by Richard Fox
“You don’t understand what you’re fighting.” Clay touched Riktan’s shoulder. “They have—”
The Prince backhanded Clay so hard that he whirled around and landed face-first in the mud. His vision spun as he tried to understand just how he’d been hit with so much force.
“Quill! In my vehicle. I have a few pronouncements to make before we get to the next base.” Riktan turned and marched back to his vehicle. “Fastal, join the rear of the convoy. I’ll work you in to my command team as best I can. Move out!”
The squads of soldiers raced back to their trucks as Clay rolled onto his back and touched his face where the blow had split the lip on his synth layer.
“Shit,” Fastal spat to one side.
“You were going to tell him I was the subject-matter expert on the sky demons.” Clay wiped a bit of blood off his mouth.
“Why did you touch him? You’re not a Blooded sworn to his service.” Fastal shook his head. “You’re lucky one of his men didn’t shoot you for the insult.”
“That…I didn’t know about that. I’ll add it to my report.” Clay got back to his feet and watched as more tanks and armored personnel carriers sped by. “They’re driving west. To the coastline.”
“They are.” Fastal nodded.
“Riktan’s going to try and fight. It’ll be a bloodbath unless—”
“Yes, it will. But do you want to try and tell the new King who’s eager to set the tone of his rule that he’s all wrong about what he’s about to do next?” Fastal raised a hand overhead and traced a circle, and the vehicles from the convoy from the airbase started their engines.
“I need to speak to him again! A head-on fight is suicide. You can’t just let him—”
“‘Let’…” Fastal leaned slightly to come eye to eye with Clay. “Let. You think I’m in charge here? The King commands his military as he sees fit. Our best hope is that Elsime lets slip what you really are and we can get you in front of Riktan to do your face-ripping…stunt before he launches an attack wherever your caste happens to make landfall first.”
“If your army sets foot within the exclusion zone Zike spoke about, it will be a massacre, Fastal. A rout like you’ve never imagined.”
“I believe you, pink boy. But I’m not the one we have to convince. Now load up and let’s follow the Prince. I recognized some of his staff. I can reason with enough of them to get you another audience. Maybe. Now let’s get moving before Riktan launches an attack that gets us all killed.”
THE END
The story continues in The Tyr: Ordeal, coming soon!
An excerpt from the next novel, The Tyr: Ordeal
Chapter 1
“But what the hell’s wrong with him?” Dr. Piotr Stamets shook his head at the patient inside an isolation chamber.
Camacho was in a straitjacket, crouched in a corner, rocking back and forth.
“According to toxicology and a circulatory scan, there’s nothing wrong with him,” a medical tech said. “The scummies in his squad said he didn’t do anything wrong—but they’re scummies. They ‘snitch’ on anyone, it means a spine shank the next time they’re in line for chow or sleeping.”
“The patient had—what appears to be—a complete mental breakdown just before recovery. A Myrmidon had to do a remote shutoff on his suit or he would’ve taken down the whole craft trying to…what was it? Show me the cargo-bay footage,” Stamets said.
The tech punched a holo key and pulled up a video of Camacho in his Marauder suit in the back of a shuttle. He was beating against the deck like he was trying to dig his way out.
“The worms know! The worms know everything!” Camacho shouted, then froze in place. The shuttle banked to one side and Camacho fell over, still screaming about worms.
“This isn’t his first mission with the company. Did he tamper with his drip or add a little something extra to his cocktail?” Stamets asked.
“Suit came back clean, same as his drip. Spontaneous mental collapse like this should be impossible, given his psych profile and history,” the tech said. “Bloodwork shows some unusual parenchymal neoplasms. Maybe his pineal gland—”
“But one of his squaddies did self-terminate before this break.” Stamets stroked his chin. “Did we get a bad reading from personnel on this batch of scummies?”
“The one that self-terminated was borderline to begin with. HR had him at a seventeen percent chance to make it through his first mission, and looks like those projections were right. Camacho? Ninety-nine percent chance of sailing through. Should’ve been a stud.”
“Seventeen? I thought the cutoff was twenty percent chance of survival.” Stamets frowned and brought up holo screens in front of him.
“There’s no paperwork in the system, but the director was pressed for every warm body he could get for this project. Maybe some of the benchmarks got a little fuzzy when we took on this consignment? I’m just spit-balling.”
“The Corp ignoring its own safety regs to make a deadline? Why I never…but what is wrong with this scummy? His EKG readings match someone in a lucid dream state, but there’s nothing in his system to suggest a poison or some environmental factor?” Stamets asked.
“Usual spores and deactivated viruses from a new biome. His serum’s working as intended. Want to pump his stomach? Hang around for a urine or stool sample?”
“I’ve got to do reconstruction surgery on one of the Myrmidons in ten minutes…the supervisor wants to know if this scummy’s got anything contagious.” Stamets put a hand on his hip.
“Nope, he’s as clean as a whistle.”
“So we know that. We run any more tests on him, it’ll come out of our section’s budget. I’m not losing my bonus to figure out what’s wrong with some scummy that the Corp is just itching to get killed off or ashed for ‘public safety’ reasons. If he doesn’t recover in…eight more hours, he’s in breach of contract and he gets the ash or the airlock. His choice. Got it?”
“Fine. Eight hours to get back in the suit to do his job or else. I’ll just sit here and—”
“No. Need you down in bio processing. The sanitation droids broke down again. Go clean out Marauder unit thirty-seven. The suit Camacho’s squaddie was in.”
“Aw…” The tech rolled his eyes. “Come on, sir. You know what those things smell like after a scummy expires in them?”
“I do, which is why I’ve got you doing it instead of me.” Stamets gave the tech a pat on the shoulder and left.
“Fuck my life.” The tech fumed for a few minutes then glared at Camacho through the glass. He flipped a switch and a microphone activated.
****
Checkerboard patterns in every color of the rainbow roiled like waves through Camacho’s vision. He knew it wasn’t really there because he couldn’t touch it, yet he felt the waves against his skin and through his stomach.
“I’m a little teapot short and stout…” he sang weakly and a chipped kettle that belonged to his grandmother emerged from the scrum of checkerboards. The top bent toward him and came away. Dark tea with tiny whole mushrooms floating in it swirled within the kettle and Camacho gasped.
“Here is my handle…here is my…”
A face pressed through the background swirl and swallowed the kettle. Stars swirled over the face, twisting into constellations.
“Camacho,” the face spoke.
He screamed and pushed against the floor with his feet to get away from the very, very real face looking him over.
“Camacho, I don’t care what you do, but do it fast.” The face’s voice warbled like it was coming from underwater.
“Yes, God, whatever you want!” Camacho began shivering.
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” the face said.
Camacho babbled, his lips nothing but rubber.
“Really? I’m going to give you some synthetic adrenaline—don’t ask where I got it—to get your heart pumping. Maybe that’ll get your liver to filter out whatever goof juice you’re on. Maybe you’
ll pop and then I’ll have even more work to do. Whatever. Just don’t move.”
A bird rose from the ether and floated to him on slow-motion wings. Colors radiated down its feathers and Camacho tried to whistle at it. The bird clamped talons into his neck and pain reverberated up and down his body. His eyes rolled back in his head and he slumped over.
“Now we wait for…hey, why isn’t your heart going full bore? Goddamn it, that asshole sold me bad shit. This is the last time I ever—” The voice of God ended in a click.
Camacho stayed there on his side as Tyr children danced in the reflection off the floor and a string of drool stretched out from his mouth.
“Sorry…sorry for what I did…”
****
The tech opened the door to Camacho’s isolation room and sighed down at the scummy. Camacho sat on the single gurney in the room, looking normal except for the straitjacket. The tech brought up a sensor wand and looked at a holo projection down the back of his arm.
“Oh. Good. I’m not going to have to drag your dead ass out of here. EKG’s normal. Low levels of drip on your respiration…how you feeling?” he asked.
“Like a can of hammered assholes,” Camacho said.
“Your readings got you as medically fit for duty. You ready to get back to work? Got to warn you, you lose any more time and the Corp will rate you as no longer economically viable. You know what happens after that?”
“Airlock,” Camacho said as he stood up and tried to wiggle out of his straitjacket.
“Or the asher. You won’t get benefits like that with other companies…you good or are you going to go agro on me? Damaging Corporate property like me will get you a taste of the void.” The tech snapped the sensor wand onto his shoulder.
“Back to work. Sure, let’s do that.” Camacho turned around and the tech undid the straps.
“Man, wish you could’ve been this lucid a little while ago. I could’ve used your help cleaning up a mess.” The tech pulled the jacket away and Camacho rolled tight shoulders out of them. “You feeling all right? Longer-term guys like you…been off the drip for a while. Normally your type’s jonesing pretty hard. Ready to do anything to get a fix.”
“Fuck off, I’m not sucking your dick.”
“Whoa, whoa…who hurt you, eh? Like I’d let a scummy near my meat whistle. Some of y’all got diseases we don’t even have names for. Come on, I’ll get you back to the armory so you can suit up. Knock down that debt with a couple hundred more dead indigs, am I right?”
“That’s how it’s done,” Camacho said, following the tech. He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he was last on the drip, but there was no pain in his hands or feet, no sensation of worms under his skin or ice in his spine like usual when he was in withdrawal.
He felt…fine. More even-keeled than he could remember. They passed a porthole on the hull, and in his reflection, he saw someone he hadn’t known in years.
Himself.
Chapter 2
There was a knock on the iron door. Sarah looked up from the cot bolted to the bulkhead and grumbled. She put her back to the far side of her small quarters from the door, and rapped on the metal, then kept knocking as the door opened a few inches. Instead of getting her normal plate of gruel with scrambled eggs and cup of watered-down alcohol, the door opened the whole way.
Captain Illion smiled at her, his face the all-silver of the Hidden caste. He wore black pantaloons and a gold sash around his waist. Going shirtless seemed to be the norm for his crew.
“Good news, we’re almost home,” he said, stepping inside. A pair of rough-looking sailors armed with pipes stayed in the passageway, watching her.
“Where’s my son?” Sarah asked. “My husband?”
“Your son is with another team. I don’t know about your mate.”
“I didn’t ask who they’re with. I asked where.”
“That I don’t know.” He shrugged. “You may have noticed you’re aboard a submersible? We don’t send or receive signals while we’re underway. It draws attention. But once we’re home…there should be word of your brood.”
Sarah mulled this for a moment. “And where is ‘home’?”
“The Grand Mists,” Illion said. “You’ve heard of it?”
“The rest of the Tyr believe it’s an uninhabitable string of islands…which would have to be weeks away from King’s Rest by submarine.” She frowned.
“Partly right. Partly wrong. Your doc-oh-tor made some modifications to my ship’s engines. Very impressive what your people can do,” he said.
“Burning down King’s Rest wasn’t enough to show you what they can do?”
“Not everyone believed Turley’s stories.” Illion’s face fell. “Even after his promises proved correct over and over, not everyone believed. Perhaps we did not want to believe? We lived too well for too long. To believe him meant that our troubles would return. But the tide comes. Deny it. Ignore it. But if you’re picking clams on Rushes Beach and you pretend there is no tide…”
“Rushes Beach?”
“A place with extreme tidal ranges. A story for Hidden children. I am so used to bringing home our infiltrators, not…whatever the Queen decides you are. You can…adopt castes at will? Like Turley?”
Sarah gripped an ear and her synth layer went blank like the Hidden.
The guards shuffled nervously in the passageway. One slapped his pipe against his palm.
“Easy now, easy now.” Illion leaned toward her and sniffed at the air. “No scent of the ink at all…impressive. Yet strange. I look upon my own caste and it is our true face, yet we must wear the markings of the others to leave our homes. Now I return home with one that bears our face…yet you are not of us.”
“My family’s purpose on Tyr wasn’t that different from what the Hidden do amongst those touched by the gods.” Sarah bit her tongue, fearing she’d just insulted the Hidden, who were pariahs across the planet because they had no ketafik markings to show which god favored them.
Illion’s face was stone for a moment, then he began laughing. He slapped his leg and wagged a finger at her.
“You…you have jokes. I like it. But there are two things I need of you. First, change back to a Linker…thank you. Next, come with me. You get to see something special.”
“Captain,” said one of the Hidden in the passageway. “It is forbidden.”
“The Queen demands her. The Queen will not have her if she drowns. Besides, her people fly; they don’t sail.” Illion rose and motioned Sarah to follow him.
Being able to walk more than a few steps without turning around was a relief for Sarah. Moving through the tight confines of the submarine was easy as the crew made way for Illion; all she had to do was follow in the wake of his wide shoulders, though she saw little more than compartment doors and dimly lit side passageways on her way through the ship.
Crew members pressed the bottom of their fists against their chests, then slapped two fingers against the back of their hand when she passed. Others squeezed bracelets made of intertwined red and blue strips of cloth.
Illion jumped onto a ladder and climbed to an open hatch, a misty grey sky above.
As she followed, the natural light hurt her eyes, but the smell of salt air and fog were a welcome change from the sweat and must of the ship. With her upper body out of the conning tower, she looked around. The submarine moved slowly through the sea, with water lapping over the nose and the upper deck.
A small group of sailors stood around a steering wheel while others inflated a small lifeboat.
All around them was an endless grey of fog.
“Come down.” Illion waved her toward another ladder on the side of the conning tower. “This is the place to be during a crossing.”
Sarah slid down the outer rails of the ladder. She felt the warmth of the water through the air and she was tempted to dive in just to clean off the stench of days kept in a little cabin.
At the steering wheel was a tall crewman with the same da
rk loose pants bound at the knees and a golden silk belt. He wore no shoes and kept flexing his bare feet against the deck.
“Bird sign! Bird sign!” came from the aft, where a pole had been erected with a cage holding a dead grish up at the top. Sarah heard wings flapping overhead but caught only a few shadows in the mist.
“Don’t worry, the maita birds prefer to eat dead things,” Illion said.
A sailor beat a pole against the forward edge of the conning tower.
“Looks like we’ve got a couple.” The captain put a hand on a curve-tipped knife hilt on his belt as slow flaps sounded overhead, circling the ship.
“I thought you said they prefer their food to be dead.” Sarah’s chest got tight as she realized just how exposed she was on the deck of a submarine. There was nowhere to run but the conning tower, and swimming for it felt like a great way to die tired.
“Prefer. I said prefer.” Illion flicked the knife up and down in the sheath with his thumb.
There was a swoosh and a bang from the aft. A black bird with a ten-foot wingspan had struck the cage and, using its bloodred bill, was tearing at the dead grish inside.
“Recognize it?” the helmsman at the wheel asked. He reached beneath his belt and drew out two small mushrooms, raised them to the yellow smudge of the sun behind the mists, then popped them into his mouth.
“No, younger male.” Illion traced lines in the air to match white patterns in the maita’s tailfeathers. “I have him now.”
“What’s going on?” Sarah asked.
“They’re territorial. We give an offering to know if we’re in the right area for the crossing. Familiar bird? Right spot,” he said.
“But you said that bird is new.” A shadow loomed out from portside and the submarine passed within a dozen yards of a rocky outcrop. The helmsmen spun the wheel to his left and the fore of the submarine shifted directions. Water sloshed over the hull and kissed her boots.
“Old birds die or get pushed out by younger birds,” Illion said. “So we’re maybe on the right route.”
