The rest of the Imperialate considered the Majdas the “true” heirs of Raylicon, the closest genetic match to our ancestors in the Ruby Empire. Except it wasn’t true. Here in the Undercity, our genes hewed closer to the ancients than anywhere else. We kept our secrets to ourselves. Beautiful and dark, as magnificent as it was harsh, the Undercity existed like a fantastical world that rarely appeared to outsiders, a separate universe only those born here knew how to reach.
Darkness surrounded the cone of light where Ruzik stood. I knew that beyond him, inside the caves that his circle called home, tapestries softened the walls, rugs warmed the ground, and handmade furniture filled the rooms, all designed by Undercity artisans. None of that showed out here, only Ruzik, armed with a dagger. He looked bored. In my youth, I’d stood guard that same way. Each member of the dust gang I’d run with took a shift of several hours while our circle slept. It was our pact; we protected them and they made a home. Sometimes other gangs harassed or attacked us, but often a shift passed in boredom.
I didn’t want to startle him; he’d come out fighting. Instead I whistled like a small lizard.
Ruzik turned in my direction, his hand dropping to the hilt of his dagger.
I walked forward. Jak remained in the shadows, on alert.
Ruzik’s posture relaxed as I came into the circle of light. “Eh, Bhaaj. No sleep?”
“Got job.” I regarded him. “Need Dust Knights.”
He squinted at me. “Now?”
“Yah. Secret rumble.”
“Big fight?” He looked more interested at that.
“Maybe.” I motioned upward. “Out and up.”
His forehead furrowed. “What?”
“Not Undercity. Above.”
“Don’t ken.”
“We go above. Vanished Sea.”
He stared at me as if I’d grown a second head. “To the desert?”
“Yah. Desert.”
Ruzik stood processing that idea. I waited, not pushing. Very few of my people ever left the Undercity. We’d lived here so long, we’d changed. It wasn’t just that we didn’t think like people who lived under a sky; our actual neurological process had become adapted to this life. The first time I’d gone aboveground, my brain couldn’t process the sight of the sky, desert, and horizon. I literally couldn’t see it. It had taken about fifteen minutes for me to comprehend enough so I could walk to the army recruiting center in Cries, but it had taken me years to truly adjust. Even now, when I lived in Cries at the top of a tower, I still felt more at home in the aqueducts.
It wouldn’t surprise me, however, if Ruzik and his gang had visited the desert. They were more daring than most and filled with insatiable curiosity.
“Why desert?” he asked.
“Visit starships. Ancient ruins.”
He snorted. “Plenty of ruins here.”
“Not ships.”
“What is ship?”
“Brought our ancestors here.”
“To the Undercity?”
“To the world. Raylicon.” He’d know what I meant. Although very few of my people understood the concept of a planet, I required the Dust Knights to learn to read, write, and do math. Most found math easy, especially spatial perception, since we constantly used those skills, navigating the aqueducts in the dark. Reading took more time for some, but it came easily to Ruzik. He loved astronomy, even if he wasn’t yet convinced its wonders actually existed.
“Why need Dust Knights?” Ruzik asked.
“Need to defend.” I grimaced. “Above city wants me dead.”
His puzzlement vanished. “We protect.” He thought for a moment. “Tower and Byte stay here. Protect circle. Angel, come with.”
“They asleep?”
“Yah. I wake.” Mischief sparked in his gaze. “Angel will curse.”
I smiled. “Jak did too.”
Ruzik nodded as if Jak had reacted in the only sensible manner. “You stay here.” With that, he strode into his home. I paced while I waited, agitated. Someone wanted to get rid of me, scare me off the investigation, or put me in a hospital where I couldn’t keep poking around. Shooting me in a garden at night with no one else around took a certain level of planning. Throwing a knife in broad daylight was sloppier, suggesting they felt more pressure. I had no idea what was going on with the explosion in the tunnel, and that business with gas in the flyer looked like an act of desperation. They were in one hell of a hurry to stop my investigation. Why?
A rustle came from the shadows. I instinctively reached for my gun even as Jak walked into the torchlight.
“They come with?” he asked.
“Ruzik, yah.” I dropped my hand. “Maybe Angel.”
“We ready?”
“Almost.” Tapping my gauntlet, I turned off my shroud. “Max, get me security at army headquarters in Cries.” No way could we reach the ruins without alerting anyone this time, now that the army knew people had trespassed there. I didn’t want anyone shooting us.
“I can do that,” Max said. “But you will get a low-ranking aide at the night office. They won’t understand why you want clearance. So you’ll tell them to contact the Majdas. First they will want to do a background check, to verify your story, which will take time—”
“All right, I get it. Put me through to Majda security.”
“Will do.” Then he said, “I have the palace.”
A woman’s voice snapped out of my comm. “Major Bhaajan? This is Lavinda Majda. What’s up?”
Ho! The colonel definitely wasn’t a night security officer at the palace. She must have ordered the staff to put me through to her if I contacted them. “I’m going to the Vanished Sea starships. Can you clear me?”
“At least you’re asking this time.” She didn’t sound pleased.
I looked up at the sound of footsteps. Ruzik, Angel, and Tower were walking out of the cave. Tower took her place on guard by the entrance, and Ruzik and Angel came to stand with Jak.
“I’m bringing three people,” I told Lavinda.
“Who?”
“Protection.”
“I need names. I have to put them into our system.”
Ruzik stiffened and Angel scowled. Jak shook his head at me.
“I can’t give you names,” I said. “They won’t come if you put them in your system. If I go alone, then this time when someone tries to kill me, I could end up eating dust.”
“We’ll send you guards,” Lavinda said.
“Not a chance. The last time I trusted Majda, I damn near crashed into the City Arts Tower.”
“I’m sorry.” She sounded like she meant it. “But I can’t clear you without knowing more.”
I had no intention of giving her names. So I just said, “Fine. Out,” and turned off my comm.
“Still go?” Angel asked.
“Yah.” I indicated my pack. “With shroud.” It probably wouldn’t hide us from the guards now that they were on the alert, but at least they’d know we were coming. They wouldn’t shoot me unless Lavinda told them to. I didn’t think she would, but regardless, I had to act now, before these slimy bastards could hide, steal, or destroy whatever they were after at the ships.
My comm hummed. Startled, I looked down. Normally people couldn’t locate me from outside the Undercity, but I hadn’t yet turned my shroud back on.
“Max, who just commed me?” I asked.
“Colonel Majda.”
Well, damn. “Put her through.”
Lavinda spoke on comm. “Major, wait.”
“I don’t have time.”
“Why?”
“I’ll send you a report tomorrow.” I couldn’t say more on the comm. Gods only knew who else I’d be telling.
“If I give you clearance and whatever you do out there goes haywire,” Lavinda said, “it’s on my head. It could damage my career and my relationship with my family.”
“I understand I’m asking a lot. But it’s important.” I’d worked for Majda for over two years. All that time p
roving myself had to mean something. “I’m asking you to trust me.”
She swore under her breath, a lively assortment of expletives. I’d have to learn those. Max would quit saying I lacked originality.
Finally Lavinda said, “I’m putting clearance through for you and three other people, from the Undercity I assume.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
She paused. “All right, it’s done. The lieutenant at the site knows you’re coming.”
I closed my eyes with relief. “My thanks.”
“Major, I can’t guarantee the night guard out there isn’t involved with whatever is going on,” Lavinda said. “I heard about what happened with the flyer. I’m sorry. Neither Vaj nor I had anything to do with it. Someone sabotaged the craft while you were talking to us.”
I hadn’t expected an explanation. I hesitated, unsure how to respond without saying too much. I settled on, “Thanks for letting me know.”
“Just be careful. Over and out.”
“Over and out.” I tapped off my comm and toggled on my shroud.
“You sure about this?” Angel asked.
“Could walk away,” Jak said.
“Nahya.” If the Majdas weren’t involved, that meant someone was acting against the military I’d sworn my loyalty to as a soldier and still served as a civilian. I may have never felt comfortable with the Majdas, but they served the Imperialate well. Or so it appeared. If they were involved in this mess, then they’d lied to me big time and damned if I would let them sweep this away. Yes, they were more powerful than sin, but tough. I wasn’t quitting.
“We go,” I said.
None of them looked surprised. We headed for the desert.
CHAPTER XVI
BENEATH THE ANCIENT SEAS
We followed hidden back passages through the sleeping Concourse. On the main boulevard, a few nightclubs were still going, but our path remained dark and isolated. Ruzik and Angel knew the route well enough that I suspected they’d done this before. I couldn’t shroud all four of us with one jammer, so we stayed out of sight until we reached the lobby at the end of the Concourse. A few lights shone there, glowing on the automated vendors selling water, food, and touristy items. A young couple sat slouched against the wall, sleeping. The smell of booze touched the air. The woman opened her eyes, waved at us, and went back to sleep. Apparently if you drank enough, even four Undercity thugs didn’t faze you.
We walked up the stairs to the archway. At the top, we stood in front of the molecular airlock with its rainbow sheen.
“Ready?” I asked.
Angel had an odd look. She turned to me. “Time to go above.”
“Yah,” I said. “Time.”
Ruzik spoke. “We do black belt tests at Cries Tykado Academy.”
“What the hell?” Jak said.
I understood what Ruzik meant. He wasn’t only talking about the tests. He used the word academy, a four-syllable word, but he wasn’t ridiculing the school. He simply said its name, accepting that people in Cries spoke in a different matter. For the first time in history, one of our athletes offered to go to the city and work with a team there. The academy testers had planned to come to the Rec Center on the Concourse, a neutral location. Ruzik’s offer had great import—in the same way as what he and Angel were about to do, coming aboveground as my bodyguards as if this were perfectly normal rather than unprecedented in the known history of the Undercity.
“You sure?” I asked.
“Yah, we go,” Ruzik said. “Meet them as equals.”
I nodded my approval. “And so you are.”
“Good,” Jak growled. “We done with proclamations?” He exaggerated all four syllables of his last word. “Now we go beat up slicks at ships, yah?”
Angel laughed and Ruzik smiled. “Yah,” Angel agreed. “Go rumble.”
“Hope not,” I muttered. I’d had enough rumbling these past few days.
We stepped through the membrane. The film slid along my skin, and then we were out, under the night sky. It arched above us, a deep black dome glistening with stars. In the distance, to our right, the towers of Cries gleamed. The desert spread out everywhere else, silent and vast, bathed in starlight.
Angel stared at Cries. “Sparkles.”
“Pretty,” Ruzik agreed.
“Yah,” I said. They were taking this remarkably well, another reason I suspected this wasn’t their first time out here. It helped that night surrounded us, hiding the blue sky with its sun and the true breadth of the desert. With the stars shedding their light across the landscape and our Undercity vision adapted to the dark, we could see well enough.
Ruzik motioned toward Cries. “We go there?”
“Not there.” I indicated the land ahead of us. “Desert.”
We set off running.
Breezes rustled our hair. We slowed to a walk as we reached the sand dunes. A little flying dragon trilled in the distance, its call drifting on the air, and the sweet scent of desert vines tickled my nose. The great silence of the desert muted our passage. We’d left Cries behind, until it was no more than a faint glow on the horizon to our right. Behind it, the Saint Parval Mountains rose into the sky, their peaks a jagged silhouette against the star-swept sky.
We followed what had once been the shoreline of a great ocean. As we went further, lights became visible in the distance. We continued on, and the domes of the Vanished Sea starships seemed to rise out of the desert. We didn’t shroud our approach, since it wouldn’t be possible to hide well enough to evade detection, but we probably didn’t show yet on a visual scan. We all wore black, blending with the night. Still, the guard there would have sensors that picked up our heat signatures, heartbeats, even the whisper of our feet in the shifting sands.
We kept walking.
The three ships grew larger. A hatchway glowed on the nearest hulk, and its light showed who else waited for our arrival—a stocky woman with her weapon out and ready. She wore chameleon fatigues, which had chosen a pattern that matched the desert, and she had the bars of a lieutenant on her shoulders. When I realized she held an ADS14 heat gun, relief flickered over me. ADS weapons were meant to control rather than injure. Her gun would heat up our skin enough to make us back off, but it wouldn’t do any real harm. She wasn’t armed to kill.
I kept my revolver holstered and walked into the light with my hands out from my sides. Jak didn’t pull the coilgun off his shoulder as he came forward, and Angel and Ruzik left their daggers sheathed.
“Halt there,” the guard said. “Identify yourselves.”
I stopped. “I’m Major Bhaajan. You should have received clearance for me to enter the ships with these three guards.”
She looked me over, scanning my revolver, then checked out Ruzik and Angel. She didn’t seem concerned by the daggers, but when her gaze reached Jak, she scowled. “That coilgun looks like military issue. I thought your guards came from the Undercity.”
“The Majdas gave us clearance,” I told her, hoping that would be enough.
“I’ll need to see your ID,” she said.
ID sent, Max thought.
Jak, Ruzik, and Angel remained at my side, intent on the guard. Lights flickered on her gauntlets while she received my ID. Her stance relaxed and she spoke in a friendlier tone as she lowered her gun. “Which ship do you need to visit?” She seemed more curious now than wary.
I’d decided to start my search where I’d seen Ken Roy working yesterday. I motioned to the right. A second ship rose behind this first one, and beyond it, a third ship curved out of the ground. “The last one, the vessel on the end.”
“That’s the biggest.” The lieutenant motioned for us to follow her. “They all look pretty much the same inside.”
Her reaction intrigued me. I’d expected her to be more impassive or wary. Then again, maybe she liked having visitors. The night shift here was probably as boring as spit.
We walked alongside the ruins, silent in their ancient presence. Our footsteps rustled and
the call of a pico-ruzik whistled in the sky. At a distance, the ships had looked as if they were glowing, but up close, I realized someone had strung lights along their hulls. I doubted the guard normally kept them lit; it made more sense to leave the outside dark and stay inside the craft, monitoring the area with the security equipment. Tonight, however, she’d turned on the lamps for all three ships. They looked festive, as if she were welcoming us to a party.
At the third dome, the lieutenant stopped before a rounded hatch and tapped in a code on a modern panel the army must have installed. As the hatchway shimmered into a molecular airlock, she stepped aside. “You can go on in.”
Angel glanced at me. “I stay here.”
I nodded, accepting her offer to act as a lookout.
Inside the ship, lamps lit the deck, the round bulbs strung along the bulkheads, each with the insignia of the Pharaoh’s army on its stem. They looked like glowing flower buds.
Ruzik and the lieutenant took up positions on either side of the entrance, watching each other with obvious curiosity. Jak walked around, checking everything. The cabin was about thirty meters across. If any barriers had ever partitioned off the interior, they were gone, and nothing remained of whatever devices had equipped this craft. One area looked like it might have been a cockpit. A solid cylinder stood there, maybe a stool to sit on, and the pitted remains of what might have been controls glinted on the bulkhead in front of it. The dimensions were too large; no human sitting on the perch could reach the controls. A few other cylinders of different heights and diameters rose in various places, seemingly at random.
The Vanished Seas (Major Bhaajan series Book 3) Page 24