Shift Tense: Eshu International Book 2

by Patrick Todoroff

  I swear the drone attack paused after that, like a brawler punched in the nose. In that half-second, I opened my mouth to say something to Tam, then the sky fell like a sledgehammer.

  Before I knew it, both Wiesels were gone, vaporized in one lethal stroke. They’d been tracking one of the black bat bastards when they were blindsided by two others. Split-second gun runs tore them into fiery wrecks.

  The Muharib Guard beside us opened up with every weapon they had, but all it did was draw attention.

  A shadow flashed past, a steel vomit, then dirt and blood and bits of flesh rained down on me. I wiped my eyes in time to see one of the damned things bank over the mansion and line up for another pass. Death coming on black carbon-fiber wings.

  It had started to dive when concentrated gunfire mangled it in midair. I heard the whirr of GE miniguns. The Triplets.

  Two nearby drones reacted and lit up the tree line on the far side of the lawn only to get chewed apart by a storm of 5.56 rounds from another angle. Three down in as many minutes. I shivered with adrenaline and gratitude. You robots are fucking with the wrong clones.

  Killer Bunnies. ‘Death awaits you all with sharp, pointy teeth’ is right.

  A loud crunch and clang came from behind me. In the smoke and panic, the two SPLM command tracks had crashed into each other. One of the M577s was stuck, engine roaring as it churned a deep rut in the lawn. The second one was dented, leaking smoke but still mobile, fleeing back toward the edge of the estate.

  The remaining rebel troops rushed to the immobilized vehicle, offering their lives to protect whoever was inside. They fired at the circling drones, and like the Muharib Guard beside us, only made matters worse.

  An unkindness of ravens wheeling over an ancient battlefield was an omen of slaughter. The black drones were no different. The robotic flock burst like black shrapnel, tore through the clouds, then reassembled and screamed in from the four winds. Whoever was on that command track was dead in the next pass.

  “Take your headset off!” Poet9 suddenly yelled.

  “What?”

  He held up a bright yellow thumb drive. “Snowcrash!”

  I stared uncomprehending as he slotted it into his Ono-Sendai. His fingers blurred on the key pad. Done, he reached up and flipped the switch on his Brain Box. One finger hovered over his keypad.

  “Snowcrash,” he said simply, and pressed ‘Enter’.

  There was a piercing screech, pain like an ice pick in my ears, and I tore my headset off.

  The bat drones tumbled out of the sky like kites with severed strings. They spiraled into trees, crashed into soldiers, gouged smoldering furrows in the earth. Two of them slammed into the mansion. One augered straight into the fleeing M577 and exploded in a giant fireball.

  And with the press of a button, the battle for Qasr al-Salaam was over.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE – Deus Ex

  United Nations IDP Camp, Dhubbato, Somaliland

  Colonel Chutani was apoplectic.

  The Pakistani colonel stood on the running board of the lead truck and shouted at the sea of refugees in front of him. His driver pounded the horn furiously, but no one was listening.

  It seemed like the entire camp was dancing, singing, hugging… Tens of thousands of smiling, crying, laughing faces delirious with joy. No one gave a convoy of returning Peacekeepers any mind.

  I looked past the tents toward the main gate. “Someone going to let him in?” I asked.

  Alejo bit into a sambuusa, spices and meat juice dribbling down his chin. “Ehhh… mañana.” He grinned. “Today is for celebrating.”

  Beside him, Carmen was handing out coconut qumbe sweets to a throng of children. Wonli and Bello stood arm-in-arm beside her, chatting happily with friends. They’d announced their engagement that morning. One arm in a sling, a haggard but happy Curro was doing the best he could to fend off multiple offers of food from half-a-dozen giggling young women. Even the Triplets were included; a stream of well-wishers went in and out of a nearby tent to see the ‘Ghosts’ who rescued Bowna and helped topple Goma Dhul-Fiqaar. Tyrants, madmen and dictators have left deep scars across this continent, but these Africans would have very different memories of Series Sevens.

  “So this Visser guy saved the day?” Tam said, steering the conversation back.

  Alejo gulped and nodded. “He and his ‘Army of the Lord’ had ambushed the SAF there a few nights earlier. Duub Cas stalled in the exact same place, and he took it as a sign. Had no idea it was Curro and Dhubbato men holding them up.”

  Poet9 stopped gnawing on a stick of spiced beef. “He was the crazy Dutch guy, right?”

  “Si. Loco por Dios.”

  “So…?”

  “So his men say the Lord took him in a flash of fire like Elijah. He died a hero, like he wanted.”

  “Bet it was a HE round,” Tam muttered.

  A smirk twitched under Alejo’s moustache. “Point is, the Duub Cas weren’t expecting another fight. When he attacked, they panicked and retreated right into a SPLM armored column. Got tore apart.” The old Spaniard looked around at the celebrations. “The man saved my son. Probably saved the entire camp.”

  Irritated, Tam shook his head. “That’s an awful big medal to pin on a religious nutter.”

  Alejo shrugged. “It worked out, didn’t it? Thank God.”

  “Thank God? Things didn’t work out for lots of other people. Think they’re choked up with gratitude right now?”

  “I have no idea,” Alejo answered. He spread his hands at the celebrations all around us. “I just know I’m grateful. And so are all these people. OK?”

  Tam frowned. “You’re only calling it God because you wound up on the ‘half-full’ side this time,” he replied. “What I saw was us barely surviving a bloody fiasco.”

  The crowd of children had thinned until only a few older kids remained. I noticed the boy Abdi standing in front of Carmen with a huge grin and a hand out. He waved at me with the other. His red shirt was powdered white with sugar and coconut flakes, but Carmen slid the last qumbe off the plate into his palm. “The scientist Einstein wrote that coincidence was God’s way of remaining anonymous,” she said carefully as she watched the boy run off. “Maybe you only see what you look for.”

  Then she turned to Tam. “But even you have to admit the Dutchmen’s attack, the SPLM tanks in that area, Poet9s overload program, that thing crashing into Ghotta’s vehicle all starts to add up.”

  “Oh, so it’s deus ex robotica?” he scoffed. “That drone toasting Ghotta was random, nothing more. And you know it.”

  “What I know is Professor Hamid is alive,” Carmen countered. “The ‘how’ is up for grabs.”

  Tam’s face went flat. “It was a coincidence.”

  “Just like your Dawson-Hull Conglomerate recognized his government less than twenty-four hours later, then announced a billion-euro aid package?” A sly grin crept across her face. “There’s been a rather odd persistence of coincidences, don’t you think?”

  “They want the coltan,” Tam replied. “That’s a bribe, not a miracle.”

  “And you know what a miracle looks like?”

  “I know you can’t cherry-pick debris from a disaster, string it together and call it God.”

  “It’s details, not debris,” Carmen explained. “I see the hand of God in them.”

  “Well, I was holding out for angels,” Tam said. “ If God wants me to believe in him, he’d better be more obvious. Go loud or go home.”

  Alejo chuckled, but his eyes were sharp. “He doesn’t do party tricks, Tam. You’ve got to realize you need him more than he needs you.”

  Exasperated, Tam threw up his hands. “And you have to realize you can’t see shit with your Jesus-colored glasses on.”

  An awkward silence piled up between us.

  “Sorry,” Tam said after a moment. “Didn’t mean any disrespect.” He kicked the dirt with his boot. “Today’s a good day. War’s over. I’m glad Curro’s alive. Things turned
out for you guys. You’ve got every right to call it whatever you want.”

  Carmen stepped up and took Tam’s face in her hands. He squirmed for a second but stayed where he was.

  Her voice was soft but intent. “When are you going to get it through your head that nothing here is ever perfect, but God’s not afraid to get his hands dirty? That he’s so big, so powerful, he will use anything or anyone to redeem some good out of the disasters we make: greedy corporations, robots, fanatics… even atheistic mercenaries.”

  “I’m agnostic,” Poet9 said with his mouth full.

  We all turned toward him.

  He looked sheepishly from Tam to me, then back to Tam. I swear Tam looked betrayed. “What?” Poet9 exclaimed. “She’s got a point. Even the Sai-qa commandos bolted when the drones fell. That’s a lot of coincidences.”

  “What happened to ‘religion was all the proof you needed God wasn’t real’?” I asked.

  “This is way past religion. All I’m saying is now I’m not convinced God doesn’t exist.” Poet9 waved a stick of spiced beef at the Garcias. “He could.”

  “That’s a step in the right direction,” Alejo beamed.

  I watched my friend tear another bite off the strip of grilled meat, a Cybernetic Interface unit grafted to his skull, his thin face laced with gang-tats and scars. The little I knew of Poet9’s childhood in the slums outside Mexico City was gut-wrenching. For him to admit the possibility of God was more than a step; it was a tectonic shift.

  Curro extricated himself from the Somali girls and joined us, an expression of mock alarm on his face. He said something witty I didn’t catch and made Tam laugh. Tam had since snagged a plate of lamb stew from somewhere and gone contrite. His eyes were still tight, but he’d moved the conversation on for the sake of friendship. I’d known Tam Song going on two decades now. We’d seen the inside of war zones all across the planet, and I knew him better than anyone in the world, yet it still puzzled me why God conversations put him on edge like nothing else.

  I wanted to help him, but what could I say? There were a lot of coincidences. In fact, I’d spent all morning deliberately not thinking about how our decision between Ghotta or Professor Hamid was essentially made for us that afternoon. From a certain angle, it had more than a passing resemblance to divine intervention. Not just for us, but the people of Somaliland.

  Perhaps it was the heat, the noise, my imagination, exhaustion catching up, but I was suddenly uneasy. The notion that a higher power was actually there, not just watching from the clouds, but somehow involved in all this, beckoned like some trail of breadcrumbs that vanished into the forest.

  I simultaneously wanted and didn’t want to follow them. I wasn’t sure I had the courage to go the way to the end.

  Still, I had the sense they would be there, waiting for me to start picking them up.

  And uncomfortable though I was, I found that oddly reassuring.

  THE END.

  ETERNAL GRATITUDE

  To Rachel, who lets me write; Mark at Angel Editing for tidying up; the Fortnighters for enduring so many trips to Somaliland; Lee Stephen for reminding me it can be done; and all the readers who waited so patiently. Thank you.

  Patrick Todoroff, Jan. 2014

  SDG