Blurred Weaponry (Saints of the Void, Book 1)

by Michael Valdez

Chapter 21

  Hyugesten's Husband

  Thank the black for naps. Dastou had ordered that they go to the south warehouses, where several mining, fishing, and farming towns delivered and separated goods meant for Blackbrick and branching metropolitan areas. He didn’t remotely remember being there. The sun had been slowly angling downward in the sky when he went to sleep in the trolley, and now he opened his eyes to find himself inside the large flashlight-lit rear of a covered cargo truck.

  He sat up and realized he had been laying his head against the rubber of a spare tire that had a small tarp placed on it. It seemed like it should be uncomfortable, but he didn’t feel any neck pain so it must have been alright. Actually, he didn’t feel half of the pain that plagued most of his body after the monastery. Saints were known to heal fast – don’t ask him why, it was a simple fact of his existence – and without any broken bones, his muscles had mended themselves well.

  The Saint yawned and looked around the cab. Crawford had been cataloging supplies, Nes putting Goner’s long-barreled sniper rifle back together, and Saan teaching or explaining something to Trenna about a bunch of medical supplies laid out in front of the pair. That’s what they all had been doing. Now they were staring at Dastou as if he’d come back to life rather than woken up.

  “Wait...” Dastou began. “Who’s driving?”

  “I am, sir,” said Goner from the cabin of the vehicle. Dastou turned to see him through a glassless partition, sitting in the driver’s seat. Evara was on the passenger’s side.

  “Since when do you know how to drive?” Dastou asked. “They don’t have cars where you’re from.”

  Saan cleared her throat. “They learned to drive by stealing vehicles from the garage,” she said, “and taking late-night joyrides.” Saan didn’t sound forgiving of the crime.

  “Don’t a bunch of people do that?” Dastou wondered, knowing that he’d been told of the activity at least once.

  “Yes,” Saan answered, annoyed. “But these two I never caught.”

  “We’re very sneaky,” said Goner from the front of the truck, right before the sound of a hard bodily impact. “Ow!” Goner exclaimed. “It’s not like she didn’t know.”

  “Doesn’t mean you should sound proud!” said Evara in an angry whisper.

  At least not much had changed in Dastou’s short time of being embraced by the wonderful arms of nap-time.

  “Where are we?” he asked, yawning again, this time stretching his legs, arms, and neck as he did.

  “You woke up just in time,” Goner said. “We’re almost at Hyugesten’s.”

  Hyugesten? That was a coastal fishing town almost a three-hour drive from the warehouses. Four if you have to avoid roads, which this group did. It was also where two of his best people in the area happened to reside.

  “How’d you know to come to Hyugesten?” Dastou asked.

  “Uh...” Goner started and never finished.

  “You told us to, sir,” Saan replied.

  “Did I?”

  “Yes. After the trolley, you ordered us to make a call to Hyugesten on a landline from the warehouse security kiosk and send an encrypted message that was all letters and numbers.”

  “I don’t remember any of that.”

  “You, um, seemed a little out of it,” Nes chimed in.

  “Apparently,” Dastou said. “Thanks for following orders, at least.”

  “Sure, boss,” Nes said with a quick salute.

  Well, Dastou thought, at least he wasn’t out of it to the point that he gave strange and wrong orders. He didn’t remember any of that outside of a dreamy haze, but he knew what he would have told his people to do, and therefore expected to be met by someone very soon.

  “What time is it?” Dastou asked.

  “Twenty-two-thirty,” Crawford said after looking at his watch.

  “Mhm, that sounds about right. I’m going to rest my eyes, tell me when were close to the town. Keep doing what you were doing, everybody.”

  The Saint laid his head back down against the tire, closed his eyes, and thought about the man who was going to meet them near Hyugesten: the agent known as Husband.

  He was called Husband so that no one used his real name accidentally in Academy circles, and he was not exactly a soldier because he was technically too benevolent for it, and so was his wife. The couple met in the Academy and bonded over their performances in certain aspects of their education, including the fact that the only class they didn’t do terribly in was the single required psychology course, in which they both scored through the roof. Their performances in that class, the scoring of which was partially based on essays and commentaries, were, to be honest, mind-blowing. Each of their first two semesters, the faculty had to rewrite the grading bases because of them. Despite that, Husband and Wife had passed beyond being freshmen only barely, and were not doing very well after only a month into their second years.

  At that point, Dastou had half his staff tell him to finally expel them, ignoring their performances in Essential Psychology, and the other half to bring down the fear of a god to improve performance otherwise. The Saint saw something in them, and decided to create a third choice by beginning a special project, creating a new curriculum as an experiment. In the new program, the Saint lowered the number of military focused courses by two-thirds, and created a philosophy course, the first of its kind. The type of discussions held in that class were not part of a “normal” education as controlled by the Social Cypher, reserved for private meetings between friends and colleagues. Husband, Wife, and six others were the only students in the odd new set of classes, and Dastou became personally involved in nearly every facet of refining the program. By the time a third year rolled around, the eight handpicked students were doing well, and Dastou added in a few more changes: hand-to-hand combat, improvised weaponry, subterfuge, negotiation, data mining. This was the start of the Davranis Security Forces’ spy program.

  Husband and Wife were soon actually married, and thereafter sent to Hyugesten to make a life for themselves under assumed names, their background stories concocted and perfected beforehand. Those two are now part of a worldwide network of information gatherers that only a dozen other people know about in detail. Rumors float around, of course, though they are hard to prove and almost always exaggerated, so Dastou doesn’t bother stamping out the whispers. Most of the spies that come from the school itself are expelled under false pretenses to facilitate keeping their identities undisclosed.

  Dastou’s thoughts further floated to the spy program in general while the bumps on the road lulled him into a more relaxed state. The Saint, he mused internally, could do a lot with his own skills, but when it came to knowing as much as he could about world events or helping his agents sneak around, he needed good, well-trained moles. And not just his small number of hand-picked spies; he needed civilian help. Some people could be convinced to help by introducing them to Ornadais Academy, the DSF its students graduated into, and their purpose to study then ultimately break away from the Cypher. Others wanted good old-fashioned bribes. Dastou was totally, undeniably loaded with currency of all kinds, and could throw an exorbitant amount at someone to turn snitch. As of two years ago the spy network was fully in place in every major populated part of the world, and is continuously paying back the investments of energy, time, and money made to establish it.

  Before a new subject for the daydream could be veered into, the end of the ride was called out.

  “We’re here,” Goner said, and Dastou opened his eyes.

  The boy slowed down, and the quieting of the vehicle’s well-maintained engine let the crackle of pebbles and dirt under the wheels be heard as they rolled to a halt. Goner turned off the engine, then he and his sister stepped out.

  “Alright, pack it up,” Dastou said. “We’ll wait outside for a bit.”

  The group in the back got what they took out of travel kits back into their respective packs, though not without suspicious glances at one another. Cr
awford, Saan, and Trenna took Evara and Goner’s packs in hand from where they were laid down in a corner and began to put stuff back into them. Nes inserted loaded magazines into his and Goner’s weapons, then buckled the latter to the metal rungs on his uniform outer layer and slung it across his back. The big sniper rifle was slipped into its long case and latched up tight.

  Evara opened the back hatch, and Dastou was reminded by the cool air that he no longer had his leather jacket. He was also reminded that he was near the ocean by the distinctive smell of a coastal breeze. The five people in the large and semi-cramped cargo hatch climbed out as best they could without tripping themselves up. They redistributed supplies as Dastou studied the surroundings under the light of two three-quarter moons at different parts of the light cycles.

  The grassland here was mostly undisturbed and featureless, with the blacker than black shapes of small mountains rising meekly in the southwest. North and south along the shore were the elongated sloping shapes of the Thousand Kilo Shore. There were a few other fishing towns on this eastern shore, providing easily-farmed food sources to the five populated city-states known collectively as the Stoneground, but this quiet coastal locale was special.

  Built on a hypnotic coverage hole, like the Diplomatic Center, the entire town of Hyugesten was put together by runaways from the Stoneground city-states fifty years ago. It’s grown since then and is nearly double the size it started as, with lots of buildings made to look as if they were maintained by the omnipresent system of many other combination urban-slash-rural areas. Locally nicknamed “The Town of Freedom and Fishes,” it was the perfect place to plant Husband and Wife together.

  Goner had stopped near a handmade wooden sign that had the words “Welcome to Hyugesten!” painted on it. The tinkling and clanking and ruffling of supplies had stopped as another gust of wind came from the ocean’s direction, chilling the group as they waited. Trenna held herself close, the mild-cold too much for her long-sleeve shirt under a T-shirt outfit. Dastou was about to order Crawford to give her his long white lab coat when a voice spoke up from the shadows behind the welcome sign.

  “I have something for the civilian. Here.”

  Husband had a practiced half-formed local accent. He walked out of the extra-deep shadows behind the welcome sign with a deep green zippered sweater in his hand that looked to be about Trenna’s size. In his early-thirties, he had a healthy tan and a handsome, very short beard that could better be called unshaven in the same light-brown as his well-manicured hair. He closed the short distance between himself and the group and held the sweater out to Trenna. She had been surprised by the voice, and stood still as a statue for a few seconds too long.

  Husband simply kept his hand out, gesturing with the sweater itself for her to take it and not moving any closer while the others silently studied him. Trenna finally snapped out of her minor paralysis and looked at Nes and Dastou. Nes gave a trivial shrug at the same time Dastou nodded, to which she responded by slowly taking the piece of gifted clothing.

  “Thank you,” she said humbly, then put on the sweater and zipped it up.

  The others gathered close enough to Husband to make it incredibly obvious they were planning something, and Dastou found himself wishing his people were better at being sneaky.

  “Ladies, gentlemen,” Dastou said, “this is Husband, a DSF spy.”

  “Spy?” Nes said in surprise. “I mean, everyone knows you’ve got spies, but you have one here of all places?”

  “It’s a very strategic location,” Dastou answered, then gestured toward Husband.

  “Welcome, everyone,” Husband said on cue before turning his eyes toward the Saint. “Sir, a pleasure.”

  “I doubt you entirely mean that,” Dastou said. “I know how early you have to be up for your work in these parts. Sorry for keeping you up so late.”

  “How formal,” Husband said with a charming smile. “You are calling on us late, and unexpectedly near our home, but neither I nor Wife mind. Nice bit of excitement to spice up our week.”

  When Husband spoke, there was a calmness to everything he said, as if he was trying to keep away anything too revealing out of his voice. It made people suspicious of him at first, but he had a pleasant smile and a professional demeanor, so after not too long he could earn anyone’s trust. He was one of the DSF’s very best, and completely reliable.

  “Good to hear,” Dastou said after a yawn. “Are we ready?”

  “I already have an all-terrain fueled up and full of supplies,” Husband said. “You can take it anytime from my garage.”

  Completely reliable.

  “Wow,” Nes said, impressed. “Resourceful.”

  Husband nodded proudly. “I thank you, young corporal.” He looked at Dastou. “I have a feeling you won’t be leaving immediately from the way you all look, though I already guessed that from the high-level emergency signal you relayed to me.”

  Dastou wished he could remember that, but at least he didn’t make his situation a small deal.

  Husband continued. “I’ve made my house available and ready for you to rest in. I started a late dinner before leaving for here and it should be ready soon.”

  Dastou’s stomach grumbled, slightly louder than and the thought of a home cooked meal was making him salivate.

  “I think,” Nes said, “that rumble in his tummy meant ‘thank you.’”

  Husband smiled kindly and pointed toward Hyugesten, which was lit mildly lit by oil-burning street lamps. He specifically pointed toward a wooden structure thirty meters away. “I have a safe, scouted route back to my home that starts from behind that building, marked with blue chalk.” He stopped pointing. “Go on ahead. I’ll be there soon after I hide your truck.”

  Dastou nodded, clapped Husband on the shoulder, and led the way into the fishing town.