Warbound: Book Three of the Grimnoir Chronicles (19 page)

“Well, I hope he enjoys himself,” Southunder said. “I frankly do not give a damn which tyrant is in charge of your gang of tyrants, as long as he does his part to destroy this space monster before it is too late.”

Toru took a deep breath, as if composing himself before saying something difficult.

Sullivan’s cigarette dangled from his lip. “Oh, what now?”

“I believe Saito is in league with the Pathfinder.”

The three men were quiet for a very long time. Things had just gotten a whole lot worse, and sometimes that took a moment to really sink in. That explained the sabotage of the detector, and also their surprise guest. Sullivan closed his eyes and listened to the hum of the engines. They were lifting off, leaving Axel Heiberg. In a few minutes Barns would be calling, asking for their new heading, and frankly, Sullivan didn’t have a clue what to tell him.

Toru broke the silence. “Each Pathfinder has been different than the one before. The last creature worked quickly, gathering an army as it went, consuming Power as rapidly as it could until it was strong enough to send its message. It was direct, simple. This one is different. It seems to be working through subterfuge, building its forces gradually in the dark.”

“Your point, Mr. Toru?”

“All is not lost until it is strong enough to send for its master. The last creature was based upon strength and was defeated through strength. This one works through cunning, and therefore must be defeated with cunning. There seem to be plans afoot that we are only now discerning. The key to our victory is through disrupting those plans.”

Captain Southunder shook his head. “And how do you intend to accomplish that?”

The threat was inside the Imperium, but the Imperium was also the one force best prepared to stop the threat. “We give them a wake-up call. We expose the Chairman as a fake,” Sullivan answered.

“It is the only way. The Pathfinder’s forces are spread across the Imperium schools. Alone we could never cleanse them all. When the Iron Guard understand that they have been deceived and that the Pathfinder is among them, they will strike back, and they will win. We have a hundred men. They have a hundred thousand.”

“Like the Iron Guard will believe the likes of us.” Southunder was incredulous. “The Grimnoir are a thorn in their side, I’ve been raiding their shipping for decades, and Toru’s a turncoat. You couldn’t even convince your own government, Sullivan. How are we supposed to convince them?

“They think the Chairman’s immortal.” Sullivan looked to Toru. The Brute nodded. They were on the same page. “So we kill him again.”

Toru had the smile of a shark. “In public.”

Art to come

Skinless man

Chapter 8

Hunger—real hunger—not your going-without-afternoon-tea, nor no-eggs-at-breakfast sort of affair—can, when a man is utterly without occupation, make life one continual aching weary desire. If the desire is not satisfied, or does not abate of its own accord (as it very often does), it can have disastrous effects on a man’s mind. It has been known to make men think very seriously about the rights of property, and a few have become so unbalanced as to become socialists.

—Geoffrey Pyke,

Memoirs of a Boffin in a German Prison Camp,
1918

New York City, New York

“Rat bastards!”
Francis hurled the whiskey bottle into the fireplace. It failed to shatter, so he concentrated his Power and reached out with his mind, and the bottle exploded in a properly dramatic manner. “Filthy, no-good thieves! I can’t believe this!”

“What part of this came as a shock to you? The part where you told the President of the United States you wanted to have a fight with him and that he was happy to oblige, or the part where you thought you could tell a bunch of crusading busybodies to shove off and you didn’t expect any consequences?” Ray Chandler, CFO of United Blimp & Freight and Francis’ confidante, covered his glass of whiskey protectively while Francis looked for something else to throw across the office. “Come on, Francis. You should have seen this coming a mile away.”

His office on top of the Chrysler Building was a temporary safe haven from the army of auditors, investigators, bought-off reporters, union activists, and other various teat-sucking pawns of Roosevelt’s who had been making his life a living hell, but they’d be back again tomorrow. Francis had no doubt about that. It was seventy degrees outside, so it wasn’t like he’d needed to light a fire, but throwing things at the chimney always made him feel better, especially when it was lit. As a side effect, however, he’d had to order the air conditioning turned up to compensate, but what was the point of being rich if you weren’t allowed a few idiosyncrasies?

“They’re accusing me of selling warship designs to the Imperium?
Me?
”

“Well, your grandfather did violate the embargos. It doesn’t take a Cog to point out that their
Kaga
class look suspiciously like the Super Tri-hull we’ve been trying to sell to our Navy.”

“And I put a stop to that nonsense as soon as I got back from
killing
a bunch of Imperium navy.” Francis picked up the evening paper. “Look at this! It’s even the same reporters who wrote all the anti-Grimnoir propaganda after the assassination attempt. Why do people still believe proven liars?”

“Are you kidding? You’ve been wearing a big target on your back all year. They probably already had these articles about what a crook you are prepped from the last time you were getting the frame job from the OCI. They just had to haul them out and dust them off when Roosevelt asked.” Chandler chuckled. “Hell, they’ll probably win the Pulitzer for their hard hitting investigative journalism.”

Francis angerily wadded the evening paper into a gigantic, ball and threw it at the fireplace too. However it hit the logs, caught fire, and then rolled out onto the floor. “Shit!” He ran over and desperately stomped out the fire before it ruined the Persian rug.

Chandler just shook his head, finished his drink, and then poured himself a refill. “I’m sorry to say, Francis, that it looks like you are the subject of a very savage public-relations campaign.”

The scorch mark wasn’t
too
bad. Francis used his magic and rolled the newspaper remains back into the fire. “Well, buy some newspapers, then. I’ll beat him at his own game.”

Chandler laughed hard. He’d had a bit too much to drink, but in his defense, he’d been fighting National Recovery Act auditors all day and their allegations of UBF price fixing. “Beat him? The man’s a master manipulator. That’s like Donald Duck saying he’s going to outmaneuver Black Jack Pershing on the battlefield.”

The mention of Pershing made Francis sigh. His old mentor would have known what to do. Francis was up to his eyeballs in trouble, getting attacked from every angle short of gunfire, and it was frankly overwhelming. “We’re in bad straits, Ray, but I’m not giving up those Dymaxions. I’ll burn this company down before I let those conniving bullies take them away.”

“The board may disagree about the whole burning-everything-down strategy. You’ve done well, made them buckets of money, way better than they ever expected, and they sure love making money, but they like heat even less, and they’re getting a lot of heat right now. I give it two weeks, tops, before they’re calling for your resignation.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Francis muttered. Ray was a financial wizard, and even if Francis got run out of the family business, Dymaxion was still his, and that’s what Roosevelt really wanted. Federal agents had already seized all of that little company’s assets under various legal excuses, mostly related to lies about his taxes, but they hadn’t found a single Nullifier, Nullifier part, diagram, or note on their creation. Francis had told one of the Treasury agents that, sadly, all of those items had been lost in a tragic canoe accident. “The only thing that’s really of value is what’s stored in Fuller’s brain.”

“And when Fuller gets back from
holiday
, do you plan to hold him hostage somewhere so the government can’t take him too?”

“If I have to. You don’t get it, Ray. The world’s changing. We’re one of the last places where Actives aren’t property. I’m not going to let my people become property.”

“Canada and England’s magical types are fairly well off . . . Okay, okay, I get you. So what do you aim to do, then?”

Francis leaned against the fireplace and studied the pattern of broken glass and curling newspaper. “I should run for president.”

“You have to be thirty-five, so twelve or so years from now, I’m sure that’ll be a fine idea.”

“What? Seriously? When did they make that a law?”

“Wow.” Chandler took a long drink. “Now there’s a testimony about the quality of our finest prep schools.”

“That’s what I get for spending most of school chasing skirts.” Francis walked back to his desk. “Look, I may not know the finer points of constitutional law, but I damn sure know right and wrong.” There were only a few framed photos on his desk, mostly of close friends since none of his family members rated the space. Francis picked up the one portrait of Faye and sighed. He’d loved a lot of women, but he only cared about one of them. That was because Faye was special. Faye owned
special
. He was the only one who knew she was still alive, and he had no idea where she was, but he found himself wishing hard that she was here now. Even without any of his resources or connections, and her drastically uncomplicated view of the world, she would probably be doing a lot better than he was . . . Of course, the White House would probably be in flames and half of Congress would be dead, but Faye certainly knew how to get results.

The intercom on his desk buzzed. “Mr. Stuyvesant, Mr. and Mrs. Garrett are here to see you.”

“Send them up.”

“Grimnoir business, I presume?” Chandler asked.

“No earthly idea.”

“Then I’d better be going,” Chandler polished off his drink and got off the couch. “Dan doesn’t like when I ogle his rather lovely wife, which is remarkably difficult not to do even when sober. Tonight? He’d probably
suggest
I take a stroll off your balcony and I’d probably find that a brilliant idea. I think I’ve had a touch much.”

That was a lie. Chandler could outdrink a sponge, though he had been dealing with auditors all day, and if anything was an excuse to drink to excess, it was auditors. “You don’t have to leave. It isn’t like that whole secret society thing is particularly secret anymore.”

“Ha! You think I
want
to know? Please. Once Roosevelt has his way with you all, I’ve got to try to figure out how to include this job on my resume without mentioning our association, Mr. Blacklist . . . Either that or I’ll just embezzle a bunch of your money before Roosevelt steals it all and then retire to a beach in Cuba.”

“Night, Ray.”

“Night, Francis.”

Francis passed the time waiting for his associates to arrive by coming up with inventive new curse words. They entered a few minutes after Chandler had left. Jane immediately came over and gave him a hug, because that’s just how Jane was, and she could probably tell he was having a bad day. Chandler was right: Jane was a beauty. Francis had always thought she looked and even sounded a little bit like Marlene Dietrich. Also, Jane really was a sweet heart, just an all-around nice person to the core of her being. “I saw the papers.”

“Hard to miss that big cartoon of me on the front page, holding up the sacks labeled
blood money
while standing on a pile of corpses titled
equality
and
prosperity
.”

“They were never one for nuance,” Dan agreed.

“I thought the cartoon made you look cute,” Jane said. “I’ve never been famous enough to warrant a caricature. You and Dan are in the comics all the time now.”

“They don’t use you because they don’t want to put a pretty face on the
Active menace.
They always make me look like a troll,” Dan complained. “And fat, too.”

“I prefer to think of you as attractively plump,” Jane said as she patted her much shorter husband on the stomach. Dan did look a bit troll-like to her in Jane’s company, but in comparison, so would most men. Not that it mattered to Jane, since, as a Healer, everybody looked like see-through meat bags filled with pumping organs and blood. But she always said that one simply got used to it. “Now hurry, Francis, fetch your hat. We must be going.”

“Why? You guys taking me out for a night on the town?”

“Sadly, no.” Dan spread his hands apologetically. “I just received word from Browning. His contact inside the government gave him a heads-up. There’s been a new development on the registration front.”

“Oh, what now?” Francis grabbed his shoulder holster, threw it on, and then tossed his coat over it. The .45 sitting on top of his desk went into the holster. There had been talk about a new executive order, but he’d been too busy trying to keep his business holdings in one piece to pay much attention to the rumors. “They rounding people up already?”

“It is a special holding area for Actives, all right,” Jane answered, “but it isn’t a roundup, Actives are supposedly
volunteering
for this.”

“
What?
That’s got to be a lie. The propaganda machine isn’t even trying hard.
”

“We need to head over to New Jersey to check it out.”

“New Jersey?” Francis thought about it for a second. He went back to his desk, grabbed another .45 auto and several extra loaded magazines. Jane raised an eyebrow. “Hey, don’t give me that look. It’s Jersey.”

Drew Town, New Jersey

It wasn’t at all
what he’d expected. It wasn’t a prison camp. It was a town, and a rather cozy one at that, nestled in the forest, next to a serene lake, all within commuting distance from the city. The signs even said that they’d be putting in a bus line, the lake was stocked with fish, and the forest even had hiking trails. There were signs every-where, all talking about how wonderful Drew Town was and would be, and every sign had happy families on it doing happy family things. Some of the art had been stolen from the
Saturday Evening Post
.