BOOK 1 OF OLD MEN AND INFIDELS
OUTLAND
EXILE
W. CLARK BOUTWELL
OUTLAND EXILE
BOOK 1 OF OLD MEN AND INFIDELS
Copyright © 2015 Clark Boutwell.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
iUniverse
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.iuniverse.com
1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.
ISBN: 978-1-4917-7565-3 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4917-7564-6 (e)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2015914856
iUniverse rev. date: 10/15/2015
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter 1 Hunt
Chapter 2 Reincorporation
Chapter 3 Lunch With The Girls
Chapter 4 The Message
Chapter 5 The Four Rules
Chapter 6 Conspiracy
Chapter 7 Salvation Through Work
Chapter 8 Sunprairie
Chapter 9 Hecate
Chapter 10 Suarez And The Gray Man
Chapter 11 The Presence
Chapter 12 The Sisi
Chapter 13 Recovery
Chapter 14 Percy
Chapter 15 Jesse Johnstone
Chapter 17 Trails Taken
Chapter 18 Trip Wire, Spring, Trigger, Jaws
Chapter 19 Death Walker
Chapter 20 Parole
Chapter 21 Bison
Chapter 22 Lake Of Blood
Chapter 23 The Underpass
Chapter 24 Bear
Chapter 25 Whistles
Chapter 26 Wails
Chapter 27 Junk Jumps
Chapter 28 Bad Night And Day
Chapter 29 Slaver’s Blade
Chapter 30 Sniper
Chapter 31 Nobody Answered
Chapter 32 Prisoner Chiu
Chapter 33 Devil’s Bridge
Chapter 34 The River
Chapter 35 Moonshine
Chapter 36 Arrival
Chapter 37 Billet
Chapter 38 Captivity
Chapter 39 Interrogation
Chapter 40 Intruder
Chapter 41 The Coming
Chapter 42 Blizzard
Chapter 43 Delarosa
Chapter 44 Eduard And Potemkin
Chapter 45 Traveler’s Portion
Chapter 46 Stamping Ground
Chapter 47 Ping
Chapter 48 The Return
Chapter 49 Unity
Chapter 50 Introductions
Chapter 51 Repatriation
Chapter 52 Lunch With The Girls
Chapter 53 Advice And Dissent
Chapter 54 Kleophirra Banks!
Chapter 55 The Bloody Shirt
Chapter 56 House Of Gordon
Chapter 57 Green Monkey
Chapter 58 Alpha_drover
Chapter 59 Alice
Chapter 60 Boxes
Chapter 61 Alpha_drover Redux
Chapter 62 Postmortem
Chapter 63 Easter
Appendix
Glossary
To Lilianne, a young kinswoman who, in her short life, has had more pain, danger, trials, and triumph than I fear to know. Her parents have persevered, lost uncounted hours of sleep, reset their sails countless times, and given more than love may ask. I admire them.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to acknowledge the hard work and sage advice tendered me by my editors, particularly Patricia Kennedy. Any glimmer of professionalism in these words is due to their careful work and insightful critique, and any remaining gaffes are of my own crafting. I would like to thank all those who have critically read this work and offered their insights, especially James DiPisa, with whom I have shared food, stories, shelter, and danger. Finally, I must thank my wife, Cheryl, for her listening ear while hearing bits and pieces of this book. In addition, I swiped her name for the title. I hope that it doesn’t mind.
PROLOGUE
The message impeded upon the gray man’s notice unbidden. With the faintest suggestion of an interface, it rose up before him through his Outside-Above interface.1 After years of use, the imperceptible biosensory device implanted in his brain, allowing him to use the Unity’s CORE (Concepts of Reality Engineering Inc.) cyberspace, was just the habit of life.
In an earlier age, it might have appeared as follows:
To: ComOutOps
From: ComOutSig
Time/Date: 11.33.03.local_11_10_AU762
RE: Unity Sensor Station 43.11.0/97_89.13.56/41 (SUNPRAIRIE)
Signal ceased SUNPRAIRIE 10.21.03.central_10_10_AU76
The gray man smiled, adjusted his uniform, signed the memorandum with his characteristic mental gesture, and began preparations for the destruction of Malila Evanova Chiu.
CHAPTER 1
HUNT
CORE, Democratic Unity of America
08.35.17.local_11_10_AU76
As her consciousness floated in the middle depths, she felt the freedom of her movements and enjoyed the surge of her predatory impulses. For a moment, Malila rippled the chromatophores along her four-meter length in pleasure before returning her borrowed skin to the pattern of the hunt. Her appearance now flowed second by second as sensors discerned the light falling upon them and mimicked the surface opposite to match.
Second Lieutenant Malila Evanova Chiu’s mind tasted the salinity, the pressure, the faint rhythmic surge and flow of the waves around her, and … her prey. In the instant of thought, she sent her winged diamond shape pulsing through the middepths, her skin adapting to the flow of water streaming over it, letting her slip along with barely a pressure wave. The designers of her avatar had subjugated all functions to the hunt, abandoning her need to feed, excrete, breathe, or pity. She saw in many dimensions of sight, sound, touch, and taste. Her sea avatar could harry, hunt, and kill even the largest animals on the diminished planet.
Reaching her selected rendezvous, she slowed and stopped. Although she had nothing as awkward as a mouth to disrupt her sleek envelope, she smiled. The prey were still oblivious to her, making a cacophony of clicking and splashing in the distance. It was time.
Malila Chiu mimicked a sound that had not been heard since the Meltdown. She stilled, waiting for the one animal aggressive enough to leave the group and give chase.
Once separated from the others, she could attack and kill her massive opponent unmolested. The beast would be expecting a flailing and disabled squid. Instead, he—it was always a male—would find a merciless killer. In the very moment the whale paused in consternation, she would thrust forward into his vital organs an
d sever the huge conduits of the heart.
She thrummed again and could now tell that all the animals had stopped—except one. She again smiled her bodiless smile and waited, listening to the rapid thrust of her prey’s vast undulating tail as it forced the sea to part, pressing his attack upon her. By the noise, he seemed to be the largest Movasi she had ever taken. She moved away from her decoy sound and reset her chromatophores to render herself a mere ellipsis in the flow of water around her.
It was only then she remembered to reengage her sound filters. While she had passively listened for her prey, her sensors had been sensitive to the most-distant sounds, but now Malila needed protection from the din of combat. In that instant, the attack began. A rapid crescendo of focused clicks hit her like hammer blows. The concussions seemed to flatten her sleek shape, encasing her in a chaos of noise. Had she internal organs, the detonations would have disabled her. She drifted in the currents, trying to reorder her sensors. No longer able to hear, her courage in tatters against an invisible opponent, she fled.
Even as she sprinted away, she sensed the predatory green-gray shape, its forked jaws agape with its terrible scimitar teeth, sweep by to plunge into the volume of ocean from which she had just escaped. The sight of her huge opponent steadied her. She was turning to pursue when her returning sensors made her look below to see in the featureless depths the attack of the second whale.
It was no wonder the sonic signature was so large; the Movasi were hunting as a team. She had no strategy to confront them. She sprinted aside as the second whale, the greater of the two, rushed past, his wake tumbling her into confusion again.
She righted herself, with difficulty this time, but had no idea where the huge predators had gone … or from whence they would come again.
Malila considered abandoning the effort, but an unsuccessful hunt would condemn her fellow citizens to a cold, hungry winter. Other than the sharp beak at the leading edge of her body, she had no other weapons. Her defenses were stealth, speed, and cunning. To reduce her avatar’s sonar signature, the designers had eliminated the squid’s suckered and barbed arms in favor of her sleek shape.
Her dilemma was the same as every predator facing two adversaries. If she tried for a killing blow on one, she would be open to attack by the other. If disabled, she would be unable to flee; winning one battle, wounded, would be a death sentence.
Out of the buzzing of her returning hearing, she detected a murmur that might be the rushing charge of one of the whales. A thought gave her sudden confidence. Edie, her metaphract, a nonsentient translator between herself and the CORE, had found a saying: “If things go south, think sideways.”
It would depend on timing.
Malila tried to calm herself. She was just able to see the glint of the recurved white teeth rising up from the depths before she acted. Launching one of her two drogue buoys, she backed away a few meters from the path of the attack. The drogue buoy jetted away before inflating with a subtle click. It hesitated, almost like a confused animal, before it began its increasingly rapid ascent.
The smaller and younger of the two Movasi whales, sleek, massive, voracious, and eellike, altered his course and followed the drogue as it appeared to flee.
As the leviathan careened past, Malila darted forward, cutting a massive slice along the muscular green tail, blood spewing out of the widening red mouth of the wound. The bull turned toward her attack even as she disengaged herself. Before the snakelike head could seize her, she thrust the remaining drogue buoy deep within his still-living flesh and fled up toward the warmth and light.
The great beast, no doubt, would find no difficulty in following her thin trail of cavitation bubbles in the water. At this depth, she knew, the wound she had inflicted would hardly slow the whale’s next attack. Malila imagined jaws encircling her, the terrible teeth gripping her, even as she heard the Movasi surge toward her on his massive flukes.
She heard the buoy deploy.
Her hopes lay with the placement of the buoy deep within the whale’s flesh. As it inflated, it would send a shock wave, like a small bomb, into the pressure-dense tissue. The whale’s center of buoyancy would shift, the buoy’s pressure and obstruction sapping his ability to propel the gigantic tail.
Moments later, the Movasi, seemingly disoriented, floated slowly past her, flailing toward the surface. The drogue balloon inflating even more as he rose, the wounded animal thrashed his huge pectoral flukes in agony, red and overwhelmed.
Her arsenal of drogues, meant to keep dead whales from sinking to rot in the abysmal depths, was now exhausted.
Where was the other whale? Malila cautiously lowered her sound filters again, forming a picture of the first whale’s death throes from the cacophony of sounds. To her dismay, a sonar shadow lurked, obscured and silent near the surface noise. The other big male was waiting, pointing his snout in her direction. He was using his wounded partner to attract and distract … her.
Realization flashed through Malila, her skin prickling with the twin emotions of fear and rage. Again, she considered slipping away. Her top surface speed exceeded anything the whale might achieve. However, a strenuous and skillful fight did not fill any bellies; hunters were justified by success alone.
Sideways.
She regulated her buoyancy, adjusting it to become negative, and slipped into the cold, dark depths. Discovering a current of seawater running toward and under her remaining adversary, she let herself drift like flotsam, tumbling and turning. She took no action until she was almost beyond the blood plume. Righting herself, she rose wraithlike until she could taste the still-potent billowing blood.
Turning, flashing, bursting from the bloody cover, abandoning pretense, she darted forward toward the cloaking sound of the dying whale.
Surprise was almost complete. As she emerged from cover, she saw the splashes of gray and green of the Movasi’s great flank and targeted him in the midthorax, halfway from snakelike head to trifid tail. Her quarry, finally sensing her presence, turned to meet the attack, his jaw serrated with back-curving teeth opening to seize her. Malila’s hardened beak slid along the muscular side before she could disengage and turn to protect herself from his attack. A long wound opened up and added more hot blood to the cold sea. She reversed course, pushing away from the beast to circle around the smaller flailing animal. The old bull surfaced and, laboring, blew a plume of overheated breath, the cold air condensing it into a tall bloodless column. There was nothing to do but circle the two Movasi, awaiting the killing chance.
The end, when it came, surprised her. Taking her reticence for injury or timidity, the old bull rushed at her as she appeared around the bulk of his dying companion. She retreated and in her flight matched her speed to the old one’s pursuit. As he accelerated, she led him away from the blood plume.
She taunted him, sometimes allowing him to approach closer if he appeared to tire, then lengthening the gap to make the whale expend the greatest amount of effort and blood to keep her in sight.
Finally, he faltered. Perhaps convinced that she was abandoning her hunt, the old bull turned to retrace his path. As he did, Malila darted forward and plunged her beak into the unprotected flank. An immediate rush of hot blood rewarded her attack. She thrust on and felt her beak cut through cartilage, bone, and muscle. Only when the gush of high-pressure blood sprayed across her beak did she pull out from the wound. The great bull spun once on his axis and was still. She swam to the still-struggling younger one to dispatch him and signaled the sea tugs to recover the carcasses.
In due course, the nation would learn of her victory. The recovery of both Movasi after combat in the open ocean was noteworthy by itself; her status as a mere E11—only seventeen years old—added savor to the story. Hundreds of her people would toast her hunting skills over whale dinners. She rendezvoused with the boats to take the whales in tow. Malila was pleased.
Malila moved the control
s in her O-A, experiencing the odd but reassuring disorientation as she left the body of her sea avatar.
In a trivial way, or so it appeared to her masters, Physeter movasii and all the toothed whales, both natural and genetically engineered, had been extinct on this particular planet for the last fifty years. That was of minimal consequence, moreover, as Malila’s sea avatar, the Movasi carcasses, the surface tugs, the crowds cheering from the shore, and, indeed, even the ocean evaporated from the simulation stage as soon as Second Lieutenant Malila E. Chiu reincorporated. Technicians of the CORE submitted reports, wiped the temporary data stacks, and started the next scheduled simulation.
CHAPTER 2
REINCORPORATION
Nyork, the Unity
11.01.35.local_11_10_AU76
Second Lieutenant Malila Evanova Chiu heard the bottom drop out of her vision and smelled burnt umber. She felt the clanging of cheap wine and retched from the taste of the creaky gate that had scared her as a child.
Could the Unity not do something to make reincorporation less disconcerting?
It was always the same when she reincorporated; her disembodied flesh sensed the trials her mind had endured … and suffered in her absence. It hardly seemed fair.
“Fathering muckers!”
Edie clucked at her as Malila groaned and sat up.
Don’t be vulgar, squilch! You brought this on yourself, you know.
Fecking frak!
The obscenity was meant to shock, and on cue, Edie grew silent. Growing up in the crèche and then the Democratic Unity Forces for Security (DUFS) barracks, Malila possessed a flamboyant repertoire of profanity, vulgarities, and obscenities. Her metaphract, of late, had taken a dim view of this proficiency.
Lieutenant Chiu donned the light robe she had laid aside hours before and, shivering, waited for her heart rate to glissade from the heights of conquest. A trickle of sweat worked its way through her short, military-style haircut and down her neck as she took a large breath to steady herself.