Insurrection Page 8

  “Pathok Ma is a curse to the honor of the Durish people,” the guide continued. “Val was right when he said that he shouldn’t have slaughtered all the hearth-steaders of that uprising. Now, half of Dur either hates Pathok Ma or is terrified of him. Which is kind of the same thing, if you think about it.”

  Eliard was shocked at that surprisingly astute bit of psychology, coming from the form of a creature that was far wider than him, and covered in scales. But appearances can be deceptive, he regarded the sheathed and scaled Device on his own arm, as the guide concluded.

  “Dur will be at war for a hundred years or more if we don’t find a way to stop War Chief Ma. And while that is not something that frightens me, and I know that any Duergar will be happy for the fight, I would rather our people advance as we could, and not be put back a generation with another senseless war.”

  “Wise words,” Eliard muttered. Especially, he thought, given what he knew was coming. Alpha.

  “Come on, we’re almost there.” The guide ran across the street to the next alley, followed it at what was, for Eliard, a punishing pace to where it ended in a wide and abandoned street under a tall stone wall. This part of Duric appeared to be abandoned or misused, as the walls were covered with the heavy, fleshy vines, and partially hidden from view was an old, black-iron gate. It took their guide just a few moments to break the old bars from the rotted mortar at their base, and they were into the wilds that surrounded the city.

  “Where are you taking us?” Irie asked.

  “And who are you, anyway?” Eliard said. Their guide had still set a punishing pace, and the captain had never been very good at handling pain.

  The trio had joined with what appeared to be no better than a track through the jungle. In many places, their way was partially obscured by the fleshy fronds of more of the spiky trees or spreading vines. The ground underfoot was damp and thick with humus, and every twig or stone they tripped over revealed strange millipedes and bugs the like of which neither the captain nor Irie had ever seen before.

  “Ko Herg,” the guide called back. He had seemed to relax a little now that he was out of the city of his enemy, and he took a moment to sniff at the air around them, before choosing a new direction through the brush.

  “You know we left our ship back there…” Eliard said with a grunt of pain. He hoped that he didn’t catch anything from this jungle. He’d heard that they harbored all sorts of strange viruses, and the thought of a virus that affected Duergar eating him was just too frightening to think about.

  “Your ship will be impounded,” Ko said matter-of-factly.

  “What!? Then we have to go back!” the captain said, his pain forgotten. This was his ship. His ship.

  “Calm down, human.” Ko Herg rolled his eyes. “They won’t do anything to it, not yet. But I bet you that there will be some reason as to why it’s currently surrounded by more of the chief’s guards.”

  “We did alright against that last lot of, what did you call them, the Chief’s Watch?”

  “It won’t be them. The Chief’s Watch are like the underground enforcers of the war chief’s will. Even Pathok Ma has to pretend to be honorable, so it’s an open secret that he uses his watch for everything else. Note how they didn’t have any flags or insignia on them?” Ko Herg reached up to scramble up the nearest incline. “Besides, we’re almost at the camp.”

  “The camp?” Irie said.

  “Yeah.” Their guide extended a large clawed hand to help Irie up the embankment. “I told you that there were more of us who didn’t agree with the war chief, didn’t I?”

  The captain and Irie saw that he wasn’t joking. After scrambling up the incline and into a dense bit of the jungle, their path opened out to a wide clearing on top of this shelf of jungle, where there appeared to be an encampment capable of housing at least a few hundred Duergar.

  “We’ll get the healer to look at your leg and get you a place to rest, but don’t expect much, I’m afraid.” Ko Herg nodded to the small tents and huts made out of old canvas or jungle-wood. Small campfires were scattered here and there throughout the encampment, around which sat the guards or those who couldn’t sleep.

  Eliard thought back to the capital city of Duric—the gun emplacements, the squadrons of the war chief’s guards in full encounter armor patrolling the city. When he looked back at the couple of a hundred people here, male, female, young and old, he wondered if he might not have a better chance of rescuing Val alone.

  8

  The Greater Enemy

  “Captain, wake up!” Irie hissed to him, and Eliard wondered just how many times in his recent service to Ponos he had been woken by some terrible news by his chief engineer. Too many.

  “Urgh,” he groaned. Everything hurt, his body felt stiff and achy, and he wondered when this torment was going to end.

  When I get Val back. When I stop Valyien. When I pay Armcore back for helping to kill Cassandra. The captain might have a melodramatic soul, but he was a fast learner, and he pushed himself up from the jungle floor and the thin blanket that had been his bed. The first thing he saw was his bandaged leg. The medical supplies of the dissidents they were staying with had run out seasons ago, according to the old Durish woman who had worked on his injured leg last night. That meant that instead of pristine flesh made new by a genetic spray, or the white, sterile, medikit field dressings that he knew were stocked inside the Mercury Blade, he was looking at a leg wrapped in long jungle leaves and secured with corn, over a foul-smelling unction.

  Dear stars, he groaned. “I bet there’s no coffee, either.”

  “They’ve got Gabor?” Irie held up a wooden bowl that looked as though it had been shaped out of a very large seed. “It’s quite alright actually, when you get used to it. And eat it in small bites.”

  “No thanks.” Eliard almost retched, looking around for his boots. They sat on the dark soil of the forest floor, beside a fire ringed with stones that had long since given itself over to coals. Near them were little huts made out of halved tree trunks, or stretches of canvas that appeared repurposed from industry, still with large glyphs and numbers stamped onto their sides. It was daytime, and the air hummed and buzzed with the sound of insects and distant shrieks of wildlife.

  “Where is everyone?” Eliard yawned, scratching at his stubble. All that he could see was the occasional Duergar going about their camp tasks, or the resounding cracks as Duergar children played the game that seemed to give them endless delight, ‘headbutt.’

  “It’s almost midday, and Ko Herg and the others are having some kind of meeting.” Irie looked serious. “I listened in and it seems that Ko wants to break Val out of the war chief’s prison.”

  “That sounds good to me. What’s the problem?” Eliard yawned again and stretched.

  “The others don’t think that they’re ready.” Irie looked around at their camp. Hardly a bit of technology anywhere in sight, the captain saw, and knew that they would be going up against an opponent with all sorts of tanks, drones, and military hardware. “And I think that they might be right,” Irie said heavily.

  Eliard swore. “Why don’t they just tell us where they’ve got him held captive? I’m sure…”

  “Captain. Even with that thing on your arm, it looked as though the Duergar were soundly beating the living hell out of you,” his mechanic said seriously, and the captain knew that she was right. He looked down at the Device. What is wrong with it, he thought. Ponos had told him that it would shift to meet any challenge.

  “Still,” the captain settled for saying. “I’m not leaving Val to rot in some dungeon.”

  “No,” Irie said, just as adamantly. “We just need to figure out some way to get the dissidents to win.”

  Eliard paused, looking at the dirt underneath him as his mind raced. He was just Eliard Martin, and even with the Device, he was still just one man, an injured one. He was no Duergar. He couldn’t fight off armies single-handedly. He had no other weapons, and he wasn’t able to get t
o the Mercury. Looking at Irie, he calculated as best as he was able. She was an excellent engineer. If she could get her hands on pretty much anything, then she might be able to rig something that would help them. But against a city?

  I need to get Val back! He kicked at the dirt, felt pain shoot through his leg, and shouted. Idiot. It wasn’t just the fact that he needed Val to help him on the Mercury Blade, they were friends.

  And I have lost too many of those already. He thought of the House Archival Agent, Cassandra Milan. He was supposed to have been her captain. If anyone was supposed to die for the sake of the mission, then it should have been him.

  And now it looks like I am just down to one crew member left, he thought. Just how bad of a captain am I?

  And that was when he had an idea. And luckily, he still had the means to carry out his plan in the form of the wrist computer. “Please work,” he muttered, tapping its screen to get at the holographic keypad, and there to slide through the menu options until he found the exact glyph he was looking for. A small red triangle with the dot of an eye in its center.

  “Ponos, I need your help.” He tapped the symbol, hoping that the Armcore machine intelligence hadn’t been exaggerating when it had said that it had updated all of their hardware.

  “Captain? What are you doing? Are you using data-space?” Irie looked at him in horror. She knew, they all knew, that Alpha had free access to the layer of quantum data that the Imperial Coalition used to relay information. That meant that Alpha could scan that data for any signs of his enemies.

  “I know, but it’s important,” the captain said. “This is Val.”

  “I rather think you should listen to your engineer, Captain Martin,” the suave voice of the Armcore intelligence returned from his wrist.

  Thank the stars. “Well, she’ll probably tell you that I’ve never done that, so I guess that I am not about to start doing so now,” Eliard said. “I need your help.”

  “I gathered. What do you need me to do?” Ponos replied.

  “I need you to kill someone for me,”” the captain said. “Just little hunter-killer drone, that’s all.”

  “And will removing this person make your mission easier? Will it bring us closer to defeating Alpha?” Ponos asked.

  “Yes,” the captain said immediately, despite the hard look that Irie gave him. Well, it would, he thought. It would mean that he got Val Pathok back, and he needed Val.

  “Good. Who?” The fact that the machine intelligence didn’t offer any more quibbles or even any moral argument for or against an assassination did make Eliard slightly queasy, however.

  “Pathok Ma, the War Chief of Duric,” he said.

  There was a moment’s pause on the other end, to be broken by the machine intelligence’s voice. “Clearly, your mission has failed. The answer is no, and I wish you to return to the Endurance immediately,” it stated.

  “No, you don’t understand. Pathok Ma is the reason why the Duergar won’t fight with us. He as much told us. If we can remove him…” the captain said.

  “Then you will have to negotiate your position with the next in charge, as far as I understand,” Ponos said. “And who is the next in charge? What efforts have you made to assure their alliance? Can you be assured that they speak for the majority of Dur, or just the city of Duric? Have you made inroads into treating with the other war chiefs? How many ships and Duergar warriors can you raise?” Ponos spoke breathlessly, presumably because the machine intelligence didn’t need to breathe.

  “Ah…” the captain said.

  “Precisely, Captain. I am not averse to killing for the sake of saving the galaxy from Valyien, but I am afraid that your plan as it stands will not work. I am a military intelligence, and I know the steps that you need to take in order to assure a profitable succession.”

  Eliard shuddered, wondering just how many other revolutions or uprisings that the intelligence had supported behind the scenes. Too many, no doubt.

  “Ponos, please. This monster has Val!” Eliard tried again.

  “Not my, or your, concern. You must return to the Endurance, where we will initiate Plan C.”

  “Plan C? What happened to Plan B?” Eliard said.

  “You are already failing at it.” Ponos clicked off, leaving the captain fuming.

  “Right. That’s it,” he said, pushing himself up, painfully to his feet.

  “I know that look in your eyes, Captain,” Irie said. “What are you going to do?”

  “I am going to bust some heads together.” Eliard wobbled on his feet. “Now show me where this great high and mighty meeting is happening then.”

  They could hear the sounds of the meeting long before they saw it, as the sounds of angry Duergar were not easy to ignore. Irie pushed through the jungle, with the captain limping beside her, toward a large clearing a little way off from the camp, where nearly the entire dissident encampment appeared to be arguing. Duergar were everywhere, sitting, standing, and shoving others up against trees as they growled through their tusks into the faces of those who dared argue with them. This space appeared to be reserved for just such activity, Eliard saw, as there was a large bonfire pit in the center, unlit in the fierce heat of the midday, and the ground was trampled and churned with the many raucous meetings that the dissidents had had over their time in exile.

  “By the stars. How do they ever expect to run a city if they can’t agree on anything?” the captain said heavily from the tree line. He looked for Ko, to find him in the thick of the argument, shoving a much larger Duergar back into his fellows before angrily poking his claw at another.

  “And that is WHY I would never follow any of your stupid ideas!” they heard him roar.

  “Enough of this.” Eliard’s mood turned foul. As much as he didn’t want to get involved, he knew that he needed them—especially if Ponos wasn’t going to help.

  “ENOUGH!” he shouted, punching out with the Device on his arm for it to disgorge a burning plasma ball over their heads and into the canopy of the jungle. There was a dull boom of the explosion, and the clearing was littered with broken twigs and charred leaves.

  “Hey! What?!” The Duergar turned, growling and hissing at the intrusion.

  “Well, you got their attention at least,” Irie said, nervously as the few hundred troll-like beings looked at them with fury.

  “That’s right, it was me,” the captain said, putting a bit of his old pirate swagger into his voice. “And the next shot will be at the first Duergar to interrupt me!” He stepped into the clearing and made his way toward the middle. The Duergar around dwarfed his puny size, but he stuck his chin out and walked (or limped) as resolutely as he could.

  “Now, not all of you know who I am. I’m Captain Eliard Martin, of the Mercury Blade, and there is a Duergar in that city over there who is my friend,” he shouted at them. “Val Pathok, I am sure that you all know the name?”

  His outburst was met by mutters and grumbles, some of them seeming to find his imposition into their meeting insulting.

  “Yeah, the Hero of the Chenga Pass, currently lounging in his father’s prison or dungeons for what? For having a brain between his ears.” He turned around to snarl at the other side of the clearing. “Now, while you lot are arguing and bickering amongst each other—” That earned him a wave of angry growls. “—I intend to get my friend out. Why? Because I owe him. He's saved my life on more than one occasion. He put his life on the line for me, and I intend to honor that loyalty. I’ve been hearing all over that Val Pathok is some kind of hero to Duric, to all of you, so what are you going to do to help him? To honor what he did at Chenga, for the likes of all of you?”

  There were more grumbling and dark looks, but what the captain had said had seemed to strike a nerve. “Who are you to speak for us?” said one of the larger, most argumentative Duergar. This one had a greenish cast to his pebble-scales, and one great cracked tooth. “You are human. You know nothing of this, of what we’ve been through. This is about more than j
ust the Hero of the Chenga Pass. This is about our houses getting raided in the middle of the night by the Chief’s Watch. This is about our children disappearing into the chief’s labor mines. This is about Durish honor.”

  Eliard looked at the man. “I may not know about all the troubles that your people have gone through, but I know about trouble. I know about getting played, and scammed, and having others taking advantage of you and there’s not a darn thing you can do about it. I also know that all of this, this entire conversation, isn’t worth a damn because, at the end of the day, we’re all going to die when the Valyien come back.”

  There was a moment of stunned silence, and then it was broken by gales of uproarious laughter.

  “The Valyien? The Valyien are dead fool!”

  “That was over a thousand years ago!”

  “Get this joker out of here, or better yet, teach him a lesson!” Others called for him to be immediately strung up.

  “He’s speaking the truth!” Irie shouted from the side of the clearing.

  “What?” said the greenish Duergar aggressor. “Another human? Why should we care what lies you two are peddling?”

  “We have proof,” Eliard said, raising the Device. “I was ‘given’ this—” He sneered a little at that statement. “—in an attempt to make a weapon that was powerful enough to defeat them. It is Q’Lot technology, developed by Armcore.”

  “Q’Lot?” There were a number of angry murmurs, and not a few guffaws. The Duergar had been slaves of the Valyien, but that had been uplifted specifically to fight the Valyien’s ancient enemy known as the Q’Lot. Now, although the rest of the Imperial Coalition largely regarded them as myths, the Duergar knew different.

  Eliard saw the eyes of the assembled regarding his outstretched arm-canon, its iridescent blue scales, its flaring tendrils like antennae or hairs extending from nodes along its outer edge. Eliard concentrated, flicked his wrist, and the thing transformed, the plates of scale-like chitin sliding over each other and morphing as it turned into a great blue, clawed fist. There was no denying what sort of technology it was.