Warbound: Book Three of the Grimnoir Chronicles - eARC

  The Imperium had wanted him to read this message. Diplomatic Corps training had taught him that a message such as this would have been encrypted. This message had not been. Surely, as soon as they discovered that he had faked his own death, the code key would have been changed. He should not have been able to read a real, current message.

  They were trying to shake him. They were trying to insult him, make him angry, to cause him to do something foolish. If that was the case, they had underestimated his resolve. It would not work. Okubo Tokugawa’s final command had been to Jake Sullivan, ergo, Toru was honor-bound to see Sullivan’s mission completed, no matter what.

  If the imposter wanted a fight, so be it. He might look and sound just like the Chairman, but it was doubtful that he would be nearly as invincible.

  “Toru.”

  Distracted and purposefully limiting his magical senses, he had not heard Sullivan approach. The Heavy was quiet for his size. Toru let go of the pipe and dropped to the floor. “How long have you been there?”

  “About thirty chin-ups.”

  Toru had counted forty-two and hadn’t yet begun to sweat, but with so many men who hated him on this vessel, allowing someone to sneak up on him was unacceptable. He would have to pay better attention in the future. “What do you want?”

  Sullivan wandered into the storage room, idly inspecting the pile of weapons stacked on the floor. The broken remains of Toru’s Iron Guard katana were on top of the stack. Thankfully, Sullivan did not remark on the broken sword. He’d been there when Toru had smashed it to demonstrate his resolve. “It’s about the crew.”

  “If they cannot comprehend the enormity of the task, then they will fail.”

  “Fighting in the Great War taught me a few things. I’ve seen what happens when you kill a unit’s morale. You might as well kill their bodies, ‘cause next time they go into combat, they’re either useless or good as dead.”

  “Irrelevant.” Toru snorted. “It should not matter. Imperium men do not have this problem. Superior warriors embrace death in order to fulfill their missions. The greatest honor a warrior can achieve is dying in his lord’s service.”

  “These ain’t Imperium men. The Chairman’s bullshit won’t fly here.”

  Toru returned to his uncomfortable patch of floor and took a seat. “One of our nations has conquered a tenth of the planet over the last two generations while the other has grown fat, complacent, and apathetic. Please, share more of your opinion on which of our differing methods is the superior.”

  Sullivan frowned. Toru knew he had him there. Sullivan, despite being a product of a weak culture, was still a true warrior. Trying in vain to convince the American authorities of the danger of the Pathfinder had left Sullivan infuriated and baffled. Toru had just won the argument before it had even begun, and Sullivan didn’t even know it yet. The Imperium school’s education hadn’t all been physical.

  “Only the fools in charge are like that. Don’t underestimate a regular American’s backbone.”

  “Yet here we are. One lonely ship . . . Did you really come here simply to debate philosophy?”

  Sullivan pretended to take in the room. “Riding around on a blimp named after the little girl that killed your father . . . That’s got to stick in your craw.”

  It was a rather astute observation. Despite appearing to be an oaf, the Heavy could have made a passable diplomat. “Is there a point to this visit, Sullivan?”

  “Yeah. Take your head out of your ass so you can see the sunshine. Whether you like them or not, these men are our only hope of beating the Pathfinder. You best start acting like it.”

  “That is an order?”

  “It is.”

  The things that I do to fulfill my father’s commands . . . Toru nodded. “So be it.”

  “Good. You’ll get them up to speed then. These ain’t Imperium. They’re free men, and they’ll fight better if they know they can win. Convince them they can.”

  “You wish me to lie?”

  “You won’t have to. I intend to win.”

  “Optimism is such an American trait. Optimism is a lie.”

  “And pessimism lowers morale.”

  “Not pessimism. Pessimism is another weak western concept. I speak of fatalism. A warrior accepts his fate. He willingly does whatever must be done to complete his task and accepts whatever consequences that entails. That is the only true way to assure victory . . . Yet, I will do as you order.”

  “You’re a real piece of work.” Sullivan moved to leave, and then paused in the doorway. “Listen . . . This thing with your own country out to get you . . . I heard about the letter. I know how you feel.”

  Indeed, Jake Sullivan had once been declared a traitor to his country, a scapegoat for a conspiracy of ambitious fools, but Sullivan had a child’s understanding of honor, and though he was a powerful combatant, he had no comprehension of the true warrior’s code. Sullivan’s country was corrupt and weak; he should have expected to be betrayed by it.

  “You know nothing.”

  Art to come

  Traveler

  Chapter 4

  Wyatt Earp was one of the few men I personally knew who I regarded as absolutely destitute of physical fear. I have often remarked, and I am not alone in my conclusions, that what goes for courage in a man is generally fear of what others will think of him. In other words, personal bravery is largely made up of self-respect, egotism, and apprehension of the opinions of others. Wyatt Earp’s apparent recklessness in time of danger is wholly characteristic. Personal fear doesn’t enter into the equation, and when everything is said and done, I believe he values his own opinion of himself more than that of others, and it is his own good report he seeks to preserve . . . He never at any time in his career resorted to shooting excepting cases where such a course was absolutely necessary, such as when combating those with wizard’s magic . . . Wyatt could scrap with his fists, and had often taken all the fight out of bad men, as they were called, with no other weapons than those provided by nature . . . Yes, you’ve heard the stories, but you do not know the half of it. Why, this one time back in ’08, we helped out Jack Pershing and his Knights of New York with a problem involving a stolen Tesla weapon and some of those branded Japanese bastards. You should have seen—Wait. Strike that. That never happened. Forgive an old man’s ramblings.

  —Bat Masterson,

  Interview in the Baltimore Mercurium, 1921

  UBF Traveler

  A few hours later, Heinrich floated down through the ceiling and woke Sullivan up a few hours later. “It is time.” The Fade pulled the chain and the small room’s single lightbulb lit up. Despite this being considered the officer’s quarters, there were still five other bunks, most of which were currently occupied, and the men all began to grumble and mutter at the sudden light.

  Sullivan maneuvered himself out of the tiny hole his cot sat in and managed to not hit his head. At least he’d gotten the biggest bunk aboard, which meant that it was still far too tiny for a man of his stature. The floor-level bunk beneath him was filled with equipment rather than a person, mostly because nobody was brave enough to sleep below a man whose magically augmented mass made him weigh in around four hundred pounds. Sullivan’s watch was sitting next to his .45. He picked them both up. “One in the morning. That didn’t take long . . .” He’d figured it wouldn’t, so he hadn’t even bothered to take his boots off before going to sleep. “Who is it?”

  “One of the UBF men, Skaggs.”

  Sullivan had only spoken to him once. He remembered Skaggs as a round-faced, gravel-voiced fella, one of Francis’ mechanics. “Where?”

  “Aft rope room,” Heinrich answered. The Fade was excited. He enjoyed this sort of thing far too much. “Lance has eyes on him.”

  “I’m glad you boys didn’t just pop him.”

  “It was so very tempting.”

  Their conversation was starting to wake up the others in the officer’s quarters. “Wha, huh?” asked Barns, sitting up in
bed and automatically reaching for the shoulder holster hanging from a peg on the wall. “Wha’s going on?”

  “Go back to sleep,” Sullivan ordered the pilot before he could pull his machine pistol. Pirates were a jumpy bunch. “I’ll tell you in the morning.”

  “Kill the damned light, will ya?”

  Sullivan pulled the chain, then followed Heinrich out into the hall. Unlike most UBF vessels, the Traveler hadn’t been built for comfort, and the corridors were dimly lit, with bare metal walls. He had to duck every few feet to avoid banging his skull on a random pipe. The rope rooms were at the very bottom of the ship, so they’d have to hurry to catch him in the act.

  Nabbing Skaggs alive meant that they’d be able to question him, and if you were going to question somebody, might as well do it with your human polygraph machine around. “You fetch a Reader?”

  “Lance sent a mouse.”

  “He’ll love waking up to that in his face. Best get the Mouth too, just in case our spy don’t feel like talking.”

  “Way ahead of you, Jake. You forget how much more practiced at this treachery business I am than you.” Heinrich looked back, eyes wide as he thought of something. “The spy is an engineer.”

  “So?”

  “Skaggs knows the guts of the ship. If he gets orders back to sabotage us, who knows what he could harm?”

  “I really don’t feel like crashing another one of Francis’ fancy blimps.” He was just holding Heinrich up, what with his having to walk around solid objects instead of through them. “Go. I’ll catch up.”

  Heinrich nodded, then his features seemed to blur and turn grey, and then he sank through the floor and disappeared. It was a good thing too, because it then saved Sullivan the indignity of trying to maneuver his bulk down the narrow stairwell in front of witnesses. His feet barely fit on the steps. “UBF designed this thing for pygmies,” he muttered.

  He reached the rope room a few minutes later, but judging by how Skaggs was lying in a crumpled heap with blood all over the side of his face, and Heinrich was standing over him with a pipe wrench in hand, Sullivan hadn’t needed to rush.

  He nudged the fallen UBF engineer with his toe to make sure he was still alive. Skaggs groaned. “He give you trouble?”

  “Nothing a wrench to the face couldn’t fix.” Heinrich answered. “But I suppose a wrench to the face solves most personnel issues.”

  “Check this out.” Lance’s deep voice came from an empty corner of the room. “Down here.” Sullivan stepped over the piled coils of rope and spotted a small brown mouse running around in circles. The floor gleamed from shards of broken glass.

  Sullivan knelt and carefully picked up one of the biggest pieces of glass. It was mirrored, and someone had scratched lines into it. “Communication spell?”

  “Yep,” the mouse answered, impossibly loud for a critter that could fit in the palm of his hand. Since Lance Talon was a Beastie, and his Power allowed him to take control of animals, they’d made sure that the Traveler had a mice problem for occasions like this. Sure, they’d eventually make a mess of things, but then they’d just have to get a cat . . . Or he supposed Lance could just take over all the mice and have them jump overboard. Beasties probably didn’t really have trouble with pests. “That spell detector Fuller put together went nuts. I found our friend here telling somebody about how we were heading for Siberia.”

  Heinrich had dragged the semi-conscious Skaggs upright and was patting him down, looking for weapons. A quick search wouldn’t matter if their spy had some form of offensive magic. “He an Active?”

  “Not that I am aware of.” Heinrich paused long enough to slap Skaggs hard on the cheek. It caused a cascading ripple through the fat of his face all the way to his extra chins. “Hey! Hey, wake up, scheisskopf. You try anything, I even feel a bit of magic, I feed you into a turbo-jet.” Heinrich hit him even harder to make the point. “Do you understand?”

  From the all the flinching as Heinrich slapped him around, it was obvious that Skaggs wasn’t used to that sort of rough treatment. “Okay, okay! Stop, please.” Skaggs was blinking his way back to coherence. Finally realization dawned as to just how much trouble he was in and the begging started. “Oh no. Oh no. I didn’t do anything! Please don’t hurt me. Please, I’m begging you.”

  Either he was legitimately terrified, or he was a damn fine actor. Sullivan wasn’t in the mood for either. “You’re getting off this blimp. Only question is if you’re taking the fast way or the slow way.”

  “This is all a mistake!”

  Sullivan held up the piece of glass. “The mistake was you thinking you could rat us out and not get caught.” Skaggs’ eyes flew back and forth from the piece in Sullivan’s hand to the remaining bits littering the floor. He was done and he knew it. “Who’re you working for?”

  Skaggs might have been tougher than he first let on, or he might have just been that desperate. “Go to hell.”

  “Want to play it hard, huh?” Sullivan tossed the piece of glass back on the floor. “Your call.” There was movement in the hall, and Sullivan looked back to see a few Grimnoir waiting at the hatch, the Reader and the Mouth he’d asked for. They were men Heinrich recruited, so Sullivan didn’t really know them well yet.

  “What’s going on?” the tall, thin young knight asked.

  “Which one are you?” Sullivan asked.

  “Mike Willis. I’m a Reader.”

  “We got a spy,” Sullivan said simply. “Let me know when he’s lying.” He turned back to Skaggs. “This fella is a Reader. So I’m gonna have the truth from you even if they have to suck it right outta your brain.”

  “Go to hell,” Skaggs repeated himself through gritted teeth.

  Heinrich had picked up a rather stout length of rope. They were in the rope room, after all. He looked over at Sullivan and raised an eyebrow. Sullivan shrugged, so Heinrich began to beat Skaggs with it about the head and neck. The UBF engineer rolled into a fetal position and tried to protect his face.

  “I’m a Mouth,” said the other knight. He was a short, downright skinny, almost frail-looking dark-haired man. “I can talk it out of him if you want, so that’s not really necessary.”

  “You offended?”

  “That depends entirely on who he’s working for.” The Mouth scowled. “If it’s Imperium I’ll want a turn beating him too.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Genesse.”

  “I like that attitude, Genesse.” Sullivan gave Heinrich a minute before holding up one hand. Heinrich stopped the beating. “My Teutonic friend here has very little patience for folks wasting his time. The only difference your attitude makes is determining how bad this hurts. So who were you talking to?”

  Skaggs picked himself up off the floor, and tried to show a little dignity. He gave a bitter laugh. “I told them you were coming. You better let me go. The Japs will tear you apart.”

  Sullivan looked to the Reader, who nodded. Skaggs was working for the Imperium. It never ceased to amaze him how many fools the Imperium managed to recruit in America. He could ask why, but that was pointless. The reasons varied, but they always came back to power, greed, or worst of all, the true believers who’d caught the Chairman’s twisted fevered vision of the future. The why didn’t even matter.

  “You on your own?”

  He spit a mouthful of blood on the metal floor. “As far as I know.”

  Sullivan looked. Willis nodded.

  “What was your mission?”

  “Keep an eye on the traitor Toru. See what you were up to. Call it in.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. They don’t tell me much, okay?”

  The Reader seemed to agree. “I’m getting a lot of thoughts about how this seemed like a good idea at the time.”

  It was as Sullivan had expected.

  “It wasn’t anything personal. I’m no Imperium nut. I’ve got debts. I’ve got problems. One of their boys, one of the scary ones with all the magic scars,
he made me an offer. What was I supposed to do? They paid me a lot of money.”

  “You think that makes it better?” Heinrich snapped.

  “I get any last words?”

  “Only if you manage to say them real quick,” Lance said through the mouse. “Heinrich, would you do the honors?”

  “The fast way down?”

  “Works for me.”

  “Wait!” Skaggs screamed, but Heinrich had already put one hand on him. The two of them turned grey, drifted through the floor, and disappeared. There was nothing but a few thousand feet of open air beneath them and the mountaintops.

  “Good Lord,” Willis whispered.

  “That’s what he gets for falling in with the Imperium,” Genesse said without emotion. Now there was a man who was used to dealing with the Imperium.

  Willis was horrified. “Just like that?”

  “Just like that. When you’re at war, and you catch a spy, you don’t hold a trial. You execute them and move on.” Sullivan just shook his head. “If he’d got his way, we’d all be dead. Him too . . . The idiot.”

  “It’s not like the Japs would have stopped shooting long enough to let him off. They have no loyalty to their snitches,” Lance said. Being a very long-time Grimnoir, he didn’t seem quite so moved over the death of an Imperium stooge.

  Genesse was looking at the broken glass. “There’ll be an armada waiting in Siberia for us now.”

  “Good thing we weren’t going there to begin with,” Sullivan said. There was a brass phone mounted on the far wall of the rope room. Sullivan went over, cranked the handle a few times to charge it, then picked up the mouthpiece to raise the bridge. “Captain? This is Sullivan. It’s done. You know what to do.”

  “I was wondering why you were lying during your briefing,” Willis said. “Hey, can’t blame a guy for using his Power a little. I didn’t delve in or anything, but the idea that the whole thing was a setup was right at the surface during your talk.”

  “Not bad.” Sullivan hadn’t felt any intrusion. The kid was good. He’d have to watch himself better in the future.