Ember Legion

Chen Jin slept until late afternoon.

Not laziness. Lei Changgeng had made it an order: ”Sleep, or I tie you to the bunk.” Since the sky fell he’d slept a little over six hours all told; close his eyes and there was fire behind them. This sleep had no dreams.

When he woke the sun was already slanting. Outside the barracks, reserve volunteers were stacking water buckets; a few half-grown kids chased each other in circles around the compound, got bellowed at by the Ember Guard on watch, ran a little farther off, and kept chasing. A bowl of porridge sat by his bunk, still warm—Big Liu had split it from the casualty shed’s pot. He drained it in two swallows and left not a grain. Grain was tight. Two thin meals a day; this bowl counted as generous.

”Tallied.” Lei Changgeng crouched at the doorway, rolling a spent casing between his fingers. ”Twelve rifles, forty rounds to a gun. Enough for one hard fight. Two fights, and we’re at bayonets.”

”What about the casings?”

”Big Liu’s been collecting.” A jerk of the chin at the corner of the yard—a half sack of brass, gleaming, all of it gathered off the field these past days. ”No press to reload them, it’s all scrap.” Big Liu added from the wall, ”I wiped every one clean. One at a time.”

Chen Jin thought of a place. The garrison’s old machine shop, north end of town, shut down ten years and more—and in it, an old reloading press. He’d seen it once, back when he was an ammunition handler. A clumsy, ancient thing that coughed half a minute before it caught its breath; the garrison had called it too slow, hadn’t bothered hauling it out when the unit was disbanded. Lucky for whoever came after. ”Three hundred rounds a day,” Lei Changgeng said, turning the number over. ”Economize, and it’ll hold.”

They went north. Past the casualty shed—the new frame already standing, first roof on. Farther north the shops along the street stood locked, locks furred with days of dust.

The machine shop had a jimmied lock.

Clean job. Not a burr on it. Lei Changgeng crouched for a look. ”Professional.”

The press was there. Its heart was gone. Main cam, spring assembly, feed tray—stripped to the last piece, two drag marks across the floor, headed east.

Big Liu saw red. ”After them!”

The marks were shallow; a few hundred kilos of iron doesn’t travel fast. Around two corners the trail died in front of a row of shacks. The innermost door stood ajar. Inside, tin on tin, hammering.

Chen Jin pushed the door open.

There was no bed. Where a bed should be, parts were stacked: washers in a lunch tin, a wall row of pliers and files sorted by size. A skinny kid squatted with his back to the door in a heap of iron, filing a gear—two strokes, up to the oil lamp, a squint, two more. Bags under his eyes dark enough to lean on; the backs of his hands a rash of burn scars, old layered on new. Behind him stood a half-man-high iron frame, built from the deck plates of a scrapped mining machine, every joint crooked.

”The press’s heart. You’ve got it,” Chen Jin said.

”Who’s asking?” The kid didn’t turn around.

”Ember Guard.” Big Liu filled the doorway. ”Stealing public property—”

”Stealing?” The kid set the file down and turned around. ”That machine rotted in that shop for ten years. Which of you touched it? The axle had seized solid. I took it apart to save it.”

Big Liu drew breath to shout, and Chen Jin pressed a hand down. He was looking at the gear. ”If it goes back on, will it run?”

”It ran fine before. What it lacked was hours.” The kid patted the heap of iron behind him. ”And if you’re thinking of carrying it home—can you?”

Big Liu eyed the heap and kept quiet. He could carry a few hundred kilos alone. A machine wasn’t carried home and finished, though.

”Name?”

”Xiao Mao. My dad’s a riveter. I was born next to a riveting frame—every mechanic in this port knows me.” He coughed once and corrected himself. ”Knows me, mostly.”

Chen Jin unslung his backup rifle and tossed it over. ”Jammed twice.”

The kid caught the rifle the way he caught nothing else: weighed it, worked the bolt, squinted down the chamber, brow knotting. ”The oil in the spring housing has dried to lacquer. Rifling’s good, though—where did this come from? I couldn’t cut this rifling.”

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”Picked it up.”

”Where? I’ll go pick one up too.”

”Nowhere. Fix.”

Everyone watched. Lei Changgeng got his pipe half out and put it away—the shack was thick with oil fumes. Xiao Mao asked nothing more. Oil can, bamboo picks; field-stripped the rifle, cleared the springs, oiled it, hands too fast to follow, mouth never stopping: ”This rifle was designed for men who’d never service it—and you really never serviced it. The leaf spring’s half rusted through. Two jams, and it was being polite.” In under a quarter hour the bolt went ka-chak, smooth, not a grain of drag. He slapped the rifle back into Chen Jin’s hands and held out a palm. ”Wages.”

”Your price?”

”I put the press back together, and every casing you spend from here on comes to me for reloading. Seventy-thirty. My thirty.”

Big Liu’s eyes were starting up when Chen Jin spoke first: ”All of it goes to the common stock. You and anyone working under you eat with the Ember Guard.”

Xiao Mao choked. Food was the item he hadn’t priced. He counted on his fingers, counted again, and gritted his teeth. ”Fine. But three conditions.”

”Name them.”

”One: the machine shop is mine. Days, nights, all of it. Two: my stock gets hauled from outside the orbital port—wrecked ore carts, scrapped loaders. Those deck plates are good iron, and nobody throws them out as scrap. Three—” a pause, and his voice dropped, ”two solid meals a day. I’m still growing.”

”Done.” Chen Jin added one clause. ”When the wall has a situation, my people come get you, and you come. Machines are like men. They need to see the world.”

”Add a meat meal.” Xiao Mao stuck out his hand.

Chen Jin took it. The handshake was all callus, harder than his own—and he hauled ammunition crates for a living.

Big Liu, who’d been nodding along, went and stacked the scattered iron piece by piece, tidier than Xiao Mao’s own stacks. The kid watched his hands and his eyes lit up. ”The big one. Lend him to me.”

”Who are you calling dumb?!” Big Liu glared.

”The strength is real, though,” Xiao Mao added, and Big Liu preened again.

Chen Jin asked, ”Your family—just you?”

”Last month the bugs came up the wall. My dad went to weld the flood gate. Didn’t come back.” Flat, fast, and then he turned away and started sorting parts. ”Mom’s been gone longer. He never let me touch the machines—said they were dangerous. Now I touch all of them.”

The shack went quiet for a breath. The lamp wick popped.

Chen Jin nodded at the crooked iron frame. ”And that?”

”Armor.” Xiao Mao slapped it and it rang. ”Ore-cart decks. Double layer, riveted. You shooting men catch bullets—us machine men go up the wall too. We get a piece of iron as well.”

Ugly in an honest way: plates of mixed thickness, rivet rows wandering, collar edge rolled inward. Chen Jin hammered it with a rifle butt; the shock numbed his hand to the wrist. It didn’t move.

”Weight?”

”Twenty-odd kilos. You can run in it. Not fast.” Xiao Mao climbed in to demonstrate, clumsy about it, head stuck twice at the collar, yelling from inside: ”Don’t laugh! The collar just needs re-cutting!” Big Liu wasn’t laughing. He was trying very hard not to.

”For the Ember Guard—price?”

”Fix the press first.” Xiao Mao wrapped the gear in cloth. ”One reloading press buys you the barrel life of twenty rifles. Don’t get greedy.”

Dusk. The shop’s door plank came down for a workbench, lamps went up, machine oil and iron rust spread through the air together. Xiao Mao directed Big Liu and the others fitting pieces back one at a time and touched only the few bolts that mattered. Nobody spoke. Now and then a wick popped. At the last bolt he spun the crank.

The press coughed.

Coughed twice more, and turned over. The feed tray clattered casings in; the first finished round rolled out, and Big Liu caught it and held it in his fist, reluctant to put it down. Xiao Mao measured it three times with calipers, noted a line on paper, and only then nodded.

”Done?” Lei Changgeng asked.

”Test run.” Xiao Mao wiped his hands. ”Real output tomorrow morning. Three hundred a day. Shoot economical—waste barrel life and it hurts me worse than you.”

Lei Changgeng took one test round, stepped to the door, and fired once at the sky. The shot rolled far out into the night. He worked the bolt and looked back. ”Smooth.”

”That’s right.” Xiao Mao didn’t look up.

On the door plank he chalked one huge character—RIVET, his name—stepped back two paces to look, then went and squared the corners.

Overhead, an electric crack split the air.

In the port’s dead quiet it tore like cloth. Heads came out all through the shack quarter. On top of a utility pole a sheet-metal loudspeaker had come alive—the port’s emergency broadcast rig, on its own battery, the kind that could hold out until the day the city fell.

”—zzt—Provisional control order. Effective immediately: full-port curfew, dusk to dawn. All armed personnel and all stockpiled materiel, register with the Provisional Control Committee within three days. Failure to register will be treated as collaboration with the enemy—zzt—”

A man’s voice. Unhurried, officialdom ironed flat.

”—zzt—All holders of specialized skills—mechanical, signals, medical, engineering—must register with the Control Committee within three days for centralized assignment—zzt—”

Centralized assignment. Xiao Mao’s hand paused on a bolt, then kept turning.

Big Liu leaned close, voice pressed low: ”Treated as collaborators? These rifles of ours—”

”Register.” Lei Changgeng finished it for him. ”Register first. Then we see what comes after the registering.”

Someone in the shacks asked softly, ”This Control Committee—which office is that?” Nobody answered.

”Materiel gets registered too.” Lei Changgeng stared down at the press. ”Register it, then they ration it.” The shack went quieter still. Everybody in the port knew who held the grain—shelter district, east of the granary, one barracks with the word EMBER seared into its lintel.

The loudspeaker switched to music. Gongs and drums, festival-bright, from a world that had nothing to do with the mass of shadows below.

Xiao Mao listened to the end, then reached up and twisted the lamp down a notch.

”Saving oil,” he said. ”Days ahead, we’ll be reading by it more.”

Big Liu pushed the reloaded round into his innermost pocket and patted it flat. Lei Changgeng looked once at the chalked RIVET on the door plank, said nothing, and moved the lamp on the workbench aside to make room for the morning’s stock.

Overhead the loudspeaker droned on, gongs and drums still going. Chen Jin slung the fixed rifle and went out—the watch on the wall still needed changing.