The Goddess Gambit

by B Michael Stevens

  Snapping out of his confused trance, Jon flipped the HUD controls from night-vision to thermal, and the farmer became a gray blur in his view.

  A shot rang out from behind Jon, nearly causing him to jump. Carbine, having not switched to thermal, was not frozen with disbelief, could still see the threat and had acted in the best way he saw fit. The shot was as clean as they come, making contact with the farmer just behind his ear, exiting out his temple and taking most of what lay between them along with it.

  "Let's move!" Carbine shouted as he moved from his position behind Jon to the breakfast bar inside the kitchen.

  Get it together, Jon!

  Discarding the unanswered questions for now, Jon switched back to low-light and followed Carbine, leapfrogging deeper into the room using the sparse cover available.

  Within seconds Jon came to rest in the same archway as the fallen farmer. He couldn't help himself as he glanced down at the nearly headless body and shuddered. No number of hours in Academy Holo-Training can add up to the real thing.

  He stepped over the mysterious corpse and peeked into the next room. Another peasant-class citizen, this one female and slightly overweight, was presently turning around from behind a table on its side to investigate the lack of support fire coming from the slain farmer, most likely her husband. She held a shotgun in her hands and wore a red scarf tied around her head in a way that hid her hair in a utilitarian fashion that was typical of hard-working women in the Rough and Shanty alike. Jon noticed her face displayed a blank, lifeless stare. Her mouth hung open, and there appeared to be dark, pooling blood under the skin of her wrinkled and saggy eyes. At seeing Jon and not her mate, she hesitated. That nanosecond cost her the day, as Jon lifted his Lawnmower without hesitation or remorse and opened fire.

  The first bullet stopped her dead in her tracks, the second caused her to drop the shotgun, and the others shredded her gown as they pummeled her into the table barrier behind, and then onto the ground.

  Once she was down, Jon pumped another half-dozen rounds into her to be sure, then let off the trigger. Instead of ear-ringing silence, he heard the distinctive burp of another Lawnmower. Then it too ceased. Jon braced himself tight against the arch and signaled Carbine. As soon as Carbine was in range to take his position, Jon moved into the room. Together, they had the room covered in a crossfire.

  Jon scanned the room and took stock of the dead woman, the upturned table, and other furniture items; all ripped to bits by gunfire. On the far side of the room, he spied yet another entrance to another room or corridor. Without looking, Jon signaled his friend, who was covering him from behind, and then sprinted towards the threshold, scooting around the slain woman and shattered table.

  As he approached it, Jon ascertained that it was indeed a corridor and that it only went off in the direction of his left. Without slowing his charge, Jon turned and leaped sideways into the space beyond, ready to let loose another volley of lead.

  "Hold your fire!" Max screamed, holding his rifle out in front of him like a priest holding a crucifix, mid-exorcism.

  Jon exhaled, his gun lowering as his breath carried away the intensity of his fight-or-flight response. Max was standing over the body of a third hostile, Quiteke was to his right, clutching his rifle a little too tightly, and Lunk was behind them both, standing in the homestead’s entry room that they had all been in when the firefight first broke out.

  "Okay," Jon exhaled again, his muscles relaxing exponentially, "everybody take it easy." He made a patting gesture in the air to Quiteke. "I think the house is clear, but we need to make sure." He sensed his friend’s approach from behind and ordered, "Carbine, circle back the way we came and clear what we missed. Max, you and Lunk take upstairs." Jon nodded to the staircase in the entry room that rose opposite the front door. "Q, help me examine these bodies." Everyone nodded and got to it, except Quiteke.

  "Human in appearance, but no heat signature whatsoever..." Jon mused aloud, switching his HUD to thermal again for a minute and then back to low-light. The bodies were ambient temperature. They had been dead for some time.

  "Hey, man. Give me a hand. This guy is big," John said as he slung his rifle over his shoulder and knelt at the third body that Max had been standing over. The man was younger than the other two farmers, most likely their offspring, and was greater in girth than both of them combined.

  "Quiteke!" Jon snapped. Quiteke flinched. The private's visor was down, but Jon could easily imagine the kid's face painted with a look of shock. Even Jon himself had hesitated. Some guys got pretty shook up their first time in action. The old guard in Academy had warned them, told them to expect it and told them that it got easier for most, but for some, they would never again know what restful sleep was. Quiteke squatted down alongside Jon, setting his rifle on the ground, and helped to roll the obese body over.

  "What the actual...?" Jon wondered, not for the first time that night. Some bulbous egg-shaped tumor had either grown out of or buried itself halfway into the back of the fat man's neck. A web of black veins sprouted from it and extended down into his torso, just under his skin. The sight was revolting, and Jon felt his stomach clench, while saliva pooled in his mouth. Signs of infectious takeover and rot were showing on the man's clammy flesh around the lesion and were likewise spreading.

  So, if this guy was dead before we shot him... Jon silently gave thanks to the fact his suit's environmental filters were working. Was this tumor what was animating him?

  Leaping to his feet, Jon unslung his rifle as fast as he could.

  "Guys! Look alive!" he shouted over the com, no pun intended. Just then, the obese corpse's limbs began to move once more. Jon watched in disbelief as the slain man pushed himself up into a plank position and then started to come up off the floor. Quiteke began screaming like a man who had lost his mind, shuffling backward, forgetting his rifle in the process.

  Jon was ready. He stepped back and chambered a round in his Lawnmower's church-key micro-grenade launcher mounted under the rifle barrel.

  I hate to do this in close-quarters, but bullets are ineffective.

  "Dammit, Quiteke! Look out!" Jon yelled as he squeezed the second trigger. A single micro-grenade, no bigger than a shotgun shell, escaped the barrel and implanted itself deep into the rising man's rotten flesh with an audible plop. There was a loud thud, and the man's already enormous chest expanded like a balloon until white-hot chemical fire erupted from his every orifice, including the new one made by the grenade's entry. Falling back down from his half-risen stance, the undead man flopped in seizure-like spasms as the fire grew in both heat and intensity, overcoming and finally consuming him.

  "Switch to incendiary!" Jon ordered, seeing that his gambit had paid off. Jon tore his attention away from the zombie pyre to his left and saw that the first two slain hostiles in the other room had also risen to a standing position and were now advancing on him and Quiteke.

  No choice, shit. He pumped another round into the breach and let it loose. The shot landed right where he had aimed, directly in front of and between the hostiles. The living room exploded in a shower of phosphorous fire.

  Max and Lunk had started down the stairs as soon as they’d heard Jon's first exclamation and now found themselves trapped at the bottom, the burning zombie between them and Jon. Max shielded his face to reduce the glare on his visor born from the inferno before him. He could see Jon, actively taking aim at unknown hostiles in the living room as well as Pvt. Quiteke, frozen in place, his back to the wall under the stairs, vainly trying to pull away from the fire.

  "Quiteke!" Max called out over the roar. "Come on! Your suit! It will protect you! Just run to me!" Max waved in an inviting gesture, but the petrified private just shook his head, fear having firmly possessed his mind.

  "Listen to me, Private!" Max ordered. "Look at me! Look at me!" Max insisted, trying to calm his mate down and walk him through the terror. Quiteke managed to turn and face his superior. When he did, Max noticed a worsening of his cr
aven behavior. The kid's knees began to shake, and he slowly raised a trembling finger at Max. No, behind Max.

  A fear, different than but related to Quiteke's, rose slowly in Max's lizard brain. He turned, wondering what Lunk may be doing that would alarm his fellow soldier so. The sight that greeted him stole his breath.

  For a split second he thought Lunk was hovering, levitating a few feet off the ground somehow, but then he saw it: a pair of giant chitinous pincers held the quiet man off the floor, suspending him. The pincers themselves hung down from what looked like a large dog-sized sea slug, baring a four-pointed square-shaped open mouth at him. Besides the claws holding Lunk, two pairs of armored crab legs sprouted from the slug's body and were holding the creature upside down where the walls met the ceiling.

  "Wha—?" Was all he got out before his visor was coated with a splat of thick, viscous, tar-like goo.

  Max's visor began to bubble and melt, the goo threatening to leak through onto his face. He quickly dropped his rifle and scrambled to take his helmet off as fast as possible, minding to keep the goo from touching his gloves. He’d just managed to rip the helm free when Lunk's massive armored boot came up and kissed him on the underside of his jaw, knocking him out cold.

  Another pump, another squeeze. Only one round left, Jon thought and saw that the two well-placed mini-grenades were doing their jobs. Farmer Ma and Pa had now joined their son in writhing on the floor, buried under a blanket of hellfire. They were burning to ashes; unfortunately, so was the house around them.

  He thought he might be able to leap over the bodies and through the fire without getting hurt and was just about to make the jump when he heard Max yelling for Quiteke to look at him. He tried to see what was going on over the intense light and heat coming off the fire behind him but couldn't make much out. Then he heard a shot ring out.

  Oh no. Where are you, Carbine? Fearing the worst for his subordinates, Jon backed up and prepared to take the plunge over the flames towards Quiteke and the others. Gripping his rifle as tightly as he could, he executed his best long jump. He landed in a roll and sprang up in a battle stance, Lawnmower ready.

  Quiteke lay at his feet, slumped over dangerously close to the fire; a few feet away, also laid out, he found Max, sans helmet. Scanning the rest of the scene, he spotted Lunk standing at the top of the stairs. Not standing! Floating! It was then he noticed that Lunk was pointing his rifle at him.

  Jon dodged to his right just as Lunk opened fire. Drywall and lumber, as yet untouched by the growing conflagration, burst into puffs of splinters as the bullets intended for Jon ripped into the nearby wall. Not fully understanding what was going on—he’s just spooked and hasn't recognized me yet—Jon hesitated to return fire. Lunk began to track Jon's movement and strafe his gunfire. Bursts of bullets continued to cut through the walls behind Jon. He grunted and push-pulled himself forward, performing another somersault and coming out of it at the base of the short staircase. He bolted up the steps, skipping every other one as he went, dropping his rifle as he closed the gap, and then putting his hands on Lunk's rifle in an attempt to wrestle the weapon from the big man's hands.

  He managed to get the barrel pointed away from his chest but was unable to free the rifle from the private's iron grip. Despite the struggle, dread apprehension dawned as he gleaned the truth of the situation.

  A Beastie!

  Lunk's helmet was still on, but Jon could see that besides the two pincers grabbing the armpits, the Slug had curled the lower half of its body down in a stinger-like fashion and attached itself to the base of the soldier's neck. The gruesome display resembled a fat, larval scorpion playing puppeteer. In his peripheral vision, Jon could see small puddles of black slime on the floor between Lunk's dangling legs.

  "I'm sorry, soldier," Jon said aloud as he let go of the contested rifle and reached behind the already dead man to pull the pin on the single fragmentation grenade that they all carried on their battle webbing. Jon turned and leaped over the banister, falling straight down onto Max.

  Behind and above him, Jon heard and even felt the blast. A shower of debris rained down on him, and a gale force gust of wind flattened the nearby fire, threatening to extinguish it, but in the end only feeding it, like bellows from heaven.

  The second the blast ended, before the dust cloud had even begun to subside, Jon rolled off over Max and switched from one HUD display to another in an attempt to penetrate the obfuscating wall of dust and ascertain if the threat was still there or not.

  Right as he landed on thermal, he made out the nearly invisible outline of the cold-blooded demon before it pounced on him. Unarmed and pinned down by the four crab legs, Jon felt the frustration of helplessness as the thing went to work on his helmet with its pincers.

  "Lieutenant! Get down!" Carbine’s voice came over the comm in Jon's ear, and before he could reply with an "I already am!" the house exploded. The entire southern wall of both the living room and the entry transformed into a brief torrent of flying detritus.

  Cringing at first against the blast, the slug-crab halted its surgical opening of Jon's armored helm and looked up towards the now missing half of the house. Its bizarre four-point box mouth opened and let loose and unearthly squawk. Struggling, Jon arched his back as best he could against the weight of the beast and craned his neck to see. Through the dust and fire, Jon could make out the glowing headlamp of an Easy-Rider, and Carbine's silhouette walking out in front of it, Lawnmower at the ready. He stepped into what was left of the room, ready to help deal with whatever had caused the literal firefight.

  The creature did not get off Jon. Instead, it bent its tail half upwards and pointed it at Carbine. Jon watched helplessly as a sphincter opened at the very tip, oozing black mucus.

  "Carbine, look out!" Jon shouted. In response, Carbine aimed his rifle at the slug.

  "No, wait! You don't have a clean shot!" Jon cried.

  Jon's eyes widened in horror as the tail began to twitch and vibrate, akin to the rattle of a snake, as it prepared to spit its acidic goo. Carbine proved to be the quicker of the two. His shot entered straight into the tar-laden sphincter and blew the tip of the slug's tail clean off. The creature’s shriek jumped an octave, and it leaped off Jon, flipping itself over in the process and attaching itself to the wall below the stairs. For the first time, Jon had a clear view of its back, which looked identical to its front except for a small, fist-sized globe of glass or crystal embedded within it. Jon had no time to muse on the nature of the orb, as the beast let out a third shriek and began to skitter up the wall, fleeing Carbine and seeking the shelter of the rooms upstairs.

  The beast was nearly over the railing and out of Jon's field of vision when another single shot from Carbine's rifle announced itself.

  The demon froze in place for a half beat and then let go of the wall, dropping to the floor and landing right next to Max and Quiteke. Jon watched it writhe for a few seconds, stop, and then slowly start to melt into the same black goo it had been dispensing.

  The last thing Jon saw before he succumbed to the heat and exhaustion was the glass orb, unharmed and unmelted, standing out in the lake of slime like a magical island.

  006

  "JON! JON, YOU OKAY?"

  Jon rocked back and forth as Carbine shook him.

  Consciousness returned to Jon slowly at first, then the confusion dispersed and he realized where he was and what had happened.

  "Yeah. Yeah, I'm good, man. Quiteke's been shot. Lunk’s dead. Max is down, check him." Jon lifted his head off the ground, rolled over and began to rise in a push-up style motion.

  "This place is gonna come down. The fire is out of control," Carbine insisted, a kiss of panic in his voice.

  "Get Max, I'll get Quiteke." Jon finished standing up and winced. Even through the exo-suit, he could feel the heat of the growing fire that was now climbing the walls like a fine estate’s tapestry and beginning to send ravenous exploratory probes across the ceiling, hungry for more fuel.


  Jon turned and went to Quiteke, wading through the flames, arm braced against the wall of fire, shielding the cracks in his helm made by the Harvester. Carbine followed. Jon knelt before the slouched soldier. The young man had his back to the wall and was in a perfect squat, his hands clutching his armored abdomen.

  "Let me see," Jon ordered and reached his hand out to pull away Quiteke's arm. The shot from Lunk's rifle had caught Quiteke right in his armor's chink, a spot just above the pelvic girdle that was only covered by textile-style armor, not heavy plate, which allowed for the soldiers to ride, bend and otherwise move properly.

  A pool of dark blood had saturated the Kevlar fabric and when Jon pulled Quiteke's hand away, began to spill down into the young man's lap and further onto the floor.

  "You're going to be just fine," Jon soothed. "Come on, we need to get outta here before the roof comes down on us." Or Max dies of smoke inhalation... if he isn't dead already.

  Jon draped Quiteke's arm over his shoulder and pulled the private up to standing. Quiteke howled in agony, but stoically cut his cry short and clamped his mouth shut. Jon stole a glance over to Carbine, who was impressively rolling Max onto his back and beginning to perform a fireman's carry of their squad-mate. Satisfied, Jon helped the limping Quiteke out of the burning building by way of the massive hole in the wall Carbine had created.

  Jon was lowering Quiteke to the soft ground outside, roughly ten meters from the farmhouse-cum-inferno, when Carbine, hauling Max, came up behind him, one heavy step at a time.

  By the time Carbine reached him, Quiteke was on his back, and Jon was turning to go back into the burning structure.

  "Whoa, wait up, man. Whaddaya doing?" Carbine asked, still hunched over with his companion on his back.