Clockwork Chaos (8 page)

I thought of Zelena, plunging a knife into her own heart.

I tumbled, spreading my arms and legs as the wreckage plummeted with me. Ahead, the boiler plunged from the sky, taking out the balloon of the
Bride of Old Moscow
and cutting their gondola in two. The poor bastards didn’t know what hit them. The heart of
Wine into Blood
continued to descend out of sight, still red-hot and steaming.

My training taught me to pull the ripcord immediately. But I knew if I pulled it now, it’d take a good three to five minutes to hit the ground, and there’s no way the angry gunners of the Whore’s air defenses would pass me up. I had to wait until the last possible moment.

Above, I didn’t see any chutes.

A black, oily cloud spread beneath me, and I didn’t know how deep it was. I entered the choking cloud, and I pulled the cord. The black chute ripped open, jerking me back up into the air.

Almost nine months before, a group of conductors had rounded up the prettiest slave girls and put them all together in a single train car. These were newly captured villagers from the line of farming communities in the fertile plains of the whore’s northern lands. Not a single one had yet been reeducated or visited by the soul tinkers, which made them wild and dangerous.

They stared at us through the bars, most of them quivering with red-tinged eyes. Not a single one wore any clothes, and we all ogled, amazed at their smooth bodies. Women from my village used to be like these women, with no hair on their underarms and legs, but very few had continued on with the tradition, as the local
politruk
had decreed that shaving was a sign of a loose, immoral woman. They were even clipped
down there
, with just a light dusting of hair on most of them. It fascinated me.

The first conductor stepped forward, dressed in his full leathers. “You deserve this. If you hadn’t taken out that armored column, this train would never have made it.” He handed a key to the major. “Have at ‘em, boys.”

The pilots, gunners, bombardiers, supply officers, and my fellow engineers all bristled with excitement. The girls, sensing what was about to happen before I even did, all scampered to the back of the car.

“There’s enough to go around,” a conductor said, his huge muscles bulging out of his leathers. “Forty-two girls for forty-two men. I got shackles if you need ‘em.”

My amazement turned to revulsion at the sudden realization of what was happening. I looked at my friends to see if any of them looked hesitant, and I was shocked at the eager, hooting anticipation.

A conductor yelled something at the girls in Hellenic, and they sobbed and wailed. The major looked back at us and said, “Officers first,” as he unlocked the cage.

I stood frozen as my fellow aviators surged past the laughing and protesting major. The wails of the women turned to high-pitched, panicked squeals as the men descended upon them.

“Boris,
come on
,” Negreeb said, the engineer for the
Star Sledge
. He grabbed my wrist and pulled me in. “You’re going to get stuck with an ugly one.”

I felt sick. If I didn’t partake, the others would surely notice, and they’d think of me as a poof, or worse, anti-imperialist. Rumors like that would get me ejected from the air corps and tossed back in with the stokers.

I closed my eyes, unsure of what to do. I remembered similar screams, from when I was a boy. We’d been absorbed into the empire almost a hundred years previous, but we’d been allowed to keep our villages, and sometimes they came at night, by the hundreds. I thought of my brother, dying of the Sickness and of my father’s shame, upon finally knowing for sure the boy was never his son.

She saved me, and I saved her. I didn’t see where she came from, but she was suddenly on my arm, her fingers clutching my skin so tightly, it hurt. I could feel the rapid beat of her heart in her chest. A gunner from
Purple Revolution
ran up and looked at the two of us and cursed. He turned away, yelling, “Boris got her. Yong-Shi bastard.” He laughed and chased after another.

“Take me from here,” she said in barely-discernable Gremlic. “I won’t fight. Take me from the screams.”

I brushed the soot and mist off my goggles as I emerged from the cloud a hundred meters above the sprawling city. All around, the flak slingers hurled their exploding charges from flat rooftops. In a nearby clearing, a trebuchet launched a glider into the air.

They would notice me in seconds. I had little control over the fast descent of my chute, and if the defenders didn’t blast me, I would slam into a small olive grove hidden between two, multi-level stone buildings.

Shouting rose from a nearby street, and the distinctive drum-rap of a Hellenic flechette gun fired up at me. The poisoned needles didn’t strike me, but I knew the next round would. I had to do something. I was still twenty meters above ground. I pulled my knife from my ankle scabbard, and I hacked at one of the two lines holding me in the air. It snapped, and I curved, falling faster as the chute fluttered out of balance. I held onto the second line and cut it just as I passed above a building with a thick garden on the roof. I tumbled. My left arm snapped, an incredible, jolting pain, as I careened into the roof, upsetting a small fountain and crashing into a trellis.

Shouting filled the street below. I sat up and gingerly touched my arm through my leather jacket. I’d never felt a hurt like this, and I cried out into the smoky air. I cried out with the pain of my arm, and the loss of my friends.

A trap door opened, and several soldiers poured onto the roof.

I held up my good arm and said in my best Hellenic, “You got me.”

The lead soldier raised his arm, and he fired his wrist pistol. I felt the flechettes strike my chest, penetrating through the leather. I looked down in surprise at the three needles. I felt the warm, stinging poison surge through my body as the curtain fell.

“Why?” the major asked, looking up from his desk. I stood at attention in his office in the back of the administrative car.

“Sir, am I not allowed?” I asked. I tried to remain as still as possible, but my heart felt as if it would beat out of my chest.

“Of course you’re allowed,” the major said. “They encourage it, do they not? You hold a warrant, so you can even keep her with you. But we’re in a warzone, and she’s local. She hasn’t even been reeducated.”

“I’ve tamed her,” I lied. Taming Zelena would be like taming the great Argun River. It wasn’t possible.

“You’ll have to keep her chained in your quarters,” he said. “And if we lay siege on New Athina, we might be there for a while, which means we’ll move to tents while the train resupplies. You’ll have to keep her chained in there, too. It’ll be miserable and tight.”

“I understand, sir.”

“There’s also the matter of payment,” the major said, looking at my paperwork. “You’re pledging your de-enlistment settlement. If you’re killed before you’re fully earned out, she won’t go to your heirs. Her deed will go back to the empire.”

“I’d like to pledge my combat death settlement as well,” I said. “But not just for her deed. I’m pledging the full amount. I want to buy her citizenship.”

The major looked at me for a long time.

“What about your family?” he said finally.

“She’s pregnant,” I said. “She is my family now.”

The major sighed, and he signed the paperwork. “I’m ordering you not to tell her about the death settlement. You may think you’re in love, but if she thinks she can choke you out while you sleep and earn instant freedom, she’s mistaken. If you die mysteriously, she dies, too. You understand?”

I knew immediately I had to follow the order. If I died, and Zelena somehow let on that she knew she was to be freed, they would suspect I’d told her. My death settlement would be denied for disobeying a direct order. I’d seen it happen before.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I understand.”

My eyes fluttered. My entire chest felt crushed, as if a heavy weight pinned me. My arm throbbed, but I could feel it was wrapped in a warm splint.

“You are doubly lucky,” an old, female voice said in Hellenic. “Had you not landed on that roof, the people would have ripped you from your limbs. And then you were shot with three poisoned needles. Not many survive that.”

“My people are of the east orient,” I mumbled, speaking in Gremlic. “We don’t catch the Sickness from handling the
xin
rock. Poisons don’t kill us easily.”

A large, metal clamp locked my chest down to a table. I strained to look at the source of the voice, but she stood behind me. I looked about the modestly-lit room, and rows of tables spread beyond me. Beige-robed healers worked over the patients.

“You do speak our language,” the woman said, this time speaking in perfect Gremlic. “And of course I know what you are.” She moved to my side so I could see her. She was an old woman, wrinkled like a rotten grape and dressed in a simple white robe. Even though she didn’t wear her golden crown, I recognized her from all the wall murals throughout her conquered lands. This was the queen of the Hellenic people. The Vinegar Whore.

“Where are the others?” I asked, looking about the room for other tables with chest clamps.

“As I said. You are lucky.”

Looking up at the grim expression of the queen, I didn’t feel lucky. The fact I was having this conversation meant today’s attack was unsuccessful. I thought of my friends, all gone.

“Tell me,” she said. “How did a Yong-Shi come to learn our tongue?”

“Her name is Zelena,” I said. “She’s to have my child.”

“I see,” the queen said, not looking at me, but at the rows and rows of the injured.

I remembered my training, belatedly, and I said the words they made us memorize in case we were ever captured and brought before an enemy general.

“Your city will fall,” I said. “Your people will be enslaved. But, it doesn’t have to be that way. If you surrender right now, if you surrender to me, considerations will be made.”

The queen laughed. “Do you know the history of your own people? Of the Yong-Shi clans?”

Her question surprised me. I knew little of the great clans that had risen from the smoke of the old world. My grandmother had told me stories. She was determined that I know the history, but I never cared or listened, no matter how frustrated she became. Why should I care about the chronicles of a defeated people, even if they were my own blood? I cared more about the history of the great tsars and tsarinas of the Gremlic Empire. I cared about the history of the hero aviators. How could I not be enraptured by the mighty Gremlic armies, marching out from Tupolov to annex the known and unknown world?

“The word ‘Yong-Shi’ is not an insult, you know,” the queen said, when I didn’t answer. “They want you to think it is. That’s one of the empire’s greatest tricks, to make the conquered think their own history is poison. Yong-Shi is a name of honor. A Yong-Shi was a warrior, one who prayed to his own ancestors for strength.”

“I didn’t know that,” I said finally.

“Soldier, what is your name?”

“It is Boris, after the second great tsar of the new age.”

“Boris,” she repeated, as if the word tasted foul in her mouth. The queen nodded, and a healer stepped forward, injecting something into my arm. “I wasn’t sure of my decision, until I met you. Sleep now.”

I slept.

Later, I awakened, and the chest clamp was gone. The room was dark, and the only light was held by a guard, standing above me. Next to the guard was the queen. She wore her formal, golden gown, and it glistened in the light of the torch. Her hair was held up in a tight bun, and her famous crown made of golden grapes sat perched upon her head.

I blinked up at her, unsure if this was a dream.

“I’m surrendering to you,” the queen said, her words stale and flat. “A boat awaits at the gates of the city.”

Wordlessly, I stood, still groggy, still not fully certain this wasn’t a dream.

I’d been moved from the clinic to a simple stone house. A mural of an olive tree dominated the wall, and a massive crack cleaved the painted image in two.

“Follow me,” the queen said, taking the torch from the guard. She leaned in and kissed the man on the forehead, who stared straight forward, emotionless.

I followed the queen outside. A row of torches lit the way to a small dock within the confines of the walls. Torches filled the city and high walls with light, but not enough that I could see much damage from the failed attack. A small steam tug sat heavy in the water, lit up with electric lights. A white flag raised above the stern.

A sailor waited at the end of the dock.

“Do you think you can navigate this with just one good arm, or should I bring this sailor with me?”

I looked at the controls, and they seemed simple enough. I noted their steam engine had not one, but two safety release valves.

“I can do it,” I said.

She nodded, and she kissed the forehead of the sailor, who turned away and marched off the dock, leaving us alone.

I helped her into the boat, and she trembled as I held her arm. I could feel her pulse, and it was wild, erratic. We sailed out of the open gates of the city, chugging alone slowly through the waves.

“Before we land, I want you to take this,” the queen said, handing me a small satchel.

“What is this?” I asked, taking the bag.

“They are two books from our great library. I am giving them to you in exchange for your life. I want you to read them, to know them. I want you to read them to your child. The first is the history of my people. My scribe finished the last chapter as you slept.”

Ahead, a pair of gunboats moved into the water to greet us.

“And the second?” I asked.

“It’s called
The Last Yong-Shi
. It’s the history of your people.”

I watched the train steam off, headed on its long journey northeast toward Tupolov.

“You’ll be famous,” the major said. “I can see the headlines now.
Hero Aviator Snatches Queen From City
. There’ll be parades and medals in your future.”

“She surrendered to me,” I said. “All I managed to do was land and not get killed.”