the Lone Soldier’s surface, dotted with remnants of coral and dead fauna. Anthem wishes more than once that he could jump off and explore everything that passes by.
As the Rumblehood sways on, the discussions turn from surface level to personalities, to experiences, and then to fears. They save these whispered admissions for when they reach the barracks, one for each squadron of each platoon. They reminisce about home, their chapter houses, and the lives they left behind and will probably never return to. They speculate on how Fletcher received his scars while revealing the origins of their own wounds. They remain restless, a mix of excitement for the journey to end and fear for what lies at the end of that long stretch of cord.
“Where are the companies?” asks Devitt one night. He’s one of the privates in their squad, and his strand makeup is a potpourri not easily discernible yet.
Anthem thinks they are the only ones awake until Unwin answers. “I hear there’s no point ‘cause there’d only be one company. So, the squads serve the platoon, and the platoon serves the battalion. The lieutenant colonel still gets to keep his rank, though.”
“Of course he does,” says Devitt. “So, no captains since there’s no companies?”
“The Thurmgeists take the Captain titles.”
“Thought I saw one earlier, lounging around in a barracks. All to herself.”
“Wouldn’t be surprised.”
Anthem is about to ask about that last point before a sharp, ringing pang rolls out. It invades every corner and crevice in the Rumblehood, a sound impossible to hide from and one they’ve spent weeks anticipating.
Nedland, previously sleeping, is the first one out of his bunk. He cranks open their cell door and runs out into the hallway. “Landing bell!” he yells. “Landing bell!”
Anthem dresses faster than he ever has and catches up to his squad in the hold, where the rest of the platoon has already gathered. The provisioners do a headcount, but every other man’s attention is on the stretch of archipelago visible in the Rumblehood’s fore and aft observation windows.
The western edge of Lomlen comes into view first. It is the archipelago’s smallest island, but even from this height, it seems to span a continent. The jungle has swallowed everything, casting its verdant blanket over even the suggestion of gaps. It’s impossible to see the detail underneath the thick tree cover, but Anthem imagines a tangle of raw ground and swarms of the maligned underneath, watching them.
Shallow rivers run, dirty rapids that are now more like mountain trails. Larger tributaries feed into muddy lakes, both mostly dried up. Deep canyons that had once been underwater trenches surround the island but are now covered in raw ground, mostly hardened or decaying in their later stages. As the Rumblehood approaches, the substance becomes evident, encroaching every inch of visible earth and climbing to the tops of the trees. Some of those trees, Anthem realizes now, are jumbled collections of roots, intertwined pillars several stories high. Pustules line some, while others are dry.
The Rumblehood cuts through putrid air, pushing aside curious maligned birds and flying eels, clinging remora as long as Anthem’s arm, only with mouth and human teeth. Anthem suppresses the urge to run to the glass and press his eyes against it to get a better look at the first maligned he’s seen outside Kaskit.
As he searches, he finds Frine in the platoon’s 2nd squad, seemingly unaware of the landscape below that was weeks coming. His only interest is James Anthem.
“Are Apes usually like that?” Unwin asks.
“Usually,” Anthem says, hoping Frine’s case is as simple as that.
The Rumblehood lurches and slows. The observation windows darken as the vessel parks into the Hyrnlak Archipelago’s bullwheel terminal. It clasps the entire Rumblehood in its mouth, though unmanned and relying on the Rumblehood’s crew to serve. Those men spread out, anchoring the vessel on a turning dock that rotates around the entire terminal, allowing the ropeway cord to keep spinning while passengers disembark.
Wenches turn. Gears and pulleys work. The complex terminal mechanisms powered by thermal pistons using heat drawn from the Gash beneath the bullwheel terminal are a mystery to Anthem, but he can appreciate their intricate workings. As he’s pondering this, Nedland yells to them, and then Fletcher shouts an order. The Rumblehood’s only ramp lowers for the first time in six weeks. By some primal instinct to be free from their cage, the battalion runs onto it.
The terminal’s plateau overlooks Lomlen’s southern edge, winding down into the dried-up seabed via a snaking path of palisade walls and then up again against the cliffs of an empty bay. A ruined city with a name long lost but now termed Ropeway Landing Zone 1 overlooks the new arrivals, crushed to pieces as if by a god’s hand. The largest broken structure sits atop the cliff, most of its surviving bulk carved into it. At the bottom of the dried bay, the palisade path enters a cave.
Clouds form outside from the moisture evaporating from the raw ground. Lightning tears cracks through the sky, flashing palm trees that bend like limp, dead hands. From them dangle what looks like torn curtains, swaying and writhing with no wind.
When the Rumblehood reattaches to the line and leaves the Hyrnlak Archipelago, the men take it as their cue to run along a path of palisades leading to the ruined city and towards their pocket of the Hells.