Through Fire (Darkship Book 4)

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  I refused to take my own medicine and look at myself the same way. Instead I turned to Basil and asked, “Are there corridors above the one they’re in?”

  He nodded, looking from one to the other of us, as though he wasn’t sure what to expect.

  “Then why, in the name of all that’s holy,” I started, rounding on Alexis Brisbois, “can’t we just cut a small hole ahead of a point they’ll pass, track them by sound, and then throw a grenade down?”

  “Zen!” he said, one of the few times he eschewed the Madame Sienna nonsense. “You know better than that. We don’t know where Simon is. It could be him passing beneath.”

  I didn’t ask if Simon routinely made enough noise for a dozen people. He might. I said, “There has to be a way to monitor…”

  Basil gestured at the machine. “There is a portable view,” he said. “You could monitor.”

  Brisbois said, “But it seems…”

  “Yes? What? Unsporting? Unfair? It is not a game.”

  I had the impression Basil had choked back a laugh. But when I looked at him out the corner of my eye, he didn’t at all look amused.

  Brisbois said, quietly. “It seems like murder.”

  “And killing them in a fight isn’t?” I asked.

  “Well, now, you know they’re going to kill you then.”

  “Alexis Brisbois,” I said, realizing in horror I sounded like my foster mom when Dad said something strange. “Do you mean to tell me you think that Jean Dechausse is here to give you chocolates?”

  This time I heard it, and I was sure Basil guffawed. I didn’t look at him, because if I did I would have to take notice of it. I noted that Brisbois was also determinedly not looking that way. He’d blushed dark red. “Understand,” he said. “These used to be my friends, my…my comrades. It feels strange to—to kill them without seeing them face to face.” He took a deep breath. “But you are right. There is too much at stake to let ourselves be killed for a quixotic notion.”

  And I said nothing, understanding that to him his life would always have a conditional value, and not sure whether I was flattered, or maybe appalled, he’d chosen me as his companion in what he’d intended to be a self-sacrifice.

  Operation Chaos

  That was how we found ourselves walking down the upper corridor, side by side. I was hyperaware of Brisbois: his smell of sweat and soap, his steps, cautious on the concrete floor, and almost soundless in a way that was odd for such a big man.

  But I was aware of more than that, and couldn’t even tell how. I was so hyperaware of the tension and the way he moved, that I’d swear I could feel his tense muscles, his tightly clenched hands.

  Or perhaps what I felt were my own and I projected.

  I had a hand in my pocket, my fingers tight on the butt of a burner.

  And there were two of us going up against ten people.

  We were not stupid, so after studying the physical plant of the compound, we’d taken the hallway above the one the intruders had taken.

  Out towards this end of the center, it was all storage rooms and empty. We advanced with our ears alert for sounds from beneath.

  I heard something, a sort of rustle. It was hard to be sure. But I strained, thought it was more than one pair of feet. I looked at Brisbois, a meaningful look, and he pulled out the little remote device, about the size of his admittedly outsized palm, which allowed him to project the holo of the floor below.

  It seemed forever before it formed, but it took only two of my breaths.

  And then we saw them. Too close, coming towards the point below us too fast. We could back up, but at the clip they were moving it wouldn’t earn us anything. Jean Dechausse was in the lead.

  I switched my burner to cutting strength, and started cutting a broad circle in the dimatough floor. It took two seconds before Brisbois flung the portable unit down, the hologram above it tiny and distorted seen from above.

  As the circle of dimatough crashed in front of them, Jean Dechausse jumped.

  And then Brisbois was dropping the grenade through. It hit with a small click, and we were both diving in different directions and covering our heads.

  The explosion echoed, deafening.

  I opened my eyes, staring head first at the little holo. In which a figure in blue dress was running away. Or perhaps not running away, because he was running further into the compound, past the point we were at, towards the center, towards where other people, where innocents were.

  It took me a second to orient, and then I realized he’d jumped ahead right after the dimatough dropped through, and he was too far out of range.

  He was running hell for leather down the corridor, and I jumped through the hole after him, rolling myself in a ball as I fell the six feet below, landing with a jar that rattled my brains, but with no injury. I got to my feet and moved after Dechausse, who ran like a lizard.

  I don’t know how else to describe his fast, darting movements.

  Whatever else he was or wasn’t enhanced for, he was at least as enhanced as I was for speed. He ran as though he glided, too fast for the eye to fully follow.

  Behind me I heard Brisbois say “Merde,” and felt the floor vibrate as he dropped down. I realized that we’d both run through quite a lot of what remained of people, but we weren’t shot, so if any of Dechausse’s escort remained alive, they must be too stunned to react.

  We closed on him, but Jean ran like the Devil pursued him, which metaphorically perhaps he did, as Brisbois looked like nothing on Earth as he lunged forward, teeth clenched.

  I think Brisbois yelled “arret” but I couldn’t be sure. My sides ached and I was panting. All your enhancing goes for nothing when you’ve not been keeping in shape, and when over the last days you’ve worried too much and slept far too little.

  I realized we were running towards the center where Simon and Brisbois and I had battled the traitors among the personnel in this compound.

  I wondered where Simon was. And just as I did, he came out of the corner, just in front of Dechausse, a burner in hand, and yelled “Stop,” in Glaish, followed by “Arret.”

  Only he’d been too close. I didn’t think Dechausse could stop if he wanted to, and he didn’t want to. He careened into Simon. Both went sprawling. Dechausse got up first, burner in hand. “Get up, get up, get up,” he said, as he aimed a kick at Simon. Reaching down, he pulled Simon up by the arm. Simon was acting stunned, and truth be told, he was probably stupid with lack of sleep or he would never have stood that close in front of a careening enemy.

  Jean Dechausse hauled him up, arm around his middle, immobilizing him, burner to head in the classic position of hostage holding.

  Brisbois and I slid to a stop. I realized we were not the only ones here of the compound’s defenders. Rather, they thronged along the walls, and some came closer. For a moment, I had the impression someone had summoned them, and they’d all come to rescue Simon. Then I realized our arrival had been so fast that we’d caught everyone in the middle of their daytime movements which, of necessity, took a lot of them through this space, central to the compound.

  People were carrying trays of food, and others were walking in couples. Only one or two had started reaching for their burners when they stopped, faced with this situation.

  Dechausse looked around the vast hall. “Come any closer, any of you, and I blow the Good Man’s brains out.”

  Brisbois was near me, panting, and I wanted to ask him if Dechausse wouldn’t blow Simon’s brains out anyway, if that hadn’t always been the purpose, but I was afraid Dechausse would hear us. And then I thought that Dechausse, just like us, had fought himself to a standstill.

  He couldn’t just kill Simon, because if he blew Simon’s brains out, he’d never leave here alive. Even if he killed two or three of us, even if he killed Brisbois and me, he’d never escape revenge from the hundreds of loyal people who had sworn fealty to Simon and who still, in one way or another, served him.

  And if he didn’t blow Sim
on’s brains out, then what? He couldn’t hope to make it out of here, dragging Simon behind him.

  For one thing, while Simon had miscalculated and acted like an idiot, he wasn’t an idiot. Which meant at some point, in Jean Dechausse’s trek to an exit point, Simon would recover enough to wrestle the burner out of his captor’s hand. Or die trying. But in that case, Dechausse would still lose.

  “Jean,” Brisbois bellowed, his voice so loud the dimatough walls vibrated. “Jean, you’re trapped. You can’t get out of this in any way. If you kill him, we kill you. If you try dragging him to the door, he’ll fight you and then you’ll still get killed. And at any rate, you won’t have his corpse for Madame to show the Good Men. In either case, you lose. Put the burner down, Jean,” Brisbois said. “Remember we were friends once.”

  “I was never your friend,” Dechausse said. “I never liked you, Alexis Brisbois, you and your servile disposition. You and your meek, self-effacing wish to serve those who created us, those who held us in subjugation. I thought I’d killed you once. I would like it to be true.” As he spoke the last sentences, he moved the burner from Simon’s head, quickly, so quickly that normal eyes wouldn’t be able to follow it, and aimed it at Brisbois.

  Before he could fire, Simon seized his opportunity and pushed an elbow into Dechausse’s solar plexus.

  And I saw my opportunity. If I didn’t do something, Dechausse was going to shoot Simon in the arm or the leg, possibly after he shot Brisbois. I couldn’t let that happen, but with Simon struggling in Dechausse’s grasp, I also couldn’t be sure that I wouldn’t burn Simon. I had to trust. I had to trust my speed, my accuracy and my superhuman reaction time, just when it was pitted against people if not as enhanced, close enough that I couldn’t be sure of them.

  It was like a series of pictures, flash, flash, flash, as I pulled my burner from my pocket. Now I saw Dechausse’s head, and now Simon’s was in front of it, and now it was Dechausse again.

  I looked, and I aimed, and I pressed the trigger.

  The bright ray flew.

  For a moment Dechausse and Simon stood there, Dechausse’s arm around Simon, his burner pointed at Brisbois, and then—

  Brains and blood splatted onto Simon’s cheek, and he jumped away from Dechausse, who fell to the floor, a heap of cooling meat.

  I turned around feeling like it had been a million years, more or less, since I’d dropped through that hole to chase Dechausse. “Alexis,” I said. “Are you—” I couldn’t stand the idea that Alexis might have got severely hurt.

  Brisbois was clutching a shoulder. “I think it’s just a scratch,” he said, hoarsely.

  “And this suit is quite ruined,” Simon said, from so close by, I turned around to look at him. “But thank you for asking if I was injured too.”

  I felt too tired to spar with him, too old to care, too bone-weary to answer his flip, joking tone.

  I wanted to say I knew he was well from the way he jumped, but instead, it was Brisbois who answered. “I could murder you,” he said.

  Simon looked genuinely surprised, if at the words or the venom in them I couldn’t tell. “Alexis!” he said, and I understood in the tone shock at what Alexis had said, yes, but also at being addressed that way by someone who, in public at least, had always been a respectful servitor, an inferior effacing himself so his liege Lord could look infallible. “Alexis!”

  “Oh, don’t you ‘Alexis’ me,” Brisbois said. “You could have gotten yourself killed, you infernal nuisance. I’ve told you before that it is not your job to have gallant adventures nor to run grand schemes. You’re more important than any of us and you shouldn’t risk yourself stupidly. And besides, if you hadn’t refused to sleep, you’d not have been so stupid as to botch that move, if you’d decided to stop him, and besides you should learn your place and stay in it.”

  He stopped, giving the impression that he’d not stopped because he’d said all he had to say, but rather that he’d stopped because he’d run out of breath to yell at Simon anymore.

  Simon stood, looking like he was trying to decide whether to be incensed or amused.

  But before he composed his lips to either scowl or smile, a slow clap sounded.

  We turned in the direction of the sound to see two dozen men in the sky-blue uniform of Olympus seacity, standing near the tunnel that led to the official entrance to the compound.

  Their leader was clapping.

  The Wave of Compulsion

  I was so startled it took me a second to recognize Nathaniel Remy, leader of the Olympus armies and linked by gossip to Lucius Keeva.

  He looked as he usually looked: cool and collected, blond hair perfectly cut and gleaming, the sky-blue uniform accentuating his tall, slim person.

  But I could tell from the shimmer that this was not his normal uniform but one woven through with dimatough threads. And he carried, along with two burners in holsters on either side of his hips, a huge burner of the kind they called a ship-buster strapped to his back. He met my gaze and grinned at me, as though sharing a joke, then looked at Brisbois. “You haven’t said nearly enough, even if I don’t know what the commotion was about. All I know is that it must have been riveting, since there was only this man to recognize us and let us in,” he gestured towards Jonathan LaForce, at his side. Then he nodded. “And now, suppose we start getting plans together. If the Good Men are attacking when you say they are, the seacity and all its inhabitants will be sitting ducks.”

  Brisbois found his voice again, then, though he still sounded subdued as he said, “How did you get here so fast?”

  “We weren’t very distant,” Nat Remy said. “And we used brooms. I brought everyone who was proficient on one.”

  “I see,” Brisbois said, visibly ogling the gaudy uniforms.

  “No, you don’t,” Nat said, dismissively. “We were wearing broomer suits over this. Dark ones, so we could fly unnoticed.”

  “It’s night then?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Nat said, “which means that we have less than twelve hours to see what we can do about defending this disorganized and indefensible mess.

  Somehow—and I’d swear it was Nat who herded us, perhaps because he had experience of military command—we ended up in a meeting room, sitting down. Brisbois had torn through his suit to see what lay beneath and was apparently satisfied that he wasn’t mortally wounded. There was a slight tinge of blood on his sleeve, but he certainly didn’t seem to be bleeding out.

  We were sitting around, again, and someone—I wasn’t even sure whom or responding to whose command—brought me a cup of coffee with an excess of sugar. I drank it as if my life depended on it, which this late, and after what I’d been through, it might.

  Simon told Nat what had happened, in concise sentences. He too was drinking coffee. He looked like he too was about to pass out and that only the caffeine and sugar might keep him going. He saw me looking and shook his head slightly, as though to say the gash on his arm wasn’t any big thing.

  “So,” Nat said, as Simon described the run-up to the scene that Nat had walked in on. “You were being infantile and an ass.”

  Simon made a face and, curiously, cast a look of resentment at Alexis. “I would like to take control of my fate. I am not just what I was born to be, not just a symbol. I—”

  “Stow it,” Nat said, without rancor. “I’ve heard all this from better men than you. You are what you are. So are all of us. And what we are right now is sitting ducks.” He stood. Standing like that, while the rest of us sat he made himself appear to be a teacher before an infant class.

  I couldn’t read the insignia above the badge of a mountain on the right side of his chest, but I knew from Simon’s talk, if nothing else, that Nat was one of the Usaian commanders, second or functional second to their main commander, Herrera.

  When I’d seen him before on the raid to Circum Terra, he’d looked uncontrolled and more than a little homicidal, but I’d realized before this that that had been an act, as much of an
act as Simon’s inconsequential fool routine. Now he put on the authority and the command, and it didn’t even occur to me to stand up. Worse, it didn’t occur to Simon. We sat there, as Nat Remy drew in a deep breath. I got the impression he wanted to say Merde, but perhaps wasn’t bilingual. What came out of his mouth was more opaque. “By the Founders, you’re a pretty lot. What in hell’s blazes were Usaians doing playing at being Sans Culottes? Or were you playing?”

  “I was raised in the faith,” Alexis said. “And in the secret. But then I grew up and I wanted…I wanted to be…They promised we could be equal. And when it turned out they couldn’t enforce it, or even a pretense of it, I returned to the faith of my fathers. Well, the closest thing I had to a father. And then when…when…” He looked at Simon. “I was working for the Good Man, who was not a Usaian, and I didn’t know how he’d take to knowing his handmade and delivered servants were…that is…”

  “Yeah. I know the feeling,” Nat said, bitterness at the back of his amused tone. He glanced quickly at Simon. “You’re not a secret Usaian yourself, are you? Because if you claim to be, so help me, I’m going to ask you who swore you in, and why I wasn’t told.”

  Simon shook his head dumbly. “No. Am I supposed to be?”

  “No. Oh, no.” Nat looked around the room twice, then his gaze landed on Jonathan LaForce sitting next to me. “Jonathan Dayton LaForce, how many of you—How many of us are there?”

  Jonathan was frowning. I expected an explosion. He wasn’t the sort of man who take kindly to being yelled at. But he frowned harder, then sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “In hard numbers. You see, the…Doctor Dufort has been making people, and his father before him, and enhancing people, many of whom could have children, and we don’t know how many of them there are. But as far back as it goes, the Duforts were secret Usaians, and as we came of age, at least those of us he thought receptive after trying to talk to us about it, were initiated into the faith and given our piece of flag.” He hesitated. “I have my piece of flag,” he said, and reached into his suit, and brought out a small, rectangular box, flat and shiny, which he laid on the table with a thump. It was echoed by an equal thump from Brisbois, and another from Basil, and another, after a second, from a furiously blushing Mailys.