Conflagration
Page 39
“The Paris Gun?”
“What else? A cannon, no matter how big, is just a huge great bomb-casing with one end left open. We pack it with explosives, and seal the muzzle well enough, it’ll rip a big enough hole in that earthworks to put a stop to whatever weirdness the Mosul bitch has planned.”
Old Temps Perdu seemed to be as adept at blowing up artillery as firing it, and he was setting Steuben to thinking. “It’d need one fuck of a lot of explosive.”
“Doesn’t have to be fancy. Nitrates and fuel oil; crude shit. Not a problem.”
“You can get that?”
Perdu nodded. “What did I say, lad? Not a problem.”
“Penhaligon’s our boy for the explosions.”
“Then bring him in, young Sergeant. Bring him in.”
The war council had broken up into separate working parties. Argo knew that he should be with the rest of The Four, Sera, and Hyacinth, discussing the interception of the White Twins, but he found himself fascinated by Old Perdu’s instantly conceived ideas. The old man had an enviable talent for planning sabotage.
Slide had turned the table over to Windermere when it came to the time for practicalities, and the atmosphere had chilled considerably. The Four considered Windermere and ES Section duplicitous in the extreme, and that was hard to shake. What he had to say, however, made eminent good sense, and they found themselves warming to him, despite their reservations. As Windermere had broken it down, Jeakqual-Ahrach and her Zhaithan were basically creating an energy exchange. According to the most recent reports, both to Il Syndicato and Morgana’s Web, small black spheres being were placed by slave laborers all over the sloping sides of the original dirt pyramid in irregular but predetermined patterns. These spheres were made of the same Other Place material as Dark Things, and, like the mini Dark Things that had attacked Dunbar’s headquarters during the Battle of Newbury Vale, they were about the same size as wicket balls, but they had somehow been rendered inert and seemingly harmless enough for humans to handle. The consensual theory, as Windermere told it, was that the spheres would be energized at the commencement of some kind of power buildup. Since the White Twins were being specially sent to the pyramid, they had to be a part, maybe even the culmination of this process.
Windermere had put it very clearly. “The object is clearly to prevent this power buildup ever getting started, and, as I see it, our attack has to be twofold. On one hand, we need to do as much physical damage to the outer structure of the pyramid as possible, while on the other, we have to kill or capture the White Twins. We also have to remain alert, if Harriet Lime is to be believed, to any Zhaithan plan to grab The Four. I think I now have to open the meeting to any and all suggestions as to just how these ends should be achieved, and how we find the resources to achieve them.”
Old Temps Perdu had again laughed. “Well, you came to the right place, Mr. Windermere. You’re talking mayhem, and there’s plenty of talent, even genius, for mayhem here in Paris.” He had then launched into his impromptu plan to destroy the pyramid, but, while most were listening to Perdu, Cordelia asked a question of those who remained. “Has anyone considered that the Twins might be killed as the culmination of this power buildup? Or the deaths of The Four might be part of Jeakqual-Ahrach’s plan? I mean, the Zhaithan have always been damned keen on human sacrifice as a means of power generation. Hundreds were hanged before the Battle of the Potomac. I was there, and I saw it happen.”
Raphael backed up Cordelia. “We were all there. We all saw it. They were trying to create what they called the primordial warrior frenzy.”
Slide nodded. “Death-moment energy release is their scientific name for it.”
“And if the plan is to kill the Twins, do they necessarily know about it?”
But before anyone could consider what Cordelia was saying, Penhaligon entered the hall. The normally imperturbable Ranger looked concerned and a little bemused. “What the fuck was that?”
Madden and Steuben looked at him blankly. “What the fuck was what?”
“You didn’t feel it?”
“Feel what?”
“Get the fuck outta here. The whole fucking building shook, and all the lights went on and off.”
“Not in here they didn’t.”
Argo, catching the odd exchange, looked round to see if anyone at the table had felt anything. It seemed not, but then he saw Jesamine, who was as pale as a ghost, and holding on to the table for support.
JESAMINE
The sheets of white light blinded her, and she couldn’t see the shower of black spinning triangles until they were right on top of her, but somehow Jesamine knew that the edges of the things, although two dimensional, were razor sharp, and she dodged desperately, twisting and ducking. Then the triangles were gone and she found herself in a grid of blue intersecting lines, also in a triangular formation. The two voices, when they came, were painfully overamplified, and horribly distorted. At first, Jesamine had thought it was a psychic attack, but, when she was able to make out what the voices were saying, she decided that it was an attempt at communication, but generated by someone or something with a great deal of power, but no idea how to control it.
At first the voices were so intense in their frantic childish anguish that they threatened Jesamine’s brain. “We met the wolf.”
“We met the wolf and he told us.”
“We met the wolf and he told us to find you.”
Jesamine steeled herself. She had to stop reeling and take some sort of control of the situation. “Easy, easy, tune it down a whole bit.”
The white light diminished in intensity, and the voices became more manageable. “We met the she-wolf who told us to come and find you.”
“Are you who I think you are?”
“We are who we are.”
Jesamine’s forced calm was turning the white light a softer blue. “Okay, I’m glad we established that.”
“The wolf told us to find you.”
“Why didn’t she send you to find Cordelia.”
“Cordelia has red hair.”
“Cordelia doesn’t like us.”
“Why doesn’t she like you.”
“We hate her.”
“We were taught to hate her.”
Jesamine could hardly believe what she was experiencing. The White Twins were apparently communicating with her. “But why have you come to me?”
“Cordelia with the red hair.”
“Cordelia with the red hair said our mother will kill us.”
“Cordelia with the red hair said our mother will kill us at the pyramid.”
Jesamine, despite her initial shock was now listening intently. “Is your mother with you?”
“No.”
“No, she sleeps.”
“She sleeps the sleep that makes her young.”
“So how can she kill you?”
“Zhaithan say it, too.”
“Zhaithan say we die.”
“Zhaithan say we die, but they don’t know we hear them.”
“Cordelia with the red hair and Zhaithan said our mother will kill us at the pyramid.”
“Our mother will kill us at the pyramid.”
Jesamine suddenly felt the Twins’ fear. They were monsters, but they were afraid. “So don’t go to the pyramid.”
“They make us go.”
“Zhaithan put us on a boat, and they make us go.”
“Help us?”
“Please help us.”
ARGO
Old Temps Perdu looked up with a concern that did not suit his battered face with its leather skin and network of scars. “The honey-colored one?”
“Jesamine.”
“Right, Jesamine. Is she okay?”
“She’ll be fine. Cordelia and Sera are taking care of her.”
“And she really received a communication from the White Twins?”
Argo spread his hands. “So it would seem.”
“And they’re turning on Jeakqual-Ahrach?”
Perdu nodded. “You gotta look out for ruses.” He turned back to the charts and diagrams in front of him. “Seems to me the first thing we gotta do is move the damned cannon a whole lot closer to the pyramid. It’s out beyond that perimeter circle right now. We gotta move it right hard up to the pyramid.”
Argo, Madden, Penhaligon, and Steuben all looked where Perdu was pointing. Steuben again asked the question. “How the hell are we going to do that? It’s a hundred yards or more, and the damn thing’s gotta weigh beaucoup tons.”
Perdu tapped the chart impatiently. “It’s on rails isn’t it?”
Argo objected. “But it’s been there for decades. It has to be rusted solid.”
“Wrong, young Major. Dead wrong. In the old days, it stood right up by the pyramid. That’s why the tracks go there. It must have been moved out when the Zhaithan started their hell-work. Which means it must have been oiled, and greased, and made mobile.”
“We still have to roll it back.”
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and find the locomotive, or whatever it was that moved it the first time, still there and still working.”
“And if it’s not?”
“There’s a whole camp of slave laborers, isn’t there? So they can do a bit of laboring for us. We just remind them that once a slave always a slave, until we say different.”
“And what if the Mosul say different?”
Perdu’s eyes took on an unpleasant gleam. “The Mosul ain’t gonna say nothing, because, when we move the cannon, they’ll all be fucking dead. Ain’t that right, Ranger Madden?”
Madden’s eyes had the same gleam. “That’s right, Old Temps, they’ll all be fucking dead.”
At this juncture, Bonaparte came into the room, and he was in a hurry. “A message just came through to Hyacinth from a Morgana agent in the labor camp by the pyramid.”
“What’s it say?”
“That there was some kind of test of the work that’s been done on one side of the pyramid. Seemingly the Teuton engineers who are working for the Zhaithan tried to fire up one section of the black spheres.”
“And?”
“And there was suddenly all this white sheet lightning and the whole fucking pyramid vanished for a full fifteen seconds. Then it came back again with all the black spheres fused out.”
Penhaligon looked vindicated. “That must have been what caused the tremor I felt.”
Bonaparte continued. “Seems like it wasn’t the desired effect because the Zhaithan went crazy and there’s been a bunch of executions.”
Old Temps sighed. “Whatever it means to them, it’s telling us that we gotta get our shit packed and make our move.”
CORDELIA
“You think the weirdness at the pyramid and the Twins breaking in on you were connected?”
Jesamine nodded. “It would be a hell of a coincidence if they weren’t.”
Cordelia, Jesamine, and Sera walked down one of the dark and seemingly endless passages that led to Falconetti’s “quiet room.” As Sera was unlocking the door to the torture chamber, Jesamine looked curiously at the eight-pointed star daubed on it. “Does that have some kind of purpose?”
Sera shrugged. “As far as I know, it’s always been there. Maybe it’s supposed to ward off demons.”
Cordelia grinned. “It didn’t keep Slide out.”
“Perhaps he’s another kind of demon. It was probably Noire who had it put there. She was my father’s most effective interrogator when I was a kid.” Sera pushed open the heavy door. “She used to have this saying that she told to her subjects before she went to work on them. ‘The shortest way to heaven is through hell.’ She said it gave them something to contemplate through their suffering.”
Inside, Harriet Lime was still locked in the stocks. Cordelia walked around her, amused by her helplessness and obvious humiliation. “And what have you been contemplating, Harriet?”
“Damn you, Cordelia.”
“Damn me? You’ve changed your tune. It wasn’t long ago that you were groveling to protect your lily-white skin from the thrashing of a lifetime.”
“If I’ve been contemplating anything, it’s what I’ll have done to you when the positions become reversed.”
“You think you’ll get me in the stocks?”
“I have far more unpleasant ideas. You do know that ultimately you can’t win, don’t you?”
Cordelia snorted in harsh amusement. “You’ll have to excuse me if I find that statement less than plausible coming from someone in your situation.”
Sera drew back the bolts that secured the stocks and then swung up the top half of the device, freeing Lime’s neck and wrists. Lime gingerly straightened up, wincing as she moved cramped muscles. “How do you know I haven’t already alerted Jeakqual-Ahrach to what you’re all planning?”
“You haven’t. I would have known about it.” Cordelia was bluffing, but with such supreme confidence that it seemed to work, and Lime’s face clouded as if she believed her. Sera thrust an orange-colored bundle at Lime. “Put this on. It’s clean.”
Lime shook the bundle open to reveal a one-piece orange overall, with a large letter “P” on both front and back, and held it up with an expression of extreme distaste. “This is what Zhaithan political prisoners wear.”
“It’ll make it harder for you to try and run. Approach the enemy wearing that, and the average Mosul grunt will shoot you out of hand before you’ve had the chance to say a word.”
Lime reluctantly started to pull on the overall. “What about shoes?”
“We’ll find you some shoes.”
She shook her head as she buttoned the buttons. “You really won’t get away with this. Her Grand Eminence is miles ahead of you.”
“I’d shut up if I were you, Harriet. The only thing that’s stopping me doing my worst to you is that everyone is so busy mobilizing to stop this thing at the pyramid, and Her Grand Eminence’s absurd attempt to break into another reality.”
Jesamine added, “Our mobilization is all that’s saving your sorry ass.”
RAPHAEL
The sun was setting as the barges approached the point on the river, towards the eastern outskirts of the ruined city, where the vehicles were assembled with which the small force would make their journey to Amiens and the pyramid. Some of those around Raphael had slept, but the majority had spent the day in frantic preparation for the attack, and he was amazed just how much had been achieved in such little time. It made sense that Damon Falconetti could muster a crew of armed men and women in a matter of hours, but the speedy location of explosives, heavy weapons, fuel, and ammunition, even Mosul uniforms and vehicles, and some strange concoction of quick-drying cement that Old Temps Perdu had demanded, indicated that the Falconetti Family had resources that were far more extensive than Raphael had ever imagined, and Il Syndicato were much more than the “degenerates and cutthroats” he had thought them to be before he had arrived in Paris. He was also surprised and impressed at the intelligence, ingenuity, and capacity for improvisation that had been demonstrated all over the Falconetti stronghold once the bit was between the Family’s teeth. Plans were formulated, details checked, weaknesses were discovered and corrected, and the needed materials obtained. As the barge Raphael was on floated past the last major outcrop of tall ruins, armed but silent children had stared down at him, and he could not shake the eerie feeling that Paris was being left in their care while the grown-ups went to war.
He remembered how his last battle had started, and how very different it had been. At Newbury Vale, the fight had been joined in the bright light of morning, with flags and banners, wild optimism, the thunder of hooves, and artillery pounding the enemy positions with shot and shell. This assault on the Mosul was diametrically different. They would be driving secretly into the night, relying on stealth, silence, and total surprise. A hundred things, unseen and unknown, could go wrong, and, instead of optimism, the mood w
as one of grim determination. About the only one who was viewing the attack with any obvious relish was Old Temps Perdu, who made no attempt to hide the fact that he hardly gave a rat’s ass about the defeat of Jeakqual-Ahrach, or even saving reality and the world. He was going to Amiens for just one reason—to create the biggest bang of his long career in explosives, and this made him happier than the proverbial widow on her wedding night. The only others who seemed to grimly relish the prospect of the coming fight were the half-dozen Rangers, who seemed relieved to be back in harness, and ready to melt into the night to, as they put it, “ply their trade.”
The luxury of observation ended abruptly the moment that he stepped off the barge. The army might be very small and highly ragtag, but it was saddling up and moving out, and doing it with dour efficiency. Once Damon Falconetti had committed to the cause, he had made manpower his first priority. Only a small force could be moved out of Paris, and Falconetti had gone to every length to see that it was made up of the best soldiers and centurions from his own ranks, plus the top guns of other Parisian gangs and outlaw bands who owed him fealty, plus the best contract freelancers. The force traveled light and was quick to sort out the transports to which they had been assigned. The war party from Paris would go to Amiens in convoy. A motorcade of cars and trucks that would, everyone hoped, descend on the unsuspecting Mosul, Zhaithan, and Teutons sometime around dawn, and without the slightest warning. The Four had been divided for the journey to the pyramid. Raphael had argued against it but had eventually been overridden. The obvious difficulty was that Cordelia had to stay with Lime, since Lime would be the one to hear and tell when the White Twins were coming, even if she supplied the information under physical duress. This made Cordelia a crucial part of the unit that would kill or capture the Twins, but to have the rest of The Four with her would make them nothing more than a nonfunctional appendage. None of them particularly wanted to go into the Other Place so close to the Amiens Pyramid after Cordelia had described what had happened when she had been near it. They all hoped that the attack and the seizing of the Twins would be a strictly terrestrial operation, and it had therefore been decided that they should split up, distributing their individual talents where they were most needed, and, they hoped, also manage to maintain at least rudimentary four-way, psychic communication. If they were called on to go paranormal, they would try to move to a prearranged meeting place.