Fury Gorge

Time seemed to freeze for Buddy. Or rather, it slowed down to such slow increments that it was like perceiving a still image. Similar to when, before higher replacements, Buddy used to wake from sleep after a long night, and instead of getting up, he’d stare at the wall. With no indication of time moving forward, and the outside world being silent, it seemed that he was watching a still-frame of infinity. A painting of reality. An image of time. He’d felt at peace then, until some sound reminded him about the world. About his duties.

This time, though, Buddy’s perception of time and space didn’t slow out of nostalgia or awe at regarding some beautiful vista. Neither did it from shock, even though the image of the creature that had barely missed its dive toward the wagon was absolutely disgusting; Buddy had reacted, and the atomizer was in his hand. In truth he couldn’t quite say neither then nor later on, until it was explained to him, just why the moment slowed to a stop as it did. He only knew that unlike his childhood, this truly was an image of infinity.

Boulders and stones had been sent flying overhead by the giant serpentine beast that had impacted the ground. They pulled along dusty tails of grit in languid arcs to their stationary spots in space. Among the debris, a cloaked figure in green and white stripes, possibly some other pilgrim by Buddy’s estimation, was locked in the air mid-tumble, thrown toward the wagon by the shock wave. Buddy was leaning gently back, one arm out for balance, legs splayed, the other risen halfway with the atomizer.

The strange symbol-script in his periphery was going insane. It was glitching and ripping and stuttering and flashing through the chromatic spectrum. Something strange was going on, that was clear.

Though Buddy couldn’t move, he could think. Which in itself was quite strange. For a second he wondered if the others could too, and if they could do something to help, but then he realized that if they could they would be in the same predicament as he.

Then he saw something beyond. Something far beyond the monster, down the road from where they had come. It was like glass. Or rather, it looked like a shattered pane of glass, though without frames. As though the air itself was broken into large shards, each bending in and reflecting off each other. He couldn’t zoom in, but discerned that through the gap in the shards, out came a dog.

Buddy couldn’t make out its color or make but knew it was a dog. It sniffed about, then scampered off, disappearing beyond the bend from where Buddy and the party had come. As it did, the shatter solidified, leaving only empty air.

As it did, Buddy noticed that the rocks and boulders, his arm and the tumbling pilgrim, were all regaining their momentum. He noticed as well that more than a few boulders, easily capable of destroying the wagon, were picking up worrying amounts of speed.

Synthetic neurons firing in overdrive, armpit vents snapping open and oxygen intake cycling up to turbo, Buddy panned his aim toward the closest, and by the time he pressed the firing stud, reality was back to its original parameters.

The atomizer discharged. A lance of light struck a boulder in the air, but Buddy didn’t wait to see if it had slowed or stopped, instead he aimed the gun at another, and another, firing lances as fast as he could. Smaller stones got through, peppering the roof of the wagon. The large pilgrim flopped atop the roof and skidded against it, only coming to a stop once it punched a fist through the roof.

The monster reared and gave chase. It was a long serpentine thing, carried along by what looked like a million machinic insectile legs. It’s ophidian body was covered in gray-white segmented plates reminiscent of ancient-earth beetles. The most terrifying aspect was its head. Between and above a massive set of mandibles, a humanoid face, sallow and yellow, with four grotesque cerulean eyes and an overly large mouth locked in a rictus grimace, stared at its prospective prey. Its giant set of teeth parted, and it roared.

Buddy spared a second of his attention to turn around and slam the max speed setting into the equine control console, then returned to the monster.

The mucoleth.

He’d heard of them before from travelers and disgruntled merchants. Tales ranged from swarms of meter long things that came upon you to things the size of mountains. The latter of which Buddy doubted highly. It was whispered that they were some horrible mutation of ancient man and machine; that they burrowed in sand and stone and dirt and felt the tremors coming from the feet of ignorant wayfarers. Experiments of a forgotten century following the cataclysm. Some prize-hunters Buddy had met, (credible folk), had seen them feasting while hunting once. They’d been in the process of draining the moisture from their victim, as they did with everything, keeping the barren Europan fossil-wastes in which they dwelled dry as bone. He’d never heard of one coming so far south.

Not that it mattered, now that one of such titanic size, easily thrice that of the wagon, was bearing down on them.

Buddy switched settings, sensing by touch how eager Gamma-XIII was, and fired a rapid hail of thumb-sized bursts at the leering uncanny face. The thing raised its mandibles to protect itself and faltered, allowing the now galloping equines to widen the gap between wagon and monster.

Jean and Jaques popped their heads out to ask what all the ruckus was about, noted the beast, then promptly disappeared back inside, faces pale. Buddy heard bumping and banging and a few curses from the ladies inside. Something was going on, but in an instant he decided that the mucoleth took precedence.

The large pilgrim righted himself and crawled over the buggy strapped to the roof, his robe flapping madly in the wind. It looked as though he meant to leap at the beast, but then he shot out his arm, brandishing a black muscle-plated replacement, and fired a rapid burst of slugs at the beast from a wrist mounted weapon.

“The hell are you doing? You can’t take that thing on with a peashooter like that! Make yourself useful and get to that turret,” Buddy cut his hand through the air in the general direction of the only weapon installed on the wagon, then quickly grabbed onto the coachman’s seat’s backrest for support as the wagon sped up further, and the large wooden wheels bumped and hopped over stones.

Buddy thought he heard the man growl, but evidently he recognized the wisdom in the bounty hunter’s words and thus came to the front and grabbed hold of the twin-barreled kinetic machine-gun. The bulky man, his face still covered by the shawl, ripped it off its mountings and swung it toward the charging mucoleth, holding it underslung with two powerful arms. The twin turbo-looms by the side of the massive stock whined as they sucked in atmospheric particles, condensed them into bullets, and slung them from a frictionless chamber and through the two long barrels toward the monster. The rapid fire lacked the satisfying staccato of a ballistic weapon but made up for it in a subsonic vibrato that chattered Buddy’s metal teeth.

The mucoleth, its gigantic body squirming and thousands of legs tramping and crushing wailed in an almost-human voice as the bullets found their targets along its plated body and massive mandibles. The large pilgrim roared in answer, the sound a weirdly familiar screech.

Must be a some strong replacements, Buddy thought pumping his eyebrows. The turret was about a hundred and fifty kilograms and was never meant to be used like that. But then his wonder changed to horror as he realized that the atomizer’s snapshots, nor the pilgrim’s turret, had slowed the mucoleth down. Rather, they had enraged it further.

At that moment Hound flapped the door open, legs splayed wide apart for balance. “Buddy, what the hell is going on?”

“Mucoleth!” Buddy fired more shots, “thing’s huge, see for yourself.”

“How long to the bridge?”

“What?”

“The bridge?”

“I don’t know! Hell, this speed it—” he stumbled as the wagon bounced off a jutting boulder on the road. The wheel that struck it shattered and burst apart in a shower of splinters and shards as it kept spinning on its bearing. “Fuck!” Buddy fired more snapshots. “Probably five minutes!”

“We blow the bridge while it’s on it!”

“Good plan, but we need distance!”

Buddy glanced at Hound’s hairless face. The neon-green eyes glowed in their sockets, and his teeth were bared in what went for a smile. “Giddy-up cowboy.”

Buddy raised an eyebrow.

---

Inside the wagon, in the parlor, Lucia, Rousseau and the stranger Meridia flinched when the first crashing boom came from outside. (The one caused by the mucoleth’s dive). Before that they’d been awkwardly sitting around the room, trading pleasantries and mundane details about themselves and the world for the scant minutes since Meridia’s boarding.

“What was that?” Lucia asked when the wagon shook.

Meridia looked startled. Rousseau fixed her gaze on the pilgrim. “Ye alright lass—”

A bang sounded from the roof followed by skidding, then a shower of smaller bangs and rattles like hail. A few pressure waves from explosions outside washed through the parlor, in the same second something burst through the ceiling. A claw. A familiar claw. A claw with white synth-flesh and serrated finger-blades. It punched back up and disappeared. Lucia went paler than usual, gasped and giggled.

Rousseau rose to her feet. “The assassin!”

Meridia’s turquoise eyes narrowed and she too rose to her feet.

“Nay, stay here lass, I need to go check on the hunter,” Rousseau turned to leave but stopped when the girl grabbed her arm. The bot turned, confused.

Meridia gave a wicked smile. “Nice body, bitch-bot. How’re my sloppy seconds?”

Rousseau’s mouth dropped in shock both at the words and their connotation. Distracted, as intended by her assailant, she failed to perceive in time the closed fist that was shooting toward her face. It struck, and pistoned once, twice, and thrice in rapid succession.

“Mother!” Lucia cried and leapt at the Wraith. She was sent flying by a roundhouse kick to the ribs. Meridia’s long and elegant legs made the violent spin look like the movement of a dancer.

“Mother,” Meridia repeated mockingly. “God damn that Five-One. He just couldn’t wait.”

The door behind her slammed open and Jean and Jaques entered looking terrified, then stopped as they saw the two women lying on the ground. Meridia’s face split in a grin. “There you are,” she purred, pulling out her Vibra-Blade.

“Oh my God, It’s you! You’re with the assassin!” Jaques shouted and pointed a finger at the Wraith.

This time Meridia hesitated. How the hell could that fool know who she was? Before she could kill him, or get an answer, her legs were out from under her, and she slammed to the floor with a loud thud.

Rousseau was standing over Meridia now, one leg already in the air, cresting the zenith of its range of motion. Her heel came down in a wicked axe kick aimed at Meridia’s head, but the Wraith was quick to roll aside. Rousseau’s foot shattered the floorboards and sunk into the wiring and cables hidden beneath.

Meridia grinned again and lunged with her knife, but a brassy fist came up in an uppercut and struck her in the elbow with a loud metallic crack. Meridia gasped as rudimentary sensoria sent pain impulses to her brain, and at the fact that her arm was now bent in the wrong direction.

Rousseau’s shuffled her back foot forward, narrowing her stance, and ripped the other foot out from the floor, nailing Meridia directly in her all-too-biological groin. Her reaction was a soundless cough. Her turquoise eyes rolled in their sockets as pain flooded her body, both biological and synthetic.

Though in pain, Meridia was quick to block the hook shooting from the left, and as she did so she shut off her synth-sensoria and snapped her elbow back. She fired up a knee, aiming at the bot’s torso, expecting the hag to block or hop back, but instead Rousseau cupped the back of Meridia’s knee with a lightning quick hand and pulled up and forward toward the Wraith. Meridia used the momentum to execute a backflip instead of toppling over.

While airborne she saw the mutt shoot past toward the front of the wagon and hissed. If that bastard made it out Unit Five-One would be helpless. When she landed she took two quick steps back and launched her blade toward the dog but missed by a hair.

Damn, now she was out of a weapon.

Rousseau was in a wide boxer’s stance, eyeing the youthful Wraith from under her brow. “Ye alright lass?” she shot toward a groaning Lucia.

“Yes… Mother,” she moaned.

“Then get ye to the Grower and Jaques. I’ll be handling her.”

“I… I can help—”

“Nay. Yer hand-ta-hand is horrible. Ye’d be in the way.”

Meridia took a wide kicker’s stance and braced her arms, palms flat and rigid like spear tips. “As if I’d let her go. Just give us the Grower and we’ll be—”

In the split second before she fell unconscious, Meridia registered a loud clang. Something had hit her on the back of her head. She’d had a monologue planned. She was going to pick at the bot’s self-esteem, or something. It wasn’t fair. She had not even known that the bot was combat capable. Not fair at all.

She fell gracelessly flat on her face, blonde hair spreading like strands of gold onto the broken floor. Jaques stood behind her with a skillet in his fists. A determined grimace stretched across his face.

“Good work Jaques! Now—”

“There’s no time for that!” Jean roared. “Look out the damn window!” the Grower pointed with his child-arm, the loose robe flopping about impotently.

Lucia did, then instantly reeled back with a scream. Rousseau rushed to see for herself, then gasped in horrified awe.

A titanic beast, body of a gargantuan millipede, face of a giant human, was giving chase, and gaining. Someone was firing with the wagon’s turret, but the rounds were doing nothing to slow it down.

Then a form rushed by. Toward the monster. It took some time for Rousseau to realize it was Beaufort ‘Buddy’ Limbo and Hound, the former riding atop one of the galloping cyber-equines, the latter at his side, sprinting like a cattle-hound. Mr. Limbo had the strap of his wide solar-panel hat knotted tight under his glinting copper jaw, and one of his long strands of cabling hair was connected to the beast. One arm was out, aiming the atomizer, the other at an angle beneath to stabilize his aim.

“Come on! Git!” he shouted and fired a prolonged lance that cut jagged lines into the monster’s segmented plating. Then he –

---

- leaned to the right, intuitively guiding the galloping equine to hug the ravine wall. The atomizer’s lance grazed the monster’s face, causing the beast to turn its attention to him.

Shit.

“Hound!”

Hound bayed, barked howled and yipped. The sonic waves garbled whatever machine wetware pulsed within the mucoleth’s head, and the thing howled. But, as Buddy had suspected, the decibels weren’t enough to paralyze it. They were enough to annoy it further, though.

The beast’s fore reared up and readied for another dive. Buddy took the advantage and rounded under where it had been and shot back toward the wagon, gaining enough distance just in time to get out of the way before the massive mandibles struck the dusty mountain road.

“The bridge should be coming up soon!” Buddy shouted as Hound came up beside him. He swung his legs over the cyber-equines back so that he was facing the monster. As he fired off shots he saw the big pilgrim on the roof of the wagon stand up. He was holding his hooded head in one massive black hand and shaking it as though he was coming out of a stupor.

He heard Rousseau’s voice from beside him. “Hunter! We be in trouble, this lass ain’t who she says she is!”

“Look, ma’am, I got my hands full right now!”

“She’s with the assassin! She’s the Wraith!”

Buddy spared a glance toward the window, then his eyes shot up to the pilgrim. The shawl flapped in the wind as he – it – reared the turret and recommenced firing. It was true. It was the assassin, Unit Five-One. Buddy could see the white muscles beneath the fabric and noted the clawed, split feet that were holding on to the wagon’s roof.

Then he grinned. It was a sadistic noble-metal grin. “I take it she’s out cold if you’re talking to me. Get her and a few fuel-cells to the rearmost compartment, and the rest of you get to the front!”

“What’re ye planning?”

“A nice big kaboom!”

Rousseau vanished then reappeared with Meridia’s unconscious body heaped over her shoulder. Soon after Lucia shuffled after with two fuel cells, one in each hand.

“Buddy, the bridge!” Hound barked from beside him.

Buddy turned and looked over his shoulder and, indeed, there it was. A monster of granite and ribbed steel girders shooting across an expanse for, what Buddy’s glitching optic readouts told him, around seven hundred meters.

In an instant the rumbling roar of the wagon turned into a flat grind as the wheels hit the flat surface. Buddy felt and heard the cyber-equine’s hooves clack against the bridge, each hoofbeat sending a shock wave up his spine that reverberated in his titanium bones.

He saw from the corner of his eyes as Lucia, Rousseau, Jean and Jaques, ran up past the window toward the front of the wagon. Then Buddy shouted out, “You need to get closer, sir! That ain’t doing shit!” to the pilgrim.

It roared and vaulted over the buggy to the rearmost compartment of the wagon. Buddy sent the command to slow, much against his self-preservation instincts, and came up to where he wanted to be, then once again matched his speed with the speeding wagon.

They were halfway across the bridge when Buddy barked, “Hound!”

The canine gave off a massive blast that tickled Buddy’s nerves, and as the hunter had suspected, scrambled the pilgrim who began to convulse violently. The mucoleth too flinched, and in that moment Buddy aimed the atomizer at the wagon and squeezed the stud.

The lance cut the last segment of the wagon cleanly in two, leaving it with one pair of wooden wheels. Almost instantly the newly detached piece, smoldering orange at the seams where it had been severed, lost momentum as the rest of the wagon pulled forward. The confused mucoleth slowed as a piece of its prey suddenly offered itself up. The assassin, Unit Five-One, shocked and angry, turned to the hunter and roared. The hood over its head blew off and Buddy could see it had grafted new pieces onto its face. A gleaming black plate of a nose and a pair of ears.

Then Buddy aimed at the cart. But now he hesitated. The form of the girl, (the Wraith, he reminded himself), woke up and, realizing her predicament, screamed out for help. The mucoleth’s massive form was bearing down but the assassin was quicker. It dropped down and grabbed the girl in one strong arm and dashed to the bridge’s railings before the mucoleth’s mandibles grabbed hold and crushed the cart.

As soon as the wreckage was before the beast’s grotesque human face, Buddy smiled, then smiled wider as the atomizer’s barrel rotated and clicked into place on its own, and dinged.

A marble of light bloomed, then burst forth in a hair-thin line, ripping and screaming as it sliced the molecules in its path. Then came a concussive boom as the super-shot pierced the hide of the monster and the power-cells stuffed into the now crushed segment of the wagon.

A blue explosion, a widening sphere of released energy, bloomed on the bridge. The massive form of the mucoleth was violently thrown back, it’s face and head a mangled wreck, and the bridge beneath crumbled and broke as support beams and cabling snapped and burst. Buddy slowed and sent a wireless signal through his equine to the others to slow as well as they reached the end of the bridge and were back on the mountain road.

They came to a stop and watched as the long millipede form banged against a crumbling railing, dangling over limp and dead, then fall over under its own weight, down into the deep to bash against the rocks. A massive segment of the bridge was gone. So too were the assassin and the wraith.

Buddy holstered the atomizer, feeling her gently vibrate with pleasure. Then, as he was about to turn to address the others, a form appeared at the lip of the ruined bridge on the other side of the gorge.

“Come the fuck on…” Buddy groaned.

There, in its green and white striped shawl, was Unit Five-One holding Meridia in the crook of one elbow like a massive gorillan beast from an ancient vid-chronicle Buddy had watched in his teens. The hulky turret dangled from another arm, while the two upper appendages were splayed out in a challenge.

“Wherever you go, Hunter Limbo, I will be there. You break me, and I shall build myself anew,” it brandished its ornate black arm. “The more you cut me down, the more others die. The more you run, the more you prolong the inevitable.”

“The more you yap on the more tired I get!” Buddy shot back. “You’re a failure! At the lab, at the town and now here! You ain’t got it in you to take me down.”

Buddy grimaced as a grinding and wheezing sound bubbled from the thing’s throat. The overlapping voice made it sound like a choir of choking people. A chill passed through Buddy as he realized the thing had, in that moment, learned to laugh.

“Maybe not you, yet. But the others. One by one I shall kill them, murder them, eat them. You shall watch as those you’re paid to protect die. One. By. One. Until you alone are left. You and that gun. You and your death.

“Death don’t scare me,” Buddy returned, though confidence had drained from his words.

“Perhaps not your death, but those of others,” the thing hissed and pulled its lipless mouth so tight one could almost make out its jagged molars. “Especially Adalaide’s—”

Buddy’s arm was up, the atomizer aimed, “Shut your damn dirty mouth!”

Unit Five-One pulled in air through its teeth, “ah… so the docket on you was correct… remember well that when one works for the Conclave, one is always remembered… Always.”

Buddy was hammering the firing stud again and again, but the atomizer was silent. She was spent and wouldn’t fire. The assassin once again chuckled in its maddeningly horrifying way. “Fate brings us together, hunter. Fate will bring us back once more. We shall meet again.”

With that the assassin turned its back to the party. It made no effort to duck or hide, which enraged Buddy further.

“Come back you bastard! Come say that to my face! COME BACK!”

But it didn’t.

When it had disappeared into the shadows of the mountain pass, the group continued on toward the Alpine outpost. Buddy didn’t speak the rest of the way. Hound sat with Lucia as she recovered from Meridia’s kick as Rousseau fussed about her. Jean was sleeping, and Jaques was pondering over the strange deck of cards once more. His fingers hesitantly reaching toward them before he’d inevitably pull them back.

END OF BOOK IV.

 

 

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