by Mike Sheriff
Three dropped. The Unum and two other guards crested the top of the stairway. The northeastern archway leading into the Center rose twenty feet beyond it.
Pyros aimed his sound rifle and fired a burst.
The last two guards slumped to the ground. The Unum threaded the archway and disappeared inside the Center.
“Come on!” Daoren said. “Before he gets—”
“Daoren! Behind you!”
He whirled to the shout.
On the first flight, Heqet raced past the wrecked levicart.
He primed his lungs to warn her off, but a glint of light above her seized his attention.
Three flights below, a wounded guard trained his dart gun up the stairs. It recoiled.
Daoren’s mind had a split-second to register the glass darts streaking his way. He tensed in anticipation of their—
A darkened blur dove in front of him. Three sickening thuds announced the darts’ impact with a solid object.
Pyros collapsed and tumbled down the flight. He came to rest on the level landing, eighty steps below.
Three flights lower, the wounded guard pivoted. He trained his weapon on Heqet as she raced up the stairway.
Daoren snap-aimed his dart gun and fired.
The guard fired an instant before being cut down. His volley of glass darts homed in on Heqet.
Daoren’s heart froze. “Heqet!”
Cordelia tackled her from behind. They dropped in a heap onto the steps. The darts flashed over their prone bodies and impacted the transway, missing Commander Hyro by a few feet.
Daoren released a whooshing breath. On the landing below, Pyros raised his hand. “Daoren . . .”
Daoren scrambled down the flight and kneeled beside him. Three dart shafts skewered the left side of his chest. Bloody froth coated his lips; a dart had punctured a lung. “Be still, Pyros. I’ll get you help.”
“Don’t bother,” he whispered. “I’m finished.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You’ll be—”
“I need to tell you something.”
Daoren detected more than pain behind Pyros’ agony. “What is it?”
Pyros sucked a wheezing breath. “Your father . . .”
“What about him?”
“He died by my hand.”
The five words seemed to take a lifetime to register. When they did, Daoren could only blink at their breathculling implications.
“My hand was forced by the Unum, but I should have been strong enough to resist him.” Pyros drew the crystal dagger from the sheath on his belt, wincing. “I give you my life for his.” He placed the dagger in Daoren’s hand. “Finish me . . . and forgive me.”
Daoren’s hand trembled. He’d dreamed of culling the man responsible for his father’s death. He’d spent untold hours imagining how it might unfold. The weapons he’d use. The time he’d take to perform the deed. He never anticipated the scenario coming to life. He never expected to learn the man’s identity. Now here he was, lying wounded at his feet, handing him the means to fulfill the desire.
“Do it,” Pyros said.
Daoren tightened his grip around the dagger’s handle. It would be easy to do it. A quick strike to the throat and he’d end Pyros’ life, but what would he gain? Would it bring back his father? Or Laoshi? Or Mako? Or the countless prospects who’d died over the past two hundred years in the name of humanity’s survival?
As Daoren stared at Pyros’ contorted face, the old Librarian’s words came back to him, spoken less than two days ago in the aerostat’s control gondola.
It’s a lesson we must relearn if we’re to survive as a species. In this world, every life is precious.
“Do it, Daoren. Please.”
Daoren searched—truly searched—but couldn’t find the desire to cull him. Instead, he discovered the last recourse he could have imagined. “I won’t finish you, Pyros, but I will forgive you.”
Pyros’ wide-eyed gaze flicked back and forth. “I don’t deserve your mercy.”
“Maybe not,” he said, “but you’ve earned it through your actions today. And I’ll need your help to reform the Jireni in the days to come.”
Tears spilled from Pyros’ eyes. He grasped Daoren’s hand; one palm up, one palm down. “You’ll have it, Unum Potentate. On my honor.”
Daoren surveyed the northeastern stairway.
The firing had stopped, replaced by an eery calm. Three flights below, Cang and Hyro helped Heqet and Cordelia to their feet. Farther down, the dead and wounded littered the transway. It was a heavy price to pay, but only one enemy remained to be silenced.
“Attend to Pyros’ wounds, Cang!” he called down the flight. “And make sure no one else goes into the Center!”
Daoren shrugged off the conformal air-pack and set the dart gun on the steps. He climbed toward the archway, clutching Pyros’ dagger. He’d find another use for it.
He’d use it to take the one life in Daqin Guojin that wasn’t precious.
19
The People Have Spoken
DAOREN EMERGED FROM the darkened archway inside the Center. The ceiling lights lacked the bewildering brilliance of his first visit, but their weak illumination proved more than adequate to gauge the landscape before him.
Rows of empty seats spanned the floor, their touch-screens blank. No cubic chronoglyphs hovered above them today. Below them, the opaque floor gleamed. An astringent odor stained the air; the residue of recent sterilization.
Thirty feet away, the Unum limped between two rows, making no effort to conceal himself. Jagged gashes streaked his arms and legs. Sweat and bloodstains mottled his regal mianfu. Despite the wounds and the events of the past hour, he showed no outward signs of concern. He manipulated a quantum tile as he walked, not bothering to look up from its screen.
Daoren stalked closer, dagger in hand. He scanned the nearby seats, mindful for hidden weapons and personal guards the Unum may have summoned while he was alone.
“If it isn’t the true Unum Potentate,” the Unum said, breaking his reticent composure. “What a wretched pain you turned out to be.”
Daoren closed to within ten feet. He squeezed the crystal dagger’s handle. “I could say the same of you.”
“Yes, I suppose I’ve brought considerable pain to you and your family. You should know that much of it was unintentional.”
Daoren snorted. “And yet here we are.”
“The last place I expected to be.”
“The last place you’ll ever be.”
The Unum chucklebucked. “As I thought it would be for you.” He halted. “It was such a simple plan. Exchange your S.A.T. score with my son’s. You’d be harvested, and my fortune and legacy would be assured.” He lifted his gaze from the tile. “But you had to complicate matters.”
Daoren circled the Unum, passing between two seats. “And you had to place your greed above the good of the people.”
“Guilty as charged.” The Unum tracked Daoren as he circled. “But you haven’t possessed power, boy. You haven’t felt it surging through your veins and filling your lungs. You have no idea what you’d do to hold onto it.”
“I know I wouldn’t cull the innocent.”
The Unum pitched his head back and rasplaughed. “No one in Daqin Guojin is innocent! We’ve been happily munching on our young for centuries. You’re just as guilty of that, Daoren.”
“We did what we had to do to survive.”
“As did I. Nourishment isn’t our only need. Most denizens think it is, but we know better. We know that without hope, survival is pointless.”
“What hope did your rule ever give to the people?”
“That’s where you and I part company. I never said anything about giving hope to the masses.”
“I can rectify that shortcoming.”
“Oh? How?”
“By culling you,” Daoren said. “That will give hope to the masses.”
“Perhaps it would.” The Unum’s gaze panned the nearby seats. “So many oth
ers have met their end in here, haven’t they? Millions of fresh-faced prospects, their entire lives in front of them. I wonder what seat your brother occupied before he was harvested?”
Daoren ignored the jab and continued to circle his prey.
The Unum glanced down at his tile. “You know, it’s fitting that you returned to the Center.”
Daoren threaded another pair of seats. “And why is that?”
The Unum tapped the tile’s screen. “You were destined to die in here.”
The row of seats rotated. Daoren’s stomach went hollow.
DAOREN GRIPPED HIS ribs, gasping for air. He’d struck the thin edge of a solid object when he fell. Warm liquid dribbled into his eyes and flowed down his nose.
He sat up and swiped a hand across his forehead. It came away bloody. He rattled his head and looked down.
A reclining glass seat glinted under his legs.
The seat landmarked his location. He was in the grooll mill, inside an open pod. He vaguely remembered the floor rotating beneath his feet while he was talking to the—
“More precisely,” the Unum said, “you were destined to die in here.”
Daoren lifted his gaze. He blinked through the blood.
The Unum leaned on the adjacent pod, eight feet away. He gripped the quantum tile, grinning. “But don’t worry, boy. I’ll survive this day.”
Daoren scanned the pod’s interior for Pyros’ dagger. It was gone.
The Unum paced a few feet closer. “The same can’t be said for Heqet or your mother though. The horrors I’ll visit upon them in the Rig can’t be spoken, but know this. Everyone you love will perish with you.”
Daoren ran his hand down to his right foot, ignoring the stabbing pain in his chest, and felt for the sole of his sandal. “Your time will come, Unum. Maybe not today, but it will come. It always does for your kind.”
“Perhaps,” the Unum said, tarrying three feet from the pod, “but you won’t be here to see it.” He raised the tile. His index finger hovered over its screen. “All that remains to be seen is how loudly you scream when you die.”
Daoren pried the dagger from the sandal’s sole, keeping his intent hidden from his eyes. His survival depended on drawing the ruler of Daqin Guojin closer. Only one lure came to mind. “Not as loudly as Narses screamed, I’ll wager.”
The Unum’s eyes glinted like glass darts. The barb had stung the intended nerve.
“Did you see him die?” Daoren asked. “Or were you too busy cowering under the desk in your chamber?”
The Unum lowered the tile and paced closer. He halted within arm’s reach and sneered. “Did you see your father die? Pyros told me he wailed like a prospect when the dagger pierced his gut.” He cacklebracked. “What I would have given to have heard that first-hand. I’d wager it sounded like—”
Daoren rapped the dagger against the seat and rocked forward. He thrust his hand outward.
The shock-fused blade penetrated hilt-deep into the Unum’s protruding belly.
The Unum shrieked and recoiled. His hands sought the dagger’s handle. His quantum tile tumbled to the platform.
Daoren scrambled onto the platform. He snatched the lapels of the Unum’s bestudded zhaoshan and swung him toward the pod.
The Unum toppled through its opening and splayed on his back atop the reclining seat. He loosed an emasculating wail.
Daoren scooped up the tile and faced the pod. “You coveted grooll above all else. You placed its acquisition before the good of Daqin Guojin and the good of its people.” He tapped the tile’s screen. “Now the people have spoken.”
The panel sealed the pod in a breathless blur. The Unum slapped his hands against the glass. They left bloody streaks.
The pod’s photonic cutters cast an ominous red loom. Their cross-hatched, hair-thin beams angled downward and sliced into the Unum’s face. Meaty sections of skin sloughed away. His lacerated lips stretched in a muted scream.
Daoren paced backward and squeezed around the adjacent pod. He halted and tapped the tile’s screen again.
The high-vacuum’s whir emanated from the pod. It sucked away the Unum’s mianfu and skin, exposing a bloated, writhing mound of flesh.
Daoren paced backward until he was a safe distance from the pod. He tapped the tile one more time.
The whistle of ultrasonic energy pierced the air. Inside the pod, the Unum’s bloody husk liquified to a smoldering slurry.
Daoren inched to the edge of the platform.
One hundred feet below, the ruddy slurry evacuated into an empty grooll tank.
He tossed the tile. It tumbled end over end and smashed into the tank.
TEN MINUTES LATER, Daoren emerged from the northeastern archway and stepped into the brightest light he’d ever encountered. He lifted his face to the sun and basked in its cleansing rays.
On the flight below, Heqet squealed. She rushed up the stairs and jumped into his arms.
He held her close, relishing the warmth of her body against his. She pulled her head back. Her gaze swept over his face. “You’re injured.”
“It’s nothing.”
“You’re sure?”
He rasplaughed. “After what we’ve been through, yes.”
She squeezed him tighter.
He sucked a whistling breath. “Careful—I might have bruised a few ribs.”
Cordelia and Commander Cang raced up the stairs and joined them.
“Is the Unum dead?” Cang asked.
“And then some,” Daoren said, still bound up in Heqet’s embrace.
Cordelia wrapped her arms around them both, squeezing even more tightly. “Thank Sha!”
“Momma,” he said, wincing. “You’re crushing us.”
Cordelia chucklebucked. “Then you’ll be crushed!”
Heqet gigglesnicked, gazing into his eyes. Her brow crimped. “With him dead, doesn’t that make you Unum?”
Cang dropped to a knee before he could answer. “I pledge to you the support of the Jireni, Unum.”
Heqet and Cordelia released Daoren. Cang extended her hand.
Daoren helped her to her feet. “Pledge your support to the people, Cang. The Jireni have served the ruling caste long enough.”
Cang’s smile revealed polished white teeth. “They will have it.”
Beyond her, denizens and Jireni filtered up the stairway. Many nursed terrible wounds and had to be supported by their colleagues. Commander Hyro escorted an Indonoid denizen up the steps. He cradled a limp body clad in a sepia shenyi.
“This denizen wanted to speak to you, Unum,” Hyro said.
The man lay the body upon the landing. Daoren’s heart sank.
It was the emaciated women who’d helped him and Heqet escape the Jireni patrol. Her body bore no visible wounds. Her wrinkled face carried a startling look of serenity.
“How did she die?” Daoren asked.
“Our levicart was torn apart on impact,” the Indonoid said. “She was thrown from the vehicle.”
Daoren kneeled beside the body. “I hope it was quick for her.”
“Quick enough,” the man said. “Before she died, she asked me to pass along a message to you.”
Daoren glanced up at him. “What was the message.”
The Indonoid straightened his back. “Give us hope.”
The words humbled Daoren. He cast his gaze onto the crowd below. They’d fought with courage and conviction in the face of dire odds to grant Daqin Guojin a new beginning. They’d earned the right to hope. He stood. “How are Su and Pyros?”
“They’re on their way to the medical facility,” Cang said. “They’ll both survive.”
“We’ll need to send aeroshrikes to recover the seeds. How soon can—”
“The crews are being readied,” Cang said, holding up a hand. “Pyros was adamant on the matter. We’ll have ten vessels underway within two hours. I’ve prepared a writ declaring the Unum dead and rescinding his cull order.”
“Su al Xing has ordered his denizen
s to disarm,” Hyro said. “The leading dissenters in the other Chengs will follow his example.”
“Good,” Daoren said. “We’ve much to do to restore Daqin Guojin’s greatness, and it starts with peace.” He grasped Heqet’s hands. “I’d be honored if you’d help me do the work, Heqet.”
She cocked her head. “Of course I will. You needn’t have to ask.”
“I meant in union,” he said. “Would you bind with me?”
Heqet’s smile rivaled her scintillating micro-studs. “Would I say no?”
Daoren leaned forward. His lips found hers.
An irresistible sensation flushed his body, overpowering the mental aura that had for so long held sway. It wasn’t anxiety. It wasn’t irritation. It wasn’t rage. For the first time in his life, he felt at peace. He’d have gladly stretched the feeling—and the kiss—for eternity. But like the first kiss they’d shared in the Center, this one was interrupted by a Jiren.
Hyro coughed. “Pardon the intrusion, but will the union ceremony take place before or after you’re sworn in as Unum?”
Daoren ignored her question, otherwise engaged.
20
A New Order
“I DO,” DAOREN said, perched in a high-backed chair fashioned from cold-rolled—and decidedly uncomfortable—crystal.
The words echoed through the palace’s Hall of Mirrors. They wafted over hundreds of seated members of the Cognos Populi . . . and two-dozen special denizens who’d been invited at his insistence. The words marked the final declarative statement in the succession ceremony. With no more than two syllables, he transformed himself from non-denizen to Unum, a week after culling the old ruler of Daqin Guojin. The week was unlike any he’d ever experienced.
It had taken less than a day for datakeepers at the Librarium to confirm that he’d written the perfect S.A.T. in May and had in fact attained the rights of Unum Potentate. It had taken six days for the Cognos Populi’s succession committee to agree on a location for the ceremony. The delay in that decision could be traced to his own actions.
Damage to the Assembly—the usual venue—was still being assessed after its kinetic encounter with the geology aerostat. Structural engineers hadn’t yet declared it safe for occupation. The committee had deemed the Hall of Mirrors the only suitable alternative. It possessed the required opulence and enough floorspace to accommodate the august members in attendance.