by John Shirley
Gods above and devils below, he thought. I adore her.
At her side was the cadaverous Dr. Vialle, dressed in a white smock and rubber gloves and dingy bloodstained white trousers. Close behind them came her hulking bodyguard, Runch Menzes, whom Smartun believed to be a creation of Dr. Vialle. There were clues to Runch’s laboratory origins in the facts that his bulging eyes were set so wide they were nearly on the side of his head, his mouth was but a wide slit that almost bisected his great, thick, scaly head, and his right arm ended in something like a crustacean’s pincer instead of a hand. More to the point, Runch’s mouth, when opened wide enough, could extrude acid-dripping insectile mandibles. As if to make up for his physical hodgepodge, Runch wore an elaborate uniform, designed by General Goddess herself, made of shiny dark blue leather and gun-metal links. On his chest was the ever-present symbol, stenciled across the links. Vialle wore Gynella’s symbol, too, in the form of a pendant. Smartun himself wore the insignia stenciled across his chest, in red, on the bullet-resistant breastplate he’d brought along from Red Ferrous Three.
Smartun took a respectful step toward Gynella, carefully not coming too close, aware of Runch’s bulging eyes watching his every move.
Saluting crisply, Smartun said, “First Division is present and accounted for, my General.”
He barely managed not to stammer as he said “my General,” trembling with the phrase’s implication of her being his. As if she could be his, in any sense at all. He lived for Gynella, his General Goddess . . .
She nodded to him. “Very good, Lieutenant.”
He adored her imperiousness, the sense of entitlement that she wore as flaringly as the red cape, the way the delicacy of her flaxen eyelashes contrasted with the hard slice of her gaze as she inspected her charges.
He would die for her, of course. But he had other hopes. Foolish dreams they were, perhaps, since she hadn’t given him much reason to hope. But if he served her one way, could he not serve her another?
She took one graceful but decisive step toward the men, into the sunlight, so that the metal highlights of her armored décolletage shot out glints. Her troops ogled her shamelessly, gazing at her as if hypnotized, their reeking collective breath rolling out from their gaping mouths as they waited in pent-up expectation. Slowly she raised her right hand to the medallion she wore around her neck—a mere circle of platinum on a silver chain, with a grid in its center, but an object of great significance. And when she touched it, the men all groaned softly, in concert.
The medallion contained the ActiTone, the locus of her control over them. But she merely tapped it, as if absentmindedly, with the nail of her index finger as she spoke, her deep, sensuously resonant voice carrying easily across the parade ground.
“Men of the First Division! You have chosen to leave the chaos and misery of your former lives, for a life of meaning, a life of order—and of power!”
The word power elicited a roar of approval from them.
“Quiet, you scum!” bellowed Sergeant Flugg.
Gynella, their General Goddess, went on. “And so, to bring order and lawfulness and profit for those of us who bring it, to make this planet peaceful and ourselves rich . . .”
Another roar of approval at the word rich.
“We shall expand our numbers. We shall move onward! We shall take more territory! Today, prepare yourselves for the attack we shall carry out tonight, on a prosperous . . .” She hesitated, knowing that many of them didn’t know what that word meant. “A rich new settlement that will give us more troops, more resources, more weapons, more land . . . and some women to entertain the very bravest of my soldiers!”
Oh, Lord, but she’s ruthless, Smartun thought approvingly, as her men roared lustily. Truly a goddess.
“And now,” Gynella boomed. “Will you follow me into battle?”
As usual, the First Division shouted in unison, “We will!”
“And will you fight to the death for the banner of a new world?”
“WE WILL!”
“Then . . .” She grinned sharkishly, her fingers going to the circle of metal around the grid on her medallion. The men moaned in anticipation. They knew what was coming. “THEN FEEL MY LOVE!”
And with that, she pointed a finger at the men, while with the other hand she twisted the dial on the device, and the ActiTone chimed like a bell made of thin diamond. The sound seemed to gather strength, to amplify across the Devil’s Footstool; the very air quivered visibly with it. She made her arm quiver, giving the impression that the impulse was traveling from her pointing finger.
All of the men standing before her, including the sergeant, fell to their knees, groaning with pleasure, hips bucking, eyes rolling, saliva dripping from their open mouths, as the ActiTone activated the pleasure centers of their brains.
Smartun, however, felt nothing from the ActiTone. He had not been treated with the susceptibility drug the way the others had. Gynella and Dr. Vialle, who had come together from Kali Four half a galaxy away, had brought the ActiTone and thousands of doses of the SusDrug, as Vialle called it, stolen from the Dahl Corporation’s chemicals research lab. Homeworld Security had pursued them and lost the trail.
Smartun had taken up with Gynella the moment he saw her; he adored her already. He didn’t need a drug with a vibratory trigger. It had worked on the Psychos they’d captured. It had allowed her, bit by bit, to build up a small army. It might allow her to take over the planet.
Gynella switched off the ActiTone, and the men fell on their faces, gasping and spent, murmuring her name. “Gynella . . .”
One of them surprised Smartun. The biggest Psycho brute of the bunch, a one-eyed, noseless murderer called Splonk, got up and staggered toward Gynella. “More!” he said. “Want you! Want . . . your . . .”
The other men looked up with a mix of horror and fascination as the big brute stalked swayingly toward their General Goddess.
The sergeant and her bodyguard and Smartun—all three at once—started to block the oncoming Splonk. But Gynella made an imperious gesture with a slash of her hand. “No! Let him approach if he dares!”
The men gasped and murmured at that. Was it really possible she would let him touch her? And . . . ?
She waited calmly until Splonk was in reach. She smiled. He reached for her. Her right hand flashed, drawing her short sword. Her body spun in place as she drew it, and as she came back around, the blade slashed lightning fast through Splonk’s midsection, right through his waist.
The Psycho Bruiser stopped, gaping, gagging, staring . . . then looked down as she drew out the sword with an expression of contempt. He watched as his entrails slopped onto the ground at his feet.
Splonk sagged to his knees, then fell forward onto his own entrails with a sickening squish. The smell of blood and excrement rose richly from the corpse.
Gynella yawned, then bent, delicately wiped the blade on the Psycho Bruiser’s back, and resheathed it as she straightened up. “You others—back to your barracks. Rest! We fight tonight!”
She flicked a hand at them, and they backed away, then turned and went mutteringly, sated and exhausted, into the barracks. Smartun called to Sergeant Flugg, who turned from the barracks door with a look of resentment that was so plain it could’ve been a hand-painted sign. Flugg passionately hated taking orders from Smartun. “Yes, Lieutenant?”
Smartun pointed at the reeking cadaver of Splonk. “Clean up that mess, Sergeant. Feed it to the skags in pen three.”
Flugg looked as if he wanted to snarl a refusal, but he glanced at Gynella, saw the look in her eye, and gave Smartun a sloppy salute. “Sure thing, Lieutenant.”
Gynella turned to Smartun. “I have a mission for you. Come inside.”
Licking his lips, Smartun nodded and followed her into the entranceway to the old coliseum. Vialle followed them; Runch stationed himself in the shade, outside the door, to keep an eye on the barracks.
As the door closed behind them, the metal latch echoing in the b
are rusty-steel hallway, she turned first to Vialle. “Doctor, for the first time, the drug failed! Perhaps we’re not giving it to them often enough.”
“Failed?” He shook his head. “It worked!” he declared in his piping, oily voice. “Even on that oaf you killed. But human behavior—or, in this case, semihuman behavior—is not entirely predictable. There are always a few variables and oddities, with genetically random degrees of resistance. But you handled it perfectly! The occasional thug with a bit of self-will will be winnowed out, exactly as you did it. I salute your efficiency!” His mouth twisted in a mocking smile as he bowed to her.
“Better increase the dose anyway,” she said. “Go on, back to your lab. I want to talk to my special operative.”
Special operative. He loved it when she called him that.
“Listen, Smartun,” she said, taking a small computer memory tab from a pocket of her skirt. “Take this, put it in your palmer, study the files. Selina cracked Dahl’s threat-assessment program for Pandora. We’ve found a group of people who have to either be recruited or eliminated. First on the list . . . one Lilith.” She grimaced and shook her head. “Too powerful, and she’ll never submit to my rule. I knew her off-planet. If Lilith comes back to this dirtball, have her assassinated. Immediately! And using every resource at your command! And don’t try to do it yourself. Get someone expert to shoot her in the back. She’s too dangerous to take on headfirst. The second one on the list is a certain Mordecai. He’s a crack shot. Might be of use . . . and might be recruitable. Third, there’s a Bruiser called Brick.”
“I’ve heard of him.”
“Brick would definitely be useful to me—on several levels, I suspect. But if he can’t be recruited, see that he’s eliminated as well. Still, we’ll try the SusDrug on him first. And the last one—you ever hear of a mercenary, former military, name of Roland?”
“Big black guy?”
Her nostrils flared. “Oh yes. That’s him.”
Smartun grunted. “I saw him in action once, from a distance, just outside of New Haven. Bunch of raiders jumped him, tried to take his outrunner. Kind of surprising how little time it took him to deal with it. He killed four men in three seconds.”
“Exactly! Good-looking galoot, too. I’ve got surveillance vid of him in action. He really caught my eye.”
Smartun didn’t like the sound of that. But he kept his expression neutral and said only, “Not my type.”
She smiled icily at his feeble joke. “He’s our type—a deadly soldier. If we can recruit him, he’d make a great subcommander. His military experience would be quite useful.”
“And suppose he can’t be recruited? Suppose he resists the SusDrug—and anything else you might offer.”
“Oh,” she said, shrugging airily as she turned to walk toward the door of her headquarters. “If Roland refuses us, if he truly resists . . . then see that he’s killed. But kill him with respect. A nice clean head shot.”
This town, Roland thought, striding down the rubbishy street, makes Fyrestone look like an urban paradise.
Jawbone Ridge was a crusty, dusty, trash-strewn settlement of shacks, humplike cement bunkers, retrofitted mining trailers, and tents on a long, wide ledge of rock just under a toothy, jawbone-like ridgetop of dull red stone. Come to think of it, Roland figured, you couldn’t really say it was a settlement. More like one of those vacant lots where debris piles up, just gets blown there by the wind. The gritty wind of the desert had brought the town mostly shady con men, out-of-work thugs, failed miners, itinerant drunks—Jawbone Ridge was known for its numerous liquor stills—and a few shopkeepers. The shopkeepers, Roland saw, had slammed their steel shutters down to coincide with sunset. It seemed they were afraid of something. The sun wasn’t quite down completely, but already the place was shut up tight—except for the Steel Incisor Saloon down at the end of the road. The boozing dive was made of pieces of old mining machines, trucks, earthmovers, and robots, all cobbled together, welded into the boxy shape of a building like a wrongly made jigsaw puzzle.
Roland put a hand on the Hyperion Invader automatic pistol holstered to his right hip and headed down the street to where light spilled out the open front door of the saloon and someone giggled madly from within.
So far, asking around the area, he hadn’t been able to find Brick. He’d seen a wanted poster of him, put up by Atlas—the Atlas Corp. was mad at him for something or other. He’d spotted a place where a wall looked as if it had been punched right through—Brick liked to punch through wanted posters. But no Brick himself, not in person.
If Brick worked as a bodyguard for a mining boss, where was the mine? The only mining concern left in the area might not be in the town itself. So where was it—and where was Brick?
Instead of Brick, he found Mordecai. Roland stumbled right across him, literally, as he walked in through the door of the Steel Incisor Saloon. He tripped over the groaning, prostrate figure of the legendary Pandora gunman.
“Ow!” Mordecai said.
“Sorry,” said Roland, leaning over to help him stand—which wasn’t hard, since Mordecai was a lean little guy. Lean but wiry, and dangerous. He had a pointed black beard, a leather helmet, and goggles; unruly black hair thrust like a rooster tail out the back of the helmet. “Didn’t see you there, Mordecai.”
“Not you with the ow. Them! They smashed two bottles over my head. At once. One each.”
Mordecai pointed at two women standing at the bar across the room—like everything else in the saloon, it was made of random rusty metal parts. One of the women was short and stocky, with ’roided, heavily tattooed bare arms; she wore a sleeveless camo-patterned paramilitary outfit with a red G stenciled on it; under the G was the outline of crossed rifles. She was shaved bald, and her eyes were hidden in dark wraparound sunglasses; her broad face was tattooed with two blue lightning bolts. Her teeth gleamed with gold, and she was toying with a big serrated knife as she looked Roland over. Towering over her was a big, gangly, awkward-looking woman, the tallest woman Roland had ever seen. She had leanly muscled arms that seemed too long for her body, her big hands ending in curved implanted steel talons; her hair was spiky gray, and her face was long, too long, her eyes like blots of darkness, her mouth froggish and crookedly outlined in lipstick; she wore a low-cut armored top showing pendulous breasts that hung to her waist.
She also looked Roland over and made a contortion of her mouth, a twisting that was probably intended as a smile, baring filed yellow teeth. “Hey, sweet thing,” the big woman said.
“Uh . . . hi,” Roland said.
“That’s Broomy,” Mordecai muttered.
Roland gulped. He’d heard of Broomy. “Why they call her Broomy, anyway?” he asked in a whisper.
“You don’t wanna know. Her pal there, her name’s Cess.”
Broomy turned around and ordered a drink from someone Roland couldn’t see. “Gimme a KK!” she snarled, her voice grating. When she turned her back, he saw she wore a crude, badly stitched cape, with a skullish G and crossed guns on it.
“Yuh, yuh, a Kerosene Kooler, here ya go!” piped up the Claptrap robot bartender, reaching up from the other side of the bar to pass over a seething mug of green fluid. Broomy grabbed the drink, splashing half of it on the bar, and drank thirstily.
“Come on back and have another bottle on us, Mordecai!” called Cess, laughing, waving a bottle of yellow liquor. “This time I’ll let you drink from it instead o’ bathin’ in it!”
Mordecai rubbed his head ruefully. “Good thing I had my helmet on. Just stunned me. Then Broomy tossed me over here.”
“What’d you do to piss her off?”
“It’s what I wouldn’t do.” He looked at Roland’s pistol. “Nice Invader autopistol. Modified with the scope and everything, huh? I had one, but a skag ate it. Almost took my arm with it.”
“I don’t see a weapon on you. You don’t look natural without a gun.”
“Got a static Cobra burstfire leaning over against that
table right there. And a couple grenades. Anyway, Bloodwing’s here. He’s got my back—usually.”
Mordecai looked up at the metal rafters and whistled. Something creaked and fluttered up there, then came flapping down to land on his shoulder. “Some use to me you were, pal,” he told the creature, “letting them blindside me like that.”
Bloodwing made a raspy sound and ducked its head, seeming to laugh. It was a vulturine, leather-winged animal, its head deathly white, its eyes lurid red-orange, its beak the color of steel and almost as tough; it had enormous talons, which Roland had seen put to good use tearing the face off a bandit.
“Yeah, very funny, Bloodwing,” Mordecai said. Bloodwing took to preening itself on its master’s shoulder. Mordecai took a medical vial from a pocket, drank the solution off in one gulp to erase the pain from the blows he’d taken on the head, and turned to Roland again. “What’re you up to here?”