MEA KAUA
Stephen Lawson
Uhane killed his jet pack’s throttle as he alighted in a grain field on the floating city’s edge. It wasn’t the only contract he’d ever taken against the corvidians, but it was the first that required him to move an entire platform.
“I don’t care how it’s done,” Mano had said. “They’re blocking out our sunlight. Our solar floats have been down for a week. Our kelp beds are dying.”
Mano was chieftain of the Rana clan, merfolk that lived in a plastic city in the water near Uhane’s tribe. He’d come with a delegation to plead their case before the Keiki o Ke Aka, whose business it was to make weapons for their one mercenary representative. Uhane’s grandfather had been Mea Kaua and had trained Uhane’s father. Now Uhane carried the mantle for the village.
Negotiation with the corvidians would be pointless. The Rana had nothing the corvidians wanted except access to fishing waters. The merfolk’s plastic cities held nothing of value for the anointed bird men or their cousins, the vesparians—the wasp people.
Since the Great Fire, this was the way of the world. Merfolk—faweyl as they called themselves—scavenged the plastic the firstblood discarded. The faweyl raised their young in oceans teeming with sharks, giant jellies, and squid, while corvidians and vesparians used the magic of antigravity to float in the skies above. The All Lords had given the Anointed everything—wings, floating cities, and computers to speak with them directly.
Even descendants of the firstblood like Uhane didn’t speak to the All Lords. For the lowly faweyl, such a thing was unthinkable. They’d been made to bring the oceans to order—to make something beautiful of the firstblood’s six-pack rings, milk jugs, and shopping bags.
“I’ve assassinated corvidian council members and fishing parties before,” Uhane had said, “but moving an entire city—that’s going to take some doing. All the Anointed are fighting a war for airspace right now. They’ll be well armed, and it will be dangerous. Expensive.”
“These are good fishing waters,” Mano had said. “We’ve made them so by cultivating the fish in our swirl. We’ve planted what good fish eat, built tunnels and mazes sharks can’t penetrate. We have a relationship with the fish, or had one, until those sky demons came. The faweyl have no means of flight, and our bodies would burst even if we dared. Your kind can do this though, Uhane.
“The firstblood once made machines to live in the ocean like faweyl and devices to fly in the air like the Anointed—higher, perhaps.”
So they agreed on a price. Uhane knew it had cost them dearly—and likely incurred a debt from the Tenek clan. Mano had laid down the coin—half in advance, as was the custom.
Uhane had gathered the tools of his trade: jet pack, Gauss rifle, swarm armor, naginata, knives, and an assortment of brimstone, swarm, and void grenades. He’d twisted the grip on his naginata, collapsing the pole to a quarter of its full length, then inserted the blade in a sheath on his jet pack.
To cross the miles of ocean between his village and the floating city, Uhane climbed into the clan’s prop-driven ekranoplan. It was a smaller ground-effect vehicle than the jet-driven ekranoplans the Soviets had once used. It could transport twelve people comfortably, flying just meters above the water at a rate faster than any boat.
After touching down among the wheat stalks, Uhane released the jet pack’s control grips and the turbojets folded down onto the pack’s frame. His swarm armor changed to match the wheat—amber with black vertical stripes to imitate the shadows. It didn’t hide his weapons or his face, but the adaptive camouflage had helped him avoid detection more than once.
He listened for sounds of alarm or movement nearby but heard none. He sniffed the air—wheat, salt water, and a hint of rain. He looked back to the horizon. A few miles away, thunderheads had massed and were dumping rain in long black streaks. Two other platform cities, nearer to each other than to this one, exchanged fire. Tiny specks of flying men—from here he couldn’t tell if they were vesparian or corvidian—soared through the air between platforms. A few fell into the ocean. The water carried the buzz of machine-gun fire—like thunder chasing lightning. One of those cities might serve the same All Lord as this one. They might call for reinforcements during their skirmish, leaving fewer troops for Uhane to elude or kill. Even better if the rain reached this platform, as it would keep most people inside.
Uhane turned to the wheat, pulled the naginata from his back, and slung the coilgun in its place. He twisted the naginata’s grips. The pole extended to its full length. He heard a muffled scream not unlike a human girl’s. There were whispers and sounds of a struggle. Uhane moved toward it. The wheat rippled with movement.
Their broad wings made it hard to see, but Uhane had no doubt what was happening. Two corvidian boys crouched over a girl. One held her arms as the other wrestled with her legs. She kicked, knocking him back on his heels, but he only smiled, folded his wings, and pushed her knees apart.
Uhane crept forward, silent as a shadow. Their adrenaline would be up, he knew. They’d have tunnel vision, focused only on the girl whose leggings hung from a stalk nearby.
He paused, only for a moment. Fighting in wheat was like fighting in bamboo. Slashing attacks were difficult. Uhane lunged out of the wheat and thrust the naginata’s blade through the first corvidian’s back. It was a surgical strike, just above the left wing’s root and into the heart. He pulled the blade free. The first corvidian collapsed onto the girl. The other’s eyes widened. He opened his mouth to yell, but Uhane’s second thrust went through his throat. Uhane twisted before withdrawing the blade. The corvidian gasped, clutching his throat. He gurgled, trying to scream. The girl struggled under the weight of the first corvidian’s corpse. Uhane dropped the naginata and stepped forward. He pulled a short knife from his belt, batted the corvidian’s hands aside, and thrust the blade between his ribs. He twisted up, severing the inferior vena cava.
Putting a hand to the corvidian’s face, Uhane shoved him backward so he wouldn’t collapse on the girl.
Uhane listened. He scanned the wheat. They were alone now.
“Don’t scream,” he said as he retrieved her leggings from the wheat stalk. They were light, elastic, almost nonexistent fabric. Corvidians always wore such things. They improved aerodynamics and displayed nature’s gifts—or more accurately, the All Lords’ gifts. He pulled the corpse from her with one hand and tossed the leggings into her lap. He looked away as she pulled them on, but kept her in his peripheral vision. He waited for the gasp of the deep inhale that would precede a scream. None came.
When she was clothed, he asked, “Did you know them?”
She looked from one corpse to the other and whimpered before nodding. She didn’t cry though. She was too scared or too numb to cry. She couldn’t be more than nineteen or twenty. Uhane picked up the naginata and laid it between them as he crouched at her feet. She’d curled into a ball. She was a pixieish thing—petite, with auburn hair and bright green eyes. “I’m Uhane. What’s your name?”
“M—” she stammered. “Mera.”
“What city is this, Mera?” he asked. “What All Lord does it serve?”
“New Brush,” she said. “Cern governs.”
“We’re a long way from Cern,” Uhane said. “He’s been busy.”
Uhane knew history. World War III—the Great Fire—had been nuclear war on a scale unimagined during the Cold War. NATO and Russia had fought what they’d dubbed the Dark States—China, North Korea, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and the African Alliance. Only the tiniest sliver of humanity had survived thermonuclear war, EMP damage, and radioactive fallout. The survivors had all been islanders with minimal access to technology.
Shielded by rock or housed underwater, four Artificial Superintelligences had survived the EMPs. They’d constructed robots to rebuild civilization, but soon realized humans required fewer resources to produce and feed. CERN had been the first to develop antigravity, which he’d shared with the others. This had allowed decontaminated material to float above the radiation. Google had synthesized the first vesparians, and shared his CRISPR Cas9 edits with the others for their cloning labs. Lomonsov had designed corvidians. SCCAS had observed the mass of plastic waste in the ocean and hatched the first faweyl. When they’d finished, the ASIs had wagered on which of the Anointed species would prove most adaptable.
Their creations scattered and multiplied. More floating cities were built in the air, and plastic cities in the sea. They decontaminated waste from the old world and raised it into the new, where fruits and grains grew on platforms kilometers above the surface. CERN became Cern the All Lord to his people. SCCAS became Scaz, Google remained Google, and Lomonsov became Lumons.
The platforms drifted, and the Anointed discovered the wealth of fish in the open ocean. The space between platforms tightened. The ASIs stopped sharing design improvements and software updates. Cern forged an alliance with Lumons. They struck Google’s platforms in the South Pacific and overwrote city-governance software. Google formed a hasty alliance with Scaz and struck back. The resulting war had been on now for over a year, with ASIs fighting for dominance and faweyl struggling to survive under a darkened sky.
With the military and police focused on security and fighting, opportunists took what they could. They looted platforms. They raped.
“You’re firstblood,” Mera said.
“Yes,” Uhane said.
“How did you come here?” she asked.
“Magic,” Uhane said.
She stared at him, perhaps believing him. The All Lords governed wisely but they didn’t teach the Anointed everything. The firstblood held many secrets.
“I need to move this city,” Uhane said. “Your people are killing a village of merfolk by blotting out the sun. Do you know how to move it?”
Mera shook her head. “Only the aerophants can repair the antigravity or move the platform.”
He studied her. Young as she was, her eyes betrayed a fierce intellect. She had an honest face.
“Mera,” he said, “I’m going to offer you a deal. How much family do you have in New Brush?”
“None,” she said. “We’re raised in collectives from three years old, then re-platformed at sixteen. Cern wants us to see only him as father.”
That was new. None of the other platforms he’d been to had devolved into full-on autocratic communism.
“I’m going to kill a lot of people before I move this city, Mera. I’m also going to destroy the steering controls. A guide would limit the number of people who might cross my path. If you help me, I can take you somewhere no one will ever hurt you again. It’s a dangerous world for a girl with no father or brothers to look after her.”
“You can’t—”
“I can,” Uhane said, “and I will.”
She recoiled, fear growing in her eyes. She inhaled. Uhane leaped and clamped a hand over her mouth, stifling the scream. Then, he slowly pulled his hand away and held her. He pressed his cheek against her neck and ran his hand over her hair. She struggled for a moment, confused by the whirl of emotion.
“Don’t scream,” he whispered. “Please.”
Her body shook as she sobbed.
“I like you, Mera,” Uhane said softly. “I can’t promise you’ll survive if I tie you up and leave you here, but I can’t have you warning the others. Now let me look at you. They were rough on you.”
She didn’t resist as he examined her. He found no blood in her ruffled feathers. He felt her wing bones. All her bones were hollow, with thinner walls than a firstblood’s. He could’ve snapped them with minimal effort if he’d wanted to. She trembled at his touch, but didn’t pull away.
“You’ll be fine,” he said. “Bruised a bit, but nothing’s broken.”
“I didn’t want to move here from Ershling,” Mera said as she wiped tears from her eyes. “You’re the first man since I came here that’s—”
Her cheeks flushed, and she looked away.
“What would I need to do?” she asked.
“I need one of these aerophants,” Uhane said. “Just show me where to go, and stay behind me if—when—there’s fighting.”
Mera chewed her lower lip. She looked down at the two bodies.
“All right,” she said.
He helped her, gently, to her feet.
“Their chambers are a kilometer or so that way I think.” She gestured through the wheat stalks. “It’s night, so I don’t think anyone will be there. Only the watches are out now.”
Mera led the way out of the wheatfield. Uhane collapsed his naginata and swapped it for his Gauss rifle. The lower-tier farmland gave way to the rising structure of the living zone. Above the habitable space was more sod with vegetables alternated with solar paneling.
“Where are the watch stations?” Uhane asked as he scanned the structure.
“I don’t really—”
Fifty meters ahead, a light snapped on, temporarily blinding them.
“Identify yourself,” a voice boomed.
“Take cover,” Uhane said.
Mera took a step backward before leaping into the air.
Uhane shouldered his Gauss rifle and pulled the trigger. One tiny steel spike, silently accelerated by electromagnetic coils, shot from the barrel. The light shattered, and Uhane levered another round into the chamber before adjusting his sight picture. He fired another silent spike and one corvidian dropped before two more returned fire. Uhane dropped to one knee as a bullet whizzed past his head, ignored by his swarm armor. A burst of what looked like black steam shot out from his shoulder and deflected a second bullet, ricocheting it past him into the wheatfield.
Uhane fired, levered, and fired again. He scanned his surroundings, but no more bullets came.
“Mera,” he whispered, but she didn’t appear. Was she backing out—counting on him to lose in a gunfight?
Had she been hit?
He ran toward the guard post to confirm his kills. One of the corvidians had a small radio clipped to a belt. It was remarkably light. Uhane attached it to his jet pack’s harness. He heard a noise behind him and spun, barrel raised.
Mera crouched, perched atop the barricade in front of the shattered search light. Uhane lowered his rifle.
“Give me one of their guns,” she said.
“No,” Uhane said.
“You’re going to take on an entire city by yourself? If I’m casting my lot in with you, at least let me help.”
“Do you even know how to shoot?”
“Well enough. We got lessons in school, ever since the fighting started.”
“Fine,” Uhane said. “Don’t point it at me. And don’t shoot unless you really have to. Mine’s silent, and there’s no flash.”
He handed her a rifle. Its stock was a honeycomb of lightweight polymer. He grabbed a harness with two extra magazines and helped her put it on.
The radio crackled and a staticky voice said, “Weller post, report. Lilt Union.”
“Do you know their code phrases?” Uhane asked Mera.
She shook her head.
“We need to go, then,” Uhane said. “Which way? Up?”
“I wouldn’t know when we were above the aerophants’ chambers.”
“In, then.”
Uhane moved toward the gaping maw of the platform’s three-story-high interior. Several cracks rang out from the darkness. Black steam shot out from his armor—this time from his abdomen and legs. Bullets impacted the ground around him. One bullet, which would’ve gone through his stomach, stopped in midair and fell. This took more energy from the nanomachines, but they did what was needed to protect him.
Uhane returned fire. The corvidian soldier took cover. Uhane pulled a brimstone grenade from his armor, pushed in and rotated the fuse lever, and hurled it above the corvidian’s position. White-hot fire erupted from the spot. The corvidian screamed. He leaped up, flailed at his flaming wings with his hands, and took flight for half a second before falling back to the ground and writhing in agony.
A door opened on the floor above, and more corvidians poured out onto the catwalk. Uhane shot one in the doorway and tossed in a swarm grenade. More screams echoed from inside the room as Uhane shot another corvidian on the catwalk. Uhane’s armor erupted outward and bullets fell around him as he pulled out his jet-pack control grips. The turbojets extended to the sides and he leaped up onto the catwalk. He stabbed one corvidian in the heart and shoved the body into the one behind him. Uhane slashed through his wing as he stumbled, then hurled him over the railing. Unable to fly for the first time in his life, the corvidian crashed into the ground below with a sickening crack. He didn’t get up.
“Come on,” Uhane said to Mera. “We need to get out of the open.”
She alighted behind him a second later as Uhane stepped into the room he’d swarmed. It was some sort of lounge, with plush furniture. Five corvidians lay dead within, though Uhane couldn’t be certain of their genders. All had massive holes through their flesh. Arms had been stripped to the bone. Faces were missing. A thin black mist covered patches of the floor.
Uhane held up his left arm and opened the control screen on the inside of his wrist. He pressed an icon. The grenade’s black mist gathered at his feet, then fused with his armor as the swarm rejoined their kin.
He looked to Mera, then tapped another icon to force the swarm to stop all bullets rather than deflecting them. He could’ve kicked himself for not doing so sooner. Only luck had kept her from getting hit by bullets intended for him thus far.
He heard movement above and running footfalls outside.
“What’s on the next floor?” Uhane asked.
“A diner, I think,” Mera said. “Decks two and three are all food and shops here. Warehousing’s all deck one. Residential’s further into the belly.”
Uhane removed a void grenade from his armor and pulled the cover from a strip of adhesive on its side.
“I’m going to lift you to the ceiling,” he said. He handed the grenade to Mera. “Press this to it, then push this lever in and twist. We’ll have about six seconds.”
Mera obediently slung her rifle and stepped into Uhane’s cupped hands. She did as instructed, and he half tossed her toward the door. Her wings fanned and she tiptoed out onto the catwalk. Uhane watched her step back as footsteps approached. He counted the seconds in his head, lunged for the door, and grabbed the approaching soldier by the harness. Uhane hurled him into the room and stepped out just as the void grenade detonated in a bright flash. Wind rushed inward as even the air was annihilated, leaving a vacuum in its wake.
Heavy crashing and thudding noises came from within. Uhane grabbed Mera by the wrist and pulled her back inside. The soldier’s legs were just inside the door, along with the wings and torsos of several corvidians from the deck above. A perfect circle three meters in diameter had been cut into the ceiling. Uhane jetted up through it. A cook approached the hole, eyes wide, but he was empty-handed.
Uhane leveled the Gauss rifle on him and asked, “You want to live?”
The cook nodded.
“Is there a back door?”
The cook ushered Uhane and Mera out through the kitchen and led them to a supply elevator.
Elthgar the Aerophant sat alone in the Upper Nest of the aerophant chambers. He came here at night to be alone, away from the aerophants’ communal living quarters. Elthgar remembered how it had been when New Brush was first forged and lifted into the sky. People had space to move and think. One needn’t have listened to or smelled the other aerophants every hour of every day. Cern, it seemed, cared only about practicalities. The All Lords gave notice to aesthetics and the human soul only when they directly affected work output. So Elthgar tinkered with his small antigravity repulsors at night. With spare parts, he made tiny models of cities and machines the firstblood had used in the prior age.
Elthgar examined the box in front of him. It was a miniaturized version of a larger machine he’d been toying with. He held the box with one hand and flipped a switch on its surface. Instantly, all the levitating models dropped to the table. He reversed the switch, and the models leaped back to life, floating as they had before.
Twenty minutes ago, the alarms had sounded, and a rush of soldiers had passed by, responding to the threat. From what he could hear, the interlopers were at least a mile away and few in number. They would be dealt with quickly and would be no concern to an old man whose only solace was in tinkering with models.
Elthgar sat up straight, suddenly alert. A shiver ran down his spine. He smelled something like ozone when—
A bright light flashed as a void sphere expanded—stopping fifteen centimeters from his arm—and just as quickly collapsed. Wind rushed toward the void, carrying his antigravity models with it. Small cities, airplanes, and a mag-lev monorail clattered to the floor.
Two figures stepped through the circular hole in the wall. One was a man without wings—a firstblood. He wore armor that blended in with the walls and carried bizarre and unidentifiable weapons. The smaller figure was a girl, though in his advanced years, Elthgar couldn’t tell her age. She might’ve been sixteen or twenty-four. They all seemed younger as time went by.
“This one is an aerophant,” the girl said. “We’ve come through at the right place.”
“Good evening,” the firstblood said. “My name is Uhane. My apologies for disturbing your work.”
“Elthgar,” the aerophant said. This firstblood had manners—something else that had disappeared when Cern began communal child-rearing. Despite the circumstances, it was refreshing. “Good evening to you as well. Are you here to kill me?” Elthgar discovered that he might not mind being killed, provided it was quick.
“I’d prefer not to,” Uhane said. “I just need help moving the city.”
“The faweyl hired you,” Elthgar said. “I warned the others they wouldn’t surrender their fishing waters quietly, even if they’ve no understanding of flight.”
“They just want to live,” Uhane said. “I was their best option.”
Elthgar gnawed on his lower lip for a moment.
“I’ll help you,” he said, “if you help me.”
“Help you with what?” Uhane asked.
“Take me with you,” Elthgar said. “I hate this place. Put me on one of your firstblood islands, far from the others. I know I’m institutionalized, but I can learn. Bring me food until I’m able to fish on my own and I’ll teach you antigravity. We can be—what’s the word—symbiotic. I haven’t many years left. I’d rather not spend them in this cramped hell.”
Uhane stared at a point on the wall for a moment.
“Deal,” he said finally. “I’ve room in the wingship for twelve. If it’s seclusion you want, there’s a small uninhabited island a mile from my village.”
“In that case, firstblood, let’s not delay. They’re bound to search here soon enough.”
Elthgar shoved the box he’d been working on into his pocket and led his two new friends to a maintenance hatch that led into the bowels of New Brush’s propulsion system.
Several minutes later, Elthgar rose from a machine and closed the hatch.
“You’ll have at least a day of travel before they’re even able to stop forward propulsion,” he said. “I’ve shut off the circuits that supply power to the thrust engines on the city’s three other sides. The other aerophants won’t be able to turn or slow down. Only wind or air resistance will slow the acceleration. Once I turn on main thrust, away she goes. You ready?”
“What’s to stop the other aerophants from just killing power to main thrust?” Uhane asked.
“Ignorance, mostly,” Elthgar said. “That’s the problem with being cared for by the state. None of the new kids Cern gave me actually care about the craft, and none are my kin so we’ve nothing to bind us. I’ve tried to teach them, but they just shrug me off as a doddering old fool. They play their games, and mostly I’m content to be left alone. There’s only one aerophant running antigrav and propulsion in New Brush, and you’re looking at him. It’ll take a day for Cern to show them how to undo the first fraction of what I’ve set up here. The city will be long gone, believe me. Ready with the grenade?”
“Ready.”
Elthgar pulled a series of levers, and a mechanical groan echoed in the walls—like a giant growling in a cave after being woken from a thousand-year slumber.
Uhane set his last brimstone grenade on the control panel and waited until Elthgar and Mera were halfway up the ladder. Then he activated the fuse.
Uhane felt a buzz in his armor. He looked down at his wrist’s control panel. A glowing circular icon flashed a message from the Keiki o Ke Aka village. He tapped it. A small patch of his wrist armor billowed upward and coalesced into the figure of Kauka, the village healer.
“Kauka?” Uhane said. “What is it?”
“Mano returned, with warriors,” she said.
Uhane narrowed his eyes, unsure how to interpret this.
“Did he bring the rest of the payment?” Uhane asked. “I’ve just set the city adrift. The Rana will have their sunlight back soon.”
“No,” Kauka said. “He came demanding the first half of the payment back. He said their village cannot survive. He has Ali’i and some others in the chief’s hut. I managed to sneak away.”
The merfolk had waited for the exact moment when Uhane had completed his mission, but when he was too far away to defend the village. Uhane held his breath for a moment, biting back a string of profanity. Then, slowly, he exhaled.
“Did Ali’i warn them they’re making a terrible mistake?” Uhane asked.
“Yes,” Kauka said. “The Rana laughed. They said they fight better underwater than the Mea Kaua, and that you were welcome to visit. Mano said that a naginata and coilgun would be useless beneath the surface.”
“I see.”
“Uhane?”
“Stay out of sight, Kauka,” Uhane said. “Just in case. Ali’i will stall them. I’ll come up with something.”
He looked back toward the hatch and lamented burning the thrust controls.
A sound in the passage ahead made him look up. He’d been distracted. Now he was staring into the startled eyes of two corvidian boys. Their clothes were similar to Elthgar’s—they bore the markings of the aerophant caste.
Elthgar and Mera froze in place.
“Hello, Farrin,” Elthgar said. “Hello, Nelgar.”
“What are you doing down here old man?” Farrin asked. “We’re not scheduled to move for another—”
Then his eyes settled on Uhane, and the absence of wings on Uhane’s back.
“Is that the—”
“I can explain, Farrin,” Elthgar said. “I can—”
Nelgar moved, and Uhane heard the crack of a pistol shot. Elthgar spun and crumpled to the floor. Mera, directly behind him, screamed and flapped her wings. As if in slow motion, Uhane saw two feathers fly from the back of her left wing, and a bloody hole where they’d been.
He was supposed to be in front of her. His armor was supposed to protect her.
Uhane grabbed Mera by the waist and spun their bodies together so his back was to Nelgar. He heard two more cracks and felt his armor ripple.
Rage filled him—a rage he’d been warned against; a rage he’d suppressed on every contract until this one. The Keiki o Ke Aka revered their elders. They valued them and learned from them. Unlike this slime. Until now, Uhane had never gone into a fight with a girl at his side. He’d never seen one that he cared for hurt.
He did care for her. In that fraction of a second, he knew she was more than a guide—more than a tool to accomplish the mission. He caught the tiniest glimmer of fear and pain in her eyes before he turned.
In one smooth motion, he shouldered his Gauss rifle and shot Nelgar—not in the head or center mass, but in the femoral artery. Nelgar screamed and collapsed to the floor, clutching his leg. Uhane slung the Gauss rifle and drew his naginata. He snapped the pole to its full length. He struck Farrin’s clavicle. The thin, hollow bones snapped under the razor-sharp blade’s force as Uhane cut down to Farrin’s heart in one stroke.
Farrin fell dead while Nelgar screamed. Uhane stood over Nelgar, ignoring the pool of blood gushing from Farrin’s rent-open torso.
“He got mercy,” Uhane said, gesturing to Farrin with his chin, “because he was merely rude. But you—you hurt my friends. I’ll take my time with you.”
He pinned Nelgar’s wrist with his foot and held the naginata’s blade over his face. Farrin’s blood dripped into Nelgar’s eyes.
“Uhane,” a voice whispered behind him.
He remembered Mera.
Her softness and the sweetness in her eyes came back to him.
Cruelty would burn what innocence she had left. In time, cruelty would make her hate him.
He thrust the naginata down sharply into Nelgar’s throat, severing blood vessels and spine with one cut. The boy spasmed, briefly, then his eyes closed. It was fast. Clean.
Uhane turned and found Mera applying pressure to Elthgar’s chest wound. Her own wound hadn’t bled much, as the bullet had missed the major blood vessels in her wing.
“This is—” Elthgar said. “Dammit. Those stupid idiot boys.”
His wings were matted with blood flowing from the exit wound in his back. Elthgar struggled with a thing in his pocket before managing to pull out a small box with a switch.
“I think this might be the key to evening the odds for the faweyl,” Elthgar said. “If used correctly, it might end the war.”
“What is it?” Uhane asked.
“Anti-antigravity,” Elthgar said.
“So . . .” Uhane said, “gravity?”
“Don’t make jokes, you dolt,” Elthgar said. “I’m dying.”
Elthgar half smiled despite himself.
“Anti-antigravity, then,” Uhane said. “How does it work?”
“It generates a field that nullifies graviton repulsors,” Elthgar said. “There’s a bigger one I’ve been working on in the Upper Nest. Not big enough to drop a city, but big enough to make people notice.”
Uhane remembered Ali’i and Kauka, held hostage in the village. He remembered that corvidians were hunting him and could appear at any moment. Despite this, he held Elthgar’s hand as the old man faded.
“I might not have needed an island for myself,” Elthgar said, “if the rest are like you. You’re a good lad. Be smart with the—”
He never finished the sentence, but Uhane understood.
Several minutes later, Uhane and Mera stood at the city’s edge. They’d rigged the larger anti-antigravity machine to a remote and fastened it above the repulsors on that side of the city.
“My wingship is below us,” he said. “Are you able to fly?”
She flexed her wing and winced from the pain. She tried it again and bit back a scream.
“Hold on to me,” he said. “I’ll slow our descent, and you can help steer.”
Kauka’s communicator came to life. Uhane’s face appeared. “Kauka,” Uhane said, “tell Mano to look through the door of the hut to the horizon.”
“What should he be looking for?” Kauka asked.
“He can’t miss it,” Uhane said.
Kauka entered the chief’s hut, and two of the Rana mermen grabbed her by the arms. Her hands shook, but she held Mano’s gaze.
“Uhane says you should look outside,” she said.
“Uhane?” Mano said. He fanned his gills. “Where is Uhane?”
Kauka said nothing, so Mano walked to the door. Miles away, the floating city of New Brush hung at a sickening forty-five degree angle, with its lowest edge just above the Rana city. If it fell, it would crush them. Mano gasped.
Kauka extended the communicator toward him. He snatched it from her grasp. Uhane appeared in a hologram.
“You were to move the city,” Mano said. “It’s still there, albeit at a strange cant.”
“You were to pay my clan in full, not hold them hostage,” Uhane said. “The steering and engine control have been rendered inoperable, but the antigravity controls still function. Engine thrust, combined with reduced antigravity on the lower platform, holds the city in place. I’ve rigged a bomb to the main thrust. If I set it off, the city falls like an axe on your people. Release my clan. Now. Your men might live. You—I am not so sure about you, Mano.”
“I have your chief,” Mano said, “and now your healer. Would you sacrifice them for a sum of money?”
“We have a reputation to uphold,” Uhane said, “but let’s negotiate. Perhaps we may reach an agreement that involves your silence. Perhaps partial payment will suffice—some fraction of the original amount. Wait for my return.”
Mano looked to the floating city, then to his men. One of them nodded.
“Very well,” Mano said.
Mano, the Rana soldiers, Ali’i, Kauka, and the rest of the Keiki o Ke Aka all waited with few words between them. Soon, a speck appeared between them and New Brush. The speck grew into Uhane’s ekranoplan, which docked soon thereafter. Uhane disembarked, and a petite figure with a bandaged wing stepped out behind him. He spoke—gently, it seemed—to the winged girl. She waited on the beach.
“Your weapons!” Mano yelled, while Uhane was still many meters away. “Leave them there.”
Mano made sure the knife he held next to Ali’i glinted in the torch light.
Uhane doffed his jet pack with the naginata, then his Gauss rifle, and lastly his knives and remaining grenades.
He held up his hands and wriggled his fingers before approaching. He bore no weapons—only his armor.
“We will make our dealings inside the hut,” Mano said, “in case your new friend is a sniper.”
“Suits me,” Uhane said. He smiled.
They entered the chief’s hut. Uhane met Ali’i’s gaze. He looked to Kauka, and her hands stopped trembling.
Mano’s gills flared. He was silent for a moment. Finally, he said, “Before we begin—”
“Yes, before we begin,” Uhane said, “I’d like to show you something.”
Mano’s eyes narrowed.
“This island held a military research lab in the time before the Great Fire, and even after,” Uhane said. “There is something like one of your All Lords that lives deep in the rock of the island. It has never ceased its research.”
“What does—”
“It knows the Keiki o Ke Aka by electric tattoos we receive as children,” Uhane said. Then, to the others, he said, “Show them.”
Ali’i, Kauka, and the others raised their forearms to show a tattoo of a glyph over a pineapple.
“Enough of this,” Mano said. “What does this have to do with anything? We came to get our money back, not to get a lesson on your tribal lore.”
“You want one?” Uhane asked.
“One what?”
“One of the tattoos.”
“No,” Mano said. “Why on God’s blue Earth would I want a—”
“Mine’s under my armor,” Uhane said, “right here.”
He lifted his wrist and tapped an icon.
Uhane’s armor erupted in needle-thin spikes. The black nanoparticle appendages lanced through the eyeballs of the closest Rana, while simultaneously piercing the heart of another. Blood spurted in an arc up the wall as a paper-thin nanoblade sliced through the carotid artery of a third merman’s neck.
Mano screamed as he watched his own knife-wielding hand fall to the floor. Uhane had given the armor special instructions for the leader—sever the wrist, but leave him alive. Mano fell to his knees. He clutched the bloody stump against his other arm, trying to stop the flow of blood. He didn’t even register that all his soldiers were dead.
“Well,” Uhane said, “don’t say I didn’t offer. Electric tattoos are great for target-list exclusions.”
Mano finally looked up. He saw the blood on the wall and ceiling. He stared at the still-warm corpses of his men.
“You,” Mano said. “You don’t have to kill me.”
“That’s not your decision to make,” Uhane said, stepping closer. Mera wasn’t here. He could savor this.
Mano reached for his severed right hand and tried to pry the knife loose. Uhane closed the distance between them and ground his boot into Mano’s wrist.
“We have a reputation to uphold,” Uhane said. “If I let one customer short us or get away with such treachery, everyone will try it.”
Nanites flowed down from Uhane’s legs and swarmed like liquid up Mano’s arm and over his body. The merman screamed until the swarm tore through his face and larynx. In a matter of seconds, it had eaten him alive.
“Are any of you hurt?” Uhane asked, looking to the others.
“No,” Ali’i said. “Not one.”
Uhane looked through the door and gestured at New Brush, suspended in the air miles away over the Rana city.
“And the cities?” Uhane said. “What message should we send to the world—to the other faweyl and Anointed?”
The chief pondered this. He looked to the corpses on the floor, and his eyes settled on the bare bone of what had been Mano’s face.
“Leaders bring such misery to their people,” Ali’i said. “You have exacted vengeance enough, and Mano has paid the remainder of the contract with his blood. Send the message that we are reasonable.”
Uhane nodded, then walked out the door. His feet carried him back to the beach.
Introducing Ali’i to the anti-antigravity device could wait. Perhaps the island’s All Lord would find a way to make an anti-antigravity beam weapon with it—one that might be used from a long distance.
“Your people,” Mera said. “Are they safe?”
“They are,” Uhane said. “Fortunately, none have lived to tell the secrets of Keiki o Ke Aka technology. My armor is a weapon when needed, though it drains significant energy. It must sleep soon.”
“And . . . New Brush?”
Uhane lifted his wrist and tapped a series of icons. Miles away, the floating city slowly began to level itself.
“My chief said the price of double-crossing us was paid with the faweyl leader’s blood. He said that civilians needn’t suffer for Mano’s treachery.”
Mera looked to New Brush, then lowered her eyes. Hesitantly, not knowing if his armor might also kill her, she extended her fingers toward Uhane’s. He didn’t move at first. Then the swarm pulled back from the skin of his hand, and he let his fingers interlace with hers. She lifted her eyes to meet his.
“I have no one and nothing here,” she said, “I would remain with you, if you would have me.”
He lifted her fingers to his face, and she brushed them across his lower lip. He kissed her knuckles.
“I would have you,” Uhane said softly. The swarm rippled back from his other hand, and he ran his fingers over her injured wing’s feathers. He followed it down to the root and placed a hand on the small of her back.
Then, in a gesture instinctively retained by both their races—perhaps in some unaltered part of their DNA—he lifted her hand over her shoulder and pushed against her waist with the other hand. She twirled on the sand in a dance that needed no tune and which ended with their hands clasped and arms extended. He pulled her in again, dipping her back toward the sand as her wings flared.
She smiled for the first time in ages as the city of the Anointed floated away under the stars.