The Long Shot Pt. 13

The rest of the crew exchanged glances. Leylin chuckled. "We'll be legends if we pull this off, won't we."

"I guess we will," Tulon said. "Come on."

They pushed the boat into the surf, hopped aboard, and then threw out the rigging. Soon, the sails were belling and their ship began to cruise away from the Deadman's Coast -- leaving the ancient ghosts that lurked there to slumber once more.

***

The Empire of Stars had chosen the finest harbor in their home island to be the site of their city. Vast pools of laborers -- most of them women impressed into service at gunpoint -- had worked night and day for a year to move slabs of heavy stone, to cut pathways into cliffs, and to clear away jungle. Their efforts had been made considerably easier by new innovations: Larger and more sophisticated cranes, gunpowder, steam turbines run by enslaved men within their flywheels. All of them had worked to transform the harbor from an already fine place for a city into a true wonder of the modern age.

The result was Star Bay -- in many ways it was similar to Queenscrown. It was a terraced city, with broad streets and welcoming stairs that led between each of the tiered levels. It was filled with rice paddies and food growing areas, which were tended to by women at every moment of the day. But where Queenscrown had grown over the centuries, under the stewardship of many Queens, Star Bay had been blasted into existence in a few short years...and with a scale that seemed nearly impossible to foreigners.

The castle-keep that served as the main defense of Queencrown was dwarfed by the double-wedge fortifications that blocked off the entrance of the harbor. The long cannons mounted on the sloped fortresses aimed outwards, creating interlocking fields of fire that were supported by even more shore batteries. Diver squadrons leaped from the backs of those fortresses, splashing into the bay to begin their underwater patrols, while small gunboats patrolled the surface. Further in, on the crest of the highest tier, was the actual Imperial Palace, which itself was rose up and up and up above the whole city, terminating in a huge, rectangular tower that seemed too spindly and thin to be a good idea in an age with cannons...

Impressive, though.

Tulon's arms ached faintly as she swam forward, her night vision goggles clearly showing the flares of body heat ahead of her. In a normal infiltration, she'd have blundered into that patrol in the darkness, only realizing that the light she was approaching was being carried by undersea warriors too late. Now? Now, she was able to slow down as Chinsara and Yetna caught up with her and the three of them watched as the divers swam on -- none of them even glancing their way.

Yetna took the lead then, her legs kicking as she swam towards the piers. Here, the water began to grow brackish and foul -- but the mesh suits that they wore had another advantage, one that Tulon hadn't counted out. The water looked as if it should burn her gills...but instead, she swam through what had to be quite a bit of piss and shit being dumped into the bay, and only tasted pure, clean water. She realized, after a moment, that the mesh had to be filtering the water for her. She breathed out a thin streamer of bubbles -- then tensed as Yetna swam upwards, her rump wriggling ahead of her.

Tulon's head breached the water and she switched from heat vision to light amplification. In the eerie, ghostly green view that gave her, she could see that Yetna had led them to a large sewage outflow pipe, which was pouring steadily into the water. She preferred to not think about the contents of the water within, while Chinsara surfaced behind her. Yetna turned back to them. "That sewage connects to the plumbing under the Imperial Palace," she whispered. "But the tunnels are too small, too narrow, to get all the way there."

Chinsara's grin flashed for a moment in the night vision.

"That's what they think, huh?"

Tulon grabbed onto the lip of the pipe, dragging herself up. She tried to ignore the faint bump of slightly too solid material against her as she stepped into the pipe itself, waste-water skimming around her calves as she started to walk forward, drawing her spear and stetting it to stun as she extended it to a short, stabbing, one handed spear. She sloshed forward while, behind her, Yetna and Chinsara dragged themselves in.

"Ew, ew, ew," Chinsara whispered.

"Shh!" Yetna hissed.

Chinsara sighed, but did silence herself. The plumbing systems ran through the whole of the city -- another thing that was different from Queenscrown, which had relatively simple plumbing for the castle and nothing on this scale for the rest of the city. Tulon saw a faint, grainy shape ahead of her as she followed Yetna's directions -- and she froze as she realized it was a woman in a kind of civil servant's uniform, holding what appeared to be a glowing stick above her head as she walked along the wall, checking various pipes and tubes that jutted out over a narrow walkway that ran along the main tunnel.

Yetna slowly moved closer to Tulon, whispering in her ear. "Sewer technician," she said, the second word in the strange sky-language of the Concord. "Just let her pass."

The technician -- silly name for it -- paused and turned back. She lifted her glowing stick up, and the light surely cast along their bodies as Yetna and Tulon stood perfectly still. Tulon's grip on the spear shifted, ready to throw it if she had too, forgetting entirely that it could knock people unconscious from a distance in the heat of the moment.

The technician shook her head, then turned and headed back to her patrol. Yetna looked down at her black clad arm, then chuckled. "They must work," she whispered, while Chinsara let out a nervous laugh.

"Lets keep moving," Tulon whispered.

They came to the pipes that led to the castle proper. These, unlike many of the others they had passed, were metal rather than stone. They flowed steadily and were too narrow for anyone but a male to get through -- and a male would be battered half to death before he even got inside the pipe. Chinsara stepped up to the side, angling her spear upwards. She toggled it past the kill mode to the heat beam, whispered a quiet prayer, then thumbed down the trigger.

The light was brilliant and the noise sounded a great deal like a vast cauldron scalding. Steam blew past the three women and Chinsara yelped in shock -- but then the steam parted and Tulon wiped the fog off her goggles and gaped.

The pipes that they had been looking at were gone. In their place was a dull, glowing red tunnel that angled up along where the pipes had been, reaching up to a rectangular stone room that looked as if it had once been the sewage station within the castle. She saw, faintly, the shape of a female figure, prone on the ground, and hoped Chinsara didn't.

"That worked!" Chinsa whispered as Tulon put her palm, gently, against the red stone. She drew her palm back, wondering.

"It doesn't feel warm through the suit," she said. "Come on."

She didn't try and understand how a mesh this thin could keep her fingers safe from stone so hot that she was able to dig in handholds and scramble up the slanting tunnel. She emerged into the control room and saw that a great many pipes had bust, and several bells along the wall were jangling, angry voices emerging from brass pipes, shouting.

"My sink is overflowing!"

"What is going on down there!"

"Well, there goes the quiet entrance," Yetna hissed, as she kicked the corpse of the sewage operator who should have been answering this complaints. It looked as if the heat-blast had caught her full in the face and left her shoulders, neck and head a ruined char. Chinsara, seeing her, put her hand to her mouth, then yanked her mask backwards, turning and vomiting into the corner. The door threw open and two women in Imperial guard uniforms stepped in -- but before they could react, Tulon and Yetna both fired their spears.

On stun, the effect was significantly less dramatic. There was just a thin spark, bright enough to leave splotches on their eyes, and then the two women sprawled to the ground.

"Come on!" Tulon said, grabbing Chinsara. "Are you ready?"

Chinsara wiped her mouth, nodding, hastily yanking her spear to stun. "Yes, ready, ready," she said, her voice ragged.

They emerged into the corridor, and Yetna took the lead here. She didn't know the exact floorplan of the palace, but she knew how Imperial fortifications were built in a general sense. She moved with confidence, taking a corner, then heading up some stairs. They walked past a woman holding up a candle and a bathrobe, who was emerging from a room that was burbling with flowing wastewater, spurting up and out of the back-flowing toilet in the adjoining room. The woman looked right at them, her brows furrowed, but Yetna kept pushing forward -- and the woman shook herself, clearly thinking that she had seen nothing but shadows.

Which...

She had.

By the time the three infiltrators had reached the third level of the palace, the alarm was well and truly raised. Someone had found the bodies, and bells were rattling and women were rushing to their posts. Guard patrols with torches headed down corridors, and light shone on everything that they could reach. The few that came near to the trio fell, their bodies hit by stun bolts, and were left where they had fallen, their torches stamped out to prevent the spreading of fire and to make finding them in the darkness and confusion harder.

The three came, then, to the corridor leading towards the bedchambers of the Empress. There, they saw just what happened when the alarm was raised for the Empress.

The first was a titanic metal door, slammed down and locked into place by heavy winches and chains. The second was an entire platoon of women with muskets, swords, and affixed bayonets, wearing the high hats of the Imperial Grenadier corps. They were, like all Grenadiers, not a one under six feet tall and muscular enough to make even Tulon blanch. The three women peeked, then drew back, while Yetna whispered. "So, do we stun em? Kill them?"

"You two stun," Tulon whispered. "I'll take down what's left -- and we'll hope that what's left in my spear will cut through the door without killing the Empress..." She bit her lip, then nodded. "Let me...draw their fire, first."

"Draw their-" Yetna started.

Tulon sprinted out from cover. There was enough torchlight that, even with her costume's blackening, the Grenadiers could see that there was a woman in the room with them. They were well trained, well drilled...

"FRONT RANK, FIRE!"

...and well led. The front rank of twenty women leveled their muskets and fired. At this range, with this much light, aiming was less of a desire than to fill the air with enough hot lead to ruin just about anyone's day. Tulon flung herself into as narrow a profile as she could, but she still felt a hot ball shoot along her belly, skimming against her -- and causing her mesh-uniform to harden, as if she was suddenly wearing plate armor. It felt like she had been whacked in the belly, rather than actually shot. Another bullet skimmed off her shoulder, and a third between her thighs. Then the barrage was past and she was skidding to a stop, spear in her hands.

The officer in charge of the Grenadiers bellowed. "SECOND RANK, PRESENT-"

And that was when Yetna and Chinsara sprang out. Their spears flashed again and again, and Grenadiers began to sprawl, including their officer. Tulon rushed towards those that remained standing, the second row trying to bring their weapons to bear. She slashed a musket with the blade -- planning to just disarm the woman, but instead, the spear cut through the metal and wood as if it wasn't even there. The musket clattered in two halves and the woman, brave and bold as anyone would want, drew her sword. Tulon swept her spear back and the sword was sheered in half as smoothly as the musket. The woman snarled and then leaped at her, but Tulon twisted aside at the last second -- and a bolt of hissing light slammed into the Grenadier's chest. She sprawled, knocked out cold, and Tulon looked around herself, panting.

The entire platoon was down, groaning. Yetna and Chinsara emerged from the shadows, aiming their spears at the prone women, and Chinsara flashed a bright grin. "Think the rest of the palace heard that?" she asked.

"Oh, that? No, why," Yetna said, her voice sarcastic as Tulon examined her spear. Rather than setting it to heat, she simply slammed the blade into the steel of the closed door. She twisted, then moved it around, curving and wriggling the spear as if she was cutting into a bit of wood. In a shockingly short time, she was able to plant a kick on the chunk she had cut free and have it fall inwards, revealing that the Empress' bedroom...

Was empty.

Well.

No.

Not empty.

Tulon ducked in and saw that the light, all the light, in the room was provided by a hazy sprawling mass of males. She counted dozens of distinct colors and patterns, flowing and intermingling with one another as they nervously reclined on cushions and near heavy braziers. They drew back and away from the doorway, their voices clamoring and overlapping. Tulon had to admit...she had never expected to understand the woman who would be Empress.

But this?

"I'd heard rumors, but..." Yetna whispered.

She could understand this. There were so, so, so many very...very pretty men in this chamber. Their colors were bright and vibrant, and their glow was masculine and powerful. From what she could see of their contractions, she was fairly certain that each of them could form quite a girthy sex-body for a really...really good fuck. Their voices were musical too, each one sounding as inviting and promising as it was possible for a male to be.

"Don't hurt us!" one said.

"Who are you?" another asked.

"What is going on?"

"We're not here to hurt you," Tulon said, reaching out to gently draw her fingers through a nearby swarm of golden lights, the tiny motes that made up the male in question feeling so very warm, even through her mesh uniform. "We're here for the Empress. Where is she?"

The males all quieted down. Their loyalty, it seemed, was not as tenuous as Yetna's had been. In the distance, Tulon could hear clattering and banging. More footsteps. Chinsara, proving that bringing her along had been quite a good idea, had shouldered up the chunk they had cut free and was using the 'kill' setting on the spear to melt it back into the door. Then, softly, one of the males spoke up -- a bright crimson one that drifted from the mass.

"Will you take us with you?"

Tulon and Yetna exchanged a glance. Tulon smiled, wryly. Taking them with her...

Heh.

If Xan had still been dead, Tulon was fairly sure that the idea would have disgusted her. Being attracted to these men at all would have been an intense betrayal -- no matter how illogical it was, considering she was sure Xan would have wanted her to find love again after he had died. But since Xan was alive, Tulon was more than happy to appreciate their glows. "Yes," She said. "If you all don't mind sharing space under the mesh..."

The men murmured among one another, but the red one formed a pointing arrow. "There's a secret door, here."

Yetna found the latch first.

The door opened, stone grinding on stone...

And Tulon started up, spear at the ready, her eyes focused, her goggles set to heat tracking. The stairs wound around and around -- heading up the tower, towards the end of the war and the salvation of her people.

With her shoulders set, she plunged into the darkness.

TO BE CONTINUED