* * *
Saul Vartanian would have killed himself sooner or later, having long exceeded the average life expectancy of martial defectors. The question as to why he did not loomed over his every thought. A part of him resented the new glimmer of hope that had come quite unexpectedly through the sudden and unexpected acquaintance with Martial Elijah Malachi.
The shutting door sent echoes through the barren corridor and he stood awhile in a silent trance. He pocketed his hands and felt for the blade. You never walked the streets without a blade… His nose twitched as he sniffed in a nauseating brew of smoke, ethanol and bile. The stench reached its peak down the corridor, where he came upon a man lying on the floor with his back up against the corner, still, eyes shut.
He stopped and studied the vagrant; gaunt, unkempt, rotten, decayed, rancid and bound up in a blanket that smelled of excrement. The martial seal on the man’s neck was faded under a bubble of scar tissue.
Dreg…
Warzone castoffs. The life of the dreg was wretched and brief; usually terminating in illness, suicide or slaughter in cold blood. Not all dregs were defectors, but all defectors quite inevitably wound up as dregs. As he reached into his coat pockets and leaned forward to lay the coins down by the dreg’s side he noticed that his chest was not rising. He pressed two fingers up to the jugular and the dreg’s head lolled to one side.
Dead…
No stab wounds. Probably bit on cyanide. He tucked the coins into his pockets and stood back up, turned and walked on as a matter of course. Sodom sanitation would find the body sooner or later and strip the corpse down for parts for the living (eyes were especially valued).
A loud wind of juddering maglev rails, sirens and foot traffic blustered through as he passed through the tunnel into Sixth Echelons, the heart of the Dukheim District sky city. Above and below, a hundred stories in each direction, flyovers intersected through the heart of a great hollow pillar. Bridges cut from wall to wall, stocked with a current of martials making the 0900 deployment rush.
He raised the collar of his coat and flowed with the Sodom bloodstream, averting the cold glares from the oncoming traffic. Passing eyes followed until the moment shoulders grazed in passing, his hand tight around the blade. Dregs were non-persons. It was insufferable to the upstanding member of martial order to see a dreg walking the streets of Sodom as though he was anything more than the lowest form of life.
The congesting mobs squeezed up against him and he kept his eyes down and his collar high, approaching the flow of the capsule lines – man-sized bubbles flowing through webs of thick, clear pipelines.
One of the ellipsoid bubbles stopped and hatched open. He flicked the cigarette butt away and stepped in. The capsule closed instantly and off it went, shooting along the nexus of tubes, winding in and out of Durkheim and over the metropolis streets. A panel shone with the capsule routes laid out and he dragged his fingertips over the district schematic, plotting the capsule’s course to Milidome Plaza.
At this time of the day, the capsule flow was fast and steady. The dawn skyline over Sodom whizzed past behind loose threads of fog; maglev highways looping around tall spires, in and out of great man-made mountains. The air carriers lumbered high in the sky, shuttling back and forth from the warzones, ferrying fresh armies of Sodomite martials.
He stared into the dark eyes of his own reflection on the inside of the glass bubble and stroked the bulging scar just above his collarbone. The faded remains of the martial seal – the brand of the UMC – were hidden behind the lumps of scar tissue.
He had no memory of how, why or when he had sold his life to martial order. It may or may not have been longer than 11 months and 13days. He did know that he was not born in the martial world. No man or woman ever was. The gates to the martial world were locked on the inside and sterilisation was mandatory on entry. All who come choose it, and the pledge to the global war machine is a pledge unto death.
The Commission cleaned you out as soon you were initiated, all records of any previous life erased forever. Even though no citizen of martial world could remember anything up until the day they crossed over, the reasons were no great secret. Every year, millions of people migrated to the war metropolises seeking fortune in the so-called “Free Martial Economy.” War was power. And both war and power were the preserve of the martial world.
The capsule slowed to a halt over Milidome Plaza, in the great shadow of the Milidome; the beating heart of Sodom. Over the top of the mountainous facade hung the gargantuan insignia of the UMC; the three-horned, three-headed beast – a head for each of the Three Regions of the Covenant. The immense hub of the UMC First Region blotted out half of the sky and gobbled up every arterial road, maglev rail, capsule tube, rhumb line and airway in the metropolis. The capsule hung high over the plaza and suddenly began to plummet, slowing to a stop at the end of a long overpass, flowing back into the congestion of foot traffic.
The capsule opened and he emerged onto Vanguard Bridge. The cold autumn wind lashed past and he raised his collar again. SGs – the blue-geared gargoyles from Sodom martial law enforcement – flanked the bridge; visors shut, guns at their chests. To the left, the global media displays were high over the plaza, blaring with the latest martial media updates from the warzones. The towering screens usually reported something tending toward the decline of East Grid power and the converse supremacy of western militaries, some political update from the Senior Commission and the odd report about economic growth interspersed with loops of wartech ads from the PMCs.
The entrance to the Vanguard was in sight. You could tell the increased concentration of high-casters by their signets. Contracting sections in West Wing were ordered according to castes, and the Vanguard section was the zenith of all martialdom. Dozens of monitors showed long lists of assignments ordered according to serial number, army quota, vacancy, assignment description, contracting party and so forth. Martials amassed, hunting for the best assignments tendered to their caste.
He crossed the threshold of the ingress into the Vanguard main atrium. The upper-casters traversing the halls seldom appeared without an entourage at their heels, sporting the marks and crests of their respective guilds. Guild hostilities had worsened in recent months, but his arrival seemed to have instantly united all in a sudden, common hate. This was the one place where no Sodomite would ever expect to see a dreg.
The visors of two SGs rotated as he passed, then quietly shadowed him through the corridors. He dared not stop his march until the moment he spied out one of the larger offices across the atrium floor. Over the front of the office doors a plaque read:
“Comm. 1st Class Donald Clarke Eastman”
He sauntered up to the open doors and silently crossed the threshold.
Immediately across from him, a man was seated behind a large desk, half-hidden behind a translucent screen, not realising that someone had entered his office until his nose started to twitch with the first whiffs of some peculiar stench… with a hint of jasmine.
The commissioner stopped. An ageless face rose almost robotically, and a pair of narrow, beady eyes peered up and surveyed him from head to toe, to head again. After a long, deadpan gaze and a protracted silence, the commissioner spoke.
“May I… help you?” The voice was an effeminate monotone.
He tucked his hand underneath his coat, took out a crumpled piece of paper and placed it on the desk. “I am here to apply for a contract,” he said. “This is the serial number.”
The commissioner gazed blankly at the piece of paper, then at the martial before him, then the Guards outside the office. He squinted to make out the scribbled 12-digit code on the unfurled piece of paper and his head tilted curiously.
“Nova Crimea,” muttered the effeminate drone voice. A glassy surface lit up and the commissioner started fingering away robotically at the keys, eyes darting from left to right over his screen. “…Caste,” the affeminite voice pronounced.
“First Tier… Ares,” he answered
automatically.
The commissioner stopped typing at once and the beady eyes rose and fixed him with a glare.
“PMC…”
“None.”
“Guild.”
“None.”
“Freelance… Martial identification number.”
He paused, and then began to recite, slowly: “Zero. Zero. Zero. Seven. One. Seven. One. Six. Six. One. Five. Zero. Eight… Eight… Eight.”
The commissioner’s expression suddenly became disturbed as he typed in the final number. The deadpan eyes peered up again. “May I see your credentials?”
He reached into the sleeve of his coat and took out a faded black card with the black insignia beast of the UMC on the back.
The commissioner’s beady eyes zipped back and forth from the card to the man himself and a glimmer of astonishment found its way across his marble face as he slowly laid the card down on his desk. “Martial Vartanian … We did not think we would see you again.” The office doors automatically shut, and the synthetic-faced commissioner remained staring with an uncanny look of acquaintance in the unblinking eyes. “Do you remember me?”
“Eastman,” Saul answered, as though uttering the man’s name would conceal the fact that he had not the slightest memory of ever meeting him before.
“They cleaned you,” the commissioner muttered deductively, with a slow nod. “I was certain you were dead. Your old record was deleted just under a year ago.”
“Eleven months and 13 days.”
Does he know…?
“Please sit,” bid the commissioner.
He obeyed with caution.
The keyboard re-illuminated over the glossy surface of the crystal-top desk. “Now,” Commissioner Eastman continued, tapping away at the keys; “The Nova Crimea assignment… You may know the call for tenders was issued by the European Bureau of Defence. Unfortunately, the quota for the assignment has already been met. We should be making the final settlements with the USE’s Defence Section later this morning. The only way we can allow your application is if we received authorisation from the contractor; a certain Martial…”
“Elijah Malachi,” he interrupted, finishing the commissioner’s sentence.
“Correct.”
“He told me to come to you.”
“I see,” Eastman replied with a vague nod. “Perhaps the memo slipped through the cracks. No administration is bulletproof, you understand…” He lifted his hands off the desk. The illuminated touchboard disappeared and the light from the translucent screen dissipated. “What were Martial Malachi’s instructions?”
“I will be taking command of the brigade for the assignment.”
“Have you reviewed the mission brief?”
“Yes.”
Eastman nodded again.
“Very well,” he said. “I’m sure all parties involved will welcome the leadership of one of the First Region’s finest. I’ll send a request for confirmation to Martial Malachi immediately. You will be contacted via Nexus once the War Bureau has approved your application. I presume you still have your cell?”
“I do.”
Having no further business to discuss, Saul abruptly rose from his seat without valediction.
“Martial Vartanian,” Eastman called out, interrupting his exit. “There is one more thing.”
“I know. Neural evaluation.”
“According to your record, Dr. Augustus Pope was your assigned neuralist. Is that correct?”
Saul stopped suddenly and turned back. “Yes… Why?”
“He’s here.”
Saul maintained a silence, eyeing the commissioner with suspicion.
“He must have anticipated you. Neuralists are very good at that sort of thing.” The commissioner gave a summoning look to the Guards outside his office. The doors opened and four heavy, blue-geared figures entered a moment later. “Room 7773.”