Hunted, p.30
Hunted, page 30
Verity’s empty bedroom. After I’d escaped from those guards and sent Innocence to safety, I’d gone back to the high queen’s chambers. Both bodies had disappeared—nothing but that pool of Sam’s blood. I remembered kneeling in the damp, touching the red stickiness, lifting my fingers to my nose…
…only now I could remember the smell. The smell of the blood. As if my nose had been Mandasar-sensitive way back then. I smelled the blood and knew it wasn’t real—just artificial stuff, the kind the doctors synthesized for me whenever I needed a transfusion. Heaven knows, I’d needed tons of transfusions during my year of being sick. My nose knew the difference between real blood and fake.
That blood, the blood that had spilled out of Sam, was just stuff whipped up with a chemistry set. I knew that. Twenty years ago, I knew: knew that Sam’s death had to have been as fake as the blood.
How had I forgotten that?
And my sense of smell—so sharp back then, so far beyond human. But somehow it had gone all dull again…until those doses of venom woke everything up.
Everything.
Memories were coming back faster now. I remembered kneeling there in Verity’s chambers and squeezing my eyes shut to keep back tears. Crying because I knew. The Mayday signal that had brought me to the room…my sister lying in a pool of fake blood…the mutinous guards rushing me away before I could look at Sam’s body too closely…waiting for me to lead them to Innocence…
It was all a setup. By Sam and the mutineers. To fool dumb old Edward, who was close to the little girl queen and might know where she’d hide.
Twenty years ago, I’d wept bitter tears and pushed away those bad thoughts about Sam—pushed them away hard. Because if I didn’t, I’d have to ask who really killed Verity, and who released the outlaw queens, and who had made sure none of the peace initiatives ever really worked—
Without warning, I hurtled out of the Sperm-tail and rammed against a brick wall.
Four Explorers shot into a dark narrow alley. Me, I collided with the nearest wall and crumpled. The other three, in big bulgy tightsuits, hit and bounced like they were wearing their own trampolines. Dade and Festina managed to keep their feet; Tobit caromed off the wall and went down, smacking flat on his butt, flipping over to his stomach, and hop-skipping along the pavement. If the folks on Jacaranda were watching via satellite, they must have been laughing their heads off.
Smashing the wall pretty near knocked the wind out of me, but my head was clear enough to realize I was closest to the Sperm anchor. Everyone else had bounced several paces away. Shaky and reeling, I kicked out my foot and hit the anchor’s off-switch. The glittery tail whipped away past my face in a jamble of colored lights, swishing across the city like a single strand of aurora borealis. With luck, Harque could keep the tail dancing all over Unshummin, distracting searchers in both armies. Meanwhile, we’d carry the anchor box with us; when we switched it on again, the tail would come straight back to our party, giving us a quick escape route.
“Everyone all right?” Festina’s whisper came softly through the receiver in my ear.
Tobit and Dade both answered, “Fine.” I just nodded. Up in the ship, Festina had told me to keep quiet as much as possible. Since I wasn’t muffled up in a tightsuit, nearby soldiers might hear if I talked.
Festina made an okay sign, then craned her neck to look at the sky. “Jacaranda, are you receiving?”
“Loud and clear, Admiral,” Harque answered.
“We’re on the move,” Festina said. “Dade, you grab the anchor. Edward, stay right behind me.” She turned to Tobit. “Have you figured out where we’re going?”
Tobit had undipped a Bumbler from his belt and was scanning the area. “The signal came from that direction,” he said, pointing to the wall I’d banged against. “Inside this building.” He lifted his head and looked up. “For best transmission, they’d go to the roof. Of course, they may not be there now; it’s been an hour since the beep.”
“If they’ve left, they’ll come back,” Festina answered. “They can’t have missed our Sperm-tail.”
The tail was still lashing the city, darting from block to block: whisking over the pavement, flapping against walls, lifting high over the rooftops and circling like a lariat before plunging down again in a splash of green and gold and blue and purple. I could hear distant Mandasar voices, commanders yelling orders at their troops, or just soldiers hollering at each other. Some would be shouting, “Keep cool,” and others, “Look lively,” and a few maybe even, “Naizó!”…tired palace guards who were ready to surrender to anything.
“Let’s head for the roof,” Festina said. “Plebon and Olympia may still be there. If they aren’t, they’ll know they should hurry back to their transmission site. And from the roof, we’ll have an easy time grabbing a ride out.”
“Sure, Ramos,” Tobit growled. “Easy. Piece of cake. In the history of the Explorer Corps, have you heard of a single landing that didn’t turn into a complete ass-biter?”
“Always a first time,” Festina answered. “Let’s go, people. Immortality awaits.”
At the end of the alley, Tobit poked the scanner of his Bumbler just past the edge of the wall. That way, we could look around the corner without sticking our heads into the open.
The Bumbler’s vidscreen showed the front of the Fasskister embassy…or what was left of it. Something had smashed it hard, like a wrecking ball or an explosion or a barrage of cannon fire. A great chunk of the brick face had been knocked in, exposing the four stories of the interior to open air. Unshummin’s weather was as mild as you could get—shirtsleeve temperatures most of the year round, with only a bit of rain—but it had still taken a toll on the inside of the building. All the floors had a definite sag, and some were crumbling on the edges. I imagine the place was filled with insects and jiffipips: centipedey things that could jump and climb like squirrels. (For some reason, Mandasars found jiffpips sweet and cute…maybe because they were distant evolutionary cousins, like lemurs are to humans. Me, whenever I saw a jiffpip, I wanted to whack it with a sledgehammer.)
Dade’s voice spoke through my earpiece. “You really think the Explorers transmitted from this building? It doesn’t look safe.”
“Maybe that’s why they chose it,” Festina replied. “The floors look strong enough to hold humans but maybe not Mandasars. Plebon and Olympia could go in, set up their equipment, and know they wouldn’t be disturbed.”
“Why would they be disturbed?” Dade asked. “I thought we were assuming the Explorers had got friendly with the palace guards.”
“Friendly is one thing,” Tobit said, “but guards might get a wee bit anxious if they knew humans were broadcasting radio messages to the world at large. Some nasty paranoid folks would suspect you were sending intelligence to the enemy. Better to set up your transmitter where you’ll have a little privacy.”
“Besides,” Festina added, “we don’t know for sure our friends are on good terms with the guards. They may be on the run and hiding out. Always suspect the worst, and…uh-oh.”
The Bumbler’s screen showed a pair of warriors coming toward us. They were moving cautiously from the direction of the palace, gas masks over their heads and crossbows held steady in their waist pincers. Each had a Cheejretha finger resting on the bow’s trigger mechanism, so they could instantly fire an arrow with the slightest squeeze.
The warriors passed in front of the crumbling embassy, peeking in through gaps in the brickwork. They had to be looking for something…and I suspected it was us. Some keen-eyed lookout at the palace had spotted the Sperm-tail lingering a few seconds in this neighborhood; the team coming our way got sent to investigate.
“What do we do?” Dade asked over the radio.
“Let’s invite them to tea,” Tobit said. “No, wait…let’s stun their fucking gonads off.” He handed the Bumbler to me and quietly drew his stun-pistol. Festina had hers out too. They hadn’t let Dade bring a gun; he’d been just a teeny bit too eager to shoot, back at the Fasskister orbital.
Me, I didn’t want a gun. And nobody had offered me one.
The guards’ footsteps came closer, clicking softly on the pavement. Festina lifted her hand, with three fingers showing. Silently she lowered one finger, then a second, then the last…and together she and Tobit dived out of the alley.
Arrows twanged at almost the same instant the stunners whirred; but the warriors shot high, not prepared for humans who could throw themselves belly down on the street. The guns fired again in unison. That was enough. I heard the bows clatter to the pavement, and a moment later, two heavy thuds on the ground.
“Are they out?” Dade asked excitedly.
“We stopped shooting, didn’t we?” Festina answered.
Without another word, she led us forward.
When you hear me talk about streets and alleys, maybe you’re picturing some city you know—your local downtown late at night, with the sidewalks empty and everything quiet.
No. Put that out of your head.
First of all, Unshummin was dark. Really, really dark The city had plenty of streedamps, but none of them worked—there hadn’t been electricity on the planet since the Fasskisters loosed their Swarm, except for chemical batteries and maybe some motorized generators protected by thick nano defense clouds. The only significant light was a glow from the direction of the palace, where I figured soldiers were burning cookfires; but the palace lay to the rear of the embassy and we were in front, so most of the light was blocked by the building. Neither of Troyen’s moons was up, so we had to make do with the stars…and after all the lights on Jacaranda, my eyes needed time to adapt.
Next, you’re probably thinking of a normal human street paved with asphalt or cement or gravel or stone. Nope. Every road on Troyen was built from a pebbly stuff called Ayposh: kind of like coral, because it consisted of a whole bunch of tiny shelled organisms, some alive, some dead. They’d been bioengineered to grow in long level sheets, photosynthesizing most of their nutrients straight from the air. Every few months, the board of works sent out sprayers full of fertilizer and mineral supplements to feed the little guys; and each year, crews would paint the highway shoulders with a chemical suppressant to keep the Ayposh from spreading off the roadbed. It was cheap, it was simple, it was elegant…and with the war on, maybe it was doomed. All of a sudden, I started wondering if people had time to spray fertilizer when they were all busy fighting. I thought of millions of miles of pavement, slowly starving to death for lack of vitamins. Maybe all the streets around me were nothing but corpses, teeny husks that would slowly crumble away and never get replenished by new generations.
After twenty years of real people dying, it seemed kind of horrible to go misty-eyed about the roads and sidewalks. You’d have to be pretty stupid to do something like that.
Anyway, there’s one last thing you’ve probably got wrong in your mental picture of Diplomats Row: the buildings. If you’re thinking of human architecture, think again. Yes, the Fasskister embassy was built of bricks; but the bricks were clear crystal, the same sort of stuff as the huts back at that orbital. It wasn’t glass, I can tell you that much—when the front wall had been smashed in, not one of the bricks had broken. They were all perfectly intact, lying on the ground as we stepped into the darkness of the half-demolished building. The bricks’ edges were still crisp and clean despite years of weathering, and I couldn’t see a trace of mortar on them. Don’t ask me how the walls held together without some sort of stickum to attach each brick to its neighbors…but the side and back walls were still intact, and I couldn’t see mortar in them either. Just rows of crystal bricks that let in the tiniest glimmer of starlight so I wasn’t completely blind.
Dim light or not, the Explorers could see fine. Their tightsuit visors had vision enhancers that made the night bright as day. I had to tag along on Festina’s heels, so I wouldn’t walk into a wall or pothole or something…and even then, I had a heck of a time not getting lost, with her practically invisible in camo. Mostly I went by the sound of her footsteps and the smell of her suit—as if I were a full-fledged Mandasar, navigating by nose.
It took me by surprise when we started going upward: a slow-sloping ramp that must have been in the middle of the building. Ramps were pretty common on Diplomats Row—lots of nonhumans (including Mandasars) didn’t do so well on stairs, and no alien species ever liked each other’s elevators; the compartments were either too big or too small, the lift mechanisms were too quiet or too clanky, they went too fast or too slow…and the interior always smelled of something you didn’t want to inhale any longer than you had to. The diplomatic solution was to build your embassy with ramps at easy-to-climb slants, so as not to irritate important visitors.
We went up slowly, switching back four times for each floor. Once we got above first-story level, the side of the stairwell was missing, giving a clear view of the street out front—Diplomats Row in all its glory. The other buildings seemed pretty well intact, even if they were dark and empty: the high silver towers of the Myriapods, like tinsel hanging from the sky; the clear glass globe of the Cashlings, its multicolored interior lights now gone dark and lifeless; the embassies of the Divian sub-breeds, Tye-Tyes in their rock mountain, Ooloms in their giant tree, Freeps in their neon casino; the Unity’s mirror garden where they’d held masked rituals every night; and at the end of the block, the mall of the up-League envoys.
Once upon a time, that mall held a fifty-meter-high flame on one side and an even taller tornado on the other, both real and roaring but never moving from their positions. Gawking tourists used to argue whether the envoys actually lived in the wind and fire, or if it was just a flashy gimmick aimed at impressing lesser species. None of us ever learned the truth…but the night Queen Verity died, the flame and tornado winked out of existence in the exact same second. It was a sign, if anybody needed one, that the higher echelons of the League were turning their backs on Troyen. By dawn, every other embassy had been evacuated too—no one wanted to go down with a sinking ship.
Now, here we were, back again.
There must have been a door or something closing off the stairwell from the roof, but it had vanished into the general wreckage. Still, the roof itself seemed in pretty good shape—at least the back half was. My eyes were getting used to the darkness; as we came up the final ramp, I could see a flat expanse of those smooth crystal bricks, with no dips or sags all the way to the rear edge of the building. Tobit checked with the Bumbler and grunted a few seconds later. “It looks safe,” he announced. “If you want to trust the engineering judgment of a stupid machine.”
“Any sign of the Explorers?” Dade asked.
Tobit fiddled with dials and peered at the Bumbler’s screen. “No…no…wait. Back there in the shadows,” he said, pointing at the far rear of the roof. “I think it’s an Explorer’s backpack.”
Dade immediately started forward, but Festina grabbed his arm. “You and Tobit stay here. In case the roof isn’t as solid as we think.”
“And in case it’s a trap,” Tobit muttered.
“Why would it be a trap?” Dade asked.
“Because anything could be a trap!” Tobit growled. “We don’t know dick about what’s going on. Someone may have lured us here with a fake signal so they could blow us to smithereens. And don’t say that doesn’t make sense, junior—stuff that doesn’t make sense can still make you Go Oh Shit.”
Festina was already heading toward the knapsack. Since nobody stopped me, I jogged a few paces and caught up with her. Side by side, we walked toward the building’s rear…and the farther we went, the less I cared about the pack and the more I worried about something else.
The smell of buttered toast trickled through the air.
Like I said, the back of the Fasskister embassy faced the palace—just a stone’s throw from the diamondwood palisade surrounding the palace grounds. Shining from inside that wall came the glow I’d thought was cookfires. A dull red glow.
The queen-shaped palace had its tail toward us, but not quite straight on. There was enough of an angle that we could see along its body, past the glass conservatory domes, up the torso, all the way to the head and its outstretched claws.
Moss. Balrog moss. Covering every square millimeter of the building from the venom sacs forward. In the dark, it glimmered a very self-satisfied crimson.
36
LYING LOW ON THE ROOF
“Holy shit,” Festina whispered.
I just nodded. The buttered-toast smell was making me dizzy.
“That queen,” Festina said. “The one who dumped those spores on the Fasskisters. She must have left some here too—to make the place uninhabitable for the Black Army.”
“Kind of hard on her own guards,” I said. It gave me a crawly feeling, thinking about that. I could understand a queen setting up a nasty parting gift for her enemies, but not when it would also hurt her own subjects. Protecting your citizens should always be your number one concern, shouldn’t it? A king who didn’t put his people’s safety ahead of his own hunger for revenge…
A queen. I meant a queen who didn’t put her people’s safety ahead of her hunger for revenge…
Never mind.
Festina growled under her breath. “That fucking Kaisho. She had to know about this.”
“Why?” I asked.
“She took that damned satellite photo,” Festina said. “The whole front half of the palace should have been glowing, for Christ’s sake. But there wasn’t any shine in the shot she showed us. She must have deliberately told the computer to filter out the red.” The admiral made a disgusted sound in her throat. “And I never double-checked. I checked the landing site, and the spot where the signal came from, but I never bothered to look at the palace. Sloppy, Ramos—really sloppy.”
“You didn’t know,” I said.
“I knew enough,” she snapped. “Kaisho has jerked us around time and again. I kept letting her do it, in the hope she’d go too far and we could justifiably whack her. But enough is enough.” She tapped a button on her wrist, changing the channel on her radio. “Tobit, Dade: full paranoia mode.”
