Nova Byzantium

by Matthew Rivett

  Uri heard it, a steady drone above the clamor of the hike. He stopped, killed his lamp, and pumped his fist, signaling for Krajnik to hold. Both crouched and surveyed the forest. The Vepr’s infrared scope offered little, so Uri closed his eyes to listen. He heard a chorus of moans, stygian and subhuman. A general unease gave way to a cold sweat. Krajnik’s head darted squirrel-like; the stillness fed a nascent panic.

  “What the fuck is that?” Krajnik croaked.

  Uri put his forefinger to his lip. Wary of another holothane ambush, they pulled their gasmasks from their kits and strapped on the goggled shrouds. Careful not to trigger trip lines or mantraps, they crept off the trail and slowly traversed the ridge. After a few hundred meters, their track ended in a limestone overhang. Below, a hollow of fern and spruce surrounded a reed-choked pond. Two human shapes, dressed in white gowns, knelt facing each other. Their bestial bellowing filled the clearing with a sickening disharmony.

  “I just see the two of them down by the water,” Krajnik said, rifle locked to his shoulder, eyes squinting into the scope. “A male and a female, both adults, unarmed.”

  “They’re wearing a headdress . . . a mask,” Uri added.

  They probed the dusk for signs of movement, assuring no enemy lay in wait. Unless the Carpis recruited wood sprites as sylvan spies, Uri was confident their trek had gone unnoticed. This wasn’t a trap; this was something else entirely. Krajnik attached the black cylinder of a silencer to his rifle. Uri shook his head as he reached over and pushed the shroud downward.

  “Give it a few minutes. I’m curious.”

  “You’re curious, I’m horrified. I say we liquidate the Carpi sideshow and get back to Bicaz for a round of horilka,” Krajnik said, frustrated.

  “This isn’t a Carpi sideshow,” Uri said, pulling off his hood. “It’s no coincidence the Second Brigade happened to stop at the trailhead when this all started. This is Alkonost’s doing.”

  Krajnik took off his mask, his brow furrowed. Uri—done waiting—crept down the rock ledge and approached the duo. He cracked a flare and tossed it in between the two; neither reacted to the sudden glare. What the flickering magenta revealed disgusted both mercenaries. Krajnik hiccupped, belched, and turned away. Uri shielded his nose in repulsion.

  “Holy Nicholas! What the Christ!”

  The man and woman’s heads were misshapen. Corrugated sub-dermal tubes distended the flesh, perforating the scalp and face in ways horrific and ghoulish. The growths permeated their craniums; eye sockets crowded with bowed tentacles, ears punctured by coils of writhing black appendages. They were victims of some preternatural tumor, the malignancy mimicking an undersea animal.

  Chained by their hands and feet, they tugged at each other, slobbering yellow mucus and screaming like brainless, inhuman creatures. Krajnik pulled the bolt release and pointed his rifle at the female, ready to execute. Uri ordered him to hold. Instinct begged him to destroy the abominations, but the wretched couple demanded a thorough investigation.

  “It’s like a parasite’s gotten inside them or something . . . What the fuck, lieutenant?”

  “Easy now.”

  Uri moved in closer. Both were Carpi barbarians of the local warrior clan, their Romany tattoos still visible around the throat and clavicle. The remnants of the woman’s matted hair covered her engorged neck, but Uri noticed a set of chrome taps—angry with infection—protruding from the man’s vertebral column. He guessed the implants were a biologic hardware of Sevastopol manufacture, but had no clue as to their purpose.

  “These pathetic creatures were dumped here,” Uri concluded.

  “By who?”

  Uri shrugged. “My guess? Second Brigade, on an errand. They’re prisoners; they were interned. Look at the chip scars in what’s left of their necks.” He pinpointed the blue-black marks with his Vepr’s laser sight.

  “Why would anyone bother to drag them up a hillside, so close to enemy lines?”

  “Because the enemy was meant to find them, not us. It’s a warning to the Carpis, a throwback to good ol’ Vlad the Impaler. Makes one wonder who the real barbarians are.”

  “Who let them get this way? Jesus, why weren’t they euthanized and limed in the pit near the city’s football pitch?”

  Uri shrugged as he circled around the atrocious exhibition. “Standard business practices would dictate this sort of experiment-gone-wrong would fall under the hush-hush classification. Operation Trajan is Alkonost’s biggest contract and unpopular among Nova Byzantium’s senators. If a picture of these things ever showed up on the streets of Constantinople, sentiment would turn against Moldovan hegemony. That’s my guess.”

  Krajnik nodded, pursing his lips.

  “As for your other question . . . ” Uri paused. “Who’s in charge of I-and-I at the brig now?”

  “Captain Zelinski, an old intel chief, he took over after the last offensive.”

  “It might be time to pay the captain a visit, sort out what Intelligence and Interrogation’s been up to.”

  “He outranks you. It might be hard to get answers, especially from I-and-I.”

  “Mission intelligence, agent privilege, remember? If he’s not cooperative, I’ll mention the pictures.”

  “What pictures?”

  “The ones we’re taking now.” Uri winked, miming a camera.

  “Ah, Got it.” Krajnik returned the wink. The specialist took a sip from his canteen and crouched to examine the pair. “Sklar used to tell me about how the Saharan legions tortured their enemies with Guinea worms, hundreds of parasites trying to wiggle their way out, excruciating and deadly. What do you think?”

  “No, this is synthetic. Probably some concoction from the Crimea, maybe Morosov. I’ve seen those chrome implants before.”

  “They’re hideous.”

  They paused to admire the ghastly handiwork, held spellbound by the pathology.

  “All right, let’s get busy.” Uri grew impatient as he checked his watch. They needed to get off the mountain. “We can’t leave them here for their Carpi comrades to find. Grab your trencher and start digging a pit. We’re going to burn them.”

  Afraid to touch the creatures, Uri grabbed the Carpis’ chains and dragged them uphill and away from the pond’s sodden bog. Krajnik gasped then vomited. There was something hidden under the man’s soiled gown: his severed feet, half-immersed in a pool of coagulating blood. Someone had hacked them off, a ruthless hobbling. The blood loss explained the man’s pallor. Acting as an anchor, he held them both to the ground. Someone wanted to make sure they didn’t move.

  Uri urged Krajnik to gather himself and start digging. They worked to clear a shallow depression, filling it with armloads of brittle twigs and thermite powder extracted from a grenade. With a heave, Uri lugged the Carpis onto the pyre. Like grotesque infants, they grabbed and pulled at each other in a spastic embrace, saliva-drenched mouths yammering. Uri picked up and tossed a lit flare into the stack. A vortex of flame erupted, engulfing the creatures in a burst of magnesium. The supercharged heat reduced the biomass to cinder with furious speed.

  Uri radioed the dam’s duty sergeant and arranged for transport. “If we hustle, we can ride back with the relief crew. Let’s get the hell out of here, tonight’s horilka is on me.”

  “Thank God.”

  The industrial park sat in the oxbow of the lower Bicaz River, a few kilometers behind the front lines. Its glass and steel girders were of sturdy construction, a center for business back when the world worked differently. Inside were the hallmarks of commerce, nests of long-gone computer workstations now converted to military function. In the halcyon days of the global network, it might’ve been anything; a software mill, a gaming lounge, an electronic stock exchange, but now it was an Alkonost brig, set up for interrogation.

  Uri tapped the end of his cigarillo. With no ashtray, he deposited the cinders onto the nylon Berber. He was sure no one would mind; the coffee-stained carpet was already filthy with footprints. He checked his watch
again; the captain was ten minutes overdue. An armored column had clogged Bicaz’s narrow highway, the traffic snarl slowing Captain Zelinski’s arrival.

  “The captain should be here momentarily. Coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  The officer took Uri’s canteen thermos, limped over to a brew canister, and filled it to the brim. Uri took a sip from the threaded mouth. Despite the plastic bitterness, the hot beverage was welcome relief from the morning’s cold wet.

  “Lieutenant Sava Valis, I read your mission debrief. It’s good to see you returned to duty after your ordeal,” Uri said.

  “I was lucky, just a few scrapes,” Sava’s boyishness betrayed outward signs of post-traumatic stress. “There’s been a rash of similar abductions lately, did you hear? The Carpis have discovered a new niche for their barbarity.”

  “Right, the two squads up near the Bucovina Front.”

  “Staked, buried alive, ritual beheadings, paralyzed with needles, all that Neanderthal shit . . . ”

  “I know, I read the briefing details,” Uri cut the lieutenant off from his macabre list.

  “Superstitious bastards. The madness just goes on and on, doesn’t it?”

  Uri nodded, anxious to change the subject. “So what does Zelinski have you doing?”

  “I’m an interrogations auditor now, for I-and-I. I’ve been working with Morosov to set up a new technology, an alpha-wave construct extracted from neural tap radiation. It’s crude at the moment, but Sevastopol says refinements are ongoing. We’re trying to build a database.” Sava shrugged. “I’d rather be out in the slog, but for now . . . ”

  “The Illithium technology . . . the captain’s informed me. I’m here to observe a session.”

  “Speak of the wolf . . . ”

  The clinking rumble of a tracked vehicle came to a halt outside. Captain Zelinski, a slight man, thin, graying, yet confident, appeared at the door with his security team. He shook Uri’s hand firmly and engaged in the small-talk niceties typically absent from grunt-speak. Alkonost’s higher brass were more “business” than mercenary, salesmen always trying to keep the conflict sold.

  Sava inspected Uri’s lanyard to ensure he held the necessary clearances for the auditing session, then led the group through an empty warehouse into a shielded chamber. Inside, stands of bright lights filled the metal room. A phalanx of tables divided the space, each piled high with black boxes and monitoring equipment. The racks were cabled to a tripod of globular eyestalks, heavy with lenses and electrical apertures. The whole mess had an insect feel.

  In the center of the metal room sat a modified jump seat cannibalized from a Hind. Kevlar straps and key-locked buckles draped the empty chair. A padded bracket, typical of tactical aircraft, protruded from the headrest. Uri examined the polished aluminum floor, antiseptic and clean, not a bloodstained splotch anywhere. It was too sterile, especially for an interrogation house.

  “Lieutenant Uri Vitko, one of our field agents in mission intelligence, will be joining us for this session,” Zelinski announced.

  A group of men in civilian attire nodded as Uri sat down in a box of seats near the wall. He guessed they were Morosov, his suspicions confirmed when a wiry, uncomfortable man stood to introduce himself.

  “For Vitko’s sake, I’d like to give a brief overview of Illithium, a byproduct of our pharmacological and pathology research—if that’s all right with Captain Zelinski . . . ” The nervous man’s suit was wrinkled and damp with sweat. He looked anxious to get the hell out of Bicaz.

  “Please, Mr. Popov, we could all use a refresher, so . . . ” Zelinski said, leaning back in a swivel chair.

  “Intended as neurological treatment, Morosov Svestpol—specifically Morosov Labs in Constantinople, with help from our support facilities, found that the synaptic assemblers coupled inductively and are capable of broadcasting a massive amount of coherent alpha-wave fields in the UHF. The unique magnetic signature was essentially the modulated kernel of short-term memory.”

  Uri tried to follow the technical jargon but soon lost the lecture’s thread. From what he gathered, there was no “question and answer” in this grilling technique. Alkonost I-and-I had contracted the Morosov headshrinkers to deploy this “passive” system on the enemy as an experiment. From their arsenal of electrical gizmos, they recorded brain activity and stored the information in high-density columns of optical encoders. Outside the electro-magnetically shielded chamber, an arsenal of computers processed the vast amounts of alpha-wave data into memory fragments, images, and sounds.

  Devoid of the interrogator’s subtle manipulations and mind games, removing the human element from the process seemed inherently flawed. Uri was skeptical. The method was cumbersome and expensive, despite Popov’s attempt to reassure the room that Morosov was continuing to streamline the technology.

  “After the network has fully matured inside the neocortex, a few milliamps into the medulla, taps will stimulate modulation and amplify the passive currents. If somebody could bring the subject in?” Popov continued, pushing up his spectacles.

  On cue, two guards carried in a manacled Carpi, twitchy and frightened. Prisoners were not typically put on starvation diets, but the barbarian’s gaunt appearance shocked Uri: sharp cheekbones, knobby knees, sunken pelvis. The guards sat the man down and secured him to the chair. Fly-eyed goggles were fastened to his head, greasy electrodes clamped against his skull.

  “Where was this subject acquired, officer?”

  “Twenty klicks south by a reconnaissance team working the Tarcaului corridor,” Sava responded, reading the dossier from a monitor. “No name given, male subject is twenty-five years old, estimated, suffers from tuberculosis, and is a past victim of gangrene. Note the truncated digits.”

  “Thank you, lieutenant.”

  Sava nodded.

  “Here on the medial aspects of the neck, Sava has implanted the taps.” Popov highlighted the sides of the prisoner’s neck with a pointer. The marks were different than those on the two deformed Carpis, the taps imitating a vampire’s bite instead. “If Lieutenant Sava Valis could amplify the connection, we’ll begin.”

  Popov attached chrome jumpers to the Carpi’s neck, then the lights were dimmed. A strobe, tight and focused, washed over the Carpi’s face, slack-jawed and vacant. He mumbled slobbery gibberish in his native tongue as his muscles relaxed.

  “To provoke associative memory, we start the hypnotic process, cuing the vestigial mind with fight-or-flight triggers to prompt output. Of course, the fresher the experiences, the more resolution,” Popov explained.

  Ruby laser light spread out over the hemispheres of the prisoner’s lenses, non-Euclidean shapes gyrating to inaudible music. The effect was nauseating. The Carpi’s jaw fell wide as the trance took hold, his limp tongue panting like a dog.

  “Now fully engaged, we phase the radio frequency transceivers and collect the stimulated emissions from the lensing cranium,” Popov narrated.

  As the process continued, the multi-colored lights changed tempo as the machines cycled through preprogramming. The room was uncomfortably quiet except for the animal mutter from the hypnotized Carpi. Minutes later, the lights came up and the oscillating beam dimmed. Technicians huddled around Sava’s workstation to await the results.

  “The current processing suite has significant lag, but we’re reworking the software for organic substrates and cellular tissues. The repackaging should shrink everything while increasing the run time with no post-processing overhead. It will be real-time,” Popov concluded.

  Uri was invited to take a look at Sava’s monitors. Shards of half-rendered images scrolled across the screen, overdubbed with the digitized muddle of Carpi speech. Stupefied by the technology’s ability to read a human mind, Uri was, nevertheless, curious how any of it led to actionable intelligence.

  “Interesting, but this . . . static, it could be anything, couldn’t it?” Uri asked, lighting a cigarillo.

  “They say recent short-term memories are e
asier to render.” Sava toggled through the catalogue of mental muck. “Recently, we’ve been able to pinpoint a few enemy encampments and supply trails using the images.”

  The session complete, two guards led the prisoner out of the chamber. Uri asked the captain to show him the brig. Zelinski escorted Uri outside the metal room, up a flight of stairs, and to a crowded hallway filled with manacles and non-lethal weapons racks. Peeking through slits of safety glass, Uri moved from cell to cell.

  “Looking for something in particular, Lieutenant Vitko?” asked the confused captain.

  “Right here. Look.” Uri pointed into one of the cells. “Guard, can you let us in?”

  “That one’s on the outs,” replied the guard.

  “Lieutenant Vitko, as a mission intelligence officer in the field, I can understand your interest in I-and-I’s techniques, but it seems you have a wild hair up your ass about something. As CO of this facility, I’d sure as hell like to know what it is?”

  “Do you know what happens to the prisoners after the Morosov treatment?” Uri gestured to the catatonic Carpi slumped in the empty cell. “Look.” He crouched near the scrawny prisoner and pulled back a lock of matted hair. “These playthings of yours are terminal, aren’t they? None of them live through this.”

  Zelinski shook his head and turned away. The veins of the prisoner’s neck and forehead bulged black and wormlike. It was the early stages of the syndrome. Like the two in the Carpathian woods, the barbarian’s forebrain had detached, locked away in its cranial prison.

  “Damn it. The techs are supposed to be giving them a shot of potassium chloride when they get like this,” the captain complained. “Unfortunately, as the network grows, it metastasizes like a cancer. It just keeps going and going. Morosov hasn’t found a way to stop it. This guy should have been euthanized and disposed of properly.”

  “Captain, permission to speak freely?” Uri stomped out his cigarillo then stood to face the unnerved Zelinski.