Zotikas: Episode 1: Clash of Heirs (8 page)

Striking, yes.
“Thank
you,” Velirith replied. The Merckle trio was just finishing their hellos to the
Executive Chair and his wife.

Turning to the EC, Fechua introduced them formally
despite the familiar association Velator had with the Executive Chair. “May I
present Velator, Prime of House Vel, and his daughter, Velirith.”

Velator gripped arms with the Executive Chair and
greeted him congenially, despite full awareness by both that less than a
century ago, the Primes of House Vel had occupied the position of Executive
Chair. Velirith knew her father simply chose not to harbor ill will. And
Velirith herself—she didn’t care.
Who would want to rule such a petty society
anyway?

She felt her father’s quick sidelong glance, checking
that Velirith wouldn’t do anything unbecoming. One year, when she was thirteen,
she pretended an over-familiarity with His Eminence, and hugged him
ebulliently. His guards, always standing behind him, didn’t appreciate the
gesture of “affection”, but couldn’t exactly chastise a thirteen-year-old girl
in front of hundreds of guests.

She greeted him with only a sly, confident smile, but
did nothing untoward, keeping her right hand tight upon her purse. The
Executive Chair returned her greeting politely but warily, as if handling a
beautifully wrapped, but dangerous package.

The Executive Chair’s wife was overweight, but not
grossly so. She looked as bored as Velirith would have been had she not appointed
herself Alternative Entertainment Chairwoman. Their salutations were cursory.

Velirith read a vague suspicion in her father, but
Velator simply led her to their table behind one of the wait staff where she
pretended to finish her greeting.

“I’ll be right back,” she told her father. She strode
over to the decorated note table and stood in front of the box next to the
guard. She held but a single note in its stylish envelope. She glanced at the
attending guard and smiled. He nodded in return, looking at her a bit too long.

“Oh,” she said, feigning surprise. There was no name
on the envelope. She set the envelope on the edge of the table and used her
stylus to scribe the name. As she lifted her hand, the card fell to the floor.
“Oh!” she said again. She moved to bend over and retrieve it, then stopped as
if realizing the impropriety of a young lady crawling under the table to pick
up the note. “Would you be so kind?” she asked the attendant.

The man was more than willing to please. As he knelt
and ducked his head, she deftly removed the remaining twenty-one notes—all
differing in content, packaging and handwriting—and dropped them into the box.
The attendant rose, smiled and bowed. Then he placed her final note in the box
for her.

“Thank you very much.” Velirith returned the bow with
a charming smile. Then, with great composure, she walked back to her table,
passing another young man with a belated note heading for the box.

They won’t shoot yet.

He hoped. Kieler had considered the possibility that
he’d be discovered on the way to the Charlaise building and decided they
wouldn’t shoot in the crowded Garrist Ring unless they thought they would lose
him. At this point, it looked like they would run him down in about six
seconds.

He broke into a dead run to change the intercept point
and kept arrow straight as if he were going to pass right by the Charlaise
building. His conspicuous speed and the purposeful movement of his first
pursuer attracted more unwanted attention. Within a few steps, another
half-dozen Cortatti roughs emerged from hidden posts and were angling toward
him. They were all running now.

Kieler made the front of the Bintle-owned bank and cut
right. Once through the sturdy doors, he reduced to a brisk stride across the
large lobby and headed directly for the inner stairwell door. Behind him every
Cortatti seemed to burst through the doors at the same time, weapons drawn.

The head clerk gave a shout, “Lock down!” and dashed
for an emergency lever.

Kieler had about two seconds before the stairwell door
in front of him would be sealed. He dove for it as the clerk yanked down on a
huge brass lever to lock the doors of the building through a complex series of
magnetic relays. Behind the general din, he heard magguns spinning up.

He hit the door, slamming it open. Once in the
stairwell, he spun and threw his weight back onto the door to shut it. Now that
he was through, he
wanted
it locked. Within a second of it closing, he
heard the very satisfying, metallic
thunk
of a huge
bolt sliding into place.

He rolled right as metal rang. A huge hole split open
just inside the handle. Fortunately Kieler’s hand wasn’t on the handle as the
maggun bolt tore through. He scrambled away before any more bolts hit and ran
up the stairs.

That the Cortatti’s had fired inside a Bintle bank
showed how intent they were on getting him. It also showed a frightening
confidence that they felt they could wield their increasing power amongst the
other houses. Kieler could hear more of the bolts flying below, but he had no
idea whether the Cortattis were blasting the door or if Bintle security was
laying down fire of its own. Regardless, in less than thirty seconds, all shots
ceased. Kieler smiled.

This was a good break. He was trapped. Supposedly.
They thought they had him, and sure enough, as he tried a door three levels
above the lobby, it too was bolted. The Cortatti goon squad was probably
figuring they had only to secure the exits and wait him out. They were sure to
send contingents to the levels below as well. But he knew there was only one
way to the roof, and he was on his way to it. On an earlier night, he had
ensured that no bolt would bar him from rooftop access. In the lobby, tense and
heated negotiations would be underway.

Regardless that his pursuit had been delayed and that
he had trained extensively for this night, trotting up fifty flights of stairs
was still a physical challenge. He shed his outer clothes, but carried them so
they would not know whether he had gone up or down. The Bintle lock down could
be overridden, but only one door at a time—so Movus’ intelligence reported.
Kieler doubted the bank Officer-in-Charge would cooperate quickly with the
Cortatti thugs trapped in his building.

On the roof, Kieler dropped the spare clothes and went
to work. It had taken him many nights over the past weeks to carefully and
methodically prepare for this. And he hadn’t done it using the stairs either.
Behind a ventilation duct Kieler threw back the dark cover and felt a thrill of
pride. There, secure against any wind, was the lightweight metal frame of a
small airship.

A sharp crack sounded just off the edge of the roof
and Kieler dropped to the deck. His heart sunk wondering how they had caught
him before he could enact his plan. But then he realized; the fireworks had
begun!

A giant sphere of purple and gold lightning expanded
in the space between the roof and the Executive Palace, right in the center gap
of Garrist Ring. The magal-luzhril burst produced a crackling thunderclap as it
expanded, its aura lingering in fading radiance. Purple and gold, the colors of
House Ek.

Kieler climbed to his feet and began to ready his
ship. The hard rains had slackened but the clouds were still thick and
threatening, waiting for reinforcements from the northeast. The wind was
thankfully light.

His father had been obsessed with making energy
production available on a smaller scale. This obsession had developed because
Ek Threzhel had manipulated the magal supply to increase his own fortune. Kieler’s
father wanted to break the hold House Ek had on everyone’s lives by their
monopoly on magal. Out of this awesome and horrible obsession had come the
engine that now drove Kieler’s magnificent little airship. It had also cost
Kieler’s father his life.

Now Kieler’s own life was on the line. He stripped
another tarp off three hydrogen tanks stowed next to the empty metal airframe.
The inflatable envelope that would hold the gas was still secure and draped
carefully around the frame for quick deployment.

He opened the valves on all three tanks, one after
another, and could hear the steady hiss of gas entering the envelope. He easily
had twice the hydrogen he needed for liftoff, but since there was no second
chance, Kieler had flown in backup cylinders. Now that he was expecting
company, there were other uses for the excess hydrogen. His ideal plan had been
to slip up here unnoticed. A maggun shootout in the lobby was hardly ideal.

At first, the envelope looked as if it were barely
filling. He checked that the valves were full open and then left the filling
airship while he ran a thin wire in front of the rooftop door. The likely
charge out of the door would yank the tripwire. After the airfoil was inflated,
he would hook the hydrogen canisters into the trap.

By the light of multicolored aerial explosions he
changed clothes. He had cooled from his ascent despite the work of setting up
the airship. Donning his final disguise, the one he had stashed here on the
rooftop just two nights ago, he buttoned the high collared dress uniform of
House Ortessi. It was a sharp set, he admitted. Most houses had sunk to the
loftiness of extremes, having colors and cuts that were gaudy and garish. But
house Ortessi had risen to prominence with the classic houses, and thus fell
when greed and self-aggrandizement became the style. At any rate, the deep
green uniform trimmed with gold was simple and elegant, even if this particular
formalwear was not suited for surreptitious excursions. Far too restrictive. He
kept the Ortessian sigil tucked in an inside pocket for now.

Stepping over his wire, Kieler listened at the door.
Nothing. No—wait, a banging far below. They were opening the door from the
lobby!

The airship was taking shape. It was a large, bulbous
wing that tapered toward the rear of the craft. It was not simply a balloon.
Simple balloons had been tried, but were too susceptible to the whims of the
wind. They were dangerous and unwieldy. Kieler had created a semi-buoyant craft
which used his
fathers
small engine to provide
forward motion for extra lift and control.

To create this forward velocity, a motorized fan was
needed. And that motor had been unavailable until his father had made it
possible to create one smaller than a man’s chest.

The dimples on the surface of the envelope were fast
disappearing as hydrogen poured in from the three tanks. Kieler quickly shut
down the first one, disconnected it, and rolled it over to another ventilation
duct near the door.

Carefully, he balanced the tank on the edge of the
duct so that the slightest pull from the wire would send it crashing down and
break off the valve, turning the tank into a very distracting rocket. He
listened at the door but a moment. He couldn’t be sure, but he thought he heard
footfalls far below.

He dashed over and disconnected the second canister.
While he rolled it into
it’s
place for his crude
trap, he allowed the last cylinder to finish filling out the airfoil. By the
time he was ready for the final tank, the skin was tight and sleek, having
formed into shape. He rolled the last canister over and balanced it next to the
other two, then gently threaded the tripwire.

There was nothing left to do. Kieler jumped over the
wire toward the door to listen for a brief second. He didn’t have to try very
hard. The slow clomping of exhausted men was close.

Kieler leapt back over the wire, ran to his ship, and
slashed the tie-downs. He then jumped into the pilot’s seat as the craft began
to drift. As he pushed a lever forward, a core of highly purified magal slid
into the engine and the fan whirred into motion. Revving softly, his airship
started rolling across the roof.

Fireworks splashed the sky, illuminating his short
takeoff. The beautiful explosions were a good distraction, pulling attention
away from him. He just didn’t want to become part of the evening’s fiery
entertainment.

The ship picked up speed, handling well. He had to be
well clear of the roof when they barged through that door. If necessary, he
could accelerate more by diving. Upon clearing the roof, the ship dropped
sharply, but then picked up enough speed to be controllable and leapt back
above the rooftop. He was airborne! No one in Zotikas had a machine like this
one!

The airship pulled steadily away. His plan was to
climb high above the bursting fireworks and enter the palace via a high
balcony.

The high-pitched whine of charged magguns pinged in
his ears above the whisper of the rotating fan, and Kieler glanced at the door.
It opened cautiously.
These goons have some savvy about them.
One of
them gave a cry to watch the wire as three others followed him out. Kieler
ground his teeth as once again his plan went awry.

None of the Cortattis on the roof were his original
tail. Not that it mattered, but Kieler was thankful. And for the moment his
pursuers were more concerned about the trap than finding Kieler. But he knew he
had only seconds before they would look around. He pulled up and climbed hard,
putting himself above eye level. He could see them so clearly; he was too
close!

But they were thinking narrowly, searching the
rooftop, behind the ventilation duct, examining the canisters, his discarded
clothes, and poking at the tarp that had covered the ship. He was gaining
altitude and distance.

It became apparent to them all too quickly that Kieler
was not on the roof and one clever thug looked up and around, puzzled. It took
several seconds for him to spot the slow moving airship, and a couple more
seconds to realize what he was looking at. Every second was precious distance,
but Kieler was still well within maggun range.

Realization dawned, and with a cry, the man raised his
weapon.