Guns of the Temple (The Polaris Chronicles Book 1)

by Choi, Bryan

  Contents

  Title Page

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Backmatter

  Bonus Chapter

  Guns of the Temple

  Volume 1 of the Polaris Chronicles

  Bryan Choi & Erica Carson

  Copyright © Bryan Choi & Erica Carson

  All rights reserved.

  Guns of the Temple is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are a product of the authors’ imaginations or are used fictitiously.

  Published by Delphinium Press, LLC.

  www.carsonchoi.com

  To Domo

  Acknowledgments

  Thanks to Shay, Whitney, Greg, and Colby for being my beta readers and providing feedback. You told me what was good, what was stupid, and what deserved death by dog pits. I received help and inspiration from the Frequency writers’ community in Providence, RI, and from the gamers of Ninpocho Chronicles. I will always be grateful to Jason Yarn for his time and valuable insights. And finally, I couldn’t have done any of this without the skill, love, and sick burns of my coauthor, Erica. – Bryan

  Thanks to everyone who encouraged me to stick with it, especially the Thunderdome team. Double thanks to my inimitable parents, abeonim, and eomeonim for encouraging and supporting our efforts. – Erica

  The Polaris Chronicles:

  Guns of the Temple

  Swords of the Imperium

  Prince of Maladies (Fall 2016)

  Knives of the Ring (Winter 2016)

  1

  Taki chewed the cuticle of his thumbnail as he scanned the river of fighters that wound slow and dusty around where he crouched. Nearly every able-bodied squad and company was headed toward the gates of the Cloud Temple. From there, the men and women would start their marches north to relieve their peers from months of restless vigil against the Imperial hordes. But Taki was not part of this congregation—at least not today. Instead, he was on the lookout for a deserter from his squad: a senior corporal who had lost his mind and was now trying to make a run for it. Draco Emreis, you stupid ass, Taki thought. I haven’t even met you and you’re already ploughing my career.

  Unexpected pain made him realize he had bitten a bleeding divot into the root of the nail. Taki sucked at the wound and chastised himself. Biting was a nervous habit he had picked up even before academy training, with multiple bouts of remission and relapse. Until today things had been going well and his fingers had begun to heal. He had graduated third in his class and had been promised a rare posting in the capital. There, he would have worn white livery with braids and brass buttons and have had little chance of seeing combat. But he had turned the job down, and in just a few hours of post-academy life his fingers looked like raw bark again. Two weeks of disciplined progress undone.

  “Newboy! Are you blind or just slacking off?” Hadassah snarled. “He’s approaching you now. Next to the cornet in red brigandine!”

  Taki winced. Though she was actually meters away in a steeple overlooking the street, the effect of the Phon sutra made it seem as if she was yelling right in his ear.

  “My name’s Taki,” he muttered.

  “I don’t care. Go stop Draco or we’re really in the shit.”

  “What does corporal Emreis even look like?”

  Hadassah grunted with displeasure. “Muscular, dirty blonde hair. Tall,” she said.

  “Can you be more specific?”

  “He’s pretty. Now go!”

  Taki clenched his jaw and continued to scan the crowd. Garish standards proudly flapped in the wind atop pikes and splashed color against the dust. Light glinted from polished helms and mail armor. A cart loaded with cannon and shot pushed its way through, accompanied by cursing and spitting from driver and pedestrian alike. He found the cornet wearing red brigandine.

  Hadassah was right about the man next to the officer. Draco was a pretty specimen, with blonde hair, high cheekbones, and thick calves. He chatted gaily but his smile was forced and he glanced backwards too often, as if aware that his squadmate had him in the sights of her crossbow. Taki hopped off the boxes he’d been sitting on and started to make his way forward.

  “I just realized,” Taki said. “He has no idea who I am. Won’t that be a problem?”

  “That’s why we put you on the street. He’s less apt to run away,” Lotte said.

  Taki’s back stiffened at the sound of her voice, though she was also far away. Lotte was a regimental captain and the leader of his squad. He had met her only a short time before, and she had immediately ordered him to search the Temple grounds for Draco. Strangely, she did not seem to have lieutenants, and had issued commands to Hadassah and Taki directly the entire time. “Just keep him occupied for a bit,” she continued. “We’ll nab him soon.”

  “Yes, Captain,” Taki said.

  He slowly shook his head. Depending on the circumstances, an attempt at desertion usually earned a heavy flogging followed by hanging. It was easy to understand Draco’s motivation, and hard to sympathize with him. Taki had never wanted to be a polaris of the Temple in the first place, but the fact that he could use what the alchemists called prana gave him no other choice. Everyone, especially polaris, knew that they were dangerous and unfit for life on the outside. It was their just penance to be confined to the Temple and atone for centuries of sin by fighting for the Argead Dominion. If Draco couldn’t accept that then he deserved what he got.

  Scenarios ran through Taki’s head for how he would distract his target. He could always be rude and try to entice Draco into fisticuffs. Or pretend to be an old acquaintance in need of a loan. Or just flirt with the man. The latter option made Taki fuzzy in his stomach, anxious that perhaps Draco would simply scoff at and dismiss his smile.

  A Dominion priest grabbed his wrist and Taki glared. One of the many pestilences afflicting the Temple was the sheer number of vagrant ascetics who trolled the streets exhorting for holy war and begging for alms. Hitting them was frowned upon, as was refusing to donate. Taki tried to wrest his limb away but the wizened priest held firm.

  “I bless thee, brave polaris!” The priest swung his censer dangerously close to Taki’s face. Thick, fragrant smoke washed over his hair and caused him to cough. “Know that it is not a sin to kill the degenerate sodomites of the Osterbrand Imperium! They serve none other than Shaitan Himself in the guise of man.”

  “Thank you, Father, but I cannot stay here,” Taki said.

  “Payment, dear son. I have given thee my blessing!”

  “I didn’t ask for it!”

  “It is thy duty to repay God for thy destruction of His earthly kingdom! Just one bullet will do.”

  Draco was about to pass by. Hurriedly, Taki dug his free hand into his belt pouch and thrust a steel-cased .25 caliber round in the priest’s face. The holy man smiled jaggedly, snapped up the cartridge, and let go. Taki swore under his breath and turned just in time to almost collide with his target. He tried to fake a familiar grin but it came out as a grimace instead. Draco cursed, turned on his heels, and dashed away into a side alley.

  “He’s running!” Taki snapped, forgetting how loud the sutra amplified his voice for the recipient. He could almost feel Hadassah recoil.

 
“Ow! Not so loud, damn you!”

  Taki bounded after his target over hastily-overturned bales of trash. Draco had already begun to climb to the rooftops near the far end, and swung from jutting pipe to protruding brick with practiced grace. Prana-enhanced physique. An Achilles, Taki realized. I can’t match him for speed or strength, but that means he’s probably not a good caster.

  “Slow him down. Attack him if you have to. I’m almost there!” Lotte shouted.

  Taki thrust a hand forward and opened his prana gates wide. He was a decent swordsman and a passable shot with a firelock, but his real talent, rare even among his kind, was elemental channeling. Under any other circumstances he would have been flogged for using destructive sutra on Temple grounds, but his captain had ordered it.

  “Khala!” he intoned. A biting chill enveloped his arm and frosted his fingertips. Pressurized air lanced forward and hit his target squarely in the back. Draco slammed face-first into stucco, lost his footing, and tumbled to the ground. Taki froze. He hadn’t intended to make Draco fall from such a height. He hadn’t intended to break his senior corporal’s neck.

  Like a cat, Draco twisted a meter off the ground and landed splayed on all fours. The cobbles under his feet and fingertips cracked and the air shimmered against a dusty corona. He hopped to his feet and drew a fighting iron. Invented by the Chung Kuo far to the east, the kau sin ke was a brutal and yet simple device: three solid bars of steel jointed together with a single chain link between them, a leather-wrapped handle, and a nasty bludgeoning end. Draco whirled the spiked head in the air so fast that it became a blur, and slowly advanced.

  Taki backed away in terror. He had a knife sheathed at his side, but was not wearing armor or a helm. He could attempt to use sutras, but against an agile opponent in close quarters he was dead. A rifle would have been useful, but those were all locked away.

  “Skipping the court-martial and going straight for the execution, are we?” Draco growled.

  “I’m sorry! I didn’t mean to hit so hard.” Taki said. He extended his hands in surrender. “I’m in your squad. The captain told me to stop you. I’m just following her orders!”

  “My squad? I’ve never seen you before.”

  “My name is Taki Natalis. A corporal, like you. I just joined today.”

  “A likely story, that.”

  “It’s true!” Taki paused and jammed a hand against his right ear. “Look, Hadassah is telling me to tell you to stop being a damned potato or she’ll put one in your left nut. I’m sorry! These are her words, not mine.”

  Draco frowned, but his menace melted away quickly.

  “I just can’t win, can I?” he said. “The captain’s close by, isn’t she?”

  “Will you put down your iron?” Taki asked.

  “Oh, right. Sorry,” Draco caught the swinging end of the kau sin ke, folded the bars together, and holstered it at his waist. “Just so you know, I wasn’t actually going to attack you. Just wanted you to run away.”

  Taki exhaled. “It’s fine. I’m sorry I went too far with the sutra.”

  “So you’re new, eh? It’s been a while since we’ve had a fresh face.”

  “Why did you try to desert?”

  “It’s a long story, but I’ll tell you if you’ve got the time.”

  Lengths of weighted rope cut the air with a whooshing sound, wrapped around Draco’s torso, and squeezed the wind from him. Taki whirled around just in time to see a woman charge past and tackle the hapless corporal to the ground. She rolled him onto his back, drew back a fist, and punched him in the face. Blood spurted from his nostrils onto the cobblestones.

  “Stupid bastard!” Lotte huffed. She rose to her feet and wiped her knuckles on the hem of her blouse.

  “Captain?” Taki asked, grimacing in awe.

  “Hey, want me to plug him? Just a flesh wound?” Hadassah asked. She strode into the alley with her crossbow leveled at Draco’s leg.

  “Did anyone follow us? Did anyone see?” Lotte asked.

  Hadassah looked back at the street and shook her head.

  “Thank God,” Lotte whispered. She lifted Draco to his knees by the front of his gambeson and fixed her steely eyes on his watery orbs. “Corporal Emreis. Do you know that the punishment for desertion is death?”

  He nodded. Taki held his breath. Hadassah spat.

  “I own your ass,” Lotte growled. “I, not you, decide when you live or die. Is that clear?”

  “Yes, Captain,” Draco gasped.

  “Good,” she said with an unexpectedly sweet smile. She drew him forward, as if to plant a kiss, and slammed her forehead into his with a dull thud. His eyes rolled back into his head and he went limp. Lotte let him down gently before turning to Taki and Hadassah. “Natalis and Mikkelsen, get him back to quarters and chain him to the radiator. If he complains, stab him. Then report to the kitchens for regular duty. We’ve fallen behind thanks to these shenanigans. Natalis, I hope you’re good at peeling potatoes.”

  Days later, Draco seemed to hold no animosity toward his compatriots for the earlier beating. Rather, the discussion had turned to the Ursalans, whose skirmishes with the Dominion had ended under terms of armistice only a year ago.

  “So what would you do in my place, then?” Draco asked Taki with a grin. “You’ve got a chevalier taking a piss with his back turned and all you have is a rusty dirk. If he cries out, his squires will rip your guts out through your bunghole. Your rifle’s gone tits up, and just as a bonus, you’re naked.” He stabbed a potato with his peeling knife for emphasis. The chain between his manacled ankles clinked merrily on the floor.

  Severed carotid: five seconds till incapacitation and twelve seconds till death, Taki thought. Heart strike: near-instant death depending on depth of cut, but access from the back highly limited by ribs and vertebrae.

  This place smells. I wish I were out fighting somebody.

  “Wait, you were naked, too?” Hadassah groaned. “If I’d known I’d definitely have blown your cover.”

  “Spiteful much? I had circumstances. Anyway, your answer, Natalis?”

  “I’d slice his throat.” Taki shifted in his seat and mimed grabbing a target from behind and drawing a knife from ear to ear. “It’s the standard takedown, right?”

  “That’s what everyone thinks, but it doesn’t work on a real person.” Draco waggled a finger at Taki. “They’ll bite you when you try to muffle ‘em, and it’s easy to slash yourself instead. Happened to me.” He tapped the back of his left hand. Purple scar tissue snarled between two knuckles and his small finger did not extend all the way as the others did.

  “But what else can you do? Won’t the target make too much noise?” Taki asked. He reached into the tub in front of him and took out another potato to peel. Number two hundred forty for the day.

  “Not if you go for the kidney. It’ll cause so much pain that all they can do is gasp. And it’s better if you step on the back of the knee. Make them fall onto the blade.” Draco wiped his brow with the hem of his shirt before also reaching for a potato and setting to work on it.

  “It has to be a quick thrust, though,” Hadassah said. She jabbed the air with her peeling knife and slapped the opposite hand against her thrusting arm for effect. “You can’t expect someone to stay still while you inch it into him.”

  “She’s right about that. Oh, and another thing, too. Just because you’ve put a man’s eye out doesn’t mean he’s done for. I stabbed a Templar right in the socket and the bastard nearly put a mace in my skull. You need to open an artery.”

  “Yeah, and wherever you go, make sure you stab a few times after that, or at least twist around a bit,” Hadassah added. “All you virgins think it’s just ‘stick in once and leave it.’ You have to be vigorous to satisfy your partner.”

  “Now you’re just being disgusting.”

  “And you’re being a spoiled princess. If we don’t show this kid how to do things properly he’ll make us all look bad. What is he, like a day out from the aca
demy?” She dug a potato eye out and flicked it across the room.

  “Eight days,” Taki said, to her great disregard.

  “The best place to go is right here and stab down,” she continued, pushing a finger against the base of his throat. There, the top of his breastbone made a deep valley underneath surprisingly thin skin and her poke induced nausea. “No one ever bothers to wear a gorget, so it’s like you’re sticking a pig. You’ve done that, right?”

  “Er, I… No.”

  “Really? How useless are you? Are you some rich merchant’s kid? Did you have servants licking your-”

  “Dassa, lay off him,” Draco said. “He just wanted to hear about when we were fighting the Ursalans. And I was having fun telling him. Especially since we’re never going to battle again.”

  “Don’t! Don’t remind me of that.”

  “Right. Sorry.” Draco cleared his throat and was silent.

  An involuntary frown crossed Taki’s face. His senior’s words were only the latest additions to the mounting strangeness of his life since graduation. Like how the first time he had met Draco was during the man’s attempt to desert. Or how Lotte seemed to be stuck peeling potatoes alongside her grunts. Or how they had spent all of their time in the kitchens rather than in battle rotation like every other company of foot in the Temple. His reservations finally overwhelmed, he raised a hand. After a few silent heartbeats he put it down when he realized the others were staring at him. This wasn’t the academy anymore.

  “Sorry, Emreis. What did you say about never seeing action again?” Taki asked, trying not to seem embarrassed. “Aren’t we at war right now?”

  The others exchanged a look.

  “Is he an idiot?” Hadassah groaned. “I thought we didn’t take the touched ones.”

  “Wait a second. Captain, haven’t you told him?” Draco asked.

  “I thought the Major did. Or that one of you lot would,” Lotte said.