Madman Mallarcky

and the Sands of Seker-Ra

A Tale of the Tibesti Static

Set in the world of Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines Quartet

by

M. Jonathan Jones

author of

Thalassa: the World beneath the Waves

Race the Red Horizon – the Flight of the Pteronaut

.com

2016

Madman Mallarcky and the Sands of Seker-Ra:

a Tale of the Tibesti Static

by

M. Jonathan Jones

This tale is set during the Traction Era in the world of Philip Reeve's Mortal Engines Quartet (rebranded as the Hungry Cities or Predator Cities series), slightly before the events of the first book Mortal Engines.

Where there are differences between versions, I have kept the original names, as in the Stalker called Shrike.

1

Rumours buzzed around Madman Mallarcky like a swarm of hungry dung-flies. No-one knew exactly where he had come from – the wrecked archipelagos of Australia, some said, or Dead America, said others – but no-one was sure and no-one dared to ask. All that was known with any certainty was that he had turned up one day in a static out-station on the fringes of the Northern Hunting Ground with a bad attitude and breath to match it, looking for the Stalker called Shrike. Imagine: looking for the Stalker! Most people gave the resurrected man a wide berth, and said their prayers if he was ever on their trail. Only a madman would ever set out to look for the last of the Lazarus Brigade. But that was just what Mallarcky did. And he found him, too.

"I WORK ALONE," Shrike had said, before making his point rather more directly, and when Mallarcky had regained consciousness and the bandages had come off, that had been good enough for him.

Since then he had plied his trade far and wide as a bounty-hunter for hire, sometimes working for the Anti-Traction League, sometimes in the service of the Traction Cities. He never seemed to care too much who he was working for as long as there was a job to be done and the pay came on time and in full at the end of it. Never a job too dirty, either; or at least, that was what people said.

So it was that the wastrels and wanderers sitting in the Cheap & Cheerless fell silent when they recognised who had just walked in one evening from the dusty desert air of the Tibesti plateau.

"Drink," Madman Mallarcky said, sliding onto a barstool. The barstool was still warm – its previous occupant had wisely decided to take his custom elsewhere.

"Certainly, sir," the barman looked right and left for a way out, but his colleagues all seemed to have vanished too. "What'll it be?"

"Whisky. Three fingers," Madman Mallarcky replied. "These fingers," he added, holding up a gory keepsake from some previous job that had been knotted together with barbed-wire.

"Yessir," the barman swallowed and tried to keep his hand steady as he filled the glass level with the wrinkled joints and blackened nails of the souvenir. "Er… On the house?"

"Much obliged," Mallarcky growled, poking the fingers back into one of his pockets. He tipped back his wide-brimmed hat, showing the panda face that the wind-blasted dust had given him around his night-vision goggles, and closed his eyes in appreciation as the contents of the glass slid down his throat.

The barman hovered uncertainly nearby, weighing up whether he might have time to dash for the door, and if he did, whether the storeroom or the space behind the pig-bins would be the best hiding place.

"Good," Mallarcky said with a nod of approval, his eyes flicking open again. He held out the glass, inclining it forwards for a refill.

"Glad you like it, sir," the barman tried to fill the glass at arm's reach. His hand trembled, and he splashed some of the whisky onto the bar.

"Or I could just take the bottle," Mallarcky suggested, and the barman nodded thankfully.

With a metallic chink of his fingers, Mallarcky plucked the whisky-bottle from the barman's grip. "You serve food?"

As if on cue, there was a busy clatter from the kitchen, and the sizzling smell of hot fat and roasted meat wafted through the serving-hatch.

"Yes," the barman admitted, wringing his hands and stifling a sob.

"Smells like camel-hump stroganoff," Mallarcky took a long and appreciative sniff. "Send a plate over. I'll be sitting right…" he turned on the stool, scanning the darkest corners of the bar, and patrons abandoned their tables as if a loaded cannon had suddenly been pointed at them, "..over there."

Shaking the desert dust from his boots with every step, Mallarcky walked over to the table he had chosen. It stood half in shadow, with a good view of the front-door, the back-door close by, and the wall at his back; just how he liked it.

Beneath the long folds of his coat, weapons jingled: the rasp of metal on metal, the long dry rattle of a chain slinking across the stock of a short-barrelled shotgun, the heavy clunk of armour-piercing rounds jostling each other in an ammunition-pouch; a symphony of menace that reached a crescendo as Madman Mallarcky sat down, and then went silent. The clientele in the bar ebbed away, those who preferred a quieter life – or a longer one – vanished into the night, leaving just the hardcore who were too drunk to move or too tipsy to care.

The camel-hump stroganoff arrived, and Mallarcky tucked in. He ate quickly, like a man who had not had a bite for days. By habit his eyes roved around the bar as he ate, and he saw how it steadily filled up again with a new crowd: the curious, the unwary, and the thrill-seekers.

Perhaps their unwelcome guest was not so bad for business after all, the management of the Cheap & Cheerless thought to themselves as they watched through a crack in the wall. Just as long as he didn't kill anyone.

Two figures came in. They went to stand by the bar for a minute to order a drink and maintain the pretence that they had wandered in by accident, and then they broke through the ranks of more or less surreptitious spectators and approached the table where Madman Mallarcky was sitting. The woman spoke first.

"You're Madman Mallarcky," she said. "Mind if we sit?"

"I'm eating," Mallarcky replied.

"And we'll be paying," the woman's male companion said, flashing a smile.

Mallarcky grunted his assent, and the two of them drew out a couple of chairs to sit down on, the legs scraping and yelping across the sticky floor.

"I'm Perfidy Lanyard," the woman said, "and this is my associate..."

"..Burdock Skink," the man wheeled out his smile again. "Pleased to meet you."

"Over the moon," Mallarcky mumbled.

He looked the two of them over casually. The man Skink certainly had a mis-spent youth behind him, plus a good few years on top of that which had not been spent much better. By the look of his clothes – an odd assortment of styles picked up here and there – he was part-digger, part-drifter, but he seemed to have weathered the storms of a restless life mostly intact. Despite that, there was a hint of fear in his eyes, like he had placed a bet that his luck might not cover.

The woman Lanyard was a much cooler customer. She gave every impression of being an up-and-coming air-trader, but anyone who has an 'associate' is generally a bit more than that. Her face was the kind that turned from beautiful to bestial in an instant if the person behind it was not one hundred percent satisfied with what life had to offer. Mallarcky would have bet good money that her demands were rarely refused.

"What do you want?" he asked.

"You," Perfidy Lanyard said. "Are your services for hire?"

"Always. For the right price," Mallarcky hawked up a hairy clod of hump that had been clinging to the roof of his mouth and spat it, along with a gizzardful of desert dust, onto the floor. The marbled concoction bounced into a corner with a fatty thud and wobbled to a standstill. "And I should warn you, I don't come cheap," he said, taking another bite of his meal.

"You look like a man with tired legs and money-bags as empty as your belly to me," Perfidy Lanyard remarked, glancing away from where the lump of fat had ended up. "I'm sure we can come to some arrangement."

"Maybe," Madman Mallarcky shrugged.

"Where's your ship?" Skink asked.

Mallarcky chewed another lump of gristle and forced it down. He smiled. "Suppose I told you it was moored up nice and safe in the air-harbour."

"No it ain't," Skink replied.

"We took the liberty of checking first," the air-trader who wasn't an air-trader cut in. "What happened?"

"A roving Fox Spirit belonging to the Anti-Traction League took exception to my flight-path and put a hole in one of my engine-pods," Mallarcky said. "I managed to land about a day's march from here."

"Unlucky," Perfidy Lanyard said. "I heard you were on good terms with the Anti-Traction League."

"No-one is on good terms with the Anti-Traction League," Mallarcky replied. "Not for long. What's the pay?"

"The pay is one hundred gold marks for five days' work. No more."

"One-fifty," Mallarcky said without looking up from his meal.

"One-twenty, and we'll tow your ship into harbour before we start. When the job is done, it'll be fixed and ready for you to leave. And you'll be able to pay for it."

"One-thirty," Mallarcky insisted. "And fifty of that up front."

"Alright," the woman nodded. "One-thirty it is. Now, don't you want to hear what the job is?"

Madman Mallarcky scraped his plate clean and licked his knife. "For fifty marks up front I am all ears," he said, leaning back in his chair. "These ears," he added, pointing to a necklace of withered brown husks that showed from under his coat.

8