Blurred Weaponry (Saints of the Void, Book 1)

by Michael Valdez

  ~~~~~

  Saan-Hu hoped that Trenna’s call of “good luck” to Dastou would also work out for her own group. The subtle hypnotic effect that had caused her, Nes, and Trenna to meander and forget they were in a hurry also had an anti-violent component. When they tried to lift their guns to shoot the animals if and when they came to the forge, the agents’ hands would not move to touch their armaments. At first she thought their location, the forge, would be a perfect place to hole up, with a display wall featuring a number of wickedly strong alloy blades for them to use once they ran out of bullets. Unfortunately, thinking about the swords, knives, and daggers with the intent of using them against their howling enemies sent painful spikes into their temples.

  “If we can’t attack, what are we supposed to do?” Nes asked once he was off the line with Dastou. His voice was solid, unshaken, but Saan knew him well enough to recognize a subtle, real worry in the words.

  “Hold on,” Saan said, and closed her eyes.

  She tried again to think about shooting one of the animals, though she didn’t have a shape for one in her mind’s eye. That simple concept gave her a shiver, and she used it as a basis for other thoughts. What about leaving? What about running away? What about tricking them into a non-combative state? No shivers.

  That was it, that’s what they had to do: leave the animals behind or make them stop, but not actually fight them.

  “I think we can have a chance,” Saan said after opening her eyes. “We can try and make them leave us alone without going against the animals themselves. Focus on that and tell me what happens.”

  For a few seconds, Nes looked at the ceiling in deep though.

  “Oh, crap!” he said suddenly. “You’re right, I didn’t get any weird vibes that way.”

  “Good,” Saan said, somewhat settled down despite the situation because she was doing what she was best at, planning. “That makes this room useless since it is full of weapons.” She looked around and saw the pile of old coal in the corner, then pointed to it. “There, we will put our own weapons in the corner, that should help keep our thoughts away from them.”

  Nes nodded and they both went to the coal pile. He unbuckled his assault rifle, removed the magazine, and gently tossed both of them in a way that they slid down the far end of the small black mountain. Saan removed the magazine from her machine pistol and threw it there, too. She also tossed her medical bag and combat belt, but kept a multi-tool in a zippered pants pocket. Trenna emptied her pack of everything other than the cuboids and map, tossing the silvery-amber cufflinks and dagger away, and Nes followed suit and got rid of his other supplies. Saan concentrated on what else the pearlescent short sword she had in her possession could be used for. To begin with, she only took it for study and decoration, and her medical training helped her imagine the blade used to cut the breastbone in open heart surgery, which she has never done to be honest. The mental manipulation worked, and she only felt a minor tingle in her hand when she touched the handle of the short sword.

  When she turned for the door, Nes looked at her, then at the sword’s sheath, then ignored it altogether.

  “Let’s go to the that Sewing Room,” Saan ordered. “There will be no obvious weapons there and the door appeared durable.”

  “I’m right behind you,” Nes said.

  “Me too,” Trenna echoed.

  Saan rushed to the forge’s double doors and left the room. As soon as she was out in the hallway and turned toward their destination, the hammering of her own heart in her ears prevented her from hearing a sudden intake of breath. She stopped dead in her tracks and stared ahead. Nes and Trenna had come out behind her, and neither of them wondered why she stopped because none of them were blind.

  The creatures were already here, near the end of the hall, walking very slowly in her direction. There were five of them, and they looked like rams with short faces, the requisite thick curly horns and dense tan-brown fur on display. The local version of such an animal was called a fasshim, except these were big. Each was maybe one-third taller than the normal variety, their shoulder height matching Saan’s to create a size so imposing they looked unstoppable. Another difference between these and real fasshim or their ram cousins were serious, sharp, carnivore teeth and eyes closer to the front like a predator’s. All in all, those things looked tremendously dangerous and equally out of place. They wouldn’t have had enough bullets to take them all down or enough skill with bladed weaponry to stand up to the remainders, with or without the hidden, peace-enforcing Stitch.

  But that wasn’t the strangest part of this. In front those five animals, strolling casually ahead was a man. He had a fresh-looking scar across the bridge of his nose, very short hair, wore ragged clothing, and had no weapons or accessories on him. In front of the big creatures he looked like a small boy near huge dogs, except far calmer. He was not afraid, he was with them.

  “Milser...” Trenna muttered from behind Saan.

  Saan recognized the name from Trenna’s polite version of an interrogation. He was one of her people, the one that had taken several of their camp somewhere and come back with several less. Dastou said that the man going by the name Citizen Vaiss planned the bombing, and that the homeless camp had actually been hypnotized. Milser didn’t look hypnotized. There was no glazing in his eyes, no obedient blankness. He was perfectly aware.

  There was something else, though. If these animals were sent by Vaiss, why were they standing there patiently? No, not patiently – impatiently. Saan had grown up hunting, sometimes with companion animals, sometimes not. She could tell the creatures all walked far too slowly, in no apparent hurry to tear into their bipedal meals. It looked as if they wanted to, with their occasional nervous lip licking and nipping at or bumping their fellow hunters; they were being held back.

  Saan wondered if the same “safe here” suggestion was working on them, and it made some sense. Lower animals, specifically mammals, were often susceptible to hypnotism, thought it had to be done differently, with manipulations of light, motion, and scent. The effects never lasted too long, but if these things truly were under suggestion and had temporarily lost their zeal for rendering prey into bags of unmoving meat as quickly as possible, it would still give Saan’s group the time they desperately needed.

  Saan slid the sword’s belted sheath around on her waist, putting the weapon near her back and out of sight, touching her buttocks, then began to jog down the hall. If the animals and Milser kept their pace, her group would reach the sewing room long before they did. Nes and Trenna sounded like they were keeping up, their footing moving at the same jogging pace, and the trio reached and the previously disregarded Sewing Room’s single door and couldn’t enter because of what Milser said.

  “Do you have any weapons?” Milser asked, halting all three of Saan’s group from moving into the room. “Saan, that’s your name right? That’s what the Citizen said. Do you feel safe here? Do you have weapons?” he repeated.

  The words made her slow her pace to almost nothing. Her brain went into a high-speed double checking of anything she carried, and she forced herself to repeat the process of cutting bone with the short sword in her mind again and again. The animals also seemed to stop almost completely, and stopped bearing those dangerous-looking teeth. Did they know what Milser said?

  “I think you might have some,” Milser added, calmly, with a practiced air. He knew what he was asking, knew that it was slowing them down. “Why don’t you hand them over?”

  “What are you doing!?” Trenna almost screamed, her voice traveling down the hallway in high-pitched misery and sadness. “Why are doing this?”

  “Shut your fucking mouth, acolyte,” Milser said with intensity and hatred through clenched teeth.

  Saan hadn’t known Trenna long, but Milser’s response was extreme considering the girl’s shy nature. What could someone that seemingly good-natured have done to this man? No, this murderer. With thoughts of all the dead on the street that she privately stared
at on security screens after the bombing, and how she kept her emotions in check in order to help the situation as best she could, Saan eyed Milser.

  “Your god is on his way to dying,” the murderer added. “After that, I get to go home to my family, like Vaiss says.”

  “It’s not possible,” Trenna argued, “Is that why you did this, to go home? All of us wanted to go home, and we knew we couldn’t. A lot of people died, I almost died. You almost had me killed!” She spoke with an aggressive passion that she’d been hiding up until now. “My friends, your friends. The people in the street. Dead because of some insane promise?”

  “He showed me it was possible. He proved it.” The defiance in his voice showed nothing if not conviction.

  “Did he?” Trenna asked, also convinced of her rightness. “Or did he tell you that he proved it through hypnotism and that’s why you believe it?”

  The logic of that question was pure, undeniable, and Milser opened his mouth to argue, probably expecting something else to have been said, then shut it. Saan realized that she was close to being able to move again, and that strangling Milser had the same headache-inducing effect as when she thought about hurting the fasshim. She engrossed herself in the simple act of entering a room, of getting somewhere else, and it helped her body regain enough control to take another step.

  “You’re so worthless,” Milser replied, completely sure of himself. “Like everyone else who believes this Saint Dastou will save them. Save them from what? Having a life without hunger, or struggle?”

  “You can believe anything you want,” Trenna said with an air of finality. “But whether or not Dastou lives past today, you won’t get to go home. I know that like I know I wouldn’t hurt or kill just because I want something badly enough. You’re deluded, desperate, and Vaiss is using that to make you do terrible things. Or maybe this is what you really are, who knows. I don’t, and I don’t care anymore. I hope you get what you deserve after all you’ve done.”

  Milser had no response to that, Trenna’s perfectly reasonable logic, unwavering tone, and passionate hope for his death was difficult to go up against. Instead of continuing a pointless argument, he cleared his throat and went back to what he had been doing at the start.

  “You have weapons,” Milser repeated. “I know you do. In that bag, maybe?” He pointed to the shoulder-string pack Trenna carried, the one with the odd plastic cuboids.

  “There isn’t anything dangerous in here,” Trenna said almost immediately. She was immune enough against hypnotic suggestion to not point out the sword she could clearly see from her position, but that Milser could not.

  “Are you sure,” Milser asked. Saan’s guess was that he knew there wasn’t anything dangerous in there, and what someone knew and what their brain made them act out were two very different things right now. “Just to be safe, to be safe here, throw it to me. I’ll take it away.”

  “No,” Trenna said firmly.

  Unfortunately, the possibility of there being something other than the little plastic items in the bag was enough for the forced passiveness of the suggestion Saan was under to cause intense, sudden pain.

  “Black void this hurts!” Nes exclaimed. “Give him the bag, give it to him,” he practically begged.

  The sharpness of those words made Trenna take the pack off after only a short delay and hold it in one hand. She looked at Saan for confirmation, who nodded tightly. Trenna then threw the filled pack down the hall and it landed near Milser’s feet with a noisy clinking of plastic on plastic. He picked it up, looked inside, and seemed satisfied.

  “Exactly what I was told you stole. Good. I can’t do anything to you people, and you can’t hurt me. That’s how it works down here. But these animals will break the hold before you can, and I hope they enjoy their meal.”

  Milser re-tightened the strings on the pack and stood still. He had a confident expression on his face as one of the five fasshim slipped past him, moving slowly. With the bag of cuboids out of her team’s hands and nothing else they had able to hold anything more than… surgical tools, Saan was fully in charge of her muscles again and took the remaining few steps to the Sewing Room in a hurry. She shoved the already ajar door fully open and waited until Trenna came in, followed by Nes, and closed it again.

  “What was all that?” Nes asked. “Why did he want those things?”

  “I doubt he knew more than he’d been told,” Trenna suggested, “but he did know something about those animals.”

  “Yeah, that they’re going to break the forced peace of the suggestion before we can,” Nes said.

  Saan was quiet as she scanned the room with Open Iris for a few seconds to catalogue everything here. Thanks to another ceiling full of automatic oil lamps that had already been lit, she got a good look at what was in here. On the wall with those eight huge spools she saw earlier from the hallway, she could tell that two were some random cotton-like material, three were a smoother, finer blend of fabrics, and the final three were the filament armor-like cloth the map was made of. The loom on the opposite side of the room would also be useful. She dropped into normal thought and spoke quickly.

  “You two use that to bar the door,” Saan said while pointing at a metal pole that was for making ramps to roll down spools. “I’ll tell you the rest as you do that.”

  ~~~~