The Blood Solution (Approaching Infinity Book 3) (16 page)

As the windram drew closer, the northerners continued to stare and simply stepped aside, as the dead soldiers had, to make a path for the boat that led directly to the steps at the base of the tower. Raus moved them cautiously along the way opened up by the silent men and women. Their silence and their stillness were disconcerting. For moments at time it was easy to forget that they were people who’d shown signs of life—albeit subdued signs of life—mere moments ago, and not simply part of the landscape, trees for instance, or statues at best.

From within the tower, a lone Sarsan emerged. He walked down the steps and with a purpose so clearly born of independent thought, that the otherwise simple act stood out starkly when compared to the strange hive-mind behavior of the masses. He was big, too. At least as big as Raus was before going Dark, which is to say that he stood a full head taller than the next biggest Sarsan among the thousands that surrounded the tower. He wore the armored clothing and a broad blade fixed to his left hip. He held the pommel with his left hand and brushed thin brown hair from his brow with the other as he descended the stairs. He had the clear air of authority about him, which Jav and Raus acknowledged with a look, both reassured by a return to normal logic and predictability.

“Let’s get this started, shall we?”

“By all means, let’s,” Jav said.

Raus flipped a thumb control on the right handlebar, prompting the prow of the windram to hum and vibrate softly. The hum built to a high-pitched tone that seemed to waver in and out of the audible range. Raus checked a gauge and raised his eyes to the Sarsan, now at he foot of the steps. He adjusted the thumb control and pulled a trigger on the underside of the handlebar with his index finger. The forward spar crackled with spark-light dancing down its length, giving birth to three trunks of lightning. The trunks jetted out to combine, separate, and combine again before hitting their target.

But the man at the stair raised a hand and drank in harmlessly with his palm what should have cooked him inside out in an instant. He continued forward, his pace and composure completely unaltered.

Jav jerked his head back unconsciously. “Okay,” he said.

Raus uttered a long sigh.

Skeletons and corpses were now walking among the idle Sarsans, responding to the will of their respective masters, saturating the throng with their own numbers. Raus set the windram down about a hundred meters from the man coming to greet them. He and Jav leapt over the gunwale to the well-trampled snow below.

The big Sarsan was hailing them with the hand he’d used to thwart he Lightning Gun. “Hello!” he called. “Hello! This is a surprise. And a good one, too, I must say.”

Raus cocked his head, thoroughly confused by the man’s almost jovial manner. “I think you misunderstand, sir,” he said. “We meant—and
mean
—to kill you. All of you. You’ll forgive us if our attempt came off as a gift of friendship from distant lands.”

“Oh, no, Mr. Kapler—it
is
Mr. Kapler, isn’t it? Only a descendant of Jorston Kapler would have the means to come here, across the sea, over the mountains, through the ice and snow, and then set that old relic to rights. You are a Kapler, are you not?”

“I am. Jorston Kapler was my father.”

“Was he now? How many generations, I wonder. None? A hundred? We shall see soon enough.”

“Who are you?” Raus said, fairly spitting rancor.

“I am Thars Kohanic,” he answered, bowing theatrically.

Raus looked at the man before him with narrowed eyes. “Thars Kohanic? That name sounds familiar.”

“It should,” Kohanic said, wearing an enigmatic smile. “For I am he, first officer of the Bright Sarsastra.” He indicated the tower at his back. “Alas, this is not the skin I wore when we arrived, but it is of my own descent.

“You appear to know little of your own heritage, Mr. Kapler. It is unfortunate that you will be accountable for Jorston Kapler’s crimes, but we are a people who cannot forget.”

Raus shook his head noncommittally, not understanding Kohanic’s meaning.

Jav looked up at his big companion, then back at Kohanic. He was tired of all the strangeness and intrigue. He wanted to finish this as cleanly and efficiently as possible and the less he knew about Thars Kohanic, the less his conscience would bother him. It was, perhaps, childish, an emotional escape of sorts, but too many things niggled at him, and a nasty variety of fatalism growing in the back of his mind needed to be exorcised.

In a flash of motion, Jav occupied the place Kohanic had stood, his hands poised before him, one over the other in the distinctive pose that marked the Kaiser Claw. He dropped his hands and examined them. Something unseen had tried to prevent him from taking Kohanic’s head.

The northerner was stumbling back several paces, reaching for his head, now thrown back from his broken neck like the cast-off hood of a cloak. The skin at the base of his throat had ripped, revealing the white of vertebra nestled in a wet, red mass of muscle. Blood pumped copiously from buried vessels, spilling all down Kohanic’s front, staining his armored clothes and filling the area around him with rising steam.

Jav advanced no further. He and Raus were both curious to see if Kohanic would simply fall over dead and inert, or if they would continue their interaction with ghosts. For a moment, Kohanic blurred before their eyes, as if there were several of him aligning to make him real. He came back into focus, gained sturdy footing, and put his head back where it was supposed to go, adjusting it so that it sat as best as it could, though it listed to his right, unable to sit properly upon the spine. Blood sputtered messily from Kohanic’s lips before he could form proper words again.

“That was impolite,” Kohanic said, the words gurgling wetly and creating thin red bubbles at his throat where the ripped folds of skin overlapped.

Jav regarded Raus who had nothing to offer in the way of explanation. As Jav turned back to face Kohanic, he became aware of a white shape passing him. Kohanic raised his hand and seemed to rob the ghost of its unnatural life, causing it to disappear. Behind Kohanic, from the steps emerged five more Sarsans dressed and armed just as he was. Two of them were women, all of them looked angry. Kohanic looked at Jav with strangely hollow, colorless eyes. He opened his mouth, but instead of words, an unintelligible sound poured out from between blood-sticky lips.

For a moment, Jav merely stared, wondering what the action might signify. He had an answer—of sorts—almost immediately.

The sound in his head exploded with physical violence. Beyond deafening, beyond merely painful, it was a sense and sanity shattering onslaught that dropped him to his knees. He clutched at his head with both hands, but just as quickly as it came on, it ceased, leaving him panting and—for the first time in a long time—afraid.

A voice inside his head was echoing over and over again
Anis Lausden,
and he was stricken with the sudden fear that he would never see her again. Anis. It was Anis he’d been trying to remember since before he and Raus left the Palace, but as the thought crystallized, it turned to mist, the way most dreams do on waking. Laughter seemed to tinkle inside his head from various corners of his brain. Some part of him, strangely cold and detached, knew the truth, that he was forgetting Anis, just as he had forgotten Jennifer. Would he also forget Mai? Black rage began to seep into Jav then. It was the start of a process that would continue for years to come. He was aware of losing something vital to him, but he could not get his head around exactly what it was.

“You know yourself as
Holson
now?” Kohanic was saying. “So many people are disappointed in you. Allow me to explain our case against the Kaplers, and then, by all means, let us get to the business you’ve come here for.”

A spectral machine was rising from the ground just before Kohanic. Seven bulbous nodules, like vague caricatures of human torsos were fixed to a central pylon, overlapping each other like thick leaves, pointing upwards, with the seventh forming a gently twisting, pointed spire. Kohanic still held something from the departed ghost in his right hand and began working it into one of the nodules.

Raus touched the newly made scar that decorated his cheek. “Blood,” he whispered unconsciously.

“This desolate rock isn’t Sarsa, Mr. Kapler. Oh, and I see that you are in fact
the
Jorston Kapler’s son. The stronger bioelectric field will always overwrite the seed’s natural imprint. All the better. In any case, I suppose it doesn’t matter what you call this place. We have made it into and kept it a paradise, in spite of what your father did.”

“What did my father
do
? And who or what are you? Thars Kohanic is a name that shows up in my father’s records dating back. . .” Raus paused.

“Yes?” Kohanic said. “Dating back how far? Mr. Kapler, your father would have had you believe that all our forays into the south were raids, that we sought to conquer.”

“Weren’t they? Didn’t you?”

Kohanic shook his head, which shifted distractingly on his neck, one slippery end against the other.

“No. We have everything that we need here. Beneath this valley, hidden within the hearts of these mountain ranges and preserved by the cold are vast caverns lined with crystals, natural batteries which we’ve used to house the bioelectric fields of the dead. Within this network of crystals, the real Sarsa—a paradise—has been reproduced and none are turned away from its warm, sun-bright meadows. We live on in death, free to pursue anything our imaginations allow, fettered only by the limits we impose upon ourselves.

“The crash took much from us, perhaps more even than the loss of our beloved home world. This was never our intended destination, but I have done my best in the captain’s place—and with ample help—to see that we did not perish as a race.

“Of the original crew, seven of us—officers—were subjected to a process co-developed by Acston Mosario and your father. Our bioelectric fields were enhanced, made independent and immortal, able to pass to and fro between the network of the crystals and the world above, able to occupy those of our own descent to help guide and direct the generations as they came and went so that we might thrive as a people once again. We are called the Bright Ones. We have modeled our rule after that of our ancient king, Heiliger Samms, who, with his bare hands and holy light, brought peace and order to the five continents of Sarsa. His greatness was really in his selflessness, though. Once all opposition was subdued, he relinquished his right to kingship, allowing the people to govern themselves, remaining to offer counsel, to protect the people, and enforce their decisions or to occasionally step in to resume control temporarily if such was necessary. We were able to emulate his model for a time with little resistance and great success.

“But Jorston Kapler wasn’t satisfied with being a mere counselor. He felt that we seven had the right to true, direct, permanent leadership in both realms and that we were fools not to exercise that right. He used deception to create a rift between us. He set brother against brother and we nearly butchered ourselves to extinction. He fled the north with his host and established his own reign far to the south. Your father was a criminal on a scale that was as yet unknown to us as a people. He continued to conduct his experiments, using up his own progeny like disposable suits of clothing, casting out or destroying their bioelectric fields in the process.”

“And you’re so different? These people are like sheep. They appear to have no minds of their own. They’re empty vessels meant only to serve you, aren’t they?”

Kohanic shook his head, making it slide disturbingly upon his red-slicked neck once again. “No. It’s true they await our orders, but they have their own lives, as simple and pastoral as those lives may have become. Rosun Kohanic, like the others, recedes when I take possession of his body, but he retains his will, his identity, his life, resuming control when I exit. But Jav Holson has killed him. Rosun Kohanic has gone on to the sun-bright meadows now. Only the strength of my bioelectric field holds what’s left of him together.

“Your father sought to create the perfect vessel. One that he would never need to replace, one that was strong, durable, permanent. You should consider yourself lucky that you were deemed a failure or a work in progress when your father died. He is dead, is he not?”

“He is.”

“Justice comes to all Sarsans, Mr. Kapler, though it may take generations. As I told you, we are a people who cannot forget. And we cannot abide an untreated stain. We made a vow, Mr. Kapler. After the fighting had stopped and peace returned to us, we swore to never take up arms against each other again. The people living in this valley, and those living in death below it are are all descendants of the seven officers, the Bright Ones. We had an obligation to rebuild and we all did our parts. We are all brothers here, Mr. Kapler, but your father’s crimes remained in stark defiance to our vow. We could not tolerate those crimes being committed a second time. Our forays into the south were to bring your father to justice and bring true, everlasting peace to Sarsans here in the cold north and in the sun-bright meadows below.

“Simply apprehending your father would not suffice, we intended to make our vow real and binding. After generations of failed attempts to subdue your father, we have finally obtained what was required from you, the closest genetic match to Jorston Kapler in existence. This machine now contains the blood of the seven genetic forebears of all Sarsans on this planet and our oath can be made physical.”

Kohanic worked the nodule on the machine, twisted it slightly and locked it into place.

“I can appreciate justice,” Jav said, eliciting a sluggish raised eyebrow from Kohanic. “But the circumstances have changed. This planet no longer belongs to you. Do you really think that machine is going to stop us from wiping you out?”

“I believe it’s going to prevent you from doing what you intended to do, at least the way you intended. And frankly, Jav Holson, you are playing host to a hundred who are in agreement with me and currently in defiance of you. Perhaps you can hear them.”