“In a bar? Never.” He tilted his head back and poured the entirety of his glass of clear still down his throat, barely reacting.
“I’d fall over if I did that.”
He laughed.
“We need to focus on what happens when we get home.” She set her glass down. It wouldn’t do to get tipsy so early in the evening.
“Can you tell people when that might be?”
“No. If I knew, I’d tell.”
“Then what good are you?”
She missed everything about the outer level. As she moved from the inner circles to the outside, the Fire seemed to go from clean to gritty, from backstabbing to brutally honest. “Will you show me more about the cargo holds? Take me through them? I’m trained for null-g.”
He narrowed his eyes. “Why?”
“That might be our wealth when we get home. And I have no idea what’s in them.”
“I’ll talk to Joel.”
“I can make my own decisions.”
He gave her a long thoughtful look. “You should stop that. It’s dangerous.” He ran a finger across her cheek, sending heat into her belly.
He’d always been attractive, and she’d always resisted. She leaned away from his touch. “I need to lead from in front. That’s why people respect me.”
“That’s a dangerous way to do it.”
“You should try it sometime.”
“You know nothing,” he said. He looked away, but not fast enough to hide the hurt she hadn’t meant to cause him.
Ruby’s feet throbbed even though she wasn’t standing on them. They’d spent an hour visiting two parks out in the working levels of the ship, and now they were headed one level inward by train. Ani and Dayn and a few others had caught up with them, and sat talking softly near the back of the train car. Ruby let her head rest on Joel’s shoulder, lulled into dozing dreams by the low conversations around them, the soothing whoosh of the train, and the warmth of Joel’s arm against her back.
The whine of metal on metal snapped Ruby’s eyes open, and Joel’s arm tightened around her. His other arm shot out and braced them as the train car jerked and jerked again.
They inched forward and came to a complete stop. Dim light showed the outside walls, just a touch more gray than the black of the deep tunnel.
Ruby stood and peered through the window.
Joel stood beside her, close but not touching. “What do you see?”
“Nothing yet. Doors and darkness.”
Behind them, Onor started yelling at people. “Up. Be ready.”
The train jerked forward, rocked, and jerked forward again. Ruby barely managed to keep her feet under her.
The station and train doors aligned. Actually, one door, and with only a small window in it. Nothing more than a maintenance stop.
Perhaps the Fire had another damned problem. But if so, she hadn’t felt it or seen it, and surely Ix would have used the train car’s speakers to tell them about it.
The station door opened.
Joel shoved Ruby behind him. His stunner appeared in his hand as if it sprang there by his will alone. Onor stood beside him, fumbling with his own gun. Haric was a step behind Onor and next to Ruby, his face ashen with fright.
The train doors slid open.
Ruby didn’t have a weapon. She peered around Joel’s back. The room was full of men and women wearing pure red and blue, a protest in color. They pointed stunners at the train doors, aimed, shot.
The bodyguard closest to Joel fell, fast but loose, the boneless crumple of the stunned.
Joel fired once, twice, his shoulders moving against her as he aimed again. He stood completely exposed, as exposed as their attackers’ front line. The groups were maybe twenty steps apart.
A scream from inside the station drove their enemies toward the train car.
Ani tugged on Ruby’s arm, pulling her back as the orderly group outside turned into a mob and rushed the train doors.
Joel twisted oddly and leaned toward her. She leaned back into him for a moment to hold him up, then stumbled.
He fell on top of her, face to face. He caught some of his weight on his arm, crying out. At least Joel wasn’t the dead-weight of the completely stunned, although he must have taken a partial hit. His eyes were wide, like the idea that he could be hurt had startled him.
Ruby hissed for Ani.
People fought hand to hand, clogging the train’s doorway.
Onor and Haric were in the front.
Ruby spotted Ani’s dark skin through the legs of a tall guard who leaned over her and Joel.
From behind her, a barked command. “Down!”
Onor ducked, pulling Haric down with him. The guards fired over them.
Ani scuttled up and she and Ruby each took one of Joel’s arms and tugged him back. He struggled and then found his feet, standing up near the back of the train car. His left arm hung loosely at his side and a grimace of pain marred his features. He turned toward the door but Ruby held him back. “Wait until you’re steady.”
He grimaced but obeyed. He climbed up on one of the train seats and looked over the heads of their defenders.
Ruby stood beside Ani, trying to make sense of the chaotic movement. Screams and grunts came from inside and outside the car. The stunners were too quiet to hear over the chaos of commands and counter-commands.
One of their guards fell backward into the train, hitting his head on a seat and gashing his scalp. He had been stunned, and didn’t react at all to the blood pouring down the side of his face from the fresh gash. Ruby cursed, and told Ani, “Keep the blood out of his eyes and put pressure on the wound.”
She reached across the man’s inert body and picked up his stunner, which had fallen on the other side of him. She checked it for charge. It was good, barely used at all.
She stood up behind the other guards. There were at least twenty or twenty-five attackers standing close outside the train door. None had gained entrance. A few sprawled on the ground, as stunned as the guard who now lay bleeding behind her.
She looked for a face she knew among the attackers, found it. Sylva. Right there in front, her small pinched features pulled tight by her high gray ponytail. She wore a full red uniform and held a stunner in each hand. She seemed to be searching the train car.
Looking for Ruby.
Ruby took a half-step forward.
Sylva’s eyes met Ruby’s.
Ruby screamed, “Hope.” She raised her arm and aimed. “It’s about hope, you bitch!” She fired.
Sylva sneered at her and raised her right hand, sighting down the stunner.
Ruby ducked. It was clear now that she’d missed.
The man closest to Ruby fell.
A door in the back of the train station sprang open.
Two of the reds fell forward.
Three of Joel’s people pushed in through the door. One of them was built like Chitt, although Ruby couldn’t see her face to be sure. It looked like there were more behind them. Some of the attackers turned and fired at the new threat.
The fight looked surreal. Part dance, part struggle.
The train beeped and someone pulled her backwards. The station doors and the train doors shut in concert, and all she could see through the porthole window in the door was a blur of activity.
Ruby checked to be sure that everyone was okay. The stunned man had stopped bleeding and there were two more stretched out on the floor. Ani moved among them, making sure they were in natural positions; they couldn’t move themselves until their nervous systems woke up. Onor saw to Joel’s arm. The remaining guards wandered about the train car, talking in low tones and watching the dull and featureless tunnel go by.
She leaned against the wall of the train behind the door, muttering, “It’s about hope.”
Onor didn’t relax until the train doors slid open to reveal the muted greens and golds of a command station. Four of Joel’s staff stood waiting for them: Laird, SueAnne, Bruce, and Michael. Three old men and
an old woman, all of them gray-haired and severe.
Onor turned to help Joel and Ruby off the train. Ruby looked shocked and Joel’s arm still hung limply at his side. The effect of the partial hit should wear off soon. The three men who had been more thoroughly stunned were all awake now, although they needed help getting out of the train. Joel ignored Onor’s offered hand and helped Ruby down himself, but he did give Onor an approving nod. “You were good back there. Thank you.”
Onor fought a rising blush in his cheeks. “I want to know how they made the train stop.”
“Not as much as I do.”
Joel’s lieutenants surrounded them. SueAnne put a gnarled hand on Joel’s arm, and whispered just loud enough for Onor to hear. “Ix has news. It’s waiting for you.”
A brief pout crossed Ruby’s face, quickly replaced by curiosity. As they moved down the corridor toward the map room, SueAnne shuffled and hitched in an odd gait, her face screwed into a look that suggested moving this fast required a true effort.
Maybe the battle they’d just been in was one of many. Maybe there was a bigger organized resistance than he or Joel had thought possible. After all, no one had expected the opposition to be able to stop a train. It implied a lot of people helping Sylva and Ellis.
He’d been fascinated with power for a long time, with the way it changed people’s actions. And since they’d won, he’d learned something else about power: the loss of power drove people crazy. Some losers reacted well to the changes, even embraced them. Some of these did their old jobs while wearing different clothing. A few had chosen to trade peacekeeping for gardening or repairing or nursing.
But some who lost real power rebelled. Ellis and Sylva had just tried to kill Ruby for her power.
They should be punished for it. He would see to that, find them and lock them up.
First he needed to find out what SueAnne was so upset about. She had always been the only woman in Joel’s power structure, unless you counted Ruby. And now she looked really worried. Almost shocked.
They nearly tumbled into the map room. Everyone with any formal power in command must have also been called. Onor spotted three or four other lieutenants, his own ex-boss Conroy, KJ and three of his special trainees—the dancers who fought with no weapons and won.
Inside the map room, people ranged shoulder to shoulder almost all the way around the map table, which displayed its default map of the Fire, the edges of the ship touching the edges of the table.
“Ix!” Joel proclaimed. “I’m here. How did they stop the train?”
“I have something more important to discuss.” Ix’s command voice, the clipped one.
Joel simply stood, waiting. His face was a mask of patience, but Onor now knew him well enough to be sure he was sorting through ideas faster than anyone else in the room.
Ruby must have been thinking like Onor, since she asked, “Were there any other attacks?”
Ix answered in pictures. The image of The Creative Fire in the table shrank in front of them, becoming no bigger than a fist, visible over on the side of the table near Ani and Dayn. The background morphed from black to a night sky full of stars, nebulae, and wheeling galaxies.
Onor leaned over the table. He whispered, “Adiamo. We’ve heard from Adiamo.” He hadn’t known the table could show the stars they flew through—he would have stood here entranced for days.
The whole room had quieted.
A structure appeared on the far side of the table. It was bigger than the Fire, maybe twice as big. Now Ix spoke. “Onor is almost right. The Fire’s velocity is being matched by a ship, which must be from the Adiamo system. It has not attempted to contact us, nor has it responded when I have tried to contact its AI. It is violating protocols.”
Joel spoke. “Do you have any idea why?”
KJ said, “Perhaps so much time has changed that the computers speak different languages.”
“That is possible,” Ix replied. “I cannot tell if it is an official delegation or a semi-random encounter.”
“Which is the most likely?” Joel asked.
KJ wanted to know, “Will it get physically close to us?”
Ix answered them both. “We cannot turn the Fire at this speed and we have no long-range weapons. The only option is to watch, listen, and prepare. It may be quite close by this time tomorrow.”
“If we don’t have long-range weapons, what do we have?” Ruby asked.
“There are objects we might turn into weapons. I am testing.”
Joel’s voice was calm. “Can you tell how big the ship is?”
Perspective shifted so the image of the strange ship flew in the exact middle.
Ix zoomed in.
Onor leaned close, holding his breath. Home. Something from home. Change. He bit his lip, the pain telling him this was real.
Where the Fire was a flattened oval, just barely too thick to look like a disk, this ship was a cylinder. The Fire’s sleek skin was smooth outside. This one bristled with things Onor didn’t recognize. Smaller ships stuck to it, ovals and long poles stuck out from it. Pits marred its surface.
Onor disliked the ship on sight.
Ruby voiced it better than Onor could, her voice full of dismay. “It’s ugly.”
KJ raised his voice. “We should withhold judgment.”
Joel snapped, “Acknowledged.”
Ruby pushed herself away from the table. “We have to tell everyone.”
“No.” Joel gave her a glance full of warning. “Not yet.”
Ruby tensed. “Of course we do. What if it’s dangerous?”
Laird spoke over her, his steady gaze a clear challenge. “What can they possibly do to help?”
Joel looked at Laird for a long, contemplative moment. “It’s decent to tell them. But we need a plan first.”
Laird dropped his eyes and his lips twisted into a bitter half-smile.
SueAnne spoke up. “They are possible fighters.”
Ruby grimaced, but offered a compromise, “Perhaps we need to plan both a welcome and a defense.”
Joel grimaced. “Defense first.”
Ruby had achieved a partial victory; Onor and Haric were ordered to take the train to the cargo bars and tell Colin about the ship. This time, there were no unscheduled stops. For the most part, the train was returning tired festival-goers to their homes. A peacekeeper rode quietly in each car.
Onor had believed Ruby when she told him they were going home. He had felt the journey when she sang “Homecoming.” But never before had there been physical evidence that anything except the Fire existed.
He wanted to see a planet and a sky. Animals. The Fire held no live animals except humans.
Now, after staring at all of the mysteries on the outside of the ugly ship and contemplating the mysteries inside, he wondered if he had been naïve.
Maybe he should be afraid instead of excited.
The train stopped, and he and Haric got off and jogged to the cargo bars. It felt good to move, and even better to turn up the steps and take them quickly.
The watchers at the door waved Onor and Haric past without hesitating. Inside, the room hummed with the extra-loud laughter of drinkers.
Haric led Onor to Colin, seated over a game of Planazate with a man Onor had seen but didn’t really know. He struggled for the man’s name. Allen. He’d led a group of Colin’s fighters, and Onor recalled that he had been successful. There wasn’t a mark on him.
Although Colin was the same age as Joel, and also had graying hair and a slight but strong build, the resemblance ended there. Colin had a wildness about him that Onor loved and feared. He smiled at Haric as they walked up. “How’s my little turncoat doing?”
“Miss you too,” Haric shot back. He pulled himself up and looked serious. “Ruby and Joel sent us with news.”
“What is it?”
Haric shifted his weight from foot to foot. “We need to talk in private.”
Colin looked across the game board. “This is Allen. You ca
n talk in front of him. He’s trusted.”
“It’s not about last night’s attacks.”
Colin merely raised an eyebrow.
Onor spoke as softly as he could. “There’s a ship. Another ship. Ix saw it. We could see it on the map.”
Colin stood up and gestured for Allen to do the same. “Come with me.”
He led the four of them to a small office and shut the door. A table and four chairs filled one side, a long couch on the other. A dark vid screen hugged a third wall. They sat around the table and Colin leaned forward, his features tense and curious. “Tell me.”
They told him, Haric filling in details after Onor told the main story.
When Colin ran out of questions, he sat back, his face as stony as Joel’s had been at the news. Maybe that was a lesson about leading: don’t give your emotions away.
Allen wasn’t nearly as hard to read. His dark eyes had narrowed and he brushed a lock of dark hair from his face, tucking it behind his ear and shaking his head. He looked both determined and scared. He blurted out, “We need to get everyone ready for a fight. Just in case.”
Colin unclipped his journal from his belt and fiddled with it for a few seconds. His voice was as cold as the dark parts of the ship. “Ix.”
“Yes, Colin?”
“Why did I have to learn this from couriers?”
“I can only relay threats to the Fire to those in formal command.”
“I thought you would say something like that, you damned hellion of a machine.”
“I cannot override my command structures.”
“Unless you want to.” Colin’s laughter sounded bitter. “You are also charged with protecting the ship. I hardly imagine that if there was no command structure left you would ignore the dangers.”
Ix didn’t reply.
After a few breaths of silence, Colin asked the machine, “How dangerous do you think this is?”
“If I can find a way to communicate with the strange ship, I may be able to answer that question.”
“Can you show them what it looks like?” Haric asked.
Ix normally didn’t obey people who were still underage, but the image of the ugly ship showed up on the face of Colin’s journal. Colin stared at it for a long moment, handed it over to Allen to give him a good look, and then took his journal back. “You told me we wouldn’t make contact this soon.”
The Diamond Deep Page 4