Absence of Blade Read online

  “I know about the bases,” he said shortly.

  “Nheris Central wants to turn them into secure military outposts. And CoG has already earmarked funds for the project.”

  “Have Nheris Central and CoG also found a way to hide the heat signature of these bases? Because otherwise I see a problem with this scheme: the serpents’ Fleet will blast those bases to rubble from orbit the second they get the scent of them.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” Gomambwe replied. His flippancy made Berkyavik suspicious. He swore there was a mischievous twinkle in the youngster’s eye—hope for him yet, Berkyavik thought.

  “As I said, CoG has set aside funds already . . . but their resources aren’t infinite. I contacted you, sir, because I thought it only fair the Church receive a consultation on the matter. We have the money, and much more local influence than CoG here on the Front. Much more mobility for a project like this.”

  “You’re thinking the White Arrows would helm this effort? Not the Church proper?”

  Gomambwe nodded. “Weren’t you with the missionary branch, before you came here as envoy?” He plucked at his own golden robe to illustrate the difference in their rank.

  Berkyavik held a hand palm up, gently chastising. “My dear Enkidu, I am still with the White Arrows, along with holding my current ministry. One does not cease being an Arrow, no more than one ceases to understand the truth of the universe. They’re connected, after all.”

  Gomambwe dropped his affected ignorance. “You think they’d be interested, then?”

  “In expanding the sphere of the Church to another world? Oh, yes.” Especially that world. Berkyavik turned his gaze to the shaded window, brightened the diamond pane with another gesture. Again it displayed its impressive view of Diego Two, the city kilometers below the vast spire that housed his office. He let his expression become hazy as he considered the possibilities. “There may indeed be an opportunity there.”

  Berkyavik swiveled back to Gomambwe. “But there’s still the problem of the Osk.”

  Gomambwe smiled; it was not a nice smile. “From what I’ve heard, sir, Za and the Fleet won’t be a problem. It sounds like the Osk won’t be a problem ever again.”

  There was a hush in the office, the kind that forms between two men who understand each other without words. After a minute or so, Gomambwe’s gaze wandered to the window over Diego Two.

  “Look at that.”

  Beyond the diamond panel, a tumult of iron-gray clouds encroached on the ultramarine sky, heavy with the promise of rain. The office darkened around them, and they watched in silence as the first droplets began to patter on the pane.

  3

  Mose Attarish leaned against the same wall he had on the day of Gau’s briefing. He slouched in a careful posture of nonaggression, his pupils narrow white dashes as he listened to the debriefing session between Shesharrim and the underfed official, Tev. It was not going well; the sharp, bitter scents of anger and chagrin filled the air, making the hairs at the nape of his neck prickle. Mose would have immensely preferred not to be here, but certain mistakes on his part had compelled him to attend.

  Tev’s shoulders shook with anger. “What in Oskaran’s name were you thinking?” he yelled as the dark-haired seph stood before him, eyes closed, saying nothing. “I assigned you this job in the hope you would execute it swiftly and covertly, not alert half the population of Nheris to our plan. You should have aborted the mission as soon as you realized we had the wrong location. Shanazkowitz will be impossible to get at, now that she knows we’re after her. Blowing up a building was not the work of the skilled seph we recruited two years ago!”

  Gau took a step forward, opening his eyes to slits, and said softly, “First of all, I did not blow up the entire building—just Shanazkowitz’s office. I was lucky to get that far,” he finished dryly.

  “I take responsibility for that,” said Mose from his corner. He dipped his snout in deference as Gau turned. “Shanazkowitz was one step ahead of my intelligence, and you went into enemy territory with inaccurate knowledge because of it. I dulled your effectiveness.” He made the sign gesture for apology. The other seph seemed wary, but after a moment he responded with a corresponding hand sign of acceptance.

  Behind Gau, Tev sighed. “Did you at least manage to gather any useful intelligence while you were there?” His voice lowered dangerously. “Something to justify disobeying our direct orders?”

  Mose saw Gau give Tev a straight look. “Only a few policy documents. The guards arrived before I had a chance to explore further.”

  Tev leaned forward, opening his mouth to reply, but Gau was already walking away. As he reached the door, he looked back over his shoulder.

  “I plan to make use of my leave for a time. This brush with capture has given me much to think about.”

  Tev’s jaw dropped farther. “You’re retreating from your duties now? But we’re at a crucial point in the war!”

  “If you have an objection, take it up with the Surarch of Za,” said Gau. “Otherwise, leave me to think. I’ve decided there are . . . certain matters it is time for me to reevaluate.”

  He turned brusquely from the open-mouthed Tev as the door blossomed open—but he did not step out right away.

  “I suppose this is our parting, Mose Attarish,” Gau whispered from the corner of his mouth. “May your blades remain sharp.”

  Mose was perplexed. Among the stable of sephs fighting for the colony, Gau’s determination was legend; rumor had it he had risen from nothing to become the most accomplished seph in Za.

  “What are you running from?” Mose whispered back. “A failed mission? You’ve cut through worse setbacks than this in our war.”

  Gau chuckled—a dry, self-deprecating sound—and replied, “Under different circumstances, you would have learned the distinction between quitting out of cowardice and ending the game with a tactical retreat.”

  Gau left. The door was still closing when Mose slipped through it, ignoring a startled bark from Tev.

  Already halfway down the hall, Gau turned. “What is it?”

  “Maybe Tev believes that line about thinking things over, but I don’t,” Mose said. “Something scared you on this last mission.”

  The dark mane around Gau’s shoulders started to bristle, and his scent turned dangerously sharp. “Are you . . .”

  “I’m not calling you a coward,” Mose said quickly, intuiting what Gau was thinking. He had a strong impulse to lower his gaze. A crystalline fury had flashed in Gau’s eyes at the inferred insult, an angry reaction that went beyond the normal pride sephs took in their bravery.

  Mose kept his gaze level. “I will need to know what happened.”

  Gau walked up to him slowly until they were less than a body length apart—closer than was courteous. He undid the fastenings on his cloak stiffly, one-handed, and pulled it aside. A dark burn extended from his right arm across his chest, covered with transparent medical gel. Mose winced.

  “What happened was I was nearly killed by one of Shanazkowitz’s traps,” said Gau. “The physicians say it should heal with no lasting organ damage, as long as I rest.” He laboriously fastened his cloak.

  “Tell Tev what you just told me. You’re entitled to medical leave—”

  “Tev won’t let me stop,” Gau almost snapped. “But I’ve had too many close calls. Even the famous Gau Shesharrim has a breaking point.” His emphasis dripped acid.

  Mose glimpsed a depth of bitterness there he’d do well to avoid. “I know the war seems interminable,” he said, “but no one expects you to fight forever.”

  “Yes, they do,” Gau said flatly. He brushed past, and this time Mose did not follow.

  A local week had passed when Mose heard of the incident. He made a habit of taking his meal breaks in one of Za central command’s cavernous communal warrens, the better to swap news and rumors
with the officials and other sephs who lived and worked there. He had his formal intelligence systems, of course, but Mose knew the most useful data often came to those who also kept their nostrils open for fresh scents. This time he’d gotten one of the colony’s orbital traffic controllers for a meal companion.

  “It was the strangest thing,” she said solemnly, hunched over her half-finished meal like a starving spider. “About two days ago, a group of spaceplanes detached from the Terran fleet and entered a low orbit over Za.”

  “A bombing run?” Mose asked, incredulous. “That tactic hasn’t worked in years.”

  Both colonies had projectile defense systems, but neither had used them for their intended purpose for a long time. The opposing sides had quickly discovered the ease with which the other could detect and disable their projectile weapons. Most of the hot war now took place in high orbit, where hyperkinetic ordnance could make the distance between the two fleets trivial.

  The cities still maintained their old missile defense systems as protection from any space debris resulting from the war above their heads. The Fleet did not maintain a geosynchronous orbit above Za, precisely to minimize that possibility, but there was still a chance.

  The orbital traffic controller jabbed her snout forward, an Osk nod. “It looked like they intended to try anyway . . . but before we could shoot them down, the planes broke orbit and ran.”

  “You mean they didn’t drop a payload?” Mose asked.

  “Well . . . radar did catch something.” The controller shifted on the bench. “A mass of indeterminate size, not moving under power. Almost like a cloud. The blip only lasted a second.”

  Mose’s gut tightened. “And the chemical and biological agent tests?”

  “Negative. Anyway, we all still seem to be alive,” she said.

  No longer hungry, he pushed his tray forward and slipped from the cavern, climbing through central command’s tunnels into wan morning sunlight. Mose stepped out onto the smooth white street.

  In the city of Za, there were no sharp corners. The curbs slid smoothly into curving streets and swept upward into polished buildings on either side of the broad avenues. The whole of Za seemed sheathed in the same integument, a polymer the texture of ceramic that could polarize to capture solar energy as heat. As Mose watched, the streets and buildings were darkening from ivory to a daytime black.

  Tensile organic webbing stretched between buildings in some places, attached at all conceivable heights and angles. Public and personal transport cars literally crawled along it, synthetic muscles in their legs bunching and sliding over each other.

  The buildings themselves were a short forest of blades and spires; the tallest of them, Za central command, was a pyramid perhaps half the height of the puniest skyscraper in Nheris. It was not height but depth that mattered to Osk: the city of Za was mostly underground, in warrens and caverns carved from the bedrock of the planet. Mose heard it had been designed in imitation of Oskaran’s great cities, sunk deep into the limestone cliffs and caves of their homeworld. The nesting grounds of his people.

  A few thousand Osk had chosen to found colonies and even entire Surarchies on multi-species worlds—successfully, Mose could attest. But those colonies had to make compromises, sacrifices. Even a multi-species world must have a founding race, and a people were never truly free when they lived under another species’ laws. The Aival colony had been proof enough of that. But Za was a free colony, theirs down to the bedrock. The Osk had made its past, and it would be to the Osk to shape its future.

  Mose drew in a deep, satisfied breath at the thought, enjoying the sensation of air filling his lungs, drawing life from Olios 3’s alien atmosphere—

  Except something was wrong.

  Instead of life, what entered his lungs was something heavy and oppressive. The air outside had become a suffocating blanket that stuffed itself into his mouth and down his throat of its own volition, choking him. Mose collapsed to his knees, clawing at his throat. Stress hormones flooded his nervous system as his panicked brain began repeating a single message over and over: No air! No air! Can’t breathe! Can’t . . . breathe . . .

  He sprawled on the sidewalk, still clutching feebly at his throat.

  Somewhere in a corner of his mind, Mose realized he wasn’t the only one suffocating: on the street beside him, hulls crunched in a grinding scream as two hovering transports rammed together. A cacophony of crumpling titanium echoed down the street, vehicles swerving into each other’s paths in their high-velocity death throes. Shrapnel winged vaguely above his head. Plunging movements swam in his vision, as climbing transports dropped off their webs like dead insects to smash on the diamond-hard street. The city was in the grip of a silent dying: there were no shouts, no cries of fear or pain; no one was able to make them. And the gasps for breath would be hard to hear under the scream and tear of metal.

  Pain came now. His lungs still struggled to take in air, and it came, but with no nourishment attached: only an agony that raked his throat with every futile breath, red-hot claws dragging themselves down the inside of his trachea. Every subsequent second of life was one too many.

  Seizures passed over him in waves. In the clear moments between them, Mose wondered if he would have brain damage. That was an odd thought, and if he could have laughed he would have: he was going to die right here on this curb and he was worried about a little brain damage?

  He tried to focus through the fog, tried to still his shuddering body and slow his pounding heart as he’d been taught long ago in seph training. The focusing exercises were meant to control fear and pain, and they would slow the depletion of vital gases from his blood; help him live a few minutes longer. Mose wanted those minutes, however few they were.

  Writhing on the white metal of the sidewalk, he didn’t even notice the shadow until it spoke.

  “I didn’t expect the effects to be so graphic.” A near-faded memory of that voice brought Mose back from a beckoning haze. He stared up at the hard features of Gau Shesharrim, emerging like a blade from that thickening mist. Gau’s voice seemed to come from far away.

  “I imagined Fate’s Shears would involve perhaps a minute or two of choking and wheezing and then death. But you’ve managed to drag this out to three minutes. I’m quite impressed.”

  A kind of dim surprise flooded Mose as he realized that Gau stood impossibly apart from the chaos surrounding them. The small seph seemed to study him before responding to the question Mose could not speak.

  “Fate’s Shears is the name of a nanotech virus designed by General Shanazkowitz. Or at least she approved it. The virus targets the artificial alveoli in our lungs and dismantles them. You are suffocating in Olios 3’s natural atmosphere.”

  Mose’s clouding eyes stared up at Gau questioningly. He looked down at himself.

  “I already knew all about it,” Gau explained. “A document in Shanazkowitz’s office held the full details of its design and the spaceplanes they used to release it into Za.” He pulled back his dark hair from the side of his neck, revealing a small tube anchored to his throat. “I had enough time to construct a defense. A synthetic feed directly into my bloodstream. I will survive this.”

  Gazing into Mose’s face, Gau felt an uncanny prickle. Was that a glimmer of anger in his features? He seemed to ask why with every twitch. Gau shook his head, almost regretful.

  “You showed concern for me, earlier,” he said. “I’ll make this quick for you.” Gau advanced on the spot where Mose lay. He was about to extend his blade when a huge shadow fell on them. He froze, the hairs on the back of his neck prickling. He turned his head upward, and his eyes slowly widened with awe and disbelief.

  Hovering above them was a gray craft that looked like it had been inexpertly cobbled together from different-sized blocks of metal. On the underside, engines glowed blue fore and aft. A rectangular hole slid open directly above them, shining a white
spotlight on Mose where he lay on the sidewalk. The beam illuminated half of Gau where he stood over him, still gaping.

  Gau dashed out of the spotlight and up the ruined street. Blurry figures descended from the craft hovering above Mose, their shapes eating up the light. He was strangely calm. In his line of work, Mose was no stranger to death. He saw it almost every day and had caused plenty of it himself. Perhaps this was just his time to go.

  The figures clustered around him, and the light went away.

  And then so did he.

  4

  It was rainy and miserable the morning of the crash.

  Black-gray clouds rose in a massif over the outskirts of the wasteland, lashing the coast and scrubby hinterlands with rain. Za was drowning. Water stood in its streets, ran in rivulets down its tunnels, streamed like tears down its spires. Gray lichen had begun to grow on some of the buildings. Rainwater had spilled down the city’s open throats and created lakes in its vast warrens. Under the new growth and the water, Za’s skin still dutifully turned from black to white with every turn of the sun, but the city was dying. Each day it reacted a little slower. No Osk were left to care for it.

  A resounding bang echoed over the wind-scoured plain. To the east of the city a line of fire slashed across the pre-dawn sky above the New Great Plains, trailing the sonic boom in its wake.

  A Terran cruiser plummeted toward the jagged plain in a wreath of flame, crippled engines screaming and coughing as they strained to keep going. The craft had been damaged before launch, and pushed to its last iota of power to get even this far. The wind screamed as it whipped over the disc-shaped hull, buffeting the cruiser this way and that.