www.thevalentinechronicles.com presents:
Weapon of Choice
by Paul L. Mathews
The morning after the Covens had met their match,
more of Ivan’s enemies closed in on the Troika.
The storm over the island still raged, and its
shrieking rose to a new level of hysteria as this new threat pushed on though
the snow. Twenty Long Knife marines, their black armour almost lost under snow
and ice, stood around their leaders.
With his head lifted to avoid being lost in the drifts,
“That’s far enough,” she said. “
Of the entire squad, only she seemed untouched by the
storm. With her heavy fur cloak open to reveal blue skin, brass two-piece, and
bare feet; she did not shiver, nor did her breath steam from behind her mask of
sculpted ice. She remained untouched by the snow, and the storm seemed to shy
away from her in deference.
Truly a witch of bleak winters,
#
Five minutes later the Long Knife marines advanced up
the cutter’s main ramp and into the hangar;
The marines stopped as one and raised their weapons.
A pile of corpses dominated the centre of the bay, four in total, with mouths
and eyes agape—mouths that seemed to howl silent warnings. One had been
completely decapitated, its spine poking from a torn and bruised neck.
One of the marines tried to speak, but all that
emerged from behind the blank façade of his facemask was a distorted gurgle.
“Are those…are those the Covens?”
“I know, sir,” another of the Marine’s said as he
slowly approached the stack of bodies. “But the Covens?”
“That’s enough,” said
Keep laughing,
“They were here,” he said. “Thirty minutes ago.”
#
Half an hour earlier Katarina, Tatiana, and Stalin had
stood about Ivan as he had sat in the hangar deck and cradled Vast. Katarina
gestured at the broken Vermiddion. “Is she okay?”
Ivan’s shoulders sagged and his head dropped. “No. She
dies.”
The rest of them took a sharp intake of breath. Even
the numb and weary Tatiana.
“But that’s impossible!” Katarina said as she covered
her mouth with her hand. “She’s…well, she’s Vast!”
“And she has been fighting since she was child, yes?
There is only so much even a Vermiddion can take.”
A silence fell upon the hangar as Katarina moved to
sit beside Ivan. She embraced the old soldier as he hugged Vast with his eyes
closed. Tatiana studied him. This was a new side to the old man. An almost
paternal side. Perhaps she and Katarina had taken Vast for granted all these
years without realising the depth of feeling Ivan had for the Vermiddion.
Perhaps there was more to their past than the twins knew…
A beeping sound intruded her thoughts and Tatiana
cocked her head to determine its source. Muffled but insistent, it led her to
the headless body of Mother Coven and she limped over to investigate. She
reached into the corpse’s inner pocket. As her fingers searched amidst the lint
and Christ only knew what else, she ignored the stench of sweat, shit, and old
perfume—she’d smelt a lot worse recently.
Her fingers closed about a metal object which
vibrated in time with the beeping. She withdrew it; a communicator crafted in
the semblance of an antique pocket watch. She pressed a button on its side and
its lid popped open to cast a projection into the air. Blue and wavering, the
image shivered before taking form.
“Well well,” Tatiana said with a mirthless and
crooked smile. “The Witch.”
Hands on broad hips, the projection of the Witch of
Bleakwinter glared at Tatiana. A mask of ice covered the face Tatiana had
wrecked, but it couldn’t conceal the anger in her voice. “Valentine?” The tone
was so frigid it made even Tatiana shiver. “Valentine?”
“Put that down, Tatian—”
“Do you actually have anything to say,” Tatiana asked
the Witch as she silenced Ivan with a curt gesture, “or shall I go first?”
“How do you have this comm?” the Witch asked. She jabbed
an accusatory finger toward Tatiana. “What have you done with the Covens?”
“They’re dead,” Tatiana’s tone remained flat and
measured as she stared at the projection. “Just like I warned you. You
remember, don’t you? You remember what I said when you were half dead in my
sister's cabin?”
The Witch didn’t respond. Stock still, she continued
to glare.
“I told you that you could go, and you could tell all
your friends that we’re Valentines, and we don’t die. Ever.” Tatiana’s voice
dropped and she glared through her eyebrows. “And if you or any of your friends
came looking for us, looking for trouble, they’d need more than a few magic
spells and dirty tricks to get out alive. Do you remember that?”
“Enjoy your moment of glory, Valentine,” the Witch said
in a whisper, “because I’m coming for you. And when I catch you, I’m going to
kill you.”
“Then hurry up, bitch.” Tatiana’s smile widened. “I’m
waiting.”
She clicked the comm shut, and the projection
vanished.
“Oh, nice work!” Stalin began turn in a tight circle
and whine. “Making the Witch even madder! That’s really going to help!”
“Stalin! Be quiet!”
He ignored Katarina and continued. “Why doesn’t
anybody in your damned family ever think of apologising? Or trying to be
friends?”
“Stalin!” Ivan shouted. “Enough!”
“We’d better get ready,” Tatiana said without
bothering to look at her family. “We’re about to have company.”
And Christ help me if I’m not looking forward to it,
she thought.
#
“I can’t detect any of the crew onboard,” the Witch
said thirty minutes later as she looked about the Troika’s hangar.
The sergeant consulted a palm scanner. “That’s a
negative, sir.”
“We split up and search the ship. They may still be
hidden aboard. Sergeant, you have the deck-plans downloaded?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then you check Tatiana Valentine’s quarters.”
“Aye, ma’am. If she’s still here, we’ll find her.”
“Very good, sergeant.” She nodded toward the Covens.
“But be careful.”
“Ma’am, yes ma’am!” The marines saluted
simultaneously before moving out in unison, the sergeant at point.
“I shall look in other niece’s quarters,” the Witch
said as she ignored the marines and their salutes. “I left something there I
want back.”
“And me?” asked
“Check Ivan’s cabin.”
#
Twenty minutes earlier, Ivan had dumped his vac-suit
on the floor of his dirty cabin. He sat on his bunk, a knotted mass of wounds
and hewn muscle that bore six decades of scars and burns. Naked but for
bandages, he rested forearms across thighs and hung his head low. His body
steamed. Moisture gathered in his moustache.
With gnarled fingers he slipped the plastic patch
from his wounded eye, and worried the bruised flesh about the socket with
tentative finger tips. He winced. His muscles burned. A malformed curse barely
escaped the cage of his bloody teeth. First Crepitus. Then Boyd. Now Mother
Coven. Yes, he may have beaten them all, but he was in his sixties. He could
not carry on like this. A man half his age would struggle.
He looked down at his automatic as it nestled in his
slack fist, its gleam muted by the glut of Mother Coven’s blood and brains. He
and twins had been lucky this time. But at what cost? Boyd gone. Vast at
death’s door. And what of Tatiana? What had she become? To see her, to see that
look in her eyes, that black slab of indifference to her killing of Trick, to
see the pain of losing Boyd and Matinee strip away her conscience: that would
be a price he could not bear—
“But Ivan, honestly, how long did you think you could
keep running before this finally happened? Did you really think you
could reach Kithaen before at least one of the twins turned into their father?”
Ivan didn’t look up straight away, but grunted and
smiled. So that explains the cold, he thought. He looked to his side. Sure
enough the spectral image of a dead friend sat beside him on the bunk. He
didn’t look a day older. The skin was still clean and shaven, the uniform still
crisp and smooth, the badges of the Omega Hammers still proud on his shoulders.
Even the bullet hole between the eyes still looked fresh, and the mass of
matted and bloody hair on the back of his skull still shone damp and sticky
about the exit wound.
“Hello, Judd,” Ivan said with a sardonic smile. “You
are well, yes?”
“As well as can be expected.”
They both laughed. Gentle laughs, slow and easy, they
spoke as old friends who had perhaps missed one another more than they would
admit. But there was something else. A subtle inflection, a hint of wariness
and a guilt in both their glances.
“I did not expect to you see again, Judd, after what
I did.”
“Ivan, Ivan, Ivan.” Judd sighed and looked away.
“That was twenty years ago.”
“Yes, but I—”
“Yes, you did.” Judd looked back at him with bayonets
in his glare. “But I stabbed you in the back, remember?”
Now Ivan had to look away. Remember? How could he
forget?
“Twenty years is a long time, Ivan. Certainly long
enough for me to gain a whole new perspective on things.” Judd looked across
the cabin at the photo of the Hammers on their T-909 tank as it rolled across
Shadow. Ivan fancied he saw a slight glimmer in those ethereal eyes. “It’s
certainly long enough to forgive, if not to forget.” He looked at Ivan again.
“Well, for most people, anyway.”
Ivan smarted as if chastised. “What do you mean?”
Judd stood and took a few paces into the room. Back
straight and hands held behind his back, he looked every inch the career
soldier. “I mean, Ivan, that it’s about time you moved on.”
Ivan’s breath shortened a little as he raised an
eyebrow at Judd.
Judd looked over his shoulder at gestured at the gun
in Ivan’s hand. “It’s time you let go, and it’s time to let me and Tusk and the
Oprinichki rest.”
“Rest? I don’t…” Ivan’s eyebrows arched and tears
swam into his eyes. “What do you mean ‘rest’? I am not holding you, or Tusk, or
the Oprinichki.” His throat contracted. He didn’t need this. He’d didn’t
need the guilt and blame. He’d wrestled with it all every night for twenty
years. Now he needed answers. He needed advice! “Why is it my fault? Why
do you blame me?”
“Because you blame yourself.”
Ivan started as though slapped in the face. His blood
froze and his body trembled. He blinked and tried to speak, he failed. Blamed
himself? Was that it? Was that right? Had he been hiding from guns—from his
past—for so long because he was ashamed? Was it that simple? That obvious?
“Let go, Ivan. You’ve carried your guilt too long.
It’s twenty years since the Torch. Let go and lay your ghosts to rest and fight
back.” He began to fade. “And do it soon, because you’re running out of time and
options. Let go while you still have the twins to protect.” He pointed at
the gun. “If you don’t there’ll be nothing left except the gun in your hand and
the knots in your stomach.”
“Wait!” Ivan held out his hands toward Judd as if it
would arrest his departure. “Where will you go now?”
Judd smiled a laconic smile as his hand strayed to
his chest. “You know where.” A crucifix hung about his neck under that khaki
jacket. “It’s time to test my faith…”
Judd disappeared, leaving Ivan to stare at the empty
space he once filled.
#
Twenty minutes later, and, with his ceramic claws
clicking on the deck,
The scent of old man and polish was so vivid here he
could almost see Ivan sat on that dirty bunk as he shined his boots, or wearing
those aged pants hung on the makeshift railing. The smell of cinnamon, lemon,
and orange was so fresh he could almost see him sat at that chipped desk
drinking his tea from Matushka-Rus’s
crockery. He crossed to a selection of half-empty trunks abandoned beside the
bunk. There were different smells here. Old leather. Aftershave. His nose
twitched and a smile touched his skinthetic lips. Of course. Skullion.
He stuck his nose in the foremost trunk and inhaled
deeply. Oh yes, that was Skullion, alright. And something else. Gunpowder.
Paper. Ink. His forehead furrowed. And yet this trunk was empty…
He lifted his head from and looked about the cabin.
Look! he told himself. Never mind what you can smell. What about what you can’t see?
The battered table at the back of the cabin. The
crucifix was missing. And that clean patch on the dirty wall. Where was the old
photo of the Hammers back on Shadow? He turned back to the coat rail and
studied it. Two of Ivan’s favourite jackets were missing, as were his most
trusted boots.
He turned a slow circle, tail between his legs and
head hung low as he snarled and slavered. “Where are you Ivan? Where have you
gone?”
#
“Download complete, Master Ivan,” Doll 2 said, her
flat voice echoing in the empty sick-bay.
“Very good, Dolly.” Ivan withdrew the wafer from the
slot in the android’s neck and pocketed it. “You understand what to do, yes?”
“Perfectly.”
Ivan took a moment to look at what little was left of
the android serf. A battered head propped up on a silver trolley. The rest of
its body—or what little Boyd had found following their battle with the Calci at
the Elephant’s Graveyard—had been abandoned on the trolley’s bottom shelf. It
was not, Ivan reflected, a very dignified end to such a long and unblemished
term of service.
Without taking his eyes off the android he hoisted
his kitbags onto his shoulders. Heavy and swollen, their weight betrayed the
memories he had stuffed inside. He’d tried to leave it all behind, but Judd was
right: he just couldn’t let go.
“We could—” He cleared his throat. “We could always
carry you, yes?”
“That would make no sense, Master. I should think you
will be carrying quite enough. There is nothing on this trolley that cannot be
replaced.”
“But you’re such an old model. You have been in
family for decades.”
“And if I slow you down there will be no family for
future models to serve.”
Ivan blinked and his shoulders sagged. The serf was,
of course, correct. And selfless as ever.
“Thank you, Dolly. For everything.”
“You are quite welcome. Now I really must insist you
go.”
Ivan allowed himself a sardonic laugh and turned to
leave. Upon reaching the door from sick-bay, he stepped through. Stalin waited
outside, panting as he paced back and forth beside a floating Dante cabinet.
Ivan looked back at Doll 2 for the last time. Alone and defenceless, it sat in
the blank and sterile room and looked back at him without remorse or reproach.
The door hissed shut behind him.
#
He looked about the Ivan’s cabin for a clue. Then his
gaze fell upon the door. With head cocked to one side he stepped toward it. In
the centre sat a big patch of spray paint, loud and fresh. His nose twitched.
There. That was it. Paint. That’s what he could smell.
His brow knitted. Paint? What the hell was that for?
#
“Is that it? Can we go now, please? Before Tatiana’s
new best friend gets here?”
Still stood outside sick-bay, Ivan sighed and his
shoulders slumped. Stalin had a point. The Witch would be here soon.
He stepped up to the Dante cabinet and unzipped one
of the kitbags that lay upon it. Inside nestled a small number of aerosol
sprays. He reached into the bag to grab one. As he did so, he looked back at
the door through tired eyes. There on the dull metal brooded one of the many
heart motifs—one of the type which warded off the Witch—he’d had the crew spray
all over the Troika in the wake of their flight from Oridia.
“Ivan? Please?”
“Not yet, Stalin.” He took one of the aerosols from
the bag and began to shake it vigorously. “There is one more job to do, yes?”
#
“Let me guess, Sergeant. Is it empty?”
“Yes sir.”
“Can you see any signs of packing? Personal effects
abandoned on the floor? Lockers or storage units left open?”
“That’s a negative, sir. If she has left, she hasn’t
left in a hurry. Not without tidying up after herself, anyway.”
#
Tatiana closed her eyes and breathed in. The pillow
she held against her face smelt so much of Boyd she could cry.
She placed it back on his bed and wiped her eyes
before turning to his locker. She moved across the darkened room to stand in
front of it, and her nostrils flared. His cabin smelt so much like him, all
sweat and… She shrugged and smiled sardonically. Yes, whisky. Not that it
mattered now. He could drink all he wanted if he’d just come bac—
“Stop it!” She punched herself in the thigh and
stamped her foot. This was stupid. She had to concentrate! Ivan’s orders, as
much as she disagreed with them, were very clear: they had to get ready, and
they had to get ready quickly.
She gripped the edge of the locker door. The cold
metal bit her skin as she opened it. She looked inside. Whisky. Boxer shorts.
Socks. Med-kit. Some old books. A modern pistol. Ammo clips. None of which she
was looking for.
Her nostrils flared again. The smell of oil seeped
from the locker, and metal glinted at the back of the topmost shelf. She bit
her lip, and glanced furtively over her shoulder.
She stamped her foot again, cursing. “Hurry!” she
muttered. “No one can see you!”
She reached into the locker, hand shaking. She
gulped. Her fingers touched something cool and metallic. She closed her hand
about the object, and paused. The surface had an oily feel to it, salacious almost,
like a forbidden fruit or a sordid act. Suddenly she felt the same way she did
when she masturbated.
She closed her eyes, and took another deep breath as
she lowered her head. Then she lifted her head, jaw set and mouth stretching
into a thin line. She pulled the heavy object from the locker before staring at
it.
This was it. This was what she had come for. A gun.
One of Matinee’s that Boyd had confessed to taking as a keep-sake. An antique
from way back in Earth’s history. Tatiana turned it over in her hands, wide
eyed and mesmerised. It had a bulbous wooden handle, a chunky body and a thin
barrel. A thick clip of ammunition brooded in front of the trigger guard, and
the hammer sat dormant at the back of the weapon.
She lifted it to her nose, breathing deeply. The
thick scent of oil, mixed with cordite. She remembered Father smelling like
that back when she was a little girl, back when he’d been fighting the
revolutionaries on Oridia. She smiled a crooked smile, eyes glittering with a
suggestion of tears. It was a good smell.
She shifted her grip on the gun, taking hold of the
cold wooden handle and slipping her finger over the thin metal trigger. Her
breath shortened, and her pulse increased. The pain from her ribs receded, and
she stared so hard at the gun her peripheral vision darkened.
This is it, she realised. I have a gun.
She closed her eyes again, and a vision of Boyd
filled her mind’s eye. She tightened her grip on the weapon and slipped it into
the waist band of her pants, the metal biting into the small of her back and
the cleft of her backside.
Suddenly she felt a little safer—and she liked it.
She snatched at a small pile of clips and rammed then
in the pockets of her cargo pants. Her boots squeaked as she turned on her heel
and strode across the room before plucking up a small backpack she’d left by
the door. What few possessions she’d seen fit to keep were stuffed inside.
Photos of Mother and Father. Some toiletries. A change of clothes and different
boots. Nothing else. None of the soft toys or drawing books, make-up or
dresses. Those days were gone now.
The door hissed open, but she paused on the threshold
before looking back over her shoulder at the bed. Sighing, she walked back to
the bed and grabbed the pillow. She stuffed it into her pack as she left the
room.
#
“Have you found anything yet?” Her voice came from
nowhere, prodding at his inner-ear from across the ethereal divide. A spasm
shot through his synthetic nervous system. Even after all these decades in
combat, after all he’d seen and done, magic still made him nervous.
“No. Have you?”
“Not yet. Where are you?”
“Following Ivan’s trail. I’m approaching the main
‘lock.”
“I’m about to enter Katarina’s cabin.”
#
Katarina shook as she stuffed piles of clothes into
three kitbags sat on her bed. She had to hurry. Ivan’s orders were explicit.
And she still had so much to pack. She snatched at one of Matinee’s last
bottles of whisky and tried to wrap it in a thick jumper, but the bottle slipped
from her sweaty fingers. It fell to the deck, bounced and rolled under the bed.
“Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck!” She dropped to her hand and
knees. Yes, she could just leave it, but she couldn’t be sure they’d be much of
that stuff where they were going. And she’d be damned if she didn’t need it
right now.
She looked about her in an attempt to strip away the
cabin’s dense shadows with her narrowed eyes. She swallowed a thick swell of
spit. No sign of them, thank Christ.
Satisfied, she ducked under the bed and reached for
the bottle.
“Hello, Katarina.”
She recoiled. With a hand to her mouth she barely
managed to stifle a scream. Wide eyed, she kicked back across the floor until
she’d backed herself into a gap between her wardrobe and door to the head.
That voice! Like broken, bloody fingernails clawing
at the inside of a coffin lid. Tears formed at the corners of her eyes as she
stared at the bed. Sure enough, the Witch’s dragon tattoos emerged from beneath
it, flowing across the deck like spilt ink. Two dimensional and flat, their
colours had faded a little since she’d watched them destroy Johnny Coven on the
flight-deck, yet the greens, yellows and reds of their scales still seemed
possessed of a supernatural glow.
She pulled at her sweaty vest to reveal the scarred
remains of the heart motif she’d cut into her breast during their last
confrontation with the Witch. “Stay back! You can’t come near me! I’m still
protected!”
They advanced across the deck until they almost
reached her chunky boots, but stopped shy of her metal heels. “Don’t be like
that, Katarina,” they said in unison, and one winked at her. “We just want to
be friends.”
She swallowed again, the grip on her vest relaxing.
“What?”
“We don’t want to hurt you. If we wanted to do that
we’d have taken you weeks ago. You’ve seen what we can do.”
“But…but this.” She tapped at her scar with her index
finger. “This keeps you away…doesn’t it?”
They laughed, and the sound bore into Katarina’s
skull like a trepan. “So people think. But they’re wrong. It may work on the
Witch, but not us.”
“So, why haven’t you killed me already?”
They winked at her. “Because we want to be your
friends.”
#
The Witch’s shriek tore across the ether. “They’re
gone! They’re not here!”
“They’ve gone! She’s stolen them!”
He bared his teeth and regained his footing. “What’s
‘gone’? Who’s ‘taken’ them?”
She shrieked again, and the cutter shook. They’d all
heard the rumours about her temper. He imagined her clawing at the air like
some mad thing. “I left them here, and now they’re gone!” Another howl, and the
swathes of ice on the wall beside
#
Tatiana leant against the wall of one of the Troika’s
secondary airlocks. The gun in her waistband bit into the small of her back.
Resting her head against the cold wall, she regarded airlock’s outer door. One
of Ivan’s stylised hearts still adorned the metal, chained to the bottom of the
door by trails of excess paint. Tatiana shivered at the thought of the Witch
and drew the faux-fur collar of her white coat up about her neck.
“Hey, sis.”
Tatiana turned to see a shapeless mass of stripy
jumpers, one of Matinee’s old parkas, three bulging kitbags, and a woollen
bobble hat step through the inner door. “Kat,” Tatiana said with a nod. “So
you’ve packed lightly, then?”
Katarina shrugged as she dropped the bags to the
deck. Tatiana swore she heard glass bottles clicking together. “So what?”
They looked at one another, and Tatiana’s eyes
narrowed. Something had changed. Katarina had altered somehow. Her gaze didn’t
waver any more. Her voice was stronger, her jaw firmer. The lips weren’t as
sore, and the crooked smile seemed a little darker.
“Are you…okay?”
“Me?” Katarina laughed. “I’m fuckin’ awesome. How
about you?”
The question struck Tatiana like a slap in the face,
and she ground her teeth. Boyd had just died. How the hell did Katarina expect
her to feel? She opened her mouth to answer, but stopped. No. Now wasn’t the
time. There was something weird going on with Kat, and she bet it was connected
to whatever had snuffed out Johnny Coven. Now she smiled her crooked smile back
at Katarina as her hand strayed behind her to grip the handle of new gun. “I’m
just fine, sis. Fine and dandy.”
#
The Witch’s rant had finally subsided when
He continued to sniff. Lubricant. Synaptic fluid. Rubber. Stalin? He grunted and shook his head. To think that little shit was still alive.
Nose to the deck,
They’d been here. All of them. Had they left? Was
this their last port of call before they abandoned the Troika and fled?
#
Ivan entered the airlock, Stalin at his heel. He
pushed the Dante cabinet, the top of the machine lost beneath his gear.
The door hissed shut behind him, and the twins looked toward him. Katarina’s face lit up with a breezy, almost delirious smile, and Ivan wondered if she might be drunk. This notion quickly passed as he looked at Tatiana.
How she has changed, he thought as he studied her eyes, dead and staring; her head reclined, her relaxed stance. One hand was behind her and one foot against the wall as she leaned back. No longer was this the frightened little Tsarina who had fled Oridia. This was a grown woman, bloodied and sharpened by the life he had dragged them all into…
“What’s in there, Uncle?” Katarina pointed at the Dante
cabinet.
“It’s Vast!” Stalin jigged from foot to foot and
wagged his tail. “Ivan thinks he knows someone who can—”
“Enough!” Ivan kicked at Stalin’s flank, and the
cyborg dog yelped before giving Ivan a hunted glance. “Are you all ready?”
“For what’s it’s worth.” Tatiana shrugged. “But you
know this is a bad idea, don’t you?”
Ivan’s nostrils flared and he drew a deep breath. His
chest swelled beneath his faded combat jacket. “We have had this convers—”
“Yes, we have, but that doesn’t change the way I feel.”
Tatiana moved away form the wall to stand before Ivan. Drawing herself up to
her full height, she looked up into his face with her chin jutting out. “We’re
just running away again, aren’t we?”
“The Witch is comi—”
“Yes, she is, but we should wait for her—ambush her.
We can take her. We’ve beaten everybody else.”
“Now is not the time.”
“Then when is the time, Ivan? The next time she finds
us? The time after that, perhaps? Or do we keep going until we run out of
luck?”
“No.” he put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed
before taking a deep breath. With a lowered head and his chin against his chest
he looked through his eyebrows into her glittering eyes. “We are Valentines,
and we decide when we fight, when we die. I do not choose to fight here. We are
tired. Wounded. We grieve.” He paused as he noted the slight dilation in her
pupils, the slight tremor in her lips. “If we make stand here, we will die. And
I do not want to die here, Tsarina. We run until we choose
battleground.”
Chin still protruding, she stared back at him. If
anything, he realised, it was his own gaze that wavered. Those eyes, he thought
with a shudder. So sheer. So hard. So…Gregor.
He squeezed her shoulders a little harder. “Yes?”
Now she looked away, but only as far as his hands.
“Get your hands off me. They’re covered in paint.”
He twitched a little. He didn’t like that tone one
bit. Once they were away from here—far, far way—he would have talks with her.
Grief or no grief, he would not be spoken to that way. But now was not the
time.
“Very well. We go.” He let her go and turned back to
the Dante cabinet to reach into one of the kitbags. He produced another
aerosol. “But first I have minor chore…”
#
Thin and wet, the paint glistened in the half-light.
The sheen betrayed a further texture beneath. Older paint. His stare traced the
shape. A heart. With tribal flourishes branching from each side.
He looked away and down at the deck, eyes vague and
unfocused as the enhanced brain behind them considered this new conundrum. He
knew that shape. The moment he’d discovered the Witch would be his new CO he’d
researched her strengths and weaknesses, and he’d found out about that shape in
the copies of Ivan’s old logs. The ward the Witch was so afraid of, created by
Kithaen decades ago when the Valentines had first fought Bleakwinter on Oridia.
Ho looked at the shape again. But why obliterate it
like that? Ivan knew she was coming, so why ease her passage onto the Troika
by removing the hearts?
“What are you up to, Ivan?” He hunkered close to the
deck and looked over one shoulder and then the other as he surveyed the entire airlock.
His teeth bared as he growled, and the irises of his eyes opened wide as his
nose trembled. “And where the hell are you?”
#
Two minutes before boarding the Faded Lady,
and the Valentines stood outside the rickety ship. With Stalin by his side Ivan
leant against the hovering Dante cabinet. The twins huddled inside thick parkas
as the storm buffeted them.
“Okay,” Ivan shouted over the howl of the blizzard.
“We get aboard Faded Lady...search it, then steal it.”
“Are you joking?” Stalin’s voice wavered and his eyes
became saucers. “That thing’s held together with good luck and bad welding!
We’d have a better chance if we flapped our arms and prayed!”
“We have no choice, yes?”
Stalin lowered his head, and his chin disappeared
into the snow. Whatever he mumbled was lost to the storm as Tatiana walked past
and approached the Lady’s airlock. “Stop whining, Stalin,” she said,
“and help me get this ‘lock open.”
#
“Sir, we’ve detected a power-source in sick-bay.
We’re on our way to investigate.”
“Roger that. And remember, sergeant: be careful.”
“Affirmative.”
#
Ten minutes after boarding the Faded Lady,
Tatiana sat on the ship’s pilot seat with Katarina beside her.
“I’m getting green...ish lights across the board,” Katarina said as she studied the
diagnostic display before her. Even from her position Tatiana could see it
didn’t make pleasant reading. “Christ. I thought the Old Bitch was past
it.”
Tatiana didn’t answer, she was lost to the remembrance of Boyd’s charred body lying beside the Old Bitch. There he lay, screwed up and burnt like a stubbed out cigarette, smoking in a sea of ash. And there he would lay for the rest of her days. Those huge holes would forever gape in his body. Those splintered bones would always poke out of his scorched muscle. She would never cease to see the ruination of his torso tainted with a coagulated mess of burst eggs and tiny, barely formed spider—
“Tatty? Sis? You hear me?”
Tears swam in her eyes as she cleared her throat and
squirmed in her seat. She hunched over the console and turned away from
Katarina, hoping her sister hadn’t seen. She pushed the mental image aside and
forced herself to concentrate. “Sure, Kat, I—” She cleared her throat again. “I
hear you.”
It came as no surprise to her the Lady’s
systems were in such a state. With its grim and dirty corridors, low lights,
dank walls, and pervading smell of waste and sweat, everything about the Faded
Lady spelled dilapidation. Even the controls here on the flight-deck were choked
with grime, and the stale air tainted with cigarettes and cheap perfume. Sickly
monitors cast wavering green highlights over the twins as the flight-deck’s air
filters coughed and struggled with the fetid conditions.
Tatiana tapped at her comm to raise Ivan. As she did
she shuddered. The old man had gone on to search the vessel for any surprises
the Covens may have left behind. Christ only knew what he might find. “We’re
almost ready for take-off, Ivan.”
A short stab of static, and then he was online.
“Good, Tsarina. Get us out of here, yes?”
She prodded at buttons on the console before her, and
their feeble orange lights flickered in protest. The whole ship throbbed and
vibrated fitfully, and a strange grinding vibration rattled up Tatiana’s seat
and into her backside. That, she concluded, did not sound good.
“Well, here goes nothing,” she muttered as she seized
the yoke. Her fingers flexed about the dirty grip.
#
Another buzz from his communicator. “
“Sir, we’ve reached sick-bay.”
“And? Did you found the power-source?”
“Affirmative. It’s a robot, sir. An old model.”
“And sir? It’s talking.”
A brief pause as the sergeant moved his comm, and
Doll Two’s voice manifested itself across the ‘net.
“—Shest. Pyat.
Chetyre.”
#
The morning after the Covens had met their match,
their ship rose through the storm. Its thrusters sputtered and whinged as they
struggled against Stanztrigger’s gravitational pull. Behind it the island
receded, blurred and indistinct in the backwash from the Lady’s
thrusters. The Troika, however,
sat still in the centre of the island, besieged by the storm.
#
“Tri.”
With a howl of anger and hatred, with the serf’s
voice hounding him,
“Dva.”
It was, he knew, too late for the Bleakwinter and the
Long Knives, but at least he could save his own ar—
“Adeen.”
#
Briefly, the Lady’s intermittent thrusters cut
out, and the island assumed a clarity as the heat haze dissipated. A fraction
of a second later the Troika exploded, consumed by flame and wreckage,
its death a brazen orange ball amidst the storm. As fleeting as it was fierce,
the explosion vanished. Now only a smoking crater concluded the storied history
of the Troika.
The Faded Lady’s engines cut in again, and the
ship pushed into the ionosphere.
#
Legend maintained that those who died aboard the Faded Lady were condemned to haunt its
corridors for eternity, and the echoes of dripping water were drowned out by
the ethereal cries of the tortured and cackling laughter of the Covens as they reverberated
about the vessel.
Ivan hardly heard them. At the rear of the vessel he
stood at an observation port, hands braced against the dirty plexiglass. He
stared at the receding ruination his beloved Troika had become. He squeezed his eyes shut and looked away, chin
trembling. The Witch and her allies had fallen for it. He’d won again, but at
such cost. Matinee, Boyd, and the Old Bitch...these losses were bad
enough, but to lose Dolly and the Troika as well?
He covered his face with one grubby hand. “Pakah, moë podruga,” he croaked, the
words dry and cracked. “Spasiba.”
He shook his head and cleared his throat before
turning back to face the corridor behind him. Dark, and lit by flickering green
lights, it stank of decay and shit. The corroded walls harboured deep shadows.
Ivan’s shoulders slumped and his head tipped back against the plexiglass. Just as the screams and pleas of the Covens’ past victims still haunted the Faded Lady, so too did Mother Coven’s words haunt Ivan: “I heard he cried like a bitch and begged them for his life. I heard he died licking their boots like the mangy dog he was...”
Ivan grimaced. It couldn’t be true. He would never
believe that. Never! Gregor could not be dead…
Could he?
He looked up and into the blighted grime of the Lady,
but he did not see. Eyes vacant, he was very, very far away. It was time. He
had to face his past, put his ghosts to rest, and make a stand against the Long
Knives,
But to do that, he needed first to find Gregor.
The Valentine Chronicles
will continue with Dark Forces
Discuss this
story—and more—on the Valentine Chronicles forum
© 2009 Mathew David
Spaull. All rights reserved.