Nova Byzantium

by Matthew Rivett

  “Please.”

  “Someone—I can only assume under your command—has been dumping these zombies up in the hills, near the borderlands. I was on patrol near the dam when I found two of these vile things, but in a far more advanced condition,” Uri explained. “Are you aware?”

  “No. My men are under strict orders.”

  “I-and-I is known for running a tight ship, but it has some leaks. I don’t want to go up the chain of command with this but—”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  “No. Listen, captain, with these recent abductions, Alkonost in Moldova has been under a lot of stress. There’s been a backlash, I realize that, but dangling these things out like scarecrows in revenge . . . it’s dangerous, and rather than scattering the Carpis, it’ll have the opposite effect. There’s also the political issue with Constantinople. Trajan is unpopular.”

  “My men are top notch, they’ve been vetted by Tiraspol, all with Level Four accesses, I . . . ”

  “What about Lieutenant Sava Valis? He’s a highly decorated combat veteran, but he was a victim of these Carpi abductions. Do you think he . . . ?”

  The captain shook his head. “No. I know Sava, and he doesn’t have it in him.”

  “Fine. I’m leaving on furlough in the spring—back to Tiraspol for another contract. I’ve a vested interest in the success of this campaign, as we all do. Lots of my close comrades have died in the Carpathians, and it’d be a shame to see it derailed, snarled in bad publicity.” Uri stepped into the hallway as the guard locked the cell behind them.

  “Thanks for your candor, lieutenant. This matter will be quickly resolved, I assure you. I appreciate your coming to me directly,” Zelinski said, shaking his hand. “The guard will escort you out.”

  “Vae Victus.” Uri saluted. “Woe to the conquered.”

  Zelinski saluted back. “Forem Byzantium, Forem Justinian, Forem Alkonost.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  September 2163 C.E.

  Another beep woke Uri from his restless sleep. The helmet’s oxygen monitor had been alerting him all night. The Hellespont’s methane flush was typical of the Black Sea’s out-gassing, rarely lethal, but debilitating near sea level. He switched off the alarm and rose from the warped sun lounger, rubbing his arms to warm himself.

  Plants had overtaken the centuries-old seaside resort, succulent vines and monsoon-fed philodendrons claiming the decayed hallways. Stripped to the brass plumbing, not much remained. On the top floor, Uri found a suite with an intact sliding door and a view of the gray Aegean from the deck. The drywall had dissolved, but the cracked tiling and sodden particle board were sturdy enough to hold his weight.

  Thirty-six hours after re-entry, and Uri was famished. Most edible fish in the northern Aegean were extinct, and the saltwater quaggas were toxic with the ever-present bacteria bloom. Bat-nibbled oranges in the hotel’s citrus grove proved indigestible, and he didn’t have the constitution to kebab a lizard, at least not yet. If he could just reach the pod’s emergency rations . . .

  The helmet stunk of sweat, but with his enrichment hood still in the pod—along with everything else—it was his only defense against hypoxia. Besides gulps of rainwater, Uri was forced to continually wear the headpiece. The orange parachute was only a hundred-meter swim from shore, but the atmosphere was uncooperative. The climb down the limestone cliffs had exhausted him, and he was too drained to lash together a raft.

  Above the sound of lapping waves came the bumblebee whir of an outboard. His orbital console was locked inside the pod’s inner compartment along with the rest of his kit. Agent protocol was to establish a link with Al Fadah Madina and upload his location. Fawzi, using Sayyid’s sluggish encryptor, had primed Miriam with Uri’s expected approach; nothing exact, nothing accurate. But this was not Miriam; this was someone else.

  Kicking through a pile of junk, Uri spotted the ruffled gleam of a plastic trash bag. Tearing off a piece, he leapfrogged down the hotel’s ramshackle stairwell and darted for the beach. He realized he had no choice; he had to swim it. Scavengers or sea gypsies, they’d spotted the orange parachute on descent and were approaching to investigate.

  He pulled off the helmet and separated the oxygen absorber/remitter from the filter. Wrapping and cinching it with the plastic remnant and a piece of wire, he stuffed the package inside his suit liner for the swim. By the time he reached the rock, he wouldn’t have the extra time to crack the pod and rummage for his hood. After a few helmet-less breaths, he was already lightheaded.

  Entangling kelp swirled in the frigid water. Uri pushed the floating helmet out ahead as he swam. Rolling waves hid the horizon. His pace was slow. With each stroke he fought harder to stay on the surface. Halfway to the islet, and Uri’s extremities tingled with hypoxia. Underwater, the whir of propellers waxed and waned in the current, but the pitch was shifting, getting closer.

  A snarl of kelp sprouted from the cloudy green as the sea floor rose up to meet him. He scraped the mottled bottom and barnacled rocks as a heaving wave threw him onto the rocks. With numb fingers, Uri clumsily reassembled the filter and slipped on the seaweed-draped helmet. He gasped and flopped onto the uneven rocks like a sunning iguana. The queasy panting slowed as the fire of oxygen-filled corpuscles spilled into his extremities.

  After a respite, Uri crawled onto a limestone plinth and found the frayed lines of the pod’s main chute. A few tugs and the bobbing cylinder washed up onto a submerged shelf. He wrestled the payload from a tide pool and punched the cypherlock’s stainless keys. The pod hissed as its clamshell opened. Underneath Zliva and Pravo’s duffel was a molded case containing his weapons and kit. Relieved, Uri slipped on his enrichment hood and threw the awkward re-entry helmet into the sea. The orbital console’s LCD flashed, prompting him to upload his location. Taking a satellite reading, he punched in the latitude and longitude, then hit transmit.

  Uri laid out his weapons. Compared to an on-world arsenal, it was a paltry collection of non-lethals Kaliq had managed to smuggle. The spark pistol and its capacitor pellets worked at close range to shock a target. Similar to a shotgun, the pistol was for close combat but worthless in the open field. But he had another weapon. Uri assembled the collapsible iodine laser, a rifle-like device with a sight and adjustable lens. Using a honed beam, it could form a point of blistering heat three hundred meters away. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

  The wake of an approaching speedboat parted the horizon, the slapping hull’s rhythm growing louder. Stashing Zliva and Pravo into a protective crag, Uri squatted to make his stand. Through the weapon lens, he saw the sleek outline of a Zodiac. Centipede patrolmen, Nova Byzantium’s territorial force, had detected his re-entry. As one of Al Fadah Madina’s archivist agents, his presence would certainly be unwelcome.

  Uri activated the rifle and aimed. Bearing down, he discharged the laser’s sizzle into the boat’s inflatable rim. Black smoke wafted over the cockpit, the bow nose-diving as the pilot throttled down the engines.

  Uri had their attention.

  A burst from a halon extinguisher muted the fire. The two centipedes yelled at each other in confusion. Steadying his aim, he bore down again, ready to unleash more infrared havoc. Before he could fire, the boat turned and slid out of sight behind a point of land, the engine hum giving way to a watery quiet.

  The centipedes’ retreat was suspicious. They never backed down from a fight. Uri rarely dealt with the empire’s army. Alkonost, by Nova Byzantium’s Justinian Code, was forbidden from imperial territory. The Transnistrian mercenaries were dealt with in the manner of a foreign legion, a necessary evil kept at arm’s length. Alkonost’s lack of loyalty was a political asset, as well as a liability. With nothing more than a signed contract and a promise, Constantinople was weary of the Tiraspol’s Hessians. The dirty work of interior paramilitary duty, tax enforcement, border security, and counter-insurgency was left to the centipedes. Recruited from the Marmara and Anatolia heartland, they were imperialists loyal t
o the emperor.

  Taking advantage of the uneasy lull, Uri quickly jumped into his khakis, wolfed down a protein cake, and guzzled a pouch of water. The console’s locator put him one hundred fifty kilometers from Nova Byzantium’s frontier on a peninsula dangling from Macedonia’s udder-shaped peninsula. Sayyid’s mission brief had been woefully vague, the details of his rendezvous with Miriam unclear. And how she would smuggle him into Constantinople remained a mystery.

  Cross-checking his console, indicators sensed atmospheric carbon dioxide levels had fallen. Uri pulled off his hood and breathed in the marine air. Three hours into his vigil, he started to nod off.

  Thunderheads swelled offshore, black walls of rain rinsing and recycling the Aegean’s sulfide waters. A bolt of lightning woke him. The storm’s downdraft churned with low pressure, the breeze chilled Uri’s sweaty face and neck. He checked his console again. An alphanumeric receipt confirmed his transmission. “No new communiqués,” flashed on the read-out.

  With the storm front came the second wave, two Zodiacs this time, reinforcements. Like hailstones, bullets clicked against the sea rocks. Taking cover, Uri cued the charger and aimed the laser. He was outgunned. A rocket flew in and exploded near the waterline. A plume of limestone dust and charred kelp spiraled up. Too much mist and optical distortion; he would have to wait for a clear shot.

  The first Zodiac made a pass. Uri aimed at the driver and fired. No more a nuisance than a mosquito, the centipede batted at the annoying hotspot, his Kevlar armor pocked by nothing more than a cigar burn blemish. Uri was going to have to aim for flesh.

  The gunner opened up with a gimbaled fifty caliber. The rounds spiraled in as the boat came about, its missile rack cued to a millimeter-wave tracker. Machine gun rounds ricocheted off the craggy shoreline. Uri dove to his belly as a low-velocity rocket slammed into rock. Shrapnel arced over him, the rocket’s incendiary gel splattering the islet in molten dollops. Ears ringing, Uri crawled under a lip of the limestone pillar and sought cover on the islet’s leeside. Agonizing seconds passed until the laser glowed green with charge. He widened the beam and rolled out to aim at the passing boat.

  A trigger squeeze and the driver’s head exploded, a blood cone soaking the cockpit’s windshield. The boat pitched hard starboard and dumped the gunner overboard. Maybe the driver had an implant or a titanium skull plate; non-lethals—even hacked units with hyper-charged capacitors—weren’t capable of such exitium ex machina. With no time to ponder, he charged the capacitor again and waited.

  The second boat approached and circled, unloading a cannonade of poorly aimed lead. Again unable to get a clear shot, Uri scooted around the shoreline as the Zodiac passed, trying to avoid the gunner. Another loop and the boat shot for open water. Uri bellied down and zeroed in. A half-kilometer out, a rooster tail of froth marked its turn as the centipedes came about for another run. Head on, there wasn’t much to aim for; he’d have a better chance once the boat was broadside.

  Another rocket volley exploded in the kelp beds, a geyser of brine raining down. Zooming in, he hovered the laser’s blue crosshair over the pilot’s head. Hoping the windshield would pass the light, Uri pulled the trigger. The port outboard engine caught fire; its fuel tank ignited.

  “A pox on your fucking house!” Uri hollered.

  But something other than a gypsy hex was killing the enemy; someone else’s hand was at work. He turned and looked up at the hazy mountains. By his estimate, there was a dead-shot sniper hidden a kilometer or more away in the jungle; there was no other explanation.

  Uri pulled the spark pistol out of its holster and fired a shot into the water next to the paddling gunner. The burst of voltage electrocuted the man in a ball of submerged lightning. Out to sea, the crew of the remaining Zodiac quickly fell victim to the sharpshooter as their boat flamed over from a punctured fuel tank.

  “You picked off two moving targets almost a kilometer away. Where did you learn to shoot like that? I thought you were a geophysicist?” Uri asked Miriam.

  “I am. But I learned to shoot as a girl in Madrassah, the Persian jungles; my sisters and I used to smuggle our rifles underneath our chadors,” she replied. “The mercenaries never suspected.”

  “How many?”

  She batted a reticent eye at him, careful to keep her attention on the helm.

  “How many kills?”

  “As a team, my sister and I probably removed twenty to thirty Alkonost from the conflict.”

  “Interesting way of putting it,” Uri smirked. Sayyid had been wrong about Miriam. Maybe not as feral as the raggedy men of Al’ Madina’s archivist stable, but for an agent, her lethality was without question. “I’m sure half those guys were my comrades, Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine.”

  “They had it coming to them.”

  “Maybe.” The Alborz Engagement, Uri recalled, wasn’t one of Alkonost’s finer outings.

  Miriam briefed him on the events that led to his rescue. She’d received Fawzi’s anonymous transmission informing her of Uri’s early arrival. After setting up seismic monitors on Mount Athos, she’d noticed the cloud-flash from his re-entry and the resulting sonic thunderclap. A check of the centipedes’ radio sidebands revealed a patrol had been dispatched to the area. Miriam, like Uri, was in a race to find the downed pod before the centipedes.

  Al’ Fadah Madina ensured its agents were kept apprised of the caliphate’s current state of diplomatic affairs with Nova Byzantium, or the lack thereof. Miriam was aware of the ante. She’d everything to lose by abandoning Uri and his payload to Al’ Madina’s adversaries. After a downlink from Sayyid with Uri’s position, she’d staked out the resort and intervened.

  “The computer says we should be at the capital by morning.”

  “Enough time for a nap then,” Uri yawned.

  She glared at him but said nothing.

  “Or . . . maybe not.”

  The catamaran heeled, the starboard keel lifting to slice the water like a knife. A few more hours and they’d be tacking into the Hellespont. It’d be dark, but Miriam’s beacon—registered under Norsk-Statoil’s corporate ID—would allow them to enter Constantinople unmolested. She was skilled at sailing a twin-hull. Uri offered little as a deckhand; an occasional turn on the winch, the odd look into the radarscope; sailing wasn’t his specialty.

  “Do you have a lighter?” he asked, holding up a small cigar.

  “Open the hatch underneath you,” Miriam nodded toward his seat. “Inside the toolbox.”

  “This’ll do.” He pulled out a handheld oxy/acetylene torch, its cone of white-hot plasma burning half his cigarillo away.

  Uri felt ham-fisted and uneasy in Miriam’s presence. He had to admit, she was an extremely capable agent and he would’ve apologized to Sayyid had he known. But prejudice was an instrument of survival, and he felt no guilt. Progressive attitudes had disappeared along with notions of progress.

  He leaned against the safety netting and watched her, trying to figure her out. She appeared to be a modest, petite Persian girl, but underneath she possessed a soldier’s constitution. Miriam, armed with a .50-caliber sniper rifle—nearly as long as she was tall—had dispatched a patrol of heavily armed centipedes with clinical efficiency.

  “When do you think they’ll suspect something?”

  “They already do. In a few minutes we’ll be passing a Marmaran cutter headed for the site. I’ve been monitoring the radio chatter,” she said, tapping her earpiece.

  The sail bags were wet as he climbed over them and into the forward berth. A porthole —just above the waterline—offered a narrow view of the action. Miriam reeled in the mainsail to slow the boat as the cutter’s crew tossed a line over. Her Turkish was impeccable as she answered the centipede’s megaphone shouts.

  Similar to the Cyclones of Diego Garcia, the cutter was a sleek vessel bristling with cannons and missile launchers. Painted on the hull, the venomous red and black arthropod was an intimidating splash of bow graffiti. The hundred-legged cre
ature was the symbol of Nova Byzantium’s “Centurions,” a nod to the legionnaires’ ancient Roman inspiration.

  The hull rocked as a centipede stepped aboard to inspect the catamaran. Lying hidden in the cramped stowage, Uri saw the patrolmen’s lamp from underneath canvas sheets. The man performed a cursory search, tossing around gear and knocking open hatches. With their comrades missing, contraband was a low priority. After checking Miriam’s papers and asking her a few routine questions, the patrolmen quickly returned to the cutter, much to Uri’s relief.

  Another blast from the megaphone and the crew cast off. With a pop of the spinnaker the cat picked up speed. Miriam followed a northeasterly heading along a line of yellow strobe buoys marking the path through the Hellespont narrows.

  “Your Turkish is very good,” Uri complimented, stepping up the gangway into the cockpit.

  “You speak Latin. Alkonost grunts aren’t typically known for their skills in parley.”

  “I was an agent in mission intelligence, not your typical grunt. Anyway, Latin was a safer bet, the lingua franca of Nova Byzantium, ‘the proper tongue of the civilized world,’ “ Uri repeated mockingly.

  “What’s left of the ‘civilized world.’ Where did you study, archivist?”

  “In Tiraspol, at the academy while on furlough. It was easier. I didn’t have the knack for middle-eastern languages, too many dialects.”

  “A thinking soldier. I haven’t run into many of those. Most I wouldn’t call soldiers at all—pirates, highwaymen, rapists, vagabonds. Uniforms don’t mean so much these days.”

  “I’m not a soldier, at least not anymore, thanks to Al Fadah Madina.”

  “Right. Speaking of which, I think Sayyid owes me something, archivist,” Miriam said, hand extended.

  “You can call me Uri, if you’d like.”

  Miriam shrugged, indifferent.

  Uri reached into his fatigues and pulled out a small nylon pouch. He put the bag of clinking coins into her open palm.