by Dan Schiro
“Why would one walk on cake?” Kangor asked as the wrinkly Cane Corso stood, stretched, yawned and farted.
“I take it you have something in mind,” said Aurelia, rolling her eyes at Kangor’s confusion and wrinkling her nose at the smell filling the room. “Where are we going?”
“Corvis Stoat,” said Orion. “The body of the assassin who took a shot at Zovaco is still in a freezer there.”
“So?” Aurelia narrowed her brassy eyes. “I’m sure you can have the forensic reports sent over.”
“What’s dead is dead.” Kangor swigged his wine and belched. “Best not to waste time covering ground that’s been covered, little friend.”
“Sounds like a typical vycart proverb — durable and old.” Orion flexed his right hand unconsciously, the whispering metal eager for use. “But even old truths don’t stand up to a spellblade. I mean to interrogate the shooter, and I don’t plan on the absence of life stopping me.”
Chapter 10
They rode through the folded fabric of space in Orion’s ExAstra Mark III dropship, passing a few hours listening to durok opera-thrash and playing table tarzzak. Then Orion shut down the ExAstra’s manacite drive and pulled out of the ether route. Though the stingray-shaped craft cost him a handful of pretty pennies every standard month, he considered the sleek ship worth the 19 payments he had left. On top of pulse cannons and excellent dogfighting capabilities, Orion thought the gunmetal gray hull with the red A-within-O design looked as sharp as anything sailing the stars.
“Come now, Orion — do you truly think you’ll be able to do it?” Aurelia asked. She sat on the crash couches across from Kangor in the cramped cabin, the table tarzzak’s anti-gravity board between them on a crate of Ogga Food instameals. With a flick of her finger, Aurelia sent a tiny glowing orb bouncing through the floating bumpers and hit Kangor’s goal. “Our time might be better spent exploring other avenues.”
“Agreed.” Kangor flicked a glowing orb back through the bumpers but missed. “It seems… unnatural, too.”
“Stop being so lazy and delicate, respectively,” Orion said. He sat in front of them, at the head of the oval-shaped cabin in a bolted-down captain’s chair. A half-circle control dash curved in front of him, and Bully sat silently at Orion’s side. “Now, if you two would both be so kind as to shut up and strap in, we can land.”
Orion touched a few buttons on the control dash, and the large, curved viewscreen in front of him filled with an image of Corvis Stoat. The snowy planet grew larger by the moment as they soared toward it. As Aurelia Deon and Kangor Kash buckled their crash couch harnesses, the three of them stared up at the cream-streaked orb.
“Never been to Crovis Stoat,” Kangor said, almost to himself.
“Corvis,” Aurelia enunciated. “And neither have I.” She shrugged and tightened her harness. “But why would I have been? What’s its reason to be?” she called to Orion. “Some overgrown trading post? How dull.”
Concentrating on his landing procedure, Orion shook his head without looking back at her. “First colonized in a joint effort by the great apes and the temba nubu, for minerals, I think. Lots of mystskyns came later for the cold-weather flower farming.”
Aurelia lit up at this. “Ah, I have heard of it.” Her eyes narrowed as she seemed to dredge centuries of memories. “A lover used to bring me Stoat ice orchids.” Again, she shrugged. “Really, the only thing special about them was the price. Exorbitant.”
Orion took the ExAstra in through the thick, frosty clouds and arced above the shifting ice of a great ocean. They soared inland over a grey continent, slowing as they descended toward snowy foothills. At last they saw the capital city, White Pax, where someone had attempted to assassinate Zovaco Ralli just a week prior. The tight-packed, up-thrust city dominated a half-dozen small hills, and the low-land fields around the hills sparkled with lavender rows of ice orchids. After radioing ahead to rent a landing pad, Orion took his red-stamped stingray down into an ice-glazed city of solid gray stone.
The three of them and Bully walked down the ExAstra’s ramp into a frigid environment, not that the temperature mattered much to them. Aurelia had her radiating emerald energy to keep her warm, despite the fact that she wore nothing but a silky purple wrap. Kangor could adapt to the cold, thickening his hide and sprouting thick tufts of fur to fill the gaps in his brown leather garb. Orion had his smartcloak, and the blue-gray shroud started converting stored solar energy into heat as soon as it read the atmospheric conditions. As for Bully, the great mountain of dog merely unfurled his long tongue with a yawn and trudged down into the snow snorting frosty breath.
With his feet on solid ground, Orion squinted up at the overcast sky and took a deep lungful of the fresh, bracing air, trying to absorb the world’s intangibles for a moment. Then he tossed his datacube up and summoned an aircab. They flew west above hoary old Accordia Square and cruised over the Common Market where restaurant and shop windows steamed against the cold. Everywhere natives bustled through snowy streets with practiced steps, and mammoth-like beasts of burden towed large carts of lavender ice orchid blossoms. After a few minutes, they reached the narrow lanes of the Judicial District and landed not far from the city morgue. The non-descript box of solid, old stone sat at the back of a short alley between two larger, equally functional administrative buildings.
“So, you’re really going to do this?” Aurelia asked Orion as they approached the door. “I mean, you’re really going to try?”
Kangor nodded, the claws of his bare feet crunching through the snow. “Raising the dead is a heavy weight to lift… even for one such as you. No shame in backing out, little friend.”
“I’m not backing out.” Orion flexed his right hand, his mouth drawing a tight smirk. “And if I do fail, it won’t be because of too much positive reinforcement.”
He pushed open the door and led his team into the warmth, Bully bringing up the rear. After a glass-and-steel security vestibule, they came to a temba nubu sitting at a desk behind a diamond-glass window. He had sleepy hazel cat eyes and black fur haphazardly tipped and striped with white.
“Uh, can I help you?” He slinked off his stool and grabbed his datacube out of the air, extinguishing the rather lewd hologram it had been projecting. “I, uh…” He scratched his chin, his wide eyes darting from Orion to Kangor to Aurelia. “This is the morgue. You know that, right?”
Orion nodded, smiling affably. “Good, we’re in the right place. I’m Orion Grimslade III, and my associates and I are here representing Zovaco Ralli.”
The temba nubu stood up a little straighter, smoothing his gray jumpsuit. “Yeah, oh, yeah, I got the message… the authorization, whatever.” A dopey smile tugged at the edges of his feline face. “Forgot you were coming by today.” He hit a button at his desk, sounding a buzzer as the thick door next to his window popped open. “I’m Gulu, um… Gulu the First,” he said with a chuckle as he waved them through.
Orion was a little surprised — he expected the attendant to at least ask for some identification, or perhaps question Orion’s intent to bring his dog back to the cold storage unit, but Gulu seemed to take a more relaxed approach to his job. They followed Gulu past the autopsy rooms to a large door that opened with a pneumatic hiss when the temba nubu turned the handle. He touched a wall panel inside the square room to bring up the small glowglobes hovering in the corners and led Orion and his crew inside.
“The unidentified mystskyn male, right?” Gulu went to the wall and took hold of a steel rung, his breath puffing out in a frozen mist. “The one who tried to pop the politician?”
Orion felt his smartcloak come to life again, a comfortable blanket of heat in the freezer. “That’s the one,” he said with a curt nod.
Gulu pulled out the slab to reveal a body covered with a white sheet. “Well, here he is, though I don’t know what you expect to find. Local brass couldn’t turn up a trace of thi
s guy on the datasphere — bio-scans, facial rec, nothing.” Gulu stepped aside, walking back to the door and leaning against the wall.
“Thank you, Gulu, you’ve been very helpful,” Orion said. He shot the mortician a quick, friendly look. “And if you wouldn’t mind, it would probably be best if we examined the body alone.”
“Technically, that’s against morgue policy,” Gulu snorted, eyeing Orion with a sly glare. “Technically. But, depending on what you’ve got in mind… maybe we could work something out.”
Aurelia Deon’s eyes lit with green light that startled Gulu out of his slouch. “What are you suggesting, little man?” she snapped. “What is it you dare to imply?”
Gulu raised his hands. “Hey, hey, I’m not saying anything. It’s just, I’ve worked here a long time.” He opened his mouth, closed it, reneged on his better judgment and spoke. “I’m sure we could negotiate a little alone time…” He offered a thumb-and-finger rubbing motion with his hand.
“This is most distasteful,” Kangor fumed, shaking his head.
“Who cares, right?” Gulu blurted with an emphatic gesture toward the slab. “He’s some scumbag, tried to kill a great man, right?”
Orion felt his comrades looking to him for action, and Orion looked to his dog. “Bully,” he said, scratching the dog’s dark head. “Intimidate.”
The sad-eyed dog transformed at the command, growling at Gulu with his dripping lips curled. The genetically engineered Cane Corso tensed and started toward Gulu with tiny white plumes puffing from his nose. For a moment the mortician froze, his white-tipped black fur standing on end. Then he spun and disappeared through the door with a yelp, leaving the AlphaOmega team alone in the cold storage room.
“Sick son of a stray,” Orion muttered as he went to the slab and pulled back the sheet. The naked reptilian humanoid beneath had two blackened holes in his chest, pulse bolt burns to his tail, and bolt scoring that cut a black gorge through the coxcomb on his head. He had no tattoos at a glance, no piercings either, just a couple of old scars. Or was that a scar over his left breast? Orion leaned closer, a hand clamped tight over his nose and mouth, and saw that it wasn’t a clean cut. In fact, the fine scales looked almost sanded off. He tucked the observation away for later and stepped back.
“You ready?” Aurelia asked, her hands on her hips.
Orion flexed his right hand, the silver tattoo on his wrist tingling. “We’ll see.”
He took a deep breath and let the liquid metal bubble out. The spiked gauntlet manifested, still glowing with the faint red fissures of lingering life force absorbed from the wild stagnar. Animals didn’t provide nearly as much blood magic as sentient beings, though Crag Dur Rokis Crag had never explained why that was, if the old durok even knew. Still, Orion hoped it would be enough since he didn’t need to bring the corpse to life in any permanent way. He just needed to give the dead brain a spark, just enough that he could speak for a few minutes.
Considering his next word carefully, Orion raised his silver-swathed hand and clenched it into a fist. “Reanimate.”
The ancient metal flashed, and the scaly green body jerked as if electrocuted. For a few seconds the corpse seized wildly, growling and sputtering obscenities. Then the jolt seemed to wane, the mouth fell quiet, and the body slowed to just a few gentle stirrings in the limbs.
“No,” Orion said, hurriedly pushing back his left sleeve. “Not enough juice, not nearly enough juice.” When his forearm was bare, Orion conjured a silver knife in his right hand. He knew using his own blood was foolish, he knew it would take years off the end of his life, Crag had explained that much in detail. Yet this was his only chance to cast a reanimation spell with the Blade of the Word, and he didn’t see any other option.
“Orion, what are you doing?” Aurelia said, reaching toward him.
“Little friend,” barked Kangor. “Don’t.”
“One shot, gotta make it work.” Orion gritted his teeth and pressed the knife to his naked arm. Blood flowed bright and red. Bully whined with the innocent distress of a devoted pet, and the veins of Orion’s spellblade glowed hotter. As crimson drops pattered to the floor, the assassin jerked back to life and sat up. Though the drawbacks were considerable, sacrificing one’s own blood made for powerful spell-casting.
“What in the… name of the Kalifa?” the mystskyn slurred, only half of his mouth working properly. “They shot me… I think they… shot me.” His right arm and leg dangled limp thanks to the pulse bolt that had carved into the left side of his head, and he looked around with unfocused, unseeing eyes. “Those Union bastards… shot me,” he wheezed as he touched his left hand to the charred holes in his chest.
“Don’t worry about that right now,” Orion said in a soothing voice. “What’s your name, friend?”
The mystskyn looked in the direction of his voice, but his eyes never seemed to lock in. “Caska. Caska, son of… huh.” He tilted his head, seemingly puzzled that he couldn’t remember his full name. “Where am I?”
Orion didn’t know how long he could power the spell, but he still wanted to tread carefully. “Where do you think you are?”
Caska touched his blackened head wound absentmindedly. “I was promised the light eternal.” His head swiveled slowly, cloudy yellow eyes jittering. “But all I see is darkness.”
Orion glanced at Aurelia Deon, and her raised eyebrows told him she was thinking the same thing — that sounded like Dawnstar talk. “Caska,” Orion said as he took a step closer, “why did you try to kill Zovaco Ralli?”
“Was that his name?” Caska shook his head. “It does not matter. It was the next step on the path.”
Orion exchanged a nod with Aurelia. “Caska, who—”
“Where am I?” Caska said, growing frightened. “What’s going on, who… who are you?”
“You’re in the waiting room, honey,” Aurelia said sweetly. “We just need to ask you a few questions before we can let you into the light, to join all those who walk the Luminous Path.”
Half of Caska’s short-snouted face smiled hopefully. “Will the light envelop me?”
“Oh, you’ll feel the light in every fiber of your being.” Aurelia’s lips twisted with a cruel smile. “Then you’ll party with the Kalifas for eternity.”
Kangor cringed, shaking his head. “This is unnerving. Unnatural.”
Orion shot Aurelia a glance and shook his head. She had gone far enough. “Caska, who sent you to kill Zovaco Ralli?”
Caska smiled broadly, showing slowly rotting teeth. “The Kalifa of Light. The light flows from the Prophet to the Kalifa to me, and the path is served.”
“The Kalifa himself?” Orion’s voice came out more eager than he’d hoped. The Union had been searching for the terrorist leader for well over a decade, ever since he had bombed the trade summit on Konnexus. “Where did you meet him? This is very important, Caska. Where is the Kalifa?”
“I’ve never been blessed to meet the Kalifa.” Caska shook his head, a jagged, lolling motion. “The light flowed through many servants of the path before it reached me, but the orders were pure.” He paused for a moment. “My commander — Rahjal — he received the light and sent me across the stars to take the next step on the path.”
A link in the chain would have to do, Orion thought. “Good, good, Rahjal. Rahjal who?"
Caska shook his head, confused and struggling to remember. “I think… Dee… Deepatra.”
A small puddle of blood had gathered at Orion’s feet, and he felt faint. “Where is he? How can I find him?”
“I… I don’t remember.” Caska’s left arm seized and stiffened. “I don’t remember where I was before… here.”
“Where is Rahjal, Caska?” Orion shouted. He staggered as he slipped in his own blood. “You need to tell us if you want to go into the light, Caska!”
“Orion, enough,” said Aurelia. Bully added a pain
ed whine and butted his head into Orion’s hip.
Kangor came to Orion’s side, towering over him. “We have all we’ll get from this ghoul, little friend.” Gently, the big vycart pulled the blade away from Orion’s blood-drenched forearm. “Let him go back to hell.”
Orion called the silver knife back into his gauntlet, and the spell sparking the damaged Dawnstar assassin faded. As the gasping, shaking body fell back to the slab, Aurelia rushed in and clamped a strip of her own silks over Orion’s wound. “Amazing.” She looked up at him with her brassy eyes. “And reckless.”
“You fuss over me like a mother,” Orion chuckled dizzily. “Hard to remember you’ve been a mother for literally thousands of years.”
Kangor clamped a heavy hand down on his shoulder. “This is not a time for jokes.” He glanced down at the blood-soaked ribbon of fabric Aurelia held to his arm. “You’ve damaged your puny human body.”
Orion shook his head, letting himself feel the pain to focus his mind. “I know my limits.” The gauntlet disappeared back into the silver glyph on his wrist, and he used his right hand to dig into the pockets of his smartcloak. When he found his emergency consulin packet, he quickly tore it open with his teeth and looked at Aurelia. She pulled the makeshift bandage away, and Orion sprinkled the pale orange dust liberally over the deep cut on his forearm.
The powdered consulin sizzled, and Aurelia and Kangor laid their hands on Orion to steady him while he suppressed a scream. After a few moments, the white-hot pain ebbed to a dull ache. Bully head-butted him again, and Orion slapped the dog softly about the jowls. “I’m okay, boy. I’m okay.”
Aurelia took his arm and looked down at the thick, red scar the consulin had knit together. “Rub a couple of applications of consu-gel on that, and your fine human flesh will be as smooth as ever.”