The Puzzler's War

by Eyal Kless

  “Commander, the shootings . . . it’s the Guardian Angels.”

  And then the Comm went dead.

  There was a long moment where Mannes simply sat in front of the screens and let what he’d heard sink in. His heart was thumping at a dangerous pace. The newer body models had a fail-safe mechanism for several organs, including the heart. Yep, he should have upgraded . . .

  Mannes turned the manual switch one click to the right. “Voice control,” he said.

  Norma’s voice filled the cabin. “You are in breach of seventeen—”

  “Yeah yeah yeah,” he cut in. “I’m going back. How long will it take me to reach the hub with increased speed?”

  The AI went silent for a brief moment. Not that she didn’t know the answer immediately, but the situation was almost definitely new to her. She was not a fully Sentient Program and, like Mannes, she was probably trying to cope.

  “With increased speed, two hours and seven minutes less than the remaining sixteen hours and thirty minutes.”

  “Do so.” Mannes released navigation controls to the pilot AI.

  The soft hum of the shuttle’s engines immediately increased.

  What the fuck was he going to do when he’d arrive at the hub? Fight eight-foot-tall Guardian Angels with his bare hands? No. The situation would already be contained by the time he’d get there. Commander Ismark was going to be preoccupied with what appeared to be a total clusterfuck of a situation. The last thing she’d want would be to reprimand a spoiled civilian engineer who wanted a bigger spacecraft. He’d be needed and he’d make some repairs, that was what he was going to do. And they’d thank him for it when it would be over. Maybe enough to put aside all this foolishness.

  To the Comm Mannes said, “Norma, get us to the hub, ask for permission to land at dock thirteen.” That was the farthest docking bay in the hub. He did not want to be in the centre of things.

  “And let’s put some music on,” he added suddenly. The quietness of the cabin was making him nervous.

  “Anything specific? I have one hundred and seventy-eight thousand—”

  “Beethoven Symphony Number Nine. Go straight to the chorus part, ‘Ode to Joy.’ Play it in a loop until I tell you to stop.”

  Immediately the cabin filled with the first chords of Mannes’s favourite symphonic piece. Usually he liked to bring up the volume to deafening levels, especially when he wanted to clear the lab and have some time for himself, but now he needed to hear the AI’s voice, even if it was already connected to his inner-ear Comm. The orchestra was playing in full swing when he heard the AI again.

  “We lost contact with the space hub.”

  He knew the AI was not standing behind him but he still turned his head. “What?”

  “We lost—”

  “I heard you. Try to establish contact again and hail the moon resort, too.”

  “The moon resort is not answering; they are on code red one.”

  It meant the moon hotel was launching its guests into space inside cryo escape pods, an extreme measure of last resort. It would take the unconscious survivors at least three weeks to reach Earth’s orbit, and then they would have to be picked up from wherever they ended up landing. Their survival was not guaranteed.

  The chorus came in.

  Mannes’s neural translator was on but he had learned high-level German in school and knew the meaning of the words without help as the verse was sung:

  Joy, bright spark of Divinity

  Daughter of Elysium,

  We tread drunk with fire,

  In a heavenly way through your holy realm!

  Things had gone to shit, and he had a horrible suspicion that this was somehow his fault.

  “Keep hailing both the hub and the moon resort.”

  “There is no contact with either.”

  “Keep doing it.”

  Mannes took control again and dialed up the speed.

  “This course of action is not advisable—”

  “Shut up. Bring the hub on the main. Magnify.”

  After the expected brief delay the image filled the front windows. He leaned back and watched it for a while. Nothing was moving. There was no indication that anything was wrong, but his heart was racing.

  Then he caught a glimpse of Earth in the background of the hub and a terrified “Oh my god” escaped his lips.

  “Show me Earth. Magnify.”

  There was no mistake.

  He heard his own horrified yells as if they were coming from far away.

  The chorus was singing We tread drunk with fire in full vigour, while all around the globe missiles carrying weapons of mass destruction exited and entered the atmosphere, and satellites released their own deadly loads upon the planet.

  Chapter 23

  Peach

  We’d just turned a bend, and the City of Towers filled our view once more, when Trevil decided he’d fulfilled his promise and stopped the truck.

  “This is as far as I go,” he said. “Take some water with you, and that piece of smoked lamb. It hasn’t gone bad yet and will be enough to get you there.”

  I looked at him with surprise. “You don’t want to visit the city?”

  “It’s not that. I heard that they’re taxing something fierce these days, and you heard it as well. With the extra fuel you bought, I have enough to get me halfway back, and with a little luck, just enough in my haul to barter for the rest of the way. Besides”—he looked up to the towers in the sky—“I promised Brak that we’d visit this place together . . . wouldn’t want to see it without him.”

  I fetched the provisions that were offered, then opened my coin bag. There were eighty-seven coins when we’d begun the trip and thirty-eight left. I began dividing the coins, but Trevil shook his head. “I swore to the Healer I would not take anything from you in coin or kind. The fuel was enough to bring both of us here, but that is all I’m going to take from you.”

  I looked at him as he extended his hand to me. “Good-bye, Peach,” he said quietly. “I hope you’ll choose well when the time comes.”

  I shook his hand but when I withdrew mine he kept his extended, turning his palm up. “The gun I gave you, Peach—I’ll need it back, I’m sorry.”

  “Yes, of course.” I detached the holster from my belt and handed it over with the antique revolver inside. He opened the case, flipped open the chamber, counted the bullets, and nodded. I turned to open the door when I heard the audible clink of the gun being cocked. “And the power pistol, Peach,” Trevil said. “The one you took from under my seat. I’ll need it, too.”

  I slowly turned back to Trevil. He had the revolver I’d just handed to him levelled straight at my head.

  “Sorry, Peach, but I really need that gun.”

  I cursed inwardly, but there was no use denying it. He must have known about it for days and kept his mouth shut.

  “It’s in my backpack,” I said.

  Trevil extended his free hand while making sure his gun-holding hand was out of my reach. I handed him the bag. Without taking his eyes off me he rummaged through it and pulled the power pistol out. He turned the power on and checked that the power clip was full, then shoved the pack back to me with his healthy leg.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  He shrugged and pointed one of the guns at the door. “Good luck, Peach.”

  I opened the truck door and slid down to the ground. It wasn’t freezing cold anymore, but it also wasn’t the kind of temperature you wanted to be standing in for longer than necessary. Without looking back, I began walking away on the dirt road. I heard the truck move and the distorted warning beeps as it reversed, manoeuvred, and turned back, then the roar of the engine as Trevil stepped on the accelerator pedal. I looked back to see a cloud of black smoke obscuring most of the truck that had been my home for the past two and a half months. There was no time to waste. I turned back and kept on walking.

  It was no problem to determine my general direction. The city, with its seven elevated Plate
aus, each supporting thousands of Spires, loomed above me for miles. and from what my limited zoom allowed me to see, it was intact. But its size was misleading—it was farther away than it looked.

  After a few hours of walking my road ended abruptly at the foot of a steep hill of upturned earth. I climbed the hill, digging my fingers through the loose earth. When I stood on top of it my vessel was sweating despite the bristling cold.

  The city was powered by eight Tarakan quantum engines, each producing power equal to six nuclear power plants. Two of the quantum engines were exclusively responsible for the power shield defending the city. Its relative smallness combined with the strength of these engines most likely saved the city from the annihilation our enemies were hoping for, but it hadn’t stopped them from trying. While their attacks had not touched the city, they had devastated the land surrounding it. From the look of the landscape, even with the satellite defence system, antimissile batteries, and the electronic shield, a few bombs must have landed damn close. I remembered the beautiful, cultivated surroundings of this great city. Now it looked as if God had decided to put a shovel into the earth and turn the entire garden.

  Even before Tarakan became independent, there used to be five million permanent residents and another fifteen million annual visitors—applicants for jobs or citizenship, and tourists—all crammed into a relatively limited space. To stop congestion and make travel between plateaus safer, the city restricted entry for outside vehicles, forbidding private cars and hovercrafts from entering its borders. Several giant, free parking lots were dug deep outside the city’s high walls, and a rich array of public transport was available and free to all. From my vantage point I saw that where one such parking lot used to be was a flat swamp, ending at the city’s walls by the base of the north tower. Trying to cross it might be dangerous as well as futile. I turned my head east and zoomed. There was a road there, and a line of vehicles. I recognised two trucks similar to the type I’d travelled in, and some other fossil-fuelled older cars. The sun had already set, and I navigated the rest of the way by the twinkling row of floodlights and oil lamps that some of the vehicles used. The traffic line was at a standstill and at least several miles long. There were more animal-driven carts than vehicles, and none of those were solar or power driven, mainly old cars and motorbikes. The road was unpaved and wide enough for one vehicle at a time. The drivers had turned their engines off, and I could see some of them sleeping at the wheel. Everyone else seemed gloomily patient, accepting this situation as normal.

  There used to be a bridge of light in this area, one of the most beautiful ways to enter the city. A wide bridge that shimmered brightly, where pedestrians and newcomers could either walk or catch the light train and climb all the way up to the Middle Plateau.

  Now there was only darkness, pierced by weak dots of oil-lamp light.

  The cold was fierce, and my vessel indicated a need for nourishment. I fished out the leg of lamb from my backpack and sniffed it. It wasn’t pleasant but it wouldn’t kill me. I began walking alongside the vehicles while chewing the almost-putrid meat.

  I had just passed a cart and a sad-looking mule when a voice called behind me, “Hey, Lady. No use getting in front of the line now.”

  I turned. The cart was covered with a combination of canvas, cloth, and sheepskin. A hand shifted one of the folds, and I saw an older man sitting inside. He was covered in sheepskin and wore a thick, woollen cap.

  “They won’t open up till sunrise, Mistress,” he said, and waved a plastic bottle at me. “I’ll share my hooch for your meat and some company.”

  I hesitated briefly. This could play out in different ways, some of them nasty, but the thought of standing in the freezing cold through the night was a major factor in my decision to accept his invitation.

  There was really only space for one large person inside, but he scooted and shuffled and I found myself sitting shoulder to shoulder with a man whose odour was the unhappy mix of onions, sheep, mule dung, and alcohol.

  “Name’s Gret,” he said and handed me a spare cap. “Here, wear this. Will keep you warm.” He handed me the plastic bottle. “And this, too.”

  Hygiene be damned—the cap was a little large and filled with several samples of other people’s hair, but it did warm me a little.

  “I’m Peach.” I sniffed the bottle, and my vessel informed me there was more than fifty percent alcohol in it. I took a long pull.

  “You know how to take a brew, Mistress Peach.” Gret sniffed at the lamb leg I handed to him. “Aye, this thing’s going bad. Still, can’t be refusing meat.” He grasped the bottle with his other hand, took a bite from the meat, and filled his mouth with alcohol. “This will kill them bad little animals. My grandpa used to say they’re everywhere, even in the air. Ugh, I got the bad end of that deal.” Gret’s face betrayed his disgust. “My hooch is better than your meat, Mistress.”

  “Wait,” I said. There was no need to aggravate the old man. I rummaged through my things until I found the tiny hide satchel. “Here,” I said as I opened it, “there’s some salt here will make things a little better.”

  Gret’s eyes widened, and he nodded as I took a pinch and spread it around the meat. “That is mighty kind of you, Mistress Peach. Salt is worth its weight in metal.”

  I shrugged. “And too much of both could end up killing you.”

  Gret chuckled and bent down and rummaged through a sack underneath our seat. It occurred to me the man was probably much younger than he looked.

  “Here.” Gret turned back and handed me an onion. “’Tis from uncontaminated soil. Won’t make your teeth fall out.” He smiled broadly, as if to prove his point.

  I bit into the onion. It replaced the taste of the bad meat. “Good onion,” I said.

  “The best,” he said proudly.

  We chewed together for a bit.

  “You’re from around here?”

  I shook my head and changed the subject. “Is this normal? I mean this line. Are you all waiting for the bridge of light?”

  Gret chuckled. “Don’t know what you’re talking about, Missus Peach—or is it Miss?”

  “Missus,” I answered drily.

  He seemed disappointed but kept talking. “There’s no light at this bridge. We’re all waiting for sunrise, for the guards to open the barrier. We unload at the bridge.”

  “You mean you’re not going into the city?”

  “Oh, I am.” He pointed at the mule. “Old Summer might not be the fastest, but she can climb a sheer mountain, she can.” He pointed at the truck standing before us. “The trucks are too heavy for the bridge, they just unload and turn back. Me and Summer, we take the climb but by law, we need to sell most of our take at the bridge or leave metal in the hands of the guards.” Gret shook his head. “It used to be easier, used to sell it myself at the market. Onions, potatoes, some brew—it was a good living. And my wife made clothes from sheepskin, like that cap”—he pointed at my head—“before sickness took her.”

  “I’m sorry to hear,” I mumbled.

  “Good woman, she was.” Gret blinked away tears. “Gave me no children, though. Even the Menders couldn’t cure her, poor soul. They say she was born without, you know—” his hand flapped dismissively “—correct womanly bits. But she was all woman to me.”

  “I am sorry to hear,” I said again.

  “Such is life, Mistress.” Gert shrugged. “We used to travel together. Now I take to the road alone with Summer. A few days, maybe a week each way. I know the good farmers, those who keep their soil clean. The truckers try to rip them off because they need to pay for fuel. I save that cost, so they give me the good stuff.” Gret tapped his nose. “A friend in the know told me my onions go straight up to the towers, where the tower-heads dine on ’em. They fetch triple the price in the upper market, if not more.”

  “A week’s trip each way isn’t easy,” I remarked.

  “Not bad if you know your roads, Mistress, and I do. Got my spots on the way, whe
re I can make a little bonfire.” His voice suddenly dropped to a whisper. “Say what you want about the damn Trolls, but there are no bandits so close to the city, except for the city guards themselves of course, they don’t need to attack you on the roads. They just sit here and wait for you to come to them and rob you blind with taxes and bribes.” He chuckled at his own wit. “Anyways, they took all the young ones to the army, so the roads are even safer now. An old geezer like me, not even the army wants.”

  That got my attention. Conscription meant trouble. “Is this normal? To take men into the army?”

  “They say it’s because of the war.”

  “What war?” I’d figured it would not take humanity too long to go back to killing each other, but still. My heart sank a little.

  “You mean you haven’t heard? They say the Oil Baron is marching. Took some lands on the slopes last year and is now hungry for more.”

  “Who is the Oil Baron?”

  “Oh, Lady . . .” He sighed at my lack of awareness. “He controls everything in the cold north. They say it’s so cold there, water freezes all year round. But the Baron has a good way of making oil, that’s where he got his name, and he keeps his people warm with it. The summer lands kept sending food to him, to keep the Baron happy. But they say he got tired of the deep winter and wants to rule the sunny lands. Because of him they stepped up the tax a season ago, and there’re definitely more animals on the roads these days, now that oil has doubled in price.”

  I took another swig from the plastic bottle. It wasn’t bad, but getting drunk was a bad idea.

  “You look tired, Mistress. There’s room at the back if you don’t mind shuffling a few sacks and the smell of onions.”

  “You don’t want to sleep yourself?”

  “Ah. Am used to sleeping sitting on this bench. I just lean here on the pole, like this.” He demonstrated. “Got a sheepskin cushion I tuck like this, and then I close my eyes, and my snores scare the bugs away.”