Lust Plague (Steamwork Chronicles) (25 page)

Last time I was in a gymnasium was on the
Art of War. A distant memory but a poignant one. Ling had been alive back then.

Sitting still wasn’t her. She got up off the bed and prowled along the row, greeting each person—most, like the rescue force, were women.

The boy was bouncing on a bed with his exhausted father smiling weakly up at him from where he lay with his hands behind his head.

“Hi there.” She managed a grin.

“Ooops.” The boy covered his mouth and shrank down beside his father.

“Thank you,
Capitan
. We are both grateful. Without you and your friend, we would all be dead.” His dark complexion hinted at true Mexican heritage—not many of the purebloods left after the PME had expanded across a quarter of the world.

He heaved himself into a sitting position and stuck out his hand. Kaysana hesitated only a second before taking it. Red skin—crusted with blood. Seeing all the dried blood on the people against the stark white of their bedding lent a bizarre and macabre aura to the room.
How will any of us ever forget this day?

“My pleasure, sir.” Her voice was cracked and rasping still. The smoke hadn’t left her nostrils, nor the smell of death. Her words were automatic, but she meant them. “Only too happy to have helped. Sten did much of it.”

“Yes.” He caressed his son’s head. “Please excuse Miguel. I guess when he saw you, he remembered…what happened. My wife—” Grief bled darkness into his eyes; then he shook his head as if dismissing his thoughts. “You may wish to know your partner is over there, being fixed by the doctors. Tell him from us all, please, when he is recovered, how much we are grateful.”

“I will.” Recovered? Sten was okay, wasn’t he?

At least here there were no screams or moans. People seemed to have decided that no matter their wounds, they would bear them in silence. Shock perhaps? Or dignity. With only the clinks of surgical instruments and the murmur of doctors and nurses making gentle inquiries, this room seemed a haven of serenity.

As she approached the surgical area, Kaysana braced herself.

From yards away, she recognized his boots and trousers. He lay on his back, not moving at all, surrounded by medical staff and equipment. Just anesthetic, nothing more, she knew it, knew it, knew it. But her stomach clamped down, and a headache pulsed at her temples all the way, until she saw his chest rise. She halted.
Knew he was alive, it was just the way… Damn I can’t lie to myself. I care too much for him. Cutting myself off from him is going to be agony.

So why am I doing it?
She couldn’t answer that. Not yet.

A monolith of tiered metal towered beside Sten’s upper body while a doctor wielded a probe that flashed a buzzing green…like some giant welding machine, as if Sten was a metal creation and not living flesh.

A metal mask was fastened over the lower half of his face. Two doctors and a nurse worked on his hands, and one doctor placed purple sutures with the tiniest of needles. The flesh of Sten’s palms and fingers seemed raw and bereft of skin. Blood collected in his palms, spilling
drip drop
to the floor.

More blood.

Cold flooded her. The room whited out and wavered. She latched on to the back of a chair, waiting for everything to settle.
A hundred thousand gallons of blood has been spilled today, but seeing his makes me woozy? Oh wonderful
. She chewed her lip. Sten’s eyes were closed, his face slack yet peaceful. Beneath the green drapes, his chest rose and fell as steadily as the waves of a vast ocean.

“Yes?” The doctor at the head of the operating table eyed her from above his white mask, raised an eyebrow. “Can we help you?”

“I’m”—she ran a finger around the neck of her opened jacket—“his friend. Is he going to be okay?”

“We’re replacing the skin that was torn away with cloned skin. Being a frankenstruct”—he seemed lost in thought for a moment—“I’d say within a week he should be on the mend and the sutures will be out.”

“Good. How did he lose the skin?” The needle in the second doctor’s hand went in and out like a clockwork fang.

“The report said he tore it away after freezing it to the, uh”—he adjusted something on the metal mask, dripped liquid from a pipette onto the mouth area—“aiming wheel of some cannon. Stupid. If he’d not just ripped free, the damage would have been less.”

The suturing doctor chuckled. “Guess he was eager to get to a sexy date, hey?” He glanced up. “Pardon me, Captain. I joke when I do surgery—steadies my hand and mind. He’s a brave man.”

“Yes, he is.”

“You might want to know, when he went under, he was talking about the three people who got chewed up by his gun along with the zombies. The ether brings such worries out. It might be best if you talk it over and reassure him later.”

“I’ll do that. Thank you for your concern.” Another reason to talk. This was a conspiracy, but…Sten was grieving over the civilians killed?

With Emily still unaccounted for, she questioned passing staff until one remembered seeing a blonde pigtailed woman come aboard. She smiled and thanked the nurse, then found a bed to park herself on. Watching the rest of Sten’s surgery was strangely calming. Least this way she knew what was happening.

“Hey, Captain.” Emily sank onto the bed and drew her feet up, pulled her ankles over so she sat cross-legged in a lotus.

“Hey, Emily. I gather you shot some zombies for me?”

Emily nodded. “That was me. So frickin’ glad I shot straight.”

“Thank you.” She squeezed Emily’s hand. “I didn’t fancy being their dinner.” Kaysana took her much chewed fingernail from between her teeth. Speaking so informally to a crew member would’ve been unbelievably lax a few days ago. Emily just grinned and tossed her pigtail back over her shoulder. Like Kaysana she still wore her PME furs, albeit with the front opened. The temperature in the airship was well above freezing.

“You got it bad, huh?” She nodded toward the surgeons and Sten.

“Got what bad, First Librarian, Ensign First Class, Emily Winterborne? And may I say what an appropriate name you have?”

“You don’t scare me.” Her grin widened. “Not anymore. How’s he doing?”

“Sten?” She couldn’t stop herself from checking. Still being stitched and welded. “He’s doing good. The doctors seem to know what they’re up to.” On the tables either side of Sten’s, a man had his fractured arm set and a woman’s leg was being operated on. “What in hell is that green zapping machine?”

“We-ell, Corey says it’s some new thing from the Hellene Nation—makes wounds heal faster.”

“Corey?” Was Emily blushing?

“He’s a nice guy I met today—a nurse. He’s rather dreamy.”

“Emily!” She tilted one eyebrow way up, putting on her skeptical look.

“What?”

How fast did Emily work? And looking for romance on today, of all days? But, she’d seen Emily under stress. The woman was bubbly yet also the embodiment of sweetness, with a backbone forged of steel. And perhaps this was how she coped? By just zoning it all out?

“I’m thinking of making him my beau…just like Sten is yours.”

Kaysana gaped. “He is not—”

“No?” She leaned in to whisper. “It’s okay. I won’t tell anyone. You know that. Even if what you and Sten got up to on the roof was different…and damn hot. My.” She rolled her eyes upward for a second, then giggled. “Okay, I’ll admit it kinda turned me on too.”

That flattened Kaysana even more. This was the real world. What had happened wasn’t going away. Emily mightn’t tell, but she still knew.

“Oh, come on.” After looking around again, she continued. “You can’t tell me you don’t have a thing going on still? That wasn’t all just this lust plague?”

Something made her tell the truth. The three of them had shared disaster and tragedy together. She’d never forget them, ever. No matter what. “Yes. I have a thing for him, but I don’t see how it can ever be…how we…” Her face scrunched up, and she bowed her head as she struggled for the words. “Oh, Emily.” Kaysana reached over and hugged her.

“Hey, it’s okay.” Emily patted her shoulder. “It’s all good. Things will work out. I got your back and you got mine. And Sten, well, he’s good for covering both our asses.” She giggled again. “Ignore that! It came out kinda wrong.”

Could she ever be a military captain again? The ability to be there for people yet to also be aloof and make the hard decisions, to sacrifice the few so that the many might survive—that distancing ability seemed beyond her grasp.

The rest of that first day smudged into one gray mess. With doctors and nurses prodding her, having her ear sutured under ether anesthesia, then being debriefed, it all become too much for her memory. She crashed onto her bunk and slept like the dead. And the dead haunted her dreams. Snaggle-toothed, face-rotting zombies with glaring orange eyes and mouths that groaned and bit.

When Kaysana awoke on the fourth morning, the ship was floating above a green patchwork of fields. The ship’s name, the
Queen Margeurite
, went well with the opulence that gleamed from every fitting. Even her little cabin was superb in every way, from the silver-framed mirrors to the carved headboard and the toothbrush glass with its gold interlocking
QM.

Breakfast of sausages and eggs, fruit and cream arrived on a silver tray brought in by a steward in perfect white trousers, shirt, and coat. After depositing the tray on a little bedside table, he nodded and left. The crimson-uniformed guard saw him out the door—another Brito-Gallic soldier. Half those aboard seemed to be Brito-Gallic. She’d heard the Brito-Gallics had all been volunteers, and though the scientists had worked out a moderately safe way to pick those resistant to the plague, it hadn’t been foolproof. To risk becoming a zombie to help strangers seemed the bravest of acts.

“Thanks, Martin.” She’d asked the guard his name days ago. “I’m not a zombie today.”

“I can see that, ma’am.” He tapped two fingers to his cap and shut the door.

Grim but unobtrusive. A steady man. Unlike the other survivors, she had a room to herself. But she still had a guard. Everyone seemed to have a guard…except the guards themselves.

If I was going to turn into a zombie, I’d be one already
. Being alone gave her time to think and to ponder things, like her wound. In the mirror, her ear looked frightful. Only a bit missing? With such words, the doctor had dismissed her vain fears. Quickly dismissed, but not effectively.
I look like a chewed-up dog toy
. The skin was puffy and red. She pulled a face. What man would find her pretty?

“Gah! Why am I bothering over prettiness? As if I’m trying to…” She frowned.
As if I want to attract Sten.

Staring at the ceiling or at the porthole at the foot end of her bed had grown boring. Four days and they’d not talked. She got the feeling he waited for her to go to him.

I’m not a coward. Why am I hiding in here?
When had facing him become so much harder to do than killing zombies?

No GAM uniform meant she had to wear the assortment she’d been given. She tugged down the Brito-Gallic infantry jacket she’d donned for warmth and frowned into the mirror. Teamed with the pair of cream hosepipe trousers and the white blouse, she looked neat if a little buxom—the blouse size wasn’t quite right. Still, the bright red jacket suited her complexion.

Four days and the
Queen M
., as the leftover staff called her affectionately, was no closer to returning across the border. Her report had been sent away by radiophony. They were picking up survivors, scouring for stray zombies, and rendering assistance, she’d been told by Captain Hilary Nordluck. Quarantine, said ship’s gossip. Likely that was correct. The luxury wasn’t hard on her, but avoiding Sten was. So today she would fix that little problem.

An hour after a monotonous yet first-class lunch, she set out for the sick bay with her guard in tow.

On the way, her boots sank into the red carpet like a spoon into cream. That and the frosted glass sconces still impressed her—such minor novelties, yet pure elegance compared with the timber floors and steel voltaic lights on the
Art of War
. As she came near the sick bay, the pop and slam of someone playing ball echoed in the hallway.

Two immaculate GAM guards on either side of the double doors stared over her head.

“Afternoon.” She smiled.

“Afternoon, ma’am,” they replied without moving anything except their mouths.

If I have to get sick, she thought, peeking in the door to the sick bay, this is where I’ll go. She wandered in past the timber and etched glass doors. The male survivors had ended up here where the aft lounge used to be. The women, all seven of them, had the forward lounge. No one here looked very sick anymore, apart from a few bandages, though a table was set up with stethoscopes, paperwork, bandages, and thermometers. A scream from a distant part of the ship made her wince—some had not retained their sanity.

Opposite the entranceway, French-style doors led to a narrow balcony where huge semicircular hopper windows could be opened out onto the sky they cruised through. Of all the things to find—windows, on an airship. But the
Queen M
. was full of such contradictions.

Bright sunlight cast curved blocks of yellow across carpet and walls. A small red ball whizzed past along the balcony, and Sten whooped in merriment. He was out there somewhere.

“Ten to two. You are never catching me, son!”

“Am too!” The high-pitched laughter could only be from the boy, Miguel. There were no other children aboard.

From behind her, the guards’ voices carried over the game. “Thinks he’s some big hero, doesn’t he? Frankenstructs! Who’d have thought anyone would call one a hero?”

Well, well. It was probably deliberate—they’d pitched their voices so she’d hear them. Wasn’t the first she’d heard of a rumbling discontent, but it was the most overt. The Brito-Gallics praised Sten, but some of the GAM and those few PME soldiers who were part of the rescue force seemed unhappy that a frankenstruct had saved the world.