by Forbes West
While you rest, one of those skysurfers descend to the road. Stepping away from the machine is a woman—one you are not expecting to see at all. Saki, your office mate, takes off her motorcycle helmet and comes over with a confused smile on her face.
“Nani mo wakaranai,” she says in Japanese. “Are you alright?” she asks in English, looking at the destruction of your car and your own bloodied state. She licks her lips, looking everywhere for some sign of threat.
You don’t even know what to say at this point. “I want to go. Let’s go back to the Mission,” is all you manage to spit out. You have the presence of mind, though, to grab the money that Mathias and Petty didn’t take. You also pick up your gun from the road.
“I’ll take you to Mission Security.” Saki leads you to what she calls a Tri-Skysurfer, which floats a couple of feet off the ground, the wind buffeting it to and fro. She takes a piece of blue-white orichalcum from a small box and stuffs it into a slot in the cylinder section of the surfer, you guess in order to power it up. “You good for this, Sarah?”
Saki seems to be more herself when she is explaining what the Tri-Skysurfer is—the windsurfer-like contraption with the cylinder, green wires, and pulsing light. It has three plastic windsurfer sails, two of the sails jutting out from the sides of the over-large surfboard, and a spring pogo stick contraption under the surfboard’s bottom.
You both hop on and Saki ties herself to a leash that is connected to the main windsurfer sail, and then ties you to her. She hands you a black parachute case to put on.
You don’t say a word for a while as Saki continues to nervously explain what she is doing.
“Why were you out here?” you finally ask.
“Nani?” she replies. “Why were you...”
“Just skysurfing. It’s our week off, you know? What were you doing out here?”
“Weekend stuff,” you mutter as the wind blows your hair into your face. The surfboard section of the Tri-Skysurfer sinks lower to the ground with both you and Saki’s weight on it, low enough for the pogo stick-like part to touch the ground. “I need to talk to the police.”
“Hold onto me tight,” Saki says and then jumps up and down on the surfboard, slamming the pogo stick part into the road. The Tri-Skysurfer then bounces high up into the air, soaring a hundred feet so quickly that your ears pop. You scream out loud as you shoot upwards. You swear you can feel the moisture of the clouds as you pass overhead; the air is a little thin. “Oh my,” you say.
Saki leans forward and to the side, catching and playing with the air currents to move at a frightening pace. She uses the controls to flex and stretch the two side sails.
As you zoom through the air, you see a massive machine in the distance. Antediluvian of course, an old technological monster from a time no one remembers. It’s an octopus-like thing with a slight white and green glow around its struts and girders. There are giant wheels and serrated blades stretching out from all sides, with flashing lights emanating from hundreds of control towers. It is literally eating the soil in all directions, barely moving but always moving forward. It leaves a deep, giant track of destroyed land in its wake for what seems to be tens of miles.
Smoke pours from multiple beams and the sound of rumbling and crunching is loud even at your far distance. It stands thirty stories high, at least. The blue and white Venn diagram is plastered all over the thing.
“Gulag machine. If you ever wonder why some Ni-Perchta don’t like us people, that’s reason number two hundred thirty-nine,” Saki says very loudly, ending it with what you guess to be a Japanese curse.
She turns and zooms towards it. You are descending now, the Tri- Skysurfer rattling. Saki pulls a lever and brakes a little as the two side sails flip forward, slowing your speed. Ni-Perchta workers are sweating and toiling away at the soil below, looking for anything orichalcum, you suppose, an army of miners filling all sides of the machine, working away at the soil it has ripped through. They look half-dead, almost skeletal.
“There should be a Mission Security team...” At that moment a black Ford Mustang drops out of the sky in front of your Tri-Skysurfer, just missing you and Saki and hitting the side of the Gulag machine with a crunch and a bang that results in a fireball. An alarm sounds off in the distance, this shrill, annoying warble you can hear over the wind as you and Saki fly away from the mining machine. You catch a glimpse of the Ni-Perchta miners running in every direction.
You look over your shoulder to see the S.B. Crue floating over your head. You don’t see who is in the wheelhouse, but someone just tried to drop a Ford Mustang on your head, and the Tri-Sky is being pulled towards the S.B. Crue by Tek as he aims a baton at you. There is a shotgun in his other hand. Two other Ni-Perchta, dressed in traditional cloaks and armed with what look like tridents or three-pronged spears, are with him. You hold on tightly and close your eyes as the Tri-Sky crashes into the deck of the ship with such force that it knocks the air out of you. When you try to get up, you realize that you are still stuck to the mast of the Tri-Sky, tied to it. Poor Saki has been knocked unconscious.
You already have your pistol out. As you squirm and try to get the damn leash off, you fire into the air, making Tek duck intuitively and fire off a shotgun blast that tears into one of the Tri-Sky sails. A trident is thrown in your direction, cutting the leash, and you instinctively crawl backwards as Tek raises his shotgun again. Before he can shoot you, you fire your pistol, hitting him square in the jaw and blowing his greenish-colored brains out. Tek’s muscles jerk in a death spasm and he fires his gun into the Ni-Perchta next to him, shooting his companion in the chest and making him fall forward, dropping his spear.
You turn and quickly shoot the last Ni-Perchta, the one who threw his spear first. He rushes at you and jumps on top of you, trying to strangle you with his bare hands. You smell his breath and look right into his eyes as you shoot him three times, emptying your gun into his chest. Covered in his blood, you gasp for air as his hands stiffen at first, and then relax.
Rolling the body off, you stand up, ready to fall over, ready to heave. You slowly come to the realization that no one is flying the ship. Then something else hits you across the face like a wet slap—you are victorious yet again. You have survived the last few fights you have participated in. You laugh a little, then cry, and then try hard to cheer yourself up as you look over the dead bodies of the Ni-Perchta you have just defeated.
Saki is still unconscious.
You look out over the bloody deck of the S.B. Crue and say to yourself softly, “This has been quite the last forty-eight hours.” You laugh.
* * *
In the wheelhouse, you study the controls—a steering wheel, a gas pedal on the floor, a simple looking radio set, and some sort of lever that you can push up and down.
Wiping some of the Ni-Perchta blood off your hands and onto your flight suit, you play with the controls a little, but you’re afraid to really do anything with them.
When Saki moans, you call out to her. “Saki? Saki, are you awake? You okay, Saki?”
She stands up and mutters in Japanese. Then she takes off her helmet and surveys the utter carnage. She walks over to you, rubbing her face. “What happened?”
“Oh, I killed those Ni-Perchta that tried to drop a Ford on us. They pulled us on deck, knocked us out, blam, blam, here we are, and I’m the winner yet again.” You smile crazily. “I’m the winner and you got to drive this thing back.”
“Airship,” Saki says. “I know this airship.” She looks around. “I can drive this, I think. Oh God, this is the S.B. Crue?”
“Oh, I know, right?” you say, laughing a bit. “I swear this wasn’t in the job description—maybe it was in yours. I didn’t think we’d be doing something like this at all. Not in the slightest, but you know, you know, God opens one door after closing another and it’s our time to shine!”
Saki tells you to get out of the driver’s seat. As you do, you notice a set of keys hanging from a hook above the contro
ls and grab them. You wonder what they open and jam then in your pocket, figuring they might come in handy. Saki takes the wheel and drives away.
Later she helps you throw the bodies overboard.
Chapter Fourteen:
The New Normal
You and Saki manage to land the airship in a field somewhere to the southwest of the Benbow Inn. A gust of wind takes you a little bit off course and drives the ship into the ground a bit, ruining the rudder and making it tough for Saki to control the ship, but she figures out how to deflate the balloon, and you leave the ship there in the middle of a green meadow like a discarded toy.
Saki mutters a lot of things in Japanese that you don’t understand, making you a bit uncomfortable and worried. Your adrenaline is still providing energy.
You walk over to the dark and quiet Benbow, checking the outside of this old Ni-Perchta building turned into a semi-modern pub. You take out the keys you found hanging in the wheelhouse of the Crue and open the front doors of the inn.
During the journey you have been blurting out your entire story to Saki, who listened carefully and without judgment. You continue your tale in the Benbow. Saki simply pours herself a drink behind the counter and continues to listen intently.
You keep talking as you wash your face and the top part of your chest with a rag and then clean your hands over and over again with antibacterial soap.
Saki nods and listens, nods and listens, and then finally states, “You want to keep drinking?”
You put out your hands. “Why didn’t you say something earlier?”
You look at the open front doors of the Benbow and decide to lock them. “Just in case.” You also look around to reload your gun. When Saki isn’t looking, your hand shakes terribly and your eyes begin to water.
You and Saki sit at the bar for a long time, unable to say much more. Saki gets more red- faced with every drink, her accent becoming thicker as time passes. It gets cold since you haven’t lit a fire.
“I’m a nighthawk, too. For a living. Sometimes with the Tokyo Sex Whale girls. And someone else,” Saki finally says, looking you over. “I’ve never had what happened to you happen to me. I would just go out on the Tri-Sky...”
“Oh,” you say, sipping your beer. It’s nearly empty so you head to the bar to refill it and find a bottle of Treena’s pills just sitting there, practically begging to be taken. You slip them into your pocket, grab another beer and sit back down next to Saki. “Oh,” you continue. “So it is a crazy ass story? Huh? Was it completely nuts? I got to tell you it’s screwing with my head a little...”
Saki puts out a hand. “I don’t think we should report it to Mission Security. Fuller and Marcelino play it by the book, but that Botha, he blackmails you something bad. The Bureau agent, Alexandros, I don’t know him but I wouldn’t trust him. Dee, the Mission Manager, is mentally retarded.”
“Fuller and Marcelino are dead. I saw them out there, out on the yellow X highway,” you say, and then start laughing again. “Dead as Dillinger!”
Saki’s face grows long. “Wow.”
“That’s what I said! Shit!” You reach into your pocket to take out the pills you found and examine them for a long time. an orange prescription pill bottle that is in Treena’s name you found on the bar’s counter, and examine it for a long time. Pills were always something that could get you past some of those feelings you ever had in the past- guilt, sadness, embarrassment, whatever it was, those little orange pill bottles that you used to steal from your mother’s medicine cabinet provided those tidy little treats that helped make something deeper than physical pain go away. Temporarily, of course. All too temporarily . Pills were a guest of the house that couldn’t stay long. You wish the bottle you had was full of the Vicodin your mother had on her but you thought it might just do, if used incorrectly. “Say, what happens when I crush one of these and snort it? Is it awesome?”
“You’re able to concentrate better, feel high, then get jittery and crash something pretty bad,” Saki tells you in a deadpan voice. You ignore her, and with your beer bottle, smash one of the pills onto the counter. You make it into a little line, and then snort it all at once with a plastic straw.
“Ohhhhhhh, booooy, that is college, my friend.” Your mind surfs through that high. The rush allows you to start forgetting, for a moment, what has happened. You laugh a little too long, rubbing your nose constantly.
Saki rubs your shoulder. “I’m sorry about what happened. I’ve known people who have died out there. I knew that co-op.”
“Barely knew ‘em!” you muster out. “Barely knew ‘em! Isn’t that crazy? First time up to bat out there... And pfft! Do people actually die like that? Without warning? Without even a chance? Does that happen, Saki? I mean Guy Farson, he got it.” You make a trigger pulling gesture to your head.
Saki looks crushed for a moment. “Guy Farson was out there, too? I thought he was…”
“Yes.”
She holds a hand to her mouth. “I knew he’d end up like that one day. I didn’t know so soon... I thought he wasn’t going...” There’s a long silence. To your surprise Saki tears up and stares off into space. She smells her own long black hair for a second and frowns, sobbing a little. “Unfortunate, unfortunate... Am I saying my rs and ls right?”
You nod.
“Unfortunately,” she says with more confidence, and takes a deep breath. “Tomorrow, we have to go back to work.”
You look shocked at this prospect. “What? What? We had seven days.”
“It’s been seven days, Sarah. Christmas off-time is gone.”
You try to figure out how much time has passed. “No. I was—wait, it was Christmas. Holy shit. I say we call in.”
Something bangs on the front doors of the Benbow. You take out your gun and Saki snaps out her ori-baton. A spark of electricity shoots out of its end.
“Let’s go through the Nemo and get out,” you whisper. “Let’s go.” Saki puts up a finger to her lips, telling you to shush.
“Open the damn door or I’ll blow it open! I hear you in there!” Winniefreddie cries. “One, two, screw you!”
The doors open with a blast, revealing a dirty, disheveled, and angry Winniefreddie. She walks in with her ori-baton out, looking ready to hurt anyone in her way. “Oh it’s you all. Was that a set-up, or what?” she says with a chuckle, and then collapses.
You watch as she changes back into that beautiful young girl in an oversized jumpsuit you thought you saw when you and the co-op were running away from the Snuffies in the temple.
Before you can figure out what to do with her, she wakes up and after clicking a button on a small ori-baton tied to her belt, changes back again.
“I like being this way and I’m lucky enough to pull it off,” she says sheepishly. “Long story.” She doesn’t speak for a long time and neither you nor Saki press her. You light a fire in the fireplace and give her a blanket you found in one of the back rooms.
You do another line despite Saki telling you to stop it.
“Winniefreddie, this is Saki. She’s the other SSR.”
“We know each other. What a set-up, huh, what a goddamn set up. You know, I knew Guy since, like forever, and Treena, my sister, before that even...”
You snicker a little, but then shut up, horrified at yourself. Saki turns to you, wide- eyed. Winniefreddie looks a bit unhinged and unable to take in what just happened. Her eyes are always wide.
“Guy Farson and your sister were killed by Mathias and Petty.”
“Guy Farson and my sister were really killed by Tek, too. I know that. Tek shot at me when I tried to get to the rendezvous. I thought it was you at first but I heard you guys through the windows...” What she says makes you wonder how long she was listening before you even knew she was there.
“The natives, you can’t trust ‘em at all. You can’t. You just can’t. You just can’t. We should have just dropped napalm on their villages one by one, killed ‘em all, cleared ‘em out, then moved in,” s
he says bitterly.
You think of the Ni-Perchta who saved you from that creature out there but do not speak of it, seeing the distress in Winniefreddie’s puffy face.
“Mathias and Petty are like a political gang. It’s not what the Network says they are, Sarah. They are not just, you know, toe cutters, they have a political edge to them. They want the settlers and the Network people to move on out.” Winniefreddie starts to sob quietly.
“Mathias is human,” Saki says after an eternity.
Winniefreddie rubs her red eyes before speaking. “Well, I guess he figures he’s one of the enlightened ones. Unlike us.
Us, you can just gun us down like nothing because we’re exploiters...”
“They killed our Mission Counters,” you say. “Blew ‘em up. Had their weird tarot cards, those weird things, all over the scene.”
“Botha?” Winniefreddie asks, hopefully. “Please tell me Botha ate it?” She sniffs.
“Nope, the young ones,” you state with a sigh. “I want to go home.”
“How’d you make it out, Sarah? I got to the Sargasso Free Zone and got a ride,” Winniefreddie says. “I had to give a couple of hand jobs to get back here. Double barreled like Kristen Stewart in that movie.”
You and Saki look at each other.
“Kidding! Just one hand job,” Winniefreddie says, laughing a little, then sobbing deeply. “Nothing like that, actually. Nice people gave me a ride.”
You go over and give her a hug.
“Tek set us up. You can’t trust any of ‘em anymore. Maybe this whole thing is going down. Maybe we all need to get off this planet. How’d you get out, Sarah?” she asks again, with a sort of weird intensity.
You fill her in as much as you can, omitting certain, important, things.
The three of you go through the Nemo Gate and get back into Mission Friendship, only to find that there is no one there except an inebriated Botha, who pulls out his ori-baton when you walk into the lobby. A rocket launcher, several ammunition magazines, and a pile of grenades all neatly stacked up on your desk, where he sits, his dull red eyes following you as you walk to the elevators. He points the end of the baton at you as you walk by. A sniper rifle and another ori-baton filled with other orichalcum bits sits at Saki’s desk.
