The Glass Mountains: The Saboteur Chronicles Book 2

by J. V. Roberts

  “Move up,” Dan called down over the railing. “Caldwell, take your crew and clear the fourth-floor. Make no exceptions, they’re either with us or against us; we’re not taking prisoners.”

  “On it.”

  “My men, on me.” He led the charge up the next half-circle of stairs. The center door on the fifth-floor stood open, light poured out of the hallway into the stairwell. Dan stepped over the body of one of the men he and Caldwell had shot in the head as he led his men into the hallway. There was a thick, tarry, stripe of blood. The man responsible for it, the one he’d shot in the back, was moaning in agony as he worked desperately to pull himself to safety. The poor prick was wasting his time. Judging by the sounds he was making, his lungs were filling up with fluid; he’d drown in a few minutes. Dan considered himself a decent man. He didn’t revel in the suffering of his enemies. On any other battlefield, he’d have graciously eased the man’s torment. But it wasn’t any other battlefield and he didn’t know how many guns were waiting for him around the corner. He couldn’t afford to waste the bullet. “This is Defense Minister Adams and I’m ordering you to surrender. No harm will come to you.”

  “In the name of the Lord Marshal, you are ordered to end your aggression. Put down your weapons, present yourselves with your hands up, and answer for your treason.” Dan didn’t recognize the voice. There was conviction, no hint of nerves; a diehard loyalist.

  “It is your Lord Marshal that is guilty of treason. He’s lied to you, soldier. He’s lied to the people of Genesis. Because of his lies, the blood of our brothers has been spilled and more is being spilled as we speak. Join us and help us take back our home.”

  “You’ve got till the count—”

  “Save your breath and let’s get to it.” He didn’t know what getting to it would entail; they were in a bit of a stalemate, charging in would be suicide for either side. There weren’t a whole lot of options.

  His thoughts were interrupted by a ker-thunk ker-thunk.

  Something landed at his feet.

  Metal pipe.

  Lit fuse.

  “Back! Back! Get down!” Dan twisted his body as he leaped backward. There was the explosion, and the heat, and then he couldn’t hear a damn thing.

  ***

  The first thing Dan noticed as he pushed himself up from the floor was the pounding in his head. The second thing he noticed was the sensation in his back; at first, it was like cold fingers, kneading his muscle tissue, then hot teeth, gnawing at his nerve endings.

  He began patting himself down.

  Arms?

  Legs?

  Still attached.

  His men were scattered at various angles on the stairs, all of them, miraculously, still moving; they were untangling their limbs and recovering their weapons, groaning and coughing, attempting to wave the smoke from the air. Then Dan remembered the doorway at his back and the enemy beyond. They’d be using the explosion to cover their charge. He spun around, his rifle at the ready, the pain strong, the thirst for survival stronger.

  Nothing.

  No enemy. No floor.

  The explosion had eaten a giant chunk out of the walkway. If Dan and his men wanted to take the armory, they were going to have to clear a six-foot gap and hope they didn’t get shot when they landed…if they landed.

  “Fuck!” The main entryway onto the fifth-floor was now just a hole in the wall, floating in space, unreachable. “We’re cut off, men. Back it up.”

  “Sir, your back—”

  “Is not important. Stay alert, anything moves up there, you put a bullet in it.” They moved backward down the stairs in twos, bounding from point-to-point, covering each other’s retreat, until they were once again on the fourth-floor, bunkered down in the hallway. Once they were under cover, the tide of adrenaline began to subside. That’s when the creature attached to Dan’s back decided to flex its claws. He braced himself against the wall, clenching his jaw, absorbing the pain, restraining the urge to cry out.

  “Move! Out of the way! Let me through!” Caldwell shoved Dan’s men aside, working his way to the front of the line. “Your back!”

  “How bad is it?” He braced himself against the wall as Caldwell pawed at the singed fabric.

  “Just give me a sec, trying not to make it worse.”

  “We can’t stand around here all day, let’s wrap it and go.”

  Caldwell turned to one of the men. “Get me a med box and a fresh shirt out of the PT room; hurry your ass about it.” Caldwell started trying to separate the fabric from the skin. “Doesn’t look vital, but you got peppered good. I see a lot of metal here; we’re going to need to remove it before we wrap you up.”

  “I don’t need pampering, just get on with it.”

  “Waiting on the med box.”

  Dan could feel the eyes of the young soldiers—they were all young soldiers as far as he was concerned—searching the ruins of his back. “You boys get your asses out there. I want half of you on the third-floor. Watch your heads, they’re still up there.”

  The men shuffled out of cover, pausing to check the space above their heads for bullets and bombs.

  “What happened?” Caldwell asked as he continued to separate the ruined shirt from the ruined tissue.

  “I got blown up.” Dan bit down on his thumbs.

  “So we’re cut off?”

  “For the moment.”

  “That means no ammo and no food. And the men have families up there…I have a family up there.”

  “So?”

  “What if the Lord Marshal decides to—”

  “He won’t. Don’t put that in your head. Don’t even whisper that around the men. Hause is fighting to maintain control and the people are the main thing holding him up. He loses that and he’s finished. He’s not about to start throwing bodies over the Sky Bridge.”

  “I apologize. This whole thing has me a bit upside down. A war in the Towers, shooting at men I called friend yesterday, it’s crazy. I never thought I’d live to see such a thing, not in a million years.”

  “You remember what they taught us?”

  “The only certainty is uncertainty.”

  “Exactly.” The instructors had been referring to the unforgiving nature of the Outlands when they’d turned that phrase. Nevertheless, Dan found it appropriate given the present circumstances. “I hope Reyes is having a better go of it than we are.”

  “He’s dancing back and forth between the lobbies. Things have gotten pretty quiet down there since we took mechanical.”

  “Sir, the supplies you asked for.” The panting soldier dropped the medical box and a folded shirt at Caldwell’s feet.

  Caldwell opened the box, fished through the contents, and came back up with a pair of tweezers and a roll of gauze. “You ready for this?”

  Dan chomped into his knuckles and nodded.

  8

  Hause was the only person in Pepper’s pub, aside from Gerrad, the bartender. He’d ordered everyone to leave and had two men watching the door. He wanted to enjoy his meal in peace. The scent of cigarette smoke still hung heavy in the air and mixed nicely with the strong drink haunting the back of his throat. He was just taking a second bite out of his pork sandwich when Pinkerton came barreling into the room, four bloodied soldiers trailing behind him.

  “Sir! We lost mechanical!”

  Hause almost choked on his food. He managed to force the morsel down, stood, and kicked his stool over. “What did you just say?”

  Pinkerton instantly regretted his overzealous approach and shrank back towards the door. “Dan and his men took mechanical. But we have everything else.”

  The shred of good news did nothing to take the sting out of the bad. Hause grabbed the top of his stool and flung it across the bar. Gerrad ducked instinctively as it crashed into the recently installed mirror behind his head, shattering it.

  “Not again,” Gerrad grumbled.

  “What did you say?”

  Gerrad retreated towards the liquor she
lf. “Nothing! I said nothing!”

  “Good men are dying down there and you’re worried about a mirror!”

  “You’re right, sir! I’m so sorry!”

  “You’re lucky I don’t break you! If I wasn’t such a lazy sonofabitch in my old age, I’d put a bullet in your head and make the sandwiches myself!” Hause punched the counter, overturning a half-full beer bottle, before turning back to Pinkerton. “We hold everything else?”

  “Yes, sir, we do.” Pinkerton slowly uncoiled and stepped forward, head slightly down, like a scorned dog trying to win back the good graces of his master.

  “Okay, that’s good. That’s very good.” Hause was trying his damndest to see the big picture, the overall beauty of the brush strokes, and not focus on the tiny smudges. “It means shit, right? He’s got nothing.”

  “Um, yeah, it’s just one point. And the lobbies don’t do him much good either.” Pinkerton didn’t sound like he was really following the logic. He was just playing the role of the yes-man. Hause had enough of those. He didn’t need another, especially one that might potentially be the Minister of Defense.

  “Why do you think that is?” Hause took two steps forward. He towered over Pinkerton by at least a foot.

  “Uh, I’m…maybe I’m misunderstanding you.” Pinkerton cleared his throat, trying to rid his voice of the pre-pubescent squeak it’d suddenly developed.

  “Why is holding mechanical a meaningless victory for Dan? Or, to repeat my previous observation, why does it mean shit?”

  “I…um—”

  “You don’t know, do you?”

  Pinkerton shook his head, lowering his one good eye. “I’m afraid I don’t, sir.”

  “Then why did you act like you had the answers.”

  Pinkerton shrugged.

  “Raise your chin and look at me! Have some pride, for Christ’s sake!”

  Pinkerton raised his head slowly as if his chin was tied to the floor.

  “One thing I always respected about Dan was that he never kept his opinions to himself. He always told me what was on his mind, even when I didn’t want to hear it. If you’re to take his place, that’s a virtue I’ll expect of you as well. Unless I tell you otherwise, you’re to speak plainly, understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “If I want my ass licked, I’ve got the grunts. I don’t expect it out of you. We’re fighting a war. It’s important that you know your enemy. So if you have questions, ask me. The lives of your men depend on it.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”

  Hause relented. He didn’t feel right about making an old friend stand barefoot on a field of glass. “It’s okay. These are trying times for all of us.” He backed to the bar and took a seat. “Dan won’t cut the electricity. He knows it’d kill the farms. He’s not going to risk mass starvation. He wants to take control of Genesis, not a graveyard. It’s symbolic, nothing more. Public opinion is already heavily weighed against him. He’s not going to dig the hole deeper by leaving the citizenry without power and water.” Hause fell silent. There was a plot slowly unraveling across the surface of his mind. He jumped up and charged past Pinkerton, barreling through the soldiers at the back of the room as if they were swinging doors. “Gather two of your officers and meet me in my office, I think I know how to end this.” As Hause strode down the hall, flanked by his personal guard detail, a malevolent grin parted his lips. It was so simple. How had he not seen it before?

  He was going to bring Dan down without firing a shot.

  9

  Dan and Caldwell fell back to the lobby. They were surrounded on all sides by wide-eyed soldiers awaiting their next orders.

  “What’s the play?” Caldwell asked.

  “We need to take the dungeon. I don’t like the idea of potential enemy combatants marching around directly beneath our feet. It should go quickly. Shouldn’t be more than a handful of soldiers.”

  “Yeah, but there’s Buddy and Loviatar. Where do you think they land on this?”

  “Wherever we tell them to. Loviatar will follow Buddy’s lead.”

  “As long as you’re sure.” Caldwell didn’t sound convinced.

  Dan shrugged. “I’m not sure of anything right now, but it’s the next right move, I know that much.”

  ***

  He gave a silent three count and, with Caldwell and a team of men at his back, he moved foot-over-foot out of the Tower One lobby, through a heavy steel door, and into the corridor. There were two soldiers at the end of the hall: one crouched in the corner and one taking cover just inside the stairwell that led down to the dungeon. Dan fired while moving, immediately dropping the soldier at the other end of the hall. Dan switched his aim to the stairwell and kept moving, hugging the outside wall, waiting for the second loyalist to pop his head back out. Caldwell was covering Dan with a heavy barrage of gunfire, taking fat notches out of the wall around the door frame. When Dan finally got parallel with the opening, he couldn’t see shit; the brick and mortar around the door had been pulverized and repurposed as a thick curtain of debris that obscured his vision. He expected muzzle flashes to greet him as his old eyes fought with the shifting images on the other side of the haze.

  Then he saw him.

  Huddled back near the corner of the railing, his rifle pointed towards Caldwell, towards the gunfire; he didn’t even see Dan.

  Dan paused and steadied his aim.

  No need for suffering.

  Make it quick and clean.

  He pulled the trigger. The outline in the mist jerked once and was still, there was no sound except for his weapon hitting the deck. Dan signaled the all clear and Caldwell and the other men moved up. There was shouting down below and multiple sets of footsteps echoing against the stairs.

  “Caldwell and you four,” Dan spoke to a group of sweat-soaked faces, “on me. The rest of you keep an eye out up here.”

  “I don’t feel up to catching a bullet in the balls,” Caldwell grumbled.

  “We don’t have anything to worry about,” Dan said as he led the charge down the first set of stairs.

  “What makes you say that?”

  “Our balls are too damn big; they’ll need more than a few bullets.”

  Caldwell laughed as a series of shots deflected against the metal beneath them and whistled off into the darkness. “My wife is going to be pissed if you’re wrong; she’s grown quite fond of my balls.” The entire staircase was vibrating as the surge of gunfire from below intensified.

  “Hold your fire! Hold your fucking fire! We’re on your side!”

  “What are you doing,” Caldwell spoke with clenched jaw and gritted teeth.

  “Just follow my lead, they don’t know what’s going on, they’ve been stuck in this hole,” Dan said.

  “Who’s up there? Speak quickly or we will open fire on you!”

  “It’s Defense Minister Adams, we’re coming down, don’t shoot!”

  There were two of them waiting at the bottom of the stairs, near the mouth of the torch lit hallway lined with cells. They held their weapons at an uneasy angle, just below their waistlines. Standing behind them, just inside the hall, framed by a pair of torches, were Buddy and Loviatar. Buddy held his black club and Loviatar held his human-sized hammer.

  “We heard shooting in the lobby and on the stairs. Albert said he heard it was Union on Union,” the soldier prodded the man beside him, “I didn’t believe him. That wouldn’t make sense, right? Told him it had to be some Rebels that went and lost their damned minds.”

  Albert was bobbing foot-to-foot. “I said I saw it. I didn’t hear it, I saw it! Caldwell and his men were shooting up the place; executed three of our own like they were Outland trash.”

  Dan didn’t know if it was paranoia, but he could swear the muzzle of Albert’s weapon had risen a few inches as he spoke. A few inches more and he’d be all lined up for a gut shot. “Hang on a minute, you saw this man behind me shooting Union?”

  “Sure did.”

  “Caldwel
l, is this true?” Dan didn’t dare take his eyes off the two soldiers.

  “I’m afraid it is, sir.”

  Dan shook his head. “That is unfortunate.” He put two bullets in Albert’s chest.

  The other soldier couldn’t react in time. Caldwell and the three men lining the staircase riddled his body with shrapnel and planted him facedown beside Albert.

  “Oh, shit! Hang on, now!” Buddy dropped his club and began backing into the shadows of the damp cell block.

  Loviatar didn’t move. He stood his ground, indifferent to the guns and the shouting. His grip on the hammer was only tightening, daring them to try to take it.

  “You and I both know that there’s no way out of here, Buddy, except through me. Stop all that running bullshit and get your ass back over here.” Dan stood in front of the stairs, with Caldwell and the other men lined up to his left.

  “You gonna shoot me?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether you make me repeat myself.”

  Buddy took his place back beside the giant. The toes of his boots rubbed up against the discarded club.

  “Where do your loyalties lie?”

  Buddy rubbed his hands together, eyes pointed at the ground. “I suppose, well…I suppose our loyalty lies with the Union.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Caldwell said.

  “Sir, I live down here with Loviatar and his hammer. I don’t get up top. I haven’t seen the sun in…I don’t know how long.”