Nara

by M. L. Buchman

  “What is it, Jaron? What?”

  “I…” the word was torn from somewhere deep inside him. Harold squawked in concern. “I killed her.” Part cry, part scream from the soul.

  “What? How?” It was hard to believe this gentle man of the jungle could have hurt anything, never mind his own sister.

  “I… I submitted,” his voice choked and broke and stammered, “my doctoral thesis in her name. When she wasn’t here. Then the WEC came. You see, I was so excited, I couldn’t wait. Couldn’t stand to wait for her. They came. I couldn’t wait for her to get home from the city. The WEC must have seen her in two places. They… I killed her.”

  Robbie reached toward the sobbing man and pulled him against her. He laid his head on her chest and wept. Harold, robbed of his perch by her arms enfolding Jaron’s shoulders, climbed onto her shoulder for the first time. Though lighter than she’d guessed, he was a solid comforting weight. She could feel the parrot leaning forward to preen Jaron’s hair in an attempt to comfort him.

  She’d heard stories of the WEC. Though she’d never lost anyone herself, many of her friends had. A few people simply left class and never returned, but she’d never given them much thought. Maybe they too were victims. Why would Jaron be hiding behind his dead sister’s name and why was all their work this spring under her own name only? Because they had come hunting him. That must be it.

  Was she embracing death, here in the center of the Orinoco, hundreds of feet above the jungle floor?

  Well, if she was, then to hell with them. Jaron was a good man. She’d trust her own instincts, and Harold’s. Jaron was so gentle with the parrots. They trusted him. She held him tightly against her as his sobs eased and he slowly quieted into a deep slumber. Harold moved onto her wrist where it lay across Jaron’s shoulder, tucked his head beneath his wing and joined his master in sleep.

  She’d find a way back here next spring, grant or no.

  The moon was a long time rising.

  Chapter 8

  “Commander Levan, would you mind coming to see me when you have a chance?”

  The man’s voice was terse as ever over the comm. “I will be with you in two minutes.”

  Suz clicked off, but the connection was already cut. She knew she had precisely a hundred and twenty seconds to prepare for his arrival. It would be nice if she knew more about the man, but when she’d presented him with Perry’s codeword six months before, he had accepted the position instantly without question and without any hint of what current circumstances he walked away from to join her.

  Once she knew his name, a few discreet queries had revealed his former role as a commander in the WEC corps for over twenty years. His record was immaculate and prestigious. And somehow, he appeared to have avoided all connection with her father’s death squads.

  There was only one connection she could find between Commander Vladimir Levan and the World Premier Bryce Randall Stevens Sr. They were both missing the same two week period from their records. The two weeks that had preceeded the earthquake that had finally destroyed the financial dictators of the world. The Japanese islands had never recovered. But she still couldn’t find out what happened, except that it was in April, and Japan had died on the first Tuesday of April fifty years ago. Perhaps Brycie’s friend “The Wolf” had been missing then as well.

  The sharp rap on her door snapped her back to the present. He never used the announcer pad that would have identified him, even though he was fully registered with the house systems, or at least she assumed he was.

  Suz released the panel from her desk and as the door slid aside it revealed the tall, powerful man. He could have been a poster, he was so perfect. Tall, handsome, broad-shouldered, and narrow-hipped; he waited outside her door at perfect parade rest then moved smoothly forward to stand opposite her desk. His simple attitude turned her haphazard excuse of an office into an operations command center.

  She waved a hand for him to sit, and as always he simply shook his head. His close-cropped hair was white and the deep lines of age upon his face simply added to his look of power and wisdom. Getting him to say more than five words in a row was always a challenge, but his resources were startling, every single time. With his help, she’d managed to crack the codes around the death squads and even turn some of their worst deprivations aside.

  But now she was researching something bigger, and she had no idea how he’d react. Time to just plunge in.

  “I want to stage a rescue.”

  “Stopping an attack?”

  “No. An extraction.”

  “How many?”

  “Ten to twelve. And I’m going with you.” His steel-gray eyes regarded her unblinkingly.

  “Two.”

  “Six.”

  “Four.”

  She heard the finality of the statement and knew better than to argue. In that moment he had assessed the risks, the size of the team, and the available transport.

  “Four,” she agreed.

  “Where?”

  She swung her chair aside so that he could see what floated in the air above her viser. Honshu, the principal island of Japan, twisted slowly about in the air, perfectly detailed down to trees and roads. The shape had changed significantly from older maps where the strongest earthquake ever recorded on the planet had rearranged land and ocean. But some cities survived. And she’d chosen her target as much by chance as research. The ancient capital had drawn her eyes many times.

  She pointed a finger at the target. “Nara, Japan.”

  Levan’s face was pale when she looked back at him. His eyes weren’t gazing at the screen, or anything else in the room. She could barely hear, as he mused aloud.

  “I should have stuck with two.”

  # # #

  Ri slid out into the night leaving Koukou to sit watch by the hatch over the bolthole. The watch person still sat on the chain to stay awake, even though they’d often been unable to capture a sacrificial. The Zenbu had become fierce, even vindictive since she had gone forth to speak with them and learned of the Crash and Smash. Tancho Cadre’s offerings were taken every few nights, even though the other cadres kept the same sacrificial for weeks at a time.

  And then Kintetsu Rail cadre was gone. She and Ninka had scouted the remains of their nest in the old rail station. Kara had been spiked out to die in the middle of the floor. The Zenbu had honored the best fighter with a vicious crucifixion and taken the others.

  Kara had not gone alone into the everlasting night. Five Zenbu were dead in a circle about the place Kara had spilled her blood. The five left by their comrades to rot for their failure.

  When she and Ninka had stripped them, they were little different from their own cadre, older, grayer, more wrinkled, but the same eyes, black hair, and skin color. And Ri had feared them a little less. Ninka a little more.

  That had been a week ago. A team of six from Dog Cadre had caught them there, and only by laying heavily about them did they escape with their lives. Four more now lay before Kara’s alter. But they had not escaped unscathed. Ninka’s arm had been badly cut and was healing very slowly. She was out of her head with hunger and pain.

  Three days since they’d had anything beyond boiled leather book covers to eat. Ninka needed food. Tancho Cadre needed food. And the hunters hadn’t had much luck, except bad.

  She pulled her hood over her head, straightening it so that the eyeholes lined up just right. A shake of her shoulders settled the pipe’s sheath down her back. Tonight she must bring back food or Tancho would become too weak to need it and then they too would be fighting the Zenbu for survival. For the right to be staked out in honor, rather than taken in the night.

  The street was silent and empty. Her choices were limited. Dog Cadre was well fortified; still wary and licking their wounds given by two Tancho cranes. Diabutsu-den was no good. They’d tried the Shōsō-in Temple again, but
only rotted food had awaited them there, everything else had been removed, though apparently their route of entry had not been discovered behind the wall hanging. They’d left the sacrificial sleeping, leaving as silently as they’d come. And the other cadres were even closer to the end than Kara and Kintetsu Cadre. They’d have no supplies worth a raid.

  There was only one place left, and she’d found a way in, at least she hoped she had.

  The fortress of Nara-ken Park. None who entered there had ever come back. There were stories that moved along the streets, even between cadres. Tales of a fabled land of plenty beyond the fortified walls swirled like mists in and out of daydreams. There were fields of vegetables growing the size of the biggest hunters. Logs, actual wooden logs for fire, grew in abundance. Animals, deer and squirrels, just as Ri had seen in the picture books, still abounded there.

  If she could raid them for even a single backpack of food, Tancho could feast and their luck would turn. And soon, perhaps, they could take on the Zenbu, and start recovering their city without living in fear each night. Ri hugged the shadows as she moved eastward along the street. A soft scrape and shuffle echoed in the night.

  She melted into an even darker doorway and remembered the old Ninja rule. People looked side to side, not up. She swung the pipe sheath so that it lay across her front.

  Shoulder blades on one side of the jam, feet on the other, she quickly climbed to the top of the doorway and held her breath, her hands wrapped tightly about the pipe. She didn’t dare unsheathe it, but it was still a substantial weight if a fight began.

  Another scuff of a foot finding the dark sidewalk and then the figure was upon her, beneath her, and gone into the doorway, so close below her she could feel the heat of the Zenbu’s breath as it passed.

  By chance, Ri had perched over an entry to the underground tunnels of the Zenbu. The foul stench from below wrapped about her, weakening her knees even as they braced her in place. Not in truest desperation would she risk their territory. They had shown their strength to her once. She’d not survive such a display again.

  The Zenbu was gone. Silence again ruled the night.

  It wasn’t until her legs began shaking with the effort of sustaining her position that she could release her nerves enough to descend.

  One block, two, three, quick distance away from the entrance to the underground. Too fast.

  She froze in the street and listened.

  Her stomach rumbled loudly enough that Ri fancied she could hear the echo off the nearby buildings. All of her books on stealth and hiding said nothing about how to quiet a body that was slowly starving to death. If some of the chroniclers had starved a bit, perhaps they’d have thought to ask a Ninja master for such a technique. But now such knowledge was lost and gone.

  Another loud gurgle and Ri started moving before some of the All investigated the sound. The shadows carried her to within a street-width of the Nara-ken wall. Even from here she could see her entrance, the street drain right outside their walls, mostly hidden by one of the last trees in Nara. None had yet braved harvesting wood so close to the walls of the park. Tonight she was going to get much closer than that.

  No one was moving along the walls, nor upon the streets. Ducking low and trying to move as a wind, or a leaf might move, Ri crept forward in fits and starts. Think like a black shadow, dressed in black, on a black night. Forward, back, sideways. No pattern to draw the casual eye.

  She was halfway across the street when she identified a high-pitched whine as separate from the sound of her breathing and her own footsteps. Without direction at first, she finally identified it as growing from the north. Knowing anyone else who might be out for the night would also be looking toward the sound rather than watching the street’s shadows, she ran straight across to the tree and climbed quickly up into the leaves.

  The whine grew so loud she covered her ears and stared at the sky. A dragon roared into view over the buildings, a white fire blasted down upon the earth as the dragon slowed above her. A great peace washed over her. The time had come. The great dragon of the sky and the sea had come to finish the world. To take the last of the world and drive it into the ocean.

  The dragon slid a bit sideways until it hovered above the Nara-ken side of the wall. But the white fire didn’t burn, it only illuminated. Shouts echoed into the night. She climbed higher into the tree to see what was happening. Dozens upon dozens of people were scattered about the park. So many. She’d have been quickly dead if she’d entered the park.

  They shouted and waved at the dragon. They threw spears upward which was foolish because though the spears could not hurt a dragon, they badly wounded two fighters when they fell back to the earth.

  The dragon began releasing small rocks. When they hit the ground a great steam burst forth and Nara-ken Cadre collapsed. All who came in contact with the vaporous clouds fell to the ground and moved no more. The final death had begun. The dragons were taking back the earth.

  Fighters poured forth from perfectly good hiding spots and collapsed among their comrades. No thought of holding a force in reserve. No plans for the next moment. Clearly those in Nara-ken had never studied Sun Tzu. Their motto was Run Forth and Die. The gentle night air blew the steamy clouds farther into the park. Why hadn’t the dragon attacked her?

  It began descending down upon its prey. But there was something familiar about it. Some memory she couldn’t place, for Ri knew she’d never seen a dragon before. But this, she almost had. Without conscious volition, she swung down from the tree and pulled aside the storm grate hidden in the shadows. A few tossed pebbles gave back reassuring, tinny echoes. The passageway was empty.

  The sewer, as she’d hoped, led under the wall into the heart of Nara-ken. There were no traps or alarms that she could spot. Had she by chance found their bolthole? But Nara-ken Cadre didn’t hunt. They never ventured forth. They were even more elusive than the Zenbu. All they needed, they had within their park.

  She eased the grate within Nara-ken upward enough to see as the dragon landed in the middle of the field. Without the blinding white fire, she saw it for what it must be.

  A flitter!

  Come back from a dead world. It was unlike the ones from her books, but the books were old.

  A flitter.

  Then the world wasn’t dead. Unless they had come from the sky. Were they from another world? Man had lived on the moon. Did they yet?

  A square of light opened in the side and a ramp folded down to the ground. Half a dozen fighters poured forth. She could tell by the way they moved that they were well-trained, and one of them moved with a stealth and smoothness that would make a Ninja proud. And they were huge. She’d never imagined such big people. Even the Zenbu in all their layers of tatters and rags were not the size of these dragon’s spawn.

  And then, framed in the light shining out from inside the craft, an angel stepped forth. Exactly as she’d looked on so many book covers. No wings, but a bounty of hair shimmered golden in the night. And her white clothing shone forth.

  “You, out of there. Slow.”

  Stupid, Ri. She’d lost her focus for a moment and now she faced the business end of a nasty looking pipe. The man wielding the pipe kicked the grating aside and signaled her upward. It was the man who had moved like a Ninja despite his size.

  She crawled out slowly and, at his motions, raised her arms to the sides.

  “Report.” Report what? But he didn’t seem to be shouting at her.

  “They’re all out, sir. Depending on the dose, twenty to thirty minutes before they start waking back up.”

  “Ten minutes on the ground. Then we’re gone.”

  Time.

  They weren’t dead. The dragon—the flitter had only put them to sleep with its vapors and steams. And they’d be gone quickly. Perhaps she could forage quickly and be gone before they woke. Now she wished she’d brought the rest of
the hunters.

  The Angel-lady moved forward looking about her feet and stepping lightly among the sleeping Nara-ken.

  “I had hoped all this wouldn’t be necessary, Commander.”

  “They couldn’t hurt the car, but I didn’t fancy their welcome of stones and spears. Thankfully they don’t carry anything more dangerous anymore. I’d suggest you choose and we’ll go.”

  She waved an impossibly white hand about her. “How can I possibly choose? You were right, they have descended back into savagery. I don’t even know if any of them can speak, language may be gone.”

  Ri glanced about, just moving her eyes. The half dozen troops had finished their inspection of the sleepers and set up a wide perimeter about the car. At least one person remained in the vehicle. Six shiruken, the four knives, her pipe, and her one special weapon. If every strike were perfect, of which there was no chance against trained fighters, she stood a one in a hundred chance of getting away. And then the dragon would hunt her.

  They all turned to look at her. Their round eyes just like the ones in the books. Those strange photos that had fascinated her for so many hours. They were even stranger in real life.

  “What about this one? He’s stood silent and still for a long time. That takes training.”

  Ri squared her shoulders proud to be recognized by another fighter. By their commander.

  “May understand more than we think.” He reached out a great paw and tore off her hood. His pipe’s aim never wavered. She inspected it more closely as she shook her hair out of her face, careful not to move her hands. It wasn’t a pipe. It was a weapon, much like the ones in the books, but it looked even nastier.

  The Angel-lady turned to study her. “Why, it’s a girl! How old do you think she is? Six, seven?”

  “Older would be my guess. We could try offering her some food.”

  His word rattled around in her mind for several moments before finding somewhere to land. She was suddenly light-headed at the mere thought of food. Her stomach growled loudly.