Pania meanwhile, was testing the target of a weapon on the gun ranges. She aimed along the sight and took deep draws on her rolled cigarette. Kyo walked around on his hands, his legs and tail hung backward over his head like a one man circus act, chewing on the necklace as he moved in circles.
‘C’mon Pan, this is taking too long!’ He complained.
‘What?’ she said, unmasking her one ear from the protective muffs.
‘I said it’s taking too long,’ he moaned still chewing on his necklace and almost loosing balance for a second. He recovered and continued hand walking. ‘Feel like I’ve been here for hours.’
‘Excuse the fuck out of me pint-size, but where the hell else are you actually thinking of being right now?’
‘I dunno,’ Kyo confessed, ‘anywhere but the gun ranges.’
‘Kiss my ass small-fry.’ Pania rebuked, returning the earmuffs and lining up the weapon to the target. A makeshift man-sized dummy stood at the end of a hundred meter field before a reinforced concrete wall. It had been put together with sandbags and pots.
‘This is my favourite place to be.’ She smiled, licking her lips and returning the cigarette.
She pulled the trigger and rattled out a few rounds. Her face lit in the blasts, a staccato shuddering of bullets hammering down the field. Once the cartridge was spent she smiled at the shredded target which stood smouldering and bleeding sand, the distant wall mottled with smoking holes.
‘Shit! Boy, this one’s a keeper,’ she said, holding the gun in her leather gloves and admiring the craftsmanship.
Kyo sprang to his feet and strutted over as Pania removed her goggles and ear-muffs.
‘Oh, bully,’ he said dryly, standing just above her shoulder height as to observe the rifle. ‘So you’re done selecting your instrument of mass murder then?’
‘Yep,’ she said proudly, throwing the weapon over her shoulders.
Pania had a shaven head, but she left a long strand of black hair fringing to her jawline. She also let two more strands hang by the sides of her ears. Like Kyo, she too wore the wooden carved necklaces and trinkets of jewellery custom made by the craftsmen of Minerva Meadows. Sometimes she had fishnet stockings. Today it was torn denim shorts and thick black leather boots as provided by the military culture out in the Novus. An ammo belt hung across her shoulders and bosom, under which she had a torn up white blouse worded Party Crasher on the back. Kyo couldn’t count her tattoos. Her left arm was a sleeve of designs and skulls and monsters and tanks and drones and machines firing rockets. She had one which was a chainsaw slicing open a love-heart somewhere at the small of her back. Others were improvised squiggles and words, art and poetry, each a memory, each an event significant to her. He sometimes asked her about them and Pania wasn’t shy to show him. His favourite was the Otter she had tattooed onto her side. It was snaking from her ribs to her hip, a stylish insignia that represented the military clan she was a part of.
For some reason she also wore a plaster across the bridge of her nose, not due to bruising, but because she thought the old societal perspectives on beauty were bullshit.
‘And just how many people can you kill with this exactly?’ Kyo questioned sincerely.
‘As many people as it can pack bullets.’ She guessed, checking the cartridge slot for grease.
‘Which is…?’
‘Eighty bullets a cartridge.’ She smiled, teeth biting hard on the cigarette.
‘You’re a one man army,’ he congratulated, correcting himself. ‘A one woman army, I mean.’
‘Yeah, I’m just glad the militia are kind enough to let me take the equipment. Had to trade in my other firearm though. Apparently one’s enough. Apparently.’
They left the gun ranges, Kyo stooping to pick up the bag of copper cylinder flasks and vegetables as per requested by Professor Laux. He looked curiously at the tattoos on the back of Pania’s legs as she walked ahead. Kyo didn’t have any of his own. They didn’t interest him much on his own body. Having a tail, fangs and big iris eyes was enough of a head turner anyway. But he let Pania cut his hair. She’d shaven it short at one side, allowing his long hair flop into a fringe, getting shorter the further back it went until there were spikey tufts behind his head. She even shaved an arty pattern into the short side. He always admired her artistic flair. Pania had stayed up late nights when Kyo was a little boy, teaching him how to draw and paint, though he never really developed much beyond finger painting.
She looked unapproachably tough with her piercings and tattoos and crazy hair style, and undeniably she knew how to handle herself, and Kyo had seen it. But Kyo knew the soft side of Pania, he knew her warm heart and loving nature, she’d always made him feel safe when they were both younger, back when he was toddling and she was just entering the double digits.
They followed the gun ranges out, listening as various other militia men and women went about their training. They marched through fields, jumped through obstacles, sloshed through swamp pits. The occasional snap of gunfire in the distance. She approached the checkout point where one of the military registration staff waited. He was reading a book about rifle ammunition. Pania stomped her feet together and saluted.
‘Sargent fuck-wits reporting for duty, sir!’ she mocked.
The book slowly lowered, the man peered over at the two idiots smiling and saluting with their Heil pose, right arms outstretched. His eyes fell on the rifle at Pania’s leg and he nodded, stating cheerlessly: ‘At ease fuck-wits. That what you’re taking-’ he asked, pausing to add with doleful irony ‘-private?’
‘Sure is,’ she smiled.
The man stood up to receive the weapon. He ran a scanner over it and assigned the weapon to Pania Kedash of Cerise Timbers defence militia via the terminal.
‘Are you a mercenary?’ Kyo asked the guy.
He half smiled and raised his eye brows as Pania chuckled and flicked Kyo’s ear.
‘Not me,’ said the man, finishing the assignment process on a computer screen at his desk. ‘I’m militia, like Pania here. The Mercs are ex-Atominii badasses from the Syridan army. They’re training people like us.’
‘Can I be in the militia?’ Kyo asked.
‘When you’re a little older, how old are you now?’
‘Twenty-one.’
The man started to laugh deeply.
‘I am twenty-one.’
‘Enlisting age is sixteen.’
‘I showed him how to use a gun,’ Pania explained. ‘He’s only thirteen years though-’
‘Am not!’ he lied. ‘I’m sixteen.’
It was common practice for militia people to educate the population on firearms, not only how to use them, but how to store them safely. It wasn’t usual practice for the citizens of Cerise Timbers to be denied access to firearms, but it was generally not done without training certain criteria being met. And whereas the militia had full access, the general population were educated on gun combat, trained for light-firearms and martial-arts. It wasn’t a mandatory practice, like most education if it wasn’t applicable to most people’s lives it wasn’t deemed such, but it was available as education for those interested, while access was restricted for those without basic training.
‘Well,’ the man nodded. ‘Guess he’s in good hands. You know the rules though. Has he had basic training?’
‘Sure did,’ Kyo nodded, holding up his Quantic-W to display his experience points. The man leaned over and grunted.
‘I never let it out my sight,’ Pania winked. ‘Seriously, I’m done shooting today. Gotta log this out, put it in my locker.’
‘I’m not interested in guns anyway,’ Kyo declared. ‘My mother’s a doctor. I wanna be a medic like her. I’ll sign with the paramedical syndicates one day.’
‘That’s real good to hear, kid,’ said the man, handing Pania the newly assigned weapon. ‘We could use some heart pushers out in the Novus.’
Pania loaded cartages into her ammo belt and Kyo followed close behind. They took the underg
round trams around to the city’s air zone, a twenty minute ride. Departing from one of the standing platforms they made their way down the metal stairways to the firm concrete ground and headed towards the militia storage building.
‘Ahh shoot!’ Kyo said snapping his fingers. ‘I was supposed to help dad today.’
‘Aww, you wanna go cooking in Minerva Meadows little man?’ Pania teased.
‘Shut up.’
Pania led Kyo through the building. It was busy with militia personnel, some of which greeted her. Pania opened her locker and slid the rifle inside.
‘So when are you able to bring that thing home?’ asked Kyo.
‘Whenever I need to,’ she said, reaching in for her torn camo jacket. ‘I’m keeping it here for now, it’s easier. I’ll have to get it checked first and approved by a Mercenary before I can take it out. But by the looks of things, I don’t think it’s faulty.’
‘So when can you use it?’
‘In a war situation,’ she explained.
‘But you said this will make Professor Laux feel safer?’
‘It will, Kyo!’ She explained. ‘I can get it if the situation calls for it. For now, I’m showing him the weapons catalogue so he knows which one I selected. After that I use it when training or on missions.’
‘Which kind of gun is this?’
‘A deadly one,’ she assured, ‘you only got basic training, but you’re going to need serious training to use that puppy. You gotta know it inside and out. Laux will like it. He’ll be happy.’
She slammed the locker tight.
*
When they arrived at the hangar Pania slid through the doors calling to Laux and Fenris.
‘Yo skags!’ She hollered, holding up a data board displaying the weapons catalogue. ‘Come n’ see the big guns, ladies. We’re talking modified M’ ninety three with armour piercing, explosive and high velocity rounds. I picked something that’s gonna kick a bulwark down like a dried up sandcastle.’
‘Hello Pania Kedash,’ said a woman’s voice from on high.
She craned her head to see Daryl and Enaya leaning over the rails on the wing section platform above. Edge Fenris threaded his legs through the bottom bar and hung off the wing’s edge.
‘Sadly if I’m not mistaken,’ he said, ‘there’s a whole world of trouble after you.’
‘What the hell’s going on here?’ Pania’s voice echoed, ‘who are you people? What you doing in my room?’
‘My names Enaya Chahuán,’ she introduced. ‘You may not remember me but I remember you from many years back. You were quite the artists.’
‘Edge!’ Pania groaned. ‘Have you been showing them my work?’
‘Are you kidding?’ Edge said delightedly. ‘Of course I have. The whole damn world needs to see your work.’
‘Especially this one,’ added Daryl, holding aloft an image of Pierce Lewis painted as a satirical looking Hitler.
‘Oh,’ she smiled maliciously, putting her data board by an old rusty weapons locker. ‘I guess he’s complained, right?’
‘Indeed,’ said Enaya.
‘Laux I got your cylinder flasks!’ Kyo called as he entered the hangar.
‘Leave them by the lockers.’ Laux shouted from the back.
‘Oh, hey Enaya,’ Kyo smiled putting down the equipment bag.
‘Aren’t you supposed to be at the cook preparations with Dak?’
‘Yeah,’ he laughed scratching his head. ‘I know. I kinda forgot.’
‘He’s not going to be happy about that.’
‘Ah,’ Kyo said shrugging, ‘it’ll be fine.’
‘Maybe you should get a move on,’ Enaya encouraged.
‘Yeah, beat it you little rat!’ Edge re-joined, doling puffs of smoke as he spoke ‘give my damn pencils a break before you chew up every last one of them.’
‘Like this one?’ Kyo teased retrieving a pencil from his pocket and popping it between his teeth.
‘Oh you unconscionable little ass-hat!’ Edge growled fiercely, climbing out of the rail to give chase. His feet pattered like a machine gun, echoing through the hangar as he raced over the plane wing to the ladder. Kyo waited around until Edge reached the bottom step then ran hell for leather, laughing out of the hangar and throwing the pencil back at Edge.
‘How did you spray the Lewis property without getting caught I’ll never know,’ said Enaya following Edge down the stairs. ‘But you’re lucky. He would have killed you if he caught you.’
‘That misogynistic bastard deserved worse,’ Pania said as Enaya handed her art book back. Pania riffled through the pages as she spoke. ‘He said a real woman’s job was not service to the military but service to the men.’ Pania looked up at Enaya and smiled. ‘So I offered him to a wrestling match so I could service his way to the hospital.’
‘So what happened?’
‘He acts all tough behind his fence,’ she explained. ‘He talks down to people like they’re garbage. So I left him a little present in the night. Had to feed his dog with a harsh dose of sleeping pills to get the job done. But I don’t regret it.’
‘Erm,’ Laux suddenly crocked from the darkness. ‘Excuse me Missus Chahuán. I want you to know I had no part of this. I mixed the sleeping dose myself but I had honourable intentions I assure you. I just wanted to help my friends get some rest. I didn’t know she would…well…’
‘You’re not in trouble Laux,’ Enaya assured. ‘Nobody is. I’m not a police force. I want to get to the bottom of this so we can ease tensions. It’s important that even when we don’t agree with each other, we can at least learn to be civil.’
‘Tell that to Pierce Lewis.’ Pania sneered.
‘Well I was rather hoping you could tell him,’ Enaya smiled. ‘It might be prudent for you to remove your installation.’
‘No way,’ Pania said hotly, hands on her hips. ‘I’m not removing it until he shows some respect! I want an apology for the insult to me and every woman here in Cerise Timbers. And I want him to know that he lives in a world now where women are everything that men claim to be. Patriarchy is dead here and he needs to know that.’
‘Yeah, you tell ‘em sweet tits,’ Edge said sparking up a cigarette. Pania punched the cigarette sparkling out of his lips and Edge ducked as the fiery embers spat over his face.
‘We didn’t know about any of this,’ said Daryl. ‘It’s always good to get the other half of the story.’
‘I’ll be glad to let Pierce Lewis know your opinion.’ Said Enaya. ‘Supposing he offers an apology. Will you consider cleaning the property?’
Pania scowled. Edge Fenris was crawling around on the floor in search of his lost cigarette, hissing something about it being his last one.
‘I’ll think about it.’ Pania eventually offered. ‘But a man of that level of arrogance reducing himself publically to admitting he was wrong about a woman…I doubt he’s going to say another word on it. He’ll just play the victim and let everyone see him scrubbing his own damn walls.’
‘We’ll be in touch,’ said Enaya. ‘Don’t you have a Q-net access point in here?’
‘Well…’ Laux started jittery. ‘As a matter of fact I’m putting a new access screen up for us in a few days.’
‘Son of a bitch took it down,’ said Edge on his knees, straightening out his burnt cigarette. ‘So he could do his sciencey crap.’
‘I needed materials for laminating solar cells.’ Laux gladly explained. ‘The hangar sees a lot of sunlight so I put in the new windows a couple of weeks ago. We’re now contributing to the city’s power network.’
‘But we’ve no Q-net access point you cretin,’ Edge said sparking up the cigarette once more and climbing to his feet. ‘This is an information age damnit, and we’re cut off from the city.’
‘I said I’m working on it.’ Laux assured. ‘Two weeks. I’ll register to the East B’ One Federal building in two weeks and you’ll be able to reach us via live-stream. Heck it could save your legs every time you need to come down
here and speak to us.’
‘It could,’ Daryl said, turning away.
‘Although I’d much rather you visited,’ Laux confessed. ‘It’s always nice having fellow thinkers around.’
‘Just out of curiosity,’ said Enaya, ‘how did you make those solar cells?’
‘Oh I have a manufacturing hub at the back of my lab. It’s a material printer. Got some products lined up ready to ship out to whoever needs them in the city. So far I’ve got about twenty six orders in for piezoelectric panelling. I’m also working on a wireless oscillating electromagnet so we can have some witricity around here. God knows I’m sick of tripping over the power cables.’
‘Laux how long have you been here?’ Enaya asked.
‘Oh…about ten months.’
‘Why haven’t you signed up with the tech schools,’ she quizzed in astonishment. ‘We’re crying out for people like you.’
‘You got me,’ he shrugged with a nervous laugh. ‘I’m working for you all. I can’t split myself into five people so; sadly progress is a little slow. Just need to fail-safe test my equipment. Never had to build from scratch before. Takes a lot of time.’
‘Why aren’t you inviting people to see what you’re doing?’
‘I haven’t the time,’ Laux sighed. ‘But as soon as I’m all set up in here then I’ll dedicate more time to showing others how. I can’t concentrate when I’m being observed.’
‘Laux is a dangerous man,’ said Edge.
‘Thank you Laux,’ Enaya smiled warmly, nodding as she followed Daryl. ‘Anything you need just let us know and we’ll get word out.’
He smiled back and bowed his head.
‘And thank you for the whiskey Edge. Maybe another time?’
‘Yeah, sure, whatever,’ he mumbled, shaking his head as he wondered into the depths of the hangar with his hands deep in his pockets.
Chaos Cipher Page 13
