Queen of Candesce v-2

by Karl Schroeder

  She could barely make out the buzzing words of Carasthant’s general. “You propose to get in through that? How? By jumping off the world and grabbing the pipes as they pass?”

  Venera nodded. When they all stared back uncomprehending, she sighed and turned to Princess Corinne. “Show them,” she said.

  Corinne was carrying a bulky backpack. She wrestled this off and plunked it down in the rust. “This,” she said with a dramatic flourish, “is how we will get to Sacrus.

  “It is called a parachute.”

  * * * *

  She had to focus on her jaw. Venera’s face was buried in the voluminous shoulder of her leather coat; her hands clutched the rope that twisted and shuddered in her grip. In the chattering roar of a four-hundred mile per hour wind there was no room for distractions, or even thought.

  Her teeth were clenched around a mouthpiece of Fin design. A rubber hose led from this to a metal bottle that, Corinne had explained, held a large quantity of squashed air. It was that ingredient of the air the Rook’s engineers had called oxygen; Venera’s first breath of it had made her giddy.

  Every now and then the wind flipped her over or dragged her head to the side and Venera saw where she was: wrapped in leathers, goggled and masked, and hanging from a thin rope inches below the underside of Spyre.

  All she had to do was keep her body arrow-straight and keep that mouthpiece in. Venera was tied to the line, which was being let out quite rapidly from the edge of the airfall. Ten soldiers had already gone this way before her, so it must be possible.

  It was night, but distant cities and even more distant suns cast enough light to silver the misty clouds that approached Spyre like curious fish. She saw how the clouds would nuzzle Spyre cautiously, only to be rebuffed by its whirling rotation. They recoiled, formed cautious spirals and danced around the great cylinder, as if trying to find a way in. Dark speckles—flocks of piranhawks and sharks—browsed among them, and there in great black formations were the barbedwire and blockhouses of the sentries.

  To be among the clouds with nothing above or below seemed perfectly normal to Venera. If she fell, she only had to open her parachute and she’d come to a stop long before hitting the barbed wire. It wasn’t the prospect of falling that made her heart pound—it was the savage headwind that was trying to snatch her breath away.

  The rope shuddered, and she grabbed it spasmodically. Then she felt a hand touch her ankle.

  The soldiers hauled her through a curtain of speed ivy and into a narrow gun emplacement. This one was dry and empty, its tidiness somehow in keeping with Sacrus’s fastidious attention to detail. Bryce was already here, and he unceremoniously yanked the air line from Venera’s mouth—or tried; she bit down on it tenaciously for a second, glaring at him, before relenting and opening her mouth. He shot her a look of annoyance and tied it and her unopened parachute to the line. This he let out through the speed ivy, to be reeled back to Buridan for its next user.

  Princess Corinne’s idea had sounded insane, but she merely shrugged, saying, “We do this sort of thing all the time.” Of course, she was from Fin, which explained much. That pocket nation inhabited one of Spyre’s gigantic ailerons, a wing hundreds of feet in length that jutted straight down into the airstream. Originally colonized by escaped criminals, Fin had grown over the centuries from a cold and dark sub-basement complex into a bright and independent—if strange—realm. The Fins didn’t really consider themselves citizens of Spyre at all. They were creatures of the air.

  Over the years they had installed hundreds of windows in the giant metal vane, as well as hatches and winches. They were suspected of being smugglers, and Corinne had proudly confirmed that. “We alone are able to slip in and out of Spyre at will,” she’d told Venera. And, as their population expanded, they had colonized five of the other twelve fins by the same means they were using to break into Sacrus.

  To reach Sacrus, one of Corinne’s men had donned a parachute and taken hold of a rope that had a big three-barbed hook on its end. He had stepped into the howling airfall and was snatched down and away like a fleck of dust.

  Venera had been watching from the tower and saw his parachute balloon open a second later. Instantly, he stopped falling away from Spyre and began curving back toward the hull. Down only operated as long as you were part of the spinning structure, after all; freed of the high speed imparted by Spyre’s rotation, he’d come to a stop in the air. He could have hovered there, scant feet from the hull, for hours. The only problem was the rope he held, which was still connected to Buridan.

  The big wooden spool that was unreeling it was starting to smoke. Any second now it would reach its end, and the snap would probably take his hands off. Yet he calmly stood there in the dark air, waiting for Sacrus to shoot past.

  As the pipes and machine-gun nest leaped toward him he lifted the hook and, with anticlimactic ease, tossed it ahead of the rushing metal. The hook caught; the rope whipped up and into the envelope of speeding air surrounding the hull; and Corinne’s man saluted before disappearing over Spyre’s horizon. They’d recovered him when he came around again.

  Now, brilliant light etched the cramped gun emplacement with the caustic sharpness of a black-and-white photograph. One of the men was employing a welding torch on the hatch at the top of the steps. “Sealed ages ago, like we thought,” shouted Bryce, jabbing a thumb at the ceiling. “Judging from the pipes, we’re under the sewage stacks. There’s probably toilets above us.”

  “Perfect.” They needed a staging ground from which to assault the tower. “Do you think they’ll hear us?”

  Bryce grimaced. “Well, there could be fifty guys sitting around up there taking bets on how long it’ll take us to burn the hatch open. We’ll find out soon enough.”

  Suddenly, the ceiling blew out around the welder. He retreated in a shower of sparks, cursing, and a new wind filled the little space. Before anybody else could move, Thinblood leaped over to the hole and jammed some sort of contraption up it. He folded, pulled—and the wind stopped. The hole the welder had made was now blocked by something.

  “Patch hatch,” said Thinblood, wiping dust off his face. “We’d better go up. They might have heard the pop or felt the pressure drop.”

  Without waiting, he pressed against his temporary hatch, which gave way with a rubbery slapping sound. Thinblood pushed his way up and out of sight. Bryce was right behind him.

  Both were standing with their guns drawn when Venera fought her way past the suction to sprawl on a filthy floor. She stood up, brushing herself off, and looked around. “It is indeed a men’s room.”

  Or was it? In the weak light of Thinblood’s lantern, she could see that the chamber was lined in tiles that had once been white but which had long since taken on the color of rust and dirt. Long streaks ran down the wall to dark pools on the floor. Venera expected to see the usual washroom fixtures along the walls, but other than a metal sink there was nothing. She had an uneasy feeling that she knew what sort of room this was, but it didn’t come to her until Thinblood said, “Operating theater. Disused.”

  Bryce was prying at a metal chute mounted in one wall. It creaked open, and he stared down into darkness for a second. “A convenient method of disposal for body parts or even whole people,” he said. “I’m thinking more like an autopsy room.”

  “Vivisectionist’s lounge?” Thinblood was getting into the game.

  “Shut up,” said Venera. She’d gone over to the room’s one door and was listening at it. “It seems quiet.”

  “Well it is the middle of the night,” the preservationist commented. More members of their team were meanwhile popping up out of the floor like jack-in-the-boxes. Minus the wind-up music, Venera mused.

  Soon there were twenty of them crowded together in the ominous little room. Venera cracked the door and peered out into a larger, dark space full of pipes, boilers, and metal tanks. This was the maintenance level for the tower, it seemed. That was logical.

  “Is everyone c
lear on what we’re doing?” she asked.

  Thinblood shook his head. “Not even remotely.”

  “We are after my man Flance,” she said, “as well as information about what Sacrus is up to. If we have to fight, we cause enough mayhem to make Sacrus rethink its strategy. Hence the charges.” She nodded at the heavy canvas bag one of the Liris soldiers was toting. “Our first order of business is to secure this level, then set some of those charges. Let’s do it.”

  She led the soldiers of half a dozen nations as they stepped out of their bridgehead and into the dark of enemy territory.

  15

  Everything in the Gray Infirmary seemed designed to promote a feeling of paranoia. The corridors were hung with huge black felt drapes that swayed and twitched slightly in the moving air, giving the constant impression that there was someone hiding behind them. The halls were lit by lanterns fixed on metal posts; you could swivel the post and aim the light here and there, but there was no way to illuminate your entire surroundings at any point. The floors were muffled under deep crimson carpet. You could sneak up on anybody here. There were no signs, doors were hidden behind the drapery, and all the corridors looked alike.

  It reminded Venera unpleasantly of the palace at Hale. Her father’s own madness had been deepening in the days before she succeeded in escaping to a life with Chaison. The king had all the paintings in the palace covered, the mirrors likewise. He took to walking the hallways at night, a sword in his hand, convinced as he was that conspirators waited around every corner. These nocturnal strolls were great for the actual conspirators, who knew exactly where he was and so could avoid him easily. Those conspirators—almost entirely comprising members of his own family—would bring him down one day soon. Venera had not received any letters bragging of his downfall while she lived in Rush; but there could well be one waiting when or if she ever returned to Slipstream.

  That was the madness of one man. Sacrus, though, had done more than generalize such paranoia: it had institutionalized it. The Gray Infirmary was a monument to suspicion and a testament to the idea that distrust was to be encouraged. “Don’t pull on the curtains to look for doors,” Venera cautioned the men as they rounded a corner and lost sight of the stairs to the basement. “They may be rigged to an alarm.”

  Thinblood scoffed. “Why do something like that?”

  “So only the people who know where the doors are can find them,” she said. “People trying to escape—or interlopers like us—set off the bells. Luckily, there’s another way to find them.” She pointed at the carpet. “Look for worn patches. They signify higher traffic.”

  The corridor they were in seemed to circle some large inner area. Opposite the basement stairs they found the broad steps of an exit, and next to it stairs going up. It wasn’t until they had nearly circled back to the basement stairs that they found a door letting into the interior. Next to a patch of slightly worn carpet, Venera eased the curtains to the side and laid her hand on a cold iron door with a simple latch. She eased the door open a crack—it made no sound—and peered in.

  The room was as big as an auditorium, but there was no stage. Instead, dozens of long glass tanks stood on tables under small electric lights. The lights flickered slightly, their power no doubt influenced by the jamming signal that emanated from Candesce.

  Each tank was filled with water, and lying prone in them were men—handcuffed, blindfolded, and with their noses and mouths just poking out of the water. Next to each tank was a stool, and perched on several of these were women who appeared to be reading books.

  “What is it?” Thinblood was asking. Venera waved at him impatiently and tried to get a better sense of what was going on here. After a moment she realized that the women’s lips were moving. They were reading to the men in the tanks.

  “…I am the angel that fills your sky. Can you see me? I come to you naked, my breasts are full and straining for your touch.”

  Bryce put a hand on her shoulder and his head above hers. “What are they doing?”

  “They seem to be reading pornography,” she whispered, shaking her head.

  “…Touch me, oh touch me exalted one. I need you. You are my only hope.

  “Yet who am I, this trembling bird in your hand. I am more than one woman, I am a multitude, all dependent on you… I am Falcon Formation, and I need you in all ways that a man can be needed…”

  Venera fell back, landing on her elbows on the deep carpet. “Shut it!” Bryce raised an eyebrow at her reaction, but eased the door closed. He twitched the curtain back into place.

  “What was that all about?” asked Thinblood.

  Venera got to her feet. “I just found out who one of Sacrus’s clients is,” she said. She felt nauseated.

  “Can we seal off this door?” she asked. “Prevent anyone getting out and coming at us from behind?”

  Bryce frowned. “That presents its own dangers. We could as easily trap ourselves.”

  She shrugged. “But we have grenades, and we’re not afraid to use them.” She squinted at him. “Are we?”

  Thinblood laughed. “Would a welding torch applied to the hinges do the trick? We’ll have to leave a tiny team behind to do that.”

  “Two men, then.”

  They went back to the upward-leading stairs. The second level presented a corridor identical to the one below. The same muffled silence hung over everything here. “Ah,” said Venera, “such delicate decorative instincts they have.”

  Thinblood was pacing along bent over, hands behind his back. He stared at the floor mumbling “hmmm, hmmm.” After a few seconds he pointed. “Door here.”

  Venera twitched back the curtain to reveal an iron-bound door with a barred window. She had to stand on her tip-toes to see through it to the long corridor full of similar doors beyond. “This looks like a cell block.” She rattled the door handle. “Locked.”

  “Hello?” The voice had come from the other side of the door. Venera motioned for the others to get out of sight, then summoned a laconic, sugary voice and said, “Is this where I can find my little captain?” She giggled.

  “Wha—?” Two eyes appeared at the door, blinking in surprise at her. Just in time, Venera had yanked off her black jacket and shirt, revealing the strategic strappery that maximized her figure. “Who the hell are you?” said the man on the other side of the door.

  “I’m your present,” whispered Venera. “That is, if you’re Captain Sendriks… I’d like it if you were,” she added petulantly. “I’m tired of tromping around these stupid corridors in nothing but my assets. I could catch a cold.”

  A moment later the latch clicked and seconds after that Venera was inside with a pistol under the chin of the surprised guard. Her men flowed around her like water filling a pipe; as she gestured for her new prisoner to kneel Thinblood said, “It’s clear on this end, but there’s another man around the corner yonder.”

  “Level a pistol at him and he’ll fall into line.” She watched one of the soldiers from Liris tying up her man, then said, “It is cold in here. Bryce, where’s my jacket?”

  “Haven’t seen it,” he said innocently. Venera glared at him, then went to collect it herself.

  The new corridor held a faint undertone of coughing and quizzical voices, which came from behind the other doors. This was indeed a cell block. Venera raced from door to door. “Up! Yes, you! Who are you? How long have you been here?”

  There were men and women here. There were children as well. They wore a wide mix of clothing, some familiar from her days in Spyre, some foreign, perhaps of the principalities. Their accents, when they answered her hesitantly, were similarly diverse. All seemed well fed, but they were haggard with fear and lack of sleep.

  Garth Diamandis was not among them.

  Venera didn’t hide her disappointment. “Tell me where the rest of the prisoners are or I’ll blow your head off,” she told the guard. She had him on his knees with his face pressed against the wall, her pistol at the back of his head. “Bear i
n mind,” she added, “that we’ll find them ourselves if we have to, it’ll just take longer. What do you say?”

  He proceeded to give a detailed account of the layout of the tower, including where the night watch was stationed and when their rounds were. So far Venera hadn’t seen any sign of watchmen; for a nation gearing up for war, Sacrus seemed extremely lax. She said so and her prisoner laughed, a tad hysterically.

  “Nobody’s ever gotten in or out of here,” he mumbled against the plaster. “Who would break in? And from where?” He tried unsuccessfully to shake his head. “You people are insane.”

  “A common enough trait in Spyre,” she sniffed. “Your mistake, then.”

  “You don’t understand,” he croaked. “But you will.”

  She had already noted that he wore armor that was light and utilitarian, and his holstered weapons had been similarly simple. This functionalism, which contrasted dramatically with the outlandish costumes of most of her people, made her more uneasy about Sacrus’s abilities than anything he’d said.

  They spent some time trying to get more out of him and his companion. Neither they nor the prisoners they spoke to knew what Sacrus’s plan was—only that a general mobilization was underway. The prisoners themselves were from all over the principalities; some had recently gone missing within Spyre itself.

  “They’re enough evidence to haul Sacrus before the high court on crimes against the polity,” crowed Bryce. “If we can just get some of these people out of here.”

  Venera shook her head. “They may be enough to get the rest of Spyre up in arms. But until we can come up with a decent plan for getting them out alive, they’re safer where they are. Let them loose now and they’ll give us away, and probably try to run the gauntlet of machine guns and barbed wire on their way to the outer walls. At least let’s find them some weapons and a direction to run in.”