by James Maxey
What I’d done had been animal, aggressive, and brutal. The dirtiest, most violent sex I’d ever imagined.
Sasha was right about one thing. I would have killed Jenny if I’d done even half the stuff I’d done with Sasha last night. I mean, I weigh close to half a ton. I can’t even lay on top of Jenny. And even if we weren’t so mismatched in size, Jenny has certain things she just won’t do. She’s said no to me on a lot of things I’d like to try. Sasha said nothing but yes, when I even bothered to ask.
So what? There was more to love than sex, right? I mean, Jenny makes me feel human. But what does that even mean? Ultimately, it means that, before she hooked up with me, I’d been resolved to face the fact that I would live and die alone. I was a species of one. A real mate wasn’t in the cards. I’d been stoic about this, pushing back my loneliness. The first night I’d slept with Jenny… I’d been on the verge of tears. I’d trembled, unable to speak, overwhelmed by the wonder of not being alone. And she’d held me, brushed her hands along my neck, and whispered that everything was alright, it was alright, alright. That had been the night when the full weight of my loneliness revealed itself, and the night I understood I wouldn’t have to bear it alone.
How could I betray the woman who’d saved me from soul crushing desolation?
On the other hand, what if Sasha felt the same loneliness? What if she thought, in me, she’d found the one being in all the world who could save her? Was I her Jenny?
Head bent, shoulders sagging, I slogged from the darkness of the cargo hold into the morning light. I saw Bobbie and Elsa already seated in the saddles of their pterosaurs and felt a spark of excitement again. I mean, sure, loneliness sucks, and heartbreak is the worst, but I was about one minute away from flying a robotic pterosaur over a primordial jungle. If that doesn’t stir your heart to joy, well, we are wired very differently, you and I.
I leapt, feeling weightless as I flew toward my magnificent ride, making a perfect landing in the saddle.
“Ride ’em, cowboy!” said Reverend Rifle, tinkering with his robot further down the runway.
“Giddy up!” I cried, taking the reins. The beast didn’t move. I dug my heels into its flanks. Not a stir. “There a start button on these things?”
“Nope,” said the reverend, walking toward me. “You’re doing it right. It won’t go into flight mode until it’s fueled up.” He carried a black sphere about the size of a golf ball as he came around to the pterosaur’s razor-toothed jaws.
“What’s it run on? Jet fuel?”
“These things.” He held up the golf ball.
“What the hell is that? I mean heck is that?”
“Nobody has the faintest idea,” said Reverend Rifle. “All scientists can figure out is that Technosaur uses some kind of matter to energy transformation, like nuclear power, only these fuel pods he makes don’t contain any known radioactive fuel.”
“So, what are they made of?”
“Like I said, no one has a clue. Nothing can cut into these things. They’ve broken expensive industrial presses trying to crush them. Lasers just vanish into the surface. Under an electron microscope, all you see is a perfectly smooth surface, black as Vantablack.”
“What’s Vantablack?”
“The blackest substance ever created in a laboratory. It swallows up photons and doesn’t let them back out. But Vantablack’s fragile, and these pods are a lot harder than diamonds.”
“So Technosaur could patent these fuel pods and be a zillionaire. She could rule the world the traditional way, writing checks to politicians. But like most supervillains, plan A always seems to be giant robots.”
“If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail,” said Elsa, butting into our conversation.
“What does that have to do with anything?” I asked.
“Robots are the only tool Technosaur really knows how to use. I’m sure it all makes perfect sense to her.”
“It makes sense to me, too,” I said. “If I had the skills to build giant robotic dinosaurs, I’d look for any excuse I could to use them.”
“Open wide,” said the reverend, tapping my ride’s snout with the fuel pod. A rubbery tongue snaked out and licked it up. Ten seconds later, the whole contraption gave off a faint, barely perceptible high-pitched whine.
“Thunderbirds are go?” I asked.
“Thunderbirds are go,” said the reverend. This time when I dug in my heels, the robot spread its wings and galloped down the runway. It hopped, skipped, jumped, and flapped for all it was worth, but a hundred feet later we still weren’t airborne and the trees at the end of the runway were getting pretty close.
“What’s the weight limit on—” I didn’t get to finish my question. With one final sprint to build speed and the biggest jump yet, we finally broke free of gravity. We were still heading straight for the trees. It occurred to me at that moment that I really didn’t know a damn thing about steering a pterosaur. If I pulled the reins, would it fly higher? Or think I wanted it to halt?
Fortunately, whatever AI powered this thing was bright enough to know that crashing into the trees wasn’t my goal and banked sharply, flapping hard, looping back down the runway to gain altitude before it at last rose high enough to clear the trees.
“Don’t leave without us,” Sasha called out as she came out of the woods onto the runway, waving at me.
“I’ll try not to,” I called back. “I’m not sure how to steer this thing.”
“It’s user adaptive,” Reverend Rifle shouted. “It can interpret your movements to deduce what you’d like it to do.”
I tested this out by tugging the reins slightly and shifting my weight to the left. To my delight, it turned left, at a speed and banking angle I was comfortable with. I’d ridden a pony when I was, like, seven, at the birthday of a foster sibling in the family I lived with at the time. It hadn’t liked the way I smelled, I guess, so it threw me, and I hadn’t ridden a horse since. I was excited to be flying this thing, but also keenly aware that if I did something stupid to make it throw me, I was going to have a much further fall than from a pony’s butt.
Sasha and the reverend mounted up as Elsa followed me into the sky, her launch smoother and swifter, but her initial test turns a lot shakier. Bobbie was in the air next, a quick launch followed by smooth, graceful figure eights around us. Her robotic steed apparently appreciated her feline balance and agility. Sasha had a more difficult launch, and a worried look on her face when she finally wheeled around and came back toward us.
The reverend was the last one into the air. Unlike me, he’d spent a lot of time on horseback. He instantly mastered his ride, showing off with a climb high above the rest of us, followed by a dive, where it seemed like he’d crash into the runway. At the last second he pulled up, as his ride snatched a large duffle bag sitting on the runway in its claws.
The reverend guided his pterosaur above mine and called out, “You took off without your luggage.” He dropped the bag, and I plucked it from the air, draping it over my lap.
“Westward, ho!” he cried, aiming his pterosaur so that the morning sun was directly at our backs. On we flew, the jungle quickly swallowing even the few feeble signs of civilization that surrounded Mundo Verde. In five minutes, I realized that the air smelled completely different. Back on the runway, the background stench of burnt fuel, molten asphalt, and gunpowder had been so omnipresent I’d barely noticed it. Now, the air turned floral and insanely humid, but the wind cooled us nicely. The treetops raced below us at a rapid pace. We were only a few dozen feet above the tallest trees, low enough we might have hit birds, except that every bird that caught sight of us got out of our way with alacrity. I tried to guess how fast we were going. I’d ridden a lot of motorcycles and knew how the wind hit you at various speeds. I felt like we were only going sixty miles an hour, seventy, tops. Definitely not airplane speed.
“This as fast as these things go?” I shouted to the reverend.
Unfortunately,
due to wingspans, we weren’t particularly close, and even sixty miles an hour was enough to make conversation impossible. But he must have heard me shouting, because he motioned toward his crotch, then tapped his ear, which seemed like some weird cowboy sign language insult. He pointed at his crotch again.
“Ah,” I said, realizing he wanted me to look inside my duffle bag. I did so and found a headset right on top, almost identical to the ones I used to wear when I worked for the Red Line. I slipped it on and said, “Testing, testing, 1, 2—”
“We hear you,” said Bobbie, tersely.
“Hi Harry!” Sasha chimed in, waving at me.
“Hello, everybody,” I said. “rev, I was wondering if this is as fast as these things go.”
“Afraid so,” he said.
“How far are we flying?”
“About three hundred miles,” he said. “There’s a river about the mid-point where we should be able to find a landing spot and take a break. We’ll go over the plans for getting into Technosaur’s fortress there.”
The adrenaline rush of riding these things started to fade as the monotony of the long ride ahead sank in. Don’t get me wrong—we were passing above some of the most gorgeous landscapes I’d ever seen. Big, sheer-faced table-top mountains rose up from the jungle in the distance, waterfalls spilling down their side, the forested tops fading into clouds. The jungle canopy below looked as I imagined it might have looked a million years ago, a trackless sea of green without a hint of a road or village. Men are supposed to be moved to awe in the face of such natural wonder, and, sure, I thought it was awesome. But, there was also too damn much of it. Like the barren desert surrounding the reverends ranch, this place could be improved by a convenience store where I could drop down and buy some snacks.
Sasha’s voice suddenly cut in on my headset. “It’s beautiful, isn’t it, Harry?”
I looked toward her. She smiled and waved at me.
“I suppose so,” I said.
“I think it’s romantic,” she said with a sigh. “The smell of all the jungle flowers, the colorful birds everywhere, the high mountains looking like fairytale kingdoms.” She paused, looking around, drinking in the grandeur of the place. “This would be a fantastic spot for a honeymoon.”
My mouth went dry. Man, a store selling two-liter bottles of Mountain Dew was exactly what I needed at that moment.
Sasha’s voice sounded dreamy as she said, “Imagine flying over all this in moonlight… would you like that, Harry?”
“I, uh…” I didn’t know what to say. I wondered if anyone else could hear our conversation, or if she knew about some private channel setting I didn’t know about because I hadn’t taken the time before takeoff to listen to a briefing about using the equipment. I looked at the reverend, then at Elsa. Neither glanced my way. Maybe this was a private conversation.
“Is she flirting with you?” asked Jenny.
I looked over my shoulder. I was, it turned out, completely alone on my saddle despite it sounding like Jenny was directly next to me. I had to be hallucinating. My guilty conscience was getting the best of me.
“Harry,” said Jenny, her voice once again clear and strong. “Have you been flirting with her?”
“Jenny?” I asked.
“Yes?”
“Where are you?”
“Texas,” she said. “Where did you think I was?”
“Right,” I said, finally grasping that I was hearing her in my headset. “You can hear what we’re saying?”
“Obviously,” she said. “I stayed behind to monitor communications, remember?”
“Harry,” said Sasha. “It looks like you’re talking, but I can’t hear you.”
I waved at her, then pointed at my headset and gave a non-committal shrug. Maybe she’d think I was having equipment problems.
“I’ve made our conversation private,” said Jenny. “I thought a discussion about honeymoons and moonlight between you and a female teammate might be worth checking into.”
“I’m not flirting with her,” I said.
“But she’s flirting with you?”
“She’s a fan. She’s a little infatuated.”
“So nothing’s going on between you?”
“No,” I said.
“No?” she said.
“Is the transmission cutting out?” I asked.
“I heard you,” she said. “I also heard your tone.”
“My tone?”
“The way you said no.”
“No?” I said. Then, “No. No.” I frowned. “I didn’t say it the way I always say it?”
“Never mind,” she said. “I believe you. I trust you.” There was a few seconds pause. “I miss you, Harry.”
“I miss you too, baby,” I said.
“I… I’m sorry I didn’t spend the night with you before you left,” she said.
“We can make up for missing nights when I get back,” I said.
“I … think that might be okay,” she said.
“You think?”
Another long pause. “Look, things aren’t as clear to me as they once were. I want you to know that I love you. But, there’s more to love than just the physical stuff. There’s a spiritual level I need to make things right with.”
“Oh Lord,” I said, the words escaping before I had time to catch them.
“Oh Lord?” she asked. “Does my struggle to put my soul right bore you?”
“No. It’s just… look, I’m crazy tired. I’m sure the reverend gave you a mission briefing. Our plane was shot down, then I got shot a couple of times, then we killed a bunch of folks, and I spend the whole night schlepping corpses. My brain isn’t firing on all cylinders.”
“I did get the report from the reverend this morning at dawn,” she said. “I wondered why you hadn’t called me.”
“Because, seriously, I’ve been busy ever since we got here, and I must have dozed through the briefing this morning about it even being an option to give you a call.”
“He said you were still out at dawn.”
“We agreed to return the bodies to the village so they’d leave us alone.”
“He said you were out with Sasha.”
“She’s got mad first aid skills.”
“What if I told you I could monitor you last night?”
“I… you couldn’t, could you?”
“No,” she said. “Are you relieved?”
“No,” I said. “I was just curious. Look. Ignore me. I’ve had no sleep. I’ve not even had coffee. Talking with me right now is like talking to a zombie.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “You do sound worn out.”
“I’m dead on my feet.”
“No sleep at all,” she said. “Up all night.”
“Right,” I said.
“With Sasha,” she said.
I swallowed hard.
“Sasha sounds chipper,” said Jenny. “Maybe I should talk with her.”
“That’s, uh…,” I said, gears stripping in my skull. “That… sure. She does like talking.”
“Excellent,” said Jenny. There was a slight click and I had the feeling she’d left my channel.
“Love you,” I said, in case she was still listening.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Physical Barriers
THE BLACK CAIMAN is the largest of all the caiman species, reaching up to twenty feet in length. It inhabits many river systems in South America. I know this zoological trivia because I was attacked by one about ten seconds after we landed on a long, wide bed of sandy gravel in the middle of a broad, slow moving river. There were maybe ten yards of shallow water separating us from the nearest shore and the second we touched down I jumped off my pterosaur and raced toward the trees on the far side, shouting, “Bathroom break!”
I was jumping along rocks that jutted up from the river when one of the rocks shifted beneath me and twisted and the next thing I knew twin pairs of toothy jaws clacked together inches before my face. I landed in the water wi
th a splash, still not completely up to speed on what, exactly, was attacking me.
Suddenly, Sasha was standing over me, striking a pose that resembled Superman on Action Comics #1 holding a car over his head, only she was lifting an impossibly large, potbellied alligator-looking thing that thrashed its meaty tail in every direction. With a grunt, she tossed it several yards downstream, where it landed in waist-deep water. The caiman turned its head toward us, giving us an evil glare, then whipped around and departed for deeper water, swimming away in rapid, serpentine wriggles.
“Be careful,” Reverend Rifle said dryly. “There are black caiman in these waters.”
“They can grow up to twenty feet long,” Bobbie chimed in helpfully.
Sasha offered me her hand. “Did you get hurt?”
“Naw,” I said, hesitating only a second before deciding that not taking her hand would look even weirder to the others than accepting her help. I mean, she had just saved my life. Yay.
“Was something wrong with your headset?” she asked as I reached my feet. “I got a little lonely not being able to talk to you.”
“You, uh, didn’t talk to anyone else?”
“No,” she said. “I just looked at the scenery. It’s so wonderful! Though…”
“There’s a lot of it,” I said, not hinting that I was relieved Jenny hadn’t initiated a conversation.
“Exactly,” she said. “I never thought I’d feel sentimental for the New York underground.”
“If you like the scenery you’ll have plenty of time to look at it up close,” said Reverend Rifle. “We need to wait for nightfall to make the approach.”
“Why?” I asked. “Technosaur builds flying pterosaurs powered by magic orbs. You don’t think she hasn’t whipped up some night vision goggles?”
“Point taken,” said the reverend. “Still, I’d rather go into this fight in the cool of the night than in the heat of the day.”
“I can see why you might feel this way,” said Elsa, eying the reverend’s wardrobe. “This isn’t exactly the best environment for a long leather duster and a cowboy hat. Didn’t you bring more comfortable clothing?”
