Wearing the Cape 5: Ronin Games (11 page)

“Yeah, that will work.” I should have thought of that. “Tell me about the sky-pirates?”

“Not much to tell. Chinese and League forces don’t know much about them. They’re active over several of the new states and pick easy targets, and only a few distant sightings reported back give any descriptions. We don’t know much more than that the largest group spotted was five flyers, mixed types. They don’t leave survivors or take prisoners, even for ransom, but they shouldn’t be anything we can’t handle—especially with Ozma’s power-ups. Speaking of, have you introduced yourself to your sword yet?”

“Intro— Shell, what did Ozma do to it?”

She grinned like an urchin. “Go on. Say hello.”

Rolling my eyes, I drew The Sword. It was still the big chunk of European-style claymore I’d seen before. Double edged blade, ridiculously flared towards the crosspiece, hilt long enough for me to easily wrap both hands around. It wasn’t glowing or doing any other obviously magical things. Feeling stupid, I cleared my throat.

“Hello?”

“It’s about time, girl. Are you done talking to the voices in your head?”

I dropped the sword.

What is a person? Shell is a person, and she’s an Artificial Intelligence living in a computer from the future. Detective Fisher is a person, and he’s a fictional character. Nix is a person, and she’s a magically animated action-figure (so is Nox, although he’s not a sane person). So what’s the definition of personhood? As far as I’m concerned, it’s self-initiative and personality—a person is someone who acts like a person. Everything else is semantics and theology.

From the journal of Hope Corrigan.

I caught the sword before it fell more than a hundred feet.

“You’re not filling me with confidence,” it informed me. “
Both
hands.”

“How are you
talking
?”

It was the Dust of Life, of course; Ozma had used the Dust of Life on Grendel’s sword, the same stuff used to bring homicidal Nox and happy Nix to life. But they were poseable figures who at least had faces and mouths…

Porcelain faces, painted-on mouths. Raising the sword to look closer, I spotted the acid etched figure on the blade. An angel. Sort of. His wings were made of blades, and he wore a poncho and a flat-brimmed cowboy hat. And smoked a cigarette. It was Clint Eastwood as Gabriel.

Well, that explains the rough voice
…

“Yeah yeah, I look pretty.”

“Um, okay.” Why would Ozma animate a
sword
? It didn’t make it sharper, did it? “Can you fight by yourself? Can you come back to me?”

“Hardly, girl. But throw me at something, and I guarantee I’ll hit it with my sharp end. And once I’m into something I won’t let go unless you make me.”

“Don’t call me girl.” And now I was arguing with a sword.

“The word fits. You call me sword.”

“Oh!” Shell laughed. “I vote for Mister Slicy. Or Sir Cutsalot.”

I sighed. “What’s your name?”

“Name? Mmmm. Cutter. That’s as good a job description as you could ask for, and I am what I do.”

“What you do— You heard Daoshi Ren inside?”

“I’m not deaf, girl. I just don’t open my mouth when I have nothing to say.”

“If you’re done talking with Mister Slicy,” Shell interjected before I could tell my sword not to call me
girl
again. “Jacky says she’s coming out to join you.”

“How are you talking to her? And how can she come out?” Jacky was a “daywalker” now, but she still couldn’t use all her powers in the daylight.

“I’m using the plane’s satellite uplink, duh. And Ozma’s given her a bottle of wind and some ‘sunscreen.’”

I opened my mouth to ask what that meant but Jacky arrived in a miniature whirlwind, dropping out of mist so fast it almost looked like she’d teleported. We were several thousand feet over the East China Sea and pushing three hundred miles an hour, and yet she landed lightly on top of the
Draw Shot’s
fuselage and stood up. Dropping down to meet her showed me how she could do it; a bubble of gently circling air surrounded her, stirring her hair and making her jacket skirt flap against her legs, but forcing the airstream to break around her.

“Nice view!” she yelled over the wind. “I wanted to move around a bit before we get close to land again! Eight Ball says we’re going to pretty much fly up the Yangtze River into south Anhui, and from the coast on in it’s all ‘interesting territory!’ Ready?”

I nodded, openmouthed, and she cross-drew her two shoulder holstered pistols, sighted across them.

“I needed to tell you—these are new Vulcans!” She tapped the one strapped low on her right thigh to show that she meant all four of the long-barreled guns. “Yeah, he named them after himself!”

“And what are Vulcans?” Shell relayed my words to Jacky’s earbug.

“Variable-projectile electromagnetic guns, basically mini railguns. The ammo is uncooked Vulcan-stuff that’s shaped in the barrel for variable density, frangibility, that kind of thing. I can dial it down to knock an unpowered target on his ass or up to seriously bother anything short of an A Class armored type. So I’ll be able to back you against some of the heavies and trust me, I can get close. You all right?”

I’d been nodding stupidly; now I shook my head.

“No! I haven’t been involved with
any
of this! I let you guys build this whole plan without— I didn’t ask you
anything
, just drove the bus and even messed that up—”

“You got us here alive. For the rest, Shell told us where your head was so we took care of it. You back, now?”

“Yes.”

“Good, because it looks like our dates have arrived.”

They hadn’t even waited until the coast was more than a smudge on the horizon. Four dark shapes, three obviously human and one much bigger and snakier, flying between us and land. They had used the sea of rainclouds to get closer than they would have otherwise.

“Recognize anyone, Shell?” Jacky asked.

“Just the flying lizard. That’s Heavenly Dragon, and he’s a One-Lander. No idea about the guy on his back or the other three flying escort.”

“Heavenly Dragon.” I nodded. “Got it. What’s his rep?”

“If you take him you’ll become a national hero in five Secession States.”

“This will be interesting,” Cutter said. “How’s your grip now, girl?”

“Hope, I’m not sure you can take these guys…”

I heard her, and I should have been scared. I
was
scared, somewhere, but my fear was a small voice behind my anger. This plane contained
life
. Life for thousands of loved children and beloved old grandparents. Since the day of my breakthrough I’d seen far too many small bodies, and the fliers closing the distance on us meant more death.

“Shell? Please ask Eight Ball to maintain course and altitude? And ask Daoshi Ren to pray
really
hard
?”

“They’re already on it.”

“Jacky?”

She checked the settings on her Vulcans. “Havoc rules, right?”

“Oh yeah.”
Cry ‘Havoc!’, and let slip the dogs of war.
No rules, no mercy. Fight to kill until you held the battlefield.

“Shell, talk to them if they have radio. Tell them we’re escorting medical supplies and any closer approach will be considered an attack.”

“Got it. And yep, they can talk…aaaand nope. The nicest thing the guy riding Heavenly Dragon said was something about you and a turtle.”

“Okay then.”

So the leader was likely the armored figure on the snaky Chinese dragon’s back. If I took the dragon, that would suck in at least one teammate to rescue him from a long fall if he couldn’t fly himself. Of the other three, one of them flew the way Jacky stood on the plane’s back: upright and ignoring the airstream to stand on an improbably thick and speedy cloudlet. He had to be an aerokinetic, an airmaster of some kind. As for the staff-carrying Kung Fu woman and the winged stone monkey flying beside him…I had no idea but I was pretty sure the stone monkey wasn’t from Oz.

“Safe bet they’re all conventionally bulletproof,” Jacky said as the whining hum of her guns climbed in pitch. “Since they couldn’t count on the plane being unarmed.”

“They’ll have some defense, anyway. How fast can your little wind carry you?”

“As mist? Faster than the plane.”

“Then hop on and we’ll confuse them.” It was one of the sillier-looking moves we had, but we’d change up after the opening bit.

A Vulcan in each fist, Jacky jumped up as I dropped under her, wrapping her legs around my waist and leaning close to hang on hands-free as I took us ahead and
up
. Only her supernatural strength, equal to any Olympian weightlifter’s, kept her attached to me as we climbed hard to command the sky above them.

Heavenly Dragon angled up to meet us, swimming through the sky like an eel through water, as beautiful and terrible as a Siberian Tiger, while the others continued onward. I let him climb, pulling for distance from the plane until I hung vertically above dragon and rider and the other three were far behind us and closing on the plane. Shell designated the pair Alpha and the trio Beta, marking them with virtual icons for me and whispering to Jacky through her earbug.

I waited until I could hear the slithering rattle of the dragon’s scales over the wind, then rolled at the top of my climb. “Beta one-two-three
go
!” I called out as I turned over to fall into a graceful dive. Jacky let go, fell, and disappeared in a blast of wind. Left alone I fell toward Heavenly Dragon, arms out and hearing
the sonic
cracks
of Jacky’s first shots far behind me as I closed the distance.

“He breaths
ice
!” Shell yelled as I fell. Of
course
he did; dragon breath was a near-universal weapon whether European or Asian—and while the white-and-silver pattern of his horns, whiskers, and scales was a clue it wouldn’t be fire, cold could
burn
. I let myself fall until Heavenly Dragon’s climb stuttered as he gathered himself and his mouth opened—then I flew
hard
, breaking down and left. The sky above me split and screamed as the air in my lungs froze, but my burst of speed generated a miss and the fanning razor stream of hyper-frozen water blew harmlessly past.

“Now girl!” Cutter shouted as I swung, two-handed. Heavenly Dragon screamed and silver blood sprayed out as I struck beneath his almost vestigial front legs. The giant snakelike body twisted in air but I hung onto Cutter, stuck into Heavenly Dragon’s underside, and pulled myself close beneath his body to grab a spasming leg before wrenching the sword free to hack again.

“The rider can’t reach you!” Shell yelled, probably watching from the plane’s exterior cams. The leg almost threw me and I clung to Cutter again, used my free hand to punch into the first deep wound to grab onto a glistening rib. Quicksilver blood froze my hand as I freed Cutter to desperately hack deeper.

The screaming head flailed around in an attempt to get at me, but I pulled away and leaped up higher on the long neck, screaming myself as the razor ice washed my feet.
This
time Cutter twitched in my hand as I swung, slicing through the rider’s saddle harness before biting into more scale. Silver blood washed my face, choking and blinding me and I spat, unable to feel my tongue.
Hacking is too slow
. “Shell! Show me his spine! His spine!” A virtual red targeting icon bloomed in the black as I pulled Cutter free and
thrust
.

If the barrel of Heavenly Dragon’s snakelike body had been thicker, cutting up through the underside I would have failed. If Cutter hadn’t been forged by Vulcan to slice through main-tank battle armor, if he hadn’t turned himself with living will to lunge between bones, we would have missed. We didn’t miss, and Cutter severed Heavenly Dragon’s spine, ending his flight. We fell. Curling in to push against the stricken dragon’s side, I pulled us free of his deadweight bulk to throw myself outward and follow a Shell-painted icon away.

“They’re falling!” She supplied redundantly as I blinked desperately, digging past my shades to wipe at my eyes. If dragon-blood was acidic I was too cold to feel it. “Rude Dude can’t fly either!”

Which way which way—
“Jacky?”

“Vulcans make
big
holes,” Shell reported. “Beta One and Three are out and are going to splash and Kung-Fu Girl is retreating—wow that girl can dance!”

That made it easy. “Tell the rider if he surrenders I’ll catch him!”

A heartbeat, two, and the guiding icon spun right and down. “He surrenders! He’s shedding his armor!” I saw him, barely and through stinging eyes as I dove. Closing the distance to fly past his flailing hands, I gripped him from behind and below to pull us out of our dive for the sea. Below us Heavenly Dragon continued to fall away, great head twisting as if trying to escape his lifeless body. I watched until he splashed and sank beneath blooming ice, then turned to catch up with Jacky and the
Draw Shot
.