Skybreach (The Reach #3)

by Mark R. Healy

  I’ll be free of this place soon, Murtas consoled himself. Once the evacuations are complete, I will leave it all behind.

  Out by the elevators, three other members of the Crimson Shield were waiting: Hughes, Scifres and Plinsk. They were geared up, arranged formally, and Murtas could see that they were ready for what they had to do. They had their game faces on.

  That pleased Murtas greatly.

  “Brothers, to me,” he ordered as he neared. He waited until they were all assembled before going on. “We have a job to do. An unpleasant one, it must be said, but one that is necessary. We go to restore order, to quell the voices of those who would oppose us.”

  “Children of Earth?” Scifres said, his youthful face full of excitement at the thought of battling the insurgents.

  “Not this day, brother. That particular tick is buried too deeply within the flesh of the beast to safely remove. Today we target the commoners who mistakenly believe it is their right to loot and pillage as they see fit. Administrator Valen wants the population back under control. They have to know that their crimes are still subject to punishment. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Dux.”

  Murtas held out his right hand, palm down, and the others obediently formed a circle around him, covering his gauntleted hand with their own.

  “Walk in the light,” Murtas said.

  “Walk in the light,” they repeated.

  “May the shadows flee before us.”

  “May the shadows flee before us,” they intoned.

  They dropped their hands, then Murtas led the way as they headed toward the elevator.

  “I don’t have to remind you,” Murtas said as the elevator neared its destination, “that three of our brothers were killed last week. Slaughtered, their souls forever trapped in this forsaken place. Let the flames of their funeral pyres light your fury as you wield your blades today.”

  “The apostate,” Hughes said beside him. “Will he be among them?”

  The image of Aron Lazarus’ face, caught on a security feed from the elevators after the attack in the Infirmary, came suddenly to Murtas’ mind. He’d felt sickened to see him appear there. Lazarus had been nothing more than a long forgotten ghost, a distant memory, until he had returned with sudden violence to their midst.

  The men had seen the footage. They knew what they were up against. Murtas couldn’t help but notice the thinly veiled trepidation in Hughes’ voice.

  “He is here. Somewhere,” Murtas said. “There was not sufficient information to track his final whereabouts, but… I sense that he is near.”

  “We’ll squash that fucker for what he did,” Scifres said.

  “If he is found, I don’t want him killed immediately,” Murtas said. “I want the final say in his fate.”

  “You’re not going to let him live, are you, Dux?” Hughes said.

  “No.” Murtas smiled. “I want to make sure he pays the appropriate price for his crimes, and that will not mean a quick death.”

  Murtas had never agreed with the original sentence Lazarus had been given all those years ago, that of relegation to Earth’s surface. Landfall. Even though it was the greatest insult that could be given to one of the Crimson Shield, to Murtas it still seemed insufficient. If he himself had been presiding over the punishment, he would have chosen death in an instant. Lazarus had brought the order into disrepute, and in Murtas’ mind, that meant he had forgone the right to draw breath.

  Still, the ruling had come from the Citadel, and that was not something Murtas could overrule, even as Dux.

  Yet, here in battle, the Citadel held no sway. Here, Murtas could make whatever judgement he saw fit in the name of war.

  That bastard Lazarus only had to show his face, and it would be done.

  The elevator slowed and there was a melodic chime as it stopped at Level Fifty-Six.

  “Positions,” Murtas said.

  The men responded by readying their weapons and edging toward the sides of the elevator car for cover.

  “When you bring justice to these animals,” Murtas said, his voice soft but full of malevolence, “show them no pity. No quarter. Remember that they deserve nothing less than death.”

  The doors opened, and the five Redmen slipped out into Gaslight swift as shadows. The power had failed on this level, as it had on several others, and the air still carried the acrid taint of smoke that had drifted up from the areas below. In the dim glow of the emergency lights, the Redmen moved silently toward the nearest hotspot, a commercial avenue that had seen a great deal of looting. There were voices up ahead, the sound of laughter, and the clang of metal followed by a pitiful shriek.

  Murtas held up a clenched fist and his men froze behind him. He edged up to the corner of the avenue and peered along it, noting a cluster of around ten figures half-way down. He turned and gestured for Dixon to take point, and the old man hustled forward with the speed of someone half his age. The others followed, and soon they had closed in on the group undetected.

  The looters continued to laugh and talk amongst themselves as an elderly man with a balding head fiddled with the lock on the door they had gathered around.

  “Come on, you old bastard,” one of them said. “Get this thing open.”

  “I told you,” the old man snarled, a note of desperation in his voice, “my premises are set on a time lock. If you’d decided to rob me at a more accommodating hour, this would have been much easier.”

  “You get that thing open in sixty seconds, old bastard, or I’m going to paint that lock with your brains.”

  The Redmen waited in the gloom, their rifles at the ready, and Murtas raised his hand. He held up three fingers, then counted down to two. One.

  The avenue was suddenly swamped in a barrage of blue fire as the Redmen’s pulse rifles came to life. Four of the looters were already down before the others had even reacted, and as the remaining targets scattered, the Redmen picked them off in quick time. The old shopkeeper was left huddling by the doorway, trembling, his hands held over his face as if that might somehow protect him from the barrage.

  “Clear,” Dixon called, and the Redmen emerged from their cover.

  The old man slowly lowered his hands and looked at the crimson soldiers in disbelief.

  “Redmen,” he breathed. “Praise the gods, I’m saved!”

  “Are you harmed?” Dixon said to him as he ran a final glance over the dead men around them.

  “A few scratches, nothing more.”

  “What did they want?” Murtas said.

  “My place here has the sturdiest door in the street,” the old man said. “It’s the only one they couldn’t knock down.” He shrugged. “I figure they just wanted it open to see what they could steal from inside.”

  “You should get away from here,” Dixon said. “There’s–”

  Shadows appeared at the end of the avenue, along with raised voices and the thud of boots. The crack of a firearm sounded, and a round smacked into the wall not far away. The Redmen darted back to cover and the old man whimpered, sliding to the floor as if he were trying to melt away.

  The skirmish was brief. Murtas suspected that the newcomers hadn’t yet realised that they were facing off against the Crimson Shield. They came charging forward with reckless abandon, hooting and firing their weapons indiscriminately, failing to hit a single one of their targets. The Redmen remained calm and watchful, waiting until their enemies entered the kill zone, and then Murtas pulled the trigger on his pulse rifle, dropping the first of them with a single shot.

  The other Redmen followed suit, unleashing a volley of pulse rounds at their unwitting enemy. The looters were decimated, their numbers halved in a matter of seconds. As the survivors began to realise that they were not simply jumping another pack of hoodlums, they turned and scattered, but by then it was too late.

  Murtas stepped out from cover, stalking after the fleeing figures and firing again and again. They screamed and begged for mercy, stumbling over one another in their has
te to escape, but there was no respite from the blue fire.

  Murtas kept walking after them, taking his short sword from his scabbard and using it against those who had fallen but not yet died. One young woman with a bloodied face gurgled something at him, raising her hand defensively, and Murtas cut through it like a stalk of dead grass, ramming the sword through her throat with an efficient thrust. He found another, then another, dispatching them with brutal strikes, an ever-widening smile appearing on his face.

  He was the purifying light shining down into this dark pit, and he would see it cleansed.

  When he eventually stopped, there was nothing left before him but a pile of bloody and steaming corpses.

  The other Redmen joined him, surveying their handiwork dispassionately. Murtas himself felt a modicum of satisfaction as he looked out upon the dead looters, deciding that the journey had not been a total loss. As he cleaned his sword, he realised that there might be a silver lining to this duty – he could take out his fury on these peasants, alleviate his frustrations through murderous retribution.

  But there was still a long way to go before he was appeased.

  A long way to go.

  Someone was laughing, softly at first, but then louder, a shrill giggle that was laced with more than a hint of hysteria. Murtas turned to see the shopkeeper standing before the doorway, wringing his hands.

  “Stupid bastards,” he cackled. “They got theirs, didn’t they?” He glanced at Murtas. “Didn’t they what!”

  Murtas began to walk toward him, his footsteps heavy in the newfound quietude of the avenue.

  “Yes,” he said evenly. “It seems they did.”

  “I always knew you boys would come through,” he said, his eyes shining with elation at having survived the encounter. “You Redman are the finest–”

  Murtas lifted his rifle and blasted the shopkeeper in the face, point blank. The man’s head exploded like a popped water balloon, and blood and gore sprayed across the door and the wall behind him. The man’s body was flung against the wall and then dropped to the floor, legs at an unnatural angle.

  Murtas stared at the dribbling mess for a few moments, then turned back to the others.

  He saw a mixture of bewilderment and uncertainty on their faces, and, in Dixon’s case, outrage. Murtas smiled sourly.

  “I came here to send a message today, and I want that message heard loud and clear. It is not our responsibility to differentiate between the many different kinds of filth that infest this sewer. We are simply here to clean the area in the most efficient way possible.”

  Dixon glared at him. “That man–”

  “We sweep the entire level,” Murtas said loudly, cutting him off. “We kill anyone who crosses our path. No exceptions.” He looked at each of them. “Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Dux,” they all said immediately – all except Dixon.

  Murtas stepped closer to the old man. “Are you confused about something, Dixon Evocatus?”

  There was a brief pause before the old man answered. “No, Murtas Dux,” he grated, obviously struggling to choke back the words he really wanted to say.

  Murtas inclined his head. “Then move out. And may the shadows flee before us.”

  The Redmen turned and began to move back along the avenue, and Murtas took one more look at the scattering of bodies around him, his skin crawling. He was filled with loathing, with disgust at being in this place but he knew he could not leave yet. He had to finish the job he’d been given.

  He was going to make these vermin pay for forcing him to come down here, for making him walk amongst them like some contemptible exterminator of pests.

  He was going to make them all pay.

  23

  Jozef stood and watched the shaft of sunlight that fell across the room before him. It was a paltry sort of light that filtered through grimy windows high up in the ceiling, and yet he knew that this was as good as it got. There would be no better offering of light this day. In this part of the Reach, the sunlight only visited for a scant couple of hours every morning before leaving, arcing toward the zenith and out of view.

  Not for the first time, he felt like a prisoner in a cell who was only afforded one brief glimpse of the outside world each day.

  Jozef looked around the room. His lodgings were austere, with a simple sleeping pallet in one corner, a desk from which he conducted his affairs in the other and a frayed hessian mat in between. The latter was used for meditation, although of late, his time for such undertakings had been severely curtailed.

  He had lived within these four walls for longer than he cared to remember – years, in fact – and yet he had never grown to like it. In truth, he hated being removed from nature in this way. The idea that the room was more like a prison cell than the living quarters of a free man had taken root the first time he had seen it, and never left. It was a cold and unyielding box that kept him from Mother’s touch, a hateful thing that he could not abide no matter how he tried to convince himself otherwise.

  Yet, he knew that he had no choice but to remain here. This was where his people needed him to be.

  He stepped forward and dropped to one knee, levelling his eyes with the bonsai tree, a simple boxwood that was situated on the table before him. He reached out and placed his fingers on the pot, an oval clay piece with a metallic green glaze that Jozef himself had created, and slid the bonsai into the centre of the patch of sunlight, where he hoped it would catch as much radiance as possible.

  “Jozef?” came a voice behind him.

  “Shepherd Gault,” Jozef said without turning around. “Is everything in readiness?”

  “Yes, but… I wanted to talk to you about something.”

  Jozef smoothed out the tiny pebbles that had been laid across the bed of the pot, patting them down gently with the tips of his fingers, and then he affectionately stroked the tiny statue of the Japanese fisherman that had been placed in the soil for decoration. Although worn and chipped, the statue invariably brought a smile to Jozef’s lips. The old man that had been immortalised in the carving possessed such a look of serenity, of oneness with his surroundings, that Jozef couldn’t help but feel the same kind of calmness overwhelm him whenever he looked upon the statue.

  He finally straightened and turned to Gault. “Then speak.”

  “I’ve spoken to some of the others,” Gault said hesitantly. “I know you might not look kindly upon this, but we’ve come up with a way to get you to safety. You don’t have to go on with the others, Jozef.”

  Jozef turned his head and stared pensively at the wall, trying to retain his composure. It was not an easy thing to do. Sometimes he thought even his most ardent followers had learned nothing from his teachings.

  “You’re right. I don’t look upon your words kindly.”

  “Please,” Gault said, stepping forward, “hear me out–”

  “You know better than this,” Jozef said, an undercurrent of vehemence in his quiet voice. “Why would you disrespect me with this fraudulence?”

  “You need to live,” Gault pleaded, tears in his eyes. “The children will need you once this is over. They’ll need someone to look up to.”

  “And so you would have me renege on my promises at the eleventh hour. You would have me make a mockery of all that I’ve said.”

  “But if you–”

  “I would never ask one of the children to do something that I myself would not do. This is the way it must be. You already know this.”

  Gault hung his head, realising he was making no headway. “I just… I fear for those who will follow us.”

  Jozef reached out and placed a hand on the other man’s shoulder.

  “Do not. They will carve their own path without us.”

  “But how?”

  “That is not a concern for you or I, Shepherd Gault. We were not put on this world for that purpose. Our task is here. Our task is now. All we need to do is follow through until our destinies are fulfilled.” He lifted Gault’s chin.
“Mother will nurture and protect those who follow. She will mould them as necessary.”

  “Yes. I understand.”

  Jozef turned to the bonsai behind him. “Just as the sun falls across this tree each day, giving it a few moments of brilliance, we too have had our time to bask in the glory of Mother’s creation. Tomorrow there will be a new day, and someone else to stand where we once stood.”

  Gault stepped closer to the bonsai, looking down at it pensively.

  “I’ve always wanted to know – how did you make this?” he said, brushing his fingers lightly against the green foliage. “It’s so tiny and perfect.”

  Jozef smiled. “I did not create it, Shepherd Gault. This tree was here long before I arrived, and it will endure long after I have gone. I merely inherited it and tended to it as best I could whilst it was in my possession.” He went and kneeled on the hessian mat as he regarded it. “Think of that. This tiny, fragile thing of wood and leaves has existed long beyond the span of any man’s life. It watched on while our civilisation reached its most dizzying heights. It saw the Wright brothers as they first lifted their feet and skimmed above the ground. It saw the first skyscrapers stand tall. It saw wars and death and rebirth, saw man first break free of the clutches of gravity and travel to the moon. It saw the elevators stretch mightily toward the heavens, watched as we colonised the far reaches of other worlds.” He smiled thinly. “And then it saw it all crumble again. Saw it fall.”

  “It’s breathtaking, in a way,” Gault said.

  “Indeed.” Jozef gave him a measuring look. “But know this: the bonsai achieves perfection not through the touch of the artisan, but through patience. Patience. There is no substitute. Every gentle clipping, every twist of wire around branch is another small step on a very long road.” He got to his feet again. “It is the same with us. You know how long I’ve waited for this day, don’t you?”

  Gault nodded. “Yes.”