"Shut yer trap, Brick!" Doc Mizumi snapped from behind his welding mask as sparks flew from his precision cutting torch.
Brick, who was undergoing a popular surgical modification - being retrofitted for construction, grimaced and bit down hard on a chunk of leather. Since the Defense of Stardown there had been a disastrous shortage of medical supplies like anaesthesia. For that matter there had been a shortage of everything. A shortage of food. A shortage of water. A shortage of workers for the work of rebuilding... Many, like Brick, had opted to get the necessary implants without the pain meds.
And boy did it hurt having skeletal welds undone.
But squinting through the pain and the sparks, Brick could look out of Mizumi's reclaimed downtown surgery onto the central plaza of the ruins of Geneva Prime and it almost made him smile. There, a team of Biomade electrical engineers working with their Mechified partners were putting the finishing touches on the new memorial. Where the statue of the idealized Cheldrun had previously stood on the nose of an ancient spaceship, there now towered an unparraleled work of art in bronze and coursing energy. A Sygola tree. Hammered and welded from the rusted metal remains (what little the moths had left behind) of the former Goshi Tower, the trunk twisted high into the sky, splaying it's branches over the opening of the defunct blackrock mine and for several city blocks in every direction. Pulsating beams of light danced in mesmerizing patterns along the limbs of the tree and from each twig hung dozens of crystalline leaves - the shards of glass that were ubiquitous around the city. When the wind blew, they played a musical tune, and if you examined them up close you would see each one contained a name, laser-cut into the glass, of a victim of the war.
A sudden jolt of agony brought him back to himself and he shot a dirty look at Doc Mizumi, who was unsympathetic and shouted at him to stay still.
The Doc was doing good business these days. His shop was littered with old Bullet-Spitter parts, discarded in favor of more utilitarian implants. In what Brick thought of as a defining metaphor, he could even see an old gun-arm half disassembled on a nearby table - its parts being scavenged to make a scoop.
As part of the rebuilding effort, Doc Mizumi refused to accept any payment but food and spare parts, and from friends like Brick, the Doc wouldn't even take those things. So Brick tried hard not to take the pain personally, and he focused his thoughts on that memorial tree...
Up in the highest branches of the tree, Karak was attaching glass leaves to their respective twigs. He paused for each one and read the name it contained aloud. He'd kept a special handful of leaves aside, sorted them from the millions of shards to be the very last ones hung on the tree. No one but him would know he had done this, and he wasn't sure anyone but him would have cared. He heated each setting with his finger torch and carefully slotted each leaf into its place.
Omar.
Amos.
Tank.
Terry the Canary.
Mickey the Mixer.
The Surgeon.
Acetylene Sue.
Showing posts with label Mechified. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mechified. Show all posts
One Small Answer
Quietly, Moses wakes up Zipporah early. She pops awake immediately with a little gasp and her hand goes out to him. He places it in his."Morning."
She blinks the last wisp of bleariness out of her eyes. "You've got that look."
He nods. "Yeah, I've got that look."
She sits ups. Now that she's awake, she's sort of got that look too.
Its so strange to be whole. To be made whole. Again. Broken and put back together by Una's tears. Which...always, she's got more of them. Healing tears. There's something there. But, as she said, he has that look.
"I told you about the Fire. As much as I understood, at least. And now we're here. We came here...I thought we were all dead. But then we're floating in the Bay, with Geneva Minor on the horizon...it has to be. I have to be here because of what the Fire told me. What the...what the Name told me." She nods. "And that means I have to go back to the city. I have to go back...where so many people died, and where everyone is going to want to kill me. I...I abandoned them, and things...got worse for them. I know it. I can try to tell them that it had to happen, that...that so much has happened since, that if I hadn't left, I wouldn't be here now, with the tiniest bit of hope that I can free them...that they'd catch me eventually, that...that I wouldn't have met you." He looks at her, then looks down, trying not to get derailed.
"I can tell them that, but I'll understand if they don't listen. And I have to...somehow...convince them to go...where the stars will fall. I don't even know where that is! I'm just hoping that...that I'll know, somehow, that it'll hit me, or else, we'll just be wandering around. That is, if anyone comes with me. That is, if...if I survive...meeting Katashi Blade.
He pauses. "I've been thinking a lot about him. I don't know hardly anything about him, but he's the head of Goshi. So I think about the Hei Shi, and how they can teleport now, and how - how they've conquered everything, it seems like. How there were Hei Shi on the Wandering Star, so he knows it's there, probably knows more than we do about the whole thing.
"I think about...someone who would be able to do all of that. Someone with that kind of...will. Someone who isn't happy until he has everything. Behind all of the evil that Goshi has done. And now I have to walk into his tower, and tell him, let the Mechified go. Let my people go. He's going to -"
She places a single finger over his lips, and waits until he looks up at her.
"Moses, I've been listening this whole time. I've heard all that you've heard for months now. I've spoken to the Dusk Sages, watched them die, watched you bind them. I've been to the darkness outside Karia, I've seen...horrible things, and wonderful things - the Emerald Isle, the bottom of the ocean!
"Nothing - nothing! - in what I've heard has made me think that this Blade can stop you. Do you know why?" Moses shakes his head. Now she gets to talk about why she's got that look. "Because of the Question. I already know the answer. Don't you? The question is life, and the answer is yes. The answer is yes. It has to be yes. First, because -" she looks away "because if its no, then all we do is for nothing, and everything will come to nothing, and there will be no one to remember it, to even cry over it. No one even to mourn. If the answer is no, then we're free, because the end will come, and then nothing after. And..."
"The...the other reason?"
She looks back to him, is blushing furiously. "Well, um. I." She bites her lip and takes his hand from around hers and places it low on her belly. Then gives him that look.
She counts to three while Moses looks at her, at his hand, then his eyes go wide.
She nods a small nod. "Yes."
The Troubles
The Troubles. That's what they called it. Or that's what the Fiochmahr clan called it, anyhow, and it seemed a decent enough name for the last few years. Of course, things hadn't been altogether untroubled before that. Not since two hundred years previous, when the Fiochmahr clan had seen its very last Dusk Sage. They'd called him the Ash-Faced One. Cheeky bastard, he was; walked right off out of the clanhold with nary a ceremony of the parting but just a distant sort of look and a walking down the mountain. He'd faded into the dusk, and neither song nor legend had spoken of the passage of him or any other Dusk Sage since.
But tonight wasn't a night for brooding on the past, or feeling sorry for yourself. Tonight was a night for celebration! Tonight, the famous mead of the Fiochmahr clan was open for one and all. Four days previous, the Fiochmahr clan had destroyed the Cheldrun logging expedition sent out from some steel city or another. Pepsid Five, or something like that. Surely that was as good a cause for celebration as any. So old Grim Fiochmahr, Head of the Fiochmahr clan, had declared a celebration, and they'd been partying nonstop ever since. After all, it wasn't every day you put an end to the Cheldrun logging operations in your area, and if the guards had seemed only half hearted at best, well, they just weren't real fighters like the Gogajin were.
Old Grim hadn't always been the head, of course, but the tale he'd told of his escape from the mines of a dark Cheldrun city, and his rescue of a whole group of their women had gone a long way towards boosting his popularity in the clan, even if none other of his companions in the mines had made it out of Geneva Prime with him. Diarmaid, Adar, Rogan, Donald, Baldur, these were the new heroes of the clan. And as for old Grim, well, he had ne always been Old Grim. The mines, and what had happened after, they'd changed him. Aged him before his time, maybe. Or maybe it was that age didn't cling so tightly to his shoulders as he felt it, but he felt it. At least, that was the story everyone told, though it likely found its source in younger minds than his. Two children on the brink of their teenaged exile were particular suspects, but no one could prove their involvement in the starting of the rumour, and the name had caught on regardless. Old Grim it was.
The mead-hall was full of Gogajin, male and female alike, each of them eager to get roaring drunk as quickly as possible. They were seated at a series of long wooden benches that filled most of the room, and already the mead was flowing freely. Boisterous does not begin to describe a room full of partying Gogajin: a few good natured fights broke out, and a few couples decided that their time would be better spent in a dark corner with each other than at the table with the others, and all that was before the boasting competition began. The Fiochmahr clan had a tradition, you see: two Gogajin would tell increasingly wild and unbelievable boasts, and whoever it was that told the wildest, most unbelievable one, well, he or she would have to go out and try to accomplish it. Usually it ended in hangovers and a Gogajin sleeping with someone they wouldn't ordinarily have been inclined to, but a few weeks back, it had brought about the raid on the logging camp, and tonight, well, tonight it was a good bet it was going to...
The partying came to a sudden halt (though the couples in the dark corners didn't bother to stop) when a pair of Gogajin slammed open the doors to the mead-hall, with a group of Cheldrun in tow. They were badly emaciated, half starved, and looked more than halfway dead. About a dozen of them came in - a middle-aged man at their head, wearing the tattered remains of what had probably once been a fine silk kimono - and many more of them were crowded around the entrance.
Silence hung heavily in the air for a long moment before a young Gogajin - only just returned from his adolescent exile - rose to his feet and shouted, "What kind of fucked up shite is this!?"
"You shut your mouth, Hagan!" a middle-aged female Gogajin bellowed back.
A number of other Gogajin joined in then, until finally Grim rose to his feet and banged the table in front of him with an enormous fist. "ALL OF YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTHES!" he bellowed.
Silence.
"Right. You two," he looked to the two Gogajin leading the Cheldrun. "What kind of fucked up shite is this?"
One of the two Gogajin spoke up. "They showed theirselves at the gate a bare few moments ago, askin' fer food and water, uh, Grim."
Grim looked to the Cheldrun. "I wist they ne be speaken Gogajin?" he asked, his regional accent coming to the fore as he spoke.
The middle-aged male Cheldrun in the tattered kimono stepped forward. "Your pardon, sir, but I do."
Grim looked at the man. "... Well, what do ye want, then? Ye must be either very brave or very stupid to come here. Qwich is it?"
"I am Ishikawa Tetsuro of the Ruby Hawk Clan," the Cheldrun said. "My companions and I are... exiles. Refugees. There is no place for us in Katashi Blade's new regime, and we thought it better to try our luck in the wilderness than to die at the hands of a Goshi Assassin, or a bounty hunter... please, sir, we have nowhere else to go. We are hungry, we are tired, and many of us are sick." He swallowed, and what he said next had the feel of an old tree toppling over: "Will you help us?"
Grim took a long moment to think about that, weighing it out in his mind. Of course, in the end, looking at the Cheldrun all helpless and starving-like, there was only one conclusion he could have reached: "... Aye. Ye clepen for me help, and I hear ye." He rose up to his full, massively muscled height. "All right, listen here! Listen here! These wights be safe with kith and kin tonight. None harm nor hounde them here on pain of a beatin' the likes o which you none never seen!"
The other Gogajin shrugged. One of them thought about shouting, "Ah, fuck you Grim!" but thought better of it at the last moment. The Cheldrun did look pretty desperate, after all.
Grim gestured, and a pair of Gogajin, a wer and wyf (a male and a female, that is), came forward and led the Cheldrun away to the Clanhold's guest quarters so as they could stow their things before they came to join the feast.
The feast went on.
------------------------
Later, when the shadows had had faded into gloom, the moon had set, and the only sounds were the frantic scrabblings and brayings of donkeysex in the hall, and the peace of the predawn hours hung heavily over the land, there came a stranger to the Fiochmahr clanhold. Stranger than even the Cheldrun refugees. A mechified. He came creeping through the corridors, almost his entire body made of metal save his face and his middle, the sounds in the hall masking the clunk-clunk-clunk of his footsteps. His eyes had been replaced with gleaming red lenses, and they allowed his vision access to the infrared: it was with this that he tracked his prey.
Gently, ever so gently, he pushed open the large wooden door that led into the room where his target slept. A bounty hunter he was, and a good one. He always got his man, or so they said. This man, well, they'd specified dead or alive, and he figured that dead would be easier than dragging him back through the wilderness, so once he was sure that the middle-aged Cheldrun sleeping on the bed in the tattered Kimono was in fact Ishikawa Tetsuro of the Ruby Hawk Clan, Winston reached out with his right hand and placed it almost gently over the sleeping man's heart.
Then he reached over with his left hand and flipped the switch to activate the pneumatic spike. Or would have, if a grip as strong as steel itself hadn't caught his hand mid-flight.
Winston looked up in alarm. The occupants of the beds around Ishikawa Tetsuro's were not asleep at all, but awake and very very angry.
An angry looking Gogajin stepped forward and glared poor Winston in the face. "I given these wights safety here with kith and kin," he cracked his knuckles, "And unfortunate fer you, I meant it."
An hour later, three Gogajin tossed the bruised and battered body of Winston the Mechified over the walls of the clanhold, and down he tumbled into the brush with the long, loud, trailing clatter of metal sliding down two hundred yards of loose rock.
Grim dusted off his hands, wiped the sweat off his brow, and went back to bed, satisfied that that was the end of it.
But the troubles were only just beginning.
But tonight wasn't a night for brooding on the past, or feeling sorry for yourself. Tonight was a night for celebration! Tonight, the famous mead of the Fiochmahr clan was open for one and all. Four days previous, the Fiochmahr clan had destroyed the Cheldrun logging expedition sent out from some steel city or another. Pepsid Five, or something like that. Surely that was as good a cause for celebration as any. So old Grim Fiochmahr, Head of the Fiochmahr clan, had declared a celebration, and they'd been partying nonstop ever since. After all, it wasn't every day you put an end to the Cheldrun logging operations in your area, and if the guards had seemed only half hearted at best, well, they just weren't real fighters like the Gogajin were.
Old Grim hadn't always been the head, of course, but the tale he'd told of his escape from the mines of a dark Cheldrun city, and his rescue of a whole group of their women had gone a long way towards boosting his popularity in the clan, even if none other of his companions in the mines had made it out of Geneva Prime with him. Diarmaid, Adar, Rogan, Donald, Baldur, these were the new heroes of the clan. And as for old Grim, well, he had ne always been Old Grim. The mines, and what had happened after, they'd changed him. Aged him before his time, maybe. Or maybe it was that age didn't cling so tightly to his shoulders as he felt it, but he felt it. At least, that was the story everyone told, though it likely found its source in younger minds than his. Two children on the brink of their teenaged exile were particular suspects, but no one could prove their involvement in the starting of the rumour, and the name had caught on regardless. Old Grim it was.
The mead-hall was full of Gogajin, male and female alike, each of them eager to get roaring drunk as quickly as possible. They were seated at a series of long wooden benches that filled most of the room, and already the mead was flowing freely. Boisterous does not begin to describe a room full of partying Gogajin: a few good natured fights broke out, and a few couples decided that their time would be better spent in a dark corner with each other than at the table with the others, and all that was before the boasting competition began. The Fiochmahr clan had a tradition, you see: two Gogajin would tell increasingly wild and unbelievable boasts, and whoever it was that told the wildest, most unbelievable one, well, he or she would have to go out and try to accomplish it. Usually it ended in hangovers and a Gogajin sleeping with someone they wouldn't ordinarily have been inclined to, but a few weeks back, it had brought about the raid on the logging camp, and tonight, well, tonight it was a good bet it was going to...
The partying came to a sudden halt (though the couples in the dark corners didn't bother to stop) when a pair of Gogajin slammed open the doors to the mead-hall, with a group of Cheldrun in tow. They were badly emaciated, half starved, and looked more than halfway dead. About a dozen of them came in - a middle-aged man at their head, wearing the tattered remains of what had probably once been a fine silk kimono - and many more of them were crowded around the entrance.
Silence hung heavily in the air for a long moment before a young Gogajin - only just returned from his adolescent exile - rose to his feet and shouted, "What kind of fucked up shite is this!?"
"You shut your mouth, Hagan!" a middle-aged female Gogajin bellowed back.
A number of other Gogajin joined in then, until finally Grim rose to his feet and banged the table in front of him with an enormous fist. "ALL OF YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTHES!" he bellowed.
Silence.
"Right. You two," he looked to the two Gogajin leading the Cheldrun. "What kind of fucked up shite is this?"
One of the two Gogajin spoke up. "They showed theirselves at the gate a bare few moments ago, askin' fer food and water, uh, Grim."
Grim looked to the Cheldrun. "I wist they ne be speaken Gogajin?" he asked, his regional accent coming to the fore as he spoke.
The middle-aged male Cheldrun in the tattered kimono stepped forward. "Your pardon, sir, but I do."
Grim looked at the man. "... Well, what do ye want, then? Ye must be either very brave or very stupid to come here. Qwich is it?"
"I am Ishikawa Tetsuro of the Ruby Hawk Clan," the Cheldrun said. "My companions and I are... exiles. Refugees. There is no place for us in Katashi Blade's new regime, and we thought it better to try our luck in the wilderness than to die at the hands of a Goshi Assassin, or a bounty hunter... please, sir, we have nowhere else to go. We are hungry, we are tired, and many of us are sick." He swallowed, and what he said next had the feel of an old tree toppling over: "Will you help us?"
Grim took a long moment to think about that, weighing it out in his mind. Of course, in the end, looking at the Cheldrun all helpless and starving-like, there was only one conclusion he could have reached: "... Aye. Ye clepen for me help, and I hear ye." He rose up to his full, massively muscled height. "All right, listen here! Listen here! These wights be safe with kith and kin tonight. None harm nor hounde them here on pain of a beatin' the likes o which you none never seen!"
The other Gogajin shrugged. One of them thought about shouting, "Ah, fuck you Grim!" but thought better of it at the last moment. The Cheldrun did look pretty desperate, after all.
Grim gestured, and a pair of Gogajin, a wer and wyf (a male and a female, that is), came forward and led the Cheldrun away to the Clanhold's guest quarters so as they could stow their things before they came to join the feast.
The feast went on.
------------------------
Later, when the shadows had had faded into gloom, the moon had set, and the only sounds were the frantic scrabblings and brayings of donkeysex in the hall, and the peace of the predawn hours hung heavily over the land, there came a stranger to the Fiochmahr clanhold. Stranger than even the Cheldrun refugees. A mechified. He came creeping through the corridors, almost his entire body made of metal save his face and his middle, the sounds in the hall masking the clunk-clunk-clunk of his footsteps. His eyes had been replaced with gleaming red lenses, and they allowed his vision access to the infrared: it was with this that he tracked his prey.
Gently, ever so gently, he pushed open the large wooden door that led into the room where his target slept. A bounty hunter he was, and a good one. He always got his man, or so they said. This man, well, they'd specified dead or alive, and he figured that dead would be easier than dragging him back through the wilderness, so once he was sure that the middle-aged Cheldrun sleeping on the bed in the tattered Kimono was in fact Ishikawa Tetsuro of the Ruby Hawk Clan, Winston reached out with his right hand and placed it almost gently over the sleeping man's heart.
Then he reached over with his left hand and flipped the switch to activate the pneumatic spike. Or would have, if a grip as strong as steel itself hadn't caught his hand mid-flight.
Winston looked up in alarm. The occupants of the beds around Ishikawa Tetsuro's were not asleep at all, but awake and very very angry.
An angry looking Gogajin stepped forward and glared poor Winston in the face. "I given these wights safety here with kith and kin," he cracked his knuckles, "And unfortunate fer you, I meant it."
An hour later, three Gogajin tossed the bruised and battered body of Winston the Mechified over the walls of the clanhold, and down he tumbled into the brush with the long, loud, trailing clatter of metal sliding down two hundred yards of loose rock.
Grim dusted off his hands, wiped the sweat off his brow, and went back to bed, satisfied that that was the end of it.
But the troubles were only just beginning.
Force and Energy
"Ishikawa Tomoe of the Ruby Hawk clan," said the old Biomade teacher, "Do you know why your design merits only a passing grade?"
Tomoe grit her teeth. She was the very image of classical Allskin beauty, and if all she needed to do was look pretty, that might have counted for something. If the histories were to be believed, her clan had once ruled nearly a quarter of a spiral galaxy - or at least those worlds within that quarter that were inhabitable - and commanded the allegiance of vast, powerful fleets of star-faring ships. Her noble heritage counted for little here, nor had the Ruby Hawk clan been considered to be particularly notable since the arrival of the refugee fleet on this world two hundred years previous. Now, she was only another student at the Matamos University of Art and Science.
The classroom was a warm, well-lit place. Willow-Sensei liked it that way. Well, she called him Willow-Sensei, anways, as did Ikari Makoto of the Jade Falcon clan, but the other three students in their Architecture and Design class - two mechified and a Biomade - had taken to calling him Old Man Willow. Tomoe supposed that Deborah and Samuel probably didn't know any better. Mechified were simple creatures, after all. But Midnight was a Biomade. For all their faults, the Biomade were at least civilized beings. She should know better.
"Do you have even a guess?" Old Man Wil... Willow-Sensei asked.
Tomoe let out an irritated puff of air which blew her bangs out of her eyes as she considered the holographic representation of her design. It seemed impressive enough to her. Easily a match for even the finest architecture of Geneva Prime. The carved arches over the entryway were immaculate, designed such that they seemed wrought from the living wood of the old growth trees they resembled rather than from the metal of which they would actually be fashioned. And the building itself, her grand amphitheatre? Breathtaking. Her design was highly stylized, flowing, curvilinear, all the things a Cheldrun building should be. There was nothing wrong with it. "... No."
Willow-Sensei smiled kindly. "I see," he said. He turned to the rest of the class. "Does anyone else care to take a guess at what is wrong with the work of Ishikawa Tomoe of the Ruby Hawk clan?"
There was silence in the classroom, broken only by the hum of the holo-generators affixed to each desk.
Midnight raised her hand, and Tomoe immediately felt a stab of anger. Midnight, to whom everything came so easily. Midnight, who had been engineered for brilliance. Midnight, with perfect hair as dark as her namesake, with that damnable fake Biomade beauty, with her perfectly symmetrical face and eyes precisely calculated such that an interested suitor could drown in them. 'Interested suitor,' that was the right term, Tomoe decided. The stories of Biomade promiscuity were legendary. At least, that's what her mother had always told her, and her grandmother agreed. Once, Tomoe had thought it a terrible thing that the Biomade had engineered themselves to be unable to reproduce, but considering their notorious... appetites, well, maybe it was for the best. If the stories were to believed, Biomade would even copulate with Karians. Karians! It was shocking. Appalling. But modesty, it seemed, was another thing the Biomade had engineered out of themselves, if the time she herself had caught Midnight and Deborah in a... compromising position was anything to judge by. Deborah at least had blushed at the interruption, but not Midnight. ... But Biomade promiscuity was not an appropriate topic of contemplation for a noble scion of House Ruby Hawk. Mother had said that once, though it had never stopped her from gossiping about it for hours on end.
Abruptly, Tomoe realized that Midnight had given her answer, and she quickly searched her memory to find it.
Oh.
Damnable, perfect Biomade. It wasn't fair, her having to work so hard to get as far as she had with miss Midnight learning the same things absolutely effortlessly.
"Is it because she hasn't attended to the aesthetics of the building's force and energy flow?" Midnight had asked.
"Very good, Midnight!" Willow-Sensei replied. "Force and energy. They are the fundamentals of all architecture, and indeed of all art. A well-designed physical structure without aesthetically pleasing methods of channeling force and energy is as worthless as an umbrella in a hurricane. Consider the work of Nakata Soujiro of the Ruby Hawk clan. As you know, Nakata Soujiro was one of the few artists whose work survived the great exodus, and many of his holo-sculptures are still on display in the Museum of Antiquities here in Matamos." Willow-Sensei pressed a button on his display, and each student's design faded and was replaced by a three dimensional representation of an alien planet, its surface alive with vibrant currents of force and energy.
Tomoe stared. Nakata Soujiro was the reason she wanted to be an artist: his work had always stirred her imagination in ways that she could not readily identify. Looking at this, called 'A Distant Star,' perhaps his most well-known work, stole her breath away. The planet shimmered, its energistic patterns pulsing like veins, sometimes seeming to dance across its surface. There, in the corner of the image, beyond the planet's orbit, was the titular star, shining with such grace and such subtlety, the force and the energy of its nuclear fires rendered in such beauty, that a tear trickled down her cheek at the sight of it.
Willow-Sensei continued his lecture, but Tomoe did not hear it. She stared, and for a moment, her fierce envy of Midnight faded away. For a moment, Deborah and Samuel and even Makoto were far from her imagination. For a moment, all of her mother's stories and her own prejudices faded into nothing. For a moment, even if it was only within her own imagination, Ishikawa Tomoe walked among the stars.
Tomoe grit her teeth. She was the very image of classical Allskin beauty, and if all she needed to do was look pretty, that might have counted for something. If the histories were to be believed, her clan had once ruled nearly a quarter of a spiral galaxy - or at least those worlds within that quarter that were inhabitable - and commanded the allegiance of vast, powerful fleets of star-faring ships. Her noble heritage counted for little here, nor had the Ruby Hawk clan been considered to be particularly notable since the arrival of the refugee fleet on this world two hundred years previous. Now, she was only another student at the Matamos University of Art and Science.
The classroom was a warm, well-lit place. Willow-Sensei liked it that way. Well, she called him Willow-Sensei, anways, as did Ikari Makoto of the Jade Falcon clan, but the other three students in their Architecture and Design class - two mechified and a Biomade - had taken to calling him Old Man Willow. Tomoe supposed that Deborah and Samuel probably didn't know any better. Mechified were simple creatures, after all. But Midnight was a Biomade. For all their faults, the Biomade were at least civilized beings. She should know better.
"Do you have even a guess?" Old Man Wil... Willow-Sensei asked.
Tomoe let out an irritated puff of air which blew her bangs out of her eyes as she considered the holographic representation of her design. It seemed impressive enough to her. Easily a match for even the finest architecture of Geneva Prime. The carved arches over the entryway were immaculate, designed such that they seemed wrought from the living wood of the old growth trees they resembled rather than from the metal of which they would actually be fashioned. And the building itself, her grand amphitheatre? Breathtaking. Her design was highly stylized, flowing, curvilinear, all the things a Cheldrun building should be. There was nothing wrong with it. "... No."
Willow-Sensei smiled kindly. "I see," he said. He turned to the rest of the class. "Does anyone else care to take a guess at what is wrong with the work of Ishikawa Tomoe of the Ruby Hawk clan?"
There was silence in the classroom, broken only by the hum of the holo-generators affixed to each desk.
Midnight raised her hand, and Tomoe immediately felt a stab of anger. Midnight, to whom everything came so easily. Midnight, who had been engineered for brilliance. Midnight, with perfect hair as dark as her namesake, with that damnable fake Biomade beauty, with her perfectly symmetrical face and eyes precisely calculated such that an interested suitor could drown in them. 'Interested suitor,' that was the right term, Tomoe decided. The stories of Biomade promiscuity were legendary. At least, that's what her mother had always told her, and her grandmother agreed. Once, Tomoe had thought it a terrible thing that the Biomade had engineered themselves to be unable to reproduce, but considering their notorious... appetites, well, maybe it was for the best. If the stories were to believed, Biomade would even copulate with Karians. Karians! It was shocking. Appalling. But modesty, it seemed, was another thing the Biomade had engineered out of themselves, if the time she herself had caught Midnight and Deborah in a... compromising position was anything to judge by. Deborah at least had blushed at the interruption, but not Midnight. ... But Biomade promiscuity was not an appropriate topic of contemplation for a noble scion of House Ruby Hawk. Mother had said that once, though it had never stopped her from gossiping about it for hours on end.
Abruptly, Tomoe realized that Midnight had given her answer, and she quickly searched her memory to find it.
Oh.
Damnable, perfect Biomade. It wasn't fair, her having to work so hard to get as far as she had with miss Midnight learning the same things absolutely effortlessly.
"Is it because she hasn't attended to the aesthetics of the building's force and energy flow?" Midnight had asked.
"Very good, Midnight!" Willow-Sensei replied. "Force and energy. They are the fundamentals of all architecture, and indeed of all art. A well-designed physical structure without aesthetically pleasing methods of channeling force and energy is as worthless as an umbrella in a hurricane. Consider the work of Nakata Soujiro of the Ruby Hawk clan. As you know, Nakata Soujiro was one of the few artists whose work survived the great exodus, and many of his holo-sculptures are still on display in the Museum of Antiquities here in Matamos." Willow-Sensei pressed a button on his display, and each student's design faded and was replaced by a three dimensional representation of an alien planet, its surface alive with vibrant currents of force and energy.
Tomoe stared. Nakata Soujiro was the reason she wanted to be an artist: his work had always stirred her imagination in ways that she could not readily identify. Looking at this, called 'A Distant Star,' perhaps his most well-known work, stole her breath away. The planet shimmered, its energistic patterns pulsing like veins, sometimes seeming to dance across its surface. There, in the corner of the image, beyond the planet's orbit, was the titular star, shining with such grace and such subtlety, the force and the energy of its nuclear fires rendered in such beauty, that a tear trickled down her cheek at the sight of it.
Willow-Sensei continued his lecture, but Tomoe did not hear it. She stared, and for a moment, her fierce envy of Midnight faded away. For a moment, Deborah and Samuel and even Makoto were far from her imagination. For a moment, all of her mother's stories and her own prejudices faded into nothing. For a moment, even if it was only within her own imagination, Ishikawa Tomoe walked among the stars.
Are You Now or Have You Ever Been?
It was hot under the spotlight, and its glare washed out the rest of the room into a haze of shadows and half-glimpsed shapes. The only other face that the Surgeon could see from where he sat on the witness stand was the face of the Goshi investigator. He'd been here for hours, being questioned, listening to the sound of pens scratching across paper as the observers took notes on... he wasn't sure what exactly. Him, he guessed. A bunch of higher ups from the Biomade Oversight Council, come to watch. Sweat beaded on his forehead, and they made a note of that, too.
Damn Sue for dragging him into this. She had promised him a new world, a free world, where the Mechified didn't have to live lives of servitude to the Biomade. Surgeon was better educated that most Mechified, and for all his customization to repair and service other Mechified, he fancied himself a student of history more than anything else. He should have known it wouldn't have worked, he realized that much now. After all, hadn't the Biomade promised the same thing that Sue had when they'd led their own rebellion against the oppressive Allskin regime? And yet the moment the Biomade were put in power, well, far from a free society, they'd just replaced the Allskins at the top of the ladder. The oppressed became the oppressor. So it went. So it would have gone if Sue had won.
Ah, but Sue had seemed so convincing. There had been such passion in her eyes and in her voice. It had all gone so wrong.
Things were bad, now. Ever since Sue had been killed, and her head put up for all to see in the same square where Moses had tricked Goshi into believing he was surrendering, only to make a fool of them in front of the whole city. The head was still there, or so he'd heard. He hadn't had the chance to see it himself, and was beginning to doubt that he ever would.
The Goshi Investigator was waiting for his answer, but Surgeon abruptly realized he hadn't heard the question. He looked up. "What?" he asked.
The Investigator's face reddened slightly, and Surgeon was pretty sure it was anger and not shame that coloured the man's cheeks. ... He wasn't sure Biomade could feel shame.
"I ask again, Surgeon, are you now or have you ever been a UMA sympathizer?"
"No," Surgeon replied. His voice was thick and heavy, but the lie was getting easier with each repetition.
"Then you deny having associated with known terrorists?"
Surgeon raised an eyebrow. "What terrorists would those be?" he asked. It was a risk to be flippant, but such small victories were all he had, now.
"Then you deny having associated with Moses, Ascetalyne Sue, Daitokuji Kiyoshi, and a band of Karian insurrectionists in the service of the United Mechified Army?"
"Yes."
The Investigator looked towards the observers. "Let the record show that the suspect has denied association with the UMA." He opened up a briefcase and produced an official looking document. "Surgeon, I have here in my hand the signed, sworn testimony of three witnesses who claim that you were second in power only to Sue herself." He placed the document on the table in front of Surgeon.
Surgeon's heart sank into his knees. He looked down at the document. He didn't recognize the other two signatures, but Terry the Canary's panicked scrawl made his heart clench. A momentary surge of anger went through him. "It's a lie!" he hissed. "I tell you the truth, I did not know them."
"Moses?"
"I did not know him."
"Sue?"
"I did not know her."
"DAITOKUJI KIYOSHI!?"
"I did not know him."
The Investigator leaned in, and hatred seemed visible in his countenance. "What exactly do you know, Surgeon? You were named by three witnesses. If you can't give us someone else. Someone higher up in the ranks of the UMA, this board will be unable to help you."
Surgeon stared at the Investigator. He knew what that meant. Blacklisting. Once your name was on the black list, well, it didn't end well. Nobody would sell to you, nobody would go to your shop, all for fear of being named a UMA sympathizer. Like you. "... I..."
"Yes?"
Surgeon's thoughts raced. There had to be some way out of this! If only... wait, that was a possibility...! "There was a girl," he said.
"A girl?" the Investigator asked.
"Nineteen, maybe. Red eyes. Pale skin. She was there with Moses. Helping him. Helping to plan his strategy. Her name was Rei. She was important, I'm sure of it."
The Investigator glanced at the board, and Surgeon shuddered as he felt an uncomfortable crawling sensation under his skull. His thoughts were being probed, now. He focused on the image of the girl and what he knew of her, forcing that to the forefront, making damn sure that nothing else was on the surface.
The Investigator smiled. "Thank you for your cooperation, Surgeon."
After a moment, the Biomade Oversight board nodded to the investigator.
"Is that all? Can I go?"
"Yes, you can go," the Investigator said. His eyes looked almost gentle now. "You've been quite helpful, Surgeon." He glanced towards another darkened corner of the room, where sat two men and a women, all clad in Goshi uniforms, all looking dreadfully official. "Put his name on the list."
Surgeon's eyes widened. "You can't! I cooperated! I told you what I knew!"
The guards were dragging him out of the courtroom, now, and his medical cybernetic appendages dragged out behind him.
"Yes, you did. But you haven't told us anything we didn't already know. Good day, Surgeon."
They cast him out of the room, and the doors swung shut with a bang.
Surgeon stared at the closed door blankly for a long moment.
Blacklisted.
Ruined.
At last, with a heavy heart and feeling utterly disgusted, he trundled off towards the building's exit. Bile rose up in the back of his throat, and he cursed the day that he had ever heard the name of Ascetalyne Sue.
Damn Sue for dragging him into this. She had promised him a new world, a free world, where the Mechified didn't have to live lives of servitude to the Biomade. Surgeon was better educated that most Mechified, and for all his customization to repair and service other Mechified, he fancied himself a student of history more than anything else. He should have known it wouldn't have worked, he realized that much now. After all, hadn't the Biomade promised the same thing that Sue had when they'd led their own rebellion against the oppressive Allskin regime? And yet the moment the Biomade were put in power, well, far from a free society, they'd just replaced the Allskins at the top of the ladder. The oppressed became the oppressor. So it went. So it would have gone if Sue had won.
Ah, but Sue had seemed so convincing. There had been such passion in her eyes and in her voice. It had all gone so wrong.
Things were bad, now. Ever since Sue had been killed, and her head put up for all to see in the same square where Moses had tricked Goshi into believing he was surrendering, only to make a fool of them in front of the whole city. The head was still there, or so he'd heard. He hadn't had the chance to see it himself, and was beginning to doubt that he ever would.
The Goshi Investigator was waiting for his answer, but Surgeon abruptly realized he hadn't heard the question. He looked up. "What?" he asked.
The Investigator's face reddened slightly, and Surgeon was pretty sure it was anger and not shame that coloured the man's cheeks. ... He wasn't sure Biomade could feel shame.
"I ask again, Surgeon, are you now or have you ever been a UMA sympathizer?"
"No," Surgeon replied. His voice was thick and heavy, but the lie was getting easier with each repetition.
"Then you deny having associated with known terrorists?"
Surgeon raised an eyebrow. "What terrorists would those be?" he asked. It was a risk to be flippant, but such small victories were all he had, now.
"Then you deny having associated with Moses, Ascetalyne Sue, Daitokuji Kiyoshi, and a band of Karian insurrectionists in the service of the United Mechified Army?"
"Yes."
The Investigator looked towards the observers. "Let the record show that the suspect has denied association with the UMA." He opened up a briefcase and produced an official looking document. "Surgeon, I have here in my hand the signed, sworn testimony of three witnesses who claim that you were second in power only to Sue herself." He placed the document on the table in front of Surgeon.
Surgeon's heart sank into his knees. He looked down at the document. He didn't recognize the other two signatures, but Terry the Canary's panicked scrawl made his heart clench. A momentary surge of anger went through him. "It's a lie!" he hissed. "I tell you the truth, I did not know them."
"Moses?"
"I did not know him."
"Sue?"
"I did not know her."
"DAITOKUJI KIYOSHI!?"
"I did not know him."
The Investigator leaned in, and hatred seemed visible in his countenance. "What exactly do you know, Surgeon? You were named by three witnesses. If you can't give us someone else. Someone higher up in the ranks of the UMA, this board will be unable to help you."
Surgeon stared at the Investigator. He knew what that meant. Blacklisting. Once your name was on the black list, well, it didn't end well. Nobody would sell to you, nobody would go to your shop, all for fear of being named a UMA sympathizer. Like you. "... I..."
"Yes?"
Surgeon's thoughts raced. There had to be some way out of this! If only... wait, that was a possibility...! "There was a girl," he said.
"A girl?" the Investigator asked.
"Nineteen, maybe. Red eyes. Pale skin. She was there with Moses. Helping him. Helping to plan his strategy. Her name was Rei. She was important, I'm sure of it."
The Investigator glanced at the board, and Surgeon shuddered as he felt an uncomfortable crawling sensation under his skull. His thoughts were being probed, now. He focused on the image of the girl and what he knew of her, forcing that to the forefront, making damn sure that nothing else was on the surface.
The Investigator smiled. "Thank you for your cooperation, Surgeon."
After a moment, the Biomade Oversight board nodded to the investigator.
"Is that all? Can I go?"
"Yes, you can go," the Investigator said. His eyes looked almost gentle now. "You've been quite helpful, Surgeon." He glanced towards another darkened corner of the room, where sat two men and a women, all clad in Goshi uniforms, all looking dreadfully official. "Put his name on the list."
Surgeon's eyes widened. "You can't! I cooperated! I told you what I knew!"
The guards were dragging him out of the courtroom, now, and his medical cybernetic appendages dragged out behind him.
"Yes, you did. But you haven't told us anything we didn't already know. Good day, Surgeon."
They cast him out of the room, and the doors swung shut with a bang.
Surgeon stared at the closed door blankly for a long moment.
Blacklisted.
Ruined.
At last, with a heavy heart and feeling utterly disgusted, he trundled off towards the building's exit. Bile rose up in the back of his throat, and he cursed the day that he had ever heard the name of Ascetalyne Sue.
What a Mixer Sees
Life goes on. This is always true for the living. Life... continues. It isn't always easy. It isn't always fun. We may sometimes wish it didn't, it may sometimes be more than we can bear, but it always goes on. In the mines beneath Geneva Prime, Mickey the Mixer's life went on.
There's always the question, how do you go back? How do you return to everyday life when you've seen things that have changed you, scarred you, at times nearly unmade you? How do you turn from the fantastic to the mundane? How do you leave it all behind and get on with the business of living, knowing that life will not wait for you to catch up?
That's the rub.
He saw Terry the Canary around, sometimes. She was working with a deep mining team. Mickey knew how that was. Not the mining, but the need to be away from... everything. Seemed he couldn't turn a corner these days without knowing that it had been drenched with the blood of his friends. His friends... he saw Brick the other day. They'd ended up in the same lift. They hadn't said anything to each other, but just waited in uncomfortable silence for the ride to end. Then Brick had gotten off, and Mickey had stayed behind. There were guards everywhere, now. Goshi soldiers with masks for the dust. They seemed creepier than they used to, and things were worse. Much worse. Sometimes, Mickey wished that Moses had never come to them at all. Sometimes he hated Moses. Sometimes he wished that Sue and all the others had just worked their way through their lives. It's less trouble. Don't stand out. Don't draw attention. Do your work. Be useful. Good boy. You want to be useful, don't you?
Mickey wanted to be useful. Maybe that's why he was keeping a journal, now. He never would have done that before, but with all that happened, well, even a mixer needs to write it all down sometimes. So he did. He sat and he wrote, and sometimes cement sloshed out of his mixer and spilled onto the page and he had to start over, and sometimes he woke up with the ashes of burned pages all around him, but mostly he wrote and preserved what he wrote, and he never seemed to realize that every time he put his pen to the paper, his scribblings became feverish, frenzied. He saw things. Things he knew he had to write down, because whenever he saw them, he saw a teenage boy's blood red eyes. The eyes looked, and Mickey did what they wanted. It was easier that way. Less complicated. Less painful. When he did what the eyes wanted, things didn't seem so unbearable. It all made sense. Tears made him rust. That was bad.
The voice was supposed to have gone away. The one that made it had gone away. ... Why hadn't the voice gone away?
'Don't cry, Mickey,' he thought, again and again. It had become his mantra. His incantation against the darkness of his surroundings. 'Don't cry. You'll rust.'
He wrote all kinds of things, and it never occurred to him to read over what he wrote or wonder why he had written it. He wrote about the state of the Goshi soldiers. He wrote about the deposit of White-Rock. He wrote about the Eyeless. He wrote about the former members of the Underground Mechified Army. He wrote about all the things that a mixer should never see but did, because nobody worried about what a mixer might see. And when he wrote, he wrote in First Mind script. Over and over. A message for those with eyes to see. And he knew it was right. That it was useful.
Mickey wanted to be useful.
There's always the question, how do you go back? How do you return to everyday life when you've seen things that have changed you, scarred you, at times nearly unmade you? How do you turn from the fantastic to the mundane? How do you leave it all behind and get on with the business of living, knowing that life will not wait for you to catch up?
That's the rub.
He saw Terry the Canary around, sometimes. She was working with a deep mining team. Mickey knew how that was. Not the mining, but the need to be away from... everything. Seemed he couldn't turn a corner these days without knowing that it had been drenched with the blood of his friends. His friends... he saw Brick the other day. They'd ended up in the same lift. They hadn't said anything to each other, but just waited in uncomfortable silence for the ride to end. Then Brick had gotten off, and Mickey had stayed behind. There were guards everywhere, now. Goshi soldiers with masks for the dust. They seemed creepier than they used to, and things were worse. Much worse. Sometimes, Mickey wished that Moses had never come to them at all. Sometimes he hated Moses. Sometimes he wished that Sue and all the others had just worked their way through their lives. It's less trouble. Don't stand out. Don't draw attention. Do your work. Be useful. Good boy. You want to be useful, don't you?
Mickey wanted to be useful. Maybe that's why he was keeping a journal, now. He never would have done that before, but with all that happened, well, even a mixer needs to write it all down sometimes. So he did. He sat and he wrote, and sometimes cement sloshed out of his mixer and spilled onto the page and he had to start over, and sometimes he woke up with the ashes of burned pages all around him, but mostly he wrote and preserved what he wrote, and he never seemed to realize that every time he put his pen to the paper, his scribblings became feverish, frenzied. He saw things. Things he knew he had to write down, because whenever he saw them, he saw a teenage boy's blood red eyes. The eyes looked, and Mickey did what they wanted. It was easier that way. Less complicated. Less painful. When he did what the eyes wanted, things didn't seem so unbearable. It all made sense. Tears made him rust. That was bad.
The voice was supposed to have gone away. The one that made it had gone away. ... Why hadn't the voice gone away?
'Don't cry, Mickey,' he thought, again and again. It had become his mantra. His incantation against the darkness of his surroundings. 'Don't cry. You'll rust.'
He wrote all kinds of things, and it never occurred to him to read over what he wrote or wonder why he had written it. He wrote about the state of the Goshi soldiers. He wrote about the deposit of White-Rock. He wrote about the Eyeless. He wrote about the former members of the Underground Mechified Army. He wrote about all the things that a mixer should never see but did, because nobody worried about what a mixer might see. And when he wrote, he wrote in First Mind script. Over and over. A message for those with eyes to see. And he knew it was right. That it was useful.
Mickey wanted to be useful.
Heroes Born and Heroes Made
Matthew had work to do. He had wanted to stay on with the Griolsa and help them finish rebuilding, but Tricks had been eager to get back to the city and he had not liked his chances of getting all the way back to Geneva Prime without the help of a Karian, even one as domesticated as Tricks. So they had left the Gogajin village, though not before the children had tackled him in one last attempt to knock down the "metal giant" and begged him to stay. It was difficult telling them no, mostly because they tried to forcibly keep him from leaving. Surprisingly, the children were not the only ones who seemed sad to see them go. Edana bid them good journey and even Angus hobbled out and shook his hand.
The two made good time and Tricks proved a surprisingly adept guide. His color had changed to a much healthier brown than his old tobacco-stain drab and he seemed more alert and friendly than Matthew had ever known him. He even talked of going to visit his old tribe for a time once they got back! Unfortunately it did not take him long to forget about that and fall back into his old habits almost as soon as they reached Geneva Prime once more. Within a week of their return Tricks, eyes blurred and face slack as he used to be, wandered off mumbling about knowing how to earn more money. That was the last Matthew had seen of him.
Now he was all alone, but that was alright. He had plenty of work to do after all. People had always thought of him as stupid because of his size and the way he liked to think things through. He was not dumb however, just careful. He intended to revive the Black Lotus, but not as it was before. There would be fighting, sure, but it would not be for the entertainment of criminals. Instead it would be a training ground, a crucible he would use to forge a new UMA. No, not UMA. UCA. A movement for all Cheldrun who wanted to live their lives as equals without all of this caste bullshit.
He knew many Mechafied were still pissed about how the last revolt ended and could probably be galvanized if they were told that Moses was not dead, but out in the world at large spreading the message. Matthew felt a little bad about that planned deception, but in a way it was true: Moses and his friends, by simply being who they were, spread the message of freedom and pride in self wherever they went. Then he had heard that the Allskin families were restless, especially the oldest and most traditional ones. Apparently one of the most pious and upstanding Clans had turned against Goshi and been banished as traitors, but were still standing strong in a new city and were even beating the unbeatable Washisan pilots. The whispers among the Allskins were that if that Clan had turned against Goshi perhaps it was the will of the First Minds, and even if it was not the simple fact that they had not been crushed said that maybe it was time for them all to break out from under the Biomade corporation.
The Biomade now, they would be a problem. He could hardly expect Biomade to join him to throw off the yoke of Biomade oppression. He had a couple of tricks up his sleeve though. He had taken samples of a couple of Dr. Watanabe's drugs during their journey together. He could not do anything with them himself, but he had recognized their value. One would toughen a mind, help defend it against telepathic attack. The other dulled the mind and would temporarily dampen or even nullify a Biomade's psychic abilities within moments of injection. Yes, if it came down to fighting he had a few tricks to play. That was why he had always won in the arena; every opponent he had faced had seen his size and simply assumed he was nothing but a dumb straightforward brute. They were always that much more surprised then when he pulled a trick they had never seen coming.
Still, he would rather have as many allies as possible, and as little bloodshed. He wanted a united people after all so that he could hand them over to the right person when the time came. That would be a trick to top them all, and one that he knew he could be proud of for the rest of his days because he knew it would be good for all of his people. King Moses, hero of the Cheldrun. He liked the sound of that.
* * *
The lord fidgeted as he sat, his long-extinguished pipe gripped forgotten between his teeth. He was a consummate warrior, a leader and a fighter, but for this battle he was helpless. He had tried to remain to at least lend moral support, but had been firmly told that it was not his place and pushed out of the room. He, Lord Daitokuji Ichiro, pushed out of his own bedroom, and by his little sister at that! His wife was in labor with their first child. Modern medicine was a wonder, but women did still sometimes not survive the strain of childbirth and his Akane was a slight and delicate woman. And so he sat and worried in his sitting room in Matamos, two of his most loyal retainers quietly sipping tea and smoking their pipes and waiting with him for news.
Finally it came. Naomi came out to him, beaming with joy and excitement. Ichiro leapt to his feet and practically shouted, "Are they...?!"
"They are both well and sleeping soundly, brother. Your wife and your newborn son." Her grin seemed to take up her whole face. "What is his name?"
Laughing, he took Naomi in his arms and whirled her about. "Why what else could it be? My son's name will be Noboru and he will be as strong and wise as his grandfather!"
"A fine choice," intoned Master Yoshitaka. "Surely Lord Daitokuji's spirit will watch closely over the child named in his honor."
"There is more!" Naomi said with the air of one who had been saving a surprise for last. "Young Noboru; it is hard to tell with one just born, but I believe he will have pure silver hair!"
"Most auspicious!" This from Ichiro's boyhood friend and advisor, Shin.
Ichiro nodded, though his face clouded for a moment. "Hopefully it will not see him as troubled as his uncle."
Naomi rested a hand on her brother's arm and said "I am sure that Kiyoshi is fine, wherever he is. Do you not remember him as a child? He was always the smartest of us, the one to plan the mischief. If anyone can slip away from Goshi, he can!"
Master Yoshitaka nodded. "He was the finest student I ever had. I hope to one day see his training completed. For now know that he has his destiny, and you have yours. And, I would imagine, so does your new son for the First Minds to mark him so."
Ichiro dismissed his thoughts of his wayward brother with his peculiar ideas. His beaming grin returned fivefold as he said to his closest friends "Come. It is high time I meet my son." With that the patriarch of the Silver Phoenix Clan started for his bedroom and his sleeping family.
The two made good time and Tricks proved a surprisingly adept guide. His color had changed to a much healthier brown than his old tobacco-stain drab and he seemed more alert and friendly than Matthew had ever known him. He even talked of going to visit his old tribe for a time once they got back! Unfortunately it did not take him long to forget about that and fall back into his old habits almost as soon as they reached Geneva Prime once more. Within a week of their return Tricks, eyes blurred and face slack as he used to be, wandered off mumbling about knowing how to earn more money. That was the last Matthew had seen of him.
Now he was all alone, but that was alright. He had plenty of work to do after all. People had always thought of him as stupid because of his size and the way he liked to think things through. He was not dumb however, just careful. He intended to revive the Black Lotus, but not as it was before. There would be fighting, sure, but it would not be for the entertainment of criminals. Instead it would be a training ground, a crucible he would use to forge a new UMA. No, not UMA. UCA. A movement for all Cheldrun who wanted to live their lives as equals without all of this caste bullshit.
He knew many Mechafied were still pissed about how the last revolt ended and could probably be galvanized if they were told that Moses was not dead, but out in the world at large spreading the message. Matthew felt a little bad about that planned deception, but in a way it was true: Moses and his friends, by simply being who they were, spread the message of freedom and pride in self wherever they went. Then he had heard that the Allskin families were restless, especially the oldest and most traditional ones. Apparently one of the most pious and upstanding Clans had turned against Goshi and been banished as traitors, but were still standing strong in a new city and were even beating the unbeatable Washisan pilots. The whispers among the Allskins were that if that Clan had turned against Goshi perhaps it was the will of the First Minds, and even if it was not the simple fact that they had not been crushed said that maybe it was time for them all to break out from under the Biomade corporation.
The Biomade now, they would be a problem. He could hardly expect Biomade to join him to throw off the yoke of Biomade oppression. He had a couple of tricks up his sleeve though. He had taken samples of a couple of Dr. Watanabe's drugs during their journey together. He could not do anything with them himself, but he had recognized their value. One would toughen a mind, help defend it against telepathic attack. The other dulled the mind and would temporarily dampen or even nullify a Biomade's psychic abilities within moments of injection. Yes, if it came down to fighting he had a few tricks to play. That was why he had always won in the arena; every opponent he had faced had seen his size and simply assumed he was nothing but a dumb straightforward brute. They were always that much more surprised then when he pulled a trick they had never seen coming.
Still, he would rather have as many allies as possible, and as little bloodshed. He wanted a united people after all so that he could hand them over to the right person when the time came. That would be a trick to top them all, and one that he knew he could be proud of for the rest of his days because he knew it would be good for all of his people. King Moses, hero of the Cheldrun. He liked the sound of that.
* * *
The lord fidgeted as he sat, his long-extinguished pipe gripped forgotten between his teeth. He was a consummate warrior, a leader and a fighter, but for this battle he was helpless. He had tried to remain to at least lend moral support, but had been firmly told that it was not his place and pushed out of the room. He, Lord Daitokuji Ichiro, pushed out of his own bedroom, and by his little sister at that! His wife was in labor with their first child. Modern medicine was a wonder, but women did still sometimes not survive the strain of childbirth and his Akane was a slight and delicate woman. And so he sat and worried in his sitting room in Matamos, two of his most loyal retainers quietly sipping tea and smoking their pipes and waiting with him for news.
Finally it came. Naomi came out to him, beaming with joy and excitement. Ichiro leapt to his feet and practically shouted, "Are they...?!"
"They are both well and sleeping soundly, brother. Your wife and your newborn son." Her grin seemed to take up her whole face. "What is his name?"
Laughing, he took Naomi in his arms and whirled her about. "Why what else could it be? My son's name will be Noboru and he will be as strong and wise as his grandfather!"
"A fine choice," intoned Master Yoshitaka. "Surely Lord Daitokuji's spirit will watch closely over the child named in his honor."
"There is more!" Naomi said with the air of one who had been saving a surprise for last. "Young Noboru; it is hard to tell with one just born, but I believe he will have pure silver hair!"
"Most auspicious!" This from Ichiro's boyhood friend and advisor, Shin.
Ichiro nodded, though his face clouded for a moment. "Hopefully it will not see him as troubled as his uncle."
Naomi rested a hand on her brother's arm and said "I am sure that Kiyoshi is fine, wherever he is. Do you not remember him as a child? He was always the smartest of us, the one to plan the mischief. If anyone can slip away from Goshi, he can!"
Master Yoshitaka nodded. "He was the finest student I ever had. I hope to one day see his training completed. For now know that he has his destiny, and you have yours. And, I would imagine, so does your new son for the First Minds to mark him so."
Ichiro dismissed his thoughts of his wayward brother with his peculiar ideas. His beaming grin returned fivefold as he said to his closest friends "Come. It is high time I meet my son." With that the patriarch of the Silver Phoenix Clan started for his bedroom and his sleeping family.
For the Love of Backstory
Moses is almost always forthcoming.
"I, uh, well, my parents died when I was about 8, I think - a cave-in. They didn't double-join the i-beams in the tunnel above ours and...well, anyway, there was a cave in. I was stuck down there for...I dunno, a long time. I slept six times before they found me. I think the news said a week. I knew my parents were dead, and for a while I thought I was too - that I'd become a ghost, down there, until I heard the digging sounds, and then I felt all of the pain. My arm" he holds up his right, mechanical arm, " was crushed and my leg too. The female bone." No, you correct him, probably the femur. "Oh."
"So I was sent to an orphanage. I had a lot more of me mechified than most of the other kids, but it was just, um, prosthetics at the time." The word is said carefully and slowly. "It was weird, because my brother, Tank, he survived. He's my big brother - older too. Really big. And I still have a couple cousins, but..." He stops.
"I don't know where they are, now."
After a while he continues. "But I ended up at this orphanage. And I was kinda famous, so people would come to see me sometimes. They just wanted to look, and I didn't talk then, so that was ok. Then - have you heard of Amuro Namie?" You have - she is the daughter and sole heir of a powerful Allskin family in Geneva Prime with connections to Goshi. "Well, she came to see me, and I remember that she was so pretty, I said 'you're pretty', and I hadn't talked in a while, so everyone was surprised. So after that I lived with the Amuro family, in their high-rise, in the middle of the city."
"It was really nice. I was really happy, and Namie was happy. I got much better upgrades, and I got to thinking about what I would do with myself, what my Job would be. I figured, I'm a survivor. I survived a cave-in, so how could I do a Job that was about surviving? That's how I got to be a Deep Delver, and I started fixing myself up to do that."
"So things were going good, and I grew up, and they tried to teach me a lot of stuff about the First Minds and about sitting still and about bowing. I think some of it stuck. But I turned 15 and it was time for me to get a job on my own, and I was all set to be a Delver. But Namie had another gift for me. She had this box" he indicates, pointing over his right shoulder, to the warm, clicking box that is now scuffed with wear but still quite intact "and she had a socket for it specially made. We mounted it, me helping and looking in a mirror - she didn't want anyone to help, and didn't want me to tell anyone. I didn't figure out why for a while - I just thought it was a secret, like our secret. And I guess its also that."
He walks for a while, very quiet (for a Mechified) and doesn't respond to your further prompts for some time.
"I'm changing. Everything is changing. So fast. I feel like...like I always keep seeing clearer, but I can't...say what I see. Its so different." After a few false starts at going on, "But after I left the Amuros, I think Namie's dad was happy I was gone, and she couldn't really visit me in the mines. She wrote a few times but...I'm not much of a writer, so I guess she gave up on it. Its...getting from the mines to their high-rise...its a long way, you know? Not just miles."
"So I was a Deep Delver, got promoted to Second Class. I saw my brother a couple of times - he's a 'spitter, and...well, I told you how big he is." Moses holds his arm over his head as far as it will go to indicate what he means. "But I think he was doing ok. Finding good work. I wasn't close with my cousins, but they helped me get in on a delving team. I got good at tossing big rocks onto a conveyor, and alter did my own delving. I was pretty good at it. Careful. No...no cave-ins for anybody else. And that's about that, before...all this happened."
"I, uh, well, my parents died when I was about 8, I think - a cave-in. They didn't double-join the i-beams in the tunnel above ours and...well, anyway, there was a cave in. I was stuck down there for...I dunno, a long time. I slept six times before they found me. I think the news said a week. I knew my parents were dead, and for a while I thought I was too - that I'd become a ghost, down there, until I heard the digging sounds, and then I felt all of the pain. My arm" he holds up his right, mechanical arm, " was crushed and my leg too. The female bone." No, you correct him, probably the femur. "Oh."
"So I was sent to an orphanage. I had a lot more of me mechified than most of the other kids, but it was just, um, prosthetics at the time." The word is said carefully and slowly. "It was weird, because my brother, Tank, he survived. He's my big brother - older too. Really big. And I still have a couple cousins, but..." He stops.
"I don't know where they are, now."
After a while he continues. "But I ended up at this orphanage. And I was kinda famous, so people would come to see me sometimes. They just wanted to look, and I didn't talk then, so that was ok. Then - have you heard of Amuro Namie?" You have - she is the daughter and sole heir of a powerful Allskin family in Geneva Prime with connections to Goshi. "Well, she came to see me, and I remember that she was so pretty, I said 'you're pretty', and I hadn't talked in a while, so everyone was surprised. So after that I lived with the Amuro family, in their high-rise, in the middle of the city."
"It was really nice. I was really happy, and Namie was happy. I got much better upgrades, and I got to thinking about what I would do with myself, what my Job would be. I figured, I'm a survivor. I survived a cave-in, so how could I do a Job that was about surviving? That's how I got to be a Deep Delver, and I started fixing myself up to do that."
"So things were going good, and I grew up, and they tried to teach me a lot of stuff about the First Minds and about sitting still and about bowing. I think some of it stuck. But I turned 15 and it was time for me to get a job on my own, and I was all set to be a Delver. But Namie had another gift for me. She had this box" he indicates, pointing over his right shoulder, to the warm, clicking box that is now scuffed with wear but still quite intact "and she had a socket for it specially made. We mounted it, me helping and looking in a mirror - she didn't want anyone to help, and didn't want me to tell anyone. I didn't figure out why for a while - I just thought it was a secret, like our secret. And I guess its also that."
He walks for a while, very quiet (for a Mechified) and doesn't respond to your further prompts for some time.
"I'm changing. Everything is changing. So fast. I feel like...like I always keep seeing clearer, but I can't...say what I see. Its so different." After a few false starts at going on, "But after I left the Amuros, I think Namie's dad was happy I was gone, and she couldn't really visit me in the mines. She wrote a few times but...I'm not much of a writer, so I guess she gave up on it. Its...getting from the mines to their high-rise...its a long way, you know? Not just miles."
"So I was a Deep Delver, got promoted to Second Class. I saw my brother a couple of times - he's a 'spitter, and...well, I told you how big he is." Moses holds his arm over his head as far as it will go to indicate what he means. "But I think he was doing ok. Finding good work. I wasn't close with my cousins, but they helped me get in on a delving team. I got good at tossing big rocks onto a conveyor, and alter did my own delving. I was pretty good at it. Careful. No...no cave-ins for anybody else. And that's about that, before...all this happened."
Mickey the Mixer
Don't cry Mickey. Don't cry. You'll rust.
Oh Sue, I'm so sorry! I tried... I meant to follow you. To fight with you. Omar and Amos strapped the chain gun to me. It was so heavy. Not, in a physical sense. Not heavy like concrete is heavy. Heavy like death is heavy. I just stared at it. Amos was trying to tell me how to fire it. I know they gave it to me because they expected me to be useless in a fight, and I am.
I hate Bullet-Spitters. What makes you do that? Design yourself so that the only thing you're good for is killing people. Why are there so many of them? And Goshi loves it. They love it when we turn each other into heaps of shrapnel.
I'm sorry, Sue. They scared me. I'm still scared. I haven't moved the whole time. I saw Omar and Amos go in. I heard the fighting. I heard your scream of rage Sue and I knew you were angry because your boys were dying. You've tried so hard to protect us. I know that. I know we have to protect each other and to be brave, but I... I do the dishes.
I didn't climb in the lift. I found a dark nook and I stayed there. I watched the Bullet-Spitters without eyes come out of the shadows and stand, waiting for the lift to come back up. You came out and you were so angry Sue. Even the Allskin was risking his life, getting shot and bleeding. Even the beautiful Vorax - she had a look on her face that I never want to see again, ever. She cut - she cut one of them in half. I was sick then, quietly, in my hand.
You all left, and I stayed hiding. I couldn't come out and tell you that I hadn't been able to help in the battle. I couldn't do that, so I stayed hidden. I heard more gunshots later, a long way off, and I was afraid you were dead.
It stayed silent for a long time. I didn't think I would ever leave that nook, but then I saw the pink light. A wavery pink light coming around the corner. It was like flame dancing around a man's fist. A Biomade. I nearly shot him, but the realization that I hadn't been able to shoot even the horrible eyeless Bullet-Spitters made me stop. I was not about to kill anyone. He wore a long dark coat of some fancy fabric, and his black hair was cut so long it fell over his eyes.
He walked right up to me. He had a finger to his lips making a shushing sound and for some reason it made me feel much better.
It's okay, Mickey. He didn't speak out loud. He said it in my mind.
You don't need to be scared anymore. Sue and the others will be back very soon. Why don't you go home and get the place ready for them.
That sounded fine. I could do that. I would get some more candy out for High Dive. I like watching her eat candy.
Everything will be fine. I just need you to give them a little message for me.
Okay. I can be a messenger.
He leaned in close to me and touched my forehead. There was a bright flash and for a moment I couldn't see. When my vision cleared his face was right there in front of me, with his hair brushed to the side. He had the strangest pink eyes. No. Red. Blood Red.
Go home now Mickey. Everything will be fine.
Oh Sue, I'm so sorry! I tried... I meant to follow you. To fight with you. Omar and Amos strapped the chain gun to me. It was so heavy. Not, in a physical sense. Not heavy like concrete is heavy. Heavy like death is heavy. I just stared at it. Amos was trying to tell me how to fire it. I know they gave it to me because they expected me to be useless in a fight, and I am.
I hate Bullet-Spitters. What makes you do that? Design yourself so that the only thing you're good for is killing people. Why are there so many of them? And Goshi loves it. They love it when we turn each other into heaps of shrapnel.
I'm sorry, Sue. They scared me. I'm still scared. I haven't moved the whole time. I saw Omar and Amos go in. I heard the fighting. I heard your scream of rage Sue and I knew you were angry because your boys were dying. You've tried so hard to protect us. I know that. I know we have to protect each other and to be brave, but I... I do the dishes.
I didn't climb in the lift. I found a dark nook and I stayed there. I watched the Bullet-Spitters without eyes come out of the shadows and stand, waiting for the lift to come back up. You came out and you were so angry Sue. Even the Allskin was risking his life, getting shot and bleeding. Even the beautiful Vorax - she had a look on her face that I never want to see again, ever. She cut - she cut one of them in half. I was sick then, quietly, in my hand.
You all left, and I stayed hiding. I couldn't come out and tell you that I hadn't been able to help in the battle. I couldn't do that, so I stayed hidden. I heard more gunshots later, a long way off, and I was afraid you were dead.
It stayed silent for a long time. I didn't think I would ever leave that nook, but then I saw the pink light. A wavery pink light coming around the corner. It was like flame dancing around a man's fist. A Biomade. I nearly shot him, but the realization that I hadn't been able to shoot even the horrible eyeless Bullet-Spitters made me stop. I was not about to kill anyone. He wore a long dark coat of some fancy fabric, and his black hair was cut so long it fell over his eyes.
He walked right up to me. He had a finger to his lips making a shushing sound and for some reason it made me feel much better.
It's okay, Mickey. He didn't speak out loud. He said it in my mind.
You don't need to be scared anymore. Sue and the others will be back very soon. Why don't you go home and get the place ready for them.
That sounded fine. I could do that. I would get some more candy out for High Dive. I like watching her eat candy.
Everything will be fine. I just need you to give them a little message for me.
Okay. I can be a messenger.
He leaned in close to me and touched my forehead. There was a bright flash and for a moment I couldn't see. When my vision cleared his face was right there in front of me, with his hair brushed to the side. He had the strangest pink eyes. No. Red. Blood Red.
Go home now Mickey. Everything will be fine.
A View from the Gallery
Guard duty really sucks sometimes. Today it sucks more than most.
It was supposed to be an easy job. I wait on the stairs, I check the security clearance of anyone who approaches. If anyone gives me trouble, I shoot them. That’s what the chain gun arm is for. No problem. Goshi Mining Corp pays pretty well when you’re a bullet-spitter, and with what they promised for this job, I’d be able to afford that new black rock processor upgrade.
It was all going well, not a person in sight. Nobody takes the stairs in a building like this, after all, and if someone did try to break in via the stairway, there are three hundred and thirty three stories. Good luck with that, punk.
Then she arrived.
She didn’t look like much. Just some pale Biomade girl. Maybe nineteen. Dressed up in one of those form fitting body suits that her parents should have told her not to wear, if she had parents. That’s a fucking shame, by the way. How can they not have parents? Never having a father or a mother, never having even the possibility of BEING a father or a mother, it makes me wonder if they’re even human anymore. That’s a dangerous thing to think, but at this point, I don’t give a shit. She had red eyes. That’s rare. Actually, now that I think of it, I’d only seen it twice before, and both of those were earlier the same day. Anyways, she comes walking up the stairs, one of those sonic dampening devices slung over her shoulder. It caught my interest, as I’d often thought about incorporating one of those into my upgrades. It’d be damn useful, if I could ever afford it. Mechanical upgrades may be many things, but quiet isn’t one of them.
“I.D.,” I say. She’s Biomade, so either she has clearance to be here or she’s working for one of Goshi’s competitors. Either way, at least I’m not bored out of my skull anymore.
She keeps coming up the stairs towards me, and I shrug my shoulders, spin up my gun arm, and repeat my request. “I.D.”
Then she blurs forward and kicks me in the chest. Damn. She hits way harder than a girl that size has any right to.
I open fire.
Bullets start flying everywhere, but before I can blink, she’s behind me. She kicks me in the face, and my whole head feels like a watermelon that got a little bit too close to a sledgehammer. Then the world tips over, and I go tumbling backwards down the stairs.
Ow.
By the time I come to my senses, she’s gone, and I’ve got a hell of a headache. My right arm’s broken, too. I knew I should have replaced that with an upgrade. Still, it’s my duty to report it. So I do.
“You gotta be kiddin’ me,” my supervisor replies over the radio.
“No joke, boss,” I say, and it annoys me to call him boss.
“Well, don’t just stand there, get after her! If she’s an assassin, we’ll be in a world of trouble.”
I look up the stairs. “Uh, boss, you know I’m only on the thirty second floor, right?”
“So?”
“This building is three hundred and thirty three fucking stories tall!”
“Yeah, and if you don’t follow her up those three hundred and thirty three stories, your ass is going to be stripped down and sold for spare parts.”
I grind my teeth. “Well, when you put it that way...”
Three hundred and thirty three stories.
Whoever this girl is, I think I hate her.
It takes forever to get to the top. Flight after flight after flight after flight. Then, finally, when I’m FINALLY at the top, what do I hear but the sound of gunfire coming from the room where the VIPs are gathered?
This just isn’t my day.
I make it up to floor three hundred and thirty three just in time to see this fat fuck grab onto some white stone. Then everything goes white.
Which brings me to now. Yeah. Now. I wake up in midair, falling. Towards the pavement three hundred and thirty three stories below. Let me tell you, it’s a whole lot quicker to take three hundred and thirty three stories in freefall than it is to climb them. As the ground gets closer, I can see the security forces swarming around the base of the building. One of them looks up and points at me.
In I come.
Guard duty really sucks sometimes.
Winds of Change
"Something is changing in Karia Vitalus." The voice was an old man's voice, heavy with the weight of years.
--------------
In the great city of the Cheldrun, two bodies hang by a pair of ropes around their necks some two hundred floors up, lab coats fluttering in the breeze. A man and a woman, both Biomade. Though they were each attractive in life, death had done them no favors. Pale and bloated now, they swung like ghastly piñatas, waiting, oh just waiting for the chance to spill their gruesome cargo onto the streets two hundred stories below.
--------------
Far away, the sun rose over the jungles southwest of Matamos. Just above the canopy grew a single, thick, bare branch; thereupon a strange, sinuous shape rose with the dawn, lifting its cold, reptilian eyes to the heavens in silent contemplation of the wonder it beheld there; for one shining moment, a new star was born above those jungles, rivaling the sun itself in brightness. There and gone.
The Anakarix frowned thoughtfully.
Those who have eyes, let them see.
--------------
"The wind doesn't taste like it used to." The same old man had spoken again. We can see him now: he is a Prill, grizzled and weary, and there is wisdom in his countenance. "The flame that was sparked on the night of the bonfire skies spreads unchecked across the land."
--------------
In the depths of Geneva Prime, a Mechified dreamed of freedom, of revolution. As he looked down upon the body of his Biomade supervisor, the thought rang clear in his mind: ‘We are not your appendages.’
Those who have ears, let them hear.
--------------
A Zipsum raced from tree to tree, trying desperately to evade her would-be-captors. Her cheeks bulged strangely, ill-fitting around the data pad she held gently in her mouth as she ran - what she had risked her life in the Cheldrun city to obtain: the operational planning for the next great logging operation into the jungles of the Anakarix.
Hard metal bullets ravaged the trees around her, turning their trunks to so much splintered pulp, sending splinters flying in all direction: the sound of gunfire was deafening.
Pain. Burning pain. A spear-like shard of wood had lanced into her vulnerable belly. Biting back tears, she raced onwards, and soon she was beyond the reach of the bullet-spitters, and of the angry metal bees that they spat.
The shouts of angry Cheldrun echoed loudly in the woods behind her.
Bleeding from the stomach, agony racing through her mind, she ran on.
--------------
"How did it go?" Rei asked. She already knew, but it was polite to ask anyways. She walked down a corridor of light with another girl about four years her junior. There is both a striking similarity and a striking contrast between the two girls: Rei's hair is off-white and the other girl's is shockingly pink; Rei's appearance is neat and functional, while the other girl's is meant to entice; Rei moves with an unconscious grace, while Aimi's movements are deliberate and calculated, though no less graceful. And for all that, they could be sisters. They are sisters, actually. Two distinct variations on the same DNA recombined in slightly differing ways. It was like that with all six of them: genetic siblings, all of them. Three girls, 00, 01, and 05. Three boys, 02, 03, and 04.
Aimi met Rei’s gaze, doing her best not to giggle at the thought of her meeting with that young man. "You already know," she said. "You're the one who can't turn it off, after all."
Rei nodded faintly and said nothing, allowing Aimi's irritation to pass over her and through her, leaving her self unmoved in its wake. "Yes," she said. It wasn't worth it to argue over this again. She knew that the others thought her defective. "You..." she trailed off.
"If you don't say it now, you'll only mope about how you wished you had said it for the next week," Aimi said, wishing not for the first time that Rei's mental shielding wasn't quite so well fortified. She supposed it was for the best. In Rei's case, it was either intense mental shielding or near-insanity. Even so, it was disconcerting, not having ready access to someone's thoughts. More so in the wake of recent events.
“You like him.”
Aimi blushed. “That’s private,” she said warningly.
“Sorry.” The teasing note was gone from Rei's voice now, vanished like the morning mist beneath the heat of the sun. A pause. “Do you really think of me when you think of madness?”
Aimi caught Rei’s eyes with her own, blood red eyes peering into blood red eyes. “What’s all this about, Rei? You don’t usually take an interest in other people’s missions.”
"Because it is so clear, it takes a long time to realize it,” Rei murmured cryptically.
Aimi smiled bemusedly. “In English?”
Rei shook her head. “You wouldn’t understand.”
For a moment, the shields wavered. For a moment, Aimi caught a glimpse of a Mechified Labor unit, (‘We are not your appendages!’ ) and a desperate sense of... something. It was gone. She frowned. “What was that?”
“Goodbye, Aimi,” Rei said. There was a note of finality in her voice. She walked away down the vast corridor of light, leaving her sister there near the entrance to the briefing room.
Aimi watched her go, confusion writ large in her expression. She wasn’t sure what just happened exactly, but she had the distinct impression that she had just missed something important. “Rei, wait,” she called.
“Go to your briefing, Aimi,” Rei said.
Despite her misgivings, Aimi did as she was told.
She always had.
--------------
“I fear that soon this fire may consume us all.” He shook his weathered head, pausing more from dramatic effect than out of necessity. “The magic of the dusk sages must be recovered if we are to have any hope of weathering the flames.” The old Prill looked at Inari with a serious expression. “This is your task, young one.”
Inari stared at the elder, wide-eyed. His task. His task! Finally, after years and years of demonstrating his cleverness to the whole choir, he had been entrusted not only with a song, but with a Task! A sacred quest! He was not totally successful in keeping the grin off of his face. “I won’t disappoint you, Elder Winter,” he said eagerly. He did not notice the very calculating look in the old Prill’s eye.
They sat in a clearing in the midst of a vast, old growth forest. It was dreary, and the light of the stars scarcely penetrated through the gloom of the place. The ground was treacherous here for any who did not know it well: for miles around the Prill village, sudden rifts and valleys opened unexpectedly in the wood, and sharp rocks were among the least dangerous of the things one might find at the bottom of one of these.
“I know you won’t,” the Elder said. “For the sake of us all, you won’t. Now, have you gathered what we asked for?”
“Water from a well holy to the Jevuum (and plenty of mud besides), a berry from the stores of the Zipsum, an Anakarix’s talon, blood spilled after insulting a Gogajin’s mother, a Vorax’s tail feather.” Inari frowned. “Elder Winter, did we really need all these things?”
Elder Winter’s upper lip twitched, as if he were trying not to laugh. “Indeed,” he said sagely as he collected the proffered items.
Inari looked unconvinced. The two red-furred fox-ears growing up from either side of his head twitched in irritation.
They were needed, mind you. They would make the blessing much easier. It’s just that other, easier to find items would have done the job just as well. Elder Winter put the items into a small leather pouch tied to his belt. “Come, Inari. You have proven yourself worthy of the task set before you. It is time to receive your blessing from the Choir of Elders.”
Inari nodded, his irritation forgotten. “Right.” He thought about it for a moment. They may be doing this to get rid of him, but it was still an honour to be chosen for a Sacred Quest.
Together, the two Prill rose to their feet and walked towards the distant firelight that came from the outer watch post of the village.
The forest allowed their passage only reluctantly, barely standing aside long enough to let them creep through, and closing immediately behind them.
The forest knew much, had seen much. Though it suffered the presence of the Prill, there were few others that walked on two legs that it would allow passage. Wooden creaks and voices like the rustling of leaves raced from tree to tree, and the air grew hot with anger. News had arrived from the distant north: another wood had fallen before the loggers. Murderers. Axe-bearers. Creatures of black smoke and steam.
Even as the song of the Choir of Elders rose into the air, filling all the land around the village with a sense of hope and glory, the trees took angry council together. No, it wasn’t time to act yet. They would watch, and wait, and plan.
For now.
The Mechified in Question
The Subject is Moses, a Labor unit modified for extreme conditions. You might have heard of him, actually. A delver. He's actually opened up at least one significant vein of Blackrock in a sector we thought was too hostile to tunnel in cheaply.
He's the second child of Hessia and Hammerhand. They lived in Sector 121 before the big collapse. Moses was 8, and he lived down there for days before a salvage crew found him. You might find some archived newsprints about it, actually. Most of the family is dead now - just a brother and maybe a couple cousins.
Caught the attention of one Namie Amuro - yes, the very same. She's his youngest daughter, and spoiled. She decided she wanted this Mech-kid as a friend - felt bad for him, or something. So they purchased his family debt and he moved in.
In retrospect, they should've gotten her a different fucking pet. But anyway.
He had the chance to learn more than they usually do, growing up in that family. He decided that he was a survivor, so he had to put that to use. He became a deep-delver, modifying himself in the usual ways. Made something of a name for himself, as I told you. Word is, he's pretty simple. Does his job but isn't deep, you know? Not a talker.
The key here is that, at some point, a certain artifact went missing from the Amuro family vaults. We're still subpoenaing the records, but we believe it was a First Mind artifact of unknown capacity. We've...interrogated some of the security staff, and one mentioned the words "Difference Engine". Mean anything to you? Yeah, me neither. But the last person, we think, to access the vault before it went missing was...you guessed it - Namie.
So the smart money is that Moses has this Difference Engine, and a few weeks later we have the incident with Assistant Director Ichiro Jun. Coincidence? We don't think so.
Whatever it is, it's a threat to us. Maybe something happened, maybe the AD got close. Who knows? The thing is - we need this artifact, and the easiest way is to cut it out of his corpse. Before this whole thing gets out of hand. You know how it goes.
Here's the file to look over. You'll probably have to go down there, and its quite a warren. Probably hire a guide - but not a Mech. Like I said, he was known. Too bad you have to (he looks her up and down) get your nice clothes dirty.
She smiles and rises to take the file.
"If blood washes out, dirt shouldn't be a problem."
He's the second child of Hessia and Hammerhand. They lived in Sector 121 before the big collapse. Moses was 8, and he lived down there for days before a salvage crew found him. You might find some archived newsprints about it, actually. Most of the family is dead now - just a brother and maybe a couple cousins.
Caught the attention of one Namie Amuro - yes, the very same. She's his youngest daughter, and spoiled. She decided she wanted this Mech-kid as a friend - felt bad for him, or something. So they purchased his family debt and he moved in.
In retrospect, they should've gotten her a different fucking pet. But anyway.
He had the chance to learn more than they usually do, growing up in that family. He decided that he was a survivor, so he had to put that to use. He became a deep-delver, modifying himself in the usual ways. Made something of a name for himself, as I told you. Word is, he's pretty simple. Does his job but isn't deep, you know? Not a talker.
The key here is that, at some point, a certain artifact went missing from the Amuro family vaults. We're still subpoenaing the records, but we believe it was a First Mind artifact of unknown capacity. We've...interrogated some of the security staff, and one mentioned the words "Difference Engine". Mean anything to you? Yeah, me neither. But the last person, we think, to access the vault before it went missing was...you guessed it - Namie.
So the smart money is that Moses has this Difference Engine, and a few weeks later we have the incident with Assistant Director Ichiro Jun. Coincidence? We don't think so.
Whatever it is, it's a threat to us. Maybe something happened, maybe the AD got close. Who knows? The thing is - we need this artifact, and the easiest way is to cut it out of his corpse. Before this whole thing gets out of hand. You know how it goes.
Here's the file to look over. You'll probably have to go down there, and its quite a warren. Probably hire a guide - but not a Mech. Like I said, he was known. Too bad you have to (he looks her up and down) get your nice clothes dirty.
She smiles and rises to take the file.
"If blood washes out, dirt shouldn't be a problem."
I'm Sorry But I'm Leaving Now
You should know that I didn't mean to do it. And I'm sorry. But I can't come back.
I went to the entrance to the new tunnel in sector 137 because I heard that something bad had happened. When I got there, they were pulling them out on stretchers, the Canaries were, I didn't know them. They had breathers on. They go down when the air is bad.
The bodies were all twisted up, like it hurt real bad. They had foam on their mouths, and there was blood coming out of them. It had soaked the stretchers and some dripped on the floor. The Mechs still had their engines going, so you smell the smoke, and then the puke, and then you see them when they come out of the tunnel.
There was...the Assistant Director for that Sector. He was talking quiet to a man next to him in a 'viro suit. I didn't mean to hear, but it was so quiet, with some watching but not talking at all, and the stretchers, and the smell - no one else was talking, so I heard. They don't notice me - they say its loud down here, I don't know, it was quiet to me.
"Looks like our previous estimates of noxious gases were accurate after all. Must've hit some sort of larger pocket that was just slowly venting before through a crevice perhaps. Don't worry," the man in the suit tensed up like he's going to leave "it isn't dangerous for us up here. We can send more recovery teams to clear up the gases - they're mostly flammable, you know. But this shouldn't slow down production so much that we miss the quota."
The other voice was tinny and echo-y in the suit. "You'd better fucking hope not. You'll be lucky if you still have a job after this loss - its the third in this sector this week!"
And I knew. I knew their faces. Grinder. Junior. Clock. A cave-in when a support-beam went out. Joshua and Jens when a cable went. Now these four. I knew one of them, one of the Greaser twins, where's his brother? And there's a Gogajin. I saw their faces, all twisted so it's hard to look at them.
The AD was talking again "...understand, we actually save money this way. Canaries are expensive - hard to train, and the quality of the equipment they need means wear-and-tear really digs into our bottom line. They take forever to come back with a reading. And it wasn't a sure thing here. So we sent these down as a test-case. Its all in my report. Saved us a couple hundred, and will save more in the long run. This means that our third-quarter earnings..."
I wasn't listening anymore. I was behind them. I reached out to get their attention, but its my steel arm that reaches out, smears grease on the AD's suit, hits him kind of heavy. Something is happening. A test-case. No Canaries sent down first. And they knew. I feel really sick.
He turned around, red-faced, and I get the headache they give you, but its not so bad all of a sudden. A ringing in my ears, that's it. He's all white in the face.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing? Get your fucking appendage off of me!"
From nowhere, [APPENDAGE - APPENDIX - SOMETHING ADDED ON].
The thoughts came from the same place the pain does.
He didn't understand, but suddenly, I did.
I began to boil. "You - we're not - appendages!" Suddenly I was up in front of him, standing straight. "We're not added on! We're -" I couldn't finish. My hand...I had the hand on, and it gripped him, around the neck. Squeezed. Hard.
The man in the 'viro suit is screaming something in his helmet, making it fog up. He emptied a gun into me, and one bullet hit flesh, but I didn't feel it, didn't even hear it. I boiled and boiled.
The Assistant Director's face turned red, then purple, really quick. "Agk! Bragk!" He tried to say something. His legs kicked and kicked as I held him in the air.
I thought of something clear and I said it and only remembered it after. "You don't think we're listening but we are! You don't listen! We'll make you listen!"
He looked at me, his eyes all wide and staring, but he wasn't listening. He stopped kicking. His head hung at a bad angle, his face all twisted up like...like the others on the stretchers. The man in the 'viro suit shouted into a device and I got scared. I hit him with my arm and he crumbled to the ground. I heard a tinny voice coming from the device.
I looked up and the Canaries had put down the stretchers they carried. They were looking at me. Everyone was looking at me. Mechified, steaming, healthy heat coming off of them. All of us together, just looking.
One came forward - a Noomatic. She said "Moses. They'll come for you now. You have to run."
"Where do I run?" Down. There's always down. Or - up and out?
"We can help you, but you have to come with us. Now."
I was moving before I felt myself decide, the pain pushing me, like a hand on my back. I want it to stop making me do things. And I want it to make me stronger so no one can stop me.
Now the pain is all I have.
I'm sorry. I don't want to kill anyone, but...
We are not your appendages.
I went to the entrance to the new tunnel in sector 137 because I heard that something bad had happened. When I got there, they were pulling them out on stretchers, the Canaries were, I didn't know them. They had breathers on. They go down when the air is bad.
The bodies were all twisted up, like it hurt real bad. They had foam on their mouths, and there was blood coming out of them. It had soaked the stretchers and some dripped on the floor. The Mechs still had their engines going, so you smell the smoke, and then the puke, and then you see them when they come out of the tunnel.
There was...the Assistant Director for that Sector. He was talking quiet to a man next to him in a 'viro suit. I didn't mean to hear, but it was so quiet, with some watching but not talking at all, and the stretchers, and the smell - no one else was talking, so I heard. They don't notice me - they say its loud down here, I don't know, it was quiet to me.
"Looks like our previous estimates of noxious gases were accurate after all. Must've hit some sort of larger pocket that was just slowly venting before through a crevice perhaps. Don't worry," the man in the suit tensed up like he's going to leave "it isn't dangerous for us up here. We can send more recovery teams to clear up the gases - they're mostly flammable, you know. But this shouldn't slow down production so much that we miss the quota."
The other voice was tinny and echo-y in the suit. "You'd better fucking hope not. You'll be lucky if you still have a job after this loss - its the third in this sector this week!"
And I knew. I knew their faces. Grinder. Junior. Clock. A cave-in when a support-beam went out. Joshua and Jens when a cable went. Now these four. I knew one of them, one of the Greaser twins, where's his brother? And there's a Gogajin. I saw their faces, all twisted so it's hard to look at them.
The AD was talking again "...understand, we actually save money this way. Canaries are expensive - hard to train, and the quality of the equipment they need means wear-and-tear really digs into our bottom line. They take forever to come back with a reading. And it wasn't a sure thing here. So we sent these down as a test-case. Its all in my report. Saved us a couple hundred, and will save more in the long run. This means that our third-quarter earnings..."
I wasn't listening anymore. I was behind them. I reached out to get their attention, but its my steel arm that reaches out, smears grease on the AD's suit, hits him kind of heavy. Something is happening. A test-case. No Canaries sent down first. And they knew. I feel really sick.
He turned around, red-faced, and I get the headache they give you, but its not so bad all of a sudden. A ringing in my ears, that's it. He's all white in the face.
"What the fuck do you think you're doing? Get your fucking appendage off of me!"
From nowhere, [APPENDAGE - APPENDIX - SOMETHING ADDED ON].
The thoughts came from the same place the pain does.
He didn't understand, but suddenly, I did.
I began to boil. "You - we're not - appendages!" Suddenly I was up in front of him, standing straight. "We're not added on! We're -" I couldn't finish. My hand...I had the hand on, and it gripped him, around the neck. Squeezed. Hard.
The man in the 'viro suit is screaming something in his helmet, making it fog up. He emptied a gun into me, and one bullet hit flesh, but I didn't feel it, didn't even hear it. I boiled and boiled.
The Assistant Director's face turned red, then purple, really quick. "Agk! Bragk!" He tried to say something. His legs kicked and kicked as I held him in the air.
I thought of something clear and I said it and only remembered it after. "You don't think we're listening but we are! You don't listen! We'll make you listen!"
He looked at me, his eyes all wide and staring, but he wasn't listening. He stopped kicking. His head hung at a bad angle, his face all twisted up like...like the others on the stretchers. The man in the 'viro suit shouted into a device and I got scared. I hit him with my arm and he crumbled to the ground. I heard a tinny voice coming from the device.
I looked up and the Canaries had put down the stretchers they carried. They were looking at me. Everyone was looking at me. Mechified, steaming, healthy heat coming off of them. All of us together, just looking.
One came forward - a Noomatic. She said "Moses. They'll come for you now. You have to run."
"Where do I run?" Down. There's always down. Or - up and out?
"We can help you, but you have to come with us. Now."
I was moving before I felt myself decide, the pain pushing me, like a hand on my back. I want it to stop making me do things. And I want it to make me stronger so no one can stop me.
Now the pain is all I have.
I'm sorry. I don't want to kill anyone, but...
We are not your appendages.
Mechified
Blue Collar Machines...
Players who wish to play a Mechified should determine very precisely what practical purpose they have chosen to serve – they’re function. With a clear idea of their function they should detail what mechanical modifications they’ve made to themselves and what modifications they’ve yet to make. Every Mechified is pursuing their own “Forged Destiny” defined as the perfect state of mechification for achieving their goal. What is your Forged Destiny? What job has your capabilities lent itself to? How do you feel about Mechified social oppression?
The First Minds divided the Cheldrun race into three castes when the Great Experiment was launched. While Allskins remained unchanged and the Biomade began genetic manipulation the Mechified underwent extensive cybernetic surgery.
Unfortunately, in such a situation someone usually falls to the bottom of the heap and that ended up being the Mechified. Numerically the largest of the castes, and always the caste which was most pragmatic, the Mechified have for millennia been the working class of the Cheldrun. Some embrace this condition with pride, others chafe against it quietly, some rebel violently, but it is extremely rare in Cheldrun society that you will see any Mechified in a position of authority.
Partly this is because the Mechified are unused to the very idea of having authority over others. From the very beginning of the Great Experiment the Mechified have tended toward a radically egalitarian mindset. Whereas the Biomade set an Oversight council above them to direct their experiment, the Mechified made it the individual responsibility of each Mechified to innovate. Every Mechified from early childhood begins tinkering and learning about mechanical engineering. Every Mechified directs their own gradual mechification over their lifetime, improving and converting their normal body functions. Since any person, regardless of genetics or social class can theoretically achieve radical breakthroughs in mechanical augmentation, Mechified culture has eschewed any kind of hierarchy.
Alongside this egalitarian push for innovation in the Mechified psyche is a brand of extreme pragmatism. While every Mechified is looking to improve themselves and finding clever and new ways to do that, mostly they look for small improvements designed to achieve practical results. Most Mechified choose a very specific function which they wish to excel at, for example “steel driving”. They then go about designing mechanical augmentations which make them more efficient at that task. In this case a piston arm, a reinforced frame, and stabilized legs, maybe even additional legs or supports. Many of these improvements will be relatively standardized based on the innovations of the generations before, but each Mechified will seek to tweek it just a bit to make it better. Every time a Mechified successfully makes an improvement he shares his discoveries with others who are then free to build on his designs. The Mechified are, in other words, an open source caste.
The unfortunate side-effect of Mechified pragmatism is that they have developed themselves so effectively into purposeful machines that the people who do feel comfortable having authority over others have typically regarded them as tools. Under the traditional rule of the Allskins, the Mechified were treated with dignity, but nevertheless expected to serve as laborers, warriors and do all manner of high risk work. The Biomade who now run the city-states of Karia feel less need to treat the Mechified with dignity. As a result the Mechified fill the lowest rungs on the ladder. They work the Blackrock mines (a dangerous and deadly job), serve as enforcers for the corporate police forces, muck the gutters, work assembly lines, do construction, and do anything else with extreme conditions and a short life-expectancy.
If it weren’t for the fact that the Mechified do actually find this kind of work fulfilling, there would have been a massive rebellion long ago. Mechified pride themselves on their ability to do what no one else wants to or is able to. Even they however have their limits. They reached their limits toward the end of the Flight with the old Saish-maintained traditional hierarchy. Along with some persuasive Biomade they rebelled and shattered the former Cheldrun way of life. At the time, the Biomade had promised them an equal share of a future open to anyone with brains and a strong work ethic. It has proved to be an empty promise. So many Mechified are again reaching the end of their patience with the Biomade leadership. In various cities and in the workforce of many corporations unrest is stirring.
The problem is that the Mechified are so egalitarian that they aren’t very good at organizing a resistance. Indeed, many Mechified whose lot in life isn’t quite as dire are happy to fight against their brothers and thus the caste is divided and conflicted within itself. Mechified enforcers clash with rebellious Mechified laborers, who strike industrial targets seeking to cripple the power structure. Unions are organizing in secret, but the Biomade can read minds and these groups are often crushed, cruelly, before they even take shape. No real progress is being made, but the ferment is spreading.
Mechified are born in the normal way to two parents and raised in tight-knit nuclear families. The parents usually begin the child at a very early age experimenting with mechanical parts and even wearing various exo-mech suits for practice. At the age of 8 kids are allowed to pick their first cybernetic enhancement. These are usually like training wheels, intended to be traded in at a later date for a fully-functional model. By 12 Mechified are beginning to articulate their Forged Destiny (or goal for personal mechification). By 15 they receive their engines and begin doing serious mechanical augmentation. At 17 they are considered adults and they commence working in some role suited to their function.
***Players who wish to play a Mechified should determine very precisely what practical purpose they have chosen to serve – they’re function. With a clear idea of their function they should detail what mechanical modifications they’ve made to themselves and what modifications they’ve yet to make. Every Mechified is pursuing their own “Forged Destiny” defined as the perfect state of mechification for achieving their goal. What is your Forged Destiny? What job has your capabilities lent itself to? How do you feel about Mechified social oppression?
| Mechified attitudes towards…. | |
| Cheldrun | The makers. The builders. The designers. We could create whole worlds if we set our minds to it. |
| Allskins | The old lords are no longer our masters, which is good, but their disgraced state almost makes us feel pity for them. |
| Biomade | Whatever they say, the Biomade have made themselves the new masters. Damn their freakish intelligence. We’re they’re equals and they had better acknowledge it. |
| Mechified | We are the guts of the operation. Take out one gear or piston and a whole machine stops working. Well we’re the whole damn engine. What would they do without us? |
| Karians | What the fuck is that? If I didn’t know better I’d say these half-animal freaks were a twisted Biomade genetic experiment. |
| Anakarix | Huh? A talking lizard. If one of those monsters spits acid in my face I’m gonna rip its tail off. |
| Gogajin | Now these guys are good for some entertainment. They’ll rip a cow in half if you get them pissed off enough, which is easy to do. Just say something about his mother. |
| Jevumm | What was that? Did you hear that? I swear if it was one of those cats I’m gonna start letting the lead fly. I don’t want one of them within 50 meters of me. |
| Prill | Would somebody please make her stop singing that Enya shit. It’s doing my head in! |
| Vorax | I heard there was some sort of bird out there that couldn’t handle the smoke. What’s their problem? They’ve got the whole sky to breathe in, just stay the hell away from the smoke. |
| Zipsum | Dammit. Something’s jammed in my gears. Hey look at this! It’s a fucked up little squirrel. I must have stepped on it back there. |
Mechanized Moses
This is a first attempt at creating a full character using BESM, and one idea I have for a character for this game. The basic premise is that this character is a Mechanized, trained and designed to work in mining operations. His right arm, shoulder, much of his torso, part of his neck, and right hip and leg are all mechanized, so he often leans his weight on that side and has a heavy, limping gait when he walks or runs as his muscle tries to keep up with the machinery. His right arm ends in a complex socket which accommodates a thick-fingered hand that lacks some fine dexterity but is relatively versatile as well as a number of powered tools useful in mining.
He has earned enough money to buy out his contract, though he can't afford to get the rest of his family out, and the extra work it required took its toll on his body, which is now in need of repairs that he can't afford. This leaves him in desperate need of some new income, which easily connects him to what's going on overall.
Ultimately, he will feel a growing sense of vision for himself. He is meant to lead his people to freedom. The Mechanized can be more than they currently are, particularly the lowest castes of heavy laborers. To accomplish anything, however, he will need to learn more about his nature, and educate himself in general a great deal. As a laborer, he had no time and little access to education or mental stimulation, leaving him only barely equipped to deal with the complexities of life on his own.
(Somewhat simplified from the original version)
[200pts]
Body 4 Mind 2 Spirit 6
Level 10 Armor (metal plating)
Aura of Inspiration +2
Hardboiled +20 Shock Value
Melee Attack: Unarmed +1
Ranged Attack: Throw +1
Special Defenses 10 (as written for Labor Mechanized)
Super Strength +2 (+4 Body for Strength rolls, +2 damage)
Tough +2
Tunneling 1 (10m/hour)
Weapon: Machine Arm Lvl 2
Marked -2 (corporate marking and ID from his previous life)
Skeleton in Closet (he killed an overseer, of course, just as he'd bought his contract, and had to flee the mines)
Combat Value 4
Attack Combat Value +5
Defense Combat Value +4
Melee damage multiplier x8
Shock Value 32
Unarmed damage 12
Thrown damage 12
Machine Arm damage 22
Area Knowledge 2 (Mines)
Climbing 2 (Caverns)
Demolitions 2 (Tunneling)
Mechanics 2 (Mechanized)
Health 60
Energy 40
He has earned enough money to buy out his contract, though he can't afford to get the rest of his family out, and the extra work it required took its toll on his body, which is now in need of repairs that he can't afford. This leaves him in desperate need of some new income, which easily connects him to what's going on overall.
Ultimately, he will feel a growing sense of vision for himself. He is meant to lead his people to freedom. The Mechanized can be more than they currently are, particularly the lowest castes of heavy laborers. To accomplish anything, however, he will need to learn more about his nature, and educate himself in general a great deal. As a laborer, he had no time and little access to education or mental stimulation, leaving him only barely equipped to deal with the complexities of life on his own.
(Somewhat simplified from the original version)
[200pts]
Body 4 Mind 2 Spirit 6
Level 10 Armor (metal plating)
Aura of Inspiration +2
Hardboiled +20 Shock Value
Melee Attack: Unarmed +1
Ranged Attack: Throw +1
Special Defenses 10 (as written for Labor Mechanized)
Super Strength +2 (+4 Body for Strength rolls, +2 damage)
Tough +2
Tunneling 1 (10m/hour)
Weapon: Machine Arm Lvl 2
Marked -2 (corporate marking and ID from his previous life)
Skeleton in Closet (he killed an overseer, of course, just as he'd bought his contract, and had to flee the mines)
Combat Value 4
Attack Combat Value +5
Defense Combat Value +4
Melee damage multiplier x8
Shock Value 32
Unarmed damage 12
Thrown damage 12
Machine Arm damage 22
Area Knowledge 2 (Mines)
Climbing 2 (Caverns)
Demolitions 2 (Tunneling)
Mechanics 2 (Mechanized)
Health 60
Energy 40
Damned Bullet-Spitters...
Karak took a long deep drag of his cheap cigar. When you’re a miner in the filthiest pit on the continent, a black-rock outfit he and his fellow mechified referred to affectionately as Karia’s Asshole, there isn’t much point in worrying about what you inhale. In fact, Karak reasoned, most miners eventually chose to have their entire breathing apparatus replaced with a more efficient mechanical one. It had the downside of making your voice sound like the rumble of an internal combustion engine, but the filters would keep nasty particulates out of your bloodstream and keep you alive longer. Mind you, longer meant till forty-five or so. It wasn’t a long life, the life of a miner.
The elevator Karak was riding in clanked and ground its way up the narrow stone shaft thousands of feet back toward the surface. The steel mesh walls of the box gave Karak the opportunity to enjoy the long boring rush of jagged gray rock occasionally interrupted by protruding lead pipes leaking steam from their joints. Normally Karak himself would be as impassive and boring as the stone walls, but today he was anxious. He kept looking up through a spot in the roof of the elevator which had rusted through to see if he could perceive a tiny pinprick of light that would mean he was nearing the top. Nothing. He looked at a gauge on his left bicep which displayed atomic time, temperature, barometric pressure and his own heart rate. It takes nine minutes and thirty-seven seconds to make the ascent, he told himself. Still four minutes to go. Relax.
Fuck! He threw his cigar out a gap in the mesh, it burst into a shower of sparks on the stone and tumbled into the abyss. The elevator rushed on, oblivious. Karak was not relaxed in the least. How could he be? Very likely waiting for him at the top of the shaft was a phalanx of bullet-spitters with no intention of accepting a surrender. Not that Karak would ever surrender, but still, they could at least pretend they were interested in taking this to the authorities.
The worst part about being stuck in this elevator with, he checked the gauge, three minutes and seventeen seconds to go is that Karak had plenty of time to beat himself up for elementary mistakes. He knew that the foreman was on the take. Why had Karak thought he would be sympathetic to the cause? When the foreman walked in on him setting the charge he’d wasted valuable seconds attempting to convince the foreman it was the right thing to do. It was about liberty, he’d said. The liberty to not die at middle age. The liberty to be treated like a Cheldrun instead of a fucking piece of machinery. Can’t you see Mr. foreman, he’d said, they don’t care about us so we gotta go after the thing they do care about – they’re money. That’s why I’m blowing this passage. The charges are set to go off tonight, when the workers will be at home, so no one will get hurt. Please don’t get in my way, Mr. foreman.
It had been to no avail. The foreman had already triggered the silent alarm before he even walked in the room. He had been talking with Karak as a delaying tactic and it had worked. By the time Karak had realized what was going on escape routes were cut off. The only way out was this old elevator, rarely used since the new hover sleds had been installed in the main shaft.
Why had he been so foolish? The answer was obvious, but he could only admit it when he was alone like this. Saying it out loud would have gotten him mercilessly ridiculed by his fellow insurgents and they never would have trusted him with this mission. Karak believed in the cause. He did. But the thought of killing a fellow Mechified made him nauseous. As soon as he’d spotted the foreman he should have killed him and made his escape. He thought he could avoid killing, but when he’d already wasted countless seconds talking and the foreman was still delaying Karak had gone into a panic. He activated the motors in his left arm which ran a three-foot-long drill-bit where his hand should be and charged. The foreman, like most Mechified, had steel plating over his torso, but the alloyed drill ate through it quickly tearing a gruesome hole six-inches in circumference through the man’s chest. Blood, oil and other fluids ran freely out.
So that was that. Now Karak was a murderer and a terrorist and the bullet-spitters, specially built Mechified for private security, would waste no time talking with him.
Karak looked up. A pinprick of light was now visible through the rusty hole. Might as well give them a show, he thought, turning a crank on his hip which set the motors in his mechanical legs to a higher idle. He checked gauges in each of his knees. Oil pressure fine. Then he flipped open the fuel chamber in his left arm and shoved in a fist sized chunk of blackrock. He closed the chamber, pressed the latch to seal it and wrapped his whole hand around the engage lever. He shifted it to the farthest forward notch with a ratcheting sound and the plunger crushed the hunk of blackrock as it simultaneously ignited. Molten blackrock coursed through channels in his arm, red-hot veins of power revving the motors which controlled the drill to a high-pitched whine and pouring inky smoke out an exhaust pipe at his elbow. While fueled like this he could drill through a ten foot thick wall of solid diamond. Too bad there wouldn’t be such a wall between him and the people with all the guns.
Light was streaming from the opening above, now. A matter of seconds till the rusty old cage came to a stop in the brightly lit, fluorescent halls of the Goshi Mining Corp. basement.
Karak took his steel mining mask and pressed it over his face until the magnetic clamps took hold. He was now looking through special lenses designed to amplify light. It would make him blind in the full light of the surface, but it would also protect his face from the bullets. Why would he want to see the greeting party anyway? The only part of him now not either made of or covered by steel was his right arm, which he left bare even of clothes; the last sign he was still a Cheldrun.
The light grew intolerably bright washing everything out in a haze of ivory. Then the elevator rattled to a halt and the doors opened.
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Ruins
Cities
