We plodded forward, and Jezzy grabbed the cuff of my thin jacket, an old-school flak vest lined with ballistic nylon that I liked to wear when I went into the field. “You were joking before, right?”
“About what?” I asked.
“That whole Vidmark thing.”
I shook my head. “I’m serious about it this time. This is my last gig, and then I’m going legit. I’m gonna join up with the Mech Command.”
“Presto, just like that?”
“Just like that,” I replied.
“And then what? Get a little house in the ‘burbs and settle down?
“What’s wrong with that?”
“The same thing that’s always been wrong with it,” she hissed. “It’s bullshit, and people like us weren’t meant for that kind of life.”
“Well, maybe I’ve changed. Maybe I’m not like you guys anymore,” I replied and immediately wished I hadn’t. For all her toughness and bluster, Jezzy was surprisingly sensitive. I could see in her eyes that she was wounded.
“Fine, whatevs,” she said with a flick of the wrist. “Just remember to lose my number.”
“You never had one.”
“Piss off, Danny.”
The corridor ended in a circular anteroom overflowing with equipment, valuables, and gear that had either been stolen by Timbo’s goons or traded with him. There were mounds of precious metals and all manner of weapons and tools and electronic equipment, stacked from floor to ceiling. Timbo was visible on the far side, peering over a collection of gold bars piled high on a pallet.
He turned, and I watched Jezzy bite back a scream. She’d never seen him before, and Timbo could be terrifying the first time you laid eyes on him. Unlike Kenyatta, Timbo (who wasn’t a Xhosa), was a tall drink of water, standing a few inches over seven feet with purplish skin and a head studded with bony protuberances that contained numerous eyes. He’d been an officer in an elite Syndicate unit, but once the occupation ended, became a smuggler full-time, and controlled most of the black market up and down the east coast, including sharing a portion of the lucrative trade in a quasi-alien narcotic called “Black Sunshine” with a human drug trafficker named Esai Quarrels.
Timbo moved toward us, and I instructed Jezzy and Spence to lay the rucksacks on the ground. Then I leaned in close to Spence and slapped the hoversurf fob in his hand. “Remember what we talked about last time?”
“No peeing in my pants, right?” Spence asked.
“Nope, the other thing.”
“Oh, right,” Spence said, winking, looking at the fob. “Two taps if we get in trouble.”
I nodded and looked back as Timbo approached, giving the three of us the once over, paying particular attention to Jezzy. He clucked his tongue, and Kenyatta snickered.
“What did he say?” I asked.
“He asked how much for the female?”
“There’s a special on her today. Ninety-nine cents,” I replied. Jezzy elbowed me hard in the side.
Timbo grabbed up the plastic case, which was presumably filled with our cash and therefore weighed two-hundred pounds. He did this with two fingers and then dropped the case on the ground a few feet from us. He appraised me. Then he clucked his tongue for several seconds, and Kenyatta nodded. “The Master asks if you know that change is coming.”
“It always does,” I replied, wanting to get the transaction over with.
“He wonders whether you know that your paper money will be no good once again when they come for your world.”
“Who?”
“The ones who wait. The ones who have always been.”
I had absolutely no idea what that meant and frankly didn’t care. All I wanted to do was make the trade, grab our loot, and beat our feet out of Timbo’s dungeon. I conjured up another smile. “We appreciate the warning, but if the deal is done, we’ll just grab the money and show ourselves out.”
Spence made a move toward the cash and Timbo stopped him with a look. Kenyatta held up a hand. “The Master would like to examine the batteries first.”
I waved a hand. “You’ve seen one battery, you’ve seen them all…”
“He insists,” Kenyatta said, some steel in his voice.
I nodded and a moment passed between Jezzy and me. I surreptitiously angled my holster around so that I could whip out my pistol if I had to.
Timbo motioned to another alien who scampered over and threw open the rucksacks. The alien reacted with delight upon seeing the batteries and began studying them, turning them over, holding them up.
“Glad we were able to do business,” I said, bowing to Timbo, hoping that he didn’t notice that my neck and arms were roped with sweat.
I waited for Timbo to react and when he didn’t, I took it as a sign. I moved over and grabbed a handle on the plastic case. The damned thing weighed every bit of two-hundred pounds. Jezzy and Spence grabbed the other handle, and I mouthed “Hurry!” to them. We moved briskly toward the entrance to the corridor when a voice boomed, “WAIT!”
Slowly, very slowly, I looked back to see Timbo. He was looking up from the batteries to me, then to Kenyatta. He barked at Kenyatta.
“Is there a problem?” I asked.
Kenyatta nodded, and I could see fear in his eyes. “The Master says you are a duplicitous, repugnant little creature.”
Jezzy flung me a look. “Say what you want, but the guy obviously knows you.”
I shushed Jezzy and Kenyatta continued. “The Master says you have deceived him. That these batteries are his.”
“That’s a lie,” I replied, trying to sound as forceful as I could. “Besides, you’ve got no proof.”
“The batteries are marked.”
“No, they’re not,” I said, looking to Spence, praying that he hadn’t let me down.
Timbo raised a hand, and the lights went out.
The blood in my veins turned to ice because I could see that the batteries had been marked with some kind of pigmented coating that could only be observed in the darkness. The lights came back on, and Spence smiled sheepishly. “Sorry, boss.”
“No worries,” I said. “You’ll have all eternity to make it up to me after we’re killed.”
There was movement peripherally. Some of the other aliens, six or seven of Timbo’s bruisers, were fanning out at the edges of the room. Some were armed, others weren’t, but all of them had homicide in their eyes and looked ready to throw down. Jezzy held up her hands, then pointed at me. “Hey, there’s been some kind of mistake. I don’t even know this guy.”
I sighed. “C’mon, Jezzy.”
“That’s not even my name. Who are you? Where am I? How did I get here?!” she said.
“That’s not gonna work. They’ll still kill all of us.”
“You can rest easily,” Kenyatta said, holding up a hand in a gesture of goodwill. “The Master says he does not kill women.”
Jezzy arched an eyebrow. “Really?”
Timbo muttered, and Kenyatta nodded. “He prefers to enslave them.”
I smirked at Jezzy. “Ha! How’s that death thing looking now?”
Before she could respond, the aliens charged us and two things happened at once: Jezzy made a move to unsheathe her concealed sabers, and I pulled out my pistol and fired a shot at the crate of cash as everything vanished in a hailstorm of screams and explosions.
5
To this day I have no idea what kind of explosive round was inside my Sump’n Sump’n pistol. I assume it was an energized sabot, but whatever it was, it hit the plastic case and vaporized the damned thing in a fireball that was brighter than a burning star.
Secondary explosions ensued along with a blizzard of confetti (the shredded money) that filled the air, obscuring visibility, momentarily startling the aliens. Their moment of hesitation was brief, but it was enough for Jezzy who whipped out her sabers and went to work.
The first alien attacker lunged at Jezzy who dropped low and punted the unlucky bastard in the groin. The beast fell onto its back, and I k
new what was coming next, Jezzy’s patented move, the “springboard.”
She darted forward and planted her feet on the fallen alien’s torso, launching herself forward, six feet into the air. I’d seen her do this countless times on other jobs and it never got old. Sailing forward, she swung her blades so hard that they seemed to split the air. There was a blur of silver, and the necks of two other aliens were sliced wide open. Three more charged and Spence dropped into a crouch and lowered a shoulder to upend one. I fired my pistol again, barely missing Timbo who ducked into a hidden chamber in the floor. The round from my gun ricocheted off a metal pillar, striking a far wall which vanished in a concussive blast that shook the entire boat.
“LET’S GO!” I screamed.
I grabbed Spence and signaled for Jezzy who gut-stabbed another alien as two more opened fire with their weapon of choice, a short-barreled Parallax rifle. Balls of compressed plasma snapped past our heads as we ran raggedly toward the far wall. My breath went tight as I neared the hole, expecting at any moment to be blasted apart.
We plunged through the hole and out into the marsh at the edge of Timbo’s lair. I watched Spence tap the red button on the hoversurf fob as shouts and screams echoed all around. An alarm soon sounded, and I knew we only had a minute or two to get the hell out of Dodge.
“I told you it was a mistake to do this!” Jezzy shouted.
“Save for it later,” I replied.
“There won’t be any laters you ding dong!”
The hoversurf appeared, dropping low before coming to a stop. We scrambled inside the bubble top, and I grabbed the controls and thumbed the joystick. I could see the aliens emerging out of Timbo’s lair like fire ants, all heavily armed. One or two had what appeared to be surface-to-air missile launchers positioned on their shoulders.
“This keeps getting better and better,” I said.
There were puffs of smoke and then the lights on the hoversurf’s translucent dashboard began blinking.
“We’ve got multiple missile locks!” Jezzy shrieked.
I reached down and did the only thing there was to do. I flipped up the cover of a green button, the one that would activate the hoversurf’s JATO bottle, its rocket-fueled turbo.
“HOLD ON!” I screamed.
We strapped in, and I jammed my finger down on the button. Nothing happened for a second, and then the hoversurf’s turbo howled to life. We immediately hit “MAT,” maximum allowable thrust, and were shot forward so violently that my testicles scrunched up into my gut. I thought for sure I was going to pass out or the craft was going to break apart.
The force of the acceleration peeled my mouth back. Every muscle in my body seized as I fought to control the trajectory of the machine which whooshed forward like a rocket on a collision course with the marine ship boneyard.
The twisted metal frames of the wrecked ships sprung into view as I flicked the joystick left, then right, expertly piloting the machine through gaps in the boats, my senses on hyperdrive. This was the one thing I’d always been good at, plotting angles and anticipating events seconds before they happened. My old man called it 3-D situational awareness, the result, he claimed, of teaching me at a very young age how to swing a baseball bat and flip a fly on a trout stream. Whatever it was, the skill had served me well in the past, and I was praying it would come through one more time as I yanked back on the controls.
The hoversurf shot up and knifed through a gap in one of the boat’s upper decks, sailing into the air eighty feet off of the ground. My eyes were everywhere, including on the dash. I could see the missiles fired by the aliens were approaching behind us.
“WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING?!” Jezzy bellowed.
“TRUST ME!”
I powered the hoversurf straight down toward an opening in another ship and time seemed to slow to a crawl. This is what I saw:
AHEAD OF US: the opening in the ship, little more than a fissure, vertically wide, but horizontally narrow.
BEHIND US: the missiles on our tail and closing fast.
INSIDE THE HOVERSURF: the dashboard blinked like lights on a Christmas trees and the klaxons howled like sinners in hell.
My eyes rotated in every direction, zipping back and forth between every potential threat, every obstacle.
The walls were figuratively closing in on us.
I could tell the missiles were going to get us before we reached the ship.
Seconds, that’s all we had.
I needed to buy us some time.
Real-time crashed back in and I flicked the joystick left.
The hoversurf swerved a few feet.
The missiles responded, their momentum carrying them out and away from us, just for an instant.
But an instant was all that we needed.
I fear-gripped the joystick as the turbo kicked in a final time and I corkscrewed our air-bike through the opening in the boat as—
BOOM! BOOM!
The missiles, unable to keep pace, slammed into the metal on the left and right of us. My eyes went wide; I could see the ends of the hoversurf’s wings kissing the edge of the wrecked boat as we soared through the belly of the ship and out another hole in the opposite wall, roaring out into open air. Jezzy and Spence pumped their fists and loosed rebel yells.
We’d done it.
We’d beaten the bastards!
I was one bad mamma jamma.
Then the turbo booster ran out of juice, and the electric rotors kicked back in, jolting the hoversurf, slowing it to its normal speed.
That’s when I saw it.
The alien glider facing us in the distance.
The one with Alpha Timbo seated in the cockpit.
“That is so not cool,” I muttered.
The glider opened fire.
A ball of compressed energy rocketed out of the weapons port on Timbo’s glider and hit us before I could scream. The plasma tore through the hoversurf, and the only thing that saved us from being atomized was the ballistic cockpit glass. Still, it was shattered by the blast, and I found myself literally in the middle of an explosion. The back blast sucked the air from my lungs, and a wave of kinetic energy rolled over me like a tsunami. Also, my clothes were on fire which really didn’t help things. Freed from the confines of the bubbletop, gravity gripped me, and I fell straight down, tumbling through the air like a puppet cut from its strings.
The ground rushed up to greet me, and I landed hard.
On my head.
Two thoughts came to me before I blacked out: I couldn’t believe I was still alive, and I couldn’t believe the high-pitched sound my lower spine made as it shattered into a hundred tiny pieces.
6
There’s a sliding scale when it comes to pain. A “one” is something like a paper cut, while a “ten” is the sensation I imagine you feel when your soul is ripped out through your mouth. I was definitely experiencing an “eleven” or “twelve” on the day my lower body was taken away from me.
I snatched a breath of air and tasted fire and blood. I had no idea where I was as I slipped in and out of consciousness. I couldn’t move or feel anything below my groin, and my line of sight was fixed heavenward.
The sky was obscured by smoke, and I heard shouts and snatches of conversation, but everything was muted as if I was listening while being trapped underwater. I lay very still and then I felt myself all over with my right hand. There were cuts and bruises on my face and head, and when I looked at my hand, it was slicked red. I feared to look down because I knew what I’d see: legs that were no longer usable.
A groan escaped my mouth. I was dizzy and heartsick, my thoughts turning to Jezzy and Spence. I wondered where they were and if they’d made it out of the hoversurf crash alive. I also wondered if I’d soon be seeing Alpha Timbo smiling, holding a weapon up to blow me away into eternity. Instead, a group of humans in mismatched uniforms that I didn’t recognize appeared and stood over me. Their faces were stamped with solemn looks, and they whispered things I couldn’t make
out. Hands were placed under my legs and upper body and then I was hoisted up onto a stretcher. A woman with kind eyes jabbed several needles filled with golden fluid in my arm as I began slipping back into semi-consciousness. I heard the whop-whop of what sounded like helicopters, and then darkness devoured everything.
* * *
I woke to the sound of the hushed voice and the harsh glow of a penlight that was being swept across my face by a ferret-faced man with a bad comb-over who was dressed entirely in black. The ferret-faced man looked over to someone I couldn’t see and said, “He’s alive.” Murmurs followed and then before I could utter a single word, I was lifted up again.
My eyes swung down, and I could see that my head was in a halo brace and my torso and legs were strapped tightly inside a kind of metal cage. The cage was bolted to a swivel that was secured to the floor, the entire apparatus designed to prevent me, and my useless legs, from toppling forward. I was woozy and disoriented from the accident and the drugs. There were spots in my eyes and a loud ringing in my ears. Unseen hands repositioned me to face a small, multiracial delegation of men and women who stood next to a wall in a windowless room made of cement block. A bare bulb flickered overhead.
My eyes roamed over those assembled before me. “Who are you, people?” I croaked. “Where am I? How long have I been here?” They didn’t respond, and so I asked the obvious. “Am I in some kind of trouble?”
“Should you be?” a stern-looking woman in a jumpsuit finally asked. “You fit a lot of descriptions, Mister Deus.”
My head swam. “Lady, I’m pretty sure this is false imprisonment, so I’d like to talk to my lawyer.”
“All the lawyers are dead,” a bulbous black man said.
“How about the Constitution then?”
“Why would that matter?” the woman asked.
“Because you’re violating my rights.”
“Which ones?”
“All of ‘em,” I snapped.
“The Constitution was suspended years ago.”
“The Americans with Disabilities Act?”
“Gone,” the woman said.
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