Absence of Blade Read online

  Absence

  of

  Blade

  Caitlin Demaris McKenna

  BEACON, NEW YORK

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or publisher.

  SCORIA PRESS

  Beacon, New York

  Copyright © 2017 by Caitlin Demaris McKenna

  Cover design by Daniel Lambert

  Interior design by Lora Friedenthal

  All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever except as provided by the U.S. Copyright Law.

  “What is a life? Jumbled memories of people and places best left forgotten. Jumbled fragments of might-have-beens and whiffs of dreams destroyed. It is a maze of dead ends and broken paths where each event, each turning point, is like the murder of an unborn self, until you are finally left with but one path to follow, and have become what you were never meant to be.”

  —Tony Rothman, The World is Round

  Absence of blade (n., fencing): The situation in a match when the opposing blades are not in contact; the opposite of engagement.

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  Twitter: @CaitlinDMcKenna

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Interlude

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Part Two

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  1

  Gau Shesharrim studied the defenses around the target. He tapped the holographic map’s corners to zoom in on points of interest, loosing a little sigh as he did so. He needed maps for his briefings, but schematics disappointed him. A flat piece of holofoil could never express all the nuances of the real building with its hidden nooks and sharp, concealing corners. All the parts vital to his work.

  “So tell me,” said the other Osk beside him. “Do you think you can kill this woman?”

  Gau turned his gaze from the table. Tev, the Osk running the briefing, was a nervous creature displaying the low-level anxiety and tics of an official of middling influence. He’d been hovering by the holotable the whole time, offering useless speculations about the guard and defenses of the building depicted in the incomplete map. Gau had ignored him as he scanned through what intelligence there was.

  He let his teeth show in the edge of a smile. “Easily.” Gau’s voice was a dry rustle the other Osk had to lean forward to hear. “Getting to her and then out will be the hard part. Still, the guard seems to be light, and the building itself offers plenty of hiding places for those with a little imagination.”

  “If I felt it was beneath your capabilities, the task would go to another. Don’t take this lightly.”

  “I never take missions lightly.” Gau’s professional mask never moved, but inside he suppressed a sneer. From his appearance alone it was clear Tev was neither soldier nor seph. He had never fought or killed. The dark mane framing his long snout was cut short in the style of a noncombatant. Under the loose white robes emblazoned with the crest of Za colony, Tev looked underfed, the gray flesh of his torso and spindly arms stretched tight over the bone. He lacked the muscles of a fighter. Gau wondered if the blades hidden in the bony sheaths that grew under the other Osk’s arms had ever seen use. The bone will be sharp but brittle. And yellow, he thought. Yellow like a new hatchling’s.

  Gau let his smile creep wider, closing teeth on his contempt. “I am merely assessing the mission aloud for your benefit.”

  Tev dipped his head in acknowledgment. “If you have any misgivings with the assignment, or the intelligence . . .”

  “I don’t,” said Gau. “There won’t be any problems.”

  “That’s a fine attitude, if your objective is to get killed,” said a new voice, full and sharp as a hand slapped on sunbaked stone.

  The hapless official almost jumped out of his robes. Gau turned from the table to face the new Osk, his face a lid over his own surprise. He’d been caught off guard; that didn’t happen often.

  “And who exactly are you, to say that?” Gau asked the newcomer icily.

  The Osk leaning next to the door was taller and broader than Gau, with the body of a fighter; Gau could see that even through the dark traveling cloak that draped his chest and lithe abdomen. Beneath the cloak, segmented seph armor sheathed the Osk’s legs and lower body down to his conical tail. A bright red mane spilled in an uncut cascade down his back.

  Four armored boots clacked on the ceramic floor as the new Osk stepped closer and inclined his head.

  “Mose Attarish. A registered seph like yourself. And a specialist in remote reconnaissance. I collected the data for the map you’ll be using. I received permission to attend this briefing in case you had any questions about the schematic. We’ve never met before, but I have heard of your . . . work.”

  “Ah.” Gau’s tone thawed by a fraction. “And I have heard of yours.” For a moment, the two sephs appraised each other. Gau could read nothing in the dark orbs of Attarish’s eyes, and his scent was a similar blank. Yet he could imagine what the other seph was thinking. He would be trying to see past the physical fact of Gau—not much taller than a child, rawboned and wiry, soft of voice and stance—to what everyone knew. Attarish would be trying to see him as Gau Shesharrim, the greatest seph in Za; Gau, who had killed more Terran leaders than any of the rest of them; Gau, who might yet win them the war.

  Tev bobbed into Gau’s field of vision. “If you have no further concerns, I suggest you begin preparations for the flight.” He rubbed his hands together. “It is long, and since you must arrive at night . . .”

  “Yes.” Gau cut him off. Actually, he was grateful for the nervous official’s interjection. Now Gau wouldn’t have to find out if Attarish was one of those admiring types who grew disappointed at the fact of him. And he was impatient to be off, doing what he did best. Gau stalked past Attarish to the vertex of the seedpod-shaped chamber. Its white walls peeled away, a doorway blossoming onto the corridor beyond.

  “Tell the hangar to prep the Carnivore. I’ll be ready to leave in a sixty.”

  Blasted rock stretched to the horizon as Gau piloted the Carnivore above the dead lands that separated Za colony from Nheris. Altitude washed out most of the details, but if he squinted, Gau could make out whorls and tortured escarpments of volcanic rock swooping toward the glimmer of ocean behind him and stretching interminably ahead. The sky above was a black dome even in daylight; his ship scraped the upper layers of the planet’s atmosphere, almost in orbit.

  The vault of Olios 3’s atmosphere and higher orbit teemed with around five thousand ships at any given time, of which Gau’s craft was but one more. Less than half of them were Osk, though the Fleet was busily growing itself larger whenever it received a new influx of material from Oskaran, which wasn’t often. The rest of the orbital presenc
e, halfway around the planet’s rim, belonged to the Terran Expansion.

  Despite harassment from Osk ships, the Terran fleet was growing every day. Terran nanoassemblies could construct ships in a matter of hours; the Fleet had to wait weeks for its ships to gestate and fuse their biomechanical parts—and get blown apart by Terran guns while they did so. A few sephs had been sent on missions to sabotage the nanoassemblies, with minimal success. Gau’s kind were not spacers—they were planet dwellers with spacefaring technology. The difference shaped Osk strategy: Za was needed to win Olios 3 on the surface, using people like Gau.

  Night had fallen by the time Gau landed on the outskirts of Nheris. The Terran capital clung to a tiny strip of arable land between the planet’s massive ocean and the moonscape of cooled lava that spilled across its single continent. The terrain around Za was much the same. Terraforming Olios 3 was a dream, lurking beyond the unknowable horizon of peace; neither colony could devote resources to such plans in the middle of a war.

  The Carnivore settled silently into a wooded strip at the edge of Terran territory and switched off its sensor-jamming systems. The hull of the flattened ellipsoid had camouflaged for the journey, turning the ship into a blotch of shadow. A door folded open in its side.

  From the doorway Gau scanned his surroundings, flicking his gaze from side to side. A meager parkland of stunted trees stretched to the horizon. At the very edge of his sight stood an outpost, but he could see no movement there.

  He stepped from the safety of his craft and began to check each piece of his articulated black armor, tugging on the fastenings of his chest plate, flexible throat guard, greaves, and vambraces. All secure. He raised the angular helmet with its segmented neck plates, brushed his black mane out from beneath it, settled the headpiece again. He pulled on his armored gloves, checking to make sure the openings to the bony sheaths on his arms weren’t blocked by gauntlet or vambrace. Gau turned back toward the Carnivore and sent a command through the circuits in his armor. The lines of the craft blurred into a collage of black and white, darkened to gray, then leapt back into focus in the image of a large boulder. The camouflage program was one of several modifications Gau had made to the craft, a gift from Za’s government when he had first arrived on Olios 3 to aid the war. Any Osk leaders worth serving provided a personal craft to the sephs they employed, to give them the mobility for their missions of protection, sabotage, and sanctioned murder.

  Gau slipped into the cover of the trees and started toward the city center, moving like the shadow he’d been trained to be.

  The military building’s security system was controlled by a simple keyboard code. Gau hacked through the firewall and stepped soundlessly into a vast dark lobby, senses alert for threats.

  It was deserted. Carpeting muffled any echoes that might have betrayed approaching footsteps. Gau scented the air and picked up the telltale tang of Terran musk, like citrus cut with sweat . . . but it was hours old and fading, barely there over the sickening miasma of Olios 3’s oxygen-dense atmosphere. Even after two years in Za, Gau’s lungs still prickled from the unnatural scent of the air. He had to remind himself there was no danger: the organic implants inside his lungs manufactured all the end-stage gases he needed, making the differences in the planet’s gas composition trivial. Without implants, he wouldn’t be standing here at all, breathing this alien atmosphere.

  Empty thoughts, and distracting, too. He banished them and walked past the desk fronting the lobby to the T-intersection beyond.

  Gau paused to double-check his suit map for the fastest route. He’d started to turn left when a warning light flashed, casting an unpleasantly bright glare inside his helmet; a guard patrol was approaching from the left hallway. His path chosen by default, Gau raced silently down the right corridor.

  Five hours later, Gau checked his in-suit clock and swore silently. He’d found no trace of Shanazkowitz’s apartment. The general’s quarters must have already moved.

  Every military complex in Nheris was a mix of administrative and residential spaces, a security tactic designed to avoid creating obvious clusters of targets. For an extra layer of security, VIPs and other military assets rotated from building to building on an irregular and frequently changing schedule. Deciphering Terran communiqués and tracking these schedule changes were ongoing tasks within Za intelligence. Gau had trusted Mose Attarish’s expertise; his tracking skills had netted Za’s sephs many kills.

  But this time Attarish’s intelligence was wrong.

  Gau whipped around the next corner and almost bumped into a guard standing watch before a plain metal door. His frustration mutated into alarm as the man whirled to face him, clawing the radio unit from his belt. In one automatic motion, Gau’s blades slid from their sheaths, each blade a sharp bone shaft as long as a tall Terran’s arm. Gau lunged at the guard and slashed once—expertly.

  There was a gout of crimson blood. The guard’s right hand thudded to the floor in the center of a spreading pool, gripping the radio unit in dying fingers. The cords of his neck tightened to scream, but Gau was on him, cutting off the cry in a second red spray. The Terran crumpled to the floor, gurgled once, and was still.

  Gau wiped his blades on the man’s shirt, taking a moment to savor the velvety feel and rich smell of the blood. Then he held the blades’ white lengths up for inspection and smiled. Their perfectly honed edges were clean and ready once more.

  He stepped over the body to the metal door. Speed was of the essence. There was a good chance the guard’s radio silence would soon arouse security’s suspicion. Gau had to decide if he would stay to investigate this room. If he left this building, he’d have to abort the mission and return to Za with Shanazkowitz alive. Gau had to be out of Nheris by dawn, and he’d spent half the dark period wandering around the wrong building. He would not be able to find the general’s new quarters, infiltrate them, and complete the kill in time.

  Gau knew what his nervous superior would recommend . . . but suns if he was going to fly back to Za empty-handed! Maybe Shanazkowitz wasn’t behind this door, but to his eye it was promising in other ways. At first glance, the door looked like all the others—a windowless sheet of metal with a hand scanner next to the doorknob. But there had been a guard, something no other individual door merited.

  His curiosity piqued, Gau tried the knob. Locked. A smile touched Gau’s snout as he extended just the tip of his right blade and inserted it in the seam between the door and its frame. He jiggled the blade in tiny movements, just enough to jog the primitive lock open. A tiny vibration traveled from the lock up his blade, and Gau allowed himself an inward chuckle.

  Then, a wave of nauseating agony swept the length of his body. Gau felt his insides clench until he had to throw up, his brownish vomit splattering the door and carpet. His muscles were in the grip of a demonic puppeteer, arching his back and limbs into a bow of pain till he was gasping for breath. It took all he had to wrench his right-hand blade out of the crack between door and frame.

  His legs collapsed under him. Gau fell face first to the soiled carpet, smelling and tasting his own bile, muscles still twitching.

  But the pain lessened to a dull ache. Gau lay and breathed for a few moments before struggling to his knees. He retracted his right blade with a wince. The muscles in his right arm felt on fire from the energy that had pulsed through them.

  The lock was electrified.

  Stupefied, Gau stared at the door. A red blinking light had come on beside the hand scanner. His brain was still numb with shock, thoughts as heavy as lead weights, but he knew he’d triggered an alarm. He grabbed the dead guard’s hand and slapped it against the scanner. The light turned green, and Gau exhaled slowly. He hauled himself to all four feet and began to examine his injuries.

  The exposed flesh around his right wrist had been seared from a healthy gray to charcoal black, and the part of his mane not covered by the neck plate had frizzed to as
h. As Gau unbuckled his chest plate and peeled it back from his skin, he saw that the underlying flesh was only darkened a little. Yet the plates of the suit itself were brittle and cracking from the electricity. He looked between his chest plate and the door, then gingerly fastened the plates back in place.

  Gau grinned weakly as he realized that here was finally something worth investigating.

  He hung in a ventilation shaft five meters above the room’s carpeted floor, harnessed to the vent’s ceiling by a flexible metal cable. He’d disposed of the guard’s body with the assistance of a conveniently placed garbage chute. By the time his disappearance was noted, the Terran would be nothing but a pile of ashes in the basement incinerator.

  A fan spanned the opening of the vent. He stared into the chamber through a blur of rotating blades that blasted a stream of cool air past him. Behind the fan’s whirring blades, a black box the size of Gau’s clenched fist had been mounted on the wall, topped with a blinking red light. A belt ran from a cylinder underneath the box to the fan’s motor. Thick cables wired the cylinder to the black box itself.

  After a moment, Gau grasped the strange setup: the fan’s motor rotated the belt, which in turn rotated the cylinder monitored by the black box. If something stopped the fan, the box would send an alarm to the nearest guard station.

  The wire was the weak spot, but it was blocked by the fan blades, and at this speed those edges looked sharp enough to strip flesh from bone. Gau covered his eyes briefly in exasperation, then began reeling in his harness. He had a control panel to find.

  Gau found it in the third cross vent he checked, a patch of lighter gray at the far end of the shaft. In the spray from his wrist-mounted aerosol, the vacant vent revealed a crisscrossing web of yellow security lasers. Gau felt the heat coming off them and grimaced: they were second generation, the kind that burned anyone unlucky enough to trip the alarm.