A Flight of Broken Wings, page 13
part #1 of The Aeriel Chronicles Series
Ruban entered the flat, latching the door behind him with a sigh of relief. It had been a long day. It seemed as though Aeriel activity was escalating all across the country, not just in the capital. Today itself, they had received reports of two attacks in the suburbs and some minor incidents in the National Capital Region surrounding Ragah. He was exhausted and he could feel a headache approaching, though in a way he supposed he was also grateful for the distraction. Today was the last day of the week, the last day he officially retained the SifCo case. On Monday, he’d have to hand it over to a new team put together by the IAW brass.
The thought of it made his blood boil and he wanted to slam his fist into the wall, just to relieve the festering feeling of utter helplessness. Still, the fact remained that he was, in fact, helpless in this matter. He couldn’t even really blame Subhas. He knew the man was doing his best, and he understood – even if reluctantly – the compulsions of his uncle’s position.
None of that made this easier, though. Ruban was self-aware enough to recognise that his aversion to the situation was caused as much by his wounded pride as a genuine sense of professional investment in the case. But still, he itched to storm into the IAW headquarters and give those damned paper-pushers a piece of his mind. He would have liked to see which one of them fared better in the situation that Ruban had been in: faced – with no warning whatsoever – with the Aeriel Queen herself; nothing but a standard-issue sifblade on his person and two civilians in the room, one of them unconscious.
Speaking of civilians, Ruban spared a moment to be thankful that Ashwin wasn’t here now, having flittered off earlier in the evening to meet some ‘friends’ in the city. Ruban supposed he was going to the Zainian embassy, and let him go. If the young man had indeed had any malicious intent so far as the SifCo case was concerned, he had had ample opportunity to act on it by now. Besides, he thought bitterly, that case was no longer his responsibility, or his concern.
It was just as well. Ruban was in no mood for company and he didn’t fancy losing his cool in front of the Zainian. He walked over to the kitchenette to fix himself a cup of coffee. God knew he needed caffeine to keep himself from passing out tonight, and he needed to stay up to deal with the deluge of cases that had suddenly landed on their laps over the past week.
An insistent knock on the door, followed quickly by another, louder one, tore him away from his thoughts. Putting his cup down on the counter, Ruban walked over to the sitting room and pulled the door open. Vikram Vaz stood on the other side of the threshold, breathing quickly as if he had just run a long distance, his eyes alight with excitement.
“Turn on the TV,” Vikram said without preamble, pushing himself past Ruban and into the flat. He marched over to the outdated television set in the small living room and flicked on the main switch. “Where’s the remote?”
“Wh-what? Vik, what on earth are you doing here? And what’s with the TV? Have you lost it?” Ruban asked, flabbergasted.
Vikram laughed. “It’s not me, my friend. The world has lost it. Turn on the TV and you’ll see. You’re the hero of Ragah once again. Hell, the Parliament attack had nothing on this. I’d be surprised if you received any less than a million marriage proposals this time. They’ll be making movies about you after this.” With that, Vikram finally managed to locate the remote under one of the sofa cushions and pressed the power button. The television flared to life.
“What are you saying, man? Stop talking in riddles and tell me what’s going on,” Ruban said irritably, making a grab for the remote. The other man dodged him – with more agility than Ruban would have expected from the academic. Apparently having a Hunter for a wife had taught him a few tricks after all – and pointed the remote at the TV again, flicking through the channels until he found the one he wanted.
The words died on Ruban’s lips when his mind registered exactly what it was that he was seeing. The screen was split into two halves. On the left hand side was playing what looked like a pre-recorded video of poor quality, slightly hazy with bad lighting. On the right, Casia Washi was talking animatedly with Ashwin Kwan.
Looking closely, Ruban finally realised why the video seemed familiar. It was not that he had seen it ever before, it was that he was in it. Frame after frame of the fight at SifCo passed before his eyes: him killing the first Aeriel; Tauheen’s arrival, her crimson-tipped wings flaring as she blasted half the wall off; him overpowered and pinned down by the Aeriel Queen as Ashwin swung the table at her; then Ruban’s final attack upon the creature and Tauheen’s escape. The scenes were blurry and ill-defined – security camera feed, he realised dimly – but there was no mistaking what was going on. Ruban was fighting the Aeriel Queen, and losing by a hair’s breadth against impossible odds.
Eventually, the video concluded and the frame to the left disappeared, the panel on the right expanding to cover the entire screen. Through the ringing in his ears, Ruban caught snatches of the conversation between Washi and Ashwin:
“And you’re sure it was Tauheen?” Washi was asking, and even through the haze in his mind Ruban could hear the raw curiosity in her voice.
“Yup,” Ashwin said, his tone enthusiastic. “Even if it weren’t for the markings on her wings, didn’t you see the way she was moving? Not even Aeriels can move that fast; not normal ones anyway.”
“Still, Ruban Kinoh put up an admirable fight, considering the circumstances…”
“Quite so,” Ashwin nodded earnestly, looking at the camera with big, solemn eyes. “If it hadn’t been for him, Dr. Visht and I would most certainly be dead. That Aeriel was so…scary.” He shuddered visibly.
“You weren’t so bad yourself,” Washi smiled encouragingly at her companion. “You aided Mr. Kinoh when he was overpowered by Tauheen. That was very brave of you.”
Ashwin dipped his head, a shy little smile on his lips. “I only did what I had to. Truth is, Mr. Kinoh was fighting impossible odds. We were wholly unprepared for the attack. No one has seen Tauheen in decades; nobody could have imagined she’d show up at SifCo of all places. All the help in the world wouldn’t have made any difference that day.” He shook his head from side to side, sighing resignedly.
“Do you not believe that this menace can be overcome, then?” Washi asked.
“Oh of course it can, but only with proper planning and preparation. Of course, Mr. Kinoh has already faced Tauheen once, and he almost got her then. I’m sure that given enough time to plan and prepare a strategy, with the necessary help from the government and the IAW, Mr. Kinoh will have no problems capturing the Aeriel Queen. There’s nobody else who actually knows what it is to fight Tauheen face to face, and I cannot imagine anyone better suited to the task of overcoming this new menace.” Ashwin’s voice was so guilelessly sincere, Ruban almost believed it himself.
“There are rumours about the video having been leaked from Zaini…” Washi let the unspoken question hang in the air. Even through the pounding pain that had now spread throughout his skull, Ruban could appreciate her skill as an interviewer. She had said nothing, yet had implied everything in that one simple sentence.
“Oh, I wouldn’t know about that. Clearly, whoever leaked that video was acting against the law – probably another one of the Aeriels’ schemes to divide us in this time of crisis. The culprit must be brought to justice as soon as possible.”
With a flick of his finger, Vikram turned off the television. “This has been going on for a couple of hours now. CXN first aired the video – apparently they’d received it through some anonymous source, though God only knows what source that is – and every channel’s been playing it on a loop ever since. And then our boy Ashwin went on at Casia Washi’s show and he’s been gushing about your vaunted bravery for the past hour, live on national TV. I wouldn’t be surprised if teenage girls were forming online fan clubs in your name as we speak,” he chuckled.
Before Ruban could think of an appropriate response to that comment, his phone rang. Reaching almost blindly for the device, he pressed answer.
“Am I speaking to Mr. Ruban Kinoh, Chief Hunter, South Ragah Division?” the cool voice on the other end of the line asked. IAW, thought Ruban, his blood thrumming in his veins even as he answered in the affirmative. “The Director would like to speak with you, sir. Please wait while I put you through.”
Ruban’s breath caught in his throat. He had expected to be put through to his uncle. What on earth did the Director of the IAW want with him? Before he could think much more about it though, a hearty voice came through the line, drawing his attention to it.
“Ruban, my boy!” the Director said, his voice warm.
Ruban could count on one hand the number of times he had met the Director during his time as a Hunter, and the man had never struck him as being particularly congenial during those short encounters. “Sir?” he said, cautious.
“You have done a fantastic job, young man. Wonderful indeed! You’ve ensured the safety of this city and made the Hunter Corps proud to have you in its ranks. I had been meaning to tell you that in person this past week, but something always seemed to come up that needed my attention. You know how it is.”
“Uh,” said Ruban, not sure how he was expected to respond to that.
“Anyway,” continued the Director, brushing aside whatever opinions Ruban might have had about his schedule. “What I called to say is this. If you need any assistance with this case, anything at all, money, men or anything else, feel free to talk to me directly, alright? All the resources of the IAW and the Centre will be at your disposal for the duration of this case. The safety of this city, this nation is paramount, and we are all relying upon you to ensure that it remains intact. Do not hesitate to ask for whatever you need to capture Tauheen and bring her to justice. This is now our first priority. I have every faith in you, Ruban. I know you can do it, if anyone can.”
“Yes sir. Of course,” Ruban said slowly. He held the phone to his ear for a few more minutes as the Director continued to speak, his tone oddly intimate. Finally, the line went dead, and Ruban threw the phone onto the sofa, sitting heavily down beside it.
“I don’t understand,” he said at length, turning to Vikram after he had had a moment to digest it all. He still felt rather shaken. “There was a leak – a security breach at SifCo. Or at the IAW, for that matter. How does nobody seem to have noticed that?”
Vikram laughed. “Oh come on, Ruban. You know what this is as well as I do. The city’s being swept by a media storm, and you’re at the centre of it all. And for once, it seems to be going in our favour. Don’t look so glum. This is your own personal manna, the opportunity you’ve been waiting for all week. Nobody cares what really happened or how; what matters is what the public thinks happened. And at least for now, they seem to think you’re a grand fucking hero! Not even the Prime Minister himself could take the SifCo case away from you now.”
Chapter 6: The Forgotten Thunder
Ruban marvelled at how completely the atmosphere at the office had changed overnight. Whereas yesterday they had been harried and overworked, bogged down by too many cases and too little time, today everything seemed to be moving almost effortlessly, as though someone had breathed new life into the very air of the stuffy old red-brick structure.
They had won an important battle, and consequently, it seemed, felt that much closer to winning the war. Ruban felt it too. For the first time in a long time, he wasn’t beating impotently against an impenetrable wall, or waging a doomed campaign against an invincible foe. Finally, he thought he was beginning to achieve some sense of direction in this case, some much-needed clarity about the path ahead. He had barely had a wink of sleep last night, after watching all the various news broadcasts screaming themselves hoarse about the leaked video and everything that it brought with it, but somehow he felt oddly refreshed this morning; lighter too, as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders.
He still wasn’t entirely sure how he was meant to deal with random strangers coming up to him and asking to take a selfie with him, or with the half dozen women who had waylaid him and insisted on weeping at him on his way over to the office that morning. Vikram had been right: it was like it had been just after the Parliament attack last year, only worse. Way worse. Still, he figured that if it meant he could keep the SifCo case and see it through to the end, he would find a way to deal with the rest.
Faiz and Dai had volunteered to go deal with the latest attack on a government warehouse in the NCR along with some of the local Hunters, so that the rest of the team could stay back at the office and research the new developments in the SifCo case. Which was exactly what they were doing now, assisted by generous amounts of strong coffee and takeaway Zainian noodles.
Putting an enormous pile of old files down on his desk with a thump and waving away the resultant dust clouds, Rinku huffed. “These are all the records I could find about Tauheen’s activities during the last century. I wouldn’t put too much stock by them, though. Most of it’s just rumours and speculation, from some of the more…imaginative channels and publications. More like UFO sightings than proper investigative reporting. And even when there’s solid proof – like pictures and stuff – nobody really seemed to know what she was up to or why. Again, it’s just more wild speculation.”
Simani groaned. “You shouldn’t have killed that Aeriel, Ruban. The one that took the disk before Tauheen. Do we even know its name yet? It must be somewhere in the system.” She turned to look expectantly at Rinku. “If it’d been alive we could’ve interrogated it about Tauheen’s location. Not to mention her endgame. I still can’t figure out what the fuck Aeriels could want with sif and sifblade formulas. It’d be one thing to simply destroy it; that I could understand. But to go through all this trouble to steal the thing. It just doesn’t make any goddamned sense.”
Ruban scowled. “It’s not like I had a lot of time to think about it. I hadn’t gone there prepared for a Hunt, you know. It was more instinct than forethought, everything that happened after that first blast in the west wing.”
“It’s a good thing he killed him too,” Ashwin piped up from the back where he was pouring himself more coffee, inundating the liquid with spoonfuls of sugar. The sight made Ruban want to gag. Hema’s cat purred in agreement, rubbing herself against the Zainian’s leg with languorous satisfaction. “Tauheen herself was bad enough. It would’ve been worse if she’d had help. Besides, he wouldn’t have told you anything even if you had managed to capture him. After all, if anything they say about the Aeriel Queen is true, I’d be more scared of her than anything they could do to me in Jahagrad, don’t you think?”
“Not that your unique ability to identify the proper pronoun for every Aeriel isn’t overwhelmingly helpful, but at the moment you have more important things to answer for, wouldn’t you say?” drawled Ruban, his eyes fixed on one of the files Rinku had just dumped on his desk. “Like why you felt the irresistible need to bare your soul to Casia Washi on national TV last night without consulting any of us first.”
Ashwin marched over to the main gallery indignantly, putting his cup down on Faiz’s desk and plopping down into his chair in a flurry of loose hair and flowing coat. The cat gave an incensed squawk at being thus ignored and planted herself huffily upon Hema’s desk, thumping her tail at Ashwin. In a way, Ruban understood her feelings. The man could be a veritable pain in the ass when he wanted to be.
He hadn’t come back to the flat last night, so Ruban supposed he had stayed over with friends at WNN after the interview, probably Casia Washi herself, though he had never thought they were quite that close. At any event, he hadn’t asked. A side-effect of the sleepover, though, seemed to be that wherever he had been, Ashwin hadn’t managed to procure a ribbon to tie up his hair in its usual braid. Consequently, it now covered his back almost like a dark curtain, falling right down to his hips. Ruban imagined it would make moving around mighty awkward, with your hair getting under your butt every time you tried to sit down. Well, nobody had ever accused Zainian nobility of pragmatism.
“It wasn’t like I went up to her asking to be interviewed, you know,” Ashwin said, scowling at Ruban. “She asked me to appear on the show, so I did. Especially since she already had the video, they all did. So I figured, what harm can it really do to explain it all properly? Better than all of them jumping to their own conclusions and raising another shitstorm around the case. Besides, Miss Casia had helped me a lot when I first came to this country, y’know. She’s a friend. I couldn’t just refuse her request out of hand. Anyway,” he paused mid-rant to look at Ruban through narrowed eyes. “I don’t see what you’ve got to complain about, all things considered.”
“Well, even if we don’t yet know the identity of the dead Aeriel, we still have the live one to think about,” Hema said, interrupting the argument, probably sensing that it was not one that was likely to end anytime soon without external intervention.
“What, you mean Tauheen?” asked Rinku. “I’d say that’s all we’ve been thinking about lately.”
Hema shook her head, running her fingers absently through Kitty’s lush grey fur. The cat rolled over promptly, an unspoken command for a belly-rub. “No. I mean the one that attacked the west wing. The one that created the distraction to get Ruban away from the disk in the first place.”
Rinku frowned. “I think that was Tauheen too, though. She could have created the distraction while the other one sneaked in and stole the disk. She probably hadn’t counted on Ruban to realise that it was a ploy and return as fast as he did. When her minion died, she came in to finish the job herself.”
“No. Hema’s right,” Ruban said, flipping through one of the files on his desk with some interest. “It couldn’t have been her. Tauheen I mean. Her attack on the east wing was strong enough to blow a large chunk of the wall clean off, reduce it to nothing more than rubble and dust. That would have cost her a ton of energy. She couldn’t have done that less than ten minutes after the west wing blast, which wasn’t anything to scoff at either. It would have drained her completely, to the point of utter exhaustion. Which obviously wasn’t the case, since she fought us both and got away with barely a scratch to show for it.”
