The Blood Solution (Approaching Infinity Book 3)

by Chris Eisenlauer

  “Whenever you’re ready.”

  Jav’s face reflected his mental shift. He’d seen how Set had moved in his “match” with Barson and felt that this was an opponent who could easily keep up with, and perhaps even outdo, Laedra Hol. He’d never thought about it before, had unconsciously ascribed his healthy respect for her to her position of authority, to her treatment of Mai Pardine, and to the seemingly impossible act of pulling him out of his displacement technique and nearly squeezing his head off with one hand. But if Jav had to rate all those he’d gone up against, he would have to say that Laedra Hol was the most skilled and the most dangerous. He got that same feeling from Dolma Set now even before engaging him.

  Jav knew that Set’s style made him, for lack of a better, all-encompassing word, slippery, so he would forego grabs and joint locks. He lashed out with a right reverse punch claw hand, but Set turned fractionally and the hand went by. Counting on this Jav, Jav stepped his right leg forward and instantly swung his right arm back to scissor Set between appendages. Set moved with Jav’s motion, slipping free of the trap and doing a back handspring to safety. Jav turned and advanced, thrusting claw hands that this time forced Set back, back, back.

  Set grinned. “Not bad.” But he stopped retreating and parried every claw Jav threw with soft, infuriating, willowy movements of his arms and palms. He matched Jav and then surpassed him, driving a quick, slapping palm to Jav’s forehead that sent him stumbling backwards.

  Jav had never felt a strike quite like that. It was like the blood in his head was boiling. He shook the sensation clear and focused. Set required more than just strength and speed. He deserved Jav’s mastery of Approaching Infinity and he would get it.

  Again, Jav’s manner shifted. This time, Set became serious as Jav seemed to detach himself from the fight. He no longer watched Set’s eyes, but instead concentrated on his targets. Somehow, Jav managed to defend himself as well, and Set knew that he was now employing AI, both to strike and to reduce any imminent impact.

  Set felt the pressure of Jav’s strikes, still only glancing, but filled with deadly potential. Jav’s approach to the fight was thorough and methodical, Just like Laedra Hol’s, and that could prove problematic for Set if he wanted to remain dominant. He was an excellent fighter, brilliant and intuitive, but as good as he was, he was no good at strategy, large scale or small. Jav was systematically rising to every challenge Set could offer and both were blinded by their desire to overcome the other. And so the fight escalated.

  Slowe dropped his folded arms, knowing what the sparring match had become. He and Set often found themselves locked in fights like this, but they had known each other and sparred together for almost twelve hundred years. They knew each other’s limits and when to stop. Slowe wasn’t so sure that either of the two up on the block knew any such thing.

  Set was like a top, spinning, stopping instantly to spin the opposite direction, his arms like whips, his palms slapping, connecting frequently, but usually robbed of power by Jav’s AI. Usually, but not always. Jav’s T-shirt had several handprints worn through it, though Set’s was just as tattered from Jav’s clawed fingers. Both appeared to be feverish as the fight continued.

  Jav stepped up his efforts, employing the dragon techniques now. His claw hands flourished, finishing with the dragon’s head claw. The dragon’s head thrust forward, dipped, circled back, probed, and struck.

  Slowe saw what neither of them could: that Jav was counting on a certain level of care from Set, and that Set was counting on other tactics to deliver him from harm. But Jav had caught Set’s right shoulder in what Slowe knew could easily turn into the Kaiser Claw—every F-Gene Figher knew by now what the Kaiser Claw was—and so he cried out.

  “Stop!”

  Jav responded immediately, turning towards Slowe, but Set could not stop his left palm, rising like the lash of a whip into Jav’s midsection. Blood sprayed in a fine, violent mist from the place on Jav’s back exactly opposite where Set had struck him. There was no visible wound, front or back, but Set had set Jav’s blood into fast and furious motion through his pores.

  Jav dropped to his knees and coughed up more blood. He was dazed to some degree, fighting to master his breath and his beating heart.

  Set looked confused and stared at Slowe. “What the hell?”

  Slowe climbed onto the gravity block and steadied Jav.

  “I’m sorry, Jav,” Slowe said. He looked up at Set. “If you had connected with that punch while he still had your shoulder—while he was still concentrating on your shoulder—you would have yanked off your own arm.”

  Set knew better than to second guess Slowe. He knelt down next to Jav. “Are you all right, Holson? It may not mean much to you right now, but I’m impressed. I’ve never had a bout like that, except with Slowe here, and that’s because he knows all my tricks.” He frowned a little. “You’re a damned fast learner, though.”

  Jav had caught his breath and was grinning. “Thank you,” he said.

  “Look at that,” Set said. “Just like Talma. I beat him up and he says ‘thank you.’ But Holson, even though you’re on the ground, you could have had my arm, which I would sorely miss. You get the win credit.”

  Jav shook his head. “Let’s call it a draw.”

  Set nodded, then frowned again. “I thought you were rated at 25 gravities.”

  “I am,” Jav said through breaths, “officially.”

  “Officially?” Slowe snorted.

  Jav shrugged. “Someone’s been making me work a little harder for the last seven and a half months.”

  “Have you got a custom block?” Set said, his interest piqued.

  Jav nodded and attempted to rise.

  “If it wouldn’t be too much of an imposition, do you think I—we—might be able to use it while we’re here?”

  “Sure,” Jav said, bending and resting his hands on his knees.

  • • •

  Jav walked the corridor, one hand clutching his jacket, one hand pressed firmly against the spot where Set had hit him. He shook his head, recalling a similar situation that seemed a lifetime away. His first real fight with Mei Pardine had ended similarly: he’d caught her shoulder in the dragon’s head claw, thought that it was sufficient, and had been put into the infirmary for half a month for his naiveté. Set was not at all like Mei Pardine, and the circumstances were different, but it occurred to Jav that his choice of targets was a bit too. . . What? Kind? In preparing for the Artifact Competition, he had been chided by Laedra Hol for not ending his fights more quickly. There was what was obtainable in a fight to consider, but with just a little more set-up, Jav thought he could have had Set’s head. Not off his shoulders per se, but in such a way that the fight would have had a different outcome.

  He entered the common room shared by the Death Squad members, finding Raus and Kapler there.

  “I’m here to tell you,” Jav said, “that you don’t want to fight with Dolma Set. He’ll slap the blood out of your body, right through your damned skin.”

  Kalkin lowered the book he was reading. “And how does that feel?”

  “It hurts. I’m saying I don’t recommend it.”

  Kalkin nodded and resumed his reading.

  “Duly noted,” Raus said.

  “Kalkin,” Jav said, “I’m going to take the rest of the afternoon off.”

  Kalkin simply waved without looking up.

  “You want some company?” Raus asked. “Transit is excessively dull.”

  “That’s likely to change in the very near future,” Kalkin said from behind his book.

  “I know, I know.”

  “Sorry, Raus,” Jav said, breaking into a wide grin. “I’ve already got a date and an injury for her to nurse.”

  Raus rolled his eyes. “Right. See you tomorrow then.” After Jav had gone, Raus said, “He just came in here to gloat about having a date, didn’t he?”

  Kalkin checked the time. “Should I be more discreet when I go?”

 
• • •

  “It looks like a burn,” Mao said, examining the exit wound on Jav’s back.

  “That’s how it feels.”

  “It’ll heal soon enough.”

  Jav nodded. “Dolma Set will be joining us for our sparring sessions.”

  “Oh?”

  “He’s rated at 28 gravities and has some incredible skills. If you train at all with him it’ll definitely make you the dominant force in the upcoming Artifact Competition,” Jav said, putting a new T-shirt on.

  “I thought I already was the dominant force in the upcoming Artifact Competition.” She pouted dramatically and wrapped her arms around him. “Whatever could I do to persuade you to secure his assistance?”

  “I think we’re off to a good start.”

  She looked up into his eyes, her smile dissolving unconsciously.

  “What is it?” he said.

  She shook her head and tried to smile again. “Just. . . Just a little worried.”

  Jav put his hands around her waist. “We’ll be—I’ll be—fine. And we’ll be one step closer to the Artifact Competition.”

  “What if there’s another. . . plant god?”

  “Well it depends on whether or not he gets along well with others. Look, Mao, Tia Winn and Brin Karvasti are staying behind in reserve, but there’ll be nine of us in all with Blue Squad. And the readings we’re getting are indicating a single, isolated source of very limited mass. It’s going to be fine. But let’s make the most of the next two days just the same.”

  She nearly jumped, cinching her arms around his neck and bringing her face close to his. He tightened his grip on her and they stayed like that for a time, reveling in the closeness of their embrace and each other’s warmth.

  14. THE PUPPET GENERAL

  10,690.096

  Two blind runners had snatched the outermost planet of System 283 and now held it fast. The resulting cone of intense black shadow behind the planet would protect the Vine from the harmful rays of the sun at the center of the system, at least for a time. Like more blind runners from the Vine, nine bolts of lightning scratched out across the blackness of space, racing past succeeding worlds, until they touched down upon the dark side of the planet fifth from the sun. That planet, known to its natives as Zahl, held no biological or botanical life. It was a dark rock covered with sweeping sands which were driven by hot, dry, unforgiving winds. Some hollowed out shells of buildings and manmade structures remained, but since the drying of the seas, these were isolated and scattered and crumbling under the abrasive rush spawned by the winds.

  Nine Shades knelt, smoke rising from the scorch marks on the powdered sand beneath them and from their very bodies. All of them—Wheeler Barson, Mefis Abanastar, Lor Kalkin, Forbis Vays, JavHolson, Raus Kapler, Bela Fan, Dolma Set, and Stafros Lowe—were Dark.

  Jav was impressed with Blue Squad. In their Darkened states, they appeared to be quite formidable. Bela Fan was still compact, but was armored in smooth, white enamel with cobalt blue markings on her thick shoulders and the dome of her head. She sported a long, thick animate tail that tapered gradually to a point. To Jav her overall appearance suggested a smooth, scaleless lizard. Dolma Set was a desert beige, with mottling the same blue as Bela Fan’s markings. His head was that of a yellow-eyed serpent or an eel. Stafros Lowe was the most striking. He was covered in a flexible metallic shell of electric blue, with heavy pods on his shoulders and topped with what appeared to be a frog’s head. Jav knew that each of them possessed a natural weapon. Bela Fan’s tail was obvious, but Set harbored a mouthful of glasslike poison-bearing fangs, while Slowe’s bone-tipped tongue was like a high-powered spring harpoon. There was something raw and primitive about them while they were Dark that Jav hadn’t encountered before, and it only served to make them seem all the more dangerous.

  Each rising to stand, the Shades stared at the figure before them. It might have been a statue with its great ball joints, its comparatively slim limbs bridging those joints, and a smooth egg for a head. The woodgrain—alive and shifting—stood out to their Darkened senses, and the star light reflected perfectly from every polished surface. It might have been a statue, but then it cocked its head in a very human expression of confusion.

  Barson stepped forward and the figure spoke. Not with a mouth—it had none—but directly into his head, the way that all Shades could communicate through their Artifacts. “Has it come to this?” it asked. “Am I to suffer visions and insanity?”

  “I assure you, we are not visions, nor are we the harbingers of insanity,” Barson said. “We are emissaries of one such as yourself; he is our Emperor, Samhain, born of the Viscain Tree.”

  The figure continued to stare with its head cocked. In spite of the complete absence of features, the smooth curve of its “face” was uncannily expressive. Perhaps it was the grain and its strange movement that conveyed this to the Shades’ heightened senses, perhaps it was something else more ephemeral.

  “Surely,” it said, “my mind—which was my pride—is striving to create some fiction to spare me the trauma of its own demise. Indeed, emissaries from one like myself come to bear me away to some afterlife where all my questions will be answered and all the mysteries revealed. It is the end for me.”

  Barson shook his great, black horse shadow’s head. “None here can speak to the soundness of your mind, but rather than death and the possibility of some afterlife, we would prefer to offer you friendship, ours and that of our Emperor.

  “We would like to take you with us, but first , perhaps this will help ease your troubled mind.” Barson produced a chrome sphere that was eight centimeters in diameter and held it out before him upon his open palm.

  Laser light shot out from the mirrored sphere, producing a holographic representation of the Emperor, a great pale gourd in three dimensions, four meters across with carved features lit from within by bobbing firelight. The image took up all the space between the wooden figure and the Shades.

  “Greetings,” the Emperor said, the firelight within him increasing in intensity and bathing the wooden man generously in its ghostly light. “Fascinating. You are the first of our kind I have personally encountered, but simply to look upon you explains much. A disservice was done to you. Men carved you into that shape, did they not?”

  “One man did,” it replied. “When I knew that there would be no undoing his work, I aided in the act, supplementing his skill and making the most of what was still available.”

  “You, my cousin, were cut too soon. Had you been given more time to grow, to flourish, you would not be in the predicament in which you now find yourself.”

  “The man did what he did out of love and for that I cherished him and his memory for 3,426,197 days and then stopped.”

  “Why?” The Emperor asked simply, and yet there was a strange weight behind the single word.

  The wooden man shrugged. “It gained me nothing.”

  “What is your first and only name?”

  “I am Icsain.”

  The Emperor seemed to nod without moving. “Had you been allowed to. . . evolve, you would have been reborn as I was. You would have known yourself by a new name, one that was intrinsic, defining, and unique, but one from which great echoes radiated outward, affecting worlds galaxies away that you would have first encountered in your dreams.”

  None of the Shades moved or showed the slightest reaction to this conversation, which was an impressive feat since this information was new to them all. None in the last several thousand years could claim knowledge of the Emperor’s personal history. Some retired Shades knew bits and pieces, but perhaps only Wil Parish, one of the legendary first Shades, knew it all or all that could be known.

  “I was Viscain. I am now Samhain. All that I am, which is considerable, hangs heavy at the threshold of this solar system. I would detonate the star which I am sure is bane to you as it is to me. But I would have you safe and see you live out your eternal days, exploiting your potential, stunted as it may be—as it
was by an unknowing butcher—for you are still greater than any man. Would you pledge yourself to one such as yourself, one who will give you the means to be free of imprisonment and the constant threat of destruction, one who will give of himself to further enhance your own being?”

  Icsain turned his head briefly, appraisingly. “I would.”

  “Will you pledge yourself to Samhain?”

  “I will. I would do anything to be free of this place. But my pledge is made in earnest. You offer salvation. You offer me some semblance of what I might have been.” Icsain eyed the Shades. “I sense sameness in them. They are hybrids but superior to normal men and women. I am afraid that I will not function well in a society of humans.”

  “You needn’t worry about that,” the Emperor said. “You will be elite, you will be among these, my Shades, and after you have completed your term of service, you will be free, truly free, to do whatever you wish, to go wherever you want. Besides enjoying the status of being a Shade, everyone will know that you are my kin.”

  “Then, because it is all I know,” Icsain said kneeling, “I will do this after the fashion of men. I hereby pledge myself to you, Samhain, who was Viscain. Whatever you ask of me shall be done. This, I swear.”

  The Emperor chuckled. “Stand,” he said to Icsain. “Mefis Abanastar.”

  “Yes, Lord Emperor.” Abanastar produced a sphere similar to the one Barson still held. He walked through the image of the Emperor and approached Icsain. “Icsain, please take this and crush it. Inside is an emergency Tether. Do not be alarmed. The contents will surround you as if alive, but please do not struggle against or resist the fibers.”

  Icsain took the sphere in his thick but well-wrought hands of polished wood. It looked small and delicate but freedom lay inside. He regarded the sphere for what seemed a long time then pressed it between his hands until it shattered. Ghostly gelatinous strands of Vine fiber splashed out, wrapping around Icsain’s thick upper torso, causing him to raise his arms in wonder and surprise. The fibers settled, pulsed as if with a heartbeat, and then finally disappeared.