The Combat Codes (17 page)

The remaining three Commanders of the Citadel sat at a circular table in the center of the room. Aon Farstead, Dakar Pugilio, and Callen Albright. They stood and saluted Memnon in greeting before returning to their seats. Memnon did not sit. As usual, he paced the circumference of the room.

“Didn’t even have time to change out of his second skin!” Dakar shouted in his boisterous manner. “Albion, you need to relax every once in a while.” The Commander of Justice threw his legs up onto the table, leaning back in his chair. “I’m telling you, one hour at the Adar shrine and that tension will be gone. I have just the girl in mind for you, too. Real sweet lass…”

“Yes, because what we really need is for High Commander Memnon to relax. Perhaps we should all forgo our duties and take some time off. Why not take a jaunt to the pleasure shrine? Perhaps then we could be more like you, Dakar, and this place would really fall apart.” Callen sneered from his seat across the table.

Dakar stood up. He looked like an angry walrus as he stared down at the wiry Scout Commander, his cheeks bright red above his long, drooping mustache. Though he was even taller than Memnon, Dakar Pugilio had not cared for his body or mind as the High Commander had. His belly sagged from beneath his tunic, displaying the distorted edges of an old flux tattoo, and his shoulders hunched from many years of torpor.

“Why don’t you stand up, worm, and I’ll show you why this place is really fallin’ apart. Because of bit-rich kids like you who don’t know how to shoot a double, walking in here on daddy’s—”

“That’s enough. Sit down, Dakar,” Memnon said quietly as he continued to pace while looking out the windows.

Dakar slowly sank back into his seat, muttering and staring at Callen as he did so.

“Provide me with your reports,” Memnon said. “You first, Dakar.”

Dakar attempted to straighten up in his seat, but even then, he somehow looked slouched, as if his body had forgotten how to try.

“Yes, sir, Albion. Err, High Commander Memnon. Last several days, well… we won some, we lost some,” Dakar said.

“Win percentage?” Memnon asked.

“Forty percent,” Dakar said in a low voice as he tugged at his mustache. “Let me tell you, though, some of the wins we had, they were great. Old Byron took out some hotshot ArkTech hire—put the light of justice on him, all right. Just like the old days, Albion—remember Byron? How he’d always catch some poor sot off guard with that overhand right? Well, he’s still got it. He threw—”

“Stop,” Memnon said. The High Commander sighed audibly as he paced. He rubbed the long scar that ran across his eyelid and down to his square jaw. “I can’t hear more of these stories, Dakar. The only stories I need to hear are those of an improved win percentage. We need to get back to tolerable levels. Balance the weight of Justice. What do we need to do that?”

“Yes, yes, I know,” Dakar said. “We have good men on the team; it’s just that—”

Callen cut in, “That’s just the problem. He has so called
good men
. They don’t need good men in Justice. What they need are more killers. That’s who the companies are hiring, killers. ArkTech, or any sane person with the bits to spend, will hire the best that’s out there. Why settle for less? I’d certainly do so if it was my head on the line.”

“You wouldn’t understand,” Dakar said, his face getting red again. “Some of my Grievar have served Mercuri for decades. They’ve given their entire lives to follow the lightpath. I can’t just throw them out on the street like some piece of trash.”

“What choice do we have?” Callen retorted. “It’s either get with times and completely overhaul our team at Justice or have the courts continue to rot, stinking as they have for years under your command.”

Dakar fumed. “Do you realize what you’re saying, boy? Fresh on the job and you think you already can tell me how to lead my men?”

Memnon interjected before Dakar had a chance to get too heated. “We do need to make changes, Dakar. I understand that you don’t want to put your men out of their path, but we can’t keep going with the way things are.”

Dakar began to speak again but closed his mouth as Memnon flashed his eyes at him.

“Start with the worst. The two Defenders on your team with lowest win percentage this cycle. I’m sorry, Dakar, but they are out,” Memnon said. “We’ll replace them with two of Callen’s fresh recruits.”

Dakar looked down at the table dejectedly.

“Callen, who have we got to spare that has experience from this cycle’s take?” Memnon asked the Scout Commander.

“Well. To start, I’d suggest the Falcon, Sit Fanyong. He has at least two years’ experience as a Knight, and I believe he also served in the Desovian justice system for a year,” Callen said.

Dakar looked up from the table with wide eyes. “We’re going to put a darkin’ Desovian on my team? There’s no way my boys will train with some ginar-fed, gen’d-up Grievar brood!”

Memnon stared down at his old friend, his eyes suddenly blazing. “Dakar, your team will train with the Falcon, and they will do so diligently.
You
will make sure of it. You are Mercuri’s Commander of PublicJustice. Your lightpath does not mean reliving your days of glory in the Citadel, bantering with your team of old-timers. Your path means putting together the best team possible. Your path means making sure the scales of Justice are balanced so that those folk that cannot afford their own Grievar will be adequately represented. And that will start with integrating Sit Fanyong into your team. We will reevaluate after the next report as to whether we need more transitions.”

Dakar looked at Memnon with his mouth slightly open. He bowed his head in concession. “Oss, Memnon.”

Memnon continued to pace around the room, his frenetic steps matching the pace he set in his command meetings. “On to the next. Aon, are we ready for the Trials?” Memnon turned to the Commander of the Lyceum, who had been silently observing the heated discussion.

Aon Farstead was ancient. Hunched over the command table, he looked diminutive, even next to Callen’s wiry frame. A few remaining wisps of white hair hung from Aon’s bald, wrinkled scalp, and two massive, cauliflowered ears hung by the sides of his head like Besaydian dragon fruit. Aon’s eyes no longer had yellow tinge of a Grievar; they were milky white—he’d been blind for nearly three decades now.

Aon spoke in a slow, deliberate canter, his voice a whisper that carried the strength of over a century of Grievar wisdom. “That we are, High Commander. One year to the next, the world changes around us, but the Trials remain the same. Like a stone lodged in a stream.”

Memnon nodded respectfully at the venerated elder member of Command. “Aon, what do you see in store for this year’s Trials?”

Aon chuckled. “High Commander, I
see
nothing in store.” The ancient Grievar batted his eyelids playfully. “But I do have a strange feeling of late. The light has been stronger these past few months. I can feel its gravity tugging on these old bones of mine. I can’t remember that sort of pull since… well, it’s been quite a while now.”

“What could it mean?” Memnon asked. “Could it be a good sign for us? Perhaps one of the Trial takers…”

Aon’s milky eyes whirled in their sockets as the ancient man took a deep breath. “The light often whispers. All Grievar can hear it if they just stop to listen. Not just in the Circle, under the bright arrays. Beyond the halls of combat, we all carry the light, walking, sitting, sleeping, breathing; it is there, whispering to us.”

From across the room, Callen let out an audible sigh as he rolled his eyes in disdain.

“Even you can hear the light, Callen Albright, though I sense you do not believe you can.” Aon flung his quiet voice in the direction of Callen’s seat, causing the wiry Scout Commander to stiffen up in his chair.

Aon continued, unperturbed. “In these recent months, the pull I’ve felt—the light is no longer whispering; it is roaring. I do not know what it saying, but I do know it is speaking to us, to the Grievar that are forever intertwined with it.”

Aon’s words quieted the room. Dakar’s face was no longer red with anger; he breathed evenly as he listened. Even Memnon had stopped pacing, pausing for a brief moment to stare into Aon’s milky eyes.

Callen broke the quiet. “That is all good and well, Commander Farstead, but bluntly, I don’t hear anything beyond the sound of Mercuri getting crushed under our competitors. Perhaps in your considerable age, you are hearing things?”

Memnon’s brow creased; he opened his mouth to reprimand Callen’s blatant disrespect, but Aon lifted his frail hand to hold him off.

Aon smiled through his thin lips. “It is said that Grievar infants, fresh from the womb, can hear the light most ably. Infants are pure, untainted by the world around them, their eyes not yet formed to see the petty underpinnings of grown folk. Perhaps that is why I can also hear the light so clearly—my years put me closer to the end, or the beginning, and with that comes a purity that dispels all the distractions of this world. I can hear the light, Commander Callen, and it whispers no longer.”

Callen had stopped listening to Aon long ago, his eyes shifting back and forth calculatingly. “Yes, yes. That’s all great, Commander Farstead. But on the subject of strange myths, as you so often bring us in the direction of, I’d like to revisit a portion of the Trials. The Combat Codes.”

Memnon spoke up. “Callen, we discussed this during our last Command meeting and decided it’s better left as is, for this year at least.”

“Yes, I know, High Commander, but I felt the need to bring it up again. The ‘light’ told me I needed to.” Callen smirked toward Aon. “I just feel that of all the Trial protocol in place, the Codes are the part that is least applicable to getting Mercuri where it needs to be. How does deciphering ancient Grievar texts, which really have no place in society today, have anything to do with bettering our teams? What good do some words have in making a better fighter in the Circle?”

Memnon shook his head. “Callen, I like what you bring to this team. A youthful perspective. We need that; we need to change things up in order to get Mercuri back to where it was. But change can’t always happen as fast as you’d like. We’re already making major overhauls. We need to take things one step at a time.”

Callen replied, “Do you think the Desovians are taking things one step at a time, spending valuable resources having their Knights recite old, forgotten texts? No, they are providing them with the newest neurotech and training them round the clock, making them into killers. When one of Mercuri’s Knights goes up against a Desovian, he may well be able to recite some ancient text by heart, but then he’ll get ground into the dirt by a better-trained Grievar.”

Memnon was pacing around the room again. The Desovians did forego many of the Codes over a decade ago in lieu of more modern training philosophies: neurostimulant transfusions, organized breeding programs. They’d taken nearly sixty percent of disputes against Mercuri until Memnon had made the decision to start playing catch-up.

Aon seemed to sense Memnon’s hesitation, Callen’s calculated words playing on the High Commander’s paranoia. “The Combat Codes are a part of us, High Commander. Since the beginning. The Codes are as much of a Grievar’s makeup as are our fists, elbows, and knees, or our techniques that have been learned and passed down from the Ancients.”

Memnon stopped pacing again as he listened to Aon speak.

“The Trials are an introduction, a test to those worthy Grievar that would become learned within the halls of our Lyceum and, eventually, forces of justice to fight for the downtrodden in our courts or Knights to represent us in the world’s arena. Each Trial is representative of a hallmark of Grievar skill and character. To remove Codes from the Trials would mean removing a piece of ourselves,” Aon said.

Memnon nodded. “Aon is right, Callen. We cannot remove Codes from the Trials. Getting rid of them would mean reworking the whole process. They stay for now. However, I will consider giving the Codes less weight in overall scoring.”

Callen leaned back into his chair, smirking.

“Command, thank you for coming today. You are dismissed.” Memnon signaled with the Grievar salute, a fist held in the air.

“Ossu,” the three Commanders replied in unison, lifting their fists.

Aon creaked from his seat, slowly moving toward the doorway without the aid of vision. Dakar stood up and walked beside Aon, “I’m headin’ the same way you are, old friend; need a hand to get back to your branch?”

Aon smiled as the doors slid open in front of him. “Thank you, Commander Pugilio, but no, this old Grievar can make do.”

Callen remained seated after the other two had left, looking up at Memnon with his arresting yellow eyes.

“Don’t you want to know where we are… with that other program of ours?” Callen asked.

Memnon shook his head, quieting Callen. “Do not speak of that here, Commander Albright.”

Callen nodded. “All right. Well, things are going according to plan, if you’d like to know. We have a subject going into the Trials next week. It shall be enlightening to watch them, to say the least.”

Memnon nodded and turned, exiting through the sliding doors.

The High Commander walked briskly, his pace increasing as he moved away from the meeting room. He had to keep moving. The Desovians were moving, getting ahead. The Kirothians wouldn’t stop, so he couldn’t.

Memnon couldn’t stop moving or the shadows would catch him.

*

Murray whisked Cego out of his barracks just as dawn broke, the two hooded with thick cloaks to shield them from the cutting sheets of rain.

Today was the start of the Trials. Murray wanted Cego to see the city from the ground before his test, even though the two could more easily take a pod directly to the Citadel.

Murray’s barracks were located on the east side of Mercuri on the edge of Karsh, a small Grievar-designated district whose inhabitants were mostly Kirothian immigrants. Most of the Kirothians in Mercuri were secluded in the dregs of the city; living elsewhere, they would face the bigotry of proud Mercurians. The immigrants were hated because Kiroth was Mercuri’s rival nation, another powerhouse of Grievar-might that controlled much of the world’s resources.