THAT TIME CHRIS FOUGHT SOME BIG GROSS BUGS

As the sun approached the horizon, Chris Gramyre, the Light Bearer Misae Osage, and twenty-one militia shotgunners piled into four six-person deedees[1] and set out through the city gates on a road that paralleled the train tracks Chris would be riding the next day. Each deedee pulled a sort of box-like trailer. Chris did not ride in the same deedee as Misae—she rode in the “quiet car” where she could meditate. That had sounded uncomfortable to Chris, who wanted to hear what the militia folks talked about.

[1] Abbreviation of double dubs, the nickname for the Ares Wilderness Wagon, a brand of motor-truck produced for Fredonic Union city-state militias, hunters, and delvers by Ares Macrotechnologies. On the west coast they’re called dubdubs instead.

They soon left the road and drove directly through the prairie. They drove for almost an hour, really getting out there, until it was close to the end of civil twilight and they were in a part of the grassland that was all mangy looking. Chris sat in one of the back seats next to a pretty woman, and enjoyed the laughing and joking around that the soldiers in his car did, even if he didn’t join in much. They were fullagers, and he was barely a firstager, so they seemed a little intimidating, even if they were only twenty or twenty-one. They’d been facing the Beasts longer than he had, though he’d already faced a few.

They rolled to a stop in the deepening gloom as the driver finished telling a funny story that was scatalogical in nature. As the laughing died down, the driver, as he and everyone else pulled something out from under his warding mantle, said, “And all that jazz, eh boys and girls?”

“And all that jazz,” they chorused, and then they all held their somethings, which proved to be inhalers, to their mouths and inhaled two puffs.

“What is that?” Chris asked.

“Jazz, or Bullet Time,” the woman next to him said, giving him a dazzling smile. “Its official name is J4Z, hence the name. It’s this new combat drug they’re distributing to us to give us an edge when we’re outside the walls. Inhaler dispenses both the drug and the philter.[1] It feels like it slows time down—improves our reaction time, helps us be perceptive. It’s not nearly as pronounced as in the movie, of course, but it’s helpful as fuck. It’s…” She made a face. “...uncomfortable, though.”

[1] A class of alchemical preparations which eliminate the detrimental physical side-effects of non-magical drugs while retaining their desired effects, particularly psychoactive substances—the only thing they can’t prevent is the potential for psychological addiction. For example, an alcohol philter prevents, among other things, hangovers and liver damage, while still letting the imbiber get pleasantly drunk. Cheapish and most commonly used for alcohol, philters are taken by all wise people before taking any sort of drink or drug. They can have other effects worked in, as well—common, cheap alcohol philters will keep you from drinking more than a certain number of drinks, at the risk of immediately needing to throw up if you break the limit.

“Ah,” Chris said. He wore a beta-class reflex charm, which worked similarly, though wasn’t ‘uncomfortable.’ Reflex charms were among the most expensive charms though, he only had one because it had been his dad’s. (Almost no one could afford a gamma-class reflex charm, and higher classes didn’t even exist. At least, not made by humans.)

The gunners pulled on their combat masks, put in their TCAPS (Tactical Communication and Protection System) earbuds and mics, pulled the hoods of their warding mantles up, distributed and checked over their shotguns, and piled out of the deedee. Chris did the same, except for the shotgun part, and piled out with them.

The militiafolk all carried semi-auto shotguns, for the swarmlings were too fast for anyone but an Old West gunslinger[1] to hit with bullets. After she left her deedee, Misae pulled out her weapon, an odd device called a gyro-torch—a brazier of a sort attached to a medium length handle. Gyroscopic machinery kept the brazier upright no matter how it was swung around, so that the flame stayed lit and it could be interposed between the user and the leaping Spawnlings, and it was well reinforced, so it could be used as a hammer as much as a source of Bearer’s flame. Chris had tried swinging it around, and thought that he’d need a better strength charm if he were to try using it in battle. Chris just had his sword.

[1] Ryan, Angie, and even Megan all glanced at Evan at this, which made a small spark of pride flare in his chest. He could hit flying locust swarmlings—of this he had no doubt.

They stepped out at the edge of an area that was stripped nearly bare, and everyone moved into that bare patch, as they wanted to be able to see any swarmlings going after their ankles, after all. Civil twilight was just ending, but it was a bright night—a huge sky full of twinkling stars spread out overhead, and the moon hung gibbous and shining. As the gunners moved into a large circle, they could hear eerie, croaking chirps that seem to be in multiple octaves at the same time.

Misae moved to the center of the circle. Misae eyed him and asked, “You ready?”

Chris took a place about five meters from her and nodded. He drew his sword and activated his charms.

Misae nodded back, and with a click and a fwooomph, the brazier of her gyro-torch erupted with bright, cheery orange-white flames.

For three beats of Chris’s heart, the flames stayed that way, shining merrily into the night. Then, with another fwooomph, the flames flared higher and turned pure white—almost silvery, actually, the bright light they cast matching the shade, if not the brightness, of the moonlight shining down upon them. They had become Bearer’s flame. The moment they changed, things started bursting out of the grass beyond the borders of the gunner’s circle.

They were a half a meter long[1], with loud, awful, fluttering wings, too many legs, big mantis claws, and heads that looked wrong, even for insects. Unnatural. As Chris tracked one, the enchantments on his mask helped him see that their eyes looked like compound eyes made out of little human eyeballs, that they had gaping maws unlike a typical insect.[2]

[1] Oh, that was huge! Unless their speed was just ludicrous, Evan figured he could knock seven out of the air no problem—with his 11.9mm, even, let alone the 10.8.

[2] Everyone except Evan, who looked at a lot of pictures of Beasts, shuddered at the idea.

As one, the gunners fired, greeting the Beasts with a twenty-one gun salute. Twenty-one Beastial locusts exploded into chunks—yet, there were more than twenty-one Beasts in the air already. The gunners continued to fire at-will.

It didn’t take longer than six seconds for a swarmling to bound over the circle of gunners and land within, halfway between the circle and where Misae and Chris stood near the center. It immediately leapt again, straight for Misae. She calmly interposed her torch between her and the Beast—it hit the wall of flame and exploded in a blast of ash. She then spun and interposed it between herself and another one, and then Chris had some leaping at him. He slashed out and cleaved a bug in twain with a single blow, a gush of innards and fluids splattering across the ground as the halves bounced and tumbled.

Chris flowed into an anti-swarmling form, twisting, spinning, and slashing non-stop. He swung his blade with every step he took, and sliced through a Beast with every swing. He caught occasional glimpses of the Beasts bursting into ash in Misae’s flames—once or twice he saw her hammer one out of the air. Beast blood and organs began to soak the ground around Chris.

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This did not last long.

All the gunners hit empty within a second of each other, and that’s when the broodmothers burst out of the darkness. Two-meter long nightmares, all thrashing legs and great fluttering wings and tearing claws and eyes and maws, moving too fast for Chris to get a look at, three mothers slammed into three of the gunners, knocking them halfway to the center of the circle. The three gunners began screaming—the TCAPS did not mute them, merely reduced their volume, and the screams were all the more horrifying for that.

Chris knew they needed to act immediately or those gunners would be ripped apart, warding mantles be damned. The rest of the shotgunners were trying to reload, ejecting the big chunky box magazines from their shotguns and grabbing new ones off their belts, while trying to keep the swarmlings off themselves at the same time. They wore heavy warded gauntlets designed to still allow them to fire the shotguns, and used them to grab and rip the bugs off themselves and each other. They were too busy fighting, and would be of no help to their comrades.

The mothers were too far apart from each other to move between them quickly. As Chris leapt into action, he hoped Misae had a plan, because he didn’t think he would be able to save more than one of the gunners. He sprang forward, dive-rolling to cover ground faster—he rolled up to one knee and thrust his blade up through the mother’s pulsing thorax. Then he ripped the blade up through its body and its head, splitting it in two, kicked the bug off the gunner, and turned, hoping to get to another one fast enough to prevent a death.

He found that one of the other mothers was simply gone, the gunner it had been attacking covered in what had to be ash. Misae had hardly even moved, and even as he turned to take in the scene, she launched the flames from her gyro-torch across the clearing at the remaining mother. Though it was more like the flames launched themselves. They almost floated, as though there was an invisible surface in the air coated with a trail of Bearer’s oil that the fire was igniting.

The flames split into two fist-wide waves about two meters from the broodmother. One wave hit the mother in one of its eyes, which exploded in black steam, while the other hit its thorax. The Beast went up like it was full of alchemized gas, igniting in a great flash. It left behind nothing but a cloud of ash and the still living gunner.

EVAN. AFTER THE TALE.

Chris leaned back, clearly satisfied with his climax. “Was one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen. Kicks the shit out of all my other stories. Anyway, the little ones sickened when the last of the mothers was slain.”

Evan nodded and said, “They always come in threes, you see.”

Chris nodded. “The swarmlings, without their guiding minds, started crawling off, apparently to find a new set of mothers to bond with. It took some time, but we managed to find pretty much all of them, smash them, and throw them in the trailers to take back to town for the BA. Misae’s flames would flicker in the direction of the Beasts as if a breeze was blowing that way, which is a neat trick. I wish I’d had time to learn it,” he added, patting one of his lanterns.

“The battle itself lasted all of two minutes.” Chris stretched his arms above his head, popping his shoulders and back, grinning. “Some of us searched and destroyed while others tended the worst of the wounds, or else got their wounds tended. Then we headed back to the city. We were beat up enough that it would have been folly to try for another swarm.

“I wasn’t exactly unscathed either. Even with a good warding mantle, I had a bunch of scrapes, cuts, and bruises, which I’d hardly felt when I got them.” He paused. “That’s not, like, a humblebrag. It was just so much adrenaline, and you have to learn to focus through pain when you train to be a Light Bearer.”

Angie and Megan applauded, and Angie said, “Thank you for the tale!”

Chris grinned. His lunch had been devoured, somehow. Evan had barely noticed Chris eating even though he’d been talking while he did so. “No, thank you! That was fun. I am way into this whole mystic birthdays thing, and you guys in general seem great.” He gave them an easy, fond grin. “But I’m not going to learn every name by Spirit’s Feast if I spend every lunch period with a single table of people. It’s bad enough that there are other lunch periods. Megan,” he said, his head tilting toward her, “You mind giving everyone my number? And me their numbers, for that matter. No rush, just sometime today.”

“Um?! Sure!” Megan said, her eyes widening and darting to Evan, Angie, and Ryan, then around the lunch hall, including in the direction of Lauren’s table. “I can do that.” She sounded disappointed.

Her tone quite neutral, Angie said, “You wanna go with him Megan?”

“I-if he doesn’t mind. If you don’t mind! I do know people!” Megan smiled at Chris, seeming to grow more assured. “I can introduce you!”

Chris blinked, and his shoulder sort of twitched a little before he shrugged more expressively. “Uh, sure? That’d be fine,” he said, upturning one palm, then putting it on the back of his neck. “I’ll be fine on my own though, believe me. If you want to stay with your friends?” He raised both eyebrows and looked at said three friends.

Angie shrugged. “It’s fine with me. We’ll see each other after school.”

“Do what you want, Meggles, I’m always cool,” Ryan said laconically.

Everyone looked at Evan. “Um,” he said. “Sure, whatever.”

“Well, okay,” Chris said. “Lead the way, Mst. O’Sadie.”

Megan smiled brightly, gave the three of them a slightly embarrassed wave and smile, and then led him off deeper into the room.

“Evan, you had a perfect opportunity there with the gunslinger line,” Ryan said.

“Are you kidding me?” Evan let his irritation show on his face. “How fucking puffed up would that make me sound? You should have said something if you thought it was a good opportunity! It wouldn’t sound arrogant coming from you.”

“Yeah,” Angie agreed. “He’s got you there for sure.”

“You said you’d bring it up when you were ready!” Ryan said, frowning back. “You didn’t give me a lot of choice in the matter, man.”

“Oh,” Evan said. Now he felt dumb. “Right.”

MEGAN. BEFORE FIFTH PERIOD.

“Well, it’s been nice chatting with you folks, but I’m going to—” Chris was saying when the bell rang. His cheerful expression shifted to one of disappointment. “Go to class, I guess.” Other people in the group made noises of affirmation, and started collecting their things and breaking off.

“Sure thing,” Aerienne Ufer said, smiling at him dazedly. Megan had just introduced Chris to Aerienne and Malie Sdiri, and they’d been finishing up chatting with them. “What classes do you two have next?”

“I got Japanese up next. Should be a breeze, since I’m mostly fluent already,” Chris replied casually. “They did make me take Japanese 3 instead of 1 or 2, but even so, I’m not too worried.”

Megan’s attention was mostly on Chris and thinking about later, when she had Algebra with him, and how much she was looking forward to that, so it took her a moment to realize she’d been included in the question. “Oh, uh, I have Life Science next.” She made a face. “I’m bad at science.”

“Yeah, me too,” Chris said. “I got Physical Science third period.”

“I have Physical Science next,” Malie said, looking up at Chris. She sounded disappointed.

Aerienne nodded. “I have Algebra 1.” She also sounded disappointed.

“Well, I think those are in different buildings, so I’ll catch you ladies later.” Chris saluted them with two fingers, and then he was off, striding through the crowd.

Megan watched him go, still not quite believing he was real, let alone hanging out with her and her friends.

“You’re just too lucky, Megan,” Malie said. “I can’t believe he ate with you. How’d you even pull that off?”

“Oh, like it isn’t obvious,” Aerienne muttered.

Megan hesitated, then said, “It’s complicated. I’ve had kind of a day, guys, do you mind if I walk over alone?”

“Oh, sure!” Aerienne said. “I totally get it. I can’t believe you never knew about the Exiles!”

“Me either,” Megan said unhappily. It was clearly getting around. “See you.”