The physician looked Kore straight in the eye - and gave her the bad news.
"Two years," the old man declared. "That's how long before the cellular breakdown results in total cessation of life."
The tall, broad-shouldered, shaggy-haired woman pondered that, for a moment. Then came the reply.
"Two years, huh?" she repeated. "Okay."
"About a month from now, your body will begin to experience outward symptoms," the physician continued. “In nine weeks you will likely be unable to walk. In sixteen you will be unable to see. In twenty you will have become entirely stationary, though your mind will remain largely functional until the very end.”
"Mmh," Kore muttered, pondering again for a moment. Then, she shook her head and declared, quite firmly: "That won't work."
"I'm sorry?"
"I work for a living," the broad-shouldered, shaggy-haired woman replied, displaying a pair of soot-streaked hands as proof of concept. "Contract job, minin' cordite. It's precise stuff – skilled labor, y’know. Not a lot of folks can do it 'thout blowing themselves up. To do that, I need to be able to walk, and to see, and all that stuff. I don’t work, I don’t eat."
"I...don't see your point?" the doctor asked, his brow furrowing. "This is your condition, Miss Kore. It is fact, regardless of whether you approve or-"
"So fix it," Kore ordered flatly. "We got ships that fold space and guns that turn your brain inside-out. Surely there's some kinda-"
"You were hit head-on, unprotected, by the emissions from a Lambda Array," the physician interrupted. "You're lucky to even be alive, much less standing and talking – what were you even doing in the siphoning chamber?"
At that, it was Kore’s brow that now furrowed.
"I went in there because I was ordered to,” she replied. “There was a part that needed fixing."
"Were you aware of the risks?"
"Yep."
"And still you entered the chamber?"
"Look, doc,” Kore snapped, her patience wearing thin. “You know damn well that there's one job for commonfolk on Castillo. One. Job. And I was about to lose it if I didn't do what I was told. That's why, respectfully, I need you to fix me – because if you don't, I'll be starvin’ to death long before my two years are up."
Silence hung between them in that filthy, dim-lit excuse for an infirmary – just a small nook amidst a vast column of icy rock nearly ten thousand feet below the surface. Above, condensation was beginning to gather across the ceiling, and now a single freezing drop splashed down onto Kore's forehead.
"We're talking about damage on a cellular level," the doctor said, finally. "I'm sure that the technology to mend your body does exist - but not here on Castillo, and not for a price that either of us could ever even begin to fathom. I’m sorry, Kore. All I can do is tell you how it’s going to be."
Again, there was a long period of silence. Then, finally, Kore rose to her feet, dusting herself off and giving the man a small, respectful nod.
"Got it," she said simply. "Appreciate it, doc."
The next morning, Kore awoke with a near-blinding headache to a notification on her personal terminal.
NOTICE OF IMMEDIATE TERMINATION – UNKNOWN, KORE
IMPETUS: SEVERE PHYSICAL DISABILITY, IMPENDING DEATH
SIGNED
CASTILLO SANCTIFIED MINING CORP.
HAIL TO THE SEVENTH-VENERATED EMPEROR
HAIL TO THE GREAT DOMAIN
So, Kore got up. Made some coffee. Donned her boots, her coveralls. Then, she stepped outside and, instead of going to work, she set off in the exact opposite direction.
-----
"Got one," he said, and the other turned at once. They were both hunched now over a small, dusty screen that glowed faintly amidst the darkness of their scattered enclosure. Behind, there was – for a moment – a shock of brilliant light through the slats of a boarded-up window. Then, the light passed, and the occupants within were cast into shadow once more.
"Yeah?" the other asked. "Show me."
"Uh..." the first muttered, navigating a gargantuan list of names and nigh-indecipherable symbols with the use of a tracking wheel inlaid on upon that rickety old desk. The machine itself was a rusting thing through which nearly a dozen thick, bundled cables were fed. "Let's see...first name Kore. Last name unregisted."
"A stray," the second nodded. "Off to a good start."
"BMI is good…fantastic, actually," the first continued. "Mental acuity in the medium register. Work experience is... wouldn't you know, precision cordite extraction for seven years. No complaints, no demerits."
"Go on."
"Alright, let's get into the thick of it," the first said, cracking his knuckles. His eyes were flicking over a vast array of symbols, now. "6G...4285...D295. Code 43. Checking for flags...got one. Flagged...TC707."
"That's it!" the other declared, snapping his fingers. "Right there. Who flagged it?"
"Uh..." the first trailed off. "Local physician. Just put it in today, actually."
"No kidding," the second remarked. “Right there in the open? We're lucky we found her first."
"Lucky?" the first demanded, his tone shifting drastically as he rose from his seat. "What are you, stupid? Get Tsen on the line now, damnit. If we don't snatch her up first, someone else-"
"Right, right," the second said quickly, the urgency immediately dawning upon him as he crossed hurriedly to the other side of the room. Waiting there was another terminal – a flat, rectangular hunk of metal with a faded screen and no more than two buttons at his disposal. And it was in a language of dots and dashes that he typed out the following:
URGENT URGENT
ADR. SECTOR 26839273ADF
GOOD ALL VITAL
707 FOUND
REPEAT: 707 FOUND
-----
The bar was completely and utterly deserted. It was just that time of day – too late to catch the miners on their way to work, and too early for their return.
It was odd, Kore thought to herself, seeing the "in-between" of a place like this. What she knew only as a location overflowing with heat and sound and sensation was now as quiet and still as the grave. The irradiated morning sun filtered lazily through a single cloudy skylight, shining down as a singular ray upon an empty space of flooring as though providing a spotlight to some hitherto unseen performer.
Kore wasn't usually the type to be thinking such abstract thoughts. Hers had long been a world of hard pragmatism; there was little time to dwell on anything beyond the constant, brutal struggle for survival.
Then again, she mused to herself – raising a glass of the cheapest liquor available to her lips – she wasn't a miner anymore, was she? She wasn't anything anymore. She was just...Kore.
For the first time in countless years, Kore found herself unsettled.
The liquid that passed between her lips was among the foulest she had ever tasted.
"Heh," the bartender – a wiry man with a pencil-thin mustache and a bulky mechanical eye – chuckled, as Kore couldn’t help but pull a disgusted face. "Sure you wanna drink that piss? You can get a whole lot better for not-a-whole-lot-more money, y'know."
"It's fine," Kore replied - closing her eyes, tilting her head back, and downing the entire glass in a single gulp. She sighed, waited, then opened her eyes once more – feeling the vile concoction burn and sizzle down her throat all the while. Rancid as it was, at least there was something in her belly now, and already she could feel the sensation of unease beginning to dull.
"That paycheck was the last one I’ll ever make," Kore declared, raising the empty glass. "Gotta be stingy with it."
"Laid off?" the bartender asked, taking the glass and setting it aside. "Sorry to hear, friend. Same thing happened to my brother just last week."
"Mmm," Kore nodded, staring directly ahead as she spoke. "Found out this mornin’ I’m out of a job. Found out yesterday that I got about two years left to live.”
"By the void," the bartender muttered, shaking his head. He turned – reached up – and returned moments later with a fresh glass and a short, wide-bottomed green bottle.
"Here," he offered, pouring the glass halfway full and sliding it across the bar. Kore caught it deftly, then cocked her head to the side in silent inquiry. "With the day you’re having? It’s on the house."
Kore hesitated, for a moment - then shrugged and raised the glass to her mouth.
"Appreciate it," she said, taking a sip. If the first drink was boiling acid, this one was smooth, soothing honey. It seemed to heal where the other had hurt, and it went down like absolutely nothing at all.
"Void take us all," the bartender was saying, his gaze downcast. "How are folks like us even supposed to live in this world?"
"One day at a time," Kore offered – keenly aware of the dark irony now present in that old axiom. "One day at a time."
The door swung open behind her.
Boots impacted heavy against that old, rotting floor.
Someone took a seat beside her. Kore didn't turn – but she saw his face in the mirror all the same. He was a weathered man in a dark-brown coat whose face looked not unlike that of old Earth’s hyenas, his hair hanging down to his neck and his face covered in part by a thick, bushy beard. He bore a scar, too, an angry thing than ran diagonal from his forehead to his chin.
And he was watching her, now, with a pair of silver eyes.
"Something I can get you?" the bartender asked, approaching once more.
"Some privacy," the man grunted.
"Sure," the bartender replied, unfazed. "You gonna buy, or just sit there?"
The man's eyes narrowed.
"Gimme whatever's most expensive," he muttered, reaching into his coat and producing a trio of credit chips. "You can drink it yourself, I don't care."
The bartender hesitated - his eyes flicked between the two patrons - and then he shrugged, stepping away with chips in hand.
The two of them sat in silence for some time until, uncharacteristically, it was Kore who spoke first.
"You're famous," she observed flatly.
"Oh?" the man replied, his expression unchanging. "In my line of work, that's just about the last thing you want to hear."
"Jiang Tsen," Kore recited, idly turning the empty glass as she spoke. "You're that bastard who blows people up."
Support the author by searching for the original publication of this novel.
"Well, shit," the man chuckled, shaking his head. "That's an interesting way to frame it."
"There ain't no way of framin' it," Kore replied. "There's just how it is."
"What a simple-minded way of looking at the world," Tsen observed. It wasn’t exactly an insult – but it wasn’t entirely a compliment, either. "Might I offer a rebuttal?"
"You mean a sales pitch?"
"You see right through me," he admitted, spreading his hands. "May I?"
"Only if ya leave me alone once you're done."
"Heraldry is an organization dedicated to one thing and one thing only," Tsen declared at once, holding aloft a single gloved finger. "It is a thing antithetical to men like Emperor Volsif – and to men like our own Duke Jerohd. It is a thing entirely anathema to this suffocating shape that the few have wrenched the many into."
Kore reached into her overall-pocket and withdrew a thin cigarette.
"Freedom," Tsen declared. "That is our only ethos."
Kore produced a small, oblong cylinder, atop which a trio of coils quickly began to glow.
"We started in Castillo," Tsen continued. "But we've got footholds in Themisto and Harpalyke, too. And everywhere the Heraldry can be found, you will find us pursuing the same goals. The freedom to live without fear of the Emperor's boot upon your neck. The freedom to live your life unmolested by a cadre of men and women so vastly distant as to be a complete and utter unknown. The freedom to-"
Kore lit her cigarette, took a drag – then blew a cloud of smoke directly into Tsen's face.
"Since when," she said, her cigarette hanging between her fingers, now, "do terrorist groups do sales pitches? And what the hell makes me so void-damned important that the big boss himself is coming here in person to try and sell me on this-" she waved a hand, "-rebellion bullshit?"
"Active recruitment is something of a difficult task when you've got the Duke's hounds snapping at your heels," Tsen replied, deflecting Kore's pointed accusations with a jovial chuckle. "As such, we tend to focus more on seeking out specific individuals - combing through public records and seeking out the disenfranchised, those just recently fired or laid off and in search of some greater meaning. Some greater justice in an uncaring world. And, well, Kore...you happened to fit the bill."
"Hell I do," Kore scoffed. "I don't give two shits about your idea of justice."
"Is that so?"
"'sides," Kore muttered, glancing down at her empty glass. "I wouldn't be much use as a soldier."
"Nonsense," Tsen countered, drumming his fingers against the surface of the bar. "I'm sure you-"
"I got two years to live," Kore snapped, her head finally turning to face the itinerant revolutionary. There was a hint of a tremor in that stony voice, now. "And without the meds that I'll never be able to afford, I got just a few weeks 'fore I'll be unable to walk. Way I see it, either I lay in my shithole apartment and wait to starve-" she put a finger-gun up against her chin, "-or I go out on my own terms, 'fore my body turns on me. So, yeah - not gonna be much of a soldier, am I?"
Tsen just stared in silence, for a moment. Then, without a word, he rose to his feet, pushing his stool in and gesturing for Kore to rise.
"C'mon outside," he said, simply. "There's something I wanna show you."
For a moment, Kore considered hurling her glass right into that smug, sympathetic, pitying face. But the moment passed, and Kore sighed, rising to her feet now as she fished around in her pocket. Now, the bartender was glancing back with a look of concern as Kore set a wad of bills down upon the countertop.
"Hey, miss..." the bartender trailed off. "That's ten times what you-"
"Keep it," Kore said simply, throwing on her coat. "I appreciate the drink and company both."
"I...thank you," the bartender said, after a moment, scooping the money up into his apron. "You be safe now, miss."
"Same to you," Kore nodded. And then, at Tsen's urging, she stepped past - through the door - and out into the frigid world beyond.
It was snowing on the streets of Callisto - slow, lazy, spiraling flecks of grey that piled silently around the two of them as their exhaled breath turned to faint, misty fog.
"That sky," Tsen said, pointing straight up. "How long've you been looking up at that sky, Kore?"
Kore looked up - and saw now a grey, swirling mass, the horizon dotted with wicked pillars of choking black smog. And now that she was really listening, she heard it, too - the cacophony of roaring engines and clanging machinery and screams and shouts and bellows and laughs and sobs.
"My whole life," she answered simply.
"Then you know," Tsen said quietly, "that it gets darker up there every year."
"Yeah," Kore muttered, distant now.
"You hear those sounds?" Tsen asked, his own eyes never leaving that wretched horizon. "Those are the sounds of a city - of a people - being slowly but surely strangled to death. Those are the sounds that a victim makes as the iron grip of industry closes tighter and tighter around the throat of the population - the death-rattle as we all breathe our last."
Suddenly, and for no discernible reason, Kore's heart was tight in her chest. For the first time in a long, long time, she felt tears forming at the corners of her eyes.
"It ain't fair," was all she managed to choke out.
"Nothing ever is," Tsen agreed. "What's happening to Callisto - what's happening to you. But please, Kore - hear me now."
Slowly, the larger woman's head turned. Her shoulders hung heavy with the weight of her own mortality. And she did not speak - she only listened.
"You say you need some sorta medicine?" Tsen asked. "I have a contact - a wealthy physician, on Ceres - who can get me just about anything the Empire can manufacture. You say that you're not a soldier? You've been doing one of the most dangerous and physically-demanding jobs on this planet for over a decade, and I can tell just from speaking with you that you've never once complained. You say that you don't give a shit about justice?" His eyes locked with hers. "I don't believe that for a second."
Now, he extended a hand. Kore's eyes flicked down - then back up to Tsen's own.
"We'll fix it together, Kore," Tsen declared. "All of it - I swear."
Kore thought then about her life. She thought of her unremarkable birth, of her mother's death and her father's departure - neither of which she was old enough to remember. She thought about the five years she had spent packed with a hundred other children shoulder-to-shoulder in a government ward - a 'waiting room' for future workers. She thought of every morning that she had awoken with a roaring pain in her back, and her feet, and her shoulders, and she thought of every night she had returned to her bed with such weariness that she could do naught but collapse into unconsciousness.
And she realized, for the first time in her life, that not once had she ever dreamed.
Kore made a decision, then. She reached up, took one final drag from her cigarette, let it drop to the pavement below - and shook Tsen's outstretched hand.
"Alright," she said simply, crushing the embers beneath her boot. "Let's get to work."
-----
Ten thousand black monoliths hung motionless in suspended animation.
Deep within the vivid technicolor of the Horsehead Nebula - the birthplace of the stars - these man-made giants loomed in stark contrast to their surroundings, silent and unmoving and yet teeming with countless millions of souls all the same. This was the looming scourge spoken only of in hushed whispers; the interstellar fleet of the Crimson Emir's infamous Sky-Melter legions.
These were the vessels of four generations of men, women, and children who had fought for centuries under the Crimson Emir in campaign after campaign at the edges of Known Space, working tirelessly to expand the borders of the Great Domain through a doctrine of fire and blood. These were the vessels of the countless men and women who had defected to the service of their true master - of those for whom continued service to the Crimson Emir had been all but a certainty, and of those who had deserted their posts under the newly-coronated Emperor and fled to their rightful place amongst the Emir's steadily-growing fleet.
They were the greatest fighting force the Domain had ever known, all under the command of the greatest warleader the Domain had ever seen.
Even amongst these titanic vessels, one in particular loomed large over the rest - the Crimson Emir's personal flagship the Ardenti Manu, a vessel that stretched nearly five miles in length and sported a hull bristling with as many pockmarks and scars as there were weapons protruding from every available nook and cranny. It cast a long, triangular shadow across its fellows, its bridge raised tall and imperious over fifty colossal thrusters opposite a prow bladed not unlike a chipped, well-worn cleaver. It was an angry, violent thing, a shadowy avatar of destruction on a nigh-incomprehensible scale.
On the bridge of the flagship, now, a sullen-eyed, grey-haired man stood with hands clasped behind his back as dozens of men and women rose slowly from their posts, setting aside their headsets and watching now with wide eyes and open ears as the gaunt-faced man began to speak.
"Sky-Melters!" he snapped - his voice thin and commanding all at once. "At attention!"
"Lord-Admiral Typhis!" the crew resounded in unison. "By the Noble Emir, we obey!"
"Indeed, you do," the Admiral replied coldly, his eyes flicking from face to face as he allowed his words the briefest of moments to resonate. "However, on this day your only orders are to hear - to hear, and to understand!"
He turned, now, gesturing with a wiry hand to the steel-plate door looming behind him - a door from which nearly a hundred black-scorched skulls hung in a makeshift net inlaid with all manners of glimmering jewels and misshapen bones.
"I present to you now," the Lord-Admiral shouted, his voice already going hoarse, "the dreaded one! The indomitable - the inevitable! He who wraps himself in death like a shroud, whose every exhalation is that of searing flame and of boiling blood! The pitiless hand! The entropic eye! The true Master of War - and the rightful heir to the Emperor's throne!"
Now, the doors began to slide apart, and as metal ground against metal there came both a harrowing shriek and a shower of glowing, flickering sparks.
"The Crimson Emir!"
Slowly, from the darkness he came - the deck shuddering with every lumbering footstep as the shadows coalesced into the silhouette of a terrible, looming colossus. Then the shadows, too, peeled away, revealing no man but a giant, a towering figure clad in a tattered old Admiral's uniform adorned with dozens - nay, hundreds of medals and trinkets and trophies and weapons and bones and topped by a brilliant-crimson cloak thrown over one shoulder.
"Hail to the Emir!" the crew were chanting now, pounding their fists against their chests in a ritual act of salutation to the vaunted war-maker. And on every other ship in that dreaded fleet all were doing the same, pounding their chests in service to the Emir as they observed the emergence of their leader on any view-screen available.
The Crimson Emir's skull was in many ways reminiscent of a well-weathered boulder, criss-crossed as it was with scars and burns alike, and from beneath a heavy brow two beady silver eyes were peering out - intelligent, calculating eyes, in defiance of the Emir's brutish appearance. These were the eyes of low cunning, of the serpent who waits for many a night before slithering into the nest and devouring the wren's eggs whole.
Slowly, the Emir spread his hands - and slowly, a wolf's grin was growing across his leathery countenance.
"My children!" the Crimson Emir bellowed, his voice so deep as to echo in one's very bones. "Today is a fine day for a war - is it not?"
"War! War! War!" the Sky-Melters thundered in response.
"My children," the Emir repeated, a hand to his chest now as he took a single step forward. "My loyal, beautiful children. You who remained by my side - even as that whelp Emperor Volsif-" he paused, "-Doss, that is, ripped away my rightful birthright! You, who look now to Mercury as I do with hate roaring like a furnace in your hearts!"
"Hate! Hate! Hate!"
"Long have we waited," the Emir continued, "gathering our forces, biding our time, and sitting on our hands while Doss sits upon his stolen throne and dares orchestrate upon my father's Great Domain! Upon my Great Domain!"
"Thief! Thief! Thief!"
"Wise, my children, wise," the warlord nodded. "You have seen through to the true shape of the coward's pallid soul. He is a thief, and a liar, and a craven, and a pathetic little gutter-whelp who plays at nobility only by my father's misguided graces!"
"Thief! Liar! Craven!"
"Doss believes," the Emir boomed, after a moment, "that he holds the universe in the palm of his hand! What a sad, sad jest. Make no mistake, children, my brother is a capable administrator - but his ego and his arrogance deceive him, and now the whelp believes that he can challenge me in my domain! He believes that we would meet upon the battlefield as equals!"
"Hail to the great Emir!" one of the crewmen howled, to which another great cacophony of voices rose up.
"Blessed Mercury!" the Crimson Emir roared, jabbing a finger. "That is where our future lies! And from here to there we shall sear our names across the universe, and baptize its denizens in merciless fire! None shall impede our coming! None shall survive our passing! And when all is said and done, I will mount my brother's worthless head-" the Emir leapt up, punching wildly at the air, "-on the prow of my flagship!"
Now, the cheers were truly deafening as the Emir, grinning, inclined his head to the Lord-Admiral waiting silently beside him.
"All is prepared?" the Emir asked, his voice now a low rumble amidst the deafening cacophony of cheers.
"Every vessel is loaded and ready, Noble Emir," Typhis replied dryly. "We are but weapons without a target."
"No longer," the Emir grinned. "It is as I said. We set course for Mercury - and purge any world we encounter. Our passing shall be marked by fiery obliteration."
"By your will, Noble Emir," Typhis nodded. "I'll give the orders at once."
The Lord-Admiral turned away - only to feel an enormous hand rest upon his shoulder.
"Not yet, Lord-Admiral..." the Emir's voice came from behind him. "Let the men rejoice, for a time. The time just before the start of a war...it's a beautiful, electrifying thing. The tension in the air...the potential energy, crackling within your very bones...let them savor it, Lord-Admiral. Let them savor the celebration before the slaughter."
The Lord-Admiral gave the Crimson Emir a dull-eyed look.
"Very well, Noble Emir," he said simply, as the warlord settled now into a gargantuan throne draped in all manner of exotic furs. "We depart at your word."
Thus, the Lord-Admiral stepped away. And thus the Crimson Emir sat upon his throne, chin resting atop a four-fingered fist, and smiled as millions and millions of voices rang out with the sound of his name again and again.
He closed his eyes, then - saw his brother's face - and his smile grew even deeper. Oh, what a war it would be. Billions would be dead by the conflict's fateful conclusion - and he would make certain of it.