The Goddess Gambit

by B Michael Stevens

  Lucy led them down a smaller, tighter path off to their right. The path cut through a gap in cage row and opened up on the far side, where an impromptu market of sorts was set up and buzzing with activity. Upside-down battered steel drums were being used as tables, some rusted to the point where fist-sized holes perforated them all over, making Jon think of the high-caliber guns the Mechs used for arms. Dirty and warped sheets of corrugated steel or planks of wood were used to increase the table area of these drums, and upon them, Invasives and humans alike piled all manner of goods, from half-rotten root vegetables to used shoes and pre-Storm hand tools, some in better shape than others.

  Here the sound of a hundred voices, in a hundred tongues, reached an almost deafening roar. Combined with the smells, the stimuli were intense and made Jon feel dizzy. He focused on following Lucy and staying covered up, but his eyes darted left and right, struggling to take it all in.

  Just off to their left, a fight between two haggling Invasives broke out as they passed a vendor’s makeshift table.

  "Don't interfere," Lucy cautioned.

  Slowing his gait to rubberneck, Jon watched as the being selling the goods, bottles of dirty water or perhaps petrol, raised not only his voice but his hands and grabbed the prospective customer. The two beings began to wrestle. One, the customer, was identical to the red-skinned girl, except male; the other, the merchant was a mystery. Its face and skin were completely hidden by wraps of beige cloth and a full gas-mask-looking apparatus. Jon watched in amazement as neither of them noticed the small human girl-child rush the table, grab a handful of the small plastic bottles and take off running, successful in her thievery.

  "Why... why do they live like such animals? It's disgusting," Jon said as he continued to process the chaos of the Shanty market. Lucy stopped walking instantly and wheeled on him.

  "Are you fucking kidding me? You think they like living like this? They are refugees, pendejo." Lucy's eyes narrowed, accentuating their skeletal appearance. "Most of them don't even want to be on this planet. They were displaced here by the Drops. Some tried to make a home for themselves, out there, in the Rough," Lucy pointed to the south, "only to be savaged by things far worse than your State, if you can believe such a thing exists."

  "Hey, I only—" Jon started, his hands up in a surrendering gesture, but Lucy cut him off.

  "No, fuck you, Army boy. You didn't ‘only’ shit. These people came here looking for help. They are trying to get away from the Harvesters out there. They are trying just to survive and your people, your government, turned them away. Shit on them. Not one ounce of help, or food, or care. Hell, you won't even trade with them."

  Jon opened his mouth to speak but found that he had no words. Even if he had, Lucy was not done, and wouldn't stop until she had said her piece.

  "Why do they live like this? Why, you ask? 'Cause when they aren't being harassed by people like you just for existing, they are left with nothing, no help, and no network, to fend for themselves. I'd like to see you try and do better."

  Jon thought about pointing out the Ziggurat as the perfect example of how his race could do better but then thought better of it.

  Lucy looked like she might stop; her mouth was slightly open, jaw sticking slightly out, a look of pure disgust on her face that even the death makeup couldn't obscure.

  "I'm sorry," Jon said.

  "I know you are. Both of you are," Lucy spat.

  "What did I do?" Carbine asked, then cringed when Lucy turned her cemetery eyes on him.

  "Shut up. Come on, we are nearly there." With that, she turned and continued through the market.

  After they cleared the market, they entered another residential zone. Here the residents had larger dwellings, carved out of old pre-Storm automobiles stacked on top each other of and welded, sometimes tied, together. Arranged haphazardly, the placement of these bizarre shelters caused the fairly straight and narrow road that they had been traveling on to splinter, divide and narrow. Like a river branching off into stream sized tributaries, the path sub-divided and disappeared around corners and into the labyrinthine district.

  "Motor City," Lucy announced and flicked a finger in the direction of a steel sign, hung by braided cables from a long-broken forklift, the boom of which remained at full extension, as tall as a streetlight in Jon's neighborhood Ziggurat park.

  The chopped apart and glued together cars and trucks that now served as homes for the residents of Motor City resembled visions from a mad architect made manifest. The toadstools of diesel-punk fairy tales, post-apocalyptic, yet creative and resourceful. Metal had been cut away and glass, sometimes plastic, had been glued in its place, forming windows where there had been none. Seats had been ripped out, stairs cobbled together by rope and nail twisted around the inside of the metallic condominiums, and sometimes on the outside as well. Car windows rolled down as Jon and company passed by, the inhabitants of the strange dwellings reaching outside to dump plastic buckets of waste onto the narrow winding paths below. Woodsmoke rose from primitive vents and chimneys; mixed in and among the smoke and shit, Jon could detect whiffs of boiled meat and cabbage. By Shanty standards, someone was having a feast.

  Resting on the tailgate of what used to be a truck and now served as a porch, Jon spied an older human male, hair gray and chiseled from age, eyes milky white and glossed over from Weaver. Jon could see the man was skinny from hunger and had recently pissed himself, too zoned out on the drug to know better. Sad, but he smartly kept the criticism to himself, yet continued to wonder, Would I have done the same though? An escape, any escape might seem better than this reality...

  "Just a little ways farther," Lucy said.

  And closer, thought Jon as he saw how near they had gotten to the base of the Ziggurat. From here he couldn't see the corners of the fortress, only the southeastern obelisk rising in the distance, its base obscured by the Shanty. The face of the Ziggurat from this close seemed more a mountain than a wall. Sloping up gently, uniformly, its zenith among the winter clouds. Jon spotted tiny gnats, Hoppers most likely, zooming in and out of the upper levels of the Zigg. Oblivious and uncaring to the situation below.

  Just as I was.

  Was?

  Jon began to reflect on his situation and the changes he felt himself going through but was quickly interrupted by Carbine asking Lucy a question.

  "What the heck happened here?"

  Oh no, thought Jon, here we go again.

  Jon looked to where Carbine was pointing. A crater, filled with twisted and burnt steel, stood out in dissimilitude to the rest of the neighborhood.

  "This," Lucy started, the tone of her voice telling Jon that they were in for another ass-chewing, "is an example of the only time you people don't ignore the folks down here." Jon saw Carbine blink and knew that his friend too realized the mistake in attempting a dialog with the warrior woman. "When a suspected esoterrorist—a term that I just love, by the way—is thought to be in the area, your military sends in a Hopper, or sometimes even a Heavy. No investigation. No questions asked. No Scrubbing. Out here, they just drop bombs. Not considered worth the risk to put boots on the ground."

  As if to reinforce Lucy's soliloquy, a low-flying Hopper passed by, drawing Jon's attention. He tried to remember how things had looked, how things had seemed from up there, from inside, but he couldn't. What lay before and around him always came crashing into his mind's eye, obliterating his former notions, just like the bombs Lucy preached about.

  "Of course, there is always a massive amount of collateral damage. Innocent life, not even related to the target, plus whatever infrastructure these poor people have managed to build. Never mind the fact that the so-called esoterrorist is usually just a human or Displaced that happens to be able to shape Strange. Nine times out of ten, they aren't even affiliated with us, or the good work."

  "I don't think we bomb the Shanty for no reason," Jon surprised himself by arguing. "If the people of the Shanty weren't harboring criminals, then there wouldn'
t be an issue. Don't pretend like you didn't see that old man whacked out on Weaver back there. That stuff is a real problem. And don't act like you don't know about how esoterrorists attacked the convoys coming from the Eastern farmlands. Then there are the gatecrashers and—"

  "Eres un jodido idiota! Such blind ignorance! Such thick-headedness!" Lucy bellowed, stepping towards Jon. For a moment he wondered if he had pushed her to the point of violence, but her war-clubs and pistol both remained sheathed. "Yeah, some do fight back against the systematic and institutionalized destruction imposed on them. They are facing death, cabrón! Extinction! Genocide! Is this getting through to you? Or are you too fucking brainwashed to understand?"

  "I get it," Carbine offered softly.

  "Shut the fuck up, pinche gringo. I don't even know why I'm wasting my time with you two." Exhausted, she turned to leave, but Jon called out after her.

  "Now wait just a damn minute."

  She stopped and turned, murder in her gaze. "What?" The word dripped from her decorated mouth like poison on an assassin's blade.

  "You come across all high and mighty, trying to make it sound like everyone down here is just trying to earn an honest living. That we are the 'bad guys' and you're some kind of saint."

  "The kids even called her that..." Carbine started but instantly quieted down.

  Lucy didn't move or speak. Only watched and listened. Like a patient spider sitting in the center of her web.

  "But what about those men you slaughtered back there on the road? They were just doing their jobs. They did nothing wrong to these people here, and yet you tore them apart, literally! Like some rabid animal!"

  "Jaguar, to be precise," Lucy said flatly and without anger. "Yes. I killed them without mercy, and I would do it again if I could. A hundred times over. If you fight for the State, you're fighting for the wrong team. You aren't the good guys. We are."

  "We?" Jon queried.

  "Yes. We. The Resistance. Those doing the good work."

  "And what exactly is the good work, huh? Ripping men's heads off?" Jon felt his adrenaline start to pump, priming him for the fight or flight that would surely come. He saw Carbine in the corner of his vision, looking at him like he had lost his mind. And maybe I have.

  "You want to destroy the Republic, is that it? What, do you work for Umbra? You helping the Harvesters?"

  "You," the lack of anger in Lucy's voice amplified the feeling of dread coming off the woman, "are an idiot. I do want to see the Republic destroyed. But I don't work for Umbra or the Harvesters. Your precious Chairman does."

  "What kind of conspiracy theory bullshit is that?" Jon scoffed, almost laughing.

  "Your government and the Harvesters are working together. Everything you have been told is a lie. You are a fool."

  "Prove it," Jon demanded, crossing his arms.

  "I... I can't. Not yet. Not all of it."

  Jon smirked.

  "We weren't even supposed to be having this fucking conversation," Lucy continued, "If you had just kept your damned mouth shut and followed me... Look, I don't care if you believe me or not. I will carry out my task and bring you to the Underground. Enough bullshit. Let's go. Not another word."

  Ignoring her, Jon called out to her back one last time, "What's the Underground?"

  "It's a whorehouse."

  Having come out the other side of the Byzantine streets of Motor City, Jon, Lucy, and Carbine found themselves in what looked like one of the oldest neighborhoods in the Shanty they’d seen so far.

  "What do they call this part of town?" Carbine, who clearly would never learn his lesson of asking questions of Lucy, inquired. To Jon's astonishment, Lucy responded, and calmly.

  “The Breaks,” she said.

  “The Breaks? Weird name.”

  "See that wall?"

  "Umm."

  "It's hard to see anymore; it's the high spot up ahead." Jon could see what she referred to. The ground ahead sloped up sharply. Jon had at first thought it was simply a narrow but steep hill that the residents had built upon, but now that Lucy had mentioned it, and he traced its length to the far left and right, out to the limits of his field of vision, Jon could see that sections of the hill remained exposed, revealing the wall underneath.

  As they exited Motor City, they appeared to be entering more of a city proper. Here there were houses, of a sort, still funky, looking more like tree-forts and clubhouses, slapped together from anything and everything, but something about them seemed established. Jon spied neon signs even, businesses. One next to where they passed was run by an Invasive woman who manned a coal-fired grill, offering rats-on-a-stick to hungry passersby. The paths that ran among and between the shelters and businesses seemed more road-like, worn, well-packed and wide. Residents and traveling merchants alike guided beast-drawn wagons up and down the thoroughfare. Poverty was still king here, but everything about the dynamic of this neighborhood spoke to Jon of its age.

  "That was once the wall that surrounded the Zigg. I mean, it still is a wall that surrounds the Zigg, but it is no longer used as the defensive barrier to keep the Displaced out," Lucy continued.

  "Displaced?" Carbine asked.

  "What you call Invasives."

  "Ah."

  "This was supposed to be the wall that broke the wave of immigrants. We broke it instead, built in front of, against, on top of, and over. The Breaks," Lucy concluded, a hint of pride in her voice.

  On the other side of the wall, just over half a klick away, was the real wall, the southern side of the Ziggurat. Jon could see that the Shanty had reached all the way to its surface, the bottom levels unpenetrated yet covered with graffiti. Like a mountain, it towered over the Shanty and blotted out the afternoon sun, casting a long shadow over the Breaks, Motor City, and more Shanty neighborhoods.

  "We're here," Lucy announced after another few minutes of walking into the Breaks. Jon had seen their destination from a ways earlier but had not realized it was their end goal. It was a wide, squat, octagonal tower, of a sort. In truth, it was no tower at all, but a series of pre-Storm shipping containers, stacked and staggered, like cordwood to a bonfire, in an octagon, eight wide at the base, and a dozen layers tall. The gaps between the rectangular steel containers, especially along the lower levels, were shored up with sheets of various metals and patched together with rivets. Faded painted stencils decorated the boxes, and words like “Evergreen," "Maersk," "Cosco," and "Hyundai" could be easily read; other names were too faded with time and exposure or had sections cut out to install windows of plastic, sometimes glass. In other places, large sections of the container’s wall had been removed to accommodate a modular add-on, or in one instance, a balcony. Above the walled-in lower levels, Jon could see the gaps between the containers above were filled on the horizontal plane with walkways. Scaffolding, wooden remnants, and flat pieces of metal, salvaged from machines or buildings long gone, were all in use. Railings and nets also showed through. The octagon seemed a micro-community in and of itself, or perhaps what pre-Stormers would call an apartment complex.

  "That's a whorehouse?" Carbine asked, gawking at the bizarre tower as they approached.

  Lucy ignored him this time and continued towards the patchwork structure, bearing to her right and taking them to the eastern face of it. There, an archway had been left unwalled in the space between two containers. It served as the entrance to the inner courtyard of the octagon. A neon sign was mounted above the open space, flashing and flickering in bright, hot pink. It read "The Und_rground," the 'e' having been burnt out.

  On either side of the entrance stood a pair of Invasive toughs, lizard-like, with enormous heads, mouths bursting with carnivorous teeth. They both were naked and covered in scales. In one’s clawed hands it held an actual Republic-issue Lawnmower.

  How in the hell? Jon wondered.

  Upon seeing and recognizing Lucy, her face, four arms and tail making her virtually impossible to mistake, the lizard toughs pressed themselves farther up against the
edges of the archway and made a nodding, welcome gesture. Lucy nodded back and strolled into the courtyard of the octagon, Jon, and Carbine in tow.

  Jon's hunch that the octagon was a micro-community proved to be correct. Upon passing through the arch, he found himself under a spider web of rope bridges, nets and walkways, maybe nine or ten levels of them, connecting the perimeter of stacked containers all the way up to the top, where a slightly conical roof had been welded, sheltering the entire interior of the octagon from the rains and winter snows. The containers themselves had been cut up, divided, and added to, and seemed to serve as the homes and storage rooms for the occupants of the Underground. Amongst the walkways and nets dangled ropes of electric light, primitive candelabras, hammocks, dried flowers and herbs tied into bundles and hanging upside down, paper lanterns, and brightly colored flags which bore ancient religious pictographs and scripture. It was funky, it was hippie-whore, it was Shanty-chic.

  Above all, it was what it was billed to be: a brothel. On the ground level, in the center of the courtyard directly in front of Jon had been erected a small stage, upon which a trio of females—two Invasive, one human—danced and gyrated in various forms of undress. The rest of the courtyard was filled with tables, no two of which looked alike. Like everything else Jon had seen in the Shanty, the tables were improvised, one being a drum with a wide wooden lid bolted to it, much like the one seen in the market, while another was a wooden reel of sorts, turned on its side. Another still was the bed of a pre-Storm truck, the rest of the truck’s frame removed and mounted to four large, empty compressed gas cylinders. Occupying these tables was a collection of men, Invasive and human both, representing a near-perfect slice of the Shanty's demographics. Some of these men had their attentions focused on the dancers on stage, others were being courted and delighted by naked females of all species. Food, drinks, and in some cases games of chance, filled the gaps in the customers’ desires.

  Directly across from the entrance to the courtyard, the container on the ground level had been gutted, it's inner wall completely removed. A bar with a dozen stools had been built into it and was being tended by a tall black woman with natural hair and skin considerably darker than Carbine’s.