Absence of Blade Read online

  Gau wondered if he might have been better off trying to find a way past the electrified door. But since that memory still brought out a cold sweat, he decided against it. He didn’t ever want to feel that kind of pain again if he could help it. The bite of a laser was less than nothing compared to having five thousand volts shoot through one’s body.

  Besides, he had something for this contingency. Gau felt for the appropriate compartment at his waist and extracted a long silver tube edged with hundreds of jointed appendages. The robot uncoiled onto the vent floor and crawled under the lasers toward the control panel at the far end.

  Gau smiled; he loved technology.

  Back in the vertical vent, the fan blades moved at a comfortable working speed. Gau lowered his cable a fraction and activated his handheld plasma cutter: he felt the subtle vibration as it went live, the metal cutting shaft glowing green.

  A fan blade obscured the wire for a moment, then it lay exposed, a vein waiting to be sliced asunder. Gau slashed the cutter down and cleaved the wire in two, its cut ends smoking from the heat. Before it could send the alarm signal, he ripped the black box from the vent’s wall, flipped open a door in its underside, and tore out its electronic viscera with a gloved hand. He affixed a small sphere of metal to the fan head. This quickly expanded into a silver net which draped and enmeshed each fan blade to immobilize it. Gau could see the fan straining to continue its rotation; he would have to move quickly.

  Lowering his cable through a space between two blades, Gau descended until he hung in the center of the room. His brief visual scan yielded both relief and disappointment. The room was empty of guards; Gau had no sense that he was discreetly watched by camera or telepresence ’bot. On the other hand, there didn’t seem to be much of anything else in the room either: no high-tech experimental weaponry, no vats full of deadly germ cultures, no anything that had crossed his mind as the reason for such high security.

  Gau scanned the room a second time, thought about it, made himself really see it . . . and this time his eye caught something he’d dismissed. The room was largely empty—except for an oak desk on the office’s left side. Paper files lay stacked on one corner of it, next to the console panel.

  Gau lowered himself bit by bit until all four feet touched the floor, then pushed the button to detach the cable. He left it hanging from the vent. Walking over to the desk, he noticed the shiny finish on the oak—a very expensive wood to transport to Olios 3, especially through supply lines that could be ambushed by Osk ships at any time. Most Terran officials made use of Olios 3’s own trees for wood, though most native timbers were somewhat porous and didn’t take nearly as well to varnish. Only high-ranking officers could afford imported wood. Was this, then, General Shanazkowitz’s office?

  The console on the desk answered that question. Most of the files inside were petty affairs: pending bills needing approval and letters whining about the way Nheris was being run. The Terran city was a nominal democracy, but it was still a war colony; the military had broad powers of martial law, up to and including powers of legislation, and Shanazkowitz was military liaison to Nheris colony.

  Gau turned his attention to the paper hard files. Most seemed innocuous enough: policy in the process of being drafted, confidential letters. He snapped pictures of them just to be thorough. After moving these to one side, Gau saw a set of folders underneath marked with the Expansion military’s official seal of confidentiality: a blazon of invisible adhesive designed to show up only under a black light. The seal was a neon beacon in the wavelengths Gau saw. A document as thick as one of his fingers filled the folder, marked with “CLASSIFIED” on the cover in red Terran script.

  Gau placed one hand on the seal, letting the circuits inside the glove analyze its chemical composition. The fingertips of the glove glowed red with heat, and the adhesive seal peeled off in a single piece. Gau put it to one side and opened the folder.

  At first the file read like gibberish. Gau flipped through whole sections of the document without finding anything he understood, even though his English was fluent and he’d read Terran military documents before. His guts clenched with an echo of pain as he wondered if he’d been wasting his time here.

  Gau turned the next page on a detailed sketch of the inside of an Osk’s lungs. Looking closer, he saw with mounting horror that it wasn’t a sketch but a photograph. The lungs had been completely removed from the body and dissected on a steel table, all four chambers separated into halves like bloody flower petals.

  The ravaged tissues were a dark teal, whitened by the skein of artificial alveoli blanketing each wedge of tissue. He’d taken it for a sketch at first due to the writing and marks superimposed over the image. Arrows pointed to different sections of the alveoli net; many of the nodes spaced about each lung were circled or starred.

  Gau felt a hot anger boil up inside him, a feeling he had not experienced in full for a long time. For a moment he didn’t know why this picture should make him so angry. It wasn’t as though he cared about the fate of the butchered Osk, not really. The victim had probably been captured on a mission, and any seph who could botch a mission that badly was not worthy of the title. Whoever the lungs belonged to had deserved to die, that was sure.

  What angered him was that the Terrans had the gall to do this—that they would have done it to any Osk they’d captured, even him, as unlikely as that was. Gau had made his name feared throughout Nheris colony; in the three years Gau had fought for Za, he had killed twelve Terran officials of prominence, some with military records, and countless foot soldiers. He had bombed, sniped, and slashed his way to infamy, and, he’d thought, to a kind of immortality. He thought he’d carved himself a place in the world.

  Yet even with everything he’d become to the Terran side, if Gau were captured, his end would be as ignominious as that of the idiot whose vital organs were spread out on that table. Slaughtered like an animal and cut up for spare parts. Gau’s name, his deeds, simply wouldn’t matter.

  Gau’s gaze fell upon the page opposite the once-living diagram. He started scanning it automatically. Froze. His breath coming faster through his open mouth, Gau carefully reread the page.

  And the next.

  And the next.

  With a slightly shaking hand, Gau closed the file and sealed it again. He stared into space for a few minutes, rocking back on his heels and thinking.

  He was about to climb back into the vent when he heard a horrible shearing sound above him. Gau’s head snapped up in time to see the fan blades break their bindings and hurl them to one side of the vent. Its pent-up energy released, the fan motor sped the blades into a blur of edged metal. The silver web landed heavily on one side, tilting the fan directly into its own supports. Its blades sliced through the metal stanchions in a hail of sparks, scattering shrapnel from the vent’s mouth in a deadly rain. With a shriek of twisting metal, the fan plummeted like a miniature helicopter out of fuel.

  A shell-shocked Gau twisted out of the way as it crashed to the floor. The fan spun in crazy circles, ripping carpet and stirring up papers in angry gusts, as if seeking vengeance for its temporary imprisonment. For a moment, it caught on the corner of the desk—and in that instant Gau heard what he’d been dreading.

  “What the hell was that?”

  “Sounded like something coming loose.” Then came the clunk of boots running down the hallway. Cursing under his breath, Gau searched for an escape route. Unless they were blind and had no sense of smell, the guards were sure to notice the vomit splattered across the door. They would shut down the whole building and search it until they’d uncovered every hiding place. If he chose the vent again, he’d just be trapping himself. Gau spotted the window behind the desk. It was time to leave.

  Gau climbed onto the rocking desk and cued the Carnivore with the radar bracelet around one wrist. He grinned as the homing beacon began to blink. His smile disappeared as the boots sto
pped outside the door.

  Gau heard Terran voices conferring lowly. “Is that . . .”

  “Yeah.”

  “Holy shit.”

  “Get your gun out.”

  “Right.”

  The key turned in the lock, and the two guards opened the door on a very strange scene.

  The fan spun halfheartedly in the center of the room, as though wondering if it was worth it to take its revenge any further. Concentric rings of torn carpet rippled out from the fan to the scarred desk at the back wall. A shadow stood atop the desk, a darker patch of night the size of a tall boy or small man.

  Gau watched the two Terrans’ eyes adjust, their puny round pupils dilating in the gloom. He saw them stiffen in the familiar fright response. But would they fly, or fight?

  “Oh, Jesus,” the shorter one whispered, fumbling for his sidearm. “It’s one of them.” He pulled a snub-nosed projectile weapon from his belt. “Freeze! Don’t move!”

  “I believe those two expressions mean the same thing in your language.” Gau gave them what he hoped was a disarming smile, keeping his eyes on the gun as he edged backward.

  “Keep your eyes on it,” said the other guard. “Don’t let it get too close.” He fished out his own pistol and drew a bead on Gau. Eyes fixed on him as though he could somehow repel Gau with his gaze. He slapped his hand down to his radio unit and brought it close to his face. “This is Unit 1-9, repeat 1-9 requesting back up. Send an armed team to—”

  So they choose fight after all. Pity. Gau tensed his legs and launched himself backward through the window.

  The guards yelled and covered their heads as glass shards bounced onto the carpeting. A hot breeze filled the room, and the empty air outside the window shimmered into the shape of the Carnivore. He’d landed in a crouch atop his craft, just below the office window. Now it manifested the pearly white hull and bold black running stripes of its default design. His four feet wide apart, Gau balanced on the craft’s hull and whipped a handheld laser pistol from its compartment along his side.

  Before the Terrans could move, Gau fired into the room. The recoilless weapon sent a shaft of molten orange light into the office’s ceiling, inscribing an arc of blackened ceiling tiles as Gau swung the weapon in a wide circle. Rebar twisted and cracked as the ceiling fell in on the guards. Their screams rose above the rubble, but not for long.

  It was a long flight back to Za across Olios 3’s continent-devouring wasteland. But Gau was grateful for the time. Old memories had stirred in him this night; for the first time in the three years since he’d come to Olios 3, Gau found himself thinking of Aival in the present tense. Though unnamed, the presence of that powerful Terran world had lurked around every page of the secret document in Shanazkowitz’s office.

  Gau had a lot of planning to do, a lot of questions to answer. And he would have to move fast—the most pressing matter seemed to have too many answers already.

  “Fate’s Shears?” He turned the name over again, and a shudder reached to the bottom of his chest. Disgust at his fear rose in him; then he remembered the Osk’s lungs laid on that steel table, its vital parts mapped out like a city for the taking.

  He pushed the Carnivore faster.

  2

  She tapped her fingers on the scarred desk, closing tired eyes before she asked the question. “Was it read?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  She let out a sigh of relief at Sergeant Watanabe’s shaky answer.

  “The document wasn’t unsealed, though it was torn up when the roof fell in.”

  She nodded. “Good. Contact the families of the two guards and offer them my deepest condolences.”

  Watanabe shifted uneasily. “Um . . . I’m sorry to have to correct you on this ma’am, but it wasn’t two guards who perished. Johnson’s ID bracelet was discovered in a—a pile of ashes in the incinerator this morning.”

  “Damn it!” She slammed a fist on the desk, making Watanabe jump. “You know whose work this is? It’s Gau Shesharrim. He came here for me.” But she hadn’t paid the price; that had fallen on her men, as it had every day of this pointless war. She barely heard Sergeant Watanabe’s next words.

  “What do you want us to do, General Shanazkowitz?”

  The general allowed herself a minute to slow her breathing before she answered. “Change nothing in the plan. Go ahead as scheduled. One more thing: activate the ShadowStalker protocol.”

  Watanabe hesitated. “Ma’am, do you really think this is the appropriate time? We’ve never successfully—”

  “I know that. But Fate’s Shears is about to change everything. We may never get a better shot at this. Do it.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  A chime rang off the office’s spacious, white-paneled walls. Tor Berkyavik, Special Envoy to the Universal Church, Aival Branch, turned from the spun diamond window. He gave it a dimming command with a wave of one hand: the huge panel darkened, shutting out his panoramic view of the planet below and the band of midnight blue sky above it.

  “Come in.” A curve of ivory wall slithered out of sight, disgorging a man Berkyavik recognized from their brief hyperwave conversation the week before. “Please have a seat, Mr. Gomambwe.” Berkyavik gestured him over to a padded chair.

  The arrival was tall, with brown skin and a bald head smooth as marble. The long robe around his shoulders was golden.

  “Thank you.” He settled his lanky frame in the chair as Berkyavik took the facing seat, adjusting his own white and gold robe of office over his suit. He rested his elbows on the enormous oblong desk between them. Berkyavik had had the mahogany monstrosity imported all the way from Sol System after he accepted this interim ministry from the Aival branch. (And he’d done so over the Aival ministers’ constant whining, though in the end they’d caved. They’d had to: it was one of his conditions for taking the job.)

  “So, Mr. Gomambwe, what can I do for you? You were rather enigmatic over the ’wave. I was a bit surprised you could get out here for an in-person meeting, actually. Things must be very busy for you in our newest parish.”

  “Please, call me Enkidu.” The young minister leaned forward, placing his hands on the very edge of the huge desk. “It’s my parish I wanted to talk to you about. Or rather, it’s about Nheris in general. There’s a . . . change in the air, sir.”

  “Sounds like something you should bring up with the city’s meteorologists, Enkidu, not me.” Berkyavik smiled pleasantly.

  The younger man’s expression went blank before he caught up with the joke; then he offered an uncertain smile. Though his bland façade didn’t change, Berkyavik made his first estimation of Gomambwe in that moment: too serious, and too invested in the gravity of his position to realize when his host was kidding him. If Gomambwe was lucky, it was only the seriousness of youth, something he would grow out of with time. It would do well for him to lighten up. Humor could be a great stress reliever in times like these. It could lighten the burden that came with their faith, if only for a short while.

  “Yes, well . . . this concerns Nheris’ liaison with the Core Worlds Government back in Sol System,” said Gomambwe. “I heard CoG’s been routing a lot of war traffic through Aival space.”

  “We’re a hub out here near the Front. Heavy traffic is our cross to bear, I suppose.” Berkyavik tried out a wink this time and was gratified by a surer grin from the other minister.

  “So I guess you know something big just went through the dedicated stream to Olios 3. CoG was trying to keep it under wraps, but as a special envoy you must have heard something.”

  Berkyavik nodded. “I’ve developed a sense for the moods of the officials I’ve been blessed to work with, especially about anything that pertains to the . . . altercation with our serpentine friends.” His voice deepened with irony on those last words. “So in short, yes; I’ve heard rumors. Did you make this appointment becaus
e you’ve heard something more concrete than rumor?”

  “What I’ve heard is an opportunity,” Gomambwe replied.

  He removed a silver data sliver from his robe and set it on the mahogany desk. A watery holo of Olios 3 coalesced in the air between them. Seen from the distance of its single large moon, one half of the world was a swatch of brilliant blue ocean. The New Pacific Sea was the epicenter of the planet’s ecosystem. By comparison, the scruffy littoral margins of the continent supported a hard-bitten handful of life forms, which survived mostly by their proximity to the sea.

  Gomambwe stopped the holo’s rotation as Olios 3’s single continent came into view. The locations of outposts were marked with pinpoints of light along the coasts, blue for the human side, orange for the enemy. Two much larger colored dots picked out the colonies of Nheris and Za, hunkering on opposite sides of the landmass. Only a few miles beyond the outskirts of each city, a fierce ecotone slashed across the landscape like the cut of a knife: thin grasslands and stunted forests subsumed by a plain of igneous rock, the remains of a catastrophic lava flow. Some cartographer with a sense of humor had named this wasteland the New Great Plains; if the Osk had a name for it, they did not advertise the fact.

  “Nheris’ government is looking for contractors,” said Gomambwe. “Independent parties with the resources and will to come to Olios 3 and set up operations in the New Great Plains. They’re going to make a grab for the no-man’s land.”

  Berkyavik sat up a little straighter in his palatial chair. He let curiosity trickle into his voice. “What for?”

  “All I can get out of them is that it’s to secure Nheris’ perimeter. There are still a few research bases, floral and faunal collecting stations, out in the Plains from when Olios 3 was first being explored.” He highlighted a scattering of blue dots on the edges of the New Great Plains. Berkyavik recalled there had been hopes of terraforming the wasteland in those early days . . . before the human side had found out who they were sharing the planet with. The research stations had been abandoned since the war began in earnest.