Rising Tide (4 page)

One of the great things about the
Cherub
, what distinguished her from a lot of other ships (apart from her name, which was excellent), was that she was equipped with VTOL engines. That meant that, unlike a lot of other airships, which had to either stay in the air or needed complicated launch procedures, she could descend right to the ground for easy loading and then rise back up again, easy peasy. Well, not so easy—it was hell to maintain those engines, and thankfully my father had taught me how to do a decent job, but for a long time the
Cherub
was all I had and I took good care of her.

The VTOL was what made the
Cherub
a great choice for this job. If you're loading lots of guns and heavy gear, you want to be able to walk (or roll, even better) the stuff right up the ramp.

There were three problems with this, though. The first was that the
Cherub
was a large ship. She needed a lot of space to set down. Most of the time, there aren't airship-sized landing areas just waiting around. And anything that might have been open like that back in the Clean would probably be covered in vegetation and crumbling stone and debris and what have you.

Problem number two was that bringing down a ship her size was going to alert anything living in the immediate area. Including Ferals. And while animals would likely run away from us, Ferals, being slightly more savvy, would probably come toward, aware that there was a delivery of food coming their way.

And that brings me to three. Let's say you have the space to put down and you do, and you avoid or fight your way through any Ferals that come to chew on your face. Then, assuming you leave the ship, she's a nice, big target for anyone who might want to steal her. Back then, I used to have a key to lock her up. That key was later lost, and I don't remember the exact details, but as Tess had mentioned, people like Mal weren't going to be stopped by a simple lock. I once installed a passcode lock on the controls. You needed to put in the precise numerical sequence to even turn them on. But I ditched that after a narrow escape where those few seconds almost cost me my life.

So I had settled for traps. Sometimes the old ways were the best ways, especially in the Sick. They were nothing too elaborate. You had to watch where you put your hands, how you opened things. And I could enable them or disable them as I wanted. I stopped using them later, after I started working with Miranda—I was afraid that they'd get her or one of the other boffins. And of course that was when my ship got stolen. But they were enabled for this job.

“Where do I put down?” I asked.

Cheyenne walked over to me and pointed out the gondola's window. “That's the beauty. Just across the street? There's a field.”

I looked where she pointed, and she was right. A football field. I had no idea how the sport had been played, but I'd seen pictures (once, some video this collector had) and something about the way they suited up had intrigued me. The field was mostly clear and large enough to set the
Cherub
down.

Of course there was still a lot of ground between the field and the police facility.

Cheyenne looked at all of us, as if reading our minds. “It'll be fine. We land on the field, cover each other to the facility. It's mostly open, good lines of sight. After we get the gear, we look for something with wheels to help. If that crashes, we take as much as we can carry. That should be worth enough. But . . .”

“But?” I asked.

She looked at Tess. “The manifest I have says that they have armored vehicles inside. If they're vintage, and nothing is broken . . . well, we'll have our way out, won't we?”

“They have armored vehicles?” I asked Tess.

She nodded. “According to the information I pulled.”

I shook my head. “I guess the Clean wasn't exactly what I thought.” I brought the
Cherub
directly over the football field. “Okay. Everybody load up and get ready.” There was the sound of weapons being checked. I pulled out my father's revolver, popped out the chamber, and made sure it was fully loaded. I also had a backup automatic on my hip. Claudia tested her bow and inspected her arrows.

“Someone will have to cover Lord Tess,” Cheyenne said.

“What?” I asked.

“I don't carry,” Lord Tess said.

“What the fuck?” I asked. “And you think now was the best time to tell us?”

“It's alright,” Claudia said. She gave me a look as if to say, just go with it. “I'll cover her. Just move when I tell you to, okay?”

“Okay,” Tess said.

“Okay,” Claudia said to me.

“Okay,” I repeated.

I set the
Cherub
down.

The howls of Ferals were already echoing across the open space as we descended the
Cherub
's ramp. I held the revolver in my hand, scanning for any signs of movement. Beside me, Claudia fitted an arrow to her bow. It made me want to grab her and kiss her, but now was definitely not the time.

Luckily for us, the field was made out of synthetic grass. I'd seen it before—unnerving that they had such things, but it meant the field wasn't overgrown. Easy place to land, no chance of getting caught up or tripped.

I let myself settle into a loose stance, the revolver out, and then they were there, barreling across the open space. I tracked my target, a tall, rangy Feral, male, its long, thin limbs propelling it toward me with worrying speed.

I sighted down the barrel. Squeezed the trigger. The Feral still came.

I inhaled, sighted, and shot again. The bullet took it in the shoulder as it was coming up from its crouch, spun it around, and threw it backward.

I swiveled to another target.

Part of me was calmed by the presence of the others. It wasn't that I trusted them (except for Claudia) but they were experienced (except for Tess), and they were covering the places I couldn't cover—and for the moment that was enough. I didn't have to look behind me.

I suppressed the urge to look behind me.

I shot, then shot again, then again and again. The others covered me as I reloaded. The gunshots echoed across the expanse of the football field. Any Ferals in the area would know we were here. That moment of alarm turned to delight as I watched Feral after Feral fall. They should know we were here. Should know that we carried thunder. Should know they were coming to their deaths.

The moment of triumph swelled, and then collapsed. Cheyenne, pulling back to reload, slipped on the wet turf and went down on one knee. Mal was also reloading, and suddenly a hole opened up. Ferals are stupid, but not so stupid that they can't sense weakness, and a few of them curved around to come in on that side.

And just like that, our order fell to chaos.

I had just enough time to swerve the revolver around at a dark-skinned, female Feral that was springing toward me. The shot clipped it and stopped it for a moment, but it wasn't down. Then there was another, then another.

“Fuck!” I heard behind me, but it wasn't Claudia's voice. I shot down a young Feral male, dancing away from where it crawled at me. Then another two shots to take the female down for good.

Then I was dry.

I turned my head for a split-second to see what was happening beside me. Scared, anxious faces. Lots of bullets (and arrows) in the air.

Then it was on me. For a moment, my brain couldn't make sense of things. This person had clothes on—a leather jacket. The tatters of a scarf. But survival instincts kicked in shortly afterward. I slammed the empty revolver into the side of its head and threw it to one side. Recently Faded. And no time to reload.

I did something that I don't normally do. I moved toward it, kicking out with my boot, trying to get some space. I was closer than I ever liked to be, and not armed, and I wanted this thing away. I kicked again, but it dodged my foot, and then I was tipping backward. I hit the ground with my side, and I saw the thing pressing back on its legs, about to jump, and—

A bullet took it in the head. On an angle so that the spray went wide of where I lay. I looked back quickly to see Mal pointing his gun in my direction. I got back to my feet, took the moment to slap a few bullets into the revolver, then turned and fired at whatever Ferals I could find.

It was loud and messy and then . . . it was over. Bodies littered the ground. My breath was loud behind my scarf. I counted five of us. All standing. Of course the bulk of my concern was for Claudia. She was breathing hard but seemed uninjured. For a moment, we just stood there, catching our breath, then it was back to reality.

Our rational brains quickly took over. I nodded to Claudia, then began checking her for any wounds or blood spray. She did the same to me. She gave me the all clear a moment before I did the same for her.

Then I turned and saw Cheyenne. Or, rather, Tess and Mal looking at Cheyenne. “What?” I asked.

“She has blood on her gloves,” Tess said.

“One got too close,” Cheyenne said. “I had to hit it to get it to back off.”

“Are the gloves intact?” I asked.

Cheyenne held her gloves out, and I could see the dark stain on them.

“Get them off!” I said.

She peeled one back with one glove, then gingerly pulled off the other one with a handkerchief she pulled from her pocket, letting it drop on the ground as if it burned her.

I moved closer, examining her hands. She held them out, flipped them over. I didn't see any blood.

But I didn't touch her.

That was always the hardest part—I might have checked her hands, checked for broken skin, cracked nailbeds, anywhere the Bug might have snuck its way in. Just because I didn't see blood didn't mean a microscopic drop didn't get through. But, getting close, running my hands, gloved as they were, over her, might just bring me one step closer to Fading myself.

It was safer to just keep an eye on her. Prep to put a bullet in her at the first sign of strange behavior.

But right then there might have been a bomb in our midst, just waiting to go off.

“I'm clean,” Cheyenne said, almost as if convincing herself. “I'm clean.”

I looked at Claudia, who just raised her eyebrows. I knew what she was thinking. This was getting better all the time.

“Let's move,” she said at last. She led us around the corpses of the Ferals, then on to the building ahead of us.

Claudia noticed the look on my face and touched my shoulder. “It'll be fine,” she said. “We'll be in and out before anyone has a chance to Fade.”

I nodded. That's what I was trying to focus on—get into the facility, grab the gear, get back to the
Cherub
, and put down Cheyenne (on the ground, I mean) as soon as possible. Otherwise, we'd be putting her down in another way.

Of course thinking about Fading reminded me about the last person who Faded in front of me—my father. It also reminded me of my cowardice. How it took me by surprise, and all I could do was grab for him, my fingers tangled in his Star of David necklace. Then, as reality hit me, what had been drilled into me my whole life kicked in and I turned and ran. Left him, or what was left of him, swirling into an abyss of mindlessness.

But that's not the sin at hand.

Mal had the heaviest load. We mostly carried empty bags for the loot, but he had his lock-picking tools in his large bag, and so we stayed close to him.

“What are you really doing here?” I asked him.

“Whatever do you mean, Benjamin?”

“You don't need this score,” I said. “You hit installations like this all the time. I know you're well-stocked on weapons and ammunition.”

He stopped for a moment and looked at me. “There's no such thing, Benjamin. One day it's going to be up to us to form a new civilization. Not this scattered series of jobs and searches. Not the day-to-day survival that we all do. We're going to need to build something, and that something is going to need defending. So, yes, I do need this score.” He started moving again, then said back over his shoulder. “We all do.”

I was still digesting this when I heard howls off in the distance, a sharp cry of . . . something? Hunger? Rage? Lust? I don't understand Ferals that much. Ahead of us, the building that Cheyenne had indicated got closer. But not close enough. I still had the revolver down at my side, and I was scanning around me along with everyone else.

But we kept moving.

We covered the distance without any more Ferals attacking us, and then we were at the door to the facility. Mal set down his bag and unzipped it, pulling out his tools, and the rest of us set up a perimeter around him, guns still out, as protection.

I started counting in my head, then stopped almost immediately. It was just setting my nerves on edge. I didn't like waiting, out in the open. It was something I avoided as much as I could. I kept flicking my gaze back to Claudia. She stood, straight, poised, ready. It made me feel better. Having her watch my back always made me feel better.