"Ratt, we need extraction now!"
The Mini-Mech turned and fixed its weapon on the new threat and fired. Lucy twitched sharply. Jon thought for a second that she was hit and that she would burst apart, but then realized that she had dodged the super-sonic slug. Too concerned with Carbine's life to be impressed, he pressed his plea.
"Lucy! Just disable him! That's Carbine in there!"
"The hell it is!" Lucy replied and squeezed off another burst of explosive rounds. The surface of Carbine's power armor danced and rattled, pieces of it flying here and there, but it remained intact.
"Rene!" Jon bellowed. "I know you're in there! Can you hear me? This isn't you, man. Fight it!"
The Mini-Mech paused in its movements, and Jon's heart leaped up, only to sink back down again when Carbine turned and fired another shot at Jon. With reflexes still new to him, Jon lifted the hammer in a subconscious effort to block the shot. By some miracle it worked. The slug impacted the head of the hammer just as it passed in front of Jon's chest. The depleted uranium round splattered like a water balloon over the surface of the hammer and sent Jon flying backward. To his shock, Jon found himself lying on his back, looking up at the converging walls that were now appearing in the periphery from all sides. We're out of time. Sitting up, he noticed that the hammer was glowing brightly; a swirl of stars spun just below the surface of the head. Unbelievably, there seemed to be no damage from the slug.
Resigned to his fate, Jon sat unmoving as Carbine, or whatever had replaced Carbine, aimed at him once more. Jon decided then and there that he would rather die at the hand of his best friend than be taken by Warbak and the Harvesters’ Purge. He closed his eyes softly, and from behind his eyelids saw a flash of light. The muzzle flash, he thought. But death did not come. Confused, Jon opened his eyes to see another not-quite Drop portal hovering above the ground, slightly to the right behind both him and Lucy.
"My Lady!" Lucy exclaimed. "Let's go!"
Jon jumped to his feet, grabbing his hammer up on the way. The walls were closing in; even now they had consumed the fleeing people who had been running towards the last bit of ground and was moving past the edges of the semicircle of containers. Jon looked from the wall of light to Carbine, to the portal, and back again.
"I can't leave him!" he called out.
"You have to, he is gone!" Lucy replied and leaped through the portal, escaping the creeping doom.
Another moment of hesitation, and then a flash of a vision, all those things Maya had shown him. The promise of a solution. The promise of a better world. He turned to Carbine once more, just in time to see the Mini-Mech become drowned out by the bright green wall, and then Jon too jumped into the portal.
As before, Jon found himself in the Vault's sanctuary prayer garden. Around him stood Ratt, Miller, Lucy, and Maya. Ratt looked beat up but was standing on his own two feet. Maya looked both scared and relieved and rushed to his side, helping to lift him from the kneeling position in which he’d landed. He hadn't heard the portal close, but then, he recalled, he hadn't heard it close the first time either. Similar to a Drop, but different, he reminded himself.
"I'm so glad you're okay," Maya said.
Jon turned from her and cast his eyes to the ground. "I... I had to leave him," he confessed. A seed of nausea sprouted in his stomach while invisible hands, cold and metallic, like those belonging to the thing that Carbine had become, closed around his heart and squeezed.
"It's not your fault," Maya comforted.
Jon shook his head, unable to speak more on it.
"My Lady. Are you unharmed?" Lucy interrupted, changing the focus of the debriefing from pity for Jon and Carbine to what would matter most to her: the goddess.
"Uh, I'm fine," Maya answered awkwardly, her hands maintaining their soft hold on Jon's. "The soldier. He, uh, he turned into one of those evil machines; a Spartan."
"It nearly killed me," Ratt announced, his voice squeaking. "But before that, I watched the transformation under the scope. The nanobots use the organic matter in the host as raw material to build more of themselves. Kinda like a gray-goo effect."
"We know that a signal from the Zigg must have triggered the transformation," Miller added. "What we don't know is whether it goes both ways. What I mean to say is, we don't know if that thing was transmitting back to the Zigg." With those words, Miller had fully captured the attention of everyone in the room. "We have to assume it did. That means we can bet that Warbak knows about the Underground."
"There is no one left on the surface. I watched it happen," Jon said quietly.
"No one but an army of those Spartans. Every New Breed soldier," Lucy added.
"Yeah. Except me," Jon said, eyes still downcast. No one said anything, but Maya gave his hand a little squeeze.
"We have to get out of here, Maya," Miller said, breaking the silence. "It's not safe anymore."
"And go where?" Ratt squawked.
"Anywhere, kid," Miller said. Lucy nodded.
"He's right. We lost today. But not all is lost. We still have Wyntr and the way to the Morning Star. We must press on," Maya said, squeezing Jon's hand a second time.
Jon could hear the group explode in a fury of speech, asking questions of each other and making preparations for a hasty departure from the Underground and home. But he wasn't listening, he was turning inward, replaying the failed mission over and over again in his head. Why didn't the orbs break? Jon thought back to his first encounter with the Harvester technology. How the demon had used its orb-weapon to capture every living soul in the village. When those Drop-Beasties trampled Quiteke's bike, they crushed the orb... and all the villagers re-appeared. Every one of them, according to the census, and no worse for the wear either... The railgun should've worked.
The rapid firing of questions, answers, and statements going back and forth between the resistance leadership was suddenly interrupted by a triumphal gasp from Jon.
"Kid, er—Ratt," Jon began, releasing Maya's hand and becoming animated. "You said that you guys figured out that a signal from the Ziggurat triggered the Spartan's transformation, right?"
"Yeah, at first I thought it was electricity, but it turned out to be a signal. I could show—"
"That's not necessary. I believe you. Do you think you could track the signal? And if so, after getting to the source, go inside the program and rewrite it?" Jon asked without stopping for breath.
"Rewrite it?" Ratt's eyes squinted behind his goggles.
"Yes. Change the orders, so to say. Reverse it. Have the nanobots use the raw material to put the host back together."
"Hmmm." Ratt rubbed his hairless chin. "I suppose that could be possible. If they can break material down and rebuild it on the atomic level... I mean, they managed to turn organic matter into inorganic matter, so I suppose it could work in reverse..."
"Do it," Jon said.
"But there is no guarantee that the host would remember who they were, memories, personality... soul."
"We'll take that risk," Jon said. "Get on it right away."
"Now hold up just a minute there," Miller objected. "We need to be getting outta here. We ain't got time for this."
"You and your men need to buy us the time. An all-out assault on the surface. Hit them in their court instead of waiting for them to come down here. Protect the children."
"Jon," Lucy interjected. "Even I must admit that your plan might work, ambitious though it is. That said, we can't risk Maya's and everyone else's life on the remote possibility that you can get your friend back."
"Goddammit, Lucy!" Jon snapped. "This isn't just about Carbine. This is about defeating Warbak and saving the Shanty. Everyone in Home!"
"Huh?" Maya perked up and studied Jon intently.
He met her gaze and announced, "I know why the orbs didn't break. Better yet, I know how to break them."
018
"MAN, where did you get a real cigarette?" Joe asked Neil, his companion.
"The boss rewards those
who are loyal," Neil answered cryptically, flashing a grin that seemed to say ‘I know something you don't.’
"Man, get out with that bullshit. Everybody knows you're full of it. If you were in the circle, you wouldn't be out here with me on watch duty," Joe said, his lips curling in disgust as if he had just stepped in a steaming pile of Beastie shit.
"Whatever. You just jealous," Neil said and pulled a long drag off his smoke. The tip throbbed red-hot, lighting up the man's face for a moment in the otherwise mostly dark dead-end street. Spending one's life in the Underground, one's eyes adjusted fairly well to low light but still required some light to see by. The red glow of his lying companion’s face seemed to remind Joe of this fact of life, and so he stood, stretched and went to add another armful of trash to the dying fire in the nearby metal drum.
"It's more likely that you stole that smoke. Probably stole it from the boss's stash. Maybe I should report you." Joe dropped the crumpled trash into the drum and vigorously brushed his hands together to rid them of any crumbs. The fire in the drum dimmed at first, smothered as it was, and then flared up, its flames rising above the lip and carrying with them the acrid smell and black smoke of burning plastic. Understanding what Joe was getting at, Neil reached into his coat pocket and pulled out the pack of smokes, offering one.
"Oh! How kind of you to offer," Joe said and guffawed, tickled by his deviousness. He took the offered pack, opened it, and was in the process of pulling out one of the slender sticks of paper-wrapped tobacco when he heard it: a female voice from behind him, so close and unexpected it made him yelp and drop both pack and cigarette.
"I need to see Radi8tr. You're going to take me to him."
Neil too was caught off guard and rolled over backward off the old engine block he had been using as a seat. From the ground, he tangled his arms up in his rifle’s sling as he attempted to bring it to bear on the intruder. Joe spun around to face the speaker and accidentally stepped on the pack of smokes.
"Jesus H. Christ, lady," Joe said, struggling to draw his pistol out of his belt holster. "You scared the living shit out of me— oh!" Joe's mouth snapped shut when he recognized the speaker.
Santa Muerte.
"Wha-what are you doing here?" he stammered and raised the pistol. It was then he noticed the man step out of the shadows behind Lucy; a Republic soldier, from the looks of it, with a large war-hammer in his hands.
"I'd put that away if I were you," Lucy said coolly. In the glow of the trash fire, her decorated skull of a face looked even more sinister than usual, her floral ringed eye sockets now nothing more than two black holes, dual abysses staring into Joe's soul, daring him to do something stupid. Joe scanned the slender and athletic figure before him, gulping at the second set of arms whose hands hovered a mere inch from the handles of two wicked-looking clubs, each trimmed with sharpened flakes of super-alloy, made to look like obsidian. Joe had heard enough stories of the Shanty's Saint of Death to know that few encountered her and lived to tell the tale. Smartly, he lowered the pistol. From behind him, he could hear Neil getting back to his feet.
"Ah, ah, ah," the man with the hammer cautioned. Joe could only assume that Neil had been in the process of raising his rifle.
"Take us to see your boss, and you have my word that I will not harm you this day. We only wish to speak with Radi8tr and aren't looking for a fight."
Joe gulped again and nodded his head. This was as good of a deal as anyone could hope for, and tough guy or not, there was nothing Radi8tr could do to him that scared him more than this cyborg ghost before him.
"Oh-okay," Joe said, turning both the barrel of the pistol and the fingers of his other hand up to the cavernous ceiling high above.
"Joe!" Neil hissed.
"Shut up, Neil. They only want to talk," Joe snapped back.
"That's right," Lucy soothed, "don't be a hero, Neil." The man backed down like a rabbit before the jaguar. "Now, lead the way."
A minute later, Lucy, Jon, and the two East Side Lords were heading down a low sloping ramp into a tunnel. Even the Underground has its own underground, thought Jon as he observed the entrance. There was a sign in old English which read 'STAY CLEAR OF THE TRACKS.' Jon recalled early lessons from the Academy; these things were called subways.
The bulk of the tunnel’s entrance was blocked by a pre-Storm motor-vehicle. The word Jeep was embossed on the front of the relic. It had no tires but instead sat on small rectangles of formed concrete. More blocks, identical to the ones the Jeep rested upon, were stacked to the sides of the vehicle and formed two pillbox-style fortifications. Atop the jeep and in the pillboxes milled half a dozen gangsters. Drums bearing trash fires, just like the one Joe and Neil managed, dotted the area behind the cinder block walls and cast their light several yards past the tunnel entrance into the ruined underground city. The men saw the approach of their companions with company and called out.
"Ho there!" one man called and raised a neon battery-powered lantern. The pale blue-white light of the device cast more of a beam than the trash fires did and forced Joe and Neil to raise their hands to their brows.
"Get that blasted thing out of my eyes!" Joe called out.
"Who is that with you?" The man with the lantern asked, then, "Oh shit."
"We're here to see Radi8tr. We only want to talk," Lucy called out. Both Joe and Neil looked at her imploringly, and she nodded at them, saying, "Go on, get out of here." The two men turned and dashed into the darkness. Jon assumed that they had decided it better to try their hand among the pickers than to face their gang's leader after this episode. There was a considerable amount of mumbling from the subway entrance, and several large-caliber weapons revealed themselves and became fixed on both Jon and Lucy, yet no one fired.
Jon leaned in close and whispered to Lucy. "Do you think this will work?"
"No," Lucy said matter-of-factly.
Jon started and stared at her, incredulous.
"But this time..." She turned and looked Jon over. "This time we can take them."
Jon tightened his grip on the hammer and steeled himself for a fight. She was right. If they could take on Hoppers and Scrubbers, they could take on drug-dealing gangsters.
To their surprise, the anxious waiting came to an end when more lanterns lit up, and a small group of men appeared from around the cinder block-fortified Jeep. Jon recognized the gang leader in the center of this group.
"Well, well, well," Radi8tr said, his signature, flashy pistol already in hand. "What do we have here? I'm trying to figure out why you would come here, with only one man, and I can't wrap my mind around it. Maybe you're tired of playing lesbo to your little chica, and you want to feel a real man?" Radi8tr cupped his groin with his free hand, a gesture which prompted a round of laughs and hoots from his men.
Lucy smiled and then said, "Actually, Radi8tr, we came to buy Weaver."
The laughter stopped, and Radi8tr betrayed his confusion with a flash of a frown on his teardrop-tattooed face.
"Huh? I don't get it. You want to trip? It doesn't work on cyborg eyes, baby."
"Don't worry about what I do with it. Just sell it to me," Lucy replied and began walking towards Radi8tr and his posse. To a man, they quickly raised their weapons.
"Jumpy, are we? I am sincere. I only come to do business." Lucy continued her slow pace forward but raised all three of her hands in a conciliatory gesture.
“Oh no. You lose an arm? Playing too rough?”
Lucy said nothing.
"Okay, baby. Let's say I believe you," Radi8tr conceded and let Lucy approach. "How much you want?"
"All of it," Lucy said flatly.
Radi8tr burst into forced laughter and danced in place, waving his chrome gun around. "Now I know you fucking wit me!" Another round of laughter.
"I'm serious. I want it all, and I want it now," Lucy insisted.
Jon nervously watched the body language of the gangster, waiting for any sign that the man would spring and give the order to attack.
"And what are you offering me?" The gang leader asked, smiling and playing along.
"Your lives."
The laughter stopped.
"Man, you got big cojones, slut," Radi8tr began. "You come here, to my home, and disrespect me to my face, in front of my boys?" He stopped his prancing and stepped forward. Jon caught a glint of lamplight bounce off his pistol and tensed.
Wait, wait.
Holding it sideways, Radi8tr pressed the barrel of his gun to Lucy's temple and sneered. "Just cause you look spooky and are all jacked up, you think you are invincible? I am the boss here, bitch! I run this show! I run this town. You may be a bad little chicky, but you can't dodge a bullet that's at your head. You need to learn wha—"
There was the briefest flash of movement and Jon along with the East Side Lords all caught something moving through the air. Did someone throw something? Every eye in the area followed the blur as it sailed through the darkness. Only when it hit the ground and stopped rolling did everyone recognize it for what it was: Radi8tr's severed head.
By the time recognition clicked in the gangsters’ heads and they turned to fire, Lucy was already in action, pouncing on her prey like the jaguar she was. There was another couple of blurs and the six men that had accompanied Radi8tr past the subway entrance fell, three cut clean in half by the two Macuahuitls, one punctured through the chest by her snapping tail, and the last two exploded into red mist as Lucy's lower arm drew her BFG from her leg compartment and squeezed off a round from the hip.
Jon launched into a run, taking full advantage of the distraction Lucy had caused and slammed his hammer into the cinder block wall, sending both block and men flying backward, the wind and the fight knocked out of them. He heard three more rips of the BFG and looked up to see every man that was in the Jeep, manning the mounted guns, either slump over or disappear entirely from the hips up.
The two men who survived were brushing the dusty remains of cement blocks off of them when both Jon and Lucy appeared over them, weapons at the ready.
The Goddess Gambit Page 34
