Agatha glanced up at the pool of light. It still displayed the vicious bovine creature with its blades for teeth. “They are Satan’s army?” she asked.
“Exactly,” said Slowborn.
Agatha swatted away a tear.
“You are here to fulfil God’s work. To help us defeat Lucifer’s army,” said Slowborn.
Agatha’s posture straightened. She flicked back a curl of oily hair.
“It is my calling?”
“It is,” said Eyebrows.
“Then I will do as asked. Who am I to question the Divine Will?”
“Uh … yes,” said General Bravo, flashing his opal teeth. He nudged Hibiscus. “Test her. Pull up Simulation A4. Actually … let’s throw her in at the deep end. Simulation H9.”
Agatha almost fell off her chair as the tabletop upon which her elbows rested morphed. One moment it was black – dark as Satan’s soul. The next, it luminesced in silver hues. She stood. Surveyed the scene displayed on its surface.
Chromes. Hundreds of them occupied a field. Or what had been a field. Shrubs and grass and trees disappeared with equal ease under the aliens’ gnashing jaws.
“Can you find her?” asked Hibiscus. “All the Chromes you see here are male. All, but one. Can you identify her – the queen?”
“Why?” asked Agatha.
“Because the males are indestructible. We’ve tried everything we know. Napalm, nuclear blasts, knives, bullets. Hit a male Chrome, and all it does is split in two, or three, or four, and each grows to full size within the day. Then the female burrows underground. Napalm or nuke the horde, and we land up with superheated chromatic sludge. It bleeds into the earth, sterilizing it indefinitely.”
“We think,” said Eyebrows, “that their magnetic parts are able to reconfigure –”
“Can you see her?” interrupted General Bravo. “The queen? The queen controls the rest. If we kill her, we kill the swarm. Every swarm has one. She is their vulnerable point.” He slammed his fist on the table. The image shook. “Their Achilles heel.”
Silence descended upon the war room.
Agatha felt it. A feeling she knew well. The tingle started at the base of her spine. It rose. Spread over her scalp, until every follicle upon her head itched.
And then she knew.
“That one.” She pointed to a Chrome near the far corner of the table. “That one is different from the others.”
The room erupted with cheer.
“Yes!” cried Hibiscus. Even Eyebrows smiled.
General Bravo clapped Slowborn across his corduroy shoulders. “You did it! You found a sexer. Almost none of ours managed this simulation.”
“And those who did died in the plane crash,” said Hibiscus.
Tears swam in the General’s eyes. “Agatha.” He took her fingers in his massive paw. “You are going to change everything.”
Agatha’s hand burned inside the General’s.
“We’ll get her started tomorrow,” said Hibiscus. “But now she needs rest. She’s come a long way.”
“Yes,” said the General, beaming. “Show Ms. Wretched to her quarters.”
*
Agatha wasn’t sure whether she would ever get used to it – the floating bed. Nothing, not a hand, not a feather, held it up. But whatever discomfort she felt lying in the demonic thing dissipated when Hibiscus arrived in her doorway with Lazarus.
The old goat had clearly been washed and toweled down. A flash of anger passed through Agatha’s heart. Did she not keep him clean enough? She washed him annually. But her ire waned as she watched him lope to the bedside. He had a youthfulness in his step she hadn’t seen in almost a decade.
“Come boy,” she said. He jumped in. Nestled his head under her armpit, as he always did. Yes, this was her Lazarus.
“I’ll leave you two be,” said Hibiscus, and the door slid shut.
Agatha waited a moment, until the purple woman’s footsteps faded away. “Look at the drapes,” she said to the goat. “Have you ever seen that color?”
Lazarus snorted.
Agreed. The linen felt too clean against her skin. Or she, too dirty for the cotton.
“And the carpet,” she continued. “Did you feel the carpet? Softer than Mother’s rusks as they come out the oven.”
Lazarus nibbled at her armpit hair.
“I know boy. You’re tired. A nap. We’ll just take a quick nap.”
*
Agatha woke to the warmth of sunlight in her hair. She shifted, trying not to rouse the goat. Lazarus heaved long snores into her shoulder. He approved of the linen.
Dinnnngggg
A chime sounded. Agatha looked for the source of the noise, but it seemed to come from everywhere at once.
Dinnnngggg
Lazarus shook his head. Agatha hopped off the bed. Scrunched the carpet between her toes.
Dinnnngggg
She scanned the alabaster ceiling. Examined the curved, ginger walls. Even checked under the bed. The sound – she couldn’t find the source of the noise.
Someone knocked at the door. “Agatha,” said a woman’s muffled voice. “Agatha, we need to get going. Can I open?”
Agatha called out her assent, and the door slid to one side. Hibiscus stood in the doorway, dressed like a grape.
She looked Agatha up and down. For just a moment, her nose wrinkled when she saw Lazarus in the bed. “Your transport is ready,” said the woman. “They need you in London.”
“London …” whispered Agatha. London was religion, and pressed skirts, and money. London was the source and the goal. London was everything Agatha wasn’t. And now, London needed her.
She coughed her morning cough, hacking up the depths of her. “I shall come,” she said, and spat on the floor. Better. That felt better.
Hibiscus looked away as Agatha readied herself. “Come boy,” she said eventually, and Lazarus was at her side. His newly-washed tail swung in a beam of lazy sunlight.
“Uh … he can’t come with, Agatha. This is a dangerous mission. You’ll be boarding a fighter jet. Entering the red zone. It just isn’t –”
“Where I go, Lazarus goes.”
“I’m afraid that’s impossible, ma’am,” said the General, his head appearing above Hibiscus. “But you will be back this evening. You have my word that Lazarus will be well-fed. Follow me. This way.”
The General smiled that smile. Light glinted off his perfect teeth. Agatha followed. She couldn’t deny the General.
“Can I offer you breakfast?” asked Hibiscus as they walked. She held out a green pill.
“What is that?”
“It’s breakfast, ma’am.”
She eyed the pill. “No thank you.”
“Suit yourself.”
They strode through a maze of corridors. “We need to get you in the air,” said General Bravo. “We arrived in British airspace half an hour ago. London cannot wait.”
“In the air?” asked Agatha.
They turned left into yet another corridor. They all looked identical – the narrow passages. Agatha had no idea how the General knew where he was going.
“You’ll be flying with Her Majesty’s Royal Fleet,” said Hibiscus. They’ve been waiting for you.”
Finally, they came upon a closed doorway. The General tapped on a series of numbers sunken into the wall to one side. The doors slid open. A surge of cool, dry air splashed over Agatha’s face. “This,” he said, extending his meaty hand, “is the Royal Fleet.”
Agatha’s calves goosebumped as she stepped over the threshold into the enormous hall. The space was so vast, she could barely see the far wall. The ceiling was as high as the Knysna Church Spire. The leagues of air above her settled on her shoulders.
She took a breath.
There were scores of them. Machines. Long. Sleek. They looked like the black mambas that occasionally made their way onto the patio of the house. Agatha’s excuse for a husband would do nothing about the snakes. Nothing at all. She cleared her throat, an
d spat.
Hibiscus shuffled to one side to avoid the projectile.
“What are they?”
“Fighter jets,” said the General. “Our last squadron. Our final stand against the Chromes.”
Agatha regarded the venomous machines with a sidelong glance. “Place not your trust in such machinations,” she quoted from Psalms. “The Lord delights in those who fear him, who put their hope in his unfailing love.”
“Where’s that Slowborn fellow?” asked the General. “He’d be able to translate.”
“He’s unavailable, sir,” said Hibiscus.
“No matter,” said the General. He placed his hand, his angelic hand, upon the small of Agatha’s back. He guided her further into the hall.
*
“Is your safety harness tight, ma’am?”
Agatha didn’t like the way the pilot adjusted the straps around her breasts. “Christ,” she muttered, and swatted his hand.
“You’re our number one priority,” he said. “Asset alpha.”
Agatha harrumphed. She supposed he was handsome enough – with those blonde locks draping his forehead. She stole another look. But he was no General Bravo.
“This is Flagship Alpha, requesting permission to depart.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Agatha.
“Sorry ma’am. I’m talking to flight control.”
Agatha shook her head.
Through the flying serpent’s concave windscreen, she watched as hundreds of identical flying machines slashed across the floor of the giant chamber. Fires red as the pits of purgatory burned at their rears. They disappeared out a yawning archway at the end of the hall.
“Roger that. Aligning for takeoff,” said the pilot, seemingly to nobody. Agatha wasn’t sure what was about to happen, but she wasn’t eager to find out.
The serpent swung its nose. Inched forward until it faced the archway.
Agatha swallowed.
“You ready?” asked the pilot. He smiled at her. Why did all the men in the afterlife have such good teeth?
Agatha nodded curtly. Tried not to stare into his azure eyes.
The machine leapt forward. “I love this ride,” he shouted over the roar of the serpent’s bowels. “Hang on, ma’am.”
The open archway was almost a mile away one moment. Then an invisible hand pressed Agatha into the foamy seat. She blinked, and the opening was upon her. By the time she exhaled, the serpent had shot through.
Blue. Sky. Bluer than the pilot’s eyes. Bluer than the dam below the chicken coop. Bluer than a Knysna day. Sunlight streamed through the windscreen. Washed her face.
“They’ve been swarming beneath the airship all morning,” said the pilot. “Traffic control isn’t sure where the nearest break in the horde is. Afraid we’ll have to burn our way through.”
Agatha squinted around her, but all she saw were more of the obsidian flying serpents. The “Royal Squadron”, General Bravo had called them. She strained against the harness to look behind her. More serpentine machines on every side.
“Young man, what are you talking about?”
“This is Flagship Alpha. Ready to engage. On my mark.”
The plane banked to the right, and now Agatha saw the swarm. The Chrome ships thronged and thrummed a few miles beneath them. She thought, from watching the video General Bravo had shown her, that the ships were huge. But now she noticed each was no larger than a horse-cart. Yet what the ships lacked in size, they had in number. There were millions of them. Countless. Frenzied, they buzzed around like the honeybees at the Henderson’s farm. The flash of their metallic skins was almost too bright to watch.
“Mark,” said the pilot.
As of one mind, the scores of black planes lifted their noses to the heavens.
The invisible hand stretched the skin over Agatha’s cheekbones until her crow’s feet disappeared. Her lower jaw grew heavy, tugged to her sternum.
“Dive!” he shouted.
The invisible hand lifted her buttocks from the seat. Her hair was about her face, tangled in her eyelashes. If she hadn’t been wearing the harness, she would have hovered above the chair. The serpent nosedived until Agatha was staring directly into the swarm. They frothed below her. And with every split-second the plane dove, the Chromes neared.
“Heavens above!”
The pilot’s cheeks flushed. He really was handsome. “Engage in three … two … mark. Light ‘em up boys. Let’s get the chicken sexer to London.”
Agatha crossed herself.
Two, four, twelve … innumerable cloudy trails emerged from the diving obsidian planes, streaking ahead to meet the alien mass.
Great balls of fire blossomed in the silvery horde of Chromes. Agatha threw her eyes at the pilot. His grin danced in a hellish orange glow. The plane tore downward. “Woohoo!” he screamed. The plane juddered violently, as they ripped through the cloud of exploding alien ships.
“Hell’s bells,” mouthed Agatha. She shut her eyes. Swallowed her rising stomach. Good thing she never ate breakfast.
Heart-tearing seconds rattled by as the plane descended. And then, as quickly as the judders began, the body of the plane regulated. Settled into its usual hum.
“We’re through,” said the pilot.
She felt the nose of the craft lift. Their fall to the earth had slowed. Agatha opened her eyes.
She recognized the city immediately. It was London. But not the London with floating rivers and gleaming buildings. This was the “after” London that God’s eye displayed in the war room. Charred and twisted, reduced to rubble and ash, the great city was a shade of itself.
The jet engines on either side of the plane swiveled vertically, so that their propulsion held the craft level. The plane hovered above the ruined city.
Movement. She squinted, trying to make it out more clearly. Yes. She was sure. Chromes. Thousands of them. Millions. They crawled over the landscape. Devoured the city as they moved.
“Why don’t you … burn them, like you burned the Chromes in the air?” asked Agatha.
“Tried that ma’am,” he said. “They simply reform. Look above us.”
Agatha strained her neck to see the Chrome cloud through which they had punched a hole. Except … except there was no hole.
“They recombine,” explained the pilot. His voice lowered. As if stating something inevitable. Something somber. “The parts are magnetic. Blow ‘em up, and they find a different configuration.”
Agatha returned her attention to the ground. “What can we do?”
“The queens,” he said. “In every mass, there’s a queen. The queens can’t recombine as easily. And our intelligence suggests that the queen controls the recombination of the others. Kill the queen, kill the swarm.”
The plane descended slowly. Hovered close enough to the ground so her eyes could pick out individual aliens. Dear God, they were ugly creatures. Their silvery carapaces jostled and writhed. Burrowed under one another to get at some juicy morsel of building or grass or whatever lay beneath the metallic throng.
“Do you see one?” asked the pilot. “A queen?”
Agatha unclasped her hands. She slowed her pulse.
She felt it.
The tingle at the nape of her neck. That delicious snow that rustled across her scalp. Into her ears, behind her eyes.
“There. That one.”
“You sure?”
It looked just like all the others. But it … felt different.
“That one,” she said.
He flicked open a switch-cover on the dashboard. “Yes ma’am.”
A roar of hell’s wrath erupted in her ears, as a volley of fiery blades pierced the ground. In a moment, the Chrome Agatha had singled out lay in a puddle of silver ooze.
“Wait for it,” said the pilot. “Any second now …”
But nothing happened. Seconds sludged by. Nothing. Nothing happened.
“This is Flagship Squadron,” said the pilot, his face a mess of warring emotions. “We
did it.” He pumped his fist. “We just killed a queen. Mow down the fuckers.”
Agatha slapped his hand. “Language!”
“Sorry ma’am.”
The plane rose. Rose and shifted a mile toward the horizon. She heard a series of muted poofs, and looked below. A morass of bullets rained down upon the horde of Chromes. They flailed about. Collapsed under the barrage of gunfire. But instead of reforming, as the pilot said they did if the queen was unharmed, they lay on their sides. Their mechanical limbs twitched. Until they were still.
Tears streamed down the pilot’s cheeks. “Ma’am,” he said, taking her hand, “thank you.” He sobbed. “Thank you.”
She removed her hand gently. “Can we eat breakfast now?” she asked.
They spent the rest of the day flying from swarm to swarm. Agatha would pick out the queen, the pilot would slice her up with the plane’s cannon, and the squadron would mow down the males.
“Incredible,” the pilot would say. “She looks identical to the rest. How’d you do it?”
Agatha shrugged, and took another pill. The pilot had called them ‘manna’. Tasted of whatever she wanted. “Grilled chicken,” she thought, as she chewed the paste. Lemon and coriander splashed across her tongue. Flying serpents aside, she could get used to the afterlife.
The hours passed, and Agatha relaxed. Began to enjoy the speed of the craft. The finesse of its handler. The way his fist cupped the firing mechanism. Strong, subtle fingers.
“Running out of daylight,” he said eventually.
Agatha gulped down another manna. Sighed.
“Time to return you to the airship, ma’am.”
“I guess so,” said Agatha. She eyed the diminishing mound of pills that sat between her and the pilot.
It hardly bothered her this time round when they blew an escape hole through the cloud of flying Chromes. ‘Missiles,’ the pilot had called them – the streaks of fire that lit up the enemy.
“God’s fire,” she corrected him.
He laughed. “God’s fire,” he agreed.
*
“Agatha, tell us how you do it!”
“How does it feel to save humanity?”
“What do you think of the Royal Squadron?”
“Say something for the cameras, Agatha.”
Obsidian Worlds Page 8