“Can they hurt anything by touching things?” Amaranthe asked.
“Probably not.” Retta’s eyes were closed, and she was leaning against the wall, letting the object do… whatever it was doing.
“Can we steer the craft off the lake bottom from here?” Amaranthe was careful not to call it the Behemoth. Retta seemed inordinately fond of the technological monstrosity and might not appreciate the sobriquet.
“Yes, but I need to know where you want to go.”
Where indeed? Destroying the craft was still at the top of Amaranthe’s thoughts, but Retta wasn’t going to go along with that. She couldn’t imagine landing the Behemoth anywhere within fifty miles of the city. Even if there weren’t the problem of explaining it to the populace, she didn’t want a two-day hike to return to Sicarius, Sespian, and the others.
“Perhaps we could leave it here,” Books said, “but coerce its occupants to abandon ship. We could then sink the submarines that are capable of reaching this depth. In the time it would take someone to repair the submarines or build new ones, we should have resolved the political situation in the capital.”
The pained expression on Retta’s face had faded as the healing tool mended her shoulder, but a new pinched frown arose at Books’s suggestion. “There are only a handful of submarines docked in the Ortarh Ortak. Not enough for everyone onboard to escape at once if something happened to… motivate them to do so.”
“Do they have to escape?” Akstyr asked.
Amaranthe and Retta glared. Books elbowed him.
“What? I’m being practical. I mean, these are all our enemies in one spot, aren’t they? We could get rid of them all and stop having to worry about them.” Akstyr snapped his fingers and pointed at Retta, oblivious to her glare. “You could fiddle with those floating boxes again, so they go back to incinerating people. But not us. We should get out of here before that starts. Can that happen?”
“No,” Amaranthe said even as Books and Retta roared the same word.
“Those are my colleagues,” Retta added.
“They poked your eye out,” Akstyr said.
“That was Pike, that sadistic miscreant. Nobody else here would do something like this. They’re my colleagues, some of them are even friends.” Retta tore the device away from her shoulder and thumped it against the wall. “I don’t know why I’m even helping you people.”
“Because,” Amaranthe said, stepping in front of Retta, capturing her gaze, “you know Forge is going about this the wrong way. They don’t want to vanquish the warrior caste; they want to replace it. But we’re going to instate a new government, one that’s fair for everyone, giving every person a chance to live freely and pursue their dreams.” She wondered if she sounded like a madwoman when she raved about tossing out old governments like dish water and plopping new ones down as if it’d be a simple task.
Out of the corner of her eye, Amaranthe saw Books clear his throat and raise a finger. For at least the third time that night, she made her cutting-off motion at him. She knew his ideal government was more about allowing equality for educated people and probably didn’t mention the words pursuing dreams, but she hadn’t read his opus yet, and this had to be close enough for the moment. It had to convince Retta to calm down and stay with them.
“I thought you wanted Sespian back on the throne,” Retta said.
“That’s a stopgap measure. He’s agreed to change the government once he’s there.” Actually, she hadn’t brought it up yet, but he’d be open to it surely. Careful, girl, she told herself, you’re starting to sound grandiose again. Maybe madwoman was an appropriate label. “He’ll step down. He’s not a power monger, and he knows he won’t be popular with the people with an assassin for a father.”
“What do you want me to do then?” Retta spread an arm toward the floating images.
“Get us out of the lake and set this craft down somewhere out of sight of the population centers,” Amaranthe said.
“How will we get back to town?” Books asked.
“There’s a small independent craft-several actually, but we’ve only verified that one works,” Retta said. “They’re the equivalent of lifeboats.”
“How far can they go?”
“I don’t believe they were designed for travel between planets, merely for short range trips, short range by these people’s standards that is.”
Amaranthe blinked. “So they can go anywhere in the world?”
“That should be the case, yes.”
“How long would the trip take?”
“It would depend on the distance to be traveled, but from what I’ve seen of the one lifeboat’s speed capabilities, perhaps an hour from one side of the world to the other.”
Now it was Books’s turn to blink in astonishment. “That would mean it’d travel faster than the speed of sound.”
“Yes.” Retta smirked and mouthed something that might have been, “Boom.”
“Then we can simply take the Behe-this craft to the South Pole, drop it off, ride back in the lifeboat, and return for dinner, right?” Amaranthe’s mind boggled at the idea, but Retta shrugged and nodded, as if this were some workaday concept.
Thunks sounded beneath them-from the direction of the lift, Amaranthe realized, though the mechanism had disappeared back into the featureless black floor after it delivered them.
“I think someone knows we’re here,” Akstyr said.
“It was only a matter of time.” Retta slumped, breaking Amaranthe’s gaze.
Amaranthe backed away. She didn’t know if she’d won Retta over or simply made her question herself further. “Is the floor… uhm, locked?”
“Yes. There are several entrances, but I secured them when we first entered.” She waved toward the floating image she’d touched before moving to the cabinet.
“So we’re safe to do what we want in here?” Amaranthe asked.
“Mia will find a way past my locks before long.”
Amaranthe had been afraid of that. She gripped Retta’s uninjured arm. “The South Pole. Park this on top of a glacier, then we’ll take the lifeboat back here, and you can drop us off then… do whatever you wish. Go get the rest of your old Kyattese friends and take them down to study it. So long as Forge can’t bring it back here.” Amaranthe hadn’t figured out yet what she’d do with all the Forge people who were on board now, inadvertent prisoners if they traveled to the other end of the world. And then there was that Mia. On the chance that she could also steer this craft, she’d need to be captured and taken… Where? She didn’t know. Amaranthe massaged her forehead, willing away an oncoming headache. Her eyes were gritty, and everything was too complicated. She made a mental rude gesture at the long-gone race that had deposited their monstrous technology on her world.
“Very well,” Retta said. She’d apparently been wrestling with complicated thoughts of her own. At least they came up in Amaranthe’s favor. “This will take time.”
More bangs sounded from under the floor.
“How much time?” Books asked.
“You may want to start thinking of delaying tactics.”
Amaranthe shared his groan. She didn’t think having Akstyr mentally pull people’s trousers down was going to be sufficient this time.
• • •
Full daylight had come by the time Sicarius returned to the ice camp. Heavy clouds had drifted back in, and tiny flakes, more hail than snow, tumbled from the sky, bouncing off his shoulders and pelting his cheeks. A few sturdy fishing boats floated out in the center of the lake, and he thought of Amaranthe. Was she even now hundreds of feet below the surface, sneaking about in the Forge craft? Or was she back in the factory, waiting for him to return before she delved into enemy territory? He liked to think so, but he doubted it. He’d been gone too long.
Once he breeched the boundary of the ice camp, Sicarius headed for the machine shop. A single stream of black smoke wafted from the chimney. The workers must have started their day. Good. He planned to requisition their help. His welding skills were limited, and he would need something as sturdy as a mountain to trap and hold the soul construct.