Her curiosity piqued, she pawed at the screen. Suddenly, the view zoomed out. Patches watched with amusement as the ship’s automatic targeting system showed flashing circles with crosshairs over the motionless figures, but none around Mags.
Another target lit up at the edge of the monitor, larger than the tiny humans. It approached the target cluster. As Kuso’s missile struck the hillside, Patches crouched, pinning her ears back. The explosion on the screen at nearly the same time caught her attention.
She suddenly understood the small screen represented something happening outside. She realized the tiny moving picture of Meteor Mags was not just a picture. Angrily, she mewed and pawed at the screen where the new target grew ever closer to her friend.
Her paw pads tapped the circle and crosshairs over Kuso’s transport, twice, in quick succession. The crosshairs stopped flashing, changing to a bright, solid red.
A new light flashed rapidly in the bottom right corner of the monitor. Like the struggling of an injured bird, it earned her rapt attention. Without thinking about it at all, Patches batted mercilessly at the new light.
The flashing light read FIRE.
★ ○•♥•○ ★
Meteor Mags ran for the Queen Anne. She held not a shred of hope she could reach it in time to stop another missile from obliterating Plutonian on the ground. But if you had asked her, and she had time to answer, Mags would have told you she did not believe in hope. Mags believed you just kept going as hard as you could until you died, and she had no plans to die today.
Kuso opened fire on her with the laser artillery mounted atop the transport like a pair of anti-aircraft guns. Mags leapt for the ridge she had commanded earlier, rolling when she hit the ground. The lasers smashed into the ridge as she rolled away, obliterating it chunk by chunk. Mags sprang to her feet and ran for cover behind a large stone.
Then she heard another missile, but not from the direction of the transport. Her sharp eyes picked up its smoky white plume in the air, approaching her position. Who else is on this rock, she wondered, wasting half a second looking for a shelter from both attackers. She bolted and ran.
The missile went over Mags’ head. It exploded at the wheels of the transport. The vehicle shot lasers into the sky as it toppled onto its side.
Mags had no time to feel any joy. A second explosion startled her. It blasted the transport back onto its wheels. The charges in the radio station had gone off. She saw no sign of Tesla and the DJ. Mags clenched her jaw. A stream of hate and sadness ran through her blood.
The door on the side of the transport opened. She ejected the clip from her Desert Eagle and slammed a new one into place. MFA soldiers poured from the transport. Mags chambered a round. She drew a second Desert Eagle.
Even through the thick padding of her leather gloves, the recoil from the pistols felt like smashing her palms into a brick wall. White noise filled her ears. The savage joy of a lioness swelled within her breast. Her bullets ricocheted inside the troop carrier, tearing the squadron to pieces.
Twenty-eight shots later, she dropped to her knees and ejected both clips. With practiced speed, she loaded fresh ones. She ran screaming towards the transport, surrounded now by fallen bodies.
The last living pair of the MFA soldiers emerged from the vehicle. They fired laser rifles at the smuggler. She leapt into the air like a cat, diving behind a rock for cover. She returned fire, but they had pinned her down behind the stone. She cursed.
Then a figure emerged from the smoke billowing behind her attackers. He pumped two shotgun blasts into them. Their bodies jerked forward, crumpling on the ground, shredded and still.
“Don’t fuck with the PBN,” he said. Sergeant’s bars decorated the uniform of one of the soldiers at his feet. There would be hell to pay for this, some day. To Mags, he raised his fist in salute. “Long live the resistance.”
★ ○•♥•○ ★
Aboard the Queen Anne, Meteor Mags took them to a safe distance and set a course for her club on the asteroid Vesta 4. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “Your entire archive, just—destroyed.”
“As long as Tesla is okay, I can’t complain. We’ve been through worse.” Tesla meowed in agreement. “Everything else though—it’s history.”
Suddenly, he smiled. “Ah, but not this!” He thrust his hand into the pocket on the leg of his cargo pants. He pulled out the compact disc in its cardboard sleeve. “My Psycho 78s disc.”
But his face fell again. From the bent sleeve, he pulled out half a disc. Its jagged edge dropped a few fragments of silvery plastic to the deck. “Goddamnit! This was the only original pressing still on the market!” He looked into the sleeve, saw the broken shards inside, and threw it down to the deck in disgust. He sat on the edge of a chair and slumped.
Mags chuckled but quickly stopped herself. “I’m sorry, dear. I know it’s not funny. But cheer up, will ya?” She stood up from her chair and marched back to her armory. “Look what I have here.” On the wall inside the armory’s open doorway, she set her hand on a locker door.
He stood up and walked to her side without enthusiasm, but his eyes lit up when she opened the locker door. Inside, a dozen pairs of colorful socks hung from magnetic clips on the walls. A magnetic mirror etched with five-pointed stars and a smiling cat face hung on the inside of the door. The mirror held a small photograph of her best friend Celina behind it, also smiling. And there, at the bottom of the locker, sat an open box of Psycho 78s albums. Their cardboard surfaces, silkscreen printed in green and black, looked glossy inside their plastic shrink wrap.
“Cheer up, mate! I produced the bloody thing. Take a couple! I got a whole case back at the club.” Mags beamed proudly.
Plutonian stepped in close to her, reached into the box, and took two of them. “Thank you, Mags. I fucking love this album! That track with you singing is just amazing.” He turned the discs over in his hands, reading the small print on the back.
Mags swiped one from his hand. “Here. Let me sign one for you.” She tore off the shrink wrap and tossed it into the box. Mags removed her right glove and placed her thumb in her mouth. Then she pressed her wet thumb into the smear of blood drying near her scalp.
Mags rolled her bloodied thumb across the bright green area on the cardboard sleeve, leaving her thumb print. She handed the album back to him. “Prints plus DNA! No one can call that a forgery, Captain Collectible.”
The DJ without a radio station smiled. He watched Patches and Tesla sitting near each other, quietly grooming themselves on Mags’ bed. Cats had such simple ways to deal with tragedy. “I have a gift for you, too.”
From another pocket, he took a charm identical to the one hanging on his necklace. He held it out to Mags. It was shaped like a tiny man, set into a silver blaze of fire. She held it in her glove, touching it with one finger. “It’s pretty,” she said. “Thank you.”
“It’s more than pretty. These two charms are Plex drives. Tesla and I have been digitizing and archiving everything on that asteroid for months, and backing it up to these. We were almost done, too. We’re only missing the last 1300 hours of dolphin song from the NASA experiments in 2023.”
Plex drives had used nanotechnology to revolutionize portable storage, but the cost to produce even a single drive remained astronomical. Each one could hold a googolplex of bytes worth of data. Mags admired hers.
“This should go in a safe place, then.” She reached into the cabinet’s top shelf to pull a small wooden box from the back. Opening it up, she said, “This belonged to my great-gramma.”
She pulled a silver chain from the box. Its shiny links rose like a cobra to follow her fingertips. She unfastened the clasp and slid the charm onto the chain. Mags leaned her head back, shook her curls, and fastened the necklace around her neck.
And that was how Meteor Mags found a DJ for her club.
Asteroid Underground Interview:
Meteor Mags
Mags, welcome back to the Underground.
&
nbsp; Thank you, dear. Did you bring the rum?
Right here.
Service is definitely getting better in this joint. Yum. What’s on your mind?
How do you manage a club when your… “commercial” activities keep you so busy?
We run the club the same way we did Gramma’s place back in France. And that is, we run it together. It’s not like I’m the boss. I just yell the loudest. But seriously, the whole place would fall apart without Celina.
Do you have any plans to release another Psycho 78s album?
Great question! We do. The boys have been bashing out one sonic monstrosity after another. They’re talking about recording a concert at the club.
You’ll be singing with them again?
Oh, I love to mutilate a couple standards with the boys from time to time, but it’s really their thing now. Besides, I couldn’t tour with them or anything. I got places to go, cargo to “liberate,” lizards to exterminate.
Would you sing a little bit of Something to Destroy for us?
A capella?
We have a piano in the studio. Over here.
Really? And a sledge hammer?
I um, uh—
Baseball bat?
No. I have this, though.
Ahahahaha! Where did you get that?
Doesn’t everyone have one of these?
I have one, but how do you? That is hilarious. Okay, bring it on over. You can back me up.
Do what now?
Come on. Here. Just stand beside me. That’s the bass end of the keyboard, okay?
Right.
Actually, it’s on your left.
Right. I mean, got it.
Now take that and bash it on the keys as hard as you can, like one two three four.
Like this?
Oh my god, what a hideous sound. Hahahahaha. Yes, that’s perfect, young man. Just like that. Okay, now on my count. One. Two. Three. Four. When I was a little girl, they fucked up my mind. Now I have come back to kill—ahahahaha, no don’t stop, you arse-bandit.
Sorry, I was just—
Part of playing a song is not standing there with your mouth open when the song starts, okay? Alright, once more. From the top. One. Two. Three. Four.
When I was a little girl
They fucked up my mind
Now I have come back to kill
Everyone I find
Left me in a cage to die
None could hear my screams
Now I have come back from hell
Show you what it means
Now I ain’t your little girl
Ain’t your fucking toy
Your life don’t mean shit to me
Something to destroy
Something give me something
To destroy!
Something give me something
To destroy!
Very good, dear. I think you got the hang of it! Now let’s have another round of that rum, shall we?
2
Old Enough
I wonder what is the appropriate first action when you come from a country at war and set foot on peaceful soil. Mine was to rush to the tobacco-kiosk and buy as many cigars and cigarettes as I could stuff into my pockets.
—George Orwell; Homage to Catalonia, 1938.
July 2028: A Warehouse on Earth.
The guard’s punch sent Meteor Mags stumbling backwards. She smashed into the stacks of boxes behind her. Her head struck something hard and snapped forward. As she brought her chin up, she howled, “Eeeyyyaaarrr!” Like an animal, she pulled herself up from the scattered boxes and lunged forward. She landed on the guard, sending them both to the floor.
The guard struck at her, but she was inside his arms. She grabbed a fistful of his hair. “Don’t!” She bashed his head into the floor. “Fucking!” Bash. “Hit me!” Bash.
Tarzi stood with his mouth open, frozen by her howl. “Damn,” he whispered. This was the first time Tarzi had encountered a guard when raiding this warehouse. Running into Meteor Mags was a surprise addition, too.
He watched her tail switch back and forth. A low growl emanated from deep inside her. “Mags?”
She relaxed her grip on the motionless guard. Straddling his body, she sat with her knees on the floor to either side of him. She flung her head back, shaking her bangs out of her eyes. White curls poured into place over her shoulders, not quite obscuring Tarzi’s view of the large anarchy symbol tattooed in black on her upper back. “How’s that for a birthday present?”
“Are you alright?”
She stood up, smoothed her skirt, and adjusted her thigh-high socks. “I’m fine. Now put that crowbar down, kid. You are scaring me to death.”
He tensed. “I must look ridiculous brandishing this thing.”
“No, no. It’s got a—caveman kind of cool to it. Just, you can put it down now. Thanks.” She had already stormed off to the crates bound up on pallets along the wall of the warehouse. The moon shone through a skylight, casting white triangles of light across the floor. “How old did you say you were today?”
“Fourteen.”
“Fourteen! Hahaha! Are you sure you’re old enough to be breaking into warehouses in the middle of the night all by yourself?”
“As Jack White once said,” Tarzi began. Then he sang a verse from Old Enough.
“Oh, a Raconteurs fan! Nice.”
Tarzi stopped, but the note continued. He looked down to see a calico cat running in circles around his feet, howling with his song.
“That’s Patches,” said Mags, glancing at the two of them over her shoulder. “She’s supposed to be guarding the van, but she probably heard the scuffle.” Her flashlight shone on the crates until she found what she was looking for. “Nice to meet you, kid. Patches says you’re okay. Here’s your other birthday present. Bring your crowbar.”
Tarzi joined her and set about prying open the wooden crate.
“There, get that nail loose—yeah, that’s it.” Mags grabbed the board and pulled it away.
“Happy sodding birthday indeed,” he whispered.
“I tell you what, Tarzi. Help me load a couple of these pallets into that van outside, and you can take as many cartons as you can carry. We’ll even give you a lift back to town.”
“Deal!” He gazed in wonder at the contents of the crate. It held carton after carton of imported cigarettes. These fine pieces of tobacco craftsmanship had no filters, and an oval profile instead of a circle. “These are pure Turkish tobacco, Mags. No blends, no fillers, nothing but—”
“Good old tabaccy. I know. These are hard enough to get in this hemisphere anymore. Imagine what I can get for them in the Belt.”
Mags meant the asteroid belt, which humans began mining and colonizing as soon as they established warehouses on Mars. So far, Earth supplied essential goods and services to the Belt, using Mars as a port and central distribution point. “Essential,” however, meant different things to different people in the System.
“There’s one rock I know where they haven’t seen a fag in three years. But,” she said, placing the plank back atop the open crate, “Meteor Mags to the rescue.”
“You’re a regular sentinel of the spaceways.” Tarzi stuffed a couple cartons into each of the pockets in his cargo pants. “Let me grab a pallet jack and help you.”
She pulled a cigarette from a carton and lit up. “What are you doing all by yourself on your birthday, anyway? Don’t you have a family?”
He had not expected to meet anyone when he snuck out that night. “My parents are both on speaking tours this weekend. But it’s cool. We got a thing planned for next week.”
As long as he kept straight-A grades in school, he explained, Tarzi’s parents assumed he must be staying out of trouble. He kept the house impeccably clean and only smoked at his secret hangout.
“Staying out of trouble seems like a great idea. Let me get the van open.” Her boots clacked across the wood floor. She swished her tail and disappeared around the corner.
H
e followed her out with the first crate on the pallet jack. Rolling it up the ramp, he froze. “Uh oh.” He pushed as hard as he could, holding his own against the crate.
“What a noob! Just back it down, little man. I’ll get it.” She puffed as Tarzi eased the crate back down the ramp. Then she backed it up two meters ran it up the ramp, into the van, and down onto the floor. “Like that! Now we can get three more in. Let’s see if there’s another jack.”
Three crates later, they were all set. Mags took the rear doors of the van in her gloved hands. Her ears picked up a distant warning.
Tarzi, walking out of the warehouse, stuffed another couple cartons into his shirt. “Can’t ever have too many.” Then he heard it, too: sirens.
She slammed the doors shut. “Time to go!” Patches jumped in, and Tarzi ran to the van.
Pulling himself up into the seat, he said, “I know the back way out of here! It’s a dirt road, past that main office building up there.” The door slammed shut.
“Yeah,” said Mags. “And one way it ends up is at the dam.” She gunned the engine, launching the van in a cloud of dust. “Which, coincidentally, is where Patches discovered the scent of these Turkish fag ends you’ve been dumping there for, oh, I’d say a couple of months.”
“What?”
She swerved around the corner of the office building, throwing them to one side in their seats. “We just stopped to enjoy the view from the cliffs up there, but you left us a trail to the tobacco treasure. It wasn’t too hard to track you back to this warehouse.”
Meteor Mags: Omnibus Edition Page 3
