Raiders (19 page)

Julian set up the portable autocannon to protect their small campsite. When he unfolded it the five legged carbonsteel penta-pod rose to a platform about a meter and a half tall. Once the autocannon was set up he secured it to the forest floor with reusable tungsten spikes. He hammered the spikes through wide rings that were welded to the platform footers. The cannon itself looked like a toy-like simple box with a rounded top that was flat black.

Julian spoke into his armband. “Cannon four one seven seven. Go live.” The small box beeped twice and then once more to confirm that it was activated. The entire assemblage weighed less than it appeared, about five kilograms all told from its feet to the scanner cap.

Kama vigilantly scanned the camp's perimeter, Coilgun extended and scope collapsed. Her Coilgun’s reticle crossed Julian as he set up the autocannon. Aurelia thought that Kama slowed her visual sweep when Julian came into focus but then supposed that it was just her imagination. Aurelia kept half an eye on Kama nevertheless.

“Cannon’s up,” Julian announced. Kama relaxed her Coilgun down and smiled at Julian. Aurelia let out a subdued
harrummph
and then took another swig of water. She stood up and whispered into Julian’s ear.

Julian laughed, glanced in Kama's direction and then shook his head. “Don’t think so, no,” he said to Aurelia.

The four sat around a small campfire with the Solarbikes ringed round them. “Don’t think we need the fast tents. Should be a decent night,” Revon said. The other three nodded in agreement.

The Sun fell away to nightfall. The four adventurers discussed the specifics on what they were going to do. After an hour and a half of details they decided that Julian would pose as Kama’s captured prisoner. The Jia Ting would consider Julian a valuable prize, a living trophy, a gift from the far away Polar City Three.

At once the auto cannon sounded out a short
blirp
and then swiveled it's small barrel toward the northeast. Revon held up his hand and everyone hushed themselves to silence. Kama and Revon looked at each other.
Blirp blorp
the autocannon tried to lock onto something just beyond the camp. He glanced at Kama again and then nodded
no.
She had charged her Coilgun and was almost to a stand.

The autocannon’s target laser jiggled and twitched. It could see something hidden just beyond.
Blirp, blirp, blirp, BLORP
and then a low pitched
thimmmm,
the autocannon’s signal that meant
ready to engage the target now.
The turret would do nothing more without Julian’s release.

Julian reached for his armband but stopped when Revon waved to him, “Wait,” Revon whispered and then disappeared into the blindscrubs in a handsmacked second. Julian nodded toward the empty space where Revon stood only a second before. The moment was comical but subdued for Kama and Aurelia.

Fifteen seconds later everyone had their weapons ready. Their guns pointed into the darkness where the auto-cannon laser threw a mist-danced beam just past. Nobody made a single sound at all. A screech emerged from the silent dark, and then a scuffle. They heard Revon yell, “Hey!”

Branches broke and leaves shuffled. The howl of what sounded like a young woman resounded across the forestline. “Yaawww! Yowww!” Revon emerged into the circle. He carried the captured specimen in front of him. The autocannon’s laser painted a tiny red and orange dot over her forehead. The girl thrashed widly against Revon's hold. She kicked out and yowled some more and then bit into Revon’s right forearm with a grizzled snarl. Spit and blood flew from her mouth. The girl’s rotten and weakened teeth were no match for Revon’s nano-fibre body armor. Two brown-yellow nuggets rolled harmlessly to the ground.

“Stop it!” Revon said as he shook the feral woman. His action made her kick and fight even harder than before. “Stop! God damn it! Christ almighty!” He yelled.

The girl stopped the futile struggle as he set her down near the firepit. He removed what appeared to be her only weapon. It was loosely tied to her thigh with rotted and frayed sunder twine. The device was a crudely formed metal blade that was bound fast against a wooden stick, a half a meter long or so. The weapon was a crude but valuable weapon for any wanderer.

Aurelia, Kama and Julian all trained their weapons on the wild girl as she heavily breathed and sighed. The girl looked from one to the other with widened eyes again and again and rocked herself in place.

After a few moments everyone lowered their weapons. Aurelia asked, “Where in God's name is she from?”

Kama responded, “She's From Reso. From the outer zone. I’m sure of it.”

“How do you know that?” Aurelia said.

“Her armor. It's leatherstrap, It’s Reso. Just look.” Kama waved her hands unto herself and then said, “Like this. See? It's in bad shape though.”

Revon asked Kama as he continued to stare at the captured girl, “The outer zone? What's that?”

Kama said, “When you are shunned from the main City, Reso that is, they send you to the
Outer zone
above the ground. When you are shunned from
the Outer Zone
,” she looked at the girl, “This happens.

The feral girl dashed away and into the dark before anyone could react. “Fuck,” Revon exclaimed and then raised his rifle up to pursue. The auto-cannon reawakened and blirped out an alert. Revon started to follow but after twenty seconds the girl returned on her own. She casually sauntered back to the firepit circle and then plopped herself down as if nothing particularly alarming was going on.

The girl held in her hands a head, a human head that was once a man, young perhaps with long matted waves of dustcoal hair.
Must have dropped it during the toss up,
Kama thought. The shriveled trophy was blackened and necrotized and leathered from weather and sun and insects all. The eyes were gone. The skin of its neck was cinched into a tightly fluted cone. The feral girl sat and rocked. She stared at the sparkhaloed flames the firepit lifted up while she softly combed its hair with her fingertips. Like a doll.

Revon lowered his weapon while he stared, amazed and unable to find any words worth speaking.

Aurelia plopped herself across the fire and shook her head while Julian reached into his Solarcycle’s storage bin. “I don’t think she’s going anywhere,” Julian said with his back to the fire circle. He turned around and said, “Girl! Hey.”

The feral one slowly raised her eyes from the fireborne trance. She widened her eyes when Julian threw a small wrapped food brick to her. The brick was originally meant as a single adult sized meal but it was enough to satisfy her hunger perhaps for a whole day or maybe even longer than that.

Julian pantomimed a toss and then nodded to the girl. He volleyed it to her from about nine meters away.

Her arms produced an impressive
phooosh
as she nabbed it from the air. Embossed into the goldfoil wrapper were black and silver letters, POLAR CITY 3||SOFTBREAD CHEESE DELIGHT||PACKED BY CHILL-YUM FOOD COMPANY 10-2511||BEST BY 4-2526||.

She tore the food-brick open straight away and gnawed at the compressed contents. For some time nobody said anything. The fire’s crackle-dance filled the forest trees and the darknight scrubs with a resounded ambiance that good fires offer.

Julian thought it was odd that the girl knew without further inspection that the brick was indeed food and not something else entirely. Perhaps her sense of smell was more acute than he guessed. He didn’t know, but figured that it really didn’t matter anyhow.

Kama took a drink from a juice square, looked to Revon who sat to her right. He said, “We don’t have much farther till the road.”

Kama nodded in agreement. “Good,” she said.

Julian placed an old acoustic guitar onto his lap and started to quietly play. “Yeah tractor mode’s gonna be nice. I’m beat.” He picked away at a melancholic A minor chord that melted into E minor and then to a modest C major. The guitar strings tuned themselves as he played. They trued one cent at a time.

Aurelia snuggled up to Julian’s right arm while he played. “Tractor mode is, what?” She asked.

Revon said, “Syncs up all the bikes. I lead, your bikes follow automatically. You won’t have to steer the bike or worry about your guiding laser. Only works on a relatively clear path or road though.”

“Sounds great,” Aurelia said.

The girl snacked on her cheese delight and then scooted over to Kama who lay tangential to the firepit circle. She nuzzled herself against Kama’s battlegear. Kama said something to the girl in Mandarin delivered with a stern, scolding vocal that was wrapped across the words. The girl grabbed her trophy head and hugged it and then rebelliously shook her head
no, no
.

And as the feral girl's eye's dropped low Kama pried the shriveled thing from her hand and tossed it into the fire. She brushed her hands to suggest the head was unclean and not worth holding on to. The girl cried for a few moments, then fell silent and stared at the fire once again and curled up close against Kama’s leather as a child would to her mother. It was a soul-felt safety found only in proximity to the familiar.

One by one they fell asleep. Revon was the last to close his eyes. The auto turret scanned and whirled and bleeped whenever a wild creature caught its attention. The world around them was lost and dark and silent even more.

A rifle shot cracked. At once everyone woke up with Revon the first to stand. The Sun was up but not far along. “Time to go guys!” Revon announced. The robotic auto turret angrily bleeped and spun as it sensed an insult threat somewhere just beyond.

Kama still lay where she fell asleep. She reached for the sleeping feral girl, but she was gone.

“Come on Kama! Gotta go! Now!” Revon said. Julian hastily threw their supplies injudiciously into the Solarbike storage bays. Aurelia snuffed out the firepit embers with her foot and then grabbed her rifle and pack. She slapped on her battle helmet.

The team quickly scanned around and were satisfied that nothing was left behind. Another rifle shot came from the Southeast. “They're close!” Revon said, “J come on!”

Julian struggled to collapse the auto turret’s base and stow it in his Solarbike. He missed a step in haste for the turret's base refused to fold down. Julian paused.
Crap, the tensioner cam safeties
, he thought and then jammed three small levers upward. The base assembly partially collapsed so Julian decided to stow it as-it was. The device haphazardly stuck out from his Solarbike’s storage bay. He hopped on as two more rifle shots rang in only this time they were married with shouts from unseen men.

“Hang on I’m gonna use tractor mode!” Revon yelled out since he supposed that there was no point in quiet. Revon could visualize the other Solarbikes' statuses. Three green dots blinked inside his visor that indicated they were linked in and would track his lead.

All four Solarbikes disappeared in place as their dynamic camouflage kicked in. Eleven Raiders rushed into the campsite and swept their weapons at the group's general direction. The Raiders appeared confused and disoriented at their sudden disappearance. They could hardly see their thin vague outlines. A Raider yelled out and then pointed at Revon’s spirited outline. The eleven Raiders trained their sights as one onto his ghostly apparition.

Revon twisted on the accelerator. The train of bikes jolted and vanished into the scrubs. They escaped without a single hit, the Raiders reaction too slow to compensate. They could hear yells and shouts from behind. Revon’s Solarbike traced out five lasers that dynamically moved and scanned ahead. The lasers shifted in response to the terrain as if they were outreached feelers.

They made it out a half kilometer or so when one of the green dots on Revon’s heads-up display turned violent red. The dot was highlighted with the letters DL which signified that Revon had lost one of them. “Dammit,” he said and then slowed the Solarbike train to a stop.

“Ahhh!” Julian yelled in pain through their communication interlinks. Revon de-linked the tractor mode and spun his bike around. Kama, Aurelia and Revon turned around with a full one-eighty swingback and then rode back to Julian. His Solarbike stood upright and passenger-less. An outward branch had snagged against the auto turret’s assembly and forced Julian's bike to a full stop. He lay ahead and to the right of the stalled craft.

Aurelia jumped off her bike and ran to Julian. She held his shoulders and said, “Shit you alright?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine,” Julian said.

Kama quickly removed the semi-folded auto turret’s base and said, “Julian talk me through this, we have about two minutes.”

Julian raised his head then relaxed. “Ah, yeah.” He paused then guarded his left flank. “Okay, uh, ahh.” He screwed up his face against the agony. “Turn the locking wing, its a big nut that has three small wings.”

“Okay its not moving,” Kama said.

“No, yeah, sorry I forgot.” Julian grimaced against the pain. “Pull the axle down. Turn the locking wing. Remove the locking wing off the axle then it should fold down all the way.”

Kama pulled against the axle and spun the locking wing as fast as she could until it de-threaded itself and fell to the ground. “Got it. Okay I see now.” She pushed the axle back into the base’s crown assembly and the entire thing collapsed. She pushed the auto turret back into Julian’s Solarbike storage bay. They heard the Raiders who were not far away. They raced through the forest scrubs in pursuit of the troubled four.

“Is the bike free now?” Revon asked as he ignited his plasma saw, an arch-bowed handle crossed with blades of superheated air.

“Yeah the branch just fell off. C’mon help me get him on!” Kama responded.

Revon and Kama ambulanced the weakened Julian onto his Solarbike. Julian tried to hold firm to the handlebars but yelled out, “Shit! Ahh! Fuck!” He fell backward but Kama caught him before he dismounted entirely.

Aurelia stood guard to the rear and nervously swept her rifle. She scoped in. Her arms reflexively shook themselves in response to what she saw next.