by M. K. Gibson
Well, there was one thing I could try. It would give away my position, but whoever the hell they were, they came looking for me. Might as well say hello.
Lowering my center of gravity, I point blank fired the nano-lines into the hull as best as I could, using the wires as rappelling equipment. I fired line after line, slowly walking my way across the fuselage towards the front of the ship. Reaching the cockpit composite glass, I lowered myself so I could sneak a peek.
Looking over, I expected to see anything from a cadre of human-conscripted mercenaries to demons to a host of hellion warriors.
I most definitely did not expect to see a pretty woman in her thirties in the pilot’s chair. She had soft, rosy cheeks and bright blue eyes. When she noticed me, she smiled and waved. Beside her in the co-pilot seat was the Ahlray. The mammoth, eight-foot cyborg blistered with armor, weapons, and tech. About the only part of him that wasn’t augmented was his cherubic face.
The mercenary and I had met before I went to prison. In fact, that son of a bitch was the reason I went to Flotsam. He had set me up, providing the authorities with the so-called evidence. Well, I reckoned I owed him.
Ahlray put his large mechanical arm around the pilot and waved at me. He mouthed something, but I couldn’t hear anything through the glass. The woman rolled her eyes at Ahlray and passed her headphone and mic over while tapping several keys on her control panel.
“Thanks, honey. Hi!” Ahlrey’s voice boomed through external speakers. “There you are!”
“No shit!” I yelled.
“Sorry, can’t hear you. One-way speaker. But it is nice to see you. Thanks for coming out. Makes this a whole lot easier. You know how much I abhor needless violence.”
“So proud of you,” I heard the woman say over the mic as she pinched his cheek.
“Aww honey, come on. Salem, this is my wife, Mandy. Mandy, this is Salem, the man I told you about.”
“Hi,” she said, leaning in. “Sorry we have to kill you. You seem nice.”
“Lemme see that,” another voice said. A voice I recognized. From the back, in the troop hold, another figure stepped forward. He was short and stocky, with a midnight blue synth-skin performance top, tactical cargo pants, and an L-shaped bandoleer of holsters, pouches, and gear. His youthful blue eyes winked at me past his surly beard and minimalist cybernetic facial implants.
Legion.
“Howdy, asshat. I owe you one,” Legion said, miming a pointed gun with his finger.
Ahlray and Legion? Shit. This was another Vox Operations hit on me. Probably in response to my prison break. Ahlray was reasonable, but Legion was a bloody psychopath. Bastard once shot me with a rocket just to see what Grimm and I would do. He had no problem with collateral damage and my guess was he did not care for leaving witnesses.
I just wanted to know how the hell these two found us so fast. Hell, last time I saw Legion, he blew his own head off after Father Grimm ran him over with the Outrider.
The Outrider . . . shit. That’s how they tracked us here! Damn me for being an idiot. Back when Grimm and I were trapped underground in Vault 47, he was topside. Son of a bitch probably put a tracker on way back then. I knew he was a professional, but damn.
Last I saw this prick, he’d blown his own head off with cybernetic implant rather than be interrogated by me. Imagine my surprise upon learning that the merc was alive and well, having finished a contract hit on the other side of the planet in Trinity Neon. So if this guy was a twin, or a clone, I didn’t care, but I should have known he would come for me eventually.
Well, the threat level got raised to pucker-factor five.
“Tell ya what, asshat,” Legion’s voice said through the external speaker. “You hold still and let us scrape you off the window like a bug, and I’ll make sure the locals die quick.”
Son of a b-word smiled while he said it. So I smiled back, powered up the mass inducer and local force field, and smashed my fist against the glass-acrylic compound of the windshield.
The synth polymer construction wasn’t the duranium hull, but it was still pretty strong. My first blow didn’t shatter it, but spiderweb fractures lined the impact site. I brought my fist down again and again. If I couldn’t bring the gunship down from the outside, then a nice depressurization should do nicely.
Mandy wasted no time in displaying her piloting skills. Banking the gunship hard to the left, Mandy dropped suddenly in elevation, which left me scrambling, in vain, to hang onto anything. Gravity took over as I began to tumble off the top of the gunship.
“Shit shit double triple shit shit shit!” I yelled, flailing like a fool, desperate to hang onto anything.
The gunship flew out from under me as if in slow motion. The ship was mere inches from my fingertips as I began to fall. My stomach lurched as I felt empty air. In a desperate attempt, I fired both nano-lines into the hull. As I fell, my weight pulled the chisel-tips into a tight wedge, just enough to support my weight—but I could feel them loosening.
I felt as useful as an old man’s extra long nutsack as I dangled a hundred or so feet from the rocky ground. I didn’t know what firing up the HBI would do to my insides so soon after my last use, but splattering on the ground was a worse option.
“Well, that plan was worth the effort!” a voice chided over the roar of the gunship’s engines and wind. Ehawee stood atop the ship with her heavy walking staff as calmly as she had back on her dais. “I commend your bravery. But your follow-through is lacking.”
“What the hell are you doing up there?!”
“Apparently what you cannot,” the older woman said. “Stay there. I will be back.”
“Where the shit am I going to go?!”
Ehawee backed up and raised her staff to the sky, calling out in a language I didn’t understand. At first there was nothing but the roar of the gunship. Then the sky rumbled in response. Dark clouds rolled in, seemingly from nowhere, blotting out the moonlight.
A bolt of purple lighting streaked through the sky, striking through Ehawee and into the gunship. Instantly, the ship began to spin as the fusion engines flickered.
“Fall!” Ehawee commanded me.
“Are you nuts?!”
“FALL!” she commanded once more.
For the life of me, I had no idea why I listened to her, but I did. I released the nano-lines and began falling. As I looked up, Ehawee opened her arms and dove from the falling ship. As she did, her body began to grow and transform.
Unlike the other skinwalkers, her clothing and staff melded into her form. Her outstretched arms sprouted talons and her facial features sharpened into a hooked beak and fierce eyes while majestic wings unfurled from her back.
What once was Ehawee was now a magnificent, beautiful, and terrifying angelic mix of woman and eagle. With her wings back, the eagle-woman rocketed through the air towards me.
Ehawee reared her head up and arched her back. Her legs snapped forward and her clawed feet sank their talons into my shoulder. I screamed in pain, but she ignored me as her wings went wide, buffeting against the wind.
Banking to one side like a paratrooper, Ehawee brought us both down in a slow spiral. When I was ten feet or so from the ground, she released me to fall into a painful tumble into the frozen ground. The Collective threw up a partial shield to keep me from breaking any bones, but the impact and sudden stop caused my vision to blur. Beside me, I heard a set of feet land softly. Cracking my eyes open, I saw Ehawee in her eagle-human hybrid form.
Her coloration, black and white tapering into reds, blues and purples along the tips and tail feathers, was very familiar.
“So when you said your long life was a product of divine parenting, you weren’t kidding. Wakinyan’s kid?”
Ehawee nodded. “My assessment stands. You’re not as dumb as you look.”
I smiled through the pain. While I questioned the mating and birthing of an elemental storm bird, I thought it might be a bit crass to ask her if she was born or hatched.
; Behind us, at the far end of the valley, the gunship listed into the side of the canyon wall. Smashing into the rock, the ship slid down the stone. I had to give credit to Mandy: She piloted the crippled vessel a good couple of miles or so before it half landed and half crashed with a loud roar of twisting metal.
“I thought you said you didn’t have anything that could bring a ship down.”
“No,” Ehawee said, shaking her head. “I said The People had no weapons capable. You did not ask if I specifically could, which I was prepared to do until you ran off foolishly. How are you still alive with such actions?”
“My dumb plans usually work?”
“I retract my assessment.”
Eh, fair enough. I nodded as a herd of The People in bison form thundered towards the fallen gunship. I looked toward the ship, then back at Ehawee. “Let’s go say hello.”
“Agreed.” Ehawee nodded as she offered me a hand to stand up.
I accepted and got to my feet. Looking at the ship and its design, I cocked my head to one side. “Y’all got a big ass can opener?”
“No.” Ehawee tapped her staff as the sky above rumbled in response. “But I can think I can improvise.”
Chapter Fifteen
Godly Vomit
En route to Flotsam Prison
“Is this safe?!” Vali screamed over the sound of the makeshift skyhopper’s engines.
Cobbled from spare parts, the skyhopper was little more than a front-back two-seat frame, sheet metal for a body, with a high-density bubble cockpit covering and two fusion engines.
“What?!” Taylor yelled.
“THIS!” Vali screamed back, gesturing with one hand at Taylor’s mechanical monstrosity.
“Oh . . . fuck no, man!” Taylor laughed as he banked hard, weaving around the random jutting sprawl of Ars Goetia’s top-level, aristocratic district.
Vali stood on the landing skid of the two-man vehicle with one hand locked in a death grip around the leather thong crudely bolted onto the side of the skyhopper. According to Taylor, the thing served as the flying machine’s only “safety feature.”
“How much longer?!” Vali yelled.
Taylor looked down between his legs and took his hand off the flight controls as he fished around for something under his seat. Immediately the temperamental vehicle plummeted into a dizzying spin. Vali felt a moment of weightlessness as his legs flew away from the landing skid.
“TAYLOR!” the god screamed as he grabbed the leather thong with both hands.
“Hang on a sec, boss!” Taylor yelled back, holding one finger up.
“TAYLOR!” Vali repeated louder.
The skyhopper leveled off and Vali felt the world right itself. His stomach, however, was still in a flat spin. The once-proud Viking deity turned his head away and emptied the contents of his stomach, hoping his godly vomit landed on some demon.
“Here!” Taylor said, passing Vali a pair of large headphones.
After wiping the puke from his mouth with his free hand, Vali accepted the headphones and placed them on his ears. Immediately the roar of the engines and wind whipping by was muted, and all Vali could hear was his redneck friend laughing at him.
“Hoo boy boss, you shoulda seen yourself. You were all like ‘aaaahhh!’ screaming and stuff. Good times.”
“I’m going to vomit on you, Taylor.”
“Go ahead hoss. I’ve been covered in worse.”
“And why couldn’t I ride inside the vehicle?” Vali asked, nodding towards the empty seat directly behind Taylor’s.
“You’re too big, boss.”
“You’re as tall as I am.”
“Exactly!” Taylor laughed. “I need my leg room and all.”
“What are the chances this contraption will explode?” Vali asked, eyeing the rusted rivets, duct tape, and bonding wire holding the fusion-powered vehicle together.
“Honestly? Forty-sixty. Maybe fifty-fifty. Best not to think about it. When I showed it to T, he asked what I wanted on my tombstone.”
The hopper continued towards the east. The morning sun was beginning to creep over the horizon, breaking the purple black of night with the red-gold colors of hope and promise. And beyond that beautiful sunrise was Flotsam.
“Sun’s coming up, boss,” Taylor said into the headset’s mic. “It’s gonna mess with your sneaking in there.”
“It won’t be an issue,” Vali said. “I can sneak in. But not if this thing keeps making as much noise as it is. Set me down a couple of miles away.”
“No need, boss.” Taylor smiled. “You may wanna hang on. This is going to get . . . weird.”
“What do you mean . . . oh!” Vali said with a lurch as his stomach once again twisted.
The world seemed to fracture and bend around Vali in a spectrum of light. It was like looking through a prism. Every angle reflected a different pattern of light and color. The cloaker device Taylor had installed drew a tremendous amount of power from the fusion engines, causing the vehicle to slow.
“Focus, boss.” Vali heard Taylor as if he were talking to him from the end of a tunnel. “The cloaking device and sound dampeners are turbo-charged. It takes some getting used to.”
“I’ll be fine,” Vali said, rubbing at his eyes and trying to focus on his new reality.
During his travels in the Nine Realms, the god bore witness to things that would break a human mind. But this technomancy was unlike the world he knew. Not worse, just different.
“How close can you get me?”
“See for yourself, boss,” Taylor said, pointing downward.
Vali looked down through the distortion field and saw Flotsam Prison sitting in the middle of Razor Bay like a cancerous growth. From the height of the hopper, Vali could see clearly into the prison’s courtyard.
Flotsam was still in a state of chaos. Smoke rose from inside the prison’s common grounds while prisoners were forced to repair the damage. From the shore, Flotsam’s processing station was equally as damaged. If the description Khurzon provided was accurate, then the explosions Salem manufactured had done massive damage inside the prison while the Cyberai he’d hired to attack the processing station had bombarded the facility from the sky.
Vali was impressed. His ally managed to do all of that with limited time, communications, and resources. Had Salem been born in Asgard, he would have been a god of war to rival his brother Tyr.
“Where should I set her down?”
“Nowhere,” Vali said. “I’m jumping. You take her out of here and land somewhere safe. I’ll contact you when I need a ride.”
“Jumping? Into that? Pardon my insubordination, boss, but horse and shit. You know what’s in those waters? ’Sides, you’re gonna need me in there.”
Vali smiled. The hick mechanic, aside from being a good friend, was remarkably loyal. Vali knew he was hurting. TJ’s disappearance had to be eating the man—the father—alive. He desperately needed something to do, something to focus on other than worrying about his only child.
But his loyalty, while admirable, was not enough to get him through what Vali planned to do. He was a right bastard manning a heavy machine gun when it mattered. But the hillbilly was shit when it came to up-close fighting.
“Not an option,” Vali said, shaking his head. “Just stay safe, keep the engines warms, stay close, and I’ll message you when I need a pickup.”
“Boss, come on, I’m—”
“No!” Vali yelled onto the comm., then immediately calmed his voice. “No. I need you to be my getaway man. You have to be ready to go at a moment’s notice. Can you do that for me?”
“No need for the pep talk, boss; I know I’m not your brother,” Taylor said with a touch of shame. “But if you need me, at all, just call for help and I’ll be there.”
“All right,” Vali said as he held out his fist.
Taylor looked at the gesture. “What?”
Vali shrugged. “Something Salem does. You’re supposed to bump it with your fist.”
&n
bsp; “Why?”
“I have no idea.”
Taylor nodded and then bumped the fist with his own. “Go get ’em, boss.”
Vali smiled, did a quick check of his tactical gear, pulled the hood of his leather cloak over his head, and let go of the leather thong. With his arms wide, the Norse god bent his legs and jumped backwards into the reverse swan dive, leaping in the green-black waters surrounding Flotsam.
As he hit the water, Vali’s body transformed into a seal. Slipping through the water, the transformed god disappeared from sight.
Chapter Sixteen
A Wise Child Obeys
Now, in the Waste
Small fires danced in the night, clinging to bits of wreckage. A long black line marred the snowy landscape, an ebony trail leading to the crashed gunship.
“Be careful,” I said to the gathered herd members.
“We know how to do this,” Macha said in her hybrid form. “Now get off me.”
I dismounted from Macha’s back. The were-bison did not take keenly to Ehawee’s command to carry me like Yoda for the last couple of miles.
“Thanks for the ride.” I smirked.
“Mother, please let me kill him.”
Ehawee repressed a smile. “Perhaps later, Daughter. Akecheta, take the warriors and circle the craft. Salem, who are they?”
“Mercenaries from New Golgotha,” I said, using my telescopic vision to inspect the downed ship. “A big cyborg called Ahlray with more weapons than that ship, and a sociopath named Legion. They work for an assassination company called Vox Operations.”
“And they want you?”
“I told you, I had to break out of prison to get here. I figured I had longer than a day before someone came for me. But I wasn’t expecting anyone with a supersonic gunship.”
“See, Mother, his presence endangers The People. We should just give him to them and be done with it.”
“My patience grows thin, Daughter. Now join the warriors or return home.”
Macha stared daggers at me but obeyed, lumbering off to join the warriors who formed a semicircle around the downed gunship. The were-bison took aim with various weapons and held their position.