Helmut grimaced: ‘Earl-Major Riordan’s orders, your grace, you and any other family we set eyes on. We are to leave none alive behind, and you’ll not make a family-killer of me.’ Louder: ‘To the evac cellar, lads! Double time!’
The young earl, perhaps alarmed at the unfamiliar sound of Anglischprache, moved a hand to his hip. ‘For queen and country!’ he shouted, and drew, lunging towards Helmut. Four more nobles were scarcely a step behind, all of them armed.
For palace guard duty, in the wake of the recent civil disorder, Earl-Major Riordan had begun to reequip his men with FN P90s. A stubby, melted-looking device little larger than a flintlock pistol, the P90 was an ultracompact submachine gun, designed for special forces and armored vehicle crews. Helmut’s men were so equipped, and as the misguided young blood ran at them they opened fire. Unlike a traditional submachine gun, the P90 fired low-caliber armor-piercing rounds at a prodigious rate from a large magazine. In the stone-walled hall, the detonations merged into a continuous concussive rasp. They fired for three seconds: sufficient to spray nearly two hundred rounds into the crowd from less than thirty feet.
As the sudden silence rang in Patricia’s numb and aching ears her abductor shuffled forward, carefully managing his footing as he slid across blood-slick flagstones. The wounded and dying were moaning and screaming distantly in her ears, behind the thick cotton-wool wadding that seemed to fill her head. The light began to flicker beyond the windows again, this time brightening the daylight perceptibly. Helmut led the way to the door, raising his own weapon as his guards discarded their empty magazines and reloaded; then he ducked through into the next reception room. Patricia looked down from the shoulder of her bearer, into the staring eyes of a dead master of stonemasons. He sprawled beside a lady-in-waiting, or the wife of a baron’s younger son. My people, she thought distantly. Mother dearest wanted me to look after them.
They stumbled out of the cloister around the palace into the sunlit afternoon of a summer’s day, onto the tidily manicured lawn within the walled grounds. Something was wrong with the shadows, she noticed, watching Helmut’s feet: There were too many suns in the sky. ‘Don’t look up,’ he shouted, loudly enough that she couldn’t help but hear him and raise her eyes briefly. Too many suns.
The northern wall of the palace grounds was silhouetted with the deepest black, long shadows etched across the grass towards her, flickering and brightening and dimming. A moment of icy terror twisted at her guts as she saw that Helmut and his guard were hurrying towards one of the smaller outbuildings ahead. Its doorway gaped open on darkness. ‘What’s that?’ she asked.
‘Gatehouse. There’s a cellar, doppelgängered.’
She saw other figures crawling antlike across the too-bright lawn. Nukes, she realized. They must be using all the nukes. For a moment she felt every second of her sixty-two years. ‘Put me down,’ she called.
‘No.’ The response came from Helmut. Her bearer was panting hard, all but jogging. Her weight on his back was shoving him down: He had no more breath to reply than any other servant might.
They were nearly at the building. Helmut hung back, gestured at her rescuer. ‘Now,’ he snarled. ‘Drop her and go.’
The man let Patricia slide to the ground, twisting to lay her down, then without pause rose and dashed forward to the entrance. Helmut knelt beside her. ‘Do you want to die?’ he asked, politely enough.
Behind him the sky cracked open again. Getting closer. She licked dry lips. ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘But I deserve to.’
‘Lots of people do. It has nothing to do with their fate.’ He slid an arm beneath her and, grunting, levered her up off the ground and into his arms. ‘Arms round my neck.’ He stumbled forward, into the darkness, following his men – who hadn’t bothered to wait.
‘I failed them,’ she confessed as Helmut’s boots thudded on the steps down into the cellar. ‘We drew this down on them.’
‘They’re not our people. They never were.’ He grunted again, reaching the bottom. ‘We’re not part of them, any more than we were part of the Anglischprache who’re coming to kill us. And if you reached your age without learning that, you’re a fool.’
‘But we had a duty – ’ She stopped, a stab of grim amusement penetrating the oppressive miasma of guilt. It was the same old argument, liberal versus conservative by any other name. ‘Let’s finish this later.’
‘Now she talks sense.’ There was an overhead electric light at the bottom, dangling from the top of the vaulted arch of the ceiling. The stonework grumbled faintly, dislodging a shower of plaster and whitewash dust; shadows rippled as the bulb shivered on the end of its cord. Someone had nailed a poster-sized sheet of laminated paper against the wall, bearing an intricate knotwork design that made her eyes hurt. Helmut stepped forward onto the empty circle chalked on the floor. The guards had already crossed over. ‘I’ll carry your grace,’ he told her. Then he turned to face the family sigil and focus.
‘I’m not your grace anymore,’ Iris tried to say; but neither of them were there anymore when she finished the sentence.
*
Sixty miles north of Niejwein, the first wave of B-52s finished unloading their rotary dispensers. Their crews breathed a sigh of relief as they threw the levers to close their bomb-bay doors, and the DSOs began the checklist to reactivate their ARMBAND devices for the second and final time. Behind them, the second wave of bombers smoothly took their place in the bomb line.
One of them, the plane with the single device in its front bay, flew straight toward the enemy city. With the target confirmed in visual range, her DSO keyed a radio transmitter – a crude, high-powered low-bandwidth signal that would punch through the static hash across the line of sight to the other aircraft in the force. To either side, the formation split, the neighboring aircraft following prearranged courses to give it a wide berth. Twelve miles was an acceptable safety margin for a one-megaton weapon, but not for the device this aircraft carried.
(‘I’m going to send them a message,’ the president had said. ‘Who?’ his chief of staff replied, an ironic tilt to his eyebrow. ‘The Russians.’ The president smirked. ‘Who did you think I meant?’)
The single huge bomb crammed into the special bomber’s bay was a B53; at nine megatons, the largest H-bomb ever fielded by the US military: a stubby cylinder the size of a pickup truck. The bomber rose sharply as the B53 fell away from the bomb bay. A sequence of parachutes burst from its tail, finally expanding into three huge canopies as its carrier aircraft closed its bay doors and the flight crew ran the engines up to full thrust, determined to clear the area as fast as possible.
To either side of the heavyweight, the megaton bursts continued – a raster burn of blowtorch flames chewing away at the edge of the world. Behind the racing bomber force the sky was a wall of darkness pitted with blazing rage, domed clouds expanding and rising and flaring and dimming with monotonous precision every few seconds. The ground behind the nuclear frontal system was blackened and charred, thousands of square miles of forest and field caught in a single vast firestorm as the separate waves of incineration fanning out from each bomb intersected and reinforced each other. The winds rushing into the zone were already strengthening towards hurricane force; the bombers struggled against an unexpected sixty-knot jet stream building from the south.
Beneath its parachutes, the bulbous B53 slowly descended towards the city. The strobing flare of distant apocalypses flashed ruby highlights across its burnished shell as it twisted in the wind, drifting towards the roof of a well-to-do carpenter’s house on the Sheepmarket Street to the south of the city. The carpenter and his wife and apprentices were standing outside, staring at the horizon in gape-jawed dismay. ‘If it be a thunderstorm it’s an unseasonal huge one,’ he told his wife. ‘Better fetch in your washing – ’ He whirled at the crashing and crunching from the roof. ‘Who did that!’ Instant rage caught him as he saw the deflating dome of a white parachute descend across the yard. ‘If that be your idea of a
prank, Pitr – ’
Niejwein, population just under sixty thousand, two and a half miles by one and a quarter, Niejwein, capital of the Gruinmarkt – all gone.
Wiped away as if a bullet had slammed through a map pasted across a target.
Niejwein: home to just under sixty thousand artisans and trades-men and their families, and almost two hundred aristocrats and their servants and hangers-on, and previously home to as many as ninety members of the Clan – of whom only eleven remained at this point – all brought to a laser-bright end by a flash of light from the heart of a star.
The boiling, turbulent fireball resulting from the surface laydown expanded in a fraction of a second until it was over a mile in diameter. At its periphery, the temperature was over a hundred thousand degrees: Stone-boiled, the bodies of man and animal flashed into vapor. A short distance beyond it – out to five miles – the heat was enough to melt iron structures. Castles and palaces only a mile or two beyond the fireball, be their walls made of stone and never so thick as a man’s body, slumped and then shattered on the shock wave like houses of cards before a hand grenade.
There would be no survivors in Niejwein. Indeed, there could have been no survivors in the open within fifteen miles, had not the other bombers of the strike force continued to plow their fields with the fires of hell.
It was not the intention of the planners who designed Operation CARTHAGE to leave any survivors, even in subsurface cellars.
The firestorm raged steadily down the coast, marching at the pace of a speeding jet bomber. Behind it, the clouds boiled up into the stratosphere, taking with them tens of millions of tons of radioactive ash and dust. Already the sun was paling behind the funeral pyre.
In the aftermath, the people of the Gruinmarkt might well be the luckiest of all. It was their fate to be gone in a flash or burned in a fire: a brief agony, compared with the chill and starvation that were to follow all around their world.
*
Huw was in the shed near the far end of the vegetable garden, tightening the straps on his pressure suit, when Brilliana found him.
‘What in Sky Father’s name do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded.
She was, Huw realized abstractedly, even more pretty when she was angry: the brilliant beauty of a lightning-edged thundercloud. Not even the weird local fashions she wore in this place could change that. He straightened up. ‘What does it look like I’m doing?’
Yul chipped in: ‘He’s getting ready to – ’
Brill turned on him. ‘Shut up and get out,’ she said flatly, her voice dangerously overcontrolled.
‘But he needs me to – ’
‘Out!’ She waved her fist at him.
‘Give us some space, bro,’ Huw added. ‘Don’t worry, she won’t shoot me without a trial.’
‘You think so?’ She waited, fists on hips, until Hulius vacated the shed and the door scraped shut behind him. ‘You’re not going to do this, Huw. I forbid it.’
‘Someone has to do it,’ he pointed out. ‘I’ve got the equipment and, more importantly, the experience to go into an uncharted world.’
‘It’s not an uncharted world, it’s our world. And you’re not going. You don’t need to go. That’s an order.’
‘You’re not supposed to give me orders – ’
‘Then it’s an order from Helge – ’
‘ – Isn’t she busy visiting her special friend in New London right now?’
Brill glared at him. ‘It will be one, as soon as I tell her. Don’t think I won’t!’
‘But if the Americans – ’
‘Listen to me!’ She stepped in front of him, standing on her toes until he couldn’t help but see eye-to-eye with her. ‘We got a report.’
‘Oh?’ Huw backed down. Heroic reconnaissance into the unknown was one thing, but wasting resources was something else. ‘Who from? What’s happened?’
‘Patricia’s guards came across. They wired us a report and Brionne’s only just decrypted it. They were in the palace when the sky lit up, the entire horizon north of Niejwein. Helmut reported at least thirty thermonuclear detonations lighting up over the horizon, probably many more of them, getting progressively closer over the ten minutes before he issued the order to evacuate. They were carpet-bombing with H-bombs. Now do you understand why you’re not crossing over?’
Huw looked puzzled. ‘How do you know they were H-bombs?’
‘Hello?’ Brill’s nostrils flared as she squinted at him. ‘They lit up the sky from over the horizon in clear daylight and they took a minute to fade! What else do you think they might be?’
‘Oh.’ After a moment, Huw unbuckled the fastener on his left glove. ‘More than thirty of them? Coming towards Niejwein?’
Brill nodded mutely.
‘Oh.’ He sat down heavily on the stool he’d been using while Yul helped him into the explorer’s pressure suit. ‘Oh shit.’ He paused. ‘We’ll have to go back eventually.’
‘Yes. But not in the middle of a firestorm. It was only a couple of hours ago.’
‘There’s a firestorm?’
‘What do you think?’
‘We’re stranded here.’
‘Full marks, my pretty one.’
Huw looked up at her. ‘My parents were going to evacuate; I should find out if they made it in time. What about your – ’
She avoided his eyes. ‘What do you think?’
‘I’m sorry – ’
‘Don’t be.’ She made a cutting gesture, but her eyes seemed to glisten in the afternoon light filtered through the hazy window glass. ‘I burned my bridges with my father years ago. And my mother would never think to stand up to him. He told her to stop writing to me. I’ve been dead to them for years.’
‘But if they’re – ’
‘Shut up and think about your brother, Huw. At least you’ve got Yul. How do you think he feels?’
‘He – ’ Huw worked at the chin strap of his helmet. ‘Damn. Where’s Elena? Is she – ’
‘Turn your head. This way.’ She knelt and worked the strap loose, then unclipped it. Huw lifted the helmet off. ‘Better.’ She straightened up. A moment later Huw rose to his feet. He stood uncertainly before her. ‘I last saw Elena half an hour ago.’
‘Sky Father be praised.’
‘That’s one way of putting it.’ She watched him uncertainly. ‘Do you understand what’s happening to us?’
Huw took a breath. ‘No,’ he admitted. ‘You’re sure they were hydrogen bombs – ’
‘Denial and half a shilling will get you a cup of coffee, Huw.’
‘Then we’re all orphans. Even those of us whose parents came along.’
‘Yes.’ Brill choked back an ugly laugh. ‘Those of us who haven’t been orphaned all along.’
‘But you haven’t been – ’ He stopped. ‘Uh. I was going to ask you to, uh, but this is the wrong time.’
‘Huw.’ She was, she realized, standing exactly the wrong distance away from him: not close enough, not far enough. ‘I didn’t hear that. If you were going to say what I think you meant to say. Yes, it’s the wrong time for that.’
He swallowed, then looked at her. A moment later she was in his arms, hugging him fiercely.
‘If we’re orphans there’s nobody to force us together or hold us apart,’ he whispered in her ear. ‘No braids, no arranged marriages, no pressure. We can do what we want.’
‘Maybe,’ she said, resting her chin on his shoulder. ‘But don’t underestimate the power of ghosts. And external threats.’
‘There are no ghosts strong enough to scare me away from you.’
His sincerity scared her at the same time as it enthralled her. She twisted away from his embrace. ‘I need some time to myself,’ she said. ‘Time to mourn. Time to grow.’
He nodded. A shadow crossed his face. ‘Yes.’
‘We don’t know what we’re getting into,’ she warned.
‘True.’ He nodded, then looked away and began to work at the fa
steners on his pressure suit.
She paused, one hand on the doorknob. ‘You didn’t ask me your question,’ she said, wondering if it was the right thing to do.
‘I didn’t?’ He looked up, confused, then closed his mouth. ‘Oh. But it’s the wrong time. Your parents – ’
‘They’re dead. Ask me anyway.’ She forced a smile. ‘Assuming we’re not talking at cross-purposes.’
‘Oh! All right.’ He took a deep breath. ‘My lady. Will you marry me?’ Not the normal turn of phrase, which was more along the lines of May I take your daughter’s hand in marriage?
‘I thought you’d never ask,’ she said.
‘But I thought you – ’ He shook his head. ‘Forgive me, I’m slow.’
‘I’m an orphan, over the age of majority,’ she reminded him. ‘No estates, no guardians, no braids, no dowry. You know I don’t come with so much as a clipped groat or a peasant’s plot?’
‘Do I look like I care?’
She walked back towards him; they met halfway across the floor of the hut. ‘No. But I wasn’t certain.’
‘For you, my lady’ – they leaned together – ‘I’d willingly go over the wall.’ To defect from the Clan, to voluntarily accept outlawry and exile: It was not a trivial offer.
‘You don’t need to,’ she murmured. She kissed him, hard, on the mouth: not for the first time, but for the first time on these new terms, with no thought of concealment. ‘Nobody now alive in this world will gainsay us.’ Her knees felt weak at the thought. ‘Not my father, nor your mother.’ Even if his mother had lived to enter this exile, she was unlikely to reject any Clan maid her son brought before her, however impoverished; they were, indeed, all orphans, all destitute. ‘No need to fear a blood feud anymore. All the Clan’s chains are rusted half away.’
‘I wonder how long it’ll take the others to realize? And what will they all do when they work it out . . . ?’
The Revolution Trade (Merchant Princes Omnibus 3) Page 63
