HESTIA / SURFACE SHANTY TOWN (LOCAL NAME UNKNOWN) / AUTUMN 2017
*
“Run. Drink first, but run.” Barkeep, one of the many bugs on Hestia, pours two sloppy shots, passes one to the customer he (sometimes) calls friend. “Take this shot with me. Head for the pisser and keep going. Do it now.”
“The fuck are you talking about? I got money on whatever this…” Man Bird gestures at the Curling broadcast holo-hovering next to the bar. “Benny?” Man Bird leans low over the bar to find his friend: “Why you down here cowering?”
The shot that should’ve killed Man Bird answers and the gangly bastard does fly. Red bolts of fire break bottles and the dirty saloon mirror. Past the pisser and through the kitchen, plasma bolts thumb-tacking the tiles they don’t destroy. The kitchen staff hits the deck, and the attackers take the high road clattering over shelves, suction-running across the ceiling after the Quetzi (species name) already a half-block down a back-alley.
The cephalopod killers leave slime trails and snot clots across the corrugated metal alley: “Cut him off” and “Roger that” communicated in one-half-instant via skin-pigment. One ruddy Octo-person leaps high to a promenade above, the second cephalopod ricochets off the shanty walls and shack doors, shooting all the while.
Man Bird takes long lanky strides in the straightaways, hops over other critters in the crowded corridors and walkways. The Quetzi kicks off walls like an emu doing parkour. He pleads for help to those he knows (those who suddenly don’t know him).
Pity and panic in the eyes of every neighbor. They won’t hurt him, but they can’t help Man Bird. “Go to church!” is the only advice he hears on his recursive loop through town.
Buried beneath another building, a structure with another structure stilt-stood on it’s back (and another on it’s shoulders), there is a small church. Burnt Chapel is it’s name because the trade languages on Hestia don’t really ‘pop’ like the languages people brought to the rock with them.
Fugitive feathered serpent shouts “Sanctuary!” and throws his tired body at the tiny chapel’s door that gives way as if it knew he was coming. Down into well-dark. Man bird lands soft, caught and gently held and passed by many tiny insectoid hands across a space echoing chitters suggests is vast-too-vast for the tiny chapel.
*
WINNIPEG, MANITOBA. AUTUMN 2017
*
* CALGARY, AB :/ \
/ ‘Rebecca’ shakes awake.
She shakes awake and nearly shoots the shit out of her rig \\ ‘espionage unit’ \\ her human suit. The ugly thing sitting jawslacked edge of the bed. The great spider knows she shouldn’t dally any real portion of the day at the motel, but she waits as long as possible to put it on–to climb in the bot-suit that fits like a sausage casing. The spider works around the chore, packs and re-packs her duffle. She sets out clothes for the rig. Re-packs her duffle, pistol on top. The spider sips coffee and dances around the sparse room to something tin-tripping out a cell phone speaker. No singing, just chitters in time and little squeaks in tune almost in tune. Caffeine hits Cancrin arachnids real hard. It’s an accident of biochemistry that comes with a side of euphoria. ‘Beck’ starts bopping and bouncing around the room to the tune. Get’s her mouth piece in to whisper-sing along to the pop song.
Karaoke-dance class done, there’s no excuse or time to loiter, so Rebecca manufactures one and smokes a cigarette out the high-and-tiny bathroom window. She announces, to herself and the bot that’s carried her too-long on Earth: “Fuck this planet. I’m out.”
Last task: spider commands her human suit to grab a repurposed cell phone and tip-type Rebecca’s words: “I’m off to see temperate rainforest and the studio that made my favorite game before time destroys both. Eat my farts, Fed.” Rebecca’s other body hits send and daisy-chained tech-magic makes a compromised phone in some fool’s pocket out Vancouver way send a text in secret to a cell tower that sends it so-on-and-forth to a Yankee Fed out hunting a spider she believes is a spy.
Fed ain’t wrong.
*
BACK IN WINNIE
*
Stoneware holds coffee reliably in all places, and hot sauce hides kitchen sins across climes and times. An American Fed pitches a real-life buddy cop script to her Mounty equal-opposite.
“Is she a spy or a serial killer? Because you’ve told me two separate-but-intersecting crazy stories.” Gloria the skeptical Mounty mocks a much taller lady across the table while a waitress tops off two coffees.
“Both. Maybe? She has hacked me multiple times. Sends me taunting text messages. Bullshit false leads. Says she’s off to Vancouver.”
“Is she in the room right now? The magical ninja spy with the large ass who, and I quote: “can drink a man like a juice box.””
“Not my quote. I didn’t say the juice box bit. I simply relayed the quote. Look, are you in? You wanna hunt big fish?” The American is as eager as she is tall, it is too much, she reaches across the table for a high five. It’s creepy, like she’s looming trying to keep her eyes at the same level as the shorter lady across from her. The high five fades to the hope of a fist bump that’s also ignored.
“I’m not in. I’m on my way out. I don’t want to be a cop. Any kind of cop. And that’s why I get punishment assignments.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, and honestly this one seems to be the last straw. Good luck with your bullshit shot in the dark stakeout.” Gloria gathers her coat and the cop bullshit she’s sick of carrying around.
“Wait. Wait. Juicebox photos. Absolute asshole people who did terrible things drank like juice boxes.”
“Crime scene photos?”
“I will show you highly classified…”
“How classified?”
“Super fuckin’ classified photos. I have them in my possession and will show them to you if you come sit on this lady’s trailer with me. Come on…”
Two hours later, an American Fed and a reluctant Mounty sit in Forge Motors finest sedan, discretely eyeballing a trailer once occupied by one ‘Robyn Aranee’ on a hunch that that she’ll circle back to the scene of the accident that spooked her.
*
HESTIA / SHANTY-TOWN / BURNT CHAPEL
*
“I am Aurantiacus, and you may take me.” When the Cephalopod goons battered down the door to the burnt chapel , they did not find their prey, the Qetzi called Man Bird. There was only a burnt repurposed stone church where a priest made his home and did the work of his order. The priest painted red and orange politely pleads to the cephalopod thugs who so rudely kicked in his door. A bug-man, a priest in the shape of a sentient Mantis pleads with two hands while others tend to a tin stove, and two more darn socks.
Octopus thugs repeat their question-threats because they didn’t get the expected compliance-answer. The priest calmly repeats: “Yes, a Quetzi came through crying sanctuary.” The amber-hued mantis offers tea to the frustrated pursuers. “I am Aurantiacus and you can take me in his place.” Bug sets himself where the altar used to be while the cephalo-cops crawl over broken pews and accuse.
Over the rambling demands of the pursuing octopuses, one with a gun aimed at the priest, a second with a truncheon held high. A third cephalopod thug with a knife suction-cup slithers across the ceiling, but the priest is brave: “sanctuary still means something to the Keepers of the Sacred Violence.” Aurantiacus downs his tea. “so take me.”
Take him they do, deep down-up to the tip-top bottom of the Hab Pod where the bosslady lives.
When she, the Exiled Queen of Keppler 22(b), was done with her most cliche “you’ll rue the day!” speech and when the priest (encased in his little bubble) refused again and again-again to give up the young man who sought sanctuary. When the priest declined to rat out whomever put cephalopod transmitters on Earth, the Queen ordered him tortured.
She did not give such an order because she thought the priest could be moved or his mind changed. The Keepers are decent, but they are fanatics and first order zealots all–the cephalopods know this better than any on Hestia. “I’m doing this to all of you because I can. And if the church resists me, I will do this to each of you until there’s not one single solitary mind left in the hive to feel the pain with you…”
*
END RP 2
MORE TO COME