The Marshal couldn’t remember the fight Morton was referring to, but they were worried about getting their arm ripped off anyway. The Logo’s energy reserves were dangerously low, and they could feel the thermal energy converters in Morton’s claw rapidly sucking out what little they had left.
“Fall on her, Boss!” Frank yelled as he tried to run closer.
As they wrestled for balance, Morton tugged the Marshal’s arm downward and let gravity pull his massive upper body atop her.
As energy continued to be sapped from their arm, the Marshal realized it was having a profound effect on their thoughts—one half of themself was having a hard time staying awake. As Morton’s shadow began to engulf them, she couldn’t hear her second voice at all. She could barely hold up her arm. For a split second, she was sure his looming mech-chassis was going to fall and crush her. For the first time ever, she felt utter terror, when out of nowhere, they heard a dangerous low-whooping sound.
An explosion had knocked over the container holding Rhodes and Lincoln and the fall broke it open. Neither of them had seen who killed the man that had put them in their cage, but it was easy enough to tell who the bad guys were. Lincoln ran straight for the closer of the two mechanical men, while Rhodes retrieved his warclub from the Peacekeeper’s podium and then threw it at the one grappling with the woman. The whirling slab of stone smashed through Morton’s mechanical shoulder, severing the limb and sending sparks and shards of metal flying in every direction.
As she fell backwards to safety, the Marshal saw a young Dakota tribesman and a pubescent gorilla-lion hybrid running towards her, and thought they might be hallucinations. When her eyes locked with the young human’s, it felt like a breath of fresh air had rejuvenated their body. Despite the Logo only having just enough energy to function, they could hear two voices inside their head again. Together, they rallied enough strength to stay on their feet, and with Morton’s robotic-claw still clasped onto their hand, the Marshal drew back a massive metallic-double-fist and swung for the smuggler’s face.
Had the blow connected where intended, the entire upper half of Morton’s torso would have been flattened. Fortunately enough, he had begun fumbling around in search of the eject button as soon as his mech-limb was cut off, and he accidentally activated a springing-jump maneuver at the last second. The Marshal’s punch slammed into the suit’s midsection, only destroying his biological legs, but sending his entire exosuit hurtling through the air towards the train.
“Nooo!” Frank shouted with desperation. He knew this was the end, but a jolt of terror still overtook him when he heard Lincoln’s roar. Turning too late, he saw the giant gorillion thundering towards him. Knowing his force field was inoperable, he thumbed the button anyway. Lincoln planted a massive palm on the man’s face and let his fingers roll over top of his head. With a gentle squeeze, Frank’s skull popped like a ripe melon and the gorillion continued sprinting towards the train.
Rhodes had been running top speed when his eyes locked with the Marshal’s. Feeling the fiery intensity of her flashing blue-grey eyes, it was as though he could hear their thoughts. There was a special connection between them, and without words or gestures, they came up with a coordinated plan. Still running as Morton sailed through the air, Rhodes dropped his club, planted his foot and entered the same spin maneuver he might have used to throw Pathos. The Marshal dove and grabbed both of his hands—the instant they touched, what little energy was left in the Logo disappeared. The Marshal heard a voice inside her scream a single note of urgency before she went unconscious. Rhodes heard it too, and felt a cool-burning sensation flow out through his fingertips, but he had already committed to the throw. After one full rotation he released, and the Marshal sailed through the air like a ragdoll before landing squarely on the roof of the train.
As soon as Morton hit the ground, he ran inside the train, activated the shield and rode out through the same door he had rode in. He had seen his henchman die but was more distracted by his pulverized legs and did not notice his hitchhiker.
Rhodes and Lincoln both needed time to process everything that had just happened, but at the same time, they were keenly aware of how many animals were dying all around them. Automated crane arms were frantically trying to put out fires and stabilize toppling shipping containers, so Rhodes ran to the nearest terminal to work from there. Lincoln started opening containers one by one, openly weeping as he did. Neither of them spoke for the duration of the process.
Several hours later, all the containers had been opened, but things were far from calm. Thousands of animals had suffocated, baked or been crushed upon impact, and the sheer number of corpses was impossible to deal with. Some of the other survivors tried to help, but many were too traumatized to do anything beyond huddle in corners. Exhausted, Rhodes and Lincoln looked at each other, hugged, and cried.
“What are we going to do?” asked Rhodes. “We can’t just leave them here.”
“Yeah,” Lincoln replied, “but we have to go before more poachers come.” Releasing their embrace, Lincoln looked around at all the living animals. “I’m not putting anyone inside another container. Living or dead.”
Just then, a tunnel door sprang open and a heavily armored motorcycle rolled in, atop of which they saw the same Peacekeeper who had been taunting them through their cage. Confused, Rhodes and Lincoln tried to blend in.
The legitimate Officer Brennan looked surprised to see so many animals standing around in a half-destroyed secret subterranean shipping facility, and even more so when he noticed a human among them. Calmly, he shouted, “What’s going on here?”
Chapter Thirty-Three
Law Versus Order
When ￢Brennan told the Matron that he had acquired another tribesman, she had let her hopes go sky-high. There were dangers that would come with creating a second Werbian creature before the first one had reached maturity, but this seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up. With the Marshal underground looking for the real Brennan already, half of the poacher army still waiting to be devoured, and the werwolf eager to finish the job, she instructed ￢Brennan to ready the trap. Because the faux Peacekeeper said his captive was Onondaga Dakota, she had even let herself believe that it was Rhodes, the twin brother of the first boy, Pathos.
Despite deriving immense pleasure from live-streaming the poachers their own demise, the Matron logged off of her Wolfchan persona and drafted a series of important correspondences. While recording a message to the Board of Trustees that explained the werwolf’s rampage, she imagined how irate it would make Portsmith and almost cracked a smile. When she told them that the firewall was stuck down, he among others had been more than a little heated, and they hadn’t had much time to cool off. Riots in the megacities were far worse than anticipated and the board’s constituents were already complaining about the inevitable economic backlash. Many ministers would be comforted to learn that Jacoby’s fleet was entering its final approach, but none of them knew the deadly secret hidden inside the soldiers.
Sitting beside her window in the relative silence of her starside stateroom, it was easy for the Matron to keep her spirits high at first. Remembering Mister Morton being devoured by the werwolf, she laughed out loud. After all she had done for the smuggler scum, he had tried to expose her Wolfchan identity. Although his betrayal was painful emotionally, it made saying goodbye to her puppet that much easier. Plus, because of the network built by his henchman Frank, they were several days ahead of schedule.
After a few hours, however, the likelihood of success began to fade. By the time she received a message saying that there was a massive fire in the subterranean shipping depot, the Matron knew that ￢Brennan had failed. If an Athena-class Marshal came in contact with a tribesman, the LGO would have activated protocols to unlock genetic code that had been secretly embedded in each of their bodies to transform them into a Werbian creature. Reporting was piss-poor from the tunnels, and an energy dispersion that far underground would be far less notic
eable than the one that made the crater, but that much seismic activity would be impossible to miss.
The Matron maintained a state of listless denial for as long as she could, then without a trigger, slipped into an unprecedented fit of rage. “Piece of shit!” Never in her thousands of years had she felt such an utter loss of composure, but the floodgates were open. She stood up and slammed both of her palms against the invisible barrier that separated her from outer space. “The first Not-Brennan–” Screaming, she put real venom into the ‘not’ part of his name. “–had it ten times harder than you! You dirty piece of Earth garbage!” She pushed back from the window violently. “Not only did he have to capture a living tribesman, he had to kill an Athena-class Marshal! Then throw her bloody corpse in the back of his Longcoat to energize the transformation because her Logo was busted!!! You didn’t have to do any of that! You didn’t even have to survive! All they had to do was touch!”
It would be days before the Matron could send anyone from USi to officially investigate, but they wouldn’t be able to confirm what had happened anyway. She would never know that Mister Morton’s claw had sapped so much energy from the Logo that it shut down and prevented the transformation. Even if they found the Marshal’s body, which they would not, this was a major setback. Daunted by the bureaucratic nightmare that would come with instating a third Athena-class Marshal, the comfortable smile that the Matron had grown so accustomed to wearing lately felt like a distant impossibility. With an exacerbated moan, she fell back into her seat and tugged at the collar of her habit, but the coarse fabric would not loosen. After tussling with it frantically for a few seconds, she gave up.
Slouching uncomfortably in her chair, the Matron used her toes to spin slowly and look out her window more easily. It took a while, but staring down at the Earth eventually soothed her. She reminded herself that the werwolf’s reign was just beginning and as long as the firewall was down, it was hers to command. With a sigh, she fixed her posture and slid back to her desk, and started protocols to address Earth’s Tribal Nations. Remembering the looks of fear and mistrust on the Chieftains’ faces as they shared war stories from their respective tribes, however, she was unable to summon the grandmotherly persona that was required when talking with them.
Conditioning Earth’s tribesmen had been one of the earliest milestones in the Matron’s master plan, which is why the next steps would be so painful. She really did care about their future, and the news she had to bring them now would be particularly difficult to lay bare, and it would only be getting worse. After reminding herself of how many sacrifices had yet to be made, the Matron closed her eyes, took a series of deep breaths, stood up, and tried again. Her desk hummed quietly as it loaded information and then lights began projecting a horde of tiny blue tribesmen all across her burgundy carpet. As if she were several stories tall, the Matron stared down at the native Earthlings with loving grace while the USi theme song played. When it had finally ended, she managed to say solemnly, “Good evening, dear tribesmen. I’m afraid we must dispense with formalities. You are in grave danger.”
Under the Shadow of the Plateau: Frontier Forever Page 30