Dusk (53 page)

Winberg scratched his chest again beneath the lapel
and turned to the orange glow of Set resting just on the edge of
Asha. He waited a beat before speaking and when he did speak, it
was mumbled and guttural, but Cyrus heard it anyway, “In about
thirty minutes, all hell is going to break lose. When it does, I
need a favor from you.” He coughed again, and then looked back at
Cyrus. Winberg’s tone was full of hubris again, “Mark me when I
speak, cross the Torus again, and you and your monkey friends are
finished, complete.”

Hexad Scoffield Trageue monitored the eardot that
had been secretly placed into Hexad Winberg’s vertex badge. Eardots
were normally active devices used to communicate on the earwig
network, but they could be rendered passive and used for
surveillance when anyone with higher vertex clearance entered the
individual code. Torus Denali had wanted the Hexad monitored
continuously throughout this entire operation involving the capture
of the Knight of Wands. Trageue himself had had a vertex added to
his own badge just for this six-vertex sensitive mission, and it
would stay, pending the outcome. But the earwig network had not
been cooperating. There had been a rash of stellar flares for the
last two day cycles, but today had been the worst by far. He was
monitoring and recording The Knight of Wands and Hexad Winberg as
he simultaneously watched the approach of the bier ship from
Eurydice on a holomonitor. The signal from the tracking satellite
had a much stranger signal, but the eardot, especially so close to
the window of the Orbital, was fritzing sporadically, cutting out
half of what the Hexad was saying. And then, just after Hexad
Winberg warned the Knight of Wands that he would be, “…finished,
complete,” what must have been the largest electromagnetic surge in
the last three day cycles caused the bier ship to momentarily
disappear from the holoscan, and faded the Hexad’s voice into
nonexistence under a bevy of static.

The Eurydician vacuum suit was stifling. Not only
did it seem bulky, but it covered most of Fenrir’s skin. He could
feel the perspiration building beneath it even as he had pulled it
on, and now the vapors that filled the space between his body and
the suit immersed him in a colloidal mixture of his own
excretions—an unwelcome sensation the Eos normally eliminated.
Steeping in his own fluids was an unnerving thought, but so was not
arriving on time. What made things even more unnerving is that he
and Chandra of Swords were carrying more Valois Squibs than he had
ever seen in all 165 gyres of his life. He recessed the assault
rifle into the hermetic enclosure on the right sleeve of his suit
and pushed his morbid cargo into the lift on the lev-gurney as the
other four in his van, concealed in their own vac suits, followed
in behind him. As the door closed behind them, and they took their
positions on the four corners of the gurney, Fenrir could not help
wondering when he would feel the warmth of the sun on his skin
again.

It had taken two and a half hours to reach
the Orbital, and the ride to the top had been unnerving. It was a
special torture to see the sun this close, but not be able to feel
the deep caress of its rays. To Chandra, it seemed harder to
breathe even though the suit had an air filter for hospitable
atmospheric conditions and only switched to hermetic mode when
those conditions became inhospitable. Even some conditions
inhospitable to normal humans would afford a certain level of
survivability to Apostates, and yet, it still felt as if the suit
itself made just the simple act of breathing a conscious chore.

When they had reached the half-way mark,
Taewook of Cups’s earwigged to them, “The Devil’s in the house of
the rising sun,” which, however cryptic in original meaning, meant
the fly-eyes in the lift had been spoofed and that it was time to
set the Valois Squibs and the ubiquity charge that would set them
all off simultaneously.

Chandra worked quickly with Fenrir, setting
the Valois in the corners and roof of the lift as Aerik had
instructed them. She seemed at ease, but these harmless looking
silver devices made her uncomfortable—especially since she had seen
an Echelon soldier’s arm and a chunk of his torso vaporized by one
that Six had caught and tossed back to him during the attack on
Avalon. She had been a young girl then—only seventy-three gyres in
life—but she remembered it as clearly as if it had happened only a
few moments ago. The event itself had saved her life and the lives
of her father and mother, and yet the thing that stuck most in her
mind was the quiet yet absolute destruction that had paved the ave
of their escape. Even as she placed the Valois, she could not help
thinking the same thought that crossed her mind on occasional sleep
cycles. And even here, as the benevolent face of Set rose above the
edge of the horizon, she saw herself, not the Echelon soldier,
maimed beyond hope, body collapsing into a pile of its own bowels
as blood spurted in a stream from a heart that lay exposed in the
cavity created by the device she now held in her hand.

But the thought bought efficiency to her movements,
precision to her placements, and ensured she followed her training
to the letter. She placed the last Squib and stood, almost ashamed
of herself, as she hoped that the destruction these devices brought
would, for the rest of their gyres on Asha, leave a macabre image,
in every lurid hue, etched in the minds of those who had sought to
destroy her and her clan so many gyres hence.

Cyrus watched on the holomonitor that had appeared
in the center of the meeting room as the crew of the bier ship and
their cargo came to a comfortable stop inside the Orbital. Here,
next to Winberg, Cyrus’s heart began to whip itself into a mounting
frenzy as the looming promise he had made only moments earlier
began to solidify in his mind—and it flustered his very core.

Torus Denali watched as Hexad Winberg and
this trumped up dexter, the self-styled Knight of Wands, met the
crew of the bier ship with their macabre cargo. Either these
menacing Apostates had some semblance of honor or this was a dupe.
Either way, the vermin snare had been set, and this time, Dr.
Chamberlain, or the Knight of Wands, or whatever he wanted to call
himself, was walking right into it.

The bier floated to the center of the room
and remained hovering as Chamberlain walked over to inspect the
body. He leaned over the bier to open the bag near the head and
lowered his face to get a clearer look.

That was when Denali ordered his men to spring the
trap.

Cyrus leaned forward to inspect the contents of the
body bag, trying to look as if he did not already know what was
there. As soon as he leaned over, the two doors that led to a
hallway on either side of the chamber opened, and Denali’s men
flooded in from both sides. But not one of the eight men who
flooded into the room expected Cyrus to stand up with a gun.

Pentangle Dezmon Djarre had rushed into the
room expecting an easy overwhelm and capture. The target was
supposed to be surrounded on all sides, surprised, and weaponless,
but when Dezmon rounded the corner behind the rest of his phalanx,
he saw the mark was not surprised, and he was not weaponless. After
that, the louvers allowing light from outside closed and the lights
of the hall all shut down, and for a moment, Djarre saw nothing at
all.

In the second it took his goggles to adjust
to darkvision, reality as Pentangle Djarre understood it had been
drastically altered. The corpse that had been delivered by the bier
crew leapt from lev-gurney firing two automatic handguns. The
corpse kicked the gurney, flipping it, and deftly looped his arms
into the straps that had held the body bag. He turned to face the
opposite hall using the gurney as a shield. Others in the phalanx
had been quicker to fire their weapons, but Djarre saw that now,
even they were being cut down by the bier crew itself. As one of
the bier crew turned toward him, Djarre dove backward, and shells
sparked off the floor around him. The filters that transferred
sound into his ears through his helmet muffled the sound, but even
the diminished noise of the hail of bullets was too much.

Without looking up, Djarre began crawling away from
the maelstrom that tore into the floor behind him. He had dropped
his gun in his dive, but there was one just in front of him. He
turned to see the bier shielding the Knight of Wands and the
animated corpse as they retreated to the opposite side of the hall
and the four members of the spurious bier crew back-pedaling into
one of the lifts.

As Six retreated, using the gurney as a
rucksack, he could feel the pull of it trying to right itself. Six
angled behind Cyrus to shield him from the shower of projectiles.
There was a strange whirring sound as the projectiles seemed to
strike everywhere except the back of the gurney. Six fired in the
direction he was moving and two of the men who had come in through
that door went down. He could feel the wind from the projectiles
that whizzed past him, apparently curved around the bier by the
grav-drive that was still engaged. Cyrus fired the gun he had taken
from Six and grabbed the officer next to him by the throat. He
dragged the officer toward the men, using him as a shield. As they
advanced, the men at the door hesitated, unwilling to take a shot
at Cyrus and his hostage. Instead, the two men left standing moved
to cover inside the hallway and focused their aim on Six.

Six was in the middle of his next step when
he hopped and twisted in the air, allowing the gurney to pull him
up and back as it righted itself parallel to the ground. The first
of the barrage of projectiles slammed into the edge of the bier.
Most of the rounds were pushed into the floor as the gurney turned
and leveled off with Six on his back. The bier moved toward the
doorway with Six on top headfirst. For a moment, his heart seemed
to have forgotten to beat as he was sure the next barrage would
find its mark in his flesh. But he had time to raise his hands
above his head and look forward with the world turned upside down
as he prepared to fire.

Cyrus had snatched Winberg by his neck with his left
hand and was forcing him toward the gunfire, keeping him in the
firing line between himself and the two men Six had not taken out.
Out of the corner of his eye, Cyrus saw Six spin and fall as if he
had been hit as the two men fired on him. Cyrus fired and caught
one of the men in his arm, knocking him against the wall. Then,
suddenly, Six was parallel to the floor, his back still against the
bier, firing his guns toward the hallway as the bier carried him
toward the entrance. Cyrus had distracted the men long enough for
Six’s volley to find their intended targets. The men fell, and Six
fanned his arms at the edges of the doorway as the bier passed
through it. There was a pop where the door controls should have
been and Cyrus knew what would happen next. Cyrus kicked, extending
his foot into Winberg’s back. Winberg fell into the sparking
entranceway, arms flailing as the doors began closing. Cyrus turned
on his own heels, firing his own weapon to make sure anyone on the
other side of the room kept his head down. Cyrus back-pedaled and
barreled into Winberg, forcing him to the ground. Cyrus continued
his suppression fire as he saw the last of the bier crew step into
the lift, but one persistent solider in a pile of bodies managed to
squeeze off a volley as the doors to the lift slammed shut.

Pentangle Djarre had steadied the assault rifle
handle on the floor and the barrel on the shoulder of Pentangle
Thames’s bleeding body. Just as the bulkhead doors to the lift had
closed, he had held the rifle as steady as he could with his
off-hand, and he had squeezed the trigger, hoping the recoil would
not send the gun backward into his own face.

As the doors to the lift closed, Fenrir stood in the
opening, firing off the final volleys of suppression fire. He
turned to make sure Chandra and the others were okay, but before
his head could turn back inside the visor, he found himself
off-balance, and as he moved his legs to regain his footing, he
found the ground was further away than he had expected. Sharp
spikes of pain pierced through his lower ribs and back, and he
almost forgot the vac-suits were made of Comptex. Then, as the side
of the lift came to meet his head in this awkward position, the
ability of his clothing to resist gunfire became irrelevant. His
head snapped back as his shoulder collided with the wall. His body
stopped abruptly and he felt the entire universe tilt on one axis.
It felt as if his entire consciousness kept moving even after his
body stopped, and then, as his vision filled with a perfunctory
gray fog, it didn’t feel like anything at all.

Winberg slid across the ground on his chest,
sheltering his face from the carpet. Spittle erupted from his mouth
as his lungs involuntarily evacuated. He gasped for air but none
came as the lapel of his shirt restricted his windpipe and he was
snatched to his knees by his collar. The lights had gone down when
the fighting had started, and a man had come out of the body bag
that should have levied Dr. Villichez, and apparently he had come
out with the gun that had appeared in Cyrus’s hand. The firefight
seemed to be less advantageous than Denali had planned, and all
sorts of panicked chatter filled Winberg’s earwig as Cyrus forced
him down the hallway using him as a shield.

Once again, Dr. Chamberlain was full of
surprises. Even being dragged along as a hostage, Winberg could not
help but admire the man. He was brash and insubordinate, but he was
cut from a much sterner ore than any of the men Winberg had come
across in his short tenure in the Eurydician military. He wondered
what was left in Dr. Chamberlain’s bag of tricks as Cyrus ushered
him around a corner to face another phalanx and it became apparent
Dr. Chamberlain was not the only member of this team with
tricks.