Hunted, page 39
“Um…what if I don’t think this is such a good idea?”
“It’s not an idea, Teelu—it’s fate. Already written by the Mother of Time. Relax and accept that some evening you’ll find something warm and fuzzy in your bed.”
She laughed out loud…probably at the look on my face. Then her hoverchair rocketed down the stairwell a hundred times faster than it’d ever moved before. The sound of her laughter echoed long after she was gone.
Festina grabbed my arm. “Let’s go, Edward. Things are going to get crazy real fast.”
I pulled myself away from looking down the empty stairwell and glanced toward the front of the building. All four claws had ripped themselves free, and now the queen’s head was pushing itself up. The stone under my feet rocked slightly…just a little tremor, but I still wobbled for a moment, off balance.
“Yeah,” I said, “going sounds good.”
We ran to the edge of the roof and threw ourselves over the wall, onto the glass cube. Even as I jumped, another tremor shivered through the stone beneath me—-the queen’s head had risen, and now she was lifting her body on its eight legs.
Far below, things popped and groaned inside the building: walls tearing away from floors, support beams breaking, furniture toppling over. A stream of palace guards charged out a ground-floor door, all of them screaming martial battle cries and brandishing crossbows in search of someone to shoot. They must have thought the Black Shoulders had started the building shaking by clobbering the walls with battering rams. When the guards saw huge masonry claws waving high over their heads, they screamed again. This time, it didn’t sound nearly so martial.
Festina scrambled over the glass roof and stuck her head through the hole in the cube. “Phylar! Are you ready to fly this thing?”
“Maybe.”
“Make it yes, and make it now. Straight up till we’re clear of this mess.”
“Easy for you to say,” he grumbled.
He reached out and hesitantly nudged a slider control. Without a sound, the cube rose lazily; I was poised near the bodies of our unconscious friends, ready to catch them if they started to slide off…but the cube’s motion was so smooth, they didn’t shift a millimeter. Keeping level, never giving the slightest lurch, Tobit took us into the air as slowly as smoke rising.
The scene below wasn’t nearly so placid. Out near the first canal, the Black Army must have heard the crashes and creaks of the palace coming alive, but they couldn’t possibly guess what was making the noise. Their line of sight was blocked by the high palisade walls; perhaps they thought the ripping and rumbling came from some kind of weapon being trundled into place. The attackers continued to work their battering rams, smashing at the gates again and again, hoping to get inside before the defenders could get the weapon ready. They had no idea what was happening to the palace till the gates fell open and the Black Shoulders surged onto the grounds.
With impeccable timing—of course—that was the exact same moment the Balrog finished detaching the entire palace from its foundations. As the Black Army charged through the gates, they were greeted by a huge stone queen, four stories tall and larger than a city block, her shell blazing scarlet with angry moss.
Mandasar warriors are as brave as any creature in the universe, but even they have their limits.
For a moment, much of the Black Army simply froze. They watched as the queen’s four claws, each bigger than a house, swept through the air over their heads and caught the Laughing Larries that were supposed to give covering fire. The claws slammed shut with the sound of thunder, solid stone walls whacking together…and when they opened again, four gold-colored lumps of scrap metal flopped to the ground like crushed walnuts.
No more hyena laughing. But the night was far from quiet.
The claws rose again, high enough to clear the heads of the attackers but not by much. Then they clacked their pincers a few times, showering the troops below with whatever dirt had accumulated on the palace walls over the years: stone dust and insect carcasses, bird nests and chips of old paint, dried-out flakes of autumn leaves and clots of mud daubed by playing children. All of it rained on the soldiers beneath, as if the queen was just brushing her hands off before getting set for serious fighting. When the spill of debris was finished, the claws came down onto the palace lawn and began to push forward like huge snowplows, ready to shove the Black Army back over the canal.
The shove wasn’t needed. With a jumble of confused bellows the warriors fell back, some trying to maintain an orderly retreat, others simply running. A few held their ground, till not-very-gentle nudges from the stone walls knocked them back into the canal.
Possibly, some of the generals tried to contact Samantha for new orders. When they got no answer, they made a decision on their own: strategic withdrawal. Within fifteen minutes, the battle for the palace was over.
48
WINDING DOWN
I won’t bother you with details of the next few hours.
What’s the point in describing, say, the trouble we went to, getting Innocence out of the cube? Unless you’re a fan of techniques for using block and tackle, you don’t want me going on at length; so let’s just give you the short form.
Innocence survived, and came through without permanent injury. The people inside the palace turned out safe and sound too; when the building started walking about, they reported being held in place by “an invisible force” till the excitement was over.
Kaisho disappeared in the confusion; she hasn’t been seen since. I guess she’ll show up eventually, expecting me to take her to bed. I’ve kind of decided I will—considering how the Balrog stopped the battle and saved thousands of lives, I owe the moss a favor. (Even if the idea of producing a spore-baby is really really gross.)
Unlike my father, Benjamin Dade wasn’t completely consumed by the moss that enveloped him…just nibbled a lot. We lugged him to the infirmary but Gashwan decided he couldn’t be treated—the Balrog had invaded his bloodstream, his nervous system, every part of his innards. Trying to remove the spores would kill him; but if we left him alone, he’d live out his normal span, the same as Kaisho.
Eventually, Innocence made Dade a centerpiece on Diplomats Row, set on a small pedestal like a moss-covered statue. He still gets regular meals and plenty of light, not to mention all kinds of people to talk with. Sometimes he complains how unfair it is, that he’s become a fuzzy paralytic; other times, he goes all spacey and gives incomprehensible prognostications that he claims come from the Balrog. A lot of folks think he invents the predictions on his own, but they visit him anyway: Mandasars who want to know what crops to plant, human kids asking who they’ll marry, that sort of thing.
If you want the honest truth, Dade loves the attention. It’s not how he envisioned his life, but deep down, he’s tickled by it.
Dawn came up warm but cloudy gray. I sat with Festina and Tobit, dangling our feet on the edge of one of the trenches in the palace lawn, watching envoys scurry between the palace and Black Army headquarters. We got pretty good at guessing which messengers would tell us, “Talks are going well,” and which would say, “I’m very, very worried.” From what I knew of diplomats, things were pretty much on track. No one wanted to fight anymore; they just had a lot of bluster that needed to blow itself out.
Somewhere back in the palace, our Mends would soon be waking up: it’d been almost six hours since they’d got shot by Dad and Dade. We’d left them in a corner of the infirmary, with instructions on how to find us when they came to. Gashwan wouldn’t let us wait anywhere nearby—us and our filthy human germs—so we’d gone outside to cool our heels and watch the sun rise.
Festina and Tobit had taken off their helmets long ago. Ever since they’d cannibalized their tightsuit power supplies, their personal cooling systems had been out of order; as Tobit put it, “We’re sweating our fucking bags off.” Opening the helmets helped air circulate inside the suits, but as the day warmed up, their “bags” would sweat even more. The two of them were discussing whether to take off the rest of their suits—and where to find replacement clothes, since Festina only wore a fight chemise under the suit while Tobit had nothing at all—when the admiral suddenly cocked her ear and whispered, “Listen!”
We listened. High over head, something was coming toward us, fast and whistling. “Fuck,” Tobit groaned, “a bomb.” All three of us shoved ourselves forward and dropped into the trench in front of us, ducking low as Tobit continued to grumble. “Here we are, hours away from peace, and some jerk-off decides, ‘Hey, the arsenal isn’t empty yet, let’s aim for the palace.’ ”
“If it’s a bomb, it’s taking its sweet time,” Festina said. She peeked at the clouds above us. “Where the hell is it?”
“Probably some kind of smart missile,” Tobit replied, “flying in circles till it chooses the optimum target.”
“Or else…” Festina began to say.
A jet-black shadow lanced out of the clouds: torpedo-shaped, riding an almost-invisible vapor trail. “Bloody hell,” Festina said. “It’s one of ours.”
“One of our what?” I asked.
Festina didn’t answer; she was already scrambling out of die trench, holding up her arms and waving. Tobit told me, “Navy probe missile. Black means it belongs to the Explorer Corps.” Then he too began climbing, hollering at the probe as if it could hear him.
Maybe it could. It swept in low to the ground, ejected something small that dropped at Tobit’s feet, then soared up into the clouds again. The ejected object was a black box covered with horseshoe-shaped gold insets: a Sperm-tail anchor. It hummed softly, already switched on.
“Look alive, Edward,” Festina told me. “We’re getting company.”
“Friendly company?” I asked. “The last Sperm-tail brought my dad and three Larries.”
“Good point,” Tobit said. “Get ready to pound the crap out of anyone who doesn’t look like our kind of people.”
Ten seconds later, a Sperm-tail stabbed from the sky. It happened almost too fast to see—one moment there was nothing, and the next there was a fluttering milky tube, stretching up into the clouds. Its end lay draped across the little anchor box, like a glittery white sock laid over a footstool. Festina and Tobit lifted their fists into fighting stance and positioned themselves around the tube. I joined them, all the while hoping I wouldn’t have to hit anyone. There’d been plenty enough fighting already.
Behind me palace guards were shouting, wondering if they should be worried about the Sperm-tail. A few came our way; others hollered, “Stay at your posts and let Teelu handle it. He’ll call if he needs help.”
Let Teelu handle it. Not a healthy attitude, leaving responsibility to someone else. When I became king for real…if I became king for real…if and when I became whatever Queen Innocence thought was best, I’d sure try to get everybody thinking more independently.
A figure shot out of the Sperm-tail—a human wearing a white tightsuit. I waited to see if Festina and Tobit would start punching and kicking; but they only stared for a moment, then Festina leapt forward and threw her arms around the newcomer’s neck. “Ullis!” Festina shouted. “What the hell are you doing here?” She turned to me, a huge smile on her face. “Edward, this is an old, old friend of mine. Ullis Naar.”
“Hi,” I said…not quite sure if Ullis was a man or a woman. All I could see were a pair of blue eyes blinking behind the tightsuit’s visor.
“You’re Edward York?” Ullis asked. A woman’s voice. “Son of Admiral Alexander York?”
“Um. Yes.” I wished people would stop harping on that.
“Then I’m supposed to render you all possible assistance in whatever you’re doing. We have Jacaranda, Tamarack, Bay, and Mountain Ash here in orbit. What are your orders?”
Tobit and Festina looked at me. I looked at them, then at Ullis Naar. “Um,” I said, wracking my brain for something to say. A tiny inspiration hit me. “How about starting with a status report?”
“Certainly,” she replied. “My ship Tamarack arrived on the outskirts of this system four hours ago. By then, the other three ships were already at their assigned stations. Together, we swooped in on Troyen, where we found Willow and the former Cottonwood in orbit. Willow was in no condition to do anything; Cottonwood gave us a bit of a run, but eventually we caught it with tractors.”
She glanced at Festina and gave a rueful chuckle. “The Vac-heads are annoyingly proud of themselves right now. Talking about ‘textbook operations’ and slapping each other on the back. Meanwhile, we Explorers were the ones who had to board the captured vessel. Lucky for us, there were no warriors—just a skeleton crew of gentles, who surrendered without a fight.” Ullis lowered her voice. “Poor kids were scared out of their wits: all teenagers, and naive as they come. Scarcely knew Troyen was having a war. Only thing they cared about was their ship…you know the way some kids get, when they can talk for hours about optimizing waste recyclers, but have no idea what day it is.”
Tobit grunted. “Sister Samantha probably chose them for that very quality…then kept ’em isolated from the nasty realities of war, so they wouldn’t have blood on their hands. If you’ve got a starship, you want the crew to be sentient, so they won’t die the moment they cross the line. Those kids were likely raised in some sheltered environment where Sam made sure they never had a homicidal thought. And where they lived and breathed spaceships.”
“Probably raised on Cottonwood itself,” Festina agreed. “Plenty of room up there, and no interference from the war.”
I thought about that. “Didn’t Sam use the Cottonwood for making Laughing Larries?”
Tobit shrugged. “Those were built by your clone. The kids wouldn’t have to know what the Larries were—the clone could say they were something harmless…surveillance monitors or weather sensors, something so boring the kids wouldn’t ask questions.”
“I would dearly love to know what you’re talking about,” Ullis said, “but first, I should see if there’s anything we need to do.” She turned to me. “Do you have any orders for us?”
“Um.” I whispered to Festina, “Do I have any orders for them?”
“Just get her to explain what’s going on,” Festina whispered back. “These ships couldn’t be here now unless they set out for Troyen a week ago.” She stopped and turned to Ullis. “Did you say you’re following Alexander York’s orders?”
“Yes.”
“And those orders said you’d find Cottonwood and Willow here?”
“That’s right. Jacaranda was supposed to drop off your landing party, then pretend to leave the system. It rendezvoused with the rest of us, and we all came zipping back to catch Cottonwood by surprise.”
Festina frowned. “Why would Admiral York want the navy to capture Samantha’s pet starship?”
“Oh,” I said. “Um.”
I remembered that night ten days ago, when I’d found myself silting in front of Captain Prope’s terminal. That’s when I noticed someone had used the authorization codes Samantha gave me…and I was beginning to guess what the Smart half of my brain had done.
Issuing orders to Prope. Diverting three other ships to Troyen. Doing it all with my father’s codes…and doing it pretty well, I guess, since it’d come off without a hitch.
Good for me. Or at least for Smart Me. He must have understood what was going on long before I did—that Sam was evil, that she’d made me a king, and she intended to start the last battle as soon as we landed on Troyen—so he’d used my dad’s codes to make sure she wouldn’t get away with it. He’d secretly called in four cruisers to capture Willow and the black ship; not only did that wipe out Sam’s “fleet,” it also provided hard evidence that my sister had pirated two navy vessels. The High Council would hit the roof about that…then Sam could forget any perks or concessions she wanted to beg from the Admiralty. She wouldn’t get a cent to rebuild Troyen. Quite possibly, the Technocracy would have imposed all kinds of economic sanctions, and backed them up with a heavy navy blockade.
But Smart Me had done more than call in those four ships: he’d arranged with Prope to trap our whole party down on the surface. Why? I guess because he didn’t want us to have the option of running away. Smart Me was no Balrog—he sure couldn’t foresee how we’d save Innocence, or stop Sam and my dad—but he must have had the colossal arrogance to believe he’d set things right somehow. All he had to do was show up, take charge, confront his enemies…and he’d come out on top.
In other words, my brainy half had the same kind of ego as every Mandasar queen since the dawn of time. Like it or not, I was one of them.
If you want the honest truth, that scared me. I didn’t want to become all clever and cunning and cruel. But what was I going to do? Push my smart bits away and keep them choked off somewhere? I’d done that twenty years ago when I’d decided I’d rather be stupid than admit the truth about Sam; and how did that help anybody?
Time to stop hiding. Stupid or smart, it was time for me to be who I was—what I was. And if some parts of me were kind of terrifying…I wasn’t so different from anyone else.
Twelve days later, I rode a Sperm-tail from Jacaranda down to Celestia. No strange flashbacks or conversations with other sides of myself. Just a whole lot of flip-flops in my stomach as I twisted and turned and corkscrewed.
Festina said that was normal.
We landed on the edge of the Hollen Marsh, within spitting distance of where my evac module had splashed down weeks earlier. Night was falling on this part of the planet—a soft summery dusk, filled with the rich smells of humus and’ growing vegetables.
