by Love, Aimee
Gavin, bless his cold, shriveled little heart, had sent everything they had, including their medical scanner and a five pound warhead from one of the ship’s torpedoes. I wasn’t sure what I could do with that, but it certainly gave me something to think about while we worked, and work we did.
For two days while the storm continued, the men fortified buildings, arranged supplies, and improvised weapons out of everything from kitchen knives and farm equipment to bottles of booze. The mead proved useless, but the local liquor that Julian was so fond of was highly flammable and made for excellent Molotov cocktails. I trained men in how to use the guns and grenades I’d weaseled out of Gavin, and in my spare time sat in the dinning hall working on our plan while mixing up batches of fertilizer and chemicals and sealing them in beeswax to make a highly unstable but extremely effective explosives.
The third day dawned with a perfectly clear sky and bitter cold temperatures. Quince and I went to watch the big sleds they used for hunting the pollies, already loaded with gear, dragged out of their hangers and prepped for the trip to Valhalla. The children, especially the teenagers, looked angry at being sent away but no one was more reluctant to board than Marcus. The council, which was what everyone had taken to calling their twelve dubiously elected leaders, had voted to send him, but he clearly wasn’t happy about it. I had mixed feelings myself. Though I was glad that the tough old guy would be safe during the coming fight, I worried that we would need his wisdom and strength before our ordeal was over. My only consolation was that they were taking a com unit with them and he would still be able to advise us.
Once the sails were set and the sleds dashed away, Quince and I grabbed a quick breakfast and headed toward the makeshift target range we’d erected. I again admired the view of the planet we were orbiting with its brilliant and valuable rings, and promised myself that before this was over, I’d find out what the place was called.
There were seven men waiting for us when we arrived. It wasn’t many for an attack team, but it brought our total number up to nine, which was certainly better than the two we’d started out with.
I ran them through their paces all morning, drilling them again and again. We’d been through it all before, and they were obviously getting board, but I knew familiarity with their weapons would serve them far better than any fancy moves I might be able to show them. If any one of them froze when things got dicey, we were all doomed. For my part, I tried very hard to remember each of their names. It was easier to lead a nameless man to his death, but harder to get him to follow you if you were always calling him, ‘hey you’.
Abram was easy on the surface, since he had bright red hair and freckles, but I knew that none of that would be visible in the tunnels we were heading into, so I focussed instead on his stocky build.
Conrad and Edmund were both tall and lean, but Conrad slouched and Edmund was missing two fingers on his left hand.
The unfortunately named Iago was shorter even than I was, but Quince had had a fit when I suggested he be excluded from our party based on size. When I’d asked Sebastian about it, he’d informed me that as well as being completely fearless, Iago was also known for his fierce hatred of them. Apparently, on his first trip down to a counting, he had freaked out and the creature had punished him by removing his testicles. I was surprised they’d let him live, since he no longer served any purpose in their twisted little social order, but I was happy to have him with us.
Seyton was the easiest because he was beautiful. Not I-saw-him-across-a-crowded-room-and-thought-he-was-handsome, but full fledged gorgeous. He looked like a greek statue of male perfection come to life, and I was painfully glad that whatever his job had been before, it had kept him out of view of my window. Otherwise, Titus’ insistence on my picking any man I wanted would have been very tempting indeed.
Timon and Walter, on the other hand, were impossible, but I tried not to let it bother me and they certainly didn’t seem to mind my getting them mixed up constantly. Everyone did, since they were twins. They were the only people on the planet who were sure of their relation, and it had made them utterly inseparable.
Quince and I rounded out the group, and although I had varying degrees of confidence in each of their skills, I admired them all greatly for being brave enough to volunteer.
We were all thoroughly frozen and sick of target practice by the time I called a break for lunch, which is where we were heading when we heard the call go up. I ordered them all to go ahead and eat, since we might be leaving any time, and everyone but Quince obeyed. He seemed to have appointed himself my personal bodyguard, and left my side only when we showered or slept. I’d given up trying to shake him and just accepted that I had a new shadow.
We arrived at the pump house that was being used as a staging ground for the cliff wall defense. It was close to the ladder, which was the only way men could ascend without equipment and bravado that we knew our opponents lacked. Spiders could presumably come up wherever they chose, since the cliff walls had dozens of openings, but everyone agreed that they were unlikely to make any kind of assault except through the tunnels or vents. They simply couldn’t handle the cold for very long.
In spite of the leaderships repeated attempts to keep everyone at their posts, a small crowd had formed around the pump house. I saw one of the council members wading through them, trying to get them to disperse, but with half of the work force on lunch break, it was hard going.
Quince and I muscled through, getting to the door just in time to watch a strange man be escorted in. He looked familiar, though I was reasonably certain he was from below, but I couldn’t place where I’d seen him before. I pulled my coat closed tightly, motioning Quince to do the same. The last thing we wanted was for them to see the guns.
We followed them in and the newcomer shot me a look of abhorrence, as if a woman enjoying the same freedom and status as a man were an aberration. Thomas, I remembered. The man Quince and I had seem in the pits picking out a girl to bed as if she were no more important than a pair of shoes.
“We want Julian back,” he told Sebastian without preamble.
“Not gonna happen,” Sebastian answered flatly, motioning for him to take a seat. The room was cramped with the eleven remaining council members, Thomas and his two escorts, and four of our own guards. Quince and I leaned against the wall by the door.
“Julian came up here of his own free will,” Sebastian continued as soon as Thomas was seated across from him. “We consider him a refugee, not a prisoner, and he’s being treated as such. I would no more order him to return to you than I’d give you anyone else up here.”
Thomas didn’t look the least bit surprised. They must have known we would never give him up. Even if he wasn’t a doctor, his knowledge of the world below was much to valuable.
“I thought this was a negotiation,” Thomas said cooly. “If you aren’t willing to compromise, I might as well go.”
“Go ahead,” Sebastian told him without batting an eye. “We aren’t particularly interested in compromise or negotiation at the moment.”
“How many are dead down there so far?” One of the other council members asked him with a malicious grin.
Thomas didn’t answer, but he didn’t get up either, and I could see the muscles in his jaw bunch as he clenched his teeth.
“What is it you want?” He asked finally.
He was playing his cards close to his chest, I realized, because they didn’t really have any way of gauging how much we knew. I’d seen someone run out of the dinning hall that first day, but it might have simply been someone rushing off to get a friend or spread the news. Julian had told us that Titus only suspected the worst. This was their way of confirming it.
“We want five woman for every ton of fish we deliver,” Sebastian told him smoothly. It seemed like a lot to me, but I had to defer to his judgement.
He g
aped, not at the idea, but at the terms.
“A ton won’t keep them a week,” he scoffed. “And at that rate we’d be out of women before any lasting accord could be reached.”
Lasting accord? Did he really believe that there was any way back for them now? I couldn’t believe he was that naive, and decided instead that they were just playing for time.
“Five women for the first ton, and one for every ton after that,” Sebastian countered.
“I’m not authorized to go that high,” Thomas said, feigning regret.
“Then how high are you authorized to go?” Sebastian asked, clearly getting fed up. I wondered, not for the first time, why he’d been chosen to do the talking, since diplomacy was obviously not one of his talents.
“Lower than five,” Thomas sneered.
“Four? Three?”
Thomas shook his head.
“Well that’s a shame, because three is as low as I’m authorized to go. I guess you better go back to your dark little cave and tell Titus that he’s about to be lunch.”
“You may think you’re in a position of power,” Thomas cautioned, “but just because you have the short term advantage doesn’t mean you can hope to win this. If they turn on us, you’ll be signing your own death warrant as well.”
“You have no idea how strong our position is,” Sebastian snarled and my eyes went wide.
We’d agreed that telling them about the power satellite and who I really was was only likely to escalate their feeling of helplessness, and a cornered adversary is much more likely to do something rash. We wanted them overconfident and plotting, not defeated and suicidal.
“Really?” Thomas asked. “And how strong is it?”
“Every man up here would rather this colony die out entirely than go back to the way things were,” Sebastian told him. “That’s how strong.”
I released the breath I’d been holding.
Thomas looked around the room, searching for some sign that Sebastian was exaggerating our resolve.
“Three,” he agreed finally.
“Done,” Sebastian told him. “We’ll have it at the top of the ladder in an hour.”
“The top?” Thomas blurted, showing the first lapse in his composure. “You can’t expect us to carry it all. The exchange has to be made below.”
Sebastian shook his head.
“None of us are going down there. If you’re worried about your delicate constitutions, we can do it outside the weather station.”
That was what the little building I’d been living in was called. We’d have to alter our plans, but I gave him a nod of agreement. It was far enough away from the other buildings that unsealing the tunnel there wasn’t too bad a risk to our security, and it gave us the appearance of being reasonable.
Thomas agreed somewhat grudgingly and he and his men were led back to the ladder and sent on their way.
“Will you be ready in an hour?” Sebastian asked me as soon as they were gone.
I nodded. We could certainly get in to position in an hour, which was what he was really asking. Whether or not we were ready was something we were going to have to find out the hard way.
The change in venue for the fish delivery meant we had to hustle to get in place in time, but wasn’t a complete disaster. Julian had been hard at work for the last few days, trying to prove the sincerity of his sudden loyalty flip by drawing maps and providing us with a wealth of other information. Both the stairway from the weather station and the ladder were heavily guarded, he informed us, which meant swapping our point of entry required little alteration in our plan. I got my team in position far enough back from the edge of the cliff that they couldn’t be seen from below, detailed the changes I’d made to our strategy for them, and then Quince and I sprinted over to the dinning hall for one last check in with the others.
The large room was abuzz with activity, having been turned into the command center. Unfortunately, coms were one of the things we were very short on. Each of the five pairs of goggles we’d received from Gavin had one built in to it, but they were too valuable for their night vision to be wasted on the surface. Instead, a system of flags had been set up to relay orders, and a dozen runners were standing by, waiting to dash off in case anything more complicated than a ‘stop‘ or ‘go‘ was required.
Sebastian was standing in the middle of the orderly chaos, barking commands in every direction.
“You all set?” He asked when he saw us approach.
I gave him a nod, holding his gaze for a long minute. I willed him to say something, anything.
“Then you’d better get back,” he told me. “The last thing we need is for them to see you two all geared up, running toward the ladder.”
He was a lot of things, but apparently sentimental wasn’t one of them.
Quince and I turned and left without another word.
Julian caught up to us before we made it to the door. He’d recovered from his injury nicely and threw his arms around us both.
“Please be careful,” he whispered into my ear.
I shrugged off the embrace and pulled away from him.
“We will,” was the most gracious reply I could manage. Considering the number of babies he’d all but admitted to slaughtering, he was lucky I didn’t punch him in the balls again.
Quince and I were half way to the ladder when he tugged at my sleeve and pointed back the way we had come. Sebastian was standing in the doorway, watching us go. He held up his hand in a gesture that wasn’t quite a wave. A wave, I suddenly realized, would have been too close to a good-bye for him to stomach. And a ‘good luck’ would have been an admission that we were heading off into danger and he wouldn’t be there to look after us.
The expression on Quince’s face spoke volumes.
“I know,” I told him, “I wish he was coming with us too.”
I wasn’t supposed to, but I couldn’t resist watching the exchange. I got down on my belly and shimmied up the rise that kept the weather station out of view from the ladder, making sure Quince stayed well back, then fiddled with my implant until the area in front of the door looked close enough to touch and I could hear the men breathing.
The fish were already there. Since we’d known this was coming, it had been prepared in advance and only needed to be carried over. Three of the council members stood beside it, and behind them stood a dozen of the burliest guards we could find. The odds of Titus trying something now, when we were at high alert, seemed slim. If he was smart, he would wait until the exchanges became common place and we got lax. He might be a monster, but I didn’t think he was dumb.
There was a banging from inside the little building that had been my home and two of the guards stepped forward.
“Open it,” one of the council members told them.
They went in the outer door and unsealed the hatch, then emerged a moment later with Thomas and several other men behind them. There was no sign of the promised women.
“We’ve held up our part of the bargain,” the councilman said. “Where are they?”
“After the fish are down,” Thomas answered smoothly, “they’ll be brought up.”
“Now,” the councilman demanded. “Or you go back empty handed.”
Thomas shrugged as if it were all the same to him and motioned one of his men back inside. He returned a moment later with a large sack and dumped it at the councilman’s feet. I saw their mouths moving, but couldn’t hear their words over the drumming of my own heart. What were they trying? The councilman opened the sack and his face became a mask of rage.
At first I thought it must be body parts, but then he reached in and pulled out a naked baby, probably no more than a few months old. The councilman pulled off his own coat and wrapped the child up, then handed it to one of the guards. Several other men r
ushed over and the two remaining babies were removed from the bag, swaddled and rushed off, presumably to the infirmary. There was no way they were old enough to be weened, and I felt heartsick at the thought of their mothers, somewhere below in the dark, having had their babied ripped from their arms with no explanation. I hoped Julian could keep them alive long enough for a reunion.
“You didn’t expect us to hand over instant breeding stock, surely,” Thomas said with a grin.
Stock? I’d had enough. I unslung the rifle off my back and sighted down the barrel at his head, but made myself hold off on firing.
Thomas motioned his men forward and they began loading the pallets of fish into sacks exactly like the ones they’d just used to transport their own children in. Bastards. It didn’t matter. That was the signal for the attack anyway.
The door to the weather station burst open and the men we’d had hidden in Sebastian and Quince’s old room came boiling out. They were only armed with farm implements, but I knew that behind them, men with two of the precious pistols Gavin had sent had secured the tunnel down.
Thomas spun around, outraged at our treachery and I squeezed the trigger, sending a tiny bolt of coherent light right through his cranium. He crumpled to the ground and the scene dissolved into chaos. I didn’t wait around to see the repercussions of my unplanned action. I switched off my implants, shouldered my rifle, and took off.
As I ran down the hill, I glanced over at the dinning hall and saw a man on the roof waving a bright green flag. My team didn’t need me there to know what to do.
The twins hit the deck on either side of the ladder and leaned out. They were my two best shots and also miserable at hand to hand, making them the best choice to act as our anchors and hold the ladder. Each had a rifle, and before I even arrived they began firing down at the ledge.