Black Hole Sun (20 page)

“Cowboy! Alert! Alert! Multiple heartbeats registering! The Dræu!”

Down in the maze one of the miners yells and pulls out his wrench. “It's moving! The beastie's still living!”

“Mine, too!” another calls, and they all began to back away. The looks on their faces ask the same question I have: How can something so full of holes be alive?

“Get out of there!” I shout, finally understanding. The Dræu are coming back to life. I tap in Vienne. “Eyes on multiple targets in the maze. Take out the Dræu that regenerate.”

“Negative, chief,” she responds. “Too many friendlies in the line of fire. I can't get a clear shot. Get the miners out.”

“Will do.” I shout into the maze. “Everybody out! You're in the line of fire!”

Easier said than done. The cables the miners rappelled down aren't attached to cranes. They have to climb out. Too many miners in the hole. Too long to get them all out.

“Jenkins,” I say. “We need you on deck for backup.”

“I'm going in,” Jenkins says, recognizing the problem as soon as I do. He's about to jump into the mix when a reviving Dræu reaches up from the ground and grabs a miner by the ankle. Instinctively the miner swings his heavy wrench at its head, smashing the base of the skull.

“Tch,” he says. “Would y'look at that.”

The other miners gather around him. They nudge the Dræu with the toes of their boots. One kicks it in the ribs. Then rolls it over. A huff of air escapes its lungs, and the eyes roll back into its head.

“It's dead,” the miner says.

“It is. A knock with a wrench is all it took.”

They get the idea quickly, and the real slaughter begins.

“Chief?” Vienne says.

“Stand down,” I tell my davos. All men have a breaking point, and this is mine. “Turn your backs. All of you. Let them finish but don't become part of it. Ebi, abandon your station. We're going to need another short-range gunner in the maze.”

A few minutes later a cheer goes up. The container full of slaughtered Dræu, its doors sealed and locked, is lifted out of the maze and then dropped into the gorge. The miners climb up the cables one by one, their overalls blotted with blood. They start singing. I look into Fuse's face and see the same expression that must be on my face, a mix of horror and shock.

“Know what they reminded me of?” Fuse says.

“The Dræu when they've got fresh meat?”

“Yeah.”

“One difference between us and the Dræu,” I say.

“What's that?”

“Our bellies are still empty.”

“That's a mighty thin line, chief.”

“It's the thinnest lines that define us, soldier.”

“Oy, that's very wise. D'you make that up on a lark?”

“No, I say, “I stole it from my father.” Turning to Áine's crane, I signal her to drop the container across the bridge. Time for the second batch.

Ebi comes running across the top of the maze. “Ebi reporting, chief.”

“Stay close,” I tell her. “Don't fire until I give the signal.”

Mimi pipes in, “A mass of signatures gathering at the bridge.”

“Battle stations, Regulators,” I say through the vid. “Here they come again.”

Áine lowers the container, and the rest of the Dræu roar across the bridge, intent on reaching their comrades. When they are past, she raises the box again, trapping them.

They're screaming for blood as they rush like a flood toward the gate. “Open it!” I order. The Dræu stream inside, blind with bloodlust, too berserker with rage to stop their charge. Their eyes are mad, and they're frothing at the mouth, their faces wild and terrible to see. It's insane, insane.
But I'm counting on their strength being their weakness.

This time there is no need to use Jenkins as bait.

“Close the gate?” Fuse asks.

“Wait,” I say. “I want to make sure we've got them all. I don't want us to go through this more times than we have to.”

“Got it.”

“Mimi,” I say, “scan the perimeter for signatures.”

“Yes, cowboy,” she says. “Wait. I am picking up a unique signature on the far side of the bridge and closing fast. It is—”

“The queen!” Vienne yells through the link.

I turn as a power sled emerges from the tunnel, its turbines blazing. Two Dræu ride with the queen, one of them driving and the other manning the gun. She straddles the jump seat, the mortar launcher on her shoulder and two bandoliers of ammo draped across her chest.

“She's going to jump it,” I say.

Ebi scoffs. “Impossible.”

The sled hits the end of the bridge and goes airborne. The front of the craft lifts, the heavy engines tilting its approach angles upward. It lands hard but with several meters to spare. The rear end fishtails, flinging the gunner from his post. As he tries to stand, Vienne takes him out with one kill shot.

The queen maintains her balance perfectly, firing a mortar at Áine's crane. The shell hits the thick plexus window, cracking it. Then it falls onto the hood, where it detonates.

“Áine!” I yell above the din, though I know she can't hear me.

Fuse starts toward her. I check him with a halt sign. At the same time the driver steers toward the opening and the Dræu that wait inside.

“Drop the gate!” I shout. “Don't let the power sled in!”

Too late. The gate falls a second after the sled skids inside. Seeing their queen, the Dræu roar louder. The driver, obeying a silent command, guns the engine and heads toward the back of the maze.

“Drop the rest of the containers!” I yell.

Boxes one and two fall into place perfectly, trapping most of the Dræu. But as the crane dropping number three swings into action, the queen fires another mortar. It strikes the boom.

The cable snaps and the box swings free, crashing into the back wall and knocking it down. The driver sees his opening. He drives the sled between two fallen containers and disappears from the maze.

“Where is she going?” Ebi asks.

I know exactly where she's going—the treasure. “Fuse, you're in command of the maze. Drop another back wall now. Take these rooters out. I'll get the queen. Vienne—” I start to say and then reconsider. Her wounded foot will slow us down. “Ebi, you're coming with me.”

Seconds later Ebi and I are running along the top of the maze, headed toward the Cross. Behind us, the shooting
begins. So that was her plan all along, I think. Distract us with mad rushes, then go for the treasure when our hands are full. Simple but brilliant. And it shows that she doesn't care about the Dræu. They're a means to an end, a toy to be played with until it's outlived its use. I know how they feel.

“Mimi, where is the queen?”

“Signatures are stationary. They are fifty meters ahead.”

In the Cross. Ebi and I sprint down the tops of the cargo boxes. For an instant I pause, taking it all in, feeling the rush of…something. Old memories? Déjà vu? At battle school, I commanded my own acolyte davos, and my first skirmish was against Eceni. She won that time. She won every time we matched up. But this is a real battle, not a student exercise. When we reach the edge of the maze, I signal Ebi to halt. We drop low, and both of us scan the Cross for targets. That's when Ebi shoots me in the back of the head.

The force of the blow knocks me forward, and I fall to hands and knees. Roll to my back.

“Permission to fire now,
chief
?” Ebi says.

“Mimi,” I say, my head a hive of noise. There is no answer. “Mimi?”

“My name is not Mimi,” Ebi says, pointing the barrel of her armalite at my head. “It is Bramimonde, Jacob Stringfellow, from the proud House of Bramimonde that men like your father destroyed.”

“No.” I try to rise, but my thoughts are full of bees. The symbiarmor is sluggish. Where is Mimi?

“Oh yes.” Stomping my chest, she drives me hard onto the top of the cargo box. “But the queen is going to change that. When she finds the treasure, she's going to return the Orthocracy to power, and I will be able to realize my true destiny.” She spits in my face. “The added benefit will be killing you. Remember when you disgraced our home with your presence,
dalit
? I said I would repay you one day, and that moment is now.”

Hell's Cross, Outpost Fisher Four
ANNOS MARTIS
238. 4. 0. 00:00

“Not on my watch,” Mimi says through the static.

Reflectively, my hand shoots out and grabs Ebi by the wrist. A numbing shock of electricity shoots into her symbiarmor. Her eyes roll back into her head, and a small moan escapes her lips before a burst of bullets leaves her gun, striking me in the chest. They bounce off, leaving me unharmed, as I hear a second noise—the crack of a single shot—and Ebi falls backward and topples off the cargo box.

“Who shot her?” I say.

“Three guesses,” Mimi answers.

“Vienne.”

“Fast work for a wee little brain.”

And I look across the line of cargo boxes, up on the minaret, where she stands holding her Armalite, scoring the barrel with a combat knife. “Thanks,” I tell her via aural vid.

“My job,” she says. Then uses the zip line to reach the ground, absorbing the landing with her good leg but coming
up limping. “I never did like that girl.”

“Could've fooled me.” I get to my feet.

“I often do,” she says. “It's really not that difficult.” Limping, she joins me, and we move to the courtyard. The queen has deserted the sled, leaving it parked in the open and still manned by the Dræu.

“Where is she?” I say aloud.

“Chief,” Vienne says, looking through her scope. “I have lock on the targets. Permission to fire?”

“Wait. I want to take them both out at the same time.”

“Affirmative,” she says. “I have both targets locked.”

“Both?” This, I want to see. “Fire at wi—”
Twip!
One bullet leaves her rifle. Two Dræu fell.

“How did you do that?” I say in awe.

“Large-caliber ammunition and two targets willing to keep the bases of their skulls in the same line of fire.”

“Don't tell Jenkins. He'll have to take out three just to prove he's better than you. Come on, let's flush out the queen.”

We jog slowly to the sled to examine Vienne's shots. Both are clean kills, right through the base of the skulls. “Mimi,” I say as we disable the chain gun, then move away from the sled. “Where is the queen?”

I scan the chigoe holes while waiting for an answer. So many places to hide in the Cross. She could be anywhere.

“Cannot pinpoint her location. The signal is erratic. I—cowboy!”

Foosh!

A mortar shell slams into my stomach, blowing me off my feet. I land hard, dazed, eyes full of static.

Vienne? I think, gasping for breath. Where's Vienne? Then I see her, safe, near the sled.

Foosh!

A second rocket! It slams into the bishop's statue. Chunks of marble rain down, and I cover my face as the bishop's decapitated head slams into my forearms, then bounces away, rolling across the tiles.

Luckily, I, unlike the statue, am still in one piece.

“Look,” Mimi says, “‘a shattered visage lies.'”

“Keats?”

“Shelley.”

“I always get them confus—”

Eceni isn't finished. A third rocket shoots from the launcher. For an instant I'm relieved because it looks like a misfire that flits impotently toward the high ceiling of the cave. Then it hits, and a cloud of black dust explodes into the air. With the squeal of grinding metal, the container wedged in the hole breaks free. Above me, the ceiling cracks open. The shipping container that Mimi expertly placed for me earlier slips from its hole and comes crashing down.

“You should move,” Mimi says.

But I don't. I lie there watching it fall, mesmerized by the way the metal rectangular box rights itself as it falls, the floor of the container on a collision course with my skull.

“Durango!” Vienne dives across the tiled flooring as the container falls. She slams into me. Her momentum should knock me out of the way, but my suit absorbs the blow, and we huddle together in an awkward embrace.

“Go!” Mimi shocks me, and I start to move, but too late.

Silently, Vienne aims her weapon at the bottom of the container, and one, two blast shells leave her armalite. I grab her, pull her to my chest, and brace for impact.

Hell's Cross, Outpost Fisher Four
ANNOS MARTIS
238. 4. 0. 00:00

The container slams into the ground. Its floor, already blasted apart by the explosive shells, shatters completely when it strikes my back, trapping us inside. Its weight slams me onto Vienne, who is balled up beneath me.

My armor handles the impact. My ears, however, can't deal with the sound, and for a few seconds I'm stunned. Until Mimi decides to zap me again.

“Move it, Regulator!” she barks into my brain, sounding like my old chief.

“Vienne?” I shrug off the wreckage. Roll her onto her back. Check to make sure she's okay, but it's pitch-black inside, and the air is saturated with dust.

“Her vitals are good,” Mimi says. “She's just unconscious.”

Just unconscious, I think. Then Vienne moans, and I know it's true. The queen. Where is she? Does she know we survived? Is she coming in for the kill?

I peer outside between the twisted doors of the container.
Eceni is as beautiful as the day I met her Offworld, and I might have been smitten by her again, if she weren't a homicidal maniac who just dropped a shipping container on my head. While I'm checking Vienne's pulse, the queen bounds across the courtyard to the statue. She leaps onto the dais, throws an arm around the bishop's crumbling waist, and does a series of high cancan kicks while humming the tune “ta-ra-ra boom-de-ay.”

“Come out, come out, wherever you are, Jacob,” she says, singsong. “I know you're not dead, Jake. Ja-ak-ey.”

“Vienne,” I whisper, and shake her gently. She lets out a quiet moan. Okay, I think, Vienne needs time to recover, so I need a diversion.

As quietly as possible I extricate myself and crawl over to the damaged door. Eceni is still dancing around the statue, oblivious to my movement. I slip through the narrow gap, my muscles screaming, my head full of static, looking for something to use to draw the queen away from Vienne.

The power sled! It's parked a few meters away. Covered in debris, but the engine's still idling. Lucky me.

“Only you could say
lucky me
,” Mimi says, “after a structure the size of a small house lands on you.”

“The eternal optimist.” I slide onto the seat and grab the handlebars. I goose the sled and roar toward the queen. She turns at the sound of the revving engine and brings the launcher to bear.

Before she can fire, I whip the sled into a fishtail, which
slams the rear end into her legs. The force blows her back six meters, and I jump off, sending the sled crashing into a column nearby. The fuel tank ruptures, and I can smell petrol in the air, even as I kick the launcher out of her hand. She blocks my next three punches with counter blows to my wrists.

“You're quick,” I say.

“You say the nicest things.” She lands a darting front kick to my chest, then follows with a succession of blows that I struggle to block. The last kick brings her in for a punch to my throat. I dodge it and pull her shoulder down, ready to use a hip throw. But she's ahead of me, and her foot comes up behind her back and smacks me in the face, knocking my helmet off.

For a half second I'm dazed. She makes me pay with a roundhouse to the gut that knocks me on my butt, and I do a backward roll to recover.

She fires the helmet at my head. I catch it easy like a ball and shove it back on.

“Bring it,” I motion her forward, goading.

“Darling, you have no idea of how much
it
I have.”

We each throw three punches—right, left, right—simultaneously, blocking so that the flurry ends with our arms intertwined, the hard bones of our knuckles centimeters from each other's noses. Then she leans forward and kisses me on the lips, pushing her tongue into my mouth.

I bite down. Hard.

“Ow!” She yanks back, wincing. “You bad, bad boy!”

Though our arms are still tangled, she throws a hook kick to my temple. The force of it snaps my head to the side, and I hear bones pop in my neck. She lands punches to my right clavicle as I fall against the side of the shipping container.

Eceni moves in for the kill. “Oh Jakey. I can't wait to get my hands on you.”

“Stop!” Vienne bursts out of the container, kicking the door open as Eceni steps in front of it.

Boom!
The force slams Eceni on her back several meters away. Her butt leaves a trail in the dust like a snowplow, and I grin.

“Forgot about me, bitch?” Vienne steps out into the light. “Keep your hands off him.”

“Thanks for the save,” I say as I rise to my feet.

“Just returning the favor, chief.”

I hear the telltale click of Vienne's armalite. Then see a RPG streak across the Cross. Eceni hears it, too, and as the grenade reaches her, she spins to her feet with inhuman speed and brings up her launcher. It smacks the warhead mid-flight and diverts its course upward. The shell flies straight up into the pitch dark.

An instant later I hear a muffled boom. The queen waltzes a few yards away as rubble from the blast plasters the stone floor. A smile breaks across Eceni's painted ruby lips. “Soldier girl, you shot my pet Regulator.”

“Your
pet
deserved a worse death than I gave her.”

“Not that she didn't deserve it, I suppose,” the queen says. A smile curls the corners of her mouth. She shakes the dirt from her dress. “Look what you have done. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to get real silk on Mars? No, I suppose you wouldn't, not a girl who sleeps in symbiarmor.”

Vienne tries to launch another RPG. Click. The chamber is empty.

“Oops,” the queen says. “You are out of grenades. Didn't you keep count?”

“I don't need grenades to take care of you.”

In that same instant the queen sprints to a column. Leaps high into the air. Bounds from the column to a second one, then to the arcade. Before Vienne can move, the queen attacks, striking with a series of cobra-quick kicks that knock the armalite from her grasp. Vienne stumbles, her wounded heel throwing her off balance.

I catch her. Pull her out of harm's way. The queen misses, and she curses as she lands on the balls of her feet. Vienne tries to charge, but I won't let go. Instead, I lock arms with her.

Vienne looks down at our hands, then into my eyes, and something passes between us. Or rather falls, like a curtain cut loose from its hanging rod. Her knees buckle—it's the wound, I think.

“You're injured. You can't beat her alone,” I say. “Together?”

“Together.”

Eceni screams. She launches a flying kick, her mouth bent down like twisted metal. We duck, hands still locked, and she flies above us. With a clang, she hits the container, then executes a perfect two-step walkover and flips off the side, turning in midair so that her kick is aimed at the base of Vienne's skull.

“No!” I shout, and swing Vienne out of the way. My forearm blocks her kick and gives us time to recover.

Vienne looks at me. I know what she wants.

Planting my feet, I swing her around like a ball on the end of a tether, and she throws a kick at Eceni's head. As easily as nodding, the queen ducks, then throws a roundhouse kick. We block it with our locked arms, and I let go long enough to lift Vienne into a
grand jeté
, our combined mass swinging her around so fast, the queen can't dodge.

The heel of Vienne's boot catches Eceni in the jaw, and I hear bone crunch. But the queen doesn't go down. Instead, she comes up spitting blood, eyes wild and full of rage.

I swing Vienne around my back and into my arms, and we both slam into Eceni, knocking her against the shipping container. She shakes her head, dazed, and we go in for the kill. Using me for balance, Vienne runs along the side of the container and hits Eceni with a succession of front kicks to the face, the side of the head, and the base of the skull.

Eceni falls backward and stumbles away. “Blood! All over my dre—”

Vienne launches herself, a human missile. She goes vertical, her body laid out like a board. Strikes the queen in the midsection. Her head driving into the solar plexus. Her arms wrapping around Eceni like a vise. Momentum carries them to a mound of debris, and Vienne twists so that her weight hammers the queen's gut.

“Oof!” The queen's tailbone cracks, and she sags as all the air leaves her body, a piece of broken rebar impaling her gut. Her eyes gloss over.

Vienne looks at the queen's fallen body. I stare at Vienne, the flames from the fires burning around us reflected in her eyes. Finally she looks at me.

“You're okay?” I ask.

“Yes, chief.”

“It's
chief
now? You called me Durango before.”

“Before when?”

“When you blew holes in the bottom of the shipping container.”

“That was different.”

“Different how?”

For a second I think I see a mist in her eyes. “You're not going to do something stupid, are you?” she says.

“Like what?”

“Like this.” Vienne pulls me close and kisses me. Her lips are warm, and I feel that heat spread to my cheeks.

“Cowboy,” Mimi says. “I hate to interrupt, but—”

“How sweet,” the queen says as she stands. “Two lovers
snuggling over the woman they
almost
killed. Tsk. And you call the Draeu animals.”

Her dress is a matted mess of blood and guanite, and her neck is bent at an odd angle. Blood seeps from a wound where the rebar impaled her. But she places a hand on the pipe and pulls hard.

“Missed me, missed me,” the queen sings. “Now you have to kiss me.” She screams, and my stomach lurches.

“How?” Vienne says.

“Nanosyms,” I say. “She must still have some in her bloodstream.”

“Millions of them, actually. Doing their best to keep me alive.” The queen waves the pipe at us. “Lucky for me the Dræu aren't here to see this. They get so hard to control when there's blood in the air.”

I open up with my own armalite. Bullets spray the courtyard, and the queen drops to the floor beneath the line of fire.

“The head!” Vienne yells. “Aim for the back of the head. It's your only chance!”

I chase the queen with a line of bullets, but Eceni ducks behind the rubble, the bullets missing her by centimeters. I pop the empty clip, then jam another into place and step out into the open to make the kill shot.

The queen is gone.

Shimatta!
I say under my breath. Stupid move.

“Where is the target?” Vienne says. “I've no visual.”

“Wait,” I tell Vienne. “Mimi?” I scan the perimeter for the queen. “She can't just disappear into thin air, right?”

The queen cackles. Her laughter echoes across the hall. I twist my head back and forth, trying to locate the sound. Then my eye catches a flash of movement, the queen tossing something small and shimmering.

“Grenade!” I scream.

It lands with a quiet squeak.

Next to us.

The light-mass grenade expands impossibly fast, and balls of light shoot through the air as Vienne and I are blown back and slammed into the wall. Vienne slides down, her head lolling to the side, eyes closed. I slide down, too, my body twitching and jerking like it's been shocked, the symbiarmor like lead skin.

I try to call to Vienne, but it comes out garbled. “Mimi? Mimi!” No answer.

“Now, if you'll excuse me,” Eceni says, skipping toward me. “I'm going to collect the treasure and be on my merry way.”

“There's no treasure,” I growl, lifting my head. “You
vitun iso
psychopath.”

Eceni leans down, her face inches away from mine. “You've failed, Jake, and according to your precious Tenets, you're supposed to kill yourself.” She pulls a shiv out of a boot. “Feel free to use my knife to do the Rites on yourself. And because you mean so much to me, if I come back
and find you dead, I'll make sure the Dræu don't eat your corpse.”

“Don't do me any favors.”

She blows a kiss. “Farewell, Great Chief Stringfellow. I wish it had ended differently for us.”

“You
jumalauta
liar!”

She grins. “That's true. I am lying. I've been waiting to see you dead since the day you dumped me.” Then she dances away toward the tunnels, pausing as she passes to plant a kick in Vienne's side. “Oh, too bad. Looks like you're alone again, lover boy.”

“Cào n
z
z
ng shíb
dài!”
I roar.