by Beth Cato
“There’s a dead soldier within. It appears he died of influenza, but he’s been stripped of his weapons. I saw no sign of any living guards in the vicinity.”
Ingrid related this to Cy as they continued to the mooring mast. She looked up the stairs with dread, readying herself for the slog. Cy hesitated.
“Take cover behind the barrels here. Watch the doors. I’ll go up.”
“But if I go up with you, the captain can scout ahead—”
“He can keep an eye out for you here, too.”
Ingrid took out her pistol and sat on a low box behind the barrels. With her gaze on the doors, she used her free hand to rub her left calf as best she could through the boot shaft.
“You hide your discomfort well, most of the time,” Sutcliff murmured.
“I was protected from my own pain for much of my life, but I did learn how to hide the symptoms of energy fevers. This isn’t so different, really.”
Sutcliff was quiet for a moment. “There is a great deal I wish I could have comprehended while I was still alive.” He took a few steps away. “Pardon. I would like a closer look at the gunnery over here.”
Ingrid obliged, moving around the barrels so that Sutcliff could study the large gun mounted to the deck.
“It’s a prop,” he murmured.
“A prop? It doesn’t work?”
“It can’t even hold bullets. Beautiful work as a dummy piece, though.”
Her jaw dropped. “There are guns like this all over these outer decks. Are they all fake? Why?” She paused, then answered herself. “They posed soldiers by these in the cinema footage.”
“Excalibur was assembled in a hurry, but it’s necessary for it to look like a ready battle station.”
“Do those gunships nearby know the truth?” The Palmetto Bug on its moorage now looked all the more vulnerable.
“That is the question, isn’t it?” he muttered, stroking his blond mustache. “I doubt they know about the faux armaments, but at this stage they almost certainly know about the illness on Excalibur and why no other ships can come near. They are guarding a contaminated graveyard.”
“It’s a wonder they allowed the supply ship to come up at all,” she said.
“An act of desperation.” He shook his head with deep weariness.
Footsteps tapped along the stairs above. She glanced upward to confirm Cy’s approach, and moved to the base of the tower to intercept him. Moments later, he joined her, panting heavily.
“No one alive up there. Ugly fight.” He offered no more details, for which she was thankful. “A large crate was left open. It’s clearly how the Chinese smuggled themselves aboard.
“They are surely roving the citadel even now, killing anyone who has survived the sickness.”
Picturing Lee as a soldier, as a murderer, made her feel sick. She felt revulsion. This was war, but . . . damn it.
“Our position here might be more precarious, too.” She moved to show the deck gun to Cy. He immediately recognized it as a fake as well.
“Damn it all. I hoped we could use this gun to our advantage. I need to let Fenris know.”
Ingrid waited beneath the Bug as Cy dashed up the mast again. Questions raced through her mind, questions she knew they could not answer: What would they do if a gunship moved in? Was there any possible way to defend the Palmetto Bug?
The low buzz of the sylphs caused her to face where they rested in the shadows.
The sylphs could attack; they had acted in her defense before. But she could not ask for them to commit suicide by throwing themselves into battle. Ingrid thought of the warning she’d already given them about the stub-wing engines and how they had reacted, and she shuddered. No. She had already asked too much of the sylphs.
They sensed her attention and flashed a query her way.
“If another ship comes and threatens the Bug, listen to Fenris,” she thought at them. They replied in the affirmative.
Depending on the situation, he could verbally request their aid. Or he could yell at them to leave.
Cy returned, and they walked together to the holding bay doors. “Captain Sutcliff, can you please scout ahead for us again?”
“He’s going in,” she murmured as Sutcliff stepped through the wall.
“Ingrid, remember, if we’re separated, plan to meet at the engine room. Some crew must be alive there, keeping this hulk afloat.” She could see in his eyes his fervent belief that Maggie must be among them. “That’ll be among the most defensible areas on the craft, if people had the foresight to bring down the fire doors.”
Even if Lee and the others couldn’t understand the engineering controls, they would know that destroying the chained kermanite that powered the citadel would be an easy way to crash it. Since that hadn’t happened, maybe they hadn’t been able to access that area at all. This was Cy’s repeated logic over the past day, anyway.
Ingrid released a heavy breath. They were on Excalibur. They were going to find Maggie. Maybe Lee, too. Would they have to fight him and his companions? How could she pass along the guandao if they stood on opposite sides of a battlefield?
“Hey.” Cy’s fingers stroked her cheek, startling her. “You’re worrying about Lee, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“For the sake of your own life and mine, you must stop. You need to be focused.” Cy’s gaze on her was hard. “You hear me?”
“I hear you.” She took in a deep breath. “I love you, Cy.”
“And I love you, Miss Ingrid,” he said, drawling out her name as he had done in the first days of their acquaintance. “Take care of yourself in there.”
“You be careful, too. Engage in chivalrous acts, only in moderation.”
They stared at each other and leaned together for a tender, bittersweet kiss. She pulled back as she sensed Sutcliff’s return.
“Still no signs of life nearby,” he said. “The hold is spacious. Multiple levels are visible in the central portion of the citadel. Those decks offer vantage points into the hold.”
Cy looked grim as Ingrid repeated this information. “Wonderful spots for snipers, then. If the Chinese didn’t have guns and ammo when they boarded, they surely have aplenty now. Does this door offer decent cover?”
“As good as any of these smaller doors, Sutcliff says. He agrees—the best course of action is to get out of the hold as quickly as possible, but we do need to get him to the kermanite. It’s off to the left.”
“I don’t suppose he’ll dally a bit longer, to help us survive this?”
Ingrid listened and relayed Sutcliff’s words. “He says he has no desire to abandon us, but he also needs to get there before we leave. After all, if we’re required to make a quick escape . . .”
Cy nodded, expression sorrowful. “Far be it from me to keep a man from his peace. Please lead the way, Captain.”
They slipped inside the hold.
She could not see a ceiling above, only darkness, but had a strong sense of a great open space that was scarcely filled. Sporadic kermanite light cast faint blue illumination along the curved exterior wall and from support pillars throughout the broad cavern.
Cy scrambled forward, and she traveled in his wake. Her crouched posture caused her calves to clench, and she relied on momentum and fear to propel her forward. She had to keep up close to Cy in case she needed to create a shield around them. The pistol felt heavy and uncomfortable in her grip. The longer she held it, the more she realized she’d prefer to rely on magic alone.
At her back, the door shut again. The click would have been a mild sound in a regular building, but here it seemed to echo loud as a gunshot.
They reached the first stack of crates about twenty feet into the hold and hunkered there. Sutcliff began to take shelter as well, then gave a chagrined shake of his head as he stood tall.
“No one in sight,” he said. Ingrid conveyed this to Cy in an “okay” hand sign. He nodded and led her onward—not straight forward into the central portion of the
citadel, but on a zigzag route among the spaced-out islands of supplies. Sutcliff studied Cy with blatant approval.
Ingrid almost tripped over a man lying in a fetal position in the shadows behind a pillar. The smell of him—good God. She gagged and fought the compulsion to vomit as Cy hurried them along. Her backpack thudded against her spine.
“Wait.” Sutcliff had stopped behind her. He gestured to a side path, his head at a curious tilt. She beckoned Cy to follow. Sutcliff walked about fifteen feet into the blackness of a chasm between boxes and studied the floor.
“There is a massive pile of papers strewn about here, circular burn marks on each and every one,” he said.
“Do they look like confidential papers?” she whispered. Evidence might prove useful later. She tucked the pistol into the side pouch of her pack and wiped her sweaty hands on her hips.
“No, that’s what is odd. There is no writing on them at all. They are absolutely blank. If enchanted ink were being used, protocol states that the entire sheet must be destroyed, not simply one spot.” Sutcliff motioned her forward to look.
His eyesight was far better than hers, as she couldn’t see the sheets at all until they were underfoot. She stopped at the very edge of a pile roughly ten feet in length and wider than the path; papers filled the passage ahead and protruded from the boxes just above, as though they’d been dropped from the ceiling. Just as Sutcliff had described, each sheet bore a circular burn mark about the size of a wax seal. What he hadn’t mentioned was that every sheet was folded, and not in a haphazard way. The folds were unique to each sheet, angling this way and that. Many sheets fit together, creating a strange puzzle.
She took in the wormlike length of the pile, and bit her knuckles to smother a loud gasp. She couldn’t help but take a hasty step back.
“What is it?” whispered Cy.
“One of the fox’s constructs. Those things she had on patrol for me. The sigils that powered it have been burned away.” Her voice shook.
“We know these things were all over California. The search must have extended far beyond,” muttered Cy, his brow furrowed.
“The person who enchants an object has the easiest time disenchanting it. That means she was likely here.” Ingrid motioned to the ground at their feet. Inert as the creature was, she wanted to get away from it, away from a place where Blum had perhaps stood.
Cy gripped her trembling hand. “We already know she was on board when Excalibur was in Atlanta. This may have been here all the while. The soldiers aboard could have been ordered to leave it undisturbed.” Sutcliff nodded in agreement. He stood in the open, vigilant as they spoke. “Or someone else made this one, and unmade it.”
“Or perhaps this construct wasn’t used to track you. It may have served some other purpose for her or someone else,” added Sutcliff.
“I don’t dare think optimistically, not when it comes to her.” Nor did she want to think pessimistically either—that this might be one of the trackers from California, and that it flew here to intercept its maker. That Blum was already on the citadel or in Phoenix or somewhere else far too close for comfort. By their expressions, Cy and Sutcliff were thinking the same thing, but no one dared to give voice to the fear.
“Let’s get away from this thing,” she whispered with an uneasy look around. No one naysaid her. She briefly embraced Cy, her head against his shoulder as if to borrow more of his strength, and then they continued their trek.
Cy guided them deeper into the hold. Ingrid concentrated on the soft tread of her feet, the sound of her breaths. The citadel’s hull was no longer visible. The world was rendered to boxes, barrels, and other odd parcels, all lit by scant light. The darkness high above resembled a night sky, minus the glory of stars.
They crept into an open area between rows.
Sutcliff shouted, “Above!” Reflexively, Ingrid formed a shield, her focus on Cy. Bullets zinged past and impacted nearby with sharp pings.
Cy kept on running, hunched low. They reached the cover of a Durendal tank, one in a row of about ten. The central cannons hadn’t been mounted yet, creating black cyclops eyes in the low turrets of each shiny new tank.
In her rush, Ingrid had formed the shield too close to them. She let it drop so they could take in ragged gasps of fresh air.
“There is one man a deck up along the railing. He’s taking shelter behind a pillar.” Captain Sutcliff stood in the open about five feet away. “About thirty feet away, someone’s throwing—”
Cy must have seen something, too, as he jumped up and scrambled away before she could repeat a word. Ingrid tried to follow. She couldn’t. Her left calf muscle locked with a lightning bolt of agony. Cy slipped around the corner of the tank and vanished.
Metal pinged close by. An impact with her right calf sent her rolling onto her back.
“Shield!” barked Sutcliff.
She flared out a bubble to encase herself again. Something crackled against the floor nearby. Smoke unfurled around her in a billowing cloud. A smoke bomb, perhaps with a toxin inside.
Was she shot? She groped at her good leg—ha!—and found a chunk of her boot sheered away. The smooth orichalcum plate beneath had been dented. The pain beneath that point was already starting to fade.
“It looks like you caught a ricochet, and sent it ricocheting again.” Sutcliff’s disembodied voice carried from the fog.
She rolled onto her side and forced both feet flat underneath her body. Even though she was trapped with a clean air supply, Ingrid’s mouth was parched with acute terror. She could see nothing in front of her but the expanding cloud, and nothing behind her but the mighty chassis of the Durendal.
“Jennings slipped away in time. Crawl away—under the fake tank, the same direction he went. Use the fog to cover you from the sniper.”
There was no way Ingrid could crawl beneath the tank. Instead, she crouched and blindly scurried after Cy. Her left leg dragged, but the braces enabled her to keep moving.
“Straight,” snapped Sutcliff. “Left, left, left. Keep going!” As if directions made any sense! Move forward, forward, that’s all she knew. The fog seemed to expand and follow her. Her ragged breaths echoed inside her enclosure; sweat wept down her back.
The cloud finally dissipated. She staggered another twenty feet and barely managed to sit rather than collapse face first. “A minute,” she croaked, with a weak wave to Sutcliff. She leaned on a high stack of boxes.
“I hear footsteps and voices close by. We cannot stay here long.”
She hesitated, then let the shield fall as she inhaled with a soft gasp of sheer relief. Her skin still carried a slight fever. She rubbed at her bruised leg, wincing.
Sutcliff spun around, alert as a cat in an aviary. “Our attackers are near. You should move.”
She nodded. Using her hands, she slid on her backside around the corner of the crate. Energy tingling through her extremities, she edged along the side of the box and peered around the next corner.
To find herself staring into a pair of dark eyes wide with alarm. A black bandanna covered the lower half of the person’s face.
Ingrid recoiled in a panic, her hand rising to shove out energy. That’s when the realization struck her. She knew that face, that shaggy black hair, those eyes.
“Lee?” she whispered, almost unable to get the word out.
“Ing?” He poked his head around the corner and tugged down the bandanna. He wore a sooty gray cotton work uniform. Relief flooded across his familiar features. “It’s really you? You’re here?”
With a choked sob, she launched herself forward, both arms around him. He was real and warm and alive. Too skinny, yes, but he was alive. They rocked in place, both in tears, both trying to stay as quiet as possible.
“How are you feeling?” She pulled back to study his face. His skin looked sallow, deep bags under his eyes—but it was a hell of a lot better than he had looked the last time she’d seen him, blood-soaked and a mere breath from death.
“I p
robably haven’t been getting as much sleep as I should, and I know I haven’t been eating enough vegetables, but . . . well.” He studied her, reaching up to roughly scrub his tears away. “How did you get here? Where are Fenris and Cy? Jesus Christ, I almost shot you just now.”
“Someone else is nearby.” Sutcliff’s voice startled her. In the joy of the moment, she’d forgotten he was there. “By the soft tread, I don’t believe it’s Jennings.”
“Should I use a bubble?” she murmured over her shoulder.
“Ing?” Lee’s voice was barely audible.
“The footsteps are fading again,” said Sutcliff. “Be judicious if you use a bubble to hide both of you. That magic expenditure will drain you quickly.”
She nodded then whispered to Lee, “Someone else was close by, but they crept away. I have the ghost of Captain Sutcliff with me. He’s acting as my lookout.” Lee’s expression was outright aghast, but she couldn’t really tell him the whole story right now. “Cy is with me—or was. We were separated by a smoke bomb. Fenris is with the Bug, docked outside.”
Horror flashed over his face. “I threw the smoke bomb, Ing. That was me. We thought soldiers had landed. I didn’t know—”
“There was no way you could.” She hugged him again, her face pressed to his shoulder.
“Why are you here?” His whisper was insistent.
“Cy’s twin, Maggie. She’s not really dead. She’s the engineer behind this.” Ingrid waved around them. “We’re hoping she survived the sickness and we can get her help to sabotage this thing.”
“You know about the sickness? Then—”
Ingrid’s left leg pulsed with pain. She hissed and drew it closer, changing her sitting position to take pressure off that hip. Lee glanced down. Ingrid’s skirt flared up to the knee, showing the shiny orichalcum of the brace that protruded above her boot.
“What’s that?” he whispered. “Are you hurt?”
“Constantly.” The painful tingles eased off again. “In Seattle, my body was permanently damaged by my power. I can barely walk on my own. We went to the Vassal States, where I met my grandmother, Madam Pele—”