“Ready? I'm waiting for you my dear, you're wasting incomprehensible amounts of time with your dreary gossip. Get the lead out, let's go!” Without so much as waiting, Oswald stormed out the door of his mansion and briskly began his trek toward the city gate. I walked to the doorway and paused for a moment; Minette arrived at my side with tears in her eyes and a shout on her lips.
“Goodbye Doctor! Take care of Ihlia! And come back alive, ok?!” She waved her hand frantically in an attempt to compensate for her amusingly stunted height. Just as I prepared to take my leave, I felt a faint tug against the back of my black leather trench coat and her quiet words filled me with that odd warm feeling once again, “Ihlia… take care of each other okay? You two are all I have. Come back safe.”
“I will, Minette. I just hope the place isn't burned down when we get back!” I laughed under my breath and trotted after the old codger while trying to ignore the frantic list Minette conjured, without pause enough to even breathe, entailing the reasons she would excel at her duty and not burn down the town.
Back at Junction City's main gate, Crelyos leaned against the ladder leading up to Bojack's nest with an indignant scowl plastered across his face. By the time we arrived at the gate, the hustle and bustle of the late morning market exchange was well underway. Allen's residence remained understandably dark as his wife and daughter grieved the loss of their male provider. As always, the community proved its bond, for Junction City's townsmen and women periodically dipped into the abode to share the pain of their fellow citizens and assist them whenever necessary. The ties stronger than blood were enough to shatter the walls of the rockiest heart. Except Crelyos', he did not seem impressed at all.
“I thought you were goin' for an augment touch up, not an organ transplant. Do you have any idea how long I've— Oh you have to be freakin' kiddin' me. Why does Doctor Fancypants look like he's ready to come with us and completely ruin my already bad day?” Crelyos gestured to the doctor garbed in his flowing white lab coat, his bald head gleaming in the dim afternoon overcast, and his rusty cart full of supplies squeaking behind him with his every step.
“My name is Doctor Oswald. Oswald, not Fancypants. And of course I'm going with you. You didn't think I would leave our town's number one mercenary in your vastly incapable, drunken hands did you?” Oswald waltzed right through Crelyos' growing cloud of rage and began snapping his fingers at the two door guards as though they should respond and open the gate without so much as a word.
“That bald son of a bitch… Who the hell does he think he is?” Crelyos' clenched fists quivered in the wake of his fury. I shook my head and nonchalantly followed after the old man while offering Crelyos a short quip.
“He's the guy that pays us.” The words forced a sigh from Crelyos and cooled his boiling wrath to a few simmering grumbles. The few words I caught mentioned the fact that the last time the world even used currency was over ten years ago; he continued grumbling even as he followed us into the blood stained filth of the wastes.
“Bojack, I trust you'll support Minette in my absence. Did you procure the item I requested? What is its location?” Doctor Oswald stopped just outside the gate. Turning, and with one hand cupped against his mouth, the good doctor yelled up to the muscularly rotund sentinel at the top of Junction City's sniper roost. With his lion-like mane wildly whipping about his face from the frigid gusts at the top of the perch, Bojack waved his mighty arm in simultaneous greeting, affirmation, and farewell.
“I will, boss! You three take care of yourselves out there! And yeah, the boys are bringing it around now!” As if on cue, the radical roar of an engine tore through the air. From the side of the rounded fortification, a four-person dune buggy with a hitched trailer churned the smoky dust from the ground as it drifted across the wastes. The sound of the jostling trailer blended together with the hoots and hollers of the juvenile driver and his even more juvenile co-driver.
As the dune buggy slid to a halt a few feet in front of us, I gave it a quick inspection. Four giant tires framed a smaller carriage to offer stability and maneuverability. In the wastes, sinkholes and loose sand pits were common threats to the unsuspecting traveler, but the design of the dune buggy offered safety from otherwise grim traps of what remained of nature's wrath. The engine, exposed at the back of the machine for likely no other reason than not wasting precious steel unnecessarily, vibrated and hummed as it consumed the quantity of sludge offered up to it in exchange for its tireless work.
A cage of padded rails framed the four close knit seats. The rails provided hand-holds and lean-posts when a passenger needed to stand at dangerous speeds, and the trying times provided a variety of reasons to stand in a moving vehicle, the first and foremost of which involved returning automatic weapon fire to pursuing bandits. During my quick inspection, in which everything appeared operational, Doctor Oswald stared with brewing contempt at Bojack for allowing a couple of teenagers the pleasure of reckless driving.
“What? Come on Doc, they insisted. Besides, what harm could they cause?” As Bojack defensively pleaded his case, the two boys leapt from the driver and passenger seat with a clasping high-five and a few more whoops before scurrying off to their duties.
“We will discuss this in adequate detail upon my return, Bojack.” The Doctor began offloading his equipment, carefully organizing it in the various compartments and shelves that littered the attached trailer's interior.
“What the hell are you bringin' anyway, Fancypants? This isn't some vacation, you know.” With his hands tucked away in his pockets, Crelyos peered over Oswald's shoulder to watch him organize his vast array of what Crelyos undoubtedly considered useless garbage.
“Ah, you wish to know my boy? So you do have a mind of observation and inquiry! Understandably so, even a Neanderthal would be curious as to the nature of such fascinating equipment!” The doctor began gesturing to each compartment, and with each pause over a particular tool or gadget he issued an intricate speech as though he prepared a thesis on his entire array of luggage several weeks prior.
His gear consisted of basics such as food, water, medical essentials, tanks of sludge to keep the dune buggy running, and ammunition. Ammunition that, in particular, took the form of ample numbers of his custom high caliber rifle rounds I used in my father's modified, bolt-action rifle. Oswald spent especially winded speeches explaining every nuance of his holocom systems and portable nanite surgery station, both of which he neatly tucked away in the trailer.
While having his holocom and nanite surgery kit would no doubt prove invaluable, his true motive likely involved slicing my head open for observation and postulation at a whim. Lastly, Oswald packed the necessary equipment to create fire and build shelter. In all honesty, it was quite an admirable spread considering the limited time I afforded him for preparation.
“Ugh, it's way past lunch time after listenin' to all that. So sorry I asked,” Crelyos droned away as he heaved a satchel, his only luggage, into the trailer. Without skipping a beat, the former soldier unzipped the top and reached within to retrieve none other than a bottle of sludge.
“Hell yeah, lunch time indeed!” Using his right hand, Crelyos gripped and plucked off the cap to a fresh bottle of sludge before inhaling it with the same velocity as the bottle he and I shared a few hours prior.
“I hate to ask, Crelyos,” I said as I placed a hand against my forehead to feign disappointment, “but that entire bag isn't filled with sludge, is it?” My hand slid down to cover my entire face, but I left a space between my index and middle finger in the vicinity of my eye just so I could see his expression when he responded.
“Of course it is. Only the essentials here, Ihlia.” The robust laughter that shook his chest following his statement coaxed a sigh from my bosom.
“Well, on the bright side, in the event of unforeseeable circumstances, we have a backup fuel supply. Were I a betting man, and I'd bet you
I'm not, I'd wager the entire potency of fuel in those bottles rivals that of at least half a tank of pure fuel-sludge,” Oswald said and pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.
As Crelyos continued laughing and drinking and the doctor rattled off the statistics behind our simultaneous alcohol indulgence and fuel security, I hopped into the rear seat of the dune buggy and swung my rifle around to my anterior, clutching it in a firm hug against my chest.
If left unchecked, those colorful characters could ramble on and cut up for hours. Finally seated for longer than a few moments, and without my mind riddled with overbearing thoughts, I realized it had been two days since I last slept. The heaviness of my eyelids soon bested me, and I drifted off into peaceful slumber to the sound of the obnoxious soldier and babbling doctor.
File 08: Entering Raze Haven
The breeze planting a near-polar kiss upon my cheeks stirred me from my serene repose. I groaned softly and raised my body into an upright position. Apparently during the course of my rest I had flopped over into the rear seats in a fetal position with an iron clasp on my rifle. I smiled when I noticed the pristine white lab coat draped over my waist like a blanket. The smile quickly faded when I scanned the area to gain my bearings. The foreign environment stiffened my shoulders with anxious anticipation. The dune buggy had stopped in, what seemed to be, the middle of nowhere.
Had we been caught by bandits? Hyped? One of my hands instinctively encroached on the trigger guard of my rifle, and I buzzed my hearing augment to life. At peak working condition, the implant allowed me to detect even faint whispers from a distance of nearly a quarter of a mile, and if targets remained in my proximity, it allowed me to discern their general emotional state from their rate of their heartbeats with relative ease. As my sensitive ears tingled from a mere breeze whistling by, I detected the quiet voices of Oswald and Crelyos.
Gathering my belongings and slinging the doctor's lab coat over my left shoulder, I trudged up the hill in the direction I heard their conversation. As I rounded the hilltop, I noticed both of them lying flat on their abdomens looking off into the distance; Crelyos possessed a pair of binoculars with more attachments and moving parts than an antique Swiss Army Knife. I dug my elbows into the crusted sand and deactivated my audial enhancement. While that soft vibration finished returning a portion of my cortical folds to a more passive state, another nanite whirred to life as I activated my sight augment which easily surpassed the technological capabilities of goggles and binoculars, even those created by Oswald.
“So, what are we looking at boys?” I whispered and zoomed my vision in on the area of their attention; I was surprised to find the semblance of a city a few miles ahead. The architecture looked vastly different than Junction City's, and I found myself marveling at the amount of effort which must have been needed to realize such an exotic design.
The foundation of the city consisted of several enormous cement pillars shoved into the earth. The ground into which the pillars sank churned and shifted notably; unlike the stiff, cracked earth stretching for miles throughout the wastes, the sand directly below the city, particularly where the pillars stood, was soft. In fact, it was almost liquid.
With the support of those massive cement pillars, the entire city sat atop a deadly quicksand trap. The most peculiar thing plaguing me about the pillars, however, was their elaborate design. The manpower and machination required to ensure they stood solid within that sea of shifting sand must have been vast, but the risk to one's life to venture out and engrave superficial art up and down the entire length of each stone slab made the endeavor seem utterly ridiculous. After rising several hundred feet, the pillars connected to the base of what appeared to be the mighty city; it looked like a giant metal clam.
Two plates rested atop one another connected by more, albeit far shorter, elaborately designed stone pillars decorated with pretentious artistic carvings. The plates themselves possessed lips of metal designed to shield the middle section of the city from the freezing winds and rain. The top plate's lip curved downward while the lower plate's edge folded toward the sky. The remaining thin slit in the middle offered easy observation of the world outside the city, and I distinctly made out several guards with binoculars patrolling the perimeter.
The guards, as near as I could tell, were raggedly dressed cutthroats geared to the teeth with various weaponry both melee and ranged. Their presence certainly explained the cautiously prone position of my two comrades. Each man and woman I saw marching back and forth bore a striking mark just underneath their right eye. It looked like an old fashioned form of ink tattooing. The shape the mark took was quite distinct: a flame.
“How long was I out for?” I whispered. Even I disregarded my previous question, but I had apparently slept through the transition that normally occurred between morning and afternoon. It was already well into the evening. I wondered if I slept the entire day away.
“Too long, and you snore so damn loud,” Crelyos hissed back while mentally taking note of the number of patrols. It looked like he was already attempting to discern a weakness in their pattern. Not surprising.
“Approximately ten hours and thirty-three minutes, my dear,” Oswald waited for Crelyos' immature jab to offer a real answer, all the while shaking his head at the former soldier's juvenile behavior.
“Approximately?” The only manner in which Oswald might have further specified was to inform me of the number of seconds, milliseconds, and nanoseconds of my repose. I chuckled softly before returning my attention to Crelyos, “so we're in Texas then?” With the enhanced speed of the dune buggies, a straight shot across the wastes from old Florida to Texas should have taken no more than nine hours. Ten and a half would have put us well into the heart of the former state.
“Well, my dear, funny you should mention… We aren't exactly in Texas at the moment,” Oswald fumbled with his words as he attempted to explain the situation. For a man usually so precise, his stuttering succeeded in eliciting a surprised blink from me.
“What Senior Fancypants is tryin' to say is that he drives really slow and got lost because he wouldn't listen to me. I eventually got us back on track, but… we're still only just now reachin' the Texan border,” Crelyos muttered with a shrug.
“Oh, of all the nerve. You were the one who kept attempting to force me to stop at every shady microbial speck of a town to restock your sludge supply, which I'll have you know you completely consumed within the first hour of a journey you knew would take ten! Anytime you gave me directions, my alcoholic friend, it was to another pub or tavern in the middle of nowhere! And furthermore!” Oswald's voice spiked sharply as the heat of his conversation with Crelyos reached peak aggravation. Crelyos lifted his hand and clamped it across Oswald's mouth.
“Shh, quiet Fancypants. You ever stop to think that maybe one of those thugs has a hearin' implant like our girly here?” He tipped his head in my direction before slowly removing his grip on Oswald's jaw; while Oswald gagged and caught his breath, Crelyos continued, “Regardless, we've hit the jackpot. Although it's strange…” He trailed off in thought.
“What is it, Crelyos? You came through this way on your way to Junction City, right? What's the deal?” I kept my voice low and looked over at Crelyos who scratched the stubble that gave his chin a sandpaper texture and sound.
“This is Loftsborough. At least that's what the locals call it. They built it to protect themselves from the hyped and bandits. Considerin' it's on quicksand… it's fairly difficult to assault. You see that bridge there?” Crelyos lifted a hand and gestured to a stone platform on ground level that extended from the firm sand, like that on which we lay prone, out into the sea of quicksand. The makeshift bridge ended in a bulbous metal platform situated between two of the stone columns, and a series of electrical wires snaked up the columns like vines.
“If you want into Loftsborough, you cross that bridge and basically ring the bell
. If they like you, they press a button and an elevator comes down to pick you up. If they don't give two shits about you, they send you back on your way. If they hate your stinkin' guts, they push another button and that platform goes bye-bye, and you learn what it feels like to drown in sand,” Crelyos explained.
“So… what's so strange about that? Seems fairly efficient,” I quirked a brow. Crelyos shook his head and responded.
“What's strange are those brigands. First of all, I know the surgeon of Loftsborough, he's an old friend of mine, and he would never allow the mayor to hire help like that. That aside, those flame tattoos are the mark of Raze. Last I checked, his territory was deep in the heartland of old Texas. He shouldn't even have influence this far out,” Crelyos gestured toward the cutthroats patrolling the city.
“Mayor? I thought a nanite surgeon was in charge of a city?” I nodded to my only real basis for comparison, Oswald.
“Normally, yes. But not everyone likes to lead. The surgeon of this city, Eugene, appointed a mayor to take care of that stuff. I forget the mayor's name, though. Anyway, the problem is all those thugs,” Crelyos mused.
“So Raze took Loftsborough?” I asked.
“Seems like it,” Crelyos responded.
“How?” I was respectfully amazed. As a former Bald Eagle, I had been part of several city sieges and invasions with small numbers, but this job was truly masterful. Even in his prime, Bradich would have likely refused a mission as dangerous and costly as assaulting a town like Loftsborough.
NANO Archive 01: The City of Fire Page 9
