The City of Ashes

by Robert I. Katz

  “They say that they’re going to restore the lost glory of the First Empire but I think that they’re full of shit. All they really want is money.”

  “Does that bother you?”

  He shrugged. “Why should it? Everybody wants money. Me, too.”

  Me, too, I thought, but there were a lot of things that I wouldn’t do to get it. Not so, Winston Smith, apparently, nor the People’s Army.

  “Any idea on what this technology might be?”

  “Not a clue,” Jerry said. “Above my pay grade.”

  “Okay,” I said, “So how many gates are there in your fence.”

  “Huh?” He frowned at the sudden change in subject.

  “The electrified fence that surrounds your base; how many gates are there in that fence?”

  “Three. Why?”

  I smiled at him. “I’m asking the questions. You’re answering them.”

  I could almost see the wheels turning in his head, the moment when he decided to lie to me.

  “I was watching when you and your friend came out on patrol,” I said. “Do the guards at the gate even recognize you? Do they know who you are?”

  “Of course they do. You think we’re a bunch of amateurs?”

  Derek Landry and his squadron were professionals. This guy was something else. I wondered what that meant for their recruiting efforts.

  I reached out, smiled at him and gave him just a little jolt. He cried out.

  “Shhh,” I said. “Remember, you want money and you want to live to spend it. You don’t want to be a hero. Heroes die young.”

  He compressed his lips in a thin line and thought rebellious thoughts. I could see his aura churning. I held my hand up and allowed another little arc of current to zap like compressed lightning between my two middle fingers. Jerry’s eyes grew wide. He gulped.

  “So,” I said, “where were we? Oh, yes, plans. What are the plans for your assault on the mountain?”

  He frowned and looked like he was thinking about his answer. I hoped that the effort didn’t kill him. “So far, we’re just sitting tight while we try to crack their shields.”

  “Then what?”

  “They’ve told us to be ready. When the shields go down, we’re going to go in.”

  That made no sense, actually. Shields deflect missiles, artillery and laser beams, but they degrade any matter that they touch. Ground based shields would need to be established well away from the installation that they’re designed to protect. Infantry could walk in right underneath them. I thought about it. Shields would stop airborne troops, though, if they planned on assaulting the mountain from above. Maybe they wanted to have that option and maybe they intended an artillery assault as well. In any case, they didn’t seem to be in a hurry.

  “What do you know about the place?”

  “You mean the mountain?”

  I nodded.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  “Nothing?” I repeated.

  Jerry shook his head. “They’ll brief us before the assault.”

  “Who do the mutated apes belong to?”

  Jerry winced at that. Apparently, he wasn’t fond of the mutated apes. “They’re on our side. Freaky bastards.”

  “How many are there?”

  “Too many. Fifty or sixty.”

  “Where do they come from?”

  “No idea,” Jerry said.

  “Any other little surprises that your employers have ready?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  No, I thought. He wouldn’t. I shot him in the chest with a tranquilizing dart then stripped his uniform off. Frank was still snoring but I put another dart in his leg, just to make certain that he didn’t wake up sooner than would be convenient; then I rolled both of them off the trail and into the underbrush. I put on one uniform, folded up the other and went back to the rendezvous point to wait for Curtis.

  He showed up an hour later. “Don’t shoot me,” I said.

  I was sitting in a tree, just over his head. He looked up, frowned at my uniform then slowly grinned. “You have one for me?”

  I handed it over and he slipped it on. “A little tight,” he said.

  I shrugged. “You find out anything useful?”

  He hefted his night vision goggles. “Yeah. I’ve got the layout of the place down. I know just where we want to go.”

  “Excellent.”

  We waited until the end of Frank and Jerry’s shift then walked in through the open gate. The two guards barely nodded at us. Two other troopers walked out, not even glancing at our faces. Curtis winced and gave a little shake of his head, marveling. “This way,” he said.

  It was after midnight by this time and most of them were asleep in bed but a few people were still milling about, talking, walking around and looking at the stars, just killing time.

  Boredom interspersed with moments of panic is the routine state of any army. These guys were still in the boredom phase.

  Overhead, another salvo of green laser light shot toward the mountain and crashed against its shields. A few of the soldiers looked up at the display but most of them ignored it.

  Curtis and I ambled around, pretending to be as bored as the rest of them. Supply huts sat in the middle of the base, with a fleet of light armored vehicles lined up on one side of the supply huts, administration buildings opposite them and barracks near the fence. The buildings were all pre-fab, light, movable and easily assembled. Two small fusion generators sat midway between the vehicles and the supply huts, next to the laser mounts.

  The place was poorly lit, with deep, flickering shadows. We tried to stay in the shadows while we slipped behind an administration building. Inside, the building was dark, obviously empty, with one window in the back. I inspected the place with all my senses: no electromagnetic pulse, no heat signatures, no cameras or alarms of any sort. I looked at Curtis. He shrugged. They weren’t worried about security inside the camp, that was certain. Lucky for us.

  The window, however, was locked. Not a problem. I put on gloves, reached into my kit and pulled out some adhesive putty and a multi-purpose tool with a serrated blade and a small hammer on the tip. I fixed the putty to the glass, attached a cord then scored a wide circle into the glass and gently tapped it with the hammer. The circle broke off. Curtis gently lowered it by the cord to the floor. I reached in, undid the latch and raised the window. We clambered inside.

  The broken window would make it obvious that somebody had been here and sooner or later, Jerry and Frank would be missed. I didn’t think we had a lot of time.

  We were afraid to turn on the lights but we both had small flashlights. It turned out to be one large room with a small bathroom to the side. Two computers and a holoscreen sat on the desks. We ignored the electronics since we had no way to figure out the passwords. Curtis rifled through the desks while I popped the lock on a filing cabinet. There wasn’t much inside, mainly a list of names. Curtis grabbed a small book and we clambered out the window.

  Before leaving, we wandered by the supply huts. We didn’t know what was in them and didn’t feel like pressing our luck but we planted some nifty little limpet bombs around the base of each building.

  We had gotten into the camp disguised as soldiers. Getting out posed a little more of a problem but we found a small drainage channel that ran underneath the fence. It gave us just enough room to wriggle our way underneath and then we were gone.

  Chapter 18

  The list didn’t tell us much. Graham Reid’s name was on it, also, I was very interested to note, Leon Sebastian’s. Both of their names, and perhaps a third of the rest, had lines drawn through them. There were a hundred or so in total. I recognized about a quarter, all prominent businessmen or politicians from nations across the continent.

  “Bad guys?” Curtis said. “Potential bad guys?”

  I shrugged. “Probably. Also, probably some former bad guys. Graham Reid is dead. Leon Sebastian is supposedly on our side, now. All these people will have to be inves
tigated, though.”

  The book was interesting, a copy of a hand-written diary that looked like the work of a blatant madman, recounting marvelous tales of winged men, mystic powers and the forgotten worlds of Faerie. The author claimed to have encountered these miracles on an enchanted isle far across the sea, though which sea and which isle was not specified.

  “Is this supposed to be Sindara?” Curtis said. “Not much to hang an invasion on.”

  “It’s no secret that the place once housed a First Empire installation. They seem to have been investigating every one that they could find. The mountain is shielded. There’s something there.”

  We both looked up. Mount Sindara, rounded curves, rough, jagged edges, piles of rubble and unstable rocky cliffs, loomed over our heads. Another laser burst came from the center of the camp and splattered against the shield, showering sparks.

  “We could call in an airstrike,” Curtis said.

  I had suggested the same thing to Anderson, Ballister and Leon Sebastian. Their objections to the idea still held. I shook my head regretfully. “They have ships, lasers and airships. Who knows what else? They might be able to shoot down our planes. I don’t think we want to escalate this. Not yet.”

  Curtis shrugged. “Let’s get going, then.”

  I hefted my pack and led the way. We had walked perhaps two kilometers when we judged that we had gone far enough to avoid immediate pursuit. Curtis grinned, held up a small cylinder and pressed three buttons, waited five seconds and then pressed three more. Behind us came the sharp cracks of plastic explosive, one after another. “That was fun,” Curtis said.

  Maybe the explosions would do some serious damage…maybe not, but it might at least slow them down. We turned our heads, faced forward and trudged on. We were going to climb the mountain.

  “Well, we had better hope that the enemy of our enemy is our friend,” Curtis said. Amen to that.

  The trail ended at a wide, grassy field surrounding the base of Mount Sindara. Across the field from us, perhaps two hundred meters away, a stone staircase began under a delicate looking wrought iron arch and then wound up the side of the mountain. From here, the stairs appeared to be undefended but that had to be an illusion, otherwise “The People’s Army” would have already marched right in.

  “Shall we?” I said.

  Curtis shook his head but didn’t say anything. We walked up to the arch. It wasn’t actually iron, which would have rusted away years ago. Up close, it appeared to be some polymer composite, smooth, black and untouched by the elements, curving upward in a lazy filigree. We looked at each other, shrugged and walked beneath it. As we did so, a thin line in the center of the arch turned green. From somewhere inside the arch, a soft hum, followed by a single beep could be heard.

  “If they didn’t before, somebody knows we’re here,” Curtis said.

  “Someone or something. Let’s go find out.”

  The steps stretched away before us, worn down by the actions of feet and rain and time but were otherwise solid. They were built for smaller people than the current Illyrian norm and we took care not to stumble. They curved around the mountain so we could see no more than ten meters or so in front. For a few minutes, we climbed without incident, then the steps entered out upon a level plateau about twenty meters in extent.

  A battle had been fought here, perhaps many battles over the years. Two moldering skeletons lay against the mountainside, a few wisps of rotting cloth still clinging to their bones. Near them, half buried in dust, was an antique rifle broken in two. Across the plateau, lying near the edge, was a figure that I recognized. I winced.

  “What is that thing?” Curtis asked.

  “A battle robot. First Empire design. They’re tough.”

  “You know this how?”

  “I trained with one.”

  The robot only vaguely looked like a man. It had the same black arms and legs, the same almost featureless head that I remembered from my time with Master Chen. Unlike the skeletons, however, it did not appear to have been lying here for long. A small, amber light glowed at its waist. “It still has a charge,” I said.

  A leg twitched, a sudden grating sound. The robot’s neck moved slightly back and forth, then stopped. A charred hole transfixed its chest, extending all the way through the back. Wiring, its insulation stripped into tatters, hung from the hole.

  “It’s too damaged to move,” I said.

  “I think that’s probably good,” Curtis said.

  We looked at each other. At the other end of the plateau, the steps resumed their twisting way up the mountain. We left the battered robot behind and resumed our climb.

  A hundred meters or so further on, an ancient explosion, or perhaps a landslide, had taken out twenty or more of the steps. Except that what we were seeing wasn’t real. I could clearly see lines of electromagnetic force arcing across the gap—a hologram. On the other side, the steps continued upward. Gingerly, I crept up to the edge, reached forward and touched the stone with the tip of my boot. I could feel the steps, though to the naked eye, the gap loomed below us. “Okay,” I said.

  Wordlessly, Curtis rummaged through his pack and came up with a length of climbing rope, which I tied around my waist, just in case, then stepped forward. Not looking down, I traversed the gap, the steps solid and secure beneath my feet. Once across, I braced myself against the rock and held onto the rope while Curtis followed; again, just in case, but he came across without mishap.

  We took a break, sat down with our backs against the mountain and ate an energy bar. Curtis closed his eyes and was soon lightly snoring. I watched for an hour, then woke him and drifted off to sleep.

  It seemed like only a minute before I felt Curtis’ hand over my mouth. He shook me by the shoulder. “Shh,” he whispered, “something’s coming.” I could hear it then, or feel it, rather: a vibration through the rock. I scrambled up and we began to climb toward a small ledge a few meters over our heads. We reached it just as three mutated apes came down the steps. As before, they looked straight ahead, plastic inserts twinkling on the back of their necks. A man walked along behind them, clutching a handheld device that seemed to be controlling the apes. He peered at the device with fixed intensity as he walked. Within a few seconds, they had passed beneath our position. They came to the gap, ignored it and trudged across, their feet weirdly appearing to be walking on air.

  Curtis drew a deep breath and sagged back against the rock. “Close,” he said.

  We waited a few minutes longer. I placed my ear against the side of the mountain. It didn’t help. I could hear vibrations from deep inside, but had no idea what they meant. No way to tell, not now, not from here.

  We walked on. A few minutes later, we came to another rocky platform built into the mountainside. It was empty. Unlike the first platform, there were no skeletons, no dead bodies, no detritus from long forgotten battles. We were half way across when a section of rock appeared to vibrate, and then the rock vanished and instead of rock, a rectangular opening appeared in the mountainside.

  An ape glared at us. It opened its mouth, roared and then charged. Another appeared right behind it, and then two more. Curtis raised his gun and fired. An explosive charge slammed into the first ape’s skull, which dissolved in a spray of red mist. Its body crashed to the rocky gravel at our feet. I tried to swing my gun around but Curtis was in my way. I dropped, rolled and got off two more shots. One of them hit an ape in the abdomen and its body separated into two parts, its liver and shreds of bowel rising high into the air then raining down with wet, stinking slaps. The ape was dead but it didn’t know that yet. It dragged its torso over the ground for another two meters, blood pooling in a red, slick trail behind it, before the light went out of its eyes and it lay still.

  My second shot hit the rock, sending a fountain of sharp stone into the air. A few shards hit one of the charging apes in the side, causing little damage but distracting the beast for at least a few moments. It grabbed its side, raised its head to the sk
ies, beat its chest with both gnarled fists and roared.

  It was loud but it was also stupid. While it was beating its chest, it wasn’t coming toward us, just making noise. I took advantage of the time to hit it with another explosive charge. Its head flew off. Its legs separated from its vaporized torso and then fell, jerking aimlessly.

  The last one had Curtis in its hands, raising his wide-eyed head toward its teeth. I lunged forward, wrapped my arms around its neck, pulled back and sent every erg of electricity I could generate into its enormous body. It froze for a moment, shook its head but didn’t go down. I felt my claws extrude and rammed them into the ape’s back, pumping venom from the glands in my wrist. It stood there, breathing hard. It locked its eyes on me and shook Curtis once, twice, but it was already growing weaker. It looked at me, hatred and defiance in its red, red eyes, and snarled; then the breath hitched in its throat and it slumped down, twitched a few times and stopped breathing.

  Curtis moaned. His right arm hung limply at his side. Blood poured down his neck.

  “Let me see,” I said.

  “Too late,” he muttered. “I’m done.” He slumped to his knees then fell back. The left carotid artery was torn, the ends retracted. Arterial blood spurted upward from the wound with each heartbeat. There was nothing to tie off, nothing to put pressure on. “Tell my sister,” Curtis whispered.

  Curtis’ parents were dead. He had never married and had no children. His sister, a widow, and his nieces were his only family. Curtis sent her money every month. “Yeah,” I said. “I’ll take care of them.”

  He smiled then, his eyes already dim, and gave a tiny nod. A few minutes later, the breath rattled in his throat and he stopped breathing.

  “Oh, fuck,” I whispered.

  Flies were already buzzing over the dead apes. It was hot and soon they would begin to stink. Sooner or later, probably sooner, their masters were going to realize that they were gone but I wanted to delay that realization for as long as possible.

  I was tired and the apes were heavy but I rolled each of them over the side of the mountain and let their bodies fall to the jungle below. I did the same with Curtis. I hated to treat him that way but if I had any hope at all of keeping the enemy confused, it seemed best to remove as much evidence as possible. No way to clean up the blood stains, though. I shrugged.