Warp World (17 page)

“Theorist, may I ease your—”

“GO AWAY!”

He grabbed the cup from her hands and hurled it at the wall.

Lissil squealed in fright, dashed to the far end of the food preparatory and dropped into the retyel.

He spun around, kicked the release for the table, and pulled his foot back just in time to save it from being crushed.

As the table reached the bottom point of its travel, the place where it always stuck slightly, he stomped down with his boot. The table slammed home with an ominous squeal and the sound of relenting metal.

“What’s going on?” Ama’s voice—half question, half accusation.

“Betrayal.” He barged past her.

Inside the sleeping quarters, Seg looked everywhere and nowhere while a dull pain glowed behind his eyes. He was only aware that he had sat on the bed as he felt his fist pound into his thigh. Even Ama’s entry seemed to be happening in some far away place.

“You scared her half to death, you know,” he heard her say.

“Are you trying to make me feel guilty?”

“So you
can
talk. Good, you can explain why you’re shouting and throwing things.”

“I don’t have to explain myself to you, Ama.”

He was thankful for the ensuing silence, though he could feel her watching him, studying his shaking hands and glazed eyes.

“No,” she said, at last, “you don’t have to explain yourself.” She sat on the bed, leaving a wide gap between the two of them. When she spoke again, her voice had softened. “And I don’t have to go to some stupid victory party and walk around with my head bowed all night … but I will. I chose to be with you; that means I chose all the bad parts as well as the good ones. We knew this wouldn’t be easy.”

At Ama’s words, at her concession, the scope of his anger widened on her behalf. “They should bow to you, not the other way around. You shouldn’t have come here. This world is broken, these people are too stupid and mired in procedure. They’ll never change. They might as well lie down and die.”

“What happened today?” She sidled closer, cupping a hand over one of his fists to steady it. A small action, but one that swung open a door in his chest.

“It was an ambush,” he said, exhaling. “Instead of looking at how the raid worked, they went straight for the procedural quibbles.” His fist trembled under her hand, but he did not pull it away. “I should have known. Win the greatest victory in generations for the Guild and they immediately have to discredit it.”

“You’ve faced worse. Remember, you defeated ten thousand Welf with only the sound of your voice.”

He didn’t return her smile; there was no humor left inside him. “Even if that were true it wouldn’t be good enough. They want to turn my raid, my success, into an aberration. They want to destroy me in order to retain their beloved protocol. And when I return to the sanctuary of my home,” he held up the digipad still locked in his grip, “I am handed notification that the survivors of the deceased raiders at the temple have joined in arbitration against me for those deaths.
Professional Incompetence
because I failed to determine the Shasir had a hidden black powder storage there.”

“No one could have known that.”

“It doesn’t matter. News of my raid’s success is everywhere. I should have anticipated there would be facilitators scheming ways to steal their share of the profits.”

“You can fight them, though? These facilitators? The Questioners?”

“Oh, I will. I’ll show them. If they want to make an enemy of me, I’ll break them, too.” He tossed the digipad to the floor.

“These are your own people,” she said.

“They’re cowards.”

Ama was silent again. Outside the door, faint murmurs and bumps could be heard—Lissil and Manatu, cleaning up his mess.

“You need some rest,” she said.

He turned to look at her; he felt old, his skin heavy, his body as weary as it had been that long night at the temple. “I have work to do.”

“Tomorrow.”

He could see she would fight him if he resisted. This time he was relieved.

“Tomorrow,” he repeated, then sluffed off his coat and boots.

After setting a wake-up chime, he sagged back onto the bed. He would rise early, dose up on stims, then tackle these problems with a clear head.

Ama curled into him on the small bed, an arm wrapped around his waist. His body, deep in the trenches of stim withdrawal, shook and fought off the sleep it so desperately needed. Another battle. Would they ever end?

A long overdue smile pulled up the corners of Efectuary Akbas’s face. She wanted to bite, to feel something solid snap between her teeth.

Her work day had ended hours earlier but the monitor in her office was once more aglow with images. On the left, the vis feed collected by her men in the Old Town of Cathind. Eraranat’s army of Outers wandered the street, gawked at the shield (probably believing it a god), then two of the prims prepared to fight (perhaps over the right to mate with Eraranat’s caj, the lone female among them). Free, armed Outers, running loose in the streets. Hostile Outers. Her notes on this discovery would be thorough.

After this feed completed, there would be another—Eraranat and two of his followers paying the Outers a visit. Equally important, that one.

On the right side of the screen was the face of raider Fismar Korth, formally
Captain
Fismar Korth. Below his image, his history. A spotless record, including selection for unspecified test programs and a promising military career until the disastrous Sikkora Raid. She had reviewed the details of the raid down to the smallest trooper’s report. It appeared highly unlikely that Korth, with his years of successful field duty, the very model of MRRC training, could have been responsible for such an obviously flawed operation. More likely, House Master Parth had been the architect of his own tragedy.

But House Masters outranked Captains, and how difficult was it to toss a subordinate to the jaws of the machine? Not difficult at all. Efectuary Akbas had covered her own mistakes that way more than once.

She had also studied the profiles of Eraranat’s other conspirators.

Raider Manatu Dibeld was nothing more than the standard piece of expendable meat trained to protect Theorists on recon missions. Eraranat had either bribed or brainwashed him into taking that job description a bit further, but there was nothing to indicate the man had any influence.

Likewise for Rider Pilot Second Class Shan Welkin. That one didn’t even come with a sterling service record. She had failed the Aggressor Flight Test not once but three times, and had finally been shuffled off to one of the lowest rental services available, as a co-pilot. Her short history was replete with failures, insubordination, and now an extrans crash that had resulted in the deaths of twenty-seven raiders, not to mention a possible mutiny.

Medical Elarn Fataleh was the latest addition to Eraranat’s band. Six years of extrans work, putting raiders back together on the line, had apparently cracked him. His attempt to reintegrate with his fellow citizens and pursue a legitimate career had failed miserably, ending with a near fatal operation on a House member. From there, his record all but disappeared and from what Akbas could gather he was now one of those butcher-for-hire medicals that polluted the Raider’s Quarter.

It seemed Eraranat had a soft spot for misfits, failures, and freaks. Perfect. Those types were easily bought or threatened. For now, however, she would not waste her time on the peripherals. What mattered was getting rid of those fifty Outers and for that she would have to first get rid of the man who was in charge of them.

She tapped the nail of her index finger on Fismar Korth’s onscreen forehead.

“You’re not a failure, are you? You are a victim of circumstance. Let’s see how you feel about changing those circumstances.”

She brought up the MRRC listings and scrolled through them until she found the contact she needed.

“Comm active,” she ordered the monitor, then: “Connect.”

“Field Active Pegno,” a gruff voice responded.

“FA Pegno, this is Efectuary Akbas of the Political Interactions Section, CWA. We have an urgent matter to discuss with you.”

“This comm’s secure, Efectuary. What can I do for you?”

“Not for me, FA.” The smile returned; her teeth felt sharp now, ready to tear something apart. “This is about what you can do for the World.”

O
n a catwalk high above the warehouse floor, Fismar stood with Seg and observed the troops as they ran drills. He had done what he could with the scant materials at hand. A maze of crates functioned as a rudimentary simulation of the sort of close-quarters combat they could expect at the Keep, and the men navigated the passages with their fake guns, covering each other as they moved forward. Not as precise or polished as real raiders but Fismar knew Seg would see a vast improvement over the disorganized mob that had come across only three weeks ago.

A hot wind drifted through the warehouse, blown in from the wastelands outside Old Town. Normally the regulated atmosphere interchange at the shield prevented winds from blowing so heavily, but the shield here was an older, quirkier piece of work. The residents were simply happy that it compressed and hardened against the Storm. Lately, it had been taxed hard as the Storm raged against Cathind and Old Town. A window had opened long enough to allow Seg a crossing, though the capricious, shifting nature of the Storm might close that window at any time.

“They’re getting it.” Fismar nodded to the men below. “I mean, the basics. Got ’em thinking more like troops and less like glory hounds out to honor their ancestors or whatever karging death and glory nonsense they brought with ’em.”

“You’ve done well, better than I anticipated, honestly,” Seg said.

“Long way to go,” Fismar said. “Didn’t bring Kalder with you? Thought she’d be anxious to see her people by now.”

“I was at the main Guild compound when the Storm cleared; there was no time to collect her. I could barely spare this time away as it is.”

“Working you over at the Question?”

Seg grunted his reply; a clear indication that the topic was best avoided. Fismar directed his attention back to the men down below.

“The chatterer tune-up’s working fine with their dialect, so there’s no more secret language going on here. Had the med tune it all up for me.”

“He tunes chatterers?”

“Elarn’s a talented guy.”

“Long-term, do you think I should retain his services?” Seg asked.

Below, a scrum had broken out between a pair of troopers. Others rushed in to separate them, and their squad leaders barked out reprimands.

Fismar shrugged and indicated the fight. “That’s just good spirit there. Fighters are going to fight.”

“The med?”

“Let me work with him some, get him onboard with the program, then sure. These boys need their own chatterers. My guess is Elarn will not only know how to put them in but where to find them on the recycled market, too. ’Course, if we don’t get some guns and fresher food in here soon, there’s not much point to all this. Respectfully. And, about Welkin, she left me a message last night. She’s still in the hole over everything, stuck flying Stormwatch, and she wants out as soon as possible,” Fismar said.

“I’m working on the financial issues. There have been complications with the disbursement. The CWA is dragging out payment for the raid.”

Fismar cocked his head. “The CWA? Why?”

“Simply their way.”

“Wouldn’t have anything to do with that little argument I heard you guys had during the raid planning sessions, would it?” Fismar spread his hands at Seg’s look. “Hey, raider rumor pipeline never stops flowing.”

“I doubt the CWA would delay the payments for every party involved in the raid simply as a means of getting at me.”

“Wellies are pretty nasty when somebody steps on their turf. And there’s that whole Digi-Wellie feud, goes back way before,” Fismar said.

“Nevertheless, we will have the funds soon.”

“Good, because I’ve picked out the gear we’ll need. Some of this is going to be pricey, but if the Etiphars are still running on the tech base their House had back when they took Julewa Keep, we can dance on these ground slugs.” Fismar pulled a digifilm from his pocket. “Show you what I’m talking about. Got the pricing too.”