by Edward Nile
"Sounds like the long way around," Aldren noted.
"The other option is for us to turn back," was Genlu's reply. "There really is nothing to the north of those mountains, Sargent Mal. Just peasant fishermen. Should you wish to spare yourself the headache and sign off on your search, I'd be more than willing to corroborate that we've completed the prescribed tour, and you'll be free to go home. Or, if you prefer, stay awhile in Feng with every comfort you could ask for seen to. The Dao is a generous host." Genlu locked eyes with Aldren via the rear-view mirror.
In Aldren’s peripheral vision, Mayla shook her head.
Damn. It was a sorely tempting offer, one Aldren would gladly take if it weren’t for the woman next to him. Mayla’s kisses weren’t that good, but Aldren was under no illusion that the lie would hold up. The Quarish woman reported to Samuel Mutton, too. If Aldren was caught breaking his end of the deal, his release from active duty would be the least of his concerns. The senator would throw him in a prison cell.
One more hurdle, Al, he told himself. Then the bastard won’t have anything on you.
“What the hell,” Aldren said. “Mountain air’s supposed to be good for the lungs, right?”
Genlu’s nod was slow. “As you wish, Aldren.” He put the automobile in gear and veered right, heading toward the hulking masses, their slopes sweeping downward to either side, monstrous arms of earth and stone poised to embrace the three travelers.
Or jaws waiting to devour them whole.
*
“This is my fault.”
Ivan paused in the act of assembling the largest automatic rifle James had ever seen. He looked toward his niece,
Tessa shrugged. “That’s his phrase of the day.”
“Really, Tess, I wonder what you ever saw in this boy sometimes.”
“Me too.” Tessa gave James’ beard a playful tug. “The scruff’s a nice touch, by the way.”
Even with things as dire as they were, James’ heart leapt at her touch, at her smile.
Tessa had changed into a different outfit. A black Industrialist shirt with the sleeves cut away up to the shoulders, the collar open. The Gearsword insignia was embossed over her left breast. Tessa completed the look with fingerless black gloves, a black tool belt, and skin-tight black denims tucked into high-top leather boots. Somehow, she managed to make a welder’s mask look sexy, balanced atop her head.
The burn marks were what placed a check on James’ glimmer of joy. He hadn’t asked how far the injuries went before, there hadn’t been time. Or maybe he just hadn’t wanted to know. Red marks snaked down her pale, well-toned arms.
“Hey,” she pulled James’ face to hers. “I’d do it again, Jim, any day.” She stroked his beard. “This is what we do. This is who we are.”
His gaze followed Tessa as she strode over to one of the Kriegers and started climbing, tool belt clanking at her hip.
James turned to Ivan. “They’re coming for me,” he urged. “There’s still time for the rest of you to make a break for it.”
Ivan chuckled. “What do you boys say?” he called. “Did we build all this so we could run away?”
“Fuck no Sir!” Roy called from atop one of the crawlers.
Ivan turned back to James. “They’d be coming for us with or without you here, Jim. So do me a favor. Take that martyr shit and shove it up your ass. This isn’t about you.” He snapped a magazine into his massive gun and chambered a round. “If you’re sticking with us, it’s to fight, not throw yourself on the wheel over some misplaced guilt. So, what do you say?”
Tessa was watching James again from atop the Krieger. Na’Tet, all of them, watching, ready. Just as his officers were the day James unveiled his plans to abandon the War Codes. Only this time, his people were going to throw themselves in the fight no matter what James Edstein said.
So I might as well go down with them, like I always should have. Like my parents did.
“Get the M-Sixty ready and load in an extra ammo box,” James called. “All of you, pick up the pace. Those sons of whores will be here soon, and we don’t want to disappoint.”
Rebels cheered. Na’Tet bowed and picked up an ammo box.
“’Tet.”
The tribesman stopped.
James nodded toward the girl, Stella. She sat petting her mangy dog, watching everything with dead eyes. “When the time comes, is there somewhere safe to bring the kid?”
“A tunnel, Holy One,” Na’Tet replied. “It opens near a creek to the west. Not big enough to get the Gods through, but enough for men afoot.”
“When the time comes, when the fighting starts, get her out of here.” James clasped Na’Tet on the shoulder. “You live to tell about us, ‘Tet.”
Na’Tet bowed. “Holy—"
“’Tet, final request?”
The tribesman nodded. “It has been an honor, James Edstein.”
They shook hands, and James watched Na’Tet go over to Stella. He might have been a metal- worshipping nutcase, but he’d saved James’ neck, twice. The last thing James wanted was Na’Tet dying over their politics.
James could only pray, to the Savior or God or anyone who’d spare an ear, that they’d all survive this. But if He existed, God hadn’t answered James’ pleas yet. Why start now?
No, they’d be their own gods, carve their own fate.
Even if it killed them.
**
The Striker Crimson uniform fit snugger than Samuel remembered. Military life or no military life, he made a mental note to resume an exercise routine. It wouldn’t do to try intimidating his enemies with love handles.
His soldiers dragged shackled rebels out of the Richard King tractor factory. Several fought, kicking and spitting despite their leader’s orders to go in peace. Others allowed themselves to be led, their faces downcast, as pale and silent as the dead. Knowing their lives were over.
“Don’t fight, Chester,” Matthew Kaizer pled as one of his subordinates strained against a pair of Samuel’s men. “Mutton!” Kaizer shouted. “My man is injured already. Tell your goons to go easy on him.”
Samuel frowned. The Kaizer son’s tone shouldn’t have bothered him, but it did.
That’s not what’s really on your nerves, Sam. No, what irked Samuel more than anything was who he hadn’t found. Matthew Kaizer and his father had evaded capture from the start, working within the Northern lines to create new machines and maintain old ones for the Industrialist cause. That Clint Kaizer was nowhere to be seen was worrisome. But no, not even that mattered just then.
Samuel wanted the man who’d forced him into the Quarrystone assault. He wanted the man responsible for the deaths of Nicholas and all of Samuel’s other most trusted men.
He wanted the Ironshield.
Several minutes of fruitless questioning and frustration later, Samuel sat poring over a map in Matthew Kaizer’s office. They’d managed to surround the building quickly, without letting any of Kaizer’s men escape to warn others. That meant little, with the fanfare they’d created driving a caravan through Helmsburg to begin with. Samuel needed a heading, and he needed one fast.
From a leather case he’d brought along, Samuel drew an older map, one that hadn’t been updated since the Civil War. He worked alone, feeling hampered without Paulson around but not trusting another man to advise him, not on this. His lieutenants would be questioning Matthew Kaizer’s men now. Perhaps one of them would be easier to convince than the engineer himself.
Helmsburg was of little consequence now, but during the war it had served as a strategic outpost on the road from Quarrystone to Garrod, the Northern capital. There’d been two pillbox forts, according to the old map. One had been demolished and built over during the town’s post-war expansion. The other sat in the middle of a forest, a forest that remained apparently untouched on the updated map. That didn’t mean the fort hadn’t been demolished, but it was as good a start as any.
Unless Kaizer is telling the truth, Samuel thought. What if Edstein’s a
lready left?
A silly concern. Even without the Ironshield as a prize, today represented a massive victory in the hunt for fugitive rebels.
And it didn’t matter. Because Samuel had a score to settle.
“Sir!” Otreman, one of the men he’d charged with questioning the captives, entered the office. “One of them talked. Said there’s another rebel stronghold on the other side of town.”
Samuel stood, spun the map around. “Point out where.”
Otreman did so, and Samuel’s mouth turned in something between a grimace and a grin.
“Sir?”
“Get geared up and spread word to get the trucks loaded,” Samuel commanded. “We’re finishing this by nightfall.”
Maybe he didn’t possess Paulson’s talents, but Samuel made do with what he had. Intuition, and blind luck.
The spot Otreman pointed to on the map was the very same place the second fort had stood. Where it still stood.
Chapter 29
Edmund Paulson had a long-held belief about powerful men.
A belief, which experience had done nothing to disillusion him of, that the closer one came to a man of influence, despite all logic, the more lax security around that man became. Sure, there might be armed guards at a fenced-off checkpoint, but once you’d tried to negotiate with them, failed, then sent them to an early bedtime with a well-placed whiff of specially-made solvents on a handkerchief, the rest was little more than a bit of acting and some luck.
Entering the Presidential House through the bustling kitchen dressed in his most expensive and unwrinkled suit, Paulson wondered, as he barked orders at the cooks about dishes he knew nothing about, at how grave a mistake his earlier idea about a chef’s disguise would have been. Walk in looking like an aristocrat angry about the state of his soufflé, everyone kisses your boot to save their jobs. Go in dressed as one of them, no doubt many would wonder who the new blood is and start telling you to do things you have no clue how to do.
The world was downright irrational when Paulson experienced it sober. It took the whiskey to bring him down to its lunacy.
But today, he needed to be above the rest. Today, he needed to be more.
His cane tapped against marble flooring as he made his way through the main foyer and onto the polished oak staircase. The guards here barely spared him a glance. Paulson wondered how any man could stand it, having his own home, however large and grandiose, be filled constantly with the comings and goings of government functionaries, treasurers, and lawyers. If the seat of power should buy a man anything, some basic privacy would be the least of it.
Paulson tipped his hat at a smartly dressed madame striding by with a stack of files under her arm. She returned the gesture with a polite nod. Paulson doubted she'd remember him even if questioned later. In these places, the best way to stay invisible was to look the part and make eye contact.
People make no sense.
A right turn at the end of the hall, then a left after a set of antique suits of armor. Faces of former presidents and dead revolutionaries stared at him from nearly a dozen paintings.
The door Paulson sought opened ahead, and a guard he recognized stepped into the hall. What was worse, the lad turned Paulson's way and recognized him in kind.
A senator's secretary wouldn't often be welcomed here except on official business. One who'd been recently and publicly fired while under investigation for kidnapping and torture, even less so.
"Hey! What are you doing—” The guard doubled over, eyes bulging.
Hitting a man between the legs was a dirty move at the best of times. Doing it to a man performing his duties rankled worse against Paulson's conscience. But matters were dire.
Petitioners waiting in the reception room looked over at the sound of the guard's pained groans as Paulson let himself in. There was no one behind the counter.
"Guess I'll just see myself in, then," Paulson said with a wink to a waiting man. "You folk might want to reschedule." He grabbed the door handle to the president's office. "It's going to be a busy day."
The receptionist's giggles solved the mystery of her whereabouts even before Paulson caught sight of her on Nathaniel Davids' lap. After his wife's passing early in the year, the man had dropped his flimsy pretense of fidelity.
Davids looked up. "Don't you know what a closed door means - Paulson?"
The president became alert, looking past his visitor's shoulder, probably searching for the poor guard. "How'd you get in here?"
Paulson crossed the distance to the president's desk. Davids shoved the girl off him - still in the process of buttoning her blouse- and reached for a drawer.
Paulson threw the papers he'd taken from Darian Gaul onto the desk. "Calm down, Nathaniel. We're still friends."
Davids reached for the papers slowly, his other hand still on the drawer handle. "Whatever this is about, Edmund , you've no right to just barge in here and-"
"Mr. President!" The guard Paulson had hit burst in, breathing heavy. "I tried to stop him, Sir, but he attacked me."
"I'll deal with you later, Wesley." Davids was unwinding the string holding the thick file shut.
"Stick around, boy, have a seat," said Paulson. "You'll have work to do soon enough."
Wesley scowled. But before he could retort, Davids' chair scraped back. "Where did you get this?!"
"That, dear Nathaniel, was in the possession of one Darian Gaul. He was on his way to deliver it to his boss when I, ahem, bumped into him." Now for the real test. If Davids was in on Salkirk's scheming, this was the time for him to make some horseshit claim that the documents were forged. In which case Paulson, and Sam, were fucked.
"That piece of slime!" Davids growled, paper crinkling in his clenching fists. "Wesley!"
"Y-yes, Sir!"
"Alert the garrisons and have a message sent to my generals. We've been betrayed. Elliot Salkirk is to be put under arrest on sight. Make that clear. Go!"
Wesley hurried off as best he could while nursing his aching groin.
"Put some ice on yourself afterward," Paulson called to the young man's back. "Understand it was nothing personal!"
Davids quivered with rage. "Where is Samuel?"
"Probably doing something stupid." Paulson plopped into a chair. He ignored the decanter on the coffee table, but helped himself to a handful of dates from the bowl sitting beside it. "I'd suggest getting a telegram to him as fast as possible."
"Dorothy, find out where Senator Mutton is and get a telegram sent. He is to report to me immediately!"
"Yes Mr. President." She was only too eager to leave, her cheeks flushed.
Davids lowered himself back into his seat and put his head in his hands. "I'm not ready for this."
"I am." Paulson hoisted himself up.
"Where are you going? Off to bring someone else bad news?"
"As a matter of fact, yes."
Paulson left the president's office, whistling a jaunty tune.
Today was shaping up to be a good day.
*
By the time Elliot Salkirk got the telegram warning him of the arrest party, their motorcars were already coming down the road to converge on his estate from either direction.
Gaul, you useless prick. It must have been him, he had to have been compromised. The question was, who would dare come after him? Elliot had a larger network than anyone save the president. Savior’s sake, his resources probably dwarfed that old lecher’s reach by now.
“What psychopath would have the stones…” he muttered to himself as he dashed out the service door of his mansion and across the yard to the massive, well-maintained brick shed. A simple, unadorned eyesore by design.
Mutton? No, that fool was wasting time chasing fugitives in Helmsburg, no doubt still convinced Industrialists had made the attempts on his life. Meskal Karov hadn’t given Samuel Mutton anything to point Salkirk’s way, Elliot had made sure of it once he got his hands on the craftsman. And now Mutton didn’t even have that sadist drunk of a
secretary anymore, thanks to Elliot’s well-timed visit.
Someone had decided to go after him, though. And that someone would pay. But first, Elliot had to get out of here.
He shoved his three keys into the specially-made lock on the shed door and pushed his way inside, flicking on the overhead lights. Metal stairs echoed under his polished shoes as Elliot climbed to the catwalk. A large curtain obscured the far side of the space.
Elliot heard the sirens of constabulary vehicles as they pulled onto his property outside.