Atl-Verazlan Compound, Veraz
Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge
4453.2.24 Interstellar
Janus grunted and strained as he and Mick dragged Koni up the stairs between them, her arms around their shoulders. The Verazlan wasn’t in any danger, probably, but she was out cold, and Janus didn’t know what was going on in the city or how big of an attack was coming.
“How much trouble do you think we’re in?” Janus asked.
“A lot,” Mick said. “Even with the jamming, we should be hearing some kind of—”
A loud siren rang out from several loudspeakers across the compound.
“—alarm. That’s good.”
“Why is that good?” Janus asked.
“Because it means that Koni’s mother isn’t the one after us, probably,” Mick said.
They reached the second floor with the open balconies on both ends, and Mick shifted his grip to drag Koni by the armpits on his own. “Stay low, boss.”
Janus nodded, and they made it to the next set of stairs. Janus moved in a half crouch, and Fury slinked after them, her neck frills extended.
Janus had a theory about those. He hadn’t taken the time to examine them properly, but he suspected that Fury was actually an amphibian and that she was externalizing the gills as a way of gathering more oxygen to produce a hotter flame or the jet-engine-like roar.
“Janus!” Mick hissed from the open doorway.
Void, Janus thought, hurrying across the last few meters to safety.
Lira and Ryler met them on the third floor landing.
Lira looked bleary-eyed, but she had an assault rifle tucked into her shoulder.
“I’ve got our gear,” Ryler said, two big black duffel bags in his hands.
“Great,” Mick said. “Lira, can you get Princess here into the storage room?”
“Can’t you sober her up?” she asked Janus.
Janus shook his head. “Those drinks she downed had at least three different natural venoms in them. I don’t have a sample, and I’m afraid of negative interactions.”
“Fantastic,” Lira said, slinging her rifle and taking Koni from Mick.
“What’s the plan?” Janus asked Mick as he dug his helmet and chem pistol out of the duffel.
“Keeping it simple,” Mick said. “They’re either coming up these stairs, climbing through the windows, or blowing a hole through the roof. Assassins might try the windows. Soldiers will come through the roof.”
“Let’s hope they come up the stairs, then,” Janus said dryly. “It’s a shame the second floor is open; I could have used gas grenades.”
“Do it anyway,” Mick said. “Rig them to blow at the top of the stairs; that way, it will flow down.”
“Right,” Janus said with a wry grin. “You’ve got it, boss.”
The first gunshots of the night rang out, hard to hear over the compound alarm, and Janus was glad to have Mick there to take charge of the situation.
Janus rigged a gas grenade with a tripwire on the second to last step.
Mick tapped his shoulder and handed him a syringe. “Here.”
Janus groaned. It was ALDH, an enzyme of the liver that would break down the alcohol in his blood. It would also leave his metabolism all over the place for days.
“Better than dead,” Mick said.
“Better than dead,” Janus said, and he stuck the needle into his thigh.
Janus grabbed two more emergency breathing tubes from the bags and tossed one to Mick. “Let’s go.”
There was yelling from the courtyard, and the gunfire was much louder.
They met Lira coming out of the storage room, and Janus tossed her a breathing tube.
“Gas?” she asked.
“Yes,” Janus said. “It should slow them down.”
“Be nice if it did more than that,” Lira grumbled. Mick offered her a syringe, but she waved it away. “I didn’t drink.”
“I can’t use the heavy stuff with Fury around and Koni passed out,” Janus said.
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A door below them was kicked open.
“Here we go,” Mick said, pushing Janus into one of the side rooms.
Janus did what Mick had taught them. He found a spot in the room that was out of the fatal area in front of the door, ducking down by the arm of a couch. He pulled Fury around so he was between her and the entrance, loaded his chem-pistol with neuro-toxin capsules, and waited.
Janus’s mouth was dry, and he tried to swallow. Mick had warned them about this, about the wait. It was the knowledge that armed assailants would be coming through that door, and it was only a matter of time. The only thing protecting him was that he wasn’t where they’d expect him to be. His heart rate increased, and his suit pushed cooling fluid from the back-mounted ECS.
Would it be amateurs or soldiers? They were coming up the stairs…
The gas grenade went off with a loud and sudden hiss, and there was cursing from the landing. Janus heard the sound of Mick opening up with his assault rifle in quick, two-shot volleys, and he pointed his chem-pistol at the doorway.
Two intruders climbed in through the window. Janus saw the motion out of the corner of his visor, and he turned too late. The assassins’ weapons were already swinging his way, and then fire and an ungodly sound filled the room as Fury roared.
Janus dove forward and to the side, firing his chem pistol wildly. One assassin collapsed; the other screamed as Fury latched onto his leg and let loose.
“Janus!” Mick said, sweeping into the room and putting three quick shots into the writhing assassin. He grabbed Janus by the back of his suit and hauled him up. “Are you okay?”
“Fine,” Janus said, feeling nauseous about what almost happened—what would have happened if Fury hadn’t been there. “Is that it?”
“I don’t know,” Mick said. “Let’s drag those bodies into the hallway and get ready in case there are more of them.”
***
Temple of Tlaloc, City of Veraz
Krandermore, Survivor’s Refuge
4453.2.24 Interstellar
Citlalmina leaned against the altar in the Temple of Tlaloc as she waited for news. The jamming worked both ways and, once the action groups entered the compound, they were subject to Atl-Verazlan’s own counter-jamming and the general chaos that had broken out in the city. She would hear nothing from them until it was over, but neither would anyone else. Citlalmina had other teams spread throughout the city, spreading disinformation to make it seem like more than one noble house was under attack or that Atl-Verazlan was at war with itself.
Each of the high noble families locked their own compounds down, preparing for their own attacks to come, while the city’s rangers made frantic calls to their families to understand if they were supposed to help defend them or expected to join in the attack.
In spite of all this—Citlalmina’s preparations, the numbers the Tlali-Acamatl action groups could mobilize, and the city’s inability to form a coherent response to an attack from within—the Atl-Verazlan were a formidable foe. Their compound was a lost-tech fortress; many family members and retainers had served in the Verazlan Rangers, and they had an armory to match their militant traditions. It was all on the spin of a dice, surprise, and audacity against tradition and training.
Citlalmina prayed with her hands on the ancient sealed stone. She recited litanies of cold Fury and vengeance as she pictured her darling boy on the slab.
But Citlalmina had been born to bitterness, and while she could ignore the worried nattering of the family elders, the gunfire outside, and the attempts to pull her free from her stance, she could not ignore the boom of her rival’s voice as it echoed among the pillars.
“Citlalmina Tlali-Acamatl!” Tialli Atl-Verazlan yelled. “Turn and face punishment!”
Citlalmina hung her head. An icy dread had seeped into her bones—more of it the longer she waited. Now she knew. She turned and straightened, shoulders back and hands clasped in front of her abdomen, as if she were a priest and Tialli and her two dozen rangers were supplicants instead of executioners. She began to speak, but then she froze as she saw the one man she had never expected to see: her estranged husband, Yolotli Atl-Verazlan, his eyes full of pity.
“Thirty years!” Tialli said, looking neither angry nor outraged as Citlalmina would have hoped. “For thirty years, I have wanted to destroy your wretched family, Tlali-Acamatl, and you have finally done what I always knew you would!”
Citlalmina felt hollow inside as Tialli’s rangers forced the remaining leaders of her family to their knees. It was everything she could do not to hunch over and sob. She couldn’t have been more different from Tialli Atl-Verazlan, who carried an assault rifle easily, triumphantly, with the hunger of a much younger woman in her eyes.
Tialli laughed, standing in the Tlali-Acamatl’s favored temple. “Thirty years since the fear of your family’s name made my father serve my brother up in sacrifice while the other noble families trembled in their beds! Rather than strike at you, as we have done today!”
“I’m sorry, Citlal,” Yolotli said.
Citlalmina had known, deep down, that she’d lost when the action groups hadn’t reported in. It was only now, though, hearing her husband’s wretched and unwanted compassion, that she realized tonight had not been a daring but unsuccessful gambit on her part to seize what she’d always thought should be hers.
She’d led her family into a trap.
She looked at Yolotli and asked in a trembling voice, “All this time?”
Yolotli smiled sadly, that same sad, pathetic smile he’d always given her when she’d lashed out against those who’d wronged her. “I did love you, Citlal.”
Citlalmina sagged back against the altar.
The Atl-Verazlan rangers moved along the sides of the temple like wolves made of shadow, eager for the kill.
“There,” Tialli said, looking down at her. “That’s what I came to see.” She raised her assault rifle and prepared to fire.
“I demand judgment!” Citlalmina shouted. “I call for the judgment of Veraz!”
Tialli smirked. “None of you are leaving this temple alive. Your family is broken. The only judgment you will receive is mine.” She put her finger on the trigger.
“No,” Yolotli said, pushing the muzzle down.
“What are you doing, brother?” Tialli said, shrugging him off. “Don’t tell me you still have feelings for this peasant.”
“I don’t,” Yolotli said, “but she called for the judgment of Veraz, and as one of the involved parties, you may not act as judge here.”
Tialli glared murder at her brother, and for a wonder, weak and affable Yolotli stared back at her with unflinching resolve.
“Tonight’s action was sanctioned by the entire council of Veraz, brother,” Tialli Atl-Verazlan said. “Who do you suggest should preside over such a court?”
“The only member of the family who wasn’t aware of your plans, sister. Your daughter.”
Tialli laughed. “Fine. Let Koni sentence them.”
Citlalmina’s heart fell. For a moment—just a fleeting heartbeat—she’d thought that Yolotli was showing her mercy, though she knew she didn’t deserve that from him. She felt crushed by the extent of her foes enmity. Thirty years! The nobles of Veraz had been afraid of her. She’d thought she was a mere dockworker’s daughter, and they had seen her as a predator in their midst. Her marriage to Yolotli had been a snare—the taboo against feuds within families was one of the few laws that brooked no quarter, one that even Tlali-Acamatl’s support from the lower classes couldn’t overcome, and she’d thought the Atl-Verazlan’s, too, had been afraid.
But they had been waiting, waiting to destroy them all with the city’s oldest laws at their backs.
And now, her dear, weak husband had delivered them to the Atl-Verazlan’s harshest judge, Koni Atl-Verazlan, the woman responsible for Copecki’s death.