A Flight of Broken Wings, page 9
part #1 of The Aeriel Chronicles Series
“Hello professor,” he said with a grin, hopping up onto the dais to take the old Kanbarian’s outstretched hand into both of his own. “How are you?”
“Ah,” said Dawad with a small smile. “It has been a while, young man. I’m fantastic, as always. I trust you’re doing well yourself?”
Ruban nodded as Dawad led him down the corridor until they reached the professor’s office, a few doors down from the seminar hall. “How is Simani, my child?” asked the old man, settling himself with some difficulty into his large, cushioned chair which made him look even smaller than he really was. At a gesture from Dawad, Ruban took the seat across from him as his host rang the bell for tea. “I saw on the news that she’d been injured in Ghorib. I believe you were there too? I trust she is not in any danger?” he shook his head. “That girl was always too reckless for her own good.”
Ruban couldn’t help it. He laughed. Dawad’s reproving tone brought with it such a strong reminder of their undergraduate days at Bracken that Ruban almost had to remind himself that he wasn’t actually in trouble for any of the outrageous hijinks Simani and her friends regularly lured him into during their time at the institute.
“She’s fine prof,” he assured the old man. “Still recovering, but she’ll be fine. Or so the doctors tell us anyway. Actually, that’s kind of what I am here for. Ghorib, I mean. You’ve read about it in the papers, I’m sure. Aeriels were attacking the sif mines in Ghorib. That’s why we were sent there to look into it,” he leaned back, frowning. “It wasn’t a destructive attack, though. They didn’t even try to get at any of the workers or anything. It was more like they wanted something…from the mines. That’s what I can’t figure out. What could Aeriels possibly want in a sif mine? Why were they in Ghorib in the first place?”
“I did read about it in the papers. And about your role in it too. Yours and Simani’s, that is. You were very courageous, Ruban,” Dawad nodded approvingly, his eyes warm. “Both you and your partner. I feel very proud to have had you as my students.”
Ruban coughed uncomfortably, not sure how to respond to his teacher’s praise, particularly because it was more than he deserved. Ashwin’s role in the incident had been kept out of the papers. The powers that be were apparently still unsure about what to make of the strange foreigner and didn’t want to bring him back into the public eye so soon after the mess he had caused with Casia Washi.
In truth, Ruban couldn’t even say that he blamed them. He himself wasn’t sure he quite knew what he was dealing with when it came to Ashwin yet. The young man had been following him around almost everywhere he went ever since their return from Ghorib, smiling and blabbering and generally making an overall ass of himself. Nothing about him had really changed since that first day Ruban had laid eyes on him on the IAW grounds. Gods, was that only a week ago? It felt like months. But Ruban couldn’t bring himself to forget what he had seen of the young Zainian in Ghorib, and he wasn’t entirely sure he believed Ashwin’s tale about an old grandmother who had taught him some secret technique of ancient Zainian martial arts as a child. There was more to it than he was letting on, but for now Ruban had no choice but to go along with the charade and accept the undeserved compliment with whatever grace he could muster.
Dawad seemed to sense his awkwardness though, and did not press the subject any further. Instead, he launched into a different topic altogether. “I also read in the papers about the rumours regarding this new formula they’re apparently developing at SifCo,” he began, his aged eyes twinkling with curiosity. “Casia Washi’s show was full of it just about a week ago. And then, radio silence. Ever since Emancipation Day, if I remember correctly.”
“It’s nothing, prof.” His lips pressed into a thin line, Ruban tried to avoid Dawad’s searching eyes without being too obvious about it. He did not like lying to the other man, but this was not a subject he was authorised to speak about. “Just a lot of baseless speculation.”
“Ah, we both know Washi isn’t the type to deal in speculation, my child,” the old man said, gazing at Ruban with sharp green eyes as if he could look into the younger man’s soul. “If nothing else, she has a reputation to maintain. But no matter. You do not have to tell me anything you don’t want to. What I was getting at, Ruban, is this. You say the Aeriels seemed to be looking for something in the Ghorib mines. And every news anchor in the country is screaming about Aeriel conspiracies surrounding SifCo, the single biggest research facility in the capital that deals exclusively with sif and its by-products. And as I’m sure you’re aware, the Ghorib mines are some of the largest and most productive in the country right now. Besides which, Ghorib is the only major mining town that is reasonably close to Ragah. Most of the others are all in the south. Does it not strike you as too much of a coincidence, then, that Aeriels should suddenly show such interest in all the places that work with sif?” He sat back, letting his words sink in.
Ruban frowned, frustration rising like bile in his throat. “But what can Aeriels possibly want with sif? The only thing it’s good for is gutting the bastards.” He bit his lip the moment the expletive had left his mouth, looking up guiltily at his old professor.
Dawad smiled beatifically. “You really haven’t changed, have you young man? I tried to teach you this while you were under my tutelage, but I suppose I wasn’t entirely successful. The world is rarely as neatly segmented, as black and white as we would like it to be. There is as much variety amongst Aeriels as there is among men. And they are no more all ‘bastards’, as you say, than Zainians are all dandies or Kanbarians all greedy capitalists; though I will say that there is some truth to almost every stereotype,” he chuckled. “My point is, there might be much about Aeriels that you don’t yet know, or understand fully. It is a folly to be tricked by one’s own prejudices. I cannot tell you what it is the Aeriels were doing in Ghorib, Ruban, especially because I don’t seem to have all the pieces of the puzzle yet. But it can’t hurt to keep our minds open to the possibility that the universe is not quite as unidimensional or monochrome as we sometimes perceive it to be.”
“We’ll be paying a visit to SifCo today,” Ruban said, buttoning his uniform shirt as he walked out of the shower. It was around eight in the morning but it had been raining on and off for a few hours now, clouds obscuring the sun and plunging the world into semi-darkness, illuminated only by the occasional burst of lightning. “Get ready quickly. We have an appointment in a couple of hours, and we don’t want to be late.”
Shwaan tossed the last few pieces of toast onto a plate containing scrambled eggs and passed them to his host, wiping his hands on the dishtowel. He had been staying at Ruban’s flat for the past week, occupying his couch for lack of a proper guest-room, as the man refused to let him out of his sight after office hours. So he figured he might as well make himself useful, and a few carefully watched episodes of ‘Secret Recipe’ and ‘Gourmet Central’ had solved the mysteries of modern kitchen appliances, although he still found the juicer mildly confounding. He took up his own plate and walked over to the table to join Ruban. He didn’t need to eat, of course. But he supposed the Hunter would eventually notice if his houseguest skipped all his meals.
Besides, food could be rather fun when one experimented with the recipes, and Shwaan was a firm believer in experimentation in all its forms, much to his host’s frequent annoyance. He made a mental note to make Safaa try the cheese balls sautéed in red pepper sauce, once this current mess was over. He would have done it before, but he didn’t want to risk his sister changing her mind and going over to their mother’s side at such a critical juncture, deciding that humanity needed to be annihilated after all.
“Simani won’t be coming with us?” he asked, swallowing a mouthful of eggs.
Ruban shook his head, biting into a piece of toast before following it with a spoonful of eggs. “Doc’s advised her complete bed-rest for two weeks at least. Besides, this is just recon, so there shouldn’t be any trouble. I’ve told Hema to be on hand just in case we need backup, but it won’t be necessary.”
Shwaan nodded, looking dolefully out of the window. “It’s been raining cats and dogs for two days in a row now,” he sighed. “I hate this weather. It’s like night-time twenty-four hours a day.”
Ruban grinned, following Shwaan’s gaze to the cloudy sky outside. “Oh I love it. It’s the best time of the year.”
“It is?” Shwaan raised an eyebrow.
“Oh yeah. Keeps those bastards nice and weak.” Then, noticing his companion’s uncomprehending stare, he continued: “Aeriels. They feed off of sunlight, didn’t you know? Monsoon is the time of the year they’re at their weakest. There’s practically no sun to be had, is there? There’s a reason the Rebellion happened during the monsoon.”
Unlike the IAW building, which despite numerous renovations still retained its air of old-world magnificence, the SifCo facility was – in every way – a true temple of modernity. The compound was divided into two broad sections, with smaller buildings and establishments sprinkled throughout the premises. The east wing was huge and imposing, a sprawling seven-floor structure of polished metal and glass that reflected the sun with an almost dazzling light on clear days. On a day like this one, it looked dark and forbidding, the stormy sky casting its tumultuous shadow on the reflective surface.
Standing opposite it, separated by a small courtyard, the west wing was a more modest sight: a simple, three-storey, whitewashed building with large windows. Young men and women – barely out of college, Ruban thought – in white coats with files and tablets in their hands walked in and out of the west wing unhindered.
The east wing, by contrast, was guarded by two heavy-set men in dark blue uniforms. Ruban could see their shoulder holsters and the sheathed sifblades at their hips. They weren’t Hunters, that he could tell, but sometimes the government issued sifblades to ordinary security personnel deployed to places considered at risk of Aeriel attacks. Not that sif in itself would do much good without the proper training. One of the most important parts of being a Hunter was knowing how to get the sif into the Aeriel, something no amount of raw firepower could replace.
Flashing his badge at the main gate, Ruban drove into the SifCo compound, taking his time to get a feel for the area before parking in a lot close to the west wing that appeared to be reserved for visitors. Getting out of the car, he shot off a message to Subhas’s contact at the facility while walking briskly across the courtyard towards the east wing, trying to avoid the rain as much as possible.
As he approached, Ashwin in tow, he noted one of the guards reaching for his walkie-talkie while the other rested a hand somewhat conspicuously on his holster, though he made no move to withdraw the weapon, yet. Ruban supposed it was natural for security to be a little jumpy after all the hue and cry in the media about an impending Aeriel attack at SifCo. He trotted up the front steps, holding up his badge for the guards to see. But before he could say anything, the heavy metal doors swung open and a long-faced, dark haired woman – her hair done up neatly in a coiffure behind her head – stood at the doorway. She gestured at the guards to stand down and stood back to allow the two men entry into the building.
“Hello, I’m Natasha,” she said with a little nod, holding out her hand to Ruban. “You must be Mr. Ruban Kinoh of the South Ragah Division.”
“I am,” he said, taking her hand for a brief shake. “It’s nice to finally meet you. And this is my…partner. Lord Ashwin Kwan. He’s our liaison with the Zainian secret service.”
The woman smiled formally. “Pleasure,” she said, turning to Ashwin. Then she started walking further into the building, gesturing for them to follow her. “Come, let me introduce you to some of my colleagues.”
“No, no. The amplifier just enhances the immediate intensity of the shot but it’s the booster at the back that really adds to the overall velocity,” the bright-eyed young researcher explained enthusiastically as Ashwin nodded along with a look of attentive fascination on his face, stopping his companion here and there to ask another question about the strange semi-circular gadget they were cooing over.
“Ah yes,” murmured the Zainian after a particularly convoluted piece of techno-babble from the researcher. “My sister had been working on something like this a few years ago. She told me the motherboard would require a platinum base before she could expand the storage capacity–”
One of the other researchers, a slightly older woman in her early thirties, tapped Ashwin’s shoulder to draw his attention to another contraption that looked vaguely like the first one, but with some sort of antennae attached to one end. “This is a more advanced version of the drive. But what it gains in speed, it loses in storage capacity, particularly when working with older interfaces. Of course that wouldn’t matter much in an emergency situation but when we consider long-term commercial use…”
Ruban tuned them out. It all sounded like gibberish to him anyway. Hiya would enjoy being here. It was not that he was particularly bad with technology. He managed the basic stuff he needed for his job without much trouble, but he had never felt a fascination for technology for its own sake. Apparently, Ashwin felt differently – his eyes were wide and his mouth hung slightly open as he listened with rapt attention to the pair of researchers explaining the relative pros and cons of the two gadgets in what seemed to Ruban like excruciating detail. Well, he supposed that even a nincompoop of Ashwin’s calibre had to have something he was interested in. Besides, it couldn’t hurt to make friends with the staff at SifCo, since they would inevitably need their cooperation at some point during the investigation.
Turning away, he surveyed the interiors of the facility. The place felt oddly sterile to him, almost like a hospital, but with machines for patients. The walls were all painted white and the furniture was modern and uncomfortable. Tall, metal cabinets lined the walls and bizarre-looking contraptions in various stages of dismantlement littered almost every available surface.
He was just about to turn around and join Ashwin in his enthusiastic explorations of the wonders of science, to try and see if he could get any information out of the junior researchers, when a metal door to the back of the room, marked ‘RESTRICTED’, flew open. A slender, harried-looking man in his early sixties, wearing thick glasses and a long white lab coat, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows, stood at the doorway. His eyes darted around the room for a few seconds before landing finally on Ruban.
“Ah, you must be Mr. Kinoh,” he said, rushing forward to grab Ruban’s hand and give it a hearty shake. “Sorry to keep you waiting. Got caught up with something; so stupid of me. I was told you would be coming today. But you know how time flies…and when you’re so close to the end. Hard to keep track, you know.” He continued to babble, turning to walk back towards the room he had just come out of. He was still holding on to Ruban’s hand, never having let go of it after the rather extensive handshake they had shared, and the Hunter found himself being pulled along behind the newcomer to the chamber with the ‘Restricted’ sign. His head snapped back to look at Ashwin, but the Zainian seemed to have caught on to what was happening and made to follow Ruban into the room, bidding a perfunctory goodbye to his new friends before breaking out into a semi jog to catch up with the other two.
As it turned out, Ruban’s impromptu kidnapper was apparently the Head Researcher in charge of the reinforced sifblade project. The room he led them into was full of more metal cabinets and a couple of wooden chests full of drawers. At the centre of the room stood a small wooden table with an ancient-looking desktop computer and a telephone. Taking the seat behind this table with a relieved sigh, the man gestured for his guests to take the chairs opposite him. “Please, do sit down,” he said, uncapping a plastic bottle and taking a long drink of water before setting it back down on the table and finally focusing on his visitors. “You must be Hunters. Of course you are. Subhas told me the Zainians were involved,” he said, sparing a cursory glance at Ashwin. “Really, all this ruckus over a silly news programme. Reporters are a bloody menace, not that bureaucrats are any better.” He shook his head. “To think they let it get this far. Nip it in the bud, is what they should’ve done. Now I have fucking reporters and Hunters and the goddamned police all over my office asking all sorts of silly questions and distracting the scientists when really, we should be working on completing the damn thing they’re all so excited about in the first place.”
“You mean the reinforced sifblade formula?” asked Ruban.
“Yes the reinforced sifblade formula.” The man nodded emphatically. “Not that the actual thing seems to matter to anyone anymore. All they want are the sound-bites and the screen time and the ridiculous fucking rumours the press likes to call news these days.”
“Umm,” began Ashwin, hesitantly. “If we could just have your name, sir?”
The man turned abruptly to look at Ashwin through narrowed eyes, regarding him as if he had completely lost his mind. And while Ruban was wont to agree with this assessment of the Zainian most of the time, even he couldn’t find anything particularly objectionable about Ashwin’s current line of inquiry. He himself was getting rather tired of referring to their new acquaintance as ‘the man’ in his head. It made him sound far more mysterious and interesting than he actually was.
“Kalhar,” the man said dismissively, as if he did not appreciate being bothered about such insignificant details. “Kalhar Visht. And you are?”
“Ashwin Kwan,” Ashwin inclined his head with a pleasant smile. Then, before Ruban could get a word in edgewise, he continued: “If you wouldn’t mind telling us, Dr. Visht, what exactly is the reinforced sifblade formula? And how will it affect our fight against Aeriels, practically speaking? I mean we all know the basics, of course, that they’re more effective than regular sifblades. But really, what does that mean in terms of practical combat? How will this formula help a Hunter, say, during a one-on-one face-off with an Aeriel?”
