“What makes you say that?”
“I’ve looked into this guy, and you’re better off forgetting whatever plan you have.”
“Gee, thanks,” she said, smiling. “You’re really a master of the good old pep talk. I feel full of good vibes already.”
“He’s forty centimeters taller than you.”
“Guns don’t care how big you are. That’s the great thing about guns, they make all men and women equal. Mikhail Kalashnikov was history’s ultimate communist.”
“But my main concern is this: he’s a natural killer, and you’re not. If you go up against him, you die. I’m sorry, but I really don’t think there’s anything left that I can say.”
“Thanks for looking out for me,” Ubra said. “But you’re wrong. He’s not a natural anything – Black Shift made him his way. Meanwhile, I’m a mother, and he endangered my baby. I’m like the Platonic ideal of a natural killer. Wish me luck. One way or another, I’m going to Venus.”
He sighed ruefully as she departed into the dust-choked streets.
She had courage.
He thought of his other employer, and was ashamed of what he had to do now.
He was the man in the middle. And the small time criminals he dealt with never thought that there might be someone on the other side of their conversations.
He started making a call to Mars.
It was for Ubra’s own good that she’d be arrested, really.
Valashabad, Mars – June 28, 2143, 0800 hours
Saldeen Zana bumped into Raya Yithdras at the Valashabad Spaceport.
“Something you should know.”
“Go.”
“Since the war began, we’ve been sowing deep agents among the Terran populace. People with no set goals, except to stay alert, and be ready. You remember this, right?”
“Of course. I gave the order myself.”
“In Neo Los Angeles, we have infiltrated a supposed underground commune. It’s a hotspot for lawbreakers and rebels. Our man has been collecting information for weeks, and he’s just learned something very interesting: the location of Andrei Kazmer.”
“What?” Raya was suddenly all ears.
Another series of earthquakes had rocked Terrus that morning. The Himayalas had now erupted as active volcanoes, for the first time in millions of years. The death toll, when finally tabulated, would be incalculable.
I come from a planet of earthquakes, the man in the video had said.
This added a few extra exclamation points to the need to find him.
“A purported member of the constabulary called Ubra Zolot arrived, and said she was trying to track a perp of Kazmer’s name and description. None of it made much sense. Our guy had no idea who Andrei Kazmer even was, and didn’t seriously try to find him. But this woman was obsessed. She kept on pestering, getting him to run new searches of public databases, crack into more stuff, leave no stone unturned.”
“And our man found him?” Raya said.
“Yes. He’s on Venus.”
“None of our searches found any leads on Kazmer. You’re telling me that some cockroach on Terrus has better sources than we do?”
“Apparently, he used
“Bingo. You got it. A few weeks ago person identified as ‘Aaron Wake’ stepped on board a Dravidian bound for Venus. And Zolot insists that this is a pseudonym for Andrei Kazmer.”
“How did he pass the security checks with a fake name?”
“There weren’t any. This was immediately after the war ended but before the occupation began. All their systems were down, and all sorts of people slipped through the cracks. If he had money – and considering Kazmer was in the employ of the Solar Arm, money wouldn’t have been an issue for him – he basically could have wandered into any spaceport and gone anywhere.”
Raya’s heartbeat thudded with excitement. “And he’s still there?”
“Oh, it just gets better and better,” Saldeen said. “We tracked the Dravidian he was on, when it left, and when it arrived. It disembarked at Zephyr City, and from there it was just a matter of requesting by official warrant the security records for various buildings. I’ve had a team of data analysts bashing their heads at this around the clock. Finally, we have it: an image of the elusive Andrei Kazmer.”
She tapped the cuff of her suit, and projected a hologram into the empty space before them. The neon hues resolved into a picture of two figures.
A man.
A boy.
The man was very tall, with a severe haircut and a military type gait. The boy was small, and seemed to be blond. Against the brightness of the Venusian day, it was difficult to tell any hair shade apart from any other. Everything was just a refulgent glow of white.
They were lounging against a wall somewhere. There was a metal platform at their feet, and a view off the platform revealed a sea of cloud beneath.
Something about the way their bodies were angled said friends.
Raya could hardly believe it.
It was clearly Andrei Kazmer. In the video he’d been purple, but that could have been a makeup job. His build, his height, his facial features. It was nothing less than match after match.
“Saldeen, you are a wonder,” she breathed.
“Thank Ubra Zolot, not me. Also, I think there’s something you’re missing.”
“Is there?”
“Yeah. Look at the boy. Have we seen him anywhere before?”
She looked at the boy, and thought she hadn’t. But there was just a faint spike of remembrance that persuaded her to keep looking.
His hair might have been blond.
He was about eleven or twelve.
He was…
“You’re looking at Vante, the murderer of Emil Gokla,” Saldeen said.
“You’re kidding.”
“I’m not. I pulled some files on him, and he’s an undocumented worker going under an assumed name. He arrived within a few days of Gokla’s passing. The timing is suspicious, as is the physical similarity. And what’s the connection between him and Andrei Kazmer, a known pawn of Sarkoth and later Sybar? Didn’t we always tell people that Vante was an assassin working for the Solar Arm?”
Raya just couldn’t believe it. The sheer luck… “So we told a lie that turned out to be the truth.”
“Well, I’m waiting for orders,” Saldeen said. “They’re still on Zephyr city. I suggest striking while the iron is hot.”
“Get the Sons together,” Raya said. “All of them. The Razormen, too. Requisition a Dravidian, and grant it a special clearance permit. Then get to Venus, and take them both alive. Tell them that it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity – given the travel restrictions, they’ll have the spacelanes all to themselves!”
“Are we able to stop off at Terrus? It’d be good to have Ubra with us. She knows better than us his habits and behavior.”
“Yes, of course.” Raya was giddy with excitement. “Capture all three, and bring them back here. I can trust you with this responsibility?”
“It’s so easy I’m almost insulted.”
Los Neo Angeles – June 28, 2143, 1200 hours
The city during the day was barely alive. Huddled masses passed through the street, illuminating Neo Los Angeles with a faint flicker of movement. A cadaver on a slab sometimes moves when you run current through it, too.
At night, it was impossible to keep the illusion alive. The city was a corpse. It had died.
The hundreds of buildings destroyed by the bombing and earthquakes still hadn't been repaired. They existed as ruined shells, insect carapaces with the insect inside long since decayed. Occasionally, struts and supports of steel jutted into the air, like bones gleaming in a ribcage.
Every roadblock was like a calcium deposit, blocking a vein. A curfew was still in place, but sloppily enforced. You could still see people going about their business, sticking to the shadows, hoping by luck and by art to avoid guard patrols.
Ubra was one of them.
Decisiveness fu
eled her.
She now had a new objective. To get to Venus as swiftly as possible, put a bullet in Andrei Kazmer's head, then retrieve Yalin and disappear from society.
Fog swirled from the gutters. By the light of the neon lamps overhead, she caught side of some figures up ahead, resolving themselves out of the gloom.
Normally people in atomised Neo Los Angeles stuck to groups of two or three. Or one. The loneliest number, but also the safest.
Here were six people walking together, spanning the entire street.
She lowered her head, deciding to just push through them.
She noticed a bit too late for comfort when she saw the light glitter off the police badges.
"Stop. Identify yourself."
She decided to keep walking. A mistake.
As she attempted to brush through the group of men, they seized her, putting hands on her, and forcing her to her knees.
"I gave you a lawful order," the chief among them said. "There's a charge called 'resisting arrest', and we can nail you with it even if you were just walking down the street to buy flowers. Now identify yourself."
Rough, calloused fingers lifted her chin up, and she found herself staring into the face of a lawman. A real one. She immediately felt like a fraud.
“Sergeant Ubra Zolot. 31st Precinct Constabulary,” she told him, trying to sound authoritative.
Curiously, they didn’t even seem to be listening to her answer.
“Yep, this is her,” a woman said.
“You’re sure?” the man said. “I don’t want to waste time with another false positive.”
Light flashed out over her face, making her blink. The man put a handheld device back in his pocket. “Facial match, to within 99% accuracy.”
He grinned. “You’re under arrest.”
Ubra blanched. “What for?”
“At the moment, for impersonation of a police officer. We’ll add other things as we think of them. Now come with us. Resist, and the handcuffs go on.”
They led her down the street, and escorted her to the back of a maglev van which hummed and swayed a few centimeters above the ground.
She caught a final glimpse of the dilapidated building, standing out in a row of crumbling structures like just one more tooth in a mouthful of rot.
They’d been looking for her.
She’d been rumbled.
Rose, this had better not be you, she thought. But Rose was cowed, scared, and not overly bright.
Perhaps it was the other one. The girlfriend, Yves Gullveig. The one who had tried to throw her out of the apartment and then had spent long minutes scowling at the floor.
She and I have an unpleasant conversation coming up in the near future.
“Take her away,” the man said.
“To the station?” The woman asked.
“No. To the spaceport.”
“Why the hell is she going there? Don’t we have to book her and stuff?”
The man made a mouth-zipping-shut movement. “I can explain later. For the moment, let’s just say this arrest is a bit more political than most.”
Ubra, listening to the confusing conversation deciding her fate, couldn’t help but ask, “so, I don’t suppose it changes anything if I told you I have a dependent? A baby only a few weeks old?”
“Doesn’t change jack shit, sister.” The officer told her. “For the record, we know about your baby. She’s with Rose Rohilian and Yves Gullveig. At the moment, she’s not our concern.”
“Did one of them turn me in?”
“No,” the man spat on the van floor. “For your information, it was a supposed clockmaker called Moritz Edel. Relax – from what I’ve heard you’re worse than guilty, you’re useful.”
Then the door slammed shut, and the van started moving.
Ubra was a morsel of food in a vast digestive system.
They took her to Neo Los Angeles Spaceport, and she was booked on to a space flight. There, she met the Sons of the Vanitar for the first time.
Little by little, it was becoming clear that she wasn’t the only person that Andrei Kazmer was drawing to him like flies to stench.
His activities had given him a sky full of enemies.
They were going to Venus, and she with them. They might run into difficulties finding Kazmer, and Ubra could alleviate those difficulties. She knew in detail his physical appearance, his voice, his personality. Not that they planned on having a long relationship with the man. They only wanted to
She was secured in the cargo hold of a Dravidian, watched over by fifteen or so metal-imbued beings that the Sons of the Vanitar referred to as Razormen.
She wasn’t supposed to refer to anyone as anything.
She wasn’t supposed to talk at all, until they’d landed on Venus and had picked up the scent for their prey.
She was starting to suspect that they lumped her and Andrei Kazmer into the same category, but she put such thoughts from her mind.
She had a ride to Venus.
Their pilot found it an unusual trip for many reasons.
The spacelanes were theirs, and theirs alone. With everyone else grounded and unable to enter space, they flew, arrowing towards the second planet in the solar system. Unusual for the lack of ingress checks, and need to authenticate himself along every pathway. Normally you had to be extremely aware of other objects in motion in the solar system, to avoid the nightmare scenario of two ships using the same lane at the same time.
This time, it had been just a single fast acceleration out of the Martian gravity well, a stopover on Terrus, and then a high-velocity cruise to straight to Venus.
Unusual for the passengers. Eight minor level functionaries with impossibly broad backgrounds and occupations. Nolund Esper, a neuroscientist from Neptune. Saldeen Zana, a sociology grad student whose meteoric rise was happening too fast for it to be due to talent alone. Hellven Xai, a civilian with flat pug-like features and seemingly no specialised education at all.
Plus the fifteen or so eerie living sentinels, moving in the cargo hold like spring traps made of masks, body armor, and spikes. Bodyguards, it was said. Elite supersoldiers.
And then the prisoner. A short woman in her early twenties, showing signs of a very recent pregnancy.
It was a very strange trip. He wasn't paid to ask questions, but the temptation to ask one was very strong.
He motionless armored humanoid beside him made him think better of it, especially when a hand drifted to touch his harm, and a blade lazily extended from it.
I am the metal. They are the flesh.
The Razorman called B-31 left the cockpit, and went to the back room, where the MASTERS sat.
It had been twenty hours since it had last eaten, but it felt no hunger. Just a mildly detached feeling that it was an engine running low on fuel.
It would consume some dextrose waxy maize before landing, as well as some glycogen loaders and protein shakes. Two thousand calories, balanced perfectly.
It knew its digestive system as though it was an engine that it had spent countless time assembling, welding molecule to molecule instead of installing pistons and gearshifters. The energy from the sustenance would hit its bloodstream within two hours, raising its glucose to 130 mg/dl.
Two hours was the terminus of their journey. When they arrived, it would be full of energy, and ready for battle.
The other fourteen Razormen were in similar stages of preparation. Sharpening the biokinetic blades embedded in their bodies. Loosening their muscles.
They were stalking extremely dangerous prey. They had no doubts in their ability to take Andrei Kazmer down. Any one of them would be a match for him. But they needed to take him alive, and that complicated matters.
“Who the hell are you weirdos?” the recently pregnant woman asked from her restraints.
B-31 gave her a quick glance, then looked away.
They didn't care about her name. They didn't care about why she was here. They certainly didn't care about whether she
survived this expedition.
The world divided cleanly into MASTER and NOT-MASTER. This woman was a NOT-MASTER, and that was enough.
B-31 picked up a hard piece of wood. Some random piece of detritus that might have been part of a packing crate.
It threw it in the air.
Then extended the blades built into its surgically reconstructed arms, feeling the excitement and endorphins wired into its system at this initiation of violence, and destroyed it in the air.
No, destruction was the wrong word entirely.
What happened to the piece of wood was art.
A lateral stroke cut it in half, hissing fast enough to leave the wood smoking.
Two bilateral strikes split the flying wood pieces again. It was now four pieces, each of them cut surgically precise and exactly equal in size.
It jumped, double-kicked, and spiked two falling pieces with blades built into the bone spurs of its feet. The one on the left shattered, exploding into splinters. The one on the right was merely broken in half. More by the force of the kick than anything.
B-31 felt a stab of irritation. It would need to sharpen that blade.
None of the MASTERS looked. They appreciated that their property was keeping itself in fighting condition.
And it was less messy than when they did this to people.
B-31 retracted its blades, feeling momentary regret that there was nothing more. The same regret that hung over it for every single second that it lived and was not embedding itself in an enemy.
Once, it had been something different. It had little space in its neocortex for the past, and in fact, there wasn't any past to remember.
Just a vague impression of immense pain.
In the brief moments when it slept, it had dreams. Visions of past brutality, but occasionally there were flashes from behind the veil, of whatever creature it had been before.
Dreams of doing things that had nothing to do with serving the MASTERS.
It’s like reaching into thick mud, and your hand keeps closing on something solid, something just out of reach…
“I don't see why you guys are keeping me prisoner,” the NOT MASTER said.
Foreverlight (The Consilience War Book 4) Page 11