“Cannon’s up,” Julian announced. Kama relaxed her Coilgun down and smiled at Julian. Aurelia let out a subdued harrummph and then took another swig of water. She stood up and whispered into Julian’s ear.
Julian laughed, glanced in Kama's direction and then shook his head. “Don’t think so, no,” he said to Aurelia.
The four sat around a small campfire with the Solarbikes ringed round them. “Don’t think we need the fast tents. Should be a decent night,” Revon said. The other three nodded in agreement.
The Sun fell away to nightfall. The four adventurers discussed the specifics on what they were going to do. After an hour and a half of details they decided that Julian would pose as Kama’s captured prisoner. The Jia Ting would consider Julian a valuable prize, a living trophy, a gift from the far away Polar City Three.
At once the auto cannon sounded out a short blirp and then swiveled it's small barrel toward the northeast. Revon held up his hand and everyone hushed themselves to silence. Kama and Revon looked at each other. Blirp blorp the autocannon tried to lock onto something just beyond the camp. He glanced at Kama again and then nodded no. She had charged her Coilgun and was almost to a stand.
The autocannon’s target laser jiggled and twitched. It could see something hidden just beyond. Blirp, blirp, blirp, BLORP and then a low pitched thimmmm, the autocannon’s signal that meant ready to engage the target now. The turret would do nothing more without Julian’s release.
Julian reached for his armband but stopped when Revon waved to him, “Wait,” Revon whispered and then disappeared into the blindscrubs in a handsmacked second. Julian nodded toward the empty space where Revon stood only a second before. The moment was comical but subdued for Kama and Aurelia.
Fifteen seconds later everyone had their weapons ready. Their guns pointed into the darkness where the auto-cannon laser threw a mist-danced beam just past. Nobody made a single sound at all. A screech emerged from the silent dark, and then a scuffle. They heard Revon yell, “Hey!”
Branches broke and leaves shuffled. The howl of what sounded like a young woman resounded across the forestline. “Yaawww! Yowww!” Revon emerged into the circle. He carried the captured specimen in front of him. The autocannon’s laser painted a tiny red and orange dot over her forehead. The girl thrashed widly against Revon's hold. She kicked out and yowled some more and then bit into Revon’s right forearm with a grizzled snarl. Spit and blood flew from her mouth. The girl’s rotten and weakened teeth were no match for Revon’s nano-fibre body armor. Two brown-yellow nuggets rolled harmlessly to the ground.
“Stop it!” Revon said as he shook the feral woman. His action made her kick and fight even harder than before. “Stop! God damn it! Christ almighty!” He yelled.
The girl stopped the futile struggle as he set her down near the firepit. He removed what appeared to be her only weapon. It was loosely tied to her thigh with rotted and frayed sunder twine. The device was a crudely formed metal blade that was bound fast against a wooden stick, a half a meter long or so. The weapon was a crude but valuable weapon for any wanderer.
Aurelia, Kama and Julian all trained their weapons on the wild girl as she heavily breathed and sighed. The girl looked from one to the other with widened eyes again and again and rocked herself in place.
After a few moments everyone lowered their weapons. Aurelia asked, “Where in God's name is she from?”
Kama responded, “She's From Reso. From the outer zone. I’m sure of it.”
“How do you know that?” Aurelia said.
“Her armor. It's leatherstrap, It’s Reso. Just look.” Kama waved her hands unto herself and then said, “Like this. See? It's in bad shape though.”
Revon asked Kama as he continued to stare at the captured girl, “The outer zone? What's that?”
Kama said, “When you are shunned from the main City, Reso that is, they send you to the Outer zone above the ground. When you are shunned from the Outer Zone,” she looked at the girl, “This happens.
The feral girl dashed away and into the dark before anyone could react. “Fuck,” Revon exclaimed and then raised his rifle up to pursue. The auto-cannon reawakened and blirped out an alert. Revon started to follow but after twenty seconds the girl returned on her own. She casually sauntered back to the firepit circle and then plopped herself down as if nothing particularly alarming was going on.
The girl held in her hands a head, a human head that was once a man, young perhaps with long matted waves of dustcoal hair. Must have dropped it during the toss up, Kama thought. The shriveled trophy was blackened and necrotized and leathered from weather and sun and insects all. The eyes were gone. The skin of its neck was cinched into a tightly fluted cone. The feral girl sat and rocked. She stared at the sparkhaloed flames the firepit lifted up while she softly combed its hair with her fingertips. Like a doll.
Revon lowered his weapon while he stared, amazed and unable to find any words worth speaking.
Aurelia plopped herself across the fire and shook her head while Julian reached into his Solarcycle’s storage bin. “I don’t think she’s going anywhere,” Julian said with his back to the fire circle. He turned around and said, “Girl! Hey.”
The feral one slowly raised her eyes from the fireborne trance. She widened her eyes when Julian threw a small wrapped food brick to her. The brick was originally meant as a single adult sized meal but it was enough to satisfy her hunger perhaps for a whole day or maybe even longer than that.
Julian pantomimed a toss and then nodded to the girl. He volleyed it to her from about nine meters away.
Her arms produced an impressive phooosh as she nabbed it from the air. Embossed into the goldfoil wrapper were black and silver letters, POLAR CITY 3||SOFTBREAD CHEESE DELIGHT||PACKED BY CHILL-YUM FOOD COMPANY 10-2511||BEST BY 4-2526||.
She tore the food-brick open straight away and gnawed at the compressed contents. For some time nobody said anything. The fire’s crackle-dance filled the forest trees and the darknight scrubs with a resounded ambiance that good fires offer.
Julian thought it was odd that the girl knew without further inspection that the brick was indeed food and not something else entirely. Perhaps her sense of smell was more acute than he guessed. He didn’t know, but figured that it really didn’t matter anyhow.
Kama took a drink from a juice square, looked to Revon who sat to her right. He said, “We don’t have much farther till the road.”
Kama nodded in agreement. “Good,” she said.
Julian placed an old acoustic guitar onto his lap and started to quietly play. “Yeah tractor mode’s gonna be nice. I’m beat.” He picked away at a melancholic A minor chord that melted into E minor and then to a modest C major. The guitar strings tuned themselves as he played. They trued one cent at a time.
Aurelia snuggled up to Julian’s right arm while he played. “Tractor mode is, what?” She asked.
Revon said, “Syncs up all the bikes. I lead, your bikes follow automatically. You won’t have to steer the bike or worry about your guiding laser. Only works on a relatively clear path or road though.”
“Sounds great,” Aurelia said.
The girl snacked on her cheese delight and then scooted over to Kama who lay tangential to the firepit circle. She nuzzled herself against Kama’s battlegear. Kama said something to the girl in Mandarin delivered with a stern, scolding vocal that was wrapped across the words. The girl grabbed her trophy head and hugged it and then rebelliously shook her head no, no.
And as the feral girl's eye's dropped low Kama pried the shriveled thing from her hand and tossed it into the fire. She brushed her hands to suggest the head was unclean and not worth holding on to. The girl cried for a few moments, then fell silent and stared at the fire once again and curled up close against Kama’s leather as a child would to her mother. It was a soul-felt safety found only in proximity to the familiar.
One by one they fell asleep. Revon was the last to close his eyes. The auto turret scanned and whirled and
bleeped whenever a wild creature caught its attention. The world around them was lost and dark and silent even more.
A rifle shot cracked. At once everyone woke up with Revon the first to stand. The Sun was up but not far along. “Time to go guys!” Revon announced. The robotic auto turret angrily bleeped and spun as it sensed an insult threat somewhere just beyond.
Kama still lay where she fell asleep. She reached for the sleeping feral girl, but she was gone.
“Come on Kama! Gotta go! Now!” Revon said. Julian hastily threw their supplies injudiciously into the Solarbike storage bays. Aurelia snuffed out the firepit embers with her foot and then grabbed her rifle and pack. She slapped on her battle helmet.
The team quickly scanned around and were satisfied that nothing was left behind. Another rifle shot came from the Southeast. “They're close!” Revon said, “J come on!”
Julian struggled to collapse the auto turret’s base and stow it in his Solarbike. He missed a step in haste for the turret's base refused to fold down. Julian paused. Crap, the tensioner cam safeties, he thought and then jammed three small levers upward. The base assembly partially collapsed so Julian decided to stow it as-it was. The device haphazardly stuck out from his Solarbike’s storage bay. He hopped on as two more rifle shots rang in only this time they were married with shouts from unseen men.
“Hang on I’m gonna use tractor mode!” Revon yelled out since he supposed that there was no point in quiet. Revon could visualize the other Solarbikes' statuses. Three green dots blinked inside his visor that indicated they were linked in and would track his lead.
All four Solarbikes disappeared in place as their dynamic camouflage kicked in. Eleven Raiders rushed into the campsite and swept their weapons at the group's general direction. The Raiders appeared confused and disoriented at their sudden disappearance. They could hardly see their thin vague outlines. A Raider yelled out and then pointed at Revon’s spirited outline. The eleven Raiders trained their sights as one onto his ghostly apparition.
Revon twisted on the accelerator. The train of bikes jolted and vanished into the scrubs. They escaped without a single hit, the Raiders reaction too slow to compensate. They could hear yells and shouts from behind. Revon’s Solarbike traced out five lasers that dynamically moved and scanned ahead. The lasers shifted in response to the terrain as if they were outreached feelers.
They made it out a half kilometer or so when one of the green dots on Revon’s heads-up display turned violent red. The dot was highlighted with the letters DL which signified that Revon had lost one of them. “Dammit,” he said and then slowed the Solarbike train to a stop.
“Ahhh!” Julian yelled in pain through their communication interlinks. Revon de-linked the tractor mode and spun his bike around. Kama, Aurelia and Revon turned around with a full one-eighty swingback and then rode back to Julian. His Solarbike stood upright and passenger-less. An outward branch had snagged against the auto turret’s assembly and forced Julian's bike to a full stop. He lay ahead and to the right of the stalled craft.
Aurelia jumped off her bike and ran to Julian. She held his shoulders and said, “Shit you alright?”
“Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine,” Julian said.
Kama quickly removed the semi-folded auto turret’s base and said, “Julian talk me through this, we have about two minutes.”
Julian raised his head then relaxed. “Ah, yeah.” He paused then guarded his left flank. “Okay, uh, ahh.” He screwed up his face against the agony. “Turn the locking wing, its a big nut that has three small wings.”
“Okay its not moving,” Kama said.
“No, yeah, sorry I forgot.” Julian grimaced against the pain. “Pull the axle down. Turn the locking wing. Remove the locking wing off the axle then it should fold down all the way.”
Kama pulled against the axle and spun the locking wing as fast as she could until it de-threaded itself and fell to the ground. “Got it. Okay I see now.” She pushed the axle back into the base’s crown assembly and the entire thing collapsed. She pushed the auto turret back into Julian’s Solarbike storage bay. They heard the Raiders who were not far away. They raced through the forest scrubs in pursuit of the troubled four.
“Is the bike free now?” Revon asked as he ignited his plasma saw, an arch-bowed handle crossed with blades of superheated air.
“Yeah the branch just fell off. C’mon help me get him on!” Kama responded.
Revon and Kama ambulanced the weakened Julian onto his Solarbike. Julian tried to hold firm to the handlebars but yelled out, “Shit! Ahh! Fuck!” He fell backward but Kama caught him before he dismounted entirely.
Aurelia stood guard to the rear and nervously swept her rifle. She scoped in. Her arms reflexively shook themselves in response to what she saw next.
The Raiders followed the freshly cut trail and were only two hundred meters distant. “Guys!” Kama yelled over her shoulder. She could see them in her scope. They looked to be about thirty in number. Inside Kama's Coilgun scope a tiny number counted down as the Raiders charged in. One ninety-seven, one ninety, one eighty one meters and closing. She ran to her bike, threw her visor down and said, “There's thirty of 'em! Let’s go!” The stall-snagged team would be overrun soon.
Revon’s face presently covered over with panic. He abstractly clenched his hands for a few seconds in exasperated loss. He reached into his bike’s storage and pulled out a blanket and a rope which he rapidly folded into a makeshift pillow of sorts and then placed it onto Julian’s bike just ahead of the seat.
Revon pushed Julian onto the blanket and lashed the rope round twice over to firmly lash him to the Solarbike. Julian yelped in pain. Revon said, “Sorry buddy but its either this or we die here. Just hang on best you can.” Revon ran back to his Solarbike and Kama hopped onto hers.
A bullet smacked Aurelia against her back but it was shot from such distance that the round carried barely enough momentum to cause any real harm. Aurelia reacted to the sting with a jolt. “Shit I’m hit!” She screamed out.
As she said this Revon engaged the tractor mode. The familiar string of green lights illuminated his visor. Without saying a word he twisted the accelerator fully down, the active camouflage washed over them and once again they were off. The Raiders yelled and shot at them from behind but their efforts were lost to vanity.
The four disappeared as the the forest swallowed them into a spirit state once more, the Solarbikes whined out with a hightone whheeeaaaiii. Excepting the downlashed Julian the other three helped the rebel machines assist with their escape.
Fourteen
They quickly rode through the forest for another ten kilometers to fully escape the Raider threat. The pines and maples and bottlebrush trees whistled past them. Aurelia could do nothing more than passively observe her Julian while his barely visible outline jangled up and down against the thick forest terrain a few meters in front of her. After the first half kilometer at maximum speed Julian appeared to go from bear hugging his Solarbike to a lax and passive posture
Revon led them out of danger with surgical discretion and precision only found in the highly trained. His Solarbike’s five red beams worked hard to feel out the terrain beyond. The beams stretched far ahead and to either side, the only truly visible sign that they were presently in transit. When the soil softened under the cycles’ oversized wheels reduced to an excruciating crawl of only eleven or twelve kilometers an hour. Revon tried to override the abrupt and unwelcome decelerant but the onboard intelligence forced them to sustain the reduced speed. The Raiders’ attack was an untimely one since it happened so early in the day. Their batteries were nearly depleted and had no time to charge under the yellow orange morning-time Sun.
After a short stop Revon was able to get Julian more or less patched up with a universal quick-gel binder. He suspected that Julian had fractured a rib based on the portable medi scanner reading but it’s semi automatic diagnostic ability was limited and small. The device detected a small blood pocket about two centim
eters under Julian’s fifth intercostal space although its volume remained constant. The small internal hemorrhage had stopped, a good sign. If the rib was broken,the fracture was too fine to resolve on the medi scanner. Revon guessed that it was probably just a hairline break, if it was anything at all.
The group got underway once more. “The road!” Kama exclaimed into her bone conducting communicator.
“Where? I don’t see anything,” Aurelia responded.
Revon said, “She’s right. It’s right up here, just ahead.” The path they followed changed from a moderately overgrown and barely identifiable hardpack trail into an agreeably cleared if abandoned ancient highway. “hard to believe this used to be paved with asphalt,” Revon said as they turned Southeast onto the new. “Shouldn’t be too bad from now on.”
“What the hell were we riding on all this way? I thought we were just going through the woods,” Aurelia said.
“No,” Revon replied. “We were on an old railroad bed.”
“THAT was a railroad bed?” Julian said into his comm. “Didn’t those used to have metal rails? And wooden planks?”
“Yeah but they’ve long since rotted away. Only dust now.” Revon threw a switch on his Solarbike’s handlebars. “Goin’ to tractor mode guys.”
“You spoil us so, Revon,” Kama said. “This trip could’ve been a lot worse.”
Revon smiled inside his battle helmet even though nobody could see. He looked into his rearview. “It’s what we do. Just hang tight guys. I'll getcha there soon enough.”
Kama wondered but didn’t inquire further and left the thought alone.
At once a wolf scrambled from the blindscrubs and snapped into Kama’s left calf. “Ha!” She yelled. The wolf gained quick purchase with his incisors but then quickly halted when they met her boot at the vamp. She shook the wild mange from her foot. The anmial rolled down and away and immediately gave up chase. “Hate those things,” she said.
“You okay?” Revon said as they traveled on.
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