Ashes

by Russ Linton

  The HUD goes white. Overheated from the crazy engine demands, my first thought is a system shutdown. Almost at the same time, over the crash of waves, a peal of thunder sounds loud enough I almost slam my head inside the helmet. With the gain up to hear Jackie, the volume is practically deafening.

  "Was that lightning?"

  HUD cleared, Jackie's staring into the sky, her mouth agape. "Felt like it struck right by us!"

  "In the bay," I reassure her, relaying Wormfood's sensor data. "I'm going to scout—"

  "Take me with you."

  "What, like you want a ride?"

  She nods.

  "Into a storm? Lightning. Wind. Maybe some hail, who knows?"

  She nods again.

  "Are you fucking high?" Examining her, she might very well be. I mean the girl did just use her own two feet to wreck the speed of sound. Her vitals are telling me she should be dead. Her heart exploded, lungs burst.

  Then again, riding on robots isn't anything I haven't done before.

  "I kind of feel that way," she says. "But hail, no problem." She moves her hand, and it jitters into nonexistence. "Won't believe how many bugs I had to pluck out of the air and slip to the side. That shit hurts. I'll bail if I see any lightning coming. And once we get up there? I'm thinking I can dance on those clouds, you know? Can't be harder than walking on water."

  Was she always this much of a risk taker? Or is this the CM protocol talking? Am I crazy for letting her do this? I drop Wormfood to one knee.

  "Climb aboard. Try to find a good hold on the back. I'll keep the speed manageable."

  "I've seen what you call speed," she quips and pats my head as she climbs up.

  "You fall, I'll try to catch you. If not, flap your arms really fast. Maybe you'll hummingbird or something."

  She's not quite settled, and she hangs her head, upside down, over the HUD. "That might just work!" she says excitedly. I'm worried until I see her roll her eyes as she latches onto the back. "Yah!" she shouts. Impact sensors indicate a sharp tap right on Wormfood's ass.

  As soon as we clear the cliff, the full extent of the problem overtakes the HUD. Behind me, Jackie exhales in awe. An entire coast's worth of severe weather has been bundled into a knot and parked above the naval base. Fingers of white-hot death, hundreds of millions of joules, stab into the bay.

  Fighter jets complete flybys. I open their channels and hear only confusion. Not even these hotshots would dare fly into the streaming darkness.

  Jackie pulls a camera out of her cargo pants. I've picked up a fucking tourist. A jagged bolt lashes downward and crawls along the deck of a violently bobbing aircraft carrier. The energy charge gropes the open space until it swarms a container with seemingly great interest. A surge, almost like a pulse, and violent energy feeds into the box.

  "Warning. Detonation detected."

  The explosion is an orange plume, hot and defiant against the torrential rain. Readouts in the HUD measure the pressure wave and track incoming debris.

  "Duck!" I shout. She disappears behind the armor.

  Even this high up, shrapnel pings us registering dozens of deflected impacts. More bolts of lightning branch off the main formation and strike docks, ships, feeding through towers and antennae arrays, cascading sparks.

  "Random patterns?" I ask Wormfood. "Or are those targeted strikes?"

  "Probability of random strikes, negligible." Drake sounds offended I would even ask.

  "Source?" I'm only asking because if Wormfood could give a shit, he'd need to prepare himself for the command he's about to receive.

  "Source is at the epicenter of the atmospheric disturbance."

  I switch to the exterior comms. "Hang on!"

  Skies darken as the Battle Armor launches into the storm. Through the HUD, filtered against blinding strikes, I begin to make out the nucleus which burns a bright gold netted behind gauzy layers of cloud.

  Wind velocity, atmospheric pressure, every sensor reading goes haywire. A constant spatter of rain sheets the HUD and the center golden beacon vanishes. Jackie's hand slips, but she grabs hold again the same instant. She squints into the rain, her face a mask of determination.

  We enter bone-jarring turbulence and a vicious gale clocking near-hurricane speeds. My joints lock, muscles flex, prepping for the surge. Restless energy searches for an escape, the same powder keg atmosphere from Whispering Pines and the one which trailed after Dad. The same jolt of fear borne of excitement keeps my passenger locked in place.

  "Warning! Stabilizers nearing maximum capacity!" Yep, any urgency in Drake's smug voice must be my imagination.

  The screen jitters and hops and I scan the periphery. The wall of rain has been dispersed by a roaring wind. A golden center glints, then it’s gone. "Lock on that point!" Clouds dip and sway as the point tracks higher, above the struggling battle armor.

  Jackie's gritting her teeth, eyes streaming with tears from the wind, the cold. Her face is stretched and cheeks flapping, just like it must've been for the past five hours. I don't see her, I see Hurricane and his toothless grin. She doesn't need to know there's a strong resemblance in the deformation of her face.

  "Repeating warning," Drake spits. "Stabilizer thrusters nearing maximum capacity!"

  "We need to clear this," I shout, even though the wind must be deafening. "Going to go for some speed in three, two, one... Kill the stabilizers, Wormfood, and go full thrust."

  "Stabilizers off. Supersonic flight engaged."

  The burst punches a hole in the cloud. White condensation blocks the screen then forms a cone of vapor around Wormfood's waist like a giant tutu. Clouds slip by but in this vast realm, they still only crawl.

  "Woohoo!" Jackie whoops. Far from being taken off guard, she's suddenly back in her element, her hands, her feet reacting to the speed flawlessly. There is no sudden adjustment she can't make, no turbulence which hits fast enough to surprise her. Our golden beacon is front and center and closing fast.

  "Stop curbside of El Dorado there."

  "Affirmative." Wormfood gets the drift from our targeted epicenter. A final layer of cloud atomizes on our approach and the jets spin down into hover mode.

  We've left the turbulence and raging storm behind. The clouds look comfortable enough for a nap, their storm wash obliterated by the purity of light emanating from the center.

  "God, are you there? It's me, Jackie."

  That she can joke after her ride tells me she's definitely high, though the statement doesn't feel far from the truth. Her punchline is softened by the awe we both experience. Purgatory survived, we've entered a heavenly realm. Instead of uniform gray, I can see out into a plush landscape of cloud tops with no horizon, individual ranges stacked one atop another, their valleys trickling with the transient white glow of a thousand suns.

  There's movement within the golden point. Drake tracks it.

  "Zoom in."

  A dude reclines on a cloud.

  No, really, I tell myself. A dude. On a cloud.

  Dark skin, mussed hair, the off-kilter coif is the likely product of a long nap against a raging battle of humidity and static or an intentional sculpture of hair product performed sans mirror. The anime hairdo trails into wispy sideburns. His level of body hair seems to indicate a certain age, but he's built like a gangly teenager, and I can immediately sympathize.

  "Hostile target identified," Drake says. "Weapons online. Target locked."

  "Hold the fuck up. I need a minute. Or an hour." Cloud boy's looking right at me. There's zero stealth to a twelve-foot black robot floating in front of a snowy white backdrop. Jackie raises up, planting her hands atop the battle armor's head to stare.

  "Hey," the dude says, casual, unconcerned. I double check the radar to make sure nobody else is there. "You the Black Beetle?"

  I guess I still am. I switch on the voice scrambler. "Yeah, that's me."

  The tepid introduction isn't the kind of speech the deadly hissing is designed to project. Deep with an eerie reverb, I'm
supposed to be giving my monologues about world domination.

  "You can fuck right off then," he says, his accent unidentifiable.

  The kid raises a hand, and warning lights erupt on my HUD. His green t-shirt clings to his skin. Before Drake can ask to murder him, I transfer controls completely to me. Palms down, arms to the side, I've learned not to point anywhere as most Augments immediately suspect I'm about to blast them to pieces. With good cause.

  "Hold on!" I say. He squints an eye, and I see his arm go slack, a ball of charged air flickering on his fingertips. "Can we talk?"

  "Talk? I am Marut, son of Rudra." He says this like I should know precisely who that is. When I don't give the proper oohs and ahhs he says, "Rudra, you Yankee twat. God of hunt and storm, mightiest of the mighty!" He's standing now on his throne.

  "Hindu," whispers Jackie as though I could use the information.

  "But you can't be...aren't a god."

  "That's where you're wrong."

  He slowly rotates his head to the left. Thin sideburns come into view along with an ear. That same thin strip of hair repeats behind the lobe like he's shaved the back of his head. But the skull underneath is all wrong. At the midpoint, his earlobe repeats, mirrored. A cheek. An eye. Mouth. Another entire face passes. The turning of his head continues beyond twisted skin until I'm staring at the back of his skull and an entirely different person.

  "We are Marut, Lords of Storm, fuckface. Battle is our calling, and we are a god!"

  CHAPTER 52

  EVEN IN FULL MANUAL control, Drake's requests for weapons power up, and tactical maneuvers still ghost across the HUD. They look tempting. I wanted to go into this all kumbaya, but I hadn't expected to stumble across this.

  "Are you seeing what I'm..." I don't finish due to Jackie's horrified stare. I know exactly what she's wondering—at what point did this guy grow extra faces and when will she get hers.

  "You're in restricted airspace, attacking United States assets." I'm on script this time. Words aren't forming otherwise. "I am at least going to ask you to stop throwing heaters at the base."

  "Negatory, cowboy," he says, affecting a decent southern accent and off-handedly releasing a bolt which burns through the clouds leaving a swirling dervish behind. "I told you, we are Marut." He parades forward, and I half expect him to disappear through the spongy cloud, but he stays aloft. "Who conquers mighty strength with strength more mighty! The very earth shakes in terror at their wars, O Agni!" he cries out the name and his visage swaps to another. Head now bowed, he stomps in a half circle, calling out with his fist raised. "Bright like the flashing flames of sacrifices!" His arm flares, sheathed in storm and the third mouth takes up the chant. "Like tongues of fire impetuous in their onset, chanting their psalm, singing aloud, like heroes, splendid from birth, invincible!" He shouts, swinging the charged fist.

  He pauses for a reaction. His eyes are hard, and there are the lines of a permanent scowl around his mouth and cheeks. Storm light plays through his poof of hair, and it sways in a single, sculpted wave. Continued bewilderment is the best I got.

  "So... You're a god, huh?" At this point, stalling seems logical. But damn, Augments rarely look too different from anybody else. Aurora had been an extreme case, but she at least maintained a humanoid form. Three Face here, well, he's almost a copyright violation.

  "You daft? I'm a god, yo. Like tongues of fire." More dramatic taser hand displays accompany his monologue. I'm beginning to wonder if he isn't baked too. Augmented under the influence. "Splendid from birth."

  "It's hard to argue divine splendor with a guy who's cloud surfing, but seriously, I'm leaning toward Augment. No offense to your people's gods or whatever."

  "My people? My people?" He stops the recitation and sneers. "I'm British, you racist fuck."

  "Look, I've seen the news. I know you got screwed over," I say, trying to mollify him. "You're...Arnav Kuswawa." I fumble the rest of his name, and Jackie smacks my helmet. "You're here because of the Salarium the U.S. seized.

  "That's pronounced Kushwaha, you racist twat. But no longer am I constrained to mortal realms. I am here for divine justice!" He proclaims, eyeing the sky. A separate, more quiet voice adds, "And for twenty billion dollars."

  "Twenty billion?" Jackie shouts. She seems to have finally come to terms with Marut's deformity. "The U.S. seized a quarter million, tops of your coin."

  "Nicked!" The voice demands. It isn't so much quiet as pointed off in another direction. "You do math? Oh, of course not, you sound like an American twat too. With the explosion in Salarium prices and the burial of your dead presidents you bitches owe me twenty billion."

  "He's got a point," I say. Jackie's face has turned a virulent red since the twat comment, and she looks like she's about to explode. "Let's talk this over. I know Sayrafi, you know, the guy who invented Salarium. I can hook you up."

  A total bluff. I killed the guy who invented Salarium. And I doubt Eric is going to rob his own coffers to buy this guy off.

  "Talk? You best listen!" he says, and the current face glowers, launching into his sermon. "Bright like the flashing flames of sacrifices! KNOW MY DIVINE SKILLS!"

  "Jackie! Bail!"

  Lightning quick isn't a bullshit phrase. A flick of Marut's finger and the screen goes white. I feel the suit propelled downward. Jackie's leapt free at incredible speeds even as several million joules blot out the screen.

  Drake fought high-velocity weaponry and charged particles long before I suited up. The easy answer was just to design ways to take the hit. Trouble is, Augments routinely defy normal physics. Battle robots don't. And this 'bot has seen better days.

  The systems flicker but don't drop offline. Lightning is a common enough hazard. Humanity has been finding ways to redirect the onslaught for centuries. If this is Marut's only trick, wrapping up my end of the deal will be easy. Maybe if he sees I'm still standing, he'll think twice or be distracted.

  "You will surrender!"

  Marut, the Storm god, declines the offer and comes at Wormfood with a full-on Raiden fatality assault. In the fury, I almost ignore Drake's alert at the far corner of the HUD.. The target I asked him to track earlier? She's plummeting through the clouds.

  It's almost cartoonish how her legs churn in a blur, burrowing through the clouds before she can gain purchase. When you're high, you make some stupid calls. Still, after seeing her on the open ocean, I wanted to believe she could pull it off. I angle to intercept and kick on the rockets.

  Wind speed measurements go off the charts, and the stabilizers fire sporadic, angry bursts, barely able to maintain position. Wormfood loses Jackie on the HUD. Alarms blare as my path takes something more like a deflating balloon and the HUD spins wildly. As useless as the lightning seemed in damaging the grounded armor, Marut's continued blasts are overloading all visuals.

  If I can't escape quick, Jackie's toast. She's already disappeared off the radar.

  "Load the tranq!"

  Weapons control outlines a violently shifting trajectory path which has me turning nearly three hundred and sixty degrees to hit him. Predicted accuracy rates hover in the low thirties. How the hell Ayana would know I'd be caught in the same situation—a lightweight projectile against the freaking wind... Wait. She could've anticipated this.

  I fire the damn thing.

  Outside, the lightning swarm has begun to multiply, one atop another like blankets of lead. Joules continue to climb, and his one-time trick is starting to feel more like an actual threat. The HUD shivers with static. I go full throttle aiming, I hope, down.

  We're at major altitude. Jackie could be falling for half a minute, tops. Find her, match speed, mid-air snatch, pray to somebody other than Marut we don't both pancake on the ocean.

  Five seconds in, an ominous creak resounds throughout the armor followed by a spectacular shearing of metal and a frigid blast of air near my feet. Drake blurts out a new warning.

  "Stabilizers, lost."

  A few years ago, if somebod
y had said I was going to die while piloting a high-tech weapon into the ocean at tremendous speeds with zero control, I would've said hell yeah! Now? My biological evac systems are getting a workout.

  "FUUUUUUCCKK!!!"

  I'm either shooting into space or into the ground. The prototype has a London moment gyroscope accurate on a fucking quantum level. It could at least tell me how bad I'm going to die. Wormfood seems overloaded, unresponsive. Sheets of blinding white and the occasional glimpse of cloud fill the HUD. Then there's the red reticle which just blipped.

  "Target reacquired."

  Jackie! She's above? Below? I thrash inside the armor just to keep my eyes on her. She's running a tight spiral, and I don't know where until the golden dot makes his appearance.

  She's actually doing it. Feet on the clouds, she's climbing pockets of vapor like they're stairs. Marut blinks away with a charge of lightning. He's spotted her somehow, swirling up through the clouds. I wonder...

  I kill the engines and go into a freefall.

  He's not aiming his powers at me anymore, she's got his full focus. Without adding more speed, no more wind, the ruined stabilizers don't matter. I'm punching through clouds like a final curtain call. My own stage to die on.

  Here I am, not trying to kill anyone, trying to make things right, but I've got another Augment intent on fighting, killing. It's a sickness, has to be. Even those who stay peaceful get mixed up in world-ending conspiracies. Marut here is maybe the most honest of them all with his proud assumption that he is, in fact, a god.

  "Warning! Low altitude! Impact imminent!" He's got a sense of self-preservation, that Wormfood. Do I?

  This could be for the best. A cosmic karma where justice is finally served and a balance restored.

  Suddenly the sky clears completely. I'm staring into an endless blue with a foam-capped sapphire racing toward me on the rear screens. Air whistles through the shattered armor. Wormfood relays commands which just might save him a second death. I'm trapped, thinking about my first.