Revolution's Shore (48 page)

Everyone nodded. Vanov waited an extra moment, eyes tight on Comrade Trey.

“Yes, comrade,” she replied, expressionless.

Gregori was too shocked, and too horrified by Lia's betrayal and the hard circle of the pistol pressed against his hair, to fight or even to ask why.

Hawk understood that things had gone quite bad when Jenny came over com to say that she would retreat without firing because the boarding party had somehow managed to get Aliasing and Gregori as hostages. Her normally imperturbable voice held a definite tremor.

Hawk wondered for a moment if Lily was going to order Jenny to fire anyway, but the captain only made the cryptic reply: “Lock coordinates to Engineering.”

Securing all patients, he then went into the lab and locked away his supplies of the Hierakas Formula. And because he always, at any place he spent more than an hour's time in, identified a bolt hole, he hid himself there and waited. Touched briefly each of the weapons he had stored there. All were operational.

He scented Jenny's mercenaries first. They smelled scared and confused as they retreated higher and higher up. Jenny he did not detect.

Then the first wave of Jehane's troops, herding those few of the crew who had been left unarmed: Blue and the tech from Engineering, and UnaDia Wei from the Main Computer banks. Soon enough they passed through Medical and collected Flower.

It was easy enough to wait them out and then follow after they'd left, thus giving Lily the backup she'd need. Except that they held a wild card that he did not expect. Eight came in, Lia with them.

“Then he must be here still,” she was saying to a stocky man whom Hawk quickly identified as Kuan-yin's crony from the
Boukephalos
. “If he wasn't in the captain's cabin. I don't want anyone to get hurt. Gregori once said he had a hiding place here.”

“Spread out and give yourselves cover,” ordered Vanov to his soldiers. “We'll just wait him out.”

Hawk did not bother to dwell over how Gregori had come to discover the bolt hole. The boy knew the ship very well. He did calculate the amount of damage he could do, but Vanov's soldiers were well trained enough to cover each other as well as the room, and Vanov left with Aliasing before he could make a choice.

So he stowed the weapons farther back and surrendered himself. As they marched him up to gold deck, and the bridge, he wondered what Gwyn would have done in the same situation. But Gwyn had been the best, and whatever Hawk's skills as a saboteur and terrorist, which were not inconsiderable, his real expertise had always lain in healing.

It was no relief to discover, on reaching gold deck, that they could have used Gwyn. Whether through the shock of Lia's betrayal, or the use of hostages, or because of his sheer ruthless efficiency, Comrade Vanov had taken control of the bridge. As Hawk was herded in, he was disposing of the prisoners.

“All the tattoos in one detention block. Just seal them in for now. But leave the ones in Engineering and in Computer until we get replacement crew. The two Engineering techs, the computer tech—we'll need them later.”

Hawk smelled blood, but he had to look around to find Jenny prostrate on the floor by the nav console. She had blood on her face, and one of her arms was lying at a bad angle. She stirred, but did not moan; she was still conscious. On the opposite side of the bridge, Aliasing stared in horror. Gregori, held by a rough-looking trooper, looked paralyzed by his mother's injury.

The bridge cleared somewhat as the people named by Vanov and their guards left, revealing Lily standing isolated by the captain's console, a soldier on either side of her. She looked unhurt. Her expression, when she saw Hawk, did not change: it was emotionless now.

“I am a doctor,” said Hawk easily into the silence left by the departure of the others. “May I see to the wounded woman?”

“No,” said Vanov. “I don't waste medical help on people whom I have orders to kill.”

Lia gasped, audibly, and went white. She staggered slightly, catching herself on the back of the chair Yehoshua was sitting in. A soldier moved to grab her arm.

“But you said”—she began, her voice as much breath as vibration—“No one was to be hurt.
He
promised me.” By the tone of her voice, there could be no doubt that
he
was Alexander Jehane.

Vanov seemed not to have heard her. He looked over the bridge crew—Yehoshua, Nguyen, Finch, Pinto, the Mule, and Bach—with a precise eye, as if measuring what to do with them.

“Comrade Trey,” he ordered. “Get on comm and call the
Boukephalos
in. I want a bridge crew waiting to replace these as soon as they can board.”

Comrade Trey moved to comm. Finch, glancing up at her set face and then at the score or so of soldiers still crowding the bridge, moved aside to let her at the controls.

Lily had not moved, except to turn her head enough to see the Mule. It sat quite still at the nav console, one hand covering the other; Bach hovered beside it just below the level of the counter, his curve pressed up against the siding.

It seemed to Hawk some message passed between the two that he could not read. The Mule hissed slightly. Pinto, hidden by the stillstrap, stared straight ahead. If he was watching the numbers click across the chin harness of the strap, it was not apparent.

Vanov, too, glanced that way. “Turn the nav console off,” he ordered. The soldier stationed by navigation reached out and flipped the auto nav to manual.

Lily was still looking at the Mule. Her expression did not change. The Mule's crest rose and fell, like a rustling, and it removed its hands from the console and rested them as if resigned on Bach's keypad.

Jenny stirred again. Her breathing was ragged but even. Vanov, secure now, glared at the mercenary.

“Kill her first, then the boy,” he ordered, cool now that he was totally in control.

On Pinto's chin strap, red numbers still clicked across the tiny screen.

“Comrade!” protested Trey, standing up from the comm-station. “I wasn't informed of these orders. Killing children is
not
what I became a Jehanist for.”

“Are you challenging me, comrade?” Vanov demanded, his voice as hard as his eyes. “You know the punishment for insubordination.”

“That child is not old enough to have been party to this mutiny. He can't be held accountable.”

Lia broke free of the soldier who had been grasping her arm. “But you
said
no one would be hurt!” she cried, flinging herself at Vanov. “You lied to me!”

Vanov slapped her full in the face. She staggered, and Vanov regarded her with cool disdain. “Kill her as well,” he said calmly.

“But you can't—” The extent of his betrayal shocked her into silence for a moment. She held one hand against the reddening patch where he had hit her. “You
must
know I got a message from Jehane—that he would send someone to bring me to him. You can't defy Jehane's orders.”

Vanov shrugged, unconcerned. “It might be true that he did mean to send someone for you. You're pretty enough. But my orders didn't come from Jehane.” It was said so impassively that it clearly was true.

Lia slumped forward, defeated by his dispassion, and began to cry. “Jenny,” she sobbed. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”

“Who did your orders come from?” Lily asked. The self-possession of her voice seemed uncanny on the tense bridge.

Vanov smiled. He made it an ugly expression. “Comrade Kuan-yin sent us.”

“Of course,” Lily echoed. Her head was still canted to keep the Mule in her peripheral vision. “With orders to kill the five of us and deal with the rest as you see fit.”

“Exactly. I'm glad we understand each other, Comrade Heredes.”

“Ransome,” said Lily. “My name is Ransome.”

“Comrade Vanov!” said the soldier by nav, surprised. He was staring at Pinto in his stillstrap. “They're still running nav.”

“I told you to turn the console off,” snapped Vanov.

“But Comrade, I
did
,” insisted the soldier.

“Then it's impossible,” broke in Comrade Trey. “You can't run vectors on manual.”

In two strides Vanov closed the distance between himself and Lily and wrenched her arm up behind her back. She began to twist away.

“Kill the other four,” he ordered. Lily froze. The soldiers hesitated.

“Wait—” began Comrade Trey.

Vanov pressed the muzzle of his pistol against Lily's ear. “Take this ship off nav.”

In the instant of indecision before anyone could act, the air rank with the scent of confusion and fear, stained with the salt of Lia's tears and the heavy aroma of Jenny's blood and the unexpected pungency of Vanov's rabid hatred, Hawk could not smell any emotion in Lily at all. It was as if she was already dead, her essence fled, gone, torn from him forever.

The horror of losing her paralyzed him. He did not even act when two soldiers put their hands on him, when he felt the shift of their bodies as they slowly—or slowly it seemed to him, caught in this moment, strung out beyond ordinary time—raised their weapons. The ghosts of the
Forlorn Hope
's lost crew crowded the bridge, their fragrance overwhelming him, tenuous and yet stronger now than it had ever been before.

Lily caught Hawk's gaze with hers and blinked twice, deliberately. The pistol against her head smelled of cold, unfeeling steel. Her hair hid its muzzle where Vanov held it thrust against her ear.

“Five seven two,” hissed the Mule. “
Break
.”

“You bitch!”

They went through just as Vanov pulled the trigger.

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Kate Elliott has been writing stories since she was nine years old, which has led her to believe that she is either a little crazy or that writing, like breathing, keeps her alive. Her most recent series is the Spiritwalker Trilogy (
Cold Magic
,
Cold Fire
, and
Cold Steel
), an Afro-Celtic post-Roman alternate-nineteenth-century Regency ice-punk mashup with airships, Phoenician spies, the intelligent descendants of troodons, and revolution. Her previous works include the Crossroads trilogy (starting with
Spirit Gate
), the Crown of Stars septology (starting with
King's Dragon
), the Novels of the Jaran, the Highroad Trilogy, and the novel
The Labyrinth Gate
, originally published under the name Alis A. Rasmussen.

She likes to play sports more than she likes to watch them; right now, her sport of choice is outrigger canoe paddling. Her spouse has a much more interesting job than she does, with the added benefit that they had to move to Hawaii for his work; thus the outrigger canoes. They also have a schnauzer (a.k.a. the Schnazghul).

April Quintanilla

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1990 by Alis A. Rasmussen

Cover design by Angela Goddard

978-1-4804-3528-5

This edition published in 2013 by Open Road Integrated Media

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