Tsar Wars: Agents of ISIS, Book 1 (4 page)

This was the unhappy state of affairs when
Kyril II came to the throne, and he promptly proceeded to make it
unhappier. In the checkered history of the Empire, replete with
examples of harsh despots interspersed among the truly great
rulers, Kyril stood out as being by far the most cruel, the most
vicious, the most heartless. He hated everyone and everything, and
his mind was ruled by paranoia—justifiably so, for after only a
short while into his reign of terror there really
were
people out to get him. Despite being hated by his people, he was so
ruthless that he managed to remain in power for eighteen years and
cause untold grief and hardship for all but the privileged few.

When confronted by the problems of mining the
planet Goliath, Kyril’s twisted mind—abetted by his equally
demented boyare—hatched a cruel and oppressive scheme. Hating and
distrusting anything that was too different from the norm, Kyril
decided that Goliath would be the perfect place to dispose of
people and groups he disliked. Principal among these were Jews,
Romany and members of a radical and rapidly growing Christian
fundamentalist sect called God’s Purgers. Within the space of a
month, virtually all members of these groups were rounded up and
shipped off to serve in Goliath’s deadly mines.

These new slaves began dying from the harsh
conditions just as quickly as the previous miners had—faster, in
fact, because few concessions were made to alleviate their
situation. In itself this caused Kyril little concern, since he
didn’t care for these people anyway—but there was still the problem
of who would do the mining once these groups were all gone. The
solution the Emperor’s boyare came up with was to genetically
engineer human beings adapted specifically to the high-gee
environment.

The slaves were subjected to long and
involved series of “experiments”—most of them little more than
pseudo-scientific excuses for torture—to determine the specific
characteristics the new breed would need for survival. Genetic
material from the different groups was used, and a race of
heavy-gravity natives was bred. These new humans were stronger and
had greater physical stamina to withstand the high gee forces. They
were slightly shorter and had a lower center of gravity, to keep
them stable and help them avoid stumbling. They had quicker
reflexes to deal with a world where objects fell at a much faster
rate. They had denser bones and stronger hearts and lungs. In an
attempt to breed better slaves, Kyril had unwittingly bred a new
subgroup of super humans.

The problem with breeding humans, of course,
was the long maturation period. Virtually all the unmodified slaves
had died and the oldest members of the new breed—who’d been started
in the mines as six- and seven-year-old children—were barely
fourteen when Kyril was finally assassinated. The program continued
for a couple more years under Kyril’s successor, Nikolai IV,
largely through inertia and because the program had remained
strictly secret.

Once the facts became public knowledge, there
was an Empire-wide backlash against the horrors. The slavery was
immediately ended, and Nikolai proclaimed an immediate and
permanent ban on all human genetic manipulation. That left the
Emperor with two major problems: reparations to the survivors of
the period that the Jews were already starting to call (with barely
concealed cynicism) “the Metamorphosis,” and the ongoing problem of
how to mine the metal-rich high-gee planets. There were long and
spirited debates, and for one of the few times in history the
oppressed peoples themselves were actually given a voice in the
decision.

The former slaves who traced their heritage
back to the Romany were the most bitter about what had been done to
them. Their people had always been clannish and independent, and
they followed in that tradition. They asked for and were given a
small fleet of ships so they could leave the confines of the Empire
and seek their own world elsewhere among the stars. For over eighty
years nothing more was heard of them—until an explorer ship for the
ever-expanding Empire stumbled across the heavy-grav planet
Newforest and its Romany inhabitants. The imperial feelings of
guilt had cooled considerably by this time, however, and the world
of Newforest was absorbed into the Empire—though not with the
entirely willing consent of the planet’s citizens.

The descendants of God’s Purgers continued to
adhere to their sect’s fundamentalist beliefs. They spurned as much
contact as they could with the material world, and wanted as little
to do with temporal authorities as possible. Unlike the Romany,
they didn’t want to break away altogether, since part of their duty
was to present an example for other people to follow. The imperial
government ceded them a different mineral-rich high-grav planet to
mine, a world its inhabitants called Purgatory. These people paid
nominal homage to the tsar and, as their prime export, traded the
valuable ore, but otherwise had little contact with the rest of
humanity.

The Jews were another matter entirely. They
had survived so many pogroms and purges over the past several
millennia that they were more philosophical about it. While they
could neither forgive nor forget the horrors of the Metamorphosis,
they could put the past behind them and think about the present and
future. There was still life to be lived—and they were in a unique
position from which to live it.

Just as God’s Purgers were ceded the planet
of Purgatory, the Jews convinced the tsar to cede them the planet
Goliath, which they promptly renamed New Zion. As they proudly
said, this was the second time the Children of Israel had defeated
Goliath. In return, the Jews agreed to keep the mines open and
supply the Empire’s ever-growing need for the heavy metal ores. New
Zion became the first undisputed home the Jewish people had had
since the days of the ancient Roman Empire.

But the Zionians realized they had another
resource at least as valuable as their planet’s ore—themselves.
They were stronger and could react faster than any normal person,
giving them an extraordinary advantage in situations that required
physical skill. They were barred from competing against unmodified
humans in professional sports—although there were some all-Zionian
leagues whose games were breathtaking to behold—but that still left
them a wide range of possibilities. In the hundred and thirteen
years since the end of the Metamorphosis, they’d become very
popular—and expensive—as bodyguards and in private security
services. And as Le Vaudeville Galactique demonstrated, they made
first-rate entertainers.

Even those spectators who knew the
vaudevillians were Zionians didn’t feel cheated. It didn’t matter
to them that the entertainers had been genetically modified; they
were still extraordinary people performing extraordinary feats. The
audience was being treated to a once-in-a-lifetime spectacle, and
they were duly appreciative.

As the Dance Masters of Space reached the
climax of their act, including leaps through ever-higher spinning
rings, the stage seemed to explode with people. Performers dropped
from the flies on ropes, bounced up out of trapdoors and
somersaulted in from the wings, the pit and the back curtain. All
the entertainers who made up this incredible show bounded onto the
stage in what could easily have been a chaotic mess, but instead
was precisely choreographed to show off each act in turn. Singing,
dancing, juggling; fire, lights, miming; acrobatics and
prestidigitation; a mind-numbing finale to remind the audience—in
the unlikely event that anyone forgot—what a masterful spectacle
they had witnessed here today.

And the audience responded by leaping to its
feet with a roar of applause that shook the very walls of the
theater, with whistles, with cheers, with the clapping of hands and
the stamping of feet, with every conceivable form of enthusiastic
appreciation. They had been bedazzled, amused, astonished and,
above all, entertained. They had spent an evening in the theater
they would never forget, an evening they would brag about to their
friends for years to come.

Curtain calls went on for ten, fifteen
minutes. At last the house lights came on again and the stage was
as bare as when the show began. The audience, feeling both
exhilarated and drained, slowly began shuffling out of the theater
with a loud buzz of conversation, each person remarking to his
neighbor about his favorite moments in the show.

Backstage the atmosphere was no less
exuberant as the performers reveled in the addictive high from the
applause. Drenched in sweat but deliriously happy, Judah and Eva
hugged their colleagues and one another, their spat of just a short
while before totally forgotten. Yet another audience had been
conquered. Was that not cause for celebration?

Avram Bar Nahum, the Ville’s manager, Judah’s
father and Eva’s uncle—though he’d been her de facto father as well
for most of her life—came up to them with a broad smile on his
face. He was a man near fifty, once as trim as Judah himself but
now going ever-so-slightly to a paunch. He waved his left hand at
them—the artificial one that replaced the natural one he’d lost
years ago. He had a broad smile that even his neatly-trimmed full
beard couldn’t conceal.

“Yet another stunning performance!” Avram
exclaimed. “A few hundred more like that and I’ll be forced to
consider giving you a raise.”

“Such compliments will turn a girl’s head,”
Eva said with a drawl.

“I only said I’d consider it,” Avram replied.
Then his face turned suddenly serious. Not the serious of
discussing the show’s management, which he never took lightly; this
was a somber expression that the dancers seldom saw on his
features, and it warned them that something unusual was happening.
“Could you both come to my office now?”

“Is there time for a shower first?” Judah
asked.

“No,” the older man said. “There’s someone I
want you to meet … and I don’t think she’ll be offended by a bit of
shvitzing
.”

Avram Bar Nahum led them back to the room
that served as the road manager’s office in this theater. It was
comparatively small and sparsely furnished, but the Ville’s manager
spent little time in it anyway. There was just a basic desk with
data ports, a comfortable swivel chair for the manager and two
other less comfortable chairs for visitors.

One of the chairs was already occupied as
they entered. The woman who’d been sitting there automatically
rose. “Sit, sit,” Avram said quickly, gesturing for her to return
to the chair. “
Kinder
, I’d like you to meet Lady Hasina
Wettig.”

Hasina Wettig was a slender black woman, a
full head taller than Eva, with short black hair and brown eyes
brimming with intelligence. Her lovely face was highlighted by
prominent cheekbones and an unlined forehead. Her business suit was
stylish and mostly conservative navy blue, though she did have an
accent of bright red in her scarf. Her only jewelry was a pair of
discreet golden earrings. Her hands had long, narrow fingers with
short nails—the hands of someone who didn’t do manual labor but who
also didn’t lounge idly about. She looked no older than twenty-one
or twenty-two.

Eva raised an eyebrow. “Daughter of Knyaz
Nkosi, one assumes.”

Hasina gave a bit of a smile as she nodded.
“One assumes correctly.”

“My father’s told us a lot about your
father,” Judah said.

“Indeed? He wasn’t supposed to say anything.”
Her voice was coolly neutral, neither angry nor accusatory. But it
was also not pleased.

“Eva, why don’t you sit over there?” Avram
said quickly, gesturing to the empty chair beside Lady Hasina.
“Judah, you can bring in another chair from outside—”

“It’s crowded enough in here,” Judah said.
“I’m comfortable standing.”

The young dvoryanka looked over at Judah.
“Exactly what did your father tell you?”

“That he and my mother and my uncles and Aunt
Marnina all worked as secret agents while your father was Commissar
of ISIS.”

“Apparently not so secret.” Hasina looked
back to Avram. “This was not supposed to be made common
knowledge.”

“It hasn’t been,” the older man said calmly.
“You don’t know about show business folk.”

“Educate me,” Hasina said crisply.

Eva cut her uncle off before he could say
anything further. “We jabber and gossip backstage. We’ll stab our
best friends in the back—figuratively—for a better spot on the
bill. I’ve never been to the imperial court; I’ve heard the
infighting gets pretty ferocious there. They have nothing on us,
believe me.

“But what belongs backstage
stays
backstage. Period. Nothing goes out front except what we want to
show them. And nobody, not even ISIS, controls that more carefully
than we do.”

“Over the years Mikkel and I have told the
company just about everything we did,” Avram said. “We had to
explain what happened to Eva’s parents and Judah’s mother. I had to
explain this.” He held up his artificial left hand. “But you’ll
never find a more loyal, more devoted, more patriotic group of
people than our company. Any secrets your father and I have between
us is safe with them. I stake my life on that.”

He grinned. “Besides, if I didn’t tell them
they’d invent stories even more lurid. That would only have made
the situation worse.”

Lady Hasina didn’t seem entirely convinced,
but her expression remained neutral. Apparently she had a lot of
practice at that.

“Be that as it may,” she said, “I didn’t come
here to discuss past assignments. My father needs you now, and I
still don’t know what these two have to do with it.”

“Your father wants the young agents Mikkel
and I were twenty years ago,” Avram said with a sigh. “I’ve tried
to keep myself in shape and I’m pretty good for a man my age, but
….” He let his voice trail off as he patted his stomach, then
continued, “Mikkel’s in better shape than I am, but he’s not up to
this, either. This is a young person’s game. You need young people
to play it.”