I sure hope the author will explain where this wonderful magical thing was found, describe it to us, and tell us what the questions were >:D
Right now? That's a negatory. Before the end? Two thumbs all the way up.
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Furey jerked awake, sitting upright in his sleeping bag, still dressed in shirt and combat fatigues. A dark silhouette crouched just inside the trance to his tent.
“Phoebe?”
A throaty chuckle. “Oooh, does it have a girlfriend? Phoebe, oh yes,
Phoebe,” a woman’s familiar voice mocked. “Was she the other one who helped kill my brother? Not to worry then, her time will come.”
Furey’s eyes slowly adjusted, revealing the figure’s features like a camera lens focusing. The lighter shadows of cheekbones, a slash of white where a mouth was curled into a sneer. Colorless eyes. Achlys. A slim, needle-shaped pistol rested in the woman’s hand.
“After you performance on the field, Oriax wants a word with you, clanner. So you and I, we’re going to take a walk.” Achlys lifted the pistol fractionally. “This is a tranq gun. Very quiet, fires darts that can deliver sedatives, poisons, nerve agents, any chemical really. Wonder what I’ve loaded this one with? Try to run or cry out and you’ll find out. It’s Oriax that wants to talk with you, not me—if it was up to me, you’d be dead already.”
“For someone who does not want to talk, you do an awful lot of it.”
In the darkness, he saw her shoulders tense. “Those had better be the last words I hear out of you, or you die screaming in agony.” Achlys filled her cheeks, and blew a breath at him. “That won’t be necessary now though, will it?”
Furey felt it again, that strange compulsion to desire this woman. The tent seemed suddenly cozy, close, intimate, the woman’s presence here like a promise, an irresistible offer. When she backed out of the tent and crooked a finger towards him, all he could do was follow.
His tent was pitched away from the others, not far from the
Bushwacker. There was a distant reddish glow of campfires here and there, but not enough light for anyone to see what was happening, he thought. They would assume the woman was Phoebe, probably.
“Your BattleMech,” Achlys murmured. “We’ll leave in that. It’ll be—” her lips twitched and Furey’s pulse raced. “—a tight fit though.” She waved the tranq gun towards the
Bushwacker. “Don’t worry about leaving your friends. We’ve arranged a little surprise for them. Any minute now.”
Furey stumbled helplessly along through the knee-high grass, Achlys just behind him. He tried to cling to some thread of rationality: loyalty, duty, his oath—but it was useless—revenge on this woman—revenge was a dead end—his clan—but Showers … Phoebe …
“Get down. Wait here,” the woman crouched and his befuddled brain followed her lead. He could hear the distant throb of helicopter rotor blades. Not to worry. It was probably just the Blakists launching a surprise night attack. What did it matter, as long as Achlys was here?
Gunfire illuminated the darkness in spastic pulses, filled the silence with echoing crashes. People were shouting, running. Pairs of missiles rose like fireworks, exploding in dazzling shapes across the sky, briefly illuminating the shapes a flight of Pinto assault VTOLs. Small arms—assault rifles, carbines—added their chatter, punctuated by the shockwave whoomph of light gauss rifle fire.
“Time to go,” said Achlys, motioning Furey to rise.
“Leto?” A voice called out from the darkness as Furey stood.
Achlys whirled, gun flashing in the ruddy light. Furey tried to speak, but it was as though he was drunk, unable to form coherent words. Achlys’s finger was on the trigger.
Furey threw out an arm. Convincing himself that it was a joke, fooled himself into believing it, this was just a silly little thing he was doing, giggling to himself as he connected with Achlys’s wrist, throwing her arm up just as she squeezed the trigger, the tranq gun coughing gently and spitting its dart into the sky.
Achlys’s free hand caught Furey in the throat, hitting him like a hammer, knocking him sprawling and choking into the grass. As before, violence restored clarity. He had to shout a warning, but all that would come was a wracking cough. Achlys turned back towards the darkness, the figure there. Late. He was too late.
Achlys froze. “You?”
Someone cannoned into her legs, knocking her down, just as a missile struck one of the hovering Pinto helicopters and blew it out of the sky. In the light of the fiery rain that came tumbling down, Furey saw who it was: Showers.
Achlys was on her feet in an instant, foot snapping out. Furey had seen how fast she’d moved before, knew that her legs could contain nothing even vaguely human. Showers was ready for it though, dodging back, catching the woman off-balance and landing a kick of his own to her other knee. Achlys didn’t even flinch, pivoted in a full circle and lashed out again.
Showers danced nimbly out of reach, and they stood there, the two, crouched and ready, waiting for the other to move. Achlys touched something at her wrist. One of the Pintos was heading their way, rotors rapidly growing from distant throb to full-throated roar. The downdraft started to buffet Furey as he struggled to his feet.
He felt blindly for the fallen tranq gun, but in the darkness, in the tall grass, it was hopeless.
Furey looked up in time to see Showers say something to Achlys, he mouth moving, but the sound swallowed by the approaching helicopter. She sneered back, rushed at Showers again, striking out with fists, feet, but Showers anticipated, twisting away or deflecting each blow. Then reacted a moment too slow, took a kick to the stomach and folded, gasping. Achlys grinned in triumph.
The helicopter was almost directly overhead now, flying low, its rotor blades blowing a gale around the struggling figures. It switched on a searchlight, erasing all color in its blinding beam. Bad news, Furey knew. The Pinto had three lasers in its turret—at this range, an isolated target would be easy prey.
Only one thing to do. He sprinted towards Achlys, threw himself forward in a tackle. She staggered sideways, then brought an elbow ramming down into Furey’s back, dropping him to the ground on all fours. She aimed a kick at his head but he rolled away, then she was forced to face Showers as he came at her again in a flurry of punches and strikes.
Another
whoomph thundered from behind Furey and the Pinto’s searchlight shattered and went dark. Its turret swiveled, firing a trio of green beams blindly into the night, close enough that Furey could feel the heat on his back through his shirt, making him throw himself prone on the ground, under the height of the clinging grass.
“You should have stayed where I left you.”
Furey was close enough now that he could hear Achlys and Showers, yelling at each other over the howl of the helicopter.
“I wonder what Oriax thinks of that?” Showers replied.
“He thinks whatever I tell him, heretic. Filth!”
Whoomph. Closer now. Furey thought he could hear the impact of gauss rounds on armor. He risked rising to a crouch, saw Achlys and Showers facing each other less than three meters away. A long, thin snake of darkness came looping down and Achlys grabbed it with one hand.
“Not if I talk to him first. You had better run, woman. They are close now.”
Achlys said nothing, only shot Showers a look filled with hate, then began climbing up the line that had fallen, even as it began to rise into the sky. The timber of the rotors changed, the Pinto climbing and angling away, Achlys swinging like a pendulum beneath it, still climbing, before being lost into darkness.
Furey made his way next to Showers. They stood side by side, watching the helicopter retreat, listening to the dwindling sound of its engines.
From across the camp, gunfire was dying down, the rest of the Blakists evidently hearing the same signal to retreat.
“She recognized you,” Furey said quietly.
“I should think so,” Showers shrugged. “I was her prisoner.”
“And Oriax? What was that about him?”
“Ah yes, that.” Showers looked thoughtful. “He is looking for the same thing as I am. If he finds it, he will use it to enslave our people.”
“Neat.” Furey was tired of Showers being opaque. Mentally, he shrugged. The man would tell him in time, or not. Evidently, there was nothing he could do to hurry the process. He switched tacks. “Still believe in one-on-one duels? She would have killed you.”
“Then I would have deserved to die,” Showers said, calmly. “And then you would have killed her. The clan would have survived. I told you: the individual is not important. Only the clan. Sometimes, sacrifices are made so the clan may continue.”
Furey didn’t know if he could match such self-erasing bravery. He had wanted a good death, but that was a selfish wish, to leave a legacy for himself. Would he have accepted a forgotten end for the sake of another Smoke Jaguar?
The clans were not, as a rule, terribly big on metaphysics. “Why am I here? What is my purpose in life?” These were questions you didn’t ask when your purpose was determined by caste.
Laborers, here are your hands, now build things that kill. Technicians, here are your tools, now fix things that kill. Merchants, here are your ships, now buy things that kill. Scientists, here is your lab, now invent new ways to kill.
Warriors, here are your weapons, now go kill things—or failing that, go kill yourself.
Annihilation had robbed Smoke Jaguar of the old certainties though. Their insectile hive of a society had failed him. A freebirth woman had saved him. Individuals mattered, because the path where they didn’t ended on an operating table in a Word of Blake prison.
Furey swallowed his argument. Now was not the time. “You saved my life. I am grateful.”
Showers threw and arm around his shoulder. “Good. That is a beginning. Then, when we reach the city. Then … then we shall see.
In our dark days of wandering, He gave us Hidden Hope. Prophetic words.”
There was something in the man’s face, half-seen in the faint reflected light, some need. Dark pools of desire in the geography of Showers’ face, black oceans of
want. Suddenly, Furey was afraid of this man.
The two were illuminated by bobbing tactical lights, as a squad of men approached them. Furey turned, squinting against the glare, and made out Sergeant Bor, the hulking form of Bulldog, the grim face of Irons, and Phoebe, clutching an assault rifle.
“Easy lads, it’s Furey and th’other one,” Bor called out.
“We have you to thank for taking out the searchlight?” Furey waved to them. “Fine shooting.”
“Yeah, well, your tent was empty and the ’Mech stayed put, so some of us—” Bor tipped his head slightly in Phoebe’s direction, “—were worried something had happened to you.”
“I see I was worried for nothing though,” said Phoebe, frowning at Showers’ arm around Furey’s shoulder.
“Well, they did send an agent to try and kidnap me,” Furey protested. Showers’ hand on his shoulder tensed in mute disapproval of Furey’s defensive tone. A trueborn needed no excuses when speaking to a freeborn.
“One of their leaders, the woman Achlys,” Showers supplied.
Phoebe rolled her eyes and turned away. “No guesses how she got to you, then.” Which was unfair, and she knew it, and Furey knew it, but once you’d left yourself open to someone, he found it hard to close up again, found it too easy to go on hurting one another.
“You did that deliberately,” he said accusingly to Showers once they were gone.
“I told the truth.”
“If you truly know something that will revive the clan, I will listen. Until then, stay out of my affairs.”
“Sometimes we must punish, not out of spite, but out of love,” Showers said. “Leto, at times you are as close to me as my sibkin, but at others, as incomprehensible as eternity. You are a warrior, Leto.
Five are our foundations, One above the rest, Four are the stepping stones, The fifth, the pinnacle. You are the pinnacle, Leto. She is a freebirth. Unworthy of you.”
It didn’t feel that way, not at the moment. More like, in listening to this man, Furey had become unworthy of her.
