“Lori?” I asked.
“Yeah, that’s her.”
“I met her once while I was stuck at the Chapterhouse in Stiner,” I said.
“Stuck?” he asked. “Weren’t you recovering from that thing with the Geno Freak?”
“Yep. Teresa wouldn’t let me go home.”
“You had three broken ribs and a broken leg, and you reopened the bullet wounds from that other case.” He shook his head. “You can’t blame her for that.”
“I guess,” I said. “At least, I didn’t get wounded on the job for Wilderman.”
“Fenris said you got shot,” he said.
“It was just a scratch,” I said. “Can’t even call that a wound.”
“Probably because you spent the majority of the time watching her cutting that bunch into squishy little pieces.”
“What?”
“That’s what she said, man.” He shrugged. “Sounds about right, though. I remember that time up in Yamato’s Zone.”
“I distinctly remember killing several of Corso’s thugs, along with Corso and his second.”
“Yeah, four. I was left with nine. I think I’ll take her word for it. She is a Knight, after all. They take oaths and shit.”
“Have you ever watched that woman fight?”
“Can’t say I have,” he answered.
“It’s glorious, it’s magnificent, it’s—”
“You just stood there and watched, didn’t you?”
“Well, for a while. I’d already killed a bunch of them,” I said.
“She said you left another Warlord hanging from a wall with a piece of steel through his shoulder.”
“He let close to sixty thugs attack us in his street in broad daylight. He was lucky I didn’t just throw him out the window of his Scraper.”
“Sounds like he might have deserved a warning.”
I pulled my coat around and stuck my finger through the hole left in it by the bullet that had grazed my side. “Do you see this? This is the last one I have until I see the Farmers again.”
“You pinned him to a wall with rebar because they put a hole in your coat?”
“Of course not. He was in on the attack. A lot of those guys were his men. I left him pinned to a wall with rebar for sending his men to kidnap an innocent girl and kill me in the process.”
His left eyebrow was raised when I looked toward him.
“I broke his arm for the hole in my coat.”
He shook his head.
“What?”
“That damn coat,” he said. “One day, it’s gonna trip you up when you try one of those crazy Agent moves. I just hope I’m there to see it.”
“You’re just mad because they don’t make them in your size.”
“Whatever.”
“I could see if Marigold will make you one,” I said.
“I don’t want one of those useless coats.”
“She probably wouldn’t charge more than double price for the extra material.”
“Look how it flops around,” he said. “One day, you’re gonna trip over it and, just like that, you’re all dead and shit.”
“I can ask when I order my next batch.”
“I don’t need one of those damn coats. If I wore somethin’ that stupid, I’d be dead in a week.”
I shrugged as we continued walking down the street. The smell of humanity permeated the air, and the vendor stalls along both sides of the street reminded me of something that hovered just out of reach of my fractured memories.
Fair, one of the voices deep inside my head said.
I nodded.
He sighed. “Do you think she could make one in black?”
Wonders never cease in this Fallen World.
* * * * *
Chapter 4
The sound of fighting ahead barely reached my ears.
“What is it?” Poe asked. He couldn’t hear it, but he could see me pause as I listened.
“How much farther to the Bastion?”
“Next Zone.”
“Shit,” I said. “There’s fighting.”
He scowled. “Go. I’ll be there as quick as I can.”
I nodded and launched myself forward. The speed an Agent can attain is much more than Poe would have been able to make. The Zone we were in was pretty barren, but you could tell a lot by the upkeep of the streets. Many had clean streets and vendor stalls for the Caravans as they passed through. This one was shabby and dirty. Still, there was no smell of feces in the street as there was in some of them. The Mardins kept the sewers running, and I have great respect for their dedication.
The sound of fighting was closer, and I slipped my straight razor into my left hand and pulled the nine millimeter from the shoulder holster with my right. It used to have a silencer, but they have a limited lifespan, and I had used it enough to make it more of a hindrance than a help.
I rounded the corner and found the street filled with a lot of armed thugs assaulting a wall of stacked cars. The wall of cars looked like it had been there for years. It spanned the whole street between two buildings that had been reinforced with steel plate.
“Bastion,” I muttered.
The defenses looked pretty formidable, and it would take a lot of people to get through them.
But there was a mob of fifty or sixty people in the street brandishing weapons. I could only see about ten stationed along the top of the wall. Not enough defenders to stop this mob if the mob went at it hard.
The fighting was centered, not on the wall of cars, but on a small group of armored forms who had been caught outside the walls. They were surrounded, and the mob would soon overwhelm them.
“That’s your cue, Stephen,” I muttered and receded into the back of my mind as Stephen Gaunt, the Corporate Assassin, took the lead. He holstered the Sig Sauer and looked at the razor in his right hand.
“Oh, Mathew, I think you’ve done it again,” I said in his voice. “You bring me to the loveliest places. But that is a lot of throats to cut.”
He slipped the razor back into its pouch and drew one of the sturdier knives.
“This should do nicely.”
I would say that I charged into the group, but Stephen doesn’t charge. He flowed through the crowd like water, and people began to fall. I severed a femoral artery, then flowed past and snaked my arm around a neck to pull the chin up, and the blade flashed. Then I was gone again. One after another fell before they even realized I was there.
Then there was a roar from behind me as Poe rounded the corner with his four-foot-long blade swinging in a deadly arc. People tumbled backward, several in multiple pieces. He swung the sword back in an arc that was just as deadly as the first.
Poe is a big man, and he is all muscle. When he hits something, it moves, and he was cutting a swath through the crowd. Another form dropped from one of the buildings to our left. She’d been descending along a fire escape when we hit the crowd.
Peggey Rowland, one of the Society Squires, landed lightly, drawing the rapier from her side. The sword danced around, and those near her died.
I ducked as a club arced through the spot where my head had been, and I grasped the front of the wielder’s shirt. I threw him into several of his cohorts with enough force to send four sprawling on the ground. Then my blade flashed several times, and the squirming pile was still.
“Don’t worry,” Gaunt whispered in an ear as I reached around with the blade. “It will be over soon.”
Once again, I was moving through the crowded street, and screams of rage and hate became screams of fear. There’s something terrifying in witnessing a man giggling as he dances through a throng of people, leaving only the dying or already dead in his wake.
But Stephen Gaunt is a terrifying sort of guy. Typically, they don’t stay terrified long.
I ended up looking into the eyes of Peggey Rowland as both of us reached the same person in the much less crowded street. The majority of those who were left were fleeing.
“Hell
o, luv,” Gaunt said.
Peggey looked a bit confused, and I stepped forward from the backseat in my head.
“Sorry,” I said and smacked the man who was screaming something I assumed was a battle cry. His head tilted at an odd angle, and he fell sideways.
“Hi, Peggey.” I grinned. “How’s it going?’
She was shaking her head. “You should be covered in blood. How did you not get any more than that on your coat?”
“More than what?” I asked and looked down at the right hem she was pointing at. “Dammit!”
There was a red splotch about the size of a closed fist.
Peggey had blood dripping from her armor, and I glanced over to our left to look at Poe. He was covered with it.
“Last damn coat,” I muttered.
I heard the group of defenders who had been cut off from the Bastion approaching and turned around and saw the leader taking off her helm.
My mouth dropped open. “Brandy?”
I had memories in my head of this woman. Someone deep inside the pile of people in my head was doing the mental equivalent of jumping up and down and waving their arms. The barrage of memories was fast, but it was detailed. I remembered this woman as a baby, a child, a youth, and an adult. The personality that was hailing me was her father.
“Do I know you?” Brandy Bolgeo asked with narrowed eyes.
I scratched my head. “I know you…kind of.”
“I thank you for your timely appearance,” she said. “But I don’t know you. Either way, we need to get inside.”
She waved to the men atop the wall, and one of them yelled into the interior, “Jonny! Open the gate!”
One of the metal panels that guarded the building on our right pushed outward. A fellow in coveralls, with a pair of short swords in scabbards on his back, looked out the door.
“You still with us, Boss?”
“Thanks to these folks,” Brandy answered.
I can’t believe she’s still alive, Tim Bolgeo said in my head. He had been pretty far down in the depths of my mind for a long time.
Brandy kept looking at me, trying to place who I was.
“I guess I need to tell you a little story,” I said. “It’s about your father.”
She scowled. “My father is dead. The people he spent years working for sent him on one of those damned missions and dropped the bombs right on top of him.”
I could see the depth of her rage at Obsidian, who more than deserved it. That rage was a common thing to see in this Fallen World.
* * * * *
Chapter 5
We were less than ten feet inside the door when she turned to me. “Now, tell me about my father.”
It was an order, not a request. There was an iron will in her that filled me with a father’s pride. Bolgeo was just under the surface now, and I could feel his emotions.
“Okay,” I said. “You know what he did?”
“He was an Agent.”
“That makes things easier to explain. Are you familiar with how Agents did their thing? The imprints?”
“Dad told me how it worked,” she said with a shrug. “I know, it was supposed to be classified.”
“Nothing’s classified now.” I pointed a thumb back toward the door we had come in. “Not much point in that anymore.”
“That’s true.”
“If you know about the imprints, this is easier still. When an Agent goes out needing a specialty personality, their personality is uploaded to the database. Then it’s downloaded back into the body when it returns. There was a copy of your father in the database.”
“What’s that have to do with this?”
“Everything.” I tapped my temple with a forefinger. “When the bombs dropped, I was in the imprinter. Something shorted out, and it downloaded the whole database into my noggin.”
“And Dad is in there?”
“That’s how I recognized you. Some of the imprints are more accessible than others, and your father was pretty deep inside until I saw you. Now, he’s right under the surface. I’m going to step back and give you two a couple of minutes.”
“This is a little too much to take in. I believe I have heard enough.” She turned to walk away.
My head dropped for a moment, and someone else was looking out of my eyes when my head raised.
“Brandy Marie Louise Elizabeth Bolgeo,” Tim admonished.
Brandy paused in mid stride.
She turned back to face me as Tim looked around. “Swimbo? Is she here?”
I could see the acronym in his mind and chuckled inside. SWMBO (She Who Must Be Obeyed).
When Tim said that word, though, Brandy’s eyes widened, and her mouth dropped open. Up until that very moment, she had not believed.
“D…Dad?” she stammered.
He stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her armored form. “I’m sorry I left you, girl. Wish I had stayed home when they called.”
I felt tears running down my cheeks.
“I’m sorry, Mom didn’t make it, Dad.”
I could feel the well of sorrow as Tim thought of his wife, Linda.
He sighed. “I guess you’re Swimbo, now, not Swimbo, Jr.”
“No one’s called me that in twenty years, Dad.”
“Well, they should.”
“They’re coming back for a run at the walls!” one of the guys on the wall yelled.
She grimaced. “Seems like our reunion is going to be short lived. Those bastards mean to kill us all.”
“Then, what say we kill them first?” Tim Bolgeo said and turned to the two Squires. “Let’s join the ranks on the walls.”
“One of your Squires is on the front wall,” Brandy said to me. “Should we join him?”
Tim glanced around. “They hitting more than one wall?”
“They’re hitting all four,” she said. “There are hundreds of them.”
“Which one gets hit the hardest?”
“Front.”
“How many fighters here?”
“A hundred and twenty people, about half of which are decent fighters. The others will fight, but they’re not really fighters.”
He scanned the area and made a decision. “One Squire on each of those walls, and I’ll take the front wall.”
He glanced up at the front wall and recognized the Squire. “Joe! Take the right wall!”
“Got it!” he yelled back.
Tim jumped from where he stood to the top of the wall of cars where they had welded a parapet for the defenders to stand on.
He heard Brandy giving orders. “Jonny! On the right! Hillbilly, join him.”
She was motioning to an armored form in the group who had come in with us.
“Got it, Swimbo.”
She stared at him, and Tim grinned down at them from the wall.
“I got it, Boss.” He held his hands up.
He was chuckling as he took off toward the right wall.
Tim turned around to look over the wall of cars at the horde of people coming down the street toward the Bastion.
That’s a lot of damn people, I said.
“It certainly is,” Tim answered.
“What?” one of the defenders asked.
“Just talkin’ to myselves.”
He looked confused, but shook his head and turned back toward the oncoming horde.
“We have contact!” someone yelled from the right wall.
“They’re in the back, too!” Poe yelled as he climbed the wall.
The whole defended area was about five hundred feet by five hundred feet, and there was very little inside the walls.
“What the hell are we defending?” Tim asked.
“The Bastion is underground, Dad. It’s the Bastion of Literacy. We’ve been collecting every book we can find in the city and preserving them. We’re going to need that knowledge in the future.”
Tim grinned. “That’s my girl.”
It explained a great deal about the setup of the defensive wa
lls. It was like the way the Mardins under the city had walled off the area under Derris’ Zone to keep the savages in check. This was the same in reverse.
“You affiliated with the Mardins?”
“We know some of them, but we aren’t part of their society. We have our own setup.”
“We can discuss it in a little while,” he said. “Let’s welcome our guests.”
“Ready the pots!” she yelled.
There were about eight big cauldrons steaming along the parapet. They sat on racks with fires burning under them.
“Oil?” Tim asked.
“Boiling water and flour,” she answered. “Sticks to them like glue.”
The horde reached the wall and started climbing the cars. She waited for a few moments before yelling. “Pots!”
The cauldrons were pushed over, and the white liquid fell onto the mass of bodies. Battle cries changed to screams as the boiling concoction clung to them. They began falling backward onto the others where the paste-like substance spread.
There was a vicious smile on her face. “Read that in a book, you assholes!”
“Ready weapons!” Brandy ordered.
Tim chuckled and drew the Sig from his shoulder holster. He waited until the flour and water had gotten on as many as it looked like it was going to. Then he raised the pistol.
Others on the wall raised their rifles and pistols as well.
“Target the ones who aren’t already injured!”
I felt the great swell of pride that coursed through Tim as he watched his daughter.
“Open fire!”
Tim pulled the trigger, and the man he was aiming at toppled with a bullet in his brain. He calmly shifted his aim, and another head blossomed. This one was female.
Sometimes, a person needs to be an equal opportunity killer in this Fallen World.
* * * * *
Chapter 6
“Here’s where it gets nasty,” Brandy said as several of her people placed their rifles on the ground at their feet. “We’re out of ammo.”
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