“Didn’t you say your sister works stone?” Slopper asked, as he lowered the statue into the lift and stepped back with his hands displayed.
“Some,” Tirnich said, his attention far from the whispered, nerve-fueled conversation. “She’s an artist. Sketches likenesses mostly.”
He stepped back as well, drawing in a tight breath as they waited once more. Either the Etiphar equipment was old and slow, or the guards liked keeping outsiders in suspense. Tirnich suspected the latter. Eventually, however, the lift began the long climb up, with the small idol and its hidden weapon inside. They waited until the lift reached the top and was emptied—as per protocol—and then Tirnich said, “Okay, that’s it. Turn slowly and let’s get out of here.”
“Now’s the part where they shoot us. But the lieutenant says that’s part of the job.” Slopper started back in the direction from which they had come. He didn’t look back at the guns they both knew were aimed at them as he began the long journey to cover.
“No, we’re safe,” Tirnich said. “See, they’re letting us go. I bet we make it back to the—”
A loud CRACK split open the air. A rock to the left of Slopper splintered and fine particles rained down.
Slopper bolted for the nearest cover. He at least retained the presence of mind to zigzag, as Shan had warned, before he dove in behind the small rock that could barely shelter him.
Tirnich sped up his pace but not to a full-out run. Another shot rang out, close but obviously meant to intimidate, not kill. Afterward, he swore he heard faint laughter from atop the Keep’s wall.
“Come on,” he urged Slopper as he marched by, “we’re almost out of range. They’re not going to waste any more ammunition; they made their point.”
Slopper rose from behind the rock, looked at Tirnich, then nodded and walked at a brisk pace.
When they were a safe distance away, Tirnich allowed himself a nervous laugh. “Told you it was good luck!” He looked at the drexla tooth around Slopper’s neck, almost hidden beneath the layers of bone and metal and other bits tacked on as part of their disguise. He had passed off his lucky charm the night before, to calm his friend’s worries.
Slopper looked down at the tooth and touched it. “I just hope we didn’t use it all up.”
“All loaded.” Fismar’s voice crackled over the rider’s comm.
“Your two are back on,” Shan said to Ama.
“Good.” Ama realized she had been holding her breath while Fismar spoke, and exhaled.
The rider sat in the rocky gully Shan had selected as a hiding place while they waited for the signal from the grabber. On the monitor that showed grainy views of the rider and the landscape, a small, scaled creature sniffed inquisitively at the landing strut, then jumped back as it encountered the mild electrical charge of the wildlife repeller.
Ama watched the creature hiss and scutter away, then shifted her attention back to the EW display in front of her. Shan had explained what she could expect to see when the grabber went to work inside the keep but so far there had been not even a blip.
“How long do you think it took Tirnich and Slopper to hike back from the Keep?” she asked Shan.
“Three hours. That’s why we risked sneaking in so close,” Shan answered. She studied the back of her flight glove, then lifted her knees and propped them up against her console. “I’d tell you to wake me up if anything goes off, but you don’t know what to watch for yet. It’ll be nice to get you trained up to a proper copie.”
Ama calculated the time of the hike and the time Shan and Fis had told her it would take for the grabber to seize control of the Etiphar’s system. “We should see something by now.” She buried the question burning inside her: What if the grabber doesn’t work?
“We will or we won’t. This is battle. You’re lucky if half your plans work and you’re lucky if only half of your enemy’s plans do, too. This is a crazy scheme anyway, so don’t eat yourself up over it.” Shan leaned sideways in her seat. “Just be glad that we can run the enviro control up here so we’re not sweating like the stompers in the hold.”
Ama glanced over her shoulder with a sting of guilt. She had seen the battle dress in which the Kenda were outfitted—stifling would be a mild description.
“Shan!” she said, looking back at the display. “I’ve got something, but—” She shook her head. “—it’s not anywhere near the Keep.”
Shan jolted upright; her fingers flew over her console. “Remember what I said about being lucky to get half your plans going?” She studied the readouts off the beacons and tripped the internal comm. “Ground Lead, we’ve got Storm-sign coming at two-seven-three, thirty percent boundary with earliest current eclipse at seven-one-five.”
“On my way,” Fismar said over the comm. Shan thumbed the comm off before continuing.
“On my way, Air Lead, oh Lieutenant ‘I’m not karging around with comm protocol,’” she said.
“The Storm?” Ama was focused on the display and the new, flashing icon. “Son of a whore.”
“We still have a sixteen-hour raid window. Fis’ll make the call on that. Don’t start flapping your gills just yet.”
Fismar burrowed his way into the cockpit and reached over Ama’s shoulder to pull up her display. His fingers traced along the display, changing the angles and beacon inputs.
“Okay,” he said after a moment’s consideration, “we can work with that. It’ll just inspire everyone to get indoors quicker.”
“See?” Shan said to Ama.
“See, Air Second,” Fismar corrected. “Wake me up if anything interesting happens.”
Shan waited for a long moment after Fismar disappeared down the ladder, then muttered softly, “Sometimes that bastard gives me the shivers.”
Seg didn’t protest as he was pushed and dragged along by his captors. The hood over his head was an unnecessarily theatrical touch, since his final destination was likely a conversion chair for a graft implant, but he guessed Efectuary Akbas wanted that added piece of drama.
He heard a door cycle open; rough hands pulled him through. He was guided to a spot on the floor and shoved into a surprisingly comfortable chair.
So, there would be gloating before grafting. He swallowed and steeled himself.
The hood was yanked from his head. Seg blinked at the return of light to his world, and sputtered when he saw the man facing him.
“Hello Segkel,” Soumer Haffset said, smiling broadly. He sat in a chair, facing Seg, one leg crossed over the other, casually holding a cup in one hand as if this were a common welcoming procedure for visiting guests. He snapped his fingers and a caj ushered up to offer Seg a drink.
“What— what is this?” Seg asked as he took in the familiar expanse of the raid planning room. The difference now was the quiet. In all his previous experiences, the room had throbbed with activity, filled with people, buzzing and alive. According to reports from Ama, during her stint inside the room there had also been shouting, arguing, and occasional threats of redress. Now the room was occupied by just Seg, Soumer, and the serving caj. He glanced back as the door irised closed behind the guard, then took a welcome drink of water. It struck him as wasteful to have such a large space occupied by so few.
“According to raider Arel Trant’s comm, you asked for a meeting this morning.” Soumer sipped from his own glass. “I simply collected you before any of the other parties searching for you managed to do so.”
Seg took another drink. He set his glass on the table in front of him, using the time to gather his wits. “I would argue that I could have evaded such pursuit—”
“You’ll lose that argument. There’s a sizable price on your head and legions of displaced individuals looking for easy profits right now, Theorist. And you won’t blend in as easily here as you did on that primitive Outer backwater.” He rose from his c
hair and paced toward the large observation window. “Now, I cannot help you. You’ve racked up enough debt to cripple my yearly output if I marshaled the funds to extricate you from this mess. So the best I can offer is to put you back where I found you, and recommend you go back to wherever it was you were hiding. You’ve lost this fight.”
Seg leaned back in his chair as he considered the words. He let the silence drag until Soumer turned to face him and opened his mouth to speak.
“I’m not here for that,” Seg said. “I’m not here to beg for charity.”
“Then what are you here for?” Soumer asked with a note of impatience. “You have precious little to offer at this point, nothing to negotiate with.”
“My forces are striking Julewa Keep. They have initiated electronic infiltration of the Keep’s control systems. We have current internal schematics and force dispositions, as provided by a defector. I expect that within six hours I will receive the signal that the Keep has been successfully breached and taken.”
“Julewa? That relic? A museum defiled by degenerates. What in the name of the Storm would you want with Julewa?”
Seg rose to his feet and marched to Soumer’s side. He gestured toward the city outside the lone window. “Old Town. They’re going to let it die.”
“It’s being debated. But I suppose we both know the debate will determine that Old Town is no longer worth the resources to hold.”
“Exactly. And Lassansa? That city had to abandon thirteen percent of its freehold over the past four years. Fareme lowered its shield capacity by nine percent. Other losses haven’t been so dramatic, but for over a century now we’ve seen steady retreat in the face of the Storm. What did we win, House Master? What did we win in our raid? A momentary reprieve from the Storm? Trinkets? Caj? We’re surrendering to our environment by the year, conceding and closing ourselves ever tighter in these cities, which become explosive from the compression.”
“If I recall, the latest explosion was set off by you,” Soumer said.
“If I can stoke the undercity with a few words, imagine what happens when a true revolutionary emerges from their ranks.”
“A true revolutionary? You don’t give yourself enough credit.”
Seg ran a hand through his hair and nodded. “It’s likely I could see this city burned, given time. Not much time, either.”
“You’re making me reconsider my offer to release you.”
“There is another way: Julewa. The Keep is a treasure trove of old technology and equipment we don’t make anymore that can still be salvaged. Relics enough to pay for the operation to take it. But more than that, more than that, Soumer …” Seg thrust his hands toward the House Master, fingers spread wide. “Taking the Keep is forward movement. It’s finding a new way to adapt. Stone can shield us again, as it did before. We can survive the Storm, no matter what it hurls at us. And we can resurrect our own damned culture!”
Soumer bent backward slightly, nearly taking a step back in the face of Seg’s outburst.
Seg looked at his extended hands and lowered them. “My apologies, House Master.”
“Soumer, if you are going to be the master of your own land. Presently only in your mind, though.”
Soumer stepped around to his table. “So. Your deadline for collection is tonight, after which it won’t matter how many trinkets you pry from the corpse of Julewa. But a percentage will stave off that deadline for a few days, at least. I gather that’s what you’ve come here for?”
“Now you know.”
Soumer lifted a digipad from the table and tapped at the screen. “You do realize even this sum is notable. A significant risk for a blind gamble. Really, Segkel, fifty Outers to take a fortress?”
“I can offer a security on the exchange, one that you will find worthwhile.”
“Respect me enough to abstain from offering me speculative ventures based on Julewa salvage.”
“Not that, no. But I can offer you a price that will recoup at least the payment you would make to advance my debt ahead.”
“And what’s that?”
Seg stepped in front of the window and looked out over the city once more. “Me.”
“Where’s the Guild?” A blood-streaked face demanded an answer as curls of smoke wafted behind him. “This is madness!”
The image was jerky, the man’s face bobbed in and out of frame before it cut back to the red-haired woman directing the viscam operator. “This is the question everyone is asking,” she shouted above the sound of a distant crash. “Where is the Guild as Cathind falls into chaos?”
On the screen, Nallin Sastor’s hair, face, and clothing were far from the polished exterior she usually presented to the newsfeeds, but there was a new determination in her posture and voice. Having shucked the protocol of her profession, she was imbued with ferocity unknown to the World’s vis-entertainers.
The image froze, locked on a close-up of Nallin, green eyes blazing.
In Jarin’s office, the same face stared up at him. More pious than righteous, but with some of that lingering fire. “That footage was blacked. No one saw it, no one heard it,” she said.
Jarin remained unmoved and expressionless as he watched her.
“But it was a fair question,” Nallin added, straightening. She rapped a knuckle on Jarin’s desk. “The Citizens of Cathind, of the World, place an enormous amount of trust in the Guild and its Theorists. Trust that largely goes unquestioned. Eraranat may be rash but he’s touched on something important here: where are the rewards for the common Citizen? They’ve been indoctrinated with the idea that their sacrifice is necessary for the good of the People, but which People? The Haffsets? The CWA Directorate? The Theorist’s Guild? What do the Citizens of the World have to hope for? Have you seen the state of the undercities recently? We feed the People lies like we feed the Storm vita.”
Nallin’s speech had turned into a blistering rant. At this realization, she took a deep breath and forced herself to resume at a calmer pace.
“If you’ve brought me here to punish me, Theorist Svestil, you’re too late. I’ve been pulled from my position. Research, that’s my job now. Confined to a desk. Indefinitely. So do what you like, but I won’t apologize for my honesty.”
Jarin concealed his smile. This revolutionary thinker had potential, and called to mind another insolent troublemaker of his acquaintance.
However, as with Eraranat, she needed reigning in. He maintained a grave, sober countenance.
“You do realize that giving true offense to the Guild, Mer Sastor, can carry consequences far beyond the professional.” He leaned forward. “And those consequences can extend beyond the person who has given offense, as well.”
Nallin’s look of determination wavered under Jarin’s thinly veiled threat. She had been in the business long enough to know the extremes Citizens of power would go to if insulted. For a moment it seemed as if she would offer an apology, but then her face shifted and she slid back into her pre-riot persona.
“Theorist Svestil.” In a blink, her voice and face softened to the perfect degree. “I assure you, no offense or insult was intended. I have nothing but the highest respect for your esteemed self and for the Guild, that bastion of knowledge and foresight.” She dipped her head slightly, a posture of submission. This one would have made a good field Theorist.
He unfolded his arms from across his chest and tapped an icon on his desk. The holographic display sprang to life. Documents scrolled by, his name highlighted in them. “When you were invited here, you conducted a search, through legitimate channels, regarding my record and place within the Guild. You also searched through the kind of less-orthodox resources a Citizen in your position keeps. I can see very well what you know, Nallin Sastor, and you do not know me well enough for either esteem or respect.”
“Correct. I don’t. But you’
re the expert in matters of culture so, tell me, would the average Citizen have believed me a moment ago?”
“Do you seek to bargain your credibility in exchange for your life and that of your family?”
“I seek to … influence. I suspect you can help me with that, and I can help you, as well. You, and the Guild.”
“Storm help me, Sastor, are you an idealist?” An amber light flared to life on his desk. “Wait outside. Go!”
She rose without a word and hurried out of the office. Good instincts. Nallin Sastor would be valuable.
Jarin tapped his desk. “Report, Gelad?”
“The package came in, but it was collected by another party,” Gelad said.
So, Segkel had crossed back into Cathind and had been snatched before Gelad could reach him. But by whom?
“Identity?” Jarin gripped the edge of his desk.
“Not Wellie, not the agencies, and not freelancers. Unsure past that,” Gelad said. “Could not pursue. Have collected Trant.”
“Bring him here. We need to know what he knows.”
“Understood.”
Seg had returned and tonight the Guild would decide his fate. Or so they thought. If Theorist Marsetto had his way, Seg would be cast out to face his various crises alone and unprotected.
But, until then, he was still a Theorist of the Guild. For a few more hours, at least.
There was also the matter of the CWA. If he sheltered Segkel, the Guild would suffer—
Akbas had made that clear. She wanted to threaten him with war? More than a quarter of a million humans were dead; the war had already begun. The Guild would protect its own.
Jarin tapped the comm on his desk, linking to his GID deputy.
“I need every spare asset we have in the city.”
Shan’s finger stabbed the primary power button mere heartbeats after the signal light went to blue. “Run-up,” she said to Ama before she switched over to the command comm. “Ground Lead, blue light on grabber, repeating, blue light on grabber. Prep for lift in one minute.”
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