The Blood Solution (Approaching Infinity Book 3) (35 page)

It was day. The air was crisp, bright with cold sunlight, revealing a sky that was alive with tracers directed at the dark line of the Vine, which was closer now. In fact, Stoakes could actually see it moving. He jerked to his feet realizing that the only way he would be able to perceive its motion was if the Stitch Drive had been re-engaged. He couldn’t afford anymore downtime. If they were coming in on the Stitch Drive, something was wrong and he would have to do his part to try to make up for whatever that might be. His efforts might prove inconsequential, but he still wanted to get back to the Palace—wanted there to
be
a Palace to which he could return.

He pulled the Suicide Knife from its sheath at the small of his back and held it before him. The rotating image of the planet he’d captured back at EP06 flickered above the blade, just as the original had in the control room. He calculated his current position as best as possible in relation to that now nonexistent military installation, checked the patterns in the sky against other neighboring mass drivers upon the spinning globe, and decided on a course that would take him to the nearest one. From now on stealth would be secondary. It was like being a general again, and the challenge of going it alone excited him in a way he hadn’t experienced in several hundred years.

As Stoakes breezed across the sky in his Darkened state, he was taken aback by the ceaseless working of almost uncountable mass drivers from just about every direction. The launch vectors were changing with the revolution of the planet, but he had no doubt that drivers not currently in operation would start up again once the angle was right. In the back of his mind, he couldn’t help but harbor a tiny knot of fear. He was hard-pressed to remember a time when the Palace had been subjected to such a heavy volume of firepower, and an unfamiliar sense of urgency sped him forward.

He travelled for the better part of the day, bounding several-kilometer spans at a time over essentially barren, snow-covered ground. It was monotonous work with so little variation in scenery, so he was instantly shocked back to alertness when a roaring projectile—massive and filled with deadly explosives he knew—suddenly filled the sky and threatened to take him on a last and decidedly one-way trip. He adjusted his weight and dropped like a stone, easily avoiding the payload meant for the Palace. His heart was racing, which was good. He needed to stay focused. There could be no doubt that he was close to the mass driver now. Indeed, as he descended he caught sight of something as yet unprecedented here: a city.

So far, Stoakes had seen only small rural communities and the two mass driver installations. Of course there had to be cities—even with all the snow, there was an excellent system of roads in evidence, all in good repair—and the city up ahead appeared to be large by any standards. He resumed his course, taking care to avoid the thundering mass driver gunshots.

As he approached, it became clear that the city had built up around the mass driver, on either side and behind it. Though the city sprawled, none of the buildings looked to be more than ten stories high. A number of bridges, none of them big enough to accommodate vehicles of any size, Stoakes thought, spanned the mass driver, connecting the otherwise separated halves of the city. Lights flashed all along the launch way and sirens wailed. They were firing the driver every ten minutes now and appeared to have a pretty efficient system. Only five kilometers away now, Stoakes could see smoothly running traffic, trucks rolling from various locations, making for the loading breech.

He wasn’t sure how he was going to disable this mass driver. There was too much activity, were too many people. Several of the surrounding buildings might serve his purpose if they were to topple onto and across the launch way, but he wasn’t sure how to make that happen. Neither did any but the stoutest of the bridges look like they might facilitate a breach. It did occur to him, however, how he might go about killing a large number of people at one time.

In his sixteen days here on Iss, in the Olaff household, among the mass driver installation personnel, Stoakes had heard the King of Spades mentioned several times, always in fearful tones or in some unpleasant oath. Faaylin Olaff had even raised the question, in jest perhaps, of whether or not Stoakes himself was the King of Spades. Stoakes had gathered that the King of Spades, what- or whoever he might be, was this culture’s bogeyman or one of them. If he could invoke that fear power and make it real for these Issians, then he could kill in lots of hundreds, if not thousands.

Stoakes thought of Faaylin Olaff again and wondered when he might encounter another like him. He’d been lucky so far in that all his other dealings had been with normals. If he came up against a force of those like Olaff in any number, he might not survive the encounter. He would deal with that potential when necessary, though. Dwelling on it would serve no purpose.

Entering the city was no challenge at all. Manned trucks and barricades had been set up on either side of, and several hundred meters back from, the driver’s exit way, but Stoakes thought that, while security had definitely increased since his arrival, the purpose of the trucks and barricades was to protect Issians from getting too close and endangering themselves, rather than to keep intruders out.

One powerful leap landed him atop a building on the fringe of the city. He returned to normal and moved to the side of the building that overlooked the rest of the city. From there he could better see how the streets were laid out. The mass driver was nestled between two three meter walls down its entire length. Near the midway point, though, was what looked like a public square, bisected by the walls and succession of coils, but connected below by at least two tunnels—he could see the stairs leading down—and above by a sturdy, enclosed concrete footbridge. He thought that he might be able to collapse that bridge, but because of its position in relation to the copper coils, it would likely have make do as a barrel jam. From that height, though, there was no guarantee that the fallen concrete would remain in big enough chunks to obstruct the launch way. Even if timing were favorable and a collision resulted between payload and falling debris, he would be caught in the explosion, which, despite his desire to be a good Viscain soldier, was not something he sought.

He stepped closer to the very edge of the building. Below, several men and women toiled at loading a truck with familiar crates. He could set about destroying the explosives themselves, he supposed, but without a sufficient chain reaction, finding all the explosives might take a long time and his goal was to destroy or disable as many of these stations as possible.

Without a clear answer at his disposal, he sighed, took a deep breath, and cried out as loud as possible, “
The King of Spades is here. Look to the sky. His shadow hangs there, but the King is here
now!”

Stoakes stepped off the edge of the building, going Dark only as he was about to touch ground. The sound of his voice had reached the workers below who only watched with concerned expressions. How else could they be expected to react? Stoakes landed and brought his Suicide Knife down upon a man’s head, where it sank evenly down to where the man’s nose met his upper lip. The sound of the blade crunching the man’s skull turned the onlookers’ expressions of concern to ones of horror. The man’s eyes went white instantly, and he fell to his knees, his hands reaching out reflexively. Stoakes put a foot to the man’s cheek and yanked his blade free. He paused purposefully, turning his blank shadow face to look on each of the workers. He picked another man out of the throng of ten that were outside the building, and thrust the Suicide Knife towards him. They were separated by at least three meters, but it was as if the blade had pierced the man just the same, violently and explosively, with a red splash out the small of the man’s back.

Stoakes paused again. If they didn’t get angry, if they didn’t turn into a mob, this was going to take longer even than finding all of the explosives and detonating them. He looked at a young woman and made a conscious decision: he would never again turn his blade upon any woman he was not ordered to kill unless she threatened his life or stood directly in the way of him accomplishing his goal, whatever that might be. He didn’t think that this young woman would survive the day, had no doubts that he would ultimately be responsible for her death, perhaps later with the Midnight Mirror, but he would not lay his blade upon her. Another then. Stoakes moved and brought his blade down like an axe on the back of a man’s neck, all but severing his head. The man dropped to all fours and poured all the blood out of his body before collapsing limply into the pool he’d just created.

“This is what Iss has to offer? You shoot at the sky, but here I am. The King of Spades will kill you all!”

Finally, someone from within the building, perhaps someone who’d witnessed the carnage from far enough away not to be overwhelmed by the suddenness and horror of what Stoakes had done, was roused to anger. He dropped the box he was carrying and pulled his sidearm. He shouted for his fellows to join him, waving his gun in wild exhortation.

Unseen to any, Stoakes smiled beneath the smoky black shroud of his Darkened state. He took another step and jammed the Suicide Knife into a man’s chest, but this man, run through as he was, attempted to grapple with Stoakes just the same. He found little to grab, though, and his forward motion sent him into a spin that landed him solidly on his back. The jolt sent up a brief geyser of blood which subsided into a gurgling sputter that spilled the rest of his life away.

Stoakes faced the small but growing group of those who were angrier than they were terrified, took several more tentative steps backward away from them, ensuring that he would be followed, then turned and started to run—or at least gave that appearance.

As he proceeded down the street, he cried out at intervals, announcing the arrival of the King of Spades, inciting rage born of fear wherever possible. Occasionally he would stop just long enough to stab some confused, unsuspecting man along the way to build the outrage and expand the mob. Stoakes saw that a mob had indeed formed and that some of them were now using handheld communications devices as they pursued him. All to the good. He navigated the nearly clockwork truck traffic easily, weaving through the vehicles sometimes, sometimes running close to building fronts out of the lanes. Many of his followers had pulled the mass driver pistols with which Stoakes was now very familiar, but his progress amongst the vehicles and through other as yet unaware groups of bystanders prevented efficient use of the weapons. Occasionally, he felt the hot needle jab of the pistols pierce his back, and though each penetration made him wince, the pain was only momentary and was something to which he was becoming accustomed.

He stopped once to drive his fist into the front of a truck, crumpling the body like foil, then with a mighty heave, he overturned the vehicle. As fuel pumped out, he fixed his stance and jabbed the Suicide Knife at the source from several meters away. The invisible force created a small crater in the metal surrounding the fuel leak just before the metal ripped, scraped against itself, sparked, and got the fuel to blazing. If the munitions caught and exploded, too, that wouldn’t hurt, but it wasn’t his goal at the moment.

Stoakes continued down the maze of streets, seemingly at random, turning here, favoring to continue on straight there, ranting as he went, killing only enough to keep the mob on the razor’s edge of intensity, but he knew exactly where he was going. Some of his pursuers had guessed it as well, or at least knew where they might trap him. But who was trapping whom?

He couldn’t believe it, thought it was the shouts of those behind him echoing off the building facades, but as he entered into the public square he’d seen from that first rooftop, he couldn’t help but laugh out loud at his success. The square was filling from all directions with hundreds and hundreds of people, from street intersections, from the tunnels leading to the other side of the mass driver, from
everywhere
. Perhaps they rightly associated him with the destruction of two of their mass drivers. Good.

As the square began to swell with the liquid mass of people, streaming in from all over the city, all clamoring for Stoakes’s head, Stoakes leapt up abruptly, alighting on a building that was opposite the mass driver and which accommodated one end of the concrete footbridge.

He surveyed the crowd below, took a moment to cut apart five men who came out of the covered footbridge, then addressed those down in the square. “Look well upon the King of Spades. They died,” he said, indicating the five. “
You
will die. All of you.” He shook the short, chisel-tipped blade, dislodging all the blood from it in that one sharp, powerful movement. He held the blade up and showed them the Midnight Mirror. “Look well at the instrument of your destruction.” His words, he knew, were trite, the stuff of pulp fiction—of which there was no lack in the Viscain Empire—but they served his purpose.

Everyone looked. Why wouldn’t they? How could that lone, tiny figure forty meters up in the air expect to scare them with a knife, even if he
had
wielded it with such mastery? To look was to die, though. Everyone who looked at the Midnight Mirror was ensnared by it, and the only succor possible was Stoakes’s mercy. He was not completely devoid of this quality, but generals of the Viscain Empire, even former ones, did not display it while at work.

He waited no longer than it took to record every face in the crowd. Then with a swift, sure motion, he slashed his own throat, deeply, from ear to ear. Stoakes was completely unaffected by the action, but in an instant the square was doused with a uniform spray of bright red blood from every throat of every man and women who’d been captured by the Midnight Mirror. The angry mob was silenced in that instant. No one remained standing. No one remained alive. The square was like a red swamp, with corpse mounds making small islands here and there throughout its shallow depth.