Warbound: Book Three of the Grimnoir Chronicles (11 page)

What he really wanted to do was take up his steel tetsubo and start smashing things, but a warrior did not disgrace himself with displays of emotion, especially when among his people’s enemies. He would not show weakness in front of the wretched Grimnoir . . . Also, the interior of a fragile dirigible was a terrible place to go mad with an eighty-pound club and superhuman strength.

How
dare
they bring up Manchuria? Yes, he had questioned his leaders, but it had not been because of cowardice . . . It had been . . .
What?
He had disobeyed those orders why?
Compassion?
No . . . That was not what had cost him his promotion and gotten him removed from the front and sent to serve with the Diplomatic Corps in America. That was not why he’d disobeyed.

It had been guilt. It had been
conscience
.

He crushed the letter in his fist and tried to go back to his meditations. After a few minutes of futile mental exercise, he decided to concentrate on physical exercise instead. The one thing the
Traveler
had in abundance was pipes sticking through the walls, and he’d already found a few solid enough to do chin-ups from.

Careful not to tap into his own Power or any of the eight magical kanji branded onto his skin, for that would have been cheating, Toru began doing repetitions. The stronger his own body was, the harder he could push his Power without damage. Since it was discovered that he was a Brute, the Imperium schools had made sure he’d spent hours a day doing physical training, every day, for a decade. Toru was no stranger to exercise. Besides, it helped him think.

The Imperium had wanted him to read this message. Diplomatic Corps training had taught him that a message such as this would have been encrypted. This message had not been. Surely, as soon as they discovered that he had faked his own death, the code key would have been changed. He should not have been able to read a real, current message.

They were trying to shake him. They were trying to insult him, make him angry, to cause him to do something foolish. If that was the case, they had underestimated his resolve. It would not work. Okubo Tokugawa’s final command had been to Jake Sullivan, ergo, Toru was honor-bound to see Sullivan’s mission completed, no matter what.

If the imposter wanted a fight, so be it. He might look and sound just like the Chairman, but it was doubtful that he would be nearly as invincible.

“Toru.”

Distracted and purposefully limiting his magical senses, he had not heard Sullivan approach. The Heavy was quiet for his size. Toru let go of the pipe and dropped to the floor. “How long have you been there?”

“About thirty chin-ups.”

Toru had counted forty-two and hadn’t yet begun to sweat, but with so many men who hated him on this vessel, allowing someone to sneak up on him was unacceptable. He would have to pay better attention in the future. “What do you want?”

Sullivan wandered into the storage room, idly inspecting the pile of weapons stacked on the floor. The broken remains of Toru’s Iron Guard katana were on top of the stack. Thankfully, Sullivan did not remark on the broken sword. He’d been there when Toru had smashed it to demonstrate his resolve. “It’s about the crew.”

“If they cannot comprehend the enormity of the task, then they will fail.”

“Fighting in the Great War taught me a few things. I’ve seen what happens when you kill a unit’s morale. You might as well kill their bodies, ‘cause next time they go into combat, they’re either useless or good as dead.”

“Irrelevant.” Toru snorted. “It should not matter. Imperium men do not have this problem. Superior warriors embrace death in order to fulfill their missions. The greatest honor a warrior can achieve is dying in his lord’s service.”

“These ain’t Imperium men. The Chairman’s bullshit won’t fly here.”

Toru returned to his uncomfortable patch of floor and took a seat. “One of our nations has conquered a tenth of the planet over the last two generations while the other has grown fat, complacent, and apathetic. Please, share more of your opinion on which of our differing methods is the superior.”

Sullivan frowned. Toru knew he had him there. Sullivan, despite being a product of a weak culture, was still a true warrior. Trying in vain to convince the American authorities of the danger of the Pathfinder had left Sullivan infuriated and baffled. Toru had just won the argument before it had even begun, and Sullivan didn’t even know it yet. The Imperium school’s education hadn’t all been physical.

“Only the fools in charge are like that. Don’t underestimate a regular American’s backbone.”

“Yet here we are. One lonely ship . . . Did you really come here simply to debate philosophy?”

Sullivan pretended to take in the room. “Riding around on a blimp named after the little girl that killed your father . . . That’s got to stick in your craw.”

It was a rather astute observation. Despite appearing to be an oaf, the Heavy could have made a passable diplomat. “Is there a point to this visit, Sullivan?”

“Yeah. Take your head out of your ass so you can see the sunshine. Whether you like them or not, these men are our only hope of beating the Pathfinder. You best start acting like it.”

“That is an order?”

“It is.”

The things that I do to fulfill my father’s commands . . .
Toru nodded. “So be it.”

“Good. You’ll get them up to speed then. These ain’t Imperium. They’re free men, and they’ll fight better if they know they can win. Convince them they can.”

“You wish me to lie?”

“You won’t have to. I intend to win.”

“Optimism is such an American trait. Optimism is a lie.”

“And pessimism lowers morale.”

“Not pessimism. Pessimism is another weak western concept. I speak of
fatalism.
A warrior accepts his fate. He willingly does whatever must be done to complete his task and accepts whatever consequences that entails. That is the only true way to assure victory . . . Yet, I will do as you order.”

“You’re a real piece of work.” Sullivan moved to leave, and then paused in the doorway. “Listen . . . This thing with your own country out to get you . . . I heard about the letter. I know how you feel.”

Indeed, Jake Sullivan had once been declared a traitor to his country, a scapegoat for a conspiracy of ambitious fools, but Sullivan had a child’s understanding of honor, and though he was a powerful combatant, he had no comprehension of the true warrior’s code. Sullivan’s country was corrupt and weak; he should have expected to be betrayed by it.

“You know nothing.”

Art to come

Traveler

Chapter 4

Wyatt Earp was one of the few men I personally knew who I regarded as absolutely destitute of physical fear. I have often remarked, and I am not alone in my conclusions, that what goes for courage in a man is generally fear of what others will think of him. In other words, personal bravery is largely made up of self-respect, egotism, and apprehension of the opinions of others. Wyatt Earp’s apparent recklessness in time of danger is wholly characteristic. Personal fear doesn’t enter into the equation, and when everything is said and done, I believe he values his own opinion of himself more than that of others, and it is his own good report he seeks to preserve . . . He never at any time in his career resorted to shooting excepting cases where such a course was absolutely necessary, such as when combating those with wizard’s magic . . . Wyatt could scrap with his fists, and had often taken all the fight out of bad men, as they were called, with no other weapons than those provided by nature . . . Yes, you’ve heard the stories, but you do not know the half of it. Why, this one time back in ’08, we helped out Jack Pershing and his Knights of New York with a problem involving a stolen Tesla weapon and some of those branded Japanese bastards. You should have seen—Wait. Strike that. That never happened. Forgive an old man’s ramblings.

—Bat Masterson,

Interview in the Baltimore Mercurium,
1921

UBF
Traveler

A few hours later,
Heinrich floated down
through the ceiling and woke Sullivan up a few hours later. “It is time.” The Fade pulled the chain and the small room’s single lightbulb lit up. Despite this being considered the officer’s quarters, there were still five other bunks, most of which were currently occupied, and the men all began to grumble and mutter at the sudden light.

Sullivan maneuvered himself out of the tiny hole his cot sat in and managed to not hit his head. At least he’d gotten the biggest bunk aboard, which meant that it was still far too tiny for a man of his stature. The floor-level bunk beneath him was filled with equipment rather than a person, mostly because nobody was brave enough to sleep below a man whose magically augmented mass made him weigh in around four hundred pounds. Sullivan’s watch was sitting next to his .45. He picked them both up. “One in the morning. That didn’t take long . . .” He’d figured it wouldn’t, so he hadn’t even bothered to take his boots off before going to sleep. “Who is it?”

“One of the UBF men, Skaggs.”

Sullivan had only spoken to him once. He remembered Skaggs as a round-faced, gravel-voiced fella, one of Francis’ mechanics. “Where?”

“Aft rope room,” Heinrich answered. The Fade was excited. He enjoyed this sort of thing far too much. “Lance has eyes on him.”

“I’m glad you boys didn’t just pop him.”

“It was so very tempting.”

Their conversation was starting to wake up the others in the officer’s quarters. “Wha, huh?” asked Barns, sitting up in bed and automatically reaching for the shoulder holster hanging from a peg on the wall. “Wha’s going on?”

“Go back to sleep,” Sullivan ordered the pilot before he could pull his machine pistol. Pirates were a jumpy bunch. “I’ll tell you in the morning.”

“Kill the damned light, will ya?”

Sullivan pulled the chain, then followed Heinrich out into the hall. Unlike most UBF vessels, the
Traveler
hadn’t been built for comfort, and the corridors were dimly lit, with bare metal walls. He had to duck every few feet to avoid banging his skull on a random pipe. The rope rooms were at the very bottom of the ship, so they’d have to hurry to catch him in the act.

Nabbing Skaggs alive meant that they’d be able to question him, and if you were going to question somebody, might as well do it with your human polygraph machine around. “You fetch a Reader?”

“Lance sent a mouse.”

“He’ll love waking up to that in his face. Best get the Mouth too, just in case our spy don’t feel like talking.”

“Way ahead of you, Jake. You forget how much more practiced at this treachery business I am than you.” Heinrich looked back, eyes wide as he thought of something. “The spy is an engineer.”

“So?”

“Skaggs knows the guts of the ship. If he gets orders back to sabotage us, who knows what he could harm?”

“I really don’t feel like crashing another one of Francis’ fancy blimps.” He was just holding Heinrich up, what with his having to walk around solid objects instead of through them. “Go. I’ll catch up.”

Heinrich nodded, then his features seemed to blur and turn grey, and then he sank through the floor and disappeared. It was a good thing too, because it then saved Sullivan the indignity of trying to maneuver his bulk down the narrow stairwell in front of witnesses. His feet barely fit on the steps. “UBF designed this thing for pygmies,” he muttered.

He reached the rope room a few minutes later, but judging by how Skaggs was lying in a crumpled heap with blood all over the side of his face, and Heinrich was standing over him with a pipe wrench in hand, Sullivan hadn’t needed to rush.

He nudged the fallen UBF engineer with his toe to make sure he was still alive. Skaggs groaned. “He give you trouble?”

“Nothing a wrench to the face couldn’t fix.” Heinrich answered. “But I suppose a wrench to the face solves most personnel issues.”

“Check this out.” Lance’s deep voice came from an empty corner of the room. “Down here.” Sullivan stepped over the piled coils of rope and spotted a small brown mouse running around in circles. The floor gleamed from shards of broken glass.

Sullivan knelt and carefully picked up one of the biggest pieces of glass. It was mirrored, and someone had scratched lines into it. “Communication spell?”

“Yep,” the mouse answered, impossibly loud for a critter that could fit in the palm of his hand. Since Lance Talon was a Beastie, and his Power allowed him to take control of animals, they’d made sure that the
Traveler
had a mice problem for occasions like this. Sure, they’d eventually make a mess of things, but then they’d just have to get a cat . . . Or he supposed Lance could just take over all the mice and have them jump overboard. Beasties probably didn’t really have trouble with pests. “That spell detector Fuller put together went nuts. I found our friend here telling somebody about how we were heading for Siberia.”

Heinrich had dragged the semi-conscious Skaggs upright and was patting him down, looking for weapons. A quick search wouldn’t matter if their spy had some form of offensive magic. “He an Active?”

“Not that I am aware of.” Heinrich paused long enough to slap Skaggs hard on the cheek. It caused a cascading ripple through the fat of his face all the way to his extra chins. “Hey! Hey, wake up,
scheisskopf
. You try anything, I even feel a bit of magic, I feed you into a turbo-jet.” Heinrich hit him even harder to make the point. “Do you understand?”

From the all the flinching as Heinrich slapped him around, it was obvious that Skaggs wasn’t used to that sort of rough treatment. “Okay, okay! Stop, please.” Skaggs was blinking his way back to coherence. Finally realization dawned as to just how much trouble he was in and the begging started. “Oh no. Oh no. I didn’t do anything! Please don’t hurt me. Please, I’m begging you.”

Either he was legitimately terrified, or he was a damn fine actor. Sullivan wasn’t in the mood for either. “You’re getting off this blimp. Only question is if you’re taking the fast way or the slow way.”

“This is all a mistake!”

Sullivan held up the piece of glass. “The mistake was you thinking you could rat us out and not get caught.” Skaggs’ eyes flew back and forth from the piece in Sullivan’s hand to the remaining bits littering the floor. He was done and he knew it. “Who’re you working for?”