by David Bowles
No one, however, could ignore the screams and stampeding chaos that ensued once Chago’s men began to open fire on the crowd. Bodies exploded left and right, sending gouts of blood, severed limbs and fragments of internal organs in all directions, a wakeup call to the complacent, a message from death. People began to scatter pellmell, driven by panic into thoughtless flight. Some simply hurried in circles or back and forth between two points, screaming themselves hoarse in absolute terror. There was nowhere to go. Nothing to hide under or behind. They were corralled in like sick cattle.
Tenshi stood still in the midst of the carnage, her feeling of horror at the slaughterhouse that her fair had become compounded by outrage at the certainty that her uncle had won. She was struck in the chest by a man who’d been knocked backwards by either the force of an explosion or a direct hit from a far-off konk rifle. She dropped to her knees, his head lolling in her lap, blood pouring from his nose, mouth and even eyes, eyes that he turned pleadingly upon her as his hands weakly gripped her arm. She recognized the man as a public transport driver who worked in Station City.
Sweet. Helpful. Dying in her lap as horrific sounds ripped the air.
“Tenshi-zin,” he gurgled as he focused near-dead pupils on her. “Shinechayudaro. Dai naseru.”
Help me. I’m dying.
And he was gone. The enormity of what was happening washed over Tenshi then, riding the crest of a wave of impotence and anger. A sob twisted her chest, blurring her vision.
“My… my people, Brando.” Laying the chauffeur’s head on the cobbled street, she slowly stood, her face hardening with resolve. “My people,” she repeated, regaining her voice and raising it above the apocalyptic din. “I’ve got to save them.”
At the sound of her voice, Brando’s numbed brain was unable to continue blocking out the unspeakable evil being done around him. Suddenly aware of the massacre, he backed up against the wall of the building, pulling Tenshi along with him.
“The fuck?” He could barely make himself heard above the hellish cacophony of screams, explosions and weapons fire.
“Terrorists or yaks.” Yakuza, the popular synecdoche for all underworld types. “The ones that killed the pilgrims.” She seemed suddenly calm of mind despite her pulse, which, he noted with hysterical clarity, raced beneath Brando’s fingertips, and despite the wild look growing brighter in her eyes. “On the roofs, at the front, in back of us. Shite. Okay, come on.”
She slid over to an oval window that had just shattered when a decapitated head slammed against it. Snapping her arm free from Brando’s grip, she jumped inside. He followed, not expecting the four-meter drop to the recessed floor. Twisting as he fell, he hit the floor with a scared little hop. His freakish earth muscles in that low gravity sent him rebounding another meter or so into the air before he landed solidly.
Tenshi was already at the back of the large sunken auditorium, thumbing the lockpad of a closet open. As he came up behind her, he saw it was replete with construction tools. She quickly scanned them, then reached out and seized the rebar fastener. She keyed its power to full.
“Grab something, and let’s go.”
She dashed toward the blood-spattered double doors, through which Brando could see bodies piling up. He dazedly grabbed the first thing he saw, a chrome tool belt, and dashed after her. She shot a rebar through the glass, which splintered and fell away as she kicked it. Out on the street, her face contorted with rage, she took aim at the yak on the top of the building across the path and sent an iron rod spinning outward at 200 kph through the afternoon glare of Jitsu’s twin suns and into the charge cartridge of the yak’s konk rifle, which promptly exploded in his arms, severing them at the elbow and shoulder, ripping a hole in his chest the size of a kleinball.
She spun around, backing up into the street, and nailed the yak positioned on the auditorium’s roof twice: the first bar destroyed his knee, sending him toppling backwards; the second caught him under the chin, boring though his palate, brain and skull, where it remained partially embedded, sealing in his brains as he slammed against the tile, blood spurting from his nose and mouth in arching sprays.
These two deaths took less than a minute. Brando scrambled to fasten the tool belt around his waist, cold dread pounding his head, his bowels feeling distant, as if preparing themselves for some inevitable gut shot.
Turning, Tenshi began sprinting toward the five yaks that had sealed off their retreat, firing as she leapt over the dead or wounded forms covering the stone path she’d designed.
One yak fell, then another. The other three realized what was happening; they swung their weapons around toward Tenshi’s maniacal figure. The air was filled with a brutal, skin-crawling sound that Brando realized was coming from her throat.
She was throwing herself at them, screaming like a fury, locs come loose and flying about her like a hundred squirming serpents.
Frigid knives of angst stabbed at his guts. His hand slipped to the belt. He couldn’t move. His hand felt the hammer there. She was going to die. His legs began to move. I’m going to lose her. Pounding the stone, feet slipping in blood, smashing dead, wounded underfoot as a part of him recoiled in horror but was subsumed by his panic.
No. No. No. Everything fading, engulfed by blue, all but Tenshi and the yegsters, their dark forms bringing arms to bear. Two meters a stride, three meters, four. Flying. The yaks firing.
Brando leapt, knocking Tenshi flat, and continued sailing through the air. Twice as fast. Twice as strong. The hammer was in his hand; he was descending; a blast grazed his leg, like teeth ripping. He flung the hammer awkwardly as a konk rifle blast pounded him, breaking ten of his ribs, sending him smashing back against the path with an agonizing jolt that shattered his right elbow and gave him a concussion.
Lifting his head against the swirling black that pulled at him, he saw Tenshi roll over and take out the remaining two yaks with a barrage of rebars. He hoped his blow had eliminated the third and wondered groggily whether there were any more hanging about.
Then darkness closed its fist around him and he wondered no more.
CHAPTER 12
When he saw Gusano and Lalo tumbled from their positions atop the buildings that hemmed in the frantic, screaming mass of Neogs, Chago began to sprint toward the massacre, all the pent up nervous desperation at his inadequacy as cap bubbling to the surface of his consciousness in a raging stream of red. Tripõ, pausing from his blasting long enough to mark his crew leader’s bizarre behavior, noticed the absence of his mates and drew the right conclusion.
Kicking his bulk into maximum accel, he caught up to and passed Chago, raising his rifle to clear a path through the crazed and frightened fairgoers; blasting, kicking and giving an occasional head-butt, he thrust himself into the center of the slaughter just as one of the stupid bastards was rammed into the cobblestones by several blasts from three of his brothers. The burly demiman slowed to a halt as his cap slipped in a pool of blood and caught himself on Tripõ’s shoulder.
As they stood together in the midst of the now decimated crowd, they saw someone roll over about twelve meters away and shoot Wan, Lobo and Frisky. Killing shots, all: throat, heart and temple, double each.
“They said there wouldn’t be no fucking weapons!” Tripõ screamed as he made his way toward the horizontal figure, stomping deliberately on the corpses and the wounded, even blasting a few just for spite and because he was enraged, more than he’d ever been.
Chago had no reply as he briskly followed his hulking second. The very air seemed weighted with the enormity of his defeat, a blackness that entered his body through every orifice, searching out his soul and clenching it in merciless teeth, teeth he felt physically grit about his torso. Seven men lost. Eight tonight.
I do it, or it’s gonna get done to me. My team. Fuck. Why me? Why now?
Opportunity for power and face slipped from him as his life soon would.
They reached the form. A woman. In her hand was a strange weapon, which
she fired at them convulsively. She was rewarded only by the whirring sound of empty chambers.
“Well, bitch.” Tripõ inclined the muzzle of his rifle at her face. “Hope you had a lot of fucking fun, because now you’re gonna join my brothers in hell, where for sure they’ll be waiting for your dead arse.”
His thumb moved along the trigger pad.
“Wait! Fuck. Fuck. This is just fucking great.”
Tripõ turned to his cap, who was nervously rubbing his shaved head right above the eagle tattoo that crowned it.
“What?”
“Can’t kill her.” Chago spat disgustedly on a nearby corpse.
“The fuck you mean, can’t kill her?” Tripõ gesticulated wildly, his face reddening. “She fucking gatted more than half your crew, Chago. We’re gonna let her live? Don’t fucking think so, Cap. All due respect and shite.”
“Come here a minute.” Chago took several paces and gestured at the burlier man. Tripõ glared at his boss for a long second, then glanced at the woman, who stared back madly, like a rabid animal waiting half-sanely for the right moment to latch its jaws onto him. He made as if to walk away, then doubled back and kicked her viciously in the jaw. Her head slammed against that of a corpse at her side, then snapped back and rebounded against the cobbles. She appeared unconscious enough afterward, so Tripõ joined Chago.
“What’s with this shite?” he growled.
“It’s fucking Koroma’s niece, you bloody blur. Kill her and you’re as dead as me.”
“Dead as you? You don’t think…”
“Come on, kwate, you know the life better than me.”
A suddenly calm acceptance lit upon Chago as he said the words. He’d lived his entire adult life and much of his adolescence trying to be something he wasn’t. Perhaps it was time to let go, never feel those dark jaws on his chest again.
Then he thought of Sandra and her father, and his will to live quickened a bit.
Tripõ’s grip on the rifle loosened and it dropped from his hands to clatter against the smooth cobblestones.
“By Fidensito, Cap, I’m sorry as shite.”
Thinking, time for me to get promoted, you pocho fuck, Tripõ turned slightly as if in disgust, activating his ocular recorder as he rubbed his knuckles against his temples to appear frustrated. Facing his crew boss again, he muttered with feigned sympathy and indignation:
“You really think they’re gonna do you?”
Frustration flared into fury, and Chago spat. “Madre Mariya, Tripõ. Seven little brothers killed under my command by a Neog architect at a bloody fair. What you think, they’re going give me a promotion, you dumb-arse fat fuck?”
“That’s all I wanted to hear, boss.” Tripõ quickly stomped on the butt of the rifle, making it pop upright. His left hand jerked the barrel up as his right scooped the stock horizontal. Clamping the weapon close to his body, he triggered a blast that, at such short range, ripped Chago in two before the cap had even registered what was happening. Fans of crimson splayed outward from the falling halves as Tripõ hawked and spat contemptuously.
“Enough of that ‘dumb-arse’ gash, you gormless marikõ.”
CHAPTER 13
Nestor sighed. Before him in the air rotated reports and schemata of the Brotherhood infiltrations of Oceania, New Mecca, New Beijing and Podgoritsa. These were nowhere near the scope of the operation on Jitsu, nor did they have the same objectives. Konrau simply wanted a presence on the worlds, a basic infrastructure to utilize “when the time was right.” Operations had advanced smoothly on each planet, the syndicate’s black-market practices insinuating themselves into the social fabric.
Jitsu seemed to be another story. He’d just gotten a tunneled communiqué from Tripõ Lameda, explaining the disaster at the fair, along with an optical illustrating why he’d taken out his cap and assumed command. Nestor’s first impulse was to be infuriated: Chago had been hand-picked by the boss, and this turn of events altered their plans.
However, as a brother himself, he understood. There existed a fine line between blind ambition and honor, one he had trod multiple times as part of Toni Benemerito’s crew ages ago. The two of them had taken out brothers whose actions had no longer reflected the ideals of L’onda, and as a result they had rocketed to the top. It was axiomatic that in any large organization, individuals would try to bend the system to their own advantage without concern for honor. With Nestor’s help, Toni had discovered these individuals and eliminated them.
Of course, Nestor’s insight into the activities of other demimen owed much to his late sister Ria, a materia or spiritual medium. The Niño Fidensio, the holy child himself, had chosen her at an early age to be a vessel for his messages, and this choice had made it easier for Nestor, a skinny, intellectual Martian boy, to enter the ranks of the Fidensista Brotherhood on the wave of respect she had garnered by her late twenties. But the Blessed Child had also rewarded Ria with uncanny knowledge about others around her, which she passed on to her little brother, creating for him a reputation as a master of intrigue without parallel in the syndicate. Nestor had been glad to use this leverage in support of Toni, an honorable brother whose only apparent objective was furthering the glory of both the Brotherhood and the Blessed Child.
Unfortunately, once in power, Toni had proven to be as twisted as the very men he’d stepped upon to reach the top. Nestor shuddered away memories long re. Yes, he lied to himself, Toni Benemerito had forced Nestor to share in the new boss’s sickness, and Nestor, ever faithful to his kasike, had endeavored to cover up the filthy past that kept bubbling up to smear Toni’s name. His reward had been a microscopic bomb in Ria’s head, Toni’s way of ensuring Nestor’s silence and continued cooperation. Nestor still didn’t understand why the Blessed Child had permitted such an evil act. For years he had tried to discover a way to neutralize the bomb, but it had been impossible.
That’s when Konrau had come on the scene, rising through the ranks faster than anyone before him. He’d helped Nestor, and though Ria had died, they’d exacted revenge and excised the tumor of Toni’s stint as kasike.
So when evaluating Tripõ Lameda, Nestor had a basis for judging his actions. He’d done the honorable thing by taking out the incompetent Chago while at the same time following the order to leave Santo’s niece alive. Nestor steeled himself to protect the hulking brother, and even to recommend he become a huramentau or mademan in a virtual ceremony. He didn’t think his boss would approve, but it was right to ask.
Konrau was actually quite receptive and almost giddy, surprising given the pressure of their move to the Brotherhood’s new HQ light years away.
“Don’t worry, Nestor. Yeah, it was a bloody mess, but the results will be sevendable. Looks certain that Santo’s getting his squads, and then the real game’s going to get started. Set up the confirmation ceremony, virtual like you said. Get some more sikaritos transferred to Tripõ Lameda’s crew, tell them to hang ready. We’ll play pirates and soldiers, yeah? Keep shite off-balance, let Santo slither to the top.”
Nestor wasn’t sure what to say, but he nodded. Ever since the kasike had put his brother on a crew in the Sol system, his mood had changed. The fits of pain were less frequent, and Konrau even seemed cheery while going over their plans. Having known the boss for so many years, Nestor was suspicious. It almost seemed as if Konrau were deliberately drawing the konsehero’s attention away from something important. However, as long as the boss continued to demonstrate wisdom and honor, Nestor would grudgingly agree to anything he said.
Despite his reluctant obedience, he started to voice his concerns.
“Still don’t get the value of sending brothers I’ve curated with care to a worthless planet to get slaughtered by civilian women, kasike.”
Konrau’s smile faltered, his eyes going cold.
“Listen, Nestor, I need you to trust me.”
“Boss, I want to, but it just seems like you’re making a mistake.”
“I know what I’m doing, Nestor. Tru
st me. Trust me like you did when you were standing there in Toni’s house, his body all riddled with holes from your gat, revenging Ria’s death, and his fem ran in screaming like crazy, punching you and spitting. I took your gun from your hands, remember, and put it in hers. Made her point it at you and pull the trigger. You didn’t move. You trusted me.”
“And after she shot me in the shoulder, you aiming her arm, you pushed her away and gatted her, too. Yeah, I trusted you. Didn’t knew what the fuck you were doing, but I trusted you.”
“Well, I need that same trust now, Nestor.”
More blind trust. I’m not even a konsehero, if truth is said. More a yes-man. But he swallowed his ire and nodded, his eyes averted. He would do as he’d been told. For the time being, anyway.
“But I’ll tell you what,” Konrau continued. “You’re right about killing off brothers being unnecessary. I want you to do some recruiting, set up some martyr crews, know what I mean? Get a dozen or so ready—draw from the weaker guys in the Arredondo crews, get some new recruits. Even ask Yen Bandera to send you some disposable yegsters-for-hire. No need for you to take the brunt of this shite, lose so many of your personal crews.”
Nestor was pleased at this offer. He had actually been contemplating padding his men with weaker conscripts without consulting with his kasike, but this arrangement was obviously much better. Though he still doubted the sanity of Konrau’s mysterious plan, at least he felt less threatened by it now.
