The Goddess Gambit

by B Michael Stevens

  A thought had survived the storm. No, more than merely survived—it had tenaciously clung onto a piece of nearby floating trash for its dear life, floated to the surface and rode the bitch out. Jon turned.

  "What will happen to her?" he asked, the floating thought now washed ashore. "What will happen to Lily Sapphire?"

  The female officer's eyes widened, and she slowly turned to gauge the Minister’s response. Maintaining his glacial cool, the Minister did not answer at first, instead only staring at Jon from behind his dark mask.

  "The purity of Home must be maintained. If she had simply come to us and reported her taint, so that we could mark her and track her, she would be allowed to live in the Shanty, assuming she complied with all applicable rules and regulations. Many humans cannot help that they are Unpure and wish to be cured. They obey the Ministry’s guidelines and hold onto the hope that such a cure will soon be found. However, that is not what Miss Sapphire did. She is not registered with the Ministry. Furthermore, we have all the evidence we need to prove that she was indeed shaping Strange during her performance. We do not know why she directed her message at you or know the nature of her Strange, nor the purpose of it yet. But I assure you, we will find out. To answer your question, Lieutenant, Miss Sapphire will be immediately arrested, tried and, if found guilty of esoterrorism, she will be purified."

  Scrubbed. Jon shuddered, and nodded, then turned and left.

  Immediately following the concert, the woman known to the people of Home as Lily Sapphire retired to her upper-level suite in the Ziggurat. She knew that by now her stalwart defender, her guardian jaguar, her Lucy, would have left the Underground and would be heading out into the Rough. She knew that despite Lucy's objections to her plan, the warrior would obey her orders.

  "That may have been your best performance yet, Ms. Sapphire," the woman said to herself and smiled. "All this time. At last. Just a little longer."

  Images of the stupefied young soldier hung in her mind's eye like kites on a strong breeze. Hovering, wavering, prominent. Soon, she thought and approached the front door to her suite.

  Her home’s level in the Zigg was near the top, in a residential zone reserved for the highest-ranking officers and officials in the State and Republic Military. Lily was the exception to the rule. She was Home's sweetheart and had been treated accordingly.

  The community she resided in, if one could call it that, was guarded by men whose armor and weapons would rival a squad of Hoppers. She’d passed them at her level’s entrance when she stepped off the elevator and had been greeted with the customary, "Evening, Miss Sapphire. Excellent concert tonight." She now walked in solitude and silent introspective thought towards her private domicile.

  After a couple of minutes of strolling through the garden-like corridors, what with the generous number of fountains, trees, shrubs all flooded with copious amounts of artificial sunlight, she found herself before her home's front door.

  As she drew close, a small panel off to the right slid open, revealing a smooth surface like glass. Lily held still for a second and watched as a blinking red light appeared behind the black polished surface, like heat lightning, flashing in the distance, obscured by clouds.

  Was the light taking longer this time? Was the gig up already? She had foreseen it taking an hour or two longer than this. Perhaps this Jon had been faster than she’d thought. Her breath quickened, and she braced herself. She was ready, and yet she wasn't.

  Be brave, she thought and steeled herself for the alarm klaxon. Then to her surprise, the flashing red light turned green. She heard the snap-clack of the door’s magnetic locks releasing and then exhaled in astonished relief as her suite's door parted.

  She stepped into her apartment a few paces and stopped, listening to the door slide closed behind her and then relock itself. She studied the splendor before her, taking it all in one more time. She winced as a pang of guilt pierced her heart. She knew that the Lily Sapphire persona, the cover story, the double life was a needed, necessary evil. It was the only way to get close. The only way to find him. The best way to help the Underground. She hated the fact that she lived in the lap of luxury when so many starved and shivered out in the Shanty. Nevertheless, she couldn't deny that deep down inside, she liked it. It was nice. The admission made her feel lower than the belly of a worm.

  I'm only human, she started to think and then caught herself, laughing. Old habits die hard, eh?

  Writing the self-crucifixion off to the stress and nervous anticipation of her current and near-future situations, she stepped out of her shoes and strode into the kitchen-half of the open room and went about heating a kettle of water.

  She plucked a glass cylinder off the counter near the electric range and opened the lid. The smell of the tea leaves and dried herbs was spicy and pleasant; it would help to relax her. No doubt gathered from the Eastern farmlands. A rare delicacy these days, what with the supply trains being raided on a regular basis by Harvesters and esoterrorists. She winced, thinking again of the starving Invasives out in the Rough. She took a small handful of the mixture and dumped it into a ceramic mug and waited for the water to boil.

  The years seemed to catch up to her as she waited. Unexpected hot tears welled up and then spilled from her eyes. Relief, sorrow, worry, and joy all fought a battle for supremacy in her heart and mind. She took a deep, shuddering breath and wiped the tears from her round cheeks. Let it go, there will be time later. First, we have to make it through this. We have to survive my plan. She shivered at the dark thought, then noticed that steam was already spewing forth from the kettle like the flaming breath of a raging dragon. Shaking her head and smiling wryly, she plucked the kettle from the range and, after letting it cool for a minute, poured the fervid water over the dried tea. She watched the water begin to take on at first a yellow, then orange, then nearly brown color as the herbs steeped.

  "Room, bath," she said out loud to a disembodied listener, her suite's AI.

  In the center of the room, the floor parted, much in the same way her front door had, creating an opening roughly the same size as her over-sized bed. From this opening, rising like the sun in the morning, came a large tub on a pedestal. Unseen plumbing was already at work, filling the tub with hot, steaming water.

  Sipping her tea, she glided across the resin flooring, designed to look like the wooden floors found inside the nicer homes of Earth-Before-The-Storm, and approached the filling tub. Another wave of guilt. Stop it, she commanded herself. She would allow herself this one small indulgence. She had waited so long and struggled through so much. She was now, after all these years, on the cusp of victory. Soon I will be in his presence. But first I must be strong.

  Bending down, she rested the mug of tea, now halfway gone, on the small table-stand next to the tub and picked up a brass bowl filled with large flower petals the color of freshly spilled blood. Like she had with the tea a moment earlier, she scooped a handful of the fragrant, crimson petals and let them spill slowly, one by one, like snowflakes into the steamy water.

  "Room, vista," she announced.

  The back half of the room, the side opposite her front door, seemed to melt away, rearranging itself the way her clothes had at the concert. Where once there was a solid wall, plainly decorated and pearl in color, there was now a sweeping vista of the Ziggurat's central core. She was near the eagle's nest; only a few floors remained above hers, and they were not open to the core.

  Despite appearances, the wall was still there, and in fact wasn't even transparent, but instead only showed what was on the other sides and bottom of her suite. The wall itself functioned like a holo-vid screen. She could see outward, but anyone looking up would only see the ceiling of the Zigg's open core.

  She stared down the expanse, with all its walkways, perimeter lofts and bustling crowds going to and fro. The artificial sunlight was dimming and had already faded to a dark orange hue. She stepped away from the tub, shedding clothes as she did. Reaching the edge of her now invisi
ble wall, she could almost look straight down the entirety of the Zigg. Yes, the bottom third floors were not open to the core, but still, the sheer size of the Ziggurat, its awesomeness, never failed to impress itself upon her from this vantage.

  "I wonder if they even know," she mused, one hand reaching out to the space and meeting the illusionary wall. She let her slender fingers trace down, then turned towards the steaming bath.

  The warm humidity wrapped itself around her like a blanket, comforting her troubled soul as she nimbly climbed inside the ivory tub. Lowering herself into the inviting bubbles and floating petals, she exhaled a long sigh of relief.

  Now she meditated. Now she waited. Soon, the Scrubbers would come. Soon, she would be arrested.

  004

  "TWO-WHEELED THERAPY, BABY!" Carbine yelled over the roar of the wind as they steered their fusion-powered bikes out of the Ziggurat and onto the massive Southern Ramp. Jon pretended not to hear his friend and also ignored his jovial manner. He was, after all, earthbound. Every bump in the road was a painful reminder of his shortcomings, of his failure during the final; even the supposedly enjoyable part, what Carbine called 'the breeze on your knees,' only served to tease him, so close to flying—so close, yet so far away.

  Exuberant with his situation in stark contrast to Jon, Carbine let out another yell of delight and popped a wheelie, holding it for a good six or seven seconds before bringing his Easy-Rider back down, and then gave his ride a blast of acceleration, nearly passing Jon.

  "Knock it off. This is our first real assignment. Let's observe proper decorum, please," Jon scolded over the comm in his helmet. He couldn't see the frown on his disappointed friend’s face, but he knew it was there. Jon grimaced, knowing that he shouldn't be taking his frustrations out on his companion. Let him have his fun, I guess. But what is done is done. Carbine will get over it. Jon released his left hand’s grip, made the gesture for his men to follow him, and tried to outrun his melancholy thoughts.

  He led his new squad down the south highway away from the Ziggurat and began to pass over the Shanty. The road itself was quite broad, allowing for the passage of entire battalions of infantry, mechanized or otherwise if need be. Although, troop movements of that magnitude were rare. For the most part, divisions assigned to the Rough stayed in the Rough, dealing with the Harvester threat as well as any other undesirables that entered the world through the Drops. To be sure, troops rotated in and out—severely wounded personnel, those going on leave and so forth—but rare was the deployment or return of an entire division. Instead, the highway they were on, and the other three main spans that served as the primary ingress-egress for the otherwise castle-like Ziggurat saw mostly supply and patrol traffic.

  In the early days of the Shanty, before esoterrorism was much of a thing and the Drop threat was more 'out there' in the Rough and not something the citizens of Home worried about, the highways didn't exist as they did now. Back then they were simply roads that spread out from the base of the Ziggurat, one headed out in each of the cardinal directions. North and east to the farmlands. West to the mountains, and south towards the front line; towards the Harvesters. Back then the biggest problems in the Shanty were protests and sanitation; herds of refugees came, mostly humans fleeing Drop-Beasties and the Harvesters, but even back then there were some Invasives in the mix. They all wanted what Home had. They all wanted inside. They all wanted the safety that the Ziggurat promised. The State had let refugees in long before Jon was born; then they learned the hard way about the taint of the Unpure. How humans, not Invasives, could shape Strange. Some did it accidentally; some shaped intentionally. Both were a threat to everything Warbak and the Republic stood for.

  The Ministry of Social Purity and the Scrubbers were born, and it fell to them to police Home for signs of Strange, and to scrutinize each applicant for Home citizenship. It wasn't long, however, before the waves of refugees grew into a tsunami. The numbers were simply unmanageable. Soon, protests turned to riots. Riots turned to attacks. Terrorism by shaping Strange, esoteric terrorism, had come to Home. The esoterrorist, killing and corrupting the pure citizens of Home, had supplanted the Harvesters as the bogeyman numero uno.

  Once the supply convoys coming from the east and north started getting hit in the Shanty, Warbak had taken steps to isolate the Shanty from the Zigg further. Construction began on the new highways, and all four were completed in record time. Each one now sprang out of the Ziggurat about a third of the way up and stretched out over and beyond the Shanty. The highways—along with the Ziggurat from which they were born—would have been considered a wonder of the world by the Republic’s pre-Storm ancestors. Twelve lanes wide and hundreds of meters up in the air, gun turrets, pointed down, ran along their entire slightly sloping lengths, serving as an effective deterrent against those who attempted to even come near the colossal ramps’ support columns. Several kilometers out, where the highway ramp finally reconnected with the earth proper, the land had been cleared away for a whole klick in all directions, and each entrance and exit to and from the ramp was flanked by twin towers, armories in their own right, housing several big gun emplacements and a company of Army troops, a Heavy or two, and a pack of Scrubbers. For the esoterrorists to hit a convoy now, they had to practically enter the Near Rough. And they would be seen a mile away. The attacks stopped.

  Once the highways were built and operational, the lower levels of the Ziggurat had been sealed off. Other than the four gates at ground level, operated and guarded by swarms of Scrubbers and infantry, which allowed the heavily vested, screened and registered multitudes of low-paid labor from the Shanty in to do the Zigg's menial tasks, there was no other way in or out except the four guarded roads and the flight-deck hangars near the top. Even the Scrubbers took helicopters when they went on excursions into the Shanty. Were it not for the ever-present threat of homegrown esoterror, the whole cesspool would be totally out of sight, out of mind.

  Which is just the way Jon preferred it. He pulled his bike along the titanic ramp of a highway, glancing in his rearview to check on his squad every few seconds. They drove along the far-right side of the ramp, passing incoming supply trucks and the occasional returning patrol unit when after another couple of minutes they noticed a stalled convoy at one of the ramp's checkpoints up ahead.

  Jon flashed his brake lights at his boys and made a hand signal for them to pull over.

  "Orders,” the guard demanded.

  Jon kicked his Easy-Rider’s stand down and fished out his N-Tab from one of the saddlebags, handing it over.

  “It'll be a few minutes, sir," the Ramp MP reported, taking the tablet. Jon nodded his understanding and dismounted. Hidden behind his helmet’s face-shield he appeared cool and collected, but his rapidly palpitating heart told another tale. His thoughts flashed back to yesterday's visit to the Ministry of Social Purity. What if they missed something? Is that why I'm being held up now?

  Trying hard to dismiss his paranoid musings, he approached the chest-high retaining wall of the ramp to stare out at the Shanty below and marvel at what an impressive piece of architecture the ramp was. And why wouldn't it be? he thought as he took in everything else in the panoramic. Compared to the Ziggurat itself, the massive, multi-lane highway ramps flowing out from the immense city fortress seemed almost mundane. He looked back at the delta of the ramp, where he and his men had just come from, and studied the Zigg with pride. He never hesitated to appreciate what it was and what it stood for when he was on the outside it.

  A pyramid in shape, the massive Ziggurat city-state-fortress, capital of and synonymous with Home and the Human Republic, stood over a kilometer and a half tall and boasted three hundred floors, the bottom one being the largest, with a massive footprint of four square kilometers, the top being the smallest, still a good thirty hectares. Windowless and armored, it was a testament to the sheer power of the Republic and man's will to survive and reclaim his world from the darkness engulfing it. Jon nodded his head unconsciously as he st
ared at the Zigg. Although the ramp came out relatively low by the Zigg's standards, the height of the delta and the first checkpoint was still two hundred meters from the earth floor and the Shanty. Even from down on the ramp, he could see the shifting plates of armor among the higher levels and the squads of Hoppers and Light Mechs flying in and out of them. Jon turned to follow the arc of the ramp as it made its way from the 100th floor of the Zigg down to the roads stretching south, passing over the entire Shanty in the process, and stopped to admire one of the four new monument towers.

  Jon glanced back to the checkpoint and saw that the soldier who had taken his N-Tab was showing it to another officer. The two sentries were conversing, and one was gesturing with his hand, pointing at the N-Tab and then back out to Jon and his squad. Jon swallowed hard. They missed something, I know it. I'm Unpure or something. Not good. Not good. A rivulet of cold sweat ran down his ribs.

  "That's what Warbak was talking about the other night, huh?" Carbine asked, surprising Jon out of his waking nightmare as he and Max approached him from behind.

  "Yeah, I guess so. It's, er, they're amazing." While the four ramps came out of the middle of the Zigg's four sides, the four monuments were being built a thousand meters out from the Zigg’s four corners. Half as tall the Zigg itself, the monuments were skinny, bright obelisks of polished metal, capped with a sphere of enormous size; their construction was nearly complete. Carbine and Jon watched as hundreds of workers slaved throughout their day, building the new wonders. Some of the workers manned cranes that dwarfed the biggest Mecha in the Army, some used Hopper-like flight suits and backpacks, and others still scrambled around a hive of scaffolding and plastic curtains that wrapped around each monolith like a spider's silk around its trapped prey.