Warp World

by Kristene Perron

  Jarin seemed to be immune to her feminine charms, but he had a soft spot for Outers and this could be easily exploited.

  It was too early to risk seducing Manatu, and the loping gresher did not posses nearly enough influence on this World for her liking. If it came down to it, she was certain she could seduce him into consoling her over Seg’s death and then let things unfold naturally. She had already laid the foundations during their time in hiding together. Manatu liked to watch the harcha races, broadcast from the arena in Orhalze. Despite her deep loathing for the spiny rat-like creatures that chased caj through elaborate mazes, Lissil had asked him endless questions about the sport. That had opened the gates to his limited faculty for conversation.

  Even now, he was recounting a mind-numbing list of player statistics, while she feigned interest and tended to their survival.

  “One raid we were on, when I was with Husco’s unit—that was Vana 1079—four of the caj I collected were chosen by the Fassansio Corporation for the races. One of them survived to the end, placed third, though. And then—”

  The door chime sounded and Manatu’s dim expression vanished. His hand shot to his holstered pistol and he signed for Lissil to stay put while he answered. She willingly obliged the order but kept an ear on the door.

  Moments later Manatu returned with a digifilm and a grim expression. So, the worst had been confirmed. Lissil’s plans became solid things; action would be needed. First, though, her response was required.

  “Is he …?” Tears gathered and she reached a trembling hand to the film, shocked to discover there was some genuine emotion in her charade.

  Manatu’s thick head jerked upright. “He’s alive.”

  The statement was matter-of-fact. There had never been even a fraction of doubt for Manatu.

  “What is it, then?” Lissil crept forward and rested a hand on Manatu’s forearm.

  “Got a job. Then I come back and get you. Theorist has a new home ready for us.”

  Lissil leaned in. She couldn’t make out most of the text on the digifilm, but there was an image that required no explanation. “I’m coming with you. I know what this job’s about. Seg already spoke to me of this.”

  “He didn’t say that in here.” Manatu nodded to the film.

  “He doesn’t tell you everything, you know that. His orders to me were very specific.”

  Manatu stared. She couldn’t let him think on it too long or he would make a decision on his own.

  Lissil snatched the film from his hand. “Well? Come on, get your gear. We’ve got a job to do.”

  “It stinks in here,” Slopper said.

  Nose wrinkled, Tirnich groped with his free hand. He looked up at the chute he and his men had dropped through. “This must be their laundry. Or used to be, a long time ago. Unwashed, by the smell.” He and the others righted themselves as quickly and quietly as they could. “Lucky thing—at least we got a soft landing.”

  Slopper laughed as he waded out of the stack of filthy linen. “At least we didn’t go down the privy hole, huh?”

  The whumpfh of an explosion rattled down the laundry chute. The sound of Tirnich’s improvised booby trap cast a pall on the momentary levity. Almost in time with the explosion, Cerd came across the comm. “Tirnich, report!”

  “We’re in the laundry room, Mascom. No hostiles in sight, but they’re in the room above us. Or what’s left of it, and them,” Tirnich said.

  “We’re about to push through,” Cerd said. “But you’re going to have to keep moving and find a place to hold.”

  Three options highlighted in sequence on Tirnich’s map. “We’re coming as soon as we can,” Cerd said. “Blood for water.”

  “Blood for water, Mascom.” Tirnich took a moment to review the map of the Keep in his tac display. There was nothing to indicate a laundry room but then much of the massive structure was unknown to them, even with Hephier’s assistance. He turned to his gathered squad. “Looks like we’re sailing solo for awhile. The good news is we’re right where we were headed. We didn’t exactly take the planned route but this is the third level.”

  Slopper lifted his chack and edged toward the door. “Back to work, right?”

  “Back to work,” Tirnich said as the squad formed up around him.

  Seg mopped his face with a towel as he passed through the headquarters building. Theorists, cadets, and Guild functionaries stopped to gape as he marched ahead of a column of armored, Guild security troops. He handed the towel to Arel and unclasped his Guild insignia from his overshirt before peeling the shirt off. What remained underneath was a simple, gray short-sleeved undershirt, dappled with stains where blood, sweat and other fluids had soaked through. He frowned at that, but it would be better than facing the Council shirtless. He affixed the pin to the shirt, carefully aligning it as he reached the council door. He turned and handed the overshirt to Arel.

  “I think we’re even now,” Seg said.

  Arel raised a metallic hand, which Seg clasped. “You’re one of us, Theorist.”

  Seg nodded and turned to enter the chamber. A security guard stepped in his path. “Your weapon, Theorist.”

  Seg snapped the holster open and extracted the pistol, barely able to restrain a laugh. With his thumb and fingers around the barrel, he passed the weapon to the guard. “The weapons are figurative in here,” he told Arel

  His eyes rose to the words engraved over the council door. The triumph of reason over nature. Had he once believed that lie?

  Question already discarded, he stepped past the security cordon. He won the race with the caj at the doors, shoved them open, and barged into the chamber. The Guild Accountancy sputtered as Seg proceeded toward the dais where the senior and most elder Theorists awaited him.

  “Theorist—Theorist Segkel Eraranat!” the Accountancy announced.

  Theorist Marsetto lurched to his feet as Seg reached the speaking platform. “This is improper! Security!”

  Loud gasps and exclamations filled the room, heads turned and mouths fell open.

  “Hold!” Maryel stood. “Everyone. Will. Stop.”

  The gathered Theorists fell silent, the moment pregnant with expectation.

  Maryel’s voice filled the chamber. “Theorist Eraranat, the situation in discussion is your status as a member of this Guild. If you have any hopes of retaining your standing in this body, you will comport yourself with respect to the orthodoxy of this chamber. And you—” She turned toward Marsetto. “—are not in command of this session. Am I understood?”

  Marsetto rumbled a vague apology before he resumed his seat. All eyes in the chamber turned back to Seg.

  Maryel allowed another moment of silence to pass, to convey the importance of the moment. At last, she spoke, each syllable delivered calmly but with undeniable gravity. “Words do not begin to describe the chaos you have wrought upon this institution and this city.”

  Seg nodded as she continued.

  “You made a public spectacle of yourself at the Haffset Accounting, including challenging a member of a CWA affiliate House to redress before you blatantly incited a riot in our city. Hundreds have died because of your actions, Theorist. And now you’ve brought a battle to our doorstep, the result of your financial irresponsibility and other improprieties.”

  “If I may, Senior Theorist.” Seg leaned forward to speak into the voice-amp on the podium.

  Maryel stared into his eyes, then glanced quickly to Jarin. At Jarin’s covert hand signal, she looked back at Seg and nodded. “Proceed, Theorist.” Maryel’s emphasis on the final word was unmistakable.

  Seg looked across the room, studying the faces. Most were hostile, some openly so. Jarin was inscrutable, as ever. Maryel looked as though the Storm were about to burst through her. Shyl Vana?

  She gave him the slightest smile and mouthed a single
word.

  Talk.

  “I don’t have much time.” He took his eyes from Shyl and swept the audience. “None of us does. The foundational systems of the World are breaking down, compressed to the point of fracture.”

  This was not the dignified, eloquent speech he had planned. That had gone out the window when he had shot a man through the neck to get here. He glanced down at the dark stains on his shirt and slapped the voice-amp on the podium down with disdain. He raised his voice as he stepped around the podium and approached the Council.

  “What do you see when you look at me? A disgrace thrown before you, stained with blood and trash?”

  He met Marsetto’s glare head-on as he reached the center of the horseshoe. “I survived! When House Haffset was going to abandon more than fifty Citizens to Outer barbarians, I allowed no waste, the First Virtue. Fidelity, the Third. Unity, the Sixth. And when the Outers stormed our gates, we showed them the Eighteenth Virtue, strength in the face of adversity. Supremacy over the elements and the environment, the Fourth Virtue!”

  He marched in front of them, his pattern describing a rough triangle as he shifted his gaze from one Council member to the next. “When was the last time we pursued victory? No, our true First Virtue, since the time of Lannit, has been false stability.”

  He swept his hand toward the outside world. “You call this city ours? We control nothing here. Twice, the CWA has attempted to take me inside the Cathind shield! You blame me for the riot? If a few words from a single man can ignite the fire, then who is responsible for allowing the fuel to gather? What have we given the People? Every year we retreat further behind our shields, desperately feed the Storm more vita to appease it, crowd our Citizens in tighter and give them no lives, no hope, just synthetic entertainment designed to numb them into torpor!”

  “So the Council should simply endorse your destabilizing rhetoric?” Marsetto asked.

  Seg spun to meet his gaze. “My forces are in the process of seizing Julewa Keep.” A ripple of shock passed through the Council.

  He glanced at Jarin and saw the briefest moment of open surprise on the old man’s face before it faded back into the usual penetrating impassiveness. Seg’s hand, at his side, clenched into a fist of triumph. That moment alone was a victory to take to the grave.

  “Once it has been consolidated and secured, Julewa will provide a treasure trove of salvage, enough to clear my debts and provide enterprise moving forward. Julewa will be a beacon to our People, a signal that the retreat is over. That we no longer hide from our own World.”

  “So, what then? You abandon the cloak of the Theorist to become a businessman? A warlord?” Marsetto asked. His words were venomous, but enough doubt had been sown among the Council that he no longer had the voices of affirmation backing him.

  Seg jabbed his thumb into the Guild pin on his chest. “I stand as a Theorist of the Guild, so long as this body deigns to retain me as such. The Guild holds the power to save the World, if it is willing to become transformative and proactive instead of seeking only to keep the sands of power from slipping through our fingers.”

  Maryel spoke up. “And you would lead this transformation?”

  Seg stopped, his face slipped into a shocked stare before he gathered himself again. “No. The Council leads. I have Julewa, and this.” He rapped the pin again.

  He stepped back from the dais.

  “I don’t have time to sit for this debate and I’ve said what I had to say. You can determine my status among yourselves and what place we will all hold in this future.”

  He nodded to the Council, an earnestly respectful gesture.

  “I have to see to my people.”

  “Your Outers, you mean?” Marsetto said, to his back.

  Seg stopped and turned. In the faces of the Council members, he saw anger, confusion, but also, possibly, understanding.

  “No. My people,” he said.

  Two more dead, five more wounded. Sweat stung Cerd’s eyes behind his visor. Between Wyan’s squad and his own, they were down to nine men. He had shifted his tac display to track Tirnich and his squad, but now Cerd had a feeling that by the time he made it down to the next level, Tirnich would be reinforcing him instead of the other way around.

  Fismar had been correct: the Etiphars had not been as numerous as they had seemed, howling in the darkness. Nevertheless, their surprise assault, in these close quarters, had made for a short, bloody fight that had nearly crippled Cerd’s detachment.

  Elarn shouldered past him and jabbed a finger to one of the wounded men. “You. You can still hold a chack. You’re going to cover us while we start moving people back up.”

  “Yes, Sagio,” the trooper answered.

  Elarn looked up at Cerd. “I’ve got the wounded.” He tapped the chack lying next to him. “The Etis have to come through me to get them.”

  Cerd nodded and waved for Wyan. “Let’s go.”

  Lissil walked the perimeter of the small courtyard—the first empty place she had seen in the city since her arrival. Manatu had babbled something about displacements and renovations abandoned because of the riots, but all she needed to know was that it was an ideal place for the moment to come.

  Manatu had hired a rental trans to take them both to this place in the heart of the city. She had to admit that it was refreshing to be out of the boxy confines of Seg’s residence. Manatu had little information about their new home, only that it would require a long shuttle ride to get there. Once more, she was surprised to feel a flicker of excitement at the thought of a reunion with her employer.

  There was a klup, klup, klup of measured footsteps at the entrance to the courtyard. Lissil abandoned her musings to concentrate on the present moment.

  She lowered into the customary bow—head tilted to one side, neck exposed—at Processor Merz Gressam’s approach. Even in that position, she could see him look left and right, confused at the absence of House Master Soumer Haffset, who had called the private meeting.

  “He’s not coming,” Lissil said. She shook her hair over her shoulders and arched her back slightly.

  Gressam paused his question when Lissil raised her head. “You—You are Theorist Eraranat’s trophy caj. From the Victory Commemoration. What is this?”

  “I have a message for you.” Lissil swayed closer.

  “A message? From House Master Haffset?”

  “From Theorist Eraranat.”

  Gressam looked around once more, then raised a hand to adjust his coat collar, which was already perfectly straight. “My time is not to be trifled with, caj. Theorist Eraranat is dead or lost to the wastes. If this is someone’s idea of a joke—”

  “You defiled the sacred gift of the mother.” Before Gressam could react, Lissil snapped out a question. “Theorist Eraranat wants to know: What is the Seventeenth Virtue of a Citizen?”

  Again, confusion, but not for long. Gressam’s blue eyes shot open a moment before Manatu’s knife pierced his throat.

  “Vengeance.” Lissil answered the question as Gressam dropped to his knees. Blood surged between the fingers of the hand he tried to use to close the gaping wound. Air bubbled from his throat in choking rasps.

  “It’s actually Vengeance for the righteous,” Manatu told Lissil, matter-of-factly. He wiped the blood from his knife on Gressam’s spotless coat.

  “No one is righteous.” Lissil watched Gressam’s dying twitches. Silently, she made the Welf prayer of blood sacrifice as appeasement to the all-seeing mother for Gressam’s transgressions.

  When she was done, she looked over at Manatu with a half smile. He was little more than a bag of walking meat most of the time but he had done a perfect job of hiding and had dispatched Gressam with the ease of a child plucking the leaves off a flower. Now, watching Gressam bleed out—a shocking lake of color on the gray stone—Manatu’s f
ace remained unmoved. Impressive.

  She would have preferred more suffering before death but they were on a schedule and it was imperative, Manatu had explained, that they not risk discovery.

  “Work’s done. Gotta meet the Theorist at the shuttle.” Manatu had paused just long enough to ensure Gressam was dead.

  “We’re not finished,” Lissil said.

  “But—”

  “I told you, Theorist Eraranat’s orders to me were specific.” Those words would work magic on Seg’s faithful dog. She had her own job to do, one more offering of appeasement for the mother god—to the body of the O’scuri who had taken the sacred gift of promised-life from Ama’s body. Besides, she was sure Seg wouldn’t mind.

  Manatu shrugged and sheathed his knife. “Doesn’t bother you?” He nodded to the dead man and the blood.

  “As a child, I was chosen to serve in a Shasir temple. One of my sacred duties was preparing the dead for ascension. I grew up in the temple; I’ve seen hundreds of corpses.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen a few, too.”

  Lissil flashed Manatu a conspiratorial smile and directed him to Gressam’s feet. “Now, we have to give the demon a proper send off.”

  Shan and Ama sat in silence. Occasional pops could be heard in the distance. Beyond that, there was no evidence of the battle being fought so close by.

  Shan, helmet off and leaning back in her seat, kept her eyes on the security monitors directed around the perimeter of the rider. Ama followed her lead but felt uneasy about this casualness. Fismar and the Kenda were deep in the heart of combat; it was wrong to just sit.

  Shan yawned. “This reminds me of the time we were extrans and we lost communications while we were waiting for a scheduled turnaround. Anyway, the karg for brains that …”

  Ama lost the thread of Shan’s story before it had even begun. She trailed her fingers over the book she had tucked safely beside her seat—Seg’s gift and her only connection to him at this moment. No matter how many times Shan had told her to quit it, she kept glancing out the window, hoping. For what? She wasn’t sure but the waiting was killing her.