Raiders

by Malone, Stephan

  Julian did so and as he slowly shambled closer to the temple bed he looked from one side to the other. The temple room was perhaps once many rooms but the level itself was gutted and stripped to make a singular large suite. The floors were smoothed and mirrored and black, almost glass-like but it did not feel as such to to his tread. He could barely make out the ceiling which looked to be twelve meters tall. The entire room was ringed with crystal fluted firelight torches, perhaps forty or more he guessed which flicked and crackled against the darkness.

  And symbols were painted everywhere. There were symbols of gargoyles and demons and heavily winged angels of both genders. There were chalices and doves and stars vertexed with five, six or seven points all stenciled with gold and silver and red. There were eyes and there were dragons. There were circles and crosses within and mosaic depictions of kings and queens and pharaohs and men and women of great power all, long since dead who held their globes and their sceptres or their Suns and their moons or their canes and their eggs wrapped in the serpents of mystery. They were reverently rendered against the glass-black walls and ceiling both. They shimmered and danced as the crystal torches illuminated their long forgotten visages.

  For Julian the spectacle was beautiful and spoke to him in some arcane and abstract way but the symbols did not transduce any practical meaning to him. So he walked and he wondered just how much of this Kama even understood. It didn’t really matter, he supposed. Still.

  They walked to within five meters of the bed. There was no mattress to be found but instead there were pillows and blankets and wraps all round. The bordered veil waved silently against slow warmed currents of air as the Elder and his consort continued their activity. The air itself smelled of sex and lavender and sandalwood. The younger woman lay next to the Elder in a half-hug while she observed the other who continued her endeavor. Her head rhythmically bobbed up and down against his thigh accompanied by muffled moan every few seconds.

  Kama stood behind Julian, her Coilgun aimed at Julian's back as before. “Nebu,” she called.

  The Elder and his two consorts looked at the two in shock for they had not noticed them approach despite the floors that echoed their every footstep.

  The Elder stood up, naked. He grabbed a robe and wrapped himself while the two Chosen women scrambled for wraps of free cloth from their nest. After a moment of silent surprise he laughed aloud. He held out his hands and shouted in Mandarin, “Travelers! Ha-hah. My great Kama I’ve missed you!” He laughed some more and said, “Now why didn’t you call?” He turned to look at the two girls and waved his hand to them, a sign that everything was okay.

  Kama hadn’t thought about that. She paused and thought up an acceptable answer for Nebu. “My Personal Assistant was hit. It broke in battle my Elder.” She bowed her head down then raised it once more. “I had no way to contact. But I came back with a gift. A gift for you and the inner Temple.”

  “Ah, so sweet!” Nebu replied as he stumbled out of the nested den and walked up to Julian. He touched Julian’s arm to inspect his carbon fibre armor from the Polar City. “Is he?” Nebu asked.

  “Yes,” Kama responded.

  “Oh well how exquisite!” Nebu switched to English. “And what is your name, Polar City man?”

  Julian hesitated and then looked back to Kama. She remained stoic and unmoved. “Julian,” he answered the Elder.

  “Ah, Julian. Very Romanesque. A good name. Strong. Hearty.” Elder Nebu walked round Julian to inspect. “Kama my love, do tell me why you deliver this to me now?”

  Kama paused again but came up with a strong lie, quick. “My Nebu, I was out in the Wastes for so long I just missed you so.” She lowered her Coilgun. “I thought that if I brought you a prize of great worth that you would invite me into your consort chamber again. Like we used to.”

  The two Chosen girls rustled from their nest and scowled in disapproval as they shook their blondewhite hair, their blue-green eyes and pearlescent mouths twisted less the mammal and more to the reptilian. Kama rubbed her left thigh with her free hand. “I know that I am old now. I can’t compete with these younger ones. All I know is that I couldn’t stop thinking about you. About us.”

  Elder Nebu said to the two women, “Chara, Fioria, please leave us for a moment. We will continue soon,” and waved them into dismissal.

  The two Chosen girls covered themselves in silk wraps and then stomped away. They marched toward a staircase that descended the temple’s far side. A door unseen clattered itself shut from below as the two girls exited.

  Nebu walked up to Kama and gently stroked her face. “How long has it been, Kama? Seven? Eight years now?”

  “Seven,” Kama replied. “Too long.” She emitted a smile so strongly seductive that Nebu, who was modestly influenced by synthmeth and alcohol at the moment, considered. “Don’t judge me by how I am now though,” she giggled with a false innocence. “The road from the Polar City is long.”

  Nebu wrapped his right arm around her head and his left to her hip and buttocks. He kissed her even through the sweat and dirt and blood of the road now past. The vulgarity of her condition only made him want her even more. She dropped her Coilgun and it clanged against the glass-black floor. She kissed him in full reprisal as his tongue and hands and spirit sought out those ecstatic peaks and arrests that they shared and lost all those years ago.

  Julian’s back was still turned. He could hear them but didn’t dare turn around, unsure of his next move. It was rather apparent that sex in front of strangers was of no concern to the alien Jia Ting. Julian shuffled his feet and coughed, a clichéd grasp for attention if there ever was one.

  Elder Nebu stopped his intertwine with Kama. “Ah, yes,” he said as he crudely wiped spittle and dried blood from his mouth onto his robe’s sleeve. “I suppose we should put this one in with the others.”

  Kama said, “Let me take him down there, Nebu.” She rubbed his groin with her right hand. “You just stay here. I will escort him. Just tell me which cell ring. I can’t wait any longer,” she slithered into his left ear.

  Nebu heaved a breath. “Yes.” He stepped away from Kama’s embrace then looked at Julian who faced the opposite direction. “Curious, did you ever tell him?” he asked.

  Julian asked, “Tell me what?”

  “There’s no point in telling him,” Kama quickly interjected.

  “Fine, yes you are right,” Nebu answered. “Take him down and return here. I will wait.”

  “Just you and me. Nobody else, okay?” Kama said.

  Nebu smiled and responded. “No guests. I’ll be cleaned by the time you get back. Hurry, my dear!”

  “I will. But first you must tell me where the other captures are,” Kama said.

  Nebu slapped his forehead. “Yes of course Kama.” He inspected her from her toes to her face. “You easily distract a man so! I wax forgetful.” He pointed abstractly toward the southern wall. “They are in cell ring eight, I think in units twenty one and two. The guards may have moved them, though.”

  “Yes my elder,” Kama respectfully bowed to him just enough to reveal a modest hint of her breasts underneath her leather battlearmor. She raised herself up and then collected her Coilgun from the floor. Elder Nebu already had paced back to the rear descending stairwell about ten meters. At that moment there was no sound excepting the crackles of crystal torches and the Elder’s slippered footfalls against the glass.

  Nebu stopped in mid-stride and turned round. Kama stood expressionless, stoic. Julian didn’t dare move a muscle, not even against his binds. Five seconds passed that seemed like fifty until Nebu finally broke the silent overcloud. “Kama, my dear, what is it?”

  Kama said to him, “My elder my elder.” She raised and then aimed her Coilgun in concert and then shot a round straight in, right through Elder Nebu's nose, thhwssssh. The Coilround exited the other side and shattered a crystal torch on the far wall beyond. It collapsed into a diamond-like rain of fire and reflected dust.

  She look
ed at his body baptised in blood, a somber faraway resignation possessed her face. “Chosen no more, Ren-Nebu,” she whispered in Mandarin as a rivulet of blood slowly crept across the glass-black floor toward her feet, a spindled organic flow of red-flicker fire and blood and glass.

  Julian stood silent with her for a few seconds more. “Kama,” he said.

  After a moment Kama shook her head out of trance and looked at him. He wiggled his wrists from behind his back. “Oh yeah,” she said. She dropped her Coilgun and cut his bind with a small knife that she had stowed inside her battlesuit’s left leg. “We know where to go now. Follow me.” She smiled and then started to walk back to the elevator door. Julian trailed along as he rubbed his wrists.

  Julian said, “You sure about this? I don’t look like your prisoner now!”

  Kama stopped and turned to face Julian. “Right.” She looked past Julian and back toward the Temple bed lair, now about forty meters away. “I have an idea,” she said and smiled. She jogged back to the bed and gathered several silk wraps with the various Temple symbols embroidered onto them. She handed the pile to Julian. “Here, roll these up and drape one over you. Like a toga.”

  “Don’t know what a toga is. But I think I get it,” Julian said and smiled back. He turned his arms until the silk wraps were a sloppy roll and then took one of them and draped it over each shoulder, like a priest’s amice. “How’s that?” he said.

  Kama nodded, “Good enough.” They went down the elevator and made their way to cell ring eight. Kama paced them just fast enough so they could make good time without appearing too urgent or obvious. They passed by hundreds in the corridors and passages. Not a single Raider suspected that this Chosen woman with what appeared to be a Temple Servant in tow had just shot one of the twelve Great Elders only a few short moments ago.

  “Almost there,” Kama said.

  “Then what?” Julian asked.

  “Let me handle it.” Kama and Julian approached two prison guards who waved them by without saying a word. Although Kama did not have to she said to them in Mandarin, “We’re going to see the captures from Polar City. Looking for more servants for Temple,” she explained to the guards.

  Julian couldn’t understand what she said but it must have worked. The guards let them through the locked gate.

  Julian looked up and down while they walked around a circle of cells. He noticed that the cell rings were a singular cylindrical structure, each ring stacked atop another. They walked toward a spiral stairway with a big red number 5 painted next to it. The two rescuers walked up to level eight and then to cell twenty-one, about half way round the ring.

  “Mirabella, guys. Hey!” Julian whispered into the cell while Kama pressed her first three fingers of her right hand onto a biometric hand scanner next to the cell door. Mirabella, Calliope and Dusty sat on the floor as far away as possible from the prison’s carbonsteel door. For a moment they didn’t move nor react to Julian and Kama's presence. When the reality finally registered they slowly stood up with wide eyed surprise.

  Exasperated, Dusty said, “Hell, I don’t believe it! Is it you? Really? Holy shit!” The door clicked open and they walked inside.

  Dusty tried to hug and kiss Kama but Kama pushed him down. She winked at him and yelled in Mandarin, “Don’t touch me! How dare you try and kiss a Chosen!”

  Dusty and the others understood immediately what was going on so they played along. He raised his palms up and said, “Sorry.” Calliope and Mirabella also raised their hands in a faux defensive posture.

  Julian handed the three the silk wraps that they stole from the Temple bed. “Here guys, don’t ask, just drape these over your shoulders.” The three captured did what they were told and without another word the five walked out of the prison cell, down the spiral stair and toward the guarded prison gate.

  One of the guards modestly bowed to Kama and said, “My Chosen, you know we need a statement of release for them from an Elder.”

  “Do you question your Chosen, my song?” Kama asked the guard.

  “Well, no. No!” The guard’s face turned a beet red and a vein in the front of his neck, the anterior jugular looked like it was going to be explode right out of his skin. “No, please! Do not be upset with me. That’s the rule here!”

  Kama calmly said, “Yes I know. But Elder Nebu is going to have a big party tonight. They are going to pick a new Chosen for the Temple. We need some extra help getting things in order. Any delay and Elder may not be,” she paused for effect, “Happy, my song.”

  The guard quickly unlocked the door with a scan of his palm and fingertips. He smashed his eyes together as if he was being beaten with a polearm. “Please. Go!”

  Kama walked past the guards and the gate with the other four behind her. They left the prison without any resistance and soon were outside the great underground city altogether.

  Mirabella tried to ask questions while they walked but Kama silenced her, her finger pressed to her mouth.

  They walked through the Outer Ring as the Raiders observed them with little regard. Mirabella fussed with the silken wrap that enveloped her. She whispered to Dusty, “Can’t believe we’re getting away with this. I feel like they’re gonna jump on us!”

  She looked half-sideways at a small group of Raiders who stood semicircle around two muscular men with chains wrapped round their fists and wrists. The small mob yelled out and jeered and cheered away while the men took swings at each other from a blood-guarded stance. Bone-crunching music crashed out to the dirty street that seemed to drip with toxins and acid, source unseen. Every other phrase was interspaced with an ambient synthetic darkness found only in the minor and the diminished, laced with abstracted female vocal songs.

  “We’re almost clear,” Julian confidently announced. “Just past these buildings. Revon and Aurelia are just past, bout a kay and a half.” Julian waved his hand forward.

  Dusty wasn’t sure what was going on with Kama. She showed no emotion at all to him in the short time since they left the prison. He hoped that her stoic attitude was a ruse to aid in their escape. Dusty was also pretty sure he was going to die back there in the presently diminishing city of Reso, lost forever to the Jia Ting and their whimsy. Their reunion was not a romantic one. Dusty walked and watched her lead them away from certain peril and death, her banded direblonde hair bounced against her leather battlesuit in time with every step away from the Raiders’ world.

  They were about halfway between the fringes of the Outer Ring and the small camp where Revon and Aurelia waited. They were tucked safely behind a moundbluff with only the auto-cannon mounted high, sole evidence that anyone was even there.

  A loud announcement resounded from behind the,. It announced in Mandarin, “Attention all family! Kama the Chosen has killed Elder Nebu! She is with captures from the Polar City!” A short pause and then, “Capture or kill her and the Elders will reward you and your family greatly!”

  They all froze in shock. Kama turned round and saw that the Raiders had gathered momentum and presently clamored toward them. They shouted and pointed down the road, straight at them. Straight in.

  Mirabella was the first to dart from the group toward the auto-cannon which appeared to be little more than a sliver of metal in the distance. Julian yelled, “Go!” and everyone ran as fast as they could. Julian and Kama soon caught up to Mirabella who was weak from being imprisoned for three weeks. Julian huffed at Mirabella as he passed, “Just keep going!”

  Both Kama and Julian had the same idea in mind. The best tactical move at the moment was to reach the auto-cannon and then engage the onrushing Raiders while Calliope, Dusty and Mirabella staggered with their best effort. The auto-cannon performed at an impressive range for a robot.

  Kama ripped off her headgear as she ran with full bolt toward the auto-cannon. Revon and Aurelia were already belly down into the dirt. They flanked the roadsides as they shot against the Raiders who closed in on the trailing three. One hundred meters, fifty, ten, then Kama turn
ed round then went into a kneeling position with her left leg out. The auto-cannon bleeped and blooped as it scanned over her head then volleyed rounds against the massive Raider mob. Julian arrived at the camp but he needed his rifle which was stowed away on his Solarbike.

  Mirabella stopped and collapsed only about two hundred meters from camp. “Come on!” Dusty yelled at her as he tried to help her up. She struggled into a weak kneed stand just as a Raider, a woman with no hair covered in leather wraps vaulted at them, her blue grey eyes waved over with rage and anger and purpose. She swung a home carved battle lance at them and then flaccidly fell as an auto-cannon round splashed through her throat. Another Raider, a man who was behind the dead woman stopped in surprise since there was no obvious source for the shot. He overcame his bafflement and stomped forward with a stump of a shotgun wrapped in bandstitch cloth and trained it on them. His shot went to the sky as he fell onto his back. Road dust pillowed over him as the auto-cannon’s distant targeting laser grew tired of the wretched heap and then disappeared overhead.

  “Come on! Keep comin'!” Revon yelled at the three who shuffled toward them. They slowly advanced toward the camp while bullets and Coilgun rounds and a laser zipped past them in the opposite direction. Julian tossed out a smoke grenade as far out as he could. It curved over their heads and landed about thirty meters behind them. The thing fizzled away and with a concussive pa-poof a large grey cloud birthed itself right in front of the advancing Raiders. He threw another one then one more to create a formidable cover line of smoke. The auto-cannon could see through the smokey curtain as if it were not even there. It targeted and picked off the few Raiders brave enough to travel through.

  They arrived at last to the small camp's relative safety. Mirabella looked at the Solarbikes and said, “What the hell are these things?” She barely got the words out with what little breath remained.

  Revon said, “They’re your lifeboat. And you’re welcome. Now get on everyone. Now!” Julian started to break down the auto-cannon but Revon yelled out, “Forget it man! Just leave it!” He raised his hands in resignation and hopped onto his Solarbike. Revon yelled out to everyone as he pointed, “Calliope, you’re with Julian! Dusty, get on Kama's bike! Mirabella, you’re with me!”