by Baen Books
"You trust them? You trust that they're going to change?" Sati looked like she wanted to spit.
"After that fireball landed on China, I think we have to reevaluate everything we thought about the Jao," Vikram said. "If they were right about the Ekhat, if they fought to prevent that and to defend us—the Earth—then they're not the absolute monsters we thought they were."
Sati looked at Vikram, and after a moment gave a slow nod. "I wouldn't say that to Father—at least, not yet—but I won't say you're wrong, either. But that doesn't make them gandharvas."
Vikram snorted. "No, they're not angels. Not by any stretch of anyone's imagination. But everything I've been able to find out about the Ekhat tells me that if there are rakshasas in the universe, if there are devils at all anywhere, they are Ekhat. Therefore, if the Jao stand against them, we must stand with them. Imagine what would have happened had the Jao not been here when they came."
"But what does that have to do with your leaving school?" Sati demanded.
Vikram began running his finger slowly around the rim of his whisky glass again.
"Have you read the Bhagavad Gita, Sati?"
"You know I have. We read it together when we were kids."
"Have you read it lately?"
Sati sat back and crossed her arms. "What does that have to do with anything?" Vikram said nothing, just kept moving his fingertip in circles. "All right, yes, I read it again a couple of years ago. I was going through a cultural identification crisis, or something, and was binge reading the entire Mahabharata and some of the Rig Veda."
"Do you remember how Lord Krishna counseled Prince Arjuna that as a prince, it was his duty to take to the field of war for the sake of his people?" She nodded. "Even the Jews and the Christians know this," Vikram said after a moment, "those that know their own scriptures anyway. 'It was the time of year when kings went out to war,' " he quoted.
"What are you saying?" Sati asked, leaning forward again so her eyes could bore into Vikram's. "Are you . . . you are, aren't you? You're going to join the jinau! Why? Because of some three-thousand-year-old book of epic poetry that glorifies death and destruction?"
"No," Vikram said. "What did Great-Grandmother Laksha call Shiva?"
"Lots of things," Sati said.
"I remember them very clearly," Vikram said. "She never used the good names, only the dark ones, and she would invoke them every time I broke something.
"Vajrahasta . . . "
"The holder of the thunderbolt," Sati said.
"Tripurari . . . "
"The destroyer of the Tripur."
"Which are?" Vikram pressed.
"The three planets created by the Asuras," Sati responded slowly.
"And Sarveshwara . . . "
"The scorcher of All." Sati's face was adopting a grim cast. She obviously suspected where Vikram was heading with that.
"Do not the Ekhat match that?" Vikram didn't press his claims. Sati could see the parallels with the recent solar plasma attack as well as he could.
"I won't argue that," Sati said. "But what does that have to do with leaving school and joining the jinau?"
Vikram spun his com pad around and pushed it toward Sati, tapping a node as he did so. Small holograms sprang into being projected above the surface of the pad. One was a representation of a statue of Shiva, with two legs and six arms, two of which were wielding swords and the others of which were holding flames. The other was an image that had been retrieved from a recent news release about the Ekhat, showing an adult in a leap, with six legs spread wide and two things that looked for all the world like sabers leading the way. The physical differences between the two images were many, but there was a certain resonance between them. It had shaken Vikram when he first compared them. He could tell that it shook Sati now.
After a moment, she tapped the node on the pad, and the holograms winked out. She pushed it back to Vikram.
"Why . . . " she said, her voice filled with emotion. She paused to clear her throat, then looked back at her brother. "Why you?"
"The counsel to the prince."
"But you're not a prince!" Sati hissed, reaching across the table to grab his hand so hard that Vikram could feel her fingernails gouging into his skin.
"Am I not?" Vikram said softly. "Our family outright owns one of the three largest business conglomerates in India. We are the second largest landholders in the country. We employ the third largest number of employees. Our security staff is larger than some countries' armies. There are more Ph.Ds and D.Phils on our payroll than most universities' staffs contain, than many countries contain. Our R and D budgets are larger than a good many countries' GNP. We are one of the largest and wealthiest operations in the world. And I am the eldest son of the family. Am I not a prince, Sati?"
Sati looked down and released his hand, shaking her head. She wasn't denying his claim, Vikram knew. She was rejecting what he wanted to do. He paused, then said, "Remember what Krishna told Prince Arjuna toward the end, the line that the American scientist quoted about the testing of the first nuclear weapons?"
"I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds," she whispered, looking back up at him with a stark expression on her face.
"To fight world scorchers, we must become world destroyers, I fear. I have spent weeks digging out as much information as I can about the Ekhat, and we will have no choice. It is destroy or be destroyed. I can do this. I can bring this to the jinau. I can bring this to the alliance. For our people. For India. For Earth."
For all that he was Brahmin in heritage, at that moment Vikram felt he had the soul of a kshatriya, a warrior in the model of the historic Rana Sanga. After a moment, his mouth quirked. If some of the family legends about Great-Grandmother Laksha's mother were true, there probably was some kshatriya in his bloodline.
Sati said nothing, but Vikram could tell by the desolate expression on her face that she had accepted what he was saying. He gave her a lopsided smile.
"You'll have to take my place, you know."
"Me?" The desolation was replaced by surprise. "What do you mean?"
"As heir apparent to the kingdom, I mean. You'll have to switch to an econ track and train to take over the leadership of the business."
"I was supposed to be the technical lead," Sati protested.
"Pffft," Vikram said with a wave of a hand. "Let Sovann take that." His reference to one of their brothers brought a bit of a smile to her face. "He's pure technocrat. You, on the other hand, despite your technical leaning, will be a better business leader than I would have been."
"Father will have a coronary," Sati said after a moment.
"Perhaps," Vikram replied with a grin. He waved a hand again. "Which is why I will not tell him until after I have joined the jinau."
"Coward."
"Pragmatist," Vikram corrected.
"He will erupt," Sati predicted.
"Undoubtedly," Vikram agreed. "Which is why you, my brilliant sister, will remain here in England until the ground stops trembling and the lava ceases to flow."
"He will accuse me of complicity."
Vikram shrugged. "Tell him the truth . . . that you didn't find out until right before I did it, and you couldn't change my mind. Blame me. He'll get over it."
Sati reached out and took his hand again; gently, this time. "Do you have to do this?"
Vikram just looked at her, his head tilted a bit.
"All right," she surrendered.
He turned his hand to hold hers for a moment. "I'll call when I know where I'm going to be. Close up my apartment for me, please." He pulled a key out of his pocket with his other hand and laid it on the table.
"You're going now?"
Vikram shrugged, and gave her that quirky smile again. "Decision made—time to act."
He stood and pulled Sati to her feet to give her a hug.
"You'd better call me," she said, her voice muffled against his chest.
"I will," he said.
Vikram released his
sister, held her hand for a moment longer, then scooped his com pad up off the table and headed for an outer door.
Sati dropped back down into her seat. After a moment she picked up Vikram's glass and downed the last of the whisky, shuddering a bit at the heat of it. She was running her finger around the rim of the empty glass when a waiter appeared with a food plate.
"Umm . . . "
"Vikram had to leave. Just leave it here. I'll take care of his tab," Sati said. "And I'll have another of whatever he was drinking." A few moments later, another whisky glass appeared at her elbow as she nibbled desultorily on the fish and chips.
Sati spent a while thinking about what her brother had said, and considering, despite Vikram's assurances, what her father was likely to say. The level of whisky in the glass dropped. Sati wasn't ordinarily a Scotch drinker, but this was starting to grow on her.
Neil McLeod bustled back into the room from the other direction and dropped onto the chair next to hers, reaching out to snag a few chips from the plate.
"Hi, Sati. Where's Vikram?"
"Gone for a soldier."
Rock, Meet Hard Place (Part 1)
by Peter Nealen
Jimunaizhen, North China
“Target is moving.”
I took my hand off the sand sock that I had crammed up under the bolt gun's buttstock and picked up the phone. “Roger,” I said, holding it up to my face, without taking my eye off the scope. Cell phones, even in this shithole, got lost in the traffic a lot more easily than tac radios.
“You know, I think I am going to get that Maserati,” J.D. said. He was sitting at the table beside me, his own eye on the spotting scope. “It's just nicer than the Beemer.”
I shook my head a little, without taking my cheek off the rifle. “Dude, you're Stateside, what, four weeks out of the year? When the hell are you going to drive the damned thing?”
“Hey, I've got a really small window to convince the high-end chicks that I'm the heat,” he said. “The fancy car is a shortcut. Stateside women are all gold-diggers, anyway. This way I get to be picky.” He laughed. “Besides, what else am I going to spend the money on?”
He had a point. I honestly didn't know what my bank account looked like at the moment; I hadn't been home in over a year. I was probably relatively rich. Our employers certainly paid well enough.
The equipment we were using kind of highlighted just how much money they were willing to throw around. I was sitting behind an AX50 rifle with an MP-7 PDW lying on the table next to me. J.D. was sitting behind a top-of-the-line Zeiss spotting scope, with his MDR bullpup leaning against the cinder block wall next to him. There were tens of thousands of dollars' worth of weapons, optics, and comm gear crammed into our little hide site.
Ten years ago, we never would have been using this stuff. Even when working clandestinely, where being seen means compromise, we'd still use mostly local weapons and gear. There was always that unlucky time where you get spotted, and if your kit looks like it doesn't belong there, people start digging. It screws with the deniability our employers prized so highly. Back then, you simply didn't see high-end gear in Xinjiang, much less high-end Western gear. But our employers had been funneling so much hardware into North China for the last decade that the only ones who weren't using NATO equipment anymore were the North Chinese People's Liberation Army itself, which was increasingly outgunned by the Triads in the east and Al Qaeda and their affiliates in the west.
“I think I've got the target,” J.D. said, suddenly all business, his eye pressed to the spotting scope. “Three Yongshis passing the stadium; looks like one's a gun truck.”
I shifted my position to bring the big sniper rifle to bear, peering through the scope. Sure enough, there were three of the boxy SUVs driving past the soccer field, which J.D. had generously called a “stadium.” I didn't need to pick them out of traffic, either; out here in Bumfuck, Xinjiang, right across the border from Bumfuq, Kazakhstan, most traffic had been reduced to mule carts. The only other cars on the road were going to belong to the PLA, the Russian Mafia, the local Communist Party boss, or the Uighur militias that were getting a lot of support from AQ.
Helpfully, the target had a North Chinese flag fluttering from his antenna. The Commissar was the target; we weren't getting paid any extra for killing his escort, and clearing them out meant staying in place longer than I cared to.
The North Chinese had put enormous amounts of resources into fortifying and manning the DMZ along the Yangtze. It seriously dwarfed the standoff between North and South Korea, and rivaled the Great Wall itself. But they had used so much of their precious resources and manpower that the border with Kazakhstan might as well be wide open. So, naturally, our employers used that border to bring most of the disruptive stuff in, where it was sold to militias, organized crime groups, and whoever else might give the Reds heartburn.
At least, it may as well have been wide open, with the border guards waving convoys of trucks through while they counted the bribes the lead driver had handed over, until this little prick had come out and started getting efficient. He'd had an entire platoon of border guards shot the first week he'd been out on the border, and it had gotten a lot harder to get the goods over the line. So we'd been called in.
I already had the range marked, so I didn't have to do any range estimation. The vehicles were moving, though, so I still had to lead the target. I took a deep breath and let it out, settling into the gun, my finger already taking up the slack on the trigger as I searched the darkened windshield for the shape that would be the Commissar in the back seat.
He wasn't in the back seat, I realized suddenly. He was riding shotgun. So much the better, then. I had to shift my position a little, to get solidly behind the weapon as I got my lead, breathed one more time, and squeezed.
I've never shot a .50 that didn't feel like getting punched in the face when it fired, and the AX was no exception, even with the enormous muzzle brake that did a pretty good job of attenuating the recoil. The rifle bucked bruisingly against my shoulder, and I lost the sight picture momentarily.
J.D. hadn't, though. “Good hit,” he said. “Took old boy right in the face. Hello, twenty-five grand.”
“Time to go, then,” I said, kicking back the chair I'd been sitting on and pulling the rifle back from the mesh-draped window. I had nothing against the Commissar's guards, and any further shooting was just going to draw them like flies anyway.
I hastily shoved the AX50 into its drag bag and slung it on my back, scooping up my MP-7 and making sure I hadn't dropped anything else. J.D. had already shoved the spotting scope in his day pack and slung his MDR. “After you,” I said, pointing to the stairs. The mesh over the window could stay where it was. Taking it down was too likely to attract attention.
J.D. headed down the stairs, as I pulled the phone out of my pocket and sent a pre-loaded text to Ivan and Carlos. “Done,” was all it said. They'd know to break down and head back to the safe house.
J.D. and I moved down the dim, dirty stairwell, J.D. keeping his rifle up as we moved. I took up security on the second floor landing as we passed it, letting him cover downstairs and to the front.
We burst out of a back door into an alley, where a dirty Dongfeng pickup was waiting, with Sergei sitting behind the wheel. I shoved the drag bag into the back seat and climbed in after it, while J.D. got in the front. Sergei already had us rolling by the time the doors slammed.
I'd taken the back for a reason; I had the MP-7, which was going to be a lot easier to maneuver if I needed to shoot Sergei in the head. Sergei was a Kazakh; he was also a brodyaga for Nursultan Kunaev, the mob boss who ran a cut of every smuggling route that came over the border near Lake Zaysan. Kunaev was a bastard's bastard, but Sergei, though quiet, had been a pretty good dude, so far. I'd still kill him in a heartbeat if I thought he or his boss were going to sell us out, and I was sure he'd do the same to us, but as long as our money was good, we'd get along fine.
He didn't drive for th
e border, but headed south, out of Jimunaizhen. We had our own little border crossing a few miles away, near Shali Haji, courtesy of our pal Kunaev.
Once we were out of town, I dug in my kit and came up with a pack of Sobranie Black Russians and a lighter. I rolled down the window a little before lighting up; J.D. didn't care for the smoke, but I needed some nicotine after that. I still didn't relax, exactly, as I puffed on the harsh cigarette, but then, I probably hadn't really relaxed in at least six years. You don't tend to relax much when you work for the kind of people we work for.
“You know,” J.D. said, turning halfway around in his seat, “there are a lot more pleasant ways to kill yourself than smoking those nasty fucking things.”
“I know,” I replied. “I contemplate them every time you start hounding me to quit smoking.”
He laughed, and we lapsed back into silence, hands on weapons and eyes out the windows, scanning the fields around us. We sure as hell weren't going to talk about anything more than banal superficialities around Sergei.
The border crossing was pretty straightforward. Hell, until our dead friend the Commissar had shown up, we could have just used the main road, the North Chinese border guards having been paid off handsomely to look the other way. We had to be a little bit more careful now, and the river crossing had needed to be concealed, but we still got across without too much trouble, and in a few minutes we were in Kazakhstan and making tracks for the safe house.
The safe house was an old farm out in the weeds; Ul'ken-Karatal was way too small a town for a bunch of strangers not to stand out like a sore thumb. Fortunately, there were enough ethnic Russians floating around that we didn't stand out like we might have in the Middle East. Granted, Carlos was brown enough that he might raise eyebrows; Kazakhs don't look much like Mexicans.
Sergei trundled the Dongfeng up to the whitewashed farmhouse and stopped with a squeal of brakes. J.D. and I piled out, dragging our gear with us, and I dropped an envelope fat with rubles in Sergei's lap. He picked it up, rifled through it, gave me a gap-toothed grin, and ground the pickup's gears into reverse before pulling out and leaving.