Through Fire (Darkship Book 4) (34 page)
Read Through Fire (Darkship Book 4) Online
Authors: Sarah A. Hoyt
“But Brisbois, if he should order—”
“Ignore him. Tranquilize him if you have to,” Brisbois said, as Basil looked not only doubtful but appalled. “However, before all that, get me and Madame Sienna a half a dozen burners with full charges. Issue model, if possible, because they’re sturdier. We’ll go and try to stop this, before they get so far in the compound they can take hostages to exchange for the Patrician, or worse, they run into the Patrician himself.”
Basil looked at the people in the pick-up camera. “It’s suicide,” he said. “You can tell they’re all enhanced.”
“Oh, yes,” Brisbois said. “I can tell, but they’re not enhanced like Madame Sienna. And Dechausse is at least as enhanced as I am. Maybe more. Keep an eye on us. If we die, tell Jonathan. He’s the next capable of gathering the most enhanced people to try to defend us. If nothing else, we should be able to delay them so you and your people can get Simon—the Patrician—out of the way.” He gave me a shaky smile, and I wondered if he believed what he was saying, or if he was willing to sacrifice both of us to give the others more time at defense.
And this was when I got upset. “Brisbois,” I said. “That might be the most stupid plan in the history of stupid plans.”
I didn’t realize I’d actually spoken aloud until I heard the words coming out of my mouth. He clearly couldn’t believe his ears.
“I don’t care how not enhanced they are,” I said and realized I was being brutally honest in a way I usually wasn’t. Ever since my foster parents had told me I was the best and the brightest and no one could equal me, I’d been careful not to hurt the feelings of normal people. But Brisbois wasn’t normal, and I wasn’t going to be careful while he went merrily into the jaws of death. “There are thirteen of them, and I understand that Jean Dechausse is at least as enhanced as you are. We are not going to march bravely up the hallway and let them shoot us. It only takes one burner blast to kill you. And one doesn’t care if it comes from an enhanced or nonenhanced person.”
I don’t know what I expect. Anger, I suppose, or mockery. If I’d made the same speech to Simon, he’d have laughed at me, and come up with some light counter banter.
Brisbois stared. He pursed his lips. “What do you suggest then? I know you are saying that numbers matter, but we can’t let these people risk themselves while we’re the ones who are enhanced and while—”
And suddenly I understood. I understood Brisbois’s need to keep others safe—his need, perhaps, to sacrifice himself. Everything he’d done, everything certainly that I’d put him through and which he’d endured more gracefully than he deserved, his quasi-paternal relationship with Simon. All of it was an attempt to…what? Atone for a crime he hadn’t committed?
I refused to take my own medicine and look at myself the same way. Instead I turned to Basil and asked, “Are there corridors above the one they’re in?”
He nodded, looking from one to the other of us, as though he wasn’t sure what to expect.
“Then why, in the name of all that’s holy,” I started, rounding on Alexis Brisbois, “can’t we just cut a small hole ahead of a point they’ll pass, track them by sound, and then throw a grenade down?”
“Zen!” he said, one of the few times he eschewed the Madame Sienna nonsense. “You know better than that. We don’t know where Simon is. It could be him passing beneath.”
I didn’t ask if Simon routinely made enough noise for a dozen people. He might. I said, “There has to be a way to monitor…”
Basil gestured at the machine. “There is a portable view,” he said. “You could monitor.”
Brisbois said, “But it seems…”
“Yes? What? Unsporting? Unfair? It is not a game.”
I had the impression Basil had choked back a laugh. But when I looked at him out the corner of my eye, he didn’t at all look amused.
Brisbois said, quietly. “It seems like murder.”
“And killing them in a fight isn’t?” I asked.
“Well, now, you know they’re going to kill you then.”
“Alexis Brisbois,” I said, realizing in horror I sounded like my foster mom when Dad said something strange. “Do you mean to tell me you think that Jean Dechausse is here to give you chocolates?”
This time I heard it, and I was sure Basil guffawed. I didn’t look at him, because if I did I would have to take notice of it. I noted that Brisbois was also determinedly not looking that way. He’d blushed dark red. “Understand,” he said. “These used to be my friends, my…my comrades. It feels strange to—to kill them without seeing them face to face.” He took a deep breath. “But you are right. There is too much at stake to let ourselves be killed for a quixotic notion.”
And I said nothing, understanding that to him his life would always have a conditional value, and not sure whether I was flattered, or maybe appalled, he’d chosen me as his companion in what he’d intended to be a self-sacrifice.
Operation Chaos
That was how we found ourselves walking down the upper corridor, side by side. I was hyperaware of Brisbois: his smell of sweat and soap, his steps, cautious on the concrete floor, and almost soundless in a way that was odd for such a big man.
But I was aware of more than that, and couldn’t even tell how. I was so hyperaware of the tension and the way he moved, that I’d swear I could feel his tense muscles, his tightly clenched hands.
Or perhaps what I felt were my own and I projected.
I had a hand in my pocket, my fingers tight on the butt of a burner.
And there were two of us going up against ten people.
We were not stupid, so after studying the physical plant of the compound, we’d taken the hallway above the one the intruders had taken.
Out towards this end of the center, it was all storage rooms and empty. We advanced with our ears alert for sounds from beneath.
I heard something, a sort of rustle. It was hard to be sure. But I strained, thought it was more than one pair of feet. I looked at Brisbois, a meaningful look, and he pulled out the little remote device, about the size of his admittedly outsized palm, which allowed him to project the holo of the floor below.
It seemed forever before it formed, but it took only two of my breaths.
And then we saw them. Too close, coming towards the point below us too fast. We could back up, but at the clip they were moving it wouldn’t earn us anything. Jean Dechausse was in the lead.
I switched my burner to cutting strength, and started cutting a broad circle in the dimatough floor. It took two seconds before Brisbois flung the portable unit down, the hologram above it tiny and distorted seen from above.
As the circle of dimatough crashed in front of them, Jean Dechausse jumped.
And then Brisbois was dropping the grenade through. It hit with a small click, and we were both diving in different directions and covering our heads.
The explosion echoed, deafening.
I opened my eyes, staring head first at the little holo. In which a figure in blue dress was running away. Or perhaps not running away, because he was running further into the compound, past the point we were at, towards the center, towards where other people, where innocents were.
It took me a second to orient, and then I realized he’d jumped ahead right after the dimatough dropped through, and he was too far out of range.
He was running hell for leather down the corridor, and I jumped through the hole after him, rolling myself in a ball as I fell the six feet below, landing with a jar that rattled my brains, but with no injury. I got to my feet and moved after Dechausse, who ran like a lizard.
I don’t know how else to describe his fast, darting movements.
Whatever else he was or wasn’t enhanced for, he was at least as enhanced as I was for speed. He ran as though he glided, too fast for the eye to fully follow.
Behind me I heard Brisbois say
“Merde,”
and felt the floor vibrate as he dropped down. I realized that we’d both run through quite a lot of what remained of people, but we weren’t shot, so if any of Dechausse’s escort remained alive, they must be too stunned to react.
We closed on him, but Jean ran like the Devil pursued him, which metaphorically perhaps he did, as Brisbois looked like nothing on Earth as he lunged forward, teeth clenched.
I think Brisbois yelled
“arret”
but I couldn’t be sure. My sides ached and I was panting. All your enhancing goes for nothing when you’ve not been keeping in shape, and when over the last days you’ve worried too much and slept far too little.
I realized we were running towards the center where Simon and Brisbois and I had battled the traitors among the personnel in this compound.
I wondered where Simon was. And just as I did, he came out of the corner, just in front of Dechausse, a burner in hand, and yelled “Stop,” in Glaish, followed by
“Arret.”
Only he’d been too close. I didn’t think Dechausse could stop if he wanted to, and he didn’t want to. He careened into Simon. Both went sprawling. Dechausse got up first, burner in hand. “Get up, get up, get up,” he said, as he aimed a kick at Simon. Reaching down, he pulled Simon up by the arm. Simon was acting stunned, and truth be told, he was probably stupid with lack of sleep or he would never have stood that close in front of a careening enemy.
Jean Dechausse hauled him up, arm around his middle, immobilizing him, burner to head in the classic position of hostage holding.
Brisbois and I slid to a stop. I realized we were not the only ones here of the compound’s defenders. Rather, they thronged along the walls, and some came closer. For a moment, I had the impression someone had summoned them, and they’d all come to rescue Simon. Then I realized our arrival had been so fast that we’d caught everyone in the middle of their daytime movements which, of necessity, took a lot of them through this space, central to the compound.
People were carrying trays of food, and others were walking in couples. Only one or two had started reaching for their burners when they stopped, faced with this situation.
Dechausse looked around the vast hall. “Come any closer, any of you, and I blow the Good Man’s brains out.”
Brisbois was near me, panting, and I wanted to ask him if Dechausse wouldn’t blow Simon’s brains out anyway, if that hadn’t always been the purpose, but I was afraid Dechausse would hear us. And then I thought that Dechausse, just like us, had fought himself to a standstill.
He couldn’t just kill Simon, because if he blew Simon’s brains out, he’d never leave here alive. Even if he killed two or three of us, even if he killed Brisbois and me, he’d never escape revenge from the hundreds of loyal people who had sworn fealty to Simon and who still, in one way or another, served him.
And if he didn’t blow Simon’s brains out, then what? He couldn’t hope to make it out of here, dragging Simon behind him.
For one thing, while Simon had miscalculated and acted like an idiot, he wasn’t an idiot. Which meant at some point, in Jean Dechausse’s trek to an exit point, Simon would recover enough to wrestle the burner out of his captor’s hand. Or die trying. But in that case, Dechausse would still lose.
“Jean,” Brisbois bellowed, his voice so loud the dimatough walls vibrated. “Jean, you’re trapped. You can’t get out of this in any way. If you kill him, we kill you. If you try dragging him to the door, he’ll fight you and then you’ll still get killed. And at any rate, you won’t have his corpse for Madame to show the Good Men. In either case, you lose. Put the burner down, Jean,” Brisbois said. “Remember we were friends once.”
“I was never your friend,” Dechausse said. “I never liked you, Alexis Brisbois, you and your servile disposition. You and your meek, self-effacing wish to serve those who created us, those who held us in subjugation. I thought I’d killed you once. I would like it to be true.” As he spoke the last sentences, he moved the burner from Simon’s head, quickly, so quickly that normal eyes wouldn’t be able to follow it, and aimed it at Brisbois.
Before he could fire, Simon seized his opportunity and pushed an elbow into Dechausse’s solar plexus.
And I saw my opportunity. If I didn’t do something, Dechausse was going to shoot Simon in the arm or the leg, possibly after he shot Brisbois. I couldn’t let that happen, but with Simon struggling in Dechausse’s grasp, I also couldn’t be sure that I wouldn’t burn Simon. I had to trust. I had to trust my speed, my accuracy and my superhuman reaction time, just when it was pitted against people if not as enhanced, close enough that I couldn’t be sure of them.
It was like a series of pictures, flash, flash, flash, as I pulled my burner from my pocket. Now I saw Dechausse’s head, and now Simon’s was in front of it, and now it was Dechausse again.
I looked, and I aimed, and I pressed the trigger.
The bright ray flew.
For a moment Dechausse and Simon stood there, Dechausse’s arm around Simon, his burner pointed at Brisbois, and then—
Brains and blood splatted onto Simon’s cheek, and he jumped away from Dechausse, who fell to the floor, a heap of cooling meat.
I turned around feeling like it had been a million years, more or less, since I’d dropped through that hole to chase Dechausse. “Alexis,” I said. “Are you—” I couldn’t stand the idea that Alexis might have got severely hurt.
Brisbois was clutching a shoulder. “I think it’s just a scratch,” he said, hoarsely.
“And this suit is quite ruined,” Simon said, from so close by, I turned around to look at him. “But thank you for asking if I was injured too.”
I felt too tired to spar with him, too old to care, too bone-weary to answer his flip, joking tone.
I wanted to say I knew he was well from the way he jumped, but instead, it was Brisbois who answered. “I could murder you,” he said.
Simon looked genuinely surprised, if at the words or the venom in them I couldn’t tell. “Alexis!” he said, and I understood in the tone shock at what Alexis had said, yes, but also at being addressed that way by someone who, in public at least, had always been a respectful servitor, an inferior effacing himself so his liege Lord could look infallible. “Alexis!”
“Oh, don’t you ‘Alexis’ me,” Brisbois said. “You could have gotten yourself killed, you infernal nuisance. I’ve told you before that it is not your job to have gallant adventures nor to run grand schemes. You’re more important than any of us and you shouldn’t risk yourself stupidly. And besides, if you hadn’t refused to sleep, you’d not have been so stupid as to botch that move, if you’d decided to stop him, and besides you should learn your place and stay in it.”
He stopped, giving the impression that he’d not stopped because he’d said all he had to say, but rather that he’d stopped because he’d run out of breath to yell at Simon anymore.
Simon stood, looking like he was trying to decide whether to be incensed or amused.
But before he composed his lips to either scowl or smile, a slow clap sounded.
We turned in the direction of the sound to see two dozen men in the sky-blue uniform of Olympus seacity, standing near the tunnel that led to the official entrance to the compound.
Their leader was clapping.