Nova Byzantium

by Matthew Rivett

  Another round, and he stubbed out his cigarette as he watched a man exit the escalator from the transit station just outside. He threw a few shekels on the bar and shouldered his way out onto the air-conditioned streets. With his duster draped over his left arm, concealing the Zagana, he sped up next to Popov.

  “Don’t make a scene and you won’t get hurt,” Uri whispered.

  Popov spun around. “What’s going on here?”

  “You have a Zagana 9mm pistol aimed at your heart,” he said, revealing the barrel under the coat’s folds. “Set for an automatic low-recoil burst with a modified muzzle velocity, each bullet is designed to tumble, causing the maximum damage to soft tissue. One false move and three rounds will carve a fist-sized hole through your sternum. You’ll be dead before you drop, understand?”

  “Yes, yes I do,” Popov said, his afternoon stubble glistening with a sweaty sheen.

  With his free hand, Uri hailed an executive cab and motioned for Popov to get in. He handed the driver a napkin with an address, then took a seat across from the squirming engineer.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  “Somewhere quiet and out of the way. I need to ask you a few questions,” Uri said, propping his pistol up with his knee.

  “Ask then. There’s no need for this. I’m a reasonable man.”

  “Perhaps. Do you remember me, Mr. Popov?”

  Popov turned to look at Uri, squinting in the tinted light. He shook his head. “No . . . No, I don’t.”

  “Lieutenant Uri Vitko, Bicaz, Moldovan Campaign. I sat in on one of your auditing sessions, an interrogation using Morosov’s Illithium technology.”

  “I oversaw dozens of interrogations. If you were present, I don’t remember you. Is that what this is about?”

  “Captain Zelinski pulled Morosov’s contract shortly after I visited his brig. Do you know why?”

  Popov shook his head, “That effort was closed out years ago. I . . . ”

  “Seven years and eight months, to be exact. It was winter.”

  “Yes, okay,” Popov sighed pensively. “It probably had something to do with funding. I’d been told Alkonost leadership wasn’t wholly satisfied with their investment and—”

  “But that wasn’t the end of Illithium, was it?”

  “We Morosov do not pursue technologies that aren’t profitable. Our research is guided by the desires of our customers. If Alkonost and the empire do not express interest in a particular product, research funding is reallocated.”

  “But you’ve other customers for Illithium, correct?”

  “No. It was an intelligence-gathering system, purely and solely, a technological asset needed by the clandestine organs of nation-state entities, and since there aren’t many of those left . . . ”

  “You’re lying,” Uri interjected. “I don’t believe you.”

  “Believe what you want, Mr. Vitko, but this abduction is completely unnecessary. I can forward you Illithium’s official project report. All our findings and data. It’s all right there in black and white. Just let me go.”

  “What about Illithium’s gray-market clients?”

  “I wouldn’t peg you as a conspiracy lunatic, Mr. Vitko.” Popov quipped. “So can I presume you’re an Alkonost auditing agent. Worried your investment’s getting sold off?”

  “I don’t represent Alkonost.”

  “Then who do you represent?”

  “Let’s just say, I’m inquiring on the victim’s behalf.”

  Popov looked out the window but said nothing.

  With its submerged manors and palatial estates, Bebek District formed an archipelago of sagging rooftops. The streets’ tidal channels were choked with hydrilla and yellow-green mats of duckweed. Closer into shore, a network of floating docks connected the sturdier mansions to land, their top floors aglow with kerosene lanterns. Except for the occasional fisherman and salvager, the district was deserted. Like tree sap in winter, Bebek’s wealth had retreated inland from the Bosphorus, closer to the root system of Constantinople’s infrastructure.

  Uri paid the driver, tipping him with a stack of shekels as he motioned Popov out of the vehicle. The path leading to the water was gnarled. Mudslides and the polluted runoff had dissolved the tarmac, leaving a ruined trail of broken asphalt. Popov stumbled over tree roots and rock piles in the dusky light.

  “Where are you taking me?”

  Uri lifted the gun and pointed it at Popov’s head. “Too many questions. Just walk.”

  “I demand to know where you’re taking me!”

  Uri pulled the hammer back, loading a round into the chamber. “Enough.”

  They followed a creaky maze of catwalks snaking along the buildings’ edges, ivy and hibiscus blooming out of shattered windows and drooping balconies. Uri shoved Popov into an empty doorway. He tripped and fell to the slate tiling. The room was empty except for a wire-wicker chair surrounded by a set of battery-powered klieg lights. Uri had rented the place from Beyoglu’s Russian arms dealers, just in case. It had only taken a few bottles of vodka and a war story or two to finagle the deal, unbeknownst to Miriam. Uri needed a safe house, and her flat was out of the question. Street interrogations could be quick, messy affairs, and he needed an appropriate amount of space and time to work. The Muscovites assured him that the local hermits would be compensated well enough to ignore any screams.

  “Sit.”

  “I guess you’re serious,” Popov said, sitting down in the chair.

  Uri raised an eyebrow. He pulled out a set of tie straps and cinched them around Popov’s sweat-drenched ankles and hands. “I want to know about Illithium . . . after the Alkonost contract.”

  “I’m bonded to a security arrangement. They’ll throw me in prison if I divulge that information. I’ll be sent to gulag.”

  “So, it’s true?” Uri stood up and crossed his arms. “Morosov continued Illithium after the contract ended, eh?” Uri said, lighting a cigarillo. “You mentioned repackaging the growth, using petri dishes or something.”

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss . . . ”

  “Are you serious? Who has the gun here, Popov?” Uri asked, waving around the piece.

  “I don’t care.”

  Uri smacked him in the chin; bloody drool dribbled from his punctured lip. “I’ve thirty caseless rounds in this clip,” he said, holding up the auto-pistol. “Enough firepower to reduce you to a pile of blood, bone, and fat.”

  “All right!” Popov cried, his voice shaky. “Replaying the broadcast directly into a user’s mind bypasses the middleman and eliminates the need to reprocess vast amounts of alpha-wave data by computer. It’s just a direct read/write capability from one mind to another.”

  “What about the ‘pickleheads’?” Uri exhaled a plume of smoke.

  “ ‘Pickleheads’?”

  Uri smacked Popov again; his wire-frame glasses flew across the slate floor and shattered. “The test subjects—the zombies! Did you fix it? Did you make the process survivable?”

  Popov shook his head slowly. “No . . . no, the signal-to-noise was too high for the MEGs to record alpha-waves outside the cranium. The self-assemblers had to be grown inside the cortex near the brain’s synaptic junctions.”

  “Meg? Who’re you talking about?”

  “M-E-G: ‘MEG’: Magneto-Encephalography—a technique using miniature magnetometers to record brain activity, similar to Pre-Shock MRI technology. To get this level of fidelity, there’s just no way to get around the intrusive inductive networks; it’s a necessary evil.”

  “So you’re still creating monsters?”

  “If that’s what you’re calling them.”

  “Morosov . . . Christ. You assholes are nothing but a bunch of goddamned ghouls, you know that? I fucking knew it.” Uri stormed around the bare room. “I should do what’s left of the world a favor,” he said, firing off a burst above Popov’s head.

  Popov coughed, a cloud of mildewed dust raining on him. “Don’t kill me,” he begged.

/>   “Give me a reason, Frankenstein.”

  “I’ll tell you everything. What else do you want to know?”

  “The thought readers. What are they? How do you make them?”

  “Jellyfish.”

  “What?”

  “The Black Sea blooms, medusas, millions of them. They’re perfect and they’re plentiful. The MEG networks grow on their mesoglea. The toxins in their tentacles neutralize the runaway metastasis. It’s something we’ve never been able to duplicate in humans’ cortical networks. Since the write sequence doesn’t need high signal-to-noise, a facial bond is reactive enough to couple for broadcast.”

  He hadn’t brought the mask along, but it was exactly what Popov described. When hydrated, the thing unfurled like a jellyfish, gooey tentacles reaching out. Sculpted to resemble Hindu relics, the ornamental grafts were bio-engineered fetishes tailored to gray-market customers. No longer fragments of voice and images, the short-term memories were a fully rendered sensorial experience.

  The same old problem remained, however. With no means to retard the self-assembler’s growth, the recording targets always died from the implant, just like the doomed Carpis he and Krajnik had encountered. Reliving an experience through someone else’s eyes meant that person would perish. The executions, the stoning, and the burnings . . . it made cruel sense now. Embedded with Morosov’s shit, the condemned were doomed to die one way or another.

  “How are memories stored inside the medusa MEGs?”

  “Chemical cuing, polymer triggers that align the associative networks.”

  “Like a tea or a broth?” Uri asked knowingly.

  “Could be. Please, I’ve told you everything. Let me go, for Christ’s sake,” Popov pleaded, his chin swelling with a purple contusion.

  “Who’s buying this shit?”

  “Marketing isn’t my forte.”

  Uri kicked the engineer in the chest, knocking him over in his chair. Landing on his back, he heard a wet pop. Unable to free his hands, one of his shoulders had dislocated. He writhed in pain.

  “I don’t know who’s buying Illithium!” Popov screamed.

  Uri put the muzzle to the man’s stringy hair.

  “I heard something about The Red Light in the Beyoglu,” he yowled. “Sex stuff and all that. That’s all I know. I swear!”

  Uri could only imagine how such a form of vicarious prostitution worked. He chose not to think about it. “And what about a Kali death cult, the Hindu Thuggees?”

  “Huh?” Popov’s eyes were rolling back, tears welling up from the pain. “I don’t know anything about any of that.”

  Uri lifted his boot, ready to stomp.

  “Honest to Christ! I don’t know! I don’t know!”

  Uri believed him.

  Fire-walled from Morosov’s distributors, Popov wasn’t privy to the ends of his monstrous science. It took Morosov’s marketing goons to come up with an application suitably warped for the gray market. Uri had learned what he needed to know from the pathetic engineer. Morosov was the builder of the Thuggees’ mask, having adapted it from Illithium’s technology. The Thuggees were just their clientele.

  “What’re you going to do with me?”

  “Centipede weather radio is forecasting a level three dead zone in the next twelve hours, not even safe for housecats. So unless you’ve got the metabolism of a monitor lizard, you’ll be blue and cold by morning.”

  “You’re not going to leave me here?”

  “I was thinking about it, unless . . . ”

  “Unless . . . unless, what?”

  “I need to give you an injection before we can go any further?”

  “What’s in it?”

  Uri shook his head, clicking his tongue to the roof of his mouth. “Not so fast. Patience. What’s it going to be, Popov? It’s late and I need a drink.”

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “Not unless you can hold your breath for seven to eight hours.”

  From his satchel Uri produced a preloaded syringe full of a silver-blue liquid. Ironically, the dose of mystery was a Morosov product, something he’d bargained from the Russians. He stabbed the needle through the starchy wrinkles of Popov’s shirtsleeve and pushed the three ccs of solution into his deltoid.

  “What did you just do to me?”

  “You’re an educated biologics designer, surely you’ve heard of binary poisons.”

  From the look on Popov’s face, he was well aware. Designed as a mirror polymer, the poison and its antidote were counterparts. Alone, they acted independently as a slow venom-mimic, released at steady rate from a nano-timer catalyst. But when recombined, they neutralized themselves. Popov could stumble back to Maslak, limp into his lab and madly research the poison from Morosov’s vast catalogue, or he could simply do what Uri requested.

  “I want as much information on Illithium as possible. Everything you have access to: the final reports, engineering, test runs, legal documents . . . everything.”

  “Most of it’s modeling simulation data. It won’t make any sense to you.”

  “I don’t give a shit. I want it. Once you’ve uploaded the data package to my anonymous account on the imperial data hub, I’ll send a cab to Maslak’s central plaza. Inside will be a mini-case with the antidote. Understand?” Uri said, crouching near Popov.

  “Those nano-timers are known to be faulty. What if it triggers too early?”

  Uri shrugged. “It’s a chance I’m willing to take.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  November 2156 C.E.

  The hydrofoils fanned out over the Caspian in a delta formation. Quick and maneuverable, they floated above the sea, darting in and out of each other’s wakes like porpoises. Just over the glass horizon, past the salt-bergs, Uri spotted the oil refineries and decrepit beach resorts of Turkmenbashi’s skyline. Columns of smoke billowed above the cityscape in spirals of dense soot. Like a netherworld inferno, Turkmenbashi and its southern peninsula burned continuously. In the Karakum desert, so much fire seemed impossible, but war generated enough tinder—bodies, oil, garbage—to keep the flames stoked.

  Air cover was light; most of the invasion’s Halos and Hinds were grounded back in Baku. One bomber and a few rocket-heavy gunships limped a few kilometers back for the initial assault. The official reason was “maintenance,” a catchall for logistical snags in Alkonost’s supply chain. The beach attack was shaping up to be exclusively amphibious. After reading the intelligence reports, Sava figured heavy weapons would be of little use anyhow. This was guerrilla war, urban and grimy.

  Padshah Khan was Nova Byzantium’s ally in Turkmenbashi; his army of raggedy men defended the city’s oil infrastructure from two fanatical brothers named Farzad and Farzam. They were “foreigners,” or so stated the official report: monastic wanderers from the oasis city of Merv in the Karakum. Engaged in a warped Nizari mysticism, the nomads practiced a perverse depravity in combat: child sacrifice, slow torture, and decimation. Using a local radio transmitter, “The Brothers” as they were collectively known, preached crazed sermons to their fanatic militias.

  Sava checked his console, 2.3 klicks to the beachhead. His mission was to link up with one of Farzad or Farzam’s operatives to establish a liaison between the Padshah Khan and The Brothers. Making an end run around the Khan would risk Constantinople’s shaky alliance. Diplomacy was of the utmost necessity.

  The rendezvous was inland, southeast of Turkmenbashi’s No Man’s Land: a strip of shelled blight that sliced the conurbation’s fang-like peninsula, dividing it into two. To the northeast was the warlord’s Turkmenbashi borough, friendly ground; to the south was the Awaza District and The Brothers. Alkonost’s primary objective was to widen No Man’s Land. Using Halos laden with napalm incendiaries, the mercenaries planned to blacken it—scorched earth—expunging the corridor of life and oxygen.

  The hydrofoils shot for a decaying oil jetty and its pipeline terminal. The kilometer-long spit would be Alkonost’s forward operating base once secured. Mor
tar fire erupted in geysers of saline mist, the agile boats quick to skirt through the fountains in a hectic choreography. Sava looked through his rifle sight. Next to a set of globular gas reservoirs, he saw a group of technicals: improvised dreadnaughts welded together from trucks, plate steel, and artillery.

  “Do you see them?” Sava radioed.

  “Yeah,” Uri responded from a nearby boat. “There’s a spotter on the far tower.”

  Deployed with Uri’s platoon, Sava commanded his own detachment. Uri was aware of Sava’s mission, but not the specifics. Mission intelligence required a strict “need-to-know,” or so went the cover story. Now able to operate freely in the field, Sava could work his side job unfettered.

  Checking the injection kit in his pack, Sava counted the crimson syringe ampoules. The Morosov agent gave him twelve growth catalysts, and he had already used one back in Baku. Quality was a must, with an added bonus for intensity, they informed him. The clients demanded something more than the usual snuff. Having read the brief, Sava was aware of The Brothers’ penchant for theatrical cruelty. Opportunities abounded.

  The missile turret swiveled on gyroscopic stabilizers to lock on the target. The rockets hissed as they slithered out of their firing tubes; the barrage zeroed in on the nomads’ technicals. Hydrofoil outriders paired in tandem, a spiral of smoky contrails approaching the enemy vehicles from all sides. Explosions rocked the gaswork’s tanks. Unmoored, the corrosion-stained spheres tipped and rolled toward the Caspian, flattening the fiery dreadnoughts like marbles would ants.

  The hydrofoil armada made another pass, taking potshots at the nomads fleeing the salt-caked jetty. The radio crackled with an “all clear.” Reports of rifle fire slowly ceased. The whine of the gas turbines eased as the boats fell on their retracting foils. A swarm of Alkonost poured over the gunwales and into the chest-high water. Sava could taste it, the brine and creosote reek—the industrial decay of Awaza’s alkali flats.

  “Rally at the pump station. Do you see it?” Uri radioed.

  “Roger that,” Sava replied. “Next to the sump fire.”