Act Five, Scene Eight
(← Last Scene) (Next Scene →)
Act Five, Scene Eight
The Tyrant’s Palace
Catherine placed her hand on the biometric scanner, let the eye-scan read her eye, tapped out a complicated password and spoke another one.
They’d done this, Mercy noted, three times since they entered, plus the time Catherine had had each of them put their hands into a hand scanner and recite individual passphrases of their own. Catherine hadn’t reused a single password. So far she’d noticed artillery, laser grids, poison gas tanks and some kind of complicated compound poison, and she was well aware there were plenty of traps she wasn’t prepared to notice.
“Your father’s crazy,” Greenrose told Catherine.
“It’s worse at home,” Mercy said.
Alarm bells rang.
“Is that some tricky code?” Greenrose snarled.
“No,” Catherine said calmly. “Intruders in the lab.” She didn’t slow down.
The acid tank discharged, filling the room and melting Century before draining down the grate, and with a wince across his bodies’ psychic link he split the body next to Ilderia again.
“We’ll need to go around,” he said.
Ilderia nodded. The stairs had gone out earlier. She was sweeping the room with her electrokinesis to trigger traps and Morgan had a few gadgets that occasionally beeped, but so far he’d had the best luck making it through.
“Around it is,” Ilderia said. Her eyes were fixed, intent, distant. “Onwards and downwards.”
They stepped into the armory, let the lights flash on out of the cool darkness. (The last time she was here she’d brought her father... who was it who’d sabotaged his armor? Too late for questions like that now.)
“Pick up what weapons you need,” she said, and Elgolian collected a gleaming rifle off the wall, shining with lights and bars of color and sleek black and silver. He inspected the ammunition and collected it, flicked a switch to the fourth position, scooped a grey cloak off the wall, and passed another to Patience. Mercy walked along another wall, disappearing grenades into hammerspace. Greenrose rolled her eyes.
Catherine slowly walked to the far wall, where the five slots for suits of armor hung. Two empty spaces marked the Mons Meg and the Girardoni. Three suits of armor remained, two genetically locked to people now dead, incapable of use. Their names were written, very plainly, Durendal and Joyeuse. The last tag was blank, but Catherine knew its name.
Catherine donned the Curtana. She’d done simulators, tried on less dangerous armors, but she had had far too little time to practice with it. Laser blasters in the shoulders for most enemies, forcebolts from the left palm if they’re fireproof, blades on back of the hands for bricks, railgun attached to the right forearm beneath the blade point... Anything else? Only as auxiliary weapons, and she had even less practice with the auxiliaries than she did with the rest of its tricks.
She fitted the last piece on, double-checked the power and backup power and backup backup power. All ran. The shields were up. Even if the fake Ilderia could throw lightning bolts, the energy-absorption fields on the armor would just convert it into battery life. Nothing but the most superhuman hand-to-hand weapons could effectively get through a Durendal’s armor; Brickslayer was on the weapon rack next to the Durendal, and she picked it up.
“Let’s go,” she said.
“They’ve left the armory,” Century said as he reformed next to Ilderia.
“Catherine’s got her Durendal?” Sunder asked. Century nodded.
“She’s never fought with it,” Ilderia said calmly.
Sunder frowned suddenly, but Ilderia went on, “They’re headed for a security station?”
Century’s body next to Ilderia nodded, pulled out a pad of paper, sketched the latest version of the map in short lines.
“If we move quickly we should be able to race them there.” She smiled at Century. “You up for it?”
He was tired. It hurt. Century was the the person he’d always wanted to be and he wasn’t going to stop now. “Always, Ilderia.”
Greenrose’s mood was sullen. Above them the roof of a towering hall, from the roof of which uncannily realistic scale models of airplanes hung.
“They approach,” Elgolian said.
“Princess?” Greenrose snapped. “Any traps in this room I need to worry about?”
“You should be immune to the gas, so just the laser weapons from the assault turrets,” Catherine said.
“And they’re coming through here? Right.” Greenrose’s eyes hardened, and she turned towards the door.
“Don’t die for nothing,” Catherine said.
“Not my plan. Elgolian?” Greenrose asked. He tilted his head towards her.
“Get the kids out of here.”
Elgolian smiled. Mercy rolled her eyes.
“We do need to keep moving,” Catherine said. Greenrose looked away. She didn’t need anyone’s help and she was glad she wouldn’t have it, and they left and then it was just her and the Tyrant’s traps.
Well. She fought better by herself. Greenrose rolled her shoulders, checked her claws, let tendrils of hair-vines slither over to the walls of the room and drew herself back. It’d been twenty years, and now she was going to get a real fight.
(← Last Scene) (Next Scene →)