18.1 BA: To Al Suit
A piece of Forrest’s protein bar crumbles over the Humvee floor, he bends down to pick up the crumbs.
“Watch it, Forrest. I had to get a special licence for this,” Gunner speaks from the driver’s seat.
Back when they first arrived in Rosca, Leichman assigned each company with their own four-wheel drive coated to match the Mortaresi sand. They’re bulky, armoured vehicles with wide, flat hoods and rectangular front grilles. One of the back doors didn’t close properly when they got it, but Gunner fixed it. He tightened something to make it fit in the frame. Then strung up some lights so they can see better in the dark.
They must have been hand-me-downs from previous military efforts, Maeven thinks, as the inside rumbles like a dryer over the sandy terrain. There’s no middle seat. Instead the floor of the boot extends forward in its place, where she has elected to sit cross-legged. She didn’t want any one of her assignees to have to deal with it, the plastic stabbing into their pelvic bone every time they drive over a bump. Otherwise, she might have to hear them complain about it.
Callum, from the front passenger seat, shakes his map to keep it upright.
“When is it ‘til we turn?” says Gunner.
“Hold up I said. There’s not much to go by.” Callum gestures to the expanse of dirt beyond them, as sand pelts on the windshield like quiet rain.
Win pitches a question. “Hey.” He takes his elbow off the door. “Who’s the strongest out of us and Sand Company?”
“Obviously it’s Maeven,” says Forrest.
“If we’re talking about versatility, I’d say Ina.” says Maeven. “If it’s raw power Hara.”
After considering it for a second, Win just turns back to the window.
“You got a wife?”
Gunner asks the question facing Callum. The kind of question Maeven might have pondered herself once, but was hesitant to ask, especially out of nowhere. The big guy shakes his head while staring down at the map. “Used to.”
“What happened?”
No answer. Something about his silence says: Don’t ask.
Gunner’s elbow touches the edge of the car seat.
“Callum.”
“Scared her off. Had too much anger in me.”
“What you yell at her or something?”
“Her? No. Never.”
Maeven thinks he’s done with the question until he later elaborates. “Everyone else.”
“What does that mean?” says Gunner.
“Other guys, you know. Couldn’t help it. I didn’t like when they got too close.”
“Yeah nobody likes that shit.”
“You ever stomp on a man’s head so hard you felt his skull crunch?” says Callum.
It’s a full stop to a short sentence. Gunner doesn’t have a response.
“Yeah,” says Callum. “Not like that.”
He straightens the map.
“Mia watched all of it. That was the last time. I stopped my wrestling career after that. Couldn’t think right,” Callum says.
“That’s why you joined the Reserve?” says Maeven.
“I guess so,” he says, the tone superficial and nonchalant. “‘Cause I didn’t know what to do with myself.”
“Mia?” says Gunner.
“Yeah. Mia,” he says. He folds the map and points with a finger curving to the right. “This is the turn.”
Halcutt steers towards a forest.
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18.2 BA: Infiltration
The sun begins to touch the horizon. Ocean’s Humvee tussles through scattered foliage, opening a path for Sand Company just behind. They park their vehicles among the trees, throw camouflaged nets over to conceal the Reserve’s presence, then change into their regular clothes.
Maeven wears the same black hoodie and shorts she wore when she first entered Peacemaker. After that, they make their way out of the forest and along the side of an inclining road.
“Are you sure it will be fine if we enter? The city is filled with criminals is it not?” says Rain. She’s wearing a yellow dress with a knitted cardigan.
“Al Suit is famous for its bazaars. It attracts people from all over,” Ina answers, in tight jeans and a white tank top. Her blond ponytail is high on her head. “We’re tourists, for all they care.”
“Still, we should lay low,” says Maeven. “Once we get there, we’ll find a place to wait. Then, I’ll head to Black Lane to pinpoint Babda’s exact whereabouts before morning…” She’s muttering without realising it, and Win, in a loose purple t-shirt, stops her by placing a hand over her shoulder. “They’re not listening anyway,” he says.
Behind them, Forrest is having an animated conversation with Adi and Hara while Patrick is just behind, looking ahead with boredom in his eyes.
“Right…” she says. I hope we do this quickly. Captain Eyeshot is counting on her.
“Hey, Maeven,” says Gunner. He’d just spoken to Rain and Callum, looks like. “Is it true you guys are bulletproof?”
“Will Users?” she says. “Usually, at some stage.”
“But are you?”
“I’d have to be.”
Ina backsteps to Gunner after the question, and Maeven gets a bad feeling. The Sand leader is grabbing his rifle, clicking the safety off.
Maeven shoves Win aside. She enforces her hand with Optimisation and does a blurring swipe just as Ina presses the trigger. The gunfire startles them.
“Ina!” says Maeven, chucking the bullet. It hits the ground with a spurt of sand and smokes into the air. “What if that missed?”
Ina hands the rifle back with a shrug. “Just making sure.”
Meanwhile, Gunner’s stopped walking. “You fucking caught it,” he says, wide-mouthed.
The road is starting to flatten. Al Suit is slowly rising into view. It’s a sinister colony of boxy mud structures, peaking like a tray of candles, each melted at different points. Every building is the same dark-brown and red. Double the size of the cities they’ve encountered so far.
If you spot this narrative on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
“In and out, assignees,” Ina requests.
“And afterwards, we’ll party!” says Hara.
Entering through the red gate, they see bazaars crammed in all places between the surrounding buildings, flanking small, staggered roads. Cave-like shopping nooks are roofed around with colourful scraps of fabric, encasing each little room in their own special ambience, and with all of its narrowness and draping and humidity, it reminds her of a closet if it were turned inside out.
Merchants gesture, call, beckon and enchant, robed in a variety of matching garbs. Maeven’s attention is taken all about, though she tries to keep her head forward. There’s a man selling nothing but wooden shoes, another who’s covered his roof with layers and layers of leather belts. One merchant is banging on a tin wall with the back of his broom, shouting proclamations about herbal tea with broken English. The tea is encased in jars and twine, backlit with flashlights. Suspiciously shadowed debris swims in the liquid.
Every passer-by feels like they’re sizing them up. There’s even the odd Will User here and there, with Resonances that are murky and threatening. They’re not the regular, friendly Mortaresi’s they’re used to, almost comically so. Ahead of her, Sand Company leads the way into a pub.
They are stuffed into the corner of a balcony. The cracks on the walls make it look like the place is falling apart.
Adi leans slightly over the table. “Maeven?” she says. “Are you okay?”
Only now does she realise she’s shaking her leg.
“Your Resonance is suspicious,” says Adi. “You’re nervous.”
“I’m fine.” says Maeven. As much as she indulges in reading other people’s Resonances, it’s always an uncomfortable feeling to be read back, especially when it’s true.
I am nervous. Sue me. It’s a feeling of growing familiarity.
“You should wait here. Leave it to me to find Babda.”
“It’s not like there are other Intuitives here,” says Maeven.
“There could be,” says Adi. Again, true though unlikely.
“Riel,” says Ina, approaching the table with a mocktail. “You need to relax. Intuition is nowhere near my specialty but even I can tell.”
There must be something glaringly wrong about her demeanour. Maeven straightens, the look on her face like she’s trying to work out a kink in her back.
“Adi, go. Be back before sunrise.” says Ina.
The assignee leaves the table and makes her way down the crowded wooden steps. It shouldn’t really be an issue. Intuitives like Adi are usually good at sneaking around. But Maeven doesn’t like that she’s sticking her nose in her Will, trying to read her like a book.
“Have a drink,” says Hara. “C’mon, we gotta blend in.”
Gunner and Callum walk over to the table fanning shish kebabs in their hands. Alcohol is cheap here, they say. But they’re on-campaign and letting them drink now probably isn’t the best idea.
Win sets a glass in front of her, then takes out his sketchbook as he sits down. Maeven looks at it, sips it. Some sort of mango juice. She dissects the flavour by smacking her lips, as she overhears Forrest having a conversation with some female locals at the table behind them.
“Forrest you speak Mortaresi?” she says, setting the glass down.
Forrest turns around smiling. “Yes I do!”
“Mortaresi, English, Chinese…”
“Mandarin Chinese, Shanghainese, Japanese, Portuguese, Tagalog…” he continues.
“How many do you speak in total?”
“Mm. I don’t know, fifty?”
“Fifty?”
Why is she just figuring this out now?
“Yeah! Our family travels all around the world to spread our knowledge of the animals! And sometimes we take them back to our own sanctuary.”
He’s still scratching his arm, red from irritation. Poor guy. Guess there’s only so much the ointment could do.
“Rain?” she calls.
Across the table, the medic User looks at her.
“Is there anything you can do about Forrest’s arm?”
“What’s wrong?” says Rain. Once she notices the rash, she stands up. “Oh dear.”
Forrest shows it to her. “I can do something, but it won’t be permanent,” she says.
Gunner raises his hand. “Me too Rain!”
Rain begins to call her Will. “You too?”
“I have a rash too—”
“He doesn’t,” says Maeven, quick to interject. “Don’t believe anything he says.”
The Medic nods slowly. “Um…yes okay.”
They spend a long time at the bar, sharing the kebabs with a bowl of chips on the side. Gunner and Hara are talking the most. The Sand Optimist yells out the balcony that she loves the shish kebabs, then again for comedic effect, as Gunner slams the table cracking up.
Maeven, Win and Patrick are relatively quiet. Occasionally, Ina tells an assignee to sit down or shut up.
Later on, Maeven leaves to book them a hotel for the night, using the bank card supplied by the Reserve. It’s a nervous walk through the bazaars, trying to find some place with enough beds, that’s willing to house the assignees for the night.
She feels she has no idea how tomorrow is going to go.
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18.3 BA: Warehouse
Bullets are fired into the sky from the Lane the next morning, the merchants of The Black Ammunition have opened their doors.
“Gunner, Callum, and Patrick will stay outside and monitor from the apartment roof south-east of the warehouse. The rest of us are going in to confront Babda. You see any trouble, Callum? You radio us.”
Callum wiggles the walkie-talkie in his hand.
Ocean and Sand are gathered by the street that neighbours Black Lane. Maeven briefs them with the satellite map in her hands, the sun high above their heads. She had already discussed this portion of the plan between her company last night, knowing that it would take a bit of convincing for Gunner to accept that he’s going to be missing most of the action. Eventually, he understood, and perhaps was also reminded of the conversation they had at the community centre in Jurn. If there are rules, I’d have thought about them. She hopes she’s earning their trust with respect to that.
It’s for their own safety, for the most part. Users are beyond their depth. If something goes wrong, she doesn’t want to be debilitated looking after all of the unwilled. Forrest gets a pass because he’s their only translator. She’s willing to risk Win for the sake of the experience. Funnily enough, Patrick, also on roof duty, doesn’t seem to care either way. He’s Transformed himself to look like a tall Mortaresi woman since this morning. Tanned skin. Long black hair. He’s not really blending in, because the white garb wrapped around him is exposed at his hip and above his chest. “He, she, they, I do it all,” he clarified to them earlier ago.
It wasn’t hard for Adi to narrow down his proud Resonance before the morning, given that Babda is one of few Users in Al Suit. She found his headquarters last night, in a warehouse that sits on the southernmost end of the Lane, where they’ll soon be headed.
Maeven pockets the map. “Are there questions?”
They look amongst each other, everyone quiet.
“Then good luck and let’s go,” she says.
Al Suit’s Black Lane is a crowded dirt road of utter chaos. True to its name, everything is painted asphalt black, including the faces of the surrounding buildings, the merchants, the sand. It sticks to their boots and emits a strong chemical odour that oozes into the morning humidity. Assignees squeeze through in a snaking line as customers around them wrestle for AKs and hand grenades for prices equivalent to a handful of shish kebabs. They’re shooting them into the air as if they have ‘try me’ stickers on them.
“This is messed up,” Ina comments under her breath, gunfire erupting around them as they manoeuvre.
They find the warehouse at the very end of the strip. A wide structure with a curved roof and panelled with thin sheets of rusting metal. A group of armed Black Ammunition members are lounging around the entrance. Guard duty. Some of them straighten as they approach.
Forrest walks ahead with Ina by his side and speaks to them in Mortaresi. What Maeven senses from their correspondence, is that they’re clearly reluctant to let the Reserve assignees enter.
“Tell them we’re here for business stuff,” Hara tries from afar. Forrest turns back to the Ammunition members. After a while, they walk back. “They can’t let us in because we haven’t got confirmation,” he says.
Maeven crosses her arms. They’ve almost expended half an hour fighting the foot traffic. She turns to look at the Lane. The road to the warehouse curves just slightly, enough that they’re out of view from the rest of the market. And to the Ammunition’s carelessness, the balconies above are unmanned.
“Ina,” she says, “Hara.”
Seeing their faces, Maeven might not need to finish. “We do this quick,” she says. “Forrest, Win, the rest of you get behind something.”
They split. Hara, Ina and Maeven advance towards the warehouse. Eight Ammunition members. Maeven focuses on the two on the very right.
The guards tense up as they’re approached. One is rising warily from the ground, the other is behind, kicking off the wall of the shed.
Maeven readies Will into her fists. She swipes the former’s rifle and uses it to knock the other’s out from his under-grip. Now possessed with their firearms, she hauls them into the air. They soar above and beyond the apartments encasing the Black Lane, spinning.
The first throws a punch, so she grabs it and throws the man’s body into his stunned friend, sandwiching him with the wall. They limp over the sand.
Looking over, Ina and Hara are just about finished. They kick open the doors to haul the bodies inside. Maeven beckons the other assignees to come on through.
There’s commotion within the warehouse; Ammunition members gathered around, pointing barrels at their heads as the Users calmly drop the bodies and right themselves. She hears heavy footsteps tip-tapping from behind the crowd. Someone’s shouting in Mortaresi.
“That’s him,” says Adi.
Babda walks into view, Ammunition members parting at his sides. Dark and heavy-set. Will thickens around him like molten glass. He stops in front of them, eyebrows furrowing, then takes the cigar out of his mouth. “What is this?” he asks in English. The smoking’s turned his voice deep and gravelly.
“Got something for you,” says Ina.
“So you think you can walk right in? Injure my brothers?” He waves his cigar as he talks, the smoke snaking into the air. “What are you, vigilantes?”
“Voluntary Reserve. We’re on assignment to eliminate you,” Maeven says.
This only makes him laugh. He seemingly translates it to his fellow members in Mortaresi, because after they hear it, they grin and chuckle back. Babda bites his cigar and starts to turn around. Members start to cock their rifles.
Maeven reaches into her hoodie. She holds the Contract in front of her and pulses her Will. Babda turns around.
“We have a Will Contract,” she says.
Babda looks at the paper for some time. A single, downward motion of his hand, and his subordinates lower their fire.
He walks to her. She hands him the paper, and he observes its insignia with a heedful eye.