The Madness of Kings

by Gene Doucette

  Meanwhile, Akh-Muh-Vatj took it upon herself to exit the ship through her own door before the red light even went out. She slammed it behind her and ran from the vehicle.

  “Well,” Makk said. “Safe to say, I think she knew whose bidding she was doing all along. Now I kind of wish I’d shot her.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend firing a gun inside one of these,” Kev said. “The bullet will either ricochet until it hits one of us or it will destroy something that responds poorly to being punctured.”

  “Is that your way of saying the walls are bulletproof?” Makk asked.

  “It is, yes. Or nearly so. The shielding on exos is built to hold up for a standard straight de-orbit reentry. A bullet or a blaster won’t make a dent.”

  “Cool,” Elicasta said, “we can just stay here until the pollies arrive.”

  “I don’t think Calcut is going to allow for that,” Kev said. He got out of his seat and climbed to the front to get a better look at the control panel for the vehicle. “It’s ident locked. Only one who can get this going just left.”

  Outside, someone handed Calcut an audio augmenter. “Ba-Ugna Kev,” he said, loud enough to be heard from inside the cabin. “C’mon out. I just wanna talk.”

  “Sure he does,” Elicasta said.

  Ba-Ugna started fiddling around underneath the front panel.

  “What are you doing up there?” Makk asked. “Trying to jump it?”

  “No,” he said. “That’s not possible. I can access some of the electrical systems, but not the ignition. There’s still power running through this board.”

  “Great,” Makk said. “Maybe if we wait long enough, Calcut will come close and you can electrocute him.”

  Kev ignored the sarcasm.

  “The null-grav mechanism is powered by a fusion reactor,” he said. “But this model also has an electric engine to power the thrusters.”

  “Thanks for the tutorial,” Makk said.

  “I can knock,” Calcut said, from outside, “but you won’t like it much.”

  “What in the Depths is that?” Elicasta asked.

  Two of Calcut’s men had extracted a long case from the back of the limo and were proceeding to set up the device contained inside. It was a long cylindrical object meant to be mounted on a tripod. Makk knew it well.

  “That’s a truckbuster,” he said. “It’s designed to penetrate heavy armor. It’s very good at it. Wonder where he picked that up?”

  “Can it get through?” she asked.

  Kev looked up and out the passenger side window. “It definitely can,” he said. “I need another minute.”

  “For what?” Makk asked.

  “I was trying to explain. The fuel cells for the electric engine are powered by hydrogen. There’s a small tank of it under the chassis.”

  “Okay.”

  “Hydrogen can explode. It’s one of the things it does very well.”

  “You want to point it at Calcut?”

  “I want to blow up this exo,” Kev said.

  “We’re currently inside of it. Maybe you forgot that part.”

  “It’s definitely safer in here,” Elicasta agreed.

  “It won’t be,” Kev said, “In about four minutes. Approximately. I just created a feedback loop, which will create heat. The tank is a part of that loop; it’s a defect in this model. I consulted on it with the manufacturer a few years back. They decided to ignore my findings. Cheaper to settle the occasional explosion than to move the tank five centimaders.”

  “Lucky for us,” Makk said.

  “Lucky for the two of you. You’ll need to be about ten maders from the exo in about four minutes.”

  “Where are you going to be?” Elicasta asked.

  He ignored the question. “Makk Stidgeon,” he said, “this may be difficult to believe, but if you truly hold both the book and the key, you’re possibly the most important person on the planet right now. You must survive.”

  “How about it we find a way to all survive?” Makk suggested.

  “Many a bounty perishes unwhelped, confounded by the madness of kings,” Ba-Ugna said. Which didn’t explain anything.

  He shook Makk’s hand, at the same time sliding a small, metallic square into his palm.

  “Find Viselle,” he said. “Nothing else matters.”

  Then Ba-Ugna Kev pushed the button on the side of the cabin, and the side door opened. Elicasta grabbed him by the arm as he went past.

  “He’ll kill you,” she muttered.

  “Probably. Do keep that rig active. And don’t lose track of the time.”

  “There you are,” Calcut said, putting down the augmenter. “My friend.”

  Kev stepped out, raised his hands, and took five steps away from the vehicle.

  “Calcut,” he said. “Long time. If you wanted to have a conversation, there were easier ways.”

  “Sure, but now I get all my favorite people together at once. I see you, Detective Stidgeon. Come on out.”

  Makk slid out of the exo with his gun pointed at Calcut. This wasn’t likely that threatening given there were eight guns pointed at Makk.

  Elicasta got out of the exo as well, finding a spot next to Makk.

  “Get behind me,” he muttered.

  “You’ll block my angle,” she said.

  “And the most famous Veeser in Velon!” Calcut said. “Glad you’re here too, sweetheart. How’s that equipment working right now?”

  “I’m recording all of this,” she said.

  “Good for you. Won’t do much good if it never reaches the Stream, will it?”

  “Calcut,” Kev said, putting himself between Linus and Makk. “You went through all of this to get me. You don’t need them.”

  “It’s collect time, Ba-Ugna,” Calcut said. “You all owe me.”

  “By the way, you’re under arrest,” Makk said.

  “Shut it, Stidgeon,” Calcut said. “You think you’re the law here? Here? You’re not.”

  Ba-Ugna started laughing.

  It was such a weird response to the current circumstance that it took everyone aback. He lowered his hands and covered his mouth and looked embarrassed to have committed the sin of mirth-finding, while half the guns and all of the attention shifted to him.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “What are you finding so funny?” Calcut asked.

  “I just lost a bet with a dead man,” Kev said. “That’s all. Orno was right about you all along.”

  Hearing his brother’s name had a deflating effect on Linus. His shoulders had been back, chest out, looking like a confident man with all the advantage, the wind and a bunch of guys with guns at his back. He had just been delivered all that he wanted, and what he wanted was the opportunity to torture and kill three people.

  And also, Makk had to assume, to get away with torturing and killing three people. Just like he’d gotten away with so many other things in the past, Orno’s murder included.

  But Orno’s name from Kev’s lips caused Calcut’s shoulders to sag and his air of supreme confidence to dissipate. He transformed into something feral.

  “What did you say to me?” Calcut hissed.

  “I said your brother was right,” Ba-Ugna said, taking two steps closer. He was now at the edge of the tent, about five paces from Calcut. “We talked about you many times, right up until the day you killed him. He said you were selfish, vindictive, and…what was the word? Venal. He liked using that word when describing you. He also said he thought you’d probably kill him one day. I guess he was right about that.”

  “You shut your damn mouth! Don’t dare speak his name, you get me? It’s your fault he’s dead.”

  Ba-Ugna took another step closer.

  Makk, realizing that Kev was now taking up everyone’s attention, began shuffling himself and Elicasta to the side.

  “Venal and childish,” Ba-Ugna continued. “I think he probably hated you. That’s not something you hear from Septals a lot, but yes. It was hate. You embarras
sed him. But the one word he used that really surprised me…”

  “I swear to the gods, Kev…”

  “…Was stupid. I told him what I was going to do with the C-Coin and…what did he say? ‘Calcut’s too stupid to understand.’ That was it.”

  Makk remembered coming across a dog during the war. The animal had lost its left hind leg to a mortar round and was in a lot of pain, but when Makk and his unit tried to get close enough to put it down, the dog made this noise. It was a deep, guttural shriek that caused Makk’s balls to tighten up and the hair on his arms to stand. They ended up executing it with a sniper round, but that dog still lived in Makk’s head, showing up in the middle of the night about once a month to bother him.

  That same sound came out of Calcut’s mouth when he heard the word “stupid”. The next thing that happened was that he grabbed the revolver out of the hands of the man standing beside him and shot Ba-Ugna Kev in the forehead.

  Several things happened at once. Elicasta screamed, while Makk grabbed her arm and dragged the two of them another ten paces from the exo. Calcut started kicking the body of the smartest man in the world and shouting, and then unloading the gun into the corpse.

  The rest of the guns that had been pointed at Kev were now pointed at Makk and Elicasta.

  “Don’t move!” one of the goons shouted. He and Elicasta froze where they were, which was a little too close to the exo for his comfort.

  Then a drone dropped from the sky between them. Makk, and then the gunmen, and finally Calcut looked up. The sky above was full of drones. Elicasta Sangristy’s army of subs had arrived to Stream Ba-Ugna Kev’s final seconds on Dib, and thanks to Calcut’s inability to stay under the tent, they also knew exactly who’d done it.

  They seemed to have worked out that they needed to stay high up above the walls in order to keep a live Stream going. Too low and they might crash, like the one that had fallen in front of Makk.

  Having emptied all of his rage into Ba-Ugna Kev, Calcut Linus looked a little out-of-sorts, as he stared up at the world and the world stared back. The full significance of it all dawned gradually.

  The only way for something like that to work is for the user to establish an uplink with the drone, Makk thought, recalling Kev’s words on the subject. But nothing can transmit outside of these walls.

  “He’s not invisible,” Makk said to Elicasta. “The drones can see him.”

  If she appreciated this fact, she didn’t say so. She was too fixated on how everyone else there was pointing a gun at them.

  “Oh well,” Calcut said. “I was gonna torture you guys for a while, but I guess there’s no time for that now.” He looked over his shoulder. “Kill them and let’s get out of here.”

  Just then, the heat from the deliberate electrical short in the bowels of the exo-vehicle reached the hydrogen tank. It exploded.

  The blast radiated out from the bottom of the exo, tilting the ship over, the undercarriage reflecting the force directly at Calcut and his men. Makk and Elicasta were knocked to the ground, but were standing at a good angle to avoid the worst of it. They also knew it was coming.

  A groggy and stunned Makk pulled himself to his feet as soon as his head was clear. He found Elicasta lying not far, looking disoriented but uninjured.

  “Get up,” he said, pulling her to her feet. “It’s time to run.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Nobody chased them. Makk and Elicasta ran along the wall that defined the edge of the compound, thinking correctly that this would be the best way to stumble upon an exit. They spotted one about a hundred maders away just seconds before a limousine and a widewagon drove through the gates: Calcut Linus fleeing the scene of the murder.

  Makk wondered if Linus took Kev’s body with him so he could kick it around some more.

  The gate stayed open and unmanned; they were on the street a few seconds later. By then, they could hear the sirens and saw the first of many police helos overhead.

  They were in the middle of an industrial area, which meant there was nothing on the other side of the wall except a road and another fenced-in complex. Consequently, there was no place for the Veesers and UnVeesers who’d answered Elicasta’s call to hide, nor was there any place to hide from them.

  This would have been the moment for Elicasta to go live and take command of her own story, but she seemed disinterested. She remained hidden under Makk’s arm as her people pressed them for quotes through a sea of blue and white lights in the semidarkness.

  “Detective Stidgeon, can you tell us what just happened?”

  “Elicasta Sangristy, what are your thoughts?”

  “For the record, that was Ba-Ugna Kev, right?”

  “Did Calcut Linus kill him like he killed his brother Orno?”

  “How did you end up in an exo with Ba-Ugna Kev?”

  “How was Lys? Was it amazing?”

  The questions kept coming and Makk had no desire to answer any of them. What he did have was a gun.

  “Everyone needs to take about twenty steps back from us right now,” he said, showing off said gun. “I thank you for showing up when you did, but you’re gonna have to move back now.”

  The police cruisers arrived a minute later, as well as the alarm trucks and an ambulance.

  It was in the back of the ambulance, after they’d bandaged her knee—which she hurt in the exo explosion—that Elicasta finally started talking again.

  “Why did he do that?” she asked. Her light was off, and her eyes were red around the rims. He hadn’t seen her crying, but she’d obviously found time to get some in.

  “Who are we talking about?” Makk asked. “Linus or Kev?”

  “Ba-Ugna. He provoked Calcut into shooting him. You saw.”

  “I think he was about five steps ahead of the rest of us, ‘Casta. The tent told him Linus was scared of being seen on a drone, which meant there was a dampening field where we were landing. The only other thing waiting for us aside from his army of goons was the two cars, and Linus didn’t set out a carpet.”

  “A…carpet. Outside.”

  “Or a rawhide tarp,” he said, “or a sheet.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You put one of those out to keep blood off the pavement. It means Calcut didn’t intend to shoot anybody there. The plan was to load the three of us up in the cars, take us somewhere else, and kill us as slowly and as painfully as he desired. So to answer your question, Ba-Ugna knew he was going to die, but saw a play where you and I might not. I think he must have worked all of that out before he rewired the console in the exo.”

  “And a quick death,” she said quietly. “Without the torture.”

  “Probably.”

  She shook her head slowly. “I don’t even know how to Stream this,” she said. “Or if I want to. How come every time we hang out someone ends up trying to kill us?”

  He laughed. “Not sure.”

  “And what Ba-Ugna said…how much of that are we supposed to believe? He said you were the most important person in the world, and thought maybe his daughter was the second-most important person in the world, and it all goes back to that crazy idea Orno had about the coming of the Outcast.”

  Makk didn’t know how to answer that. When they were on Lys and Kev was trying to convince them to disavow the Viselle confession vid because he believed Orno that the world was ending. At the time, it was a ridiculous assertion that Makk didn’t take at all seriously, and he doubted Ba-Ugna Kev actually took it seriously either. It seemed like part of the pitch to get them to help save his daughter. And it worked; Elicasta was ready to do it.

  Now he was dead in part because it looked like he really did believe Orno. Makk could be happy that now he didn’t have to argue with his girlfriend about her willingness to turn the truth into a lie, but mostly he was just worried that he was getting this wrong. Even if the Outcast wasn’t literally returning (of course he wasn’t) there was something going on.

  “I’m not sure what to bel
ieve,” Makk said. “But Kev was willing to sacrifice himself for that crazy idea; maybe we should start listening. And maybe we should find someone who knows more about this than he did.”

  “Viselle Daska.”

  “I was thinking of Dorn Jimbal, actually. But her too.” He pulled the metallic square Ba-Ugna handed him out of his pocket. “Any idea what this is? He gave it to me before he stepped out of the ship.”

  ‘Casta took it from him and held it up. “Not sure,” she said. “It looks…hang on.” She squeezed the flat ends. It made a clicking noise and popped open. There was a tiny square sliver inside.

  “What’s that?” Makk asked. “A breath mint?”

  “It’s a memory chip.”

  For a computer?”

  “Sort-of.” She closed the box and put it down. “Shut the door.”

  Makk pulled the ambulance door closed with them inside.

  “Not sure they’ll appreciate that,” he said, meaning the paramedics. They were on the other side of the street, talking to one of the alarm truck guys. The street continued to fill up with police cruisers, none of which currently had Makk’s captain. It seemed everyone was waiting for Llotho to arrive before formally interviewing Makk and Elicasta.

  “I only need a minute or two,” she said, removing her rig. “See if you can find me some gloves.”

  “What kind of gloves?”

  “Non-static fiber, if they have anything like that. I don’t want to touch this with my bare hands.”

  He looked around. “Rubber gloves?” he asked, holding up a pair.

  “That’ll have to do.”

  He handed them over and then watched as Elicasta conducted a minor surgical procedure on her own rig. First, she had to take the tiny black box off the back of the skull lattice, then pop it open (she did this with the blade of a scalpel) and carefully slide the memory chip from Kev’s little square tin into it.

  “Don’t you have to take one out too?” Makk asked.

  “I had a free slot,” she said. “Each chip’s about a terabyte.”