Analog SFF, May 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Venera drew back her lips in a snarl. “Someday they're going to name a disease after you.”

  The commandant sighed. “I just wanted you to know that I've issued the order. He's being terminated, oh, even as we speak. And—” he laughed heartily, “I had an inspiration! The manner of his passing is quite hideous, you'll be impressed when you see—”

  A soldier clattered to a stop at the door to the office. “The lower floors are secure, sir,” he said. “They had tied up the night watch and the guards in the prison. In addition, we found ten of these in the basement.” He handed the commandant one of the charges Venera's people had set.

  Venera exchanged a glance with Bryce, whose hands were still untied.

  “Well, look at this.” The commandant knelt in front of Venera. “A little clockwork bomb. Why, it's so intricately made, I can only think of one place it might have come from.” He arched an eyebrow at the knot of prisoners. “Are any of you from Scoman, by any chance?” He didn't wait for an answer, but turned the mechanism over under Venera's nose. “How does it work? Is it a timer?”

  She said nothing; he shrugged and said, “I think I can figure it out. You turn this dial to give yourself ... what? Ten minutes? If you don't reset it before it winds down to zero it explodes.”

  A muffled report sounded from somewhere in the building. A gunshot? The commandant glanced at his men; one turned and left the room. “I suppose one or two of your compatriots might still be loose,” he admitted. “But we'll round them up soon enough.”

  He was just opening his mouth to add something else when the lights went out. The building rocked to a distant blast.

  Instant pandemonium—somebody stepped on Venera and crumpled her to the floor while some sort of struggle erupted just to her right; one of the machine guns went off, apparently into the ceiling, lighting the space with a momentary red flicker. All she saw was people rearing up, falling down, tumbling like scattered chessmen. She strained but couldn't get free of the ropes that bound her hands behind her.

  Another explosion, then another—how many of those bombs had they said they'd found? She was sure they'd planted at least twelve.

  Now somebody fell on her in a horrifyingly limp tangle and she screamed, but nobody could hear her over the shouts, screams, and shots.

  More machine-gun fire, terrifyingly close but apparently directed out the door. Venera wormed out from under the wet body and found a corner to huddle in, hands jammed into the spot where walls and floor met. She cursed the dark and chaos and expected to receive a bullet in the head any second.

  Silence and heavy breathing. Distant shouts. Somebody lit a match.

  Bryce and Thinblood stood back to back. Each held a machine gun. Another gun lay under the body of the commandant, whose lopsided face was frozen in an expression of genuine surprise. The room was awash with men who were holding one another by the throat, or feet, or wrists, all atop the tiled bodies of the soldiers who were still tied up. Dark blood was spattered up the wall and over everybody. Venera looked down at herself and saw that her own clothes were glistening with the stuff.

  “Get them untied!” Somebody flipped a knife into his hand and began bending and slashing at the ropes. When he reached Venera, she saw that it was one of the archers. Venera leaned forward knocking her forehead against the floor as he roughly grabbed her arms and cut.

  “The prisoners are loose!” Bryce hauled her to her feet just as the match went out. “Somebody find a bloody lantern! We've got to get out of here!” They burst into the corridor just as the lights resumed a dim glow. There were bodies all over the place, bullet holes in the walls, and she heard shots and shouts coming from the stairwell.

  “Good idea to leave those men in the cells,” she said to Bryce. “A command decision.”

  He grinned. They had given two men some spare weapons and grenades and, out of sight of the tied-up guards, put them in a cell with a broken lock. They were to free the prisoners and arm them if the rest of the team didn't return in good time.

  The soldiers recovered their guns and armor from a pile outside the storage room and one by one loped toward the T-intersection next to the stairwell. A firefight had broken out down there. Venera had her pistol in her hand but ended up in the rear, down on all fours as bullets sprayed overhead.

  For a few minutes there was shouting and shooting. When it became clear that the men in the stairwell were of Sacrus, somebody threw a grenade at them, but more shots were coming from the side—the top right arm of the T from Venera's perspective. That was the direction the commandant's men had originally come from. The stairwell was at the very top of the T, the storage room behind her.

  Now it was chaos and shooting again. Venera crawled to the left, to the spot where the metal cage had descended earlier. It was gone. She raised her head slightly and saw, through smoke and dim light, that the great metal door to the treasure room was open.

  Bryce and the others had made it into the now cleared stairwell, but Venera had been too slow. Soldiers of Sacrus emerged from clouds of gunsmoke, faceless in the faint light. Venera scrambled to her feet, slipped on blood, and half fell through the doorway into the treasure room. Her feet found purchase on the carpet, and she pressed her whole body against the cold door. It slowly creaked shut, ringing from bullet impacts at the last instant.

  She spun the wheel in the center of the portal and turned around to lean on it. A sound hangover echoed through her head for a few seconds, or was she still hearing the battle, but muffled by iron and stone?

  Stepping forward she lifted her arms, saw blood all over them. Something caught her foot and she stumbled. Looking down she saw that it was another body—a soldier of Sacrus, maybe the very one with whom she'd locked eyes through the little glass window in the door. He lay on his back, arms flung about, and blood pooling behind his head.

  His abdomen had been cut wide open and his entrails trailed along the floor.

  A new wash of fear came over Venera. She backed against the door and brought up her pistol to check it. Wouldn't do to have a misfire due to blood in the barrel. For a few moments she stood perfectly still, listening and, finally, looking about at the place she had come to.

  The huge square room was lit better than the hallway had been, by small electric spotlights that hung over dozens of pedestals. She had glimpsed those earlier, the canisters and boxes atop them now glowing in surreal majesty. There was nobody else in sight, but she thought she could see another door opposite the one through which she'd entered.

  A woman chuckled somewhere; the chuckle turned into a laugh of childish delight.

  Venera made her way around the room's perimeter in quick sprints, ducking from pedestal to pedestal. It was hard to tell where the laughter was coming from because sounds echoed off the high ceiling. Faintly through the floor she could still hear the noise of battle.

  The laugh came again—this time from only a few yards away. Venera rounded a broad pedestal surmounted by some kind of cannon and stopped dead, pistol forgotten in her hand.

  A big clockwork mechanism had been shoved off the next pedestal and now lay shattered on the floor. Little wisps of smoke rose from it. The pedestal itself was covered with the remains of a man.

  Somebody was kneeling in the gore and viscera that dripped over the edges of the pedestal. It was a woman, completely nude, and she was bathing—no, wallowing—in the blood and slippery things she was hauling out of the man's torso. She stroked her skin with something, squeezing it as if it were a wet sponge, and gave a little mewl of delight.

  Venera raised the pistol and aimed carefully. “Margit! What have you done?”

  The former botanist of Liris cocked her head at Venera. She grinned, holding up two crimson hands.

  “Don't you get it?” she said. “It's cherries! Red, red cherries, full and ripe.”

  “Wh-who—” Venera had suddenly remembered the commandant's boast. He had found a hideous death for Garth, he'd said. She stepped forward, staring
past a haze of nausea at the few scraps of clothing she could recognize. Those boots—they were Sacrus army issue.

  “They trusted me,” said Margit as she lowered herself into the sticky mass she was massaging. “These two knew me—so they let me in. When the bombs went off, the wall and door parted a bit—the hinges sprung! I just pushed it open and ran right out of my little room! Nobody there to stop me. So I came here and brought him with me.”

  “Brought who?”

  Margit raised a hand to point at something lying in the shadows of another pedestal. “The one they'd just given to me. My present.”

  “Garth!” Venera ran over to him. He was on his side, unconscious but breathing. His hands were tied behind his back. Venera knelt to undo the knots, putting her pistol down when she decided Margit was too far into her own delusions to notice.

  Far gone she might be, but she'd killed at least two men in this room. “You must have ambushed them,” said Venera, making it into a question.

  “Oh yes. I was dressed oh so respectably and had my prisoner with me. They were staring out the window, you people were shooting and thrashing about somewhere out of sight and I just popped up there in front of them. ‘Let me in!’ Oh, I looked so scared. As soon as their backs were to me I mowed them down.”

  “There were only two?”

  Margit clucked reproachfully. “How many people do you put inside a locked vault? Two was overkill, but you see the doors don't open from the outside. That's a precaution." She enunciated the word cheerfully.

  Venera slapped Garth lightly; he groaned and mumbled something, batting feebly at her hand.

  She looked up at Margit again. “Why come here?”

  Margit stood up, dripping. “You know why,” she said, suddenly serious. “For that." She pointed, straight-armed, at something on the floor.

  It was crimson now, but there was no mistaking the cylindrical shape of the key to Candesce. When Venera saw it she gasped and raised the pistol again, cocking it as she tried to haul Garth to his feet with her other hand.

  Margit frowned. “Don't deny me my destiny, Venera. Behold!” She struck one of her poses, throwing her arms out in the spotlight. “You gaze upon the Queen of Candesce!”

  “V-Venera?” Garth blinked at her, then focused past her at Margit. “What the—”

  “Quickly now, Garth.” She half carried him over to the blood-smeared stones where the key lay. She let go of him and reached to scoop it up, still keeping a bead on Margit.

  The botanist simply stood there, awash in light and gore, and watched as Venera and Garth backed away.

  She was still watching when they made it to the chamber's other door and spun the wheel to open it.

  * * * *

  16

  Venera's parachute yanked viciously at her shoulders. All the breath drove out of her, the world spun, and then a sublime calm seemed to ease into the world: the savage wind diminished, became gentle, and the roar of gunfire faded. Weight, too, slackened and in moments she found herself come to a stop in dawn-lit air that was crisp but hinted at a warm day to come.

  All around her other parachutes had bloomed like night flowers. There were shouts, screaming—but also laughter. Corinne's people were taking charge; the air below Spyre was their territory. “Catch this rope!” one of them commanded, tossing a length at Venera. She grabbed it, and he began to draw her in.

  The knot of people waited a hundred feet from the madly spinning hull of Spyre. Twenty had arrived here in the early morning hours, but more than seventy were leaving. There hadn't been enough parachutes, but Sacrus had helpfully decorated its corridors with heavy black drapes. Many of these were now held by former prisoners. Having belled with air to brake them, the black squares were now twisting like smoke and were starting to get in the way as people tried to grab one another by wrist, fingertip, or foot.

  She pulled herself up Garth's leg, hooked a hand in his belt, and met him at eye level. “Are you okay?” He still seemed disoriented, and for a moment he just stared back at her.

  “Did you come for me?” His voice was hoarse and she didn't like to think why. There were burn marks on his cheeks and hands and he looked thinner and older than ever.

  Venera smoothed the backs of her fingers down the side of his face. “I came for you,” she said, and was surprised to see tears start in his eyes.

  “Listen up!” It was the leader of Corinne's troupe. “We've just passed Fin, and I let out the signal flare. In a couple of minutes it's going to come by again, and they'll have lowered a net! We're going to land in that net, all of us. Then we'll be drawn up into Fin. We need to stick together or people will get left behind.”

  “Isn't Sacrus going to pass us first?” somebody asked.

  “Yes. So everybody with a gun get to the top. And unravel those drapes, we can use them to hide behind.”

  As Spyre rotated, first Buridan, then Sacrus would go by before Fin came around again. The soldiers of Sacrus had been right on their heels as Venera's group crowded into the basement. Doubtless they would be bringing heavy machine guns down, or grenades or—it didn't bear thinking about because there was nothing to be done. For a few seconds at least, Venera and her people were going to be helpless targets.

  “Ouch!” said a woman near Venera's feet. “I—ouch! Hey, ohmigod—” She screamed suddenly, a frantic yelp that grew into a wail.

  Venera spun around to look. Dark shapes flickered around the woman's silhouette, half seen but growing in number. “Piranhawks!” someone shouted.

  A second later there were thousands of them, a swirling cloud that completely enveloped the screaming woman. Her cries turned to horrible retching sounds and then stopped. Buzzing wings were everywhere, caressing Venera's throat and tossing her hair, but so far nothing had bitten her.

  Nobody spoke. Nobody moved, and after a minute the cloud of piranhawks began to smear away into the air. They left behind a coiling cloud of black feathers and atomized red, at its heart a horrible thing bereft of blood and flesh.

  “Brace yourselves! Here comes the airfall!” Venera looked up in time to see the latticework of girders that supported Buridan Tower flash past. In the next instant a fist of wind hit her.

  Garth was nearly torn from her grasp by the pounding air. Two people who had refused to untie themselves from the black drapes were simply blown away, disappearing in moments into a distance blurred with barbed wire and mines. Others simply let go of their neighbors for a second and found themselves being drawn slowly, leisurely away as the airfall passed by and calmer air returned.

  “Catch the rope! Catch it!” She watched the lines being tossed and frantic lunges to catch them, then one of the men who'd drifted a few yards away shuddered and spun. Dark lines stood in the air behind him for an instant before snapping and becoming thousands of red droplets. She heard machine-gun fire.

  “Sacrus! Return fire!” Everybody opened up on the small knot of pipes and the machine-gun nest as it swept down and at them. Tracer rounds framed and dissected a vision of mauve cloud and amber sunlight. Venera blinked and couldn't see, waved her pistol hesitantly. Then Sacrus lofted up and away and the firing ceased.

  “Get ready!”

  Ready? Ready for what—the net caught her limp and unresisting, and that probably saved Venera from a broken neck. As thin cords dug into her face and hands she was hauled into speeding air again, faster and faster until all breath was sucked out of her and spots danced in her eyes. Just as the howl and tearing fingers of the hurricane became intolerable it ceased so abruptly that she just lay for a while, staring at nothing. Gradually, she made out voices, sounds of something heavy being shut as the wind sound cut out. Lantern light glowed below a metal ceiling where shadows of people hove to and fro. She rolled over.

  Garth Diamandis was sitting up next to her. He probed at the back of his head carefully, then darted his eyes back and forth at the people who surrounded them. “Where are we?”

  “Among friends,” she said. “Saf
e. At least for now.”

  * * * *

  Blood slid down the drain, miniature rivers in the greater flow of water. After all that had happened, Venera was surprised to find that none of it was hers. By rights she should have been riddled with holes last night.

  The facilities of Fin were primitive, but the water was wonderfully hot. She dallied in the rusted metal cabinet that stood in for a shower, letting the stuff run over and off her in sheets, holding her face under it. Not thinking, though her hands still shook.

  A loud banging startled her, and she almost slipped. Venera flung open the sheet-metal door. “What?”

  Bryce stood there. His glower turned to distraction as he took in her naked form. In a moment of reflected vision, she saw his gaze lower, pause, drop, pause again. Then he caught himself and met her eyes. “You're going to use up all the hot water,” he said in a reasonable tone.

  She slammed the door, but it was too late; she could practically feel the line drawn down her body by his eyes. “So what if I use it all?” she said gamely. “You're a man—take yours cold.”

  “Not if I don't have to.” She heard rattling around the side of the enclosure. “There's a master valve here, but I'm not sure whether it's for the cold or the hot. I'll give it a few turns....”

  She threw the door open again and stalked past him to grab the rag they'd told her was her towel. Wrapping it around herself as best she could, she did a double take as she saw him watching her again. “Well?” she said. “What are you waiting for?”

  “Huh?”

  “Get in there.” She crossed her arms and waited. Bryce turned his back to her as he undressed, but she didn't give him any relief. It was her turn to admire. With a sour glance that held more than a little humor, he stepped into the stall.

  Venera leaned over to look at the side of the enclosure; there was the valve he'd mentioned. It was momentarily tempting to give a few turns—she could imagine his shouts quite vividly—but no. She was an adult, after all.