9 Tales From Elsewhere 7

by 9 Tales From Elsewhere

  In order to provide a formal show of strength to both the workers’ union and to BerkSys Transit, two Guarders had been assigned to be present as well. Although there had been no threat of violence to prompt such a request for Guarders by the Judiciary Board, it was a decision that was quickly turning out to be a good one.

  Seconds after Gypsy had confirmed Menolley’s death, he began to identify potential targets and his blasters started booming. The shock of the explosion and his subsequent minor injuries vanished and Buzzer became all business. Gypsy was targeting men who were not in BerkSys Transit Security uniforms but who were firing into the crowd with a myriad of weapons. His accurate fire was knocking them down in quick succession.

  Another bomb went off somewhere close by and shrapnel ripped into Gypsy’s chest and lower abdomen. Gypsy’s scream was short and angry, his light body-armor absorbing most of the impact. He sprang up firing and growled at Buzzer to take cover. Buzzer noticed the pain of a new injury and blood leaking from a tear in his left pants leg but he ignored it and allowed his Guarder training to take over. Bolts flew from his blasters, eliminating target after target. One of these unfortunate men was hit by blasts from both Guarders’ weapons simultaneously, the massive onslaught of energy ripping his body apart in a bloody spray of bones and organs.

  The two Guarders were on the move, shoving corporate executives who were still confused by the sudden turn of events to the ground and barking at them to remain there until this was over.

  “Damn syndicate devils,” Gypsy rasped as he and Buzzer took cover momentarily behind a large chunk of ruined stage. “They have the most to gain by a strike and the most to lose by a successful resolution to the salary issues that the workers are fighting over.”

  “I don’t see any professionals out there, Gypsy,” Buzzer said as a hail of debris rained down on them from another explosion. “Looks just like workers gone crazy to me.”

  “True, Frank,” Gypsy said and fired three quick blasts around his corner of the destroyed piece of stage. “But, believe me, the syndicate is responsible for this. They are financing this operation, supplying the weapons and perhaps even a little training. This wasn’t something that just sprang up. That bomb was placed accurately and the guys firing on all of these people know a little bit about what they are doing. This was definitely a set-up to assassinate Menolley by the syndicates.”

  “So, then, what’s our plan?” Buzzer asked and Gypsy just smiled.

  “Watch and learn, Buzzer.” With that, Gypsy was up and running, firing blast after blast and screaming in rage the entire way.

  Buzzer followed close behind, his weapons finding many targets and eliminating them as well. Men screamed, blood flew and he could see fear on the faces of those he was slaughtering. Too bad, he thought, they had made a conscious decision to follow their current course of action. He was only paying them back in kind.

  “Dive!” Gypsy screamed and Buzzer immediately tucked and rolled into a small depression on his left.

  The blast was deafening and Buzzer could see the remains of several men sail past his position. In many areas of the square, blood was pooling and steaming in the cool Berking afternoon. Buzzer was up again within seconds and training his weapons on more targets. He couldn’t see Gypsy but he had blaster fire to contend with at the moment.

  The BerkSys Security personnel were holding their own but were overwhelmingly outgunned and outnumbered by their merciless enemies. Throngs of people still shouted in fear and death and ran haphazardly throughout the new war-zone. Buzzer searched for Gypsy while he was busy picking off targets and decided to backtrack a little when he didn’t see the larger man anywhere near.

  He found his partner lying facedown and still about twenty-five meters away and quickly worked his way over to him, fearing the worst. There was a lot of blood underneath Gypsy, leaking out of the man in a stream, and Buzzer carefully turned him over. Gypsy was still alive and barely conscious, his abdomen tore open right through the thin armor that both Guarders were wearing.

  “Gypsy!” Buzzer hissed and saw recognition in the man’s eyes.

  “Frank,” he rasped and tried to suck in a breath. Most of Gypsy’s bowels were lying on the concrete of the square outside of his body. Buzzer could see that he didn’t have much time left.

  “I need to get you to help, Gypsy,” Buzzer said and tried to position his body to better lift his fallen partner from the ground.

  “No!” Gypsy growled and lunged for Buzzer, grabbing his right arm in a vice-like grip, the strength that Gypsy was able to muster in his weakened state amazed the younger Guarder. “Leave me, I’m done, Frank.”

  “No way, Gypsy, not today,” Buzzer said and snapped off two quick shots with the blaster in his left hand at an approaching target. More explosions ripped through the afternoon, followed by the screams of the injured and dying. It seemed that the BerkSys Security men were not going to win this one after all. “I’ll get you out of here.”

  “No, Frank,” Gypsy said, his voice gentler this time. The wounded Guarder let go of Buzzer’s arm, fell once again on to his back and began to dig inside his torn and blood soaked black shirt for something. Buzzer got off two more well-placed shots over the top of the small crater in the concrete Gypsy had chosen to dive into. His partner’s dive had not been fast enough, apparently.

  “Take this, Frank,” Buzzer heard and felt something small and cold being thrust into his right hand. Buzzer looked down and saw a silver cross on a chain, something that he had known Gypsy wore but never actually got a good look at. The cross was smooth and cleanly cut, it was large and reflected the sunlight briefly into Buzzer’s eyes.

  “Keep on to that, Gypsy,” Buzzer said and quickly scanned the area for more approaching targets. “You’re still going to need it once I get you out of here.”

  “Frank,” Gypsy said and paused. “You and I both know that I’m not getting out of here. Alive, anyway.”

  “Don’t worry, Gypsy...”

  “No, Frank, listen,” Gypsy said and blood trickled out of his mouth to slide down his chin and neck. “Listen to me. Take this cross, wear it over your shirt. Do this for me. I know what I’m talking about.”

  “But, Gypsy...”

  “Just do it, Frank!” Gypsy screamed at him as Buzzer whirled around and dropped a man who was less than fifteen meters away. Buzzer grabbed a few marble grenades from a small pocket within his uniform and threw them in different directions before ducking back down and covering Gypsy as best he could. The explosions were loud and close and more debris rained down on the two Guarders. When Buzzer snuck a look up out of the little hole that he and Gypsy were lying in, there wasn’t anyone else around for meters who was still breathing. Buzzer looked down at Gypsy and slowly slipped the cross and chain over his head while his partner watched. “I’ll get you out of here.”

  Gypsy feebly pulled Buzzer’s head down close to his blood covered mouth and whispered to him. “Don’t worry about that right now, Buzzer, you need to get yourself out. But, then, you need to do me one favor. All I ask is that you please come back for my body. Don’t leave me on Berking, Frank. Take me back to Aegis afterwards.”

  “I wasn’t planning on doing it any other way, Gypsy,” Buzzer said and could feel the strength quickly leaving his partner’s grip. Growling with the effort of lifting the larger Guarder on to his left shoulder, Buzzer’s rage simmered inside and he immediately targeted several men approaching his position with weapons about thirty meters away. He could only use one blaster now, while his left hand held on to Gypsy, but one weapon was all he needed at the present moment. He could feel his senses heighten, his vision became crystal clear. All irrelevant sound escaped his ears and he focused on just two things--killing those responsible for murdering his partner and escaping this horrible planet so that he may return Gypsy’s body to its rightful place...on Aegis.

  Blaster fire tore from his weapon and Buzzer’s screams of rage echoed throughout the square. He co
uldn’t feel the weight of Gypsy’s body as massive amounts of adrenaline flooded his system. Buzzer’s heart was hammering in his chest, his breath came in quick gasps but his legs were moving, propelling the two Guarders to the cover of a few buildings across the square.

  He could see a group of almost thirty men with weapons working their way toward his ultimate destination in an effort to head him off but his well-placed shots were quickly decreasing this number. A shot nearby tripped Buzzer up and he stumbled down hard to the ground, Gypsy’s body sliding a few feet further. He shouted in rage and horror as he saw most of Gypsy’s innards spill out on to the debris strewn ground. Blaster bolts ricocheted off the walls of the buildings around him, gouging out huge chunks of building material and filling the entire area with a thick layer of dust. Buzzer kept on placing shots from his currently cover-less position and tried to gather Gypsy’s organs up enough to shove them back inside his partner and get the body on his shoulder once again.

  “I’m not leaving you, Gypsy,” Buzzer growled at the now dead Guarder. “Not leaving you here in this sick and twisted place.”

  Buzzer groaned as he noticed several new wounds on his own body, blood poured freely from one of them in his left shoulder. Gypsy’s body was lifted slowly back on to the newly injured shoulder as he continued to fire at the men surrounding his position with his right hand.

  Another well-placed shot slammed into the armor covering the left side of his chest and Buzzer went sprawling once again to the ground. The dust was thicker now as more fire tore into the surrounding buildings, the cover he had so eagerly sought just seconds ago.

  His blaster was nowhere to be found now and he once again unholstered the smaller back-up weapon. He gathered up Gypsy’s body and tried one more time to shove the man’s organs inside his ravaged abdomen as he noticed that the firing had stopped, at least in his immediate area.

  Buzzer stood again, the larger body of Gypsy draped over his left shoulder, a few pieces of his partner’s shattered intestine lying against his left arm. He tried to breathe and choked on the dust. He could see many men, at least a dozen or more, surrounding him, their blasters leveled at his head and chest. Buzzer’s small blaster remained pointed at the chest of the man who stepped forward, seemingly the leader of this rag-tag group of well-armed BerkSys Transit workers. Their eyes met and Buzzer’s finger tightened ever so softly on the trigger.

  Although a battle still raged across the square all was silent now for Buzzer, all but his own breathing and the jackhammer beating of his heart in his chest. His eyes remained locked on the man facing him, taking in the black hair, curly and several inches long. He studied the face of this man, the long nose, the thick beard, the dark eyes. There was fear in those eyes, something that Buzzer knew was not reflected in his. He had only hatred at this very moment, facing his own death so early in his career as a Guarder. Hatred that he wouldn’t be able to take down more of these enemies before they took him out.

  The man’s gaze wavered from Buzzer’s eyes then and took in the still form of Gypsy riding his left shoulder. The blasters aimed at him from the other men in the group were being held by shaky hands. Gypsy had been right, these weren’t soldiers. They were just men, men who were fighting a fight that they thought was right. Men who were following the orders of someone else, someone who most likely was not present at this skirmish and who probably had an alternate agenda but, for some reason, they were willing to follow this unknown player to their deaths if it came to that. There were looks of awe on the faces of these men, looks of recognition of exactly who or what was standing before them. Guarders were not seen every day, especially in the square outside the corporate headquarters of BerkSys Transit. Buzzer could see the legends and mystique of the Guarder Squadron coming to life behind those eyes. He could see the look of doubt and the prospect of possible Guarder retaliation, of Guarder vengeance, cross the man’s face. The man gulped once and then his eyes opened wide with astonishment. Buzzer had seen the man’s eyes wander down toward his chest and the large silver cross that hung there.

  Gypsy’s cross...

  The man stumbled backward several paces and looked into Buzzer’s eyes once again, this time the look there was one of terror. At a slight signal from this man, all of the blasters formerly pointed at him had been immediately lowered. All of the men but the one who had faced him suddenly turned their heads down to the ground and made a sign of the cross over their chests with the hands that weren’t holding weapons.

  Buzzer had no idea what was going on but he suddenly felt the threat in his current situation dissipate. Just like that, it was gone. He wasn’t going to die today. Not in this stinking little square. Not on this ugly little planet. He would be able to return Gypsy home...home to Aegis and the Guarder Squadron. He had always heard that the Berking people were deeply religious and very superstitious but he didn’t know the reasons behind this. Some of their old beliefs seemed to be coming into play here, however. The change in the man in front of him had been amazing.

  “Our fight is not with you, Guarder,” the man who still faced him said. “It is with those who run the cargo lanes and who do not pay us what we are worth.”

  “Your fight may be one that you believe in but this was an occasion to solve it peacefully,” Buzzer said. “You just took many steps towards making sure that it never happens that way now.”

  “Maybe from where you stand, sir, it looks that way,” the man said solemnly. “And from where you stand this is what we see; a mystery dressed in black and bearing a silver cross, the mark of the holy one. An avenger who is injured, whose very being is torn and bloodied, yet a man who still defends the body of a fallen comrade more heavily than we were defending our very livelihoods. This speaks volumes to us and our traditions that you may not understand, sir. But these are signs much too strong for us to ignore. Because of this, and the omens that you have brought upon us here today, you have earned a pass.”

  “Because of how I look and this cross on my chest?” Buzzer asked, still not willing to trust that these men wouldn’t cut him down after a step or two.

  “Because of that and what you represent here,” the man said and holstered his weapon. He spread his now empty hands wide and motioned for the safety and cover of the buildings and thoroughfares behind him. “Please, let us do this service. Take your comrade and leave this place. Do not force us to kill you by firing on us. Lower your weapon and take this gift.”

  With that, the man nodded once and the men surrounding him turned their backs to Buzzer and began marching back toward where the battle, although lessening, was still being fought. Buzzer could see the BerkSys worker speak into a tiny communication device and suddenly all was quiet in the square beyond.

  Buzzer stood motionless and watched the retreating figures, his blaster still pointed at the back of the only man who had spoken to him. This man turned around briefly then and faced him once again. “Go in peace, sir. Please accept this gift.”

  Buzzer nodded only once, almost imperceptibly, but the man accepted this and returned to his march back across the square. After several more moments spent in silence, Buzzer adjusted his grip on Gypsy and left the former battleground.

  Buzzer blinked away the lone tear in his left eye that he was trying to convince himself was just an errant snowflake. He looked down at the silver cross once again, the cross that had mysteriously sent some terrifying message to the men who could have killed him that day. He had held on to it, even after returning Gypsy to Aegis for burial in this place. He had wanted to hold on to the one thing that Gypsy had given to him before dying on his shoulder in that square outside of BerkSys Transit.

  Now it was time to give it back.

  He knelt down in front of the cold stone marking Gypsy’s grave and hung the silver chain over the top end of the marble cross. The silver chain made a ‘V’ shape just below where Gypsy’s name was etched into the marker, the silver cross swaying in the wind just below that. Buzzer stood up then and
noticed that Mestizo had moved closer. Mestizo bent down and touched the silver cross, touched the marble cross and then took a silent step back.

  Buzzer glanced once toward his friend and fellow Guarder before turning back to look at both of the crosses now marking Gypsy’s final resting place. “That’s where it belongs.” Buzzer said and Mestizo nodded.

  “I’m sure he’s glad to have it back, Frank.”

  Buzzer didn’t have an answer for that but he felt much better now that he had returned Gypsy’s gift. He took a single deep breath, bent down to touch the marble cross marking the grave one more time and turned toward the far-off entrance of the cemetery. “Let’s get back, Tony,” Buzzer said. “We have a meeting to attend.”

  THE END.

  THE BIG COVERUP by D. A. D'Amico

  Mahmut Singh jammed a yellow pencil into the cherry-colored swatch with a showy flourish. The pencil shattered, spraying splinters everywhere. The fabric never even rippled.

  Mindy squeaked. She hopped back as Angela Pratt dodged, pulling her recording rig out of the way as the smaller girl stumbled.

  "Really?" Angela brushed a clump of brown hair from her eyes and reset the rig. If Mindy messed this up, she'd have the girl back recording makeup blogs. "The man promises mayhem and explosions, but you get skittish when he jabs his hanky with a number two pencil?"