Nova Byzantium

by Matthew Rivett

  “Fawzi?”

  Sheikh Sayyid’s jovial lackey Fawzi was responsible for Uri’s commission. By hacking his sheikh’s data channels, he was able to hijack archivists in the field for his own curious ends. And somehow, he was able to pay them for it. A smart kid: Uri knew there was a reason he had warmed to the chubby subversive when he met him.

  One last look, he opened the mask’s mahogany case and touched its weirdness. The relic was to remain at Miriam’s flat, unbeknownst to her. Tucking it in between the leather-bound volumes of a bookcase, it looked indistinguishable from neighboring tomes.

  He remembered the smell: mildewed canvas, leaky hydraulics, and the dirty burn of jet fuel; Uri had almost forgotten how strong it was. Attempting to sleep in flight was pointless; the stiff jump seats, turbulence, and roar of the Ivchenko turbofans made relaxing impossible. Behind the navigator’s seat, they sat strapped in, facing the flight crew. Young kids, Alkonost was already short on veterans, a fact complicated by a few failed campaigns on Nova Byzantium’s northern frontier. As a deserter, Uri worried they might recognize him, but the boys were far too young. Most weren’t even shaving when he’d quit.

  One of the sergeants, a few years older than the rest, mentioned the Fall of Kharkov. Operation Allied Saint was a drawn-out campaign, a low-level conflict until rumor of imminent pullout spread. Uri turned up his headphones to eavesdrop. He’d heard only speculation, but no direct confirmation.

  There’d been an uprising, rumors of extortion by Alkonost, and a local oblast insurgency. The boys mentioned a battalion killed in their barracks by a truck bomb—three hundred troops lost—resulting in an ensuing pogrom of revenge killings. The pullout—or retreat, depending on one’s perspective—was ugly. Uri wanted to ask the puerile mercenaries if they had seen his daughter, but he had no proof she was there.

  The jarring turbulence increased. Uri glanced at the navigator’s LCD map and saw a storm cell of whirling red and orange on the weather radar. He noticed something odd.

  “Jan Mayen’s due north, but by our heading . . . ” Uri stretched to get a better look. “We’re nine thousand meters over Pristina, way west.” Uri said quietly, nudging Miriam.

  “Sayyid sent me a communiqué late last night. The City received an archivist’s beacon near the Rhine Delta; the agent’s three months overdue. I talked it over with Einar at Norsk-Statoil. He said they could negotiate to have Alkonost adjust our flight plan in order to pick him up,” Miriam casually explained.

  “You’re joking?”

  She flashed him a perturbed glance. “No.”

  Uri smiled in disbelief. “Why didn’t Sayyid notify me? As the military specialist and designated agent, I’m the one responsible for this shipment.”

  “But I’m responsible for coordinating our plans with the flight crew,” Miriam retorted. “I set up this operation.”

  “Where’re we going to land, Miriam? Flanders is a swamp, and what about dead zones?”

  “This Antonov’s equipped with rocket assist for short takeoff. The lost agent established a location for a suitable runway. It will be a quick stop; we’ll be on the ground less than fifteen minutes. If he’s not there, I’ve given orders to the crew to abort,” Miriam explained.

  “You’ve given orders?” Uri quipped. “And why wasn’t I informed? We’re not just day-tripping, here?”

  Miriam stared straight ahead.

  “Since I’m obviously not capable of doing the job, you want my payout as well?” Uri fumed.

  He was irate with Sayyid; the sheikh had done this for a reason. Sure, it all paid the same, but he was the archivist assigned to this delivery, not Miriam. It was a slap in the face from Sayyid; it had to be punishment for his recent roguishness.

  To escape the awkward silence, Uri got up and walked back to the payload bay. A line of crates draped with nets sat on wheeled trolleys. Near the front was his pallet, the nuclear duffel neatly bundled next to his weapons pack and the Norsk weather station. He lifted up the netting and peeked at the freight. The shipping labels revealed little: supplies any remote construction crew might require, generators, hydraulics, compressors, air tools. But one of the small crates caught his attention.

  Impact-proof, its hard case was latched with combination locks. The label indicated it held medical incubators and specimen holders complete with a built-in Ferrofluid cooling system; high-end hardware, definitely out of place.

  “Fasten your harnesses, please,” announced the pilot. “Rough air ahead.”

  Uri scrambled back, fell into his seat, and clipped the five-point buckle. The red twelve-volts flashed as the fuselage shuddered, the bumps silencing the crew. Leaden clouds whirled past a hatch window. They had entered the storm, a tropical depression. Central Europe, especially the massifs, was an unending cauldron of colliding storm fronts. Alkonost typically avoided such monstrous disturbances, but they were short on fuel and required a more direct route.

  Uri tapped the knee of the mercenary sitting across from him. “Do we know the oxygen levels at the landing site?”

  The mercenary shrugged. “Not sure. I guess we’ll know when we get there, eh?”

  Stupefied, Uri pulled his hood out from his satchel and prepped the filter and seals, adding extra combat fasteners to the canvas shroud.

  Two hours later, jostled and motion sick, the crew prepared to land. The vertiginous descent was steep, the Antonov banking hard as it squared itself. Yellow cabin lights marked three thousand meters. Uri craned his neck to glance out the hatch window but saw only miasma.

  The Rhine Delta was an upended chunk of the continent, a mean slog for any archivist. The Flemish Low Countries were immersed by the rising North Sea, the dikes ruined, the land reclaimed by estuary. Now a vast slough, crocodile and water snake roamed the skeletal conurbations, preying on lethargic nutria. Prone to methane flashovers, the Delta’s fluvial jungles were optimal for birds and reptiles but hell on mammals, a true terra morta.

  Through the mist a weedy tarmac appeared, a runway for an old military base outside Rotterdam’s ruins. The turbofans struggled and strained the last one hundred meters until the landing gear careened into broken pavement. Uri’s teeth smacked and pinched his tongue. Tailbones and backsides bruised, the crew groaned. With the spoiler brakes deployed, the Antonov creaked to a halt.

  Miriam and Uri followed the security team as they unbuckled and moved to the rear cargo door. The sergeant pulled a hydraulic lever to lower the plane’s drawbridge ramp. Everyone’s breathing quickened. Uri checked his console. Atmospheric oxygen content was adequate, but carbon dioxide levels were in the red. He threw on his hood, cinched it up, and adjusted the filters. Miriam did the same as the younger Alkonost fumbled ineptly. Uri’s fatigues clung to his skin. The Flemish swamp heat was atrocious.

  They stepped onto the moldered airstrip and looked around. Cordoned in by moss-draped cypress and bushy cycads, the runway was infiltrated by bog plants. Ghostly hangars sat back from the claustrophobic forest, their gaping doors like empty eye sockets. Next to the structures, the ruins of a control tower tottered vine-entangled and stripped. A kick to the tarmac and the concrete crumbled to gravel.

  “We’re lucky we didn’t crash.”

  The extremely loud sound produced by cicadas’ tymbals saturated the air with insect noise. This place, with its deafening din and asphyxiating humidity, was misery. Uri grew anxious.

  “Where is this bastard? We need to get the hell out of here,” Uri said, his voice muffled by the hood muzzle.

  “Fifteen minutes,” Miriam said.

  “I’ve never been out this far,” said a specialist, pacing about.

  “I was stationed in East Anglia for a few months,” another mentioned. “But nothing like this.”

  Ten minutes ticked down. They continued to loiter.

  “That’s it,” Uri said to the sergeant. “Have the crew start the engines. We’re getting out of here.”

  “Sorry, sir, but I only take orders from authori
zed personnel,” the sergeant argued. “We’re not going anywhere until—”

  A crossbow bolt, its aluminum shaft fletched with plastic, pierced the man’s trachea right above the collarbone. The sergeant tore his hood off. Eyes bulging, he mouthed silent words but made only a wet gurgling. Dropping to a crouch, he reached up as if to catch the blood flowing from his neck. A moment later, he was dead.

  “Christ!”

  “The sarge!”

  “Goddamn it!”

  “Where did it come from?”

  “It’s a trap!” Uri exclaimed. “Get back in the plane.”

  Another bolt struck a recruit through the calf. Uri shouldered the screaming man as he toppled. Miriam and the others rushed into the waiting Antonov, the mercenaries slowing to drag the body inside. A squall of metal, tings of crossbow fire rained over the fuselage, a few penetrating the metal skin.

  “Miriam!” Uri pointed forward. “Get them going!”

  She nodded and scrambled up through the plane to the cockpit. As the pilots fired up the turbofans and swung the plane about, an explosion rocked the starboard. The Antonov listed, unmooring the trolley casters from the decking. A jet burst of acceleration sent the crate train backward and onto the ramp as it struggled to close. With a hydraulic groan, the door gave way to the momentum like a battering ram, spilling an archipelago of pallets onto the runway.

  “We’re hit!”

  “Where?”

  “The wing. Maybe an RPG.”

  “It’s catching fire.”

  A jarring secondary rang the plane. Uri tossed Miriam her weapon then grabbed his Khyber rifle, Zigana pistol, and kit as he dashed back onto the tarmac. Using the scattered cargo for cover, they hunkered down and loaded clips. Uri looked at the four young men and the navigator. In their haste, only half had brought their weapons.

  “Did the pilots get out?”

  “I don’t know. They were unbuckling when I bailed,” the navigator said. “By the looks of it . . . probably not.”

  “How’re we going to get out of here? We’re a thousand klicks from nowhere,” yelled a panicked recruit.

  “We’re fucked!” shouted another.

  Uri grew annoyed.

  The Antonov’s left wing was engulfed, igniting the short take-off rocket pods. Another plangent explosion and the wing cracked open, expelling lit fuel. It didn’t take long. A minute later and the airframe was a mushroom of black smoke and billowing flame.

  Miriam pulled out her sniper rifle and assembled the barrel and stock. Frustrated, Uri threw his Zigana and extra clips at the weaponless recruits, warning them to fire sparingly. More crossbow bolts mixed with arrows thumped the crate plywood. Popping up, he used the freight pallet as a parapet and scoped the scene.

  Near the wreckage he saw a line of sinewy, lanky men wearing breathing apparatuses—not hoods, but medical masks with a tube connected to an oxygen reservoir. The barbarians were shirtless, bodies streaked with orange war paint. Uri opened up with his Khyber bullpup and emptied a clip in three-round bursts. The barbarians scattered as he cut them down. Another barrage of muscle-powered missiles poured in as he ducked.

  “They’re primitives, no firearms.”

  “How many?” Miriam asked.

  Uri shrugged. “I don’t know. Hard to tell. A fucking lot, though.”

  Miriam unfolded her rifle’s bipod and propped it on the crate to scan the airfield as Uri laid down suppressing fire. The Alkonost recruits covered for them. Spraying and praying, their wild shooting exasperated Uri. Through the smoke, he saw movement, swarms of Rhine barbarians creeping in on their position like ants to sugar.

  “There’s hundreds of them,” Miriam said.

  Uri glanced at his duffel lying on the tarmac. The tote was too heavy. He couldn’t run with it, his adversaries too nimble. Unlike his hood—which acted as a bellows to concentrate oxygen—the barbarians had fashioned a pure oxygen turbo-boost. The devices were a clever way to overcome a dead zone’s lassitude.

  “Called reloads, got it?”

  Miriam nodded.

  He switched the Khyber to single shot and fired, the brass tumbling from the breach in a steady ka-ching ka-ching. Miriam’s aim was tighter, every shot dropping a warrior mid-stride. An odd hit breached a barbarian’s oxygen tank, producing a blue flash like a firefly. Minutes passed. The first wave had succumbed to Uri and Miriam’s fusillade. Not far behind, a second wave rushed in to fill the fallen ranks.

  “Reload!” Miriam dropped down and slapped in another clip.

  Uri, with six clips emptied and two left, was thin on ammunition. Perspiration misted his eye shield, challenging his aim. With the enemy only a few hundred yards away, he switched to three-round bursts.

  “Almost out!” Miriam cried.

  Uri glanced over and saw a single clip left in her webbing. To his right, a burst of wild pistol fire subdued a flanking group of barbarians; the Alkonost initiates had finally landed a hit.

  But it wasn’t enough.

  After emptying another clip, Uri’s heart sank. In less than a minute, they’d be overrun. He reached down to his calf, pulled the Grozny beheading blade from its sheath, and ejected its two cyanide doses.

  “Cease fire!” Uri yelled. “That’s it, we’re done!” He looked over his shoulder at the depleted mercenaries, weapons exhausted. Only three out of the five remained, the dead skewered by metal.

  “I can’t do this.” Miriam set down her rifle.

  Uri looked at her, despondent eyes teary behind the enrichment hood’s eye shield.

  “I won’t let them have me—I can’t.”

  “Miriam, look at me.” Uri flashed the two vials of black liquid, pushing one into her fist. “If it comes down to that . . . this will take care of it, got it?”

  She nodded.

  Uri kneeled next to her. “But stay alive, okay? Just do me that favor.”

  He held out his hand. She gripped it tight.

  The warrior whoops swamped the insect cacophony as they closed in, bows and crossbows taut and aimed. In the dusky light, they were alien creatures direct from a child’s nightmare. A war chief, ornamented with a chest harness and reptile-skin epaulettes, broke through the phalanx. In his hand was an archivist’s battered and soiled console. The chief approached Uri and poked him in the chest with his assegai spear.

  “You have one too, eh?” the man said in broken Latin.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  November 2156 C.E.

  “You expect me to give in to the demands of pederasts and fairies?” exclaimed Padshah Khan. “You’re all fools. I will not shame myself before that . . . that army of dandies. I won’t!”

  General Dobish, commander of Operation Alexander, shook his head and stroked his mustache. “It’s unconventional, I’ll give it that. I’ve heard of crazier things in my thirty-year career. But . . . ”

  “But . . . what?” said the gesticulating Khan, his shaggy papaha wobbling on his round head.

  “Lieutenant Uri Vitko?” Dobish turned to face the lieutenant. “Are you up for this? What’s your intramurals rating?”

  Uri took a puff of his cigarillo and shook his head. He was having trouble believing what he was hearing, especially from a general.

  “You’re actually contemplating this?” the Khan interjected, bewildered. “General, I demand that you cease entertaining such nonsense.”

  “You will demand nothing,” General Dobish replied, shoving his finger at the thickset warlord. “You’re not footing the bill for this, your imperial sponsors back in Constantinople are, and if it wasn’t for us, those cross-dressing pixies would have had your head on a pike years ago.”

  “It was hovering around twenty-two hundred last time I checked, sir,” Uri answered belatedly. “But there are some Alkonost veteran masters who—”

  “There’s no time, lieutenant,” the general started. “So, you think you can beat these Nizari bastards?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe, sir,” Uri remained noncommi
ttal.

  “It’s worth a shot, eh?” the general smirked.

  Uri shrugged, slowly exhaling smoke.

  “So what are the terms of the ceasefire, Lieutenant Valis?” Dobish asked, spinning around on his boot heels. “What do les jumeaux terribles have lined up?”

  Sava walked into the center of the quorum with Jaweed and opened a loose-leaf binder listing The Brothers’ ceasefire terms. The Padshah and his hoary lieutenants gasped in huffs of indignation as he read aloud. Lines redrawn, ground and oil facilities turned over, access to desalination facilities and corridors inland . . .

  Despite the protests, Uri didn’t find The Brothers’ desires all that unreasonable. For Nizari fanatics, the pair possessed uncanny business minds.

  “So we’ll draw fifteen lots for the Khan’s men, as Sava’s already committed to be ‘king’ in this contest. Correct, Sava?” Sava nodded. The general opened the notebook and gave it a cursory glance. “And Uri will be our master . . . unless the Khan has a champion he’d like to offer.”

  Uri had expected Dobish, one of Alkonost’s more conservative generals, to oppose the plan. But much to Uri’s dismay, Alkonost, ever more concerned with blood and treasure, viewed gladiatorial chess as a means to an end. In the creosote dust of Turkmenbashi, “paths of glory” were quickly transmuting into “paths of least resistance.”

  Uri felt his intestines knot. Eyes downcast, he focused on the scuffed leather of his jump boots. His throat longed for a shot of Scotch.

  “You want me to sacrifice my men? You make these decisions as if I’m not here, general?” The Khan’s face was frozen in an incredulous grimace. “Who do you think you are, that you can just enter my palace and make these insane demands, eh?”

  “I’m your last chance. You’re outnumbered and outgunned, Khan,” Dobish answered curtly, walking over to the expansive window of the retrofitted petroleum ministry. “That nomad army out there—hell, it’s like they’re sprouting from the sand, isn’t it? I suggest you draw your terms. Let’s see what we can get out of these garish gynandries, eh?” he pointed at Jaweed.

  Uri headed downstairs to the anteroom to get his drink. No one stopped him. The Khan had converted the old oil ministry into a palace, perched on a wind-burnt mountain that overlooked Turkmenbashi’s Awaza peninsula. Scotch was extinct this far east, so a manservant delivered him a shot of vodka. He slumped into a lounger in front of the tall windows and lit a cigarillo.