Marduk's Rebellion

by Jenn Lyons

him were already on the inside with Intelligence Operations. Merlin was smart enough to come up with that one on his own.

  “More accurately, you’re better than everyone but an AI with computers.” Medusa clarified.

  “That must be it,” Merlin agreed. “You’re our only agent who’s ever hacked into an AI—”

  Medusa made a small whine of protest, but otherwise didn’t correct him.

  “—Paul must have wanted you to play with some records somewhere. He couldn’t come to the League, because if they were our records we wouldn’t have wanted anyone tampering with them.”

  I ran finger along the edge of the film. “It’s a theory, anyway.”

  “I suppose his husband would know more.”

  “Yeah. What do you know about him?”

  His grin turned boyish. “What makes you think I know anything?”

  “Because the Colonel made you do a check before he Okayed the wedding bells. Spill.”

  He smiled. “Alexander was our inside man at Keepers’ Island. Has been for years, quietly slipping us nanite blueprints and medical supplies right from under the esteemed Maia-Leia Shana’s nose. That’s how he met Paul. He’s scholar-caste, allowed to father six children, all of whom tested scholar-caste themselves and none of which live on the island.”

  I whistled. Maia-Leia Shana must have thought highly of Alexander’s genetic potential to give him permission to mate that many times. The average for scholars was two children.

  “Paul was the first time he’s ever married in the human sense. Alexander’s father was a Wilder, now deceased. He has one brother, who is still alive and works for the League. They don’t talk for both personal and logistical reasons. I gather that when their father engineered his escape to the League he could only take one of his sons with him, and he chose Nicholas. The strain of being the son left behind soured the brothers’ relationship.”

  The transport spun around crazily. I grabbed on for a handhold and concentrated on making my lungs work. “Alexander...Rhodes?”

  “Indeed.” His gaze, as he looked at me, was full of sympathy. “I understand he’s nothing like his brother.”

  “No,” I whispered. “No, I can’t imagine so. Ol’ Nick likes his partners female. And young.”

  The transport slowed to a stop. We’d arrived.

  FIVE.Ian

  The housing block on the corner of 1600 and 2100 was a quaint enameled chrome and brushed steel construction once meant for artisan and scholar flats. That was before a string of terrorist bombings leveled several nearby buildings and caused real, messy deaths. The terrorists and the Sarcodinay played a game of tag for a while; the Sarcodinay would rebuild and the terrorists would bomb it all to hell again.

  The League, by the way, disassociated itself with these wunderkind over fifty years previous, but the League didn’t own any kind of monopoly on being angry at the Sarcodinay. The Urbans who didn’t have access to real weapons, space ships and shore leave in other star systems vented their anger with homemade napalm cocktails and bathtub nitro, and took their aggressions out on every could-be skald they could find.

  After a while the high-castes being used as a scorecard grew sick of it, literally. The stress levels must have been amazing, never knowing if someone had slipped a bomb into their kid’s lunch box or if someone was about to start sniping from the top of one of the nearby buildings. Productivity levels fell off. Heart attacks and chronic illnesses moved in to pick up the slack. The Sarcodinay were faced with the decision of abandoning the neighborhood or recasting the whole block.

  So, in classic Sarcodinay style, they did both.

  The Sarcodinay would still move in the occasional service caste family, but it was rare. The neighborhood apartments were too nice for lower castes, and the Sarcodinay didn’t like to be reminded that they weren’t in full and total control of their megacities. Easier to pretend the neighborhood didn’t exist at all.

  Now, housing had become an issue again with the arrival of all these League personnel, so any place that could be used to fill the demand was being dusted off and given a quick once over. In many cases that meant Majors sleeping in slave billets not much bigger than a pup tent, but someone who knew what to ask for could end up with something considerably better. Particularly, say, if they were originally from the megacity in question and knew that certain addresses officially labeled as service-caste housing were in reality much nicer.

  “This will be a lovely place if we can plant explosives, tear the whole thing down and start over.”

  “It wouldn’t be the first time. You don’t like the architecture? I’ve always thought it looked vaguely art deco.”

  “I don’t think living in the apartment where your parents were arrested is going to do anything for your mood right now. This isn’t healthy.”

  “You sound like Merlin.”

  “He’s a man of uncommon good sense. Why don’t you let me switch your room assignment with an admiral’s? They’ll never realize.”

  “No.”

  “I could put you in Governor Tirris Vahn’s summer palace. Her staff keeps a lovely garden. You like flowers—”

  “I said no, Medusa. That’s final.”

  My AI didn’t to inhale or exhale air to breath, but that didn’t stop her from sighing.

  When the lift reached the top floor, I hunted down the door to my apartment. The halls were ragged, but they smelled of soap, fresh paint and bleach. At least someone had come down and cleaned up. That was better than many people could expect.

  Despite the Ministry of Housing’s notorious reputation, my code worked perfectly on the lock, first try; but two steps through the door, I decided I’d cleared them of charges before the evidence was in. Someone was going to pay.

  This was not an empty apartment.

  “Deuce?”

  “I’m interfacing with the Ministry of Housing database right now.”

  “Thanks.”

  I hadn’t sent any furniture ahead, just instructions to pick a bedroom, make sure a bed was in it, and throw my duffel bag on top. I’m sure the big shots had also given instructions involving their own quarters: wall-to-wall carpeting, soft lighting, old oak furniture and waiting brandy in snifters, but the furnishings in this place were by no means generic VIP. Someone had taken their time.

  The floor was concrete, sanded marble-smooth, acid washed and dyed the same color as fine old leather. A handful of red woven rugs that I strongly suspected were from the Atlas QZ rather than New Mecca broke the monotony without being gaudy. A few chairs and a table, all in flat black plastics—cheap, but sturdy and unpretentious—provided the basic comforts. The walls were creamy white, not pure enough to be cold but not so yellow that it clashed with the art—and boy, was there a lot of art.

  Paintings hung from the walls, the doors, even windows. Framed work covered most of the wall space, and unframed paintings rested on the floor like second-league gladiators waiting for their chance to fight. Clay sculptures pirouetted on tabletops or skulked on top of concrete columns. Outside, I could see the shadows of other, larger sculptures out on the balcony.

  The lights were on and I smelled something with a tomato base cooking in the kitchen.

  “What a mess. According to these files, no one else has been assigned here, but it’s possible there’s a cross-reference error. Some of these files haven’t been opened since the Plague. I’ll keep looking.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Be careful: someone’s home.”

  Someone also considered themselves quite the artist. After studying the paintings, I decided I agreed with them. It didn’t hurt that it was virtually all treasonous by Sarcodinay standards: a shuttle dropping off supplies to the rebels, skimming the atmosphere seconds before the jump back to hyperspace; pirate ships massing to attack a series of Sarcodinay merchant freighters; a Wilder girl with a stolen rifle taking pot shots at a Sarcodinay scout team with the tangle of a ruined Quarantine Zone dead city stabbing the sunset behind he
r; the burning of the Louvre; the imagined first landing of the aliens, when we’d been too torn apart by the Plague to do anything about it.

  I saw one painting and froze.

  Rougher and more primitive than the others, the painting looked as if the details of its inspiration were too painful for anything more than a quick sketch. Two humans, a man and a woman, a father and a mother, were being taken away by the Sarcodinay, arrested or worse, but the center of the painting was the young child they were forced to leave behind. She was a young gamine in pigtails, otherwise mistaken for a boy. The child twisted and screamed and rebelled against the human Ministry of Justice officers who held her back while the Sarcodinay took her parents away, her face and posture the definition of childhood terror.

  My throat felt tight.

  “You like that one?”

  For the second time in twenty-four hours I found myself pointing a weapon at a man’s head. It was starting to become a habit.

  “—Ah, or not. Why didn’t you say you’re an art critic?”

  My eyes grew wide in surprise and then narrowed in anger.

  “You?!” I can be quite the conversationalist when I’m pressed.

  The waiter from Vanessa’s party stood before me.

  He’d changed from the service-caste uniform he’d worn earlier into something less comfortable and a whole lot more flattering: tight nu-suede black pants tucked into tall boots and a filmy white linen shirt, laced at the neck and baggy at the cuffs. The sparkling green stare, slave caste-mark and