Suicide Run (Engines of Liberty Book 2)

by Graham Bradley

  The only area he hadn’t seen was the lower part of a massive hollow in the middle, and he had yet to meet anyone who’d been down there. More than likely it was the face of the old mine, deep and barren. It bore little relevance to his primary concern: Camp Liberty was a cage, but it wasn’t a magical one. He could find a way out.

  The day after learning about the HAM radio, Calvin lay awake

  in the dark, eyes staring up at the canvas of the Rebel Hearts’ tent. His mind raced all night, envisioning how he would make it to the camp’s front doors. Although their guns remained under lock and key when they weren’t training, he carried his knife at all times, fighting the urge to throw it at Captain Hamilton whenever he strode past.

  He had an idea of how he would pull off his plan. All he needed was the right when. His nerves almost got to him half a dozen times, prompting him to take a run at the radio office before he was truly ready, but he kept himself in check. The only thing worse than doing nothing would be to fail.

  As it would turn out, Captain Hamilton gave him the final push that he needed.

  Lunchtime. Calvin sat with his brigade and made casual conversation, talking about how hard it was to change an alternator coil on a dragonling, and how the gryphons would benefit from better balance on the y-axis. He kept one ear turned to the officer’s table not far away, where Hamilton sat with a few underlings, some of whom were older than the good captain.

  “Been at this for nine years already,” Hamilton was saying.

  “Serious? How old are you?” someone asked.

  “Eighteen. Penn found me in Virginia, been doing it ever since. Literally half my life, you believe that? So yeah, I’m young, but I know what I’m doing. Rank is a matter of know-how, not age. We wrap this thing up, and I’m retiring from the service.”

  “As a war hero,” said one of Hamilton’s comrades.

  “And the war will be over. All we’ll need after that is a force to keep the mages on their side of the pond. I’ve already got a girl back home to mother my litter and everything.” Hamilton drained his glass. “Life is good, gentlemen.”

  Calvin folded another fork, concealing it under the table when Hank’s eyes fell upon him.

  “You all right, Calvin?”

  “Top shape, Hank.”

  Hamilton was in for a rude awakening, and soon.

  *

  That night, Calvin went for it.

  He’d volunteered for smelter duty in the afternoon—one of the less-desirable jobs in camp. It involved sorting through junk that the salvage crews had found up on the surface during their nocturnal excursions. Most of it was junk that ended up in the smelter, where it would be turned into other things. The area was loud, the air stank with noxious fumes, and lots of guys got burned if they weren’t careful.

  Calvin took the duty for a reason: he needed a gun. He had no chance of making one that actually worked, but he figured he could find one that looked like it worked. In the end he had pieced one together with zero trigger resistance and a loose hammer, but it would work. Concealing the gun in an ankle holster fashioned from a strip of an old tunic, Calvin finished his shift and began the walk back to the Rebel Heart barracks. Not coincidentally, he’d have to

  walk right past the HAM radio office to get there.

  *

  At 10 PM, a grenade rolled down the hallway to the HAM

  office. One of the guards’ eyes widened and he dived for it, fingers frantically working at the spoon to remove the detonator core. The other guard pulled his pistol on a swarthy figure that appeared in the hallway, but the gun stuck in his holster for half a crucial second.

  The attacker clubbed the second guard over the head with a pistol—just to stun him, not knock him out—and pried the guard’s gun from his hand. Duly armed, the attacker leveled both weapons at his victims. When the dummy grenade failed to go off, the guards saw their folly laid bare.

  “Y’all stay real quiet now,” Calvin warned. “You know what happens else wise.”

  A minute later they were handcuffed back to back, their mouths gagged and their feet bound. Calvin took their keys and unlocked the HAM radio office.

  Get in, call Amelia, tell her the truth. Set a place and time to meet, and get gone. It was a simple plan, so he figured there was little that could go wrong. Breathing in deep, he brandished the guns—fake in his left, real in his right—and stepped inside.

  Little did he know that his next moves would alter the rest of his life, the fate of Camp Liberty, and the course of the entire continent for all of time.

  CHAPTER 5

  Without a carpet, Godfrey trudged through the swamp until he came across an old witch’s shack, from whom he pilfered a broom. Kalfu had had a spare broom, but Godfrey wasn’t about to accept a favor from the sangromancer. Some people were like faeries when it came to charity: you could never pay them back for just the act of a loan. You’d have to pay them back for every residual benefit of the loan, which in this case would be every good thing that would happen to Godfrey from now until the end of time, and there was no such thing as cheating a sangromancer out of a deal.

  So he hadn’t taken Kalfu’s broom.

  He was still far from the lodestone, but brooms were simpler

  than carpets. Godfrey nursed it into the air and flew east, enjoying the sense of his power growing stronger. under his own power. Instead of returning to the Ohio, he flew to New Birmingham, Alabama, where Fitz’s badge knew of a bestiary. The owner had lent her services to the Corps in years past, and after dealing with Maitre Kalfu, Godfrey felt he could handle a lowly beast-wrangler.

  At most bestiaries, he’d have been right. This one, however, was run by a different breed.

  Godfrey dismounted the broom and entered the main building, a ramshackle little structure held together by magic more than by hardware. For example, the wood planks in the walls weren’t flush, yet a permanent spell drew energy from the sun outside and channeled it into a shield to keep out dust and wind. The doors had neither handles nor locks, but Godfrey suspected that they wouldn’t open outside of business hours, or to any unauthorized patron. And in the front foyer, a wooden fan spun overhead, etched with a clever Saxon runes that made it move faster when the outside temperature rose.

  He rang the bell on the counter and dug Fitz’s badge out of his pocket.

  “Hello? I must speak with the owner of this establishment!” he shouted.

  A young lady emerged from the back room, her figure trim and muscular, covered primarily in form-fitting leathers and thin cotton fabric. She wore a leather vest and a black canvas skirt over skintight leggings that stopped just above the knee. Gatorskin boots accentuated the curves of her calves, and she kept long daggers strapped to either leg. Unlike most faunamancers Godfrey had known, she let her hair grow long, though she braided it in a stiff tail that reached almost to her waist. A bandana covered her forehead and most of her hair, giving her a working-girl image that invited no nonsense.

  “Yeah?” she demanded, half-interested.

  “Eh, the owner . . .” Godfrey trailed off.

  “You’re looking at her.” She had a lilting colonial accent. Fitz’s badge indicated to Godfrey that this was not the same owner Fitz had known.

  “Um, hello,” Godfrey said.

  “Something I can do for you, bobby?” She asked it in such a way as to imply that she wasn’t in the mood to waste her time.

  “I was under the impression that Iphigenia Brimble was the manager?”

  “Aunt Iffie kicked the bucket two years back, din’t she? Ain’t no warm fuzzy neither, thanks for bringing it up.”

  “My apologies, I—”

  “Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I’m Sophronia Brimble, this is my gig. You got coin or what?” She fixed him with a hard stare.

  Godfrey didn’t like that; he’d meant to come from a position of power. He’d have to come at her tough, really play the hard mage if he was to get her services. He curled his lip and tried not to straighten
up too abruptly.

  “Name’s Fitznottingham, Deputy of His Majesty’s Continental

  Bureau of Intelligence.” He flashed the badge like he’d seen Fitz do it a dozen times. “I require the services of three fast airborne animals, post-haste. Official business.”

  “You’re a kid.”

  At this, Godfrey glared. “And a bloody accomplished one. Age matters less than skill, Miss Brimble.”

  “Oh bollocks, you ain’t commandeering my flock, are ye?” Sophronia demanded. Godfrey steeled himself, doubling down on the act.

  “In the name of the Crown, yes. You will be generously compensated for answering the call to aid the kingdom in this time of crisis.”

  “I’d better,” she growled, and mumbled something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like wanker. “I’ve only got one other flyer on duty. Can you handle a wyvern?”

  “Done it before.” Godfrey hoped that wyverns weren’t too different from gryphons.

  “I have three of them, the rest are out on jobs. Just so you know, this will be expensive.” Sophronia folded her arms and tapped a finger on her bicep. Godfrey made a show of considering it before allowing a small concession.

  “I’m authorized to offer you one and a quarter times your standard rate,” he lied. Her eyes widened.

  “Well then. That’s a squick more generous than the fifty percent they forked out last time. What’d you say your name was, bobby?”

  “Norring . . . that is, Nottingham. Fitznottingham. Winston.”

  “Right. For that price, I’ll even put on saddles. Hop to.” She motioned for Godfrey to follow her out the back.

  He allowed himself a subdued grin; she’d fallen for it. Then again, being generous with Sophronia certainly couldn’t hurt his prospects. Godfrey pegged her for a year or two his senior, and quite the fit bird, for a colonial. He kept his interest hidden, so that she would have time to take an interest in him first, as she inevitably would. Always come from a position of power, Father had said. Ironic, yes, considering father’s position, but even a pillock could speak truth.

  The rear door led to a large wooden enclosure with a high, half-open roof. The floor level was separated into eight paddocks of equal size, lined with straw and the dung of different species. Two paddocks held wyverns, the giant winged saurians that were between gryphons and dragons in size. Whereas dragons had four limbs and two wings, wyverns had only wings and hind legs, with a long, flat tail for steering in the air. They couldn’t breathe fire and they were notoriously disobedient on the battlefield, but they could fly great distances on little nourishment.

  “Handsome creatures, but you said three wyverns,” Godfrey said.

  “Third one’s inbound. My beau had a dispatch this morning,” Sophronia said.

  Godfrey stiffened at the revelation that she had a man in her life. He didn’t get a chance to compose a response before a shadow

  darkened the roof-hole overhead. He craned his neck as the third wyvern spread its wings and floated to the ground, landing with a softness that defied its size. At the rider’s behest, it tucked its wings and bobbed over to its paddock. The rider dismounted, keeping the reins in hand, and Godfrey got a good look at him. He was a solid-jawed British tar, fully six inches taller than Godfrey, and he sported an impressive collection of scars on his arms and face, augmenting his rugged appearance.

  “Mornin’, love,” he said, flashing Sophronia a bright smile. Blast it all, his teeth were even straight! Godfrey unconsciously pressed his lips together over his own crooked incisors.

  Sophronia winked at the man. “Nigel, this is Fitznottingham, of the Royal Intelligence Whatsit,” she said, gesturing to Godfrey. “This is Nigel Sharpe, ace faunamancer and the most experienced flyer this side of the Atlantic.”

  “Pleasure, then.” Nigel stuck out his hand for Godfrey to shake, which he reluctantly did. Ugh, he had a snotty London accent—Hammersmith, if it was anywhere. Did this man have anything about him that wasn’t worth hating?

  “Pleasure, yes. You know what, we might only need two wyverns for this gig,” Godfrey thought aloud.

  “Oh, but you’ll like this, Fitznottingham. Bruno and Lucie here are twins. They can stay linked over thousands of miles. We can spread out and cover more ground with them,” Sophronia said as Sharpe made adjustments to his wyvern’s saddle.

  Brilliant, Godfrey thought. He stroked his jaw as if thinking it

  over. “Better make use of that, then. How soon could you reach Port Atlantis, Mr. Sharpe?”

  Nigel pursed his lips. “That’s right close to nine hundred miles from here.”

  And you don’t have to do it on a bloody carpet, Godfrey thought bitterly.

  “Should be there this time tomorrow morning, accounting for food and rest. I don’t suppose you have an address for me?” Nigel asked.

  “House of Commons. I’ll send further instructions when we’re in position on our end,” Godfrey said. “Sophronia, can your Lucie contact his Bruno from the Ohio territory?”

  Sophronia looked to Nigel. “Ain’t never been that far north, love.”

  Nigel again calculated the distance in his head, as if he knew the flight time between every location in the colonies. Godfrey fought the urge to roll his eyes.

  “Four hundred miles. Give or take. Should be a doddle.”

  “Swell. We leave an hour ago,” Godfrey said.

  They flew. Godfrey regretted having to lead the way, as it gave Sophronia a view of his wyvern’s posterior, making his inexperience rather obvious. He played it down to being out of practice, fuming every time she corrected his form.

  At least he’d gotten rid of Nigel.

  *

  The animals were fast. They reached Ohio shortly after mid-

  night, with only one stop to hunt and take their relief. After landing on a hill overlooking Youngstown, Sophronia dismounted and stretched her legs, while Godfrey tried not to fall over in agony. Damn, but the carpet was looking better.

  “What’s our quarry, then?” Sophronia watched the wyverns as they drank from a creek at the bottom of the hill.

  Trying to ignore the soreness in his thighs, Godfrey took her side and stared at the ruins of Youngstown by the weak light of a slivered moon. This wasn’t the same place he’d landed before. It gave him a new perspective on the terrain. “You’ve heard of the rabble that call themselves technomancers, yes?”

  “They’re just rumors,” Sophronia allowed. “Usually from drunks.”

  “Unfortunately not. My partners and I were ambushed by one, west of Maryland. Crafty little blighters,” Godfrey said.

  “How bad?”

  “Killed Birtwistle and Fitznottingham,” Godfrey said.

  “Ain’t your name Fitznottingham?”

  Godfrey gulped. Fortunately it was dark and she couldn’t see his face. “Right, I meant our apprentice. He killed Birt and the new chap. Really bugs me, as me an’ Birt were great mates. People always talked about us in the same breath you see, so whenever someone says ‘Birtwistle’ I usually think ‘and Fitznottingham.’”

  “Oh. Sorry about your mate, then.” She sounded sincere. “And

  you said it was just one? One ‘a them popped two of you and got away, and came here?”

  “Yes. Doesn’t feel like he’s left, either. Question is, if he’s still here, where the devil is he hiding?” Godfrey thought aloud.

  “Hold up then, mate. One techie takes on three mages and gets away. Now two of us are here and there’s more of him? Just what’n the bloody hell kind of operation is this?”

  “The kind where we sniff out this prat from a distance while we can still get away,” he said, indicating the wyverns. “Once we know where he’s holed up, you signal your boy back in Jersey. Then my colleagues at the House of Commons send in all the wings and wands of King George. Have no fear, Miss Brimble: this ain’t my first skirmish.”

  Her resulting silence told him more than words ever could. He’d impressed her.

/>   A few more minutes passed before she spoke.

  “To the job, then,” said Sophronia, whistling for Lucie.

  CHAPTER 6

  “Get out of that chair!” Calvin’s voice cracked. The empty gun was steady as a rock in one hand, and the loaded gun trembled in the other. Could the radio technician tell? Would he force Calvin to take more drastic measures?

  “I absolutely c-c-cannot,” stammered the tech. His name was Ben Kyland. “We’re not scheduled to broadcast tonight.”

  Fuming, Calvin cocked the dummy pistol, careful not to pull the hammer out.

  “The schedule is paramount—” Ben began. Calvin holstered the real gun and grabbed a handful of Ben’s shirt, keeping the dummy pointed at his face.

  “I don’t give a dimpled penny about your schedule. I have to

  send a message. You’re going to show me how.” Wincing to himself, he pressed the barrel to Ben’s forehead.

  Ben gulped. “Okay, okay, just . . . don’t. All you have to do is—” He cut off mid-sentence and swatted Calvin’s hand away. Instantly he was up out of the chair and had one hand on the dummy, the other on Calvin’s throat. Ben forced Calvin back against the wall and wrenched the gun free. Quaking with fear, Ben leapt back and turned the gun on Calvin.

  The trigger clicked. Nothing. Ben’s eyes lit up.

  Fear and fury took over. Calvin didn’t see Ben; instead he saw the mage he’d blasted with the blunderbuss during the farm raid—his first ever kill. He remembered pulling the trigger and just letting it happen, letting the tool do the hard part at first, so that he could live with the pain of it later. To save his mission, Calvin pulled the loaded gun and fired it up close.

  The report deafened him in the enclosed space, making his ears ring. A puff of smoke slithered out of the barrel, and Calvin waved it away to see Ben squirming on the ground, clutching his thigh with both hands. His khaki trousers turned dark red between his fingers.