Chapter 7: Armory
and Allies
The Armory redefined
the concept of large – at least, when it comes to enclosed spaces.
Most people said that it was large enough to fit a whole planet, but
Jimmy was pretty sure that was an exaggeration. More importantly, it
was currently being fought over by two very angry groups of people.
This much, Jimmy knew from the text books and his father's
long-winded discussions about it at the dinner table.
First, the Yetel had
taken up residence in the Biodecks (which were connected to the
armory in a few hundred locations), while the Slor had started living
in the Armory itself. This had been nice and happy and peaceful for
almost a hundred years – more due to a lack of much contact and
communication than anything else. The Slor had devoured trash, the
Yetel had managed their trees and their fungus, and then...
Well, then, the
pressure of time and the growth of Harbinger society led to contact –
a set of large junctions that connected Armory to Biodecks. There had
been a hope for peace – on a starship as large as Harbinger, peace
had been easy for hundreds of years. But then, the most common death
of diplomacy cropped up: A translation error, created by the
difficulties of communicating between a perfectly harmonious,
pheromone-based hive mind and a race of rampant individualists who
communicated by spraying semi-acidic mucus at each other, led to ten
years of war and death, with the battles and the retreats being
etched out in text books and shipnet debate forums.
Jimmy had followed
those. He had even played some sim-games based off the more famous
battles and campaigns.
In reality, though,
everything looked way more complicated than the simple battle plans
laid out in Jimmy's textbooks. The first and most glaring difference
was the terrain. What looked like contours and lines on a map
translated into...insanity. Piled atop the flat, matte black ground
was a hodgepodge of artifacts and trash. There were piles of guns
that looked almost human in design, mounds of black cubes, slabs of
what could have been rotting meat mixed with barbed wire. There were
swords mixed with mounds of cloth and discarded bits of electrical
machinery. There were obelisks rising out of cleared spaces of
ground, marked with symbols and sigils that made Jimmy's eyes hurt.
It all combined to
create a clashing, mashing mixture of stuff that made Jimmy's head
hurt just looking at it. He took a moment to look down at the cargo
container that he was perched on, to give himself a break. He rubbed
his temples with his fingers, then pushed himself back, turning
around on his belly – easy, since the container was nice and flat –
and looked over the edge at Pix. She waved at him, and he smiled.
“Good news,” he
said.
“I'm waiting with
baited breath!” she called up to him.
“I can't see
shit,” he admitted, turning and dropping off the cargo container.
He landed with a grunt, and turned to Pix, who frowned at him.
“That's...not good
news,” she said.
“I know, I just
wanted to build morale,” he admitted, shaking his head. Pix smiled,
but it was wanly.
"Well,
we can't just walk randomly. There's only enough food in those
pockets to last us...how long?"
Jimmy
patted said pockets. It felt downright eerie to be wearing a dead
woman's jacket, but what else was he going to do with it? They had
done a thorough inventory of the stuff, though that had been mostly
sorting it into two piles: Things that could be used, and things that
they had no
idea
what they even were.
"Uh, five days
of food."
"Five days."
Pix sighed, then started ticking off their needs. "We need a
guide, we need transport, we need water."
"I know, I
know. Let me try Anna's speed dial again." Jimmy opened Anna's
phone and tapped the speed dial for Edna. It rang and rang and no one
picked up.
"Great."
Pix put her hand on her forehead. "This is it, we're going to
die."
"No, we're not
going to die!"
A distant explosion
echoed through the armory. Jimmy was sad that he was already getting
completely used to those.
"What we are
going to do," Jimmy continued. "Is-"
The phone rang. He
yelped and dropped it with a clatter.
It sat there,
between Pix and Jimmy, ringing.
"Not me."
Pix whispered.
Jimmy
nodded, then knelt down and picked it up. The caller I.D said that it
was from Edna. Jimmy gulped, trying to wet his mouth. It didn't work.
He put the phone to his ear, half expecting to hear something
horrible. Instead, he heard a young woman's voice – a sad voice. A
very, very sad voice. "Listen. My mom...My mom is dead. That
means the gang is partially under my control now. I have to show
Tlessia I'm strong, or that damn cat is going to take over. You
follow?"
Jimmy nodded.
"Right."
"I'm going to
lead you to Tortuga. Then I am going to make a profit off you and
keep a hold on this gang, and keep Mom's vision alive. Agreed?"
"Okay. On one
condition," Jimmy said, voice soft. "You keep the Xorquin
off our tail."
"I don't even
know where he is! I don't even know if he even knows where-"
"Then it should
be easy," Jimmy said. Part of him was depressed how rough he was
being. Another, bigger part didn't want to die very much. "And
when we get there, we want to get home. No ransom."
"Well,
then, I can't help you there." Edna sounded just as rough. Jimmy
wondered if it depressed her too. "It's either you come in as
ransoms, or I let you rot out there, like you left my mother."
"Hey! We gave
her the Rites as best we could."
Edna went quiet for
a long, long time. Jimmy bit his lip, glancing at Pix. She was
looking at him as if she wasn't quite sure...well...she reflected
what Jimmy felt inside, clearly on her face: This adventure meant
more than just running. It meant being hard. It meant shooting. It
meant death. Jimmy's attention was drawn back to the phone when
Edna's voice came back, set to maximum hard "Okay. Then, how
about..."
"Wait."
Jimmy blinked, a rather surreal thought popping up. "Uh, some
government agency of the Xorquin wants something we have very badly."
"What are you
talking about?"
"We
ran from a Xorquin agent, you know. The one that is chasing us, he
has
to
work for them,"
Jimmy said, trying to keep the sound of desperation out of his voice.
This had better work or... "And this agent wants a data crystal.
They're willing to kill for it, which means it has to be worth a lot,
even more than me."
There was a pause.
Jimmy smiled,
slowly. He could practically hear the interest in Edna's breathing.
Well, not really. But he felt a slow blooming confidence, deep in his
chest – she was at least considering a trade.
"Sold,"
Edna said. "You bring us the data crystal, we'll get you home
and...like m-mom said..." She stopped, and then resumed when she
was in control of her emotions again. “Never take hostages. They're
a bad deal. So...get to work getting over here. Partners.”
Click.
Jimmy flipped the
phone closed. He closed his eyes. Then he turned to Pix, who was
looking at him with wide eyes.
He gave her a thumbs
up and felt ashamed at how proud he was of himself.
###
Jimmy
had Pix on guide duty. She had the antennas, and she could text while
talking, while walking and while constantly listening for distant
artillery fire – she really was the best at multitasking. Part of
it was that her brain was part computer, so she actually
multi-tasked,
instead of the cheating way that humans did it.
Edna drip fed them information over the past twenty-four hours,
herding them along the paths that would, supposedly, take them to
safety. Jimmy found that, unlike the various translations of the epic
Lo'Tor that he had seen for lit-class, he and Pix actually had to
stop and rest every once and a while. It was a weird thing they kept
leaving out of the narrative in those stories.
It
was on the third rest stop of the day, sitting under a huge something
or other that looked like a gigantic...thing. Jimmy didn't really
know what it looked like. Imagine a crooked finger, except the first
knuckle branched out into five more fingers, and each finger ended in
an inside out sphere that glowed a sickly green. Oh, and each split
criss crossed in a way that did not seem possible, giving the entire
structure a queasy, not-quite-real look to it. That was the best
description that Jimmy could really think of it.
Jimmy closed his
eyes and stopped looking at it before his head started to ache. The
only good thing he could say about the thing was that it shielded the
two of them from prying eyes above and its sides were smooth and fun
to put your back against.
"Man, this
sucks." Pix tapped the side of her head. "The connection is
getting futzy."
"Yeah. But at
least we're not-"
SCHREE! Two big old
planes shot over head. In the distance something exploded, the
explosions echoing and flashing.
"Great."
Pix sighed. "More bombings."
"At least we
haven't seen an actual army." Jimmy hugged his knees to his
chest.
"What's that
squeakling rumbling noise?" Pix looked around, her brow
furrowing. She stood up slightly and looked around the corner of the
thingy. Then she sat down, her face bleaching white.
"Tanksarecoming!"
The
squeakling rumbling noise got louder and louder as the first tank
pushed past and around the thingy. It was painted a dull matte black,
with a lot of smooth, rounded edges and a really big gun. It drove
around to the front of their cover, then the front of the tank
slammed right into a pile of rubble with a loud CLANG! Another tank
drove up from the other side, and then more and more, each one louder
and clankier than the last.
Jimmy and Pix stayed
completely still, hoping beyond hope none of the tanks would notice
them.
When the last tank
vanished behind a pile of cargo containers, Pix spoke up. "Running
time?"
"Sounds-"
BOOM!
“-good.”
Yup. Running time.
###
"Okay, now that
we're no longer right in the direct path of bullets," Pix looked
up at the sky, then back down at Jimmy. "I think it's time to
tell you some rather bad news."
Jimmy thought he was
pretty used to bad news. He smiled. "Don't worry, whatever it
is, we can deal with it."
"Okay."
Pix sighed. "The connection is dead. I'm not getting any
signal."
Jimmy nodded. "Okay,
that is...." He stopped dead. "No more directions?"
"Not unless a
map flies over here with wings and a harp!" Pix collapsed back
against a cargo container. The endless mazes of those things, the
huge piles of rubble, the countless bizarre devices to whose purpose
Jimmy could only guess at, they were all starting to wear thin on
him. That and the freaking light that came from nowhere and overlaid
everything with a sickly greenish color to it. Even Pix looked gross
in that light.
"You know
what?" Jimmy declared, turning to look at Pix. "Lets take a
break. Maybe the connection will come back, and it's not worth
getting lost while we wait. So, lets just procrastinate for a bit."
Pix cocked her head
to the side. "Well, I've procrastinated on studying, tests,
projects and homework...why not adventuring too?" She slid down
the side of the cargo container and landed with a thump.
Jimmy grinned,
resting his back against a cargo container opposite from Pix's. Their
legs ran in parallel. He tipped his shoe to the side and rubbed her
thigh. She giggled and kicked her foot, a shoe flying off and
smacking into the container across from her..
"Ew,"
Jimmy made a face as Pix's feet started to stink up the place.
"Let's be
stinky together!" Pix yanked his shoes off and for a while, they
were. Then they got used to it. Jimmy leaned over and slowly slid his
hands over Pix's feet.
"What are
younmmmgha!" Pix rolled her head back and closed her eyes as
Jimmy's thumbs worked the part of the foot that was right under the
big toe. Jimmy didn't know what it was called, he just knew that if
felt good when you massaged it.
Then he grinned.
'Oheheheh!
D-dhehe-tickle!" Pix giggled her head off.
She jerked her foot
away from Jimmy, then, moving her legs to the side and underneath
herself.
"Oh," she
whispered, hands going to the floor. Jimmy had noticed it wasn't as
cold as he had expected, but he was a bit more interested in backing
up against the cargo container, Pix crawling at him with a downright
evil grin on. "Oh, yes, you're gonna get it now!"
She tickled his
ribs, slipping her fingers and hands under his shirt. He laughed and
batted at her arms.
They both managed to
ignore the freight engine sound of artillery shell zooming overhead.
Somehow, between the
tickle offensive Jimmy was planning for Pix's armpits and his
defensive elbow actions, they started making out.
Kissing
never really got old. Jimmy put his hand on her cheek. She grabbed
his ribs harder, fingernails digging deliciously into the skin. Jimmy
felt her toes brush his toes. He wiggled in response. She drew back
to breathe something incredibly sexy and also incredibly
unintelligible at his lips.
"What?" he
whispered.
"I said I want
to-" Pix described something rather surprisingly graphic.
Jimmy snorted,
despite himself. "Y-You do know that sounds kinda stupid when
you're not in a p-" She kissed him and he shut up.
Pix jerked back.
"What?"
"What?"
"Oh, I mean..."
She sat back on her haunches. "Oh! Sweet!"
"What?"
Jimmy felt a bit non-plussed. Was he supposed to be horny still, or
what?
"The connection
is back!"
"OH!"
Jimmy sat up even more. "Ask Edna-"
"Shhh!"
Pix hushed him. "Let us girls figure out how to save the day.
Okay, sit in your corner."
Jimmy stuck his
tongue out at her. Pix cocked her head and her antennas sparked a few
times. She closed her eyes and hummed, tapping her fingers on her
knee.
"Okay, here's
the good news." she said, grinning. "And, by the
Architects, we need some good news. The battle is moving up that way,
from what Edna can figure."
"How does she
figure that?" The sounds of battle, to Jimmy's ears, were
getting closer and closer.
"I don't know,
didn't ask. She just said now is a good time to move."
Jimmy sighed.
"Before we do, I have something totally serious and important to
say."
"Yeah, wh-"
He kissed her.
A few minutes later,
they came up for air.
"Okay,"
Pix nodded, panting. "That is serious and important."
They got up slower
than they could have, seeing as how they took several stops to kiss
each other. And maybe more than that. Then, hand in hand, they
started to walk again.
###
"See anything?"
"Sorta."
Jimmy sighed, lowering the binoculars from his eyes. At first, the
stuff in
the
Armory had bugged him on a fundamental level. But now, after two days
of trudging through the damn thing, the very fact
of
the Armory was starting to bug him
every time he thought about it. Why put a big old mostly empty room
in your spaceship? Why make it so stupidly huge, especially when most
of
that empty space was completely empty – literally, the ceiling was
a few miles overhead and there was no way that anything would be
packed in that high. And it made even less sense considering how the
Armory was in the center of the ship, meaning loading or unloading it
would be nearly impossible and would take literal centuries of work.
When people found
things that didn't make sense, most of them just shrugged and said,
'the Architects work in mysterious ways.'
Whatever the hell
that meant.
"Could you
clarify that 'sorta' for me? It's a mite vague!"
"Well."
Jimmy looked down from his perch on the latest thingy. It was tall,
had few easily climbable rungs that jutted out from the side, and
offered a perfect perch to look at everything in a mile wide circle.
There
were some tanks, no telling which side they were on. No, wait, the
hatch on one was opening. Ew. Slor always made Jimmy think of those
gross slugs that lived under bits of trash in the gutter. The only
difference between them and the Slor was that the Slor were bigger,
and slimier and had a complex, elegantly organized society, advanced
technology and the most beautiful poetry written in the known galaxy.
But that didn't change the fact that they made Jimmy want to run for
the salt whenever he saw them.
"Okay,"
Jimmy sighed. "There's a Slor tank group ahea..."
"Ahea?"
Pix cocked her head. "What does Ahea mean? Did you mean ahead?"
"Well, I-"
The Slor tanker's
upper half exploded in disturbingly red goo and fleshy bits. Jimmy
flinched backwards, blinking a few times. The other Slor started to
slide back into their tanks. Another one exploded, and then a third
barely missed being exploded by a hairs breadth, the bullet meant for
it sparking off of the armor.
"Pix!"
Jimmy shouted, confident they couldn't hear him. After all, they were
far away and getting shot at by some sniper. "The Slor tankers
ahead of us are getting shot at by a sniper!"
"Uh...bad?
Gross?"
"It's
definitely gross." Jimmy's stomach did a slow flip flop when he
remembered the Slor were some of the best artists and poets the
galaxy had ever seen. Bang, there went Globbydab. Bang, no more
Vorrrrt.
Bang, no more Jimmy.
He shivered at that rather dark train of thought. And then he saw the
tanks starting to traverse their turrets in his direction.
"What the...!"
He flattened himself as much as he could, pressing his head to the
deck. BRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRAP!
He could hear the
ripping sound the machine guns made even from over here. Bullets
started to rain down on the front of the thingy he sat on, some
zzziping overhead like angry wasps. He started to inch his way
backwards, down the gentle slope of his perch. His feet went over the
edge, then his legs, and then he was shimmying down with a nice hunk
of metal between him and any bullets. That fact did not make it any
less scary.
He dropped down to
the lower level and, now there was way more metal between him and the
hail of bullets, he moved freely to jump down. He landed and rolled
when he hit the ground. He got back to his feet and blinked. "How
did I do that?"
"I don't care,
I'm just glad you're not ending up down here with fifty thousand
extra bullet holes!" Pix grabbed him by the shoulder and shook
him. "What. Were. You. Thinking!?"
Jimmy's head bobbled
with her shaking, even as his knees started to melt. "Stop
s-s-s-shaking me!"
She stopped. Then
she started again. "Seriously! Tanks! Aiming at you! Big TANKS!"
"Stop!"
Jimmy grabbed her and kissed her.
"If
you think that makes it all better...well..." she scowled at
him, then kissed him back. She jerked back, dragging teeth over his
lips for a moment. "You're absolutely wrong.”
"Well, I'm
okay, and I have learned to hide as often as possible." Jimmy
gulped. His knees had turned to jello when he hadn't been looking.
Pix let go of him and he collapsed.
He held one hand up.
"I'm okay, I'm okay." He smiled from where he was laying.
The tanks had stopped firing and he thought he could hear the creak
and groan of them moving off.
"Next time,
just watch for long enough to know if it's safe, then get back down."
Pix helped him up. “Don't let them think you are the sniper. I
figure they don't have enough time to identify a possible target when
they're getting shot at.”
"Good
thinking."
"So, think we
should go around or through?"
"Well, if this
was sex, I'd say through. But as it's not sex-"
"Do men always
have to connect things to sex?"
"It's in my
contract."
###
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