Nova Byzantium

by Matthew Rivett

  Uri took a last look through the scope; nice clean chest shots, one apiece, like a surgeon’s knife.

  The airboat glided underneath the swampy canopy as they raced downriver. Channels of open water intertwined through the vast wetlands of the lower Rhine. The ruined city’s buildings had morphed into hilly islands, complete with shorelines of fern and mud. Through the mangrove’s rabbit warrens and cycad undergrowth, Uri spotted their pursuers’ distant froth. Weaving the boat through the drowned city’s moldering alleys, the Doppler whine of the speeding airboats faded, the Vandal war party lost.

  Merging with the river’s main artery, they pulled into a cypress grove and concealed the airboat with branches and tufts of Spanish moss. Sticky heat mist filled the swampland, reducing visibility to fractions of a kilometer. They nursed from the oxygen bottles and waited.

  “They’re gone. I can’t hear them,” Uri whispered.

  Miriam said nothing.

  Rhythmic and steady, rain droplets fell from the branches into the surrounding water. Like a hypnotist’s metronome, her eyes gazed into the overlapping Bessel ripples. Unlike Miriam’s usual cold disposition, her distance was raw and personal. He reached for her arm, but she pulled away.

  “Don’t touch me,” she said, gaze unbroken.

  “Miriam, it had to be done. And I couldn’t . . . I just . . . ”

  She shook her head and dissolved into tears. Uri wanted to hold her but kept his distance.

  They hadn’t seen a Vandal in half a day, but the Flemish barbarians proved masters of ambush. Wary of movement, wiggling water snakes and the splash of Nile crocodiles filled their periphery. Near sundown, they motored out into the listless black of the delta’s tidal lagoons, then headed for the outer coast.

  Sailboat spars teetered in a foundered marina. The global flood had lifted the docks above the pilings and pushed the moorings inland. Driftwood choked its canals, sealing them from the delta’s wider inlets and open water. Most of the boat hulls were breached—half sunk in the weed-filled estuary—but a few remained afloat.

  Killing the engines, they tied off to a finger pier and climbed through the dilapidated maze of boathouses and pitching walkways. From nests of shredded tackle, iguanas with turgid dewlaps hissed as they walked past. The dock’s concrete offered a respite for the marine reptiles, a rare rocky oasis in the muddy vastness. As a result, the place was overrun.

  Twelve meters in length, the sloop was a racing hull made from Kevlar reinforced fiberglass. A logjam of bleached lumber filled its slip. But with some work, the debris could be cleared. The sails in its forward berth were green with slime but intact, and the rudder mechanism was sloppy but workable. While Uri salvaged a mishmash of lines from the surrounding wrecks, Miriam filled a tote full of rescued bleach and soaked the rigging.

  “It looks like it hasn’t been here as long as the rest,” Uri gestured at the surrounding ruin. “Pirates, or refugees, or something . . . “

  Hand pumping the bilge, they worked through the night to make the boat seaworthy. A few oars wrapped with oily swaths lit the dock like torches. The boat was called Aegis, Uri guessed, as only the “Ae” and “s” were readable.

  Besides the vinyl cushions, a magnesium flare, and a set of winch handles, the cabin was stripped. They slept with their oxygen masks, but in the morning’s gloom, a breeze had pushed the anoxia inland. With only a few PSI left in their tanks, the fresh, oxygenated air was a welcome relief. They woke hungry and thirsty, their breakfast just a few gulps of jug water from the boat’s survival kit. Uri offered to skewer an iguana, but Miriam declined.

  Using the airboat, Miriam towed the Aegis through the flotsam as Uri shoved the rotted wood aside. Entering the river mouth, he saw gray shapes loom up from below. The keel shuddered with screeching vibration as the Aegis plowed through fields of sunken junk. The Rhine Delta’s outer estuary was a bone yard. Europe, sickened from the Post-Industrial Shock, had vomited its detritus down the river in a futile purge.

  Abandoning the airboat to the tidal ebb, they hoisted the sloop’s mainsail and jib. The coastline faded into haze as a weak westerly from the Channel pushed them north. The air smelled of hydrogen sulfide. Fizzing pools belched the gas from the North Sea in blotchy textured ripples. A byproduct of the green bacteria and sunlight, the water shimmered a faint magenta. East Anglia was two hundred kilometers from Rotterdam, according to his orbital console. If they maintained a steady three knots, they’d reach the Alkonost base in twenty-four hours.

  Uri went below deck and inspected Zliva and Pravo for damage. Kaliq and Fawzi, toiling in Sayyid’s laboratory, had constructed their containers with hermetic shockproof seals. Despite the abuse, the blue LEDs glowed steady, isobars and temperature meters pulsing nominal. Scrolling through his console’s unread communiqués, Sayyid was already planning Uri’s next procurement, somewhere south in the Maghreb. Uri keyed in their current status and uploaded the message to Al Fadah Madina’s network.

  Sheikh Sayyid Al Azraq Hawat, Miriam and I are behind schedule . . . still in the slog. Will upload pod drop location once available. Standby for delivery confirmation ::–Agent Uri Vitko/Archivist #212-MXQ-9XS:: sent via REMOTE :: encryption clock 0.001 hrs ::

  Back in the cockpit, he reclined and idly trimmed the sails. Uri tried to lighten the mood: old war stories, anecdotes about former comrades, memories of his daughter when she was young, but like Charon ferrying the dead to Acheron, Miriam stood at the helm’s chrome wheel in gloomy silence.

  Taking turns at the helm, they sailed through the night, guided by the LCD glow of their console’s inertial compass. In the pre-dawn, massive shapes broke the featureless horizon. Uri grabbed the flares and lit them. Standing near the bow, he used the sparking fountains as semaphores.

  Uri shouted their arrival.

  The East Anglia heli-base was a collection of three retrofitted Norsk-Statoil drilling rigs. With one of its derricks still active, the platform refined extracted oil for its generators and helicopters. As they sailed near the central rig’s massive pylon, armed men descended the gangway to a floating dock. Uri threw the flares into the sea, grabbed a bowline, and tossed it to a waiting mercenary, who tied the Aegis next to a pair of Zodiac patrol boats.

  “Lieutenant Uri Vitko, as I live and breathe.”

  “Captain Zelinski,” Uri said, stepping off. “They put you out to sea, eh?”

  “Better than furlough.”

  “It’s been what . . . seven years?” he said, shaking his hands, trying to play it cool. East Anglia maintained a brigade of men, but to meet a familiar face so soon unnerved him.

  “The airfield, right before Baku. You were on your way to Operation Alexander . . . that whole mess.”

  “The penultimate mission before they discharged me,” Uri adlibbed.

  “Discharged?”

  “I-and-I’s assessment. Something about being unfit for the battlefield attitude-wise. Burned out, I wasn’t one to argue,” Uri lied.

  “I see.” Zelinski paused, cagey. “I assume you were on the downed Antonov back in Rotterdam?”

  “An escort mission for Norsk-Statoil.”

  “And you two were the only survivors?”

  “Unfortunately. I’m sorry to report your comrades weren’t so lucky.”

  “Hmm . . . ” The Captain furrowed his brow. “Well, I guess you can explain all that later. Come. It looks like you and your companion have been through quite a lot,” the captain said, escorting them up the gangway. “Lieutenant Polansky’s on a mission in Hibernia; you can have his cabin. We’re a bit cramped here, but we make do. How about a shower and some insta-paks?”

  Uri nodded eagerly.

  More fragments than clothing, Uri pulled off his soiled shirt and tossed the remnants down the incinerator chute. The crew had given them fresh fatigues. Miriam’s were oversized, Alkonost recruits typically not so petite. What was left of their gear sat piled on the cabin’s floor: Miriam’s rifle, their consoles, and the marbled pillars of
Zliva and Pravo. His back was a weave of swollen slashes; it hurt to move. He shivered with a gust of filtered air, his body’s core pulling blood away to fight the shock. If he could just get into the shower . . .

  Miriam sat on the edge of the lower bunk, hands clasped between her legs. Ignoring her female sensibilities, Uri stripped to his shorts and tabbed 35ºC on the flow meter. Cracking the stall door, he ran his hands under the bracing water and waited for it to warm.

  “I’m sorry,” Miriam said above the water hiss.

  Uri paused the showerhead. “For what?”

  “Out there on the boat, you were trying to talk to me and I . . . I just couldn’t.” Miriam’s eyes welled with tears.

  “No bother,” he said, crouching to look her in eyes. She started to sob. “Hey, look at me.” He reached out and touched her cheek. “We do what we have to do out there. Don’t be sorry; you’ve nothing to apologize for.”

  “I thought they wouldn’t get to me, the Van Dallens, but it brought it all back. All of it. I started thinking about my sisters, and . . . ”

  “It’s okay. It’s over now.”

  She hung from his shoulders and wept, her teary cheek resting on his chest. Pushing back strands of dark hair, he hugged her, shushing her like a doting parent. A few minutes later and Miriam regained her composure. Uri let her go and started to step back into the shower.

  “One question.” Miriam’s words stopped Uri—half in, half out of the stall. He turned to look at her.

  “They had my console too. Why didn’t they ever ask me for my code?” Miriam asked, puzzled.

  “I was more susceptible. They knew I had a vulnerable point; you didn’t. They could get to me. Would have eventually.”

  “But . . . How?”

  “By using you,” Uri replied.

  Miriam’s eyes flashed with a combination of horror and something Uri could not identify before she dropped her head into trembling hands.

  Uri entered the shower, and dropped his sodden shorts. For an officer’s quarters the bath was luxurious, complete with multi-spray showerhead and towel dispenser. Despite Alkonost’s recent financial setbacks, Tiraspol always managed to keep its higher brass comfortable.

  Adjusting the flow, he felt the water sting his wounds. The pain mixed with the pleasure as the delta’s grime washed down the drain. Like a hajji, he kneeled down in the stall and let the hot flume pour over him. Minutes passed as thought faded to exhaustive trance.

  He felt her touch as the water adjusted. She peppered his back with washcloth dabs of anti-bacterial solvent. He hadn’t heard the stall door open. Pain surrendered to the rare sensation of human touch. The water pressure came up as she readjusted the nozzle. He felt her small hand on his shoulder, enticing him to turn around.

  Miriam was naked, the Khal Al Alam’s hardened chrysalis molted. Uri tried not to leer, but under the watery sheen her Persian features enticed him. Somehow, in the great dying of mankind’s twilight, humanity’s preternatural beauty still slipped through. He wanted her, something beyond mere physical urge, a transcendent desire.

  Miriam kissed him, awkwardly but sincere. Uri held her tight, pushing her body against the stainless aluminum walls with a firm but careful embrace. Mouths locked, his hands wandered over her, caressing her slim, muscled contours and petite breasts. Miriam’s body heat filled him, relieving him of the cold, chronic ache. He kissed her brow and cheeks then let his mouth slip down to her neck. She hiked her leg against his as she held onto him. Hands wrapped around her buttocks he pulled her closer.

  “I-I . . . ”

  “What?” Uri said impatiently, kissing her ear. “What is it?”

  “I’m a virgin.”

  Silence.

  Uri gently set her down as she unwrapped from him. Somehow the revelation didn’t surprise him; Miriam was different, special, rarified. With his hand held to her cheek, he looked into her large almond eyes, the water’s hiss buffering the quiet.

  “Another time,” Uri said at last.

  “Okay. Another time.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  April 2164 C.E.

  A slap to the digital X-ray unit brought it to life. Recycled from sickbay by the Crown’s medic, it was capable of imaging radiation sources by tracing halos of quantum discharge. The display delivered pixilated ghosts of the world in high-energy gamma. Lacking a proper Geiger counter, it was the next best thing. They ambled down into the vault chamber to try it out.

  Sava peered into the unit’s LCD and panned it over the antechamber’s hatch and the Crown’s utility column rising through the superstructure like a tree trunk. A fountain of white saturated the detector’s pixels as he tweaked the settings; the radiation was overpowering.

  “My God.”

  “What?”

  “It’s everywhere.”

  Shuffling in their agonizing way, the crew followed Sava into the elevator and up to the main floors. The iridescent radiation diverged from the redoubt’s core like capillaries, flowing into all the recesses and corners of the fortress. The walls were thick with circuitous fractals, the ethereal flow just under the surface. A pump circulated cooling water up and into the complex. The Crown of Thorns with its chaotic thicket of spikes acted like a gigantic assemblage of cooling fins, radiating heat from the nuclear reactor to the outside.

  “That’s why this place is so warm,” Sava said, walking from room to room. “Thin membranes. The radiation from the cooling water is pouring out in a barrage of needle-like photons.”

  “Christ,” Wilco lamented. “What about the showers, the faucets, the water?”

  They stumbled into the bathroom, turned on a sink tap, and let the water run hot. Sava checked the splashes. While not as radioactive as the walls, the glitter-fizzle of radiation dappled the droplets.

  “It’s in the water too.”

  “That’s goddamned wonderful,” sighed Wilco.

  “But not as bad. It’s probably a separate flow, a leak in the heat exchanger seals.”

  “Should I get everyone together?”

  Sava nodded.

  Assembled in the control room, the crew, stiff and achy, contemplated their options. Like Mach’s toxic exposure, the mercenaries were accumulating a steady dosage of ossifying catalyst. The gamma emissions were easily shielded; a wrap of foil or a thermal blanket would keep the high-powered rays at bay. But it was the beta carriers that worried everyone. The particulates were everywhere, not just in the water, but also in the dusty motes floating through the HVAC. Small aerosols carrying heavy cesium and selenium nuclei leached into a human body’s porous membranes.

  “We have to shut off the pump and shut the reactor down.”

  “How? The core’s one hundred meters underwater, and even if we were able to dive down, the radiation would fry us,” the medic explained, the Crown’s resident radiation expert.

  “If it’s turned off, we’ve got no generator other than the diesel. Fuel’s limited; it won’t last long,” added Wilco.

  “It doesn’t have to, just long enough for the dead zone to pass,” Sava replied.

  “But what about the water?”

  “It’s only the hot water; Yakiv checked it. Our reservoir comes from a well inland. But regardless, we should all use filters.”

  “If by some miracle we manage to shut down the reactor, what then? Is this Morosov shit even reversible?” the medic asked.

  Sava shrugged. “No one knows. But what other choice do we have?”

  He rolled out the map of Jan Mayen, their ill-fated route to the lighthouse dotted in half-erased pencil. The men huddled in as Sava circled the bay of Maria Muschbukta on the northern coast some ten kilometers away. While on patrol, he’d stumbled across the derelict marine observatory. Located near Beerenberg’s rocky flanks, the partially submerged lab stood off from the shore. If dive gear was to be had on the island, it seemed the logical place.

  “I’ll go out and salvage,” Sava offered.

  “In your condition?” Wil
co jested.

  “You then?”

  Wilco stepped back into the shadows, along with the rest of the men.

  “And if you do find dive gear, who’ll descend into the reactor?” asked the medic. “That close to the core—even with the water—you’ll receive a toxic dose; it’ll kick this shit into overdrive, and you’ll end up like—”

  “I’ll go. Mission intelligence trained me in underwater demolitions at Odessa. No one else here besides Mach is qualified, and since Mach is . . . ”

  “But you’ll die.”

  “Good, I’m sick of looking at you assholes,” Sava smirked. “Now, if somebody can put together some overnight gear, something I can haul in a wheelbarrow, I’ll get on with it. By Wilco’s estimates I’ll have . . . How much time?”

  “Three days.”

  “Three days to reach Maria Muschbukta,” Sava repeated. “So time’s short.”

  On his way to his room to gather gear, Sava knocked on Mach’s door. There was no answer. Too preoccupied with their own suffering, no one had bothered to check on Alkonost’s worst-off member. Sava yelled through the door, then put his ear to the aluminum. In the advanced stages, the inchoate network had infiltrated Mach’s lungs, slowly drowning them like a pneumonia victim. His labored breathing was disgustingly audible, but no more; the room was silent.

  Sava tried the latch, but its privacy lock was engaged. Mach had sealed himself inside. He pinned the default code with no luck. Too weak to bust in the door, he jimmied the bolting mechanism using his utility knife. With a crack and a turn, the flimsy door swung open.

  “Mach?”

  He was standing, miraculously free from his wheelchair, arms outstretched like a lamenting pilgrim. Baffled, Sava shuffled into his billet and tapped on the bed light. Mach failed to stir. His mouth was hinged open in a silent scream, pupil-less eyes grayed over into milky blobs. His colorless flesh was cold to the touch and leathery. The intricate black networks of the Illithium spread out like the faint cracking of a marbled sculpture; the cancer had consumed him.

  “What’ve they done to you?” Sava whispered.