by J M Guillen
No. Too many explosions going on. Plus all the handsome hero-ing I had to do. I stepped outside, thinking I would watch for Sadhana muscle. What obvious thing did I miss?
There’s a reason that Gideon’s situation is in the shitter, Hoss. I felt Wyatt’s grim tone over the link. Whatever Irrational shit Subject X pulled while in that conduit messed up more locations than the Ryuu Tower.
I know that. My brow furrowed. The Spire also has those symbiont blossoms all through it, just like… I let my thought trail off as pieces began to shift together.
Just like the one your happy ass strolled through on your way here? Wyatt finished. The symbiont blossoms that seemed to cut straight through our Axiomatic realmwall?
Shit. He was right. The blossoms were more than simple sentient expressions of this place. They wore away at reality itself.
Michael, how do you suppose those Sadhana operatives found their way into The Spire? Stone had a legitimate question.
I didn’t think overmuch about it. I felt like an idiot. My dossier specifications indicated that I should clear the area, and I did that. Cold boot kinda discourages a lot of independent thought…
You should think about it now. Gideon even apprised us that the hot zone remains status four with Sadhana operatives still present.
All of it fit together nicely, I had to admit. I’d simply been so caught up in shooting things and dodging four-armed astral wolf-men and eavesdropping on telemarketers that I hadn’t put it together.
So… Delacruz knows a way back to Rationality? That’s her end game? As I asked, I realized it must be true. She had as much as told me herself when she said she’d get me home.
She doesn’t simply have a way back to Rationality. Stone’s patience waned. She believes that Sadhana created a direct ingress to The Spire itself.
She found the readings while trying to account for the aberrant vectors with the Gatekeeper, Wyatt stated, admiration in his tone. Seems that Hyper-Rationality and the beautiful Ar’Ghosa topia don’t get along. But in the end, math showed her the way. He paused. Math and triangles, really.
But Sadhana found The Spire first. I bit my lip. While we ran around the Ryuu Tower trying to extract Stone, they were pulling a little incursion of their own.
In one of our most sensitive Facility locations. Stone’s link felt pleased that the slow kid in class was catching up. This is why Sofia’s intel matters so much. It’s the missing piece.
She even rounded up some help so she could get there. Wyatt chuckled. Enemy of my enemy and all that.
I had to admire Delacruz. She had been in a truly shitty situation but never gave up.
The lady had balls.
This is why reaching you is paramount, Michael, Anya cut in at last. We are secure, and the aperture is as stable as Asset Wyatt and I can manage on our end.
But it’s more than just a homecoming play at this point, Hoss. Whatever Sadhana has cooking at The Spire, we’re knocking at the backdoor. Gideon doesn’t know we’re here, but—
But we spoke to him before we came after you, Stone interjected through the secondary comm. He needs our help. It’s bad there, Bishop.
So Sofia knows the way home, and the backdoor is likely the last place Sadhana expects Asset reinforcements. I nodded.
“[ǝǞǨ ǤƙƔƓƣ.]”
I turned to find the young woman leaning back through the doorway. She gestured me forward. I nodded at her.
Figure out how to get that thing off her. Bring us in. We’ll all go home. Stone smiled, and for once, I felt as if he were on my side instead of making a unilateral decision and trying to convince me that I agreed.
Copy that, cadre. I shook my head, grinning ruefully. How the fuck did I even get started? I’m on it.
The young woman waited for me in the doorway, her dark eyes unreadable.
I muttered to myself, lost in thought, as I stepped into the next room and saw Delacruz sitting in an all-black, side-armored, roll-barred, dune buggy. Its wheels came up to the middle of my thigh, the huge treads deep enough to engulf my hand. Close inspection revealed they were based off the Desert Patrol Fast Attack Vehicles used in Desert Storm and stamped in the middle of the hood with the Sadhana logo.
“Right,” I chuckled. “Vehicle barn. Nice FAV’s.”
“Pretty sweet, right?” Delacruz couldn’t seem to stop grinning.
I walked the perimeter of the room, getting a quick count. Five of the two-seater vehicles sat there, each with a small bed in the back for cargo.
“No keys, though.” Delacruz might not have been able to link, but she could apparently read my mind.
“They’re in the pocket of the guy you killed.” I should know, I had just seen them. I stepped back into the mechanic shop, fished them from his pocket, and then jingled the keys at her as I returned.
“Good guess, Bishop.” Delacruz nodded.
Right. Instead of explaining I asked, “So, without Crown function, do you know where we’re going?”
“Well, you do.” Her steady appraisal turned frank. “Because you went through that entire patch.”
“I didn’t.” I gave her a sheepish smile. “The explosions took me by surprise, and my fierce guardian vanished into the mist.”
“Yeah. That went bad.” She winced toward our lithe Amazonian ally, currently engrossed in the shininess of one of the buggies. Then Delacruz’s eyes flashed with anger. “I thought Sil had died. Bastards knocked me out and took me.”
“Sil.” I had forgotten her name. I remembered her as Subject X, the woman who Sadhana had placed into that siphon.
That was a lady who deserved to get herself some payback.
When I said her name, she looked up at me with a smile.
“Bitch-op.” The woman intoned with a slight stutter in the middle.
Delacruz broke out laughing.
“You taught her that. Don’t lie.” I kept smiling at Sil, not wanting her to think we were making fun of her.
“No! Honestly.” Delacruz giggled again. “Okay. Maybe a little.”
“So.” I jangled the keys at Delacruz. “Several of these have numbers on their fobs.”
“I’m sitting on number eleven.”
I wriggled the key loose from the ring, then tossed it to her.
She caught it with a deft grab.
“How many FAVs are we taking?” I glanced at Sil meaningfully, wondering about her driving skills.
“Three.” Delacruz didn’t grasp my question at first but then brightened. “Ah. You missed the part in the patch regarding the Signum.” She gestured at the glimmering glow upon her head.
“Oh.” I did have some idea. “I understand there is some kind of telepathy or some such?”
“No.” Sofia’s shook her head. “It’s far better. Being touched by Ar’Ghosa is better than anything you’ve experienced with your Crown. You feel where your allies are, just by instinct.”
I nodded. That explained some things.
She went on. “It allows the instant and functional transfer of knowledge with no Crown limitations. You gain muscle memory, experience, there’s no language barrier…”
“That’s handy.” I leaned against the wall, nodding, but thought about the fate of a certain Raptor I had seen at The Spire. “I suppose they have some method of keeping it from,” I gestured at my entire body as I spoke, “getting all icky?”
“For now.” Her tone indicated that she worried about this.
Talking about Delacruz’s allies brought to mind my own. Subtly, and with great tact, I gently shifted the topic toward them.
“What the fuck do you want to do about the rest of our cadre?”
So damn smooth.
“Been thinking about that.” She sighed. “Those caves are hours away, assuming we take these FAVs and there are roads.”
“I didn’t see any roads.” I frowned.
“Right.”
“Liaison Stone indicated that he believed our wisest course would be to lose the charm brac
elet.” I jerked my chin at her arm. “Then we aperture them in and go home.”
“Killing everyone along the way.” She nodded. “It’s a great plan, but you’ll find that a lot of Stone’s plans are like that. There’s always some missing step that he just assumes will magically fall into place.”
“The bracelet.” I studied the device.
“Bishop, I’ve tried hammering the thing off, tried cutting the thing off. I even considered your Stiletto, but…” She vacillated the trapped hand. “I think it’s a bad idea.”
“I can put holes in the thing. I can even probably guarantee that most of them won’t pierce you.” I waggled my eyebrows at her.
“When I pounded the thing against the metal table in the shop, the sudden force made it turn hot,” she explained. “I had to stop before I blistered. Same with the saw.”
“Nice failsafe.” I considered the possibilities. “So the Stiletto…”
“Might melt my skin off.” She finished. “If the other option is that painful, I might as well let you cut off my hand with your fancy cutlery.” She shook her head. “I just don’t know that I’m there yet.”
“Okay, so we know Stone’s plan. What else is there?” I leaned against a sandrail, running a hand over the leather bucket seats.
“Well, with these, we can make a run for The Spire ourselves.” She spoke cautiously.
“That sounds rough. We have almost no gear and only a general direction.”
“I doubt we can just take Sadhana head on, but we could probably skirt them with speed and stealth.”
I nodded. That made sense.
“I have no idea how many Sadhana assholes are in our way, but if we make it, you can link our cadre just before we step through the realmwall into Rationality.”
I nodded, beginning to see. “Worst case scenario, they go back through the caves and come home via another conduit in Japan.”
“Right.”
“Things are bad at The Spire.” I leveled my gaze at her. “Sadhana is inside, and the Catalyst onsite has been running ragged trying to halt their operatives.”
“I see.” She appeared to mull this over. “It’s not the best plan.”
“Three of us isn’t much in the way of reinforcements.” I glanced at Sil who studied the vehicle with great interest. “Why is she interested in coming along?”
“Sadhana has hurt a lot of her people, not to mention Ar’Ghosa itself.” She hesitated, looking for words. “Moreover, they tortured her under Ryuu Tower.”
“Payback then?”
“Well.” She vacillated one hand again. “Maybe. The Ad’uun know exactly what has sickened Ar’Ghosa. There are processing stations situated in key locations. These stations are significantly damaging the environment.”
“Is that…?” I frowned, just a touch. “Is that part of our focus here?”
“No.” Delacruz glanced to Sil and then back to me. “Those stations lay right along the path we are taking home. We’re escorting; that’s all. The plan’s that Sil and her sisters would do a little monkey-wrenching with whatever she has in that pack.”
“And you were just…” I shook my head. “Going to charge into The Spire alone?”
“No one was exactly coming for me, were they?” Her tone held just a touch of bitterness. “Besides, I had the Gatekeeper and the Wraith at the time.” She shrugged. “Should have been easy.”
“You don’t exactly have them now.” I eyed her uneasily.
“Nope.” She smiled almost cheerily. “I have you.”
“Right.” I chuckled. “So Sil is going on? Alone with that pack?”
“Yup.” She nodded. “She’s willing to do what it takes to make them hurt. If she dies doing so, it’s an honorable death.”
“But…” I realized that we had strayed from my earlier question, “Does she know how to drive?”
“I passed Sil everything I’ve ever learned about driving, all in less time than it’s taken to have this conversation.”
“So…” I gave Sofia a small smile. “You know how to drive?”
“[Dumbass.]” She smirked and flashed an unladylike gesture. “How about you look in your patch underneath Locale Four and tell me if you think we can make it?”
“Yes, ma’am.” I pulled up the data and quickly found the relevant intel.
It… might only be a little impossible.
She had a fairly intricate map of the route to Locale Four, but she had intended to stop and use the Gatekeeper at several key locations, watchtowers mostly. Now, that was off the table, but with the sandrails, I saw a better than average chance.
“What’s Site One?” A large square rested in the center of the map, one we had to pass.
“It’s the closest of Sadhana’s processing stations. Behind it is a road straight to what they call the Breach. That’s Locale Four, where Hyper-Rationality is bleeding in.”
“And causing the aberrant vectors.”
“Right. The axioms of this place are all bending away from The Spire, as if repulsed.”
The more I studied the map, the more I thought this could work.
Maybe we’d get that thing off Delacruz, maybe we wouldn’t. But with the rails, we’d at least get to The Spire, far quicker than hoofing it. The moment we touched the Lattice, we could update Gideon and work on extracting the others.
According to the patch, we could be at Locale Four in approximately forty-eight minutes.
Provided we had no distractions.
“I say we can make it.” I nodded at her. “Tough but doable.” I blinked to set a reticule in the appropriate location for Locale Four.
“Well okay then.” I liked the easy way she smiled.
Fumbling a key loose, I handed it to Sil. She studied me for a moment, her serious eyes made huge by the lack of hair, and took it slowly.
“[ɄǝǻǸ ǷǧǤ. ǣȼɋ ɂȱɯ.]” She smiled. “Bitch-op.”
“I agree, Sil.” I nodded once and started looking for number six.
“Yeah?” Delacruz teased. “What did she say?”
I found number six, climbed into the driver’s seat, and fastened my five-point harness. Starting my vehicle, I glanced out the open bay door, then back to Delacruz.
“She said this is the best plan she’s heard all day.”
Outriders
Ten minutes later, the world swirled around us, a landscape of glowing mist and darkened shadows, with an unseeing sky of stone above our heads.
The three of us tore through the Irrational hellscape at breathtaking speed, the vehicles roaring through the mist. Thick trunks of the not-banyan trees blurred by as the path wound around, allowing plenty of sightline ahead.
As per my usual position, I took point while the three of us drove in single file with Sil in the middle and Sofia at the rear. The road we traveled looked well used, with obvious tire tracks in several places.
This both comforted and worried me.
Only a few moments into the ride, I wished we had found some radios or walkie-talkies in the vehicle barn. Anything, really, that we could use for communication would help.
Riding that hard without being able to link sucked ass.
“There!” I pointed at the left hand path and yelled to be heard over the roar of the engines. I didn’t know if the others heard me or not. Either way, they stayed with me.
The reticule pulsed a soft blue in my vision, beckoning us ever onward. More than once I slowed, thinking that the path had come to an end or straining to see over the next rise before I rocketed over into fuck-knew what. At one point, a hairpin turn surprised me as the worn road descended past a series of gigantic dun boulders.
Then, when the path widened into a vast field, I gasped in surprise. No matter how horrifying Ar’Ghosa might be, it shocked me with its beauty.
I slowed, taken aback by the wide, rambling field of blue and scarlet flowers. A wreath of wicked thorns surrounded each blossom. They held the deadly, terrifying beauty of a graceful predator.
Looking for food, I assumed.
Sil pulled up next to me, as did Delacruz, on the opposite side.
“They’re quite intelligent.” Sofia watched me as she spoke, her voice almost too quiet to be heard over the engines. “They can move far quicker than you might expect, and if they catch you in their feelers, you’re paralyzed in seconds.”
“Good to know.” I nodded, peering across the field. “The reticule is in that direction.” I pointed toward a distant rock outcropping. “If we get separated, make that your heading.”
“Copy that.” Delacruz faced Sil, and I assumed she shared the message.
Charging through the field, the sickly sweet scent of the flowers washed over us, smelling like nothing so much as blood.
That aroma called to me, sang my name.
The sweetness of blood calls, ever sibilant, that nectar of ancient and terrible Gods. I inhaled, letting the awful imagery slip through my mind. It screamed, primal and sweet, and tickled warm in my nose. I could practically taste it, the bounty of a thousand manic, wild hunts, the cry of the prey as it squirmed beneath me—
I caught myself, shaking my head.
It took every bit of will I had to pull myself back.
“What the fuck?” I snarled, speaking to myself. “If you distract me, you’ll get me killed!”
In the darkness behind my eyes, I felt ancient, yellow eyes regard me.
“That’s not what you’d want,” I said, realization washing over me. “If I’m someone’s prey, you wouldn’t want it to be those things.” I regarded the alien jellies.
A distant growl answered me, all the affirmation I needed.
“Then knock it off. Be helpful, if you can.”
I took a breath, eyeing one of the jellyfish that had drifted closer.
I needed to focus. Whatever sick on-again off-again thing I had going with Mr. Fukui’s aberrant buddy had to wait.
Attempting to avoid one of a jelly’s myriad tendrils as it drifted over the wicked thorns, I pulled to the left. The creatures whispered as they passed, strange sibilant mutterings that floated down from above.