Shield and Crocus (24 page)

Life in wartime meant the Shields had to be even more cautious. The daytime patrols were doubled, night patrols tripled. The strain would eventually wear on the guards’ combat-readiness, but the summit and its resolutions had slowed the Shields’ movements to a crawl, even after Nevri’s death.

If they had to take four detours around closed districts every time there was a meeting, they weren’t going to be able to respond to anything. The tyrants had fully leveraged their control over the city, but trade had dried up. By Wonlar’s calculations, the tyrants couldn’t keep the restrictions up for more than a week without seriously undermining their bottom line, but that would be enough time to complete their summit, finish whatever resolutions they were debating. Assuming the tyrants were motivated enough by Nevri’s death to come together, put aside their decades-old grudges.

They’re playing to their strengths, so we have to play to ours.
The first night of increased patrols, Selweh led a raid to torch one of Yema’s barracks in the middle of the night. The next morning, the Shields robbed several tax offices and distributed the money among the districts surrounding the failed bank attack, building on the seed of goodwill in that area. Every day brought two, three, even four missions. Three days into the lockdown, the Shields’ time frame had grown very short. Missions were born, planned, and executed in hours rather than days or weeks.

Strange that we’re at war and I’m bored out of mind. The others are running themselves ragged and all I get to do is wander around in Douk’s coffeehouse and listen to everything second-hand.

The idleness eroded his patience like rain on the cliffs of the city. He was involved in planning most of the missions, but the closest to the action he’d gotten since Nevri’s death was watching a few brawls outside of the coffeehouse and seething that he couldn’t intervene.

But it couldn’t be helped—his leg still refused to accept his weight. He’d tried to walk without a cane that morning and dropped to the floor like a sack of threegrain flour.

Selweh stepped down from the kitchen and gave him the smile that he’d had since he called his father “wonner.” “Good news. The proceedings for the day were cut short. Smiling King assaulted Dlella, and Yema stormed out.”

Wonlar scaled the stairs oh-so-slowly and hobbled out into the back room. Douk’s back room (“the party room,” he liked to call it) had abstract paintings titled
Revolution
and
Renewal
, several early sculptures from Sarii before she stopped taking commissions, and a circular glass table with seats for three.

Wonlar lowered his voice and took the nearest seat, setting his cane against the table. “The fire?”

Selweh nodded, continuing to pace. “Yema got into his carriage in a huff at noon and hasn’t been seen back since.”

“Excellent. The more we can get them worried about their individual problems, the less they think about pulling together.”

Aegis pursed his lips, thinking or gathering courage, then said, “I want to go back to COBALT-3’s laboratory, the one where they held me.”

Selweh stopped and shuddered, no doubt remembering the cold tables and the meticulously brutal experiments. Then his son smiled wide and said, “if we wait much longer, all of the intelligence I gathered while escaping will be useless. There are probably eighty citizens in there, and I can’t let them suffer.”

Wonlar nodded. “It will raise our profile, showing we can still fight even when the tyrants are at the ready. Good. Tell Bira I’m coming along this time.”

Selweh crossed his arms, his eyes narrowed. “Do you really think we’ll let you?”

“No, but eventually you’ll give in. We need everyone on this.”

Selweh put a hand on his father’s shoulder and cracked a smile. “Even the broken-down crotchety ones?”

Wonlar laughed.
How is it he always knows how to make me smile?
Wonlar stood, wavered for a moment, then placed a hand on Selweh’s and sank back to his chair. “Especially those. I’m going with you.”
I’d go mad if I spent another night in here, useless.

Selweh hugged his father and left for the front room. Wonlar was alone again. Just a broken old soldier whose war is passing him by. All this for the death of one woman. Their gambit to end a war was merely sending the city careening out of control.
Good job, old man. You caused this, so you have to fix it.

He set aside his cane and pushed down on the sides of his chair. Pain exploded in his leg, but he growled, straightening on his strong foot. He wavered, put a hand to the chair, and then let go, standing on his own. He laughed again, grabbing the cane and setting about his preparations. This was going to take a lot of tea.

The sun was already a memory by eight, hidden beyond the cliff above the resting bones of the titan’s foot. The bones were stacked against the canyon wall, the ends covered by the accumulation of soil. In one of the stories he told to the children in Bluetown, Wonlar said that Audec’s skeleton was merely slumbering all these millennia. And one day he’d wake up and obliterate the troublesome city that had grown up around him like industrious carrion.
If he hasn’t woken to crush the tyrants, I don’t think he ever will. It’s up to us.

Selweh watched the street traffic from the corner outside Douk’s coffeehouse, leaning against the wall as the moon took to the sky. Three patrols had passed in the half-hour, each from different directions, and not a one went by without stopping to hassle someone every block, asking for papers, saying there was a curfew, or demanding a toll. He wanted nothing more than to stop them, but making a scene would expose their position.

Selweh ducked back inside of the coffeeshop and saw his companions at rest. Bira and Sarii played a round of Titan’s Bones while Rova and Fahra played their tenth game of checkers at one of the high tables. Rova sat on a low chair and faced Fahra, who dangled her feet off of one of Douk’s tall bar stools. The arrangement necessary to put them on the same level brought a smile to Selweh’s lips. He grabbed hold of that smile, wrote the memory into his mind, adding it to the memories of being young with his father, of nights spent curled up with books, and the joys of discovering the wonderful alchemy of food. They were armor as much as the reinforced cloth of his raiment, especially in the past week where missions and planning crowded out sleep.

His father still hadn’t emerged from the basement, and it was past the time they’d set to leave.

Selweh saw Wenlizerachi blur through the kitchen, pursued by Xera, who wielded a stale loaf of bread, laughing. Audec-Hal’s champion wove his way around the mock conflict and down the stairs to the basement.

“Father?”

Selweh heard a sharp exhalation of breath, then, “hold on.” he took two more steps down the stairs and saw his father straining with the tall boots of his raiment.

“Are you all right?”

Wonlar grabbed the boot and shoved his foot inside, eliciting a popping sound and another wince. Wonlar reached to his side where three mugs steamed with liquid—
dounmo
and his elixirs.

“You don’t have to come along tonight,” Selweh said.

Wonlar finished off the mugs in quick succession and stood, trying to hide the pain. “None of us have to do this, son. We do it because we push ourselves, because we can’t wait for someone else to do it for us. Now give me a hand with the coat.”

Selweh helped his father into the rest of his raiment, watching Wonlar gather his strength. His father put aside the shroud of illness that had wreathed him since Nevri’s death and rebuilt the mask of First Sentinel, just as Selweh had learned to put on the face of Aegis when the shield found him. Eyebrows narrow, lips tight, shoulders back, and chin up, whole body at at the ready.
Make everything about you say “I am in charge; you do not want to get in my way.”

His father was nearly seventy years old, and the man put on the face better than anyone Selweh had ever seen.

“Bring them down. It’s time.”

Everyone knew that Audec’s bones were hollow. Children in every district were raised on the stories of the shardlings and the other horrors that dwell in the bone pathways. Most people were smart enough not to use them.
Often times, we don’t have that luxury. This is one of those times.
in order to bypass the district-by-district lockdown, the Shields took a route through Audec’s right hip to get into COBALT-3’s domain.

Shimmercrab goggles showed him the vast interior of Audec’s Hip in red-scale, the steep drop-off to his left below the stable pathway. He’d walked that path a half-dozen times before, and the safest route was also the highest up, near the front of Audec’s Hip. The six Shields walked in a tight formation. Ghost Hands hovered above the group, keeping her attention open for any of the denizens of the hollows.

[
Anything
?] First Sentinel asked in his mind for Ghost Hands to hear.

[
Not yet
,] was her response.

Blurred Fists scouted forward again. He’d run ahead a hundred yards, then speed back to rejoin the group and report.

“This place always makes my blood cold,” he said.

“I know,” Sapphire jerked her head around to look over her shoulder. “Did you hear something?”

First Sentinel shook his head.

[
I felt nothing
,] Ghost Hands said.

He resumed walking, leaning on the cane for as long as he could before pushing himself in the real fight. “Keep going. I want to get to the laboratory in the blue time so we can be out by dawn.”

First Sentinel heard the sound as Ghost Hands spoke in his mind.

[
There’s something ahead
.]

Skittering. The sound of bone on bone.

“Sounds like shardlings,” Blurred Fists said.

“Ghost Hands, cover us from the air, Sapphire and Aegis to the front. Blurred Fists, watch our flank. Sabreslate and I are on support.”

The Shields took their positions as the skittering sound intensified, rolling over and redoubling itself again and again.

“Ghost Hands, barrier please.” he felt the wave of her assent in his mind. She levitated higher, robes flowing in the chill winds that ran through the hollows.

A wall of barely-visible energy appeared around them. The surface shifted like a soap bubble, swirls stretching and overlapping as the group moved forward.

After a few steps more, First Sentinel saw the shardlings. There were three, each a collection of more than a hundred arm-length slivers of bleached-white bone. They moved like a continual spill, collecting into a mound and then springing forward, leap-frogging over themselves again and again.

When the shardlings hit Ghost Hands’ wall, the sound reverberated through the cavern. They probed again and again, jagged bones reaching out like tendrils to test the barrier.

“We have to keep moving. Ghost Hands, push them back,” First Sentinel said, continuing to walk forward.

The wall pressed forward as the shardlings continued to attack. One skittered to the drop off and disappeared out of sight.
It’s not gone, it’s flanking.
Several times before, he’d seen shardlings climb straight up the walls of the bone pathways to attack them, and he expected no less.

“Blurred Fists, pick that one up when it comes back. Ghost Hands, can you make a full demi-sphere?”

“Not for long. I can’t maintain it all the way and have any energy left for the fight.”

So we have to pick a front and then go. Or, we can be smart.

“Ghost Hands, on my mark, I want you sweep those two off the edge. Then we all run and get them behind us. Blurred Fists, I want you to run interference. Don’t get pinned down, but see if you can slow them.”

The group all nodded, and they prepared for the charge.

First Sentinel watched the shardlings’ pattern of attack, and waited until they’d disengaged a few feet from the barrier.

“Go!”

Ghost Hands swept the remaining shardlings off the edge, and the Shields started sprinting. First Sentinel downed an elixir that reduced his weight to nothing and had Ghost Hands push him along so he didn’t have to aggravate his leg. There were still several miles to go, but if they could get enough of a lead on them, First Sentinel bet that they could keep the creatures at bay with Blurred Fists’ speed and Ghost Hands’ shields.

After a few hundred feet, the elixir’s effect expired and he had to run on his own. First Sentinel’s bones creaked and sharp pain tore at his side.
Not enough painkillers.
he grabbed a couple of pills out of a pouch and dry-swallowed them, then felt the tendrils of relief stretch down his blood.
Thank the City Mother I made them so fast-acting.

First Sentinel looked over his shoulder and saw Blurred Fists behind them, jogging in reverse as the shards emerged from the cliff, closing with alarming speed. Blurred Fists cracked their bones with the set of crusher gloves First Sentinel had made him. He allowed himself a small drop of pride in their craftsmanship. Then he reached to his pouch again and produced a small explosive.

He raised his voice, calling, “Blurred Fists, bomb in my left hand!” he held out the explosive as he ran, and within a second, it was gone.

The boom came mere moments later. First Sentinel had never figured out how to make longer-fuse versions small enough to carry in pouches.
My to-do list would never run out even if I was designing full-time.

The bomb had pulverized two of the shardlings, leaving just one on their trail.
One, we can take.

“Just one left. Stand ground!”

The Shields stopped and turned to face the creature. Ghost Hands stayed high and Sapphire moved to the high end of the path, next to the wall.

Sabreslate shifted her cloak into a pair of razor-tipped maces and armor while First Sentinel cracked his knuckles, activating his shock gloves. The remaining shardling charged right down the center, making its way toward First Sentinel. Aegis stepped in front of his father and leaned into his shield to brace.

Sapphire shaved sideways to hit the creature at the flank. She grabbed handfuls of bone shards and snapped them in her grip, while the rest of the beast lashed out at her and Aegis both. Aegis covered her with the shield, and they pushed the construct back. Blurred Fists made several passes, and Sabreslate joined the melee with stone maces. Between the four of them, they pulverized the beast until the remaining stopped moving, reduced to a pile of inanimate bone.

First Sentinel kicked at the pile, satisfied. “Alright, now double-time it to the exit. Our window is closing.”

* * *

They entered the compound without a hitch, dropping five guards by the gate and three more in the interior corridor. Sapphire mangled COBALT-3’s automata like they were paper and First Sentinel nourished fledgling hope about their chances for the first time since he’d woken up from his injuries. First Sentinel kept moving, cane clicking quickly on the tile so he could avoid thinking about what a bad idea it was for him to be there on the mission.

He’d taken enough pain killers to put a grown Freithin under and balanced it with a full pot of spiced tea.
It’s amazing I’m not buzzing as fast as Wenlizerachi.

The ceiling was lined with electric runner lights, which led the Shields on the path towards the laboratories. Aegis took point, telling them about the patrols through Bira’s telepathic link.

[
There should be a larger automata guarding the juncture up ahead. Sapphire and Blurred Fists, flank left, Ghost Hands and Sabreslate, go right. First Sentinel and I will go up the center. Keep out of those hands if you value your lungs. If COBALT-3 shows up, get her to First Sentinel and me. We’ve got a present for her
.]

A dull green light shone through the blurry glass windows in the double doors as Aegis led the Shields with hand signals, counting down. He closed his last finger into a fist as he stepped up to a door and kicked it open.

The room was mostly bare, with laboratory supplies stacked along the walls beside large boxes filled with paper. As Aegis had warned, a twenty-foot-tall automaton sat in the middle of the room, illuminated eyes and rotating head scanning the room.

“Go!” Aegis shouted, not bothering with telepathy now that the automata had seen them. Aegis and First Sentinel charged up the middle to draw the automata’s attention.

First Sentinel primed his shock gloves and reached for a knife. As they charged, First Sentinel scanned the automata for a good handhold to climb up towards the power station on its back.

Aegis dove under a massive mechanical hand and used the shield to shear the automata’s armored belly. Sapphire tackled the thresher from the side and Ghost Hands used her telekinesis to immobilize its left hand. First Sentinel scrambled up and around the left side towards the power plant and slashed the power cables, glad that he had thought to insulate the gauntlets.

With their concentrated fire and the thorough application of explosives, the Shields brought the automata down with a loud crash.

But that just cost us whatever surprise we had left.
Aegis took them to the doors of the laboratory subjects’ wing by the time more forces arrived. They squared off against a dozen Ikanollo-scale automata wielding charged-tip pikes. The automata had turned a four-way hallway into a chokepoint, pikes out and buzzing.
COBALT-3 doesn’t appear to be in residence tonight. She’s probably quartered somewhere closer to the summit. Luck is with us.
Though he was curious to see if the scrambler he’d finalized would work.

Ghost Hands knocked the electrified pikes up into the ceiling and the combined charge of Sapphire of Blurred Fists broke the automata’s line. After that, they made short work of the machines. Aegis dove into the fight, grace and power incarnate.
He’s using the rage well. Keeping it contained, using it without being blinded by it. Maybe I should be learning from him, now.

The laboratory wing was a litany of sins, spelled out in the smell of feces and vomit, the constant moans of the inmates, and walls with stained with dried-blood spatters in orange and red, blue and black.

Ghost Hands relayed Aegis’ orders once more. [
We need to find the keys for the doors to break out the subjects. Ghost Hands, Blurred Fists, and Sabreslate, head through the north corridor. The rest of us will go south and meet at the other entrance. Don’t break anyone out yet, we need to do it all at once so we can handle the crowd. Be on the lookout for gurneys or other ways to transport the heavily wounded.
]

[
Go, now.
] The group split again and First Sentinel waited for Aegis to give the order for the two of them to move down the south corridor.
He’s keeping an eye on me,
First Sentinel realized.
It’s what I would do.

Aegis nodded and spoke in a low voice, leading First Sentinel and Sapphire down the hallway. “The guard with the keys should be roving the corridors with an escort of two or three others, checking on subjects. It’s a more advanced model, better programming. Let me take it and just mind the escorts. The key-carrier has an alarm system, so we need to be fast.”

A light fixture blinked ahead, casting the hallway in a slow strobe of periodic illumination. Aegis walked low, hunched over but eyes forward. First Sentinel listened to the slow drip of water from a crack in the ceiling and the gentle buzz of electricity. The Shields moved quietly, waiting for the telltale clicking of metal-on-tile.

There it is. Forward and to the left, around the corner.
Aegis heard it as well, holing up a closed fist. Aegis waved Sapphire and First Sentinel to the wall behind him. [
Good, keep it quiet and avoid the other guards for as long as we can.
]

Aegis peeked around the corner, then turned back and gave another countdown.

[
Four. Three. Two. One more.
]

“Go.” Aegis took two quick steps out from the wall and turned, swinging the shield around to sever the cables and cords in the guard’s neck joint, popping the head clean off. Aegis snatched the head out of the air with his free hand and grabbed the construct, lowering it silently to the ground. Sapphire carried the lifeless machine over to one of the empty cells and hid it.
She didn’t even ask me to help. Have to keep my eyes open, protect my team however I can.

They crossed two hallways and turned another corner before First Sentinel heard the triple-staccato of the keyholder and its escort. He placed them at nineteen paces down the hall.

Aegis leaned over to First Sentinel and whispered, “do you have any charge left on the ruby breath?”

First Sentinel nodded, holding up two fingers for two charges. Aegis nodded and pointed around the corner. “Ten paces.”

First Sentinel drew a foot-long bone from his belt, looked to Aegis, then popped out from the corner to face the automata. He waited a half-second until they stepped into range and twisted a segment of the bone. A red-and-orange gout burst from the bone and rushed down the hallway, swallowing the trio. Aegis leapt into the hall, grabbed two overhead pipes, then started to swing forward like an ape in the jungle. He swung down into a pair of the automata, kicking with fire-retardant boots.

Sapphire threw one of the charged pikes, which embedded itself in the chest of the third, dropping it in a burst of electricity. First Sentinel pressed up the middle, moving as fast as he could manage while keeping steady. His staves flashed against the key-holder’s guard, luring it into creating an opening.

The key-holder’s metallic voice filled the halls. “Intruder alert. Laboratory hallway B-3-7. Intruder alert.” Klaxons picked up the call, orange lights flashing.
Damn. Our timeline just cut in half.

Blows flew as the key-holder swung its glaive at inhuman speed, pressing Aegis back against the wall with a barely-blocked strike. The staves let him defend against the glaive, but when he closed, his blows barely dented the automata’s armor.
Gloves only, then.

“Press!” Aegis called, and the Shields converged on the key-holder. Aegis swung the shield high, First Sentinel ducked to sweep with the staves, and Sapphire knelt to deliver a cross to its midsection. The key-holder’s glaive blocked the trip and deflected the shield, but it couldn’t stop Sapphire’s body-blow. The construct crumbled in half and folded to the floor. Aegis dropped a shield-smash onto the automata to finish it, and snatched up its keys once it was down.