Topic: Mercator Arc
"The Gun" sequels the "The Rector" and Mil Kariden has a choice to make. Will the Rector's advice help, or are there other forces at work?
4420 words.
Dessero drove. Mil Kariden rode see-oh behind him and to the right, facing the sliding door of the old military command courier. All the fancy gear had been stripped out long ago, leaving the vehicle a husk of its former self. A optic array had been sprayed on both sides of the door giving it the appearance from the inside that acid had eaten through the metal. The array allowed Kariden to watch the near empty streets of the parish. Yellowish street lamps burned in the rain, their blue filters folded open for the night. Curtains were drawn across glowing windows.
Wipers scraped across the glass windshield. Rain drops fell to replenish. Kariden yawned. The twenty hour days had thrown his cycle out of whack.
“Bunch of skumpin’ spidders up here,” Dessero said turning onto a street and heading south. “We’ll see what’s what.” Dessero was a Raven. He volunteered to run patrols in the parish for the Rector. He did it for the chance to hurt people.
They drove slow and Kariden saw the mob of spids parked in the empty lot of a former building that had been razed after the war. The wheels on the arachnid-like vehicles were mounted on four hydraulic articulated legs filched from planetary exploration probes and heavy construction equipment. Gangs of youths not much older than he, built the machines and formed obstacle racing clubs. A few were testing the loud prowess of their rides, revving the gasoline engines that supplied overall electrical power and hydraulic pressure to the wheel motors. Someone else was walking their spid side to side, wheels locked, dancing it to blaring music with jarring syncopated beats.
Not all of the young people were Parishioners. Which wasn’t a problem. Dessero saw the two older adults in the mix before Kariden. “That look like Weezo to you?”
Kariden linked his visual field to the optic array and zoomed in. The man’s long hair fanned out in spines across his back. He shucked and jived his street hustle. “Yeah. That’s him.”
“I told that skump that if I caught him out here again he was a dead man.”
“You seriously going to kill him?”
“No,” the driver said, never taking his eye from the target out there pushing venom, the local drug. “You are.”
Kariden blinked. The hard cold lump of the gun pressed against his ribs from the holster sown into the inside of his topcoat. He thought of the weapon as a thing to make threats, not something to actually use to injure someone—not that he had a problem with that—or to end a life. “I don’t know if I’m ready.”
“I don’t think Iman cares.” Dessero drove the courier to a stop. Weezo looked up through the bent knees of the spids and without a pause, turned and started running toward the back of the lot where an alley offered hope of escape. “Go! Now! Get that skump!”
Kariden lurched forward and slammed the side door open. He jumped out, caught his feet, and bolted into a full run. He rounded the edge of the parked spids, assaulted with jeers and cheers. Someone threw a bottled drink at him. Weezo was nearing the dark wet wall of the open alley, deciding left or right.
The Raven weave linked with Kariden via radio. “Where’s he going I need to know.”
Weezo jinked toward his decision. “The left the left,” Kariden yelled.
Dessero turned the steering wheel hard and jumped the courier toward the parked spids. A glass bottle exploded against his door. He shoved the shifter into reverse and cranked the wheel, gunned the old command van backward. Wrenched the shifter and cranked the wheel again, spinning tires forward. “I’ll block him at the exit. Keep dogging him.”
The gun thudded against Kariden’s chest like a hammer. Weezo slipped and fell behind a pile of rubbish. He popped up and ducked, lurching into the opposite direction, his quill hair bobbing ridiculously like counterweights. The water on his slick coat shimmered.
“He’s going right! Going right!”
Dessero slammed the brakes. With no room to turn around and a camion lumbering down the street he set reverse and sped-off backwards. The courier slipped in the rain; the Raven did his best not to over steer. He swung the rear of the van into the dark maw of an empty parking slot, did a quick shift and spun the van back onto the road, ignoring the loud blats from the horn of the oncoming truck. “Don’t let that skumper get away,” he shouted to Kariden.
A shot rang out and Kariden ducked, almost fell into muck, his breath hot and fast. Another shot. It had to come from the other man with Weezo. Kariden scanned the party some thirty meters away and didn’t see the shooter. “I’m taking fire.”
“Deal with it.” Idiot.
Kariden fought the gun out its holster. He racked the slide. The excitement had him shaking. He wondered if this was what the Rector wanted him to do. He released the breath he’d been unconsciously holding and fired two shots into the air.
Spidders ducked for cover, shouting. Laughing. Throwing bottles. Rocks. Trash.
He scrambled up and resumed his chase. Rain pelted his face, stung his eyes. Another shot popped. Chips of concrete sprayed from the corner of the nearest building as he passed into the tunnel of the alley.
Weezo was a dark blur racing away from Kariden toward the street beyond, leaping around piles of dark discarded shapes.
Dessero swung a hard left at the intersection to intercept. He took his hand off the wheel, reached into a pocket inside his jacket and fingered a soft vial of venom. He flipped the tiny cap and squeezed a drop onto his tongue. Shoved the vial back into the pocket. The wave hit him and he shook his head as if to clear it.
He swerved around a taxi, ignored the horn blast, and gunned the accelerator.
Kariden stopped, his breath running like an engine. He cradled the fist clenching the gun with his left hand. Hesitated. Weezo’s back was a broad target. Kariden fired high, the bang echoing off the walls.
Weezo stooped and dashed to the wall to hide himself in the shadow. Kariden pursued.
Dessero came upon the alley and swung the courier around, spearing the headlights into the gaping darkness.
Weezo stumbled. Threw his hands up in the glare. His spines raked out.
The Death Raven climbed out of the van. Unholstered his Mekmore.
Kariden slowed, his gun held out, aimed it at nothing in particular, his pulse slamming in his neck. He couldn’t think. He just moved toward Weezo. And Dessero. A man lost in brilliance surrounded by scintillating needles of hard rainfall.
Weezo thrust his hands out, backing up toward the wall. “No man its dry. Ain’t nothin’ goin’ on.”
Dessero said nothing to him. He spoke to Kariden. “End him.”
“No man!” Weezo hands danced in front of him like the frantic wings of a bird. “I ain’t sellin’ man. Ain’t selling’. Settin’ up a race. I swear man. That’s all.” He dared a glance to Kariden whose face was bright smear above his dark clothes. Mouth tight and grim. “Ask ‘em,” he said nodding his head toward the spidders.
Kariden stretched his aching fingers off the grip, then closed them tightly again. He couldn’t steady the gun. The rain in his eyes turned the world into a child’s bad watercolor.
“Kariden . . .” Dessero stressed. The Raven had moved so that the ambient gloom from the rain slick walls brought out his features. The tattoo on the left side of his jaw looked as if a lover had reached from behind him and smearing two ink stained fingers along the hard edge of bone. The mark held Kariden mesmerized. It was as if those simple strokes lent the man his cruelty. His inhumanity. Dessero’s eyes cut to him and Kariden shuddered.
Dessero flicked on the generator to his laser gun. It began to whine and hum.
Kariden imaged the gun being brought to bear on him, and . . . his gun popped loud in the alley, echoing like a thunderclap.
Weezo howled, sinking to his knees, then fell over. His hands pressed against his gut. Blood pooled behind his fingers. Spilled over.
Dessero exploded into rage. “I said ‘end him’ you skumping idiot!” He stepped over and boxed Kariden in the ear.
Mil Kariden’s head swam. He had no idea what he was getting into. Numb, he had no idea what to feel. Couldn’t comprehend what was expected of him. Beating someone up was one thing. But this . . . There had to be better ways of dealing with these instances. None came to mind.
Weezo lay moaning and mumbling incoherent words. He might live if they got him to a butcher. Kariden watched a small red prick of light waver across the man’s torso. It found the heart, paused. A flash of light erupted there, searing clothes and flesh. Weezo was no more.
Dessero swung his gun arm around pointing in Kariden’s general direction. “Move,” he said with dead calm. A gunshot came from where the alley met the empty lot of spidders, the bullet whizzing and whining off the brick wall. Kariden stumbled out of the Raven’s way.
The Mekmore hummed, blowing a kiss of death to the red dot on the other man’s chest. He fell over with a final pained grunt.
Dessero shut down the Mekmore’s generator and stowed the gun. He stared at Kariden with disgust. “You want to be a peace office, you better carry out your duties.” He paused. Spit in the rain. “Or find another line of work.”
Kariden had nothing to say. Life had ended here and the enormity of that fact felt as if it were pulling him under water. As if he had been tossed into the Crater Sea to drown. He watched Dessero step toward what was left of Weezo.
The Raven grabbed the dead man by the collar and started dragging him toward the courier. He looked up at Kariden’s frozen form. “Go get the other one, you skumpin’ gawf.”
Kariden nodded and ran. He needed to run just to get the nervous energy out of his body. He wanted to scream and tear things apart. Beat someone. And oddly, he wanted to fuck.
The damage to the man was no worse than Weezo’s wound. The rain had dampened the smoldering cloth. Kariden did not want to look into the finger wide hole through heart and lung and shoulder blade. Dragging the body was hard work and just the kind of exertion he needed to use the adrenalin dumped into his system.
The spidders did not bother him. They returned to their business. Typical night in Cratertown.
A small group of bystanders had gathered at the ends of the covered boardwalk flanking the courier. The night rain brought a chill and they stood hunched in their coats and ponchos, hands deep in pockets, watching with dull eyes.
Kariden thought to offer an explanation as Dessero helped him load the body into the courier. But the older, more experienced man kept silent and Kariden had no intention of stepping further out of bounds with him. Dessero shot him all manner of hateful glares. Kariden felt small and useless. Stupid. A skumping gawf.
Chore done, Kariden sat once again in the defunct commanding officer’s seat, the bodies at his feet. He wondered about the men’s weaves, which were technically still active and would die off when they could no longer extract energy from their hosts. With the right tools it was possible to gather memories and restore some semblance of their personalities.
The man he dragged through the alley would still be alive if he hadn’t fired shots at them. Would have gotten off with the same warning that Weezo had been given some time ago. He made a fatal error. Kariden tried to weave link with him, but the only response was the dead man’s identifier: Mondo.
Dessero snatched the courier onto the road, nearly throwing Kariden out of the seat. He drove west, passing the intersection to the north. Kariden suspected that perhaps they were going to sink the bodies off the piers in that direction, but apparently not. “What are we doing?”
Dessero glanced back, returned his eyes to the street. “Gonna send a message.” His voice came cold as the downpour. The wipers slammed to and fro.
A message. They were headed for the district were Weezo had lived. He wasn’t a member of Jaxsen’s little troupe. That man had sulked away from the Parish after taking his threat seriously; Kariden recalled breaking the man’s face. Jaxsen’s absence left a vacuum. It became filled by men like Weezo, nonaffiliated vice sellers who thought they could score on easy prey.
The Rector would have none of it.
Death was dealt.
Kariden had spoken to the Rector about this. He called up a recorded experience stored in his weave. He closed his eyes, the interior of the courier replaced by the terrace of the Rectory.
They had been enjoying a reprieve from the rain, a rent in the clouds let the pink baleful eye of the sun shine down, adding brightness to the otherwise sulfur haze filtered through dense clouds. Blue lamps on the terrace balanced the tint.
“Is killing really necessary,” Kariden asked the Rector.
The Rector leaned on the handrail, hands clasped, his Uplift swinging from his neck. The Rector’s topcoat was open and hung like dark robes. “Here, I’m afraid so. It is the manner of preparing the proper foundation of a thriving society.”
“How’s that?” Kariden leaned on the rail likewise. The city spread before him, a pile of low buildings falling toward the sea.
“Laws of deep antiquity cover the accepted behavior of man from his peers. Codex Ur-Nammu, Codex Hammurabi, and Codex Mosai are of noted study, each very simple, and enlightening in their common sense.”
Kariden was quiet. He let the man lecture.
“Codex Mosai is perhaps the most important. While the other two established punishments for lawbreaking, the Decalogue contained the foundation for a prosperous society, a society meant to last. Here. Let me flash them.”
Kariden allowed the weave link and soon eidetic knowledge of these ancient texts blossomed in his mind.
The Rector continued. “The first five set up the philosophical and psychological underpinning for the society. The cohesive glue. Everyone in the society must have the same beliefs. Otherwise, schisms occur. Often—as history proves—with disastrous results. The last five are violations that if allowed would be detrimental to the existence of the society. You can’t have members of your society allowed the will to violate the natural rights of others. It diminishes the population. Incurs grave conflicts. A society without consentual rules of behavior cannot last.”
Kariden interjected in the Rector’s pause, “Thou shall not kill.” It came almost as a whisper.
“But kill who?” The Rector answered quickly. Passionately. “Who is in your society Mil? Everyone?” Kariden remained quiet, waited for the answer. “If you apply the Decalogue to spiritual matters, then yes, thou shall not kill everyone. But in practicality, thou shall not kill members of your own society.” He paused then to study the young man. Kariden held his gaze and looked away only when overwhelmed by the intensity of the man’s eyes, the determination boiling over.
The Rector turned his head back to the sprawling city of Cratertown. “Thou shall not kill,” he whispered slowly as if conjuring the totality of its meaning. “Societies throughout history have never applied this rule to every member of humanity. We segregate ourselves into Us and Them. Into Friend and Foe. What is a military but a legal means to kill others in a structured consentual format?”
Mil had to nod at that.
“You see, Kariden, the ancients understood uncivility. They understood that personal freedom and social security were two axes of a vector plot. More of one is less of the other. Societies try to strike a balance. Societies with great personal liberties have little in the means of security and the people are at the mercy of those stronger than themselves. Dominance rules. The first act of bringing civility to fledgling societies is to subdue those individuals that prey upon others. In the ancient codices, death was a punishment for the slightest transgression. It sent a message to others that this behavior will not be tolerated.
“If you are to be peace officer of the Parish, you may have to kill to protect our people from those we deem foes.”
“Yeah, but . . .”
The Rector turned to him. “Yes,” he prompted.
“The people in the parish can go outside the parish to get drugs, or doxies, or anything else. So what does it matter?”
The Rector nodded with a knowing hint of a smile. “Yes they can, Mil. And that is their business. But for many, the parish is a sanctuary. A sanctuary from those very things. We have welcomed recovering addicts. Should we allow that which almost destroyed them into our domain?”
Kariden shook his head. “But death? Isn’t that extreme?”
“Yes. It is extreme. It needs to be.” He gazed back to the city. “Look out there Mil. It’s pure anarchy. And people still come here. Because it’s also pure freedom. There is no law. No courts. No jails. There is Raum, and his edicts, and his dungeons, but no consent of the people. All here have learned that if you leave the Raven’s alone, they will leave you alone. You think Raum and his men earned this by slapping wrists?”
Kariden said nothing.
“No, they haven’t. Those men understand primal societies. They understand dominance and submission.”
A moment of silence. Kariden pulled away from the rail and ran a hand through his short hair. “I don’t know if I can. Kill.”
The Rector nodded. “Perhaps not.” He looked into the sky to judge the clouds. They raced with their burden of rain. Veils begun to feather around the disk of the sun. “Submit to God, Mil. The First Son and Iman hold open the Gates to your Path. Don’t be afria—”
Something struck Kariden’s shoulder jostling him from the reminiscence.
“What the skump are you doing? Sleeping?” Dessero glowered, having craned his neck after putting the courier in parking gear.
“No. I was—”
“I don’t give a shit.” The Raven shoved a tricorn hat on his head and opened his door. He got out into the downpour, slammed the door, and slide the side door open. Water shot out of the back gutters of his hat. He climbed in, pulling the door closed but not latched, and stooped walked over the bodies to the back of the van.
“What are we doing?” Kariden asked as Dessero unlatched a tool bin and hefted out a large gunlike device.
“Sending a message. Like I said.” Dessero handed him the device. “Here.”
Kariden took the heavy thing. He hadn’t seen anything like this. It looked like some kind of construction tool. And harpoon. Like what they used on the sea to hunt the larger sponge eel.
Dessero scooped up an armful of small gauge chain. At one end was a heavy weighted ball. The man stepped over the bodies, slid the side door open. Rain gushed in. “Come on,” Dessero yelled. Kariden scrambled out with the strange harpoon in his hands.
They had stopped at a street corner. As soon as Kariden stood beside him, the Raven shouted again, “Rain’s gonna scatter the targeting laser to shit, but that pole’s about ten meters tall. Dial that in and feed the chain here. See how it works?” He pointed to the loading mechanism.
“Yeah,” Kariden yelled. His hood was useless in the torrent so he brushed it back. Water got down into his clothes. He found the range dial and set it, then fed the chain into the mechanism so that the heavy ball was primed to launch.
Dessero tossed Mondo out of the courier like the body was a cord of wood. Weezo followed. Thunder clapped. “What are you waiting on,” the older man yelled. “Let’s get this done.”
Kariden shuddered and armed the chain launcher by toggling a switch. A compressor inside the gun screamed to life, painfully loud while drawing in air. A needle gauge reported the pressure and soon a small green diode glowed. He aimed the launcher up toward the box of the street lamp thrust over the road on a metal pipe secured to the concrete pole. He fired and the ball and chain sped out, arced over the extension arm. The weight pulled the chain back down. It banged on the tin sheeting over the sidewalk, chain rattling, bounced off and swung like a pendulum, the chain having kinked and locked at the neck of the lamp box.
Dessero had Weezo’s body hooked through the collar of the dead man’s coat to another length of chain. He hooked this to the lead chain and took the launcher out of Kariden’s hands. “Good shot,” he mumbled, releasing the chain from the gun and handing it back. “Let’s swing him.” The man walked toward the heavy hanging ball.
Kariden slung the launcher over his shoulder and followed Dessero. Dawn was fast approaching and a few people had come out onto the sidewalk to watch. They said nothing and did nothing. The mark on Dessero’s jaw was warning enough.
The two men heaved Weezo’s body up, gripping wet chain through thick gloves, working the links down the extension arm until it caught in the crook. Weezo dangled against the concrete pole.
Dessero removed the weighted ball, cut a link of the lead chain leaving it to sway beneath the body, and secured the ball to the new end of it. They hung Mondo’s body.
Kariden looked that their work. He guessed it was better than dragging the bodies through the streets. Some Raven’s had done that. “Is this where they lived,” he asked.
“No,” Dessero said as they climbed aboard the courier. “The next block down.”
“Then why this street? I don’t understand.”
“You will soon.” Dessero had the engine rumbling and he drove the van away from the block where the dead men lived. He selected the crowded parking lot of a rickety apartment building. He got out of the van, opened the side door and reached in to his immediate right, and grabbed the long case tucked against the wall. “Let’s go.”
Kariden followed him into the building, and up stairs that seemed on the verge of collapse. On the third story Dessero yelled, asking if anyone was home. A haggard man poked a head out from between a door and the jamb. The Raven asked him if anyone lived in the apartment whose door he pointed at. The man nodded his head vigorously, then shot it back inside. Bolts were thrown.
Dessero banged on the door he had indicated. It opened a crack. “I need to use your window,” he commanded.
A young woman with unkempt hair and sad eyes had seen his tattoo and opened the door. She stepped out of the way, holding herself in anxiety. Dessero went to the window that looked down the street toward the street lamp with its hanging cargo. He unlocked the window and heaved it open.
He pointed to the case. “Open it. Set it up,” he told Kariden. He looked at the young woman. “Some tea would be nice.”
She started and moved to the kitchen as Kariden unlatched the case and removed the pieces of a long kinetic precision rifle. It looked like a Cenestrian model. The Rector’s student peace officer began assembling it.
“You might want to hurry,” Dessero goaded. “Don’t want them to pull the bodies down before you’re done.”
Kariden glanced at him with worry before locking the final two pieces in place. He positioned the rifle at the window, resting the barrel on the sill. Rain beaded on the muzzle. He half expected Dessero to take over and get down behind the gun. This didn’t happen. Dread filled him.
Dessero nodded to coax him. Kariden took a shooters stance, bending down to one knee in a stable squat. He linked his visual field to the targeting sensors. An white-light and infrared mixed overlay drifted in the center of his vision. The bodies dangled as sunlight bleed into the eastern sky.
“When they come,” Dessero said, “ I want every other one shot.”
Kariden swallowed. Intimidation and busting people up was one thing, but this . . . “I don’t think I can.” His voice came out small and weak.
He heard a rustle of cloth, then the increasing whine of a laser gun’s power generator. A cold bit of metal pressed behind his ear. “What are you doing?”
“Giving you the proper motivation.”
Kariden’s mind raced. “You’re asking me to murder.”
Dessero laughed. “I’m not asking.” A beat up truck pulled up to the lamp post. Four men jumped out. “Ain’t a one of them innocent. Weezo’s buddies will just take his place. Is that what you want?”
“The Rector wont condone this.” The first round locked onto a target. The second began to acquire.
“Doud is a fool,” Dessero said at Kariden ear. “Full of lofty ideas. Cratertown belongs to Raum. The old man would be better off taking the parish elsewhere. Raum would just a soon destroy the city than give it up.” He pressed the muzzle of his gun harder against Kariden’s skull.
The rifle was ready to fire. “You won’t kill me. The Rector will know it was you.”
“And he will do what exactly Kariden?”
No answer.
“He will get himself another jackboy. That’s what he will do. One that can do this job.”
The man with the rifle sighed. Had these men done anything to become enemies of the Parish? He couldn’t recognize their faces compared against a list of offenders stored in his weave’s caches. The Rector wanted to strike fear into the hearts of evildoers, and demanded execution in service to justice, not murder. Never all out murder. But those ideas paled in comparison to the stark reality of self-preservation. He could feel the vibrations of the hungry Mekmore against his skull.
Kariden became a killer.
I gave it a once over, but there still might be typographical and grammatic errors. If you see one before I do, please let me know.
