Her right arm flashed before Jon's face but didn't make contact. Jon guessed—hoped—that he was not her target, or not yet at least. The hand that avoided Jon grabbed Max's pistol, forcing its slide back and rendering it useless. Before the dying lieutenant could let go of his compromised weapon, she twisted it, her hand spinning fully 360 degrees on the wrist axis. Jon heard Max's finger and wrist break in a half-dozen places.
Max blinked repeatedly and stammered, his mouth moving like a fish plucked from water. Fearing that he would be next now that the threat had been eliminated, Jon made to bolt out from between the dying man and his killer.
"Don't move, héroe," she said coolly, in a peculiar Hispanic accent. Jon's eyes scanned his opponent and saw that the over-sized pistol she wielded was already pointed directly at him. She moved like she had a brain in each limb, panoptic and coordinated.
"And the other," she said, not even looking at the rear of the transport, yet somehow aware of Carbine's presence. "Come on out."
She slowly backed away, her pistol pointing at Jon. Max continued to flounder. Once she was clear, Jon could see she had driven her club clean through the kid's torso, high up into his diaphragm. He struggled for tiny breaths, like a panting dog. In the corner of his eye, Jon watched Carbine creep around the corner of the APC, hands up.
"Both of you, stand in the middle of the road," she ordered. Cautiously, Jon and Carbine complied. "Kneel." As if telepathically synced, the two friends looked at one another, each looking to the other for a cue on how to proceed. Finally, Jon nodded to Carbine. They looked back to the woman and kneeled in the road.
Resting the bottom of a thick-treaded, knee-high boot on Max's collarbone, the woman reached down with a lower arm and pulled the club from his stomach. The wound made a vile sucking sound when the tip cleared Max's body, allowing air into the gap, and blood to flow freely. She side-stepped in a sweep, moving out of the way as Max fell face forward. At a speed that would rip tendons and dislocate joints, she whipped the arm holding the club through the air in a slicing motion, cleaning it of most of the fluid and viscera that covered it. Then she wiped the rest down with the tail of her long coat.
"Hold out your arms," she commanded, sauntering over to the kneeling pair. Jon looked up at her; her painted face of death bore an aloof expression, bordering on impatience and annoyance, but not one of rage.
"Hold out your arms," she repeated. When Jon continued to hesitate, she said, "Look. I don't like you. I don't trust you. You're Republic scum. If it were up to me, I would gut you here like a pig to die in the road and have the birds pick at your remains." Jon gulped. He believed she meant what she said.
"But my lady insists that I rescue you and bring you to Home. To the Shanty." The woman's skeletal painted lips sneered in disgust at that.
"Your... Lady?" Jon risked the question.
"Yes. The one I serve. You know her as Lily Sapphire." The woman dropped the statement like a bomb, obliterating Jon’s expectations and creating a shower of questions.
"What?" Carbine asked, his mind also blown.
"There isn't time for Q and A. You have no choice in this. I will follow my Lady's commands. Either hold your arms out now, or I will knock you out and carry you back!" the woman barked impatiently.
They held their arms aloft, and the wraith sliced their cuffs in two, cutting the chain clean with a single stroke of her black toothed weapon.
"That's some club," Carbine murmured in amazement.
"It's not a club." The woman nearly spat her words, clearly disgusted. "It's a Macuahuitl. But I wouldn't expect a Statist culero to know that. Now, come on. Follow me. I killed both the driver and gunner up front before they could call your amigos, but we shouldn't linger anyway. I hope you boys can keep up." She sheathed the high-tech war club back into a leather saddle, hidden behind the draperies of her coat, then took off running. She jumped the bank of the road and began to head cross country.
Jon looked around, taking in his surroundings for the first time. He realized that they were just east of the western foothills, smack dab in the flatlands south of Home. In the distance was a smear of farms, rubble, burbs and military outposts. The Near Rough... On the Horizon, silhouetted against the rising sun, loomed the Ziggurat.
They watched her go. She moved fast; too fast. Bet she has more machine parts than those extra arms and tail. She may be full body...
"We’d better get going," Carbine said and took off after the woman. Jon followed, and together they strained to keep up.
"What's... what's your name?" Carbine shouted between gasping breaths. Bred to be genetically superior or not, it was all they could do to keep up with the machine woman.
"This isn't speed dating, Jarhead," she answered back without slowing nor showing any sign whatsoever of being short of breath.
"I was... just... trying to... be polite..."
Jon stopped running and leaned forward, his hands on his thighs, panting for breath. Then he stood upright and called out to the woman.
"Okay, Okay! Hold on! Just hold on!"
The woman stopped running and turned around, eyes glaring and narrow.
"You want to knock me out and carry me, that's fine. Otherwise, you're going to answer some questions," Jon bluffed. The woman's expression did not change, nor did she move. "You said that you take orders from Lily Sapphire, right? But she was taken into custody several days ago. We didn't get on that transport till last night." The woman slowly began to walk back to Jon and Carbine, arms akimbo.
"I know that Lily Sapphire is an esoterrorist, so I get that she has cyborg ninja bitches working for her. I also know that she was taken into custody by the Ministry of Social Purity, because I'm the one who turned her in, so—"
"You don't know shit," the woman interrupted.
Jon smiled and blinked at her, happy that he had provoked a reaction from the stone-faced killer. "Okay, so educate me." He gestured invitingly.
Carbine looked back and forth between his friend and their rescuer. The woman remained silent and motionless for a moment, then responded.
"You're both as dumb as you look. Maya—that's her real name—wanted to get arrested. She picked you on purpose. She knew that you would turn her in."
I trust you...
Jon's false bravado disappeared. For the second time since meeting her, she had said something so completely unexpected it shattered his defenses. He looked over to Carbine for support, but his friend just shrugged his shoulders.
"She told me the night before the concert that she was going to allow herself to be captured, and that you two would be here, on this road, at this time." The woman pointed back to the abandoned APC behind them. "She told me to get you and bring you to the Underground, to show you some things, the truth, and then to have you help me break her out of the Ministry."
The woman let the words hang in the air, thick and hard to digest. Only the sound of the gentle morning breeze could be heard. It carried a small flurry of ice crystals and made Jon shiver, though perhaps he would have shivered anyway.
"Why would she let herself get arrested so that we can break her out?" Carbine asked from the side, breaking the spell of the silence. "That's stupid."
"He's right. It doesn't make any sense," Jon joined in. "Besides, what makes you think we would help break her out? She's a terrorist, and... so are you." Jon bravely finished his sentence, knowing damn well that if she wanted to, this woman could cut him down with little to no effort.
She shook her head mournfully. "Even after all that, you cling to your lies and illusions."
Carbine raised a finger and attempted to interject something. "I... uh... um..." She turned and glared at him, and his finger lowered. "Never mind," he managed.
"My Lady says that after the Underground, you will want to help. But I wouldn't be one bit surprised if you still didn't. You military men are all the same." And with that, she turned and began to run again, slower this time, towards Home.
Jon sucked
in a deep breath and blew it out slowly. Deep down he thought maybe he already did want to help, but his mind and heart were scattered, conflicted, messy. So much has happened in such a short time. Too much. His fists clenched. The mere thought of betraying his government to help an esoterrorist enraged him.
"Who the hell does she think she is?" Jon asked no one through clenched teeth, though Carbine heard and turned to look at him, leaving the question unanswered. Tears threatened to escape from Jon's eyes. He closed them, keeping them in. Behind his eyelids, he saw the red-skinned girl, raped. The frightened civilians that he had given first aid to. The way they’d thanked him for saving them. The fear in the Drop-trash child's voice as it ran, blindfolded. The pain in its father's pleas. The Colonel...
"I think she is kinda sexy,” Carbine interrupted Jon's bout of cognitive dissonance. “I mean, once you look past the skeleton makeup.”
Jon felt his shoulders relax, his fists loosen. He looked up at his buddy in mild disgust and disbelief. "Really?" Jon squinted at him, head shaking slightly.
"Hey, man. I'm just saying," Carbine answered. Then, "So... what do we do?"
"I guess we follow her," Jon said and took off running.
Carbine grinned, watching his 'big brother' go, and then did likewise.
"You never told me your name!" Carbine yelled to the warrior woman once he caught up to her.
"My name is Lucy."
Captain Jackson approached Colonel Taylor from behind. The commanding officer was seated at his field desk in the command tent. Laid out like a surgeon's tools prior to surgery were the disassembled pieces of Taylor's 1911 pistol. A whiff of carbon and oil caught Jackson's nose as he came close.
"What's on your mind, Captain?" Taylor asked without looking up. He was plunging a metal-bristle brush into the barrel of the stripped pistol with all the Zen-like focus of a painter consumed by her muse.
"That was too close," Jackson said.
"Yes, Captain, I'm aware of that," Taylor muttered, mildly irritated at the statement of the obvious.
"I am concerned, sir. What if some of the men talk? Word could spread to the other units."
"Wouldn't worry too much about that, Captain." Taylor halted in the cleaning of his pistol, placing the pieces on the desk. He spun in his chair and looked up into the eyes of his disturbed subordinate. "In three days, Umbra himself and a contingent of Harvesters will arrive in this camp."
Jackson's eyes went wide in shock and disbelief. "Sir!" He gulped.
"The endgame has begun, Captain. We will escort the demons to Home, and right into Warbak's trap."
008
EVEN THOUGH IT was still several klicks off, the Ziggurat seemed to loom over them, like a passing colossus, giant and indifferent to the insectoid life underfoot. From this vantage, the squat pyramidal city-state-fortress looked ten times bigger to Jon than it had when seen from the sky-bridge ramp.
They were currently passing under the lower half of the southern ramp, and Jon gazed up at it, wondering what troop movements were being conducted to and from the Zigg. Has word of our arrest, word of our escape already reached Headquarters? His eyes traced the belly of the sky-bridge all the way to the wide, sloped, and flat southern face of the city he had called home. The city he believed was the last bastion of human civilization. From there, the other three sky-bridge ramps, along with the one they walked in the shadow of, extended like a cephalopod's tentacles, out and over the Shanty along the cardinal directions. The perspective from down here sure is... different. Bisecting the spaces between the four highways, just out from the four corners of the Ziggurat’s base, stood the obelisks; each connected to the Zigg by way of its own slender bridge. Jon peered to see, the day's light making him squint against the semi-translucent clouds. From what he could tell, the construction of the monuments was complete, each white tower now regally adorned with a massive globe of crystal. Only the scaffolding surrounding each monolith like a cocoon still needed to be taken down.
"Stay close to me, it's going to start getting crowded," Lucy ordered. Jon pulled the hood of his poncho further over his head, almost covering his brow, and focused his eyes on the way ahead. Lucy was right; they had passed by where the sky-bridge ramps touched the earth a while ago and now were approaching the loose edges of the Shanty. Even from here, Jon could see that it wouldn't be long before the scattered tents and wagons of the newly-arrived became a tightly packed slum slowly built by third-generation refugees, a sprawl of poverty where each subsequent wave and generation of outsider to arrive had added to, and on, what was there before. Still a klick off from where his line of sight became blocked by the sheer mass of occupancy, Jon could smell the stink of the place. It grew stronger with every step, and he reflexively grabbed the side of his hood and tried with moderate success to pull the garment over his face and nose.
Lucy had given them the ponchos before they got near the bottom of the southern highway. She’d declared it best they swing wide, approach the Shanty from the southeast and avoid the twin tower guard posts of the highway's entrance entirely.
"But just in case they spy us and decide to look too closely, you’d better cover up," she had said, and fished the small black plastic ponchos from a pocket in her long coat. Jon and Carbine had both donned the cloaks with no argument, but as they’d hiked past the southern ramp towers, Jon could feel the eyes of the soldiers stationed there upon them. One shrug. One simple pull and this disguise falls off, Jon had thought to himself as they walked along. All I have to do is reveal myself and we are spotted. They will wonder why a soldier is heading towards the Shanty and not passing through the checkpoint. The gig would be up. All I have to do is...
But Jon had stayed his hand. And Carbine, if he had been entertaining similar thoughts, kept them to himself and well hidden. Now it was a moot point. The twin towers of the ground-level checkpoint were far behind them, and they were now officially in the Shanty. Out of sight, out of mind.
Soon they found themselves walking single file as they navigated deeper and deeper into the refugee camp turned city. Jon glanced behind him and saw that the open space of the Shanty's rim and the plains of the Near Rough beyond had been swallowed up. The air was rank with the smells of feces and death. Above the oppressive stench, Jon detected a top note of primitive fuels, diesel and the like, that ran engines for those fortunate enough to possess a generator or vehicle. The sheer amount and variety of the sights in the Shanty was overwhelming.
"Are those… their homes?" Carbine asked Jon quietly, amazement in his voice.
"Yeah. I think so." Jon gawked at the scene before him. They were wading through a sea of people, mostly Invasives, all shapes, colors, and sizes. On both sides of the space that served as a road were the 'homes' that Carbine had inquired of. Row after row of cages were piled on top of each other, half a dozen to a full twelve high in spots, and running lengthwise down the street—more of a walkway—they were currently navigating. The complex of cages reminded Jon instantly of kennels, for that is what they were, retrofitted with slabs of rubber carved from pre-Storm tires and planks of wood, pallets, anything at all that could serve as a roof or a floor. Naked children belonging to an unknown species peered out from behind the steel bars. Flies danced on their faces as they watched unblinkingly as Lucy led Jon and Carbine on. While meeting the gaze of one of the tenants of the cage row, Jon tripped when his foot landed lower than expected. He felt the give underfoot, caught his balance and looked down, instantly regretting his carelessness. A small ditch had been dug along the front of the cage row and was serving as an open sewer. Jon gagged and tightened the pull of the hood against his mouth and nose, shaking his boot as best he could to clean it.
His antics gave him away as a stranger to the people in the street. Before Jon had finished dragging his shit-soaked boot through the dust in the street, he was being accosted by a group of children and one man, humanoid, except for what could only be called an elephant's trunk, dangling limp and scrotal, from its
face, as well as lacking most of its legs.
"Smchmargle-barque!" The man raced along the ground, walking on his hands, then planted his stumps onto the dirt to reach up and grab Jon's poncho.
"Ah! Get off me!" Jon let go of his hood and tried to peel the elephant man's grip open. The smell of the man, and of the Shanty in general, hit him hard. He fought back a gag and continued to squeamishly pull the creature’s clammy and bubbly hands off his poncho. The children gave the elephant man a wide berth but formed a circle around Jon and also began to yammer in languages alien to Jon, waiting for their turn to grab, pull, and beg.
"Smchmarghle!" the pitiful thing continued to plea, tugging as it did.
"Let us pass, Grandfather." Lucy approached; Jon had never heard her speak so gently before.
"Santa Muerte!" the children gasped and backed away timidly. The elephant man released Jon's poncho and looked towards the approaching angel of death. Jon's face twisted in disgust as he watched the limp flesh balloon wiggle back and forth across the man's face after he had so quickly turned his head. Then a touch of shame reddened his cheeks.
"We do the good work, Grandfather. This is my man, he is under me," Lucy explained calmly. The legless man looked up at her, his pale eyes welling up. "You know I cannot give you food or goods to trade, for there are many here in need. How can I help one, yet deny the rest? Do you understand?" The man nodded; a single tear escaped and carved a wet path down his dry and dusty cheek.
"All will be lifted up when the good work is done," Lucy concluded.
"Sshme-lakate." The man bowed his head, causing the already grotesque appendage on his face to dangle obscenely. Lucy nodded in return, and the man slowly backed himself away on his hands and disappeared into the mass of onlookers.
"What's the matter? Never seen a slum up close before?" Lucy asked in a mocking tone. "Oh, that's right, they don't have those in the Zigg. Now, think you could not draw attention to yourself? That would be great."
The Goddess Gambit Page 15
