Scavenger Alliance

by Janet Edwards

  I rubbed my forehead in bewilderment. “He wouldn’t? Why?”

  “Because he’d seen what happened to people who were webbed when their brain gradually changed over the years and their link to the Earth data net broke down. He knew these guns formed connections to their owner’s brain in a similar way, and he didn’t want to risk experiencing that connection failing. I didn’t trust anyone else enough to hand them a gun, so I kept its existence secret and locked it away in case Mac changed his mind.”

  I was staring at Donnell’s gun now, studying the glowing tendrils that ran into his arm. “Your gun is connected to your brain?”

  “Yes. An Armed Agent weapon can do far more than shoot people. It has its own artificial intelligence, which handles jobs like tracking potential enemies and transmitting information to its owner. The brain connection turned out not to be the problem Machico feared, perhaps because the gun’s artificial intelligence is fully self contained with no link to the Earth data net.”

  I frowned. “I didn’t know your gun had artificial intelligence.”

  “Kasim and I carefully kept the full details of our guns’ abilities secret. Being able to track the movements of people we considered dangerous gave us a huge advantage. The gun tracking range is limited, but it crucially extends well beyond bow range, so we couldn’t be taken by surprise and shot in the back.”

  “Oh.” That explained several odd incidents that I’d witnessed over the years, where Donnell seemed to be expecting trouble before it happened.

  “Getting back to the history of this gun.” Donnell tapped the table next to it. “After Kasim and I had been Armed for a few years, it was clear the brain connection wasn’t changing, but Mac still didn’t want a gun himself. He said that the way he messed things up in Asia had proved he was a good technical expert but a terrible soldier. For a long time, I planned to give the gun to your brother one day.”

  “But you didn’t. Why?” I hoped I wasn’t sounding too resentful. “When we arrived in New York, you made Seamus an officer, you trusted him with everything else, so why not give him the gun as well?”

  “Because the guns were specifically designed to be used by people who were at least eighteen. Seamus was only sixteen, so I was worried the brain connections might not form properly.” Donnell sighed. “Well, Seamus didn’t stay around long enough for me to give him the gun, and only weeks later there was that clash between you and Cage. When he told me his plan to marry you, I decided to encourage him. My idea was to use his ambition to keep you safe until your eighteenth birthday, and then give you the gun.”

  I stared at him. “If the off-worlders hadn’t arrived, you’d have given me this gun on my birthday?”

  “Yes. It seemed possible that you’d decide to shoot me with it, but if you did then I felt I deserved it. The important thing was that once you had the gun, you’d be able to protect yourself from Cage.”

  I was rethinking the events of the last couple of weeks. “You’ve just been complaining about me not telling you things, but all the time I was going frantic with worry about Cage, you never mentioned that you had this gun in your safe.”

  “When we discussed arranging your engagement to Cage, I said that you had to tell me if the situation got too difficult for you, and mentioned there was another option I could use.”

  I groaned. “How could I possibly guess that option was a secret gun? Machico knew it existed. Is that an extra reason he made me an officer?”

  “Yes. Ever since your birthday, Machico’s been nagging me to give you the gun so you could watch my back the way Kasim did. Mac said he was convinced you were too loyal to go off world, so delaying things would achieve nothing except making a dangerous situation worse. He made you an officer to try to force me into action, and that was why I punched him.”

  I waved my arms in disbelief. “And even when we were facing Cage starting a war, you still didn’t tell me about the gun. Why?”

  “Because I knew that giving you the gun would put you in the centre of that war.” Donnell gave me a rueful smile. “I’ve told you about the gun now, Blaze. I was going to offer it to you as your birthday present. I’m offering it to you today instead, but please take a minute to think carefully before accepting it.”

  I dutifully thought about it for a minute. I thought about all the problems the alliance had suffered this winter. I thought about Kasim’s death. I thought how Donnell had been struggling to control the alliance alone.

  “Once you’re Armed, there’ll be no going back,” said Donnell. “Tad looks deathly ill to me, but if he does manage to survive to go off world, then you won’t be going with him. However much influence Tad has, the authorities of Zeus will never admit someone with your background once you’ve got that gun on your arm, and you can’t remove a gun that’s connected to your brain without killing yourself. You’ll be committing yourself to spending the rest of your life on Earth.”

  Once I was Armed, there’d be no going back, and no chance of leaving Earth, but I’d no intention of leaving Earth anyway. I might not be the best choice of person to help Donnell keep order in the alliance, but he’d been saving this gun for me for six years, and I knew he wouldn’t give it to anyone else. I could stay a burden to Donnell, someone he had to protect, or I could help protect him.

  I picked up the gun. “How do we do this?”

  “You put the gun on the back of your bare wrist, and it does the rest.”

  I tugged up my right sleeve, put the metal centre section of the gun on my wrist, and waited tensely. For a few seconds nothing happened, but then there was a tingling in my arm and the lights of the gun flickered.

  “The gun charges itself by a combination of taking power from nearby electrical sources, and using excess heat from your own body,” said Donnell. “You’ll notice a significant drain as it starts to function. You may feel cold, a little breathless, and giddy.”

  He was right. The effect of the gun charging, or possibly the nervous strain, was making me feel dizzy. The gun startled me by adjusting its position, and then the grey tendrils started to glow with life.

  “If you ever notice those symptoms again in future,” said Donnell, “then it means you’ve fired the gun too many times and exhausted its power. You must stop firing the gun immediately, or the energy drain on your body could become life threatening.”

  One of the tendrils slithered creepily over my skin. It was tempting to rip the gun off, but I held still.

  “Last chance to change your mind,” said Donnell. “Once those tendrils enter your arm …”

  All the tendrils were moving now, some slithering down to my right hand, some wrapping round my arm, while others explored upwards towards my shoulder.

  “Very last chance,” said Donnell.

  I watched the point of one of the tendrils pressing down against the back of my right hand. It seemed to be forcing its way through the skin, but it didn’t hurt me. In fact, I couldn’t feel anything at all.

  The gun lights flickered again, there was a single stab of pain in the back of my neck that made me gasp, and then a calm female voice spoke inside my head. “Connection established. Initialization sequence entering phase two. Please state owner name.”

  I took a deep breath. “Blaze.”

  “Owner name acknowledged,” said the voice. “Thank you, Blaze.”

  The lights of the gun started flashing. I was Armed!

  Chapter Thirty-two

  “Perimeter breach zone one.” The voice of my gun spoke in my head, and a mass of black lines and glowing white dots appeared to float in front of my eyes, superimposed on my view of the room around me.

  It was almost midnight, and I was in the off-worlders’ hospital room in Sanctuary. I was bathing Phoenix’s face with tepid water, and trying to persuade myself there was still some hope of her surviving the winter fever, while knowing there wasn’t. The medicine had eased her symptoms for a while, but now she was struggling for every breath.

  Tomorrow
would be the critical third day of the off-worlders’ illness. Phoenix had tried so hard to adapt to life in hostile New York, but she was going to die tomorrow. She might not even live until dawn.

  I put down my cloth and bowl to concentrate on the tracking display that my gun was sending directly to the visual centre of my brain. The confusing mass of lines showed the layout of the ground floor of Sanctuary, and the glowing dots were people. I’d ordered my gun to warn me whenever someone new entered the hospital area, which happened a lot during the day but was strange this late at night.

  The tracking display responded to me studying the hospital area by magnifying it. There were clusters of stationary white dots in each of the three hospital rooms, which were the patients and the people on nursing duty. Another white dot was moving along a corridor. I frowned. The day nurses wouldn’t be arriving until dawn, and no one would be bringing supplies or visiting patients in the middle of the night.

  The dot had reached the junction at the end of the corridor. It would now turn left or right for one of the other two hospital rooms, or go through the double doors straight ahead to carry on towards us.

  “Perimeter breach zone two,” said my gun.

  The white dot was now moving down the corridor that only led to this room. Nobody but Donnell should be coming here. He’d announced that Nadira and I would be nursing the off-worlders, he’d bring food and drinking water to us himself, and this area was strictly off limits to everyone else. That arrangement wasn’t just to keep the off-worlders safe, but to give me time to adjust to the gun before the rest of the alliance knew I had it.

  Whoever this was, it couldn’t be Donnell. My gun had automatically registered that Donnell was the owner of an Armed Agent weapon, and designated him as my ally, marking him with a green dot.

  The white dot couldn’t be Donnell, but it couldn’t be Cage either. Years ago, Donnell had ordered his gun to designate Cage as an enemy. That information had been shared with my gun, so Cage would be shown as a red dot not white.

  I glanced round the room. Nadira was fast asleep on the bed nearest the window. After spending years caring for our sickest patients, she was an expert in grabbing sleep whenever she could. Braden was asleep too. Tad and Phoenix were both unconscious. Tad had been breathing with the distinctive whistling sounds of winter fever for the last day, which was a very bad sign. He might not be quite as sick as Phoenix, but …

  I forced my thoughts away from whether Tad was going to live or die tomorrow. I had to focus my mind on keeping us all alive tonight. The intruder coming towards us could be dangerous, but it was possible that someone had a perfectly innocent reason for coming here. Perhaps Machico was bringing me a message from Donnell. If the visitor turned out to be someone else unthreatening, I’d have to make sure they didn’t see my gun. Donnell had only trusted Machico and Nadira with the secret of me having the weapon.

  I picked up a blanket from the top of a nearby cupboard, draped it carefully over my right arm, and then moved to the door. I was about to open it and challenge whoever was out there, when I saw the white dot had stopped halfway down the corridor. It stayed still for about a minute, before retreating back through the double doors, and continuing out of the hospital area.

  “Intruder has cleared perimeter,” said my gun, and the display of lines and dots vanished.

  I sighed in relief, and went to dump my blanket back on the cupboard. There were some storage rooms in the corridor leading here. The intruder must have been fetching something from one of them, probably something they’d no right to take since they’d come for it at night. I didn’t try to work out who might be stealing oddments from Sanctuary, because my mind was back to worrying about Tad again. I could hear his breathing from where I was standing. There were obvious hesitations in the whistling now, soon he’d be struggling for every gulp of air like Phoenix, and then …

  No! Tad couldn’t die. Tad mustn’t die. I knew we could never have a life together, but our relationship had to end with him going off to the bright new world of Zeus, not dying a pointless death here in abandoned New York. It wasn’t just that Tad’s death would be as big a personal blow as losing my mother in the London firestorm. He was the last of the magicians, and the last hope of saving the interstellar portals that were the fragile links between worlds scattered across space.

  “Perimeter breach zone one,” said my gun.

  The tracking display reappeared, and this time the dot entering the hospital area was far more conspicuous because it wasn’t white but red.

  Cage was coming! Now I understood why the first intruder had come to this corridor and then gone away again. Cage had sent someone to check whether Donnell had left guards outside this room. His accomplice had reported back that there was no one here, so now Cage was coming to kill me.

  I fought back against my instinctive fear. I should be triumphant, not afraid. Cage was coming to kill me, which was exactly what I’d planned to happen.

  There were no guards here to help me, because that was part of my plan. I’d insisted Donnell and his officers should stay in the Resistance wing at the other side of the sprawling Americas Parliament House. I was apparently defenceless in an isolated area of Sanctuary, my only companions a single elderly nurse and three desperately ill patients.

  How could Cage resist such an ideal chance to kill me? There was even the added incentive that he could kill the off-world boy as well, getting his revenge for that humiliating defeat at the boathouse. Cage didn’t know that he was walking into a trap, and his supposedly defenceless target had an Armed Agent weapon on her arm.

  After the scene between us in Reception, the fact Cage had escaped from his imprisonment in the Manhattan division area and come here was enough to convince everyone he intended murder. Not just any murder either, but one in the hospital area of Sanctuary, which the whole alliance considered the most dishonourable of crimes and carried an automatic death sentence.

  I could do anything I wished to defend myself, and no one would question my actions. Donnell hadn’t given me any specific orders about Cage, so I was free to kill him myself, or just capture him and hand him over to stand trial.

  A civilized person would probably be reluctant to kill Cage, but I wasn’t feeling very civilized. Someone had released Cage from his prison cell so he could come here to kill me. If I captured him now, we could insist on him being held prisoner by the Resistance instead of Manhattan division, but he might have found a way to blackmail other Resistance members as well as Hannah and escape a second time. I felt that death was the only truly secure prison for someone like Cage.

  I picked up my blanket again, went out from the dimly lit room into the even darker corridor, and shut the door carefully behind me. The lights in the ceiling here were on the lowest possible setting, and half of them were broken or missing. I walked down the corridor to the furthest storage room, opened the door, went into the room, and then pushed the door almost closed again behind me.

  “Gun command designate approaching enemy as primary target.” I murmured the words aloud. In theory, I just had to think them and the gun would obey, but I wasn’t confident enough to trust in that yet.

  The red dot that was Cage started flashing. It had reached the double doors now.

  “Primary target has breached perimeter zone two,” said my gun.

  I heard the faint creak that must be one of the double doors opening, and covered the betraying flashing lights of my gun with the blanket. My plan was to let Cage walk past my hiding place, wait until he reached the door to the hospital room, then step out into the corridor and call his name.

  I would make a single token gesture of being civilized. I’d let Cage see my gun and order him to surrender. If he didn’t do that immediately, and I was sure he wouldn’t, then I’d shoot him. The targeting system of my gun would have automatically locked on to him as my primary target, so it would be virtually impossible for me to miss.

  “Perimeter breach zone one,” said the
gun. “Second intruder.”

  I frowned and studied the gun’s display. The red dot that was Cage was still slowly approaching me. A white dot, moving much faster, had just entered the hospital area. Cage’s accomplice was back!

  I hesitated. If I stepped out into the corridor now, Cage would turn and run. If he got away, then he could deny ever being here. I had to wait for him to move on past me, so I was blocking his retreat. Ideally, I should wait until his accomplice was past me too, so I could either kill or capture them both. The danger was that Cage would try to enter the hospital room where the off-worlders and Nadira were helpless in bed, forcing me into showing myself while his accomplice was coming up behind me.

  The shadowy figure of Cage walked past my partially open door, near enough that I could have reached out and touched him. He was moving so slowly and furtively that I couldn’t hear him at all.

  “Perimeter breach zone two,” said the gun. “Second intruder.”

  That meant Cage’s accomplice was through the double doors. If I stepped into the corridor now, then I’d have one of them on each side of me.

  I hadn’t expected to be in this situation. I’d been certain that Cage would come here alone. Who was his accomplice? If it was Hannah, then she wouldn’t be a physical threat.

  No, on reflection it couldn’t possibly be Hannah. I was surprised that Cage was trusting anyone to help him commit a murder that could earn him a death sentence. He surely wouldn’t be fool enough to put himself into the power of someone with Hannah’s history of betraying people for her own advantage.

  “Cage,” said Wall’s voice.

  I blinked. Wall was helping Cage! I hadn’t expected the leader of Manhattan division to …

  “What are you doing here?” Cage sounded startled.

  “I thought you’d get someone to let you out of your prison cell,” said Wall, in a coldly furious voice, “so I made a spy hole in the ceiling of the corridor outside it. I’ve been sleeping in the room above that, with a couple of my own nephews taking turns to watch through the spy hole. A few minutes ago, they woke me to tell me that no one had gone near your prison cell, but you’d somehow escaped anyway.”