City of Blades

by Robert Jackson Bennett

“So that’s how you came to be here? The previous commander got shot, so they came to you?”

  Biswal deflates a little. “No. Not quite. I was teaching. Military history, at Abhishek Academy. The shelf, in other words.”

  Mulaghesh nods. “The shelf” is the military term for a state of disuse, when a soldier, operative, or officer is not dismissed but set aside and, likely, forgotten. One can get on the shelf for any reason: some fall out of favor politically, some screw up an operation or make some fatal career flaw….Still others just get old. Very few go to the shelf voluntarily—yet this is precisely what Mulaghesh herself attempted to do. And I couldn’t even get that right….

  “No one else wanted the job, so they gave me another look,” says Biswal. “I should have known that if they were willing to give it to me, I shouldn’t take it. This is a daunting task, and the number of souls on my shoulder weighs heavily.”

  Mulaghesh glances at a map on the wall detailing the installations throughout Voortyashtan. “How many?”

  “Seven thousand here in Thinadeshi. Four thousand in Fort Hadji, where the rails see a lot of action—just north of the highlands, you see. Thirty-five hundred at Fort Lok. More at the border with Jukoshtan. All in all, I find myself commander of twenty-three thousand soldiers here in Voortyashtan, Turyin. A lot, but not as many as we need.”

  “No?”

  “No. We’re spread too thin. My predecessor tried to disrupt the insurgents’ bastions in the mountains, and that was a miserable failure. Cost him his life. For now, the military council’s orders are strictly to hold on. Fortify. Protect the harbor. As if it needs it. The Dreylings practically have their own army down there. They’ve even got a damned minigun.”

  “Really.” Mulaghesh makes a note of this.

  “And somehow all the shtanis manage to have firearms, too.” He gives the carousel in her holster the briefest of glances. “I hate them, Turyin. I hate these damned new guns, which suddenly seem to be everywhere.”

  “I never figured you for a technophobe,” says Mulaghesh.

  “I’m not,” he growls. “But these things make it damned easy to kill a man. With bolts, ammunition is so much more of a hassle. Too much wind and you can’t use them at all. Short-ranged, too. With riflings…Overnight, we’ve gone from bolt-action to fully automatic and beyond. Dying has gotten a whole lot easier all over the world.”

  “We’ve always been able to make them,” says Mulaghesh. “We were just never able to scale up production before.”

  “Then perhaps we should have left them on the factory floor,” says Biswal. “Are you a convert, Turyin?”

  “If you can’t fight the future, you might as well learn the ropes quick as you can. Especially if you’ve got to climb them with a handicap.” She holds up her prosthetic left hand.

  “Ah.” His eyes sadden. “I’d heard about that. I’m so sorry for what you went through.”

  “And both of us know it wasn’t much. I’m alive. That’s more than most get.”

  “Yes. That is true. You always did have a head for priorities, Turyin. It surprised me when I heard you’d walked out on the job. Why did you leave?”

  She gives a neutral shrug. “They wanted me to be something I wasn’t.”

  “Ah. A politician, then?”

  “Something like that.”

  “And now you’re here on the shuffle,” says Biswal. “I don’t think anyone’s ever done the touring shuffle in Voortyashtan. Why did they send you here?”

  “I pissed on a lot of important shoes when I left,” says Mulaghesh. “They could’ve just waved the discrepancy off, but they didn’t. I don’t think they even wanted to give me the opportunity to get it taken care of, really. I think maybe they sent me up hoping I’d get buried here.”

  Biswal’s eyes dim and crinkle. “Yes. I…I wonder that, too. Perhaps they’re just trying to mop us up. Me and you, still being alive—we inconvenience them, don’t we?”

  She hesitates. She feels nauseous. She hasn’t discussed this with anyone in over ten years, and she never wanted to break the subject open like this, with the very man who led them all way back when.

  She wanted to forget. She did a good job of it. It’s downright obnoxious of the world to remind her that the Yellow March actually happened.

  To her relief, they’re interrupted by the sound of steps behind them. Mulaghesh turns to see a Saypuri soldier of about forty mounting the stairs, and from the chevrons on her uniform she’s a captain, first class. But there is an unmistakable air of lethality about this woman that Mulaghesh finds striking: everything about her posture and bearing—jaw set forward, shoulders square, legs spread wide—seems intended to either take or deal damage. Her hair is tied back so tightly it seems to stretch the skin on her forehead, which has a curious whitish streak in the middle. It’s a large scar, like she’s had almost all of her scalp peeled off in some injury. This does nothing to affect her stony, still gaze, though: Mulaghesh only has to glance at her to see that this is a soldier who’s seen a great deal of combat, probably the messy kind.

  Once she’s at the top of the steps, the captain swivels on her heel and smartly salutes. “General Mulaghesh. It’s an honor to have you here at Thinadeshi.”

  “Ah, you found me, Nadar,” says Biswal.

  “When you’re at Thinadeshi, General, you’re almost always in the nest.” She glances around disapprovingly. “Against my advice.”

  “Turyin, this is Captain Kiran Nadar, commander of Fort Thinadeshi. Nadar doesn’t admire my makeshift office here. She thinks the shtanis are dangerous and could take advantage of it. But on the contrary, the reason I’m up here is because I know they’re dangerous.” He gazes east, at the ragged, pink peaks of the Tarsil Mountains. “Where else can I get a better look at what we have to deal with?”

  “I’m guessing this is something of an artifact,” says Mulaghesh, standing and looking around at the little room. “Built before artillery and small arms had quite the reach they do now.”

  “Correct,” says Nadar. “And since we lost our last commander to a sharpshooter—may he find peace in his slumber—it makes me nervous that General Biswal chooses to take his tea up here.”

  “Perhaps I enjoy spending time in the portions of this fortress,” says Biswal, “which were built when we had clearer aims about what we wished to accomplish here.”

  Nadar lowers her gaze. There’s an awkward beat.

  “It’s one hell of a place,” offers Mulaghesh. The words seem to die miserably in the air.

  “No doubt you’re familiar with more modern installations, General,” says Nadar, with a touch of wounded pride. “But here, we’re forced to make do with what we have.”

  “Some of it looks damned modern, though.” Mulaghesh walks to the west side of the spire, which looks toward the ocean and the cliffs. But before the cliffs is the bland little structure she saw on the way up here, lined with miles of razor wire. “What in all the hells is that?”

  “A halted attempt at expansion, General,” says Nadar smoothly.

  “Expansion?”

  “Yes, General.”

  Mulaghesh looks at her. “No, it isn’t.”

  Nadar’s confident expression wilts. Biswal glances back and forth between the two of them, his face inscrutable.

  “I’ve seen expansions before, Captain,” says Mulaghesh. “Lots of them. And that’s not one. More to the point, I spent a lot of time reviewing requests and proposals to try to expand Fort Thinadeshi. None of them broke ground. Which that out there obviously has.”

  Nadar looks to Biswal, who looks back at her as if to say, I told you so. Nadar frowns, nettled, and says, “With all due respect, General—and I think this is something you expected—this is an intelligence compartment that I don’t believe you’re read into.”

  “Maybe, Captain.” Then, casually, “Is this that thing about the metal?”

  Nadar looks like she’s been slapped. “The…The metal?”

  “Yeah
. The metal you found around here.”

  “How…You…” Nadar struggles to control her reactions. “How was it that you came to be, ah, informed about this, General?”

  “I’d seen reports on something about it back when I was on the council.” This is a lie, but since very few ever know what powerful people see and do, it’s an easy one to believe. “I suppose that was before it got formally compartmentalized, though. I thought it was just some curiosity. But if it’s big enough for compartmentalization, and for you all to build that out there for it…it must be pretty damn curious indeed.”

  There’s a long silence.

  Biswal leans back in his chair and chuckles. “The years have been kind to your mind, Turyin. You’re a sight cleverer than I remember.”

  “I’ll take that as a compliment, sir,” says Mulaghesh.

  “General Biswal,” says Nadar, now quite flushed, “I…I do not consider the intelligence orders we have regarding our affairs here to be anything to laugh at. If there has been a breach of this compartment we need t—”

  “I recall once hearing a young captain very tactfully tell me,” says Biswal, “that one can both respect and obey Ghaladesh while remembering that it is over a thousand miles away.”

  Nadar’s flush deepens. “This is still an alarming revelation. Even if it is General Mulaghesh who’s aware of the situation here. My concern is that, if she knows, someone else could. That poses a serious security breach.”

  “You’re right to be worried,” says Biswal. “But this breach didn’t happen on our end—something I’ll happily tell Ghaladesh. Perhaps we ought to be grateful to General Mulaghesh for making us aware of the breach in the first place.”

  “I’m just here on the touring shuffle,” Mulaghesh says. “I don’t wish to be an intrusion.”

  “You aren’t,” says Biswal. “This project is an intrusion. It’s wise to seek your discretion, though—and the best way to be discreet is to know exactly what it is we need to be discreet about. Captain Nadar, will you please read General Mulaghesh into this compartment and give her the full briefing on Operation Arc Lightning?”

  Nadar makes a face as if she’s just been asked to swallow a spoonful of some very foul medicine.

  “I don’t wish to waste any more time discussing this absurd diversion,” says Biswal quietly, holding up his hands. “Please, Nadar. Show her the most recent eccentricity our nation has chosen to spend money on, rather than more walls, more soldiers, and more support.”

  “With all due respect, General,” says Nadar, “this flies in the face of proce—”

  She stops talking as a round of small pops echoes across the battlements. Mulaghesh looks up, alarmed. “Is that gunfire?”

  Neither Biswal nor Nadar seem surprised. Biswal checks his watch. “Ah. I’d forgotten what time it is.”

  “What the hells is that? It sounded like a volley.”

  “Well, it was, in a way.” Biswal takes out a spyglass and walks to the walls. He glasses a yard to the east, behind walls and walls of wire fencing. “Just another daily duty of Fort Thinadeshi.”

  He hands Mulaghesh the spyglass. It takes her only a moment to find it, and though it’s hazy with gunsmoke the scene is quite clear.

  Nine Saypuri soldiers with riflings stand at one end of the yard; at the other is a tall, earthen berm with dark, stained soil at its bottom. There’s something lying there in the dirt, limp and crumpled, and two Saypuri soldiers run forward and drag it away, leaving behind a streak of red mud.

  “They surprised a checkpoint,” says Biswal beside her. “Shot two of the guards there. We only captured them by pure coincidence—a returning patrol happened upon them.”

  The two soldiers drag in a filthy, cowering Continental man, his face almost completely obscured with bruises. They put a blindfold on him and stand him up before the berm. The crotch of his pants blooms dark with urine.

  “You’re executing them?” says Mulaghesh.

  “Yes,” says Biswal. “This is not Bulikov, Turyin. There is no order of law here, beyond tribal law. The only courts here are military courts. And the fortress’s prison is tiny and old. We can’t keep people there indefinitely.”

  She watches as the supervisor of the rifling squad shouts orders. The nine soldiers lift their riflings.

  “In Voortyashtan,” says Biswal, “we make do with what we can.”

  The yard fills with gunsmoke. The Continental man topples over. It takes a little bit longer for the sound of the gunshots to drift up to them.

  She lowers the spyglass and slowly hands it back to Biswal.

  “Perhaps you can now understand,” says Biswal, “that I have much more important things to care about than any secret science experiments. Captain Nadar—please show General Mulaghesh the laboratories. Perhaps before she retires she can inform the council what a ridiculous burden this all is. And once you’ve done so, report back to me on the status of the eastern perimeter. We still have real work to do.”

  ***

  Nadar is still composing herself at the foot of the stairs when Mulaghesh gets there. Nadar coughs. “I apologize for that, General. That must have been uncomfortable.”

  “I’ll say,” says Mulaghesh darkly. She oversaw executions of her own in Bulikov, of course, but they were far more ceremonial affairs, attended and supervised by civilian officials. What she just witnessed felt as mundane as taking out the day’s trash.

  “The thing is, I agree with him,” says Nadar. She begins walking down the hall, and Mulaghesh follows. “Operation Arc Lightning places a great burden on us when we need it least.”

  “But?”

  “But, Biswal has…little patience for any issue that isn’t actively posing a threat.”

  “When your predecessor got shot in combat, I can see why a clandestine mining operation might not top your list of priorities.”

  “General Raajhaa…Yes, he was a great leader, General. He was much admired. His loss changed many minds about what we’re doing here.” She shakes herself and begins taking a long staircase down. “How much do you know about Arc Lightning, General?”

  “I know it’s a metal. I know it’s in the ground. That’s about the run of it. I didn’t even realize it’d gotten a fancy code name yet.”

  “I see. And how much do you know about electrical engineering?”

  “Nothing. Maybe less than nothing.”

  “Well, that’ll make this easier,” says Nadar. “It’ll mean fewer questions.”

  They walk down the hallway to the lab doors. The ceilings here are covered with pipes and tubes, all sighing or squeaking or softly bubbling.

  “You are probably aware that electrification promises to be the next great step for our nation,” says Nadar.

  “I read about it in the papers from time to time. I thought Vallaicha Thinadeshi had tried it before and failed.”

  “True, but she only made small inroads. Yet now, as you might’ve seen in Ghaladesh, entire homes and buildings run off of it.”

  “Yes,” says Mulaghesh, who’s honestly never really cared for electrical light. It somehow seems to bring out the flaws in the human face.

  “The main issue right now is transmission,” says Nadar. “We have coal, we have dams. But scaling up transmission to match Saypur’s industries…that’s proving difficult.” She throws open a wooden door on the other side of the hallway. Inside is a pristine white laboratory featuring all kinds of complicated equipment: pumps and processors and something that has an inordinate amount of tubing. Four attendants are perched over glass dishes containing various amounts of gray, unimpressive powder. They look up, startled.

  “Lieutenant Prathda,” says Nadar. One of the attendants stands up straight and salutes. “This is General Mulaghesh. I’m giving her a tour of the facilities. Why don’t you give her the technical rundown of what we’re doing here?”

  Prathda—a gangly, odd peacock of a man—paces over and salutes Mulaghesh directly. “Certainly, General. An honor to ha
ve you with us. How technical would you like me to be?”

  “Just give her the general rundown,” says Nadar. “And no charts this time, Lieutenant.”

  “I see,” says Prathda. He bites his lip. “But, Captain, I did some additional production work on one, and I think this chart really clarifies how—”

  “No charts, Lieutenant,” says Nadar forcefully. “Just the five-minute tour.”

  “Certainly, Captain.” Then he thinks for a moment and says, “A demonstration would probably be simplest.” He turns to his attendants. “Please get me the components for the Aamdi test, if you could.” One of the attendants leaps up and digs underneath the counter until she produces a very large lightbulb that’s more than two feet long, a bulky battery, and two sets of thick cables. “Thank you,” says Prathda, and he picks them up and carries them to a dense door with a sign reading TESTING ROOM FOUR. “This way, General,” he calls over his shoulder.

  Mulaghesh follows, but Nadar hangs back. “I’ve seen this show, General,” she explains. “I’ll, ah, hang out here in the hallway, if that’s all right.”

  Concerned, Mulaghesh walks into the testing room. “Please shut that door securely,” Prathda says. “Thank you, General.”

  She notices the door has a layer of steel on the interior, like a blast door. “Uh…Is there anything we need to be, uh, shielded from?”

  “I assure you, it’s all quite safe. Now, we have here two very ordinary components—a bulb, and a battery. The battery is large and has a very large charge, and the bulb is from a high-powered street lamp in Ghaladesh—so its capacity for taking in electricity and putting out light is very, very high. Am I clear?”

  Mulaghesh grunts.

  “Excellent. Now, these cables are of common copper—the sort of copper that is currently being used in most electrical practices. If I apply them to the battery’s connectors like so…And then, of course, to the lightbulb’s base…” The bulb, lying on its side on the counter, flickers with a faint yellow light, which grows as Prathda adjusts the cables until it’s a flat, somewhat decent source of light in this rather dark room.

  “Right,” says Prathda. He removes the cables, killing the light. “It functions, carrying the charge to and from the bulb. However, there is considerable loss—hence why the bulb does not glow particularly brightly. But these cables”—he holds the two other cables up so that Mulaghesh can see that they’re flagged red—“are an alloy, mixing copper with a very recently discovered element.”