The Animus Gate (Book One of The Animus Trilogy)

by Thomas M. McNamara

  The Animus Gate

  Book One of The Animus Trilogy

  Thomas M. McNamara

  Copyright © 2021 Thomas M. McNamara

  All rights reserved

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Cover design by: Thea Magerand

  Printed in the United States of America

  To my mother and father,

  for their patience and encouragement

  Part One

  The Dance of the Universe

  -1-

  In ages past, the collapse of a nation might have been traced back to the announcement of a simple edict that took a little too much freedom from the people. Or perhaps there was a tax on a staple like coffee or tea that a nation found both onerous and part of a larger problem.

  For the great and terrible Sar-Zin Empire, it began with a phone call to a gift shop.

  The trouble all started on Telamat, a planet on the fringes of the galactic map that prized one historical footnote: It was the empire’s first planetary colony. So there was history here, right? It turned out that you could squeeze a pretty respectable pile of credit chits out of history buffs lured by the legends of the early days.

  So what if the bulk of the relics in the native ruins was broken pottery and the fragments of spears and knives? With a little storytelling magic, ancient junk became buried treasure.

  No one understood this better than Saeed Bakari, the founder of Bakari Antiquities. His humble gift shop boasted a vast collection of weathered knives crafted of wood and obsidian. Beneath his glass counters lay rows of necklaces and bracelets with mysterious-looking gems unique to the planet.

  Glitterdark was a perennial favorite; flecks of silvery metal seemed to float within the smoky, translucent crystal as though suspended in a liquid. Entire shelves held small armies of stone statues depicting animals, plants, and perhaps even the extinct natives themselves.

  Were these real? Did it matter?

  Saeed’s son Darius minded the shop today. As he looked over a recent shipment sitting on the front counter, he pondered the authenticity of their wares. There was a time when exciting mystery had abounded, but eventually childhood’s curtain of illusion pulls back to reveal a world bereft of magic rocks and cursed mummies.

  Sometimes the new generation would come in and gawk, and he could see that old shine in their eyes. The shine of wonder.

  Today there were few customers to live through vicariously, so he had to content himself with watching a gentle rain streak down the windows of the shop. It was the perfect weather for a hot cup of tea. But before he could begin brewing, his wristpad buzzed, indicating an incoming call. It was his brother Rali, and it was flagged “Urgent.”

  Darius braced himself before answering. He would have been more surprised if it weren’t an emergency. He let it ring a few times anyway. Make his older brother sweat a little.

  After a good ten seconds, Darius tapped his wristpad to answer, and Rali’s agonized face appeared on its vidscreen. His brother was in some kind of dingy, dimly lit room.

  “Ah, Darius!” he exclaimed. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t answer—”

  “What’s wrong, Rali.” Darius wanted to add “this time,” but he managed to bite his tongue. He was already thinking about how many credits he had in the bank, how charged the battery was in the delivery van out back, and where the nearest hospitals were.

  “Oh, nothing really wrong, exactly!” Rali chuckled nervously and glanced at someone offscreen. Probably a bookie brandishing something heavy. “I’m not sick, not hurt, nothing like that. Thanks for asking. No, I just came back from work, and my apartment got broken into while I was gone, and all my food was stolen, so, you know, I gotta either eat or pay rent—”

  “So you need some cash....” Darius rolled his eyes.

  “Well, you know, not too much, just like...a thousand credits? I can pay it back—this won’t be like last time.”

  “A thousand credits for groceries, Ral? Do you need cash, or a bank loan? Come on, cut the crap.”

  “Well, I mean, I guess there’s more to it than just the groceries. 'Cause, you see, there’s also a little debt I owe to some guys. It’s not bad, it’s just that I’m kind of behind on my payments, you know, and I don’t really have much to give them in collateral—”

  There was a crash on Rali’s end of the call. He winced and said to someone offscreen, “Oh please, not the—” Another crash interrupted him. He looked back at Darius. “Yeah, if you could get here kind of quickly, that would be great. These guys are pretty insistent about getting their money. When do you think you can get here?”

  “I don’t know, Rali, the shop is pretty busy right now. I’ll have to call you back.” Darius hung up before Rali could get in another word.

  Their mother Zara came in from the back of the shop, carrying a tray of candles. “Who was that on the phone?” she asked. “Was it your brother?”

  “Yes, mother. He’s after money again. This time he owes someone a bunch of credits. Last time, somebody stole his bicycle. Last month, he broke his wrist and couldn’t afford the pain meds. I’ve never seen him on a bicycle.”

  Zara set her tray down and leaned against the counter. She looked tired beyond her years. There was a long silence that Darius knew was going to end in a plea.

  “Darius...”

  “Ma, this is always a one-way street with him. Money goes his way and just disappears.”

  “Darius, darling, I know he is bad with money—but I have never heard him that scared before. Please, at least go check on him. You don’t have to give him a single chit. Just check on him, would you?”

  Every fiber of his being told him he should just kick back with a hot drink and kill a few more hours until the weekend began. But if it turned out that Rali was in real trouble, he knew his mother would never let him hear the end of it. There would always be that one time.

  “Fine,” he said. “All right, I’ll go. But I’m doing this for you, not for him.”

  She kissed him on the cheek. “You are such a good boy. I will mind the store until you get back.”

  He nodded. “I should be back soon. If I show up on the evening news, you're free to pretend you've never heard of me.”

  “Just like you pretend you don't have a brother?”

  Darius rolled his eyes. “I'm going to check on him, aren't I?”

  “At my insistence. And now you're dawdling.” She shooed him towards the rear of the shop. “Go.”

  Darius paused by the storage room door on his way to the back entrance. If his brother really was in trouble with people who were ready to beat his debt out of him, then it didn’t make sense to just waltz in there with a smile and a firm handshake. Darius went into the storage room and rummaged around for something that might convince these goons to back off.

  His exploration produced a shock baton and a magnoglove. These pieces of relic-hunting equipment could subdue wildlife and help clear debris, respectively. The Bakaris regularly packed tools like these when it was time to head into Telamat’s jungles to gather more antiques from the ruins. Darius had always imagined that they could be effective on people as well.

  Either way, he figured it was good to have options. And he wasn’t afraid of a scrap, despite what his brother thought. The
y’d both spent some time on the streets back in the day. In the city of New Caledonia, the occasional fistfight on your way to adulthood was practically a rite of passage. Still, he was glad to beyond that now.

  It had occurred to him to simply call the police, but that would only be a temporary solution; if Rali did actually owe money, his creditors would probably just return even angrier than before. Plus, in his brother’s neck of the woods, the police often shot first and asked questions later. So Darius had no choice but to personally intervene.

  He also doubted that he had enough money to cover Rali’s debts anyway. The numbers always seemed to multiply as one got closer to the truth. So the least dangerous course of action was probably to extract his brother altogether and figure out some way to pay his debts later. Darius wasn’t quite sure how to do that yet, but he had a few minutes to work out a plan.

  He exited to the alleyway behind the store and hopped into the delivery van. The Bakaris couldn’t afford the luxury of personal flight, so this ride had regular wheels like thousands of others around the city. It drove on actual roads. Darius hoped to buy his own flyer one day, but at this rate, he wasn’t sure if he’d even have his own hoverboard.

  He told the van to drive to Rali’s latest hole in the wall. Since it could do that on its own, Darius took the opportunity to scout out the apartment building first. The vehicle used a suite of radar, sonar, and optical sensors to avoid impacts in real-time, and every vehicle on the road had a tag that updated its location at least once per second. Through the collective pool of positional data, his van could “see” the entire city grid at once. That way, it could adapt to evolving conditions accordingly, as could every other vehicle on the road.

  And with a little know-how, you could tap into that grid and take a look for yourself. Rali might have been a screwup, but in his descent into the underworld, he had taught Darius a few tricks of his own. Those could be used now to scout the exterior of the apartment complex.

  He figured he had about one minute of free peeking before the city’s traffic AI took an interest in the unauthorized tap and notified the authorities of the breach. Then both brothers would be dealing with the long arm of the law.

  After a few minutes of fiddling with command scripts on his wristpad, he managed to get the van to display a holo-projected screen simulating a camera feed. This feed synthesized a real-time optical input that streamed in from every vehicle that drove past Rali’s apartment complex.

  The feed revealed a ganger looming at entrance of Rali's apartment building. With his animated tattoos, aggressive posture, and regular scanning of the block, the dude stuck out from everyone else on the curb. He probably imagined that he’d be the guy reeling Darius in upon arrival. Like a fish. But Darius had too much gang initiation under his belt to let someone that heavy drift into a blind spot to set a trap.

  He instructed the van to pull into an alleyway between Rali’s apartment building and a public charging station. Off the main roads, the traffic AI would release the van and allow manual control. He found a spot in the alley to park, put on a rain jacket that he’d grabbed at the shop, slung his gear pack over one shoulder, and climbed out of the van.

  ✽✽✽

  It had been a while since he’d cruised through Rali’s neck of the woods. He’d forgotten how institutional these tenements looked, and how littered the streets and alleys were. He’d forgotten the smell of garbage sitting too long, and the sight of flickering street lamps, graffiti, and cracked walls. This place was not a well that many climbed out of.

  Darius spotted the back door and made his way over. He pulled the hood of his jacket down low to hide his face. The only other company in the alleyway was a stray dog who took no interest in him yet. In the gloom, he could get to the door without anyone recognizing him.

  The side gate was a low-tech affair. It had no face scanner or biometrics of any kind. It was fully off the network, requiring only a little power to maintain a lock that required a laser-cut identikey to get in. The juice for that typically came from solar panels on the roof of the building.

  Ordinarily, this would be enough to stop a vagrant or an aspiring burglar, because the keys were expensive and time-consuming to replicate. Overall, it was about the best kind of security that you’d find on a side entrance in this area.

  And as always, a door is only as effective as its lock. And despite this being an exterior entrance in a tough neighborhood, it lacked a metal frame to give it proper reinforcement. So the deadbolt would be going into the building, which was made of wood. Furthermore, the door was not flush with the corridor behind it, and the door opened inwards. Darius was almost disappointed with the simplicity of the solution. He liked puzzles.

  The shadowy corridor beyond the gate didn’t appear to have any sentry cameras, so he activated his magnoglove and simply wrenched the bolt out of the strike plate. Contorting metal like that wasn’t a silent process, and it wasn’t as quick as simply punching his way through. But he didn't have the time or resources for a stealthier approach. He would just have to bust the lock and not stick around for a witness to spot him.

  Darius glanced around the alley furtively. He didn’t see anyone taking an interest in him. Satisfied that he wasn’t going to screw this up just yet, he bent the deadbolt out of the way and stepped into the corridor beyond.

  Darius entered the dimly lit central courtyard and tried to remember where Rali’s apartment was. The building was five stories tall. Floors two through five had walkways going all the way around, with dark metal railing. The dim exterior fixtures emitted two kinds of light: dirty white or sickly, flickering yellow. If they weren’t out altogether. Here, the only noise was the falling rain and the woosh of cars on the wet streets outside. The only smells were of trash bins and wet concrete.

  Home, sweet home.

  He scanned the main entrance to his left. There was no sign of the lookout yet. Darius checked his wristpad and pulled up his brother’s apartment number: 401.

  Darius raised his arm so that the pad hovered a few inches from his eyes. The camera on the other side of the device activated an augmented reality mode. This essentially became a set of AR goggles, and it overlaid apartment numbers over every unit in the build as he scanned around. And there was 401, near the eastern stairwell.

  That number made sense. It put Rali’s apartment close to the stairwell. Stairwells often reverberate when people traverse them. If Rali ever expected company, it would give him a sign when someone was coming. Didn’t seem like it had helped very much this time, though. Or maybe you just can't run forever.

  Rali’s building sported four stairwells in total, one in each corner. Darius chose one further away. Of course, the goons knew he was coming, but since he’d bypassed their lookout, they didn’t expect him just yet. Overall, the situation still felt salvageable. There was still a pocket of time before the goons would smarten up and start looking around the building for his approach.

  Darius wondered if he’d parked the van too close to the entrance to avoid notice. Or was it too far away to make a clean exit? He had no experience with extracting deadbeats from apartments in the middle of the night.

  He thought wistfully about curling up on the couch with a steaming cup of tea and another episode of Captain Lazarus. It was the season finale, after all. Would the traitors finally be crushed? Or would Jembo Tullius escape and continue his attacks on the empire? Darius guessed the latter.

  It occurred to him that he didn’t really even know where to take his brother. They weren’t spies like Tullius with a network of safe houses. He was a gift shop employee, and his brother was a supposedly recovering mindspike addict who could barely keep his life together.

  This wasn’t the first time Darius had regretted skipping military service. Soldiers knew how to put up a fight—how to deal with being outnumbered in unfamiliar territory. Then again, if he’d gone to the academy, he’d be far away from this whole planet. He’d probably be drop-podding on the Gemini f
ront like literally a million other grunts. Not necessarily an upgrade, taken as a whole. In fact, those people could find some ugly ways to die.

  Darius made his way up the stairwell. Not too fast to gain attention, but not so slow that time would run out for Rali to keep all his fingers and toes. Darius paused halfway up to check his messages. There was one from his mother. He knew she had questions that he wouldn’t be able to answer truthfully. Or even knowledgeably, right now. That had to wait.

  He tightened his gloved left hand into a fist. It was satisfyingly weighty. He nodded to himself and kept moving. The glove couldn’t grasp a baton very well, so he held that in his right hand.

  Darius made it to the fourth floor and took a look around. He thought he saw someone moving in the courtyard below. Could have been anyone. Could have been the lookout. No time to check now. He had to keep pressing forward. He kept his head down and advanced carefully towards the apartment.

  The lights in Rali’s apartment were on. That meant that the goons hadn’t broken all of them. A murmur of conversation drifted through the window as he approached; he couldn’t make out the words, but it sounded unpleasant.

  It probably hadn’t occurred to anyone to lock the door. After all, they were expecting company soon. These types weren’t afraid of the dangers of a rough neighborhood. They were the danger. Darius closed his eyes and tried the knob as gingerly as he could. Sure enough, it turned without resistance.

  He wished that he could just talk his way out of this. He wasn’t bad at that. But the people he was about to deal with weren’t the listening type. They didn’t deal in diplomacy or negotiation. They dealt in cold, hard credits only. And Darius knew in his heart that Rali owed more than either of them could pay right now. And no baubles from the gift shop would satisfy these people. His only real choice was a physical confrontation.