Nova Byzantium

by Matthew Rivett

  “A billion, maybe less.”

  “Less and less each day. There’re vast stretches of permanent dead zone. Those fortunate enough to escape the anoxia . . . starved. There are places,” Uri leaned toward her as if to whisper, “only a few thousand kilometers from here, where you wouldn’t recognize the people as Homo sapiens. They’ve regressed: naked, minimal use of simple tools, lacking even a spoken language. Their clock’s been reset by sixty thousand years, and . . . ”

  The doctor interrupted him. “Lieutenant Vitko, I’m not sure what you’re getting at.” She took off her glasses and crossed her legs, the synthetic swoosh of nylon.

  “I’m trying to paint a picture of the mercenary’s world for you, doctor. Notions of true loyalty?” he shook his head, “We don’t think like that.”

  “Then what binds you to Alkonost?”

  Uri sucked the last bit of alcohol from the ice, then set the glass down on her desk. “Let me explain it this way: when mercenaries come back from deployment, their old life . . . just doesn’t work anymore. There’s a truth we can’t easily communicate, and it’s maddening,” Uri said, pointing to his temple.

  “They call it the ‘Cassandra Complex’ in psychology,” she interjected.

  Uri shrugged. “To know in your heart that no matter how well we maintain our phalanx, the borders of Nova Byzantium will inevitably shrink and disappear with human beings quick to follow, it . . . ” Uri paused.

  “Lieutenant?”

  “It becomes a simple question of survival, doesn’t it?” he continued. “How to carry on day-by-day, and in what capacity: as a starving barbarian, scraping and scavenging to get by, or as a soldier, with a line of logistics, ammunition, enrichers, and provisions?”

  “So your loyalty is a matter of survival, then?”

  “That’s how it works, doesn’t it, evolution? Sad, but true. We are animals after all, motivated by self-interest,” Uri said.

  “That’s bleak.”

  “And fucking depressing.”

  The doctor said nothing, scribbling down a few notes as Uri sank into his chair.

  “And as far as desertion goes,” Uri continued, “You and your headshrinkers can tell Command—or whoever—that as long as the Antonovs keep airdropping palletts of fuel, rounds, and food, my loyalty won’t be a problem.”

  “All right then. Our time’s about up,” she forced a smile. “Thank you for your candor, Lieutenant Uri Vitko. You’ve offered me a unique perspective, however nihilistic.”

  Uri pushed out his lower lip and nodded his head. “You’re welcome, Miss Bashir.” He stood up and straightened his fatigues.

  “And lieutenant . . . I’m sorry to hear about your daughter. I hope you’re able to find her,” she said.

  “She was a beautiful girl.”

  “Still is, I’m sure.”

  “I can only hope.”

  Someone knocked on the door. After an uncomfortable pause, Uri walked over and opened it. Captain Zelinski. Uri snapped a quick salute and stood at attention, eyes forward.

  “At ease. Lieutenant Vitko, I haven’t seen you since Bicaz. Mission intelligence, you paid us a visit, remember?”

  “I-and-I’s brig, of course. It looks like they’ve redeployed you. No more Moldova, eh?” Uri said, backing up to let the captain into the psychologist’s office. “Sir, I’m not sure if you’ve been formally introduced to Miss Bashir. I was just answering a few questions for her.”

  The captain raised an eyebrow. “Oh? Hopefully nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “No, of course not,” she said, uncomfortable. “Can I help you with something, captain?”

  “They received a call down in the lobby. Apparently, Lieutenant Vitko’s not responding to his console. I was on my way up to drop something off. So I thought I’d come by and deliver the message personally, maybe say hello.”

  “I must’ve accidentally left it back in the barracks.” Uri said, a half-truth. “Is there a problem?”

  “One of the Antonovs is overweight—your brigade—and they need to do a gear check.”

  Despite regulation, mercenaries packed their gear full of contraband, mostly booze, drugs, and the usual. A plane flying into a war zone couldn’t afford to be overloaded. Most tarmacs were primitive and prone to sabotage. Aborted landings were common.

  “I need to head back to the airfield. I could give you a lift?” Zelinski offered. “My car’s out front.”

  “Thank you, captain. I’d appreciate that.”

  The car, a six-wheeled executive model, EMP hardened and with blacked-out windows, pulled into I-and-I’s roundabout. The driver opened the door for the captain and Uri. Zelinski was under-ranked to have his own car, but working for I-and-I afforded perks only spooks and spies could finagle.

  “You’re fond of cigars? I had these shipped from Thrace. I’ve my own humidor. Try one.” Zelisnki pulled out a glass tube and handed it to Uri. Obligingly, he popped the cork and slid the cigar out, brushing it under his nose.

  “Aromatic.” Uri pulled out his naphtha lighter—an Alkonost winged abstract embossed on brushed aluminum—and lit it. “Smooth, not bitter at all.” He puffed his cheeks. “What’s on your mind, captain?” Uri knew there was an underlying motive for Zelinski’s generosity.

  The captain hesitated. The uncomfortable silence gave way to the hum of the car’s wide-treads rolling over the byway’s asphalt. “I just wanted to take this opportunity to thank you, lieutenant.”

  “If you could refresh my memory, captain. Thank me for what?”

  “You warned me about Illithium back in Bicaz. I stopped the program a few weeks after your visit, firing Morosov’s ghouls not long after. The intelligence we were getting from those Carpi zombies was questionable. Despite a few successes, more coincidence than anything, it was a bust.” The captain looked out the window, gripping his console nervously.

  “Right, the brainless idiots. Was there any attempt to mitigate the growth?”

  “Popov—that was his name—tried to slow the self-assembler’s metastasizing process. Something about ‘tricking’ the micro-machines to shut off. But then the networks spread through the whole body like a geometrical mesh, no longer confined to the cranium. It was a fucking mess. At one point they even tried an irradiation process, using collimated strontium emitters to retard the networks.”

  “And?”

  The captain shook his head. “Their bodies started to petrify. The networks hardened. It turned them into a bunch of goddamned ‘pickleheads.’ “

  “Pickleheads? Not a clinical term, I’m guessing.”

  “It killed them, but slowly. God awful,” the captain sighed. “The fleshy membranes hardened like mummies. Damn disgusting. All that gluey flesh, eyes imprisoned in sockets, tongues withered like jerky. It stopped the growth all right.”

  “This Popov, didn’t he say something about growing these Illithium networks on something else—like a petri dish?”

  “I don’t remember. Maybe. But when it comes to that sort of stuff . . . Morosov are snake-oil salesmen, always looking for the add-on contract. Luckily the colonel agreed with my decision. It was back to waterboarding, finger clamps, and high voltage,” he smirked.

  “What about the body dumpings?”

  “We never found out who did it. Finding the perpetrators wasn’t a big priority with all the abductions and beheadings. Goddamn savages.”

  They arrived at the deployment center, a large cluster of climate-controlled domes grouped around the central airfield. Inside the superstructure were the Antonov hangars and repair bays, a termite colony of mercenaries and support crews prepping for airlift.

  Baku was technically a “friendly” territory, relaxing the requirements for the planes to arm with weighty cloakers, optical jammers, and counter-measures. It mattered little, however; like goldfish in a bowl, the mercenaries’ gear grew and expanded to their personal weight limit.

  “I’m off. I’ve some business to attend to,” said Zelisnki. �
�Best of luck. I’ve read the briefs on Turkmenbashi . . . ” he paused. “ . . . I’m sure it’ll be an interesting logistical and tactical challenge.”

  “It’s a shithole, captain. A mess, and I hope Command’s given some serious thought to our extraction.”

  “There’s no snowing you with platitudes, Lieutenant Uri Vitko. Anyway, I wish your men the best of luck. You have my long-wave routing number. If you need additional I-and-I support, let me know . . . ” he offered his hand.

  Uri shook and saluted. “Vae Victus. Woe to the conquered.”

  “Right,” Zelinski saluted, smirking.

  The audit was well under way. Uri’s company of thirty men stood cordoned near their designated aircraft. As second lieutenant, Uri was chief logistics officer responsible for payload. One of the specialists had brought Uri’s duffel out from the barracks and measured it, his gear well under the fifty-kilo allocation. A portable scale was wheeled around, piles of contraband accumulated at the protesting men’s feet.

  Uri examined the mercenaries’ gear. It was typical stuff: vodka, pornography, bricks of Assyrian hashish . . . One agitated recruit tried to make a case for his “knife” collection. Inside a canvas roll, he had polished medieval implements, a fauchard, a halberd, a guisarme—all minus their poles—a few saw-edged axes, and assorted butchering knives. Standard-issue survival knives limited one’s ability to work clandestinely, he argued. To kill silently, he needed more range. Uri didn’t buy it.

  Another disappointed recruit tried to smuggle a few extra kilos of bar soap and chocolate bars. A typical currency for whoring on the frontier, child prostitutes always enticed by the latter. The airmen were ordered to dump the soap into a nearby tub skid for redistribution, as Uri personally handed out the chocolate bars to the loitering men.

  “Lieutenant Sava Valis,” Uri saluted. “How’s your platoon coming along?”

  “Fine. I’ve managed to recruit Mach for the cause,” Sava smiled, nodding at the lean but muscular specialist standing behind him.

  “You’re overweight. Not the typical nonsense, I see.” Uri looked over Sava’s set of hard cases and weapons bags. “The gladiator racket paid off, eh?”

  “You might say that,” Sava said, eyes darting.

  “Mind if I have a look?” Uri asked, lifting an eyebrow.

  “Sure.” He took a step back, nearly stumbling over Mach’s kit pile.

  Uri squatted and inventoried Sava’s gear: two trace sensors, a hummingbird drone, a satchel charge, a brand-new Vepr with radar tracker, and a medical kit.

  “Can you pop this open?”

  “No problem.” Sava knelt and thumbed the medical kit’s lock.

  Morosov tech, but what it did, Uri wasn’t sure. The corporation’s catalogue of medical equipment was vast. This, with its servo-actuated syringes and chrome-weave tubing, was enigmatic. Inset in the hard case was a wireless activator. Next to the remote were vials of bright liquid stored in padded rows.

  “What does all this do?”

  “It’s experimental—a free trial version from Morosov. The way it was explained to me,” Sava said pensively, “using a small catheter, it’s supposed to give you a cranial oxygen boost using an active metabolic feedback loop, or something. Good for marginal dead zones and anoxic environments. A small computer monitors your vitals to keep it tuned.” He patted the receiver. “I thought I’d give it a go.”

  “Unfortunately you’re overweight, lieutenant. But if you toss out that satchel charge and a trace sensor, you should be good.”

  “I can probably live with that.”

  “Speaking of Morosov, Sava, I just had a talk with Captain Zelinski, your former CO back in Moldova.”

  “Oh?”

  “He told me about Illithium’s demise. What about the body dumpings, were there ever any leads?” Uri asked. “Strange, that whole business.”

  Sava looked him in the eye and shrugged. “Haven’t a clue. I heard about it, though, everybody did. Somebody really had it in for those Carpi knuckle-draggers, eh? Too bad, all that . . . very ugly . . . very ugly indeed,” Sava grimaced.

  Uri knew Sava was the culprit, his accomplices probably scattered about the company—his buddy Mach, maybe. Sava wasn’t a bad guy, Uri figured, just unpredictable and wily: a kid. He could do nothing to punish him. What would be the point? The campaign was now a mop-up.

  After Uri left Bicaz and Moldova, Alkonost established a defensive cordon along the Ceahlau Massif. Halo bombers created a mile-wide path of scorched earth using incendiaries, ensuring nothing living could cross. It was a draconian solution, but effective.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  February 2164 C.E.

  His waist surrendered another belt hole. Jan Mayen was taking its toll. The Morosov inoculates were causing acute side effects. The worst was chronic nightmares. Despite a concrete wall dividing the billets, Sava’s neighbors needed earplugs to block out his nocturnal outbursts. Alcohol, antihistamines, a brick of opiates, all failed to quiet his loud reactions to the terrible dreams. Mach mentioned an occasional odd dream, but nothing as severe—or loud.

  “Most of the time, I can’t move. There’s something holding me down, my legs are either anesthetized or missing. I hear voices, children in a watery chorus. Colors are dark, but vivid. There’s always a rotting smell, like dead vegetation, vinegary. Then there’s the god-awful cramping. The tendons in my feet have gotten really bad. In the morning, I can barely walk.” Sava relit his cigarette stub and took a drag.

  “You remember smells from your dreams?”

  “It depends.” He put out the stub and took a sip of coffee; it tasted like the paper cup.

  “If the odor’s half as bad as the breakfasts around here . . . ” Mach tried to joke as he pushed his reconstituted eggs around the tray.

  “What about you?”

  “Just the typical. My hands, though . . . ” Mach flexed his grip. “It’s so bad sometimes, I can’t even button my trousers. I have to run my hands under hot water to loosen them up, so numb and painful.”

  “Chemotherapy’s got to be easier. Give me fucking cancer instead,” Uri smirked.

  “Do you think it’s like Illithium?”

  Sava grimaced and narrowed his eyes. “No, that was just one experiment among thousands. They’ve long since shelved it for military applications. They’ve since adapted Illithium for more recreational purposes, remember?”

  “Right,” Mach nodded, knowingly.

  “Morosov cranks out everything from sub-dermal malarial mesh to smart-skin tourniquets. There’s always side effects. We’ll adapt to this in time.”

  “If you say so.”

  The mess was empty, the idling ice machine and refrigerator hum breaking the mausoleum quiet. Yakiv shuffled in wearing a tank top and shorts, his freshly grown beard matted with sleep and drool. Sava, as commanding officer, had relaxed military discipline. “Viking chic” seemed appropriate for Jan Mayen. With the men’s physical stress, the high-and-tight approach was burdensome.

  “Did you run out of trazodone, Yakiv?” Mach smirked.

  “No, I’m awake . . . at least I think I’m awake.” His eyes were twitchy. His clammy hand rubbed his sweaty sternum; the recruit looked agitated.

  “You look spun up. That stuff got you wired?” Mach asked. “A side effect of those little blue pills the doc’s got you taking, eh?”

  Yakiv sat down and folded his hands, meditative, lips pursed. He had something to say. Sava poured another cup of freeze-dried Selassie and pushed it in front of him. Sava and Mach raised a curious eyebrow at each other, waiting for Yakiv to speak.

  “What is it, Yakiv?” Mach asked.

  “Do you believe in ghosts?” he asked, eyes darting quickly.

  “Is this another side effect? Maybe you’re having nightmares,” Sava said.

  “I saw something near the southwest sally port, that long skinny window just above the gate, you know the one?”

  They both nodded.

  “The
medicine was giving me a headache. I couldn’t sleep, so I left my room. I was going to the mess, and I saw something out the window, near the horizon. A flicker of sails, fading to green.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “As sure as I am sitting here talking to you.”

  “Is it still there?”

  Yakiv nodded, getting up.

  The passageway was cold and bare, the window’s narrow rectangle filling the space with predawn gray. Yakiv rubbed his biceps to warm himself and squinted out at the dreary seascape. He pointed to a spot near the shoreline of Jan Mayen’s western rise. Sava zoomed in with his starlight scope, focusing on a small cloud of auks circling the algae beds. The scope’s grainy amplifiers melded with the swirling birds in monochrome noise.

  “This was the spot, eh?”

  “Yes, near the nesting grounds.”

  Sava pulled back as a bright flash swamped the scope optics. Mach and Yakiv gasped. Sava disabled lowlight mode and took another look. Wavering through the ocean’s gaseous breeze was an islet of green phosphorescence. With zoom at full power, he realized it was no wayward ship; it was more extraordinary than that, an iceberg coated with sheets of phytoplankton and bacteria. Far from the picturesque gleam of white, the iceberg was stained with yellow sulfides and microorganisms.

  “It’s an iceberg,” Sava said, passing the scope to Yakiv and Mach.

  “How’s that possible?”

  “They say there’s a glacier or two left on Greenland, high up on the inland plateau,” Sava said. “It might’ve calved off and drifted out from a fjord. The tidal wash is incredible this far north.”

  “Glaciers?” Yakiv shook his head, “not possible.”

  “There’s a few small ones left in the Alps and the Urals.”

  They saw another flash, then the luminescent burst of afterglow. The iceberg’s microscopic colonies didn’t have the metabolic firepower for such a lightshow. There was another source of light. Sava looked at the leaden skies; no lightning-filled thunderclouds. It was coming from the island itself, eclipsed by Jan Mayen’s western headland.

  “What’s causing it?”

  “It’s a searchlight or something, really powerful, coming from the island, somewhere beyond the plateau,” Sava guessed.