The Airship Aurelia (The Aurelian Archives) (59 page)

“
No! I brought Aurelia all this way because I thought she was important to The Heron—I thought they actually
wanted
her. And not as a pile of scrap metal!
Sisquicks
, Nivy, you could have told me they didn’t even
care
about the bleeding…”

The room had gone eerily quiet. Nivy and everyone in some way related to her—which was to say, everyone except Nimrod, who was still scrutinizing Reece—was staring at the rectangular datascreen over the table as it ran wild with flickering code. Its erratic light jumped on their faces, a wan glow.

“Is that true?” Nivy asked the room at large after a moment.

As if in answer, in the distance, muted alarms started undulating. Feet pounded nearby—a small squad of soldiers, from the sounds of heavy boots and clanking metal.

After eyeing the screen shortly, Nimrod snorted and turned to face the fire, his hands clasped in his lap. “Nekoda, Canter, see to that.”

Canter and her husband were already halfway out the door; Reece could hear the soft thumping of the hawk’s wings carrying it away, maybe to deliver a message. Asa touched Illie’s arm and gave Nivy a stern look before jogging after them.

In the confusion, Reece was able to shake Nivy off altogether and approach Nimrod at the hearth. He didn’t know what was happening, what the screen, soldiers, and alarms all meant, but he knew what he had to say was
at least
as important.

But as he opened his mouth, Nimrod said,
“You’re wrong, Captain Sheppard. We care about the weapon. In the past, we’ve cared too much. The invention has been missing for centuries. The war is
now
. It is time The Heron stood on their own.”

“
But—”

“
It’s a treasure hunt, Captain. It has done nothing but slow our efforts.”

“
Maybe,” Reece admitted. “And maybe once, you could have just let the hunt for it go. But now The Kreft know the weapon is still out there. Doing nothing to keep it from them is as good as giving it to them yourselves.”

“We will destroy them before that ever becomes a possibility. It will be a glorious victory.”

He said it with such
relish
, as if his people hadn’t been at this for five hundred years already, as if he was thrilled to partake in the war. And he did it without even doing Reece the favor of looking at him. Reece had expected The Heron to not trust him, to scoff at him, and maybe even hate him, like Asa seemed to. He hadn’t counted on being dismissed out of hand.

“
Oh, good,” Reece said, gesturing with manacled hands, “that answers all of my questions. Except for the one about how you’re supposed to destroy them without the weapon
made
to destroy them.”

“
It is Heron business,” Nimrod rumbled, as if that should put an end to all of Reece’s arguments. He was in for a disappointment.

“
Is it?” Reece asked. “Because the way I figure it, The Kreft getting their hands on a weapon of mass destruction concerns all of us.”

For the first time, Nimrod’s expression shifted. It was like a slowly-building wave, a stirring deep in the ocean. The zealous spark in his eyes was becoming a roaring wildfire.
“Don’t you pretend to know anything of war, boy, from your cush planet Honora. There’s an expendable blip on the radar if ever there was one.”

Immedia
tely, Nivy was at Reece’s elbow. But the glare that would have as good as pinned Reece powerlessly to the wall, Nimrod merely grumbled at. “Reece is right, Nimrod. We don’t have to exhaust our resources looking for the weapon—just a small contingent—”

“
I expected more from you, Nivy,” Nimrod interrupted, seeming genuinely disappointed. “I can excuse your irresponsibility to a point, but I will not tolerate disloyalty to our worthy cause.”

Reece squawked disbelievingly.
Disloyalty
? Was Nimrod really talking about the girl who had made herself a mute, flown across the galaxy into enemy territory alone, and been willing to die for a legend all for a chance to help her people in the slightest? The day Nivy was disloyal was the day Reece advertised Captain Pleasant’s Hairstuffs for Gents.

“
I don’t think I believed it till right now,” he said, shaking his head slowly, “that anyone could be so
arrogant
.”

“
Oh?” Nimrod pointed a knobby-knuckled finger in Reece’s face. “This, from the Palatine First who trailed destruction from one side of the galaxy to the other? Who churned his friends like gravel under his wheels to get where he wanted?”

For a moment, Reece was too shocked too answer, too alarmed, because he knew, instantly, that Nimrod was right. He
had
been arrogant; maybe he still was, and that was why realizing it made him so angry at himself. Then he remembered Tutor Agnes in her handkerchief and Mordecai, white-whiskered and grinning, cackling over his cooking, and everything pounding in him went still. “I’ve lost too much to ever be proud of what I’ve done,” he said quietly. “I’m not saying it makes me better, but it makes me different. After everything you’ve lost…you’re still too proud to realize you can’t do this alone. But I know I can’t.”

The fire popped and crunched as one of its logs gave out. The screen was still spastic with code, a flickering in the corner of Reece’s eye. Abruptly, Nimrod spun, marched to the screen, and violently yanked out one of its wires, so it went dark.

“We have done this alone for centuries,” he said, angrily throwing down the wire. “And still, for the glory of The Heron, we survive.”

“
But for how much longer?” Illie asked from her seat in the shadows, drawing a sharp look from Nimrod. She returned the look levelly, and that’s when Reece realized he might’ve been premature in assuming Nivy’s fierceness had come from her father. “There is no glory in always being one thread away from unraveling, Nimrod.”

“
But that is just the point, Illiana! We
are
one thread from unraveling. One clumsy hand could pull us apart. The sunward planets are little more than fodder in this war! We decided that a decade ago…to change our minds now, after what we’ve done…”

“
After what you’ve done?” Reece repeated, turning to Nivy. She shook her head, seemingly at a loss. He believed her. Nivy could mislead, betray, and disappoint him, and he’d still trust her a thousand miles further than Nimrod.

Nimrod seemed most agitated about the fact Reece had managed to unruffle him. Huffing, he circled the table, shaking his head at Reece as he passed him by.
“Our glorious victory is nigh. I would not compromise that now, neither for a mythological weapon, nor for allies. We have no need for either, anymore.”

“
What do you mean?” Nivy demanded, heading off Reece as he opened his mouth, about to ask the same thing but in ruder terms.

“
I’m afraid you’re no longer privy to that information.”

Reece guessed flatly,
“Because she’s siding with me?”

Never mind unruffled—when Nimrod spun on Reece, the man looked
insane
. Reece got the strangest feeling he wanted to give him pushups for insubordination. “Because I said she isn’t!” he barked.

Nivy quickly sidestepped in front of Reece, holding up a warning hand to ward Nimrod off. Reece was touched. A little insulted—he kind of wanted an excuse to go toe to toe with Nimrod and make his
glorious
point—but mostly touched.

Grumbling, Nimrod agitatedly smoothed down the front of his jacket before abruptly going still, as if something had occurred to him. He nodded once to himself.
“Very well. You want a hand in this rebellion, Palatine First? You want to know how we’ll win this war without Honora? I’ll give you something to think on. Bring him, Illie.”

On his way to the door, Nimrod cranked a great rusted lever on the control console. In the distance, a generator started up with a metallic groan.

“What is this?” Nivy muttered to Illie as her mother approached to draw Reece towards the door Nimrod had left open at his back. They edged out into the cavern just as a photon globe over the control room powered up with a buzz of complaint, as bright as a beacon in the damp sea of black. More were fluttering in the distance, like sleepy, blinking eyes.

“Stay calm, Nivy,” was all Illie said as she led them to the rail of the observation deck, where Nimrod was waiting, looking satisfied.

“
I give you,” he said, proud, triumphant, his hand on another switch hanging by a fat chain from the invisible ceiling, “the future of The Heron.”

He threw the switch with a click and a clank.

From right to left, one after the other, the photon lights came fully on, burning through shadows and streams of dust motes. Each popping photon revealed thirty more yards of bunker; each thirty new yards of bunker revealed another ship with a wooden hull and patinaed gold airlocks, long-snouted, sleek, and winged.

When the last photon globe popped, Reece was staring down two neat rows of sleeping ships facing each other across the long airstrip, which tapered into the distance, a tunnel drilled through the roots of the mountains. He was radioactive with adrenaline and panic, his mind painfully awake and yet blank, like someone had thrown the lights in his head and shocked everything that had been creeping around
in it into going perfectly still.

To his left, Aurelia. To his right,
Aurelia. Five of her, ten of her,
twenty
of her. He almost believed someone had set up the bunker with carnival mirrors and created an optical illusion. Only…

These ships
weren’t
Aurelia. Someone who hadn’t studied her at length might have been fooled, but it only took Reece a second glance to realize that the ships were too long, their wings just a bit too sharp, more like
The Aurelius
’s had been. And they were mounted with canons the size of bimotors.

He
caught himself on the rail, mouth hanging open. Aurelia was a survey ship, an explorer. Aurelius had been a passenger vessel. This third breed…it was a
warship
. He squinted at the nearest ship, its name emblazoned on its side in red script, as if in bloody imitation of Aurelia’s.

The Aureliod.

“Our armada,” Nimrod said, pulling his gesturing hand into a fist.

A steel door at the head of the airstrip—the very door Reece must have been escorted through earlier—opened, and Canter rushed in, pausing only for a second to stare down the length of the bunker before homing in on the small company on the observation deck.

“They’re landing,” she shouted breathlessly. “Nimrod, they’re landing! And they’re asking for
him
!”

Reece’s mind chugged as it tried to kick back into gear. He understood, somehow, that Canter was talking about him, but it was like a film had been laid over the bunker, and the only thing that stood out with clarity were those ships that just
couldn’t
exist.

“
How did they get through?” Nimrod demanded, ignoring Reece in his dazed stupor as he swung towards the stairs with Illie.

“
Most of the ships led The Kreft away, back out into the Voice. One slid through our defenses while their back was turned. It was too fast. I’ve never seen anything like it. It was like a ghost, on the radar. There, and then…”

A ghost on the radar. It was painful, but Reece dragged himself back to the present, and turned towards Nivy, still feeling a little slack-jawed.
“What are they talking about?”

Nivy hesitated, then,
after glancing uncertainly at the fleet of warships one last time, nodded for Reece to come with her. He didn’t want to. He wanted to stand here and keep staring out over the bunker and its alarming cargo, but his feet had a different idea. He pattered clumsily down the stairs, belatedly noticing how quickly Nimrod had dismissed their fight in light of this mysterious new development, and realizing how worried that should probably make him.

“
Remember how I mentioned that The Kreft were moving strangely?” Nivy said quietly as Illie, Nimrod, and Canter conversed in low, urgent voices. “It was because there were other ships in The Ice Ring. They just appeared, a small fleet, no more than a dozen. Even The Kreft were caught off guard. They regrouped to round them up and gave chase.”

“
What kind of ships?”

“
No one knows. They couldn’t get a straight read—the ships put off some kind of intentional interference, to make the radars glitch. And they’re faster than anything we’ve got.” Nivy stopped at the bottom of the stairs, turned, and held Reece back with a hand on his chest. “Reece. They said they were from Honora.”

“
What
?” Had the duke sent someone looking for him? Was he really that
stupid
?

Reece turned to demand Canter tell him everything and found himself face to face with Nimrod, who managed to loom quite impressively, considering his stocky height. The man grabbed his manacles and cranked them to a hard, awkward angle, so R
eece went up to his toes as Nivy hissed something surprisingly ugly that didn’t bear repeating.