Torn From On High: Free City Book 2 (The Free City Series)

by S F Chapman

  Post-Renaissance Europeans, particularly from France, gradually overtook most of Tunis. The vast French protectorate of Tunisia was established in 1881.

  In 1941 Tunis played an important part in supplying the legendary Nazi Afrika Korps under the command of Erwin Rommel in the North African Campaign of World War II. Men and munitions were fed in through the port to carry on the Axis struggle to control the northern portion of Earth's second largest continent.

  Through protracted and agonizing efforts with no small amount of luck and nearly inexhaustible resources, the Allied Forces slowly prevailed over the German-led Axis. The French masters briefly regained control over Tunisia just after the war.

  But European Colonialism was doomed. One by one the colonies were set free. Tunisia gained independence from France in 1956.

  Tunisians then enjoyed about two hundred years of comparative peace before the worldwide butchery of the protracted Second Amero-Asian War decimated most human life on Earth.

  In a rare bit of luck for the region, by the end of the Second Amero-Asian War in 2196, Tunis had been largely spared from the madness that destroyed the irreplaceable age-old cities of Cairo, Rome, Athens and many, many others. Tunis was saved but sadly, most of the residents were not. For nearly fifty years, great clouds of radioactive dust and stray plumes produced by chemical and biological weapons from Northern Europe drifted south over most of North Africa which denuded the region of nearly all life. By 2300, global warming had caused a 5-meter increase in the water level of the Mediterranean, which cut off the ruins of Carthage from the rest of the sleepy and sparsely inhabited remnants of Tunis.

  The abrupt rise of the Warlords in 2363 revived Tunis yet again.

  Bwana Kufuzu, the brutal First Warlord of EurAfrica, quickly established a military presence in the region, greatly enhancing his efforts to subjugate the remaining inhabitable portions of Europe to the north. In the ensuing eighty-three years, Tunis has been outshone only by the huge EurAfrican capital of Arusha far to the south as the most populous and wealthy urban area on Earth.

  With Arusha's recent destruction, Tunis now ranks as the Earth's most important city.

  In an amusing twist of fate, nearly fifty years ago engineers and architects from Tunis were largely responsible for the design and construction of the fledgling city of New Rome. Situated about a hundred kilometers south of the uninhabitable wreckage of the old metropolis, New Rome owes much to its eternally tenacious rival on the Gulf of Tunis.

  • • •

  “You will sleep here,” the Overseer's Assistant pointed into one of the dozens of doorless rooms in Domestic Servitude Housing Block 43.

  The mute slave peered shyly into the austere quarters.

  The tattered bed was little more than a narrow cot with a thin gray moth-eaten blanket. A rusty metal washtub and a filthy plastic bucket in the far corner made up the bathroom and laundry facilities.

  The shuttered window on the opposite wall contained no glass. The hot afternoon wind from the desert whistled through causing the ill-fitting louvers to rattle disquietingly.

  It was above average lodgings for a drudge.

  The slave ventured into the chamber that would be his home for the foreseeable future. He set his meager bundle of threadbare clothes on the bed.

  “You are permitted one meal per day at the Slave's Dining Hall in Building 3. You are scheduled for 3:25AM until 4:05AM. If you are not present during that time you will not be fed,” the Assistant cackled sardonically. “You will report to the Building 17 Slave Master at 6AM tomorrow morning for assignment.”

  The slave nodded.

  • • •

  A half an hour further along into his solitary patrol rounds, Tariq stopped for water under an especially desiccated and scraggly palm.

  Far to the north, he recalled, in the comparative paradise of Tunis, he and the others had been toiling away on the back-up planning for counterinsurgency should the Fiefdom of EurAfrica face the unlikely prospect of invasion by either IndoPacifica or AmerAsia, its two largest neighbors.

  He had been field-testing a crude new handheld particle beam weapon at the Base Ordinance Range when he learned of the news. Nearly a half-day earlier, Outer Reaches hooligans had detonated an antimatter weapon over Arusha and vaporized Daniel Kufuzu, the Benevolent and Exalted Fourth Warlord of EurAfrica.

  His Fiefdom was suddenly without the strong and steady hand of a leader, an untenable situation that required immediate and decisive action.

  Kufuzu and his advisors had foreseen, although in hindsight imperfectly, just such an unfortunate and despicable event.

  The threesome of Paramilitarist Serfs had been sent off from Tunis later that day in a rusty old road machine. Their grueling twenty-one hundred kilometer cross-desert trek had taken nearly a month. Along the way they had acquired, sometimes with cash, sometimes with brutal force, all needed supplies.

  Fifteen years earlier their present sweltering location had been selected to be used only if Daniel Kufuzu met with an untimely death.

  The long abandoned thousand year-old ruins of the Fort of Djaba and the nearby prehistoric caves lay on the edge of a dune-covered Saharan plateau in the northeastern portion of what had long before been known as the Republic of Niger. The spot had been carefully chosen because of its inhospitable climate and utter isolation.

  The idly curious would never stumble upon the forsaken location to interrupt their surreptitious undertaking.

  • • •

  The mute slave filled the Commander's cup with strong black coffee.

  “That will be all,” the officer motioned to the door with mild annoyance at the unfamiliar drudge, “now get out.”

  The slave silently bowed in deference before leaving the office.

  Commander of Covert Operations and Feudal Master of Paramilitarist Serfs Frédéric Rameau scowled at the stack of communiqués from Nairobi as he sat stiffly at his desk in the sprawling EurAfrican Imperial Military Base in Tunis.

  The ruthless thirty-two year-old former soldier had quickly risen to his current position as Head Spy for the Northern District of Africa when he had thwarted a poorly planned coup six years ago. Daniel Kufuzu himself had personally rewarded Frédéric with the prestigious appointment as thanks for preserving the Warlord's standing as the Supreme Leader of EurAfrica.

  But the job had been a letdown for Frédéric. Instead of the intrigue and high drama of fieldwork, he spent nearly all of his time directing two-dozen subordinates from his stuffy little office. Living the vicarious thrills of others was not his style.

  He sighed and sipped his now-cold coffee.

  Perhaps it wasn't so bad.

  His three personal Serfs were hiding out in the desert right now tending to the most vital and unexpected of undertakings. Soon all of humanity would be stunned by what they had managed to accomplish. Certainly as their Master he would personally be credited with achieving the great feat. They were, after all, just Serfs.

  Frédéric's daydreams of glory were interrupted by the topmost document on the stack in front of him.

  He slowly read through the dispatch from an operative in Nairobi.

  The man had secretly “befriended” a veteran female Inspector from the Free City Inquisitor's Office and discovered an intriguing bit of information regarding an unsolved crime during a recent drunken dalliance with the woman.

  Frédéric reread the message several times and smiled; this, and the work of his Serfs, would change everything.

  • • •

  With Tariq's return from the patrol of the area adjoining the cave his workmate Qadir trotted out into the heat to replace him on sentry duty.

  In the comparative coolness of the well-hidden cave, Tariq bowed reverently to the scruffy man seated comfortably on several burlap sacks of now moldering grain. Grimy, unshaven and dressed as the rest of them were in the malodorous and well-worn garb of the Desert Serfs, the raven-skinned man certainly didn't look like a powerful leader.
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  He was a bit too dark and delicate in appearance to be successfully passed off as a local, Tariq and his workmates knew, so they had spent days just after they'd recloned him carefully developing a very detailed story that explained the inconsistencies.

  The ruse was that the man was a black Arab trader from the island of Lamu a bit south of the equator just off the coast of East Africa. Two years ago, he'd been begrudgingly handed over to a new Master to settle a gambling debt. Now, the elaborate tale went, he tended to group's supplies in the cave because he was too frail for the rigors of the open desert.

  “The surrounding area is clear, Oh Exalted One,” Tariq held his bow for several seconds.

  “Very good, my servant. Shall we begin today's studies?” the man asked.

  Tariq nodded, “If it pleases you.”

  “It certainly doesn't please me, but,” he smiled scornfully, “I've come to realize that it is necessary.”

  The lightly-built black man rose, “Had my Palace advisors been better prepared for my assassination then I would not have been forced to endure these many months of hiding in the desert whilst I’ve been reeducated as to what has transpired over the past fifteen years.”

  Tariq glanced up at the man, “I understand your frustration. Your Aides most certainly failed you by maintaining only out-of-date DNA and memory files. I will strive to keep these vital records current should we be forced by future misfortune to repeat this process.”

  The Warlord chuckled, “Yes I know. Thank you Tariq; you and your workmates have struggled mightily to rectify the ineptitudes of others.”

  Tariq relaxed a bit. He was well aware that the recently resurrected EurAfrican Warlord was prone to tirades. It had been long rumored that he had once personally beheaded a hapless Palace slave who had mistakenly delivered the wrong colored grapes to the ruler's breakfast table.

  “Tell me,” the Warlord began, “how I met my most beloved third wife, Sophia.”

  7. The cop and the spy

  “Inspector Trop,” the petite young woman smiled as she stared up at him from behind the desk in the little office, “it is so nice to see you again.”

  Ryo frowned briefly as struggled to recall when he had last interacted with the ebony beauty. “Ah; Mixion?”

  “Right,” she twanged with a faint and nearly unidentifiable accent.

  “I'm looking for Zmuda.”

  She grinned pleasantly, “And he is certainly looking for you.” She produced a communication device, “Jasper, dear; I have a package for the boss.”

  “On my way,” the device replied.

  “Which one of his personas is the busiest right now?” Ryo idly asked, “Professor Malcolm Evans of the School of Biology or Lieutenant Zmuda, Master Spy?”

  “Definitely Zmuda,” Mixion ruminated, “particularly with the current wickedness that is afoot.”

  After several seconds of muffled thumps and thuds, the door to what appeared to be a coat closet behind the desk swung open to reveal a husky redheaded man. The garments hung on the closet rod behind him swayed back and forth.

  “It's such a remarkably simple way to conceal the entrance to the CRAMP Situation Room,” Ryo noted.

  The big man loped to the side of the desk.

  “We had to enlarge everything last year,” Mixion reported, “Jasper was a wee bit too stout to fit through the old passageway.”

  The redheaded roustabout winced at the ribbing.

  Mixion slid open a side drawer of the desk, “Zmuda is in the CRAMP's Bio Lab which is hidden downstairs in the basement of the University's Biology building.”

  She produced a tattered laminated nametag with a smudged but recognizable image of Ryo and an archaic clipboard with a dozen or so dog-eared documents. “You will need a plausible disguise that will allow you to poke about down there without arousing suspicions.”

  Ryo studied the badge. Ned Reed, Vermin Abatement Officer, Free City Health Department was embossed across the very official looking document.

  The old Inspector fumbled for several seconds as he attached the nametag to his shirt.

  Jasper handed him the clipboard, “Shall we go downstairs for a look-see, Ned?”

  Mixion rolled her eyes at the minor league deception.

  • • •

  For twenty minutes Jasper and Ryo kept up the ruse of the stern Heath Inspector and the reluctant University underling scrutinizing the shadowy reaches of the cavernous basement.

  When Jasper was satisfied that no one else was lurking about in the sub-level, he casually directed Ryo to a tall and gray electrical panel.

  Danger! High Voltage -- Keep Out was boldly painted in bright red letters across the hefty, man-sized cabinet door.

  Jasper glanced around before producing a large brass key. With a metallic clank, he unlocked the door and opened it to reveal a second inner panel bestrewn with half a dozen thick black circuit breakers.

  The big man deftly toggled several switches.

  The inner panel swung open.

  Ryo followed him into a dim tunnel and the double doors slowly closed behind them.

  After several paces, they stood at a particularly robust metal hatch. A small viewport briefly opened before the massive portal unlatched.

  “Ryo Trop! Damn good to see you!” boomed the portly middle-aged gent who greeted them.

  “Lieutenant,” Ryo bowed slightly to his old cloak-and-dagger friend.

  “Welcome to the laboratory.”

  High up on the back wall in the cheery and well-lit workroom, behind several workbenches cluttered with a bewildering collection of weird metal and glass apparatuses was a carefully lettered sign that proclaimed Saving humanity: The CRAMP is Combat Ready Advanced Mission Personnel.

  Ryo studied the complex machinery and profuse lab ware; “I must say that you have quite a propensity for setting up large, secret workshops.

  Zmuda grinned at the compliment.

  “What exactly do you do in here?”

  “Mostly hide out from my pesky coworkers,” the Lieutenant quipped.

  Jasper stifled a laugh at the comment.

  The spymaster led his guests to several huge shiny metal capsules that stretched from floor to ceiling, all wrapped haphazardly with tangles of tubes and wires.

  “This,” Zmuda rapped his knuckles against one of the vessels, “is where Jasper was produced.”

  “Ah; cloning tanks,” Ryo nodded. “I myself started out as a baby in a much smaller version of one of these at the EurAfrican Sequential Cloning Facility in Dublin.”

  The Lieutenant snorted, “You and many thousands of others.”

  “I think the Dublin facility produced about forty-two hundred infant clones in 2390,” Ryo shrugged, “Fortunately only one of me.”

  “As you may recall, a few years ago I discovered an ancient genetics database from 2060. It of course contained all of the genetic information needed to produce clones, but it also included the memory files of the original adult subjects. Since then I've produced adult clones with all of their memories intact. As far as I can tell, no one else can do anything like this now.”

  Ryo studied the intricate metal chamber, “It seems that we are still just bumpkins compared to our ancestors in the twenty-first century.”

  “In many ways, we are. It took months to properly recreate the old process.” He pointed proudly at Jasper, “This big lug was the first success.”

  The Aussie grinned.

  “Both Jasper and Mixion recall participating in a secret research project but I've been unable to glean any other information about the effort from the available historical records. It's that old problem that so much information from the past was destroyed during the madness of the Second Amero-Asian War.”

  Ryo considered the efforts of his friend for several seconds.

  Jasper produced a plain, beige photo album and thumbed through several pages, “There are twelve of us now from the distant past, four in Free City and the rest scattered about on Ear
th and beyond.”

  Zmuda nodded as the men studied the pictures of the newfangled spies, “We've even got someone on Titan to assure that the recent coup that disposed of the Warlord of the Outer Reaches stays on track.”

  “Impressive,” Ryo commented.

  The men lingered for several minutes.

  “How is Dilma?” Zmuda finally asked with the look of concern that one might expect from a godparent.

  “Well enough, I suppose,” Ryo dithered as he set the album aside.

  “I'm sure that Jana told you that I attended Dilma's recital the other evening as Professor Malcolm Evans. Both Jasper and Mixion were there as well.”

  Ryo tipped his head and studied the wistful expression on the man's face, “You miss her, don't you?”

  Zmuda nodded. “The three of us did rescue her from what would likely have been a horrible life in the sex trade.”

  Jasper had a faraway look as he spoke, “She's such a wonderful young lady. I can't imagine her being abused as an erotic plaything by some brute in the Outer Reaches.”

  Ryo considered that Dilma had spent months with the three adults during the long return to Earth aboard the tiny interceptor. Certainly the foursome had formed a family of sorts: Zmuda as the wise old patriarch, Mixion and Jasper as the adoring young aunt and uncle, and Dilma as the beloved ragamuffin.

  “Just as she was instructed to do,” Ryo reported, “Dilma has kept the details of her former life and any reference to you and the CRAMP secret. No one but me knows of her past. But she does miss you and sometimes when I'm telling her bedtime stories she will stop me and share a tale about you three.”

  “She's a great kid,” Zmuda beamed.

  “And I suspect you're a good dad as well,” Jasper added.

  “Well;” Ryo's eyebrows arched up, “parenting is so much harder than investigative work, especially for an elderly novice like me. I have doubts that the fine people at the Connaught School and I can make up for Dilma's frightening lack of social skills and street-smarts.”