Against the Tide

Chapter Thirty-three

“I can put this on myself, you know,” Herzer said, extending his arms backwards.

“Us to do,” Bast replied. “Hold open, Megan.”

The ancient Romans had put an enormous amount of thought and practical research into making field armor that a soldier could wear day in and day out and Edmund Talbot had seen few reasons to ignore them. The loricated legionnaire armor was made of overlapping steel plates, lorica, that were effectively thin steel bands held together by small fittings on the inside. They were bent to go around a human body and open on the front. There they were tied with leather bindings. They had to be bent back to be put on, but other than that the armor could be donned like a coat and was, for armor, remarkably comfortable and cool.

Herzer had already donned the cosilk undershirt, with wide half sleeves to prevent chafing from the edge of the lorica, the steel-faced leather kilt and the thick cosilk scarf that wrapped around his neck and folded across his chest. The latter was to prevent the armor from digging into the neck and also acted as a slight protective collar against rebounds.

Herzer tied the front of the armor as Bast and Megan put on his shin, knee and thigh guards. Then he held his arms out, smiling faintly, so they could attach the bracers. On his right, his only, hand he slipped on a leather glove backed with steel inserts on the outside. Last, Megan placed his helmet on his head. The original Blood Lord helmet had been a barbute, a solid helmet of steel with a thin “T” on the front for breathing and sight. Recently, the legions had gone to the original Roman design. It was far more comfortable and gave much greater vision in battle. Of course, the face was essentially unprotected, but nothing was perfect.

He looked at the two of them standing side by side, the childlike beauty of the ancient elf with her long, curly, blue-black hair and cat-pupiled green eyes standing next to the much more subtle beauty of the councilwoman and shook his head.

“Do I get to keep both of you?” he asked, holding out his arms.

“Friends are,” Bast said, accepting and joining in the group hug. “Friends will stay. All and always.”

“I won’t kick her out of bed, mind you,” Megan said, trying to smile.

“Will help with armor?” Bast asked Megan.

“What armor?” Herzer said, frowning.

“Going with,” Bast replied, slipping out of her bikini top and bottom. “Hard fight have. Back will cover. Ride Joanna. Won’t mind.”

“It is going to be a hard fight,” Herzer said, frowning harder. “A bloody shambles fight. You’re as good as anyone in the world, better than me, but you’re going to need armor and I don’t know any in this ship…” He stopped as the elf produced a square of fabric the size of a handkerchief from her apparently bottomless pouch. She started unfolding it. And unfolding it. When it was fully unfolded the deck of the compartment could be seen through a long, grayish bodysuit.

“Hard to put on,” Bast said, sitting down on the deck and shoving one leg in. “Megan to help?”

“What is that?” Herzer asked. He always tended to get a bit… horny before a fight. Just one of his many demons. And the sight of the elf writhing on the floor putting on that… cat-suit combat-nightie, was a bit more than he was prepared to handle.

“Carbon nanotube,” Bast grunted, shoving an arm into a sleeve that ended in an integral glove. “Not very stretchy. Think have gained weight.”

“Carbon… what?” Herzer asked as Bast got up and stretched, hard, finally getting all her digits into place.

“Carbon nanotube,” Bast said, posing with her arms in the air. She looked from one blank face to the other and then pouted. “Diamond? Girl’s best friend?”

“You mean that’s a suit of carbon nanotube?” Megan said, aghast.

“Yeah,” Bast said, simply, pirouetting in place so the zipper at the back was presented to Megan. “Zip me?”

“That’s the stuff that they used to put in tourney armor to make sure nothing could get through it, right?” Herzer said.

“And in wyvern wings.” Megan nodded, zipping up the back. “That’s why they’re impenetrable.”

Bast folded up her hair in a quick bun and slipped a cover over her head. Like the rest of the suit it was nearly invisible.

“What do you think?” she asked, posing again and then turning in place.

The suit was essentially transparent except in carefully selected… mildly opaque spots.

“Put your eyes back in your head, Herzer,” Megan said, dryly. “Besides, you’ve seen it.”

“But this is… different,” Herzer said, wonderingly. The suit glittered faintly in the lamplight and he remembered what Bast had said about diamonds. That was, essentially, what the suit was, a flexible covering of solid diamond.

“Third floor,” Megan said, chuckling, “combat lingerie…”

The elf ignored the byplay and picked up her bow and saber.

“Ready?” she asked Herzer.

“Sure,” Herzer replied, bemusedly. “Why don’t you always wear that?”

“Doesn’t breathe very well,” Bast said, frowning. “Gets hot. Hard to take off in case want fun.” Her eyes grew distant and she frowned, then looked at Megan and reached out to stroke her face. “Say no goodbyes, yet.”

“Why?” Megan asked, tilting her face to the side.

“Is not time,” Bast replied, frowning. “Gaslan is… -shifting…”

“Message from station one-three-seven, Mr. J,” the messenger said, handing over a sealed envelope.

“Thank you,” Joel said as the messenger left. He slit the -envelope open and frowned at the contents. One cheek twitched for a moment and then he stepped quickly into his secretary’s anteroom and opened up a speaking tube.

“Communications,” a voice said when he whistled into it.

“Operational Immediate to all stations…” he said.

Brice Cruz had been a Blood Lord when most of the pussies going through the chow line hadn’t heard the name.

Sure, he’d had his problems. Been up the ranks, been down the ranks. But kicking him out of the corps over a few miserable bandits had really pissed him off. At first. Herzer had been the one to bring him the news. He’d known Herzer since right after the Fall, when they were both apprentices in Raven’s Mill. And he knew that Herzer would go to bat for him.

So when Herzer had told him that Herzer’s recommendation had been a full court-martial, well, he had to think.

He’d spent a good bit of the next year thinking. Besides starving there wasn’t much else to do. Gunny Rutherford had recited a poem one time, something about Black Sheep. One of the lines was about “slipping down the ladder, rung by rung.” That was his life in a nutshell. When you’re too dangerous to be a soldier, and too honorable to be a bandit and a lousy farmer, there wasn’t much going but “slipping down the ladder, rung by rung.” The only thing that kept him from thinking about it was what wine and beer he could afford working as a wandering laborer.

They’d found him in a miserable slop of a tavern, drunk as an owl on bad wine and near half dead. They’d sobered him up and then started asking questions. After a while, he realized that if the answers were wrong, he wasn’t walking out of the hut they’d taken him to. But the answers were right. And so he’d been given a new job. It wasn’t as good as being a Blood Lord and really getting it stuck in. But, and this was the key point, they’d promised him that if he was a good boy and played by the rules, he’d occasionally get to kill people. The flip side being that if he fisked with them, even once, he’d be visited by unpleasant gentlemen with similar abilities and then there would be no more Brice Cruz.

He’d thought they were crazy when they put him back in Raven’s Mill. But it was remarkable what a change of hair and skin color along with a few things you could do with a face could do. Nobody had twigged. And, after all, he knew the town and the Blood Lord Academy inside and out. He’d been there before half the buildings were built. Had built a third of them.

He’d taken a job in the kitchens and done a professionally middling job. Never so good that he could get promoted, never so bad that he got fired. And he kept his ears open. From time to time he passed on bits of information that he’d picked up. Nothing much, Raven’s Mill in a lot of ways was a backwater.

This morning was unusual, though. The commandant had called for a surprise inspection. And he’d heard one of the headquarters guards that was coming off duty saying that Councilwoman Sill and some undersecretary from the War Department were in the building. Just a surprise inspection wasn’t too odd; the commandant was a right bastard about them. But put it together with the visit, though, and something was happening.

He glanced at the clock and looked out the window. Right on time.

“Spell me,” he grunted to one of the assistant cooks. “I had too much coffee.”

He stepped out back to the latrines and opened up the door to the third stall.

“Clearly we need better facilities,” he said to no one in particular.

“It’s clear,” a voice answered from the next stall.

“Councilwoman Sill and an undersecretary from the War Department are at headquarters,” Cruz said, conversationally. “And there’s a surprise inspection. Maybe dog and pony show for them. Lots of tenseness going around.”

“I heard half of that already,” his control said in a hard voice. “And we have a problem.”

“What’s that?” Cruz asked, buttoning up his pants.

“You’ve got a mission,” the control said. “One that you have to take right now. Can you get in the headquarters?”

“Yeah,” Cruz replied. “If I really have to.”

“You really have to,” the control said, tightly. “It’s game time.”

“In the headquarters?” Cruz said, trying to keep his voice down.

“In the headquarters,” the control replied. “Now. There is exactly no time.”

“I can’t get out,” Cruz said, quietly but angrily.

“Let us handle that,” the control replied. “Just do it.”

“Fine one to talk!” Cruz snarled. “You won’t be looking down a platoon of swords!”

“It doesn’t matter,” the control replied. “This is game time. You took the salt. There is one way out of this organization and that is feet first. You can do it of old age or… other ways. But if you try to run, you’ll just die tired.”

“Son of a bitch,” Cruz said, quietly. “Fisk it. Everybody dies sometime. Who’s the target?”

“Do you understand your orders, General?” Edmund asked, watching First Legion file out of its fortified camp. They were leaving a half cohort to hold the walls; if everything went to hell, they could always fall back on it. The rest of them were marching silently to the south, towards the battle.

“Yes, sir,” General Lepheimer said. The legion commander was another political appointee but one that Edmund would have chosen himself. The UFS, the world, had precisely no military officers at the Fall. They were still trying to train a professional corps. But Lepheimer was a long term student of military history and his tactics, in simulated battles, map exercises and the few small skirmishes he had engaged in, had been sound.

Lepheimer chuckled dryly in the darkness and looked over at the duke.

“When I told my boys it was going to be a battle to tell their grandchildren about, I didn’t realize how right I was.”

“Well, if we have grandchildren to tell, it will be because of what they do today,” Edmund said.

As he said it the pipes of the legion began to swirl and the battle hymn of the Blood Lords was roared from six thousand throats.

“Blood to our blood, General,” Lepheimer said, saluting. “We’ll get it done.”

“Breakfast for the general,” Cruz said, waving the tray in front of the two guards’ faces so they could smell it clearly.

“Secure room,” the left-hand guard said. “Nobody goes in.”

“Blast,” Cruz replied. “If I don’t get this to him quick I’m in trouble.” He held the tray out to the left-hand guard. “Hold this for me.”

“What?” the guard said, automatically taking it. As he did Cruz swung a roundhouse punch into his face with his right hand and followed it up with a left to the right-hand guard. What looked like light gloves against the morning cold had steel inserts and lead palms for weight. It still hurt.

“Good thing they changed the helmets,” Cruz muttered, shaking his hands to get feeling back in them. “Never could have done that with a barbute.”

He palmed a dagger, then slipped the latch on the soundproofed door.

The room beyond was about ten meters long and occupied mostly by a large conference table. Harry Chambers was standing at the far end, holding a long dagger in his hand. Elnora Sill was sitting in the end chair, facing the door. Her head was tipped back revealing the gash in her neck that went almost to her spine. General Lanzillo was on the floor with a dagger in his back.

“Good,” Cruz said, closing the door and bolting it from the inside. “You managed it. Have you contacted higher, yet?”

“What?” Harry said, reaching down and pulling the necklace that held Elnora’s key from around her neck. “No.”

“Do it, quick,” Cruz said, going over to the general. “Good thrust. Nice technique. In the future, though, do the kidney first. It paralyzes them.”

“Who are you?” Harry said, clearly flustered.

“Your backup,” Cruz snapped. “You don’t think you’d be sent on a mission with no backup do you?”

“But I didn’t tell anyone…”

“What? You think we don’t watch you?” Cruz replied, shaking his head and going over to check Elnora. “Call Conner. We’ve got to get out of here.” He reached down to touch the councilwoman’s neck and then punched back, driving the dagger into Harry’s stomach then ripping down. He twisted it as he withdrew and then punched the Undersecretary For House Relations in the face, hard.

“Fucking traitor,” he said, kicking the dagger out of the man’s nerveless fingers.

He picked up the key and turned to the door, opening it just as one of the response guards was running at it with his shoulder. The guard sprawled on the floor and then bounded back up, sword in hand, swearing at the bodies in the room.

“I am an agent of the UFS Counterintelligence Service,” Cruz said, arms outstretched, holding up the key in one hand and the dagger in the other. “This was an authorized termination…”

“Herzer,” Sheida said, appearing in the air as the major was getting ready to mount his wyvern.

“Your Majesty,” Herzer replied, startled. He slid back to the deck and bowed.

“No time, Herzer,” Sheida snapped. “Where’s Megan?”

“Here,” Megan said, stepping away from the mast where she’d been keeping out of the way.

“We need to talk, fast,” Sheida said. “Somewhere secure. Where?”

Herzer thought about that and shrugged. “Landing platform. Wind’s from for’ard, it will carry our voices away.”

Herzer and Megan hurried up the companionway as Sheida wafted behind them. Captain Karcher bounded up to the landing platform and Sheida waved her hand.

“Make sure we’re not overheard,” Sheida said, calmly but definitely.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Karcher said, bounding back down to the quarterdeck and clearing the rear. She took the wheel herself, the only position that might overhear.

“Elnora Sill is dead,” Sheida said, rapidly. “Assassinated. We retained her key, thank God. But someone has to activate the portals.”

“Oh,” Megan said. “A council member.”

“I’d go myself,” Sheida said, nodding, “but there would be… complications…”

“I’ll go, of course,” Megan said. “We have the two for the front here. If I have the authority?”

“You do,” Sheida replied. “I’ll port you to Raven’s Mill…”

“This is outside the blocks, Your Majesty,” Herzer pointed out.

“Damn!” Sheida snapped. “Damn, damn…”

“I wouldn’t have taken the port anyway, Your Majesty,” Megan said, softly. “I’ll go on Joanna.”

“Like hell you will!” Herzer said. “It’s going to be a madhouse!”

“There will be you, Joanna and Bast to protect me,” Megan said, defiantly. “And that is what I’m going to do.”

“Joanna can carry you to inside the blocks,” Sheida said. “From there you port to Raven’s Mill. That’s safer, Miss Travante.”

“Too bad,” Megan said. “I’m going.”

“No, you’re not,” Herzer said.

“We don’t have time to argue,” Megan replied, smiling. “Get moving, Major.”

“She’s right,” Sheida said. “We don’t have time to argue. And Travantes are stubborn as the day is long.” She sighed and shook her head. “Get going, you two. Herzer… keep her alive.”

“I will, Your Majesty,” Herzer said, wishing he could be sure of it.

“Don’t worry,” Megan replied, sadly. “I’ve got a personal protection field. You don’t.”

“Go,” Sheida said, vanishing.

“Not even a good luck,” Herzer groused, climbing back down to the maindeck. He grabbed Megan’s hand and they threaded their way through the cluster of crewmen who were arming the dragons. Taking her hand was a necessity as much as anything; the crews were highly drilled and moved in a synchronous fashion. Someone with no experience moving among them was as likely as not to be run over by a group carrying highly volatile bombs.

They made their way to Joanna, with Bast already seated on her neck, and Herzer picked Megan up, tossing her onto the dragon.

“New passenger, Commander,” Herzer said, angrily.

“What?” Joanna replied, turning her neck. “Why?”

“Change of plan,” Herzer said, running away through the organized chaos. “She’ll explain.”