“The man’s name, Chief Durango,” she says, almost spitting, “is not important now. What took you so long to come to our defense? Why did you not respond to our distress calls?”
I look to Vienne. The look on her face is clear. There were no distress calls. “Mimi?”
“No distress calls, cowboy.”
Why would Ebi lie?
“Mother,” Ebi says, sticking out her chin, “I am a Regulator. Regulators do not ask for help. I did not send the distress call.”
Regulators don’t ask for help? Since when? Nothing could be further from the truth.
“Someone needs to study the Tenets again,” Mimi says.
“You defied me?” the Dame says, turning a scowling face to her daughter. “When I tell give an order, Lisette, I expect it to be followed to the letter. I did not rise to the position of CEO by tolerating insubordination.”
“You are a retired CEO,” Ebi says. “And I no longer take orders from anyone except a Regulator chief.”
“You impudent little hussy!”
“Words are not bullets, Mother. My name is Ebi, and I do not fear your name-calling anymore.”
I clear my throat. “A man is dead. Stop bickering long enough for us to give last rites and put his body into cryo. Then you can tell me who he is and what the blazes you’re doing here.”
“The answers are simple, Durango. First, we are here to retrieve my misguided son.” Then the Dame sneers, “And second, that man was my husband.”
If that’s how the Dame treats her husband, I think as I head back to the kid’s hiding space, I would hate to be someone she dislikes. Of course, I am somebody she dislikes. Dislikes intensely.
“Quit whining,” Mimi says. “Weren’t we trying to find a little girl?”
“I was,” I say. “I think you were just trying to drive me crazy.”
“I don’t have to try to do that,” she says. “You do a fine job yourself.”
“Hello?” I say, pulling the panel and peering into the dark basement, half afraid of what I’ll find. All it would take is a stray bullet to find the crack—
“Don’t think about that,” Mimi fusses at me “The worst-case scenario doesn’t always have to play out.”
“If it does, then I’ll be prepared for it.”
“That’s a lie, and you know it,” she says. “There’s no being prepared. Only less surprised.”
“Hello?” I repeat. “It’s me, Durango. It’s safe to come out now.”
Seconds pass. No response. And then a small, sweet voice. “I want Jenkins.”
“Thank you,” I whisper, and peer into the darkness. “Hey, kid. Jenkins is sort of busy right now. We need to go to someplace safe, but when he’s not busy, I’ll tell him—no, order him to come play with you.”
“Pinkie promise?”
“Pinkie.” Please, please don’t let anyone else hear me saying this. “Promise.” To show that I’m true to my word, I extend a hooked pinkie finger—the one I have left.
“Okay,” she says, and I feel the tug of her finger pulling mine. “I’ll come out.”
As she does, I take her hand. Then sweep her up in my arms. I carry her up the steps leading to the viaduct.
“I can walk,” she says. “I’m age-three now.”
“I’m sure you can,” I say, and swing around with her. “But I don’t mind giving you a piggyback ride. I always wanted a little sis—Vienne?”
There she stands, hands on hips, an impish smile on her face, like she’s just heard a juicy bit of gossip. “Picking up young girls again, chief?”
“I—ah—I.”
“We played a hiding game,” the little girl says. “Then the chief made me a pinkie promise.”
“Is that so?” Vienne extends a hand. “Well, that’s good. But you need to run as fast as you can back to the Cross. I’m sure Maeve is looking for you.”
“Can I stay? Please?” She clings to my arm when I set her down. “He’s very nice.”
“I know he is,” Vienne says firmly. “Except we’re in a hurry right now. Come on, be a jewel.”
The little girl kicks the dirt. “Aw. Okay.”
“That’s my big girl.”
The kid runs along the viaduct and easily crosses the broken span, headed for the Cross.
“You handled the kid like a professional,” I tell Vienne. “I’m impressed.”
She jams a fist into my ribs. “And you are getting soft.”
“Ow!” The punch takes me off guard. My armor easily absorbs the blow, but it’s enough to throw me off balance. “I didn’t see that coming.”
Vienne tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and smiles, causing my knees to bend involuntarily. Didn’t see that one coming, either.
Phweee! “Plasma blasters!” Nor that one. “Duck!” I shout, and pull Vienne down to the deck with me. My head jerks toward the source of the blast—the vestibule. Damn it, the Draeu are back for more.
“How many hostiles?” I ask Mimi as we take cover behind a skinny concrete railing post.
“Indeterminate. They are all clumped together.”
“Distance?”
“Ninety meters and closing fast. Your current position will be compromised. Move to safety, cowboy.”
“You read my mind.”
“I always do.”
For cover fire, I ease off a few rounds. Then sprint for the far end of the viaduct. We clear the break with a long, adrenaline-fueled jump. Plasma bolts fly past us and ping off the deck ahead. They ooze to the ground below, hopping and hissing like water in hot grease. The air fills with the stink of thermite, and the metal begins to melt.
“They’ve got a pulse cannon,” I say out loud. “Damn. Double damn.” I open an aural link as we’re running. “Jenkins, get your carcass out here. The Draeu are back, and were taking fire—”
“Come again, chief,” Jenkins yells as he steps from behind the rail truck, laying down cover fire. “Can’t hear you over all this shooting. Take that, you farging rooters! Ha! Ha-ha!”
“It appears,” Mimi says, “that Jenkins is already in position.”
“Astute observation, Mr. Watson.” He probably was there the whole time, I think, having a good time watching us ducking those plasma rounds.
With a lunge, I launch myself across the hood of the truck. Another round of plasma shots slam the metal skin, and its passenger door sags on its melted hinges. A second later, Vienne pulls the same stunt and lands behinds me. Our heads turn. Eyes meet. And we both start laughing.
“Regulator!” we yell, and touch fists.
A volley of plasma gels come flying over the truck. “Time to bug out,” I say.
“Affirmative,” Vienne agrees.
With the Draeu still filling the causeway with fire, we run for the tunnel. We follow the trail of blood underground, expecting to find the Bramimondes, but seeing nothing but a puddle of blood, three sets of footprints, and one of the plumbing bombs Fuse has been teaching the miners to build.
“Find them,” I tell Vienne and Jenkins as I close an iron gate behind us. “Follow the footprints to wherever they got to. When you find them, follow these directives.”
“Yes, chief.”
“First, cover them against advancing hostiles. Second, when you see Fuse, give him a good hard slap for leaving his station.”
“A slap on armor or bare skin?”
“Use your discretion.” I smirk. “I trust your judgment.”
She salutes. “Yes, chief.”
“Jenkins, you go with her.”
He slings the armalite to his shoulder. “Aw, I wanted to shoot more Draeu.”
“Plenty of time to do that later.”
Like that, they’re gone, and the tunnel is quiet. A few seconds later I hear a noise, a high-pitched battle cry that raises the hairs on my neck. The Draeu are caterwauling. And they’re coming for me. “Mimi, how many hostiles now? And don’t tell me indeterminate!”
“A bunch.”
“Thanks
,” I say. “A bunch is much, much more specific. Distance?”
“Fifty meters and closing. Their weapons are fully charged.”
Slipping into an alcove in the tunnel wall, I snap a new clip into my armalite and pull my side arm. With two weapons, I can hold them off, unless they rush me. Then any of them could fire a plasma, and I’d be a dead man.
On second thought. Setting the weapons down, I unhooked one of Fuse’s special C-42 bombs from my belt. “This’ll do,” I say, satisfied with the weapon’s capacity to commit mayhem.
Seconds later the Draeu slam into the iron gate. They don’t bother to try opening it, but climb with freakish ease to the top, fighting one another to get a shot off, their lips dripping wet with foam.
“Don’t move now,” I say, and toss the bomb at their feet. Then pull the trigger.
A half second later the blasting cap triggers the explosion.
Fuse does good work.
The Draeu scream. The sound sends shivers up my spine, and my instinct is to run. But I walk toward the gate, my finger hard on the trigger until the canister is empty and only spitting flames come from the end of the pipe. I see little, but I can smell everything.
When the smoke clears, and I step into the tunnel inspect the damage, I find nothing but a damaged gate and scorch marks on the wall and an empty spot where the Draeu had been.
“Mimi,” I say, “where are they?”
“Gone,” she replies.
“Gone where?”
She pauses. “Across the viaduct, according to my sensors.”
“So I didn’t kill them?”
“No.”
“And that’s possible how?”
“I—” She pauses, sounding almost embarrassed. “I have no data to explain this occurrence.”
“Me, neither.” So Draeu could step into a raging fire and not be burned to cinders? Bad news. Really bad news. Are they flame retardant or just so tough that they can ignore third-degree burns? How do you defend against an enemy like that?
“Is that a rhetorical question?” Mimi asks.
“No,” I say, “I want answers. Real answers that will help us fight these monsters.” As I start walking back toward the Cross, I call Vienne. “How’s the situation with Fuse?”
“He’s red-faced about his error, if you know what I mean.”
There’s a note of mirth in her voice. Maybe it’s the thrill of a good battle. Or maybe slapping Fuse has something to do with it.
“Rendezvous in the courtyard,” I say. “We’ve got a little bit of a tactical problem on our hands.”
“What’s that, chief?”
“It’s the Draeu. They can’t be killed.”
CHAPTER 23
Hell’s Cross, Outpost Fisher Four
ANNOS MARTIS 238. 4. 0. 00:00
Dealing with the fallout from the Bramimondes’ sudden entrance takes hours away from the job I want to do—getting ready for the real Draeu attack. Instead, we take care of her late husband/servant. We lay him in a makeshift grave and cover his body with a heavy tarp.
Ebi and Jean-Paul join us Regulators and a few miners to pay respects, but the Dame is too traumatized by the ordeal and demands a hot bath and a lie down. The lie down she gets. The bath—hot or otherwise—is a luxury nobody’s going to worry about getting her.
And then the hard part. Finding out what the deuce the Dame is doing here, a thousand kilometers from home. So I call a meeting of all parties concerned. We gather in a room next to the infirmary on the arcade.
“We seem to have a new batch of visitors,” I say as we gathered around the table. “Mind telling us why you’re here? Since they’ll be staying with us for a while.”
“Staying here? I certainly shall not,” the Dame sniffs.
“It’s not like you’d got much choice now,” Áine says. “Like it or not, you’re stuck here.”
“Do not insult my intelligence,” the Dame says. “Do you really expect me to take the word of a group of emaciated dirt worms? Now, where is my son? I’ve come to—”
“Dirt worms?” Áine launches halfway across the table. “You bring the Draeu to our doorstep, and you insult us? I ort to spit in your face.”
“Ort?” the Dame says, mimicking her. “Is that a word? I don’t recall it being part of the bishop’s Academy of Language. Although, I must say, your kind never had the benefit of hearing very much civilized speech.”
Áine curses under her breath. The Dame smiles, then looks to Maeve with a mocking eyebrow raised. The old lady only smiles in return.
It’s not, I think, the reaction the Dame is wanting. But I’m getting tired of the game. We have to finish the redoubt before the Draeu attack again, our defensive tactics need tweaking, and I need to debrief my crew—the Draeu are much more than your common cannibalistic marauders.
“How is it,” I ask, keeping my voice calm and commanding, “that you came to be here, Dame Bramimonde?”
“Do you not listen? I told you that I have come to retrieve my son. Where is he? And that old man who led him here?”
“That’s not what I asked you.”
“How dare you ask anything of me, dalit. I can barely tolerate sharing the same air with you.”
I ignore the insult. “You, your daughter, and your husband came to Fisher Four alone? For a son you don’t care about. I find that hard to believe.” She cuts me a look, so I force the issue. “Wealthy folk like you not hiring bodyguards? That’s unusual.”
“We did hire protection,” the Dame says. “The cowards fled as soon as the Draeu appeared.”
“Where are they now?” I ask.
“The Draeu pursued them.”
A pall falls over the room. We know what happens to people that the Draeu chase. “Where exactly did the Draeu appear?”
The Dame waves away my question. “As if I know anything about this wretched place.”
“Outside the station,” Ebi interjects. “It was an ambush. We were expected.”
“We, as in any humans?” I ask Ebi. “Or we, as in the Bramimondes?”
“We as in Bramimondes, I believe.”
“What difference does it make?” the Dame sneers. “Those animals only wanted to kill us. It is nothing short of a miracle that we found our way to safety.”
I doubt it’s a miracle. More likely dumb luck. “It makes a very big difference, Dame. Was this a random attack, or did they target you specifically?”
The Dame flicks imaginary dust from her cuticles. “How would I know?”
“They knew it was us.” Ebi says, coming to the table, where she plants her hands firmly on the rough hewn stone. She stares fiercely at me. “The leader called us by name. He even introduced himself. I killed three of them in the firefight before our bodyguards deserted us.”
“The leader?” Fuse says. “The one that the chief shot?”
Ebi nods. “Yes, that was the leader. His name is Kuhru.”
“And he was specifically targeting you?” I say, the hackles on my neck rising. I don’t like the idea that the Draeu were waiting for them. “Why?”
“He said that their queen wanted us,” Ebi says.
“Mimi, is she telling the truth?”
“Affirmative,” Mimi says. “Her heart rate and respiration indicate that she is telling the truth, as she knows it.”
“Thanks for the disclaimer.”
“Lie detecting is not an exact science, cowboy,” she says. “The standard disclaimer always applies.”
“So,” I ask Ebi, “why would the Draeu queen want you?”
“Easy,” Jenkins butts in before Ebi can answer, “she’s hungry. Can we go now?”
I order him to pipe down, then ask Ebi, “Why does the queen want you and how did she know you were coming to Fisher Four?”
“Kuhru didn’t say, but before the shooting started, he told the other Draeu to search us for the treasure.”
“Treasure?” Jenkins’s ears perk up.
“Which was ridiculous,” the
Dame says. “We carried nothing of value with us. Our departure was rushed, so we took only the bare essentials.”
“Along with a group of bodyguards,” Fuse adds.
I feel the situation slipping out of my hands—too many people are interrupting me—so I clear my throat. “Back to my original question: How did the queen know you were coming to Fisher Four?”
“I don’t know,” Ebi says.
The Dame rolls her surgically sculpted eyes and taps a fingernail on the table. “As my daughter says, we do not know. We are not zoologists, after all, and I am weary from travel and from this inquisition. Lisette, accompany me to my quarters.”
“What quarters?” Spiner scoffs. “You’ve not been invited to stay amongst us. You’ll be damned lucky the miners don’t drop you down a chigoe hole.”
The Dame stands. “I will not be addressed in that manner.”
“You high-faluting hag!” Spiner launches off his stool. “Up in New Eden, they might put up with your crap. While you’re on miner ground, you’ll act like you’ve got some manners.”
The Dame huffs and scoots for the door. Spiner, furious at the slight, starts to follow her.
I let loose with an earsplitting whistle. “Nobody’s going anywhere until I get some answers. What’s this treasure the Draeu are after?”
“Durango,” the Dame says, stretching out my name like a threat, “I have no idea. But I am exhausted, and I must see my son. Lisette, follow me.” She leaves the room. Ebi, though, doesn’t follow her right away.
“Chief,” Ebi asks me, “may I be dismissed?”
“Dismissed,” I say, and she follows her mother. I’ve had enough arguing. I need to talk to the one person who can answer my questions directly. “The rest of you go, too. All of you. Except Maeve.”
Áine objects, “I’ll not be taking orders from the likes of—”
“Áine, please,” Maeve says. “Go take care of the children.”
Reluctantly, she follows the others out of the room. But not before flashing an obscene hand gesture in my direction. She slams the door behind her.
“You’ve hurt the girl’s feelings,” Maeve says. “What happened between you?”
Black Hole Sun Page 14