Shattered Alliance

by Benjamin Wallace

  Just beyond his toes, the world fell away several hundred feet and it made him second-guess everything. Being two hundred stories up didn’t bother him as much as knowing that in a moment, there was going to be two hundred stories of nothing below him.

  At this point, most people would stop and ask themselves with utter bewilderment just how it was that they had gotten themselves into this mess. But not Cason. He knew exactly how he had gotten into this mess.

  Cherry cobbler.

  That was how.

  A slightly sweeter cherry cobbler was why he was now looking off the edge of a two-hundred-story building and coming face to face with his own mortality. Cherry cobbler was the reason that, at any moment, angry men with guns were going to burst out the rooftop door and do their best to stop him from jumping.

  He looked at the memory chip in his hand and shook his head. It wasn’t even his cherry cobbler. It belonged to his boss, Harius Thurgood. In a world where anyone could print anything, it wasn’t so much the cobbler that was so valuable. It was the idea of the cherry cobbler that was worth a fortune. Things weren’t worth much of anything anymore. But ideas… those were still worth something. And that’s why Mr. Thurgood had hired him. To make sure Mr. Thurgood’s ideas stayed where they belonged.

  The recipe inside the file was worth millions. If you had the better tasting cherry code, all of the worlds would print your food instead of your competitor’s. A slightly flakier crust. A sweeter aroma. A better mouthfeel. This was the new battlefront of commerce, and Thurgood Foods and Pastries was winning that war. It was indisputably the best-tasting cherry cobbler in the entire galaxy. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t have been worth stealing. Or stealing back.

  Cason tucked the chip into his pocket, peered over the edge of the building and took several deep breaths. The height made his head swim. At least it wasn’t windy. Wind would have made it worse. He backed away from the edge to get a running start and checked his watch. Just a couple of minutes more.

  The roof access door blew open with a bang. The steel door shot across the rooftop and smoke rolled out of the staircase.

  They were early.

  He tapped a comm in his ear and spoke. “Angel, how are things looking?”

  A woman’s voice responded in his ear, “Everything is on schedule.”

  Several men in security uniforms stormed onto the roof. They spotted him and ran toward him, shouting warnings and telling him to get down.

  “Not everything,” Cason said. “We’re going to need to move things up a bit.”

  “It’s not ready.”

  “I’m ready, Angel! Make it happen.”

  “Shouting isn’t going to make it ready,” Angel said.

  The first guard reached him and opened a stun baton with the flick of his wrist. The weapon snapped open and sparks rolled down its length as the guard swung for Cason’s head.

  Cason snapped the man’s wrist and the baton dropped to the ground. He then ducked under a counter punch, stepped past the man and landed an elbow in a kidney, sending the guard to the ground screaming in pain.

  The other four men weren’t much slower than the first. They surrounded Maze and filled the air with the hum of four more powered batons. A glancing blow would be enough to incapacitate him. Contact lasting longer than a second would make him wet himself. Either would take him out of the fight, but the true sadists made sure they didn’t let up until their target was a drooling mess ready for the psych ward.

  The man on his left moved first, lunging with the humming edge of the baton.

  Cason dropped low, seized the man’s arm and pulled it through the crowd to connect the baton with his buddy’s stomach. That guard wet himself and fell to the ground as Cason stood and hit the first guard with an uppercut.

  Another baton passed close enough to his face that he could smell the ozone it produced. The prods along its length snapped electric blue filaments of pain. He fell to the right and drove an elbow into the guard’s face. The last man standing came at him, so he continued the motion and spun aside. This guard moved more fluidly than the others and wasn’t relying on the baton as his only weapon. Fists and feet came at Cason as the two men blocked, swore and searched for an opening in each other’s defense.

  Maze caught his opponent’s wrist with a lucky grab and the baton dropped into the scree that covered the rooftop. He then kicked the baton, sending it out of the guard’s reach. The next few minutes were filled with an exchange of vicious blows, blocks and dirty moves that brought each man to the brink of exhaustion.

  Perhaps it was desperation, but his opponent finally made a misstep and overthrew a right cross that Cason let pass before driving a left hook into the security guard’s ear. His opponent collapsed to the rooftop.

  Maze took several deep breaths and checked his pocket to ensure that the drive hadn’t fallen out during the fight. After all he’d been through, he’d hate to have to come back for it again. The rectangular drive was still in place; the secrets of the cobbler were where they belonged.

  Cason looked out across the edge of the building and took one more deep breath.

  “Angel? Are we ready?”

  “Not yet.”

  There was a shout at the stairway and Cason turned to see a half dozen more security guards flow out onto the roof.

  “Angel?!” Cason begged.

  “Not yet! It’s not like I stutter.”

  The reinforcements had holstered their stun batons and brought out the real hardware. They gave him to the count of three to lie down on the ground and give himself up. But they were lying about three. They started shooting as soon as he ran for cover at two and a half.

  Cason dove behind a thick metal pipe and drew his own gun as the bullets tore up the roof around him. The pipe rang in his ears as their bullets tracked him down. It was going to hold. Maybe.

  It was just a cherry cobbler. He knew his history. Back in the time of nations and even in the early days of the Alliance, the people that were in his line of work fought and died for important things—the secret plans, the cipher, or an antidote. Lives hung in the balance. This was a cherry freaking cobbler.

  He fired twice over the top of the pipe with the intention of scaring the guards into finding their own cover. But that plan failed miserably and the guards kept coming toward him.

  More men appeared at the rooftop entrance. More guards. More guns. More bullets ate at the roof around his feet. He looked once more to the edge of the building and the void beyond.

  Cason Maze sprang to his feet and started running toward the edge. “Now, Angel!”

  “It’s not ready,” Angel shouted back.

  “Now!”

  Aunt Betsy’s Homestyle Cooking’s corporate security guards weren’t the best shots in the galaxy. But they weren’t the worst, either. And they were making up for any shortcomings with volume. The rounds were getting close.

  He ran back and forth as best he could while making his way toward the building’s edge, doing whatever he could to throw off their aim. But the bullets chased him and he could hear their angry sting as the slugs buzzed by him.

  He was only feet from the edge. “Now, Angel!”

  “It’s not—”

  “Now!” he screamed, and leapt from the edge of the two-hundred-story tower. It wasn’t the first time he trusted the AI to come through in a pinch. But it was now the scariest time.

  He felt the conformation, just before he sprang. Just before he heard Angel say it was finally ready. Like topping the crest of a steep hill at speed, his stomach lifted and twisted inside his belly. It wasn’t weightlessness, but it was a sixth of what it had been a moment before. And it was enough to rocket him above, and hopefully over, the moon’s financial district below.

  It wasn’t a natural feeling. It wasn’t a good feeling. It felt like being caught in a lie. But it was his only way out.

  “The system is working to correct,” Angel informed him.

  Gravity loss wasn’t compl
etely unheard of up here. It was frequent in the colony’s early days. But as time went on, system errors were becoming less common and much shorter in duration. The system had been improved to the point that the time between failure and restoration made the lapse hardly noticeable. The city’s residents might feel it in their stomachs for a split second or experience a moment of lightheadedness but little else.

  There was, of course, the incident a decade ago where the moon lost gravitational enhancement for more than a day. Even at that, the residents took the event in stride. There was some evidence that they truly enjoyed it, as the moon experienced a small population explosion nine months later. Experts figured that, unlike other historical blackouts, the baby boom was not brought on by boredom but by enthusiastic experimentation, as most of the moon’s population had never actually experienced the celestial body’s natural gravity or their sexual partner’s unnatural gravity.

  Cason was over the street now. The pedestrians were so far below him that he couldn’t tell if they were enjoying their reduced weight or not.

  “I don’t know how long I can keep it off,” Angel said. “The system is really fighting me.”

  Maze looked up at the building across the way, his destination. He wasn’t even close. “Fight back!”

  A bullet tore through the air by his ear and he looked over his shoulder. The guards had followed him over the edge. The view was surreal. Everyone was falling but the descent was so unnaturally slow that they appeared to be flying toward him.

  He twisted in the air and fired back. One of the guards was struck in the shoulder. The man dropped his weapon and grabbed the wound. The weapon appeared to float in the air next to him, but he made no effort to retrieve it.

  “Their AI is really impressive,” Angel said. “It’s almost kicked me out.”

  “Don’t let it!”

  “Yeah, it’s just that easy.”

  “Angel! I’m two thousand feet up here.”

  “Oh, I think you’re higher than that.”

  “Just keep the gravity off!”

  “I’m trying!”

  He had already fallen a couple of stories. At this rate, terminal velocity wasn’t going to be an issue for quite a while. But if Angel lost the fight with the moon’s AI, he would be a stain on the Lunar Financial District in no time.

  Several more of Aunt Betsy’s finest stood on the edge of the tower and fired. The bullets passed harmlessly above him as their weapons were sighted for the Earth’s pull. If his luck held, they wouldn’t figure this out until he had reached the other side.

  He shot another of the flying security guards and watched the man go limp almost instantly. There were still two more flying toward him. Each was doing his best to reload in midair.

  Cason looked back to his destination. The building wasn’t far now. All he had to do was make it to the window before the moon’s AI locked Angel out and turned him into a cartoon anvil.

  Fifty feet away.

  “It’s almost locked me out.”

  Forty feet away.

  “I hope you’re close.”

  Thirty feet away.

  “That’s it,” Angel said. “I’m out.”

  Twenty feet away.

  “The system is back in control.”

  Ten feet away. He reached out his hand and the gravity kicked back in.

  He felt it in his stomach first. Then he heard the guards behind him scream as they all dropped together. He was still traveling quickly enough horizontally to make the window. It just wouldn’t be the window he was aiming for.

  Cason fired his pistol until it was empty, closed his eyes and tucked into a ball as much as he could. Then he winced and crashed through the window shoulder first. He rolled across an office floor, acquiring multiple rug burns and an eyeful of the ugly pattern. They could put a city on the moon but still couldn’t design a decent-looking commercial carpet.

  A large desk brought his dramatic jump to a final stop when he knocked it over. He opened his eyes to see a bewildered woman standing over him, holding a rather shaky cup of coffee.

  He stood up and brushed the glass from his clothes. “Um… is this your desk?”

  She nodded.

  He nodded back and studied the mess he had caused. He bent over and picked up a cracked picture frame and handed it to the woman. “You have a very lovely family.”

  The door to the stairwell was operated with a keycard or a swift kick. He didn’t have a keycard, so he chose the latter and raced down several flights before entering a lower floor and finding an elevator. Once inside, he finally allowed himself to breathe.

  “I’m in the elevator. That was too close, Angel.”

  “I just altered gravity for you, you ungrateful hack.”

  “I’m in the service elevator. Just make sure there aren’t any surprise stops on the way down.”

  “I’ve already seen to that. You have a call from Commodore.”

  He pulled the drive from his pocket and turned it over in his hand. “Put him through.”

  “Maze?” Harius Thurgood, codename Commodore, barked.

  “Good evening, Commodore. Cheery Cherry Cobbler V6.7 has been recovered.” He smiled as he delivered the news. He had just saved his boss a fortune and expected the man to share in his excitement.

  But there were no accolades or words of thanks. Commodore was always all business. “I need another extraction.”

  So soon? He’d have to have a talk with Thurgood Security. They had to keep a better eye on the company’s assets.

  “What is it this time, sir? Some kind of muffin?”

  “It’s my son,” Harius said softly. “He’s found himself in some trouble.”

  “Again?”

  “Surprisingly, this one doesn’t seem to be his fault. I’ve sent Angel the information. I’m counting on you, Cason.”

  Cason did his best to make sure the sound of his eyes rolling didn’t make it into his voice. How many times had he bailed the kid out now? “I’ll get right on it.”

  “It’s important that you know I promised the Earth Security Council that I wouldn’t do anything stupid. So, you’re going to have to do it for me. But I don’t think semantics are going to fly with the council, so…” He didn’t trail off. He was finished speaking.

  “I understand, Commodore.”

  “I knew you would.”

  “If we’re going to keep this quiet, I’m going to need a ride that isn’t one of ours.”

  “It’s already been arranged. Thank you, Cason.”

  The line went silent. Commodore was gone.

  The elevator doors opened a moment later and he stepped out into the building’s loading dock. He slipped through an open delivery door, dropped into the alley and got into a waiting car.

  He settled in and prompted Angel. “What did he send you, Angel?”

  The voice in his ear responded, “You’re not going to like this at all.”

  4

  Chonda’thor, the palace’s great hall, had been named for the first emperor king of Shandor, who, at the behest of four of his favorite wives, had overseen the looting and pillaging of neighboring kingdoms to fund the hall’s construction. Roughly translated, Chonda’thor meant Great Hall Again, as it was the second great hall constructed by the king to please his wives. The first great hall, Chonda’thir, had been completed several years prior, presented to the royal wives and met with a resounding and unanimous, “meh.”

  With this reaction, the king had Chonda’thir razed and ordered that the looting and pillaging be doubled for the construction of an even grander project. And Chonda’thor was grand indeed.

  Columns of carved amber supported the arched roof that rose more than forty feet into the air. It was said that the space created inside the chamber was so vast that the room had its own atmosphere, and that if a great enough crowd filled the hall, their very breaths could create a cloud above the audience, provided they all heaved and panted extra heavily. Shandoran legend held that this ha
d occurred only once before. Then it rained. And the rain from that cloud was disgusting and reeked of a mob’s worth of bad breath. They called the event Gholmagatha—the rain of a thousand mouth breathers—and passed several decrees to ensure that it would never happen again.

  Fine tapestries portraying the legends of Shandor were hung throughout the hall. Each was twenty feet tall and spun from the finest Dominthian silk by artisans working under threat of death and a legacy shaming that their grandchildren’s grandchild would never live down.

  All of the great stories were here. The Elevation of Kragmon’Dur was majestic and awe inspiring, as it should be. The Fall of the House Lormath detailed the perils of both hubris and keeping a logthmar as a pet because, as all Shandoran parents knew, they may be cute when they were young, but logthmars grew up.

  There were hundreds more. Kanjak’s Folly. Eldinyma’s Comeuppance. Jardara’s Minor Scolding. The War of Good, Evil, Indifferent and Disinterested took up fourteen tapestries alone.

  When Chonda’thor was finally complete, it was presented once more to the emperor king’s four favorite wives. It is written that they were struck speechless by the hall’s grandeur. Then, only seconds later, they were struck unconscious by the guards, encased in amber and displayed next to their very own tapestry called the Peril of the Four Nags.

  The Rox Tolgath tapped the amber sarcophagus of the fourth nag with a hrmph as the king prattled on about the meeting with the Alliance dignitaries. His highness had been more than amused by the double cross and hadn’t stopped giggling since Captain Thurgood and his crew had been hauled away.

  “Did you see the looks on their faces? They were so stupid. And that was before we sprang the trap. Then they looked even stupider.” The king had finally stopped gasping for breath only minutes before and was finally able to form words. “There’s nothing I enjoy more than putting an Earthman in his place.”

  The Rox Tolgath only grunted.

  “Did you see the looks on their faces, my new friend? Did you?”