Ilya found everything he needed in Ennoi. He brought the size and skills of a peacekeeper, ideal for dealers looking to add muscle to the payroll. For the rest, he was a man better left in peace – no one could match his four hundred and twenty pounds of brute muscle on an eight-foot physique brandished by two holstered blast rifles, three plasma pistols, and a pair of long knives suitable for quick, efficient carving.
He met May-Lin Houtari and Ming Shi-Long, his employers, an hour after his arrival. He introduced himself as Ignatius Horne. They knew the value of the asset standing before them and thought they had reached a deal for his services, until a pair of rivals emerged from the shadows and entered the bidding. They squabbled over him, moving back and forth between Collectorate-standard Engleshe and a regional sub-language passed down since their ancestors left the south Pacific twelve hundred years earlier.
Ilya could not stand the squawking but offered no input on the price. Instead, he removed a plasma pistol from his holster and shot each rival through the head while they were in mid-sentence. He turned to May-Lin and Ming, holstered his weapon, and glared.
“Bidding is over. Let’s get to work.”
Ming, a perpetually neurotic and – as Ilya soon discovered – remarkably stupid psychopath, clapped and jumped at the news. He reached up to slap Ilya on the shoulder.
“Very good, very good,” he said. “We get peacekeeper, they get dead. Oh, this very good for us, May-Lin. Big day, big day. We run Ennoi. You wait and see. You wait and see.”
May-Lin, a pole of a woman almost seven feet tall and with feminine features that could not rival anything Ilya enjoyed aboard a Carrier, spoke few words but provided Ilya with the two most important commodities – her body and a pipe filled with opia. She came to him every night, and they smoked together before wrapping themselves in a Leucanthian leaf, the furry underside of which made for more comfortable intercourse and sleep than the uneven stone floors.
“You love me, Ignatius?” She asked him each night.
“No,” he replied without hesitation.
“Very smart. No love in the jungle. Good chance you die tomorrow. Keep your heart black and empty.”
Ilya could have told May-Lin how he took on both those qualities long before he went AWOL. He could have told her about the horrors he had seen, the evil he committed in the name of the Unification Guard. He could have told her how life was meaningless, a porridge into which the Chancellors stirred bits of all the ethnics until rendering a taste perfect for the dinner table. He could have warned her that one night he might snap her neck and walk away without regret. He could have told her how three thousand years was ending, and he was supposed to be the centerpiece of its finale. But in this forgotten city among this human filth, who would care?
One night, after a successful transaction in which May-Lin and Ming gained territory from a suddenly deceased rival, she and Ilya lay together in a Leucanthian leaf, exhausted from sex and perspiring heavily on each other. She caressed his scraggly beard.
“Tell me what you are,” May-Lin whispered.
“Me?” He searched for words and stumbled upon a prophetic truth. “Didn’t you know? I’m the destroyer of men.”
“Yes,” she said with a gentle kiss. “Yes, you are.”
He rolled away from her, found his pipe, and became lost in an opia cloud. Suddenly, the shadows of the past crept in around him and tore at his innards, just as they had on the day he decided he could not fight for the UG ever again. Ilya begged the opia to take him far away, but some memories were too strong to erase. Especially the face of a little red-haired girl whose name he never knew.
“Would you fix my shoe, sir?” The girl sat beside him under a stone cupola. Her eyes were gray and withdrawn. “See? The strap is broken. Do you have a utility laser?”
No matter how much he inhaled, the girl would not go away. None of it would.
“My shoes,” the little red-haired girl implored. “See? It’s the strap.”
He woke in a fright, perspiring more than usual. He fought through his opia haze and stared at May-Lin. She was dressed and holstered. The gray light of day filtered through Ennoi.
“Time for work,” she said. “So I cook breakfast. Eat in a hurry.”
He found a plantain and a bowl of peppered beetles at his side and ate heartily.
“What’s the rush?” He asked just in time for Ming to step between them.
“Rush?” Ming asked with a mischievous grin. “Big. Is very big. We take city today.”
Ilya turned to May-Lin. “What’s he going on about?”
“Lau Po is coming. We are to meet his caravan at the north promenade.”
“Do I want to know why?”
“Yes, yes,” Ming held a long knife in a jittery left hand. “He come once in two months. Make all his deals and go. Very big.”
“I know all about Lau Po. Everybody around here is more afraid of him than they are of me. Why are you doing business with him?”
“Oh, not just business. No, no. Lau Po always looking for partners. See? He know it good to have partners. They look out for him.”
“Great. And you’re thinking he’s going to take you on … why?”
May-Lin patted Ming on the head and calmed him.
“Ignatius, I don’t believe you understand what ‘partner’ means in this business.”
“It’s having somebody who doesn’t need to look far to shove a blade through your heart.”
May-Lin kissed him. “Now you’re getting the idea. Fast learner, isn’t he, Ming?”
“Yes, yes. So, Iggy, here is what we do. We get to promenade first. When Lau Po come with caravan, I propose to be partner. When he say no, you kill all but Lau Po. Must not kill Lau Po. You understand?”
May-Lin nodded with an awkward grin. Ilya thought they were both insane but did not particularly care as long as he got his cut and enough opia to keep him in a fog. He holstered his weapons and followed them on the two-kilometer trek up the mountainside, always on the lookout for the scum who might want to have a go at a peacekeeper. Certain dealers were known to keep trophy heads on a spit. Ilya was not especially worried. He was, after all, surrounded by ethnics who barely qualified as human. At least, that’s how he would have viewed them before he looked into the glasses. As a Battalion Commander, he would have had no reservations about dropping a fusion slew upon this whole region, eliminating Ularu and its worthless inhabitants. It would have been more efficient than a daily grind of attrition in between sessions with an opia pipe. Ilya sometimes missed the ease of that lifestyle. He might have still been there had he not looked into the eyes of a little red-haired girl.
He kept his nerves – and outward focus – together for seven months following the ethnic cleansing of the Salvadorans. He waited patiently until his first extended R&R then booked passage aboard a cruiser destined for Indonesia Prime.
He had learned much about the planet during his early tour, and Ilya knew how quickly he could disappear among five billion people on the most overcrowded, secretive world in the Collectorate. He did not care what his desertion might mean for his family name. All he knew was the stories he heard about the jungles and about opia sounded like bliss. The jungles swallowed men alive, he was told. Savages lived there. Good, Ilya said. Exactly where I belong.
Later that morning, as he watched from a distance while Ming negotiated with a portly man in a fedora named Lau Po, he realized just how meaningless all life had become. He was also not surprised when Ming, who bounced around a bit as he talked to Po surrounded by the master’s bodyguards, launched into a rant with one of Po’s associates. Po, meanwhile, appeared stoic, his hands crossed at his waist while offering the faintest, mocking smile.
Seconds later, as Ilya expected, Ming suddenly found himself without a head. A bodyguard came up from behind and wielded a perfect cut with a long sword. As the head bounded down broken stone steps, May-Lin shouted to Ilya, who was hidden by an arch. Ilya cursed, unholstered his wea
pons, and came out firing.
He knew Po would have more than the six visible bodyguards, so he was not surprised when return fire came at him from all directions. Ignoring the fact that he was without body armor, Ilya relied upon his Kwin-sho mastery, contorting his body for rapid fire and defensive postures as he filled his enemy with flash pegs and bullets. Their blood splattered, and pieces of their heads became like shrapnel as they convulsed and fell. The movements were automatic, the body count predictable. Silence followed twenty seconds later.
Ilya stood in the middle of the promenade and estimated at least a dozen bodies, not counting Ming. Not among them was Lau Po, who stood quaking, two blood-smeared bodyguards lying at his feet. Po had pissed himself; a glistening puddle of urine formed between his feet. May-Lin began making demands of Po, but Ilya could not hear her. He saw only a short, squat excuse of a human before him. This was a man who thrived off the destruction of others, just as Ilya had been prophesied to do.
No, Ilya told himself. There shouldn’t be one of our kind, let alone two.
He blew apart Lau Po’s chest with a barrage of flash pegs. As the former opia king fell forward into a pool of blood, May-Lin screamed.
“No! Fool! We told you, don’t kill Lau Po.”
“Look around,” he said matter-of-factly. “No partner. You got the whole cudfrucking city to yourself.” He sighed. “I don’t even want Ming’s cut.” He stared at the headless body. “Idiot.”
“Ming was stupid. Always was. But this is not our way. To be partner, you must show strength and kill all but the master.”
Ilya started to turn away, shaking his head. “So? Now you’re the master.”
“No. Not master. Nobody will respect this. They will come for me. I am dead woman. You killed me, Ignatius.”
She tried to fire her plasma pistol but managed only a click. Ilya grinned. He had disabled the weapon while she slept. He trusted May-Lin even less than he did Ming. Undaunted, she hurled a knife at Ilya, and he took it full in his left bicep rather than deflecting it. He sensed pain, but he did not care.
“You were right,” he said. “No love in the jungle. Keep your heart black and empty.”
As he pulled the knife from his arm, May-Lin dived for an automatic pistol beside a dead bodyguard. Ilya watched with disinterest as she grabbed the weapon and aimed. He flicked his wrist. A split second later, a hole opened in the middle of her forehead. Ilya started walking away before May-Lin’s body smacked the uneven stone.
He descended the mountainside without slowing down, without concern about his next opia fix or whether a challenger might jump him before he reached the south boundary of Ennoi. No one came for him, although he did hear a rise in weapons fire from the northern streets. The territorial battles were already beginning. As he walked into the deep jungle, Ilya freed himself of his blades and then his blast rifles. He was left with only a plasma pistol as he neared his destination and heard its mighty roar. He knew how all this had to end. The jungle was longer his refuge. One like him was gone, now the other needed to do the same.
Suddenly, the haze of daylight became brilliance as he stepped out of the jungle and faced one of the greatest spectacles in all the Collectorate. Four great rivers converged at a gorge, and their rushing tides fell more than two kilometers, as if into an abyss. He could not see where the falls ended, as a dense mist rose above the roar and generated a kaleidoscope of rainbows.
Ilya should have been overwhelmed by the beauty. As a boy, as an idyllist lover of all the Chancellors had created across this galaxy, he would have treasured this moment. However, as he walked to the edge, Ilya no longer cared about beauty. He reached into his back pocket and found the blue glasses. Instinct told him to toss them over first. Yet Ilya had a better idea. He put on the glasses and said the three words he hoped never to utter again: “Come to me.”
Instantly, he found himself inside a Germanic dance hall where hundreds of people in identical blue glasses were dancing and swigging tankards of ale. He brought the celebration to an immediate halt by reaching deep into the gut and releasing a barbaric scream that tore through the hall. The band stopped playing; all eyes turned toward him. For good measure, he took the table nearest him and flung it over. He saw it in their eyes: They knew who he was even though he had rarely visited. This made the moment even more appropriate.
“Never,” he shouted. “You hear me? I will never finish this. You will fail. Whatever this has ever been about, you will fail. I am Ilya Hollander, and I will not be the destroyer. Let the others come. Whatever they are. Let them deal with you because I am finished. You will never see me again. No one will.”
He took a long, deep breath and stared into their contemptuous faces. Random mutters drifted out of the silence, and several larger men of a distant historical period started toward him. Ilya didn’t see the point. Even if they grabbed him, all he had to do was remove the glasses. Couldn’t they see how pointless this was? How pointless everything was?
And then, just as quickly, the large men stopped and stared. However, their indignation and their sneers softened and then reemerged as bewilderment. No. Something else. Ilya didn’t understand. They seemed as much in shock as they were frightened. The dance hall fell silent again, but Ilya began to sense a change right before he heard an unfamiliar voice. Then he realized the change: They were not staring at Ilya but rather at someone behind him.
“Perhaps there is another way,” a frail voice said from behind.
Ilya twisted about. Mostly, he saw a curtain of scraggly, whitewashed hair drooping over a wrinkled, twitching face. One eye was closed. The man before him raised a hand to Ilya and rested it against Ilya’s bloody left arm.
“Perhaps we can find the truth.”
Ilya shed his anger with a heartbeat. He did not know this man, but he focused upon a single, impossible detail. This man was not wearing glasses.
TWENTY TWO
MOTION
Lucian Wash, Hiebimini
Standard Day 59, SY 5311
HADEED’S GENERALS CALLED THIS the war room, but he begged to differ. The war, he reminded them, was still a goal albeit very close to realization. However, he was impressed by how far they had come. Tedious planning and manipulation of the black market brought a CV light table to the wash, and specifically to the field tent raised for this purpose. They spent countless hours in here for six months using the flat-surface map and its holographic components to plot their strategy. This wasn’t so much about planning for Declaration Day – as Hadeed named the opening salvo of their war – but for the anticipated battle to come later. Every general agreed: The Chancellors would strike back quickly if they had clear, viable targets. Hadeed was confident his Declaration Day plans would negate such a possibility.
Nonetheless, the light table revealed just how stretched resources would be in the early days of the revolution. That knowledge – and the accompanying proposals to mitigate the problems – easily paid for the cost of the table, said Hadeed. A one-day war will not liberate Hiebimini, he reminded his generals.
On this day, a sense of great urgency filled the wash. The enclave was at less than half strength, with many disciples, weapons, and other resources having been sent away to wait for their signal or hide in one of the many isolated camps established deep in the Schrindorian Mountains more than two thousand kilometers away. The rest of them would be dispersing on a carefully-crafted timetable over the next thirty days. All were on edge – within a few hours, a Tumbler with very special disciples would be leaving, the most important signal yet of the coming conflict. The first of Hadeed’s generals, Benazir Asiah, would also be departing to take command of the Schrindorian network. Hadeed wanted the full counsel of his entire command staff before that could happen. They gathered around the light table as Hadeed discussed a stratagem he did not yet believe to be fully realized.
“I remain convinced that Messalina is the key,” he told them, pointing to the city on the holographic relief. “Carrier
Command will not anticipate a drawn-out conflict. They will believe we are radical isolationists who only have the resources to go after secondary targets, such as smaller enclaves or the most isolated uplift stations. After we have sown the initial chaos in Messalina, we simply cannot subscribe to their expectations. I believe we must create such anarchy as to force their hand. They must place inordinate resources toward the capital. This will give us time to reposition our assets elsewhere.”
Hadeed was not used to sounding like a military man, but he had picked up the language from his generals and found it increasingly enjoyable.
Gen. Assam Hajib nodded. “Honor, I concur. There are, by our best estimation, more than six thousand Chancellor civilians in the capital. If we were to destroy the three bridges over the Bengalese and disable the regional uplift station, those Chancellors would be trapped within the city walls. We could have death squads working day and night to cull their numbers.”
First Gen. Fergus Willem disagreed. “As the majority here have previously stated, Honor, such a maneuver would commit almost a third of our forces to a fixed location. We could not hope to win a protracted battle for the city. Granted, we all agree mass executions of Chancellors would send a powerful message. However, I believe our plans for Declaration Day will be more than sufficient to achieve that end. Every man, woman, and child on this planet will see the product of our efforts.”
Hadeed studied the holographic relief and nodded. “Messalina is the key, my friends. The question remains: In what way?” He turned toward the tent’s entrance and motioned to a lieutenant in a black shomba. “Bring him.” He turned back to his generals. “I’m not sure everyone here has fully embraced all the resources we have in studying this stratagem.”
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