Look to Windward (11 page)

“Still not dead, eh, Given?”.

“Who's that? What?”.

People were talking around him. His head hurt. So did his legs.

“Your fancy armor didn't save you, did it? They could feed most of you to the chasers. Wouldn't even have to mince you up first.” Somebody laughed. Pain jolted from his legs. The ground shook beneath him. He must be inside the land destroyer with its crew. They were angry that it had been hit and they had been killed. Were they talking to him? He must have dreamt it turretless and burning, or perhaps it was very big inside and he was in an undamaged part. Not all dead.

“Worosei?” said a voice. He realized it must be his own.

“Oo, Worosei! Worosei!” another voice said, mimicking him.

“Please,” he said. He tried to move his arms again, but only pain came.

“Oo, Worosei, oo, Worosei, please.”

In the old faculty building, beneath the Rebound courts, in the Military Technical Institute, Cravinyr City, Aorme. That's where they had stored them. The souls of the old soldiers and military planners. Unwanted in peace, now they were seen as an important resource.
Besides, a thousand souls were a thousand souls, and worth saving from destruction by the rebel Invisibles. Worosei's mission; her idea. Daring and dangerous. She'd pulled strings to make it happen, the way she had before when they'd joined up, to make sure that she and Quilan would be posted together. Time to go: Move! Now! Jump!

Had they been there?

He seemed to remember the look of the place, the warren of corridors, the heavy doors, all dark and cold, glowing falsely in the helmet visor. The others; two squires, Hulpe and Nolica, his best, trusted and true, and the Navy special forces triune. Worosei nearby, rifle balanced, her movements graceful even in the suit. His own wife. He should have tried harder to stop her but she'd insisted. Her idea.

The substrate device was there, bigger than they'd been expecting, the size of a domestic chiller cabinet. We'll never get this onto the flyer. Not with us at the same time.

“Hey, Given? Help me get this off. Come on. It might help.” Somebody laughing.

Get this off. Never get this back. The flyer. And she'd been right. Two of the Navy people went with the thing. They'd never get off. Never. Was that Worosei? She'd just wiped his face, he could have sworn. He struggled to call her back, to say anything.

“What's he saying?”.

“No idea. Who cares?”.

One arm was very sore. Left arm or right arm? He was angry at himself for not being able to tell which. How absurd. Ow ow ow. Worosei, why … ?

“You trying to tear it off?”.

“Just the glove. Must come off. He'll have rings or stuff. They always do.”

Worosei murmured something in his ear. He'd fallen asleep. She'd just gone. Worosei! he tried to say.

The Invisibles came, with heavy weaponry. They must have a ship, probably escorted. The
Winter Storm
would try to stay hidden, then. They were on their own. Waiting for the flyer to return for them. Then the discovery, attack, and losing them all. Madness, flashes and explosions all over as the Loyalist side shelled and counter-attacked from who-knew-where away. They ran out into the rain; the building behind them burned and slumped and fell, turned to glowing slag by the energy weapons. It was night by then and they were alone.

“Leave him alone!”.

“We just—”.

“You just do as you're fucking told or I'll drop you on the fucking road, understand? If he lives we're going to ransom him. Even dead he's worth more than you two brain-dead fuckwits, so make sure he's alive when we get to Golse or you'll be following him to heaven.”

“Make sure he's alive? Look at him! He'll be lucky if he lasts the night!”.

“Well, if we pick up any medics less fucked up than he is, we'll make sure they deal with him first. In the meantime; you do it. Here. Medpac. I'll see you get extra rations if he lives. Oh, and there's nothing worth taking.”

“Hey! Hey, we want a cut in the ransom! Hey!”.

They'd dived into the crater, sliding and falling. A
big explosion had punched them half into the mud. Killed them if they hadn't been suited up. Something whacked into his helmet, sending the speakers crazy and filling the visor with blinding light. He pulled the helmet off; it rolled into the pool of water in the foot of the crater. More explosions. Stuck, jammed into the mud.

“Given, you're just a heap of fucking trouble, you know that?”.

“What's this do?”.

“Fuck knows.”

The land destroyer, turretless, trailing smoke and leaving one wide segmented track unravelled on the slope behind it, ground and skidded and rumbled its way into the crater. Worosei had recovered first, hauling herself out of the ooze. She tried to pull him free, then fell back as the machine rolled down on top of him. He screamed as the huge weight pressed him into the ground and his legs caught against something hard, breaking bones, pinning him.

He saw the flyer leave, taking her to the ship, to safety. The sky was full of flashes, his ears were pounded by the concussions. The land destroyer shook the ground as its munitions detonated, each pulse making him cry out. Rain lashed down, soaking his face and fur, hiding his tears. The water in the crater was rising, offering an alternative way to die, until another explosion in the burning machine hammered the ground, and air blew out of the center of the filthy pool and it all frothed and drained away into a deep tunnel. That side of the crater collapsed into it as well, and the land destroyer's nose tipped down, its rear went up and it pivoted off him, thundering down
into the steam of the hole and shaking with another series of explosions.

He tried to drag himself out with his hands, but could not. He started trying to dig his legs free.

The next morning, an Invisible search and recovery team found him in the mud, semi-conscious, surrounded by a shallow trench he'd dug around himself but still unable to free himself. One of them kicked his head a few times and put a gun against his forehead, but he had just enough wits left to tell them his rank and title, so they pulled him from the mud's embrace, ignoring his screams, dragged him up the slope and threw him into the back of a half-wrecked armored truck with the rest of the dead and dying.

•   •   •   

They were the slowest of the slow, the expected-to-die consigned to a wagon which itself was not expected to complete the journey. The truck had lost its tail doors in whatever engagement had resulted in its being unable to travel at much more than walking speed. Once they'd moved him and cleaned the blood from his eyes he could look out to watch the Phelen Plains unroll behind. They were black and scorched as far as the eye could see. Sometimes smudges of smoke adorned the horizon. The clouds were black or gray and sometimes ash fell like soft rain.

Real rain pelted down only once when the truck was on a part of the road sunk below the level of the plains, turning the roadway into a greasy stream of rushing gray and washing over the tailgate and into the rear compartment. He had been lifted, mewing with pain, to a sitting position on one of the rear
benches. He could move his head and one arm very weakly, and so watched helplessly as three of the wounded died struggling on their stretchers, drowned under the swirling gray tide. He and one of the others shouted, but it seemed that nobody heard.

The truck went light and slewed from side to side as it was nearly washed away in the flood. He stared wide-eyed at the battered ceiling as the filthy water swirled over the submerged bodies and around his knees. He wondered if he cared anymore whether he died or not, and decided that he did because there was just a chance he might see Worosei again. Then the truck settled and found traction and climbed slowly out of the waters and grumbled onward.

The slurry of ash and water drained out through the rear, exposing the dead, coated in gray as though by shrouds.

The truck took frequent detours around shell holes and larger craters. It crossed two makeshift bridges, swaying. A few vehicles whizzed past them going in the other direction, and once a pair of aircraft slammed overhead, supersonic, so low their passing raised dust and ash. Nothing overtook the wagon.

He was attended to, minimally, by the two Invisible orderlies who'd been told to look after him by their CO. They were really Unheards; a caste above Invisibles by the Loyalist way of thinking. The two seemed to veer unpredictably between relief that he was going to live and perhaps furnish them with part of his ransom, and spite that he had survived at all. He had named them Shit and Fart in his head, and took some pride in not being able to recall their real names at all.

He daydreamed. Mostly he daydreamed about catching up with Worosei without her having heard that he had survived, so that when she saw him it would come as a complete surprise. He tried to imagine the look on her face, the succession of expressions he might see.

Of course it would never happen that way. She would be like him, if their circumstances were reversed; she would try to find out for sure what had happened to him, hoping, no matter how hopelessly, that by some miracle he had survived. So she would find out, or she would be told, once news of his escape became known, and he would not see that look on her face. Still, he could imagine it, and spent hours doing just that, as the truck squealed and thumped and rumbled its way across the sintered plains.

He had told them his name, once he'd been able to speak, but they hadn't seemed to pay any attention; all that appeared to matter was that he was a noble, with a noblemale's markings and armor. He wasn't sure whether to remind them of his name or not. If he did, and it was communicated to their superiors, then Worosei might find out all the quicker that he was alive, but there was a superstitious, cautious part of him that was afraid of doing that, because he could imagine her being told—that hope against hope fulfilled—and imagine the look on her face at that point, but he could also imagine himself dying even yet, because they hadn't been able to treat his injuries properly and he was feeling weaker and weaker all the time.

That would be too cruel, to be told that he had survived against all the odds, and then discover later he
had died of his wounds. So he did not press the point.

Had there been any chance of paying for rescue or even faster passage he might have made more of a fuss, but he had no immediate means of payment, and the Loyalist forces—along with any privateers that might have been acceptable to both sides—had dropped even further back into home space around Chel, regrouping. It didn't matter. Worosei would be there, with them. Safe. He kept on imagining the look on her face.

He lapsed into a coma before they got to what was left of the city of Golse. The ransom and transfer took place without him being aware that anything was going on. It was quarter of a year later, the war was over and he was back on Chel before he discovered what had befallen the
Winter Storm,
and that Worosei had died in it.

•   •   •   

He left during the GSV's night, when the sun-line had dimmed and disappeared and a deep red light bathed the three great ships and the few lazily flying machines weaving about them.

He was on yet another vessel, a thing called a
Very Fast Picket,
on the last leg of his journey to Masaq' Orbital. The craft disappeared through the interior stern fields of the
Sanctioned Parts List
and a little later exited and separated from the silvery ellipsoid's exterior, curving away to set course for the star and system of Lacelere and leaving the GSV to begin its long loop back to Chelgrian space, a vast bright cave of air flashing through the void between the stars.

Airsphere

U
agen Zlepe, scholar, hung from the left-side sub-ventral foliage of the dirigible behemothaur Yoleus by his prehensile tail and his left hand. He held a glyph-writing tablet with one foot and wrote inside it with his other hand. His remaining leg hung loose, temporarily surplus to requirements. He wore baggy cerise pantaloons (currently rolled up above the knee) secured with a stout pocket-belt, a short black jacket with a stowed cape, chunky mirror-finish ankle-bracelets, a single-chain necklace with four small, dull stones and a tasselled box hat. His skin was light green, he was about two meters standing straight on his hind legs and a little longer measured from nose to tail.

Around him, beyond the hanging fronds of the behemothaur's slipstream-ruffled skin foliage, the view faded away to a hazy blue nothing in every direction except up, where the creature's body filled the sky.

Two of the seven suns were dimly visible, one large and red to right and just above Assumed Horizon, one
small and yellow-orange to left about a quarter off directly below. No other mega fauna were visible, though Uagen knew that there was one nearby, just above Yoleus' top surface. The dirigible behemothaur Muetenive was in heat and had been for the last three standard years. Yoleus had been following the other creature for all that time, diligently cruising after it, always hanging just below and behind, paying court, arguing its case, patiently waiting to reach its own season and insulting, infecting or just ramming out of the way all other potential suitors.

By dirigible behemothaur standards a three-year courtship indicated little more than an infatuation, arguably no more than a passing fancy, but Yoleus seemed committed to the pursuit and it was this attraction that had brought them so low in the Oskendari airsphere over the last fifty standard days; usually such mega fauna preferred to stay higher up where the air was thinner. Down here, where the air was so dense and gelatinous that Uagen Zlepe had noticed his voice sounded different, it took a great deal of a dirigible behemothaur's energy to control its buoyancy. Muetenive was testing Yoleus' ardor, and its fitness.

Somewhere above and ahead of the two—perhaps another five or six days at this slow rate of drift—was the gigalithine lenticular entity Buthulne, where the pair might eventually mate, but more likely would not.