by John Daulton
Now they were “my” mechs. Black Sander noted it before nodding his head. “Is that all?”
“No. I also want to be there when she takes it off. I want to see the look on her face when she is no longer the War Queen.”
“Why in the name of Hestra would you want that? What possible reason could you have to need that sort of personal connection with her being dethroned?”
He turned and pointed to a photograph hanging on the wall. It was in black and white, like many around the villa were. In it were three men wearing ponchos and wide-brimmed hats, wider than Black Sander’s by far. The entire place was decorated with similar images. They all held rifles, and one held a bottle made of glass. “It is for them,” he said. “They will see me standing on the soil of another world. They will see how strong their blood has become. They will see, and they will be proud and know that their courage lives on, that it will grow out into the galaxy. That is why.”
Black Sander didn’t think he could make that kind of deal.
“Your eyes say you don’t have the authority,” Jefe said.
Black Sander winced inwardly. He hadn’t made any outward signs of his thoughts. He’d been doing deals like these for more than two decades. He regarded Jefe warily.
Jefe smiled. “It is okay, amigo. I have my own kind of magic to see. Besides, I think it is time for me and your employer to meet.”
“A meeting is not on the table,” Black Sander said.
“But we will have one anyway.”
Chapter 35
Pernie didn’t want to be pretty. Not for Jeremy and not for Kyle. She made a point of telling Jeremy that as they made their way toward downtown after school. She explained that she was going to marry Master Altin one day, and that she would only be pretty for him. She was going to try to be pretty like the lady elves, but if she couldn’t be that pretty, then she was going to be pretty like Deeqa Daar and the women who crewed Roberto’s ship. Pernie thought she could be that pretty if she tried. But she wasn’t going to try right now, because she probably was going to have to wait a hundred years. So being pretty right now didn’t make any sense.
“Well, I still think you are,” was all Jeremy said, which was fine. He could think what he wanted, but she told him he needed to keep his thoughts to himself unless he wanted to make her mad. Fortie Nomstacker had tried to tell her she was pretty once, and he was lucky she didn’t hit him in the throat again.
They walked together quietly after that, Pernie trying not to be mad and Jeremy trying not to make her that way. Forty minutes after the last bell, they were picking their way down abandoned streets and around trashed cars, many of which were burned out or had someone sleeping in them.
“That one over there,” Pernie said, pointing to a very tall building that had its whole top half caved in. It was very sharp looking at the top, almost like a spear. Just thinking that they might find a Hostile in the rubble made Pernie wish she had her elven weapon with her.
They got to the building in no time. Travel went much more quickly with Jeremy along because he used his tablet to make maps that led them right to things. Soon Pernie was tilting her head back and staring up at the broken parts of the building high above.
“There has to be some Hostile guts up there,” she said.
She looked around, but all the doors and windows were boarded up. There were lots of signs saying “Keep Out” and “Danger—Condemned.”
“We can’t go in there,” Jeremy said, seeing where she was looking. “The whole thing could fall down on us. We need to look through the rubble around the outside.” He turned to go down the side street. “Come on, a wall over there on that building fell down into the street.” He showed her a picture of the next block, taken from a satellite. He started to move away, but Pernie went to a board on a window and tried to pry it off with her hands.
“I need something to lift this with,” she said, bringing Jeremy back. “It’s stuck.”
“Good. Come on, Pernie. We can’t go in. It’s not safe.”
“Nothing is safe,” Pernie said. “Just ask anyone, and that’s all they will ever say.” She went to the next boarded-up window and tried to pull that one off. It wouldn’t budge either.
She turned about and looked through the debris lying all around. She found an old wooden broomstick and lots of bottles made of plastic and glass. She ground one end of the broomstick against the edge of a broken slab of concrete that had fallen from above, grinding it flat like one of Jeremy’s screwdrivers back in the science lab. When it was flat enough, she took it to the boarded-up window and worked the flattened end underneath the board as far as she could. She pulled against it, trying to lever the board away from the wall, but all she managed was to snap off a quarter inch of the wooden broomstick blade.
“I need something to hit it with,” she said. “It needs to go deeper. Bring me that rock right there.”
Jeremy saw the chunk of concrete she was pointing at and was kind enough not to tell her that it wasn’t technically a rock.
“I’ll hold it, and you hammer it on that end,” she said.
She ground the end of her broomstick flat again as he retrieved the chunk of concrete.
“It won’t work. Look.” He was pointing up to where round, nearly flat bolt heads dotted the board in nine places, lined up in rows like miniature domes at the top, middle, and bottom. “They’re bolted on there. You’ll just break your stick again.”
Pernie frowned. She really wanted to get inside. She wished she hadn’t promised not to do magic. If she could just open up that board enough to look inside ….
“Come on,” Jeremy said again. “Let’s just go to the other building. Sophia is going to figure out you didn’t take the bus home pretty soon. Don’t you at least want to look for something Hostile?”
She did. She really did. She’d been trying to get down here for days and days. It would be a shame not to even look.
“Fine,” she said. She followed after him, but eyeballed every covered window and every covered door, looking for just one piece of wood with a big enough gap to get her stick in. She just knew the tall, broken spear of a building held something good inside.
They traveled all the way down the side of the building and came out on the other street. Sure enough, Jeremy had been right. The whole avenue was heaped with massive chunks of concrete where another building had collapsed on one side. Black strands of metal reached out like twisted insect limbs. The metal was rough and surely made of iron, and Jeremy told her it was called rebar. He told her how iron and concrete are both strong in their way, but that together they become something else entirely. He said someone in Earth’s history named Roman used it first, and that Roman had a great empire—or at least that is what Pernie heard while digging around looking for Hostile parts. Pernie thought Roman sounded like the War Queen, so she told herself that she would mention him and his concrete to Her Majesty the next time she was in the Palace, even though that would probably be a long time away.
The two of them crawled around on the debris pile for the better part of an hour. Pernie didn’t know what she was looking for, but she figured she would recognize a Hostile when she saw one. She used her broom handle to pry over some of the pieces she couldn’t move by hand, feeling a little thrill of anticipation each time she sent one tumbling down the mound. She’d get down on her hands and knees and stare into the dust until it cleared. But there was never anything. Just more concrete and rebar. Sometimes she found parts of furniture or big shards of broken glass.
She stood up and stared back down the street, along the wall of the tall building with all its boards. All the buildings around it had boards on them too. It seemed like all the best parts of downtown were marked as “Danger” and “Condemned.” She wondered if maybe there weren’t any Hostile parts outside of them at all. According to the signs, all the danger was inside.
A series of notes played from Jeremy’s backpack. He opened it and pulled out his tablet again. His
grandfather, Gabby, was calling him. Pernie recognized the school custodian’s voice even though she couldn’t see him on the screen.
“Where you at, boy?” Gabby asked. “It’s getting dark. You get that girl back home?”
“No,” Jeremy said. “Not yet. But we’re going soon.”
“You best get on. The school gone and called me already. That Mrs. Hayworth is all in a fuss about her now, and she got the police looking for her again. She say your little girlfriend ain’t showing up on the grid. You didn’t wrap that girl, did you?”
“No, Grandpa. I didn’t do anything. But we’re on our way.”
“You want I should come get you?”
He looked to Pernie, who shook her head emphatically. Sophia Hayworth had also made Pernie promise not to get into any more vehicles with any men who “hadn’t come to the Hayworth home for dinner at least twice before.” Jeremy shrugged and looked back into his tablet. “She says no. We’re on our way home, though. We’ll still be home way before dark.”
“You best make sure,” Gabby said, and then Jeremy turned the tablet off again.
“Come on,” he said. “Let’s go. If we cut through the alleys, we can be back at your house right away.”
“Where do you live?” Pernie asked.
“Not far,” he said. He was already walking back down the side of the building. “Come on.”
She caught up to him quickly, and the two of them made good time. She saw a man rummaging through bags of trash in one alley, and she saw lots of very mangy cats. A dirty lady with only three teeth tried to touch her, begging Pernie to put some credits in her account.
“I don’t even know how to do that,” Pernie said as she knocked the woman’s reaching hand away with a reflexive rap of the broomstick. The woman jerked her arm away and made a rasping hiss, snakelike, as she clutched her wrist. Jeremy shied away, looking horrified, but Pernie simply walked on.
“You weren’t afraid of her?” Jeremy asked once the woman was well behind them.
“No,” Pernie said. “Why should I be? She’s just an old lady.”
“I thought you said that lady who was teaching you how to be the Sava’an’Lansom was an old lady.”
“Well, that’s true,” Pernie said. “Djoveeve is very strong for an old lady. Plus she was trained by elves. She could kill most anyone if she wanted to.”
“Could she kill you?”
Pernie had to think about that for a moment. Her first thought was that Djoveeve could not, because Pernie had already beaten her in several fights. But those were practice fights. Djoveeve had other ways of killing people. She was a trained assassin, after all. She could sneak in while Pernie was asleep and claw out her heart with jaguar claws. Or use Fayne Gossa poison on her while her immunity was still not quite complete. The more she thought about it, the more she realized that if Djoveeve wanted her dead, the old assassin could get it done.
“Yes,” Pernie said at last. “A Sava’an’Lansom can kill anyone.”
Jeremy looked suitably impressed.
“Hey,” called a voice from behind them. “Look who it is.”
Pernie and Jeremy turned back to see four of the boys from her first night in the alley downtown. Pernie recognized one of them as the oldest one, the one that had tried to grab her.
“Oh crap,” Jeremy said. “Come on, run.” He took off running, but stopped ten steps down the alley when he realized she wasn’t following.
“Pernie,” he called to her, his voice an agitated whisper. “Come on. We have to go.”
“Did you come back to pay us what you owe us?” said the oldest ruffian. “I figure you owe me double now, seeing as how you cost me a night in jail.”
“I don’t owe you anything,” Pernie said, squaring up to him. “And you are a criminal. Those men at the Reno PD said so. Criminals belong in jail.”
The young man laughed and turned to his friends. “You hear that? I am a criminal, and I belong in jail.” They laughed, although the youngest one was looking up and down the street nervously. “So look here, kid. How about you just come along with us to Gorky’s Casino and get us some game chips. What’s your allowance, anyway? A rich brat like you must get at least a hundred a week. Maybe two hundred. I’ll let you off for seventy-five, how’s that?”
“I’m not giving you anything. You need to go away.”
“You got a mouth on you, sister. You should watch that.”
“I’m not your sister. Now go away. I have to go home, and you are going to make me late.”
He glanced at his friends. The youngest was backing away, but the other two were moving to either side. “Look. Why not make this easy? It’s only three blocks away. You just go in, put your hand on the plate, look into the iris scan, and tell them how many chips you want. Give them to me, then we go away. It beats getting your ass kicked, and your friend’s back there too.” He looked over Pernie’s shoulder to where Jeremy stood. Jeremy’s eyes were wide and his hands shook terribly.
“You leave him alone too,” Pernie said. “I’m not giving you any chips or anything else.” She raised her broomstick and held it defensively.
“Oh shit!” he said, mocking her as he pretended to shake like Jeremy. “I got a little girl with a broomstick here. She’s … she’s going to give me a splinter.”
The boys flanking her laughed, and one of them went beyond her and grabbed Jeremy. Jeremy tried halfheartedly to pull away, but gave up straightaway. The street tough dragged him back and thrust him to the elder of the crew, who caught him in a headlock.
“So this is how it’s going to happen,” the youth said. “Me and your pal here are going to Gorky’s. If you want me to not beat his face in, you’re going to get me some chips. I’ll call it fifty, since I’m being nice. You get them, he walks away; if not … lots of bleeding and screaming. How’s that?”
Pernie’s broomstick swung flat and hit him in the temple. It dazed him, and it came so fast the other two near her didn’t move for the sheer surprise. She stepped back and drove the blunt end of the broomstick into the forehead of the boy who had grabbed Jeremy. He collapsed in a heap of loose-fitting clothes. The third boy pulled a length of rusted chain out of his pocket and swung it at her. She caught it with the forward half of the broomstick, and the momentum of his swing wound the chain around the broomstick twice with a clack, clack even as she yanked it from his hands with a jerk. That movement allowed her to bring the back end of the stick around hard against his ear. He staggered, and Pernie jumped up and kicked him in the chin. She heard his teeth cracking, and a moment after, blood poured from his mouth.
The older boy shook off the headshot he’d gotten and quickly fished something out of his pants waistband. It was a small laser gun. Pernie saw it and knew exactly what it was. She’d been looking through weapons catalogs on the net since she figured out how it worked and how to find such things. There were so many wonderful weapons out there, at least a hundred of which she wanted to own one day.
“Put that shit down, bitch,” he said, gesturing to her broomstick with a movement of his chin. “I swear, I’ll do this little bastard right now.” He pressed the laser against Jeremy’s temple.
The flattened end of Pernie’s broomstick sank a full two inches into his eye socket. He screamed and fell to the ground before he’d even realized she’d thrown it. His laser and Jeremy both fell to the pavement beside him. Pernie snatched up the laser and put it in her sweater pocket. She helped Jeremy to his feet as the blinded youth grabbed his face and rolled about making a ruckus.
“He … he could have shot me,” Jeremy said, looking down at the figure thrashing on the ground.
“No, he couldn’t,” Pernie said.
“Yes, he could. What if you had missed? He could have shot me, and I’d be dead right now.”
Pernie pulled the laser back out of her pocket. “No,” she repeated, pointing to the three lights along one side, none of which were lit. “Look. The battery is dead.”
J
eremy looked at the laser, his mouth slowly opening as he thought about what she’d said. He looked back at the young man lying in the street. The youth had pulled the broomstick out, and now blood was spewing everywhere. He was screaming at the top of his lungs, a high-pitched, piercing wail. Jeremy watched him for a moment, then looked back at Pernie again. “Damn,” he said.
Pernie shrugged. “We should hurry. There’s still plenty of daylight for me to get home.”
Jeremy was nearly dumbstruck, but he stumbled along with her, alternating his unending dialogue between how he’d almost died and how Pernie was like one of those Darma Force commando guys. Pernie didn’t know what “Darma Force commando guys” were, but she did know she wanted to get out of there before all that screaming got the stupid Reno PD to come get her again. She’d gone to all the trouble to cut out her chip and wrap it in tinfoil in her bag so they couldn’t find her, and she sure didn’t want to get hauled back to Sophia Hayworth by them again now. That was likely to get her sent back to Prosperion for sure.
Unfortunately, the police cruiser was waiting for her at the end of the block.
Chapter 36
By the time Roberto and his crew arrived at dinner at Calico Castle, the meal had already begun, though just barely so. Kettle caught them entering and gave Roberto a scolding look as she passed him by. “I should say ya could find the time ta show up proper fer a grand meet such as this,” she said. “Kept the master, the great doctor, and the general all sittin’ there o’er an hour waitin’ on yer leisure.” She winked after it, though, and patted him on the cheek, whispering, “I made that duck-stuffed swan what ya liked so much afore.”
Roberto grinned. “Two birds are better than one,” he said. “And sorry I’m late. Those guys at the TGS are assholes.”
“Well, ya can watch yer mouth in mixed company in this house,” she said, the long habit of admonishment readily upon her. She looked to his entourage of corseted crew and frowned. “The ladies’ll not be too keen to eat with that offal comin’ from yer mouth.”