Expendable - James Alan Gardner [128]
A rumble.
A roar.
A vibration under my feet.
The whale was taking off.
The Launch
It would have been a sight to see: the roof doors opening and the glass orca soaring out on plumes of smoke and flame. With luck, Tobit had made it back in time. I breathed a prayer for those aboard, then moved cautiously out of the stairwell. There would never be a better time to sneak up on Jelca, with the sound of blast-off loud enough to cover my approach.
Scalpel in hand, I stole forward.
The building’s glass rattled as the launch continued. The ancestor lying in the stairwell lifted his head with one last show of interest…then pouted and lay down again.
Three rooms between me and Jelca.
Room 1: the roar outside increased, moving upward. I could swear the ship was sliding straight past the building, scorching the tower’s exterior with belches of fire.
Room 2: with a roar, the sound of engines swept past the building, up, high up, heading for the roof, as echoes banged off every building in the city.
Room 3: the noise suddenly eased, and I knew the ship had cleared the roof doors, out into open sky where its sound could spread through the mountains. The echoes were still loud enough to cover my soft approach to the last room, if only Jelca was looking in some other direction.
But he was looking straight at the door. His pistol pointed straight at the door too.
“Don’t move a hair,” he said with theatrical calm. “I can pull the trigger faster than you can move out of the way.”
I knew he was right.
The Laying of Blame
“So who are you?” he asked conversationally. “Ullis? Callisto?”
His question confused me. Then I realized my helmet had opaqued itself enough that Jelca couldn’t see my face.
“It’s me,” I said. “Festina.”
He inhaled sharply under his radiation mask. “Festina? Of course.” He gestured with the pistol toward my hand. “I should have recognized you by the scalpel. Still your weapon of choice?”
Ouch. “You really are a shit, aren’t you?”
“Thanks to you,” he answered. “You backed me into a corner. If you hadn’t left me with no other options….”
“Spare me the excuses.”
“But you’re the one to blame,” he insisted. “You forced me to shoot Oar when you knew it would kill her. You made it impossible for me to be an Explorer…. So now I’m something else.”
“A dangerous non-sentient,” I said.
“Exactly. And if I’m going to be damned forever, the least I can do is live up to the title.”
I sighed. “You’re quoting some bubble, aren’t you? And a bad one at that. Since you can’t impress me as a human being, you try it as a villain. That’s pathetic.”
“I’m not trying to impress—”
“You are!” I shouted…not because my words could affect him but because I’d heard a sound behind me. “If you weren’t trying to impress me, you would have shot the second you saw me. But you want to gloat. You want to justify yourself. Or you want to act out some bubble you’ve seen where the villain acts menacing to pretend he’s more than a pissy little schoolboy. Honestly, Jelca…destroying a world because nobody likes you!”
“You liked me once,” he retorted. “You adored me. And you weren’t the only one. Eel adored me. Oar adored me…”
“I did not!” shouted a voice behind me. The next moment, an axe whizzed past my head.
Battle Rejoined
The axe was not balanced for throwing. It flew fast enough to take Jelca by surprise, but only struck his arm with its handle as it passed by. It glanced off the wall behind him and clattered to the floor.
Jelca raised his pistol.
Unlike the axe, my carefully prepared scalpel flew with perfect precision. I threw it with a simple flick of the wrist, in the instant before I dove out of the doorway. It slashed into Jelca’s fingers where they wrapped around the butt of his stunner. He screamed. The stunner fell.
“Hah!” The laugh rang through the room. Oar leapt past me, heading for Jelca. “You killed my sister, fucking Explorer! You tried to kill me. Now we will see who is such a thing as can die.”
She moved sluggishly, and there