Ingo’s mouth twisted dryly. “You look like you’ve gotten a year older in a week.”
“Yeah,” said Hal. “I guess this kind of thing will do that to you.”
I exhaled. “Ingo, this is Harlan Taylor and Vera Kelly. We were Peacefighters together. Ingo was a Peacefighter too,” I added.
“Sorry about before, buddy.” Harlan offered a large hand. “We’re on the same side, looks like. Least, we are now. Who’d you fight for?”
“European Alliance,” said Ingo after a pause. They shook. “And forget it. I’d have pulled a rifle on you too.”
“Yeah, I bet. You guys were always hell up in the air.”
Vera held out her hand. “I’ve heard a lot about you.” At her quick, knowing glance, my ears heated.
“And you,” said Ingo as they shook. “You and Amity were roommates, yes?”
Vera gave a small smile. “In a different lifetime.”
Ingo snorted and raked a hand through his hair. His tone turned flat. “Yes,” he said. “A lot of things happened in a different lifetime.”
We sat in a cluster at the bottom of the stairs, where it was lighter. Ingo’s gaze went over me. “When did you last have water?”
“Over two days ago. We’ve been drinking beer and soda, but—”
He had a canteen over one shoulder; I hadn’t noticed it. He handed it over. “Here. It’s from one of our old caches; it’s almost full.”
Suddenly I was almost shuddering, I wanted it so badly. I uncapped the canteen and took a gulp, then another. The water was too warm and tasted metallic. It was wonderful.
I forced myself to stop and handed it to Hal, who took some and then passed it to Vera. As Harlan took a swig, I glanced up the stairs, wondering if I could ration some out to those most in need without causing a riot. I decided I couldn’t, and rubbed my forehead wearily.
As Ingo recapped the canteen, I said, “So you got everyone out safely?”
“Yes, in the end.”
“How’s Mac?” I asked softly.
“Alive. Apart from that, not well, the last I saw him.”
I winced, thinking of the dank underground river – the narrow crawl spaces. “But the railroad will help him and Sephy get to Nova Scotia?”
“Yes. Not immediately though. He needs medical care first.” Ingo frowned and looked down, bouncing a fist on his thigh.
“Where’d the World United guy come from?” Harlan asked.
“From the European Alliance, originally,” said Ingo. “I’ll let him explain. But he needed to get into the city somehow, and the railroad knew that…I’d be going back in.”
I glanced at him, wondering at his slight hesitancy. He cleared his throat. “So you’ve been busy,” he said to me.
“Wildcat on the rampage,” drawled Harlan.
Ingo gave a faint smile. “She often is.” He was still studying me. “I’m very glad you’re all right,” he added quietly.
“The feeling’s mutual,” I murmured.
Our gazes stayed locked. It was the wrong time, yet my body didn’t seem to know that. Recalling again his lips on my palm, warmth fluttered through me. Ingo was the first to look away.
When Jean Buzet returned, he frowned at Hal. “Should the boy stay? There are things I need to explain which are quite sensitive.”
Hal raised an eyebrow, his chin lifting.
“My brother stays,” I said.
My tone didn’t harbour any arguments. Jean Buzet inclined his head. “Of course, Miss Vancour.”
He undid the first few buttons of his shirt and drew out a large brown envelope. He opened it and slid out three crumpled, much-handled photographs. He handed them to me.
I went still as I recognized them: the photos that Ingo and I had found while on the run from Harmony Five. We’d come across a factory; when we’d stolen a plane from its tiny airport, these had been on a bulletin board.
The glossy black-and-white images showed a mushroom cloud – a graph titled Bomb blast effects on a typical city of ten million people – two fat, swollen bombs lying side by side.
“Holy hell…they’re real,” Harlan whispered, taking them from me.
“Didn’t you know that?” I said. “We published similar ones in Victory.”
Vera looked dazed too. “Yes, but…I guess we hoped the Resistance was just making them up to scare us into action.”
“No, they’re very real,” said Ingo. “We saw the factory.”
His eyes met mine…and I knew he was remembering, like me, how I’d gotten shot as we stole the plane – his hands pressed over my wound as I took off.
It was the first time Hal had seen these photos. His face hardened. Neither of us had to say it: our father had been indirectly responsible. He handed the crumpled images back.
“Our man Grady took these to the European Alliance earlier this year,” I told Harlan and Vera. I glanced at Mr Buzet. “He said the world was too afraid to act.”
“Yes, correct.” Mr Buzet adjusted his glasses with a quick, practised motion. “That was a ruse, in case your Mr Grady was captured. When we received the photos – and by ‘we’, I mean the EA, Africa, and Russo-China – we met secretly and then brought other nations on board. Then we sent our own people into Can-Amer to verify this information.”
He tapped one of the photos. “We’ve had spies in this country for months. We’ve seen this factory for ourselves now: Atomic Harmony Devices. It was difficult to find, but we did it. And we’ve seen other factories.”
The whole time he spoke, there was a slight lag as I worked out what he was saying. Now all of us got it at the same time.
“There are more bomb factories?” I gasped. Vera’s eyes were wide.
“No, no. That is the only one for nuclear bombs. But…” Mr Buzet frowned; he turned to Ingo and said something in rapid Euro. Ingo responded. He sat unmoving, with his head tipped back against the wall.
Mr Buzet continued: “There are also many foundries, you call them, and factories for the making of tanks, airplanes, and so on.”
My voice had gone steely with fear. “They’re still in production now?”
“Oh yes. Every day. Night and day.”
“But she’s already got Can-Amer,” said Vera blankly.
Then we all realized.
“And ships,” went on Mr Buzet. “For troops. And others with the big…the platforms, for planes to take off from.”
“Ships that can carry planes?” echoed Hal.
“Yes. To the EA, presumably.” Ingo’s tone was bitter. “When I decided to fight, part of me thought I was just being stupidly noble. Getting involved in a mess that wasn’t mine.”
“It’s all our mess, looks like,” muttered Harlan.
“Yes – everyone’s,” said Mr Buzet. He sketched a map in the dust on the floor. “This is Can-Amer, yes? To the west, there are factories all along here. People are forced to work in them – forced to keep quiet.”
His finger traced a line that stretched in a Y from Alaska and the Yukon, then down the coastline of what used to be the Western Seaboard – the home country of four of us in the room. Mr Buzet’s finger passed through Sacrament, and I saw Hal wince. A lot of his friends were still there.
“Then over here…” Mr Buzet drew an arc around New Manhattan Island, expanding several hundred miles in each direction. “There are many more factories,” he said. “These are mainly the tanks, and the planes. She is gearing up for something big.”
“Well, ain’t that just peachy,” muttered Harlan. “Oh, man – why couldn’t the bitch have tripped when she was running out of here?”
I was asking myself the same thing. I stared at the arc drawn so precisely in the dusty floor.
“Now then, the bomb factory – did you know that these are the only nuclear bombs she has?” Mr Buzet tapped the photo showing the two bombs.
“Really?” I glanced at Ingo and saw that he’d already been told this. Two was bad enough, but it was a relief – all of us
in the Resistance had imagined dozens.
“Yes, only two, though she is trying to build more. It is a difficult process, it takes much time. But with only two bombs, all of us in World United have decided to take the risk and fight. We can’t let her create more and take over the world. We’ve already attacked to the west.”
My head jerked up. “You have?”
“Yes. While our spies gathered information, World United built planes and troops of our own. In fact, many of us – fifty countries – started over a year ago, with the news of Gunnison’s…activities. Now we’ve come in across the Bering Strait, here.”
He drew a short, determined line at the upper part of Alaska. “She was not expecting it. We have troops stationed in hiding in many remote places now. They are attacking her factories there as we speak. And yesterday, troops came up through the Mexican desert and are attacking her holdings along the lower west coast.”
It was as if the sun had just come out, yet suddenly I was close to tears. For months, the Resistance had been so alone on this island with Kay Pierce. I pressed my hand to my mouth, and felt Ingo’s gaze on me. Vera squeezed my arm, her eyes bright.
“Finally,” I whispered. My eyes met Ingo’s. There was an emotion in their dark depths that I didn’t understand, but he gave a small smile.
“Finally,” he echoed.
“Oh, hell yeah,” said Harlan, grinning. “Go on, Mr Boo-zay, tell us more good news.”
A precise smile flickered across Mr Buzet’s face. “That is all the good news for now. The rest is…” He frowned and turned to Ingo again; another brief consultation in Euro. “Is potential good news,” he finished. “Miss Vancour, we need your help.”
“My help?”
“Yes! We need New Manhattan Island. There are vital factories along the east coast. We need a place where we can house troops, have an airport. And to our luck, it is the perfect time. The island is already in a state of unrest. We heard this on the wireless before we entered the tunnels.”
“Unless things have calmed down?” Ingo said to me.
I shook my head. “We’re still surrounded here. And we keep hearing sirens and seeing smoke sometimes.” I explained about the executions. There was silence as I described the blood on the platform.
“She lost some support from the Guns with that move,” I said quietly. “They’re all local – too many people died. Pierce fled the city days ago,” I added with grim triumph.
Ingo’s lips twisted faintly. “I would too, with Wildcat telling everyone to attack me. You’re quite formidable, my friend.”
Our eyes met again. I tore my gaze away as Mr Buzet went on:
“Outside New Manhattan, from what we can tell, there is not this division – the military is firmly on her side.” He drew a dusty map of the city and tapped the region of the Garden.
“This stadium is near the ports,” he said. “We have ships with troops waiting out at sea. What we need is a distraction – some way of bringing the Guns to this end of the island” – another tap – “the very northern part. Then our troops can attack with a clear route to the airport. Once we take that, it is all but done. We clean up the rest of the Guns, including any in the tunnels, we destroy the bridges and – voila!”
“Destroy the bridges?” echoed Vera.
“Yes. We will not make it easy for Kay Pierce to retake New Manhattan. Supplies, food, will come in from the EA. We will use air strikes against her factories.”
Another sweep of his finger, obliterating the Xs in a semicircle around the eastern coast. “A few months, maybe,” he said. “If we can only take New Manhattan, we will destroy her. This region is vital to her war effort.”
He turned to me, pleading. “Miss Vancour, you are the only one who can give us the distraction we need. To put the fine point on it, you are Wildcat! You’re the one who has roused the city to this fury!”
Ingo had been sitting silently. Now he stirred, his expression sharpening to annoyance. “Kay Pierce may have had a little more to do with the city’s fury than Amity. It’s funny what hanging people on street corners will do.”
“Yes, yes, of course! I just meant…”
“Skip it,” I said tiredly. I gazed at the rubbed-out Xs. “So…our side’s been making bombs too,” I said after a pause.
Mr Buzet’s tone turned clipped. “Yes. Very unfortunate, but necessary. Pierce will attack; we have no doubt. Even if she were gone, General Keaton and others agree with her goals. We cannot stop them without weapons of our own. It is the only way.”
Sadness stirred. He was right; it was all too far gone now. Even putting Weir in charge might not have helped – from the sounds of it, we’d have had a military coup anyway.
I kept studying the finger-drawn map, envisioning the northern part of the island – what was there. What I needed to do seemed coldly obvious to me.
Yet to cause this sort of distraction meant using people who trusted me. Some would surely die in the process of diverting the Guns’ attention. The fact that I’d risk my own life hardly made it better.
I vow to preserve the sanctity of life…
A faint, bitter smile pulled at my mouth. Finally I swallowed back my feelings and looked at Ingo. “What are the tunnels like now? How hard is it going to be to get everyone out of here?”
He shook his head. “The routes are all different – the cave-ins have changed everything.”
“They wouldn’t have to go very far. Maybe to the 5th Street entrance, if we still have it.” Just far enough so that they could slip away without the Guns realizing we were leaving.
Ingo considered. “Yes, that route is the same, pretty much. It’s just hard going, is all – rubble everywhere, and unstable as hell.”
“It’ll have to do.” I had a flash of thankfulness that we’d saved half the batteries for the flashlights. I turned to Hal. “Could you get them out as soon as it starts getting dark?” I glanced at Harlan and Vera. “He’ll need help to organize everyone and start taking them out.”
“Yeah, I can do it,” Hal said. I squeezed his shoulder hard.
“Got it,” said Harlan, and Vera nodded.
“Dare I ask what you’ll be doing?” said Ingo after a pause.
I pressed a hand to my throbbing temples. I wanted Ingo to be safe…to be able to go home and see his family again.
But it was too late. He was already here.
Finally I straightened and gazed at his half-ruined face. The dearness of it – of what he meant to me – pierced me and made my voice curt.
“I need your help.” I cleared my throat and glanced at Hal. “And some of the snipers, if they’ll come.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
September, 1942
The train moved through the dawn. Though Collis had a first-class sleeper compartment, he’d spent the night in the easy chair by the window, gazing out at the darkness. Now, as the first bars of sunlight lit the landscape, he shifted uneasily.
It was all so familiar: the long vistas; those barren snowy mountains; even the hawks circling overhead.
Collis’s compartment was a medley of stainless steel and curved lines. The bed had a mint resting on the pillow, left by a maid. A silver bowl on the table held fresh fruit.
The last time he’d journeyed to this region, he’d been in a cattle car, crammed in with dozens of others.
Collis looked down and fiddled with the plain gold band on his finger. For a long time, he’d thought he’d never get married, because what could he offer Amity Vancour? But when he had imagined marriage, it had always been to her.
Yet he wasn’t sorry about the marriage he’d actually made.
It had been on the spur of the moment. He and Kay had been in his chambers at the palace, hurriedly going over the plans for him to come out here. He’d felt grim from the events of the day. Betraying the Resistance hadn’t come at an easy personal price, no matter the reasons. Then he’d seen the look on Kay’s face.
She’d gripped her arms i
n that half-wry, half-vulnerable way she had. She shrugged as if in explanation.
“I’ll miss you,” she said.
She’d never said anything to indicate that she truly cared about him, though he thought he’d seen it in her eyes. It hadn’t even been a decision. Collis had dropped the shirt he was folding and gotten down on one knee on the plush carpet.
“Marry me, then,” he said.
“What?”
He’d taken her hand. Unaccountably, his heart was pounding. “Marry me. I love you, Kay. I didn’t want to, but I do.”
She’d given a small smile and slowly kneeled beside him. “Collis, we’re both old enough to know better. There’s no such thing as love.”
He took her face in his hands. He wanted to say, Do you have any idea at all what I’ve done today?
“What is it that I feel then?” he asked hoarsely.
“I don’t know. Compatibility? I told you, we’re very much alike.”
And Collis knew it was true. Probably truer now than when she’d first told him that. He stroked the corner of her mouth with his thumb. “Fine, so I’m compatible with you and you’re compatible with me. Is that a yes?”
A strange expression had crossed her face. “We are, aren’t we?” she said.
She rose, leaving him kneeling there. She paced across the room. Finally she turned, staring at him. “You really want to marry me?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Why? Your job’s quite secure – you must know that.”
“Forget my job. We’re two of a kind. No one else will ever understand us the way we do each other.” In a low voice, Collis added, “And besides, maybe I want to stop getting kicked out of your bed in the middle of the night. Know what it’s like to wake up with you.”
Kay came slowly back to him. She crouched beside him again, slim and neat in her blue skirt and jacket. She traced the shape of his broken nose – drew a line down to his mouth.
“It could be good politically,” she said. “We’d make quite a team.”
Collis had to laugh: his first proposal and this was the reaction. “Is that all?”
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