Zotikas: Episode 1: Clash of Heirs (3 page)

“Stop that man!”

The first maggun bolt was fired from the
man he had passed. It went wide in the dim light, but not so wide that it
didn’t add adrenaline speed to Kieler’s feet.

Other alarms were ringing now. Real alarms.
Before he reached the stairs he saw lights come on in the long suite of rooms
on the second level. Feleanna Cortatti’s rooms.

 He reached the wall and bounded down
the stairs. Grabbing the banister he swung around the first landing and
glimpsed a guard coming up. Kieler launched himself, using the high ground advantage
and his plunging momentum. Catching the unready guard full in the chest with
both feet, the guard flew backward all the way to the next landing, never
touching a single step on the way down. Kieler kept his momentum and swung
completely over the rail to the next flight of stairs. That man didn’t follow
and Kieler kept up his headlong descent to the bottom.

By the time he reached the corridor he
could hear footfalls from every direction getting close fast.

A guard popped out several yards in front
of him as Kieler reached the doorway to the wine tasting room. The man’s maggun
was already spun up and as he leveled and shot, Kieler dove out of the
corridor, accidentally tackling one of the wine tables. Fumbling for footing,
he half crawled, half lurched to the storage room door, knocking over two more
tables on the way. He found his footing just in time to crash through the
storage room door.

Behind him, a guard fired. The bolt missed
Kieler but several wine bottles exploded in front of him. Kieler stepped full
speed into the liquid. As he slipped, he twisted.

His heightened awareness caused time to
slow, and he had the prescience to wonder as a leveled blade passed inches
above his falling face. He gawked at the inconceivable, fierce beauty of the woman
he was about to collide with. Her bold, chiseled features were outlined by a
wild halo of crimson hair. To further add to the incongruous vision, Kieler saw
she wore nothing but a gossamer nightgown reaching only to mid-thigh.

Out of control, Kieler landed hard on his
left shoulder and slid into her legs. But somehow, in a feat of dexterity he
would always remember, she leapt, flipped her sword over, and stabbed downward
as she too fell. Whether she had aimed for his heart and missed, or aimed with
an intentional, instinctive sadism, she pierced the shoulder he had just
slammed to the floor.

The blazing pain was oddly incidental.

Escape.

Escape was his only focus. He spun on the
floor and pushed off the far wine rack, propelling himself toward the thankfully
still open hatch. Wine bottles cascaded down from the shaken rack, bombarding
the deadly angel. The only thought he spared for her was:
She must not
follow me down.

Head first into the hole he clutched for
the ladder rungs. He caught the second one down—with his left elbow, wrenching
the now bleeding shoulder. Despite his focus, his vision blurred with pain. He
lurched back up and grabbed the hatch, slamming it closed. The heavy tile
sounded like a thunderbolt itself as it smashed down. But that wouldn’t be
enough.
The woman had to know about this entrance, didn’t she?

She would unlatch it and he would be
followed. From a leg sheath he pulled a four-inch blade and jammed it into the
latching mechanism, essentially double latching it so that it could not be
opened from above.

He slid down the ladder, the pain now
fierce. At the bottom he had enough presence of mind to grab up his mask and
cloak. Then he ran.

He sprinted down the under-garden
passageway. He prayed that as they organized, no one but the woman would know
of the secret passage. And she would have to get word to the guards outside. He
should not find guards welcoming him at the statue entrance.

 It made sense. Probably only the
ruling family members knew of the tunnel’s existence.

He could hear nothing in the corridor but
his own footfalls and heavy breathing. The abrupt silence was strange after
such violence. He held his left arm with his right. His shoulder burned.

At the other end he climbed quickly into
the pedestal of the statue and slowly released the catch. Peering through the
crack he saw guards running toward the residence. So far, they must have
figured he was still trapped inside the keep. When clear, he swung open the
door and crawled quickly out. He shut the pedestal door and ducked into cover
beside the bushes.

More lights were on at the citadel and
sirens blared. He clung to the shadows, crawling toward the trees. It was but a
few feet later that glaring arc-lights began blazing to life all over the
garden and his concealing shadows began to vanish.

He felt exposed, but the bushes still
blocked line of sight with the guards patrolling the keep. He had nearly made
it to the trees when he saw a guard coming toward him. With no shadows he had
only one choice: he dove into the center of the hedgerow and froze.

The oncoming watchman hadn’t seen him.
Within seconds the running man passed by. Had Kieler reached out his hand he
could have grabbed the guard’s ankle. But the foliage of the bush hid him. It
also scratched the skin of his hands and face like the claws of a wild animal.

As the guard ran on toward the main keep,
Kieler crawled out and dashed into the trees. He ran from tree to tree now,
knowing more guards might be coming this way to get to the main building. Soon
enough they would be coming out from the keep, guided by the woman. He avoided
two more of the gathering sentinels and had to break cover to sprint for the
door to the steps leading down to the Plate level. Kieler hoped Bags was ready
for a quick getaway.

As he flung open the door he had jammed
open earlier, a shout rang out behind him. He’d been spotted.

Kieler swore.
Why not just two seconds
more?
He’d have been through the door unseen. But he had the lead, and
sheer fright gave his legs strength to take the stairs five and six at a time,
guided by his good hand on the railing.

He was more than half way down the ten or
so stories when pursuit came through the door above. One shot pinged down
through the metal stairs, but it was so obviously ineffective that they didn’t
shoot again. They bolted down the stairs after him.

He gained the ground level and sprinted
across the dock. Now metal bolts followed him as the guardsmen shot from the
landings of the metal staircase. He ran so as to put the crane between him and
his pursuers. Magbolts sent sparks showering down as they rang off the metal of
the loading crane.

Passing the freighter he spotted their sled
with no small measure of relief. Bags had turned it around, ready to run, and
had the top hatch opened enough to peer out. He saw Kieler immediately.

“
Sparks!
Come on!” Bags flung open
the hatch and then dropped out of sight, heading for the cockpit.

Kieler jumped down into the deep cut V of
the track, sliding down the magal slope. He hit the top of the sled and rolled.
Magbolts clanged off the hull around him. Multiple shooters, but no one seemed
to have a clear shot as the rain again worked to Kieler and Bags’ advantage.
This time Kieler didn’t go headfirst down the hatch, but swung down, caught
himself with his good arm and pulled the hatch closed over him.

“Get this sled moving!” Kieler shouted
down. Before he hit the floor of the cargo hold the raider lurched forward and
acceleration pressed Kieler immobile against the ladder. The hammering of
magbolts on the hull dropped off within moments. His mask slid out from under
his arm, and fell diagonally toward the rear of the hold, stopping only when it
hit the engine compartment bulkhead. He grunted and tried to pry his head back
through the rungs of the ladder.

Eventually he muscled himself down the
ladder, and though still in full acceleration, managed to crawl through the
open hatch into the cockpit. Looking up through the narrow windshield, he saw
brilliant lights ahead: the gate! From the guardhouse, more magbolts pinged
uselessly off the hull. Then Kieler’s heart dropped as he glimpsed two giant
rail guns atop the gate, one pointing toward them and one aimed down the track
in the direction they were going. A shell whizzed over their heads and Kieler
barely felt its detonation behind them—the guards hadn’t compensated for the
sled’s great speed. A breath later the gates flashed overhead. They were
through—still accelerating. Before relief and exhilaration had time to take
hold, another shell detonated ahead of them, tearing open the upper right of
the track. Magal fragments rained down onto the raider. Had they been a full
size freighter, they would have unbalanced and tumbled end over end. As it was
they shot by the ragged hole and out of range.

“Back her off!” Kieler grunted, still on
the floor. “We
gotta
slow down before we hit the
curve!”

But Bags was also revved, and though he
pulled back on the throttle, he only did so to neutral. The sled skimmed down
the magnetic track barely slowing. They hit the first curve at still over 400
and were thrown sideways. Kieler smashed his already hurt shoulder and Bags,
straining to stay in his seat, finally reversed the impeller to decelerate
without throwing Kieler through the windscreen.

Kieler groaned and fell into his seat.

“Did you get it?” Bags glanced sideways at
him.

Kieler reached into his jacket and pulled
out the gold and green jeweled star. “I got it.”

Bags whooped and clapped his friend on the
shoulder, eliciting a wince and a scream. “You ok?”

“I got stabbed. I think it was Feleanna
Cortatti,” he grimaced.

Bags eyes went wide. “What! Sorry. But you
did it! You didn’t need good stars, you just needed
one
good star, and
you got it!”

“I got it,” Kieler repeated, relaxing as
they slowed to a more controllable speed.

Deftly, Bags navigated through a series of quick track
switches toward a little-known passage through the Plate. Kieler watched his
friend enjoying the feel of the nimble craft. They shared a few moments of
elated silence, but as that elation slowly ebbed, Kieler realized he probably
wouldn’t be seeing his friend and former subordinate for a long time.

Gently Kieler doffed his uniform jacket and wrapped it
around his shoulder. It was still seeping, but the wound was amazingly
straight, as if cut with a surgeon's scalpel. A deeper hit would have easily
killed or dismembered. He shuddered, then winced with the pain of movement.

Letting the pain subside, he spoke as the craft hissed
quietly in the bottom of the track. “You know, Bags, I’m leaving tomorrow on
this mission. I’ll be gone a long time if things go well; permanently if they
don't.” He let that sink in. “You’re captain of Slink Squad now. You’re going
to have to teach one of the guys to do the driving of this little beast while
you do the leading.”

Looking sidelong at Kieler, Bags frowned. “
Gotta
spoil the fun, eh?”

They slowed further and Kieler went on. “Yeah, well,
we
gotta
remember why we fight, each of us. And you
have to remember the motivation of your men, not just yours.”

His frown turning to a deep scowl, Bags replied, “Mine
I’ll never forget. Someone steals your wife—” Kieler could almost hear Bag’s
teeth grinding. He hated to remind Bags of ugly memories, but those memories
kept a man focused. “I suppose everyone has some reason for hating the
highborns.”

“Some reasons aren’t as bitter. Take Caprice; he never
knew his parents. He’s just lost. As far as anyone knows he was born under the
Plate.”

“Yeah,” Bags agreed. “He’s reckless. No family.
Doesn’t really care about living or dying, just what he can get that day.”

“Yes, but Bags he
does
have a family now.”

Bags mused on that as they slowed to a crawl and
pulled into an abandoned warehouse. “Us.”

Kieler smiled at him. “Remember that and your whole
squad will remember it.”

They both jumped out and opened a grate in the floor.
Within seconds the two raiders had disappeared from Avertori and were
descending through the Plate.

This entrance was one of about thirty Kieler knew of,
most of them well hidden. The two men donned their masks and moved quickly
through massive conduits, rubble heaps, and tunnels; always heading down.
Kieler led almost without thinking, winding through the maze in which he'd
grown up. He unsheathed the luzhril shard he'd used on the raid and lit their
way. It didn't pass unremembered that when he had found this passage as a
teenager, he only had a jar of light lugs. The luzhril on the rod had been
given him by Movus much later.

 They leaned sideways as they scooted under the
slope of a fallen slab, then climbed up a rock heap and half-slid down the
other side. A broken tower angled down, forming a long part of their path, but
before the end they crawled through a shattered window and into a hollowed-out
space that narrowed into another tunnel that had obviously been dug out to
allow men to squeeze through.

His shoulder throbbed but keeping pressure on it
minimized blood loss and Kieler knew he would be all right. To properly treat
the wound, they would need the medical supplies in Movus’ quarters. He always
had the best.

Once the two men turned into the main tunnels, they
encountered other residents of the underground city. Though some still kept
time and schedule with the world above, many did not, going about their
business at unusual hours. Their passing was acknowledged with a glance or a
nod, but Kieler knew the insignia on their masks and even the masks themselves
evoked respect and a touch of fear. Kieler had earned the insignia he wore over
the right eye-hole of his mask. The purpose with which they moved and the blood
on Kieler’s clothes further increased the distance of those not in the Coin.

Some couldn't help passing close. A grimy man,
sweating copiously, pushed a three-wheeled cart up the slope Kieler and Bags
were coming down. His face was set and to stop would be to lose upward
momentum. As he passed, the front wheel hit a rut in the rough surface and the
cart tipped. Kieler and Bags both reacted to steady it, but the motion sent a
blaze of light out the top of the high-sided cart.

Light lugs. The cart was packed with various
containers, from glass jars to rough urns squirming with the bio-luminescent
insects largely used for portable light beneath the Plate.

This man had worked hard to collect such numbers of
the pests. To lose them in a tip-over would have been a financial disaster.

But his “smile” of appreciation to the two Coin
operatives was nothing more than a scowl and a thankful nod.

In the world above the Plate, especially at the
Cortatti Estate, the streets were smooth and rubble would have been cleared.
But
here,
both the street, the sides of the street, and the ceiling of
every tunnel were
carved
out of rubble. If he hadn’t just been at the
immaculately tended gardens of the Cortattis, Kieler wouldn’t have even
noticed. Growing up in these wasted ruins of a city—a city long dead before
Avertori was built—rubble was Kieler's normal.

The end of this wider tunnel opened onto the perimeter
of a space so large it had its own ambient light, albeit weak. Kieler and Bags
skirted the edge of the Karst Borough. Noise from commerce, from hundreds of
thousands of people living in these ruins, filled the air.

The Plate separating above from below spanned the
entire Isle of Threes on which Avertori stood. Why it had been built, Kieler
could only guess. Under the Plate, the majority of the population existed
mainly in these various boroughs. People settled in these larger hollows out of
social need and even in Kieler's brief years the population had grown as
Avertori above declined. The largest and busiest of these boroughs was Karst.

From the low path on which they trod, they could see
little of what was sometimes called the Karst Plain, referring to its
relatively wide expanse. But their world was also deep; deep beyond knowledge.
Kieler wondered if even Movus (who still seemed like the parent who knew
everything) had explored the full depth of this dark netherworld. Most exiles
took up residence as close to the surface as possible in any area free of
rubble. Karst was so wide and open that the Plate itself roofed it.

Kieler and Bags reached the hollowed-out corridor
leading to Movus’ home under Karst. It was a quiet corridor, with Movus' place
being the only residence. His home had the added privilege of a solid stone
door with a magnetic lock similar to the one on the Cortatti library, except
this one had no glass to break. The two successful raiders knocked, received no
reply, and Kieler used his key to let them in, eager to share their success
with Kieler’s mentor. But as they entered Movus’ library, they realized the
head of their intelligence network was, as usual, not home.

With hardly a word, Kieler pushed aside a spread of
plans on a polished stone table, and lay down, unwrapping the crude dressing
from his pierced shoulder as he did.

“Leave that to me,” Bags rumbled at him. “Leaders are
always the worst patients.”

“I thought doctors were the worst patients.”

Bags’ only response was a short grunt as he opened one
of many cabinets and withdrew a cleaning solvent and a ceramic bottle
hand-labeled, “Bio-salve”. This was not entirely an unfamiliar process. Other
jobs had found them injured worse.

As Bags cleaned his shoulder, Kieler tried to lie
still despite his racing mind. He wondered at the bottle of salve. He had
innocently asked for some from an
Avertoric
doctor
after one of his incursions above the Plate. The doc had no clue what he was
talking about. Yes, Movus knew stuff.

A knock at the door, ignored three times, finally
bugged Bags enough to go see who it was. Though he couldn't see the door from
the library, Kieler could tell the man pushed his way past Bags despite
insistent protests.

“I'll throw you out!” Bags said as the stooped man
shuffled into the library.

Kieler leaned his head back on a stack of papers and
sniffed the air. “What's that smell?”

Over the man's prog-like snort, Bags muttered, “Dirt,
filth and swamp-water.”

In a way, Zroom, the room's new and unwanted visitor,
had an advantage against Bags' hugely superior muscle: he looked like a
decrepit old man. It was hard to hit him and feel good about it.

“Stay away from my patient!” Bags commanded. “You'll
contaminate the wound.”

With an indistinct chuff, Zroom did stay back just far
enough for Bags to work. Zroom was one of the under-Plate's few farmers,
raising an exotic crop that was actually quite profitable: truffles. Most of
his crop he smuggled through the Plate and sold to House addicts at exorbitant
prices. Some of his unusual fungi were said to have psychotropic properties
that clarified one's thinking. Nevertheless, they grew in the wettest,
rottenest, smelliest parts of the underground. His infused aroma did not add to
his already scarce popularity.

“What do you want Zroom?” Kieler asked, not giving him
the respect of looking at him. “Come to tell us how to run the world again?”

“Yup,” said the man without a hint of doubt. “You need
it. You go off and get yourself stabbed on some reckless raid and you don't
have an ounce of common sense about how to run a new government should you
actually manage to destroy the old one.”

His heavy lids and saggy, sallow face contradicted his
confident tirade. But this was not a new argument. Since both Kieler and Bags
ignored him while Bags doused a piece of gauze with the salve, Zroom continued,
this time with questions.

“What did you do? Raid Cortatti headquarters? Are you
as daft as I've been asserting for all these years?”

Bags shot him an enraged look and had he not been
applying the balm to Kieler's shoulder at that very moment, he probably would
have grabbed Zroom by the neck. “How do you know what we've been doing, spy?”

A smile that looked more like a scowl cracked the
dirty man's face. “And you're our intelligence squad? We're in worse trouble than
I've been grumbling about.”

Bags' free hand swiped around in an annoyed attempt to
backhand him. Zroom had moved two steps away to avoid just such a lashing.

“Blood-stained Cortatti uniform on the ground isn't
much of a hint, is it?”

“Bags...” Kieler warned. “Anything you say gives him
more ammunition.”

A rumble like a grevon growl sounded deep in Bags'
chest. But Zroom had moved to the medicine cabinet and was examining the
contents with an appreciative look on his flabby face.

“Stop snooping,” Kieler said mildly. “Movus finds out
you touched anything and he'll have fifty of us fighting each other for who
gets to kill you.”

Zroom turned and nodded. “My point made. If you
succeed you get to be puppet EC. Movus jerks your strings. And fifty grevons
fight over the scraps. What a country.”

Kieler winced despite the salve’s amazing ability to
soothe even as it healed. He winced because though he knew that what he was
doing was necessary, he did wonder how the end result would be better. Zroom
had hit a nerve.

Interjecting for his patient, Bags asked through
clenched teeth. “What do you want Zroom and how can we get rid of you?”

“I want to shape this world. You need my wisdom and
the only way you'll get it is if I cram it into your over-muscled heads.”

At this Kieler cracked a smile. “Why not use your
irresistible charisma Zroom?”

Another snort. “That's you're department, Sparks. I
know you're smart. Bags less so but not entirely stupid. You should listen to
me.”

“Why?” Both said simultaneously.

“Because not everyone agrees with the Coin. Because
you don’t know what you’re doing. And because I know how to organize working
systems. Profitable, organized, sustainable working systems. You two just know
how to break stuff and blow stuff up.”

Neither responded to the muck-stained farmer. Bags was
now sewing, and that
did
hurt.

Eyes closed, Kieler muttered, “I did break a lot of
stuff tonight Bags.”

Even though he was concentrating on sewing Kieler's
wound closed, Bags replied, “and Caprice got to blow some stuff up...”
Pretending to acquiesce to Zroom's superior intelligence, Bags heaved a
melodramatic sigh. “Well, you're right again Zroom. You can go now.”

Through the condescension, Kieler noted with pride
that Bags, despite his annoyance with Zroom, was quite gently sewing his
shoulder while patiently bearing Zroom's abrasive presence.

“Revolution requires forethought, during-thought, and
afterthought. All those involve
thought
!” Zroom's tone was acidic. “You
just rush into action, stirring up the most violent house on Zotikas with no
thinking about the result. We need to organize a government
now
. We need
to practice governing
now
. We have the perfect chance to create a
free-market system of equal opportunity
down here now,
and aside from
the Coin, we're in total anarchy.”