“Is this how you treat an ambassador?” Amminapses snapped.
Pepper’s dreadlocks fell forward as he leaned in. “I don’t trust you being up and around. You have your own agenda, for now it’s similar, but that is never a guarantee with the Satrapy, is it?”
“I work for the benefit of all.”
Pepper saw to it that Amminapses was dragged off. Katerina, the pipiltin, and Timas’s parents now stood staring at them.
“I think they’re a bit unhappy with us,” Pepper observed with a wry grin. He pointed at the warriors. “Tear the inside of this ship apart. We’re looking for an extra vial.”
They looked uncertain. Pepper strode forward, the grating jumping with each powerful step. “Now! Get moving.”
Several scurried to the sphere. Timas followed Pepper. “What about Hulbach?”
“What?”
“The cavern under the Great Storm.”
“Ah.” Pepper waved Katerina over. “Tell any Aeolian with a craft to get to the surface, start seeing if they can get people in groundsuits to get into the cavern down there. At the very least, the cavern might be a better place to hide the youngest.”
Katerina nodded. “We’re already working on sending down some crack teams with them, whoever we can spare, in case they try and shut us out.”
Timas moved closer to Pepper. “But how are we going to save the other three people that the Satrap is going to kill?”
“We don’t. You want us to risk airships, lives, to try and intercept those three? No, they’re already dead. And maybe they’ll get lucky and get through. Or maybe they won’t. Either way, kid, you saved one life. Be happy with that. When we fire off that nuke, when the Swarm gets close enough we’re not wasting it, maybe she’ll even thank you for it.
“Take what wins you can get, because they will be few and far between from this point on. Now, I’m off to get ready, we have a little over an hour before the main force hits.”
Pepper walked away. As he passed the pipiltin he jerked his head in the direction of Timas. “Have someone clean the dead alien off the floor, too, when you get a chance.”
The stunned leaders of the city just nodded.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Back at the communication room Pepper looked at the board. The crescent of approaching Swarm on the clear status board had been updated. The radio handlers worked via instructions from Aeolians calling in the new guesses as to where the edge of the Swarm was. Katerina had left to see what happened on the docks.
Pepper took the radio. Midas Special was there, and Jack was upset. “We can’t pick you up, we getting ready to break orbit. League ships coming in from all over.”
“Peace, brother. I’m not bubbling up, and it’s probably too risky for you to have tried to dip in and back out just for me.” Pepper licked his lips. “How bad is it up there?”
“They doing the same thing as all we Raga, you know? They using merchantships, with armed crew. Look normal, but they been juggling schedules, hiding extra ships in the DMZ. Now here they all is.”
“How many?”
“Over the air and in the clear?”
“We all know each other’s cards now.”
Static washed over the radio for a moment, an edge of jamming, but then Midas Special punched through. “. . . fourteen ships, all that into consideration. All light. Nothing coming through the wormhole yet, but we can expect it.”
Fourteen. Pepper knew the Ragamuffins could spare four armed merchantships like the Sheikh Professional. And maybe two real attack ships, made for the expensive pursuit of war in space.
There’d been some serious clashes in establishing the DMZ, back in the days after the uprising. The League played for keeps, but once it started having trouble in its own backyard keeping down alien counterrevolutions and human breakoff movements, the DMZ became practical.
So how hard was the League playing now? This handful of merchantships hardly seemed like a vast attack force. The League had fought over the DMZ the first few rounds with much larger numbers.
Pepper toyed with the mic. If this was a feint, and they’d managed to hide League ships anywhere near New Anegada, he would risk an entire planet with his next request. The land of Aztlan and the land of Nanagada, all at risk.
Yet, to throw Chilo to the League . . .
“Midas, tell the Dread Council we have a Satrap on the surface. Tell them a whole nation of aliens is hiding under the Great Storm, it’s what the Swarm is trying to get to, in addition to taking everyone else down for the League to mop up later. This isn’t a feint against New Anegada, it’s all about Chilo and the aliens here. It’s worth the fight, tell them Pepper said so. Get clear of orbit, come back bristling, you hear?”
“Loud ’n’ clear, transmitting it along the line now. We go respond back, we go take, maybe a half day. Burn some serious fuel. We’ll be back.”
And that was that.
The cavalry had been called. Ragamuffins scattered throughout the DMZ and New Anegadan space would be on the move. The special forces of the entire organization, the mongoose-men, soon would be descending up on Chilo. Help would arrive.
If they could last long enough.
And in doing this, he was requesting the Ragamuffins to burn most of their fuel reserves, putting them in a weak position to defend themselves and ply the spaceways in the near future.
CHAPTER FIFTY
Katerina intercepted Timas. “I have a gift for you.”
“Okay.” Timas followed her as she dragged him along the docks to a storage room filled with wooden crates stamped with barcodes. He’d just finished visiting his parents, both of them pressed for time. Itotia had helped organize the women’s resistance, getting them bill-hooks, teaching them to use them. And Ollin, always the unofficial pipiltin, kept busy involving himself in everything the city’s leaders did.
Itotia had told him about Pepper’s escape plan, and the bubble, when he’d asked her why she’d been looking so triumphantly at him. “Be careful of him,” she said. “He does have a weakness for getting involved in causes, I think, but there is a limit. I think he’s liable to leave you for dead when it really comes down to it.”
Timas filed the knowledge away.
Now he watched as Katerina zeroed in on one crate in particular, pressing her thumb on the keylock to open it. Inside sat a pair of thick machine guns.
“This is a Sharkov 9.” She held it up, somewhat awkwardly. “The Consensus moved these over, and I requested some particularly for us. I’ve never fired anything before, but this one has very low recoil, which is good for amateurs like us, explosive rounds, and a grenade launcher. They’re also very light.” She was reading off a script.
She gave it to him, and Timas hefted it. It was indeed light. “I’ve never fired one either.”
First she had him add his thumbprint by pressing it against the top of the stock. “If you lose it in battle, it can’t be used against you.” After that, seeing some hidden manual in the air that she’d called up but that he couldn’t see, she showed him the basics. “Traditionally, this is illegal for me to hold. Consensus doesn’t like teenagers handling this kind of weaponry. But we’re rewriting Consensus law on the fly right now, and we have these to protect ourselves with.”
There were five grenades already loaded in it, and one full clip with a hundred rounds. The safety, the built-in thumbprint on the stock, pulsed green slightly. “It’s live.”
They practiced holding the gun with their fingers to the side of the trigger, stock snug on their shoulders, the flip-up readout giving Timas information he couldn’t interpret. “Don’t worry about it,” Katerina said.
It took fifteen minutes, and Timas felt somewhat confident that he could fire the weapon. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. I wanted you to have it. I wanted to come back. I was relieved when I heard you were safe. I worried about you down there, and when your mother came up to tell me you’d stayed . . .” She clipped a strap to t
he gun and looped it up over the back of his neck, hand brushing Timas’s cheek as she did so, and then clipped it back around.
The Sharkov hung near Timas’s stomach. The strap bit into the still bloody punctures from Skizzit, but Timas didn’t complain. “Thank you,” he repeated awkwardly.
“This all feels like a dream.” She still held on to the strap.
“A nightmare.”
“If I live, I don’t think I’ll ever be quite the same.”
“I know.”
She hugged him, tight and long. He hugged back, with a silly smile on his face. All the Aeolians in the new Consensus, hanging around their city, would probably be able to see him. Who knew how many thousands saw his silly grin right now? He didn’t care anymore. “Where are you going to fight?”
“I should go with my parents, but I really want to be near Pepper. You’ve seen how dangerous he is. I think he’s seen fights like this before, and I think anything I can do to help him is good.”
Katerina let him go. “I think you’re right. I’ll see you there, then. The Consensus thinks my being near Pepper is important as well.”
“Just be careful, okay?”
“You too.”
Together they walked back out onto the docks, both carrying their machine guns, safeties thumbed back on.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
Heutzin stopped Pepper outside the communications room with a quiet, almost bashful manner. He held a long wooden box out to Pepper. “For you.”
Pepper took it, accidentally crushing a corner with his grip. Inside lay his sword. “Heutzin . . .”
“You’d mentioned wanting it back earlier.”
A big grin. Things were coming together, Pepper thought. Heutzin handed him the scabbard as well.
Pepper fastened it to his metal waist. “Thank you. Now what do you want?”
Heutzin grinned. “Yes, I do have an odd favor.”
“Let’s hear it. Walk with me.” They advanced toward the atrium. They dodged crates, walked past barriers of wire spun so fine it cut off limbs, and zigzagged around spikes welded to the floor.
And everywhere stood armed citizens and warriors.
“I have no family, Pepper. I never had children. I have no legacies to pass on, other than teaching my skills as a mechanic.”
Pepper sighed. He saw what was coming. And he liked Heutzin; the man had helped him out and stood by him. It was going to be hard to hear what came next. “And?”
“I used to be xocoyotzin. A proud position in this city. I fell from everyone’s favor, though. But still I love my people, Pepper. I love my city, that is why I was always happy to serve on the docks, fixing the suits, helping the boys as best I could.
“I’m getting old, Pepper, and I’m facing death here, defending my city. And I see a chance to do something noble, grand, that will take my name and make sure no one in this city ever forgets it . . . if it survives.” Heutzin stopped and looked up at him.
The pipiltin would be relieved, no doubt, not to have to figure out how to get someone to volunteer to do the deed. Pepper nodded. He tapped his chest. Underneath, safe in a pocket, was the vial. “Stay close. The counter-infection will be quick once I inject you with it, so we’ll have to wade out into the thick of it. You fight until you drop, so that the Swarm doesn’t suspect anything. And you stay close behind me, until this happens. We don’t want you getting hit by something random.”
Heutzin let a long breath. “Thank you.”
Pepper shook his head. “It is the others who should be thanking you, Heutzin. Come, I’ll tell the pipiltin, and then let’s go to the top layer. It’ll be the best target for a landing on this city by the Swarm.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
Heutzin had joined Pepper where Katerina and Timas already stood with him near the lip of the upper level. It gave a great view of everything happening outside the city.
According to Katerina, the horde’s forces would hit Yatapek within the hour. It was a long hour. Long enough for Timas to realize how much the entire city had changed in just the days since he’d been gone. Pepper had been busy.
From Yatapek’s atrium all the way out toward the rim of the city, Jaguar scouts, Aeolian soldiers, and civilians all lined the streets with weapons and body armor made out of whatever they could find.
Over the stately upper-city buildings where only the elite once lived, large mounted weapons waited to unleash hell on anything that penetrated the city’s transparent walls. Mothballed anti-pirate guns had been taken out of retirement, transported through the city, and bolted in here.
The air vibrated with tension, and so did Timas.
Everyone had seen what the Swarm would do. No one had any doubt that this was a fight to the last one standing.
Ollin would be burning incense to the family gods while Iotatia waited in the courtyard. Timas felt he should have been there. But he also felt, as he looked out over the brown and red clouds below the city as if standing on the prow of a mighty ship, that the gods would understand his indiscretion.
Let his father offer something for his son.
Timas looked at Katerina. “Anything?”
Katerina looked up into the sky. Overhead the ragtag fleet of Aeolian airships moved around the giant orb of Yatapek. Many of their hulls glinted. The paint had been stripped clean from flying in the protection of Chilo’s acidic clouds to get to Yatapek. Mingled among them were the dun-colored cigar shapes of airships from Yatapek’s sister cities, their noses painted with fierce teeth or feathers. They bore names like Bloody Retaliator, and Sun God’s Strike. And among them, large spotter and barrage balloons painted with red and brown camouflage.
“Do you need to be shifted?” Katerina asked. Pepper had hardly moved the entire time. He’d been stood near the balcony on the level’s edge for the last half hour, saving power. The mottled and rusted-out suit held him in its grip, both man and machine looking like not much more than an old metallic statue.
A statue holding a very large gun at one side, and a wickedly sharp sword of some sort strapped to the other. The recently polished edge glinted.
His dreadlocks shifted as he shook his head to Katerina’s question. “I only get two and half hours when I power this up.”
Pepper looked intently down at the clouds. “I wasted enough clumping around the last day.” A bead of sweat dripped down his forehead to his nose, balanced there, and then dropped to hit the breastplate.
Katerina twisted her head, listening. “They’re spotting outriders. Scouting airships, just under the cloud layer.”
But none of them could see anything in the murk below.
“There.” Katerina pointed. “The Swarm’s coming.”
It looked like a cloud of gnats in the far distance against the haze and sharp sunlight, just skimming over the rust-colored clouds.
Timas felt numbness spreading over him as he realized the sheer immensity of what he was seeing. “There must be thousands of them.”
Pepper snapped his fingers. “Tell your friends now is as good a time as any.”
“Are you sure we’re ready for this?” Katerina reached up and unconsciously rubbed the filigree of her silvered eye. She was about to be plunged into a form of personal darkness, Timas knew. Like standing in a dark closet, she’d said.
“We slow them down.” Pepper looked around. “Now is the time.”
“Then close your eyes,” she said.
The very back of Timas’s eyelids flared with actinic light, purple and yellow and hot.
When he opened them again, the giant fireball of the nuclear explosion burst out a cloud in the far distance, vaporizing the leading edge of the Swarm’s armada. Tiny midges of airships slowly fell out of the sky, burning the whole way down.
Now there were just hundreds that had been lagging behind, regrouping.
“Now they know we’re fucking serious,” Pepper shouted.
Katerina shivered, cut off from her entire world now. She was no longer the Aeolian
avatar, she was just Katerina. “Feels like chopping off our own arms just to hurt them.”
“No. More like chopping off your arm to buy yourself a couple hours.”
“Here are the scouts.”
Pepper grunted and strained to move the suit unpowered. He leaned closer to look farther over the city’s edge through the transparent aluminum shell.
Like lean sharks, ten jet-powered dirigibles shot out of the cloud layer toward the city. Twelve Aeolian airships dropped from around Yatapek toward them, and the dockside anti-pirate batteries began a steady thump.
Anti-airship fire blossomed, black puffs carpeting the sky below the city.
One of the airships crumpled as it caught a good shot and then continued to limp forward until the batteries zeroed in on it and destroyed it.
Now the Aeolian airships engaged, tracer fire creating a matrix of brightly colored lines all throughout the space under the city.
“We’re holding them,” Timas said. The Aeolians kept the scouts away from Yatapek, chewing up the attacking airships with well-aimed fire.
This might be a winnable fight.
Timas was about to open his mouth to say that when two scouts swung around and raced straight at the nearest Aeolian. All three of them watched as the first one burst apart before reaching its target, but the second struck nose-cone on.
Both airships crumpled, then slowly started to sink toward the clouds.
“We told the pipiltin and the Consensus they’re suicidal.” Timas shook his head. “They did that trying to get at us when we escaped in the ore processor.”
“Any individual, any ship, is merely a small appendage. It’s a group mind. It’s one thing to hear it, another to see it.” Pepper looked down as the wreckage caught flame, then disappeared into the clouds. “A bad way to die.”
Slowly sinking down through the acid-soaked clouds, waiting for the heat and pressure to build to lethal levels.
The Aeolians reacted to the Swarm’s suicide run by moving back and coordinating their gunfire attack via radios and the anti-pirate battery guns.
Sly Mongoose Page 26