Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5

by Chaney, J. N.

  The smoke grew thicker by the minute, a black choking cloud that made it hard to see and harder to breathe. As I passed through it, I expected to come across a survivor or two, huddling in some corner too scared to move or running from the building in a panic like frightened rats. But there was no one alive in the halls I passed through, only broken bodies. The luckiest among them had simply been shot, but many of the dead had not been so lucky. Whether to conserve ammunition for the final battle or from simple cruelty, the Nightwatch had beaten many of the inhabitants to death. I saw the young and the old, the strong and the feeble, all slaughtered in the crudest and most violent ways possible.

  I didn’t know why, but I couldn’t help feeling that it was all a punishment and that I was the person who was meant to be punished by it. The dead were a means, but the end was to torture me for what I had done. For my insolence in killing the great August Marcenn.

  I knew at the time that I wasn’t really being rational, but I still couldn’t shake that feeling. Every brutalized body, every blank pair of staring eyes, felt like a message with my name and address on it.

  But who was the message from? That was the question, the one I didn’t want to answer. I stepped over the corpses and tried not to look in the lifeless faces. I kept moving forward, ducking my head to keep the smoke above me as much as possible.

  By the time I got to Emmet’s apartment, I no longer had any hope left. I was near the fires now, and if the death squad hadn’t killed Emmet and Ophelia then the flames almost certainly would have. I didn’t expect to find them alive, but I still felt like I had to check. For whatever it was worth.

  The door to their apartment had been knocked off its hinges and hung there like a loose tooth. I poked my head in but didn’t see any sign of their bodies. I didn’t see the shotgun either, but the soup pot had been knocked to the floor. The Nightwatch had forced their way in here, and that could only mean one thing.

  I pushed my way in past the broken door, walked through into their living room, and looked around. There were no signs of a struggle past the kitchen entryway—no books on the floor or overturned tables.

  The first time I’d been here, I’d wondered where the two of them slept. I checked what I had assumed was a closet door, and it turned out to be the door to a tiny bedroom. There was a mattress on the floor, flush with the wall on either side. It was like a berth on a ship, something the old military man would have been perfectly comfortable with. He wasn’t in it, and neither was Ophelia.

  Could I be wrong? Could this have ended in some other way than what I’d assumed? Maybe by the time the Nightwatch got here they were already gone. Maybe they were still alive—but if so, then where were they?

  I left the apartment and started to walk down the corridor. I was heading for the street outside—but something stopped me. Call it instinct, or whatever you want, but something told me they were in the building. I paused in place, reviewed the building schematics, and noticed something I hadn’t seen before.

  If I went in, toward the flames that raged somewhere deep inside, I’d cross a common area called the Residential Lounge. On the other side of the Residential Lounge, I’d find another staircase. At the bottom of that staircase, I’d find a room—a room that was marked Emergency Shelter.

  Could they be in there? Would Franklin Emmet have ever trusted in the safety offered by such a place? Perhaps he wouldn’t; the old man was cranky and didn’t seem like the type to rely on anything but himself. Ophelia, on the other hand…

  She could have talked him into it. If she wanted to go there, Emmet would have taken her whether he wanted to or not. He’d do anything for her, and he trusted her judgment better than his own.

  I made my decision, but just as I turned the whole building shook. It was like an earthquake, and I stumbled into the wall and had to catch myself. I saw plaster raining down and realized that part of the building had collapsed somewhere. Down the hallway in front of me, I saw the flicker of flames.

  I started to run, but not for the stairwell. I ran down the corridor, past smoke and ash and fire. I ran through the Lounge, and somehow noticed through a cloud of smoke that the residents had been hosting a chess tournament before the crisis interrupted them. I saw a few of the boards, the pieces scattered here and there. I saw the scoreboard, where the names of the players were listed. Franklin Emmet’s name was near the top.

  On the other side of the Residential Lounge, the fires were roaring. It’s such a basic, elemental fear. The dullest animal knows to run from fire, though some people say a horse will run into a burning barn because it’s always felt safe there. Just as foolish as a panicked horse, I ran toward the flames instead of away from them. I bolted straight through, counting on my armor for whatever protection it could give me.

  The heat was incredible, I remember that. It made me gasp, and the act of taking breath in made my throat burn.

  But I kept going, and was past the worst of the flames surprisingly quickly. The part of the building that had collapsed was right in front of me. The floor dropped away into a heap of rubble, and among the ruins down below I heard someone shouting. “Ophelia! Ophelia, honey! I’ll get you out of there”

  It was Franklin Emmet.

  I activated my mobility gear and fired a hook, then used it to swing down from where I stood. I landed in the rubble and paused just long enough to listen for his voice.

  “Hang on, Ophelia! Somebody HELP!”

  I glanced at my screen, figured out where the voice was coming from, and headed in his direction. “I’m coming, Frank!”

  He heard my voice. “Is that you, Arbiters?”

  “It’s one of us,” I called out. “The younger one.”

  “Get over here, Barrett, I need your help!”

  Addressing me by my last name was a military habit, which made me think the two of them must be in real danger. And sure enough, when I found the partially collapsed remains of the emergency shelter, I found Ophelia in serious trouble. I heard rushing water and realized the pipes must have burst. Water was gushing out, and the floor was dark with it. Frank was up to his ankles, and the water was rising with every passing second. He was trying to prop something up with his legs, and I couldn’t see what at first—but then I realized it was Ophelia’s face.

  The shelter roof had been reinforced, so it had largely held up when the building came down. One of the walls, however, had fallen in—and Ophelia was under it. There was Franklin Emmet, digging at the rubble frantically, and there was Ophelia. She was breathing shallowly, in little gasps, and her eyes were closed. As he pulled chunks of debris off his wife and cast them aside, Emmet was trying to prop her face up out of the water at the same time.

  I ran over to him, yelling, “I’ll get the rubble off her! You just hold her head up!”

  He heard what I said and put his hands underneath her neck. But the water was rising, and there was only so far he could push her head up. The weight of the fallen wall was on her chest, and the water was only getting deeper.

  I reached the debris pile and started throwing chunks of plasticrete. Back in training at the Arbiter Academy, they had made us pile up a lot of sandbags. We were supposed to be learning how to build rough and ready fortifications, but it’s one of those things most Arbiters won’t ever have any use for. It’s a simple process when you’re moving sandbags—grab, turn, and throw, repeat ad nauseum. But the simple act of repeating it about a thousand times has an interesting effect, it teaches your body how to do that set of movements with the maximum possible efficiency.

  I tore through that rubble, moving more like a machine than a man. I threw one piece after another, pieces I wouldn’t even have thought I could lift. But the water kept rising, and there was just so much of it. By the time I heard Emmet yelling, the water was already almost to my knees.

  And if it was up to my knees, what did that mean for Ophelia?

  I didn’t dare look down, but one glance at Emmet’s face told me everything I needed to
know. The man was staring up at the ceiling, but I had the impression he was looking much higher. His eyes were desperate, blazing with rage and sorrow. Tears were streaming down his cheeks, and his fists were balled up in fury.

  He was no longer holding Ophelia’s head. His wife had already drowned.

  I grabbed his shoulders and shouted. “We have to go, Emmet! We have to get out of here!”

  He didn’t hear me at first. He kept staring at the ceiling, as if he could bring it down around our heads by sheer force of will. If he could have pulled down the sky, I believe he would have.

  “Emmet, come on! We need to get out of here!”

  The rest of the building was still burning behind us and could land on our heads at any moment. With all the systems off-line, the whole level was likely to burn now—but we had to try. Anything we could do to move away from the flames would at least buy us a little time.

  “Emmet, let’s go!”

  He suddenly saw me, and his eyes were murderous. He raised one of his hands and opened his mouth to say something. Then he slumped in defeat, and said, “alright, Arbiter.”

  He let me lead him away, with the body of his wife still buried behind us. If they ever found her, it would look like she’d died alone. Trapped beneath rubble, and unconscious until the waters took her. But she wasn’t alone. Her husband Frank was right there beside her, until there was no longer anything to be done.

  I said nothing, letting the silence loom over us. What do you say to a man who has just lost everything? Words are useless in that situation, so I kept my mouth shut and just led him out of there.

  We still had at best just a shadow of a possible chance. But I did have a plan, and it all depended on one thing: getting Franklin Emmet to set aside his grief and tell me about this cyber warfare expert.

  13

  From where we stood, the death of Frank’s home was oddly fascinating to watch. The flames grew and spread, crawling out from the center of the building until every window roared with fire like the mouths of dragons. If the surrounding buildings had been a little bit closer, they would have gone up too. As it was, burning embers drifted down in all directions, risking an uncontrollable conflagration.

  I wanted to get out of there but getting Frank to open up was mission critical. He wouldn’t talk till he was ready, and he had to get ready in his own way. We stood in the shadows, and the light from the flames played across his face. He looked so desolate, the last thing I wanted to do was intrude on his grief. But I had no choice, and the only reason I hadn’t done it yet is because I didn’t want to spook him.

  He stood there watching, and I could imagine what he was thinking as the flames scoured every inch of his life away. Ophelia was dead, but it wasn’t just Ophelia. It was all their memories, every memento of their life together. Every souvenir and every scrapbook, every book in his library, everything she’d ever touched.

  The building shuddered, and a high-pitched squealing sound suddenly filled the street. It was like the sound a man might make if he was burning alive, just before he fell down for the last time.

  And that was close enough, because the part of the building that was still standing had only seconds to live. The plasticrete walls suddenly sagged and buckled, and the top half of the structure plunged into the collapsing bottom. I stepped back instinctively into the relative safety of the alley, but Emmet didn’t budge an inch. He stood there staring at it, and the rubble poured out into the street like some kind of strange liquid. It rolled out almost as far as his toes, and if he’d been even a foot closer to the falling building it would have bowled him over.

  And maybe he would have been happier if that had happened. As it was, he just looked down at the wreckage for a moment and then turned to me. “Let’s go. I know a place where we can take cover.”

  Emmet liked to be in charge, so I let him lead me. Before we crawled out of the emergency shelter room, he had retrieved his shotgun from the shelf where he’d left it. Now he held it comfortably and scanned the street with his eyes, looking for cover in the deepest shadows. When he found a place he approved of, he melted into concealment like a predator sinking down into the tall grass. When he saw another place to move to, he crossed so quickly and quietly it was like he wasn’t even there.

  It was probably the first time in many years that he had used these skills, but they were still there when he needed them. We weren’t outside for long. Frank just took us from the ruins of his building to a neighborhood senior center two blocks away. It was a smart choice. The Nightwatch had already been through this area; they had no reason to come back.

  When we reached the door, Frank cursed to find it locked.

  “Hold on,” I said. “I’ve got this.”

  I shot the door lock, and the door swung open and let us in. We cleared the room as we’d both been trained, although we knew we wouldn’t find anyone there. It was just a social center, a place for the neighborhood seniors to play cards and board games. There weren’t even any bodies, a refreshing change considering what I had just seen in Emmet’s building.

  He pulled out a chair and sat down with a sigh. I sat down beside him, wondering if he would finally start talking now. Instead, he listened. The sounds of war still raged outside. From the way it sounded, the barricades were still defended.

  “Those bastards tricked us,” said Emmet.

  “The Nightwatch Defectors?” I asked.

  He nodded, but he looked like he wanted to spit. “Defectors my ass. They got us to trust them, then they came down from the roof and just started killing everyone. I wanted to fight them, but she…”

  He ducked his head, not wanting me to see the tears in his eyes. He tried to say more, but he couldn’t seem to be able to get the words out.

  “I don’t know if they tricked you,” I blurted out without thinking. Some of the things I didn’t want to think about came welling up. “This is like a contagion. I don’t know how, but… I think it spreads.”

  Emmet’s eyes looked half-crazy for just a moment, but then he shrugged. “It just doesn’t matter, Tycho. It doesn’t matter for shit.”

  He sighed again and spread both his prosthetic hands on the table. “You see these arms? Just metal and plastic, not flesh and bone. It wasn’t supposed to be like this; this is not what they sold me. But I’m not the first guy they lied to, and I won’t be the last. I did my bit for them, and I lost good friends on the way. You know what that’s like, don’t you?”

  He nodded at the empty seat next to me as if it had been reserved for Gabriel. I nodded in response, appreciating his willingness to acknowledge my loss.

  I don’t think he even noticed, though. “So, I lost my arms. Blown off by the same bomb that killed my friend Andy. I got my pension, and from that point on I thought that was it for me. I thought it was over, that I had no future, no life ahead of me. Ophelia didn’t think so. She didn’t see me as two missing arms. She saw a man who would love her, a man who would stick with her… and she never let me down. Not once did that woman ever let me down. Now all that’s gone.”

  “I’m sorry, Emmet.”

  His voice was brutal. “It’s got nothing to do with you!”

  I didn’t try to reply. He had to feel what he felt, and there was really nothing I could do for him. But when he glanced in my direction his face softened a little.

  “I didn’t mean to snap at you. This is mine, I don’t need anyone to do anything about it. She deserves that much. She deserves for me to lose my shit over her.” He closed his eyes, as if trying to remember something. “She deserved a hell of a lot more than that.”

  He needed someone to hear him, but he didn’t need anyone to add any commentary. I kept my mouth shut and just listened to the sounds of war outside—a long rattle of automatic gunfire, a distant explosion.

  He opened his eyes again and looked away, like he didn’t want to look me in the face.

  “I’m asking you this, Tycho. I need you to tell me this.”

 
I waited, knowing that this was what he needed—and what I needed too. The whole conversation was a contradiction; on the one hand I was helping a man cope with the death of his wife, and on the other hand I was softening him up so I could get the information I needed.

  His face got cold again. “I know what you’re doing. I know what you want from me. But you’re going to hear me first, and you’re going to answer my question. And then I’ll decide if I want to help, or if I’d rather just see the whole world burn. Are we clear on that?”

  I nodded, feeling like I was standing on the thinnest ice over the darkest water.

  He watched me closely, then clenched his jaw. “I lost my friends and my arms for the Sol Federation, because I believed in what they were doing. I believed in the project, the colonization of the solar system. But when I needed those people, where were they? They didn’t save my wife. They didn’t save my home. They sent two guys in here—two guys!—and one of those guys is already dead. They don’t give a shit, Tycho. Or if they did, it doesn’t matter because they didn’t use the resources they needed to get the situation dealt with. So, what good is any of this?”

  “What good is…?”

  “Don’t fuck with me, man, you know what I mean. What good is the Sol Federation? What good is any of it? Why should I even help you?”

  I had to pick my words carefully. If I said the wrong thing, there was every possibility he would just tell me to fuck off. He’d regret it later; I was sure of that. Franklin Emmet was a decent man, even if he was a little crazy from grief and loss. But later was too late. I had to get him to help me now.

  “I’m not going to give you a speech about the Sol Federation, Frank. Patriotism is for politicians, right? Whatever I believe, it doesn’t really matter anyway. The Federation fucks up sometimes, just like every government has ever fucked up. That’s not why I’m doing this, and you know it. There are still people alive out there, and I don’t want anyone to die when they don’t have to.”