by J. J. Green
“Understood, sir. Sir...?”
“Yes?”
“Are you aware a BA starship has entered Earth orbit?”
“No, I was not.” He’d thought they’d all pissed off into interplanetary space.
“It’s just one. The Valiant. She’s, er, she’s under fire from the few EAC ships there.”
“Right. So?”
“So...we have two battleships stationed at Earth. I was wondering...”
“I see what you mean.”
What was it the Dwyr had said? The enemy of my enemy is my friend.
Two could play at that game.
“I understand your proposal. Stand by for my answer. Meanwhile, you know what to do.”
He asked his comm officer to hail the Valiant’s commander.
A few moments later, she provided him with a vidlink and told him the Valiant’s commander was Brigadier Colbourn. A harassed-looking older woman with a thin fuzz of white hair coating her scalp appeared on the screen.
“Ua Talman,” she said, “I’m rather busy here. I’d appreciate it if you would be brief.”
Beyond her the bridge of her ship could be seen along with her officers at their consoles. It was clear from their expressions they were facing the fight of their lives.
“I won’t take up much of your time,” he replied. “But I’m curious as to why you’ve placed yourself in such a dangerous position. My question isn’t frivolous.”
Colbourn’s face was blank as the time lag passed before his reply reached her, then she scowled. But as she heard his final sentence, her brow cleared into something like hopefulness.
“We’re attempting to free Jamaica from EAC control. You know what they do to the civilians of countries they invade.”
“And you’re attempting this alone?”
Again, the lag passed. Now she looked irritated.
“I’m sure your data tells you that. If you have nothing more to say, I must go now.”
Lorcan did have more to ask her, such as why the hell the rest of the BA space fleet wasn’t taking part in the assault, and, considering the circumstances, if Colbourn had some kind of death wish and she wanted to take everyone in her command with her.
He forbore.
“Before you go,” he said, “I have a proposal. Despite my previous alliance with the EAC, now there is little love lost between us. I’d like to offer you the services of the two ships I have in your vicinity. In exchange, if your venture is successful, I want the BA to allow the continued operations of the Barracuda Sea Mine without harassment.”
He awaited her reply, expecting immediate agreement. The woman was in no position to quibble. However, what she said was:
“I’m not able to agree to those terms.”
“What?! But you’re about to...” As he watched, a shudder ran through the Valiant. Had the ship taken a hit, or was she firing? Behind the brigadier, the officers looked terrified.
“Oh, very well,” said Lorcan after a moment’s consideration. “My ships will lend you their support.”
He hated the thought of committing his vessels and crews to helping the Valiant without the prospect of getting anything in return, but he hated the Dwyr more. And it was obvious that if he didn’t do something soon, the BA ship would be lost. Also, much as he begrudged the feeling, he couldn’t deny his conscience was pricked. Colbourn and her men and women were only trying to save their compatriots from slaughter, at the dire risk of their own lives.
His reply had reached its target. Relief swept over her haggard features. “Thank you, Ua Talman. Now, I really must—”
“Yes, I understand,” he replied, closing the vidlink and cutting off her response. Nothing more was needed to be said.
Contenting himself with the knowledge that even if Colbourn hadn’t agreed to any kind of recompense for the services she was about to receive, he could nevertheless use them as leverage in later negotiations, he asked for a link to his admiral.
“Please inform all your commanders stationed at Earth that they are to defend the BA ship from the EAC attack.”
“I was hoping you would say that, sir,” she replied, “I’ll relay your message immediately. And if I might say so, I think you’re choosing the right side. I never trusted that woman, the Dwyr.”
“Thanks for your opinion,” Lorcan replied icily before closing the comm.
Chapter Forty-Three
It was hopeless. They were hemmed in from all sides. Even if the Cornflower managed to land in the mansions’ grounds again without being blown to pieces, they would never reach her. As soon as they left the house, they would be mowed down by the EAC troops outside. More EAC soldiers were arriving, too.
It was going to be a massacre.
Still, with marines stationed at the windows keeping back the attackers for now, Wright had insisted they continue searching the house. Taylan guessed he had a point: If the Dwyr was here, they could use her as a hostage and get her army to back off.
But the woman was nowhere to be found. Taylan had searched the attic with Abacha, stepping between thick, old wooden beams, peering through clouds of dust their movements puffed into the air. There had been plenty of interesting things to see in that dark place—boxes filled with the relics of hundreds of years of occupation, heirlooms of generations of inhabitants, paintings moldering in their frames, books infested with insects, trunks that had once contained clothes but were now mostly mouse nests.
But no Dwyr.
“You know,” Abacha said as they descended the ladder after their fruitless search, “there’s still a chance we could get away.”
“What chance?” asked Taylan. “The place is surrounded.”
“I don’t mean all of us. I saw—”
“Not this again!”
“Hear me out.” He’d reached the bottom of the ladder and talked to Taylan as she climbed down after him. “There’s some cover near the back of the house, a shrubbery, outside the kitchen. It leads to an overgrown orchard, and that reaches all the way to the fence. If the whole platoon were to try to leave that way, they would soon be spotted, but a couple of us, keeping low? We might make it.”
“I don’t get it. If you want to desert, why did you suggest to the major that we came here?”
“I thought catching the Dwyr was the only chance we had, but she isn’t here. It’s the end of the road for us if we don’t do something, and I’m not ready to die, not for the BA, not for anyone.”
Taylan felt a twinge of pity, though she was disappointed in her friend. She didn’t want to die either, and certainly not for the BA. She’d seen its ugly side and she didn’t view it in the same way anymore, but there was more to life than simply staying alive.
“I’m not running away because the odds look bad,” she said. “If Wright had thought that in West BI, I wouldn’t be here. He knew what was right then, and he does now.”
“I’m not talking about right and wrong. I’m talking about survival.”
They’d crossed the landing on the uppermost floor. The major had given the order to assemble in the ballroom on the first floor after they’d finished their search. The room was in the center of the house and had no windows, so it offered protection from the attack.
“If you want to make a run for it, be my guest,” said Taylan bitterly. “I won’t tell anyone. But leave me out of it.”
Abacha didn’t reply.
They descended the stairs without speaking a word to each other and walked across the wide hall, heading for the ballroom. Hisses of pulse fire were coming from all around as the EAC forces pressed in on the house. The marines at the windows were doing a good job of keeping them back, but eventually the power packs in their rifles would fail, while the EAC could resupply.
The ballroom was getting busy as others also returned from unsuccessful searches.
Wright was there, his hands on his hips, his visor up, looking defeated.
Taylan put distance between herself and Abacha, thinking if he was go
ing to try to make his escape, she was too disgusted with him to say goodbye. She decided to speak to the major.
He looked better with his helmet covering that tuft of hair that always stood up on the crown of his head. She wondered if he knew about it. He was a good guy, even though he was too in love with the military for his own good and never seemed to believe anything she said.
“Hey,” she said as she reached him.
He replied sternly, “Corporal—”
“C’mon. Can’t we talk to each other as friends for once? How much longer do we have?”
His rigid bearing softened. “It might not be as bad as it looks. I just heard from Colbourn the Valiant found an unexpected ally. The AP has come to her defense, and they’re currently going at it with the EAC ships.”
“That’s great news—for them, not so great for us. Unless the Valiant can beam us aboard like in the sims.”
“I don’t know whether to ask the Cornflower’s pilot to attempt a landing.” His brow furrowed. “It would be madness, but it’s the only chance we’ve got. If even a few of us could make it out to her—”
“He’d probably do it, but...” She didn’t bother stating the obvious.
“I know. It’s never going to work. No one would make it ten meters from the door before they were shot down, and it must already be too late anyway. We’re due an airstrike any minute. I keep expecting the EAC troops to withdraw.”
Taylan sucked in a breath as a true understanding of the situation hit her.
“What?” Wright asked.
“She’s here!”
“She...?”
“Dwyr Orr is still here! We’ve been searching for ages, but her soldiers have only kept up a pulse fire attack when they could have launched grenades or mortars, or just bombed us. She didn’t manage to get out when we arrived.”
“Shit, I think you’re right.” He began sending a comm, telling everyone to keep on looking, to go back to the places they’d searched and search again, to tear the place apart.
A marine near one of the ballroom walls turned too fast and clumsily knocked over a Grecian-style statue. The white marble figure tumbled heavily onto the polished tiles. A crack echoed from the walls, and the statue broke into several pieces.
But that wasn’t what everyone was looking at. Behind the space where the statue had stood crouched a woman in a long, black dress. For a breathless second, everyone froze.
Then she bolted.
Taylan didn’t think she’d ever seen anyone move so fast. The Dwyr flew across the room like she had wings on her heels. She ran diagonally across a corner, confusingly not heading for the door. The unexpectedness of her direction caused the marines to freeze for another second in surprise.
It was enough time for her to reach the wall. As she touched the spot she was aiming for, Taylan saw a very faint outline in the wallpaper and two cuts in the decorative rail.
There was a secret door.
She shouted a warning, but the Dwyr had pushed it open and was disappearing inside.
Meanwhile, hisses came from the direction of the main entrance to the ballroom. No one had noticed that the EAC soldiers had finally managed to get inside the house. Pulse bolts were streaming in from the doorway, cutting through the marines like scythes. They turned and began to fire back.
Taylan ran for the secret door.
THE PASSAGEWAY WAS pitch black. She lowered her visor, and her night vision activated. Rough, pitted brick walls rose on each side of a space only a meter wide. The floor was brick, too, though uneven. Thick, ragged cobwebs hung down, recently broken where the Dwyr had passed through them. They flapped lazily in a mild breeze. The passageway led to an exit somewhere outside.
Her helmet was picking up the sound of soft footsteps ahead, though they were hard to hear over the noise she was making herself. She guessed Dwyr Orr had tried to leave via the secret passage when the marines had arrived and hadn’t quite made it. She’d been waiting, trapped behind the statue, while Wright stood just a short distance away, unable to make it the final few meters.
Well, she was still not going to escape.
Taylan sped up. Her target couldn’t be very far ahead. She lifted her pulse rifle and fired, speculatively. The flare wiped out her vision for a moment, but that was the only result. The Dwyr had to be farther away than she thought, or the passage curved.
She noticed it had begun to slope downward. Did it go underground, to travel beneath the gardens and perhaps emerge outside the fence? She didn’t know a lot about these old homes of the aristocracy.
Whatever. The Dwyr was not getting away. Taylan fired again, and lost her vision again for a quarter second. She strained her ears, listening to her helmet’s audio. The faint footsteps had stopped. Now all she could hear was her own heavy tread.
Her chest tightened. Had she lost her?
Something heavy smashed into her back and she was flung forward and down. Before she could rise, the thing hit her again, but this time she heard the crack of her armor splitting and agony burst in her kidneys.
She shrieked.
The Dwyr must have been hiding in an alcove, waiting for her approach.
Whatever was embedded in her back was ripped out again, jerking her body and flooding her with new pain. Summoning all the energy she could, Taylan shifted to one side, cramming herself against the wall. A metallic thunk hit her ears. The Dwyr had missed with her third blow.
Her nerves screaming, Taylan twisted around. Throughout her ordeal, her hand had remained fastened on her rifle. The Dwyr’s robed figure loomed over her, holding something long and pointed. One of the things that hold torches on walls?
Taylan was already firing, aiming vaguely in the direction of the woman. Pulses flew out, filling the passage with light. The Dwyr looked monstrous, and the expression on her face as flashes threw it into relief was terrible.
Taylan was in too much pain. She could barely cling onto her rifle, let alone aim it. Her shots were going wide.
The long, sharp object lifted once more, her blood dripping from its tip.
If the Dwyr hit pierced the front of her armor, she’d kill her.
With a cry of effort, Taylan wrenched her arm over her body and fired again.
She heard a screech. She’d hit the Dwyr. Fire erupted from the woman’s robes, and her makeshift weapon clattered to the floor beside Taylan’s head. Issuing an awful scream, the Dwyr ran off down the passage, her arms thrust over her head, trailing flames.
Then she was gone, only the smoke of her burning clothes and flesh remaining.
Taylan couldn’t move. Hot liquid was seeping out beneath her, soaking her skin. Her body was a ball of agony, worse even than the time Wright had blown her free from the boulders. She couldn’t breathe. A great weight seemed to be pressing on her lungs.
She seemed to be looking down a tunnel. All she could see was the brick ceiling above her, where spiders crawled. Her vision was darkening, and she didn’t think it had anything to do with her visor.
Fuck.
She didn’t want to die. Not yet. She wanted to see her kids again. Somehow. Just one more time. She couldn’t give up on them. They would never know what had become of her.
Blackness encroached, and she felt the thread of life slipping from her grasp.
Footsteps.
Her gasps halted. The Dwyr was coming back. She’d doused the flames, and she was returning to finish her off. Taylan tried to lift her rifle, but her arm was useless and wouldn’t obey her.
Only, she realized, the footsteps were not soft. They were not the soft tread of a woman, but heavy, running, booted feet. It was the sound of soldiers. The EAC must have fought their way into the ballroom and now they were coming down the secret passage to find their Dwyr. They might stop to kill the BA marine dying in the passage, or they might not bother and let nature take its course.
But the footsteps were those of just one soldier. Or was it a marine? Wright must have seen her run into the opening
in the wall. Had he come after her?
The footsteps stopped.
Her vision fading, she couldn’t make out the shadowy form leaning over her.
Someone removed her helmet.
“Little chick, you look bad.”
“A-Abacha?”
“I’ll carry you.” He knelt down and eased his arms under her.
As he lifted her, she cried out. She couldn’t help it.
He took care to avoid jolting her body or bumping her against the walls, but the pain was still so bad she could barely speak.
“You came to find me,” she whispered.
“I wasn’t going to leave without you.”
“But wh-what about surviving?”
“I thought about it, but some things are more important.”
So he had understood Arthur, after all.
Chapter Forty-Four
Gentle hands peeled Kala’s charred robes from her body, lifting off with them great strips of blackened skin. The pain was beyond anything she’d ever experienced, beyond any agony she’d ever imagined, yet it paled in comparison to her wrath.
Someone had hurt her. Hurt her, who could not be hurt! They had done the impossible. How could it have happened?
When she’d tried to kill the soldier pursuing her, she’d known she might not succeed—she had, after all, a weak body; her strength lay in her mind and spirit—but it had never entered her head that she might be harmed in return. The fact defied her comprehension.
“This salve will ease the pain, Dwyr,” said one of those attending her.
A cool sensation arose from her thighs.
“I have something that will allow you to sleep while we complete your treatment,” said another.
“No,” Kala murmured. Her voice sounded strange, like the scrape of sandpaper on wood. “No. I want to see.”
She tried to rise onto her elbows, but her arms were too stiff and gave an agonized protest to her efforts.
“Dwyr, please lie still.”
She grimaced. Her face felt strangely tight. “I must see,” she croaked.
