Rise of the Clavefolk

[Maharg67]

ONE

 

Clave One was huge but mostly one could not easily see that for most of the spaces were on the smaller side. The Great Dome was an exception being a dome shaped chamber rising over twenty standard levels from the centre of its floor to the apex of the dome. Greenery of semiwilderness gardens filled the outer ring and a clever naturalistic ring shaped channel flowed clockwise. In the centre of the ring was a great green park dotted with kiosks, pagodas, footpaths, cyclepaths and other structures cleverly designed to blend into the scenery. Here was the greatness of the Clave-One shown but here also were signs of trouble.

 

Kasela-111 stopped his strolling to pause beside a broken down droig, a squat dome shaped machine that hovered normally just above the footpath. He opened a panel, slipped a tool out of a pouch and did some quick adjusting. Then he quickly slipped out a tiny slot-chip and slotted it into the basic robot. A moment later, with some soft humming, the droig began to slowly rise from the ground. He closed the panel, locked it as it should have been and stood up to look around with a frown.

 

Wildboys had sabotaged thirteen robots in the big gardens and thanks to their being in elite families they would get away with their crimes. The autocratic Clave Directoriate was becoming increasingly corrupt and inefficient with every passing year. Kasela-111 was in theory able to deal with such pests, he being a law-officer in a blue clavesuit with black body-armour of vest and helmet plus a pulsepistol, a clubtorch, a stunclub and a multiple purpose handcomp. A faithful robot, a constable, followed him around and was now a blue peaked dome hovering close by. These were often called bobbies. In practice the Wildboys jeered at him, laughed at him and were increasing violent to him and other law-officers. In particular they liked to hassle the women law-officers.

 

Wildgirls were not much better.

 

But things were going to change!

 

Because he had no family, no dependents except a pet cat who liked his neighbour better than he did Kasela-111, he had been the one chosen. Having done much duties down in the upper levels with the fringe folk and up in the even higher reaches with the ghouls, giant roaches and other threats up there, he could also better escape and survive away from the more civilized sectors. When two Wildboys and a Wildgirl had not only badly wounded a woman law-officer but got away with it, the officer had been reprimanded for provoking trouble, the Law Office had had enough.

 

Nearly all of his real valuables had been transported to a hidden cache high above in a fringefolk settlement that he trusted. He had only what he needed on him and nearby to get away safely or so he hoped. Oddly enough he had lied to the other law officers about where he had sent his stuff as if some instinct had told him that something was not right.

 

He could not escape the feeling that something was wrong. The feeling had been with him since the vote had been taken in the secret meeting and he had been chosen to shoot down the Wildboys and to show the government that the law-officers would take no more of the Wildboys madness. He had not supported the plan but Faygan-453, a man he did not trust, had dominated the meeting as often the overly charming one did.

 

There had been the strange dreams in which he had been in a great big cave with an opening showing the jagged metallic towers of a ruined city. He had been naked in that amazingly vivid experience but had not been embarrassed. A much older woman and man, also naked and youthful looking, had sat also at the small camp fire ringed by stones on the hard dirt ground and had spoken to him of many secrets, of knowledge, of warnings and much else. They had spoken to him of a long history in which magic and technologies had not only lived with one another peacefully but progressively, productively in cooperation. But then had come the Great Schism with the rise of the Steam Lords who would crush magic as being a competitor to their power. After them had come the Electric Lords and after that the wars had begun.

 

So they had told him together but in other dreams a younger woman had come to him, also naked, and had informed him that the elders were biased, that the magefolk and their Mage Lords, were just as responsible for the wars as had been the enemy Lords. It was the innocents who had been caught up in the conflict. It was those in the middle who in the end had enough and had driven both the magefolk and the techfolk into exile. Into exile they had gone but then further and they had vanished. To do so they had been helped by a powerful third force but who or what this was, the magefolk did not know.

 

The young woman had taught him how to bring forth the basic powers of the magefolk. In turn he had taught her the basic ways of electrics, electronics, mechanics and other sciences, even physics and genetics, and she had learned them quickly with brilliance. He was a genius but because he was an orphan with an unknown background he lost his position in pre-university to a much less smarter person who had an elite bloodline to boast of. Instead he ended up in Graduate Collage and then the Law Academy where he quickly learned not to attract too much attention to himself. Those who did had a bad habit of vanishing.

 

Magefolk were less than welcome in the Claves, especially there in Clave-One the Clavedom Capital. But now as he stood there waiting to ambush the next lot of Wildboys to make their appearance, he felt the power building up in him. Magefolk magic in basic forms being concealing, defensive, offensive, healing, repair, sensing and communicating modes. The Great Dome was dotted with hidden Msensors designed to detect magefolk and doorways, gateways, elevators and other key places had hidden Mscanners. Yet he had never, as far as he knew, come close to being detected.

 

That was when his big old pet tomcat ambled out from behind a bush and looked up at him with big green eyes. He studied the feline in astonishment and more when when the cat spoke to him in a rather odd voice. "Silly young man. They do know you are magefolk. Not only that but they are setting you up to force you to use your mode magic to survive. Then they will try to capture you but will not mind killing you. I have not been neglecting you but that lovely young woman who moved in next door to you she is a secret police agent. I have been observing her and picking up information. Now close your mouth; you look so undignified gaping like that."

 

He had disturbing thoughts and feelings about all the ways she had observed him in his private life.

 

He shook his head as to clear his mind and spoke. "Why would the secret police set me up like that?"

 

The tomcat responded. "I do not know. The agent living next door to you is just a low ranking newbie from the Secret Academy and they told her nothing. Indeed I suspect that the secret police, or Claves Security Intelligence Agency as they call it, the CSIA, is just a puppet in this affair. There is a secret faction war taking place in the Clavedom Leadership now and at least one faction wants to launch a major purge against magefolk, muties and other so called misfits. They want to do so to gain power or at least we fear. Now, this is not the time to speak of such matters. You need to trust me. You have slaved both robots, the droig and the bobby?"

 

He nodded. "With my own chips and not the ones I was given."

 

The tomcat purred. "As I guessed you have already had doubts and have begun to make moves to truly escape. The other innocent law officers have been warned as have others. This trap, hopefully, will not claim the lives of any innocent bystanders. Now, open your arms and let me jump into them, you big cuddly boy. Then bring the robots as close to your legs as you can."

 

A young woman jogged past in shorts and a rather skimpy top. She smiled at him but looked puzzled for pets, especially cats, were not allowed in the Great Dome. There was too much chance they would go after the songbirds or other fauna that lived there. But then she looked even more astonished as the law-officer, the two robots and the big ginger tomcat all vanished with a sparkling shimmer.

 

Alarms began to ring as the use of strong magic was detected in the Great Dome.

Continued in TWO!

 

 

Edited August 28, 2009 by Maharg67

[Maharg67]

TWO

 

The woman watched the vanishing of the law-officer, the cats and the two robots from the distance. She was by appearance a young citizen out for a jog wearing shorts, a teeshirt, sports slippers and a belt with a music-cube linked to her ears via small earphones. Except she was no jogger, she was a secret police agent and she had been living next door to the young man for a long time.

 

Now she was both angry and worried. She had failed to detect that the tomcat was some kind of magical creature though she was supposed to be trained, to be augmented-upgraded as a special cyborg to detect such things. The CSIA did not take such failure lightly though being just out of academy she would probably be given some leeway. Newbies were expected to make at least a couple of mistakes.

 

Problem was she and the CSIA had become entangled in a Clave Leadership faction war between elite elders. Nobody in the CSIA liked this, not from top to bottom, and the CSIA Leadership were trying to slip out of the stupidity.

 

A pair of Wildboys on skates came pelting along the footpath towards her, grinning wildly and making stupid loud noises. Then they saw her, grinned even more, and rushed right at her. As they did they reached out to grab her, to grope her. She whirled and struck out with a quick rabbit kick to send one fool flying even as she whirled and smashed the other with rapid punches. Her style was low level, dirty and quickly efficient.

 

The two Wildboys lay scattered and bloody on the ground. They were dead!

 

She sighed briefly, turned and walked away. A crowd formed as people came to see what was going on and then fled again fearing to be involved. So it was that nobody really saw her kill the Wildboys or leave. Luckily, or was it luck, the only camera watching that area malfunctioned at the time and she was not recorded doing the deed.

 

Soon she was showered, changed and was in a monorail train on her way to her home apartment to get her next set of orders.

Continued in THREE!

 

 

Edited August 28, 2009 by Maharg67

[dezdimona]

excellent. Sorry I've fallen behind in my readings. :biggrin:

[Maharg67]

THREE

 

Kasela-111 appeared out of mid air and fell just a few centimetres to the ground with a tomcat in his arms and two hovering small robots close to his legs. He appeared in a grubby concrete hallway tunnel dimly lit by cheap solid-state glowstrips and splashed with crude colourful gang grafitti. He knew where he was at once thanks to past experiences. He was in the higher levels where the fringefolk dwelt, the misfits unwanted in the Clave proper. Most had ended up there just because they had supposedly poor genetic traits but there were also criminals, political exiles, the unwanted and many who simply could not tolerate living in Clave society.

 

The law-officer began to pace quietly along the hallway for he was fairly sure he knew where he was. The robots followed along, the droig testing the area if seeking plants to trim, the bobby ever ready with its stun weapons. Tomcat, or just Tom, leapt lightly to the concrete floor next to a couple of plastic mealpack containers that should have gone into a recyling chute.

 

The cat spoke. "Feels better up here, freer and more magical, but no where as good as home. Just as techfolk came down here with their tricky electrics, robotics and other technologies, we magefolk created our own pocket dimensional realms, nine of them, and there we found our escape. I was sent here as part of an expedition to rescue any magefolk who might emerge in the Clavedom."

 

Kasela-111 spoke. "What is the surface like now?"

 

Tom responded with his odd growly voice. "Much of it is in ruins, is magically or otherwise toxic and can not be lived on by normal lifeforms. Yet a fairly large civilization, the Triadic Empire, dominates the one big continent. The Empire survives with a mixture of baseline non-magefolk type magic and fairly primitive technologies. They do have basic guns, steam-trains and telephone lines in the Heartlands of the Empire but in other places things are mostly more primitive. The Empire has banned magefolk and our magic plus various forms of technologies like atomics and robotics. Yet in both the Empire and outside it, including with the so called Barbarians, there are those who seek to use, to exploit, the old ways."

 

The law officer nodded. "You have been there then."

 

Tom nodded in a feline manner. "Only briefly and only a few times. The Triadic Empire of steam-airships, steamships and steam-trains is a realm where Technic Magic is used to make steam power more efficient, to make it burner cleaner, more efficiently and to lose less waste heat. Steam-wheelers roll along roads through out the Imperial Provinces. The Steam Lords are very powerful. The Electric Lords are gaining more power as the telegaphic, telephone and electric lighting systems grow more common. The Gas Lords have never been greatly powerful despite wide spread use of gas for heating, cooking and to a lessening extent, lighting."

 

They both ceased speaking as they sensed trouble ahead. Then three big hulking young men came around a corner in gang leathers splashed with ganger colours. They were half dragging a young woman with them, another Ganger but with different colours of another gang. Her jacket was open and her shirt was ripped open to expose one breast. One man was crudely groping the young woman but was more intent on trying to stop her from kicking him. Her arms were bound behind her back, she was gagged but she kept on struggling savagely.

 

The gangers saw a law-officer and reached for cheaply manufactured guns illegally made and sold by organised crime. But the cheap revolver pistols and submachineguns with their old fashioned cased rounds, did not leave the holsters. Kasella-111 slipped his pulsegun out and shot them down with sizzling pulses of energy. Their dead bodies struck the floor and lay twitching there. The woman stumbled but then managed to stand. She scowled as if expecting to be shot or otherwise badly treated.

 

Kasella-111 strode over to her, did up her jacket and slipped her gag off. Then he stepped back and frowned at her. "You are of the Helena Blades and this is supposedly your territoy according to gang markers I saw back there. Who are these scum?"

 

She shrugged. "You must have served up here, then. I remember seeing your face in some law-station once. They are a new gang. They are growing fast with plenty of guns, body-armour and other stuff. They have plenty of legit cash and good credit to buy more fools with and to do bribery. They are selling a new range of drugs that are starting to cause big trouble. My gang, we don't like them undercutting our business even if we aren't into the harder drugs. We don't like other gangers coming into our turf, especially these Storm Gangers who aren't part of the Gang Pact. So you gonna free my arms or what? Nice *kittie kittie* but not as nice as mine. No, I mean my pet cat at home so don't give me that look, officer!"

 

Tom spoke then. "Very nice! You like cats! A good sign."

 

The ganggirl frowned. "Not real then but some very expensive animal robot."

 

The cat shook his head. "No, a magical entity and my name is Tom. I think we can trust you. This is Law-Officer Kasella-111."

 

She whistled softly. "You have a bit of a sharp reputation up here. A few gangers would like to have a slice at you. Those community program types think you are wonderful. They say that new cable-3DTV show, 'Good Bad Lawman' is based on you. You really kill all eighteen of the Jube Family in one firefight?"

 

He shook his head. "Only fifteen of them, only the adults and oldest children. The rest I managed to just capture."

 

He freed her arms and she stretched her arms up, pressed forward and kissed him hard passionate on the lips. Then she stepped back and grinned at him. "You are on the run. Just before these fukes got me going stupidly alone, my old comp showed up your WANTED BULLETIN. Showed your head in revolving 3D, details and such like. Described you, the cat and the two robots. So we make a deal of sorts but what sorts. You need to lose the body-armour, the uniform, the body-armour and the robots. I can find buyers."

 

"I keep the robots. I like them! I will disguise them." He responded and the bobby beeeped wildly for a moment. "The bobby says you can keep your hands of him. He considers himself to be a valuable member of the community."

 

"My name is Sasha-De-Slasha or, more officially, Sasha-908." She snorted at the robots. "Robots can act real strange sometimes, even the supposedly dumber ones. They get all uppity about their being individuals and having rights. Listen to me you little beepers, you don't give me any attitude."

 

The bobby poked his stungun towards her and beeped some more.

 

The tomcat spoke wiith a tone of amusement. "Bobby-Bob please do not stun anybody. You need a new fully recharged Epack, a good polishing and some tuning." The cat rubbed himself against the small law robot. "He always gets a big niggly when he is getting too low on charge."

 

The ganggirl snorted and then she started to loot the dead gangers. "My gang hasn't much chance of keeping our territory. People of all kinds are leaving here. Trouble is coming here and it is not just the new gang. People, even well organised and armed ones, have vanished or been murdered horribly. There are not enough law-officers or law-robots in this area and we are uncomfortably close to the Horror Levels above us. I think you are trouble but also you have special resources my gang and I could use. We is all women except three specials and some kids. We got robots also."

 

They looted the dead gangers both to get their stuff and to make it look like a normal fight in that it was normal to loot dead bodies. The law-officer and tomcat followed her as she went off and the robots followed Kasella-101.

 

Continued in FOUR

 

 

 

[Maharg67]

FOUR

Salina-123 was the real name of the young woman who had killed the Wild Boys. She never did get back to her apartment and was grateful that it did not contain any truly personal stuff from her real life; that was in a security locker somewhere. For Salina-123 sensed something wrong even as she got out of one of the big public elevators that would lead her home. She detected the two secret police officers watching the crowds moving towards where she lived and she turned back. Why she did not assume they were just looking for the law-officer, with two robots and a cat, who had vanished she did not know but something told her she was in trouble.

 

Pausing to buy a plastic shopping bag from a vending machine, she also filled it with foodbars, self heating cupcans of coffee, box-bottles of drinking water and other hopefully useful items for somebody on the run.

 

Then she headed away to the fringes, to the wilder places where she could buy what was needed for her to get out of the Clave proper. Yet she did not hurry and even flirted lightly with a couple of security officers she passed. It seemed that the alert for her had not been made general and so she had a good chance of getting away. It came to her that somebody or more than just one person had messed up badly in the CSIA or in higher level of Clave Leadership and were trying to make her into a scapegoat.

 

Then she was getting into an older type of monotrain, one that was less crowded because it went to places where most people did not want to go to.

 

Continued in FIVE

Edited September 6, 2009 by Maharg67

[LordTenaim]

I can't wait for the next part this is really gripping stuff.

[Maharg67]

FIVE

 

The law-officer, the two robots, the cat and the young woman began to encounter other folks but most did not want any form of interaction. They were groups of locals who looked upon anybody else with suspicion. But then somebody welcomed Sasha-De-Slasha by her ganger name. She grinned and answered back but soon after confirmed that she really did not trust the middle aged man who greeted her. He was a trader in illegal and often dodgy sim-stims (simulation-stimulation software programs). A few folks wanted to talk to him badly about damage his goods had caused some people.