Engines of Empire

by Max Carver

  The Premier had covered the plain gray walls with thick, dark curtains. All furniture had been removed and replaced with a few thick cushions on the floor and some ornate incense burners and candle holders.

  “Please sit.” Cross sank to a cushion and folded his legs. “My wives will bring us tea, as the ambassador prefers.”

  While everyone sat, two of the colorfully wrapped women from the dais entered, their heads lowered, and closed the doors behind them. Ellison was startled to notice that one of the two women had big, pale green fish eyes that he would usually associate with the Aquaticans and their DNA manipulation. He couldn't see the rest of her, so he couldn't check her neck for any large sea-creature tattoo.

  “These are the newest and prettiest of my wives,” Cross said, watching with pride as they served green tea in steel coffee cups. “Walali comes from the Island of Kythira, among the Aquatican people. She helped set my feet on the path of Higher Light.”

  “You have adopted the faith of the Aquaticans?” Ellison asked, with a look at Coraline.

  “We do not cover ourselves like this,” Coraline said. “In these beautiful silks. We bare our skin to the sea and sky and only cover ourselves on land or in frigid waters.”

  “The Aquatican faith was only a doorway for me,” Cross said. “Beyond their gods lies a deeper truth. The Higher Light. I saw it when I ate the same concoction of sacred ocean plants the Aquatican prophets use to commune with the spirits.”

  “That is not meant for outsiders.” Coraline looked at the girl in the aqua-colored hooded scarf, with the big green fish eyes. “Your father will be unhappy to hear of this, Walali. You stole the Deep Blessing mixture from his tabernacle, didn't you?”

  “She opened my eyes,” Cross said, not letting his wife answer. “The Great Lights, the great polar auroras, spoke to me. I saw that the lights are the face of the Higher Light. The true god.”

  The room was quiet for a minute. Simon Zorn again seemed to take great pleasure in slowly stirring and tasting his tea.

  Ellison was at a loss. Most of the Iron Hammers he'd encountered were like the men outside, their leaders like General Prazca. Cross had become something different. Even his appearance was markedly different, his hair and beard neatly trimmed, unlike the wild lice-ridden forests growing from the heads of his men. Cross's hair looked oiled and even dyed to keep it a uniform midnight black.

  “And what did you learn from this experience?” Coraline asked, finally tearing her eyes from the wayward Aquatican girl.

  “Our people can live in peace,” Cross told her. “I've seen it. It is the only meaningful way forward.”

  “I'm glad you see that,” Ellison said. “Do your people agree?”

  Cross hesitated, as if choosing his words carefully. “The Polar Archipelago is inhabited by wolves. All of the men, and many of the women, are wolves. The Premier must be an alpha among alphas, more than a wolf. A leader of pack leaders. A dire wolf, like the ancient creatures of Earth. Some do not wish to hear talk of peace. They think it sounds like weakness.

  “I understand,” Cross continued. “I was once like them. I come from a long line of dire wolves. This,” he indicated the large crossed-hammers logo tattooed on his bicep, “This comes from my surname. My grandfather's surname. Cross. The crossed hammers were his personal sign. I was meant to follow after my grandfather and father. Then my Walali came, and she brought me to the Light.” Cross held out an arm, and the green-eyed girl sauntered over and dropped into his lap. He fondled her gently through her robes. Ellison knew Cross was sixty-one years old, though he looked much younger, indicating he'd been getting plastic surgery.

  “It sounds as though a peace agreement between your two factions is quite possible,” Simon said, finally looking up from his tea. “You see, Minister-General Ellison? I don't believe I was hasty in inviting all of you to meet at once.”

  “The Premier has never contacted us with an offer of peace,” Ellison said.

  “Of course not,” Cross said. “Do you think I want to be overthrown? My people would not allow that, not without a great victory on our part and a surrender on yours. But Carthage has offered us a new path. All of us know our world could never defeat the forces of Carthage, even if the Polar Archipelago aligned with the Coalition against the outsiders. This provides me cover to seek peace in the name of necessity. Because Carthage demands it.”

  “Your people are wise to choose a leader as perceptive as yourself, Premier Cross,” Simon said.

  “Leaders of the Polar Archipelago are not picked by the rabble, like cheap baubles in the market,” Cross said. “Leadership is taken. Before I became Premier, I had to kill my father in single combat. He should have seen it coming, since he'd done the same to my grandfather. I suppose he didn't expect me, out of all his sons. Three of my brothers seemed more likely candidates. All of them are dead now, too, as the Light has chosen.”

  Ellison nodded. This fit with what he knew of the regime. Cross's recent personal and religious changes, though, were a complete surprise to him.

  “So we have the outlines of an agreement,” Simon said. “The Coalition and the Iron Hammers agree to join Carthage's defense network, under terms previously discussed. A ceasefire is declared, with complete autonomy for each faction. Peaceful trade agreements can then be worked out between you.”

  “You would promise to stop all raids on Coalition shipping?” Ellison asked. “You, the pirate king?”

  “It is time we move forward to more peaceful commerce,” Cross said. “And more productive endeavors. Raiding and robbery are not the path to the Higher Light.”

  “It seems hard to believe your people would go along with that,” said Coraline. “Raiding and robbery are popular vocations among the Iron Hammers.”

  “There is also the issue of slavery,” Ellison said. “People trafficked in from other worlds for your brothels and households.”

  “This too will pass in time,” Cross said. “The Light will bring us all forward.”

  Ellison sipped his tea—he still would have preferred coffee, and for that matter a real chair instead of a cushion on the floor—and considered how to proceed. If the Iron Hammers had opened fire on them, tried to kill them all, he wouldn't have been surprised. That would almost have been expected. This offer of peace had caught him by surprise, though.

  He didn't trust it. Maybe the Premier had seen the light—or the Northern Polar Lights, apparently, while doped up on strong hallucinogens—but his promised reforms seemed doubtful. Cross was clearly facing some dissent within his own leadership, bad enough that it had been obvious to outsiders.

  “Peace with the Polar Archipelago and an end to raiding and slaving would be a strong incentive for the Coalition leaders to sign on,” Ellison said at last. “I will be sure to emphasize this when I report back home. There will be discussion among the leadership of our nations and their legislatures, and of course the public—”

  “I was instructed to return to Carthage with an answer,” Simon said. “I cannot wait weeks and months for a response.”

  “But surely Carthage understands that we are a coalition of popularly elected governments, not a dictatorship. Nor would we ever wish to become one,” Ellison added, with a pointed look at Simon.

  “Carthage cares only about results,” Simon said.

  “Under the Coalition charter, no interplanetary treaty is final until ratified by the House of Ambassadors,” Ellison said. “And the ambassadors answer to their home countries. Everyone will have an opinion on this. Polls show the vast majority of our people oppose any alliance with Carthage. And this bombing of the spaceport only makes things worse. If someone meant to push us into a hasty decision by throwing fear and danger into the situation, they're going to get the opposite of that. More delay.”

  “Perhaps the intent was just the opposite,” Simon said. “To interfere with our diplomacy, to forestall any agreement. As you say, that's what many of your people want. Perhaps the bombers expecte
d us to pack up and fly back to Carthage, as though we have never seen danger before. But you would not believe the dangers I have seen, the horrors and death I have observed. I do not fear, Minister-General Ellison. It is not in my programming. No minor bomb is going to chase me away, however much you and your people might prefer that.”

  “You aren't implying that we would bomb our own spaceport, are you?” Ellison said, feeling another wave of hate for the android.

  “You seem too reasonable for such a course,” Simon said. “But appearances can deceive, and are often designed to do so. However, perhaps some hard-line faction on your side engineered this. Someone with access to explosives and the technical knowledge to install them. Someone with a mining background, perhaps.”

  “I would not attack my own people!” Kartokov snapped. He pointed at his own burned face. “And my people got the worst of it. You machines weren't hurt at all, aside from your stupid feather caps getting burned off. And that was an improvement.”

  “And now you can argue that the bomb in your own rooms proves your delegation's innocence,” Simon said.

  “These accusations are getting us nowhere,” Ellison said. “Loomis's investigation will turn up something. They're imaging each person currently on the port, checking their faces against databases of known terrorists and criminals.”

  “In the meantime,” Cross said, “let us send up a prayer offering to the Higher Light, showing our gratitude for the peace to come.” He patted his wife's silk-covered shoulder, and she rose and joined his other wife in preparing some kind of ritual involving incense, candles, chanting, and the burning of salty-smelling plants. Ellison tried to avoid breathing any of that in; he didn't want the Polar Lights talking to him.

  Still, Ellison was glad for any delay, anything that put off Simon's pressure for a final answer that Ellison simply did not have the authority to give.

  The comm beeped in Ellison's ear. He took out his pocket screen, discreetly as he could. Loomis was calling. Ellison accepted.

  “We fished something out of the sludge,” Loomis said, his voice audible only to Ellison. “Bad news, but no surprises, I guess.”

  “What?” Ellison typed the message so he didn't have to speak during Cross's chanting and incense thing. Cross's wives danced, in a way that seemed a bit snakelike and sultry for a religious practice, and now they were bringing some recorded pan flute and harp music into it. It wasn't hard to see why Cross's rough, violent subjects were getting annoyed with their leader.

  “It was a Carthaginian honor guard bot,” Loomis said, “We fished out short vids of it installing the explosives in the storage corridor that runs behind your room. Including the one that almost got your boys.”

  Ellison felt himself snarl involuntarily. He managed to get the expression under control. Cross was too entranced with his chanting and his dancing wives to notice, fortunately.

  Simon Zorn was not, however. The ambassador android was looking right at Ellison.

  “Is everything all right, Minister-General?” Simon asked, feigning concern in an almost convincing way. “You look like a ghost walked over your grave.”

  “I think you mean a goose, Mr. Ambassador,” Ogden said, finally adding something to the conversation. The minister of commerce was less than useless.

  Ellison could stop himself from drawing his pistol and shooting the android through the head—for the moment—but it was going to be a little longer before he could fake a civilized conversation with the machine. So instead he typed to Loomis: “Are you sure? 100%?”

  “One hundred percent,” Loomis replied in his ear. “It was one of those reaper bots.”

  “Evacuate all civilians,” Ellison typed back. “Leave only Carthage and the Hammers. Move quickly and quietly.”

  “Including your family, sir?” Loomis asked.

  “Yes. And send down the big guns to me. Everything.” Ellison typed back, then deleted his record of the texts before pocketing his screen.

  “Is everything all right?” Simon asked again.

  “Yes,” Ellison said, aloud this time. “I just didn't want to interrupt the, uh... ” He gestured at Uly Cross, who was swaying to the flute music.

  “Of course you didn't,” Simon said. “Was it news about your wife? My soldiers report she's fine, though still unconscious. Your boys are apparently unhappy, having had a bit of a rough day—”

  “I thought your robots were going to leave the medical center and leave my family alone.”

  “I may have forgotten to confirm the order.”

  “You don't seem like someone who misses a lot of small details,” Ellison said.

  “Honored guests, please,” Cross said. “We are nearly finished with the pleasure offering.”

  Too bad, Ellison thought as he looked back at the ambassador and tried to figure out how to keep the android occupied while Loomis handled the evacuation. And, more importantly, how to deal with the eight Carthaginian infantry reapers currently on this port. If it came to a fight, would the Iron Hammers side with the people of their own world or with Carthage?

  Regardless, Ellison knew what was ahead. Bad water. That was what his father called it when one of Galapagos's killer storms whipped up, threatening their family's trawler. The Western Sea had birthed a number of typhoons so bad they almost made one believe in the Aquaticans' tempestuous sea gods. Ellison had seen his share of bad water during the war, too. Bad water of all kinds.

  Now all of Galapagos was his ship, and he had to steer the world through the storm.

  We're barreling right into it, he thought. And there's nowhere to go but dead ahead.

  Chapter Eleven

  Earth

  Colt awoke with a start. He'd had nightmares of that skinwalker, the Simon unit, standing over him, asking all kinds of questions. In his dreams, everything had been fire red, like the infernal underworlds of legend, the red of the devils that Mother Braden had warned them about, waiting to snatch children who were too loud or wandered out in the ruins when they were supposed to stay home.

  In his nightmares, the Simon had demanded again and again to know where Colt's mother had gone.

  “Where is your mother?”

  “I don't know.”

  “Did the reapers take her? The clankers? The scavengers? Did she suffer before she died? Did she suffer for days, weeks, months? Did she—”

  “I don't know!”

  “Where is your sister? Why aren't you protecting her? She needs you, but instead you're here—”

  He was awake now, though, and that nightmare was over. He was back to the real nightmare of his waking life.

  The facility was darkened, so maybe it was night. There seemed to be fewer, softer cries around him, in the world beyond the stained green curtains.

  Something bumped against him in the dark. Something had woken him, he realized. It seemed impossible to believe he'd gone to sleep here, a prisoner in this awful place, but the pain machine must have worn out his nervous system. Or perhaps he'd been drugged and didn't remember it. It wouldn't be the first time the machines had tranquilized him.

  Another bump, this one against his hip. As it rolled closer, Colt recognized it.

  The Nurse Kitty pediatric bot was visiting him again, wires still dangling from its missing eye and cracked face. Its saggy cockroach arms unfolded, revealing the circular saws, the straight blades, the dirty syringe.

  “No!” Colt whispered, wriggling uselessly in his restraints. “Shoo! Go away!”

  “Be quiet, or you'll draw attention.” The old med-bot's voice was low and crackling, much quieter than it had been during the day. Instead of syrupy-sweet baby-talk, the bot now spoke in a rushed, nervous young woman's voice. Either Nurse Kitty flipped to a different personality mode at night, or...

  “Is that you?” Colt whispered.

  “Yes, it's me,” the med-bot whispered back. “Now, quiet! This will be loud as it is. Hold still so I don't lop your arm off.”

  A circular saw sprang to l
ife, emitting a high whine, which became a grinding, chewing sound as the saw gnawed into Colt's upper-body restraint. He was nervous watching it, since the thing really could cut off his arm, but his hacker friend was careful and precise.

  Colt tossed the cut strap aside and tried to get up, but his hips were still strapped impossibly tight.

  The med-bot finished cutting him loose, and Colt eased to the floor. He looked down at all the sensors on his arms and chest. There were more at his forehead and temples. All were wired to the bank of unmarked machines and monitors by his hospital bed.

  They weren't all sensors, he understood very well. Some were there to induce pain, available on a sliding scale of agony.

  “Can they tell if I take these off?” he whispered.

  “Yes,” the med-bot said. “You'll have ninety seconds to clear the building.” She gave him directions. “You're about fifty kilometers southwest of your home territory. Do you know the location of Hangzhou Tower? The red and gold pagoda skyscraper?”

  “Maybe... ”

  “It has a bronze statue in front known as The Watchful Tiger.”

  “Yeah, I know the place.”

  “Go there.

  “That's where you are?” Colt asked.

  “Go now. Remember, ninety seconds.” The med-bot rolled away through a curtain.

  Colt grabbed double handfuls of sensor wires, took a deep breath, and ripped them all off at once. They'd been applied with a glue that tore away hair and possibly a layer or two of skin, but he managed to let out no more than a low grunt at the pain.

  He tossed the wires on the bed and ran out the way the med-bot had indicated. He was disheartened to find himself barefoot, dressed in a paper hospital gown still encrusted with his own vomit. He'd lost his clothes, his backpack, his tools, everything. And there was no time to scavenge before he left.

  Colt ran past one small, green-curtained area after another. Many of the curtains were drawn, but some weren't.