Palatine First (The Aurelian Archives) (37 page)

The second Vee erupted out of the darkness, a strange silver-antennaed gun in his hand…there was a sizzling noise, like bacon cooking in a pan…a blue streak shot out of the gun and as Hayden tried to dive out of its way, struck his leg. He felt a burst of tingling in his knee before it became as unresponsive as the leg of a stranger.

As the Vee leaped over the handcuffed Gideon, Gideon pounced, his hands miraculously unbound, and roped his arms around his white neck, wrestling him to the ground. Hayden’s attention zoomed from the tussle to the Vee with the half-charred face, who had pantingly dragged himself out of the fireplace. There were still-smoldering ashes clinging to his black jumpsuit, though parts of it had been entirely peeled away by the flames to show scraps of white skin covered in blisters and black, bleeding sores.

Hugh tackled the Vee around the middle and rolled him away from Hayden; the Vee screamed in agony, a scream that Hayden knew would call in the others posted outside the door.

“Po! Po, seal the door!”

Scrambling, her boots sliding and screeching over the wooden floor, Po threw herself towards the hatch as the burned Vee screamed and wailed, pinned by Hugh to the blood-smeared ground.

“Shut him up!” Gideon growled through gritted teeth, pulling the flat of his forearm up against the throat of the Vee he had from behind. The Vee’s eyes kept rolling back into his head as he dithered between consciousness and the alternative.

Looking disgusted with himself, Hugh covered the Vee’s mouth with a hand. “H-Hayden—”

Hayden crawled to his aide, dragging his still-tingling leg. The sores, the blisters, the blood, none of it bothered him—he’d seen burn victims before during his practicals at The Owl—but he couldn’t stand the thought that he had done this, even to a Vee. The hate and anger had all trickled out of him and left him with a feeling of blank shock. He pressed steady fingers to the side of the Vee’s throat and held them there until the Vee stopped fighting and appeared to fall asleep before their eyes.

It had fallen quiet in the boiler room, so that the crackling fire sounded loud. Gideon leaned up from laying the other seemingly sleeping Vee on his stomach, breathing heavily through his nose. Hugh folded Sophie, who was rocking back and forth with her glazed eyes staring over the tops of her knees, into his chest and murmured gently into her hair, which he stroked with a trembling hand.

A
thump
that sounded twice as loud as it should have made Hayden’s hands slip as he gently inspected the Vee’s burns.

“They’re tryin’ to get in,” Po’s voice called nervously. She reappeared, twisting her hands over her stomach. “I sealed it and locked it as many ways as I knew how…it should hold, at least until they get a thermal torch on it.”

Gideon, Hayden noticed, was handling the Vee’s silver lightning gun with the hand still trailing his irons. His other hand he held away from himself, his thumb jutting out at a crooked angle. Dislocated.

“How well do you know this place?” he asked Po as he let Hayden examine the displacement of his thumb.

“What,
The Jester
?” Po sounded surprised. “I ain’t never been aboard her, but she must be about the same as any heliocraft fitted with a Quadrant 7. You know, back pipings and about four boiler rooms like this one to generate heat enough for the balloon.” She nodded vaguely upward.

Another time, the faces Gideon was making as Hayden realigned his thumb would have been comical.”Is there another way outta here?”

Po looked around for a minute and jumped when another thump sounded behind her. “Just the pipes. They’ll all have ladders runnin’ up them, for maintenance.”

“That’s where we’ll go then, Aitch,” Gideon said, and Hayden looked up with raised eyebrows. “What, you fancy waitin’ around for the Vees to bust in the door and Reece get himself killed? You and me’ll shimmy up the pipes, circle back behind the Vees and hit them with this—” he waved the silver gun, “and then while you get Soph and your da into hidin’, I’ll run and help Reece.”

Something seemed suspect about that plan, Hayden thought as he chewed his lip and with a final, capable twist, returned the thumb to its place. Po confirmed this as she sat down by Gideon and stared intently into his face.

“
The Jester’s
airborne now, you can’t get up those pipes! The air that goes through there is hot enough to flay a flea off a rat’s back…if you got caught in the draft…”

“So turn it off.”

“It’s not as easy as turnin’ it off!” Po looked upset. “That air is keepin’
The Jester
airborne. If you cut off that feed, the balloon—” She quailed beneath the Gideon’s glare.

Intervening, Hayden suggested, “Maybe you could shut down just one pipe?”

Tilting her chin and staring thoughtfully into space, Po murmured, “I guess I could tamper with the gauges and change the timin’ on the heat discharges…it’d prolly give you a five minute window to get up to the next level and get clear.”

Hugh spoke up for the first time, his voice slightly muffled in Sophie’s hair. Sophie still hadn’t surfaced from his jacket. “Hayden, I want you to stay here.”

“What?” Hayden looked over at his father, his eyebrows drawn together. “But Gideon—”

“I think Gideon’s proven himself capable,” Hugh said dryly, clearing his throat. He raised his chin over Sophie’s blonde hair, and Hayden saw the kind of sternness in his face that meant Hayden wouldn’t be getting his way no matter how he hemmed and hawed. “And besides, your leg won’t be ready to climb anything for some minutes yet. Gideon?”

Gideon shrugged one shoulder as if he couldn’t see how it mattered either way.

“You shouldn’t go alone,” Hayden stiffly insisted.

Po had been staring at her lap, concentrating on her fidgeting hands, but now she suddenly stood. “I could go,” she offered a little apprehensively. “In fact, I think I should. I’m used to climbin’ through engines. You might need a guide to get outta the Quadrant. And if
he
wakes up…” she jerked her head without looking at the unconscious Vee Hayden had been tending, “…you’ll need to put him under again, Hayden.”

Gideon and Hayden stared at each other for a moment. Unable to find an argument, Hayden finally, unwillingly, nodded. Useless, again.

“Just take care’a your family,” Po said gently as she led Gideon off into shadow, clinging to the wrench she had procured from an old toolbox in the corner of the boiler room.

Hayden watched them go and felt the fight fizzle out of him; his shoulders slumped, and he looked glumly over at his father and Sophie to find their eyes on him.

“They’ll be alright,” Sophie peeped as she eased herself out of the protective cage of Hugh’s arms and took one of Hayden’s hands in both of hers. Hayden gave her warm hands a squeeze as if trying to press more certainty into her words.

In the darkness, the hatch continued to thump.

Po weaved confidently between boilers and cylinders, keepin’ just barely in sight, her shape a blur through the sticky steam shootin’ in continuous jets from trappin’s around the room. Much as Gideon was glad’a somethin’ useful to do, of bein’ able to put a plan into action, he had his misgivin’s, largely owin’ to Po. His parents were prolly rollin’ in their graves, seein’ him draggin’ a girl into this sorta danger. Though it really felt like Po was doin’ the draggin’.

“Here!” Po had stopped at the very back’a the deceivingly large boiler room.

Two steps in front’a her, the floor dropped down into a deep basin. At the bottom’a the basin was a mammoth black pipe mouth, gapin’ wide, lookin’ hazy in the heat it was puttin’ out. Above the basin were three smaller pipes. Laced together like a braid, they spiraled up through the ceilin’ and outta sight. It wasn’t hard for Gideon to think’a the big pipe as a mouth, and the other three as a set’a panpipes that were waitin’ to be blown on to make a sound.

Po scooted closer to the edge’a the basin and put her hands on her knees to look down into it. She had to wipe sweat from her forehead before she straightened again not five seconds later.

“This is gonna be tricky.”

“Can you do it?”

In answer, Po circled the basin and went to the metal power box built into the snakin’ tubes that hid the walls. She pried it open and started tinkerin’, mutterin’ too quietly for Gideon to make out any particular words, her hands flutterin’ over the box controls.

A few moments later, she scurried back around the basin to the sound of a fan powerin’ down, a little too close to the edge for his peace’a mind. Flinchin’, he grabbed her arm and yanked her a few steps to the left. She hardly seemed to notice.

“That wasn’t so bad. I programmed a release’a cool air to flush all the heat outta the pipe so’s we don’t scald ourselves.” She thrust a pair’a thick mechanical gloves at his chest. “Expect we’ll still need these—the metal is likely to be a little toasty.”

With a wild howl, air started pourin’ outta the leftmost pipe, pleasantly cool on Gideon’s bruised face. Dust scampered and whirled across the floor while Po’s braid flopped against her back.

Diggin’ into her back pocket, Po pulled out a junky watch. She tapped its face. “Soon as that air stops, we’ll have six minutes and forty-three seconds to get up the tube before…” She faltered and snapped the watch around her wrist.

“You could stay here,” Gideon suggested, uncomfortable.

Po looked up and braved a smile. “So could you. But Reece needs us.”

The wind cut off with one last gasp. Together, they hurried to the edge’a the basin, where the lowest rungs’a the three ladders runnin’ up the tubes were barely visible.

“Boost?” Po asked.

Gideon cupped his hands, accepted her foot, and lifted till her head disappeared inside the tube and her feet started kickin’ as she squirmed up the ladder. Hands gloved, he leaned and grabbed hold’a the rung. His feet dropped from the ledge and dangled as he pulled himself up the tube, which was just tight enough for his elbows to scrape the sides if he didn’t keep them tucked into his chest.

They climbed without talkin’ the first three or so minutes. The sound’a their breath came back to them louder than it should’ve. All the metal was biscuit-pan warm, and added to the feel’a them being in a giant oven. Sweat trickled down Gideon’s face, burned in his eyes.

“We nearly there?” he grunted, lookin’ down between his feet. There was a coin-sized drop’a orange light far below; all else was black.

“Should be.” Po sounded uncertain. “Maybe another fifteen—” She stopped suddenly. “Do you…hear somethin’?”

He did. Somewhere—overhead or down below, the tunnel’s reverberant length made it hard to tell—a fan had started purrin’.

Gideon was grippin’ the rungs so hard his fingers felt numb. “Move!”

Po’s clothes rustled and her boots clanged as she continued upward. Gideon stayed close behind her, hampered by how slow her fastest was.

“I see the fork in the tubes!” Po suddenly shouted, her relief echoin’ four times over. “It’s just—ARGH!”

Gideon looked up in time to catch a boot with his face—goin’ by the squeak’a rubber on rung, Po’s foot had slipped. Gideon followed up her scream’a alarm with a growl’a pain and took her flailin’ boot in hand before she knocked out his teeth.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry!”

“Bleedin’—just forget about it! Keep climbin’, we’re runnin’ outta time!”

“I…Gideon, I’m stuck!”

Gideon squinted up, barely able to make out Po wigglin’ violently as she tried to free her other boot. It was wedged between the ladder rungs and the wall.

Spurred on by the thrummin’a the fan growin’ persistently louder, Gideon squeezed his shoulders up into the gap by her feet and tried reachin’ a hand into the tight fold’a space. His arm wouldn’t go in past his wrist, his fingers just brushin’ her bootlaces.

“How’d you—”

“I don’t know, I just slipped. I can’t hardly move it—it’s too tight around my ankle.”

“I can’t reach it,” Gideon said through gritted teeth, stretchin’ his fingers as far as they would go.

Meanwhile, the hummin’ was gainin’ power, and the tube was gettin’ hot. Gideon’s back prickled as sweat rolled down his neck.

“You gotta pull harder!”

“I’m pullin’ as hard as I can!” Po said loudly, her voice crackin’. The rung strained against her struggle.

Face screwed up in effort, Gideon managed to wring another tenth of an inch outta his arm. His forefinger hooked one’a Po’s laces, and he yanked. The knot fell apart in his hand, undone.

“Gideon…the fan—”

“
I know
!” He pressed a forearm to his eyes. The heat felt touchable, like a dense bog all around them.

“Y-you should go! You should go on!”

“I can’t fit around you, burn it, and I don’t got time to go back…you just gotta pull harder!” Spewin’ a stream’a Mordecai’s favorite Pantedan curses, Gideon twisted Po’s bootlaces and tugged till they snapped. He stared at the outline’a the broken strings in his hand as if not believin’ what he was seein’.

Po suddenly made an exultant noise, and Gideon felt the rung rattle madly as she went at the boot with fresh determination. “My foot’s comin’ outta the boot!”