The Live Soldier Trilogy Box Set

by Liam Clay

  Tikal halts at the top of the hill. “Try to capture the leader!” She shouts. “I’ll deal with the other two.”

  I do as she says. My mountaineering skills are non-existent, but long legs are always useful in a race and I make good time down the hill. Behind me, Tikal’s opening shot rings out. One of the men drops in his tracks, setting off a small avalanche of broken rock. Her sophomore effort brings the second man to his knees. I veer toward him, brace a hand against the slope for balance, and draw my shear across his back. He exhales sharply and keels over. I pause to study him. He’s young, no more than twenty, and dressed in a familiar combination of furs and synthetic staples. A heavy box wrench is still clutched tightly in his hands. I run on.

  The slope flattens into a plain of fallow fields. I keep expecting my quarry to look back, but fear keeps him focused straight ahead, right up to the moment when I swing my rifle butt into his ankles. He trips and goes down hard, face plowing a furrow through the unturned soil.

  I grab the guy by the shoulder and flip him over. He surprises me by rolling with the movement, arm bringing a rusty pipe up toward my face. The bar deflects off my armored bicep and grazes my temple. Blood flows, spiking my adrenaline. I respond by planting a fist into his belly. He buckles around the blow, feigning incapacitation, and then aims a kick at my groin. I jump awkwardly to avoid it, and come down with my knee on his chest. Something gives and he stops struggling, so quickly that I’m worried I might have killed him. But no: he’s still breathing, although shallowly and with difficulty.

  When my heartbeat has steadied, I crouch down to take a closer look at him. This one is older, balding, with a cro-magnon brow and a deeply cleft chin. His furs are nicer than the other guy’s, synthetics newer and better fitting. And most importantly, mud markings cover both of his cheeks. I stay quiet until he manages to focus on me.

  “Raka. Where is he?”

  The man thrashes and tries to rise, but pink foam appears on his lips and he falls back, coughing weakly. Considering the crimes I suspect him of, it’s hard to summon much sympathy. I place my fist on his chest and apply an increasing pressure, letting up only when he starts to convulse.

  “I’ve got some good news, and some of the other variety.” I tell him. “The good news is that due to unresolved issues in my personal life, I’m not sure I can kill you. If you’d kicked the bucket while we were fighting? No problem. But I’ve recently become a sucker for that cold blood conscience. The bad news is that in a few seconds, my friend is going to get here. You know, the one who shot both of your buddies in the back just now.”

  The situation must be getting to me because I’m losing the plot, spouting whatever comes into my head.

  “Don’t get me wrong though, she’s a great gal. It’s just that patience is not one of her many virtues. So if you don’t tell her what she wants to know, and in the exact instant she asks, you can expect your situation to deteriorate rapidly. No hushed pause for last words, just a bullet to the brain followed by a slow transition to fertilizer. Oh look! Here she is now.”

  Tikal jogs up to stand beside me. Cro-mag takes one look at her, shudders, and starts to sing a lovely tune.

  CHAPTER 26

  The cro-mag’s clothes hang in tatters about my body, furs absent, pants stopping just short of my dirty ankles. My left foot drags in the dust, and blood leaks from my recent head wound. For three hours I’ve been walking like this, hoping to cross paths with a gathering party bound for the Fortress. According to our informant (left behind with Tikal) such groups are common this close to Raka’s stronghold.

  I wonder what Porter would think if he could see me now. Traveling in disguise with plans to infiltrate an enemy camp? Some proper reconnaissance work going down right here. The only problem is, I haven’t met a soul so far. Just a sprawling vista of dead farmland, my Opacity-conditioned senses struggling to take it all in. Looks like I’ll have to walk up and knock on the front door.

  A mark appears on the skyline, like a tear in the seam connecting land and sky. The Fortress. My instincts are telling me to run, and ignoring them is hard work. At least I’m operating solo again - caring about other people is even harder work. I walk on: step, drag, step, drag, across the dreary flats.

  Raka’s fortress is aptly named. A lopsided ring of stakes with squat towers at its compass points, the place reminds me of an exhumed archaeological site. It even has all the accoutrements you’d expect: plumes of greasy smoke rising from within tar-blackened walls, rough-cut latrines filled with excrement, murderous crows fighting over scraps. They’ve even hung a few corpses from poles to round out the look.

  I needn’t have worried about being caught during my approach. The fortress has overflowed its bounds and there are people everywhere - digging holes, laying branches over holes, passed out drunk near their holes. A lot of this last example in particular. But upon further review, a correction. There are men everywhere, and legions of boys as well, pelting through the camp in raucous swarms. But of the fairer sex I see no sign.

  I insert myself into the crowd, just another dirty face in the mix. Some of these people still look out of place in this environment. They wander the muddy lanes between holes, engaged in tasks but not committed to them, as if their former lives might come calling at any moment. Others I can’t imagine anywhere but here and now. An old man tearing at a rat carcass with broken teeth. A boy eyeing the rodent hungrily, and a pervert eyeing the boy in turn. They’ve gone feral, become one with nature, evolved. Or devolved.

  I pass through the fortress gates. The scene inside is much the same, only rowdier. Open sided shelters house trestle tables filled with drunks and gamblers throwing dice. Even more ominous are the pits. Roughly circular and variable in diameter, they are closed in by roofs made of pale skins stretched over heavy wood frames. Their access tunnels belch out a horror of a smell: wet-hot and obscenely sexual. Muffled sounds leave a lot to the imagination, but that almost makes it worse - as if my mind, forced to fill in the gaps, has been made complicit in this atrocity. What kind of sick society has Raka created here? Someone really needs to kill the bastard. And someone will, but only if I do my part right.

  Finding Raka’s digs is easy, as they’re the only ones not literally dug into the ground. His palace is a tipi so big it looks like a vertically parked star destroyer. A triangular slash in one side serves as a door, and here at last my progress is challenged by a pair of guards carrying long spears. Well, technically they’re signposts still dragging chunks of concrete, but the effect is the same.

  “What do you want?” One of them asks. I do my best to look pathetic and downtrodden.

  “I need to see him. The one they call Raka.”

  “The one they call Raka?” The second guard repeats mockingly. “What are you, simple?”

  “No sir. Just not used to speech, is all. I’ve been living alone in the mountains for... I don’t know how long. Years. But this winter was hard. I was starving. So I came down, and one of your foraging parties picked me up. They promised to find me a place here, on the condition that I swear an oath of fealty to your master.”

  The second guard shakes his head. “You holdouts, always so self-important. The boss has better things to do than get his rings kissed by every stray that limps into town.” He points back towards the gate. “You want my advice? Go start digging your hole. I hear all the prime real estate is going fast.” The two men share a laugh.

  “Beg pardon, but it’s not just fealty I’ve come to offer. It’s news.”

  The first guard squints at me suspiciously. “What kind of news?”

  I let my eyes cross in an imitation of labored thought. “The bad kind.”

  The guard’s face lights up. “Well why didn’t you say so! We love watching people bring the boss bad news.” He indicates an empty stockade a dozen paces away. “Been a while since we had guests.”

  I decide to play dumb. “Thank you kindly.”

  The guards share a smirk and lead me in
to the palace. Raka’s interior designer has clearly taken style queues from the Bellows, avoiding copyright infringement by adding some signature gruesome touches. Animal skulls proliferate; fresh carcasses hang from steel hooks along the walls; suspicious stains mar the dirt floor. All very enchanting.

  And here, for the first time, there are women. Lounging on couches or hiding in corners - facing reality or blocking it out. I don’t know which is more awful to see, but if I want to help any of them, I need to disguise my anger for now. A wooden cage waits at the tipi’s center. Ropes run from its roof, snaking up into the canvas ceiling. We climb aboard. A trio of men turn a spoked wheel that looks like a prop from a Conan the Barbarian remake, and the elevator lurches upward.

  The tipi has five tiers, and we rise through all of them. Each level exceeds its predecessor in opulence. Raka may force a prehistoric lifestyle on his followers, but his personal space is all Opacity. The top floor décor reminds me of Wen shin’s apartment up in the 180s, where all of this started so long ago. A fabric screen conceals one side of the room. Geometric shapes flow across it in waves, powered by a tiny projector that hangs from the peaked ceiling.

  Dozens of women - scratch that, girls - inhabit the shadowed fringes of the space. Six guards flank the screen, each of them making my escorts look like weaklings. A smaller man stands between them, directly in front of the flickering fabric. A leather patch conceals his right eye, and he seems to curl around the wound it hides. I peg him as Kenrit, Kai and Olia’s father.

  One of my escorts pushes me forward. “I’m sorry to bother you master, but this holdout says he has news for you.”

  There is a collective intake of breath.

  “Speak.”

  The voice issues from behind the fabric screen. It is nuanced and rich, a voice to command armies with. Time to roll the dice.

  “Thank you, master. My name is Seamus. I come from the mountains just west of -”

  “Get to the point!” Kenrit barks. “Or be impaled on one, your choice.”

  Minimal acting is required to summon a look of fear.

  “The point... yes. I came down from the mountains two weeks ago. Starved, weak. A foraging party picked me up. They brought me along while they did their gathering. But then, three days ago, we were attacked.”

  “By another group of holdouts?” Kenrit sounds bored.

  “Excuse me sir, but no.

  “Then who was it? Keeping in mind that if you blame Kingston, it’s straight to the stocks for you. The master is tired of these false rumors.”

  “No sir. I mean, yes sir. It wasn’t them. I - I think they were from across the sea. Opacians.”

  Kenrit laughs. “Told you that, did they?”

  “No.” I reply, letting a hint of sullenness creep in. “But I heard one of them say it.”

  “This is ridiculous. The master doesn’t have time for your backwoods bullshit. Guards, take him to -”

  “What did they look like?” The disembodied voice silences Kenrit instantly. I bow to the screen.

  “All camouflaged, they were. Five of them.”

  “And their arms?”

  I scratch my head. “Never did see any weapons on them.”

  Kenrit scoffs. “How could five men overpower a whole gathering party barehanded?”

  “I don’t rightly know. It was night time, see, and I was tied up with my face in the dirt. But there were... noises.” I simulate the sound of a sonic shear. “Metal through metal, it sounded like. And meat getting cut up. Oh, and one other thing. They were women, all five of them. Not men.”

  No silence has ever been so complete, nor half as satisfying. Hook planted.

  “And you escaped how, exactly?” Not so bored anymore, old Kenrit.

  “Oh, I didn’t escape. Their leader let me go. Red haired woman, real looker too. But she had a condition.”

  With mounting horror, I feel my facial muscles start to contract.

  “And what might that have been?”

  “I was supposed to bring Raka a message.” The dam bursts, and a mad grin spreads over my face. “A challenge, actually. She said you would know what that meant.”

  Everyone else in the room stiffens. But I start laughing, a wild cackle that steals my air and leaves me gasping when it passes. Good god, time to backpedal.

  “I beg your pardon, sir. It’s just funny is all, a couple of young lasses trying to threaten the likes of you.”

  .

  Looking back, it should have been obvious what would happen next.

  In my imagined version of our meeting, Raka would barely have noticed me. I was to be a non-entity, dimly registered and immediately forgotten. I could have tagged along as he prepared to deal with this new threat to his supremacy, an invisible observer perfectly placed to carry out the rest of my part in the plan. Maybe it was the laughing that put the kibosh on that possibility. But probably it was always destined to be this way.

  I’d known I was taking a risk, of course. But the male psyche is a petri dish of delusion. What do we secretly think when we watch action movies? I could do that. Ultimate sacrifice for the greater good? Child’s play. Handling torture like a champ? Too easy.

  Wrong on all counts.

  If Raka had done the honors himself, at least I would have gotten a look at him. But it’s Kenrit who leads me and my escort into a pit stocked with iron implements. Oh unhappy day. My only solace is that they don’t seem to be taking the whole thing very seriously. With any luck, this will be a low grade, paint-by-numbers brand of torture.

  And so it proves to be. I spend a few painful but predictable hours tied to a chair, getting punched in the face, stomach and occasionally the balls. Kenrit doesn’t actually participate, just looks on while the guards plod through the motions. They’re not even pretending to enjoy themselves by the end, and it occurs to me that this is the Fortress version of going into make-up. They plan to put me on display, and want me to look the part.

  When my features have been reduced to bloody gristle, Kenrit dismisses the guards and approaches my chair. I expect him to start adding the finishing touches. Instead he pulls out a handkerchief and uses it to clean some of the blood off my face.

  “Don’t worry, that was the worst of it.” He mumbles. “Although you didn’t do yourself any favors back there.”

  “Like you care.”

  “Hey man, I’m just doing what I can to stay alive. But that doesn’t mean I’m a complete asshole.”

  I want to reply with something rude, but that would be unwise.

  “I did mess up pretty bad, huh? Been alone in the woods too long, I guess.”

  He nods. “We see it all the time with you holdouts. But assuming you can learn to keep your mouth shut, you should be fine. When the master makes an example of someone, he likes to leave them alive to tell the tale. Punishment and absolution, he’s always saying. Two sides of the coin of power.”

  “And if I make another mistake?”

  By way of explanation, Kenrit points to his missing eye. I can’t help feeling a little bad for him.

  “What did you do?”

  “I tried to leave. He caught me.”

  “And do you ever worry he will take the other eye?”

  “Every day. You can’t stand as close to the sun as I do without being burned sometimes.”

  “Is that what he is to you: the sun?”

  “How could he not be? His word is law here.”

  Since taking insane chances is apparently my new thing that I do, I decide to take one on him.

  “What if I told you that was about to change?”

  “Because of the woman who sent you here? I don’t think so. Raka would never have instituted the Challenge Law if it didn’t benefit him. He cannot be beaten in a one-on-one fight. And every time he defeats a new challenger, it strengthens his hold over the rest of us.”

  “If the guy’s so indestructible, why does he use that Wizard of Oz screen gimmick?”

  “Because he’s afra
id of the Designer.”

  “Seriously? I thought no one had heard from him in years.”

  “No one has, but that doesn’t mean he’s dead. Kingston still has its walls, and there is no telling what goes on behind them.”

  “And Raka thinks that the less people see of him, the safer he is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why don’t you out him, then? Or better yet, kill him yourself.”

  “Speak quietly!” Kenrit hisses. “You never know when someone might be listening. But even if I thought I could kill him, I wouldn’t.”

  “Because you used to be friends?”

  He looks at me sharply. “How do you know that?”

  Oops.

  “The Gatherers that picked me up must have mentioned it.”

  He nods, appeased. “No, that bond was broken the day he took my eye.”

  “Then why are you protecting him?”

  “Because he is the only one who can give this island what it needs.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Freedom from the Designer’s shadow. Once the master has enough men, he plans to march on Kingston.”

  “And when does he anticipate that happening?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t shared his confidence for a long time, and asking questions is how you get fed to the dogs.”

  “Sounds like a swell guy. Will I ever get to see him in the flesh?”

  “You tell me. When will the red haired woman arrive?”

  “Tomorrow morning, I think.”

  “Then you don’t have long to wait.” He cocks his head to one side. “Who are you, really?”

  “Just another nobody trying to survive.” I tell him, smiling through red teeth. “Oh, and when the challenger shows up, make sure to take a close look at her entourage. Might see someone you know.”

  CHAPTER 27