The Renegade

by P. M. Johnson

  Bishop accepted the other man’s hand and shook it, wincing slightly as Linsky gave him gave a hard squeeze with his prosthetic appendage.

  “I’d better leave,” said Bishop. “Attika and her babysitters get nervous if I’m gone too long.”

  Thirty minutes later, Bishop slipped down an alleyway to where he’d parked his car. He reached into the glove box and retrieved a small gray Personal Data Device. He pressed a few icons on the screen and watched it flicker to life. Moments later, the face of Attika appeared.

  “Where the hell are you?” she demanded. “We traced your location to an alleyway outside Boston, but you left your PDD and the tracer in your car. You were under strict instructions to keep the tracer!”

  Bishop smiled condescendingly, pleased by the knowledge that her panic was due in part to her missing agent whom he’d dispatched an hour earlier. “You forget who we’re dealing with, Attika. These people are unrepentant servants of the former regime. They’d have gutted me like a fish if I’d been foolish enough to try to sneak by them with a tracer on me. I’m willing to spy for the greater glory of the Revolution, but I’ll not commit suicide.”

  Attika’s face darkened into a scowl.

  “You know something, Bishop? I’ve noticed that the farther away from me you are, the more cynical and emboldened you become. Perhaps I should tighten your leash, maybe even put you back in your cage.”

  “Point taken,” replied Bishop submissively.

  “Good,” said Attika. “Now, what did your source tell you? Where the hell is Linsky?”

  “As suspected, Linsky’s once again leading his Storm Front,” replied Bishop. “He was last spotted near Philadelphia. That’s where he went to ground.”

  “Philadelphia? I thought you said he would be somewhere around Boston. That’s why I allowed you to go there.”

  “I can only tell you what I heard,” replied Bishop.

  “Fine. He’s hiding somewhere around Philadelphia. What else did you learn?”

  “He will do what he does best; using a combination of disinformation and terror, he will seek to put your new government on its heels by targeting Liberty. There will be a series of raids on food depots, rail stations, and government facilities all around the city. I’ll provide you a list of potential targets.”

  “What’s his end goal?”

  “Why, to topple the government and restore the PRA,” said Bishop with a light laugh.

  “With himself as the new Grand Guardian, I assume,” said Attika.

  “Perhaps, but my informant said something very interesting that may shift the focus of your efforts.”

  “Yes?”

  “He said Linsky’s working hard to strangle our little Enfant Régime in its crib as he prepares for the return of the old man himself, Joseph Harken.”

  Attika narrowed her eyes upon hearing this news. Ignoring Bishop’s play on words, which he had pronounced with an exaggerated French accent, she said, “Harken’s coming back? When? How?”

  “My informant didn’t know, but Linsky is apparently convinced the former Grand Guardian will be returning soon. He’s even rumored to be in communication with him. But you can be assured that if Harken is coming back, he’s doing so with the blessing, even assistance, of the Sahiradin.”

  “The Sahiradin might come, they might not come,” said Attika tersely. “We’ll let the Lycians and the EDF worry about that. Our job is to stabilize this country, boost production, and put people back to work.”

  “A potatoes and jobs plan won’t be enough to stop Linsky, Attika. You’ll need to go to war. It’s a pity Brandt resigned and took all those soldiers with him to fight the Sahiradin. With Linsky on the loose, you need someone with his abilities to root him out.”

  “We don’t need Brandt!” snapped Attika. “He’s an egotist. Let him hop around the galaxy fighting monsters.”

  “So it’s up to Vessey and First Army, then,” said Bishop, carefully masking his mounting pleasure. He admired Attika’s intelligence and zeal, but she really did talk too much when she became angry.

  “Vessey’s no better than Brandt, but at least he does what he’s told.”

  Bishop couldn’t help but smile. Vessey was a cagey old survivor of the former regime. He would seek to mollify Attika and do as she asked, but he was no Septemberist.

  “Then who will you use to hunt down Linsky? You have yet to replace Brandt, and at least half of Second Army followed him into the EDF. Surely you can’t entrust this to the Constitutional Guards.”

  “Why not?” asked Attika, annoyed by Bishop’s casual denigration of her internal security force.

  “Perhaps I’m out of place in saying this,” said Bishop, “but they’re little more than a mixed bag of glassy eyed true believers and street scum. And although Commissioner Corbin might be a steady Septemberist, he’s no match for Linsky. He lacks the sophistication and ruthlessness necessary to do the job.”

  “If you’re suggesting that I replace Corbin with you, forget it about it,” snarled Attika.

  “I would never dare suggest such a thing,” replied Bishop demurely, though the thought did appeal to him. The future was uncertain, and leading Attika’s security force would be a good place to either secure the survival of the Septemberist Revolution or ensure its demise.

  “Good. Stay in your lane, Bishop. You said Linsky plans to hit installations around Liberty. Transmit the locations and I’ll confirm what you’re saying.”

  “Confirm what I’m say?” said Bishop, offended. “Don’t ask me to risk my life on missions such as this if you do not trust the information I provide you.”

  “I don’t trust a damn thing you tell me, Bishop. Never have. Never will. But like watching a rat in a maze, I can learn a lot from what you say and do.”

  Bishop’s face turned red with anger. “Now you listen to me! If you think I’m a rat, maybe I’m finished sticking my neck out for you!”

  “Maybe I’ll stick your head in a noose,” shouted Attika. “You seem to have forgotten that your life is dangling on a very thin thread, and I’m the one holding the end! Now get back to Liberty as quickly as you can for a full debriefing. Report in when you reach the first safety station. I don’t want you wandering around in the countryside unsupervised.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” sneered Bishop. “I’ll report in at the first visa station, er, I mean, uh, safety station I come to.”

  Attika scowled at the former Justice Guardian’s use of the PRA’s term for its network of internal checkpoints but refused to engage. Her decision to reactivate the former regime’s network of travel visa checkpoints, now referred to as “safety stations”, had been necessary. With Linsky on the loose and growing numbers of people attempting to migrate to the League of Free Cities, what choice did she have?

  “Just get back here!” she ordered before abruptly ending the transmission.

  As soon as the image of Attika’s face disappeared from his PDD, Bishop’s expression morphed from anger to amusement. He dropped the PDD onto the seat next to him and turned the car’s ignition key. He placed it into first gear then silently rolled out of the alley. As he headed south, he tapped his thumbs on the steering wheel and hummed a cheerful tune. Attika was no doubt still trying to reach the clumsy oaf she had assigned to follow him. The poor retch was probably still lying in a pool of his own blood, staring upward toward a beautiful but indifferent blue sky.

  “You have so much to learn, my dear Attika,” Bishop said to himself. “You are playing at a game you do not understand. Alas, there is so little time to learn the rules. So little time.”

  Chapter 35

  Borelium is strong beyond compare, but once cracked, it cannot be repaired.

  - Anonymous.

  Bakaram, the so-called Queen Slayer, pulled the hood of his black cloak down and lowered his head as he walked along the service level road, just fifty meters above the surface of Toska Brey, capitol city of the planet Xur. Like the ancient, forgotten street below, this
level was blanketed in permanent shadow by the surrounding buildings. Thousands of meters above Bakaram’s head, the shining surfaces of soaring spires dazzled the eye with an ever-changing display of colors as Xur’s blue-white sun progressed across the sky, reflecting sapphire blue in the morning, brilliant white during midday, orange and red in the evening. Known as the City of a Thousand Suns, the citizens of Xur were born, lived, thrived, and died in the heights far above the ground, the sight of which was as alien to them as the surface of another world. Indeed, many considered the dark lower levels of the city quite threatening, and few dared descend from the heights to see for themselves the foundations upon which their ancient grand city rested.

  As they had done during the Sahiradin revolt against the Alamani, the Alwen, Xur’s governing council of oligarchs, carefully maintained its neutrality during the long conflict between the Sahiradin and the Lycian Alliance. Nevertheless, the entire planet, especially the city of Toska Brey, was teaming with agents from both sides. They monitored shipping patterns and financial transactions, tracked the arrival and departure of the opposition, and sought to influence the vast finance and trading machinery of Xur in their favor. For its part, the Alwen maintained its neutrality not by limiting its interactions with Sahiradin and Lycians, but rather by frequently dealing with each. Except for weapons and other tools of war, all trade within the Alliance network and the Reclaimed Worlds was allowed to pass through Xur’s ports.

  This veneer of neutrality was tolerated by the Alliance and the Sahiradin because of the critical role Xur and her five sister planets, the so-called Unaligned Worlds, played in the galaxy’s balance of power. For unlike the rest of settled space, the Unaligned Worlds maintained khâls with connections to each side’s networks. It was through these gates that the Sahiradin acquired, for example, the latest technology for mining and processing their stores of unrefined borelium. And the Lycians relied upon the khâls’ communication functions to securely transfer vast sums of denosh through Xur’s financial institutions. Furthermore, if done carefully, these khâls also allowed Lycian and Sahiradin agents to slip through to the other side. For the most part, masters of the Unaligned Worlds turned a blind eye to small incursions through their khâls into each other’s territory, assuming payment was quietly made to the right officials and the more important rules of neutrality were observed.

  Two security drones roared past Bakaram. Though they were in search of other prey, members of one of Xur’s many criminal organizations engaging in prohibited activities in the dark depths of the city’s lowest levels, the drones no doubt caught a glimpse of Bakaram. They would have recorded his height, weight, gait, and as many other attributes as possible for later analysis by the city’s legendary Central Index System, a vast network of computer systems which ran Xur’s law enforcement programs. CIS would soon begin matching the data the drone sent to it against other information at its disposal and determine that there was an unaccounted for Sahiradin in the city where few of his species had registered their presence.

  Cursing his ill fortune, Bakaram could not afford to remain on Xur any longer than absolutely necessary. He glanced left then right before slipping into a narrow space between two buildings barely wide enough to admit him. As he walked, he removed a small object from the folds of his cloak and passed it along a thin seam in the foundations of the building to his right. The seam glowed a soft white then a door appeared where none had been a moment before. Bakaram entered and walked down a passage that opened into an immense space containing thousands of large containers stacked on top of each other. Though the crates were unmarked, the former Warden of the Citadel to Queen Pashira knew exactly what was in them – large quantities of borelium, sent to Xur long ago for safekeeping in case the Alliance should ever cut off access to their main supplies. Hidden stashes such as these had helped sustain the Sahiradin war effort following the Lycian surprise attack on Dokpartha where so much of the precious material was mined and refined. In fact, it was with borelium retrieved from this very place that Pashira built the stealth torpedo ships that had proven so effective during the assault on Halduan.

  Bakaram traversed the warehouse and entered another passage then turned left into a room containing a long table and a variety of storage containers placed along one of the walls. Standing on the far side of the table were seven Sahiradin warriors. Though, like Bakaram, they wore no uniforms and displayed no markings of rank, they had a quality about them suggesting they were accustomed to command.

  “Bakaram!” said one of them. “Finally you are here.”

  “You are very late,” said another. “Our absence from our posts will soon be noticed.”

  “Yes,” said a third. “Khadiem will send her Karazan assassins to deliver the same message they delivered to the others.”

  “They will lift our heads from our shoulders,” said another.

  “And our warriors will stand by and watch.”

  “They would never dare defy the living Queen.”

  “You mean Empress, don’t you?” said a warrior with his mouth turned down in a bitter scowl.

  “Calm yourselves!” snapped Bakaram. “If anyone should worry about assassination, it is I. While you all have been happily carrying out your duties, I have been skulking in the shadows, constantly watching for signs that I have been discovered.”

  He looked from face to face. The assembled Sahiradin officers were all tall and lean, hallmarks of the children of Pashira and so many Queens before her. None bore any likeness to Khadiem’s hulking offspring.

  “How many generals did Khadiem’s repugnant staichias murder?”

  “Five. They then dismembered them in front of their officers. Each part was placed on a separate vessel which departed for different systems where they were ejected into the depths of space.”

  Bakaram drew in a deep breath. To so dishonor a warrior’s body, to deny him a place of honor among his brethren was incomprehensible, beyond cruelty. It was yet another sign of Khadiem’s madness and contempt for the true principles of the Law.

  “Who else?” asked Bakaram. “How many of their officers survived?”

  “The Karazan satisfied themselves with murdering the generals only. Their subordinates followed their leaders’ final commands and willingly gave them over to Khadiem’s assassins. Though Khadiem still doubts the loyalty of those officers, they live.”

  Bakaram pressed his clenched fists onto the table. His pale blue eyes narrowed to slits. “The fools were moved too quickly,” he said.

  “They took the Kisch’s refusal to perform the Ascension Ceremony as a call to defy Khadiem and her claim to the throne.”

  “Yes, and look what that got them and the Kisch as well!” shouted Bakaram. “I hope that this display of the Empress’ barbarity and contempt for the Law has been a lesson to you and your followers. We must act as one and only when the time is right.”

  “And when will the time be right?” asked a general. “Khadiem has murdered the Kisch and claimed absolute authority over every living thing in the galaxy. She has moved her throne from the depths of Solsegur and placed it in the Citadel. She is appointing her foul Murhatta warriors to all positions of leadership. All of us gathered here will soon lose our commands and you will have no allies left to turn to.”

  Bakaram glowered at the general and was about to respond, but was cut off by a warrior to his right.

  “And she has the last Kaiytáva. No one is beyond her reach.”

  “The situation has grown more difficult,” admitted Bakaram, trying to sound calm. The generals were losing their nerve. Though brilliant in open war, they were ill equipped to engage in political intrigue. “Nevertheless, we must remain committed to the task. We cannot waiver. Time is her friend, not ours. I have made plans to advance the schedule. We will strike soon.”

  “How will we strike?” demanded a general, one of the few Sahiradin with dark hair rather than white. “No one is allowed to approach her except her own brutish Karazan an
d that deceitful monster, Kurak.”

  The other generals nodded their heads when they heard these words.

  “Kurak is a devious one,” said a general. “His time living among the Humani has twisted his warrior spirit. He lacks all honor.”

  “I did not ask you to risk your lives to come to Xur so we could whimper like quaking Alamani,” said Bakaram. “We are here to discuss a new strategy which some of you may find repulsive but must agree to pursue.”

  “And what is that?”

  Bakaram paused and scanned the faces of the warriors gathered around him. They represented a tiny fraction of Khadiem’s vast war machine, but if they followed his instructions, there might be a chance to save the Sahiradin species and realign their spirits with the true demands of the Law.

  Each of us knows why he is here,” he said. “Khadiem’s birth was unnatural. I admit to playing a part in that birth, and so I share in the blame for it. But because I played that part, I also know the damage such a divergence from the natural cycle of births and deaths has caused. From the moment of her first breath, Khadiem behaved in strange ways. She has always been beyond cruel. Her contempt for tradition and the Law took root at a very early stage. She hated Pashira with every fiber of her being and frequently threatened to murder her and take the throne for herself. And as you all know, she favors her own children over the offspring of Pashira. She harbors deep suspicions of her mother’s offspring. And I fear we have only begun to see the depths of her madness. The Law imposes restrictions on a Queen’s power. She is not absolute in her authority, but Khadiem sees herself as the embodiment of the Law rather than its servant. In her twisted mind, her every wish is a manifestation of the Law for she is the Law.”

  The generals listened attentively to Bakaram’s words, expressions of solemn agreement on their faces.

  “But due to her latest acts of aggression, we must abandon our plans to realign our warriors’ spirits with the demands of the Law. The divergence has grown too great. We cannot correct the course of events from within. We must look to others for help to overcome Khadiem.”