Raiders

by Malone, Stephan

  Julian guessed that Kama wasn’t an idiot. She probably had figured out that only military are allowed into the facility let alone the holding cell of a living prisoner of war. “Me,” he said and put his hand to his chest. “Well, uh. I am a Captain.”

  “And what or who you be a Captain of?” Kama's grasp upon English was clearly not a strong one.

  Julian leveled out his stance and stood a little taller. “I am in charge of armored vehicles and the mobile platforms. Also the auto turrets.” Julian paused and then looked up and down Kama's leather battle gear. “Kama. We just want to know. Who are you? Why are you Raiders spying on us?”

  Kama did not respond but instead walked right up Julian in slow fluid steps and then stood in front of him. He could smell her leather battle gear that emitted overtly subtle hints of of oil and dirt and sweat, a strange thing considering it all had been washed several times since her capture. Her armor suit creaked with her every move, not sharply so but with a dulled low-twist pitch as if the armor was crafted ages and centuries ago. “I like this face.” She grabbed his upper arms. “Nice too. Yes. Hmm.”

  Aurelia involuntarily flexed herself into a rage, her face flushed over, her knuckles a fireblind white. “You bitch, get your fucking hands off of him!” She tried to shove Kama away from her left side, but Kama only moved slightly and then laughed at Aurelia's failed attempt to shove her out of the way.

  Kama pointed to Aurelia and said,. “You, girl. Go to your home. Go to homeplace now, you. Jool-yun come back to you next sun.” Kama pushed Julian down and onto the wood-lined floor like he was a toy. Julian tried to push her off but her entire body seemed to be constructed of ironwood. She straddled him down. Julian could not move a thing. Kama jarred her head to Aurelia and then back to Julian who still attempted to free himself. But it was no use. This alien prisoner was strong, really strong, Julian thought. Like something out of a pulp comic except that it was really happening and he was actually being helplessly bound to the floor. Kama spoke to Julian as her oil-and-dirt smelling leather creaked against her motion. “Girl is common one. You stay. I choose you. Honor for you.”

  At this point Aurelia was beyond the realm of mere words. She body slammed into Kama with everything that she physically had. Her momentum forced Kama off of Julian as she simultaneously rebuffed away from her. “Jesus you bitch! You crazy bitch!” Aurelia screamed, her face painted over with bloodshine. “What the hell is wrong with you?” Aurelia exclaimed as she twisted her body to face Kama. Julian rolled himself away, stunned.

  A stream of Prison guards shuffled themselves into the small holding cell. “Okay kids that's enough fun!” The senior officer announced. Four guards held Kama down with modest success. She bodily lifted them one at a time but only for a few centimeters. Despite her apparent superhuman strength she relinquished to the struggle. “Guys, get out of here. Go see the doc, Visiting hours are over.”

  Julian helped Aurelia up and they both looked at Kama who snorted and exhaled against her captors. “Guys, now. Out,” the guard said.

  Aurelia and Julian exited the cell, hobbled up the ramp and then walked back to the observation room. Dr. Palmer was clearly distressed as he held his hands up to his face. The Professor held his hands out as if he were pleading for sanity. “Aurelia, why? So what she hit on your boyfriend. What did you expect her to do with him? Seriously!” He waved his arms around the room, exasperated. “I mean, you know? Look where you are!”

  Aurelia relaxed her stance and placed her hands on her hips. “Doc, that girl is some kind of cracked. I'm sorry, but she's out of her fucking mind. You don't just dry-hump someone's boyfriend like that! You should have let me smack her around doc. She needs an attitude adjustment!”

  Dr. Palmer suspended his hands at chest level and then dropped them to his sides. Aurelia, this woman has been,” he waved his right hand, “Well she's been out there all her life you know, in the Wastes. Their societal structure whatever it is is utterly alien to anything you can possibly know.”

  They looked down the observation window. Kama was once again on the couch only now her hands were bound and her face showed no emotion save some redness from the recent takedown. Five prison guards arced around her. The guards appeared to be saying something to her but none of them could hear anything through the soundproof triple-glassed window. Kama simply stared up through the window and focused onto its right side which was roughly where Julian stood.

  The Professor continued. “Listen, you don't get it. Maybe I should have disclosed some more cultural information here.” He pointed straight through the window to Kama. “See that? Okay that, she, is not just a simple barrel-picked Raider that we arbitrarily captured. Kama is or at least was one of their alphas. What that means is that she was almost certainly selected from a very early age to be mated with whomever is heading up their little party down there.”

  Julian interrupted the doctor's dissertation. “Wait, doc. So what, like she had two husbands or something?”

  “No Julian, what I'm saying is that, well at least we believe and trust me, the data is ridiculously limited here. Their leaders are called elders, a small yet powerful group who control all of the Raider subcultures. They sustain a small pool of women who they use as mates. These hand chosen women are of course the most attractive and most physically fit of all the females born. There are plenty of genetically modified descendants running around out there whose great great grandparents were never allowed to live in any of the Polar Cities and Kama is definitely one of these descendants.

  "The ratio of the elders to the women is unknown but the analysts best guess is three to one, maybe four. A lot of this is guesswork but our sociological scientists believe that these special women probably had a lot of power,. They are untouchables, at least that’s what we think, and they could probably do whatever they wanted to whomever they wanted to do it to for their entire lives as short as that is out there in the wastes.”

  “So they have like a special do-whatever-you-want pass?” Julian scratched the left side of his head just above the ear.

  “Probably, yes. Do whatever, to whomever, wherever.”

  “But what about fidelity? Wouldn't it make sense that these alpha women would have to be faithful to their, uh, the elder group?”

  The doctor raised his hands up to exemplify his words. “Look, we aren't talking about a pack of wolves here. The Raiders are human beings just like we are. Their societal structure is far more complex than anything you find in the animal world. If we were looking at a clutch of bonobo monkeys, sure the females would mate only with the alpha males but this is different.”

  “How is it so different doc? This Kama chick doesn't behave any better than any animal,” Aurelia sneered.

  The Professor said, “It's different Aurelia, because life out there is, well it's very short and extremely stressful. No animal group nor human collective for that matter has undergone such a degree of stress as the Raiders. Imagine this. You wake up and today you find that your family's all dead from one of the Great Storms that blew in. A colony of insects overran you and hundreds of your fellow Raiders simply suffocate to death, smothered into oblivion. You haven't seen a drop of rain fall in over a year.. Or the rain falls non-stop for a month and flash-floods wash everything you ever knew away. With each new day a different flavor of hell presents itself to these people. Don't forget about the Dead Latitudes to the South! When you turn twenty-five as a Raider you are old. We think Kama here is around thirty to maybe thirty-five years old. That makes her a senior citizen in the eyes of her tribe.”

  “Maybe that's why they never bothered to mount up a rescue mission. Kama's so old to them she's like a throwaway or something,” Aurelia said.

  “Perhaps, Aurelia, there is more truth to that statement than you realize.”

  Julian interjected. “So doc, what are you going to do with her now? Just let her rot here in this cell pod?”

  “Well, that all depends on her really. If she cooperat
es we may try to integrate her to our way of life here in the Polar City, but I don't know.” Dr. Palmer shook his head briefly. “I for one am not going to hold my breath. You know? She may be too unstable. I doubt if she will ever be able to live among the regular population. She may just live out the rest of her life right there in that little room.”

  “Good,” Aurelia snickered.

  “Have a little empathy Aurelia,” the Professor said.

  “Sure, whatever.” Aurelia looked down at Kama who still looked up toward them. “All this social studies crap is interesting but it still doesn't answer my question.”

  “What question?” Dr. Palmer asked.

  “If she was one of their inner elite sex toys or whatever then why the hell was she sent out on a scouting mission? That just makes no sense to me doc. None. I don't get it.”

  Dr. Palmer said, “I really don't have an answer.”

  “Yeah okay.” Aurelia shoved faced her palm toward the observation window. “Let’s go home Julian. Let's go.”

  “Alright well this has been one nutty afternoon doc. Thanks.” Julian and Aurelia started to walk out of the observation room.

  “Yeah thanks doc,” Aurelia said half-sarcastically. “And good luck with your crazy leather-girl.”

  “Take care guys. Don't forget to clear security on the way out.” Dr. Palmer pivoted his chair back around to his office desk.

  They were almost back to the Facility entrance when Aurelia smacked Julian on his left upper arm with a biifff. “You're an idiot,” she said.

  “What the hell was that for?” Julian rebutted.

  “You could have fought her off a little harder than that,” Aurelia said.

  Julian shrugged. “Jesus what the hell was I supposed to do, huh? Yeah come on like either one of us expected her to just do that after being a virtual zombie in the lockup for six weeks. Calm down and cut me a little slack.”

  Aurelia continued to stare forward. She said, “Yeah I'll cut you some slack.” Julian said nothing but instead shook his head as they walked out.

  Aurelia muttered just above her breath, “Idiot.” They traveled in silence toward the Military Centre's main entrance. A small group of twelve combat specialists dressed in full field gear marched in the opposite direction. Corporal Shad, an old friend of Julian's from training raised his hand and threw him a quick wave. Julian returned the gesture and then snapped off a short salute, unorthodox and odd since he outranked Shad. But Julian did not really care. Aurelia ignored the passing squad entirely..

  They exited the Facility and then proceeded onto the streets of the underground Polar City. The City engineers managed to provide the passageways with ample illumination despite the relatively small amounts of available power. Over a century of aesthetic renovations refaced the Polar City's inner conduits, tunnels and passages into organically relaxed thoroughfares. They were never called tunnels or conduits but simply the streets by City inhabitants.

  Each street was named as any found in the Lost Cities of the Wastes far and long ago. The City streets were typically curved and bendy, an intentional design. The Polar City builders knew that future generations would have to live inside for most of their lives. They understood that squared off and linear travel systems created anxiety. So they built in subtle curves and even graded the tunnelways slightly. They gently rose and fell and this gave the tunneled streets a more relaxed and abstract feel for the people who used them every day. It was a small sacrifice in transportation efficiency but worth it in the end.

  Citizen-created art was strongly encouraged to decorate the inside surfaces of the streets, even the ceilings. Everything from finger paints pushed from the hands of children to complex, beautiful mixed-media illustrations from minds of the the gifted lined the City streets throughout, even the lesser roads where only uncommon visitors passed by every now and again. To the people inside the great Polar City Three a common street was not a progenitor of anxiety or stress or peril. These tunnelways offered a utility and spiritual fulfillment only rarely seen in the history of civic design, ancient and modern both.

  For this was a different paradigm, a time of getting it right on the first and only try. The surviving scraps of civilization that remained were driven underground for this, the last and greatest stand that humankind has ever staked down in its brief time alive in the song of the Universe.

  This desperate fling. A A final throwing of the bones for their hopeful and reticent survival.

  Five

  After their brief trip over to the Military Centre, Julian and Aurelia returned to their neighborhood sector.. Evening approached the City as they arrived and it was almost time for the City's outer lighting systems to be dimmed to forty percent. The main avenue which was merely one branch away from their little street slowly thinned out its traffic. The handcarts and the walkers-by and the citizens atop their bicycles, the three-wheeled pedalcraft all moved toward their respective destinations.

  They made it a point to stop at Anlith's place to drop off payment for her help with their garden-wall before the City lights turned low. Young Anlith wasn't home but her mother answered the rounded door which was stained in a reddish-brown teak. The wood appeared deceptively new despite its age. Anlith’s mother was a matronly apparition, a woman in her lesser fifties who donned herself in a well-frayed apron and a skull-and-crossbones bandana tied loosely around her forehead. The bandana served to pull her hair up from a pair of fatigued yet comforting gray-green eyes that almost no child would ever dare abandon even years away.

  The woman stood mid-threshold, pointed to her head and said, “Ignore this. Other scarf gave out in the wash. Haven't worn this thing since my party days,” she waved abstractly into the air, “Thousand years ago.” She removed her bandana quickly with a subtle hint of embarrassment and asked, “What's up folks?”

  Julian smiled slightly, brightened up his eyes and responded. “Hello, we just wanted to give Anlith the last of her money for helping us. For fixing our garden wall.”

  Anlith's mother smiled and said, “Thanks I'll be sure she gets it.” She flung her right thumb at mid-breast. “Wencela, her mom. She's gone somewhere God knows what she's up to now that restless girl, but thank you so.”

  Julian replied, “And thank you. Tell Anlith thanks so for her expertise.”

  Wencela took the roll of money from Julian's hand and wavered it mid-air. “Will do.” A three-toned beep resonated from inside her home somewhere. She pointed over her left shoulder which clutched onto the money. “Gotta get back there. Stew's gonna boil over!” She announced.

  Julian and Aurelia simultaneously held up their palms to wave themselves away in a friendly gesture. “Bye.” The door appeared to close by itself as the woman retreated inside but it was only an illusion created from Wencela’s unseen heel as she kicked it and shut it behind her.

  They returned home again and Aurelia plopped onto the couch, tired and drained while Julian went into their kitchen to grab some water. “Want anything?” He said.

  “I’m fine, no.” The smart-lamps base rings glowed and dimmed.. They were extremely low power organic computers running on less than a single volt, thin as silk and designed to be installed straight onto furniture or built in as if they were always meant to be there. They required no maintenance or batteries to change, nothing to plug in or wire up. Humans may have lost control of the world from the violent climate outside but at least they enjoyed life again without being buried in a torrent of menacing gadgets. Aurelia spoke to the lamps with their soft, basilar glow. “Message.”

  The lamps responded and blinked twice softly and a man’s voice emitted from the wall console. “Guys hey this is Major Orlando from the Centre. I guess you aren’t home yet but Doc Palmer wanted me to call you about something. It’s about that Kama girl they have locked up. This is classified shit so don’t talk about this to anyone. Anyways she talked. Call the doc or me when you can. Thanks guys..”

  The lamps blinked twice and then the rin
ged glows were gone altogether. The media wall console appeared to be a landscape painting of a barn and wheat field when not in use, a twenty-sixth century version of sleep mode. The painting bleeped a soft chime sound, a notification for Aurelia that a reminder was automatically added to call the Centre soon. If she ignored the reminder after a day then the media console’s frame would softly glow to remind her..

  Julian emerged from the kitchen with a lemon water. “Who was that?”

  Aurelia said, “The Centre again. Orlando.” She rubbed her eyes and forehead. “More brass. Makes me nervous. I don’t like all this attention we are getting from up high.”

  “That’s because you’re a star now.” Julian sat down across from her and said, “Livin’ large. So you gonna call?”

  Aurelia rubbed her eyes again and covered them with her hands. “Can you call them? Please?”

  “Yeah yeah.” Julian said to the coffee table, “Call Doctor Palmer.” The table emitted several low tones in quick succession. A moment later Doctor Palmer’s voice said from the wall console, “Hello?”

  “Hey doc it’s Julian. We just rolled in the door here. What’s up?”

  Doctor Palmer said, “Well you aren’t going to believe this one.”

  “I’ll believe anything. What’s happening now? Something with the Raider I'm guessing.”

  Palmer responded, “Yeah. After you left here Kama started to talk. She said she wants to, uhh, she wants to, heh, battle Aurelia.”

  Julian set his water down and shook his head. “Sorry doc, what’s that now?”

  The Doctor repeated, “I know, right? I said Kama told us she wants to fight with Aurelia. She says that if she does this then she will tell us whatever we want to know. She went on saying some garbage about her honor as chosen or some-such.”

  Aurelia removed her hands from her eyes and gave Julian a disbelieving look. She shook her head and extended her fingers away. “Doc, I’m here, hey. This is craziness. It’s nuts. She’s fucking crazy, you know this right? Come on, I am not going to spar with her. I’m still not feeling one hundred percent from my wound. She’d kill me anyways.”