by Mike Sheriff
The decree had triggered protests among the most affluent members of the ruling caste, but the dissent had been defused without overt violence. Still, the location of the storechambers—and the passcodes for the vacuum locks that sealed them—had been kept secret to all but him and a handful of his most trusted Jireni.
One of those Jireni was Commander Cang. She reached the edge of the cull zone and angled toward the Jireni outpost that lay one hundred feet west of the food stalls. Unlike the lofty spectraglass towers and glimmering toroidal structures favored by Slavvic designers, the cubic outpost comprised three drab levels of windowless nullglass. It was one of hundreds that dotted every Cheng.
During the former Unum’s reign, they’d been part of the network used to monitor denizens and prospects. At the height of the uprising, outposts in Chengs loyal to the Unum had proven the most difficult structures to seize. Now they provided a rapid-response capability for civil emergencies, and a place for ordinary denizens to seek help in times of crisis.
The outpost’s blast-resistant outer doors were already open when they arrived. Cang led them inside.
The ground-level’s tiled floor covered less than one thousand square-feet. On its perimeter, Jireni manned consoles laden with luminescent touch-screens—the termini for data collected by an array of optical and acoustic sensors. Scans of nearly every transway, laneway, courtyard, and cloister in Nansilafu Cheng could be summoned with the tap of a finger. Another tap could fuse the data with that pulled from other outposts, enabling a near-omniscient presence for tracking countless denizens.
The capability rankled Daoren—the potential for abuse seemed unlimited—but for now he accepted Cang’s recommendation to leave the monitoring system intact. Better to have it and not need it, she’d argued, than to need it and not have it.
She led Daoren and Heqet to a console on the floor’s southern wall, where a diminutive Jiren flanked the seated operator. The standing Jiren’s bianfu featured a flourish of gold piping on its sleeves, signifying the rank of commander. The Jiren turned as they approached.
Hyro alum Takeda bowed from the waist. She held the position for a few seconds before straightening and extending her hand. “It’s good to see you again, Unum.”
Daoren grasped her hand. “And you, Commander Hyro. I wasn’t aware you’d left Riben Cheng.”
“I brought my daughter to the Librarium yesterday.” Hyro took Heqet’s hand and pumped it with equal vigor. “She’s expressed an interest in becoming a Librarian.”
“I’d have thought she’d want to follow in your footsteps,” Heqet said.
“Yellow is her favorite color.” Hyro held her arms to the side, opening her tunic before the console. “Kimye thinks the Jireni bianfu is too morbid.” Her resigned gaze fell upon Heqet’s belly. “You should thank Sha for granting you a boy. They’re such simple creatures. Girls are far more . . . challenging.”
Heqet chuckled. “Maybe your daughter will grow out of it.”
“One can only hope.” Hyro shifted her gaze to Daoren and narrowed her eyes. “Though I suspect her desire will only be strengthened thanks to her escort at the Librarium.”
“Who’s escorting her” Daoren asked.
“Your mother.”
It was his turn to chuckle. “She can be quite . . . persuasive.”
Cang edged forward and cleared her throat. “If I may, Unum. There’s something you need to see.” She placed a hand on the seated operator’s shoulder. “Call up the transmission and play it from the beginning.”
The operator swiped a blank screen on the right side of his console. Cang motioned to it while the Jiren input a series of commands. “The air-burst transmission you’re about to see was received by my district headquarters eight hours ago.”
“Eight hours?” Daoren asked. “Why didn’t you seek me out sooner?”
“A source of interference corrupted the transmission. It took two hours alone to decrypt the quantum data. My team only just finished the processing needed to render any of the qubits readable.”
“What caused the interference?”
“Sha knows, Unum,” Cang said. “I’m afraid most of the transmission couldn’t be recovered.”
The operator swiveled in his seat. “It’s ready, sireen.”
“Run it.”
The operator tapped the screen—a heavily pixelated image stream appeared. It captured an aeroshrike’s bridge.
The perspective suggested the recording had been made by an optical sensor mounted high on the aft bulkhead. Scattered consoles and Jireni filled the lower half of the screen. Missing image packets lent a stop-motion effect to their movements, but their looks of rising panic came through without distortion.
Daoren leaned in. Heqet followed suit. Beside her, Hyro folded her arms across her chest, back straight and stiff like she was preparing to absorb a blow.
On the screen, every Jiren shifted focus to the right, toward the bridge’s starboard bulkhead. Near the forward windows, roughly thirty feet from the sensor’s mounting point, two crew members pointed in the same direction. One of them wore a black bianfu with gold piping.
Daoren’s throat tightened. “Is that Pyros?” he asked, motioning to the figure.
“Yes.”
“And Radan next to him?”
Cang took longer to answer. “Yes.”
“What are they reacting to?” Heqet asked.
“You’ll see in a moment,” Hyro said.
The transmission’s stop-motion effect continued. A few more disjointed frames displayed, then—
Brilliant yellow light flared, emanating from an off-screen source. Within seconds, its intensity rivaled that of the sun. Pyros and Radan shielded their eyes, their movements jerky, before vanishing beneath the glare. The atrocious radiance faded as quickly as it began. The on-screen transmission went dark as the sensor adjusted to the new level. When the image stream resumed, Pyros, Radan, and the rest of the bridge crew hung suspended in mid-air. The aeroshrike was plunging from the sky.
Heqet gasped. “Oh my Sha!”
The stream pixelated and darkened. It didn’t resume.
Daoren exhaled a whooshing breath. The transmitted imagery was frustratingly vague, but one thing was certain; his Primae Jiren was dead.
He glanced at Cang. She’d served with Pyros for more than two decades. Radan had been her personal aide for years. If she felt any remorse for their passing—any emotion at all—she masked it well.
He would have preferred to grant her more time to absorb the shock, but the circumstances demanded expediency. “Based on this evidence, your temporary elevation to Primae Jiren is now permanent.” He extended his hand. “Will you accept the position?”
Cang grasped his hand without hesitation—or comment. They shook; one palm up; one palm down.
The gesture was the only confirmation he needed. He nodded at the console screen. “Is there anything else?”
“That was the only optical transmission received from the mission,” Hyro said. “Nothing was received from the other two aeroshrikes. We assume the same fate befell them.”
“But what triggered their fate?” he asked.
Cang and Hyro exchanged a guarded look. “We have a few theories,” Cang said.
2
In Transit
JULINIAN PEERED THROUGH the window’s transglass, nose close enough to the tempered pane to sense the coolness of the air beyond it. A rare moment of calm had descended upon the cullcraft’s control gondola, and she intended to take full advantage of the lull.
Two thousand feet below, an unceasing sea of sand shimmered. Rippling linear dunes stretched from north to south, mimicking the wave patterns along the shores of the Sea of Storms. The dunes had been molded over weeks or months or years by the prevailing winds. The sculpted expanse dwarfed all the dioramas ever rendered by Daqin Guojin’s artisans. All it took was a subtle change in air pressure.
She drew a deep breath and held it. Nature shaped things. Somet
imes, as illustrated by the wind-driven formation below, the results were beautiful. More often they were less attractive, especially when it came to humanity.
Behind her, a guttural curse disrupted the tranquility and underscored her point. An equally guttural voice compounded the disturbance. “About time you showed up!”
“Like you’ve never been late for a watch?” a mocking voice countered.
“Not as late as you, you fid!”
“Who are you calling a fid?”
Julinian exhaled. Her breath condensed on the window, forming a gray oval. She counted down the seconds to the inevitable.
Three seconds later, before the patch of condensate had time to evaporate, the sawtoothed rasp of ripping flexglass marked the inevitable’s arrival. An enraged shout followed. “My blouse!”
“Sha can hang your blouse! You should have relieved me twenty minutes ago!”
“I had to eat before I came on watch, didn’t I?”
“I’m starving, too!”
“You won’t be after you lose some teeth!”
Julinian pricked her ears, tarrying for the telltale thud of a punch. Her aural vigilance was rewarded a second later. A piercing shriek and a heavier thud announced a knock-out blow. She sighed and turned from the window.
A slight Indonoid-Caucasoid, all of one hundred pounds, stood over the prone form of a larger woman. The upright mongrel hiked her blouse’s torn sleeve. She hawked and spat on her unconscious crewmate, whose lineage remained a mystery thanks to her head’s angle upon the deck. “That’s what you get for tearing my blouse, you slaking cudd!”
Julinian chucklebucked. The smaller woman had spirit, she’d give her that. None of the other crew members paid attention to the altercation. They maintained their focus on the dozen consoles scattered about the cramped gondola.
Regardless of the cullcraft’s operational role, she wouldn’t insult a Jireni aeroshrike by calling the space a bridge. It encompassed half the volume and none of the design forethought. The consoles for sonic weapons and optical sensors occupied opposite bulkheads and lacked the air-links needed to share tactical data in real-time. The navigation console resided mid-deck, as any reasonable nav console should, but faced starboard rather than forward due to its proximity to the helm. With so many components added as an afterthought, it was a wonder that the systems functioned with any semblance of integration.
The sense of patchwork extended to the mongrel uniforms. Their bianfu comprised of quilted over-trousers and long-sleeved blouses, each fashioned in a different shade of gray flexglass. Their sturdy mid-calf boots ranged from black to brown to tan. When flexed, the footwear emitted an annoying squeak that reminded her of fingernails on spectraglass. Few wore the uniform’s heavier tunic.
Made from ashen burrglass, the thigh-length tunic was encrusted with black, toroidal links designed to disperse acoustic energy. Larger segments of flexible armor—the kind that absorbed kinetic energy—studded its shoulders and arms. Those who wore the garment looked twice as bulky, lending them the stature of an average Guojinian. The bulk came at a price, however; the tunic weighed upwards of ten pounds. For mongrels like the scrappy Indonoid-Caucasoid, that translated into a ten percent increase in body mass.
Julinian scanned the gondola, content to observe from a distance. She was still acclimatizing to the crew’s unpredictable behavior. In Havoc, the average mongrel had no difficulty sharing scant resources or sacrificing personal needs for the greater good. Onboard the cullcraft, their most selfish and territorial instincts came to the fore. It had to be the environment.
Unlike the crew on a Jireni vessel, the mongrels lacked a clear hierarchical command structure—and the discipline that extended from such. On an aeroshrike, a late arrival on watch would earn a reprimand from the commander, not a closed fist to the jaw.
Since their departure from Havoc an hour ago, she’d witnessed no less than five fights in the gondola. During the first scuffle, one mongrel had drawn his crystal khukuri from its belt sheath and held the curved blade to his opponent’s throat. No blood was spilled in that instance, but Sha only knew how many more fights had broken out in other parts of the vessel.
Two mongrels entered the gondola via its rear hatchway, taking little notice of the unconscious woman on the deck. Julinian felt an immediate flush of relief, coupled with cold pricks of irritation.
Such were the demands of this unique mission that thousands of marginally qualified shocktroops had been pressed into service. Few among the control-gondola’s crew fully understood their duties. Massum ili Mussam and Itta ala Atti were the exceptions, hence the relief. Their competence, however, had earned them the role of her minders during her stay in Havoc, hence the irritation.
Massum served as the fleet’s commander—if an assemblage of mongrel vessels could be called a fleet and be said to operate under the guise of command authority. Standing a middling five-foot-six thanks to a dense topknot of braided hair, the wiry Africoid-Asianoid was in his early thirties. By mongrel standards that made him middle-aged.
Life expectancy in their colonies was shorter than that in Daqin Guojin. Famine was more prevalent. Disease claimed more lives due to sub-standard medical knowledge and a lack of synthetic medication. Some soft-hearted denizens took pity. She wasn’t one of them. The mongrels made their choice hundreds of years ago to escape the edicts of the Cognos Populi and live free. A shorter lifespan and smaller physical stature were just two of the levies placed on their liberty.
Itta ala Atti served as Massum’s sub-commander. A Slavvic-Indonoid, she’d inherited the worst qualities of both lineages; an inflated sense of entitlement, and a cloying sense of inferiority. At twenty-three, she was young to bear the responsibility of command—even in a secondary role. She wore her mud-colored hair in two entwined braids that encircled her throat like a gleamglass scarf. In quieter moments, Julinian liked to imagine using the styling to throttle the life out of her.
During her nine-month residence in Havoc, Massum and Itta had been her constant companions. She’d taken to calling them Umbra and Penumbra—though not to their faces nor within earshot of another mongrel. They might have viewed the titles as derogatory—a slag against their lineage and skin tone, perhaps.
The titles had nothing to do with their appearance. Massum was her ever-present shadow while she transferred the specifications of the plasma-beam weapon to the colony’s technical experts, hence Umbra. Itta had monitored her as well, though to a lesser extent. Penumbra thus seemed a fitting appellation.
The pair paced forward and joined her at the forward window, boots issuing protests as they halted. As usual, Massum exuded the placid reticence he’d inherited from his Asianoid forebears. In contrast, Itta’s quick, cutting eyes never settled on a fixed point for long. She scanned the horizon beyond the window, shifting her weight from foot to foot and eliciting an irritating chain of squeaks.
“You seem nervous,” Julinian said.
“With good reason. An unexpected meeting with more of your aeroshrikes could put a rapid end to this adventure.”
Julinian suppressed the urge to slam Itta’s head into the window—she had to be careful to hide her true nature around the pair. “Did the display of the plasma-beam do nothing to alleviate your fear? When was the last time the mongrels destroyed three aeroshrikes in less than a minute?”
“Destroying three unsuspecting vessels from the ground is one thing. We’ve only retrofitted three cullcraft with the weapon system—and it isn’t as powerful.”
“Is it my fault you people don’t build larger aerostats?”
Itta’s jaw clenched. Her eyes flared. “You people?”
Massum raised a hand. “Your point is taken, Itta. It would have been better to retrofit every cullcraft with the technology so thoughtfully provided by Julinian alum Petravic. But it would have taken too long.”
“Thank you, Massum.” Julinian offered Itta her well-practiced version of a sincere smile. “I’d like to retake Daqin
Guojin before my youth fades.”
“It’s all about you, isn’t it?”
She tamped down her ire. Itta made up for Massum’s innate reticence by spewing interminable pronouncements and languid complaints as if she adored the timbre of her own voice. Not rising to meet her blather with scorn had become a daily ritual.
“Do you think Daoren will lead the defense from the wall?” Massum asked.
Julinian rolled her eyes, the reaction automatic. How many questions had she already fielded about the usurper? Massum’s minding duties had included daily queries on Daoren’s personality, mannerisms, habits, and more. “Sapient Sha, haven’t I already told you enough about him?”
Judging by Massum’s expression, the outburst surprised him. “Don’t Guojinians strive to know the minds of their enemy?”
She couldn’t prevent a smirk from stretching her lips. “We always discounted it because our enemy tended to be mongrels.”
The snide remark earned a snort of disdain from Itta. “You don’t care a whit for our people. You Guojinians never did.”
“That’s changed now,” she said, sensing the need for some bridge-building. “You need grooll for your starving people. I need to rescue my city-state from the vile usurper who culled my cousin and uncle. There’s no reason our interests can’t intersect and work to our mutual benefit.”
“Or our mutual destruction,” Itta mumbled under her breath.
Julinian grabbed Itta’s hand. She would have loved nothing more than to jerk the miserable cudd’s arm from its socket, but that joyful act would have to wait for another day. Instead, she led her to the gondola’s aft windows. Massum followed along, ever malleable.