by Sean Kennedy
The first droids were struck by the bikes, and their steel bodies bounced, twirling as she let her hatred flow out to her stainless children. Hatred of the Desert War that birthed her, hatred of the return, hatred of the lies and loss of humanity; a cannibal’s hatred.
The Vagos screamed as the clawed hands of the spike droids slashed them. The few shattered Stickman, crushed and broken by the oncoming bikes, lost their marionette strings as she detached, letting her subconscious control become stronger as it flowed to the remaining mirrored monsters.
Each Stickman’s step was a bound, every movement a killing blow with the speed and godless power of the machine. Through them, her claws tore through flesh and fuel, spraying all as the slender weapons attacked
On his Herkimer and surfing on chemicals, Duke saw the crash start as the first two bikes went down, and thought the others would pave a path through any problems before he got there. Sudden gunfire from the edges of the pack told him different just before his bike was struck by another Vago’s suicide dodge and he cursed the telltale wobble of an inevitable fall.
The Duke went down as the remaining spike droids descended into the fray. In the slow-motion moments of his fall, Duke saw the Road Witch hunched over the firelit corpses as her dreams attacked with telepresence claws.
Her Stickmen swung their fingers, shredding those still able to defend themselves. As their talon-like feet found purchase, each bipedal nightmare wordlessly thrashed in a sparkling blur. The sound of engines and twisting metal gave way to cries of the injured and dying as Vagos and bikes spilled their blood.
When his bike stopped, Duke was still conscious but pinned. As the alcohol and copper smell of fuel and blood filled his senses, he knew he was dead unless he could get his mangled leg out from beneath the Herkimer
He saw the metal crowd surrounding the tangled wreckage of his gang, now little more than a pile of metal and meat. The Stickmen’s silence only amplified the screaming of the bikers last moments on Earth.
There was a spark, and Duke heard the heavy gasp of alcohol combustion. A shrill screaming rushed in around him. Blue flames, traveling on the fumes between bodies, raced to the edges of the pyre. Screams of pinned Vagos burning alive filled the night. The flames found the unpunctured tanks in the tumbled wreck, and they detonated like road bombs, sending burning bikes and bodies flying.
A howl cut the air, louder than the screams of the dying and louder than the fuel fire’s roar. It crossed spectrum boundaries, broadbanding out across the abandoned roads. It was a vengeful gnashing of teeth, a sound from the death of her child came from the Road Witch as she took her first shambling step away from the fire.
Tonight the highway was kind. Tonight she found transports running the fringe, and like fresh fish in the stream they were easy to pick from the roadside. Their vehicles were unable to protect them from her electronic soul. The transport drivers didn’t disconnect in time, and her feedback burnt their brains to the inside of their skulls.
She had made the few survivors sing as she pressed bladed fingers into their eyes. They had learned the truth; the wisdom of passage, and the concrete indifference of the highway. They were born to die, to sit by this fire as poseable pleasures. They were lucky.
She felt the few surviving bikers transmitting their panicked cries through the spectrum as they retreated. They would tell of her, and of how she had slain all them before they could even attack. They might even find their overwatch and pieces of the weapon he’d fired at her. A weapon they’d all fired at her! Their transmissions would blend into the data stream transmitted across the sky. Daemons of light riding frequencies, bringing the messages to the living.
How dare they come at her out here?
Didn't they know who she was?
One of them did.
One called her name.
That was something.
The fire warmed her synthetic flesh, and swaying rat-tailed hair tickled her thighs as she looked to the fireside council to see if anyone disapproved. The far one did. She’d carved out his eyes, but she could tell that somewhere his ghost must be watching, judging, mocking her from an afterlife server; knowing that his troubles were over and hers could never be.
She screamed again and swung her clawed hand, catching his chin and sending the head sailing into the night like a lovers flower petal. She took a breath to still her chattering teeth.
A disadvantage of design is the inability to revel in flaws. Flaws were human, and she wasn’t, not anymore. She was something worse, forgotten. Something that lurked in a bomb ditch, where wire bodies listened to the cries of the soon dead.
Somewhere beyond the firelight, she heard the severed head of her critic land and lowered herself back into a squat, letting the smell of burning meat enveloped her.
The survivors would spread the word. Perhaps they would be ready next time, they might kill her, but that was too much to hope for. They would tell their people, and their eyes would be wide with wisdom as they sang of her.
There she is... Miss America....
That would be good.
The winds changed. The screaming had stopped. The dying were dead, and those that weren’t were suffering in silence where they hid. If scavengers didn’t come to the smell of cooking meat; the sun would finish them in the morning.
There she is… Your ideal...
Her thoughts were interrupted by a faded transmission across the atmosphere. The neural extensions of her hair-like implants could pick up Immersion’s soothing lies far beyond conventional range.
With so many beauties… she took the town by storm...
In the firelight, surrounded by corpses and the burning stench of chemicals and flesh, she allowed Immersion’s augmented transmission.
With her all-American face and form...
A cowled hooded figure appeared by the firelight, feeding off her visual cortex to let the shadows dance on the dark robes.
“There is a matter which we need your immediate attention on. An Item has been stolen in the Pacific Quarantine Zone.”
She raised her head, and her hair shifted into a sway.
“I have sent you the file,” the cloak said, pausing to let her speak. She twisted her head, tilting it from side to side, and circuitry rustled in her mil-spec monofilament hair.
The queen of femininity...
She outstretched a thin arm, gray from her solar nanite’s constant repair. Extended talons made her hands beautifully articulate meat hooks and she twisted her palm to the sky, thrusting it forward like a beggar’s weapon toward the dark avatar.
“Double your usual fee has been placed in your account, and you will receive the same again upon retrieval. We want this resolved before news leaks to the open market. ”
The dream of a million girls who are more than pretty can come true...
The apparition faded and she was left with her court of the dead. The soft crackle of the brush fire was interrupted as another fuel tank exploded, the blast echoing down the dark highway.
Chapter 17
Jacob’s bunkside receiver hit eight o’clock, conjuring a guitar’s scream from its small speaker. The soft edges of his heads-up display faded into focus.
“Nothing like classic Cannibal Corpse to get the blood flowing here on Ancient Dead; the soul of the zone! If you were pre-partying for Wreck Fest outside last night, what you saw was the real world!
A flyer thundered into the hulls, and from the blood found on the feeds, there was some heavy action going on. Scavengers got a hairy welcome from the out-zoners at the crash, and you know that’s the real garbage; because once it's Zone, it’s what we own! If you know what went on, hit me up, Papa Mike! Nobody can keep secrets from the Ancient…” *click*
He twisted the knob as the time changed to 8:01, and his vision caught on the gold locket hanging from his lamp. He felt like there was something sentient about it, like it was judging, watching him while he slept.
He pushed his power-boks off the bu
nk and found his Kowazuki drone being stalked by the sunbeam patch as it crept across the floor.
He looked again to the locket.
What is an EPRG?
The helmet outlined the locket in his HUD, but that’s all it could offer. Whatever it was, the man in white wanted to be sure it would be lost. It was a secret, his first, and the tiny private ember burning inside him felt good.
The helmet's visor snapped up with a satisfying clack. He reached up and authorized the helmet’s release of the neck seals, pulling it off and letting the air currents circulate against his scalp.
He could feel the terror like poison gas around him as he quickly opened his collar, unzipping the suit as his body let out a protesting shiver. He grabbed the locket and made sure the carved symbol would hang facing away as he slipped it over his head and tucked it beneath his envirosuit, feeling its smooth surface against his skin.
He resealed the suit and felt better, and better still when he pulled the helmet back on; taking in deep breaths as the helmet resealed. The visor dropped, and the heads-up display returned.
An Immersion AR prompt from Teeva was flashing. Jacob authorized it twice, and the sliding reality panel opened in the now starship wall. Teeva burst through, augmented in all his traveler glory.
“Bro, there was some heaviness rainin’ down in the hulls last night!” he said as the sliding porthole snapped shut behind him.
“Oh!” he staggered for a moment, peering out from under his sedge hat. “Awesome new helmet bro!”
“Yeah,” Jacob smiled. “I think it was Space Corps; it’s their green.”
“Sick! …Green! …Bro!” Teeva said, nodding with each word.
“Joni’s gonna think it’s super tight bro, she loves that stuff. She’d come, but she’s riding light ‘bout last night. A flyer’s down bro!”
“I just heard on the ambient reports when I woke up,” Jacob said.
“Woke up? But you’re...” Teeva stopped and cocked his head, the motion exaggerated by his wide straw sedge hat.
“Bro, do you sleep in that suit?”
“They’re meant to be slept in," Jacob shrugged, “it has full recycling and waste management, air circulation, everything. As long as you flush the internals you could stay in the suit for months at a time, it's a necessity for space travel.”
“Yeah bro, but you're not...” Teeva stopped, “that’s pretty ninja actually, it's like you're always ready.”
By your armor, you shall be judged.
“Yeah! Totally bro!”
“What else are they saying about last night?” Jacob asked.
“We’ll see, normally if a flyer’s down, it’s a mess. All kinds of eyes fly out there to get whatever they can sell, right? ‘Specially close to the Pirate King! But get this, there’s like nothing in the light about it, at all! If Zoners hadn’t seen it, it never would’a happened bro.”
“Really?” Jacob said, feeling the secret the locket burning.
“Big money bro. Joni said she’s already found like at least three versions of the story. Some said it was a satellite, others said two transports crashed, and another said it was a hijacked cargo flyer that crashed.”
The secret’s heat became too much. “I know,” he said.
“Bro?”
The story spilled out of Jacob into the attic. Jacob talked about waking up, finding the new helmet and taking the drone for a spin. He pointed out the modifications Mac had made and waved his arms as he told about racing through the stacks.
Teeva was wide eyed when he heard about the VTOL crash, and the dark shapes chasing a man in white after dropping from their shark transport. He hunched forwards as he listened about something thrown into the night just before the heavy cyborgs found him.
Jacob flipped his visor up, and Teeva vanished from sight. As quick as he could, Jacob pulled the helmet off slipped down his zippers far enough to pull out the golden EPRG locket. He pulled the helmet back on and brought the visor down to find Teeva, eyes wide and waiting.
“This is it,” Jacob said as it swung, dangling from his hand in the morning light.
“No way bro!” Teeva said, staring at the tiny amulet.
“I know, I was trying to figure out what an EPRG was, and it’s been offering a wireless connection…”
“Did you sync with it?” Teeva asked.
“No, I didn’t.”
“Good bro! It's gotta have some kinda tracker with all the online heat.”
“Do you think it's worth anything?”
“Oh, for sure bro! if it's gold, that’s worth mad coin bro,” Teeva said, nodding as he stuck out his ghostly fist and Jacob bumped it, feeling the impact through his glove.
“How come I can feel that!”
“Feel what bro?’
“When I first bumped you right now, I felt your fist through the glove.”
“Just good haptic feedback bro, like when you shook hands in Galafynn. When you gots a solid link, it can do that, like touchin’ in dreams bro.”
“Does that mean I can get hurt?”
“Can’t hurt more than a dream, but that can still be pretty bad bro. Joni explains it better.”
“Maybe she knows more about this locket too,” Jacob said, and Teeva squinted, sucking air through his teeth.
“What?” Jacob asked.
“Well bro…like...whatever it is, it’s a big deal. I mean, Joni is great and all, but like something that hot, you should keep down low you know? Just’a few days to cool.”
“What do you mean? I trust Joni just like I trust you!”
“Yeah ‘course! Joni’s a bro, that not what I mean.” Teeva said and sat on the bunk next to Jacob.
“It just, like, with that kinda money chasing it? It’s big bro, an’ like, well, anyone who knows could be at risk, even by accident. Sometimes even searching for stuff can lead ‘em to you.”
Jacob nodded, Was it dangerous? He thought of cyborg claws in the ship's darkness.
“You did right tellin’ me bro, but like… No one else. Whatever it is, it’s really hot! An’ when you gots somethin’ hot, you sit on it until everythin’ cools, then look for answers. I'm just sayin’ maybe keep it low bro, some answers might come out over the next few, but for sure don’t go accessing it bro! If it calls home, it’ll be rainin’ for real bro.”
Jacob said nothing and slowly slipped the locket back into his suit, zipping up to let the neck seal re-engage.
“But first run tho’, felt good bro?”
“Yeah really good, it's super-fast, I was going to...” A powerful knock landed twice on his bedroom door.
“Come in please,” Jacob said, and the hulking frame of Vincent Slate stepped into the attic.
“Are you talking to someone?” He asked.
“He's not online bro, he can’t see me,” Teeva whispered.
“Oh, right!” Jacob said, “Yeah, Teeva is here, we thought maybe we could get some more practice in with the Kowazuki.
“Humph,” Slate grumbled at the drone. “I'm ready to do some testing on the Rainwalker, so as soon as you're able, meet me in the shop.”
“Oh, Uncle Vince, I really wanted to get some training in with the drone today. The race is tomorrow and...”
Slate rounded on him, and the words choked Jacob’s throat. After a painful moment, Jacob found his voice, “I mean, I’ll just put it away and be right down.”
“Outstanding.” Slate said, and turned in place, closing the door behind him as he left. Jacob waited until he‘d heard him descend the stairs.
“He’s intense bro!”
“Yeah.” Jacob said, “He doesn’t talk much, and it seems like he’s angry all the time.”
“0perators are like that bro. Your uncle’s a combat flyer for sure, his eyes are all soul-screamy an’ stuff.”
Jacob stood and picked up the racing drone from the floor.
“Don’t sweat it bro,” Teeva said, “you made the right call. I wouldn’t have said no to that either, an
d really, I mean what's the point of practicing anyways.”
Jacob put the drone on his bed, “You don’t think I have a chance, do you?”
“Ha!” Teeva laughed, “No- way bro, you totally got this! You’re gonna mop the floor with these skags no matter what! You don’t need the practice is what I’m sayin’” Teeva waved his arm, and the sliding reality gate opened in Jacob’s wall.
“Hit me when you gots time later bro.”
“I will,” Jacob said, feeling better. He thought up his visor, and it snapped open revealing his attic bedroom once again.
He packed up the done, and halfway down the attic stairs he felt a rumble in his guts, When he reached the bottom step, he veered through the kitchen doorway and froze.
A large Kaizen house spider was stretching its telescoping legs, reaching between the counter and dishwasher, passing dishes between its articulated grippers .
It froze at the same moment Jacob stepped into the kitchen, the astonished look on Jacob’s face reflected in its spider eye lenses. Its faded Kaizen calligraphy looked like a black widow's mark on its segmented body.
“Hi!” Jacob said.
The spider slid a dish onto the shelf and shifted, recoiling back onto the counter, collapsing its legs and shrinking its body.
“Sorry to surprise you,” Jacob said, taking another step, “I thought I might find something to nibble on.”
He moved to the far end of the kitchen and opened a cupboard, finding it filled with meticulously spaced clean glasses. He looked back and the Kaizen was gone, but there were now grape, strawberry, and beef flavored protein bars, all artfully fanned out to display on the kitchen table.
“Oh!” Jacob said, and tried to remember if they were there when he walked in. He looked around the kitchen and spotted the spider peeking from behind meal-mix boxes on top of the refrigerator. He picked up strawberry and beef flavored bars.
“Thanks very much,” he said and tore open the beef. He took a huge bite as he left the kitchen and made his way towards the stained-glass doors. As he stepped onto the veranda, a light rain began to whisper in the cargo stacks.
