Kaldean Chronicles: Kaldean Sunset (Book I) (13 page)

Not many people understand that life. They'd say it was barbaric, so when he finally did get into the fleet, he told everyone that he was from Stellarus. They'd get that. The boys there were mostly from the cities, taking advantage of a two year commitment that would let them go to the University so they could get a real job. They didn't know what it was like to dig in the mud all day for the food you need to survive while you're stomachs tearing you apart from hunger.

He felt disconnected, and he was, so he focused on his training and built a career. It didn't come easy, but over time he rose through the ranks and eventually took command of the fleet. There was no pandering, no bribes—the Jihadis didn't work like that. They recognized results and he got them.

That's why he chose the mission to visit the palace. He was accompanied by a creature named Rahm, one of the eerie sentients. It lowered itself to a sitting position at the head of the ship, so it could use its legs to control the console.

He didn't trust the creature very much. One of them seemed to have read the Emperor's mind back on Vermillion, so Marco tried to clear his thoughts away and stayed as quiet as possible so the thing didn't speak to him. It remained silent when they took off which led Marco to believe that it was reading him. He decided to ask questions.

“Can you see things from far away, like the fleet in space?”

“No.” Marco Jolted. He nearly jumped out his body in fright every time it spoke to him.

“You can read my mind?”

“I don't mean to bother you. I know you don't like it.”

“Can you feel my emotions?”

“I get little things. It's not a clear picture—small images, maybe a word or two, but nothing substantial. When you're very emotional, I can get a clear picture.”

“How is that possible?” Marco had never seen anything like it.

“There's a gland in my body,” Marco could see the image of a small fleshy sphere throbbing. “It picks up on certain electrical signals and EMF waves.”

“Huh. Strange.”

“To you it's strange. To us your reaction is quite irritating.”

Marco laughed. “You're not all that different, even if you look strange.”

“No hair. So weird,” Marco said in exasperation.

They were distracting themselves. Marco was sitting in a sterile metallic environment, hard edges and bright lights, with nothing but a steel wall between him and a human brain that was somehow supposed to transport him thousands of light years away.

“I feel that too,” the creature was responding directly to his thoughts. He was going to snap. They jumped just as he was about to respond. His life might be over. He was a representative, of what was probably a doomed regime. If the Lorian Sisterhood was responsible for the murder of the Emperor, then they were capable of anything.

He was lucky that the Jihadis had seen fit to give the guards the palace's location before they left, or he wouldn't have gotten an answer.

He shut his eyes and pretended he was huddled in his little corner in his family home. He was going to die. “Is there anything there,” he asked the creature. “Can you sense voices?”

“I sense lingering pain and regret, but it's gone. It's residual energy.”

He opened his eyes, and saw a severed human hand floating less than 20 feet away. Pieces of scorched and burning metal, flew past. The hairs on Marco's arms were standing straight up, bristling with the tension that had filled the cabin, a wave of depression that closed in on him until he couldn't breathe. He was the commander of an Imperial fleet, a man whose life had been spent fighting wars, and he was cowering like he was weak.

He couldn't take it. He wanted to scream and cry. What was he going to do? His breath exploded out and he had to struggle to bring it back in. He had to push, keep it together. He was a soldier. He breathed in, then struggled to keep the pattern going. Once he managed to regain control of himself again he looked at the Larvos who was turned towards him.

“You projected emotion on Vermillion. Can you help me stay calm?”

“No. It's only when we have emotional outbursts.”

He was going to have to do it himself, and didn't that come naturally? Hadn't he pushed himself before? But that was always because he had something higher to strive towards. He had ranks to rise through, people to defend and a crown to honor. Now he had nothing except for his own survival to think about, and that wasn't enough. It could be a motivating factor, but he couldn't draw out that extra effort. Still, he had to pull himself together, breathe, and somehow find a way to make it work.

“Do you sense anyone?”

“There is somebody approaching.”

“Can you feel them?”

“They're not very close, but there is a hint of fear.”

“Let's get them on Comm. Are you comfortable with that?”

“I have no problem defending myself if need be, but be aware we have that instinct and will act upon it.”

“Understood.”

Toni was a young fisher with a small house on the seaside in Paleo. He used to go out every morning and work for hours, catching fish, bringing them in and hauling them out to market. He didn't make much, but he survived. Now he was sitting in his one story apartment with his wife Renee taking care of their children in the other room, wondering what he was going to do.

He didn't tell them what happened. They put Artemis units up all over the beach, little white claws that dug into the water and pulled out fish at all hours of the day. They were destroying the coral, and taking in way too much. It was going to destroy the marine life in the area, but the people got their fish, and he was out of the job.

They were due to get upgrades soon, and the Paleo government was working to get disenfranchised workers in new homes, but they were taking time, and what his wife and children didn't know was that they didn't have anything except for what little food that was left in their preservation system.

If things were different, he'd go out and let his line fly to get them something to eat, but fishing was prohibited. Desperate to supplement the few algae cakes and fish patties they had left, Toni grabbed his thick fur coat, and began to put on his boots.

“No, Toni.”

“I'm just heading out to get a drink. Be back later,” he a quick dive for the door.

“You think I'm fucking stupid.” Renee walked away from the children's door and got his face.

Normally Toni would shut down and keep his mouth shut, but this was desperate, and they had to do something. “I don't know what you're talking about Renee. I just wanna drink.”

“There's Artemis units going up and down the beach. You haven't been there in weeks. We're running out food and you're coming back drunk every afternoon. The only reason I didn't say anything was because you seemed to be behaving yourself.” She shoved her finger in his face, “but I know what you're trying to do, and you're gonna get yourself in the pen, and I am not spending the next taking care of those kids alone.”

“Well what the fuck else are we supposed to do?”

“My parents got an Artemis printer. They can give us something to tide us over until we can get things set.”

“No.” He grabbed open the door and she caught him by the shoulder.

“Please, Toni.” the woman never begged, but she was begging now.

He threw her off and ran out the door into the cold blue night. The wind was whipping in his face as he made his way down the steps, and onto the beach. Lights were moving in the sky, an aircab probably bringing the rich into the city. Things were supposed to change, but they never did. The people still lived the way they always had since the beginning of time. This new economic revolution, no matter how wonderful it sounded, was going to hurt the people that mattered, and he wasn't going to let that happen. He was going to feed his family.

He trudged through the sand, taking the slope slowly, letting his eyes move over the expanse. There was a whisper of white, just beyond recognition, flowing up and down in time with the waves. He walked faster. There was no cover.

A surveillance drone could spot him from space, send pictures to the marshal and he'd get picked up within a few minutes, but it was worth the risk. He was sweating underneath his jacket, but his throat was and his skin was cracking. The cold burned. If he was out there for too long, he'd freeze.

The fishing unit was getting closer. He could see the black storage bin behind it up against the soft blue of the midnight sky. Inside of it, there were enough fish to feed his family for a year. He kept checking the sky, watching the lights. If they strayed from their normal paths to the city, he could just duck down and hide under his coat. He might be able to fade into the landscape, but it wasn't for certain. Some of the newer ones were making use of heat sensors, and if that was the case then the marshals were going to take him in.

Little Toni used to run with him on the beach and pick up shells. He collected them in a little box in his room and used to take them out and talk to them. It was the sweetest thing in the world. He was a lucky kid. He never had any trouble until now. It would break his heart to see that boy sick and dying from hunger. Nobody helped you out here. The people made their own way. They'd been making their own ways since they came to the planet.

It could happen. They might have to dig a hole and put their son in there. His son might watch him die. They couldn't just take all of the resources around the planet, and tell people that they couldn't collect them themselves. If people needed those resources to live, they should be able to gather them.

The fish were right there in that storage bin, and it was just a few yard away now. There were thousands of them, each one carrying a half ton of fish. Toni pulled out a black cylinder, and opened it up to reveal a blue laser emitter, strong enough to cut the bin open. He was going to be fine.

Toni took a deep breath and pulled out a carbon bag from his pocket. It could hold gallons of fish, enough to feed them for more than a week. He turned the laser on and aimed it at the bin, letting it cut through the thick material in a large circular pattern. The sludge poured out, gallon after gallon. There was so much there.

When the torrent stopped. He covered his nose from the smell and reached in to pull out the meat. His hands slipped around, grabbing at tentacles and slimy bodies, greedily throwing everything he could into the bag.

When he was done, he tied it up and turned around to walk away, only to find himself being thrown to the ground by a silver mechanical arm. He was face down in sand, listening to the sound of hydraulics passing, an army of wind and a fire, rushing down the beach. He could hear the scream, terrified women being dragged from their homes just above where he was standing.

It slammed him up and threw him into a black cage, with its hard edges pressing against his bones. He couldn't see anything, aside from the tan sand through the air holes in the front of the cage, but he could hear the wailing. Somewhere not far from where he was, Renee was screaming.

“Renee! Renee! I love you! Are they okay?” His whole body jolted from the shock of an electric current rushing through, slamming him back into the cage walls. Nothing held still. The air was charged and he was moving. They were taking him somewhere. His body shook, the cage shook. The people's screams were being drowned out by shocks, and somewhere in the distance his wife's bloody pleas were lost, drowned out by the sounds of hundreds people begging for their lives. He couldn't find her, and he probably never would again.

Their voices were still there inside him, swirling around his head, whispering in his ears. His son was telling him about the sea spiral he found. His daughter, Drita, was running around in her pink dress with fairy wings on her back. Renee was holding his hand, rubbing her pregnant belly on the beach. He cracked open, completely vulnerable to the creatures that had taken him.

The movement stopped and he felt the cage being set down on the ground. It slammed back, forcing his head forward into the door, throwing blood down his forehead Their faces were still in his head, smiling like they used to. Those times were gone, and they were never going to come back.

These weren't the marshals.

The sound of hydraulics signaled the his cage was moving again, and the small pressure on Toni's head told him he was being lifted, then his was turned downwards, the door opened so that he was thrown down onto the ground into a pile of mud. Machines came, each one a metallic humanoid with no insignia. They stripped his clothes and prodded him with stinging electric shocks through a gate that led to hell.

There were people everywhere packed into the walls, screaming, begging. Each one was covered in mud. The stench was terrible, but the noise, that was worse. Dried throats, desperate to erupt, were blasting the tiny space with frenzied cries, man y of them incoherent.

“My baby! Where's my baby!?” A girl behind him was pounding at the people around her, barely aware of what was going on. They turned and stared at her, then transformed into rabid beasts. They couldn't handle it. With murder in their eyes, they roared and slammed her against the wall with their hands grabbing at her throat until she turned blue and fell down on what little space there was. They killed her.

They weren't men any longer. They were caged and naked, standing in the mud. They were being treated like animals, so they acted like animals. Toni got the sense, using what little mental faculties he could, that whatever was doing this to
them didn't see them as people.

They were cattle.

Progress is a slow beast often spurred by chaotic events so unbearable that they cause us to grow in order to overcome them. Antoni didn't see himself overcoming the sight in front of him. His father was dead and his home was being destroyed.

The surroundings fit the situation. He was standing in the middle of the Jihadi Fleet Command Center, where the remaining forces had gathered. The strategy meeting room was sparse—black simple chairs, silver floor, a square window and a white table, all hard edges and cheap materials. The men didn't need much comfort. They saw death, and they fought wars. They were fighting their whole lives while he was laying in his bed surrounded concubines and fine foods.