by Anthology
Shai Laren raised her head slightly to listen, nodded, and linked her hands behind her back.
Warden Alladice glanced sideways. "Perhaps we should do as it says."
Shai Laren frowned. "Anselm has charged me with keeping watch over the Executive," she said. "I am not about to shirk my duty."
"Very well then," he said. "I will do the same."
The train began to shudder with the stresses of re-entry. Warden Alladice reached out to steady himself on the door frame, but Shai only rolled onto the balls of her feet and allowed the pneuma machina to find the point of perfect balance. She closed her eyes and for a moment she could almost feel the atmosphere of Mars rushing past. Tiny particles racing over her skin in trails of blue and gold. It took her some time to separate out the shouting in the dining car from the gentle roar of the re-entry.
A wave of nauseous apprehension rippled through her body a moment before an explosion of raygun fire turned the air to a prickle of lightning. The sound slammed against her body like the blow of an open hand. Someone started screaming. Moving on her toes to absorb some of the turbulence, Shai Laren slammed into the dining car. In all of the commotion it was difficult to tell the shooter from the bystanders. Her eardrums hazed with white noise as the pneuma machina sifted out the useful information, isolating one voice amongst a hundred.
"—these monsters won't stop until they have bled us dry. Every one of us! The Queen of Heaven is not our enemy! These people just want the basic rights to life as you. As your own sons and daughters. It is barbaric to keep them sealed up there in the vacuum and the darkness, forcing them to work and threatening them with death if they do not comply.
"You think that you are ruled by your planetary governments? These companies own each and every one of you. And we aren't sentient creatures to these corporations. We're cattle!"
A man's body was lying prone on the floor. Shai could smell the sharpness of ionised particles. The sickening char of burning meat. She crouched down as she reached the body, but the crowd pushed her out of the way before she could feel for a pulse. Shai had no choice but to head for the man with the raygun. He was wearing a badge on the lapel of his tattered jacket—red and shaped like a star with an open hand within. She raised her voice over the screams.
"There's a storm on Venus that's raged for more than a thousand years," she said. "The Cythereans call it the Spectre Unchained."
He stopped speaking. His face knotted with confusion as he tried to fit the information into what was happening around him. It was one of the first things the keepers had taught her to avoid drawing her fanblade. Still her favourite when facing someone so pumped with adrenaline and cortisone that their whole perception of the world was narrowed to a pinpoint.
"I…" he began shakily, all the certainty gone out of him. "I don't…"
"Amongst some Gradivusi," she said, taking another step forwards. "It's considered grossly offensive to ask a direct question to anything but a close friend or family member."
She had his full attention now. He was Mercurial. One of the lower castes from the look of his six fingers. There had been a Mercurial in the Cathedral who could trace her ancestry three thousand years, and boasted two full sets of eight fingers and three thumbs. He stood out amongst the opulent interior of the Laplacian Express. His chalk white skin and hair almost a negative space.
"…What…"
Shai held out her hand. "Give me the gun," she said.
The Mercurial hesitated for a moment, his eyes darting amongst the passengers who were still trying to climb over each other to escape. It looked like he might shoot her anyway, and Shai reached for the hilt of her fanblade. Then a hand emerged from the crowd behind the shooter, plucking the raygun out of his six fingers. The Mercurial started shouting, but moments later two of the train's robotic security team were wrestling the him to the floor.
Anselm dropped the raygun into a half-finished tureen of soup and reached out to take her elbow, turning back towards the sleeping cabins. "Panic over," he said.
This time, Shai Laren could get close enough to the man lying on the fine carpets to be sure that he was dead. She sighed and stood with him for a moment until the security team came. Stupid, really. But it seemed like the least she could do. As they took him away, she looked back over her shoulder.
"How many of the assassination attempts did you say had succeeded so far, doula?"
Anselm frowned at her. "Four attempts. Three successful." And when she kept staring back at the Mercurial spitting and swearing into the pile of the carpet. "What is it, Shai?"
"Assuming that the other targets had a comparable level of security," she said. "This would appear to be a particularly inept assassination attempt."
Anselm shrugged. "Perhaps he is a particularly inept assassin," he said. "Perhaps he has nothing to do with the others. When we reach the Oculus station the Gradivusi will take him into custody. We can question him then."
Shai nodded and kept walking, but did not look convinced. When they reached Executive Lascelles' door they took up their places on either side.
Anselm looked around. "Where's Warden Alladice?"
Shai's chromatophores pulsed. "He was here before," she said. "Perhaps he saw what was going on and decided to check on the Executive? Anselm, wait—"
Anselm opened the door. The blast shields were slowly scrolling back from the windows, bathing everything in Martian twilight—an ever-changing collage of red-orange sand, purple sky, and burned umber shadows that made everything inside the cabin look like it was moving. Layered in rippling light. Warden Alladice was a curve of concentrated shadow bending over Executive Laselles' bed. Silver reflections from the orbital array spun themselves into the evening cloud and caught on the knife in his hand. Shai Laren reached for her fanblade, but Anselm had already drawn. His blade came open in a arch of brass-coloured metal that hung in the air as Warden Alladice spat with pain and the knife clattered to the floor in two shards of severed metal.
Anselm's fanblade folded back into itself and the Warden backed away from them both, pressing against the windows where the surface of Mars crested slowly into view behind. In the silence, Shai Laren could hear herself breathing over the pulse of the engines. Then the windows shattered outwards. For a moment, Alladice hung in the roaring gale that shredded his black cloak into rags. Then he reached out almost in slow motion and curled up onto the roof of the train.
Anselm rushed to the Executive's side and Shai Laren hesitated—her hand still resting on her fanblade.
"Go after him, Shai!" Anselm's voice cracked over the wind. "Or we'll lose him. Quickly!"
It took her a moment to realise what he was saying. After that, she didn't have time to be incredulous. Shai covered the small cabin in three fast steps and swung herself up into the wind. It roared through her headtresses and burned in her eyes, but the air itself was cold enough to make her fingers ache. The roof of the Laplacian Express reflected all the changing colours of the twilight. Thick pink and fragile lilac. Mirrored silver, slipping through the air like a serpent a hundred feet above the surface of Mars.
Alladice stopped on the roof of the next carriage and turned around to face her. He smiled. And he waited. Shai Laren spread her weight between her feet and opened up her fanblade—painting the air with a half-circle of gold-coloured metal. It would have been enough to scare off an opportunist, but Alladice only reached for the matt black baton at his hip. He thumbed the mechanism, and spikes of bare metal a foot and a half long speared out of either end.
Shai Laren swallowed hard and advanced. She reached out to the pneuma machina for resonance. Felt everything come into sharp focus. The desert sky like split goldstone. Whorls and whorls of stars. The roof of the train still warm from re-entry. The thrusters like a blast furnace underneath. Reflected light from the orbital array turned Alladice's face into sharp angles and deep shadow. She hopped the gap between the carriages and feinted forward, waited for him to lunge, then kicked off the roof
of the train and cartwheeled over his head. Inverted in the air, she just had time to notice the natural stone archway racing out of the desert ahead before she had her back to it. Had to balance her weight carefully so that she didn't slip on landing.
A flash of metal, and Shai Laren swept her fanblade into a long arch in front of her to catch the blow. Nestled against her hindbrain, the pneuma machina ran numbers. The speed of the train. The pitch and incline. The height of the stone archway racing unseen out of the umber shadows behind her.
Duck. Now.
Her blade snapped closed with an audible crack. She rolled and pressed down against the hot silver of the train as the stone bridge whip-cracked past. She allowed her momentum to return her to a crouch, swept the blade open at Warden Alladice's ankles as he rose, then pivoted as he anticipated the blow and leapt. Adrenaline was a low roar in her blood, smothered by the steady stream of emotionless numbers pouring from the machine. Shai Laren rose and painted the air with a vertical arch of metal that sliced easily through the carbon weave of Alladice's staff. One of the telescopic spikes shuddered and collapsed in on itself. He thrust at her with the other.
The machine drank it in. Position of the blade, rotation in his arms. The tracery of her exoskeleton tightened a little in anticipation and she surrendered to it—sliding sideways over the curved roof of the train. Coming to a stop barely an inch from the dead drop into the desert.
Alladice threw the useless end of his staff at her, and ran. He was headed for the engine.
***
Shai twisted in mid-air, pulling her feet out of the way before Warden Alladice's half spear took them off. He had nowhere left to go now. A dozen feet of sharply curved engine housing was all that was left between them and the smokestack. Even from here, Shai could feel the blistering heat of it through her wrappings.
She landed, steadied her footing, and found him staring back at her. Realised what he was going to do halfway between when he acted and the last second that she could have stopped him. The machine made a snap calculation. She didn't have time to weigh up the pros and cons. She and Alladice swung themselves down into opposite sides of the driver's cabin at exactly the same moment.
As she straightened, the train's robotic pilot looked between them. Its face was featureless silver and couldn't register emotion. Not even when Alladice's spear split its head open from crown to collarbone. Smoke and coolant fluid sprayed over the bulkhead and sizzled down into the metal. Shai slid back as Alladice's spear slammed through the air where she had been and embedded itself in the console. The pneuma machina stabbed at her thoughts. No space to open her fanblade. Best to unbalance him. She grabbed his ankle with her free hand and pulled. When he sprawled backwards amongst the wreckage of the pilot, she half-opened her blade and stepped forwards. No room here. We're at a disadvantage. Have to think of something else. Where the hell is Anselm?
"Why are you doing this?" Alladice is too sharp to fall for the distraction technique. Play for time. "You want the Executive dead, I understand that, but why wait until now? Why not do it before Anselm and I even arrived? And why endanger the lives of everyone else on this train now that you've failed? How does that make you better than her?"
"Better than her?" Alladice laughed, wiping a long stripe of blood up the black sleeve of his body armour. "Stupid child. You have no idea what this is about. You think we care about Lascelles? About the Queen of Heaven? About anybody on this train?"
Shai's mind spun for a moment. "Who's 'we'?"
A nasty smile pulled at the corner of Alladice's mouth. He brought up the tip of his spear. "If you'd lived," he said. "Perhaps you would have found out."
Her exoskeleton seized hold of her body, pushing her into a low crouch and bringing the closed shard of her fanblade up to block. Leaning her weight into her forward knee. Forcing him to step back.
"And when you're done with me," she said. "What will you do then? Anselm will not go down so easily."
Alladice repositioned his feet and cleaved down with another blow. Her exoskeleton constricted, splaying her feet out over the sizzling metal. Twisting her blade to hold him off. He backed up another step.
"I'll think of something," Alladice spat. "You think the two of you are the first members of your Church that I have killed?"
Shai's stomach turned to cold, clear water.
Stay calm. Get your feet back underneath you. Quickly. Raise your blade.
The force of the next strike reverberated in her arms. Muscles shivered with exertion. She made a show of trying to push herself up. Sliding forwards. Letting him retreat another pace.
Alladice's eyes flashed over his shoulder as his heel touched the edge of the cabin. "Such a clever girl," he said, smiling. "But not quite clever enough."
Before he could pull away from the edge, an hand reached out of the howling gale and plucked him into the open air. He hung suspended there—his face twisted with a mixture of fear and rage, the tattered remains of his cloak fraying in the wind. Then he was gone, rolling in a disordered mess underneath the thrusters of the Laplacian Express. A shadow burned down into the Martian sand.
Anselm swung down into the cabin and Shai Laren straightened up, wiping the sweat and dust off of her skin.
"It's all right," she told him, looking down at the controls. "I'm almost sure I know how to fly this thing."
***
The Laplacian Express screeched and squirmed as it barrelled towards the canyon. Its thrusters burned blue and then white-hot as the ribbon of muscular silver jack-knifed and threatened to roll. Red sand spat into the thin atmosphere on every side. The last few carriages banked harder than the others. For several seconds before they righted themselves, the furnace of their underbelly was exposed to the air.
As the train finally ground to a shuddering halt, Anselm leaned out to watch it settle down into the desert. The air filled up with an eerie silence.
"A little bumpy, but we appear to have survived."
He dropped down into the sand. Shai stepped out of the other side of the cabin and took a slow pass around the engine. On the far side of the ravine the Martian capital glittered in the twilight, cupped in the crater of Solis Lacus. Aqueducts sloped gracefully down into valley. High silver arches and sparkling lights. The whole city seemed silent from out here in the desert. Motionless. Its greatest skyscrapers outlined in a pale glow.
Shai turned her back on it and walked towards Anselm. "He said that it wasn't about the conference," she said. "That it was bigger than I could understand." And, when Anselm did not respond: "Warden Alladice, I mean."
Anselm nodded, watching as people from all across the Solar System climbed down out of the Laplacian Express.
Shai sighed. "What will happen if I leave the Church?"
"Difficult to say." He still wouldn't look at her. Even with his veil torn back from his face his expression was inscrutable. "Can't say I've known it to happen before. But the pneuma machina are precious, Shai. I can't imagine the keepers would simply allow you to walk away with one of them."
"And it can't be removed," she finished stonily, iridophores turning her skin as silvery as the city hanging in the heat haze. "At least, not without killing me."
Anselm nodded and drummed his fingers on his lips. His green eyes were murky and distant. Shai wasn't even certain that he was listening to her.
"And what will you do?" she asked, her teeth catching on the end of her tongue.
He drew a breath, and came into focus. "Well, if Alladice was part of some greater plan, as you say, then I shall need to find out who he was working with. Once I get these people to the Oculus station, I'll start by running a background check on Alladice. I'm sure Executive Lascelles must have the information in her personal files. Then I'll interview the Mercurial. Find out about the man he murdered in the dining car. Try and work out if it's connected."
"And the trade conference? The prisoners on the Queen of Heaven? What is going to happen to them?"
Anselm's e
xpression creased tight with frustration. "As I said, Shai, the matter is hardly our concern."
"And if I leave the Church?" she pressed. "If I walk away now and you become the first doula to lose one of his charges in…what? At least as long as you have been a member? What will the keepers make of that? Do you think that will be any of your concern, doula?"
The line of his mouth set hard. "You are playing a dangerous game, you realise that?"
She held his gaze and her ground, and waited for him to make his choice.
"Fine," Anselm sighed. "I will speak to Executive Lascelles and see if a compromise is at all possible. It's not entirely without precedent for the Church to intervene in certain matters of diplomacy. If you are so set on the idea, then perhaps you would like to carry out negotiations with the Queen of Heaven yourself."
Shai nodded slowly. She unwound the wrappings from around her forearms and used them to bind up her headtresses. Tucked the stray edge across her face, obscuring everything but her eyes. She hopped back up into the driver's cabin.
"I'm certain that the Executive will listen to you, Anselm," she said. "The two of you seem to be old friends, after all. While you are discussing it, perhaps you can ask if she will lend me Serethi's services until the matter is resolved. If we are to carry out negotiations between the Executive and the prisoners, I will need all the help that I can get."
Sean Patrick Hazlett
http://reflectionsofarationalrepublican.com
Boomer Hunter(Short story)
by Sean Patrick Hazlett
Originally published by Grimdark Magazine
Jimmy Alvarez was one tough mother. After reliving the firefight over and over in my head, I could only come to that conclusion. Shivering and covered in blood and dust, I hid under the bodies of my crew in some godforsaken ditch near an almond grove in California’s Central Valley while I prayed for twilight to fade into night.