The Wind After Time: Book One of the Shadow Warrior Trilogy
Read The Wind After Time: Book One of the Shadow Warrior Trilogy Online
Authors: Chris Bunch
WIND
AFTER
TIME
Book One of
The Shadow Warrior
a division of F+W Media, Inc.
For
Lance LeGault:
a damn fine
Wolfe
CHAPTER ONE
The seventeen-year-old walked into the circle of smooth-raked sand. Around it sharp boulders, reaching toward alien stars, made the circle an arena. All else was silence and the night.
A corpse-white grasping organ appeared, extending toward him. In the center was a Lumina. It glowed.
“Take the stone.”
“I am not worthy.”
“Take the stone.”
“My years are not sufficient.”
“Take the stone.”
Joshua took the Lumina into his own hand. His fingers brushed the Al’ar’s tendrils.
“Have you been instructed?”
“I have.”
“Who lit that torch?”
A second Al’ar spoke.
“I did.”
Joshua saw Taen standing to one side of the sand circle.
The Guardian forsook the ritual: “This may be forbidden.”
“No,”
Taen said, voice certain.
“The codex did not see, so it could not enjoin such a turning.”
“So you said before, when you came to us, and told us of this Way Seeker.”
The Guardian stood without speaking, and all Joshua heard was the whisper of the dry Saurian wind. Finally:
“Perhaps we should allow it, then.”
• • •
Joshua Wolfe came awake. There was no sound but the hum of the ship, no problems indicated by the overhead telltale. He was sweating.
“Record.”
“Recording as ordered,”
the ship said.
“The dream occurred again. Analyze to match previous occurrences.”
Ship hum.
“
No similarities found. No known stress at present beyond normal when beginning an assignment.
”
Wolfe slid out of the bunk. He was naked. He walked out of the day cabin, glanced across the instrument banks on the bridge without seeing them, then went down the circular staircase to the deck below. He palmed a wall sensor, and the hatch opened into a small chamber with padded floor and mirrored walls and ceiling.
He went to the middle of the room. He crouched slightly, centering his body.
Breathe … breathe …
Joshua Wolfe, nearly forty, had used his body hard. Ropy muscles and occasional scars roadmapped his rangy high-split frame, and his face appeared to have been left in the weather to age. His hair was bleached as if by the sun. He was just over six feet tall and kept his weight at 180 pounds. His flat, arctic blue eyes looked at the world without affection, without fear, without illusion.
He began slow, studied movements, hands reaching, touching, striking, returning, guarding; feet lifting, stepping, kicking. His face showed no stress, effort, or pleasure.
He returned to his base stance abruptly and froze, eyes changing focus from infinity to the mirrors on the wall, on the ceiling. For an instant his reflections blurred. Then the multiple images of Joshua returned.
He sagged, wind roaring through his lungs as if he’d finished a series of wind sprints. He allowed a flash of disappointment to cross his face, then wiped sweat from his forehead with the back of his hand.
He controlled his breathing and went to the fresher. Perhaps now he would be able to sleep.
• • •
“Accumulators at near capacity for final jump.”
“Time to jump?”
“Ten ship seconds … Now.”
Blur. Feel of flannel, memory of father laughing as he danced in his arms, bitter — bay, thyme, neither, in the mind. A universe died, and space, time, suns, planets were reborn.
“N-space exited. All navbeacs respond. Plus-minus variation acceptable. Final jump complete. Destination on-screen. Sensors report negative scan, all bands. Estimated arrival, full drive, five ship hours. Correction?”
“None.”
• • •
Wolfe’s ship, the
Grayle
, darted toward the field on a direct approach.
“Where shall I land?”
A screen lit. The field below was just that — a huge, bare expanse of cracked concrete. There was no tower, no port building, no hangars, no restaurant, no transport center. There were perhaps half a hundred starships, from long-abandoned surplus military craft to nondescript transports to small well-maintained luxury craft parked helter-skelter on the sides of the tarmac. There was no sign of life on the field except, at one end, a grounded maintenance lighter and two men intent on disemboweling the engine spaces of a heavy-lifter.
“Put us down not too far from those ramp rats.”
Seconds later, the braking drive flared and the ship grounded. Joshua touched sensors; screens lit and were manipulated as he carefully examined every starship of a certain description. One drew his attention. He opened a secondary screen on that mil-surplus ship, once a medium long-range patrol craft.
“ID?”
“Ship on-screen matches input data on target fiche. Hull registry does not match either numbers from target fiche or the ship listed as carrying those numbers in Lloyds’ Registry. Sensors indicate skin temperature shows ship active within last planetary week. Drive tube temperatures confirm first datum. No sensor suggests ship is occupied.”
“It wouldn’t be. He’s already about his business. Maintain alert status, instant lift readiness. I’m going trolling.”
“Understood.”
Joshua dressed, then went to an innocent wall and pressed a stud. The wall opened. Inside were enough weapons — guns, grenades, knives, explosives — to outfit a small commando landing. The ship itself hid other surprises: two system-range nuclear missiles, four in-atmosphere air-to-air missiles, and a chaingun.
Joshua chose a large Federation-issue blaster and holstered it in a worn military gun belt with three magazine pouches clipped to it. Around his neck he looped a silver chain with a dark metal emblem on it, stylized calligraphy for the symbol
ku.
It also supported, at the back of his neck, a dartlike obsidian throwing knife.
Joshua considered his appearance. Gray insul pants, short boots, dark blue singlet under an expensive-looking but worn light gray jacket that might have been leather but was not, a jacket that obviously held proofed shockpanels. Pistol well used, all too ready.
Someone looking for a job, any job, so long as it wasn’t legal. Just another new arrival on Platte. Just another one of the boys. He would fit right in. He stuck a flesh-toned bonemike com over his left clavicle.
“Testing,” he said, then subvocalized in Al’ar:
“Is this device singing?”
“My being says this is so.”
He
heard
the ship’s response through bone induction.
“Open the port.”
Joshua’s ears crackled as they adjusted to the new pressure. He walked onto the landing field, and the lock doors hissed shut.
He started whistling loudly when he was still some distance from the mechanics. One of them casually walked to his toolbox, picked up a rag, and began wiping his hands. Joshua noted that the rag was lumpy, about the size of a medium-sized pistol. Platte was that kind of world.
“Help you, friend?”
“Looking for some transport to get around the hike into town.”
“Town’s a fairly dickey label when there isn’t but one hotel, a dozen or so stores, three alkjoints, our shop, an’ a restaurant you’d best not trust your taste buds to.”
“Sounds like the big city compared to where I’m from.”
A smile came and went on the mechanic’s lips, and he looked pointedly at the heavy gun hung low on Joshua’s hip. “I’d guess you came from there at speed, eh?”
“You’d lose, friend,” Joshua said. “When I lifted, there was nobody even vaguely interested in my habits or my comings and goings.”
The mechanic took the hint and started toward his lighter. “I can call for Lil. See if she wants to pick up a few credits. But it’ll cost.”
“Aren’t many Samaritans working the Outlaw Worlds these days,” Joshua said. “I’ll pay.”
The mechanic picked up a com and spoke into it. “She’s on her way.” He returned to the engine bay and turned his wrench back on. The second man appeared not to have noticed Joshua.
After a while Joshua saw a worm of dust crawl toward the field.
• • •
Lil was about eighteen, working on forty. Her vehicle was a nearly new light utility lifter that looked as if it’d been sandblasted for a repaint and then the idea had been forgotten. “What’re you doin’ on Platte?” she asked without preamble after Joshua had introduced himself.
“My travel agent said it was a relaxing place. Good weather.”
Lil glanced through the ripped plas dome at the overcast sky that threatened rain but would never deliver. “Right. All Platte needs is water and some good people. That’s all Hell needs, too.”
The road they traveled above was marked with twelve-foot-high stakes driven into the barren soil. Some time earlier someone had run a scraper down the track, so there were still wheeled or tracked vehicles in use. The vegetation was sparse, gray, and sagging.
“You’ll be staying at the hotel?”
“Don’t know. Depends.”
“It’s the only game in town. Old Diggs sets his rates like he knows it.”
“So?”
“I run a rooming house. Sorta. Anyway, there’s a room. Bed. Fresher. For extra, I’ll cook two meals a day.”
“Sorta?”
“Biggish place. Started as a gamblin’ joint. Damn fool who set it up never figured people got to have somethin’ to gamble before they gamble. He walked off into the desert a year or so ago, and nobody bothered looking to see how far he got. We moved in.”
“We?” Joshua asked.
“Mik … he’s the one that called me. And Phan. He was the quiet one. Probably didn’t even look up from bustin’ knuckles. They’re my husbands.”
“I’ll let you know if I need a place.”
• • •
Joshua asked Lil to wait and went into the long, low single-story building without a sign. The lobby was scattered with a handful of benches, their canvas upholstery peeling. It smelled stale and temporary. There were planters on either side of the door, but the plants had mummified a long time before. The checkout station was caged in thick steel bars. The old man behind it blanked the holoset he was watching a pornie on and smiled expectantly. Joshua eyed the bars.
“You must have some interesting paydays around here.”
The old man — Diggs, Joshua supposed — let the smile hang for an instant in token appreciation. “It prevents creativity from some of our more colorful citizens. You want a room?”
“I might.” Joshua reached into his jacket and slid a holopic across. Diggs activated it and studied the man in the projection carefully but said nothing. Joshua took a single gold disk from another pocket, considered, as greed strolled innocently across Diggs’s face, added its brother, and dropped the coins on the counter.
“Tell by the sound they ain’t snide,” Diggs said. “Damned poor picture. Doesn’t look like your friend was very cheerful at having it taken, either.”
“His name is Innokenty Khodyan.”
“That wasn’t what he used here.” The coins vanished. “Another reason I don’t have trouble is everybody knows I’m an open book. He checked out two days ago. Took him that long to get a sled and driver sent down from Yoruba. Two other men came with the armored lim. Hell of a rig. Long time since this dump has seen something that plush.”