Down Deep

Book 1: Dust Knights

by Catherine Asaro

Genres: Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera; Space Exploration

Synopsis

DUST KNIGHTS: A NEW SERIES IN CATHERINE ASARO’S SKOLIAN EMPIRE: Major Bhaajan and her gang of Dust Knights act as guides and bodyguards to a member of the Imperial family on a mission of good will in the Undercity. But what awaits them in the Down Deep may ruin the chance at peace forever.

A CITY DIVIDED

For centuries Selei City—the capital of the Imperialate and one of the most desired locales in all of the Skolian Empire—has been held together by the thinnest of threads. While the “haves” live in great luxury, the “have-nots” scrape by, eking out what existence they can in the Undercity. Major Bhaajan, formerly of the Imperial Army, knows both worlds. Born into the Undercity, she nevertheless has made a name for herself in the Imperialate. And now, she has the chance to help her people.

HOPE FOR RECONCILIATION

For the first time, a member of the Royal class wants to extend an olive branch to the Undercity. Hoping to build bridges, Colonel Lavinda Majda recruits Major Bhaajan and her Dust Knights to act as guides and bodyguards as she makes her way into the Undercity on a mission of goodwill.

THE DOWN DEEP

But the problems of the Undercity run deeper than Major Bhaajan or Lavinda know. If there is to be lasting peace, the Dust Knights must reach the very lowest rungs of society, known only as the Down Deep, where the scars from years of enmity and distrust are greatest. There they will face an unseen enemy that may destroy the lives of all citizens of Selei City—and threatens the fragile peace forever.

Release date: July 2, 2024

Publisher: Baen

Print pages: 240

Sample

CHAPTER I

Visit. Or Not.

 

 

“If you go with them, you will die.” The General of the Pharaoh’s Army scowled at her sister Lavinda. “That is unacceptable.”

Bhaaj stayed back from the arguing sisters and kept her mouth shut. The chamber where they stood practically oozed serenity, from its sky-blue walls to its many windows. Yah, sure. Right now, it felt about as calm as someone shouting, “No way!”

General Vaj Majda stood taller than everyone else in the room, indeed taller than most anyone alive, even her imposing sisters, Lavinda and Corejida. All three had the black hair and dark eyes of Skolian royalty, a trio of inexcusably wealthy human beings with enough power to crash a few planets together if they got angry enough. Not that planet-bashing technology existed, but what the hell. If they’d actually wanted to do it, instead of just sounding like they did, they’d have found a way. Majda always triumphed.

Colonel Lavinda Majda met her sister’s glare without a flinch. As an army officer, she served in Vaj’s chain of command. The middle sister, Corejida, had remained a civilian; she ruled the financial empire the House of Majda had built over the millennia, since the age when their ancestors rode as conquering warrior queens and inflicted enough barbarism on the universe to last an eon. These days, the Majdas increased their holdings in a more civilized manner—like taking over the economies of entire worlds. Why bother with bloodthirsty armies? Just buy everything on the fucking planet.

“Or maybe these people you want to visit won’t murder you,” Vaj continued, relentless. “They’d benefit more by taking you hostage. We never bargain with kidnappers, but you are my sister and heir, which means we’d have to negotiate.” She crossed her arms. “So no. You will not visit the Undercity.”

Bhaaj wanted to curse to the sky. Would this mission die before it started? She’d come with her protégé Angel to discuss Lavinda’s visit. Or so they’d thought. Angel waited at her side, taciturn and still, as if they could vanish into their silence. Good luck with that. They stood out like throbbing thumbs someone had slammed in an old-fashioned door. With their curly hair and subtle differences in features, anyone would know they came from the Undercity, which supposedly meant they might go wild and beat up everyone in sight. Never mind that Bhaaj had served in the army for twenty years and then as a private investigator for the elite of an empire.

It was true, though, that Angel looked as angelic as a jackhammer. Strong and powerful, gorgeous in her vibrant youth, she made no attempt to hide the tattoos, scars, and circuit-diagrams that covered her muscled biceps. She’d run with a dust gang since childhood, with all the angelic behaviors that implied, like beating up rival gangs. Despite her upscale clothes today, she obviously didn’t come from the City of Cries.

Goddess, what a name. Seriously, Cries? What did they have to weep about? Sure, they lived on a world that had been dying for millennia, until even in its kindest regions it threatened to barbecue its human settlers. Except the Majdas lived here, and they wanted a nice place for their palace. Like paradise. Sorry, Cries, you can’t die yet. Not that anyone objected to it existing as one of the most starkly beautiful cities in an interstellar empire. They just chose to forget the Undercity, that so-called slum hidden in ruins beneath the desert.

“I’ll have protection.” Lavinda motioned at Bhaaj and Angel. “Major Bhaajan and her Dust Knights.”

Vaj gave Bhaaj the slightest nod, her only acknowledgement that Bhaaj had worked on retainer to the House of Majda for over four years now. She barely glanced at Angel.

Don’t disrespect my protégé, Bhaaj thought. Angel didn’t look offended, though. More than anything, she seemed curious about the sisters.

“It’s still too risky,” Vaj told Lavinda.

“I’m willing to take the risk,” Lavinda said. “This visit is too important to cancel. We aren’t getting anywhere with people in Undercity.” She indicated Angel. “She’s the only one who has agreed to take a job with the government, and she’s joining as a civilian.”

Angel remained impassive, but Bhaaj felt her interest spark. Her protégé was far savvier than anyone outside the Undercity gave her credit for, except perhaps Lavinda.

Corejida Majda spoke up. “She’s right, Vaj. We need to meet the people of the Undercity on their own terms if we’re going to establish better relations. Hell, any relations.”

Vaj motioned toward Bhaaj without glancing at her. “That’s Major Bhaajan’s job. I see no reason to send my sister.”

“General, permission to speak?” Bhaaj asked. Although she’d retired from the army ten years ago, she instinctively reverted to military behavior with the general.

Vaj turned to her. “Go ahead.”

“I’m happy to act as a liaison with the Undercity,” Bhaaj said. “I appreciate the chance to improve relations. However, the gap between our cultures is large.” She was the queen of understatement today. “We’ve existed as separate worlds for so long that my people don’t trust the government.” Why would they? For millennia, Cries had ignored them. Now the Undercity had something everyone wanted, and suddenly the authorities were all about “relationships” and “mutual benefit.” Bhaaj had no intention of letting them take advantage of her people. She could act on their behalf, but she didn’t want to alienate the powers of the Imperialate in the process, with who knew what disasters that might create.

She spoke carefully. “Colonel Majda’s visit would go a long way toward establishing more trust with my people.” Lavinda needed only to meet folks, be diplomatic, and listen to them. That alone would offer a big step forward, the first time anyone with influence had reached out to the Undercity.

Vaj snorted. “What, they don’t trust us because we’re offering them a higher wage than they’ve ever seen, with actual benefits, a decent standard of living, and access to education so they can better themselves? They’d rather be a bunch of lazy thugs, take drugs, and live in squalor?”

For fuck’s sake, Bhaaj thought. Angel tensed at her side, and Bhaaj spoke quickly, cutting off any response Angel felt inspired to bestow on the Majda queen. “General, I mean no offense. But my people don’t live in squalor, and we value a strong work ethic.” How did Vaj think they survived? As for the drug use, yah, it was a problem, but they needed solutions, not dismissal. “Both of our peoples could benefit from coming to understand each other better.”

“Well, that was tactful,” Lavinda said. “Vaj, you have no idea how much you just insulted them. I’ve encountered only hints of their culture, and already I can see it’s incredible. Beautiful. We need to get one of us down there, not only to show the Undercity we genuinely want better relations but so we can educate ourselves as well.” She met her sister’s intransigent gaze. “We have to meet them on their terms, or they will never trust us. And we need them. They can make the difference between our surviving as a free civilization and conquest by the Trader Empire.”

Vaj spoke tightly. “I won’t risk your life.”

Lavinda tilted her head toward Bhaaj and Angel. “I’ll have protection.”

For an instant, Bhaaj glimpsed something under Vaj’s iron exterior, something unexpected, maybe even impossible. Vulnerability? The general feared for the sister she loved.

As quickly as that reveal came, Vaj recovered her control. She said only, “Yes, Major Bhaajan and her martial arts fighters do excellent work. But it isn’t enough.”

“Send a squad of Majda guards with me.” Lavinda glanced at Bhaaj. “Would the Undercity accept their presence?”

They’ll hate it, Bhaaj thought. Given that she’d doubted Vaj would agree to anything less, though, she’d prepared her people for this possibility. “Three Majda guards can come. No uniforms. They should dress like us, simple clothes designed for durability.”

Angel spoke in the terse Undercity dialect. “Maybe not bring weapons.” Her gaze glinted. “Gangers steal.”

Bhaaj almost swore. Sure, high-powered guns would be more tempting to her people than gold, but they’d deal with it. They didn’t need Vaj finding another reason to get worried. “We shouldn’t have a problem. Three Dust Knights led by the man Ruzik will also escort Colonel Majda. My people hold them in the highest regard. It will be a sign of honor to Lavinda that they give her protection. All the Dust Knights will uphold that vow, not just those who work with Ruzik.”

“Ruzik?” Vaj motioned at Angel. “Are you talking about her husband’s gang?”

Well, yah. That was another factoid better avoided. “The Dust Knights are the martial arts circle I established. It includes both young students and adults earning higher-level belts. Angel and her husband received their first-degree black belts last year.” Bhaaj nodded to Vaj as one martial arts teacher to another, even though Vaj didn’t teach anyone anything martial except how to obey orders. “One of their testers was Randall Miyashiro, your tykado master here at the palace.”

“Ah, yes.” Vaj sounded a fraction less recalcitrant. “Randall speaks well of your students.”

What amazed Bhaaj most wasn’t the General’s nod to Miyashiro’s high position, but the cognitive dissonance of hearing the most conservative matriarch alive speak with respect for a man’s judgment in matters of combat. The days when barbaric queens kept their men in seclusion had long ago vanished, replaced by a supposedly egalitarian society where men had equal rights. Employers, politicians, influencers, and most everyone else gave at least lip service to the idea because they wanted to avoid becoming the mesh-media’s favorite hate object. The Majdas, however, didn’t give a rat’s ass about controversy. They still secluded their princes, unrepentant in their conviction that men should stay hidden while women ran the universe, and if people didn’t like it, tough.

Except.

The general served as a joint commander for a male Imperator. Almost as many men as women served under her, and if she acted against them, the backlash could threaten even her position. So Vaj dealt with it, the “it” being that she had to treat the men as equal to the women. Besides, she was no idiot. When she decided to hire a tykado expert to train her security forces, she wanted the best. That he happened to be male was, in her view, an unfortunate anomaly, but that didn’t stop her. She offered him an unprecedented salary, and Randall Miyashiro became the only male tykado master in the history of Majda.

“I’m glad Master Miyashiro thinks well of them,” Bhaaj said.

Vaj frowned at her. She frowned at her sisters, first Lavinda, then Corejida, then Lavinda again for good measure. Finally she said, “Very well. Three Majda guards.”

Glancing at Bhaaj, Lavinda gave the barest nod. Good. They’d passed the first hurdle.

As the Majda sisters discussed the visit, Bhaaj considered their next step. They had to face the Undercity, which the rest of the Imperialate considered the lowest of the low. The media loved to make villains out of her people, who had no voice to protest. They wouldn’t have known how to object even if they’d realized the rest of humanity despised them. They hid their true culture, a world of great beauty that existed within their crushing poverty.

Bhaaj wanted to improve matters.

 

CHAPTER II

The Statue

 

 

Bhaaj stood with Lavinda inside the cave known as the Foyer, both of them pretending they didn’t notice all the other people hulking there, three guards from the Majda police and all four members of Ruzik’s dust gang, including Angel. Rippled walls surrounded them, and the ceiling arched high over their heads, lost in small stalactites that hung down like stone icicles.

“This is part of the Undercity?” Lavinda asked. “It’s beautiful.”

One of Ruzik’s gang gave a dismissive snort, the man Byte-2, named after his father Byte. The fourth member of Ruzik’s gang, a woman called Tower for her height, smirked at Lavinda. Standing by the wall with his muscular arms crossed, Ruzik scowled at Tower and Byte-2. Their posture changed almost invisibly, just enough to show they didn’t miss his silent reproach: Quit dissing our guest.

Although Lavinda acted as if she didn’t notice, Bhaaj had no doubt the colonel realized she’d managed to start her visit by saying something her reluctant hosts considered stupid.

Pretending it hadn’t happened, Bhaaj spoke in a conversational voice. “This isn’t actually the Undercity.” She motioned to the archway where they’d entered the Foyer. Beyond it, they could see the narrow street they’d taken to this cave. The lane stretched away into the mist, bordered on either side by faded vendor stalls. The merchants in those booths worked here because they couldn’t afford a better location farther up the street. They peddled cheap food and trinkets to the few tourists who ignored the signs warning them away from this area. Farther up, the lane turned into a luxurious tourist attraction called the Concourse, with trendy cafés, glitzy nightclubs, and boutiques. Visitors thronged the boulevard, thrilled for that supposed taste of the most notorious slum in the Imperialate, everyone spending huge sums on fake “Undercity” goods, making the Cries merchants rich while the people who actually lived in the Undercity died in the dark.

“The Tourist Bureau claims the Concourse is part of the Undercity,” Bhaaj said. “It isn’t, though. This entrance is—” She thought for a moment. “It’s like an air lock that separates the Undercity from the above-city.”

Lavinda nodded and left it at that. Her guards watched Ruzik’s gang like they wanted to whack them over the head and toss them in jail. Standing together, Ruzik and Byte-2 looked like copies, Byte-2 leaner and with a sharper face. They were brothers, Byte-2 three years older than Ruzik, nearly twenty-five, the same as Angel. Ruzik led their gang despite his youth, mainly because he was smarter than most anyone else anywhere.

The tats on his biceps showed his namesake, the giant ruziks that roamed the desert above. People from Earth had reacted with surreal delight when they saw images of the big lizards. T. rex! they’d cried. Bhaaj had to admit, a ruzik did look like a Tyrannosaurus rex. Scales covered a ruzik’s hide, though, and they wielded more powerful front arms than their dino relatives. Maybe whoever stranded humans here had engineered them from DNA they’d found on Earth. Bhaaj didn’t see the point, except that ruziks were more suited to Raylicon than softer species like, say, the obstinate humans who insisted on living in this desolate place. In any case, the badass lizards suited Ruzik and his gang.

Lavinda gestured, taking in the entire Foyer. “This place doesn’t look like people use it.”

“We don’t,” Bhaaj said.

Lavinda squinted at her. “Then how do you leave the Undercity?”

Behind Lavinda, Tower started to laugh, then shut her mouth when Ruzik glowered. Angel showed no reaction, just stayed impassive. Ruzik knew Lavinda from previous cases he’d worked with Bhaaj, and he seemed to like the colonel. It didn’t surprise Bhaaj. He’d always been a good judge of character.

Bhaaj said only, “The cops throw my people in jail if they catch them on the Concourse.”

“The police?” Lavinda glanced at the three Majda officers, all women, of course, given that Vaj had appointed them. They’d dressed in black today, with nothing to hint at their authority except the heavy guns holstered on their hips. “You do this?” Lavinda asked. “Imprison people just for leaving the Undercity?”

“No, ma’am,” one of the guards said, Captain Morah if Bhaaj remembered correctly. “We don’t patrol here. Major Bhaajan is talking about the Concourse police force.”

Lavinda turned her laser focus on Bhaaj. “You’re saying the Concourse police make anyone who lives here stay underground?”

Well, they tried. No one could stop her people from sneaking out. Of course they used hidden exits, secret places where they went back and forth to the Concourse. They sure as hell never came through this too-obvious portal into forbidden territory.

Bhaaj spoke blandly. “The Concourse police protect the shoppers.” She had so much more to say, but she held back. Harsh words would just blow up this visit and ruin their chances to improve the brutal poverty that fueled her anger. Lavinda didn’t push. It was one reason Bhaaj had begun to trust her; the colonel picked up cues that her sisters had no idea even existed.

“Need to go,” Angel said in the taciturn Undercity dialect. She switched to accented but otherwise perfect Cries speech. “I have my first day of work for the Kyle Division in the city today. I don’t want to be late.”

“You go,” Bhaaj told her. “We’re good.”

Angel nodded, then turned and gave Ruzik the barest hint of a smile. His impassive look softened as he met her gaze. With that swooning declaration of love finished, she considered the Majda security officers, who looked ready to clap her in power-cuffs. Bhaaj could imagine her thought: Tough for you, key clinkers. That Angel held back saying it boded well. Today she’d even dressed like a slick, and she carried city ID. Bhaaj’s wrecking ball of a protégée was learning to give a convincing appearance of civilized behavior.

With a glint of satisfaction, Angel walked past the Majda guards, leaving the Foyer through an archway bordered by exquisite carvings that few people even knew existed, let alone appreciated for their great archeological value. And so she headed on her way, setting a new benchmark, becoming the first civilian to gain employment in Cries straight out of the Undercity.

Lifting her hand, Bhaaj invited Lavinda to an exit across from the one Angel had used. A second archway stood there, another marvel of ancient architecture. They headed through it, following a dirt path that widened beyond the arch. Bhaaj and Lavinda walked together, both of them carrying packs, with guards and Dust Knights before and behind them.

A lamppost stood up ahead, a pole of antiqued metal topped by a curved hook. Old-fashioned and well-wrought, the lantern hanging from the hook spread its light across the path.

“That’s lovely,” Lavinda said. “It looks like the Concourse lamps.”

“The city installed it.” Bhaaj’s voice cooled. “It’s the only thing they’ve provided here.”

“They don’t light the Undercity?”

“For fuck’s sake,” Byte-2 said up ahead. He glanced back to add more, then stopped when Ruzik gave him a look that threatened mayhem. Closing his mouth, Byte-2 turned forward again.

“We have an agreement with Cries,” Bhaaj said. “If we maintain this lamp and the sign they put on it”—she motioned toward a plaque on the pole of the lamppost—“they won’t send police here.”

Lavinda went to the pole and read the plaque, a burnished piece of artwork engraved with blunt words: Do not go beyond this point. If you have come this far, you have entered the most dangerous area of the Undercity. This region is off-limits to visitors. You continue at risk to your life. It was written both in the Cries dialect and in Skolian Flag, a second language for all Skolians, the official tongue of the Imperialate.

The colonel stared at the plaque far longer than she needed to read its words. She finally turned to Bhaaj. “Your people agreed to post that notice?”

“My ancestors, actually. That plaque has been here for centuries.” Bhaaj shrugged. “We suggested the wording, just to make sure no one misunderstood.”

“But why?” Lavinda asked. “Do you all want to keep out everyone else?” She paused. “I understand that my initial suggestions to help, years ago, were idiotic. You don’t need your children dumped in state-sponsored schools, offered work as low-paid laborers in the desert or menial jobs in the city. But those aren’t the only ways for outsiders to help.”

Bhaaj blinked, at a loss for words. Majdas never called themselves idiotic. Period.

“I realize we have a long way to go with your people,” Lavinda added. “If we do the work, though, our interactions could help us both.”

“My hope, too.” Bhaaj nodded to her, then continued down the path accompanied by Lavinda and their squad of human punching machines.

Mercifully, Lavinda let it go, which was fortunate, because Bhaaj doubted she could say more without giving offense. None of her people wanted intruders from the above-city here. Hell, many of her people didn’t even believe Cries existed, at least not the images they’d found of a glorious city with towers sparkling in all that impossible light. She hadn’t believed it either, not until that day, at age fifteen, when she’d snuck all the way to the end of the Concourse, over a kilometer distant from the Foyer. She’d stepped through a shimmering film that filled the archway there—

Into sunlight.

Bhaaj would never forget that moment when she stood under the endless blue sky. No way could she absorb it all: wind on her face, sun on her skin, wide-open spaces, desert stretching everywhere. She’d turned in a circle, struggling to take it in—and a new sight had come into view, distant and bathed in the limitless sunshine.

The City of Cries.

Those shining towers were real.

Somehow she’d walked to the city. Finding the army recruitment center was harder than she expected, even after she’d looked up how to get there. The sights, sounds, smells, the sky so overwhelmed her, she barely managed to think. Yet despite it all, she reached her goal and enlisted. Or she tried. They said she was too young, that they could only take her at sixteen. Even then, she’d have to spend two more years in school, which they considered a good thing, because she failed all their arcane “academic exams” except math. They didn’t know what to make of her intelligence tests, which listed her as brilliant. When they talked about finding her a foster family, after she stupidly told them that she had no parents to stop her from enlisting, she’d walked out.

Bhaaj went back the day she turned sixteen. She’d spent that year stealing time on the Cries education meshes, enough that she passed all her exams, including top marks in math. The army stuck her in school anyway because of her age, but eventually she shipped out into a universe that hated her Undercity origins, that called her subhuman. She’d taken great pleasure in proving them wrong, especially in making the supposedly impossible climb into the officer ranks. Twenty years later, she came home with the dream of improving life for her people. So yah, she was an idealist. Or an idiot. No matter. She tried anyway.

Of course she told Lavinda none of that. Too personal. They remained silent, following the path with its slight downward slope. When they’d gone beyond the light from the lamppost, the Majda guards switched on their gauntlet lamps.

Bhaaj stopped, turning to them. “Lights off.”

The Majda captain stared at her, impassive. Damn. Bhaaj wished they’d sent Captain Duane Ebersole instead. She and Duane had a lot in common, both always having to prove themselves. He offered a perfect example of the saying that a man had to be twice as good as a woman for the Majdas to consider him equal. Duane had done it and then some. Even so. When it came to protecting her sister, Vaj Majda considered it better to send women. The captain of that illustrious trio met Bhaaj’s gaze with an implacable stare and left her lamp glowing.

Bhaaj sensed Ruzik tensing to fight. He didn’t give two shits about the sex of his opponents. No one in the Undercity cared. You didn’t survive poverty by telling half the population they couldn’t do squat. Only the wealthy could afford such irrationally restrictive customs.

Lavinda spoke quickly, before anyone punched anyone else. “All right. But how do we continue without light?”

Diplomacy, Bhaaj reminded herself. “My apology.” She even gave Captain Morah a respectful nod. “I should have explained.”

The captain squinted, seeming more confused than anything else. Her tensed posture eased.

“We do use lights,” Bhaaj told them. “But only a certain type.” In other words, whatever they could scrounge or steal, nothing like the high-end tech carried by Majda forces. “If you arrive with tech beyond anything we use, people will react as if you’re intruders.” And they’d like nothing better than to beat up what they saw as rich, boastful trespassers.

Captain Morah didn’t look convinced. “You have an alternative?”

“Like this.” Bhaaj flicked on the light stylus hanging by a chain around her neck. A sphere of radiance surrounded her, dimmer and more golden than the harsh light from the Majda lamps.

Morah laughed. “You’re kidding, right?”

Bhaaj wanted to get pissed off, except she could tell the captain meant well. She felt the guard’s reaction. Damn it, she had no desire to be an empath. She had enough trouble figuring out her own emotions without dealing with other people’s moods. Growing up in the Undercity, crushed under the weight of sickness, starvation, violence and death—no. She couldn’t bear to absorb all that pain. In her youth, to survive, she’d buried her Kyle ability. The army, however, had other ideas. Their brain-benders woke up her brain and now they wanted to train her. Bah.

Bhaaj glanced at Lavinda and found her smiling, just barely, but enough to make Bhaaj scowl. Lavinda’s face immediately became neutral. It made no difference. Going to those brain-benders did have one advantage: they’d taught Bhaaj how to refine the instinctive mental protections she’d learned in her youth without realizing it. Now she “slammed down” her mental walls. It spurred her brain to produce more of the neurotransmitters that blocked other empaths from detecting her moods.

Lavinda winced, then gave her a look that anyone, Kyle or not, could read: That wasn’t necessary.

Sorry, she thought. Lavinda couldn’t detect thoughts, but she’d probably get a sense of Bhaaj’s intent, that she hadn’t meant to use so much force.

“Are you sure you want us to turn off our lights?” Captain Morah was saying.

Lavinda tilted her head at Bhaaj. “Follow her lead.”

Morah motioned to the other Majda guards, and they switched off their lights, leaving only the sphere of light around Bhaaj. Ruzik tapped on a scavenged piece of tech-mech hanging around his neck, and a dim, golden light glowed around him as well.

That done, they headed along the path again. The top of a spiral staircase soon appeared out of the darkness. Memories flooded Bhaaj. She’d stood here the day she turned sixteen, facing Dig, her closest friend, the girl she’d loved like a sister. Dig had wanted her to stay. They’d said so little, but a world of pain lay beneath their taciturn words. As much as Bhaaj regretted leaving the people she loved, she needed to go. Wanderlust had pulled her like a steel cord. Yet the Undercity would always live within her, even now when she could move among circles she’d never known existed in her youth.

Bhaaj stopped at the stairs, next to an ancient statue. It showed Azu Bullom, a god worshipped thousands of years ago in the Ruby Empire. He had a man’s head, with horns that spiraled around his ears and the body of a great cat. Stone wings lifted from his back in a huge span of chiseled feathers, like motion frozen into stone.

As everyone gathered at the stairs, Lavinda said, “That’s a remarkable figure. Who carved it?”

“We don’t know.” Bhaaj fought her ingrained tendency to say nothing. On principle, her people told outsiders zilch about the Undercity. She’d invited Lavinda here, though, and she needed to offer more than zilch. “It’s been here longer than any of us knows. Our sculptors maintain it. We have no weather underground, and we don’t often use these stairs, so it doesn’t get much wear.”

Lavinda spoke quietly. “It’s one of the most striking examples of early Ruby Empire sculpture I’ve come across outside of a museum. And it just sits here, unseen?”

“Yah.” Bhaaj spoke carefully. “We feel it’s safer if Cries doesn’t know about it.”

Lavinda exhaled. “Yes, I can see that. People in Cries would either want to remove it or else invite tourists to visit it here, causing damage.”

Bhaaj hadn’t expected Lavinda to understand. She nodded with respect to the colonel, then headed down the stairs, aware of the others following. Their footsteps scratched on the gritty stone, sending swirls of dust into the air that rose at first, and then drifted downward.

Halfway to the next level, Bhaaj came to a place where just a few days ago, no stairs had existed, just broken pieces of stone sticking out in jagged angles. True to their word, the Knights had completed their repairs, working with one of the best builders in the Undercity.

She continued on.

Down and around.

Down and around.

At the bottom, Bhaaj stepped onto a flat area at the base of the stairs. Light surrounded her, with darkness beyond that dim glow. She moved aside so the others could gather around her.

Byte-2 glanced at Ruzik. When Ruzik nodded, Byte-2 took off, jogging into the darkness.

“Where is he going?” Captain Morah asked.

Wait for it, Bhaaj thought.

After a moment, Lavinda said, “Major Bhaajan?”

Wait for it, Bhaaj thought.

A light flared in the distance. An instant later, more lights flared, filling their world with radiance—and revealing a wonderland. Light from every direction struck crystals, mica, and reflective grains of sand, all of it embedded in stone, creating hundreds, thousands, millions of points sparkling like a host of stars, a nebula created underground. The world glittered.

“Saints almighty,” one of the Majda guards murmured.

Yah, Bhaaj thought. As a child, she’d taken this spectacular display for granted, but in the years since, nothing she’d seen anywhere else could match this hidden world.

The air felt cool, maybe another reason her people had chosen to live in these ruins, the remains of an alien civilization that had long ago vanished. Go deep enough, and the temperature became livable even when the eighty-hour days scorched the surface.

Bhaaj waited, letting their visitors take in the view. They’d reached what her people called the aqueducts, though she’d never figured out why. These canals seemed too large to act as a water transportation system. Hell, Raylicon didn’t have enough water anywhere to flow through such giant conduits. This tunnel measured twenty meters across and forty high, supported by a system of braced arches designed by long-dead architects. Her group stood on a midwalk, a path against the wall about three meters wide and halfway up the canal.

Some thirty paces away, Byte-2 stood by a torch in a wall sconce. His light had flared first; the rest had come from the Dust Knights waiting for his signal, all stationed by torches along the midwalks. They wore darks tops and trousers, also heavy boots. Their gauntlets glinted in the torchlight, creations utterly different from the sanitized smart bracelets sold in Cries. Many had tattoos, cyber implants, and battle scars. Silent and unsmiling, terrifying without even trying, they stood guard on the Undercity. Bhaaj knew them, understood them. She’d been them in her youth. Never had she lost that heart, not even now when she pretended to be civilized for her upscale clients.

Yet for all their impressive appearance, the Knights played second-fiddle to the canal itself. Towering columns supported the tunnel, some natural rock formations, others created by ancient builders. Human sculptors had carved them into statues of the deities Bhaaj’s ancestors worshipped during the Ruby Empire. Another figure of Azu Bullom rose by the stairs, his body that of an animal that had existed only in myth—

Until eighty years ago.

On that day, a Skolian battle cruiser encountered a tiny scout ship exploring the stars. The cruiser’s evolving intelligence, or EI, easily breached the helpless scout’s systems. Its terrified crew had good reason for their fear; the officers onboard the massive cruiser assumed the scout had come to survey territory for potential conquerors. They prepared to imprison the invaders—

And then they found an image in the scout’s library that changed human history forever.

A jaguar.

Azu Bullom.

It took the cruiser’s invading EI only moments to verify that the animal—this jaguar—originated on a world independent of any Skolian or Trader colony, a world with a documented human history going back hundreds of thousands of years. In that instant, a six-thousand-year-old myth became reality.

Earth existed.

Humanity found her lost children that day, six millennia after an unknown race had stranded Bhaaj’s ancestors on Raylicon. The reality, however, wasn’t the idyll they’d had imagined. Earth’s people had nearly destroyed their sublime world in what they called the Virus Wars. It had decimated the population, wiping out entire cultures and corrupting a substantial portion of their records. Desperate, they’d reached for the stars, searching for new worlds where they could live.

Bhaaj would never forget the incredulous words of a much younger Vaj Majda during the first summit between the Imperialate and Earth’s emissaries. You destroyed humanity’s home world, and now you think you can just find more? We have no more! We fight for every slice of celestial real estate we can coax into livable territory. You had paradise—and you idiots threw it away.

Those words hadn’t made her popular on Earth, and the Imperialate diplomats had quickly withdrawn her from the talks. Even so. Vaj had given voice to what many of Earth’s lost children thought, one of the few things the Imperialate and the Traders had ever agreed about.

Yah, right, Bhaaj thought. Who are we to criticize? Despite the lack of Earthlike planets, her displaced children had multiplied into the trillions, flinging their overpopulated selves across thousands of planets and habitats. And what had they done with that great achievement? Created world-slagging armies that could destroy humanity. While the Trader Aristos committed genocide, both human and planetary, and the Imperialate sought to crush their empire, Earth was recovering, tended by an ashamed populace that sought to heal their world from the crucible of their own violence.

The Virus Wars had obliterated any clue to the origins of the humans who settled Raylicon. Neither the Skolians nor Traders had any success when they compared their ancient stories to what remained of Earth’s historical records.

Bhaaj wondered, though, if the Undercity might offer clues that other comparisons missed. The first humans on Raylicon had created this artwork. Byte-2 stood by a sculpture of the fire goddess Ixa Quelia carved into the wall. Larger than life, she rose more than three heads taller than him. Her hair streamed along the stone like an untamed celebration of freedom, and a sword hung from her belt, glittering with embedded crystals. She had the chiseled features, high cheekbones, and large eyes associated with the nobility. Hell, she could have been Lavinda’s sister, if Lavinda had looked wild instead of civilized. Beyond her, a statue of the war goddess Chaac brandished the axe of lightning and carried a shield painted with gold, red, and white rings. Across the canal, Izam Na Quetza, the winged god of transcendence and flight, stood with his spirit companion Na-quetz, a bird with green and yellow feathers. The statues existed as a haunting memorial to an ancient time preserved only in the hidden byways of the aqueducts, lost to the rest of humanity.

Newer sculptures stood in the lower half of the canal. The one across from them showed four modern-day warriors, two women and two men, all facing forward. One woman held up a knife, poised to strike. The man next to her had a massive gun, what looked like a military power rifle, a weapon that supposedly no one here knew about, at least not legally. The other two had smaller guns, and they all looked ready for combat. Muscled and powerful, they were barely more than children by Skolian standards. In the Undercity, where you grew up fast or died, they ranked as battle-scarred adults.

Lavinda spoke quietly. “This is incredible.”

“Yah,” one of her guards murmured. Although most of them continued to look around with undisguised amazement, one had turned to watch Bhaaj. In fact, so had Ruzik and Tower, both with a sense of waiting. Odd. They seemed expectant, even worried. The Majda guard was staring at a patch on Bhaaj’s tank top just above the waist, a circular emblem of the Pharaoh’s Army. Bhaaj had picked up the shirt at an army surplus store, but she saw no reason to gape at it. Plenty of people in Cries wore army surplus clothes.

Bhaaj squinted at Ruzik. “What?”

He tilted his head toward the other side of the canal, up ahead rather than across from them. Bhaaj turned—

The statue stood on the floor of the canal, one of the taller-than-life variety carved into the stone. The last time Bhaaj had come here, nothing but a wall had existed in that place. This new image showed a woman with her arms raised in perfect tykado form, ready to fight, a warrior with long legs and muscled arms. She lifted her head in defiance, her curls streaming along the wall in a mirror of the Ixa Quelia statue across the canal. The woman in the new sculpture had a strong face, beautiful and powerful. She wore a muscle shirt, trousers, boots, and heavy gauntlets.

The emblem of the Pharaoh’s Army showed on her shirt just above the waist.

Not only was it the only statue in the Undercity that displayed a modern military insignia, but it was also the only one with a fighter in a tykado stance. No one here had known tykado existed prior to four years ago, when Bhaaj founded the Dust Knights. The Knights studied the martial art, both the fighting moves and its philosophies of balance, with violence as a last resort. Their teacher worked with them almost every day.

Their teacher. Bhaaj.

“Well, fuck me,” Bhaaj said, ever the soul of articulate discourse.

The hint of a smile showed on Ruzik’s face. He, Tower, and Byte-2 looked satisfied, as if she had made some pithy statement. Actually, it was pithy by Undercity standards.

“New,” Ruzik explained. “Artists finish today.”

Bhaaj nodded to them. Enough said. The Undercity had given her one of its greatest honors, more than she’d ever expected or deserved. The story of her reaction here, her open mouth, her three words, it would all go into the Whisper Mill and spread everywhere, nothing too much, but yah, more than the usual. A good and fitting reaction.

Only Bhaaj would know the truth, that in the privacy of her home when no one could see, she would shed tears in her gratified disbelief that they honored her this way, that somehow, her efforts to improve life for her recalcitrant, beautiful, violent, gifted people was making a difference.

This trip had resulted from her attempts. Her people would never accept charity, so a few years ago, she’d arranged an exchange; in return for a day of free medical care and food, they’d let the military test them as Kyle operators. Not that people in the Undercity cared what “Kyle” meant. Bhaaj had given up trying to explain that it referred to humans with the neurological mutations needed to operate tech from the ancient Ruby Empire. In truth, no one understood those rare machines that had survived the Ruby collapse. Scholars wrote no end of papers about the subject which, when stripped to basics, said, What the hell? How can you mash neuroscience, math, and mysticism into one discipline?

No matter. The Imperialate could use the few remaining Ruby machines that still worked. The result? Almost instant communication across star-spanning distances. It created their sole advantage over the other empire that dominated the stars—the Traders, those narcissistic psychopaths who viewed galactic domination as their gods-given right. Traders had no Kyle tech or trained operators, which meant their interstellar communications crawled compared to the Imperialate. For that reason—and only that reason—the Imperialate survived against them.

The Undercity had no idea. Their ancestors had taken their introverted selves underground, choosing isolation over the sunlight. They’d left the rest of humanity to rampage in barbaric splendor until the Ruby Empire exploded in the flames of war and plunged into five thousand years of dark ages. Now humans had spread across the stars again. To survive, the Imperialate needed Kyles, but for reasons science hadn’t yet solved, they were almost impossible to clone. Not that most people wanted that dubious honor. The neurological changes that defined Kyles also made their minds painfully sensitive. They were empaths. Only one in ten thousand humans qualified as a full Kyle, driving the military to seek them anywhere. No one expected to find many in the ruins beneath the desert, but the government was desperate enough to try.

On that day, they learned the truth.

One in three Undercity citizens was an empath.

Bhaaj finally understood. Her ancestors had retreated underground because they couldn’t bear the mental pressure of their brutal ancestors. They chose isolation instead, living, dying, and loving in the dark. It concentrated their traits until now they gave birth to Kyles at a rate three thousand times that of normal populations. Suddenly the Imperialate—which had dismissed, ridiculed, and ignored the Undercity for centuries—said, Hey, let’s be friends.

Convincing General Majda to allow this visit had proved difficult, but doable. They now had a more difficult task, maybe an impossible one.

They had to convince the Undercity.