“Good,” said Shade, when everyone wore a crown. “As you can imagine, these Deceptors will allow us to move into a new stage in our campaign against the Overlords. Thanks to this adaptation of their own technology, you will be able to enter one of their strongholds and steal their secrets.”
Only Ella met this assertion with equanimity. Drum frowned and leaned forward, great elbows resting on his knees. Gold-Eye looked at the others to see how they were taking it. Ninde grimaced, indicating that no one could get her anywhere near an Overlord’s stronghold.
“Which stronghold are you thinking about?” asked Ella calmly.
Shade smiled. He made a gesture with his right hand, like a conjurer about to reveal a rabbit, and a laser stabbed down from the ceiling to the right of his desk. Motes of light twirled around it and formed into a hologram of the bay. It was a bird’s-eye view, above the twisted remnants of the bay bridge, whose middle third was bent into the deep blue water.
Shade gestured again, and their viewpoint changed. They left the bridge to travel farther out in the bay, toward the point where it met the open sea. Halfway, their view zoomed in on a small rocky island that dominated the narrowest stretch of water. Two old stone towers, joined by a flat-roofed building, took up most of the island. Each tower was a checkerboard of yellow sandstone and shadowed cannon ports—and each was topped by the silver globe of a Projector, casting reflections like shoals of fish on the blue-green waves that washed around the island.
As they watched, a very large Winger flew in high and made an almost vertical descent to land on the flat roof of the center building. As at the University, it was carrying an Overlord, which quickly climbed off its back. This one’s armor was bright, blinding red, and it wore a cloak that moved like fire, all red-and-yellow tongues of flame. Its helmet was pyramidal, with a dark visor stark against the hell-fire red.
“Red Diamond,” remarked Shade. “Going home to Fort Robertson. It seems to live there. The only such residence I have been able to locate. Fort Robertson also has the only Projectors that aren’t sixty stories up.”
“How are we supposed to get out there?” asked Ella. She tapped the crown on her head. “Even if these things confuse their senses, they’ll still see us….”
“No they won’t,” interrupted Shade. “Projector power is used in a very fundamental part of their sensory integration. The Deceptors totally scramble that. Besides, you will go at night. I doubt very much that there will be any Ferrets on Fort Robertson, or any other creatures for that matter. I have had the island under observation for many years without seeing the Wingers fly in anything but Red Diamond or occasionally some other Overlord.”
“So are we supposed to swim out?” asked Ella. “I could probably make it, and Ninde…”
“No, no. I wouldn’t ask you to swim!” exclaimed Shade. “You’ll take one of the inflatable boats from this Submarine. My little helpers have patched one up and converted an outboard motor to electric power. It will serve the purpose well.”
Ella and Drum exchanged glances. Both had experience out in the bay with boats and knew it wasn’t safe or easy except in the calmest weather.
Neither spoke, but all four of them realized that Shade wanted them to go somewhere potentially even more dangerous than the rest of the city, somewhere where no one had been before, though it was only a few miles out into the bay. Even if they did get there safely, the chances of a safe return were very slim.
Shade seemed oblivious to this, leaning back and smiling with the air of someone who expects general enthusiasm to break out at any moment.
Finally Ninde raised her hand and asked the question everyone wanted to know.
“What do we do when we get to Fort Robertson?”
“Didn’t I say?” Shade smiled. “I want you to steal a Projector.”
VIDEO ARCHIVE—INTERVIEW 25371 • ELLA
What would I want to be if we could change things back to the way they were?
I don’t know. I really don’t think about it. The chance we will succeed is so small…and if it is going to happen at all, we can’t afford the time to just think about it. We have to act.
As far as particular things go, I guess I’d like to walk down the middle of a street in the sun, with people all around me…old people, young people, everyone. But that’s a daydream, and daydreams are dangerous. A daydream will get you killed.
Better to concentrate on what we have to do. Don’t think about tomorrow. It can look after itself.
Focus. Get the job done.
What comes after probably won’t be our business at all anyway.
I don’t think there really is any such thing as a happy ending outside stories and Ninde’s favorite films. Not for us.
No happy endings for us. Just endings.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The Overlords started changing the weather on the afternoon before the planned infiltration of Fort Robertson. The first signs came just before dusk, with a freezing wind rolling up the bay, chilling the water. Sleet followed for half an hour. Then the wind died, leaving the bay calm and very cold.
Ella and Drum came back indoors blue faced and shivering, after spending two hours getting the inflatable boat out through the forward cargo hatch.
They showered, donned heavy ex-Navy wet suits for warmth (two XXLs welded together by the robots for Drum), and went back out again to join Gold-Eye and Ninde in the inflatable—a matte-black dinghy with a solid fiberglass floor and bow sitting between blown-up rubber sides.
Though it was slightly warmer after the sleet, a fog was rising in its mysterious way, all around the harbor. The half moon, only just appearing on the horizon, was rapidly blanked out. The sun, setting behind the skyscrapers of the city, found gaps for its rays between the tall buildings, only to lose them in the fog. The few lights that had come on automatically around the bay were also indistinct—fuzzy balls of color rather than sharp illuminations.
“We’ll have to wait,” said Ninde, already shivering despite the full-body wet suit that made her look rather like a slim, attractive seal. “It’s too cold.”
“Fog hide island,” added Gold-Eye worriedly, looking down the length of the Submarine. He could barely see the conning tower, which was still catching the sun just above the rising fog.
“Shade wants us to go now,” said Ella. “There is some need for speed, apparently. And the fog helps us, too, remember. Now, has everyone got their crowns on? Okay—here are the batteries. Keep them out of water if at all possible. Shade tells me they should be water-resistant, but don’t count on it. Watch your swords too—this boat isn’t as tough as it once was.
“If for any reason you go overboard and can’t be recovered, try and swim back. City Tower is lit up and it lines up pretty well with here. If you can see it, swim for it. The wet suit will help you stay afloat—just drop everything else. It can all be replaced.
“When we get to Fort Robertson, we’ll tie up at the landing stage and go ashore as quietly as we can. I don’t want to depend on these Deceptor things working the way Shade thinks they will.
“Is everybody ready?”
“Yes,” replied Drum and Gold-Eye. Ninde didn’t say anything, but her shivering grew more exaggerated. Ella ignored her and pushed the start button on the outboard. It whirred into life, kicking up froth as Ella flicked it from neutral into forward gear. At the same time, Drum lifted off the bowline that was looped over a rusting projection on one of the wharf’s piles.
The spider robots had done a good job changing the outboard motor from gasoline to electric. It still performed well, as Ella discovered from her experimentation with the throttle, but now it was much quieter. She only hoped the large, plastic-sealed battery at her feet would last them there and back, as Shade had promised.
Throttling back to a safe, steady speed, the inflatable followed the Submarine hull to the stern, zigzagged among the piles of the wharf there, and then turned out into the
bay. Out of the shelter of the Sub, they immediately hit some waves—but they were small. The water was surprisingly calm even for a fog-bound bay.
Calm, but with steadily decreasing visibility. The fog was thickening by the minute, the air growing warmer as the gray-white wisps fell into layers like pulled-apart wool.
Airborne mist mixed with salt spray on their faces—the only exposed patch of skin on their neoprene-suited, mittened, hooded, and booted bodies—as the boat rose nose first into the air up a line of swell and then nose first back down into the water on the other side.
Ella had planned to steer using the lights from one of the still-functioning harbor beacons and a fully lit-up apartment block on the north shore, but with the fog, neither was visible.
Slackening their speed a little and locking the throttle—just enough to keep steerageway—she pulled out a compass and checked her course.
“Gold-Eye,” she said, moving the outboard’s tiller a little to correct her course, “go up to the front and call out if you see anything. There are a few buoys—floating markers, that is—that we don’t want to run into.”
Gold-Eye nodded and edged past Drum and Ninde, keeping a careful hand on the rope that ran down the bulbous inflatable cylinders on either side of the rigid part of the boat. At the bow, he leaned forward, stomach on fiberglass and chest on the inflated rubber prow, so he could see even when they were on the crest of a wave.
“See anything?” asked Ella, increasing speed again.
“Not yet,” replied Gold-Eye, eyes blinking from the spray. A few minutes later he heard a dull, clanking noise—and something large and white loomed out of the fog only ten or twenty feet away, off to the left.
It was a white-painted buoy, bigger than their boat, anchor chain clanking dismally. Damp seagulls were clustered on it, half frozen from the sleet of a few hours before and totally confused by the sudden change of weather. One tried to take flight as the boat approached but plunged into the sea instead and was carried away on a wave like a fisherman’s lost float.
“There!” shouted Gold-Eye, his voice carrying through the quiet of the fog, making the others wince.
“I see it,” replied Ella calmly, changing course a little. “We’re about halfway there. And Gold-Eye, you don’t need to shout.”
“Sorry.”
They continued in silence for another ten minutes, the only sound the buzz of the engine and the wash of the sea around the boat as they breasted each line of swell. Gold-Eye almost spoke up twice to alert Ella, but both times he realized he was only seeing denser patches of fog.
Then the noise of the sea changed, becoming louder and harsher with the crash of swell on land. This was closely followed by their first sight of Fort Robertson, which rose up out of the sea and fog off their port side. For a few seconds they saw one of the towers, topped by a Projector, its silver sheen just catching the evening sun above the mist. Then the island was gone again, lost in the fog.
“Missed it!” muttered Ella. She opened the throttle to cut back and along the swell that threatened to pick them up and deposit them on the island. “We’ll go around and come in on the other side at the landing stage. Get ready, everyone. Ninde, see if you can pick up anything.”
Ninde nodded and began to chew on her knuckle, her silver-crowned head bent in concentration. After a few seconds she looked up, obviously frightened.
“I can’t get anything at all!” she said. “It just doesn’t work! Not from the water, because I can always get the feeling…except now…”
“The crown,” said Drum quietly. “I can’t do anything either. It has to be the crown.”
“Oh,” said Ninde, looking slightly relieved. She reached up to disconnect hers, but Ella put out a foot and tapped her on the knee.
“Don’t,” she said. “If these things work as promised, we need them on now. We can be seen from the towers, and if there are Trackers there, they’ll smell us on the wind.”
“Okay,” replied Ninde, letting her hand drop back to her lap. “I just hate not knowing what’s going on….”
“I know,” replied Ella meaningfully. “Quiet now—we’re going back in. Gold-Eye, swap places with Drum—he’ll be off first. Here we go!”
She angled the boat back toward the island, accelerating again for a quick approach. It was almost too quick. The fog and failing light made distance hard to judge, and all of a sudden the island’s wooden landing stage was in front of them, stone towers rising up behind it.
Ella flipped the outboard into reverse as they saw it, so the boat bumped rather than crashed—and Drum leaped ashore, drawing his sword almost in midair. Gold-Eye followed less flamboyantly and with greater caution drew his sword, following the big man into the shadow of one of the towers. Ninde tied the boat up while Ella killed the engine. Then both jumped out and ran across to the shadows.
A minute later the last of the sun dipped down below the horizon and the fog was no longer white. It was just dark, wet, and cold.
There were no lights on the island—or none working. And there was no visible point of entry from the landing stage. Just the steps up to the roof of the flat building that seemed to be built into the island itself. The place where the Wingers landed.
“Lights on,” whispered Ella, activating her own witchlight. “Follow me.”
Sword in one hand and witchlight in the other, she led the way up the steps. Gold-Eye followed less confidently, looking up at the towers on either side. They seemed taller here than in the picture—five or six stories at least, topped with the strange silvery spheres….
Ninde didn’t move at all till Drum gave her a bit of a push. She felt lost without her Change Talent. Even out here with all this water around, she felt sure she would be able to sense something. Particularly if the Change Projectors Shade had raved about helped; after all, there were two of them less than fifty feet away….
Drum saw her hand go to the battery pack on her belt and readied himself to stop her—but her hand passed over it and pulled a flashlight out of its loop instead. She clicked it on and moved off.
Drum shook his head and followed, ears wide open for the sudden hiss of a Ferret or the sound of some other terrible creature. Shade had said there were none here, but Drum knew many instances when Shade had proved wrong and his children had paid the price.
Back in the boat, the cover on the small compartment in the bow creaked open and a furry snout emerged. Beady red eyes focused on the figure of Drum. When he was out of sight, the rat robot scurried out and leaped ashore. A few seconds later, it was slinking up the steps.
VIDEO ARCHIVE—INTERVIEW 23489 • DRUM
A future after the Change is turned back?
That’s a stupid question, Shade. The courts of Byzantium and China were gone long before the Change…. I might have found a place there…or the Ottoman Empire, perhaps….
I don’t expect any brave new world will have career openings for harem guards or gelded civil servants.
I don’t really expect that there will be a brave new world.
But we have to try for one. For all the kids in the Dorms…in the Training Grounds…
But not for me.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The eastern tower had a riveted steel door leading onto the flat roof of the middle building, which the Wingers used as a landing zone. The western tower appeared to have no outside point of entry at all. It could be reached only from within the middle building—which in turn could be entered only via its own roof and the door into the eastern tower. Even the cannon ports that had looked like easy entry points proved to be shuttered tight with black-painted boards.
The tower door looked very ordinary, as if it might have come off a merchant ship in a previous life. Lines of rivets ran around the edges and across its middle, and there was a worn bronze knob above an old-fashioned keyhole. Closer inspection revealed that the keyhole was sealed—perhaps with a broken key—so there was a good chance it wasn’t even locked.
Ella studied it closely, then signaled Drum to stand so he could strike within the doorway as she pushed it open. Gold-Eye and Ninde stood farther back and slightly apart, ready to support but not so close that a net gun could mesh all three of them with one shot.
When they were ready, Ella reached out, turned the bronze knob—and pushed the door open with a vigorous heave. Drum’s sword jerked half an inch forward—but there was no one there. Just an empty room.
A very strange room. White, slippery-looking marble lined the floor—except right in the middle, where there was a ten-foot-wide hole. A corresponding hole was cut in the ceiling directly above. There were no stairs or ladders in evidence—just this vertical shaft.
Ella edged in, holding the witchlight high, still alert for some hidden creatures—but there was nothing there for them to hide in or behind.
Cautiously she went to the edge of the hole and looked up and down in one quick second, then looked again more slowly. Both views were surprising. The hole was essentially a round shaft that went up farther than the witchlight extended—probably to the top floor. It also went down—a very long way down. Ella could just make out two floors below, and it seemed to continue well beyond that. A shiver crossed her as she looked, and the image of a dark abyss stretching down for miles flashed into her mind.
She signaled the others to come in, but they were already in. Drum closed the door after checking it could be opened from the inside. Now they all gathered around the shaft, looking up and down in puzzlement.
“It’s like an elevator shaft with no elevator,” whispered Ninde. “I wonder how far down it goes.”
“I guess we’d better try and find out,” whispered Ella. “Get your ropes out. Drum, keep an eye on the door.”
Gold-Eye looked down at his equipment belt to unfasten the length of rope coiled against his hip—and his eye caught a small blinking red light at the top of one pouch. It was the light that should come on only when the battery that powered his Deceptor was at less than half charge. It had been on only for an hour….