Exordium

by Tyson Jordan

  I swung my feet over the side of the bed and hissed as I tried to stand. My leg burned fiercely from the knee to the hip, and my thigh was embedded with a series of circular injection sites, precisely placed. Argenta shook her head at me and stated, “There were multiple fractures throughout your body. While unconscious, you were well-acquainted with a bone mender. You should not move.”

  In disdain, I frowned and forced myself to my feet, still leaning heavily on the narrow bed. My head pounded ferociously as my vision blurred then focused then blurred again. In a dry voice I muttered, “How did we get here? Wherever here is?” Argenta was about to respond when a gruff voice interjected from the far side of the room.

  “You are more than fortunate to be alive, Fortuna. The destruction of the Mirakind facility was far from subtle, and upon hearing of your insubordination, I dispatched Guild Sentinel Ceres to retrieve you and Argenta. You are in the Bastion, and have been here for three days.” It was Ferric. He limped forward, giving most of his weight to his cane. The events of the preceding night came to me, and I remembered Janus, silent and solemn, departing with Vaelryk and Nyrvanna.

  “Do we know where he is? Where’s Janus?” I demanded, and Ferric gave no reply. I swore loudly, and turned my attention to Argenta, crying out, “This is your fault! If you hadn’t tried to fight a goddamned Gamma on your own, then none of this would have happened and—”

  “Enough, Fortuna. Our enemies are innumerable, and still you would attack your allies?” Ferric’s command took hold of me, but I did not apologise. Argenta remained aloof, and I glowered at her, furious.

  “In spite of your disobedience, that night was not a total loss. The sample that you retrieved remained intact, and has been analysed, courtesy of Sentinel Ceres.” Ferric beckoned her to join us, and she complied. She had cut her blonde hair much shorter than it had been in the Guild, and her green eyes seemed to shine more brightly for it. She looked at me, barely clothed and undignified, with a glimmer of frustrated recognition.

  “This reagent you found in the Mirakind facility is an additive, something that has found its way into the algae fields used to feed the Teem.” The Guild Sentinel spoke confidently, displaying the same vial that we had retrieved from the laboratory. In spite of the fire in my leg, I listened intently, my vision focused on the intense yellow of the sample.

  “What is its purpose?” Argenta asked. Her attention too was fixated on the vial. It was more than curious how the simple opaque yellow within seemed so otherworldly.

  “I’m getting to that; be patient. Consuming the tainted algae has a bizarre effect on people—it’s something I haven’t seen before, at least not in this way. As far as I can see, Erdechildren can’t metabolise it efficiently, so it builds up throughout the tissues, particularly the brain. Following that, people start exhibiting signs of Affliction, even though there are no Malinvicta nearby.”

  “In short, the Teem is a growing infestation.” Argenta spoke flatly, and I scowled.

  I felt my blood run cold at the thought of hundreds of thousands of refugees becoming afflicted, becoming willing servants for the Malinvicta, and I gritted my teeth, forcing the thought out of my mind. It was immediately replaced by the thought of Janus rising to his feet slowly and obediently, enthralled by Nyrvanna and prepared to do her bidding.

  “So what the hell are we supposed to do now? We torch the algae fields? We let everyone in the Teem starve to death? Those are the only options?” My anger could not be contained, and Ferric shouted me down.

  “Your anger is no option at all! Now is the time to think, and carefully consider our next course of action! You are a Guild Sentry now, not some child having a tantrum!” The old man was correct, and his words left me subdued.

  “But all those people in the Teem, they—” My tone shifted from anger to doubt and compassion, and the Centurion before me remained unmoved.

  “Enough! I refuse to listen to the incessant wailing of a boy! With every outburst you shame yourself, the Guild, your comrades, and the memory of your father!”

  I was shocked into silence, and I could not bring myself to look my teacher in the eye. I could feel them all staring at me in judgment, and my only hope was that their staring would soon end.

  “Sentinel Ceres, can you identify which Mirakind facilities are responsible for the mass production of the reagent we obtained?” Argenta broke the silence with her unaffected speech, and I was, for once, grateful to her.

  “Thankfully, yes. For the moment, only those facilities operating in close proximity to the Teem are involved in its production.”

  “How many are there?” I asked, dreading the answer.

  “Oddly enough, time is on our side. The algae samples I analysed show that this chemical has only found its way into the fields for a month, perhaps two. There were two facilities in close enough proximity to the fields to deliver it, one of which you already destroyed.” The physician sighed in relief. The destruction of one remaining centre, in spite of what we had sacrificed for the first, was attainable.

  “Time is not on our side, Sentinel. Our enemy understands our course of action now, and will accelerate production, not only in the remaining facility but in every possible agricultural operation. It will not merely be the Teem that will be afflicted; soon it will be all of us.” Ferric’s words were made more sickening by their obvious truth. The algae fields of Grand Ocean were the only feasible means of producing food for the billions of Ocean Dwellers, Bra’ Hca, and what few remaining Erdechildren there were. If we lose them … we lose the War. I nodded in begrudging acceptance of this fact and retrieved my sword from its resting place against the wall, ignoring the pain in my leg.

  Argenta began speaking in an ominous tone. “There is also the matter of Sentry Janus Baskervor. If he has indeed been afflicted, then—”

  “Then nothing! We kill the whore who has a hold on him, and then he’s back to normal. Problem solved.” I was quick to interrupt her, and she gave a derisive look.

  “Your simple optimism aside, you must be aware that if he is afflicted, then he will willingly provide Nyrvanna and Vaelryk with whatever information they wish for, both tactical and technical. Should we encounter him, he must be terminated.”

  I could feel my hand tighten reflexively around the hilt of my sword, and bared my teeth. Ferric ended the argument before it began.

  “The future of the Guild and the citizens it protects means far more than your friendship, Fortuna. Argenta spoke correctly—if you should encounter former Guild Sentry Janus Baskervor in the future, you are ordered to kill him.”

  The silence came again, and I could feel the oppressive looks of Argenta, Ceres, and Ferric upon me. I muttered, “Understood,” and remained in silence from then on, knowing with no uncertainty that I would refuse.

  35

  Forgiveness

  The Destrier ’s heavy and redundant shielding had suffered only superficial damage in the explosion that had reduced the Mirakind facility to rubble and cinders. It rested, complacent, at the base of the Bastion in one of the many empty repair bays.

  I sat in the cockpit, running various diagnostics on the ship and seeking out whatever distraction I could find. I almost wished that the Destrier had suffered greatly so that I would have far more to do, but the ship flew without complaint, while the remaining particle weapons, navigation instruments, and life support systems were more than prepared to function. Only the active light refraction system was nonfunctional, and repairing it would require talents and facilities far greater than what I could offer. Gareem had completed his task superbly.

  I thought back on those past short weeks to our time in the Guild, seeing Janus and Gareem holding each other tightly in the docking bay. For all of his exasperations, Gareem was nonetheless a moral and loyal man, wholly committed to his cause and his family. Even though the Mirakind facility’s destruction was common knowledge at this point, I wondered if anyone had told him about his nephew.

  I doubl
ed forward in the pilot seat and held my head in my hands. The events of the assault took hold of me, and I was overtaken by a raw surge of anger and sorrow. It would not be stifled, and I began pounding my fists against the low ceiling and consoles before me, feeling my father’s judgment again. My fury only magnified, and I howled.

  “Having a bad day, are we?” I heard a dry voice from behind me, and I turned in my seat. It was Gareem, standing near the ship entry. In guilty embarrassment, I slowly nodded. My stomach turned cold as he climbed aboard and leaned back in the navigation chair.

  “I … I don’t know what to say.” My voice was a barely audible whisper, full of shame and doubt, and the engineer propped his feet up on an inactive console. He peered at me for a moment with tired eyes and seemed to see little of interest.

  “Kid, I know what happened to him. I flew down here—without permission, of course,” Gareem smirked, “once I heard the news about that manufacturing plant you destroyed.”

  “We built a bomb, and it … it all went so wrong. Janus, he …” My voice was louder but I could not organise my thoughts. I felt a hand rest lightly on my shoulder, and it calmed me.

  “Listen to me, kid. My nephew understood full well what the risks were when he signed up for the Guild, and I respected that wish. I’m not a child, and as awful as it is that things worked out this way, I won’t blame you for any of this.” The old engineer’s words were deliberate and calm, and I felt a terrible burden lift.

  “That being said, I do have a problem with you. Your actions are extreme, Zircon. You bounce back and forth between being totally stoic to an emotional wreck. If this keeps up, you’re going to absolutely destroy yourself. So why do you do it?” I had no meaningful answer to offer him, and Gareem pressed on all the same.

  “Is it your father? Are you trying to be like Cobalt Fortuna? Are you trying to be what you think he wanted for you?” The sound of his name shamed me, and I bowed my head. As before, I had no answer that I could give.

  “Listen to me, Zircon, and listen good. You may not like hearing this, but it has to be said all the same. Your dad was not the legendary hero that the Guild has made him out to be.”

  I protested against Gareem immediately, arguing, “He saved millions of lives on Rck’ Hara! He drove back an entirely army of Malinvicta on his own! He saved my life; he—”

  Gareem interjected all the same, and spoke in a soft voice. “Yeah, your dad did those things, and I’ll give you that. But you know, your dad was also a mess—on the inside, I mean—and I’m more than a little worried that he passed that on to you.” The Ocean Dweller’s grip on my shoulder tightened.

  “What?” I had no concept of what Gareem was saying. I had studied the many exploits of my father, his unyielding ferocity on Rck’ Hara, his invincibility in the face of an unstoppable evil. The thought of Cobalt Fortuna somehow being vulnerable was incomprehensible.

  “I knew your dad probably better than anyone back in our day, except maybe one or two people. Cobalt was a conscript, you know? He didn’t volunteer for any of this. All he ever wanted to do was go back home to Erde and his girlfriend and his old job as an industrial chemist.”

  “My father was a … conscript? He was a chemist?” The vision of the green knight standing in a sterile laboratory, surrounded by bubbling reagents and glassware, was impossible to me, and my face showed it.

  Gareem laughed at my disbelief and continued. “I can tell you all kinds of things about your dad, you know. As a person, I mean—not as Guild propaganda. He was a hard man to know, but he and I had more than a few good chats all the same.”

  The Ocean Dweller’s face fell then, and he spoke in a worried voice. “Things started going wrong for him, like it does for all of us in the War. Difference was, for all of that impossible strength of his, Cobalt was one of the weakest people I ever knew. Personally weak, I mean. He couldn’t cope with loss, so he just turned angry and cold and more violent with every passing day. He thrived on it, you know. The violence.”

  I could hear the howling warrior of my nightmares again, and I thought of my father in the street with the Alphas, smiling widely. I knew that Gareem was correct, and I let him continue.

  “By the end, he was such a hollow man. I felt sorry for him, I really did. He left nothing in his wake but death, Zircon. He did what he wanted, when he wanted, without any care for those around him. When I heard that the Mirakind facility was blown up, part of me honestly thought that he was still alive. It was exactly the kind of stunt that he would have pulled during his time, orders and care for innocents be damned. He was a man consumed.”

  “No one helped him?” My question was simple but charged with meaning, and Gareem shook his head.

  “I tried, but he was damned proud and wouldn’t listen to me. My brother tried too, and almost got through to him. In the end, it just didn’t work for him, though. He wouldn’t let it work.” Gareem’s voice was heavy with sadness, but with new resolve he continued. “But you need to hear this all the same. Your father is gone, kid, but you have a choice to make, like he did. You always have had a choice. You don’t have to be like him. It’s better if you’re not.”

  With that, the Ocean Dweller rose from his seat and clapped his hand on my shoulder before leaving the Destrier , leaving me alone but forgiven.

  36

  We Prepare Anew

  Argenta soon entered the Destrier calmly and sat in the navigation chair. My jaw tensed at the sight of her there, but she paid me no mind as she crossed her lap with the sheathed Engeltrane , its red hilt lightly charred, and began initialising the various systems of the ship. I followed suit, understanding that she had formulated another plan, although I did not know her exact intentions.

  “In spite of our current state, we are nonetheless fortunate. Our enemy is a poor tactician.” A small smile crept across her face, and I quirked an eyebrow in reply.

  “The Mirakind facilities represent a centralisation of resources. Now that we have destroyed the first, only the matter of the second remains, at least for the moment. Its destruction will prevent the Affliction of further refugees and, with time, the Teem may be liberated.” She was correct, to a point, but there were nonetheless problems that needed to be addressed.

  “We need to hurry, then, because that centralisation of resources won’t last long. Vaelryk and Nyrvanna know our plans, and they’re going to do everything they can to protect the remaining facility. Following that, they’re going to expand elsewhere and then,” I clenched my fists in anger at the thought of Janus, forever locked in servitude to Nyrvanna, “nothing will have changed.”

  “We are strangely in agreement. The second facility will remain under much closer guard than the first, and we are only two Sentries, which is to say we are woefully under strength.” Deftly pressing keys on her console, Argenta downloaded a schematic of the second Mirakind facility from a Guild archive, its architecture simple but ominous like the first. A holographic projection emerged before us, and we studied the building intently, hoping to see some weakness to exploit.

  It was a pyramid, an older structure than the modern spire we had left in ruins, and its architecture was foreboding. It was inelegant, overbuilt, and reinforced throughout to the point of redundancy. Upon a glance, the facility was clearly impregnable.

  Immediately exasperated, I muttered, “So what are our options, then? We can’t exactly work our way down from the roof again, or just walk in the front door either, and if the Destrier couldn’t level the tower on its own, then there’s absolutely no way it can destroy this place. There aren’t any capital ships in Grand Ocean’s orbit either, and even if there were, it’s not as if we have the authority to call down an orbital strike.” The fortress continued to shine before me in silent mockery, and I scowled. Maybe Ferric could call in one of the two capital ships from Rck’ Hara? I wondered.

  Argenta was as focused as ever, her green eyes reflecting the blue light of the schematics, and she interlocked her fingers benea
th her chin. She paid my objections no mind, and I sighed in loud impatience. Then a glimmer of inspiration flashed in her eyes, and she stated, “We do not need to infiltrate this facility to destroy it.”

  “What? How?” My mind was still somewhat fixated on the prospect of an orbital strike, a shining beacon of violet death raining down from the sky and obliterating the pyramid entirely. I shook my head again, knowing that such a thing was not possible for too many reasons to count.

  “This facility is geared much more heavily towards manufacturing than the first, and considering the number of chemical reagents it regularly consumes, it requires a great deal of access to waste treatment facilities, as well as other chemical manufacturers.” Argenta gestured at twin networks of pipes that ran under the pyramid and branched out in two directions, one for intake and the other for waste output, and I began to see her meaning. She expanded the holographic projection, focusing on the underbelly of the pyramid, burrowed deeply into limestone bedrock and surrounded by the sea.

  “Given the magnitude of this access network, the underlying stone for the facility has been compromised in several locations. Properly synchronised explosive charges in key points beneath the structure should prompt its collapse.” The thought of the facility crumbling beneath its own weight and drowning in the coming flood was an encouraging one. Argenta’s plan was plausible, and as I had no alternatives to offer, I agreed.

  Together we traced pathways along the hologram’s underside to find a suitable point of entry, and we came to the same conclusion. The sewage systems found beneath the Teem were linked to those of the Mirakind facility, and in the heart of the slums there was an access point.

  37

  Offer of Support

  A sense of responsibility and invigoration filled me then, and we debriefed with Ferric before our departure. He gave us his approval, again because we had no other meaningful options to take, and chastised us anew for our earlier efforts. His words were harsh, yet offering further punitive measures was not possible, for there were none to replace us. I started the engines of the Destrier , feeling them roar in loud appreciation as we left the confines of the repair bay.