Chapter 30
Blink and You'll Miss Me Dying
Ping-clang! Ping-clang!
Another pair of ricocheting bullets. Dastou shook his head in disappointment; these sailors needed better training or bigger brains. Firing off a pistol in an all-metal warship down a narrow hall and trying to hit something through a small window in a cabin door was pretty stupid no matter how you look at it.
His group had run up from the Element Control Center, though through halls, past a few other doors, and came here. The skeleton crew running this destroyer meant that the team had only been spotted once they were inside the place Dastou wanted to get to, when one of the guards screamed like a frightened child before the Saint knocked him out. The other guard had been drinking something, spit it out in surprise, and was able to yell out the first syllable of “help!” before Crawford took him out. Then came the shooting.
The complex communications equipment of the warship’s “Radio Room,” as a plaque outside the sealed door called it, took up two of four walls in its small, designated space. An L-shaped operating station filled a corner, and the two other two walls featured diagrams, codes, frequency charts, and other instructional material. That was another terrible idea, seeing as how any enemy that boarded could, in a heartbeat, have access to everything needed to undermine the entire navy. Blackbrick was very new at this “full-scale war” thing. Technically, so was Dastou, but at least he wasn’t an idiot. Not all of the time, anyway.
Switches, toggles, turn-knobs of various sizes, backlit and plain buttons, each by the dozen, took up space on most of the radio equipment. Six screens showed bits and pieces of information and graphs related to operating the devices they were attached to. Again, it looked disconcertingly similar to the Caravan’s communications room. Dastou sat in the bolted-down metal chair at the L-shaped corner desk’s pivot point, where the operator would be within reach of every major knob, button, and toggle. The radio was intricate, sure, but those instructions on the posters were clear and easy to reference. As the Saint started dialing the frequency he wanted on a knob, he looked over his shoulder to see Trenna and Crawford pulling the knocked out comms operator and his guard over to a corner to keep them safe from possible friendly fire. Dastou faced the radio again, put on the already plugged-in headset, and made a connection to an unsecure line.
“That will do,” Crawford said after a final grunt while putting the guard in place. “Let’s look for something useful.”
Sounds of scrounging around came from the shelves on one of the walls, lots of clinking and shoving as Trenna and Crawford rummaged.
“I’m sorry, but I think I need an explanation,” Trenna said. “I don’t understand what an ‘unbalanced’ is.”
“I can reference it against you to make it clearer,” answered Dastou while he fiddled with knobs. “You’re a ‘natural,’ Trenna, someone almost entirely immune. Although before Vaiss came along we thought all naturals were the same, and you seem to have a deeper immunity. Anyway,” he said, waving away his tangent, “an unbalanced is the opposite: completely, totally susceptible. Their vulnerability also makes their brains respond differently than what the hypnotic suggestion actually wants.”
“Is that common?” she wondered.
“We don’t have real metrics, but it’s been estimated that one in five-thousand is a natural, or somehow becomes a natural in their adulthood. One in about fifty-thousand is unbalanced. It’s rare to the point that having three of them in a city room would raise eyebrows. Three in the same room like downstairs is… shit, I don’t know what it is.”
“The assumption to be made, then,” Crawford said, “is that they have been made unbalanced. Do you suppose all of Blackbrick’s army and navy is the same?”
“Not everyone, but a lot of them, maybe. The tattoo I saw was way less intricate than what Trenna’s people suffered from. My guess is that it was easier to make them unbalanced, with fewer, more straight-forward commands, than fully take them over.”
Dastou heard the static in his headphones lower and knew he was close to the right frequency. He shifted from the bigger knob he had been moving around to a smaller one to hone in on what he needed. The channel he was looking for changed randomly at least once a week, and Dastou got tired of being informed about it so often and decided to ignore the messages until he had to make contact. That was, what, three months ago? He sighed at himself and kept turning the smaller knob slowly clockwise.
“Is that so much worse than being hypnotized normally by him?” Crawford asked.
“Yes,” Dastou said with pity. “It causes severe brain damage. This army and navy, if most of them really were made unbalanced in order to be filtered out of mass-hypnotism, won’t last long.”
The topic unfortunately made Dastou remember a terrible part of his people’s past. A Saint several generations back – whom no one liked to think about – was using human experimentation to comprehend the limits of his power with hypnotism. Part of that was making people unbalanced to see if there was a way to control the suggestion given so the result was still predictable, if not what was directly written on a Stitch. All of those unfortunate subjects died due to hemorrhaging of the brain, at around the same time frame, between one and three years after the experiment began. Usually the death occurred minutes after a complete psychotic breakdown that nearly always resulted in shocking, overwhelming violence. The madman Saint actually once tried to unbalance himself and found it impossible, which is why the specialized tattoo Stitch on the sailors below deck didn’t affect Dastou.
Admittedly, the technique made sense. Manipulating hundreds of ultra-obedient soldiers with a complex tattooed Stitch would take a very long time. Making a great number them unbalanced required far less intricacy and reinforced Citizen Vaiss’ seemingly desperate impatience. He wanted to destroy the information the DSF had on the Social Cypher so badly that he would make a temporary armed force that would collapse due to the nature of its grunts and the eventual deranged, violence-filled few minutes before their deaths. The result could be the deaths of hundreds, maybe thousands if the unbalanced had access to, say, a fleet of destroyers with missiles and cannons ready to go. It made Dastou sick to think of the death toll.
What exactly had the DSF accidentally collected that some inhumane bastard would risk lives by the hundreds to get it? Or maybe he didn’t think of it as a risk. Maybe lives lost were, to Vaiss, unimportant as long as he got what he wanted, the creation of a ticking time bomb capable of mass destruction something he didn’t think twice about. The attack on the streets of Blackbrick just days ago was enough evidence to believe that might be the case.
“I believe they figured out not to fire down the hall,” said Crawford behind Dastou, whose focus was on the radio equipment. “It’s been a couple of minutes since the last shots.”
“You would think they’d have realized it earlier, after we heard that soldier cry out,” said Trenna, grumbling afterwards, a dull metal-on-metal clang revealing that she was moving something around.
“Whoever fired the shot that ricocheted back at him is going owe a heavy favor, I’d say.”
“If he lives,” Trenna said quietly.
“Obviously,” responded Crawford coolly. “But it is a brand-new ship; their medical supplies will be fully stocked. More than likely he’ll be fine.”
Was that Crawford’s version of trying to comfort someone? Strange days, indeed. The redhead seemed to have warmed to Trenna over the days they spent on the Jaspertine. Or at the very least he thought her less useless, as she spent most of the trip obsessively trying to learn what she could about some of the neater toys Husband packed for them, her favorite being the digital monocular used by spotters. It was also beneficial that Crawford was not remotely interested in the opposite sex, meaning that as physically attractive as Trenna was – not counting that she was still quite thin from being homeless for a while – he was better to have around than that walking libido Goner, or the incessantly charming Nes.
The static in the headset Dastou wore became nonexistent. It went from the noise of nonexistent or bad signal, to the noise of a connected open line with no one saying anything.
“I can see the ones in the hall leaving,” Crawford said. “They’ll be back soon, I’m sure.”
“Anyone on this line, answer,” called Dastou into a desk-mounted microphone. “I already know there’s always someone on here at all hours in case of emergency. We are aboard a Blackbrick warship headed for DavNo.”
“No, give me that,” said a familiar gruff voice in the background of where the frequency connected.
The sounds came through a set of speakers high on the wall. Dastou must have gotten something wrong and not set incoming signals to the headphones. He grunted in disappointment at himself, took off the headset, and tossed it aside. Super-geniuses were not supposed to forget to turn off the speakers.
“Cozy, is that you?” asked the man on the other side of the connection, who must have taken the microphone from whoever had been quietly manning it prior to Dastou’s call.
“Cozy?” Trenna asked. The Saint shrugged without looking at her. He also heard a big metal something hit the floor behind him, and glass breaking after.
“Yeah, yeah, it’s me,” said Dastou, trying not to focus on what else was going on in the room he was in. “Let’s get right to it: I assume you all heard about a little bit of war being declared?”
“Oh, your damn right I heard that,” said the man on the line, his anger bubbling through some minor interference creeping into the wall-mounted speakers. “Heard it twelve hours ago when these bastards decided to suddenly announce they were invading and pretending they weren’t.”
“Good, then in that case it won’t take much to convince you that I need help stopping or slowing down this armada. How ‘bout it, Bouten?”
“What in the black!?” called Crawford, surprised. “You’re talking to Bouten Liamlak?” More glass shattered.
“Haha!” said Bouten, either not having heard or ignoring Crawford’s too-loud question. “Cozy, my boy, I think you’re confusing me for some brightseer fool. Watch me get this war started proper.”
Clicks, scrapes, and a thump made it obvious that Bouten had put the mic down, then footsteps in the background indicated he was moving away from it. Bouten spoke to someone. Dastou couldn’t tell what was being said, but Bouten Liamlak must have been talking to one of his subordinates – everyone there would be a subordinate to the man.
“On my count, you hear me!” Bouten said to someone. Clicks and scratches, and the man’s voice was clear again, closer to the mic. “Alright, Cozy, get your feet set, this may shake you up a bit.”
Dastou needed only half-a-second to realize what he should say in response. “Oh, shit.” He grabbed the arm rests of the bolted-down operator’s seat tight. “Guys, grab something and hold on!” he called out.
The panic in his voice and Bouten’s vague warning over the speakers was enough to scare Trenna and Crawford into complying. When Dastou glanced around to check on them, his companions were already gripping some piece of bolted-down metal or another with white-knuckled intensity.
“Four,” Bouten counted. “Three, two...”
Immediately after Bouten uttered “two,” an explosion could be heard some distance away through Fat Duck’s hull, which meant the sound was incredibly loud out in the open. A second later, the ship rocked at most five degrees starboard, probably from an unexpected wave hitting it. That wasn’t enough to disturb a child out of sleep, certainly nothing to yell about. He let go of the chair’s hand rests and cleared his throat, marginally embarrassed.
“Um, was that it?” Trenna asked.
“Impressive,” added Crawford thickly.
“First off,” shouted Bouten, sounding as if he was bellowing at someone behind him, “someone doesn’t know what ‘fire on one’ means!” His voice was clear and normal again. “Secondly, from what that lovely voice just said, I didn’t hit the ship you’re on. That was a bomb I had a small engine attached to and set in the ocean, though I guess I must have miscalculated somewhere and aimed wrong. Radar is hard to work with.”
“Are you insane!?” shouted Crawford now that he was sure Bouten would hear. “Why were you attempting to hit the ship we’re on with some kind of motorized bomb? What if we got killed?”
“Hah!” said Bouten with a chuckle. “Those shells aren’t strong enough to sink what you’re on – we can see the monstrous things from here.” Helping Bouten build that telescope turned out better than expected, thought Dastou. “I mean to scare them, let them know they aren’t exactly a secret, and a lot more are about to be shot off. I’d recommend getting yourselves to safety.”
“Wait a damn second, Bouten,” Dastou said. “How’d you get ready so fast as to have weapons put together especially for this occasion?”
“Let alone,” Crawford said, letting suspicion drip in his tone, “have some radar tracking capability to find where we would be in the first place?”
“I got a hint about these warships a month ago from a special friend in the west,” answered Bouten calmly. “An old fella with biceps big as my belly who you’ll meet soon if what he said was right. He also gave me the design for a radar tracker, the same kind as the ones on the warships. Had enough time to put together a few things, like those motor-bombs.”
“They’re torpedoes,” Dastou said, remembering that he had blueprints for them in the weapons development manuals that were the DSF’s biggest secret. He also recalled that they seemed fairly useless, until now. “Congratulations on being the first to make them, I guess.”
“Tor-what? Bah, never mind. Just get to shore, Cozy. Not that I’ve missed this past year of your absence up here. Hah!”
“Bouten...,” Dastou whispered, exasperated.
“At your speed you’ll get near land in an hour or so. Damn steel monstrosities are fast for their size.”
An hour? They had felt a substantial increase in speed soon after the alarm, but cutting down a few hours travel to one was remarkable. Dastou turned off the radio’s main switch, realized that was sort of pointless, and yanked out cables from power converters on the bulkhead the equipment was attached to. That was… an impotent display of sabotage, but he didn’t want to ruin this machine completely. Getting radio equipment working was half-miraculous, involving deep dives into the Null Bank, and if he couldn’t go back in ever, breaking this equipment felt like a huge mistake.
“Alright,” Crawford started, “do you mind explaining how you know that man?”
When Dastou opened his mouth to answer, albeit with not much, there was another loud explosion from far off and outside, the sound muffled like the first torpedo hit. Same as the first time, there was a wave afterwards, and a slight tilt of the warship. This time the trio stood still, keeping their balance by spreading their feet a bit and moving their arms. Crawford cleared his throat after being interrupted.
“Do you mind explaining,” he repeated, “how you happen to be friends with the criminal overlord of Davranis North?”
“’Friend’ might be overstating it,” replied Dastou. “And ‘overlord’ might be overstating it a lot. Is that a fire extinguisher, and a hand-axe?”
He was pointing out the fire suppression tool Trenna carried and the smallish impromptu weapon Crawford held.
“Well, fine then,” said the Saint. “Trenna, you know how to use one of those things right?”
“Yes, sir,” she answered, and Dastou was not surprised.
Most city-folk would have trouble with the heavy red apparatus, seeing as how hypnotism dictated emergencies and use of supplies t
herein. Trenna was from the Tribeslands, where most people would never have seen one at all, so she should have been extra confused. As usual, Trenna appeared far more capable than most brightseers.
“Okay, let’s get off this thing,” Dastou said. “I’d hate for Bouten’s love of theatrics to get us blown to pieces.”
Dastou stepped over to the stupendously large and complex mural of the radio’s inner workings. He stuck a pair of fingers in a hidden latch, pressed a button within that latch, and heard a click followed by a hiss. He pushed against the wall and opened a perfectly camouflaged door right where Trenna said it would be.
“Thank goodness,” said Crawford. “I almost thought these warmongers screwed up their own boat’s map.”
“Me too, until the door opened,” Dastou admitted.
The Saint led the way into a narrow passageway with small diode bulbs glowing orange near the low ceiling. While he didn’t have to sidle to fit in the passage, it was close, with one shoulder faintly scraping against a metal wall out of necessity. He turned his head and checked on the others as he stepped forward. Trenna followed directly behind him as Crawford waited a pace to take up the rear. The corridors that led into the communication room, much as the rest of the ship they had snuck around or ran through, were already narrow, and this cramped path was no doubt meant for a single person – a covert route for the operator in case he had intelligence to relay. Luckily it was only a handful of meters from the comms room to a steel door that that would let them out. Unluckily, there was no way to close the secret door in the mural.
Behind the trio, two loud, echoing klongs hit the door to the comms room from that was being shot at earlier. The locked-from-the-inside cabin door was being slammed by something, the two successive strikes like gigantic hammers against the steel. Whatever these people had for a battering ram, it was incredibly powerful, and the sounds sparked in Dastou a need to rush. He hurried along to the steel door that would lead outside. He tried the latch, it pulled back as far as it should, but pushing the door didn’t do anything. He put his whole shoulder against it, shoved hard, and still nothing.
A second pair of fast, booming hits sounded off, then came the sound of metal being wrenched apart, then a final metal-on-metal explosion; the outward swinging door to the Radio Room was rammed open in the wrong direction, the hinges bent apart, and lastly the door smacking against the bulkhead with great speed.
“No one’s here!” said a male sailor after entering the comms room. “The mouseway! They’re in the mouseway!”
The Saint sighed.
“Load another pair, fire into it,” said the same middle-aged woman he heard below deck with the unbalanced sailors, the one who pulled the alarm.
She had kept her voice very low and Dastou hardly heard the order. He did, however, see shadows made by lights in the connected room that filtered through the sliver of space between the secret door and the jamb; they were setting up right at the entry.
“Oh, that’s no good,” Dastou said in a whisper. “Trenna, the extinguisher, use it when the door is opened.”
“Are you sure? It’ll blow back here.”
“First shot loaded!” called a soldier.
“I didn’t say announce it!” Smart Lady reprimanded.
“Nevermind.” Trenna uttered as she made an awkward half-turn, one shoulder touching the wall, her feet almost tangling up on one another.
The girl removed the safety pin on the extinguisher, then aimed the conical nozzle at the end of a short hose back the way they came, right at Crawford. The redhead’s eyes popped open wide and he ducked right as the secret door was shoved open. Before Crawford was fully down on a knee, Trenna squeezed the firing lever on the extinguisher. The air in front of the nozzle, above Crawford, and most of the way toward the room they just left was rapidly filled with white, fluffy foam, and she didn’t let go of the lever for several seconds.
Dastou could tell from his peripheral vision that the entire path to the communications space was in a white-out condition. Extinguisher foam used by the Cypher – there were two other kinds in the Null Bank that were ignored – was meant for fast expulsion and expansion. The stuff would expand for a handful of seconds, slowly breaking apart to fill the air and replace oxygen, its coverage range amazing when it was used to carefully choke out all instances of fire in an emergency. And when there wasn’t a fire and the stuff was sprayed into empty air with a too long press of the lever-trigger? It became a chokingly thick miasma that would cover a small room.
What had been a noisy, nerve-racking situation turned into a quiet, haunted scene. The foam in the air, which would very soon clump together and fall to the floor, muffled sound and made the coughs from the sailors caught in the trajectory of the spray seem far away.
Dastou put his attention back on the door next to him and shoved against it shoulder-first, hoping it was just heavy. He grunted in pain as the door barely budged open a crack, and took note that it was not actually very thick, maybe half as much as other inner doors of the ship. He saw the real problem thanks to the teeny gap he made at the exit: a wooden crate was blocking the way, and that might also be blocked by something else.
“What’s wrong? Why isn’t the door opened?” asked Crawford.
Dastou turned to look back the way he came, and saw that in those few seconds of him failing to open the door, the foam had dissipated greatly. The ground looked like a slipper, snowy winter in Davranis Central, and the air was empty enough for the sailors chasing them to have mostly clear shots. Luckily, he was glancing back just as one of Blackbrick’s “finest” got down on one knee and aimed a two-barreled mini-cannon down the mouseway. That was a new type of weapon, meaning Bouten Liamlak was not the only one cobbling together novel and deadly implements.
“Shit!” Dastou shouted, unable to admire the new toy for longer than a heartbeat.
The Saint lunged back the way he came, only able to push off with one foot, and tackled Trenna, who herself hit Crawford enough to knock him down too. The mouseway was narrow enough so that none of them hit the floor with a hint of grace.
Whoomp-whoomp! The shoulder-mounted mini-cannon did not fire the two big barrels simultaneously, and Dastou was still able to look at the sailor who fired, noticing the fist-sized projectiles in a fraction-of-a-second of accidental Open Iris. The small cannon balls whizzed and whistled past the Saint, nearly struck his bald head, then bashed against the door after Dastou’s mind went back to normal.
The dual metal-on-metal clangs from the cannons were ear-splitting when the steel door was hit, followed by the sound combination of breaking metal and crunching wood. Dastou’s ears were ringing from the all-encompassing noise, but he had the wherewithal to look up and see that their way out was clear because the relatively thin door was violently wrenched off its hinges and flung outward halfway open, the wooden crate shoved aside with a lot more force than Dastou could have mustered. The door swung down anti-climactically after the cacophony of its destruction, and clattered to the floor without going completely into the next room, making a sort of ramp down with the bottom end on the lip of the mouseway exit.
The man who fired the dual-cannon cursed his aim, and Dastou got himself up off Trenna and Crawford awkwardly. He saw that the cannon was about to be loaded again, grabbed a thumb-length small knife he’d been keeping on a small sheath at his waist, and hurled it at the man’s shoulder. It hit the mark, stabbed in all the way to the handguard, and the cannon-holder fell backward. The weapon dropped heavily to the floor, and someone else in moss-green and white was quickly trying to pull the man back as a third sailor ran around to take the mini-cannon off the floor.
“Run!” bellowed Dastou at his companions as he stood up and ran the single step to where the door used to be.
The Saint hopped on and then off the door-ramp, entered the bridge, and instantly used Open Iris for a couple of seconds to take in the space. It was a nice looking, clean space with wide walking lanes, and lots of equipme
nt that looked stolen from the Academy’s design books – again, he reminded himself that it would technically be the other way around. Each bulkhead but the one that featured the mouseway door was made of mostly translucent material that Dastou could easily guess was neirdite quartz again, with steel support poles placed regularly inside the thick see-through barrier. Big flat diode-lit view screens mounted above eye-level relayed information, and touch-based interfaces fit surprisingly well with traditional knobs and switches at each of five work stations evenly spaced in a three-quarter circle around the room.
In the center of the bridge, directly in front of Dastou, was a black, square box of a table with a flickering, floating holographic display showing a topographical map of Davranis North. Seven holographic red circles on the map were labeled with the floating words “target of opportunity.” Four of those targets were Davranis Security Forces listening posts or meeting places, the other three were other important locations.
One was sub-labeled with the letters “B.L.,” which would refer to Bouten Liamlak, and pointed at the secret office where the man ran his various enterprises, criminal and otherwise. The second target was the same disused port Dastou was headed for in Jaspertine. It had been built and then almost immediately abandoned by the Cypher, the same way the rest of DavNo was, fifty years ago. The port was set to support large vessels, meaning it might be a target because it would be a perfect landing spot for the fleet and they would be smart to keep an eye on it.
The third and strangest target of opportunity was a densely populated area known as the “Art Quarter,” which people from all over the world knew as a place of exploratory culture. Folks held private showings of their artistic efforts; read poetry to their fellows; spoke of philosophy. They made music – music for the void’s sake! – and played it live with their patched-together instruments, or sold clothes they designed and made themselves. It was a widely known and beloved tourist area, protected equally by above-the-board civilians and hungry-for-power gangs. It was where Dastou met one of Nesembraci Jaydef’s sisters, Sidria, a fashion designer taking her yearly allotted vacation time to head up from Central to see the Art Quarter and show off a few new products. Nes was with her, and the two men hit it off, Dastou seeing the future agent’s potential instantly.
When he looked away from annoyingly distracting holographic map, Dastou noticed that six sailors had taken cover in the commotion of the mouseway door being blasted open, all in front of the work station area closer to the fore of the bridge. Now that it was relatively quiet, they were poking their heads out, each with a surprised look on his or her face to see the man they meant to arrest standing on the bridge of their warship. Dastou down-shifted, feeling the strain of the act already.
“So,” Dastou said, speaking loud enough for his voice to carry throughout the room, “how’s everybody doing? Invasion plans working out for you?”
A man got quickly to his feet farther up and to the left of the holographic map table, his gold rank pins a little wider than anyone else seen so far, a tiny golden wreath of sewn-in feathers below those pins. This was most likely the captain, and he had a handgun that he quickly pointed at the Saint’s face, while only the big electronic furniture separated the two. The man’s expression was not one of calm, necessary detachment, and Dastou ducked so fast his spine complained from beginning to end, getting behind the big black table barely before the captain pulled his trigger. He glanced back to see that Trenna and Crawford had also gotten down in time and leapt behind the closest work station left and right of the door respectively. The captain’s single shot hit a side of the mouseway bulkhead, ricocheted, and a man screamed in panic, maybe hit by the bullet, maybe not.
“You could just say, ‘you’re under arrest!’” the Saint shouted at the captain from behind cover.
Crawford stuck his head out to look at the Saint while running footsteps came at them. The redhead made a symbol with his flat palm that they decided earlier stood for Jaspertine.
“No shit,” Dastou called out with the thickest sarcasm he could pour into only two words. Asking if they needed their getaway vehicle while being completely surrounded was like asking if you needed to pull cookies out of the oven early so they didn’t bake into coal – though the analogy was only in Dastou’s head because he felt very much like he was in an oven on high heat right now.
Someone ran out of the mouseway and Crawford popped out of his hiding spot. The redhead thrust a palm into the sailor’s chest, stopping him and forcing the wind out of his lungs. The agent then kicked his target solidly in the gut with almost textbook precision, sending the poor bastard off his feet and into others that were right behind him in the passage. Dastou got out of cover, ran toward port, and saw that only the captain had a gun, the three sailors behind their leader holding batons in skull-crunching grips with skull-crunching grimaces on their faces.
“Fine,” the captain called out, “you’re under arrest!”
The captain aimed up with his extra-long-barreled pistol the second he made eye contact with the running Saint and pulled the trigger again. Dastou was already ducking down when he heard the flat clap of the silenced pistol – ah, because the noise in an enclosed space would be debilitating. He moved fast while crouched and reached the work station ahead of where Trenna had taken cover.
Another clap meant the captain fired again, and Dastou heard the crunch of bullet-riddled electronics just above his head. Another shot, another crunch; the captain was trying to keep him in place while he moved closer for a better shot. The captain was only a meter-and-a-half away now, and Dastou twisted while crouched to look out and see the port side of the bridge, his view partially obstructed by the table he hid behind. He saw what he expected, and the sailors with batons were rushing along the port of the bridge, circling around work stations to get to him.
Then, Trenna came running up from around the work station she was using for cover, fire extinguisher in hand, and up the same walking path the baton-wielders were on. Dastou was in the middle with a great view of Trenna coming up one direction of the bridge’s walkway, near the quartz wall, the baton-wielders coming the other way. Those three sailors had moved closer to her to get to Dastou, but only registered her at the last second, when she had taken another couple of paces and was within arm’s reach of them. The surprised look on one of the baton-wielders’ faces didn’t last long, as it was forcibly removed when Trenna swung the big red metal cylinder at the guy’s head with consciousness-ending speed. The sailor could not avoid it, and the battle of extinguisher versus side-of-the-head was won in the exact way anyone would guess, the devastating clang accompanied by a short yelp from the victim. The too-hard swing from Trenna spun her an extra half-a-turn while the sailor she struck flopped to the floor, and she lost her balance slightly. The extinguisher hit the metal floor with a sound eerily similar to when it hit the sailor, stopping her awkward turn. The and the other two men halted to deal with her.
Dastou guessed that the captain was also distracted by Trenna sudden appearance, and left his cover the same way he came in, in the direction of the big black table. The captain’s gun was up, but it was only now aiming back in the Saint’s direction. Too late. Dastou, as close as he was, only took one long step and then reached out, grabbing the man’s wrist like a vice, his thumb pinching in near the enemy’s own. Dastou’s other foot finished its step at the same time that he took hold of the silenced weapon by the top of the long barrel, pulled up at the same time he pinched in with the hand holding the wrist, and wrenched the weapon out of the captain’s hands.
That whole disarm was over so quickly it left the captain stunned and confused. He didn’t have time to change expressions before Dastou smacked him in the temple as hard as he could with the pistol as hard as he dared, knocking the man with the fancy badge out cold. Meanwhile, the Saint still held the silenced gun by the barrel, the muzzle facing him. The two remaining baton sailors were slowly coming for Trenna, whose back was to the quartz wall
after the element of surprise gone and the extinguisher too unwieldy compared to batons. It was admirable that she still held it at all.
“Get down!” screamed Crawford.
The hollow, deep, instantly recognizable sounds of the mini-cannon’s barrels firing followed the agent’s warning. In the enclosed bridge, those booms replaced all other sound. Dastou didn’t duck when the advice came, just moved aside, then heard and felt the air cut apart by the small cannon balls as they missed him by half-a-meter at waist level. The Saint caught the last the cannon ball trajectory in his peripheral vision across the bridge, shot in a straight-line path from the mouseway. The cannon balls hit the fore transparent wall, causing explosive noise from the impact that combined with the high-pitched vibration of the quartz, a painful, disorienting consequence. Dastou gritted his teeth and closed his eyes in instinct, the noise a wave that drowned the bridge, and kept going, a piercing whine that lasted for two or three very long seconds. When he heard the sound dissipating beyond the palms against the side of his head, he re-opened his eyes. He was the first to get himself together and did not delay in standing up and hurrying to the sailors that had been chasing Trenna, who was now on her knees with palms against her own ears.
Still holding the captain’s handgun, he pistol-whipped one pained sailor and then shoved the other head-first into the quartz, knocking them both out efficiently.
“Trenna,” he said tersely as he put a hand on her chin for attention. She opened her eyes and uncovered her ears. “Get up,” Dastou ordered.
She did what he said, though she probably would have done it anyway. Sometimes you have to pretend to be in charge or no one takes you seriously when you are. When the young woman stood up, still rubbing her temples, she looked in the Saint’s direction, and her eyes went wide at something behind him. Fearing he had no time to turn around, Dastou glanced at the closest polished steel pole reinforcing the transparent wall and saw in the reflection a woman coming up behind him with a baton raised high.
The Saint skirted to the side as the air whistled next to his temple, the weapon swung down where his head was. He twisted to see Smart Lady, the officer. Without waiting she swiped to the side, the air whistling again. Dastou had to hop back to avoid being struck, one hand on the quartz wall for balance. In the corner of his eye, another sailor was coming for him.
Dastou quickly stepped to his left to get some distance against Smart Lady, then left again to put another half-pace between them, but now his back was to a work station and he knew he couldn’t make more room. Right in front of him, however, between himself and the sneering female commander, the cone from the end of the extinguisher flew past, flipping end to end. Still seeing it in his periphery, the cone hit the other oncoming sailor dead in his nose. The boy was startled, tripped himself up, and fell. The side of his head hit the corner of the same work station Dastou was up against took the sailor out of the fight.
As top-notch awesome as that was – he’d tell Trenna later – Smart Lady didn’t give a rat’s ass. She came at Dastou fast and fierce, the baton moving in a blur. This woman had to be ten or fifteen years his senior and wasn’t a Saint, but she was skilled. Every one of her movements was smooth and immediately followed up on, giving him little time to act. She took a swing to the left, matched it with an attempt at a grapple using her other hand, combined with a swing to the right and downward. Dastou matched it all, attack for attack, blocking or repositioning everything she did. He was able to, finally, slide to the side of the station his back, but the move was too fast, and she shoved a hand against his chest to push him backward.
Dastou kept his footing as a sideways swish of the baton came and grazed his nose close enough to take off the sweat from the tip and luckily nothing else. Another attempt at a grapple was interrupted with a two-handed shoved against Smart Lady’s forearm. Dastou needed something to unlevel the playing field, and registered something just dumb enough to work for him.
The next time she swung down and he avoided it, he also took a too long step backward, the small of his back touching the black hologram-emitting table, then another long step to his right. The look on Smart Lady’s face was one of success, of satisfaction – she thought he was trying to get away from her relentless assault. She came at him with the same fervor, but Dastou only needed the second he gave himself to grab a small bottle of hand sanitizer on the center work station, which was now to his right. Thanking whoever the neat freak was that decided to have that on hand, Dastou grabbed the small bottle, flicked the top up with a thumb, and squeezed the plastic container hard, aiming it at his enemy’s face while she came rushing for him.
Smart Lady got some alcohol-based solution in one eye and squealed in surprise. Dastou dropped the hand sanitizer and closed the half-step to her with an arm extended. The Saint slipped to her side and grabbed and twisted the woman’s weapon arm back by the elbow. With one eye closed, she reached across her body with the other arm, her hand a claw trying to scrape at his face. Dastou snapped his head back, eluded the angry graze at his face, took that reaching arm by the wrist and pulled down on it. Smart Lady now had one arm behind her back and the other across her neck, which immobilized her.
Not seeing a way to avoid doing her harm, the Saint pushed her forward, let go of her cross-reaching wrist, and spun her by simultaneously pulling on the baton-wielding arm’s elbow. The shock at having one arm set free showed on her face, but not for long since Dastou gave her the hardest punch he could. The spin and the opposing force of his fist were enough to knock her unconscious before she hit the ground. Smart Lady dropped, hit nothing else on the way, and landed loosely on the metal deck.
Dastou looked to his right and saw Crawford fighting two sailors, a third on the floor near him and down for the count. The hand axe that the agent held earlier was stuck in the firing mechanism of the two-barreled cannon launcher, ruining the weapon.
To his credit, Crawford was doing a masterful job against the two remaining enemies, the redhead’s skill at hand-to-hand combat his third highest attribute as a student. He was doing a good enough job that anything Dastou did right now might interrupt the flow, so he decided to wait and watch. The Saint, however, heard Trenna running around the bridge to get to Crawford, didn’t bother calling for her to stop, and waited for the entertainment to commence.
Crawford eluded a swipe with a baton from one sailor, then one from the other, both movements by the agent so miniscule that the weapons missed by millimeters; he was moving as much as he needed to and absolutely no more than that. One of the men rushed forward, hoping to grab Crawford and hold him still. The redhead sidled, took the lunging sailor’s wrist with a single hand, used the excess of momentum against him, and flipped the poor fool end-over-end with seemingly no effort at all. That sailor landed hard on his back behind Crawford, who was still able to see the other enemy coming. Trenna was also coming, running very fast, the extinguisher in-hand. Dastou winced in advance.
Crawford saw her and did not step back into his own fight, letting the sailor focus on him and pay no heed to Trenna. The young woman was still running when she grunted and hurled the extinguisher as hard as she could – throwing herself totally off-balance with the toss. The red metal cylinder was thrown low, too heavy for her to lob properly, and it smashed into the unsuspecting soldier’s knee with a resonant clang, knocking the sailor’s lower leg out from under him. The unfortunate man’s forward rush was stopped suddenly by the abrupt backwards movement of a leg, and the uniformed enemy pitched forward as if his belly was on a fulcrum. Crawford watched apathetically as the sailor face-planted, breaking his nose with a crunch. That guy was assuredly done for the night, and maybe the next several days.
Crawford looked at Trenna with narrowed eyes. “I did not need help.”
“Oh,” she responded, hands on her knees as she caught her breath. “Sorry, couldn’t tell. Wanted to help.”
“Admittedly,” Dastou said, the bridge now quiet, “that was very amusing.�
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Crawford looked down at the knee-smashed broken-nosed sailor. “I’m inclined to agree. But what do we do now? Should we expect more?”
Dastou started to walk toward the captain’s workstation, centered on the bridge and near where he already stood. Ah, it was his hand sanitizer; a leader has to be an example in all ways, he reckoned, including cleanliness. His companions joined him at the captain’s space.
“I’d say no,” Dastou answered. “That was a lot of sailors that came at us, the others still have to run the ship after all, and skeleton crews aren’t meant to have replacements for positions. If anything, Fat Duck is going to be considered out of the fleet once they realize how short on manpower they are and that their radio is temporarily down.”
“Is that the type of information you wanted to find?” asked Trenna, pointing at the flickering hologram above the black table, still working and showing targets.
“That would do, yeah,” Dastou said. “It might not show where they’re going, but it shows what they want. And they’re not going to surprise anyone at this point thanks to Bouten and Tryst’s arrogant declaration.”
“Or these ships will use the criminal’s pre-emptive attacks as an excuse,” Crawford piped in.
“That would make sense if that map didn’t show him as a target already,” Dastou figured. “Blackbrick was already coming in guns blazing, maybe now they’ll have to stop and change their plans.”
“So we’re leaving now?” wondered Trenna.
“Is Jaspertine on the way?” Dastou asked Crawford.
“It is,” he answered. “A couple of minutes away if our programming worked out.”
“Then yes, we’re definitely leaving.” He looked around the bridge at the unconscious bodies of sailors everywhere. “Though I wish we were able to get away with even a tiny bit of secrecy…”
“I do not know why I am surprised you are there,” interjected a voice filtered through small speakers somewhere overhead. A familiar, dangerous voice.
Dastou looked to the big flat monitor that was relaying weather information a moment before. The screen was attached overhead at the forward end of the bridge, above the hatch built into the quartz bulkhead that would let them out to the deck. Citizen Vaiss’ face took up most of the screen. A red blinking light next to a shiny black circle indicated a camera in the center of the black bevel of the view screen, which meant Vaiss could see the bridge.
“As dearly as you love to endanger yourself,” the Citizen said, “where else in the world would you be but aboard one of my warships?”
Ignoring the impossibility of video communication going out to the ocean, Dastou walked closer to the screen. “Yeah, these are nice. Lots of modern conveniences, all in a big, murderous package. Lovely. Where you headed with these death-toting bad boys?”
“You already know,” said Vaiss, not hiding his distaste for speaking to a Saint. “Davranis North, that little haven that you people have carved out.”
“Oh, I didn’t do much to it,” Dastou said about DavNo, letting only a second pass as he considered Vaiss’ odd phrasing. “Sure, I visit and out in some time here and there, but I’m easily bored. Have to have something to...”
“Not. You.” Vaiss cut Dastou off sharply with those two words, each in its own bile-filled sentence. “You people in general. DavNo, as you call it, is a filthy hole. Destroying it is a bonus I happily add to burning your Academy to ashes around you. Freedom does not serve any of you, it is not your place.”
Dastou raised an eyebrow, and looked at Crawford. The redhead, as expected, over-dramatically shrugged in confusion. “No clue, sir, none at all.”
“Uh...” started Dastou, then figured out what he would say. “Look, Vaiss, sweetie, you’re really going to have to start explaining things better. This thing we have,” said the Saint while making back and forth motions between him and the man on a screen, “is going nowhere unless you learn to be clearer, maybe a little terser. Respectful communication is key to the success of any relationship.”
Vaiss smiled with a sickening amount of joy. It was like the man Dastou met in the basement of the monastery had been on his best behavior and a lunatic of a disturbingly high caliber was the reality.
“Terse?” Vaiss said. “As an example, should I take Paige Ki’s fall? That did not last long at all, I imagine.”
Dastou clenched his jaw. Paige. How dare this salt and pepper son of a bitch use her name. The Saint could do nothing, frozen with memories of love and confusion, of affection and guilt. Of pure happiness and devastating heartache. Citizen Vaiss saw it.
“Though for her,” the Citizen continued, “it may have been half of an eternity. Who knows other than her. Sadly, we can never ask her; her dissolving bones are sitting at the bottom of the sea somewhere near the base of Silverline Sharp. No more picnics, no more sea-gazing. The look on her face was a wonderful gift she gave me without knowing.”
In the few seconds that Dastou’s rage grew nearly out of control, the logical part of his mind told him that Vaiss was being too familiar, giving too much away. And then Dastou was gone, thrown into Open Iris by his desperate need to know. He had never gone back to that day, and never wanted to for a second. It was far too traumatic and he knew it. Now, something was different, he had to find out what Vaiss was talking about, and the Saint let the world slow to near freezing. He felt himself dive into a dangerously deep meditative trance as he reopened a long closed door, and saw the face of the woman he loved.
Blurred Weaponry (Saints of the Void, Book 1) Page 43