Lindsay Buroker - Conspiracy

“Should I be worried that you look more nervous than I do?” the emperor asked. He was lying on the bed, his hands folded over his belly, as if in relaxed repose, but tension tightened his interlaced fingers.

“Nah, I’m not nervous,” Akstyr said out of some notion that doctors should be brave for their patients. “Just…”

“Pensive?”

“Right.”

“There may be little time,” Sicarius said, his tone hard, the words clipped.

“Right,” Akstyr repeated.

Sespian sighed, lay his head back, and closed his eyes. The tension didn’t ebb from his fingers.

“Is there anything I can do?” Books asked softly from behind Akstyr.

“No,” Akstyr said. “I’ve memorized everything you’ve translated for me. I just need quiet.”

He took a deep breath and closed his own eyes. He stretched out, trying to sense the artifact without letting it sense him.

Since Akstyr knew what the devices looked like, he was able to picture the buried one in his mind. He imagined it nestled beneath the skin, a knot burrowed into the muscle, and slowly the made-up picture in his head coalesced into the real one. It had life of a sort. An awareness. It emitted… a question or perhaps a probe, as if it knew something, or someone, was there.

Akstyr fought for calmness. It wasn’t certain yet, or it would have already moved. He summoned energy in his mind, like coiling one’s body before springing into the air. He was about to unleash the energy, to attempt to stun the device, when the floor tilted. It nearly threw him from his seat, and he only caught himself by grabbing the emperor’s footboard. The dirigible groaned and tilted back the other way.

“Check on it,” Sicarius said.

At first, Akstyr thought Sicarius was talking to him, but the door slammed, and he realized Books had left. Akstyr shifted on his seat, not thrilled at being left alone with Sicarius. Well, Sicarius and the emperor, who was sitting up, frowning.

“Lie down, Sire,” Sicarius said. There was no deference in the way he said sire, and it was clearly an order. “Continue,” he told Akstyr in the same tone.

“Maybe,” Akstyr said, directing his words to the emperor instead of Sicarius, “we should wait until-”

The floor titled again, this time toward the nose of the craft. Akstyr’s heart jumped. They weren’t heading toward a crash, were they?

“-someone besides Maldynado is driving,” he finished. Nobody smiled at his attempt at humor. It didn’t amuse him much either. He wanted to lunge to his feet and run up to the navigation cabin to check on what was happening.

“Continue,” Sicarius repeated. The way he said it made Akstyr suspect he didn’t have the option to leave. “Before this gets worse,” Sicarius added.

Sespian nodded grimly. “Do it,” he told Akstyr and lay back down.

As if it was so easy. Akstyr closed his eyes again and struggled to regain his focus. He probed the area beneath the scar tissue, trying to find the device. He frowned. It wasn’t there.

Amaranthe, using clamps she had scrounged, fastened one end of the slingshot to a vertical strut to the left of the cargo door. Basilard was doing the same on the other side. The already tilted floor angled more steeply toward the nose of the craft, and Amaranthe found herself hanging onto the strut as her feet threatened to skid out from beneath her.

“I didn’t think a dirigible could tilt that much,” she said.

Though Basilard was struggling to hold on as well, he managed to one-handedly sign, Maldynado’s driving.

“Good point.”

Something scraped behind them. The box of blasting sticks sliding across the floor toward the corridor. Amaranthe’s heart leaped. Those should have been secured when the men first came on board.

“What’s going on back here?” Books clawed his way out of the emperor’s suite and into the corridor.

“Grab that box,” Amaranthe shouted.

Alarm widened Books’s eyes, and she wished she’d kept her voice calmer. If he fumbled it and didn’t catch it before it smacked into the wall or slid down to the navigation cabin…

Books managed to catch the box before it struck anything.

“Thanks,” Amaranthe said. “Secure that, will you? And bring us a few sticks. And that lantern that’s sliding your way too.”

“I came back here to see what was happening, not get pressed into labor,” Books said, though he headed toward her.

“What’s happening is we need someone pressed into labor.” Amaranthe nodded toward the porthole in the door. “Maldynado’s swerving about isn’t helping much. They’re getting close.”

“Dead deranged ancestors,” Books whispered, staring at the hole.

Amaranthe doubted he could see details from across the cargo hold, but the black ship now filled the view. It blotted out the mountains and the sky with its bulk. Amaranthe couldn’t tell if it was bringing weapons to bear, but, even if it didn’t, the craft could probably destroy the dirigible simply by running into it. Like a steam tramper squishing a fly.

“Has it done anything yet?” Books was strapping down the box of explosives.

“It’s just following us,” Amaranthe said. “Getting closer and closer. Basilard, think we’re ready to open the door and test our blasting-stick slingshot?”

Our?

“You helped me construct it.”

It’s your idea.

“Basilard says we’re ready to go.” Amaranthe extended a hand toward Books. The dirigible tilted to the side, and her feet slipped. Only her fingers wrapped about the strut kept her from tumbling toward him.

“I can… read his signs,” Books said, his words broken as he focused on climbing on hands and knees up the slanted floor while he clenched blasting sticks in his fists. “That’s not what he said.”

The nose of the dirigible rose and the floor tipped the opposite direction so quickly it nearly hurled Books into the cargo door. Amaranthe and Basilard caught him before blasting sticks could fly from his hands. For a moment, the greens and browns of the wetlands were visible through the porthole before the craft leveled.

“That idiot,” Books growled. “I should be piloting. He’ll kill us before the enemy has a chance.”

Something flashed outside. Amaranthe and Basilard almost clunked heads as they leaned toward the porthole for a look. Maldynado had brought them within fifty feet of the ground. The tips of trees would claw at the dirigible’s metal hull if they dropped any lower. The other craft wasn’t quite as low, but it was far too close for Amaranthe’s tastes. A white beam shot out of the dome’s black belly. It sliced through the sky and tore into the earth below. Trees burst into flame or were hurled from the ground altogether. Marsh water boiled and erupted into geysers. The beam zigzagged across the ground with clumsy madness, and Amaranthe thought of a kid scribbling on the sidewalk with chalk.

“Why’s it shooting the ground instead of us?” Books asked.

Amaranthe thought of Sicarius’s explanation for the strange craft’s existence. If the original expedition had needed Admiral Starcrest and a genius code cracker from an enemy nation, maybe the technology was so foreign that the Forge people were struggling to work everything. Except they were having no trouble flying after her team in that monstrosity…

“I don’t know,” Amaranthe said, “but we better take advantage of the fact that we’re not a smoldering ball of flame yet.”

Even as she spoke, the beam zigzagged again, striking a stout cypress. The wood exploded beneath the power, or perhaps the heat, and shards flew everywhere. Flames erupted from the ten-foot-tall stump that remained.

“Good idea,” Books said.