Raiders (21 page)

“I think I can handle it,” Julian answered.  As they neared the Outer Ring the Raiders took notice. Kama and Julian could hear the Raiders shout to one another in Mandarin. “Can you make out what they are saying?” Julian whispered.

“They’re trying to figure out who we are,” Kama replied.

“Great.” Julian wriggled his binds while he shuffled. “They don’t look armed.”

“Don't be so sure. Most of them are addicted to synthmeth or alcohol or whatever they can get their hands on,” Kama said. They continued their shuffled walk and as they did the Raiders who lined the road’s sides fell silent and simply stared at the two as they passed by. They were gathered in small groups of ten to twenty along the roadside. Kama shouted out in Mandarin, “I have a capture! Leave us to pass my songs! For I am your Chosen!” She yelled into the street.

The Raiders in this Outer Ring were indeed without moral conviction. Some were nearly naked, others totally so. Julian briefly glanced to the left. A man and woman writhed against each others bodies as they moaned and sighed right in plain sight of everyone. The man reached out and swigged a drink from a cream colored clay jar. Julian guessed the jar was filled with alcohol but there was no way to really know. A young boy watched the naked adults as they wrestled and they orgasmed up as if the spectacle were an everyday affair of little significance. Julian reflexively stopped in horror at the sight of the poor child.

Kama butted Julian with her Coilgun, against his armor just hard enough so the sound was believable but not so much that her action inflicted any injury.
Bbwwapp.
Julian got the message and immediately snapped out of his train.

About half the Raiders stopped what they were doing to see what Kama was going to do next. To see a Chosen outside of the Reso underground was not an uncommon sight. To witness one of these elite women parade herself down a commoner's road with prisoner at gunpoint, however, was.

“We already have enough attention. Don’t draw any more,” Kama said.

“Yeah, you were right. Wasn’t expecting
that,
though
,
” Julian responded.

“Gonna yell at you in Mandarin now. Pretend that you are scared, when I do,” Kama said.

“You sure they don’t understand us? Can they understand English or not?” Julian asked while he shuffled past a throng of Raiders who reached out to touch him in teased curiosity.

“No,” Kama answered. “Now shut up.” She spoke aloud, “I said BE QUIET my capture! Or I shall cut your unworthy head! I’ll cut it right off and give you away! A souvenir for my songs here!” She butted his back with her Coilgun in believable presentation.

The Raiders nearby clapped and jeered at them. “Do it my Chosen!” they yelled in Mandarin. “Do it!”

Kama smiled back to her former Raiders in visaged facade. “This one is for the Elders my songs! Be patient! For I will bring you more!”

She wasn’t sure if they would buy it. But they did for the Raiders roared and cheered as their leatherbound idol marched by them, her metal ringed dire blonde hair confidently bobbed and lulled itself while she walked.

One of the Raiders, a man who appeared to me in his middle twenties ran up to Kama in a flash. His eyes pushed themselves out of their sockets a little and his mouth itself gaped wide. He breathed heavily and tremored while he held out his hands. He was tweaked on synthmeth, probably something else too.

Kama wanted to block his advance but could not lower her Coilgun against Julian for fear that the performance would be given away, and all would be lost. “You!” the crazed man said, not wanting to waste another second on words. The man wrapped his arms around Kama and kissed her deeply, his tongue somehow forced itself past her teeth and met hers overcome with lusted waves. A single kiss with a Chosen was certainly worth his life. At least he believed it to be true within his drug induced mindstate.

Kama bit down hard and the crazed man sprang back and yowled and collapsed to the ground. He covered his mouth in a futile attempt to stop the flow of blood. A pressured torrent emitted from his face and wrapped itself around his hands and arms.

“Him!” Kama yelled out, her mouth streaked with the assailant’s blood. “He dies, this man for what he has done!” She breathed deeply in exasperation and jutted her head toward the man who lay on the ground at her feet. She never lowered her weapon from Julian's back, not even for half a second and then kicked the crazed Raider where he lay.

Julian stood still. He wasn't sure what to do next. He did his best to hold himself in role, to
appear
captured.

A group of nearby Raiders piled onto the man after they withdrew their knives and their handspears and their small canes from leather and cloth alike. The prone man let out a muffled moan and held out his arms against the rush but it was no use. Twenty seconds later the mob got up from the pile and revealed what remained. Two Raider men picked up the wretched bloodied heap and tossed him into a firepit about ten meters away.

Kama and Julian continued their trek toward the City. They arrived at a tunnel entrance. Reso lay below, a wide staircase about thirty meters wide that led gently down. Oddly there was nobody at all on the entire staircase for as far as Julian could tell. He had expected at least some kind of military presence. Some guards or checkpoints perhaps or at least an unmanned auto cannon. But no, there was nothing.

“Not far now,” Kama said.

“Good. The sooner the better,” Julian said. They straggled down the dimly lit stairwell with strings of neverfail lights as their only illumination. Small vines and plants rebelliously and impossibly lined the metal stair edges and crevices. They arrived at the lowest step and then touched the level ground.

Reso.

“Welcome home,” Julian said to Kama.

“Doesn’t feel like home. Not any more,” she said.

“Now what?” Julian asked.

“Another half kilometer. We’re going to an Elder’s place. Used to be a hotel centuries ago.”

Julian shrugged. “What the hell is a hotel?”

“Travelers used to pay to sleep there once. That’s what they told me.”

“So like renting a Pod for a day or two.”

“Something like that,” Kama said. They walked through tunneled ways and passages lightly populated with more Raiders only this time they were well scrubbed and appointed unlike the Outer Ring’s populus above. Curiously they did not seem alarmed nor surprised at Julian and Kama's presence. Kama received silent respectful nods from several passers-by. At last the tunnel's end opened into a large underground atrium that was five levels high. Shops and stores and what appeared to be living quarters ringed the outer walls above and below.

Julian could not help but notice how nearly
perfect
everyone looked, almost as if he walked into a city of alien supermen and women both. None of the Raiders appeared overweight nor inflicted with any overt chronic conditions. They were well toned and perfectly proportioned and beautifully heeled. There was no sign of any military or police presence anywhere. Nobody raised their heads in alarm when Kama and Julian entranced into the great atrium, she with her Coilgun charged and him with his hands firmly bound in.

For the Raiders of Reso, any activity that a Chosen partook in was to be considered normal, mundane, ignored. You could question a Chosen elite, sure. But then consider if such action is equally valued to losing everything, your life not shielded from exclusion, at that very moment.

They entered a structure with a sign in front. Faded letters spelled out HYATT in white near the structure’s topmost floor about thirty meters overhead.

“This is just weird,” Julian said.

“Shh. Don’t say anything,” Kama said. They walked across the spacious entry foyer toward an ancient elevator that amazingly enough was operational. Julian stopped, unsure whether he could trust walking into a cramped and windowless box. The elevators back home were roomy and inviting by comparison. “Get in,” Kama said.

Julian decided he had no choice but to do so. What else could he do?

“Kama, level six,” Kama hoarsely spoke in Mandarin to the elevator console.

A female Assistant voiced itself from the brushed chromeblue metal. “Identification failed. Please exit the car,” it said in Mandarin.

Kama realized that her voice was a little off, probably from dehydration and dust alike. She cleared her throat and then repeated, “Kama, level six!”

Two high pitched blips emitted from the plate. “Welcome back, Kama.” The elevator jarred itself to life. Julian shuffled his feet to gain balance with his wrists yet bound. Ten seconds passed until the elevator door silently slid open. And then they stepped out of the car.

Julian stopped after only three steps from the elevator and as he did Kama nearly bumped into him but stopped short. He turned round and nodded sideways to her. She looked ahead and saw an Elder about fifty meters away. He lay reclined on an oversized bed in the distance with two Chosen girls. One woman appeared young from across the large temple room. The other he could not see save for her buttocks which protruded above a veiled curtain that circled the bed. Kama jangled her head forward and whispered, “Just walk. It’s fine.”

Julian did so and as he slowly shambled closer to the temple bed he looked from one side to the other. The temple room was perhaps once many rooms but the level itself was gutted and stripped to make a singular large suite. The floors were smoothed and mirrored and black, almost glass-like but it did not feel as such to to his tread. He could barely make out the ceiling which looked to be twelve meters tall. The entire room was ringed with crystal fluted firelight torches, perhaps forty or more he guessed which flicked and crackled against the darkness.

And symbols were painted everywhere. There were symbols of gargoyles and demons and heavily winged angels of both genders. There were chalices and doves and stars vertexed with five, six or seven points all stenciled with gold and silver and red. There were eyes and there were dragons. There were circles and crosses within and mosaic depictions of kings and queens and pharaohs and men and women of great power all, long since dead who held their globes and their sceptres or their Suns and their moons or their canes and their eggs wrapped in the serpents of mystery. They were reverently rendered against the glass-black walls and ceiling both. They shimmered and danced as the crystal torches illuminated their long forgotten visages.

For Julian the spectacle was beautiful and spoke to him in some arcane and abstract way but the symbols did not transduce any practical meaning to him. So he walked and he wondered just how much of this Kama even understood.
It didn’t really matter,
he supposed. Still.

They walked to within five meters of the bed. There was no mattress to be found but instead there were pillows and blankets and wraps all round. The bordered veil waved silently against slow warmed currents of air as the Elder and his consort continued their activity. The air itself smelled of sex and lavender and sandalwood. The younger woman lay next to the Elder in a half-hug while she observed the other who continued her endeavor. Her head rhythmically bobbed up and down against his thigh accompanied by muffled moan every few seconds.

Kama stood behind Julian, her Coilgun aimed at Julian's back as before. “Nebu,” she called.

The Elder and his two consorts looked at the two in shock for they had not noticed them approach despite the floors that echoed their every footstep.

The Elder stood up, naked. He grabbed a robe and wrapped himself while the two Chosen women scrambled for wraps of free cloth from their nest. After a moment of silent surprise he laughed aloud. He held out his hands and shouted in Mandarin, “Travelers! Ha-hah. My great Kama I’ve missed you!” He laughed some more and said, “Now why didn’t you call?” He turned to look at the two girls and waved his hand to them, a sign that everything was okay.

Kama hadn’t thought about that. She paused and thought up an acceptable answer for Nebu. “My Personal Assistant was hit. It broke in battle my Elder.” She bowed her head down then raised it once more. “I had no way to contact. But I came back with a gift. A gift for you and the inner Temple.”

“Ah, so sweet!” Nebu replied as he stumbled out of the nested den and walked up to Julian. He touched Julian’s arm to inspect his carbon fibre armor from the Polar City. “Is he?” Nebu asked.

“Yes,” Kama responded.

“Oh well how exquisite!” Nebu switched to English. “And what is your name, Polar City man?”

Julian hesitated and then looked back to Kama. She remained stoic and unmoved. “Julian,” he answered the Elder.

“Ah, Julian. Very Romanesque. A good name. Strong. Hearty.” Elder Nebu walked round Julian to inspect. “Kama my love, do tell me why you deliver this to me now?”

Kama paused again but came up with a strong lie, quick. “My Nebu, I was out in the Wastes for so long I just missed you so.” She lowered her Coilgun. “I thought that if I brought you a prize of great worth that you would invite me into your consort chamber again. Like we used to.”

The two Chosen girls rustled from their nest and scowled in disapproval as they shook their blondewhite hair, their blue-green eyes and pearlescent mouths twisted less the mammal and more to the reptilian. Kama rubbed her left thigh with her free hand. “I know that I am old now. I can’t compete with these younger ones. All I know is that I couldn’t stop thinking about you. About us.”

Elder Nebu said to the two women, “Chara, Fioria, please leave us for a moment. We will continue soon,” and waved them into dismissal.

The two Chosen girls covered themselves in silk wraps and then stomped away. They marched toward a staircase that descended the temple’s far side. A door unseen clattered itself shut from below as the two girls exited.

Nebu walked up to Kama and gently stroked her face. “How long has it been, Kama? Seven? Eight years now?”

“Seven,” Kama replied. “Too long.” She emitted a smile so strongly seductive that Nebu, who was modestly influenced by synthmeth and alcohol at the moment, considered. “Don’t judge me by how I am now though,” she giggled with a false innocence. “The road from the Polar City is long.”