His transport approached Nephesian on the planet’s dark side, so the great ivory city-ship, nearly four kilometers long and half as wide and deep, stretched out in shadow across the sky like a cylindrical moon, pricked with thousands of tiny lights emerging through portals from bow to stern. Hadeed could not make out the details of Nephesian’s colossal engine array through the pitch darkness, but he knew the legendary ion scoops were there because they blotted out the stars. The ship seemed to stretch into forever, just like the wide open plains of Kundun as Hadeed stood upon the yellow mesa and reflected on his destiny. But there, at least, he saw hope of a better tomorrow, a chance for victory – even if nothing more than the product of a wild imagination and bountiful delusion. The Nephesian, however, offered a staggering blow against hope. How could mere clay-diggers stand up against this? How could the common people have allowed the Chancellors to come so far and have so much at the expense of all others?
When he was little, he saw these monstrous vessels cross the night sky as the brightest stars and dreamed of seeing them up close. Now, the stars were cold and heartless; they were the living quarters of thieves and murderers. And he was about to step foot upon their domain.
Hadeed steeled himself for what was to come. This, however, was difficult to achieve given the reverie and excitement of his teammates who filled the cabin of the transport with gasps and cheers. Together, they comprised the champion haepong team of Ashkinar, and their reward was a day aboard the Nephesian. They were already buzzing about the amazing stories they would tell upon their return, how this was a privilege to remember until the day they turned to dust. Hadeed wished them well, but he was not here to play tourist. His purpose was set, his mind resolute, and his courage built on the foundation of all Miriam had taught him.
As the tiny transport shifted to match rotation with the city-ship and approached the dorsal docking ports, Hadeed could better put the immensity of the great beast into perspective. Messalina, Hiebimini’s largest city, could fit inside the Nephesian two, perhaps three times. And this, Hadeed reminded himself, was one of dozens orbiting Hiebimini. He smiled at the sheer absurdity of what lie ahead but kept close the events that brought him here in the first place.
He stepped onto the cavernous hangar deck of the Chancellor flagship, far less enthusiastic about this “privilege” than his teammates but distinctly more focused upon what he had to do. Like his team, Hadeed wore a formal dress robe and a blue-and-white striped, declining shomba that covered his bald head and fell over his shoulders like a tent. Each of them also wore a purple sash with a silver medallion positioned over their hearts as a symbol of their championship status. Hadeed needed only to look around, to see the skin-tight dress and rigid mannerisms of the hangar crew, of the customs officials, and the far-off divisions of peacekeepers running drills to know his haepong warriors would look like freaks to these people. Natives. Pawns. Clay-diggers. Pets.
The UG officials who pushed them through security made eye contact only long enough to raise their brows in arrogant disdain, or so Hadeed perceived. Most were no older than Hadeed but easily a foot taller, and they kept their focus primarily upon holocubes orbiting inches in front of their faces, apparently emitted from tiny nodules attached just above their right temples. They conducted blood screens, something a teammate explained was standard customs procedure. According to Benazir Asiah, all ships en route to and from Hiebimini were required to dock with a Carrier and complete customs before continuing the journey. The Carriers were like ports, he explained. Although Hadeed could not imagine why Asiah considered himself such an expert, he also did not care, as he fully intended for this to be his final trip off Hiebim soil.
Once they cleared customs, Hadeed’s team and their coach waited for thirty minutes in a seated, roped-off holding area, able to ogle the sights of the deck stretching virtually the length of the ship. Finally, an older woman wearing a flower-splashed sarong and a pearlescent smile introduced herself as their official tour guide.
“We do ask,” said the guide halfway through her speech, “that you remain close to the group at all times. While the Nephesian is a ship of finite size, its design is complex and includes a number of restricted zones. We believe you will find all your needs are met in the heart of the city, and we will make every effort to provide you with a memorable adventure.” Her smile was constant, and Hadeed realized her lips hardly moved as she spoke. “You may also find your headdress to be somewhat unnecessary in our climate-controlled environment. A purser will be happy to secure your shombas and return them at the appropriate time.”
When Asiah and a few others reached to remove their shombas, Hadeed spoke up.
“Is this a requirement?” His teammates turned awkwardly toward him, and the guide offered a side-nod, revealing more teeth. “Shombas are part of our identity.”
“Well said,” the guide responded without objection and twirled about. “Follow me.”
Hadeed ignored the confused glances of his teammates as they stepped onto a moving platform that carried them past more newly-arrived vessels – some bearing the flags of other colonies – and the lines of humans being processed through customs. As they moved effortlessly toward a wide glass tower containing a series of elevators, Hadeed looked out across the vast deck and gulped at the detail of a kilometer-long airfield lined with hundreds of battle Scrams, beetle-shaped troop transports and sleek, crimson capital ships. He heard the guide refer briefly to them as the ground-intervention fleet.
“These vessels protect you from all threats domestic and foreign,” the guide said through her implanted smile. “They also allow us to provide humanitarian relief quickly and efficiently.” When one warrior asked if the airfield would be part of the tour, the guide did not let him finish his sentence. “UG restricted. Even to me.”
Hadeed never saw the sheer enormity of the peacekeeper force this close, and now he understood that Miriam’s long-term strategy of placing operatives onboard in key positions was critical if future generations were to have any chance against this horde. Sabotage, she said, was the only way to undermine the UG.
Yet the scope of the enemy’s might did not come into full focus until a wide glass elevator dropped them down below into the city itself. As they stared out upon a dream, the great warriors of the pack fell silent, their jaws limp and their hearts and minds enraptured by the paradise laid out before them. Hadeed fought the urge to fall to his knees and surrender.
They stepped out onto a promenade surrounded on three sides by a multi-layered park immaculately landscaped with giant willows and islands of flowers none of them knew existed until today. Chancellors were everywhere, some in small groups relaxing upon the grass, each with a nodule sprouting a holocube. Others ate at small tables and shared tall glasses of crimson liquor. A few men jogged past in form-fitting exercise tunics that exposed massive, rippling chests and thick shoulders Hadeed considered monstrous. And all about the park was heard the aggressive elegance of an orchestra in full throat. After their guide promised to arrange a meal for them here later in the day, she directed them to follow her along a moving platform under two great willows and out to the most wondrous sight of all.
“Welcome,” she said, “to the Heart of Nephes.”
They said nothing as they crowded along a balustrade overlooking a bustling city, at the base of which levitated trains and personal hover Scrams whirred past each other to form a grid of flashing red and green beacons. Transport tubes seemed to levitate far above the city and carried vehicles well beyond the pastel-colored buildings and wide streets toward the giant engine array, the outline of which was a distant gray blur. The city structures formed a rigid geometry, far removed from the domed enclaves familiar to the Hiebim. All about the city, vast CV projections splashed messages barely audible from the promenade. It created a din that confused Hadeed. He never heard such conflicting volume; the enclaves fell short in so many ways, but peace and quiet was not among their flaws. As such, he barely hea
rd the guide when she pointed to the source of the roar directly below them. He realized they were standing above something unknown on all of Hiebimini: a waterfall.
Like the others, he leaned over the balustrade and watched as untold millions of liters of water erupted from a hidden port and fell almost one hundred meters to the ground level of the city. The guide explained how the water recycled and how it provided the city’s inhabitants an important feature of their home worlds. She said more than twenty thousand men, women and children lived off-world in this Carrier for years – even decades – at a time, and they demanded the natural amenities. She pointed upward to a brilliant, artificial sun moving slowly in levitation along the outline of the flying buttresses that supported and concealed the hangar decks of Nephesian. The guide went into considerable detail about the city’s architecture and economy and pointed out some of the locales the warriors might want to visit. She talked with pride about how the ship was slowly rotating to form its own gravity, and no one among them probably ever noticed they were in constant motion. Hadeed, however, remained focused upon the waterfall – and a memory now ten years old.
“He gave us ten liters,” Hadeed whispered, remembering the “compensation” his clan received from the Chancellor in blue glasses three days after the attack on the ministry.
“What’s that?” Asiah nudged him.
“He gave us ten liters,” Hadeed said. “He acted as if he was doing us a great favor.”
Asiah patted him on the shoulder and frowned before returning to a state of giddiness. Hadeed could not believe what he saw: His awestruck fellow warriors did not understand the degree of hypocrisy they were openly admiring. They should have been condemning rather than praising. Ultimately, a statue tore most at Hadeed’s heart and distanced him from his teammates.
As they walked along the promenade, their guide pointed out a fifty-meter-tall sculpture in the city center. The subject was a bearded man in formal trappings unlike anything Hadeed recognized. The guide might have identified him, but Hadeed focused only upon one word: brontinium. The entire piece, she insisted, was sculpted out of pure, refined brontinium extract.
“Brontinium can be sculpted?” One warrior asked, unable to blink.
“Yes,” she said. “But the process is slow and remarkable. Only a few Carriers have such a piece.”
Hadeed thought only of the generations of workers who struggled in the brontinium mines to provide this opulence for the Chancellors. He thought of Azir, himself a miner who made the mistake of thinking a government post was a step up in life.
“Is this what we give them?” He whispered to himself. “Is this what they do with our treasure?” He wondered how incredibly stupid his people could be.
He walked as a zombie, tagging along with his group but utterly disinterested in the marvels all about him. He did not care whether the locals were dismissing these Hiebim as freaks. He simply wanted his mission to be completed. Soon enough, the opportunity arrived. He fell back from the group, disconsolate, when suddenly he was bumped from the side.
“Excuse me,” another man said.
“Excuse …”
They both smiled and shook his hands at once. Polemicus Fynn said he heard the team would be arriving today but was so busy, he had forgotten all about it.
“I trust they’re showing you a wonderful time?” Fynn asked.
Hadeed cleared his throat as some of his teammates looked back to them, and the guide glanced over her shoulder.
“Without question,” Hadeed said loudly enough for all to hear. “If I don’t see you again today, I’ll hope you’ll visit the clan soon. Ground leave doesn’t seem to come often enough.”
“Unfortunately, no.”
With that, Fynn continued down the street.
Hadeed changed his demeanor at once, catching up to the group. He strutted proudly, his shoulders high and firm. He even offered passing Chancellors a cordial side-nod, exactly as Miriam had taught him. None of them had a clue what happened in Hadeed’s brief encounter with Fynn. The Chancellors had no idea about the pale, centimeter-wide poison speck on the palm of his right hand, carefully transferred there by Fynn, who until recently served in a classified unit known as the anti-sedition wing of the scientific corps. They did not know the speck carried a lethal dose of Quatroxal, a narcotic banned throughout the Collectorate. Most importantly, they had no idea why Hadeed possessed it.
Five days earlier, when Miriam had revealed Sir Ephraim Hollander’s intention to retire, she added a caveat that compelled Hadeed to cast the first “raindrop” in their war.
“His itinerary includes one last official function before farewell,” she whispered into his ear that night atop the mesa. “He is planning to greet the Ashkinar haepong champions during their official visit. Apparently, Sir Ephraim enjoys our little game.”
After a meal, the team took center stage for a ceremony to be broadcast throughout Nephesian. Dignitaries, almost all Chancellors, gave brief speeches with assorted platitudes they neither wrote themselves nor meant with the slightest sincerity. Hadeed did not flinch when he recognized Sir Ephraim Hollander’s blue glasses or heard the voice that once proclaimed to a boy beaten within an inch of his life: “I’m sure you’ve learned a valuable lesson today.”
Rather, Hadeed – who stood in the back row – catalyzed the Quatroxal speck by wetting his right index finger with his tongue, then pressing the saliva into his palm directly above the pale-white blotch. The chemical reaction would prove lethal upon the next contact with another’s flesh. Death would come a day later without warning and without lingering evidence.
“But they’ll know it wasn’t natural,” Miriam told him. “They’ll know they’ve been infiltrated. They’ll panic. They’ll make mistakes. In time, we’ll take advantage.”
Sir Ephraim greeted the team with handshakes, first to the gladiator, next to the gladiator’s seconds, then to the defensive captain … always smiling and offering a side-nod never returned. He completed the first row and turned to the offensive unit. Hadeed vowed to look Sir Ephraim square in the eye, wondering whether the Chancellor might recognize one of his many victims. He was so lost in the glory of the approaching moment, he didn’t notice when a pair of aides swooped to the Chancellor’s side and whispered.
Sir Ephraim stepped away and spoke to everyone, including the audience. “Thanks to all for bringing such thrills to our magnificent colony,” he said. As he was being spirited away, he added: “Duty calls, even on my final day, it would appear.”
Rage gripped Hadeed, but he was paralyzed, left watching in helpless dismay as the Chancellor disappeared. He didn’t hear the applause as a second-tier official handed out plaques with the Collectorate seal. No, Hadeed thought. This can’t be. He’s not going to walk away.
When the ceremony ended, Hadeed distanced himself from his teammates, who were too busy celebrating to care about his sour turn. He ignored the words of their guide and wandered the maze of corridors and foot bridges connecting the sports and fine arts complexes. Two hours later, as a luxury liner with Sir Ephraim and staff prepared to leave the Nephesian, Hadeed received a most unexpected greeting. He passed a SightMail column, one of thousands throughout the city-ship, when a holographic SM of an unfamiliar man appeared before him. The SM smiled, having found his recipient by identifying Hadeed’s genetic profile.
“Greetings, honorable Trayem Hadeed,” a tall, young and immaculate man in a red-and-black tunic said. “I am Elizer Gripphen, personal secretary to Sir Ephraim Hollander. He wanted me to express his most sincere apologies for having to leave the ceremony prematurely. He knows the moment was important to you, perhaps more so than for the others.”
Hadeed felt cold. The face seemed familiar. The SM continued.
“Sir Ephraim thanks you for your wonderful efforts in contributing to the fabric of Hiebim society. He has been impressed by your growth and believes you now understand the value of the lessons you were taught at an early age. He also hopes
you now have a more fundamental grasp on the scope of power afforded each caste. From this, Sir Ephraim hopes you will commit yourself to the betterment of all society while remaining within the parameters of your own caste, which holds great value in its own way. Although you did not fulfill your ambitions today, Sir Ephraim is sure you will avoid any such errors in judgment in the future. He has enjoyed the time he has spent with you and all those of your kind. Goodbye, Hadeed.”
Humiliation turned his blood to ice. He could not shake the filthy sensation of having always been under the persistent gaze of a Chancellor who anticipated Hadeed’s every move. The perplexing journey of the past ten years merged into a common image: Sir Ephraim casually turning away, leaving Hadeed angry and vengeful. First, it was the torture chamber, then the courtyard, now today – leaving Hiebimini behind forever.
He’s walking away, Hadeed thought. And he’s laughing at me. Was this how the great and powerful Chancellors passed their time, laughing at the ineptitude of those who thought anything would ever change? Was that the peacekeeper who stayed behind in the torture chamber of the Agriculture Ministry?
Hadeed did not understand how Hollander could have known about the assassination attempt or why he didn’t arrest Hadeed on the spot. What Hadeed did realize, however, was that he had a perfectly primed speck of Quatroxal on his skin. If the Chancellor he intended to kill would not pay, then perhaps …
His opportunity came less than a minute later, when a young haepong fan – a man perhaps in his early twenties – identified Hadeed among a crowd and insisted on congratulating him. The man’s seven-foot stature and imported finery betrayed him as a Chancellor, and Hadeed happily complied with a long, firm handshake. He wished the fan well and wondered how the death would be officially reported.
He wandered in a daze until finally catching up with his teammates shortly before departure. He wallowed in self-pity and an overwhelming sense of ineptitude. What would she think? Would she still love him? Not until they were onboard the transport and departing the city-ship did the full reality of the day all but kick Hadeed in the groin.
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