by L D Inman
They did not hesitate. It took two seconds to break the guards’ necks. Ten seconds to lift the corpses onto the bed at Barklay’s gesture while Barklay gathered up Lady Ingrid’s robe and wrapped her awkwardly in it. “Nothing for it,” Barklay said unvoiced, “have to take her too.” She had seen and recognized them; their secrecy was gone, and they needed every minute of the palace’s confusion.
Four seconds to get out to the corridor, still empty and quiet. Three for the prearranged tap for Boyd to let them into the stairwell. “Be quick, but don’t hurry,” Barklay said.
A minute and almost a half, and they were at the bottom. Ahrens’s eyes widened briefly when he saw Barklay carrying Lady Ingrid in his arms behind the soldier carrying du Rau; but he held open the door and ushered them through without hesitation.
It was going to add to their time, wrangling a second limp form back the way they had come. Be quick but don’t hurry. And when those guards missed their next check-in, their escape window would be severely curtailed. They kept moving. Back through the cistern room. Down the pipe: it took two each to hand their captives through, and Barklay kept a careful hand supporting Lady Ingrid’s head and neck, tucking her long braid into the neckline of her gown. Du Rau was going to be torqued about this, no doubt of that; but by the same token, her presence would buy some docility from him. Provided they got to the holding location intact.
Swiftly down the cistern tunnels. The prisoners changed hands once, quietly; Barklay shook out his aching arms. They reached the point where their outward route diverged; two turns and then a clear long run. Up a service hatch and onto a catwalk. A rivet-heavy door and an echoing metal stairwell.
Then they were out into open air, in an alley outside the palace grounds. The freight groundcar promised them was there, a black boxy shape near the alley’s mouth. Barklay gestured two soldiers to check it over, scanning for transmitters and confirming the provisions inside. When it was clear, the team climbed into the back compartment, handing their captives in with care. Ahrens and the navigator went to the cab. Barklay saw Ahrens pause, the silhouette of his head tilting upward with an unnerved gesture. The night was clear and cold, and in blackout conditions the city did not obscure the glittering profusion overhead. Ilonians rarely saw stars: even in the summer when the sky was relatively clear, the nights were short and the opportunities narrow to see anything like this vast trackless field of light-points against the black.
It was a sight to draw an enchanted stare and a salute to holy wisdom. But tonight, it felt like a terrifying exposure. Barklay closed the back compartment and went to swing up into the cab along with the navigator. Ahrens got in, felt around the steering yoke, and activated the power cells. With every passing hour, Barklay grew more grateful to have him along: even as he cast one more disquieted glance upward to the sky, Ahrens put the van into gear, his movements impeccably solid and unhurried.
The van crept out of the alleys and picked up speed on the artery road, heading out of the dark city.
5
The first thing du Rau could identify, in his struggle toward awareness, was the distressing sound of Ingrid vomiting. He ought to go to her, but his eyelids weren’t receiving his orders to open, and when he managed to shift a foot, the other came inexplicably with it.
There were voices, quiet and tense. Hard. Hard under him, against his shoulder. Cold. He hadn’t heard that accent in a long time. He hadn’t heard that voice in years. His eyes were open now, but he didn’t have enough consciousness yet to read what they saw. Bare, unforgiving strip-light overhead. Dark figures moving. He turned his head.
Ingrid was bent over a battered plastic bucket, clutching at her robe and nightgown; a hand reached to draw her braid out of the way, and she swiped at it, taking the braid back angrily. She spat into the bucket, and would have spoken, but was forced to heave again before she could.
The room they were in was nowhere he knew, a gray concrete box with a dusty floor. It was full of people, men in dark garb, their outlines studded with the angles and curves of gear. He was sitting on the cold floor propped against a wall. He felt sick himself—not, he was increasingly aware, just out of sympathy for Ingrid. His hands were cinched together with a winding white plastic tie, and as he focused on his feet he saw that one of his slippers was missing. His toes were yellow-pale, as if they had been pinched hard by a rough hand. He glanced about, his eyes tracking slower than his urge, and dragged his focus upward. Stolid, broad faces looking down at him. Accents, fatigues, and faces came together like ice crystals adhering. Verlakers. How? Had Bernhelm been overrun…?
No. He had set the invasion operation in motion, overseen its launch, and then he and Ingrid had gone to bed. He remembered being utterly exhausted, beyond what he felt when he neglected his health too long; remembered his head seeking the floor, and desperately holding it up.
He and Ingrid had been taken.
This hardly sounded more plausible than a counter-invasion, but here he was, more alert with every passing second. He and Ingrid were still dressed for bed. They were restrained in a cold, dry room by a handful of soldiers who were fully rigged in special ops gear. All of which suggested they were still in Berenia somewhere. Which meant that locating and retrieving him would be a reachable priority for his palace security.
Maybe.
He was gathering a sense of his surroundings: this room was not, he felt, on the ground floor, wherever it was—judging from the voices somewhere below. A multi-story building, then, utilitarian like many factory and storage facilities of the previous generation, any number of which had been abandoned by the receding tides of commerce. Most of those were east of Bernhelm. It would take time to track them to the right one, he thought. An intensive search and a strategic sweep of the palace and its population could cut that work to a day or less. Unless his designated heirs interfered.
Which they would. He and Ingrid had purposely yoked all four of them together so they couldn’t disrupt the workings of the state. But these Verlaker fools had taken not only him but Ingrid as well; there was nobody to stop them wrangling to get out of the yoke and dragging one another into thrashing destruction. And meanwhile the invasion operation would continue and there would be not one competent and clear-eyed person to stabilize the result. The Verlakers hadn’t saved themselves. They’d simply damned Berenia to an equal misery.
Du Rau sat upright against the wall, glaring up at his enemies. Ingrid had subsided shakily and was now poised over the bucket, breathing herself back into control.
He sucked his teeth, trying whether he would be able to speak clearly. A few seconds’ preparation, and then he enunciated slowly: “What idiot—”
But then one man moved aside from another and du Rau saw, precisely, what idiot. He slumped back in a suffering eyeroll. “I should have known.”
“It is very good to see you again, Lord Bernhelm,” said General Barklay, politely. “Though I admit the circumstances are somewhat less than ideal.”
“If only I could say the same,” du Rau said. He was still speaking carefully and the words were only a little slurred. “You must be spoiling for a death befitting a war criminal,” and as a few of the Verlakers tensed, “You are, aren’t you. Alban Selkirk must be delighted to get an opportunity to scrape you off his shoe. Either that, or he’s desperate. Or perhaps it’s both.” He considered a moment. “Probably is.” He would have gone on, but his throat had dried up; coughing and swallowing, he watched the young men’s expressions shut down, and Barklay’s smile lower to a silent purr.
Yes: desperation would certainly drive Selkirk to send Barklay and a small team to sneak onto Berenian soil and kidnap its head of state. Exactly how did he imagine this playing out? Was Barklay going to hold him and Ingrid hostage for an end to the invasion? No, if they were still on Berenian soil then they couldn’t dare signal their location; indeed, du Rau saw the reflective paper tacked up against the ceiling to diffuse their tell-tale heat, camouflage against sweeps from abo
ve. His thoughts tracked again to his original surmise. Disruption and distraction.
And even if—when—he and Ingrid were recovered, Berenia would hardly be better off: he’d be dealing with threats against his authority within the hour of his return, and if he lost the Executive Committee, his government would be delegitimized within days. Barklay had just ensured that Berenia would suffer another coup after years of progress.
That is, if the coup hadn’t already happened. How else could Barklay have infiltrated the palace and stolen him and Ingrid away? Someone must have seen that his path was cleared. Let the Verlakers dirty their hands with his and Ingrid’s deaths; someone in the palace was this minute reaping the benefits of this abduction. Du Rau swallowed again, harder, for the moment overcome by the enormity of this coalescing, malignant idiocy.
“Well,” said Barklay, “we had better make our guests as comfortable as we can. Lord Bernhelm will want some water,” and one of the soldiers left the room at his look.
Du Rau glanced at Ingrid, who was still pale but now upright and steady, sitting on her heels. She was looking at Barklay with implacable disgust, but then she turned to meet du Rau’s eyes. She was furious and frightened, and it was unendurable that she should be here suffering this indignity, when she could have been there containing the damage. Now she was part of the damage.
“You didn’t even have the decency to take me alone,” he said to Barklay.
“No plan survives contact with the enemy,” Barklay said, “alas. I regret your discomfort, Lady Ingrid.”
“Why?” she said, levelly.
Instead of answering, he amended: “Well—not enough to hesitate making use of it to ensure your husband’s docility. Take her to the other room.” He gestured, and his men moved, two to draw Ingrid to her feet and two to lift du Rau to his. She gave a little struggle, more to express her opinion of this situation than an attempt to escape. If she had been bound, they had already removed her bonds. She was on her feet, superb even with her robes dirtied and her hair draggled.
They were maneuvering him into a plain chair before he could react—all he could see was Ingrid looking over her shoulder at him as they took her away, and then panic shot through him. He got his feet flat against the cold floor and shoved. “Ingrid!”
He almost had the chair over before they grabbed him. The door was shut and Ingrid was gone by the time he could get a look again. “Don’t worry,” Barklay said, in a voice that sounded soothing but was surely calculated to infuriate him further, “I don’t actually intend her any harm. You can contribute to that outcome, of course, with your cooperation.”
“Cooperation with what?” du Rau snarled, as the soldiers undid his bound hands and secured them to the metal arms of the chair.
“Well, with this phase of the operation, certainly. I merely hope to convince you of my position as we go on.”
“Oh, just say it, Barklay,” du Rau said wearily. “Say what it is you want.”
Barklay shrugged. “I want you to call off the invasion.”
Du Rau gave him a look. “Even you,” he said, “are not that much of an idiot.” Like it wouldn’t be political suicide to do what Barklay wanted even if he agreed. Which he never would.
“It would be in your interest, du Rau,” Barklay said seriously. “This? This part is easy. What follows from here is going to be hard.”
There was a little silence. Then du Rau said: “You’re going to beg me for your death before this is done.”
“As you said so eloquently a moment ago,” said Barklay, “I already have.”
~*~
Ryswyck never did get to have sparring court.
In fact, no sooner had Douglas closed the line from giving Selkirk his morning’s briefing than the air-raid sirens outside rose and drew up to full pitch. He strode out to the comms room and nearly cannoned into the cadet who had risen to tell him that a flight of scudders had got clear of the cordon set up between Amity’s fighters and their ground support at Sentinel Point. Their heading would put them directly over Ryswyck within ten minutes. “Alarm up to the tower?”
“Yes, sir,” said the cadet.
“Tell them to shelter at the bottom,” he answered on his way out.
The student body of Ryswyck had already organized itself: there was no more panicked darting of cadets in the halls, but everyone Douglas met was moving at a purposeful run. He found Major Grier striding out of the mess hall and asked, “Do your companies have the order to shelter in the arena complex tunnels?”
“Yes, Admiral,” said the major, “and a signal gone out to P Company to take shelter in the field.” They both winced. Then Beathas appeared, holding a handset crackling to her ear, and the news promptly got worse.
“They’re sowing dragon mines up and down the inlet,” she told them. “Amity won’t be able to get any boats into position, or supplies across to us.”
“They’ll be coming our way soon, then,” Douglas said. So far the battle was proceeding exactly as Selkirk and Barklay had surmised: the Berenians were looking to flank Amity and take Ryswyck. Ryswyck was virtually indefensible itself, but it faced Amity’s weakest side and afforded a level area in the coastal hills from which to launch more scudders. “Thank you, Commodore.”
“We have got to get rid of these scudders,” said the major. “Can you give me some units to make up a supply chain between here and Sentinel? If I can get two companies set in the next hour, we can fix a line and give the gun some cover.”
“Beathas,” Douglas said, “call in for infantry reinforcements and have them shuttle in more light artillery while they still can. In the meantime I can put two units’ worth of my soldiers on the spur line from the farm site south. Tell Stevens to pull a cartographer from the junior cadre and have them run point.” Beathas nodded and turned away to key her handset.
“I’ll go as far as the farm site with your cartographer,” Major Grier said. “I want to get a feel for the line in person.”
Before Douglas could agree, the roar of the scudders overtook them. “—two—in pursuit—” squawked Beathas’s handset, and then an abrupt silence followed in almost the same instant by a shuddering bloom of some dreadful impact. There was the sound of breaking glass and wood.
Douglas pelted back to his office and stopped in the doorway. The outer panes of the windows nearly all had large cracks; two were just short of shattered and nearly opaque. Beyond them black smoke boiled not from the tower but from the edge of the airfield beyond: but the signal spire at the top had been taken off, and blackout louvres hung askew from their moorings. Overhead, Amity had caught up with the scudders as they banked, and their exchange of fire lit the clouds with fury.
“Would it be a waste of time to rig a new spire?” Stevens had appeared and was now looking over his shoulder.
Dragon mine, Douglas was thinking. It had missed the tower but caught the spire with its detonation chain. Stevens wouldn’t be asking that if it hadn’t missed.
“Nobody’s going out there,” he said aloud, “without a shield, until we’re sure both those charges went off.”
“Aye, sir. The major is going out to the farm now while he has the chance—I sent Gaddys to run point like you asked, and Rose is going with them to set up the supply comms.”
“Good.”
Stevens hesitated and then said, “I’ll have a couple of cadets start constructing a rig in here. If we see a chance to mount it on the tower, we can take it.”
“Aye,” Douglas said.
“Sir,” said a cadet from behind. “I just got a message from Commodore Beathas. She has one of the auxiliary signals up and working.”
“Thank you, Cadet. That’s good news.”
It wasn’t, if the the cadet’s pause was any indication. Douglas turned to look over his shoulder.
“She says an enemy troopship has won through. They’re landing at the mouth of the inlet.”
~*~
Hadley Point made it through three days before d
isaster struck.
Speir supposedly had a bunk assigned to her down below, but she had never slept in it; she rattled down the lift every few shifts to get a brief wash or grab a cup of stew to eat on her always-moving feet, and during lulls in the shelling took her turn to roll up in a blanket and sleep for a few hours. The noise of the guns had rapidly become undetectable, and returned to her conscious awareness for scant minutes when she came back up from a trip to the bunker. She wore her earplugs all the time, though it hardly seemed to matter whether she had them in or not.
In between shelling bouts, she studied maps of the network and sounding data and schematics of the guns overhead. When a troopship nosed its way into the harbor amid a fury of scudder attacks, Deadheight swung to cover Hadley, who used their better angle to pump fire at it until it was forced to turn, smoking in places, and retreat again behind Colm’s Island.
After that, the Berenians redoubled their attacks on Hadley in revenge.
The smaller guns were handily protecting the big one on the promontory. So when a heavy impact jarred Speir where she was briefing Ansett before taking her break, she gripped the table to steady herself and assumed that one of the small guns had taken a hit.
But when the report came in, it was worse.
A dragon mine had come shearing in toward the back of the promontory, and the small-gun crews had taken cover. It hadn’t hit any of the guns; it had been aimed, devastatingly, at the shallowest point where the tunnels led to the lift. The tunnel was now a smoking mass of rock and twisted metal; and the guide rails for the lift were warped, the lift platform stuck halfway up.
Hearing this, Speir and Ansett flipped up their hoods and mounted the ladder to survey the damage from outside.
It was a sight to glaze one over in horror. Heavy rain was pouring in runnels into the smoking maw; Speir caught sight of a soldier’s arm flung out, and then realized that the arm was alone.