Absent From Felicity

By Richard Quarry

John Gottschalk did not expect to be the sole survivor of a rescue mission to a habitat swallowed up a black hole years before. He did not expect to find the survivors of the banged-up colony enslaved by Ophelian mercenaries, the biggest, nastiest, and most studiously sociopathic soldiers in the galaxy. He did not expect to serve as a ping-pong ball in the Ophelians' endless enactments of their social contract, Survival of the Screwingest. Nor did he expect to be … adopted? claimed? — by an exuberant, six-and-a-half-foot blade-centric teenager who styles herself "Devray, Conqueror of Worlds!" ("Really, I'm just starting.") And for Devray, one world is not enough. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Quarry
• Release date: Oct 5, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215847596

Book preview

1

I stooped to pick up the doll half buried in the dust. It looked like some 19th century period piece; calico dress around lumpy stuffing, frizzy red hair, lots of freckles in a round pink face, tiny button nose, and wide dead marble eyes.

Yet the doll was close to four feet long. Too big for a child’s toy, surely. I squeezed experimentally.

"Ah-OOH-ga! Ah-OOH-ga! Dive! Dive!"

I hurled it from me. What happened here? I bawled at Lieutenant Bau.

Holding the sensor high, he made another sweep of the devastated landscape. Steady, deadpan Lieutenant Bau. An Ophelian, strong as an ox and about as sociable. Of the eight of us who had started down the spoke to the main torus, only the two of us remained. Him because of his Ophelian toughness, me because … well, that was one more mystery, and I feared the question might soon prove moot.

I stared at the rows of orange lights flickering two thousand feet overhead. A lifeless, billowing gray ocean of debris swept gently up toward the down-curving horizons of the torus roof for a mile in front and a mile behind. Scarecrow frames of collapsed buildings reached up as if having died in vain supplication. Zephyrs of gray silicate rose and spun in the fickle drafts. The air smelled of scorched metal.

Sixteen thousand people had been living aboard the Tycho Brahe when the black hole lurking at the center of the galaxy spasmed outward and swallowed the habitat whole. Skeptics predicted we’d find no fragment big enough to clog a salt shaker. Well, we’d proved them wrong.

Alas, I feared few would ever know. Because along with the gruesome loss of our six comrades, we’d lost all radio contact with our ship. And we still had to get back up the spokes.

They’re all dead, aren’t they? I said.

Bau tucked the sensor away. Hoisting his rocket launcher, he peered through narrowed lids, searching for any threat the machine might have missed. There are other sectors.

Even more than the silence of the ruins, the thing I found most deeply disturbing were the toys lying thick on the dust around what remained of the recyclers.

Toys, I say, and yet a parody of anything that might ever have been designed for play. As expedition historian I recognized the designs, mainly early to mid-twentieth century. The Golden Age of Christmas catalogues, before children’s dreams went online.

But what were they doing here, lying atop the debris of whatever catastrophe had struck? What use could survivors have had for a model train set, or a rocking horse, or a pedal-driven model of one of the great Empire of Waste finned monster cars? What possible use for a complete life-size, solid model of a barn, surrounded by similarly scaled chickens, pigs and cows, cast from bonded silicates and weighing, at a guess, from one to four hundred pounds? Or a cowboy hat big enough to form a hot tub?

Mockery. Sheer mockery of the family life that had once flourished aboard the Tycho Brahe. As if some evil intelligence — but I could not submit to mere superstition.

Tidal forces, I declared, trying to shut the freakish pseudo-toys from my mind. "From when the torus plunged through the event horizon. Nothing else could rip rents like that in the Brahe’s hull. Or create the jumble in the spokes, that demented, ear-splitting battle of machinery our exploration team kept trying to dodge. And falling short by one disappearance and five mangled bodies. Or maybe two disappearances and four mangled bodies; hard to be sure. The gravitational distortion must have killed everyone aboard."

Men— Bau hunched involuntarily as Thor’s hammer, or something sounding painfully like it, came clanging around between the hull and the outer shield again. Obviously the gyros, designed to keep the spinning donut hull of the torus from smashing into the radiation shielding, were going their own way like all the rest of the systems. I wondered just how much more pounding the Brahe could take.

I lowered my hands from my ears as the metallic roar passed on.

Men fought here, completed Bau.

What? How can you tell?

Look around you. As I gazed clueless, he shrugged. Let’s get moving.

We tramped through the rubble, wheezing in the thin atmosphere. Twisted tie-bars, exposed ends of I-beams, and loops of reinforcement webbing clutched at our feet like the fingers of drowning men. My legs burned as I topped an ashen dune and followed Bau down into a bowl in the rubble desert.

He stood crouched, the rocket launcher suddenly pointed straight out from his shoulder.

Lieutenant?

Shut up.

Something pinged off my backpac. Turning, I caught a hint of movement, then nothing. Bau grunted sharply.

What is it? I cried. Then I saw the vaned rod poking from his side.

I whirled and fell as a sudden piercing ache jerked my arm around. Bau fired his launcher. Fifty feet away the explosion kicked up a spray of dust and something that looked like a head. I saw a bloody red tear in the arm of my blue plasticene coverall. Bau fired again, and once more, then kept firing as dark, crouched figures scuttled across the depression.

Stop! Stop! I shouted, on my knees and waving my arms frantically. We’re friends! I could do little else; Bau was the only member of our party to carry weapons.

A thin, ragged figure sprang up from the dust before me and pointed something in my direction.

We come in peace! I tried.

I thought I saw a grin on the filthy, cadaverous face. Then the figure exploded, the upper half disappearing in a crimson spray while the legs, unjoined, toppled apart.

Bau staggered sideways, missiles still streaking from his launcher. He looked like a murderous St. Sebastian, with short rods sticking out of his body while dust, blood, and body parts spurted in gouts all around.

I wanted everyone to stop shooting and establish a dialogue. We’ve come to help you!

A jet of flame belched forth from the rubble at Bau’s feet. His dark form, engulfed, struggled in the center of the fireball. Quick gray forms scrambled low to the ground, more like rats than humans. Bau collapsed. Slowly the flames flickered out.

They closed in on me then, cautiously; thin, crouching, outlandish figures, clad in rags and grime. Some brandished crossbows, others more strange-looking weapons. Most looked little more than children. Tall, creeping, spider-limbed, sinister children.

I got up off my knees. We’re from Earth! Don’t you understand? You’re rescued!

One, a veritable patriarch from his soot-stained beard, stalked in close, holding an improvised mace and chain. His lips drew back over a gap-toothed mouth as he started twirling the head: a silver rocket ship, its exaggerated fins honed sharp. "Maa-ma, Maa-ma," it wailed. My attacker’s expression wavered between temerity and mad glee.

Then he pitched forward, raising a fresh cloud of dust as blood welled from a huge hole in the back of his skull.

The ragamuffin band scattered like minnows as a giant came bellowing down the slope, pistol in hand. I say, and perceived, a giant, but I doubt he stood much over seven feet, and built like the Hulk. It was the sheer volume of his fury, as well as the bronze shade of his skin, that exaggerated his already considerable stature.

I wanted them alive! He kicked Bau’s still smoking body for emphasis. Beneath layers of dust he wore a mélange of bright tatters and irregular sections of black body armor.

His minions, as I now took them to be, gibbered an unintelligible host of excuses as they cowered out of reach. A second bronze-skinned goliath topped the rise.

Damn. Well, at least we got one of them.

Their size! That bronze skin. Ophelians for a certainty. What were they doing here? The logs of the Brahe listed none among the population.

The giant strode down and with one great hand jerked me off my feet so that we stared eye to eye.

We come in peace, I burbled, without much faith.

TOUGH SHIT!

A sharp pain spiked upward from my neck and exploded through the top of my skull, taking consciousness with it.

2

My leg spasmed from an electric shock. My eyelids slammed open.

I lay on a table in a dimly lit room. A tall, dirt-streaked, feral-faced youth dressed incongruously in a coonskin cap and a brown baggy garment lined with fringe grinned evilly at me. The youth held what looked to be a crude and bulbous replica of a gangster-era tommygun. Some such toys shot sparks from their barrels. From the way my heart fluttered while my leg still quivered and jerked, his model evidently provided rather more of a jolt.

Seeing me stir, a big raggedy bronze-skinned Ophelian — not the giant who hit me, but his slightly less excitable companion — turned and fetched the youth a clout on the head.

Dammit, Girt, I told you not to fool around! He smiled down at me apologetically. Sorry about that. It’s these kids. Lack of parenting, most of ‘em. We do what we can. Grabbing a handful of my coverall he pulled me erect, more or less. How you feelin’?

Uhh …. At that point I ran out of things to say.

Releasing me to slump and sway, the Ophelian dragged a folding chair over and straddled it. He smiled genially, his face bulging pumpkin-broad around a generous assortment of teeth, evidently artificial because still pearly white. His eyes, brown and somewhat bulbous, held a gleam that did little to reassure me. A bowl of thick bushy hair, gray with age and dust, ringed his face, and in the dust-scattered light of a battery torch his skin took on a greenish tinge like stained copper.

Sorry about the accident, he said, in a deep, scratchy voice. Terrible tragedy about your friend. These kids, you can’t leave ‘em alone for a second. But you’re safe now. I’m C.C. Bisbee, by the way.

Oh, ah, yes, quite. I remembered everything now, and didn’t like it one bit. Pleased to meet you. John Gottschalk. From Earth, I added, in the hope it might do me some good.

Yeah, we figured that from your gear. Bit of a surprise, that. Haven’t had many visitors these past twenty-eight years, what with the event horizon and all. Just drop by for a chat, did you?

I tried to shared his laugh of good fellowship, and failed dismally. Uh, not exactly.

Over on a table by the door Girt and a second filthy, emaciated, over-sized urchin sprawled with the lank unconcern of teenagers. I think his companion was a girl. At any rate she wore bits and pieces of a stylized nurse’s uniform, complete with starch-stiff white hat sporting a red cross. An angel of mercy, bearing a crude metal crossbow in her lap. While neither she nor the boy looked full Ophelian in color or stature, they certainly weren’t pure Terran.

Ophelians served only two functions in the Federation. Mainly they formed the backbone of the military. Mercenaries, in other words. Beyond that, they terraformed planets too scary even for that hardy and resourceful breed of human colonists who venture toward the frontiers of space.

Not that Ophelians aren’t themselves human, of course. Sort of. It’s a sensitive subject all around. But in all our extensive briefings on the Tycho Brahe, the subject of Ophelians had been conspicuous by its absence.

I gave C.C. Bisbee an apologetic grin. Ah, may I ask what you’re doing here? We weren’t informed of any Ophelians.

"You weren’t? So I guess this isn’t exactly a military mission, is it?"

No. Too late, I wondered if that was a smart thing to say.

Bisbee laughed and patted my knee. Tell you what, fresh. Seeing as how you’ve busted through everything I ever thought I knew about event horizons, why don’t you tell me about yourself? To start with, are there any more of you wandering around? Hate to have another accident.

I noticed he’d taken Lieutenant Bau’s web belt, along with its holstered pistol. Both pistol and belt were fire-blackened, but tough enough to survive. The computer, of course, would be a dead loss. The last functioning computer our party had. One by one the others had fallen to chaos surges after trying to interface the Brahe’s terminals. We hadn’t really wanted to interface, not after the first time. But when multi-armed scouring machines are descending on you, or ore processors spitting their contents like machine-gun fire, you tend to grasp at whatever straw is to hand. Bau’s computer alone had been kept strictly quarantined. Now it was gone, and I was alone here, with no hope at all of reaching the ship.

Eight of us started down the spoke to the Four/Five seal, I said. The other six were killed. There are more aboard our ship, though, I added hurriedly. Fifteen. Oh, and twenty-five in cryo. For emergencies. Soldiers. Ophelians. In fact we’d left only four crew members aboard the Robert Scott, not one of them a soldier.

Twenty-five Ophelians in cryo, eh? Bisbee sounded distressingly unimpressed. Not much help there, are they? Not that you’ll need any help. You’re safe with us. But you are quite sure about all this, aren’t you, John? I mean, I believe you, but my buddy Parker, he’s got what they call an impulse-control problem. Maybe you noticed. Right now he’s out scouting around. And when he gets back, you’ll want to be very, very definitive. ‘Cause if you start to oscillate, his impulse is gonna be to have your balls for a doorknob.

Over on the table the angel of mercy giggled, then reached out and made a squeezing, twisting motion, followed by a sharp jerk.

Now as to this ship of yours, said Bisbee. Obviously it got you through the event horizon. That means it can get you back, right?

Yes. We hope.

Right all the way through? Where not even a photon can pass?

Certainly. Well, probably. If the odds had been better, the expedition historian would not have been an utterly expendable twenty-four year old doctoral candidate like me.

Well, well, there certainly are some clever people around to figure out a thing like that, aren’t there? Tell me, how does it work?

I’m not a physicist, I said. "But broadly, our ship, the Robert Scott, is enclosed within an ablative shielding of shadow matter. As you know, shadow matter is an electromatrix colloid of particles massing less than the Planck limit." I hoped to dazzle him with technology while figuring out what, if anything, I could do to better my situation.

Yes, yes, I know about shadow matter, Bisbee said, confounding my expectations. He didn’t look like someone who would know about shadow matter. I hadn’t, before all the compulsory educational vids during our voyage. If I had, I might not be here. What I don’t know is, how the hell does it get you out of a ringin’ black hole?

Ah yes. Well according to the Fletcher equations, Hawking evaporation is not uniform along the Schwarzschild radius. Virtualization clusters fluctuate around the event horizon in a pattern that, ah, equates roughly with the, uh, Schrodinger wave function. Or was it ….

Virtualization clusters? said Bisbee. You mean the whole ship acts like a virtual particle, popping up here and there?

Yes, exactly. Whew. You see, a probability envelope …. How did it go? That is, we more or less ride the probability envelope across the event horizon. The mean time expectation is—

Something big and black hurtled through the doorway behind a bright flicker of steel. The heads of the kids sitting on the table shot up like jacks-in-the-box on springs of blood. C. C. Bisbee jumped to his feet, swinging the chair around with one hand while pulling Bau’s pistol with the other.

The black figure was already upon him. I caught a ferrous glint and saw the pistol, Bisbee’s hand still attached, clatter to the floor. He uttered a cry cut short by another silver flash. He staggered back to the wall and slid down, blood hissing in a fountain from his throat.

The figure in black let the fountain fade to a bubbling pulse, then leaned over Bisbee’s corpse and carefully, fussily even, wiped clean the blade of the biggest knife I’d ever seen.

Pretty good, huh? he said.

I gaped. Maybe retched a little, too.

Hey, flow easy, fresh. You’re rescued.

I’d heard that one before. I surveyed my purported rescuer dubiously. Starting from the floor I saw black moonwalker boots, black plasticene rigger’s utility pants with dark gray shin guards and kneecups, a black web belt with a big black sheath for the knife, black skin gloves, a black impact-resistant field jacket, black face mask, and perched incongruously over everything, an archaic black denim peaked cap with NY written on it.

Who are you? I asked. I think I may have stuttered.

Why, I’m Harvey Rothenberg. He held the knife up against the light to check its cleanliness. The blade had to be a foot long, with wicked, glittering curves. Satisfied, he snapped it back in its sheath. The steel buttcap stuck out as the one bright point amid the caliginous whole of Harvey Rothenberg, rescuer-at-large.

He unwound the belt from Bisbee’s body and strapped it on. Shaking the severed hand loose from the pistol, he stuck the weapon in its holster. And who might you be?

I, uh, that is, I mean—

You do know, don’t you?

Yes, of course. I’d just been wondering if it was politic to admit it. My name is John Gottschalk. I come from—

Well, Johnny, do you think you could stand?

I tried, and fell back against the table with a stabbing pain in my side. I wondered if the giant had kicked me after knocking me unconscious. It seemed the sort of thing he’d do. I think my ribs may be broken.

Hold still. Rothenberg came over and ran gentle fingers over my side. There?

Yes.

He jabbed. The pain shot so far up it beat against the backs of my eyeballs. I snorted and gulped, but did not cry out.

Nothing broken, he said.

How can you be sure?

You’d have screamed otherwise. Now listen up. We’re going to be doing a lot of e-and-e for a while. That’s escape and evasion. I’ll call a break for self-pity soon as it looks appropriate. Until then, quit looking so sorry for yourself, okay?

An accent I was beginning to recognize. Harsh consonants, vowels like a growl, syllables crowded together. Faint, but recognizable.

Ophelian. Of course. Though he stood half a head shorter than Bisbee, let alone the giant, and possessed a slimmer build, his speed and deadliness proclaimed his heritage. These people were everywhere. What had happened here?

Uh, Sere Rothenberg?

Call me Cat, fresh. Everyone does.

Yes, certainly … Cat. If you don’t mind, I’d like to— I put my head down to stave off an attack of nausea. Blood flowed thickly across the floor; our boots squelched in it. The smell was stronger than you might think, if you’ve never stood in a small room with two decapitated corpses and another with its throat cut. What I’d like to ask is, what’s going on?

Is that standing?

Excuse me?

The Cat shook his head. Digging in his backpac he snapped two halves of a stubby, archaic-looking weapon together. He stuffed a pair of red-and-brass shells thick as flares into the twin barrels, one above the other. Shotgun, I remembered, that’s the name. I’d seen them in vids.

Then he took off his mask.

I blinked as the hard-angled, gaunt face at first refused to come into focus. Then I realized his eyes didn’t match. The right one, deep brown and centered on a slanting, puckered ridge, stared out with a harsh and defiant glare. The left eye glowed a brilliant green, appearing entranced by its own daring.

Even without the mismatched eyes his face would have borne an excessively well-traveled look, with its tawny gold Ophelian skin rather Frankensteined by scar lines that continued on as silver streaks in his close-cropped black hair and beard.

Time to ram, he said, slipping his pac back on. Follow close, do what you’re told right when you’re told to do it, and if things get to looking a little scary, just think of the stories you’ll be able to tell. Long as you keep moving, that is. Johnny, you are about to acquire experience.

3

We ran through a broad subterranean passage. Up and down, up and down over the hills in this jagged underground wilderness of slag. My hands got scratched bloody from trying to aid my throbbing legs. In some places the buckled steel of the roof pressed down to within inches of the rubble crests, only to swoop back up fifty feet or more. Lights flashed on and off at random, alternately surrounding us with elongated, flailing shadows, or pitching us into a darkness relieved only by the blue beam of the Cat’s torch.

This, then, was Substrate. Or rather what was left of it: a netherworld between the habitat proper and the outer hull, where machinery and mankind attempted to interact in an intense, sensor-ridden maze that even in a sound torus could be plagued by frequent malfunctions to both. I could hardly believe life support still held.

After fleeing the small room holding Bisbee and his headless companions, we ran along halls, then down stairs, then tripped and slid and shimmied our way down a steeply inclined slope rough as a rasp. Finally we squeezed through a rift to emerge in this succession of metallic caves and valleys, where we dodged brambles of mutilated steel.

My heart, stuttering to start with, sounded a stall warning as we clambered up a slope so steep it threatened to file off my nose. Above me crouched the Cat, urging speed. Ribs grated in my chest as I slowed to a pounding, spastic crawl instead. Then the first crossbow dart clanged off a twisted girder three feet from my head. I cut in the afterburners and scuttled over the crest with a new-found agility.

They’re shooting at us! I shouted. Or rather wheezed.

Come on, come on, come on, prodded my alleged rescuer. "They’re too far away to hit anything if you’ll just move a little faster!"

He rushed downhill. I followed in leaps and bounds, jumping from one hopefully firm point in the shifting metal scree to the next. Toward the bottom momentum swept me past my mark and I took a tumble. Only the tough plasticene saved me from being skinned alive. Most of me, anyway.

We skirted a sheer wall in which long rents revealed a valiant whirring and shuffling of gears, blowers, and belts, among which loose wires hissed and sparked, filling the air with the smell of ozone. Past the wall we scrambled up a ridge of crumpled metal and broken glass. Gravity caused my legs to drop anchor.

"Boost it, dammit!" suggested the Cat, cresting the ridge.

But— A sledge hammer knocked my right ankle out from beneath me. I hit the ground hard enough to bounce, had not a helpful piece of jagged steel hooked me in place.

I’m hit! I wailed. The vaned end of crossbow dart poked from my boot. A companion whizzed by my ear. The Cat rushed back up to the skyline and leveled his stubby gun.

Even through the glare I saw a great gout of orange flame belch from the muzzle. The immense blast all but rolled me sideways. Thirty yards away dust and debris erupted as something big and bizarrely flexible flopped violently before coming to rest.

The Cat jerked me loose of the steel hook and pulled me up, one-handed in the Ophelian manner, not seeming to notice that I weigh 175 pounds. Then tossed me bouncing down the slope. I cried out (okay, maybe screamed) as the dart tore loose from my flesh in a very rough bit of field surgery. As I smacked against an I-beam at the bottom he was there to jerk me back onto to my feet.

I’m hit, I repeated. "My — gasp — ankle."

Flesh wound, the Cat announced curtly. He hauled me along after him, and for lack of an alternative I went. I never imagined an ankle could hurt so much. The pain forced a thin stream of bile up to dribble down my chin.

This is what comes of independent thought, the Cat chided. "Next time I tell you to boost it, boost your ragged ass!"

But I’ve been shot!

"There’s nothing I can do about that, dammit! If you don’t boost it, you’re gonna get shot a whole lot more!"

As he headed off with me in his wake the nearby overheads died once more, leaving only a pale glow from more distant lights. Here and there ghostly emanations filtered up through the rubble.

We wove in and out, up and down. Every time my right foot took my weight I wondered if the ankle would buckle. Somehow it held. Pain, I was learning, was relative. Mainly to fear.

Only when the Cat held up a hand did I become aware of a sifting sound in the rubble. Now like a tossed handful of gravel, other times a definite clanging, the whole interspersed with the tubercular rumblings and ratchetings of motors trying to wake from a long slumber disturbed by dreams of rusted rotors, clogged filters, and gap-toothed gears. For all its last-gasp mechanical snuffling, however, the machine tailed us like a sniffing dog.

Don’t dawdle, fresh, said the Cat, and set off at a faster pace. Then the trench we followed ended in a rubble berm.

Clank, snort and rumble, drawing closer.

Turning, I straightened from my crouch and peered over the lip of the ditch to catch a glimpse of our mechanical mascot.

A plesiosaur on stilts.

That was my first impression, from its bulbous, scorched-silver body complete with cooling fins, its sixteen-foot hinged legs, its segmented neck, and the dimly glowing red head.

I didn’t have much time for second impressions because the Cat threw me flat, a sensation similar to being slammed onto a bed of nails.

I did not complain. For one thing, the impact voided the air from my lungs. For another, the red light shot forth in a beam that danced along the slag above my head. One quick pulse, that was all, but it left behind hissing tendrils of smoke and the acrid stench of puddled steel.

I tried to huddle further into the slag. What is that thing?

Sterilizer, said the Cat.

Why is it trying to kill us?

Doesn’t like us, I guess.

Whoosh, clang, and rumble, drawing closer still. Can you shoot it?

"Johnny, did you get picked for this mission ‘cause you got some kind of learning disability? As I have patiently tried to explain, it’s my job to intellectualize, yours to run. Now follow me. Don’t look back and don’t try to ringin’ think for yourself."

He launched himself over the rim of the trench. I followed with my comparatively waddling imitation. Ahead in the twilight I saw the lip of another gully, maybe forty yards distant. In normal circumstances, on a normal surface, I might have made it. On Earth I wasn’t considered weak or slow. Instead, I pushed faster than my burning legs and wounded ankle could manage, and fell. Shoving myself up I looked back despite the Cat’s injunction.

The sterilizer stalked me. Its neck stretched up and back like a cobra flaring its hood. The red eye began to glow.

Then the Cat did a very brave thing. Sprinting back in my direction, but angling to the side, he fired Bau’s pistol twice in the air. The muzzle flash formed two pinpricks of light. At once the head swiveled toward him and the red light shot out. A fierce crimson disk lit up the spot where he’d stood.

Only he was no longer there. Either he’d been vaporized, or he must have thrown himself sideways into some depression in the rubble faster than I could see. Already I was up and running, propelled by the hiss of smoke off superheated alloy.

Now I have to say this about the Cat. In the course of my adventures aboard the Tycho Brahe I never met anyone, with one significant if idiosyncratic exception, whose word of choice for Harvey Rothenberg was anything other than treacherous or some more colorful synonym. Indeed I have to fight past that description myself before regarding him in a broader and (on occasion) more charitable light. His courage, however, cannot be questioned. And though I still wince at the memory of a man who regarded my life in much the same light as a pair of dice, neither can I throw off my gratitude to him for saving it again and again.

Almost as many times as he put it at risk.

Now the Cat appeared from the smoking steel to join me in a mad tumble over the lip of the next gully. Run, run, run, he advised, leading by example.

I ran.

Whoosh, whistle, scrape, clang and thump, sounding close behind. The sterilizer pursued us in fits and starts, sometimes gliding along full of efficient menace as its motors enjoyed a brief renaissance, more often wallowing and beating at the slag like a two-year old splashing his bathwater.

Unfortunately, the demented machine served as a beacon for our pursuers. They kept well away from the mechanical scourge, but each time we had to top a rise, crossbow darts hissed close. At this range they might not penetrate deeply enough to kill, but they didn’t have to. Slowing us down would prove fully as fatal.

The machine nearly caught us as we waded knee-deep through a noisome patch of brown sludge, in the midst of which my legs, by now reduced to lactic acid and pain receptors, would have abandoned me if the Cat hadn’t hauled me along so that my feet barely grazed the bottom. Fortunately some element of the sludge struck the sterilizer as even more of a contaminant than us, for as we fled squelching from the morass the rogue paused to evaporate the entire mass in a steaming pottage that, blowing over us in one of the random zephyrs of the ventilators, caused me to retch up what little remained in my stomach.

We had gained a bit on the machine, but now the giant’s minions also drew closer. Darts began to rain in on us. We ducked into a shallow ditch and trotted along in a crouch, for trotting, or a stumbling approximation of it, was the best I could manage. Something clattered ahead of me. I saw Bau’s pistol bounce on the slag.

"You — gasp — dropped — wheeze — the—"

Shut up, the Cat counseled.

We came up onto the skyline, heard the darts hiss, and dived into a slight hollow, where we lay curled and panting, even the Cat. The hole was rather like a First World War shell crater; less muddy, but considerably sharper-edged. At intervals crossbow darts arced in on a high trajectory. Gazing cautiously over the lip I caught furtive stirrings in the rubble as the shooters crept closer. But they went to ground as the sterilizer, fresh from its victory over the sludge, came clanking into view.

Exciting, huh? the Cat said brightly. The rogue rattled closer. Tell you, glow, you’ve done real good so far. This was news to me. Good enough, I think we’re about through the worst of it. That was even bigger news, and quite contradicted the facts as I construed them. One more good run, and we can coast a while. This time you lead off. Ready?

Which direction? I did want to avoid stupid questions, but even so.

Oh, away from the sterilizer, I guess would be a good start.

I did not like the sound of this. Ah, Cat ….

What did I tell you about thinking?

But—

Ready, set—

Oh, what the hell.

"Boost it!"

I leapt up with what sang froid I could manage and ran. Crossbow darts went whirrp! whirrp! around me. One hit my leg hard enough to knock me down, but though it felt like a good crack with a bat the angle was wrong and it skidded off the plasticene. Looking around I found myself alone. Except for the sterilizer. It zeroed in on me with its peculiar hunt-and-peck motion like a chicken hunting worms.

As I clambered up and set off in a shambling excuse for a run a shot echoed off the metal walls. Bau’s pistol. It sounded again, and I went down with a searing impact in my left side. This time I lay there. I was done. Lungs and legs past redline, pain breaching the hull of my will.

Then I saw the rogue swing around. The pistol crashed out several more times, the bullets now pinging off the body of the sterilizer. The red light flashed. I squeezed my eyes shut against the glare, and when I opened them saw nothing where the shots had come from but a slowly twisting pillar of smoke.

Now other figures to either side of the burned area scuttled away. The sterilizer cast this way and that, herding them like a lumbering, over-aged sheepdog. Most managed to disappear unseen, but any who panicked and ran upright were scythed down by the red beam.

Stop basking in glory, glow. The Cat knelt by my side. That sterilizer’s about to run out of targets.

I’ve been shot. Again, I added accusingly. With that gun you dropped before telling me to run across the open. It hurts.

It’s supposed to hurt. That’s nature’s way of telling you to move faster next time. Now you want to get up, or lie here and see if that rogue’s got more pity for your trials and tribulations than I have?

His logic was impeccable. I struggled up and we moved on, the Cat mercifully going a little slower now. The bullet wound turned out to be what someone who’s never been shot would probably call a graze. It hurt, but I didn’t suppose there was much the Cat could do about that, either.

4

Really, glow, I appreciate the way you sucked it up back there. The Cat sprayed sealant onto my ankle, my side, my hands, my face … in fact so many places I was practically mummified beneath a glowing plastic layer. Lots of people would have laid down and died. I won’t forget it.

Neither will I. The blue light of his torch turned my blood purple-black beneath the thin transparent film.

We huddled in a tight cave composed of shattered aggregate held in place by smoke and mirrors, unless the several disconnected steel limbs had something to do with it. With a gauze patch the Cat wiped a muddy paste of blood and dust from my calf above the ankle bone, revealing sickly pale flesh puckered out around a wide red gash. I pressed my lips together and tried to act stoical. Inwardly I flinched from the thought of touching anything ever again.

Can we rest now? I asked, already knowing this came under the category of stupid question.

Would be nice, said the Cat, working away. I have a feeling we’re playing a bit fast and loose with your strategic reserves. On the other hand ….

Yes?

Look on the bright side, Johnny. You’ve still got one perfectly good leg left. That’s a hell of a lot more than you’ll have if Parker comes roaring down on us.

You think he’ll try?

"Oh yeah. Parker’s got one