What Price Victory by Various

Author:Various
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2023-07-02T15:39:19+00:00

Calculus Logi

Darius Hinks

Heat rises from the sands like a living thing. It shimmers and rolls over the dunes with a silent menace, bringing tears to my eyes. I blink, and an array of filmy geometric shapes shifts slowly across my retina, the minute mathematical symbols blurring in the salty water. Then I close my eyes for a moment to rest them from the harsh light.

Not that there’s much to look at anyway.

Belisarius IV is barren beyond anything I have ever experienced. Not a single river breaks the monotony of the view; not so much as a sapling lifts its leaves above the sweeping dunes. If it weren’t for the distant wreck of the Sardanapalus, it would seem a lifeless wasteland; but I know otherwise.

In three-and-a-half seconds the planet’s fierce sun will reach its zenith. The heat will become sixty degrees Celsius: a heat so great that the planet’s scarce fauna will be forced to burrow and hide to escape the seething furnace. For a short while peace will descend, and only then can our daily race begin.

As my chronograph reaches the end of its countdown, I flex the pistons in my augmented legs, tensing the muscles and stretching the artificial fibres in preparation. ‘Envisage a circle of which the centre is nowhere, and the circumference is everywhere,’ I murmur, taking comfort from the old catechism as I lower myself into a crouch, ‘for that is the Emperor.’

The ticking of my device is audible in the otherwise silent cave, and I sense the anticipation of the others as they ready themselves. Their fear is almost palpable, and I can’t help but smile as I consider their pitifully unadorned limbs. Every day they make the attempt, and every day another one dies.

A bead of sweat rolls slowly down the bridge of my nose, and I feel the immense heat beginning to rise through the soles of my boots.

‘Now!’ I cry, and launch myself into the light.

One by one we spring from the darkness of the cave, blinking like newborns as our eyes struggle to adjust to the harsh glare. I race ahead: sprinting lightly over the dunes with the sun sparkling along my dials and cogs, and the pistons in my legs wheezing musically as they power me across the desert.

Behind me trail the other survivors, those faithless flotsam and jetsam who are now my only companions: Amaryllis, Hasan, Rabanus and Valens. Humans of course, but as alien to me as everything else on Belisarius.

I can hear their pained gasps as they struggle to breathe the stifling air and without even turning to look, I can envisage the desperation on their sweating faces as they attempt to find purchase on the shifting sand. The sun will be at its hottest for only seven minutes and forty-two seconds, and they each know that a moment’s hesitation could be fatal. Seven forty-two: the numbers are embedded in their thoughts like a prayer.

I sprint like never before, as though I have daemons bearing down on me.

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