Five Empires: An Epic Space Opera Page 28

  “Please,” he said, ushering them back the way they had come. Jake didn’t like having his back turned to this man but he didn’t have a choice.

  Thankfully their rooms were located on the same level. Jake nodded for Mandie to take the first room, his look suggesting that he would join her at the first available opportunity. His own room, or ‘cell’ as the monks called them, was identical. A simple, low-slung cot and a small, rough-hewn table. Jake sniffed at the oil in the emitter on the table. Stale and rank - probably hadn’t been changed for years.

  “Get some rest,” Van said by the door. “Getting back down the mountain won’t be easy.”

  A none-too-subtle message. When the monk had gone Jake lay back on the cot and sighed.

  Truth be told, the meeting with Reed had gone exactly as he’d anticipated. A civil rebuff, but a rebuff nonetheless. Nostromic monks were famed across the galaxy for their stubbornness. Jake was hardly going to be able to waltz in unannounced and liberate Fusar.

  And what to make of these monks? Considering their remote location and lack of technology, Jake had expected a certain level of rugged eccentricity. What he hadn’t counted on was the air of depravity. A shadow hung over this place and it clawed at the edges of his finely-tuned consciousness. There was a dark, dark underbelly here and if it could fill a hardened soul like him with such dread, he could only imagine what it was doing to Mandie.

  He wasted no time in visiting his human companion. Mandie was huddled low against the wall between the cot and the table.

  “Can you feel it?” she said. “I feel like this place is crushing me.”

  “I feel it,” Jake said, kneeling and wrapping his arms around her. He felt as helpless and as vulnerable as she did. The pair sat silently against the wall for a long time.

  “Every fiber of my being wants to run,” Mandie said. “Maybe I’m just exhausted.”

  “Your instincts are working just fine,” Jake said.

  The duellist laid a hand on Mandie’s thigh, enjoying the warmth there.

  “We need to stick together,” he said finally. “Find Fusar, get the hell out of here. Simple.”

  Mandie smiled at the dry humor.

  “Hold me again,” she ordered. Jake did his best to oblige.

  Later, the pair fell asleep together on the cot, both waking regularly throughout the night at odd sounds that would occasionally reverberate through the old building.

  39

  Morning came with the toll of a mournful bell. Jake figured it must be a call to dawn prayer. He stood and stretched, lamenting another rough night’s sleep. He hated the idea of being below his best in the next twenty-four hours. Mandie stirred and forced herself to an upright position.

  “Keep the door shut and your gun ready,” Jake said, stepping across the threshold. “I’ll be back soon.”

  The duellist made his way toward the stairs. Along the way he got several glimpses into the neighboring cells. Some of these monks were quite young and kept themselves in prime shape. Two of the dedicates Jake saw were doing chin ups over a steel pipe.

  Despite their good physical condition, slug-shaped lesions were evident on their torsos. More than one man looked up at Jake with outright hostility. It looked as though the Abbot’s warning had substance - visitors weren’t welcome here. He quickened his step as he took to the stairs.

  It wasn’t particularly difficult to find the ground level mess hall. Jake followed a meaty waft and eventually found himself in a large chamber dominated by a circular hearth. A bubbling cauldron hung suspended over the hot coals. Since there was no one in the room, Jake took a couple of bowls and helped himself. The stew looked decent enough, rich and hearty.

  “Ah, but you haven’t said your prayers first,” said a familiar voice by the door. It was Van, leaning casually against the door frame.

  “I apologize,” Jake muttered, immediately thinking of Mandie. “We’ve come a long way and we’re hungry.”

  “Of course,” Van said agreeably, ushering the duellist forward. “Come. The forest is so inviting this time of day. You can leave those on the table.”

  Jake blinked, knowing he had no choice. This Van character was going to lay things out once and for all. Jake only wished he could do it on a full stomach. He followed the monk out into the courtyard.

  Several monks were already working on the mosaic. They looked up at Jake with blank, hollow eyes. Even in the gathering light their pupils were the size of dinner plates. Feeling anxious now, Jake followed Van into the darkness of an arched tunnel under the northern wing.

  The monk didn’t say a word in the dank passage. Jake half expected him to shiv him in the liver or something. By the time they reached daylight again, his nerves were teetering. The duellist couldn’t remember feeling so vulnerable in his life. It was as if Van, perhaps the valley itself, was peeling him away layer by layer.

  One thing was certain - this would be his last great adventure. He’d always told himself that when he finally lost his nerve he would give up his life of nomadic violence. Give it all up for a vineyard on the slopes of the Panffe Mountains on Verdano III.

  That was what awaited him when he finally extracted himself from this mess. He would deliver Fusar to her people and have her go find the Fourth Catalyst. At that moment, watching Van head into the dappled shade of the coriolis forest, he doubted he had the energy to complete his quest. Strangely enough, the realization calmed his nerves.

  “The mind is a flower, brother,” Van said, pausing on one of the strange soil terraces.

  “The mind is a flower,” Jake grumbled, hating the traditional Nostromic exchange.

  Van turned his intense gaze on the duellist, his eyes radiating intelligence and power.

  “Do you really believe that, Jake?” he asked. The question was innocent enough but Jake felt guilt worming its way into his guts.

  “A mature, seasoned duellist comes wandering into our peaceful valley,” Van went on. “A man without a tandem. A man who, at some point, has liberated himself from his wires.”

  Jake shrugged. He didn’t see any point in contradicting the monk. Van was referring to the circuitry that had been woven into his nostrils. The link that once allowed him to work cohesively with his cybomancer brother, Fashon. The bond that he had brutally severed, never looking back.

  “I admire a man who can do that,” Van said candidly. “You won’t find any of those constricting, suffocating neural bonds here.”

  Of course, Van was right. These monks were effectively running counter to everything mainstream Nostroma society valued.

  “Ajon Prime wouldn’t approve,” Jake said with a wry smile, hoping to foster some common ground with the feral monk.

  “No,” Van said, beaming. “He’s too busy selling his people into slavery.”

  Jake blinked. This monk, at least, followed the news casts and internal bulletins. Jake wasn’t surprised that a man radiating such authority was inclined to stay abreast of current affairs.

  “Yeah, well, some of us aren’t into the Cava05,” Jake said. “Ajon Prime is making a fatal mistake.”

  “You think, brother?” Van asked in mock surprise. “Where does that leave men like us, I wonder?”

  Jake took a moment to collect his thoughts. He was stepping through a minefield - the wrong answer would get him killed. He needed more information. It was time to turn the tables on this monk.

  “We’re all branches on the same tree,” Jake said. “Do you think Ajon Prime will leave this monastery alone?”

  “We’ve been alone for decades,” Van spat. “Not one bishop has come to visit us. I think we’ve earned the right to chart our own course.”

  Jake looked at the muscular monk through slitted eyes.

  “This is a beautiful place,” he said, changing tack. “I can see why you keep it a secret.”

  He ambled further south, climbing several terraces. Van followed, perhaps annoyed that he’d lost his guest’s undivided attention.

 
“The Church of the Mind,” the monk said eventually. “It’s a wondrous thing.”

  The pair had reverted to small talk again. Jake needed to find another angle of attack. Following a barely discernible track, Jake made his way through a shrubby understorey and found himself at the lip of a sheer cliff face. Far below him the plain stretched to the horizon. A dark smear several miles to the southeast might have even been the crashed corvette.

  Van appeared beside him, as silent as the gentlest of breezes. He placed one foot on a granite boulder and considered the hazy, dust-laden landscape.

  “What if I told you we’ve achieved what we set out to do?” Van asked. “Real communion between men?”

  Jake considered this. Was Van referring to homosexuality? He didn’t think so - that activity would’ve been reasonably common among monastic orders. The duellist tried to recall the finer points of Nostromic Doctrine. Austere monasteries like Fidelis Prime were devoted to the unforced, organic exploration of the relatively untapped potential of the sentient brain.

  The neural laboratories in the Caravan of Light were bound by deadlines and rigid scientific methods. The sterile labs produced all the sympathetic circuitry that tandems used. Or in Jake’s case, abused. The monasteries were responsible for more abstract, philosophical inquiry. More than one cornerstone of Nostromic research had emerged from deep within some far-flung monastic order.

  There were no guiding principles for Nostromic monasteries - each one retained its own idiosyncratic method of operation. If Van was telling the truth, and his order had indeed achieved something significant, then Ajon Prime and the Caravan of Light would be most interested.

  And yet there was something broken here. Normally a monastery with valuable data would apply for some kind of research recognition and a lab team would be dispatched to the planet. But there was nothing to suggest that Van, or the Abbot for that matter, wanted that to happen.

  “I have no reason to doubt you,” Jake murmured. “And I don’t want any trouble. With your blessing I’d like to collect the Jaj and be on my way.”

  Van’s flinty, hopeful expression clouded over. Jake thought the man was about to scowl but a smile appeared despite the odds.

  “Of course,” he said amiably. “I didn’t expect you to understand right away. I apologize if things don’t turn out the way you wanted, but breaking folks in is always hard.”

  Jake felt a sudden chill as Van began heading back to the monastery.

  “Where are you keeping the girl?” Jake called after him, trying to keep the panic from his voice.

  “Where she needs to be,” came the wholly unsatisfying answer. Jake struck a nearby tree trunk with a closed fist, skinning his knuckles. The situation was probably worse than he had anticipated - these monks appeared to be on a downward spiral of destruction, and Fusar was hopelessly tangled in their foul web.

  His heart pounding, Jake resisted the urge to rush back to Mandie. The mercenary was no fool and would be able to handle herself for the time being. In theory, her small room was eminently defendable, at least for a short period.

  Besides, Jake got the impression that Van had been sizing him up, and would now be planning his next move. For the moment, at least, the monk was intent on recruiting the duellist into whatever dubious scheme he had going.

  That bought Jake a little time. Twelve hours might even be enough to locate Fusar. Of course, the problem of escaping the valley was yet to be solved. All he could do was address that obstacle when it came. Feeling his anger subsiding, Jake headed back the way he had come.

  A chorus of dusky yellow birds accompanied him through the otherwise silent coriolis pine. The bright morning was breathlessly still, almost seducing him into a dull lethargy. He knew that losing his focus now, even temporarily, might cost him his life. The implications for Fusar, and by extension the galaxy at large, didn’t bear thinking about.

  Jake selected a path that wound its way to the east of the monastery. Here a babbling stream cut deep into the soft soil. Jake cupped his hands and took several draughts of the pristine mountain water, immediately refreshed. The monastery’s eastern wall rose several yards beyond the stream.

  A large water wheel churned through a stream-fed pond further to the north. Jake suspected the wheel powered a primitive flour mill or buttery. A simple barn stood on the east side of the brook. Several species of partridge flapped at Jake’s ankles and he saw a clutch of hoofed animals in the shrubby undergrowth.

  The monks were clearly adept at animal husbandry, no small task in an isolated valley without recourse to goods and materials.

  As Jake rounded a bend in the stream he came across several monks bathing in the cold water. Some were slapping their grey robes against the rocks on the bank. Sensing hostile eyes, Jake pressed on. Further up the stream it narrowed, allowing Jake to leap across to the monastery side.

  A heavy wooden door was set into the base of a towering belfry. He shoved the door open and began climbing a spiral stone stairwell. Around halfway up he almost tripped over a monk huddled against the wall, looking through a small window.

  The man was relatively short for a Nostroma, and had a quiet, reserved air. He was using a light pen to sketch a holograph of the forest outside. The artistry was solid enough, but what struck Jake was the technical accuracy. The man seemed particularly interested in the terraced soil profile of the valley, marking the exact dimensions of each step in his diagram.

  “I’ve never seen that before,” Jake said. The monk nodded nervously. Jake wondered if Van had already forbidden the other monks from talking to him.

  “That’s because those terraces don’t exist anywhere else,” he said eventually.

  Jake thrust his hand out, sensing an opportunity to acquire information.

  “Jake Le Sondre.”

  “Denholm,” said the monk bashfully.

  “You seem to know about the ecology of this place,” Jake observed hopefully. “What do you think caused those terraces?”

  Denholm seemed to shrink within himself, recoiling from the question.

  “Only that they’re anomalous to the region,” he said carefully.

  Jake raised his eyebrow, hoping for a crumb or two. If the monks were going to raise a wall around Fusar, the best he could do for now was gather as much contextual data as possible. Besides, he could tell this monk was passionate about his work. These guys always talked.

  “You’ll have noticed the protected geography of the valley,” Denholm said. “Unless I’m wrong, the ecology hasn’t changed for more than fifty thousand years.”

  Jake nodded. “Ancient flora and fauna?”

  Denholm bowed his head, looking at Jake carefully. Was there a link between the valley and the monks? If Jake could find some way of upsetting that balance, he might get an opportunity to liberate Fusar. At this stage it was a hazy concept - he needed more information. He decided to take a risk.

  “What’s happening here, Denholm?” he asked. “Surely you don’t condone the imprisonment of an innocent Jaj girl.”

  Denholm’s gaze was almost wistful as he looked out at the sun-drenched valley.

  “In a former life I was an ecologist for Ajon Prime,” he said. “I traveled nineteen systems in all, documenting broad scale biome types along Cavan rim. I was captured by a simian patrol and tortured for several days. Maybe weeks.”

  Denholm’s eyes were glassy with resignation. “The ecologist in me sees a girl who serves a useful function in this particular ecosystem. The monk in me sees a hundred men creating something truly profound. Leave now, Le Sondre. Leave before you are torn limb from limb.”

  Jake straightened, eyes locked on the defiant ecologist.

  “You’re a disgrace to your profession,” he said. “When the time comes, I’ll come looking for you.”

  “I’m not an ecologist any more,” Denholm called as Jake raced up the stairwell. “I’m a monk of Fidelis Prime …”

  Jake didn’t stop until he reached the top. Pan
ting, he toggled his wrist pad, trying to reach Fusar. As expected, his probing link fizzed out - the monks almost certainly had a local scrambler in play.

  That he’d been able to communicate with Fusar at all was a minor miracle. Long range communications via exchange satellite was a loophole Fusar had taken advantage of. But that didn’t help him now. He headed down an empty, silent corridor where the inky shadow was broken by intermittent shafts of sunlight. Voices from the courtyard drew his attention - that didn’t sound like monks.

  His body tensing, Jake looked down through a window and saw a clutch of new arrivals talking to Van.

  Nobblar was there. Basko by his shoulder. They both looked a little worse for wear. Beyond them, at the rear of the group, was a man that made Jake’s skin crawl. His brother Fashon stood leaning against a sandstone pillar with an air of mild disdain. The tight ball of anxiety in Jake’s chest became malignant.

  He might’ve guessed his brother would be vindictive enough to follow his trail. It wasn’t enough that Jake had ripped away his sympathetic circuitry - Fashon would demand to know why. The psychopath would happily kill him if the answer wasn’t satisfactory. To engage in any kind of discussion would be like entering a thick, lethal swamp.

  The man standing beside Fashon had a shock of orange hair and a smug expression. Jake’s rapid assessment pegged Ginger Boy as a duellist and Fashon’s new play thing.

  To Ginger Boy’s left stood two women that Jake knew intimately. The tall one was a cybomancer and Jake’s former lover - Sweet Jean was her name. She was broad-shouldered and muscular, with a broken, scarred face. Her short hair was blond and lank.

  The duellist in this dreaded tandem was Jake’s sister Verity. Her jet black hair curled all the way to her lower back. Folks said she was pretty in a luscious way, and Jake supposed she had a certain allure. Her large brown eyes were devastatingly expressive when she allowed them to be. Right now she was looking intently at Van in that faintly expectant way of hers.

  The tattooed monk was gesturing amiably, eyes twinkling with mirth. Jake didn’t doubt he was having the time of his life. Of course, none of the tandems had much chance of leaving the valley alive. Under the eaves of the first floor, several monks looked on with dull eyes. Troops that Van could call on if needed.