The Dry Earth (Book 2): The Nexus

by Orion, W. J.

  “We have formula back at the tower,” Caleb said. “Most of it is out of date, but still sealed. I’m sure it’s good. I’ll have a courier run up what we can spare ASAP. We also have a few babies of our own. I’m sure one of the moms would offer any spare breast milk they have.”

  “That’s a kind gesture, thank you. I, uh, say this because we need help, and your messenger back there seems to be offering us quite a bit of it, and at a time we need it. I play tough, but we’re in a bad way. Is this for real? Tell me straight.”

  “What’d she promise you?”

  “Four vehicles, some fuel. Free passes to go to your Monolith building and set up shop. That failing, some place called Shantytown.”

  “Done. Whatever the Baroness says is rule and law with me.”

  “The Baroness? She’s your daughter?” the Teacher asked.

  “Closest thing I’ll ever have to one. She’s my sister’s kid.”

  “You must be proud,” she said, adding a genuine smile.

  And kaboom. I’m attracted to this woman. “You have no idea. She’s… she’s special. She’s gonna change the world. If we can get that ship, she’s gonna change the galaxy. Maybe the universe.”

  “I can see your blush in the dark. You’re very proud of her.”

  “One cheek is for her; the other cheek is for you.”

  “Oh my,” she said, and Caleb watched her work up a blush to match his. “So forward.”

  “Only way I know, Miss Teacher.”

  “Mr. Baron….” She said, feigning modesty and discomfort. The whole time she grinned.

  “I know. Handsome and clever too. And with the extremely limited choices available to women in this world, I am such a catch,” he winked.

  “You’re trying to distract me.”

  “I’m trying to woo you; distraction is a side effect. …I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be hitting on you like this. I don’t want to give you the impression that this deal hinges on whether or not we hook up. I apologize. Back to business? I can be sexually inappropriate at a later date, unrelated to this deal, if you give me the green light.”

  “Promises, promises.”

  “You’ll find I keep my promises.”

  “We’ll see. Where were we?”

  “My niece extended you an open invite to the tower or to Shantytown. I can confirm the tower, and she can speak for Shant. She’s beloved there. Like a mascot that kills crabs.”

  “That video… it’s real?”

  “She showed you the one on her phone?”

  “She did.”

  “It’s real,” Caleb said. “I was there. Ain’t no way to fake ‘em anymore anyhow. She whacked that one at the school, and we got back to Shant in time with Trey when it came back for her and we did work. Took down three more. Hunter-killer crabs. Crabs that hunt other crabs.”

  “Call me skeptical about your Rambo crab story. Everything she said sounded frankly insane. Psychic electric squids? Spaceship battles to get our water back? A third kind of alien? It’s the ranting and raving of a kid who stays up too late watching Netflix.”

  “Well, she’s never watched Netflix, and never will. Whatever she told you, it’s the truth. Believe me, I fought against it too but it’s all true. It’s been a pretty crazy run.”

  She narrowed her eyes and surveyed Caleb. Haven’t had a woman look at me like that for years. Actually… makes me uncomfortable. My worth doesn’t need assessing. Not anymore.

  “My scrutiny makes you uncomfortable.”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “Sure is. Like a wart on a witch’s nose. Says a little bit about you. Okay. Okay. We’re gonna talk in circles about this all night, half because I like the conversation partner, and half because I have a thousand questions I think you have some of the answers to.”

  “I’m glad you enjoy the company.”

  “Me too. Look… Yasmine said something I thought was… well, naïve. She said you’re the good guys, like this is some superhero story. Tell me, are you the good guys?”

  She would say that. “I told her I’m not the hero of this story, and that’s the truth. If there is a hero, it’s her. But you know what? Everyone is someone’s bad guy.”

  “Well spoken, for a fireman.”

  “I’m well read. So what now, Miss Teacher?”

  “I convince my people this is the grand opportunity we’ve been holding out for. I’ll think on it tonight and make my pitch in the morning over the dead bugs and lizards we call breakfast,” she said with a sigh.

  “Living the dream.”

  “Living, Baron. Living. Dreams are something people might have in the future, but they’re not for us. Not for our generation. Not anymore.”

  “What’s your real name?” Caleb asked her. Please tell me. I really want to know. “I’m Caleb. Ring.”

  “Sophia Bainbridge. I prefer Sophie,” she said, then added a whimsical laugh. “I, uh, told your niece I’d forgotten my name. I feel like an asshole for lying now.”

  “I have that feeling with her all the time,” Caleb said. “You get used to it, and she always finds a way to forgive me. And if there’s anyone that needs endless second chances, it’s me.”

  “Hope she’s saving some forgiveness for me, too. Caleb, I think we’re going to get along. Green light.”

  Green light. I think she likes me. “We’ll definitely get along. Mostly, yeah. We’ll still have our fights like most couples, but we’ll work it out, and raise beautiful children. In the end, people will sing songs of our love.”

  “I humbly request that if we can get Cypress Hill to rap about our love, I’d like that.”

  “You know my sister listened to a lot of them,” Caleb said.

  “I know that now.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The Handoff (Sans User’s Manual)

  “It’s the same kind of ship that bastard blew the top of my building up with,” Caleb said.

  “Yeah,” Yaz replied.

  Cut into the peak of the arid, bleak ridge pinpricked with wind turbines that spun in lazy circles was a gully of rocks. Sitting inside that gully was the muted iridescent carcass of a crab ship. Purple, pink, and metallic all at once it trailed nine of the engine-tipped cylindrical tentacles out of its aft. Where it didn’t shimmer and mesmerize, the hull was cracked and dented.

  Flanking the ravine’s upper ledges on all sides were several lean-tos and a few nylon tents that the group sheltered in. Fire pits smoldered in the daylight in all directions, and boxes and bags were strewn all about. Large wooden cases of supplies were stacked up, and dirt was piled up to provide places to take cover in the event of a fight. The place had the look of a firebase deep inside a pre-crab warzone, not one of a community.

  “That means it has solid weaponry,” he continued at her side.

  “Yeah,” she said, her voice curt.

  “You’re being salty,” he said to her. “What’s up?”

  “Last night. Teacher asked me to leave. You went with it. Not a moment of support for me to stay. That hurt. I deserved to be a part of that conversation.”

  “Yeah. Hey kid, you’re probably right. I just went with it, like you said. She wanted me alone, and I wanted to do whatever it took to get that trade going our way. I had my eyes fixed on putting you with my machine gun, and locking this ship trade down. I’m sorry. Next time, if it ever happens again, you’ll have my support completely.”

  “Thank you,” Yaz said. I hope he’s telling the truth. “There aren’t that many in this group. Fifteen? Twenty?”

  “If you count the triplets there are twenty-two. Antonio, Miles, get over here,” he called out to the two misfits they had picked up on the journey to the peninsula. “Stay close. Watch my back. Don’t be touching other people’s stuff.”

  They nodded with considerable nervousness and stuck to his back. He gave them the stink eye when they got too close and they backed off, giving him a few feet of space.

  “Where’s the Teacher?” Ya
z asked.

  “Down the hill checking on the other three vehicles we’re giving them. They got a guy who was a mechanic before the war. She’s doing her due diligence.”

  “You like her,” Yaz said as she stepped up on a rocky ledge to get a better look at the crashed ship.

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “With her eyes, it’d be hard not to get a little excited,” she teased. “Ohhh, you’re blushing. I’m sorry, this is awkward. I thought you were all construction nails, wood smoke, and bitterness.”

  “I have a gentle, soft side too,” he replied. “Smells like Juniper Breeze lotion. And yeah. Wowzas on those peepers. Bright enough to light the night. I see why she has a following. I’d follow her.”

  “I’m a fragile teenager, creepy Uncle Caleb. Exciting ship though. Down there in the ravine. I hope Trey can fix it, like he says.”

  “He’s come through for us ten times out of ten,” Caleb said. “No reason to expect any different now.”

  The two of them (plus Antonio and Miles) smiled at the small number of the Teacher’s people gathered around. Some peered out of thin, torn tent flaps, others stood proud, weapons in hand, watching them as they assessed the crashed ship. All were dirty and rail thin. Their eyes were fatigued in a way Yasmine had never seen.

  “Hey, you,” Yaz called out to a middle aged, balding Asian man of medium height. He wore stained jeans and a black leather biker vest over a thin dress shirt that used to be white. He had a pump shotgun draped across his forearms.

  “Yeah?” he yelled back.

  “How’d you shoot this thing down? Were you there that day?”

  “I shot it down myself,” he said, puffing his chest out in pride.

  “How?” her uncle asked.

  “They flew in the same way every time they landed. We watched them from our original camp a few miles out the peninsula. Same flight path every time, arrogant dicks. Slow, like a bumblebee. We had a stash of heavy weapons from way back we’d been sitting on, and three of us climbed up these here towers, and when they flew past one morning, we took our shot.”

  “Hit one of the engines,” Yaz said.

  “Crap luck,” he admitted. “But we had three shots at it, and mine was the one. Fat squid-shaped bastard went down right there, and the turbine parts fell on it. They got out on foot. Took out one on the ground, but the rest slipped down the hill like worms in the mud. We lost eight people in that fight. A third of us. Bastards.”

  “What kind of weapons did you use?”

  “Anti-tank rocket brought it down,” he answered. “Big enough.”

  “Praise gunpowder,” Caleb said. “You need a job? I’m always hiring for guys like you.”

  “Maybe. I hear we’re relocating to your backyard. You’re really gonna fly this? Teacher says you’re gonna take the fight to outer space. That true?”

  “Sure is,” Yaz answered. Here we go. Same story over and over.

  “How you gonna fly it? We tried to get the thing going but couldn’t even get the lights inside to turn on. It’s all weird in there. Tiny tubes running all over the place, fish tanks. Hardly nothing human-seeming at all in there.”

  “Crabs power their own tech. Their bodies make electricity like those eels in the oceans used to, but on a larger scale. Their stuff won’t run for anyone but them.”

  “You run with crabs?” he asked, his hand dropping closer to the grip on his shotgun. “You crab lovers, like those bastards down in Sturgeon Bay?”

  “Not all crabs are bad,” Yaz said. “And I’m getting sick of explaining that. We linked up with a few of the good ones, and they’re going to help us, and we’re going to help them. Scowl all you want, but that’s how this ends. Humans and good crabs working together to overthrow the bad ones.”

  “You’re traitors to the human race,” he added as he grabbed the grip of the shotgun.

  Caleb’s hand drifted down to the large pistol on his hip, but Yaz put her hand out and her uncle stopped. Antonio and Miles moved away from them, putting space between them and a potential gunfight.

  “You study history? You remember World War Two?” she asked him.

  “I remember learning about it. Has nothing to do with this.”

  “It has everything to do with this,” she countered. “Many Germans hated Hitler. German groups worked behind the scenes to screw with the Nazis, and the Allies helped those groups. History is filled with examples of people cooperating with a fragment of the enemy to weaken the greater enemy whole. We can’t fight the crabs head on and hope to save this world. We already lost that war. You want to hate us for finding allies amongst the crabs, then go right ahead. Drink that haterade. But remember: someone has to try something new, because what we’ve been doing for thirteen years hasn’t netted us a damn thing.”

  “I….” he muttered.

  “I ain’t happy about it,” her uncle added. “But I’m learning to get right with Jesus over it, every time we smash a bad crab, or get something good that’ll help us make a real difference.”

  The man turned away without another word, and wandered back to the shelters his people lived in.

  “I’m still hiring!” Caleb yelled out to him.

  “That was tense,” a woman’s voice said nearby.

  Yaz and her uncle turned. The speaker was Michelle, the other refugee they’d absorbed on the road.

  “I thought you stayed behind to take care of your brother,” Yaz said.

  “Changed my mind. Didn’t want to miss out on our big moment.”

  “Me either,” another female voice said.

  “Miss Teacher,” her uncle said, his voice about two octaves higher than usual. He almost jumped out of his pants, too. “All checked out with the convoy?”

  “Missing three sets of fuzzy dice on the mirrors, but I’m willing to overlook that issue if you leave us a few gallons of water to drink,” she said. “On our drive south.”

  Yaz literally leapt for joy. She clapped her hands several times on the way up and down too, just to hammer her joy home. Her uncle grinned.

  “We would like a map though. Or a guide if you have a few people who need to head south.”

  “Antonio, Miles,” Caleb called out. The two came back over.

  “Yeah?” Miles asked.

  “You two want to do me a solid? Get in my good graces and join the team officially?”

  “Hell yeah,” Miles said.

  “Oh, you know it,” Antonio added.

  “Head back to the tower with Teacher and her class. Deliver a message to Mikey, my main man. It’s a favor I won’t forget, understand?”

  They nearly died with glee over being tasked by their hero. The two men retreated away, planning their return route and high fiving each other repeatedly.

  “What do you need from us before we leave?” Teacher asked them. “I don’t have the manual for it. Never could find the glove box.”

  “You know what kind of weapons you used to shoot them down?” Caleb asked.

  “We should have the crate we used around here. I can lead you to it.”

  “I’ll take it, thanks.” He seemed pleased with that.

  “When are you planning on leaving?” Yaz asked her.

  “A few hours. The more driving we can do in the daylight, the better,” she answered.

  “And the more work we can do on this ship,” Yaz said back.

  “That is correct. Mr. Baron, if you’re not busy, I’ll show you to that crate.”

  “Never too busy for my favorite teacher,” he said with a smile, and the two walked off to find the box that used to contain the weapons that shot the ship down.

  As the Teacher promised, she and her class were gone from the hill within two hours. Caleb lingered with his goodbye to her, and they both seemed very sad to part ways with each other.

  Yaz liked that.

  Not long after the Teacher’s departure Trey stood on the same rocky ledge, looking down on the crashed ship in his multi-legged, dirty white cha
ssis. His survey lasers buzzed over the crash, and he moved left and right, allowing the laser beams to hit the entire wreck. Surrounding the lip of the ravine were the six other crabs, moving now with life. Trey had shared some of his rations with them, and in the few hours since that, the crabs had blossomed back into life.

  Watching them move about on all their armored legs, with their tentacles swaying back and forth, was still unnerving to all around, but this was their reality now. Crabs would always be around now. Get used to it or get out of it.

  “How bad?” Yaz asked him.

  “Queso.”

  “What? Cheese?”

  He sighed with his speaker. “No, just a language glitch. I don’t understand fully what this chassis is telling me, beyond a repair manifest. Fortunately, this chassis has state of the art nanites that can do all the work required, we just need raw materials for them to work with.”

  “Nanites? Little robots?”

  “Organic robots we grow, but they work essentially the same. They repaired this suit from the battle in Shant after I cannibalized some of the fallen crab’s armor.”

  “Wow. What kind of raw materials do you need?” she asked.

  “Crab tech is best, but we can make do with most anything. The less suitable the material, the longer the nanites will need to make the repairs.”

  “Timeframe?”

  Trey’s speaker let slip a sigh. “Four days if it goes well. Ten to twenty if doesn’t. That’s just a guess. I don’t fully understand what this suit is capable of. Not yet at least. I’m getting there.”

  “Where do we start?” she asked him.

  “Get inside and salvage the rations onboard so the other crabs don’t starve. Then start searching for anything made by crabs and start a collection. The Sturgeon Bay crabs undoubtedly can spare parts they can give us to get started. When you’re done with that, start grabbing whatever electronics or machinery stuff you can find from the vicinity, and we’ll see what we can do with it.”

  “This is exciting,” Yaz said.

  “You mean terrifying,” Trey corrected her. “At any moment when we get into space my repairs could fail, and we could vent our water and atmosphere into the void and die of asphyxiation or exposure.”