Afro Puffs Are The Antennae Of The Universe

by Zig Zag Claybourne

  The best way to work off hyperactivity due to overconsumption of sweets, hellacious music, sunshine, and sausages: adrenalin. Everyone would be sliding into naps by the time she parked.

  I’d make a helluva parent, she thought, tempted to see how the rover handled a corkscrew, but filing it as a maneuver likely best attempted alone.

  She glanced. A sudden odd readout. “Hey, so, I’m getting some weird energy.”

  Desiree leaned over.

  Keita leaned over closer. “I’ve got this set to scan the boat once we’re in range. I figure if anybody’s gonna hit us, they’re going for the boat first, right? The Ann’s beating like she’s got extra hearts. We’ll be there in two minutes.” Keita scooched deeper into her chair and fixed her eyes through the whizzing windshield on exactly where she knew the Linda Ann would be. “Or one.”

  “Do these things bite?” Compoté asked.

  “We’re about to learn. Squad out!”

  Sharon bolted. The Nonrich vehicles weren’t too far away, owing to the fact that, again, she’d assumed she’d had the solid upper hand.

  One of the people she had on perimeter duty squawked in her earpiece, “Ma’am, incoming.”

  She planned to fire the two people she had on perimeter duty.

  Yebaums didn’t bite, but a few of the younger ones grabbed on to running legs in the most fascinating game a yebaum had created since forever, leading to all kinds of slapstick, lots of cussing, and a vehement shout from Sharon not to use force. They may not have bitten yet, but she’d seen teeth in the crowd, sharp, serrated, piranha-like teeth, and she hadn’t made it to fifty-two merely to be eaten by potato monkeys, a thought preceding the heart-dropping chill of spotting a dust cloud failing to catch up with the vehicle causing it as a grey-and-black rover screamed first into view, then into even rapider approach, then to a dirt-and-grass swirling stop a hundred yards away from Sharon Deetz and the boys of plunder.

  “Wars have been lost because somebody stopped to take a piss, Compoté,” she said.

  Desiree, Neon, Keita, and Yvonne exited the rover.

  “We outnumber them three to one,” he said.

  Sharon resolved herself to what was about to come. “Pissing in the wind. Munitions, get the hell over here!” Bodies laden with tech scrabbled to a halt in front of her. “Slide detonation into my phone.” Furious swiping ensued, absolutely manic rapid-fire.

  Sharon held her phone high above her head.

  “Pot, what are those attached to my ship?” Desiree asked.

  “Likely bombs,” said Keita.

  Sharon, who couldn’t hear them, shouted, “Explosives!” with a jiggle of her phone hand. “Back in the rover!”

  Keita threw a middle finger up for “Like!” and another middle finger for “Hell!”

  Desiree laid a hand on Keita’s bicep to draw the message down. “Thank you, dear. Hostiles,” she shouted, “you have one chance to make sure the family Christmas photo isn’t a sad affair for your relatives. Get that shit off my boat.”

  Sharon brought the phone down and tapped. A mine went off aft starboard that left a sizeable dent in the Ann’s reinforced hull, scattering yebaums extremely quickly.

  Desiree didn’t take her eyes off Sharon. Then Desiree took a step forward. Keita touched Desiree’s elbow. Desiree spun and headed for the rover. The crew followed.

  They entered the rover.

  It quickly powered up and zoomed toward the hostiles.

  I have miscalculated the fuck out of this situation, Sharon thought, frantically tapping her phone. Two more explosions went off, rocking the ship and raining small bits of debris. “Scatter!”

  The rover circled the small group once, forcing them into the exact opposite of scattered. The interlopers huddled in a loose mass.

  The rover stopped, silently hovering.

  Desiree’s voice issued from the rover’s speakers. “My ship takes any more damage, I ram this up each one of your asses individually. If you’ve signaled for backup, tell ’em don’t bother. No point backing up corpses. Weapons down.”

  “Open fire! Bring that tin down!” Sharon whipped her gun up and followed the rapid reports of the squad with what she hoped were extremely precise shots of her own. Rovers didn’t come with a lot of entry points, but here and there they had grillwork and intakes; a high-caliber bullet in either couldn’t be good.

  The rover did a curlicue spinout, then shot toward the shooters at high speed, scattering them again. The vehicle stopped and Desiree immediately exited in a tuck-and-roll close enough to Compoté to spin on the ball of a foot and sweep him. As he fell, she perfectly coordinated elbowing his nuts with the moment his back hit the ground, followed by a kneeling uppercut when he did a crunch upward in pain.

  Neon and Yvonne sprang out, focums firing. Three hostiles crumpled into convulsions in seconds. Those still standing looked from Sharon to the field of play. Being a mercenary was well and good till you realized it didn’t come with a Veterans’ Administration to look out for one’s long-term health and vested interests in the event of a sudden unexpected ass-whupping.

  “Weapons DOWN!” Desiree shouted again.

  Sharon dropped hers, providing the mercs with the leadership they sought and needed.

  Desiree, with Compoté’s gun in hand, advanced on the hankty witch trying to blow holes in her ship.

  “You came all the way out here to be an asshole,” said Desiree.

  Sharon allowed a defiant glint in her eyes and posture but wisely said nothing.

  “Please don’t tell me your name is Becky,” said Desiree, close enough now to hold a hand out for the phone.

  Sharon complied.

  “Sit the fuck down,” said Desiree. “Yvonne?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Shoot ’em.”

  The two focums made it so. Two mercs down.

  “Him too,” said Desiree.

  Compoté’s groaning got flicked off.

  “You know that line, You come into my house?” Desiree said inches from Sharon’s weathered face. Desiree hated close-talking as much as any sane person, but she needed to speak this woman’s language a moment. “You also know how they say you covet shit, you fuck up every time? Oh, you fucked up. You. Fucked. Up. You leaned in to the fuckup.” She tapped her comm. “Keita? Would you mind assessing the damage? Thank you.” She took a step back. “This is even too petty for Thoom. Nonrich, right? Fucking Bufords. Just give me a day without fucking Bufords!” She threw up her hands—one of which held the phone—in frustration.

  Three more explosions smacked her ship.

  “I didn’t have time to close the screen,” said Sharon.

  “Captain?” said Keita, out of the rover now. “There’s more damage.”

  “Thank you, luv.” To Sharon: “I really should kill you. I should drag you up and down this shore, mollywhopping your ass every inch.” She tossed the phone aside. “Neon?”

  Neon blasted it.

  “I,” said Captain Desiree Sandrine Quicho, “am tired of being preyed upon by fuckups. How many more in your complement, and where are they?”

  Sharon steeled up.

  Desiree nodded toward Sharon’s scarred hands. “Combat?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, you know what pain is. You know it’s unnecessary?”

  Sharon gave the information.

  “Call that in to Shig,” Desiree told Yvonne. “Tell him to put ’em somewhere and give ’em some poetry. Maybe it’ll humanize ’em.” She faced Sharon. “Who’s got the other munitions key?”

  Sharon pointed.

  “Get it. Hands and knees. Disarm everything. Anything more powerful than a dragoon’s fart rocks my boat, you die. If you think I’m fucking around, you die. Do you understand the words coming out of my mouth?”

  Sharon nodded.

  “Comply.”

  Sharon crawled to the unconscious munitions master and retrieved the control. She indicated another unconscious body with her chin. “She h
as one too.”

  Desiree nodded once.

  Sharon repeated the procedure. When she returned to a seated position, she held her hands up, devices proffered. Desiree grabbed them, then stepped back from striking range. She gave the pads to Yvonne and kept walking, giving one instruction: “Shoot her.”

  5

  Suit Up

  “Ramses spoke with me about this,” said Shig. His office was disturbingly quiet, but she hadn’t wanted to speak with him among the embedded shrapnel pieces, damaged walls, and shattered glass of Water’s Edge, let alone the bites and lesions inflicted on the Ann.

  “And likely Fiona has, and Milo, and Kichi, and now me,” said Desiree.

  “You’re asking us to change our ways, something which I neither have the power nor influence to do, anyway. The same I told each of them.”

  “How are we supposed to keep you safe, Shig? You’ve got seventy-five people in holding. What are you supposed to do, put them on a peninsula and cut off escape?”

  “I’ve heard of your Australia.”

  Desiree ticked off on her fingers. “Thoom. Nonrich. Vamphyr. And that’s just who we absolutely know. Bigfoot’s probably got a crew here too. You’re going to have to actually monitor the Blank, and you’re going to have to stick guard dogs at the perimeter. Anybody not automatically broadcasting a certain signature, chase ’em out until they get the message.”

  “Your entire world will know about us for certain.”

  “Maybe it’s time they did, Shig. They gotta grow up sometime. And don’t tell me about Atlantis’s long history. Fuck Atlantis’s long history. You exist courtesy of a dimensional quirk, not a glittering-spired destiny. That dimensional quirk might collapse at any moment, and then you’ll have a Walmart. You ready for that?”

  His shoulders dropped. “We are not ready.”

  “Acclimation. After ten, twenty years of chasing folks out, you might be ready to let ’em in.”

  “Doesn’t your United States president—”

  “We don’t speak of him.”

  “The fact remains: we are not exclusionists.”

  “Shig…I love you. Know that. But that’s utter bullshit. Self-congratulatory bullshit. Amelia flying through the Blank doesn’t make you non-exclusionist. You’re not xenophobic, no, but as many times as y’all have zipped out-Blank without leaving maps, you cannot pretend the high ground precludes you from getting dirty hands. A faction’s been working on a dimensional transporter. This means they could pop into Atlantis any time they wanted to. Walmart, Shig.”

  “Not ready for its people.”

  “Then do what I ask. Present my proposal. Fast-track it. I’ve got the device, and we’ve got people trying to scrub its research out of existence, but it’s more delay and divert than defeat. Be nice if it was defeat and I could finish building my frikkin’ house...”

  “How damaged is your ship?”

  “Enough. I’m sailing her home. By the time I reach port, maybe I won’t want to wipe half of humanity off the face of the Earth.”

  “You could repair it here.”

  “Been in one fight here already when I wanted to be in none. I got ideas for when I get home. We’ll sail soon.”

  “What if local councils say these fights are with you, that it’s you who should be barred?”

  “My home is whenever Smoove massages my neck and my brothers cook too much for dinner. I’ll leave and hope you’ll visit.”

  “Ramses said similar.” Shig’s spirits dropped even lower. He was in danger of borrowing sugar from Hades. “What about Keita? She’s only just gotten here.”

  “No matter where you go…there’s a fucker waiting to be a fucker. Trust me, she knows that better than anyone.”

  “This is fucked.”

  “Yes, yes, it is, and I wish I knew a way around it. I wish I could finish that house and start sketching again. Or start a summer camp, pack the Ann with kids, and bring ’em here without worrying that Becky or Brad is gonna strap bombs to my ship. I can’t. And the difference between here and out there is the threat isn’t manufactured, exaggerated, or designed to be capitalized from. And I realize it takes hella vag for me to say I can’t build my house, close your entire civilization’s borders, but we’ve told you from the day we met: if Buford or any of them take root here, that’s it for you. Cancer. I’m going to have Neon slap the fye out of every single one of them in holding to find out if there are any more in hiding. You run into any more sleepers I should know about?”

  “Not since last time.”

  “If they’re here, they’re here in small numbers. We’ll deal with ’em as we go. I am fully aware we brought this on you. Let me do what I do best.”

  Shig grimaced. “Battle?”

  “No, luv. I’m best at avoiding battle. Let me carry the weight of any decisions you have to make.”

  “You’re a good human, Desiree Quicho.”

  “Not yet. I will be.”

  Keita swiped the back of her hand across her forehead, leaving the grimy skin grimier than before. “If I understand you correctly—”

  “You know you do,” said Desiree.

  “Rather than give me a few days to repair and enhance Ann here…you want to chug home and?”

  “Can you tell how pissed off I am?”

  “Yeah.”

  “No, I mean deep inside.”

  “Fifteen on a level of ten.”

  “Buford’s scat’s still out there in our world,” said Desiree. “I’m taking the fight to ’em straight and true.”

  “We’re gonna fuck with corporate America?”

  “Yep.”

  “I’ll unpack my power suit.”

  In New York, Aileen Stone wore her power suit to full effect. Men avoided eye contact with her, women praised her as first of her name, and the president of the United States sat ramrod-straight while she dressed him down.

  “The stupid shit you’re doing?” she said.

  He nodded, jowls dancing, making her think precisely of a Saint Bernard on a trampoline.

  She hated Saint Bernards.

  “Stop it. Now get the fuck out.” One had to know how to talk to these “governing” types. Especially when they got the shiny title “president” pinned to their chest and first pick of the juice boxes.

  His ridiculous toupee levitated the rest of his doughy body. “Ma’am” got mumbled toward her shoes, then he left to rejoin his secret service brahs denied entry to her office.

  So far, no one had thrown a rock at her windows, despite everyone of course knowing they were behind the deception, even though they weren’t. Certain games had to be played at certain levels. For the moment, Thoom and Kosugi were content to squabble.

  “Nonrich waits on us,” said Madam Cynthia to vampire lord Ricoula via Skype because Thoom. “As long as their attention is on what happens between us and Kosugi, we can get away with all kinds of incursions.”

  “Covertly,” said Megu to Mo. “We have the advantage.”

  “Of course covertly,” said Mo Kosugi. Hell, ninja or no, no one was on his payroll because of snappy dressing.

  Aileen sat at her desk, tapped the inlaid screen, picked up her stylus, and pondered her manifesto. She hadn’t drafted a proper manifesto since taking over. It was more for future generations; certainly, the underlings weren’t worthy to know of its existence, let alone see it. It’d be like showing theory to a cat. But by the time Nonrich fell—and of course it would fall—historians would look upon such writings as key points in the world’s disgustingly uneven social evolution. They’d know that Aileen Stone (at a certain point, she’d reveal her real name; future historians deserved that) had not only tried to guide the world but had made it sit at attention and actually learn a thing or two.

  Hoarding wealth and influence weren’t bad either. Definitely wouldn’t say no there.

  In all honesty, it was one thing to want to guide the people, another entirely to want to be among them.

  She didn’t fe
el rushed. The fall would take a good hundred years to see Nonrich’s ideals permanently overturned, and she had no plans on cloning herself.

  Aileen Stone was not one for designer knock-offs.

  Best to begin with a quote.

  I was born a coal miner’s daughter, she wrote, which while ragingly coincidental was also true, and she’d be damned if she’d waylay her personal veracity for some rickety country singer. Daddy owned the mines. Several. He was long dead, buried somewhere. She couldn’t remember exactly where. Aileen Stone didn’t revere bones.

  “Delete sentence.” The text disappeared. Coal might feel a bit too archaic by the time the writings of Robin May Allen graced some researcher’s life.

  I was born in darkness. That felt good, felt right. Very portentous and foreshadowing. My eyes adjusted quickly.

  She smiled, tapped the stylus emphatically against her desktop, and continued.

  Outside, the world turned.

  6

  Fucking Chads

  “We really gonna take on Nonrich?” asked Yvonne as Desiree studied maps and graphs.

  “Yep,” said Desiree.

  “Like, topple?”

  “You can’t topple that. Too bottom-heavy. Burn it from the top down.”

  “You have a plan?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Dinner’s ready. Keita has the ship on auto. Neon’s checked out the two prisoners.”

  “They kill each other yet?”

  Yvonne shook her head.

  “Rude,” said Desiree. She’d placed them in the same brig. People separated get ideas; together, they get on nerves.

  “Captain?”

  Desiree had yet to look up from the landfill of papers, displays, and tablets covering her desk. She now did so. Yvonne was generally cool, generally non-struck by the supposed wonder of it all, and had never once—till now—looked anything less than the square-jawed, the-fuck-you-looking-at goddess she was.