Chapter 10
“Every decision of governance must weigh the genetic implications to the human species.”
Legacy Mandate by Emperor Yung I
Che Ramos tried to stroll naturally among all the other Vested Citizens on the broad path from the ribbon throughway. He tried to keep his hand from resting on the hilt of a sword that he had worn for nearly two whole hours. In those two hours the city where he had lived his entire life suddenly became something entirely new.
After years of planning, weeks of classes and the help of a dueling instructor, Che made the leap from a demi-cit to a Vested Citizen, with all the freedoms and hazards this new status allowed. No longer bound by the draconian limitations of the demi-cit, for the first time in his life he could engage in countless activities he had only watched in vidstream dramas. He could pilot an aircraft, drive a skimcar, imbibe limitless quantities of various intoxicants, shoot off firearms, or sell his own internal organs on the open market. Oh, the glorious freedom of it all!
Of course, at the same moment he no longer enjoyed the Imperial protections afforded all demi-cits. Accountability for every word and deed now reined in any exuberance he might have, and Che knew he could now go broke and starve, if he was not flayed in a duel or otherwise killed by his own foolhardy choices. The oath of the Vested Citizen made that all too clear. He had stepped through a one-way door into a dangerous, exciting world, and the reality was intoxicating.
Che knew that the demi-cit system dated back centuries to the old Khan Li dynasty. Thanks to his recent citizenship classes, Che also knew that the system under the old dynasty did not regularly allow voluntary promotion to full citizenship. In those days a demi-cit generally gained promotion through the efforts of a sponsoring citizen. Otherwise one was a demi-cit for life, like it or not. That all ended when General Yung overthrew the Khan Li Emperor way back in 5299—or was it 5297?
Now, for all these centuries, any demi-cit could voluntarily walk away from the Imperial largesse, the stipend, the housing, the medical care…and all the intrusive control. They could choose to walk from all those certainties into a life of immense risk, and nearly limitless freedom. But one could only make that switch once in a lifetime.
Che now stood at the start of his new life, however long or short it might be… The citizenship class spelled out the odds and numbers very clearly, so Che knew that most new Vested Citizens did not step into a life of wealth, surrounded by Shaper tech and fabulous longevity. Most, he knew, gambled their lives in hazardous, high-paying jobs not permitted for demi-cits (such as high-risk asteroid mining) or they eked out some basic lifestyle about on par with the demi-cits. The highest social class and the lowest gutter dwellers contained only Vested Citizens; the starving, the drug-addicted homeless could only be Vested Citizens, too. That “freedom” was not permitted to demi-cits.
Che intended to be part of that former group, and he was realistic enough to know that few demi-cits making the election for full citizenship felt any differently. But Che had a plan, and citizenship was just one more step toward the fruition of a dream he formed ten years before.
Since a major part of his plan involved a temporary career in Fleet, the two figures clad in Fleet uniforms walking toward him caught Che’s attention. Well, he thought, one Fleet uniform, and just the collar tabs of a second uniform shrouded in a voluminous cloak.
For some reason, the two figures walking from the ribbon throughway struck Che as out of the ordinary, although Fleet personnel abounded in Imperial City and the dumb-mech trotting along behind was nothing too peculiar. The one in the commander’s uniform stood about average height, perhaps a handsbreadth taller than Che, but heavily muscled and very serious looking. The cloaked woman was in some ways exactly opposite of the commander. Her short blond hair and half smile presented a rather disarming image, and her apparent slenderness additionally contrasted with her stocky companion.
Although Che had not yet obtained a Shaper implant, he operated HUD eyepieces, and he received an unpleasant jolt of recognition when his HUD UI fed him the commander’s ident signature: Commander S. Sinclair-Maru…Saef Sinclair-Maru. That name was one of eight cited in his citizenship class as examples of Vested Citizens not to offend. All eight had the unfashionable tendency to provide skillful, lethal duels. Saef Sinclair-Maru was the only name Che immediately remembered, simply because it was also the name of those history-book heroes of Imperial City, Mia and Devlin Sinclair-Maru.
Che felt a sudden chill. What the hell was he doing, thinking that a couple of classes and a sword somehow made him a citizen?
He felt himself shrivel inside at the thought of looking across a sword into the face of Sinclair-Maru. What joy would all the freedoms of a Vested Citizen bring to one sprawled on the ground, slowly assuming room temperature?
Without thinking, Che backed away from the two approaching figures and blundered directly into two young men. Instead of straightening, looking them in the eye, and stating a calm apology (as instructed in his citizenship class), Che followed a lifetime’s patterning as a demi-cit, mumbling some inaudible words as he turned to leave.
That was a nearly fatal error.
“A deliberate affront,” one of the young men said. Che glanced up, horrified to find both men staring at him. One wore a haughty, angry expression, while the other looked between Che and his companion with a pleased, vacuous expression.
“I—I…my apologies for my clumsiness, sir, I—” Che began to blurt, not at all the way his class had instructed, but he felt the burning need to keep these two citizens from speaking certain dangerous words.
“My honor is taken,” the angry one said.
“Indeed, mine, too,” the vacuous one added.
“N—no…” Che babbled, seeing the irrevocable pit opening before him, already feeling the burning pain of a thrusting sword that surely awaited.
“I saw no dishonor,” a new voice said, and Che felt a new shock as he found Commander Sinclair-Maru standing close beside, his blond assistant shaking her head in disapproval.
Both of the young-looking men turned their focus from Che to the new interloper in Fleet uniform. “What? This citizen deliberately insulted us!”
Commander Sinclair-Maru seemed rather impatient as he said, “I observed it all. There was no offense.”
“There was. It’s no business of yours.”
Sinclair-Maru’s hand dropped to the well-worn hilt of his short sword. “You call me a liar, and the honor of my Family cannot ignore this.”
Che felt the dryness of his mouth as the tension built. Apparently the vacuous young man understood “the better part of valor,” and possibly recognized the Sinclair-Maru name that was surely scrolling across his UI. He placed a hand on his angry companion’s shoulder. “Perhaps we are mistaken,” he said. Che saw the telltale flicker of movement as the vacuous one transmitted a line-of-sight message to his friend. Che figured it probably said something like: “Shut up or we’re dead!”
Whatever it was, it worked.
“Perhaps you are right,” the angry one ground out as if the words cost him blood.
Commander Sinclair-Maru almost seemed to smile. “Good.” His hand dropped from his sword. “Good day.” He nodded and began walking. Che felt one hard hand casually sweep him along with the rather frightening commander.
When they were a few meters distant Che said, “I—I am indebted to you, sir.”
“Never mind,” was the low response. “How long have you been a Vested Citizen?”
Feeling foolish, Che answered, “Just a few hours, actually.”
“Well, well,” Commander Sinclair-Maru said, “I’ll probably never see you again, Citizen, but I wish you far better luck than it appears you have enjoyed thus far.”
Che stopped walking as the commander, the cloaked assistant, and their dumb-mech walked on from the ribbon throughway toward the inviting Port District. For some reason Che found himself calling out, “I may see you sir. I’m a Fleet specialist now. I’m Spec Che Ramos.”
“A busy first few hours of citizenry, eh? Very well then, Ramos. I’ll see you in service to the Emperor, perhaps.”
As they continued to move away, Che heard the assistant say, “Not your fight. Why intrude?”
Straining his hearing, Che barely heard the growled reply, “I cannot abide a bully, Maru.”
Che watched their progress a moment longer before awakening to his situation once again. He thought momentarily about visiting one of the pubs or other exclusive citizen territories, then thought better of it. He waved down a skimcar and slid in with a sigh of relief.
For the first time in his life, Che saw the skimcar offer the option for manual control. Although he had long wanted to drive a skimcar, just like a vidstream drama, one glance at his shaking hand silenced that impulse. “Ten Sundeep Plaza, please,” he instructed the skimcar. Better just to head home and pack his belongings anyway.
Phase two of his big plan was about to begin, despite his brush with death.
* * *
Saef and Inga walked from the ribbon throughway only a half klick to the Fleet registry, where they encountered their first issue.
“Commander Sinclair-Maru?” the Fleet clerk said, after quickly scanning the log files. “Your temporary duty orders don’t show you here in Imperial City for two more days, I fear.”
“My promptness is a problem?” Saef said.
The clerk cleared his throat several times, nervously scanning some UI projection, his eyes scanning rapidly from side to side. “Yes, sir. You see, I just have no quarters for you here. You’ll have to stay at the transient officers lodging, I’m afraid.”
“Transient officers?”
“Just an expression, sir. They’re really quite nice,” the clerk continued, nervously swallowing. “I have a skimcar arriving any moment.”
Saef stared at the clerk for an uncomfortable instant. “Very well. How far from our lodging to the Admiralty office?”
The clerk’s eyes flicked. “Eight klicks only, sir. There’s the skimcar now.”
Saef speared the clerk with one last glare before stepping to the door with Inga close behind.
“I hope this isn’t some sort of ‘stuff the rube’ type game, Maru.”
Inga shrugged, but her brow held uncharacteristic furrows. The dumb-mech scampered ahead to the skimcar, seeming to sniff at it like a dog. The door obligingly folded back, allowing the dumb-mech to leap up into the seats, taking half the compartment. “I guess the luggage is riding with us, eh?” Saef said dryly.
“There’s food in the luggage,” Inga said, and Saef couldn’t help smiling as the door closed.
The ride to the “transient officer lodging” may have been only eight klicks, but the visible environment changed dramatically. In place of the bustling vitality of the Port District, their destination lay in a rare zone of disrepair. Even the Imperial City UI overlay defaulted to basic green surfaces on every building, a message of shameless self-promotion scrolling slowly across: SUNDEEP-MARITZ INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY.
Inga shooed the dumb-mech out the door and it scampered gamely up to the exterior of their rather tired-looking goal. Inga and Saef followed, and the skimcar buzzed away, back toward the distant base of the ribbon.
Saef stepped inside the door and instantly felt his annoyance fade, replaced by something far more intense. Inga captured his thoughts in one terse phrase: “Something’s wrong.”
“Yes,” Saef said, quickly scanning the lobby of what must once have been a hotel of some sort. The attendant desk showed thick, dusty proof that not even cleaner mechs had operated in some time.
Saef felt the alerts ping into his UI like physical blows as his connection to all Nets snuffed out, an extinguished candle. The next moment compiled a cascade of actions into one crystalline instant:
Saef snatched down for his weapons, a door crashed open beside the attendant desk, Inga’s hand blurred with inhuman speed from beneath her cloak, and a shot fired from the opening door struck Saef square in the chest.
Saef felt the shock of impact twisting him as his pistol cleared the holster. He stared for a frozen millisecond at Inga’s profile, her feral smile topped by that loose lock of blond hair. Then her face lit in staccato flashes as the submachine gun in her hands hammered through the open door and chewed a line down the wall. Saef completed his draw, pistol in his right hand, sword in his left.
Without pausing, Saef charged ahead through the open door, weapons up and ready. Inside he found two opponents down, clearly very dead, riddled by Inga’s fire. “They’re down,” Saef said, and stepped back into the lobby. Inga held the wicked, black sub-gun against her shoulder still smiling, her gaze flicking over the doors and windows opening onto the lobby.
For the first time Saef really noticed the strange heat at his low back where Devlin’s old body shield rested. It worked as advertised and now bled heat converted from the kinetic impact of one high-velocity round.
“Question is, do we hold here, or run?” Saef said glancing obliquely out a window, keeping well back. “What else have you got under that cloak?”
Inga quickly dropped the magazine, replacing it with a fresh one. “Couple more mags, sword, knife, a body pistol…and a grenade.”
“A grenade,” Saef repeated, surprised.
Her smile widened and she blew the fringe of hair out of her eyes. “Yeah. Bloody love a grenade, and the weight kinda evens me out.”
Saef shook his head. “I’ll have some questions if we survive this, Maru.”
“Hah!” She grinned. “Just a sec here…” She seemed to look off into the distance, her brow furrowed as if in deep thought.
“Okay,” she said at last. “There’s no way out except up front here, unless we blow a wall. And there’re a couple of them posted up across the street…someone down to the left, too.”
Before Saef could interject, Inga skipped past a window in two flashing steps, continuing in motion as two projectiles cracked through the window and wall. “Yep, those are bad guys!” She laughed.
“You’ve been on the scaram, haven’t you?” Saef accused, staring at her.
“Just like Family,” Inga said and winked.
Saef grimaced, shaking his head. Far, far beyond orthodox. She found the Deep Man, like Saef…like the most accomplished of the Sinclair-Maru, and she was untouched by fear in what was surely her first real gunfight. Questions…
“Listen then, Cousin: Trigger the door with the dumb-mech, suppress the shooters across the street for just a moment. Stay to the right of the door—and Maru…don’t get hit,” Saef said. “I’ll take this shooter to the left, and cross over.”
Saef had worked two years as an instructor at the Battersea Ground Combat School, in part because it allowed him to stroll about hundreds of simulated battles and observe large numbers of men and women from dozens of different Houses as they engaged in combat. Very quickly he discovered that most people under even simulated gunfire could not help but shrink their fields of vision down to the most immediate threat against their life. If a bayonet thrusts toward your guts, your world becomes that wicked point of sharpened metal. Similarly, if the window you’re staring at suddenly erupts with a stream of deadly bullets, little else will exist for several fear-fueled seconds. There were only a few ways to train around this human instinct, and few invested the effort in learning the depths of fear, finding the Deep Man.
Thus Saef felt little surprise when he was not immediately hammered with gunfire as he initiated his attack.
At Inga’s direction, the dumb-mech shambled past the door, triggering it to open, and a half-dozen rounds snapped through the open expanse, even as Inga scuttled past a window, firing a burst as she slid to the ground. At the same moment, Saef emerged, moving at a shallow angle to the left, and not one round came at him.
A moment later that was no longer true. The startled gunman couldn’t avoid seeing Saef appear directly in front of him, and he managed to get one shot off. Saef barely noticed the flare of the skimming impact deflected by his body shield, as his own sights aligned and the pistol in his right hand bucked once. Saef saw the hit, and turned toward his remaining enemies before the gunman fell headlong. He crossed the road unchallenged, bursts of fire roaring to his right.
Apparently Inga’s fire spooked the two shooters in the abandoned building opposite her position. From two windows reckless fire poured out, raking the walls and windows of the decrepit hotel. Over that perpetual hailstorm of fire the two shooters never saw or heard Saef’s attack.
Saef moved down the wall, the muzzle of a weapon blasting fire protruding from a window just ahead. He saw a flash of an armored man’s face forming one last surprised look. Saef’s shot took him below the helmet and above the armor.
He vaulted lightly through the window, moving past the fallen ambusher without a sound. Hearing the near-continuous roar of an automatic weapon from another room, Saef slid down a long corridor in a smooth rush, his sword held, blade up, and pistol ready.
He entered the open door without a pause, allowing his peripheral vision to quick-scan the two blind corners, the instinctive ambush locations of any human attacker. But only a lone figure populated the room, firing long bursts from a pair of windows.
Saef cut the firing off, literally, with a quick slash of his short sword. His opponent, an armored heavyworlder, spun with a cry, his rifle dropping from his now-limp right arm.
“Now we’re going to talk,” Saef said in an even tone.
Blood poured from the heavyworlder’s thick right arm, and he stared at Saef’s for one shocked instant before lunging forward. Saef barely parried the knife that seemingly materialized in the man’s left hand, knowing full well that his body shield offered him no protection from a blade. The armored shoulder caught Saef in the midriff, knocking him painfully backward. Blades clashed again and for one desperate moment Saef felt the enormous strength of his heavyworld foe as his left arm began to buckle. Saef seized his only chance a moment before his enemy’s knife plunged home, firing a single shot almost in his own face, the muzzle blast stinging his eyes.
Saef stood breathing as his opponent slumped down, then moved to clear the remainder of the building before making his way back across the street, sword and pistol still in hand.
With all the Nets suppressed somehow, even the default Imperial City overlay had disappeared, and the decaying row of structures displayed to their full disadvantage. Of course, the old hotel structure appeared in a particularly poor light, its walls pitted with hundreds of fresh bullet impacts.
“Coming in,” Saef announced, walking through the shattered door, afraid of what he might see.
Inga sprawled behind the dumb-mech, the submachine gun resting conveniently atop its metallic carapace. Her right hand lay on the weapon, and her left hand held a shiny red fruit that she munched with obvious relish.
Several bullet impacts decorated the dumb-mech.
Saef stared at Inga as she smiled.
“I will want some answers from you, Maru,” he said.
Inga tossed the fruit core on the rubble-strewn floor. “You may even get some, Commander,” she said, standing to her feet and cradling her sub-gun, “but first we should probably finish surviving, don’t you think?”
“You have some suggestions to that end?”
“Oh yes. I excel at this ‘cloak-and-dagger nonsense’ as you call it.” She smiled broadly, and Saef felt a tremor of shock as the color of her eyes shifted from their bright blue, swirling into dark brown. “But I suspect you will have more questions before we’re through.”