Through Fire (Darkship Book 4) (35 page)

The Wave of Compulsion

I was so startled it took me a second to recognize Nathaniel Remy, leader of the Olympus armies and linked by gossip to Lucius Keeva.

He looked as he usually looked: cool and collected, blond hair perfectly cut and gleaming, the sky-blue uniform accentuating his tall, slim person.

But I could tell from the shimmer that this was not his normal uniform but one woven through with dimatough threads. And he carried, along with two burners in holsters on either side of his hips, a huge burner of the kind they called a ship-buster strapped to his back. He met my gaze and grinned at me, as though sharing a joke, then looked at Brisbois. “You haven’t said nearly enough, even if I don’t know what the commotion was about. All I know is that it must have been riveting, since there was only this man to recognize us and let us in,” he gestured towards Jonathan LaForce, at his side. Then he nodded. “And now, suppose we start getting plans together. If the Good Men are attacking when you say they are, the seacity and all its inhabitants will be sitting ducks.”

Brisbois found his voice again, then, though he still sounded subdued as he said, “How did you get here so fast?”

“We weren’t very distant,” Nat Remy said. “And we used brooms. I brought everyone who was proficient on one.”

“I see,” Brisbois said, visibly ogling the gaudy uniforms.

“No, you don’t,” Nat said, dismissively. “We were wearing broomer suits over this. Dark ones, so we could fly unnoticed.”

“It’s night then?” I asked.

“Yes,” Nat said, “which means that we have less than twelve hours to see what we can do about defending this disorganized and indefensible mess.

Somehow—and I’d swear it was Nat who herded us, perhaps because he had experience of military command—we ended up in a meeting room, sitting down. Brisbois had torn through his suit to see what lay beneath and was apparently satisfied that he wasn’t mortally wounded. There was a slight tinge of blood on his sleeve, but he certainly didn’t seem to be bleeding out.

We were sitting around, again, and someone—I wasn’t even sure whom or responding to whose command—brought me a cup of coffee with an excess of sugar. I drank it as if my life depended on it, which this late, and after what I’d been through, it might.

Simon told Nat what had happened, in concise sentences. He too was drinking coffee. He looked like he too was about to pass out and that only the caffeine and sugar might keep him going. He saw me looking and shook his head slightly, as though to say the gash on his arm wasn’t any big thing.

“So,” Nat said, as Simon described the run-up to the scene that Nat had walked in on. “You were being infantile and an ass.”

Simon made a face and, curiously, cast a look of resentment at Alexis. “I would like to take control of my fate. I am not just what I was born to be, not just a symbol. I—”

“Stow it,” Nat said, without rancor. “I’ve heard all this from better men than you. You are what you are. So are all of us. And what we are right now is sitting ducks.” He stood. Standing like that, while the rest of us sat he made himself appear to be a teacher before an infant class.

I couldn’t read the insignia above the badge of a mountain on the right side of his chest, but I knew from Simon’s talk, if nothing else, that Nat was one of the Usaian commanders, second or functional second to their main commander, Herrera.

When I’d seen him before on the raid to Circum Terra, he’d looked uncontrolled and more than a little homicidal, but I’d realized before this that that had been an act, as much of an act as Simon’s inconsequential fool routine. Now he put on the authority and the command, and it didn’t even occur to me to stand up. Worse, it didn’t occur to Simon. We sat there, as Nat Remy drew in a deep breath. I got the impression he wanted to say
Merde,
but perhaps wasn’t bilingual. What came out of his mouth was more opaque. “By the Founders, you’re a pretty lot. What in hell’s blazes were Usaians doing playing at being Sans Culottes? Or were you playing?”

“I was raised in the faith,” Alexis said. “And in the secret. But then I grew up and I wanted…I wanted to be…They promised we could be equal. And when it turned out they couldn’t enforce it, or even a pretense of it, I returned to the faith of my fathers. Well, the closest thing I had to a father. And then when…when…” He looked at Simon. “I was working for the Good Man, who was not a Usaian, and I didn’t know how he’d take to knowing his handmade and delivered servants were…that is…”

“Yeah. I know the feeling,” Nat said, bitterness at the back of his amused tone. He glanced quickly at Simon. “You’re not a secret Usaian yourself, are you? Because if you claim to be, so help me, I’m going to ask you who swore you in, and why I wasn’t told.”

Simon shook his head dumbly. “No. Am I supposed to be?”

“No. Oh, no.” Nat looked around the room twice, then his gaze landed on Jonathan LaForce sitting next to me. “Jonathan Dayton LaForce, how many of you—How many of
us
are there?”

Jonathan was frowning. I expected an explosion. He wasn’t the sort of man who take kindly to being yelled at. But he frowned harder, then sighed. “I don’t know,” he said. “In hard numbers. You see, the…Doctor Dufort has been making people, and his father before him, and enhancing people, many of whom could have children, and we don’t know how many of them there are. But as far back as it goes, the Duforts were secret Usaians, and as we came of age, at least those of us he thought receptive after trying to talk to us about it, were initiated into the faith and given our piece of flag.” He hesitated. “I have my piece of flag,” he said, and reached into his suit, and brought out a small, rectangular box, flat and shiny, which he laid on the table with a thump. It was echoed by an equal thump from Brisbois, and another from Basil, and another, after a second, from a furiously blushing Mailys.

I didn’t know what the boxes meant, except I assumed they contained pieces of the sacred flag of the Usaians, the barred, star-spangled piece of cloth that was said to have once flown over their long-lost homeland.

But they meant something for Nat all right. His eyes widened and he grew considerably paler. The words “It just became real for him” crossed my mind, but even I wasn’t sure, precisely, what they meant.

He stood and inclined his head, and put his fingers up, pinching each side of the bridge of his nose, as though trying to calm thoughts going through his head in tumult. I got the impression that if he’d spoken then, if he’d spoken immediately, we’d have gotten shouted at.

Instead, he took a deep, long, audible breath. He said something under his breath. It wasn’t
merde
. Or at least it didn’t sound like
merde,
but I think it meant the same.

Then he looked up, though his hand remained poised for his head to drop into it at any minute. “We have a problem,” he said. “And that is why I came ahead to try to find a solution to it, before the Good Men are upon us, and before our problem is effectively without solution.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, what precisely do you expect the army of Olympus, arguably a Usaian army, which is why I’m here at all, to do for you?”

There was a long silence, and then Mailys spoke, her voice thin and that of a very little girl. “Fight for us.”

Nat looked at her, and nodded once, but I had the impression the movement of his head was in no way an agreement with what she’d said. “Granted,” he said, “I and my comrades will fight, bleed and die for fellow Usaians, and for the cause of liberty around the world. But you don’t understand my meaning. General Herrera of the Olympus forces is engaged in battle right now. We have been engaged in battle, or in preparation for battle, or in various conflagrations against the armies of the Good Men for over a year.” He let his hand fall, and faced us fully. “We’ve done bleeding and dying enough, but if you think we are enough to stop the Good Men taking over this seacity or overrunning it, or even bombing it from above till it’s a cracked shell on the floor of the ocean—” These words elicited a small sound of protest from Simon, which in turn got him a cold look from Nat’s dark eyes. “You are out of your ever-loving minds. I learned in religious education that the heart of a pure Usaian, infused with the faith and the words of the Founders, was capable of defeating ten of the Good Men’s slave troops. Even if that were true—and I’ll tell you right now I’ve seen no superiority of that kind, our hearts stop like others when we’re shot—this still leaves a good two troops of the Good Men for each we kill or more. They have millions they can draft.

“We’ve managed to survive by running what is largely a terror action; by hiding and striking from cover, by running a guerilla war against the Good Men and their transports, their goods and their facilities. And we’ve become painful enough for them not to try too hard to kill us; for them to avoid us and try not to disturb us. We haven’t become painful enough for them to engage in all-out war against us. We have five seacities with us, and the only significant territorial areas are those of Olympus, and they are, as far as the Good Men know, backwoods, inhabited by ignorant farmers whom they could wipe out anytime. In fact, they’ve carried out a couple of punitive raids on our towns, which were a minor effort to us but which—” He swallowed. “I was on the receiving end of one of those and let me tell you, it might have been child’s play to them, but it almost ended the Olympus army, early on.”

“You’re saying that there is no hope,” Jonathan said. “And that we should surrender now? Then why do you fight? Why do you wear that uniform, if all you do is just play at being soldiers, while the Good Men ignore you, save for random slaps at your inadequate forces?”

“I didn’t say we had no hope,” Nat said. He put both hands on the table and leaned forward slightly, looking at each of us in turn. I noticed the men who’d come in with him were paying close attention. Surely they’d heard this before?

“I didn’t say that we could do nothing, as Usaians in the long game. No, no, no. We have hope and we will win this, but it won’t be a sudden action, a short, thrusting invasion, a happy moment when the people of the world will realize they prefer liberty and hew to our cause. That’s not how real life works, though it makes for a beautiful picture in the sensies.” His lips quirked. “Those of you who are fighting men know that. And you know it’s a matter of years.”

“We don’t have years,” Alexis Brisbois said. I’d never heard a human being sound as cold, as desolate. “That was my idea when I established this secret center and others like it. The idea that we could lie low and over ten years or so work, return the Good Man to power, and then start again to freedom, another way, but the problem we have is twofold. First, the Good Man has been outed as an artifact, a Mule, and suspicions of course fell on a lot of us who work for him. And second, the Good Men are attacking. I don’t know if they intend to use all their forces. I doubt it. But the numbers we got are more than enough to destroy us. Yes, we could still stay, those of us in the Good Men forces who are in these centers. We could stay quietly behind, let the Good Men repopulate the isle, and then set about converting the new population.” He pursed his lips. “In fifty years or so, we would have a perfect opportunity. Maybe a hundred.”

Nat cackled. “I like your sense of humor, Brisbois. You are funny.”

“Not funny at all,” Jonathan said. “My friends are out there, and my family.”

“I’d gathered,” Nat said drily. “Which is why I’m not taking Brisbois seriously. But let me tell you this, it would be better if we had a finite number, a carefully delineated population. Because I don’t know how to save the population of the island. I understood you’ve gotten those more closely connected with the Good Man’s household into some sort of shelter?”

Jonathan sighed and shrugged. “Most of them, but I doubt all. And besides, pardon me, sir,” the “sir” was military courtesy, as he’d looked at the insignia on Nat’s chest. “I know that you’re here because the Olympus army is sworn to defend Usaians.”

There was a waggle of the hand from Nat. “‘Sworn’ and ‘defend’ are both debatable. We try to protect Usaians when it doesn’t put our cause in danger. But I’d hoped very much we could do a lift of people endangered, that you were in the tens at most. And if you aren’t, I’m hoping most of you, the vast majority of you, can be put somewhere safe. Then we can let the Good Men overrun the island. Because that would be the best thing we could do. We could then lead a small and targeted operation to get our people out of here, and let everyone go to hell otherwise. Let the Good Men have this hunk of rock and dimatough.”