The Mammoth Book of SF Wars (34 page)

Sarah stared at it open-mouthed. “But if this was here, why did we …”

Fitzwilliam flung open the hatch. “Because it is for one person only,” he said. “A last chance escape route for the captain.”

“That was where you were going when you heard me?” asked Sarah. Then she realized the more relevant part of his comment. “But it’s only for one person.”

“Always enough space for a little’un,” said Fitzwilliam, cheerfully, throwing her head first through the hatch.

Sarah found herself in a pitch black tube. Fitzwilliam dropped on top, knocking the breath from her. He had a hard muscular body.

“Sorry,” he said, insincerely.

She was about to make some pithy and sarcastic comment to put him in his place when an elbow caught her in the stomach as he twisted around to shut the hatch. By the time she recovered, the devastatingly witty comment had slipped from her mind, which was a shame as she was sure that it had been jolly good and that it would have utterly crushed the insufferable man. Fitzwilliam grunted with effort, a lever moved and an explosive charge shot them away from the doomed ship with a thump.

“You really don’t give a lady time to catch her breath,” said Sarah.

There was a click and a dim light came on. They were nose to nose.

“Sorry about the accommodation,” said Fitzwilliam, while focusing on adjusting some controls behind Sarah’s head.

“I must look a frightful mess,” she said and could have kicked herself. Why did she have this urge to babble inanities when she was anxious?

“I believe that I may just be able to survive looking at you for a while longer,” said Fitzwilliam, with a smile. “I have a robust constitution so I’m willing to take the risk.”

Sarah sniffed. He was far too glib for her liking although he did have a nice smile. Sarah looked out of a small porthole by her head. The boat was rotating around its axis every ten seconds or so. Lucifer dominated the heavens filling the boat with red light on every rotation. The remains of the rear hull of the
Cassandra
passed across the window. A great gout of flame blasted silently out of the wreckage, vanishing quickly as its air supply dissipated into the aether.

“Now we wait for rescue,” Fitzwilliam said. “Do you know any good word games?”

“Rescue by whom?” Sarah asked, calmly. “We are going to die in here, aren’t we?”

He looked at her and she could see that he was considering what to say. “Yes, I’m afraid that’s likely,” he eventually replied. “The boat will drop into Lucifer when the galvanic cell fails and the cavorite panels stop working but I fancy that we will be dead by then. The air supply is only intended for one person.”

“I see,” Sarah said. She was glad that he had enough respect for her intellect not to try to fob her off with a comforting lie.

“Back there in the ship, when everything went to hell. You were fighting some sort of magical battle, I suppose,” he said, making the sentence a statement rather than a question.

The expression on her face must have shown her shock, because he hurried to reassure her.

“My father is in the Foreign Office, Miss Brown. I understand more than you might imagine about the duties and proscriptions of your profession.”

“Magic is not a word I would like to be associated with,” Sarah said. “I mean, with which I would like to be associated.” All her anxieties flooded back; she would be talking in a south London accent next.

“Have no fear, Miss Brown. The Navy looks after its own, and I look after my people, especially those who have served faithfully. You have my personal guarantee of protection. My uncle is the Bishop of Bath and Wells, charming old chap who still has an eye for a well-turned ankle. He’ll like you.” He turned on that annoying grin.

“I see,” said Sarah. “So you were making fun of me when you asked all those embarrassing questions on my first night aboard.”

“Well, perhaps just teasing you a little,” said Fitzwilliam. “You looked so nervous that that I thought you needed distracting.”

“You obnoxious, arrogant … man!” Sarah said, unable to think of a worse name to call him. She tried to slap him, which was not easy in the cramped conditions and he caught her wrist without difficulty.

“Bad girl,” he said. “Hitting your captain in a war zone could be construed as mutiny and I would have to shoot you.”

She pulled her arm free angrily. A sharp insertion of pain reminded her that she was not entirely healed.

“Let’s see where you are hurt,” Fitzwilliam said, looking genuinely upset. “I’m sorry, I had quite forgot about your injury.”

“You won’t find a wound,” Sarah said, mollified by his show of concern. “The damage was psychic. I feel much recovered already.”

“Nevertheless, I think I should examine you,” said Fitzwilliam.

His hands moved gently over her body, while she lay back and closed her eyes. His touch was comforting, more like caresses than a medical examination, so she relaxed. Actually, it was a lot like caresses.

“Captain Fitzwilliam,” she said, eventually.

“Yes, Miss Brown.”

“You wouldn’t be the sort of cad who takes advantage of a helpless lady under your protection, would you?”

“I regret to say that I may well be just such a bounder, Miss Brown.”

She opened her eyes and examined him. He was quite handsome in a rugged sort of way and he did have an engaging smile. He would have been safe if he had not come back to rescue her. Perhaps he deserved some compensation for the loss of his life. She considered her options and recalled that she really hated word games.

“Well, if I am to be ravished I suppose I must submit gracefully,” she said, and kissed him.

It was some time before Sarah came up for air. When she did, she turned her head to look out of the porthole while he playfully nuzzled her neck.

“Captain Fitzwilliam,” she said.

“What is it now, Miss Brown?” he asked, a faint edge of frustration colouring his tone.

She giggled, wondering if he would see the funny side. The poor man was in for more frustration.

“I think you should look out,” she said. “I believe you may have, um, missed the boat, so to speak.”

“What?”

Sarah pointed to where the American sloop headed straight for them, demonstrating the famous sailing qualities of the type by navigating easily through Lucifer’s rip tides. Fitzwilliam clearly did not see the funny side. “Bloody Americans,” he said. “They’ve been a perpetual nuisance since Boston Harbor.”

SOLIDARITY

Walter Jon Williams

Resistance to a conqueror needn’t be futile, but may need to be nudged along by an expert …

A master of many subgenres of SF, including military SF in his Dread Empire’s Fall series, as well as authoring historical adventure and crime, Walter Jon Williams is a multiple award nominee and winner who has “to write novels in order to afford to write shorter work” because “I really love writing short stories.” Hooray. And who else’s personal page of Frequently Asked Questions would include the info that
“mataglap”
is an Indonesian word, indicating that someone is about to go berserk and start killing at random?

S
ULA DRESSED IN
fine Riverside low style for her meeting with Casimir. The wide, floppy collar of her blouse overhung a bright tight-waisted jacket with fractal patterns. Pants belled out around platform shoes. Cheap colourful plastic or ceramic jewellery. A tall velvet hat, crushed just so, with one side of the brim held up by a gold pin with an artificial diamond the size of a walnut.

“I don’t like this,” Macnamara said.

Sula peered at herself in the mirror, flipped her fingers through her dyed black hair.

“I wish there were other choices,” she said, “but there aren’t.”

“My lady—” he began.

She turned to him.

“I’m going,” she said. “We need allies.”

And, because he was under military discipline, he said nothing more, just glowered in his petulant way.

The neighbourhood known as Riverside was still, and the pavement radiated the heat of the day as if it were exhaling a long, hot breath. Between bars of light, the long shadows of buildings striped the street like prison bars. She saw no sign of Naxid or police patrols.

The Cat Street Club was nearly deserted, inhabited only by a few people knocking back drinks on their way home from, or on their way to, their work. The hostess said that Casimir wasn’t in yet. Sula sat at a back table and ordered sparkling water and transformed the tabletop into a video screen so that she could watch the news programme, the usual expressionless Daimong announcer with the usual bland tidings, all about the happy, content people of many species who worked productively and happily under their new Naxid overlords.

She didn’t see Casimir arrive; there was only the hostess coming to her and saying that he was in. The hostess escorted Sula to the back of the club, up a staircase of black iron, and to a door glossy with polished black ceramic. Sula looked at her reflection in the door’s lustrous surface and adjusted the tilt of her hat.

The next room featured a pair of Torminel guards, fierce in their grey fur and white fangs, and Sula concluded that Casimir must be nervous. Lamey had never gone around with guards, not until the very end, when the Legion of Diligence was after him.

The guards patted Sula down – she had left her pistol at home – and scanned her with a matt-black polycarbon wand intended to detect any listening devices. Then they waved her through another polished door to Casimir in his suite.

The suite was large and decorated in black and white, from the diamond-shaped floor tiles to the onyx pillars that supported a series of white marble Romanesque arches, impressive but non-structural, intended purely for decoration. The chairs featured cushions so soft they might tempt a sitter to sprawl. There was a video wall that enabled Casimir to watch the interior of the club, and several different scenes played there in silence. Sula saw that one of the cameras was focused on the table she’d just left.

“Were you watching me?” she asked.

“I hadn’t seen you around,” Casimir said. “I was curious.”

He had come around his desk to greet her. He was a plain-featured young man a few years older than Sula, with longish dark hair combed across his forehead and tangled down his collar behind. He wore a charcoal-grey velvet jacket over a purple silk shirt, with gleaming black boots beneath fashionably wide-bottomed trousers. His hands were long and pale and delicate, with fragile-seeming wrists; the hands were posed self-consciously in front of his chest, the fingers tangled in a kind of knot. His voice was surprisingly deep and full of gravel, like a sudden flood over stony land.

She felt the heat of his dark eyes and knew at once that danger smouldered there, possibly for Sula, possibly for himself, possibly for the whole world. Possibly he himself didn’t know; he would strike out at first one, then the other, as the mood struck him.

Sula felt a chord of danger chime deep in her nerves, and it was all she could do to keep her blood from thundering an answer.

“I’m new,” she said. “I came down from the ring a few months ago, before they blew it up.”

“Are you looking for work?” He tilted his head and affected to consider her. “For someone as attractive as you, I suppose something could be found.”

“I already have work,” Sula said. “What I’d like is steady pay.” She took from an inner pocket of her vest a pair of identity cards, and offered them.

“What’s this?” Casimir approached and took the cards. His eyes widened as he saw his own picture on both cards, each of which identified him as “Michael Saltillo”.

“One’s the primary identity,” Sula said, “and the other’s the special card that gets you up to the High City.”

Casimir frowned, took the cards back to his desk, and held them up to the light. “Good work,” he said. “Did you do these?”

“The government did them,” Sula said. “They’re genuine.”

He pursed his lips and nodded. “You work in the Records Office?”

“No,” Sula lied. “But I know someone who does.”

He gave her a heavy-lidded look. “You’ll have to tell me who that is.”

Sula shook her head. “No. I can’t.”

He glided towards her. Menace flowed off him like an inky rain. “I’ll need that name,” he said.

She looked up at him and willed her muscles not to tremble beneath the tide of adrenaline that flooded her veins. “First,” Sula said, speaking softly to keep a tremor from her voice, “she wouldn’t work with you. Second—”

“I’m
very persuasive
,” Casimir said. The deep, grating words seemed to rise from the earth. His humid breath warmed her cheek.

“Second,” Sula continued, calmly as she could, “she doesn’t live in Zanshaa, and if you turn up on her doorstep she’ll call the police and turn you in. You don’t have any protection where she is, no leverage at all.”

A muscle pulsed in one half-lowered eyelid: Casimir didn’t like being contradicted. Sula prepared herself for violence and wondered how she would deal with the Torminel.

“I don’t believe I got your name,” Casimir said.

She looked into the half-lidded eyes. “Gredel,” she said.

He turned, took a step away, then swung back and with an abrupt motion thrust out the identity cards. “Take these,” he said. “I’m not going to have them off someone I don’t know. I could be killed for having them in my office.”

Sula made certain her fingers weren’t trembling before she took the cards. “You’ll need them sooner or later,” she said, “the way things are going under the Naxids.”

She could see that he didn’t like hearing that, either. He turned again and walked to the far side of his desk and stood there with his head down, his long fingers tidying papers.

“There’s nothing I can do about the Naxids,” he said.

“You can kill them,” Sula said, “before they kill you.”

He kept his eyes on his papers, but a smile touched his lips. “There are a lot more Naxids than there are of me.”