Saint Antony's Fire

by Steve White

  "In their own inner sanctum?" gasped John White.

  "We've seen that their overlords don't even trust their own underlings, and are prepared to kill them," said Winslow as another light beam attempted to drill through the barrier that sheltered them. "Who else would that weapon be aimed at?"

  He looked around at the still-functioning vision screens that lined the chamber's walls. The battle was raging at the city's perimeter. As he watched, a formation of Grella flyers swooped out, their weapons seeking the Eilonwë in the forest. But the beams of captured and long-hoarded Grella heavy weapons stabbed out—blindingly, for these were the kind of weapons that had been used against the English fleet, destroying matter by bringing it into contact with its intolerable negation—and one by one the flyers exploded in a blinding effulgence of light. An involuntary cheer burst from Winslow's throat as he watched St. Antony's fire turned on its creators.

  But his cheer died in his throat, for some of the Grella weapon turrets were still in action, and they mounted far heavier versions of the Hell weapons. They burned fiery trails through the darkened forest, and Winslow's stomach clenched at the thought of how many Eilonwë must be dying.

  "Owain didn't disable all the turrets," he thought out loud. "And they can still control them from in there." He indicated the armored central citadel.

  "The Eilonwë will never be able to break through with those things in action," said Virginia Dare in a bleak voice. Winslow didn't like that voice, for in it he could hear the long-term hopelessness that was her birthright creeping back.

  "We've got to get in there!" he declared. He grabbed Virginia Dare's light-weapon and fired it. The beam barely even scratched that door, as heavily armored as the wall in which it was set.

  Then he remembered the iron gunpowder-filled iron buckets that, when all else failed in an assault on a fortress, a pair of men would carry forward and hang from a nail driven into a gate. The French called it a petard.

  He looked to his right and left, at the English crouching behind other control desks. "Martin! Jonas!" he called out to two sailors who hadn't given up their bombs to Owain or Shakespeare. "Roll your bombs over here!"

  They obeyed, and the deadly spherical objects rolled across the floor, unnoticed by the Grella observers. Winslow caught them. "Virginia, set these things for two minutes from now."

  "What?" Her eyes widened as understanding dawned. "You're going to try to . . . No! They'll kill you before you can get there."

  "Even if they don't," Shakespeare added, "there's a saying about being 'hoist with your own petard.' " Characteristically, he had instantly grasped what was afoot.

  "What else can we do?" Winslow demanded. "Squat here and watch them grind the Eilonwë down?"

  John White spoke up in a voice which, though mild, got their attention, "At least, Captain, don't try to carry both bombs yourself. If you fall, then all is lost. Give me one. If we give them two targets, the chances are double that one will get through."

  Virginia Dare's eyes grew even wider. "Grandfather, no! Don't do this. You're not a young man anymore!"

  "All the more reason to do it. I have less life left to lose than the rest of you. And in any case, my life is completed." He smiled at her. "God has granted me something that has been given to no other man: to see my own grandchild turn from a babe in arms to an adult in a pair of years. I missed your childhood, and that I regret. But having known, if only for a little while, the woman you've grown into is enough for any man." He turned back to Winslow and his eyes held his need.

  "All right," said Winslow, not meeting Virginia Dare's eyes. "But listen carefully and obey orders! Here's what we're going to do. We'll run for the door, well apart from each other and taking advantage of as much cover as we can. Once we get up against the door, we'll be safe; I've been watching that weapon, and it can't swivel but so far. We'll leave the bombs against the base of the door. Then we'll get away fast—Master Shakepeare is right about what often happens to petardiers!—moving along the base of the wall so we'll still be inside the weapon's field of fire. Understand?"

  White nodded jerkily.

  "Set the bombs, Virginia," Winslow said quietly.

  Her eyes darted from one man to the other. Then she swallowed and set to work, deftly despite the tears that misted her vision.

  "Martin!" Winslow called out while she worked. "Pass the word to the men that when I say 'Now,' everyone is to create a ruckus. Throw things, shoot with the light-weapons, anything to draw their attention."

  "Aye, Captain."

  Virginia Dare handed her grandfather and him each one of the hefty bombs and performed one last adjustment on them. "You now have two minutes," she said levelly.

  "Now!" shouted Winslow.

  From around the concentric circles of control desks the English yelled, waved their swords, took futile pot shots with the light-weapons. Whoever was remotely controlling the swivel weapon was clearly startled, for a rapid fusillade of crackling beams lashed out in various directions.

  "Go!" Winslow snapped at John White. Without waiting to see if he was being obeyed, he sprang out from behind the right-hand end of their shelter and ran, zigzagging, toward the door.

  A crucial pair of seconds passed before the hidden controller grasped what was happening. The weapon mount swiveled and a beam sought him, searing the floor, just as he dived behind a control desk, hitting the floor and rolling. It was the last shelter he would have. Between him and the door was only open space.

  Then, to the left, he heard a commotion as John White lunged forward. With insectlike swiftness, the weapon mount swung in that direction, spitting beams. One of them caught him.

  From a distance, Winslow could hear Virginia Dare's stricken scream.

  Without pausing to think or feel, Winslow sprang to his feet and sprinted the last few yards. Not daring to slow down enough to go into a roll, he crashed into the door and crouched against its base.

  The weapon mount swiveled downward, seeking him with insensate fury. But it could only burn sizzling holes in the floor a few feet away from him. He was inside its turning radius.

  He paused for a look backwards. John White was still alive, sprawled on the floor. Their eyes met. White actually managed to smile. Then, with a weak motion, he sent his bomb rolling across the floor. Winslow reached out and caught it, risking the beams. But the weapon had turned back to John White, finishing its work.

  Winslow continued to deny himself feeling or thought. Instead, he placed both bombs against the door's base. Then, not knowing how much time he had left, he scurried away along the wall, staying out of the swivel weapon's reach and putting as much distance as possible between himself and the door. When he had gotten to the opposite side of the stronghold, he went to the floor and crouched into something like the position he had assumed in his mother's womb.

  Eternal seconds passed. He wondered if something had gone wrong.

  When it came, it wasn't two separate explosions, because Virginia Dare had set the bombs for the same instant. It was a single concussion that deafened him and might well have snapped his spine if he had been standing with his back to the wall. As it was, an instant passed before he could stagger to his feet and run back along the wall in the direction he had come.

  The door hung askew, blasted from its frame. The swivel-mounted weapon above it drooped lifelessly.

  Out of the left corner of his eye, he saw Shakespeare and Virginia Dare running toward the entry that now lay open.

  "Attack!" he yelled at the room in general. He drew his two blades, kicked the ruined door aside and plunged through choking, reeking smoke into the innermost Grella citadel, stepping over a dead Grell.

  As he emerged from the smoke he took in the entire scene with a glance.

  Off to the side he saw Grimson's charred body. In the screens, the weapon turrets had obviously fallen silent in the absence of commands. Around the control desks, the surviving Grella milled about in their cold natures' closest approximati
on of panic. And behind the circular desk on the raised dais stood a Grell in whose features and chest insignia Winslow recognized Sett 44.

  But mostly he saw the Grell directly in front of him—the only one in the room with a weapon, which he had just raised. Winslow looked directly down the orifice of that weapon, and with cold certainty he knew himself to be a dead man.

  Then Shakespeare, charging in behind him, tripped over the dead Grell and, arms flailing, blundered into the Grell, throwing the weapon off just as it was fired. The beam barely missed Winslow's head, and he caught a whiff reminiscent of summer thunderstorms. Before the Grell could regain his footing and snap off another shot, Winslow rushed him. With his sword arm he shoved Shakespeare out of the way. With his other hand he plunged the ballock dagger in and then up with a force that lifted the diminutive alien off his feet. Winslow threw him aside and plunged forward.

  The English were crowding in, butchering the Grella and smashing at the instruments they didn't understand. Vision screens and banks of lights began to flicker out.

  Winslow left all that to the others. He pressed on through the chaos toward the dais where Sett 44 stood behind his control desk. Their eyes locked in a split second of mutual recognition—a communion of sorts.

  Yes, it's me, you maggot, Winslow thought savagely. And I've come to kill you!

  But then there was a loud humming and an incomprehensible flashing of lights, and the dome above that central command dais began to lower itself down. It settled over the dais and clamped itself onto the top of the wraparound desk, enclosing Sett 44 in an openwork cage. Looking upward at the ceiling where it had been, Winslow saw what it had concealed: a circular tunnel leading upward.

  An escape hatch, he realized. Even as the thought flashed through him, the now-enclosed dais—whose base evidently held the same mysterious engines as the Grella flyers—began to rise upward toward the tunnel.

  Winslow had no time for thought. He dropped his sword, clenched his ballock dagger in his teeth, and ran the rest of the way as fast as pumping legs and tortured lungs could take him. Then, just before Sett 44's escape capsule could rise beyond reach, he jumped and caught the edge of its lower platform with both hands.

  A split second later, a wobble in the rising capsule told him that another human body had added its weight. He looked to his right and met the eyes of Virginia Dare, likewise hanging by both hands. She had dropped her light-weapon, but her two-handed sword was still strapped to her back.

  Then they were rising more rapidly, and entered the tunnel.

  There was barely room for the two dangling human bodies in that enclosed space. Feeling his back slamming against the tunnel walls, Winslow suspected that Sett 44 was deliberately swinging his vehicle from side to side, trying to dislodge his two unwanted passengers. He held on grimly in the darkness. Above, he could glimpse a faint glow of light, growing steadily stronger.

  Abruptly, they burst from the tunnel into the great artificially lit dome above. Below was the small city. Directly below, about fifteen feet underneath, was what looked like a landing field for the flyers, which were desperately streaming toward the great openings in the dome. Sett 44 swung his escape capsule onto a course to follow them.

  Through the whistling of the wind, he heard Virginia Dare's shout. "He's going to get out and head for the arch! He'll be able to go through and warn the Grella in the next world beyond to counterattack in full array with ships that can force their own way through the portal, without the aid of the arch."

  Even as Winslow was considering the consequences of that, Sett 44 made a series of side-to-side swinging motions. Winslow barely managed to hang on. Virginia Dare wasn't so lucky. Winslow heard her scream, and caught sight of her falling toward the landing field below.

  As before, when he had watched John White die, Winslow denied himself all emotion. That could come later, if he was alive. For now, he concentrated every fiber of his being on climbing, hand over hand, up the undercarriage of the escape pod. He occasionally allowed himself glances ahead, where the great opening in the base of the dome was growing and growing, the night outside riven with the flashes of battle.

  Finally, lifting himself up with a last, agonizing one-handed heave, he glimpsed Sett 44's head above the control panel.

  Hanging on grimly with his left hand, he took the ballock dagger from between his clenched teeth with his right hand, drew it back, and hurled it.

  It was not a throwing knife, and lacked the proper balance. It clanged off the edge of the control desk and, deflected from its course, struck Sett 44 a glancing blow on the cheek before falling into the abyss below.

  Startled by the blow, Sett 44 briefly lost control of his vehicle before righting it and bringing it to a hovering position just inside the wide exit portal toward which he had been steering. He raised a hand to his cheek, brought it away covered with the unnatural Grella body fluid, and looked around. He soon saw Winslow, weaponless, hanging by both hands.

  He stood up, leaving the escape pod to hover, and looked down at Winslow. His tiny lipless mouth opened slightly in what Winslow imagined was a smile. He reached into a pocket and withdrew an object which was obviously a weapon—too small to be of any military use, but doubtless adequate for its present intended purpose.

  There was a deafening clang, and a concussion that sent the escape pod staggering sideways. Sett 44 was thrown off his feet, and Winslow barely held on. Then the damaged pod began slanting drunkenly downward and to the side. As it did, Winslow glimpsed the flyer that had glancingly collided with it, even more damaged and likewise on its way down.

  His eyes met Virginia Dare's.

  She must, he had time to think, have hit the ground in that landing area beneath us and survived the fall. We weren't very high or moving very fast when she fell—and she's nothing if not tough. And she knows just enough about those flying boats to get one aloft, and pilot it to a collision.

  But then she was out of his field of vision—and Sett 44 was back into it, rising unsteadily to his feet. He took aim again with the weapon he had managed not to drop.

  The pod smashed into the side of the vast exit door with a force that finally broke Winslow's grip. He fell ten or twelve feet, instinctively twisting to the side and hitting the floor with a roll. He went on rolling, out of the way of the falling escape pod, just before it crashed.

  Sett 44 crawled from the wreckage, toward the weapon he had dropped. It lay on the floor about twelve feet from him and a good deal further from Winslow, who heaved his battered body up and tried to force it to walk.

  Then the crippled flyer hit the floor and skidded over with a scream of tortured metal, smashing into the grounded escape pod and recoiling several yards before lying still only a short distance from Sett 44's hand-weapon. Virginia Dare stood up and lowered herself to the floor with obvious pain. She must have hurt her ankles in her fall. But they were not broken, for she slowly walked toward the weapon.

  Sett 44 crawled faster, pulling his broken body along in a grotesquerie of haste, emitting what had to be wordless sounds of pain.

  Virginia Dare, limping though she was, reached the weapon first. With the hardest kick she could manage, she sent it spinning across the floor into the shadows.

  A few fleeing Grella were starting to run through the wide door. Eilonwë appeared behind them, shooting them and cutting them down, pursuing them into the dome. Virginia Dare ignored them all. She drew her sword from behind her left shoulder and, moving even more slowly than before, advanced on Sett 44.

  "Captain!" Winslow heard a familiar voice.

  "Owain!" he shouted back as the Welshman emerged from among a crowd of Eilonwë. "You're alive!"

  "Indeed, Captain. I was only able to plant bombs in two more of the turrets before a patrol spotted me. I eluded them, but then I had nowhere to go but the arch. There, I returned to the Near Void and hid until the excitement began. Before returning to the real world I got to watch some of their flyers coming through the arc
h as they made good their escape. You should have seen it! They flickered for an instant in the Near Void, like something revealed in the dark by flash of lightning, before vanishing into the Deep Void." He looked around as the Eilonwë poured on into the dome in pursuit of the fleeing Grella. "It looks like you did for the rest of the turrets."

  Winslow allowed his abused body to slump back down to the floor. "Yes. Well, the Grella did for some of us, too." The memory of John White would no longer be held at bay. At least, he thought, remembering the fate of White's daughter and son-in-law, he only died once.

  Owain was silent for a moment, then sank to the floor beside Winslow. "I'm sorry I didn't do better, Captain."

  "Don't talk foolishness. There are quite a few Eilonwë alive now who would have been consumed by Saint Antony's fire if you hadn't done what you did."

  They watched as Virginia Dare reached Sett 44. She winced with pain as, with one foot, she rolled him over onto his back. She planted her foot on his midriff where the solar plexus would have been on a human and held her sword with the point resting, ever so gently, on the scrawny throat. The huge empty dark eyes stared up at her.