by Mike Sheriff
“It doesn’t make him an enemy,” he said. “Besides, he’s from one of the city-state’s most respected families.”
“And one of the wealthiest.”
“Until grooll bartering was suspended,” Daoren added.
Heqet hiked her jars and leveled a dead-pan stare. “Exactly.”
He cued a response, only to have it interrupted by an approaching Jiren. The young Slavv halted a few feet away and came to attention. “Excuse me, Unum, but Commander Slabidan asked me to come find you.”
“Any word from Commander Cang?” Daoren asked. “Has she launched yet?”
“I do not know,” the Jiren said. “Commander Slabidan needs to know whether you want the watchtowers manned.”
Daoren’s gaze found the border wall’s upper battlement, three hundred feet above the cull zone. The watchtower to his front climbed another three hundred feet higher. Five miles to the east and west, two more gray columns sliced the blue sky. Their observation pods contained powerful optical and acoustic sensors, increasing the range at which an incursion could be detected. To man the thirty towers spanning the wall, Slabidan would have to task more than four hundred Jireni . . . and soon.
He nodded at the Jiren. “We’ll discuss it inside the outpost.”
The Jiren spun on his heels and joined the guards leading the way through the crowd. Daoren didn’t speak as he and Heqet walked in their wake, but each step forward brought a deepening sense of disquiet. He suspected the feeling wouldn’t ease until Cang’s mission headed north and found some answers.
CANG STEPPED OVER the aft hatch’s raised coaming and entered the bridge gondola. Black tinting infused its wraparound windows, lending the voluminous compartment a funereal quality. Twenty Jireni manned its scattered consoles; electro-optical sensors, acoustic sensors, air-link communications, navigation and maneuvering, ballast and trim, and damage control. Hushed pre-flight checks and status queries steeped the gloomy space in white noise. None of the crew noticed her appearance. “What’s our status?” she asked, tone sharp enough to pierce the burble of conversation.
Jiren Yongrui turned from his multi-screened nav console on the bridge’s centerline. He straightened his back and tucked his arms to his sides. “Commander’s on the bridge.”
The announcement silenced the bridge crew. They stiffened, sitting or standing to attention. Cang raised a hand to acknowledge the marks of respect. Technically, she should be addressed as Primae Jiren, but she had no desire to further complicate an already complex mission. “Status?”
“All positions are closed up and cleared away,” Yongrui said. “We’re ready to launch on your order, sireen.”
Her gaze floated past him and alighted on the forward windows, twenty feet beyond his nav console. A raspy breath caught in her throat.
Radan had stood in the same spot on Pyros’ doomed vessel. Aeroshrikes featured identical bridge layouts, making it easy for crews to transfer among different vessels. The familiarity sparked a searing pall of remorse. Leaden heat bloomed in her chest. It radiated upward, as viscous and choking as slag-hot smoke.
Yongrui’s eyes narrowed. “Ready for your order, sireen.”
Her throat pinched closed. She grunted to overcome the suffocating sensation, clawing for the simple command to launch the aeroshrike. A strangled clot of syllables was the best she could muster. “Ex . . . excuse me for a mo—”
She whirled and retreated through the hatch. The solitary waste chamber aft of the bridge was unoccupied, thank Sha. She lurched inside and closed its door, mindful not to slam it home.
She leaned on a hand basin, avoiding her reflection in the bulkhead’s polished mirror. The heat that had started deep in her chest reached her cheeks. A torrent of tears erupted, hot and stinging. She clamped her hand over her mouth to mute her sobs . . . and to suppress the urge to cry out Radan’s name.
The emotional upswell faded in less than a minute. Cang reached for a flexglass hand towel and dried her face. Nervous laughter pulsed from her mouth like compressed air escaping from a varinozzle’s relief valve.
She must be getting old.
Eight years ago, her husband’s death had prompted the requisite period of mourning, but not a single tear. Everything living died; it was a natural law as immutable and universal as gravity or quantum resonance. Why Radan’s death should prompt such an indecorous display of self-pity escaped her. It had to be hormonal; biology had a way of undoing the most well-ingrained habits, including reticence.
She folded the hand towel back over the handrail and flushed the adjacent waste basin. Negative-pressure airflow emptied the ceramic bowl’s water supply, the shriek amplified tenfold in the confined space. She made a mental note to use its evacuation to mask any future cries of remorse, should the need arise, and exited the waste chamber. She stepped over the hatch coaming and re-entered the bridge.
Twenty pairs of eyes fell upon her. Mid-deck, Jiren Yongrui and Jiren Bhavya traded wary looks from their consoles, unable to mask their concern.
“Forgive me,” Cang said, addressing the entire bridge crew. “I ate something earlier today that didn’t agree with me.”
“Do you want to retire to your quarters? I can take us out if you—”
“I’m fine, Jiren Yongrui,” she said, dredging up her most commanding timbre to settle the point. “But let’s see how good you are at launching an aeroshrike. You have control of the vessel’s movements for departure.”
Yongrui puffed his chest, eyes aglint. “Yes, sireen.” He strolled forward and took up position near the forward windows.
Cang choked down another upswell of grief. His position was inches from where Radan had spent the last minutes of his life.
“Helm, confirm all engines at idle power and airscrew pitch set to neutral,” Yongrui said, voice firm. “Give me ten degrees positive on the forward planes.”
“All engines at idle and airscrews neutral,” the helmsman responded. “Forward planes are ten degrees positive.”
“Detach mooring cables.”
A series of dull clunks resonated through the bridge. “Mooring cables detached,” another crewman said.
“Very well. Helm, set all engines to ten percent thrust.”
“Ten percent thrust all engines.”
Cang settled onto the raised chair next to the nav console—the commander’s chair, forbidden to everyone but her to use. Though the launch thrust was limited to ten percent in accordance with standard practice, its resulting acceleration was enough to press her into the chair’s flexglass padding.
She kept her gaze fixed on the nav console to her right rather than the forward windows; her phobia for heights was most acute near the ground. Once above two thousand feet, the angst tended to fade. It made little sense—her odds of surviving an emergency were inversely proportional to her height above the ground. But from two thousand feet and above, the Earth seemed more like an abstraction than a solid object. She shifted her gaze to Yongrui.
He remained in the same position, hands clasped behind his back, head swiveling back and forth as he assessed the ascent.
He reminded her of Radan—at least in physical form. Yongrui shared the same lean build and unblemished skin tone. His skull bore the same pleasant symmetry, lacking the severe angularity so many shorn scalps revealed. He rose onto his toes and leaned toward the window, scanning a ground-borne object off to the vessel’s starboard side.
Cang winced. She pictured Radan’s feet breaking contact with the deck at the moment his wounded aeroshrike lost its buoyancy. She imagined him thrashing in mid-air as the vessel dropped from the sky like a crystalline brick.
How many seconds had he endured that terror? Did he have the faculties to realize he was living the last moments of his life? Did he spare a final thought for her?
She pushed aside the harvest of bitter thoughts, only to have a fresh crop of questions fill the void. What mysterious force had brought down Pyros and his fleet? Was it an accident? A burst hydrog
en cell could have erupted into the fireball implied by the corrupted air-burst transmission. Or had a mongrel attack led to the calamity? And if that was the case, what kind of weapon could have produced such catastrophic damage?
“Commander?”
Cang snapped out of her mental fog. Yongrui now stood at his nav console, a few feet away. “We’re level at two thousand feet,” he said, a hint of concern coloring the report. “No close contacts besides Commander Eshan’s vessel. Shall I execute the flight plan?”
“Take us north.”
“Make your course true north,” he said. “Set all engines to fifty percent thrust.”
The aeroshrike steadied up on a northerly heading and accelerated. She lifted her gaze to the forward windows.
Ten miles beyond them, the Great Northern Border scribed an indelible line in the sand. Its gray-crystalline blocks and lofty watchtowers glinted.
She took a deep breath and made a solemn vow. If the mongrels were responsible for bringing down three aeroshrikes and culling Radan and Pyros, none of them would live long enough to lay eyes on the border wall.
HAI LEFT THE milling crowds behind and advanced along the vacant concourse, one thousand feet south of the wall’s cull zone. The concourse bisected two squat storechambers, each oriented along an east-west axis.
The one on his right belonged to a Slavvic family whose name escaped him. For as long as he could remember, it had housed crystal and ceramic abodewares. The other storechamber had been in his family for more than ninety years—one of six that resided in as many districts. For as long as he could remember, it had housed grooll.
He turned left and angled for its vaulted entrance. Bas-relief figures adorned the expansive frieze above the opening.
They captured the likenesses of his father, grandfather and other male ancestors dating back to 478 A.C.E. One day, his own likeness would be fashioned in white crystalline, the commemorative work commissioned by his brothers—should they outlive him. Sha willing, the fortunes of his family would be reversed before that sober occasion. He reached the entrance and passed beneath the lifeless countenances of his forebears.
Inside, an arched nave finished in sunglow tiles terminated at a nullglass door twice his height. He entered the passcode into its luminous keypad and stepped back while the door swung open on its massive hinges.
The familiar storechamber seemed all the more foreign thanks to its vacuity. Three opaque crates stood in single file in the center of the cobbled floor. They were as large as single-family abodes, but the emptiness swallowed and shrank them. Two smaller figures lingered before the middle crate. Both wore purple shenyi.
Hai paced toward his brothers, footfalls echoing among the crystalline cross-members that spanned the domed ceiling. Two hundred feet tall, two hundred feet wide, and two hundred feet long, the cavernous cubic had housed a portion of his family’s grooll supply for close to a century. For close to a century, abode-sized crates had filled the space to the cross-members.
Now only three remained. Each contained ten thousand pounds of grooll; the maximum allotment he and his brothers could retain under the Unum’s edict. The rest had been seized and spirited into secret vaults throughout the city-state as part of Daoren al Lucien’s so-called strategic reserve.
He reached the crates and greeted his brothers with a terse nod. Min and Gan didn’t deign to offer even that small gesture in return.
He cared little for either sibling and, so far as he knew, they cared little for him. He knew more about the Assembly’s newest members than the two men fate had made kin. Before Daoren’s ascent had upset the natural order, he’d rarely spoken with them. Now, their common interest made them necessary allies.
“Well?” Min asked. “What have you heard?”
It was natural that Min should speak first. The second-born took precedence over the third-born, and Gan knew his place. Eight years separated Hai from Min. Only thirteen months separated Min and Gan. They had their mother’s delicate physique, Sha rest her immaterial soul. He towered over them in the same way the Center dominated the heart of Zhongguo Cheng.
“Well?” Min prompted.
“Nothing yet.”
“Perhaps it isn’t happening today,” Gan said. “What if there’s been a delay?”
Gan had always been the biggest worrier—even before he’d lost his twin brother. The pair had inherited the trait from their mother, though in a purely genetic sense. She’d crossed to the Great After when Gan and Fan were only two years old, long before she had the chance to nurture the defect. Following Fan’s harvesting five years earlier, Gan’s tendency to fret had grown even more acute.
“If there’s been a delay, then we’ll bide our time,” Hai said. “This will only work if she’s coming.”
Both brothers lowered their heads and cast brooding gazes onto the storechamber’s floor. The posture was familiar.
“What troubles you?”
“We’re risking everything on the word of a Slavv,” Min said.
“That’s what troubles us,” Gan added.
Their meek demeanor rankled him, but he masked his ire. His ancestors had never retreated from the challenges they’d faced. He had no intention of breaking with tradition now.
Ten generations ago, his family had been among the poorest in Zhongguo Cheng. The introduction of grooll had changed that, but it wasn’t as if their social ascent was handed to them. Yes, they’d been allotted their ration based on their S.A.T. scores and subsequent vocation, but they hadn’t squandered the opportunity it presented. His ancestors had parleyed whatever excess grooll was left at month’s end into even more grooll. They did so through their labor, their vision, and their foresight. And they did it repeatedly, generation after generation. But no one had handed it to them.
And no one had tried to take it away . . . until Daoren assumed power. Hai had recognized his intention to do so during the ascension ceremony in the palace’s Hall of Mirrors. The grimace borne on the young Caucasoid’s face as he addressed the Cognos Populi, speaking of edicts for the greater good of the city-state, betrayed his true desire. He wanted to rob the Asianoids of their power.
Hai couldn’t let that happen. He wouldn’t let that happen. But to achieve his aim, he needed his brothers and their unwavering support. “You must commit your heads and hearts to this task,” he said. “Do you remember what this storechamber looked like when it was full?”
“Of course,” Min said.
“It will look like that again soon enough.”
“But how?” Gan asked with the same nasally whine he’d acquired as a child. “The Unum has locked away every ounce of grooll in his secret vaults.”
“He knows where the vaults are located,” Hai said. “It’s simply a matter of compelling him to divulge their location.”
“He’s also ordered the dismantling of the grooll mill.”
Hai nodded. The task was nearly halfway completed according to the latest report to the Assembly from the structural engineers assigned to the task. In another few months, the grooll mill would be a memory, its components cannibalized for other uses. “Anything he dismantles can be rebuilt.”
“I’d temper my confidence if I were you,” Min said. “The Unum enjoys widespread support among the people and the Jireni.”
“Hang his supporters!” he said, tiring of his siblings’ weak-minded vacillations. “They’ll be swept aside in what’s to come. Daoren al Lucien has disturbed the natural order, and we’re going to put it right. Once we’ve retaken the city-state, I promise you that he and Zhenggong Heqet will be the first to test the grooll mill’s inauguration.”
“If we can capture them,” Min added.
“I’ve already seen them today, here at the wall.”
“The Unum and Zhenggong are here at the wall?” Gan asked.
“Yes. Both of them.”
Min stroked his chin. He pursed his lips. “We hadn’t planned on that. We assumed he’d be at the Assembly and she at their
abode.”
“It changes nothing.”
“How can you say that? The strike teams are already pre-positioned.”
“And they’ll still follow the plan,” Hai said. “Except now they won’t need to capture Daoren in his chamber or Heqet in her parlor.”
After a moment of hand-wringing, Min and Gan nodded in unison. It signaled that further discussion was unnecessary.
“Go join your teams. I’ll contact you as soon as I hear from her.” He spread his arms and waved his brothers forward.
Min stepped into the embrace first. He leaned forward until his forehead touched Hai’s. “I am your brother.”
“And I am your brother,” Hai responded.
Gan stepped forward. Hai lowered his forehead and made the connection. After they exchanged the words of farewell, he watched his brothers march away. “Remember,” he called after them. “Sha favors the bold.”
The statement echoed through the storechamber. Once it had faded, he added a whispered coda. “And the merciless.”
5
Interference
CANG SHIFTED IN the commander’s chair, trying and failing to find a comfortable position. Long transits always made her restless.
On her earliest reconnaissance missions, back when she was new to the fleet, she’d taken to strolling the aeroshrike’s lower decks whenever she wasn’t at her duty station or studying for the vocational ratings needed for promotion. Pyros usually accompanied her whenever their off-watch periods overlapped.
Unlike scores of female Jireni in their cohort, she’d never shared a bed with him. Rumors abounded, of course, fueled by the time they spent together. But they’d never exchanged so much as a kiss.
Their relationship had always been more familial—like that of a brother and sister. He’d kept up her spirits when she encountered difficulty with the relative-velocity calculations required for multi-vessel maneuvers. She’d convinced him to stay in the Jireni caste when his young wife begged him to find a less risky vocation. Part of her still questioned whether the advice had been for his sake or her own.