“I’m surprised you snore.”
Erie sat on her couch wearing a different black hooded coat. Instead of pulling over her head as usual, she had let the cowl slip back, revealing a large protrusion at the base of her skull.
Althea processed all of this information as she woke. She left SlIDE and its enhancements on all of the time now. Pontikos indicated that and circled it as an “unknown implant.”
“I don’t think I landed well when I fell asleep.”
Althea rolled her neck, feeling the odd pinch and pull of her inorganics. She read, she knew about how the mesh between skin and chrome was supposed to itch and burn. But hers just felt tight, like she had her muscles bunched a few centimeters beyond her skin. The phantom parts of her chest and back had ceased itching upon contact with the enemy yesterday.
The thought train lead her back to a dark place. Rather than face the bogeyman, she shifted to a different uncaring Persona. In an effort to stave off madness, this one only differed from her base in that she was almost incapable of introspection.
Something feels off about that thought…
Erie interrupted her inner monologue,
“You also talk in your sleep.”
Althea froze, wondering where Erie was going with that.
“Alpha level implants have one of the highest maximum values of any implant. Without even denting your stipend, you could book clandestine one-way passage off Earth.”
Suddenly glad she had only slightly adjusted her Persona, Althea said,
“And you want passage off Earth. What if someone offered you that for me?”
Erie nodded and said,
“The thought crossed my mind, but you are still technically my patient, which is why I am helping you. I just need you to live long enough for the insurance judgment against you to process.”
“How did you insure your illegal chop shop?”
Erie blinked at Althea and tuned her head,
“The same way everyone does? Why does that matter?”
Erie set a pair of tea cups on a low table between their couches. A drone crawled over on treads bearing a tea kettle with service.
Althea waited until the tea was poured and Erie splashed milk and sugar into her own cup and said,
“What happens if the judgment goes with me?”
“Since you’re not contesting it, that’s unlikely. Why are you so interested in my insurance?”
Althea shrugged. The words just seemed to pour from her mouth as soon as they occurred to her.
“What is that on the back of your head?”
Erie blushed this time.
“I wanted to talk to you about that.” A drone wobbled over with a platter of cookies. It released a set of legs on the bottom of the platter and made a new fold out table of cookies. Erie grabbed two and pointed to a pair of dark discs with a red dot on the top.
“Those are good. You should have one.”
Erie held one in her hand and ate the other while she waited for Althea to select the suggested cookie. She nodded at Althea and swallowed the second cookie in a single bite, rolling her eyes back and humming as she did.
It tasted delightful. The outer chocolate shell covered a more delicate cookie whose texture would have been disastrous without the shell. A final dollop of cherry jelly in the center of the cookie completed the perfect trio of bitter, sweet and sour.
Erie said,
“I am a little older than I look. I was born eighty-three years ago. Give or take a year, I spent twenty in the black and nearly fifty working as part of a Surge Detachment.”
Althea said,
“Bullshit.”
She knew who Erie was talking about. Hundreds of stories talked about the Core world’s Surge teams. Black operatives par excellence, they played a pivotal role in the Core’s elimination of the Eliott Rebellion and they put down the Subversion terror cells.
Erie shrugged and said,
“I can prove it. Look.”
She lifted her hair and turned her back to face Althea. Under the woman’s hair Althea could see a large housing that stuck out almost seven centimeters from Erie’s skull.
Pontikos said,
“This almost resembles primitive Persona stations used to treat insanity and other forms of antisocial behavior, Mistress.”
Althea recognized a patch interface on the back, but nothing other than the writing. In large letters that had been painted years ago and faded since it read: Drone Orientation Terminal. In small print it bore a squadron sigil. It looked just like the winged lion emblem of the Surge.
Althea said,
“This is hardly proof…”
The panel flipped off and Althea read the serial number and tracking data from the device. Pontikos shivered and said,
“I am not comfortable accessing this information Mistress. The chance we will accidentally trip a detection countermeasure is unacceptably high.”
The details concerned her less than the warning carved in Chinese, English, and Spanish: “Property of CoreGov. Failure to return these materials to a quartermaster constitutes treason.”
“Oh.”
Althea could hear the skeptic in her mind. Someone could artificially age the metal underneath. Or a clever artisan could remove such a warning from a legitimate piece of technology and attach it to a different one.
Erie snapped the panel of her implant shut and said,
“I don’t really need you to believe me. I jettisoned most of my memories from that time to external backups. I don’t like to think about those days. Still, the skills have been useful, but the toys have been fabulous.”
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Tapping her implant, she said,
“And that’s my point. This piece of kit comes from my Surge days. They did not exactly give it to me and they did not exactly send me on my way with heartfelt thanks. A very small number of people leave Surge alive. That’s a well kept secret.”
Erie sipped from her tea and said,
“That’s why I want to skip planet. I like my fellow Surgers. He’s not even a dick like most of them. But two of us in one place is still two too many. And I want a proper nest egg before I skedaddle.”
Althea sipped her tea as Erie spoke and noted its high quality.
“What does that thing do anyway?”
“It’s how I orient to my kids.”
“Orient?”
“A good drone operator, one who’s been trained, does not control their drones. They orient to them. My kids are my senses, and hundreds of extra hands. And of course, weapons. A good warrior does not settle for controlling their weapon, they become one with it. As it is with drone operators.”
“That sounds like something you rehearsed.”
Erie grinned at Althea.
“Like I said, I kept some memories. Anyway you know what I want now. Off planet and to freedom where I can avoid having my hands and eyes ripped out.”
Erie took a bite of another cookie and said,
“What do you want, Althea Thompson?”
“Right now? To escape from the people chasing me. In the longer term, just to survive, of course.”
Erie coughed and covered her mouth to prevent spraying the tables with crumbs.
“That’s all, huh? You don’t have a sweetheart to return to or parents who you love dearly?”
Althea did not care to think about that. She said,
“What about you? What happens after you blow planet?”
Erie narrowed her eyes at Althea and said,
“I put in with a decent sized merc company as a combat medic and drone op. Pay’ll be good and I won’t get too bored. Plus, CoreMil won’t be a problem as long as I pick a crew who aren’t too interested in working the Core.”
“I… huh.”
An alarm interrupted whatever else Althea intended to say. She stood, walking around the tea and food as she looked for the source of the sound.
Erie nodded and said,
“Relax, it’s just a timer. To remind us not to linger here too long. I spent some time working on a few old drones who are in good enough shape to follow now, so we have no reason to linger.”
Drones proceeded to clean up their afternoon tea as the two women slipped out of Erie’s mansion.
“When you leave this place for good, what happens to that hiding hole?”
Althea breathed easy and matched Erie’s pace.
“My original plan was to blow it. But I just reconsidered.”
Outside, the wind blew harsh from the East, bringing with it hot and dry air. At least it weakened the stench of the wastes. Few clouds of gas floated over the thick sludge that evening.
Althea followed Erie’s lead in stopping and checking their progress. An odd anomaly occurred to her so she asked,
“Why do those three drones follow us everywhere?”
As she spoke, all three sprayed a part of their path with a misting agent.
Erie said,
“Old chemist trick. The drones analyze our scent profile and release specially crafted enzymes that break down our scent and disperse in minutes. Really good trackers can sometimes pick up the residue, but not out here. Whatever our juices break down into can’t stand out against this background.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because my tracker has a Molecular Analyzer attached and can’t find us in this muck.”
Althea rolled her neck again. With giant metal shoulders, moving them just did not feel especially helpful.
Today Erie seemed less excited and more cautious. Althea noticed as night approached and Erie’s drones closed on them.
“Why do you seem worried?”
“This is bad territory to be in.”
“What do you mean?”
“Gangs, deserters, cannibals, you name it. This place has it. And one of the real bad cannibal gangs hangs out around here.”
“We’re so close to the city…”
Erie laughed.
“Every time I start to think you’re some hardened badass, you say something like that. But you’re just a Corpslave, you probably don’t even notice the people who go missing right at the edge of your sight. The old mother of two generations in the same house who manages to bring home food and cook it despite two jobs stands a meter off on the subway. You pass her everyday, but one day you never see her again. Why would it matter to you anyway?. You never see her wailing brats or their wailing brats either.”
Erie bit her lip and turned away, shaking her head. Althea’s eyes widened and she stammered out an apology when Erie cut her off,
“Sorry. That’s my baggage, not yours. There are a few things I should have disposed of memory-wise.”
Althea shrugged, trying to find the hardened badass Erie mentioned and considered the woman’s words.
Eighty-three. She could have been involved in both of the major Surge battles I know about.
“Will you tell me where we’re going?”
Erie nodded, but put her hand on her lips as she pulled Althea down next to her. Althea turned silent as she watched a trio of well-dressed men — one wore a stove-top hat with tails, the other two simple dark business suits — walked through the wastes alone. The civilian within her wanted to stand and wave to the three men, beckon them over and warn them about wandering cannibals.
But Erie’s hand on her shoulder stopped her until Althea spotted the weapons in their hands. Two of them carried modern projectile weapons, both light plasma rifles, and the stovetop hat man carried a long hook that had been sharpened on the inner part of the curve. Bits of flesh and gore clung to the metal.
The man whistled as he walked through the wastes, looking like a tall, dark reflection of Erie’s ebullient stride from yesterday. Althea ground her teeth to keep from shouting a challenge at the man and tried to divert her attention elsewhere. She settled on Erie squatting next to her, glaring at the man with the stovetop hat. Her eyes narrowed and her lips pursed like Erie was kissing the air. Althea wanted to ask the woman what she was thinking, but the proximity of the strange cannibals sealed Althea’s lips.
Erie held her eyes in her hand once the three men disappeared into the distance. Althea whispered,
“What was that?”
“They call themselves the Kindly Ones. It’s an old inside joke for people with too much education. I don’t like those guys.”
“Why were they dressed like that?”
“Because that particular cannibal gang acts more like a country club and less like a band of slathering madmen. People join the Kindly Ones for the purpose of hunting and eating people.”
“Holy shit, why doesn’t someone do something about them?”
Erie snickered and pointed in the direction of the three men,
“If you run real fast that way and give a few good shouts, you’ll find the local CorePol chief hanging with his friends. He was one of the ones carrying the plasma rifles.”
Althea’s hand went to her mouth, which only made Erie start laughing in earnest. Between gasps she said,
“Fortunately for me, they don’t eat drones. Let’s go.”
As they left the fetid river behind, the wastes changed. Gone were the endless piles of garbage and scrap metal. More and more, the remains of old concrete and metal buildings rose around them with spines bursting through the earth to announce their graves. Stripped of the metal of their flesh in this area, Althea had the feeling someone had been cleaning up this area. Pieces too large to haul or break up lingered and produced a fire-ravaged forest of old buildings.
Erie took the lead and made Althea appreciate and recognize the woman’s skills. Unless she paid attention, Erie shuffled out of Althea’s sight constantly. Only her waving hands or flashing drone beacons gave Althea any indication of where she had managed to scurry; at least after she told Pontikos to stop updating her on Erie’s position.
After hours of trekking through the wastes, Althea started to feel sluggish and tired. Erie nudged her when she caught Althea nodding off next to her in the darkness.
“Hey. If everything goes right, we’ll find a decent place to sleep in less than an hour. Are you good until then?”
Althea waited for Pontikos’s confirmation before she nodded in response to Erie’s question.
“Sure, let’s not stop too long.”
Erie grunted as they crouched in the corner of a ruined building. Peeking around the bricks, Erie held herself in position as she seemed to relax to Althea.
Erie said,
“We’re going to make a run for that building over there. The one that looks modern.”
Pontikos circled the building for Althea, it looked tiny from this distance.
“Say when.”
Erie’s eyes glazed for a moment and said,
“Everything looks clear and the scouts seem to think we’re safe. On three!”
The fatigue disappeared as Althea braced herself. Tension in Erie’s stance made Althea nervous as she waited for Erie’s count.
They took off at three, running as fast as they could without splitting up. Althea felt she could apply more speed, but that would have left Erie behind. Endorphins coursed through Althea’s body as she pumped her legs and raced across the flats. The run thrilled her legs and gave her a slice of the feeling of knighthood, charging across an open field toward a castle she intended to storm.
The fact that she did not deserve the conceit of knighthood exploded along with a piece of the terrain ahead of her. Erie grabbed Althea’s arms as dust cloud shot into the sky. Pieces of asphalt and broke rained down around them, the larger pieces missed them.
Althea panted as she said,
“What was that?”
Erie held Althea still and said,
“It was a proximity mine. Took out one of my sweeper drones.”
She looked unhappy at the fact.
“You make that sound bad?”
Erie nodded.
“I only have so many drones before losing them becomes a problem. And I think we’re standing in a minefield.”
“Oh.”
