“Miss Michizane, Mister Carlotto,” Fairsykes flags you down, tipping his dark blue peaked cap, emblazoned with the tetrahedron symbolism of the Settlement Planets, each antiquated flag or coat of arms represented in the same bureaucratic monstrosity, the de jure stewards of Tiangong. “I apologize for the intrusion. Your employer, Doctor Shishito, informed me I may find you both here. He’s quite worried about your safety. And so am I, I’ll admit.”
Behind him, two other officers sweat beneath their pith helmets. They have no umbrellas, only the cross-body falseleather belts, sweat-stained navy blue finto-wool slack uniform pants and button-ups, to distinguish them from common rabble. One is tall, human, short brown hair balding and oily, slouching against the tuk-tuk they rode in on. The other’s short, standing straight—a porcine anthropomorph, snout stubby with thin mustache, his handmade sun helmet already bruised and discolored from a cycle’s worth of enforcing the byzantine laws of the land.
Their tungsten buckles, cheap and mass-produced from recycled metal, display at their waists, polished and glaring in the unbearable sunlight, flashing the familiar tetrahedron.
“As I alluded to last evening at Madame Soonyeong’s,” he proclaims, “you are both under arrest. I’ve done some research, and it seems a couple criminals similar to the both of you are wanted off-planet.”
“The Settlement, and the planet of Tiangong is exempt from such intergalactic reporting requirements,” you chide, clinging to the technicality that helps you sleep at night.
Or, at least that’s what the brochure said. It’s a monstrosity, a Gordian knot, a bundle of tied mitsuba parsley
“While that may be true, there is still a charge—a few counts of destruction of arcology infrastructure. A serious crime, as you can imagine. Elevators don’t repair themselves. And there’s also the matter of the many corpses that seem to find themselves in your wake. A whole house of them, too.”
“What did Shishi lay on you?” Ø huffs. “Depending on what you’ve got to say, I may not be too happy.”
“Doctor Shishito explained his situation in a limited sense. His group has suffered a murder or two, and he’s found difficulty with zeroing in on a culprit. I don’t blame him for seeking assistance with his situation, although I question his judgment. Instead of reaching out to our stations, he’s hired off-world individuals—you two—who I’m inclined to believe are wanted pirates. Killers, even,” he admits with sincerity. “However, in return for cooperation with our department, such matters as his lack of forethought will be overlooked for the Yugure Consortium. They normally keep to themselves, after all.”
“Well, we’re on our way to pick up the guy and collect,” Ø bargains.
“She’s right,” you plead. “We know the killer.”
“Now? According to the twenty or so coolies we passed to get here, it sounds like you were neck-deep in another gunfight.”
“Listen—over a hundred murders went under your radar, and someone’s doing something about it. If you wait until tonight, we can get you the ringleader, delivered by Boss Shishito,” you try.
“And who would that be?”
“‘The Ghost,’” the mare admits through a look of disgust.
“Not the best name to come up with. Convincing? No. Nearly as bad as your made-up little pseudonyms, I’m afraid,” he frowns. “So, as you can understand, no, absolutely not. I’d prefer if you were brought into our custody. Although I’m partial to Madame Soonyeong’s forewarnings, I’m not about to let you both run off back into my arcology and kill another hundred-or-so people, Above or Below. Officer Keswick, Officer Dudou, please arrest these two.”
The two auxiliary officers approach, sweating in the sunlight. At their side, now unhooked, are their just-short-of-a-meter-long billy clubs. Intricately carved, hickorywood make, their batons are inlaid with the aluminum tetrahedron symbols of the Settlement, along with twelve-digit identification codes—in lieu of names. At their wrists, the weapons rotate menacingly. With a flash of light off the polished truncheons, the pair break into a charge across the dusty flat plain.
They take you by surprise, while you’re hip-to-hip with your mare, sharing your umbrella’s meager shade. Thus far, none of your adversaries have been competent enough to attack first, at least not in any meaningful way. You wonder how many hours the two officer have logged, as the butt of a baton collides with your sternum, sending you stumbling backwards, the shorter porcine officer pursuing without stopping, slashing into the air on all sides.
Ø is surprised as well, and clumsily meanders out of the way of every swing, her exposed fur charring in the sunlight. However, her tall adversary missteps, jutting out an arm just too far. His downward swing leaves an opening from which she leans forward, landing a punch at the bridge of the cop’s nose. It’s surprise, she assumes, that makes him flinch, allowing her to land two more strikes to the right, then left side of his face.
Lights out, the officer drops to the ground, pith rattling against the dirt road.
Without a moment of hesitation, Lieutenant Fairsykes reaches into his holster, his hand confidently holding the ivory grip of his hammerless sidearm. It’s a standard-issue Sapporo VII, immaculately cleaned, fired at least four times this cycle alone. A professional, his form seasoned, feet firmly planted against the dust, nearly flat, he prepares to kill or be killed.
From down the sights, his stiff upper lip shows little remorse for your mare. She’s simply another criminal, a future footnote in monstrous mountains of paperwork spackled with outdated, bureaucratic Ozymandiases affixed in tetrahedron. Semi-forgotten symbols of bygone galactic power, like the frigates in the distance, the ancient wrecks of intergalactic struggle windswept, stripped of value, left to rot.
Later, Fairsykes will spill coffee on such documents in the cycle’s gloaming hours, filing KIA records in quintuplet for unseen quality managers whose careers exist in mythology only. Ink pen calligraphic strokes—straight lines—will combine with a perfect circle of a mug’s wet base. Layered atop one another, and ironic Ø. Nothing more.
His sunkissed finger pulls the trigger, the semi-automatic pistol primed to perforate the mare.
However, instead of the comforting recoil, only silence. Every subsequent pull is met with an impotent nothingness as the gun refuses to fire. It’s jammed.
No gunshot is heard—only a Whisper.
Undeterred, Fairsykes drops his gun and approaches Ø in the same aggressive fashion as his beaten-down colleague, ready for an old-fashioned gutter fight.
Two more painful thwacks assault your arm as you retreat. Your skin swells immediately, the hot sting of green-blue bruising growing beneath your sport jacket and flowery button-up, making you clench your teeth, nearly biting your own tongue. In an effort to gain distance, you shimmy backwards, away from the porcino officer, hoping to outrun your pursuer in the oppressive heat, as far from the road if possible.
You jump across the staircase’s gap, dancing atop the infrastructure of the farm itself, trying your best to remember the bony structure of planters, metal beams, and supports in the featureless horizon of dust. The falseleather shoes at your ankles are abrasive. Their mouths scrape against your bone—too new for combat—thin lines of crimson muddying your sweaty socks where your malleolus juts.
Your cheeks are flushed. They burn, along with every other centimeter of exposed skin. Even your scalp, covered by your brown locks, is assaulted with a horrifying sort of foreign sunlight, charring, itching with pain.
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The officer in chase belts halts and threats, but, undeterred, you continue further into the maze of de facto trapdoors, the thin surface of irradiated ground punctured with see-through skylights of tarps and fishnets. Navigating the man-made minefield of the plantation’s ceiling, you try your best to maneuver safely through, at one point a foot falling through the roof of yet another farm, pants cutting at the thigh, plastic twine cutting a single gash, only to dislodge yourself and continue trying to build distance.
At the main road, Lieutenant Fairsykes advances rapidly. His balled fists are up, at the ready. Ø and he share slight smirks, remembering the messages found in the tea leaves. Shrugging, bouncing at toes, both come into the offense, the officer’s Defendu on exhibition. His quick-power movements—chops to the neck, attempted hits to the eyes—are too speedy.
The fighters advance so quickly that they run into one another, barreling over each other, grappling to the ground, kicking up radioactive dust as furry digits scrape against forearm and human knuckles collide with oblong skull.
He’s competent, Ø would admit, unlike Shishi’s pitiful gangsters at training or the normal prey her mind lingers towards in periods of hunger. It’s the way his knees refuse to stay planted and still. And his unwillingness to lose the minor advantage in height, careful to guard his center of gravity. Confident in his movements, he rains down blows, using any attack at his disposal.
Others would call it dirty, but not your mare. Resourceful, she’ll reflect, like her time in the arenas slathered with mud and rain, or on Agapito, where blood and dust coagulated at youthful nostrils. Successful when it matters—when it’s kill or be killed.
And yet, you tire from running, adrenaline evaporating.
A burning sensation traces your trachea, depleted soil choking your lungs. Following your rash navigation of plantation pitfalls, an arcing run with the officer not far behind, you are once more near the descending staircase of the White Axe hideout.
After all, in the featureless, shade-less outskirts of the city, there’s nowhere else to run.
Behind you, the pudgy porcino officer sweats. Like you, he gasps for breath, salty sweat clogging his eyes and dripping from his thin hair. He rips at his pith, fanning himself with his helmet, fat fingers gripping his kneecaps. Unsure of how to proceed—as if you were in a certain Fontvieille department’s Casino—you turn to face him as Ø would. Arms in a fighting stance, hands open, ready to attack any vital.
The officer stands, stretching at his back, breath escaping his maw in hisses, and begins his attack towards you anew, empty eyes hooded, sunkissed forehead clammy, the tell-tale sign of heatstoke.
However, a tremor rocks the still sand at your feet. Distant metal groans, bamboo scaffolding splits. A thin layer of sediment flows like water across your loafers, its bulbous head snaking from between your legs, surface chittering, vibrating like millions of insects. Your adversary the officer—also confused—pauses his desperate sprint to a jog. Then a walk. Then, finally, a confused stillness. Pith in hand, he fans himself anew.
The earthquake spreads. Solids convert to liquid. Like quicksand, a sinkhole appears, earth giving way, contorting at the officer’s boots, swirling with a certain forgotten rhythm, that of a Madame’s tap-tapping taiko drums. Without further warning, a great chasm opens below the porcino’s dusty navy boots, swallowing him whole, baton, pith, and all, his form disappearing beneath the whirlpool of sand, the sieve dragging him into the collapsing ceiling of the bok choy plantation below.
By the descending octaves of his screeching the clacking of his baton on serrated flooring, you judge he’s only fallen into a few planters. Landed, possibly, hopefully, on the on the second-highest floor, in a dusty mixture of White Axe corpses, misted greeneries, and spent shells. Alive, you hope.
Sand trickles through the empty chasm, the sinkhole growing with intensity, drawing in nearby dunes, waterfalls of debris pouring down multiple stories. It collects atop growing vegetables, suffocating and entombing them. Within the hour, the bottom two stories will be filled. By tomorrow morning, next cycle, it’ll be as if there was no plantation at all.
A strike to her muzzle. Two karate chops to his trapezius. The Lieutenant’s hand rips at Ø’s mane, the sensation cascading through her occiput, drawing blood at the base of her nape.
Bloodied, heat-stricken, the two predators, one feral, one bureaucratic, continue to circle. They’re a localized sandstorm, shrouded in kicked-up dust, rising to sprained knees, then shaky feet or hooves, before colliding once more, smashing at clavicle, leading elbow-first into eye sockets, teeth becoming dislodged, bruises swelling. Fairsykes brings his hands, knuckles bloodied, to your mare’s neck, catching her off-guard with a strangle, forcing her backwards, her center of gravity loose in the silt, but refusing to fall completely. He’ll reach in his boot—she knows—to grab the hand-me-down snub nose Sherpur revolver within, loaded with outdated, ineffective cupronickel slugs, its barrel upturned like his spiteful split lip, etched with the date of his induction as a cadet, not dissimilar to that of a Tiangong gangster’s initiation.
And he’ll take joy in the ad hoc execution, firing once-twice at point-blank range, his combat pistolcraft unmatched, aim true as always, Shooting with purpose—To Live.
However, emulating his kill-or-be-killed spirit, fueled by the well-trained knowledge of a gladiatrix, Ø strikes with a furred kneecap and connects with his groin. She incapacitates him fully.
In shambles, he contorts, the fingers on her windpipe reluctantly releasing as she flings a talus upwards. Once, twice, to a rapid tap-tapping regularity. And after several swift kicks, Lieutenant Fairsykes slinks to the floor, bending like the bamboo supports that keep the arcology platted. He groans in his descent, planting into the dust, losing consciousness from the malicious combinations of blunt trauma, whole body beaten.
Relishing the sight of prey at her hooves, scratches at her neckline still fresh, crimson soiling the once-white top she wears, she draws a leg upwards, over the writhing officer’s head, ready to sever his spine with a single blow.
Before she can, however, you rush into her, bringing the full force of your weight, the mutual heatstroke you both share readily apparent.
You pant against her, holding her back from completing her biological imperative to kill. Huffs of sediment leave her nostrils, engorged from her rage, sputtering blood into the road. In a moment of respite, she feels the droplets of sweat on the edges of her fur, humidity trapped in her jeans, bursting from her neckline’s vee. As you hold back her body physically and her mind telepathically, she feels just how tired she is.
It’s been nearly two full cycles of action. Her lungs ache, every nerve crying out from overexertion. You hang at her chest, the both of you too winded to continue.
“Calm down,” you spit, a long strand of dehydrated saliva escaping from deep within your throat. “Kill him and we can’t fix this.”
She snorts, balking at your suggestion as always. From her vantage over your shoulder, she watches the writhing figure, his outline straining the dirt patch, navy outfit stained with crimson gore and irradiated clay. He’s a vulnerable kill.
But his blood is sterile. Somehow, its less appetizing than usual. It tastes like surgical tools and saline, inedible, like the bagged corpses of the meat house. Somehow, for the second time in her life, she’s not hungry. The Lieutenant is familiar, like a One-Armed Man, where an otherworldly suggestion staved off a killing blow. A fluke at first, a once-in-a-while lack of spirit on her part. But now, it’s a weakness, she feels, a total breakdown of her criminal capabilities in the face of her normal hunger for blood. Madame’s Soonyeong’s musings—that of the relationships between compassion and wisdom, male and female—are crossed wires, sparking at inopportune moments and leaving the mare embarrassed in your tired grip.
She chews her chapped lips with a dull remorse, eyelashes flinging grime in silence.
“If I get off of you, you’re not gonna kill him, right?” you plead. She nods with a domesticated, unconscious sort of lucidity. One felt by anyone suffering heatstroke.
You let her go, making for the Lieutenant’s cruiser. She follows suit, hooves beating tracks from the scene of the crime. You leave two officers incapacitated in the roadway, one lost in the catwalks of the White Axe compound, no other soul for the hundreds of meters visible in the scorching sands, either back towards the Below’s walls or the endless wastes in the opposing direction.
The two of you investigate the modified police tuk-tuk. It’s reinforced with sturdy doors and a yellow-blue paint job. Deceptively clean, with loose slugs and cigarette butts hidden in easily missed compartments, rather than strewn all about the floor. Its backseat is caged, for whatever criminals can be wrangled into submission, thin plastic marred with a smattering of scattershot holes—no doubt evidence of a backseat execution. As fate would have it, possibly because of the Lieutenant’s overconfidence, the keys are in the ignition. Alone, it sputters idly.
With your combined weight, it rocks lower, its wheels digging into the dirt, frame braying with exertion.
Before departing, however, you hop from the vehicle. Using careful precision, you replace the pith over the head of the first officer. And, in a last act of charity, you dig the metal teeth of the umbrella into the sand above Lieutenant Fairsykes. Shaded, you leave his unconscious form, lips chapped in the mid-afternoon suns, for the next passerby to find.
His blue peaked cap is dirty, and you spit-shine its tetrahedron charm. It sparkles in the sunlight, glint visible at range, a fallen star in the wastes. Somehow, though, no matter how much you make the Settlement’s emblem shine atop the Lieutenant’s unconscious head, Ø doubts it’ll make any difference on your objective’s outcome, no matter your vain optimism that the situation can possibly be fixed through polite gestures like these. The mare would chastise your charity, berate you until hoarse, but she doesn’t care, preferring to pilfer the tuk-tuk’s compartments for hidden canteens or flasks of alcohol, actively ignoring her lack of murderous drive, refusing self-reflection on account of the heat.
A half-smoked, stolen cigarette finally meets her bleeding lips as you and your mare kick up dust.