by Jinn, Bo
He stared at the book cover as he poured a glass of scotch and opened the fresh carton. He drank the scotch, toked the cigarette and turned over the front cover, flipped through the table of contents, cases, laws and treaties, stopping on the first page of the prologue, and then skimmed through the page from a standing distance:
This book was written with the scope that the lay person may understand how the foundations of the new world were laid. Part I examines the historico-political and economic premises behind the formation of the United Martial Covenant of western powers and its institutions. Part II focuses on the foundations of the internal divide between so-called “Martial Order” and “Civil Order” and the relationship between these two worlds. These central themes of UMC politics shall be discussed in light of the later formation of the East Grid Pact, three years subsequent to the establishment of the UMC…
He stopped reading mid-paragraph, removed his coat and laid it over the counter. He then took the book and lowered himself into his bed. The weariness sunk in instantly. He skimmed through the prologue, arriving at page 12:
Chapter I: The Rise of the Global Martial Economy
He held the book up in front of him, with his thumb down the middle. He read:
In the succeeding five decades, after the turn of the millennium, the world bore witness to a radical revolution in the global economy. War became far more than the leading world industry; war became the backbone of all world industries, such that every major branch of the global economy – agriculture, energy, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, technology and so forth – became bound to world conflict. Professor Robert McGrath of the University of New York presaged this total military dominance of world economics and was the first to coin the term “Global Martial Economy”. 1
Even though the premises underlying this shift have been subject to extensive academic dispute, the creation of the “Mercenary Act”, the liberation of the martial market and the Gaia Revolution are generally agreed upon as the fundamental economic causes behind the rise of the GME.2 After renewable and nuclear energy sources overtook fossil fuels in the mid-twenties,3 the energy industry underwent an exponential decline with the resolution of the world energy crisis. This, coupled with the outbreak of the first skirmishes between the United States of America and Russia, and, later, the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea and China, set the stage for the complete global economic dominance of the martial industries.
Warzone proliferation saw a sharp increase after the two major alliances: The “North Atlantic Alliance” between the (then) Federation of Western Europe and the United States of America, and the coterminous “Mongolian Line Alliance” between the People’s Republic of China and the New Southern Republic of Russian States.4 Within 10 years of the two major alliances, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, India, the UAE and South Africa, among several other, smaller nations were all locked in conflict across a new Iron Curtain which cut straight through the middle of the globe from the peak of Scandinavia down to the tip of the African continent and around and across the Pacific, manifesting the boundary line between East and West, known today as “The Walls of Fire”…
His eyes began to droop.
C. 5: Day 348
Four zeroes on the chronometer marked midnight when the alarm rung.
Saul stepped under the light over the mirror and regarded himself. The tangled mess of facial hair was shaved down to stubble, exposing the thin scars around the deep lines of his jaw. The blade slipped out and shimmered in the light. He slipped the edge under the line of gauze below the elbow and cut. The bandages slipped off and the signets gleamed blood-red. He held his arm up before him with a glare, then passed the blade from one hand to the other and cut the bandages off the other arm.
Sodom was alive with light as the capsule descended from Sixth Echelons. The face of every tower and every spire, from the streets below to the airborne traffic high above the skyline, was a matrix of technicolor pixels. When night fell, Ares slumbered and Dionysus took the throne. Sodom went from the pumping heart of the First Region War Machine to a mass brothel, a fountain of ambrosia and a great scream of ecstasy audible until the ends of the globe, and Dragon Boulevard was the adrenaline-saturated pulsing jugular of the martial capital.
He nudged open the fire exit and came into a long and dark alley. An old dog, curled up behind piles of trash, whimpered and limped away. He raised his collar and pocketed his hands as he approached the light at the end of the main street, his footsteps fading into the occult blares from the Dragon.
The wide avenue was a spinning kaleidoscope of psychedelia which ran right through the middle of the lower district to Durkheim Plaza, and the great, three-headed beast of the UMC soared high on the Milidome facade in the distance. Blue-geared SGs patrolled every corner and the bedlam continued to build all the way up until up until the Dragon’s Head, where the larger martial guilds garrisoned their private nightspots. These were peak hours for walkers too. He passed by the Nymph on the Bordello Strip: a high-rise ziggurat shrine to erotica, flashing scarlet and crimson on the tip of the Dragon’s Tail. The Nymph was one of the largest bordellos on the strip, very popular among the lower casters. You got what you paid for and then some. Saul snatched a glance through the crowds at the glass walls as he passed. The carmine light irradiated a display line of nude and limber silhouettes twisting and bending for their potential trade.
One blonde-haired crimson-lipped nymph caught his eye and smiled a counterfeit smile, causing him to bump into a squad of SGs. The Guards turned, guns cocked, and when their illumed visors scanned over him, the signets under his coat sleeves flashed in their digital sights and they dispersed at once. SG squads patrolled every corner of the strip. Gang wars between rival guilds were not uncommon, and even less so on the Dragon at peak times. And since the only guns on the city streets were I.D-locked and borne by Sodom’s finest, guild wars were kept in control for the most part, along with any immediate possibility of mass uprisings.
About a quarter-mile down the Dragon’s Tail, he spotted one of the smaller buildings on the Bordello Strip. A sign on the side of the tower showed the grimacing head of a crowned daemon holding a royal sceptre in one hand and a flask of ambrosia in the other. The words “SIXTH CIRCLE” flashed red over the top of the daemon’s head.
He crossed the road. Eight goliaths constituted the guard detail at the front entrance and glares followed as he passed and turned onto the next side street.
At the end of the alley, a flight of stairs led up to a terrace and a back entrance, just as he had been told. When he ascended the stairs, he was received by a none-too-welcoming committee – three heavy men, scarred, thickly tattooed and outfitted for the sole function of backstreet brawling, with thick, vascular arms crossed over their flack-jacketed chests and the insignia of black sickles curved around their scarred orbitals – the mark of the Scythe Guild.
As soon as he climbed the last step, their heads jerked around like wild beasts roused by sudden and unfamiliar company, and one martial, baring the signets of a Third Tier Elite, uncrossed his arms and stepped forward, closely followed by his two cronies. “Just where the fuck do you think you’re going, dreg?”
“I was told there would be someone waiting.”
The elite stepped forward and sized him up.
“You’ve got some stones...”
“I am here to see Elijah Malachi.”
“Malachi…” the elite rumbled with a snigger. “Malachi,” he repeated, turning to his two comrades, who returned his laughter with interest. He rubbed his palm from the top of his head down to his chin, wiping away the humour from his disfigured expression. “You took your best shot,” he scowled. “Now, get the fuck out of…”
His hand shot up when the elite’s made to grab him by the neck and his grip latched round the thick wrist like a vice.
The elite froze, loose-jawed, eyes wide and reeled back with a look of fearful awe at the blood-red signets that slipped out from under
his sleeve.
“I am here to see Elijah Malachi…” he repeated, sustaining a glower.
His grip loosened from the thick wrist. Before long, the elite turned to his associates.
“Call Celyn.”
They hesitated at first, exchanging grave and confused looks. Then, one of the burly martials turned and disappeared. During the half-minute that passed, the incredulous eyes did not defer, searching him from head to toe, stopping on the scarred seal creeping out from the collar of his coat.
In the next moment, a blaring wave of noises from inside the building flooded through the open doors, and a very familiar voice stirred him to attention. “What’s going on?” The martials stepped aside, and who should come through the doors but the ebony-skinned, emerald-eyed jasmine woman.
“This guy says he wants to see Malachi.”
The jasmine woman stopped with an askew look as soon as their eyes met, then drew slowly closer, her eyes narrowing the nearer she approached until he could smell jasmine on her again, evoking a strange sensation not entirely like lust… but not entirely unlike it either. “Celyn…”
“…You have got to be kidding me.”
“I didn’t believe him either,” said the elite, “but you can’t forge signets like that. He’s an Ares-caster.”
The jasmine woman looked down at his wrists, where the edges of the signets were poking out of his sleeves.
“Should we get Malachi?”
“No,” the jasmine woman answered, her air suddenly foreboding. “He’s our guy.” She started to walk back through the door, leaving silence behind her. “Come on,” she called as she walked away. “Elijah’s waiting.”
The two Scythe soldiers held the doors open and he followed, crossing into a vortex of shrill howls and earth-quaking beats. Beams of scarlet light tore through the blackness from a wide floor below, lighting hundreds of silhouettes, dancing, twisting and stumbling in an ambrosia-induced rapture. Lucre shimmered and rattled on pulpits with nude figures; sweat dripping, glimmering on the naked flesh like blood drops. He slowed his step, mesmerised with near morbid fascination at the striking reminiscence of his nightmares. It shocked him to a halt, looking out from the gallery. The screams became louder and louder...
The shrill broke when a hand seized him by the arm.
“You can ball after we take care of business!” the jasmine woman yelled over the din.
She led the way across the upper floor with a quick stride. The crowd parted and cleared her path and as they passed, a few high-caste guilders followed their trail with scowls – those that weren’t engaged with bevies of walkers and copious quantities of ambrosia. They came to a glass elevator at the back of the floor. The jasmine woman stepped in first, pressed the top floor button, crossed her arms and looked forward. The elevator doors shut and brought an abrupt end to the tumult and they slowly began to rise.
“Celyn…” he muttered, breaking the long silence.
“Knight.”
“Celyn Knight.”
“Martial Knight will do,” she amended. “And you must be Vartanian.”
Silence fell again.
“Malachi said he had two associates. I did not expect a…”
“Expect a what?” she jerked her head round with a glare. Silence fell again. “Let me guess,” she snorted. “All women are walkers and all men are martials.”
“Numbers do not lie.”
“Female martials have a higher caste average than males,” she answered, turning to him with a hostile look. “How’s that for a statistic, quicksilver?” The elevator stopped and the doors opened with a single chime and the jasmine woman walked out the second the doors opened, leaving him behind.
He detected a contrivance about her manner. It seemed... forced. Remembering quite vividly the type of woman she was in her otherwise most intimate of moments, he intuited that her... diffidence... had less to do with the fact that she was a martial woman in a man’s world than it did with a secret intent to terminate any trace of lasciviousness between them, which was reasonable enough. Martial policy on intercourse was very clear: at least 60 days between repeat partners, and the Commission had ways of keeping track of intercourse history the same as everything else.
“What kind of Ares-caster walks around all alone looking like that?”
He regarded himself briefly. “Are you not relieved?” he asked.
She snickered. “Why – because I got laid by a high-caster?” she asked, rhetorically. “I’m not a walker. The man behind the prick doesn’t matter to me.”
“How noble of you.”
“By the way, do us both a favour. About last night – don’t say anything to Eli.”
“Why?”
“Do you really need a reason? Keep business and pleasure separate. Always a good rule of thumb.”
The corridor narrowed into a glass-walled passage which passed right over the Dragon. Above, the sky was clear and star-spangled. The passage terminated at a door and the jasmine woman stepped aside. “After you,” she said.
Warily, he pushed the door open and crossed the threshold.
He came into a long room. He approached the far end, where a small group of martials were accompanied by twice the number of walkers, sprawled over large satin-upholstered couches and surrounded by about two dozen empty bottles of ambrosia. A naked butane flame danced over the low table-top in the middle of them and the light of the full moon shone from above through the glass ceiling. Toppled piles of dimitars and psychotropics were strewn over the table-top and the white-carpeted floor.
“At last...” a deep voice pronounced. “I was starting to doubt whether you’d show.”
At the head of the table, there sat the only man unaccompanied by a walker. The man had a coal complexion and was well-turned-out in every way, with a fine-cut black suit, black shoes, an open white shirt and a platinum ring around his middle finger. His dark face rose from the shadow. When the face came into the light, a long, grisly scar cut from the top of the man’s scalp down across his left eye.
“Vartanian.” Malachi grinned, wide and pearl-toothed, coming to his feet. “We meet at last.”
“Who the hell is this?” spoke an irate voice from among them.
Saul remained quiet, looking from one sneering martial to the other until his arms slipped out of the coat sleeves. When the light found the blood-red signets, silence fell upon the room.
“This, comrades, is your new co-commander,” Malachi introduced. “Say hello to Martial Vartanian, First Tier Ares. Now, if you all don’t mind, gentlemen; I think it’s time you all took this party downstairs where it belongs.”
The platoon-inebriated Scythe martials and walkers all rose and half-stumbled past him and out of the room. When the last of them had left, the doors closed.
“These are the men you expect us to lead?”
“Now, now,” said Malachi, “don’t go getting the wrong idea. These men play hard, but they work hard – damn hard. You have my word.”
Celyn lowered herself into a black leather lounger. “Speaking of playing hard,” she said. “Where’s the Cajun?”
“Cho! Co! Yeaaw! Merci, mes chers!” At that moment, a door flung open at the end of an adjacent corridor and a voice cackled loudly. Three high-end, platinum-haired walkers with high heels and mannequin features sauntered in from the adjacent corridor, walking and dressing at the same time, and shuffled right past them and out of the room. Seconds later, the same loud, cackling voice from before approached, singing:
“I’s a rambler, I’s a gambler, I’s a long way from home, and if you all don’t like me, just leave me alone. I eat when I’m hungry, I drink when I’m dry. If ambrosia don’t kill me, I drink till I die. Laissez le bon temps rouler, laissez le bon temps rouler…”
A long-haired, sharp-faced and bare-chested mestizo-looking martial staggered into the room, holding a half-empty bottle of Liquid Luck ambrosia. He lifted the bottle to his lips took five long swigs, then hung his arms, threw hi
s shoulders back and burped. The mestizo’s golden eyes dawdled around the room, finally settling on Saul, whereupon he leered a wide and jagged-toothed leer. “Ah, baise-moi; Monsieur Ares!” he sputtered, flinging his arms in the air. “Eh, Celin’!” he cried, pointing a wavering finger at Celyn. “Bon soir, cher...”
“Duguay,” Malachi rumbled. “We’ve got business. Put down the poison.”
“Bon.” The Cajun shrugged, lifted the bottom of the bottle and emptied the drink into his gullet and bore a striking resemblance to the nightclub mascot outside the building. He exhaled loudly and threw the bottle aside with a smash. The Cajun cackled, leapt over the back of a long settee and fell into his seat with a sigh. Then, seeing the bottles on the table – some of them still full – his eyes lit up with sudden desire, and he filled himself another glass, licking his lips. “Grand… Alors…”
“Saul’s here to run us through strategy for Nova Crimea,” said Malachi, setting the agenda for the meeting. “After that, we talk future plans. Ain’t that right, Saul?”
Saul had had his eyes fixed intently on the boisterous Cajun. “Right,” he muttered.
“Right…” said Malachi in a shrewd, drawn-out voice. He stroked the stubble on his chin with the ringed finger and started to pace around, one hand pocketed. “Assuming we’re all alive by next week, the future looks pretty damn bright.” He took a glass off the table and filled it with ambrosia, then walked out to the edge of the penthouse and gazed out over the Dragon. “Hell,” he snickered, “with you in our ranks; there’ll be no contract we can’t score, no martial we couldn’t snatch up for the guild.” He drunk and exhaled. “The sky’s the limit.” Malachi turned to face him again. “Well… we’ll get to all that later,” Malachi grinned. “Don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, now, do we?”