by S. J. Ryan
“Most will be all right if we can leave here.”
“I wish I were as hopeful as you.”
Carrot wished that she was as hopeful inside as she sounded outside.
Men arrived with carts bearing cisterns, pails, sheets and blankets. Water was poured from cisterns into pails, and the pails were poured upon Carrot's body from head to foot. Her clothes were drenched, and as the water had cooled with the night she was given shivers. It is all right, she told herself. The wetter you are, the safer you'll be. She made a small smile as she chided herself that for a supposedly superhuman mutant, she was so vulnerable to cold – and had not thought ahead to request the men to heat the water when there had been ample time to do so.
She was given gloves and fitted them on (and they too were wetted) as sheets were wrapped around her limbs and torso and kept in place with pins. The sheets were drenched, and then blankets with slits cut in the center for her head were draped upon her body. The blankets too were drenched.
In the end, Carrot was a walking lump of fabric, entirely covered with sheets and blankets, even her head. Everything was wet, cold, and heavy. She could barely see and hardly breathe through the layers of bedsheets covering her face. She was led to the modified catapult, which had been set on the path that led to the mill pond. Once she was in place, Men looped a towing rope to each arm, draping each rope over her shoulders.
She felt a light pat on her arm. It was Norian. He smiled and bowed his head. “Carrot, I have never met man or woman as brave as you. It is an honor to call you my friend.”
“I am honored to have you as a friend, Norian.” The response was barely intelligible through the sheets. Her attempt at a bow was more of a wobble. She wondered at how ridiculous she must look.
Carrot faced the path – what she hoped was the path – and gulped a deep breath. With a grunt to overcome the inertia of the wheels, she trundled the catapult along the path, into the poison ring.
Every step was a fight. It would have been so even without the added mass and bulk of the sopping bedding, even without the stench of wet hay that stung her nasal passages and lungs. Her eyes watered, her face burned.
She passed a fox that lay sprawled, eyes shut and paws twitching. A crow limped and cawed mournfully. Thankfully, there was no sight of a human corpse.
Carrot blinked her eyes from the tearing, nearly tripped and ran into a rut. With a grunting heave she broke free.
When she had been atop the tree with Mirian and Bok earlier that evening, she had estimated the thickness of the poison ring at a hundred meters. But that was by sight. By physical exertion, it seemed a thousand. It seemed endless. Then she started to cough.
At last the smell went away and so did the sensations of burning on her face and wrists. She breathed freely once more. Her coughing lessened, and she could sense that her healing abilities were bringing her to rapid recovery. Exhausted, she fell to her hands and knees. She plucked off the gloves and unwound the sheets around her head.
As she started to pull off the blankets wrapping her body, she heard a noise behind her, coming from the direction of the ring. It sounded like the rustle of legs through high grass. Puzzled, she turned about, still on hands and knees, and looked up. A few meters away, a figure approached. The figure was holding a basket.
“Hello, dear,” Athena said. “I'll take back my gun now.”
Athena had shorn her bindings while Carrot's limbs, sword and the gun were under the layers of sheets and blankets. Athena must have sensed the vulnerability, for she strode confidently.
“HeeeYAAAAH!”
The man's scream came from behind Athena. She whirled and there was Norian, sprinting through the ring. He halted, waving his sword with both hands.
“Get away from her!” he shouted. He started to cough – worse than before.
“Norian!” Carrot cried. “No!”
Norian circled around Athena. Athena rotated to constantly face him. He stopped when he was inbetween the two women. Athena's puzzlement turned to a smirk.
“You thought to torture me,” she said. “Well then, it seems I need to teach you a lesson.” She raised her hand and tilted her palm vertically.
Carrot recognized the action from her encounters with Inoldia and shouted, “Norian, watch out!”
Athena's palm exploded a dart toward Norian's chest. Norian's sword batted it away. Athena frowned for a second or so, gently dropped her basket – and then she bolted toward him. She moved so fast that even Carrot saw only a blur. Athena leaped and flew toward Norian's throat. Carrot knew that Norian would die.
Norian, however, did not seem to know that. He sidestepped and his blade moved faster than Carrot had ever seen it move in practice, directly into Athena's path. Athena reacted with impossible speed, twisting herself out of the way, but the blade twitched so fast it seemed in two places at once and it slashed her arm. Athena screamed as she hurled over Carrot and crashed into the pond.
Carrot spared no time in ripping away the blankets from her chest. She plunged her hand into her coat and withdrew the gun and remembered how Athena held it. She turned and aimed at Athena, who was rising out of the water. Carrot squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened.
Norian charged past, flashing his sword as he slogged into the water. Athena's wide eyes were drawn to the glint of moonlight on metal. She bolted again, but this time to streak away from them both, scooping the basket as she did. As fast as she had moved before, she was in the woods and out of sight.
Continuing to squeeze the trigger without result, Carrot cursed at the weapon. Was it out of pellets? No, that would be too much coincidence. There must be a locking mechanism –
Norian began coughing and wheezing. Carrot dropped the gun, squirmed out of the bedding and rushed into the water. Norian fell against her, hacking continuously. She helped him to land and knelt him to the grass.
“I'm sorry, Carrot,” he said between chokings. “She burst her ropes like they were threads!”
“You shouldn't have come,” she whimpered. “You shouldn't have come!”
“Carrot,” he choked. “This army needs a leader more than the blade of one more fool!”
Then he closed his eyes and coughed again, and with his phlegm came blood.
If someone had suggested the day before that she would ever have had Norian on his back while unbuttoning his shirt, she would have been scandalized. But that she did in order to place her hands on his chest and will: Heal. Heal. Heal!
Matt said that her healing power was in the form of things called 'nanobots,' tiny artificial creatures that were distributed throughout her body, millions upon millions, somehow responding to her intentions just as would an arm or leg, eye or mouth. As she concentrated on Norian, the nanobots collected at the point of contact between her hands and his lungs, leaving her body midway through the process of her healing. Her coughing resumed as his subsided. His breathing, however, continued to be irregular, and he had lost consciousness.
“Arcadia!” The call came from the south, around the edge of the pond. She heard the clop of hooves, saw horses burst down a path. She had to clear her eyes before they confirmed what her ears had heard: her father at the lead.
“Stay away!” she shouted as he tried to embrace her. “I'm covered with poison.” Keeping her hands on her patient, she gestured to the base with her head. “The base is ringed by poison that was dropped by an airship!”
“Are you all right?”
“I am.” Her coughing belied the claim. With coughs between every sentence, she said: “The catapult is over there. The poison will be neutralized with water. Fill the tub with water and aim toward the base. A path must be made. So that the people. The people can – “
“Speak no more, Daughter. I'll attend to it – and have a fire built to dry you!”
He shouted at the men he'd brought and the catapult was readied. Soon bursts of water were flung across the ring, enabling the catapult to advance before it flung again, eating a path
through the poison. Within an hour – eternity for Carrot – the soldiers began streaming through.
Mirian arrived and silently watched Carrot tend to Norian in the light and heat of the misleadingly cheerful fire that had been built to warm and dry Carrot. Senti arrived, made Norian to sip from a bottle, and spread the contents of her satchel. With the healer's nod, Carrot released Norian into her care. Carrot went back to where she had dropped the gun. As she returned it to her coat, she arose to find herself facing Major Hagan.
Hagan saluted crisply and said, “Awaiting your orders, Colonel.”
14.
“Matt, it is time to wake up.”
Matt opened his eyes. He was seeing in visual enhancement, as it was otherwise pitch dark to human sight. He was lying flat upon a metal grating, in what appeared to be a tiny room with metal walls. Over his head was a raceway full of cables, at his side was an electric motor and gearbox. He remembered: he had taken refuge in an equipment housing within the gas-cell galleries of the Nemesis.
Ivan's widgets floated in his field of vision and Matt read the readouts. It was six hours since he'd told Ivan to knock him out. His hypermode charge was finally at full.
Matt stretched and yawned, feeling well-rested despite all Ivan's admonitions that 'natural sleep is best.' With rest came optimism. Maybe he could still get out of this. True, he was aboard a giant military airship in the middle of a sea, alone and weaponless. But they still hadn't caught him, and with his implant powers fully restored, he felt that he had a fair chance at escape.
“Ivan, where is the ship now?”
“Inertial guidance indicates that we are approximately fifty-one kilometers from our previous position.”
“That's probably from being blown by the wind. Then the repairs aren't finished.”
Prior to finding a place within the service galleries in order to sleep, Matt had poked his head out of access portals to gain a full view of their environment. That had not been informative. They were surrounding by clouds and sea, with the storm barrier a dark bar in the west. External views of the ship, however, told a more interesting story.
Nemesis had not escaped unscathed from its encounter with the sky serpent. The starboard envelope plating had been scorched black over hundreds of square meters. The lower vertical rudder had become jammed. The rearmost engine housing on the starboard side had been belching a trail of black smoke.
“Let's see how they're doing with the repairs,” he said. “Is the passage clear?”
“I detect no auditory or olfactory indications of human presence,” Ivan replied.
Grabbing the parachute that he'd used as a pillow, Matt crawled to the housing access door – about the size of an old-fashioned pet door – and squeezed out to the lighted passage. The interior of the airship envelope was vaguely similar to that of the Good Witch: a human-weight-supporting walkway that extended from one end of the envelope to the other, providing service and maintenance access between the gas cells. However, it was on a whole different scale – with a second gallery above and side passages as well. Mazes of pipes and electrical conduits wove between the rows of cells, providing pressurization, stabilization, and status-monitoring.
“Let's find a portal,” Matt said, slipping the parachute onto his back.
He followed Ivan's AR arrow tailward. Ivan warned that crewmen were approaching from a cross passage. Matt hid behind a stanchion until they were past. He reached the end of the walkway, descended a ladder, unlatched the portal hatch and poked his head outside the airship.
Harsh moonlight gleamed through the clouds. The storm barrier was still visible, roiling above the horizon in the west. Below, as expected, was still empty sea.
He turned his attention to the status of repairs. What appeared to be the airship equivalent of bandages had been attached over the worst spots of skin-scorching. The engine housing had stopped belching smoke, and as he watched, the propeller started to windmill. Workers in harnesses dangled from lines dropped from the elevator-fin, hammering the rudder-fin with rubbery mallets, flashlight beams jiggling with every whack.
We've got to get moving, Matt thought. The sooner they arrived over Britan, the sooner he could parachute down and rejoin Carrot and the others.
He briefly considered impersonating a crew member and assisting in the repairs. But no, it was best to be patient and remain hidden. On that, he thought, it might be best if he moved his hiding place. The trick would be to a find a place where they'd already looked, and wouldn't look again until Britan. He pulled his head in, dogged the hatch, stood up straight and pondered.
“Matt, I am detecting the probable presence of Savora,” Ivan said.
Ivan displayed a pop-up of a diagram of the galleries. A green dot showed Matt's position, a scattering of red dots showed Savora's possible positions. The closest red dot was only fifty meters away down a cross-passage
“You're in stealth mode, aren't you? How did she find us?”
“It is likely she is doing so by olfactory tracking methods, the same as I am utilizing to track her.”
Matt studied the diagram. It was like a quantum probability wave: Savora could physically be at only one of the red dots, but if he guessed wrong, he would run right into her. With hypermode reserves at full, they would be evenly matched, but he didn't want a confrontation if he could avoid it. The problem was that he was against the rear bulkhead and had nowhere to retreat, while the red dots were everywhere ahead – and coming closer.
Matt returned to the skin access hatch, swung it open and climbed backward onto the skin of the ship once again. He climbed upward, arising onto the top platform between the dual envelopes. He walked forward beneath a vast sky of stars and wind-whipped clouds and the words came to mind: So beautiful, so deadly. Fortunately, the countering wind was light. If the ship had been underway, it would have been a lot harder to make progress against it. Even as it was, he held attentively onto the handrail, mindful that a powerful gust could send him plunging to the sea.
Near the nose loomed the blister of an observation station. One small window faced tailward, but apparently no one had bothered to look through it and see his approach, or could not tell him apart from a regular crew member given the distance and dark. Or maybe they had spotted him, he thought, and they were being sneaky about sneaking up on him. Whatever it was, he decided he should get out of sight before he was seen.
At midway on the ship's length, he took a cross-platform to the port side and climbed down handholds to another access hatch. He slipped inside. The interior gallery was empty. He had time; he took a moment to think.
To know what he had to do next, Matt had to consider the likely actions of his huntress. Savora had detected his scent before, would figure he had gone outside and would come inside again at some point. Therefore, she would probably be coming forward to search. It would be best to keep moving in a random pattern. Matt started forward, hoping to stay ahead.
Ivan warned, “Matt. I detect men at the cross passage in front of you.”
Matt turned and walked the other way.
Ivan warned, “Matt. I detect men at the cross passage in front of you.”
You just said that, Matt thought. But Ivan was right – two groups of men appeared at once, at both the nearest noseward and tailward cross passages. The men noseward had guns, those tailward did not. Matt hurried tailward.
He heard shouting behind his back and the men in front of him – three crew in all – spread to block him. He prepared to fight, but then a bullet ricocheted against the platform grating, fired by the group behind his back. The men in front cowered instinctively. With two hands administering joy-buzzer shocks, Matt broke through, took the next cross passage, then down the port gallery, then another cross passage, then up a ladder, then – it was like a three-dimensional maze. Ivan kept track, but Matt had no idea where he was. He hoped his pursuers didn't either.
“You would think they would be more careful,” he said as he slowed and caught his b
reath. “Shooting in a place full of explosive gas!”
“The passages are well ventilated so that hydrogen gas presence is kept low,” Ivan replied. “Also, the ship possesses a large quantity of explosion and fire suppression countermeasures.”
“How do you know that?”
“From the equipment labels on the walls.”
“Glad one of us has time to read.”
Ivan's pop-up identified their position as one quarter of the ship's length forward from the tail. If they continued tailward, they would run into Savora again. Matt paused to consider alternatives. He couldn't go tailward (Savora), he couldn't go noseward (crew). The cross and upward passages led to the skin hatches, but he had a hunch that the crew had gotten wise to that trick and would be watching outside for him.
The only remaining alternative was down. He climbed the ladder to the lower walkway, and then continued through a hatchway that had been secured open. His feet landed onto the upper deck inside the gondola. Ivan reported the cross-passages clear. Matt wandered, checking door locks on the rooms that Ivan reported were empty. Look for a place to hide, Matt thought, remembering that he would have to hide from scent as well as sight.
“Matt,” Ivan said. “I detect an increased probability of health danger if we continue tailward.”
“What do you mean?”
“I have detected trace amounts of a gaseous compound hazardous to human life.”
Matt knew that Ivan chose his words carefully. Hydrogen was not a compound, so he didn't mean a leak from the cells.
“Can you describe the compound?”
“It is a mixture of several chemical formulas. However, the critical molecular component appears to be a lethality-enhanced derivation of phosgene.”
“Phosgene.” That sounded familiar. “Is there something special about that?”
“Phosgene in a gaseous state was used as a weapon in the Great European War.”
Matt remembered a VR game he had played long ago, whose setting was the Great European War. Men fought from trenches, shooting at the enemy lines across a muddy, lifeless battlefield called 'No Man's Land.' They bombarded one another with artillery shells filled with chemical explosives and poisonous gas. In the role of one of the 'doughboys,' Matt had to don a special breathing mask during a gas attack. He hadn't fitted it properly, poison gas got into his lungs and he had suffered a horrible death (so the game narrator informed). After spending more time in field hospitals than battle, Matt understood why the game had poor sales.
