Blood Royal

by Will McDermott

  ‘Kauderer,’ he said. ‘You’re already here. Excellent.’ Kauderer sat right in front of one of the lamps, which forced Clein to stare into the light if he wanted to look Kauderer in the eye.

  ‘Clein. Captain.’ Kauderer nodded to both, keeping his face completely impassive.

  ‘Captain Katerin felt it best we meet here,’ continued Clein, squinting as he stared into the light. ‘We’re all professionals. No sense in this affair going public. A simple resignation will certainly suffice.’

  ‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Kauderer. He stood to gain just a little more height advantage over Clein. He stared down his hawkish nose at the political officer. ‘Although I do have one or two extra demands.’

  Clein chuckled, but Kauderer could tell it was a somewhat nervous laughter. ‘You don’t understand, my dear Hermod. I don’t see how you are in a position to demand anything. Captain Katerin here has you on tape confessing the whole sordid affair. I’ve heard the evidence myself.’

  Kauderer paced around to the other side of the desk and sat in Helmawr’s chair. ‘No, I’m afraid it is you who doesn’t understand,’ said Kauderer. ‘You will be the one resigning.’

  Clein shuffled his feet nervously. Kauderer could tell that this meeting was not going anything at all like Clein had thought it would. ‘But the tape…’

  ‘Erased itself as you listened to it,’ finished Kauderer. ‘Did you honestly think it would be that easy?’

  Clein looked at Katerin, who wasn’t sweating at all, for once. The captain shrugged his shoulders and said, ‘I told you it would be difficult to tape him.’

  ‘Now you will listen to me, you odious little man,’ said Kauderer.

  ‘I will not!’ he said and turned on his heels.

  As he strode into the darkness, Katerin called after him. ‘That door is locked and guarded on the outside by four of my best and most loyal men.’

  Kauderer stood behind the desk. ‘Nemo can’t help you now,’ he said. ‘You can’t even get a message to him from in here.’

  Clein stopped walking. A moment later Kauderer could hear his footsteps getting louder. He returned to the light. His shoulders sagged and he stared at the floor. ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘You both got me. Well done. I’ll resign and leave quietly. I’m sure neither of you want another scandal on top of the Armand debacle.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll do that and much more,’ Kauderer stated. ‘You see, I believe Nemo has another mole inside the palace. Before you leave, you’re going to help us uncover your fellow spy.’

  ‘But Nemo will… he’ll kill me!’ he stammered. ‘I don’t even know who the other spy is. This is the first I’ve even heard of it.’

  Katerin clapped the dejected Clein on the back. ‘From what I know of Nemo,’ he said, ‘he’ll kill you just for failing.’

  ‘Besides,’ added Kauderer. He walked back around the desk and stared down at Clein. ‘You have no choice.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Clein asked. He looked up at Kauderer and then over at Katerin. ‘What do you mean, I have no choice?’

  ‘I took the liberty of sending Nemo a message earlier today,’ said the intrigue master, ‘using one of your special canisters.’

  ‘You did what? How? How did you…?’

  ‘Because I am who I am and you are who you are,’ replied Kauderer. ‘Now be quiet.’ He paced in front of the desk as he spoke. ‘The message itself was quite simple. All it said was: Believe I have been compromised. Kauderer closing in. Please advise.’

  ‘Oh, dear lord,’ said Clein.

  ‘Yes, it is quite elegant, isn’t it?’ said the intelligence officer. ‘Nemo, as our dear captain mentioned, doesn’t tolerate failure, and obviously can’t afford to let you get captured…’

  ‘He is going to kill me.’

  Katerin nodded. ‘Most likely through the other agent he already has in place.

  ‘Assuming there is one,’ said Clein.

  ‘I don’t need to assume any longer,’ said Kauderer. He stopped in front of Clein and tossed him the canister. ‘Here is the reply to your last message. Go ahead and open it. I’ve already read it.’

  Clein looked like he was about to ask how, but then decided not to. He tapped the code on the canister and snapped it open. He pulled out the neatly folded note and read it aloud. ‘Stay put. Help is on the way. You will be taken care of.’

  ‘So,’ said Kauderer, pacing again. ‘As I see it, you can help us locate the other agent before he kills you, or we can let him kill you and find him that way. As I said, you really have no choice.’

  ‘You can’t protect me.’

  ‘The good captain and I will do everything in our power to keep you alive, even if we have to send you into hiding afterward.’

  Clein looked at the two men, and said, simply, ‘But what if one of you is the other agent?’

  A long silence filled the dark room. ‘Then, Mister Clein, you are royally scavved.’

  Yolanda was dazed. She’d hit her head on the rail of the platform when that idiot Cyklus’s missile exploded beside her. She was just coming around when she heard Kal scream. She looked up and saw Jerico rushing toward Armand. At the same moment, a blur fell past her. She thought she heard Scabbs’s voice scream, ‘Help!’

  Yolanda’s mind snapped to attention. She rolled over and peered over the edge of the lift and saw Scabbs falling down the shaft. Before she could react, his body had fallen out of the meagre light provided by the work lamps. She lunged forward and let her torso drop over the edge as she aimed her web shooters into the darkness. She could still hear him screaming.

  She shot two streams of webbing down the shaft. At first, the webs just sprayed into the darkness, not impacting anything. Yolanda weaved her arms around in figure eights as she pressed her thighs and toes into the mesh floor of the lift to keep from slipping. Seconds seemed like minutes, but she kept spraying.

  Finally, one of the web streams contacted something. She immediately aimed the second shooter at the same spot. It stuck as well. As the webs hardened, Yolanda continued spraying, but also looped the strands around her wrists. When she stopped, she had two long ropes of steel-strength webbing connected to the ends of her arms by what looked like huge balls of glue where her hands used to be.

  Then the lines went taut, pulling Yolanda’s legs over the edge of the lift.

  ‘Scav me!’ she cried as her knees slipped past the edge.

  Lysanne crept over to where Themis lay motionless on the floor of the lift. She tried not to think about the squishy bits on the wire mesh under her hands and knees. Vicksen was dead. Two of the Spyrers were dead. Now Scabbs had been thrown down the shaft. She sniffled and wiped her eyes and nose with her forearm. She just wanted to crawl away into a dark hole and forget this day had ever happened.

  She reached Themis and took a breath before turning her over, afraid of what she might find. At first she was relieved; Themis’s eyes were open and her lips were moving, but as she tried to speak, Lysanne knew something was wrong. Her voice was barely more than a whisper. ‘I’m here,’ Lysanne said. ‘What’s wrong?’ She leaned over and put her ear next to the elder Wildcat’s lips.

  ‘Missile… lodged in… ribs,’ she wheezed. ‘Can’t… breathe.’

  Lysanne pulled open Themis’s long, leather coat and saw the blood. Her vest was coated in red, the leather glistening in the lamplight. The tailfin of one of Cyklus’s arm rockets stuck out a few centimetres, just below her left breast. It must have been a dud or the firing mechanism had jammed when it struck her ribs. Either way, it hadn’t gone off.

  ‘What should I do?’ asked Lysanne. ‘I don’t know what to do!’ She sniffled again. Her hands began to shake from the stress and she couldn’t concentrate.

  ‘Pull… yourself… together,’ whispered Themis. ‘You can… do this.’

  ‘Do what?’ Lysanne sniffled.

  ‘Remove the… missile.’

  ‘There’s so much blood,’ she said. ‘What do I do about the bl
ood?’

  ‘One thing… at a… time.’ She coughed and blood flowed out of the wound around the tailfin. ‘Hurry!’

  Lysanne reached out tentatively with both hands and grabbed the missile by two fins. She gave it a little tug. It didn’t move. She pulled a little harder. The blood began to flow, but the missile stayed stuck. She looked at Themis for help. The new Wildcat leader had passed out. Blood trickled from her lips down her cheek.

  Kal slammed into Armand’s stomach, leading with his shoulder, but it barely moved the elder Helmawr an inch. Jerico let his momentum spin him around the side of Armand, just as his brother’s armoured fists swung down toward his head. He danced back out of reach and flipped his blond braids out of his eyes.

  ‘Did that make you feel better?’ asked Armand.

  ‘A little,’ said Kal. ‘You’re going to pay for Scabbs and everyone else you’ve murdered.’

  ‘Why do you care about them?’ asked Armand. ‘They’re insects compared to us. You have noble blood running through your veins, yet you choose to cavort with Hive trash.’

  He rushed at Kal, swinging his gloved fist at the bounty hunter’s head. Kal ducked under the blow and slashed at Armand with his sabre. It skidded off the armour plates. He dove into a forward roll as Armand’s follow-up punch came down at him. Jerico popped back up to his feet, and the two men began to circle each other.

  ‘They’re good, hard-working people,’ said Kal. He searched Armand’s Spyrer rig for the hole Valtin had mentioned as they talked.

  ‘Ha. They’re hardly people at all,’ said Armand. His red eyes flared beneath the dome. ‘You forget. I’ve tasted them. The Hivers are fouled by pollution and waste.’

  ‘But they are proud of their heritage,’ said Kal. He found the hole. It was right over Armand’s heart. In his vampire rig, Armand was at least a head taller than Kal and it would be a tough shot. Kal would only get one chance. He needed to keep his brother talking while he looked for the right opportunity to strike.

  ‘They work hard to make the Hive what it is,’ he said. ‘Hivers live and die in the filth, always striving for a better life for themselves and their families. They are the true nobles. They have nobility of heart, and mind, and spirit. Not some worthless birthright and fancy armour.’

  ‘And there it is,’ said Armand. He chuckled. ‘The birthright. That’s what we’re fighting for, isn’t it?’ Armand stopped circling the lift and leaned back against the rail. ‘Father offered to give you back your birthright if you brought me in.’

  Kal could feel the red eyes of the rig staring at him. ‘Hah! I’m right. I knew it,’ shouted Armand. He clapped his hands and then rested them on the rail behind him. ‘All that talk about nobility and purpose? What a load of sump waste. You’re doing this for the money and the power. You’re no better than Father.’ Armand howled with laughter, bending his head back as it escaped his helmet.

  Lysanne gritted her teeth as she pressed the tip of the dagger against Themis’s skin. She knew what she had to do, and Themis had little time left. She pushed the dagger into the skin next to the protruding tailfin and cut through to the ribs. Dropping the knife, she pushed her hand through the enlarged hole and felt around inside the elder Escher’s chest cavity for the tip of the missile.

  Before starting, she had ripped off the hem of her black robes. She took a piece of the cloth and packed it in around the wound to hold back the bleeding. Her probing fingers found the missile cone, which was lodged between two ribs. She pushed her thumb and forefinger in between the ribs and tried to pry them apart. The missile moved slightly as she applied the pressure, so she grabbed the tailfin with her free hand and pulled.

  The missile slipped right out of the wound, which immediately began to fill up with blood again. Lysanne threw the missile over the edge of the lift and turned back to Themis. As she stuffed her ersatz bandages into the wound, an explosion from below rocked the platform.

  Yolanda hung upside down beneath the lift, her feet clasped around the bottom rail of the platform. With her hands encased in webbing she could do nothing but hang on at this point. She could feel the web ropes moving, as if someone was climbing up the webbing. After a few minutes, she finally saw Scabbs emerge into the dim light surrounding the lift. He climbed, hand over hand, toward her.

  ‘Good to see you again,’ she said.

  ‘Just hanging around… waiting for me… were you?’ He asked in between breaths.

  ‘Very funny. Just climb onto the lift and pull me up.’

  ‘At least your pants didn’t fall down,’ said Scabbs. They both chuckled, remembering the similar predicament Scabbs and Kal found themselves in no more than three days ago. Scabbs grabbed hold of Yolanda’s shoulders and began to pull himself up toward the platform.

  Before he could reach the bottom rail, an explosion on the far side of the shaft rocked the lift. Yolanda lost her foothold and they both plummeted back into the darkness. Yolanda didn’t know if she could activate the web shooters with her hands encased, but it was their only hope.

  She clenched her fingers inside the webbing and pointed her hands at the walls rushing by. Nothing happened. She pressed harder and a line of web sprayed out and fastened to the wall. She stuck her other hand into the stream and let it harden around the bulb of webbing already there. The webbing hardened, and Yolanda and Scabbs swung toward the wall of the shaft

  They slammed into the wall hard, but the web line held and Scabbs, who had been hugging Yolanda during the fall, held on around her neck. They ended up face to face, Yolanda’s amazon body pressing the much smaller Scabbs against the wall. He smiled.

  ‘If you try to kiss me, I’ll let you fall,’ she said.

  ‘I’m smiling because we landed next to the ladder,’ said Scabbs. ‘Roll off of me, and I’ll get us out of here.’

  Yolanda rocked back and forth until she finally turned them around. Scabbs reached out and grabbed a rung of the ladder and dragged them toward it.

  As Armand laughed, Kal rushed. Now was his chance. He leapt through the air, his sabre held high, ready to be driven home through the hole in Armand’s armour. Kal swung his arm forward just as the missile exploded beneath the lift. Staggered by the explosion, Armand fell to his knees.

  Kal sailed over the domed head of Armand, toward the edge of the lift. He waved his arms wildly, but knew he would never be able to stop before flying head first off the lift and plummeting down the shaft.

  At the last moment, Armand’s hand whipped out and grabbed Kal by the wrist. Jerico’s legs and torso spun around and slammed into the rail. Armand stood and lifted his little brother off the ground by the arm. Kal could swear he saw a smile beneath the mirrored helmet.

  Jerico reached for the sabre with his free hand. Armand shook his head. ‘No. No. No,’ he roared. He squeezed Jerico’s wrist hard, forcing the bounty hunter to drop the sword. ‘Now what should I do with you?’ he asked. ‘Should I throw you back down into your beloved Hive or keep you here and make sure your noble blood doesn’t go to waste?’

  Derindi pulled himself over the edge of the lift and dropped onto the mesh floor, wheezing. His arms and legs ached. His chest felt like someone was standing on it and he could feel his heart pounding all the way up to his ears. ‘I made it!’ he said. ‘I can’t believe I made it.’

  ‘Excellent. Tell me what you see.’ The voice was in his ear. Nemo had obviously been monitoring his channel the entire time.

  Derindi raised his head and looked around. ‘Jerico is fighting some black-armoured monster…’

  ‘That would be Armand, the vampire.’

  ‘…It looks like Jerico is losing. The vampire is holding him off the ground by the arm.’

  ‘Excellent. What else? Do you see the item?’

  Derindi had no idea what the item looked like or even what it was. He decided to describe everything. ‘There’s two Escher women. Looks like one is killing the other. I don’t see Scabbs or Yolanda, but I heard a lot of people fall in the dark
ness as I was climbing. There’s two dead Spyrers. No, one of them just moved, but he looks pretty bad. And some guy is sitting in a tunnel next to the lift.’

  ‘Nothing else? What about that tunnel?’

  ‘I can’t see into the tunnel from here. There’s a lot of junk on the lift. Some of it looks like guts. Wait a minute, I do see a small object near the tunnel.’

  ‘Describe it.’

  Derindi crawled closer to the tunnel. He was breathing a little better, but he could barely move his arms or legs. ‘It looks like a metal rat, kind of like a toy I used to have.’

  ‘Idiot, tell me what it looks like, not about your childhood toys.’

  ‘It’s kind of roundish, maybe ten centimetres long, with a metal tail. You know, like little round segments all linked together so it can wiggle around. Oh, and I can see little metal wires coming off the body, all over, like hair.’

  ‘That’s it!’ said Nemo. ‘It must be. Has anyone seen you?’

  Derindi shook his head, and then remembered that Nemo couldn’t see him. ‘No,’ he said.

  ‘Get it and go before anyone else does. Bring it to me right away!’

  Derindi grabbed the Chamberlain’s brain, stashed it in his pouch, and crawled back to the steps. He sighed. ‘Going down should be easier, right?’ he said to himself.

  This time there was no answer in his ear.

  ‘You know,’ said Armand, ‘All of this exercise has left me feeling a little drained.’ He lifted Jerico’s arm higher into the air, bringing them face to face. The strain on Kal’s shoulder was almost unbearable. It felt like his arm would rip out of its socket at any moment and spikes of pain shot through his arm, chest, and back.

  ‘Aren’t you afraid I’ve been tainted by the Underhive atmosphere?’ he asked ‘I’m sure I’m carrying any number of diseases. I touched Scabbs’s face the other day.’

  Armand brought his other arm up toward Kal’s neck. Long needles extended from the tips of his first two fingers. The ends glistened as beads of clear liquid grew on the needles. ‘These inject an anti-coagulating agent and a sedative into your blood stream before drawing out your blood.’