“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bit curious.”
“We commissioned a vault to be constructed in Earth’s far north, Jan Mayen, an island in the Arctic Ocean.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Most haven’t. It’s a volcanic atoll many kilometers away from the nearest human settlements. It’s a geological anomaly best suited to survive the Post-Industrial Shock, according to our inference engines,” Sayyid explained smugly.
“You’re thinking long term?” Uri raised an eyebrow, sipping the last of his qahwah.
“The First Caliphate of the Prophet Mohammed—Peace be upon Him—lasted for half a millennium. We intend to do the same.”
“I see.” Uri said, tapping his cigarillo into the empty cup. “And I suppose you need someone to deliver these?”
Sayyid smiled back, saying nothing. Uri shrugged noncommittally.
“I suppose if the price is right . . . But why? Trapped on Earth, you won’t get to poke and prod them like the rest of your toys,” Uri motioned in the direction of the scatter of odd machines, troves of recondite endeavor now appreciated by only a few. “Bombs are designed to explode, so why—?”
“While our studies preoccupy us, it’s our archives that truly motivate us. When it comes to Al’ Madina’s mandate, we maintain an objective approach; we try not to judge history. With conquest being humankind’s natural order, and weapons its core technology, much can be culled scientifically from such penultimate doom,” Sayyid explained.
Uri sighed, crossing his arms in thought. “Penultimate? Then what’s the ultimate?”
“The acerbic ghosts of our former industrial world, the byproducts of too much energy consumed too quickly. These—” Sayyid said, petting the warheads like a pair of Rottweilers. “—are just playthings, capable of small but fiery bursts of annihilation. However, their explosive spectacle pales in comparison to the over-heated rot now visited below by less glamorous means.”
Uri nodded, humoring the sheikh.
He mentally predicted Sayyid’s requiem-like reply. The sheikhs’ brand of messianic fatalism provoked such dictums, however hypocritical. Too many years spent in their heavenly kasbahs, they’d grown detached from the ailing Earth. Despite Al Fadah Madina’s monofilament umbilical, the fetus now felt free to judge its placental mother, blasé and absentminded. Sayyid adamantly denied the caliphate was a harsh judge of history, but he could barely conceal the contempt in his voice.
“The mission’s dangerous. Your orbital pods can’t reach the upper latitudes,” Uri said. “I’ll have to escort the payload on world. It’ll be a slog. I want my stipend tripled.”
“I’m sure that can be arranged. Besides this tote, what else did you bring us?”
Uri popped the other container. “Odds and ends.” Uri displayed a magazine of data cartridges. “These are for Sheikh Abdul-Azim. I retrieved them from NIT’s digital libraries in Bhopal. He’d requested an additional database from Srinigar, but there’s plague there now, so . . . ”
“And what about this?” Sayyid said, picking up and limply dropping one of the ejection suit’s arm sleeves.
“Something that wasn’t on the list: a high-temp pressure suit, part of a bomber’s ejection system. Good condition. Thought it might be worth an ingot or two?”
Sayyid pushed out his lower lip with curious ambivalence. The suit wouldn’t get many takers, probably too practical, not esoteric enough for the sheikhdoms’ academic pursuits. A gray economy had emerged among Al’ Madina’s support crew, paramilitaries, and maintenance engineers; he could most likely trade it for a logistical drop, or a weapons upgrade.
“And what about this?” Sayyid lifted a bushy eyebrow and reached in for the mask’s box. Opening it, his eyes brightened. “Who wanted this . . . thing?”
“There was no name on the communiqué routing code, just a number. Its associations are classified.” Uri tried to snatch the box away from Sayyid’s eager hands. “You don’t have a need-to-know, Sayyid. Hand it over. ‘Secret Life of Arabia’ and all that, right?”
“Shame, what is it?”
“Haven’t a clue,” Uri lied. “A cult artifact. I nicked it off some Thuggees in Mumbai.”
He made a mental note to erase the procurement log on his console. Despite all the weeks spent among the Thuggee phansigars, gold was no longer an adequate reward. The mask’s mystery tugged at him like Khyber opium. He decided to keep it.
The sheikh inspected the artifact as Uri reached impatiently for the box. Sayyid had already removed the mask. “Yes, it has an interface technology, neural sequencing, and associative inductive circuits, see?” The sheikh traced the spindly blobs with a manicured finger. Uri stepped closer and backlit a few of the mask’s arms with a utility LED. Sayyid continued to speculate, “It could be an enhancement technology with an integrated alpha-wave distributor, designed for amputees and paralysis victims, something like that. But why the intricate religious symbology?”
“I doubt the Kali Thuggees would be interested in rehabilitation technology. Could it be a player of some sort?” Uri asked, leadingly.
“Possibly,” replied Sayyid, unaware of Uri’s insinuation. “Direct alpha-write systems are a dark art. Morosov never had much success. Alpha interpreters were the norm, expensive and impossible to come by, mostly experimental. I’ve never heard of a ‘personal model,’ “ Sayyid paused thoughtfully, stroking his jet moustache.
“Alkonost dabbled in interpreters, psychological operations and prisoner interrogation. I actually saw a demonstration of the technology once. The subject’s side effects were . . . I guess you could say, ‘severe,’” Uri continued.
“I wonder if Wafiq on Ahmar Manzil requested this? He’s been obsessed with Crimean biologics lately, I—”
“Enough.” Uri finally grabbed the box away from Sayyid. “Archivist’s ethics and all that. You understand, sheikh? I can’t disclose.”
“Of course,” Sayyid said, surprised. “You’re tired. Let’s get you to the guesthouse. Tomorrow we’ll discuss your mission in more detail.”
Uri yawned in agreement.
CHAPTER FOUR
January 2156 C.E.
The hotel stood like a candle on Bicaz’s western edge, waxy ice dripping down its shelled flanks. Sniper fire had chipped away most of the frozen blobs from the roof-walk, leaving a palisade of shattered concrete and rebar. The ice storm continued into its fourth day. Fueled by a Ural cold front, an inversion layer trapped the warmth of the Sahara’s northern rain belts. The structure was the highest point in the valley with a strategic view into the Bicaz Gorge, a claustrophobic chasm that split the Carpathians’ eastern flanks.
Pinned down, Sava took a swig of vodka and handed his flask to his specialist. “Don’t these bastards ever take a day off?”
“If they did, you would have missed this meteorological wonder.”
“What?”
“This,” Mach said, looking up into the sky. “A once-in-a-lifetime ice storm.”
“It could be raining frogs for all I give a shit. Where are those bastards?”
“Carpis are like mosquitoes, comrade, you don’t see or hear them until it’s too late.”
Sava looked out over the sandbag wall. More pops of gunfire. “Goddamn it! I’m sick of this. We’re going to smoke these fuckers out, all right?”
“Fine by me.”
“Any idea where they might be?”
“I spotted tracer fire to the northwest.”
Nova Byzantium’s Moldavan Campaign had stretched into its second year. Provincial diplomats, dispatched to the city of Bicaz, had failed to reason with the Carpiani Alliance, a loose confederation of barbarians determined to fend off the encroaching empire. Under contract, Alkonost managed a fragile beachhead in the valley, with most of their resources dedicated to defending a hydroelectric dam north of the city. Using a hidden traverse, “the Carpis” targeted the facility from the Ceahlau Massif’s highlands. Combat operations focused on cutti
ng off the tribals’ alpine avenues, a challenge even in the best weather. If Bicaz fell, the Province of Moldova would lose its main power plant.
Alkonost’s motives were not entirely mercenary; they had a self-interested stake in ensuring Operation Trajan’s success. Alkanost’s homeland, The Free State of Transnistria and its capital Tiraspol, bordered the province of Moldova along its eastern frontier. Allowing hordes of marauding Carpis to overrun the border and swarm the banks of the Dneister would be bad for business. Alkonost command was adamant that Operation Trajan be Tiraspol’s number one priority, fueling the campaign with blood and largesse. “Bicaz must not fall” became the rallying cry, encouraging the morale of the mercenaries’ zealots.
“Wire a trace sensor to the microwave tower,” Sava ordered, head scrunched into his shoulders like a turtle. “Mach spotted muzzle flash to the northwest.”
“The northwest? You sure?” Sergeant Sklar called, “Mach! Get over here,” Sava’s gangly specialist scurried across the hotel’s icy roof. “Mach, where’re they at?”
“Up under the overhang near some trees . . . I think.”
“You think?” Sklar glared.
“Sergeant Sklar, forget about it. Wire up the sensor, now!” Sava barked.
A squall of freezing rain let loose a cacophony; the forest cracked like gunfire as limbs snapped under the ice’s weight, the woody explosions providing audible camouflage for the Carpis. Sava yelled for the squad to take cover as another hail of bullets peppered the hotel.
Sklar pulled an optical device from his satchel. The sensor bulged with moth-eyes like an insect’s head, contorting light into streaks of black rainbows. He slid over to the hotel’s radio tower, a scaffold dripping with icicles the size of ancient stalactites.
“Hurry!”
Zipping the tie-wire, Sklar toggled the sensor’s power. Its LED failed to glow until he yanked out the battery module, tapped it, and slapped it back into the receptacle.
“Come on!”
“The cuing circuit takes time to reboot. Almost ready,” he shouted. Crimson suddenly squirted from Sklar’s shoulder, the gunshot shattering his scapula.
“Sniper!”
Sklar slumped like a marionette, arm pinioned by his macerated deltoid. Frothy blood gurgled from his lips as he lurched forward, stumbled, and collapsed against the tower. A flailing hand knocked the sensor to life; the blue LED flashed active. Mach and Sava rushed onto the roof and each grabbed one of the sergeant’s boots, pulling him belly-down back to the safety of the sandbags.
“I need his console,” Sava said, fishing through Sklar’s webbing. He found it in a hip pouch and activated the remote. The monochrome screen sparked to life, delivering a grainy image of the mountainside.
“I’m giving him morphine,” Mach said, triaging the sergeant. Blood sputtered from his mouth as his lung collapsed. “We’re going to need medevac.”
Sava ordered Mach to radio for an APC, then went back to tweaking the sensor’s console. An idea came to him. Unbuckling Sklar’s helmet chinstrap, he removed it and balanced it on the butt of his Vepr bullpup. From a kilometer away, no one would be able to tell it was only a helmet propped on an assault rifle.
“Lift it up when I say,” he said, handing his rifle to a nearby recruit.
The midday gloom washed out the tiny screen. Shielding it with his hand, Sava squinted at the grainy image. He waited for the right moment, then nodded. The recruit held his breath and pushed the dummy above the sandbag rampart. Before he could exhale, a bullet whizzed in but missed its mark, the round ricocheting harmlessly away.
“There!” Sava pointed at the screen.
“You got it?” Mach asked, while trying to hold pressure to Sklar’s wound with field dressing.
Sava nodded.
Using strobes, the trace sensor detected micro-displacements in real-time. Tuned to the speed of a bullet, the device gated out ambient clutter, tracking the missile’s trajectory by marking its path with a digitized arc. Another helmet thrust provoked a blitz of sniper fire as pixilated parabolas collected on the wavering screen.
“They’re tucked into that overhang, just underneath the ridgeline,” Sava pointed.
“Good eye. Lurking along the cliff wall like a bunch of nesting wallcreepers, eh?”
Sava ordered spotters to remain behind and recruited a squad to join him on reconnoiter. But first, they had to haul Sklar down to the hotel lobby. Tailbones and elbows bruised and throbbed as the men skidded down the staircase’s icy flume. Each misstep and Sklar crumpled to his knees, his comrades unable to shoulder the deadweight. The throaty yelps were nauseating reminders for them to watch their step. Down in the lobby, they laid the sergeant out on a moldy lounger.
Mach checked his radio. “They’re on their way.”
“How long?” Sava asked, gazing past the debris-filled foyer to street beyond.
“Five minutes.”
Half an hour later the whine of an APC filled the gutted lobby. Sava met the driver, a frightened corporal chauffeuring an even more frightened captain back to the airfield.
“I need to get myself and five men up to the northwest edge of town, about a klick—just a little detour. How about it?” Sava asked, taking cover next to the vehicle’s armored hatch.
“No can do, sir. Not possible. I need to get Captain Zelinski here to his chopper by 18:00 hours. We can take your wounded back to the medics, though.”
“Fine. Mach, you and Krajnik get Sklar loaded. Do you have any ammo?”
“A case of 5.56mm magazines, a few grenades, some depleted uranium 7.62mms, and a rocket or two.”
“Anything else?”
“A med kit and a mule.”
“We’ll take it.”
“But!”
Sava opened the rear hatch and saluted the cringing captain as he and Mach helped themselves to the vehicle’s cache. With a heave, Sava and Mach dragged the collapsed mule out onto the ice. A line of green bars glowed with power, the machine fully primed. Sava unclipped its remote and handed it to Mach.
“Get Sklar loaded.”
Sava plotted their path through Bicaz’s western ruins. Mortar rounds rained down with the storm’s hyper-cooled sleet. The city was a ghost, color and texture erased by curtains of marbled white. Sava lit a smoke flare and led his men through an obstacle course of fallen walls and automobile skeletons. Past the fog, he spotted the city’s collapsed cement factory. Its teetering smokestack offered a rally point, just a sprint from a copse of beech to the splintered forest beyond.
The mule’s pneumatic whir shadowed them as they dodged through the mayhem. The bipedal unit labored under the weight of the team’s gear. Sniper rounds sang from ridge-top aeries, gunning for the automaton but missing. Unlike its human counterparts, the mule’s random sways made getting a bead difficult. With a lucky shot, the mule was susceptible, a single-point design failure minimized by its Brownian cageyness.
The spotters radioed Mach from the hotel. The trace sensor still pinpointed the sniper clutch a thousand feet up under the overhang. Sava snapped the Vepr to his shoulder and peered through the rifle’s scope. Toggling into long-wave infrared, he saw the Carpis’ amoeba-like smudge on the mountainside.
“What’s the plan?” Mach asked.
“I want you, Krajnik, and the mule to head to higher ground, start rolling flash-bangs over their ledge –create a distraction. Dragan, Orel, and I will approach them from the side. Got it?”
Everyone nodded.
Once under the cover of the icicled forest, Mach and Krajnik started up the slick hill. Sava pulled a few more magazines and grenades from the passing mule, dividing the ammo between himself and his two men. Like a drunken savant, the lumbering walker followed Mach, constantly on the verge of toppling but remaining upright.
“Over here.”
Sava led his men to a nearby boulder. Both were greenhorns, Orel boyish and round-faced, Dragan leaner and swarthier. A few service patches would’ve been a comfort, but t
hey’d been recruited from the Pripyat frontier—almost barbarians themselves. Chernobyl’s exclusion zone was well known for toughening recruits’ constitutions.
“I want you two to trail me by ten to twenty meters. Wait for my mark,” Sava ordered, jamming a few more rounds into his rifle clip.
“What’s your mark?” Orel asked.
“You’ll know,” Sava said, patting his weapon.
Both nodded.
They struggled up a deer path, watching their step on the frozen runoff and slick granite. Sava’s lungs burned with each breath of the frigid air. His face stiffened from frost, each breath thawing and refreezing his stubble. Cold was a rare misery. Precious minutes ebbed as the Alkonost mercenaries chipped and stabbed their way upward.
The forest—a snarl of black capillaries entombed in ice—concealed little, but the falling limbs and curtains of sleet scrambled motion, or at least confused it. Perched above the Carpis’ ledge, near a ravine, Sava paused to reorient. He held up a clenched fist, a sign for Dragan and Orel to hold. Sliding on his belly, he crawled down to the bulging roots of a sycamore, a protective nook to prop his Vepr and sight in.
He signaled the recruits to be ready, then radioed Mach to let loose. Phosphorous grenades tumbled over the overhang and exploded like miniature suns. A shadow ducked out and squeezed off three rifle rounds, ricocheting into trees and rocks. One by one, the Carpis crept from the ledge to lay down suppressing fire.
Crouched behind him, Dragan and Orel unleashed enfilade. With the enemy distracted, Sava clenched his aim and buried a salvo of a metal-jacketed lead into a Carpi’s neck. The body flopped and slid off the cliff’s goatee of ice, tumbling to the valley floor. Bracing for a full assault, Sava was surprised when a plume of blue-white smoke billowed up from the ledge.
“Where are they?”
“They’re escaping,” Sava yelled.
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