Nova Byzantium

by Matthew Rivett

  “It’s giving me the creeps,” Yakiv said, eyes glued to the binocular shroud.

  Mach’s forearm console beeped. “It’s operations. Wilco’s picking something up on VHF.”

  They hovered around Wilco, the Crown’s radioman, waiting for the broadcast to repeat. Timed in thirty-second intervals, the signal was in “Old Morse,” a mix of cryptic radio semaphores. Long defunct, Alkonost had ceased teaching the language to new specialists. With no one able to decode the message, Sava ordered Wilco to record, distort, and display the audio in time series.

  “Do we have a basic radio manual?”

  “How about an electronic copy?”

  “Perfect, bring it up on screen.”

  Another recording of long and short beeps was enough to correlate and process the rudimentary signal. Sava wondered why anyone would use such an antediluvian code. The “human modem” was far less reliable than its microprocessor counterpart. Panning the distorted pulses, Mach scribbled down dots and dashes on a pad of paper.

  “I got it. Bring up the manual and scroll to the appendix, to the alphabet.”

  After a few minutes of transcriptions, Mach set down his pencil and stood as if to give a speech. He started to read the message, but stopped, confused.

  “What’s it say?”

  “This is someone’s idea of joke. Somebody’s having a laugh,” Mach said as he silently reread the notepad.

  Sava shook his head with dread. He knew what was written on the crumpled paper was not a joke, or at least not intended as one. The Crown bled the squad of pranks, reduced their high jinks to quips of black humor; Jan Mayen’s existential hangover was too sobering.

  Mach read the note at last. “Alkonost stop you are never leaving stop no resupply stop I know what’s in the vault stop ARIN 2112-313-1100 stop.”

  “Let me see that.” Sava grabbed the note and read it.

  “Who’s Arin?” Yakiv asked.

  “Nobody. It’s an Alkonost Recruit Identity Number, A-R-I-N, encoded into your ID implant when you were recruited. Everyone has one,” Sava said, handing the note back to Mach. “Mach, are you sure you decoded it right?”

  “I’d have to have one active imagination to scramble the code this badly. Wilco, can you find out where it’s coming from?” He turned back to Sava. “Remember a few weeks ago, the incident with Yakiv?”

  Sava nodded. “The intruder.”

  “Well, it looks like our friend has a found a way to communicate with us at last.”

  “Whoever the hell he is . . . probably a deserter. He must have come in with the last logistical crew. Gone bat-shit insane or something. They probably tried to haul him off on that Mi-26 when he escaped.”

  “Do you think it’s true, that we’re never leaving the island?” Yakiv interjected.

  “Consider the source, Yakiv. I’m not putting a lot of faith in Jan Mayen’s resident hermit psychopath just yet,” Sava reassured him.

  “I’ve got it,” announced Wilco. “The direction finder’s honed in. The signal’s coming from two hundred seventy-five degrees west, northwest, just over the Moon Mountains.” “Moon Mountains” was the squad’s nickname for Sor Jan, the alien landscapes of Jan Mayen’s western highlands. Sava stashed the note in his leg pocket.

  “The contents of this note do not go beyond the four of us, got it?” Sava ordered.

  “What do we tell the others?”

  “Tell them it’s an anomalous communication, currently indecipherable. Understand?”

  “Got it,” they each replied.

  More squad members filtered into the meeting room for the early morning shift change, smoking cigarettes and rubbing the sleep from their eyes. Mach unrolled a dusty map, anchoring the corners of the parched canvas with ammo clips and a canteen. Sava briefed the new arrivals on the morning’s excitement. The men hunched over the gridded contours as Sava pointed out Jan Mayen’s geological and manmade features. Besides the litter of abandoned weather stations, a marine observatory, and the ruins of a whaling hut, one location stood out.

  “The intruder has activated the lighthouse on the northern coast. There’s a LORAN beacon used for ship-to-shore; he must have hotwired the transmitter,” Sava explained.

  Before the Post-Industrial Shock, the Kingdom of Norway had sponsored a retrofit of Russia’s aging atomic lighthouses. The Norwegians were so fond of their restorative handiwork, they built a few within the kingdom itself. Anachronistic yet romantic, the beacons guided ships through the newly thawed Northwest Passage. They were unmanned, robotically timed to the Arctic Circle’s seasonal sunrises and sunsets. The lighthouse on Jan Mayen, like the rest, had succumbed to the effects of sulfuric salt fog and vermin infestation and no longer functioned. Until now.

  “The lamp: that’s what lit up the iceberg. We’ll go out and scrounge around. See if we can find this intruder,” Sava said. “It’s a hike, fifteen kilometers. It’ll take a day to get there and a day to come back.”

  “Full kit, field bag, rifles?”

  “Yes.”

  The men moaned.

  “Listen, you jokers!” Sava lifted his head from the map and addressed the room. “There’s somebody out there playing a game, and I’m not about to underestimate the ability of one bastard to wreak havoc. If he’s an Alkonost deserter, and if that Halo out there’s any indication, this guy’s fully trained and adept at survival, evasion, and escape.”

  “Also savvy enough to hotwire a centuries-old mothballed mini-reactor,” Mach added.

  “That too,” Sava sighed. He didn’t want to admit it, but despite its madness, the note’s message weighed heavy.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  October 2163 C.E.

  Miriam and her contacts were seated in the corner office atop Norsk-Statoil’s Maslak skyscraper when Uri arrived. The room was sparsely but tastefully furnished with expansive windows overlooking the umber gloom of Constantinople. Three strikingly blond men in sleek silk suits sat facing Miriam. Their Latin was weakly accented, refined and succinct, each word chosen thoughtfully. They possessed an ephemeral quality, like souls destined for an unnamed heaven beyond the apocalyptic materiality. Uri couldn’t help but be impressed.

  “I’d like to introduce you to my partner, Uri Vitko. He’s an archivist—a survival specialist—who’ll be escorting me. He’s under contract to The City like myself. Uri, this is Einar, Gunnar, and Jarl,” Miriam said.

  “How do you do?” Their handshakes were cold but dry, blasé limpness. They nodded briefly at him, cobalt eyes concealed by black-framed spectacles. Uri took a seat next to Miriam.

  A holdover from the Pre-Shock, the Norwegian oil conglomerate Norsk-Statoil sought refuge in Nova Byzantium’s post-industrial law and order. Constantinople exploited the corporation’s talents to wring the last black drops from Earth’s strata. Oil, however, was not their primary endeavor. The lucrative extraction and refining contracts bought them time and capital to pursue other unspoken aspirations.

  “Norsk-Statoil has commissioned an Alkonost Antonov for the journey to Jan Mayen,” said the man introduced as Einar. “They will fly you and the meteorological equipment to an atoll. While beneficial, installation of the weather station is to be the cover story for delivery of your payload. This is a joint mission. And our relationship with our co-sponsor, The City, is not to be discussed with representatives of the mercenary entity. Understood?”

  Both Miriam and Uri nodded.

  “Once installed, we will use The City’s uplink to transmit the weather data back to the empire from the atoll.”

  Uri concluded that “The City” referred to Al Fadah Madina.

  “In my mission briefing, I was informed that—”

  “Uri has been briefed on the diplomatic issues regarding The City and Constantinople’s proxy war in Al Quds,” Miriam interrupted.

  Uri slumped into his chair and sullenly sipped from his water glass, annoyed by her interruption, but only briefly. This was her deal after all, and he was out of his
element. Spoke only when spoken to, the unsaid rule.

  “Norsk-Statoil built the vault on Jan Mayen,” Miriam explained to Uri, the three Nordic gentlemen nodding in agreement, “a joint venture between Einar’s subdivision and The City. They know of your payload and are acting liaisons to Alkonost. Jarl’s already made arrangements with Tiraspol; our flight leaves in one week.”

  “Mr. Vitko,” Einar interjected, “it is my understanding that you are former Alkonost. If you don’t mind me asking, why did you desert?”

  Uri was taken aback. No one had, strangely enough, ever asked him the question. The reasons felt obvious. To verbalize it—to actually say it—was another matter. Uri thought for a minute, eyes drifting over the ceiling grates and Lucite paneling. Fidgeting in his seat, he tried to find the right words.

  “You’re safe here, Uri—no traps, microphones, no cameras,” said Jarl, pointing and eyeing the room’s nooks and recesses. “We use Alkonost’s services time-to-time, but we’re not informants. We’re just curious.”

  Miriam nodded for him to speak.

  Uri took a deep breath. “Well . . . I was serving in Dagestan, defending the viceroy’s government from the highland Azars. A chronic dead zone had settled over the Northern Caspian, a salt fog choked with steppe methane. The viceroy had retreated to foothills of the northeast Caucasus.” Uri took a sip of water before he continued. “Unfortunately, their reserves were in default, and they had no bullion to pay for our brigade. When winter arrived, flights couldn’t land for extraction—too much enemy fire, bad runways—a whole host of excuses. Politics were involved, and we were ordered to wait it out. We were starving, so I left.”

  “Just as easy as that?” Einar said.

  “Not so much. I left my men behind—they refused to come with me—so I hiked south over the mountains. Barely alive, I followed the lights,” he said, pointing to the ceiling.

  “The City, yes, navigating by the stars,” Einar mused. “But you must be aware of Alkonost’s punishment for deserters.”

  Uri shrugged. “Yes. A beheading in Cossack Point, it’s a weekly tradition; I’m well aware. I’ve stumbled across a few Alkonost in my work as an archivist. With short, deadly tours, mercenaries tend to not remember faces for very long. I’m capable of handling such an eventuality, I assure you.”

  Mercenaries were incurious. Suspicion about whether or not a stranger was former Alkonost wasn’t typical. There were always exceptions, of course. Most old vets were dead vets, and the retired tended to stay put in Tiraspol after their tours.

  “Good. We’ve managed to supply you with proper Norsk-Statoil credentials, if you should need a proper cover story,” Einar smiled. “We wish you the best of luck.”

  “If I may ask you a question, Einar?” Uri added, as Miriam reprimanded him with a cold glance.

  “Please.”

  “Nuclear payloads, procured by The City, delivered to a vault built by Norsk-Statoil . . . I don’t get it. Is the installation some kind of reactor?”

  “It’s complicated, and I’m not at liberty to discuss the specifics,” Einar replied coyly.

  “Right.” Uri smirked. “I suppose they’re not paying me to ask questions, either. Fair enough.”

  They said goodbye and headed toward the elevator at the opposite end of the floor. Norse art—if one could call it that—decorated the hallway. Woodcarvings of fierce pagan gods glowered from polished granite walls. The leafy face of the “green man” gazed up at them from a floor mosaic. Inside the elevator, an English—or Scandinavian—voice called out the level and prompted them. Uri found all of it unsettling.

  “Extinct languages spoken by a blond Vikings, ancient religions now defunct. I don’t get it,” Uri admitted. “Who are these jokers?”

  “What’s not to ‘get?’ “ Miriam responded, gazing out at the rain-streaked windows of the elevator.

  “So Norsk-Statoil built this vault on an arctic island . . . to do what, store Al Fadah Madina’s nuclear arsenal? The sheikhdom pays in gold, but it can’t be just about the money. All this skullduggery right on the empire’s doorstep.”

  “You ask too many questions. You’re paid to deliver a payload. Nothing more.”

  “I’m well aware.” Uri sighed, frustrated.

  Miriam was just as cryptic as her paymasters. Maybe he was inquiring too much. Clandestine information was the currency of his world; he shouldn’t care, it all paid out the same. But he did care. It provoked his imagination like so much else recently.

  “This geological payload you and I are about to deliver,” Uri asked, trying a different tack. “I wasn’t aware of it; it wasn’t a part of my contract. What’s it for? Can you tell me that much?”

  “Norsk-Statoil is proving out a meteorological theory. They believe the Post-Industrial Shock is a climatic hiccup, and that the warming will reverse,” Miriam explained. “But I don’t share their optimism.”

  “A new Ice Age?” Uri laughed.

  Miriam tilted her head and shrugged. “Chaos theory predicts it as a strange attractor; it’s a possibility, however improbable.”

  “Whatever.”

  Uri watched the darkening sky through the elevator glass. As they descended toward the plaza geodesics, streams of runoff poured from the roof spillways. Like a sunken Atlantis, the sodium glow of streetlamps filtered up through the sloshing water. Arriving in the main lobby, Uri retrieved his satchel from the guard booth.

  “You’re supposed to have a permit for that,” the guard admonished in broken Latin. The man had been snooping. Uri nodded and snatched the canvas bag from the heavyset man.

  “Mind your own business,” Uri said, flipping him a shekel bribe as they left.

  “Did you bring your handgun with you? That guard’s probably calling the gendarmes. Do you want to get thrown in a Byzantine jail?”

  Uri shushed her and exited through the whoosh of the lobby’s automatic doors. Out in the plaza, Miriam ran up to him like a niggling sibling, impatient. Ignoring her, he sat down at the bar of a food cart and ordered a lamb shawarma. Miriam clenched her fists. Uri was about to dig into the spicy meat and yogurt sandwich when Miriam elbowed in next to him.

  “What’re you doing? Why won’t you answer me?”

  Uri pushed his forefinger to his lips, and then batted an eye over his shoulder at Morosov’s facade. “It’s my side job. There’s a fellow named Popov. He should be arriving soon. I need to talk to him—one way or another,” Uri said, patting the Zigana inside his satchel.

  “The gendarmes will see you, and they’ll call in the centipedes—you’re jeopardizing everything.”

  “Have a kebab,” Uri said, lifting a finger to attract the vendor’s attention. He closed his eyes and savored his food. “This is wonderful. There are things I do miss about the empire—Miriam, please, have a seat. Talk to me.”

  “I don’t want to be around when you pull your stunt, so . . . ”

  Uri grasped her by the forearm and pulled her toward him. Her nostrils flared with rage, dark eyes wide with insult. “Who do you think you’re talking to?” Uri said with a furrowed brow. “You must really think I just fell out of the sky, huh, some neophyte hack? This is what I do, Miriam, and I’m no stranger to this type of work. And this type of work is what Al Fadah Madina pays me for, in case you’ve forgotten.”

  “It’s a miracle. I don’t know how you survived out there. You’re rash and foolish.”

  “How did you survive, Miriam, before coming to Nova Byzantium?” Uri said, his thumb firmly over the Farsi slaver brand on her inner arm. They both looked at the scar. “What about that?” He let go of her and turned back to order a mint lemon tea. She stood frozen, eyes flashing.

  In the few days he’d known her, Uri had managed to exploit the few rips in her veil of secrecy. And in the process, he’d stitched together a mosaic of Miriam’s fragmented life.

  As a girl, she’d attended a madrassah funded by one of Al Fadah Madina’s missions in northern Persia. At the peak of Alko
nost’s bloody Alborz engagement, the mercenaries were hired to strangle supply lines feeding the Azeri insurgency. After a year of too much bloodshed and too little success, the place became a hellhole. At the conflict’s height, Miriam fled the madness. The details of her escape remained vague. How she fell into the hands of slavers was a mystery.

  “I give you my word, Miriam. You can trust me. I know what I’m doing,” Uri said, striking a soothing tone.

  “I will say this to you, archivist—”

  “Uri.”

  “I will say this: I don’t want to rely on you for anything. But if I do—Allah have mercy—I expect professionalism and a regard for caution. I’ve risked too much to just . . . ”

  Worked up, she was short of words. She ran a tense hand through her thick shoulder-length hair, a few strands falling into her eyes. Uri paused and noticed moistening eyes, something in her voice, lips pensive and clenched. He wanted to reach out, but instead handed her a cup of hibiscus tea. She took and sipped it.

  “Miriam, I give you my word.”

  She silently set the cup down and walked away, disappearing into the rush of suits and pedicabs.

  The evening crowd thinned as Uri loitered and smoked his cigarettes. His stash of bazaar cigarillos was running low; he needed a substitute. Trying to avoid the camera surveillance, he made a circuit of the plaza, finally settling into a Raki lounge. He maneuvered through the jostle of well-liquored suits and claimed a barstool at one end of the U-shaped bar. Looking past the phalanx of bottle spigots, he had clear vantage of Morosov’s main entrance. He ordered a drink and waited.

  Anatolia Raki was too fiery and fumy for his palate; the sweeter honey notes of whisky was more his style than the empire’s bitter anise hooch. He swirled the milky liquid around in the tumbler before setting it on the polished granite. Uri observed the mingling crowd opposite him. Most were business types having an after-work drink. Re-enactors of a gilded age, they were caught up in the romanticism of a bygone era, forgotten with recent generations. He thought it a pity. Too infused with the life outside Nova Byzantium, Uri was not envious.