The Sword

by J. M. Kaukola

  He was a liar. He was a fraud. He was a failure. He was a coward. First to fight, last to quit. He’d run, when he should have fought.

  The bottle was empty.

  He collapsed, toppled against the bed. The cooling unit roared. Frost grew on its radiator. His skin was on fire. The blankets were soaked in sweat. The empty bottle toppled from his hand, thudded against carpet.

  He wasn’t done. Not yet.

  He had another bottle. The white cap lobbed away, clattered into a darkened corner.

  He’d run.

  So many dead. He'd shut up. He’d followed orders. He’d run away. Run away, and broken every oath he’d ever sworn. Run away, and saved, what? His life? It wasn’t worth it. He wasn’t worth it. Not the river of blood, not the ocean of shame, not the rotting stink of cowardice.

  He’d wandered the streets, the first days. Wandered, until someone picked a fight. He’d lost every fight, even when he should have won. He’d lost, until they’d stopped pummeling him and walked away. Lost, and lain there, in pools of blood, and wished for another kick.

  It wasn’t enough. It was never enough.

  He glanced to the nightstand. Towards the black box. It waited, open, with the pistol glinting inside. Soon, he’d black out again. Maybe, he wouldn't wake up this time.

  There was blood on the dresser. Blood on the bed. Blood on his hands, and bits of glass.

  Drink.

  The wind shifted. The door creaked. It swayed open.

  Clausen stood, like a half-melted snowman. He turned, to address the challenger.

  A shadow loomed in the doorway. It made no sound, as it slipped into the room. It waited, as the door closed, behind.

  Clausen stared, unseeing.

  This man was familiar, a half-lost echo of another life. Through the haze, through the fog, Clausen dug, pulled at strings of memory. A picture emerged, a fragment, blazing with awful truth. The Airship. The mission. The man with the plan. The man who'd put everything in motion. The man who'd set them up.

  Berenson.

  The bottle slipped from his hands. The molten hate turned outward. Clausen howled, “You!”

  Berenson nodded. He said, “Me.”

  Clausen lurched towards him, and thundered, “You did this!”

  “I did this.” Berenson echoed.

  “You set us up! You killed us! This is your fault!” Clausen roared. He snatched the man by the throat. Slammed him against the wall. “Say something!” He demanded.

  “Ta-da.” Berenson gurgled.

  Clausen screamed, mindless rage boiled over. In blind fury, he hurled Berenson away. The genejob crashed into the dresser. Bottles shattered against the floor. Clausen’s vision tunneled in, faded to red. He lunged forward, snatched the stumbling man and slammed him, face first, into the mirror.

  Glass shattered, silver shards marred with blood. Clausen had Berenson by the collar. He pulled him around, face to face. He punched. Screamed. Punched again. In a tiny little corner of his mind that was still coherent, he remembered that punching a man's face was a painfully inefficient method of disabling him. He didn't listen. He kept hitting. He kept screaming.

  By the time he ran himself out of rage, there was a Berenson’s-head-sized-hole behind the broken mirror. Berenson’s face was a mass of blood and broken features, a sopping jigsaw puzzle short a half-dozen pieces. Clausen staggered back. A single thought broke through the fury. I killed him.

  I don't know how I feel about that.

  The second thought worried him more than the first.

  He looked for his bottle.

  In the corner, Berenson groaned. Then, he sat up.

  Not possible.

  Berenson reached up, grabbed his nose. He twisted, and it straightened, with a horrible gurgle-snap. His face shifted. Inflated. Crushed features sets. Cuts healed. Missing teeth filled.

  “Bullshit.” Clausen said. He staggering back, collapsed onto the the bed, once more.

  “I know.” Berenson said. His voice was flat from collapsed sinuses. He added, “Giff me a moment.”

  The two sat in silence. Clausen held his bottle and stared. Berenson lay at the foot of the dresser, and slowly stopped bleeding.

  Finally, Berenson said, “That was not too bad.”

  “You just let me beat the shit out of you.”

  “I got better.”

  “I noticed.” Clausen said. He glanced to his bottle, and then to the injured man. A moment of clarity dawned, and he said, “You could have taken me. At any time. Why didn’t you?”

  “You needed to spill blood, and I needed to give it. I live to serve.” Berenson said, as he began to stand. He warned, “Although, I am going to hit you.”

  Clausen tried to answer, to raise his hands in defense, but he was slow, clumsy. Berenson was a blur. A battering ram slammed against his stomach, and Clausen folded. His guts rebelled. His throat burned-

  He burst like a volcano. Liquid fire poured up his throat. Torrents choked him, crashed over the stained carpet.

  Hands grabbed his head, held him up.

  When the shaking stopped, he collapsed. The steel vice pulled him back, tossed him onto the ice cold sheets. He lay there, shuddering. He gasped. He wretched. He skirted the edge of conscious, on a snapshot tour of receding pain. He struggled towards waking, fought through the heavy waters. When the world finally came into focus, his first words were, “It hurts.”

  “Alcohol poisoning will do that.”

  “Fuck you.” He said. He opened his eyes, stared at the slow-spinning fan, above. He said, “I'm gonna to kill you.”

  “There is a queue on that. They are handing out numbers.” Berenson said, as he stalked the room. “But killing me is a bad idea.”

  “Sounds fine to me.”

  “Says the man attempting liquid suicide.”

  “You led us into a trap. You killed us.”

  “Not just. I also forced you to blow the ship. My miscalculations did.”

  “Why shouldn't I kill you?”

  “This was not my plan.” Berenson said, as if it was the most obvious justification.

  “Your plan wasn't to get us all killed? Made into villains?”

  “No! My plan was to get you all killed as heroes. There is a large difference.”

  “Yeah. I'm definitely going to kill you.” Clausen said. “After another drink.” He reached for his bottle, but it was gone.

  “Sorry. The bar is closed.” Berenson said. He placed the vanished liquor on the desk, behind him.

  Clausen glared.

  “Look, I know this is pathetically too little, and too late, but I am sorry. I made a grievous error. I thought Tiberius was turning the Airship into a very special bomb, to blackmail the Authority. He was not. He was using it to harvest Strand for something else. Because of that, he could afford to lose it, to wire it with traps and more firepower than he would, if it was his sole trump card.”

  “Good for you. Figured it out. Does that bring back twelve hundred people?”

  “No.” Berenson said. He fidgeted with one of the dresser drawers. “But it does mean we have another shot at him.”

  “Fuck you.”

  “Listen to me!” Berenson said. “He tried to kill us, and we made it out! That is not much, but it is more than his gameplan has allowed for. We can figure him out, move on him, take him down!”

  “You can.”

  “Maybe you have not noticed this, but I am not really a people person! I have a rather large crowd of Agency suits crawling over me because I failed them. I have some pressing health issues. And I am the one person, the only one, who can get inside Tiberius's head. Anyone else tries, and they will be torn apart, just like you, on that Airship, or worse!”

  Clausen stared at the ceiling.

  “I know what I am, Mister Clausen. Do not think I me ignorant of it! When your choice is the devil or the deep seas, and I am the only person offering a way out, you think long and hard before you choose! But that is what this is, a
nd where we are. The world is coming apart, the Agency does not trust me, and unless we do something, many more are going to die.”

  Clausen did not answer.

  “I need you, Mister Clausen. The others follow you. You could put this unit back together, go for round two-”

  “No.”

  Berenson switched tactics, and said, “Colonel Halstead has been framed, utterly and terribly, by a plan I designed. He is dead, and we can not change that, but we can give his family back their hon-”

  “Fuck you, no!” Clausen roared. He bolted upright. The world spun. He overcame. The black box was on his bed. The pistol was in his hand. The room tilted. The tunnel narrowed, but held open, over iron sights. Those sights pointed straight at Berenson’s chest. Fury was a hell of a sobrient. Clausen snarled, “Shut! Up! You will not piss all over the Colonel! You will not blackmail me! You say one more thing - one more! - and, I swear to God, I will end you!”

  “Now there is the fire!” Berenson said. He clapped his hands. “I can work with this! I mean, I’d prefer if you pointed that gun somewhere else, but… that is some great go-getter attitude!”

  Clausen racked the slide. He commanded, “Out!”

  “Mister Clausen, I lied to you. I lied to you not with words, but with what I implied, what I did not say. I swear to you, on whatever you hold dear, that I will never do so, again. Everything I have said in this room is true, and if you want, I will tell you only the truth from here. Not half-truths, not the truth you want, but the raw and unfiltered dreck that runs through my mind.”

  “I want you out.”

  “We can change things-”

  BLAM!

  Berenson staggered back. Blood poured from his chest. He said, “You shot me. You actually shot me.”

  Clausen stared at his hand, at the smoking gun. He said, “I was trying to point.”

  Berenson slid down the dresser, a trail of blood followed his descent. He landed, and gasped out, “Probably the alcohol. It interferes with motor control.” He touched the blood-soaked hole in his shirt. He said, “That hurts. A lot.”

  Clausen was numb, from the alcohol and the absurdity. He asked, “Is this gonna to kill you?”

  “No, no, it went clean through. Nothing vital hit. I will recover. If it fails to kill me, it simply slows me down.” Berenson said. He conjured up a weak smile, and added, “It is a useful trait. Hurts, though. I believe I will… rest… for a while.”

  Clausen nodded. He put his gun down. He was tired, too. Must have had too much to drink. He said, “I'm going to pass out, too. Wake me if room service shows up.”

  “In this hole? No one is coming. No one heard a thing.”

  Clausen was already snoring.

  Berenson rested his head against the wall. He tried to move as little as possible, to let the repair weaves work. To no one in particular, he admitted, “That went better than expected.”

  #

  Grant Firenze, computer wizard, would-be-warrior, criminal, and traitor, rotted in a jail cell. He sat on the edge of his cot, perched on the edge of puke-green fabric, and stared at the toilet. It was the only point of color against the gray walls. He stared, through reddened eyes. His face was ragged. His hair was matted. He looked like a madman, felt like an animal. The bars let in streaks of light, cast shadows over the cell, reminded every stone centimeter that this was prison, and there was no escape.

  One moment blended into the next. He had no computer, no data. He'd requested a book, and gotten only stares. He'd turned to writing code in his mind, composing problems and solutions, trying to dissect that wall of black nothing that had erased the network on the Airship. Could he have stopped it? He tried to forget the hallway to hell and the stalactites of gore. He tried to forget the dripping, buckled ceiling. He tried to ignore the screaming, whining silence. He tried to stay inside the clean room in his own mind, and not let memories breach the seals. It didn’t work.

  He did push-ups, crunches, and resistance exercises. Just like he'd learned at Kessinwey. He broke down code and re-ran scenarios. How many people died? He stopped tracking time, merely existed between lights up and lights down. He ate food when given. He drank water when offered. He spoke to no one.

  The prisoners eyed him, hungrily, and prepared for a fight. The guards glared at him, and waited for an excuse. He gave neither the opportunity. He did not live, he abided. He endured. He dwelt. Dead. So many dead. Lauren had pushed him out of the net, and then died. Kawalski pushed him out of the fire, and then died. They tried to save that ship, and they died. To a man, they died. Could he have stopped it?

  The world stopped. There was a break in the pattern. A shadow fell upon him. Someone was here, outside the door, color leaking through the gaps in the bars. Firenze never looked up. He said, “You're blocking my light.”

  “Grant Firenze?” A woman's voice asked. Her words were clipped, authoritative. Police officer's diction. He'd gotten used to that tone when he'd lived in Old Chicago. He’d learned to comply, smile, and not say too much.

  “That's me.” He said. He rose to face her, like a man surfacing from a turgid sea.

  The woman was tiny, but every inch of her was steel. Her face was taut, and he could see the muscles pulled along her neck, the way she moved inside her very nice suit, like a boxer getting ready to throw off her towel and fight. On her shoulders, the silver pins shone under the jail-house lights, the eagle and globe, with the brilliant Sword of Morning in its clutches, and radiant light behind. Agency. She smiled, but her eyes were hidden behind the dataglasses, gloss black, surely streaming every bit of information she craved, a fetishized one-way transparency. Her head tilted, and though he couldn't see her eyes, he knew they were flicking over the scene, collecting every bit of detail, checking every angle. Firenze tensed, tried to mirror the calm ready he’d seen on Sergeant Clausen. This was about to get horribly worse, he could feel it.

  “Relax, Mister Firenze, I'm here to free you.” She motioned to the side. With a clang and hiss, the door slid open, leaving a great gap in the barred wall. She asked, “May I come in?”

  He wanted to laugh, at the absurdity of the question, “It's a jail cell. You don't need to ask.” He paused, then added, “Unless you're a vampire, or something.” There was little humor in his voice, simply fatigue, and the ghost of a smile.

  “I'm Agent Velasquez.” She stated as she stepped over the threshold.

  “Commander.” He corrected.

  “Hmm?”

  “Field Commander.” He said. “Your tabs say you're a Field Commander. You're carrying a gun under that coat, and you don’t walk like you're aware of it. You're not from Analysis. Or Legal. You don’t fly a desk, Commander. Why are you here? What do you want?” He hated himself for knowing this.

  She nodded, obviously impressed, and said, “Very good, Mister Firenze. May I call you Grant?”

  “Sure, Commander.” He said with a shrug. It didn't matter.

  “Well, then, Grant, it's time for you to leave.” She placed a water bottle on the cot next to him, and a protein bar.

  “Why?” He asked. His eyes never left the crease on the wall, over the toilet.

  “Because this is a holding area for thugs, and you’re not a thug.” She explained. She leaned against the bars, just out of his reach, her hands casually near her hidden holster. She didn’t threaten, but she was prepared. She’d have made Clausen proud.

  “Really?” He asked. “'Cause, I'm pretty sure you hung that mess on us. Or is that whole debacle no longer a crime?”

  “I never said you weren't a criminal. I said you weren't a thug. You don't belong here.” She said. “The way I see it, you were just some poor kid who got caught up in the wrong crowd. You got involved in something he shouldn't have. Now you’re paying too great a price.”

  “Yeah, you'd know about that, Agent.” He said. “So, did you come here to strangle me? Threaten me? Drag me into another shit storm?” Anger, anger he'd buried began to boil. He’d gone numb
in this cell. He’d frozen his fury, shoved it deep into the black, and waited, but now that was peeled away. His chest began to thaw, his head to pound, and his hands to shake. His voice strained, like live wires grinding, and he forced himself to speak, calmly. “Are you not done with me, yet?”

  She stood, straighter, cleared the line to her gun, but did not yet reach for it. She said, “Calm down, Grant. The trial is over-”

  “Over?” He cried. “Over? They never called me in! I have the right to a fair trial! Or, is that right gone, too?”

  “Careful, Mister Firenze.” She said, “You were never charged.”

  “Never – what?” He demanded. Anger blended into confusion. His gut turned. Something terrible had happened. He knew it. The tabs on her collar promised it.

  She explained, calmly. She spun a narrative both logical and damning. She said, “You were ancillary to the entire debacle. You were held hostage, you were forced to cooperate against your will. Due to your delicate medical state, your testimony was extracted from your assist box. As the experts have testified, the memories and thought patterns recored therein may stand as first-hand evidence-”

  “Fuck you.” He breathed, not caring if those were his last words.

  “-and that evidence demonstrated the lengths that your kidnappers went to in order to seize that Airship and the wealth associated. The use of plasma weaponry against civilians was particularly jarring, as was the use of the antimaterial laser to bar escape from-”

  Firenze was on his feet. There was thunder in his ears. Fire in his chest. He was not a violent man, but now wrath claimed his mind. Near feral, he cried, “We were trying to save those people! We died trying to stop it!” He wanted to sob. He wanted to break something.

  Velasquez edged backwards, her professional calm thinning, but not broken. She'd been prepared for this. She pressed on, “This is not my opinion, Grant. This is the legal truth of the matter.”

  Treason. Blood and dirt on their honor. Butchered, beaten, and left to rot, good men and women all. His stomach turned on itself. Anger wasn’t the right word for this. This made him sick. It was like the entire universe had twisted into the devil's playground, and he'd watched it happen, but no one would hear his testimony. “Truth?” He asked. The word tasted like shit.