by Richard Fox
Stolzoff felt a sudden breeze, strong as if a speeding ground car had just passed him. The hair on the back of his neck stood up as he swung his pistol down each end of the hallway.
“Bit drafty, eh, sir?” the Guardsman asked.
“Hurry up before I have to burn this uniform to get the smell out of it,” the colonel said.
The Guardsman raised his gauntlet over the pipe. An X-ray view of the pipe showed the fiber optic cables…and a cylindrical device deep inside the mess of wires that shouldn’t have been there.
A green light pulsed on the gauntlet.
“Clear of explosives,” the Guardsman said. He took a wand from his belt and jammed it into the cables. There was a click and a smell of burnt air. He extracted the wand, the foreign object attached to it.
“Vampire clamp,” the Guardsman said. “I’ve seen these in corporate espionage cases. I’ll get it to forensics, but I’ll bet a month’s pay we won’t find a bit of DNA or marked components to track down the manufacturer.”
“Run a mouse droid through the pipes, make sure there aren’t any more,” Stolzoff said.
The device was a plain metal cylinder, as plain as it was sinister. What else had the assassins learned about the palace and its security?
At least Remi hadn’t tried to contact him yet. He and Cosima should still be safe. With the last security leak plugged, Stolzoff could finally welcome them back to a home that was both safe and secure.
He hoped.
****
Glint watched as Stolzoff spoke with the other Guardsmen. He’d slipped past them easily, and they were courteous enough to lower the laser detection system just long enough for him to sneak into the palace right under their noses.
He held an arm toward the wall, and his appendage telescoped out to touch it. He shimmied up the wall silently and swung his feet back to anchor against the ceiling. Humans so rarely bothered to look up while they walked. With mechanical limbs that would never tire, he started his slow migration to the first of his two objectives.
He had to drop off a tiny package, then he would make his way to the palace’s control room.
CHAPTER 10
Edwin Baumer awoke to a beautiful fall morning. For once, the sky was bright blue. No depressing blanket of overcast clouds to spoil his day. The silver rings around the planet shimmered like the auroras common to the northern latitudes, and a fresh breeze blew in off the lake.
His dog, a black and white collie, ran in from the forest and barked at Edwin as he emerged from his tent nestled along the lakeside.
“Hush, Gizmo, you’ll scare the fish,” Edwin said. Gizmo trotted over and sat down next to the embers of their campfire. The dog looked up and whimpered.
“Fine, fine. You don’t catch any fish, but you sure aren’t above eating them, are you?” Edwin opened a cooler and tossed a cooked trout filet to the dog, which jumped in the air and caught it in his jaws.
Edwin stretched his arms wide and pressed his fists against his lower back, massaging the tight muscles. He was getting too old for these hikes deep into the woods just for the sake of fishing, but there really was nothing better than a few quiet days along the lakeshore to clear his mind.
Well, there was one thing that could make it a bit better.
Edwin walked down to the lake and pulled at a line extending into the water. He fished out a six-pack of beer cans and yanked one from the plastic rings. The chill aluminum sent a spike of pain through his arthritic knuckles, but he didn’t mind it too much.
He popped the can open and took a deep sip. To hell with what time it was, there was no one out here to judge him. He attached a lure to his fishing pole and made his first cast of the morning. He waited for the soft plink of the lure hitting the water and sat back in a folding canvas chair.
With nothing but the sound of nature around him, he enjoyed a moment of serenity.
A tremendous splash in the water startled him so badly that his chair tipped backward. He caught a glimpse of a man standing knee-deep in water as he fell back, careful not to spill his beer in his fright.
Edwin slapped against the ground, and the very wet, very angry-looking man stood over him, a pulser in his hand.
“Are you alone? Who else is out here?” Remi said, his questions loaded with threat.
“No one, sir! Just me and the dog,” Edwin said, one hand up in surrender, the other holding his beer perpendicular to the ground. Gizmo barked in alarm, jumping in a circle instead of coming to aid his master.
Remi pointed a finger at Edwin. “Don’t move.”
He turned away and sloshed back into the lake. Edwin pushed himself up on his elbows and watched Remi dive into the water.
Edwin took a quick sip of his beer, a spike of adrenaline causing his hand to shake.
He looked at Gizmo, who came over and licked his face.
“You call yourself a dog?” Edwin muttered.
Remi emerged from the water a moment later, a wet and shivering Cosima in tow.
“Towel. Fire, anything,” Remi said to the fisherman. He scooped Cosima up and carried her out of the water.
Edwin scrambled to his feet and ran to his tent, where he grabbed a terrycloth towel from the top of the backpack and handed it to Remi.
“My sleeping bag is heated,” Edwin said.
“Oh, thank god,” Cosima said through chattering teeth and snatched the towel out of Remi’s hand. She crawled into the tent and zipped the flap shut behind her.
Remi, his skin tinged blue from cold, wiped water out of his hair and shook his pulser. “Who are you? How did you get out here?” he asked. “This is the king’s land for military training.”
Edwin grabbed a floppy hat from the ground beside the tent and showed Remi the permit tucked into the brim. “Journeyman Edwin Baumer, bound artist to House Carinthia. I have a remit for access. Paid the fee at the office in Port Kenyon. Say, is that Princess Cosima in my tent?”
“No.”
“Don’t lie to the man!” Cosima said from the tent.
Remi rolled his eyes and looked over the campsite. “Where’s your vehicle?”
“Walked, took my leather personnel carriers, sir,” Edwin said, pointing to his boots. “There’s a trail up the hillside, leads right back to Port Kenyon. Nice hike keeps the heart young.”
Remi looked Edwin up and down, then said, “My lady, change into his clothes.” He turned his attention back to Edwin. “How far to town?”
“You can’t be serious,” Cosima said. The tent rustled as she moved around its cramped confines.
“It’s a hard day’s walk for me. Twenty or so miles,” Edwin said.
“Ew, everything smells like fish!” Cosima said. “And his shoes are too big.”
“Shove a pair of socks into the shoes,” Remi said to her. “Do you have any cash?” he asked Edwin.
“Do you want my dog too?” Edwin asked, backing away from Remi.
Remi’s hand snatched him by the front of his shirt, and the fire in Remi’s eyes gave Edwin a clue that maybe he shouldn’t fool around with this man.
“A few marks.” Edwin pulled his wallet from his pocket and Remi snatched it out of his hand and released him. Remi took the marks out along with a travel debit card.
Cosima came out of the tent, wearing a flannel shirt and black corduroy jeans. She looked at Remi and turned her nose up at her new clothes.
Remi pulled his gauntlet off his arm, the shield emitter black and burned out.
“You stay here for at least another day.” Remi shoved the gauntlet into Edwin’s chest. “Then you go back to Port Kenyon and you ring the palace. Ask for Colonel Stolzoff; he’ll reimburse you for everything.”
Remi grabbed a small backpack hanging from a tree near the fire and looked through it. He nodded in approval and threw it over his shoulder.
“If anyone comes by, you never saw us and this never happened,” Remi said. He grabbed Cosima by the hand and led her up the hillside behind the campsite.
“Son, I don’t think anyone would believe me if I told them,” Edwin said.
****
The trail was sand and gravel, level and wide enough for two people to walk next to each other. An infantryman could have walked this trail with half his weight in gear on his back from dusk to dawn without complaint or effort. Cosima took to hiking about as well as Remi suspected she would.
“Can we please stop,” she whined.
“One hour, my lady. We’ve only been walking for one hour,” Remi said. His hand went to his holstered pulser out of habit, ensuring that it was still there. Walking with the weapon drawn would alarm anyone else on the trail and probably get their presence noted to the local law enforcement. He needed to keep him and Cosima off of their pursuer’s radar, which meant off everyone’s radar. That the fisherman in the middle of the woods managed to recognize Cosima in her disheveled state meant keeping her from notice would be difficult.
“Just for a minute?” she asked.
“No. Look around, we’re in the middle of a clearing, no cover or concealment anywhere. Keep going until we’re someplace we can hide,” Remi said. He shifted the pack against his shoulders and waited for Cosima to step ahead of him.
Cosima’s shoulders sank as she plodded along.
“Why can’t we call for an air car? Pretend we just got lost out here,” she said.
“Because whoever is after you knew where to find us in that way station. They penetrated the palace’s security, and I don’t know who to trust anymore. We call in the park Pathfinders and it’ll send up a red flag in the system.”
“Then why are we going to a town that’s full of people and cameras and what not?” she asked. “Why don’t we just stay in the woods, hunt for food, and make clothes from animal skins and—oh my god, I can’t believe I just said that.”
Remi grinned. “I’ll need you to not be Princess Cosima for a while.”
“That doesn’t sound so bad. You think I can make that gig permanent?”
“No, sorry. Being part of the royal family isn’t like this, most of the time.”
Cosima turned around, walking backward. She held her arms up to the sky. “Oh, explosions, assassins, and killer robots aren’t de rigueur? Guess if I wanted all that, I would have joined the army, not been tapped to marry some fop who’ll inherit a kingdom.” She spun back around, her fists balled. “Don’t tell Prince Francis I said that,” she said over her shoulder.
“Said what?”
“Exactly.”
They continued on until they reached the edge of rolling hills covered by a thick forest, the tops lost in the mist.
“Can we take a break now?” Cosima asked.
Remi pointed to a brook cutting along a hillside. Cosima ran over and sat down against a moss-covered rock, and massaged her feet through the ill-fitting boots. Remi dipped a canteen into the water and shook it to activate the UV lining and kill whatever microbes were in the stream. He handed the canteen to Cosima, who grimaced as she took too big of a gulp of the ice-cold water.
“Ugh, does it run straight off a glacier?”
“It does. Let me see your feet.”
Cosima looked at him sideways. “Excuse me?”
“I imagine that your feet are about as soft as a silk purse. If I can hold off blisters, you’ll thank me later.”
Cosima rolled her eyes and put a booted foot up on his thigh. His rough hands tickled her feet by accident as he pinched the skin of her feet, looking for hot spots and white nodules, the beginnings of a blister.
“That’s not so bad—would you mind rubbing them for me?” she asked.
Remi pushed her foot off his thigh and repeated the inspection on the other foot.
She kept her socks off to air out her feet and ate a ration bar Remi found in the pack. Remi didn’t ask for a bite, didn’t try to rest. He climbed up against a boulder and watched the trail.
“Remi, how do you do this? All the fighting, the running. Why aren’t you a nervous wreck like me?” she asked.
He jumped down from the boulder and pointed to her boots. She took the hint and put them back on, shoving her toes against the wadded socks within.
“To give up is to die.” He helped her to her feet. “That’s how it is in combat. If you think the enemy will let you have a second to rest, to rethink how the heck you screwed up and landed yourself in the army in the middle of the war, you are dead.” He pointed up the path, its end lost in the mist. “You focus on the mission, the objective, and keep going.”
She shook her head and put one foot in front of the other.
“I’m not a soldier, Remi. Wait, what’s your name? All this time together and I don’t even know your first name.”
“Paul, my lady.”
“And you can cut out all that ‘my lady’ business. I’m not a princess right now, correct, Paul?”
“Yes.”
She could see his face strain against adding her title to his word. “What would you do if you were me? Would you keep calm and carry on through all the attempted murder, or would you run? Get off this planet and try for a new life somewhere else?”
He didn’t answer right away. The trail angled upward through the hills, and Cosima had to push against her thighs to relieve the strain on her legs.
“I’d do my duty,” he finally said.
“Not hard for you, is it? You’ve been ‘doing your duty’ for years, all voluntary I might add. I’m born to a particular House at a particular time and my duty is chosen for me. Does that seem fair to you?” The mist thickened around them, so cold Cosima could swear she saw ice crystals glinting in the fog.
“No, I don’t think that’s fair,” Remi said. “But life isn’t fair. Just because I’ve had the chance to choose my path doesn’t mean everything’s worked out the way I wanted.”
Cosima let the conversation die away. The march through the hills became more miserable than she’d imagined as her legs started to cramp up.
She made it to the top of a hill, and her calf seized up like an unoiled gear. She hissed in pain and fell to the ground, clutching her leg.
Remi pushed her hands away and massaged the knotted muscles and pushed her toes toward her shin. The pain lessened; weak muscles spasmed as they loosened.
“Paul, I don’t know if I can do this,” she said. “I’m a spoiled rotten brat. I can’t do this pain-and-misery business.”
Remi pressed his palms against her calf, and the spasms faded away.
“You have to, Cosima. There might be someone tough underneath all this whining. You need to keep going until you find her.”
“I’m not you, Paul. I’m not Shoshana either,” she said.
The name of Remi’s partner in the Guard struck him like an electric shock. He took his hands away from Cosima and stood up. “How do you know that name?”
Cosima got to her feet and brushed herself off. “I saw the recording Wilson had, the artist making that mural. I borrowed a copy while he wasn’t looking.”
Remi looked away from her and walked down the hill, his footsteps loud against the dirt.
“Wait, where is she? Why haven’t I seen her around the palace?” Cosima followed him, his pace fast enough for her to struggle to keep up. He didn’t answer her.
“Paul, wait, I’m sorry,” she said. She caught up to him and grabbed him by the hand. He snatched it away from her. “Is she OK? In the video she was ‘expectant’ or something like that,” she said.
Remi whirled around, his face a mask of pent-up anger.
“You don’t know, do you? You were cooped up in that ivory tower for so long that you don’t even know what it means. Expectant, it means the soldier will die from her wounds.”
Cosima stopped, a terrible realization coming to her. “But, how could she…what happened?”
Remi’s face softened. His breathing grew even as he fought against his emotions.
“After Vincent was hit, I dragged them both back to our lines. Slow, the pirates were still s
hooting at us. Vincent was my duty, protecting him was my only mission, and I put him in jeopardy to bring Shoshana back. His wounds were cauterized in the blast, hurt him bad enough that he’d survive. She…she died on the way up. Never made it to the surgery.”
Remi took a deep breath, his composure returning.
“You were with her, at least?” Cosima asked.
“No. After I got them to the field hospital, I found a rifle and went back to the fight.”
“Why would you do that? I thought you and she…were…”
“We were. I don’t expect you to understand. I’d already put Vincent at risk for my personal feelings, I wasn’t going to let down the rest of the task force to stay with her. I’m a soldier, not a doctor. I went where I was needed.” Remi pointed down the pathway. “We must keep moving. Fog like this means worse weather is on the way.”
He took a few steps, but Cosima stayed still.
“I’m just a mission to you, aren’t I?” she said. “You could leave Shoshana and Vincent behind without a second thought. You’ll do that to me too because you don’t have a heart, do you?”
Remi’s hands curled into fists.
“I will carry you, if I must.”
Cosima huffed and started walking.
****
Hours later, the mist had moved on—replaced by dark clouds that rumbled with thunder. The hills were lower, farther apart, but with her aching feet Cosima dreaded going over anything higher than a curb.
Remi hadn’t spoken to her, ignoring her attempts at conversation.
Her right foot stung with every step, her left foot throbbed every time she took it off the ground, and her knees hurt in ways she didn’t know were possible.
“Are we there yet?” she whined.
A drop of rain hit her forehead, so cold that it must have been a fraction of a degree away from being sleet. More rain hit around them, big drops that swayed the tall grass with their impacts and slapped against rocks.