Appropriate, I guess—according to the Robin Hood stories, Will Scarlet was Sherwood’s greatest swordsman. And I’ll need weaponry for the robbery; I can’t fight stuff like Reaper’s scythe with my bare hands.
But swords?
I slide one from its sheath. The blade looks sharp as fuck. And the people I’ll be fighting aren’t bad guys as such—technically, they’re on the right side of the law. I don’t like Stevens & Stephens, but I won’t hack off their arms just to steal a stupid gun.
I’m not Ninja Jane.
I heft up the swords. They’re beautiful examples of their kind—duplicates of the military sabers carried by German cavalry officers in the First World War. I’m a superior sword maker as well as wielder, and from both points of view, these weapons are awesome: the last generation of swords made for actual battle. The idiots actually believed they’d be riding in cavalry charges, waving their blades as they rode down on the enemy. That turned out well, didn’t it? And now Robin wants me to do the same, facing guns and superpowers?
The door to the mead hall opens and Marian enters. She’s still in her lab coat and muumuu, and still wearing safety goggles. It doesn’t look like a battle costume, but if my Willow Scarlet outfit is bulletproof, Marian’s must be, too.
“Shake a leg,” Marian says. “We’ll be leaving in just a few minutes.”
I point to the table. “Robin wants me carrying these swords. How useless is that!”
“What would you prefer?” Marian asks. “A gun? The table can provide you with a nice M16. Or an M4? An M82? I can get you an Uzi or AK-47, but only if you’ll use them ironically.”
I say, “What about a weapon that knocks people out instead of killing them?”
“Ah, yes,” Marian says, “head trauma and permanent brain injury are much more humane, aren’t they?” She sighs. “Willow, darling, if you’re fighting Darklings or Sparks, you can hack them or shoot them and they’ll be fine, relatively speaking—unless you deliberately go out of your way to kill them. Whereas, if you’re fighting normal humans, they’re so damned breakable! People have been killed by a single punch. An ordinary punch, not even super-strength. What you did to Robin with that quarterstaff … for him it was just a time-out and a lesson against arrogance. If you did the same to a normal human being, they’d be ready for a toe tag. It’s the zeroth law of Dark and Light: we play by different rules than mortals.”
She picks up one of the swords and tests its weight. “The real question is,” Marian says, “can you use this effectively? And do you have an alternative? If you can shoot lightning out of your nostrils, then by all means, leave the swords behind. Or if you’re a mediocre sword fighter, take something you’re more adept with. A quarterstaff, for example. But from a practical point of view, any weapon is lethal against normal humans, but only good clean fun against people with powers. Given that, you might as well take the swords to keep Robin happy.”
She offers me the sword she’s holding. I don’t take it. “Keeping Robin happy isn’t one of my high priorities.”
“It should be,” Marian says. She says it lightly, but I hear the threat behind her words. “As long as Robin likes you, the rest of us will, too. If you give us reason to reconsider…”
She lets that hang in the air. I can fill in the blanks. It would be easy to hang me out to dry during the train robbery. When the fighting starts, the outlaws could simply not guard my back. Hell, someone like Ninja Jane could stab me in the back during the chaos. That would solve a lot of problems for Marian: she wouldn’t have to erase my memory and run the risk that I’d still remember something; she wouldn’t have to worry about some wild card running around Sherwood Forest, messing with her lab and building stuff of my own; and if I get killed during the robbery, the feds will take off my mask and discover that the poor girl supposedly shot by Robin Hood was actually a member of his gang. Robin stops being a thug who hurt an innocent bystander. Marian would surely concoct a story saying that my apparent death at Robin’s hands was just a clever ruse … and hey, he’s back to being a roguish dude who’d never harm a fly.
But no one will stab me in the back if Robin likes having me around. Essentially, I’m safe as long as Robin wants to fuck me.
Awesome.
I take the sword from Marian and strap it onto my back.
I take the other sword, too. No sense having one hand empty.
15
Mechanisms of Fight or Flight
MARIAN LEADS ME THROUGH the forest to a clearing that’s being used as a staging area. She points me toward a handful of jet packs lying on the ground. “Suit up,” Marian tells me, then hurries away.
I go to the jet packs and examine them. Each has a pair of meter-long wings attached to a central cylinder with a jet cone at the bottom—the type of personal flight unit that humans have dreamed of since Icarus, or at least since reading Popular Science in the 1920s.
Engineers have coughed up hair balls trying to make such devices, but never with much success. They’ve produced half-assed flight units that lumber through the air for embarrassingly short periods of time, but nothing that lets you swoop across the sky like a bird.
Then along came Cape Tech, which pumped out swoop machines by the dozen. Every Mad Genius feels obliged to make their own personal flight-pack design, in the same way that classical musicians wrote fugues just to prove they knew how.
I pick up one of the units. It’s heavy, like a backpack equipped for a ten-day hike. I have no idea how to strap it on or work it, but Wrecking Ball comes over to lend a hand.
“You’re the new girl,” she says. “You clobbered Robin. Good job.”
This is the first time I’ve heard Wrecking Ball say anything beyond hollered curses. Her accent is Filipino, and her manner is hearty. She strikes me as one of those people who never represses emotions: if she’s angry, she’s furious; if she’s sad, she cries without feeling guilty; if she’s happy, she’ll slap you on the back and buy the first round of beer.
Up close, she’s huge, a head taller than me and twice as wide. She’s human at the moment—her skin is just brown, not rusty black iron. I wonder if she has to be human in order to use the jet pack. Maybe turning to metal would make her too heavy. Or maybe she’s just more comfortable as flesh and blood … like wearing casual clothing instead of a work uniform.
Wrecking Ball smacks the side of the jet pack’s central cylinder. The top of it detaches; it’s actually a steel skullcap. She makes me take off my red Robin Hood–style hat, then she presses the skullcap tightly onto my head. I can’t see what happens next, but I think the cap resizes itself for a snug but not too tight fit. Wrecking Ball nods to herself, then tells me to put on my hat again. I do. She adjusts the hat slightly and says, “There. Can’t see the cap at all.”
“What does the cap do?” I ask.
“Reads your mind,” Wrecking Ball replies. “It has a Wi-Fi connection with the jet pack’s control unit. Just think where you want to go, and the pack does the rest.”
Seems simple. Also potentially disastrous. What if somebody blasts the area with radio static to scramble the Wi-Fi? I’ll just have to trust that Marian thought of such dangers, and took appropriate precautions.
Wrecking Ball must see the worried look on my face. She laughs. “Come on, girl, if someone like me can use one of these packs, you’ll get the hang of it, too. Tuck’s horse, Lightning—he’s over there—will teleport us to the scene, one by one. We’ll be hundreds of meters in the air, so you’ll have plenty of room to experiment while you wait for others to arrive.”
“That’s assuming I don’t crash and burn,” I say.
“Can’t happen,” Wrecking Ball assures me. “Marian built in fail-safes. If the wings detect you’re in a nosedive, they automatically pull up before you hit the ground.”
I’m still not thrilled, but I have to assume Marian knows what she’s doing. She’s off on the other side of the clearing, giving orders to several dozen robots. They look like r
un-of-the-mill cannon fodder—bulky metal contraptions painted Lincoln green. They’re roughly human shaped, with guns instead of hands. I doubt that the robots have much speed or intelligence, but they’ll add to our numbers and provide covering fire for our attacks. They’ll also provide cover for our retreat … which brings up an important topic.
I ask Wrecking Ball, “What happens when one of us gets the bazooka?”
She says, “Just think that thought clearly. Your skullcap will signal the jet pack to fire a flare. Very bright, very loud—we’ll all see it. If you trigger the flare yourself or see it from somebody else, just fly straight up. Keep going till the air gets thin enough that it’s hard to breathe. That’ll be high enough to be safe from anything the Darklings shoot at us. Then just wait; Lightning will teleport us out, one by one.”
“What if something happens to my jet pack?” I ask. “What if I can’t fly away?”
“Someone will help you,” Wrecking Ball tells me. “Probably Robin. He likes rescuing pretty girls.”
Wrecking Ball gives me a wink. She probably believes Robin and I have already got consummatory together. I don’t correct her misimpression. She might take better care of me if she thinks I’m balling the boss.
I say, “Speaking of being rescued, how do I call for help? Do we get radios? Maybe cell phones?”
Wrecking Ball taps the side of her neck. “We have radio implants,” she says.
“I don’t,” I reply. “At least I sure as hell hope Marian didn’t put anything inside me while I was unconscious.”
“Then if you need help, you’ll have to yell,” Wrecking Ball says. “But don’t worry. Watch the rest of us and follow along.”
I could ask a million more questions, but the answers would likely be hand waving. Robin and his outlaws are all off-the-cuffers. Not a single one has asked what my powers are. No one has even asked if I have powers. They’ve apparently heard I beat Robin in combat, so they assume I must be a Spark.
They must leave all the thinking to Marian. Without her and her inventions (including Sherwood Forest itself), Robin and his posse would be easy pickings.
Speaking of Marian, where is she? She’s not talking to the robots anymore. I look around, but she’s nowhere in sight. Instead, I spot Robin striding to the center of our assembly.
“Good my friends,” he shouts, “the time has come! Pray to your gods, then gather round. Lightning awaits.”
Robin leaps onto the back of the gray quarter horse I saw in the mead hall. The horse has been quietly grazing on the clearing’s grass … but when Robin mounts its back, the horse doesn’t bolt in surprise. It simply stops eating, gives a long-suffering look in Friar Tuck’s direction, then disappears.
Five seconds later, the horse is back. Ninja Jane appears from the shadow of the trees and places her hand on the animal’s neck. The horse disappears again, taking Jane with it. The process repeats—Lightning in, Lightning out—for each of the outlaws. No one except Robin makes the effort of mounting the horse; touching is obviously enough for the teleportation to work.
Wrecking Ball nudges me forward when most of the others have left. Most of the human others, I mean; Marian’s robots wait stoically, last in line behind the Sparks. I pat Lightning’s shoulder and feel his strong muscles under his skin. He’s sweating now, as if hopping back and forth requires exertion. But quarter horses are tough animals bred for working on ranches, and Lightning is nowhere near his limits. He leans into my hand, and abruptly I’m slapped hard by a winter wind.
* * *
MY ALTITUDE: HIGH AS fuck. The temperature: inversely proportional. Southern Ontario is approaching an Edmonton level of cold, and here I am, wearing red tights.
Suddenly, I’m thankful for the codpiece. It blocks more wind than the leggings. But the V down my front is bronchitis waiting to happen.
At least I have a wonderful view. It’s midafternoon, and sunny. Farmland spreads out below me, fields white with snow framed by forests of bare dark trees. Gray lines of roads form a haphazard grid, with occasional zigzags to scoot around oddities of terrain. Barns and houses clump here and there, but they’re scattered sparsely enough that they probably won’t get hit in the coming firefight.
I can barely see the train tracks. They’re under a dusting of snow that must have fallen since the previous train passed. No flakes are falling at present; cirrus clouds wisp like my dad’s hair when it needs cutting, but they don’t block the sunshine at all. The train we’re going to attack is visible many miles in the distance as it chugs along through the pastures.
Lightning the Flying-slash-Teleporting Horse disappears. I’m whipped even harder by the wind, now that I’m not in the lee of the horse’s body. I start to plummet. Apparently, touching the horse prevented me from dropping, but now I’m on my own.
My gut clenches, but only for a millisecond. Then I muster all the skill and coolheaded nerve of the world’s best paratrooper. I project calm thoughts toward my jet pack, and in a heartbeat, I’m flying for real. Jools the F-18. I’m still freezing my ass off, but who the hell cares? This is awesome.
It isn’t my first time flying without an airplane. I’ve been carried by Miranda, and I’ve ridden a flying carpet powered by Shar’s telekinesis. But this is the first time I do my own driving; it’s glorious. I practice zooming around till I almost crash into Robin.
I don’t see the dude till the very last second. Lightning must have spaced us out widely when he brought us in. That way, we’d be spread across a big swath of sky to avoid accidental collisions. I haven’t even seen any other outlaws yet—they’re smart enough to keep their distance. But Robin has gallantly swooshed up to join me, in case the dumbass newbie needs help. I have to make a barrel roll to dodge him midair, combining the skills of a combat pilot with everything else that’s in my head. I yell nasty things as I spin, but there’s no way that Robin can hear me. The jet packs aren’t super noisy, but they’re as loud as a gas-powered lawnmower. Between that and the rush of the wind, nothing I say will be audible unless I get up close and personal.
Robin grins, as if he didn’t just nearly get me killed. I almost grin back—his Halo hits me hard with its charming brashness—but my Willow Scarlet Halo immunizes me enough against Robin’s charisma. His smile still affects me all the way to my toes, but it doesn’t shut down my brain.
So I turn and jet away to a safe distance. Keeping my back toward Robin, I hover to look at the train. It’s still too far away to see much detail, but I can make out the basics: it has a single engine in front, then two bog-standard freight cars, three passenger cars, two more freights, and a caboose.
The passenger cars are double-deckers, painted green and white like the normal GO trains that make commuter runs between Waterloo and Toronto. Some of the passengers may be ringers—Darklings or Sparks who’ll jump out of their seats when the shit hits the fan. It’s possible the bazooka has been stashed with the passenger luggage to make it harder to find. The gun is too big for a standard suitcase, but it would fit in a duffel bag like I use to carry hockey equipment. Odds are, however, that the bazooka is stored in one of the freight cars: locked in a heavy vault and surrounded by enough combat power to ruin our day.
Assuming the gun’s on the train at all. This whole setup might be fake. The bazooka may be sitting in the back seat of a minivan, cruising along the highway in a completely different direction. Reaper may be a bonehead (ha-ha), but someone in the Darkling community might be smart enough to arrange such a bluff.
Only one way to find out. I drag my gaze away from the train and scan the sky around me. As far as I can tell, almost everyone has arrived. The other outlaws drift on the breeze—some hugging themselves in the cold, some sizing up the train, some apparently zoned out. No sign of Tuck, but several of his animals are present. (There’s nothing I’ve ever seen as cute as a fennec fox with its own tiny jet pack.) No sign of Marian, either, but a dozen of her robots hover nearby, so maybe she’s controlling them from Sherwood.<
br />
Lightning arrives with a final robot clutching the horse’s mane. Robin shouts something I can’t hear. It’s probably “Tallyho!” or something equally Robinesque. He tilts forward into a power dive straight at the train. Others plunge close after him. For a moment, I imagine them crashing into each other fifty feet above the target. I tell myself they’ve done this often enough to be good at group operations. Still I give them a good head start, so I can steer clear of collisions.
It’s only after I’m heading down that I see Ninja Jane behind me. Somehow, on a clear afternoon in a wide open sky, I didn’t notice her.
But obviously, she’s decided to keep an eye on what I’m doing. If I try to escape, she’ll stop me with extreme prejudice.
I’ll bear that in mind.
* * *
THE OTHERS DON’T SMASH together above the train. On the way down, they do a reasonable job of dividing into equal-sized parties for each of the four freight cars. Someone must be issuing orders over the radio implants; it might be Robin, but my money is on Marian, wherever she is. She can probably see through the eyes of her robots, so she’s getting twelve different views of the robbery scene. By checking out the feeds, Marian has a great bird’s-eye view of what’s going on.
In orderly fashion, the Merry Men align themselves with the freight cars. They match the train’s speed and hover a few hundred feet above their targets. It’s possible no one on the train knows we’re here, but I doubt it—even Reaper should be smart enough to cast some spell that would let him watch for attacks coming from overhead. In fact, he’d just need a few GoPros mounted on the train and aimed in different directions to get an overall view of the situation.
But no one attacks us. After a moment, Wrecking Ball makes the first move. Like a diver doing a cannonball off the ten-meter platform, she drops and hits the roof of the freight car connected to the caboose. Blue sparks of lightning shoot upward from the point of contact—the train roof must be wired like an electrified fence. I don’t know if Wrecking Ball can be hurt by electricity, but in the short run, it doesn’t matter. Her impact bashes clean through the roof and into the freight car below.
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