Metropolitan

by Walter Jon Williams

  One of the techs scurries to make her a sandwich.

  The mage senses Aiah’s appraisal, looks up at Aiah from under her bangs. “Did you need to tell me something?” she asks.

  “No. But they didn’t offer me a sandwich.”

  The corner of Aldemar’s mouth twitches in amusement. “Perhaps one of these gentlemen will get you one.”

  One of the gentlemen does.

  04:12: Team Eight-C reaches Point Window on its way to Point Pillar.

  Aiah remembers all the stories of the Barkazil War she heard when growing up, all the old soldiers drinking their beer on the sidewalk and reminiscing. She imagines trucks and armored cars in silent, disciplined columns, rumbling engine noise disturbing the sleep of Caraqui’s citizens. Marines in their gunboats speeding through the darkness beneath their city’s huge concrete pontoons.

  Looks up to the video feed to see Shieldlight glinting off rotor blades and the blunt noses of rockets.

  Thinks of dolphins darting in the darkness beneath Caraqui’s barges, weapons in their sleek hands.

  And considers Taikoen, the hanged man, living in the pulse of plasm, ghost-hands reaching out to smother life.

  She wonders who will die according to the neat dictates of the checklist and who will not, will die instead in the sudden, flaming knowledge that all schedules have gone awry, all agendas are voided, all programs canceled.

  04:40: Factory goes live. All goods moved to Paperhanger.

  Aiah knows the hardware as well as anyone, so she throws the switches herself. Copper contact arms descend to the sockets atop the huge accumulators and capacitors. Plasm fills the circuits, leaps in a beam from the transmission horn concealed in the billboard atop the factory.

  Paperhanger is a silver airship floating along a precise radio heading that intersects the factory’s broadcast beam. A linked bronze mesh, designed to absorb plasm, covers the ship’s vulcanized skin. The ship’s own horns, synched to spinning gyroscopes, redirect the plasm to where Constantine’s mages are ready to use it.

  Aldemar lies back in a padded chair, eyes closed, a copper circlet around each wrist — military-type t-grips that can’t be dropped by accident. It’s her job to ride the plasm beam, make certain that Paperhanger gets every mehr of energy. If Paperhanger gets attacked, she’s supposed to help defend it.

  “All circuits live!” Trucker reports.

  “Mage attack! Mage attack!” Red yells. A wave of adrenaline hits Aiah’s body, racing through her veins like fast-moving columns of troops, but there’s nothing she can do but feel the pulse pounding in her throat. There’s a tap on Aiah’s shoulder. One of the techs, holding in his gloved hand a military helmet of high-impact plastic. “Better put this on,” he says.

  “Accelerating all schedules!” Trucker shouts. “All units advance to seize objectives now!”

  On the oval video screen, the image jolts as the cameraman hangs on for dear life, copters put their noses down and peel away from flight lanes toward their objectives. The fantastic towers of the Aerial Palace appear on video through the shimmer of rotor blades.

  The mage attack is on the First Brigade. Because the brigade is late, the mages who were supposed to protect it haven’t joined it as yet, and the moving columns are helpless beneath waves of fiery plasm.

  04:55: trackline cars moving.

  It’s actually 04:51. The schedule’s been advanced, or possibly just dissolved altogether. The “trackline cars” — in actuality artillery shells the size of trackline cars — sit under canvas at railway sidings in neutral territory. Plucked from their cradles by giant plasm hands, they commence their flight to their target, directional fins deploying in midair.

  The trackline cars rumble through the air on the way to their targets, a faint line of vapor trailing from each fin. The enormous shells are flung from their mages’ ectomorphic hands like darts into corkboards, plunging into the huge concrete barges that support the headquarters and barracks of the Metropolitan Guard and the Aerial Palace, which itself is defended by detached Guard companies. Aside from the damage the shells can cause, the shells are supposed to disrupt communications, stun the defenders and punch holes in the bronze collection web that guards the buildings, making it possible for the attackers’ plasm to enter. The Guard’s buildings are also splashed with incendiaries, in part to mark their location with columns of smoke to aid Geymard’s air assault.

  A loyalist mage locates another column of the First Brigade, and the lead armored car erupts in a spectacular display of fuel, ammunition, and plasm fire.

  Aiah looks dry-mouthed at her dials and sees them feeding a constant supply of the goods to the airship Paperhanger that hovers gracefully over neutral ground a thousand radii away. A staccato adrenaline pulse beats time in her throat. A drop of sweat courses down her cheek from beneath her helmet. She’s as useless as any bystander, helpless to alter the situation one way or another, but she’s not a bystander. The whole thing is her fault — none of this would be happening if not for her.

  She looks up at the video screen and sees smoke columns rising above the Metropolitan Guard complex — huge square-shouldered buildings, all concrete and gunslits, bombproof roofs, transmission horns, radio antennae — and then white trails of rockets reach into the jittering image like smoking fingers .

  Team Four-A commencing strafing attack.

  Explosions wink red against the massive Guard structures.

  Aiah can’t take her eyes away.

  06:05: Judiciary and Popular Assembly occupied. Team Seven reserves deployed as necessary.

  Good news, bad news. Visible on a new video feed, rebels of the Marine Brigade stand proudly in front of Government Harbor buildings, having occupied the seat of government without resistance. But it’s all symbolic, for the cameras; nothing of importance is going to happen in those buildings in the next few hours. Much of the Marine Brigade pushes forward to aid the Second Brigade in storming the Aerial Palace, where companies of the Metropolitan Guard are putting up a stiff resistance. Live feed shows the battle from a half-dozen angles, the extravagant architecture of the Aerial Palace bright with reflected tracer fire.

  The rest of the Metropolitan Guard is still confined to its base, sheltering in the massive concrete buildings. Parts of the buildings are on fire, coils of thick smoke rising from the gunslits, and a fierce battle is being waged, with both gunfire and plasm. Geymard’s mercenaries, on the high buildings adjacent, have the Guard surrounded, but can do little but pour more ammunition into the fight without any clear indication that it’s doing any good. Their gunships have exhausted their ammunition, but fortunately the big aerocars with munitions and heavy weapons all arrive without interference, crushing neat roof-garden rows as they drop to disgorge cargo.

  “All gunships have exhausted their ammunition. Returning to base.”

  “Report from Jewel One,” Red says. “The necklacing was only a partial success. Mages guarding the cables.”

  Jewel One was Prince Aranax, the necklacing his attempt to blow the cables carrying plasm to the loyalists. Aiah thinks of dolphins drifting downward into darkness trailing mute streams of blood and bubbles ... plenty of plasm for the defenders.

  “Four-A’s being hit again! Foreign troops!”

  Clearly the First Brigade has no luck at all. Now Mondray’s Regulars, the mercenary troops imported by the Keremaths, are racing to the rescue of their employers. The First Brigade was supposed to seize bridges between the mercenaries and the Aerial Palace, but now they’re too late.

  Aiah tastes blood in her mouth and realizes that she’s been gnawing her cheek.

  She looks up in alarm at a throaty cry from one of the plasm consoles: Aldemar sounds as if she’s just been punched hard in the solar plexus. Her body thrashes on its padded chair. Her perfect white teeth are clenched, and her eyes are closed in concentration.

  Slim’s eyes go wide. “Paperhanger’s under attack!” he shouts. “Wizard Three, Wizard Two — abandon security
duty and defend the ship!”

  *

  No crushing plasm assault destroys Paperhanger, but rather a series of raids, the government mages running at the airship for a slashing attack, then fading away to attack from a new direction. Most of the attacks fail, but a few get through. The airship’s condition slowly worsens: enough gas cells are punctured so that the ship slowly loses altitude and stability, more and more water ballast must be dumped to keep the vessel on an even keel, and eventually its captain announces that its crew will have to abandon ship. The crew drag their wounded to the emergency aerofoils and the long glide to the surface of the world.

  “Shift the plasm beam to Red Bolt!” Aldemar’s voice, boosted by plasm, rings off the roofbeams of the factory. Pigeons flutter nervously on their perches. Red Bolt is the backup, a converted cargo plane cruising in neutral airspace. But its facilities are more limited than those of the airship: its slim, aerodynamic profile is less likely to soak up the entire plasm beam, and its broadcast horns are smaller and less accurate. These handicaps can all be overcome with care and attention on the part of the mages attending to the plasm transmission, but the care and attention could be diverted to better things.

  Aiah licks her lips, tasting adrenaline in the sweat dotting her upper lip, and reaches for her dials. “Does Red Bolt know they’re getting the goods?” she demands.

  “Yes! Panther’s told them!”

  Panther is Sorya’s all-too-apt code-name, as Constantine’s is Big Man. Aiah checks the orientation of the reserve horn again — correct for Red Bolt — and readies her hands on the switches.

  “Shifting to Red Bolt on my mark!” she says. “Five! Four! Three!...”

  On her mark she throws the switch; overhead she can hear the clatter of rotators as the main feed is shifted to the roof’s secondary transmission horn. Her dials show the plasm going out, but it’s not clear that Red Bolt is actually receiving the goods until word comes from Trucker at the commo board.

  “You — Wizard Three —” Aldemar’s voice lashes out, stumbling on the code-names. “Keep the beam on Red Bolt! You — the other one — we’ve got to ride security. Or . . .” Her eyes, all whites, roll toward Aiah. “Lady — can you keep the beam on target? That would free one of us.”

  Aiah’s heart is in her mouth. “I will try,” she says, and with feigned calm and pounding heart steps toward one of the consoles, connects the circuit that feeds plasm to it, pushes the gloves and closes the copper military t-grips over her wrists.

  A demonic roar of plasm fills her senses. It’s as if she can sense, on this end of the circuit, the war and death and desperation that resonates through the whole plasm circuit. Perhaps she’s receiving scattered sensation from mages in combat.

  “Hurry!” Aldemar’s plasm-enhanced cry seems to imprint its urgent message on the inside of Aiah’s skull. Aiah has no time to go through the careful steps of building an anima and sensorium, instead her mind leaps straight into the circuit and out the directional rooftop horn. Her impressions are diffused, uncertain, yet filled with thundering glorious power and occasional intense flashes of brilliant sensation, as if the plasm itself were alive and transmitting its inchoate sensations to her.

  Aiah makes an effort to sharpen the scattered sensation and finds her senses coming into focus, the world resolving itself into an image of startling clarity as if through a miracle of optics: Red Bolt itself as seen from the rear, cruising twelve radii above the planet’s surface, white vapor trails stretching from each of its four engines.

  Aiah restructures her sensorium until she sees the beam itself, the directed plasm burning bright gold through the sky to surround the plane like a diffused aura, with other, smaller beams firing from the plane’s broadcast horns toward the ground. Consciously she tries to manipulate the beam, and finds a wilful resistance that, with a start, she recognizes as another mind.

  She attempts to communicate with it.

  — This is Aiah — No! Lady, she tries. I can take the beam from here.

  — You sure? The answer is twinned, the mental communication echoed by a vocal one from the sandbagged console to her right.

  — Yes. No problem.

  The task proves simple. Red Bolt continues to fly imperturbably above the endless gray city mass below. Aiah builds her sensorium until she sees everything in ultra-clear focus: the silver-skinned aircraft with its studded bronze collection web, sharp white clouds far below, the golden lines of plasm firing down on Caraqui, the metropolis so distant that from here Aiah can’t even see the shimmer of its sea or the violet outlines of its famous

  volcanoes.

  “Keep alert!” A ringing command from Aldemar. “If they could find Paperhanger, they can find Red Bolt!”

  And if they can find Red Bolt, Aiah thinks, they can find the factory. Her fingers fumble with the strap of her helmet and snug it in place under her chin.

  The job of keeping the beam focused is dull enough that she can spare part of her attention for the news coming from the commo board. The unlucky First Brigade has been routed by Mondray’s mercenaries. The rebels are trying to make a stand on the far side of the Martyrs’ Canal, where Constantine and Aiah had once raced toward their meeting with Prince Aranax.

  Elsewhere the news is better. The Aerial Palace has been entered by rebel troops, and they’re fighting their way upward. Detachments of rebels have seized plasm stations and begun switching their plasm horns to rebel receivers. The government mages are capable enough, judging by their attacks on Paperhanger, but now they’ve less raw material to work with. And when Aiah slits open her eyes to catch a glimpse of the video display, she’s astonished by the change at the Metropolitan Guard complex — several of the buildings are ablaze, pillars of fire around which whirl the hurricane debris of war. Armored vehicles burn on a bridge ramp, remnants of an attempted breakout.

  From the Keremaths themselves nothing is heard. No broadcasts to the population, no appeals to loyal troops, nothing. It’s as if no one’s in charge at all.

  Perhaps no one is. Aiah thinks of the hanged man creeping like a vein of methane ice through the plasm conduits — no bronze collection web can keep him out, because he enters along the plasm circuit itself.

  You wish me to kill?

  Certain people. Yes.

  Bad people?

  I believe so.

  Aiah wonders if Constantine’s cold ally, in exchange for a reward of warm human bodies, disposed of Caraqui’s rulers before the fight even began.

  The rebels manage to raise some drawbridges on the Martyrs’ Canal — it’s wide enough to provide a substantial obstacle — and Mondray’s troops are halted till they can find an alternate route. Elements of the Marine Brigade are being pulled back from the Aerial Palace and sent to the canal by speeding gunboat. Over the wide stretch of water, mages reach for each other with outstretched fingers of burning plasm. Resistance in the Aerial Palace has almost collapsed.

  “Attack on Red Bolt!” The high-pitched scream comes from Wizard Two, and snaps Aiah’s attention back to the silver areoplane cruising on its Great Circle course high over neutral ground. Aiah can see it coming — with her senses attuned to plasm, and nothing but many radii of air between her and the attackers, it would be hard not to — and there, below and northward, she sees a blazing gold serpent streaking toward the aircraft, backtracking the plasm beams that Red Bolt’s transmission horns are sending to Caraqui.

  Aldemar’s mental voice, invading Aiah’s senses, is surprisingly calm.

  — Wizard One, remain in reserve near Red Bolt. Wizard Two, try to cut off its sourceline.

  The attacking serpent suddenly rears up like a cobra about to strike.

  Bits of Aiah’s own plasm beam break off, like military aircraft peeling out of formation, each trailing its golden sourceline behind it. One heads for the intruder — Aldemar, Aiah thinks — another darting low as if to snip the serpent off near its tail. If the attacker’s sourceline can be interfered with closer to its
point of origin, then the attack itself will evaporate.

  The hovering cobra strikes, spitting a hundred flashing plasm missiles at its target, self-contained bolts of fire. Flame streaks the sky. Missiles splash against a shield that Aldemar stretches across the sky at the last instant. And then both the missiles and the cobra are gone, and Red Bolt flies serenely along its course high above the clouds.

  Aldemar’s grim voice floats into Aiah’s consciousness.

  — He’ll be back. He’s just gone to get his friends.

  A notion occurs to Aiah.

  — Can we put Red Bolt on another course? I can bend the beam to keep it on track, and eventually reorient the transmission horn.

  Aldemar’s answer is decisive.

  — Yes. Let’s do it.

  In her normal voice she orders the commo techs to relay orders to the pilot, and Red Bolt dips a wing, throttles up, and rolls away from its original path, diving slightly to increase speed.

  For the moment the sky is peaceful again. Aiah finds it easy enough to keep the beam on target: she follows Red Bolt’s path, the plasm looping behind her in the sky, and then straightens the kinks in the beam when she has the opportunity.

  She glances up at the video through slitted eyes. Half the Metropolitan Guard headquarters is a flaming holocaust, but there’s still resistance, shellfire crunching against the crumbling concrete walls. Resistance seems to have completely collapsed at the Aerial Palace, and rebel troops are moving up stairwells without opposition.

  But the Martyrs’ Canal seems to be living up to its name. Mondray’s mercenaries managed to find or seize a bridge, and they’re pushing as many troops over it as possible. The rebels don’t have enough troops to stop them — calls for reinforcements are continuous — and the only rebel superiority seems to be in numbers of mages. The mercenaries have very little magical protection.

  If you can’t send troops, send plasm, Aiah thinks urgently. But she’s not in command.

  “Red Bolt’s under attack!”

  Aiah’s perceptions snap to the sky. And the war goes on.