Alien Honor (A Fenris Novel) (2 page)

The shock was too great. Klane almost stood up to let the wind take him. Instead, he craned his neck and peered up into the sky.

His thoughts took time coalescing. He had come from up there. His eyes narrowed. The seeker had just told him another riddle. He hated riddles and he hated being different. Most of all, he hated how the bigger, older boys picked on him day and night. It was time to return to camp, to fashion a junction-stone and teach the others the price of mocking one who came from the sky.

PART I:
PREPARATION

1

24 OCTOBER 2452 A.D.

In another time and place, Cyrus Gant might have been a gawky teenager, all elbows and knees and ill-coordinated, skinny limbs. Here, he was gaunt like a starved rat, with the cunning of a junkyard dog. He’d need that cunning to escape the Dust hunters.

Here was Level 40 Milan, Italia Sector, end-of-the-line for everyone living a kilometer underground. At the bottom of Milan, tons of algae-slime ran through the vast processing plants. Every hour of every year, the slime pits seeped noxious fumes that could drop a trank freak.

Several mega-blocks away was the deep-core mine that supplied the city’s power. The main shaft ran down to the Earth’s mantle, and usually the magnetic shields held. When they didn’t, they bled excess heat. Bottom Milan temperatures could soar into the one-hundred and twenties and even thirties. During one disaster seventeen years ago, everyone in Levels 40 and 39 died. Taken all together—the fumes, heat, and squalor—many said Level 40 was an Earthly version of Dante’s Hell.

Anyone with the credits or connections moved up. Cyrus was one of the unlucky 40ers—a lifer as they said—although he was a survivor. He’d been on his own ever since he escaped the orphanage.

As he slunk past massive, gurgling pipes, casting a wary eye to the right and left, his right hand dropped to his belt. It was a piece of rope with a knot. It kept the castoff pants tight against his sunken waist. Thrust through the belt
was the object of his grope and his prized possession: a working vibrio-knife. He wore paper-thin boots and a shirt two sizes too large for his scrawny frame.

He ducked under a tube, careful to keep his head or back from touching it. Heat radiated from the rusty thing.

The upper ceiling lights flickered. Cyrus looked up fifty meters. High up there in the ceiling shined sunlamps. One of them had just blown, and the giant lamp went dark.

Too many sunlamps in Level 40 were the same way, giving the bottom a twilight quality.

Sucking in his lips, Cyrus scanned the terrain one more time. He felt something wrong, an oppression of his spirit, an evil thing. The terrain was a vast maze of tubes and pipes crisscrossing for kilometers in a bewildering array. Some of the pipes were scalding hot. Others had icicles on the bottom. This was part of Algae Plant Twelve. The mutated sludge gurgling through the tubes was a particularly vigorous form of slime that helped to feed Earth’s billions.

Cyrus had chosen the place for a reason. He carried ten grams of pure Dust, the prized and most expensive illegal drug in the solar system. He belonged to the Latin Kings, one of the hundreds of mules or carriers used to transport Dust and other black market goods. His goal was to become a foot soldier, a gunman next, and finally a chief in one of the sub-gangs. He would protect himself from the evils of life by being the toughest, smartest, and highest-ranked person around.

Right now, he needed to get his ten grams of Dust to the other side of Level 40 near Number Seven Lift. The guards there had been bribed to look the other way. His contact waited there.

The constant gurgling sludge as it pulsed through the pipes, the heat, and the ill odors should have disguised the approach of the three hunters. They should have, but Cyrus kept scowling in frustration.

He had the gaunt features of the eternally hungry and a sharp nose. His eyes, there was something strange about them. They were deep-set, blue like ink and wise about the street. His gut told him trouble came. He trusted the feeling, hesitating to make his move through an open area.

He kept turning his head, rubbernecking as he looked around. A BAD THING was out there. He hadn’t felt something like this since the time in the orphanage when the sex fiends had exchanged credits with the housemaster.
He’d always had a knack for keeping his ears open. Trust no one but yourself. It was the earliest law of life he’d learned on the street. Cyrus had fled from the orphanage that night before the predators could take him down to the basement and abuse him. Since then, he’d looked out for himself. He’d joined the Latin Kings because the street had taught him you needed allies to beat the nastiest evils.

Out here in the pipes, his fingers curled around the hilt of his vibrio-knife. Why did he feel—?

Cyrus saw a hunter. It was the man’s feral movement more than the red jacket that gave him away. The thick-necked thug ducked under a tube, straightened, and turned around. A big sword image on the back of the jacket marked him as a Red Blade. They were another gang, the blood-foes to the Latin Kings.

Cyrus’s heart began to pound. The man held a gun, a slugthrower, a big one. Cyrus didn’t wonder what the Red Blade was doing here. It was obvious. The thug hunted him because the man wanted Dust. Who didn’t want ten pure grams? The Red Blade wouldn’t just rob him either. The man would kill him.

Instead of sobbing at the unfairness of life, instead of making a face or shaking in fright, young Cyrus’s eyes narrowed. The man must have twice his weight and age and the hunter gripped a gun.

A junkyard dog in this situation would have bolted for a better place. The eyes gave Cyrus away: that he was more than just another slum-dweller, a punk with a knife and an errand. He was a dinosaur, a small one to be sure, but a throwback to a different era when humanity lived in caves, battling giant bears for the right of its home. To run blindly now would be to die.

Cyrus had no intention of dying.

The Red Blade out there acted as if there were others with him. Cyrus hadn’t moved a muscle since spying the man. Slowly, Cyrus swiveled his head, scanning the area once again. Ah, yes indeed. He spied another… and a third hunter, too. He’d expected that. Red Blades liked to work in triads.

By studying their positions, Cyrus realized they had him blocked. They must have studied his habits or they had pinpointed the route through the pipes.

I’ll have to use the ducts now. I’ll have to go into the dark
. That was dangerous. Sometimes they flushed waste through the ducts. If you were caught in them during that time, you drowned in boiling sludge.

He turned away slowly and began easing in that direction. He didn’t notice
the drip in the pipe over him. It must have hissed, because steam blew out of the crack. But he’d never have heard it with all the gurgling around him. Black slime dripped a slow drop at a time out of the crack and into a shadowed area.

Cyrus’s boot stepped into the middle of the hot slime. He slipped and went down hard as his foot shot out from under him.

A second later, a spark and loud
ping
told him one of the hunters had just fired at him. A second shot opened another crack. Hot gushing slime blew out of the pipe and steam billowed into the air.

Cyrus used the distraction, getting up and sprinting away.

Once more, shots rang out. More pings and sparks told him the billowing steam helped cover him.

“There!” one of the Red Blades shouted. “He’s running for the ducts!”

Cyrus didn’t turn around to look. He knew one of them would be pointing at him. They wanted the Dust. It was worth hard credits.

He sprinted, leaped a low tube and took a sharp turn left. The leftmost thug skidded to a halt, lifted his arm, and took a deliberate bead on him.

Cyrus concentrated, although he was only half aware of what he did. He ran, and sweat slicked his forehead. The sweat didn’t come from the running, but from using his power. If he really concentrated and poured mental energy, he could move tiny things with his mind, or block small things like a firing pin in a slugthrower.

The thug aimed and the hunter must have pulled the trigger, but noting happened. The gunpowder didn’t explode. The Red Blade raised the gun in what appeared to be frustration and pulled the trigger a second time. Cyrus no longer used his power and the firing pin clicked normally against the bullet. A shot rang out, and the slug ricocheted off a pipe ten meters above the man. Steam hissed from the new crack, and if the thug hadn’t dropped in time, the hot steam would have melted his face.

Cyrus would have laughed at the hunter’s panicked shout, but a throbbing pain in his forehead prevented that. Using his power had a cost. Cyrus’s eyesight blurred because of what he’d done, and he almost crashed into a pipe. Just in time, he ducked, rolled, and slithered into an opening, falling several meters before hitting metal. Despite his readiness for the drop, it knocked the wind out of him.

In the gloom, his mouth opened and he tried to suck air. Finally, his lungs unlocked and he crawled into deeper darkness.

Half a minute later, the hunters converged on the opening. Cyrus heard them, and he froze lest a noise give him away.

“You had a clean shot at him,” one of the hunters said. He sounded like the leader. “What happened?”

“My gun wouldn’t fire.”

“That’s why you shot at a pipe?” the leader asked.

“My gun worked then. There’s something weird about this kid.”

“Yeah, I’ve heard that. He has our Dust. Go on, get him.”

“Why do I have to go down?”

“You had a clean shot and you missed. That’s why.”

“I already told you my gun wouldn’t fire.”

“Well it better fire this next time, or I’ll practice with mine on you.”

“Okay, okay. Give me the light and the locator.”

Cyrus had heard about locators. This was bad.

A sudden change in the gloom—and a thud—told him the hunter had dropped into the duct.

“We’ll wait up here and give you a hand out,” the leader said. “And don’t think about running off with the Dust.”

Cyrus’s head hurt worse than ever. He hated the backlash of his talent. Now one of them had followed him down here.

“It’s a tight fit!” the whiny hunter shouted up.

“Shut up and get on with it,” the leader said. “The kid is probably running while you yammer.”

“No. I have him on the locator. He’s near.”

“Then get him!”

Cyrus backed away, moving by feel.

“Why don’t you surrender, kid?” the hunter called, his voice echoing strangely in the ducts. “All I want is the Dust. Give it to me and you can walk away.”

In the darkness, Cyrus grinned like a wolf. The hunter lied. But something in the thug’s voice told Cyrus the man didn’t like it down here.

Despite the headache, Cyrus knew he needed to use his talent one more time. It would get very bad afterward, puking bad. Sometimes, though, one had to pay the cost if he wished to live.

The cat and mouse game lasted eight minutes. These were mazy, twisty ducts. The two hunters outside shouted down from time to time, offering advice.

Finally, Cyrus backed into a side duct that squeezed his shoulders together. He kept his hands in front of him while gripping the silent vibrio-knife. He waited as the hunter crawled near.

“I know you’re close, kid. I can see it on my locator.”

Sweat appeared on Cyrus’s forehead, and he sucked in his breath as he used his power. The man’s flashlight went out.

Cyrus heard the hunter swear in frustration. He moved then as the thug clicked his flashlight on and off. At the last moment, something must have alerted the hunter.

“You little punk,” the hunter snarled. A boom went off, a flash of flame, and a bullet seared lengthwise down Cyrus’s back—his back was parallel with the bottom of the duct. The bullet opened a furrow from his shoulder to his buttocks. That burned, and it caused Cyrus to lose concentration on his power. The flashlight resumed pouring out light, and the thug happened to be aiming it at his eyes. It blinded the hunter, the Red Blade.

With a flick of his thumb, Cyrus clicked on the vibrio-knife. Its whine of noise was unmistakable.

“No!” the hunter howled, trying to bring up his arms in front of his face.

With terrifying ease, the knife cut through flesh and bone. Blood poured and the hunter died, slumping onto the metal floor.

In the far distance, the other two hunters shouted, asking what happened.

With a tug, Cyrus removed his knife from the man’s face. He shut off the vibrating blade. His hand was rock steady. His features were hard but calm. He didn’t like to kill, but if he had too, he did it.

He wiped the blood on the man’s jacket. Red Blade, red blood—it was a Latin King joke. Then he pilfered his enemy, taking the gun, the locator, and the flashlight. He also found twenty-seven credits in the man’s pockets.

Before the others decided to come down into the darkness with their slain comrade, Cyrus headed away toward a different opening. He could hardly see. His eyes burned and his forehead felt as if someone had driven a nail through it. He was still alive, thanks to his talent, and once more, he’d survived his competitors.

He had everything under control.

2

TWO YEARS LATER

Special Second Class Jasper of Psi Force didn’t look like the best telepath on Earth. He was short, bald, and overweight. He wore a shiny, shimmering suit and sat between two large NKV agents dressed in their black uniforms.

The NKV were Premier Lang’s dreaded enforcers, his secret police. Marten Kluge—the first premier of Sol and controller of the Sunbeam over one hundred years ago—had wanted democracy implemented throughout the solar system. For a time—after several bitter wars—democracy had reigned. Eventually, Kluge died and the second controller of the Sunbeam became premier. He talked about democracy and practiced politics the way Caesar Augustus of ancient Rome would have understood. By the third premier, dictatorial rule had become the norm. Premier Lang was the fifth controller of the Sunbeam and ruled Sol from his seat of power.

Rebellions and spontaneous riots bubbled into existence from Mercury to Neptune. The one good thing was that the ravages of the Cyborg War, particularly the genocidal tactics of the machine-man melds, had finally been repaired. The solar system had become crowded again. People had forgotten about the horrors of war as the young and hotheaded talked about the need for militant solutions as practiced by the legendary Marten Kluge.