Fragments of circuit boards went crunch. I didn’t like listening to the sound, so I asked, “Why did the Larry leave?”
The admiral shook her head in the darkness. “Who knows?” Slowly, she walked over scattered scraps of the warrior’s body and knelt beside the largest piece of carcass. “Thanks,” she said, laying her hand lightly on the boy’s blood-drenched shell. “Thanks, whoever you were.” Then in a soft gentle voice: “That’s what ‘expendable’ means.”
It was a thing Explorers said to each other when somebody died—like a little prayer. I’d never heard an admiral use it before. Most of the admirals I’d met were the sort to say, “Good riddance.”
Festina stood up again. “I’d better follow the Larry,” she said. “See where it’s going. With luck, the bad guys will come to fetch it, and I can see who they are.”
“Then let’s go,” I told her.
She gave me a look. “This isn’t really your business, Edward…” She stopped. “You wouldn’t be Edward
York,
would you? The Explorer who married the Mandasar high queen?”
“Um. Yes. That’s me.” I didn’t think the outside world had heard about that, but admirals must be pretty well informed.
Festina let her breath come out in a whoosh. “Sometime real soon, you’ll have to tell me how you’re mixed up in this…but for now, tag along with me. If I leave you alone, the wrong people might find you.”
I wondered who she thought were the wrong people. Recruiters? Captain Prope? Battle-mad Mandasars? But I didn’t ask, and the admiral didn’t explain. She just waved for me to follow as she headed into the trees.
The Larry was no longer in sight, but the laughter still rattled through the forest, occasionally hitting a note that made the trees buzz with resonance. We plunged after the cackling as fast as we could, thrashing through the undergrowth on a general downhill slant, back toward the canal.
Soon we reached an area where the brush was trampled flat. A lot of warriors had stormed past this way—maybe the whole militia. They must have heard the Larry too; they’d swum across the water, then started to search the woods, trying to figure out what was making the howl.
I winced—the warriors’ trail led in the same direction as the Larry’s laughter. Were they following it, or was it following them?
With the undergrowth all squashed, Festina and I could move through the woods more quickly, angling downhill toward the Larry’s cackle. Laughter wasn’t the only thing on the night breeze; I could smell the crusty burning-wood whiff of Musk B as thick as the smoke from a forest fire. It was the odor of disaster waiting to happen—a whole pack of warriors aching to crush recruiter bones, and a single Laughing Larry that could hover high overhead, spraying down death.
Half a minute later, we were closing in on the hyena chatter…and also on the choking musk. Up ahead, a bright light suddenly beamed from the sky, reflecting crimson off the shells of two dozen warriors gathered in a marshy clearing. The warriors had drawn into a wide ring, circling the edge of the open area. In the middle stood a human man, and straight over his head the Laughing Larry hovered in the air like a gold-glinting sun. The light came from higher in the night sky where a skimmer floated, searchlights in its belly and a rope ladder dangling down to ground level.
Festina put her hand on my arm and held me back out of the light. No one in the clearing noticed us; the man in the center had his gaze glued on the warriors, and they were too busy eyeing the Larry. One of the Mandasars must have recognized the gold ball as a weapon and told the others to keep back.
“It’s a standoff,” Festina whispered. “That man’s right in the Larry’s eye. You know about that?”
I nodded. Straight under a Larry’s spin-axis, there’s a spot that isn’t covered by any firing slits. Stand there, and it’s like the eye of a hurricane—things get destroyed all around you, but you’re safe. Larries are intentionally built that way; I’d once seen an underground advertisement showing a smug business exec walking down the street with a Larry over his head, while thugs fled out of his path, THE ULTIMATE IN PROTECTION, the ad said. SLAUGHTER EVERYTHING AROUND YOUR FOR A 50-METER RADIUS, THEN WAIT FOR THE BLOOD TO STOP DRIPPING.
Just one problem for the man in the middle: to escape with his skin intact, he had to climb the ladder up to the skimmer. The easiest way to do that was clambering past the Larry; but that meant leaving die safety of the eye. For a few seconds, he’d be smack in the Larry’s kill zone…and during those moments when he couldn’t let the Larry fire, the Mandasars would race forward and shake him off the ladder. He’d be dead by the time he hit the ground—not from the fall, but from dozens of claws lopping him into giblets.
I could see one other way for the man to try his escape: ordering the Larry to rise with him as he climbed, always keeping a meter or so above his head. Staying safe in the weapon’s eye, he wouldn’t have to worry about it shooting him…but there was still the problem of the Larry shooting the
ladder.
It was a skimmer’s standard emergency rope ladder; if the warriors charged forward and the man told the Larry to let loose, a razor storm of fléchettes would slice clean through the rope. Once again, he’d fall straight into the warriors’ waiting claws.
As Festina said, it was a standoff: the militia holding back from the Larry’s death radius, the man unable to move from his only place of safety.
I squinted to see the man more clearly. With the search-beams coming from straight over his head, I couldn’t make out his face; but he was tall and thin, with a great ball of wispy-fine hair that caught the light like a halo. He wore no shirt, just a leather vest…and as my eyes adjusted to the brightness, I saw that the front of his body was transparent, like he’d had his skin peeled off and replaced with glass. You could see his ribs, stark and white, covering a shadowy lot of internal organs. I was too far away to make out his heart beating, but it was easy to watch his lungs expand and deflate with every breath.
He was breathing fast, like he was nervous. I’d be nervous too if I could look down and see my stomach churn.
Maybe if you came across a sight like this man at a museum, it would be an interesting way to learn about anatomy. Here in the dark night forest, it made my skin crawl. Whether Mr. Clear Chest was a recruiter or just someone wandering through the woods with illegal weapons, the guy was clearly a mean piece of work. He’d let the Larry kill that poor warrior…and he would have slaughtered Festina and me, except that he must have heard the militia thundering their way through file forest. That’s when he called the Larry off hunting us and brought it back to protect his own transparent hide. The little gold ball must have got to him just in time to keep the warriors at bay.
But it wouldn’t hold them off forever—not with so much Musk B rippling through the night. I could hear a dozen pincers clacking fiercely, blood-eager to rip into an enemy. Pretty soon, the kids would be so riled they wouldn’t care about getting shredded by razor fléchettes. Someone would do something stupid, and then they’d all rush in: charging into the slashing flurry, as if the Larry couldn’t kill them all.
Maybe it couldn’t. Maybe a few ragged survivors would make it to Mr. Clear Chest and tear him apart. That had to be why he hadn’t used the Larry already; he couldn’t be sure it would kill every warrior there. But it would spill a lot of blood…and I knew that at any second, the warriors just wouldn’t be able to hold themselves back any longer.
“What should we do?” I whispered to Festina.
“I don’t know,” she answered. “If you’re a blood-consort, can you order the Mandasars to pull back? Tell them to let the guy go and fight another day?”
With so much musk in the air, I didn’t know whether
anything
could make the warriors retreat…certainly not some stinky-hume stranger they’d never seen before. But if this was the only chance to avoid a ton of carnage, I had to give it a try.
Swallowing my fear, I stepped out from the cover of the forest. “Hello,” I called in a loud voice. Better to speak English than Troyenese—the warriors should understand, and so would Mr. Clear Chest. I didn’t want him panicking and ordering the Larry to fire…which he might, if he thought I was talking in Mandasar and giving the warriors a battle strategy.
“You don’t know me,” I said as I walked toward the circle, “but you might know my name. I’m…”
Edward York
, I thought. But the words that came out of my mouth were, “
Teeshpodin Ridd ha Wahlisteen”
The Little Father Without Blame. Queen Verity had given me that title a long time ago; I hadn’t thought about it in years. But in the split second before I spoke the phrase, I’d lost control of my tongue again: back to being a helpless spectator while an unknown something walked around in my skin.
If you want the honest truth, getting possessed was a relief—I didn’t have a clue what I would have said next. Whichever spook or spirit kept slipping into my shoes, it was sure better at bossing around Mandasars than I was.
“Gentlemen,” my mouth said, sounding all of a sudden more confident, breezy, and in control. “Pleasant though it would be to dance on a recruiter’s entrails, the price would be too high. At least for tonight. Don’t you agree?”
I glanced around the circle of warriors. The way they glared at me wasn’t much friendlier than their fury at Mr. Clear Chest; but they’d been too surprised to rip me apart in the first second, and now the spirit possessing me had momentum on his side.
Calmly, I stepped into the circle of the skimmer’s spotlights. The warriors looked back and forth between me and Mr. Clear Chest, their pincers whisking angrily. The threat didn’t faze the spirit possessing me; I kept walking forward, right up the tail of the nearest warrior until I was standing high on his back. The sheer nerve of doing that froze him in place—otherwise, he would have bucked me straight to the moon.
“There’ll be other nights and other recruiters,” I told the Mandasars…but I kept my eye on the glass-chest man and his Larry. “If you all die now, who’ll protect your hives? No matter how much you want to spill this recruiter’s blood—and no matter how much he deserves it—as of this moment, you gentlemen are at war. War to save your homes, your hives, and your personal honor as warriors, keeping your heads clear to defend what is truly precious rather than becoming some recruiter’s brainwashed thugs.”
The Mandasars growled at that. I took that as a good sign. “And when you’re at war,” I said, “you don’t fight stupid battles. You pick your time and you pick your place, because you’re fighting for something that must not be lost. You act like true warriors serving an honorable cause, not fools who get into pointless brawls because you can’t control your tempers.”
Off to my right, one of the Mandasars growled, “Fools? Fools we? Fools?”
Uh-oh,
I thought. The spirit possessing me had gone too far. I could sense it in the face of every warrior there: fiery indignation at what had come out of my mouth. Musk surged up from the warrior beneath me, so thick I swear I could see it—a thin pheromone mist oozing out of his pores. It scared the willies out of me, but obviously not the spirit in command of my body. I could feel my head shaking sadly, as if I pitied the huge hulking warriors around me…
…then I ripped off my shirt and threw it in the face of the kid who didn’t want to be called a fool.
It surprised me as much as anyone else. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mr. Clear Chest tense up, but he didn’t tell the Larry to shoot; by now, he realized I was his best chance for getting out alive. His gaze flicked from me to the warrior with the shirt over his face. The youngster was snorting angrily, pawing at the fabric with his weak upper arms…but by the time he’d pulled his snout clear, he wasn’t snorting so much as sniffing.
Sniffing at my sweaty shirt.
I jumped lightly forward, straight in front of more warriors—within easy reach of their claws. Calmly, cockily, the spirit moving my legs made me walk bare-chested around the circle of Mandasars, passing before each one in turn. They were all sniffing me now, jutting out their snouts, almost touching me with their nose spikes. None of them tried to get a whiff of my face, where there might still be queen’s venom; they were snuffling at my body, as if it had some amazing perfume they’d never smelled before.
I couldn’t smell it myself. Just the burning-wood odor everywhere, covering the natural stink of the stagnant canal, the trees all around, even my own sweat.
Like taking a walk in the park, I went around the whole circle. Zeeleepull was part of the crowd, on the far side of the clearing where I hadn’t recognized him before. Even he seemed surprised by whatever he smelled on me; I couldn’t understand that, considering that he’d got a snootful of queen’s venom when it was several hours fresher. But the spirit possessing me didn’t think anything was unusual—I walked past Zeeleepull no faster or slower than any of the others, till I’d finished a complete circuit of the assembled militia.
“Now,” I said to them all. “Back up and let this shit of a recruiter go. He’s not worth any of our lives. This is the first action in a war…and it’s our enemy who’s running with his tail in the air.”
I looked at Mr. Clear Chest. With the light coming from straight over his head, I still had trouble making out his features…but I could tell he was glaring at me in hate. His heart jerked fast beneath his plastic skin; his lungs heaved tight against his ribs.
Let him huff and puff
, I thought.
As long as he realizes there’s only one way to get out alive.
“Back up,” I said again to the warriors. “Let the bastard leave.”
Eyes glittering fiercely in the searchlights, every warrior slowly pulled back out of the clearing. I retreated with them, feeling shaky relief once I’d been swallowed by the shadows of the forest.
We all watched the recruiter grab hold of the rope ladder and climb quickly to the waiting skimmer. The Larry held its position, hovering three meters above the clearing till the man was safely inside the vehicle. That was the moment that scared me most—when the recruiter might send the Larry swooshing at us for a strafing run, just as a parting shot.