The City of Ashes

by Robert I. Katz

  I had met with Leon, Guild Master Anderson and Guild Master Ballister only an hour before. They had listened to me, saying little. After I finished, Anderson glanced at Ballister, who nodded. Anderson turned to me and said, “Thank you. We will pursue this.”

  And that was all. I left but within a few minutes, a text arrived from Leon asking if he could call on me at my office.

  He sat now in a chair across from my desk, looking glum. It was his show. I let the silence build and finally he scrunched up his face, raised his eyes to mine and said, “I wanted to apologize.”

  I cocked my head to the side and waited. Good. Let him crawl. After a moment, he frowned, looked away and sighed, a pained expression on his face. “So,” he said. “I’m sorry.”

  “Go on,” I said. I found that I was beginning to enjoy this.

  “I thought that I could keep things under control. It seemed like a simple enough contract. I wasn’t counting on Winston Smith and his antics. He was playing a different game.”

  “There are rules. He wasn’t Guild.”

  “I know,” Leon said. “I wouldn’t have let him kill you or any of your men.”

  “You might not have been able to stop him.”

  He sat back in his seat, frustrated. He had trouble meeting my eyes. “I would have tried.”

  “Alright,” I said. “You’ve apologized. Your apology is accepted. Don’t do it again.” I leaned forward. “What now?”

  “Now?” Leon gave me a slow grin. “How would you like to be Guild Master of Argent?”

  I sat back in my chair. He was serious, I realized. I didn’t see that one coming, not at all. I thought about it for a long moment. “Tell me more,” I said.

  “You were right. Sindara has been garrisoned.” Ballister, unlike Guild Master Anderson, had never mastered the art of spreading good cheer. Ballister always looked just a little bit angry, even at the best of times, and these were not the best of times. “We can’t even approach it.”

  “How did that happen?” I asked. “When did that happen?”

  “We weren’t paying attention. Why should we pay attention to an insignificant island far from our shores?” He sighed. “It seems that the navy of Gath has a number of factions. One faction appears to have remained loyal to the old regime. Three Gath destroyers arrived two days ago. They’re moored in Sindara Bay. It also appears that Gath’s former government had at least one ally: Finlandia is cooperating in this venture. A flotilla of Finlandia patrol boats have encircled the island and they’ve established an advance base near the foot of Mount Sindara.”

  “Our military is stronger than Finlandia’s and the new government of Gath is not going to help them. Is it worth it to bomb those ships?” I asked.

  Leon pursed his lips and visibly winced. Anderson shook his head. “Do we want to escalate that far? It could mean war with Finlandia.”

  “Meridien was attacked. We were, if only for a week, at war with Gath. Are you so sure that the war is over? If we choose to pursue this, Gath would presumably be on our side. I imagine that they would like their ships back, and if they can’t get them back, they would probably rather they be destroyed than remain a threat to their government.”

  “What is on that island?” Anderson said. “If it’s something of military significance, then we want it ourselves, and we don’t want it falling into the hands of either Finlandia or Gath.”

  I sat back in my seat. “So much for our allies.”

  Ballister looked angry, but then, he always did. “We’ve decided on a plan,” he said.

  “Oh, God, really? Another plan?”

  Leon gave me a weak grin. “I think you’ll like this plan.”

  Chapter 16

  Leon was out of his mind. I didn’t like the plan, not at all, but I went along with it. Three nights later, I dropped out of the cargo bay of a navy patrol sub into the warm waters surrounding Sindara. We had deliberately picked an overcast night. I wore flippers equipped with miniature jets, a mask and a breathing tube that extracted oxygen from the water and fed it into my nostrils. I carried a pack with an untraceable transponder, camouflage clothing, two GPS locators, assorted small bombs and incendiary grenades and a light weight plastic rifle that could shoot tranquilizing darts, flat tipped lead ammo and exploding charges, plus a container of each, though realistically, if I had to use the gun, I was most likely already toast.

  Jennifer had not been pleased. “Why you?” she asked.

  I had asked the same thing. “You’ve proven to be remarkably competent,” Guild Master Anderson said. “You’re physically adept, highly intelligent and able to adapt to changing situations.”

  “So, what you’re saying is, I’m expendable?”

  He frowned but appeared to consider the question more seriously than I would have preferred. Finally, he shrugged without answering.

  I was tempted to tell them all to fuck themselves. I really was…but Sindara had been my property and my project and I still resented the way that it had been taken from me. I sat back, drew a deep breath and considered.

  What the fuck, I thought. I’ll do it.

  The submarine was coated with stealth shielding but such shielding is never completely effective, and who knew what mysterious Empire technology they might be using? I was dropped off nearly ten kilometers out and made my slow way toward shore, hugging the bottom. Curtis came after me, along with four other guys from my security team.

  We each carried field transmitters designed to confuse underwater surveillance. If we were noticed at all, we should show up as rather large tropical fish. In order to heighten the illusion, we swam almost aimlessly, crossing over each other’s swim path, stopping, starting, hovering in place before inching our slow way forward. We passed schools of fish and a small coral reef and once, a barracuda that looked at me with beady, thoughtful eyes before swimming on. It took us nearly four hours before the bottom began to rise and we felt the swell of the waves above our heads.

  We emerged five kilometers down the beach from the enemy base, where a stand of palm trees grew close to the water. The palms led up to a thick growth of sea grapes, papaya, calabash and frangipani. We crawled across the sand and into the forest and then stopped in a small clearing to assess the situation.

  Aerial surveillance had indicated only cursory patrols this far from the base. The patrols came by at regular intervals. We had timed our approach to be between two of them. Curtis stood up and pointed a small handheld device over his head—a combination directional mic, lidar and radar detector—and turned in a slow circle. “Nothing,” he said. My enhanced senses confirmed that we were alone.

  My men were well trained and they all knew what to do. We split up into three teams and vanished into the woods. Curtis came with me.

  The island of Sindara had been formed by the migration of a tectonic plate over a plume of magma erupting through the ocean floor, forming a series of volcanoes. All of these had merged together into Sindara. The island had eroded over the millennia down to an almost flat plateau, except for the final volcano, Mount Sindara, the only one that still clawed its way into the sky. The island was over two million years old, all of its volcanoes long extinct. The crater of Mount Sindara still existed, however, on the far side of the island from the bay.

  According to the ancient map, the original Empire base had been established in the floor of the crater and had spread out over the sides of the mountain. If any lost technology or useful artifact were to be found, that’s where it should be.

  Curtis and I were assigned to scout out the crater. We walked through the jungle in a meandering line, following small trails carved out by peccaries and wild pigs. My senses told me that no men had come this way in at least a week.

  The air was hot, still and humid. The Empire had managed to keep mosquitoes from getting a foothold on Illyria but unfortunately, a small native animalcule called a triatome had evolved to fill the same niche. We sprayed ourselves with repellant but it was only partially e
ffective. The disgusting little things could barely be seen by the naked eye but their bite contained an enzyme that dissolved a microscopic amount of flesh that they then sucked up through a flexible proboscis. It stung.

  I remembered an article I once read about a dry plain in Africa. Every few years, the rains came and mosquito eggs hatched. By the time the waters receded, enormous swarms of blood sucking insects swept across the savannah, leaving devastation in their wake. The pictures included a herd of dead cows, killed by mosquitoes.

  It took three million mosquito bites to kill a cow. It took about a hundred thousand triatome bites to kill a human.

  Nevertheless, we tried to ignore the nasty little creatures as we trudged on.

  I held a hand up. “Wait,” I said. I sniffed. Something was coming, something rank, something that I recognized and had hoped never to smell again. “Get off the path,” I said.

  We burrowed our way into the undergrowth and waited. A minute or so later, three creatures shambled along the trail. They looked just like the mutated ape that I had escaped during the tournament in Gath, but much smaller, perhaps 180 centimeters, with the same broad shoulders, deep barrel chests and large hairy paws. They walked in single file, scratching occasionally at their fur, knuckles dragging on the ground. They looked neither to the left nor the right, their attention focused straight ahead. As they passed by, I could see small plastic boxes clinging to the back of their necks, red and green lights twinkling.

  They vanished around a bend in the trail and I drew a deep, relieved sigh. “What the hell are those things?” Curtis whispered.

  “Mutated apes? Organic robots?” I shrugged. “I don’t think we want to find out.”

  Curtis bit his lip and nodded.

  We waited until the smell dissipated and then resumed walking. We were heading for an isolated ridge on the mountainside. According to our surveillance, the ridge had a flat surface and provided a 360-degree view. The ape things had shaken us both up. We were expecting to face human adversaries but hadn’t counted on monsters being part of the program. I wanted to see whatever we could see before going any further but I was reluctant to come out into the open. Luckily, the jungle extended almost to the ridge.

  “Stop,” Curtis said.

  I halted, my right foot hovering in the air.

  “Back up,” Curtis said. “Look.” He pointed to a spot in front of my foot.

  An almost transparent string, thinner than a thread, hovered five centimeters over the ground. I nodded, carefully placed my foot down and inched away. The string led to a small pulley screwed into a tree, then went straight up to a branch above our heads. A round, hollow metal tube pointed toward the path, the string attached to a trigger.

  “This thing must go off every day,” Curtis said. “Plenty of animals use this path.”

  We would have seen their bodies, though, and I would have smelled them if anything dead was lying close to our position. “The local animals have probably learned to avoid the trail,” I said. It sounded improbable, even to me.

  “Or their dead bodies get cleaned up and taken away.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Forget this. It was a bad idea.”

  Curtis nodded. We inched our way backward, came to the edge of the cliff, discussed the situation briefly and began to climb. Six meters above the ground, we found a small ledge and clambered onto it, turned with our backs to the wall and sat, legs dangling.

  Far below, in a small, deep valley, we could see dozens of twinkling lights along with armored vehicles parked next to makeshift wooden buildings. My night vision picked up the heat signature of at least two hundred men, spread out along the level ground. No doubt many more were inside the buildings. The glow of electrified fencing surrounded the whole encampment. Mount Sindara loomed above the camp. Our aerial surveillance had first noticed its construction two weeks before. I hadn’t expected it to be this large and it looked as if they weren’t planning on leaving.

  A deep, mechanical hum filled the night. A green beam shot out from the center of the encampment toward the mountain. The beam shattered and green sparks flew in an expanding circle from a glowing center.

  “Jesus,” I muttered.

  Here and there, scattered in what looked like a random pattern, small foci of light suddenly dotted the rising landscape. A shimmer of electromagnetic energy surrounded the mountain, then flickered out.

  “It’s shielded,” I said. “They’re probing for weak spots.” There were a lot of weak spots. I could see it if nothing else could. The shield around the mountain was patchy. The enemy forces had probably been working on it for days, even weeks. Their laser fire would soon breach it.

  Curtis and I didn’t need to say anything. We both knew what to do. We climbed back down and set off through the jungle. As we neared the enemy lines, Curtis went right and I went left.

  Their men weren’t as wary as they should have been. I suppose they had grown complacent. To the side, I could see the heat signatures of a two-man patrol walking along a trail, rifles slung across their backs. I followed them. They wore night vision goggles but were watching the pathway in front of them instead of the woods. The goggles didn’t bother me. Even if they looked right at me, they would see nothing. My camouflage suit was designed to keep body heat from escaping. I followed them until they reached a guarded opening in the fence. They nodded to the guards. The guards nodded back but didn’t ask for any other passwords or identification. They went in. Two other men came out through the gate, chatting amiably, and walked onto the trail.

  I shook my head. Lousy discipline, which could only help me and my mission.

  I followed these two for over an hour, slipping through the branches and overhanging leaves. Finally, one of them said, “I have to take a leak.” His companion nodded and sat down on an old stump. The first man stepped off the trail, fumbled with his zipper and faced a tree.

  He never saw me coming. I shot him in the back with a tranquilizing dart, slipped my left arm around his neck and my right hand over his mouth, held him immobilized until he fell unconscious, then slid him into the underbrush.

  “Frank, you ok?”

  Frank couldn’t answer and I wasn’t going to. I threw a pebble across the trail and when the second guard turned toward it, I touched him on the back of the neck and let the current flow. His back arched and he fell to the ground, seizing.

  Chapter 17

  When he came to a few minutes later his mouth was taped shut, his hands were shackled behind his back and his feet were tied together. He blinked at me, fuzzily trying to figure out where he was. I gave him a minute and saw his eyes grow wide when he realized what had happened. He struggled briefly against his bonds until I gave him a small jolt of current. “Cut it out,” I said.

  He stopped and stared at me. “Now,” I said, “I’m going to take the tape off your mouth. If you yell, I will kill you. Understand?”

  He nodded.

  “Excellent.” I smiled. “No need to be uncivilized about this.” I pulled the tape off. It must have stung because he gave out a stifled groan. “What’s your name?”

  “Jeremy Evans.”

  “Where are you from, Jeremy?”

  “Neece,” he said.

  I nodded. Derek Landry was also from Neece, a pleasant little country with a pleasant, sunny climate. Their economy was primarily agricultural. So far as I knew, their army was more ceremonial than real. They barely had a police force.

  “Why are you here, Jeremy?”

  He shrugged. “They pay well.”

  “Yes. So, I’ve heard.” I cocked my head to the side and smiled at him sadly. “Still, you have to ask yourself: this job has a lot of risks. Is the pay worth it?” I held my hand up and allowed a bright blue arc of electricity to crackle between my fingers.

  He stared at me, wide eyed.

  I stifled a yawn behind my fist. “The evening is getting late and I have things to do, so tell me, Jeremy, who are these people? Why are they here?”


  His eyes darted from side to side. He said nothing.

  I laughed under my breath. “Really? You’re going to be a hero? For what? For who? Do you think Winston Smith cares one iota for your worthless life? Do you think that I do? You’re lying here like a trussed-up turkey, ready for the oven. If you want to live through this, you will tell me everything I want to know.”

  He drew a deep breath, then he gave a jerky little nod. “Fine,” he said. “They call themselves the People’s Army. They recruit from all over.”

  I nodded. I had heard this before, as well.

  “Do you know Derek Landry?” I asked.

  He looked surprised. “He’s a squad leader.”

  “Yours?

  “No. Not mine. Mine is Nils Longren, from Octavia.”

  “How many men are in the base?”

  He frowned. “Maybe three hundred.”

  Three hundred was not a lucky number, I reflected. Though the history of Illyria during the dark ages was sketchy, hundreds of books and databases had survived that recounted the history of mankind prior to the collapse. All of us knew at least some portion of that history. The Light Brigade had numbered three hundred and they died to the last man. The Spartans under King Leonidas at Thermopylae also had three hundred. Three hundred was just enough to put up a fierce resistance and to die nobly, which in the current circumstances, would not bother me in the slightest.

  “How many of them do you know?”

  “Just my squad. They brought us together for this operation.”

  “How about Winston Smith? Do you know Winston Smith?”

  He grimaced. “He pays the bills. Smug little bastard.”

  “What is the operation?”

  “You mean the mountain?”

  I gave an encouraging nod. “Yeah. What about the mountain?”

  “It’s an old First Empire base. It’s still active. They have technology that the People’s Army wants.”

  I sat back and pondered that for a moment. “Tell me more about the People’s Army.”