Behind the Bitmask

by Jessica Kagan

  “You must really want the cultists gone if you’ve roped a titan into this,” he then said to us.

  “Two titans, actually,” Azure said. Agnus briefly paused his attempts at dental hygiene to nod and grunt in agreement.

  “You, of all people, are a titan? Forgive me for saying this, but aren’t titans supposed to be all-powerful?”

  I was hoping that Azure didn’t try to smite Ulysses for saying that. Luckily for us, she didn’t.

  “Meh, I’m well educated and have good friends. Isn’t that what’s truly important in life?” She blew a kiss at me; apparently, she and Agnus were both in a theatrical mood today.

  “Well, I’d rather have you around than Hyperion. We’re very lucky that she’s no longer interfering in our business here.”

  We continued, and by the evening, we had worked out a contract that would see us collaborate with mining syndicate of Las Médulas to flush out the Amdahl cult and pick up any valuable ores along the way. It was only a matter of time before I got my hands on Amdahl’s Arbalest.

  2005 was shaping up to be a fun year. The bounties of Las Médulas were pouring in, and we’d get to kill a bunch of worthless cultists.

  Let’s see... What did Ulysses get us? I’ll make a list.

  The Kevlar armor. Apparently, he thought that the Amdahl cultists had more in the ways of guns than swords, although he tells me that Kevlar also helps with blades as long as our enemies are slashing and not stabbing. We also get helmets, too! Anything that allows us to focus on gunplay is probably a good thing, since the series of gun murders we’ve committed on our journey have lead me to believe we are good at that. Also, these won’t vanish out of existence because a server farm had to power off.

  Ulysses also told us he was going to have a priest bless our equipment. That’s nice of him, to say the least, although I don’t think it’ll do anything. The Catholic community in Las Médulas might be more open to magical/chthonic influences than most of the Catholics on Earth proper, but they haven’t adopted nearly as well as the Eastern Orthodox Church. I, of all people, should know this.

  We’re going to have a special mining team to try and drill down into the Amdahl cultists’ headquarters once we’ve located them. I don’t really need to speak to them all that much; they can apparently handle their own defensive needs. I’ll have to make sure Haxabalatnar gets a book or DVD series about mining, though – otherwise he might spend more time schmoozing with them than infiltrating with me.

  Ulysses is also giving us the services of a mercenary team. Unlike his miners, they’re going to be directly under my command. Also, unlike the miners, we kind of have to talk with them in order to get anything done.

  I don’t usually find merely talking to other humans to be a harrowing experience (though Terminal was a big exception back in the day), but Ulysses’s mercenaries took the cake. Their leader, a fellow named Hector Zhao, was by far the nuttiest of them.

  The first time we met with the mercenary team, we were in the one of the miners’ barracks. The mercenaries were billeted there for want of money to pay the fare at Red Roof. The locals were tolerating our presence for a moment – even if they didn’t know who we were, they recognized Zhao and company as the protective sort. Mining is dangerous enough when you don’t have to deal with cultists, so having trained soldiers on your side when you’re at work arguably justifies having them tromping around your quarters and then some. Third Amendment fanatics might disagree, but Las Médulas does not follow American law...yet. If I were in Hector’s place, I would try to keep myself polite, quiet, and unobtrusive (in other words, the anti-Charlotte) so that we didn’t end up creating unnecessary, energy sapping conflicts. Hector, on the other hand, had other ideas.

  “Good God, why do you have to ruin EVERYTHING?” he shouted at one of his underlings.

  “I-” began the underling before immediately being cut off.

  “I tried to do something nice for everyone, and you throw it back in my face like it was pigeon droppings! The least you could do is be grateful, but no!” Hector’s perfect Received Pronunciation put his volcanic rage in a very strange light.

  “Is this really the time or place? We need to discuss our logistics, not your recipe for Dim Sun,” I interrupted. Hector immediately redirected the entirety of his anger upon me.

  “You dare to override my authority over my men? If you have a problem with how I manage my troops, you’d better say it to my face,” he snarled. I hoped he wasn’t trying to intimidate me; it was just making me angry, as well.

  “Why yes, I do have a problem with your management style,” I continued. “How do you expect to earn their trust and respect if you can’t show them either virtue?” Silence, but for the faint sound of Hector’s teeth grinding against each other.

  “They knew what they signed up for. If they don’t like it, too bad,” Hector finally said.

  The underling gathered up his courage and finally got in a word edgewise.

  “You know what? You’re right, I don’t like this sort of shabby treatment. I quit!” he said, throwing his gun to the floor (don’t do that!) and storming out. Hector drew his right arm back like he was about to punch his former subordinate, but immediately relented.

  “You just keep on giving them ideas, okay? Then, you’ll be out a company, and Ulysses will be mad with me, and you’ll be unable to find anyone better,” he snarled.

  I managed to get through the negotiations without further decimating Hector’s company, but his fierce scowl reminded me at every minute that he’d rather not be here. Eventually, we stormed out in opposite directions. I joined my companions at a local cafeteria and tried to hide my frustration from Azure and Haxabalatnar, but that backfired when I ordered a potentially tough sirloin steak that ended up requiring a good deal of cutting.

  “Looks like someone needs a backrub!” Azure cooed at me when my knife passed through the meat and started scuffing up my plate.

  “No, really, I-” But I changed my mind the moment I felt her touch on my shoulders.

  “Whatever, continue.” So Azure let her own meal grow tepid as she kneaded the tension out of my body. That didn’t used to happen.

  “I think we’re in agreement that Zhao will be difficult to work with,” Haxabalatnar said. I would’ve found it very hard not to snap at him if Azure wasn’t rubbing my shoulders, but instead I just nodded.

  “I mean, it probably doesn’t need saying, but what else are we going to talk about? Food’s kind of rough out here,” he continued.

  “Damn right, it is! I’m spellscripting a better knife when Azure is done,” I responded. Then Azure hit a special point in the middle of my back that I didn’t know I had, and things got awkward for a second.

  “Oh dear God, not in public, please...” I heard Haxabalatnar muttering into his hand when I came to. His other hand was busy facepalming.

  “Moving on,” I interrupted (as if the backrub incident hadn’t just occurred). “Is there any chance that we can get Zhao to provide some sort of neutral liaison? I definitely don’t want to talk to him again if I can get the chance.”

  “Really, Charlotte? Hector is a decent fellow once you get to know him,” Azure said. “He lashes out a lot because he lost some friends fighting the Amdahl cultists when they didn’t follow his advice. I think he’s partially clairvoyant.”

  “You gleaned this much from scraping his neural activity?” I responded.

  “No, I sat down and talked to him earlier. Sometimes, you need to hear what people are willing to say in public more than what they’re thinking in private.”

  “Interesting perspective for a telepath,” Hax quipped. He started gnawing on what was hopefully a lemon bar that he’d ordered as part of his lunch. It looked unnecessarily limp and gloppy.

  “I know, right?” responded Azure. “Sometimes, I forget that most humans only get the publ
ic communications and have to guess at what’s going on behind the scenes.”

  “Oh yeah, I’ve been meaning to ask Charlotte if the telepathy lessons have been working out... I’m guessing from the fact I managed to finish my sentence that the answer is no.”

  He wasn’t entirely wrong.

  “To be honest, they haven’t been a priority in some time,” I responded. Hax shrugged, and I followed his lead.

  “How do I describe it? I can broadcast to Azure when she’s near, but the only way I’m seeing what’s happening in anyone else’s brains is by blowing them out with my Walther,” I continued.

  “Azure, have you considered getting a phone of your own? It might come in handy someday,” Hax suggested.

  “I was thinking about it a while back. Sigmar’s invasion distracted me,” she admitted. “You think the Chippewas have the reception for that sort of thing?”

  “I don’t know, but you might end up going to more civilized places after this. Plus, you could play Snake when you get bored.”

  Azure seemed to be distracted with her phone purchasing plans the next time we had to meet with Hector. He seemed oddly deflated, like he was going out of his way to avoid offending me. Initially, I thought it was because we were scaling a mountain of paperwork courtesy of Ulysses’ syndicate. However, something flashed across his face, and he opened his mouth to speak.

  “Uh, Charlotte... I want to apologize for losing my temper the last time we met. It has been exceedingly difficult for us to find contracts lately, what with Sigmar taking over the local countryside and killing some of our previous customers in the process,” he eventually told me. After his explanation, Hector perked up a bit. I don’t think it justified his behavior, but you have to start somewhere.

  “You ever try taking jobs on Earth?” I asked him a few minutes later.

  “There aren’t a lot of places on Earth that we’d fit in...but maybe when we’re done here. I hear the PRC needs some help dealing with separatists in Inner Mongolia, especially now that some of the crazy ones are trying to resurrect Genghis Khan.”

  “That benefits them how, exactly?” I asked. Azure and Haxabalatnar raised their eyebrows, but I don’t think either of them knows who Genghis Khan was, much less anything about Mongolia.

  “Yeah, that was what I thought! Maybe they want a figurehead.”

  An awkward silence descended on us, and we returned to the paperwork.

  The big problem was that the local bureaucracy was insanely stingy with their copiers, so we had to manually fill out lots of duplicates. We also occasionally had to deal with forms painstakingly transcribed from antiquated parchment. Was there a shortage of scanners in hell?

  “Fucking piece of autistic crap! I’m sick of filling out these forms!” Hector suddenly shouted, slamming his hands down on the desk and strewing his half-finished documents everywhere. I jumped out of my chair from the shock, Haxabalatnar rolled his eyes, and Azure tried to ignore it, but couldn’t quite conceal her irritation.

  “Charlotte! Why aren’t your subordinates doing this for us? They’re clearly not disciplined enough to patrol or otherwise undertake soldier duties,” he continued. I wondered if he really had a point.

  “Huh, what was that you just said about losing your temper?” Azure responded, barely looking up from the laptop she’d taken to this meeting. I wasn’t going to look, but I was certain she wasn’t using it to fill out documents. If Hector had lost any more emotional momentum from hearing that, he’d have literally deflated.

  “I...well...you just have to be like that, don’t you?” he said, still clenching his jaw. “You know, just because I have a strong emotional reaction to something doesn’t mean there can’t possibly be even a kernel of truth to what I’m saying.”

  “Sounds like you had something of a kernel panic and dumped core there!” I quipped because apparently I don’t know any better.

  “You’re not helping.”

  That was the pattern we fell into. Hector would flare up unpredictably and violently, but someone would call him out, and he’d make a concerted effort to calm down. I don’t know enough about anger management to say how well he was doing, but I had to at least recognize his struggle. We managed to get through the bureaucratic muddle without him punching or stabbing anyone, but his journey towards tranquility and mindfulness would have to continue without us.

  A few days later, it was time to leave. As we packed, I noticed Azure pecking at something plasticine with her fingers.

  “Hey, sweet! You got your own phone! What’s the number?” I shouted when I realized what it was.

  “Let me check... It’s X1-538-289-7248.”

  “You have a hell country code? I’ve never actually seen one in the wild.” I have to admit, it was pretty neat, even if you’re not a huge phone nut.

  “Agnus has one, too. I think he got it just before we left to find the Arbalest. If I remember correctly, his previous number was nominally based out of London, but I forgot the old number soon after he switched.”

  Even Azure didn’t seem to think she needed the phone. Still, it was a source of entertainment and a cheap mana battery for both of us. Once we got to the drill site, we were going to need both. There was no estimate yet for how long it would take the miners to pierce the cultists’ sanctum in Mount Amdahl, but it could easily take weeks. I resigned myself to that and started making inquiries about setting up a bookmobile.

  “Good news! We just hit 500 feet! That’s a fifth of the way down!”

  The miners had been nice enough to set up another computer terminal on which we could track their progress. Compare that to the silence from our mercenaries (even if Hector was trying to look extra penitent every time he thought I was paying attention), and you’ll understand while I spent most of my time at the dig site. Our base camp at Mount Amdahl was, while not exactly warm, surprisingly not quite as cold as the rest of the Chippewa Mountains. I had been quick to notice that and ask exactly what was going on.

  “We’re still trying to figure that out. My personal theory is that they’ve got some sort of massive heat vent pretty close to the surface, but we don’t know why they’d bother,” explained the forewoman on duty when I’d popped the question.

  “Why not find it and drill through there?” I asked.

  “It’s too dangerous. Heavy drilling material melts if it gets too hot. Plus, the cultists might notice.”

  Ulysses’s plan for inserting us into the Amdahl cultist complex was more in-depth than just digging into the mountain. We had to keep the cultists from figuring out what we were doing, so our mercenaries had a ton of tasks on their hands – patrolling to keep an eye out for potential informants, launching small raids on the front entrance of the compound, and I even heard that Hector had a kill team wandering the wilderness looking for isolated cultists on bizarre missions, just like whatever Weldy and friends had been doing. It seemed to take the edge off his outbursts, which I liked.

  My schedule (and my friends’) was lazy by comparison. We slept eight hours a night, worked a shift, and had some time for recreation at the end of the day. Azure was honing her telepathic powers by hunting for mental signatures of intruders and practicing lightning spells in her spare time; Haxabalatnar was teaching the local miners how to do martial arts in case Hector failed us, and I was playing magical blacksmith.

  This was an excellent opportunity for me to practice my enchanting skills. Back in my Aux worshiping days, I was fixated on conjuring things out of thin air. That wouldn’t work up on Mount Amdahl. First, you need far more computing power to create something out of nothing than you need to alter something that already exists. Plus, summoned objects tend to get unstable and explodey if you don’t properly dispose of them. A lack of in-script garbage collection nearly cost me a hand once back in my Aux coven days. In the interest of not losing any other crucial body parts, I used my laptop’s
spellpower to augment the big drill. It needed lubricating fluids, sacrificial materials, coolant – things that just seem to last longer and work better when magic gets involved.

  When I wasn’t needed to adjust the CPU load balance or enhance a new tool, I spent my time updating my knowledge. I’d downloaded some digitized periodicals and textbooks the last time I was in Las Médulas, although in order to do so, I’d had to set up one hell of a proxy to get around our hotel’s draconian IT policies. Believe it or not, they weren’t entirely about magical topics. Furthermore, Azure was trying to get me addicted to science fiction, so she’d recommended a recent anthology of short stories that I occasionally had the chance to dip into. Nightfall by Isaac Asimov was apparently a classic, but its premise seemed pedestrian compared to the strange things that actually exist in hell. I wonder what sort of things Asimov would’ve written if he’d lived to know hell was real? Beyond these, I spent some time honing my gunplay and martial art skills. Haxabalatnar had decided that since I’d picked up good fundamentals at Agnus’s court, he could further my skills. We would see about that-

  The drill decided to break my train of thought by screeching loudly and coming to an abrupt halt.

  “Looks like we just hit something unexpected! Might have to send some boys down with jackhammers to clear the drill head,” the forewoman told me when I opened my mouth to complain. What could be buried in Mount Amdahl that could thus inconvenience us? The answer presented itself about twenty minutes later, as one of the miners who had been sent down to investigate came up with a concerned expression (and a dusting of unidentified rock) on his face and what appeared to be a broken circuit board.

  “Uh, Charlotte? I think we might’ve just killed something. We found some polished chrome wrapped around computer chips, and my boss said it was probably a deactivated robot, but I don’t know if I believe her...” he said, in a voice so sheepish you could shear it for free wool. Who was this person, and why were they talking directly to me instead of the forewoman? A small voice in the back of my head told me that not keeping track of people had burnt me badly in the past, so I decided to give this miner a chance.