A Prison Unsought (81 page)

Anaris lifted the ship away from the planet, arcing away
toward the nearest moon. From the communications console the recorded voice of
the Panarch repeated its dispassionate message, reporting the position of the
shuttle and its condition.

“Communications,” said Anaris.
“We’ll take up station behind the moon. Stand by to deploy a relay.”

He gave Morrighon a mordant smile. “It should be a touching
reunion,” he said.

Gath-Boru carefully set the old man down against a wall
and lent his strength to closing the doors.

“We can’t hold the outer hatch shut
against a determined assault,” said one of the Panarchists, a short, dark-brown
man. “And we still have the Rifters to deal with.”

As if to underline his words, the little metal room
resounded to an impact on the doors. Gath-Boru motioned the guards with him to
help hold it closed.

The Panarch looked up from where he sat, wincing as a small
woman carefully cut through the arrow shaft in his shoulder with some sort of
metal tool. Gath-Boru stared; it cut the tough ironwood shaft as though it were
a reed.

“I don’t think they’ll be a
problem. Our friend here brought along some of that bioweapon they use—” He
looked up at the general. “What do you call that dust that kills?”

“Spore-tox.”

“Their sensors will have revealed
its toxicity. It only needs a small hole through the hatch, which they know
they can’t prevent.” The old man smiled at Gath-Boru. “Even without it, one
look at you would probably convince them to surrender.”

The general smiled back, uncertain how to respond.

“It missed the major vessels and
nerves,” said the little woman. “If you’re careful, you’ll do.”

Evidently seeing Gath-Boru’s expression of incomprehension,
the sky-lord explained the situation to him. The ship’s control was held by
enemies. Once they were overcome, the ship could lift off, if they could hold
the lock against the Tasuroi.

“And if you cannot?” asked
Gath-Boru. He remembered what the old man had said to the Ironqueen about the
engines.

The Panarch comprehended instantly. “We will not allow this
vessel to fall into the hands of your enemies.” The old man’s smile was grim.
“Is it your custom to burn your dead?” he asked.

Gath-Boru hesitated at the oddity of the question. “Yes.”

“Then, if we fail, your pyre will
consume your enemies in thousands.”

“We won’t fail,” said a tall, thin
man, addressing the Panarch. “You and Matilde can run the lift-off from the
bridge. The rest of us can hold the lock—the Rifters have a couple more jacs,
and there are enough breathing masks in the locker for us and our new allies.”

He turned from Gelasaar to Gath-Boru. “We should be able to
hold the lock long enough to lift off.”

Gath-Boru saw comprehension in the Panarch, sorrow and
gratitude, and he understood. It was unlikely anyone in the lock would survive.

“Until death take me, or the world
end.” The other Panarchist woman in the room smiled, though tears glittered
along the lower rims of her eyes.

Her oath expressed, in different words, the oath he himself
had taken to the Ironqueen, and with a full heart Gath-Boru knew that these men
and women from beyond the sky understood loyalty and love just as he did.

“This is a good company to die in,”
he said, and their responding smiles were all the answer he needed.

o0o

Londri’s forces stopped the Tasuroi at the breastworks on the
crest of the hill from which they had attacked the shuttle that afternoon. The
cannibals fell back, decimated by determined archery and a squad of
artillerists armed with sporetox—fortunately the lack of wind favored its use.

Londri dispatched runners, but war-horn interrogatives
brought back grim news. Comori had fallen, and reinforcements would not reach
them anytime soon. It would be all they could do to hold this position. They
could only harass them with archery, and their arrow supply was low. The two
heavy catapults left from her own assault had fallen to the Tasuroi before the
Ferric Guard threw them back; at least the crews had cut the cords before
fleeing, rendering them useless.

But the Tasuroi had lost interest in them, turning instead
to assault the ship; she could do nothing to stop them. She cursed under her
breath as the hordes gave way to allow a company of Aztlan soldiers to bring up
spore-tox and never-quench, while the cannibals pried at the doors to the
grounded vessel.

After a time, they succeeded in levering them open and
jamming them with a log. A thread of fire lanced out of the crack they’d forced
and speared a Tasuroi who had not backed away fast enough; his head exploded in
a flare of bloody smoke, the body flopping in senseless spasms to the burned
and ashy ground.

A hail of arrows clattered uselessly against the doors and
surrounding hull. Several flew through the opening. Another line of fire lanced
out.

Londri watched as a light catapult took aim. The spore-tox
bolt flew true against the doors, bursting in a deadly haze through the slit
between the two halves.

The Tasuroi ran forward again, accompanied by Aztlan
soldiers, only to be met once more by the fire weapon: two bolts lanced out,
swinging from side to side in a deadly scythe that tore through flesh and armor
with equal ease.

“They are no doubt wearing masks
against toxic substances,” said Stepan from behind her. “Never-quench will do
little more, except perhaps from fire-tubes.”

“How long will it take for them to
be able to fly?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “We can
only hope it’s less time than it takes the Tasuroi and Aztlan to overcome the
lock party.”

“And if not?”

Stepan shook his head. “Then they will trigger the engines,
and we will all die.”

Inside the shuttle, Yosefina called at last, “Bridge secured!”

She didn’t wait for the shouts of relief and thanks, but
hastened to the com. A short interval passed, as everybody paused to draw
breath, then she called out, “The Rifters surrendered. Matilde
estimates ten minutes to lift-off. Wants to know how we’re holding up.”

Mortan Kree stepped forward, laughing. “Tell him we’ll make
it—”

He jerked, clutched his shoulder where an arrow suddenly
sprouted, but he did not drop his jac. Yosefina Paerakles turned away from the
com and checked the power on her weapon.

Mortan began to check his jac, but stopped as a burning
sensation flared in his shoulder. Horror bolted along his nerves when he saw the
brownish-red fuzz erupting from the arrow wound. Spore-tox. He turned to the
massive Gehennan general. “Do you have an antidote to this?”

Gath-Boru shook his head. “It can’t be used on living flesh.
Fire sometimes works.”

Kree motioned Caleb closer and indicated his jac. “Try
setting that to wide dispersion, lowest power setting. Let’s see if cautery
will slow it down.”

Caleb grimaced, but did as suggested. The Gehennans looked
on dispassionately. Kree guessed they were used to much worse.

The pain of the burn blinded him with excruciating white
heat for an endless pulse, then the agony dwindled to the red-hot of burning
coal. Kree blinked through blurry eyes at the wound. The cautery did seem to
slow the spread of the fungus, or whatever it was.

More arrows clattered against the back wall. Yosefina
stepped up and fired back, drawing a scream of agony. She grinned over her
shoulder, but before she could speak a thin tube thrust through the crack and a
stream of liquid drenched her. Her clothes smoldered for a second, and then she
shrieked as she erupted in a column of flame, her skin cracking open and
peeling away.

The firestop in the bulkhead foamed her, too late. Somehow,
fumbling with fingers burned to the bone, she reset her jac, stumbled to the
door and released the entire remaining charge at full aperture, provoking a
chorus of screams as she took her killers into death with her. Then she toppled
through the doors and was gone.

Weakness spread inexorably through Mortan Kree’s arm, cold
ramifying into his chest. This is it, he thought; the numbness spread, damping
all emotions except focus as he forced his clumsy fingers to dial his jac to
the same setting.

He grinned at Caleb and Gath-Boru, feeling one side of his
mouth droop as the toxin mounted toward his brain.

“My turn now,” he said, and stepped
into the opening of the doors, the spore-tox already blooming around his
shoulders and head. He triggered his weapon. A flare of light accompanied by
agonized screams announced the death of countless more attackers. Then an arrow
lanced into his throat and he fell bonelessly out of the ship.

At the other end of the shuttle, Matilde sat back, wiping
her good hand down her clothes. “Core regeneration complete. Lift-off
in three minutes. Radiant flush cycle initiated.” She poked her little finger
in the air. “We’ll even have a little left over for shielding, so it won’t
matter that the lock is jammed open.”

The Panarch smiled at her. Outside, a star flickered in the
twilight sky, growing in brightness against the lightning-like discharges of
the Knot.

“There he is,” he said, jutting his
chin at the screen. “We’ll meet him halfway.”

At the lock, the doors began to grind apart. The last Privy
Councilor fired carefully at the ends of the wooden levers, but he could only
delay the inevitable. The doors opened wide and the Tasuroi poured in.

The jac charred the first wave of attackers, exploding
bodies in a bloody fog; then the beam of power from it faltered and died. The
next wave of attackers rolled over the Panarchist, who tried to counter a blow
with his weapon, but the weight of the Tasuroi’s club bore the weapon back
against him and crushed his skull.

Motioning his soldiers back around him, Gath-Boru backed up
against the inner door, meeting the onslaught with the steel that had given the
Crater hegemony over the kingdoms of Gehenna, and soon the metal room was
splashed with blood.

And then the floor quivered.

From outside, Londri watched in horror and rage as Aztlan
directed the assault on the ship. “Damn the traitor!”

Then a puff of steam lifted lazily from beneath the machine.

“I believe they are preparing to
lift off,” Stepan declared.

Both he and Londri fell silent, their hearts and minds with
Gath-Boru, whose Ferric Guard fell one by one to the clubs of the Tasuroi until
Gath-Boru alone was left. He had always known his huge body had condemned him
to an early death from heart failure: it was the mark of his line, so he did
not fear dying. He feared only failure, but that was the specter that haunted
him now as the Tasuroi pressed ever inward, disregarding the scything sweep of
his sword. The door behind him was locked, but it would fall all too soon to
the battering rams of Aztlan if he fell.

His arms grew heavy, but he knew if he faltered they would
overwhelm him in a moment.

Then, louder than his laboring heart, the machine gave a
coughing roar, like the great saber-cat of the Surimasi Mountains. A flare of
light joined the maddened howls of the damned. The Tasuroi fell back;
emboldened, he pushed into them, slashing until the room was empty of aught but
the dead. The roar repeated, and brought with it a wave of heat.

The attackers had fallen back at last, but the sound of the
wind rising replaced their shouts. He peered around the door and his breath stuttered
in his chest.

Far below, burned bodies heaped around a shallow, glassy
crater; and around that, the scattered forces of the two armies looked up. He
caught a glimpse of a pale face upturned, above gleaming red armor, but the
ground fell away too fast for him to be certain.

Gath-Boru watched, fascinated, as the battlefield dwindled
into insignificance and vanished. Soon the horizon took on a definite curve; he
squinted as the sun rose again, but the sky darkened. He gasped for air, but
did not move away from the door—he appreciated that something was keeping the
wind of their flight away from him.

His nose began to bleed, and his vision blurred, but joy
burned inside his chest, expanding fiercely. As the world became a vast
blue-white bowl beneath him, his last thought was that he had done what Londri
had always wanted: first of all those born upon Gehenna, he had escaped.

Gath-Boru smiled, and then the darkness closed in and
carried him away.

Ng leaned forward in her command pod, as if she could
impel the cruiser to greater speed.

In the main screen the Knot flared with actinic brightness,
great sheets of lightning-like discharges sweeping through canyon walls of
light. The huge ship could no longer safely skip, and the bright point of light
ahead that was Gehenna grew with painful slowness.

“I have a visual, sir,” said
Wychyrski.

The screen blanked, filled with static, then cleared enough
for her to make out the cramped bridge of a standard shuttle with four people,
two seated at the consoles and two standing in the background. The dapper
bearded figure in the center caused a surge of overwhelming emotion. “The
Panarch!” Then her nerves chilled when she saw a bloody wooden shaft protruding
from his shoulder.

“Your Majesty,” she said, rising.

Belatedly—a measure of the stunning sight of their ruler in
real-time—her crew also rose.

The famous face smiled across the distance between them. “No
time for niceties, Captain: well done.” Then, apparently seeing her alarm, he
touched his wound. “This is not as serious as it looks.”

Ng bowed again as the crew sat down slowly. “Status, Your
Majesty?”

Gelasaar hai-Arkad turned to the soot-smeared figure at his
right. Ng recognized Matilde Ho, Gnostor of Energetics, only by her voice as
she said crisply, “We’ll clear atmosphere in three minutes.”