Sly Mongoose (36 page)

“Falling back into door-to-door fighting is good,” Pepper said. He didn’t sound affected by it at all. “Touch seems to be the way they communicate fastest, so the open fields were dangerous. Here we break them down into individual units with basic instructions.” He fired again as another one stumbled down a set of stairs.

It dropped back minus a head, blood geysering out from its throat. Timas jerked his eyes back down the street, but it felt like the image had seared itself onto the back of his head.

“Keep moving,” Pepper said.

They hurried through the streets, retreating with the surviving hundreds that converged on the elevators and emergency stairwells.

Timas looked around, astounded as the survivors lined up quietly. No pushing, no noise. They all rode the city down to its bitter end, fighting
the Swarm for every last inch. And they didn’t see the need to panic, they just maintained their determination. It took ten overly long minutes to wait in line, trusting people near the back to keep the Swarm at bay.

The Swarm had gotten within a couple hundred feet when they stepped into the elevator and headed down.

Far overhead the city groaned. The layers were exerting heavier loads on the parts of the shell that were undamaged. As they slowly descended through the atrium Timas saw fires burning among buildings, gardens, and avenues. They passed opposite the other side where a tiny figure of a single person with a billhook held off seven Swarm advancing on him. The man climbed up onto the balcony after one of them bit him. He plummeted down the atrium’s shaft, hitting some of the spars on his way down.

Pepper watched the body fall, but made no comment.

The air got better. Here it was trapped behind street bulkheads, in between layers, and in the atrium. Timas stopped wheezing.

When the elevator got to the docks Pepper ducked out first, checked the area, then waved Timas on. Before he stepped out of the elevator, the brown murky light washed out into a general dimness. Timas looked up through the elevator’s transparent top, up the long shaft all the way to the top of the city. He could see the undersides of the clouds. They’d passed through.

He ran out after Pepper.

Down here, it was like the exodus in all the other layers hadn’t happened. Grim-looking Jaguar scouts manned the same defenses Timas had passed on the upper layer to get to the atrium.

Pepper and Timas used call and response passwords to pass through. Several men had large jugs of pulque and big smiles. They were dead men, finding liquid courage.

Timas couldn’t blame them.

Others sat with their guns cradled, business as usual, waiting for some threat to attack them.

“We didn’t have time to assemble,” they told Pepper. “We were to be the second wave, but the cities separated, so we retreated down here so we could at least die with dignity.”

Several of them had come down, layer by layer. “We found some children in the houses in the mid-layers,” they reported. “Their parents couldn’t get them up to the upper layer or down here to the airships that were leaving.”

They took Pepper and Timas to the alien airship, where the hatch had been shut. “Do you know how to fly it?”

Some of these people had drawn straws to fly out on the last airship that had risked docking with the city. And those that had found escape bubbles stocked in the docks had already since bubbled out.

A little less than half the city had escaped, they all guessed, comparing notes. Although what the thousands who crossed into Aegae would find, no one knew for sure.

The mid-layer children had missed both chances. They stood huddled together in a small group, grim, tired faces regarding Pepper with a faint flicker of hope.

“I can’t fly it,” Pepper said. “I have no idea. But it is designed to survive the surface, and inside it will have anti-crash mechanisms. There’s a good chance they’ll survive the impact. The city has enough air in its buildings and inner structures that even as it drops down, with remaining buoyancy, heated air, and the thicker atmosphere, terminal velocity will be fairly low. Leave them in there.”

But there was no more room for Timas once the children were herded into the alien machine.

Timas turned to Pepper, who looked at the mechanical hand in front of him. The hand that Pepper didn’t have.

P
epper made a fist. “Timas, I’m not going to risk being infected. If I bubble off and get picked up by them, I’m an easy capture. There are things I know that the Swarm could use.”

“You’re Pepper, damn it!” Timas looked slightly panicked, certainly trapped.

“I can’t risk it.” Pepper grabbed him by the elbow and forced him to march along.

The damn kid had complicated it all. All he had to do was to follow what he’d been told and invade the other city with everyone else. It had been a bold gesture, trying to save Pepper’s life. But sadly, one with consequences. Whether fair or not.

Pepper led him into the prep rooms for the groundsuits and pushed Timas toward the nearest, a bulky yellow one. “Let’s suit you up.”

Timas didn’t get it for a long second.

“Move,” Pepper snapped. They didn’t have much time. Timas jumped into motion. Pepper helped him get into the insectlike contraption. “You have almost the same chance as the kids in that craft back there, in your suit. The heat, the pressure, they won’t kill you. The impact, that won’t kill you as long as you find a solid place to hide with some cushioning. What might kill you is the structural collapse.”

Timas stared as Pepper snapped the torso together. “Collapse?”

“When the damn city hits the ground and starts breaking up. I recommend not going to the upper layer, as parts of the city’s wall will break off and fall onto it. Get a couple layers beneath that, but as close to the atrium as possible—it’s stronger.”

“You’re leaving me here to die.”

“We’re both at extremely high risk for dying; don’t assume the bubble will work. We could get picked up by the Swarm.”

“You’re leaving me here to die,” Timas repeated.

“I have
responsibilities
,” Pepper said. “One of them is to destroy this threat. The last is revenge. You’re panicking right now, but you’re not
dead. You need to keep yourself pulled together. You made a mistake, I’m trying to help you save your life.”

Pepper grabbed the collar of the groundsuit. “I would go down if my suit didn’t leak. I would have gone for the aliens. I would ride the city down to the surface with you. You understand. I’m not asking you to do anything I wouldn’t, if I had the right equipment. Understand?”

Timas swallowed. “But we’re falling out of the sky.”

“When they drop probes on planets like Chilo they don’t include parachutes.” Pepper tapped Timas on the cheek. “They let them drop out of the sky. If you want cloud data, you use the parachute to hang out up here for a while. But if you’re headed for ground, you jettison it. How fast does the probe, filled with delicate instruments, hit the surface in soupy air like this?”

“I don’t know.”

“Timas, look me in the eye and guess.” Pepper again tapped the collar of the suit, getting him to look forward.

“A hundred miles an hour?”

“Fifteen.”

“Fifteen?”

“Fifteen miles an hour. The thickness of the atmosphere that deep changes terminal velocity. The city will still have air, compressed into odd spots, but still helping buoyancy. The heat will also add buoyancy. It’s why your suit filled with air gets easier for you to use down on the surface than up here.”

“Fifteen.” Timas looked down.

“The atrium is the core of the city, made out of nanofilament, as are the layers. They’ll flex, but hold at those speeds.” Well, near the atrium they should, the edges would snap for sure. But Timas didn’t need to know that. “You keep your cool. Find a place that’s soft and safe where I just told you, and then your job is to get to Hulbach so that they can go rescue those kids from the craft down in the docks. Here, this is a beacon, you hang it from your neck. Use your chin to trigger it. Even Hulbach will hear it. It’s pretty powerful. Raga from orbit will hear it, okay?”

That got his attention. “Okay.”

“You stay here, though, until the heat starts cooking the Swarm. You don’t want to get attacked.”

Pepper latched the helmet on to Timas and slapped it. Timas gave a thumbs-up, and then Pepper left him.

Already acrid Chilo air had started to seep in everywhere. In the distance Pepper heard coughing as people struggled to breathe.

He had thirty minutes of continuous power left in his suit. Less than he’d wanted, jumping around so much. Had that been worth risking Timas’s life for, even with all the assurances Pepper had given him?

Pepper couldn’t be sure as he sprinted out of the docks and up through the city, headed for the airlocks. It took too many minutes to get up there. There was also a risk that the escape bubble would not be able to work in the pressure they’d descended to. Pepper had been adjusting his ears all along.

Swarm waited for him as the elevator opened. It only took Pepper a couple minutes to empty the clips in his gun as he tried to clear a path to run down. The air almost choked him, thick with acid and carbon dioxide.

Even altering his lungs in anticipation wasn’t helping. Most of Yatapek’s breathable air had been mixed with Chilo’s up here.

The doors shut, hit his elbows, opened again.

Pepper pulled out his sword. The empty-eyed people crushed inward, and he walked out into the middle of them, step by deliberate step.

“You’re just lining up for me now,” Pepper said. “Aren’t you?”

Each step was accompanied by the death of another piece of the Swarm trying to stop him. It was clear what it was trying to do: slow him down to trap him here on the doomed city. It just threw bodies at him, regardless of the cost. The counter-infection had reduced its numbers, but what hundreds it had, all moved to block Pepper’s route out of the streets.

“A brutish solution.” Pepper swung, time after time again. He created a charnel house of blood and severed heads. He stopped only to dip into houses, seeking pockets of fully breathable air where he would gasp and listen to the Swarm batter at the doors.

Then he’d break back out into the street to force his way to the next house. Blood dripped down his arms via the sword and stained his boots where he crushed in heads.

A strange peace washed over him. He’d always anticipated dying in battle. This stand would not be forgotten: slaying the Swarm while standing
on the deck of a doomed city falling down toward a hellish ground.

It fit.

The Swarm would win. And that pissed him off enough to pick up his pace, slowly pushing the carnage along, aware that Swarm blood ran in the gutters of Yatapek’s streets. He’d moved from the elevator through the central street, almost to the last houses, when the Swarm stopped.

The bodies, their strange communicative waves of fronds shifting, moved out away from him.

He tensed, expecting weaponry. A grenade, a distant sniper shot . . . anything. He staggered, alone in the street, in front of a faceless enemy, that looked back at him with hundreds of faces that had once been people.

The Swarm spoke to him again. Parts of the entire crowd spoke each phrase.

“We are no longer effective.”

“The battle is over.”

“We offer you the freedom to pass, if you will give this message to our otherself.”

“Our nature has been betrayed, and it undid us.”

“We trust you will keep your word.”

Pepper looked at the line of speakers. Then nodded as he coughed. “Is that it, or should you tell me something more detailed?”

“Our otherparts may already know about it.”

“If not, it can determine what we mean by pondering.”

Okay. Why not? “I’ll pass it on. I give my word.”

And then like some bizarre honor guard, a lane opened. The Swarm stood side by side along the road. Pepper staggered through it.

Minutes later, shooting up toward the clouds, looking down at the city far below slowly plunging down toward Chilo, Pepper crossed his legs.

Betrayed?

What could betray the Swarm?

It was a question he had to shelve as he rose above the clouds and into the still explosive air battle. A strong wind current would take him toward the Aeolian city.

If he didn’t get shot out of the sky by any number of airships and crossfire on his way there.

P
eople died not too far from Timas. They collapsed against the wall, bent over, sucking in deep lungfuls of air and then coughing and choking. One of the soldiers dropped his gun and the bottle in his other hand and staggered past Timas. His reddened eyes darted around the room. He fell forward and balled up, gasping, wheezing, and sucking at air that only betrayed him.

Timas could hear the screams, distantly, through his helmet. He wished he could block them out, but he couldn’t. Could he go out there, and see what was happening to the people who couldn’t escape?

Not yet.

He sat on the bench in his suit, staring straight ahead at the lockers until one of the posters began to curl and blacken.

Too long.

Timas staggered up and walked out.

All throughout the docks people lay sprawled in tortured poses. He stumbled past them, trying not to look.

He had no idea how much time he had left. Or if the elevators would even work. He had gotten too scared and he’d frozen up. He might die yet.

Halfway to the elevator something moved. A strange-looking member of the Swarm with extra-thick skin, like nothing Timas had seen, staggered forward. It was adapted for the deep, he realized. Thick, almost skeletal skin. Glassy eyes. It struggled to breathe, but it still lived, unlike anything human in Yatapek now.

When it saw Timas it changed course, stumbling for him. Timas patted his waist. His gloves clanged against the groundsuit. His gun remained left behind. Not that he could have used it, but he felt naked.

The creature hit, and Timas grabbed its throat. He struggled, off balance, scared of falling on his back and damaging the radiator fans on the back of the suit. It pushed him, but weakly. Timas leaned forward, thinking about the choking soldier, and squeezed. He kept pushing and tightening his grip, screaming, until he fell forward with its dead body limp in his hands.