by Steve White
Jason got unsteadily to one knee (but not to his feet, for he knew what was coming) and consulted his clock display again. Yes, it must be just about time. He gestured southward. “A couple of my men are waiting at Seventh and Arch Street. They’re still there, even though the fire is spreading into that area.”
For an instant, the look on Stoneman’s face made him fear he had blown it after all. But then he realized it was a look of mildly surprised disappointment, not one of suspicion. The Transhumanist gave rapid orders to two of the goons, who departed in the indicated direction. The other two, with two revolvers each, kept the prisoners covered.
“I must admit to a degree of disillusionment, Commander Thanou,” said Stoneman. “Even under nerve-lash, I expected better from you, Pug though you are. But one never knows, does one?” He shook his head, then turned brisk, playfully tossing the little case up and catching it. “Now, as to the manner of your death: I know what I said before, but assurances to Pugs of course mean nothing, so—”
A flash to the south suddenly flooded the scene with light. At the same instant the night was shattered by a deafening roar and a concussion that sent everyone staggering, as the fires reached the National Arsenal and thousands of artillery shells exploded in a blast that shook Richmond’s seven hills, shattering windows and sending chimneys toppling over blocks away as a great pulse of heated air and smoke spread outward, bearing a shower of fragments … including the fragments of two goon-caste Transhumanists. The best use to which the Confederate States of America’s munitions were ever put, flashed through Jason’s stunned mind.
It was, he knew, only the beginning of Richmond’s climactic agony. One after another, a hundred thousand shells, including those on the Confederate Navy ironclads that had been run aground on the riverbank, would explode all through the remainder of the night and into the morning, without letup: four nerve-wracking hours of continuous, ear-bruising blasts, worse by far than a Union bombardment would have been.
Jason, who was expecting it and was kneeling, remained steady. The Transhumanists were sent stumbling forward by the shock wave from behind them. Stoneman practically fell onto Jason, who grasped the wrist of his gun-hand. At the same time, he dropped the tiny case, which went skittering and bouncing playfully off along the cobblestones. He and Jason grappled, the latter handicapped by apprehension that the nerve-lash feature of the Colt his opponent was still grimly clutching might still be activated.
A succession of shots distracted his attention, and he saw out of the corner of his eye that one of the goons was getting off a succession of rounds from his two revolvers—probably fewer rounds than he would have with one, and the other hand free to “fan” the hammer. But he was doing so while off-balance, and his shots went wild. Novak went under those shots and sent him sprawling with a savate kick, then rushed him and grappled for the pistols. The other goon, whom the concussion had sent to his knees, was unable to get off a shot before Aiken brought a knee up into his face and sent him sprawling over backwards, dropping one of his revolvers. With the resilience of his gengineered breed, he sprang back to his feet—only to be shot through the midriff by Mondrago, who, though still exhibiting the after-effects of dizziness, had scooped up the dropped pistol.
All of which distracted Jason just enough for Stoneman, with a surge of genetically upgraded muscles, to bring his Colt’s muzzle into contact with Jason’s cheek. For the second time, he convulsed with sickening agony, and Stoneman broke free. He started to bring the Colt—no doubt also useable as an ordinary pistol—to bear on the uncontrollably shuddering Jason.
Then, as though in slow motion—or so it seemed to Jason, in what he was coldly certain was the last second of his life—Mondrago swung around to bring his revolver into line on Stoneman. At the same instant, Novak smashed his opponent’s left hand against the cobblestones, forcing him to drop the pistol it was holding. In appreciably the same motion, he brought his right elbow down on the goon’s throat, crushing the larynx, then swept up the dropped pistol and brought it around.
In that fractional second, Stoneman must have instantly analyzed the situation and decided he had more important business than a gunfight he probably wouldn’t win.
Without even pausing to shoot Jason, he dived to the street, sliding along on his stomach as Mondrago’s and Novak’s bullets whizzed over him, grabbed the little laminate case, then sprang to his feet and sprinted east down Cary Street. The Service men fired after him, but the Colts were inaccurate beyond short ranges, especially in the flickering light of burning Richmond. He was soon gone.
Dabney, whose non-combat-trained reactions hadn’t kicked in before the brief fight was over, helped Jason to his feet with his good arm. “Are you all right, Commander?”
“Yes, I’m fine,” Jason lied as he forced down his residual trembling and shook his head to clear it of nausea. “Alexandre?”
“I’ll do,” said the Corsican, wiping away the blood that was trickling down his cheek.
“Then let’s go!” The blue dot denoting Stoneman’s bionics had already wavered out of Jason’s field of vision, but he had a pretty good idea of where the Transhumanist was headed. “We have to get that data chip! It would be the intelligence coup we’ve been hoping and praying for. That’s become our top immediate priority.”
“Killing Stoneman would be all right, too,” Mondrago commented as they started out at a run.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
It soon became evident, as the little blue dot flickered on and off, that Jason had been right about Stoneman’s destination.
They turned left on Ninth Street, and soon the bell tower at the southwest corner of Capitol Square rose before them. Beyond it, the intricately landscaped grounds sloping up to Mr. Jefferson’s capitol building were carpeted with sheer human misery. Here, away from the fires, now-homeless Richmonders huddled with whatever possessions they had been able to salvage. Old people sat staring into nothing. Parents tried to calm their wailing children as the nerve-shattering blasts of exploding artillery shells went mercilessly on and on and on.
Dabney had explained that the public buildings here would survive—although it would take heroic efforts by bucket brigades to save the governor’s mansion. And in this throng of refugees, Stoneman would undoubtedly seek to lose himself.
“Let’s spread out,” Mondrago suggested.
“Right. But don’t get too far from me; if my implant picks up on his bionics, I want you all to be able to converge quickly. The one thing in our favor is that he can’t simply throw that case away; he indicated that his superiors want it back.”
“The bad news,” said Novak, “is that a firefight would cause even these shell-shocked people to panic, and he might get away in the confusion.”
“And anyway,” added Aiken, looking around at the civilian bystanders of all ages and both genders, “we can’t start a firefight here.”
“Then we’ll have to subdue him with as little violence as possible,” said Jason. “Although he won’t have any such compunctions. Let’s go!”
In the ghastly light of the flickering fires and occasional flashes of explosions, they threaded their way through the crowd, tightly packed and somehow listless, as though these people were drained and deadened by hours of outrageous assaults on their senses as well as on their very world. The adults seemed to have become desensitized even to the repeated crashes of the exploding shells, although the children continued to scream and beg their parents to make it stop. No one paid any attention to armed and uniformed men moving among them.
Apparently no one paid attention to the presence of a black man either, here amid the rubble of a collapsed society, for Jason spotted Gracchus up ahead.
Gracchus saw him too. “Commander! What happened? Did you find Stoneman?”
“Or he found us.” Jason briefly described what had happened. “And so here we are, trying to find him in this crowd.”
Gracchus looked puzzled. “Why? Oh, I know: killing the son of
a bitch would be a pure pleasure. But you said you have to get back across the river while you can, so you can get to Belle Isle on the fifth and blow up the cache there. I don’t know how much time you’ve got. The railroad bridges have already been burned; Mayo’s Bridge is the only one left, and they’ve got tar and pine knots and kerosene all along it so they can burn it in a flash as soon as the last Rebel troops get across it. Then it’ll be too late. Let’s get across now.”
“Gracchus, Stoneman is carrying something—don’t ask me to try to explain what it is—that we’ve got to try to get from him. It’s a case, no bigger than a matchbox, made of … a material you’ve never seen.”
The black man’s expression changed to one of skepticism. “Is something that little really worth the risk?”
“Trust me. This is more than the opportunity of a lifetime. If we can take this thing back to our own era, it could mean the beginning of the end for the Transhumanists. It would be like … well, like Gettysburg was in this war: the turning point. If there’s any chance at all, it’s our duty to take it.”
“Let me round up my men,” was all that Gracchus said.
Actually, thought Jason as he did the same, I haven’t even told him all the risks involved—because I know who is going to be in this part of Richmond, headed toward the Mayo Bridge, in a very short time. But he wouldn’t understand. And I can’t let myself think about it. I already have more than enough on my mind.
The two groups worked their way around, to the east of the governor’s mansion, where they saw fire brigades quelling an incipient blaze in the kitchen outbuilding. Here, another black man joined them and had a hasty colloquy with Gracchus, who turned to Jason. “This man thinks he spotted Stoneman a little to the north, around Broad Street. But now he’s turned around and is working his way around, back toward the Mayo Bridge, in an indirect sort of way.”
“So,” said Dabney, “he also wants to get out of Richmond while he can. But he knows we’re looking for him and is trying to elude us.”
“He probably can, in the winding streets to the east of here,” was Mondrago’s pessimistic assessment.
“Then we won’t try to track him down,” Jason decided. “We’ll go straight to the bridge and wait there, where he’ll have to get past us.”
Unnoticed by the firefighters, they scrambled down the slope and continued a block to Fourteenth Street, littered with the detritus of evacuation: broken furniture, dead animals, fire-blackened silverware, shattered crockery, pathetic lost toys. There, all of Gracchus’s men except one named Rufus fanned out to the east, in an effort to form a net behind the Transhumanist. The rest of them fell in with straggling Confederate troops trudging south between the burning buildings toward the Mayo Bridge. Jason grew more nervous, checking his clock display repeatedly and trying to remember the exact time at which he and the others, including Pauline Da Cunha, had crossed over in the company of these retreating troops, whose departure would mean the end of the last vestige of law and order in Richmond until the Union army arrived.
They crossed Exchange Alley, passed the burned-out ruin of the commissariat, beyond which Fourteenth became Pearl, and approached the bridge. It was still not quite dawn, but the fires gave enough light to see it extending ahead over the river and Mayo’s Island. A few engineers were crossing over to the south, having put the finishing touches on the combustibles along the bridge’s length. A single engineer remained, near the closest abutments, as did a mounted man, who, like Jason, wore the three bars of a Confederate captain on his collar.
“Captain Jason Landrieu, of the Jeff Davis Legion, sir,” Jason introduced himself. “Whom do I have the honor of addressing?”
“Captain Clement Sullivane, sir,” the horseman replied in an accent that Jason by now was sufficiently experienced in this milieu to be fairly confident in identifying as South Carolinian. “I’ve orders to hold this bridge until the last of our troops have crossed it. But I’m still awaiting some ambulances, with cavalry escort, of General Gary’s command. So I’ve had to stay here and watch … this.” He gave a gesture that encompassed the landscape of Hell that was Richmond. A moment passed before he could speak again. “You may as well get your party across. As soon as the last of Gary’s men are gone, I’m to fire the bridge.”
“Thank you, Captain, but we’re waiting for someone. We’ll stay over here for a while.”
“As you will—but at your own risk. I can’t delay blowing the bridge for anyone.” The engineer shouted some question, and Sullivane sketched a salute. “Excuse me, Captain. And good luck!” And he trotted his horse away.
“Let’s get back here,” said Jason, pointing to a narrow side street, little more than an alley, extending toward Shockoe Slip, surrounded by burned-out hulks of buildings. They slipped into its shadows to lie in wait.
They were just doing so when Gracchus turned, as though noticing something in the shadows of a partially collapsed wall. “What—?”
A shot rang out and Gracchus spun around ninety degrees with a gasp of stunning pain. Before the rest of the could draw their revolvers, Stoneman sprang out from behind the wall, grasped the disabled Gracchus by his left wrist and, eliciting a fresh cry of agony, swung him around to serve as a shield, with a Colt pressed to his right temple. “One move and he dies!”
Jason seemed to exist in a state of protracted time as various sense-impressions and the conclusions drawn from them flashed through his brain.
First, Gracchus’s wound. The bullet had entered a few inches down from and to the left of his right shoulder. But there had been no cinematic spurt of blood – no major artery had been hit. He was losing blood now, though, and artfully immobilized by Stoneman. And no help could be expected from Sullivane; the captain was otherwise occupied and far enough away that he hadn’t even heard the shot over the distant cacophony of exploding shells. And if Jason shouted for him, Gracchus would die. For Stoneman’s thought processes were no trouble figuring out. The Transhumanist, seeing he couldn’t shoot all of them, had decided to settle for a hostage. His next words confirmed it.
“Now, then. I’m going to go across the bridge with him. If anyone asks, he’s a Union spy I’ve caught and am taking him for questioning. I’m not sure anyone will even notice, though.” He glanced out onto the main street, where the last Confederate elements were coming through. “You will remain here. If I see you following me, he will die.”
“He’ll die anyway,” said Jason, “after you have no further use for him.” He was playing for time, for those retreating Confederates had reminded him of something. He consulted his clock display. Yes. Any moment now.
“Perhaps, and I know you won’t believe any pledge of mine. But there’s a chance I’ll release him once I’ve crossed the river and they’ve burned the bridge behind me; after all, he’s in no shape to do me any harm. And if I know Pugs, as long as that that chance exists, you’ll have to take it.” Stoneman started backing toward the street, keeping Gracchus interposed between himself and the five revolvers pointed at him. “We’re going now.”
“First,” said Jason, “I think you’d better look behind you.”
Stoneman seemed about to spit contempt for such a childish trick. But then all of them were staring past him at the street. Rufus stood paralyzed, and Dabney gasped. The Transhumanist risked a glance over his shoulder … and saw the small party among the knots of straggling Confederate troops. There was a dark-haired woman in a bedraggled crimson dress in what seemed the fashion of the Gulf Coast, and a few soldiers led by a certain captain …
Now I think I remember, thought Jason in the midst of unreality. Just before we crossed the bridge, I thought I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, some kind of confrontation going on in an alley. But of course I couldn’t stop to look into it. He continued to stare at what he couldn’t help thinking of as the ghost of Pauline Da Cunha … and also the ghost of his own slightly younger self, as were Mondrago and Dabney. Aiken and Novak simply stared.
; But he at least had been prepared for it. Stoneman hadn’t. The Transhumanist’s jaw fell at the utterly unnatural sight of the seeming doubles, and his grip on Gracchus went limp and his revolver wavered slightly out of line.
With the strength of desperation overcoming the weakness of blood-loss and pain, Gracchus broke free of Stoneman’s grip on his left wrist and brought his left elbow back into the Transhumanist’s midriff, while dropping down.
Stoneman’s trigger finger convulsively tightened, and the revolver barked. But the shot merely grazed the top of Gracchus’s head and the black man collapsed, leaving Stoneman’s chest shieldless.
Jason had known—or, rather, remembered—what to expect. So he was able to wrench himself into action at that crucial instant. His Colt crashed in the alley, and Stoneman stood, swaying, for a fractional second before collapsing to the filthy cobblestones.
“Basil, take care of Gracchus,” Jason ordered as he hurried to Stoneman’s body and knelt beside it. He tore open the bloodsoaked tunic front, reached inside and fumbled in the inside pocket. There! He withdrew a tiny laminate case, held in a hand that trembled slightly.
“So that’s it?” Gracchus asked. The black man blinked away a trickle of blood from his scalp wound. “Are you sure it’s really so important as to be worth all this?”
“Gracchus,” sighed Jason as he put the case in a pocket and buttoned it, “have you ever heard of the legend of the Holy Grail?” Without waiting for a reply, he stood up and looked at the street. Jason Mk I and Mondrago Mk I and the other ghosts—including Pauline Da Cunha, whom Jason thankfully would now never need to fear confronting—had moved on, and would now be crossing Mayo’s Bridge. The street was filled with a procession of ambulances, being driven at reckless speed.
“That will be the next-to-last element of General Gary’s force to cross,” said Dabney. “Afterwards will come their cavalry escort, after which the bridge will be gone.”
“Right. We’ve got to move. Basil, Aiken: help Gracchus along. Let’s go.”