Forged in Blood I

Chapter 16

“How much farther?” Amaranthe whispered as the sounds of footfalls faded. “You don’t look well.”

Retta crouched beside her in the alcove, with Books and Akstyr pressed in behind them. They’d used Akstyr’s guard jacket to fashion a bandage for her, but she must have torn something anew during the last scurry for cover, for fresh blood dampened her hand. Her face was Kendorian pale.

“Not far.” Retta leaned her head against the wall. “We’ve been ‘not far’ for an hour. We’re just having trouble finding an unblocked route to our destination.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“Mia must have guessed where we’re going, and she’s directing troops to hunt in the area.”

“Their hunting is proving oddly effective,” Books said. “We keep seeing the same men. It’s as if they know right where we are.” The look he directed at Amaranthe held some extra meaning. Maybe he thought Retta was giving away their position somehow.

She shrugged back at him. Striking out on their own wasn’t an option. At this point, Amaranthe was completely lost. They were depending wholly on Retta to lead them to the control room. Or anywhere for that matter. If she passed out from blood loss, Amaranthe feared they could wander for days and not find their way out.

“They do know where we are,” Retta said bluntly. “There are ways to track humans in here.”

“Do we need to set up a diversion?” Books asked. “Draw the guards off so you two can get in?”

“Just what we are you volunteering for that?” Akstyr asked. “I’ve been shot at enough tonight.”

Not for the first time, Amaranthe wished she’d brought Sicarius along. He could handle the guards. Given time, he could probably hunt down everyone on the craft. Much more desirable than being hunted themselves. She hoped Sespian appreciated the use of her men.

“There’s one more route we can try,” Retta said. “This way.”

She wiped her moist hand and led them back into the maze. A few fresh droplets of blood splashed to the floor.

“Is there a first-aid kit in that control room?” Amaranthe asked. “Maybe we should stop somewhere to patch up your wound.”

“Yes,” Retta said.

Books and Akstyr shrugged when Amaranthe looked their way, wondering which of her questions Retta had been responding to. So long as she didn’t lead them back to the room with that crate and operating table. Pike might have left some of his salves in there, but Amaranthe shuddered at the idea of going in there to retrieve them.

Something floated out of an intersecting aisle ahead of them, a black cube. It rotated in their direction, a glowing red hole on the front, burning into one’s soul like a hot iron. Amaranthe flattened herself to the wall.

“Hairy donkey dung,” Akstyr whispered, and he and Books did the same.

“Not again,” Books said. “Run?”

The cube floated toward them.

“Just step aside,” Retta said.

“It’ll try to flambe us,” Akstyr blurted.

“No, I reworked their operating instructions early on.” Retta stepped out of its way, and the cube drifted past without pausing. “They don’t vaporize humans any more.”

“One we met in your underwater base did,” Amaranthe said.

“Those weren’t from the Ortarh Ortak.”

“Just how many stashes of advanced technology does Forge have?”

“Enough,” Retta said.

“How comforting.” Books still sucked in his gut and pressed every inch of his back to the wall as the cube passed.

It paused, and Amaranthe tensed. A fine red beam shot out of the orifice, angling toward the floor. Something flashed, and smoke wafted up, then the cube moved on.

“What’s it doing?” Akstyr asked.

“Cleaning up my blood.” Retta grimaced.

“We should have brought more weapons.” Amaranthe flicked a finger at the dagger on her belt, lamenting the pile of crossbows and rifles they’d left in front of the submarine-not that they’d do anything against that cube. “Real spies would have figured out how to sneak aboard with more than dinner knives.”

“I assumed you had the explosives in your purse.” Books waved at the satchel she had managed to retain throughout the night.

“I thought someone might search it. I only brought things a normal woman from the well-to-do business class might carry around.”

“Such as pens, ledgers, and abacuses?”

“Cosmetics, lotions, and breath mints,” Amaranthe said. “And adhesive for my fake nose.”

“Well-to-do businesswomen sound much like regular women,” Books said. “Regular women with prostheses anyway.”

“Maldynado may have thrown some… additional items in there too. I couldn’t figure out why it was so heavy this morning until I located a cedar candle inside.” She’d left it on the desk in her office, wondering if Sicarius would find the supposedly “stamina enhancing” scent amusing when they finally got to stand guard together. “Maldynado believes a woman should always be prepared in case she stumbles into some handsome stranger’s bed.”

“That dolt has a singular mind. A good-hearted one though.” Books sighed. “I suppose I should tell him that someday.”

“Yes, you should.”

“Does your team always talk this much in enemy territory?” Retta led them up a ramp.

“Only when it takes five hours to get from one side of that enemy territory to another,” Amaranthe said, then regretted the whining. She wasn’t the one with a bullet in her shoulder.

“That’s not true,” Akstyr said. “Maldynado talks all the time, no matter where we are.”

“We’re almost there.” Retta rounded a bend and stopped at a dead end.

Terse shouts sounded in the distance, orders being given.

“Wrong turn?” Books asked.

“No.” Retta lifted her uninjured arm and pressed her hand against the wall a foot above her head.

Runes similar to those at the other door flared into existence. Retta pressed three in a particular order. So smoothly Amaranthe didn’t realize it at first, the floor lifted. She turned, checking back the way they’d come, but a wall had formed out of nothing behind them. They were stuck-trapped-within a box.

Nothing inimical, Amaranthe told herself. It was just a steam lift. Without the steam.

Retta slumped against the wall and hissed, her face tired and pained. “You can’t die from a shoulder wound, can you?” So far she’d been brave, fearless in fact, but there was an uncertain quaver to her voice now.

“No,” Amaranthe said.

“Sure you can,” Akstyr said. “It can get infected and your arm can rot off and then you’d be climbing onto your own funeral logs.”

“Ssh.” Amaranthe elbowed him and told Retta, “That won’t happen.”

Retta stared bleakly at him.

Amaranthe didn’t sense the lift coming to a stop, but what had originally been the dead end wall disappeared, crimson runes and all, between one eye blink and the next. The wall behind them opened up as well.

They walked into… what had Retta called it? The core?

Glowing images floated in the air all over the chamber they entered, some globe-shaped, some squares and rectangles, and some shapes there was no name for, at least in Turgonian. They all hovered above head level. Amaranthe didn’t see any consoles, or levers, or gauges or anything else she would associate with a control room. In fact, there wasn’t anything except those glowing images. Some contained three-dimensional maps while others showed more of those strange runes and still others contained… schematics was the only word she could think of, though they were so complex that she didn’t know if her concept of the term applied.

“Magnificent,” Books whispered, stepping up to a globe-shaped image with blues, greens, tans, and whites. Even at his six-and-a-half feet, he had to tilt his head back to look at it. “Is this the world?”

“Our world, yes.” After poking at one of the images, Retta had shambled to a blank section of wall. She touched it with her blood-smeared palm. A rectangular structure the size of a train car slid out of it. She touched something on the side and a tall door opened. “There are thousands of worlds in there. I’ve looked at some. It’s hard to imagine they exist. Or existed. According to Professor Komitopis, the race that built the Ortarh Ortak was here more than fifty thousand years ago. Our ancestors were running around in spears and loincloths when this civilization came here to experiment on us.” Retta stood on her tiptoes to pull something off a shelf.

Amaranthe rushed over to help, figuring Retta meant to patch her wound.

“There are… other worlds?” Books cleared his throat. “I mean, I know there are other planets in our solar system and that some of them have moons and such, but would they actually be hospitable enough to visit if one could? I’ve read that Kyattese astronomers surmise that other planets are placed too close or too far from the sun to be habitable by any form of life as we know it.” He eyed the chamber about them.

“Later, Books.” Amaranthe made a cutting-off motion with her hand, though if there were some way to send this craft to another planet altogether… that’d be an excellent way to keep Forge from mucking around with it. “Retta, what can I do to help? Can that box heal you somehow?”

Retta was tapping a series of symbols on the side of an object she’d pulled out; these were ice blue and smaller than those from the lift. “Yes. I’m not sure what it’ll do with the bullet, but hold it against my wound. It should knit the hole.”

“I think the bullet went out the other side. There’s blood saturating the back of your shoulder too.”

“Joy.”

As directed, Amaranthe held the box to Retta’s wound. She nearly dropped it when the flat surface transformed before her eyes, curving to mold into the contours of Retta’s shoulder.

“Stop that.” Books swatted Akstyr on the arm.

Akstyr was poking and prodding at the floating images. “These are brilliant. I don’t sense them at all. They’re not Made, and they don’t even have a feeling about them like physical objects. If not for my eyes seeing them, I wouldn’t believe they existed.”

“This place is intriguing,” Books admitted, though he was keeping his hands clasped behind his back.

“Can they hurt anything by touching things?” Amaranthe asked.

“Probably not.” Retta’s eyes were closed, and she was leaning against the wall, letting the object do… whatever it was doing.

“Can we steer the craft off the lake bottom from here?” Amaranthe was careful not to call it the Behemoth. Retta seemed inordinately fond of the technological monstrosity and might not appreciate the sobriquet.

“Yes, but I need to know where you want to go.”

Where indeed? Destroying the craft was still at the top of Amaranthe’s thoughts, but Retta wasn’t going to go along with that. She couldn’t imagine landing the Behemoth anywhere within fifty miles of the city. Even if there weren’t the problem of explaining it to the populace, she didn’t want a two-day hike to return to Sicarius, Sespian, and the others.

“Perhaps we could leave it here,” Books said, “but coerce its occupants to abandon ship. We could then sink the submarines that are capable of reaching this depth. In the time it would take someone to repair the submarines or build new ones, we should have resolved the political situation in the capital.”

The pained expression on Retta’s face had faded as the healing tool mended her shoulder, but a new pinched frown arose at Books’s suggestion. “There are only a handful of submarines docked in the Ortarh Ortak. Not enough for everyone onboard to escape at once if something happened to… motivate them to do so.”

“Do they have to escape?” Akstyr asked.

Amaranthe and Retta glared. Books elbowed him.

“What? I’m being practical. I mean, these are all our enemies in one spot, aren’t they? We could get rid of them all and stop having to worry about them.” Akstyr snapped his fingers and pointed at Retta, oblivious to her glare. “You could fiddle with those floating boxes again, so they go back to incinerating people. But not us. We should get out of here before that starts. Can that happen?”

“No,” Amaranthe said even as Books and Retta roared the same word.

“Those are my colleagues,” Retta added.

“They poked your eye out,” Akstyr said.

“That was Pike, that sadistic miscreant. Nobody else here would do something like this. They’re my colleagues, some of them are even friends.” Retta tore the device away from her shoulder and thumped it against the wall. “I don’t know why I’m even helping you people.”

“Because,” Amaranthe said, stepping in front of Retta, capturing her gaze, “you know Forge is going about this the wrong way. They don’t want to vanquish the warrior caste; they want to replace it. But we’re going to instate a new government, one that’s fair for everyone, giving every person a chance to live freely and pursue their dreams.” She wondered if she sounded like a madwoman when she raved about tossing out old governments like dish water and plopping new ones down as if it’d be a simple task.

Out of the corner of her eye, Amaranthe saw Books clear his throat and raise a finger. For at least the third time that night, she made her cutting-off motion at him. She knew his ideal government was more about allowing equality for educated people and probably didn’t mention the words pursuing dreams, but she hadn’t read his opus yet, and this had to be close enough for the moment. It had to convince Retta to calm down and stay with them.

“I thought you wanted Sespian back on the throne,” Retta said.

“That’s a stopgap measure. He’s agreed to change the government once he’s there.” Actually, she hadn’t brought it up yet, but he’d be open to it surely. Careful, girl, she told herself, you’re starting to sound grandiose again. Maybe madwoman was an appropriate label. “He’ll step down. He’s not a power monger, and he knows he won’t be popular with the people with an assassin for a father.”

“What do you want me to do then?” Retta spread an arm toward the floating images.

“Get us out of the lake and set this craft down somewhere out of sight of the population centers,” Amaranthe said.

“How will we get back to town?” Books asked.

“There’s a small independent craft-several actually, but we’ve only verified that one works,” Retta said. “They’re the equivalent of lifeboats.”

“How far can they go?”

“I don’t believe they were designed for travel between planets, merely for short range trips, short range by these people’s standards that is.”

Amaranthe blinked. “So they can go anywhere in the world?”

“That should be the case, yes.”

“How long would the trip take?”

“It would depend on the distance to be traveled, but from what I’ve seen of the one lifeboat’s speed capabilities, perhaps an hour from one side of the world to the other.”

Now it was Books’s turn to blink in astonishment. “That would mean it’d travel faster than the speed of sound.”

“Yes.” Retta smirked and mouthed something that might have been, “Boom.”

“Then we can simply take the Behe-this craft to the South Pole, drop it off, ride back in the lifeboat, and return for dinner, right?” Amaranthe’s mind boggled at the idea, but Retta shrugged and nodded, as if this were some workaday concept.

Thunks sounded beneath them-from the direction of the lift, Amaranthe realized, though the mechanism had disappeared back into the featureless black floor after it delivered them.

“I think someone knows we’re here,” Akstyr said.

“It was only a matter of time.” Retta slumped, breaking Amaranthe’s gaze.

Amaranthe backed away. She didn’t know if she’d won Retta over or simply made her question herself further. “Is the floor… uhm, locked?”

“Yes. There are several entrances, but I secured them when we first entered.” She waved toward the floating image she’d touched before moving to the cabinet.

“So we’re safe to do what we want in here?” Amaranthe asked.

“Mia will find a way past my locks before long.”

Amaranthe had been afraid of that. She gripped Retta’s uninjured arm. “The South Pole. Park this on top of a glacier, then we’ll take the lifeboat back here, and you can drop us off then… do whatever you wish. Go get the rest of your old Kyattese friends and take them down to study it. So long as Forge can’t bring it back here.” Amaranthe hadn’t figured out yet what she’d do with all the Forge people who were on board now, inadvertent prisoners if they traveled to the other end of the world. And then there was that Mia. On the chance that she could also steer this craft, she’d need to be captured and taken… Where? She didn’t know. Amaranthe massaged her forehead, willing away an oncoming headache. Her eyes were gritty, and everything was too complicated. She made a mental rude gesture at the long-gone race that had deposited their monstrous technology on her world.

“Very well,” Retta said. She’d apparently been wrestling with complicated thoughts of her own. At least they came up in Amaranthe’s favor. “This will take time.”

More bangs sounded from under the floor.

“How much time?” Books asked.

“You may want to start thinking of delaying tactics.”

Amaranthe shared his groan. She didn’t think having Akstyr mentally pull people’s trousers down was going to be sufficient this time.

• • •

Full daylight had come by the time Sicarius returned to the ice camp. Heavy clouds had drifted back in, and tiny flakes, more hail than snow, tumbled from the sky, bouncing off his shoulders and pelting his cheeks. A few sturdy fishing boats floated out in the center of the lake, and he thought of Amaranthe. Was she even now hundreds of feet below the surface, sneaking about in the Forge craft? Or was she back in the factory, waiting for him to return before she delved into enemy territory? He liked to think so, but he doubted it. He’d been gone too long.

Once he breeched the boundary of the ice camp, Sicarius headed for the machine shop. A single stream of black smoke wafted from the chimney. The workers must have started their day. Good. He planned to requisition their help. His welding skills were limited, and he would need something as sturdy as a mountain to trap and hold the soul construct.

Before heading to the building, he took a closer look at the vehicles lined up in the parking area. The wind had been blowing that morning, and snowdrifts a couple of feet high nuzzled the tires on one side, but the lorries were in otherwise good condition. He glanced back the way he had come, noting his tracks across the white field. He didn’t see anyone on the stark, flat landscape, not yet, but the snow would make his trail easy to follow. The practitioner might alert the soldiers to Sicarius’s morning spying, or he might choose to handle it himself. Neither the Nurian nor the soul construct would be appealing enemies to battle, not when he’d had so little time to prepare.

On the chance that he might need to flee, he climbed into the cab of one of the bigger lorries and shoveled coal into the furnace. He’d keep it stoked throughout the day. The practitioner he could outrun on foot, but the soul construct? There was no chance. The lorry might be able to outpace it, though the snow blanketing the roads would likely slow the machine down more than the creature.

Nobody came out while Sicarius was building up the fire in the furnace. Once the gauges promised readiness, he headed for the machine shop, pausing again to eye the stack of steel beams along an outside wall. They might be sturdy enough for his needs, especially if the camp also had thick sheet metal.

“Might,” he repeated aloud. He seemed to be using that word a lot.

Finding the back door unlocked, Sicarius slipped into the one-room building, where the heat and the chatter of two men met him. Articulating arms and oversized cutting tools littered benches and worktables. The men, both bearded and brawny, with sleeves rolled up to their elbows, were building up the fire in the furnace. Sicarius padded across a floor littered with sawdust, stray nuts, bolts, and screws, and bits of coal, then stopped behind the pair.

“I require your assistance.”

Both men spun about in surprise, one dropping his shovel and the other clenching his like a club. Amaranthe would have given them a friendly greeting and figured out a way helping her would help them, but Sicarius lacked the patience for social pleasantries. He lacked time as well.

“You’re Sircareius,” one of the men said.

“Sicarius,” the second corrected, nudging his comrade with an elbow.

“Yes.” In other circumstances, Sicarius might not have responded to a statement of the obvious, but if they knew of his reputation, they might be less inclined to offer resistance and more inclined to follow his orders. Swiftly.

“You helped the boss last winter,” the second speaker said. “You and that girl. Lokdon, wasn’t it? She was nice.”

“Isn’t he an assassin?”

“Yes, but he was on our side that night when… well, the boss said not to talk about it, but we all would have died if not for him and his friend.” He wiped his rough coal-smeared hands on his trousers and stuck one out toward Sicarius. “I’m Wodic. This is Mederak.”

Sicarius walked to the closest workbench while keeping the men in his peripheral vision. He believed them innocuous, but one didn’t survive years of having a million-ranmya bounty on one’s head by putting beliefs ahead of vigilance. For men like these, such money would change their lives.

“I require a steel trap approximately eight by eight by eight feet joined with the strongest welds possible. It will have two hatches, one on the top and a smaller one on the bottom or side. The walls must be thick enough to withstand the pressure of-” Sicarius noticed the men staring blankly at him. One, Wodic, still had his hand out. “Here. I will draw it.”

Wodic looked down at his hand, shrugged, and walked over to the table.

“He wants us to use the boss’s materials for her new holding warehouse?” Mederak whispered to his comrade while Sicarius was drawing.

“Ssh, it’ll be all right. We’ll tell her it’s for Ms. Lokdon. She won’t object. Not after the…” Wodic lowered his voice. “Not after the mare-cats and that… that evil spirit thing. Did you hear about that?”

“Just stories.”

“They’re true,” Wodic said.

Sicarius finished his drawing without comment. It seemed odd that these men were willing to help him without the application of threats, but he was not surprised Amaranthe had left that feeling of indebtedness behind. She certainly had a knack for winning over allies. Not all of them remembered her so fondly later on, when the heat of the moment passed, but the situation had turned out in these people’s favor.

“Here.” Sicarius pushed the sketch in front of the two men. “It must be assembled outside, so it can be moved.”

“Moved where?”

“Into the lake.”

Wodic and Mederak scratched their heads. “The lake?”

“The obvious trap does not catch the fox.” Sicarius realized he’d quoted one of Basilard’s grandfather’s sayings. In this case, it was apt. “It must be assembled today.”

“Today?” Mederak blurted.

Still rubbing his head, Wodic stared at the sketch. “I don’t know if that’s possible, Mr. Sicarius. There’s just us two and our driver out here this week. Until the ice freezes-”

“It will be done today,” Sicarius repeated. “I will assist you.”

They looked him over. Yes, his black clothing was adorned with knifes rather than smith’s tools, but he was a capable worker.

“All of our lives depend on it,” Sicarius said.

They considered the sketch again, perhaps for the first time considering why Sicarius might need such a trap.

“Today’s good,” Mederak said at the same time as Wodic said, “We can do today.”