by David Bowles
The door irised open, first revealing Leyla Soral’s head, her dark hair framing a severe face and piercing green eyes. A moderately tall woman in her early fifties, Soral had been chosen for her present job after the valor and toughness she’d demonstrated during the Kunti invasion of Dhara, where she’d been mayor of an important city. Santo knew the present movement of CPCC citizens was a personal affront to her, as she’d watched her own people, including family members, herded into Kunti internment camps.
As she walked in, Ambassador Soral inclined her head slightly beforing taking a seat without permission. She was an insistent infidel, one worthy of some respect, but Santo was beginning to tire of her. He decided that today was the last day he’d agree to see her. A little surprise was being planned for her that would keep her away permanently.
“Minister Koroma, I am here to make a final offer. Stop this fascist interment of CPCC citizens, and the AF will gladly assist you in ridding your planet of the criminals that plague it.” She leaned forward, placing her hands, balled suggestively into fists, on the dull surface of his desk. Santo sat motionless, his own hands folded across his stomach. “This will not be another Dhara, Koroma. You see, two AF defense ships are fenestrating as we speak. Allowing for decel once they enter normal space, they’ll be here in about twelve hours. They can either arrive to help, or they can arrive to blockade you, to revoke this planet’s charter and put it under military control until a non-oppressive government is put together by its citizens. You decide, Minister.”
Santo continued to regard her coldly for an unnerving space of several minutes. She slowly sat upright, her hands slipping off the desk, her eyes glinting even more angrily than before. Santo reflected that even the typical unctuousness of ambassadors had its limits, and he relished the naked hostility on Soral’s face.
“Ambassador,” he said calmly, “this is, to be frank, none of the Consortium’s concern. An internal matter. I’ll remind you that Jitsu isn’t a full member in your gang yet, and any interference from you may result in our complete withdrawal and the declaration of our independence. As for your armed forces, you will recall the decades we spent fighting Soltec for control of this planet. We took them on, and we can do the same with you, if that is what you are looking for.”
Soral’s mouth twisted. “You just guaranteed your own removal from office. Archon Rawe won’t be so cavalier in his attitude toward the CPCC, I imagine.”
“Rawe is very old, Ambassador. Like most old men, he’s getting more and more crotchety. Don’t imagine he will care a whit if you threaten him. He’ll do as the Oracle instructs him, and she’s made it clear that this is her will.”
Soral opened her mouth and raised her left hand, but at that moment the door banged open and Deputy Ken Wata rushed breathlessly in.
“Arojin… it’s the Archon. He’s dead.”
Santo surged to his feet. “You’re sure?”
“Yes. He was found in the hall outside the audience chamber. Aneurysm.”
Santo glanced at Soral. Her eyes were wide. He was also surprised, but pleased beyond words. He hadn’t planned on this twist. Samanei had assured him that the Archon would be gone soon, perhaps in the midst of the looming conflict between the AF and the Brotherhood, but she’d given him no hint that it would happen this early. Perhaps it wasn’t even her doing. How it had happened, however, was of no consequence. What happened next mattered most.
This unbeliever would be shocked the core of her being.
“Leyla,” he said as he turned a reptilian smile on her, “it looks like if this world’s about to get it a new leader. Some advice. Were I you, I’d gather my things and take a shuttle off the planet now.”
“Is that a threat, Santo?” She stood proudly.
He gave a short laugh. “No, dear. In two hours, that monstrous building where yall infidels house your embassy will become a pile of rubble. I’d hate to imagine those deep green eyes of yours trapped beneath so much concrete.” Soral appeared unflustered by this, so Santo went for the jugular. “What’s more, I’ll remind you that yakuza are not nearly as gentle as Kunti soldiers, Leyla. I understand they forced you to watch them rape your wife during your captivity. I’m sure it was traumatic for both of yall. How unfortunate it would be to see the same repeated, perhaps on yall’s son?”
“You mother…” she began, surging from her chair with balled fists. Santo blinked at her sudden rage. She mastered it in seconds, though her hands still trembled and her eyes blazed. Swallowing almost imperceptibly, the ambassador smoothed her jacket down and turned to go. Without looking at him, she intoned, “I’ll see you on trial in the Interstellar Court if you do what I think you’re planning. It’ll be a pleasure to see you squirm, to see you locked up forever.”
“Goodbye, Leyla. I enjoyed our tête-à-têtes as much as you. Don’t ever change.”
She slammed the door as she walked out, leaving Santo and Ken alone.
“Should I call an emergency session? We’re on recess, you know.”
“Yes, do. We’ve got much to do, and little time to do it. Get as many members as you need to accept the Oracle’s declaration and then initiate a faux-conference with the Jinja ra-Orakuru. Once she makes the announcement, vote right away and broadcast the session to the whole planet. Then get ready for the maelstrom.”
When Ken had left, Santo called Ana in.
“Get me a private transport to the Archon’s compound. Transfer all my calls to his office, prioritizing any from Major Sosa, Captain Wu, or our young friends from New Beijing. Understood?”
She nodded and hurried out to get started. Santo palmed open a closet, pulled out the blue robe that only an archon could wear, hanging there all these years, and with indescribable pleasure, began to slip it on.
CHAPTER 33
Brando came to his senses on the ground outside of the compound. At his side, Diken and Chua were having shrapnel extracted from their limbs by docbots.
“Guys alright?”
“Fuck you, Kyosu. Why not warn the rest of us next time you decide to blow up a bogful of robots, eh? That way we can, you know, get our arses hid behind some type of shield or something.”
Chua nodded his agreement with Diken.
“Yeah, you set off a damn chain reaction, nearly decapitated Go, you crazy, gormless sumbitch. And I hear you killed their fucking cap during your kews. Brilliant. Hey, while you're at it, be sure to shoot a few civilians.”
Brando’s head snapped up. “That’s crossing the line, Chua. They’re my wife’s people. Mine, too. You know that I do my damnedest to protect them.”
“Yeah, well, I wish you could spread some of that Neog concern of yours for your goddamn squad mates.”
Brando muttered apologies as he struggled to his feet: “Mengo, mengo.”
“Mengo my arse,” quipped Diken. Chua just gave him the finger.
Brando shrugged their anger off. He was still groggy and weak from being yanked mid-kew, but the news of the yak's death barely fazed him.
Guess those fail-safes aren’t so safe after all.
He was more irritated that he hadn't gotten the name of the arojin working with the Brotherhood.
Fucking Dominians. No matter how hard Santo has tried to get them to compromise, they’d rather step off the Path and ally with truth-blind criminals.
Ben stepped through the door of the compound, accompanied by the rookie, both of them talking quietly. As soon as he saw Brando, his face twisted in anger, and he walked quickly to where the squadman was trying to get his bearings.
“Idiotic wank. This is the last time, you hear? First you endangered the squad, nearly killed us. Then you kill an important source, the brother of Konrau Beserra. Why? Your simple-minded obsession. Year after year. We’ve got a job to do, arsehole. This ain’t no fucking vendetta!”
“I do my job. I keep my planet safe.”
“Yeah, you do. But you don’t really give a shite about anything—”
Brando clenched
his fists. “I’ve sacrificed everything for my people, you—"
“—except leads on a seven-and-a-half-year-old case you'll never solve.”
“Don’t say that, damn you.”
“Fuckers responsible are long gone, Brando. Couple of yaks that broke past our line and killed your wife and kid, mate. Completely random, no ulterior motive. Why can’t you give up?”
“Random? That piece of shite just admitted killing her, and he mentioned a Pathwalker co-conspirator! Don’t ask me to give up, Ben. I won’t do it, not when I’ve almost got it solved. It’s more than just revenge, don’t you get it? I find the arojin responsible, I free this world of its oppressors, too!”
Acid churned in Ben’s guts. Even after all these years, the guilt he felt about the death of Brando’s family weighed down on his soul like a blood-soaked burial shroud. Betrayal was torture, nearly more than he could bear, but Nestor’s rage and all it implied were a thousand times worse. Driven to distraction by helpless desperation he exploded in a frenzy of spittle and vitriol:
“Whatever, you psycho fucking Neog. But stop putting my men at risk!”
Brando’s face hardened. “I’ll put them at risk if I have to. That’s my Path. You knew it when I signed on, you know it now. Since you benefit from my ‘obsession,’ it should be no problem. It’s no longer worth it to you, discharge me. I’ll get at the truth without you.”
Muttered curses came from the others. Ben shook his head. “So, what you’re saying is you don’t give a shite about any of us.”
“You’re hired guns. If I’m with you, it’s to make sure you do your fucking jobs.”
It was only a half-truth. He did feel a kinship with these men. But those feelings were irrelevant. They could never replace his loves. Nor could his fellow Pathwalkers on Jitsu. He defended them with such zeal because they were also on the Path and because, through Tenshi, he had come to love them. But every battle he fought, he fought as if his wife were watching him from ra-Yindawo. He needed her approval.
“Got a feeling you're dirty, anyway, Ben, so don't lecture me about our mission.”
His face betraying nothing, Ben crossed the distance between them in three long strides and, stooping to Brando’s height, backhanded him. The blow sent D’Angelo sprawling in the sand, where he lay for a few moments before slowly getting to his feet. He stepped close to his mentor, and Jing seemed surprised to hear him growl softly in Unified Chinese.
“You’re my captain and my friend, but if you hit me once more, I’ll kill you.”
Ben Wu said nothing as Brando spun on his heels, hopped into one of the transports, and sped off without asking leave to do so.
“Oh, bloody brilliant.” Chua slapped a palm against the sand. “Now we're gonna need to crowd into two transports. Captain, you gotta do something about that sumbitch.”
Ben nodded. He would have to act. No more postponing. Too much was at stake. He had to set aside his friendship with Brando, the debt he owed the man. It was time to sacrifice him to save someone much more important.
“Alright, Endo, some fucking answers. What happened to the bloody fail-safes?”
“Well, the diagnostic showed everything was all right, fail-safes running normal. But then I opened the mother up, and… somebody’s tampered with it.”
“Been out of the cage?”
“Nah, Ben. Stuck it in there last month, and you and me, we’re the only ones can authorize it being cycled open.”
Except the major. And a certain arojin.
Let it be one of them. Let it be some crazy-arse plan, and not a screw-up on my watch. Images flashed above the display top in his mind: Ya-Ting spinning in her mother’s arms, giggling and pure; Ya-Ting hanging on a yak’s elbow, guffawing and thoroughly unclean. A shudder to clear his head. His stomach knotted convulsively.
Nestor won’t be interested in my theories; he’ll want my head for this.
After loading the squad into the two ATS transports, Ben and Jing made certain the surviving yaks were secure in the holding cell of the prisoner transport. The New Beijing kid was hooked up to a docbot: his left ventricle had been severed, but he’d probably pull through. Ben stepped up into the cabin. Jing rode shotgun as they headed toward ATS headquarters.
“Ben. That guy yall call Kyosu?”
“Yeah?”
“Well, back there he was talking, what, Kaló to that yak?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Then right now he talked to you in Xīnhànyǔ. I mean perfect, too, like my grandpa used to use. How many fuckin’ languages does he speak?”
“I don’t know. Five? Ten? Used to be a linguist.”
“With the AF?”
“Nah, he ain’t a soldier, Jing. He was a civ. Taught here at the university. Founded Ra-Koreji. That school they just shut down? That was his baby.”
“That crazy bastard was a professor?”
“Yes, fool. That’s what Kyosu means. Like Jiàoshòu. Professor.”
“The fuck’s he doing in Alpha Squad?”
Wu’s fingers whitened on his seat’s armrests.
“His family was slaughtered like eight years back. Probably yaks.” Ben’s stomach clenched bitterly. Yeah, probably yaks that got past my squad. Fucking Nestor. “Maybe even this Felipe, if Brando’s telling the truth. Messy shite. He got involved in the investigation, but you know how Civil Security is on this fucking glebe. They didn’t find shite.
“But he stayed obsessed, came and talked with me and the other vets that were trying to whip the Squads into a decent body of frontier patrols. I’d already lost nearly every man on my squad twice in five years, the second time right before the murder. As if they’d waited for the opening, see?”
Ben didn’t mention being taken prisoner. That officially had never happened.
“The shite happened in what used to be a frontier town, Kinguyama. Some mates of Kyosu’s got the case moved to ATS. Well, we couldn’t figure out shite either, the state we were in. So he asked to join.”
“What you tell him?”
“No way in Domina’s dank dung hole. Had no combat experience, no weapons training, no hand-to-hand, no nothing.”
“And then?”
“He just left all quiet. A year later he came back.”
The transport dove into a hole at the base of a dune. Darkness enveloped them. Panel lights brightened in intensity and the vehicle’s flood beams illuminated the passageway on all sides. To Ben it seemed the only thing that kept the darkness from crushing him was the speed at which they bored down the tunnel, and the minute they stopped the inevitable would close in on him like a predator, swallowing him as it had sucked his daughter into its maw as well.
He felt impotent, frustrated. How had he allowed someone like Brando to put him in this position? Easily answered: it wasn’t Brando who had put him there. Wu’s squad, for the second time in three years, had been unprepared. Tenshi and her little girl had died as a result. It was a simple enough equation that not only made him responsible for D’Angelo’s loss, but also underscored his feelings of guilt for the death of Qing. Identifying with the professor’s plight had merely sealed his doom.
“One year later. You couldn’t even tell it was the same man, cept for the sad Earther height, I guess. He was strong, stronger than any of us, and those dirtbunny muscles of his let him do all kind of wild, gravity defying stunts you had to see to believe. His eyes were what convinced me, though. Like craziness focused into a little black beam peering out from his pupil to sear the shite out of you.”
“How fucking poetic.” There was a strange, ambiguous glint in the rookie’s eye.
“Shut up, noob, or I’ll reassign your arse to the CPCC building.”
“Could he fight?”
“Nah, not really. Probably hadn’t raised a fist in his life. But he’d been practicing with battle sims and such. Okay brawler, I guess. Anyways, the major called me in and said to take him. Archon's orders, if you can imagine that. Started training him right
away, but a guy’s thirty you’re gonna experience problems molding him into a fighter. But I pushed his arse, hard. He still doesn’t have much skill or flash, even after seven years of practice, but he makes up for it with speed, strength and balls. Guy fights like he doesn’t mind dying, that’s why he crushes the yaks."
And with him, I never lost more than five men on a mission. He’s become the heart of this squad.
“But he's gonna get iced, no? After that shite he pulled today?" Jing seemed almost vehement in his insistence. “He’s finished, ain’t it?”
The transport autoed to stop in the squad garage. Ben reached out and slowly clicked the door open. The severity of what he was about to do was beginning to sink in. He set his jaw with grim resolution.
“Yeah, poor bastard. He's finished. May the five blessings come to him. And me, too.”
Jing peered at him with an odd, thoughtful expression as Ben gruffly exited the transport. When he was sure the captain wasn’t looking, the rookie bent over his wrist, muttered something into his percom, and then followed the older soldier into the landing bay.
CHAPTER 34
Brando set the sand-pitted military transport down on the faded circle of the tarmac beside the sun-bleached narrow length of the now modified Strugar-Rask Tarhiata his wife had first given him a ride in, what seemed like eons ago, when he’d thought he could find peace. He still remembered how Tenshi, on her hands and knees, had guided the paintbot through the marks she'd laid out, the phosphorescent paint smelling of childhood to Brando. Getting out slowly, exhausted and emotionally drained, he palmed the lift open and descended into the bowels of Tenshi's leviathan masterpiece. He'd sealed off almost all of its many rooms, leaving only his basement level study, Tana's playroom and Tenshi's workroom. The latter two he'd remodeled years ago, converting them into a huge training area.
Before stepping off the lift, a circular platform that traveled vertically in a cylinder with four arches at each end, he braced himself for the gravity increase. After cashing in Tenshi’s shares in Izakiwo, Inc., Brando had installed an expensive and illegal set of gravtiles that allowed him to increase the gees in the basement in a series of concentric circles rippling out from the lift until reaching Earth normal at about fourteen meters out. This was the heavily debated "secret" to his physical prowess: when not on duty, Brando lived and trained at more than twice Jitsu's normal gravity, only leaving his heavy subterranean world to practice Tai-Chi and acrobatics in the overgrown garden.
