by Eyal Kless
“Tell you what, Mistress. You’re good for conversation, but seem to be new to these parts. The city can be harsh to newcomers, me and my missus found out about it the hard way. I have a small shack in near the Middle Spires. Nothing fancy, but I clean it proper when I’m there and I have a lock on the doors. If you be needing to save some coin, just help Summer and me climb the bridge, and then you are welcome to stay in the spare room. If there’s no job coming my way after I sell the onions, I could show you around a bit.”
I considered his offer. I had a limited supply of funds and had a suspicion that Tarkania was not the city I used to know anymore.
“No funny business,” I warned, waving the scabbard in a theatrical gesture for emphasis.
“On my word, Mistress.”
“Fine.”
The line began moving at a faster pace.
“You’ll have to pay a toll in, you know that, Mistress?”
“Any way around it?”
Gret shook his head. “Heard there is a way into the lower end of the Pit through the swamp, but you’d need some serious high boots and more than a sword to deal with what’s in the water. No, Lady, best for you to take your chances here, with me.” He wrinkled his brow. “I could say you are my new wife—that would halve the sum.”
“Would that be all right by you?” The idea had merit but something in me resented it.
And suddenly the truck veered left, we were at the top of the line, and I forgot all about my reservations. It was the first time I’d seen Trolls. I’d heard the name and description from Trevil and Malk, the former owner of the power sword, and had a pretty good idea what to expect, but this was the first time I’d laid eyes on the phenomenon: humans wearing Tarakan tech meant for Guardian Angels. There were several dozen men and more than a few women, and none of them were the same. More than half of them were wearing metal braces, helping to unload goods by throwing them from one to the other like they were children’s toys. Others were carrying weapons, some of which were enormous. I’d seen enough military and paramilitary personnel to know that they were idle, guarding a perimeter that they did not believe was in any danger. A lot of them were talking among themselves or walking slowly in pairs between the vehicles and the bridge. I noted the three elevated machine guns, zoomed in on the Troll manning the one closest to me and saw she was smoking a small pipe. Yep, all was idle, but if things changed those machine guns could shred anyone in the area in a matter of seconds. The bridge of light was still a little farther away, just a small line in comparison to the enormity of the city’s walls and looming towers. As I looked up I could see a Sky Train cutting through the air in the distance. It warmed my heart to discover that the technology still functioned. I wondered where the Sky Train travelled to.
One of the Trolls waved at us to move to a designated spot. There were a dozen vehicles unloading their goods in front of officials wearing heavy purple-and-gold coats. One of them strolled towards us.
“We’re in luck,” Gret whispered through clenched lips. “He’s one of the nice ones.” Out loud he said, “Fahrtal, it’s good to see you.”
“Gret, you are a lousy liar,” the man intoned. He had a thin, meticulous moustache and an air of someone who really did not want to be there. “Let’s see what we have here.” He walked to the back of the cart.
“Onions. Big and hard!” Gret declared.
As I watched, one of the merchants beside us began shouting at an official. “This is highway robbery.” His hands gesticulated dramatically in the air. “Your scales are tipped, and you hiked the taxes again. Might as well have given everything to robbers and beggars.”
Guards immediately began to converge on the merchant from all directions, but the one who bore the brunt of the merchant’s rage seemed relaxed. I could not hear the guard’s answer but from his physical demeanour and gesture I guessed he was saying, “I don’t make the rules,” while resting his hands casually on the power rifle. Behind him, several Trolls quickly unloaded sacks from the old van. The guard thumbed at the open tent behind them. This time the wind carried the guard’s voice. “Make your complaints to someone who might give a damn.”
The merchant turned and walked to the tent. I could see that with every step his frustration and anger were growing.
Fahrtal finished counting the sacks. “That will be three sacks of onions or coin as tax.”
“Three sacks?” Gret’s eyes bulged in surprise. “That’s steep, that’s—”
“We need to feed the troops, Gret. Or do you want to try your luck with the Oil Baron?” He turned to me without waiting for a response. “And who might you be?” His dark eyes explored me. I had a hunch this man never forgot a face.
“My wife,” Gret said and added too quickly, “My new wife.” He was nervous, and I could see that Fahrtal felt it.
“Newlywed. How lucky you are. And you are from?”
“Lakewood,” I said quickly.
“That’s far,” he said. “And you came all the way here to marry ol’ Gret here?”
I looked at the sheepskin-wearing Gret with what I hoped was love-filled eyes. “He’s . . . different, but a good man, and besides,” I said without flinching, “I love his big, hard onions.”
Gret began to cough but the official burst out laughing. “Fine,” he said, turning back to Gret. “I’ll let her in for free, but she needs to pay five towers for that sword of hers.”
He waited for me to count the coins into his hand, pocketed them without bothering to give me a receipt, and said, “Welcome to the City of Towers, Mistress Gret.”
Chapter 26
Mannes
It was daytime in mid-winter in Kyrgyzstan, and the temperature on the side of the mountain was just above freezing. The sky was shrouded in grey clouds, blocking the sun. Norma informed Mannes the temperature would drop even more in a few hours. Any wind would make things even more uncomfortable. Mannes figured the space suit would keep him warm and relatively radiation free, and if things deteriorated, he could always put on his helmet. He chose to carry two small oxygen tanks on his thighs, with enough air to last him sixteen hours, and took the emergency landing backpack, too, just to be on the safe side.
Nothing went smoothly, though. He even had to open the door manually and that took some effort and a little engineering ingenuity. Once outside he walked around the shuttle with growing trepidation. The shuttle, like all of its kind, had been built in space and was not meant to enter or leave Earth’s atmosphere. That was what the space elevator was for. For extreme situations—and Mannes acknowledged to himself this was definitely the case now—the shuttle was equipped with emergency landing fluid, which dispersed itself on the shuttle’s body and protected its occupants from being fried as they entered the atmosphere. The heat caked the fluid into the body of the shuttle, and now that it had cooled, it was as solid as the metal underneath it. Mannes vaguely remembered there was a way to remove it, but it was a lengthy process and would take some careful brewing of chemicals. He was not sure the formula was in the shuttle’s memory banks or the required materials in inventory, but this, he decided, was a matter he could address later.
They’d landed on the lower slopes of a high mountain, in the thick of the woods, easily spotted from the air but harder to find from the ground. Mannes’s internal connection to the shuttle’s AI was a blessing. He would surely have been lost without it.
He walked downhill for close to two hours, rehearsing phrases in Russian from the neural language pack in his brain amp. The Russians had made sure to crush the local culture on their second try for occupation, so the locals might resent the language, but they all spoke it. He was startled when Norma said suddenly, “I’m afraid we have a problem.”
Mannes stopped in his tracks, then sat down and leaned his back against a tree. He inhaled deeply.
“What is it?” he said in Russian.
“It is not life-threatening.” The AI shifted immediately to the same language.
“I am glad to hear that.”
“I am only saying this because you seem to have hunkered down behind a tree.”
“I know.”
“It’s not like there is a nuclear missile coming our way.”
“That’s good to know.”
“And if there was one, hiding behind a tree would not have saved you.”
“But in the minute or two I had left to live I could take a mighty shit.”
Norma went silent for several brief seconds. Mannes sighed and shook his head. All AIs, even relatively simple ones such as the shuttle’s, came with a personality. It was grown from several basic, predisposed subroutines and influenced by the four hundred or so hours spent with the software consciousness engineer responsible for growing the self-aware program from a sort of virtual infancy into something that wasn’t a suicidal maniac. The problem was that most AIs’ consciousness engineers were usually, to put it mildly, not the sort of people you wanted to have a beer with, and the AIs’ programming psychologists were even more pitiful when it came to personality.
“I was joking,” he said to the Comm.
“Yes, I know. As you are most likely aware, the nourishment pill takes care of all internal waste without the need for ‘taking a mighty shit.’”
Mannes sighed again. Yep, definitely that sort of software consciousness engineer, but he’d done a mighty job on the piloting skills, so it evened out. Barely.
“What’s the problem?”
“The army outpost has an automatic command control. It is a very primitive system, but somehow still active. It initiated a dumping field around the base that restricts receiving and sending signals.”
Mannes uttered a curse in Russian he was only half certain he understood the meaning of.
“I might manage to hold our contact for several hundred yards in, but once you are in the base—”
“I’ll be on my own.”
“—you would be on your own. On the bright side”—the AI’s voice perked up enthusiastically—“the base’s sirens are sounding and the loudness is a hundred and six decibels. That will help you with navigation once we lose contact.”
Mannes tried to listen but heard nothing.
“It is pretty clear once you get closer to the base.”
“This base, it’s in a state of emergency? Because I could get shot a mile away from it.” Mannes was also painfully aware of his lack of weaponry. Not that he was trained in using firearms, but a gun would have been nice to have right now.
“The base has been off the grid for years. I do not think it is able to respond to this immediate crisis. The sirens and the dumping field could have been active for a long time.”
Mannes winced and fished another pain-relieving pill from his belt. The pill dissolved in his mouth, leaving a fresh mint flavor on his tongue. He felt its effects almost immediately.
“Feeling better?” The suit was monitoring his physical situation and sending it to the shuttle’s AI.
“Yeah. Those pills are a blessing.”
Mannes got up and shook out his legs. A brief glimpse at his retina map showed the way. He turned, tripped over a large stone, landed awkwardly, and almost twisted his ankle. This time his curse came out in English.
Chapter 27
Twinkle Eyes
Miraculously, we did not die, although we came close.
After a deadly cat and mouse game, the Dwaines retreated at sundown to fortified barracks, and we ended crawling through the minefield, holding on to the hope that Galinak had managed to take down all the snipers. Even with the use of my enhanced sight to detect the mines, it was a slow, nerve-wracking experience. For obvious reasons, Galinak crawled so close to me his head was practically between my legs, and the butt of the machine gun he carried on his forearm kept hitting me in vulnerable places.
“Are we there yet?” he whispered.
I dared a peek at my backside. “No. I’m taking the scenic route.”
“Ah, good, because from here I can only see your hairless balls.”
“Quit complaining,” I whispered through gritted teeth. He had no reason to complain, wearing SmartLeather, while I could feel every sharp stone grating against my body.
We kept crawling.
“Shame about the horse,” Galinak said, breaking the silence again. “Guess they did cook a stew after all. Too bad diplomacy didn’t work.”
“Well, I’m only making a calculated guess here, Galinak, but if you hadn’t touched those buttons and blown up one of their precious Sky Birds, maybe the Dwaines would have been a bit less hostile.”
Galinak thought about it for a short spell. “Nah, those Secluders would have roasted us as soon as they got the chance. I could see it in their eyes. Can’t trust ’em.”
There was an upturned metal caravan of some sort in the middle of the field, its wheels long gone, and after Galinak ripped open a stuck door we climbed inside.
“We’re almost out,” I said, taking my time looking around with my enhanced sight, “and if we keep the caravan at our backs we will be covered for a while.”
Galinak leaned on the metal wall and checked his weapon, I followed his example and did the same with my peacemaker.
“Nice shooting, by the way.” Galinak slapped my back.
“Yeah, well . . .” I coughed. “The muzzle-retina connection was a nice surprise. I didn’t think a collector’s replica gun like this would have one.”
“It’s custom-made, very nice. Shame about the rate of fire, though.”
I turned the large gun in my hand. I had to admit it felt comfortable holding it. The old me had shunned weapons and violence on principle, but the old me had also been torn to pieces by a horde of Lizards. That had changed new me’s point of view regarding guns.
“I think I’m fine with the rate of fire. Makes me think before I pull the trigger.”
Galinak snorted something under his breath, which I decided I didn’t want to hear more clearly. In truth, I was shaken. Our Tarakan bodies, with enhanced mobility, durability, and in Galinak’s case physical might, were the only reason we were still alive. Weapon or not, fighting was a horrid experience, at least for me, and I swore not to do it again if I ever had the choice.
“We should continue,” I said, and Galinak nodded in agreement.
By sunlight we’d cleared the field and began walking on foot. A nourishment pill took care of our bodily needs but not the battle fatigue. After several more hours of trekking it was actually Galinak who proposed we rest awhile. We veered away from the path and took refuge in the shade of some bushes. Having real weapons did not change Galinak’s sense of caution. I used the time he spent scouting to count the metal coins we’d looted. It was a small fortune, enough to tempt anyone to change their plans, but I felt I had no choice. Galinak would want to know sooner or later, so when he came back, I told him the sum.
To my surprise he only pocketed a handful of coins and told me to keep the rest for a while.
“We’re going to the City of Towers together to find Vincha, then I’ll decide what to do. Might as well keep only one of us jingling,” he explained.
“Aren’t you afraid I’ll run off with the metal?”
Galinak found a shady spot, lay down on his back, and closed his eyes. “You’re not a bad shot, Twinkle Eyes, all considered, but you ain’t that good, either.” He opened one eye and looked at me. “Don’t look like I just rusted your metal. You did well enough out there, for a rookie Troll. Truth is, we’ve been saving each other’s hide since the beginning, and as much as I can recall, even before that. Guess it should count for something.”
I sat down next to the prone Galinak with a heavy sigh, trying to make sense of my conflicting emotions. Yes, Galinak trusted me and would come with me to the City of Towers. It was the best possible outcome, for now. Yet despite the trials of battle, I felt a growing suspicion it wasn’t just the warrior’s code that bonded us. With all his bravado, Galinak was almost too easily susceptible to my sugges
tions. I was considering whether the Tarkanians created not just new bodies for us but had also messed with our minds as well.
I thought Galinak had dozed off when he suddenly asked again, “How are you going to track Vincha down?”
“Like I said, I’ve done it before.” I shrugged.
“Remind me how long it took you to find Vincha the last time—several years, was it?”
“I didn’t know then what I know now, and I suspect I still have good contacts where it counts.”
“Good contacts?” Galinak chuckled. “They knew the former you. Now you’re a complete stranger to them.”
Galinak was right. My former contacts would not recognise me, but most of them wouldn’t care much for who I was, either. As long as I flashed enough coin and played on their weaknesses, I could get solid information about what was going on in each district. Besides, Vincha, with all her elusiveness, was still a creature of habit. I knew by name the very few people in the city who still saw her in a good light, and having experienced Vincha up close and personal, I doubted she’d made many new friends.
“We know the area she operates in, and we know who she’s trying to protect. Leave it to me,” I said with slightly more confidence than I truly felt. “I’ll find her.”
“You sound very sure of yourself. But even if you find her, Vincha’s not going to help you.”
“And why is that?”
“Because this Mannes guy wants Emilija, but the rusting Tarkanians want Vincha’s daughter, too. She gets the rusty bucket full of shit flipped over her head either way, and in that situation, I imagine she wouldn’t care who’s holding the bucket. So no, I don’t think Vincha’s going to show you her loving side.”
A memory flashed before my eyes, Vincha kneeing me in the chest, then sitting on me and pricking the lower part of my eyeball with a very sharp combat blade. I shivered. “I will find a way to make her cooperate, I did it before.”
Galinak yawned. “Don’t offer her my share of the metal.”