by Jinn, Bo
He turned and she looked away the instant before their eyes met, rose and began to get dressed with her back turned to him. Seeing her -- bare-bodied with the long braids cascading over her shoulders and breasts, down as far as her hips --, flashes came to him through the residue of the nightmares and the stupor that hung over him still.
“What is your name?” he asked.
The jasmine woman looked up and studied him. Her eyes were globes of dark jade.
“Does it matter?”
“I would like to know.”
She looked askance. “Why?”
Silence. When he did not turn or answer, she smirked and looked away.
Her apparel was unusual for a walker. It was equally unusual that she was a particularly beautiful walker. That is by no means to say that walkers are not particularly beautiful. They would not have much to sell otherwise. But the walker business is very competitive, which begged the question as to why she would have wasted a good night’s profit on the likes of a dreg, for there was no possible way she could have assumed he was anything more than the lowest dreg in the metropolis.
He reached for his coat, took out a handful of oblong silver coins and counted them: 78 Dimitars and 97 Ducats; all the wealth left to his name. Midway through count, he threw the money on the bed. The jasmine woman looked down at the coins and then back up at him.
“I do not remember how much we agreed on,” he said. “You will probably increase the price. That should be enough.”
“You think I’m a walker?” she snickered.
The hair drew back from over her neck. He noticed something gleaming under the skin above her breast. Blending into her dark flesh was the seal of the UMC.
“You are a martial,” he said, with vague astonishment.
“Second Tier Elite.”
He noted the signets marked in her flesh. “Impressive,” he muttered diffidently, as he opened a fresh pack of cigarettes.
“Wish I could say the same,” she replied, surveying the little cubicle. “Are you a dreg?” she asked, quite point blank.
“Why?” he asked, lighting his cigarette. “Ashamed already?”
“No,” she said. “You were a means to an end. Besides, I doubt we’ll be seeing each other around anytime soon.”
There was nothing more certain. Even if they did, it was likely they would not recognise one another. But that smell of jasmine was uncanny. Probably their paths had crossed once, he thought, before 11 months and 13 days ago.
Having dressed, the jasmine woman straightened up and spared one last benevolent look, which he dismissed with a turned back. She paused, then patted around on her legs and felt around the insides of her coat until she took out a small black canister. The top of the canister opened when she pressed down on the base and three tablets rolled out and into the palm of her hand. Her throat bulged as she swallowed, took a deep breath and tossed the canister onto the bed beside him. “You look as though you’re low,” she said. “You can still afford to keep a cubicle so maybe you’re scraping the bottom of the dreg barrel. The price of neurals is way up these days. These’ll get you back on your feet.”
He looked over his shoulder and eyed the cylinder with aversion. The cigarette smoke scorched his eyes.
“Go ahead,” she insisted. “I’ve got plenty.”
“No thank you,” he replied and looked away again.
“Are you mad because I’m not who you thought I was? Don’t be a proud dreg. Go on. Take them… Might be your last hope.”
A mist of smoke blew from his lips into the thinning beam of light. He raised his eyes to the sun and kept silent.
The jasmine woman shook her head and turned away. “You know; don’t look new here,” she said. “But, just in case you are, a little word of advice: You won’t last long if you don’t stick with the program. So, if you’re not on one yet, you ought to find yourself a neuralist, and quick.” She made for the door, and just before she left she added, “And stop asking walkers for their names, or anyone else, if you can help it. Don’t go looking for me, dreg… I’m warning you.”
She lingered a while as though waiting for a response. When none came, the door slid open and then closed again. He heard the echoes of her footsteps fade in the barren corridor.
There was a blue glow in the corner of his eye just as the last ray of sunlight blinked away. His cell was ringing. O730 , according to the chronometer on the bedside.
Right on schedule…
He got up off his bed and picked the cell up off the counter. The caller ID flashed over the screen. He laid the cell back on the counter, tapped the display and blue light rippled out from his fingertip and a holographic pillar of white shot out from the display. The photons swirled and the miniature figure of a man appeared in the pillar of light.
“Rise and shine, Martial.”
“Malachi.”
“Vartanian… you look like hell.”
“Then I will fit the job description.”
He took out a cigarette and sat.
“The contract closes today,” said Malachi. “The meeting with the broker is in less than 30 minutes. Did I mention the meeting was at the Vanguard?”
“I remember…” He lit the cigarette.
“The most exclusive martial syndicate in the first region; you don’t even think to get cleaned up? You look like a damn dreg.”
“Elegance does not count for much in our trade.”
“Well, you sure as hell ain’t getting in the Sixth Circle looking like that. SG might just shoot you on sight.”
And that would be terrible for business…
“You’ve lost weight. Think you can still carry your gear?”
“I can fight,” he assured.
“Well, wouldn’t be good for much in this world if you couldn’t, now would you?” said Malachi. ‘You remember the name of the broker?”
“Commissioner Donald Clarke Eastman… Do not patronise me.”
“You’ve been out a long damn time. They’ll make you take an eval.”
“I know.” A stream of smoke flowed from his nostrils.
“We had to pull a lot of strings to get here. Don’t fuck this one up before it starts. And put that damn smoke out. Who smokes those anymore anyway?”
Saul Vartanian would have killed himself sooner or later, having long exceeded the average life expectancy of martial defectors. The question as to why he did not loomed over his every thought. A part of him resented the new glimmer of hope that had come quite unexpectedly through the sudden and unexpected acquaintance with Martial Elijah Malachi.
The shutting door sent echoes through the barren corridor and he stood awhile in a silent trance. He pocketed his hands and felt for the blade. You never walked the streets without a blade… His nose twitched as he sniffed in a nauseating brew of smoke, ethanol and bile. The stench reached its peak down the corridor, where he came upon a man lying on the floor with his back up against the corner, still, eyes shut.
He stopped and studied the vagrant; gaunt, unkempt, rotten, decayed, rancid and bound up in a blanket that smelled of excrement. The martial seal on the man’s neck was faded under a bubble of scar tissue.
Dreg…
Warzone castoffs. The life of the dreg was wretched and brief; usually terminating in illness, suicide or slaughter in cold blood. Not all dregs were defectors, but all defectors quite inevitably wound up as dregs. As he reached into his coat pockets and leaned forward to lay the coins down by the dreg’s side he noticed that his chest was not rising. He pressed two fingers up to the jugular and the dreg’s head lolled to one side.
Dead…
No stab wounds. Probably bit on cyanide. He tucked the coins into his pockets and stood back up, turned and walked on as a matter of course. Sodom sanitation would find the body sooner or later and strip the corpse down for parts for the living (eyes were especially valued).
A loud wind of juddering maglev rails, sirens and foot traffic blustered through as he passed through
the tunnel into Sixth Echelons, the heart of the Dukheim District sky city. Above and below, a hundred stories in each direction, flyovers intersected through the heart of a great hollow pillar. Bridges cut from wall to wall, stocked with a current of martials making the 0900 deployment rush.
He raised the collar of his coat and flowed with the Sodom bloodstream, averting the cold glares from the oncoming traffic. Passing eyes followed until the moment shoulders grazed in passing, his hand tight around the blade. Dregs were non-persons. It was insufferable to the upstanding member of martial order to see a dreg walking the streets of Sodom as though he was anything more than the lowest form of life.
The congesting mobs squeezed up against him and he kept his eyes down and his collar high, approaching the flow of the capsule lines -- man-sized bubbles flowing through webs of thick, clear pipelines.
One of the ellipsoid bubbles stopped and hatched open. He flicked the cigarette butt away and stepped in. The capsule closed instantly and off it went, shooting along the nexus of tubes, winding in and out of Durkheim and over the metropolis streets. A panel shone with the capsule routes laid out and he dragged his fingertips over the district schematic, plotting the capsule’s course to Milidome Plaza.
At this time of the day, the capsule flow was fast and steady. The dawn skyline over Sodom whizzed past behind loose threads of fog; maglev highways looping around tall spires, in and out of great man-made mountains. The air carriers lumbered high in the sky, shuttling back and forth from the warzones, ferrying fresh armies of Sodomite martials.
He stared into the dark eyes of his own reflection on the inside of the glass bubble and stroked the bulging scar just above his collarbone. The faded remains of the martial seal – the brand of the UMC – were hidden behind the lumps of scar tissue.
He had no memory of how, why or when he had sold his life to martial order. It may or may not have been longer than 11 months and 13days. He did know that he was not born in the martial world. No man or woman ever was. The gates to the martial world were locked on the inside and sterilisation was mandatory on entry. All who come choose it, and the pledge to the global war machine is a pledge unto death.
The Commission cleaned you out as soon you were initiated, all records of any previous life erased forever. Even though no citizen of martial world could remember anything up until the day they crossed over, the reasons were no great secret. Every year, millions of people migrated to the war metropolises seeking fortune in the so-called “Free Martial Economy.” War was power. And both war and power were the preserve of the martial world.
The capsule slowed to a halt over Milidome Plaza, in the great shadow of the Milidome; the beating heart of Sodom. Over the top of the mountainous facade hung the gargantuan insignia of the UMC; the three-horned, three-headed beast – a head for each of the Three Regions of the Covenant. The immense hub of the UMC First Region blotted out half of the sky and gobbled up every arterial road, maglev rail, capsule tube, rhumb line and airway in the metropolis. The capsule hung high over the plaza and suddenly began to plummet, slowing to a stop at the end of a long overpass, flowing back into the congestion of foot traffic.
The capsule opened and he emerged onto Vanguard Bridge. The cold autumn wind lashed past and he raised his collar again. SGs – the blue-geared gargoyles from Sodom martial law enforcement – flanked the bridge; visors shut, guns at their chests. To the left, the global media displays were high over the plaza, blaring with the latest martial media updates from the warzones. The towering screens usually reported something tending toward the decline of East Grid power and the converse supremacy of western militaries, some political update from the Senior Commission and the odd report about economic growth interspersed with loops of wartech ads from the PMCs.
The entrance to the Vanguard was in sight. You could tell the increased concentration of high-casters by their signets. Contracting sections in West Wing were ordered according to castes, and the Vanguard section was the zenith of all martialdom. Dozens of monitors showed long lists of assignments ordered according to serial number, army quota, vacancy, assignment description, contracting party and so forth. Martials amassed, hunting for the best assignments tendered to their caste.
He crossed the threshold of the ingress into the Vanguard main atrium. The upper-casters traversing the halls seldom appeared without an entourage at their heels, sporting the marks and crests of their respective guilds. Guild hostilities had worsened in recent months, but his arrival seemed to have instantly united all in a sudden, common hate. This was the one place where no Sodomite would ever expect to see a dreg.
The visors of two SGs rotated as he passed, then quietly shadowed him through the corridors. He dared not stop his march until the moment he spied out one of the larger offices across the atrium floor. Over the front of the office doors a plaque read:
“Comm. 1st Class Donald Clarke Eastman”
He sauntered up to the open doors and silently crossed the threshold.
Immediately across from him, a man was seated behind a large desk, half-hidden behind a translucent screen, not realising that someone had entered his office until his nose started to twitch with the first whiffs of some peculiar stench… with a hint of jasmine.
The commissioner stopped. An ageless face rose almost robotically, and a pair of narrow, beady eyes peered up and surveyed him from head to toe, to head again. After a long, deadpan gaze and a protracted silence, the commissioner spoke.
“May I… help you?” The voice was an effeminate monotone.
He tucked his hand underneath his coat, took out a crumpled piece of paper and placed it on the desk. “I am here to apply for a contract,” he said. “This is the serial number.”
The commissioner gazed blankly at the piece of paper, then at the martial before him, then the Guards outside the office. He squinted to make out the scribbled 12-digit code on the unfurled piece of paper and his head tilted curiously.
“Nova Crimea,” muttered the effeminate drone voice. A glassy surface lit up and the commissioner started fingering away robotically at the keys, eyes darting from left to right over his screen. “…Caste,” the affeminite voice pronounced.
“First Tier… Ares,” he answered automatically.
The commissioner stopped typing at once and the beady eyes rose and fixed him with a glare.
“PMC…”
“None.”
“Guild.”
“None.”
“Freelance… Martial identification number.”
He paused, and then began to recite, slowly: “Zero. Zero. Zero. Seven. One. Seven. One. Six. Six. One. Five. Zero. Eight… Eight… Eight.”
The commissioner’s expression suddenly became disturbed as he typed in the final number. The deadpan eyes peered up again. “May I see your credentials?”
He reached into the sleeve of his coat and took out a faded black card with the black insignia beast of the UMC on the back.
The commissioner’s beady eyes zipped back and forth from the card to the man himself and a glimmer of astonishment found its way across his marble face as he slowly laid the card down on his desk. “Martial Vartanian … We did not think we would see you again.” The office doors automatically shut, and the synthetic-faced commissioner remained staring with an uncanny look of acquaintance in the unblinking eyes. “Do you remember me?”
“Eastman,” Saul answered, as though uttering the man’s name would conceal the fact that he had not the slightest memory of ever meeting him before.
“They cleaned you,” the commissioner muttered deductively, with a slow nod. “I was certain you were dead. Your old record was deleted just under a year ago.”
“Eleven months and 13 days.”
Does he know…?
“Please sit,” bid the commissioner.
He obeyed with caution.
The keyboard re-illuminated over the glossy surface of the crystal-top desk. “Now,” Commissioner Eastman continued, tapping away at the keys; �
��The Nova Crimea assignment… You may know the call for tenders was issued by the European Bureau of Defence. Unfortunately, the quota for the assignment has already been met. We should be making the final settlements with the USE’s Defence Section later this morning. The only way we can allow your application is if we received authorisation from the contractor; a certain Martial…”
“Elijah Malachi,” he interrupted, finishing the commissioner’s sentence.
“Correct.”
“He told me to come to you.”
“I see,” Eastman replied with a vague nod. “Perhaps the memo slipped through the cracks. No administration is bulletproof, you understand…” He lifted his hands off the desk. The illuminated touchboard disappeared and the light from the translucent screen dissipated. “What were Martial Malachi’s instructions?”
“I will be taking command of the brigade for the assignment.”
“Have you reviewed the mission brief?”
“Yes.”
Eastman nodded again.
“Very well,” he said. “I’m sure all parties involved will welcome the leadership of one of the First Region’s finest. I’ll send a request for confirmation to Martial Malachi immediately. You will be contacted via Nexus once the War Bureau has approved your application. I presume you still have your cell?”
“I do.”
Having no further business to discuss, Saul abruptly rose from his seat without valediction.
“Martial Vartanian,” Eastman called out, interrupting his exit. “There is one more thing.”
“I know. Neural evaluation.”
“According to your record, Dr. Augustus Pope was your assigned neuralist. Is that correct?”
Saul stopped suddenly and turned back. “Yes… Why?”
“He’s here.”
Saul maintained a silence, eyeing the commissioner with suspicion.
“He must have anticipated you. Neuralists are very good at that sort of thing.” The commissioner gave a summoning look to the Guards outside his office. The doors opened and four heavy, blue-geared figures entered a moment later. “Room 7773.”