Surprisingly, Blart’s plan didn’t backfire, at least for the duration of time it took us to get to the radio station. We walked a few miles across town, making a wide circle around the neighborhoods where the most gunfire, screaming, and burning was happening, and finally arrived at the radio station. When we got there, the place was completely empty. Inside, the lights were off, and the fence around the place was chained and locked.

  “So how’d you get in there, porky?” I asked him.

  “I went around back,” he explained, leading me to a small hole that he’d cut through the fencing. It was about the right size for a potbelly pig. Blart ducked through and turned around on the other side, looking at me like he was going to enjoy watching me crawl through the mud. Instead, I drew my kukri and used its unnaturally keen edge to widen the hole enough for me to fit through.

  Inside, I followed Blart to the base of the radio tower, where there was a small control room. Bootprints ran back and forth in the mud all around the place, some of them very deep and wide, likely a daug. The whole thing put me on edge. Its door hung slightly ajar, but there was a window with a view inside that showed that the little shack was empty. I booted the door open anyway, clearing the small room quickly before gesturing for Blart to come in. He did, and after looking around the little room fruitlessly, he whined a little.

  “Blart… what does that noise you’re making mean?”

  “Well, I left the bags right here,” he muttered, “and…”

  “And now they’re not. You little son of a bitch. That was our way out of this!”

  “Shame,” said a familiar voice from behind me, before I took a shot to the kidney. I instantly knew that the organ had been ruptured, which was interesting in an academic sense. What was more pressing, though, was that my knees jellied from the overwhelming flash of agony, and a hand clapped around the back of my neck to hold me up. A groan escaped my mouth as I was tossed, like a little clown boy, out into the mud and grass outside. My body didn’t quite work after that, though I was still fighting to get to my feet when something unimaginably heavy landed on my chest.

  Fighting for breath as the tremendous weight pushed me into the weight and mud squelched out from behind my back, I swung my kukri feebly at the weight I couldn’t see. It thunked into something, but with the lack of force, it only barely bit. Thin, black, slightly wavy lines appeared in the air around my kukri, and the weight increased briefly before something heavy swatted the blade out of my hand, sending it tumbling through the air and breaking my wrist in the process. It really wasn’t my night.

  “Ready to die?” The voice asked, and I suddenly realized where I’d heard it from. Suddenly the weight on my chest reduced enough that I could breath, and I gasped in a breath, relishing the stars that crossed my vision with the sudden influx of air. All at once, an armored figure appeared, one boot firmly planted on my chest, the other calf-deep in the mud. It held a small, blocky, double barreled weapon in my face.

  “Didn’t I kill you?” I asked the armored figure, amazed that he was still alive.

  “I got better,” he assured me. “You won’t.”

  “Wait, Max,” a woman’s voice, which I also recognized, said. She walked out of the operations shack, holding a struggling and mildly squealing Blart.

  “Wait? This puke shot me, I’m not waiting another second.”

  “No!” She shouted, and heaved Blart at the man. He pulled the trigger at the same time Blart made contact with him, the flying pig throwing his aim off. Instead of plowing through my head, his shots strafed from my shoulder down my bicep, absolutely destroying my arm. Helpfully, the computer in my skull reported to me that the limb had been amputated.

  “You dumbass, look at what you’ve done! He’s our chance to topple this whole thing!” Blart made an undignified, but very piglike noise as he righted himself and tried to stumble off. “Take another step, rider, and you’re dead,” the woman commanded, and Blart froze. He had a remarkable survival instinct, the thought wandered through my shocked mind. “Put a healpak on him,” she told Max.

  “For this guy?” He asked, disgusted. “What are you up to?”

  “That was an order!”

  “Yes, sir,” Max grumbled, putting a sardonic edge on the word that confused me as to their relationship. He pulled a rolled up package out of a pouch on his belt and tore it open. He pulled out a thick cloth and leaned down, wrapping it over my brand new stump. It burned like nothing I’d ever felt before, like molten metal being poured right onto my stump and then, mercifully, I finally blacked out.

  - - -

  I awoke, what felt like second later, to a massive jolt of agony applied directly to my everything. Jerking, jolting, and vomiting, I tried to twist to the side but only succeeded in turning my head and spitting chunks. Cold, steely bands were wrapped around my chest, neck, legs, and arm. Singular.

  “Fuck me, did you gotta shoot my arm off?” I asked nobody in particular.

  “I wanted to shoot your head off,” Max replied from behind me. I looked around, twisting my head as much as I could, but I couldn’t lay eyes on him.

  Find this and other great novels on the author's preferred platform. Support original creators!

  “Oh, well thanks a million for that,” I grumbled. “Why don’t you go ahead and shoot me in the face the next time you get an urge like that?”

  “Don’t tempt me, cockbag.”

  “Boys,” the woman said. “Let’s be friends. We can all get what we want here.”

  “How do you know what I want?” I shot back, feeling petulant.

  “Most people don’t want to die,” she deadpanned.

  “Well, whatever you want, I don’t have it. Better turn me loose.”

  “As a matter of fact, you do have what I want. I want to get off this planet. I’m tired of this place, it’s a shithole, and there’s nothing good happening on the whole planet. Plus, the other family has a much better contract. Getting paid nearly double for almost the same job.”

  “Then leave?” I suggested, hopefully. “Trust me, I don’t want you here any more than you do. Well, I definitely don’t want your trained gorilla here, I wouldn’t mind seeing more of you,” Another wave of agony shot through the whole of my being right about then, and I am nearly certain that I had a seizure. Either way, it seemed like some time had passed along with the pain, and the woman was suddenly standing there. She was as beautiful as I remembered, all sharp features and demeanor, something like a brightly colored sea snake.

  “Welcome back,” she told me, almost gently. “Let me explain your situation. There are two metal prongs, attached to what we call a digital interface gun, inserted into your spinal column. They both intercept all signals sent from an NII, and are capable of sending signals to it. For example, directly stimulating the pain centers of your brain. If you would like for what Max did to you to not happen again, you’re going to agree to my terms. Good?”

  “’ure,” I said, realizing that I’d bit the tip of my tongue off. My mouth tasted like blood, and it hurt, badly, to speak.

  “Good,” she said, reaching forward and putting her hand on my cheek. Her skin was hot to the touch. “Tell me your plan.” Yet again, and with no small amount of pain, I related it to her, and she looked thoughtful as she listened.

  “You came up with that on your own?”

  “Ha’ he’p,” I said. “AI.”

  “Yes, that makes sense. Alright, Melvin, here’s the deal. When you get up there, you broadcast the presence of the riders to the whole planet. In return, you get your pig back.”

  “Why?” I asked, giving her a curious look. My tongue hurt too much to add that I didn’t particularly want Blart back. “Why me?”

  “It’ll cause worldwide chaos enough to destabilize your government, and the sociological data will be tainted enough to make the Archaeologists lift their blockade. The loss of the moon base, paired with the intense paranoia you will generate will allow for my employers to act in the open, and I’ll be finished with this crapshoot of a contract that has gone far beyond what I ever expected it to. As for why you in particular, who knows, maybe I have a sense of poetic justice. Any other questions?”

  “Wha’ your ‘ame?” She smiled at the question, genuine warmth entering her face.

  “When you can ask it properly, I’ll tell you.” I groaned in disappointment. “So, what do you say?”

  Instead of saying anything, I nodded my head in assent, then slipped into velvety black warmth and knew nothing anymore.

  - - -

  I was getting tired of waking up in tubes.

  “I’m getting tired of dragging your fat ass into tubes,” the voice of the Dragon captain said, as if to answer my thought, directly into my mind.

  “As a matter of fact, I’d prefer to stay out of them myself.”

  “Yeah, well, the other Dragons dropped you off here and handed me a cybernetic arm. Told me you’d need it. I’ve expressed my doubts, but she was insistent.” As he was speaking, the tank began to flush, and I exhaled all the goop that was in my lungs so I didn’t have a coughing fit after it dropped past my lips. With the buoyancy provided by the stuff gone, I felt my full weight come back. More importantly, I felt my right arm weighing on me like a lump of steel.

  “What the fuck did you do to me?” I asked him, trying to bring my arm up to look at it. It flew up all wrong and slammed into the glass face of the pod with a crack. The pod slid open and I tumbled out of it instead of stepping, finding my balance all wrong.

  “We’ve got a window a little more than three days wide. There’s no time to regrow your whole arm, so we did the second best thing.” I pushed myself to my hands and knees, being extremely careful with my new right arm, and stared at it. The limb looked to be made of metallic plates, almost the same color as my skin. With a start, I realized that it was a bit too long.

  “Why the hell is it so long? And the skin tone doesn’t match!”

  “It wasn’t originally made for you. Anything else you’d like to complain about? Maybe the texture of your palms won’t feel right when you’re-”

  “Ahhh, shut up. How the hell am I going to fight with this thing? I can barely control it!” As if to punctuate my statement, when I tried to push myself up, the limb straightened forcefully and I bounced off the ground, ricocheting painfully off the tube behind me.

  “You’re going to practice for the next two days. Fully cyberized limb replacements like these are built with battlefield replacements in mind. It links with the computer in your head and interprets your commands as best as possible. If you didn’t have that, this would be hopeless. As it is, it’s probably not going to go well. And we’re definitely not unlocking the onboard weaponry.”

  “Onboard weaponry?” I asked, my earlier reservations completely gone.

  “Don’t even think about it, you’ll blow your head off picking your nose.” When he said this, I brought my hand up to look at it in wonder. Rather, I tried to bring it up to look at my hand. In reality, the traitorous arm twitched upwards and I mashed myself in the face.

  So began my training to use my arm.

  - - -