by Mike Sheriff
Three glass darts punched through it. Their tips stopped two inches short of his chest.
Beyond them, Narses crouched on the stairs, dart gun in hand. He cursed and retreated up the stairs. The hatch slammed shut with a thunderous crash.
Daoren dropped the impaled book and raced to the stairs. As he climbed, grinding screeches radiated from the upper vault. He grasped the hatch and pushed. It didn’t budge. “He’s dragged a rack over top of it!”
Pyros scrambled up the stairs and lent a hand. Their combined effort shifted the hatch open an inch. “Three men to me!” Pyros said.
Three Jireni joined them, crowding onto the stairs below the hatch. They managed to open it six inches before exhaustion set in. “Heqet!” Daoren said. “You might be able to squeeze through!”
She hunched over Laoshi’s body. Her shoulders heaved in time with her keening.
“Heqet!”
Heqet kissed her grandfather’s forehead and trudged to the stairs. She swiped tears from her cheeks as she climbed. Pyros extended a hand to help her up.
“Don’t touch me!”
Pyros and the Jireni shrank to the side to let her pass. They lowered their heads, avoiding her contemptuous glare. She halted before Daoren.
“I know it’s difficult,” he said, “but you have to set aside your grief. We need your help to stop Narses. See if you can squeeze through and clear the obstruction.”
Resolve tempered her gaze. She nodded. Daoren braced his arms against the hatch. Pyros and his men bunched next to him. “On three,” he said. “One . . . two . . . three!”
They pushed. The hatch opened six inches . . . then seven.
Heqet wriggled into the gap. “A little more!”
Daoren tapped all his strength, arms and legs burning. If he faltered, Heqet would be crushed. “Push!”
Pyros and the other Jireni panted and groaned. The hatch raised another inch.
Heqet squirmed through the opening. A second later, she moaned.
“What is it?” Daoren asked.
“There’s a dead Jiren on top of the rack.”
“Sha damn Narses’ eyes,” Pyros muttered between groans.
A thump announced the body’s removal. “Keep pushing!”
Grinding screeches signaled Heqet’s efforts to drag the rack away. The hatch rose higher and higher, then swung fully open. Daoren climbed into the false seed vault. “Well done, Heqet!”
Beyond her, a dead Jiren lay beside an overturned rack. His throat bore a gruesome slash; the handiwork of a crystal dagger. Narses must have talked the other Jiren into performing the deed.
Daoren darted to the hole leading into the limestone chamber. Pyros boosted him through. Daoren lowered his hand and hauled up the Primae Jiren.
They raced up the sloping corridors, footfalls reverberating off the silver walls, making the two sound like twenty. They reached the entrance and burst into dazzling sunlight.
The aeroshrike sailed overhead, eclipsing the sun. Its engines thrummed as it climbed away.
Daoren thumped to a stop and cursed. “He’ll call in these coordinates. By morning there’ll be a fleet of aeroshrikes here to destroy the vault!”
“Not with conditions the way they are in Daqin Guojin,” Pyros said, folded over to catch his breath. “The Unum won’t be able to spare the Jireni to crew them.”
“An uprising?”
“Throughout the southern and eastern Chengs,” Pyros said, straightening. “The Unum issued a cull order after your escape. Now that I’ve seen what you were searching for, I know why. This discovery will—”
Pyros peered up the crater, scowling. Daoren followed his gaze.
The broken bodies of two Jireni lay upon the pocked and churned sand slope. One was missing a leg.
“What is it?” Daoren asked.
“Julinian’s body,” Pyros said, pointing at the crater’s edge. “It’s gone.”
Disturbed sand indicated that a heavy object had fallen there and slid down the berm.
“Narses could have taken it with him,” Daoren said.
“Perhaps . . .” Pyros’ scowl persisted. “I’ll leave most of my men here to guard the vault. No telling if the mongrels journey this far south in their scavenging.”
“And no time to tarry.”
A few minutes later, four Jireni emerged from the entrance, carrying Laoshi’s body. Heqet and Cordelia trailed them, hand-in-hand. They watched with Daoren as the solemn procession plodded up the sand slope and angled toward the geology aerostat. Heqet stifled a sob.
Daoren put his arm around her and suppressed his own tears. “Your grandfather was a brave man. We’ll give him a funeral worthy of his status . . . in good time.”
15
Eight Seconds
DOZENS OF BODIES dotted the transway.
Cang maneuvered the levicart around another heaped pile. Beside her, Radan peered through the passenger window. “That’s an Indonoid family,” he said, voice weighted with remorse. He shook his head. “A father, a mother, and three children. What threat could the children possibly pose to the Unum?”
She had no answer. They’d so far passed through five decimated boroughs in Yindu Cheng. Hundreds of dead denizens lined their transways and pediwalks. Thousands more likely filled the habitation complexes and other structures, hidden from view. Their presence would assert itself in a few days, once decomposition took hold. And that was just in one district.
Until now, Radan had absorbed the carnage in silence—he’d never seen the results of mass culling before. She had—three times during her service in the Jireni. She knew that the innocent often died alongside the guilty. She also knew not to let her emotions get the better of her reason. As appalling as its aftermath may be, the Unum’s cull order had solidified popular support for his removal.
Cang considered pointing this out to Radan to help raise his spirit, but decided against it. She doubted her intellectual appeal could penetrate his raw revulsion, especially when dead children still marred the landscape. They rode the next four miles to the depot without exchanging another word. Radan didn’t speak again until they’d alighted from the levicart and passed through the depot’s unguarded main entrance. His head swiveled as they crossed the interior cull zone. “Where are all the guards?”
Cang couldn’t say. In contrast to their first visit, no Jireni manned the four access points leading to the arsenal. They reached its open nullglass door unchallenged. She led Radan inside.
The contrast in the arsenal couldn’t be more stark, either. Su al Xing’s followers occupied its massive floorspace, operating huvvadollies and transferring crates of personal arms onto huvvatrains for transport. The racks of dart guns, sonic rifles, and sound cannons lining the perimeter had noticeably thinned. A quarter of the levidecks and levicarts were missing as well. The arms depot of Yindu Cheng had been transformed into a logistics and staging base for Su and his fellow dissenters.
“Commander Hyro has been busy,” Radan said.
“Indeed,” Cang said. She spotted Hyro and Su, standing next to a row of beige levicarts in the center of the arsenal. Hyro beamed as she and Radan marched over.
“Commander Cang,” Hyro said. “Can I interest you in a gross of Hexalite levicarts? They’re priced to move.”
Cang ignored her levity; she was here on serious business. She motioned to the depleted racks and shifted her gaze to Su. “Are you getting everything you need?”
“Commander Hyro has been most accommodating,” Su said. He pointed at the huvvatrains. “We’re now arming dissenters in the southernmost Chengs.”
“How many dissenters?” Cang asked.
“Difficult to say. It’s not like we ask them to sign up for duty.” Su’s eyes narrowed. “I’d estimate we’ve placed about two or three thousand men and women under arms.”
Radan gasped. “Merciful Sha! The Unum would lose his mind if he knew what we were doing.”
“Does he suspect anything?” Hyro asked.
“And what do you tell him?” Su asked.
“That the dissenters are obtaining their weapons through small-scale skirmishes and random ambushes.”
“Not by strolling into Jireni arms depots and plucking them off the rack,” Radan said.
Su chucklebucked. “I imagine he’d have an issue with that.”
“There’s another piece of good news,” Cang said. “Pyros made contact this afternoon. He’s returning from his mission.”
“Excellent!” Hyro said, clapping her hands. “Where did the mission take him?”
“I’m not sure. The air-link signal was heavily degraded. We only spoke briefly before it dropped out.”
“I thought aeroshrikes carried powerful transceivers,” Su said.
“They do,” Radan said. “The signal degradation may have been due to atmospheric distortion or an equipment problem. I’ll try to raise him again this evening.”
“So we have no idea when he’ll be returning?” Hyro asked.
“Not yet,” Cang said, “but it stands to reason we should be ready to meet him when he does. I don’t think he should go anywhere near the Unum.”
“I agree,” Hyro said. “Why risk it?”
“He departed from the southern aerodrome in the company of Narses and Julinian,” Cang said. “We should assume he’ll be returning there with them.”
Su leaned against a levicart’s hullform. “My men have linked up with dissenters in Feizhou Cheng,” Su said. “They’re reducing Jireni strongpoints near the southern aerodrome as we speak. They might be in a position to seize the aerodrome within a day or two. If Pyros could somehow delay the aeroshrike’s arrival until the moment we take the aerodrome, we could also seize Narses and Julinian in the same stroke.”
“I’d wager they’d make excellent bargaining chips,” Hyro said.
“Would they?” Radan asked. “I’m not sure if the Unum would give up power for his son and niece’s lives.”
“Perhaps not,” Su said. “But it’s an option worth fighting for. It might save many more lives.”
Cang absorbed the statement. For a former Librarian, Su possessed a keen tactical mind. In many ways, he was an utterly remarkable figure. Soft-spoken, yet commanding. Assertive, yet quiet. Jovial, yet haunted. One question still bothered her about his past. “May I ask you something personal?”
“Of course,” Su said.
“I’ve studied your biometric data for years,” she said. “You’ve never taken union even though your S.A.T. score granted the right.”
“I’ve never met a woman who could stand my company for more than a few days. My focus tends to be consumed by other matters.”
“You have no children or siblings.”
“Correct.”
Cang paused, gauging how to frame the question. “The investigations I’ve conducted have revealed a common trait among dissenters. All have experienced personal losses. The loss of a child to the S.A.T. The loss of a sibling or parent to an errant dart or sonic round. Personal loss is what drives them to reject the edicts of the Cognos Populi and join the ranks of dissension.”
Su motioned to the men and women transferring crates of sonic rifles onto a huvvatrain. “My followers can vouch for that.”
“What drove you to dissension?” Cang asked. “I haven’t seen any indiction of personal loss in your case.”
Su ran his hand over the levicart’s forelight and smiled. “The Cognos Populi—and by extension the Jireni—always assume there has to be a proximate cause to explain a denizen’s radicalization.” He rapped his knuckles against the forelight. “For me, it was a confluence of events. Events so small and so seemingly innocuous that I was barely aware of their effect. The suppression of knowledge in favor of propaganda had always bothered me, but I lived with it. The curtailment of rights and privileges based on lineage had always bothered me, but I lived with it. The unequal distribution of grooll had always bothered me, but I lived with it.” He punctuated each statement with a rap of the forelight. “Then one day, ten years ago, I woke up and found I couldn’t live with it anymore. A hundred minor annoyances had built up and shaped me into a dissenter, much like a hundred ordinary years shape an infant into an elder.”
Cang nodded. The explanation confirmed her suspicion. She’d long suspected that the most dedicated, committed dissenters in Daqin Guojin were those who, like Su, had undergone the transformation slowly. It mirrored her own experience.
“We’d best get back to the Assembly, sireen,” Radan said. “For the Unum’s evening briefing.”
“Of course,” Cang said. She turned to Hyro and Su. “Keep me informed of any developments regarding the southern aerodrome. I’ll contact you again once we’ve heard from Pyros.”
Hyro came to attention. Su straightened his back and dipped his chin, his smile never waning.
Cang wasn’t sure if it was the arsenal’s lighting, but he looked younger now than he did during their first meeting at the habitation complex. Dissension seemed to agree with him.
DAOREN SET THE sonic hammer back in the rack. He grabbed another and checked its power setting, confirming it was fully charged. He snatched a third, repeating the process with the barest amount of conscious intent.
Why the charge levels of eighteen sonic hammers mattered, he couldn’t say. No aeroshrikes were pursuing them on their return flight to Daqin Guojin. No sealed doors in buried pyramids needed to be breached. It was busy-work. Useless activity to divert his troubled mind.
He’d excused himself from the aerostat’s control gondola ten minutes ago, citing the need to inventory equipment. Heqet wanted to assist, but he asked her to stay forward with Pyros, Cordelia, and the two Jireni who’d joined them for the journey home. He had to get out of the gondola; every instrument reminded him of Laoshi. He had to get away from the others; he didn’t trust his stinging eyes to stay dry.
Daoren reached for another hammer, but stayed his hand.
Gouges marred its shaft near the headstock.
He placed his hand around the shaft and ran his thumb over the gouges, letting each furrow slip beneath his skin. The hatch coaming in the gas envelope had channeled them. The hammer’s sound pulses had helped knock the aeroshrike out of the sky. Laoshi’s frantic call over the internal comm had come seconds later.
His response to that call for help had saved Laoshi’s life. He’d been there for him when it mattered most. Why couldn’t he have been there for him inside the pyramid?
The heavy memory forced his eyes closed.
Over the nearly five hours since departing the Great Pyramid, Laoshi’s death had played on an unending loop. The magnifying lens of regret rendered each horrific detail all the more lucid and lurid.
Daoren opened his welling eyes.
He should have kept watch while the others searched the racks. He should have had Laoshi’s back. He should have been ready. Instead, he gaped like a useless fid as glass darts ended his life. Rather than regaling them with meandering tutorials on the journey home, the Primae Librarian was lying under a makeshift shroud in a dank hold less than thirty feet away.
A tear spilled down Daoren’s cheek. He drove his fist into the rack. Damn the old Librarian—he’d taught him how to cry again, and now there was no way to switch it off.
He needed to switch it off so he could concentrate. They may have found the seed vault, but the discovery would be for naught if the Unum culled them upon their arrival in the city-state. If Laoshi was still alive, he’d no doubt have an elaborate plan to ensure their survival.
Now the others were relying on him—the true Unum Potentate according to Pyros—for a plan and he had none. He smashed his fist into the rack again, welcoming the distracting pain.
“It weighs on you, doesn’t it?”
Daoren flinched at the voice’s proximity. The din of his strikes had camouflaged her approach. He swiped his eyes and tur
ned from the rack.
Cordelia pinned him with a pitiful gaze. “Laoshi’s death troubles you.”
He put on a brave face. “My only concern is defeating the Unum.”
She stepped closer and caressed his cheek. “You think this mask can fool me?”
“What makes you think it’s a mask?”
“Nineteen years of being your mother.”
“I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not,” she said. “You fashion these walls and pretend nothing can touch you, but you feel Mako’s loss, your father’s loss, and Laoshi’s loss as acutely as any of us.” Her finger traced his nose from bridge to tip. “Perhaps more so.”
He sensed his brave face crumbling. He grunted to shore it up.
Cordelia set her hand on his chest. “And you fear the bond that’s been growing between you and Heqet all these years.”
His mask fell away. “You knew?”
“I’m not blind, Daoren. I’ve seen the way you’ve looked at her since you were a child. Mako saw it, too. He knew long ago that you had feelings for her, but he hoped he could best you at one thing at least.”
“He did with father’s love.”
“Because Mako was open to love. When you closed yourself off, it brought out your father’s worst fear. He saw—”
Daoren glimpsed pain on his mother’s statuesque face an instant before her voice fractured. “He saw what?”
She didn’t speak, but her eyes radiated unmistakable apprehension.
“Does it have anything to do with what Laoshi said to you in the seed vault?” he asked. “About not telling me something?”
Cordelia sniffed. She shook her head.
“Then what?”
“Your father saw my father in you,” she said, voice raw. “And no parent wants to see his child die young or alone.”
“Your father died alone?”
“In Havoc. He gave his life to save Laoshi.”
“I didn’t know,” Daoren said.
Cordelia gazed at the hold containing Laoshi’s body. “I heard the story on Laoshi’s knee countless times. Your father heard it from me many times more. He worried you’d meet the same fate one day.”
