by Mike Sheriff
“Yes, Trium.”
“And the grooll?”
“Atomized by the detonation.”
Hai ended the call and huffed another sigh. “It seems Daoren wasn’t bluffing about the charges.” He leveled a chilling glare. “The one person who possesses the passcodes to access more than five billion pounds of grooll has slipped through our fingers.”
“He’ll be back.”
“I know he will. The question is whether he’ll be back at the head of a mongrel army.”
“We still have two assets that will give him a moment of pause.”
She led Hai away from the opening and crossed the floor to the antechamber located off the western wall. Two Jireni guarding its doorway came to attention, rattling their dart guns against their body armor. One of them opened the door.
Beyond it, Heqet lay on her side upon the lone crystal divan, still clad in her white pienfu. She faced the adjacent wall, unmoving save for the steady expansion and contraction of her torso.
“Where’s the infant?” Hai asked, voice lowered as if to avoid waking her.
“In the care of a wet nurse,” Julinian said, voice raised so her glinty guest might hear every word. “A Slavv who lost her child during the invasion.”
Hai peered at her as though she’d taken leave of her senses. “Why prolong the inevitable? Cull the boy and be done with it.”
“I’m not a monster,” she said. “And little Mako’s worth more to me alive. I can use him to control his mother.”
Hai cast his gaze upon Heqet’s sleeping form. His eyes narrowed. “What do you intend to do with her?”
“I’m thinking of putting her on display.”
Hai’s brow folded. “On display?”
“Here in the Assembly, as a warning to the masses.” She smirked. “Perhaps I’ll tear off a little piece of her for each day Daoren remains at large.”
“I thought you said you weren’t a monster.”
“There’d be a method behind the torture.”
“Such as?”
Julinian censored her smirk. “When Daoren returns to Daqin Guojin, I want him consumed by thoughts of vengeance . . . not tactics.”
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Bonus Chapter #2
Survival Aptitude Test: Hope’s Graveyard
Chapter 1
Dagger-Ax Men
LAOSHI RAISED THE sonic rifle to his faceplate and peered through the optical sight.
The dim corridor mirrored the previous two he’d traversed. Opaque ventilation piping and black power cabling hugged its angled ceiling. Canted walls bracketed its narrow walkway, surfaces speckled with droplets of condensation. Scattered junction boxes and other bulky protrusions jutted from the grated surfaces. None were large enough to mask a human being. At the far end of the corridor, a pentagonal hatch glinted.
The objective.
Laoshi lowered the rifle, keeping its bowl-shaped muzzle pointed along the threat axis, and raised his right hand. He waved it from side to side.
Five seconds later, another hand fell upon his armored shoulder-plate. Commander Nehjal’s nasally voice leaked through his helmet’s earpiece.
“Proceed.”
Laoshi edged forward, alert for signs of movement. He tucked his elbows into his sides—bumping a protrusion would violate the whispersilent protocol—and boxed his breathing.
Inhale for three seconds.
Hold for three seconds.
Exhale for three seconds.
Hold for three seconds.
The repeated pattern oxygenated his blood, calmed his nerves, and focused his attention. The pentagonal hatch became his entire world—not that it had much competition. He reached the end of the corridor, ten feet from the hatch, and dropped to a knee. “In position,” he said, letting the helmet-mic’s compressor compensate for his hushed tone.
“Dominus up,” Nehjal said.
Laoshi didn’t take his eyes off the hatch’s circular handle. The first sign Dominus had moved up came when three fingers drummed the top of his helmet. The signal carried no tactical meaning—his friend simply enjoyed drumming his fingers. He must have decided to do it at the spur of the moment, noise discipline be damned.
Dominus stalked five feet farther before pressing his body against the right-hand wall. He aimed his sonic rifle at the hatch. “Ready.”
Nehjal’s voice crackled in Laoshi’s ear before Dominus’ ready call had faded. “Deploy eavesdropper.”
Laoshi already had the device out of his web pouch. As thick as a fingernail and a little bigger than his palm, the eavesdropper’s tri-horn detectors could pinpoint acoustic sources as weak as two decibels from a stand-off distance of one thousand feet. Densely packed amplification circuitry made the item heavy; each eavesdropper weighed two pounds. He carried six of them among his webbing on every mission.
He covered the last ten feet on the balls of his feet, mindful to not make a sound. The eavesdropper needed to go above the hatch, flush against the vertical bulkhead, just like the other two he’d placed. Its powerful sensors could penetrate ceramic-armor bulkheads, but only when in direct contact with the medium. The third and final device would permit sonic triangulation of the guards inside the command post. The mongrels didn’t need to talk; breathing alone would yield a cross-fix. The cross-fix would yield the firing solution needed to cull them before they raised the alarm.
Laoshi reached the hatch. He raised his hand to set the eavesdropper against the—
The device slipped from his gloved hand. It clattered onto the walkway.
Nehjal’s disbelieving groan filled his helmet. “Oh, for the love of Sha . . .”
Heavy footfalls resonated from the other side of the hatch. Its handle spun like a whirlwind.
“They’re coming out!” Dominus said, breaking the whispersilent protocol. “Laoshi, pull back!”
He back-pedaled to clear Dominus’ firing arc. The hatch swung open with a thunderous crash.
Laoshi hoisted his sonic rifle to his shoulder, heartbeats pummel-thumping his throat.
A sneering mongrel burst through the hatch. Bloody fangs jutted from its mouth and extended halfway down its anechoic chest-armor. The horrifying creature brandished two flaming daggers. It unleashed a breathculling howl.
“Sapient Sha!” Laoshi screamed.
Dominus’ breathless rasplaughter cut through the din. “Sha can’t save you now!”
Commander Nehjal’s voice echoed down the corridor. “Endex, endex, endex!”
Laoshi gaped at the blood-drooling mongrel, now frozen in mid-lunge mere feet before him. He lowered his quivering rifle and gaped at Dominus. “What’s this thing supposed to be?”
Dominus raised his helmet’s slotted faceplate. Gray eyes sparkled above unshaven Slavvic cheeks. He smirked. “That, my friend, is your worst nightmare!”
Nehjal marched along the corridor and yanked off her helmet. “Terminate the projection.”
The sneering mongrel and surrounding corridor vanished, revealing an enormous lumenglass stage. The plasmonic-projection platform was the largest in the Jireni training facility. Its bottomless black panels spanned ten thousand square-feet and could replicate innumerable operational settings. Third-Gen haptic feedback imparted kinesthetic and tactile sensitivity that approached the substantive fidelity of real-world objects.
Nehjal halted before Dominus. Her brown scalp glistened in the ambient light. Darker eyes hinted at annoyance, but her neutral brow and impartial lips muddied the signal. She conveyed a serene maturity more commonly associated with an Asianoid elder than an Indonoid Jiren in her mid-thirties.
“Jiren Dominus,” she said. “I’ve never seen a mongrel with fangs, much less flaming daggers. Would you care to explain?”
Dominus stiffened to attention. The posture was
n’t rigid enough to wipe the smirk off his face. “I wanted to welcome Jiren Laoshi back to the team, sireen.”
“And you felt reprogramming the training projection was the best way to do that?”
He shrugged. “I felt it was the best way to test his nerves.”
Nehjal grunted. “Do Jireni shrug when we’re at the position of attention?”
“No, sireen.”
Her eyes squinched. She waved him closer.
Dominus sighed and took three shuffling paces forward. Nehjal flicked the bridge of his nose with her middle finger.
A sharp-edged crack announced the strike. Dominus flinched and squeezed his eyes shut.
Laoshi masked his amusement. In the six months he’d been on the assault team, he’d never heard Nehjal raise her voice. He’d seen her raise her hand and flick a hundred noses though.
“I had no idea you possessed so much spare time,” she said, still berating Dominus. “I’m sure I can find more constructive tasks to help fill it. Ones involving repetitive physical labor.”
“I could suggest a few, sireen,” Laoshi said.
She pivoted and leveled a piercing glare. Laoshi slung his sonic rifle and pulled off his helmet. He paced forward without waiting for her order.
The finger-flick rang out just as sharply as the one Dominus had received. Laoshi’s eyes watered. When they cleared, Nehjal gazed at him without a trace of ire.
“Is your back still hurting, Jiren Laoshi?”
“No, sireen.”
“Do you need more recovery time before resuming your duties?”
“No, sireen.”
“Are you trying to get Jiren Dominus culled?” she asked. “If you are, I’d consider promoting you.”
Laoshi stifled a chuckle. “No, sireen.”
“Then keep a better grip on your equipment. Drop something in the midst of a reconnaissance and you could get us all culled.”
“Yes, sireen,” he said. “It won’t happen again.”
“It had better not. The next time you place an eavesdropper, it will be for real.”
Dominus’ eyes brightened, matching his nose. “We have a mission?”
Nehjal nodded. “Tomorrow night.”
“Where?”
She reached out and flicked Dominus’ nose again. “What do we say about insertion security?”
Dominus winced. “Never reveal the target until you’re on the way to destroy it.”
“You’ll find out on the aeroshrike,” she said. “Pass word to the rest of the team to muster at the northern aerodrome at noon tomorrow.”
Nehjal strode across the stage and angled for the archway leading out of the training facility. Dominus slugged Laoshi’s arm once she’d disappeared. “An actual insertion mission, Laoshi!”
Laoshi summoned his bravest grin. “Finally.”
“I’d wager it’s Havoc,” Dominus said, rubbing his angry nose. “The southern sector.”
Laoshi weighed the prospect of performing his first aerial insertion into the most heavily defended sector in the most heavily defended mongrel colony. Since joining the Jireni six months ago, he’d completed six training jumps in the facility’s free-fall simulator. He’d yet to perform one in the atmosphere.
His seventh training jump had ended in a spinal compression when Jiren Vandarian inadvertently reset the windtube’s blade pitch to neutral. Without the artificial airstream, Laoshi had fallen forty feet onto the hardened-glass mesh covering the turbine.
That was six weeks ago. Since then, Dominus and the other team members had conducted a reconnaissance mission in Decay. It was his friend’s first real-world insertion, and he’d chatterwailed about little else since returning.
“Don’t look so worried,” Dominus said. “I’ll be with you every step of the way.”
Laoshi puffed his chest and lied. “That worries me more than facing a mongrel with ten flaming daggers.”
Dominus snorted. He moaned and reached for his ruddy nose. “Sapient Sha—she might have broken it with that last flick.”
“With any luck.”
“Is that any way to talk to someone who’s inviting you to his abode?”
“Your abode?”
“If you think I’ll let you spend the last night before your first insertion alone, you’re mistaken.” He grabbed Laoshi’s arm and dragged him toward the archway. “Besides, Myra wants to see you.”
THE PARLOR’S WARMTH made up for the abode’s cramped, austere decor. So did the company.
Laoshi sat at the table with Dominus and Myra. His hosts wore casual flexglass shenyi and no tunics—neither stood on stiff formality. Myra’s shadow-black shenyi would have been an ideal match for her hair before her S.A.T. Like all successful prospects, she’d emerged from the Center with a shorn scalp denoting the mark of denizenship. Her sleek eyebrows now served as the garment’s sole accent.
Dominus bounced little Cordelia on his knee while Myra tickled her bare feet. Cordelia didn’t fuss the way most nine-month-old infants fussed when accosted by their parents. She seemed content to be jostled and tickled.
Laoshi marveled at the incongruous sight. Growing up, Dominus had vowed on countless occasions to never enter union. No woman can take the place of unattached adventure, he liked to say.
That was before he met Myra, a fellow Slavv and an adventure unto herself. She’d finished near the top of her cohort last year and accepted a position as a quantum programmer at the Librarium. Quantum programmers were renowned for their problem-solving capabilities. Dominus’ metamorphosis had to be an extension of that gift.
“Would you like any more grooll?” she asked, abandoning her daughter’s feet. She motioned to the half-empty bowl in the center of the table. “We have plenty.”
“No, thank you,” Laoshi said. “I’m full.”
In truth, he hadn’t felt hungry at the start of the meal. He couldn’t say what suppressed his appetite more; tomorrow’s looming insertion, or knowing that the grooll might contain the mortal remains of his friends.
Myra pushed back from the table. “I’ll get some more water.” She padded into the pantry.
Laoshi’s gaze lingered on the pieces of grooll in the bowl. Each bite-size torus whispered a name to him. Their flesh-tone hue only amplified the murmur.
“Are you all right?” Dominus asked, still bouncing Cordelia.
The question broke Laoshi’s trance, but not his line of thought. “Do you ever wonder what life was like before the Cycle of Extinctions?”
“How do you mean?”
“Take our food, for example.” He pointed at the grooll. “Imagine having alternatives other than our youngest prospects to eat.”
Dominus rolled his eyes. “You’re not going to bring up the seed vault again, are you?”
“No, I’m talking about the time when life was abundant. When humans weren’t forced to make such inhuman choices.”
“We do what we have to do to survive. Sha granted us sapience so we could avoid extinction.”
Laoshi nodded. Survival Through Sapience served as Daqin Guojin’s motto. Four centuries ago, the city-state’s brightest minds had synthesized a stable food source using “donated” macronutrients and silica. Two centuries later, the Cognos Populi introduced the S.A.T. In so doing, the ruling caste made technical knowledge the sole prerequisite for denizenship and planted the seeds of the prospect undercaste.
Without the S.A.T. and the grooll it made possible, humanity would have joined the interminable list of multi-celled life forms that had passed into oblivion. Most denizens believed Sha—the Sapient, Heuristic, and Adaptive—had herself bestowed the gift of grooll upon humankind. They called it Sha’s Mercy. Few questioned the morality of eating the city-state’s young anymore.
“You’re thinking about the test, aren’t you?”
Laoshi harrumphed—Dominus could always read his thoughts. Even as children, he’d known what vexed his friend well before Laoshi could put a finger on it.
Among thei
r cohort of prospects, fifty-five percent had passed the S.A.T. last year. Dozens of friends—boys and girls he’d grown up with during years of tutelage at the Librarium—had been harvested at nineteen years of age. The appalling ratio’s shadow hadn’t receded one iota over last twelve months. Dominus hadn’t let it mire him in gloom though. He’d joined the Jireni, entered union, and started a family. Laoshi envied his momentum.
“Cast it out of your mind,” Dominus said. “You’d be better focused on tomorrow’s insertion.”
Laoshi spun his empty glass atop the table. He was right—the past was the past. “So what’s it like? A real-world insertion.”
Dominus’ brow furrowed. Looks of contemplation rarely graced his visage—he favored action, not reflection—but an inward focus tinted his expression now. He drummed his fingers for a moment, then shook his head. “I could spend the rest of the evening trying to explain it. It’s something you need to experience.”
Myra returned from the pantry carrying an iridescent-blue ceramic pitcher. She refilled Laoshi’s glass. “So, Laoshi, tell us when you’ll be entering union.”
The blunt order caught him off guard. He stuttered.
“Sha’s silica teeth,” Dominus said. “Give him a chance to digest his grooll before you start the inquisition, will you?”
“No better time than the present.” Myra set the pitcher beside Dominus before sitting. She leaned across the table and locked her gaze onto Laoshi. “I’m waiting for a response.”
Laoshi chucklebucked—an ill attempt to mask his discomfort. “I don’t know anyone who’d want to take me in union.”
Myra dipped her chin and hoisted her eyebrows. “Oh, please. A strapping young Asianoid who finished at the top of his cohort and aced his S.A.T.? I could find you a dozen women before dawn.”
“A strapping young Asianoid-Caucasoid,” Dominus added.
“Even better,” Myra said. “An exotic Hyphenoid. You’ll have to fend them off with a sparring staff.”
“I’m just happy to be doing something I love,” Laoshi said.
Her sleek eyebrows arched even higher. “You love being a Jiren?”
