The sun cracked the horizon with its ancient, unforgiving rays. The chirp of morning birds followed, setting off a slow-burn in his arteries, and an ache in his cartilage. A deep greyness weighed heavily on his eyes, and the light was too sharp. His teeth felt musty. The dawn’s gradients of renewal washed down on him like slaps to the psyche.
The Mechanic had been twitching for over an hour. With a final jerk, he rolled over into a tense pose. He was not yet awake; face stony, eyes ticking. Internal metrics were measuring and quantifying. Wentworth watched him with a mild umbrage.
Gradually Raxx’s pose softened and his eyes grew lucid.
“Sleep well?”
Raxx considered this, worked his jaw and grimacing. “Well enough.”
Wentworth nodded. Down in the mine site, their opponents were still lying where they’d passed out the night before. The growing light seemed to emphasize the wreckage of last night’s party, as the rays made their pass across the valley.
“Should be bright enough now…” He pulled out a pair of cigarettes and lit them, passing one over. He remembered the man leaving his cigarillos in the truck.
“Thanks.”
Wentworth nodded, then retreated into himself. He took his first drag — he’d only puffed when lighting them — it sent a wave of blood rushing up his spine. It was almost painful, this sudden infusion after hours of withdrawl. Shards of iridescence blossomed in his mind, activating each neuron. He rode the wave of dizziness, the outer layers of his cortex vibrating, until the second and third drags brought him back down to normal. He opened his eyes and looked at the world, smoke curling against his skin. The light’s angles were no longer so drastic.
He finished his cigarette and ground the cherry into the earth. After shaking off the loose tobacco he tucked the filter into his pocket. By this time Raxx had already started assembled the implements and ingredients for heating breakfast.
“Mind handing me some of that jerky?”
“Sure thing.”
He began preparing diagrams, and chewing on the beef. Upon finishing he glanced over and spoke. “Raxx;” the man had almost finished with the coffee. “It’s my turn to get some rack now, but before I do I’m going to set you up so you know what to watch for,” he handed over the notepad.
Raxx looked it over. “‘Salute’ — isn’t that something from the medieval era?”
“Pretty much. It’s a good aide de memoir for communicating on the battlefield — which isn’t exactly what we’re doing right here, but it’s still a good framework for organizing your thoughts. It stands for Size, Activity, Location, Uniform, Time, and Equipment — let’s start with the first one: Size.”
“You wrote down fifty.”
“Right. That was a bit of a guess, since we can’t see all of them right now. You’re going to need to double check it. If you notice them broken down into any sub-groups or teams, you should put that down there, too. Next one: Activity?”
“Well, they’re passed out still… I dunno, it looks like some of them are… couples. Maybe. And they were drinking last night… I don’t really see anything else.”
“Sounds like you’ve got the hang of it — it’s not just what they’re immediately doing that’s important, but also how they do it — whether they’re lazy or not, what times they sleep, et cetera. Anything that seems noteworthy should be marked down… but anyway, next one — Location?”
Raxx raised his eyebrow.
Wentworth fought back a jolt of irritation. The desire for sleep was dogging his heels. “I know they’re all down there, but is there anything you notice about the arrangement?”
Raxx stared down at them, considering. “Well… there might be something — I see a couple different groups, maybe three — but it might just be some accident of how they passed out. Unless if you’re talking about Slayer and his friend? I don’t see them anywhere.”
Wentworth nodded, “They disappeared into the hangar — must have a room in there, or something. Honestly, ‘Location’ normally just means the grid-coordinates — like I said, SALUTE’s usually for communication — but sometimes the location can give you hints as to what their plans are, if you consider it the right way… speaking of which: Uniform?”
“Damn — I know that word. That’s… that’s what the constabulary in Hope wears, right? So we’re looking for how many pockets they have? If they’ve got bandoliers or not?”
Wentworth chewed his lip. “Yes and no. I guess it’s a bit archaic nowadays, but what it means — in this sense — is what unit they belong to, what sort of group are they? So in this case, yeah, what you said would pretty much sum it up — I mean, if these guys had been part of something larger—” Raxx’s brows furrowed, “-then we’d be asking: Are these guys the cooks? Are these guys the elites? Are they conscripts? Stuff like that — but right now, the question basically boils down to what their individual skills are — maybe there’s a medic, or a sapper, or something else we’d want to know.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Next we’ve got Time — of course you should write down the time next to anything you write down, but I kept that one in case something important happens that doesn’t fit into one of the other categories. And if nothing much happens, you can use it as a log — I set the Datapad to beep each hour, to remind you. So that brings us to the last one: Equipment. I didn’t bother with it last night, because it was too dark to make out details, and I don’t think they have anything beyond small arms and a few vehicles — but if you want to update the list, that’d be great.”
“I can do that.”
“Good. In that case, I’m going to crash — I’ll only need a few hours, but don’t be afraid to wake me for anything.”
“Okay, but I got a question, first — why didn’t we just shoot Slayer last night? I’m pretty sure you could have hit him, and they were too drunk to do anything but shoot back and miss. We could’ve got away.”
Wentworth mulled over this for a second. “Yeah… I could have… and we could have got out of here, probably, without any of them seeing us… but something was itching at me. There was some reason I didn’t want to do it. At first I thought it was that I didn’t want to rush into things like we did last time — but that wasn’t it. I dunno… just because you think you see a tactical advantage, doesn’t mean that it’s actually there.”
“What are you saying?”
“Well… what do you think all of those guys down there would be doing today if Slayer wasn’t there to keep them in check? This isn’t a case of cut off the snake’s head, and the body will die — this is a case of kill the Master, and the hounds will be set loose. A few of them might suicide, and the others would kill each other, but the rest would just run off to spread havoc everywhere else. They’d become new Slayers… no, when this batch goes out, we take all of them out. There’s a way to do it… I just don’t know what that is yet. Shame about that kid last night, though.”
It was hard to tell at that distance, but the pile of bloody rags by the base of the broken cross might have been his remains.
“Anyway, I’m not going to figure it out without some sleep. I told you I wouldn’t rush into this.”
He turned over, and within moments Raxx was on his own. He looked over — during their conversation the fuel tab heating his coffee had burned out. He checked it — the temperature was just right.
He sipped at the cup and watched — not quite sure what he was looking at.
Uniform. The word felt strange on his lips.
His uncle had been smart. That old Mechanic he’d met in Steeltown had been smart. But Wentworth…
The man had no head for engines, but other sorts of dynamics he seemed to look through as if they were glass. The callousness he’d shown during the crucifixion had bothered him, almost as much as the crucifixion itself. His sleep had been plagued with nightmares about it — the kid tied there, screaming for mercy, as a dark mirror of himself, dressed in helmet and goggles, stood there and laughed… He’d barely been able to look at the other man after waking — but had he really been callous? Or had he just seen past it? In retrospect, Wentworth was right — if they’d tried to save the kid, they might have both died, and a lot of others…
But there was the way he spoke. He kept saying words, turns-of-phrases, which left Raxx in the dark, but… what was it he’d said about the old myths? That, even if they were unknown, they’d be recognizable to people today? Most of his sayings seemed to fit into that category… most of them. And they weren’t bad sayings, or even bad ideas; regardless if a lot of them seemed prewar… but there was that computer he trusted his life on.
The man was so damned dismissive of everyone he met, as if—
The computer beeped.
Damnit! Slaved to a device… he spent the next few minutes writing a summary for what had occurred that hour. His hand was unaccustomed to writing letters. The sloppiness frustrated him, and his hand cramped up. Occasionally he’d blush in shame, wondering whether a particular word was spelt with one ‘L’ or two. Wentworth’s writing was neat and precise.
Uniform.
Where had his thought train been? Wentworth… the man was smart, but there was something about his attitude; it was bad enough that he was unapologetic for using the computer… not just unapologetic, but arrogant about it. It was a symptom of the same thing that made him dismissive of — of everything! Every city, every person, every idea…
Of course, people were always like that — they thought their ideas the best. When you visited a foreign city you kept your manners about you, going along to get along, but Wentworth… well, to be honest, he wasn’t bad with people. For a man who incited so much wariness upon first impression, with Raxx’s help they’d managed to woo their hotel-manager, to get Tracy and her staff to fall in love with them… he treated people…
He treated people the same way you treat a pack of pariah dogs.
It wasn’t that he demanded his city be above all others — he accepted that it was, and they were all beneath it! He treated everyone like the deformed waiter at the Roadhouse — as if it would be unfair to expect more than failure!
Uniform.
Assumptions… they were always complex. He’d once assumed that an engine sensor — one out of over a dozen, none of which he’d had the equipment to test — had been faulty, but it had turned out to be nothing more than a dirty fuel-filter. He’d wasted a lot of money fixing that.
Uniform.
Wentworth’s arrogance had blinded him to something about this group — something he ignored about every group — but this time it would prove critical to outsmarting them.
Uniform.
Who the hell were they?
Wentworth’s dreams were broken and distorted. He kept thinking he was chasing something, or maybe being chased, but he couldn’t say what or who. In the waking world he was sweating wherever the sun beat down on his jacket. It kept intruding into his dreams, making him feel sticky and unclean, like he was in a swamp. There was a buzzing sound in his ears whenever insects flew by. The dreams kept his heart at a heightened pace, and adrenaline flowed through his veins. Not enough to be called a panic, it was more like caution, or edginess — but too much for proper sleep.
The amputee woman moaned, struggling against the straps, her skin blistered. He aimed the rifle at her head.
He awoke up with a jolt. His eyes opened up, surveying the scene around him, keeping the rest of his body still. The tree branches above him, gray and eldritch, were swaying gently in the wind, covering half the sky. Immediately about him he could hear the sounds of nature, the quiet breaking of twigs and shuffling of leaves as the forest animals went about their lives, the wind whistling through the branches above and the grass around him. Beyond that, the far-off shouting of men and machines. The air was humid, and he was uncomfortable in his jacket. The fresh morning air was gone, and the earth no longer stole his body’s heat. The shouts were becoming more frequent.
“You picked a good time to wake up. I was about to give you a shake.”
“Why? What’s happening?”
“Well, after they woke up Blondie made them exercise for a bit, and then they started doing maintenance — I wrote it all down — but now they seem excited about something. There’s all lining up.”
Wentworth had his binoculars by now, but he was wary about using them, “They’re getting ready for an inspection parade.”
“A what?”
“But not from Slayer… that’s him down by the front gate… shit, they’ve got guards up now!”
“I wrote it all down — and I kept an eye on them, they won’t see us.”
“Okay… somebody’s coming in the front gate… shit, Raxx, is that who I think it is?”
“Yes it is.”
“Damnit, he’s the last guy we need killed… we might just have to—”
“They’re not going to kill him.”
“Well, yeah, not at first — they’re going to parade him around and make fun of him. I wonder how they hell they got him to—”
“No, Wentworth, you don’t get it — this ‘parade’ or whatever, isn’t to make fun of him — this parade is for Jenkins’ sake.”