Four zeroes on the chronometer marked midnight when the alarm rung.
Saul stepped under the light over the mirror and regarded himself. The tangled mess of facial hair was shaved down to stubble, exposing the thin scars around the deep lines of his jaw. The blade slipped out and shimmered in the light. He slipped the edge under the line of gauze below the elbow and cut. The bandages slipped off and the signets gleamed blood-red. He held his arm up before him with a glare, then passed the blade from one hand to the other and cut the bandages off the other arm.
Sodom was alive with light as the capsule descended from Sixth Echelons. The face of every tower and every spire, from the streets below to the airborne traffic high above the skyline, was a matrix of technicolor pixels. When night fell, Ares slumbered and Dionysus took the throne. Sodom went from the pumping heart of the First Region War Machine to a mass brothel, a fountain of ambrosia and a great scream of ecstasy audible until the ends of the globe, and Dragon Boulevard was the adrenaline-saturated pulsing jugular of the martial capital.
He nudged open the fire exit and came into a long and dark alley. An old dog, curled up behind piles of trash, whimpered and limped away. He raised his collar and pocketed his hands as he approached the light at the end of the main street, his footsteps fading into the occult blares from the Dragon.
The wide avenue was a spinning kaleidoscope of psychedelia which ran right through the middle of the lower district to Durkheim Plaza, and the great, three-headed beast of the UMC soared high on the Milidome facade in the distance. Blue-geared SGs patrolled every corner and the bedlam continued to build all the way up until up until the Dragon’s Head, where the larger martial guilds garrisoned their private nightspots. These were peak hours for walkers too. He passed by the Nymph on the Bordello Strip: a high-rise ziggurat shrine to erotica, flashing scarlet and crimson on the tip of the Dragon’s Tail. The Nymph was one of the largest bordellos on the strip, very popular among the lower casters. You got what you paid for and then some. Saul snatched a glance through the crowds at the glass walls as he passed. The carmine light irradiated a display line of nude and limber silhouettes twisting and bending for their potential trade.
One blonde-haired crimson-lipped nymph caught his eye and smiled a counterfeit smile, causing him to bump into a squad of SGs. The Guards turned, guns cocked, and when their illumed visors scanned over him, the signets under his coat sleeves flashed in their digital sights and they dispersed at once. SG squads patrolled every corner of the strip. Gang wars between rival guilds were not uncommon, and even less so on the Dragon at peak times. And since the only guns on the city streets were I.D-locked and borne by Sodom’s finest, guild wars were kept in control for the most part, along with any immediate possibility of mass uprisings.
About a quarter-mile down the Dragon’s Tail, he spotted one of the smaller buildings on the Bordello Strip. A sign on the side of the tower showed the grimacing head of a crowned daemon holding a royal sceptre in one hand and a flask of ambrosia in the other. The words “SIXTH CIRCLE” flashed red over the top of the daemon’s head.
He crossed the road. Eight goliaths constituted the guard detail at the front entrance and glares followed as he passed and turned onto the next side street.
At the end of the alley, a flight of stairs led up to a terrace and a back entrance, just as he had been told. When he ascended the stairs, he was received by a none-too-welcoming committee – three heavy men, scarred, thickly tattooed and outfitted for the sole function of backstreet brawling, with thick, vascular arms crossed over their flack-jacketed chests and the insignia of black sickles curved around their scarred orbitals – the mark of the Scythe Guild.
As soon as he climbed the last step, their heads jerked around like wild beasts roused by sudden and unfamiliar company, and one martial, baring the signets of a Third Tier Elite, uncrossed his arms and stepped forward, closely followed by his two cronies. “Just where the fuck do you think you’re going, dreg?”
“I was told there would be someone waiting.”
The elite stepped forward and sized him up.
“You’ve got some stones –”
“I am here to see Elijah Malachi.”
“Malachi…” the elite rumbled with a snigger. “Malachi,” he repeated, turning to his two comrades, who returned his laughter with interest. He rubbed his palm from the top of his head down to his chin, wiping away the humour from his disfigured expression. “You took your best shot,” he scowled. “Now, get the fuck out of…”
His hand shot up when the elite’s made to grab him by the neck and his grip latched round the thick wrist like a vice.
The elite froze, loose-jawed, eyes wide and reeled back with a look of fearful awe at the blood-red signets that slipped out from under his sleeve.
“I am here to see Elijah Malachi…” he repeated, sustaining a glower.
His grip loosened from the thick wrist. Before long, the elite turned to his associates.
“Call Celyn.”
They hesitated at first, exchanging grave and confused looks. Then, one of the burly martials turned and disappeared. During the half-minute that passed, the incredulous eyes did not defer, searching him from head to toe, stopping on the scarred seal creeping out from the collar of his coat.
In the next moment, a blaring wave of noises from inside the building flooded through the open doors, and a very familiar voice stirred him to attention. “What’s going on?” The martials stepped aside, and who should come through the doors but the ebony-skinned, emerald-eyed jasmine woman.
“This guy says he wants to see Malachi.”
The jasmine woman stopped with an askew look as soon as their eyes met, then drew slowly closer, her eyes narrowing the nearer she approached until he could smell jasmine on her again, evoking a strange sensation not entirely like lust… but not entirely unlike it either. “Celyn…”
“…You have got to be kidding me.”
“I didn’t believe him either,” said the elite, “but you can’t forge signets like that. He’s an Ares-caster.”
The jasmine woman looked down at his wrists, where the edges of the signets were poking out of his sleeves.
“Should we get Malachi?”
“No,” the jasmine woman answered, her air suddenly foreboding. “He’s our guy.” She started to walk back through the door, leaving silence behind her. “Come on,” she called as she walked away. “Elijah’s waiting.”
The two Scythe soldiers held the doors open and he followed, crossing into a vortex of shrill howls and earth-quaking beats. Beams of scarlet light tore through the blackness from a wide floor below, lighting hundreds of silhouettes, dancing, twisting and stumbling in an ambrosia-induced rapture. Lucre shimmered and rattled on pulpits with nude figures; sweat dripping, glimmering on the naked flesh like blood drops. He slowed his step, mesmerised with near morbid fascination at the striking reminiscence of his nightmares. It shocked him to a halt, looking out from the gallery. The screams became louder and louder.
The shrill broke when a hand seized him by the arm.
“You can ball after we take care of business!” the jasmine woman yelled over the din.
She led the way across the upper floor with a quick stride. The crowd parted and cleared her path and as they passed, a few high-caste guilders followed their trail with scowls – those that weren’t engaged with bevies of walkers and copious quantities of ambrosia. They came to a glass elevator at the back of the floor. The jasmine woman stepped in first, pressed the top floor button, crossed her arms and looked forward. The elevator doors shut and brought an abrupt end to the tumult and they slowly began to rise.
“Celyn…” he muttered, breaking the long silence.
“Knight.”
“Celyn Knight.”
“Martial Knight will do,” she amended. “And you must be Vartanian.”
Silence fell again.
“Malachi said he had two associates. I did not expect a…”
&nbs
p; “Expect a what?” she jerked her head round with a glare. Silence fell again. “Let me guess,” she snorted. “All women are walkers and all men are martials.”
“Numbers do not lie.”
“Female martials have a higher caste average than males,” she answered, turning to him with a hostile look. “How’s that for a statistic, quicksilver?” The elevator stopped and the doors opened with a single chime and the jasmine woman walked out the second the doors opened, leaving him behind.
He detected a contrivance about her manner. It seemed … forced. Remembering quite vividly the type of woman she was in her otherwise most intimate of moments, he intuited that her diffidence must have had less to do with the fact that she was a martial woman in a man’s world than it did with a secret intent to terminate any trace of lasciviousness between them. Martial policy on intercourse was very clear: at least 60 days between repeat partners, and the Commission had ways of keeping track of intercourse history the same as everything else.
“What kind of Ares-caster walks around all alone looking like that?”
He regarded himself briefly. “Are you not relieved?” he asked.
She snickered. “Why – because I got laid by a high-caster?” she asked, rhetorically. “I’m not a walker. The man behind the prick doesn’t matter to me.”
“How noble of you.”
“By the way, do us both a favour. About last night – don’t say anything to Eli.”
“Why?”
“Do you really need a reason? Keep business and pleasure separate. Always a good rule of thumb.”
The corridor narrowed into a glass-walled passage which passed right over the Dragon. Above, the sky was clear and star-spangled. The passage terminated at a door and the jasmine woman stepped aside. “After you,” she said.
Warily, he pushed the door open and crossed the threshold.
He came into a long room. He approached the far end, where a small group of martials were accompanied by twice the number of walkers, sprawled over large satin-upholstered couches and surrounded by about two dozen empty bottles of ambrosia. A naked butane flame danced over the low table-top in the middle of them and the light of the full moon shone from above through the glass ceiling. Toppled piles of dimitars and psychotropics were strewn over the table-top and the white-carpeted floor.
“At last…” a deep voice pronounced. “I was starting to doubt whether you’d show.”
At the head of the table, there sat the only man unaccompanied by a walker. The man had a coal complexion and was well-turned-out in every way, with a fine-cut black suit, black shoes, an open white shirt and a platinum ring around his middle finger. His dark face rose from the shadow. When the face came into the light, a long, grisly scar cut from the top of the man’s scalp down across his left eye.
“Vartanian.” Malachi grinned, wide and pearl-toothed, coming to his feet. “We meet at last.”
“Who the hell is this?” spoke an irate voice from among them.
Saul remained quiet, looking from one sneering martial to the other until his arms slipped out of the coat sleeves. When the light found the blood-red signets, silence fell upon the room.
“This, comrades, is your new co-commander,” Malachi introduced. “Say hello to Martial Vartanian, First Tier Ares. Now, if you all don’t mind, gentlemen; I think it’s time you all took this party downstairs where it belongs.”
The platoon-inebriated Scythe martials and walkers all rose and half-stumbled past him and out of the room. When the last of them had left, the doors closed.
“These are the men you expect us to lead?”
“Now, now,” said Malachi, “don’t go getting the wrong idea. These men play hard, but they work hard – damn hard. You have my word.”
Celyn lowered herself into a black leather lounger. “Speaking of playing hard,” she said. “Where’s the Cajun?”
“Cho! Co! Yeaaw! Merci, mes chers!” At that moment, a door flung open at the end of an adjacent corridor and a voice cackled loudly. Three high-end, platinum-haired walkers with high heels and mannequin features sauntered in from the adjacent corridor, walking and dressing at the same time, and shuffled right past them and out of the room. Seconds later, the same loud, cackling voice from before approached, singing:
“I’s a rambler, I’s a gambler, I’s a long way from home, and if you all don’t like me, just leave me alone. I eat when I’m hungry, I drink when I’m dry. If ambrosia don’t kill me, I drink till I die. Laissez le bon temps rouler, laissez le bon temps rouler…”
A long-haired, sharp-faced and bare-chested mestizo-looking martial staggered into the room, holding a half-empty bottle of Liquid Luck ambrosia. He lifted the bottle to his lips took five long swigs, then hung his arms, threw his shoulders back and burped. The mestizo’s golden eyes dawdled around the room, finally settling on Saul, whereupon he leered a wide and jagged-toothed leer. “Ah, baise-moi; Monsieur Ares!” he sputtered, flinging his arms in the air. “Eh, Celin’!” he cried, pointing a wavering finger at Celyn. “Bon soir, cher…”
“Duguay,” Malachi rumbled. “We’ve got business. Put down the poison.”
“Bon.” The Cajun shrugged, lifted the bottom of the bottle and emptied the drink into his gullet and bore a striking resemblance to the nightclub mascot outside the building. He exhaled loudly and threw the bottle aside with a smash. The Cajun cackled, leapt over the back of a long settee and fell into his seat with a sigh. Then, seeing the bottles on the table – some of them still full – his eyes lit up with sudden desire, and he filled himself another glass, licking his lips. “Grand… Alors…”
“Saul’s here to run us through strategy for Nova Crimea,” said Malachi, setting the agenda for the meeting. “After that, we talk future plans. Ain’t that right, Saul?”
Saul had had his eyes fixed intently on the boisterous Cajun. “Right,” he muttered.
“Right…” said Malachi in a shrewd, drawn-out voice. He stroked the stubble on his chin with the ringed finger and started to pace around, one hand pocketed. “Assuming we’re all alive by next week, the future looks pretty damn bright.” He took a glass off the table and filled it with ambrosia, then walked out to the edge of the penthouse and gazed out over the Dragon. “Hell,” he snickered, “with you in our ranks; there’ll be no contract we can’t score, no martial we couldn’t snatch up for the guild.” He drunk and exhaled. “The sky’s the limit.” Malachi turned to face him again. “Well… we’ll get to all that later,” Malachi grinned. “Don’t want to get ahead of ourselves, now, do we?”
“No, we do not,” Saul replied.
The scarred eye narrowed judiciously as Malachi knocked back the rest of his drink and sauntered back over to his seat, taking out a device from under the sleeve of his suit jacket. He pressed down on the control and the holographic flame over the table fizzled away. In its place, there materialised a large three-dimensional schematic of what appeared to be a city. “That’s her,” Malachi presented. “Nova Crimea.” He slipped the control back into his suit, sat down, poured himself another glass and leaned back in his seat. “Floor’s yours, Martial…”
Saul laid his coat down on the nearest chair and slowly stepped up to the holographic schematic. He mentally went over the stratagem, which he had only briefly sketched out in his mind over the interceding days, but which had since ripened in his veteran subconscious.
“Expand Sector 5.”
The schematic rotated to his instruction and the northeast corner of the holographic rendition of the city expanded. He took out a cigarette, placed the butt at his lips, lit, drew and blew a stream of smoke, coming nearer to the hologram, circled and stopped.
“We will be one of five brigades the EDS is deploying to take Nova Crimea,” he began. “Each brigade has been assigned a different sector. Our objective is to take Sector 5. East Grid forces took over the city about a month ago on a Russian mandate, so they are expecting retaliation. This will not be a surprise attack, but we can turn it int
o one.”
He lifted his right index finger and drew a line over the edge of the sector in the hologram.
“Nova Crimea is right on the edge of the New Borderland, outskirts of the former Ukrainian Republic,” he explained. “The city’s defences were set up to repel attacks from the east. After the beating the place took a month ago, the enemy would not have had enough time to restructure their ramparts. We will be moving in on the city from the west. Our PMC is providing us with 12 Landis GM-1 Leviathan Buldroogs. We move up through sector four with 4th Brigade. Once they have cleared our path, we move on to Sector 5. That is where our real work begins.”
He drew another mouthful of smoke, took the cigarette between his middle and index fingers and ran the smoldering tip along two, wide paths that cut right across the schematic.
“These are the two main streets,” he continued. “They run straight through the sector. We will call them “North Street” and “South Street” for ease. They are the key to the sector. That is where the enemy will put all of their stock. They will no doubt have all the surrounding buildings garrisoned and we can assume that they will deploy any heavy armour they can spare here and here (he pointed the locations out on the schematic with the smoldering cherry of his cigarette). Their strategy will be to funnel us into these two paths and tear us apart. Even if we had a hundred thousand soldiers, we would not be able to get through in a full frontal firefight…”
“Why don’t we just bang dem salauds up from a ways away, hein?” the Cajun interjected.
“Nova Crimea is not a martial metropolis,” he replied, pausing to decipher the drunken creole burbles. “There are civilians there – thousands of them.” The concern in his voice seemed to render present company bemused and he noted their rapid and askance looks at one another. Needless to say, civilian lives never registered high in the list of priorities before an assignment, barring some clause to that effect in the martial contract.
“The ESD wants us to keep collateral damage to a minimum,” Malachi intervened. “They want their city back, not a pile of debris and dead bodies.”
“Mo chagren,” hummed the Cajun, throwing his head back wearily.
“Go on, Saul…”
“We will need to secure the elevated positions over both roads.” He drew lines of smoke through the schematic. “We breach these buildings along the main streets,” he indicated. “It will have to be done quickly and silently. We must divide their ranks and find a way to destroy their armour before we advance…”
He suddenly paused, much to the confusion of his three listeners.
“So what’s the plan?” asked Celyn.
“That, I have not yet worked out,” he said. “We will be outnumbered. We must pick our openings carefully. I will inform you as soon as the strategy is clear in my mind. For now, all I know is that we will need a lot of explosives, and at least four sniper platoons.”
“No problem,” Malachi assured. “Duguay will take the sharpshooters. Celle can put the demo team together.”
Celyn assented with a nod.
“You and I will lead the infiltration teams,” said Saul. “We shall split the brigade up in two – one battalion going north and the other going south with three companies moving through the buildings. Assault squads will hold positions in the adjacent streets. It will be a night operation. We can take the buildings quietly and surprise them. Once we have secured both roads, the sector will be ours before sunrise.” He blew a stream of smoke from his cigarette and gazed pensively through the holographic schematic and out the glass penthouse walls. “There is no better way to go about it,” he concluded. “If everything goes according to plan, you can save a lot of your men’s lives, and keep damage to a minimum, which should make your employers happy.”
He wandered across the room, past Malachi and Duguay toward his own reflection in the penthouse walls. When he came nearer, he could see the view of the illuminated skyline through the reflections of the three silhouettes seated in the room behind him and a wall of cigarette smoke.
“Then, that’s it,” said Malachi.
Saul removed the cigarette from his lips and exhaled.
“That is it.”
The jasmine woman let out a snort. “Always easier said than done.”
Malachi clapped his palms against his thighs. “Alright then,” he declared, rising from his seat. “Now that that’s out the way…”
“Les temps des affaires…” murmured the Cajun, marking the next item on the agenda.
Saul remained with his sights set over the Sodom skyline.
“The contract pays fifty-million dimitars,” said Malachi. “Ten million to the guild Underclasses, ten to Overs, twenty to the Lower-Elites. That leaves ten million to divide between us.”
He took the last drag from his cigarette.
“Well,’ said Malachi; ‘what are your demands?”
After a long pause, he exhaled the last draw of smoke and turned. His jaded stare wandered curiously over Celyn, who stared back at him through narrow eyes. “I do not want your money.”
Malachi’s head tilted back and surveyed him through downturned eyes. “What now?”
He dropped the burnt butt into a half-empty glass of Snake Venom ambrosia. “You can keep the money,” he reiterated.
“Quoi faire?” The Cajun’s head lolled over with a leery goggle
“I have no need for money.”
“Is that right?” There was a sudden air of misgiving in Malachi’s voice as he stepped forward. “Doesn’t look like it to me –”
“Eli–”
“Not now, Celle.”
Celyn sighed and looked away.
“Why do I get the feeling there’s a catch here?”
“I will lead your men to battle and you will win,” Saul stated, categorically. “It is what I do. You will also keep all the spoils.”
“Mais…” prodded the Cajun.
There was a long silence among them.
“I have two conditions,” he said.
“What conditions?” Malachi demanded rapidly.
“We do this my way.”
“Which means?”
“I never fire on civilians.”
There was a momentary silence.
“What’s condition two?” asked Malachi.
Saul looked back at him.
“After we complete the assignment and take the sector…” He paused. “I leave.”
“Leave?”
“Yes.”
“Where will you go?” asked Celyn.
“That does not concern any of you,” he said, brushing Malachi’s shoulder as he walked past. He lifted his coat off the back of the chair and filled the sleeves with his arms. “When you get back to Sodom, you will give the Commission the final assignment report. You will tell them I was killed in action and that my body could not be recovered.”
“You’re going rogue and you want us to cover for you,” said Malachi. “Is that what you’re telling us?”
“Bioque,” growled the Cajun.
Malachi glowered. “If the Commission finds out –”
“They will not find out,” he interjected.
“They always find out.”
When he straightened out his coat, he took out another cigarette and raised it to his lips.
“Why the hell are you doing this?”
“Explaining my reasons to you will make no difference.”
“We want you to be one of us. Name your terms.”
“There is nothing you can offer me,” he said, making his way toward the door. “Those are my terms. This meeting is over.”
“No one ever leaves the martial world once they cross over,” Malachi stated, categorically. “No one. Especially men like you. You’re just going to walk out into the middle of a warzone? And what do you think will happen when you cross the Civil Border? You’re a martial. Wherever you go, sooner or later they will find you.”
“It is a chance I will have to take,” he said.
br /> The conversation came to a stop and another protracted silence hung between them. He could already sense the first and most obvious consideration emerge amid their silence: whether or not it might be a better idea at that point to cancel the contract and, having reckoned everything in advance, he knew – as Malachi knew – that that would be bound to irritate their clients at the European Defence Section. He could almost hear the soundless deliberation unfold.
“Obviously, you have a lot to consider,” he said. “I will be outside.”
He turned away and their eyes followed him as he sauntered out of the room.
He already knew exactly how the deliberation would proceed in his absence, having innumerably replayed every possible way the scenario could unfold to its inevitable conclusion since he had first come upon Elijah Malachi of the Scythe Guild more than a month ago. Within five minutes of their first conversation, he had had Malachi figured out as the type of martial very easily lured by the possibility of attracting an Ares-caster into his circle of associates.
The sting of cognitive dissonance will subside, he thought, as he stepped out onto the edge of the rooftop terrace, overlooking the Dragon. After that, Malachi would do what all men of his kind do: weigh the risks and see that he stood to lose a lot more by rescinding the contract so close the assignment date. If the slightly more drastic measure of his assassination was considered, the penalty for killing a high-caster in cold blood entailed no less than allowing him to flee under the pretension that he was dead, and there was as much risk of the Commission finding out either way.
He puffed away at his cigarette and gazed wistfully down the Dragon and up at the Milidome, resolute that the next time he walked into the jaws of the three-headed beast, it would be for the last time. Malachi’s words rung disturbingly in his head. “They always find out…”
His thoughts were interrupted by a stir below, which seemed to have been caused by a dreg that had wandered out from the dark backstreets and stumbled into the light of the Dragon. The dreg stumbled weakly to the floor. There were cackles and three martials appeared from the dark and surrounded him. They lashed out with low kicks to his legs, knocking the dreg over on his back, then driving their shins into his gut over and over again.
Just as the anger started to bubble up, a firm hand seized him by the shoulder and nipped his rapidly rising fury at the bud.
“What are you doing?”
Celyn came up quietly by his side, arms crossed, showing no sign of discomfort when the frigid breeze lashed against her sending the long weaves of hair swaying. She looked away and took out the black neural canister. He followed her movements through the corners of his eyes as she popped open the lid and rolled three tablets into her hand. “You know,” she said, cocking her head back and gulping the tablet down, “the last time I saw you, I knew you had lost it.”
“Then, why are you here?”
“I told them I’d try and talk some sense into you.”
“You are wasting your time.”
“Fine,” she said, tucking the canister back in her coat. “At least tell us the reason.”
“What difference does it make whether or not you know my reasons?”
“Maybe I care.”
“That is impossible,” he said. “Neurals erase empathy.”
“And that’s the way it has to be,” came the rejoinder. “Look, you and I both know the only reason you’re putting yourself through this is because you’re off the program. Every damn martial in this city is out there killing and dying, trying to get what you have. You’re putting yourself through hell. And for what?”
A pause ensued wherein the stumbling dreg on the Dragon had now come to his feet and attracted more laughing and taunting from passersby. He was struck on the face and knocked down again. SGs stood by and watched, making no attempt to intervene. The laughs and hisses of the leering mob surrounding the dreg became bawls of bloodlust. They had kicked and beaten him until he was a twitching mound of raw flesh and bone, blood leaking from his gob and nostrils. Finally, when the dreg could do naught except prop his weight up on his hands and knees, three blades shimmered in the light, brandished in raised fists. The blades came down and stabbed. There were thick spurts of red, then they rose and banged down again, tearing through his back, neck, chest and gut. The pierced and punctured dreg writhed, twisted, choked, drowning on his own blood until the last twitches of life left him. When the thrill of his destruction subsided and his killers and onlookers walked away, the Guards came forward and hauled the torn pile of flesh away.
When it all ended, Saul dropped the smoldering cigarette butt and stamped the cherry out under his heel. When the trail of smoky fog parted his lips, he raised his collar. By then, Celyn’s eyes were fixed, unblinking, over the spot where the whole scene had unfolded. And as she gazed at the bloody puddle left in the dreg’s wake, Saul turned and walked away.
“Tell Malachi to call me once he has made his decision.”
C. 5: Day 363