Thoughts on "Presage"
Topic: Notes

Yesterday I printed out what I had written on "Presage" and had doubts. Some parts were a chore to read, some parts weren't giving me the emotions I wanted to have, and some seem to be trivial information.

The odd thing about this is that it reflects that if I attempt to do something with a definitive plot, it turns to shit. All the work that I did on "Presage" was to flesh out the core of the story that I had been working on and which would have been included in the final drafts. I reread that and am amazed that I was already hitting all the notes I wanted to hit in something more off the cuff and stream of thought, and with much better flow. This section would have been Part 4, if I keep writing "Presage" they way I'm currently doing.

But Part 1, 2 and the unwritten 3 are really too far from the climax, and though they are ment to tell the reader something about Roco Bellero, I feel that what I wrote before tells a better story of who the man is without all the extra bullshit. Sometimes cheese and pepperoni are all the toppings you need.

So . . . what am I going to do with parts 1 and 2, with the volopter action scenes and the girl he had to kiss to get the message he had another job? I don't know. Maybe scrap them. That part of the process. Maybe rework part 1, because what was going on with Eckon and the human machines has something to do with the overall story.

But I like what I was doing before I meddled with it, so I'll have to pick up where I left off. After-all, do we really care how Roco gets to Mercator? Its what he does on Mercator that drives the other stories forward, (and in some sense backward.)

I already have 3800 words on it (and it will be titled "Presage") and will post when it's done.

 

 

The Codus
Topic: Mercator Arc

The Codus

 

The hand trembled as if afflicted with palsy, the fingers splayed wide, reaching. It was an ancient skeletal thing, thin layer of taut muscles straining under a mottled gray parchment of skin roped with a net of veins, and draped tight over cables of tendon.

The summoned man the owner of the hand reached for stepped back in horror, as if to be touched by such a thing would set him to death by nanophage. The living corpse had surprised him by lunging out of the chair that seemed to have been made of thick slabs of black marble. There was no distinction between the chair and the floor it merged with, or the walls and ceiling of the circular room. The jaw in that sunken face fell open. Eyes like hard little marbles filmed with cataracts gleamed in a cone of light that seemed to shine down upon them from nothing but a point in the air.

“He has come,” the living corpse said in a voice strong and confident, not from the vocal cords, but from a phonic array in the thing’s mouth.

It is not a thing, Rector Doud reminded himself. And he—he!—is not dead. Apaxan machines had kept him alive, machines so refined as to be indistinguishable from biology. Machines that made the implants woven throughout Doud’s body seem like clockwork by comparison.

The hand fell upon the Rector’s left shoulder, clutching, steadying the frail being that pulled itself erect. Doud gasped. It was like being touched by death. What had they called it in the Deep Antiquity? The Grim Reaper? Yes. Give him a hooded cloak and a scythe and he would be the very picture.

“The war is over,” the living corpse added through his breathless mouth. His eyes were fixed at nothing in particular, as if looking through Doud, or the wall. Or the planet. The man had long since transcended optic senses.

Doud’s hand had moved to the cuff hanging from the skinny arm, but stopped short as if it could not complete the command to grip that wrist, even to pull it away. “Who has come, Codus?” he asked through quivering jaw, breath fogging out of him; it was always cold in here.

The Codus’ head dropped suddenly as if his life-force had just fled from the news. The grip on Doud’s shoulder lessened. “Joachim,” the Codus whispered. He seemed on the verge of collapse and Doud did then take the man’s wrist as it slipped. He thought to be gentle so as not to fracture the birdlike bones, but the flesh felt strong and unnaturally dense beneath his own. Doud helped the Codus to the chair.

“Who is this Joachim?” Doud asked. “Has Pavona sought to intervene?” They would be no better governors.

The Codus sagged in the chair, motionless as a true corpse, like a robot shut down. Or a puppet laid aside. His voice had wound down from its youthful command presence to something tired and worn out. Something that better matched his physical form. “The white god . . . who has become as his bride.”

Gibberish. Doud frowned his displeasure. The Codus was capable of steady lucid insight, which often trailed into whimsical nonsense. Doud felt agitated as well. Something was not quite right. He felt pending doom as if he were about to step off a precipice. Hadn’t the Codus sometimes said someone was coming to stop the war? It was always a possibility that someone from the Expanse would step in, so Doud never thought such comments remarkable. But hadn’t the Codus said the same a time or two before the war even started?

He believed so. The trouble here was that the war took them all by surprise. No one saw it coming. They all believed themselves better than that, but tensions between the factions escalated and within a single twenty hour day, violence erupted.

Violence begat violence.

Both sides fought to destroy the antipodal other.

But in his crazy talk, the Codus knew.

Or did he? There was always a war somewhere at some time, and someone would stop it. It was as prophetic as saying a man would find a coin. The Codus wasn’t a prophet; Doud never made the mistake of believing so. The only prophet was Iman, the Last Prophet, and the only war he warned about was the Final War.

And Iman never tossed out zingers like “the man sheathed in milk will battle the licorice god.” And to hear it said so seriously added a pathetic humor. At first Doud laughed at the absurdity of the phrase being uttered with such dreadful sincerity. After a while, the repeated expression became tiresome. The old Codus certainly believed what he was saying. And that was the saddest part of it all.

A bride-like white god and a man sheathed in milk . . . were they the same? No, Doud stressed to himself. Senseless drivel from a mind mostly broken.

The curved part of the wall behind the throne lost some of its thereness. Forms wiggled through that vaporous section. Cloying odors filled the room. Apaxan. They moved forward on three thrice bifurcated tentacles spaced equally around the low bulbs of their dark, splotchy bodies. A short thick stalk connected the body bulb to a fanning triangular . . . Doud had no idea what to call it but it looked like a lateen sail from one of the proa out on the sea, bulging full of wind. It was like a head, but it was so much unlike a head. It swelled in the middle above the stalk root to each tip and thinned at the edges, a trio of thin tapered proboscises waved from each apex, tucked between them, closed puckered orifices. The edges along the lateen were lipped slashes, bordered with small fleshy barbs and open pores. The lips seemed to be forever propped open by a grillwork of cartilage, exposing a purplish-pink mat of wet spongy matter beyond.

Odors vented from the pores, the chemical mode of communication of the apaxan. The beings had two other modes. One was by sound, more a cacophony of animal noises than any human language. The other mode was what they would soon do. Doud had seen it before.

The throne of the Codus began to recline and an opening seemed to eat itself into being at the headrest. The apex probes of the three apaxan found their compatible orifices as they met around and under the throne, entangled. They were neurally connected, but their number was insufficient to give rise to an emergent separate identity. The apaxan under the headrest reached up with its probes, finding the pores in the Codus’ neck.

The old man twitched. The head lolled and Doud thought the fragile sinew holding it to his torso would tear and allow it to fall. The jaw had never really closed, and the alien puppet masters had no need to make the face point in Doud’s direction. The young Rector stood before them with his hand cupped over his nose, listening to their commands issue from the phonic array in the Codus’ mouth.

“Joachim must not find us. Calculations prove trustworthy. Seal the path to the adyta.”

It made no sense to Doud. His grandfather Redhlan had found the adyta under a pile of rubble a few kilometers away from the nascent settlement along the arc of the crater sea. Redhlan had cleared a path to the vessel and the things inside had let him in. He trusted this secret only to a few men and erected the first rectory over his discovery. Doud’s father inherited the secret, passing it to his son.

The apaxan had told them many things, the old Codus who was kept alive by arcane science was a veritable library of history. The Church had its records, the Deep Antiquity carried with them during the Exodus from Earth. However, the living corpse had filled in details time had otherwise eroded.

And now they wanted it sealed? “I don’t understand.” Doud hugged himself in the cold.

“Seal the path. Isolate us.”

Doud shook his head. “But when should the path be reopened?” To lose this conduit of knowledge sickened him.

The apaxan undulated against one another. Their connections overtly sexual and a bit disgusting. “Joachim will open the path upon his appointment.” And that was that. The apaxan under the back of the reclined throne withdrew its probes, strings of some vile liquid trailing the ends.

They disconnected from one another, and with a fetid haze ambled the way they had come, through the doorway that phase shifted in and out of solidity.

The throne returned to its pre-union state, the Codus slipping and sagging, settling like a forgotten doll. The hard marble of his eyes looked at nothing.

Doud rubbed his hands together, cracking his knuckles. “What happens after Joachim opens the path?” he wondered aloud.

The Codus startled the young Rector with his tired and worn down answer. “Rebirth.”

 

 

 

Rector Tadian Doud did as the apaxan bid. Someone did come and put an end to their trivial little war. He had not come from the Greater Pavonan Expanse, but from another arm of the galaxy, from some other human inhabitancy of which they had had no contact. Other than himself, the man was known as Joachim to only the Codus and the apaxan. Doud held the secret of the name in deathly fear. Such disclosure would surely open the path to the apaxan adyta by another means.

Joachim had slipped past the denial field of metal hungry microsatellites that mined geosynch orbit, and singlehandedly infiltrated the Homesteader colonizer whose Calisennial Era technology had been the primary factory of the war machines below. The faction holding Cratertown would certainly have won against those that wished to dispose them had Joachim not destroyed all the ships on the landing plane south of the rain filled crater. That had gotten everyone’s attention. The mysterious out-worlder had discovered the means to activate the Homesteader’s horrible weapons, devices intended to landscape undesirable terrain. The remains of the parked spacecraft were twisted imploded slag.

The warmongers realized they had a new master.

That was twenty-nine years ago, the Rector reflected, or forty by the reckoning of the Sacred Calendar, the keeping of time from Earth the Church had kept. The scientists of Deep Antiquity had held the opinion that the Earth was not special. But God had not sent His two Sons to the apaxan and their mortal enemies who took the Earth for their own needs. The Earth was indeed special in that regard.

And the planet Mercator . . . its hour was so close to the Sacred Hour that the difference in a few seconds was trivial enough to dismiss.  And what to make of the buried and hidden adyta, and the apaxan inside that seemed to be waiting. The aliens were up to something, that much the Rector could guess. What, he had no idea. They wouldn’t disclose their plans, and the semi-dead Codus, whose name had never been disclosed, was never much help. Whatever their schemes were, the apaxan were confident that their calculations were trustworthy, an oft repeated phrase. Had God selected Mercator for some special purpose too?

Shortly after Mil Kariden left his service, the Codus appeared to him. The Rector sat at his desk, deep in the business of administrating the parish when he felt a presence. He looked up to see a man standing in his office. His weave was receiving the image, though the source of the transmission was not discernable. Doud had no doubt it came from the adyta below the foundation of the Rectory.

The image of the Codus was not that of the living corpse he recalled from so long ago, but as a healthy young man, muscled under his simple tunic and trousers. Soft luscious curls framed his head, falling to midway down his neck. His lips were full like a child’s, and his eyes were those of a mother watching in melancholy her children growing to adulthood.

“You must take your parish out of the city.”

The Rector blinked. “I don’t understand.”

“Trust me as you always have. You must leave. Joachim will take his revenge against one of his lost.”

The Rector frowned and dropped his eyes from the man to gather his thoughts. When he looked up, jaw moving to speak, the Codus was gone.

It was hard work, and he had to fabricate some excuse as to why he wanted to move the Parish, but he got it done. Rector Doud’s justification carried a hint of truth, or enough truth that his congregation could believe it because they could see it with their own eyes. Cratertown wasn’t improving. It remained a depraved and immoral place. The Parish was an island that could not lower the sea level. They were welcomed in a hidden cleft of rock, a place called Sacred Valley.

The parish settled in, and Doud waited with heart heavy in anticipation for some unspecified event to transpire. It wasn’t that much of a wait, and when the event happened he was filled with sick awe and sadness. He sobbed, but God was wrathful against wickedness, and Doud had brought salvation to all he could.

 

 

 

Joachim uncovered the path to the apaxan adyta.

Inside, Emanuel stirred.

---

 

 

While I was writing "The Rector", I had the idea that what if Doud was a Codus, but not just any Codus, but the First Codus Iman. I thought, "Naw. Too much."  That lead to what if he is a Codus of three apaxan who were descendants of the apaxan of Iman and had Iman's knowledge and memory? (The offspring of apaxan carry the memory of both parents, and certain strands could remain viable for millennia.) That was good, but it cheapened Rector Doud's piety and made his religion a concoction to deceive people. Doud is to be a True Believer, a keeper of the Faith. So this is the evolution of those ideas.

Originally, I had no intention of having an apaxan presence on Mercator. But it does make sense that will be apparent when other stories unfold. But stories write themselves. I'm just transcribing them.

I knew that Emanuel was out there somewhere. Now I know where. Amazing how the story reveals itself to me.

Who's Emanuel? The clues are there. Think word evolution and abbreviation.

 

The Gun
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.

 

The Rector
Topic: Mercator Arc

This 2134 word short story is more of a vignette. Its one of those spur of the moment ideas that sprung to life Friday.

---

 

 

 

"Yeah, I got everything you need, everything you can want." The man spoke into a comm stylus stuck to his collar as he glided through the throng of people in Mauhager's, the prominent night club in Cratertown. If you were somebody, you were here. The man thought himself as Someone Important, and to be sure, he was to certain people. "I can set you up, it's no problem," he prattled on. He was the depraved sort of sleaze that elevated his status on the weaknesses of others; a jubilant and boisterous man carrying himself without a care in the world. His manner of dress gloated his wealth: fine cut suits of the latest Pavonan fashion, slick hair gleaming under the lights and bound into a short ponytail with a thick bead of rare Cenestrian wood—calvanot that grew in the high country. And those glints at his fingers as he moved his hands? Silver rings inlaid with that same dark calvanot, polished to a high gleam. On the treeless world of Mercator, wood came imported at a premium. He was out of the rain, as they say. Real dry.

"It's a deal my man, see you then. Listen, I gotta slip out. Gotta meet somebody I got to take care of." With that he closed the call and pulled the comm stylus off his collar, sliding it into a pocket inside his jacket. He rounded a group of pretty girls who were all big eyes and bashful smiles. He flashed his charming grin, never breaking lock on the prettiest of the bunch as he passed. Maybe later. . . . He made his way to the back of the club, to the quieter sections where the blasting dance music was muted by sonic fields, toward the booths and private rooms were business was conducted.

It wasn't as crowded as the main floor, but still rather busy with more affluent clientele: bulker masters, mining bosses, and other captains of industry. And bargirls catering to their whims. He arrived at the appointed booth. The two gentlemen seated were not of those kind.

"Hey preacher-man. I see you brought your boyfriend with you." He slid into the booth to face them.

Both men wore sour severe faces of serious intent. The man in the dark cloth was older than his counterpart with a bristle of white hair sparkling on his head and cold hard eyes in a long stiff face. The wiry youth sitting to the aisle leaned over the table on his elbows, his shoulders bunched under his raincoat. Murder set his features; his otherwise handsome face marred by this ugly mask. He was a coiled spring under high tension.

"Is that the best you can do, Jaxsen?" The Rector said, taking a moment to sip his wine. "Offer insults?"

Jaxsen gave a half hearted shrug. "Hey, you bust my balls, I bust yours right back." He leaned back into the couch throwing an arm over the top.  He and Rector locked eyes, but the old man seemed impervious. Jaxsen glanced around and spotted a waitress, waved her over and ordered something strong to remove the edge that was creeping into his nerves. He didn't care for the Rector. The other guy, he'd never seen. Maybe a dry behind the ears Mercator virgin. Didn't look like much. Nothing his boys couldn't handle in a scrap.

"I'll get straight to the point," the Rector said, his voice steady and fluid, his eyes never wavering. "You will keep your whores and your venom out of my parish."

Jaxsen smiled broadly, chuckled. "Preacher-man, I thought we had an unspoken deal. I supply the sin; you get gawf's to save."

There must have been some undetected message sent from the Rector to the muscle beside him, maybe a signal between their weaves, that network of implants woven into the body's cells. Brain included. Neither men glanced at one another, or made any kind of visible signal, however the young man's right arm shot out, his fist striking the huckster right in the face. He resumed his posture as if he had done nothing more harmful than brushing lint from the man's shoulder.

Jaxsen had grunted a little scream, probably more out of surprise than pain. You just did not hit Jaxsen in the face, not without there being some consequences. He was, after all, a man of means and influence in Cratertown. "You skumping bastard," he spat at the Rector, rubbing the soreness across his left cheek. "You'll pay for that."

Jaxsen's drink arrived. The young lady set it on the table and scurried off. A few patrons had turned their short attention to the commotion.

"Exactly how," the Rector asked. He hefted his challis and sipped wine, never dropping his eyes from Jaxsen.

Jaxsen spared a glance into the crowd, out past the section's entrance. He could not see any of his own bullyboys. This made him nervous. He hid the feeling behind a threat. "I have connections to some big names in the Ravens. It would be nothing to get them to work you over."

The Rector held a laugh in his throat, swallowed it like a lump. Anyone would have taken it as a lump of fear. "I see. Well you should know that Chief Ulden tithes exceptionally well." And why not? It was the Rector that eased the man and his young daughter through the grief of his wife's suicide. Though the Rector wasn't convinced that Ulden was as hurt as he let on. The daughter, however . . . . And the Rector had not fooled himself that his outreach wasn't politically motivated. Such was Cratertown.

Such was Mercator.

Jaxsen shrugged as if what he heard was of no import. He wanted to say something witty, but . . . where were his boys. Held up? Cozying up to cute bargirls? If so, they would answer for this.

The Rector clasped his hands upon the table, above them on a silver chain hung his Uplift, a circle connected to a thick flat bar by two V-like arms. "We of the Church are inspired to hate the sin, and love the sinner. But with you Jaxsen, the difference between sin and sinner is rather blurry. Where does one end and the other begin?"

"I don't believe in any of that shit."

"That's apparent," The Rector said. "Perhaps if you did, things would be different. But none-the-less, even in this anarchy, societies need rules within which to operate. And while worlds of civility have civil means of enforcing those rules, barbarism answers only to barbarism. Physical dominance rules Mercator."

"Are you done," Jaxsen barked. "Because I believe I have drugs to sell in your parish." He made a move to get up, but the young muscle shoved the table forward, pinning him in place. It hurt.  "What the skump do you think you are doing," he yelled at the Rector's bullyboy.

Heads had turned. A crowd gathered. Here was sport. Bets were made.

"Iman tells us," the Rector said coolly, and all too aware of those standing around, "that God allows suffering, because in suffering there are truths to learn about ourselves and our part in His Plan. I have suffered Jaxsen. And I have learned the lessons of that suffering. And thus I suffer less for my enlightenment."

"You better let me go. You have no idea what you are getting into." It sounded good, but being pinned by the table, it carried no power.

The Rector ignored him. "As the sole and recognized authority of the Parish, I'm enforcing the rules of the society I govern. You will suffer Jaxsen. It is my wish that you will learn the lesson of keeping your filth out of my parish."

With that the bullyboy stood and his right arm became a piston punching through the raised, splayed hands of the huckster and landed blow upon blow upon his face. The crowd cheered him on, though they cared not for the reason for this pummeling, they cared only for the pummeling. There was a lot of work to do here, the Rector thought as he sipped his wine. A little morality could turn this place into a nice city. But morality had to be awarded.

And immorality . . . punished.

The Rector's man stopped once Jaxsen's red slick and swelling face sank from broken bone. The wiry young man trembled with adrenalin. He let the Rector slide out of the booth, holding the raucous crowd at bay as slips and bits of local currency changed hands. There were cheers for the Rector. The people were hungry for righteous leadership.

"Someone get him to a butcher," the Rector ordered. After all, Jaxsen was in need of medical attention and it would be unImanite not to assist one in their moment of need. A few people moved forward. The rest of the crowd parted as the two men made their way to the exit.

Outside, rain fell, as it does constantly with at most a reprieve of two days of bloated red giant sunshine.  The sun had just set to rise again in a paltry eight hours. They sealed their coats and hoods and walked along sidewalks built like a string of porches along the streets, splash guards nailed along columns deflecting the ever-present spray shot out from tires as vehicles of all sorts rambled through the city. The Rector preferred to walk. He wanted to see the people, and for the people to see him. It awed him, all this humanity that came to this hell of a world seeking something, enduring hardships for something better.

He offered that something. His congregation took in the addicts and the downtrodden, helped them sort out their life, lead them down a better road. Cratertown could be a good place. It could be a marvel. Yet there was much work to do. And hard decisions to make to ensure that Good Work could be done.

The young man walking beside remained silent, lost in his own thoughts.

"How do you feel about what we have done, Kariden?"

The youth shrugged. "I don't know." A pause. "He had it coming, but . . ."

"It felt wrong?"

"Something like that Rector." The voice was distance.

Rector Doud nodded. "It felt wrong because the vengeance factor felt right."

"I guess so."

Both men were silent for a few steps. "Understand I take no pleasure in that sort of business, nor in having you perform it." They shared a glance. The Rector coughed into a knotted hand. "Iman tells us in time of crises, hard things must be done to ensure the right things be done. When there is no time for litigation, swift adjudication is the only course.

"The Book of Merikhana recounts the Exodus and how the Iq'ain refused Codus Iman. Have you studied this?"

"Yes Rector." Kariden paused, gathering what he recalled. "Many of the caliphate accepted Iman as their Mahdi, except for a faction of the Iq'ain. They launched a nuclear explosive against the adyta in their skies, and ‘. . . the Lord smote their city with a fiery strand that pulled their city and the ground to it, swallowing them whole before the strand itself vanished in a brilliant flash.'"

The Rector nodded inside his hood. "Iman explained that the apaxan adyta acted on its own, defending itself and eradicating future threats. It was a harsh measure, and one some rightly call a mistake. Iman was distraught over the loss of so many innocent lives. Sadly, history was never certain that those men who launched the missiles were in the city that harbored the weapons. However, the effect was one of unity. We embraced the Exodus with little fuss afterwards."

"It was that or die," Kariden said distantly. Then, "You think Jaxsen will be a problem?"

The Rector sighed. In truth it was a hard thing to know. Public humiliation could cower, especially if the spectators were against you. If he mustered harriers, he might run into opposition. "As long as I remain on good terms with Ulden, we shouldn't have a problem."

"But he runs the Death Ravens." Those men were would-be criminals on other worlds, but here in this anarchist state they were foot soldiers for a warlord.

They neared the parish. It was no different than any other part of the city, but it was hard to miss the rusted wrought iron monument that had been erected to mark the territory. The Uplift towered above their heads, a simplistic figure that was nothing more than a headless tall beam with slender raised arms holding a large wireframe sphere up to the heavens.

"That he does," the Rector said. "But this is Cratertown."

Presage part 2 rewrite 3
Topic: Mercator Arc

This is more about what I'm looking for to get into Roco's head months after his botched mission. I need a compelling set up to get him into the next mission.

Revised for clarity and a few more paragraphs added.

Section 2 of part 2 complete. Go here.

Section 3 of part 2 complete. Go here.

Go here for Part 1

---

 

The weave let me get drunk. I drowned my worries in a bar called Zero's Hell that had become a criminal haven. Here we—me and the other convicted—found refuge from the judging eyes of the rest of society, those people we could not avoid as we went about our daily activities.  We became nocturnal, like vampires. Feeding off of each other. It was safe here. And quiet. The Federal Assembly figured it was a bad idea to let criminals register the censure flashes of other criminals. Such people might congregate and plan more crime. Become a greater burden on this shitnut society. Yeah, that was working well, wasn't it? Eventually the cops would bust the place up. Fine the owner. Scatter us. Then we would coalesce somewhere else. Make another lair.

I tried not think about the life I hated. They were pushing me out; offering shitty jobs the cops could handle. I turned them down until the offers dried up. I didn't care. What was the point? They didn't really need me. The system was broke and no one cared. Why should I?

I drank alone, the worse kind as any serious drinker will tell you. I tucked myself into the lonely shadows of a booth set far in the corner of the back wall. I sipped my dascoe, amber fire in a chipped glass tumbler. The room was loud in a white noise of conversations,  chinking bottles behind the bar, and the clack of pull balls colliding as they shot through gravity gradients on the baize skins of the gaming tables. There was music, but I had my weave block the music-cast. I wasn't in the mood for music.

The doors opened and a group of youths entered. Their chattering laughter stopped after the weaves of all the patrons flashed them a horde of censure statements. I felt my own pulse out. They beat a hasty retreat out into the street, nearly falling over each other to get out of the nest of snakes they found. No one inside bothered to glance at the group, not even the raucous men and women standing around the pull tables who were apt to fight over gambling losses and snap cue sticks across the backs of heads. Bar hoppers happened in every night. Usually left just as quickly.

Usually.

Someone else slipped in as the youths left. Almost without detection. But even through a buzz that was working its way toward igniting that angry thread within me, I noticed. Couldn't help to with that ingrained alertness dulling my inebriety. The lithe figure walked to the counter with a woman's gait, head hidden in a hooded jacket that looked a size too big. He or she must have been a criminal, or had been around enough of us not to be bothered by flashed disclosures.

A sniffer maybe. They could tolerate the vilest of us. I didn't like the situation at all. A news guild would love to get inside the Shop and expose it. They knew something was up and was looking for a way in. Looking for a person to use as their portal. Like me. I was such a damn-Iman fuck-up in my desire to put the Bad Guys away, that I had made myself far too visible. I had become a liability. But the Shop hadn't wiped me yet. Guess I was a chit they hoped to cash in someday.

The new customer leaned against the bar waited for the bartender, an ugly man that wore the scars of his fights as badges of valor. The two spoke and he put a bottle of beer on the worn, damp counter. The hooded figure turned to me and my censure pulsed. As if in answer a hand raised to the edge of the hood and pulled it back from a head fringed in obsidian hair.

The person was a women and for a moment my gut clenched because I thought it might be her and here I was drunk and ungunned. But no, this girl was taller than the one that haunted my dreams. And her hair was longer. Her face not as wide and pale as a full moon.

She turned her gaze from me with petulance, as if rejecting a lewd emote I certainly hadn't sent. I felt recognized. Targeted. I had my weave start the detox and left a finger of dascoe on the table as I got up to leave. I tightened my jaw. Damn-Iman sniffers ruining my night.

She stole a glance at me before I reached the door. Come sniff this girly-girl. It will be the last thing you do.

The street was dark except for a few neglected fluttering light rods leaning over the sidewalks and staining them with spastic ill light.  Rollers and lifters were parked along the curb, but none moved along street of low buildings. A group of youths stood beyond a low slung roller across the pavement talking and drinking. I strode briskly to an alley with the intention of putting a stop to this intrusion of my privacy. I heard the door to Zero's Hell open behind me and set up the dust on the back of my coat to form a simple optic array.

It was her alright.

I slipped into the alley and about half way into it crouched behind a metal refuse bin to spring an ambush should she enter. A sniffer would have some fighting skills if he or she wanted to subdue an uncooperative target such as myself. If she did not follow me, no harm no foul. But if she did, well . . . I'm not a man to beat up a woman out of anger or sport, but don't send a woman to take care of me. No leniency should be given in combat. Do it and lose.

I watched from a dust-assembled optic array I had smeared on the bin.

Then she was there at the mouth of the alley, a dark form like the blade of a knife against the brighter ambience from the street beyond. She drew the hood of her jacket over her head- no telling what kind of sensor arrays lay in its woven edge-and entered the shadows with small measured steps. I readied myself, feeling the tension in my muscles build.

I hoped the metal of the bin would mask my heat signature, and it must have because she advanced about half way to me without making any indication she could sense me. But then she stopped, almost invisible in the darkness, and reached into her jacket for . . . a dull metal disk.

A millimeter wave antenna to augment her weave-dust sensor set.

I sprang out from my cover, the tail of my long coat spreading like the wings of an angry raptor. I meant to have shouldered her into the ground, but she was swift, sidestepping away. I felt her hands briskly on my shoulder, pushing. I stumbled, but managed to catch my balance. I did a quick about face, spinning on the ball of my foot while stooping into a crouch. She pirouetted, swinging a leg out, her knee gracefully unhinging and the sweep of her booted toes just missing my face. I dropped and rolled into her just as she was about to stand on two feet again. She tumbled beside me, and before she could recover I pounced upon her. She struggled under me, a hard form breathing heavily. I pinned her down with a knee between her flattened breasts. The dust on the index and small fingers of my right hand grew into spikes. I held them over her face.

"Talk. Or you're getting new eyes." Dark and feral. Almond shape beauties I wouldn't mind peering into under different circumstances.

She tried to move but I pressed my knee down. She surrendered. "I have a message for you." Her voice was iced water.

A message. By courier. Hadn't had one of these in a long time. "From who?"

Her hands had found my knee, warm things. She made no attempt to remove it. "I'm just a link in a long chain."

The Shop would do something like this if they had reason to believe a direct scatter-cast wasn't secure enough; use a system of couriers to thwart traceback who had no idea who the messenger was, or what the message was, or for whom the message was intended. For all she knew, I could be another courier in this chain. But no one used me for that business. The message was for me. "Let's get a drink."

 

 

 

"Let's have it," I said stepping out of my cramped excuse for a kitchen, my hands chilled by two glasses of Vrimmel Stock premium dascoe. I placed one on the low table in front of the young woman sitting on the edge of the sofa.

She gave a wary glance at the drink and put a hand into her jacket. The cuff of her sleeve slid up revealing a tattooed kaleidoscope of writhing symbols and images; she had been recruited from a gang. I wasn't surprised. Her hand moved out and laid something beside her dascoe. She uncovered the object and lifted the glass to her lips, forcing a conservative sip.

The message was encoded in a button of dull blue-green smart matter. I sat in the chair at the end of the table, swallowed a dollop of dascoe. The rest of my life seemed compressed in that tiny thing. All I had to do was activate it and see what was in store for me. I didn't know if I wanted too. They should let me fade out. It's what I deserved.

This had Castle written all over it. He knew I'd appreciate a rough and tumble little woman. Like last time. The choice of courier was a message in and of itself. Something deep was going on. My handler wanted me in play.

But did I? For all the things I have done for Pavona and the Expanse, it was still corrupt and diseased in its the core. Lives were still pretty much shitty, and getting shittier.

I swallowed dascoe, wanting the liquor to burn out my hopelessness. The button gleamed in the soft lamp light. It remained strangely inert and silent in expected frequency ranges. The messenger held her glass, sipping and waiting. "You got the wipe codes?" I asked.

She frowned. "I just know to get that to you . . . and get paid."

I nodded. Yeah. Get paid. I hear you. "The message comes with a wipe code. The courier before you automatically transmits-"

"I know how it works. I don't remember the other one. I was wiped." She took a large swallow of dascoe and put it on the table. "Believe me." An off-world accent began to flavor her Pavic.

"So the other runner wiped both of you, but you didn't get the code?" I didn't like this. This was very deep.

She shrugged. "How would I know?"

I was the intended recipient so both of our weaves should be talking to the message tablet. I pointed at it. "It should send a key to your weave to flash me the code. But if you don't have it . . ." I bit my lip and hefted the glass of dascoe, the amber-gold liquid complemented the lamp light. Romantic in any other setting. My blood chilled.

"But what," she prompted.

I put my glass down, leaned over, elbows to knees, and steepled my fingers below my chin. That evil little button, looking so harmless on the table. Like a forgotten thing."It's a lot more serious than what you think." My voice was amazingly calm despite the rush in my heart. Messages within messages."Dangerously so."  The wipe code ended at the last transaction because they wanted me to remember this encounter. To jeopardize her. If it came to it. Now she, she would be wiped. I would have to do it. But only if I fully received the message.

"How?" Apprehension crept into her voice. She craned her neck around to steal a glance at the door. It would never open for her unless I authorized it.

I sighed. "There is no wipe code because if I do not accept this message, both of us are going to be wiped for good."

She gaped at me.

I stood up and sat beside her on the couch. "Good as in dead."

No one likes to be told that and her reaction was normal. She jerked up but I held her wrist, gently. "But that is not going to happen. Understand?"

She snatched her arm from my grip but didn't move. "Nobody told me . . ."

"I know." I eyed the tablet, our fates in its grasp. "You were not just the last link in a chain."

She sagged back onto the couch, her suspicious eyes locked with mine.

"You were also the first."

She frowned at me for a few seconds. "Like hell I was."

I reached out for the tablet, finding it light weight and not quite cold; its machines working and generating heat. I dropped it into my palm, studying it. I could just make out the scored line that divided it in half. It was meant to be split in two and dissolved on the tongue. By two people. The message encoded in tangled chains of molecule like machines.

"You've been a runner for a while, haven't you."

She squirmed. "Yeah. Couple of years."

"You did a job and they got samples of you. This has two messages. One's a decoy. The real message is paired to our genemetrics. It won't activate without them."

"That's crazy" she said above a whisper.

"It's security. And insurance."

"You need what? A blood sample? Hair."

The tablet had recognized me and separated. "No. Saliva will do."

"What," she said with disgust, "you want me to spit on it? Or on you?"

"A kiss will do."

She chuckled, and when I didn't she added, "Are you serious?"

"Just a quick open mouth kiss." I held one half of the tablet up for her to see. "Let this melt in your mouth."

She hesitated and I could image what she thought. I brought her to my place, gave her a drink, now was trying to coax her to put in her mouth half of something someone she could not remember with any clarity gave to her, and then to kiss me like a lover. I'd be wary too.

"If I don't?" Worry crept into her face.

"I don't receive the message. We likely won't see the morning."

She eyed the half of the tablet I held out for her.

"And you won't get paid," I added.

She glared at me and took the half. Popped into her mouth.

I looked down at my half and felt finality, as if it were not a just a message but a step that once taken could not be undone. My fate seemed to lay in this smart matter pill. My fate . . . I thought of dreams and shuddered. So be it. I cupped the thing into my mouth,  my tongue tingled under it as it collapsed into a foam of machines. "You ready?"

She nodded. I drew in slowly and our mouths met. It was about as clinical as it gets, our tongues rubbing purposely against the other for the sake of mixing chemicals and machines. I released her and she wiped her mouth.

"That wasn't so bad was it?"

She offered no reply. Just scowled.

My weave had the message. It activated instantly, launching me into a cyberscape and severing me from reality. I found myself in a white nowhere, still sitting, but on nothing. An autonomous avatar of Castle appeared as if stepping through a door. Like the man it represented, it was tall of slender build, yet not softened by years of being out of the field and behind a desk.

It stopped in front of me and shot a look to my right, as if to the gang runner that was not present in the ‘scape. It looked to me. "Meet me in Heil Thericon in two days." Without waiting for any reply, it turned around and started walking away, then stopped as if it forgot something. It half turned and glanced at the young woman not there, then said to me, "Unless you don't care."

Eternity stretched between us. A memory from a dream stirred. That haunting moon face. A cool gentle hand on my shoulder. Breath at my ear. Words.

Fate.

"I'll be there," I told Castle's avatar.

It nodded and disappeared beyond that imperceptible door. I dropped out of the ‘scape.

Heil Thericon. Near the edge of the Greater Pavonan Expanse. Close to Derelict Junction, a travel hub to points outside the Expanse. To the uncivil worlds. I didn't know where this mission would take me, but glancing around my apartment, I didn't think I would be coming back here. It's funny how a feeling can feel so certain. Like a punch in the gut.

I finished my dascoe. I had things to do. I'd have to pay the courier; transfer funds through backroute networks from one of the Shop's accounts to hers. I had to wipe her. And as much as I would like to get drunk with her and fool around, I didn't see it happening. I had to prepare for this mission.

And there was something else I had to do too.

 

 

 

I prepared myself to be turned away as I settled the lifter on the parking slab of an opulent-but not arrogantly so-home. It was a sprawling one story affair, with rooms attached here and there as if they were spur of the moment additions. They curled back around to wall in a garden, if I remembered it right. The low pitch roof was red and gold slate. Columns supported the roofs of porches. Tall elegant trees stretched their canopies offering shade. Hedges and flowers bordered walkways. I knew where the craters had been, but they had been expertly filled, topped with short younger trees as if they never existed.

Before I reached the door, it slid aside. Anella stood there, regal and forbearing. She suddenly grimaced and lifted slender fingers to her temples, shutting out my flash. She took in a breath and dropped her hands. Held the edge of the door. Blocking the path inside. "What do you want?" There was nothing friendly in her tone. Her glare, unforgiving.

"I want to see my wife."

Anella harrumphed. "She was never your wife."

I wasn't going to argue the point. "She was going to be."

Anella shifted her weight and looked away, out across the yard. "I suppose she was." There was distance in those words that stretched back through the years. She let go of the door and her fingers fidgeted with one another. She watched them a while before looking back up at me. "I don't abide criminals on my estate."

"You know me."

"I knew you!" She shuddered, held her own elbows. "How could you do that?"

"I pay for it every day. Believe me."

Then came a silence between us, heavy and choking. I watched an insect crawl across the flagstones. I looked up into her thin pale face. A face of severe beauty. "Anella, please."

I could feel her weighing who I was against who I am. The moment dragged. I sighed. "Forget it," I mumbled and turned. What a waste of time. I'm such a damn-Iman fool.

"Wait," Anella called.

I stopped and faced her.

"Why do you want to see her? Why now? After all this time?"

The dream burned in my mind. Fate. "I never said goodbye."

Anella absorbed it. She nodded. "You know where she is." She ducked into the house and I followed her.

We walked through the spacious foyer to the garden. Anella stopped and I continued on through. The path meandered to a wide alcove. Set inside were bouquets of eternal flowers. An explosion of colors. They framed the bust of a woman whose beauty rivaled even Anella's.

Teola.

Suddenly I didn't want to do this. I didn't want to be here. I didn't know why I was here. What I was seeking. I had accepted her death. Hadn't I? After all these years the wound that cored out my heart had grown smaller. Here I was to rip it open afresh.

I reached out and touched a shoulder that looked like cold marble. Teola awoke. Or rather what awoke was the remaining cyberphrenal portion of her weave now enmeshed in the smart matter of the bust. It wasn't her, but it was. The living memory. The bust enforced that idea by doing what I had rather it not do: became more lifelike.

Teola recognized me. "Hello Roco," she greeted cheerfully. "It's been awhile."

It wasn't her, but it was. "Your sister doesn't like me."

The bust laughed lightly. "I doubt that has kept you away." Her tone dropped to something more serious. "How have you been? Doing well?"

"Yeah," I shrugged and nodded. "I've missed you." Terribly. "But I've been busy." I felt like an idiot school boy confronting his crush.

"That's good," Teola said. "Getting on with your life." She paused. "After all that has happened."

"Yeah, I know. Been doing something good. I am doing something good now. Screwing up . . ." and I couldn't help chuckling for levity, "But still . . . I'd like to think that what I've been doing is for the good . . . is good. You know?"

"I think so." Quietly.

"Doing things that need to be done." I saw that day the lawn erupted in geysers of earth, leaving fire and holes. Hopelessness. Misery. Loss.

"What do you want Roco?"

I caressed her cheek, wanting badly to fall into the illusion of Teola's simulacrum. Wanting it to be her. "I don't know. I mean . . . I'm sorry I couldn't do anything. I'm sorry you're not here . . . so sorry."

"Don't blame yourself. I'm with Iman now. And you are where He needs you to be."

I sighed. Such talk was never any consolation for me. "Am I a good man?" I looked at her, waiting for an answer. From a simulation. A ghost. A memory.

"I fell in love with you."

I closed my eyes, damming a tear or two. I nodded. "You did. I thank you for that." I stood there for a moment, lost in those days gone by. It seemed like centuries since we were together, planning our future. Then it ended. Now it felt like it was ending for good. I could still turn the job down after I was briefed on Heil Thericon, but . . .

I couldn't shake the feeling I would not see this world again. I could be marching toward certain death, and it was better than living here with this censure screaming out of my head.

Another sigh. "Goodbye Teola."

"Goodbye Roco."

I touched her shoulder and she was gone. I stood there for a moment, looking into that marble face, until Anella grew tired of my loitering and escorted me out. I gave her my thanks. She gave me her silence.