by Matt Forbeck
Steiner’s nostrils flared for a moment. He hadn’t seen MacGuire go for his gun, and the shot had startled him. The adrenaline pumping through his veins told him he should do something—something violent—to tip the scales back in his favor.
Mitch slid his pistol from its holster and held it ready under the table in front of him. He didn’t think he’d have to use it, as MacGuire could drop the oberleutnant before he got anywhere near his own weapon. The other Cogs worried him more than Steiner did. If one of them or both decided to come to their commander’s rescue, this bullshit argument could turn into a bloodbath.
Mitch glanced at the Mishimans to see which side they might take. The Imperials would back MacGuire’s play no matter how batshit crazy they thought he might be to get in the middle of a Capitol-Bauhaus row. The soldiers from Mercury were the wild card.
Juba sat watching the entire display as if he had a front-row seat to his favorite play. He took another sip of wine from his glass and rolled it around on his tongue. An amused smile played on his lips.
Duval seemed to be ignoring it all. She had something brown in her hands, and she’d buried the lower half of her face in it. When she noticed Mitch looking at her, she put it away, but not before he saw what it was: a teddy bear.
Steiner, whose eyes were as sharp as Mitch’s, put his tongue in his cheek for a moment as he gauged his chances. Then he tossed back his head and laughed.
“Isn’t this the way it always is?” he asked with a grin. “The tensions run so high, we are like dogs in a kennel. Unable to reach our foes, we turn on ourselves in our frustration.”
El Jesus smirked. “I know you didn’t just call me your bitch.”
The entire room burst into laughter, some of it more nervous than heartfelt. Either way, it was all real.
Smirking, Steiner waved off El Jesus’s joke and returned to his game, which had become more interesting to him than yanking El Jesus’s chain. The Cogs sitting with him continued with the match as if nothing had happened, at least nothing their commander would care about.
Juba raised a glass to MacGuire. The Imperial snapped a quick salute to the Mishiman before holstering his weapon. Mitch knew the man would start to clean it as soon as the barrel cooled. The other Imperials watched his back as he returned to them, just in case Steiner decided that the conversation wasn’t over yet.
Brother Fredrik burst into the room then, a pair of tinted goggles pushed up on his forehead and an acetylene torch burning in his hand. He stopped after he entered and stared at the scene.
“I heard shots,” he said.
“Shot,” Mitch said. The man gave him a confused look. “Singular.”
Fredrik seemed unable to understand what Mitch meant. Then he spotted the broken music player, and his jaw dropped.
For an instant Mitch feared that the monk would break into tears. Then a wide smile cracked his face, showing all his teeth.
“It’s about time someone put that thing out of its misery,” he said. Satisfied, he turned to get back to his work. As he left, he shot over his shoulder, “That’s just the kind of teamwork you’re going to need.”
This time, nobody laughed.
27
Mitch had the worst dreams that night. He saw Nathan strapped down to a horrible machine, stripped naked and violated with nails and needles, boneblades growing from his arms and legs. Behind him, Adelaide and Grace struggled and screamed as the mutants tossed them onto the rack of their monstrous machine.
He knew he was sleeping—dreaming—but he couldn’t stop the images from coming, filling his head. He screamed for someone, something to wake him, but no one heard.
In his dream Mitch couldn’t move a muscle. It seemed as if every muscle had been strapped to an examining table that had been elevated so that he could see all the horrors inflicted on his friend and his family. He couldn’t even close his eyes.
As the machine began putting holes in Adelaide, he struggled harder and harder, but nothing happened. Sooner or later, he knew something had to give. He wondered if it would be him.
Mitch’s eyes snapped open. He lay on a bench in the same hall in which he and the other soldiers had drunk the night away. His tongue felt as dry as an old scroll found in a desert cave, and his head pounded from the morning light streaming in through the slitted windows.
Samuel stood in the doorway, surveying the soldiers and the self-inflicted damage they’d done. When he spoke, his voice was quiet but his words were firm.
“It’s time.”
A pair of monks scurried in after him with a meager breakfast for the soldiers. Mitch drank as much water as he could stomach and chewed on a bit of bread. The monks didn’t have much more to offer, but that was all he really needed.
Most of the others didn’t look much better than Mitch felt. El Jesus looked like he might weep at the first loud noise. MacGuire had to be hurting, but he still had the grim, officious look he always wore. Only Duval seemed like she might not be hung over, but she wore a private pain on her face instead.
After breakfast, Samuel spoke. “If you will follow me,” he said.
The game was over, Mitch sensed, and it was time to show his hand.
Samuel led the ten soldiers up through the monastery, with Brother Fredrik bringing up the rear. The monks they saw along their path scurried out of their way. Whether they were terrified of the strangers or simply didn’t want to interfere, Mitch could not say.
As they went, they passed a window that looked out on the postage stamp of a landing pad that sat atop the only level hunk of rock in front of the monastery, on the other side of a massive stone bridge. An airship sat out there, warming up in the icy cold, smoke billowing from its burners.
Mitch spied the pilot giving the airship a once-over while a monk on a ladder scraped ice off the craft’s windshield. The copilot, a serious man with a stiff gait, followed after him, double-checking everything.
Mitch wondered if the ship would be ready for them to take off in conditions like this. The Capitol Ground Forces wouldn’t have let something like bad weather stop them, but these looked like civilians used to flying a private craft for a wealthy man. They might have other ideas.
Mitch trusted that Brother Samuel would motivate them. If the man could get together a team of soldiers like this, he could certainly light a fire under a couple of pilots. Of course, in weather like this, lighting a fire sounded like a fine idea.
Samuel opened the doorway to a spiral staircase and led the procession up to a vault high above. Severian waited there for them and opened the door with Samuel’s help. She stood there with her sword drawn and ready while the others filed past her, crowding into the room.
Snow-colored light spilled into the room through a high skylight, cascading down onto a circular sword rack filled with blades. Their exposed steel gleamed softly in the dim light. At Samuel’s gesture, the soldiers lined the rounded wall of the tight, circular room and stood there wordlessly.
The air in the vault smelled stale, and cobwebs hung in every corner. Despite that, the place resonated with reverence and mystery, and even Mitch could feel it.
Severian, who looked as fresh and ready as ever, removed one of the swords from the rack. She held it flat in her open palms, presenting it as if it were a delicate treasure.
“Juba Kim Wu.” Samuel intoned the words like a prayer, although Mitch couldn’t tell if it was meant to be an offering or a petition. The Mishiman stepped forward and accepted the weapon with a gracious bow.
“Maximillian von Steiner.”
Steiner stepped forward and took his sword. He hefted the blade, feeling its weight and balance and admiring its craftsmanship. Then he stepped back to join the others as they waited for their weapons.
“Valerie Chinois Duval.”
The Mishiman woman paced forward and stood stone still. Severian repeated her ritualized movements for Duval and presented her with a sword. Duval’s eyes glittered with excitement. Most Mishiman warriors were
trained with the sword from a young age, and Duval clearly was no exception.
“Jesus Alexandro Dominguin de Barrera.”
The fact that Samuel not only remembered El Jesus’s full name but pronounced it correctly impressed Mitch. He watched Severian repeat her ritual, then wait for the corporal to accept his blade.
Nothing happened. El Jesus failed to step forward. Mitch glanced over at his corporal and saw that the man was asleep on his feet.
Mitch gave him a firm nudge.
“What?” El Jesus said, careful to temper his irritation as he opened one eye. He knew better than to chew into his sergeant.
Mitch jerked his head at the large two-handed sword that the kneeling Severian held out for the man. El Jesus looked at the blade for a moment, then at Severian. With a sheepish look on his face, he accepted the sword.
Samuel and Severian continued with their ritual, naming each soldier and presenting him or her with a sword. Every one of the others accepted the blade with honor.
Samuel came to Mitch last. Mitch wondered if that had always been the plan or if the monk had decided not to risk another incident like the one with El Jesus until he had no other choice.
“John Mitchell Hunter.”
Mitch watched Severian go through her silent sequence one final time. When she finished, he strode up to where she knelt and took the sword from her. He ignored the blade and locked eyes with her instead.
Despite the austerity of the monk’s life, Mitch could see the beauty in Severian. On Luna, she might have been a model—or just another aspiring actress waiting tables. In her gaze, he saw immense intensity and pain, and he wondered what might have driven such a woman not only to hide herself away in the ass end of the world but to take a vow of silence as well.
Severian’s eyes searched Mitch’s as he looked through hers. It struck him that she had no other way to communicate. Gestures only went so far, although hers were always elegant.
Although the woman piqued his curiosity, Mitch respected her choices and what she had done with them. He saw her for what she was, not what she wanted to be or had once been, and he accepted that without comment or reservation.
Severian looked away.
Mitch hefted the sword. He was ready to go.
28
The day dawned bitter and cold, and the icy wind bit through the soldiers as they walked out to where the transport sat steaming at one end of the rocky runway. Captain Michaels waited for them at the door, greeting them each as they climbed up the short steps into the main cabin. He recognized their type: killers one and all.
Better to be with them than against them, Michaels thought. He’d taken a job as Constantine’s private chauffeur to get away from people like this—he’d seen enough of them in his days in the Capitol Navy—but he still appreciated that there were times you needed to have someone around who knew how to kill. These days, with the mutants overrunning the planet, they were in serious demand.
Still, Michaels fucking hated this, and he’d spent most of the morning telling Hodge all about it.
“Why the hell can’t someone else save the world?” he’d said as they had run through the preflight check for the third time. “When I signed on with Constantine, I figured I’d put all this bullshit behind me. You know, drive the big bus through the air for the man with all the money. A man who wouldn’t send me into a warzone or up against a horde of damned mutants.”
Hodge snickered as Michaels went about his rant. That irritated Michaels as much as anything. After about five minutes of laughter at his expense, he turned on his copilot and said, “What’s so damned funny?”
“You,” Hodge said with a sly smile and an Imperial accent. “You who think you have it so bad.”
“You call this paradise?” Michaels flung his arms at the wintry world around them.
“I’ve seen worse,” Hodge said. “And so have you.”
“And I’ve seen a whole lot better. I’ve gotten used to it!”
Hodge ran a hand over his face in an attempt to wipe away his nervous grin. “Sure you have. It’s been wonderful, hasn’t it, working for a man like Mr. Constantine. Why, I’ll bet the worst trouble you’ve had over the last five years was wondering when they might ask you to fire up this old bird next.”
“You’re full of shit.” Michaels didn’t like the way the conversation was turning against him.
“Am I? I was right there with you. The biggest trouble we had in Mr. Constantine’s service was boredom.”
Michaels shook his head. “Well, we certainly don’t have any issues with that anymore, do we?”
Hodge giggled. “No, I suppose not, but you finally got what you wanted, didn’t you?”
“You’re cracked. Who in his right mind would want to fly a pack full of mercenaries to Canaan? I didn’t sign on for this shit.”
Hodge stuck out his lower lip. “But you wanted it. You’ve always wanted to be a hero, haven’t you?”
“You call this being a hero? More like the hero’s chauffeur.”
Hodge let a faint smile show his rotten teeth. “And is that so bad? We’re pilots. We move people around. Now we get to move around heroes instead of well-heeled fucks. Sounds like a step up to me.”
Michaels laughed despite himself. “Sure. Except I’m the pilot around here.”
“And I’m perfectly comfortable with that, with being the chauffeur’s sidekick.”
“Why’s that?”
“Heroes die. Chauffeurs fly away.”
As he greeted the so-called heroes Brother Samuel had put together, Michaels sincerely hoped that would be so. Given what he knew about the mission, though, he didn’t think it all that damn likely.
A hawk circled overhead as the soldiers boarded the ship. The major in charge of the Imperials spotted it and stopped dead in his tracks to watch it. Then he pointed it out to the Mishiman woman, who’d nearly run into him.
“Didn’t know there were any left,” he said.
Of course not, Michaels thought. You don’t get too many large, free-roaming birds out in the asteroid belt. He craned his neck back to look at the bird. He wasn’t too sure the damned thing wasn’t a vulture, but he decided against sharing that with the Imperial.
As the two soldiers from Capitol strode up through the snow, the bigger one looked at the other man’s sword. “Ever use one of these?” he asked.
The Capitol sergeant laughed. “On a bet a few times.”
They didn’t inspire confidence.
Once everyone was inside, Michaels went through and did a preflight check of the main cabin. The last thing he needed was for one of the soldiers to get hurt on the way to their destination. He and Hodge had assigned seats to the passengers on the basis of a loose estimation of their weight and their intimate knowledge of the peculiar balance issues of their craft.
Brother Samuel got the seat of honor in one of the niches. None of the seats were what Michaels would call comfortable, but this one was the best and gave the brother a view of all the others.
Hodge and Michaels had spent all day yesterday tearing the various luxuries out of the airship so they could fit more people in it. The way Constantine had made it, only six people could travel in the airship, although they did so in style. With all the junk torn out, though, they could fit in the ten soldiers and their gear in the main cabin, plus Brother Samuel and Severian, while he and Hodge drove and the two stokers in the compartment above kept the engines blazing hot.
Michaels gave the Capitol corporal’s seat one last check. The poor corporal had been selected to sit on top of the velvet bag that held the device he had heard the monks talking about.
“How come I gotta sit on the fucking bomb?” the soldier asked.
Michaels patted the man on the shoulder. “That’s the best seat on the plane.”
“How you figure that?”
“If it blows up, we’re all dead.” Michaels smiled, showing all his teeth. “This way, you won’t feel a thing.”
&nbs
p; “Thanks a fucking lot,” the corporal said.
Michaels couldn’t tell if he was serious. He snapped off a quick salute and then headed for the cockpit, shouldering his way past Severian, who stood in the doorway.
Hodge, who stood in at the copilot’s controls in the booth behind the cockpit, had already begun the preflight routine, and Michaels joined right in, barking back and forth at the man. Sometimes Hodge rode in the machine gun pod on the top of the ship, just for the spectacular view, but he wouldn’t find his way up there until they were well under way.
Although Constantine had modified much of the craft, he’d left the gunner’s position alone and kept it in tip-top shape. A wealthy man like that was always a target, and he’d believed in peace through a preemptive show of force.
The familiarity of the preflight process comforted Michaels. He might not have flown a ship of soldiers into a warzone before, but he’d been through this part of flying the craft countless times.
“Boiler one redline, boiler two redline,” Hodge’s voice said in Michaels’s headphones. They’d spent a good chunk of the morning stoking the burners, and their efforts against the icy weather had paid off. “We’re ready for launch.”
“Sound all clear,” Michaels said.
Somewhere, Hodge pushed a button, and a warning siren began to howl outside the ship. If any monks had been tinkering around near the landing pad, they now knew to get the hell away.
Michaels flicked the last few switches to bring all the ship’s functions online. The altimeter needle stuck, but a few quick taps with his finger freed it. He grabbed the controls and shouted into his microphone.
“Throttle up one and two.”
“One and two, aye,” Hodge said.
“Throttle up three and four.”
“Three and four, aye.”
Michaels saw a young boy in a monk’s robes running up to the airship with a slip of paper in his hand. The boy stopped on the stone bridge, far enough away that he would be safe. Michaels thanked the Cardinal he’d bothered to use the siren in such a godforsaken place.
