Ashes of Candesce: Book Five of Virga

16

"THIS IS REALLY quite nostalgic," said Jacoby as soldiers bound his hands behind him. He smiled at Venera, then winced as one of the men brushed against his wound.

"Why'd you shoot that man?" she snapped.

"So that we'd be free to talk."

"I'm not in the mood." Her expression told him she really would be happy to shoot him if he said another word. He shrugged and focused his attention on his nervous men, making eye contact with each in turn and nodding or otherwise indicating his confidence that they would survive this.

Meanwhile, Venera had swung about to face the hostages. "You lot can do what you will!" she told them. "I think it should be clear to you now that your own people don't give a damn about you."

"Commander!" A soldier ran up and saluted hastily. "We're cut off!"

For the first time, Venera looked surprised. "What do you mean cut off? We brought two cruisers!"

"Apparently they've had to retreat!" Now Jacoby could hear it: the unsteady pop-pop of small-arms fire echoing through the dangling buildings.

Venera hauled Jacoby to his feet and marched him away from his companions. "Our reunion may be briefer than I'd hoped," she said. "First of all, thank you for not harming my actors. The fact that you treated them well will stand you in good stead when I decide whether to kill you or not."

"Oh, come now, Venera, we've been down this road before," he said. "You're spiteful and impulsive, but you never drop a trinket if it might end up being valuable to you."

"And you're a trinket?" She'd brought them out of the tent and to the edge of the street span. The shifting rooftops of Fracas made a bewildering kaleidoscope below. Fanning put the barrel of her pistol to Jacoby's ear and said, "We need to get out of here. You'll survive if you help. What's it to be?"

The gunfire was coming from above them. Jacoby couldn't turn his head, but caught a glimpse of uniformed figures on nearby rooftops. "Well, it depends," he said. "Where is it you want to get to?"

"First of all: Why are my ships retreating?"

He thought about how little he could get away with telling her. "There's guns mounted in some of the outside buildings. They can hit anything to either side of the city's disk. Your ships would have to put themselves in the plane of the city's rotation to avoid them, and even then, we can drop bombs on them from the lower towers..."

"But not very accurately. And they could obliterate Fracas from there."

"But you wouldn't. The people here are innocent."

"So were the people of Spyre."

He scoffed. "You hold too high an opinion of yourself. It wasn't you who destroyed Spyre. It was the generals. They weakened it--"

"Whatever," she said, but the pistol left his temple. "The point is," she went on, "if we go out we'll be shot." She nodded past the verticals of cable and chain. "The only way is to go down." She meant toward the outer rim of the spinning ring of buildings. -- And she was right, in a way: from the rim one could simply let go and fall away in the plane of the city's rotation--safe from the guns mounted on either side of the disk of spokes.

"You could do that, but..." By now, and according to plan, her people were trapped. She had to surrender. "There are no ships or bikes in the lower mobiles," he pointed out. "They're only at the docks, at the center of the spokes, and to get from the axle to the rim you'd have to fly past all the guns. You'd be blown to pieces."

She peered over the railing. "Only if we fly outside the city."

While he tried to make sense of that comment, she turned decisively. "Back to the docks!" she commanded her men; but one of her lieutenants shook his head.

"They've taken out the staircase, and stationed themselves on the rooftops above us," he said. "We have no way to climb." He was one of the baroquely armored men, and he'd spoken in an accent Jacoby recognized.

"We'll see about that." She turned to the bespectacled bomb expert. "Guesses on how much tension these are under?" She slapped one of the thick ropes that held up the street.

He grabbed the bristly, tightly wound rigging and waggled it. "Mm, w-well, not much," he said doubtfully. "Wouldn't be t-too much of a backlash. Might toss you a few dozen feet if you held on and cut it below you." He looked over his glasses at her. "Th-that is what you had in mind, isn't it?"

"I don't want the backlash." She rounded on Jacoby again, leveling the pistol at his nose. "Are these moored at the top, or counterbalanced?"

Jacoby was curious to see where she was going with this, so he said, "Counterbalanced."

"Great," she said, and turned away. "Take those suicide charges and set them to cut these. We're going to drop the street."

Panic erupted among the hostages as they realized the soldiers were about to cut loose the decking they were standing on. They made a stampede for the gangways, but nobody shot at them. They were still valuable, and Jacoby still had plenty of men in the city with which to round them up later. "Let's test this," she said as the bomb expert tied a charge to one of the suspension ropes.

Bullet holes stitched a line across the canvas ceiling. "Give up!" one of Jacoby's men shouted from a nearby rooftop. The soldiers Venera herself had stationed on other rooftops and gangways began to make their way in under cover of intense fire, as, humming, Venera's bomber made his connections. He finished, and he and everybody else stood back as Fanning aimed her pistol at the charge.

"This is insane," said Jacoby. "It'll never--"

Bang-blam! The charge went off and the rope parted. Instantly it snapped upward--but only twenty or thirty feet high before the pent-up tension in the rope was used up, and it fell slack again.

The entire street creaked, groaned, and dipped a foot.

"Well, that's disappointing," said Venera, hands on her hips.

"No, no, your grasp of Newtonian physics is sound, m'lady," said the bomb expert as he hurried to lash a charge to another rope. "All these ropes conjoin about two hundred feet above us. We'll have to cut away most of the street before the counterweight takes over."

"Ah. Get going, then." But he was already rushing to the next line, accompanied by two soldiers who startled him every few seconds by firing over his head.

"Mount up!" she commanded. A soldier boosted her up one of the ropes and she twined her legs and inched her way up farther. "Tie the prisoner's hands on the other side of it," she told her men, and Jacoby was towed over to the rope next to hers and his hands lashed on the other side of it. He found himself nose-to-nose with one of the explosive charges, and judiciously took the aid of one of the soldiers to clamber up past it.

Gunfire from the surrounding rooftops was intensifying. One of the Slipstreamers fell, limp as a rag doll, and his companions cursed and sprayed gunfire indiscriminately into the city.

"Keep it together!" Venera yelled at them. "And get up here!" Without another word, she lowered her pistol and shot the charge below her.

Her rope--and her and the five other people clinging to it--rebounded into the air as all of them held on desperately. One of the men let go and tumbled spinning into the air.

"Pick me up later!" he shouted as he pawed at the foot-fins slung over his back. Jacoby watched in astonishment as he twisted to avoid guy-wires, sewage pipes, and catwalks. If he could do it for just a few more seconds, he'd exit the bottom of the city and be in clear air ...

Blam! The charge on Jacoby's own rope had gone off and the rope whipped him in the face. Stunned, he let go and it slithered over his forearms and neck. Then he hit another man, who grunted. Jacoby grabbed at the rope again as the soldier swore at him.

They were twirling into the air, and now coming down to swing in a wide arc out over the bottomless canyons of the city. Somewhere, Venera Fanning was whooping.

"Just a couple more, boys!"

Everybody seemed to be shooting now--Jacoby's men in their sheltered windows, Venera's men on the ropes--and as his rope swung him around again Jacoby saw that the street was missing too many ropes now, listing and toppling tables, chairs, boxes, and bodies into the abyss. He watched a travel chest impact a conical roof a hundred feet below and burst like a sudden flower, shirts and trousers its petals.

The street groaned and lost its shape, becoming a U that shed planks like water. Fanning's soldiers shot out two more of the ropes and the rest snapped. Twisting like some tormented worm, the street sprawled over rooftops and nipped gangways and ladders in its death throes. It tumbled, split apart, and in deadly showers of lumber and coiling nooses of rope, left the city.

"How could she do that! How could she--" It was one of Jacoby's men, hanging off a nearby rope.

Jacoby swung by him, laughing a bit crazily. "How could she? She's the one who destroyed Spyre!"

"You said I didn't!" shouted Venera; then the ropes were hauling them upward faster and faster past bell-like houses and can-shaped shops. Whatever these lines were anchored to on the other side of the city, it was crashing down with as much enthusiasm as the street just had.

"Foot-fins, everyone," shouted Venera. "And see to the prisoner!" Pain was pounding through Jacoby's left hand and he was about to lose his grip with it entirely; but the upward pull was slackening, and gravity falling away. The last rooftops whipped by and then they were in the vertical forest of cables that reached up to the axle of the wheelless necklace city. They rose hundreds of feet and hanging on got easier. Jacoby was abruptly seized by the soldiers who bracketed him on the rope, and they untied his hands and retied them behind his back.

He nodded to the man next to him. "You're from Liris," he said. This man wore the ancient, outlandish armor of the tiny building-sized country Venera had been adopted into when she first landed in Spyre. The man grinned at Jacoby, and then they shared a sorrowful glance at the empty sky where Spyre had once been. Meanwhile, Fracas, below them, was turning from a town into an arc of toy-sized roofs.

"We're taking the yacht, ma'am?" called a soldier.

"Yes. You'll like it."

Jacoby knew now that he'd been right to build multiple layers into his trap. The only rational escape route for her yacht was perpendicular to the disk of the city, and his ships that had pinned down her escort had that way covered. No matter what she did now, he had her.

"Venera, you can't escape!" he yelled. "What you're doing is suicide."

"It's only suicide if it kills ya," said the soldier from Liris with a grin.

They were weightless now, flying upward at the tangled underside of the docking cylinder. Jacoby found himself zipping past the yin-yang staircase, looked into the astonished eyes of a businessman sauntering down it. All around him Venera's soldiers were letting go of their ropes, strapping big foot-fins to their feet, and readying grappling lines and hooks.

Freed of any significant centrifugal gravity, momentum carried them forward now--not up, because there was no "up" anymore. The soldier from Liris let go of the slackening rope and began vigorously kicking his feet. Foot-fins weren't a strong mode of propulsion, but in cases like this they could at least change your heading, and he was angling himself and Jacoby out of the maze of cables and into the open air next to the city. The other soldiers were doing the same--and ahead of them was the lip of the docking cylinder.

"Ready grapnels!"

Something whizzed past Jacoby's ear: gunfire from the docks. He shouted and pointed, but Venera's lads were already laying down return fire. Figures ducked and dove into the cable forest inside the cylinder as her men tossed grapples to catch its lip. Somebody threw Jacoby's man a line and they hauled themselves in, and then there they were, standing tiptoed on the burnished edge of the city's axle.

Venera made a great leap, forty feet across the curve of the cylinder, to her yacht. Her men followed in ones and twos while their friends laid down covering fire. When it was his turn, Jacoby tried to twist free, but all he got was a blow to the ear and then he, too, was landing next to the yacht's hatch.

Inside, the thin vessel was stuffed with trigger-happy, adrenaline-charged men. "Bring him forward," Venera commanded, and Jacoby was hauled up to the cockpit. Bullets pinged off the hull and one starred a porthole as he passed it.

"Your survival depends on finding us a safe way off this city," Fanning said to her prisoner.

"There is none," Jacoby told her. "Surrender now."

"Very funny, Jacoby."

"I'm serious," he said. "You'll be exposed to fire from the city all the way. Most of the gun emplacements that used to encircle Spyre were moved here and hung in the city."

"These guns," mused Fanning. "They point out? Not down?"

"You mean, down past the rim? No. But to go that way, you'd have to fly right by them..."

She nodded. "But how many of them point into the city?"

Jacoby blinked at her. She had no rational choices left; but this was Venera. "You can't mean to--"

Fanning turned to the pilot. "We're going to do a matching maneuver to the city's rotation, then lower through it. Can you manage it?"

The pilot, a sandy-haired, windburned veteran, simply raised his eyebrows. "Not without consequence," he said.

"But it can be done?"

"Y-yes..."

Jacoby considered letting her go right then. He had no intention of killing Venera Fanning; in the great game, she was a vital token (and besides, he liked her). What she was proposing to do was far more likely to get her killed than he was.

If he let her go, though, he would have suffered two serious blows to his plans. He'd never be able to forgive himself for being so weak; so he bit his lip and just cursed past the blood on his tongue.

Outside the broad windscreen, Jacoby could see the docking ring rising past, and the forest of cables and chains swinging into view. Bullet trails sketched a cage around the ship, but none impacted; his men knew he was aboard.

"I'm prepared to be reasonable," Venera said suddenly. She'd braced herself, legs splayed straight at the floor and wall, both hands on the ceiling. Outside the windscreen at her back, cables whipped past, disturbingly close. The gunfire had ceased.

"Hmm-what?" He couldn't look away as narrow miss after narrow miss nearly cut the yacht in two. They were arcing down now, angling through the cables toward the city's rooftops.

She made a moue, eying him. "I'd be happy to drop you off with a pair of foot-fins and a bottle of water. Maybe in a handy cloud, once we've left the city behind. What do you say?"

There was no way they were going to survive the next five minutes, but the offer was touchingly generous. Jacoby said so.

"Threading the needle," said the pilot. "This could get bumpy." The yacht's engines roared and with a stomach-churning slewing motion, they dropped into the narrow gap between a mansion and a school. Jacoby caught a glimpse of astonished faces, pointing fingers.

"So tell me, what was the plan?" When he didn't answer, Venera reached out and grabbed his chin, turning his face to hers. "Focus."

A crash came from somewhere behind them and the ship shook. In his peripheral vision Jacoby saw another tier of houses slide up past the windscreen.

He wasn't about to tell her his plan, but Inshiri's was another matter. "The hostages were bound for somewhere outside Virga," he said. "Derance called it the 'arena.' I'm unclear on the aeriography--"

"That group we set free. Were they the only ones?"

"So far, yes. But we were expecting another consignment."

"From what nations? Name names, please."

The yacht hooked a string of pipes and water exploded over the nose. The pilot cursed. There was another slamming crash from aft. Jacoby tried to hang on to everything all at once.

Engines roaring, the yacht hovered for a moment, hesitant in the face of thick towers, a barrier of heavy cables, and an open canyon that was, unfortunately, crisscrossed by several layers of catwalk bridges. Muttering some mix of prayers and curses under his breath, the pilot slid them toward the bridges.

"Really, Venera, you talk like you have the upper hand, here. But the fact is, the only thing keeping you alive--apart from him"--he nodded at the pilot--"is the fact that I am still alive. Why should I give you any details?"

The yacht took out a bridge. Townsfolk were fleeing ahead of it, and so far at least they hadn't hit anybody. Jacoby heard the hatch behind him open, and the voices of a dozen soldiers all say "Ow!" in simultaneous sympathy as another bridge snapped.

"Uh, Commander, not to, well, you know, overstate the obvious, but I thought you might want to know--"

"Not now!" she snapped at the bomb expert. He ducked his head and closed the hatch.

They were free-falling. Fanning's hair lifted like some black halo around her head. She put her pistol to his forehead and said, "Jacoby, I'm out of patience with you. Who are they? How many ships do they have? What sort of agreement are they making with these countries?"

Buildings whipped by, faster and faster. If they hit anything now, the yacht would be smashed into kindling.

Better give her something to keep her quiet. "It's about Candesce. They're mustering support for an incursion into the sun of suns. They promise they're not going to shut off the field, only tune it down--"

"Ha!" she said. "You were never that naive. Besides, they would need the key to Candesce to get in, and Chaison gave it to a precipice moth. Last I saw it was flapping its ugly way into winter."

He just looked at her, and Venera's eyes widened. "But that's impossible," she said. "How could they have it when it was given to..."

"We're through!" whooped the pilot. Clear blue sky had broken across the windshield.

* * *

WITH A BRILLIANT flash, the yacht was knocked end over end. Jacoby tumbled, hit the wall, the ceiling. Spangled with shock and pain, he dimly felt Venera's feet on his chest; she pushed off, making him huff, and then he blinked and saw her strapping herself into the copilot's chair. The windscreen was cracked in a dozen places, and ahead and to starboard, another blossom of explosive fire lit the sky.

"Who are they?" she demanded. "How many?"

For a confused second Jacoby thought she was talking to him, but then the pilot pointed. "Six ships. That must be what chased ours away."

"Not guns in the city. Ships! They've been laying in wait for us?"

"Of course they've been laying in wait for you," huffed Jacoby. "You haven't realized that this was a trap all along?"

He saw the dawning realization on her face. "Then the real Thavia of Greydrop--"

"Works for me, damn it."

"But the hostages, they were genuine--"

"Of course they were! You wouldn't have fell for it if I'd used fakes."

"Ma'am," said the pilot, "I think they're launching bikes. Ideas?"

"Oh, yes," she said grimly. "I have an idea." Now it was her turn to point. The pilot groaned.

"First you tell me to drop us through a city, now it's clouds of razor wire and mines?"

"Don't forget the piranhawks," she said past a tight grin.

"No!" Jacoby clawed his way forward. "Not that way!"

The hatch behind them opened again. "Uh, ma'am? The boys were wondering--"

"Tell them to brace themselves," she called. "We're going to lose those ships in the ruins of Spyre."

She chuckled and rubbed her hands together. "Somebody's going to write a book about this," she said giddily. She leaned toward the pilot. "How's your penmanship?"

"Venera, give up to me now," pleaded Jacoby. "The alternative is much, much worse!"

"Bah," she said. "I'd rather die than be your prisoner again."

"That's not what I mean!"

Clouds lay ahead of them--but unlike the white and peach-touched thunderheads that dotted the sky above and to all sides, these were speckled and black, like thin smoke. Venera indicated the highlights of the view. "Spyre was an open cylinder twelve miles long," she said. "It had a lot of defenses. There's the razor wire, yes, but there were also clouds of caltrops, and of course the mines."

The pilot nodded vigorously. "Yes, about those--"

"I doubt we'll see any. They're navigation hazards; I can't see the neighbors tolerating them now that Spyre's gone. And it would be cheap to dispose of them; two men with machine guns could pick them off from a safe distance."

"All right."

"Venera, please! Don't go this way!"

Something long and silvery shot past to port. "Razor," said Venera unnecessarily. "Oh, look--"

"I see it, I see it." The yacht twisted, throwing Jacoby against the bulkhead again.

Well, there went any chance he'd had of keeping this capture from Inshiri. With Derance dead, there was nobody loyal to her who'd seen what had just unfolded in Fracas--but that was about to change.

"The old defenses made a kind of shell around Spyre," Venera was saying. "Egg-shaped, fifteen miles long by ten. Once we're in there it should be clear and we can take a more leisurely path out. Those big cruisers will have to circle around, they don't have our maneuvera ... What the hell is that?"

A mist of spiked balls flew past, then a few strands of razor wire, and then they were into open air again. Venera and the pilot were suddenly silent, and Jacoby looked past them and saw that there was indeed nothing to hide anymore.

"There must be ... hundreds," whispered Venera. For the first time, she looked afraid.

Oh, more than hundreds. Jacoby had long ago lost count. He shook his head, defeated and resigned.

"Run up the white flag," said Venera quietly.

They glided, engines idling, into a cloud of warships miles in extent.