The Blue-Spangled Blue (The Path Book 1) Read online

  “Fucking holed,” remarked Pako.

  Chago looked at the locals, searching for Maryam Kino. Braids rimed with grey, she sat on a rug woven with geometical patterns at a place of honor on a raised platform. Beside her was a white-robed woman.

  The giya, leader of this church.

  “Bring me the one up there on the right. Don’t touch the other.”

  Gusano and Lalo hefted the giya to her feet and dragged her to their captain.

  “Where you keep your tubes?”

  “Tubes?” As if she didn’t speak Standard, the bitch.

  “Wapi tubo taru ka, chupeka?” In Baryogo, just in case.

  “Don’t know.”

  “Yall just sucked down thirty. They appear out of fucking nowhere?”

  She shrugged. Typical Neog. Reject reality. Chago unholstered his chrome and popped her roughly across the jaw. Meditation broken, a trickle of blood at the corner of her mouth, the location of the drugs suddenly occurred to her.

  “Back there.” A jerk of her head. No fear apparent in her eyes.

  “Show us.”

  She led Chago and Tripõ to the back of the teyopan. A short hallway of curved ceiling ended in a small, closet-like office. The giya gestured languidly at a box next to the laminate desk.

  “In there. Coded to my thumbprint.”

  “Right. Open it.”

  The giya slowly shook her head.

  “You heard me, bitch? Open it! Open shikasero zo!”

  She simply lowered her head and said nothing. Chago felt a rush of violent anger squeeze his chest like a vice, cutting off his breathing.

  They’re always defiant, he inwardly raged. Never can just bloody cooperate.

  Not trusting his voice for the anger that gripped him, Chago nodded, dialed up projectile: 10 cm on his chrome, and in a sudden movement buried its barrel in her locs, at the base of her skull, slanting upward forty-five degrees, and drove into her brain a bullet that exploded right below the neo-cortex of her frontal lobe. Her dope-smoothed forehead blew violently outward, spattering the wall above the desk with gray matter, blood, bone fragments and clumps of reddish-brown hair. Her body collapsed, its limbs loosened for all eternity, its ruined head smacking resoundingly against the edge of the desk.

  Chago stared at the lifeless form, forcing himself to examine it coldly: a dead piece of meat. His chest slowly loosened.

  “Damn, Chago.” Tripõ stared at the woman's crumpled form, estimating her weight. Then he shrugged, muttered “fuck it” and bent, hefting his trucha and activating its laser blade. With surgical precision he removed her right hand and used it to open the chest. Inside were about 500 thin metallic cylinders containing moku, Neog drug of choice for meditation. Tripõ began scooping them into a bag he’d carried with him.

  “They’s a lot of tubes, Chago. But, uh, why’d you pop her lid like that?”

  Chago roused himself from his trance and growled, “Kill a giya, or any Neog, by blowing out their brains, you ruin their chances of quantum enlightenment. That’s what they believe. No time for the brain to release its energy, some shite like that. Puras pendehaaz. Anyways, that’s what Nestor told me I should do to her.”

  “So, what, now we do the rest?”

  “Look, you dumb-arse, you didn’t hear Nestor? Just the giya and the pilgrims. The native Neogs, they ain’t to be touched. Especially not Maryam Kino. Got it?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Hey, look.”

  Tripõ gestured at the desktop. Chago hadn’t noticed before, but there were several small data pads spread haphazardly across it. He lifted one, wiping blood from it with feigned nonchalance.

  “Bendita Mariya. We got us a bonus, kwate. Dumb-arse giya didn’t upload the pilgrims’ offerings. Couple of thousand credits here, we split ‘em, you and me. Give me your pad.”

  The upload was over in a question of seconds.

  “Konrau ain’t gonna get mad?”

  “Not if he don’t know about it. How’s he gonna find out?”

  “I ain’t saying shite.”

  “Good.”

  They rejoined the others in the main chamber of the teyopan. The Neogs had begun to shake their reverie. A couple of the younger ones were removing their lenses to see what was really happening around them.

  A little late to get interested in reality, motherfuckers.

  Chago nodded to Pako, who started separating the locals from the rest and herding them to one corner of the room.

  Just like we planned.

  Kicking kleinballs out of the way, Gusano prodded the pilgrims to their feet with the barrel of his konk rifle, took a step back, chose one at random, and fired. The directed blast lifted the off-worlder, a lithe, blond youth—Martian from the looks of him—off his feet, throwing him upward and back. Gusano’s second blast sent him spinning like rag doll through the air, and the third ripped his head completely off his shoulders, showering the image of Domina Ditis that hung on the wall with a hail of bluish red.

  “Pura Ermandá,” he muttered, making a circle with the forefinger and thumb of his left hand and pressing the circle to his heart, the remaining three fingers splayed awkwardly downward and to the right. The sign of the Brotherhood.

  Chago suppressed a shudder. A mademan like himself was supposed to feel nothing when chloroforming cattle like these. Years in klikas and on crews was supposed to burn all compassion for squares out of a brother completely. But Chago had never been free of that twinge of pity, though it filled him with a gripping shame he took out on his victims.

  His men, if they felt something similar, didn’t show it. El Chore stepped up to a woman whose mouth had just opened as if to scream. Ramming his lazgat all the way in against her tonsils, he blew the back of her head out. The pilgrims behind her, bathed in ichor, felt click within them the natural impulse of self-preservation, an instinct no amount of meditation or drugs could erase. They turned and began running with blind abandon, but el Chore aimed his gat at one and punched a hole some five centimeters in diameter through his spine and out his abdomen. The Neog twisted as he fell, sizzling intestines flapping unspeakably at his sides. The second was similarly dispatched, sprawling in the dust as darkness slammed a hand forever across his eyes.

  The other pilgrims, though panicked, were easier to take out: mainly head blows, make it look like a crazy Neog civil unrest problem, not allow anyone to reach gnosis. A couple of the sikaritos wanted to have their way with the women, but Chago told them to back off. Nestor’s instructions had been very precise: get the tubes; kill the giya and the pilgrims. No fucking around. He didn’t dare add that the thought of such violations brought Sandra’s face to his mind in the very place he prayed she’d never see him.

  Pako had to knock a couple of the locals around in order to rein in their hysteria at the sight of the slaughter. When one Neog began to scream, the foot soldier, enraged, punched her in the mouth, destroying most of her front teeth. She was quiet after that, as were the others.

  The massacre was over in minutes, and Chago gave the signal to exit. Tripõ destroyed the lockpad of the door once it had closed, trapping the locals inside with the carnage, as the majority of Neog buildings had only one entrance. Chago figured it would probably be close to nightfall before anyone came to the teyopan. With the lousy Civil Security Jitsu’s theocratic government had, no one would ever track his crew.

  Once back in the basement suite of a hotel near the space port, the expansive set of quarters and offices that served the Brotherhood as a base of operations on Jitsu, Chago linked to Nestor via faux-conferencing. The virtual room was entirely black except for the pool of light surrounding the table where Chago and Nestor's doppelgangers sat.

  “You did it?” Nestor's face appeared unreadable as always. Of course, he could have programmed his doppel to look that way for the con, but Chago knew from experience that this was the only expression the boss's adviser ever wore.

  “Everything like you said.”

  “No locals hurt? Santo’s
wife, for example?”

  “Nah, Nestor. I said I did what you told me to. I'm not to be trusted, or what?”

  “Kalmau, ese. We trust you. Good job. Now hang silent a couple weeks. We’ll keep yall updated. Things are starting to move, understand? Be plenty jobs for yall little brothers.”

  “We’re taking Jitsu, no?”

  “Things you don't know can't be taken out of you, got it? Don't worry about the bigger picture. Just do the jobs me and Konrau give you, the way we tell you to do them, and everything will be just fine. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “Now, put those tubes to good use, Chago. Get some panocha, live it up, you and your crew. Things are gonna get real busy for yall real soon. Thumbing off.”

  Chago Martin moved his head out of the path of the thousand dancing beams of light that seconds ago had been triggering his synapses like mad. A smile stretched across his face.

  We're taking this bloody place. I know it.

  The Brotherhood, long the most powerful crime syndicate in all of human space, seemed on the precipice of something even greater. Chago wasn’t the brightest of men, but he felt certain that this spinning nightmare of a planet was only the beginning of a much grander move toward domination of all human space. He imagined for a moment that he’d been chosen for this job because of his talents. He’d obviously caught Beserra’s eye, and now he was being prepped to take charge of this planet’s conquest.

  Afterward, who knew? Perhaps he’d be installed as sub-kasike, under-boss of this hellhole, answering only Konrau himself. For a few moments he gloried in his imaginary promotion.

  Only in the darkest recesses of his mind did an unheeded voice whisper the real reason he had been chosen: his superiors considered him disposable.

  CHAPTER 3

  Santo Koroma slid his finger down the glass, scrolling through the inspired words of Founder Dresch, the first arojin, the Holy Prophet of the Ogdoad. His diligence had long ago burned away all feeling but this: an insatiable hunger for quantum enlightenment. A nail click halted the scroll, and Santo highlighted a section with a leftward sweep. He preferred to manipulate the holy text with his hands, voice commands tending to shatter his focus and detract from meditation.

  Today’s passage was from General Theology:

  The politicians and the intellectual elite believe they have spirited away the keys of gnosis and hidden them; however, they themselves have not entered, nor do they grant entrance to those who desire it. You, however, be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves.

  The last line echoed in Santo’s mind. As always, the voice he heard in his head was his mother’s. He remembered her expounding on this particular verse, urging him to keep in mind the basic tenet of the Path—quantum enlightenment through total self-knowledge—and to avoid the moralistic pratfalls that so many Pathwalkers were prone to. No good, no bad, she reminded him. Only what is and what’s to come. And most important: you. She had instilled in him, before her own blessed translation, the skill to see what others needed in order to attain gnosis and an understanding of his own importance in ensuring the enlightenment and translation of his fellow Pathwalkers.

  This desire to guide the planet along the Path, he insisted to those who questioned him, was the only motivation for his steady climb up the theocratic ladder of Jitsu’s political hierarchy.

  Amo okanjuwa. Not ambition. Never.

  A beep of a distinctive timbre and Santo’s index finger popped the com icon in the right corner of his compad.

  “Jambo.”

  “Arojin Koroma. Muwema michana. Sorry I’m disturbing you.”

  Inho Bek. Secretary to the Archon himself.

  “Not at all,” Santo assured him, letting his eyes mist up a bit. “Just searching the Founder’s words for peace and clarity.”

  “It must be a difficult time for you.”

  “An understatement. Bandits, in my district. Entering Samaneino Teyopan while my wife was leading meditation. Stealing the sacrament, killing the pilgrims. Murdering the giya, one of my former students. You think I'm insensitive to this atrocity?”

  “It is clear you’re not. Apologies if I implied otherwise We know your district security team is investigating. What’s their conclusion? Junkheads?”

  “Perhaps. But they downloaded all pilgrims’ credits not shunted to the bank.”

  “Civil Security is at your disposition, if you need it. They're also investigating similar cases in several districts. Not massacres, just theft and damage. But CS is not prepared for such incidents. No training, no experience. Archon Rawe requires a better solution.”

  “Tell him to stop immigration. Amo Jitsujin.”

  “You’re sure they’re not local? How can you know? Besides, a halt to immigration is out of the question. There’s the task of cleaning up the southern continent and Salty Sea still to be finished, which will take us at least a century, even if we increase immigration five percent every year for the next decade. This world needs more backs and minds.”

  “Make the people produce more babies.”

  “And distract them from gnosis? Arojin, you’re playing with me.”

  Santo sighed inwardly, displaying a neutral face to his compad.

  The price of power is having to make these decisions, he reflected. If I hope to be Archon someday, I must learn to accept that the tangled and meandering path to enlightenment at times seems to move away from its goal before reaching it.

  Long ago he’d decided he would go along with the present Archon’s policies, though he believed the influx of outsiders hindered his peoples’ attainment of gnosis. He despised the constant secularization of education and government, exemplified by the expanded university and the Chamber of Deputies that now supplemented the traditional theocracy.

  But there would be time later to set things aright. For the moment, the complex plan he’d set into motion two years ago would move to the next tier.

  “We should create squads of range officers to guard the settlements. Recruit ex-members of the defunct Jitsu Liberation Army. Hire—hire off-worlders with the necessary skills. Set up outposts along the edge of the Great Desert. Michiyu Sosa is the perfect man to put in charge.”

  Bek’s excitement at the idea was palpable, though the secretary tried to hide it.

  “Just the measures we need. Should I patch you through so you can propose this to the Archon himself?”

  Santo knew that Bek’s approval of the plan meant it would be implemented. Jitsu’s ratowanin, Mutemi Rawe, was weak and senile, his decisions more often than not whispered into his auditory implant by his wily secretary.

  “Sure, Secretary Bek. Let me talk to him. Be enlightened.”

  “You too.”

  Santo leaned back and awaited the face of the old fool he’d soon be replacing.

  Twenty-five minutes later, he clicked off and tossed the compad away in disgust. Old fool, indeed. Rawe had agreed with Santo that increased protection was necessary, that an anti-terrorism, anti-mob unit had to be established. But the idiot insisted that the Chamber of Deputies, full of reformists with six more years left to their seven-year terms, be the ones to decide its composition, duties and jurisdiction. No matter how many times Santo expounded on the Archon's need to exercise his emergency powers and set up the squads on his own, the decrepit liberal refused to budge. Santo had misjudged Inho Bek's influence on the man. Or perhaps this was Bek's doing. Meddling fool!

  Pacing from room to room in his large if spartan apartment, Santo weighed his options. He desperately needed to consult the Oracle, but the situation in Kinguyama was more pressing, a tale awaiting his expert management and spin.

  Returning to his study, he calmed himself with a thimbleful of moku. Then he pulled an illegal bouncecom from a hidden compartment at the base of a statue of the Founder. Connecting it to his main com terminal, he put a call through.

  After a few moments of encrypt/decrypt, a stolid face rose from the flat surface of the terminal.
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br />   With ambivalent blankness, Nestor Bos directed his black holographic eyes at the arojin.

  “Complications?” the mafioso asked, his voice smug.

  “Slight setback, but the timetable stays aligned. Just get ready for movement.”

  “Big or little, partner?”

  Santo wrinkled his nose as if in disgust. As wise as serpents, he reminded himself.

  “Not sure. Be ready for anything. Can you handle that?”

  A sly grin. “You bet, Prefect Koroma. Anything you order up. Just remember: we get ours the time comes.”

  Unable to speak further with the infidel, Santo nodded and clicked off. There were moments when the deal he’d cut with L’ermandá, the Brotherhood, most powerful crime syndicate in the Consortium, twisted in his mind and gut like the poison his instincts told him such agreements always turned out to be. But the Oracle assured him this unholy pact was the only way, and he faithfully obeyed. Still, weakness caused him to offer silent prayer.

  Mother, Domina, Founder: give me strength to do what must be done.

  CHAPTER 4

  Brando was struck by three things as he stepped from the shuttle onto Jitsu’s ochre soil: the disorienting spring in his step due to the world’s lower gravity, the unsettling closeness of the horizon, and the relentless heat of Higante. That local sun glared down at the newcomer in seeming disgust as its partner, the smaller star Kobito, ducked behind the peaks of western mountains.

  The professor adjusted the temperature setting on the condition suit that hugged his skin beneath linen pants and shirt, slipping on a pair of shades to protect his eyes from the brutal UV light.

  For a second, his choice seemed not just rash, but unhinged.

  What a barren, brutal place to live out my life. The hell am I doing?

  The answer was simple. Setting aside his need to get away from his family, the offer had been too tempting to pass up. Jitsu was the only place where a centuries-old dialect of Baryogo was spoken in its original form. How could a linguist resist such an opportunity? Brando had done a careful study of Baryogo’s Lingala elements for his doctoral thesis, warmly received in all the right circles, but his proudest achievement was his mastery of the language in conversation.