The Creative Fire: 1 (Ruby's Song)

by Brenda Cooper

  “The Fire’s metal, and that girl is only flesh. Don’t let her hurt you beyond repair while she beats herself to death against the inside wall of a spaceship.”

  He swallowed, still thick of throat and tongue. “I just hope she isn’t dead yet.”

  “Ix says no.”

  “Are you ready?” The Jackman asked. “Can you do this?”

  “What are we doing?”

  “We’re going to get her. There are others meeting us at various places.”

  “Ruby’s in lockup?”

  “No. She’s in command.”

  Onor grunted. “I just came from there. How the hell are we going to get back?”

  “We have help hiding our movements.”

  “No. You don’t. Not enough. There’s a table. There’s four tables. They show where everyone is. Magic and scary. They can see us now.”

  “I dropped you off there, remember? I saw it.”

  “Did you really see it? Did you watch it for hours? Ever?”

  “They wouldn’t have let me stay. So I didn’t ask.”

  “I watched it, for a very long time.” While Ruby had slept with Joel. “I know a lot about the patterns and the battles. I can help.”

  The Jackman sounded wounded. “I only got a glimpse.”

  “You can stare at the table for a week after we win,” Onor promised. “Let’s go.”

  59: Pieces Revealed

  Ruby followed Ellis slowly down the hall, humming “Homecoming” all the way.

  He turned and glared at her, so she smiled and continued.

  Walking remained hard at first, but eventually her feet started obeying her mind with no extra effort. Thoughts came a bit closer together. Ellis must need her alive, have a plan for her. It would have been so easy to kill her after they’d stunned her.

  They stopped outside of a door and Ellis turned to Ruby, his eyes cold and hard. Even so, she saw fear in them. Or maybe she just needed some hope to cling to. “You’re not to speak,” he said. “If you speak we will make sure you cannot ever speak again. Do you understand?”

  Well, maybe he was afraid. She lifted her chin and straightened her spine, trying to look as strong, female, and unafraid as she could. A lesson from Jali. “I heard you.”

  They led her into the biggest room she had ever seen. Rows of tables, seats close together, every seat filled. Faces turned to watch her, curious, suspicious, angry. They all watched her. She saw uniforms of every color except gray. Clean, neat. Not the fighters. The planners. Here and there, even a splash of green.

  Sylva. Standing on the far side of the stage, watching, her eyes narrow and her face hard as robot gears.

  So many in one place.

  Chitt had stopped by the door and faded into a line of reds who stood watching the room, leaving Ruby and Ellis on a stage with a giant screen behind them and one on each side of the room. On the screen, she and Ellis loomed over the group. Her face was pale and her damned hair had gone flyaway again. Whatever camera they were using made her hair look the wrong color of red.

  They’d left her in her grunged-out grays to set her apart from everyone else. She smiled, used her hand to capture the worst bits of flyaway hair. She straightened her back.

  Maybe she would finally meet Garth, the man who seemed to be behind all this. Colin had showed her vid and a picture, so she knew what to look for: a tall, pale-skinned man with dark eyes, slightly hunched over shoulders, and hair beginning to gray. With well over a hundred in the one room, there were too many people to see them all individually in the crowd

  She kept smiling at the crowd, making eye contact, doing her best to own the stage. It would be a great place for a concert. She drew it in her mind and heard the instruments tuning up.

  Next to her, Ellis’s face looked purple with anger. He should be saying something if he wanted to shift attention away from her, but he seemed to be waiting. Sylva also stood, tapping her toe lightly.

  Garth didn’t appear to be here. Mostly she saw strangers or noticed faces she’d seen in passing. A reminder, again, of how big the Fire was and how she was only one person, and a small, young one at that.

  The vid screens snapped away from Ruby to show a close-up of Garth, his face too big to look natural. It appeared on three walls, behind her and on both sides. Coward. If he wasn’t here, how was she supposed to influence him or capture him or do anything useful at all?

  She hadn’t forgotten Chitt, or the fact that Lila Red the Releaser had been like Chitt, or like her. The faces could all be enemies, or a mix.

  The projected image of Garth showed details she hadn’t been able to see from the picture Joel had pointed out for her on his wall. Garth’s cheeks were high and a bit sunken, his lips nearly colorless. His eyes were a bright dark, almost gray, his lashes long and feminine and deep black. Worry lines carved the skin around his eyes and the corners of his mouth.

  She expected Garth to talk, but it was Ellis who spoke first. “Ruby Martin, you are here to be judged. Your trial is being broadcast on all of the ship’s channels and witnessed by the ship’s captain.”

  Now Garth spoke. He addressed neither Ellis nor Ruby. “People of The Creative Fire. We are almost home.”

  Ruby bristled. He wouldn’t be telling the grays that—if he even told the truth about broadcasting to everyone—unless she had done so first. Bastard. Liar.

  “And it is time for all of us all to work together. We must do that in the ways that we know. We must have order and discipline. We will begin to enforce discipline rigidly in all areas of the ship.”

  Right. He was willing to kill. She imagined people stopping to listen and shaking their heads or making bad jokes.

  “We do not know what we’ll find at Adiamo, whether we will meet friends or enemies. We must stand united in case we find danger. We must stay where we know how to act. We must do our jobs.”

  The grays must stay slaves. She wanted to get her hands on this vid and edit it so people would hear what he was really saying. He sounded so fervent, so confident, and so wrong.

  She had to stay alive to write songs about him.

  “Today, we are putting one of our workers on trial. We are doing so because she has been trying to cause change in a time when we can’t afford change. We have been patient. She is young, and a girl.”

  “Woman,” she whispered.

  Ellis glared at her.

  “But we cannot allow mutinous thoughts or deeds in any form, and we will root them out so that we remain strong together to face the growing threats.”

  She looked back out at the faces. They were difficult to read. Some set hard against her. Some curious. Not that it mattered; this wouldn’t be a fair trial. If she were lucky, she’d go to lockup. She did not expect luck. But you made your own.

  She took a deep breath and gathered as much strength as she could. She glanced down, noticing that she still wore the necklace Joel had left for her. Surely Ellis and his supporters knew the power of the mixed-color symbol. Yet they were underestimating it, and her, and the people who followed her. All she had to do was glance at Chitt, who looked angry and betrayed and also ready to act. And who had been on Ruby’s side since before Fox came for her.

  She felt rifts in this room that could crack wide open.

  When Ruby let her breath out, she took another one in, feeling it fill behind her belly button, deep. She gathered as much of her anger in to her as she could.

  She spoke.

  “My most mutinous thought has been that we go home the same way we left, where everyone aboard The Creative Fire has a voice.”

  Ellis grabbed her and pulled her toward him. He stank.

  “Let her talk!” someone yelled from the back of the room.

  Ellis’s hand covered her mouth.

  She slimed his sweaty palm with her tongue. A short scream exited her throat and pushed through his fingers.

  His hand opened.

  She got out the words, “We are not killing you,” before he leane
d over and replaced his hand on her mouth, whispering in her ear.

  She had to stop struggling to hear what he said. “I will see that Fox dies for this if you don’t stop.”

  He was quite behind the times. But for the moment, she stopped. Fox didn’t deserve death for coming to get her.

  Garth watched her intently from whatever safe bunker he was in.

  Ellis accepted her stillness as acquiescence and let go of her face.

  She kept her gaze firmly on Garth and spoke a single word loud enough for the whole room to hear. “Coward.”

  60: Joel and Onor

  To Onor’s surprise, they headed to common, where they joined two other groups of about the same size. “Won’t they find us here? Where are the reds anyway?”

  The Jackman grinned. “We’ve distracted them. We had help from Ix. Like your directions here.”

  Onor hadn’t told anyone about the voice in the helmet. “How did you know?”

  “Ix told me. Ix can give us whatever information we ask for or that it wants us to have. The problem is that it can’t hide information the others ask for.” He paused. “Are you sure you want to go?”

  “Of course.”

  The Jackman grunted. “You could stay back and be defense. We’ll be meeting Joel.”

  Onor spat. “We may need him.”

  “See you keep that pride.” The Jackman turned and started them off down the same corridor they’d come up. Onor walked near the middle of the pack, beside Kyle. Both were silent, but Onor had the distinct sense that Kyle was as happy to have him around as The Jackman seemed to be.

  It seemed like the wrong number of people. Onor counted twenty plus him. Twenty-one. Too many for a stealth operation, too few for a strength move.

  The Jackman had an inner sense of the Fire’s layout that made the route back through the blue level seem direct and safe. No one had journals with them, but The Jackman muttered under his breath from time to time, his jaw tensing and relaxing, his focus sometimes inward even though they walked though enemy territory.

  Onor stumbled over a low lip where two tunnels joined. Kyle steadied him. “Are you okay?”

  “Sure. I’ll be fine.” He breathed and walked and worried. His brain shed its fog and his knees lifted higher. It seemed they hadn’t gone far enough when The Jackman ushered them through the locks on the far side of the blue level and through a connector that led to command.

  “Go right,” The Jackman whispered.

  Around a corner, they met up with four other people. Joel, two men, and a woman. Joel stopped and looked hard at Onor, appraising him all over like the first time they’d met in the corridor on green. Joel had passed Onor on his way out, so he knew Onor had been guarding him and Ruby the night they had slept together. In another circumstance, another moment of his life, Onor would have turned away. He wanted to now, but he couldn’t. It mattered too much that he be part of the next battle, part of saving Ruby.

  Joel had slept with Ruby too easily. He couldn’t possibly appreciate her. He probably slept with women all the time; women liked power.

  Ruby’s choice, too.

  Joel waited for a response from Onor. Maybe he expected a punch.

  Onor swallowed hard, shoving away his hurt pride to deal with later. “Good to see you again. We should go.”

  “Good to see you, too.” Joel looked past Onor at the group from gray. “Thank you for coming.”

  Joel turned and led them in the direction they’d already been going, their pace a fast walk.

  The Jackman took up the rear and Onor fell back beside him.

  Being in the back let him watch Joel, who moved at the front of the group from the first step after he met them, leadership falling to him as surely as he breathed. Joel knew almost everyone’s names already, which seemed impossible, and he learned the others quickly, as well as the names of people they knew, asking about family and jobs and dreams in whispered tones.

  Twice they passed men who looked the other way. Onor looked for the multicolored sign, even subtly, on their uniforms or jewelry. He didn’t see it, but still he felt sure the men were with them. Or trying to take no side at all.

  They came to a “T” intersection. Joel steadied his stunner, pointing just in front of him. He and The Jackman separated, one on each side, and people peeled off to stand by one or the other.

  Onor hesitated, then followed Joel.

  The Jackman gave him a soft nod of approval.

  The group split a second time, and Onor worked to stick with Joel again.

  Joel stopped in front of a door and whispered. “This is the briefing room. We’ve got two minutes to wait, then we go in together, all four groups. There are four doors. There are more people able to help than you know about.

  “Use your stunners only to threaten unless you’re fired on, and then use them to stay safe and to keep each other safe.”

  Onor nodded.

  “Keep Ruby safe.”

  Joel and Onor shared a look, respect mixed with determination, and all of it salted with the unspoken. They nodded at each other.

  Joel opened the door.

  61: Confrontation

  Ruby had created silence in the room with her one word: coward. The word seemed to fall into the rift she felt in the room, and she wasn’t entirely sure if she would hear cheers or be hit with a stunner next. Garth started to laugh at her. And while he was laughing, the door to her right opened.

  Joel burst in, followed by Onor. Both men held stunners out, Onor with one in each hand. Ellis grabbed her, using her to shield himself from them.

  Ruby laughed, giddy with the tension and the sudden action. Ellis was demonstrating the very word she had just called his boss. Then other hands were on her, rougher and surer, the wrists thick under a red uniform. She felt real fear then, more afraid than when she’d first walked into the room and realized how many people had gathered to see her charged and damned.

  Ruby kicked down hard, slamming her foot against a boot while she tried to twist away. The room spun as her attacker dragged her backward and sideways.

  She glimpsed Garth on the vid screen, no longer laughing, his eyes snapping anger and his mouth shut tightly.

  Ellis’s face passed close to hers, going from fright to slack as he fell, stunned by someone.

  Onor standing, yelling her name.

  The man who held her, his arm. In front of her face. She bit, tasting cloth.

  The crowd, standing and moving, making no real sense. A blur.

  The ceiling, her arms pulled tight behind her, her back bent. She screeched as pain arced up her spine.

  The other sounds were confusion, and then she started to fall, dragged down as the man holding her slumped in the boneless fall of the stunned.

  A hand reached for her. Green uniform. Joel.

  She took his hand, and he pulled her close to him and pushed her down. She refused to lay flat even though Joel barked at her to. She sat up crouched, able to see, able to run, but still as small as she could be and do either. Her breath came in great, gasping bits laced with fear and adrenaline.

  “Stay there,” Joel hissed. He straddled her with his legs, standing over her.

  Chaos. Color and movement and screaming. The reds that had been against the wall fought each other. The crowd in the center stood uncertainly, seeming to sway in all directions. Some people held stunners on uncertain targets, others crawled under tables, heading toward the doors. Impossible to make out who was on what side.

  Chitt on top of a man twice her size, beating the side of his head with her stunner while he struggled to throw her off.

  The Jackman, in what looked like an even fight with a red, blood streaming down his beard, but the red bloodied too, his nose and arm slashed and bleeding.

  Joel tried to scream at the crowd, but the noise and fighting drowned his voice.

  The doors were clogged by knots of people trying to get out and grays and blues trying to get in, everyone slowed by everyone else. />
  To her left, a red uniform launched itself at her. Sylva. With a stunner aimed at Joel. Ruby leapt, felt her right shoulder dig into Sylva’s neck, knocking Sylva backward.

  Sylva grunted and grabbed a chunk of Ruby’s hair, pulling.

  Ruby landed on Sylva, her head yanked down to the stage floor as Sylva pulled.

  Ruby twisted and kicked, getting nothing better than shin.

  Sylva was on her, one hand still holding her hair, the other holding the stunner, using it as a bludgeon, slamming Ruby in the cheek so hard she tasted blood.

  Ruby felt only anger now, hot and swift. She raised a hand and blocked Sylva’s next blow, twisting her arm around Sylva’s so Ruby pulled her down, easing the terrible bright pain of the hair pull. She thrust with her legs, getting leverage, rolling over on top of Sylva and pinning her.

  Onor screamed from behind. “Lean, Ruby, give me a shot!”

  Ruby leaned to her right, feeling Sylva react to the release of pressure and begin to flip her, gaining the advantage again. Sylva’s arms felt tight around Ruby’s waist, a force. They let go and Sylva fell, loose limbed and stunned.

  A glance revealed Onor’s triumphant smile

  “Nice!” Ruby called to him as she shoved Sylva’s inert form to the side and stood.

  “That’s twice,” Onor grinned, turning to block a man racing toward Joel.

  From the screen, Garth’s voice, rising, someone adjusting the volume. “Stop!”

  A momentary hush fell over the room.

  Joel shouted, “Freedom!” into the silence

  Ruby stepped to his side.

  Most of the struggle in the room slowed or stopped, attention shifting between Garth’s image, Joel and Ruby, and Onor and the others on the stage.

  “We’ve won,” Joel proclaimed. “We’ve won freedom.”

  A stunner fired, the beam wide of its mark, missing Joel and hitting the man behind him.

  A surge of movement brought down the man who’d fired the stunner.

  “More?” Joel asked the crowd, scanning their faces and ignoring the man on the ground.

  A scuffle broke out behind them, and Ruby took her cue from Joel, not looking back until she heard Onor’s voice demanding something. A quick glance showed him standing over a man on the ground, kicking him.