by Ben Stevens
“Welcome, Miller,” Elena said, nodding.
“Back atcha, sweetie.” Miller returned the nod as he approached the table. “Council, I present to you Candice. I have asked her to represent the support staff citizens of the Zigg.” Miller knew that most at the table already knew Candice in some fashion or another, but wanted to establish some small measure of proper decorum, despite his casual greetings.
“’Tis a pleasure.” Elena waved in their direction, freeing a loosely tied-back dreadlock.
Miller pulled a chair back on his side of the table, gestured to Candice, then strolled around to sit between Elena and Quiteke.
“I, uh…” Candice stuttered, “I uh— I am, uh… happy to be here. I will do my best. Thank you.”
“You’ll do fine,” Miller said, sitting down and gesturing for her to do the same. “So what is on the agenda today?”
“Arrangements are being made to barricade off the Tek’s lair in Underground,” Quiteke announced.
“Da last shipment of food from da east ‘as not arrived,” Elena blurted out.
Miller held up a hand. “One at a time! Let’s try and set an example here. Quiteke, please.”
“Okay, boss. So, like I was saying, arrangements have been made to go ahead and quarantine the part of Underground where the Tektonic was reported. We know enough to know that the beast can’t leave its lair, and we hope to prevent anyone from coming too close to it. The stockpiles of cement that we procured should be enough to do the trick.”
“And signage?” Miller asked.
“Yes, that too.”
“Good. Keep me informed, I want me and the Hoppers present when we execute. Just in case.” Miller folded his hands together and pointed two fingers to the young soldier.
“Sure thing. Good call, Sarge, er, I mean, General.”
“Okay, moving on. Elena, you said something about the last food shipment not arriving?”
The former bartender leaned forward and opened her mouth to speak but was rudely interrupted by the sudden flinging open of the chamber’s double oak doors.
“I’m sorry to just barge in here.” It was Captain Juste Wojax, Miller’s new second-in-command and ace Hopper pilot, one of the few New Breed to stay on after the Purge.
Exasperated not only at the council meeting’s lack of progress, Miller growled at the intrusion.
“What is it, Captain? We have a lot of work to do here and—”
“We have a situation in the Warrens, sir,” the young man announced, his face beaded with a sheen of fresh sweat.
A low murmuring erupted from the assembled council, but Miller silenced them with a wave of his hand as he got to his feet. Now what?
“A situation? What kind of situation?” he asked, fearing the worst.
“At the Hammered Wombat, sir,” the captain stammered. Miller instantly recognized the name of the Shanty’s oldest and most notorious drinking establishment, long used by Miller, Maya, and the Resistance in the days of Warbak as both a meeting place and a location where one could trade in secrets and intel.
“Spit it out, Captain! What’s going on?”
“It’s him, sir. Matiaba,” Wojax blurted out.
Miller frowned deeply and stared through his captain, trying to understand.
“Matiaba has been spotted, sir. He is in the Wombat as we speak.”
“Ho-ly shit.”
“Is he still here?” Miller asked his men, who had remained outside the tavern’s main entrance as ordered, trying to look as casual as possible.
“Yes, sir,” one of the men, Lieutenant Rayn, reported. He raised one arm to his head and tapped his right ear. “We have a live feed with the men on the inside. The target is still at his table, sir.”
“Good, let’s move.” Miller moved past the two men and pushed open the door to the Hammered Wombat. The men followed close behind, each withdrawing their compact submachine guns from under their rain slicks.
The tavern was unchanged from Miller’s memory of it—a hodge-podge of various furnitures and patrons, testifying to the slow growth and long history of the well-loved establishment.
Miller took stock of the room and saw that his men saw him. Besides the two to his back, there were three trusted men, in Shanty-appropriate street clothes, who had positioned themselves in strategic locations throughout the bar, keeping tabs on and preventing Matiaba from escaping out the back.
Matiaba, closest aide and practical second-in-command of the Republic under Chairman Accoba Warbak. A true weasel of a man who had been responsible for the capture and creation of Lucy, Maya’s oldest guardian, among many other crimes, including prostitution and torture.
The aide had gone missing during the events of the Purge and it had been assumed that he was dead, although a body had never been recovered. Now, more than three weeks later, here he was, in the flesh, nursing a jar of Belsen’s famous hooch and acting as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
Miller’s men had informed him that they had reached out to Belsen, the pub’s proprietor, and informed him what was about to go down. Now Miller looked to the bar and made eye contact with the man, nodding to him.
“Bar is closed!” Belsen shouted, getting every bit of mileage out of his barrel-sized chest and sounding as if he had a megaphone at his disposal. “Clear the room! Now!”
A multitude of confused imbibers glanced around, not understanding. Only one figure remained cool and still—Matiaba.
“I said out! Now!” Belsen retrieved a pump-action pre-Storm shotgun and chambered a round for effect, sending the previously chambered round flying across the room.
Getting the message loud and clear, everyone, human and Displaced alike, abandoned their poison and began filing out toward the door.
Belsen approached Miller near the rear of the herd, a sheepdog to the sheep.
“Try not to make a mess, man,” he said.
“I give you my word,” Miller replied, placing one huge hand on the equally big man’s shoulder.
“Gig’s up, Matiaba. We have you surrounded. There is no escape this time,” Miller said as he approached the aide from behind. He signaled his men, front and back, and the five of them arranged themselves into a large circle around Miller and the former aide.
“This time? Escape? Whatever are you talking about? I never escaped to begin with. I thought we were free now,” Matiaba said without turning around. The aide extended one lithe leg under the table and pushed a chair back for Miller.
“We are free, Matiaba. But you, you won’t be for long. You need to answer for your crimes.” Miller walked around the table to face Matiaba, ignoring the offered chair.
“My crimes?” Matiaba looked up at Miller over the top of his brew. “Pardon me, General, but all I did was follow orders. Surely not every officer in the Republic that wasn’t part of your Underground Resistance has been arrested.”
Miller stopped, caught off guard, and stared, slack-jawed.
“From what I’ve seen, every able-bodied man and woman in Home that didn’t leave with the Old Guard has been given a new job. Have you asked yourself why I didn’t leave with the Schismatics?”
“I—uh… no. I haven’t asked myself that,” Miller said, collecting himself. “Though you should be asking yourself that. We are taking you in, Matiaba.”
The former aide stopped smiling and sat up straight, pulling the wrinkles out of his shirt as he did.
“Again, I ask, why am I being treated differently than any other soldier in the former Republic?”
“You know why,” Miller said. “For the things you done.”
“Things?”
“What you did to Lucy, for starters.” Miller signaled to his men and their circle around the table tightened.
“General Miller, I fear you aren’t hearing me. The ‘things’ I did were nothing more than me following orders.”
“Nice try,” Miller said. “Come on, get up. Don’t make me tear this place up.”
“No need to b
e dramatic, I will go with you.”
“You… what?” Miller asked.
“You heard me correctly.”
Miller glanced up to the faces of the men who now stood behind the table, reading them, hoping somehow to see what they might think of this peculiar and unexpected turn of events.
“At the very least, I would like a fair trial. Allow me to present myself to your council. Allow me to make my defense. Clear my good name. That is why I didn’t go with the Old Guard. Clearly, you must see that I had the opportunity?”
Miller found that he couldn’t argue with the logic. Matiaba hadn’t been seen or heard of since before the Purge. He could have escaped if escape had been his plan. But what was his plan?
Miller caught the scrutinizing glances of his men, no doubt all wondering what he would do. He shifted in place for an uncomfortable minute. Matiaba remained seated and staring at him, but bore no hint of irony or cockiness, yet Miller found himself unable to trust the man.
“Fine. I’ll take you to the council. You’ll get your fair trial. But you had better not try any funny stuff.”
Raising his hands in a conciliatory gesture, Matiaba stood. “You have my word.”
10
“Please, allow me,” the bellhop said, holding the door open for Maya, now Lily Sapphire. She smiled, curtsied, and walked into the room.
Lucy quickly moved to follow, but the bellhop deftly positioned himself between the two women.
“We have a room prepared for you just downstairs, miss.”
The bellhop, a short, weaselly, sweaty man, raised a conciliatory hand to Lucy and motioned to his left, back out into the hallway from which they had just come.
Lucy smiled at this, cocking her head slightly, taking perverse pleasure in the fact that were she of the mind, she could rend the upper half of this man’s body from the lower with a roundhouse kick.
“No bother,” Maya called out from inside the penthouse suite. “She will be sleeping with me, Mister…”
“Pedro, Miss Sapphire. Pedro Gonzales, at your service.” He stepped aside and bowed his head.
“I did not realize that your assistant was with you.” He leered at Lucy as she walked past him and licked his sweaty lips. Lucy suppressed a shudder like a sick person attempting not to vomit.
“And the boy?” Pedro inquired, his eyebrows arched in a knowing expression.
“Please, I would have him in here as well.”
“As you wish, miss.” Pedro left to retrieve Ratt and the second load of supplies being unloaded from the sled. They had departed from their impromptu transport and followed an escort up to the lavish palace that stood over the rest of the squat adobe city.
Unable to do any real intel-gathering during their brief jaunt across the city to the palace, the trio had simply done their best to take it all in without looking out of place. What little sightseeing they did manage to do had imparted on them the impression of a typical post-Storm city-state.
It had its unique cultural and geographical character—the adobe buildings, the intoxicating scents wafting from the spice market, goat meat simmering in pepper sauce, woven textiles dyed with local resources and draped over a people of dark bronze skin and black hair. Women beat rugs outside with corn brooms; children tended to livestock and other chores, while men with guns drank tequila, patrolled the streets, and eyed the newcomers with suspicion. While unique in its way, it had its similarities with all the other civilized places, Home’s Near Rough Enclaves, Maya had visited before arriving in Home, in that there was a distinct divide between the “haves” and the “have-nots.”
This fact was hard to miss. After passing an entire block of low-ceilinged, rough-hewn adobe houses with dirty, barefoot children in the streets outside, skinny mules tied up out front, mangy dogs drinking water out of mud puddles, and the smell of open sewage somewhere—blissfully out of sight—they’d come to a street cut from a different cloth altogether.
The streets were cleaner, the houses much better built—haciendas with lovely, wavy red tiles on the roofs, lush gardens in the front yard, the only smells being those of roses and gardenias. The buildings had windows with actual glass, shutters, and curtains, not just ragged shreds of old cloth. Mechanical vehicles—some with wheels, some more modern with fusion-cell hovering capabilities—were parked out in the place of horses and mules. But what was most odd about this street and the next two they would pass down before reaching the palace was the eerie silence. There were no signs of life in any of the buildings they passed. No women dumping pots off the ornate, wrought-iron-wrapped balconies; no children working or playing in the gated yards. In fact, the only human presence they saw during that three-block journey were well-armed sentries, just like those on the wall and who had escorted them, positioned on the street side of the estates’ gates and walls.
Compared to the first district that they had passed through, each house in the “haves” district was a palace. Yet compared to the actual palace in the center of the city, even the mansions had seemed like hovels.
Maya had never seen such splendor on Earth. The palace and its penthouse rivaled anything in Home, even amongst the top levels of the Ziggurat.
Now alone with Lucy, Maya took in the contents of the penthouse suite. Just past the entrance stood a short, round table upon which sat a greeting card, a glass of sparkling wine, and a plate with fresh figs and small baked goods on it. The air in the room smelled of clean linens and a light breeze blew in from the balcony, the doors to which had been left open, with only a pearl white curtain drawn across the opening, rippling slightly in the breeze.
She strolled further into the suite, admiring the pre-Storm art decorating the walls, and then she noticed the bed. Larger than any she had ever seen, it was cornered by thick, dark wooden posts that reached from floor to ceiling, each ornately carved with a Mesoamerican theme. The tops of the posts were joined by a canopy from which hung lavender-tinted draperies, partially obscuring the mattress, sheets, and pillows within. Lucy got to work unpacking the stuff they had brought, procuring her two Macuahuitls comically hidden inside a box labeled Instruments. Maya walked past the bed and brushed her fingers across the pleasant textures of the canopy before making her way outside to the balcony.
She gazed out across the city and inhaled deeply. She could almost smell it—the sense that something lay hidden here, between the cracks of the mud buildings, beneath the polished veneer of the palace in all its luxury. Something dark lay sleeping while the tired men, women, and children of New Puebla went about their lives.
Suddenly, there came a knock at the door, and then it opened.
Lucy barely had enough time to cover her war-clubs with a nearby bath towel before Pedro and Ratt entered the suite. Maya noticed with some satisfaction that Ratt had managed to tint his goggles, hiding his new mysterious and alien eyes from the New Puebloans.
“Your manservant and the rest of your luggage, Señorita Sapphire,” Pedro announced as he eyed Lucy, who stood next to the bed, stiff and awkward.
Maya returned from the balcony and smiled at Pedro.
“Thank you, sir.”
“Señor Fernando bids you rest some, for he would like to see you after sundown. You are cordially invited to dine with him and his wife. We will send for you when the time comes. For now, is there anything I can get you? Food? Drink?”
“No, thank you, good sir. We are fine. We will rest and await the hour of repast,” Maya responded politely and then gave Lucy a slight nod. Lucy moved to the luggage and began to rummage for something.
“No tip necessary, Miss Sapphire. It is our custom here.” The sweaty man bowed, turned, and left, shutting the door behind him. The trio all silently counted to ten, then they all relaxed and huddled together to discuss what to do next.
“Okay, guys. We don’t know what’s really going on here, so stay on your guard. We will go to this dinner tonight and see what we can learn. Let’s go ahead and rest if we can,” Maya whispered to h
er friends.
“Totally.” Ratt seemed relieved. “I’m exhausted.”
“I will stand watch. You two get to bed,” Lucy offered and retrieved her sword-clubs from under the towel.
Ratt didn’t have to be told twice, having stayed up all night working on the necklace and packing the hoverboard. He peeled off his darkened goggles and hit the mattress as hard as the city’s women’s pestles coming down on the handful of maize in their mortars.
Maya whispered down into her radio necklace before climbing in beside Ratt. “Get some rest, you two,” Maya said to her silent and invisible guardian angels on the mountainside. “If you can, that is. I’m sorry that I’m not there to sing you to sleep.”
Far up on the hillside, Jon flicked the safety off the railgun and tracked the incoming outlines down the hallway to the doors of the penthouse suite.
Heads up, Lucy.
Lucy flung the door open so quickly and so suddenly, she completely surprised the trio of young girls on the other side. They stood frozen, like a hare gazing into the eyes of the hunting cat, the lead one’s fist raised in mid-air, prepared yet prevented from knocking a second time. Lucy suspected their wide eyes were more from her Santa Muerta appearance than the abrupt answer to their knock, but acted as if nothing was out of place, even knowing what her visage would signify to the Latina girls.
“Yes?” Lucy asked coolly.
The girls were all young and pretty. Each one’s dark hair hung over their slender shoulders in a singular loose braid, the spaghetti-strap white gowns they wore contrasting wonderfully with their cinnamon skin. The two behind the knocker carried items, one a neatly folded assembly of clothes, the other a basket filled with bathing salts and scented oils.
“Señorita, we are here to prepare Miss Sapphire for Señor Fernando,” the knocker spoke shyly.
Lucy carefully eyed the girls and the goods in their arms. Satisfied, she slowly stepped back and to the side. “Of course, please come in.” She closed the door after the last girl passed through and called out to her lady.