They Promised Me the Gun Wasn't Loaded

by James Alan Gardner

  Renfields are tougher than humans, but they can’t compare to Sparks. A single slap dazes Stephens enough that he’s not going to shoot me immediately. This lets me whack him a few more times, and he folds like a paper lantern.

  Farther off, the other Stevens shoots up a storm. I can’t see what she’s trying to hit, but I assume it flies and sings opera. Reaper’s scythe moans with excitement; it wants to spill blood, and soon. I can’t help wondering how my hockey stick would fare against the scythe, but I doubt I’ll have the chance to find out. Aria and Dakini will beat me to the punch.

  I step over Stephens’s body and stealth my way to the doorway of the lab. The female Stevens is just outside; she’s popping her pistol at a sphere of golden light that flits through the nearby treetops. Inside the sphere is my dear friend Aria, who’s quick enough to dodge most of the gunfire and whose force field deflects the few shots that manage to be on target.

  Meanwhile, Aria sings sonic blasts at Reaper’s skull. They don’t have any discernible effect—Reaper spins his scythe like an airplane propeller in front of him, somehow forming a wall that Aria’s attacks can’t penetrate. In fact, the barrage of sound only increases the scythe’s own moaning, as if the weapon absorbs the energy and keeps getting stronger.

  I don’t like where that might end up, but first things first: Staff Sergeant Barbara L. Stevens. I lean around the doorway and extend my hockey stick to tap Stevens on the shoulder. She whips toward me, trying to bring her pistol to bear. But that just makes it easier to poke her in the face, then slash the stick down on the gun. She doesn’t drop the weapon, but the muzzle gets knocked downward. An instant later, the pistol goes off—Stevens must have pulled the trigger by reflex.

  A hole opens up in the ground near Stevens’s feet. Clouds of dirt spit upward like brown talcum powder.

  I flick my stick and catch Stevens under the jaw. Her head snaps backward, and from there, it’s just bashy unsportslike conduct until I batter her into neverland.

  A voice speaks out of nowhere. “Who are you and how did you get Ninety-Nine’s stick?”

  Dakini. She sounds close by, but I can’t see where. She must be making me blind to her presence: telepathic invisibility.

  And I don’t understand her question. Doesn’t she realize … oh, wait, I’m dressed as Willow Scarlet. Even though Dakini can literally read my mind, she doesn’t recognize me.

  I step back into the lab and around the edge of the door. When I’m sure that Reaper can’t see me, I pull off my mask. “Surprise!”

  A moment later, Dakini’s arms are around me. She gives me a giant bear hug. “We’ve been looking all over for you! Are you okay?”

  “I am, but Zircon’s not,” I say. “And any second, this place is gonna—”

  The floor beneath us lurches. Shit, I jinxed it.

  * * *

  SHERWOOD FOREST TILTS AGAIN. The angle is only five degrees or so, but off in the woods, I hear the collapse of an oak that’s overbalanced. It’s the sound you hear when a lumberjack chops down a tree: the unchopped portion of the trunk slowly crackles as it breaks, then branches snap as the tree slumps against its neighbors, and finally, THUMP as the trunk hits the ground.

  Reaper says, “Fuck,” then starts to chant in some language I don’t recognize. Since I know every human language, he must be casting a spell in the special Darkling language called Enochian. I’m sure I’ll hate the results if we let him finish.

  I go back to the doorway, cock back my arm, and throw my hockey stick at Reaper’s head. Butt end first, with the blade of the stick straight up like an airplane’s tail rudder.

  I’m as good as the best human spear thrower, and that includes people from back in the day when good throws meant survival, not medals. I’m confident my toss will hit Reaper bang on, even if a hockey stick isn’t as well balanced as an actual spear.

  But Dakini is bad at taking things on faith. As my stick flies through the air, violet tendrils wrap around to guide its aim and multiply its force. The stick veers midair and circles so it hits Reaper hard in the back of the skull.

  It’s not enough to knock him out, but it staggers him a moment. He can’t continue his incantation. More importantly, he can’t maintain the propeller-like spin of his scythe as it blocks Aria’s song. A sonic blast gets through his guard and knocks him off his feet.

  As Reaper scuds across the grass, Aria follows up with a coloratura volley pounding down on top of him. He’s driven into a Reaper-shaped divot, and held there by the force of a recitative.

  Reaper struggles to move his scythe between him and the sound. Before he succeeds, I grab my hockey stick from where it fell. I jam the stick’s blade under the handle of the scythe. The moment of contact jolts my stomach with a sudden explosion of nausea, but I manage not to puke as I flick the weapon out of Reaper’s hands.

  The scythe sails away, screaming its head off in frustration. It bounces against a tree and releases the power it absorbed from Aria’s attacks. The tree’s trunk blows out like a truck tire bursting, leaving a gigantic hole.

  The tree begins to topple, and for a moment, it looks like it might fall on Reaper himself. But Dakini intervenes to prevent the sort of poetic justice that likes to happen around Sparks and Darklings. She throws up a violet barrier similar to the one she used to protect me from Stephens. She tilts the barrier like a ramp, letting the tree slide down on an angle and hit the ground several paces from where Reaper lies.

  Reaper tries to get up. Before he gets far, Sherwood Forest gives another lurch. It tilts farther, then shudders.

  Aria gives Reaper another blast. This time he falls …

  No, he doesn’t. He just kind of floats.

  And I’m floating, too. Totally weightless.

  Aw, shit.

  21

  Potential Extinction Vectors

  GRAVITY HASN’T STOPPED WORKING. Gravity works just fine. What doesn’t work anymore is whatever keeps Sherwood airborne.

  So crap. We’re in free fall.

  Sherwood plummets, and those of us inside drop with the same velocity and acceleration. In the stratosphere’s thin air, it feels like zero g: whee, fun! But every second that we plunge, the density of air outside will increase. Soon we’ll have enough air resistance for gravity to return … which sounds like good news, except it will also mean that the hull of Sherwood Forest will heat up madly, like a space capsule on reentry.

  Was Marian farsighted enough to equip Sherwood Forest with heat shielding? More to the point, could she afford the cash and resources to do so? Even Mad Geniuses must sometimes get pinched by budget constraints.

  To confirm my worries, a computer-generated voice starts booming from speakers in the trees: “Critical systems failure. All persons abandon ship. Sherwood Forest will crash in approximately four minutes.”

  “Aria!” I shout. “We have to move!”

  She looks down at me. I realize this is the first time she’s seen me without the Willow Scarlet mask. CRACK! She breaks the sound barrier zooming down to hug me, burying her face in my shoulder. “You’re alive!” she whispers. “You’re alive!”

  “Um, yeah,” I say, forcing myself not to joke that her hug might kill me. But seriously, Aria is nearly squeezing out my guts—splat, like a tube of lube. She’s super-strong and not holding back. After a moment’s more squishing, I have to say, “Dude. Four minutes from now, we hit the ground and splatter. Unless we burn to cinders first. Can we put a pin in this for later?”

  “Sure,” Aria says into my collarbone. She straightens up. “Sure. But we need to find Zircon. Ze’s not answering our messages.”

  “I know where Zirc is. We have to go back into the lab.”

  Aria is still holding me, though not in as much of a death grip. She easily carries me with her as she flies through the laboratory’s door.

  Inside, lab equipment drifts in zero g: robot components … weapons … bottles filled with chemicals … oh, look, there’s one of Jane’s daggers. Let’s
not bump into that, shall we?

  As I look around the room, I catch sight of Dakini. She’s bobbing weightless beside the male Stephens. Violet tendrils reach from her forehead into the man’s skull. “Erasing memories?” I ask.

  “I thought it best,” she replies. “I’m wiping away the last ten minutes, so they won’t remember we fought them. That way our team won’t get in trouble with the law.”

  “Good.” As I speak, I spot what I’ve been looking for: the medi-tank. Since it wasn’t anchored to the ground, it’s floating like everything else—a priceless weightless bathtub of medical salvation. “That thing there,” I say. “We need it.”

  “On it,” Dakini says. She gives Stephens’s brain a final rinse, then wraps the medi-tank in a mesh of violet strands. When it’s suitably enveloped, Dakini throws another strand of violet around Aria’s waist. We’ve become a little train: Aria is the engine and she’s carrying me in her arms; when Aria moves, Dakini gets pulled along too, with the medi-tank tagging behind like a caboose.

  “Critical systems failure. All persons abandon ship…”

  I look down at Stephens, still lying unconscious. I sigh. “Dakini…”

  She says, “Of course.”

  More strands of violet energy, one reaching out the door to snag onto Reaper. Within seconds, all of our recent opponents have been added to our little train.

  We do not bring Reaper’s scythe. With any luck, it’ll be destroyed along with Sherwood. I suspect that destroying the scythe won’t be nearly that easy, but a girl can fantasize, right?

  “Awesome,” I say when we’re ready. I point toward the corridor that leads to the clean room. “That way,” I say. “Fast.”

  Aria is good at fast. She zooms forward, still hugging me tightly. The rest of our train is in tow. We have to slow down through doorways, so Dakini can maneuver the medi-tank, but the tank is weightless and Dakini is getting quite dexterous at telekinesis. As for Reaper and Stevens & Stephens … screw ’em. If they bounce against doorframes, boo-hoo.

  Within half a minute, we’ve reached the clean room’s air lock. There’s just enough space for us all to fit inside along with the medi-tank. Even so, we have to stand the tank upright, like an extra person in our midst.

  And let me say, there’s no good position for an unconscious skeleton and two Darkling minions when you’re all crowded in together. You don’t want them right in your face, but you don’t want them behind your back either. We prop them behind the medi-tank, and push the tank tight back against them—partly to keep them from slumping to the floor, and partly so we don’t have to look at them.

  Since we’ve got a bit of time while the air lock cycles, Dakini goes to work erasing the memories of Reaper and the other Stevens. Meanwhile, I try to slip out of Aria’s grasp, but she doesn’t let me go.

  “What happened to you?” she demands. This is the first chance we’ve had for a talk—while we were flying, conversation consisted of, “Go right … turn left … now slow down a second.” Aria says, “We looked all over the forest for you, but…”

  “How did you get up here in the first place?” I ask.

  “The Darklings brought us. They put out a call for Sparks to help invade Robin Hood’s base. Dakini and I volunteered. But as soon as we got here, we snuck away from the main attack force and started looking for you and Zircon.” She looks around. “Where is Zircon, by the way?”

  “Seriously hurt,” I reply. “But if all goes well, ze’ll be fine. There’s a teleport thingie that will beam us to Waterloo. As soon as we arrive, we need to get Zirc and this tank to a power source.” I hold up the tank’s electrical cable, the one that I cut with Jane’s dagger. “Standard power lines should do, but wherever we go, it has to be someplace Zirc’ll be safe for three or four hours.”

  “What about the roof of a university building?” Dakini suggests. “We should be able to find a useful power feed. And no one will notice us up there—not until morning, anyway.”

  “Sounds good,” I say.

  “I’ll keep you safe,” Aria promises. “Both of you. All of you.”

  “Safe from what?” I ask.

  “From this honking big forest that’s falling straight down on Waterloo.”

  * * *

  OOPS. FORGOT ABOUT THAT. But Polly the Parrot did say that Sherwood was parked above our city.

  Basically, several million tons of foresty goodness is about to crash down on top of our home. Sherwood measures at least two kilometers in diameter. When it falls out of the stratosphere, hot from reentry, it’ll flatten and incinerate everything below.

  Then the force of Sherwood’s impact will scatter debris in all directions. Burning debris. Burning debris that includes a shitload of Cape Tech, so assume extra explosions and spills of uncanny radiation.

  Then there’s the sheer earthquake shock that’ll shake the ground. Waterloo houses aren’t built for such tremors. For miles around the impact site, everybody asleep in their beds will have their homes collapse on top of them.

  Three hundred thousand people currently live in Waterloo. I wonder how many will be alive three minutes from now.

  “Critical systems failure. All persons abandon ship…”

  The Darklings and Sparks who assaulted Sherwood must be hightailing it by now. Presumably they had an escape plan. They can leave the same way they got to Sherwood, however they managed the deed.

  But did they think about the risk that Sherwood might crash? And even if they did, do the attackers have the strength to do anything about it? It’s one thing to transport attackers up to a target in the stratosphere. It’s a whole other thing to grab something that weighs millions of tons and shove it back into the sky.

  In the past few seconds, a few percentage points of gravity have returned. The closer Sherwood gets to the ground, the thicker the air. It’s now thick enough to push back.

  The floor beneath us is heating up. Aria lifts me off the ground before my shoe soles start to melt.

  * * *

  THE DOOR OF THE air lock chimes and we all pile out. More precisely, Reaper and the Renfields topple out like corpses when you open the wrong closet … but to-may-to, to-mah-to. We let them lie because we’re busy keeping the medi-tank from falling.

  In front of us, Marian has laid Zircon out on the examination table. Zirc’s costume has been removed to expose the wound on zir back. It’s bad: like if someone used a sledgehammer to smash a hole in a rock face.

  Nearby lie bandages and disinfectant, which Marian must have intended to put on Zircon’s wounds. But the first-aid stuff hasn’t been used. What would be the point? Zirc isn’t bleeding, and rock can’t get infected.

  But rock can crumble. Zircon’s face has changed from its normal gold tan to a bleached marble white. And the surface of the rock has started to flake off—what geologists call “spalling” or “exfoliation.” Rocks exposed to harsh weather develop microfractures and eventually fall to pieces. With real rocks, the process takes centuries; with Zircon, I’m afraid ze may crack apart at any moment.

  “You bloody well took your time,” Marian growls. She’s stand ing in front of an access panel in one wall of the room. Inside the panel are what look like conventional circuit boards. Marian is smearing the boards with toothpaste. I tell no lie. It is literally Colgate toothpaste with Total Advanced Whitening, and she’s slathering the stuff across the capacitors, resistors, and logic chips. Oh, Cape Tech, I love you … especially in the hands of a master Mad Genius like Marian.

  “I met some opposition,” I tell her, “but I also found some friends.”

  “How lovely for you,” Marian says. “Are you aware we’re crashing?”

  “No shit, really?” I asked. “I thought the weightlessness was because you didn’t pay your gravity bill.” I look around the room. “Where’s Vernon?”

  “None of your business,” Marian says. “I sent him someplace safe.”

  She points to the door that leads to other places and times. It’s
open now. In the middle of the opening is a space-time vortex—an actual swirling eddy that resembles a cut-rate Doctor Who special effect. Multicolored bands spiral into a central vanishing point, and the whole thing turns slowly like the North Atlantic Gyre.

  Very cheesy. Very weird science. But I repeat myself.

  I say, “So Robin Hood will live to fight again?”

  “Of course,” Marian replies. “Now chop-chop, into the vortex. The sooner you go, the sooner I can finish rewiring.”

  I turn to my friends. “Aria, take Zirc. Dakini, take the tank. Get out of here now; I’ll be right behind.”

  Aria looks like she wants to protest, but Zircon needs help more than I do. Aria cradles Zirc in her arms and flies into the swirling mass of color. The two of them vanish.

  As Dakini begins to use her energy strands to move the medi-tank, I lower my voice and ask Marian, “Why the rewiring?”

  “Because if I’m fast and clever, I can rig the vortex to suck in all of Sherwood.” She jabs a soldering gun into the toothpaste. The toothpaste sputters, then sizzles. “It’ll be like a snake swallowing itself. Everything will get pulled from this plane of existence … as opposed to falling on the heads of people below us.”

  It sounds insane. But that makes it perfect for weird science: a ridiculous gambit to save hundreds of thousands of people. The Light loves that shit.

  I say to Marian, “What happens to you?”

  “What do you think?” she snaps. “I get sucked in, too.”

  “And you end up where?”

  “Nowhere,” Marian says. “Just gone. Negated.”

  I jerk my thumb toward the vortex. “You can’t escape through that?”

  “No,” Marian says with strained patience, “because I’m changing the vortex from transport to annihilate. And if you don’t stop asking these questions, I won’t have time to make the change and Sherwood will smash the shite out of your precious city.”