For the previous installment of this story, click here. 

Or, visit the Cleansed By Fire portal page for comprehensive links to previous chapter installments and additional backstory and information about the novel.

Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 6, Nexus

“Doman Coxe, we should be leaving now,” said Manguang, the tall, thin man who had  been keeping Daniel company since yesterday. “We’ll be going well into the native and business passages, so the temperature won’t be quite as cozy. Grab yourself a daycloak from the wall over there.”

As Daniel reached for the closest one, Manguang stepped over quickly and politely guided Daniel’s hand to the next row over. “These are the daycloaks. I know, for an offworlder, they probably all look alike, but it’s a bit of a social faux pas to wear a nightcloak during the day cycle.”

They stepped out into a main passage, and Daniel was once again struck by how large the tunnels under Mars were. And how well-lit. It still set his teeth a bit on edge to know he was far underground and likely to spend a good chunk of the next several years there—and the smooth stone walls were a constant reminder—but it wasn’t the claustrophobic environment he had always suspected Mars to be. According to Manguang, the illumination system was about as close to sunlight as one could get, right down to just the right level of UV exposure that the body needed—at least during the daytime. Even underground, Mars operated on a diurnal cycle, and it had been both comforting and unexpected to Daniel yesterday as the day drifted closer to evening and lights in the passageways gradually dimmed, until they settled on what was essentially twilight illumination on Earth.

After about 10 minutes, as they drifted farther away from the transport hub and the tourist-heavy areas, Daniel could feel the shift in temperature, and was glad for the daycloak. It wasn’t unbearably cold, but the air had a distinct nip now. Even with abundant fusion plants in the lower tiers, there was apparently only so much energy a government was going to expend heating an entire world.

A few twists and turns later, Daniel and Manguang were in a smaller but still roomy passage that clearly led to more utilitarian areas. Someone appeared from a side passage and quickly brushed past Daniel. Someone thinner even than Manguang and exceedingly pale. The skin wasn’t a stark white, but maybe they aren’t really that pale. It’s been at least 10 years since I’ve seen one, and only then from a distance.

Daniel touched Manguang on the shoulder. “Was that an Ishmaeli?”

“Hmmmm? Where?” Manguang looked around and laughed. “No, not a neo sapien there. A Wight. Fully human. They descend from some of the early settlers who considered it a point of pride never to stop living in the older tunnels and warrens. They keep to themselves and only flit in and out of the common areas quickly on business. ”

“Striking appearance.”

“Intimidating, you mean? They consider it a point of dishonor to drink in too much UV or have excessive muscle mass. Aside from the pallor and gauntness, the only thing that really sets them aside is a nasty set of claws—a bit of nano-assisted bio alteration that’s part of their adulthood rites.”

“I’ll make it a point not to stare then,” Daniel said. “I’m fond of keeping all my facial features attached to my head.”

“Meh,” Manguang huffed. “The ghoulish appearance does a great job of keeping tourists from probing around their sectors much, which is just how they like it, but the Wights are actually the most peaceful population in the planet. Don’t worry. You’ll get the measure of Mars soon enough, Doman Coxe.”

“Please, just Daniel. Being an attorney automatically grants me a prodigious ego, but I don’t even like mister or sir, much less doman, unless I’m getting it from a waiter or concierge. I prefer people to bow to my infectious charm or my searing argumentative stylings, not a title.”

Manguang merely nodded assent and led Daniel through increasingly less decorated and more secure passages and portals. Finally, they reached a maglev car—to the immense relief of Daniel’s feet—and a uniformed MarsGov official checked their credentials before they boarded it.

“When we get off the magline, we’ll be in fully UFC areas but don’t worry, we keep the incense to a minimum and you’ll only be required to flagellate yourself once a day,” Manguang said with a wink. “Seriously, the only difference you’re going to notice is that the security personnel dress differently and there are no casinos or taverns.”

“Ah…so this is what Hell looks like,” Daniel retorted.

Manguang chuckled. “We deacons in particular are prone to the lure of dice and wheels. It’s why so few of us go on to become shepherds or pastors. And there’s no prohibition against drinking. Just seems a bit unseemly to have gambling and drinking establishments in religious rec zones. But I doubt you were planning to spend your entire life only in the UFC sectors, asylum or not.”

“You are taking me to see the Peteris and Paulis, right?”

Manguang frowned at the sudden shift in topic. “Yes. Why do you ask?”

“You’ve told me a lot about Mars since yesterday, but nothing about protocol with your church’s leaders.”

“Oh, that? Daniel, that could have waited until we were in the reception chamber. Look, if you were approaching them in some public or vid-worthy event, we’d have all kinds of ritual to quiz you on. As it is, just behave yourself, more or less.”

“You can’t be suggesting I’m about to just slap them on the back and trade jokes.”

“Greet them with a quarter-bow. If you have any personal or philosophical objections to the titles Peteris and Paulis, just use Deum and Deia. Try not to imply that the UFC is a bunch of heretics, even if you think we are.”

The look on Daniel’s face was incredulous.

“Daniel, you’ve been scanned for any and everything obnoxious. Exploding or producing a toxic bioweapon would aggravate the Paulis and Peteris to no end. Not too much else fazes them, and they hate overzealous pomp. Unless you plan to make lewd sexual gestures to the Peteris’ wife or piss on their frocks, you should be fine.”

***

Sarai and Mehrnaz stood in the airlock, wearing the bare minimum gear to protect them from exposure to open space. They listened calmly as the atmosphere was drawn from the passageway, and waited for the outer door to cycle open.

It was a weekly exercise of the religion of the Shared People, and one that was also repeated before any important undertaking. In this case, their mission for the client Stavin.

They pushed off, trusting the thin safety lines to keep them tethered to the deck, and opened themselves to the immense expanse of stars and the great, sweeping shadows between them. The meager crisis suits they were wearing  meant that a significant fraction of the terrifying cold of space was already creeping through to their skin. But that was naught but a reminder of the cold logic of their God’s plans and judgments.

The sisters joined hands and half-sang the words of their prayer in perfect unison.

“Oh wise and merciful Abrahm-Elohim, we gaze upon your infinite face as your servants and heirs. We submit ourselves to the scrutiny of your countless eyes. As we embark upon our life-path, we ask for your forbearance as we inevitably stumble. May our allies outnumber our adversaries and our wisdom outweigh our folly. Selah.”

Not much longer thereafter, they were in the control cabin and guiding Ishtar’s Folly to their destination several hours away and the final dispensation of the mysterious cargo they were carrying—both of them with a growing suspicion that once this job was completed, they were going to be saying a prayer of repentance as well.

(To read the next installment of this story, click here.)

For the previous installment of this story, click here. 

Or, visit the Cleansed By Fire portal page for comprehensive links to previous chapter installments and additional backstory and information about the novel.

Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 5, Blood and Tears (continued)

His latest meeting with Domina xec-Academie had gone, by Gregory’s estimation, about as well as any that had come before—which wasn’t the most ringing endorsement he could provide.

Once again, he left with plenty of images and uselessness to fill his head but little to fill in the gaps of his knowledge. He had set aside two hours for the former chief steward of the late Red Pope and wanted just about every minute of that part of his life back, with the possible exception of the mental image of her greeting him in a transluscent, skin-hugging, full-body confection made of slickskein that did more to draw attention to her body than actual nudity could have ever accomplished.

She had put on a scarlet daycloak fairly promptly and apologized with an obvious lack of sincerity and pure salaciousness in her tone that the outfit was a necessary part of her new excercise regimen, helping to balance the proper levels of perspiration and heat retention.

Most of the next two hours consisted of a well-orchestrated ballet of lies, evasiveness and coquetries of her part, coupled with sarcasm, accusations and diplomatic inducements on his.

Toward the end of their meeting, Domina presented him with a small gift-tube and mentioned it was something special for Amaranth. Miko Tanabi, who had taken to standing just inside the room while the Peteris’ other guardsman, Gregor Alenko, remained outside—a change in procedure orchestrated by the Paulis herself—cleared her throat and Domina handed it to her instead. She did so with a look that on casual glance appeared to be chagrin but was something that Gregory recognized as something almost shyly predatory.

After that came a flurry of quick meetings in which Gregory was alternately harrassed, praised and ridiculed by various members of the Ecclesiastia; then a short Sacrumass to conduct in the Grand Chapel, with his sermon sounding eminently more confident than he was feeling at the moment; and finally to the central UFC security station where Gregor retrieved Domina’s “gift” for Amaranth.

After a few minutes, Gregor reappeared and handed the gift-tube over to Gregory with news that there was nothing in the parcel that was setting off any sensors or alarms with the sniffer apps. Still, he was shaking his head as he handed it over, as if he were handing his Peteris a message about the death of a close friend.

“This cannot be good,” Gregor said with what sounded like bemused solemnity. “It is sealed for the Paulis but I could have…”

“No, don’t tempt me,” Gregory said. “If it isn’t dangerous and I break the seals, Amaranth will kill me. It’s keyed for her, it’s declared safe; she’ll open it. She’d break it open in a heartbeat if our roles were reversed of course.”

“Marriage creates the uneven game field for men,” the bodyguard responded. “This is why there will not be a Madame Alenko.”

Miko sniffed indignantly but said nothing in response to her Peteris or her fellow guardsman.

Later than night, Amaranth would walk into Gregory’s privy chamber in a slumbergown, just before bedtime, and toss the gift-tube into his lap.

“The gift is really for you, Greg,” she said, “and where it landed was quite appropriate.”

The Peteris of the UFC picked up the tube from his lap, opened it, and poured the contents out into his palm. One pair of very expensive, unnecessarily skimpy and vanishly sheer briefpants. Although they appeared to be new, the aroma now drifting into his nostrils suggested that something very energetic had happened inside them earlier in the day.

“I think I’ll be having that little chat about who owns your nethers a bit sooner than expected with our guest,” Amaranth said dryly.

“She certainly has a gift for subtlety, doesn’t she?” Gregory offered blandly. “Where do you suppose she finds the energy and stamina? I’m surprised those wanderlusts of hers haven’t suffered system crashes yet.”

“At least it’s an improvement from when she couriered me the plasz-wrapped thumb of one of my spies in Davidia,” she responded. “I think. So, are you going to throw that away now? Or make love to it?”

“Must I give it up?” Gregory said innocently. “It’s so rude for us to refuse a gift that so much…effort…went into.”

Amaranth snorted in a decidedly unfeminine manner. “Greg, toss it out, disinfect your hand and come to bed soon. I won’t be doing anything that will soil your briefpants but you will want to talk with me before I fall asleep. Particularly since I did a little something passive-aggressive today, my love, in response to this whole Domina fiasco.

“I gave asylum to my very own highly placed Vatican lackey. I’ll tell you a little about it tonight, and round out your knowledge in the morning. Just like you did with me and the Domina situation.”

With that, Gregory gave up hope of tomorrow being a better day.

***

After several hours alternately walking, crawling and slithering through various degrees of destruction beneath Jerusalem, Bechan Adym had long since lost his burning sense of purpose and replaced it with an overwhelming sense of anxiety and fear.

He had only a small survival pack that he pushed ahead of him, and the ultradense slickskein outfit that hugged his body, and neither of them was comforting him much. The skin-thin slickskein was a special polymer weave that was packed so tight on a molecular basis that it weighed as much as light field armor, while maintaining total flexibility. Its smoothness allowed him to glide through some of the tightest paths, but the weight and lack of breathability was also making him sweat miserably inside the damned thing, even though most of his body heat was being converted to energy for the small browbeam lighting his way. As a result, he was constantly sipping his own perspiration through a catchtube and liking it less with each passing minute.

The density of the slickskein ensured that he almost certainly would not be cut but it wouldn’t do a thing to protect him if a tunnel collapsed on top of him—a prospect that he was both dreading and desiring at this point. Soon, the way would become easier, or so he had been led to understand; he suspected that would mean something like getting disembowled first, then finding out later how much more pleasant it is in comparison to have a foot chopped off.

He closed his eyes and considered just turning back. Then he reminded himself, again, how much his ancestors had endured over thousands of years, and he pressed on. Fear was his regular companion now; he intended to make it his propellent instead of his braking thrusters.

***

In the small syna called Temple Ezrath, Rabbi Brifel Mann keyed up an interface with the AI that controlled the imagery on the Western Wall and also served as the main AI both for the local Jerusalem Civil Governing Authority and for Jewish priests and religious scholars across Israel.

“Good evening, Rabbi Mann,” the AI said in a voice that sounded like a young man forced to grow up too fast. “How are you?”

“Well, Kotel, very well,” the rabbi answered. “I saw some new imagery on the wall today, depicting the Holocaust with Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats. It was very striking, all the more so for the fact it was mostly black and white.”

“It is fascinating, you know. I had discovered some archival material recently—an adult illustrated novel from the Second Millennium titled Maus. It was quite inspirational. The author…”

“Kotel, sometimes, a simply thank-you suffices,” Brifel said, reminding himself once again that the AI had only been the successor of the previous Kotel for five years now. The AI was smarter than most adults, but it was still a long way from fully finding its personality. “I actually wanted to talk about Bechan Adym.”

“How is he?”

“Seven hours underneath the city. You be the judge.”

“If he can survive and if he’s using stims, I should think he can reach the Jordan River, or the Dead Sea, in another four hours, if his path was well chosen,” Kotel noted. “Or, upwards of 13 hours if he chose poorly or made any wrong turns.”

“Hmmmm. Well, then, I think that in that case, you should wait another seven hours, then contact the Vatican authorities and tell them there has been a breach of the tunnels and that a pack of scuttlers should probably be sent out to investigate.”

***

The admin suite was overly crowded this evening, with three field marshals reporting to her in lieu of Maree, along with Kevan, Paulo and Ather. Willem rounded out the lot, quiet as ever off to the side as everyone else gathered in a circle in their slipchairs.

“We still have the Fourth Millennial Event tomorrow, and we all need rest, so I won’t keep you long,” Lyseena xec-Juris said. “We’ve all seen the reports for today and the long string of attacks, all but one of which Secular Genesis took credit for. Does anything strike any of you?”

“They were very audacious,” said one of the field marshals.

Lyseena narrowed her eyes and stared at the woman for a full ten seconds. “I’d relieve of your duties for an inane insight like that if it weren’t for the fact your field report shows you have a functioning brain.”

“Well, we’ve already established a pattern of the attacks escalating over time,” Paulo noted. “The effort was highly coordinated and clearly had purpose beyond mere harrassment of the Catholic Union.”

“Purpose, yes. But what?” Lyseena asked, with the air of someone who already had an answer.

“Fear, one would suppose,” Kevan added. “Though they seem to have only stirred up more interest in people about tomorrow. I swear with the media reports and citizen queries on the Grid more people want to come to the city core now, hoping to be just close enough to see templars and terrorist spar without getting killed in the process. I’m sure Ather must have some colorful commentary to share.”

“Ather has been busy,” responded Ather sup-Juris. “Lyseena has had me chasing Maree most of the day, and a fine chase it was. I love hunting. So, I haven’t been thinking of your problems, Kevan. Besides, I already know what Lyseena is leading up to because she talked to me about it earlier, and if I spoil her ending she’ll shoot me on the spot.”

“Too true,” she said, noting that two of the field marshals blanched at the thought. Probably best to let them think I would do that, for now at least. “Brothers, sisters. This entire godforsaken day has been leading up to something. Working us up and wearing us out and announcing to us that more was yet to come. And it did.”

Lyseena paused, took a breath.

“But didn’t it all seem rather…anticlimactic?” she continued. “We’ve had an entire day of rough foreplay and no one has fornicated with us.”

“I’d say we got pretty well fucked,” blurted one field marshal, whom Lyseena knew had been all too close to a pair of back-to-back assaults in recent hours.

“Did we now?” Lyseena asked. “No,we haven’t been yet. All this build-up, and no conclusion. That’s my assessment.”

“I’m not disagreeing with you, Lyseena,” said Paulo, “but does that mean they had a piss-up with their finale, or…”

“…it means, Paulo, that they haven’t presented it yet,” Lyseena answered. “We’ve had an entire day of chaos to manage thanks to the Red Pope’s untimely demise. A day we weren’t expecting to have to deal with, when we have an even bigger event and more chaos to deal with tomorrow. We were already stretched thin, and we figured they would strike us today when we were least prepared to deal with it.

“Instead, we’re tired, and now we know they aren’t finished yet, and we still have to face that tomorrow. No, fellow templars, this isn’t over. We’ve been played on a line like fish. Secular Genesis plans to strike us with their real attack, or attacks, tomorrow. They always did. And whatever they are planning, I think it’s going to be about as ugly as it gets.”

(This concludes Chapter 5. To view the next installment, which begins Chapter 6, click here.)

For the previous installment of this story, click here. 

Or, visit the Cleansed By Fire portal page for comprehensive links to previous chapter installments and additional backstory and information about the novel.

Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 5, Blood and Tears (continued)

She was being pummeled. Her mind was screaming, “Get up! Run!” Shadowy figures were pressed around her, smelling of burned flesh and touching her with dry and flaking fingers. She wanted to open her eyes. To speak. To get up.

But she was shackled. No, tethered. Mentally pinned. She strained, not knowing why she should or whether the effort was worth it.

For a moment, her eyes opened. A vague shadow in front of her, light all around it. Then she drifted again. Her eyelids dropped. Something inside her head tried to cinch those tethers again and she struggled against herself. She fought. She writhed inside her own psyche.

One by one, the restraints were slipping away. But from all directions, she still heard her own voice telling her to pull herself together and flee and fight and move. She began to grow frantic inside her thoughts, becoming more anxious the closer she got to freedom.

She didn’t know if she struggled for minutes or hours. But she started to rein in the chaos. She pushed away the flesh-seared corpses that were her recently slain family. She quieted the multitude of voices, all of them her own, until she could begin to think.

Until she began to realize that one voice wasn’t her own. “Maree,” it said. The voice was familiar. Familiar didn’t mean friendly anymore though. She panicked again.

Her eyes still wouldn’t respond properly, but she tried. A shadow in front of her gained resolution. A shape. Large. Blocking the dim light. Then her eyes betrayed her again, plunged her into darkness.

And again, she opened them. A shape. A person. There, and then gone again. Then back. Memories of white hair and hazel eyes. Familiar. Strange. Real or illusion? Now or then? Her context was slipping, and her control with it. Panic began to set in again. She didn’t precisely remember why, but there wasn’t supposed to be a person with her. All the dead people were in her head where they belonged. Who?

She opened her eyes again, not knowing how much later it was happening, and managed a few seconds of vision. No one was there, but there were items near her feet that didn’t belong. She remembered a little. She was in the rear berth of her borrowed groundcar. Someone had been there. Maree slipped again. Lost her hold. Everything went black, and she was back inside her head with the scorched dead of Astoria.

Then, all at once, she broke through the wall in her head with a huge choking sob, and she sat up, shaking. It took her nearly a minute to realize she had drawn her slug pistol, and slid it awkwardly back under her bounty coat.

Overhype, she remembered. I took overhype to escape the templars. God I hope I never have to resort to that again.

As her mind and body began to re-synch and her awareness sharpened, she realized that the items at her feet were a hot-canister and a cheap disposable flexsheet. Someone had been here, but as she looked around, past the windows of her car, she realized she was alone. There was still enough light outside to be clear on that point, and she was still back a bit in the woods, out of sight of the main road.

For a moment, she considered tossing the hot-canister out of the car until common sense reminded her that anyone with an agenda would have killed or bound her already, not left her a beverage. She pulled the thermal tab on the side of the large cup, and then sipped at the suddenly-steaming drink. It was shit-for-value caff, and she noticed now on the side of the canister the logo of a cheap travel depot she had passed many miles back. But in her current condition, anything that could shock her brain back into focus was welcome.

She picked up the flexsheet, and touched her thumb to the blinking standby avatar, watching words unfold in a script she hadn’t seen for years.

Maree,

My apologies for not staying around. I can’t know for certain what you took, but I have a good guess, and I am far too old to risk several broken bones as you come out of an overhype coma. And you bring back too many memories of your grandfather anyway, and Matthew for that matter. Consider me a coward if you must, but I’ll just spend this time while you “slumber” and say what needs to be said in the written word instead.

If the handwriting style itself hadn’t tipped her off, the tone of the letter would have. Charlyes Kemusian, one of her grandfather’s oldest friends; one of the early founders of Secular Genesis. A man she had called uncle from the time she could first speak. Maree began to read again.

Your father contacted me after the events at your Astoria cottage. He feared you might do something rash to Secular Genesis and thought I should warn someone. He vastly overrates my current level of connection to the movement, but I do reluctantly stay in the loop. I suppose I could have told him that I knew precisely what happened in Astoria and who did what to whom. Well, enough, anyway. Enough to know what you were really after.

Maree set aside the flexsheet for a moment. She hadn’t known that Uncle Charlyes had maintained any contact with Secular Genesis, but she should have expected the old fox to do so. When his beloved Matthew died, so did much of his anger toward the Vatican—why fight for something the popes had denied them when one of them was now dead—but he would never let himself be left in the dark. Her eyes fell back onto the letter.

But your father doesn’t let details like that stop him, now does he? But you already know that. I sent a spyfly over to that archaic little yacht of his. I suspected you’d be heading his way, though it slipped my mind to notify Tobin or Stavin or anyone else to expect you. I’ve gotten so absent minded in my latter years.

Maree, I know about anger. I know about revenge. Take your new identity and just run. For the love of your grandfather. For my sake. Run. And when you can find a way to do it, leave the Catholic Union. Stavin isn’t worth any of this. Neither is the Vatican. You have a chance to start anew. Take it.

Maree teared up for a moment. This man was the closest she could get to her grandfather now. Maybe the only person left who cared.

But you probably won’t. Will you? And I must accept that. I watched you face Tobin. I watched your relationship with him die in a moment. I watched you run in Houston. I watched you kill. I followed you here. You are running, but you won’t run away, will you?

“No,” Maree said in a whisper, “I won’t. I don’t think I can.”

If this were a Grid-vid…some godawful cloak and blade  holodrama…this would be the point at which I leave you an arsenal of weapons, a list of names and locations, and a decked-out slipcar. Everything you need for your trail of vengeance.

This isn’t a story, though, Maree.

I don’t have anything to give. And I wouldn’t if I did. Oh, I tapped into that linkpad of yours with that new name you’re carrying and slipped a few funds into the account. It’s not much. I’m old and unemployed and rebels don’t get retirement endowments. But it can feed you and keep you in lodgings for a few months I suppose. But I can’t give you revenge.

Does that mean I know where you could go and won’t tell you? Or that I don’t even have the knowledge you need? You can take your own guesses. An old man is entitled to some secrets, eh?

Choose your path carefully, Maree. I don’t know how many more forks in the road will be offered to you before you end up with only one path and the devil’s own momentum to carry you.

And you know where it got him.

Love, Charlyes

Maree thumbed the erase avatar. Guzzled caff until her throat couldn’t take the scorching anymore. She slipped into the forward berth and fired up the groundcar. Time to go a few miles, and then find a new way to travel.

There was still at least one person in the  world left for her to love, she realized. And who deserved it.

And she was going to disappoint him.

(To read the next installment of this story, click here.)

For the previous installment of this story, click here. 

Or, visit the Cleansed By Fire portal page for comprehensive links to previous chapter installments and additional backstory and information about the novel.

Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 5, Blood and Tears (continued)

For what might be the last time in his life, Bechan Adym realized, he was standing before the HaKotel HaMa’aravi—the Western Wall of Jerusalem which so many outside the Hebrew faith had saddled with the term Wailing Wall so many centuries ago.

Bechan thought back to the stories of the old wall, from before the Conflagration, which was nothing but stone. Much of that remained, but was now surrounded by and filled in by irregular-shaped slabs of transplast and polysteel, upon which flashed images from the Jewish past. The painful things they must never forget: The Egyptian captivity, the Babylonian oppression, the ancient Crusades, the Holocaust and more, including the Final Crusade itself—which was indiscriminately aimed at the Arabs and caught Israel in its wake, so much like the original Crusades.

In these modern times, the AI-controlled wall itself truly did wail at times in painful recognition of millennia of the Jewish suffering that went hand-in-hand with its endurance and triumphs. It would also moan, and weep water at times like gigantic tears. Stone and smartplast, old and new, nature and technology.

Bechan said a silent prayer before the Kotel and then proceeded to a small public syna nearby. He entered the modest temple and regarded the four silver bowls at the entrance. He plucked a small piece of unleavened crackbread from the first, baked with bitter herbs inside to recall the trials the Jews had survived since becoming the Chosen People of Yahweh. He dipped in in the second bowl of salted water to recall the tears shed, past and present. Then into bowl of honey, for the sweetness of the Lord’s deliverance and blessings. And finally into the bowl of dried lamb, for the protection of the angels of Heaven.

He chewed thoughtfully on the Sacred Remembrance and then removed his shoes and socks, stepping into the long Cleansing Pool on the way to the inner chamber and letting the warm water purify his steps. At the end of the pool, he set his footwear aside on a long, low table and turned as Rabbi Brifel Mann entered from a small side room.

“Bechan,” he said with a nod and a smile. “I had hoped you might reconsider.”

“Israel is my home, but it is also our prison. I have places to go if we are to ever be free from our most recent would-be masters. You have your tools?”

“I do, and I will remove your IDentipod with as much care as I performed your bris, Bechan,” the rabbi said warmly. “To what end, though? Our nation is ringed with thousands upon thousand of security pylons and monitored by a hundred satellites. When you are sensed, without the device inside you, you will be caught quickly.”

“I will have no toys of the Catholics in my body as I travel. I will not have it,” Bechan said. “And the pylons I do not fear. There are other paths,” he whispered, nodding to the floor.

“The Vatican collapsed those many tunnels long ago.”

“There are still ways through the rubble.”

“And how many survive that journey?”

“As Yahweh wills, rabbi,” Bechan said. “If I die, then I was not fit for His purposes. And where better to die and be interred than underneath such holy ground, even if it does mean being crushed under tons of rock?” That last he said with a smile and wink, but the rabbi frowned.

“Feh! If you do make it, contact the Voudoun; they will know how to reach me.”

“The Voudoun—necessity breeds such strange alliances,” Bechan noted. “Maybe they’ll loan me a zombi for my journeys. Something to do the heavy work and not force me listen to small talk.”

Brifel removed his blades and small clamps from a black satchel. “We should begin then. I will miss you.”

Bechan hugged the rabbi’s neck and kissed his cheek. “And I will miss your wife’s cooking as I munch on field rations and random weeds. I will reach the Outside. I will.”

“When you do, I will raise a toast in your honor,” the rabbi said, as he deftly cut open Bechan’s wrist. “If you do not, the Kotel will weep for you as it has all before you.”

***

The meandering sheet of obsidian flowed as far as Bohlliam could see in either direction, with sand and ash and loose rocks everywhere else from horizon to horizon, punctuated by a few hardy cacti and palms. The transformed remains of the Great Causeway, centuries ago a straight and kilometer-wide path of granite and colored sand and now a simulated river made of black glass thanks to the Conflagration.

Angel City. The land of the intentionally lost—and no city at all for centuries. One of the few places the Catholic Union didn’t bother seeding with security pylons. Bohlliam could see stirrings in the distance; perhaps an ash storm on the way. He considered whether to simply seal himself up in his hut for the remainder of the day and night, but there was that slow-moving crawler in the distance, on a path that refused to deviate. A path straight to him.

I never asked to be a prophet for these people, he thought sourly. And I have that emophage infection to thank for the flipping honor. I only wanted to be alone.

Still, it might mean an offering of fresh food and maybe a good rum or verdemead to wash dinner down with. Something that would let him sleep through the dreams of others that always crowded his own.

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For the previous installment of this story, click here. 

Or, visit the Cleansed By Fire portal page for comprehensive links to previous chapter installments and additional backstory and information about the novel.

Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 5, Blood and Tears (continued)

Gregory was just toweling off from a quick shower when Amaranth chimed him on his linkpad. He snatched up the device from the bed, slapped in on, and answered her call. At once, a tiny holographic projection of her hovered there on his wrist—it was only for his wife, children and grandchildren that he was willing to waste the storage space for that function.

It was probably for the best that the linkpad wasn’t actually transmitting images back and forth but simply simulating her and, he suspected, simulating him at her end, though she didn’t always have the holo function on. Because if his linkpad had been set up for real-time visuals, Gregory suspect he’d be getting teased right now about his lack of an exercise regimen, as water dripped from his very middle-aged-looking torso.

Instead, he got a relatively chipper, “Hello, Greg. How are you spending your time before meeting up with your paramour again?”

“Cleaning up from wearing full vestments in stuffy rooms with stuffy people carrying on pointless meetings,” he responded. “Want to be clean just in case I give in to Domina, so she’ll have a fresh canvas to dirty up.”

“You’re mixing your metaphors, again, my love,” she teased. “I’m mostly done with the medtechs for today, but just wanted to let you know that in between sessions I’ve been enjoying the footage of your encounters with Tommis’ steward.”

Gregory frowned. “Ammie, I haven’t recorded any of my sessions with Domina. That would be…”

“…a borderline violation of the asylum conventions and certainly a security risk for us if it got out,” Amaranth finished. “But it turns out that someone remembered who’s in charge of security and made sure to record the short-range feed from the MobileEye for me.”

“Damn it! Who the fu…”

“Calm yourself, Greg. It doesn’t matter.”

“It pissing well does matter that one of my guards, and obviously it was Miko or Gregor who did this, went behind my back on something like this.”

“No, it doesn’t, Greg,” Amaranth continued, with a trace of steel in her voice. “First off, the person in question delivered the data strips directly to me and if I hadn’t made it back to Mars alive to see them, would have destroyed them in short order. Second, you don’t know which one of them it was, so you can’t do anything to that person. And even if you did want to do something, Miko and Gregor are the best and most loyal bodyguards that it is possible to get outside of my own personal retinue, and I’m not parting with any of mine because it’s my ass out there in the field and I need the best of the best. Your guards are protecting you, Greg. Part of that is making sure that I see what’s going on with you and Domina.”

“Amaranth, I don’t appreciate the second-guessing here.”

“Greg, making sure the Paulis has the necessary information to guide and preserve the Peteris is not second-guessing. And with all due respect, you’re a tad out of your league compared to me when it comes to dealing with vipers of Domina xec-Academie’s caliber and you know it.”

“Amaranth, this is hard enough as it is; I can’t have you peering over my shoulder or wondering if I can trust my team to take orders from me.”

“Greg, personal security is my purview and you know it. But relax. I’ve told both of them to leave off any more pirated images from your trysts with Tommis’ slattern. And I’ve already destroyed the recordings that have been made. I’m trusting you to deal with Domina and even though I think you’re doing a piss-poor job of reining in your testosterone, I liked the way you sprang the Pope Kuang-Hsu connection on her. I think you’re getting her range a bit.”

The compliment took him aback. “Amaranth,” he said, and paused. “Thank you for that. I do need you, you know. On this.”

“Greg, I’ll be visiting Domina briefly at some point to remind her who owns the nether regions of your anatomy, and there may come a time we need to double-punch her, but this is your cross to bear. Partly I’m doing that to be all passive-aggressive with you for giving her asylum without asking me,” Amaranth joked. “But in all seriousness, she isn’t going to tell me anything. One of us would kill the other if there were extended sessions between us. You, however, are a man and she figures all men turn to gel in her fingers, so you might actually get somewhere with her.”

“Ammie, you know that whatever…”

“Shut up, Greg,” Amaranth said with a light laugh. “I’ll know if you’ve stepped over a line, because I’m your wife. And we women know. And that’s what will keep you in line. There are women I’d forgive you over; you know this isn’t one of them. Now finish sprucing up. Time’s wasting and we need answers, and your girlfriend is probably expecting you by now.”

***

“How bad is it, Paulo?”

“Compared to what, Commander? This is the sixth attack scene I’ve been to today. Kevan may have been caught in one of the attacks on his circuit, but there’s only been one other terrorist assault on his rounds, so frankly speaking he’s gotten off easy today. And the third circuit, which Maree should have been handling, has been hammered near as bad as mine from what I’ve heard.”

“How bad?” Lyseena repeated, hearing Paulo’s sigh clearly through the linkpad connection.

“The worst yet. Thirty civilians dead; 32 seriously wounded. We’ve got at least 60 with minor wounds. Add to that 2 wounded templars and 3 dead constables. Every attack on my circuit has been worse than the previous. They seem to be coordinated and scaling up as they go along. Does that synch with third circuit?”

“Close enough,” Lyseena responded. “Their most recent attack was just as bad as the one before, but otherwise it was ramping up steadily in body count. They have seven attacks to your six, but slightly fewer injuries and deaths so far.”

For several seconds, Paulo was silent. “There’s still at least an hour more of this pomp and circumstance for Pope Tommis’ requiem before we start to see crowds dispersing,” he noted. “What are the chances that the violence will keep people away from the Fourth Millennial Celebration tomorrow?”

“None,” Lyseena said. “If anything, I suspect crowds might be bigger now.”

“Then what are the chances we can get some more trained bodies shipped in here for tomorrow from some other regions?”

“Imagine that you’re a snowflake,” Lyseena said grimly, “and this is Hell.”

***

As a newsfeed in his vox filled one ear with delicious news about the day’s attacks, and relayed field operative reports from his servitor filled the other, Stavin allowed himself a grin.

Everything going according to plan. Precisely.

Everything on track.

An ill-prepared and beleaguered templar force, and an worse-prepared local constabulary, were getting hammered on multiple fronts. And they had no conception of the pain he was yet to inflict on them.

Like a cat with its mouse, he thought, and I’m not even through playing with you yet.

(For the next installment in the story, click here.)

For the previous installment of this story, click here. 

Or, visit the Cleansed By Fire portal page for comprehensive links to previous chapter installments and additional backstory and information about the novel.

Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 5, Blood and Tears (continued)

The air in the modest rec chamber of Ishtar’s Folly was already heavy with haze; heavier than it needed to be, Mehrnaz realized, but getting up and fiddling with the scrubber settings now would only ruin the mood, and any weekly hookah within the Shared People was about creating a positive and communal atmosphere. Even more so this week, as Sarai had been fuming ever since they ejected the Standish-corpse from the ship. The man had struck some nerves with her, to be sure, but that was only a small part of the pain. Worst was that Sarai was even more angry than Mehrnaz was at the leader Stavin himself for sending them the Standish-gift to begin with.

And that, Mehrnaz considered, meant Sarai was about as angry with the leader Stavin as it was possible to be. If not for the fact they still had a contract to fulfill for him, Mehrnaz suspected her sister might already have set a course for Earth to track down the man and turn him from the rebel Stavin to the Stavin-corpse.

So, with a job to finish imminently, and tensions high, canceling this week’s hookah would have been idiocy. Both their minds needed to be clear. Still, some changes had to be made. Normally, the gathering would have been in a larger room with more Shared People at a nearby station or settlement of Ishmaeli or Isaacians. But keeping it here on the ship with a smaller group was more practical with the looming contract to complete with the client Stavin.

Also, there were no brand-brothers of their clan here. A few brand-sisters and some assorted female friends and associates, like the data pirate Jordin, an Isaacian who tended to float from one Ishmaeli clan or Isaacian arc to the next—she was the rare loner among the Shared People; not totally separate, but too independent to commit.

The lack of males at this hookah did bother Mehrnaz a bit. Often, the relaxation of a hookah led to some coupling, or even trebling. Not that such a thing wouldn’t happen this time, but the chances were always slimmer in an all-femme gathering. But having males around would have been too much a reminder to Sarai of the Standish-corpse and the client Stavin. Not to mention that hookah participants shared more than vapors and conversation around the hookah. The contribution of any male genetic sample to the communal dish inside the hookah itself likely would have been more than Sarai was prepared to endure right now.

She would calm down once the job was over, and then they could determine how to address the client Stavin once he was no longer holding a contract for them. Already, Sarai seemed more relaxed, Mehrnaz noticed, and was chatting lightly with an Ishmaeli brand-sister and the the hacktech Kirrah, a particularly dark-skinned Isaacian they had recently made the acquaintance of during a contract last month.

Mehrnaz leaned back into a cushion, pulling lazily on her own hookah tube, and realized that the nearest cushion was in fact the data pirate Jordin, who turned out to be much softer, and certainly warmer, than any cushions in the room. Mehrnaz smiled up into the Isaacian’s shining, charcoal-gray face, caught her aquamarine eyes, and received a sly grin in return.

Perhaps I can rinse thoughts of the our dealings with the Standish-corpse out of my mind after all, she pondered, and replace them with some fresher, softer memories.

***

Typically, Ather sup-Juris preferred to perform interrogations when he was calm; something he rarely was after any slipgate journey. He had no intention of deviating from that philosophy, but he did feel it was important to set the right tone with a subject.

So, now that he was back at Templar’s Tower in Nova York, he stopped by the holding room where the recently apprehended priest was sitting alone. He would likely know little about the Secular Genesis cell he was serving, but it always paid to be thorough.

Ather opened the door, stepped just inside the chamber, and crossed his arms behind his back. He let both his imposing size and his full inquisitor’s uniform register in the priest’s mind, then cleared his throat slightly.

“Normally, I work alone,” Ather said. “But a certain templar admin officer has expressed a desire to participate. As such, I feel it will be my duty to be very…dutiful…in my use of the latest technologies and techniques.”

The priest paled visibly. Ather imagined he could hear the man’s guts twisting even now.

“I simply thought you should know,” Ather continued, “so that you can consider how best to keep our session short. And to the point.”

With that, Ather backed out of the room, noting with some satisfaction that there was a tear in at least one of the priest’s eyes already. And Ather doubted that the priest would be finishing the small, half-eaten lunch that had been set before him 20 minutes earlier.

Confession may be good for the soul, but the prospect of it is often hard on the digestion.

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For the previous installment of this story, click here. 

Or, visit the Cleansed By Fire portal page for comprehensive links to previous chapter installments and additional backstory and information about the novel.

Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 5, Blood and Tears (continued)

Domina waited. She didn’t mind that part. The best hunters did a lot of waiting. Striking too soon was always the biggest mistake. One wrong move too early, from a stray step to a clumsy attack, and the quarry will bolt and leave you with nothing. That was simple, clean, tactical logic, and Domina had always been a tactical sort. What was troubling her was just how difficult her prey was making himself to corner.

The Peteris of the UFC had already surprised her twice. First when he revealed that he had called upon his medtechs to scan some pilfered biological sample from her to search for nanotech, tripwire viruses, concentrated pheremones, biochemical weapons or other surprises that she might have had laying in wait inside her very body—none of which were things she would choose to use but which many of her peers had often employed. His action was a violation of the Conventions of Asylum, but a very difficult one for her to prove even if it suited her plans to do so.

Then that surprise visit last night after she thought she had sent him running in sexual frustration and embarrassment. Instead, he had stormed back in on her and started grilling her about Pope Kuang-Hsu; how he had gotten onto that lead she didn’t know, but that damnable AI Ghost probably had something to do with it.

In most ways, he had proven to be just the gentlemanly, polite devotee of following the rules that Domina had been expecting. But those two moves proved he wasn’t going to be quite as pliant as she had hoped. Clearly, more of his wife—and Ghost—had rubbed off on him than anyone knew.

So she waited.

She had been doing so, more or less, for the past several hours. After the unexpected visit from Gregory last night, she realized that despite her expectations, he might show up at any time. He wouldn’t barge in again most likely. All the same, she had purchased and had express-delivered a set of proximity detectors that she had placed throughout the hallways to ensure she would have warning if anyone entered the floor. She also had two vid-sentries mounted by the door to her apartment, one inside and one outside. She wouldn’t dare use them to record any conversations between herself and Gregory—and he would likely realize that—but it would deter him from violating her privacy. 

Still, despite developing a somewhat grittier approach than was his tradition, Gregory clearly remained a chivalrous sort, and using shady tactics even against someone of her infamous reputation probably gave him a twinge of guilt. Bully tactics and violations of the conventions were moves he would likely tap reluctantly and infrequently.

But, no longer able to rely on the notion that he would announce his arrivals, Domina had gotten up very early, at a time Gregory was highly unlikely to be awake himself or to feel comfortable invading her space, so that she could get a good run in, making a dozen or so circuits of the hall that circled around her floor of Candlestand 33, and be able to eat at her leisure, bathe, and primp—a ritual that would become a daily one so that he would never again catch her in a casual or unscripted moment.

She couldn’t be sure when he would arrive anymore. But one thing was certain, he would return, politely or otherwise, and probably at least once a day.

And so, she waited.

She knew now that the sexual aura she was cultivating was not the sure-fire weapon she had hoped it would be, and this was probably her biggest source of frustration—the one thing that made her waiting almost interminable. Sex wasn’t her only tool, nor even obfuscation. She had other avenues, some of them deadly, and she had used whatever tactics necessary for the Holy Mother Church in the past. But sex had always been her best weapon in the service of the Vatican, even before she came to be Pope Tommis’ chief steward and lover. Tommis had hand-picked her long before then and mentored her as an operative for him, and knowing the potential she had, one of the first things he had done was grant her prior absolution for any sins of sexual intercourse. He knew the value of her body in motivating people to do what Tommis wanted or get them to let their guard down for some sort of retribution.

Thanks to Tommis’ blanket absolution, a papal decision that could not be reversed, her vow of chastity was a moot point and she could not be prosecuted by the Vatican for anything she might do with her body, short of aborting a pregnancy. And that would never come up, since she had, years earlier, paid for a physician to render her incapable of conception and make it look like a natural defect.

And yet, for all the edge that sexual innuendo, the art of seduction and even actual bedding had given her over the years, it was proving nearly useless with Gregory. She was getting to him, but she could not truly get through his defenses.

The Nazarene had provided her with a full dossier on Gregory, including psych profiles that should have been about 90 percent reliable—and probably were. She wasn’t sure how many different AIs the Nazarene had access to, but clearly, at least one of them was on a psychosocial template and so the Nazarene had worked up a number of handy profiles for her on any number of people before. She could predict with reasonable assurance most of Gregory’s sexual proclivities—the scents, textures, colors and more that would have the most impact—and even some of his more exotic tastes, and she had already played to several of them. So far, to no avail. It was unlikely that the Nazarene had failed to nail Gregory’s personality; but he had clearly underestimated the man’s reserves.

It would have been easiest, of course, if Gregory had just given in. And he might yet do so, but it was going to be a long, hard road, and she might not have that kind of time. Especially given that Amaranth had survived Uhuru and was now back in-planet. The men who gave in quickly were the best. It gave her precious little satisfaction to watch someone fall to her charms quickly, but expediency was more important than artistry in most of her intrigues and machinations, so the faster they shed their undergarments and handed themselves over to her, the better.

It also would have been pleasing if Gregory had been the sort to hide behind fidelity or piety and try to fool himself into believing he was impervious. That was a conceit that almost inevitably left a man with several weak points in his armor. Such men were ultimately putty in her hands. But Gregory clearly wasn’t hesitant to recognize his arousal and his failings, and thus whatever shame he felt he redirected into energy to marshal his desires or confront her instead. So far, this left her with precious few opportunities to pierce his armor.

She also would have been satisfied if he had simply been the type to lie about her effect on him. Trying to ignore her efforts or diminish them would have not only energized her but also kept him on a constant defensive stance. Instead, the bastard either tacitly acknowledged or overtly admitted that she was alluring and that she affected him, thus making any of her subterfuge useless, and putting her off balance instead.

Gregory was the worst kind of man for her to face. He knew his shortcomings and he was basically an honest person; he knew he wasn’t impervious and didn’t try to be. It was like facing emotional judo and libidinal aikido. The worst thing was that he wasn’t even actively trying to counter her; it was simply his natural responses at work. He was going to be a hell of a lot of work. And while Domina loved her work, she didn’t like to see it drag out, even assuming that the Nazarene’s plans would even give her that kind of latitude for time. And that would be a huge assumption.

And so she waited.

Because no matter how hard a target Gregory was to hit, everyone had a weak spot and everyone had moments of vulnerability. Regardless of how hard he was making the hunt, he was still prey. And she was still the hunter. He would be back, like any prey, to her hunting grounds because that was where nature dictated he must be.

And she would be waiting.

***

“Everyone is clear on their roles?” Stavin asked the assembled cell leaders, field leaders and assorted others. A number of nods and mumurs of assent went up in the virtual room everyone was projecting their sims into. The Grid was one of the few places so many of them could gather together at once with almost no risk. Even if some Catholic Union agency hacked into their meeting, they would only be able to trace the locations of a few attendees at best, and would be hard-pressed to catch them in the literal world before they bolted.

Still, while it was the safest way to meet, it wasn’t Stavin’s favorite. No matter how good the sims and how good the virtual environment, something was always missing. The emotions were harder to read, the atmosphere less charged. And none of that played to Stavin’s strengths. Despite that, it was clear he had command of the meeting, and even if he didn’t run Secular Genesis per se, he was certainly among its ranking leaders now.

And just about every important thing that was about to happen soon was his show. His inevitable victory. His glory.

He would not have anyone frigging it up.

“Those of you who have assigned tasks today, carry them out to the last detail,” Stavin continued. “The rest of you, do nothing. If I see any initiative today, any…entrepreneurial…actions, and I will personally have that person skinned. You can decide for yourself whether I’m being literal or figurative.”

For a moment, Stavin was certain he felt a flicker of tension and anticipation all around him, even in this virtual space. He smiled.

Today marks the beginning of the end of the Catholic Union, he mused.

(To read the next installment of this story, click here.)

For the previous installment of this story, click here. 

Or, visit the Cleansed By Fire portal page for comprehensive links to previous chapter installments and additional backstory and information about the novel.

Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 5, Blood and Tears (continued)

The Redstar Line slipship could have made it from Pacifica to Mars in a few hours, even accounting for making at least three jumps through slipgates and taking its sweet time accelerating from one to the next. But given that it had left at 11:40 p.m. Pacifica time, that would have put it onto the red planet at an atrociously early time of the morning. And since most passengers were just as happy to sleep—and most especially sleep through all those uncomfortable slipgate transitions—the flight crew at that time of night was, as customary, exceedingly leisurely about the whole process.

When Daniel Coxe debarked from the vessel at the Freecity Public Flightport on Mars and glanced at the chrono on his linkpad, he was gratified to see that a nearby clock was displaying the very same Yucatan Province time as the “home time” on his wrist—in which he had lived and worked for three years now.

He had never had any significant dealings with anyone on Mars so had never thought about what time they favored here, though he knew it was a single time zone for the entire planet. That they had chosen Yucatan time probably wasn’t random, he supposed, given that the planet had been colonized in part to establish a beachhead for humans that was largely unthreatened by Vatican aggression.

And with Nova Roma in the Yucatan, housing most of the main bureaucratic offices of the Vatican, one of the papal towers and the Godhead, I suppose I, too, would want to be on the same schedule as them to help ensure I don’t lose sight of my potential enemy.

Because the slipship was incoming from the Catholic Union, current treaties stipulated that the tiny expatriate Vatican security staff at the flightport had the right to scan all passengers coming off the vessel, and Daniel was gripping his fake Martian passport very tightly for just that reason. But the security crew had decided not to bother with this flight, and so Daniel’s heartbeat began to fade slowly to a normal rhythm the farther away he got from the gate.

He had checked baggage just to make things look good, but he didn’t head for the baggage claim because he didn’t give cock-squat about was in his travelcases. Instead, he started looking for a sign bearing the symbol of a fish beside a cruciform.

I don’t really want to be here. I told Harry to get me back to Britannia—or even Gaul or France if he couldn’t manage that. But he was right; anywhere on Earth is still too close to the Vatican for my safety. So now it’s life inside a fucking dusty, cold, red ball hovering out by the damned asteroid belt. Joy of joys.

Finally, he found the sign he was looking for, and followed the prompts down one hallway and then another, until he was standing in front of a chapel door. He entered, and when he didn’t see anyone on duty, he found the door to the office of the cleric on duty, and rapped loudly on it.

About the time Daniel was ready to knock a second time, a puffy-eyed, overweight man opened the door, looking slightly confused. Daniel was tempted to ask the man if this was his natural expression or if he had just been roused from a morning nap at his desk, then thought better of it.

“Yes, my brother?” the priest asked. “The morning service is still an hour away. Do you need counseling or help with one of the terminals?”

“Vicar,” Daniel said, laying a hand on the man’s shoulder and looking at him with a weighty gaze, “I’m not a praying man. I’m a gambling man. But even I like to think I know when to stop running a table and stop pushing my luck.”

The priest frowned, confusion knotting his features. “You need counseling for a gambling problem?”

“No, vicar, I need you to call your central UFC office right now and tell them that a very well-placed person from the Vatican dearly wants to meet with someone important enough to give me a very safe room for a very long time in return for some very valuable information.”

Suddenly Daniel’s hand was resting on open air; he didn’t know a fat man could move so fast. The priest’s first couple calls from the desk-mounted linkpad gave him dead ends, but his third hit paydirt. The person on the other end apparently told the priest to hand over the receiver to Daniel, who was suitably impressed—and more than a little disquieted—to find out who that person was. The priest left the office and closed the door behind him. Daniel gave the quickest synopsis of his story he could, and then waited for five seconds that seemed to stretch on forever.

“If this is a joke,” said the voice on the other end of the call, “you had better be gone by the time my people get there. If you’re for real, stay in the priest’s office, and don’t leave even if your bladder is about to burst. We’ll buy you new trousers and a fresh set of dignity if need be.”

***

In the admin suite of Templar’s Tower in Nova York, it was a full meeting of the admin officers. All the same, only Lyseena and the steward Willem Staffordis were flesh and blood.

In the normal circular arrangement of slipchairs, Kevan, Paulo and Ather—who for all intents and purposes was filling in Maree’s spot until Lyseena could promote a new admin officer after the new year—were all there with her. But they were all holographically projected, as every one of them had been sent into the field with a holotrans. They still needed to meet once or twice today to stay on track, and using their slipchairs to gate into the office was too much time wasted, too much trouble and simply a squandering of energy.

Paulo and Kevan had grumbled about lugging the holotrans equipment with them, but Lyseena was too shaken by Maree’s betrayal to be doing a meeting over sliptrans or linkpad. She wanted to see her people’s faces and gestures. Nothing could afford to be hidden; no misinterpretations could be allowed.

“Ather, my friend, how’s your day-trip to Texas Prov?” Kevan jibed. “Enjoying nice, sunny Alamo Gulf while we make the rounds of the peacekeeping details and field marshals and the piss freezes inside our bladders?”

“OK, you got your shot, Kevan, now jettison any more crap you have in reserve. And yes, Paulo, the scowl on your face is duly noted, too,” Lyseena said. “I need both of you out there keeping the requiem on track. With Maree out rogue, I had to take two field marshals out of the mix to cover what would have been her duties out there, which means I had to give interim promotions to some captains to cover the gaps left by those field marshals, and…need I go on, gentlemen?”

“No, commander,” Kevan and Paulo both responded.

“Good. As it happens, I told Ather to lead a team out to Houston after he woke me out of a perfectly nice dream to update me on Maree. If you have problems with my decision to send him and not one of you, log your complaints with me. I can promise you I’ll give them the same consideration I gave my morning consitutional. Now, as to why I told him to get his hindquarters to the sunnier climes…”

“Prodigious as that part of my anatomy is,” Ather pointed out to his two holo-crtitics.

“…I’ll let him fill you in,” Lyseena finished, firing off a scowl in Ather’s direction for the interruption, for no other reason than to cover her smirk.

“Ah, yes,” Ather said. “As much as I’m enjoying the warmer weather now, you’ll both be happy to know it was still a fairly chilly morning here when I first arrrived, I got my boots and socks quite wet trying to get off a boat at the shoreline, and I’m sure I’ll catch a nasty cold and have to stop by a med-store later this week to get an antiviral.”

“Fantastic, Ather. You’re doing some boating and beachgoing, too,” Kevan said. “The hazard pay for that will be fantastic, I’m sure.”

“Well, Tobin Deschaine has good taste in his choices of place to sail,” Ather said.

“You found Maree’s father?” Paulo asked. “Maree, too?”

“Neither, I’m afraid,” Ather responded. “The boat was empty. Of people, that is. Signs of some kind of struggle, and some small splatters of Tobin’s blood here and there. Two somebodies were there, based on what evidence we’ve found, one of them Tobin, an hour or less before our arrival.”

“And the other person?” Kevan ventured.

“Might have been Maree. Might have been someone else connected to Secular Genesis. Those are the two best guesses so far.”

“Is that all?” Paulo asked. “If all you have is a better idea of where they are now, what’s the fanfare? They might have flown or gated almost anywhere by now. With respect, Lyseena, why are we meeting now about this? As much as I love playing with holos…”

“Because, Paulo, I want Maree, and I want you and Kevan as informed as me so that I maximize my chances of getting her,” Lyseena said, “And because there is a dead templar watch team in Houston. The stakes are getting higher.”

“I could see Maree killing a watch team while on the run,” Paulo said. “But killing her own father?”

“We actually don’t know if he’s dead or not,” Ather interrupted. “The amount of blood doesn’t suggest it, though I suppose it’s possible he met his end with something bloodless like a snapped neck and he’s somewhere at the bottom of the gulf. I give it even odds that he’s still alive.”

“Still doesn’t seem to suggest Maree,” Paulo said. “Assaulting her own father. What would be the point?”

“Actually, I’d argue it points to the other person most likely having been Maree,” Ather said. “I’ve got my eyes and ears in a lot of places now, and we’ve had some of Maree’s family to question. Our rogue princess has some daddy dramas.”

“So?” asked Kevan.

“So,” Lyseena answered for Ather. “If Tobin is still alive and on the run, we may need him as bait to get Maree good and riled and ready to bite a hook. And as soon as we are done dealing with requiems and millennials, the four of us need to find out who’s out there who knew Maree’s grandfather, since Ather assures me that’s the man she loved like a daddy—because hurting his friends may help us hurt her, and draw her out.”

(To read the next installment of this story, click here.)

For the previous installment of this story, click here. 

Or, visit the Cleansed By Fire portal page for comprehensive links to previous chapter installments and additional backstory and information about the novel.

Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 5, Blood and Tears (continued)

The captain of Scion’s Dream was doing his level best to look pleasant this morning, just as if the daywatch was going to run smooth as wispsilk—even though that he knew from an informed source that it wasn’t. Showing a scowl now might make his later performances ring false. No sooner had that thought run through his mind than his executive officer approached with a slight frown line between his eyes.

“Sir, we’re picking up a vessel on long-range scans. Looks to be coming from Mars. Some sort of podship moving at high velocity. Has to be unmanned to be moving that fast.”

“Why the concern?” Bartelle D’Onofrio asked his second-in-command.

“The podship is not only moving far faster than most express courier vessels would, but its design is a semi-stealth one. Frankly, it’s a miracle we caught it on scanners. The AI actually brought it to the scancomm team’s attention while she was doing some astrographical pattern scan updates for her nav systems,” Commander Frankes responded. Then he saw the irritated frown on his captain’s face and as Bartelle opened his mouth, the commander sped up his report. “It’s trajectory is straight for a position off the coast of Nova York, sir. No express or emergency courier vessels are expected in the Catholic Union on that course from Mars right now.”

“Can we intercept it?” Bartelle asked.

“As long as we launch within the next 15 minutes, an unmanned interceptor could get in position with an interdictor field and tractor beams and have the podship pulled out of distortion mode—and probably with zero damage—long before it reaches Earth.”

“You’re dead certain this is an unauthorized vessel looking to enter Catholic Union space?”

“AI confirms it, sir. She’s contacted all military and Vatican central systems and no one…I mean no one…is expecting this.”

“Well, if it ends up being something corporate and we twist off an executive, you’d better have all the evidence I need to show that he failed to register a courier run with Vatican Traffic Control,” Bartelle said.

“A package will be on your desk long before we snare the podship, sir.”

“Get it done, Frankes.”

Bartelle kept the scowl on his face for a few minutes longer, even though he was smiling inside. Once again, we’re right on schedule, Nazarene. The only thing that would make me feel better is knowing precisely what it is that you’re setting up Mars to take the blame for.

***

Maree Deschaine was running for her life—well, perhaps just for her freedom, but the two seemed rather synonymous right now. She was certainly glad it was winter. Because if she had been running a couple months earlier here, in what would have been the drenching mid-autumn heat of Texas Province, wearing a bounty coat, she’d be ready to collapse. She was hot enough as it was, but since a bounty coat was essentially a tricked-up trencher favored by bond hunters and contract investigators—and unlike a longcoat was only able to seal from throat to crotch—at least the bottom part of the coat was letting in some cool air. Part of her wanted to open up the torso portion for some extra ventilation, but she didn’t dare.

Seeing the tac-tanks converge on her father’s boat (no damn you he’s nothing to you now just a discarded man named Tobin Deschaine) had filled her with dread. With a templar strike team like that, they were either after Tobin alone to find out where she was, or they already suspected she had met with him and they were hunting for them both. Either way, that meant that every biometric array in the city would be on and monitored by a bloodhound AI. Normally, those arrays weren’t used, since security pylons did a superb job of keeping track of citizens through their IDentipods with a lot less data chaos. Also, constant monitoring of an entire biometric array network quite literally could bore an AI to death. But with that strike team, they clearly wanted Tobin and Maree, and that meant they would be looking for facial recognition of both of them throughout the city.

Sadly, since Maree had wanted Tobin to know exactly whom he was dealing with from the start when he came up from below-deck, her disguise was still in the daysack she had hidden near her escape transportation. And that was still a few kilometers away. If she passed by a biometric array without some kind of disguise to at least slow up her identification—or God forbid if her face was identified by an AI while she was near a security pylon, thus letting the Vatican know whose IDentipod she was now using—she was dry-humped for certain.

As she exited yet another alley and ended up in an open street, Maree realized that the luck that she had experienced in tracking Tobin down so quickly was not with her in the mad dash to get back to her daysack.

Several meters away, she saw a templar watch-truck. She knew there would be several of them somewhere relatively close to shore to monitor the strike team on Alamo Gulf, but she had hoped to avoid encountering one. Two things registered very clearly in her mind at that moment.

First, she could not allow any of the monitoring equipment on the bed of that watch-truck to be trained on her.

Second, a watchteam would have two comm-log technicians and one templar field officer. The chances that all of them would fail to notice a woman running out of an alleyway at breakneck speed—much less that they wouldn’t recognize a former admin officer who had just betrayed the templars—was about nil.

If they had been local constabulary, I might have been OK. No local police force is going to uniformly memorize a face even as important as mine, since they resented the Office Templar in many cases anyway. But every templar in the Catholic Union will have been ordered very strenuously to keep my face clearly in their memory.

Maree didn’t hesitate. As she shifted herself to run toward the watch-truck, she slipped her left hand inside the sleeve of the bounty coat—which was tricked-up even more than most thanks to its law-breaking former owner—shoving a finger into the trigger tube hidden inside and feeling the cool, oily blast of numerous high-speed microsprays from the neck of the coat, forcing dozens of nanospheres into her blood vessels. She didn’t want to use a dose of overhype, especially since there were only six of them in the coat, but she needed all the enhanced sensory and reflex responses, as well as strength, that she could muster right now. At the same time, she drew her slug pistol—a nice three-magazine job that the former owner of the bounty coat had unwillingly bequeathed to her—and thumbed it to the magazine holding the explosive rounds.

As the overhype kicked in, she quickly took inventory of the watch-truck’s crew. Both comm-log techs were outside the vehicle. One was busy monitoring the equipment. The other was looking right at her. Being templar techs and not field officers, neither had a sidearm, but both had holstered stunrods and skeinvests. In the cab of the vehicle sat the field officer, who also was looking right at her. He would be fully armed, lightly armored and combat-trained.

Unfortunately for him, he was also seated in a cramped space and as good as dead, though he did his best to reach for his sidearm and the door nonetheless.

Maree fired one round through the windshield of the truck, and it exploded just as it pierced the transplast. Given the amount of blood and bone that splattered across the remains of the windshield, it was safe to assume that the field officer was now meeting with the Heavenly Host.

She briefly considered firing on the two techs, but she was almost on top of them already and there was no telling how easily she’d be able to find more high-grade ammunition for her guns while she was dodging both the Vatican and Secular Genesis. She holstered the pistol and pounced on the tech manning the equipment, snapping her neck. Maree’s momentum carried her into a bank of equipment and that knocked the wind out of her, but only for a moment, as she was fully in the throes of the overhype now. She disentangled herself from her second templar corpse and jumped off the bed of the watch-truck to face the third and final templar.

This tech had obviously taken basic combat training more seriously than most of his peers, and must have kept up with ongoing training as well. He was ready for her, with his stunrod in hand and poised in a very effective fighting stance. The one thing he had neglected to do while caught up in the notion of an impending battle, Maree noted with some satisfaction, was to open up a channel from his linkpad to his field marshal to report that he was under attack.

Normally, Maree might not have worried about a tech, even a combat-trained one, because techs simply didn’t get much chance to use fighting skills. But then again, normally Maree would have been wearing at least light templar armor in the field instead of a mere bounty coat, and that made the stunrod-wielding tech a far greater-than-normal threat. Still, he wasn’t likely to realize her coat was anything more than a simple trencher anyway.

Maree feinted, sidestepped and let the tech swing to gauge his talent. His moves weren’t bad, which meant she had to finish this quickly. As Maree gathered herself, the tech lunged forward for another strike, aiming the stunrod square for her abdomen. She stepped into the strike and dipped her torso slightly to catch the tip of the stunrod square in the chest. Theoretically, the ceramatin plates of a bounty coat—sandwiched between polymesh, which was further sandwiched between two very stylish-looking layers of black simhide—were enough to keep the stunrod from knocking her out.

In reality, while they did indeed do just that, it still stung like hell. Not that even that pain was going to slow someone on overhype, particularly someone with hours of field combat under her belt.

Maree’s right hand disappeared into her bounty coat’s other sleeve and came out with a buzzrake firmly attached to her fist and wrist. She knocked the tech back with an open-palm left-hand thrust to his chest, then lunged with the buzzrake in her right hand. The vibroteeth array tore into the stunrod, which is exactly what Maree wanted, and sheared the weapon in half. By the time the tech realized he was no longer armed, Maree had backhanded him across the face and gotten a good grip on the back of his vest with her left hand. She shoved him to the ground, face-first into the pavement, and drove the buzzrake into the back of his neck with a quick jab that neatly severed his spinal cord from his skull.

Without another thought, she spun and began to run again, into the next alleyway.

Now all she had to do was get back to her daysack, put her disguise back on and get out of the city of Houston and, ideally, the entire Houston Parish, too. And all this before the overhype wore off in three or four hours, at which point she would begin a gradual but inevitable descent into an eight- to twelve-hour-long coma.

Just another fine morning in the brand-new life of Maree Deschaine.

***

It hadn’t been entirely unexpected that he would be scolded by the Panel of Shepherds in addition to being scolded by Amaranth, though he had hoped they might at least wait a few days. One hour into his morning meeting with the men and women who served as his advisors and as a balance against papal authority in the UFC, he was starting to look forward to death by sudden stroke.

“Peteris, we need to turn Domina xec-Academie over to the Vatican and wash our hands of her before the Popes and the Godhead declare open warfare with us,” asserted Shepherdi Leonid Brahga. “You should never have taken her in without our approval.”

Gregory leveled his gaze squarely on the man who was at least half the time a major thorn in the Peteris’ ass. Some of the other shepherds had questioned his reasons for granting Domina asylum, but so far, only Leonid had been quite so bold as to attack the decision outright.

“Approval?” Gregory said. “A decision on whether to grant sanctuary on behalf of the UFC is a papal decision. Myself or Amaranth. That is one of several items that have always been, and I presume always shall be, the purview of the Peteris or the Paulis. Or both.”

“It may be your right, but we demand that you rescind that asylum now, for all our sakes,” Leonid stated. A couple shepherds nodded in agreement but Gregory noted that most were stonefaced or assiduously avoiding either Leonid’s gaze or his own.

“We, Leonid? You may be the most vocal member of this council, but you aren’t the chair of it,” Gregory pointed out. “Rebekha, does Leonid speak for you now? Did you hand over your seat while I’ve been sparring with the Red Pope’s former steward and trying to dodge her brazen sexual advances?”

Shepherdi Rebekha Graciela chuckled and leaned back in her seat. “No, he doesn’t. But I’ve chaired this panel long enough to know that once Leonid is fired up, it’s best to let you and him pummel each other for a while before I step in. Oh, and I’m sure Domina xec-Academie’s sexual advances have been a terrible burden to you, Peteris,” she added with a wink.

Her tone turned more serious, though, as she leaned forward again and continued. “But while I may not have quite Leonid’s level of indignation, we’re all concerned about harboring someone who probably killed the Red Pope.”

“Amen to that,” Leonid said. “Peteris, I know the Paulis is against this asylum…”

“Based on what, Leonid?” Gregory countered, cutting him off. “She only just got back last night. What did you get? A few moments with her in a hallway where she wondered out loud why her husband gave an entire floor of a candlestand to one of the most notorious and twittered-about chief stewards in recent Vatican history? Amaranth is in the ‘concerned’ camp like Rebekha. That’s all. Oh, and Rebekha, of all the many things I might accuse Domina xec-Academie of right now, possibly the only one I wouldn’t would be killing Pope Tommis.”

“We cannot harbor this woman. It’s too risky,” Leonid said. “And I won’t stand for it.”

“Fine, Leonid, don’t stand for it. Would you like me to leave the room now while you call for a vote?” Gregory asked, with a note of condescension in his tone. “Do you think you can get a majority of the shepherds here right now to move on a no-confidence vote that you can take to the entire Council of Elders? And do you think you’ll get a two-thirds majority of the shepherds, pastors and chief deacons there to override my decision to grant asylum?”

Leonid glowered, but didn’t answer.

“Look, all of you,” Gregory said. “Brethren. The sudden death of the Red Pope and Domina running here to Mars to us was going to give the Vatican every reason to point a finger at us regardless. Had I turned Domina away, they simply would have accused me of ordering the murder and then abandoning my puppet. The Vatican has always looked for excuses to initiate hostilities against us, and this was going to end up being one of those excuses regardless. Having Domina in our hands at least gives us a chance of convincing her to give us what we need to discredit the Vatican when they do start getting ornery with us.”

“I’m inclined to agree with you, Peteris, on a personal basis,” Rebekha responded. “But when the Vatican gets ‘ornery’ with us, people often start to get killed or rounded up. Our people. Our clerics. We can’t just bend over for the Vatican, but we can’t afford to spit in their faces, either.”

“I agree, with you, Rebekha,” Gregory said. “So take the riot guns off of you and everyone else and put a sniper sight on me. Issue a report that the Panel of Shepherds has ‘grave reservations’ about my decision to grant asylum and invite the Vatican to negotiate with all of you on the appointment of a neutral investigator to question Domina. The Popes are neck-deep in carrying out a Grand Requiem and ringing in the new millennium as if it were theirs alone. It will take them days to get started on the process.”

“And even if they manage to get their heads out of their nether regions long enough to do it quickly, I will conveniently be a jag-ass about giving them access to my guest, while all of you continue to publicly wring your hands over my domineering nature,” he continued with an amused snort. “By the time this is all said and done, we will have had at least a couple weeks to keep picking at Domina for information and if I don’t have something from her by then, especially now that my wife is back in-planet, it’s a lost cause. At that point, we can revisit the idea of tossing Domina out on her hindquarters.”

Rebekha looked around the table for confirmation, and got mostly nods. “Agreed, Peteris. We will forthwith redirect all the attorneys, justicars, mediators, reporters and irritated diplomats to you. I hope you’re wearing body armor these days, because some of them may end up being assassins.”

Gregory smiled thinly. “If any of them are, I’m sure Leonid will be the first to weep over my corpse.”

(To read the next installment of this story, click here.)

For the previous installment of this story, click here. 

Or, visit the Cleansed By Fire portal page for comprehensive links to previous chapter installments and additional backstory and information about the novel.

Cleansed by Fire

Chapter 5, Blood and Tears

Tobin Deschaine had taken to sailing almost nonstop in the years after he retired from his templar duties, all the better to avoid having to run into or deal with anyone from his past in law enforcement—not that he had spent much time fraternizing with childhood friends or associates in the Secular Genesis movement, either, except for a select few he met with a couple times a year.

He had often thought about simply heading out to sea for Europa or Oceana, but the chances of being caught trying to flee the Catholic Union were always too high. He had avoided exposure all those years as a templar field officer and then a quiet retiree to put Maree into position in the templars, and leaving the Union would have drawn attention to her immediately.

Not that it mattered much now. He wasn’t of any particular use to Secular Genesis himself anymore, and now his daughter was on the run. Ever since he had received a message yesterday about the events in Astoria, he had fully expected to come up from below-decks and see some armed someone waiting for him, either from the rebel movement or the templars.

What surprised him this morning wasn’t that his expectation had come true but that it was Maree standing there with the gun. But Tobin hardly missed a beat. “Tell me, Maree, was it Michelle or Cowen you worked over to find out where I’ve been sailing?”

“Both,” she said simply.

“Might I ask if you let them live?”

Maree ignored that question. “Dad, I need you to point me in the most promising direction to find Stavin.”

“Why? They won’t take you back. You’re too toxic now. Why did you do it, Maree?”

“Secular Genesis was just using me—and passively at that. Throwing away all the hard work you and Grandfather laid out to get me where I was. And they don’t even stand for what they used to. I was serving a petty, vindictive bunch of children. But I guess I shouldn’t expect you to take my side over The Cause.”

“No, Maree. Not that. The murders of your cousins and their kids.”

“I did what I had to and I tried to keep them away from it. And incidentally, I don’t want to know where Stavin is so I can beg my way back in like you think…”

“…Burning them like that…”

Maree paused, realizing they were having two different conversations.

“What? What do you mean? You think…” she sputtered.

“Burning them like Salem witches. You should have joined the Office Inquisitorial instead of the templars. What did they know? What did they see that made you do that to them?”

“Stavin fucking burned them! Not me. It’s my fault they’re dead, but precious Stavin put them to the torch, Father.” She had fully expected that the Office Templar and the media might jump to a conclusion that she had killed family to cover something up, but her own father?

“You expect me to…”

“Stavin, Daddy. Stavin! I broke ranks and challenged him. He told me he’d burn them if I didn’t sit pretty in the tower and play like a templar Rapunzel. I didn’t do what he said and it wasn’t enough to hunt me down. He damn well kept his word and burned them. He would have burned all of them if I hadn’t arranged for them to be rounded up for questioning.”

“That’s…How…Why…” Tobin seemed to be deflating before his daughter’s eyes as he tried to reconcile the conflicting roles in his life; she hated him for it because it was something Grandfather never would have done. His anger at her had turned into confusion instead of an epiphany. But most horrifying to Maree was when she saw a calm acceptance rise to the surface, watched him straighten up and square his shoulders again, and heard him say: “It’s horrible. But not so unexpected. You backed him into a corner. He can’t make a threat like that and then back down. The cause first, Maree! The price is too high. A few lives are nothing. Not even kin. But still, those are lives that are on your head.”

The five blackened corpses inside Maree’s head seemed to be on board for that final accusation, but not much else that her father had said. The blood vessels in her scalp were thrumming like quad-drums. Grandfather knew how to separate his personal life from his life in Secular Genesis; my father gave up one for the other.

“Tell me, Dad, when exactly did you stop being Grandfather’s son and start being a tripslut for the movement?” Maree spat. “He always told us there would be innocent deaths. He never gave us noble fairy tales. He made sure we understood we would do horrible things for a larger purpose. But do you think Grandfather or any of those fellow founding conspirators he called friends would have threatened the family of a member of the movement, much less actually kill those people simply out of spite? Would he have turned the terror against his own?”

“Times have changed. The stakes are…”

“The stakes have been the same for the past 300 years or more. The same. Secular Genesis is just the latest in a long line of rebellions. Maybe it’s finally the one that will succeed. Trouble is, the people in charge of it now just want to put a new tyranny in place. A secular one. Because we all know that secular evil is so much better than evil in the name of God.”

“Maree, don’t ask me to…”

“I’m not asking you to do anything, Tobin Deschaine,” Maree said icily, “except to give me a lead on Stavin as one last show of respect to your dead parents, especially your father; your dead wife; and me, the woman who used to be your only daughter.” She disengaged the safety on her weapon. “A few collateral casualties are always to be expected, Tobin. You won’t be the first or the last. And Secular Genesis will go on just fine without Stavin. You can console yourself with that. I won’t demand any more of you than how to find him.”

***

More than an hour later, three people watched from the shore of Outer Houston, in three entirely different places—each with very personal emotional investments—as three tac-tanks bearing the insignia of the UPA’s Office Templar dropped from the sky and set themselves down in hover mode, lightly churning the otherwise calm early-morning waters of Alamo Gulf, as they surrounded Tobin Deschaine’s modest yacht. Moments later, several lightly armored templars boarded the ship.

The owner of one of those intrested sets of eyes on shore remained unsmiling, but very satisfied at the spectacle. Cautiously hopeful.

The owners of the other two sets of eyes, for different reasons—but at almost exactly the same moment—simply said, “Shit” and began to run.

***

As Peteris of the UFC, Gregory Dyson was accustomed to waking up at his own pace in the morning—except when Amaranth was in-planet. This morning was no different in that regard, albeit with some extra-hard jamming of fingers into his ribcage.

“Amaranth, I am certain the wakechime I set isn’t to go off for at least 10 more minutes,” he mumbled as he adopted a fetal position and attempted to put as many pillows as possible between him and his tormentor.

Not that it made any difference. She was poking him even harder through the pillows.

“Actually, it won’t go off for another 30 minutes, Greg, but get your flat ass out of bed now anyway. I’m off soon to the medtechs to get my old self back. I know I won’t be able to get everything I need from you in terms of debriefing until later today but give me the high points now.”

Gregory groaned and heaved the two largest and densest pillows at his wife’s head. After rubbing a bit of sleep from his eyes, he yawned and looked at her with only half-feigned distaste. “It’s not fair that you know martial arts and I don’t. Because I ought to give you a good thrashing for denying me 30 minutes of sleep.”

“Out with it, Greg. I have to leave in a few minutes.”

“Well, for a start, Isis is pregnant. With a boy. Though she hasn’t told Mahbi yet that it is, since he wants to be surprised at what parts his first child will have.”

Amaranth’s face broke out in a huge smile and a couple small tears welled up in the corners of her topaz eyes. “Our first grandson. Oh, his cousins will be waiting to put their old dresses on him right away, I know it! Have you arranged for all our children to get together here for a little celebration?”

“Yes. Tentatively anyway. I reached Darlah, Rubi and Glenn all by late yesterday. I’ve left notes on a flexsheet on your desk.”

“And Gavin?”

Gregory was silent.

“Greg. Gavin is our son. Our eldest child. I assume you at least told him. I don’t expect you to invite him.”

“Gavin is our son,” Gregory repeated. “Yes. That’s true. But he isn’t family. He chose his family when he took vows to the Vatican Red. He can find out from someone else. You. One of our girls. Glenn. I don’t care. But it won’t be me.”

“Greg…”

“Amaranth. I’m going to be a grandfather again. You’re back home alive and in one piece, even if you are temporarily discolored and sporting a hideous nose. Please. Don’t ruin my mood.”

The Paulis of the UFC nodded her head slightly and put her hands palm-out in a gesture of surrender. Then she frowned. “Gregory, as wonderful as that news is, I can’t help but notice you deflected my original aim. You know what I was asking about when I woke you up. The lethal tart you’ve given such generous accomodations to.”

Rolling his eyes, Gregory responded, “Generosity was hardly my aim. Domina came to trade information to me for asylum. She confirmed that Pope Tommis didn’t die naturally. She insists she had nothing to do with killing him—which, incidentally, I think might be the truth. She told me that Tommis hadn’t had his cognos uploaded to the Godhead the last two scheduled times and left me with the distinct impression that he had to die before the public upload scheduled for the Fourth Millennial Celebration. Which makes one or both of the other popes the prime suspects in my mind.”

“She tell you anything else?”

“Not really, no.”

“And that’s worth giving her an entire floor of Candlestand 33?”

“Amaranth. I got what information I did by granting her asylum. But she’s holding something back. A lot of something. I’m sure of it. By being here, she already makes it look like we had something to do with the Red Pope’s death. I need her to give up the rest of what she knows.”

“And letting her have an entire floor of a candlestand is your way of applying pressure? Coercion via coddling? If you were an inquisitor of the Black they’d drum you out of the order.”

Gregory let out a short growl. “Ammie. She’s a political and religious refugee. I’ve taken her in. Promised her asylum. Yet I am summarily denying her freedom of movement on Mars. If I give her anything less than the entire floor of a candlestand, it will look like I am keeping her prisoner instead of keeping her safe. Do you really want MarsGov to start wondering if they should reconsider our charter?”

Amaranth closed her eyes and sighed. “Point taken. But this bitch has been indirectly or directly responsible for a lot of the shit I’ve stepped in for the past six years when I go out on the wander. If I find out she gave you any sugar to get those accommodations, you’re going to be celibate for a long while. So, when do I get to see the vids?”

“Vids?” Gregory’s face was awash in confusion.

“Security vids. Footage of what she’s been up to. Covert crap.”

“Amaranth, I don’t have any vids on her except what monitors the common halls and every potential way off the floor.”

The look in Amaranth’s eyes precluded the need to swear or even say “What?” Her displeasure was clear.

“What kind of man do you think I am? I’m going to put spy-eyes or spyflies in her refresher? Her bedroom? Or anywhere else? Just what do you think I’m into?” He winked.

His attempt to lighten the mood worked, but not as well as he had hoped. “I know precisely what deviant tastes you have in your vid viewing—and what you like to record of our activities, Gregory,” she said with some good humor, but then the razor edge returned to her voice suddenly, “but what leave did you take of your senses to leave her unmonitored?”

“The entire floor is monitored. And guarded. Just not her movements in her private areas. I’m interested in her staying put, not recording her life. And frankly, if I did, I suspect any vids of you would have some serious competition.”

“Don’t try to get me in pleasant humor again, Gregory. This is deadly serious. That woman is as lethal as a wyvern, no matter what she looks like or how much she tries to lure you out of your trousers. You’re an idiot for not having cams on her every moment.”

“MarsGov would have our asses if they found out, Amaranth. That’s clear violation of the Conventions of Asylum and you know it. Unless I’m ready and willing to make a case that she should be a prisoner—and then we might lose her to MarsGov—I can’t screw with that kind of thing.”

“Damn the Conventions, Gregory!”

“You can play fast and loose sometimes in the field, Amaranth. You’re the Paulis. It’s your job. I’m the Peteris, and I have to hold shit down here and be a good diplomat, theologian and politician. This isn’t a rule I’m willing to break right now.”

Amaranth scowled as she put on her daycloak and prepared to leave for her appointment with the medtechs. “This will be continued, Greg. Your dedication to rules of good conduct could get you killed.”

“Domina is hoping so, I’m sure,” Gregory said, blowing a kiss to his wife as he headed to the refresher to clean up.

(To read part 23 of this story, click here.)