ElyriasEcstasy (28 page)

From the corner they made their way across the final street,
slipping past a decaying fence, onto the grounds of a farm. The huge bales of
hay were there. A little digging was required to get them to the vehicle buried
among them. It was a sturdy transport, with large tires that would grip uneven
surfaces. The rear hold was quite large. Two hatches opened onto the roof and
he and Pelkra took seats beneath these. Gator settled in at the controls.

Pelkra reached under her seat, rummaged, arranging things.
When Gator started the engine the faint interior light came on. Urna saw that
Pelkra had a bow of dark oily wood and several bundles of arrows gathered at
her feet.

The sight jolted him briefly. But what had he expected? He
knew these people didn’t have guns. That was part of tonight’s objective—to
obtain weapons.

Yet the notion of entering the Unsafe in a ground vehicle,
with a bow and arrow as defense against the Passengers…all of it was for a
moment nearly beyond comprehension. But he had committed to this. And he would
see it through.

Pelkra was looking back at him now. He saw her scar again.
Another scarred woman. Had the Guard given her that mark? He looked instead
into her eyes, which were large and shimmering and actually quite lovely.

“Good luck,” he said to her.

“And to you.” One of those eyes winked. He grinned.

From the front of the transport Gator said, “Here we go.”

And they eased and shook their way free of the concealing
bales, and swung out onto the street.

* * * * *

Bongo, Arvra had learned, was another of these Order of Maji
people. It had rather dismayed her when Gator had earlier told her about
the—what? The organization? The movement? They were some sort of resistance,
plainly, and there were apparently quite a few of them scattered about the
Safe. They were organized enough to have sent Bongo here, with a map and a plan
to liberate a store of weapons from the Unsafe. The Maji were sufficiently
ingenious to have smuggled Urna the Weapon all this way.

But the rest of what Gator had told Arvra—magic, the
Far
safe?
It sounded crazy to her. Or at least eccentric.

She didn’t puzzle over it much as she and Bongo made their
way. The streets were lively. The two of them skulked quietly along, calling no
attention to themselves. The lack of streetlights helped. They reached the
place where the second of the two salvage vehicles was currently being stored.
It was inside a building with a false back on it, a whole wall that could be
swung away on hidden hinges. Hervo was waiting for them there. He was one from
Frank’s old crew, an aging but still amazingly tough individual. He had eyes
like flint and a face nearly as hard and dark. His hair was shaved down to a
gray whisper, a cut even more severe than a Guard’s. He had served a sentence
of a few months on a work farm after Frank’s operation had been discovered.

“How’s Frank?” he asked when Arvra and Bongo arrived. It was
always the same question whenever he saw her.

She answered as she always did. “Frank’s fine.” They both
knew otherwise but it had become a ritual, maybe the only way Hervo could
express his affection for his erstwhile comrade and his sympathy for Arvra.
Frank Finean was in the care of one of his regular tenders tonight. He wouldn’t
know that his sister was gone, wouldn’t acknowledge her when she returned.

If she returned. You had to put
if
to everything when
you were going scavenging into the Unsafe.

The transport was a six-wheeled thing, rust on its sides, a
converted farm vehicle. It had been given a quicker engine than its original,
though looking at the hulking monster you wouldn’t think it could budge faster
than a person could jog. Like the other vehicle they were using tonight, it had
a sizable cargo hold. Empty, it waited for the goods they meant to collect on
this raid.

Guns. Arvra, climbing inside, shook her head minutely. She
saw the sense of going to gather these weapons that were supposedly waiting out
there for them. If the Lux were ever to be seriously resisted, those resistors
would have to be well-armed. Still, it was a different kind of operation than
what she was used to.

She settled at the controls, started up the modified motor.
Bongo took the adjacent seat. Hervo went to open the false wall. When Arvra had
moved the transport out onto the street, Hervo closed up the building and
jumped nimbly into the vehicle, taking the rear seat, which was raised and
ringed with a set of small windows. The glass had been removed. Hervo took his
customized crossbow onto his lap. Arvra knew he was a fine shot with it. He’d
slain many a Passenger in the Unsafe with his accurately fired bolts. Frank, in
the old days, had bragged to his sister that Hervo ought to have signed up as a
Weapon.

That boast rang with irony and sorrow now in her memory.

She guided the rusted but powerful hulk through the empty
back streets. They were to rendezvous with Gator at the town’s periphery on the
Unsafe-ward side. From there they would set off on their foray. It would likely
be a big help, Arvra admitted, to have a navigator sitting next to her, guiding
the way. She glanced sidelong at Bongo.

Not a bad-looking guy. Not at all.

On the floor by her feet was a long blade with a handle that
she’d wrapped in strips of leather. It was a good weapon, just the right
weight. It was a last-ditch implement, however. She would only use it if the
Passengers swarmed this vehicle, if they were able to get inside. She was
relying on Hervo’s marksmanship with the crossbow. As well as Pelkra and her
bow and arrows. Gator’s vehicle would follow this one.

Of course, having Urna, an armed expert Weapon, along on
this excursion might just tip the odds of survival and success well in their
favor. Arvra nonetheless cautioned herself not to go thinking that the
operation was already accomplished. A lot could go wrong in the Unsafe.

As they neared the rendezvous point she saw Gator’s vehicle
approaching from a different direction. It too had kept to the less-used
streets. No sense in calling the attention of the whole town to this raid.

Arvra let a grim smile press her lips together. Then she saw
that Gator’s big-wheeled rig was being pursued.

Next to her Bongo was lifting a hand, pointing. “What’s
that?”

Behind, from his elevated seat, Hervo, who had the best
vantage, said, “It’s a car, civilian make. But—but there’s two Guard inside
it!”

Arvra had been slowing, meaning to make the turn that would
take them past the town’s border, off across the belt of wasteland that led
toward the truly decayed turf that lay beneath the Black Ship. Now she brought
the six-wheeled vehicle to a halt. Gator was still two blocks away. The
buildings here housed the few industries the town had. They were uninhabited at
this hour.

The pursuing car, Arvra saw, now sharply accelerated. Small
and quick, its headlights off, it leaped ahead and was about to overtake
Gator’s much larger transport.

That was when Arvra, wide-eyed, saw a hatch open on the
rig’s roof. A figure popped up into view. A cap, seized by the wind, flew from
its head, and silver hair went spilling. The figure raised a pistol.

* * * * *

Tuck had followed the bigger vehicle at a discreet distance.
Without headlights he’d steered, matching the other’s brisk speed. Virge felt
his intensity, his concentration on the task he had assigned himself.

Gone was the awkwardly flirtatious male of earlier, the one
who blushed so readily. Here at the car’s controls, instead, was a
Guard
,
a trained police official.

They had traveled several blocks. The larger rig was keeping
to unpopulated streets, moving with a purpose. Virge couldn’t see who occupied
the vehicle nor guess their intentions. It wasn’t even clear to her whether
they knew they were being followed. Tuck was maintaining a cautious gap.

Virge’s heart was beating fast but she wasn’t panicking. Not
at all. In a strange way this was fun, getting swept up in this unexpected
adventure. But it could all end badly. She definitely didn’t want to get
involved with anything that might turn official. She, after all,
wasn’t
a Guard.

If it came to that, hopefully she could just excuse herself
and slip away from the scene.

“Where do these bastards think they’re—” Tuck was muttering.
Then he caught himself, and his shoulders stiffened. “They’re a scav crew!
They’re heading into the Unsafe!”

He spoke with absolute certainty and Virge, looking forward,
saw that they were indeed moving toward the vast fungal glow that filled the
sky ahead. Any sense of high spirits abruptly vanished. This was no longer a
venture she wanted anything to do with. Even the vague thoughts of going to bed
with Tuck later on disappeared utterly from her mind.

“Hold on!” Tuck yelled, and raced the fleet little
two-seater, sending the vehicle hurtling forward. The street blurred past.

Virge braced herself. Plainly Tuck meant to overtake the
transport, presumably to cut in front of it in order to stop it. She only hoped
the much heavier vehicle didn’t simply plow over them. To his credit, though,
Tuck was keeping a sure, masterful control of their car.

They flew toward the rig. Suddenly it was looming. And just
as suddenly a hatch came open atop the vehicle. They were near enough that she
could actually hear the metal thud when it banged down upon the roof. A figure
emerged from the opening. A cap went flying and a great disarray of silvery
hair shook out into the streaming wind created by the transport’s speed.

Urna had a gun in his hand. Urna raised that gun. For an
instant, Virge Temple thought, it seemed that their eyes met.

Nevertheless, the instant ended with a flash from the gun’s
muzzle. After, their small car abruptly and violently pivoted and the street
heaved up all around them.

* * * * *

Pelkra was the first to see that they were being followed.
When Urna turned around in his seat and looked through the slit window just
below his hatchway, he squinted at the street rushing away behind them, seeing
nothing. Then he spotted the small car. At the same instant Pelkra said, voice
dead calm, “There are two Guard inside.”

Urna heard it as a call to action. However, this was not the
specific mission to which he’d been assigned. He was to defend this little
convoy of two vehicles once they were inside the Unsafe. Any action taken
within this town must be ordered by one of the operation’s commanders.

Military training. The instincts were certainly still in
place, still giving pattern to his thinking.

Gator hadn’t looked back. He evidently took Pelkra’s word.
They were on what looked like the final stretch of roadway before the town’s
edge. “Urna,” Gator said, “can you disable that car?”

Urna let the clanging hatch answer as he sprang up, the
pistol sliding easily into his hand. The cap Bongo had given him was snatched
from his head. Before it even fell to the street he had the gun aimed, was
tightening his finger on the trigger.

When he saw Virge Temple—or someone who looked impossibly
like Virge—sitting in the pursuing car’s passenger seat, it was too late. He
was a professional killer. A slayer of Passengers. On missions into the Unsafe
there was no ambiguity, no need for mitigating thought, for instantaneous
judgments. Everything moving was the target. Every shot was a kill shot.

Had he had one extra second, however, one tiny sliver of
time stuck in amongst these fleeting instants, he might have delayed firing. If
only to confirm what he’d seen, or thought he had seen.

But the trigger was already pulled. And his shot was, as
expected, absolutely accurate.

His bullet blew out the left front tire and the small,
sporty car banked sharply. Sparks flew in a great, blazing spray. The vehicle,
which had surged ahead at high speed, now helplessly overturned. It scraped
along the street, belly up, more sparks scattering from its roof.

Urna felt a cold horror. Very different from the
satisfaction he would’ve expected at fulfilling Gator’s order so completely.

He dropped back through the hatchway and said, “Stop! I know
someone in that car and she’s no Guard.”

Again without turning, without asking a question, Gator
braked the rig. Urna was out through the roof, hopping off the rear of the
transport. The car, still capsized, had come to a halt. Urna raced to the
passenger side, knelt. He felt shards of glass under his knee.

Virge Temple was spilled haphazardly against the car’s roof.
But her eyes were open and they were the lustrous brown he recognized. Her hair
was quite different, however, nothing more than sad stubble now, and the
configuration of her features wasn’t…quite right.

But this was her. He was convinced. Even if she
was
wearing a Guard uniform.

The car’s driver, similarly crumpled against the roof, was
moaning, one limb weakly flailing. Urna saw blood but it didn’t appear to be
gushing out of the man at any appreciable speed.

Planting his weight, seizing the handle, the Weapon wrenched
open the passenger side door. Its top scraped the street’s asphalt. He gathered
Virge into his arms, pleased when one of those eyes widened. She saw him, knew
him.

Grinning as he ran back toward the rig, he found the breath
to say, “You’ll have to tell me why you decided to join the Guard.” And she
made a hiccupping sound that was close enough to a laugh.

Gator had waited. Pelkra threw open the back door on Urna’s
side and he got in, cradling Virge.

“Here come the Guard,” Pelkra said, still with no emotion
whatever in her tone. The woman with the scarred face and lovely eyes was again
looking behind. “I’d guess that’s the whole garrison,” she added.

The transport was moving forward once more. It rapidly
picked up speed. Glancing up from Virge, whom he was holding in his lap, Urna
saw another big vehicle ahead. It had six wheels, rusty sides. It was Arvra in
the other salvage rig. It was moving as well, turning toward the bordering
tundra that lay between the town’s edge and the outer fringe of the Black Ship
itself.