The Weapons of War

by Dan Schiro

  Orion floated back from the sprawling galaxy map and closed his virtual eyes. He calmed himself with a few moments of meditation, and then he performed the mental acrobatics the old man had taught him to tip his mind into Blooming Flower. He opened his eyes and looked at the map again, and his heightened awareness branded the colorful tapestry on his active memory. Again he grasped the white jewel floating in front of him.

  “Reset search parameters,” he said, his voice emotionless. “Collate a list of consumer goods containing the raw materials from list one and illustrate shipping patterns.”

  More colorful threads bloomed across the map, these spider-webbing out to the galaxy’s major population centers, the Maker Rings included. Orion took the space of eight breaths to add this new star-spanning tapestry to his active memory before he clutched the white jewel again. “Reset search parameters,” he said in the same flat voice. “Collate a list of…”

  Orion tried new filter combinations, each one marching into his head in a steady procession. Which readily available metals could be melted down to create specific alloys? What kinds of devices could be broken down in large amounts to obtain valuable elements? Which component pieces of industrial machinery could be repurposed for Dalaxa Croy’s designs? What kind of substances could be cleaved at the atomic level to obtain vital chemicals? What about large, one-time orders of goods containing trace amounts of rare materials? Orion illustrated all of these shipping patterns and scores more, juggling each image in his active memory. With every new entry he shuffled the deck, interposing them in different combinations to see how they fit together.

  Hours passed, and as Orion felt his hold on Blooming Flower falter, a particular combination of colorful threads pulled taut. After quickly checking a dozen different shipping routes, the great cross-stitch pointed to a resale business on the city-engulfed world at the center of galactic trade.

  “Govan’s Resale Warehouse,” Orion scoffed. “Hard to get more generic than that.”

  He lifted the glass virtual reality visor off his head. As he snapped back into the real world, he discovered he was drenched in sweat from the mental effort of maintaining Blooming Flower for so long. His muscles ached as if he had completed a circuit in the gravity gym, and his fingernails had dug bloody crescents into the pads of his hands. Stretching with a groan, he pulled his personal datacube out of his pocket and tossed it up.

  “Send an audio message to Aurelia and Kangor,” he said, waiting a moment for the cube’s eye to wink blue. “It’s on, so get back to the office. We’re going to Konnexus.”

  Chapter 7

  The rogue comet broke free from the Maker Rings’ artificial gravity well, soaring past the invisible lines of the ether routes and out into the vast darkness between stars. Strangely, it somehow slowed, its tail fading and its blue-green coma dying. When it seemed nothing more than a dirty glacier floating through space, a small hangar bay opened in the underside of the frozen mass. Over the course of the next few hours, four ships arrived and passed through the semi-permeable force field of the hangar bay. The first was a dark-red heavy cruiser, gaudy with turbo pulse cannons and decorated with curling horns. Next, a kind of weaponized pleasure yacht docked, its hull bright with elaborate swirls of red, purple and white. A hiver-made spacecraft followed, the insect-like design all jagged angles, brown armor and burnished gold accents. Finally, the fourth ship arrived — black as a shadow, long and sharp as a dagger — and the hangar bay closed.

  Deep in the heart of the stealth ship, Typhus the Mad Thinker paced the floor of his quarters. He wore a navy-blue combat suit decorated with his full military regalia. He had earned the dozens of polished medals, gleaming bars and sigil-branded badges hundreds of years ago, some for quelling colony revolts, some for taking enemy ships and still others for conquering planets, both primitive and advanced. A blood-red cape trailed behind him, the affectation equally ancient and worn only by the Grand Warlords of the Crimson Claw Empire. On his head he wore his manacite-embellished neuro-crown, and while the device enhanced his brain’s processing speed by a factor of three, it also had the queer effect of stretching his perception of time. That made waiting for his children all the more tedious. His thoughts wandered back to plucking them from gutters and slums, training them and eventually bonding them to the ancient spellblades he had collected. He knew the demon metal would drive them all mad eventually, but for now they were powerful weapons in his arsenal.

  The door chimed, and Typhus broke from his trance. “Enter,” he commanded as he stopped pacing and stood ramrod straight in the middle of his quarters.

  The door hissed and the scratching of clawed feet announced Vargas. “Are you ready to receive them, my lord?” asked the short, robe-swathed creature.

  “Yes, of course Vargas,” said Typhus, gesturing sharply with the edge of his hand. “You know I’ve been waiting.”

  “Quite so, my lord.” Vargas stepped aside and peered out into the corridor. “Enter, children,” he said with a voice equal parts cracked glass and affection.

  Four humanoids entered, and Vargas slunk out with a nod of his pale head to his master. The menacing group of young men and women approached within a few feet of Typhus before sinking to a knee and bowing their heads. They tallied a horned durok, a feline temba nubu, a waifish insectoid hiver and a fourth tall humanoid swathed in black, leaving little clue to his galactic race.

  “You may rise,” Typhus said after a few moments.

  They got to their feet, weapons and gear clinking softly on their militarized outfits. Ruga Dur Rugex Cron, a durok with brimstone-red hide and two twisted horns, wore an ammo vest strapped with small weapons, a thick leather jerkin, scuffed leather pants and brown boots speckled with rusty dots that might have been blood. He was the first to address Typhus, to no one’s surprise.

  “My lord, why did you pull me back?” Furrows lined his face, and his yellow eyes flashed with anger. “I had made a group of pirates my slaves, and I was positioned to raze the New Covotani colony.”

  “I am sure it would have been glorious,” Typhus said with a wolfish grin as he admired his protégé’s fire. “But that doesn’t matter now.”

  “Has it begun?” asked the slender man in black, his eyes hidden by black lenses and his voice distorted through a slightly snouted mask. “Has it truly begun?”

  Typhus turned to him with a nod. “That it has, Nixus. Things will move fast now. It’s time for each of you to play your part.”

  “I, for one, couldn’t be happier.” The beautiful, tiger-striped temba nubu woman they called Pozoia Tofana wore a sweeping gown that hugged her slinky form, its fabric patterned with purple and white swirls to dizzying effect. “I was growing so very bored assassinating D-list diplomats. It’s like spearing prairie whales that have grown too fat to run and too old to fight.” A cruel smile danced in her bright green feline eyes. “Where’s the fun in that?”

  The hiver called Ayano 210 simply nodded; she never spoke a word. Her outfit looked much like Ruga’s, all thick leather and brass buckles, the material cut to fit her levered insect legs, rounded thorax and thin, glossy dragonfly wings. The brown antennae on her head twitched, and she cast a questioning gaze up at Typhus with her multifaceted red-gold eyes.

  “Yes, Ayano — why now?” Typhus said as he turned his smile down at her sallow face. “It’s possible we’ve been compromised, but it won’t matter if we move fast. Ayano, Nixus and Pozoia will go to the three assembly sites as my proxies. Defend them from harm at all costs.” He thought for a moment. “Hurry the workers to the finish, and shed the blood that you must to motivate them.”

  “I’ll not stand idle,” growled Ruga Dur Rugex Cron, his meaty fists clenched. “I’ll not await orders while I could be—”

  “Calm yourself, Ruga.” Typhus laid his huge clawed hands on the durok’s shoulders and narrowed his white-blue eyes. “You will go to the collection site. See th
at the mole-man sends the last shipments to the assembly sites, and then destroy the evidence. All of the evidence.”

  “All of the evidence.” Ruga nodded, seemingly satisfied by the violence implied. “Yes, my lord.”

  Typhus released him and stepped back, gazing down at his disciples. “This is our moment, my children. I can feel it.” He closed his eyes and raised his hands, savoring the exhilarating view from the precipice of destiny. “We will repay the treachery of a genocide. We will free the galaxy from the yoke of bureaucracy.” He opened his dilated white-blue eyes to see his creations kneeling. “And we will impose a new order, as glorious, pure and hard as a manacite fist.”

  Chapter 8

  As he walked the halls of the heavy cruiser called the White Heath, Orion had to admit it. Costigan and Reddpenning had been smart to expand the Briarhearts instead of letting him fold them into AlphaOmega as minority partners. With the money earned protecting Zovaco Ralli, the newly married mercenaries had bought an old warhorse of a ship and given it a top-shelf refurbishing. Every stark steel line of the hallway ran straight and true, and the manacite drive hummed softly as the iridescent cascade of ether space raced by the generous portholes. Polished com-panels hung at every corner, their blinking arrows and touchscreen maps directing Orion from the crew quarters to the bridge. Bully loped along at his side, sniffing curiously at the artificially lemon-scented air.

  When Orion and his great mountain of dog reached the oval-shaped bridge, he found Aurelia, Kangor and Dalaxa Croy already waiting, with Costigan and Reddpenning strapped into their respective co-pilot and pilot stations.

  “Late to the meeting he called,” said Dalaxa, the statuesque s’zone leaning against an operations terminal. She wore a form-fitting Union jumpsuit, dark blue with a white stripe, white accents and a half-dozen sleek pockets. “Does this happen often?”

  Aurelia rose from the crash couch where she sat with Kangor. “That’s our great leader.” She cast him a wry smile while Kangor grunted his own hello.

  “Trouble finding the bridge, Orion?” asked Alana Reddpenning. She was an athletic human woman, with a long, dark braid and calculating eyes that warmed only for her husband, Jim Costigan. “We’re almost there.”

  “What’s up, OG?” said the broad-shouldered man who sat in the co-pilot chair. Orion had first laid eyes on Jim Costigan’s square jaw and black crew cut at the Military Institute of Mars when they were both wiry teens, deep in the most rebellious and shiftless days of Orion’s life. Though Orion had been expelled and Costigan had graduated with honors, the two had somehow remained friends. “We were just about to pull out of the ether route.”

  “Then it sounds like I’m right on time.” Orion shot a smirk at Dalaxa and turned his eyes to the viewscreen curving along the front wall of the bridge. After a few moments, the bright pastels of the ether route faded away to reveal star-spattered space. Reddpenning manipulated the holographic controls of the helm to swing the ship, and the planet Konnexus came into view on the screen.

  “Ah, grimy old Konnexus,” Aurelia chuckled. “Never change, baby.”

  Orion saw city-covered continents connected across gray seas by a tangle of hyperloop tubes. Smudges of gray-green fog shrouded the poles, and steady streams of spacecraft flowed to and from the planet like an orbital nimbus of arteries and veins.

  “You’ve been, I take it?” he said to Aurelia.

  She nodded. “I spent a few decades here after the Green asked me nicely not to come back home.” Her bronze eyes gazed at the screen thoughtfully. “Konnexus is a very old place, you know. Six different ether routes cross here. The Engineers likely used it as their main trading post before the Union did. Cities built upon cities built upon cities.”

  “We’re geo-locked, OG,” said Costigan as he stabbed at his control dash. “You need us, just call.”

  Orion nodded. “Good. We may, if my hunch is right.” He straightened his smartcloak with a swift tug. “Okay, Aurelia and Kangor, you’re with me. Let’s do the job.”

  “What about me?” Dalaxa asked.

  Orion turned his mismatched eyes to her. “What about you?”

  “This is my mess, and that makes me the expert.” She opened her hands in a wide, indignant s’zone gesture. “Surely you’ll need me to go with.”

  Orion shook his head. “You’re here as a scientific consultant, Doc. This is a stealth-recon-possibly-combat mission. We’ll call you if we need your technical expertise.” He turned to exit the bridge, snapping his fingers at Bully to follow. “Kangor, AD, let’s go.”

  The door to the hall hissed open as they approached, and Dalaxa Croy followed them out. “I’ll not be left behind, Mr. Grimslade,” she said, muscling her way to his side with a note of angry determination in her voice. “You think you’ve discovered some kind of funnel almost all the rare materials on my list passed through, correct?”

  “Hey,” Orion smirked as he strode down the corridor, “someone did read my pre-mission briefing.”

  “That makes one of us,” Aurelia said from the back of the pack.

  “If your hypothesis is correct,” Dalaxa continued as she matched Orion’s long strides, “you could be dealing with dozens of volatile combinations. Do any of you know enough advanced chemistry to neutralize tellurium-silix powder exposed to oxygen? What about the temperature to maintain the vapor-liquid equilibrium of lepartsium carbonate?”

  “Look, Doc,” Orion said with a shake of his head. “You’re not really trained for this kind of situa—”

  “I have degrees in 13 disciplines of applied science,” she said loudly, speaking over him. “You need me, damn you.”

  Kangor raised a bushy orange eyebrow. “Can you even fire a pulse pistol, Miss?”

  “Of course I can,” she spat back. “And I’ll have you know, I personally designed a series of pulse weapons when I was still at Galactic Core University.”

  “Doc,” Orion barked, stopping short in front of a star-splashed porthole. “I understand your need to take ownership of the—”

  “I told you, I’m no doctor,” she snapped. “And clearly you don’t understand, Mr. Grimslade…”

  The argument continued as they wound their way through the steely innards of the White Heath to its small hangar bay. In the end Orion relented, in part because Dalaxa made some fair points about her usefulness, and in part to stop her from climbing up into the Prodigal Star’s landing gear. The four of them boarded with Bully in tow, and Kangor went to the weapons locker. He fetched Dalaxa a pulse pistol she could conceal in the hip pocket of her jumpsuit and strapped a lightshield to her thin arm. Then everyone buckled in, Orion fired the thrusters, and his sleek spacecraft taxied out of White Heath’s hangar bay. They dropped toward the smog-smudged gray planet miles below the Briarhearts’ stocky, well-patched old warship.

  While Kangor muttered over the ops station console and Aurelia and Dalaxa regarded each other coolly on the crash couch, Orion kept his attention on the main viewscreen and the superimposed graphics pointing him to a public landing pad. The details of a large landmass slowly came into focus as they penetrated the planet’s shell of dirty atmosphere. Amid oceans gray and dead and strewn with tangled trash, Orion saw a vast, jagged cityscape. The metropolis surged from edge to edge of the landmass, with pale green smog floating above it like spores on the breeze. The urban sprawl of Konnexus also had incredible vertical scope, with long catwalks and vast platforms intersecting at jumbled angles. Buildings thrust up everywhere, some of them tremendous starships that had landed millennia ago and become permanent fixtures. Orion counted dozens of gravity cranes dotting the skyline, no doubt continuing Konnexus’ endless remodel.

  “Aurelia,” Orion said over his shoulder, “do you seriously have fond memories of this dumpster?”

  Aurelia smiled wryly. “If you’re looking for the grimiest of grimy good times, Konnexus will provide. Everyone’
s just passing through, alone, and there’s no telling what someone will do when they don’t have to live with it.” She sighed. “Good times.”

  Kangor offered a gruff chuckle. “I shudder to imagine the heights of your depravity, Exile.”

  “No kidding,” Orion laughed. “Remind me to take my vacation elsewhere.”

  “Like you’d know how to take one,” Aurelia scoffed. “Anyway,” she added with a glance at Kangor. “You two couldn’t keep up with me on Konnexus, the Maker Rings or a beachside bar on Paradisium.”

  “Perhaps I’ll give you a try,” Dalaxa said as a grin bent the bow of her lips. “I was known to drink a few duroks under the table back at GCU.”

  Aurelia and the weapon scientist warmed to each other and shared drinking stories while Orion took his Prodigal Star in for a landing, the ship’s shift-skin tuned to cherry red. What had looked like a matchbook suspended amongst the vast structures grew on the viewscreen until Orion realized that the industrialized platform sprawled hundreds of city blocks. He settled on a general parking pad attached to one end of the soot-stained platform and killed the thrusters. As he looked out the viewscreen at the towering forest of buildings rising all around the platform, Orion had an entirely new sense of Konnexus’ scope. It made him feel small.

  Orion and Bully led the way down the ship’s rear ramp with Aurelia, Kangor and Dalaxa following. They took a short walk across a narrow causeway, and Orion chanced a peek over the edge. The city stretched down beneath the platform to dizzying effect. A tangled hodgepodge of buildings stacked up in alternating layers, and walkways and air traffic lanes intersected at dangerous angles. Orion sensed a subtle dilapidation of the cityscape as his gaze drifted lower and lower; glittering glass banks, restaurants and nightclubs gave way to businesses and apartments, then to factories and seedy bars, then to the squalor of rusty shacks stacked like cargo units. At the bottom he saw shadows his eyes could not penetrate.