Through Fire (Darkship Book 4)

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  It wasn’t that he couldn’t have succeeded at another time when I was younger, by the simple expedient of being one like me and sure of himself. But now it had all changed and it was all academic. I wasn’t Simon’s to protect or to stop, and I’d never be.

  I ignored his protest and looked at Brisbois. He looked…waxen. But he didn’t tell me I couldn’t do it, nor that I shouldn’t do it. He just nodded once.

  “Yes, but two of you—”

  “There is also me,” Basil said, standing up. “I rode a broom when I was young, and still do it now and then, even if it is technically illegal. And I can respond for others like me. Twenty or fifty people trained in military discipline, who have close to nothing to live for. People whose parents, or children or wives were caught in the maw of Madame’s uprising. They were guillotining people all day in the square, Monsieur Remy. It leaves a lot of people who will do anything to stop the killing and to protect the innocents who remain innocent.”

  Nat inclined his head. “All right,” he said. “If you’re sure that we can muster the people to conduct the raid, this is what I suggest: Monsieur Brisbois, Madame Sienna, and myself, and my men will go to raid the explosive cache. What I need from the rest of you meanwhile is two things. I need you to work that communicator of yours and get as much intelligence as you can. To carry out this trick on the amphibious vehicles and the troop carriers, we need to hit them as soon as possible. Far enough from the seacity that they don’t get one shot off, but close enough that most of them can’t turn around, regroup, reorganize.

  “And I need you,” he told Simon, “to get on a protected channel on that communicator, one that can’t be overheard, and order all your secret compounds and all your fighting men to be on the alert and ready to defend the seacity. And yes, the territories too, if you have some people there, though I expect they’ll plan to take out the seacity first, so the territories know they’re abandoned. At any rate they’re more dispersed, and therefore harder to take with a sudden action in one night.” He pressed his lips together. “I expect you had training in military, at least for projected trade wars, the same as—the same as any son of a Good Man had, possibly because they believed it would help—Well, for the tone of the thing. Did you?”

  Simon smiled, a smile that was almost a sneer and made an anatomically improbable suggestion. “I will take a lot from you,” he said. “Because you are here to save me from the consequences of my lack of foresight. Or at least to save my people, which is all I require of you. I will take a lot more from Brisbois who is a friend, and who has gotten me out of scrapes, and into them, for years. But you will not treat me like a child in my own domain. And you will not talk down to me, whether I’m the Good Man or the Protector. Whatever I am, I am the commander of my men and the commander of Liberte, and I hold the fealty of my troops in my hand. You can take your opinions and put them where the sun don’t shine. By choice I would go with you on this raid to the explosives depot. And you could use me too, whatever you think. I’m more enhanced than anyone but Zen—”

  “That’s why I’ve recruited Madame Sienna.”

  “But the fact remains that I know I need to be here, and that I need to command and dispose my troops. You can go and carry out your raid in peace, Nat Remy. I will do my duty.”

  “Good,” Nat said, and wheeled around and headed out of the room.

  Astounding

  The ammunitions and explosive depot was deep in the grounds of the Good Man’s palace, those same grounds we’d run through, Brisbois and I, back on the night of the disastrous ball.

  I didn’t know how long ago it was, nor was I willing to calculate. As far as I was concerned, that night, and the nights before it, the months before, most of my life before, belonged to someone else as wholly different from me as though we didn’t share anything, certainly not the same body, nothing beyond a few memories.

  This time we came back flying.

  One thing I’ll say for Nat Remy, though he had the devil’s own temper, he was a damn able broomer. A damn able leader too. He had obviously trained this group of men, and I started suspecting they were his particular command, his rapid strike force. After all, he’d said that most of their war was a guerrilla operation, and in that kind of war, how invaluable would a broomer squad be, dressed in dark fabrics, striking in the night with neither warning nor alarm? I seemed to remember something about a wave of assassinations of Good Men, and shivered as the image rose before me of a palace window, open, above well-guarded grounds, and a man in black stepping through and—

  But then I had to think about where we were and where we were going, and what we were going to do. I was not going to spare any pity for men who for centuries had ruled lands with an iron fist and killed their own offspring to continue ruling.

  The building where the ammunitions and explosives were stored was low and large, crouched into an expanse of verdant lawn like a turtle. There were no trees around and that made perfect sense. If it were to blow, the last thing anyone would want was for the trees to catch fire and propagate to the entire grounds.

  The lack of trees was somewhat of a problem, as we’d been flying through the trees, a dangerous pastime, but one that kept us relatively safe. Now, about to enter the open space, Nat Remy gestured rapidly to his men.

  I’d never learned broomer sign language, a complex system of signaling designed to be understood by boomers in situations of stress. It was said that experienced broomers could carry on entire conversations, and Simon had told me that once someone had done an entire book of poems in broomer language and recorded it. I’d thought it was an amusing idea, and likely a lie, because when Simon was in the mood to tell tall tales, there was nothing you really could believe of the many stupid stories he told.

  Now, looking at Nat Remy’s hand move and sketch broad gestures, I could believe it. But this left me perfectly in the dark as to what I was to do. Only, as his men signaled back something I could no more interpret than his orders, Remy looked back and lifted his hand in a universal gesture, then pointed at the trees, then gestured again. It was clear. “You two, wait here.” I was aware of Brisbois by my side, as I reached to turn the propulsion of the broom off, while leaving the anti-grav on, so I could float in mid-air.

  The dark-clad Olympians zoomed forward on brooms that they seemed to move with as much ease as normal people move their arms or their legs.

  It seemed to me they were all faster than they should be, and even to my enhanced vision, it was hard to see in the fortunately very dark night as these black-clad figures zoomed forward, encircled the building and landed.

  I swear I heard whimpers and sighs, sounds of death in the warm night. I might have imagined it though, as the sounds must have been very small and the distance was great. My memory might even have added those sounds afterwards as, at the time, what I was most afraid of was that the defenders would fire on the attackers with burners.

  This didn’t happen. Nothing happened, seemingly, save that suddenly Nat Remy was back where he had been, on his broom, as though he’d been spit out by the darkness of the night itself. He was making a different gesture now, waving his hand in the universal signal for “come” and “follow me.”

  Down where we landed there were men on the grass, dead, I think, or at least unconscious. I didn’t look closely, but I suspected dead because Nat Remy would not risk their recovering consciousness and destroying his mission.

  “We can’t open the door,” Nat Remy whispered in the kind of soundless whisper that takes years to learn. “And I suspect that it might still be gencoded for you.”

  “Likely,” Brisbois whispered back. “And also, once inside, there will be other doors. That’s why I had to come.” I couldn’t see his features, but I got the impression he hesitated. “If you’d stay here and guard.”

  “There will be no one inside,” Nat asked.

  “Oh, likely there will be people inside, but not as many,” Brisbois said. “And that’s why I’m ta
king Madame Sienna with me. The important thing though is that Madame might have—almost for sure will have spies, and if they see us go in…”

  “I see. It would make a perfect trap. You go then.”

  Brisbois and I advanced into a short entrance tunnel. The suspense as to whether or not he’d be able to open the genlock didn’t last long. The door clicked open. A voice from inside, a young, frightened voice said, “Who comes?”

  I flicked my burner to cut, and fired into the darkness. There was a whimper, and the man fell. Brisbois turned to me and gave me a half smile. He didn’t say I’d done well not to keep the burner on heat, but I wasn’t stupid, and surely he knew I wouldn’t do anything so crass as use fire near explosives. So his smile might be for another reason, though I had no idea at all why he also shook his head.

  Down the hallway, and he shot down another guard before he could hail us. Two more doors were opened by his finger in the genlock.

  All too soon, we were in a very long, very low chamber. Even in the dark, I could see row upon row of what by size and shape had to be ship busters, as well as other shapes. I thought there was enough here to outfit an army. Brisbois took a deep breath. And I heard someone breathe behind me. I turned, finger on burner trigger. And recognized the shimmer of Nat Remy’s blond hair, and the general shape of his body.

  “Damn you,” I said in a whisper, since I wasn’t sure if there were other chambers, other routes, or if other guards survived. “Why did you follow us?”

  He shrugged in the dark. “I’ve been shooting the cams along the way. It occurred to me you probably didn’t have gadgets to detect them.”

  “The cameras,” Brisbois said, spinning around. “I’d forgotten all about them.”

  “Well, I imagined they’d be here, which is why—”

  The explosion came from outside. The walls and floor rocked.

  “Who the hell is firing explosives near an ammunitions depot?” Nat roared.

  “Ah, that will be Madame Parr,” Brisbois said. He was already running past me, towards the entrance to the depot.

  Nat spared me a look as though to ask if the woman could be that stupid.

  I said, “I think you missed a camera, Nat Remy. And this is personal. She used to be his wife.”

  And then I was running after Brisbois.

  Consider Her Ways

  The grass was on fire. Which was weird, because it had been quite green and lush before. But it was on fire now, burning with an acrid smell, as trails of fire crawled amid the green that looked black like bright snakes glimmering in trails, towards us.

  Nat’s men were ranged in a circle, and that I saw none of them had been killed. In fact, I thought that Madame wasn’t as crazy as she seemed. She’d fired not at the depot itself, but at the space just out of the trees near it. The trails of fire were what remained from what must have been a fragmentation explosive, lethal at close quarters but deployed this far away, more noise than real danger.

  The woman, I though, had a flare for the dramatic.

  We were all still within the tunnel that led to the door of the depot, in the dark shadows, and she couldn’t fire on us without setting off the explosives in the depot.

  She had no such protection, except for the fact that we would have trouble taking out all her minions, including the ones doubtless hidden in the trees, and that if we killed her they would shoot back.

  She stood now, at the edge of the trees, in her uniform and decorations, flanked by a dozen or so very decorative young men in body-molding uniforms. And by the light of the dispersed fires, I could see she was smiling.

  “Brisbois,” she called in our direction. “If you surrender, I shall let your friends go.”

  Brisbois was just ahead of me. He started as if to force his way among the Olympian forces that had ranged themselves in a circle defending the entrance to the depot. The Olympian soldiers closed their ranks against him, so he couldn’t have gone between if he’d tried.

  Nat had caught up with us. His hand grabbed at Brisbois’s arm. “Brisbois, don’t be a fool. If she gets you—”

  Brisbois shook his arm, to dislodge Nat’s hand, and called back, full voice, “And what will you do if I don’t, ma petite?”

  He called her “ma petite” in the same sickening tone that Simon had called me that. At that moment, in those circumstances, it dripped with irony and bitterness. The hair at the back of my neck tried to stand on end.

  “If you don’t, I’ll blow the ammo depot. I have it rigged to blow.”

  He laughed. “You wouldn’t, my dear. For one, I do not believe you had anything like the foresight necessary to have the depot set to blow. All your bright boys and girls have been busy in displays of terror and murder among the populace. For another”—he laughed again—“you wouldn’t damage the Patrician’s grounds, because you’re very hopeful that you’ll inherit them and get to live here in full splendor.”

  She didn’t say anything. There was a movement in the dark, as if she’d made some gesture of annoyance.

  “So, what will you do if I don’t surrender myself, ma belle?”

  “I’ll cut you all down,” she said. “You and all with you, including your fancy woman. Don’t think I don’t know. Don’t think I haven’t heard.”

  “Have you?” he said. “Have you heard that Jean Dechausse committed suicide?”

  It was clear she didn’t even know Dechausse was dead. There was a jump, a startled sort of shock, and then she screamed, “You lie. You captured him. You have him in some way he cannot communicate with me. You—”

  “Suicide.”

  “He wouldn’t.”

  “Suicide through stupidity. He had a chance to get away, but instead he chose to try a desperate gambit in which no man with brains could have hoped to win. He would have lost no matter what he did. I’m disappointed, my dear. Your taste in men used to be better.”

  “I picked you.”

  “As I said, your taste was better once.” He seemed very calm, almost sad. “But now that Jean Dechausse is dead, who can you trust? Who in your entourage haven’t you betrayed? You say you have us surrounded and that you can bring overwhelming force to bear, but can you? Who will you betray as you betrayed me? And who will betray you?”

  She looked very pale in the darkness, pale enough I could see the pallor of her face, her gestures. “I could take you back,” she said. She was speaking too fast. “I loved you once. I could take you back. If you come to me I’ll let your friends go, and I’ll take you back.”

  “Take me back to what, my dear? The Good Men are going to attack and they’re bent on destroying you for killing the Good Man.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “No, but you broadcast killing the surrogate, you poor fool. The world thinks you did and the only way for them to erase what the world thinks it knows is to erase you.”

  I was looking, and some of Madame’s entourage peeled off, melted into the trees. I wondered if they were going to warn others, perhaps to order us shot down. Or if they were deserting. If they’d just realized doom was headed for them.

  “I will defeat them,” she said. “If you just surrender to me.”

  “I trusted you once,” he said.

  “You loved me once,” she said. And paused. “How is our daughter?”

  I put a hand forward, I grabbed at his arm, opposite Nat Remy. “You can’t surrender,” I said. “We have to fight our way out.”

  He shook my hand away. “Very well,” he said. “I shall come out in the open, but you have to dismiss your men first, so that I know you’ll allow my friends to go.”

  Rose Parr stomped her foot, or it seemed to me she did so. It wasn’t a very military gesture, but more the way someone would shoo a cat. She stomped her foot, she waved her hand and people melted into the dark, on either side of her, leaving her standing alone.

  “Come,” she said. “You see, it’s all safe.”

  He elbowed his way past the rank of Olympians. Nat sh
ot me a worried glance. I dove forward and grabbed at his arm. “No, Alexis. It’s a trap.”

  “I knew you when you didn’t hide behind a woman,” Rose Parr said.

  Alexis Brisbois shook my hand away.

  He took a step into the clear space between our group and Madame. Then another.

  A barrage of light shot from all sides, as the rays of several burners, from men hidden in the trees, blazed at him.

  The burners set the grass aflame again, but Brisbois wasn’t there. I don’t know if normal eyes could have followed, but I saw him clearly as he rolled, and turned, and fired at Madame Rose Parr. She looked surprised and started to fall, and I had both burners out and was aiming through the trees in the direction the shots had come from, and Nat Remy had joined us. If he wasn’t enhanced as we were, he was putting on a good imitation, firing fast and accurately, and taking down one enemy after another.

  Until no one fired back.

  “It doesn’t mean we’re safe,” Remy said. “There might be others. Almost for sure there will be others.”

  “It will take them a while to recoup, now that Madame is dead,” Brisbois said. “It will take a while for the inevitable ambitious successor to rise up. Her heir apparent was Dechausse and Dechausse is dead.”

  He spoke calmly enough, and I wondered if he felt nothing for the woman who’d been his wife. But then she’d tried to kill him. I couldn’t even imagine what survived of his feelings, after that.

  I followed with Nat’s men, while Nat kept watch, back into the arms and ammunition room, and this time we turned on the portable lights we’d brought with us. The walls were indeed ranged with weapons, except one wall which was piled high with what looked like gray disks. We took the disks we’d come to collect, but before we left Nat Remy came back in. His eyes shone as he looked at the weapons, and I realized the man had a true love for the machinery of war.