Authors: S.T. Burkholder
He was faced in the far distance with a partition and upon the lofty ramparts of which patrolled armed guardsmen and above them, along rails that gleamed dimly throughout the dark of the girdered ceiling, turrets kept watch. There was a further breadth beyond the apex of the wall and within it he knew the inmates of the other tiers and sections of tiers to be emptying. To his right he found the same and the unseen presence of as many prisoners
who teemed around him then. Numbering in all upwards of a thousand in perfact math, but divided and kept hidden by human sensibility into fractions thus made useless to one another.
"Our table is over there."
Anders said and pointed off to the outermost section of bench in the row of tables nearest them.
"Where does that lead?" Sejanus said and pointed to the door upon the left wall and crushed against the far partition, cornered.
"Magrails." He said. "Work detail after meal time. Come on."
"Do these halves meet outside?" He said and followed him through the splintering streams of prisoners to the table.
"Separate corridors all the way to the port. Why?"
"No reason."
"You know, Sejanus," Dibsey said and took him lightly by the arm, as a man might his personal confidant, and Sejanus took his arm away. "There is something to be said of not abusing too good a thing."
"Habit I picked up." He said and stopped before the benches.
"Troopers," Anders said and took his place at the table amidst his fellows and their laughter, their jesting, fell silent to greet him with quiet echoes of 'Sir' and downcast nods.
Sejanus looked them over and they, he. He might have been aboard a carrier again or experiencing a return to some rundown and stripped away simulacrum of the Citadel's hallowed halls, to an extended family that knew no end for all their similarities. But among them he saw the Cog, tattooed here and carved there and each one a mark of his new exile among old comrades. They looked for it upon his face, as he had seen it rounding eyepits and nestling in the bowls of sunken cheeks, and when they could not find it looked in his eyes.
"Who's the fish, Sarge?" Said a man across from Anders and a seat to his left.
"Sejanus." Sejanus said and took an empty seat some spaces down from where his cellmates had sat themselves in the places reserved for them.
"New cellmate." Hulk said.
"Did you tell him what happened to the last cellmate?" Someone said uns
een from down the table and the rest burst into laughter.
"Hastur Victor," Dibsey said and their mirth tapered off into a serpentine quiet beneath the noise
of the other inmates. "Sejanus."
He matched their stares in that silence, so many probes launched to calculate some secret history that could only be confirmed under scrutiny. To scout the far off shores of a savage people men had only heard tales of.
"Welcome, brother." Said the man who had first spoken to Anders, a face of scruff and sallow skin beneath a dark knit cap.
Sejanus nodded to him in kind and the sporadic and conjoined conversations resumed with the tones of a routine mad
e uneasy by the interruption. He set his arms against the tabletop and looked into the dark blankness of the inactive meal screen between them, shoulders hunched and jaw clenched. As though it were existence itself in that place which was abhorrent to him and best got clear of. Looking as one who often looks into suns.
"Sejanus." A voice said to his right, at the end of the table there, and he looked to the older
man who was seated there - a half-blind greybeard that looked at the tabletop out from beneath a tight wrapping of dark cloth and who spoke like the name had been an ejaculatory thought. "I know that name."
He fixed his eyes on the man's, that looked elsewhere, and when he looked up at last he glared still. They remained so as the moments and the casual goings on of the day went by, so commonplace but concealing for the two of them the terrible thing that loomed in Sejanus's mind and in his gaze. Thus the old man shook his head, and he looked away.
"So you're the real deal. Huh?" Said the man sat across from him. "You're really him."
"Who are you?" He said to him.
"Captain Kimbal Deurot. Crypsis 6." The man said and extended a gloved hand, but Sejanus made no move to take it and so he replaced it back to his side of the table. "I thought you'd be bigger."
"Most people do."
"Hey," Deurot said and raised his hands. "You won't get any shit from me. I know better than to play with you Blackblood boys."
"Meal counter activated." He heard beneath him, muffled by the leather of his greatcoat, and then all around him in hundreds of other instances.
The blank screen between his elbows lit up and its touch display invited his perusal. He glanced across the limited array of items and tapped with his thumb the artifact for nondescript meat stew. A prompt manifested. It read that to his name were fifteen CorpBucks and that such was the stipend for all newly arrived inmates. Ten had been deducted for the charge of clothing him and that the meal he had selected cost a further five. It would exhaust his funds; but new funds would be rewarded upon the completion of work detail and at the rate of seven CorpBucks each day. From this one and one half would be deducted in restitution for lodging, though the first day's was gratis in welcome, and that any lost company property was an inmate's responsibility and the inmate was liable with charges pursuant to replacement. The prompt wondered if he accepted these terms and then if he accepted the charge for his selection of meal and finally cautioned that it was the first and last request that would be made of him. He keyed in his acceptance.
"Blackblood boys." Sejanus said and watched as a hatch parted beneath the meal screen that asked him to please wait and a bowl of burnt slop was raised to fill it that at least had the courtesy of being warm.
"This place ain't the same." Deurot said as he chewed on the pakshi noodles that steamed in his own bowl. "Not since the war ended."
"Crypsis isn't military?" Sejanus asked and mashed the meat into the steaming gruel, stirred it up and took a spoonful.
"Listen," He said and slurped another pink string past his lips. "We hate the Outerverse Conciliations as much as any vet. But we're homegrown. Sure we got the implants of a normal life, few illegal ones here and there; but you guys - whew."
"The Black Blood didn't just spring up after the Reclamation."
"No you were there. But you were small back then, mostly discharges and a few deserters - circumstances depending. And you were organized. Most of us at least had numbers on you then, even if we didn't have that kind of tactical brutality you all is famous for. Not now, man. Now you tell me to spit and I'll spit and I'll be happy to do it." Deurot said and stared down at his plate and Sejanus watched the flex of his jaw as he chewed. "You'd never hear me say this when I first got sent here. But it's enough to make a man move on. It paid to be here - you know, 'here'. Not anymore."
Sejanus nodded and focused his mind whole upon his food. He tasted little of it, too hot to spend long on his tongue, and in short order he had inhaled
the thick stew and burnt his mouth for it. He arrayed the bowl and its dented spoon upon the platform again and keyed for it to lower into the autowasher below. He sat with his hands clenched before him again and dwelt upon far off things that reduced the noise that went on around him into a muted field, drawing up of an occasion to his notice at the mention of words like 'knife' or 'beat' or 'kill'. Then the alarm sounded and the voice of Master Control announced that morning consumption was concluded.
He stood and added to the sudden bustle of movement that burst out all across the four isolated corners of the mess. He followed the others to the door he had before inquired about to Anders and which led to the magrail ports. He went across the hall floor unaccompanied and unchallenged. He did not stop until meeting the inmates that had piled in a confused knot round the doorway too small to accomodate them all and looked back to see Anders speaking with the old, blind
man who had known his name, though he knew in a manner different than the others. Their eyes met then, his and his cellmate's, and so Sejanus turned about to force his way through the prisoners and beyond them through the door.
Day 1
They came out onto a broad walkway and below them trafficked the great swell of humanity that had been assigned their place on the floor below them. In the far distance, beyond the mechanized racks and transportation utilities that waited like dormant and hungry beasts, he saw the thick garage doors along the far wall retract into the gulf of the heights of the shipping bay. The rear of an armored hauler backed into the opening and its doors opened to the deputised workmen there, baring its load of supplies. He felt a hand on his shoulder.
"This way, Sejanus." Anders said and lead him away to the right with Hulk close behind, Dibsey at his elbow wearing a mild smile.
He followed and listened to the roar of the winds that echoed up through the garage tunnels beyond the loading bays below, growing the louder with each of the gates that were opened to recieve the new cargo. Some of those he walked with detached from the course and navigated the ladders placed at intervals along the catwalk. He glanced over the railing to find them entering the exo-loaders there below, locked away from the other prisoners behind high fencing. His cellmates went on and to the observation booth ahead on the far wall and to the consoles that were arrayed before it outside on the walk
's continuation.
Above and above the noise of the storm a series of hatches groaned open and as many immense lifts uprose from the factory floor through like aperatures there and upon them were stationed squadrons of guardsmen and amidst them some of those that had departed down the ladders. He watched them until they filled the open expanses overhead and stemmed the stray snow and ice and pale sunlight that filtered down off into nothing. He studied the heavy gear and environmental masks they wore with the cold world shown to him overhead and could not help but to feel he looked upon the penitent bound for some worse circle of the Hells. Then Anders guided him through the doorway of the booth and out of sight.
"Our offices." Dibsey said into his ear and he looked over the hive of people arranged in tiered seating before him, hunched over the monitors that fit poorly with their drab and grimey attire.
"This your job up here?" Sejanus asked and surveyed the hub before him. "Ticking off deliveries?"
"Some of us pilot the loaders down there. The cranes up here." Anders said and nodded out the window at the grueling operation at work there, under the weight of which men sweat and moaned like in some pit of perdition. "A few on maintenence for the autostorage units; you know: for appearences."
"Why isn't it all automated; why just storage?"
"Same reason the traitors and civies are hauling crates with just their hands." Hulk said.
"Seems like a waste of manpower."
"Well it would be, if manpower was the point." Dibsey said and passed behind him toward the other door, touched him on the shoulder as he did so. "Please."
Sejanus glanced to the two others of his cellmates and rejoined him at the threshold. There they navigated out onto the walkway again and made for its terminus against the wall and the stairwell that ran down from it to the warehouse floor. They trooped down the grated steps and came to the gate at its bottom and which Anders opened with the command given him by his bracer. Thus
, as its maglocks whined inert and the door swung open, master and slave met with one another.
The indiscriminate mass of
workers there eyed them with a kind of duality of fear and opportunity, one perhaps intertwined with the other. His cellmates paid them as much mind as touring conquerors do their human spoils and are often thus conquered themselves. Sejanus thought it strange then that what he and others had fought to protect had ended only in suborning its noxious elements back into the fold and to where, as on Cocytus, they could plot in peace its great overthrow. These thoughts troubled him only so far as he was brought into the presently emptied shadows of the scaffold of an autostorage unit and wherein a man waited upon his knees, held in bloodied submission by a group of stout Blackbloods.
"What's this, then?" He said.
"Where we give you this." Anders said and gave him a sharpened bit of metal, wrapped round the base with medical tape to form a handle, and gestured upward vaguely. "No cameras. And where you prove your loyalty."
"Prove my loyalty?" Sejanus said and waved the knife at them. "To you scumfucks?"
"We know your stature." Dibsey said and laid the long fingers of a long hand upon his shoulder as he might drum them upon a table, slow.
"So we'll forgive the scumfucks comment." Hulk said, loud but without animation, and stood cocked to the side and with his eyes fixed unblinking on him.
"And I, my brutish friend." Dibsey went on. "But you must admit that we cannot truly be sure of your allegiance these days, what with how badly the wars ended for you."
"How badly the wars ended for me." Sejanus said.
"Killing a man, a Corist at that, and not an inhuman can shake one in his convictions. Make him break with his faith in Man. The Concilium. So," Dibsey said and waved with his other bony hand at the beaten man who looked to and fro at them in a ponderous kind of madness.
"And who's this asshole?" Sejanus said, but looked down at the man.
"A Unionist." Anders said from behind him and stepped nearer, crossed his arms. "Nobody important."
"And you want me to kill him."
"To prove your loyalty."
"To prove my loyalty." Sejanus said and thought back to the times he had done so and then approached the man sat on his knees before him.
"Wait." The man said through busted lips and teeth and looked up at him with eyes swelled shut and so Sejanus stopped, knife poised in the air. "Let me up. Let me die on my feet, like a man."
"Let him up." He said and the Blackbloods which flanked the man animated, but froze at the noise of Hulk's snort.
"This isn't a man." He said. "It's a dog. Cut him like one. Ear-to-ear on his stomach. Let him die that way, prostrate like he should have lived."
"Did you fight?" Sejanus asked him.
"Did he?" The big Blackblood said and pointed furiously at the Unionist, arm rigid with taut and inked muscle.
"I asked you." He said and took his eyes from the Unionist to level them at Hulk.
"No," He said and let fall his arm, but stood still on his toes and kept his fists clenched at his sides. "No I was here, lot longer than you - neophyte."
"If I'm to kill him," Sejanus said and slipped out of his greatcoat. "Then I kill him my way. Fighting man to fighting man, soldier to soldier. Give him a blade and clear away."
"Pfah," Hulk ejaculated and threw up his arms, turning away. "Should we let him recover in the infirmary first? Gods."
"He's right." Anders said and looked after Hulk, who stood with his hands on his hips and away from the rest shaking his head at this feet. "He wants a knife, so give him a knife."
One of the three men behind the Unionist produced from behind his belt a true dagger, long and sharpened fine and with a cutting edge, and then Sejanus began to wonder. The man held it to each of his eyes and cut the puffed up tissue, drained the fluids, and stood to drop into stance. The Blackbloods stepped away as they were bade and assembled themselves on all
round outside the empty scaffolding. Sejanus brought his shank and wits to bear and stripped to the waist, tied the arms of the jumpsuit tight about his hips.
They began then to circle one another, falling in and out of the shadows that clung to the sparse shafts of light filtering down from above. The Unionist made a
low lunge at him of a sudden through the dark and he shifted his leg away from the blade and stepped back. He saw the glint of metal and watched it as he transferred the knife to the other hand. Sejanus stabbed at him in an overhead thrust as he did so and the Unionist ducked out beneath only narrowly and was grazed still along the shoulder. He pulled the blade away in haste and stabbed again in a straight, powerful forward motion that drove his foeman backward over a divider that ran across the floor. The Unionist stumbled backward and tried to catch his balance again when Sejanus swooped in at him with a quick downward slash and the greed of a quick kill.
The man recovered
in time and caught the strike wrist-to-wrist with an aim of winding round his hand to catch hold of Sejanus's arm and though he indeed gripped it, it did not move. His blade and the man's fist shook as they challenged one another and while they'd hold there the Unionist brought his long dagger up through the black and lances of light like some silvery eel possessed of daemonic speed. But Sejanus was the quicker and slipped his knee in the path of the upraising arm. The blow thus recoiled and the man tried again for the back of the leg that held him at bay and Sejanus pivoted sidelong, losing briefly the contest of his own knife. The Unionist made to take him and at last arrest him at his knifehand; but Sejanus rushed forward then in a mad gambit and of the sort that a man needs to be unexpected.
The
Unioinst toppled backward under the sudden force and Sejanus was upon him. The long knife cut him deep along his ribs in the fall and he could feel the warmth ooze out against the cold sweat that coated his skin. He drove his own shank with both hands at the Unionist's throat and the air was empty now but for the seething of their breaths, taken through the teeth and quick. There was no world for them but theirs. They had gone to that realm that all fighting men are spirited to in such bouts, duels of close blood and honest survival, wherein all else around them is only a shadow of things and the only real true thing is the man they wish to kill.
Sejanus left off suddenly and the Unionist drove his knife toward his belly, but he deflected it uselessly away. The man
spun the knife then in his grip and slashed at him instead and this he blocked with his free hand, twisted his arm about the Unionist's to take it in a hold. He made to stab into the man's armpit, into his heart, but the man was quick and threw out a hand to his wrist and caught it. Thus entwined their arms were useless, and so the Unionist drew his leg round to pass across Sejanus's collar and over his shoulder and forced him downard to reverse their positions.
The Unionist pitched himself forward in a fit of movment and in a way few of the onlookers could see for its speed had pinned Sejanus's arms beneath his knees. He slashed with a wild, hurried strike at the end of this maneuver and before he had settled, all of him moving with the subtle panic of a man on the verge of what seemed the sole opportunity over a fantastic foe. The blade drew across his eye and Sejanus's world filled with red. So blinded, he switched the sit of his shank so that its point hung downward and drove it with his limited range of movement into the thigh of his enemy again and again. He cried out for the fleshwounds and leapt up to slam his knee farther d
own onto his arm and immobilize it totally; but the man had put himself in a strange unbalanced position and so, the weight off of his body, Sejanus put his knee into the small of the Unionist's back and launched him forward into the scaffolding of the autostorage. His skull cracked audibly against the metal in a wet, muted crunch and with his hand freed Sejanus commenced to stab him in the sides and between shoulders until he no longer moved atop him except with the force of the blows. He moved the dead man away to fall beside him and got to his feet.
"Well done." Anders said.
"Well done?" Sejanus said, breathing heavily, and stemmed the flow of blood with the back of his hand to know if he could still see out of his left eye and could.
"Kendal Preete." He said and nodded at the corpse. "Unionist second in Tower Nine. Put enough of us in the infirmary I didn't think we'd ever get rid of him."
"You knew I'd fight him."
"It
had cost too much to get him for revenge." Dibsey said and glided up to him, presented a cloth from his workman's vest and Sejanus took it. "Guards. Constantly watched him. The Unionists, they pay more than us sometimes. But today was no commonplace matter. Hastur Victor Sejanus arrived and we had to be sure of him."
"How's the eye?" Anders said.
"No worse than my side." Sejanus said and took his hand away from the deep cut. "I need a MedSlab."
"It's prepped." He said and stepped aside to let him out of the autostorage's underbelly. "Guards will be waiting to escort you.