Sol Arbiter Box Set: Books 1-5

by Chaney, J. N.

  He came in at me again, interrupting my brief flash of thought. I slipped down and to the side, successfully avoiding him. Then I came in under his attack with a vicious uppercut and somehow missed him completely, despite the fact that his face had been directly underneath my fist. My punch seemed to go right through him, and even though he dodged back like he was avoiding it, I knew what I had just seen. He hadn’t dodged at all, it’s just that his face was never where I thought it was.

  All at once I knew what was going on, and I knew the truth behind the legend of the Kagebushin. They weren’t immortal boogeymen, and they weren’t shapeshifters either. They were highly trained killers using a clever combination of thermoptics and holography.

  Back at the Arbiter Academy, a long time ago, I had a close quarters combative instructor who used to make me train blindfolded. She’d come at me with a shock knife, a training tool for edged weapon skills, and expect me to stop the attack without being able to see it. The shock knife delivers a nasty sting, but you can power through it if you have to. The idea was to get the knife away from her while getting shocked as few times as possible. I never did reach the point where I wasn’t shocked at all, and she told me I probably never would.

  “The point isn’t to get so good that you don’t get cut. That just isn’t possible when there’s a blade in play, and especially not against a skilled attacker. The idea is to survive. Get cut if you have to, but keep going and win.”

  I still remembered her words. She used them mostly to distract me, even if the advice was good. I’d be stumbling around, trying to figure out where she was despite the blindfold around my eyes. She’d be talking the whole time, a constant stream of useful fighting tips, and every now and then a painful shock as the blade whipped out along my arm or belly or sometimes my throat.

  I thought all the blindfolded stuff was crazy at the time, just an expression of that woman’s twisted sadism. As I got better at the drill, I figured out that you could use feeling to take the place of sight if you had to. You just had to get in close, get your arms out in front of you to keep the blade away from your body, then find the attacker’s arms. Once you knew where those were, you could take the attacker down.

  On that East Hellan rooftop, I didn’t have time to think about any of those things. It just came back to me, in a flash of memory and a reckless impulse. The Kagebushin assassin came in for another attack, blades slashing left and right in quick succession. I threw my arms up, closed my eyes, and crashed right into the flurry of attacks.

  I don’t know why he had picked that moment to abandon his hit and run strategy to try and overwhelm me again, but he probably just got frustrated at how long it was taking me to lie down and die. It happens to a lot of people. Fighting is exhausting, and after a certain point you just want to get it done with. Whatever the reason, his committed attacks gave me the opportunity I needed.

  One arm made contact with my opponent’s wrist. I turned my body, pivoting to my right, and jammed my other hand up under the same arm. With two points of contact, I was suddenly to my opponent’s right side and in a position to prevent him from using either of his weapons effectively. He made an attempt to adjust his weight, but I pushed back on the arm I controlled until his spine arched back. With no control over his center of gravity, he had no control over the rest of his body. I kicked the back of his heel and swept his foot out from underneath him, and he hit the rooftop hard. Then I opened my eyes, spotted him trying to get back to his feet, and kicked his head like I was trying to score a goal with it.

  That was it for him. A spray of blood shot out of his mouth when my foot met his face, and his broken mask was knocked two or three feet to the side. He dropped his weapons, and I grabbed one up before he could do anything to recover. The man was still moving—he was nothing if not tough—but he just couldn’t stand because his foot kept slipping out from under his body weight like he had no sense of balance. I stabbed down through his neck behind the collarbone with the blade I’d taken, a kind of short sword. He groaned and slumped down to the roof. He still wasn’t dead, so I wrapped the fingers of my left hand through his hair, pulled his head up to expose his throat, then cut it open with his own blade.

  Out of every killing I’ve ever done, that was probably the most gruesome. Killing with a blade is a disgusting business, and far more deliberate than killing in a firefight. I stood there panting, covered in my own blood as well as his, and looked around the rooftop. That fight was over, but the other three assassins were still alive. At first I thought my friends would probably need my help, but it didn’t turn out that way.

  In fact, even the guy we were supposed to be protecting didn’t turn out to need any help from me. Sasha Ivanovich, scientific researcher and incessant complainer, had somehow managed to run his attacker face-first into the environmental control unit and smash the man’s head into it until the unit’s casing buckled. As I watched in amazement, he did exactly what I had just done and killed the assassin with one of his own weapons. As he slipped the blade in between his target’s ribs, I had the distinct impression he was saying something quietly in the guy’s ear, just like when we found him talking to one of the creatures in his secret laboratory.

  I looked for Andrew Jones and saw him grappling with a masked attacker. I changed my grip on my blade, intending to run over and finish his opponent off for him. Before I could get there, Andrew caught his opponent’s attack and pivoted violently, throwing the man over his shoulder headfirst so rapidly that the assassin had no opportunity to even attempt a break-fall. His head hit the roof with the whole weight of his body behind it, snapping his neck with a sound I could hear even at three meters away. Jones stepped back, and the masked killer collapsed in a heap dead on the roof.

  The sheer violence of the throw was almost as extreme as the acts Sasha and I had just committed, but none of those things could have prepared me for what I saw when I turned and looked for Vincenzo Veraldi.

  I’d always seen Veraldi’s fascination with knife-fighting as being mildly pathological, considering that the knife is generally useless in most fights. I had to admit that he was highly skilled, but it’s like knowing how to tan your own leather or make your own 18th century buff coat. It might be interesting, but it’s not useful.

  Well, our resident knife-fighting expert finally had his chance to shine. He’d been facing off with his opponent the whole time I’d been fighting mine, but unlike me he hadn’t taken any cuts. Despite the visual distortions produced by the assassin’s thermoptic holography setup, Veraldi was dodging and weaving like some kind of dancer, always out of reach of his opponent’s blade. By the time I finally took a step in his direction, Veraldi was ready to make his own move. He slipped under a cut and performed some maneuver with his own blade that made it flash in the night. Then he pivoted away and dropped back into his knife-fighting stance while the attacker stumbled and then stopped in place.

  There was a gasp, but I don’t know if the assassin was the one who made the sound or if it was me. A second later, the man’s intestines came pouring out of the front of his cloak and coiling up at his feet like a pile of rope.

  Luckily I didn’t have to look at the sight for long. With his opponent disemboweled, Veraldi no longer had anything to fear from the man’s two blades. Before the assassin could even fall, Veraldi kicked him directly in the face and knocked him backward off the roof. He disappeared, his guts trailing behind him as he fell.

  “You don’t think that was overkill?” asked Jones, but Veraldi didn’t answer. He just walked to the edge, looked down at his handiwork, and nodded grimly at what he saw.

  “Remind me to never, ever piss off that lunatic,” said Sasha Ivanovich.

  Jones laughed. “It’s too late for that.”

  I was still bleeding, so I turned back to the man I’d killed and searched him for anything that could stop it. Sure enough, he had a personal medkit under his cloak. “Hey Jones, these guys are carrying medkits.”

 
“Oh, right. I’m bleeding again. Thanks, Tycho!”

  He soon found one for himself, and we were able to use them to get ourselves patched up and medicated—just enough to function and avoid infection. My hand was shaking as I applied the patch, and I realized I was slightly faint from loss of blood.

  Andrew’s face looked slightly horrified. “You don’t look so hot, Barrett. I think you had a close one.”

  “No doubt about that. Have you ever seen anything like that before?”

  He shook his head. “No, but I get the legends now. That was some weird shit. Sometimes it seemed like he wasn’t where he was supposed to be.”

  “It’s not as weird as it looks. Hold on a sec.”

  I turned back to the dead Kagebushin in front of me and searched him quickly. It didn’t take me long; the holographic emitter was on his belt, right near where he had kept his medkit. I pulled it off and handed it to Andrew, who took it from me with an astonished look.

  “Is this… is it what I think it is?”

  “A holographic emitter?” I nodded. “Yeah. That’s how they make people think they can shapeshift.”

  He kept on staring at it, turning it over in his hands. “I just don’t get it. How could an organized crime group on Mars have Earth military technology? We’re talking about tech that’s still in development.”

  “I don’t know, Andrew, but that’s a question for another day.”

  “You’re right about that.” He handed it back to me. “Here, put this on your belt. I’ll pull one off this guy. These could come in handy.”

  Equipped with our own holographic emitters, we’d have a big advantage in any fight, not just close quarters. It’s hard to aim effectively at someone who isn’t really where you think they are. Meanwhile, Veraldi had returned from whatever dark mental universe he’d gone to during the knife fight. “What are you two doing?”

  Andrew answered him. “You’re not going to believe this, but these guys have some sort of holographic emitters. I’d say they were prototypes given how advanced the tech is, but they look like production models.”

  “Holographic emitters? You mean like this one?”

  He pulled his shirt up, revealing that one of the devices was already hanging from his belt. Jones was stunned; he couldn’t even think of anything to say.

  “I figured that’s what they were doing as soon as the fight started,” Veraldi explained. “I got in close with a sleight of hand trick and slipped it off his belt without him ever even feeling it. By the time I gutted him, he must have thought he was seeing double.”

  I couldn’t help it and started laughing. Sasha looked at me like I was crazy. He probably thought we all were by that point.

  Jones shook his head. “Vincenzo, you are more disturbing than I ever realized.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment. Now let’s get going while we still have the chance. There’s a crowd forming down there by the guy I disemboweled, and our problems are only going to get worse.”

  That didn’t seem likely. It didn’t even seem possible. On the other hand, we still had a long way to go before we got out of East Hellas.

  14

  As we made our way across Fuji Section, I kept expecting the Kagebushin to make another attempt on us. After all, we had killed four of their supposedly invincible assassins. Shouldn’t they want us dead more than anything?

  As we crossed from one rooftop to another, I still had the sense that we were being watched. I’m sure we were, but whoever was watching us kept their distance. In the whole history of the Kagebushin, they had never before run into anyone they simply couldn’t handle. Now that it had happened, they probably just wanted us to get out of their territory as quickly as possible so they could start repairing their reputation. A crowd of civilians had seen their killers get slaughtered. They weren’t going to live that down right away.

  We rested on a rooftop near the edge of the district, always ready for one last-ditch attempt against us. Veraldi was looking out across the city. “We’ll be at the airlock gate soon.”

  Jones nodded. “Yeah. But how are we planning to get through?”

  “One thing at a time. We need to see what conditions are like up there.”

  I heard something from up ahead. A swelling and receding sound, like the tide.

  “What’s that?”

  Veraldi listened for a moment then shook his head. “Trouble. I don’t know.”

  The closer we got, the more obvious it became that Veraldi was right. This was trouble for everyone. Street traffic had been choked off completely by a massive crowd advancing in our direction from the neighboring district. Many of them had their faces covered by the flowing scarves we had seen so often here in East Hellas. Some of them carried cudgels, or protest signs heavy enough to be used as such. Others carried slingshots, while still others were busy breaking up chunks of plasticrete to use as ammo or filling bottles to make improvised firebombs.

  Blocking their way with obvious nervousness, a line of StateSec Officers stood with guns at the ready. They were holding the crowd back for the moment with the threat of lethal force, but if they made the mistake of acting on that threat the crowd could just as easily overwhelm them with sheer numbers and rip them apart.

  Little by little, step by anxious step, StateSec was falling back into Fuji Section. The only trouble with that, as far as they were concerned, was that a crowd was now forming behind them as well. Which side would Fuji Section take?

  On the one hand, they might view the angry mob advancing from across their border as an armed invasion, in which case they would probably take the side of StateSec. On the other hand, they had just as many troubles here with Martian Sclerosis as everyone else in East Hellas, and the corruption and mismanagement of Ares Terrestrial was just as much of an issue to them. If they made the decision to join the revolution, the StateSec officers on the street below us didn’t stand a chance.

  On the rooftops on the other side of the street, I saw two Kagebushin killers watching the scene unfold from behind their scowling demon masks. Any serious reform movement would have to do something about all the syndicates, so the gangsters would probably take the government’s side. That might not matter, though. When a whole populace decides it’s had enough, gangsters get swept away just as easily as any other institution.

  From the state of the milling crowd on the Fuji Section side of the developing street battle, I couldn’t tell which way the district was leaning. People looked agitated, and some of them were armed. Some of them had masked up. But which way would they jump?

  The swelling sound I’d heard from a few blocks away was the sound of the approaching mob, which moved with the eerie quiet I’d learned to associate with an East Hellan crowd. It’s not that they were silent, but they weren’t chanting or yelling, not yet. They were rolling forward like a mudslide, gathering weapons as they advanced.

  Someone in the crowd rushed forward suddenly and smashed a long wooden pole through a storefront window. The glass crumbled and fell in, and there was an angry murmur from the Fuji Section people. Then another protester grabbed the vandal and dragged him back into the depths of the crowd. I don’t know what happened to him, but the message was clear. They weren’t here to fight Fuji Section—they were here to fight StateSec.

  A slingshot whirled, and a chunk of plasticrete arced up and flew through the air to hit a StateSec officer directly in the head. He had gear, so he wasn’t hurt, but he stumbled back a step then steadied himself and resumed his place in the line. The crowd inched forward, ominously quiet and purposeful. Another chunk came flying, and then with no transition at all there were so many flying chunks of plasticrete that it looked like a hailstorm.

  The StateSec officers firmed up their line, and an officer shouted an order. They all aimed at once, except for one who was unexpectedly knocked down by a huge plasticrete shard. When they pulled their triggers, I expected bodies to start dropping all down the advancing rebel line. Instead, tear-gas gren
ades shot out across the street, filling the air with a drifting cloud of white gas.

  The crowd didn’t retreat, despite the fact that some of them were hit directly by the gas grenades and knocked over by the impact. Their comrades dragged them away to get medical attention, and the rest of the crowd just kept advancing.

  The soldiers continued to fall back slowly, but the crowd behind them was giving them no space to retreat. They were starting to get hemmed in, and it could only be a matter of time before they made the decision to shoot their way out.

  “What are those armbands?” asked Veraldi.

  Some of the protesters on the frontline were wearing black armbands with green lettering. Jones peered down at them. “I can’t be sure from this distance, but those look like the armbands some of Bensouda’s Hafidi’s followers used to wear to show that they were willing to be martyred for the cause.”

  Ivanovich scowled. “Yes, yes, the rich culture of East Hellas is always fascinating. Especially the unique customs of religious fanatics and street scum. Much more interesting than getting out of here alive.”

  “The man has a point,” I said. “It won’t be easy to get through a crowd like that and get out of this section. Isn’t there some other way to get to Great Wall?”

  “Well”—Jones tapped his foot on the roof as he thought—“maybe? Each district has several of those airlocks, one for each adjoining cell. They only close them during an emergency, so those gates are really just short tunnels through the walls separating the districts. Those walls are massive, but even so it wouldn’t take long to get through one on foot if you had access to an open airlock. There are vertical gates and horizontal gates, so in theory we could go just about anywhere. The only trouble is getting through them. There are usually train lines, and where there isn’t one, the gangs usually guard the borders.”

  “I’ve seen that myself,” I replied. “I don’t think we want to run into any Kagebushin border guards right now.”