Outlanders 24 Equinox Zero, page 2
Breeze Castigleone didn't look like the boss of the Snakefish barony's Tartarus Pits. Named after Tartarus, the abyss below Hell where Zeus had confined his enemies, the Pits were the planned ghettos of the baronies. The Pits were melting pots, swarming with slaggers and cheap labor.
The barons had decreed that the villes could support no more than five thousand residents, and the number of Pit dwellers could not exceed one thousand. Part of every Mag's duty was to make Pit sweeps, seeking out outlanders, infants and even pregnant women and either ejecting them from the barony or killing them. Despite the ruthless treatment of the Pit dwellers, one constant, in any version of any vile, was a Pit boss. By no means an official title or position, Pit bosses nevertheless served a purpose of varying degrees of importance, depending on the ville.
Part crime lords, part information conduits and part procurer of luxuries, most ville's tolerated Pit bosses as long as they knew and kept their place. If they maintained a certain order among the seething masses in Tartarus, Magistrates were inclined to look the other way if they engaged in limited black marketeering or the elimination of troublesome elements.
Not only did Breeze Castigleone not look anything like a Tartarus resident, but he also didn't resemble his predecessor in the slightest. Boss Hamhock Hiney had been pretty much standard issue, much like the self-styled barons who had tried to rule the country before the unification program; fat, brutish, bullying braggarts whose sexual appetites tended toward the depraved. Castigleone appeared almost fey and feminine in contrast to the late Hamhock.
But Chaffee knew Castigleone hadn't risen to prominence in the Tartarus Pits of Snakefish on his looks alone. He possessed a cunning and absolutely ruthless brain, which in tandem with his talent for manipulation and unlawful acquisition of goods, made him something of a genius.
Chaffee looked out at the Cific past the end of the pier. Mist floated above the water, wreathing the waves with vapors. The fog felt like the touch of a slimy band on his skin.
"Where are the partners you spoke of?" he asked.
Castigleone chuckled patronizingly and removed a small object from his coat pocket. It emitted a faint buzz, and he passed it before his face. Chaffee knew what it was and ignored the affectation. At some point hi his life, Castigleone had come across a tiny, battery-operated fan with plastic vanes. When he adopted it as a personal signature, his nickname naturally followed. Chaffee found it silly, but "Breeze" was certainly preferable to "Hamhock."
"They're on their way," Breeze replied, gesturing toward the ocean.
Sif stepped forward, gazing eagerly out at the fog.
She spoke a few words Chaffee didn't understand, ear-filling conglomerations of consonants.
"What the hell did she say?" he demanded.
Castigleone shrugged. "I have no idea. I'm just the go-between, not a linguist. I'm just a hired man with a hired man's interest in your situation."
Chaffee ground his teeth together, tamping down a sudden surge of the righteous rage of a Magistrate when scorned by a slagger. It was a struggle to remind himself than when he led his crew into an ambush, he had ceased to be a Mag.
A sound floated to them, vague and watery. Out of the vapor a shadow appeared. Chaffee stiffened, squinting as the shadow shape resolved into a looming, elongated outline. It was a ship, he realized, but a ship that might have been gliding in eerie silence out of the mists of history.
Double ended, perhaps sixty feet long, the vessel reminded Chaffee of some aspects of a giant, wide-bodied canoe. Stern and bow reared up to support platforms amidships. On the outside, along the rail were fastened gleaming disks of steel, objects that Chaffee recognized as shields. Each one was inscribed with the same symbol; a black cross canted clockwise, with the arms curving backward. The tail mast had a sail draped around it, unfilled because there was no wind to speak of. The sail seemed to be made of animal skins from which the fur had been scraped. The black sideways cross insignia was either painted or sewn onto it.
The prow that faced them arched upward rather like the trunk of an elephant. Positioned uppermost on the trunk was a snarling dragon's head, its long snout gaping open to reveal rows of inward-pointing fangs. On either side of the head-flared fins, scalloped at the ends so they resembled bat wings.
Chaffee stood rooted to the spot, too numbed by astonishment to move or even speak as the dragon ship hove closer to the end of the pier. For a reason he couldn't understand, the sight of the vessel evoked visions of limitless ice fields, of sunlight twinkling on hoarfrost and of a soul-numbing cold. He shivered involuntarily. At the edges of his hearing he heard a distant, rhythmic throb that he absently recognized as the growl of an engine.
On the deck stood dark, silent figures, giant men wearing helmets of burnished steel that were adorned with curving horns or outspread wings. The moonlight glittered on their scale-mail corsets as though they were dusted with diamond chips.
The engine sound changed, lowering in pitch, and the dragon ship bumped gently against the end of the pier. Sif strode out eagerly as the figure of a man leaped gracefully from the vessel and into her arms. She caught him up in a brief, fierce embrace. Chaffee stared so long at the figure without blinking that his eyes began to sting and water.
The man seemed very tall in the dim illumination. From neck to thigh his lean body was cased in black link mail, and under that a fur-trimmed tunic. Light winked dully from an amulet hanging around his neck.
His head was completely concealed by a helmet wrought of black, gleaming metal, presenting a blank visage of slitted eye-holes and a small grilled slot for breathing. At the crest and sides of the helmet sprang out thin, sweeping curves of steel that were mates to the bat-winged fins on the ship's dragon figurehead.
The dragon-helmeted man disengaged from Sif, and Chaffee noted he wasn't as tall as he had first thought, but he still topped six feet. He appeared underweight at first glance, but the effect was caused by a total absence of excess flesh. He strode purposefully toward him and Castigleone.
The Pit boss spoke to the helmeted man in a whisper, gesturing toward Chaffee. The man's eyes glittered behind the slits of the helmet, then he strode toward him.
As he did, he lifted the helmet from his head. The man's face was aquiline, with hollow cheeks that stressed his broad, pale forehead. Sleek black hair fell to his shoulders in a tangle of witch-locks. A streak of white that was several inches wide slashed straight back from his hairline over the crown of his head to his nape. Across his forehead crooked a wealed scar, bisecting his right eyebrow.
The slight slant of his gray eyes lent his pale face a vaguely sly cast. His mouth turned up at the corners, so that he seemed to be constantly smiling over some amusing incident only he was aware of.
At first he struck Chaffee as an aesthete, an effete intellectual. There seemed to be a smug serenity about his bearing and smile, but there was none in his eyes. They blazed in his gaunt face with haunted memories of suffering, of fasting, of a soul-deep pain. He had unusual hands, too; the palms were very broad with exceptionally long and powerful-looking fingers. His right hand was encased in a glove of black leather, but the left hand went bare.
The man handed his helmet to Sif and absently toyed with the amulet hanging from his neck. With a start, Chaffee realized it was a tiny wooden phallus with stylized crystal testicles affixed to it.
In a voice that bore traces of a metallic accent, he asked, "My friend Breeze tells me you wish to become an expatriate? That you seek asylum?"
Chaffee's gaze flicked from the strange amulet to the dragon ship and back to the man's high-planed face again. "You can offer me asylum?"
The dark-haired man gestured negligently to the vessel "That is the mobile embassy of the nation I represent. Once you set foot upon it, you will be under the protection of Ultima Thule...and therefore saved from the coming Ragnarok."
It took Chaffee a few seconds to work out the subtleties of the man's accented pronunciation. Trying to mimic it, he echoed, "Ulteema Toolay? Is that where you're from?"
A smile tugged at the corners of the man's thin-lipped mouth. "Nyet. I hail from a land much, much different."
“If I go with you, I'll be saved from...what did you call it?"
The man's smile faltered and turned into a frown. Turning to Castigleone, he said, "I presumed our mutual friend had explained our doctrine to you. Ragnarok, the conflict of ice and fire; the last day. But the discussion is not about my origin but about your choices."
Chaffee took a deep breath. "Yes. I wish your protection."
He took a step toward the ship, but the man stopped fondling his amulet and restrained him by a hand on the shoulder. "However, tovarich, I have a few questions."
Chaffee scowled. "So do I. First of all; who are you?"
"I have been known by several names. However, the easiest for you to pronounce is Grigori Zakat. It's not my real name, but it will suffice."
He paused and added coldly, "Now I have a question for you. I am curious about a man I once knew who wore the same armor as you."
Surprised, Chaffee inquired, "You mean a Magistrate?"
Grigori Zakat nodded. "He was a former member of that fraternity, I believe, only recently disaffected when I first met him."
"Do you know his name?"
Zakat chuckled, but there was no humor in it. It was a sinister, sibilant hiss of a laugh that set Chaffee's nape hairs to tingling "I do indeed. I shall never forget it. Perhaps you can give me a hint of where I might find the man named Kane."
Chapter 2
Two months later
"Kane," Domi whispered. "Where are you?" Kane's strained voice issued from the trans-comm unit Domi held to her ear. "About three-quarters of a klick northeast of you, right at the river, halfway up a tree."
Domi couldn't help but smile. "What the hell are you doing up there?"
"What do you think?" His whispering tone was harsh and tense, "I'm building a house."
"Why are we whispering?" Domi asked, imitating his low tones.
The transmitter accurately conveyed Kane's sigh, but he didn't raise his voice. "I'm above a place where animals come to drink. I might be able to see Monstrodamus's tracks if he's been here recently."
"Has he?"
"I don't know."
"Okay," Domi replied. "I'm near a bog, but I don't see anything that looks like dinosaur tracks or dinosaur shit."
"We know he's here on the island," came the terse reply. "That's enough." Kane fell silent for such a long tick of time, Domi was on the verge of calling his name. When he spoke again, there was a perceptible note of anxiety, if not fear, underscoring his voice. "I'll call you back."
Domi heard the click of the circuit closing. She folded the cover over the palm-sized radiophone and stowed it back in her war bag, blinking back sweat from her eyes. She guessed the humidity was about ninety percent, and even the chirping of birds sounded lethargic in the moisture-drenched air.
She accepted the discomfort as part of the mission, but she found Thunder Isle, as the natives of New Edo called it, almost as inhospitable as rad-hot hell- zones. As she had crept through the jungle, waterfowl whirred up in clouds from pools of stagnant water, unseen animals snorted at her from tall breaks of cane and swarms of insects hummed all about her.
Domi had needed all of her wilderness craft to make any kind of progress. She had seen narrow animal paths beaten through the undergrowth, but she didn't follow them. Curiosity was not much of a motivating force with her. She learned early that too often curiosity killed not only the cat, but also everything around it. People who grew up outside the sheltered walls of villes accepted that as gospel.
She slunk through the vines and underbrush like a creature born to jungle life. In many ways, she had been. A thicket ahead of her was suddenly violently agitated, as if shaken by a stiff breeze. Dropping to one knee, Domi knew she couldn't be seen. An albino by birth, her complexion was normally pale as creamed milk Since being on the island, she'd taken care to cover her exposed skin with a mixture of berry and grass juices that kept most insects away. She'd scrubbed in mud to allow her skin to blend in easier with the shiftings of light and shadow.
Domi's close-cropped bone-white hair was wilder than normal because she'd braided broken twigs with green leaves into it to disguise most of the color. She was every inch of five feet tall and weighed one hundred pounds. On either side of her thin-bridged nose, her ruby eyes glinted like drops of blood.
She wore a camou-striped tank top, so soaked with perspiration it adhered to her body like a second layer of epidermis, and a pair of high-cut shorts. A zippered canvas bag and holstered blaster were attached to a web belt cinched around her narrow waist. She wore no shoes, since her feet were thickly callused on the soles. Her small breasts thrust tautly against the damp fabric because of her youth and, at the moment, the tension in her body.
One of the genetic quirks of the nukecaust aftermath was a rise in the albino population, particularly down south in bayou country. Albinos weren't exactly rare anywhere else, but they were hardly commonplace.
The former Pit boss of Cobaltville, Guana Teague, had found Domi particularly unique and smuggled her into the Pits with a forged ID chip. In exchange, she gave him six months of sexual service. When seven months had passed without his releasing her from their agreement, she terminated the contract by cutting his throat.
The shrubbery rustled again and Domi held her breath, trying very hard to look like one of the ferns sprouting all around. She gripped the M-14 rifle she'd chosen from the Cerberus redoubt's extensive armory. The blaster was serviceable, with a matte black finish and fired heavy, 7.62 mm rounds. She kept the weapon below the line of underbrush but above the marshy ground so the bore wouldn't be fouled.
A lean creature, very low to the jungle floor, crept into view. It wasn't large, only two feet long or so. With its rich chocolate-colored fur and short legs, the animal reminded her of a ferret or weasel. The head was shaped differently than such animals she had seen in the Idaho Outlands where she grew up. The snout was pushed back bulldog fashion, and the canine teeth protruded down from its upper jaw like a pair of discolored daggers.
The ferret's head rotated on its neck in a jerky fashion, its nostrils dilating as it sniffed the air. It froze, its black button eyes fixed on her. Domi expected it to dash off in a panic once it caught her unfamiliar scent. To her astonishment, it lowered its head and leaped, extending its jaws wide.
She had no time to draw either her handblaster or the knife sheathed to her calf. Leaning back, she lifted the blaster and buttstroked the ferret out of the air. It landed in the nearby brush, twisted, squeaked in fury and lunged at her again.
In the short span of time between knocking the animal out of the air and its next leap, Domi whipped the serrated, nine-inch-long knife from the sheath at her leg. The only memento of her seven months as Guana Teague's sex slave, it was the same knife with which she had cut the man's triple-chinned throat. The long blade in her hand flickered just a shade more swiftly than the reflexes of the ferret. It sliced the air in a flat arc, then cleanly sheared through fur, muscle and bone. The fanged head jumped from the lean body amid spouting blood.
The animal's decapitated body dropped to the ground, and it thrashed around in a series of twisty convulsions. The head landed between her feet, its jaws still champing. Domi backed away from it, grimacing at the speckles of the creature's blood shining wetly on her legs. She had seen and killed any number of mutie animals in her young life, so encountering a vicious throwback to an earlier form of existence didn't disturb her overmuch.
Standing, Domi swished her knife through the air to clean it of blood, realized that was a mistake, plunged the blade into the ground and sheathed it. She cursed silently at herself, knowing there could be other creatures nearby, far larger than a ferret, that would be attracted by the scent of blood.
For a moment, Domi considered giving up the hunt for the creature Kane had christened Monstrodamus and returning to the Cube. She wasn't enjoying her return to ferality as much as she had hoped she would. She wondered briefly why she was not experiencing the ecstasy of the hunt as she had so many times before. The delicious sense of peril, the feeling her most precious possession—her life—was at stake, didn't excite her as it had in the past.
The prospect of stalking and killing a raptor like dinosaur had sounded uniquely entertaining when Kane first proposed it. Now it seemed like a recklessly foolish way to spend the day, since there were far more dangerous animals on Thunder Isle than vicious prehistoric ferrets. As she recalled what Kane had told her about the huge cave bear that had pursued him during his second visit to the island, she repressed a shudder.
The ferret and just about every bit of flora and fauna on the little island were prehistoric in nature, brought there through science gone awry, not violated Mother Nature run amok. Even knowing that still didn't make the place feel any less ominous.
There was something ominous about all of the Western Isles, and this one, named Thunder Isle by its nearest neighbors, was extremely disturbing. The Western Isles referred to a region in the Cific Ocean of old and new land masses. The tectonic shifts triggered by the nukecaust dropped most of California south of the San Andreas Fault into the sea.
During the intervening two centuries, undersea quakes raised new volcanic islands. Because the soil was scraped up from the seabed, most the islands became fertile very quickly, except for the Blight Belt islands that were originally part of California and were still irradiated.
The volcanic isle upon which New Edo was built was not irradiated. New Edo had been settled by the House of Mashashige, fleeing political unrest in Japan. It turned out to be a richly forested isle, the tip of a larger landmass that had been submerged during the nukecaust. Evidently it had slowly risen from the waters over the past two centuries, and supported a wide variety of animal and vegetable life. The exiles from Nippon claimed it as their own and named it New Edo, after the imperial city of feudal Japan.
