by Greg Hanks
The foyer was their staging ground. Farin stood by the metal cage of the elevator, her face hard to read. Baggy eyes that didn’t linger. Prompt movements with no actual duty. Rain heaved two black containers full of resources next to the elevator. Piers carried two Khor’Zon rifles, knife-like and scoped, over to the elevator, standing them upright against the cage. His son, Roland, followed with a tray of two long-nosed pistols. When he saw V’delle, his face was taken with rapture.
“Papa says I’m old enough to help,” he said, rushing across the foyer to the requisition closets, his face ironed to V’delle’s, “I’m getting grenades!”
“Grab a set of four, okay?” she called to him off-handedly, looking at Piers.
He approached her like a father to his college-bound daughter. “You look ready.”
“I feel good. Don’t tell Roland those grenades aren’t even activated yet.”
He smiled as they watched the boy take his steps carefully, carrying a tray of metal balls attached to a belt.
“He likes you,” Piers said quietly.
“Oh, I’m well-aware of that. Where’s Rosalie?”
“She’ll be along, but she wanted me to give you these.” He held out three nondescript packets of a squishy substance. “Hayla and Rosalie prepared it. A medicinal salve. Much like what the Khor’Zon use.”
“Thanks,” she said, taking the packets and putting them in her shell.
“Do you have the route memorized?”
“Almost. Pretty much. Yeah.”
Piers smiled, his eyes searching her. “Please be careful. Don’t shoot any deer.”
She almost said something about being glad not having to save his ass again, but her throat wouldn’t let her. She accepted his embrace.
“Keep an eye on Maora, okay?” she told him in a whisper.
He nodded and stepped back to let Rain approach.
“My little girl,” Rain said, “all grown up and just glowing.”
“Have you planned out all your kids’ songs and nap times yet?”
“I’m gonna miss you, Miss Attitude.”
“I’m sure you’ll have plenty of time thinking about me while you and Farin—”
“Farin!” Rain called. “C’mere, V’delle wants us to show her our love for each other. C’mon, hurry.”
By the elevator a few yards away, Farin’s eyes went creepy wide. “I’ve been saving up plenty of saliva.”
V’delle turned back to Rain. “Just keep this place running, all right?” Her eyes graced Breckenridge’s office.
“I know, V’delle,” Rain said. “Don’t worry about the problems here. Just find more people.”
“Will do.”
They clasped hands.
“Oh,” V’delle said, backing away, “tell Rhapsi to make more of those cloaks.”
“She’s gonna love that,” he said sarcastically. “I’ll put in an order.”
“Well?” Balien asked V’delle, standing inside the elevator. He looked tense and almost irritated. “Is it time?”
“Coming,” she said.
V’delle approached Farin. Looks of exhausted trust. Eyes of fearful hopefulness.
“I’m glad one of us isn’t storming off this time,” Farin said.
“Doesn’t feel as good,” V’delle said.
“Bring back an army. Or honestly like five people would help.”
V’delle nodded. Their embrace was slow, but powerful. A kinship, a sisterly pact.
“Here,” Farin said, handing V’delle a black, thumb-sized communicator.
“These are from the Outpost raid last month,” V’delle commented, handling the device. “They’re working?”
Farin nodded. “There are thirty-six channels. I’ll be on twelve. Breckenridge on one, obviously.” She gave a glazed look of annoyance. “Not many people use it right now. But we’ll be able to talk.”
V’delle put the communicator in her shell and smiled. “Now it’ll be like I never left. How boring.”
Farin skewed her face upon inspection of the shell pack.
“Your cloak,” she said.
V’delle sighed. “Damn it, you’re so nosy. It was going to be this big thing where you found it under your pillow. Now you ruined it.”
“V’delle, Rhapsi has others she can give me,” Farin said, smiling at the joke, but it was crimped.
“You’ll need all you can get if something happens here. I won’t need it. I don’t need to hide this time.”
“V’delle, seriously, please—”
“Ruining it,” V’delle said, as another voice echoed into the foyer. Everyone turned as it became painfully recognizable.
Ketterhagan shuffled into the foyer holding the pair of metal baseballs Farin had seen at the base of his desk.
“I cannot believe you were going to leave without saying goodbye!” he said, out of breath. “We share a special journey together, escape near death together, fend off renegades together, and now it’s come to this?”
“Sorry, old man,” V’delle said. “I didn’t want to bother you. You’re always working on something in that room of yours.”
“Indeed! Making these.” He held out the spheres.
She was skeptical. “Er—what are they?”
“An electromagnetic pulse bomb.” He saw her grimace. “No, no, no, not a ‘boom’ bomb. It only sends a shockwave outward. These will disable an entire Outpost. Only use it if you’ve run out of options. Press the top button and it will detonate in five seconds.”
“An entire Outpost?” V’delle said incredulously. “You’re just now giving us this?”
“They take a lot of time, and we don’t have a lot of resources. But I thought you might need them on your new adventure. Five seconds, V’delle.”
“Okay, I got it,” V’delle said, giving him an uncertain glance and taking one of the spheres. “Thanks, Ketterhagan.”
“What, no hug?”
“Take a shower first.”
Ketterhagan lifted an arm to smell. He quietly composed himself. “Fair. Fair, indeed.”
“Wait,” she began, “didn’t you want to speak with me before? Sorry, I forgot.”
“No. Not that I can recall.” He gave her a cheek-to-cheek lip smile.
She lingered for a moment, then took the second EMP and brought them both to the elevator. There was enough room to fit the devices into their shells. She joined Balien in the cage and tried to deflect her inner hesitation. “See you all soon.”
“Nutrients, V’delle!” Ketterhagan called. “I always tell you—nutrients!”
V’delle stared at the old man but didn’t say anything. His jovial face slowly melted into one of suspicious silence, and they both shared a knowing connection. V’delle looked at Farin.
“Watch him,” she said.
Farin nodded, her hand around one of the elevator’s metal struts. “Radio me.”
The elevator jolted and begun its ascent.
“Don’t forget the bike is kick-started,” Rain called out.
Balien furrowed his brow and looked at V’delle. “What bike?”
V’delle smiled. “You didn’t think we were gonna walk all those 700 miles, did you?”
Soon the walls of the shaft cut off the foyer, and V’delle was left alone with Balien. Quietness in the form of a screeching, cyclical mechanism. V’delle’s blood started flowing evenly. No anxiety, no pressure. Only the inhalation before duty. The calm before bloodshed.
Rain’s carefully designed route brought V’delle and Balien under the bridge whereupon Seen’ai had slammed V’delle into a car three months ago, through picket fences and storefronts, down gullies and alleys until the thickness of the inner city started to fade. A mile from the mine’s entrance, the suburbs sprouted, little one-stories gapped by apartments all smashed together. Unfortunately, Rain’s route couldn’t provide air coverage from passing drones, as the suburban streets garnished wide streets, dense lawns, and sprawling brush fields fenced-in by rotting posts and tang
led barbed wire.
V’delle tapped briskly along the sidewalk of a mile-long avenue. Balien strode easily behind, his steps nearly twice hers.
“So nice not to be encumbered by night vision goggles,” Balien said, facetiously. “No chance of drones out here then?”
V’delle stepped through a puddle. “We’ve got ID’s this time that won’t give drones a heart attack.”
She careened into an open gate of a squat home with black shutters and white siding. Up the cracked concrete steps, around the side, to a backyard with a rusty storage shed made from cheap metal.
“Why he chose this place . . .” she mumbled.
She pulled the rickety door. Two red dirt bikes surrounded by old cans of gasoline and shelves of pre-war tools and scraps.
“A motorcycle,” Balien said, relieved.
“What’d you think it was?”
“No, it is just . . . it is nothing.”
“You actually thought I meant bicycle, didn’t you?”
“Well, if you humans were not so vague all the time . . .”
V’delle laughed a little as she pushed through some trash to get to the bike. The motorcycle looked like a clunker, but Rain had tested it a few weeks ago. It had a full tank of gasoline, courtesy of Ketterhagan’s garbage-fed fuel machine. The entire place smelled like rubber and old gas. She carefully led one of the bikes through the doors and immediately sat on it to make sure everything looked and felt right. The motorcycle could seat two humans, though how comfortably was the real question. It wasn’t a slim racing model, but a hybrid version somewhere between a traditional road bike and a dirt bike. It maintained a certain finesse and agility while supposedly ensuring long, pleasant rides. The handlebars sat low on the front, and the shocks were thick, capable of keeping its riders from turning to liquid from the vibrations. The wheels were larger than normal, Rain having fitted new ones to better accommodate the harsh post-invasion roads that V’delle and Balien would be traversing. The faded red decal on the body kit was V’delle’s favorite part; she called the bike “Dry Blood” as a term of endearment.
She waved to Balien, her eyes still glued to the handlebar mechanics. “Can you grab the other cans of fuel and put them in the side things?”
Balien went inside and grabbed the cans. He closed the sliding door before returning. “Side things?”
V’delle kicked the starter and the bike roared to life. She turned around and pointed to the black holsters on each side of the back tire. “Fit them inside these. There are two helmets in there too.”
He lumbered without complaint, snatching the two black helmets and tossing one to her.
“That one’s a large, I made sure,” V’delle said, waiting to watch him try on the helmet.
“Er . . . you know, maybe just drive slower?”
“Try it on.”
Balien inhaled and placed the rim of the helmet’s opening on his crown. “You’re lucky I’m not purebred.” He forced the thing onto his head. It went down without a fight.
V’delle tried to keep from smiling but seeing a Khor’Zon in his armor with a traditional human motorcycle helmet was hard to deflect. “Stunning.”
Balien grimaced at what was left of the single-seat. “This will never end, will it?”
“There’s handlebars,” V’delle said flippantly.
Balien looked at the rear of the bike. Two sets of handlebars stuck out from underneath the fender. “Great. This will fix everything.”
“Look, this is the best we can do. It’s fast and easy on fuel. It’s not comfortable for me either.”
“It might be better if I drove—”
“Uh-uh. Not gonna happen. Get on, Neutrino.”
“What?”
“Some stupid word Ketterhagan told me. Since you’re neutral, I figured it suited you.”
“I did not realize we were at the nickname level of friendship.”
“We’re not.”
Balien scoffed and maneuvered his way onto the seat. A minute went by. Scrunching. Adjusting. He paused. Another shift.
“Are you done?” V’delle breathed.
He shuffled once more. “Yes.”
“Those handlebars will be your obsession this trip. We’re definitely not at the level of friendship where you touch me. Got it?”
“Whatever you say, Mat.”
“Did you just call me a mutt?”
“If we are using nicknames—it is something I saw everywhere in Aeternis. The island’s previous inhabitants had it on signs and buildings. Sometimes there were pictures of food next to it.” He started chuckling at his own words. “A hot dog.”
“You are terrible at this.”
“Is that not what they call them?”
She cranked the handle. The motorcycle boosted from the backyard and bounced down the front lawn through the gate. When it hit fresh pavement, they sped down the long street with Balien hanging by his fingernails. V’delle maneuvered through the suburbs from memory and the highway ramp came quickly. She revved the engine up the incline. They crested to a forever-lane flanked by a gorgeous green landscape and mostly intact telephone poles.
They were flying at eighty miles-per-hour down the fissured highway without sign of life or structure. Intermittent walls of tree and grass and ghost towns on either side. It seemed as if this little motorcycle was the only thing moving for hundreds of miles. V’delle wasn’t surprised—it was the reason they’d chosen this route in the first place. They would come to larger cracks in the road and have to slow down, and sometimes for long stretches there would be mazes of crevices that needed a skillful turn to avoid. V’delle was growing frustrated during one of these mazes and tried to boost her way through a small gap. The bike hopped the crack, landed off-balance, and almost spun out from under them. She regained control quickly, but her entire body was on fire, her arms and legs stiff like cinder blocks. She swore she heard a chuckle behind her.
An hour passed. V’delle had become numb to the constant whine of the engine. Her eyes were strained beyond relief, trying to focus on both the irregular road and the overcast sky. At any minute, a drone or a dropship could fly overhead. Preen’ch could spring a trap down the highway. Robot dogs could hop from the cover of the brush and stick their paws into the spokes. Everything could end in a moment, but she kept going, kept the handlebars steady, kept an eye on the fuel gauge, and tracked Balien through his movements and the side mirrors. Then again, they were Preen’ch and Khor’Zon. Fresh, working ID’s. A welcome reminder. They’d be stopped before being killed, at least.
An old gas station appeared on the horizon, tarnished sedans around the building like barnacles. Three great columns held up the roof of the pumping stations, pieces of its underbelly hanging down like the chads of notebook paper. Washed out browns and rusted orange crusts. A small convenience store detached from the pumps was in shambles and porous. V’delle heard something whistle through the air. She put pressure on the brake.
A rocket struck the side of the gas station. Pieces of brick flew. Dust surged across the street. Shouts dotted the fields. V’delle pulled the bike to the side of the road, killed the engine, and laid it in the tall grass. She and Balien crouched in the brush, flinging their motorcycle helmets from their heads, their bodies still aflame from wind shear.
“Follow me,” V’delle said. “We don’t engage until we know what’s going on.”
Balien nodded and drew his rifle. They crept into the grass.
Pattering gunfire popped down the highway. Sophisticated chirps and hollow metallics. Preen’ch and Calcitra. A small explosion carried a gust of black smoke down the road. V’delle strained her eyes to try and find the targets.
“This is not good,” she whispered. “What are they doing fighting so far north? There’s practically nothing up here.”
“Must be an Outpost nearby,” Balien asked.
“We can’t let any Calcitra see us.”
“Right.”
They prowled through the
fields toward the gas station. They lay prone and crawled up near the edge of the disgruntled parking lot. Between flickering shoots of grass and hedge, they saw two Preen’ch with their backs against the north side of the convenience store, their rifles down and at the ready. Rigid and decisive. No human fear during a corner peek, no shaking hesitation. Through hand signals they bickered.
“Get me the muzzle extension and the bipod,” V’delle whispered.
Balien quietly disengaged his shell. He plucked the two-legged stand and placed it near her barrel. Next, the muzzle extension with built-in suppressor. Both components snapped magnetically to the rifle.
Balien looked through his scope. “Are you positive about engaging?”
V’delle closed one eye and looked through her scope with the other. “Yes.”
Two quick whiffs of air from V’delle’s rifle. The left soldier’s helmet exploded into the brick, his body a limp bag of meat. The right soldier was pinned with a hole in his neck. Blood spurted and drained down the obsidian armor.
V’delle came up for air. “Let’s move.”
She rolled away, then rose to a crouch, Balien in tow. A higher plot of land ten yards north gave vantage over the eastern fields where gunfire pinged back and forth. They reentered their same positions and waited. The field stretched for miles alongside the road. Blackened stains and craters pocked the road’s already dysfunctional surface. Bodies black and gray alike sprinkled the thoroughfare, contorted and soon to be forgotten. On the southern side of the road, a small knoll and a sweeping bulwark of tall, dense forest, terrifying pine and oak together in dark green unison. In those blackened spaces of void, a soldier could be clutching her pistol against her chest in preparation for a silent ambush. Amidst the gentle grass of the fields, a Khor’Zon might be lying dirtied by mud and blood, ready to unload his magazine into a creeping assailant. Invisible Warfare, the Calcitra called it. A reality forced upon every boy and girl who hadn’t been taken by the Chalis.