Forged in Blood II

Chapter 6

Squished. Was that the word Mahliki had used? An apt word. Amaranthe could breathe, though she would have preferred not to. Her new soldier buddies hadn’t visited the public baths in a while, and at least one had consumed sardines and fermented cabbage for dinner. In addition, an elbow was lodged in her stomach while a sword hilt jabbed into her kidney. There was plenty of room in the navigation area up front, where Tikaya and Mahliki sat with Lonaeo looking on, but the soldiers had, by some unspoken rule, decided not to crowd the Starcrest family. Too bad Amaranthe didn’t have Sicarius with her-his forbidding presence always commanded plenty of space. Neither she nor Basilard could see much past the towering men surrounding them. Perhaps it was for the best. Amaranthe would have been tempted to clean and organize if she’d had a better view of the papers, books, specimen jars, and tools littering the interior. She’d thought there was a rule about unattached items needing to be secured on ships, due to their tendency to fly about in rough waters, but the calm waters of the Goldar River must have convinced the two young scientists that they could bring out their projects. All of their projects.

“We’re almost there,” Mahliki said, glancing apologetically at the packed crowd behind her.

“No hurry,” Maldynado responded. “It’s cozy and warm down here, not to mention devoid of flying cubes that want to incinerate people.”

Amaranthe might have chosen dealing with the cubes over breathing the miasma of body odors clogging the air, but she hoped they’d be able to avoid both once they climbed out. They’d go straight to the ship, figure out what needed to be done to get rid of it, and finish up as quickly as possible.

“Did Lord Admiral Starcrest build this submarine?” one of the soldiers asked. He touched the hull a couple of inches above his head, stroking the sleek metal.

“Yes,” Tikaya said. “This is the third one he crafted for the family, and he’s designed and helped construct a number of larger ones for the marine studies departments at the Polytechnic. He’s published his work, making it available to all, and we’re starting to see derivative models in the seas, though only nations willing to embrace… non-standard energy sources have made progress.”

“He’s been publishing? For everyone?” The aggrieved soldier sounded more betrayed by this than the implication that the boats required magic to run. “I thought he was dead. We all did.”

“Just in exile,” Tikaya said. “My understanding is that your last emperor wanted your people to believe he was dead rather than that he’d chosen not to follow criminal orders that would, uhm…” She glanced at her audience of hulking soldiers and decided to finish with, “I’m sure he would have returned to his homeland if he’d been allowed, at least to visit.”

“It’s too bad he never had a chance to work for Sespian,” Amaranthe said.

“The world knows little of the boy,” Tikaya said. “Most of what we heard in Kyatt was that he-”

A soft thunk reverberated through the submarine. An algae-coated dock piling floated into view.

“We’re here,” Mahliki said.

Amaranthe remained silent, curious to hear what the world thought of Sespian, but Tikaya didn’t finish her statement. She and her daughter flipped a few switches, examined gauges, and finally pushed a lever. The submarine rose a few feet, then clunked against the ice.

“This mode of transportation won’t be available to us much longer,” Mahliki said. “Give me a moment… We’ll have to… Oh, I’ll just use the auger.” She slid out of her seat and headed for a hatch behind the soldiers. “Pardon me.”

Amaranthe was elbowed and jostled as the men made room for her to pass.

“Auger?” Maldynado asked. “I thought we’d get to blow our way through the ice with some special underwater cannon.”

“Torpedo,” Tikaya said.

“What?”

“Rias calls them torpedoes. They’re launched from tubes with charges contained within the shell. He has some that detonate on timers.”

“They could blow through the ice?” Maldynado asked.

“They could blow up the whole dock and any ships moored there.” Tikaya pursed her lips with faint disapproval.

“And we’re not going to use one?” Maldynado asked.

“You needn’t sound so distressed,” Amaranthe said. “It’s not as if they were going to invite you to flip the switch that launches them.”

Maldynado digested that for a moment. “Well, you never know.”

A grinding sound came from above them. Mahliki had disappeared into a small cabin behind the hatch, some sort of research area, Amaranthe guessed from the cabinets, shelves, and tools she glimpsed.

“Do you need any help?” Lonaeo asked.

“No, I’m already through,” Mahliki called back. “I’ll crack it a bit and… try surfacing now.”

Tikaya’s hands darted across the controls, a confusing array of gauges, levers, switches, and… Amaranthe didn’t have words for some of the doohickeys. The submarine rose again. Snaps and cracks erupted above, almost like overzealous logs throwing off sparks in a hearth. They broke through, the buoyancy of the craft discernible beneath their feet as it bobbed.

Lonaeo squeezed past Maldynado and Basilard and hopped up, catching a beam near the hatch above them. For someone of Starcrest’s height, or even Tikaya’s, it would have been easy to do while standing, but he had to dangle from one arm while he spun the wheel.

“Care for some help?” Maldynado tapped a ceiling beam with a finger.

“Nah,” Lonaeo said, “I’m used to scrambling up trees and under shrubs to collect insects. This isn’t much different.” When the lock released, he pushed the hatch open, still dangling from one arm as he did so. He was stronger than his scrawny form would have suggested. He caught the lip and pulled himself out. “Come on out, boys,” he called down. “Don’t forget your fur coats. I think the temperature dropped a couple hundred more degrees in the last fifteen minutes.”

The soldiers snorted.

“Foreign weaklings,” one muttered, though not loud enough for Tikaya or Mahliki to hear.

“What kind of career is collecting bugs?” Maldynado asked while the soldiers clambered out ahead of him. “That doesn’t sound very useful.”

Mahliki stepped out of the hatchway behind him, a hurt frown on her face.

Hoping to alleviate any abraded feelings, Amaranthe asked, “Should you be questioning other people’s life choices, considering what you were doing for a career when we first met?”

“What’s wrong with bringing delight and pleasure to the lives of lonely women?”

“You were wearing a loincloth,” Amaranthe said.

“I fail to see your point.”

“They have loincloths in Turgonia?” Mahliki asked, securing the uppermost buttons on her jacket. “For… summer use?”

“For decorative use,” Amaranthe said firmly, “by dandies.”

“Really, boss.” Maldynado sniffed.

He might be offended for the next thirty seconds, but at least Mahliki’s frown had turned into a slight smile.

“I’m sure entomology is fascinating,” Amaranthe said, then realized she didn’t have much of a notion of what an entomologist did, so she voiced the one thing she knew about insects. “I’m told bugs are a superior source of protein and that it’s a shame they’re largely lacking in the Turgonian diet.”

“Fifty ranmyas says I know who told her that,” Maldynado muttered to Basilard.

“You wouldn’t say that if you’d spent two weeks in the South Fernsils living on palm weevil larvae,” Tikaya said. She’d finished at the controls and now stood beneath the hatch. A soldier lowered a hand, offering to help her up.

“I don’t think we have those here,” Amaranthe said. “But if you spend any time in the woods with Sicarius, he’ll attempt to feed you cicadas, grasshoppers, and giant black ant eggs.”

“I knew there was a reason I didn’t care for that boy,” Tikaya said, though she smiled while she spoke. She accepted the proffered hand and disappeared through the hatchway.

Her daughter followed without further comments on entomology or loincloths.

“Did she call Sicarius a boy?” Maldynado choked.

“He was when they met.” Nobody lowered a hand to assist her, but Amaranthe managed the hatch without trouble.

“Yes,” Maldynado said in response to some comment from Basilard, “it sounds like he was as charming as a youth as he is today.”

The rest of the party was waiting on a wide dock buried beneath eight inches of snow. Full darkness had fallen, but it did nothing to cloak the fact that a giant dome-shaped craft had smashed Fort Urgot into oblivion. Most of the trees around the lake and the parade fields had been mowed down or hurled down by the force of the landing. Even the water tower, which hadn’t been crushed, leaned to one side, the tank tilted precariously over the slope of the hill beneath it. Fresh snow had fallen since the… incident-no, carnage, Amaranthe told herself, utter devastation and carnage-but body-sized lumps remained on the field. Someone should burn funeral pyres for the dead, but that ominous black presence must have convinced the military to flee.

“What’s the plan, boss?” Maldynado asked.

“We’ll scout the area to determine if it’s safe to approach,” a sergeant, the highest-ranking soldier in the group, said after leveling a cool look at Maldynado. Amaranthe guessed that meant they weren’t going to line up to take orders from her. “Lady Starcrest,” the sergeant finished, “please wait here until we return.”

With a couple of quick hand signs, he divided his team in half, and two soldiers jogged in each direction, their rifles at the ready.

“Return to me if you see any of the kelbhet,” Tikaya called, then added, “cubes,” for clarification. “I have a way to deal with them.” She dropped her voice to say, “Lady Starcrest, how odd.”

“Not the name you usually go by?” Amaranthe asked.

“No, and my understanding was that due to his exile status, Rias has no right to claim that name any more either.”

“Who’s left alive that knew he was exiled?” Amaranthe asked.

“I… don’t know,” Tikaya said. “Do you think it’d be terribly unwise to ignore their admonishment to stay here and get right to work?”

“Uh.” Amaranthe had no problem going off on her own, but she hadn’t guessed a fifty-year-old linguistics professor would be quite so bold.

“They didn’t tell us to stay here,” Mahliki said. “Just you, Mother.”

“Oh, but staying here is nice,” Lonaeo said. “You have a good view of anything inimical that might be approaching, and you can hop into the submarine and escape beneath the surface.”

“You can stay if you wish, Lonaeo,” Tikaya said. “Your mother won’t be pleased with me if I get you killed. As I recall, she objected to you coming along in the first place, deciding for whatever reason that Turgonia was more dangerous than some of the islands full of spear-flinging, brain-eating cannibals we’ve visited.”

Lonaeo tugged at his scruffy beard. “Was she wrong?”

“That… remains to be seen.”

While waiting for them to decide who was staying and who was going, Amaranthe signed, Do you two have any idea which direction Sicarius went when he left the fort?

Basilard pointed to the western side of the lake.

Watch for signs of him or the soul construct while we’re out here, please.

Understood.

“I haven’t heard any yowls the last couple of nights,” Maldynado said quietly. “That’s promising, don’t you think? Maybe he killed it somehow.”

“Or led it out of the area.” Amaranthe had a vision of Sicarius standing on the rear of a train, the giant fanged hound chasing after him.

“We’re ready when you are.” Tikaya had put on gloves and a fur cap in addition to her bow, quiver, and rucksack, and she’d lit a lantern. Her daughter stood at her side, similarly clothed for the cold weather, though she stomped her feet and had pulled her scarf up to her eyes. This weather must be quite shocking after the tropics. Lonaeo had disappeared back into the submarine, pulling the hatch down behind him. “Lonaeo will keep the Explorer ready in case we need to leave swiftly.”

“What about the soldiers?” Amaranthe asked.

“If they can’t find us, they aren’t the scouts they think they are.” Tikaya tilted her chin toward the Behemoth. “You’ve been in there twice, you said? Can you find one of the entrances?” She was bouncing in her boots, too, though Amaranthe wasn’t certain if it had anything to do with the cold. There was an eager gleam of anticipation in her eyes. Dear ancestors, was she looking forward to climbing into that monstrosity? After all the death it had delivered?

And who are you to judge her, her mind asked. Especially now…

“I’ll try.” Amaranthe checked her weapons and readjusted her own pack, then led the way up the road she knew to be buried beneath the snow. It would take them past the jogging path and to what had been the front gates of the fort. “The hull is smooth, and I don’t remember any markings. I wasn’t given a lot of time to explore on my previous visits.” Though she had a distinct memory of a close-up chance to study an interior wall, thanks to Pike smashing her face against it.

Amaranthe kept her eyes on the towering black hull as they approached, pointedly not looking too closely at the body-sized bumps beneath the snow. Tikaya reached the side of the ship first, took off a mitten, and rested a hand against the hull.

“I wouldn’t recommend doing that with your tongue,” Maldynado said.

Tikaya cocked her head curiously at him.

“Never mind. It’s not that cold yet anyway.”

“Why don’t you and Basilard stand watch?” Amaranthe suggested.

Basilard had his neck craned back, staring up at the black dome towering over them. He stepped closer to a lantern to sign, It must be a hundred stories tall. It’s… unfathomable.

Amaranthe didn’t know if it was quite that high, but it might very well be. It certainly dwarfed the few trees left standing. If she remembered her city trivia, the tallest building in Stumps was sixteen stories high.

A firearm boomed somewhere to their left. The Behemoth blocked the area from view, but Amaranthe’s hand dropped to her pistol.

“Our soldier friends?” Mahliki slid her own hand into her jacket, toward something at waist level-hopefully something more fearsome than a collection vial.

That was a pistol, Basilard signed. The soldiers are carrying rifles.

“We have company out here then,” Amaranthe said. “Not surprising.”

“The door?” Tikaya asked.

Amaranthe stared bleakly at the unmarked hull. “The wall grew translucent, and I walked through it, but it wasn’t at ground level.” She waved to a spot above their heads. “I slid down the curve ten or fifteen feet. That was when I escaped. When I entered, we went up a ramp that came out of nowhere, but the door-more of a big bay opening-was higher. When we escaped in the lifeboat… I have no idea where that came out of, but some sort of tube. We shot out and…” She shrugged. “It was before the crash.”

“I understand,” Tikaya said. “Let’s walk around and see if we spot any clues. I don’t see any writing or anything useful yet.”

“I vote that we walk in the opposite direction from the shooting,” Maldynado said. “Just in case they’re shooting at some of those cubes.”

“But it’d be acceptable if they were shooting at our soldier allies?” Amaranthe had been thinking they should check in that direction.

“Er.”

“We don’t have many soldiers on our side. We should try to keep the ones we do have alive.” Pistol in hand, Amaranthe led off, following the base of the ship.

Tikaya strode behind her, though her focus was toward the Behemoth. Her daughter walked at her side, more like Amaranthe, watching the dark snowy fields. Amaranthe wondered if that signified less of a passion for the ancient technology or a more practical soul.

More shots fired, farther away this time. Maybe the soldiers were leading them-whoever them was-away from the ship. There weren’t any other lights out on the field, and Amaranthe was conscious of their two lanterns, like beacons against the black hull.

Three more body-sized lumps in the snow waited ahead of them, and her stomach squirmed. They’d have to walk around them. She wasn’t going to risk stepping on somebody, dead or not. Nor did she want a good look at them-they might have been cut in half by the edge of the Behemoth.

Except it didn’t look like that, she admitted as they drew closer. The three bodies were crumpled, one half leaning against the hull. It was as if they’d died after the ship landed.

Tikaya and Mahliki veered to the side to walk around the spot-Amaranthe wondered if it occurred to them what those snow-blanketed bumps were. She started to step to the side, too, but halted.

“Wait,” she blurted.

If these people had died after the ship landed, what had killed them? Injuries acquired jumping out of a door? Or maybe they’d been injured during the crash and had fled, but their wounds had been too bad to make it farther than the exit. Enh, that might make sense for one, but for all three?

“What is it?” The way Tikaya eyed the lumps suggested she’d twigged to what they were.

“People trying to escape, I think,” Amaranthe said, “implying a door up there perhaps.”

“Ah?” Tikaya lifted her lantern as high as she could to study the hull.

“Must be way up there,” Maldynado said, “if they broke their necks falling out.”

Broken necks? Would that explain it? Maybe they’d been running from some of those cubes-at the thought, Amaranthe gave their surroundings another quick check-and hadn’t realized the door would be so high above ground level.

“No, I think I see the bottom edge there,” Tikaya said, “about ten feet up. Can someone give me a boost? Maybe there are runes etched in the hull, something that would allow entry from outside.”

“Allow me to offer my shoulders, my lady.” Maldynado dipped to one knee and laced his fingers together, offering her a leg up.

As Tikaya removed some of her gear and prepared to scale Mount Maldynado, Basilard knelt next to the bodies and brushed away snow. Amaranthe had thought of doing the same thing, to figure out why these people had succumbed to the afterlife in that particular spot, but she hadn’t wanted to stare into the accusing eyes of the dead.

Stop it, she told herself. She had to accept the blame for now and deal with the guilt later.

Basilard knelt back, his pale blue eyes finding hers, a message in them.

“What is it?” Amaranthe leaned closer.

A lot of snow still coated the bodies, but the yawning red canyon slashed into the neck of the frozen woman on top of the pile was hard to miss. Arteries severed. A quick death. One that hadn’t been caused by the crash, and not one the cubes had inflicted either.

One of Basilard’s gloved fingers made his throat-cutting sign, the one he used for Sicarius’s name.

“I… don’t know,” Amaranthe said. “He’s not the only one in the world who cuts throats.”

“Just one of the best,” Maldynado muttered then grunted as he hoisted the professor into the air.

Not the natural athlete her daughter promised to be, Tikaya struggled, slipping and thumping a knee into Maldynado’s ear, but she did finally attain her perch atop his shoulders. “Light, please.”

Mahliki handed the lantern up to her mother.

Basilard uncovered the other two bodies, pointing out that they-a man and a second woman-had also been killed by a knife and that none of the three had been appropriately dressed for the sub-freezing temperatures outside.

“If it was him,” Amaranthe whispered, “what’d he do? Kill these people as they were coming out? Assume they were part of Forge and therefore enemies?”

Maybe he was looking for you, Basilard signed.

That was possible. If he’d seen the crash, he would have guessed that she’d be in the Behemoth. “So he killed these three and then ran inside, checking to see if Books, Akstyr, and I were still in there?”

Mostly you, I’d guess.

Amaranthe twitched her fingers, to wave that away. She reminded herself that they had no way to know Sicarius had killed these people. It could have been some private with a knife, determined to defend the capital from the invaders who had destroyed Fort Urgot.

“If he did go in there, looking for us, where is he now? It’s been a couple of days, long enough to search even that massive craft.” Assuming he hadn’t gotten lost-somehow she doubted it. She’d never seen him lose his way in woods, tunnels, or anywhere else. “Why didn’t he come back to the factory to see if we were there?”

Basilard hesitated, then shrugged.

Because he was injured or killed was probably what he thought, but wouldn’t say. Not to Amaranthe. As if she didn’t know how deadly some of the things inside the Behemoth were.

Her eyes widened as she spotted movement out on the field, or rather, floating above the field. There were, she reminded herself, deadly things out here too.

“Any luck with that door?” she asked, “because we may have a visitor coming.”

Mahliki groaned. “Not again.”

“I haven’t found any writing up here,” Tikaya said. “It’s possible though… hm.”

The black cube, blending with the dark night, wouldn’t have been visible if not for the snow, but everyone spotted it easily against all that white. It hadn’t turned toward them yet-it was drifting along, parallel to the hull of the Behemoth. It stopped here and there to shoot a crimson beam out, incinerating some stick or branch. It paused at one point and melted a hump of snow. At first, Amaranthe thought a body lay underneath it, but the cube simply seemed to be burning snow into water. Because it saw the white stuff as debris to be removed? Or because it was broken? Whatever Retta’s assistant had done to change the cubes hadn’t been that well thought out. Understandable, given the rush she’d been in….

“It’s open. We can go in by thrusting ourselves through the membrane here.” Tikaya pushed her hand through a section of the hull to demonstrate. “We just have to climb up.”

Oh, right, Amaranthe should have mentioned that. She’d walked out a door like that during her escape.

“Let’s get to climbing then,” Maldynado said. “That black butt sniffer is getting closer.”

Butt sniffer? Basilard signed.

“That’s not quite how the original word translates.” Tikaya’s fingers disappeared into the hull as she gripped something behind the barrier-membrane, that’s what she’d called it. “Give me a boost, please, Mister Maldynado.”

“Yes, my lady.” Maldynado grabbed the bottoms of her feet and hoisted her up, perhaps with more vigor than expected, for a startled squawk floated down.

Tikaya made it inside though, her body disappearing in segments as she squirmed over the ledge.

“That looks so odd,” Maldynado said.

“Hoist her daughter up next,” Amaranthe said. “We should-”

“My bow!” came Tikaya’s voice from above. “Throw up my bow and my rucksack.”

Mahliki hissed. Maldynado snatched the longbow from where it leaned against the hull, threw it at the membrane, then reached for the pack. But Mahliki had it between her knees as she pawed through the contents.

“Here, we’ll throw the whole thing up.” Maldynado reached for it.

“No.” Mahliki pulled it back. “I know what she needs.” She yanked out a ceramic jar. “Mother, I have it. Can you catch it?”

A beam of red streaked out of the hull, out of the door-membrane.

Mahliki spat a Kyattese curse.

Basilard grabbed the jar in one arm and scrambled up a surprised Maldynado, launching himself from the bigger man’s shoulders. The force sent Maldynado tumbling backward into the snow, but Basilard reached the door and hauled himself inside.

“Me next,” Amaranthe barked, waving for Maldynado to hurry up and stand so he could give her a boost. Though curved, the Behemoth’s hull was too sheer for her to climb.

“Look out!” a man cried from the edge of the field. A rifle cracked.

Amaranthe crouched, her back to the Behemoth. She spotted two soldiers-two of the men who’d accompanied her team over here-one with a lantern, one holding a smoking rifle.

She assumed he was firing at the cube, but, no, it had drifted off to her left, toward the lake. There were more men in the shadows at the edge of the field, and something bulky with a-

“Down,” Maldynado barked, grabbing her leg.

In the same second that he yanked her from her feet, a thunderous boom sounded. Something head-sized hammered into the hull a few feet above them. Not head-sized, Amaranthe realized, cannonball-sized. Some idiots were trying to blow their way into the Behemoth.

The cannonball clanged off with as much force as it’d struck, taking off at an angle and sailing toward the lake, landing with a distant crack-splash. Amaranthe rolled from her back to her belly, pulling out her pistol again.

Excited chatter came from the direction of what she now recognized as a mobile field cannon.

“…why’d you shoot, dolt… they found a way in.”

“Can’t let others get in first… treasure…”

“Watch out for the…”

The pair of soldiers were charging toward the people manning the cannon. The snow slowed them down, and they didn’t cross the distance as quickly as they would have liked. A couple of the dark figures turned toward them. Nobody over there was holding a lamp, though someone held a burning brand, ready to load and light the cannon again. Amaranthe cut out their own remaining lantern and aimed her pistol at the brand. She didn’t want to hit anyone, but she did want to keep them from shooting at her allies.

“Owph,” Maldynado grunted, enduring a slap from Mahliki.

“Get up, and throw me up there. Mother’s in trouble, and your friend too.”

“Do it,” Amaranthe said, though she didn’t take her eye from her target. She fired.

The short-barreled pistol lacked the accuracy of the rifles, and there must have been fifty, sixty meters between them and the cannon, but the brand flew to the snow behind the shadowy figures. She’d either struck true or surprised the man enough for him to drop it.

Someone over there fired anyway, not at her, but at the approaching soldiers.

The two men dropped to their bellies in the snow. They were controlled drops, Amaranthe thought, not like one might see if a man received a rifle ball to the chest.

“Get rid of your lantern,” she called to the soldiers. The light made them easy to target.

The soldiers must have been thinking the same thing, for the lantern was extinguished immediately.

Another shot fired from the group by the cannon-they’d crouched down and were now using the big artillery piece for cover. The bullet clanged off the hull high overhead. Maldynado swore. It must have come close to hitting him. He was standing, having lifted Mahliki into the ship.

Amaranthe pulled ammo and powder out of her belt pouches, wondering how she hadn’t managed to retain any of Forge’s repeating firearms for herself.

A shot boomed not far from her ear, Maldynado unleashing a round at the relic raiders or whatever they were. For all she knew, they were some of Ravido’s soldiers, trying to recover tools or devices from within the Behemoth for his allies. No, the Forge people would have known enough to instruct those men on the proper way to enter the ship. A cannon. What idiots.

They continued to exchange fire with the pair of soldiers, who continued to shoot from their bellies. One of the men by the cannon cried out and flopped to his back. His fall didn’t stop his comrades from shooting.

“We might want to find better cover, boss,” Maldynado said, “if we’re staying out here.”

Amaranthe didn’t want to stay out there. She wanted to fling herself into the Behemoth and help the others with what had to be more of those cubes, cubes that might not be as defective as the one roaming about out here. A cannon could kill her just as dead as a beam of energy though.

As if to remind her of the fact, someone fired in their direction. She ducked her head. The rifle ball skimmed across the snow six inches to her right and ricocheted off the hull. She didn’t know where it went, but heard it whistle by her ear. Far too close for her tastes.

“Cover, where?” Amaranthe tried to wriggle deeper into the snow. “There aren’t any trees left around-there isn’t any anything left around.”

“Uhm-oh, those’ll be frozen solid.”

Without rising from his stomach, Maldynado grabbed one of the corpses and dragged it toward them. Amaranthe couldn’t squelch her grimace-or her squeamish repulsion at the idea of using dead human beings for cover.

Less squeamish, Maldynado did the work, piling the three corpses up in front of them. Before he’d finished, a rifle ball slammed into one, proving his words true. Frozen solid, indeed.

“Gruesome, but effective,” Maldynado said.

“I’ll say. All we’ve bought ourselves is a stand-off though. Those people probably brought tons of ammo to lay siege to the ship.”

“I could thump them all into the nearest snow drift if I could make it over there without being shot.” Maldynado pounded a fist into his gloved hand for emphasis.

He probably could if given the opportunity to hurl himself into the middle of the pack.

“So you need a distraction,” Amaranthe mused. “Where’d that cube go?”

Maldynado pointed far to their left, toward a couple of trees by the lake with the tops shorn off. “It’s been incinerating the fallen needles, one at a time, around the base of that pine.”

“Its job is to clean things, I understand.”

“If we could arrange to lob a few tons of pine needles over to land on top of that cannon, it might drift over and pay those blokes a visit.”

“Unfortunately, I forgot to pack my pine-needle-launcher,” Amaranthe said.

“Mercenary leaders are supposed to be prepared for anything, you know.”

“I’m failing on all sorts of levels lately.” Amaranthe flicked a finger toward the cube. “I wonder if it’d get annoyed and come visit if you shot it.”

“I’d think that would be a given, but why would you want it to visit?”

“I wouldn’t, but maybe we could convince our enemies to shoot it.”

“Uh, yes, and how do you plan to do that?”

“I noticed that the curving hull of the Behemoth causes projectiles to ricochet off at an angle,” Amaranthe said. “In fact, that first cannonball landed not far from where the cube is now.”

Maldynado stared at her. “You’re not thinking…”

“It couldn’t hurt to try. If one of their bullets comes anywhere close, and the cube notices, maybe it’ll drift over there and say hello to them.”

A long moment passed with Maldynado staring at her before he said, “There are times like this when I wish I’d gone to the military academy and joined the army.”

“Why?”

“Because there’s a soldier axiom about not sharing a foxhole with anyone crazier than yourself. If I’d actually joined, I’d be able to quote it precisely. That would be apt right now.”

“Ha ha.” Amaranthe considered the curving hull again, then pushed up to her hands and knees. “Don’t worry. I think we need the bullet to strike a few meters in that direction if there’s hope for it to land anywhere close to the cube. I won’t draw fire to our foxhole, such as it is.”

“I don’t want you to draw fire at all.” Maldynado reached for her.

Amaranthe sprang away from him-she didn’t want his protectiveness to convince him to volunteer for the drawing-fire assignment. Utter foolery shouldn’t be delegated; one should take the risk and accept the consequences oneself.

“Wait,” Maldynado blurted as she ran from cover. “They’ve got the brand. They’re going to light the-”

A cacophonous boom tore across the field, and Amaranthe flung herself into the snow. The cannonball didn’t come anywhere close to hitting her-it wasn’t a weapon meant to fire at a moving target-but it startled all the needles off her branches. Instead of landing in a controlled roll, she face-planted in the snow as the cannonball clanged off the hull. The reverberations thundering against her eardrums made her feel like the clapper in a clock tower bell.

Ignoring her pulsing eardrums, she jerked her head up, trying to see where the ball landed. It’d already struck its target. The tree next to the one the cube had been working around wobbled, then fell to the snow.

The cube, lacking any animal instincts, didn’t draw back with a start, but its beam did wink out, and it paused, hovering in place.

A hand clamped around Amaranthe’s ankle. “Get back here, you fool woman,” Maldynado growled, hauling her back to the barrier of bodies.

The action sent a barrage of snow down her trousers and she would have cursed his ancestors if she could manage anything so coherent. As soon as he let her go, she scraped handfuls of the cold stuff out of her undergarments. “Not calling me ‘boss,’ anymore?”

“Not when you-emperor’s teeth, Amaranthe, it’s just as likely to think the attack came from here.”

She’d thought of that and pointed toward the hull overhead. “We can flee inside if it heads this direction.”

She lifted her head to see if it was going to head anywhere at all. It’d left its position by the pine tree, and it took her a moment to find it. The dark form was floating across the snow, not toward them but toward the cannon and clump of men around it.

Amaranthe refrained from a triumphant fist pump and a chortle, instead extending her arm, palm up toward the cube, as if showing off a particularly fine dish she’d delivered to the table.

“I see it,” Maldynado grumbled. “That doesn’t make you any less crazy.”

No, probably not, Amaranthe thought, wondering if she’d take such risks if she weren’t feeling like she herself deserved to die after all the carnage she’d wrought. Nonetheless, she took satisfaction in the startled cries and curses from the cannon men. The two soldiers took advantage of their distraction, firing fresh rounds into their midst. Maldynado had reloaded, and he fired again as well. A yelp of pain announced someone’s shot finding flesh.

Then the cube had closed sufficiently, and its red beam lanced out. It struck the iron barrel of the cannon. Amaranthe expected shards to blow off, but the intense heat melted the metal on the spot.

The men stumbled backward, their clothing and features illuminated by the beam. Not soldiers, Amaranthe verified from their unshaven faces and longish hair, though she’d already guessed as much.

Torn between fleeing and needing to avoid being shot, the men tried to crawl away on their stomachs. She hadn’t thought anyone over there had had time to reload the cannon, but the cube’s beam found black powder somewhere. An explosion rang across the field, hurling smoke and shrapnel into the air.

Amaranthe and Maldynado ducked low behind their barrier, but not before she glimpsed the men abandoning their crawl. They leaped to their feet and sprinted across the field, impressively fast given their lack of snowshoes.

When the rain of shrapnel abated, Maldynado rose to his feet. “Huh.”

“Don’t overwhelm me with your enthusiastic approval.” Amaranthe stood as well, still trying to scoop and shake snow from her trousers.

“No, I don’t think I will.” Maldynado bent a knee toward her and laced his fingers again. “Come on, let’s jump in there before that cube grows bored with disintegrating the cannon and comes to visit us.”

Though she, too, wanted to catch up with the others-she hadn’t heard a peep from inside and had no idea what was going on-Amaranthe lifted a finger. “Wait, we need to check on the soldiers we stayed behind to help. After all, they helped us with that initial warning.”

One of those soldiers was already running in her direction.

“The professor,” he blurted, glancing around. “Where’d she go? Is she all right? And her daughter?”

“Inside.” Amaranthe pointed up. She couldn’t answer the second and third question yet. She decided not to feel disgruntled that these men were far more concerned about Starcrest’s family than her and Maldynado. The soldiers had traveled across the continent to help Starcrest, after all.

“That thing is…” The man stared up at the hull, doubtlessly having a hard time imagining a door up there, but he had to have seen at least part of their group scramble through it. “Unbelievable.”

“Among other things, yes,” Amaranthe said. “Where’s your comrade?”

Not dead, she hoped. Not another one….

The soldier’s chin jerked down. “Shot. In the leg. I need to take him to…” He looked bleakly at where Fort Urgot should have been. “Back to the city. To a doctor. He’s bleeding a lot.”

“Take him to the submarine. It’s not nearly as far to drag him, and I bet Tikaya’s nephew has some first aid gear in there.” Amaranthe had bandages in her own pack, but she didn’t want to delay-she wanted to find out what was going on inside. For all she knew, Basilard needed first aid right that second. Besides, the soldiers ought to have the same gear as she had.

“Yes, right,” the man said, “but what about…” He waved toward the hidden entrance.

“We’ll take care of them.”

The soldier hesitated, glancing back and forth from his fallen comrade to the ship.

“Krater?” his comrade called. “Hurry up, I’m bleeding all over the slagging field.”

That made up his mind. He nodded once. “Understood. I’ll tell the others. Good luck, ma’am.”

Ma’am? She’d apparently been promoted to an actual person, thanks to their shared battle.

“Here.” Maldynado, back on one knee again, shook his hands. Yes, he was as worried about Basilard and the others as she.

Amaranthe stepped into his hands, and he boosted her up. She scrambled through the membrane and found herself in a dark tunnel. Dark? Odd, the ship had always been illuminated when she’d been inside, every tunnel, ramp, and chamber brightened to daylight intensity.

A scrape and grunt sounded behind her. Amaranthe turned to see if Maldynado needed help, but he’d jumped high enough to catch the ledge on his own. The snowy field lay visible behind him, as if this were a window instead of some hidden door.

“Do you have the lantern?” Amaranthe asked. The others weren’t visible anywhere. She thought about calling out, but decided to wait. Just because those would-be relic raiders with the cannon hadn’t found a way in didn’t mean other enemies weren’t about in the tunnels.

“Yes, one moment.”

After a few clanks and thumps, a match flared to light, illuminating Maldynado’s face. The grim expression didn’t match the foppish nest-of-snakes hat he’d managed to keep on his head through everything.

He lit a lantern and held it aloft.

A long black tunnel stretched out ahead of them, an intersection visible at the edge of the light. There wasn’t a sign of anyone else.