by K. Eason
She adjusted her HUD to a smaller target, entirely unarmored, let all her breath go, and fired the split instant she got lock.
The first bolt planted itself in a strategically vulnerable area of the point man’s cranium, producing a brilliant spray of fluid that hissed as it passed through the Vizier’s veil. That sufficed more than any shout might have to warn him to reduce his own silhouette. He dropped, nearly as fast as the stricken point man, to a prudently prone position. His security were unconcerned with his sudden movement, having their own attention occupied by this change to their reality. That they had been attacked was fairly obvious; but such a realization, while easy to make, is harder to resolve, particularly when the mind attempting that resolution is stuck on what is believed impossible versus what is actually happening.
The nearer Tadeshi resolved his situation rather more quickly than Grytt would have wished, and, having dived for cover behind his deceased comrade, proceeded to sling a pair of bolts at the open back of the shuttle. One of them bored through the seatback above her. The other ricocheted off the bulkhead twice before exhausting its momentum and clattering to the decking. Grytt, herself occupied with sudden adjustments, fired at the far security and took his leg out from under him, clipping his calf and spinning him back and away from Rupert. Not the target she’d intended, but the result was sufficient.
Grytt fired again, this time for cover, and scrabbled into the wedge of shadow beside the cryostasis unit. She wormed herself flat against the bulkhead’s curve. Another brace of bolts gouged the decking where Grytt’s face and torso had been.
That made four. Two more, and the shooter would need to reload, unless the man she’d dropped was also firing, in which case—
Two more bolts entered the shuttle in rapid succession, from different vectors.
To hell with counting. Grytt held her breath, and primed her ’slinger, and very carefully walked her right fingers blind up the cryotube until she felt the panel’s smooth polyplate. Memory told her there were three buttons. She felt her way across them. One. Two. Three. She had no idea in what order they should be pressed to activate the unit, or in fact what their purpose was.
She pressed them all.
The unit beeped, loudly, and Grytt dove across the shuttle, behind the already perforated seats, as two sets of ’slingers unloaded again, this time punching holes into the cryotube, which promptly commenced wailing and flashing two colors of light and spraying crystalline plumes of coolant across the shuttle’s interior. The ambient temperature plunged into a credible imitation of Midwinter at the Thorne palace, complete with spitting precipitation and treachery underfoot.
Grytt’s human eye prudently closed. Her mecha eye, unblinking, adjusted its perception from the now obscured, conventionally visible spectrum into the longer bands. The two Tadeshi—and Rupert—were bright and hot through the cloud. She knelt and shot at the nearest, one-two-three, into his chest. The resulting spray from his body cooled to rapid invisibility.
The far security, the one she’d only winged, steadied himself on his knee and aimed at her, clued in by muzzle-flash. She launched herself for the far front corner, where the angle of door and bulkhead might offer her some cover.
Her foot stepped squarely into a smear of coolant and crystallized water vapor. She had a moment to register I’m slipping and employed it to turn her shoulder and retain her grip on the ’slinger, in contravention of reflexes which would have dropped the ’slinger to prevent the subsequent teeth-rattling impact with the deckplate. She spun mid-air, landing meat-side down on shoulder and elbow, and skidded gracelessly across the open deck before her hip came down and friction stopped her, fortunately short of a cranial impact with the wall, and unfortunately far short of the any cover, and most unfortunately, on her side facing away from the shuttle hatch.
The coolant chose that moment to exhaust itself. The last traces of it drifted down, riding aether gone suddenly still. Grytt had a clear view of the emergency kit bolted to the shuttle bulkhead, and the placard with pictographic instructions for what to do in case of rapid depressurization.
At least I won’t have to deal with that, she thought. Her back was exposed, the coolant’s foggy shield was gone, and—
There came a single, decisive shot. Then a second and third, in rapid succession. A man shouted, or tried to: the utterance turned rapidly soggy, ending on a gurgle.
Grytt blinked at the emergency kit. Her body registered no damage. She wasn’t bleeding. Interesting. She rolled over, driving her mecha knee into the decking for leverage, and came up ready to fire.
The Tadeshi were all down. Rupert was picking himself up, two knees and one hand for balance. In the other, he held a ’slinger. The collar, unfastened, dangled from his neck. He peered at the shuttle.
“Grytt! For the love of—Grytt, are you all right?”
“I just started a war,” Grytt said, standing up. “I hope you’re happy.” She picked her way down the ramp, careful of the glassy smears of liquid.
“Horrified. Thank you.” He looked at the ’slinger, and at his hands, and then at his coveralls. Then he put the weapon down, very slowly. “You’re not hurt?”
“No. Thanks to you.” She holstered her ’slinger and, with both hands, twisted the collar the rest of the way off Rupert’s neck. She turned it in her hands.
“You got this off?”
Rupert touched the raw patches on his neck where the collar had been. “Evidently.”
“Mm.” She dropped it to the deck and stomped on it with the mecha foot, hard enough to rattle her own teeth. “There.”
Rupert stared at her, blinking rapidly. His eyes were red-rimmed and a little swollen. “I may have killed someone.”
“You did.”
“Oh,” he said, faintly.
Grytt grabbed a fistful of coverall at his shoulder and hauled him upright. Then she shoved him, gently, toward the shuttle.
“We’ve got to go.”
She jogged across the hangar to the aetherlock, jammed the pass-string into it, and keyed it to sealed. Turned back and saw Rupert standing there, eyes closed, chin raised, as if he were looking up at the inside of his own skull. He was an arithmancer. He might be doing just that.
“The lock won’t hold,” she said. “Not forever. There’re probably eleven alarms going off right now. Move, Rupert.”
He opened his eyes. “And go where?”
“Into the shuttle. Come on.” She paused only long enough to scoop up the Tadeshi ’slingers. She shoved two of them into her waistband, which exhausted the fabric’s ability to accommodate stolen weapons, and held the third loosely in her left hand. Her right, she used to take Rupert’s elbow and half-steer, half-drag him up the ramp. He had never been a bulky man, but his bones felt sharp under her hands. “Didn’t they feed you?”
“I wasn’t especially hungry. Grytt. I repeat: where are we going?”
“Off Urse. Shuttle’s set for Beo. We’re not going there.” She waved the datastick at him. “Moss’s pass-string. It will get us past Control. Make sure they don’t shoot us down. We get to the system’s edge, we can signal one of our ships. Might take it awhile to get the message and come through the gate, but I don’t see much choice.”
“And how will we do any of that?”
“There’s a smart turing in the cockpit. You can hack it. Can’t you?”
“Let us hope so.” He squeezed his eyes closed, as if against a particularly bright light. “We can’t come back here. To Urse.”
“No.”
His eyes opened. His gaze this time was clear and sharp, like razor glass. “And what about Rory?”
Grytt hesitated. Then she peeled out a layer of truth, and said, “She’d’ve come herself, if I would’ve told her. Which I didn’t.”
He drew a breath, held it, hissed it through his nose. Anger and anguish fought for suprem
acy across his features, twisting lips and pinching nostrils and sending his brows crashing together and retreating again.
Grytt offered a sympathetic grimace. Then she got on with the business of making their escape. She cycled the door seal. The ramp rose slowly, eclipsing the carnage in the hangar, reminding her of closing jaws. Not a comforting thought. Not one she would share with Rupert.
The shuttle shuddered. The interior lights dimmed and shifted, lighting along the creases of bulkhead and deck, bulkhead and ceiling, casting the whole space into muted greens and yellows.
The engines. The pilot.
She bolted for the cockpit hatch, splattering puddles of fully liquid coolant underfoot, and, upon arrival (a coolant-assisted skid-slam into the bulkhead) stabbed the datastick into the pad. She had grown accustomed to the immediate, compliant green. The pad remained stubbornly red. The iris remained closed, squeezed tight like an eye against bright light.
Or a fist. Grytt punched the hatch, mecha to metal. The impact sent warning twinges along every hex-point that anchored alchemy to flesh. The door sported knuckle-shaped gouges. Her metal knuckles sported door-colored scuffs.
“That won’t help,” murmured Rupert.
“There’s no one in there. I checked.”
“Of course there is. The turing.” He shouldered her aside; or rather, he inserted himself beside her and waited. He could no more move her than a sheet of paper could defeat a rock. But he could probably finesse the locks if she moved aside, which she did, swearing a steady stream of paint-blistering invective that would have delighted Rory.
Rupert pursed his lips, unimpressed, and leaned down to peer at the lockpad. Then he closed his eyes and did whatever it was arithmancers did while normal people contemplated further violence against inanimate objects.
The shuttle shivered. The teslas on the external door panel turned red, indicating depressurization underway as the aetherlocks cycled.
“Rupert, it’s taking off.”
“Yes, Grytt, I know.”
Grytt’s heart, still perfectly human, rattled between synthetic lungs which, despite the tightness in her chest, continued to inflate and contract steadily, refusing to allow the luxury of panic. She hated void-travel. She hated it when there was a pilot, and a dozen redundancies in case of disaster. This was the worst-case scenario she could conceive other than being flushed out the aetherlock without a hardsuit.
And if Rupert couldn’t outwit the turing, they would go to Beo, which would end much the same way, except with a fight beforehand, for which she was woefully underarmed. Her ’slinger, carrying half a load, the three partial loads in the Tadeshi weapons, and an arithmancer, to land on a hostile base of marines.
The aetherlock option seemed suddenly a little more appealing, until she examined the shuttle’s interior and discovered that both of the emergency hardsuits had taken damage in the firefight. She fingered the splintered poly-ceramic. She might be able to get a whole suit out of the two. Might.
“Rupert.”
The shuttle rocked and wobbled aetherborne, stabilizing after a moment. Then it lurched forward, threatening Grytt’s balance and tipping Rupert away from the lock for a slipping, scrabbling moment.
“You did that on purpose,” he murmured. “Bad turing.”
Grytt fingered one of her stolen ’slingers. If they landed on Beo, one bolt more or less would not matter. But here:
“Rupert. Will you have better luck in the cockpit?”
“Likely.”
“Then move aside.”
He looked at the ’slinger in her hand, and his eyes saucered. He turned sideways, covering his head, as if mere flesh and bone were proof against bolts. As if she would miss, at this range. The larger Tadeshi bolt punched easily through the lockpad, throwing sparks and little shavings of plastic and polycarbonate amalgam. Grytt stuck her mecha hand into the hole. The bolt had gone most of the way through the pad on the other side. A small matter to push it clear. A slightly larger matter to wedge her fist, and then her forearm, into the hole. The angle was unhelpful, but the mecha wrist did not suffer the same motile restrictions as its human analog. Its fingers were not as sensitive for feeling blind, either, but her target was a lever, not a button, and there it was.
She grunted and pulled. The hatch irised open to reveal an empty pilot’s seat and a front console occupied by a turing with a small screen and a rudimentary input pad, attached by a web of cables and bolts. A bank of teslas blinked in a pattern discernible to the turing itself, and probably to Rupert.
“It’s annoyed,” Rupert said.
Grytt hefted the ’slinger thoughtfully. The box did not look particularly shielded. “So am I.”
“Patience. That’s our pilot.” Rupert eeled into the single chair, propping his legs up on either side of the turing in a most indecorous fashion.
About time, Grytt thought, and wished his lapses in propriety coincided with less desperate situations.
The shuttle changed direction slightly. Acceleration pushed Grytt partway back into the main cabin.
Rupert merely grunted. He did something to the console’s remaining controls, and the turing’s small screen blinked awake. Grytt frowned at the orange grid and the tiny readout scrolling down the far right edge.
“Central Control just cleared us,” said Rupert. “Evidently this is a regular run to Beo. See? Those four digits there indicate—”
“Rupert.”
He sighed. She marked again the new sharpness to his shoulders, tenting through the coverall and settling over the knobs of his spine.
“I have no live communications. Grytt. Does Rory actually know what’s happened?”
“No,” said Grytt. “There wasn’t time to tell her. We can send a message once we’re clear. Assuming we get clear. If we have to land on Beo. . . .” She grimaced. “I’ll try and do something with the hardsuits, in case we need them.”
“Of course.” He offered her a smile both crooked and sympathetic. Rupert knew as well as she what would happen if they landed, and what could happen, and what must not.
Whatever happened now—Rory was on her own.
Part Three
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Scientia Potestas Est
It is common wisdom that the small hours of third shift are best avoided by persons who wish to maintain cognitive function during first and second shift, which is when most business is conducted. It is also common knowledge that teenagers, while quite fond of sleep (as a concept, in general, and in practice on days when their schedules begin early), will forego it when sufficiently motivated. In general, that motivation takes the form of peer social gatherings or illicit and unwise behavior unapproved by the local adults (and sometimes all three together at once). Rory had no interest in, nor access to, peers. She was, however, quite willing to engage in illicit and unwise activities, particularly in the absence of Grytt or Rupert to insist that she turn off the turing and go to bed.
It was Grytt’s absence that had inspired her deliberate insomnia. That Grytt had not called was understandable. She did not trust the communications for anything more important than please pick up some noodles on the way home. Security had logged Grytt’s departure at the accustomed hour, but after that, she simply vanished, somewhere between the detention block and the main promenade. That was worrisome. One did not simply lose a person like Grytt.
Rory had sifted through the detention records, and security, to ascertain whether or not Grytt had been arrested, detained, or somehow otherwise delayed. She found nothing.
Rory was not the same caliber arithmancer as the Vizier. He had a post-graduate degree in its theory and application, and many more years’ experience. He could, and did, and had—which was how they’d caught him—traverse the aether on more levels than she could. But he had also, in his last foray into the turing, left a set of hand-scribed notes on the he
xes he’d discovered. She also had Jaed’s pass-string, the Minister of Finance’s, and the Minister of War’s. Rory made good use of all of them, and manufactured for herself an amalgam of the three pass-strings, composed of clearances and wrapped with the same hexes that Messer Rupert had identified. The turing did not notice her passage. Flat out did not. Could not, as long as she did not disturb anything.
She also took into account Messer Rupert’s warnings, and the clear evidence of his arrest, that Urse had at least one extremely talented arithmancer working its security. As a concession to safety, she kept her communication to the turing limited to material interface of keyboard and screen. It was rather like trying to paint while wearing mittens, but it was safer than spreading her consciousness out through several layers of aether.
You see, Messer Rupert? I’m being careful.
To which her inner Grytt said, Not enough, you’re not.
Rory had some words for that internal Grytt, mostly having to do with where are you and dammit, come home.
“There’s nothing in security,” Rory announced, and wondered why the news did not do anything to ease the tightness in her chest. “No alerts. Nothing. No hospital admissions, either, that look pertinent.”
Zhang paused in her tidying of the living room. Tidying was Zhang’s way of coping with stress. Thorsdottir preferred to cook. And thus, in the past several hours, as Grytt grew later and later, Thorsdottir had prepared an elaborate cake, a tray of muffins, and sufficient lentil soup for, Rory was certain, at least a dozen people. At Rory’s announcement, she emerged from the kitchen, clutching the rag with which she had been wiping down the counters for the past twenty minutes. They didn’t look as if they felt any better, either.