by Mike Sheriff
She picked her way through the crates and examined the stenciled marking on one of cylinders.
NO-Flurane.
The nitrous oxide and flurane blend was used as a general anesthetic. She’d experienced its effects first-hand when her appendix was removed, fifteen years ago. The gas’ distinctive odor—and the headache it had induced upon waking from the surgery—seemed just as vivid today.
A grated ceiling vent whirred to life. Cordelia lifted her face to it.
Cool air washed over her skin. After twenty minutes of near-constant movement, it was a welcome relief.
She lowered her face after another few seconds. Her gaze again settled on the gas cylinders. They contained more than enough anesthetic to render unconsciousness in thousands of patients. She pitched her head back and thrust her arms into the air.
“You found something to celebrate?” Asla asked, joining her in the storechamber.
“I have an idea.”
“I’m all ears.”
Cordelia motioned to the cylinders. “What if we released all this gas into the ventilation system? Do you think it would be enough to anesthetize the Asianoids?”
Asla’s face scrunched as she pondered the question. “Possibly, but I have no idea how effective it would be in such a dispersed state.”
“The cylinders are pressurized,” Cordelia said. “And there’s only three floors to saturate.”
“Four, counting the sub-basement.”
“Regardless, I still think there’s enough to do the job.”
Asla glanced up at the ceiling. “Would we introduce it through that vent?”
Cordelia bit her lip. She couldn’t recall the density of NO-Flurane. “The gas might not filter down to the other levels. We’d need to disperse it from the pumping chamber.”
“In the sub-basement?”
“Yes.”
Asla grimaced. “So we’d have to get the huvvadolly down there without being detected. How do you propose we do that?”
“You and Kimye could transport it using the patient’s elevating chamber. I’ll draw the attention of the Asianoids.”
“How?”
“Let me worry about that.”
“Won’t we be anesthetized as well?” Kimye asked, lingering in the door’s threshold.
“Not if we’re wearing rebreathers,” Cordelia said. “There should be some at the emergency station next to the elevating chamber.”
Asla and Kimye traded dubious looks. Cordelia shrugged and raised her hands. “If either of you have a better plan, I’d love to hear it.”
The pair signaled a dearth of alternatives with two forlorn head shakes.
“Then let’s get to it.”
Cordelia left Asla and Kimye in the storechamber to extract the huvvadolly. She crossed the surgery chamber to the gray cabinet and snatched three scalpels from a drawer.
Each was housed in its own protective sheath. The crystalline implements were hardly a replacement for a dart gun or sonic rifle, but they could serve as defensive weapons if the need arose. She handed one to Asla and one to Kimye as they passed by. “Be careful,” she said to Kimye. “It’s very sharp.”
Kimye slipped the scalpel into her shenyi’s pocket. Asla tucked hers behind her waist belt, within easy reach. Cordelia stalked to the chamber’s opaque door and pressed an ear to its cool surface.
No sounds ebbed from the hallway beyond the door.
She steadied her breathing. Silence didn’t mean safety. For all she knew, six Asianoids could be lurking ten feet beyond the door, waiting to cull them on sight. The only way to know for certain was to open the door. She swallowed her angst. “Are you both ready?”
Asla and Kimye nodded.
Cordelia tugged the door open. She leaned forward and stuck her head across its threshold.
Twenty feet down the vacant hallway, the elevating chamber’s double-doors beckoned. Next to it, a red-tinted nook housed length of flexglass hoses, crystalline pry bars, and other firefighting equipment.
“All clear,” she whispered. “Let’s go.”
She led Asla and Kimye down the hallway. The huvvadolly’s directional varinozzles emitted sporadic huffs and hisses. Under normal circumstances, the emissions were no louder than a whisper. In the moment, they seemed as shrill as a shriek. The varinozzles fell silent again when they reached the double-doors.
Cordelia snatched three rebreathers from the nook. Each consisted of a rudimentary nose-and-mouth mask and a cylindrical oxygen candle. She tucked hers inside her tunic and hooked the others atop two gas cylinders. A push of a button opened the elevating chamber’s double-doors.
Asla and Kimye guided the huvvadolly inside. They turned back to her—worry lines inscribed their faces like the stress fractures in Rhyger’s Cliffs. “Tread carefully,” Kimye said.
“I will,” Cordelia said. “Make sure you empty every cylinder into the ventilation system at the same time.”
“We will,” Asla said, “and as quickly as possible.”
“Sha willing, I’ll meet you both in the pumping chamber afterward. If I don’t show up, stay there until nightfall and then make your way to Rhyger’s Cliffs.”
Asla’s eyes pooled. She started to speak, but her voice fractured after a few syllables.
“And when you see my son, tell him . . .” Her own voice crumpled under the emotional weight. She grunted to shore it up. “Tell him I love him. And tell him to kiss little Mako for me.”
Tears streamed down Kimye’s face. Asla wiped her own eyes. “Good fortune, Cordelia.”
The double-doors swished closed before Cordelia could respond. She waited until the chamber began its descent, then drew a deep breath and offered a petition to Sha. She had only one chance to get this right.
She pitched her head back and released a spine-chilling scream.
It resonated down the hallway. No sooner had it faded than a smear of distant shouts and footfalls arose. The commotion seemed to emanate from all points of the compass, growing louder with each passing second.
She assessed the closest threat-bearing and dashed in the opposite direction, heart scaling her throat with equal speed. Every fifty feet, more hallways branched off from her chosen path. She veered into the second one on the right and thumped to a stop. She held her breath and pricked her ears.
The clank of crystalline weapons joined the thud of rapid footfalls. The Asianoids were getting closer.
She released another scream and resumed her sprint. Another series of hallways cut across the route, but she didn’t deviate from her course. Not yet. She glanced to the right as she streaked through an intersection.
Five figures loomed fifty feet down the hallway. They issued a flurry of startled cries.
Cordelia lowered her head, legs and arms pumping, lungs burning. She reached the next intersection and pounded to a stop. She pivoted and fixed her gaze back along the hallway.
Fifty feet away, five Asianoids burst into view. They halted and raised their weapons.
She lunged into the adjacent hallway an instant before a chain of percussive reports rang out. Glass darts and sonic rounds sliced the air behind her.
She raced up the third hallway, streaking past closed doors. The next intersection lay more than one hundred feet away. She registered the distance and made two instantaneous calculations. She couldn’t reach it before her pursuers gained entry to the hallway. And she couldn’t outrun the projectiles that would follow once they did so.
She halted before the next door and reefed it open.
A recovery chamber lay beyond it. Twelve beds lined two walls.
She scrambled inside and closed the door, mindful not to slam it home. Its interior handle bore a privacy lock, praise be to Sha. She activated it.
The lock seated with a hollow clunk.
Cordelia bunched her shoulders and cursed the racket—it had surely carried down the hallway and signaled her location. She backed away from the door, listening for the sound of approaching footfa
lls. A subtle whir snared her attention instead.
Cool air wafted from two ceiling vents. The airflow doubled, then redoubled. A familiar odor reached her nostrils. . . .
She donned the rebreather and tugged the pin to activate its oxygen candle. She backpedaled, putting more distance between her and the door. She didn’t stop until her back hit the rearmost wall.
A sonic impulse hammered her ears. Fifteen feet away, the door’s lock exploded. A shower of glass fragments peppered the opposite wall.
A split-second later, the door swung open. Five Asianoids burst into the chamber.
Cordelia tugged the scalpel from her pocket. She stripped off its protective sheath and held it before her. The blade quivered.
The Asianoids glowered, weapons pressed to their shoulders, ready to fire. Several narrowed their eyes, clearly puzzled by the sight of a scalpel-wielding woman wearing a rebreather.
The oldest Asianoid stepped forward. His expression softened, taking on a piteous hue. “I want you to know I respect your courage.”
He exhaled and adjusted his aim; the sonic rifle’s bowl-shaped muzzle glinted. “And this culling isn’t personal,” he said, sniffing. “You’re simply on the wrong side of . . .” He sniffed twice more and rattled his head. “On the wong . . .” His eyes drooped as his body swayed back and forth. “On duh wong sssiii . . .”
The rifle slipped from his grasp and clattered to the floor. He slumped to his knees and flopped onto his back. The other Asianoids staggered and collapsed behind him.
Cordelia gulped oxygen like a fluid, each inhalation sucking the rebreather’s mask tight against her skin. She tossed the scalpel aside and snatched the sonic rifle off the floor. Her gaze fell upon the unconscious Asianoids.
Their relaxed faces conveyed a childlike innocence—as if they were incapable of doing harm.
Without pausing, she fired a sonic round into each of their heads. “Nothing personal,” she said, “but you took up arms against the wrong mother.”
She slung two more sonic rifles over her shoulder and exited the chamber. At least she wouldn’t be greeting Asla and Kimye empty-handed.
15
Remembrance
HAI MARCHED ACROSS the open square fronting the Assembly’s grand façade. A waning moon hung low on the eastern horizon, but the radiant stanchions along the square’s perimeter cast a lurid yellow sheen across the wide expanse of ceramic tiles.
The tiles beneath his feet had once featured a grand mosaic—one that glowed with iridescent glory at night. Daoren’s use of screw mines to unseat the former Unum had also unseated the oversized Imperial Regalia. Subsequent repairs had finished the entire square in ordinary white tiles, foregoing the original design and erasing the city-state’s debt to Mother China. It was yet another example of how his people’s stature had been diminished under Daoren al Lucien’s rule.
The more Hai thought about it, the more Daoren’s social reforms seemed to be aimed at sublimating Daqin Guojin’s founding lineage. He wouldn’t be the first Caucasoid to try. In his own way, the former Unum had represented a break from tradition; he’d subverted more than three hundred years of Asianoid rule. And look what that had cost in terms of stability.
Hai had no doubt that Julinian—an Eastern Caucasoid like her uncle—would have an equally disastrous tenure. The sooner an Asianoid led the city-state, the better. And if he should be fortunate enough to be that person, the better still.
If Min and Gan harbored concerns over his ambitions, they remained mute about it. They walked with him, albeit a full-step to the rear in deference to his age and his position as Trium. Primae Jiren Yaochin lagged more than twenty feet behind them—perhaps mired by the burden of her new position. Whatever the reason, it afforded him the space to speak plainly with his siblings. “My instincts tell me that Julinian won’t lift a finger to reinstate the S.A.T.”
“What makes you say that?” Gan asked. “She promised to do so.”
The shocking display of naiveté made Hai shudder. “It won’t benefit her position, but it strengthens ours.”
“We’ll have to do it on our own,” Min said.
“I agree,” Hai said. “And we’ll have to do more than rebuild the grooll mill and re-equip the Center to conduct the tests.”
“What more will we have to do?” Gan asked, still trailing the point of the conversation.
“As long as alternative food sources exist, the people will never accept the S.A.T.’s reinstatement. We must set about the destruction of every crop beyond the border, and every seed within it.”
Gan opened his mouth, but Min beat him to the response. “The crops will be easy,” he said. “Any that weren’t destroyed during the mongrel assault can be burned in place. The seeds will prove more difficult to eradicate. Aren’t they stored in different vaults throughout the city-state?”
“Unlike his secrecy regarding the grooll vaults, Daoren hasn’t been as cautious in protecting their location,” Hai said. “He issued a comprehensive list to the Assembly last month.”
“But aren’t the seed vaults under Jireni guard?” Gan asked.
Min harrumphed. “So was the border wall, yet we overcame that obstacle.”
“Indeed.” Hai glanced at Gan as they walked. “You’ll need to identify and destroy any relevant scrolls and data records.”
“Which scrolls and data records?”
He sighed—his youngest brother wasn’t the nimblest thinker in the family. “The ones that refer to food stocks, of course.”
“Those could number in the millions.”
He thumped Gan’s shoulder. “Then it’s fortunate you have so many people at the Librarium to assist you.”
They reached the far side of the square. Hai paused to let Yaochin catch up. Before she reached them, he leaned closer to his brothers. “Before this month is out, I want the notions of alternative food sources and seed vaults to return to the fictions from whence they sprang. I want Daoren al Lucien’s fabled new order to be nothing more than a transient anomaly—a wistful tale that mothers and fathers will tell their children in the years to come.”
Yaochin reached them a few seconds later, sweat-dappled and breathless. The ambient light lent her shining complexion a sickly pallor. Her wary gaze flicked from brother to brother as if she expected retribution for delaying them.
Hai flashed a reassuring smile. “You needn’t worry about us aiming a sonic rifle at you, Yaochin. We don’t share Trium Julinian’s flair for the dramatic.”
The best reply she could manage was a halting grin.
It boosted Hai’s regard for the new Primae Jiren. Under the fluid and chaotic circumstances, silence was the most intelligent response Yaochin could offer. “Could you secure us a levicart?”
“Where would you like to go, Trium Hai?” she asked.
“The Center.”
Yaochin’s sweaty brow folded in evident puzzlement. “What could be of interest there at this time of night?”
Hai masked his annoyance—he loathed having to explain himself. “I want to assess how far the structural engineers have progressed in the grooll mill’s dismantling.”
CANG HUGGED THE spectraglass façade and peered around the corner.
The transway ran due south for miles, cutting a one-hundred-foot swath through Zhongguo Cheng. Lofty administrative structures flanked it, each fronted by massive mauve columns, bulging corbels, and bas-relief entablatures. The adornments appeared untouched by the mongrel incursion’s violence.
She scanned for potential strongpoints and signs of movement, then backtracked fifty feet and rejoined her crew inside a gloomy alcove.
Crew served as a poor descriptor for the force she now commanded. Jiren Yongrui and Jiren Bhavya fronted five more Jireni; after the Slavv’s culling amid the dunes, they were the sole survivors of the mission to Havoc. In truth, Jireni also served as a poor descriptor. Like her, they now wore the mongrel bianfu.
They’d liberated the uniforms from the shocktro
ops onboard a bowpod. The assault craft had been destroyed by a thunder mortar, not far from the wall. The mortar’s massive overpressure had likely culled the shocktroops in an instant; it left no visible injuries except for the red-black sclera surrounding their irises. Their bianfu and weapons had suffered no ill effects.
The wall had proven easy to penetrate. The mongrels had stationed no shocktroops to guard against infiltration. It made sense—they wouldn’t expect their enemies to approach from the wasted northern desert.
Their lack of presence in the northern districts was more puzzling. Perhaps they hadn’t had enough time to consolidate their position and organize regular patrols. Perhaps their numbers were spread too thin after suffering so many losses. Whatever the reason, their level of alertness would no doubt be higher in Zhongguo Cheng. It was the seat of power in Daqin Guojin after all.
“The transway looks clear,” Cang said. “We’ll follow it south to the Center, then head east toward the Assembly.”
“On foot?” Yongrui asked, gesturing to the right.
A hundred feet away, a civilian levitran rested on another transway’s blue crystalline surface. They’d commandeered the ten-passenger vehicle in Nansilafu Cheng after traversing the cull zone. Its speed had enabled them to transit forty miles in forty minutes, albeit at considerable risk.
Sha’s good fortune had smiled upon them; they’d reached the outskirts of Zhongguo Cheng without incident. Since exiting the levitran, they’d heard the telltale whine of mongrel gyroblades passing overhead. So far, they’d seen none of the craft . . . or denizens. Judging by the deserted pediwalks and vacant transways they’d encountered on their journey south, a curfew must have been imposed throughout the city-state.
“On foot,” she said. “I’d wager we’ve pressed our luck as far as we dare with the levitran.”
The others voiced their agreement. She took comfort in their quick acquiescence—the Slavv’s culling had reasserted her command authority.
Their current mission was a simple one to accept; undertake a reconnaissance of the Assembly to assess the mongrels’ strengths and weaknesses. A secondary objective was to locate and establish contact with potential allies—whether they be ordinary denizens or fellow Jireni. The tactical tile in her bianfu’s outer pocket was tuned to an encrypted emergency frequency for that purpose. So far it had stayed silent.