Tilted Axis

by David Ryker

And then he paused, thrown by his own sense of security. It wasn’t right. He never felt right at times like this. It was impossible to, especially with everything that had happened so far.

  Ferlish was no doubt back from the desert and planning a contingency.

  Ward raced back to the edge and looked down over the city. The sentinels were still circling on the rooftop, but how could he be sure? How could Moozana?

  He felt the weight around his neck, a chain digging into his skin, the tombstone swinging off the side of the building as he looked down, the height in itself dizzying.

  He pushed back from the edge and made for the door, boots churning in the gravel under his feet.

  The elevator dropped through the floors, the cables spooling smoothly, and bottomed out, making the blood in Ward’s feet feel heavy.

  He stepped onto the street and into a slew of political chants. Banners waved and flags swirled in circles, streamers and confetti floated through the thick city air, hot with the presence of a million bodies.

  Ward swam through the river of sweat and elbows, brushing unfurling party horns over his shoulders as he did, his focus trained on the route to the final vantage point: the high roost with Chang coming head on.

  He paused for a second and looked over his shoulder, feeling eyes heavy on his back.

  He scanned the faces, watching beer spill from cups. Music laden with upbeat brass cut through the shouts and cheers. Someone stepped on his foot and ran their hands along his back as the people thronged around him. He barely felt it, keeping one hand against the butt of his pistol through the hem of his coat, his eyes like searchlights, resting on each face for a fraction of a second, crossing them out like names in a phonebook.

  After a few more seconds he locked his jaw, sucked in a deep breath, re-oxygenating his blood, and then pushed off again. He had every sentinel in the city on the lookout for him, and he was probably the only guy in twenty clicks not grinning. Chang’s return to the capital was the event of the decade. It was a party that was going to last for days.

  In the middle of all this mess, he hadn’t seen the city building up to the event. He’d been out at dawn or in the middle of the night, outside the city and the system. He’d escaped the normality of day-to-day life, and now, being plunged back into the city in daylight… It was painful. He couldn’t imagine being one of them — one of the people in the crowd.

  It was like they were a different species — of course, they were, after all, at least half of them. But that wasn’t what he meant. Martians. Humans. They were pretty much the same. Different bone structures, sure, different languages, but they still bled red, still had hearts pumping in their chests, brains firing in their heads, deluded with chemical concoctions into thinking life was just peachy. Dopamine. Serotonin. Oxytocin. The building blocks of happiness. Hell, if only they knew what really went on under that silky sheen of life. What happened behind closed doors at the buildings where the people who were supposed to keep them safe worked.

  Ward shrugged off the watchful eyes, loosened the chain around his neck, picked up the tombstone, and carried it forward.

  He knew the route, but took some loops anyway, cut back on himself once, ducked into an apartment building and let himself out the back, sprinted down an alleyway and ducked through the thickest group of people he could, but still, even with fifteen extra minutes added to his route, he couldn’t escape the feeling that someone was on him. He was a deer in the forest now, prey not predator, looking into the endless kaleidoscope of trunks and undergrowth, knowing that there was a set of teeth out there, hiding in plain sight, watching him, waiting for his guard to drop, and then…

  He scanned the rooftops as he went, closing the distance to the last building.

  He reached it and didn’t slow down. It was an office building. New. Glass all the way up. Flush, nearly, with just the thinnest creases at the window joins. The sun was hitting it, turning the whole thing a deep and icy blue. The sign over the door said ‘The Calarax Building’. The name of some rich guy, no doubt. Someone who built a building for the sheer pleasure of having their name on something that stood up straight when they no longer could.

  It looked new enough to be up to the latest safety codes, big enough to have at least two or three fire escapes. Plenty of ways out, and set across the length of a block — alleyways on both sides leading to a pair of wide roads, far enough from the procession that it would be a clean getaway — not fighting the crowds, but close enough that the sentinels couldn’t chase them down in cruisers without mowing down a thousand people.

  Ward looked up at it, thinking how good a spot it would be.

  He checked his watch. It was almost midday. Chang’s route would bring him through Xaraniah Square at about twenty minutes past. Ward had time. He softened a little, and then, like someone was slipping a blade between his ribs, he felt his leg start to vibrate.

  He pulled the communicator out, hoping that it was just someone calling the person that he’d stolen it from, asking where they were watching the procession from. Whose apartment were they going to afterward for a drink. Whether they’d remembered to bring buns for the street party.

  But it wasn’t. Moozana’s private number flashed on-screen and with a gut-wrenching sense of dread, Ward lifted it to his ear.

  “Ward, where are you?”

  “In front of the Calarax Building,” he said numbly, knowing what was coming next. His back was aching from the weight of the stone.

  “You need to get up there, right now,” Moozana said between ragged breaths. He was running. “The sentries missed their check-in. We can’t raise them. Ward? Ward? You hear me?”

  He didn’t. The phone hit the ground and bounced on the sidewalk, coming to rest in the street, Moozana’s tinny voice leaping out of the speaker embedded in the screen. Feet and legs swirled around the communicator like a maelstrom.

  But Ward couldn’t hear Moozana’s voice anymore. He couldn’t hear anything but the rushing of blood in his head. Couldn’t feel anything but the grip of the SIG Sauer in his hand, his feet pounding through the marble lobby of the building. The distant shouts from the security guard at the desk as he flashed by, vaulted the security gate and slid across the steel bag-search table.

  He landed, stumbled, and then kept running.

  29

  Ward threw himself into the elevator and hit the button for the top floor. The doors whirred closed sluggishly and the soft notes of music designed to kill the silence between strangers filled the air ominously.

  The box began to ascend, the cables reeling in quicker and quicker until the elevator settled into a steady pace, the floors churning by in a blur.

  Ward calmed his breathing, eyes closed, walking himself through the possibilities he was going to face when he hit the roof.

  Where would the shooter be? How was he going to take him out? Ballistic vest. Go for the head. Get it done, quickly. Out, circle the roof, find him, put him down.

  The doors opened and Ward shoved himself through the gap and onto the floor of an office. A golden sign was emblazoned on a white wall — three names all tied together over a white desk. There was no one manning it. The office had been shut down for the day due to Chang’s arrival. It was basically a national holiday.

  Ward pricked his ears and then shot forward across the reception area, pushing through the fire door and into a winding stairwell that dropped thirty stories straight to the ground.

  But he didn’t go down and swung left instead, heading up the stairs, following signs for the roof.

  He climbed two stories, taking the steps two at a time, his watch flashing in his peripherals as he did.

  A door swam into view. The words ‘Roof Access’ glowed above it in red. He dragged in long breaths, filling his chest and muscles with it, his brain dumping adrenaline into his body, filtering out the pain and locking it away in the deepest recesses of his mind. His eyesight closed down to a keyhole, magnifying what was in front of him, in his sphere o
f focus.

  The pistol felt light in his hand, the ridges and bumps under his fingers and palm tiny and intricate. He could feel every one. He was totally precise in that moment, his mind clear and ready.

  The door seemed to float toward him, his free hand reaching out, his body turned a quarter on perfectly, feet stepping over each other so that he’d be able to take a full step through and then sideways without turning or wasting an instant.

  And then it hit him, all but too late. The realization. All the pieces slotted together in the fraction of the moment between his hand pushing down through the handle and the doorward shoving him into the line of fire.

  It was Moozana. It was always Moozana.

  Ward’s eyes widened, the sunlight blinding him.

  Something flashed.

  His body twisted, his right hand surging pneumatically upward.

  The bullet hit, obliterating his arm.

  His hand sailed through the air, SIG Sauer still locked in its grip.

  Lubricant and impact jelly splattered the door on his right and the gravel under foot.

  Shrapnel tore into his coat, biting at his body, sinking into the ballistic vest, razor-sharp shards of metal teeth.

  The bang almost split his eardrums in two, the force of the shot blowing him off his feet. The noise echoed in the air and died. This high up, and with the din below, who knows if anyone would hear it. The sentinels would be paid not to.

  Pain rifled up through his arm, no more than a ragged stump below the elbow. Cables and snapped carbon-titanium tubes hung from the end like broken twigs, the braided muscle fibers like used paint brushes jammed in a dirty cup.

  He tried to breathe and found his chest wet and heavy. He could taste blood, feel it running over his face.

  He stared up, everything on his right side blurred and dark.

  A shape swam in the ether, coming into view, the long barrel of a rifle protruding into the sky, the muzzle smoking.

  The shooter, a tall Martian with a skinned head and heavy features, pulled back the bolt and ejected a spent jacket the size of a plum, fishing inside his thick, shoulder-padded coat for another shell.

  He pulled it out and jammed it into the body of the rifle, the dull thunk of it hitting the chamber like someone hitting an anvil with a hammer.

  He stepped slowly forward.

  Ward could smell blood now, feel his chest hot and sticky under his left hand, slowly spidering across it, crawling through the blood soaking his shirt.

  He tried to lift his other arm, to aim, point his pistol, still feeling it in his grip. But there was nothing there. His right arm raised, the frayed stump pointing harmlessly at the shooter.

  Ward could barely make him out, his teeth the only thing he could see clearly. Straight and pointed they seemed, like a snarling dog’s.

  Ward tried to pull the trigger anyway, his brain sending messages his severed arm couldn’t execute.

  The thought kept coming. It was Moozana. You stupid shit. It was Moozana, the whole time. It was all him. Ferlish Arza was just a pawn, a diversion. He was a smokescreen thrown up by Moozana. Every moment with Moozana that Ward tracked back through became absolutely clear now.

  The shooter slung the rifle over his shoulder, passing a thick strap over his head. The butt almost touched the floor, the barrel appearing over his head like the thin stem of a black wing.

  He was laughing.

  The noise echoed distantly in Ward’s head.

  He watched the shooter reach for a knife, dragging it out of a sheath on his hip. It was shining in the sun, long and serrated.

  Moozana had set him up, one final time. He’d put him on the case to begin with, waiting for an opportunity to disguise the kill. Hell, he’d even made Ward beg for it. He’d set it up for Ward to be the one to ask. To tell Moozana to put him on it. How could he have not seen it?

  And Erica… He’d had it wrong. She’d said that it was a punishment… To be stuck on him. He’d thought she was lying, that she’d asked for the assignment. But she hadn’t. Moozana had stuck her on Ward knowing they were going to get taken out. Knowing that she’d be killed along with him. But why? Ferlish. Ferlish Arza. That was why. Because when his daughter turned up dead with Ward, he’d be distraught. Vulnerable. Moozana could spin it however he liked. Make it seem like it was Ward’s fault. He could make Ferlish hate the AIA, the Thessaly Treaty… Turn him against the idea of a united Axis. Offer him an alternative… Jesus, that was it. He was going to kill Erica and use her death to recruit Ferlish Arza into whatever the hell secret sect he was a part of.

  Moozana had sent the sentinels to Ootooka’s cyber clinic to do the job. He’d had them waiting there to do it, except they’d missed.

  He’d sent Sadler’s replacement, the second shooter, to the port when Ward and Arza had gone through the checkpoint to try and finish the job.

  He’d cleaned out the shooters' hideout.

  He’d tipped off Fairbright that they were coming.

  He’d been looking for them before they left for Aeolus, keeping tabs on every way off the surface.

  And he was the one who told the Defense Committee, told Ferlish Arza about Fairbright, to cover his tracks the moment that he knew Ward and Erica were headed there.

  He must have convinced Ferlish that Ward needed killing, told him where to take him, out into the plains.

  He got rid of Sadler’s body, too, killed the coroner to stop Ward from finding anything else his investigators might have missed.

  He was the one who did it all.

  And he’d told Ward the last shooter was dead.

  But now here he was, standing in front of him, knife in his hand, ready to carve Ward up.

  How hadn’t he seen it? How could he have missed something so… Obvious. He cursed himself, his ghost-hand still fanning the trigger on a pistol that wasn’t there.

  His breathing was labored now, the force of the shot had winded him badly, broken some already fragile ribs, punctured a lung maybe. It was hard to say. Everything was hurting, his arm screaming at him so loudly that he was barely clinging on to consciousness.

  He should have figured it out the moment that he realized his accounts weren’t frozen. Why would they have been? Ward wasn’t on an arrest-on-sight list. As far as anyone else thought, he was already dead and Moozana didn’t want to draw any more attention to the fact that he wasn’t. Everything had been off-the-books. His arrest, the kill room out in the plains. Moozana had passed the whole thing off as above board and made sure none of it could be tied to him.

  Hell, the footage Ward sent him had never even seen the light of day. The sentinels on the rooftops weren’t there for Chang’s safety, they were there to set Ward up, to get him to come here, to this moment now, to burst through that door thinking he was about to save Chang, when really, he was running right into an ambush.

  There were no sentinels even up there. It was just the shooter, set up with his finger on the trigger, the rifle pointed right at the only door onto the roof, waiting for it to open. All Ward needed was a little push.

  The shooter knelt in front of Ward now, out of arm’s reach. He was broad, with pointed cheekbones and dark eyes, his skin mottled with scars. A merc, through and through.

  “You know,” he said in a voice barely above a growl. “You’ve been a real pain in someone’s ass.” It sounded to Ward like he was underwater. Maybe his eardrum was punctured.

  Ward smiled through bloody teeth and then spat a thick chunk of crimson into the shooter’s face.

  He laughed and wiped it off. “I can see why.”

  Ward coughed and stared over his head into the featureless blue sky. At least it was a nice day to die.

  “Told me that if the shot didn’t kill you, to send a message.”

  The shooter reached forward and pushed the knife into the space between Ward’s collarbones. He felt the tip through the vest, diging into his skin, but it didn’t cut the material.

  Ward wondered abjectly wh
at the tensile strength of the vest was. How much of the bullet it had stopped. How many fragments had gone through. How long he’d take to die. Whether it would have been better to let the bullet hit him square on and not have to endure some sort of boring monologue and torture session. It was the talking he was dreading the most. Just get it over with, he wanted to say. But there was nothing in his throat except blood.

  He could feel something hard between his teeth and wondered if one of them had come loose or if it was something else.

  The shooter dragged the blade down Ward’s chest and over his stomach. The pressure made him hurt.

  His shirt fell away in two halves and he looked down at himself, covered in blood, his entire body a scatter graph of shrapnel shards. Blood was coming out of some, oozing and squeezing through the vest. Others were just sticking up like metal splinters, catching the sun in a funny way.

  The shooter looked at his handiwork, unhurried, admiring the force of the shot. The power of the rifle. It had blown straight through Ward’s arm and a ballistic vest. And he’d seen what it’d done to Sadler, too, from two clicks out — made mincemeat of her insides.

  From this distance, nearly half of what Sadler had been hit from, Chang wouldn’t stand a chance from a direct hit.

  Ward swallowed and his throat folded up inside his neck.

  The shooter reached for his shoulder and roughly tugged at the strap there, unhooking it without any concern for how much it was hurting Ward.

  He gritted his teeth, flecks of blood flying into the warm air.

  The vest came away, along with some of the shards, and Ward’s cut up body exposed itself to the sun.

  “Looks nasty,” the shooter chuckled, forearm on his knee, blade hanging loosely in his fist.

  Ward looked at it, summoning the strength he had left.

  His one decent hand found the small of his back and pulled.

  His own knife came around and stopped in the air.

  He was going for the throat.

  His brain took a second to realize that his arm was being held in place and not moving.