35 Just Insane Enough
JUST INSANE ENOUGH
“THIS IS A horrible plan,” Darius opined twenty minutes later as the turbolift glided to a halt on the dungeon level.
“You could have said so on the way up,” I admonished. We’d had sufficient time riding the balloon station’s central turbolift from the lowest levels to just below the upper communications deck.
“I did say so,” Darius said before our conversation was cut short by the turbolift doors rudely opening.
The four of us stepped into a sparse, spartan corridor with no cover, nowhere to hide once battle began.
My fingers itched for my broadsword, and I desperately wished it were strapped to my equipment harness rather than the Yezhidian-issue short sword.
The demon guards standing behind the orderly’s desk eyed us curiously while the orderly typed away at his workstation.
Despite the difference in size, the metal-and-fur Imperial uniforms rather than Royal tunics, and the dull composite alloy walls rather than gleaming wood and tapestries for decoration, I was reminded of the room outside the chamber where I met three marshals so long ago.
That was less than three weeks past.
The orderly growled in Imperial, breaking me from my reflections. “State your purpose.”
“We are here for the Emperor,” I replied in the same harsh tongue.
The orderly’s head snapped up, and the guards dropped their swordstaffs into a guard position, alarmed by the request. My lancer was already out, my bolt catching the orderly in the chest before he could dive for the panic button.
A flurry of movement followed. Tredesceu and Darius both shot the left-hand guard, which left the other unassailed.
He could have ended our countercoup then and there, but instead of sounding the alarm, he charged.
Pavlov, keeping his bloodlust admirably in check, coolly parried the guard’s thrust, stepped inside the swordstaff’s reach, and slashed his short sword across the demon’s torso, spilling blood and entrails onto the floor before cleaving the demon’s head in twain.
Darius breathed. “What happened to calm and quiet?”
“They must have orders to arrest anyone asking to see the Emperor,” I reasoned.
“So glad I listened to you,” Darius replied. “How did you ever survive the war?”
“Search me,” I said.
“Search the cells. We need to find the Emperor.”
“She’s in cell two-one-ten,” Pavlov said, bent over the orderly’s computer.
“Perfect. Find the key code.” I broke into a trot, heading down the hall of cells, passing empty chambers until I found cell 2110.
“Shit.”
“What is it?” Darius asked as he caught up with me, then he saw the Emperor’s cell. “Oh. Shit.”
Astrid was indeed in the cell. Her wounds were bandaged, and she seemed to be healing well. I could tell by the readouts on the side of her medical stasis chamber.
“I didn’t realize her wounds were so serious,” Darius said.
“They weren’t. They put her in stasis to prevent her escaping,” I said. “Bet you five crowns the moment I purge the chamber, alarms will sound and guards come running.”
“No bet,” Darius replied, his face grim. “Can we transfer the chamber to a gurney, push her out somehow?”
“We’d be seen,” Tredesceu said. He and Pavlov joined us.
“What about waiting it out? Maybe she can be stimmed up, at least until we reach the cruiser…” Darius began, but Pavlov frowned.
“Even if you execute an emergency purge and inject stimulants, it will take her several minutes to return to full functionality,” the big demon said.
The four of us stood in silence outside the Emperor’s cell, grimly contemplating our choices, until Darius asked, “So what do we do now?”
I’d intended to dress Astrid in a dead guard’s uniform and try to bluff our way out, but that was impossible now.
I turned to Darius. “Archduke, go back to the ship.”
“And leave you here? I wouldn’t dream of it,” Darius protested, but I silenced him.
“Once we leave this cell block, we won’t make it three meters before someone sounds the alarm.
We can’t shoot our way out, not the four of us.
You get to the cruiser, send all noncombatant personnel to the surface, and bring every soldier you have to rescue us,” I ordered.
“They won’t expect an attack from your ship.
You’ll hit them from behind and clear a way for us to get back.
Once they’re distracted, we’ll slip out with the Emperor and be flying free before anyone realizes what has happened,” I explained.
“They’ll surely send a squad to secure the Emperor,” Darius agued.
I nodded. “I’m counting on it.”
“This station has heavy lancer defenses,” Pavlov said ominously. “Your cruiser won’t survive departing its berth, and any shuttle sent planetward after we raise the alarm will be incinerated.”
Darius smiled. “We won’t use shuttles. My cruiser has drop pods.” Darius raised his eyebrows at me. “Have you used drop pods before?”
Pavlov and Tredesceu nodded. I grimaced. “Not since the Academy,” I admitted. “But it’s the only way I see for us to get past those lancers.”
“Don’t worry. It’s as easy as falling off a log,” Darius said, giving me a comforting clap on the arm.
“It’s not the fall, but the landing I’m worried about,” I said, trying to keep a note of hysterical laughter out of my voice as I realized what we were about to do.
Darius took my shoulders, concern written large across his features. “Levar…”
I brushed his hands away. “You should go. The longer we wait, the more likely someone will stumble over one of our corpses. Realistically, you’ve got ten minutes. We’ll wait for your signal, or until the alarm sounds, whichever comes first.”
Darius glanced at my companions and asked, “Either of you coming with me?”
“Someone needs to make certain the Emperor and Consort don’t get killed,” Tredesceu replied immediately, his voice cheerful despite his grim expression.
“It will be an honor to die saving the Emperor,” Pavlov said, positively beaming.
The archduke drew himself up and bowed to us, actually bowed at the waist. “I salute you, three of the finest transhumans I’ve ever had the pleasure of serving with.”
I grinned, holding back the tears my treacherous eyes threatened to let loose. “Go, you fool. Your ten minutes are running.”
The archduke left, running to the turbolift and disappearing inside. I ordered Tredesceu and Pavlov to collect all the weapons and ammunition they could from the dead guards.
“Do you honestly think it will matter, sir?” Tredesceu asked.
I looked at Pavlov, the only one of us not upset to die. “Maybe not, but if they’re going to sing songs about today, then I want those songs to be worth singing.”
Pavlov laughed, then swept my whole arm into his hand. “You will make a fine demon in another life.”
We assembled what we could, bracing security doors open with corpses, preparing straps to attach the Emperor to Pavlov so he could carry her, but we finished every preparation we could imagine well before Darius signaled his attack.
Soon enough, I found myself pacing. Had something happened to Darius?
Surely it had been too long. I checked my watch.
Tredesceu smiled at me. “I didn’t take you for the nervous type, sir.”
I smirked back. “I hate waiting.”
At that moment, yellow lights began flashing and an alarm blared.
Looking ceilingward, Tredesceu said, “Looks like you don’t have to anymore.”
The tension drained from me like water from an unstoppered sink. “Well, that’s as clear a signal as I could hope for. Let’s get started.”
I walked to the stasis pod, took a deep breath, and pulled the emergency purge lever.
The chamber lid popped open, sending medigel flooding over my legs.
Immediately, a second alarm began to blare.
“Pavlov,” I called as I began undoing the restraints holding Astrid upright in the chamber.
Pavlov caught the Emperor as she fell, and I sliced the respirator from her face.
Her eyelids fluttered, but she did not awaken.
I found the stimulant vials and pressed them into the hypospray, silently praying she would awaken quickly from her coma.
We strapped Astrid to Pavlov’s back, belts running under her armpits, across her chest, and around her waist, her bare feet dangling a foot off the ground, well before the turbolifts began moving.
We kept her arms free in case she gained mobility there first, so she could serve as a tail gunner.
Tredesceu and I watched as the bank of five turbolifts sprang to life, waiting to see which one would reach us first.
The second turbolift to the right dinged. Pavlov, Tredesceu, and I all fired our lancers through the door before it opened.
Blades bared, Tredesceu and I leapt into the crowded turbolift car, stabbing and slashing wildly, eviscerating and impaling anything larger than us which dared to move.
Several frantic, bloody moments later, the two of us stood panting, covered in gore, but alive among a carpet of dead, dismembered demons.
Pavlov joined us, somewhat put out at not having been able to join the fun, and Tredesceu and I set about looting the bodies of ammunition and weaponry as the turbolift doors shut.
Before they closed completely, I heard the ding of another turbolift arriving.
The turbolift plummeted faster than gravity could manage, the gravitic floor keeping us from floating to the ceiling. We watched the vacuum spheres’ sides swell towards us as we approached the spire’s midpoint. When they curved away again, we could see Darius’s diversion.