Chapter 13 – Road Trip

Cat let her hand slap against the outside of the rumbler through the open window, watching the hilly countryside pass.

“Do you still have a dick?” she asked, looking at Hunter in the back seat through the rearview mirror. “Like, a robot one.”

“No,” Hunter said.

“Aw, that’s a shame. Why not talk to Frost? I bet he could hook you up with a nice girthy piston or something.”

“One more word about pistons and I’m turning this rumbler around,” Doc said.

“Psh,” Cat said. “I’m just trying to make conversation. This is gonna be a long ride.”

They had left Northmark several hours ago, just after the crack of dawn, going straight south. They wouldn’t reach Spitforge until the evening.

“We might as well go through the plan once more,” Doc said. “Did everyone read the packets Linton gave us?”

“Yeah,” Hunter grunted.

“Nope,” Cat said.

Doc sighed. “Cat, you really ought to take this more seriously.”

Cat rolled her eyes and blew a loud raspberry. “Whatever, man. I know enough already. We find the mansion, get to the guy, kill him, then leave. Done.”

“For someone so excited to do this, you seem remarkably disinterested in doing the actual work,” Hunter said. “Let me tell you a lesson I learned as a monster hunter. A hunt is more than pulling the trigger. You go into it with your head on wrong, you’re not coming back out.”

“Is that a robot joke?” Cat asked.

Hunter sighed.

“I’ve never really seen the need to get too involved with all this ‘thinking’ stuff,” she said. “That’s Linton’s job. He says smash something, I smash it. Doesn’t have to be more complicated than that.”

“That might work when you’re beating up street trash,” Doc said. “This is an archon of the MOW we’re talking about. The rules are different. If we don’t do things right, we will die. After being tortured for information.”

“Fine. Let’s plan, if that’ll make you unbunch your panties.”

Through the bulk of the trip, Doc and Hunter laid out everything they had on their target.

Tamos himself was not a mage, which would make him easier to kill. However, he surrounded himself with powerful bodyguards, who would have to be taken out before they could get to the archon.

His four-story mansion would also be crawling with armed guards. Doc suggested they try to avoid them as much as possible. Time would be a factor in this, as reinforcements could arrive from Spitforge, so getting rid of every single truther on the premises was to be avoided.

After killing Tamos, they would proceed to the city, where a member of the Church of Rags would set them up with a getaway vehicle to get them back to the bar, where they would meet up with the rest of the Bluebirds.

The Attean landscape passed them by. Eventually, they reached the province of Yunslowia, traveling along a coastal road with a view of the choppy, grey Shipbreaker Sea.

They stopped for fresh fuel cells at a small station in some rural town. The owner looked at them sideways, but Cat kept him at bay with a well-placed stare.

They kept driving until dusk. They rounded a large outcropping, and Cat saw the factory city in the distance.

Great foundries vomited black smoke into the sky. A looming, dark skyline, backlit by angry, red light. It loomed over the coastal countryside, indomitable.

Spitforge.

The industrial powerhouse of the Concord.

“Damn,” Cat said. “Never been to Spitforge before. If that’s not an evil-looking city, I don’t know what is.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” Hunter said. “I hope you like smog and acid rain.”

***

Cat and the others were running a little late.

Her brother had planned for everything to start at exactly 2:00. It was now 2:05—they’d had to bypass two road checks in the morning, which had slowed them down—and they were driving through the small suburb on the outskirts of Spitforge which preceded the secluded mansion.

It was called Arturio.

They drove up the main road. The clapboard houses to the left and right were colorfully painted in yellows and greens and light blues, wood fences blocking off the properties. Many people were outside, working at flowerbeds, watering lawns, walking dogs or strolling with children. Everyone seemed to know one another, greeting each other amicably.

Once they saw the van, however, they looked up, many stopping whatever they were doing to stare.

“What’s wrong with them?” Cat asked, staring right back.

“Don’t know,” Doc said. “I guess they probably don’t get many outsiders around here.”

“Smells fishy,” Hunter said.

“You don’t have a nose, though,” Cat noted.

“You know what I mean. Something’s not right.”

They were coming up on a truther outpost, an ugly brick building with the mark of the MOW—a sunburst in the shape of an eye—over the doors. Hardlight billboards urged the arrest of the Bluebirds and displayed their likenesses, drawn with baffling inaccuracy.

“They made me look fat,” Doc said, rubbing his round belly mournfully.

Suddenly, a face came on over the hardlight screens. A man with a broad nose and prickly, receding hair. He wore a large beard with hints of grey, his expression stern.

“Attention, people of Arturio!” the man spoke. His voice carried over tubular farshouts placed beneath the billboards that vibrated in rhythm with his words. “This is Archon Wenslow Tamos speaking. There has been a confirmed sighting of the terror organization known as the Bluebirds in the immediate vicinity. They will likely be making their way through town. They have come to harass your community and destroy all you care about. These are remorseless killers. Take up arms, I say! Drive out these intruders!”

“Uh oh,” Cat said. “Looks like we’ve been found out.”

Doc floored it, and they rounded a cargo rumbler as they sped off down the road.

“They will be traveling in a white rumbler with the registration A2HH9B,” Tamos continued. “Their deaths will be in service to the Concord and will be rewarded accordingly. Help the MOW cleanse the world of these terrorists!”

Once the initial shock wore off, people started fleeing. They dropped whatever they were doing and ran inside their homes as if they had heard someone cry demon.

Some, however, came right back out with guns in hand. Pointing and shouting, they quickly identified the white rumbler barrelling down the street.

Cat ducked as they opened fire, holding her hands to her head.

They were almost at the end of the town. If they could just make it a little longer…

The rumbler pulled sharply to the left, rattling as it jerked haphazardly from one side to the other.

“Dang it! They caught a stabilizer!” Doc called. “We’re losing a bearing!”

Cat looked up just in time to see the rumbler collide with a light pole, the fender wrapping around the metal.

She was thrown forward in a shower of shattered glass, a cacophony of groaning metal. The seatbelt jerked her back with a sharp tug and prevented her from smashing her head on the dashboard. Her neck cricked painfully from the sudden jolt. It took her several seconds to reorient herself. She got the door open and stumbled out of the rumbler, ending up on her knees.

A pot-bellied man came towards her on the sidewalk with a raised shotgun. She put up a barrier just in time to block his first shot, but the hardlight was completely shattered. She rolled behind a building before he could fire again.

Cat took a few seconds to catch her breath and survey the situation. Doc and Hunter were alive, but only the latter had managed to get out of the rumbler. Several armed civilians were closing in on them, and truthers spilled out of the outpost further up the street.

The man with the shotgun was closest, and therefore priority number one. She left her cover and used a Drida rune to raise one of the stone blocks that made up the curb.

“Nonlethal only!” Doc called. “These people are civilians! They’re innocent in this!”

He was right. Cat lowered the block and fired it off at reduced velocity. It took the man in the legs and knocked him onto his stomach.

Before he had a chance to stand up, she pushed herself forward with Knuph and kicked the shotgun out of the man’s hands, letting it slide into the road. He swore at her, but she cut him off with a kick to the head.

A bullet missed Cat’s head by a hand’s breadth, putting a hole in the wall of the building behind her. She ducked low and looked around. One of the men she had spotted earlier crossed the street, a meaty pistol in hand.

“I won’t let you hurt my wife, you monsters!” he cried. “For the Concord!”

Cat considered a slapshot, but that could well be lethal at that distance.

Instead, she used the Drida rune to manipulate the asphalt under the man’s feet, turning it into a semi-solid that slid up his legs and grappled onto his arms, pulling him to the ground with a scream. With another use of Drida and a flick of her wrist, she pulled the pistol from his hand and caught it as it spun her way.

Doing it this way cost far more anima, but saved a life in the process. As far as she was concerned, that was well worth it.

“Hunter, I need some backup, man!” Cat called. She eyed the last two civilians closing in on the rumbler from the opposite side of the road.

The construct had gone around to the back of the rumbler and opened up the doors, rooting inside.

“One moment,” he said calmly.

Cat dove behind cover as a barrage of handgun fire rained around her. “Now would be good!”

Doc was still fumbling with his seatbelt inside the rumbler. The volunteers noticed this and focused their fire on him.

Cat rushed towards the fat man. She raised a barrier in front of him and used a quick Baku rune to launch herself skyward, flipping over the rumbler and landing on the other side. One of the men was right in front of him, and she caught him with a spinning kick to the side of the head.

He fell like a bag of rocks. She used Knuph to disturb the aim of the second man and went in with a gut punch that knocked the air out of him. She sent him flying with another Knuph rune. He rolled to a stop some four meters off, unconscious.

The rest of the civilians turned and ran, retreating into the safety of their homes.

Okay, that should make us a little time. Now we just…

She turned and spotted a dozen truthers closing in on the van, just thirty or forty meters away. They were spread out across the whole street to avoid area attacks, having seemingly identified that she was a geomancer.

Cat ran for the discarded shotgun, but the truthers had already opened fire. Burning heat bloomed in her midsection and she fell backward, squealing through the pain. With shaking hands, she identified a hole in her shirt, blood spreading from the wound.

Hunter shut the doors to the rumbler and walked towards the truther squad at a slow, measured pace. He had a sword strapped on his hip in a simple leather sheath, a rifle over his shoulder, and a canvas bag in his left hand.

One of the truthers caught him with a bullet in the shoulder. He flinched slightly, but continued unfazed.

“Damn it, Hunter! Whatever you’re going to do, do it fast!” Cat cried. She kept her hands on the wound as blood trickled through her fingers.

He didn’t acknowledge her in the slightest.

Hunter let his bag drop and took the rifle in both hands. He brought it up to his shoulder with a practiced movement and aimed down the sights.

The rifle rang out.

Bang!

Bang!

Bang!

Three headshots.

Three dead truthers.

The others scattered to take cover, but he caught one in the midsection just as he tried to jump behind a parked rumbler. The man fell, screaming, and Hunter finished him off with a bullet to the head.

The truthers leaned out of cover to shoot back at him as he advanced on their position, but he ignored the oncoming fire, bullets bouncing off his hardened chest plate. His returning fire forced the truthers to duck back.

When his magazine clicked empty, Hunter dropped the rifle and drew his sword, glinting runes etched along its surface.

He leapt onto a rumbler with a truther hiding behind it. The frightened black-coat peeked up, aiming his gun. Hunter bisected the man’s weapon, then his head. He fell back, brains sliding onto the ground.

Hunter jumped out of the way as the seven remaining truthers riddled the rumbler with bullets. He stalked along the side of the street, pressed against the wall, and caught a man in the stomach who was trying to flee. He made a horizontal cut with little more than a flick of the wrist, spilling the man’s entrails over the hot tarmac.

Two more took aim from across the road. Hunter switched the sword to his left hand and held up his right. A pistol folded out of the forearm, depositing itself into his waiting hand. He shot both of the black-coats in the head, one bullet each.

Less than a minute later, there were no truthers left to oppose them. None of the corpses so much as twitched.

Hunter wiped his sword on a dead man’s coat and sauntered back to the van.

Cat shivered. Her toes and fingers were numb, and she wasn’t sure if she could move at this point. There was a disconcertingly large pool of blood beneath her.

With the coast now clear, Doc rushed forward and settled on his knees in front of her. He gently lifted up her shirt, which provoked a hiss of pain, and he applied his big hands to the wound as a green glow alighted from them.

“You’ll be alright,” Doc said smoothly, with utter certainty. “Give me a minute and you’ll be right as rain.”

There was an initial, sharp tug of pain that made Cat cry out, then a warm, soft sensation settled over her like a blanket. She let her head fall back as Doc patched her up, the ruined flesh of her abdomen slowly knitting back together, pain lessening with each pulse of her heart.

Within a minute or two, Doc once again urged her to sit. She did so, groaning at the dull ache in her midsection.

The wound in her stomach still bled, but the bleeding had been halted to a slow trickle, and the gaping hole had been reduced to a small flesh wound.

“I don’t have the time to heal you fully,” Doc said apologetically. “As soon as this is all over, I’ll give you proper care.”

“Are we ready to stop wasting time?” Hunter asked, having retrieved his rifle and bag, resting the former on his shoulder.

Cat managed a grin. She managed to stand with help from Doc.

“You bet,” she said. “We still have an archon to kill.”

She had used almost half her anima, so she reached inside her hoodie, found a nim potion—a glass vial of blue liquid—and downed the contents. As it spread into her stomach, she felt her magic returning. Taking more than a couple a day would flood the body with too much anima, causing serious injury. Right now, though, it was exactly what she needed.

Hunter went to look for a replacement rumbler and Cat set about pumping herself back up, still woozy from blood loss.

The fun was just beginning.