“I can’t imagine they’d require someone to die with the craft,” Amaranthe said. “See if there’s some sort of delay. There are lifeboats, or there should be. Unless all of them were fired when we crashed. Maybe you can check on that too. As for the rest…” She closed the journal and sat down. “I don’t want to risk the city. Can we lift off and then immolate?”
“Let me check on those things.” Tikaya returned to the images.
Amaranthe had been thinking of the professor as being in charge, as someone who saw her as nothing more than a bodyguard along to shoot things. That she’d asked for Amaranthe’s opinion, and even seemed to be following her… yes, they’d been orders, surprised Amaranthe. Maybe Tikaya figured it wasn’t her city and they weren’t her people, so it’d be appropriate to ask for a native’s advice. Or maybe she wanted to pass the blame to Amaranthe.
“Just what I need,” she muttered. “More deaths on my shoulders.”
Nobody was around to hear her. Mahliki, the closest person, was still manipulating the viewing image, trying to find those tunnel-boring machines or evidence of a fresh underground passage. She frowned deeply and murmured something of her own.
“What is it?” Amaranthe shook out her hand again, in case she needed to put her pen to use once more.
“I… don’t know. Come look.”
Amaranthe gazed up at the image. Their “bird” was providing a view from near the Emperor’s Preserve again, but it was focused toward the horizon instead of downward. The eastern mountains, their white craggy peaks thrusting skyward, were… burning? She wasn’t sure. Smoke smothered one of the peaks directly east of the city. It seemed to be drifting up from the front slope of the mountain.
She lifted a hand, intending to ask Mahliki to take them closer, but a brilliant explosion burst from the hillside, yellow and orange flames leaping into the air so high they would have been visible from the city by the naked eye. It might have been audible too, even across the miles and miles of intervening farmlands. Before, there’d been a smoky haze above the area, but now huge black plumes rose, darkening the sky.
“Whose demented ancestor caused that?” Maldynado asked. “And why?”
“What’s out there?” Tikaya asked.
“A pass,” Maldynado said. “There’s a road up into the mountains. We were there last spring. It…” He trailed off, chewing thoughtfully on the side of his mouth.
“More than a pass,” Amaranthe said, guessing her thoughts matched his. “There’s a hidden dam and a lake up there that supplies all the clean, fresh water to the city. Although… can you get closer with that thing?” She waved toward their floating map. “That explosion came from lower on the mountainside, I think.”
“There are a lot of old mines up there,” Maldynado said.
“Which would be pointless to blow up,” Amaranthe said. “The city’s water supply though… If they blew up the dam, they’d flood Stumps, and nobody wins there, but…” She snapped her fingers. “I bet it’s the aqueduct. There are reservoirs in the city, but with a million people, we’ll start to run out of water within three or four days.”
“I don’t understand,” Mahliki said. “There’s a lake right there.”
“A lake we pump our sewage into,” Amaranthe said. “It gets pretty diluted I think—people swim out there after all—but I’ve heard that if you drink much of it, you and you family can expect to enjoy some lovely bouts of cholera.”
“You don’t have any filtration systems in place?” Tikaya asked.
“Filtration?”
“I’ve read of sand filtration systems being used by some civilizations, and my people have experimented with chemicals that kill pathogens.” Tikaya lifted a shoulder.
“We never needed to develop anything like that,” Amaranthe said. “I’m not even sure we have the technology to do so. If it’s not metallurgy or engineering…” She shrugged—those were what the empire was known for.
“But your city’s vulnerable if it only has one water source,” Mahliki said.
“That’s why the aqueduct is underground,” Amaranthe said. “So it’s not easy for enemies to reach. And the existing maps aren’t even accurate. They’re deliberately misleading about where the water comes from and where the underground lines run. I can’t imagine who would know to strike out there.” She pointed at the billowing smoke. “My team only knows about all this because of the incident last year. Researching the snarl of lies and altered blueprints confused the spit out of us.”
Basilard waved a hand to get everyone’s attention, then made a single sign, the finger sweep across his throat. Sicarius?
Amaranthe’s stomach sank into her boots. If he belonged to that Nurian practitioner, and that practitioner was working for Flintcrest… “Why?” she asked. “What would one of the candidates gain from harming the city? They should want to inherit a glorious capital city, not writhing chaos.”
“There’s another explosion.” Mahliki nodded, not toward the mountains this time, but toward the southwest corner of the city, near the lake and the railway. “Multiple explosions.”
It didn’t take long for Amaranthe to figure out what the smoking cylindrical husks left behind represented. “The granaries.”
“Someone’s striking at your city’s food supply too?” Mahliki asked.
“There’s not much stored within the city itself,” Amaranthe said, “not when compared to the number of people here who need to eat. Most food comes in via the rail system from the surrounding countryside and other satrapies as well, but the granaries are symbolic. This is going to cause panic.”
“This may be our opportunity to destroy this craft without many people noticing.” Tikaya walked over and drew a finger through the map, returning its focus to the Behemoth.
The crowd that had been staring at the craft, trying to figure it out, had dissipated. Some people were gaping toward the eastern mountains, but more were leaving the field, racing back to their homes to check on their families. And to check their food and water stores, or at least that’s what they’d be doing when they figured out what had happened.
“I’ll take us off the ground and set the destruction mechanism,” Tikaya said. “If it blows up in the air, high above the lake, it might put on a good show, but it shouldn’t damage anything down here. Though I suppose there could be sizable chunks of shrapnel. I’ll move us out over the farmlands farther, where the population is less dense. I think I can give us ten minutes, maybe more, to run to the nearest of those lifeboats, where we can escape and make our way back to the factory.”
“Wait.” Amaranthe gripped her arm. “This might not be the best time to blow up the Behemoth. If Flintcrest wasn’t responsible for those explosions, if none of the candidates were, this could represent some new enemy to the city. Someone who’s swooped in to take advantage of the chaos.”
“But, who?” Maldynado asked. “The Nurians are already here with Flintcrest. Who else would attack? The Kendorians? How would they know about the secret aqueducts? The Mangdorians and the Kyattese prefer peace to war—they’ve never struck at us in force before. The desert city states haven’t shown any ability to come together to make a cogent attack on the empire in the last hundred years, so it seems unlikely they would now.”
“I don’t know,” Amaranthe said, “but we may need this craft to fight… whoever it ends up being.”
Tikaya arched her eyebrows. “The technology must be destroyed; I thought you agreed with that.”
“I did. I do. But maybe it should wait until after the city is safe. If we have some new enemy to deal with, some army we hadn’t anticipated…” Amaranthe imagined a massive invasion force poised on the nearest ridge, looking down upon the city. Was it possible that in all the chaos created by the succession squabbling, armies could have slipped past the border forts?
“Here in the heart of your empire?” Tikaya asked. “I deem that unlikely. Besides, those explosions weren’t acts of armies. They were guerrilla tactics. The kind you’d
expect from a small group of desperate men. I have a feeling we should finish here as quickly as possible and go talk to Rias and our group of desperate men.”
Amaranthe stared at the professor. “You think… You don’t think Admiral Starcrest would have orchestrated this, do you?”
“It’s possible things are not as they seem. We’ve been away from your headquarters for nearly twenty-four hours. Let’s not make up fanciful new enemies until we’ve checked in. Either way, this craft cannot be kept in reserve. We must win this war with our own wits and resources, if it is to be won at all.”
Amaranthe hung her head. Had she been the one doubting the professor’s willingness to do the right thing when it came to disposing of the powerful technology? And then she’d been so quick to think of the ship as a potential means of defending the city. She wondered if Forge’s intentions had started out innocently.
“You’re right. Yes, do it.” Amaranthe met the eyes of her teammates. They’d all gathered their weapons and gear. “We’re ready.”
Chapter 10
Amaranthe jogged down the corridor with Tikaya at her side, she with her rifle and the professor with her bow. Maldynado, Basilard, and Mahliki followed on their heels. Tikaya had supposedly manipulated the cubes so they wouldn’t appear to trouble them on their run to the lifeboat, but Amaranthe kept her finger on the trigger. The Behemoth was already airborne, hovering over farmlands on the other side of the lake. Tikaya had arranged for an hour delay before the craft “self-immolated.” That should be plenty of time, but Amaranthe didn’t want to risk being anywhere nearby when it happened. If they could escape in the next five minutes, that would be excellent.
“Left,” Tikaya said, her breath winded from the jog, but she was keeping up admirably, especially with all the gear bouncing about on her back. “Two more turns and we’ll be there.”
Amaranthe surged ahead a couple of paces to round the corner first, in case danger awaited. She stuttered to a halt. It wasn’t danger in the form of cubes, as she’d been ready for, but two men dragging a bulging burlap bag down the corridor. Daggers hung from their belts, but neither person was otherwise armed.
A stream of succinct and vitriolic Kyattese words streamed out of Tikaya’s mouth. A heartbeat later, Amaranthe twigged to the reason for them. The idiots with the cannon might not have found a way in, but others had. If these two people were on board, hunting for treasures, ancestral spirits knew how many others had found their way into the labyrinthine passages.
One of the men released his bag and dropped into a fighting crouch, his hand darting for his knife. “This is our claim. We found it, right and honest.” He eyed Amaranthe’s rifle though, and didn’t draw the blade. When Maldynado and the others jogged around the corner, he stepped back.
“We’re a mile in the air above the lake,” Tikaya said, “and the ship will blow up soon. You’d better come with us, or you’ll blow up with it.” She cursed again in Kyattese and said something to her daughter.
“You lie,” the second man said, not releasing his “claim” bag. “We would have felt it if this place moved. You just want our stuff.”
“No,” Amaranthe said, lowering her rifle and walking toward them, hand open. “It’s true. I’ll show you. I have a device in my pocket that’s worth more than anything you have in there.” She glanced at Maldynado, meeting his eyes and giving a quick nod. The men were watching her hand. She lifted it toward a jacket pocket, thrusting out her breasts for good measure as well—they’d been enough to intrigue those young soldiers on the train, after all—though she suspected the prospect of more treasure was what riveted them.
Flowing around her like water, Maldynado and Basilard jumped the two men while they were watching her. Heads were hammered into the floor, and within seconds the team had two whimpering and grumbling prisoners, their arms drawn behind their backs in painful grips that made them easy to control.
“Good work. Let’s go.” Amaranthe jogged into the lead again.
“Wait,” Tikaya said. “There could be more people in here. I didn’t think to check before activating the immolation program. I should have, I should have. I didn’t think—I was distracted by the explosions, and— Blighted banyan sprites, there could be hundreds of people in here.”
The anguish in her voice made a lump well in Amaranthe’s throat. Treasure hunters or not, anyone exploring inside the Behemoth didn’t deserve to die for greed. Emperor’s warts, people might have wandered in out of sheer curiosity.
“I know,” Amaranthe said. “I didn’t think of it either and should have. Can we check from the lifeboat? We’ll get these two in there, and my men and I will go back out to find any others.”
If they had time. Blast it, how many people would be left aboard? The Behemoth was a… a… behemoth. It could take hours to round everyone up. Hours they didn’t have. And those cursed cubes… just because Tikaya had cleared them from this route didn’t mean they weren’t elsewhere in the ship.
The argument got Tikaya and the others moving again, though the professor must have been having similar thoughts. She murmured something under her breath, again speaking in Kyattese. It sounded more hopeful than the earlier cursing. Maybe Amaranthe’s words had given her an idea.
“What about our things?” one of the prisoners gasped, as Maldynado and Basilard pushed them around a final corner.
“Can we go back for them?” his partner asked. “We lost Tedak to one of those black boxes. It melted him to nothing. It’s not worth him dying without—”
Maldynado jostled him. “You’ll all die if you don’t stitch your lips together and do what these ladies say.”
They’d come to a dead end. Amaranthe shifted from foot to foot while Tikaya teased symbols from the wall, big ones such as they’d seen often next to doors, but then a smaller set below, one she took the time to read. Amaranthe wished she had a pocket watch. How much of their hour had already raced past?
“Is this the right spot?” Amaranthe asked. “The lifeboat?”
“Yes.” Tikaya removed her gear, opened her rucksack, and pulled out the black sphere. “But if I understand this correctly, the pod is very simple, meant to land escaping personnel safely and nothing more.”
“I know that. We’ve already been in one.”
“These interface controls are our last chance for communicating with the ship’s systems.” Tikaya lifted the sphere, held it before the smaller grouping of symbols, and manipulated a handful of them. A conical white beam came out of the wall, enveloping the sphere.
Amaranthe jumped back, though her brain caught up with her reactions a second later. It was similar to the white beams from the repair devices, not to the scorching crimson rays emitted from the cleaning cubes. After a moment, Tikaya let go of the sphere. Instead of dropping, it floated within the beam.
“Bloody balls,” one of their prisoners whispered. “We hadn’t been able to get our gizmos to do anything. We were just picking the, uh, pretty ones.”
Tikaya ignored them. An image formed in the air above the sphere, not dissimilar to the larger ones in the control room. A moment later, Amaranthe found herself staring at a familiar map of the Behemoth’s interior, one with colored dots on different levels.
“Those are the people still onboard?” Her stomach sank. Six different groups. If the ship weren’t so spread out, getting to them all might be feasible, but how long would it take to run from level to level?
“Uh,” Maldynado said. “How many people can we fit into our lifeboat?”
Amaranthe grimaced at the new concern. “They’re not big inside.”
“We’ll make it work,” Tikaya said firmly, her eyes meeting Amaranthe’s, as if to remind her of the promise she’d made. “We needn’t stay in it for long.”
“Agreed.” Amaranthe pointed at the sphere. “Is there any way to take this map with us? I can’t…” If she had to memorize the complex routes… she’d never be able to do it, not that many. And what if the people moved po
sitions in the time she was trying to get to them?
“Yes, that’s what I’d planned to do.” Tikaya removed the sphere from the white beam. The map projected above it remained in place. She handed it to Amaranthe.
“Any chance you can add a clock to it?” Amaranthe asked. “To let us know how much longer we have?”
“Not in a language you’d understand. I’ll see if it’s possible to delay the countdown though.”
“Good.”
Basilard prodded Maldynado and pointed to one of his pockets.
“Oh, right.” Maldynado fished inside of his jacket. “Will this do?” He held up a gaudy gold pocket watch crusted with emeralds and sapphires.
“To pay the team’s wages for a year? Yes.” Amaranthe grabbed it from him. “How much time do we have currently, Tikaya? Assuming you’re not able to change the countdown.”
“About fifty minutes.”
Amaranthe would have preferred precision to “about,” but she noted the time on the watch and only said, “Understood.” If they were dealing with translating the minutes across languages, precision wasn’t going to happen anyway. She pointed at Tikaya and Mahliki. “You two stay here, watch the prisoners, and figure things out, please.”
The two treasure hunters eyed their proposed guards with speculation, and Amaranthe hesitated. Maybe it’d be better to leave Basilard or Maldynado and take Mahliki to hunt for the people. But Starcrest’s family had to get out of here. Amaranthe had been sent to help them, and she wasn’t going to fail. She… she’d get out too. Sicarius needed her. These thoughts were only for… just in case. Besides, she needed her men to handle the people they found, in case they put up resistance. Most of the dots were in pairs, but there were two groupings of multiple people.
She pointed at Mahliki and held the prisoners’ eyes. “You two have heard of Fleet Admiral Starcrest?”
They nodded.
“This is his daughter. He’s trained her from birth to defend herself and smash men who annoy her into applesauce. If you give her any trouble, she’ll tear off your balls and shove them down your gullets.” Not her classiest threat, but it had the desired effect. The men grew pale.
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