The Steam-Powered Sniper in the City of Broken Bridges (The Raven Ladies Book 2)

by Cassandra Duffy

  The storm had drenched the entirety of the ship, and the indentation ladder on the port side was no different. She slipped twice, nearly falling the second time before she finally mastered climbing down the pitched side of the ship using her prosthetic leg only sparingly. She was exhausted and shaky when she finally settled into the “fast boat” so named as the Balclutha’s wooden long boat was still powered with manual rowing. Her men gave her wan smiles, clearly just as nervous as she was about her falling and missing the boat. Or they were perhaps as concerned about possibly capsizing the boat in the surf where she would drown and they would lose their weapons.

  “It’s not going to get any easier by waiting,” Olivia said through clenched teeth, reading their reticence.

  The outboard motor sprung to life, and Johnnie nosed them toward the shore. The spray off the bow and the wind in their face made it difficult to see much of anything on their approach. They made for the lighthouse and the pebbly beach strewn with driftwood along its southern edge. Olivia briefly thought of directing them around the jetty into the bay proper, but decided against it. There wouldn’t be anywhere to land the rubber boat that wouldn’t also leave them entirely exposed. The lighthouse’s beach was clear, she could see that much from the Balclutha, and it had cover almost immediately in the giant rocks and driftwood piles. It was as good a place as any to establish a foothold since she didn’t know if the town fell to Slark or mutants or maybe even human marauders.

  She gripped the side rope for all she was worth when the boat crested over the first breaker near the beach. The bow shot up and fell even faster on the other side. Johnnie gunned the engine to get clear of the wash, almost losing the boat when it turned diagonal on them. Somehow he corrected and got them pointed at the shore again just in time to jump over the next, smaller wave. This one, coming so close on the heels of the first, nearly unseated Olivia, but one of her men, an American sitting on the other side of the same bench from her, managed to grab her battle harness with his left hand to pull her back down. She almost screamed in joy when she felt the plastic bottom run up on the pebbles of the shore. The two men at the front leapt from the boat into the waist deep surf and hauled for all they were worth, bringing the fast boat well up onto the shore. The remaining men followed suit, including Olivia, covering the first two as they secured the boat.

  Out of the turbulent chaos of the surf, Olivia was shocked at how calm the beach was once she was on shore with the tiny waves lapping at the heels of her boots. She slowly, quietly advanced up the beach to take point, her carbine trained in front of her, expecting an onslaught at any moment. With the boat pulled up far enough out of the surf and tied off to a heavy piece of driftwood, her squad fell in entirely behind her as she guided them in a waxing maneuver to face the lighthouse. Their stealthy assault was halted by the unlikeliest of warnings. Little red dots sprung up on all of them, two to a man and three on Olivia. Her first instinct was Slark, but she’d never known them to use laser sights.

  “Put the weapons down,” a woman’s voice called from somewhere unseen.

  Olivia slipped the strap of the carbine off her elbow she’d wrapped it around to steady her aim and set the gun in the pebbles at her feet. Her men followed her lead. Olivia didn’t need to guess at how badly they were outnumbered. Whoever got the drop on her team was at least ten strong and aiming from cover. If they’d wanted to kill them, they could have done it without a moment’s thought, making surrender an appealing option to still have.

  “We’re the security detail from the Balclutha out of the City of Broken Bridges,” Olivia said to the unseen force. “We’re looking for Major Bradley and the Crescent City logging camp contingent.”

  “That’s all a lot of gibberish to me,” the unseen woman replied.

  A squad of fifteen emerged from cover in the rocks and driftwood. They were commandos of remarkable skill to hide so completely that she hadn’t seen a one of them when they’d landed. More surprising than their ambush was the squad’s composition—they were all women.

  “Ravens…” Olivia murmured, stopping the women in their tracks.

  “That’s right,” the lead woman said. She was tall, taller than Olivia even, and dressed in the traditional Special Forces attire of a battle harness, camouflage clothes, tightly cinched boots, and grime across her face to obscure her features. Her light brown hair was pulled back in a tight braid, leaving her brilliant green eyes as the only distinguishing feature. “I’m Captain Dylan Watson of the Voron Dagger.”

  Olivia only barely recognized the words Voron Dagger as something Claudia had mentioned. It was the designation for the commando vanguard she’d once been a part of—the Raven’s advanced scouts and Special Forces units trained in the tactics of the Russian Spetsnaz.

  “I am Warder Olivia Kingston of the Balclutha’s security detail,” Olivia replied.

  “What are you? Marauders? Pirates?” Dylan asked.

  “Fishermen by the look of how they hold their weapons,” one of the other Raven women said. A small chuckle ran through the group.

  “We’re a cargo vessel,” Olivia replied flatly.

  “You’re not going to find any cargo here, Warder,” Dylan said. “We came upon the mess after the fact and had to wipe out an entire tribe of creepers.”

  “Creepers?” Johnnie asked.

  “She probably means mutants,” Olivia said.

  “I actually like creepers better,” Johnnie said. “They do sort of creep, don’t they?”

  “Whatever they’re called,” Dylan said, “they came here in force and swamped the city’s defenses. A few men, former Marines by the look of their uniforms, made a last stand in the lighthouse. They were overrun a few days ago judging from the state of the bodies. Your Major Bradley might be in that bunch.”

  Olivia ran through all the worst case scenarios she’d charted and none of them were accurate. The Ravens were already sending teams to the coast which could only mean they’d already turned the corner and flanked the Slark line. Every outpost and the City of Broken Bridges itself would be washed over in mutants in no time at all.

  Dylan, reading the obvious frustration on Olivia’s face, took a few steps closer. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news,” she said. “Were you close to the Major?”

  “No, well, kind of, I guess,” Olivia said, and she didn’t know why or maybe what quality about Dylan made her continue, but she was driven to admit more. “I’ve made several mistakes in my command lately and it seems they’ve started to cost me.”

  “Something I know all too well,” Dylan replied. “Tell me though, how do you know about Ravens?”

  Olivia couldn’t think of a reason not to tell Dylan about Claudia. From all the war stories she’d told, Claudia seemed like a Raven hero. There was the other name, the important name Claudia had mentioned with some fondness and deep-seated reverence, Veronica. Olivia wasn’t sure if they were out of the woods yet with the commando women, but she thought it was as good a time as any to play the familiarity card.

  “One of your scouts from the Voron Dagger group Draco made her way to the City of Broken Bridges, what you would probably call San Francisco.”

  This brought only a glimmer of surprise to Dylan’s face, which was immediately banished. “What is this Draco scout’s name?”

  “Claudia Marceau.”

  “That’s bullshit,” the soldier who had made the joke about Olivia’s men being fishermen interjected. “Marceau’s unit was wiped out in Tombstone.”

  “Easy, Garcia,” Dylan said. “There were a lot of MIA after Tombstone, most of which turned up later in New Mexico, but I’m curious, how did Marceau get so far northwest?”

  “She said the White Queen Veronica sent her here,” Olivia said, parroting almost verbatim the vague explanation Claudia had given her to a similar question.

  “Veronica died in Tombstone,” Dylan said. “I’m curious why Claudia wouldn’t know that.”

  It was hard for Olivia to fathom th
e word in connection to the remarkable soldier Claudia claimed to be, but the word refused to leave the forefront of her mind: deserter. Whatever shift in demeanor surfaced on Olivia, it seemed to satisfy many of Dylan’s questions.

  “Have a look around, if you want,” Dylan said, “and when you see Claudia again, tell her the Voron will be on the coast soon.” The commandos left the beach in an orderly skirmish line, melting back into the brush and cover as though they’d never been there.

  Olivia’s men retrieved their weapons immediately, although their commander continued to stand stunned on the beach.

  Chapter 18:

  Commissions of Fire and Disappointment.

  Shortly after seeing the sea lions, Claudia began sleeping at Esme’s home behind the donut shop on a dark, narrow little lane in the Chinican District. Shortly after this, Claudia’s feet began to itch in a familiar way.

  Lying in the darkness of Esme’s bedroom, wrapped in the light sheets and blankets common to the underground dwellings of the City of Broken Bridges, Claudia struggled with a desire to flee even while she attempted to sleep. She nudged the curtain over the vent window open with her toe—such was the size of the tiny room on the back of the house. The head, foot, and one side of the bed Esme slept on were all against walls. The vent window, which many houses along the rock walls had, opened up on tubes that ran down to the giant chamber below where the Transcended and Keepers made the city’s electricity in the volcanic canyon. Faint, hellish red light filtered up along with an abundance of heat. With the added light in the room, Claudia looked over Esme’s sleeping form. Her hair had fallen most of the way over her eyes and her thumb was in her mouth.

  There were two sides to the donut shop owner—the public side of business as usual and this quiet, private side of a deeply traumatized, fearful girl. Claudia didn’t plumb the depths of Esme’s history in the war, although Esme had seemed eager to talk about it, simply because Claudia didn’t want to know what horrors had befallen Esme. War stories were supposed to be grand, triumphant, and remarkable; she suspected Esme didn’t have any stories like those. There are people suited to war and there are people who are not, was how Veronica had put it, always adding as an afterthought: and the world doesn’t give a shit which you are anymore. Claudia thought she was born to fight, just like her father, and regretted a world that would ask someone like Esme to see combat of any kind.

  The depth and severity of the damage done to Esme’s mental and emotional health aside, which was daunting and frightening all on its own, Claudia also began to suspect they weren’t all that sexually compatible. To that point, after a week of sleeping in the same bed, they’d only had sex twice, and both times were brief, uninteresting affairs. In the past, when Claudia grew bored of a lover, she simply changed dance partners or skipped town. As Esme increasingly began to rely upon her for emotional support, Claudia wondered if she might not do some serious damage to the girl if she followed her usual pattern.

  This was almost certain to happen with the good news she’d left unspoken at dinner earlier that night. Training with her new sniper rifle was going so well, her father offered her a field commission to go out with the torch brigades to clear the lasher trees growing in and around Half Moon Bay before they could encroach on the no man’s land that was the ruins of South San Francisco—outside the wall. There would be mutants to shoot, sniper support to provide the burners as they were called while they saw to their work. Most burners were what Olivia referred to as rag bowlers from the second level. They were poor and without the business sense or abilities of the Chinicans, so they worked the violent jobs the city still valued like harvesting rats or, in the case of particularly brave bowlers, working as burners in the torch brigades. Burners were adorned in metal helmets with welder masks, full-body leather aprons, and carried elaborate flamethrowers designed to kill the lasher trees. The cover fire for the torch brigades stood atop a scissor lift affixed to a platform driven along on modified tractor treads. They would always go out in squads of three burners, one driver, one shooter, typically sixty or so squads at a time so nobody would ever be too far from help. The driver would park the scissor lift in a central area, not too close to the lasher trees, and then send the shooter skyward to watch for mutants. The burners, barely able to see in their flame-resistant getups, would then triangulate a lasher tree and work it from the top down until it crumbled over. Most mutants had moved south and the Slark seldom ventured past La Honda anymore. It was a cake walk mission, but her father called it an important first step in teaching his daughter to be a leader of men.

  She hadn’t told Esme about her new post, about her return to the uniform, about the chance to finally take on a leadership role. Esme was not going to like it. This presented Claudia with a conundrum. She could tell Esme and let whatever anger she had over it put an end to their romantic entanglements, and that would be a way out of the relationship for Claudia, or she could try her best to ameliorate the news by lying and calling it something else. She didn’t feel like lying and she doubted it would do her much good beyond a momentary reprieve as it would no doubt get back to Esme what she was really doing.

  She’d made it clear to Esme that they were not an exclusive couple, although she wasn’t sure if Esme believed her. It was shortly after Esme had said, “You talk like a lesbian, but fuck like a man.” The words had stung and Claudia responded with a sting of her own, reminding Esme that their relationship was without strings, that she wasn’t the type to settle. Settle was her exact word and she regretted using it after although not enough to apologize.

  She considered waiting until the morning to tell her. She didn’t sleep well in Esme’s bed though. It was small, felt enclosed, and the concept of being several stories underground bothered her immensely. The impenetrable darkness reminded her of the restroom in the canyon in Utah where she’d nearly died in the mudslide—most nights, she still woke up with a start, thinking she heard rumbling. If Esme was mad enough about the news, she might send Claudia back to the tower where she could sleep comfortably.

  Claudia awoke Esme with a gentle nudge. She came to the world afraid, disoriented, and a little surprised to find her thumb in her mouth. This happened nearly every time she awoke, Claudia had learned. Although she carefully arranged her hair over her eyes before sleeping, Esme didn’t start out with her thumb in her mouth; it always made its way in there after she lost consciousness.

  “What? Is something wrong?” Esme asked.

  “I have to leave tomorrow,” Claudia replied. “My father found a posting for me in the defense force.”

  “You’re going to walk around on the wall, patrol the bridge stumps, or train recruits?” Esme asked, settling back onto her pillow. “You can still sleep here during that if you want.”

  “I will be providing sniper support for the torch brigade.”

  This brought Esme fully from sleep. She sat up and stared down at Claudia with an expression equal parts fear and rage. Her face, half-lit by the red glow from the vent window, looked strangely plain to Claudia as though it could be anyone’s face or everyone’s face. She was any woman who wished conflicts would pass them by. Claudia didn’t think it was the face of the brave Mouse that had convinced her to join Esme in her bed a week ago.

  “You know how I feel about combat,” Esme said sternly.

  “I do, but you know I do not feel the same way,” Claudia replied.

  “Would you stay if I asked you?”

  “No, but I would be flattered if you did.”

  “Would you stay if she asked you?”

  “She would never ask me to.”

  “No,” Esme said, “she will probably be thrilled for you.”

  “I am sure she would be as I was thrilled for her when she was given the post on that red and gray ship. I did not understand her desire to go to sea again, but that did not stop me from feeling happy for her. Why would this be different? I am a creature of wilderness and war. You should be glad to see me return t
o my home away from…” she stopped short of saying ‘this hell’ although those were the words she wanted to use to describe the underground world of the City of Broken Bridges. “…you should be glad for me is all I am saying.”

  “I told you what I went through during the war, I told you how many friends I lost, I told you…”

  “Yes, I know, and I was honored you trusted me so much…”

  “I didn’t even carry a weapon. I never told you that part. They wanted to give me a gun, bombs, a knife even. I always refused. Dying with a weapon is…is a sin.”

  This threw Claudia from the bed. They’d been down that road just once and Claudia had made it clear her immortal soul, if it existed, was too far removed from any higher power to be cleansed now. She grabbed up her pants and began dressing.

  “You know I do not believe in such things,” Claudia replied tersely. “Does your god look over the Slark as well? Are they his creations, huh? Did he destroy their planet and send them here to take ours?” Claudia pulled on her boots and stood, stepping far enough away from the light of the vent window that only the tips of her toes would show, leaving the rest of her in silhouette. “You did not carry a weapon in war. I respect your bravery in this, but do not think we are the same. I am a warrior, like my father and his father before him. Did you know my grandfather was one of the youngest soldiers to assault the Juno beach at Normandy? At fifteen, he did not turn his back when the Germans occupied France and so what would he say to me if I set down my rifle to become a shopkeeper when the Slark are still on the other side of the wall you seem to have forgotten exists?”