Crawler’s Log — Day 4, Run #16

  Cities do something to people.

  Not always in a bad way.

  Out on the Flats, every shadow looks like teeth and every loose bolt sounds like a warning. You stay sharp or you become part of the dust. That’s just the rule.

  But when folks see walls… real walls… you can watch the tension slide off their shoulders. They start talking about tomorrow again. About beds. About hot food that doesn’t taste like resin and recycled air.

  Can’t blame them. Even I feel it a little.

  New Vire’s is a shining spot on the maps that never blow away. Biggest city this side of the Flats. Some crews dream about settling here once the road shakes out of their bones.

  I’ve only seen it twice. Both times I was too busy crawling under the Leviathan to look up for long. But from the rail today, seeing those lights through the dust?

  Yeah… it hit different.

  — Patch

  The walls of New Vire rose out of the dawn.

  From a distance they looked almost clean just a band of pale metal biting into the horizon. Up close, Patch saw the truth: rust-smeared plating welded over older scars, mismatched gun nests bolted on at odd angles, scorch marks running black along the seams where something big and angry had once hit and nearly gotten through.

  The Leviathan rolled toward the main gate at a wounded crawl, engine grumbling like it didn’t trust what it saw. The storm had scoured soot into every seam. Panels still bore fresh claw gouges from the gorge. The old girl had taken a beating and kept moving, but she wasn’t subtle about it.

  “Gate looks worse than last time,” Ruck muttered from the helm, leaning on the wheel. “Didn’t think that was possible.”

  Patch hung from the cabin, harness clipped in, watching the wall expand to fill his view. The gate itself was a stack of salvaged blast doors, three layers deep, each one thick enough to stop a charging hauler. Barricades and firing slits lined the approach, creating a killing funnel in case anyone got clever.

  “Still standing,” Patch said. “That’s more than you can say for most things out here.”

  Ash was perched near the forward gun nest, one boot hooked under a cable, eyes narrowed as she watched the battlements. “Counted twelve gun barrels in the first stretch,” she said. “Seventeen bodies.

  The Leviathan shuddered as Ruck eased her down the last slope. Gravel and broken asphalt crunched under her treads. The Flats gave way to a scarred stretch of ancient road that led straight to the throat of the city. Mercy stood at the starboard rail, fingers worrying her beads, lips moving soundless.

  “Highway,” she murmured when Patch drifted closer. “Stone veins that fed the Old World. They built them to carry life. Now they carry ghosts.”

  “Today they carry us,” Patch answered. “I’ll take that trade.”

  She didn’t look convinced.

  A harsh metallic squeal echoed across the Flats as the first layer of the gate ground partially open, just enough to let an inspection team through. A squad of guards emerged and fanned out, weapons raised, not loose and lazy like the last time Patch had been here, but tight and careful, fingers already half-curled on triggers. Their armor was mismatched: bits of ballistic plating, scavenged riot gear, some pieces bearing the faded stencil of a long-dead security company, others clearly hammered out of Leviathan-grade scrap.

  The lead guard. A broad-shouldered man with tired eyes spoke.

  “Convoy Leviathan, you are entering secured perimeter of New Vire. Power down primary weapons and reduce speed to inspection crawl.” His voice came through a rusted loudhailer, crackling around the edges. “Identify commanding officer.”

  Grim stepped forward along the spine, boots ringing off steel. She didn’t bother with theatrics. She just set her weight showing she belonged on top of a moving fortress, one eye steady on the gate.

  “Grim Helvar,” she called. “Rigmaster of the Leviathan. Charter code Kilo-Seven. Thirty settlers in Vault Two under our protection. Cargo manifest available on request. We’ve got damage from storm and gorge. We need repairs, fuel, ration refill. Standard trade.”

  The lead guard lowered his loudhailer, muttered into the collar mic at his throat. A moment later, the city’s external speakers squealed, then crackled to life.

  “Leviathan recognized,” a new voice replied. Female and layered with authority and fatigue. “Hold position for quarantine and inspection.”

  “Quarantine?” Cinch whispered.

  Armed runners jogged along the Leviathan’s sides, cataloging every scar, every scorch mark. One of them paused at the deepest gouge along the middle plates, where one of the gorge creatures had dug in viciously. The metal there still buckled inward like a punched rib.

  The runner’s eyes widened. He tapped the mark with his gloved fingers, then called up to his commander, voice too low for Patch to catch.

  The lead guard stiffened. His gaze snapped to Grim.

  “You crossed the east gorge?” he called, louder now.

  Grim’s answer was flat. “We crossed,” she said. “We’re still here. Gorge is not.”

  The guards exchanged looks. The lead guard cursed under his breath.

  “Open second gate,” the woman’s voice ordered through the loudspeakers. “Contingency Protocol. Route convoy to Bay Three. All settlers to Processing. Council requests immediate debrief with Rigmaster.”

  Patch didn’t like the sound of contingency. He liked Processing less.

  Ash exhaled slowly. “There it is,” she said under her breath. “Smile for the city, boys and girls. She bites.”

  The Leviathan rolled through the first gate in a grinding haze of dust and echoing metal.

  Inside, the killing funnel narrowed into a corridor of concrete and welded steel, overhead gantries strung with cables and dangling floodlights. Guards lined the catwalks above, guns tracking the rig as she passed. No one waved. No one called welcome.

  Patch felt the weight of the walls pressing in. The Flats might hate you, but at least they left the sky open.

  As the rig eased to a halt in a wide holding yard, the gates slammed shut behind them with a series of thunderous impacts—one, two, three, each door deeper and heavier than the last. The air tasted different here: less dust, more iron and exhaust, a tang of ozone from electric fencing.

  This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

  “Vault Two,” Grim called, voice carrying down into the belly of the rig. “Prepare for city entry. Settlers disembark in groups of ten. Keep your tags visible. Stay calm”

  Sawyer’s calm voice followed a second later. “Line up in tens. Bowls first, questions second. You’ll think better with something warm in you.”

  Patch glanced down and saw Sawyer already at work, ladling thin stew into tin bowls at the base of the ramp, meeting each settler’s eyes for a heartbeat as they passed. No smile, just quiet presence. It loosened shoulders the guards hadn’t even noticed were tense.

  “Eat,” Sawyer told a shaking man who could barely hold his bowl. “It helps.”

  Piston, further back near a stack of fuel drums, watched the gate machinery with a grin that made Patch nervous. “Look at those pistons,” he muttered. “Could lift a rig twice our size. Shame they only use them on doors.”

  “Try not to fall in love with the city’s machinery,” Patch said. “We’re just visiting.”

  “Who says I can’t flirt?” Piston chuckled.

  Grim called out again more quietly, “Patch, Ruck, you stay with the rig until they clear us. Flick, you’re with me. Council wants a story, you bring the pictures.”

  “Copy that,” Ruck said.

  A metal staircase clanged into place against the Leviathan’s flank as New Vire dock crews rolled it over, hooks biting into the hull. Settlers shuffled up from Vault Two, eyes wide, bags clutched to their chests like shields. Most had never seen a city wall this high. Some had never seen a city at all.

  “Welcome to New Vire,” one of the dock officers barked, voice dry as sand. “Line up. Keep your hands where we can see them. Anyone tries to bring unregistered weapons through Processing, you’ll lose the weapon and maybe a hand.”

  Cinch winced. “Friendly,” he muttered.

  “Friendly is a luxury,” Mercy said softly, fingers brushing the beads at her neck. “They look like people who ran out of it.”

  Settlers were ushered down the stairs in tight groups. Guards checked tags—little metal disks stamped with names and routes. Bags were dumped onto inspection tables. Clothes were searched for contraband: hidden blades, smuggled tech, anything that looked like it could threaten whatever balance the city was clinging to.

  A girl no older than twelve protested when a guard tried to take a carved bone trinket from her hand. “It’s my mother’s,” she said. “She—she died crossing the Flats. It’s all I—”

  The guard hesitated, jaw clenched. He looked like he wanted to say no, rules are rules. Then he caught Mercy watching, eyes steady, beads still. After a beat, he shoved the trinket back into the girl’s hand.

  “Fine,” he said gruffly. “Neck-level only. If it’s sharpened into a weapon later, it’s mine.”

  The girl nodded fiercely, clutching the charm like a lifeline.

  Still, the Processing line was rough. One man who argued about his confiscated knife got his arm slammed into the table and twisted until he stopped talking. Another who balked at a medical exam was strapped down and injected anyway. The message was clear: New Vire might let you in, but on its terms.

  “Seen enough?” Grim asked quietly beside Patch.

  “More than I wanted to,” he replied.

  “Good,” she said. “Keep your eyes open.”

  A pair of armored escorts in cleanest-of-the-dirty uniforms approached, rifles slung but ready. One of them, a woman with close-cropped hair and a tired authority to her posture, saluted Grim with two fingers.

  “Rigmaster Helvar,” she said. “Council’s waiting. You and your comms tech—Flick, yes?—come with us. Your mechanic and pilot can escort the Leviathan to Bay Three. She’ll get a secure berth and a maintenance slot.”

  Bay Three was buried deep inside New Vire’s industrial quarter, past a series of checkpoints that chewed up time and patience. The tunnel they followed was low and wide, walls sweating condensation, the air crowded with the smells of oil, coolant, and too many bodies. Other rigs were parked in adjoining bays. Smaller haulers, wheeled caravans, scavenger crawlers all were chained and clamped in place like penned animals.

  The Leviathan rolled into the largest slot, her treads rattling over embedded rail lines. Overhead cranes creaked on their tracks, following her progress like vultures. A control booth high on the wall flickered with dim light, operators visible as shadows behind reinforced glass.

  “Bay Three, Leviathan inbound,” a voice crackled over the local speakers. “Lock her down.”

  Heavy clamps descended on articulated arms, latching onto the rig’s side rails with clanking finality. Chains ratcheted taut through floor-mounted anchors. The main bay doors slid shut behind them, slamming the outside world into silence.

  Ruck braced his hands on the console, eyes roaming the control readouts. “Gotta say,” he muttered, “this might be the first time I’ve seen her on a leash.” Before he could say more, the cabin door banged open. Flick stumbled in, adjusting his goggles, Grim behind him, jaw set tighter than usual.

  Ruck straightened in his seat. “How’d the Council tea party go?”

  Grim’s good eye flicked toward the overhead glass of the control booth. “Later,” she said. “Bay mics might be live.”

  Flick looked spooked, fingers tapping a stuttering rhythm against the side of his headset. “They knew about the gorge,” he blurted anyway. “Not just in a ‘heard a rumor, sounded bad’ way. They’ve got maps. Charts. Old seismic logs. Like they’ve been watching that place rot for decades.”

  “Flick,” Grim said warningly.

  He snapped his mouth shut.

  “Least they’re giving us a maintenance slot,” Ruck said. “She could use the pampering.”

  “Pampering,” Patch repeated, deadpan. “Sure. Let’s call being chained to a wall pampering.”

  Grim’s shoulders eased half an inch. “Ruck, meet Gauge in the engine bay, you two stay with the engine techs when they come crawling around. I don’t want anyone re-routing anything without you two watching. Patch, you do a full hull walk. Note every new scar, every loose bracket, that can be a problem to us. If they decide to keep us here, we’ll be ready to leave anyway.”

  Patch grinned, humor thin but real. “You’re thinking ahead.”

  “It’s my job,” she said.

  “What about me?” Flick asked, voice a touch higher than usual.

  Grim looked at him, then at the sealed bay doors, then at the rig. “You,” she said, “set up your array. You said the interference dropped as we got closer. I want to know why.”

  Flick’s little kingdom layed in a cramped compartment two levels down from the main deck, wedged between a bulkhead and a cable run that hummed with the Leviathan’s power. He’d painted the inside walls with chalk symbols and half-legible notes over time, filling every spare surface with scribbles that only he seemed to understand.

  Patch ducked through the hatch after him, shoulders brushing conduits.

  “Okay,” Flick said, hands already racing over dials and cracked screens. “Storm’s gone, we’re under city shielding, and for once nothing is actively screaming in my ear. This is as clean as the ether gets.”

  He flipped a series of toggles. The main receiver panel buzzed to life, its surface flickering with stray bands of white noise. Flick adjusted the tuning knob with careful, twitchy precision, his eyes narrowed behind his grimy google lenses.

  The static shifted. Hissed. Flattened.

  Something pulsed beneath it.

  “There,” Flick whispered. “You hear that?”

  Patch didn’t at least not at first. It was like trying to catch the shape of something moving just under the surface of water more suggestion than sound. But as Flick fine-tuned the receiver, the pattern became harder to ignore. A faint, regular thump in the noise, like a heartbeat buried under layers of dust and years.

  Thump. Thump. Thump.

  Not random. Not weather. Not equipment failure.

  “Could be bleed from city infrastructure?” Patch offered. “Grids, pumps, whatever they’ve got humming under our feet.”

  Flick shook his head sharply. “City grid’s harsh. Jerky. This is… steady. And too old. Too deep.”

  The pattern sharpened again as Flick adjusted the gain. For a moment the sound broke through clearly—a single, clear rising tone that made the hairs on Patch’s arms stand up.

  It didn’t sound mechanical. It sounded almost… intentional.

  Then it dropped back into the static.

  “Maybe it’s some old-world beacon,” Patch said. “Sat uplink that never learned it’s dead.”

  “Sat signals come from above,” Flick said quietly. “This is coming from below. Well below. Under the Flats.”

  Patch felt something cold settle in his gut. “Under what part of the Flats?”

  Flick hesitated, mouth twitching. He twisted the tuning knob again, checking the directionality reading. A little light on the panel flickered weakly, needle drifting but repeatedly pulling toward the same vector.

  “Back east,” Flick said. “Broad arc. But the strongest pull is…” He swallowed. “Right around where the gorge was.”

  The little compartment felt smaller all at once.

  “We dropped half that gorge on itself,” Patch said, voice suddenly hoarse. “Shade blew the bridge spine. That whole section should be buried under fifty tons of concrete and old-world metal.”

  “Yeah,” Flick said. “So whatever’s calling under that didn’t care.”

  Patch stared at the panel, at the soft, persistent blip that kept surfacing in the static like something knocking from under floorboards.

  “How long do you think it’s been there?” he asked.

  Flick shook his head, helpless. “Long enough that the instruments don’t know how to categorize it. There’s no label for this. The tech shrugs when I ask. That’s not supposed to happen.”

  Patch exhaled slowly. “Could be just some old relay station waking up wrong. Some bunker auto-pinging for a master that’s dust.”

  “Could be,” Flick said

  He scrubbed his hands over his face. “Whatever it is, it doesn’t feel like a thing that forgot it exists

  “So,” patch said slowly, “you going to tell the Council about this?”

  Flick flinched. “Grim says we hold back until we know more. They already knew too much about the gorge. If I show them this raw, they’ll either lie about it or try to take my gear apart to see if it’s broken.”

  “And if it’s not broken?” Patch asked.

  “Then we’re all in a lot more trouble than a busted receiver,” Flick said softly.