“Archivist Uri, it is a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” Kaliq nervously offered a vigorous two-handed shake, his accent thick.
Uri smirked.
Archivists were minor celebrities in the orbital city. Unable to mingle with the funk and grit of the Earth’s upheaval themselves, it provoked taboo, especially among Al’ Madina’s younger men. Sayyid pushed past the youths impatiently and ducked under loops of coolant hose and power cable. Beyond the corrugated web, two white canisters sat atop a plinth. Kaliq slid on a hooded shield and checked the cylindroids.
“Ten percent above background—some alpha . . . beta is stable,” Kaliq said, removing his hood.
“So these are the Left and the Right Wing of the Apocalypse, ‘Zliva’ and ‘Pravo’ . . . retrofitted, new and improved.” Uri crossed his arms and admired Al’ Madina’s handiwork.
“Kaliq, show him,” Sayyid said.
The youth extracted an aluminum tube from a cryogenic cooler with a pair of tongs. He hovered the source over the nuclear pair. An idle hiss swelled into a roaring static that swamped the Geiger’s tinny speakers.
“Is this safe?” Uri asked.
Sayyid said nothing, gesturing for Uri to pay attention.
The two containers uncoiled in a mechanical burst, exposing their radioactive cores. Five sinuous vanes protruded from pneumatic spokes, each a sub-compartment holding a partition of heavy metal. The transformed cylinders looked like graphite water wheels, their axle a mesh of automated clockwork.
“There’s an inner anthracene scintillator that triggers an optical safety switch when a cascade event is imminent—” Sayyid started to explain.
“What’s a ‘cascade event’?” Uri interrupted.
“A meltdown,” Kaliq explained, agitating Sayyid.
“As I was saying, when an event is imminent, the fissile geometry alters itself. A sudden density change that quickly ‘cools’ the enriched uranium,” Sayyid continued.
Kaliq dumped the source back into the sublimating dewar. The nuclear roar receded, the Geiger counter’s “clicks” reduced to a dribble. With a flip of a switch, the containers’ hydraulics retracted to their original configuration. Kaliq loaded the devices into a large duffel bag and motioned for Uri to feel the weight.
“Together they’re forty kilos, but remember, gravity’s less in the toroid.”
Uri climbed into the shoulder strap and heaved the load off the plinth. “Still a bit heavy. This, with my weapons kit and gear . . . ” Uri paused. “Just beware, if someone really wants this, they’re going to get it from me. If I’m on the run, I won’t let this slow me down.”
“We understand. Risk is part of the business,” Sayyid said, stroking his moustache. “If such an eventuality occurs, your stipend will be forfeited and your contract terminated, understand?”
“I think that goes without saying.”
“All right, onward . . . time to discuss the mission dossier.”
In the lab’s briefing room, Uri reclined in an armchair and waited for the hologram. A topographic world map, minus the meteorological gray-green swirls, filled the far wall. A disembodied glove hovered, spun, and expanded the ethereal globe. Uri lit a cigarillo and settled in, ignoring Sayyid’s protesting stares.
“The pod’s latitudinal limit is forty degrees north-south, which puts the drop zone west of Nova Byzantium’s Aegean frontier.” Sayyid highlighted a peninsula in Central Macedonia. “Upon payload retrieval, Miriam—an Al’ Madina agent—will transport you to Constantinople. There, a chartered Alkonost Antonov will fly you both to Jan Mayen with the consignment.”
“The both of us? I work alone, Sayyid. And if I did require partner, it wouldn’t be a woman,” Uri protested, exhaling a plume of smoke into the projector’s holographic matrix.
“A barbarian notion,” Sayyid replied.
“No,” Uri argued. “Females are just too hard to protect, especially outside the imperial frontier. Too much hassle. And need I remind you about barbarian notions here in the sheikhdom? Harems hawked and swapped for trinkets and salvage, females nothing but genetic material sequestered and sequenced in Al’ Madina’s attics. I know what goes on here,” Uri argued, annoyed.
“Enough!” Sayyid yelled. “You will work with Miriam, or your contract will be canceled.”
Uri opened his mouth but said nothing, smashing out his cigarillo in a decorative plate with a clenched fist.
“Miriam is a top geophysicist and is an extremely capable fixer, especially inside the empire. Her connections with Norsk-Statoil are an invaluable asset. And she’s well aware of the political situation.”
“The political situation?”
“Yes, the caliphate’s relationship with Constantinople has soured. We’ve claimed salvage rights to Old Palestine and Southern Assyria, territories under Nova Byzantium’s protectorate. Our Salafist brothers are fighting by proxy against an Alkonost division in Al Quds,” Sayyid explained.
Uri nodded, eyes widened in mock shock. The same old blood, jingoism, and hegemony in the Holy Land; no one there had taken a day off since Jacob and Esau fought in Rebekah’s womb.
Sayyid continued, “Bringing an Al’ Madina warhead into Constantinople proper would be viewed as a terrorist act. This is a fragile operation. It . . . just looks bad. You understand?”
“Bad, indeed.”
“So will you agree to this, or do I have to find someone else?”
“I’m not really sure why you need me. Why don’t you just get this Miriam to deliver the payload?” Uri asked.
“You have the required military training necessary for a mission into the northwest’s Khal Al Alam. This is a vitally important consignment. Out of the fifty-five archivists in the caliphate’s employ, you hold the top survivability index of our current agent stable. This delivery is too important.”
Khal Al Alam, Arabic for “The Empty World,” was the term the sheikhs used for the bedlam outside Nova Byzantium’s fragile order. As the years stretched, Uri logged more months scouring the world’s carcass than most. He felt comfortable in his Pleistocene skin, almost too comfortable.
“I’ll do what you ask,” Uri replied. Sayyid’s argument was logical. “So if the caliphate can get me close to the frontier, I can airdrop in.”
Sayyid closed his eyes and shook his head. “No, it is the Hajj. Our fleet of air vehicles is dedicated. You know this.”
“It wouldn’t be more than a four- or five-hour detour up to the Cilicia Sea,” Uri pleaded.
“No, I’m sorry. I don’t have control over these matters.”
“What about a lift to Mecca from Soqotra with the Hajjis? I’d be closer, at least.”
“You’re an infidel, Uri. ‘No unclean idolaters shall approach the Sacred Mosque.’ It would be blasphemy. The mujahideen would behead me as an apostate and you with me,” Sayyid lamented.
“You’re being difficult, sheikh.”
Sayyid threw up his hands, exasperated.
“There’s absolutely nothing you can do for me, nothing?”
Sayyid shook his head.
“Fine. The slog. Get on with it,” Uri shrugged, motioning to Sayyid to continue his briefing. A circuitous blue strand appeared on the map, snaking its way north from Soqotra, skirting the Red Sea’s eastern shore.
“Using our diplomatic contacts in the Selassie Kingdom’s northern Horn, we will smuggle you through the pirate coasts north of the Aden Gulf. We’ve mujahideen influences in the Eastern Tuaregs as well, and a salt caravan will arrange to take you into the Sinai swamps. The Ma’dan tribes there can escort you to the Nile Delta. They’ll help you avoid the cannibals. Maghreb slavers have their stockades just west of Gaza; there you’ll be able to barter for passage to the lower Aegean.”
Uri sighed, exhausted with the plans.
Sayyid rattled off the itinerary as easily as if they were directions to the nearest toilet, offending Uri’s survivor sensibilities. Uri’s estimate put the journey at a month. Northeastern Africa was
depleted, hostile, and ravenous: terra mortus. To survive, he’d be forced to adopt the chameleon-like existence of the half-starved and rabid, a grueling ordeal. After his recent stunt with the Thuggees, he was not eager to repeat such a charade.
“Pirates, cannibals, slavers, and a reduction in my pre-negotiated stipend? One has to ask if you’ve my best interests at heart, Sayyid. Especially after recent events,” Uri added sheepishly.
Sayyid stiffened. “Are you referring to the weapons incident at the nexus? It was a violation of Al Fadah Madina’s sharia; a monetary sanction is completely fair in such a situation.”
“So lax in your defense of those under your employ, it makes me wonder. That’s all,” shrugged Uri.
Sayyid’s eyes widened with shock. Questioning an Al’ Madina sheikh rarely occurred, but Uri was not his underling or his servant, he was a contractor. This was a business.
“Do you think I was in on the take? Skimming off the top? Is that it?” Sayyid’s voice rose, hands flailing in contempt.
“I’m not accusing you of anything. Twenty ounces of gold may be nothing to you, but to an archivist working in the Khal Al Alam, it’s a matter of life and death. Hard for you to appreciate, I realize.”
Lips pursed in frustration, Sayyid held his words while his underlings silently fidgeted.
“Fine!” he said at last, again throwing up his hands. “I’ll supplement the pro-rated stipend from my own reserves. Just get the shipment delivered, understand?”
Uri nodded.
With a measured flip of his kafiya, the sheikh turned and left, leaving Uri alone with the technicians. He shut his eyes to think.
“Where’s my tote?” Uri asked.
“In the prep bay, archivist. Most all your procurements have been delivered to their respective sheikhs. There’s nothing left but that pagan artifact and the bomber’s ejection suit,” Kaliq replied.
“Show me. I have an idea.”
Kaliq introduced Sayyid’s personal loadmaster, Fawzi, to Uri, a pudgy young man with a boyish chuckle. Responsible for the orbital pods, he would be readying Zliva and Pravo for their violent re-entry through the atmosphere. A surprised jolt tightened his jowly face as Uri described his idea. After a round of nervous laughter, the apprentices realized Uri was serious.
“This suit was only designed to handle a sub-orbital re-entry . . . speeds and altitudes much less than a drop from geo-synchronous,” Fawzi tried to explained.
“What if he rides tucked behind the aeroshell? The magnetic sleds launch two pods at a time; if we just launch the one—” Kaliq jumped in, eyes eager and bright, “—he could ride in the backseat, so to speak.”
Fawzi shrugged, scratched the folds of his neck, and thought for a moment. “It is in the realm of engineering possibility. Those suits do have built-in re-breathers. Archivist, you really want to burn, don’t you?” he asked. “One false move—a slight shift in your center of gravity—and you’ll slam into the Kármán line at thirty kilometers per second, then ‘poof’ like a meteor.”
“Better than having my bones gnawed clean by a gang of Nubian double-Ys,” Uri said, lighting another cigarillo.
“That may be true.”
“My rifle’s been jettisoned by the mujahideen, but I still have my field kit. Fawzi, if you can load it in the pod, along with Zliva, Pravo, and this . . . ” Uri said, handing him the intricate wood box with the Kali mask inside.
“There should be enough room,” the stocky loadmaster turned it over in his hands. “What is it?”
“Not completely sure. Adapted Morosov tech, I think, possibly a military alpha reader. Something new.”
“And nobody claimed it? Have you tried it?”
“Tried it?” Uri shook is head. “No. Not really sure how one would try it,” Uri lied.
“What’s the consignment number?”
Uri pulled out his console and toggled through the communiqués to show him.
“Did Sayyid make you an offer?”
“Nope,” Uri said curtly. “No one has.”
“Shame. Seems like quite a piece of work. I would like to know more about this . . . this thing,” Fawzi said. “Unique.”
Uri nodded, feigning indifference.
Fawzi turned back to the suit. “Okay, archivist. It may be madness, but we’ll do some modifications and give this contraption our best shot, insha’Allah.”
Uri noticed his alien reflection in the control room glass, white carbon phenoilics outlined by the suit’s inky joints. He flipped up the gold visor and looked around the hangar. The airlock’s sphincter was sealed in front of him, hiding the magnetic launch rail and endless vacuum beyond. He sat behind the pod’s shield like a charioteer, waiting for launch.
Al Fadah Madina had never launched a human being into the void—at least not a live one—so Kaliq had constructed a high-G seat from an old lift pod. With a pull of a lever, the chair would disengage both Uri and the payload from the sled, slinging him into the Earth’s exosphere. Uri breathed deep to stress the suit’s regulator. The flight was estimated to take five hours, two orbits around the Earth to burn off velocity, and one to make the plunge. Clutching the pod’s heat shield like a parasite, he would ride the nuclear warheads’ pod back to Earth.
Kaliq had rigged an extra coolant tank to extend the suit’s climate control to maintain miserable, yet endurable 35º C through reentry. Claustrophobic straps cinched the oversized ejection suit to fit him, only adding to the unnatural heat. The suit was awkward in the false gravity, the added modifications bulky.
“Estimated time to departure?” Uri asked.
“Five minutes, archivist,” Fawzi said over the radio’s static buzz.
The launch was unsanctioned and a violation of Al’ Madina sharia law. Sayyid’s apprentices, although usually numbed by rote obedience, were eager to help pull off the stunt. Uri was betting on Sayyid’s ambition to overcome any qualms. If successful, the end would justify the means. The only fallout from the exploit would be Uri himself if his payload should explode in a fiery contrail of radioactivity.
“Two minutes, archivist.”
The technicians vacated the airlock. The hum of the rail’s charging capacitors replaced the whisper of venting gas. The airlock dilated. Fawzi and Kaliq wished Uri luck and warned him to wait until he was clear of Al’ Madina’s toroids to release the electromagnetic sled. An icon, programmed into the suit display, was to cue him at each waypoint.
Uri, the pod’s tense and nervous pilot, challenged the automated launching protocols, playing havoc with the guidance computer’s stressed algorithms; the risk was high. Obsessively, bordering on farcical, Fawzi reminded Uri “to remain perfectly still.” Tightening his muscles, he clutched the seat and waited.
“Launch!”
A blue-white pinwheel blew over the pod’s aeroshell. The force of acceleration drained the blood from Uri’s brain, walling off his peripheral vision with a black tunnel. Fawzi had reduced the rail launcher by ten megawatts, the bare minimum for re-entry. Payloads were impervious to high-Gs, a minor stress; but for a yielding biomass like Uri, it was nothing less than a cosmic smack. The seat punched him through the half-kilometer rail barrel and into the ether.
The “English” from the rotating toroid sent Uri through a slow arc, the trajectory meticulously timed to miss the spokes of Al’ Madina’s hawats. Black pinpricks of vertigo swirled through the revolving wheels of the orbital colony. In a blink, he was free of the rotating superstructure.
Condensation clouded his face shield, blurring the digital rhythm of the visor’s LEDs. In theory, the air supply’s blend was mixed to prevent hyperventilation, but a panicky combination of agoraphobia and acrophobia worked against him. A cartoon icon flashed in the helmet’s HUD—one of Fawzi’s mnemonic codes. The dancing lion prompted him to pull the sled release. With shaky hands he reached down and reefed the loop’s spring mechanism. The chassis fell away.
The parachute’s self-adjusting straps, devised by Kaliq, fast
ened Uri to the pod’s housing. The straps reeled out as needed to detune the tether’s violent harmonics. Too much, or not enough, and the vibration would knock him unconscious. Uri manually unwound the spool, adding distance to the wobbling aeroshell.
The display flashed: 500 km.
He was too far up for the suit’s barometric altimeter to work. Uri focused on his breathing. Thirty minutes into the descent, his vertiginous nausea ebbed. He disengaged the harness’s chest buckles and shook it away. Flying now, he dared to look down.
Paisley skirts of algae bloomed around islands like raindrops. Closer, the Earth’s tapestry was a mosaic of contours, a mesh of green and beige corralled by coastline. Nested inside were skeletons of abandoned cities connected by the tattered strands of road and broken rail. Bacterial patches of magenta clung to the shores of inlets and isolated bays. Uri searched for geographic landmarks: the twin kidneys of the Black and Caspian Seas, the crooked spine of the Caucasus . . . nothing. Swirls of smoke, dust, and cloud camouflaged continental shape.
56 km
Purple twilight surrendered to midnight, which turned again to golden dawn. Wisps of ionization shimmered around the aeroshell’s rim. Uri’s chariot skimmed the sky’s solar cycles twice more. A steady diet of breathing and meditation held off his panic. He slid down the visor and tried to empty his mind, letting time pass undeterred, until a snap roused him from his trance.
Re-entry.
Jet spurts of nitrogen struggled to stabilize the pod as it plunged. He pulled himself into the shell draft and stood up on the payload housing, using the Kevlar leash for stability. Like a surfer, he flexed his quadriceps and waved his arms for balance to absorb the buffeting. The exertion was agony.
An orange haze surrounded him. Bright flashes sputtered over the heat shield as it shed insulation. Standing, squatting, then kneeling, his legs burned and trembled. Like Atlas, the world’s gravity pushed him down with planet-sized force. Bodily movement—however slight—released a tantrum from the steering jets as they corrected for small shifts in his weight.
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