Nighthawks at the Mission: Move Off-World. Make A Killing.

by Forbes West

  Mathias, suddenly looking healthier, gets to his feet and limps towards the street. It is then that you see the evil flood that charges its way out of the darkness of the shelter. Tens of those disgusting once-humans with green eyes burning bright as coals, their clothes hanging like limp rags around their emaciated white bodies, rush out. The mummies slash the air with long, claw-like fingernails, their bloodshot, yellow, and encrusted eyes blinking rapidly. Several swarm Mathias.

  The rest of the Antediluvian people barrel at you as a horrid wave, their revolting smell threatening to suffocate you. They tear at you, hands grasping your throat and legs. You push some of them back with a gust of flames, and manage to pull out your baton and throw several across the lobby, slamming that mass of undead flesh into a glass partition that bursts with the weight of their bodies.

  You shoot a couple in the head, reloading as fast as you can. You floor another group, giving them a mental push with your baton that knocks their weakened frames to the floor with a crunch.

  More mummies grab your neck, slashing you with their dirty, jagged fingernails. One bites you—luckily the bite doesn’t pierce your leather jacket, it just pinches your shoulder blade.

  Mathias shoots out a blast of lightning from the front of the lobby and kills a swarm of those creatures. It also hits your arm, the one that is holding the gun, and numbs it. You drop to the side, gun and baton flopping out of your hands—you are paralyzed. The mummies turn and flee; it seems a fear mechanism has clicked in their heads. They run into the street, falling over each other, only to be vaporized by the increased tempo of the flash storm’s energy, leaving behind only rags that float in the air.

  You try to move but your muscles won’t respond.

  Taking out a small pistol from the back of his jeans, Mathias runs over to you in order to deliver the final blow. He is five steps away, four steps, and lifts his pistol so slowly, it seems, and points it at your head. Your eyes catch his—green eyes that threaten to drown your consciousness—and you feel yourself slipping away. Fighting back with everything you have, you grab your ori-baton with one awkward and painful effort and manage to bend his arm back by just using your mind, without a single noticeable gesture of your ori-baton, in a way you can never fully explain.

  You are still telekinetically twisting his arm back, and in another quick thought rip one of the bracers off his arm with a snap and toss it across the room. Your ori-baton has not moved once.

  Mathias is frightened, maybe for only the second time in this man’s life. You look at him, feeling something you couldn’t imagine—pity. You smother the thought and make him pull the trigger on himself by telekinetically jamming his finger back onto the trigger. He shoots at point blank range with a full clip of shells, hitting his upper chest and throat.

  You then telekinetically throw him clear across the street, near the temple steps. His half- mask comes off. He tries to stand again, but falls down the temple steps.

  Mathias heals, amazingly quickly, and stands up, eyes flashing, revealing fully extended fangs. As he moves towards you, a white blast of energy slams down, vaporizing him. You can hear him scream, faintly, as if from far away. The flash storm moves in in full swing, its changes of light and energy rings dancing over every single square inch of that dead city.

  When the storm dissipates, the feeling comes back into your body and you grab Mathias’s bracer, his ornate ori-baton, and even his little half-mask. You put on his bracer and return to McRoss Station in a flash of light. All it takes is a simple thought about the location. When you arrive, Guy and Jaime are being carried out on stretchers, IVs attached to their arms. Treena stands by, enclosed by a blanket. She is handcuffed and sitting on a curb, still covered in Jaime’s blood. A pack of Mission Security long range patrol cars are parked nearby, their lights flashing in the gloom. The bodies of Ni-Perchta warriors, machine-gunned and ori-attacked, line the highway. You even spot Petty’s body amongst the massacre. The few warriors who survived are in handcuffs.

  James Farson, your local agent from the Bureau of Off-World Affairs, walks out of the darkness as the rest of the Counters notice you and raise their guns. He doesn’t say anything.

  You toss him Mathias’s half-mask and sit down on the road, ready to pass out from the blood you’ve lost from the stabbing and all the energy you used to survive this final battle.

  Epilogue

  James Farson does the right thing and gets you a partial reward. Mathias’s death is “unconfirmed”, screwing you out of a lot of money. Eight hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars still comes your way—nothing to sniff at, but nothing to go home in triumph with either in your own twisted reasoning. You are, however, well known as the girl who shot Charles Mathias and you have achieved a level of fame bordering on celebrity.

  The Mission is restored to its former self after the summer solstice, with a new line-up of settlers coming in. Subway and McDonald’s return to the food court, bigger and better than before.

  Guy, Jaime, and Saki come out of their induced comas around the same time; Guy first, then Jaime, then finally Saki, weak and thin. Besides a little discomfort, all are none the worse for wear, though poor Saki’s memory of the last few weeks is patchy at best. Guy had to be the one to tell her that her family had been killed. You’re thankful that she’s forgotten quite a bit more than that.

  Bad dreams seem to be the only remaining issue. Treena holds a funeral for Winniefreddie that is only between her and, to your surprise, a Ni-Perchta priest. They symbolically throw Winniefreddie’s ashes into the same river you dumped her body in, which unnerves you. A terrible guilt wells up inside you, but you never tell Treena.

  You often sit with Guy and Saki on the patio of the Benbow, taking in the sunsets, drinking cold, home-made beer. Saki and Guy are together; you are not with him, except in secret where you make love whenever you can. Guy professes that you are his best friend and that Saki is the love of his life. You have decided to accept that. They sit next to each other most nights, holding hands and watching the sun fall away.

  You ponder the relationship you have with your new friends on lonely nights on your penthouse balcony. You are the richest person in the Mission, and what Dee said you could never have is now yours. A lovely and large penthouse.

  Jaime stops by every now and again, crashing in one of the extra bedrooms, showing you sketches. He asks for nothing in return.

  Despite the end of Mathias, there is no security stand-down. Ni-Perchta security forces at the Mission have been replaced with hired guns from the United States. They treat you with forced courtesy and the Ni-Perchta like rabid dogs.

  The bad days of the “Mathias Terror” are used to scare brand-new settlers during drunken late hours at the Benbow, now a true inn. Another level has been added to the place, with rooms for those visiting from other Missions and Ni-Perchta cities. You are required to keep it “a separate development,” meaning your liquor-providing license will be revoked if you allow Ni-Perchta guests. In the late hours, you find yourself thinking that there is some truth to what Mathias said.

  More settlers have come, more arrogant than the last and more vicious in their dealings with the Ni-Perchta. There are no more Ni-Perchta helpers on site at the Mission, having been banned for security reasons due to a new agreement with the Witch-Lord. The walled village of the Funeral Breaks is closed to them, the previous inhabitants scattered. Moondog Street still stands in the emptiness of the village. The bars and the strip clubs could not be closed.

  The Funeral Breaks is to become a new Mission, Mission Pathways, for human settlers only. The closing of the village strikes you strangely—you feel sad and bewildered for those Ni-Perchta you barely met. Even the coven that gave you that gift long ago seems to have re-settled somewhere in the tablelands up north and you don’t see them for a while.

  When you drift off to sleep, you think of your sister waiting out there, somewhere in the deep darkness of The Oberon, waiting, biding her time, like a vi
per curled up in a deep hole for the winter. You can’t believe she’s alive and behind so much carefully executed misery. You say nothing to the others about her though they ask.

  You and your friends sometimes drive out to Sargasso-3, just to do something, especially on warm and pleasant nights. You recovered the Crue, lost in the Sargasso Breaks up until a few weeks ago, and sometimes you take that out as well, your friends aboard. You pay for the rudder to be repaired and for it to be de-bugged by off-duty techs, and your friends sincerely thank you.

  One time, having set the airship on auto over the Quadling Sea, you drink a little too much. “Do you think Mathias ever had a point?” you ask Guy, referring to what’s happening to The Oberon, the ugly changes being made.

  Guy doesn’t hear you over the wind and just grins. “What?” He’s holding Saki’s waist. You think of discussing you and Guy with Saki, but they are happy with each other. You give Saki the blessing of being kept ignorant about the man she loves, which is something you wish someone had done for you. The lie is better than the truth.

  * * *

  One day, near dusk, as your friends are out doing something else, the little Ni-Perchta children you “bought” a while ago show up at the Benbow when it is empty of all customers. You follow them to the green hills outside, where other Ni-Perchta are waiting—it's the coven you met on your first night out in the Super Sargasso region.

  They are passing through the area, traveling to somewhere called Thi-Herku, a group of hills far off. One of the Ni-Perchta greets you—the tall male you saw out on the hill who gathered up the children that day. He talks to you for a bit, stating in good English that the coven are migrating back this way for a little while and that they want to thank you for your kindness to the children and for releasing them. He invites you to their temporary camp a mile away.

  That night, you sit at their campfire and eat with them. You talk to members of the coven through the kind translator who speaks for you.

  After the meal, one Ni-Perchta adds war paint to your face. It has some meaning you are not fully sure of. The translator says that you are part of their coven now, and that you are the Finder of Lost Children besides being a Force-Fire. You are moved by this, moved by their simplicity, their friendliness towards you, and their humor. They ask you why the city Ni-Perchta and humans have such a love of money and things. After a moment of bitter reflection upon seeing how you have ended up, you shrug. “I don't think we know any better,” you tell them.

  You apologize about the Network forcing them to move this way and that. The translator, speaking for the chief, says that it cannot be helped and that you are welcome to join them wherever the winds push them.

  You stay the night, awakening at dawn. The translator tells you something you weren’t expecting. He says that he is worried for your “kind” and for the city Ni-Perchta as well. He asks you to go with them. “There are other humans who have stayed with us before and will stay with us again,” he says.

  You thank him but decline to go, and watch them drive off into the distance, their wagons and cars and trucks disappearing over the horizon. The children and the translator wave to you as they go off into the wilderness.

  To the annoyance of your friends and customers, you leave the war paint on your face for the next day, finally washing it off with reluctance.

  Stepping out under the red skies and tiptoeing past the puddles and overflowing pond that was hit by today’s earlier maintenance storm, you head for the Crue parked outside the slightly improved Benbow Inn. You’ve just remembered that you left your wallet in there.

  There is a man standing next to your old covered wagon decoration, its side painted with the words Sargasso-3 or Bust. You put that decoration up with the permission of the other co-op members, though Treena thought it was gay. A couple of scarecrows sit inside the wagon, their insipid smiles aimed at the green countryside all around you.

  The man standing there has a goatee and wears a Hawaiian shirt. He’s in his fifties, balding, with slightly stooped shoulders and large as a bear. He stares out over the empty, green landscape. A crappy Volkswagen is parked next to where he stands, its front trunk punched in a little. It has a funny-looking blue and white circular license plate—the new license plate that the Witch-Lord and the Network require all vehicles to have. A regular Nevada plate is bolted next to it.

  “Very peaceful out here, you know? Sort of an oasis away from it all.” The man points to the sky. “Look at those clouds parting there. Nasty old maintenance storm just took off—pew, pew, pew—in every direction, you see that?” He laughs like a little kid. You watch him, curious.

  “Had such a desire to come out here, too, you know? I forget if I saw it on the Internet, or I heard about you, something. You get much company out here?”

  Guy, who you guess is returning from the other side of the Crue, interrupts. Saki is with him. “Sometimes, with the new rooms we put in. Bit slow lately because the portal is closing soon,” he says.

  “Well, this is better than the Mandalay for what I want. Jeez. Nice place. Nice place. Quiet. You got a room for rent?” The man then takes out an orange prescription bottle from his pants pocket and dry swallows a couple of pills. “Heart’s been acting up.”

  “Uh, yeah, we got a few,” you say. You and Guy look at each other in concern about this stranger. Something is off but you can’t put your finger on it.

  “Good stuff. Look, I’m just a simple guy—you got burgers and beers here, right?” You and Guy both nod.

  “You can call me, uh, Will Kosti. I’m a writer.” He puts forward a big, beefy, gnarled hand and you shake it, and so does Guy. He is wearing two watches, one on each wrist.

  Will reaches into his pocket, taking out a wad of Dii-Yaa, regular cash, and a couple of funny gold coins. “That’s five hundred bucks and a couple of Krugers—I haven’t had a chance to swap it out. Just let me know, girlie, when I’ve worked through that.” He smiles, showing off a gold tooth in one corner of his mouth. “No registration, that alright?” His jovial demeanor has changed; he has become angry and commanding at the same time. “No registration and no Network report. You cool with dat?” He smiles again. “Used to work out here years ago for these, uh, foreigners, and I can’t stand all this new bureaucracy. I’m glad to be back in The Oberon. It’s a place to make a killing in, you know?”

  About the Author

  Forbes West was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois and graduated with a Master's Degree in Political Science from California State University, Long Beach. He currently lives and works mostly in San Francisco, CA and owns a home in Ojima, Japan- a village five hours south of Tokyo by car that is in the foothills of Mt. Fuji.

  Web: http://offworldnetwork.thirdscribe.com/

  Twitter: https://twitter.com/Forbes_West

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/forbes.west