Warp World

by Kristene Perron

  “This will be … unortho.”

  “Theorist, I live for unortho. What have we done with ourselves for karging centuries now? Hide in the damn cities, building walls and shields and sneaking out to steal what we need from everyone else. I’m tired of it. Whole damn life it’s been about getting by. We need to … I don’t know … take land again, build, make something. Go back out there.” He waved his hand at the walls. “I don’t even know where there is, but it’s not here, underground. I know my history and the deeper you try and bury people, the uglier it is when they finally claw their way out. You know what I like about going extrans? I got room to breathe.”

  Seg’s mouth fell open, then closed abruptly. He understands. The alcohol was making him feel warm, unfettered. He waved his hand aimlessly, the bottle threatening to slip from his loosening fingers. Fismar pulled it away before he could drop it. “We’re trapped in here,” Seg gestured to indicate the World outside the walls, “all of us.”

  Shan held the smoldering end of the amba stick under her nose and took a deep sniff. Her eyes glazed over as she looked from Fismar to Seg, and back to Fismar.

  “Wait.” She opened her mouth several times as if to speak, but her thoughts were obviously getting more difficult to hold in place. “You’re serious,” she said at last. “You’re both serious about this?”

  Both men looked at her with solemn expressions. Seg spoke first. “Yes. Yes we are.”

  Fismar lifted the bottle. “Here’s to being left alive. To all the brothers and sisters, hey?” He took a drink and finished off the majority of the remaining liquor. He passed the nearly-empty bottle back to Seg. “Takes a bit more for me. To put the worms to sleep, see?”

  “I understand,” Seg said, as if he really did.

  Shan watched the two men for a minute, then pointed the amba stick at Seg. “You gonna pay him?”

  Seg let the bottle slide to the floor. “That would be customary. I doubt he is expecting simply quarters and meals.”

  After another thought-gathering pause Shan said, “You need me, too. Shit, can’t have—” She screwed up her face as if she had just bitten into something sour. “—raiders and no way to transport them.”

  A sarcastic reply lay on Seg’s lips. His limited experience with Shan hadn’t exactly endeared her to him—professionally or personally. She had been in the co-pilot seat of his rented gunship when it crashed. Then, she had managed a successful landing at the Secat, only to completely miss the incoming enemy airship and spend the battle incapacitated.

  But she had stood with them at the Temple and that counted for something.

  “I don’t need a rider pilot at this time,” he said. Simple and concise. He congratulated himself on the precision of his diction. He hadn’t slurred. Had he?

  “But you will need a pilot, and that will me be. You owe me.”

  Seg bristled at that, but felt Fismar’s hand on his shoulder.

  “I will keep you in mind.”

  “I will keep you in mind,” Shan said, mocking. “Like I kept you in mind when RFC Hatterin ran up one side of me and down the other demanding to know what the karg I was up to when I joined in your little mutiny over there? Kept you in mind and kept my mouth shut. And now I’m pulled from the pool. I’ll be flying Stormwatch until I’m too old to pull the stick or until they figure out what I did and ship me off to the ponds.”

  The liquor had shut down the part of Seg’s brain that usually responded to such tirades.

  “You gave the order,” Fismar said to Seg. “That makes the outcome yours.”

  “I’ll find a place for you,” he told Shan, the kind of pithy but vague statement he ordinarily abhorred. He didn’t specify where the place would be. The guild employed its own rider service; there might be some low-level spot he could plug her into.

  “Kargin’ right you will.” Shan took another whiff of amba and closed her eyes, muttering to herself.

  “Now that we’ve got that done,” Fismar said, “let’s talk about this mob of yours that needs to be made into troops.”

  “Theorist Eraranat! Theorist Eraranat! A word please!”

  The voice rattled inside Seg’s head as if someone was beating a metal spoon against a pot. He turned slowly. Morning light was beginning to bleed through the shield and into the Raider’s Quarter, which did nothing to improve either the aesthetics of the street or the state of his head.

  The source of the voice was an attractive woman, red-haired and fashionably dressed, or dressed, at least, in what he assumed was current fashion. She stood out like a flower on a dung heap and this incongruity sent a warning through Seg’s bleary pain.

  “What?” he asked, biting off the word.

  The woman produced a viscam recorder. “If I could have a moment to talk to you about the battle at the temple, Theorist.”

  Media. Somebody had seen him come in and knew that a tip in the right place could earn them some scrip. He was half hungover, half intoxicated, but loose. And now that he had assessed the threat level, he was strangely relaxed.

  “Go ahead.”

  With the exception of carefully escorted tours, the Guild was notoriously closed, even restricting newschatterers from their facilities. His easy compliance must have surprised her, but she covered it well. With her free hand, she adjusted loose strands of hair in an artful motion that suggested she was perfectly suited to this line of work.

  “What was it like standing alone against thousands of hostile outers?” She raised the viscam.

  Seg’s brow furrowed. What was it like?

  “I wasn’t exactly alone. But … it was …”

  What? Hopeless? Insane? Miserable?

  “… glorious.” The word slipped out in a tone that could be read as any number of emotions. What Seg felt, however, was surprise.

  “You’ve risen out of obscurity to fame, Theorist, literally overnight. The first successful multi-strike in over fifty years, a massive harvest from your very first raid, and a tale of personal heroism, as well. A valiant stand in the face of the enemy. What are you planning to do next?”

  His face lost all of its previous openness. “I don’t discuss my plans, Mer …?”

  “Nallin Sastor.” When Seg didn’t respond, she added, “World News Service.”

  “Mer Sastor.” He bowed and turned on his heel. “You’ve wasted enough of my time.”

  “Media feed,” Seg ordered, once he was safely sequestered in his own sleeping quarters. “Volume three, multi-source.”

  Manatu had been waiting up when he arrived home and was vocal in his disapproval. There was no use hiding where he had gone—the impromptu interview was all over the newsfeeds.

  Lissil had been hard at work preparing a morning meal. She had offered him a slight bow but refrained from assuming the retyel, he was pleased to note.

  A dose of sobrite had taken care of the worst of the hangover, and another stim had given him a vibrant burst of energy.

  He tugged off his jacket and shirt, the smell of alcohol-laced sweat and amba smoke rising off him as he did. Across his torso, the gelatinous healing grid pulsed. Another two days and he would be done with that annoyance.

  What are you planning next? Sastor had wanted to know. A very good question.

  Question. The Question, his Question. Jarin had warned him to begin preparation. He would. Soon. But first he needed to consider his situation.

  He had his men, his troops, a place to house them, and now a man to train and command them. Ordinarily, he would not put any stock in fate or luck, but events had fallen uncannily into place on that score.

  He should have been a wealthy man. Set for life. Carefully managed, his fortunes could have grown and prospered until he was considered truly rich. In that perfect alternate world, he could have afforded a larger residence with a bed
big enough for both him and Ama to sleep comfortably, with separate quarters for Lissil and Manatu.

  And this, he thought with a smirk, is why fate and luck are no better than myth and superstition.

  Already, he had spent a good amount of his raid profits—the rental gunship and troops; trans fees for Lissil, Ama, and the fifty Kenda; the lease of the warehouse for his new troops (an enormous sum, even considering the dilapidated state of the building and its undesirable location); transportation costs to move his troops to their new home; and supplies to feed, clothe and outfit them. And these were one-time expenses. To house, feed, and care for his troops indefinitely would deplete his supposed riches more quickly than he dared to consider.

  The most obvious answer was to employ the Kenda as raiders, of course. Unortho, but he could make it acceptable and establish a record of success.

  Did I bring these men here to rent them out as soldiers? He knew the answer to that but the answers to his larger questions eluded him.

  He sat on the edge of the bed and allowed himself a moment of indulgence, to wonder about Ama. Did he miss her already? They had only been apart three days. She wouldn’t have been able to offer him any help with his dilemma but something about her imbued him with certainty and confidence.

  The newsfeed caught his eye, a report on Con-4. One of the few efforts to make a new city, to reclaim lost land from the Storm. Con-4 was perpetually locked in a struggle to survive. It was almost as if the mere existence of new construction offended the Storm, making transport flights and material movement in and out of the construct city problematic.

  He crossed to the wallscreen. With a touch of his finger to the corner of the display, he unlocked the newsfeed, shifted it into information mode, and pulled up a map of the World. Seventeen major cities were noted, with information tags offering specific details on each, as well as the numerous smaller outposts, most of which were connected to the larger cities and shared their power transmission facilities for their larger shield grids.

  Seventeen cities, surrounded by endless wastes. He tapped a random mountain range, the Sistaz, and noted that the last detailed survey information was over a century old. There were no longer any references to the history of the range, or the significance of the name.

  So much lost. The icons for the cities were large and gaudy, standing out in a gulf of wasteland and choked, poisonous seas, the dregs of once-mighty oceans. He stared at the image of one of the seas, so irrelevant now that it didn’t even bear a name or any notation of interest. He remembered the salt spray of the ocean on Ama’s world, the feeling that over the horizon was new land, a new world to be discovered. Perhaps she had not felt that way, having grown up in a world where there were possibilities and horizons, but here the horizons represented limits, not opportunities.

  Scrolling back to Cathind, home of the Guild and his own city of birth, he surveyed the surrounding area.

  There, a slightly more recent reference, a mere three hours’ flight away, Storm-permitting. He pulled up the information.

  Julewa Keep. The story was a minor legend.

  We need to take land again, Fismar had said. It was true. The People needed to move again. To move forward.

  He had changed the face of the World once already, with a stunningly successful multi-strike bound to become a template for future operations. He had taken a Minor House and elevated it to Major status in a single raid.

  Now? Now he could show them something else. He could take back Julewa, for his troops, for the People, and Jarin’s overcautious nature be damned. The trick to overcoming an opponent like CWA Director Fi Costk wasn’t to cower before him as if he was a manifestation of the Storm. It was to galvanize the World and inspire them with audacity.

  “Live and strive, or stagnate and die.” A smile spread across his face.

  Long before the warehouse lights turned themselves on in the morning, Ama was wide awake. Seg didn’t break a promise unless something, or someone, created an obstacle beyond his control. A fact that was little comfort through the night, as she waited for his arrival. They were well into the third day and there was still no sign of him.

  For the sake of the men, she did her best to act as if there was nothing wrong. She ate something hot and sweet out of one of the metal canisters, then she cleansed herself in the room the men still refused to use. She inspected the men’s wounds that Elarn had treated.

  She was not the only restless soul. The men were speaking more sharply with each other; some roamed the building as if there was a purpose to their wandering, a few sang of home in voices heavy with longing, and more than one had asked her what had happened, where was Seg?

  To which she offered her standard answer: “This world is complicated. He’ll be here.”

  Kype, the Westie with the missing finger, jumped on every opportunity to sow dissent.

  Only Tirnich seemed unperturbed by the wait. He had quickly latched onto the youngest Kenda among them, the scrawny boy the men had nicknamed Slopper—a name used to denote the most junior member of a boat’s crew. Together, Tirnich and Slopper busied themselves by exploring every nook and crook of the musty old building.

  In contrast, the division between Cerd and Viren carved itself deeper every hour. The two no longer contented themselves with an occasional angry glare, and their respective deckies were following that lead. Words had been exchanged. It was only time standing between them and a fight. No telling how that might escalate when the other men chose sides.

  Seg, whatever you’re doing that keeps you away, I hope it’s worth it, Ama thought.

  As she reached the door, she told herself that it was only fate that had brought her there, that she had not been watching the men out of the corner of her eye to make sure none were marking her path. She told herself, as she quietly lifted the bar away, that she was only going to poke her head outside, even though there was a canteen of water hooked onto her belt.

  Hand on the lever, she took a deep breath.

  “Going somewhere?” Viren asked, and she jumped at the sound.

  She turned, scrambling for an excuse, unable to mask her guilt as she stuttered, “I was just—”

  Viren held up a hand. “I won’t say a word. Not a peep. You can count on your old friend Viren.”

  She let out a relieved breath but he wasn’t finished.

  “Unless you plan on leaving me behind.”

  Ama shook her head. “You are not coming with me. Absolutely not.”

  “Because?”

  “Because you don’t know this world. I do. And it’s dangerous.”

  The final word ignited Viren’s smile. “Which is the best reason I can think of for doing it. Come on, little Captain, come on. Free me from this prison, just for a drop!”

  Ama pressed her lips together as she fixed her eyes on the door. “Son of a whore. A few paces, that’s all. We’ll go out, look around, then come back in. Nothing more. And if we see one face out there we head straight back, no questions.”

  “Agreed!” With that, Viren whistled over his shoulder and a small cadre of men perked up and started toward him.

  “What are you—” Ama bleated.

  “Can’t go exploring new waters without my deckies, can I?”

  “You are going to get us in a lot of trouble one day, Viren Hult.” Ama jabbed a finger into his chest.

  “Oh, I do hope so.” He clapped his hands together, as four other men gathered around. “Danger! Adventure! Just out there, come on.”

  “Do we need blades?” Prow asked.

  “No!” Ama cut off Viren’s reply. “No weapons.”

  “You heard the Captain. Adventure awaits, deckies!”

  Seg stared impatiently at the amber Storm warning light on the slideway system running to Old Town.

  “The travel restrict doesn’t co
me off any faster if you glare at it,” Fismar said. He stretched and pushed his hands together as Seg paced. “Walking doesn’t make it come off faster, either. Once they decide the Storm’s cleared enough to admit passage, it’s cleared. And with a crowd this size …” Fismar waved to indicate the empty chamber, Manatu its only other occupant, “it’s not going to be hard to catch the first slideway over.”

  “It’s been three days now. Past sending the med over, I haven’t been able to contact them. They’re essentially extrans here, in a world that regards them as caj or renegade Outers.”

  Fismar rose to his feet and intercepted Seg as he turned to pace in the other direction. “You got to learn to accept the bigger things. Storm’s gonna do what it does. When it’s big like this, you can’t sit there and think on it until your brains boil out.”

  He accepted Seg’s glare without response.

  “Listen, let’s step outside and fill our tanks. You can tell me what you’re planning to do with this happy bunch of barbarians so I can figure out how to get ’em ready for it.”

  Seg nodded. What else was there to do?

  They stood just outside the station, sipping cups of greshk purchased from a vendor cart. Manatu shadowed close enough for safety but far enough to allow the men privacy. Seg kept his eyes fixed on the external Storm monitor while he spoke.

  “Fifty armed men need their own space. So do I. And what you said last night is true. We need to move again, expand and contest the World, not hide from it.”

  “I was pretty drunk last night, but you’re doing good so far.” Fismar gestured for him to continue.

  Seg said: “Julewa.”

  Fismar’s eyes widened. The corner of his lip curled up.

  “Fifty men to take Julewa Keep? Maybe you don’t know the history of the place, but four times that number in actual trained raiders, with rider support, tried to take the place from Etiphar in the way back when. House Etiphar were bastards and deserved to get blacked and pushed out of civilization, but the ones who made it to Julewa were the hardest and nastiest of the bunch. Fanatics and killers. Three separate attacks were launched to dig Etiphar out of that piece of wasteland rock. They all failed. Wiped out the13th Charter Air/Ground to the last trooper, hung ’em off the walls of the Keep and let the Storm take the bones.”