“I’d let those bastards saw my hand off, if I could just have a smoke. Christ,” he mumbled.
“The sisters never let us smoke,” said Miriam, her voice steady and calm. “They said it made us too jittery. But there were other things—far worse—that ruined our aim.”
It was the first thing she’d said in days. He’d almost forgotten the sound of her voice. Desperate to keep her talking, he made a concerted effort to step lightly.
“The Alborz Engagement . . . right.” He propped himself up on an elbow and peered through the vent. “That whole mess couldn’t have ended quickly enough, eh?”
She nodded. “Alkonost’s proxies, royalists from Tehranistan, they cut the girls’ right forefingers off.” She held up her hand and wiggled her intact digits. “Just past the trigger finger’s first knuckle. That’s when my sisters decided to leave for Nova Byzantium; the fight wasn’t worth it anymore.”
Miriam paused. Uri said nothing, waiting for her to continue.
“The Hinds were napalming the forest, spraying it with defoliant. Our madrassah was burnt to the ground. One of the senior sisters radioed Al Fadah Madina before our transmitter was hit. They were going to send a man—a fixer—who specialized in refugee extractions from Alborz. But there were so many of us—so many girls.”
He heard it in her voice, the painful memories surfacing.
“An older man—a herdsman—arrived to lead us through the demilitarized zone. It felt too easy, too simple. We suspected he’d paid off the Alkonost commanders, which made us wary. But everyone was desperate and starving, so we went along.
“The older girls knew something was wrong, but I was too young. The men, a caravan of slavers, were to escort us across the Zanjan and South Azerbaijan to the Imperial frontier. The Kurdish Zingaros beat us like the camels they rode. I can still smell them, musky leather and wood smoke—they stunk like animals, like cruelty.”
She rubbed her scars again. “They shackled us to the saddles and branded our arms, telling us the only way the centipedes would allow us into Nova Byzantium was as factory slaves. There was no ruse; we were chattel, sold into servitude and betrayed.”
Uri looked on quietly.
“At night, the older sisters left the tents and returned later, bruised and shaken. I thought they were—” her voice breaking, wetness filling her eyes. “—I thought the men were just beating them. I was a sister of the faith; I didn’t know about men. I was too young. The older girls started to experience pelvic pain, infections, incontinence . . . ”
Uri rubbed his stubble in disbelief. As a man, the barbarism of the Empty World was purely physical, its pain masculine and one-dimensional, simple and controllable. He tried to put see himself as a female in that world, but the horror was too unimaginable.
“They were protecting the younger girls, willingly offering themselves to keep us from their lechery. It worked. I remember the slavers’ eyes; their eyes were the worst.” She sneered. “As the caravan neared Nova Byzantium, they stopped feeding us. We grew weak and a few of the sisters died. The Zingaros didn’t have the humanity to bury them. They just left them there, human garbage in the dust trail.
“When we reached the imperial frontier, we approached a centipede checkpoint. There we learned the truth; the Kurdish slavers were taking us to a brothel in Ankara. A manifest listed us as cargo. With a few gold coins, and a go at the older sisters, the border patrol was about to let us pass. But an argument broke out over bribes. An itchy centipede let loose with an MG3, and . . . ” Miriam sobbed.
“I was an orphan—those girls—those women—were everything to me. They were my family. I lay there, pretending to play dead. I could hear the dying sounds around me, fluid-filled lungs, raspy coughs of blood, and the moans. It went on for hours, until nightfall.” She was quiet again.
“How did you get away?”
She wiped her eyes and continued. “The centipedes hauled the bodies to the roadside. I let them drag me, trying to stay limp. Before sunrise, half-frozen and shivering cold, I crawled to a ditch and ran away. Al Fadah Madina has agents in Nova Byzantium, a network of mosques and imams in contact with the Holy Protectors of the Sacred Mosque, coordinating Hajj and Fatwahs, that sort of thing. After I told them who I was, they took me in. The caliphate was horrified.”
“Miriam. I’m so sorry.”
Bird squawks from outside and the condensation drip filled the silence. Anger like an electrical fire burned and buzzed in Uri’s chest. He got up and paced the claustrophobic chamber, swooshing his cable tether. There had to be a way, there was always a way, he thought. Exhausting himself, he sat down and leaned over to extend his arm through the vent. He felt the trembling embrace of Miriam’s hand and squeezed it.
“We’re going to get out of this, Miriam. Understand?”
“Okay.”
On the deck outside the sky-lounge’s glass perched a murder of crows. Absent a proper court, the crows were King Espen’s only courtiers. Caws drowned out the Inquisitor’s monologue, but the madman continued his tirade undeterred. More of the same, he continued to spew his religious nonsense, tangential axioms of Armageddon. The Inquisitor was addicted to the din of his own evangelism, well-rehearsed sermons of paranoia and devilry. Besides the cussing ravens and the war chief Gregor, the chamber was empty except for the waxen king.
“Just tell us the code!” the Inquisitor screamed, “and the pain will stop. I promise.”
Uri shook his head, defiant. Gregor tore into his back with another whip crack. The pain sliced, but fear of infection worried him more than the torture. The Rhine Delta’s bacterial blooms made for a lethal concoction, to say nothing of the egg-heavy flies.
“Who are you protecting? Why is this Islamic cabal—this Al Fadah Madina—so dear to you? What’s it going to take, huh? A corkscrew to your eyeball, a blowtorch to the fingers? We’ve got nothing but time, archivist.”
The king rose from his throne and stood in a shaky wobble. Inaudible mumbling muddled the Inquisitor’s diatribe. This was the first time Uri noticed the old man move.
“Quiet!” the king rasped.
The Inquisitor continued to rant, oblivious.
“Quiet, boy!”
Gregor cued the Inquisitor with a worried nod. Abruptly, the man glanced back and stopped. “Yes, father?” he said meekly, “I didn’t hear you speak. What is it?”
“Leave us. I want to have a word with the archivist.”
“But father, I can’t in good conscience leave you alone with this demon. The evil must be properly exorcised with a regimen of pain. He can’t be trusted,” the Inquisitor pleaded.
With a flip of his wrist, the king shooed the Inquisitor away. The begrudging son shuffled off like a scolded child.
“You’re Ukrainian?”
“My mother was Ukrainian, but I’m Transnistrian,” Uri replied.
“I’ve ancestors who worked in Kiev, in the Verkhovna Rada,” the king said. “Back when the Union thought it could manage its problems.”
Uri said nothing, eyes focused on the ancient patriarch.
“Why don’t you just give us the console code? My son will get it from you eventually. It’s not worth your life.”
Pensive, Uri thought through the pain then spoke. “Maybe it is worth my life. If I can save a fellow archivist this stupid fate, well . . . I used to think like you people, when I fought people like you,” he said, tapping his temple. “Just surviving, doing whatever it takes, hand-to-mouth; I thought it was enough. But that’s how animals live.”
The king smirked, gray eyes rejuvenated. “You’re an errand runner for these—these spacemen heretics,” King Espen said, gesticulating overhead. “Picking the gold from the teeth of the old world’s corpse. And for what? To repeat the same mistakes, to roast and suffocate the world again with your devil’s progress?”
“Just fade into oblivion? That’s your answer?” Uri slurred, cheek swollen from blunt fists. “Abandon thousands of years of thought, reason, and
enlightenment—throw it all in the dustbin and exploit what remains. Sit among the ruins and idly reminisce, is that the idea?”
“We want to live in harmony with what our Lord has given us, like our ancient ancestors before the Industrial Age. Even now, our children adapt and acclimatize. Some born in the kraal no longer wear masks. Their blood is thick and sturdy. We hunt and live from the land. It’s the natural state of our inner humanity, our God-given destiny. Fully sustainable in coexistence with nature, it’s the way things were intended.”
“That’s shit,” Uri scoffed. “ ‘Noble savage’ and all that, eh? Living in ‘peace’? It’s fantasy; there’s no harmony in living short, brutal, anonymous lives. It took mankind thousands of years to pull itself from the dung heap, and you want to go back to the Stone Age. Have at it.” Uri shook his head in disbelief. “You’ll be conquered, slaughtered, enslaved.”
“By who?” roared the king.
“Another kingdom, another tribe, another colony. It doesn’t matter. Conquest is what humans do to one another.” Uri wiped the blood from his chin with a cuffed hand. “But it doesn’t have to be that way, not anymore. We don’t have to be slaves to our inner Neanderthal. Enlightenment is a gift. Use it.”
King Espen laughed then coughed, his lungs rattling and wheezy. “You have a high opinion of yourself, archivist. Do you really think you and your devil caliphate are going to resurrect the old global order?”
“No . . . not now.” Uri shook his head. “That’s not really point; that’s not what I was saying.”
“Please, educate me. What is it all about?”
“It’s about separating ourselves from beasts. Making a break from the past.” Uri paused, mouth open. “Leaving all this superstition behind. But I’m a . . . I’m . . . ”
Uri was a pessimist. To admit it defeated the point. The sheikhdom had calculated humanity’s survival after the Post-Industrial Shock, and there was little hope. Continued “population attenuation,” as Sayyid put it, was a fact. Within a century, maybe two, human population would dip below a critical threshold.
“What were you going to say? Speak. You’re what?” The king waited, rolling his wrist in impatience. “Is there a word for ‘futility’ in Latin? Please, enlighten me.”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because . . . ” Uri sighed. “ . . . because it’s too fucking depressing.”
“Gregor! Come! Remove our guest!” the king shouted.
The war chief swung the mahogany doors wide and grabbed Uri’s cabled shackles, dragging him out into the hallway. The wild-eyed Inquisitor stormed in behind Gregor and groveled to his father-king, begging King Espen to let him have another crack at the heretic. With a head nod and a wave, the monarch went back into his fugue.
Like a giddy child, the Inquisitor shuffled out into the hall, rubbing his hands eagerly. More beatings, Uri expected, until his organs ruptured or a lung collapsed, then death. The Vandals were beginning to realize no amount of torture was going to force Uri to give up the code.
Back through the warehouse, Uri saw Zliva and Pravo shelved and unmolested. Incurious or ignorant, the Vandals had ceased their tinkering. Plans tumbled through his head, chess moves of escape stratagems. There had to be a way.
Gregor and the Inquisitor led him across the swaying suspension bridge separating the two towers. A fog held firm to the swamp below. Rotterdam was a cloudscape of moldering plinths and creeper-strewn bridges. Uri saw Montevideo’s prison brig above and the tiny loophole of his prison cell. In girlish anticipation, the Inquisitor skip-stepped across the sky-bridge. Uri tried to steady himself from the jostle, but the shackles tripped him.
“I want the code! Give me the code! I want it!” the Inquisitor intoned.
Uri tried to stand up on the slick bridge slats.
“And you’re going to give it to me.”
“The hell I am.”
The Inquisitor kicked Uri in the ribs, dropping him back to the swaying deck. “You see,” the Inquisitor said, crawling up beside him to gloat. “If you don’t give it to me . . . ”
“Tell him,” egged Gregor with a goofy grin. “Tell him what’s coming.”
“If you don’t give me the code to your console. I’m going to let my dogs have at your little bunny.” The Inquisitor pointed up to the brig and Miriam’s cell. “And we’ll make you watch.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
February 2158 C.E.
The deer grazed in the burnt stands, ears twitchy with mites. The scrawny animal wandered the ash grove searching for grass shoots. Uri followed it with his SVD, a Spetsnaz upgrade. The lightweight rifle was collapsible and versatile, a good weapon. A few decameters out of range, he waited silently for the buck to meander back through the beetle-infested pines.
Closer now, he swung the crosshairs over its shoulder as he honed in on the heart; lots of artery goodness just behind the shoulder. A well-placed 7.62mm round into its flimsy ribcage would seal its fate. A good campfire, maybe a few drops of liquor—he could almost taste the venison. With a sigh, he fingered the trigger.
“Lieutenant! I thought you’d be out here,” Sava said, patting Uri’s back as he squeezed. “Thought you’d escape our little soirée, eh?”
Uri’s shoulder dipped as he fired. The bullet harmlessly smacked the trunk of a rotting timber. Its report scared the stumbling deer away and out of range. Throbbing hunger returned, hypoglycemic distress muddling his mental clarity. Uri slumped in despondency.
“Goddamn it, Sava! I had the little bastard in my sights!”
“What? Where? What’re you talking about?” His mouth creased in a boyish grin. Sava was stainless steel; the misery washed off him like juvenile invulnerability. Uri couldn’t relate.
“A deer—meat!—the first one I’ve seen in a month . . . and now he’s gone, and I’m too fagged to chase him.” Uri moaned. He was too weak and wobbly for a tantrum.
“Really?” Sava shaded his eyes and panned the needle-free forest. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”
“Fuck it.” Uri stood up and slung his rifle. “What’s another skipped meal, eh? I’m starting to get used to it.”
“Command says there should be a Hind on patrol in the next few days, emergency rations and all that. If we can just get to the drop zone . . . ”
“I heard the rumor. The landing zone’s twenty klicks east of here,” Uri said, pointing to a folded massif of hazy black. “Way too far. We’ll burn more calories just getting there . . . Did they get an Antonov into Khunzach?”
“No,” Sava sighed. “Of course not. It’d be triple-A fodder before it could enter the glidepath. And Command isn’t about to waste those kinds of assets on Dagestan. This is war on the cheap. We’re on a public relations campaign.”
“It’s bullshit.”
Sava shrugged. “There’ll be other opportunities. You worry too much, Uri. Anyway, Mach found a cistern near an old gun emplacement leftover from the Chechen Jihad. The water’s stale. It just needs another go through the purifier and it’ll be tasty.”
Uri followed Sava back to the road where the remnants of their platoon loitered. Haggard, their uniforms were ripped and worn, grime so thick the camouflage blurred into a homogenous blob. Wary eyes gazed out from sunken sockets. Sharp cheekbones tented their emaciated flesh; no one had eaten in days. Hunger and the dehydrating altitude proved their worst enemy.
Half the platoon bore scars from Turkmenbashi’s oil fires. Prior to the final pullout, a revenge-filled Padshah Khan sabotaged the terminal pipelines. The Khan’s suicide bombers had infiltrated Alkonost’s perimeter, detonating Awaza’s northern depot in a crude-fueled inferno. With the oil infrastructure in ruins, Tiraspol forfeited the contract, enraging Nova Byzantium’s senate. Dagestan was Alkonost’s probationary amends, a trial contract to regain lost trust. The only problem was, Operation Putin was unwinnable.
“Colonel Karpov radioed Wilco with our orders. It’s a small village, just ten or twelve families. It should be
an easy clear and sweep,” Sava said.
“What’s it called?”
“The village?”
Uri nodded.
“Tsutrrakh . . . or something. It’s up the valley a few klicks; we’ve got the coordinates.”
“Let’s move.”
They started down the valley through dusty riverbeds, boulder-filled traverses, and washed-out roads. Their mule’s battery had gone dead the week before. Without a working thermo-voltaic charger, they’d abandoned the robot porter. The ammunition burden was left to the ragged crew, each step an agonizing ordeal.
A small glaze of winter-white capped the higher ridges. The younger recruits, never having seen, touched, or tasted snow, ogled the alabaster peaks with lethargic wonder.
The towering Caucasus rose above the North Caspian’s chronic dead zone. Lowland refugees and Dagestan’s beggarly viceroy had fled the provincial capital for the highlands. But the indigenous Azars were resisting. The guerillas answered their invasion with ambush and sabotage. Defending the viceroy and his displaced canton was a drawn-out, far-flung campaign Alkonost’s mercenaries had little stomach for.
“How’re we going to do this?” Uri asked.
“As per Proviso 721-23, our mandate requires us to provide assistance where possible, ensure indigenous needs are met, and gather reconnaissance on potential threats,” Sava quoted, snickering.
“And idly stand by as the local zealots stone their children to death,” Uri added. “We should’ve burned the fucking place to the ground.”
Sava shook his head. “Honor killings. Jesus Christ, I’d thought I’d seen some gruesome shit in my time, but that . . . ” He shook his head. “We can only wish Tindi the worst, eh? If Command could cough up a little air support, we could incinerate those barbarian fuckers.”
“I’ve got to get the hell out of here.”
“Cheer up, lieutenant. It’s not the end of the world.” Sava paused, then japed, “Well, not just yet.”
Nova Byzantium Page 24
