Sly Mongoose (20 page)

“I will.” Pepper smacked Timas on the head with the stock of the gun and the kid dropped to the grating, out cold.

Itotia ran forward, but Pepper put his hand around her with the gun, hopping with her to pull her back. “He’s brave, your son, leave it be. Listen,” he hissed, “Yatapek is in the way of the invasion. Timas will be out of the way where he is going. If we live, we can get him back. If we don’t, then at least he’s alive. Trust me on this. It’s better to live to fight again. Don’t die needlessly for some cause. If you really believe in it, harbor your energy, and bring it to bear when you can do the most damage. Later.”

She pushed him off. He let her. It refocused her on him and kept her away from Timas. “You can
not
just hand his life away,” she said. “You can’t do this.”

Pepper looked at Scarlett. “His mother remains with me. You take him. But if he’s seriously harmed, disfigured, or anything of the sort, you will pay. I will be back for him.”

Scarlett nodded. “I’ll pass that on.”

Pepper looked down the airlock. “Then let’s get moving, this airship doesn’t have long.”

The pirates in the cabin retreated, taking their Aeolian prisoners, a dour-looking Katerina, and the unconscious Timas. They left Scarlett, whom Pepper tied to the railing.

Itotia walked to the far side of the catwalk and curled up into a small ball by herself as the pilot got them underway again.

The pilot kept them in the air, barely, as sulfuric acid bit in the air around them. The airbag whistled and distended, the engines chopped away at full throttle, using the airship’s minimal aerodynamic properties to keep it aloft.

It was a coin flip, Pepper thought, whether they’d make it before the whole damn airship just gave up.

A
sharp smell shocked Timas awake. One of the Aeolian soldiers, a slender man with green eyes and close-shaved head, waved a pill of noxious smoke under his nose.

They’d been stripped of their armor, capes, and weapons. Renata sat next to Timas. They were all crammed into a small hold along with crates on a subfloor of a large airship car. Brown light streamed up through tiny glass slits in the floor, giving everyone ghastly, underlit expressions.

Timas rubbed his forehead. “He knocked me out.”

“Then they dragged us over to this airship and dropped us through the floor.” Renata pointed up at the hatch above them. “We’re still in place, they’re shifting crew around. Maybe arguing about whether Pepper’s deal will hold or whether just to do whatever they want with us and ditch their old leader.”

“Then what happens to us?” Timas looked at her.

“It’s tricky right now.”

Timas stood up, wobbly on his feet. He could feel the swaying of the airship under him. It trembled and bucked about in the air.

He made his way, leaning against the wooden crates, to the prow where Katerina sat in a ball, hugging her knees.

“Katerina.”

“Go away.” She didn’t look up. Her hair hid her face.

“I’m sorry about all this.” He felt horribly guilty, knowing that for a moment he had condemned her to this while hoping to avoid it himself. It felt slightly right that he’d been hit and dumped here.

She pushed her hair aside. Tears dripped around the edge of the silver eye. “I had a
life
. I had a life. And I got unlucky enough to be thrown in with you in this primitive mess. I’m a damn hostage, Timas. And everything I know and love has disappeared. There is nowhere else to go. No lower.”

“We’ll all get through this.”

“It’s all lost. That man, he just gave me away like I was
property
. Take her, she’s an avatar, he said. But I’m not anyone’s
property
. That’s what
you people out in these ramshackle cities are like, maybe, but I’m an individual with rights.”

She covered her face again.

“Besides, who can trust you?” she murmured at her knees. “I saw you bargaining with Pepper. Didn’t work out the way you had planned, did it? And now who trusts you. Not me.”

Timas turned around. She was right. He’d not earned her trust.

The hatch opened, a thick shaft of light spearing out from it. A ladder rolled down, and several armed pirates climbed down with it. They pointed at Timas. “You, come with us.”

Timas looked at Renata, who shrugged. Nothing she could do.

The men hauled Timas up onto the next floor of the airship, a long corridor with rooms off to every side. The airship had once been a large passenger ship.

“Hello, Timas,” said Luc.

Timas turned around. Luc stood there, wrapping a thick, heavy strap of leather around his right fist. Several pirates stood around him with big grins.

“Luc . . .”

“I said I’d make you pay.” Luc stepped forward as the hatch dropped shut. The pirates who’d pulled him out stepped back, giving both boys plenty of room.

“They were real.” Timas held his hands up. “We saw aliens. Pepper proved it, they’re hiding on the surface somewhere.”

Luc hit him in the stomach. Timas folded to the ground, the breath punched right out of him. “You tore me away from everything, Timas. My brother, and then my family.”

Timas gasped for air as the next punch came. The pirates laughed as Luc continued hitting him. Timas fended it off as best he could, but each punch bruised his arms and shoved him to the ground.

He kept his head protected and curled into a ball. The pirates laughed. “Get up, fight back.”

Timas didn’t give them that; they’d crowded around hoping for a spectacle. He didn’t have the strength to fight Luc, they were mismatched in every sense of the word.

But if he could survive this beating, maybe he could find something down below to carry on him for the next one.

The pirates got bored and pulled Luc off Timas. “He’s still worth something.” One of them pushed Timas back to the hatch. “You’ll get your fun, Luc, just take it a piece at a time.”

Luc stood, blood from Timas’s busted lips and cuts staining the leather strap. His hair hung disheveled around his eyes. “You had me banished,” Luc spat. “But I still had friends in the upper layers. I came to the smugglers sniffing around and told them Pepper would be transported out as soon as I heard. When I found out you came with them, that became my price for helping out.”

Timas let them lower him back among the Aeolians. Renata looked up at them. “Is this what we can all expect from you, beatings?”

“So far it’s just him,” the pirate shouted back. “But keep making noise, I’m sure we can come up with something for you.”

Timas flopped to the floor. “Don’t antagonize them,” he whispered.

Renata stood over him. “This is unacceptable.”

Timas crawled away from them, ashamed of seeming so weak. His ribs ached, his arms hurt from the punches and kicks, and his face was cut up.

He found a corner between the curved wall and two crates and curled up there.

In the dark, time passed swiftly. Renata came to him with a bowl of meat and potato soup. Timas swallowed the whole bowl’s contents and gave it back.

Half an hour later he looked around and crawled behind a crate near what looked like a drain. He was too nervous, his stomach roiled, and he found himself using a finger to provoke the response he craved.

He saw Katerina moving around to stare at him from the front of the storage space. He looked away.

Listless after throwing up, he just lay staring at the ribbed ceiling, listening to the footsteps of their captors and distant laughter.

At least his mother had left with Pepper.

That was a small thing.

And they would all know he had been right, about the aliens. There was a small measure of satisfaction in being proved right.

P
epper sat on the docked rescue ship, Jaguar scouts guarding him. Ollin had taken Itotia to meet the pipiltin. No doubt a meeting to discuss what to do about the current situation.

Itotia returned through docking tube after a good hour. She’d not talked to him for the entire flight. “The pipiltin want to turn you back over to the Aeolians, for goodwill. They’ve confiscated Heutzin’s gold and the credit you gave him. They’re trying to use it to get Aeolian help to repair the cuatetl.”

Pepper shook his head. “They’re too focused on the micro.”

“They won’t consider paying for Timas’s ransom with your own money.” Each word cracked out from Itotia’s thin lips. “The welfare of Yatapek comes first, they say.”

“Politicians,” Pepper muttered, disgusted. “The mining machine is unimportant.”

“Even the pipiltin know things are getting crazy out there.” She sat on the seat next to Pepper. “The Aeolians aren’t responding. The pipiltin are getting ready to take an airship to one of the nearest Aeolian cities. They want to send an envoy.”

“I’m sorry,” Pepper said.

Scarlett looked at them both. “Not as sorry as your son will be. I want my damn money.”

Itotia stood up. Pepper would have expected a slap, but Itotia punched the pirate captain in the stomach. It caught him off guard. He staggered back, winded. Itotia turned and grabbed Pepper’s shoulder. “What can you do?”

Kill the pipiltin. Destroy the envoy’s airship. Instigate a coup. Kill everyone who kept annoying him. Pepper rubbed his forehead. “Get me Heutzin and the spare groundsuit parts.”

If he could get properly mobile, all of those options opened up. Including going to the surface and leaving this circus behind. Finding the aliens would give him a better handle on what exactly the Swarm was looking for.

He looked back up at her.

“And then what?” she asked.

“Then I can do something about it all. No more dicking around dealing with people, but something serious.” He locked eyes with her.

“And my son . . .”

“Getting me a groundsuit is the best thing you can do for your son.” In the big picture of things. Pepper had no idea what the pirates wanted with a particular young boy like Timas, but it couldn’t be good.

But he wasn’t lying to her, not in the big-picture sense.

“Then you’ll get groundsuits. But you know you can’t fit in one, what limbs you have are too muscular.” She stared at him, and Pepper stared back. He’d revved his body’s metabolism up. Already his temparature burned. Sweat trickled down his back and stomach as his body literally began eating and destroying the weight and tone he’d been putting back on. He’d fit. If it meant mobility, he’d walk into the room tomorrow looking like a scarecrow.

Usually he only burned himself up like that for energy. In desperate combat. But now, Pepper only warred with himself to become xocoyotzin.

The staring contest ended. Itotia folded her arms. “I’ll make Ollin delay the flight a full day. You have twenty-four hours. Heutzin will come pick you up and get you to the parts.”

She walked back out, sweeping past Scarlett without a second glance. Four Jaguar scouts came in after her, but they surrounded the pirate captain instead of Pepper.

Itotia came later in the night to Heutzin’s workshop. She stood in the doorway. “You look sick,” she said.

“I’m burning my body up”—Pepper raised a hand up—“to fit the suits.”

She looked around. “You could have the house, on the upper deck.”

Metallic air, dingy light, grease, and oil hung heavy throughout the workshop. Pepper gestured at the hundreds of pieces of groundsuit scattered across the tables set against the cramped walls. “I’m happy enough.”

“Do you have everything you need?”

“I have all I need, plus more tools.” He used his leg to push the wheeled stool he sat on over. “What are you doing down here?”

“Checking up on you.”

Pepper picked up a helmet visor and peered into it. He plugged it into the thick, rusty collar of a chassis. It lit up, green diagnostics scrolling over Itotia as he looked through it at her.

“You know, even if I get this thing working, you’ll need to prepare for the Swarm.” Over the last few hours the silent cities had come back to life. They broadcast a bewildering array of claims throughout Aeolian information space. Everywhere Aeolians gathered a new element of confusion brewed. The cities sent out information saying Pepper was a League agent, trying to undermine the cities. Others claimed a Ragamuffin invasion neared. Or a League invasion neared. People talked to odd-sounding, stiff, and familiar faces of old family members or friends who told them that everything was okay aboard these cities and the Aeolians could return.

Some Aeolians believed them, enough to confuse the matter further when the Swarm began to add its votes to the Consensus. Aeolians agonized over how to withdraw the right to vote from its own physical citizens on suspicion of being part of the Swarm.

All this visitors relayed to Pepper in snippets. If the Consensus kept falling apart, invaded physically and democratically, Pepper realized Yatapek soon stood alone.

“How do we prepare for the Swarm?” Itotia snapped. “You failed against them. The Aeolians are failing against them. What can Yatapek do?”

Pepper set the visor down and picked up a piece of paper. “You have metal and wood. You can make these.”

She took the diagram from him. “What is it?”

“It’s called a billhook. An ancient polearm, used very successfully in several battles on Earth. The edged bit on the end should let you form up formations with a good reach against the Swarm. Eight, ten feet, you can lop heads quite nicely if it lets us get close enough for hand-to-hand combat. I assume you don’t have too many personal firearms in the
city?” And the Swarm couldn’t arm every one of its members. The clumsiness of individual Swarm units suggested to Pepper that fast, effective marksmanship from their side wouldn’t be something Yatapek would have to worry about.

Itotia shook her head. “Rifles for the Jaguar scouts, but there are, maybe a few hundred of them.”

“You’ll need to arm everyone: women, children.”

“You think it will come to this?” She leaned against the door frame.

Pepper nodded.

“The pipiltin will not allow it,” Itotia said. “They think we will remain safe by obscurity.”

“I gave you the design. If you choose to build them, or use them, that is your decision. If you choose to wait and see what will happen, that is also yours. I just know that if it were me, I would at least like to die doing something to face my killer.”