City on Fire

“Please understand that when I said I wanted you here, that was for my peace of mind only. But it is the Aiah who puts herself in danger for her people that has my devotion, and even for peace of mind I would not have you other than who you are…”

Aiah’s nerves sing at these words, flame and sorrow together. “Thank you,” she says.

“I am getting a signal. The war begins anew. Farewell.”

“Senko’s blessing,” she says, but he has already pressed the disconnect button.

She puts the headset on its hook and looks down at the map again. Now that she knows where some of the police are, she realizes that her plan will not work.

And so she makes another.

FIRST STRIKE FAILS

COUP PLOTTERS COUNT ON REINFORCEMENTS

GOVERNMENT CONTINUES APPEALS TO PEOPLE

Dark water surges at Aiah’s left hand as she walks along a rust-eaten catwalk of mesh. More water drizzles down from above, flashes of falling silver in the beams of helmet lamps.

They are between two of the giant concrete pontoons. At some point in the distant past iron beams were laid down to connect the pontoons, and a roof built to seal out the light; and on top of this roof a series of office buildings now stands.

In the half-forgotten darkness below, Aiah’s people scramble in the Shieldless gloom. Seawater sloshes around their feet as the catwalk sags under their weight. The operation is woefully behind schedule, and this time it is Aiah’s party that is late.

At Fresh Water Bay, Aiah’s group was able to get adjacent to the station and turn off the plasm mains at the easiest and most convenient place. With police patrolling the plasma mains near Xurcal Station, the sabotage has to be much more dispersed, and more prolonged. Instead of four faucets, thirty have to be turned off, all at a greater distance from the target. Since the plasm reroutes itself, Aiah hopes that the operators at the station may not even notice that their supply is in jeopardy—she supposes they may be receiving less than previously, but with both sides in the fighting making more demands on the city plasm grid, this should not be surprising.

Aiah and her teams have descended, over and over, into the dark wells of the pontoons, into the subbasements of office buildings, into dank sweating steel-walled rooms ankle-deep in seawater. They worked into the sleep shift, and then into the work shift—it has been over a day since Aiah slept. Butsleep was surrendered without protest: a battle is raging, and Xurcal may be critical. Either enemy mages are operating there, or it is beaming its power to mages operating elsewhere.

But now Aiah’s job is almost over. All but four of the thirty taps have been turned, four taps on the main plasm cables leading to Xurcal. All the branching cables have been shut off. And from this point it should be as simple as it was to turn off Fresh Water Bay.

Four simple operations.

If only Aiah weren’t lost.

Her maps are out of date. Where the map showed a cable junction complete with a rotating control, Aiah found only an empty steel room, rusting door swinging on its hinges. The cable was there, but it was covered by armored plates and surrounded by the heavy steel footings of the scavenged rotator box. And so there was nothing to do but to follow the cable onward, toward Xurcal, and hope to find a place where the tap could be turned.

One gloved hand trailing along the pontoon’s crumbling concrete wall, Aiah follows the cable and hopes that, if a junction appears, it will be within arm’s reach. The cable is above her, fixed to the pontoon wall above her head with iron staples as thick as Davath’s arm.

—Ethemark? she sends.

No answer. He has been with the party only intermittently—with the head of the Plasm Enforcement Division wandering around in Caraqui’s sweat-walled basements, Ethemark has a lot more distractions in the office than usual.

He might, Aiah thinks charitably, be scouting up ahead.

“Careful,” says Davath. “Slippery here.”

The catwalk is covered with guano, probably from a bat or bird colony somewhere overhead. The stuff has mixed with seawater to form a slick white clay that slides treacherously beneath Aiah’s boots. Aiah steps cautiously in the mess.

Beyond, one of the cables supporting the catwalk has broken or rusted away, and the catwalk sags into the water at a dangerous angle. Aiah is breathless by the time she gets to the other side, and her boots are full of water. She wishes that when she realized the junction had gone astray, she had thought to go back for her boat.

“Here it is, miss!” Davath increases his pace along a sturdier section of catwalk, and Aiah breathlessly follows. Davath’s hand torch and helmet lamp play on a junction box and rotator, both of them bolted to the side of the pontoon where another cable joins from the pontoon above.

“Looks like a temporary installation,” Davath says, but his torch shows big deposits of rust scarring the ostensibly stainless surface of the rotator box, and it is obvious that the junction has been here for years. Decades, probably.

—Ethemark? Aiah sends again.

Nothing. She scans the wall for a communications box for her portable handset, and doesn’t find one.

Wonderful. Now they’ve found their objective, but they have no way to tell anyone they’ve reached it.

And they can’t just cut the plasm here, because the taps have to be turned all at once, otherwise the mages at Xurcal will know what’s happening and take steps to prevent it.

Davath, no sign of frustration crossing his cinder-block face, unshoulders the cutting torch and its heavy gas cylinders, which he’s been carrying this long distance. His body is built for carrying burdens, and he shows little sign of weariness.

He places the cylinders gently onto the catwalk. “Whenever you’re ready, miss,” he says.

“I’m waiting for Ethemark. He’s… off somewhere.”

“Very good, miss.”

Prestley reaches into his jumpsuit for a cigaret. He lights it and the three wait in silence, the darkness warm and close around them. Drips of water fall steadily from above, plash into the water nearby.

Aiah’s nerves jump at the sound of bolts being thrown, and then yellow light pours out into the darkness as a hatch is thrown open only a few paces away, farther along the plasm line.

“Senko only knows where we are,” a voice says, and then a helmeted man steps from the hatch onto the catwalk. He stares at them for a startled instant before raising his boxy black pistol and pointing it straight at Davath.

“Hold it right there!” he says, a thread of panic in his voice.

Aiah can only stare at him, heart hammering in her throat, as another two police follow him out onto the catwalk, weapons drawn. One of them has a submachine gun, a little gleaming wicked thing, held in his two fists.

“Who are you?” the first officer says. “What are you doing here?”

Aiah stares and tries to talk, but finds that something has stolen her breath.

Prestley shrugs and tosses his cigaret butt into the water. “We’re Plasm Bureau,” he says. “We’ve got a repair order.”

“Down here? Now?”

Prestley frowns. “Plasm gotta move, man.”

Another police voice chimes in. “Don’t you people know what’s going on?”

“Hell with that!” says the first. “I don’t believe ’em anyway!” His pistol barrel gives a little jerk toward the wall. “Up against it, all of you. Hands up on the concrete.”

Aiah mutely obeys, places her palms on the sweaty wall. She can’t seem to find her voice at all, or her mind.