ElyriasEcstasy

by Amber Jayne

“You don’t have to,” Bongo said.

  “What?”

  “You don’t need to baby me. I’m scared. I admit that. But I insisted on coming along and I’m standing by that. No matter what happens.”

  Arvra didn’t respond but she was impressed. Maybe these Order of Maji characters were all made of tough stuff. Certainly Gator, who was staying right on her tail like he was supposed to, was a rugged piece of work. The other vehicle had its lights blazing now too. That stark illumination would help keep off the Passengers, true, but it was no guarantee.

  Ahead, in the distance, were the first signs of the Unsafe’s previous occupation—buildings on the horizon, just dots from here.

  Bongo, she noted, had already seen them. Good eyes. It might just be that he would prove truly worthwhile on this operation.

  “I do have a question,” he said, looking up from his map again. “How do we get back?”

  Behind, she heard Hervo grunt. Her eyes widened. “That’s not the kind of question I really want to hear from my navigator.”

  “What? No. No.” He waved a hand, looking embarrassed. “I don’t mean that. I know the way there, the way back. What I meant was, how do we get back into your town? With the Guard on alert. They saw us leave. They’ll be waiting for us to come back, right?”

  “They saw these vehicles,” Arvra said. “So what? We keep them hidden, as you saw when we collected this one. The Guard didn’t see us—except maybe for Urna. That might complicate things. But getting back? We can roll out of the Unsafe a couple of miles to either side of the town and the Guard are never going to know. Then we can smuggle the goods into town at our leisure. And you Maji people can take your guns wherever you were planning on taking them. Don’t worry about what’s behind us right now.”

  Bongo appeared to muse on this for a moment then nodded decisively. “Okay.”

  Overhead the Black Ship squirmed and glowed. It was such a vast, impossible, horrible thing, and yet Bongo wasn’t wasting time gawking up at it. Arvra remembered her own inaugural raid. The first time she’d been under the Black Ship, with Frank leading the crew, she was terrified. It had taken everything she had not to beg her brother to turn the truck around and take her back.

  Bongo, then, had some real grit. Again she couldn’t completely hide a grin.

  “On the left,” came Hervo’s stolid voice from behind.

  Arvra’s eyes flashed that way just in time to see a crossbow bolt pierce the malformed skull of the Passenger that had apparently sprung up from the ground itself and started racing toward the vehicle. As it collapsed she could hear Hervo reloading his weapon. He was quite a shot.

  She saw no other Passengers in the immediate vicinity. Beside her, Bongo let out a breath he’d evidently been holding for several seconds. His lips thinned into a line. His green eyes turned forward.

  “Straight ahead for a while,” he said once more.

  * * * * *

  Rune was racing the wings harder than he had ever done before. Wringing the overtaxed motor. Squeezing every bit of thrust the burning fuel could provide. He had traveled from the Citadel in what was surely record time—if anyone had ever bothered to keep such records. No one had, he felt sure. Using wings in this manner was not advisable.

  He was numbed from the wind. At some point he’d passed through a mist, not troubling himself to go over it, and it dampened his clothing. The black strips snapped wetly against his sleek body. He didn’t care about the discomfort.

  Ahead, still quite some distance off, he thought he detected a flush of light on the horizon that could only be the Black Ship. Miles to go still. But his altitude gave him an extended view. Wisps of cloud intervened. He maintained the straight line he had been following since lifting off from that administration building’s rooftop.

  Perhaps his absence had been discovered by now. Soon it would be time for his evening dose. It might even be past that time by now. He felt no effects yet of narcotic withdrawal. It could be that he would feel none at all, so caught up was he in this venture.

  Urna. Urna.

  But he didn’t speak the name aloud. He wasn’t within range yet. His words wouldn’t carry to his treacherous lover’s ears. Rune wouldn’t be able to feel him, not even if he donned the blindfold so to let his other senses take over.

  He might, however, be in radio range by now.

  Taking a firm grip, he slipped the handheld radio from his belt. With his other hand he pulled down the fabric to bare his face. He pressed the radio tightly to his chilled ear. He felt his dark hair streaming out behind him as he turned his head a few degrees to cut the howl of the wind. He turned up the radio’s volume as loud as it would go and listened.

  He heard Guard chatter. At first he thought it was just routine traffic. Then he heard the urgency in the voices, overlapping each other. Some crisis was underway. This was the correct channel for the Guard border units. This disruption must be happening in one of the border towns.

  The very town, in fact, Rune determined after a moment’s intent eavesdropping, from which the report of Urna’s sighting had come.

  A grin gleamed on the Shadowflash’s narrow face. Not only were the Guard dealing with a “civic disturbance”, but from their rapid talk Rune deduced where the wayward Weapon had gone.

  Into the Unsafe. Riding with a pair of illegal salvage vehicles. Rune even had a description of those transports now.

  The grin stayed stamped on his features. He worked the wings’ throttle, somehow coaxing even more speed from them. The fuel gauge was dropping at an alarming rate. The harness cut across his wind-benumbed body. He didn’t care. Didn’t care. Forward. Forward. Find the Weapon, find Urna. Into the Unsafe.

  He and his second self would have their reunion on familiar ground.

  * * * * *

  Urna let the man with the crossbow in the lead vehicle take the first shot, so to measure his accuracy. He let Pelkra, who sat next to him atop their transport’s roof, take down the second Passenger that appeared, for the same reason. Now he had an idea of their skills.

  This was different for Urna. Always in the past he’d known the value and talents of his partner. Rune had been an absolutely defined quantity to him. But he wasn’t on a mission with his Shadowflash this time.

  When the third Passenger came racing out of the fungal gloom, claws scraping the ground, Urna let his instincts take over. In less time than it took to blink he’d aimed, fired and put a bullet through the creature’s head, while it was still little more than a distant shadow.

  Pelkra, after an appraising pause, said, “Nice work.”

  “Thanks.” His prideful grin was a brief flash of teeth. “You too.”

  Arvra had turned onto a new course a little ways back and Gator had followed. Presumably Bongo was providing the directions, probably using that cluster of structures ahead as a reference point. Passengers seemed to congregate in the old, ruined cities. It was why the Weapon/Shadowflash kill missions almost always went there. Still, there were plenty of the monsters running loose in the erstwhile countryside to keep things lively.

  After a time a new collection of rotting buildings appeared in the distance. The land here was hillier than before. They’d come upon a crumbling roadway.

  Arvra slowed her vehicle, Urna saw, so as to more easily navigate the rubble-strewn road. He could hear the rusting transport’s motor growling in protest but it kept chugging. Gator followed close. They went on for close to half an hour like that, the general hush only periodically broken by the report from Urna’s pistol (the clip was full but he was meting out his shots judiciously, needing only one bullet per target) or the lethal whistle of a crossbow bolt or one of Pelkra’s arrows. They were accumulating a decent kill stat among them, Urna noted, not without a twinge of irony.

  Speaking of twinges…

  Again he pressed his temple. The disorientation wasn’t the same as before. It was both less distracting and more intense, as if something were clarifying in his head. As befor
e, he fought to keep the sensation suppressed.

  He and Rune as children, playing on an expanse of green grass, the sun shining down on them. Urna let Rune tackle him to the ground even though he could outdistance and outwrestle his dark-haired friend. His best friend. Urna was laughing. So was Rune, though not with the same vigor. It was all frolicsome fun. Then a voice was calling, an adult voice, a kindly admonishment, “Don’t play too rough, boys!”

  Urna couldn’t see this adult, just Rune and the grass and the warm, bathing sunlight.

  Then he couldn’t see any of it. The vision had gone.

  Vision? No, he realized. No! Another memory. He was sure of it. Like that one where Rune—slightly older than he’d been this time—had been trying to tell him something important and dire. And Urna hadn’t wanted to listen.

  At first, the knowledge that this was Rune had been nagging, suspect. Urna couldn’t fully trust it, not if there were the slightest chance that he was under some influence of Kath’s or even Bongo’s magic. Now his head was free of outside interference and he was confident in his memory, in these images. It was a relief. A weight lifted from his shoulders that he had barely understood he was carrying all his life.

  He shook his head sharply. There was a flash of clammy black, leaping over an ancient moldering vehicle that sat at an angle just off the roadside. The Passenger was near enough that Urna could see its distorted features. Too close! With no Shadowflash to tell him of the impending threat, the thing had come too near.

  When he shot the beast in mid-jump, it sprayed ichor just half a dozen feet from the side of the transport Gator was driving. Breath shook Urna’s chest. No time for memories. Not now. As much as he wanted to know about himself, he couldn’t spare the attention, not under these circumstances. His revelations, if there were any more to come, would have to wait.

  The two vehicles were closing on the cluster of buildings. Urna and Pelkra both had good vantages up here, able to see past the lead transport. Up ahead were the outskirts of a city. Big buildings. Or what used to be. Only now they were mostly piles of rubbish, and they were completely blocking the road.

  Arvra slammed on her brakes. Gator, so close behind, almost collided with her when he followed suit, reacting as quickly as he could manage.

  “Shit!” Urna heard from below. Sparing the briefest glance downward, he saw Virge Temple tumble into the back of Gator’s seat.

  Urna, keeping vigilant of their surroundings, nonetheless looked down into the forward vehicle and saw Arvra slamming her steering wheel with her right palm. Beside her, Bongo was working quickly with the map. Hervo, in his sharpshooter’s nest, turned and gave a hold tight hand sign to the vehicle behind. Both transports idled.

  It was unpleasant to be halted in the Unsafe. Even when he’d been on foot here he had almost always been in motion. Slaying Passengers right and left, never pausing.

  On the ground it seemed there was no such thing as a “clear route”, no matter how good your maps were. Urna thought to mutter this observation to Pelkra but refrained. Grousing wasn’t his style.

  Among the three armed members of the salvage gang, they picked off seven Passengers before the vehicles got moving again. Arvra’s lurched to the left, cutting away at a sharp angle. Gator kept pace. It looked like they were going to make a drastic lateral move, hit the city from a new tack, by way of what would hopefully be a passable street.

  The briefer the time they actually spent inside the ruined city’s limits the better. Urna trusted these people. He believed in this mission. But he knew what the Passengers could do. Whatever they were, whatever their motivations or supposed intellectual capacity, those creatures considered the Unsafe theirs. Intrusions weren’t welcome. Intruders were to be halted—and torn to pieces.

  Urna gunned down two more, both charging toward them from the direction of the city. In all his time as a Weapon he had never decided for himself whether the monsters could even communicate among themselves. If so, it seemed to be only as animals did. But that was enough.

  Arvra found some unobstructed ground and picked up speed. Gator came jouncing after. The quicker velocity was exhilarating.

  Urna allowed himself another grin. There was no reason why he couldn’t enjoy this a little. After all, his entire adult life had been dedicated to this work.

  One thing was sure, though. He preferred siding with these people to operating at the behest of the Lux.

  The grin stayed, even as he fired off another round and Pelkra and Hervo both sent shafts into the Shiplit dusk. It wasn’t until Urna heard the faint, familiar buzzing from the sky that his grin slipped.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Hang on.” Bongo drew the map sharply across his lap. His green eyes moved, following a tracing finger. “I’ll find us another way.”

  Arvra had confidence that he would do so. He’d guided her through two detours already. Things weren’t static in the Unsafe, as much of a dead place as it seemed to be. Old buildings gave way and spilled across streets. Roads buckled. The terrain changed.

  “I’ll be right back,” Arvra said, reaching for the door handle. She didn’t take with her the long blade with the leather-wrapped hilt. That was only a last-ditch weapon and she wanted both hands free. “Hervo, cover me.” The order was unnecessary, she knew. The crossbowman was doing his usual exemplary work, picking off Passengers with deadly precision.

  Bongo didn’t even look up as she jumped out of the vehicle, boots crunching on the littered ground. It was one thing to ride around in the Unsafe, something else to be on foot, to feel the turf under your soles. She didn’t linger over this philosophical point, however. She dashed over to what had caught her eye. Donning a pair of gloves, she caught the object’s edges in a firm grip, heaved it up, turned and hurried back to the idling vehicle.

  She kicked the lever that dropped open the back hatch into the cargo hold and flung her prize inside. It rang hollowly on the enclosing metal. It was a piece of ancient electronics, something from the old world, a casing housing wires and—what was that word she’d come across in her reading of old texts?—circuits. Good salvage. There were people back at her town who were getting good at tinkering with such things.

  Pre-Black Ship Elryia had been a place of wonder, with many advanced devices. Maybe the world could be so again. Someday.

  Arvra raced back to the cab, felt a surge of relief when she had the door securely shut behind her. Hervo hadn’t had to fire off a shot. They were still on the city’s outskirts but by going around its boundaries, Bongo had said, they were getting closer to the armory.

  “Go that way.” Bongo pointed.

  There was a gap in the blockade of rubble that had stopped them in the first place. Beyond, it only looked like more obstructions. Arvra, however, didn’t hesitate. She threw the transport forward. Gator, as always, followed closely in the second hauler.

  Past the barrier a clear zone opened up. It was almost ridiculously pristine. Nothing but flatness for several square blocks, interrupted here and there by the sad, skeletal shapes of dead trees.

  “Clear running,” Arvra said, grinning.

  Bongo took it as the compliment it was meant to be. “All this used to be a…park. An urban recreation area. At least I think that’s what a park was.”

  The two vehicles were picking up speed, making a straight line for the far border of the onetime park.

  “We’re almost to the arsenal,” Bongo said as Hervo’s crossbow twanged and, off to their right, a Passenger fell and rolled and lay still. “This is going to work!” Excitement flushed his handsome face.

  Arvra ran the transport even faster. Its six wheels handled this flat landscape easily. Headlights blazed. Some of those Passengers attracted by the sound of the engines flinched at the sight of the harsh lights and shied away. Others kept on charging and were cut down by bolt, arrow or bullet.

  Urna was making a real difference. Arvra’s eyes flashed toward the rearview, saw the former Weapon perched atop t
he trailing vehicle. A tiny sliver of memory winked across her mind. Lying beneath his leanly muscled body, taking his cock and seed into herself. It wasn’t, she knew, the most unpleasant of remembrances.

  They were halfway across the dead park, Arvra still in mid-glance at the rearview mirror, when the shape in black swooped out of the air, seized Urna in an implacable embrace and lifted and carried him back up toward the Ship-dominated sky.

  * * * * *

  The sharp jounce was worse than anything Virge had felt yet on this trip. Couldn’t Gator avoid some of these yawning ditches he seemed so bent on driving over? It was unfair and she knew it immediately, and winced. Gator was doing a hell of a job steering this behemoth, keeping pace with Arvra, who had sped up considerably in the last minute as they’d reached a clear area within the ruins.

  Something struck the seat on Virge’s left. An eye blink later she noticed that Urna’s legs were no longer dangling down through his hatchway. Right on top of that same instant, from the roof itself, came a sharp cry. “Urna!” Pelkra’s voice.

  Virge turned, rose, looked up. Gator braked but this time she caught herself before lurching into the back of his seat. Urna was not sitting on the lip of the hatch where he’d been a moment ago. What had dropped to the seat below was a pistol. His pistol. Much used on this excursion. A thread of smoke still curled from the barrel.

  Instinctively—though where such an instinct could’ve come from, she didn’t know—Virge grabbed up the handgun. It was heavy but balanced in her grip.

  “Urna!” Pelkra shouted again, but there was a finality in her voice this time. The tight, ringing pluck of her bowstring followed.

  “What the hell’s going on?” Gator wanted to know. Ahead, Arvra’s vehicle had halted as well.

  Firearm in hand, Virge went up through the opening to the roof. Pelkra was there. Only Pelkra. Her face was pale around the thick white scar that marked it. She was nocking another arrow from one of the several quivers spread around her.

  Her eyes were wide and still, but tearless. She said, “A man with…wings strapped to him dove from above. I only heard him a second or two before he grabbed Urna. The man…he…he just lifted Urna. Took him. Like a predator bird.”