Cyber Mage Read online

  PRAISE FOR SAAD Z. HOSSAIN’S DJINN CITY

  “Bangladeshi author Saad Z. Hossain’s Djinn City is set both in his home country and the realm of the Djinns. It’s a richly evocative adventure about a father and his half-Djinn son searching for one another—a sort of dark-fantasy Finding Nemo, as charming and funny as it is inventive and strange.” —Adam Roberts, The Guardian

  “Djinn City is a page turner; a story that immerses and keeps you up well past a sane hour.” —John Venegas, Angel City Review

  “Hossain’s rich, vivid, straightforward prose propels the story at a quick clip. Darkness looms on every page, yet he offsets the serious stakes with Joss Whedonesque quips… With man-eating wyrms, invisible airships, and eccentric genies, this fantasy-adventure will appeal to fans of The Golem and the Jinni and the Bartimaeus trilogy.”

  —Booklist

  “Hossain blends picaresque fantasy, supernatural politics, and genetic science into a whirlwind of a tale…an imaginative, talented storyteller with a knack for both dark comedy and harrowing tragedy.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Hossain’s story ripples with magic and just a dash of something twistedly angelic. It is populated by dragons in their most nascent forms, terrifying sea beasts, and flying machines; it is built up by fictionalized mythologies that weave their way through known origin stories and rumors, birthing something new and captivating. Its villains are complex and sometimes appealing; its heroes are delightfully flawed. Even its violent scenes have charm. Humor and intrigue ferry Djinn City toward its thrilling end. Expect rapt audiences to spend a good while frantically rubbing lamps to wish for one thing only: the speedy release of its sequel.”

  —Foreword Reviews, Starred Review

  “A delightful fantasy adventure with a YA spirit, a PG rating, and a rich introduction to Arabian mythology.” —Kirkus Reviews

  PRAISE FOR SAAD Z. HOSSAIN’S ESCAPE FROM BAGHDAD! :

  “Saad Hossain’s perplexingly weird debut novel, Escape From Baghdad! captures the pure insanity of the Iraq War. At the same time, it’s not a war novel. Instead, it’s a skillfully constructed literary IED that brings together the sharpest aspects from multiple genres. It’s a Tarantino-esque Heart of Darkness set in war-torn Iraq, filled with absurdism and dark humor, a mash-up of satirical Joseph Heller-style comedy and sci-fi fantasy with a gratuitous mixture of good old-fashioned ultra-violence.” —Colby Buzzell, VICE

  “Set in the aftermath of the US invasion of Iraq, Bangladeshi author Saad Hossain’s debut novel is a riot of mordant humour and gonzo storytelling… The Gulf war may just have found its Catch-22.”

  —James Lovegrove, The Financial Times

  “Saad Z. Hossain’s Escape From Baghdad! may be the hippest, weirdest, most creative and visionary book yet to emerge from the full-on debacle that was W’s still-simmering Iraq war. Hossain’s unique blend of satire, mythology and speculative fiction makes Escape a hold-onto-your-hat tilt-a-whirl joy to read. And, quite possibly, a future classic in its own right.”

  —Jerry Stahl, author of Permanent Midnight, Happy Mutant Baby Pills, I, Fatty

  “Hossain daringly shows us that war isn’t just hell but absolutely insane.” —Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

  “Saad Hossain has given us a hilarious and searing indictment of the project we euphemistically call ‘nation-building.’ With nods to Catch-22, Frankenstein, The Island of Doctor Moreau and the Golem myth, Escape from Baghdad! weaves fantasy, absurdity and adventure into a moving counter-narrative to the myth of the just war.”

  —Daniel José Older, NPR

  “It’s a marvelous mix of genres, blending the visceral atmosphere of a war movie with the casual nihilism of Catch-22 or the original M.A.S.H. complete with an Indiana Jones–style treasure quest… A gonzo adventure novel that shreds the conventional wisdom that pulp can be pigeonholed.” —Kirkus Reviews

  “Escape from Baghdad! is a virtuoso performance, both utterly heartbreaking and riotously, laugh-out-loud funny… I wanted to stand up and applaud when it was finished, but I didn’t want it to finish. I could not recommend it enough.”

  —Lavie Tidhar, World Fantasy Award winning author of Osama.

  “Saad Z Hossain’s upcoming Escape from Baghdad! is the sci-fi and fantasy writer’s debut novel, characterized as an Arabian–Nights–esque thriller. Having set the book in modern-day Iraq, Hossain started off his research reading blogs written by American soldiers in Iraq, and then braided together Norse and Greek mythologies.”

  —Ploughshares

  “Saad Hossain is the author of Escape from Baghdad!, an engrossing cross between Zero Dark Thirty and Raiders of the Lost Ark that takes a sobering look at America’s troubled legacy in Iraq.”

  —Bookslut

  AN UNNAMED PRESS BOOK

  Copyright © 2021 Saad Z. Hossain

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. Permissions inquiries may be directed to [email protected]. Published in North America by the Unnamed Press.

  www.unnamedpress.com

  Unnamed Press, and the colophon, are registered trademarks of

  Unnamed Media LLC.

  ISBN: 978-1-951213-28-2

  eISBN: 978-1-951213-29-9

  Hossain, Saad Z., author.

  Cyber mage : a novel / Saad Z. Hossain.

  Description: Los Angeles : Unnamed Press, 2021.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2021039688 (print) | LCCN 2021039689 (ebook) | ISBN 9781951213282 (paperback) | ISBN 9781951213299 (epub)

  Subjects: LCGFT: Science fiction. | Dystopian fiction. | Novels.

  Classification: LCC PR9420.9.H675 C93 2021 (print) | LCC PR9420.9.H675 (ebook) | DDC 823/.92--dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021039688

  LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021039689

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are wholly fictional or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Designed and Typeset by Jaya Nicely

  Manufactured in the United States of America by McNaughton & Gunn.

  Distributed by Publishers Group West

  First Edition

  CYBER MAGE

  A NOVEL

  SAAD Z. HOSSAIN

  The Unnamed Press

  Los Angeles, CA

  CONTENTS

  PART ONE

  Prologue: Making of the Sword

  Chapter 1: The Lover

  Chapter 2: Salt and Chalk

  Chapter 3: Kali Lunch

  Chapter 4: Red Fort of Baridhara

  Chapter 5: Pop den

  Chapter 6: Lockers

  Chapter 7: Lucid Dreaming

  Chapter 8: Kali Games

  Chapter 9: School is for Suckers

  Chapter 10: Ripples in the Black River

  Chapter 11: Fish and Chips

  Chapter 12: Walking on AIR

  Chapter 13: Power Level 9000

  Chapter 14: Distressed Mongolians

  Chapter 15: Cold Room

  Chapter 16: Private Stars

  PART TWO

  Chapter 1: Assembly in the ISS

  Chapter 2: Daughters of Old Foes

  Chapter 3: All Parties are Aggrieved

  Chapter 4: Gramps

  Chapter 5: Uncle Hinks’s Kitchen

  Chapter 6: Uncle Hinks Goes to Town

  Chapter 7: Tigers of the Black

  Chapter 8: The New Team

  Chapter 9: Courier Pains

  Chapter 10: Spring Break

  Chapter 11: Last Stand

  Chapter 12: Daisies in the Sky

  Chapter 13: The Mage Takes a Bow

 
Chapter 14: Lights out

  Chapter 15: Black Rain

  Chapter 16: Smile For The Cameras

  Chapter 17: Saka Comes

  Chapter 18: All This Base is Ours

  Epilogue

  Appendix

  This one is for my gamers.

  CYBER MAGE

  PART I

  PROLOGUE

  Making of the Sword

  The Dragon pored over a pile of steel scraps. Some of them were the latest carbon steel. Some looked hundreds of years old. There were leaf springs from ancient trucks, back when vehicles burned fossil fuels and used rubber tires. The springs lasted forever, long after the trucks, owners, and goods had turned to dust. There were pieces of old knives and axe heads, handles long gone.

  Every so often he reached out and picked up a piece. The ones he kept, he stacked carefully together. Sometimes he used an ancient hand grinder to clean off rust and dirt. He had an open pan of solvent, and he submerged the best pieces in this to effect a final cleansing.

  When the pile was big enough, he put the scraps in a canoe-shaped canister, fitting them together like jigsaw puzzle pieces, rotating them until he felt at peace. The canister itself was made of mild steel, and would be picked apart when the final billet was forged. This was the time-honored way of making canister Damascus, which allowed the forging of a blade using disparate metals.

  When the canister was filled, he plugged the gaps with high-carbon steel powder and then covered the top with flux. Even though he was technically blind, his fingers moved unerringly because he could see the lines of the distortion field, the witchery physics of the djinn world, spheres of eldritch energy all around him, far more useful in the manipulation of steel than photons bouncing against a working retina.

  His forge was a very simple gas-powered fire housed in a rectangle of ceramic bricks, hand-made from the clay on site. He could have heated the metal with his fingers, but the regular beat of the flames soothed him, and in any case he preferred to adhere as closely as possible to the old ways.

  When he was satisfied with the canister’s weight and distribution, he spent a moment fiddling with the field, making sure each piece was aligned correctly so they would weld together nicely once molten. A good preparation saved a shitload of grief later on, and canister Damascus was fiddly and temperamental to begin with. Most people in his little blacksmith commune made stuff out of straight bar, either 1080 machine-tool steel or the more expensive carbon steels with nano structure, so-called new Wootz steel.

  He preferred to work with junk metals. Anything else seemed like cheating. The new carbon steels were so hard and durable that they barely needed forging. You could grind a knife out of a bar and it would be fine with a half-hearted heat treatment. For that matter, you could print a katana on a hub machine on any street corner and it would probably be better than the real thing.

  But the old ways of forging allowed him to align the molecules using the field, making internal patterns of carbon and iron that were, though unseen, fantastical works of art, art for the eyes of God, since no other djinn or man had his sight, eyes made custom by Givaras the Broken. At no small cost.

  When he was sure everything was good, he welded the ends of the canister shut and then welded a piece of holding pipe to the end of the little box, so he could manipulate it easily. Of course, he could put his whole hand into the forge without risk, but he preferred not to advertise his abilities. People already gave him a wide berth.

  He finally put the billet into the forge and took a breather as it turned orange. The lack of sparks was a good sign; it meant his welds were holding and air wasn’t getting into or out of his canister. When it was ready, he put it on the anvil and hammered it evenly, trying to make the interior pieces of molten steel into a solid welded piece. There were power tools he could use for this, but he liked the rhythm of hammer striking billet, and his field-enhanced body was far stronger than an ordinary human’s in any case.

  When he felt that the billet was solid, he started hammering the edges, trying to peel off the soft metal of the canister. This was the really tricky part, determining whether the inside metal was welded together properly while also trying to remove the entirety of the canister metal, which was unsuitable for blade work.

  The Dragon cheated, of course. His eyes could see the edges in the molten steel, and he ran his field over each weld with the lightest touch, locking each errant carbon atom into stable cubes of iron. He would continue to do this throughout the forge, arranging even the trace elements of heavy metals with geometric precision. The canister was stubborn, refusing to come off. He took his chisel to it and then finally, as the metal was in danger of cooling down completely, just ripped it off with his bare hands.

  The billet inside was mottled, showing the grains of the different metals he had put together. He checked for cold shuts, the flaws that presaged improper welds in the steel, but there were none, so he put the billet back in the forge. When it was bright orange again he took it out and started hammering it flat. Soon he fell into his normal rhythm, and the world contracted into the dull ache in his right arm, and the gentle heat of the forge, the warmth on his scales that felt like home.

  When the billet was flattened into a long bar, he hammered the middle with his chisel and folded it over itself. Back into the forge for another round, heating, hammering flat, heating, folding, over and over, until he lost count of the layers. This was the old way of homogenizing the steel, getting rid of the impurities and spreading the carbon evenly throughout the metal to avoid overly soft or brittle spots. At the same time, he was nudging the metal with the field, lining up the trace elements of manganese, phosphorus, and nickel into pleasing shapes. If another eye could see the tesseracts inside, they would have called him an artist instead of a craftsman.

  Finally, after many hours, his body was pleasantly exhausted and the sun was winding down over the horizon. The other forges in the commune had all winked out one by one, and everyone was already gathering in the longhouse to get out of the dangerous night air.

  He let the billet cool and put it away with his tools. There was no thieving in such a small community. In any case, his Damascus was distinctive, better than the other stuff, sought after out in the city. He took no apprentices, and they thought him churlish for that. He was about to leave when he saw a shadow approaching, a cool wet wind, and the stench of the abyssal sea. A burly man came in a long coat, but the Dragon saw only fish, thousands of them crowded together, their eyes glistening, water coating them in a faint mist, an alien school in the shape of a human, the two forms coexisting somehow without negating each other. He had met this being before, once. His heart sank. This was neither fish nor man. This was an elder djinn. “Bahamut,” he said, throat parched. “You’re a long way from the sea.”

  “This is a strange place you’ve picked.”

  “It’s a place.” The Dragon shrugged.

  “And you make knives.”

  “I like the fire.”

  “I see. Wasting your time.”

  “Living in peace,” the Dragon said.

  “Public service.” Bahamut sighed. “A concept entirely lost on the present generation. I cannot leave my demesne. I did tell you about the gate, didn’t I? The world on the other side, where your dear friend and mentor roams? The one you helped to free? All is not well there… The pilot sleeps in the gate, and he is most restless. Something comes our way, Dragon. Something…odd. There is Matteras, roaming free in the sky. There is Hazard, claiming the Earth. It behooves us to give answer.”

  Matteras. His maternal uncle, oft called the uncrowned king of djinn, who hated him, had banished him to an underground hell for years. Then there was Hazard, the violent jackal-headed djinn who despised humans, who had sworn to kill him multiple times. The djinn world hated the Dragon, for he was an abomination twice over, born first as djinn-human hybrid, a stain upon Matteras’s family honor, and then remade once more below the earth into something worse, a half-d
ragon freak with custom-made eyes and wyrm DNA coiled through his body. He had been entangled since birth in djinn politics, and it had left him broken, burned, and shunned by all.

  “That’s great,” the Dragon said. “Sounds like you have a lot of personal problems. I’m going to put away my tools, wash up, and go lie down. Then tomorrow I’m going to finish my knife. My buyer is coming next week and I’m behind. So please. Go away.”

  “Ah well. Fine. I will commission a sword from you, then.”

  “A what?”

  “You are a blade maker, as you say. You have told me your schedule for tomorrow. Most admirable. I wish to make a sword.”

  “Find another smith.”

  “This sword requires the help of a djinn smith, one who has been trained by the Broken and is thus able to part molecules with the field. A singular blade is warranted. Again, a debt is owed. Your cousin misplaced the last such sword.”

  “Rais?”

  “Since you refuse to rescue him from Gangaridai, at least you can help to discharge his debts. It was your father’s sword, in fact, if that makes you feel better.”

  “The cavalry blade? On our wall?”

  “The very same. A most storied blade, now lost for all time through the carelessness of two Khan Rahman emissaries. You will make a replacement blade, an even grander one! A sword that cuts the field! A smiter of nanotech! It will need to be quenched in dragon flame to make it extra special.”

  “That won’t do anything,” the Dragon objected.

  “Extra special, I said!” Bahamut snapped. “It will sound better for the ballads. A sword quenched in dragon flame. That is not something to be scoffed at. It is part of the commission. I told you a singular blade is required. And you have here the only dragon in existence.”

  “You’re going to keep bothering me until I do it, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “I just wanted to be left in peace.”

  “No peace!”