“So, who are you anyway, Ms. Drone killer?” Galela’s voice filled the air, naturally and clearly as if they were sitting still.
Rat stayed silent. She was getting the hang of holding on now. Without the twists and turns of the city, it was much easier.
“Do you have a na-”
“Rat. I’m Rat.”
“Huh. Is that short for something?”
“Yeah, it’s short for Rat. You know, like the animal? Do they have those out here in freedom land?”
Galela didn’t respond to this right away. “You mentioned slaves, earlier, when talking about the hoverpull. We’ve heard reports that the Deathless keep slaves in parts of the world. Can you confirm that?”
“Can I what?” Maybe the ship had spat Rat out in a different dimension where the Deathless were benevolent rulers and everyone lived happy little lives. “Yes, slaves fucking exist. I’m a slave. Do they not have slaves here? Did the Deathless just decide ‘oh this fucking desert gets a pass? You all get nice lives.’ Give me a fucking break. What, did you think the Deathless were mining up all that nice stone for your pretty houses themselves?”
“Where are you from?”
Rat’s lip curled at the dismissal of her question, but she’d seen this tactic before. Give an answer, get an answer. “Mine 71421. Somewhere in… shit, what’d they used to call it. N- Nu Hampsher maybe. That’s what some old slaves called it.”
“In the old ew ess ay? Damn.” The woman’s voice got quiet. “I don’t believe it. I can’t believe he was right… How could anyone have survived it?”
“You survived the war. Don’t see why we would’ve been different.”
“What do you know about the war, sokar?” Galela craned her neck to look back at Rat. Rat could see mirth in the old woman’s eyes and knew she must look stupid in her oversized orange scarf. “You look like you must have come after. Maybe twelve, thirteen years old?”
Rat scowled. “Hey watch it, I’m fucking twenty-two.”
Galela fully snorted and turned her eyes back ahead. “I know children bigger than you. You haven’t known your moons yet, have you?”
Another mystery and no real answers. Rat growled, but short of jumping out of the hoverpull, she couldn’t do much about it. Instead, she scratched the tangled mess of scars that lay on her outer thigh, the consequences of years of bad habit. It still concerned her that even now she could barely bleed. Even the cut to her hand from less than an hour ago had closed up already, not even leaving a scar.
“So, little lady,” Galela said, “you picked up that we were talking English, even though you claim not to know any.”
Rat frowned. “Well, we’re not supposed to know any. It’s against the rules for humans, even overseers, back at the mines.”
“It is forbidden here too. But still, they speak it?” Galela looked back again.
“Barely. My family taught me some… but, I knew some, before I even met them.”
“Before you met your family?”
“I was four when I got assigned to the unit. Fine, you want me to say unit?” Rat scrunched up her scarf so that all Galela could see was a mass of scarf and two glaring red eyes.
Galela’s eyes softened, a look Rat was starting to hate. “Not at all, little one. I wanted to know who you were with before that. Who were your parents?”
The earliest memory Rat could conjure was a smooth floor sectioned in soft squares of stone and warm wooden planks. A house. “I don’t know. Maybe some breeders or something?” But Rat remembered when they really started breeding people en masse. Glinda said she wasn’t from that stock. “Maybe just some people who sold their kid?” The memory was blurry and she couldn’t make any more visuals come. Just the feeling of someone’s hand, soft but strong, holding her own. “Someone fucked up probably. “
“You lived with them during the war?”
This one Rat knew. “No. Glinda said they got me shortly after it. Whatever was before slavery, so it must’ve been before the war.”
“Your memory must be extraordinary to remember a war that finished the year you were born.”
Rat opened her mouth because this was definitely wrong. Rat wasn’t a mewling infant when she was given to her unit. But it was possible her trauma-addled memory was wrong. “Ok, my turn for a question or two. You said you didn’t think there were survivors in my country. Where are we then?”
“We’re in Africa.”
“Ok,” Rat said, quickly, before Galela could ask another question. “How close is that to New Hampshire?”
Galela turned to look at Rat and then back ahead. Then back to Rat. “How did you get here?”
Rat grit her teeth. She was doing all the answering. “The. Fucking. Butcher. King. He sent me on a suicide trip into a ghost ship from space and then bailed on his damn promise when I actually bliged the thing. Let me in the middle of a desert in a pool of blood and clay.”
“The Butcher King?” She was slow.
“Yeah?”
“He came to Earth?” Very slow.
Rat let out a long groan. “What do you mean, ‘came to Earth?’ Doesn’t he rule this place with the Deaconess? Evil space power couple, making everyone’s life hell?”
“I…” the woman trailed off, but Rat wasn’t having any of it.
“No, spill. You have that sound in your voice that people get when they think I’m really fucking stupid, but I’m not a dumb slave right now, not to you. So I’m gonna - I’m gonna make you answer me. Why do you think I’m stupid.”
“The Butcher King… you’re sure it was him? He doesn’t exactly visit mortals ever. None of the Deathless except the Deaconess do. Maybe the Butcher King lives on Earth, I can’t say. No one’s seen him since the war. What was he like?”
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
“He… uh. We didn’t get off on a good start. I called him a brat.”
“You called him a brat.”
“Yeah. Before I knew it was him. And then he went scary space demon on me. Fucked through my brain a bit, waved his dick around to scare me. So I told him I thought he’d be taller.”
“You said what?”
“I know, it was a stupid one. I spent the whole flight from the mine to the ship thinking over better insults.” It still left a bad taste in her mouth, how weak the jab had been. “I’m usually a bit sharper. He didn’t seem to mind me calling him an idiot though. Seemed to kinda like it. Sick fuck.”
Galela made a sound halfway between a choke and a laugh. “You called the moon breaker an idiot?”
Rat, tired of repeating back everything she said, turned to look at the sky. The morning sun was halfway up, shining on a faint moon. Even with this much light, Rat could see the huge jagged bite mark taken out of it. At least, Vallery said it had been a bite. From a giant mouse that thought the moon was cheese. Rat felt pretty stupid to have never questioned the story. Though who knows, maybe mice could become Deathless. Maybe under all that armor, The Butcher King was just a rat like her.
She grinned and nodded up at the moon. “He did that?”
“What do you know, child? About the Earth, about the Deathless?”
Rat just kept staring at the moon. “Deathless rule the universe and make people do whatever they want. For fun. Didn’t know there was much more.” The Butcher King had shattered the moon?
“Well then, this will take a while.”
“At the pace you’re going? We’ll be here all fucking-” Before Rat had a chance to finish, the hoverpull came to an abrupt stop. Rat, who’d loosened her grip on it, flew off the front and tumbled into the sand.
“Rat!”
Rat lay on the ground, limbs splayed, scarf all tangled around her. The impact into the sand had, as she was coming to expect, not rattled her very much, but she did have a lot of sand in her mouth.
“Are you ok? Hurt anywhere? Move your hands and toes.”
Rat untangled the scarf and gave Galela a curled lip snarl. “Warn me next time.”
Galela blinked. “Damn, you’re durable. I’d thought you’d seen we were here.”
Rat pulled the scarf down around her face to take a good look. She’d probably spent the last minute starting at the sky, which on a regular hoverpull, wouldn’t have meant much. But this thing had been so fast, that they’d covered a lot of ground in that minute. They now stood at the bottom of a valley of sand dunes surrounding a giant, completely nondescript sandstone dome. It blended in so well with the sand that had she not been ten feet from it, she’d have missed it, which was probably the point. It could probably fit some ten thousand people in it, wide as it was and probably a good two or three stories high.
“Here?” Rat brushed the sand off her scarf. “This some kind of secret rebel base where you plot to overthrow the Deathless and fix the moon or some shit?”
“Fixing the moon isn’t on the agenda. But otherwise, yes, very adept.” Galela unstrapped Noha from the hoverpull and slung the woman over her shoulders. “Now come on Rat. There are some people who will be very interested to meet you.”
As Galela walked towards the building, Rat was struck by its lack of windows or doors. Instead, Galela walked right up next to it, placed an index finger on the sandy wall, and started walking, whispering something fast and in English under her breath. She’d taken a half dozen paces when she stopped and grabbed something on the wall. A knob.
“Follow close,”Galela said. “We don’t like strangers. They have to know I’m in charge and you won’t run before I can properly vouch for you.”
Rat’s muscles tensed up and she ran a hand down her arm, wishing scratching still brought her relief. Then Galela turned the knob and pulled. A small portion of the wall shifted and slid down.
They walked in.
Rat quickly found that she’d been very wrong about her assumption of how many people this place could house because the dome didn’t seem to be about housing anyone. It was a massive hangar, buzzing with activity. The massive heavy vehicles all around her stretched in every direction, an army of derelict tech. Tanks coated in rust with gun ports half fallen off, planes missing wings, hovercraft cracked in half. She saw the trucks like in the city but with half their tires. There was something that looked excitingly like a spaceship, all sleek with big rockets and a huge cracked nose. Rat grinned, wondering if the rebels ever left Earth. Granted, she’d rather drink acid than trust that ship to take her out of atmosphere… but the idea still left her just a bit giddy.
“There’s a lot of fucking crud in here,” she whispered, excited.
“Shh.” Galela’s shush was hard and sharp and took Rat aback. She’d told Rat to stay close but hadn’t said anything about making noise. Besides, it was plenty noisy here.
“Galela! We weren’t expecting you back.”
An older man, his beard and long hair full of more grey than brown, from quite a bit away hailed them.
“Rashan, we need medical!” Galela called back. “It’s Noha. Massive injuries to her torso area, three ribs broken…”
Rat tuned her out, sufficiently satisfied that they were speaking imperial. She was more interested in the mothership of all garbage that she’d been dropped into than in Noha’s injuries. Around them, other people were starting to notice the entrance. Yes, it was noise, and yes, it was commotion but everyone was dirty and everything was broken. With her bright orange scarf, Rat was probably one of the finest dressed folks here. The idea made her swell, laugh, and squirm, all at once.
By now, the man, Rashan, had reached Galela with a team of what must be doctors. There were three, dressed in almost clean coats of white or blue. Their hands were gloved and their faces masked. One woman, blonde hair tight in a bun, was waving around a bioscanner at Noha while another was feeling her forehead and taking a pulse.
Rasha talked with Galela, too quietly for Rat to hear over the din. They went back and forth, Galela’s hands moving wildly under her scarf. Rashan was more composed, nodding, his faded uniform behaving better than Galela’s drapery. Then he started and looked sharply over at Noha, past her, and at Rat.
Rat had been passively watching until she met the man’s gaze. Fighting her instinct to glare from under her big scarf, Rat raised a hand to wave. At this movement, the doctors seemed to notice the tiny woman for the first time then. The blonde doctor, still wielding the bioscanner turned to face her, eyes puzzled over the top of her mask.
With seemingly no provocation, the bioscanner began to scream.
Rat screamed herself, jumping at the noise.
“No, Rat, no!”
Rat barely heard Galela’s voice over the new explosion of sound. The blonde doctor waved frantically at Rat shouting “that’s it that’s it! That thing in the orange scarf!”
Rat covered her ears, looking for a place to run. This must have been a trap. She never should have come. She turned to where they’d entered, but there were four soldiers there now, guns out and pointed at her.
“Rat-”
Rat didn’t waste any time to hear what Galela had to say. She took one step forward, ready to run, and saw the glowing red of a laser sight. The scampering pandemonium was drowned out by a sharp crack and the next thing Rat knew, she was flat on the ground.
They’d hit her square in the face. She couldn’t hear a thing over the ringing and her right eye was blinded and itched like hell from the impact. If getting rushed and stun blasted was Galela’s idea of vouching, then Rat should have just left Noha in the alley. People had actually seemed less angry at Rat when she caused death than they were about her one valiant attempt to save someone.
Her hearing and senses a bit more returned, Rat touched her eye. Her fingers came away stained red and her stomach lurched. Was she gonna be blind in this eye now? It didn’t take a lot to ruin an eyeball, even hit with non-lethal rounds and these folks weren’t exactly about to replace hers.
"Alright for fuck’s sake, you got me,” she said, loud as she could so she could hear her own voice over the ringing. Her body shuddered, adrenaline, fear, anger pulsing through her veins. Her brain screamed at her to run, but she ignored it. They had her where they wanted, on the floor, half stunned, half deaf, and half blind. “Blurgin hell, Galela,” she started as she pulled herself to a sit, hands overhead.
Even with her hands in the air, the soldiers were not appeased by her surrender. As soon as she started moving, the throngs of soldiers turned, shouting and hollering and pointed their guns at her.
For a moment she spotted Galela among the crowd. The woman’s eyes were huge and full of what could only be fear.
“Galela what-”
The air filled with a cacophony of noise as rifles fired, emptying their magazines into her small body, over and over and over again. Rat felt herself being shredded, the process almost too fast to feel any pain. Within a fraction of a second, she no longer had the capacity to experience any sense other than pain as her body was obliterated. The last thing she was aware of as her thoughts slipped away was that it was taking far too long for her to lose consciousness…