Chapter 10
Refuge
Outside Sanseqi (Tricolor), Qingmu County, Shanbeixi Province
It was near sunset when they left town. Now that she'd been found once, Yasuko was expecting more to come and soon. Honestly, she was a little surprised that there wasn't another team or two, or even the entire army of the local baron. Maybe the team that found her was hoping to monopolize on the reward and didn't report in. Lucky break for her.
She wasn't sure she was safer with these Imperials, but she decided to take her chances with them They were able to fight off one group of Sturla's assassins. Maybe they could do it again.
Even though she had time to rest and completely purge her system of the injection the assassin gave her, Yasuko was having trouble keeping up with the others. She was in a lot of pain and it wasn't exactly easy to move around in the brace.
Bantu had a habit of looking back over his shoulder to check on her.
"Carry?" he offered.
This was his third time to ask and her answer was the same.
"I'm fine. I can manage."
"I get it," Lowen said. "You're tough, you're independent, you can take care of yourself. You've demonstrated that ably, Yasuko, but you're starting to hold us up. I don't want to be wandering around in the dark, so let Leichtmatrose Wanna carry you."
He then said something in their language and Bantu stopped and stooped down so she could get on his back. She had a feeling if she didn't take him up on the offer, he'd just scoop her up in a bridal carry, which would be even more undignified, so she grudgingly climbed onto his back.
The Imperials picked up the pace and within half an hour they reached an apparent ghost town. There wasn't much left. It looked like it had been abandoned some twenty or thirty years ago at least. Not a bad choice for a hideout.
They went to one of the more intact houses. As they got closer, a voice called out in their language. Lowen said something in reply. It was short, maybe a challenge and passphrase. Bantu set Yasuko down and they went on into the house.
When they stepped inside, they were met by a man with a shouldered rifle. Judging from his voice, he was the one who made the challenge before. They exchanged some words, then another one approached. He stood at attention and seemed to be giving report. It sounded like something serious had happened. Yasuko was losing patience with not knowing what they were saying.
"Lowen, what's going on?" she asked.
The man giving report asked Lowen something, probably asking who she was. Lowen answered him and this seemed to kick off some sort of dispute that only appeared to end with Lowen pulling rank to silence him.
"You'll have to forgive my men, Yasuko," Lowen said. "It would seem that our Chief of the Boat succumbed to the injuries he sustained during the crash. It has put them on edge."
"I, ah, I'm sorry for your loss," Yasuko said.
"Thank you," Lowen replied. "I appreciate the sentiment."
He looked around, then said, "I guess since we're going to be working together, I should introduce you to the rest of the crew."
He said something in his language, prompting three other people to assemble. He addressed his men, but the only thing she could catch was her name when he motioned to her. He then switched over to the Lingua-equivalent and told her, "Yasuko, this is what's left of my crew. Obermaat Orwin Wei, Combat Systems; Hauptgefreiter Goran Mordu, Propulsion; Gefreiter Saladino Khan, Fire Control; Vollmatrose Vidaly Skorsky, Electrical; Leichtmatrose Nils Weiss, Deck and Supply; and he's not in any condition to stand, which is why you don't see him here, Stabsgefreiter Casim Casim, Machinery."
"Pleased to meet you," Yasuko said, giving them a slight bow.
Wei said something critical, earning him a rebuke from Lowen. He then muttered under his breath in a language pretty much the same as Celestial, something like, "Damn white devil and his cripple fetish..."
Lowen replied in the same language, "Did you say something, Obermaat?"
Wei stiffened up and said, "No, sir."
Yasuko didn't let it go, however, and said in Celestial, "I think he was casting aspersions on you your sexual predilections, Lowen."
If she ever met her language tutors again, she'd have to thank them for teaching her fancy words. It seemed to multiply the effect. Wei blanched a little and Lowen looked a bit uncomfortable as well because now he couldn't pretend he hadn't heard what Wei said.
Perhaps to narrow the number of people who could follow along, Lowen continued in pseudo-Celestial and told Wei, "If you have a complaint, I expect you to go through channels and maintain a suitable military bearing for a sailor in His Imperial Majesty's Navy."
"Aye-aye, sir," Wei replied.
"Now that Bootsmann Swensen is gone, you are second-in-command, Obermaat," Lowen said. "I need you to think well on what that means."
"Then why did you pick up this girl, sir? Out of all the people you could've chosen for a local guide, why her?"
"Because she was being targeted by agents of the pretender," Lowen replied. "She knows more than the average surface-dweller and she has incentive to help us."
"If she's a target, then you've made us targets as well, sir."
"We were already targets, Obermaat. Now we have someone better informed of the threat we face and better equipped to deal with our current situation."
"Begging your pardon, sir, but what can a one-armed crippled girl do?"
"I've been surviving on the streets since I was ten years old," Yasuko replied. "I've seen everything from the filthiest rat-infested back alley to the Emperor's own bedchamber. Good luck finding someone else who knows both worlds half as well and wants nothing more than to see the Celestials go down."
"Celestials?" Wei asked.
"It's what the ruling class on this planet calls itself," Lowen replied. Switching back to pseudo-Lingua, he then told Yasuko, "We've conducted a preliminary survey of the planet, but let's hear the situation on the ground from you, in your own words."
"What do you want to know?" Yasuko asked.
"Just give us the general overview."
"Okay. Well, you've got the Celestials that rule us from Tianjing—the Capital Beyond the Sky as we call it—and all the floating cities and flying fortresses, and then there's us paisanos. The Celestials call us Infernals. We've also got the Unincorporated Territories, countries the Celestials don't control. Idinga, Volga, Grandia, Viet Tay, et cetera, et cetera."
"Tell us about the pretender," Lowen said.
"There's a new Emperor. I don't know what he's calling himself now, but his name's Sturla Yinglisson."
"Englesson?"
"No, Yinglisson," Yasuko said. "After his mother, Princess Yingli, the daughter of the last Emperor. His father is Lord Grima of House Magnus, the Minister of the Household."
"Did the last pretender not have any sons to succeed him?" Lowen asked.
Yasuko had a brief flash of when she was holding Prince Wupeng under the water in his bath.
"He did," she said, "but the Crown Prince... he had an accident."
"He was assassinated," Lowen said. "All part of the current pretender's plan, I imagine. Did he have a hand in the death of the last pretender as well?"
Her arm tensed up as she remembered how she struggled to break the Emperor's neck. She nearly thought her arms would break first.
"Something like that."
Lowen stroked his chin thoughtfully and said, "So we're dealing with a man who would have his own uncle and grandfather killed. The fact that we've arrived at a time of transition could play to our advantage, though."
"How do you know all this?" one of the others—Skorsky, if she remembered right—asked.
"And what was that you were saying about the Emperor's bedchamber?" Wei added.
Yasuko regretted mentioning that. She said too much. She wanted them to think she was suitably valuable to them, but she didn't want to tell them everything. She was taking a chance on them, but she didn't fully trust them. She couldn't be too evasive, though, or they wouldn't trust her either. Of course, if she stopped to think about, the truth might sound more farfetched than any lie she could come up with. What was she going to say?
"I, ah..."
She was getting some suspicious looks. She had to say something.
"Let's just say I've seen both sides of this world, okay?"
"We'll leave it at that for now," Lowen said, intervening before any more uncomfortable questions could be asked. "Suffice to say, Yasuko here has a wealth of on-the-ground intel that will help us."
Not everyone seemed satisfied with this, but so long as military discipline prevailed, no one was going to openly speak against Lowen. Yasuko tried to help move the topic away from her by asking, "What are you going to do now? Do you just wait for someone to pick you up?"
"Our ship's communication equipment didn't survive the crash," Lowen said. "We have a couple field radios, but they don't have the range to contact our fleet. We need something more powerful."
"There is a network of communications towers here on the surface," Kan said. "For the use of these Celestials, I'm guessing. We picked up the signal of one about eighty kilometers from here. We were doing our supply run before heading that way."
"In prime condition, we could make the trip in about two days," Lowen said, "but with two wounded..."
"Three, sir," Din said, holding up his freshly bandaged arm.
"Four," Wei corrected, eyeing Yasuko.
"Leave Little Sister to me," Bantu said.
"That's sweet of you, Wanna," Wei sneered, "but you'd be more useful carrying Stabsgefreiter Casim."
"I can do both."
"We'll worry about that when we need to worry about it," Lowen said. "Double-check our stock, get some chow if you haven't already and rest up. We're moving out in two hours."
"Aye-aye, sir," the men replied.
They all had things to do, but that left Yasuko out. Lowen noticed that she was just standing there wondering what to do, so he told her, "'Rest up' applies to you too, Yasuko. We don't have much in the way of comfort, but we've got a long way to go and the farther you can make it on our own two legs, the better. Do you want something to eat?"
"I'll be fine," she said.
"We have to conserve our resources, but don't try to tough it out too much. If something were to happen to you, it'll make things that much more difficult for us."
"If I'm holdin' you up, you can just leave me out there in the wastes."
"I'm not going to do that, Yasuko," Lowen said, "but you can do your part to meet us halfway. Get some rest. We leave in two hours."
She found a spot that was out of the way, propped herself against the wall and eased herself down to the floor. She hadn't had a bed to roll out of since she left the Villalobos place, so she had gotten pretty good at getting down like this and getting back up again. She closed her eyes. She didn't plan on sleeping, but she could rest. Eighty kilometers was a long way to go on foot even when you're in good shape. She'd rather not be hanging off Bantu's back the whole way.
She could hear the Imperials talking in their language. How much of it was them talking about her? She couldn't let it bother her, not too much anyway. She had Lowen and Bantu in her corner, probably Kan too at least. If she could prove her usefulness, the others would probably come around.
She couldn't rest easy, though, not by a long shot. She felt like any moment a swarm of fliers would surround them and a battalion of troops would cart them off to the Capital. She imagined Sturla sitting there smugly on the Phoenix Throne, congratulating her for the lovely set of hostages she'd brought together for him. Needless to say, she was thankful for when Lowen came by to give her a shake and tell her it was time to head out. Once she had every bone and joint screaming at her, she wouldn't have time to think so much.