Warp World (4 page)

“Think you would’ve learned something by now, skyrider.” Fismar engaged the wheels on the chair. “Fighters are fighters, wherever they come from. These boys ain’t troops, but they
are
fighters.”

“Yeah, yeah, kargin’ Outers all look the same to me.” Shan scratched at the mop of black hair that jutted out from her head in every direction.

Fismar waved the medicals over at last.

“Enjoy med-leave, sand slogger,” Shan said.

“Stop by the RQ and we’ll drown the dead,” Fismar said with a look back over his shoulder.

“Long as you’re paying,” Shan said.

He gave Shan a wink, then shifted his eyes to the Kenda and gave them one last thoughtful look.

Shan unzipped her flight suit, sighed, and muttered, “Kargin’ decon.”

Ama looked left and right. The white-suits were already at work, hosing and spraying and brushing.

“Shan …” Ama shifted her weight from right to left.

“Are you still here? Go get scrubbed with the other caj. Go on.” Shan made a shooing motion with her hand.

Ama backed up a few steps, turned her head toward the mass of naked men, then turned back to Shan. “I’m not caj and I don’t wan—”

“Listen up.” Shan’s eyes burned; the upper half of her flight suit hung around her waist. “Because the next time you talk to me, or even look at me, like you’re a Person, I’m gonna put you on the ground. I’ve played nice because you belong to the Theorist but the raid’s over. Get it?” She scowled as she eyed Ama from toe to head, then her eyes cooled faintly. “Besides, you ain’t got any equipment those worms over there haven’t seen before. Well, except for the …” She gestured to the dathe on Ama’s neck. “Quicker you get it done the quic—”

“Less talking, more unveiling!” Viren said. He stood about fifteen feet away, fully undressed, hands on his hips. Some of the Kenda laughed, some turned away, some turned to watch, more than a few exchanged whistles.

Shan’s eyes fired up again but, Ama noticed, the pilot’s cheeks flushed pink.

“Shut your kargin’ hole, Outer!” Shan shouted, then turned to Ama. “That one has a big mouth.”

Ama considered a reply but Viren beat her to it.

“Goddess of the Sky! I beg your forgiveness.” Viren spread his arms wide. “Come let me shower you with repentance!”

“That’s it,” Shan growled under her breath.

She stomped away. Ama thought she might leave the decon chamber but Shan stopped at a rack and pulled a large chack off a shelf. As she marched toward Viren, all the other Kenda, and a few of the white-suits, backed away. Viren’s smile never faltered, even when Shan jammed the muzzle of the gun into his naked chest.

“One more word, Outer.” Shan fired each word at him as if it were its own weapon. “One more and I fill you full of spines.”

Viren offered Shan the kind of look a boy might give the Lesson House instructor after being caught truant. The moment her shoulders relaxed, his eyes roamed to her chest, which was only covered by a thin undershirt. He caught her gaze again and directed it downward, between his legs.

“You filthy—”

“Return to the decon area!” The booming command, from one of the white-suits, halted Shan’s rant.

“You’re kargin’ lucky,” she said, as Viren strolled back to the rest of the men. He was quickly led away by the white-suits and Shan tossed the chack onto the shelf under security’s watchful eyes.

As she walked to the far end of the chamber, her eyes flicked to Ama just once. Though she still wore a look of disgust, Ama thought she saw embarrassment in that derision, too.

Alone now, Ama swallowed down her discomfort and started the long process of removing her clothes. Her injuries made the task almost impossible; her left arm hung useless thanks to the knife wound Dagga had inflicted.

She lowered herself onto the cold metal floor and struggled to unlace her boots. “I forgot how much I hate this place.”

“Kiera Nen?”

Her head jerked upward at the name. Two merry eyes shone down.
Kiera Nen
, prophesied savior of the Kenda. Some of the men had taken to addressing her that way since she had revealed her dathe. Ama had borne it at the temple, when their lives were at stake, but the thought of carrying on with the name was too close to Shasir trickery for her liking. She had fought with her Kenda brothers to rid their world of false gods and prophets; she had no intention of becoming one herself.

“Ama. Just call me Ama.”

“Tirnich Kundara,” the boy said. “I was at the Secat.”

“I remember. You helped with Seg’s auto-med.”

“Is that what it’s called?” He gestured to the unit on Ama’s arm. Tirnich was down to his waterwear but if he was embarrassed it didn’t show. “Thought you could use some help, too.”

His look was so earnest and innocent that Ama found herself agreeing without hesitation.

“Drexla?” Ama asked, nodding to the sharp white tooth that dangled from a string around the boy’s neck.

“Yep. My good luck charm. Brin gave it to me after I started running messages for the resistance and escaped a few close calls with the authorities. He didn’t want me to come here, said I was too young,” Tirnich chattered as he helped unlace Ama’s boots. “Then everything happened at the temple and such, and I guess he saw I could fight, so he let me join. It’s pretty exciting. I bet I’ll have some stories for Pica—that’s my baby sister—if we ever get to go back home. Do you think we will?”

No
, Ama thought.
This is home now.

“Maybe someday,” she said.

“I hope so. I bet we do. Not that it really matters, though I’d like to see Pica again.”

Ama smiled. However naïve Tirnich was, his optimism and joy was like wind filling the skins of her boat.

Efectuary Jul Akbas clicked her fingernails on the smooth surface of her desk. The desk was void of all objects, as she ensured it was every evening before she returned to her residence in the CWA city of Orhalze.
Clear desk, clear mind
, she always reminded her staff. Lazy and careless, that was how she thought of most of her underlings. People in general, for that matter. How some made it up the ranks with their deplorable work ethic and sloppy personal habits was both a mystery and a source of annoyance to Efectuary Akbas.

The man on the monitor before her was a prime example.
Theorist Eraranat
. As the name entered her mind she felt the muscles of her face constrict.

Eraranat had dismissed her, not once but twice. He had made a fool of her in front of her peers. This boy, this smug, sloppy boy, had dared to set himself above a CWA Efectuary? And, in the process, this arrogant young Theorist had undone the years of effort it had taken to win a place among Director Fi Costk’s inner circle. Thanks to him, she had been reassigned to oversee ent analysis—a position of little importance and even less chance of promotion. Eraranat would learn that the woman with whom he had trifled knew and lived the Fourth Virtue of a Citizen: Supremacy comes to those who earn it.

The intrans vis feed from the Eraranat 001 Raid came through on her monitor in jerky, staccato chunks. There was no audio. She suspected Eraranat’s mentor’s hand in the poor quality of the feed. Nevertheless, she watched, closely.

She watched the gunship come through the gate. Eraranat had commissioned his own rider but this was not it. Noteworthy.

She watched the wounded raider and the rider pilot pass through, capturing a still frame of each in order to research them later.

She watched a stream of Outers armed with prim weapons pass through the gate. Unrestrained.

She watched Eraranat lead a female Outer through the gate. One of his two trophy caj. He had taken the Outer back to her world and then returned with her. Why?

Tomorrow she would dissect the feed. Tonight she wanted raw impressions. A method that had proved effective in her years of surveillance.

Eraranat stands in front of the Outers. Then he limps to the medicals.
(Injured. How?)
The medicals load him onto the stretcher. Then the …

Wait.

She halted her nail tapping and pressed a button to reverse the feed at half speed. The figures moved backwards, almost comically.

She stabbed a button to freeze the feed, then another to play it again, still at half speed.

The trophy caj walks at Eraranat’s side. Their lips move to indicate they are speaking. The Theorist stops, turns slightly, and takes her hand.

He takes her hand.

Akbas stopped the feed. As impossible as it was to believe, she could not deny what was in front of her. The gesture was not one of master to slave, or owner to property. Affection, this was what Efectuary Akbas saw.

“Degenerate,” she said aloud, with an urge to spit. Though she would never.

The act was disgusting. It was also, she mused with a thin, hard smile, damning. She trailed her fingernail over the onscreen body of the Outer in a distinct X.

And, again, something made her pause.

She captured a still of the moment, used her finger onscreen to center the image on the Outer and magnified it. As the face of Eraranat’s caj expanded, the image quality lessened. Even so, through the fuzzy details, there was something familiar about the features. Aside from the digifilm of data she had collected on Eraranat, Akbas knew she had seen this face before.

From her desk drawer, Akbas withdrew the Eraranat data film, slid it into the base of the monitor, and tapped the screen to split it in half. On one side, the grainy face of the caj remained; on the other, data and images of the Theorist scrolled by.

Akbas’s eyes zipped left to right, left to right, absorbing, comparing.
Where, where, where?

There was a vis still of Eraranat in Haffset’s raid planning chamber. Her teeth ground as it appeared and, perhaps to remind herself of the importance of this work, she froze the image.

All the players in the room were known to her. She had memorized names, faces, titles, and any other information she considered pertinent. Theorist Jarin Svestil sat at the outer ring, though she had never allowed herself to imagine his influence was limited to that realm. His
aide,
Gelad, sat on his right. Was anyone fool enough to believe the former raider was merely an aide? At Gelad’s knee, was his caj, the one she had questioned him about. In the seat next to Gelad—

No. Wait.

She centered the image on Gelad’s caj and expanded it until the face filled its half of the screen. On the left half of the screen, Eraranat’s caj. On the right, Gelad’s. And while Gelad’s caj wore a thick collar, had a face covered in intricate black designs, hair twisted and hidden in coils of red fabric, the features were unmistakable. These two images were of the same Outer.

And now she had her answer to the question that had kept her awake too many hours since that day: How had Eraranat retrieved the raid planning data?

Every muscle tensed, not just those in her face. How had this detail eluded her? They had used the caj. Somehow, they had used Eraranat’s caj to smuggle out the data.

“Storm-rotting bastard!” She smacked both palms against the desk hard enough to sting. Her hands rolled up into fists as she fought the urge to rip the monitor from the desk.

Now she had proof, not that anyone of significance would listen, or care, given the success of the degenerate Theorist
’s raid. But somehow knowing,
proving
her suspicions ignited the simmering rage she had endured since her day of humiliation.

She had been careless; she had underestimated Eraranat’s ambition. Never again. Whatever it took, she was going to bring him down and see him cast out. Wherever he went, whatever he did, she would make it her business to know. The moment she saw an opportunity to make him suffer, she would take it. Knowing the hotheaded young show-off, opportunities would be plentiful.

S
he pressed a button and Eraranat’s face filled the screen. Palms flat on the desk, she leaned forward until she was almost nose to nose with him. “I see you now.” Her eyes narrowed. “I see right through you.”