A Conflict of Orders (An Age of Discord Novel Book 2) (43 page)

Had he laid it on too thick? But the lieutenant didn’t appear suspicious.

“Locked himself in the control cupola,” repeated Tovar.

The lieutenant muttered something under her breath and then put her hands to the ladder. She began to climb. Halfway up, she stopped, looked down and gestured peremptorily for the two troopers to follow her. Once in the airlock, the officer looked to Lotsman, who pointed silently forward. The lieutenant grunted sourly and marched off along the gangway, her troopers behind her.

Tovar grabbed the kit-bag they had stashed in the airlock and scurried down the ladder. Dai and Lotsman followed. As Lotsman set foot on the earth of Shuto, he heard Tovar say, “Your officer said he wants you to go help him. Our captain’s locked himself in the control cupola. He told us to go wait in that truck over there.”

More troopers. Six of them, led by an overweight corporal. They moved with the ill-disciplined air of soldiers who had spent their careers entirely in guard-posts and sentry-boxes.

The corporal gestured noncommitally. He and his troopers came to a halt about the ladder’s foot. They gazed up at the open hatch with disinterest.

This was actually going to work. It was a desperate plan but they might actually pull it off.

“Second truck from the left,” Dai said quietly. “Driver in cab, three troopers in the back.”

“Go!” said Lotsman.

The three of them sprinted across the apron towards the truck. Someone yelled. A trooper moved to stop them but was too far away. He brandished his mace ineffectually. Lotsman reached the truck and vaulted into its rear. He snapped out a punch, catching a trooper in the face. The man went over backwards. The pilot spun about and lashed out with a booted foot. A second trooper folded. Tovar had the third one, a woman. He punched her on the temple, and she dropped backwards and out of the truck.

The vehicle shot forwards. Lotsman swore and grabbed for a handhold. Tovar fell onto his back, but managed to get a hand to a bench support. The truck banked to the left and described a wide arc across the apron.

Lotsman made his way forward until he was at the cab. There was an open hatch in the cab’s rear panel and through it he could see Dai at the wheel. He clambered in to sit beside her.

“Where are we going?” he asked.

“How do I bloody know?” Dai replied. “Away from this place. Anywhere.”

They left the aerodrome by its only exit and found themselves on a road which ran straight to the horizon. If there was a town or palace in West Tobira, it was nowhere near the aerodrome.

“What a grim place,” Lotsman muttered. “Can you get this thing to go any faster?”

“Flat out now.”

“They was a command car back there at the aerodrome. They could catch us up in that.”

“There might be even faster cars at the terminal,” Tovar added. He was at the hatch to the truck’s rear.

“We have a head-start,” Dai pointed out.

“A couple of minutes at most,” Lotsman replied. He turned to Tovar. “Anything interesting back there?”

“They don’t seem to be following.”

“Too busy trying to get into the control cupola, I expect.”

The aerodrome vanished in the haze of distance to their rear, and the poisonous yellow of the plains spread across the horizon. The land was silent, the only sound the faint whistle of air rushing past the truck’s cab, or the occasional rattle of some loose fitting in its bed. The scenery rushing past did not change, although low humps and gentle undulations could be seen.

The road was straight, a thick black netting through which yellow grass peeked. It narrowed at the horizon ahead.

“What’s that?” Dai asked, pointing forwards.

Lotsman could see nothing.

“The sky…”

Directly ahead, above the horizon, the sky was tinged brown. He could see how the colour seemed to fade into blue at the edges. “The town,” he said, “it must the town. This, what’s it called, West Tobira.”

“Pollution,” Tovar said, nodding.

They saw the brown sky’s source before they saw the town itself. Small pots appeared on the horizon, poking up from the yellow ground, some writing lines of brownish grey on the sky. As they drew closer, the pots grew and extended upwards, and Lotsman realised they were further away and larger than he had first thought. Chimneys, great chimneys. They were scattered to left and right now, their roots hidden over the horizon. They pistoned smoothly upwards, until the factories crouched around their bases rose into view.

Twenty minutes later, they drove amongst the manufacturies of West Tobira. There was a chemical stink in the air, and looking up Lotsman saw that the sky now seemed a velvety brown. Lining the road to either side were great sheer-sided buildings of brick with rows of vast mullioned windows some thirty feet above the ground. It was like driving along a canyon.

There was no way of telling what each place manufactured, but this clearly was the source of the earl’s wealth. Lotsman wondered that the Emperor allowed such pollution on his home world. He wondered too if the Emperor had ever visited West Tobira, or even this continent, Minami.

They left the dark mills behind and found themselves once more on the plain. Ahead, no more than twenty miles away, they saw the edges of a town. Built of the same dark brick as the manufacturies, its buildings were also tall and sheer-sided, with no windows on ground-level. When the truck entered the town limits and passed the first building, Lotsman looked up and saw greenery spilling down from some balcony garden. He saw more, creepers and trailing plants written on the walls, cascading like water until some ten feet above the road surface.

The road took them into the town’s central plaza and there they found the building they sought: the train station. On the other side of the square sat a tall imposing cube with turretted corners. The earl’s castle. From what attackers, Lotsman wondered, was it was meant to keep its residents safe? Were there still fierce nomads ranging the plains of Shuto? He vaguely recalled there having been some in the world’s distant past, but surely they could not still have survived? Nor would they attack a vassal of the Emperor.

They parked the truck beside the entrance to the station, and Tovar and Dai clambered out. Lotsman slid behind the wheel. The cargo-master went to check a timetable posted on the station wall.

Returning to the truck, he said, “The next train is in ninety minutes. It’s going all the way to Yomi.”

“I’m off to hide the truck,” Lotsman said. He indicated the kit-bag Tovar had pulled from the cab. “You should get changed. I’ll be back in plenty of time.”

They hurried into the station.

Now, where, thought Lotsman, was the best place to hide the milita truck? Down a back-street? No, he might get lost and never find his way back to the railway station. He gazed across the plaza.

“Of course,” he said out loud. He grinned.

He gunned the vehicle into motion and shot across the plaza. Beside the castle was a thick wall, some ten feet in height and topped with battlements. Next to this was an open area. And in the open area, in neat lines, were militia trucks. Just like the one they had stolen.

The proletarian entrance to the railway station led through a short tunnel of brick directly onto the platform. It was deserted. To their left, a brick wall separated the proles from the platform used by yeomen and nobles. To their right, the train’s single track led to a siding and no futher. West Tobira was the terminus. Opposite the platform another brick wall blocked the view of the steppes.

Tovar was surprised at how…
provincial
this station appeared. This was, after all, Shuto, the capital of an interstellar empire of thousands of worlds. And yet he could have been on any of the rim worlds he had visited in the last twelve years. He looked down the track in the direction of Yomi. He knew the city to be thousands of miles away. The track was single line, completely straight, vanishing to a point on the horizon. Buildings followed alongside it for several hundred yards before seeming to give up the race and collapse with exhaustion. He knew how they felt.

“Well?” demanded Dai.

Startled, Tovar glanced across at her. “Yes?”

“Give me the bloody bag.” She stuck out her hand. “I’ll get changed first.”

He stiff-armed the kit-bag to her. She slung it from one shoulder and stalked across the platform to the entrance to the female toilets. She disappeared inside.

Tovar took a stroll about the platform but there was nothing to see. He stopped at the end overlooking the siding and stood there a moment. He rubbed his face with his hands and let out a low sigh. He had liked being a cargo-master; the role suited him. That, he suspected, was why he had been given it. The events since Darrus had been… exciting at first. He couldn’t deny that. Finally he was actively involved in one of the Order’s great plans. There had been danger. Their imprisonment aboard
Vengeful
. Their escape from the battlecruiser…

And now this. Tovar had carefully cultivated the persona he had used as cargo-master of
Divine Providence
. It was not him but he had become it. The worrier. He had worried every day since they had left Geneza. Even now, he expected a convoy of militia to burst into the plaza before the station.

As if to prove him wrong, he heard the clatter of heels on the platform behind him. He turned round. It was Dai. Either she had changed—and died her hair an unremarkable brown—incredibly quickly, or he had slipped into a daydream and not noticed. Probably the latter, he decided.

“Your turn.” Dai glowered at him and dropped the kit-bag at his feet.

“What are you staring at?” she demanded. She yanked down the hem of her skirt, scowled and turned away.

They were intending to present themselves as three provincial proletarians travelling to the capital, Toshi, on their liege’s business. Although they had plundered the crew’s quarters of
Desert Runner
for a disguise to use once on Shuto, nothing they had found had been entirely suitable. So, from what had been available, Tovar had made three plain suits of a type likely to be worn by clerks. Dai’s outfit had been the most difficult to make. Two of the sloop’s nine rateds had been female but neither had possessed her figure.

Tovar bent and picked up the bag. He left Dai and crossed to the male toilets. Yes, he had done a good job there.

When he exited the toilets ten minutes later, also clad in a grey suit, albeit with trousers not a skirt, he found Lotsman with Dai. As he crossed the platform to them, he reached up and patted the back of his head gingerly. He’d shaved his scalp and it felt disturbingly nude.

“Ah, right. Good,” said Lotsman, accepting the bag from Tovar. Off he went to get changed.

A thought occurred to Tovar. He hurried after the pilot.

From West Tobira, they travelled by train to Minami’s capital, Yomi. They left the railway station via a cavernous exit and found themselves on a sparsely-populated pavement. It was tens of yards wide, and hot from a bright summer sun in a sky of palest blue shading to white. Before them stretched a huge plaza, into which intruded great slab-sided buildings at odd angles. They featured cutaways and strange angular extensions, often of glass or pale washed concrete. A wide highway of bronze filigree bisected the plaza some fifteen feet above the ground, and along it ran the occasional vehicle. Here and there were ramped openings in the pavement.

Dai lifted a hand to shade her brow and scowled at the buildings dancing in the haze of heated air. She felt her jacket tug beneath her arm and that too annoyed her. It was warm, her business wear was unsuitable for the climate, the underwear and hose gripped in places she’d sooner were not constricted, her heels were impractical and she wanted her blonde hair back. She had played the role of Ship’s Engineer aboard
Divine Providence
so long, she had become it.

“Toshi is thousands of miles away,” Tovar said. “How are we supposed to get there from here?”

He reached up and rubbed the back of his shaved head. Lotsman had also cut his hair and shaved off his moustache. Dai had not recognized him at first. His face no longer seemed so long, nor so prone to melancholy or mirth. She could not decide if his bare upper lip was an improvement. He certainly did not resemble the clerk he played. Of the three of them, only Tovar fitted the stereotype.

“Aeroliner,” said Dai, dropping her hand. She no longer remembered at what she had been looking.

Pinned to their collars were the same escutcheons they had worn aboard
Divine Providence
, depicting a beast caught in a thicket. They had freedom of travel under that coat of arms and there was no reason to suspect anyone was searching for them. The West Tobiran authorities, perhaps, but the only coats of arms the militia had seen had been stolen from
Desert Runner
’s crew.

Lotsman led the way to the nearest ramp leading underground. Dai had not seen anyone descend or ascend it since they had left the railway station. She hoped the pilot knew where he was going.

At the bottom of the ramp, they found themselves in a large chamber, built of the same grey concrete as the pavement. They could not see its far end, only two lines of square columns, one to either side, meeting in the distance. The ceiling, also grey, was twenty feet above their heads, and from it dangled light-panels the size of a noble’s second-best bed. Directly ahead of them a cut-out in the floor gave onto the level below. Dai, heels clattering on the concrete and threatening to slip off her feet, crossed to it. Below she could see yet more concrete: a wide island between two railway lines.

Lotsman had found a map of the network. Colourful lines described a variety of geometrical shapes. A black star indicated the station they were in. It sat near the middle of the map on a dark blue line. And that line continued down to the left-hand bottom corner of the map. At its end was the symbol for an aerodrome.

Another ramp led them down to the platform and they waited patiently beside the line bearing the aerodrome symbol. Ten minutes later, a blunt-nosed train, heralded by a wash of air, rattled into the station and drew to a halt. Lotsman was first to the door, which slid open at his approach. Dai hurried to catch up, silently cursing her footwear and the pilot’s fast pace.