NOVEL NEXT Chapter 98: Desert Caravan I
[The Elluhada Panhandle]
Sand stretched out as far as the eye could see.
Betelgeuse engaged his MDES' magnification lens and observed the slow churn of sand in the distance. The transport-convoy inched closer to the overhanging dune, and it was now close enough that he could see their chrome surfaces reflecting the red rays of Corydon.
The convoy was most likely bound for Saltilla, given their eastbound trajectory. A freelance charter, given the fact that their Maschinenfabrik trucks were imprinted with a logo that wasn't either of Ninsei's "N" or Tacoma's lightning-bolt insignia.
Betelgeuse' commslink crackled to life.
"*krrshk* Filippov reporting. Do you read me, B.T.?"
"I read you," Betelgeuse responded.
"It's twelve cargo-trucks, two humvees. Thete is in position and is reporting some kind of horse insignia. Looks like they contracted Cossax for their protection," Filippov said.
"Cossax? They any good?" Betelgeuse inquired, glancing sideways at Voke, Douglas and Misha. The three of them had rebreathers in their mouths, modified for greater CO scrubbing-efficiency courtesy of Filippov, and they clutched ZWEN railguns in their hands.
The railguns were for show. Between them, they only carried twelve armature-rounds in total.
Which meant no firing. Not today.
"Quite. Even Ninsei uses them sometimes," Filippov returned. "I reckon they'll have titanium-weave armor, same as those Paladin guys. They're high end, so I reckon humvees will probably be outfitted with Nullifier-Braces."
"Okay. Continue monitoring," Betelgeuse said, nodding to himself. Over the past few weeks, the former Navigator had shown himself to have a broad and in-depth understanding of the way things worked in the Protectorate's transportation industry, and Betelgeuse had grown to trust his observations.
Betelgeuse glanced down at his wrist-transceiver and tapped at its screen.
1738h sidereal time.
"About the tremors I reported earlier," Filippov said. "I'm sensing drilling. It might be a whole drill-rig team a couple kilometers to the east, but I can't be sure because all this sand is dampening the feedback."
"Might be Ayish-Bejana," Betelgeuse said. "Not something we can ascertain at this juncture. Thete's out of comms range so you keep an eye on her in case she needs any help."
"Got it. Filippov out."
Filippov's voice cut in a series of crackles and pops. Even at a distance of a few hundred meters, the interference was palpable. Betelgeuse was beginning to think that the whole basin was covered by Chimerae jammers.
Turning again to Voke, Douglas, and Misha behind him, Betelgeuse motioned for them to take control of their fire teams, comprising five Privates each.
Private was the 'rank' that Betelgeuse gave the new additions to their crew, opting for a military designation that emphasized clear hierarchy. Save for one exception, these Privates came from passing convoys that he'd 'convinced' to join his personal army. After all, the business of surviving in the Elluhada was nothing if not labor-intensive.
They'd brought 15 out of 16 Privates today. The last one, they left back at their encampment.
Voke, Douglas and Misha thumped away over the soft sand, descending the dune and disappearing from his view. Returning his attention to the oncoming convoy, Betelgeuse settled into a calm watchfulness.
The minutes passed. Corydon shimmered overhead. The Amate jutted out far away to the east, half obscured by towering pyramids of sand that rolled on endlessly.
"*krrshk* We're in position, B.T.," Voke said.
"*krrshk* Doin' it wrong, Cockster, you're supposed to start like 'Voke reporting'," Douglas said.
"*krrshk* Shut it, Doug," Misha shot back.
"Hey, get off my dick, Misha—"
"Doug," Betelgeuse said, taking on a tone that tolerated no dissent. "Look sharp. Tangoes at one thousand."
He disengaged his visor's magnification and slung his railgun to the side. His wrist-transceiver showed 1759h, sidereal time. He raised his visor toward Corydon as it drew across its meridian to blaze high noon.
You know you long to use the power at your fingertips.
True. His mind itched to use the compulsion. Betelgeuse lowered his gaze to observe the convoy bearing down on them, the trucks' clanking tread-belts finally coming into earshot.
"B.T., we goin?" Douglas transmitted, impatient as ever.
"Quiet," Voke said curtly, his reply tacitly endorsed by Betelgeuse' silence.
30 seconds…
20 seconds…
"B.T.!" Filippov suddenly transmitted, his sudden cry almost taking Betelgeuse by surprise. "Unidentified over the next dune—very close! A ton of light vehicles—"
Loud buzzing drifted into his ears, like a million angry hornets suddenly stirred from their stupor. Betelgeuse' eyes narrowed.
A single gleaming bike crested the dune directly opposite them, then cut a diagonal down toward the valley of sand. Then a second one. Then a whole legion of them.
The curtain of spike-wheeled bikes gouged deep troughs into the side of the dune, raising mists of sand that blanketed the Amate from view. Their trajectory put them in a collision course with the trundling convoy, which by now had already passed Betelgeuse and his crew.
"Reposition," Betelgeuse transmitted, pushing himself to his feet and running after the convoy. "No engaging until I give the command. Filippov, you have eyes?"
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
"I have eyes!" came the reply.
"Three o'clock, the open-back on the sand-ridge. It has a symbol on its side—"
"I see it," Filippov said, his voice becoming almost wholly consumed by the static. Betelgeuse was close to the maximum comms range. "Sticks wrapped around an axe—it's the Sand-Marshal. Bonito Mussolini."
"Kakkin' great," Misha sighed, with Voke grunting in agreement.
"Fuck!" Douglas laughed stupidly. "Isn't it Benito? Benito Mussolini!?"
"Bonito Mussolini is—"
"I know who the fuck it is," Betelgeuse groused, interrupting Filippov and speeding across the ridge of the dune on foot. "Filippov, you're breaking up. Reposition further up and tell Thete to do the same. The rest of you, look sharp! We'll wait for them to tire themselves out, then we strike!"
Bonito Mussolini, the self-proclaimed Sand-Marshal. A personality renowned for his brutality and sadism, a bandit who enjoyed a fearsome reputation as a cannibal and child-rapist.
Filippov and Thete had brought him to Betelgeuse' attention in their last planning session, alongside a whole slew of other wretched creatures who roamed the vastness of the Elluhada. In fact, the official report detailing Sand-Marshal Mussolini's crucifixion of an entire thirty-vehicle caravan down south was part of the original impetus for Betelgeuse shifting the small crew northward. He didn't want to risk the resources it would take to deal with such a psychopath, if he could help it, not to mention that the northern routes were favored by freelance charters due to proximity with the small city, Gehen*.
*[Often used as a rest and refuel stop for freelance charters, who were less able to afford to carry large amounts of extra fuel with them.]
Unfortunately, it appeared that the Sand-Marshal had had a similar target in mind—freelance charters, rather than the relatively more well-defended corporate convoys.
Betelgeuse didn't much look forward to butting heads with the Sand-Marshal. But then, he didn't appreciate having his prey stolen either.
The convoy was now several hundred meters away, but was swerving wildly to the side in response to the fearsome speed of the Sand-Marshal's bike-grunts. The gas mask-wearing bandits were throwing circular objects onto the side of the trucks, the objects sticking and then beginning to emitting a high-pitched whine.
Before Betelgeuse' eyes, the convoy's trucks locked up and twisted onto their sides, digging deep gouges in the discolored sand as they screamed to a stop.
The convoy was halted.
'EM-pulsers,' Betelgeuse realized, skirting rightward down the side of the dune and falling into cover behind a shelf of sand about a hundred meters straight-line distance from the battle.
Peering over the top of the shelf, Betelgeuse watched the battle unfold below him.
EM-pulsers trigger the automatic braking system used by the Maschinenfabrik trucks. Sandy came prepared.
The two humvees were still rumbling across the valley floor, their top-hatches slamming open. Chrome-armored figures sprung out with practiced efficiency and took their positions at the blocky-looking mounted multihead-railguns.
Their vehicles rolled up some way onto the opposite dune and canted at an odd angle as the mercenaries strained the multihead-railguns against gravity and aimed into the mass of throttling bikers.
They started firing, the metallic twangs blasting sonorously through the valley of sand.
With each shot of their multihead-railguns, thirty armature-rounds streaked across the space, deleting whole swathes of biker-grunts into pink mist and sending gouts of orange flame into the air.
The legion of biker-grunts flared and bunched, and several of them collided into each other, their spiked wheels grinding their writhing bodies to mincemeat.
The Cossax fired as though they had an unlimited supply of armature-rounds, sending wall after wall of certain death into the Sand-Marshal's marauders.
By now, Voke, Misha and Douglas had caught up with Betelgeuse. They slammed into the sand-shelf beside him, with the Privates taking up their position further to their left.
Voke and Misha were breathing hard and forcing air through their rebreathers.
Douglas, not looking the worse for wear, said: "Balls, I got like three bullets! No way we can take allo them!"
"Keep quiet and watch," Betelgeuse said. "We pounce if the opportunity presents itself. Otherwise, we cut and run."
One of the biker-grunts had managed to get an EM-pulser onto one of the two humvees, but it didn't have any effect. A Cossax mercenary poked out the top-hatch beside his comrade and blew off the grunt's head with a well-aimed railgun-shot—
When suddenly, a great explosion erupted, chunking the humvee whole and blasting the mercenaries upward in a smattering of torn limbs.
'Some of the bikes are rigged with explosives!' thought Betelgeuse, the gears turning in his head.
The second humvee was streaking down back in Betelgeuse' direction and blasting away at the biker-grunts. The Sand-Marshal's horde had already been reduced to less than half, when a voice thundered across the space, blasting from a ratchety-looking speaker stuck out the open-backed truck.
"NO MORE USELESS FIGHT! LAY DOWN WEAPONS NOW! SURRENDER TO YOUR DEATH!"
Powerful waves of compulsion washed across the landscape, laced into that stentorian voice's rather ungrammatical declarations. Its source was a massive monstrosity of a man, hooded in a brown tarpaulin, his features obscured by a piece of dull metal that looked like a jagged patch of metal sheeting.
Betelgeuse immediately began shouting countermanding orders. his voice transmitting through the commslink to his band.
"Keep your ears on me!" he said. "The Sand-Marshal's using the compulsion. Ignore it and listen to my voice. You are under my protection. Your minds are under my protection."
His crew clenched their jaws and kept hold of their minds.
Down in the valley, the Cossax didn't appear to waver much, as they continued sending barrage after death-dealing barrage into the enemy. What Filippov said about their humvees being outfitted with Nullifier-Braces must have been correct.
A chance for us to get our hands on some actual Nullifier-Braces. Maybe Filippov can do some reverse-engineering.
At that moment, a curious thing happened.
Before Betelgeuse' eyes, a biker-grunt angled himself after the careening humvee and stood up on the seat of his bike, ripping off his gas mask to reveal an over-pale face that looked like it had been smudged over with make-up. The grunt saluted sharply and screamed at the top of his lungs—screamed so loudly that it must have torn up his vocal cords: "My life for Il Duce! All Hail Sand-Marshal Bonito Mussolini! All hail Fascismo! All hail!"
Those were the grunt's last words before he smashed into the humvee and exploded in a kamikaze blaze, the force causing the vehicle to overturn and causing a spectral smog to drift up into the air.
Compulsion? Are the Sand-Marshal's minions all mind-broken puppets.
If so…
I might be able to disrupt them.
Given my current level of affinity with the compulsion, I'll probably be able to disrupt all thirty of these guys at once.
As for the Sand-Marshal…
Betelgeuse raised his eyes toward the towering figure bobbing with the truck drawing down to the smoking wreckage of the humvee, noting that even from a distance he could feel the emanations from a great concentration of intentionality.
He has an intentionality-lattice set up. A makeshift Nullifier-Brace.
The perfect opportunity to test out the limits of his power. The last time Betelgeuse tried to use his new Etching was a fortnight ago, when a Paladin merc tried to go Rambo on him. He'd taken a hold of the man's mind easily, but triggered an accelerated hyper-Bloaming that caused the merc to pop like a pimple.
Effective if I'm trying to kill someone, but lacking in finesse.
Opportunities to test out my new Etching don't come easily. How will this Sand-Marshal stand up to my power, I wonder…
"Listen up," Betelgeuse transmitted to his crew. "Little miss Sand-Marshal has his guys under compulsion. Which means I can disrupt it."
"... Couldn't be anything but compulsion," Misha whispered, clutching tightly at her railgun, clearly disturbed by what she saw.
Ignoring her, Betlegeuse continued: "I'll break the compulsion and then counter-command them against the Sand-Marshal, maybe get them to blow themselves up. Once I start, all of you will descend the frontage and round up the rest—any survivors from the convoy plus any of Sandy's goons I'm not able to catch. Aim your weapons at them but don't shoot unless absolutely necessary. We don't want to waste any bullets."
"Roger, roger," Douglas said.
The truck had pulled up beside the wreckage at the floor of the sand-valley, less than a hundred meters below them now. The bear-like Sand-Marshal let himself down from the truck onto the valley-floor, the truck bobbing up and down on its suspension.
As the Sand-Marshal walked over to the wreckage, he pushed past several of his biker-grunts and cursed savagely, roaring at his quailing minions.
Betelgeuse frowned as the Sand-Marshal pulled a struggling body from the flaming wreckage, raising the Cossax mercenary by his neck and unsheathing his long and rusty knife…