by Mike Sheriff
“I . . . I think so,” she whispered. “Are you—”
Blood-curdling screams cut her off. Daoren whirled to the cries.
Blinding flames enveloped the watchtower’s severed base. The aeroshrike’s crumpled framework draped the wall, its nose and tail sections sagging over the southern and northern parapets. Jireni stumbled away from the inferno, bianfu ablaze.
He gripped Heqet’s shoulders. “No matter what happens, stay here!” He addressed the guards. “Don’t leave her side!”
He sprinted up the walkway and reached a handful of Jireni tending to the wounded. He kneeled beside one of them, hand raised to block the heat radiating from the watchtower’s base. “Where’s Commander Slabidan?” he asked.
“Under that,” the Indonoid Jiren said, motioning to the heart of the pyre.
The wounded Jiren grabbed Daoren’s sleeve. The Asianoid couldn’t be more than twenty years old. Charred skin sagged from the left side of his face, oozing scarlet rivulets. His exposed cheekbone glistened amid the gore. “Where . . . where . . .”
The stench of scorched flesh filled Daoren’s nostrils—he suppressed a gag. “Lie still, Jiren. Lie still.”
“Where did . . . where did the mongrels get such a weapon?”
His eyes stung, red-raw. “I don’t know.”
“Daoren!”
Heqet panicky voice drew his attention back to the southern parapet. She whipped her arm back and forth, waving him over. He left the dying Jiren and dashed back to her. She pointed down at the cull zone. “The Asianoids have reached the wall!”
Before he could respond, Commander Hyro sprinted over from the northern parapet. Her expression carried the crushing strain of ill news.
“Have the mongrels reached the wall?” he asked, knowing full well they had.
Hyro’s eyes glimmered and welled. “They have, Unum.”
A chill crested on his skin. Three hundred feet below, the mongrels and Asianoids were consolidating their forces. If they used the elevating chambers, they could reach the battlement in less than a minute. If they ascended the stairways, it would only take a few minutes longer.
He surveyed the battlement’s battle-scarred defenders. They’d need ten times the number of Jireni at hand to fend them off. The coordinated attack on two fronts had turned the tide. He glanced at Hyro and Heqet and saw the same bitter conclusion inscribed on their ashen faces.
The battle for the northern border was over.
“Is this the end for us?” Heqet asked, voice quivering.
“No,” he said. “But we need to regroup and rearm. We’ll blend in among the denizens, then choose our moment to strike back.” He grasped Hyro’s shoulder. “Issue the order to evacuate the wall.”
Hyro sucked a whistling breath, but recovered quickly. “Do you have a rally point in mind?”
He’d already pondered the need for a fallback position before ascending to the battlement. A place that was difficult, but not impossible to access. A place where the city-state’s vast network of monitoring sensors couldn’t reach them. A place where the approaches could be monitored in every direction. “Rhyger’s Cliffs,” he said. “In three days’ time.”
Despite the ruinous turn of events, Hyro somehow conjured up a smile. “I couldn’t have chosen a better location.”
Heqet’s brow crimped. “I hate to point out the obvious, but thousands of people down below want to cull us. How are we supposed to reach to Rhyger’s Cliffs from here?”
Hyro took her arm. “Let’s discuss this on the march, shall we?”
She led them away from the burning aeroshrike, the six Jireni guards in tow. Two hundred feet down the battlement, they reached a circular nullglass hatch, five feet in diameter and set flush among the walkway’s crystalline tiles. A keypad glowed on its face.
Hyro kneeled and entered a passcode. One of the guards levered the hatch open, revealing a set of switchback stairs.
Heqet raised her eyebrows. “Stairs?”
“An evacuation shaft,” Hyro said.
Heqet glanced at Daoren. “Did you know about this?”
“It was part of my briefing when I assumed the duties of Unum.”
One of the more detailed briefings, in fact. The Great Northern Border served as the principle line of defense against mongrel incursions. Its designers had done everything in their power to make it impenetrable, but they didn’t lack imagination.
They’d foreseen the possibility of the border being overrun and recognized that those high upon the wall might not welcome the idea of becoming trapped behind enemy lines. The evacuation shafts were the solution. Each was sealed from lateral entry by three-foot-thick crystalline walls. Only two access points existed; one atop the wall, and one twenty feet below the wall. Each shaft comprised thirty flights of stairs and three hundred-sixty steps in total. It wasn’t an easy evacuation, but it was an evacuation nonetheless.
“Can you manage the stairs?” Daoren asked.
Heqet’s hands fell upon her bulging belly. She sighed. “Do I have a choice?”
“No, you don’t.” He turned to the Jireni guards. “Escort the Zhenggong down. I’ll join you in a moment.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’m staying here with Hyro until the wounded are evacuated. Wait for me at the bottom.”
Heqet rushed forward and threw her arms around him. Her belly complicated the embrace. “Don’t keep me waiting too long.”
“I’ll be down soon,” he whispered. “I promise.”
“You’d better be—or I’ll come back up and drag you down.” She leaned in and kissed him. “I love you.”
“And I love you.” He nodded at her guards. “Go!”
They descended the first set of stairs with Heqet situated in the middle of the line. Daoren lingered until they were out of sight, then pulled the quantum tile from his pocket.
He had ill news to pass along to his mother.
12
The Enemy Within
CORDELIA CROSSED THE deserted nave and exited the habitation complex. Asla, Kimye, and Divlin were already waiting for her at the base of its steps. “Any stragglers?” Divlin asked.
“It’s all clear. Anyone left in the other complexes?”
“The registers indicate the living spaces are empty,” Asla said.
“Good.”
Cordelia descended the steps and surveyed the grounds. Besides the half-dozen habitation complexes used to house students, the nearby structures included an immense geodesic messing facility and a domed medical infirmary.
The messing facility could feed thousands per sitting, but its triangular transglass panes revealed no occupants. The infirmary attracted scores of visitors on any given afternoon. Today it appeared vacant. Every denizen and Librarian had been relocated to the Void.
She pointed at the infirmary. “We should secure some medical supplies. There’s no telling how long we’ll have to hunker in the Void.”
“Excellent idea,” Divlin said, rubbing his temples. “I could use an analgesic to take the edge off this headache.”
They followed the ceramic-tiled pathway leading to the infirmary. They were twenty feet from its soaring spectraglass entrance when Cordelia noticed something odd. She halted. “Bide a moment.”
“What is it?” Asla asked.
“Do you hear that?”
“What?”
“How quiet it’s become up north.”
Asla cocked her head. Her eyes widened above an expansive smile. “The incursion must be over!” She pulled Kimye into an embrace. “The Unum and your mother have beaten back the mongrels!”
Kimye beamed, even as her face flushed crimson from the vise-like hug. Divlin let out a boisterous whoop, his elation amplified by the infirmary’s vaulted entrance. Cordelia’s heart swelled. She was about to offer her thanks to Sha when a gnawing unease seized her focus.
The relative calm might indicate another outcome; the mongrels might have won the day.
&nb
sp; “Perhaps it’s best not to tally our blessings before we know they exist,” she said.
“But we must have defeated the mongrels,” Divlin said. “It’s unthinkable to imagine otherwise.”
“There’s one way to find out.” Cordelia reached into her pocket for her quantum tile. It vibrated as she extracted it. The name on its screen triggered a smirk. “He could always read my mind.” She tapped the screen to make the connection. “I was just about to—”
“We’re evacuating the border,” Daoren said, words spilling out of the tile. “The mongrels and Asianoids have reached the wall.”
The unthinkable statement provoked a foreboding shiver. “The Asianoids?”
“Masses of them hit us from the south. They’ve allied with the mongrels to carry out a coordinated attack.”
Divlin paled. Asla’s hand streaked up to her mouth. Kimye tugged Cordelia’s sleeve. “My mother?”
“Commander Hyro is fine,” Daoren said, apparently overhearing the question. “And so is Heqet. Once we’ve collected the wounded, we’ll make our way to the rally point.”
“Where’s the rally point?”
Daoren went silent.
She guessed the reason. “Can you broadcast it over this tile?”
“I’m not sure this connection is secure.”
“Can you give me a hint?”
“It’s where I broke my arm when I was nine.”
She knew it well—Rhyger’s Cliffs. “When will you get there?”
“No later than three days from now. Where are you?”
“At the medical infirmary near the central habitation complex.”
“Listen carefully. I want you to—”
Five percussive reports blotted out his voice.
Cordelia flinched at the din. A split-second later, five objects whizzed past her, each emitting a high-pitched crack. The quantum tile seemed to bite her hand and leap from her grasp.
Divlin screamed. Asla and Kimye joined him moments later. Cordelia blinked, struggling to make sense of what she was seeing.
The fluted ends of three glass darts jutted from Divlin’s chest. He collapsed to his knees and slumped forward. His body landed beside her shattered tile. Its glass screen bore single hole, the width of her index finger.
She spun around to trace the source of the darts.
One hundred feet away, six Asianoids cradled six dart guns before the messing facility. Each wore purple sashes on their shenyi’s sleeves. They sprinted closer.
Cordelia snatched Kimye’s collar and dragged her toward the infirmary’s entrance. She reached for the door’s handle. Slag-hot pain radiated from her right hand the moment she grasped it. She shrieked and yanked her hand back.
A circular wound marred her palm, the width of her index finger.
She gasped and turned the hand over.
A jagged exit wound revealed shattered bones and shredded tendons.
Nausea welled up and washed over her. A glass dart must have passed through her hand when the Asianoids fired their volley. Her vision diluted to a gray-white smear and her knees buckled. Were it not for her grip on Kimye’s collar, she would have dropped to her knees.
“What’s wrong with you?” Asla asked, breathing down their necks. “Get inside!”
Cordelia swallowed a clot of rising gorge and willed herself to stay conscious. She lifted her wounded hand to Asla’s face. “I . . . I can’t open the door.”
Asla’s eyes bulged. She reached around Kimye and reefed the door open. Her vigorous shove forced them into the infirmary’s empty nave. She slammed the door closed behind them.
A ripple of percussive reports rattled the door’s translucent spectraglass pane. A volley of darts transformed it into a million dazzling fragments.
Cordelia shielded Kimye from the airborne shards. Beside them, Asla stumbled backward and thudded onto the floor. “Are you hit?” Cordelia asked.
Asla examined her torso, mouth twisted with shock. “No!”
“Why are they trying to cull us?” Kimye asked, clutching at Cordelia’s tunic.
Cordelia had no time to ponder the answer. She glanced at the shattered door. Its missing pane allowed a clear view of the pathway leading up to the infirmary.
Six armed Asianoids reached Divlin’s body. Two of them hoisted dart guns to their shoulders.
“We have to go, Asla!”
“Where can we go?”
Two percussive reports hammered Cordelia ears. Two crackling darts streaked past her head and smashed into a tiled wall located to the nave’s rear.
“Anywhere but here!”
Asla scrambled to her feet and dashed for one of six hallways leading out of the nave. Cordelia shoved Kimye in the same direction and followed as fast as her legs could carry her.
JULINIAN WADED THROUGH piles of mongrel bodies, one hundred feet north of the wall. Massum walked beside her. The absence of weapon firings made his silence even more pronounced.
They’d moored the cullcraft fleet—what remained of it—two hundred feet from the wall, electing to cover the remaining distance on foot. Only thirteen of the vessels had evaded destruction during the final assault. Out of the sixty-one crews that had taken to the air from Havoc this morning, four-fifths hadn’t survived to witness the fall of Daqin Guojin’s northern border.
Not that she minded their absence—or the tens of thousands of shocktroops who’d died within sight of the objective. She’d needed the mongrels’ superior numbers to take the city-state. She didn’t need them to hold it. En route to the wall, they’d overflown scores of fractured bowpods and gyroblades. The destruction of so many assault craft was a far greater loss; she could have put them to good use in the coming days and weeks.
Fifty feet from the archway, they passed a bowpod whose port sidewall had been blown off—most likely by a sonic round from an aeroshrike’s point-defense turret. The exposed crew compartment held one hundred dead shocktroops. They slumped in their suspended seats, lifeless hands dangling inches above the craft’s buckled deck plates. The identical postures and body armor made it impossible to distinguish their gender.
The morbid sight compelled her to speak—if only to portray the pretense of humanity for Massum’s benefit. “At least they didn’t suffer.”
“So far as you know,” he said. “Though suffocation doesn’t strike me as a pleasant way to die.”
He had a point. The round’s blast wave would have destroyed their lungs, but it may not have rendered them unconscious. It depended on the length and strength of the pressure differential. “We can only hope that brain swelling hastened their passing.”
Massum grunted. Julinian left him to his thoughts as they passed beneath the wall’s archway, electing to savor the moment instead. Walking beneath the gray crystalline blocks, shrouded in shadow, felt like a rebirth. She’d left Daqin Guojin eight months ago—perhaps overflying this very archway—to pursue Daoren and his vile crew of dissenters. Back then, she was a member of the Assembly, known throughout the city-state as the Unum’s niece and the Unum Potentate’s cousin. Now she was about to return as Julinian the Conqueror, no longer defined by her familial relations. Free of their shackles, she felt weightless.
After another twenty feet, she exited the archway and planted her feet on the cull zone. She’d expected to see a sterile expanse of white-crystalline tiles. The vision before her triggered a full-throated gasp.
A few hundred feet to the west, the collapsed watchtower’s fractured detritus covered thousands of square feet. Huge blocks of nullglass—some as big as private abodes—were scattered as far south as Nansilafu Cheng. Anyone caught beneath the tower when it fell would have been smashed beyond recognition. Above the debris field, the instigating aeroshrike’s structural framework hung from the wall’s southern parapet. Its mangled cross-members still smoldered in places.
As she absorbed the devastation, a small group of armed Asianoids approached from the same direction as the debris field. “Do you know these m
en?” Massum asked, hands tightening around his sonic rifle.
“One of them.”
The Asianoids took their time reaching her and Massum. Hai al Kong halted the group. He shouldered his sonic rifle and raised a hand in subdued greeting.
Julinian paced forward and embraced him. She felt his body stiffen beneath her arms—Hai wasn’t one for overt displays of affection—but to his credit he didn’t pull away. She released him and leaned forward until her forehead touched his. “Survival through sapience, Hai.” She pulled her head back and chuckled. “Forgive me, Trium Hai.
“And to you, Trium Julinian,” he said, taking a half-step backward. “I trust you had a pleasant journey.”
“And an even more pleasant arrival. All thanks to your plasma-beam weapon.”
Hai’s eyes brightened as he cast his gaze upon the aeroshrike draping the wall. “I’d like to review any imagery you captured during its use. It could help me refine its characteristics and improve its effectiveness.”
She stifled a laugh. Hai never strayed far from his technical vocation—even when fighting for the future of the city-state. She gestured to Massum. “This is Massum ili Mussam, leader of the mongrel faction.”
Hai snapped a stiff nod, more curt than courteous.
“And this, Trium Massum, is your best friend in all of Daqin Guojin,” she said. “Allow me to introduce Hai al Kong, leader of the Asianoid faction and the genius behind the plasma-beam technology.”
Massum’s acknowledgement was equally cool. The two men stared at one another, unblinking, before Julinian broke the impasse. She grabbed their hands, bridging the divide. “This is an auspicious day, my friends. Here we are, the triumvirate that will lead the people out of the darkness, standing upon the cull zone in broad daylight.”
She cast her gaze to the south.
One hundred assault craft—a mix of bowpods and gyroblades that had survived the battle—idled upon the cull zone’s southernmost boundary. The intervening glass tiles bore sporadic craters channeled by kinetic and sonic rounds. Aside from the watchtower’s debris field, the damage was a thousand times lighter than that inflicted on the wall’s northern approaches. So, too, were the number of dead.