“As they have,” Simon said. “Damn you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Halfway through their conversation, I’d realized they were going to try to leave without me. And while I wasn’t sure I should be in on that conference, I was going to be. For one, I was not going to be left behind by two men who were determined to protect me from everything. And for another, if I was going to help with the stabilizing of Liberte, I had to know what was happening and what could be done. I knew they meant well, but I wasn’t their daughter, their sister, nor their anything. I had no reason to trust their judgement over mine.
I had to decide on my own what risks I would take and which were acceptable. But more importantly, I had to know. I’d made great mistakes because I hadn’t known of Simon’s plans. I’d risked Jonathan LaForce and Mailys and wasn’t even sure they were still alive. I was not going to continue fighting with both feet in a sack.
At a guess, leaving me behind was Simon’s idea, while Alexis felt that Simon and I—both—needed to be protected from every possible danger.
I undressed and started dressing quickly. When Simon said, “Damn you,” he chanced to look over at me, when I was in my underwear—well, in someone’s underwear since I’d woken in it—and getting ready to slip on the coveralls I’d worn to the seacity.
His jaw dropped and he jumped back, out of reach of Brisbois’s arm. “Don’t you dare,” he said. “Fool me once, and I’m willing to believe you had good intentions. Fool me twice, hit me with an injector again and I slip a dagger in your back while you sleep.”
Brisbois said, “What? I’m not trying to distract—” and turned. By then I was mostly dressed, and fastening the suit down the front. “I didn’t plan this,” he said, in earnest protest. “Maybe I should have, and have been ready to put you to sleep. Simon, please listen to me. It is better if you stay here, better if these people don’t see you face-to-face; better if they’re not too sure where you are or if you’re even alive. It’s almost impossible to run a secret organization, even a secret military outfit, without enemy penetration.”
“And? If we’re not going to use me, really use me, as an asset, why am I here and not panning for gold in the territories?”
“Panning for what? You know someone really should have kept you from reading crazy stuff in childhood.”
Simon frowned. “Never mind. The point is we’re either going to use me or we’re not. Your decision. If we’re not going to use me, can I get a submarine to take me to parts unknown? If we’re going to use me—if my presence is absolutely necessary to rescuing the people who rely on me, can we cut the crap and just go to this conference in the Blue Room or wherever?”
“Not without me,” I said, as I closed the last fastener.
They both looked at me, and Simon opened his mouth. But Brisbois spoke first. “No, Simon. It’s no use. First because if we are being serious, then we’re going to need all the help we can get. And second because I have a strong feeling it’s absolutely no use. Not when Madame Sienna has decided on something.”
Simon looked dubious, but then he nodded. “We go to the conference room then.” A slow grin twisted his lips as he squeezed my upper arm. “They’ll never know what hit them.”
Trapped in Shadowland
The three of us walked, barefoot, out of the room, and asked the first person we met—a young woman in green coveralls, who seemed to know Brisbois and recognize Simon, whom she graced with a small smile—where the Blue Room was.
The barefoot thing bothered me. Surely they could have brought us shoes, when they brought us clothes?
On the other hand, I felt more naked than that because, for the first time since the night of the party, I was without a burner. I half-hoped one of the men had a burner on him, but I suspected not, since we’d all been stripped and given our present clothes.
If I knew Simon, he had probably been a walking arsenal. I’d never known him when he wasn’t carrying enough weapons for a small army, much less when he was carrying none. And there, at the back my head was the question: why had they not returned our weapons? Or at least not returned mine?
They had, after all, made sure we were who we said we were. So they could trust us. But could we trust them?
I wanted to talk about it, to ask the two men if they had weapons, and if not, why not, but I didn’t dare. I felt the only thing worse than being scared that we were all unarmed was knowing for a fact that we were all unarmed.
The Blue Room was at the end of a long hallway without doors, where the walls looked like they’d been carved from rock and then coated in gold. I had a momentary pang of something not quite grief. When Len and I had leased our very first ship for harvesting pods from Earth orbit—all the ships belonged to the Energy Board, and the best we could do was lease from them, but most of the leases were semi-permanent, as long as the couple worked—we couldn’t afford much, but in this, our first home, we wanted to have something special. So we’d gilded the walls of the first room in the ship, partly because it was also the smallest room in the ship and we could afford it.
At the same time, the back of my neck was prickling, the hair trying to rise. That corridor with no doors seemed like a perfect way to corral us in such a way we couldn’t easily escape.
The door at the end was half open, and Brisbois opened it completely and stepped in. One thing I’ll say for the man. He had the gift of filling to capacity any room he entered.
When we arrived, the room contained only three men, who had been seated before we entered. It was a vast room and looked like it had been designed for large meetings. A long table and many chairs could have accommodated a couple dozen people. But once Brisbois stepped into it, and looked around as though inspecting it for stolen accoutrements, the room was filled to capacity.
Simon and I pushed in, on either side, and I suspected looked much like afterthoughts to Brisbois’s looming presence. The men who had been sitting looked discomfited too. The three of them were much of a size, and a look, that look saying “trained in fighting.” The middle one had jaws like a bulldog, and dark blond hair cut very short. The one on his left had a leaner, longer face and dark hair. The one on the right was slightly shorter than the other two. They all wore the white uniforms that had belonged to Simon’s house. And they looked…
I narrowed my eyes as the look found a place in my mind. They looked exactly like naughty children caught misbehaving. Like little boys caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Interesting. I wondered why. And I meant to find out.
They rose—slowly—as we came in. They looked at Simon with narrowed eyes, then at Brisbois evaluating, then at me.
The one in the middle spoke first. I noted that when he spoke he put his hand on his hip, and I suspected under his white uniform hid a holstered weapon. “We didn’t expect you, Commander Brisbois,” he said. “And we didn’t expect”—his eyes slid to Simon—“a lookalike.”
Oh. I dropped onto my left foot, ready to spring. That was how they were going to play it, was it? I suspected they were going to find it was not a good idea.
“He is not a lookalike, Baudin, and you know it. Don’t be a fool. You analyzed our genetics.”
Baudin looked confused. It was just a moment. Clearly in his cunning plan to—what, claim that Simon was an impostor?—he’d forgotten what they’d done to allow us in here. But he never admitted a mistake, just said, “And someone who appears to be, from her genetics, Jarl Ingemar, after a very sophisticated sex change operation.”
This got Brisbois to look at me, but only for a second. Like me, surely he could sense the movement in the room as he turned away, and then as he turned back to them. “She’s not Jarl Ingemar,” he said.
“That’s not what the little test told us. And people like them—” There was an unholy emphasis on the them, and eyes going to myself and Simon—“making themselves female bodies and having their brains transplanted into such bodies is not wholly unheard of. We have heard things…�
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I sensed more than saw Simon move, and wondered exactly what he was doing. It was a tiny move. What could he do? It was just us, and armed men. Armed men who might very well be hostile.
The back of my mind was calculating: there were three of them. Likely they were all armed. How to take them out?
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Brisbois said. And then in the tone of someone whose mind had been following the same path ours had. “What exactly has been going on here? And what are you three up to? Precisely?”
If he expected embarrassment or abasement, he didn’t get it. The man on the left smiled, a smile that reminded me of pictures I’d seen of weasels. I’d never actually seen a weasel, Eden not having taken many animals, but this was very true to the pictures. “Well, we’ve been thinking.”
“I don’t think so,” Brisbois said. “If you’d been thinking, you wouldn’t be asking us stupid questions, Souci.”
Souci-the-weasel narrowed his eyes. “Oh, no,” he said. The smile was gone but the impression of a small rodent who thinks he has the upper hand remained. “We’ve been thinking about this whole thing. The way we see it, right? What went wrong the last time we purged the Mules from the world, is that the Mules,” he pointed at Simon, “like him, came back and took over again, the way they do. And then they polluted everything again, the way they do.” His mouth quirked. “Which is why we’ve been thinking and planning. Now, this whole thing about enhanced people being evil…” He shrugged. “The way I see it, Madame has a point. And doesn’t. At this point practically everyone is enhanced, so if we’re a little more enhanced than the others, who cares? It makes us more competent and better able to rule them, while still being human. Human, like he and—” he actually pointed a finger at me, and the finger was trembling—“she aren’t. I mean, if they’re allowed to go on, and you know, reproduce, they’ll just push us off this Earth, so we’ve been talking, and we think it’s better to—”
We never even traded a look. Where we were, it simply wasn’t possible. And though telepathy was bioengineered into bonded nav and pilot couples in Eden, you had to be bonded. Perhaps Simon had the same telepathy engineered into him. It was an open secret some of the old Mules did, and we were their clones, even if I was somewhat modified. But Simon and I didn’t have telepathy. And Brisbois and I surely didn’t.
Yet there was something to the tensing of their muscles—felt, more than seen—or perhaps to the way their smell changed or…I can’t explain it, except to say that I knew I wouldn’t be alone, as I decided this had gone far enough and leapt.
I assumed these people were bioengineered for speed and maybe intelligence, just like we were bioengineered. So, it seemed to me my only hope was surprise.
I flew out at the one who was speaking, feet first, hitting him in the middle of the solar plexus, then rolled to my feet past him. I turned to poke the eyes out of the one in the center, but he wasn’t there. He was attempting to attack Brisbois, who had just taken out the one on the right.
I pulled the gun off the guy I’d knocked to the ground—he wasn’t moving. And Brisbois got the gun off the man he’d subdued. As he did, the guy who’d been in the middle flew out at Brisbois, fists flying.
“Freeze!” that was Simon, standing in the middle of the room, holding a burner. “Freeze or I’ll shoot.”
We froze. The two of us and the man who was still standing of the triumvirate who would…what? Rule the seacity? We had to find out what was going on and exactly how many people in this secret base had gone over to the enemy side. And was it the enemy side, or merely a conspiracy of the loons in here?
But before all that, Simon said, “Zen, would you kindly disarm the large gentleman. Take his obvious weapon and bring it to me. And you, Alexis, would you search him. You’re probably better at that than Zen.”
I took the weapon I could see through the man’s clothes, and walked backwards, covering the still-conscious Baudin, till I handed the spare burner to Simon, who pocketed his much smaller burner, took the safety off the big guard’s burner, and said, “Now, let us talk like civilized people.”
Baudin stared. “We searched you,” he said. “All of you. You could not have had a concealed weapon.”
Simon shrugged. “Oookay. We can discuss that, or we can discuss what exactly you thought you were doing, with whom you thought you were working, and precisely how many people in this base are on your side.”
“All of them,” Baudin said. “We talked in democratic assembly and we’ve decided that you are not a true human and we should not be serving you. Particularly since you and she plan on reproducing and replacing all humans.”
“News to me,” Simon said. He gave me a sideways glance which I couldn’t quite read, one that was perhaps half-wishful and half-amused. “Even if we were planning on reproducing, I don’t think we’d get so busy as to replace the population of the Earth. And we’re not that different. Just a bit enhanced.”
“Very enhanced,” Baudin said. “Not like the rest of us. We’re simply the best of humans, and, being the best of humans, we are their natural rulers, to keep them from the pitfalls of folly that have marred their history. With us in control, there will neither be the heinous excesses of your kind, nor—”
“I don’t think he’s right,” I said.
“About their ruling?” Brisbois asked. He was finishing tying together the hands of the guy I’d hit. His own victim looked dead. “I’m sure he isn’t. He’s just a little would-be king, trying to knock off those above him and rule in their stead. He would be worse than any Mule, even the really bad ones like Simon’s father, begging pardon.”
“Begging pardon for what?” Simon said. “I say that about the old bastard myself.”
“No,” I said. “About everyone being with them, Brisbois,” I said. “If they were, why wouldn’t they simply have filled the chamber with water when we first came in? Or added something lethal to the air, after it was proven we’re who we say we are. And that man, the one who agreed to the genetic tests—Basil?—I don’t think he was intending on killing us. Why bother with the genetic tests?”
Brisbois looked at me, chewing on the corner of his lip.
“Also,” he said at last. “People would have arrested us or confined us in a room, not…Simon, keep an eye on this one? I’m going to reconnoiter.”
“I can do that,” I said.
“No,” Simon said. “You might hesitate in shooting someone ostensibly unarmed until it’s too late.”
“Madame Sienna?” Brisbois said. He whistled air between his teeth. “Brother, she shot a Revolutionary Guard without a second look, just because she thought he might check up on my nonexistent mother.”
Simon gave me an appraising look. “That true, Zen?” And then, “But I still think I shouldn’t be the one stay—”
“Simon,” Brisbois said. “I want both of you to stay. You’re too valuable as you are, and Madame Sienna will stay and guard you. I’m the most expendable of us. If I don’t come back…” He pulled a ring from his finger and handed it to me. It was one of the cheap com rings. “It dials Jonny LaForce to the right and Mailys to the left. If they answer, tell them it is you, and I suppose they can ask questions to establish that is true. Then tell them I followed through on what Jonathan recommended and what happened.
“And now I’m going to reconnoiter.”
“Wait, Alexis,” Simon said, urgently. “Why can’t we just shoot this bastard and all three of us go?”
“Still too risky for you,” Alexis said, even as my stomach did a flip-flop at the idea of shooting an unarmed man because it was inconvenient for him to live. No, it wasn’t rational. Did I claim to be rational? Whatever the plotters believed, I was all too human. “You shouldn’t be seen, not until we figure out how far the rot goes. Besides,” he said, “we too might need a hostage.”
He edged towards the door, removed his top and threw it out. Two shots nailed it, one from each side of the hallway.
“
Aha,” he said. From outside came cautious steps approaching the door. I traded a look with Brisbois. That not-quite-telepathy we had going still seemed to be working. I gestured with my head towards the right, and he made the like gesture towards the left, the opposite of how we stood.
Look, it was very simple. If Brisbois shot one of them, the other one would come in, burner blazing. We didn’t know how fast the other one was, or how competent, but one thing I did know, someone coming into a small room with a burner at full power might hit any of us before we could duck or defend ourselves. If the person wasn’t enhanced, this likelihood diminished, but how likely was either of those approaching wouldn’t be enhanced? How likely was it that they would have set someone to guard a room full of enhanced people who wasn’t himself enhanced?
So the only thing to do was shoot both of them. At the same time. And, fortunately for us, they had given themselves away, moving towards us.
My heart started thudding, fast, loud, so loud that I had trouble thinking past the noise. What if these people were coming toward us for no reason except to check that we were still alive? What if—But the steps were cautious, and they’d shot Brisbois shirt. It was probably burned to pieces, there in the middle of the hallway.
The steps were now close and I had to make a decision. And there was no decision to make. They’d shown ill-intent first, and after all this, in the middle of trap and countertrap, I couldn’t let my friends be endangered. Tuning to the noise, with no more thought than it took to point at where the center mass of someone approaching would be likely to be, I put my arm out the door and shot the person on Brisbois’s side, at the same time he shot the person on my side.
Through Fire (Darkship Book 4) Page 24