Saul of Sodom: The Last Prophet

by Jinn, Bo

  “No, we do not,” Saul replied.

  The scarred eye narrowed judiciously as Malachi knocked back the rest of his drink and sauntered back over to his seat, taking out a device from under the sleeve of his suit jacket. He pressed down on the control and the holographic flame over the table fizzled away. In its place, there materialised a large three-dimensional schematic of what appeared to be a city. “That’s her,” Malachi presented. “Nova Crimea.” He slipped the control back into his suit, sat down, poured himself another glass and leaned back in his seat. “Floor’s yours, Martial…”

  Saul laid his coat down on the nearest chair and slowly stepped up to the holographic schematic. He mentally went over the stratagem, which he had only briefly sketched out in his mind over the interceding days, but which had since ripened in his veteran subconscious.

  “Expand Sector 5.”

  The schematic rotated to his instruction and the northeast corner of the holographic rendition of the city expanded. He took out a cigarette, placed the butt at his lips, lit, drew and blew a stream of smoke, coming nearer to the hologram, circled and stopped.

  “We will be one of five brigades the EDS is deploying to take Nova Crimea,” he began. “Each brigade has been assigned a different sector. Our objective is to take Sector 5. East Grid forces took over the city about a month ago on a Russian mandate, so they are expecting retaliation. This will not be a surprise attack, but we can turn it into one.”

  He lifted his right index finger and drew a line over the edge of the sector in the hologram.

  “Nova Crimea is right on the edge of the New Borderland, outskirts of the former Ukrainian Republic,” he explained. “The city’s defences were set up to repel attacks from the east. After the beating the place took a month ago, the enemy would not have had enough time to restructure their ramparts. We will be moving in on the city from the west. Our PMC is providing us with 12 Landis GM-1 Leviathan Buldroogs. We move up through sector four with 4th Brigade. Once they have cleared our path, we move on to Sector 5. That is where our real work begins.”

  He drew another mouthful of smoke, took the cigarette between his middle and index fingers and ran the smoldering tip along two, wide paths that cut right across the schematic.

  “These are the two main streets,” he continued. “They run straight through the sector. We will call them “North Street” and “South Street” for ease. They are the key to the sector. That is where the enemy will put all of their stock. They will no doubt have all the surrounding buildings garrisoned and we can assume that they will deploy any heavy armour they can spare here and here (he pointed the locations out on the schematic with the smoldering cherry of his cigarette). Their strategy will be to funnel us into these two paths and tear us apart. Even if we had a hundred thousand soldiers, we would not be able to get through in a full frontal firefight...”

  “Why don’t we just bang dem salauds up from a ways away, hein?” the Cajun interjected.

  “Nova Crimea is not a martial metropolis,” he replied, pausing to decipher the drunken creole burbles. “There are civilians there – thousands of them.” The concern in his voice seemed to render present company bemused and he noted their rapid and askance looks at one another. Needless to say, civilian lives never registered high in the list of priorities before an assignment, barring some clause to that effect in the martial contract.

  “The ESD wants us to keep collateral damage to a minimum,” Malachi intervened. “They want their city back, not a pile of debris and dead bodies.”

  “Mo chagren,” hummed the Cajun, throwing his head back wearily.

  “Go on, Saul...”

  “We will need to secure the elevated positions over both roads.” He drew lines of smoke through the schematic. “We breach these buildings along the main streets,” he indicated. “It will have to be done quickly and silently. We must divide their ranks and find a way to destroy their armour before we advance…”

  He suddenly paused, much to the confusion of his three listeners.

  “So … what’s the plan?” asked Celyn.

  “That, I have not yet worked out,” he said. “We will be outnumbered. We must pick our openings carefully. I will inform you as soon as the strategy is clear in my mind. For now, all I know is that we will need a lot of explosives, and at least four sniper platoons.”

  “No problem,” Malachi assured. “Duguay will take the sharpshooters. Celle can put the demo team together.”

  Celyn assented with a nod.

  “You and I will lead the infiltration teams,” said Saul. “We shall split the brigade up in two -- one battalion going north and the other going south with three companies moving through the buildings. Assault squads will hold positions in the adjacent streets. It will be a night operation. We can take the buildings quietly and surprise them. Once we have secured both roads, the sector will be ours before sunrise.” He blew a stream of smoke from his cigarette and gazed pensively through the holographic schematic and out the glass penthouse walls. “There is no better way to go about it,” he concluded. “If everything goes according to plan, you can save a lot of your men’s lives, and keep damage to a minimum, which should make your employers happy.”

  He wandered across the room, past Malachi and Duguay toward his own reflection in the penthouse walls. When he came nearer, he could see the view of the illuminated skyline through the reflections of the three silhouettes seated in the room behind him and a wall of cigarette smoke.

  “Then, that’s it,” said Malachi.

  Saul removed the cigarette from his lips and exhaled.

  “That is it.”

  The jasmine woman let out a snort. “Always easier said than done.”

  Malachi clapped his palms against his thighs. “Alright then,” he declared, rising from his seat. “Now that that’s out the way…”

  “Les temps des affaires…” murmured the Cajun, marking the next item on the agenda.

  Saul remained with his sights set over the Sodom skyline.

  “The contract pays fifty-million dimitars,” said Malachi. “Ten million to the guild Underclasses, ten to Overs, twenty to the Lower-Elites. That leaves ten million to divide between us.”

  He took the last drag from his cigarette.

  “Well,’ said Malachi; ‘what are your demands?”

  After a long pause, he exhaled the last draw of smoke and turned. His jaded stare wandered curiously over Celyn, who stared back at him through narrow eyes. “I do not want your money.”

  Malachi’s head tilted back and surveyed him through downturned eyes. “What now?”

  He dropped the burnt butt into a half-empty glass of Snake Venom ambrosia. “You can keep the money,” he reiterated.

  “Quoi faire?” The Cajun’s head lolled over with a leery goggle

  “I have no need for money.”

  “Is that right?” There was a sudden air of misgiving in Malachi’s voice as he stepped forward. “Doesn’t look like it to me...”

  “Eli...”

  “Not now, Celle.”

  Celyn sighed and looked away.

  “Why do I get the feeling there’s a catch here?”

  “I will lead your men to battle and you will win,” Saul stated, categorically. “It is what I do. You will also keep all the spoils.”

  “Mais…” prodded the Cajun.

  There was a long silence among them.

  “I have two conditions,” he said.

  “What conditions?” Malachi demanded rapidly.

  “We do this my way.”

  “Which means?”

  “I never fire on civilians...”

  There was a momentary silence.

  “What’s condition two?” asked Malachi.

  Saul looked back at him.

  “After we complete the assignment and take the sector…” He paused. “I leave.”

  “…Leave?”

  “Yes.”

  “Where will you go?” asked Celyn.

 
“That does not concern any of you,” he said, brushing Malachi’s shoulder as he walked past. He lifted his coat off the back of the chair and filled the sleeves with his arms. “When you get back to Sodom, you will give the Commission the final assignment report. You will tell them I was killed in action and that my body could not be recovered.”

  “You’re going rogue and you want us to cover for you,” said Malachi. “Is that what you’re telling us?”

  “Bioque,” growled the Cajun.

  Malachi glowered. “If the Commission finds out...”

  “They will not find out,” he interjected.

  “They always find out.”

  When he straightened out his coat, he took out another cigarette and raised it to his lips.

  “Why the hell are you doing this?”

  “Explaining my reasons to you will make no difference.”

  “We want you to be one of us... Name your terms.”

  “There is nothing you can offer me,” he said, making his way toward the door. “Those are my terms. This meeting is over.”

  “No one ever leaves the martial world once they cross over,” Malachi stated, categorically. “No one. Especially men like you. You’re just going to walk out into the middle of a warzone? And what do you think will happen when you cross the Civil Border? You’re a martial. Wherever you go, sooner or later they’ll find you...”

  “It is a chance I will have to take,” he said.

  The conversation came to a stop and another protracted silence hung between them. He could already sense the first and most obvious consideration emerge amid their silence: whether or not it might be a better idea at that point to cancel the contract and, having reckoned everything in advance, he knew -- as Malachi knew -- that that would be bound to irritate their clients at the European Defence Section. He could almost hear the soundless deliberation unfold.

  “Obviously, you have a lot to consider,” he said. “I will be outside.”

  He turned away and their eyes followed him as he sauntered out of the room.

  He already knew exactly how the deliberation would proceed in his absence, having innumerably replayed every possible way the scenario could unfold to its inevitable conclusion since he had first come upon Elijah Malachi of the Scythe Guild more than a month ago. Within five minutes of their first conversation, he had had Malachi figured out as the type of martial very easily lured by the possibility of attracting an Ares-caster into his circle of associates.

  The sting of cognitive dissonance will subside, he thought, as he stepped out onto the edge of the rooftop terrace, overlooking the Dragon. After that, Malachi would do what all men of his kind do: weigh the risks and see that he stood to lose a lot more by rescinding the contract so close the assignment date. If the slightly more drastic measure of his assassination was considered, the penalty for killing a high-caster in cold blood entailed no less than allowing him to flee under the pretension that he was dead, and there was as much risk of the Commission finding out either way.

  He puffed away at his cigarette and gazed wistfully down the Dragon and up at the Milidome, resolute that the next time he walked into the jaws of the three-headed beast, it would be for the last time. Malachi’s words rung disturbingly in his head. “They always find out…”

  His thoughts were interrupted by a stir below, which seemed to have been caused by a dreg that had wandered out from the dark backstreets and stumbled into the light of the Dragon. The dreg stumbled weakly to the floor. There were cackles and three martials appeared from the dark and surrounded him. They lashed out with low kicks to his legs, knocking the dreg over on his back, then driving their shins into his gut over and over again.

  Just as the anger started to bubble up, a firm hand seized him by the shoulder and nipped his rapidly rising fury at the bud.

  “What are you doing?”

  Celyn came up quietly by his side, arms crossed, showing no sign of discomfort when the frigid breeze lashed against her sending the long weaves of hair swaying. She looked away and took out the black neural canister. He followed her movements through the corners of his eyes as she popped open the lid and rolled three tablets into her hand. “You know,” she said, cocking her head back and gulping the tablet down, “the last time I saw you, I knew you had lost it...”

  “Then, why are you here?”

  “I told them I’d try and talk some sense into you.”

  “You are wasting your time.”

  “Fine,” she said, tucking the canister back in her coat. “At least tell us the reason.”

  “What difference does it make whether or not you know my reasons?”

  “Maybe I care.”

  “That is impossible,” he said. “Neurals erase empathy.”

  “And that’s the way it has to be,” came the rejoinder. “Look, you and I both know the only reason you’re putting yourself through this is because you’re off the program. Every damn martial in this city is out there killing and dying, trying to get what you have. You’re putting yourself through hell. And for what?”

  A pause ensued wherein the stumbling dreg on the Dragon had now come to his feet and attracted more laughing and taunting from passersby. He was struck on the face and knocked down again. SGs stood by and watched, making no attempt to intervene. The laughs and hisses of the leering mob surrounding the dreg became bawls of bloodlust. They had kicked and beaten him until he was a twitching mound of raw flesh and bone, blood leaking from his gob and nostrils. Finally, when the dreg could do naught except prop his weight up on his hands and knees, three blades shimmered in the light, brandished in raised fists. The blades came down and stabbed. There were thick spurts of red, then they rose and banged down again, tearing through his back, neck, chest and gut. The pierced and punctured dreg writhed, twisted, choked, drowning on his own blood until the last twitches of life left him. When the thrill of his destruction subsided and his killers and onlookers walked away, the Guards came forward and hauled the torn pile of flesh away.

  When it all ended, Saul dropped the smoldering cigarette butt and stamped the cherry out under his heel. When the trail of smoky fog parted his lips, he raised his collar. By then, Celyn’s eyes were fixed, unblinking, over the spot where the whole scene had unfolded. And as she gazed at the bloody puddle left in the dreg’s wake, Saul turned and walked away.

  “Tell Malachi to call me once he has made his decision.”

  C. 5: Day 363

  The steel walls hummed. Cold air funnelled in through the ventilation ducts. The corners of his book shone yellow under the pale light, where the pages had been stained by tar and nicotine. He had smoked through the whole carton of Lucky Strikes and started his second reading of United Martial Covenant and the Birth of New World Order. It did not take him long to realise that he was reading things he had merely forgotten that he already knew. With each line of text, his mind seemed to precede his eyes. It made him wonder whether memories could rekindle through experience the same way. Only time would tell...

  He turned the yellowing sheets forward to page 213. The title at the top of the page read:

  “Chapter 12: A World Divided”

  He read, skimming through the introductory paragraphs, as usual:

  The formation of the Martial Covenant ushered in two major global divides -- one external and the other internal. The first divide was between the eastern and western spheres, fulfilled by the signing of the East Grid Pact two years after the Martial Covenant. The second, internal division emerged from the promulgation of so-called “Martial Order,” giving rise to the soldier societies known today as the “martial metropolises.”

  The proliferation of the free martial economy and the influx of Private Military Corporations in the wake of the first skirmishes between East and West gave rise to a vast demographic shift, as millions of people all over the world turned to the martial profession (the first converts invariably being soldiers from the national militaries). 1 A few short years after the signing of the �
�Mercenary Act,” the headcount of private militias across the UMC nations surpassed that of national military personnel. 2 Growth continued to surge until, by 2050, more than 10 percent of the adult population in the entire western sphere was employed by the PMCs, comprising more than 150 million soldiers. Sociologists regard this period as the early formation of the “Martial Class.” 3

  In the early years of the UMC, martials and civilians lived among one another as common citizens of the nations. However, a sharp increase in violent crime coupled with the global media’s sensationalisation of events such as the notorious Vincent Caine Incident4, there emerged a sociological division between civilians and soldiers, a divide founded on fear. Long and arduous political disputes at the supranational level finally led to the 45th annual Assembly and the passing of UMC Council Resolution 01-45, bringing into effect the “Martial Autonomy Act” of the same year. This marked the beginning of political separation between martial and civil order. Three years later, the construction of the first martial capitol of the First UMC Region, Sodom Metropolis, was complete. Within the last 20 years, more than 25 martial metropolises have been built within national territories across the Three Regions, with five more cities still under construction.5

  To this day, the “Principle of Division” between civilian and martial society remains one of the fundamental doctrines of UMC law and politics. Whereas sovereignty over civil society resides with the governments of member nations, jurisdiction over martial order lies exclusively with the UMC, through the Council of Nations and their several executive Commissions. This, effectively, resulted in the formation of two “internal worlds” within the western sphere itself -- one governed by the laws of the nations, and the other by the laws of the UMC. For the purposes of government, citizens of civil and martial society alike were accorded equal right to vote at UMC Council elections, although martial citizens are prohibited from taking office…