Marauder Ramses

by Aya Morningstar

  “What’s Venus like?” Elise asks. “I’ve never left Earth.”

  “It’s….” I can’t think of what to say other than “better than this shithole.” I normally don’t mind sounding like an asshole, but I feel like I’ve given Elise enough of a hard time already. “It’s nice,” I say.

  “I grew up mostly in the floating jungles,” I admit. “My parents basically met there, and they wanted me to know about both jungle and city life. It was hard though, going from hunting boar with bows and spears and eating with your hands, to suddenly needing to know about six different types of forks.”

  I see the lights on the buildings blurring up as the car starts to descend toward the street.

  “You eat hot dogs with your hands,” Elise says. “So you’ll feel right at home.”

  I can already feel my stomach churning, though I have no real idea what I’m going to be eating. Ever since my parents bridged the gap between the cities and the jungles of Venus, most of the diet I ate in the cities became quite similar to the food we had in the jungles...just prepared in a more fancy style. The main meat was boar meat, and our diet was heavy in tropical fruits.

  We get out of the car and go into Jerry’s Dogs, which is a really tiny building with only a few tables. It’s a bit late for dinner time, so there are very few customers and several open chairs.

  “How hungry are you?” she asks me.

  My stomach churns. “Hungry.”

  “So I’ll get you two,” she says.

  “Three.”

  “You don’t even know how big they are or what they taste like –”

  “Three,” I say, still not sure it will be enough.

  “You think that makes you sound tough,” she says, “but you’ll look pretty sad when you have a half-eaten hot dog on your tray.”

  We reach the counter, and Elise orders four dogs “with everything.”

  When they arrive, I just see two pieces of bread covered in vegetables. I see red, green, yellow – nearly as colorful as the floating jungles. Then I sniff and smell meat.

  The hunger tears at me, and I grab the dog and tear into it, biting half off in one bite.

  My eyes widen in surprise. The taste is overwhelmingly good.

  It’s crunchy, the meat is delicious and juicy, and there’s even a touch of acid to round it all off. I nearly bite in again as Elise smiles up at me, but then my mouth burns. A fiery heat lances across my tongue and fills my entire mouth. The heat bursts up into my nasal cavity.

  Elise is raising her hot dog to her mouth, and I dive over the table and slap it out of her hand. “It’s poisoned!”

  I slide off the table and roll onto the floor, landing on my feet in a low squat.

  All the customers stare at me, some holding half-eaten hotdogs in their hands, and some with yellow sauce splattered all over their hands.

  Elise’s mouth is hanging wide open, and her hotdog and all its toppings are now spilled all over the floor.

  The burning in my mouth intensifies, and even if the poison brings me down, I’ll die knowing I saved Elise.

  I grab my gun and draw it, pointing it over the counter. The heat in my mouth is bringing tears to my eyes – it must be some kind of nerve agent. “Was it Grius?” I look down at my arm band, but it’s green. It likely wasn’t designed for detecting this poison. I shout across the counter at the guy working the register. “Or was it Sanga? Or another Marauder from Darkstar?”

  “Shit, man!” the man says. “I don’t know what the fuck –”

  I feel a hand on my arm, and it’s Elise pulling me back. She hisses into my ear, “No one is poisoning us! Put the gun away!”

  I keep it held up, ignoring her. The heat is still burning my mouth, but it’s starting to subside. It’s likely not strong enough to take down a Seraph, but surely it would have killed Elise.

  “My mouth burned shortly after I bit into the dog,” I say, “and –”

  “It burned?” Elise asks. “Like a hot pepper?”

  “What?”

  “A hot pepper. They put a small hot pepper into the dog.”

  “Why would they do that?” I ask.

  “To add heat. It tastes good.”

  The owner barges in from the kitchen, sees my gun, and starts shouting at me. “You fucking Seraphim shit birds! I’m tired of your shit, I –”

  “Please,” Elise says, pulling on my arm.

  I lower the gun.

  “He’s really sorry,” Elise says. Then she whispers into my ear. “Say it!”

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m from Venus. We do not put painful, burning flavors into our food, and I thought you were poisoning us.”

  “Get the fuck out of here!” the owner screams at us.

  Elise and I leave the restaurant, but not before I grab the remaining hot dogs off the table and throw them into a paper bag from the tray..

  We step outside, and I await her fury.

  She looks up at me and bursts out laughing. As she’s laughing, she reaches into the bag, pulls out one of the green peppers and bites into it. “It’s barely hot to me, you big idiot.”

  I can still feel the burning on my tongue.

  “How?” I ask. “Are humans immune?”

  “No,” she says. “You build up a tolerance.”

  “I see,” I say. “You may eat one of my dogs, since I ruined yours.”

  “That’s so generous of you, Ramses,” she says, taking one from the bag and biting into it. She hands the bag to me and says, “Enjoy the rest, but just remove the peppers since you can’t handle them.”

  I furrow my brows at the bag. “I can handle them. I was worried about you. The burning sensation was not so bad...it barely registered to me, but I thought to a human it would be dangerous.”

  “Uh huh,” she says, a smile lighting up her eyes as she looks at me.

  I pull my half-eaten dog out from the bag and bite right into it without removing the pepper. Pain flares up in my mouth once again, and I squint my eyes to stop them from watering.

  “I can tell you really don’t like those, Ramses, so just take them off. It’s fine. Really.”

  “You will not out-pepper me, woman.”

  “I’m not the one crying over a hot dog,” she says, rolling her eyes and grinning.

  “You’re shame debting me,” I say.

  “Oh, here we go,” she says. “Look, Ramses, you saved my ass a few times already. If anything, I owe you shame debt.”

  I swallow the last bite of the first hot dog, and I wait for the burning to die down before speaking. “I thought you said it was my fault that everything happened the way it did.”

  “It was, partially,” she says. “But I can’t help but think what might have happened if we hadn’t interrupted their plans. It looks like the gas didn’t do anything, but maybe Grius had another sphere, and the gas was inert unless it mixed together? We don’t know the full extent of their plans.”

  I bite into the second hot dog, giving myself time to think of a response. I look at Elise’s bracelet, still glowing green, but it doesn’t put me at all at ease. I don’t trust Harmony, and I can’t believe that they’d have gone to all that trouble to set up an attack, only for the gas to do nothing.

  “How do you really know for certain that Harmony can’t be hacked?” I finally ask.

  “It’s an incredibly high-level A.I.,” Elise says. “It’s beyond a computer that can be hacked. It’s like...can you be hacked?”

  I stifle a laugh. The easiest way to “hack” a Marauder or a Seraph is through their cock. Elise, for instance, could – I shake my head and push the thoughts away. I need to focus on the job.

  “I could be persuaded, charmed, coerced….” I say.

  “But Harmony isn’t a human, Marauder, or Seraph –”

  “You can’t have it both ways,” I say. “She can’t be hacked because she’s not just a machine, but now she can’t be manipulated because...she’s a machine?”

  “No,” Elise says
. “Because she’s too damn smart. It would take something way smarter than any number of humans to manipulate her. It’s why we let her make the big decisions.”

  “You let her make all of the decisions,” I say. “It’s fucking dangerous.”

  Elise scoffs. “Doesn’t your mother make all the decisions on Venus? How is that any less dangerous?”

  “There’s a parliament,” I explain. “She’s not like some ancient queen who calls all the shots.”

  “Anyway,” Elise says, “let’s get going, my contact should be home by now.”

  We start to walk down the street. The sun is still up. It’s barely visible through the thick haze of smog, but it’s still light enough that I don’t feel the need to keep my hand on my gun as we walk. I know neighborhoods like this can get really rough, but they’re much worse at night.

  When the Seraphim look out and see Elise’s uniform, they glare at her. Some take their kids and pull them away.

  “Looks like they’re afraid of you,” I whisper into her earpiece. I have to speak really low for Seraphim not to be able to hear me.

  “They break the law a lot, and we arrest them. So yeah, they don’t like us.”

  I nod. It’s similar in Sankt Petersburg. We’ve tried to offer counseling services or setting them up with other Seraphim who aren’t having difficulties, but nothing seems to work.

  “She lives here,” Elise says, pointing up at a building on the corner.

  We go inside and walk up two flights of stairs. Elise knocks on a door with chipped paint and splintered wood.

  “Hold on!” calls out a woman’s voice from deep inside the apartment.

  I’m tempted to knock louder, but I resist the urge. Old habits die hard.

  The door swings open and a tall, spindly Seraph woman scowls down at Elise. Then she looks over and arches an eyebrow up at me.

  “Oh, God,” she says. “It’s you.”

  “Gaia,” Elise says. “Please hear me out.”

  Gaia starts to shut the door, but I jam my forearm against it.

  “Oh?” Gaia says, flashing her teeth at me. “You’re going to strong-arm your way in here? You’re like one of them now, huh? Hypnotized by human pussy –”

  I swallow my rage. I’m good at distinguishing from people’s voices when they genuinely mean something and when they just want to get a rise out of me. Gaia is just trying to piss me off to make me do something stupid.

  “May we come in?” I ask.

  “Why the fuck would I let you two in?” she asks. “You think I need everyone in the building thinking I’m a snitch?”

  I can hear Elise sucking air in through her teeth, and her face has turned a deep crimson color. Her fists are balled up, and she’s staring daggers at Gaia.

  “We’re trying to help,” Elise says in a low voice, simmering with rage.

  “Oh?” Gaia says. “You have no idea what we are going through. None –”

  “Maybe if you hadn’t shut me out back when –” Elise starts to say, but Gaia shoves herself up into her face.

  “I shut you out to keep you safe!” Gaia says. “You didn’t need to be involved in all this shit. Something is fucking wrong with us, and –”

  I’m standing and looking down at both of them, and Gaia suddenly looks up at me and jabs a finger at me. “Not all of us, of course. And Seraphim like this tall asshole here? Instead of trying to help us, they just pretend we don’t exist! Do you know my boyfriend disappeared over a week ago? I called your fucking police station, and they didn’t do shit, they –”

  “What’s your boyfriend’s name,” I ask. “We’ll look into it for you.”

  Gaia scoffs and shakes her head. She starts to close the door on us, but stops short. “You help me in exchange for something? That’s not how cops are supposed to work. When one of us disappears like this, they never come back, and the cops sure as fuck can’t help find Sanga. If you really want to help me, then just get out of here before anyone –”

  “Did you just say Sanga?” Elise asks. “Your boyfriend is Sanga?”

  Gaia doesn’t open the door any further, but she leans in toward the opening and looks up at Elise and me with wide and shocked eyes.

  “You...know where he is?” she asks. I see hope glisten in her eyes, and then it dies back just as fast as it appeared. “Shit, that can’t be good.”

  “He was involved in an attempted terrorist attack,” I say, not wanting to soften the blow or mince words. “He escaped, but we’re trying to track him down.”

  Gaia lets go of the door and walks inside. She seems to be dizzy and shakes her head. “Fuck!” she screams, kicking the shoe rack just inside the door.

  She ignores us and keeps walking further to her apartment.

  I give Elise a look, and I point with my eyes further inside.

  Elise nods, and we both step through the open door.

  Gaia is holding a framed photo now, and looking down at it with red, teary eyes.

  “Gaia,” Elise says, “We’ll –”

  Gaia throws the picture down at the floor. The frame shatters into a bunch of pieces. “That lying piece of shit!”

  I put my hand on Elise’s back, and I move in front, putting myself between Elise and Gaia.

  “How did Sanga lie to you?” I ask. “Do you know where he’d run to?”

  “Not Sanga!” Gaia says. “That piece of shit Marauder.”

  “Grius?” Elise asks.

  “I don’t know his name,” Gaia hisses. “An old, grizzled fuck. He always smiled real wide, but there was nothing there. I didn’t believe a word that came out of his mouth, but Sanga wanted to believe.”

  Elise and I both stay quiet, not wanting Gaia to stop talking. She’s unstable now, and if we set her off, she could stop giving us information.

  Gaia shakes her head, looking down at the shattered frame. “He promised me he wouldn’t get involved, and then everything seemed okay. Sanga was happier than ever, and I thought he’d turned a corner. That was fucking stupid of me to think he had changed his mind. Now I see it...he was happy because he’d decided to follow that liar, and he didn’t care if he had to lie to me to do it.”

  “What did the Marauder offer you?” Elise asks.

  “To get out of this place,” Gaia says. “He said Darkstar still has a functioning ship, but not enough antimatter to leave just yet. So he needed Seraphim like us to help him.”

  The pieces start clicking in my head. Grius needs antimatter, and the Seraphim – as I’d been hearing – want to leave this star system. They want to become Marauders again.

  “Why would Grius focus on Earth?” I ask. “If he wants antimatter, Earth is the worst place to get it.”

  Only the governments of Mars and Venus have access to antimatter, and it can only be used when both planets agree on the use. When not in use, it’s kept locked up on Titan, in the factories started by my father and uncle. Because both Venus and Mars distrust Harmony, Earth has no direct say in the use of antimatter. Mars-Venus use antimatter to oversee the re-terraforming of Earth, but Harmony is never given direct access to it.

  “I don’t fucking care,” Gaia says. “I just wanted Sanga to stay out of this shit. Leaving this star system is a pipedream...we all want it, but most of us are smart enough to know we can never ever get it. That lying shit is just taunting us, saying what he knows we want most.”

  “Did he try to recruit you?” Elise asks.

  “Yes,” Gaia says. “Not that you care about me, so I’ll save you the effort: He didn’t tell me shit. You had to prove yourself – like I assume Sanga did – before you learned anything. Standard bait and switch – hey, what’s that blinking thing?”

  I see Gaia is looking down at Elise’s wristband, and then I see it is blinking yellow.

  Shit.

  I quickly check my own, and see that it’s still solid green.

  Elise notices her band, and she stops cold, staring down at it.

  “You guys need to leave,” Gai
a says. “Out!”

  She starts shoving Elise toward the door.

  I take Elise by the hand and step outside the apartment door with her.

  “Sorry about Sanga,” Elise says.

  Gaia nods, then shuts the door in her face.

  “Ramses,” Elise says. “You should get away from me...at least until Harmony checks me out.”

  I pull out my plasma pistol and turn it to the lowest strength, and then I adjust the spread to a small pinprick. I point the gun at my own wristband and hold down the trigger. I drag it across, and as the band heats, I feel it burning my skin. The band splits in two, and I throw it down onto the ground.

  “Fuck, Ramses,” Elise says. “You can’t tamper with that, you’ll –”

  The band starts beeping rapidly, and the color turns to red.

  I snatch Elise up into my arms and run with her away from the band. I hear the explosion behind me, and shards of wood cut into my back as the heatwave hits me. When I turn around, I see it was only a small but concentrated blast. Part of the floor was blown open, and the surrounding walls are charred and blackened, but aside from the small scrapes on my back, I’m fine.

  I put Elise down and start to check her for cuts.

  “I’m fine, Ramses –”

  Her arm band begins to beep as hallway doors start opening, and Seraphim start looking in confusion to see what just blew the fuck up in their hallway.

  As soon as they notice Elise’s uniform, they slam their doors shut and pretend nothing happened.

  I point the gun at Elise’s wrist, and I put my fingers behind the band and between her skin, and then I fire. The extra heat burns my fingers rather than her wrist, and as soon as the band is cut open, I throw it full force through the window. It shatters and explodes in mid-air before hitting the ground.

  “Shit,” she says. “Why the hell would it explode…?”

  “Having you infected isn’t...harmonious,” I say. “Easier to just blow you up.”

  Elise stands shocked and stunned. “Harmony wouldn’t….”