Both were standing with their guns drawn when Venera fought her way past the suction to sprawl on a filthy floor. She stood up, brushing herself off, and looked around. “It is indeed a men's room.”
Or was it? In the weak light of Thinblood's lantern, she could see that the chamber was lined in tiles that had once been white but which had long since taken on the color of rust and dirt. Long streaks ran down the wall to dark pools on the floor. Venera expected to see the usual washroom fixtures along the walls, but other than a metal sink there was nothing. She had an uneasy feeling that she knew what sort of room this was, but it didn't come to her until Thinblood said, “Operating theater. Disused.”
Bryce was prying at a metal chute mounted in one wall. It creaked open, and he stared down into darkness for a second. “A convenient method of disposal for body parts or even whole people,” he said. “I'm thinking more like an autopsy room.”
“Vivisectionist's lounge?” Thinblood was getting into the game.
“Shut up,” said Venera. She'd gone over to the room's one door and was listening at it. “It seems quiet.”
“Well it is the middle of the night,” the preservationist commented. More members of their team were meanwhile popping up out of the floor like jack-in-the-boxes. Minus the wind-up music, Venera mused.
Soon there were twenty of them crowded together in the ominous little room. Venera cracked the door and peered out into a larger, dark space full of pipes, boilers, and metal tanks. This was the maintenance level for the tower, it seemed. That was logical.
“Is everyone clear on what we're doing?” she asked.
Thinblood shook his head. “Not even remotely.”
“We are after my man Flance,” she said, “as well as information about what Sacrus is up to. If we have to fight, we cause enough mayhem to make Sacrus rethink its strategy. Hence the charges.” She nodded at the heavy canvas bag one of the Liris soldiers was toting. “Our first order of business is to secure this level, then set some of those charges. Let's do it.”
She led the soldiers of half a dozen nations as they stepped out of their bridgehead and into the dark of enemy territory.
* * * *
15
Everything in the Gray Infirmary seemed designed to promote a feeling of paranoia. The corridors were hung with huge black felt drapes that swayed and twitched slightly in the moving air, giving the constant impression that there was someone hiding behind them. The halls were lit by lanterns fixed on metal posts; you could swivel the post and aim the light here and there, but there was no way to illuminate your entire surroundings at any point. The floors were muffled under deep crimson carpet. You could sneak up on anybody here. There were no signs, doors were hidden behind the drapery, and all the corridors looked alike.
It reminded Venera unpleasantly of the palace at Hale. Her father's own madness had been deepening in the days before she succeeded in escaping to a life with Chaison. The king had all the paintings in the palace covered, the mirrors likewise. He took to walking the hallways at night, a sword in his hand, convinced as he was that conspirators waited around every corner. These nocturnal strolls were great for the actual conspirators, who knew exactly where he was and so could avoid him easily. Those conspirators—almost entirely comprising members of his own family—would bring him down one day soon. Venera had not received any letters bragging of his downfall while she lived in Rush; but there could well be one waiting when or if she ever returned to Slipstream.
That was the madness of one man. Sacrus, though, had done more than generalize such paranoia: it had institutionalized it. The Gray Infirmary was a monument to suspicion and a testament to the idea that distrust was to be encouraged. “Don't pull on the curtains to look for doors,” Venera cautioned the men as they rounded a corner and lost sight of the stairs to the basement. “They may be rigged to an alarm.”
Thinblood scoffed. “Why do something like that?”
“So only the people who know where the doors are can find them,” she said. “People trying to escape—or interlopers like us—set off the bells. Luckily, there's another way to find them.” She pointed at the carpet. “Look for worn patches. They signify higher traffic.”
The corridor they were in seemed to circle some large inner area. Opposite the basement stairs they found the broad steps of an exit, and next to it stairs going up. It wasn't until they had nearly circled back to the basement stairs that they found a door letting into the interior. Next to a patch of slightly worn carpet, Venera eased the curtains to the side and laid her hand on a cold iron door with a simple latch. She eased the door open a crack—it made no sound—and peered in.
The room was as big as an auditorium, but there was no stage. Instead, dozens of long glass tanks stood on tables under small electric lights. The lights flickered slightly, their power no doubt influenced by the jamming signal that emanated from Candesce.
Each tank was filled with water, and lying prone in them were men—handcuffed, blindfolded, and with their noses and mouths just poking out of the water. Next to each tank was a stool, and perched on several of these were women who appeared to be reading books.
“What is it?” Thinblood was asking. Venera waved at him impatiently and tried to get a better sense of what was going on here. After a moment she realized that the women's lips were moving. They were reading to the men in the tanks.
“...I am the angel that fills your sky. Can you see me? I come to you naked, my breasts are full and straining for your touch.”
Bryce put a hand on her shoulder and his head above hers. “What are they doing?”
“They seem to be reading pornography,” she whispered, shaking her head.
“...Touch me, oh touch me exalted one. I need you. You are my only hope.
“Yet who am I, this trembling bird in your hand. I am more than one woman, I am a multitude, all dependent on you ... I am Falcon Formation, and I need you in all ways that a man can be needed...”
Venera fell back, landing on her elbows on the deep carpet. “Shut it!” Bryce raised an eyebrow at her reaction, but eased the door closed. He twitched the curtain back into place.
“What was that all about?” asked Thinblood.
Venera got to her feet. “I just found out who one of Sacrus's clients is,” she said. She felt nauseated.
“Can we seal off this door?” she asked. “Prevent anyone getting out and coming at us from behind?”
Bryce frowned. “That presents its own dangers. We could as easily trap ourselves.”
She shrugged. “But we have grenades, and we're not afraid to use them.” She squinted at him. “Are we?”
Thinblood laughed. “Would a welding torch applied to the hinges do the trick? We'll have to leave a tiny team behind to do that.”
“Two men, then.”
They went back to the upward-leading stairs. The second level presented a corridor identical to the one below. The same muffled silence hung over everything here. “Ah,” said Venera, “such delicate decorative instincts they have.”
Thinblood was pacing along bent over, hands behind his back. He stared at the floor mumbling “hmmm, hmmm.” After a few seconds he pointed. “Door here.”
Venera twitched back the curtain to reveal an iron-bound door with a barred window. She had to stand on her tip-toes to see through it to the long corridor full of similar doors beyond. “This looks like a cell block.” She rattled the door handle. “Locked.”
"Hello?" The voice had come from the other side of the door. Venera motioned for the others to get out of sight, then summoned a laconic, sugary voice and said, “Is this where I can find my little captain?” She giggled.
“Wha—?” Two eyes appeared at the door, blinking in surprise at her. Just in time, Venera had yanked off her black jacket and shirt, revealing the strategic strappery that maximized her figure. “Who the hell are you?” said the man on the other side of the door.
“I'm your present,” whispered Venera. “That is,
if you're Captain Sendriks.... I'd like it if you were,” she added petulantly. “I'm tired of tromping around these stupid corridors in nothing but my assets. I could catch a cold.”
A moment later the latch clicked and seconds after that Venera was inside with a pistol under the chin of the surprised guard. Her men flowed around her like water filling a pipe; as she gestured for her new prisoner to kneel Thinblood said, “It's clear on this end, but there's another man around the corner yonder.”
“Level a pistol at him and he'll fall into line.” She watched one of the soldiers from Liris tying up her man, then said, “It is cold in here. Bryce, where's my jacket?”
“Haven't seen it,” he said innocently. Venera glared at him, then went to collect it herself.
The new corridor held a faint undertone of coughing and quizzical voices, which came from behind the other doors. This was indeed a cell block. Venera raced from door to door. “Up! Yes, you! Who are you? How long have you been here?”
There were men and women here. There were children as well. They wore a wide mix of clothing, some familiar from her days in Spyre, some foreign, perhaps of the principalities. Their accents, when they answered her hesitantly, were similarly diverse. All seemed well fed, but they were haggard with fear and lack of sleep.
Garth Diamandis was not among them.
Venera didn't hide her disappointment. “Tell me where the rest of the prisoners are or I'll blow your head off,” she told the guard. She had him on his knees with his face pressed against the wall, her pistol at the back of his head. “Bear in mind,” she added, “that we'll find them ourselves if we have to, it'll just take longer. What do you say?”
He proceeded to give a detailed account of the layout of the tower, including where the night watch was stationed and when their rounds were. So far Venera hadn't seen any sign of watchmen; for a nation gearing up for war, Sacrus seemed extremely lax. She said so and her prisoner laughed, a tad hysterically.
“Nobody's ever gotten in or out of here,” he mumbled against the plaster. “Who would break in? And from where?” He tried unsuccessfully to shake his head. “You people are insane.”
“A common enough trait in Spyre,” she sniffed. “Your mistake, then.”
“You don't understand,” he croaked. “But you will.”
She had already noted that he wore armor that was light and utilitarian, and his holstered weapons had been similarly simple. This functionalism, which contrasted dramatically with the outlandish costumes of most of her people, made her more uneasy about Sacrus's abilities than anything he'd said.
They spent some time trying to get more out of him and his companion. Neither they nor the prisoners they spoke to knew what Sacrus's plan was—only that a general mobilization was underway. The prisoners themselves were from all over the principalities; some had recently gone missing within Spyre itself.
“They're enough evidence to haul Sacrus before the high court on crimes against the polity,” crowed Bryce. “If we can just get some of these people out of here.”
Venera shook her head. “They may be enough to get the rest of Spyre up in arms. But until we can come up with a decent plan for getting them out alive, they're safer where they are. Let them loose now and they'll give us away, and probably try to run the gauntlet of machine guns and barbed wire on their way to the outer walls. At least let's find them some weapons and a direction to run in.”
Bryce and Thinblood exchanged glances. Then Bryce quirked his irritating smile. “I have an idea,” he said. “Let's strike a compromise....”
* * * *
There were plenty of cells in the block, but Garth was in none of them. While Venera searched for him, Thinblood took the bulk of the team to look for the night watch. Nearly fifteen minutes had passed before he reappeared.
Thinblood was jubilant. “Both floors are secure,” he said. “We left the watchmen in a closet we found. And my welder has sealed off the main doors and a side entrance. He's a model of efficiency, that one.”
Bryce put a hand on Venera's arm. “Your man doesn't seem to be here. We have to look to our other objectives.”
She shrugged him off, gritting her teeth so as not to snap some withering retort. “All right, then,” she said. “There's more to this tower upstairs. Let's find out what Sacrus is up to.”
The next floor was different. Here the velvet-covered walls and darkness gave way to marble and bright, annoyingly uneven electric light. Venera heard the sound of voices and chatter of a mechanical typewriter coming from an open door about thirty feet to the left. Crouching under the lee of the steps with the others, she scowled and said, “The time for subtlety may be past.”
“Wait.” Thinblood pointed the other way. Venera craned her neck and saw the heavy vault-style door even as Thinblood said, “Sacrus is reputed to keep their most secret weapons in this place. Do you think...?”
“I think I saw some of those weapons being made downstairs,” she said, thinking of the fish-tank room. “But you're right. It's just too tempting.” The door was surrounded by big signs saying VALID PERSONNEL ONLY, and two men with rifles slouched in front of it. “How do we get past them?”
One of Corinne's men cleared his throat quietly. He drew something from his backpack and after a moment his companions did likewise. They strung the small compound bows with quick economical movements. Seeing this, Venera and the other leaders climbed back down and out of the way.
“Count of three,” said the man at the top. “You take the one on the right, we'll do the one on the left. One, two—”
All four of Corinne's soldiers jumped out of the stairwell and rolled into crouches. Their shoulder muscles creased in unison as they drew back, and Venera heard an intake of breath and “What the—” from off to the right, and then they let loose.
There was a grunt, a thud, then another. The archers whirled around, looking for another target.
The sound of typing continued.
“Take out that office,” Venera instructed the archers as she stepped into the hallway. “We'll go for the vault.”
The heavy door had a thick glass window in it. Venera shaded her eyes with her hands and stared through for a few seconds. She whistled. “I think we've found the mother lode.”
The chamber beyond was large—it must take up most of this level. There were no windows, and its distant walls were draped in black like the corridors downstairs. Its brick floor was crisscrossed by red carpets; in the squares they defined, pedestals large and small stood under cones of light. Each pedestal supported some device—brass canisters here, a fluted rifle-like weapon there. Large jars full of thick brown fluid gleamed near things like bushes made of knives. There was nothing in there that looked innocuous, nothing Venera would have willingly wanted to touch. But all were on display as if they were treasures.
She supposed they were that; this might be the vault that held Sacrus's dearest assets.
The view was obscured suddenly. Venera found herself staring into the cold gray eyes of a soldier, who mouthed something she couldn't hear through the glass.
Deception wasn't going to work this time. “We've been seen,” she said even as a loud alarm bell suddenly filled the corridor with jangling echoes.
“Can we blow this?” Thinblood was asking one of his men. The soldier shook his head.
“Not without taking time to figure out the vulnerable points ... maybe doing some drilling...”
Thinblood looked at Venera, who shrugged. “It's going to be a firefight from now on,” she said. “Better get downstairs and free those prisoners. Then we can—” Something bright and sudden flashed in her peripheral vision and there was a loud clang!
She stared in dumb surprise at the metal bars that now blocked the way to the stairwell. “Blow them!” she shouted, pulling out her preservationist-built machine-pistol. “This is no time for subtlety!”
At that moment there was an eruption of noise from the far end of the corridor. Venera dove to the floor a
s impacting bullets sprayed marble dust and plaster at her. The others either flattened as well or staggered back against the wall. Blood spattered over the threaded stonework.
Now a smoke grenade was tumbling toward her, each end-over-end bounce sending a gout of black into the air. It stopped just outside the bars then disappeared in a growing pyramid of darkness. Past that Venera heard shouted orders, gunshots.
"You will lie facedown on the floor and put your hands behind your necks! Anyone we do not find in that position will be shot! You have five seconds and then we will shoot everything that sticks up more than a foot off the floor."
All she could hear after that was machine-gun fire.
* * * *
The commandant held the mimeographed picture of Venera next to her head and compared the two. “You look older in real life,” he said in apparent disappointment. She glared at him but said nothing.
“Really,” he continued in apparent amazement, “what did you think you were going to achieve? Invading Sacrus? We've forgotten more tricks of incursion and sabotage than you people ever knew.”
Twelve of Venera's people knelt around her on the floor of a storage room that opened off the third-floor corridor. Mops and brooms loomed over her; a single flickering bulb illuminated the three men with machine guns who were standing over the prisoners. Two more soldiers had been tying their hands behind their backs, but the process had stalled out briefly as they ran out of rope. The commandant, who had at first seemed flustered and shocked, had soon recovered his poise and now appeared to be genuinely enjoying himself.
“You did a good job of sealing off the front doors, but my superiors were able to slip this through the crack.” He waggled the mimeograph at Venera. He was a beefy man with an oddly asymmetrical face; one of his eyes was markedly higher than the other, and his upper lip lifted on the left giving him a permanent look of incredulity. “They also slipped in some instructions on how we're to proceed while they cut through your welding job. It seems we had a...” He flipped the sheet over to read the back. “...a certain Garth Diamandis in our custody, as guarantor of your good behavior. Our arrangement was very clear. Should you fail to obey our orders, we were to kill this Diamandis. I'd say that your little incursion tonight constitutes disobedience, wouldn't you?”
Analog SFF, May 2007 Page 21
