CoE: Lamentations Snippet
Not everything in life can be politics, thank heaven. And on Fridays, I promise to keep things lighter.
But boy, do I have a post ready to go for Monday.
Meanwhile, I thought I might post a little something from the book I’m writing right now – the sequel to Battlehymn. SPOILERS FOLLOW! But if you’ve read Battlehymn, and you don’t mind getting a sneak peek, here’s a piece of Crown of Exiles Book 2: Lamentation.
FOR THE SPOILER-HARDY FEW. CoE: Battlehymn is a science fiction story about a young man named Shem who discovers that he has the talent to influence the minds of other people through song. People who can do this are called skalds, and in some instances, the talent has been put toward military applications. Put a skald in a giant armored robot suit with external speakers, and have him sing about how your team is going to win, sort of. At the end of Battlehymn, Shem was forced to fight a member of the mercenary cohort he’d joined. Here, the leader of the cohort, Ichigo Kamiyama, and Shem’s armor suit trainer, Naji, are discussing what happened in that battle and what to do about it now…
Ichigo nodded, poured a small amount into a glass, and sat down behind the desk. “Naji, you knew David better than most. Maybe better than me. And you trained Shem. Tell me, even with Shem’s singing, do you really believe that he could fight off David in a Jotun suit?”
Naji shook her head immediately. She’d seen Shem’s last exercise before the cohort had shipped out for Elian. He’d been good, yes. And his singing had an effect, but by the end of the exercise, Shem’s suit had been completely disabled by training rounds. She thought about the conversation they’d had in the hanger bay that night. It’s a coffin, she’d said, meant to hold you in place for the reaper when he comes.
That’s not quite right. he’d responded. It’s not meant to protect the person in it. It’s meant to protect the people outside… We invite the reaper, so that he does not strike down those we seek to protect. She smiled at the memory now. He’d been so morose. So somber. And his armor had been covered with paint from the practice rounds. He’d been shot up by one of the cohort team leaders – Norris.
“No. No way. Even with the singing, a Jotun’s armor and armament are more than a match for Shem. Remember the exercise in the asteroid field? Norris shot Shem up good despite the singing.”
Ichigo nodded. “That’s what I thought. No matter how good a shot Shem is, a Jotun’s a terror, and David wears it like a second skin. So, you’d agree that even at full fighting strength, you’d give that match to David.”
Naji nodded. “Yeah. In a heartbeat. There’s no way Shem could do enough damage to a Jotun fast enough to stop him once he got moving.”
“And yet Shem is here, and David is not.” Ichigo sat at his desk, swirling the amber liquid in the glass. “Let me add another factor for you to consider. Shem went out and fought David’s Jotun… without grabbing a weapon first.”
Naji laughed out loud. She started, and just couldn’t stop. It went on for a little while, Naji shaking her head and wiping the tears from her eyes. Then she saw the look on Ichigo’s face. “No way.” Her brow furrowed. “Chief, no. There’s just no way. An unarmed suit no bigger than a Hemme against an armed Jotun? And Shem won? There’s no way.” She thought about it, shaking her head. “Couldn’t have happened.”
“Yes, normally I’d say the same thing. And then I saw this.” He reached down and activated a holo-display over his desk. It began to play surveillance footage from just outside the hangar deck. Shem’s suit came leaping out of the deck’s egress port, followed closely by an explosion. Ichigo froze the image and backed it up slowly, but Naji had already seen it. A good pilot immediately scanned the hands and shoulders of an opponent for armament, and Shem hadn’t had any when he came tumbling out of the complex.
“So… how did he do it? Did David drop something? He couldn’t have sung him away? Right?” Naji walked around the desk and leaned over Ichigo’s shoulder, peering at the frozen image. No weapons. Son of a…
“There’s one other thing I haven’t told the cohort. Apparently, Shem was about to be smashed up against the colony wall – you know how David likes to get physical in that Jotun. So, Shem’s song changed.” He pulled up another piece of footage, this one showing the two suits headed for the colony wall at high speed, David squeezing the Vanir suit. A telltale came up on the display, showing the stress the suit was taking, and Naji shook her head. Markus was a genius with armor suits. A lesser one would have cracked like an egg under the pressure David was putting on it. Suddenly, David’s right arm went limp, and Shem was able to get free enough to lay a fantastic punch on the Jotun and get free – just before they both collided with the colony wall and went tumbling.
Naji leaned in closer. “Zoom that and back it up? What happened there with David’s arm?”
Ichigo backed the footage up, then played it forward at a lower speed. “You tell me. What does it look like to you?”
“It looks like… It just stopped working.” She looked down at Ichigo, who was staring at the frozen image with flat eyes. “How did that happen?”
“When Shem’s song changed, he was broadcasting through the entire colony, and everyone experienced a sharp, piercing pain in the elbow of their right arm.” Ichigo said, his voice steady and cold. “It appears that Shem’s song had a physical effect beyond just the normal perceptive, emotional, cognitive impact a skald song has.” He drank the liquid down now in a single gulp, shuddering and gasping at the fiery taste.
Naji felt her legs go weak. “Maybe I will have a drink of that stuff after all.” She poured it herself, just a finger of the single malt scotch. She tossed it back and squinted. “Wow. Yeah. So, we have a skald on our hands whose songs have a potential physical impact. What now?”
Ichigo shrugged. “Shem’s still untrained. Raw. He’s a fantastic musician, but I don’t know if he’s been able to tap his talent as a skald to its greatest potential. And if he doesn’t have control of this?” Ichigo nodded at the display. “Then he’s more than a potential asset. He’s a… he’s a disaster waiting to happen. He meant that to affect David, but it hurt every person in the colony. And some of the nearby ship crews and miners, apparently. Anyone who heard it. Now imagine that instead of trying to shut down David’s prosthetic arm, he had been concentrating really hard on David’s brain.” He poured himself another shot of the scotch. “Last night, Shem had a dream. A dream where he sang a song that killed people. A song that he couldn’t get out of his head. A song that scared the hell out of him, but he still remembered it. You want to find out what happens if he sings it? Accidentally, even? Say, while he’s scrubbing in the shower? And it’s just a little tune that won’t leave him alone? How many times has that happened to you.”
Naji didn’t say anything. She just stared at the display.
“That’s why it has to be you, Naji. No one’s told Shem about that. We have no idea what he’ll do if he suddenly realizes he has that kind of power. It’s unprecedented. And when the Commonwealth finds out he can do it?”
“Which they have to know by now,” Naji muttered, “thanks to David.”
“They’ll be after him directly. So he can’t be here. He specifically can’t be here. He’s got to be someplace else. And that has to happen in the loudest secret way I can think of to buy Haven time to build her defenses. Because mark my words, we’re going to get pasted before this is all over and done. And I need to know that Shem is in control of himself and his abilities. Or he can’t come home.” He fixed Naji with a hard, flat look. “And he can’t serve the Commonwealth either. If the Queen or one of the princelings gets ahold of him?” Ichigo shook his head. “They’ll tear his brain and body apart until they figure out how he did that, and then they’ll figure out how to make others do it. And everyone loses.”
Naji shuddered.
“That’s why it has to be you, Naji. It can’t be Cassie. Maybe it could be Ailer. I don’t know if I could do it myself. I like him too much. When you get to the bottom of it, you’re the only one I trust to pull the trigger.”
Naji nodded, not taking her eyes from the display. “All right,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “I’ll get packed. Let’s all hope it doesn’t come to that.”
Ichigo nodded. “Amen.”
