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“NO,” SHE SAID. “AND neither are you. You’re going to wind up chair of this little excursion.”
“You don’t trust me,” he said.
“No, oddly I do,” she said. “You’re young and naive, but I think you are trustworthy. Let’s hope that’s enough to stop you getting anyone killed.”
Dun waited patiently in the briefing room. Tam had already said he would volunteer and had brought some water and cups. They waited. The door creaked.
“Hey,” Stef said. “Don’t think I’d miss all the fun, do ya? Oh, and Dasha will be along in a moment with some of her cohorts.”
“Have you been canvassing?” Dun said.
“Maybe,” Stef said with a smirk in her voice. “To be honest though, Dash doesn’t need much persuading to a scrap.”
“Hmm...” Dun said.
“So you got a plan?” Stef said.
“Not really,” Dun said. “I don’t know the place as well as you folk. I was hoping I might be able to use some local knowledge and we could formulate one.”
“I think I may be able to help there,” Nev said from the doorway.
“Oh, hi, Nev,” Stef said. “Come and sit down.”
“Dasha’s behind me,” he said.
And she was, with three more folk that she didn’t introduce. They followed her in sullen silence.
“We begin now?” Dasha said.
“I think that’s probably everyone,” Dun said. “So as I kind of said before, we want to open the door that lets the water out to the Under-folk.”
“It’s a sluice,” Nev said.
“Thanks! Sluice. That’s why I need the local knowledge!” Dun said. “So how might we open it?”
“Well,” Nev said, “we could find the plans of the sewer system and... locate the valve, then...”
“Pah!” Dasha said. “Know how we should open it?”
Everyone in the room knew Dasha well enough to recognize a rhetorical question when one was asked. Dun was too scared to reply.
“Permanently! We should go with picks and smash it.”
“Okay... good suggestion. Anything more practical?” Tam said gingerly.
“It is an excellent suggestion!” Dasha said. There were grunts of assent from her cohort. The first sounds they had made.
“Yes,” Nev said, “but while we are busy smashing, along come the Duchy militia and pick us off like rats.”
There was a brief pause, underscored by muttering from Dasha’s camp.
“Hmm...” Stef said. “I might be able to improve the smashing plan.”
“Go on,” Dun said.
“Well... I’ve just recently got my storeroom filled with explosives from our pillaging comrades.”
There was sniggering in the ranks.
“They might be put to good use?” Stef said.
“Do you know how to time them?” Tam said.
“Yes!” Stef said in hurt tones.
“How might we deliver them?” he said.
“Dunno,” Stef said. “Hadn’t got that far.”
“Where does the sluice water run on this side?” Dun said.
“I’ve got a map of it somewhere,” Nev said, got up from his chair and crashed out of the room.
“Always keen when someone takes interest in his drains,” Stef said.
More sniggering.
“What are you thinking then, Dun?” Tam asked.
“Have we got a boat?” he said.
“Don’t use ‘em much around here,” Stef said.
“Could we knock one together?” Dun said. “Only needs to be some kind of flat-bottomed raft.”
“Won’t be a problem,” Stef said.
“These explosives, could they go off by a where and not a when?” Dun said.
“I suppose,” Stef said.
“Then can we sail the boat all the way to the sluice and...”
“Boom,” Dasha said.
“Yeah,” Dun said, “boom.”
“Okay,” Tam said. “I reckon if Stef and I spend the rest of the cycle building and collecting gear, and Nev goes over the plans with Dun and Dasha so we can work out which way to attack from. Meet back here before sleep-cycle to check on progress?”
“Sure.”
“Great.”
“Later.”
By the next meal break, Dun had established that there was a plausible route for the boat to take. There seemed to be a vent shaft above the causeways they’d escaped through, and Dasha said she had access to a glide-car that could get them there. It seemed the tech crew knew what they were doing raft building, and Stef could concentrate on explosives and detonators after meal break. After a good-natured meal and a reasonable amount of banter, the company broke up again in order to pile into their allocated tasks.
Dun had an itching feeling under his scalp about the whole thing while he was eating. It was only once he had finished and they got back to the conference room and they restarted that he began to realize what he had been bothered about.
“So we are done now?” Dasha said.
“Hmm... I’m not sure,” Dun said.
“Why?” said Dasha. “We have a boat, we have a bomb, we have a shaft, we have a glide-car. What more do we need?”
“My problem is... Well, once the boat reaches the bottom of the shaft, how far does it need to go to reach the sluice, Nev?”
“One hundred fifty maybe a hundred sixty strides,” he said. Dun liked Nev a lot. In an uncertain world, Nev was within a small frame of reference, completely certain.
“You understand my issue?” Dun said.
“No, elucidate,” Dasha said.
“Well, for a thousand or so strides, the bobbing boat swishes along to its target. And then how do we make sure no one fishes it out of the water? If that happens, then it just doesn’t go off.”
“Easy,” Dasha said. “We booby trap the boat and boom!”
“Yeah,” Dun said, “but we don’t really complete the mission, do we?”
“We cause chaos and disruption! Sounds good.”
Dun sighed. “Look, if you want me to command this mission, you need to understand we’re aiming to complete it, not just to wreak random havoc.”
“Why not random havoc?” Dasha said.
“Because then the Duchy will not think that you are anything to contend with, and they will move to crush you. If you are organized, hit strategic targets hard, aim to reduce casualties, you are increasing the Duchy’s fear of you and removing the sympathy they’d get from you killing innocent people.”
“No guards are innocent,” Dasha said.
“Aren’t they?” Dun said.
“I don’t think so, no.”
“Well, we do it my way, or no way.”
Dasha humphed.
“Besides,” Dun said, “there’s no fight here. Doesn’t that bore you?”
Silence.
“Well,” Dun said, “my thought is that we need is a distraction.”
“Ah!” Dasha said.
“If we were to attack somewhere else when the boat touched down, then it’s passage would be smoothed,” Dun said.
“Where?” Dasha said.
“I don’t know,” Dun said. “Where does the watercourse pass, Nev?”
“Cellblock?” Nev said.
“Perfect!” Dun said.
So they added flesh to the bones of the plan. It seemed that the easiest thing was to lower some folk down the shaft first to check the boat and ensure it was going to sail right. That party had to include Stef to provide final checks. Then the party from the top doing the lowering. A party doing the distracting in the cell block, surely the noisiest and most dangerous part of the mission, as it would attract the attention of the militia if it worked. Dun figured this was where he should be since it was all his idea in the first place. It would be impossible to keep Dasha from this bit, although it seemed like her own faction followers would be spread thin if each party was to be guarded properly. Organizing a mission was starting to give Dun a headache. At that point, Tam came in with fresh hot drinks and some kind of salty tasting fresh wraps. He touched Dun’s shoulder.
“You okay?” he said.
“Yeah, thanks,” Dun said, and then to his party, he said, “Break time, folks. Five hundred clicks or so. Don’t go too far”
“Going well?” Tam said.
“Yeah, I think so, just sorting who’s going to go where and when.”
“Always a tricky bit,” Tam said.
“We need to split our forces and have a distraction,” Dun said once the room had emptied.
“Sounds sensible,” Tam said.
“I was going to go with them.”
“That sounds less sensible.”
“Oh?” Dun said.
“Well,” Tam said, “with the best will ever. Who’s going to communicate your mission, and it is your mission, if you’re dead? No water, no fish, and no one here really cares.”
“Your point?”
“Woah,” Tam said, “get you, suicide mission guy. You want to bring as many people back as you can and get your mission completed. If it’s worth completing, then you do it from the recording room.”
“Recording room?”
“Where we monitor and record the inputs of all the Duchy sensors, and we can receive sound from all of our agents and transmit to them too. Coordinate, if you will.”
“Okay, I think,” Dun said. “Although we’re still perfecting our distraction.”
“What else is down that neck of the pipe then?” Tam said.
“The cells for one,” Dun said.
“Job done then, surely?” Tam said. “We organize a jailbreak.”
“Are they not used to you guys sneaking folk out of there all the time?” Dun said.
“Oh, sure,” Tam said, “Not exactly used to it. Mostly, they hate it, but we still get away with it!”
“So they’re going to fall for that?”
“No, we’ll have to use different tactics.”
The door opened.
“Blow them up!” Dasha said.
“Boom...” everybody said.
