06: Chasing Smoke

My mind had spun all that night, and the prospect of crossing the single more treacherous passage on Earth had only a very small part to play in that spinning. The rest of it was Naomy – her beautiful blue eyes, olive skin, and exotic features. She was a beautiful creature, and more than that, she loved me, and though I forced myself to never acknowledge my own feelings about her, it had been getting harder by the day lately. It didn't make it any easier that she could have been mine a thousand times in the past, if only I had let her.

But every time I imagined myself happily in her arms, I saw my wife's dead eyes looking back at me instead of Naomy's, accusing me, cursing me, damning me. I was betraying her. At first, I think Naomy had thought I would come to accept things, and return the love she had shown to me. When a few years had past, and she began to see things as they really were, she carried an edge of sadness around with her. I had always felt guilt about that, but I was powerless to fix it, so I thought.

Then again, I had never kissed her before. For a second, I almost thought I could forget about the past. For a second.

And why not? This was a woman who had literally and figuratively saved my life, with her own bare hands. I owed more than I liked to admit to myself. Aside from breaking me out of the shell, she had made me a better person. When I had wanted to turn my back on humanity, she had shown what it meant to have compassion again, and to care. She had always had a knack for getting me into trouble.

* * *

The Atlantic expanse was every bit as hazardous as rumour made it, with its seemingly never-ended fields of razor-sharp ice ridges, sudden drop-offs, and constantly shifting hills and valleys. Nevertheless, the crew had made good time through the first two days of the three day sojourn, with a number of close-calls, but no major problems. Of course, sleep had been fleeting, caught in short segments in between the frequent bumps, drops and slide-outs. And they all knew the risks of even being in the expanse; death could come at any moment, and completely without warning. All three of them were reluctant to close their eyes, knowing that they might never open them again.

Noal was in the midst of a fitful sleep when he was woken by an unusual change in the movement of the Gravedigger. “Why are we stopping?” he asked, groggily.

“There's smoke up ahead,” said Naomy, from the driver's seat, “Might be somebody in trouble, I thought we should check it out.”

Sal shook his head from the navigator's spot, “I tried to talk her out of it, boss, but she wouldn't have it.”

Noal grinned, “No, I bet she wouldn't. Alright, bring us in nice and slow, and stay alert. I'd rather not take any unnecessary chances.”

“Thank you Noal,” said Naomy, smiling.

“You're welcome, Nae; I know you'd never forgive yourself if we didn't at least check it out.”

Naomy stopped the Gravedigger and looked back appreciatively, brushing his fingers briefly over Noal's cheek. They had pulled up close to one-hundred feet from the source of the smoke, a nondescript mass of metallic angles that was difficult to identify from that distance. Noal secured his ice-suit and opened the toyo door. “I'll take a closer look and call you if I need you.”

Noal hiked slowly through the ice, trying to make sense of what he was seeing through the wind-blown sleet blowing in the from the north. He thought he could see something moving inside it, but he wasn't sure. As he crept closer, a terrified female voice cut through the wind.

“Help me! I need help! Get me out of here!”

Noal turned and ran back toward the Gravedigger, signaling for Naomy and Sal to come to him. “I think there's a woman trapped inside a toyo up here, we've got to get her out of there!”

The crew ran as fast as they could and found a wrecked toyocar, billowing smoke, and the same woman's voice crying for help. Noal got there first, kicking at windows and clawing at doors in a frantic attempt to get the poor woman out, and his compansions were beside him half a second later.

Suddenly the woman's crying voice changed to a metallic countdown. “Three. Two. One.” Followed by a series of high-pitched beeps. The trio had barely registered that something was odd before a bright flash erupted from the wreck, crackling with a wave of electric shock that dropped them to the ground, incapacitated and paralyzed. The crunching of multiple boots on ice carried toward them, along with familiar voices. “Looks like our dear bar-keep was as good as his word. I guess I won't have to kill him, after all.”

Suddenly Noal was staring into the smiling, dreadlocked face of the navigator and his men, from the Snowmobile Savage's cantina in Johnstown. “Well howdy there, mister Noal Silver. Missed your old pal Cinder, did you? I guess I didn't miss you, though, did I?” he laughed, odorously, as his men hauled the powerless Codexers to their feet and hauled them toward four black toyocars, painted with bright white skull and crossbones that had just pulled around from behind the simulated wreck. Other men were already inside the Gravedigger, pulling it around to meet the others. “Nice toyo you got there, mister Silver, mind if I hold onto it?” mocked Cinder.

“Take good care of it,” said Noal, weakly, “I'll be needing that back after I'm done killing you all.”

Cinder guffawed, “Did you hear that, boys? 'After he kills us all' he says! Ha! Ha!” The pirate navigator took away Noal's voice with a backhanded cuff across the face. “That'll shut ye up, then. Secure 'em in the Jolly Roger, I'll be there presently.”

The pirates dragged Noal and his crew into one of the toyos, shackling them to the ceiling with what appeared to be old-world handcuffs, though they were still unable to move of their own accord. A pirate got into the driver's pit a moment later, followed by Cinder in the navigator's seat. “I'm afraid ye'll have to be our guests for the time being,” said the pirate navigator, as the toyo pulled off and sped away, “Our boss would like a, hem, word wi' ya.” The driver chuckled along with him.

“You've been attracting a lot of attention to yourselves,” Cinder continued, “And not the kind I imagine you wanted, which is where I come in. Been following you since you left Winnipeg, and let me just say, no one was more surprised than me when Rico's End went up like a holiday firecracker! Even I never did anything quite like that before. At least, when I take out a satellite colony, I leave the site intact when I'm through.”

“You're a true humanitarian,” Noal retorted.

Cinder laughed, “Yer a funny guy, Noal; I like that. I don't think the boss'll be quite so amused, though. You'd all best rest up, though, we'll be at our base in a couple'a hours. It'll be good to be home!”

“Where are you taking us?” asked Noal, feebly.

“Our little home out here in the expanse,” Cinder smiled at Noal's surprised look. “Wondering how we can maintain a permanent base out here in the bloody flux, no doubt. Some years ago, we, or I should say, the boss, found a rather anomalous section of expanse; a section that is anchored into the sea-floor, and therefore does not shift.”

“Anchored how?”

“I guess I can tell you, seeing as you won't be leaving anytime soon, and even if you did leave, you'd never be able to find it again,” Cinder explained, “It is like a shaft of ice – a giant shaft that extends all the way the down. Bloody one-of-a-kind, no less! And only a handful of people even know it exists. Nice place for a secret base, wouldn't you say?”

Cinder continued his inane babbling for the next two hours, until the toyo approached what appeared to be a large ice-crystal jutting up from the shell. As the Jolly Roger approached, the shaft shifted, pulling out and away from the shell to reveal a hidden ramp descending down into it.

“Welcome to Anflux, the proud home of our own Brigands of the Expanse,” Cinder announced, “I'm sure you'll find your accommodations... comfortable.”

The trio was hauled from an expansive garage through myriad passages carved out of the ice-shell and eventually tossed, prostrate into a single prison cell secured with a heavy steel door. “Seems the boss hasn't arrive quite yet, so you all can just sit tight in here until he arrives,” Cinder told them, closing the door, “Could be awhile. Don't cause any problems for my men; boss wants you alive, not necessarily unharmed, understand?”

The trio succumbed to unconsciousness, waking an indeterminate amount of time later. They were stiff and sore from their ordeal, but at least they were able to move again, though they were shackled to the floor with the same sort of old-world handcuffs as before. Noal stretched his aching muscles and the others did the same, all of them looking particularly worse for wear, and none-too-pleased on top of it.

Sal was in a particularly terrible mood. “Well this is a nice little predicament we're in now, thanks to you two and your insufferable compassion! Let me just recap here: whose idea was it to get out of the 'digger and walk towards an obvious trap? Ohh yeah, it was you two. And who was it who suggested leaving the mysterious smoke alone? Right, right that was me, wasn't it? But I'm not gonna say I told you so.”

“Shut up, Sal,” fired Naomy, “You may be a product of the major metros, but you knew what you were signing on for when you came to Core, and the Codex isn't any different, in that regard.”

“Maybe, Nae, but it's not our responsibility to stop for every stray who might have gotten themselves into trouble.”

“Of course it is! We're Codexers, now Sal,” Naomy replied, “And I seem to recall you being one of the first to help Noal, when we found him out there, stuck in the shell.”

“That was different, Nae—“ Sal started.

“That's enough, you two,” Noal interrupted, “None of this gets us any closer to getting out of here, which I assume sums up your goals as well as mine.”

“Sorry, boss,” muttered Sal, as Naomy nodded reluctantly.

“What do you have in mind, Noal?” asked Naomy.

“For starters, you can take off those handcuffs.”

Naomy smirked and pulled at first one cuff, then the other, the metal bending, then snapping from her wrists.

“Now mine,” said Noal.

“What about me?” asked Sal, incredulously.

“Sal, you can tell me about the tensile strength of that door.”