by DJ Molles
“I can still fight!”
“You’re more of a liability than an asset.”
“That’s just your unsubstantiated opinion.”
Mala leveled her longstaff at Lux. “I can prove the validity of my opinion right now.”
Perry activated his shield and stepped in front of Mala’s longstaff. In response, she activated her shield. And Lux activated his.
Sagum took a step back from all the crackling energy fields, raising his hands. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Are you guys kidding me right now?”
Perry, all hot and bothered and ready to puff up his chest out of pure defiance, shot a glance at Sagum and saw the man’s face held not even a modicum of good humor anymore. The veins stood out around his temples, his mouth drawn down thin, his eyes disbelieving and disappointed.
Made Perry feel a little silly, actually.
“I don’t even know what to do with you right now!” Sagum suddenly shouted at them. “Would you look at yourselves? Take a bird’s eye view of what you’re doing right now! Three people that all want the same thing, too full of themselves to work together, everyone pointing weapons at each other? This is…this is…I don’t…” Sagum stammered, his hands flitting about like he was trying to seize on something, then finally clutching his head. “This is dumb,” he murmured, almost to himself. “You’re all dumb. I can’t believe you’re the ones that think you’re going to save the world. Bunch of fucking idiots. Is this the best that humanity has on their side? Really? Well, fuck it, maybe it’s better that we just die. Because this shit…Fuck it all. I can see the writing on the wall. This is just more of the same old shit.”
“Sagum,” Perry started.
“No, you shut up!” Sagum nearly screamed, his voice becoming shrill. “You got all the power! All the violence! Giver of Death and Gift of Confluence and blah blah blah. I get it! I’m powerless to stop any of you! I’m just a fucking peon! But I can talk, and that’s what I’m gonna fucking do! I’m gonna talk, and you’re gonna listen, or you’re going to have to disintegrate me!”
His flushed face paled a little bit, as though he realized that maybe he didn’t really want to bet his life on all this, but he was on a roll, Perry perceived with a sort of distant fascination. He fully intended to ride this out to whatever conclusion it came to.
Perry had to respect that.
For a few seconds, Sagum remained frozen in his current position, as though wondering if the disintegration was coming. When no one pointed their longstaff at him, he straightened and continued, slightly calmer.
“If this is the way that shit is gonna be done, then none of you are any different than the ones up in The Clouds that you claim to hate so much. You’re playing personal games with people’s lives, and you don’t seem to give a shit about the consequences. Do you still see us as peons? Are we still just pawns for you to amuse yourselves with? Because if that’s the case, then even if we do win against the Guardians—which, shit and fuckall, it doesn’t look like we’re going to if you guys keep bitching at each other like this—then we’re just going to be right back where we started. Everything we’ve worked for will be for nothing. Oh, congratulations, Humanity, you survived a complete extinction, now get back to work serving the powerful elites that don’t give a shit about you and never did.” Sagum shook his head. “Is that the future? Again? And again? It makes me feel so hopeless that I think I’d rather just let the Guardians do their job. Frankly, I’ve more respect for them at this point. At least I won’t have to hear them bicker at each other while they murder me.”
Mala spoke evenly. “You don’t actually want to die, Sagum.”
“Oh, what a poignant observation, Your Godliness! Of course I don’t want to fucking die! That’s why you got me all irritated, because you’re pretty much dooming me to it, and for no good reason! Do you think any life on this planet actually gives a shit about your petty arguments about who said what and who did what to whom at some point in time in the past when everything was completely different than it is now?” Sagum seemed to abruptly run out of words. His jaw kept moving without sound, and his face kept turning from Perry to Lux to Mala, and then back again.
Then, all of the sudden, he snapped his mouth shut and let his arms flop to his sides. “You know what? I’m not doing this right now. I don’t care. Maybe it’s best if you do all murder each other out here.” And with that, he started walking towards Karapalida, then stopped, spun around, and started back towards the skiff, shouting over his shoulder, “I’m taking the skiff! I need my equipment…and Whimsby…and…go fuck yourselves.”
Perry watched him lurch his way awkwardly back to the skiff. He turned back around, realizing he wasn’t paying attention to Mala’s longstaff at all, and she could have taken advantage of his momentary inattention. But she didn’t. They were all just standing there. Like fools.
“Right,” Perry mumbled, swallowing a lump of what tasted like shame and embarrassment. “Soooo…”
The fire had gone out of Mala’s eyes. Her longstaff was still pointed at Lux—well, at Perry, really—and her shield was still up. But her face had lost its warlike sharpness.
“I’m just gonna…” Perry smacked his lips, as though choking on the flavor of his own stupidity. He righted his longstaff, muzzle to the sky, and let his shield drop. He stood there for a moment, glancing between Lux and Mala. Then he backed away from them. “I’m just gonna…join Sagum.”
***
It’s never pleasant when all your righteous anger winds up making you look like a blowhard.
Lux stood stiffly in the cocoon of his shield, unmoving, save for his eyes that tracked Perry’s retreat until he was out of Lux’s field of vision. Then they flicked back to Mala.
It was strange. In every other encounter he’d ever had with Mala—and he checked himself on this, scrounging through his memories of their usually-combative interactions—it had always been a jousting match with both sides believing they held the moral high ground.
This was the first time Lux could recall ever being on a level playing field with Mala. No, not in strength or fighting prowess. If he were being honest, he knew that she could destroy him with minimal effort. But rather, they’d been reduced to the same plane of morality. Neither able to look down on the other.
Lux couldn’t decide whether he found it refreshing or disconcerting.
“Well, Mala,” he said, feeling a little resigned now. “What will it be?”
She pursed her lips, letting the muzzle of her longstaff sag a few inches. “I’m going to have to kill you.”
Lux fully expected her to launch a sudden assault, and was disappointed in himself that all he did was tense up and wait for it.
But instead, she held up a finger. “If…you fuck me over.”
The caveat didn’t relax him. But Mala seemed to think that enough had been said, because she extinguished her shield, plopped her longstaff on her shoulder and turned to walk away.
“Can I get a definition of what fucking you over exactly entails?” Lux asked her back.
“You know,” she replied, not looking back.
“Actually, I don’t,” Lux said. “I would still like some clarity on this.”
But she did not provide him any clarity.
She did, however, wave her hand at the lines of legionnaires. “Stand down,” she called to them. “Inquisitor Lux and his praetors are coming in.”
***
“What do you think they said to each other?” Sagum asked, standing on the skiff with his hands on his hips, his expression not quite calmed down from all his outrage.
Perry, standing beside him and watching Lux and Mala turn and walk away from each other, shook his head. “I can’t even guess.” He looked at Sagum with a small smirk. “Once again, you turn out to be the smartest person in the group. Who’d’ve thought?”
Sagum rolled his eyes and looked at Whimsby, who was sitting there where he’d been sitting since he was switched back on, a blankly obsequious
look on his face. Sagum’s eyes crunched up in the corners and he said exactly what Perry was thinking.
“He looks like all the other mechs now.”
Whimsby stirred, detecting that he was being spoken about. “Well, Master Sagum, I am a mechanical man.”
“You didn’t used to be,” Perry observed, quietly.
Whimsby quirked his head and frowned. “That’s impossible, Master Perry. I am a mechanical man now. It stands to reason I could not have been anything else in any time in the past.”
“You were a man,” Perry sighed. “A real man. You spoke for yourself, and you thought for yourself. Yes, your innards were all mechanical, but you weren’t like the others. You were different.”
“Strange,” Whimsby said. “Perhaps my core processor had been corrupted even prior to being shot.”
Perry shook his head. “Bren suggested that to you once. You told him that you’d run diagnostics and everything was fine.”
Whimsby simply shrugged. “If you say so, sir.”
Perry turned his attention to Lux as he vaulted aboard. The paladin had a deep scowl across his face, as though buried in his thoughts, and he didn’t look directly at any of them, but instead turned and looked back out towards Karapalida, and the lines of legionnaires tromping their way behind Mala. He muttered something under his breath that Perry didn’t catch.
“So,” Perry raised an eyebrow. “How are things?”
Lux twitched. Looked at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, are we still going to have to force our way into Karapalida? Or has Mala decided not to kill you?”
“No,” Lux said, hollowly. “She’s still going to kill me.”
Perry felt a little droopy at that. “Oh.”
“But only if I fuck her over. Whatever that’s supposed to mean.”
Perry perked back up. “Wait. So she’s letting us in?”
Lux didn’t immediately answer. “She failed to give me any clear parameters on what fucking her over meant.”
“Well, you know her better than the rest of us.”
“That’s what worries me.”
“Just…” Perry considered it for a moment, seeing the distant figure in her black battle uniform, shimmering in the mirage rolling up from the dusty ground. “If you think she might perceive something as fucking her over, then just…don’t do that thing.”
“Excuse me, sirs,” Whimsby’s voice chirruped, all pleasant and servile.
“What is it, Whimsby?” Perry looked at the mech. With his back to Karapalida, he was staring out into the east.
“There appear to be four objects in the distance. Are you expecting any more of your friends?”
Perry’s heart did a pleasant little jump as he turned and squinted in that direction, thinking about Teran possibly returning with Outsiders to lend a hand to their efforts. Well, today was shaping up to be…
Wait.
Perry frowned. East was the wrong direction. Teran had gone south to meet the Outsiders. And he couldn’t see anything in the east anyways.
“Oh, you won’t be able to see them, sir,” Whimsby noted. “Although they should be coming into human visual range within the next few seconds.”
What was that? A string of tiny specks dancing on the horizon?
“Whimsby,” Perry said, not sure whether to still feel positive, or to start being worried. “Can you describe what you’re looking at?”
“Of course, sir. It appears to be four, copper-colored metal balls, approximately two meters in diameter, and hovering about two meters above the ground, flying in a direction and at a speed that should put them reaching Karapalida within the next twenty-seven minutes.”
Perry wasn’t sure what string of expletives exploded out of him for the next two seconds, but in that time he’d taken Lux by the arm and shoved him towards the skiff controls. “Fly this thing!” Then he cupped his hands over his mouth and screamed at the top of his lungs to the skiffs full of praetors hovering adjacent to them. “Get into the city! Guardians incoming!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
GUARDIANS
Hauten’s buggy roared through the disastrous streets of Karapalida, the sound of its drivetrain nearly drowned out by the screaming of the loudspeakers. Stuber clung to the rollbar, standing with his rifle in his hand, unwilling to sit.
“Gods!” Hauten yelled over the din of the klaxons. “Can’t they shut that shit off?”
Stuber didn’t bother to answer him. He hadn’t even been aware that the loudspeakers in this place were still working—the jumbotron in the New Section had been destroyed—but the ear-piercing shriek was evidence enough that Legatus Mordicus had gotten them working, and he was glad for it.
He was glad for the rifle in his hands. He was glad to be moving towards peril, even as he was starting to experience something he’d only got a whiff of when he’d charged into Oksidado: Terror, not for himself, but for someone he loved.
It was a strange dichotomy to suddenly be thrust into: Another fight, which was wonderful and beautiful in its own hectic way—it went straight down into the core of him, and the klaxons seemed to be screaming, “This is what you do! This is what you were made for!”
But never before had he entered into a fight knowing that Petra was in direct and imminent danger with him.
It clouded his mind. Competing emotions. Guilt, because there was an illogical part of him that kept thinking, You wanted this! You asked for this! And now the universe has given it to you, and you’re going to have to face the very real possibility that because of it you’re going to lose Petra—
No. Such a thing couldn’t be considered.
And he wouldn’t be losing shit. Because he would die first before he let anything bad happen to her.
It was all very much out of his control, but you have to tell yourself little lies sometimes to keep your head in the game.
The buggy hit a pile of debris, jumping and swerving as it did. The crates of ammunition between Stuber’s planted boots shifted, hitting his ankles. But he didn’t care. He needed to be in the temple complex right fucking now.
“Go faster, you fat bastard!” Stuber bellowed at the back of Hauten’s head.
“This is as fast as it goes!” Hauten roared back. He swerved to avoid a woman that just stood there on the side of the road like she couldn’t decide whether or not she’d rather be disintegrated by Guardians or turned to mush by a passing vehicle. “My other buggy could go faster, but you killed it!”
“Fuck your other buggy!” Stuber yelled, though he wished he was in it right now—Hauten was right, it had been much faster. “You get me to the fucking temple or I’m going to start shooting through the back of your head!”
“That’s not gonna make it go any faster!”
It was a needless argument, but needless arguments often go hand in hand with high tensions. The temple spire loomed up to their left, and the next thing Stuber knew he was holding on to keep himself from flying out of the vehicle as Hauten yanked it into an unbelievably tight turn.
No room in this little alley. The walls were just a foot or so from the sides of the tires. The expanse of the temple square opened up ahead of them. A small barricade of trash went up in a gout of refuse as the buggy’s brushguard slammed through it.
Stuber ducked to avoid an empty tin can that flew by his head. While he was already ducked, he swooped up under the rollbar, ready to un-ass the vehicle the second it stopped. The walls of the alley skimmed by, close enough that it seemed he could feel it scraping his beard.
The temple square was madness unleashed. Peons running pell-mell. Legionnaires trying to barge their way through the tide of humanity, pushing the components of the autoturrets, screaming at anyone in the way, shouting at their comrades, using their shields to buffer men, women, and children out of their path.
The buggy screeched a stop, nearly running one of the squads of legionnaires over. They hollered something, but Stuber wasn’t listening. He swung under
the rollbars. Boots hit the ground. Rifle held at a high ready, he stabbed a finger at one of the legionnaires that was looking at him.
“You! Get this fucking ammo out of the buggy!”
The legionnaire didn’t hestitate—“ammo” was a compelling word. He and three of his squadmates charged forward, swarming the buggy.
“Be gentle with her, you brutes!” Hauten called out indignantly as he scrambled out.
They were not gentle. They stormed the cargo area that Stuber had just relinquished, hefting the crates of ammunition, bashing the new paint from the rollbars as they hurtled the crates out.
“Is this it?” one of the legionnaires yelled at Stuber—a decanus by the looks of him.
“Five thousand rounds is all we had time for,” Stuber answered, eyes already scanning the temple square, though he knew Petra wouldn’t be in the middle of the mad rush.
“Fuckall,” the decanus griped. “That’ll last for about one fucking minute!”
“It’s better than nothing,” Stuber snapped. “And be ready to clear jams—some of these rounds are wonky as fuck.”
Copper billet slugs. Unbalanced. No conical shape to help them feed smoothly. The gods only knew where the things would strike, if they even managed to feed.
That was a problem for the legionnaires running the autoturrets. Which, in all likelihood, wouldn’t be quite so auto as they were used to. But a few minutes of inaccurate fire was better than no fire at all.
Stuber figured the legionnaires didn’t need him micromanaging them, and he had better things to be doing with himself. He needed to get his body in the proximity of Petra, and he needed to get her in a place with some good ballistic protection. Someplace where the Guardians would struggle to get to them. Someplace with a quick exit if shit got too spicy.
As he charged towards the steps of the temple, he spotted a break in the crowds of people, and beyond it, the shapes of skiffs on the far side of the square that hadn’t been there before.