Dominion

by Nicole Givens Kurtz

  If I let them go, they will be back in force.

  Back for their dead. And for her. She aims her wrist canon at them. Her arms are wavering. Her vision blurs. She blinks rapidly, but it is no use. Even the zimu rage has left her. She is empty. Done. Her head swims and the desert floor slaps her hard in the face. And again, the darkness takes her.

  ✦✦✦

  Kaka Sungura is bored. He squints across the blasted landscape and sighs. His ears twitch with a faint whine of servomotors. He turns back to Mzee Kobe.

  “Ok, let’s try another one. Riddle me this: what is it that falls but makes no noise?”

  Kobe thinks for a while.

  The sun rages. The wind blows, flies buzz sleepily in the searing heat. Kaka waits eagerly for Kobe to fail. But he is disappointed.

  “The night,” Kobe finally answers, his voice like boulders mating.

  Kaka Sungura sighs, his long ears drooping. “Dammit, is there a riddle you don’t know?”

  Mzee Kobe looks placidly at Sungura. “No.”

  Kaka Sungura mutters darkly to himself, “I’ll get you yet, you big bastard, see if I don’t.”

  The sun hammers relentlessly down on them, creating green tinted shimmers in the irradiated sands of the desert. Kaka Sungura turns up his autocooler a fraction. It coughs a little before settling down with a slightly louder hum.

  Fucking sand, it got in everywhere.

  He eyes the desert balefully. It stretches into the distance, straight and smooth as far as the eye can see. Probably all the way to New Machakos. They have been patrolling this, the furthest reaches of the territory, for over a month. And they have seen nothing. No bandits, no invaders, not even a bloody scavenging Achutch. Just sand. And they have ten more days to patrol before they can go back to town to report.

  Ten days! Fuck me!

  Kaka has just about had it with this place.

  “Look Mzee, we have been here twenty-nine days and we have seen nothing but sand and bloody flies. We are wasting our time. Why don’t we dash back to New Machakos? Make a race of it, y’know. Get some R&R, sip a little whiskey, maybe get our rods lubricated…”

  Mzee Kobe regards Kaka for a long moment. “No,” he grinds out.

  The sand, the heat, the flies, the monotony, the uncongenial company. Suddenly it’s too much for Kaka.

  “Oh, for the sake of Holy Man above! Why not, you pea brained, inbred, stupid piece of…”

  Alarm bells jangle inside Kaka Sungura’s cybernetically enhanced brain. He stops like a thing strangled.

  “I mean,” he licks his lips. “I meant…” his voice is a cracked whisper. A cold sweat envelops him. “I meant no offense, Mzee.” His voice trails off. Ice crawls down his spine. “I beg your msamaha.”

  For a long moment, Mzee Kobe stares down at him from his 9-foot height, dorsal canon locked, combat blades fully unsheathed from his massive forearms.

  Sungura sweats.

  Then the canon whirrs back to the safe position and the blades retract smoothly and Kobe hunches back into safe mode.

  “Ok,” he says placidly and goes back to scanning the empty landscape. Sungura breathes again. Fuck! That was close. You had to be so careful around

  these Kobes.

  Especially this one.

  The damn things were so touchy about their honour. Sungura wipes his damp forehead, wrinkling his nose at the acrid stink of fear that clings to him like a shroud.

  If I have to spend another ten days with this mad, hulking, rusting piece of crap, I may just have to strangle myself with my own entrails.

  His thoughts stray to the town of New Machakos. An oasis in the midst of a poisonous desert. Fresh cool springs. Hot women. Cold beer. The best gambling in the Cracked Realm. In New Machakos, he is not just a gun for hire: he is Kaka Sungura, trickster, shyster, ladies’ man and the sharpest mind across the sundered realm.

  His ears droop as he broods. This job had seemed so easy. Patrol the desert for mutants, bandits or invaders. Kill them on sight and come back. Granted, not his usual thing, but the governor had offered a generous retainer plus 500 shillings per head of any bounty he closed. Easy money.

  “Oh and take Mzee Kobe with you,” the governor had added smoothly. “He is getting bored. We don’t want him to uh, prematurely retire any overly boisterous customers now, do we?” Reluctantly Kaka Sungura had agreed. Mzee Kobe was the oldest Kobe in town. And by far the most dangerous. Not a bad sort to have around in case things went south in the desert. But nothing had gone on in the desert. It had been irritatingly peaceful. And now he was stuck with a dangerous war machine who might or might not be clinically insane. That, and the sun.

  Shit.

  Kaka spits in the sand. Can’t believe I let the governor saddle me with the demented…

  “There’s something out there,” Kobe’s grave voice interrupts his dark thoughts.

  “Huh? What? Where? I don’t see anything.” Mzee Kobe points. “Use your optic magnifiers.”

  Sungura snorts. Senile old fart is probably hallucinating, he thinks, uncharitably.

  But obediently he clicks his magnifiers on.

  He draws a sharp breath.

  “Shit. Is that what I think it is?”

  His only answer is a shower of sand as Mzee Kobe lights out, leaving Sungura standing there, spitting grit out of his mouth.

  Shit. That old bugger can really move when he wants to.

  Kaka Sungura brings his bounders online.

  But then again so can I. Especially when there’s a princess to save and lots of murdering to be done!

  *Bounders at full power*

  He lets out a wild whoop.

  Game on.

  ✦✦✦

  The Nyati’s head smashes through the wall in an avalanche of bricks, dust and blood. The rest of his body remains in the room, jigging and jiving like a nyatiti dancer. Chui5 doesn’t have time to admire the Nyati’s newfound dancing prowess. He ducks under a hastily flung sonic spear and smashes the second guard across his breastplate pulverizing his internal organs. He flops over like a broken doll. The last guard reacts quickly and targets him with a wide pattern flamer. Too close to avoid. Chui5 activates his burrow and disappears.

  “What the fu…”

  The words end in a gurgle as Chui5 unburrows behind the guard and chops his vibrio through the Nyati’s thick armoured neck. A whining hum. A burst of blood. And the guard’s head with its domed boss of wickedly curved horns thuds to the floor in a vermillion puddle. The decapitated body blunders about as if in search of its missing head before collapsing onto an intricately carved Meru oak table, smashing it matchsticks beneath its two-ton weight. It shudders a bit and is still. Chui5 cleans his vibrio on the guard’s tunic before stowing it in the dorsal harness it shares with his war hammer. He scans the room. Dead Nyati guards litter the airy space. There is smashed furniture everywhere. Blood covers the plush carpeting. In great glistening gouts. A huge viewer hangs drunkenly from the wall, its cracked screen flickering like a giant winking eye. Chui5 sighs.

  Such a mess. Father will be most displeased.

  But that’s nothing new. Father is always displeased with Chui5. Too tall, too bulky and almost as heavy as a Simba, Chui5 is a far cry from the lithe, silent, graceful, bringer of death that should be his birthright. Instead he is big, blunt, brutal and frighteningly strong. A brute. A throwback. An animal. Chui5 has been called many things. The names bounce off him like stones off armour. He doesn’t care. His closure rate is the highest of the five princes in his father’s kingdom. Five brothers. And he is the fifth and youngest. Still, he always gets the job done and done quickly, if a tad bit messily. Behind him, the view screen crashes to the floor in a shower of sparks. Chui5 sighs again and turns to the task at hand.

  His contract is sitting bolt upright on a richly embossed throne, emitting a palpable odour of fear.

  President Panya is as afraid as he has ever been in his
life. The apparition before him has smashed through his elite guards in less time than it takes to draw four breathes. Nothing in the Cracked Realm could do that except…. But it can’t be. He swallows. Burrowers are a myth, a bedtime story to scare unweaned pups. Surely they don’t exist.

  Whether they exist or not is now an academic question. A burrower is now on his throne room, and it’s gliding towards him. Black, fluid death. Time to go. President Panya activates one of the bolt holes scattered throughout his throne room. Or at least he tries to. Nothing happens. He activates the autocanons hidden amongst the filigreed cupolas high above his throne. Nothing. His jaw drops. Impossible! Somehow this creature has managed to bypass his internal security network and killed his AI. Without it he can’t access his systems. Any of them. Even his exoskeleton is useless. Just so much metal and ceramic circuitry. He is trapped. He licks his lips which have suddenly gone dry. Pull yourself together. Everyone has a price. Even this… thing. Do what you do best, what you were born to do. Make a deal with him.

  “Wait,” he winces at the quaver in his voice.

  A dry swallow.

  “Wait,” he says again, his voice firming up. Now he sounds like what he is. The president of one of the Cracked Realms’ biggest and richest corporations.

  “Look friend, let’s not be too hasty, ok? Tell me what you want, what your heart desires. Whatever it is, you shall have it.”

  The apparition continues its inexorable advance.

  “Whatever they have paid you, I will double it.”

  Chui5 draws a long thin blade, black as midnight. President Panya can’t take his eyes off its oily surface. “I’ll triple it!” he shrieks. But the apparition continues advancing.

  “Ok! Ok! Ok! You can have it all! All of it!” President Panya’s voice is shrill as a songbird’s. “Take it all! I will give you my personal access code! You can be rich. Rich beyond your wildest dreams.” Spittle flecks his thin lips.

  The apparition stops. “All of it?” Its voice is a muffled growl.

  I knew I could reason with him. “Yes, yes, all of it. You will be the richest being in the Cracked Realm.”

  Chui5 appears to think for a moment. “Hmmm, tempting. But I think not. ” He moves. Fast. Faster than his bulk will have you believe. Faster than President Panya would have thought possible for anyone to move. He is still marvelling at just how damn fast the thing is, when the carbonium blade punches through his exoskeleton’s armour and in a bright, burst of blood, snatches his life away.

  Chui5 looks at the Panya’s corpse. Blood, hydraulic fluid and coolant are leaking from the exoskeleton. Both man and machine are dead.

  “Now, now ‘5. Mummy always said don’t play with your prey.”

  Chui5 chuckles as he withdraws the compkiller software that he had insinuated into the recently deceased President Panya’s AI. The room’s internal security net sputters back into life. But by then he has activated his burrow and is gone like he had never existed.

  ✦✦✦

  There is blood and fire everywhere. A hot wetness splashes across her eyes. Screams of dying cubs. Butchers everywhere. Someone thrusts a raw piece of meat at her face. Disgusted, she recoils. Smoke tickles the back of her throat. She bends over, coughing violently. Her air recyclers are offline. She is choking.

  I am going to die.

  Suddenly, she is in her father’s arms. She looks up at his fierce face. “Baba,” her voice is a whisper.

  “Shhh, be still, blood of my blood.” He looks down at her, his gentle expression sitting oddly on his cruel warrior’s face. “You are now the future, kitten. You are clan Simba. ”

  “No, baba… I can’t…I ”

  ‘YOU CAN AND YOU WILL! PROMISE ME! PROMISE ME!”

  ✦✦✦

  Shibuor wakes up with a start, her face wet with tears. “Baba!” she struggles to remember, but the dream slithers out of her subconscious like a coy snake and retreats into the ether.

  Slowly, she becomes aware of her surroundings. She is lying on the baking sand surrounded by dead and dying Achutch. The sun is still high in the sky and the thirst is barbed wire in her throat. But she has bigger problems than that. A dark cloud approaches in the distance. But this is no raincloud: it is made up of flesh and blood and bone and death. The Achutch are back. And Shibuor knows her life is over. She has nowhere to run. Nowhere to hide. And no strength left to fight. She drags herself to her feet. Her body is a cacophony of pain. But she ignores it. She is a warrior and she will die standing up straight. The Achuth are closer now. A few have already started firing their repeaters. They are not close enough for any sort of accuracy.

  But that will change soon enough.

  Visions flash before her eyes. Her father, stern of face but with love in his eyes. Her mother, petite, always smiling, but deadly. Shimba, her brother, huge, gentle and clumsy. Her sister and namesake, deadlier and faster than even their mother.

  Their youngest brother, Sibuor, still unenhanced, just a playful little cub.

  All of them dead.

  She shakes her head and extends her ua combat claws one last time. The Achutch are almost on top of her now. Rounds are pinging off her abused armour.

  One last dance then.

  She roars her defiance at the approaching horde and prepares to sell her life dearly.

  An actinic light flashes so close to Shibuor that she smells burning ozone and singed hair. The front row of Achutch simply ceases to exist. Another flash lances into the cloud and the Achutch burst apart in a noisome rain of ash, boiled blood and severed limbs. The cloud recoils, the Achutch squawking madly. They are no longer attacking but trying to get away. Another flash, more dead Achutchs. The offbeat metallic buzz of a twin mounted autocanon and the remaining scavengers are blown apart. A lucky few would be marauders flap off into the lowering sun, squawking indignantly at their thwarted revenge. Shibuor can’t understand what’s going on. Blackness nibbles at the edge of her vision.

  Oh no, not again. I am getting really fucking tired of fainting.

  She wills herself to stay awake. She can feel blood dripping warm and wet somewhere beneath her armour. Slowly, carefully she turns around and there before her like an unlikely pair of guardian angels are a Mk 5 Sungura and what looks like a Mk 1 Kobe of all things.

  I didn’t even know there were any of those left.

  “Hey there princess,” the Sungura’s voice is sardonic, “you don’t look so hot. How about you put away that steak knife there and let us help you?” He gestures at her arm.

  Shibuor looks down at her combat claw. It seems really far away. Slowly she sheathes it. And that action seems to drain her of the last of her strength. She sinks to the desert floor. The hot sand is warm and comforting. She snuggles into it.

  So, this is what death feels like.

  And then, somehow, she is in the Sungura’s arms and he is dribbling cool delicious water into her sandpaper mouth. “There we go, a little water, some stitches, a hot meal and you’ll soon be murdering your enemies and glorying in the wails of their children again.” He grins. “I am Kaka Sungura. Maybe you’ve heard of me?”

  A huge shadow blocks out the sun and the venerable Kobe looms over her. His brutal features are almost prehistoric in their bluntness.

  “Oh yeah, this here is Mzee Kobe. He is a bit err… eccentric but he is good people.” The Kobe regards her impassively, and then in a whine of ancient servomotors withdraws.

  “Mad as a snake that one,” Kaka whispers and he winks at her.

  Shibuor tries to say something. She isn’t sure what. But her mouth is gummy. “Shhh , I am sure you have quite a tale to tell us, princess, but that can wait till we get back to New Machakos.

  New Machakos! Noooooo!

  The memories flood back like a tide of blood. Suddenly she knows everything. She knows everything. She struggles to speak, but the words turn to mud in her mouth. All she can manage is a guttural moan.

 
“Sshhh, sleep now.” A small sting on her shoulder. Too late she sees the hypo in his hands. Her thoughts turn to cotton wool. Her vision wavers.

  “Sweet dreams, princess.” The last thing she sees is Kaka’s grin.

  ✦✦✦

  For almost twenty centuries, the ancient walled fortress of Chui Clan has stood atop the summit of the mountain that was once known as Kenya. Its dull grey walls rise from the flank of the mountain and thrust 200 meters into the sky like a giant metal spear. Nobody knows who constructed it or why. In its entire known history, the fortress has never fallen to an enemy force. To attack it, one will have to first climb the mountain, which in itself is no mean feat. Once this is accomplished, one will then have to somehow gain entrance into the edifice itself, an impossible task.

  The fortress walls are impervious to shells, lasers, plasma weapons and even antimatter missiles, as many a clan has discovered to their cost. There are no windows or doors. The walls are sheer and smooth, and no claw, grapple, magnet or suction device can gain purchase on its featureless surface. The metal that forms its walls is unlike any known substance. Deep scanning it reveals nothing. It is not observable on radar, infrared or lidar. Yet Clan chui members somehow enter and exit the massive building. No one knows how.

  There are legends of course, stories stretching back to the mythical time of Man. Stories that claim the fortress was a defensive outpost of a great empire that once stretched across the continent from E’gipt in the north to Azania in the south. Others say that it was part of a chain of super weapons capable of harnessing the very power of the sun and roasting the entire planet to a cinder. Nobody knows whether there is any truth to these stories. The fortress is a mystery within a conundrum within a cypher. No one but members of the Chui clan has ever been inside. And naturally they are saying nothing—not even under torture or mental deep scanning.