A Conflict of Orders (An Age of Discord Novel Book 2)

by Sales, Ian

  Twenty minutes later, they drove amongst the manufacturies of West Tobira. There was a chemical stink in the air, and looking up Lotsman saw that the sky now seemed a velvety brown. Lining the road to either side were great sheer-sided buildings of brick with rows of vast mullioned windows some thirty feet above the ground. It was like driving along a canyon.

  There was no way of telling what each place manufactured, but this clearly was the source of the earl’s wealth. Lotsman wondered that the Emperor allowed such pollution on his home world. He wondered too if the Emperor had ever visited West Tobira, or even this continent, Minami.

  They left the dark mills behind and found themselves once more on the plain. Ahead, no more than twenty miles away, they saw the edges of a town. Built of the same dark brick as the manufacturies, its buildings were also tall and sheer-sided, with no windows on ground-level. When the truck entered the town limits and passed the first building, Lotsman looked up and saw greenery spilling down from some balcony garden. He saw more, creepers and trailing plants written on the walls, cascading like water until some ten feet above the road surface.

  The road took them into the town’s central plaza and there they found the building they sought: the train station. On the other side of the square sat a tall imposing cube with turretted corners. The earl’s castle. From what attackers, Lotsman wondered, was it was meant to keep its residents safe? Were there still fierce nomads ranging the plains of Shuto? He vaguely recalled there having been some in the world’s distant past, but surely they could not still have survived? Nor would they attack a vassal of the Emperor.

  They parked the truck beside the entrance to the station, and Tovar and Dai clambered out. Lotsman slid behind the wheel. The cargo-master went to check a timetable posted on the station wall.

  Returning to the truck, he said, “The next train is in ninety minutes. It’s going all the way to Yomi.”

  “I’m off to hide the truck,” Lotsman said. He indicated the kit-bag Tovar had pulled from the cab. “You should get changed. I’ll be back in plenty of time.”

  They hurried into the station.

  Now, where, thought Lotsman, was the best place to hide the milita truck? Down a back-street? No, he might get lost and never find his way back to the railway station. He gazed across the plaza.

  “Of course,” he said out loud. He grinned.

  He gunned the vehicle into motion and shot across the plaza. Beside the castle was a thick wall, some ten feet in height and topped with battlements. Next to this was an open area. And in the open area, in neat lines, were militia trucks. Just like the one they had stolen.

  The proletarian entrance to the railway station led through a short tunnel of brick directly onto the platform. It was deserted. To their left, a brick wall separated the proles from the platform used by yeomen and nobles. To their right, the train’s single track led to a siding and no futher. West Tobira was the terminus. Opposite the platform another brick wall blocked the view of the steppes.

  Tovar was surprised at how… provincial this station appeared. This was, after all, Shuto, the capital of an interstellar empire of thousands of worlds. And yet he could have been on any of the rim worlds he had visited in the last twelve years. He looked down the track in the direction of Yomi. He knew the city to be thousands of miles away. The track was single line, completely straight, vanishing to a point on the horizon. Buildings followed alongside it for several hundred yards before seeming to give up the race and collapse with exhaustion. He knew how they felt.

  “Well?” demanded Dai.

  Startled, Tovar glanced across at her. “Yes?”

  “Give me the bloody bag.” She stuck out her hand. “I’ll get changed first.”

  He stiff-armed the kit-bag to her. She slung it from one shoulder and stalked across the platform to the entrance to the female toilets. She disappeared inside.

  Tovar took a stroll about the platform but there was nothing to see. He stopped at the end overlooking the siding and stood there a moment. He rubbed his face with his hands and let out a low sigh. He had liked being a cargo-master; the role suited him. That, he suspected, was why he had been given it. The events since Darrus had been… exciting at first. He couldn’t deny that. Finally he was actively involved in one of the Order’s great plans. There had been danger. Their imprisonment aboard Vengeful. Their escape from the battlecruiser…

  And now this. Tovar had carefully cultivated the persona he had used as cargo-master of Divine Providence. It was not him but he had become it. The worrier. He had worried every day since they had left Geneza. Even now, he expected a convoy of militia to burst into the plaza before the station.

  As if to prove him wrong, he heard the clatter of heels on the platform behind him. He turned round. It was Dai. Either she had changed—and died her hair an unremarkable brown—incredibly quickly, or he had slipped into a daydream and not noticed. Probably the latter, he decided.

  “Your turn.” Dai glowered at him and dropped the kit-bag at his feet.

  “What are you staring at?” she demanded. She yanked down the hem of her skirt, scowled and turned away.

  They were intending to present themselves as three provincial proletarians travelling to the capital, Toshi, on their liege’s business. Although they had plundered the crew’s quarters of Desert Runner for a disguise to use once on Shuto, nothing they had found had been entirely suitable. So, from what had been available, Tovar had made three plain suits of a type likely to be worn by clerks. Dai’s outfit had been the most difficult to make. Two of the sloop’s nine rateds had been female but neither had possessed her figure.

  Tovar bent and picked up the bag. He left Dai and crossed to the male toilets. Yes, he had done a good job there.

  When he exited the toilets ten minutes later, also clad in a grey suit, albeit with trousers not a skirt, he found Lotsman with Dai. As he crossed the platform to them, he reached up and patted the back of his head gingerly. He’d shaved his scalp and it felt disturbingly nude.

  “Ah, right. Good,” said Lotsman, accepting the bag from Tovar. Off he went to get changed.

  A thought occurred to Tovar. He hurried after the pilot.

  From West Tobira, they travelled by train to Minami’s capital, Yomi. They left the railway station via a cavernous exit and found themselves on a sparsely-populated pavement. It was tens of yards wide, and hot from a bright summer sun in a sky of palest blue shading to white. Before them stretched a huge plaza, into which intruded great slab-sided buildings at odd angles. They featured cutaways and strange angular extensions, often of glass or pale washed concrete. A wide highway of bronze filigree bisected the plaza some fifteen feet above the ground, and along it ran the occasional vehicle. Here and there were ramped openings in the pavement.

  Dai lifted a hand to shade her brow and scowled at the buildings dancing in the haze of heated air. She felt her jacket tug beneath her arm and that too annoyed her. It was warm, her business wear was unsuitable for the climate, the underwear and hose gripped in places she’d sooner were not constricted, her heels were impractical and she wanted her blonde hair back. She had played the role of Ship’s Engineer aboard Divine Providence so long, she had become it.

  “Toshi is thousands of miles away,” Tovar said. “How are we supposed to get there from here?”

  He reached up and rubbed the back of his shaved head. Lotsman had also cut his hair and shaved off his moustache. Dai had not recognized him at first. His face no longer seemed so long, nor so prone to melancholy or mirth. She could not decide if his bare upper lip was an improvement. He certainly did not resemble the clerk he played. Of the three of them, only Tovar fitted the stereotype.

  “Aeroliner,” said Dai, dropping her hand. She no longer remembered at what she had been looking.

  Pinned to their collars were the same escutcheons they had worn aboard Divine Providence, depicting a beast caught in a thicket. They had freedom of travel under that coat of
arms and there was no reason to suspect anyone was searching for them. The West Tobiran authorities, perhaps, but the only coats of arms the militia had seen had been stolen from Desert Runner’s crew.

  Lotsman led the way to the nearest ramp leading underground. Dai had not seen anyone descend or ascend it since they had left the railway station. She hoped the pilot knew where he was going.

  At the bottom of the ramp, they found themselves in a large chamber, built of the same grey concrete as the pavement. They could not see its far end, only two lines of square columns, one to either side, meeting in the distance. The ceiling, also grey, was twenty feet above their heads, and from it dangled light-panels the size of a noble’s second-best bed. Directly ahead of them a cut-out in the floor gave onto the level below. Dai, heels clattering on the concrete and threatening to slip off her feet, crossed to it. Below she could see yet more concrete: a wide island between two railway lines.

  Lotsman had found a map of the network. Colourful lines described a variety of geometrical shapes. A black star indicated the station they were in. It sat near the middle of the map on a dark blue line. And that line continued down to the left-hand bottom corner of the map. At its end was the symbol for an aerodrome.

  Another ramp led them down to the platform and they waited patiently beside the line bearing the aerodrome symbol. Ten minutes later, a blunt-nosed train, heralded by a wash of air, rattled into the station and drew to a halt. Lotsman was first to the door, which slid open at his approach. Dai hurried to catch up, silently cursing her footwear and the pilot’s fast pace.

  She stepped into the carriage. It was old, the wooden floor worn into shallow dips by countless feet. The wooden benches running down each side of the carriage had been polished to a rich buttery hue by countless bottoms. Some of the light-panels flickered and rattled. Black smears lined the carriage walls.

  There were a pair of proles further down the carriage, staring listlessly at each other across the aisle. After a quick glance, Dai ignored them and settled warily beside Tovar. Looking up, she saw Lotsman grinning, and wished she shared his infuriating sense of adventure. He perched on the bench, hands on his knees, gazing at the window opposite with an expression of happy expectancy on his face. There was nothing to see, of course. Just coarse grey concrete walls.

  Which soon turned to black as the train lurched into motion, left the station and entered a tunnel.

  On Shuto, transport was free. All forms of transport. Movement itself, however, was not free. Permission was required. But, given the necessary permits, a proletarian could travel at no cost from one side of the planet to the other. As Lotsman, Tovar and Dai were doing.

  As the train rattled and shook its way through the tunnels beneath Yomi, Dai tried to think herself into her new guise. She was no longer a crew-member aboard a data-freighter, but a clerk on the most scrutinized world of the Empire. Aboard Divine Providence, she had travelled where the data-freighter had taken her; here, she travelled only where she was permitted to travel. And on Shuto, everywhere was carefully organised such that the three classes of society rarely had to mix.

  The three of them did not speak during the forty-minute journey to the aerodrome. The carriage remained mostly unoccupied, although different passengers alighted and disembarked at different stations. By the time the train reached the aerodrome, only Lotsman, Tovar and Dai remained. They rose to their feet as the train pulled into the station and waited for it to come jerkily to a halt. Again, Lotsman was first to the door and stepped out onto the platform as it slid open.

  Once more amongst square pillars of grey—the décor was so similar they could have been back at that first station—they headed for the first upward ramp they saw, marching along with confidence. It was all a front: they had to appear to know what they were doing or they might draw suspicion.

  The concourse of the aerodrome was as vast and empty and forbidding as everywhere else they had seen so far in Yomi. It was impossible to tell what shape it was. Some sections stuck out; others intruded. Off to one side, Dai saw an inclined plane of concrete which seemed to serve no purpose. It was too steep to be a ramp and led up to a blank wall.

  Above their heads, strung between columns, were great rectangular glasses like vertical lighting-panels. They glowed a pale yellow and written across them in black was travel information: docks and destinations, departure times and aeroliner designations.

  “I don’t know about you,” Lotsman said, “but I’m starving.”

  Dai glanced at him. He was gazing up at the information panel. She looked back at Tovar, who stood at her shoulder. He nodded.

  “Six hours on that bloody train,” Lotsman continued, “and not a bite to eat.”

  “We have time,” said Tovar. “The next aeroliner to Toshi doesn’t leave for three hours.”

  Suspecting food would not be provided on the aeroliner—not for prole passengers, anyway—Dai nodded. Her feet still hurt and it was taking all her acting ability not to show it.

  They hurt even more once they eventually found a cafeteria. She thought they must have walked miles through this vast echoing concourse with its peculiar architecture. The eaterie was just as unwelcoming, a great open space with tables and chairs in ordered rows, the far wall of glass making it appear the room was open to the outside. A small serving area was situated halfway along the right-hand wall. Lotsman immediately strode toward it.

  Tovar had charge of the crowns—here on Shuto, there were too many fiefs for scrip to be useful—and he paid for their meals as they each placed them on the tray they carried. Then it was across to an empty table, of which there were very many, where they sat and immediately began eating. The food was simple fare, of cheap ingredients and cheap to prepare. Proletarians were rarely fed anything else. Dai focused on her plate, eating until she could feel her stomach stretching and the waistbands of her underwear and hose digging even tighter into her middle. She sat back and wished she could undo something. A belt, perhaps. Or some handy tabs, such as her Divine Providence coveralls had possessed. She missed those coveralls. They had been designed for ease of movement as she crawled about the data-freighter’s engineering spaces. Unlike the constricting jacket, tight-fitting top, short skirt and high heels she currently wore. Standard apparel for a female clerk on Shuto, but not designed for comfort.

  Lotsman let out a quiet belch and scraped his chair back. He picked up his mug of coffee and held it up to his mouth. Before taking a sip, he grinned at Dai. She turned to look at Tovar. The ex-cargo-master patted his lips with a napkin, and then carefully folded it and placed it beside his empty plate.

  “We might actually get away with this,” she said in surprise.

  It astonished Lotsman how little oversight they had encountered on Shuto. No one watched them, no one wanted to know where they were going. Or why. Even when they climbed the ramp to board the aeroliner taking them to Toshi, no one asked to see their escutcheons or demanded the reason for their presence.

  It was entirely different to his life aboard Divine Providence. Then, he had been required to present his escutcheon whenever he arrived on a world. Many fiefs also controlled the movements of proles within, and across, their borders. He didn’t know how many fiefs there were on Shuto—hundreds probably. But the borders between them seemed to be completely open. In fact, there was no indication where one fief ended and another began.

  The aeroliner would doubtless cross many such borders before reaching Toshi. Lotsman looked about him with professional interest. The aerocraft was essentially a small boat, but incapable of reaching orbit. Its hull contained some twenty rows of seats, in pairs either side of a single aisle, each pair facing each other across a narrow table. As he had boarded, Lotsman had seen another entrance further forward. He guessed that gave access to the compartment for yeomen and nobles.

  Dai slid into a seat and across to the window. Tovar stopped and looked back to Lotsman. “Do you want to face forward?” he asked.
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br />   “Don’t mind.” Lotsman wasn’t piloting the aerocraft so it made no difference to him.

  The cargo-master put his hands to his sizeable stomach and smiled ruefully. “Perhaps you should sit next to Marla, Rafe.”

  “Sure.” Lotsman folded himself into the seat beside Dai. Beyond her and through the window, he could see the aerocraft’s wing. It appeared too stubby to provide much lift—but he knew its underside, and the keel of the hull, was covered with chargers set to repel gravity.

  “I expected it to be a bit more basic than this,” he remarked. He slapped a hand down gently on the upholstered arm of his chair. “This is nearly luxury.”

  Dai gave a weak smile.

  “I expect,” replied Tovar, “a lot of things on Shuto might seem luxurious to us.”

  “Don’t bet on it,” said Dai darkly.

  “It’s all very liberal too.”

  “Don’t bet on that either.”

  Lotsman turned away. Dai was clearly in no mood for conversation. It was going to be a long journey…

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Empress Glorina was a week away from Shuto. Ormuz had mixed feelings about about their impending arrival. To see the Imperial capital! He felt a boyish excitement he had not experienced since his first trip in Divine Providence years before. And yet… He would be on Shuto to lift the Serpent’s siege of the Imperial Palace. Duke Ahasz. That was likely to be a strange meeting.

  “It’s going to be so weird,” he told Varä. “He’s me, but a couple of decades older.”

  “Not quite the same,” the marquess replied. “You’re not trying to take the Imperial Throne.”

  “I might as well be. We’ve no idea how the Emperor will respond when the fleet arrives. He didn’t seem to think the Serpent was a threat.”