The Creative Fire: 1 (Ruby's Song) (36 page)

60: Joel and Onor

To Onor’s surprise, they headed to common, where they joined two other groups of about the same size. “Won’t they find us here? Where are the reds anyway?”

The Jackman grinned. “We’ve distracted them. We had help from Ix. Like your directions here.”

Onor hadn’t told anyone about the voice in the helmet. “How did you know?”

“Ix told me. Ix can give us whatever information we ask for or that it wants us to have. The problem is that it can’t hide information the others ask for.” He paused. “Are you sure you want to go?”

“Of course.”

The Jackman grunted. “You could stay back and be defense. We’ll be meeting Joel.”

Onor spat. “We may need him.”

“See you keep that pride.” The Jackman turned and started them off down the same corridor they’d come up. Onor walked near the middle of the pack, beside Kyle. Both were silent, but Onor had the distinct sense that Kyle was as happy to have him around as The Jackman seemed to be.

It seemed like the wrong number of people. Onor counted twenty plus him. Twenty-one. Too many for a stealth operation, too few for a strength move.

The Jackman had an inner sense of the
Fire
’s layout that made the route back through the blue level seem direct and safe. No one had journals with them, but The Jackman muttered under his breath from time to time, his jaw tensing and relaxing, his focus sometimes inward even though they walked though enemy territory.

Onor stumbled over a low lip where two tunnels joined. Kyle steadied him. “Are you okay?”

“Sure. I’ll be fine.” He breathed and walked and worried. His brain shed its fog and his knees lifted higher. It seemed they hadn’t gone far enough when The Jackman ushered them through the locks on the far side of the blue level and through a connector that led to command.

“Go right,” The Jackman whispered.

Around a corner, they met up with four other people. Joel, two men, and a woman. Joel stopped and looked hard at Onor, appraising him all over like the first time they’d met in the corridor on green. Joel had passed Onor on his way out, so he knew Onor had been guarding him and Ruby the night they had slept together. In another circumstance, another moment of his life, Onor would have turned away. He wanted to now, but he couldn’t. It mattered too much that he be part of the next battle, part of saving Ruby.

Joel had slept with Ruby too easily. He couldn’t possibly appreciate her. He probably slept with women all the time; women liked power.

Ruby’s choice, too.

Joel waited for a response from Onor. Maybe he expected a punch.

Onor swallowed hard, shoving away his hurt pride to deal with later. “Good to see you again. We should go.”

“Good to see you, too.” Joel looked past Onor at the group from gray. “Thank you for coming.”

Joel turned and led them in the direction they’d already been going, their pace a fast walk.

The Jackman took up the rear and Onor fell back beside him.

Being in the back let him watch Joel, who moved at the front of the group from the first step after he met them, leadership falling to him as surely as he breathed. Joel knew almost everyone’s names already, which seemed impossible, and he learned the others quickly, as well as the names of people they knew, asking about family and jobs and dreams in whispered tones.

Twice they passed men who looked the other way. Onor looked for the multicolored sign, even subtly, on their uniforms or jewelry. He didn’t see it, but still he felt sure the men were with them. Or trying to take no side at all.

They came to a “T” intersection. Joel steadied his stunner, pointing just in front of him. He and The Jackman separated, one on each side, and people peeled off to stand by one or the other.

Onor hesitated, then followed Joel.

The Jackman gave him a soft nod of approval.

The group split a second time, and Onor worked to stick with Joel again.

Joel stopped in front of a door and whispered. “This is the briefing room. We’ve got two minutes to wait, then we go in together, all four groups. There are four doors. There are more people able to help than you know about.

“Use your stunners only to threaten unless you’re fired on, and then use them to stay safe and to keep each other safe.”

Onor nodded.

“Keep Ruby safe.”

Joel and Onor shared a look, respect mixed with determination, and all of it salted with the unspoken. They nodded at each other.

Joel opened the door.

61: Confrontation

Ruby had created silence in the room with her one word:
coward
. The word seemed to fall into the rift she felt in the room, and she wasn’t entirely sure if she would hear cheers or be hit with a stunner next. Garth started to laugh at her. And while he was laughing, the door to her right opened.

Joel burst in, followed by Onor. Both men held stunners out, Onor with one in each hand. Ellis grabbed her, using her to shield himself from them.

Ruby laughed, giddy with the tension and the sudden action. Ellis was demonstrating the very word she had just called his boss. Then other hands were on her, rougher and surer, the wrists thick under a red uniform. She felt real fear then, more afraid than when she’d first walked into the room and realized how many people had gathered to see her charged and damned.

Ruby kicked down hard, slamming her foot against a boot while she tried to twist away. The room spun as her attacker dragged her backward and sideways.

She glimpsed Garth on the vid screen, no longer laughing, his eyes snapping anger and his mouth shut tightly.

Ellis’s face passed close to hers, going from fright to slack as he fell, stunned by someone.

Onor standing, yelling her name.

The man who held her, his arm. In front of her face. She bit, tasting cloth.

The crowd, standing and moving, making no real sense. A blur.

The ceiling, her arms pulled tight behind her, her back bent. She screeched as pain arced up her spine.

The other sounds were confusion, and then she started to fall, dragged down as the man holding her slumped in the boneless fall of the stunned.

A hand reached for her. Green uniform. Joel.

She took his hand, and he pulled her close to him and pushed her down. She refused to lay flat even though Joel barked at her to. She sat up crouched, able to see, able to run, but still as small as she could be and do either. Her breath came in great, gasping bits laced with fear and adrenaline.

“Stay there,” Joel hissed. He straddled her with his legs, standing over her.

Chaos. Color and movement and screaming. The reds that had been against the wall fought each other. The crowd in the center stood uncertainly, seeming to sway in all directions. Some people held stunners on uncertain targets, others crawled under tables, heading toward the doors. Impossible to make out who was on what side.

Chitt on top of a man twice her size, beating the side of his head with her stunner while he struggled to throw her off.

The Jackman, in what looked like an even fight with a red, blood streaming down his beard, but the red bloodied too, his nose and arm slashed and bleeding.

Joel tried to scream at the crowd, but the noise and fighting drowned his voice.

The doors were clogged by knots of people trying to get out and grays and blues trying to get in, everyone slowed by everyone else.

To her left, a red uniform launched itself at her. Sylva. With a stunner aimed at Joel. Ruby leapt, felt her right shoulder dig into Sylva’s neck, knocking Sylva backward.

Sylva grunted and grabbed a chunk of Ruby’s hair, pulling.

Ruby landed on Sylva, her head yanked down to the stage floor as Sylva pulled.

Ruby twisted and kicked, getting nothing better than shin.

Sylva was on her, one hand still holding her hair, the other holding the stunner, using it as a bludgeon, slamming Ruby in the cheek so hard she tasted blood.

Ruby felt only anger now, hot and swift. She raised a hand and blocked Sylva’s next blow, twisting her arm around Sylva’s so Ruby pulled her down, easing the terrible bright pain of the hair pull. She thrust with her legs, getting leverage, rolling over on top of Sylva and pinning her.

Onor screamed from behind. “Lean, Ruby, give me a shot!”

Ruby leaned to her right, feeling Sylva react to the release of pressure and begin to flip her, gaining the advantage again. Sylva’s arms felt tight around Ruby’s waist, a force. They let go and Sylva fell, loose limbed and stunned.

A glance revealed Onor’s triumphant smile

“Nice!” Ruby called to him as she shoved Sylva’s inert form to the side and stood.

“That’s twice,” Onor grinned, turning to block a man racing toward Joel.

From the screen, Garth’s voice, rising, someone adjusting the volume. “Stop!”

A momentary hush fell over the room.

Joel shouted, “Freedom!” into the silence

Ruby stepped to his side.

Most of the struggle in the room slowed or stopped, attention shifting between Garth’s image, Joel and Ruby, and Onor and the others on the stage.

“We’ve won,” Joel proclaimed. “We’ve won freedom.”

A stunner fired, the beam wide of its mark, missing Joel and hitting the man behind him.

A surge of movement brought down the man who’d fired the stunner.

“More?” Joel asked the crowd, scanning their faces and ignoring the man on the ground.

A scuffle broke out behind them, and Ruby took her cue from Joel, not looking back until she heard Onor’s voice demanding something. A quick glance showed him standing over a man on the ground, kicking him.

Ruby stayed close to Joel, more control now in her breathing.

Joel was right. They’d won. Ellis was on the ground, unconscious, and so was Sylva. It was the first time Ruby had ever seen her looking relaxed. Three or four others lay on the stage, stunned or, in one case, beaten. A woman’s body lay across the floor at the foot of the stage. But most people stood, and some even sat. Most of the movement and chaos had slowed or stopped.

A great happiness filled up Ruby’s belly, the happiness as deep as her anger during the fight, as her fear before that. Not happiness. Triumph. She thought she’d felt that before, but she never had, not really.

She wanted to float with it, giddy.

Except Garth was still watching, and he was far away.

Joel looked up at the picture of Garth. “There are more of us than of you. In case you don’t know it, you’ve lost. We’re taking the rest of the ship as I speak.”

Everyone in the room was looking at Joel now, some quietly, some with approval or hatred, some merely curious. A few looked stunned and surprised.

Garth regarded Joel, silent and furious.

Onor had come up on Joel’s far side, standing close to him, protecting.

Ruby fought to keep her face neutral, to think in the midst of the continued rush of joy at winning this room. It wasn’t done yet; she couldn’t afford to get ahead of the end of the fight. Mistakes lurked in laziness.

Joel kept his eyes on Garth’s. Didn’t move.

Ruby watched him, marveling at the strength in his face, the resolve. He was sure of himself, sure past the events in this room.

The doorways had cleared enough that grays and blues and reds who had come in at the same time as Joel—all wearing the multicolored sign in easily visible ways—streamed into the crowd and sorted. Ruby couldn’t tell what they were doing, but it looked like they were finding the sign and putting people into two groups. They attended to the stunned or wounded in a third corner of the room.

Good.

She whispered in Joel’s ear. “How do we get them? Garth and his supporters?”

To their right, a red swung a defiant fist at a swarthy, dark man wearing the sign and was immediately hit with three stunners. A last burst of fighting?

Garth spoke. “A ship without discipline will fail. We will yet win, and when we do, you will die with Ruby and her friends.”

Ruby glared up at him. “Come meet me where we live. Where the workers work and keep
The
Creative Fire
going.” Her voice rose. “I dare you.”

“We will win,” Garth said.

“Not today,” Ruby said. “We’ve done it.” Only they couldn’t leave yet. There was a step to take still. She pursed her lips, feeling what they should do like a word stuck behind her tongue.

Joel pointed up at the screen, an answer to the question she’d whispered in his ear earlier. Three men in green had come up and surrounded Garth, who stood stock still.

He looked startled at the intrusion.

“Ix let them in,” Joel said to Garth.

Garth flinched and betrayal touched his face before he hardened it.

Joel turned and looked out at the room full of people. Everyone had stopped, the silence so complete that Joel could speak just above his normal tone. “Watch,” he said. He raised a hand and lowered it.

Ruby looked back at the screen. Garth jerked and fell. One of the greens laid a blanket over him. As the blanket covered Garth’s face, noise erupted, sobs and disbelief.

He had been shot dead. Not stunned.

She turned to Joel, shocked. They’d won. They didn’t need to kill him. Not like that. Maybe if he was right here and fighting them hand to hand.

Then she thought about Lila Red, who had been killed by a captain. But even that didn’t take away the feeling of too much cruelty.

She felt unsure of Joel, maybe a bit frightened. But then surely he’d had to kill Garth. He must know what he was doing.

Joel looked out at the crowd, his jaw tight. He stood strong, legs slightly apart, leaning a tiny bit forward. He lifted an arm above his shoulder. She expected him to claim victory, but he did something far smarter. He spoke to the crowd. “Garth had to die for the fighting to stop. Now we are all free.”

His audience gave him puzzled looks, but Ruby felt a small, warm smile creeping up her bruised face.

“We are all free,” Joel repeated. “We can stop fighting one another, because a ship’s crew does not fight. A ship’s crew works together. And we have a ship to take home.”

Ruby could see it now, feel it. That thing behind her tongue. She called out, “Ix!”

Ix answered her with no hesitation. “Ruby Martin.”

This was the final necessary move. Ix. “We want Joel to be captain. Do you recognize him as our captain, so that you will obey him?”

“Joel,” Ix said, “Do you wish this honor?”

Joel did what Ruby knew he would. He looked out over the crowd and placed the decision in the hands of the crew. “Are you ready? If you are ready for a new day, I am ready for a new day. I will not betray you. I will bring you home.”

The crowd roared so loud that Ruby barely heard Ix say, “I will follow Joel.”