The Chaos Sutra

by Gregg Vann

  Leau reached into his harness and withdrew a small, handheld warmer. He pressed it up against the slick wall of bluish ice in front of them and started waving it side to side. Iev gently placed the cutter on the ground—its still-hot barrel caused the ice around it to crackle and pop, releasing tiny explosions of water vapor. Then he pulled out his own warmer to begin helping Leau. As they worked, the two men peered through the translucent surface of the ice, examining the fuzzy outlines of a tan rectangle. It looked like a large canvas knapsack, folded over onto itself. And Leau gave Iev a questioning glance.

  “No idea,” Iev stated.

  “Me either. Let’s get it out of there.”

  With their goal in sight, and curiosity piqued to new heights, the pair redoubled their efforts with the warmers. Melted ice began to flow down the lower portion of the wall in a halting sluice, merging into a bulbous and ill-defined mass before freezing again on the floor of the ice cave. Both men stepped up onto the uneven slope created by the runoff, leaning in to continue carving away at the ice.

  “I can touch it,” Iev said finally, reaching inside a small cavity he’d created with the hand-warmer. “It’s definitely fabric of some sort. Keep working on the ice in front of it while I try to get in below.”

  Iev melted away a narrow opening beneath the object, one deep enough to slide his entire arm into, and then he began hollowing out a void that stretched the full length of it. He was leaning in as far as he could, with his face mask pushed up tightly against the ice, when Leau began yelling.

  “Iev! Look out!”

  Iev swiftly pulled his arm out of the hole and scrambled to stand upright, just as a hand fell down over his face. A bony, desiccated hand, clearly belonging to a corpse. Iev frantically pushed himself away from it and slid across the floor, all the way back to the opening of the cave. Leau staggered over to join him, equally stunned.

  As they watched, a large crack opened in the wall of ice, and then the whole thing came crashing down to the floor. They both stared in horrified silence as a body fell out, unfolding to its full length as it struck the ground. The impact threw a black cylinder out from the fractured chest of the corpse, sending it tumbling across the cave to land at their feet.

  Iev recovered himself enough to tentatively lean forward and pick it up, but pulled his hand back sharply as an alarm sounded. The piercing noise filled the cave, and was followed closely by a loud and imperious voice.

  {ATTENTION: Any attempt to touch or tamper with this device will result in a focused thermonuclear detonation. It is the sole property of The Order of Buddha’s Light. Leave the device in situ until authorized retrieval. Commencing emergency transmission…Bodhi Prime}

  {ATTENTION: Any attempt to touch or tamper with this device will result in a focused thermonuclear detonation. It is the sole property of The Order of Buddha’s Light. Leave the device in situ until authorized retrieval. Commencing emergency transmission…Bodhi Prime}

  By the time the message finished repeating for the fifth time, Iev and Leau had used their suspensors for a rapid emergency descent down the face of the mountain.

  And then they hurtled away in their drill-truck.

  Just as fast as they could possibly fly.

  Chapter Two

  Brother Dyson was puzzled.

  And when you were as old as he was, and had seen the things he’d seen, anything that still managed to surprise you was very special indeed.

  Despite his vast experience, personally dealing with thousands of clients over the years, Brother Dyson had never encountered anything quite like this before. He simply couldn’t fathom why this particular transference candidate had specified a religious renewal, even insisting on the old penance requirements meant to atone for one’s sins. Why would anyone elect to undergo such an arduous cleansing ritual when it was no longer necessary?

  Well, not for the non-believers, anyway.

  The Bodhi had recently stopped demanding the religious ordeal as a requirement for consciousness transfer, because they were losing a substantial number of clients to the Volasi’s burgeoning cloning program—much to Brother Dyson’s chagrin. Traditionally, the Bodhi preconditions for cloning had been both onerous and expensive. But new competition in the marketplace, along with other unfortunate financial realities brought on by the aftermath of the Brenin War, had pushed the Order’s strict religious concerns to the background. Those who came to the Bodhi now for religious clarity or atonement did so willingly, and there were precious few of them. Lamentably, most visitors to Bodhi Prime these days were only interested in prolonging their lives, not enriching them. So why would someone with no religious affiliations in general, and no Buddhist leanings in particular, want to voluntarily put themselves through the expense and hardship of the cleansing ritual? It was a substantial burden, and one not to be taken lightly.

  Each of the exhaustive penance plans was individually tailored, crafted specifically to make amends to all the people the transference candidate had harmed during their lifetime. It was a physical, tangible attempt to cleanse their karma by undoing some of the damage they’d caused—either through monetary payment, or acts of contrition—before the candidate began a new existence in a freshly cloned body, with all of the memories from their prior life completely intact. So what had prompted this candidate to ask for such a tremendous hardship when it was no longer compulsory? Guilt? Perhaps… But Brother Dyson had reviewed her records and thought it unlikely. No, this made no sense to him, none at all. So he resolved himself to investigating the woman’s reasoning further before approving her transference petition. The old monk began rifling through his desk for the right data chip to begin his inquiry, and just as he found it, he heard a loud commotion outside his office.

  “Brother Dyson! Brother Dyson!”

  The frantic voice was muffled by the heavy iron and wooden door, but the desperation in it was unmistakable. The yells were followed promptly by a rapid and incessant knocking. Brother Dyson pushed his chair back from the desk and stood up. For such a grievous breach of decorum to occur, he knew that something must be seriously wrong.

  “Come in,” he directed.

  The door flew open, and Dyson’s assistant and disciple, Brother Ora Ryll, came bursting into the room.

  “My apologies, Brother Dyson. Please forgive the interruption. I know that you’re working on the transference petitions and asked for solitude, but this is most urgent. This is… Well, this is… It’s impossible!”

  “Relax, Brother Ryll. Relax. I could use a break. Now, take a deep breath and tell me what this is all about.”

  “There has been a transmission from Ulor XI!”

  The old monk sighed, doing his best to hide his displeasure. Brother Ryll had a known penchant for hyperbole, a character flaw that he’d been working on quite diligently. But it seemed he hadn’t met with much success, yet.

  “Yes, Brother. That is most unusual. But certainly not worthy of all this panic.”

  Ryll animatedly shook his head, handing a dataslate over to his superior with trembling hands. “No, Brother. You don’t understand. It’s a transmission from a soul chamber. An emergency beacon has been activated.”

  Brother Dyson gingerly took the device, glancing down at the information displayed on it with keen interest. He carefully reviewed the details of the report, searching for what had so unnerved his disciple. Ryll’s work was exemplary, as usual, but he took a much different approach to notation than Kiva had—Dyson’s previous assistant. Dyson knew that he would simply have to adjust, just as he’d done to many other things since Brother Kiva’s death. Despite the lingering shadow of his influence, writ large on almost every aspect of Brother Dyson’s daily life, Kiva was merely the most recent in a long line of friends the august monk had lost during his lifetime.

  Those damned Brenin and their thrice-damned war.

  Dyson had been sorely tempted to ignore Kiva’s wishes and resurrect his old disciple. But he couldn’t bring himself to do it.
His friend had insisted on seeking enlightenment through a ‘true’ rebirth, following the ancient path of that venerated cycle, The Wheel of Life. It was a common enough sentiment these days, and enjoying a huge resurgence in popularity at the monastery. Brother Kiva hadn’t disapproved of the Bodhi transference procedure, employing advanced proprietary technology to attain enlightenment through successive consciousness transfers—de facto rebirths, if you will. Kiva had advocated and administered the process to many during his tenure. He only insisted that it wasn’t his path. It was yet another thing that had made Brother Kiva so special.

  Yes, Dyson thought to himself. I do still miss him.

  “Is everything all right?” Brother Ryll asked, sensing Dyson’s sudden onset of melancholy.

  “Oh, I’m fine, Brother. Just fine. Visiting with ghosts, as it were.”

  Ryll looked at his mentor oddly, but knew better than to ask for elaboration. If Brother Dyson wanted to talk about something, he would. This was one of several informal but important rules, known and practiced throughout the monastery. There was an unstated understanding among the monks not to question the Order’s leader unless it was absolutely necessary. Brother Dyson was a repository of wisdom that he alone knew best how to impart, not a library book full of stored information, to be borrowed and returned at will.

  Dyson spoke softly as he sifted through the details of the transmission, reviewing the broadcast frequencies, location, coding language, and all of the other carefully recorded specifics.

  “It does seem to be from one of our emergency beacons,” he said finally. “But there aren’t any soul chambers missing, Brother Ryll. You know that. This can’t be genuine. Every atonement monk is accounted for. In fact, we haven’t lost a soul chamber in over two—”

  Dyson’s eyes reached the time stamp at the same moment his brain fired the neurons to complete the sentence.

  “—hundred years.”

  He slowly fell back into his chair and read the transmission again. “But that’s just not possible.”

  “I know, Brother,” Ryll replied. “But don’t you see? It has to be him. The only one of our order to ever vanish without a trace.”

  “Miso.” Dyson breathed out. “Buddha’s blessings…it’s Brother Miso. We’ve finally found him.”

  He stared down at the dataslate, weighing the import of the moment, and then Dyson gazed back up at his disciple. He saw the young man’s astonishment, and knew that his own face was no more stoic.

  “Prepare a ship, Brother Ryll. We leave for Ulor XI immediately.”

  “We? You’re going yourself, Brother?”

  “It’s Miso. Do I have a choice?”

  Dyson’s mind was racing, thoughts and memories from hundreds of years ago, flying to the forefront of his consciousness. Confusion and doubt merged with the host of other emotions he was feeling, threatening to overwhelm the old monk as everything coalesced into twin burdens of self-recrimination and regret. Dyson tapped into centuries of meditative training to will himself calm.

  “Miso helped establish this monastery, Brother Ryll. And I, we, owe him everything. My greatest shame is that we never found him.”

  “Of course, Brother. I understand.” The young monk turned to leave, but his master’s voice stopped him in his tracks.

  “And Brother Ryll, please prepare one of the Series 10 atonement monks to house Miso’s soul chamber. If there isn’t one ready, bring along all of the necessary components and we’ll assemble it on the way.”

  “But—” Ryll started. He saw the look on Brother Dyson’s face, and Ryll’s protest died before he could utter it. “Yes, Brother. Of course. Right away.”

  Two hours later, a muted gray, H-shaped vessel rose up through the arid atmosphere of Bodhi Prime, trading the planet’s familiar warmth for the cold and unforgiving vacuum of space.

  Brother Dyson said a silent prayer, and then he set a course for Ulor XI.

  Chapter Three

  This one is very good, Kiro Tien thought.

  I must be moving up the ranks on the Special Corp hit list.

  But this latest assassin's competence was only a mild surprise to the exiled Udek. His actions over the last year and a half had done little to curry favor with his home world, and recent events certainly hadn’t altered that fact. Tien's ongoing advice and counsel to the Obas had allowed them to monopolize most of the avarock currently being exported by the Volasi. In fact, they’d just completed another series of major contracts—guaranteeing all of the extremely rare material they’d need for the foreseeable future. This had angered the Udek military to no end, and they were not an organization prone to overlooking such slights. No matter how unintentional.

  Avarock was an exotic mineral with a multitude of unique properties, many of which only manifested on Volas, the planet where it was extracted. The most remarkable of the mineral’s attributes was its natural repulsion from the planet’s surface—the force of the effect directly proportional to the total mass of avarock employed. In the simplest of terms, the more of the mineral you possessed, the more lift you were able to generate. The Volasi took advantage of this planet-specific feature to construct enormous floating platforms. And then they built cities on them that hung effortlessly in the sky—perfectly stable, with absolutely no energy expenditure required to keep them aloft. They were able to maintain these floating metropolises hundreds of meters off the ground, if they wished, or even multiple kilometers high, merely by adding or subtracting massive tug-borne slates of avarock, built just for the purpose. It was an amazing accomplishment, and the Volasi cities were spectacular sights to see. But off-planet, the avarock had a more mundane, yet still highly valuable use. The mineral was an essential component in constructing lightweight shielding for starships. New fabrication techniques utilizing avarock enabled shipyards to layer impressively strong hull designs, while still greatly decreasing the overall mass of the ship. The resilient shielding minimized the normal penalties to acceleration and maneuverability that can hobble warships in battle, and it was a feature the Obas were incorporating into all of their new vessels as they rebuilt their fleet following the disastrous war with the Brenin.

  It was also a development the Udek were keen to stop.

  Tien's insight and direction had aided the Obas in many such ventures since he’d taken up residence with them. And despite their history of extreme isolation, and proclivity for near-religious xenophobia, the Obas were now forging alliances and trading partnerships with a host of different races. They were slowly, subtly, establishing and expanding their footprint across the galaxy, in ways their forefathers could have never imagined—or wanted, for that matter. But in doing so, the Obas were treading through what were traditionally regarded as Udek spheres of influence, and Tien imagined this was another reason the Udek Confederation had recently stepped up their efforts to kill their former spy. Tien not only knew too much about them—cause enough in their minds to want him dead—he was sharing that knowledge with others.

  And that was why, Kiro Tien, former member of the Udek Special Corp, an elite assassin with thousands of kills to his name, now found himself crawling through a filthy refuse tunnel, shuffling through sludge of dubious origin toward a ventilation shaft leading up to the surface of Obas. He was nearing the end of the rock-walled passageway so Tien paused to listen, straining to hear any sounds coming from the vertical shaft straight ahead of him. But his efforts yielded nothing. Other than Tien’s own labored breathing, amplified by air filtering in through the methane-additive mask he wore, the only sounds he could discern were occasional drops of polluted fluid, escaping from minute cracks in the pipes just above his head.

  Yes, he thought to himself.

  This one is very good, indeed.

  But despite the lack of signs, Tien knew the assassin had to be somewhere in the air vent. He was trying to use the shaft to make his way back up to the surface—so he could escape in his hidden ship before the Obas discovered it…and him. Tien also knew
that his would-be killer was never going to make it.

  He’d see to that himself.

  As he scooted his way forward through the confined tunnel, covering the last bit of ground to reach the air shaft, Tien reached up and felt the dagger protruding from his shoulder. The knife was buried deep in his flesh, leaving only the handle exposed. The assassin’s thrust had been so savage that one of the quillons at the base of the blade gouged a jagged path down through Tien’s muscle, and it was now lodged beneath his shredded skin and blood-soaked clothing like an anchor—though in function, it acted more like a blunt hook. But it kept the dagger from twisting around as Tien moved, and he reluctantly acknowledged the small blessing. As much as the blade hurt, and it really hurt, Tien didn’t dare pull it out. There was no telling how badly he might bleed when the knife was removed, and Tien could the endure pain far more easily than any debilitating blood loss. No, the dagger would remain in place until he killed the man who put it there.

  Tien reached the end of the tunnel and slid a metal grate aside. He then darted a look out into the air shaft, pulling himself back in quickly just in case the assassin was lying in wait, primed to attack. But Tien didn’t think so. His assailant had botched his mission, and lost whatever advantage he’d had. Now, he was on the run. The transition from hunter to hunted complete. Though with Kiro Tien in pursuit, it was more akin to a different reversal of roles—from assassin to target.

  The operative was fleeing because he wasn’t stupid. He knew his mission was a failure, and that the Obas would now be marshaling their forces to track him down. It was just a matter of time before they found him, and the deaths of his predecessors—sent to perform the very same task he’d been assigned—augured well for Obas proficiency. There was only one real option left to him now, to get off the planet as quickly as possible. Tien understood the assassin’s Special Corp training because it was the same rigorous instruction that he’d undergone, and this situation expressly called for an immediate exfiltration. In the Corp, failure was unacceptable, but understandable—reality dictates that not all of your missions will end in success.