The Goddess Gambit

by B Michael Stevens

  "I saw something in there. I need to get it for Command. It could be important." Jon bolted past his friend and back into the mouth of hell. Carbine panicked, practically throwing Max off his back onto the ground next to Quiteke and turned to follow.

  "Jon! Wait! You'll get yourself killed!"

  Carbine could not see his friend, for now the flames had grown as tall as to replace the wall his Easy-Rider's rocket launcher had obliterated, and there was no response.

  He shifted in place, torn between his concern for his best friend and his hard-wired instinct for self-preservation, and continued to cry out, this time opening the visor on his helmet.

  "Jon! Dammit, Jon!" The smell of burning things invaded his nostrils, further inciting his growing panic. The vile smoke-miasma made from broiling wood, plastic, cloth and human flesh caused him to cough, yet he kept his face-shield up and continued to call for his friend.

  An eternity passed, and Carbine could take it no longer. His mind made up, he snapped his visor closed and readied himself to jump through the wall of fire before him when suddenly a silhouette appeared behind the angry orange curtain. A split second later, a seared and scorched Jon leaped out and rolled across the charred ground, clutching something to his chest.

  "What the hell were you doing?" Carbine cried as he approached Jon, not so much offering a hand as he intended to grab and pull his friend away from the inferno and billowing columns of black smoke.

  "This," Jon managed as he unwrapped his arms from his torso and presented to Carbine a small, grapefruit-sized dazzling glass sphere, swimming with specs of candescent flecks.

  "Poor Lunk," Quiteke murmured as he watched Carbine finish wrapping the bandage around his midsection.

  "Yeah. Tough break," agreed Carbine. "There ya go, bud. All better." Carbine fastened the wrap with a couple of small metal clasps and then delivered a hearty slap to the private's shoulder. Quiteke tried to smile his thanks, but it came out as a wince. The injected nanobots had sealed the wound, stopped the bleeding and would even now be working diligently to prevent infection, but the pain remained. "Here," Carbine offered as he reached his other hand into his left leg's dump pouch and withdrew a small aluminum vial, "drink this. It'll help with the pain, but it'll mess you up too." Quiteke took the vial, twisted the lid to break its seal, and then downed the bitter aqua vitae inside. His wince of pain quickly turned into a grimace of disgust, but he thanked his sergeant anyway.

  Jon had braved the fire to retrieve the mysterious orb from the belly of the slain beast, but immediately after had stashed it in his dump-pouch so that he could attend to Max and Carbine to Quiteke. Carbine had inquired as to what the object was and why it was important, but Jon had dismissed him.

  "I'm not sure. But it might be a clue. Something we can use to exploit the Harvesters. I can't explain it, but my instincts told me that we should save it and bring it to the Colonel. Forget it for now. Let's look after these men."

  And so they did. Dame Fortuna had smiled on Quiteke. The bullet had penetrated the soft part of his armor but managed to miss both his spine and all vital organs.

  Jon had been concerned about Max but found immediately that the private was alive. He was missing a few teeth from Lunk's massive boot to the head, and now had a raw and scarred throat and lungs from the smoke but was going to be okay.

  "What happened?' Max asked in between hoarse coughs after Jon brought him back to consciousness.

  Jon explained the breakdown of what he believed happened as best he could. Max's brow furrowed in confusion, but he accepted Jon's theory in the end.

  "Whatever that thing was, the Zombie-Slug, as Carbine calls it, it seemed to be some variety of Harvester. Just not the ones we learned about in Academy. It's now pretty clear that there must be more than one type of Harvester. Different styles for different mission specialties, perhaps?"

  "But sir," Max asked and launched into another coughing fit. "How…"—cough, cough—"do you know it's a Harvester?"

  Jon frowned. "Well, I don't actually. But its face. Well, what you can call its face. The part with the big square mouth. It resembled a Harvester," Jon explained.

  It did, in fact, resemble the smooth semi-nautical eyeless head of the traditional Harvesters they had studied and fought in VR training their whole lives. Each creature, what was known as the quintessential Harvester, and even this ‘Zombie-Slug’, had their differences, but they certainly had their similarities as well. Like a hound to a wolf, or a common shore crab to a deep-water king.

  "And the way it was able to crawl on the ceiling. It can't all be a coincidence. I mean, yes, sure, it's conceivable that this thing was a new, as-yet-unregistered Drop-Beastie, but it sure has a lot in common with the Harvesters. Either way, its intel that Battalion HQ needs to know about."

  After the injured men had been patched up, they had a brief meeting of the minds. The boys agreed with Jon that they had enough important intel, along with the fact they were down a man, not to mention the wounded, that they needed to abandon their mission and return to base camp to report.

  "Well, let's head out then," Carbine suggested and made to break.

  "No, not tonight. We're too trashed. Max and Quiteke need to rest," Jon said.

  "Oh, so now you want to make camp,” Carbine said. Jon cocked his head and looked at him, saying nothing.

  “There could be more of them in the area. And even if there aren't, that bonfire will surely bring them, or some kinda Beastie," Carbine argued as he gestured to the smoldering remains of the farmhouse.

  "That's a risk we will have to take. If we press on now, through the dark, we run just as much of a risk of running into hostiles in the area, plus we will have Max and Quiteke not at their best." Jon glanced around, then said, "We can take shelter in that barn over there. We can shore up the doors from the inside and position ourselves for maximum strategic advantage."

  "We could at least backtrack to the abandoned village," Carbine persisted. "That was what, not even a thirty-minute ride back?"

  "No, Rene. My reasons still stand. Quiteke needs to heal. We take our chances here. That's an order."

  "Okay," Carbine submitted with only a hint of 'whatever' in his voice. After that, no more was said, and the men went about moving themselves into and fortifying the barn the best they could.

  "Jon! Err... Lieutenant! You won't believe what I've got here!" Carbine exclaimed from his place high in the barn's loft.

  "What is it?" Jon asked, quickly cursing himself for having failed to investigate the loft earlier properly, but none too worried for he could hear amusement in his friend's voice, not concern.

  Max was slowly dragging crates in between fits of coughing, using them along with an assortment of large tools to barricade the now closed front doors of the barn, with Quiteke resting on the ground looking on. He stopped in his endeavors to look at Jon and hear Carbine’s reply.

  "You got see it for yourself. Looks like ol' Ma and Pa were growing more than carrots and cabbage out here."

  Jon turned to Max. "Keep working. I'll go see what's up."

  Carbine’s find turned out to be what looked like, for all intents and purposes, a makeshift laboratory for the manufacturing of the narcotic Weaver.

  "Holy shit," Jon muttered as he took a visual inventory of the various jars, beakers, and baggies. "I thought this crap was just in the Shanty..." His voice trailed off as disbelief settled in.

  "I guess even simple people in the Rough need to escape from this hell sometimes," Carbine smirked, clearly finding humor in the whole scenario.

  "It's not funny, Rene," Jon spoke as if delivering a eulogy. "And it's not just innocent escapism. This filth is the doorway to degeneracy. Can you imagine what it would be like if all of Home became like the Shanty? This crap is ruining people... ruining our nation. It's the pastime of Drop-trash and the Unpure. It's sick and wrong."

  "Jeez. Okay, okay." Carbine shook his head and frowned.

  "I didn't even know this crap
had made it out this far." Jon reached down into the clutter of beakers and paraphernalia and plucked a small lipstick-sized vial. He held it aloft and focused on its contents, which could easily be made out through the clear glass.

  Weaver. Dream Milk. Cloud 9. By whatever name it was called, it could be known from its signature cloudy white color, laced like stars in the heavens with minuscule flecks of polychromatic glitter swirling within. "The Shanty is a cancer, man. And it's spreading. Come on. Let's bag this stuff up and bring it to the colonel as part of our findings."

  They did just that and then Jon headed back down into the main part of the barn. Carbine remained in the loft, his sniper instincts kicking in and telling him that this was, as he put it, "a sweet vantage point."

  Exhausted, they each and all settled down quickly and were ready to fall asleep fast. Jon quickly assigned the watch duties, volunteering himself to start. His squad was asleep and snoring before he had even managed to pull the top off his canned corned beef hash supper.

  Jon set the food down on top of a crate turned to stand on its end, creating an impromptu table. He reached into his dump pouch, looking for his multi-tool-utensil, and rediscovered the glass sphere.

  "Oh yeah," he said aloud and pulled it out. The glowing lights inside it danced and swirled, emulating a spiral galaxy and throwing tiny motes of faerie light around the room. A lot like the Weaver... Jon carefully set the globe down next to his meal-in-a-can and went back into the dump pouch, looking for the Military-issue spork. Finding it, he pulled another crate, this one still horizontal, up to him as a seat and hopped a squat.

  Keeping his eyes on the mysterious orb, he grabbed up the corned beef hash and began to shovel sporkful after sporkful of the salty mush into his mouth.

  Why do I even want to bring this stuff back to HQ? The men there will probably abuse the Weaver. Jon reflected on the poor behaviors he had witnessed earlier. And the Colonel? Will he even care about the new class of Harvester? Or this orb? Seems all he cares about is killing, and barbeque, and rape.

  Jon sighed long and slow, frowning deeply at his thoughts. I dunno. Is there something wrong with this army, or just something wrong with me?

  He stopped his chewing motions as frustration swelled within him. I can’t even eat, he thought in disgust and set the can and spork down on the makeshift table.

  Maybe the Ministry missed something. Maybe Lily really did make me Unpure. Maybe it just takes time to show... To hell with it all!

  Jon shook his head in agitation and tried to clear his mind of its troubles and doubts, and soon found himself nearly hypnotized by the alien orb his eyes had landed on again.

  He stared at the dancing motion of the flickering particles inside the sphere and his mind stilled. A dreamy sense of tranquility came over him and his eyes unfocused. Yet, somehow, it was as if his vision, his beholding of not the thing itself, but what it contained, began to zoom in. Like a probe launching into the firmament, Jon's visual focus moved in, closer and closer until it was among the infinitesimal stars. It was then that he noticed what the tiny, pixel-like things were. His eyes opened wide in pure shock.

  They were, each and every one, one of the missing villagers.

  Jon couldn't believe his eyes. I must be crazy! He brought the orb closer to his eyes and squinted. Could it be? It was. If not the villagers themselves, somehow shrunken down to a gnat’s size, then a perfect portrayal of their likeness.

  What manner of Strange is this? Jon wondered as he gazed upon the floating, fay-sized villagers. They were dressed in the same humble manner as the undead dwellers of the farmhouse, and there was a near even amount of men, women, and children. Mostly all of them were frozen in fearful poses, hands up in terror, mouths trapped like statues in an eternal soundless scream. Some, though far fewer, were shown frozen as if in repose—snapshots of sleeping children, eyes closed in peaceful ignorance to the hellish reality they were actually in. Is this a Harvester camera? A recording of its victims? Or is this actually them? Captured somehow? Shrunken and in suspended animation?

  Jon switched from sitting and staring at the globe to pacing the barn floor, debating whether or not he should wake the others and share his discovery, or let them get some much-needed and hard-earned rest. It had been his call to rush the factory in the final test; it had been his call to split the squad and breach the house from both ends, and now Lunk was dead. Perhaps I'm just not cut out for making judgment calls, period. He winced at the thought and went back to torturing himself until the hour arrived for him to awaken Carbine.

  Carbine was much calmer about the situation than Jon had been.

  "Look, it has to be a recording device. Alien tech. That's all. How else can you explain it? A Harvester shrink-ray?" Carbine mocked.

  Jon had shown it to him before he had finished rubbing the crust from his tired eyes. His suit’s built-in timepiece had beeped its pre-set alarm, and Jon had raced up into the loft and shaken his friend awake, urgently whispering, "Look, Carbine! Look!"

  Slightly disappointed, Jon acquiesced to his life-long mate. "Yeah, I guess you're probably right." But a voice inside told him that that was not the case. Nevertheless, Jon let it go and allowed Carbine to take over watch, and himself to succumb to exhaustion. He made himself a makeshift bed using clumps of hay still in the barn's many stalls and fell into a deep, dreamless slumber.

  Late morning had arrived, and with it a sharp rise in temperature.

  "Unseasonably warm," Max remarked as they packed up their gear and their findings into the Easy-Riders’ saddlebags.

  "Yeah, it is," Jon agreed, lifting his face to the warm sun and smelling the breeze. "Wizard weather."

  "Are you sure you're good to ride?” Jon asked for the second time.

  "Sir, yes sir!" Quiteke shouted, and tried to snap to attention, but his body locked up halfway there in a painful cramp. Jon appreciated the young man's newfound bravado, but his face betrayed his concerns for the private's abilities. Quiteke knew he was busted, so followed his reply with, "Please don't make me ride bitch, sir. C'mon man..."

  Jon sighed. "Alright soldier, just don't overdo it okay?"

  "Sir! Yes, sir!" Quiteke repeated, this time with a little less false gusto and a little more grin.

  Jon turned to Carbine and Max. "You guys about ready?"

  "Yup," Carbine replied. "Just wrapping it up." Jon raised his head and looked at what remained of the farmhouse. It had burned all through the night and was now nothing more than a blackened stain on the land. Small tendrils of gray smoke still wafted up here and there throughout the rubble, reminding Jon of the primitive cook fires in the Shanty when seen from high up on one of the Zigg's ramps.

  "It's too bad we weren't able to give Lunk a proper burial," Carbine brooded.

  "Yeah. But if you recall our lessons, he got what the ancient warriors of Earth-Before-The-Storm thought of as a warrior's funeral. It could be so, so much worse." Jon's thoughts involuntarily drifted to dark musings of what would have happened to the farmers who had been possessed by the 'Zombie-Slug,' and to all those reported to have been taken by Harvesters in the Far Rough. To those whose burial consisted only of ending up in the digestive tract of a Class Three Drop-Beastie. And finally, to those missing but possibly found villagers.

  He shuddered and pulled his wandering mind back to the here and now. Carbine muttered something, presumably his agreement with Jon's assessment, but Jon didn't hear it. He was lifting up the cover flap of his Easy-Rider's saddlebag and taking stock one more time of the items they had collected: the dozen or so vials of Weaver and the mysterious orb that seemed to contain nearly a hundred lost souls.

  They finished packing and were making to head back. They would reach the camp in roughly four hours, maybe less, since now they were traveling in daylight. Jon watched Quiteke slowly climb onto his Rider and wondered not for the first time in twenty-four hours whether he was making the right call in letting the private ride. It is what it is. He'll be alright.
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br />   "Everybody ready?" Jon asked.

  "Yes sir!" came the unanimous response, and Jon had just lifted his hand to give the signal to roll out when he felt the first tremor, followed by a rumble in the hills.

  "What was that?" Max asked, drawing the question out slowly.

  The rumble continued without stopping, growing in volume like a harsh buzzing or vigorous rustling of leaves and twigs. The tremor did too, slow, even and steady.

  Not an earthquake, thought Jon, pivoting in his Rider's saddle, eyes darting to the hills on all sides of them.

  "There!" shouted Carbine, pointing at the hills to the southeast.

  A reverse flash, a light once there, snuffed out in a second along with a deafening whoomp. Even hidden from them by hill and tree, they could see a scattering of lone cubes floating in the air, flashing in black and white, slowly fading into non-existence. The hair on Jon's neck began a wave that reached down his arms and back.

  "Now that..." Jon murmured.

  "Was a Drop," Max finished for him, already holding aloft his N-Tab to take readings from the near horizon. Where the light and cubes had been, something else was beginning to appear; a column of smoke, rising and growing.

  "But what's making the smoke?" Carbine inquired.

  "Whatever came out of it, I’d imagine," Jon said.

  "Another fire?" Quiteke asked. "Say no, man."

  Jon studied it, the sense of danger once again growing in him as it had last night when he’d first heard Max shouting they were under fire.

  "It's moving..." Jon mumbled to himself, and then, comprehension. "That's not smoke! It's dust! Go, go, go!" He mashed the start button on his Rider's handlebar, and his machine purred to life. "We gotta go! Now!"

  The small trees that decorated the tops of the southern slopes parted like blades of grass as a swarm of insectoid Drop-Beasties crested the hill, all at least Class Four in size.

  There must be a hundred of them! Jon realized as he watched them pour down the slope straight towards the farm, like a carpet of mold shown growing in time-lapse. Each one the size of a Republic tank, they moved at speeds equal to what an Easy-Rider could reach. They looked to Jon like what the kids called potato bugs, only draped in plated medieval armor. A dozen round, pupilless eyes that reminded Jon of portholes on an old-world sailing vessel adorned the front of each one. The occasional tree and shrub before the swarm disappeared under their thousands of synchronized legs, the ground itself turned to loose fill and dust beneath their weight and speed.