“Good. Have some greshk,” Seg said. “It’s quite good.”
Manatu took a seat on the cushioned couch-bench. “No thank you, Theorist.” He patted his stomach. “Doesn’t sit well with me. Never has.”
After a glance to Seg, Lissil backed away to the preparatory.
Manatu watched the silent newsfeed with an expression that flitted between pride and dismay. “Lots of attention on you now.” He pulled his pistol from his vest pocket and examined it.
“They have no idea what they’re talking about.” Seg watched his image flash across the screen in various stages. A horrid picture of him as a cadet in worn utility overalls. A childhood picture that he didn’t even know existed. A picture of him departing from the Haffset Raid Planning Room, Lissil in tow. Another one taken at the field headquarters of the raid. Then a rider was displayed, of the variety he had rented for his own use on the raid. Finally, aerial footage of the smashed temple in Alisir.
He sat upright too quickly; pain needled him. “End media feed.” He drained his cup in one smooth motion, rose to his feet, and retracted the chair into the wall.
“We’ll discuss proper sleeping arrangements in the morning.”
“Floor is fine,” Manatu said. “Had worse.”
Seg’s sleeping quarters were far cleaner than usual, lacking the discarded laundry that tended to pile up in the corner, or the films he often left lying around. His precious small collection of authentic paper books was neatly organized, though Lissil had done so by size and color and not by topic. He could correct that later. For now, he simply lowered his bed into place and sat down on the edge.
There he remained for several minutes—sitting and staring at his blank wall. His body cried out for sleep but his mind refused to settle. Ever since intrans, he had been plagued by this anxious restlessness. Now, cut off from Ama, it had grown worse.
You must prepare for the Question. Immediately and with as much diligence as you prepared for your raid. This new phase will be as taxing as the previous one. That had been Jarin’s warning in the trans.
Seg had pestered the medicals into releasing him early, but they had insisted that his mentor would convey him home. No act of kindness, Seg was unsurprised to discover. Jarin had used the confines of the trans—well guarded against outside surveillance by his aide and driver, Gelad—to bombard Seg with topics too sensitive for public discussion. Ama, Lissil, the Kenda men, his actions during the raid—Jarin seized on each subject, while Seg did his best to pacify the old man.
However, about the Question, Jarin had been particularly obsessive.
One battle to another. The thought made Seg suddenly weary.
He closed his eyes and a memory played: he and Ama, tangled together on some damp piece of ground, the sky black, genuinely black, the skittering and screes of nocturnal animals echoing from far and near, and above, through the canopy of trees, pinholes of light. Stars, thousands of stars.
A tap at the door pulled him from memory’s sanctuary back to the harsh sterility of the World. It was Lissil.
“Enter.”
She stepped in and closed the door behind her. She had removed the smock she had worn while working—the curve of her body now outlined behind a thin layer of material.
“Theorist.” She stepped forward tentatively. “This caj—I am done with my duties. Shall I join you now?” Before he could answer, she took several gliding steps forward and knelt before him.
Seg regarded her much in the same way he had viewed all of his World since intrans—through new eyes. Technically she was caj, his caj, and a true trophy. Long, dark hair spilled in waves over her shoulders and full breasts. Her lips, in that perpetual pout, promised the sort of pleasure any healthy young man wished for. Not long ago, without a thought, he would have bedded her, perhaps even made room enough in the tiny bed to sleep through the night with her. In truth, he did not want to spend this night alone, but the only person he wished to be with was on the other side of the Storm.
“If your duties are done, you may rest. There is room enough for both you and Manatu out there.” He nodded to the door.
Lissil raised her eyes to Seg, distress written across her features, “Theorist, I— Do you not find me pleasing?”
Her question almost drew a laugh. For a moment, he regretted his decision.
“You are pleasing.” He waved a hand to punctuate that this was not a topic requiring further discussion. “But you will not share my bed.”
In Seg’s mind, this was his most unortho behavior to date. Were his father, overseer of caj at a Recycler, to hear of this he would promptly disown him.
Instead of gratitude for this unheard of leniency, Lissil looked up at him as if he had just slapped her.
“But it is my honor to serve you well, to display my obedience.” She hesitated before she finished her thought. “I beg you to keep me. But if you are to send me away, please do not send me to the huchack ponds or the Recycler. Theorist Svestil spoke of them, and—” She shuddered, unable to put such horror into words.
Again, Seg was overcome with an urge to laugh. After all of Ama’s ire on the subject, this caj did not want liberty.
“Lissil, enough! I won’t send you away.” He rubbed a hand across his forehead. “But you are not my caj and if you insist on pleasing me, do so by remembering that. Now go. I need sleep.”
He emphasized the final word and Lissil seemed to understand. She hurried out of the room, thanking him only once.
When she was gone, he lay back, pulled the sheet over himself, and stared at the ceiling as the lights dimmed.
Eraranat 001. His first raid. Could he have known the changes that raid would bring?
By the standards of the People, his home was luxuriously extravagant for an unpaired man. To have this space to himself was a reflection of the wealth and power of the Guild. When he had been transferred into the quarters, he had reveled in the space, scarcely able to believe that it was all his.
Now, for the first time, his home felt claustrophobic.
The Welf was advancing too fast; Seg scrambled to find his weapon, lost somewhere in the smoky ruins of the temple. Where was Ama? He had to warn her, tell her to run. At last his hand came down on something solid; he raised the heavy needler and fired. Nothing but a dry click. The cassette was empty, and now the Welf, who stood at least twice Seg’s height, towered over him. He raised a spiked club
“NO!”
The scream jarred Seg out of sleep; he flailed beneath the sheet, finally remembered where he was and stilled himself.
His heart hammered his chest; he was soaked through with cold sweat. Had he yelled out loud or was that only part of the nightmare? Manatu’s failure to arrive made him suspect the latter.
He swung his legs over the edge and waited for the unreal terror to pass. In the medfac, he’d had a few dreams about the extrans to Ama’s world, but those dreams had been murky and nonspecific, dulled by medication. This had been real. Too real.
He pulled off his shirt and checked the healing grid on his torso. Satisfied that it was intact, he lay back and turned his head to examine the crono. He had slept all of two hours. Not enough, but as he closed his eyes he felt his heart pounding again. He sat up once more and shifted until his feet touched the floor. No more sleep tonight.
He stood with a grunt of effort, then walked to the storage bin, opened the recessed door in the wall, and pulled out the basic med-kit. In one of the vials secured in a small compartment, he found a stim tab; he pressed it to his wrist, a potent stimulant seeped into his blood, and the fog evaporated.
Minutes later, freshly clothed, Seg walked softly out of the sleeping quarters. Manatu shifted on the floor, his hand on the butt of his pistol.
“Theorist?”
“I’ve been contacted by the Guild for … Guild busi
ness.”
Lissil groaned and rubbed her eyes. Manatu sat up. “I’m coming with you.”
“Not necessary.”
“Where you go, I need to go.”
“Not this time,” Seg said. “Stay. Sleep. I’ll return.”
He stalked out before Manatu could reply.
Seg sat on the north post of the old wall. A favored retreat during his cadet days, the wall had no cultural significance, a place of relative obscurity.
The smooth stone beneath his hand brought to life images of the World’s first Theorists. How different their lives had been, how uncertain! When the Guild compound was first built, the situation on the World was much more fluid. The Guild itself had been raided and ransacked by bandits. This wall was the organization’s response. Along with the wall, they had tapped into their deep reserves and also borrowed, from the CWA, sufficient funding to hire mercenary raiders to hunt the bandits. Every last one had been located and executed, their families taken into the early form of debt-peonage that would eventually become caj status.
Eight centuries later, a direct assault on the Guild was unthinkable. Along with the CWA, the Guild was directly responsible for the World’s survival and continuation in the face of the Storm. The bitter rivalry that evolved between the two organizations often tilted the balance of power back and forth, destroying neither but locking each in a permanent struggle for dominance. The MRRC, Mercenary Raider and Review Commission, the World’s third largest power, remained largely neutral and kept to its own business—overseeing the accreditation of raider units and functioning as a sort of union for raiders in good standing.
The Guild’s old wall was allowed to languish and had been gradually torn down for the addition of buildings to the compound. A wall with a much larger area now screened the Guild, but that was built merely to keep out the riffraff.
The stairwell up to the wall had fallen into disrepair and was restricted from access. Seg looked back at the doorway through which he had come. During his cadet days, he could well have been probated for bypassing the restriction lock to come up here. Now? With his new status? He smirked at the thought.
He looked out at the lights of the city—orderly, safe, and lifeless. What would those early Theorists have thought of modern Cathind? Would they feel as confined as he did now?
In his pocket, the weight of his comm tugged and he dipped his hand in to retrieve it. Before his raid, he had never found the companionship of others necessary. But before his raid, he had never killed a man or faced his own death so certainly. Tonight he needed the company of those who understood how that felt.
“Theorist?” Fismar said, as the comm connected.
“Raider Korth—” Seg paused, unsure what to say next.
“I can hear a breeze. You aren’t home,” Fismar said.
“Very astute.”
“Well, if you’re already out …” Fismar chuckled. “I’ve got a couple of bottles that need killing, and I need a good man to anchor the line when I go at ’em. Me and Shan are drowning the dead over here.”
Seg pushed off the wall. “What are your co-ords?”
“Theorist!” The metal door creaked on its hinges. Shan swayed behind it. “Get your crazy ass in here right kargin’ now!”
Seg stepped into the room. The light inside was scarcely brighter than the orange night-cycle lights in the passageways outside.
The Raider’s Quarter was a different world from the pristine confines of the Guild Compound, and the subterranean off-duty residences even more so. Above ground, scarred and burly men and women roamed the streets clutching bottles or exhaling clouds of fragrant smoke; below, rows of muted wallscreens broadcast newsfeeds and vis-ents throughout the maze of stone corridors. During the day, the corridors would have been packed with bodies, and Seg—whose face had frequently appeared before him on the newsfeeds—would not have passed through so unnoticed.
Fismar’s room was located on the upper levels of the complex, which made it extravagant by undercity standards and reasonably comfortable for the four occupants it now held. But it was just that: a room. A threadbare curtain functioned as a privacy screen for the toilet and cleanser folded into the wall. The complex likely had a communal preparatory, judging from the smells that permeated the corridors.
Fismar lay on the fold-out couch, bottle in hand. His other hand traced lines on the tattooed back of a passed-out rental caj who lay prone on the floor. The graft in her neck pulsed a soft blue light, indicating that her health status was still within margins, but the empty bottle next to her spoke to the likely cause of her torpor. Fismar sat up abruptly and slapped the seat of the couch; fibrous stuffing spilled out of a tear next to his leg.
“Come on, sit down! Have a drink,” Fismar said. “Raider tradition and you’re an honorary raider now.”
“Honorary digi kargin’ raider!” Shan’s words slurred together as she stumbled into a seat. She wore a flight suit, undone to the waist and tied there. On top, she sported a stained, gray shirt. “Drink! To the dead!” She downed a swig of the bottle she held, then leaned forward and scooped a long, slender stick of amba from a package on the floor, nearly spilling from her seat as she did.
As Seg sat, Fismar pressed the bottle into his hands. “Drown the dead. Theirs, ours, don’t make no difference.”
Shan pointed the amba stick at Fis, one eye closed, the other in a mean squint. “Watch your tongue. We don’t drink to filthy Outers. Better when they’re dead. Specially that …” She raised the amba stick and waved it around, drawing smoke scribbles in the air. “… that big one with the big mouth.”
Fismar shook his head but didn’t argue. He looked back at Seg. “You gonna drink it or stare at it?”
Seg poured down a hearty swallow that kicked itself back out in a violent cough almost as quickly as it went in. He sputtered and wiped his face as Shan laughed.
“That’s not the stuff you’re probably used to back at the Compound,” Fismar said. “We drink it a bit rougher out here.”
“I can tell.” To be truthful, he hadn’t done much drinking at all, in the Guild Compound or otherwise.
Fismar straightened up and nudged the unconscious caj out of the way to clear himself and Seg some leg room. She lay on her back now, moaning, lost in some drunken dream.
“Heard you got out of the medfac; figured you’d be awake tonight,” Fismar said. “You saw more’n most digis ever do.”
Seg took another more cautious drink and managed to hold down the fiery liquor. He shrugged. Fismar eyed him for a moment, then continued.
“Storm knows we saw more’n most do, all of us out there at the Temple. Ain’t normal to get cut off and trapped like that. Fast in, fast out, don’t give ’em time to react. That’s the raider rule.” He pulled the bottle from Seg’s hand and took a hearty drink.
“They repaired you well,” Seg said.
“Wasn’t anything. Hurt myself worse’n that on the Whack Course.”
Even with modern medical technology, most People would not have been so dismissive of a partial paralysis. Treatment success rates varied, though it seemed to have worked in Fismar’s case.
“I mean, what’s a bit more metal, right?” Fismar said. He handed the bottle back to Seg. “So I’ve been thinking about things. ’Bout what I’ve got here, and what you seem to have going.”
“Meaning?” Seg asked as he took another drink. He felt pleasantly lightheaded, and the liquor wasn’t so bad on the third drink.
“Meaning my unit just got word that it’s dissolving today. Part of a larger charter, but the losses were unrecoverable and, well, most of us weren’t considered unexpendable assets to begin with, y’see.”
Seg saw very well. His meager credit prior to the raid had prevented him from renting a gunship and raiders that were not at the bottom of the list. What his
father would have called gutter scrapers.
He raised the bottle and drank deeply; the heat was spreading through his body now, dulling the edges of that unnamable anxiety.
Fismar snatched the bottle from his hand. “Whoa. Pace yourself. Need you upright so we can talk this out. Okay, you’ve got troops. You brought ’em over with weapons because you’re going to use ’em as troops. That’s obvious.” He punctuated his words with another drink, then passed the bottle to Shan. “So you need somebody to make them into proper raiders.”
“What the karg?” Shan jolted upright in her chair, shouting. “Outers as raiders? You gone Storm driven, Fis?” She held the bottle aloft as if she might hurl it at him.
Fismar leaned forward, his voice barely rising above a conversational tone. “Compose, RP2 Welkin.”
Shan’s reaction was instant and instinctive. Her hand lowered, her mouth closed, but her eyes continued to burn at Fis. “Isn’t right.”
Fismar had switched from drunken joviality to military formality in the blink of an eye. Then, as Seg watched, he sat back and the cold mask on his face dissolved into its previous friendly expression.
“I’ll give you some free advice,” Fismar continued, addressing Seg. “You need junior leadership to make this effective. Anything that runs from the top down gets killed out there. So you need to pick out the smart ones, form squads, and train them up proper. Well, you need me to pick leaders, form squads, and train them up proper. And that loudmouth, the big one with the big nose and the cocky attitude? He’s a natural ringleader. You need to get him on your side.” He sat back and lowered his voice. “Or kill him before he poisons it all.”
“Kill,” Shan said. “Definitely kill. No, wait, karg him with a broom handle, send him to the ponds, then kill him.” She nodded, satisfied with her suggestion.
Seg gently pried the bottle away from Fismar. “You’re volunteering for the job?”
“I am.”
Seg took another drink as he considered this. Fismar was a natural leader and, as demonstrated at both the Temple and the Secat, a natural warrior.
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