ElyriasEcstasy (27 page)

Calmly now, Bongo took the map from his coat. He held it up.
“This will show the way to the arsenal. There is a clear route. I can read this
better than anybody you’ve got. But,” he held it toward her, “if you want to do
this without me, I guess I can’t stop you.”

Urna detected no hint of impishness or irony in the man’s
manner. Bongo was being as serious as the Weapon had ever witnessed.

Arvra gazed at him, at the proffered map.

“Arvra…” Gator said, standing a step behind her.

Decision came to her. Her shoulders stiffened with it. “You
navigate,” she said to Bongo. “It’ll free up one more fighter for us against
the Passengers. You’ll be riding with me. If you fuck up, I might boot you out
under-Ship.” She softened this with a kind of sneering comradely curl of her
lips. “Gator drives the other vehicle.”

Blue eyes flashed toward Urna once more. He met them
steadily, admiring this woman’s air of command. There was no phony, unearned
authoritative demeanor about her, like he’d encountered time and again among
the military’s officers.

“And the Lux’s own Weapon here,” she said, the smile
changing, becoming something warmer, “he is going to watch over us tonight and
see to it that we all make it home safe. Right?”

All eyes were on him. Urna gave everyone a grin and said,
“Right.” Promising what could not be promised.

Chapter Fifteen

The word came at last from Marny. Not in person, but by way
of a note given to a messenger who had speeded it across the Citadel grounds,
from the Guard compound to the military’s, and who had delivered it into Rune’s
hand. Marny Vilst had signed the note and added some personal message at the
end. But the Shadowflash didn’t finish reading the sentimental addendum. He had
been waiting. Now he was on the move, enacting his plan.

His Guard lover with the pale-blonde hair said that Urna had
been spotted. A surveillance operation in a far-off border town had moments ago
reported seeing the fugitive Weapon. Evidently the Guard contingent there had
received orders to keep watch on the female companion who had visited Urna on
the night of his escape. After several days, he had now apparently turned up in
her company.

The border town’s local Guard unit was scrambling. But they
hadn’t yet apprehended the Weapon. That bespoke only of the inefficiency of
border companies. Shoddy organization led to such disasters.

Rune was determined that he would reach Urna first, despite
that he was hundreds of miles from the scene.

Stairs flashed beneath him as he raced up toward the roof.
Aphael Chav had personally chastised him for failing to bring back Urna. Since
then, however, it was remarkable how little attention had been paid to Rune. It
was almost like he was being shunned. He hadn’t even been called to drills
today.

He didn’t care. That inattention served him.

His combat clothes felt good on his body. The black cloth
covered his face, leaving free his eyes. His blindfold was in its customary
pocket. He had his pistol, the very one he had fired only twice in the
Unsafe—three times if he counted the discharging of it on that rooftop, on that
last mission with Urna, when they had playacted and he had pretended to be the
Weapon and Urna the Shadowflash. He remembered, with a sudden, almost cruel
vividness, how that game had ended. With Urna on hands and knees. With Rune,
cock thrusting—

Earlier he had snuck his gun out of the armory. He had
managed it with stealth, with subtlety. He’d used a coded card that he had
filched from, then returned to, a dozing sentry, all without the man ever
realizing. He also had a knife—just a kitchen utensil, really—tucked into his
right boot.

Now he reached the roof. It wasn’t the usual one from which
the Weapon/Shadowflash teams launched for their forays into the Unsafe. This
was the rooftop of one of the administration buildings, unused at night,
unwatched. Getting the set of wings up here had required some true ingenuity.
He had slipped them off a shelf in the repair shop where they’d lain, forgotten
it seemed, behind other pieces of military equipment awaiting refurbishments.

Part of his Shadowflash training had included a course in
field repairs, in case the wings ever malfunctioned on a mission. In a matter
of minutes he had been able to unclog the mechanism’s lines and get it working
again. Smuggling the wings up to this roof, though potentially perilous, had
necessitated in the end little more than careful timing. He had studied the
sentries’ patterns and slipped unseen between them.

Obtaining the radio that was secured to his belt had been
the easiest thing of all. The military was supplied with them. His was
currently tuned to the Guard channel that Marny said was used by the border
precincts. When he got out there he would have a ready source of immediate
intelligence.

The night sky was clear. But he would have flown in a
driving rain, even through the maddened forks of an electrical storm. Anything
to reach Urna. His soul mate. His antithesis. His need.

Rune, with fast, efficient moves, strapped on the harness.
The fuel gauge showed only half full but there was nothing he could do about
that. Stealing these wings from the repair shop was one thing. Pilfering fuel
would’ve been virtually impossible.

It didn’t matter. He was only concerned about getting where
he was going. Returning was meaningless right now. For all he knew he wouldn’t
be coming back from this undertaking.

But whatever happened out there, he would find Urna, face
him. And there would come a reckoning between the two men.

Rune fired the engines and lifted from the rooftop, the
wings carrying him toward his destiny.

* * * * *

Virge couldn’t help but feel a pity for those who lived here
on the border. Not only were the buildings they passed shabby and rundown, not
only was the awful presence of the looming Ship a weight that pressed on her
mentally and emotionally, but the very fact of the town itself evoked a kind of
outraged compassion. Why was it here? Why build so close to the Black Ship? Who
had decided that people should dwell within easy view of the Unsafe?

The truth was that this town had probably stood here in
pre-Black Ship days. Certainly the structures looked quite old. It was simply
that they hadn’t been kept up, which accounted for how dilapidated everything
looked. After the Ship’s arrival, after the Passengers had poured from it, the
human survivors of Elyria had retreated to the only place where the skies were
still clear. Where the world was as it had been. Thus, the Safe had been born.

Much of the detail of that was lost in the haze of history.
People, understandably, didn’t want to dwell on that long-ago calamity.

But there was only so much space in the Safe, only so many
places where humans might live. This town had either retained its original
population or it had eventually been recolonized, after people adjusted to the
new way of things. No doubt the Lux, who had—so the general legend went—seized
power in the wake of the Ship’s arrival, had decreed that people must live here
despite the hardships.

Reflexively Virge touched her forearm. Under the sleeve of
her uniform coat was her sterilization tattoo. She was hardly the only person
to be so modified. It was fairly common, in fact.

She glanced sidelong at Tuck Palarch, who had driven her out
to this border town at a fast clip. Now he was guiding their car along the side
streets, avoiding the people out cavorting in the dark. The place was “riled
up”, according to a Guard at a checkpoint. An early curfew might be called.

“This is all that Weapon’s fault,” the sword-wielding Guard
had gone on. “Stupid fucking military hotshot.” It had been picked up, like a
chorus, by the others at the checkpoint. Everybody voiced a low opinion of the
Lux’s military branch, singling out Urna in particular. The consensus was that
he was a coward, that he’d run away because he couldn’t take going on another
mission into the Unsafe.

Tuck even had contributed. “I never did think much of that
silver-haired freak.”

Virge had made no comment.

“Y’know, I never even thought to ask,” Tuck said now.
“You’ve never seen the Ship, have you?”

“No.”

The big Guard made a sympathetic noise. “I grew up in its
shadow. You won’t believe this, but when I joined the Guard and shipped out for
the first time, I kept looking around, looking up. I felt…uncomfortable. I was
missing
that gruesome monster.” He laughed at himself.

Virge shuddered. Then she took a grip on herself.

The size of the fucking thing was unbelievable! All her life
she’d known of the Black Ship. Everyone everywhere knew about the Ship. It was
the central defining reality of Elyria. The Black Ship was more important than
the Guard, the Lux. The Ship had changed this entire world. And here, for the
first time, she was seeing it.

Tuck said now in a reassuring tone, “It’s not as dangerous
here as you might think. You’ve probably heard horror stories about Passengers
creeping across the border all the time, but it hardly ever happens. Whatever
the hell those vile things are, they seem to need to stay immediately under
their Ship. My folks used to tell me that the fiends were as afraid of us as we
were of them. Don’t know if that’s true. But I do know you’ll be safe. With me.
I’ll make sure, Cawd.”

She looked at Tuck again and forced a smile to her lips. It
was quite possible that later tonight she would be lying with him. On the drive
here he had screwed up his courage and offered her a place to stay. He was a
Guard but he didn’t seem to be a monster. She remembered that he’d said he sent
part of his pay back here to his parents. That had struck her as a
fundamentally decent thing to do. He wasn’t handsome by any reasonable stretch
of the word, but he was far from hideous. Besides, looks weren’t everything.
Virge enjoyed lovemaking. She liked the intimacy, the escape from reality. It
was something no one could take away. Not the Guard, not the Lux. Not even
Aphael Chav himself, the evil old fuck.

The thought provoked a soft snicker from her.

Tuck was turning her way, asking, “What’s so—” when his eyes
snapped back, and he hit the brakes.

Virge lurched forward in her seat. Before she could ask what
was going on, Tuck had killed the car’s headlights, leaving its electric motor
droning quietly.

She looked around. They were almost at the gated entrance to
a wide black stretch of land, presumably the farm he had mentioned when
offering her a place to stay. The surrounding fence was falling apart. She
tried to follow Tuck’s intense gaze but she saw nothing. Until she did.

Farther along the property line there were bulky bundles
arranged into a number of haphazard towers. Hay, Virge realized as her eyes
adjusted to the Shiplit semi-dark. Bales of hay. Something was emerging from
among them. A vehicle. Now that she was focused on it, she could actually see
wisps of the dried grass spilling off it as it drove through a gap in the fence
and swung out onto the street.

On one side of the street ahead lay the farm, on the other
was the town. The vehicle—it was big, a commercial rig, with oversized
tires—went lumbering toward the town, picking up speed as she watched.

“Cawd,” Tuck said, “you might want to hop out here.” The
lights on the car’s controls gave his eyes a steely, threatening gleam. “I’m
going after whoever that is. I want to know what the hell those people were
doing on my folks’ farm.”

But Virge didn’t want to be left alone on the streets, under
the eerie Shiplight, in this strange town. She could still be discovered as
someone impersonating a Guard. Tuck was the only person she knew.

“I’ll stay with you,” she said. “Maybe I can help—”

But he’d already set the two-seat vehicle into motion,
racing it now. Large knuckles whitened on the steering controls. His blunt face
was grim but for the grin that appeared on it. “Now I’m wishing I hadn’t had to
leave my gun at the company armory,” he growled.

Virge, wondering just how serious this situation would get,
braced herself against the car door as Tuck took the turn, pursuing the rig
that had left a little trail of straw behind it.

* * * * *

The two others slated for tonight’s venture into the Unsafe
would meet the two parties nearby their respective vehicles. Urna was with
Gator, the big Maji man. Arvra was taking Bongo and his maps. Urna wanted to
say some kind of farewell to both but Arvra’s manner was brusque, thoroughly
professional. They had reviewed the plans for the raid. Now it was time to get
going.

They parted outside Gator’s place. People were still out in
the street. It was a strange sight. The town’s citizens were milling. The
younger ones were playing games, laughing, cheering for no reason Urna could
see. It wasn’t quite a festive mood, however. There seemed a dormant violence
running beneath these activities, awaiting some kind of stimulus to bring them
to life. Or else he was imagining it.

A few steps away from Gator’s door, Urna paused. He felt a
kind of twinge in his head. An instinct? An onsetting headache? For one
fleeting instant he felt certain he was being watched—looked at deliberately,
and with recognition. But there was no evidence of it. None of the passersby
were paying him any especial attention. He was still wearing the knit cap Bongo
had given him to hide his distinctive hair.

“What’s wrong?” Gator was at his elbow. He spoke in a low
tone.

Urna touched his temple. Maybe it was just a headache.
Only…he
did
feel something, and it wasn’t quite a pain. For a moment the
street suddenly wavered around him. Then the effect ceased abruptly. He blinked
and everything felt steady.

“Nothing’s wrong,” he said. “Lead the way.”

They went, moving through the streets. Urna saw few
lampposts and realized that even when they were lit, this town was probably a
very dim affair. Even so he was intrigued by the liveliness on display. A few
blocks from Gator’s house he saw a trio of women and heard the finely
harmonized song they were singing. Somewhere in the distance he also heard
glass break.

Gator showed no reaction to anything, merely maintained an
even, though not hurried, pace.

As they neared the edge of the town, on that side away from
the Ship, Urna again wondered about that sense of being watched, that feeling
that he had been identified by someone unseen. What would happen if that were
the truth? He had a sort of bounty on his head now. The Toplux had promised to
withhold electrical power from the whole of the Safe until his presumed
accomplices turned him over to the Guard. What if somebody
had
spotted
him? What if they were reporting him right this minute to the local garrison?

He dismissed these thoughts curtly, cleanly, leaving no
mental residue behind. He had been a Weapon. He still had his training, his
skills. He could still call on his operational discipline. Never had he allowed
fear to impair him on a mission. Never had cowardice affected his performance.

They collected the third person for their party at a corner.
She was waiting in a doorway, dressed in black clothes that reminded Urna of
his loose, comfortable combat uniform. “Pelkra,” was all the introduction Gator
offered. Pelkra gave Urna a tight nod, which he returned. Of her face, he
noticed little more than the white thick scar which ran from her ear to the
corner of her mouth.