Zotikas: Episode 1: Clash of Heirs

by Storey, Rob

  Behind him, a guard fired. The bolt missed Kieler but several wine bottles exploded in front of him. Kieler stepped full speed into the liquid. As he slipped, he twisted.

  His heightened awareness caused time to slow, and he had the prescience to wonder as a leveled blade passed inches above his falling face. He gawked at the inconceivable, fierce beauty of the woman he was about to collide with. Her bold, chiseled features were outlined by a wild halo of crimson hair. To further add to the incongruous vision, Kieler saw she wore nothing but a gossamer nightgown reaching only to mid-thigh.

  Out of control, Kieler landed hard on his left shoulder and slid into her legs. But somehow, in a feat of dexterity he would always remember, she leapt, flipped her sword over, and stabbed downward as she too fell. Whether she had aimed for his heart and missed, or aimed with an intentional, instinctive sadism, she pierced the shoulder he had just slammed to the floor.

  The blazing pain was oddly incidental.

  Escape.

  Escape was his only focus. He spun on the floor and pushed off the far wine rack, propelling himself toward the thankfully still open hatch. Wine bottles cascaded down from the shaken rack, bombarding the deadly angel. The only thought he spared for her was: She must not follow me down.

  Head first into the hole he clutched for the ladder rungs. He caught the second one down—with his left elbow, wrenching the now bleeding shoulder. Despite his focus, his vision blurred with pain. He lurched back up and grabbed the hatch, slamming it closed. The heavy tile sounded like a thunderbolt itself as it smashed down. But that wouldn’t be enough. The woman had to know about this entrance, didn’t she?

  She would unlatch it and he would be followed. From a leg sheath he pulled a four-inch blade and jammed it into the latching mechanism, essentially double latching it so that it could not be opened from above.

  He slid down the ladder, the pain now fierce. At the bottom he had enough presence of mind to grab up his mask and cloak. Then he ran.

  He sprinted down the under-garden passageway. He prayed that as they organized, no one but the woman would know of the secret passage. And she would have to get word to the guards outside. He should not find guards welcoming him at the statue entrance.

  It made sense. Probably only the ruling family members knew of the tunnel’s existence.

  He could hear nothing in the corridor but his own footfalls and heavy breathing. The abrupt silence was strange after such violence. He held his left arm with his right. His shoulder burned.

  At the other end he climbed quickly into the pedestal of the statue and slowly released the catch. Peering through the crack he saw guards running toward the residence. So far, they must have figured he was still trapped inside the keep. When clear, he swung open the door and crawled quickly out. He shut the pedestal door and ducked into cover beside the bushes.

  More lights were on at the citadel and sirens blared. He clung to the shadows, crawling toward the trees. It was but a few feet later that glaring arc-lights began blazing to life all over the garden and his concealing shadows began to vanish.

  He felt exposed, but the bushes still blocked line of sight with the guards patrolling the keep. He had nearly made it to the trees when he saw a guard coming toward him. With no shadows he had only one choice: he dove into the center of the hedgerow and froze.

  The oncoming watchman hadn’t seen him. Within seconds the running man passed by. Had Kieler reached out his hand he could have grabbed the guard’s ankle. But the foliage of the bush hid him. It also scratched the skin of his hands and face like the claws of a wild animal.

  As the guard ran on toward the main keep, Kieler crawled out and dashed into the trees. He ran from tree to tree now, knowing more guards might be coming this way to get to the main building. Soon enough they would be coming out from the keep, guided by the woman. He avoided two more of the gathering sentinels and had to break cover to sprint for the door to the steps leading down to the Plate level. Kieler hoped Bags was ready for a quick getaway.

  As he flung open the door he had jammed open earlier, a shout rang out behind him. He’d been spotted.

  Kieler swore. Why not just two seconds more? He’d have been through the door unseen. But he had the lead, and sheer fright gave his legs strength to take the stairs five and six at a time, guided by his good hand on the railing.

  He was more than half way down the ten or so stories when pursuit came through the door above. One shot pinged down through the metal stairs, but it was so obviously ineffective that they didn’t shoot again. They bolted down the stairs after him.

  He gained the ground level and sprinted across the dock. Now metal bolts followed him as the guardsmen shot from the landings of the metal staircase. He ran so as to put the crane between him and his pursuers. Magbolts sent sparks showering down as they rang off the metal of the loading crane.

  Passing the freighter he spotted their sled with no small measure of relief. Bags had turned it around, ready to run, and had the top hatch opened enough to peer out. He saw Kieler immediately.

  “Sparks! Come on!” Bags flung open the hatch and then dropped out of sight, heading for the cockpit.

  Kieler jumped down into the deep cut V of the track, sliding down the magal slope. He hit the top of the sled and rolled. Magbolts clanged off the hull around him. Multiple shooters, but no one seemed to have a clear shot as the rain again worked to Kieler and Bags’ advantage. This time Kieler didn’t go headfirst down the hatch, but swung down, caught himself with his good arm and pulled the hatch closed over him.

  “Get this sled moving!” Kieler shouted down. Before he hit the floor of the cargo hold the raider lurched forward and acceleration pressed Kieler immobile against the ladder. The hammering of magbolts on the hull dropped off within moments. His mask slid out from under his arm, and fell diagonally toward the rear of the hold, stopping only when it hit the engine compartment bulkhead. He grunted and tried to pry his head back through the rungs of the ladder.

  Eventually he muscled himself down the ladder, and though still in full acceleration, managed to crawl through the open hatch into the cockpit. Looking up through the narrow windshield, he saw brilliant lights ahead: the gate! From the guardhouse, more magbolts pinged uselessly off the hull. Then Kieler’s heart dropped as he glimpsed two giant rail guns atop the gate, one pointing toward them and one aimed down the track in the direction they were going. A shell whizzed over their heads and Kieler barely felt its detonation behind them—the guards hadn’t compensated for the sled’s great speed. A breath later the gates flashed overhead. They were through—still accelerating. Before relief and exhilaration had time to take hold, another shell detonated ahead of them, tearing open the upper right of the track. Magal fragments rained down onto the raider. Had they been a full size freighter, they would have unbalanced and tumbled end over end. As it was they shot by the ragged hole and out of range.

  “Back her off!” Kieler grunted, still on the floor. “We gotta slow down before we hit the curve!”

  But Bags was also revved, and though he pulled back on the throttle, he only did so to neutral. The sled skimmed down the magnetic track barely slowing. They hit the first curve at still over 400 and were thrown sideways. Kieler smashed his already hurt shoulder and Bags, straining to stay in his seat, finally reversed the impeller to decelerate without throwing Kieler through the windscreen.

  Kieler groaned and fell into his seat.

  “Did you get it?” Bags glanced sideways at him.

  Kieler reached into his jacket and pulled out the gold and green jeweled star. “I got it.”

  Bags whooped and clapped his friend on the shoulder, eliciting a wince and a scream. “You ok?”

  “I got stabbed. I think it was Feleanna Cortatti,” he grimaced.

  Bags eyes went wide. “What! Sorry. But you did it! You didn’t need good stars, you just needed one good star, and you got it!”

  “I got it,” Kieler repeated, relaxing as they slowed to a
more controllable speed.

  Chapter Three

  Deftly, Bags navigated through a series of quick track switches toward a little-known passage through the Plate. Kieler watched his friend enjoying the feel of the nimble craft. They shared a few moments of elated silence, but as that elation slowly ebbed, Kieler realized he probably wouldn’t be seeing his friend and former subordinate for a long time.

  Gently Kieler doffed his uniform jacket and wrapped it around his shoulder. It was still seeping, but the wound was amazingly straight, as if cut with a surgeon’s scalpel. A deeper hit would have easily killed or dismembered. He shuddered, then winced with the pain of movement.

  Letting the pain subside, he spoke as the craft hissed quietly in the bottom of the track. “You know, Bags, I’m leaving tomorrow on this mission. I’ll be gone a long time if things go well; permanently if they don’t.” He let that sink in. “You’re captain of Slink Squad now. You’re going to have to teach one of the guys to do the driving of this little beast while you do the leading.”

  Looking sidelong at Kieler, Bags frowned. “Gotta spoil the fun, eh?”

  They slowed further and Kieler went on. “Yeah, well, we gotta remember why we fight, each of us. And you have to remember the motivation of your men, not just yours.”

  His frown turning to a deep scowl, Bags replied, “Mine I’ll never forget. Someone steals your wife—” Kieler could almost hear Bag’s teeth grinding. He hated to remind Bags of ugly memories, but those memories kept a man focused. “I suppose everyone has some reason for hating the highborns.”

  “Some reasons aren’t as bitter. Take Caprice; he never knew his parents. He’s just lost. As far as anyone knows he was born under the Plate.”

  “Yeah,” Bags agreed. “He’s reckless. No family. Doesn’t really care about living or dying, just what he can get that day.”

  “Yes, but Bags he does have a family now.”

  Bags mused on that as they slowed to a crawl and pulled into an abandoned warehouse. “Us.”

  Kieler smiled at him. “Remember that and your whole squad will remember it.”

  They both jumped out and opened a grate in the floor. Within seconds the two raiders had disappeared from Avertori and were descending through the Plate.

  This entrance was one of about thirty Kieler knew of, most of them well hidden. The two men donned their masks and moved quickly through massive conduits, rubble heaps, and tunnels; always heading down. Kieler led almost without thinking, winding through the maze in which he’d grown up. He unsheathed the luzhril shard he’d used on the raid and lit their way. It didn’t pass unremembered that when he had found this passage as a teenager, he only had a jar of light lugs. The luzhril on the rod had been given him by Movus much later.

  They leaned sideways as they scooted under the slope of a fallen slab, then climbed up a rock heap and half-slid down the other side. A broken tower angled down, forming a long part of their path, but before the end they crawled through a shattered window and into a hollowed-out space that narrowed into another tunnel that had obviously been dug out to allow men to squeeze through.

  His shoulder throbbed but keeping pressure on it minimized blood loss and Kieler knew he would be all right. To properly treat the wound, they would need the medical supplies in Movus’ quarters. He always had the best.

  Once the two men turned into the main tunnels, they encountered other residents of the underground city. Though some still kept time and schedule with the world above, many did not, going about their business at unusual hours. Their passing was acknowledged with a glance or a nod, but Kieler knew the insignia on their masks and even the masks themselves evoked respect and a touch of fear. Kieler had earned the insignia he wore over the right eye-hole of his mask. The purpose with which they moved and the blood on Kieler’s clothes further increased the distance of those not in the Coin.

  Some couldn’t help passing close. A grimy man, sweating copiously, pushed a three-wheeled cart up the slope Kieler and Bags were coming down. His face was set and to stop would be to lose upward momentum. As he passed, the front wheel hit a rut in the rough surface and the cart tipped. Kieler and Bags both reacted to steady it, but the motion sent a blaze of light out the top of the high-sided cart.

  Light lugs. The cart was packed with various containers, from glass jars to rough urns squirming with the bio-luminescent insects largely used for portable light beneath the Plate.

  This man had worked hard to collect such numbers of the pests. To lose them in a tip-over would have been a financial disaster.

  But his “smile” of appreciation to the two Coin operatives was nothing more than a scowl and a thankful nod.

  In the world above the Plate, especially at the Cortatti Estate, the streets were smooth and rubble would have been cleared. But here, both the street, the sides of the street, and the ceiling of every tunnel were carved out of rubble. If he hadn’t just been at the immaculately tended gardens of the Cortattis, Kieler wouldn’t have even noticed. Growing up in these wasted ruins of a city—a city long dead before Avertori was built—rubble was Kieler’s normal.

  The end of this wider tunnel opened onto the perimeter of a space so large it had its own ambient light, albeit weak. Kieler and Bags skirted the edge of the Karst Borough. Noise from commerce, from hundreds of thousands of people living in these ruins, filled the air.

  The Plate separating above from below spanned the entire Isle of Threes on which Avertori stood. Why it had been built, Kieler could only guess. Under the Plate, the majority of the population existed mainly in these various boroughs. People settled in these larger hollows out of social need and even in Kieler’s brief years the population had grown as Avertori above declined. The largest and busiest of these boroughs was Karst.

  From the low path on which they trod, they could see little of what was sometimes called the Karst Plain, referring to its relatively wide expanse. But their world was also deep; deep beyond knowledge. Kieler wondered if even Movus (who still seemed like the parent who knew everything) had explored the full depth of this dark netherworld. Most exiles took up residence as close to the surface as possible in any area free of rubble. Karst was so wide and open that the Plate itself roofed it.

  Kieler and Bags reached the hollowed-out corridor leading to Movus’ home under Karst. It was a quiet corridor, with Movus’ place being the only residence. His home had the added privilege of a solid stone door with a magnetic lock similar to the one on the Cortatti library, except this one had no glass to break. The two successful raiders knocked, received no reply, and Kieler used his key to let them in, eager to share their success with Kieler’s mentor. But as they entered Movus’ library, they realized the head of their intelligence network was, as usual, not home.

  With hardly a word, Kieler pushed aside a spread of plans on a polished stone table, and lay down, unwrapping the crude dressing from his pierced shoulder as he did.

  “Leave that to me,” Bags rumbled at him. “Leaders are always the worst patients.”

  “I thought doctors were the worst patients.”

  Bags’ only response was a short grunt as he opened one of many cabinets and withdrew a cleaning solvent and a ceramic bottle hand-labeled, “Bio-salve”. This was not entirely an unfamiliar process. Other jobs had found them injured worse.

  As Bags cleaned his shoulder, Kieler tried to lie still despite his racing mind. He wondered at the bottle of salve. He had innocently asked for some from an Avertoric doctor after one of his incursions above the Plate. The doc had no clue what he was talking about. Yes, Movus knew stuff.

  A knock at the door, ignored three times, finally bugged Bags enough to go see who it was. Though he couldn’t see the door from the library, Kieler could tell the man pushed his way past Bags despite insistent protests.

  “I’ll throw you out!” Bags said as the stooped man shuffled into the library.

  Kieler leaned his head back on a stack of papers and sniffed the air. “What’s that smell?
”

  Over the man’s prog-like snort, Bags muttered, “Dirt, filth and swamp-water.”

  In a way, Zroom, the room’s new and unwanted visitor, had an advantage against Bags’ hugely superior muscle: he looked like a decrepit old man. It was hard to hit him and feel good about it.

  “Stay away from my patient!” Bags commanded. “You’ll contaminate the wound.”

  With an indistinct chuff, Zroom did stay back just far enough for Bags to work. Zroom was one of the under-Plate’s few farmers, raising an exotic crop that was actually quite profitable: truffles. Most of his crop he smuggled through the Plate and sold to House addicts at exorbitant prices. Some of his unusual fungi were said to have psychotropic properties that clarified one’s thinking. Nevertheless, they grew in the wettest, rottenest, smelliest parts of the underground. His infused aroma did not add to his already scarce popularity.

  “What do you want Zroom?” Kieler asked, not giving him the respect of looking at him. “Come to tell us how to run the world again?”

  “Yup,” said the man without a hint of doubt. “You need it. You go off and get yourself stabbed on some reckless raid and you don’t have an ounce of common sense about how to run a new government should you actually manage to destroy the old one.”

  His heavy lids and saggy, sallow face contradicted his confident tirade. But this was not a new argument. Since both Kieler and Bags ignored him while Bags doused a piece of gauze with the salve, Zroom continued, this time with questions.

  “What did you do? Raid Cortatti headquarters? Are you as daft as I’ve been asserting for all these years?”

  Bags shot him an enraged look and had he not been applying the balm to Kieler’s shoulder at that very moment, he probably would have grabbed Zroom by the neck. “How do you know what we’ve been doing, spy?”

  A smile that looked more like a scowl cracked the dirty man’s face. “And you’re our intelligence squad? We’re in worse trouble than I’ve been grumbling about.”