The Iron Maiden (24 page)

Spirit and Megan watched the three, seeing them seeing the marvelous scenery. “I think that's half of what I love about him--and her,” Megan murmured. Spirit understood. There was certainly something special there.

Then Shelia rolled up. “Train approaching, boss,” she said. “Overtaking us from behind.”

“Hey, there's no train scheduled now,” Casey said.

“We know,” she said. “That's why we're suspicious.”

Hope held a quick council of war with Spirit and Coral. Spirit and Hope had both had battle training and experience in the Navy, and Coral was generally knowledgeable about inclose violence. Together they decided on their strategy for defense.

Hopie and Casey and Hope peered back, and now as the track curved they saw the pursuing train, steaming up the grade, definitely closing on them. “We'll pick up speed as we start down the other side of the Divide,” Casey said. “But so will she. The grade don't make no difference for this. She'll catch us, sure.”

“Grade?” Shelia asked.

Hopie glanced at Hope and winked. “Come here, Shel,” she said. “Look out the window. See the mountains out there? The snow? We're crossing the Great Divide, and it's been an awful climb, but now we're almost at the top, about to start down the other side. We old railroad hands call the slope the grade.”

“Oh,” Shelia said, nonplused. She was a fine woman, but it was evident that she did not see the mountains or the snow outside.

Casey smiled. “Most folks are mundane,” he murmured. “That's their curse. They don't even know what they're missing. You and your little girl're the first real folk I've met in a long time, Gov'nor.”

“We're very rare species,” Hope agreed, and Hopie nodded emphatically.

"She sure favors you. I'd a known she was your kid right away, even if you hid her in a crowd.

Bloodlines run true."

Spirit averted her face. The man was right in essence.

“Hang on,” Casey said. “Reality's 'bout to take a beating.”

Hopie and Hope smiled and took firm hold on the anchored furniture, as did the others in the chamber.

This was going to be weird. But would it be strange enough to balk the enemy train?

First the train slowed on the track, and the enemy train overhauled it rapidly. Then, just as the other was drawing up parallel, the home train left the track and floated into the sky. Hopie gave a little sigh of amazement, locked into the vision, and Spirit was startled she had known what to expect.

They left the other train below. They maneuvered on the small wheel fans of the cars, angling them down to provide propulsion. The enemy train blundered on ahead, caught by surprise by the maneuver. Then the cloud enveloped the train, and darkness reigned outside. They had disappeared into their own great cloud of smoke.

“We got away from them!” Hopie exclaimed happily.

But the other train would soon enough zero in again, and then it would lock on and invade, in the manner of a pirate ship with a refugee bubble. Spirit did not like the odds.

Hopie glanced at Hope cannily. “But you're cooking something, aren't you?”

“I think you'd rather not know, honey.”

“I think I'd rather not not know, Daddy,” she countered. “I'm scared.”

She spoke for those other than herself. It seemed better to reassure them all, especially Megan, who was sitting pale and tight-lipped. They were not combat personnel. Only Spirit and Hope had been toughened to this sort of thing, and Coral could handle it. The others were in trouble. “Mrs. Burton is arranging to shunt some steam inside,” Hope said.

“Steam?” She didn't grasp the relevance.

“It will make them uncomfortable,” he explained.

“Oh.” She still didn't get it but did not pursue the matter further, and the others who did comprehend did not comment.

Megan, Hopie, and the other noncombatants retreated to the restaurant chamber, while the others took laser pistols and went out to defend the train from either end. Spirit guarded the entrance to the sleeping car. But she was merely part of the delaying action; what counted was what Mrs. Burton was preparing.

The pirates (for so Spirit thought of them) boarded. They did not come cautiously; they came with the abandon of grossly superior numbers, seeking to overwhelm the few defenders in an instant. Every lock opened simultaneously, and men came through each, holding their lasers ready. Spirit could track the action in different sections by Sheila's announcements on the intercom. Shelia was a noncombatant, but her calm coordination was vital.

The pirates were met by the careful fire of the defensive lasers. One beam from Spirit, one from Coral, and two men fell, each holed efficiently in the throat.

“Shoot for the face,” Hope told Casey. “One beam per man, no more; they outnumber us.” Of course, the enemy could also hear the com speaking, but that couldn't be helped.

“Progress, Mrs. Burton?” Hope asked, his voice sounding calm. He was playing his scene, but time was running short--very short.

“Close enough,” she said. “I'm rigging a line; I can pull the cork from the diner; I think it'll work.”

“Then unroll your line, Mrs. Burton. Get back here quickly--you and the engineers.”

She strung her line, and the three of them retreated from the engine, entering the passenger car. But, as they reached the center, more men burst in at the now-unguarded engine lock, threw themselves into the crannies of the cab, and began firing into the passenger car.

“Cover your heads,” Coral called. Then she hurled something. It skidded along the floor, rolled, fetched up at the far end, and exploded. A small grenade. “Now get into the diner--fast!” she ordered.

Mrs. Burton lifted her spool of line. “It's been severed!” she exclaimed, horrified. “I've got to reconnect it!” But that turned out to be unfeasible. “I'll set it off,” she said. “You scoot back to the diner. I'll give you thirty seconds.”

“But--”

“Better do it, boss,” Shelia said on the com. “They're moving against Spirit; she'll have to retreat in a moment.” True words; Spirit was already retreating.

“You want it this way, Mrs. Burton?” Hope asked.

“I'm old, boss,” she said. “You gave me a good retirement. Now move!”

Spirit heard a loud hissing from the cab as she entered the chamber with the noncombatants. She knew what it meant. “Farewell, Mrs. Burton!” Hope gasped as he launched himself at the door to the final chamber. It opened as he reached it; he stumbled in, and it closed behind him. Hopie was operating it; she had been alert and timed it perfectly.

Now they watched what happened beyond their sanctuary. The screen showed it clearly. A great rush of steam was pouring from the cab, billowing out, funneling through the locks from car to car in both trains, spreading throughout the length of both. They heard the screams of the men being burned. They could not escape; the steam quickly permeated every crevice of both trains, and it was super-hot. It was the steam that normally drove the propulsion propellers; Mrs. Burton had tapped into one of its lines, routing it into the passenger section. It reminded Spirit of the time she had fired the propulsion jet in the refugee bubble, scorching the pirates. It was having similar effect.

They checked Coral. She had been burned through the abdomen. She was alive but unconscious. They gave her a sedative to keep her that way; she would live but would only be in pain while conscious, until they got her to a competent medical facility.

“She did her job,” Spirit murmured.

Indeed, she had. Coral had taken the shot that might otherwise have caught Hope. She was the loyal bodyguard to the last.

The battle was over. They let the steam dissipate, then went out to explore. Hopie wanted to come too, but all the adults forbade it.

There were dead men everywhere; the steam had suffocated them all. Spirit exchanged a glance with Hope. Yes, he too remembered the bubble in space!

Mrs. Burton was dead, too, of course--and that also echoed the past. “Helse,” Hope murmured. Spirit winced. There was no similarity between the young, beautiful girl of the past and the old woman of the present, except this: each had knowingly sacrificed her life in horrible fashion to save theirs.

Hope leaned against Spirit and cried. She held him an comforted him as well as she could, stifling her own pain of the occasion. It had ever been thus. Hope was the feeling man, she the iron maiden.

*

The campaign continued, as Coral recuperated physically and the others did so emotionally. It was especially hard on Megan and Hopie, who had never been exposed to such malicious physical violence before. Hopie mourned “Grandma Burton,” feeling guilty for surviving. But Shelia and Ebony, who had some prior experience, rallied to help them through, and so did Coral, despite her injury.

Hope entered the first state primary at Granite. He did not win, but came in second, significantly stronger than predicted. That, in the legerdemain of politics, translated into an apparent win. Suddenly he was a much stronger candidate than he had seemed before, and the media commentators were paying much more attention to him. In their eyes he had become viable. They had much fun with the Hispanic candidate, but his issues were sound, the unrest of the populace continued to grow, and the aspirations of those who were sick of the existing situation focused increasingly on him. He showed up more strongly in the next primary, becoming a rallying point for the disaffected, and the third one he won. Then he was really on his way.

Spirit was breathlessly busy organizing the details of the campaign, but it was successful. They played off the several factions of the party, and in the end Hope became the first Hispanic nominee. He chose Spirit as his running mate. The victory was sweet, but there was no pause in the campaign, for the incumbent Tocsin remained ahead in poll percentage points.

Slowly Hope gained, until he drew almost even, and the election was rated a dead heat. Then Tocsin pulled out all the stops. Among them was the old scandal of Hopie's origin: the charge that she was Hope's bastard baby. The fanatic press tried to get at Megan, but she was ready for this. What really finished it was Thorley's interview with her, in which the conservative gadfly asked her point-blank why she had agreed to adopt this child, who could not have been her own.

“I love her; she is mine now,” she said, echoing Hope's response.

“But surely you have wondered about her origin--”

“I know her origin. That's why I adopted her.”

Thorley shook his head eloquently. “Mrs. Hubris, you are a great human being.” Very few understood how sincerely he meant that. His career, as well as Hope's, had been safeguarded by Megan's constancy.

The issue faded; Thorley had defused it. That fact that this also saved Spirit's hide was politically incidental.

Another threat involved the Jupiter Navy. The first signal of trouble was when a formidable task force approached the planet for extensive maneuvers, with battleships and carriers hanging over individual cities as if targeting them. The public was assured that it was only a routine exercise, but it was a massive and persistent one.

Hope talked to his old Navy wife Emerald, who was in easy communication range because she commanded one of the wings. She was an admiral now, her brilliance as a strategist, proven in Hope's day, having enabled her to rise impressively.

“What's going on up there, Rising Moon?” he asked forthrightly. “As a candidate for the office of commander-in-chief, I believe I should be advised if the Navy has any problems.”

Her dusky face cracked into a smile. She still loved him, and would help him any way he could. “Hope, you know there's been increasing civil unrest recently. There is concern that the election itself could be disrupted. So the Navy is on standby alert, ready to keep the planetary peace if that should prove necessary.”

A form answer--with teeth in it. The Navy was under the ultimate command of the civilian president, Tocsin. Was he preparing for a military coup in the event he lost the election?

“It is good to have that reassurance,” Hope said. “We know how important it is to preserve order.”

Which was another formal statement. “Give my regards to your husband.” And there was the hidden one: her husband, Admiral Mondy, was the arch-conspirator of Hope's once tightly knit group within the Navy. He prized out all secrets and fathomed all strategies; he liked to know where every body was hidden. Hope was telling her that something was up and to alert Mondy if he was not already aware. He might be retired, but they knew he kept his hand in. That sort of thing was in his blood.

“Have no fear, sir,” she responded, and faded out. That concluding “sir” was significant, too; she was tacitly recognizing Hope's authority. There would be a quiet unofficial alert among Hubris supporters in the Navy--and Spirit knew how strong that support was, and not just because Hope was a former Navy man. There had been considerable anger about the way he had been cashiered.

But these were incidental concerns compared to what came up next. Spirit received a special visitor on the campaign train: Reba of QYV. She didn't even inquire about Reba's business. “I'll fetch Hope.” The woman nodded grimly.

“Hubris, this is off the record,” Reba said immediately when Hope arrived. “It could mean my position--and your life. The press must not know.”

“Let me bring one member of the press here, now, while I hear what you have to say. If he agrees to keep it secret--”

Reba sighed. “Thorley.”

He nodded. “He happens to be aboard now.” Indeed, Thorley was on temporary assignment to cover a leg of the campaign, and was a great comfort during Spirit's off moments.

She went to fetch Thorley, explaining the situation on the way. He nodded, evidently recognizing Reba's identity. He did have sources of his own. He joined them, sat down and waited.

“I am--an anonymous source,” Reba told him.

“Understood.”

“This woman knows me as well as any,” Hope said. Thorley raised an eyebrow and glanced at Spirit.

She nodded. He might be surprised that any woman should know Hope as well as his wife or sister did, but did not question it.