NOVEL NEXT Chapter 99: Desert Caravan II
"Take off armor, now!" the Sand-Marshal rasped through his mask, dragging the tip of his sand-shingled knife across the merc's titanium-weave lamellar. His blue eyes flashed with repressed violence, and his hand tightened around the merc's neck.
"T… trying," the merc coughed, her voice recognizably feminine.
"Aha!" the Sand-Marshal chortled brutishly, throwing the merc head-first into the side of the overturned and flaming humvee, her helmet thunking loudly into the metal chassis. "A cunt! We love cunt! Balbo!"
"Marshal Mussoleen sir!" Blackshirt Balbo returned, springing off his sputtering sand-bike and snapping off a salute, his wide eyes barely discernible behind the cracked lenses of his gas mask.
"It's Mussolini, zhit!" the Sand-Marshal barked, slamming a vicious backhand into Blackshirt Balbo's chest and causing that lanky figure to smash into the side of his idling sand-bike. By now the other Blackshirts had parked their sand-bikes and dismounted out of respect for, and fear of, their great leader, their arms raised in disciplined salutes.
That was the way Sand-Marshal Bonito Mussolini liked his men.
Groaning in pain, Blackshirt Balbo pushed himself back to his shaky feet and raised his hand in a salute and held it there.
"Tell your Duce, Balbo, do you love cunt?" the Sand-Marshal said, stepping forward to the overturned humvee and placing a heavy hand on the top of the merc's full-faced helmet, gripping it tightly enough that his fingers dug into the ceramic material. The woman screamed as her visor began to crack, and he basked in her fear. "Or are you faggot churkey like your brothers I forniculated in ass?"
"I love cunt, Great Fascismo!" Balbo yelled, standing ramrod straight, his voice pitching higher with either anticipation or panic.
"Ah, great lo-ver! Then you will sex this cunt here! A generous that Il Duce gifts his followers. You put your dick in, Balbo, and you remember it the next time I call you to my bed!" the Sand-Marshal erupted into laughter, raising his arm straight before him and holding the merc woman by her helmet so that her legs dangled and kicked desperately in the air.
"S-sir," Blackshirt Velasco said tentatively, his back straightening so much his spine curved backwards. "R-reminder that we are needing that armor, sir! We must be saving it..."
Scoffing with irritation, the Sand-Marshal retracted his arm and twisted the merc's head so that her face was aligned with his. His piercing blue eyes burned into hers through the cracked visor. She had blue eyes, like him.
A Jegorichian.
Her skin was fair, her features the kind most men would find beautiful. Blood trickled from her pale lips, and in her eyes—those pain-filled, trembling pupils—he saw a delicious measure of fear.
"Strip now, cunt! Or I will pull this off, yes?" the Sand-Marshal seethed, his other hand shooting out to grab her left forearm and then pulling on it hard enough to elicit a popping sound from her shoulder.
"Arg! Stop, stop!" the woman cried, struggling futilely against the strength of the Sand-Marshal and causing that beast of a man to laugh heartily. He threw the merc woman upon the ground with a loud thump, his ears pricking at her moans. Women could be quite repulsive, yes, but they always gave out the best screams.
The woman curled up from the pain of the impact, as several of the Blackshirts, including Balbo, set upon her, forcing her face into the sand and attempting to find the means to remove her armor. Ignoring her groans and little screams, each of them took the opportunity to fondle her buttocks. Il Duce had given her to Balbo today, but that didn't mean they couldn't get away with a grope or two.
The Sand-Marshal turned and squinted down the path. Farther afield, the gray-overalled drivers of the Maschinenfabrik trucks had been rounded up by several of his Blackshirts and were being driven forward toward him with kicks and threats of violence.
"Hurry up there!" the Sand-Marshal thundered. "Is there be any Gehennite?"
"Great Fascismo!" one of the Blackshirts called, running frantically to the Sand-Marshal and giving his salute. "There's one, there's one, sir! Issa female!"
"Aha! Ahaha!" the Sand-Marshal sounded, tearing off his mask and peeling his lips backward to reveal sharpened teeth and bleeding gums in some pantomime of a smile. He took a deep breath, filling his pumping, multi-chambered lungs with the warm carbon monoxide of the Desert atmosphere. "Woulda been better if it was a boy. But good luck is good kakkin' luck. Bring 'er here, Pug! At the double!"
Saluting crisply, Blackshirt Pug turned on his heels and ran back to the corralled drivers. He seized the arm of the Gehennite and half-dragged her diminutive form across the sand, throwing her finally at the feet of the Sand-Marshal.
"Gather around, everyone!" the Sand-Marshal commanded, shivering with savage anticipation.
"But… this chunt gon' die, sir!" complained Blackshirt Balbo, his voice drifting over from behind the Sand-Marshal. He didn't much like dead bodies.
"Concuss 'er, stupid zhit!" the Sand-Marshal growled, snapping his head round to cast a rage-filled glance at Blackshirt Balbo, who was now straddling the merc woman. "You can sex her dead or alive."
Blackshirt Balbo snapped upright and saluted, then took the merc's bare head and bashed it against the chassis of the overturned humvee, knocking the woman out.
The rest of them were gathered in a semicircle round the Gehennite woman now, standing still and saluting like toy soldiers. Before their eyes, the Sand-Marshal bent down and ripped the gas mask from the Gehennite's face, eliciting a panicked squeal from her.
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The Gehennite woman had tan skin, a flattish nose and dark, fearful eyes. Her dark hair was bunned up neatly behind her head, and her overalls were tight enough that it accentuated her curves. She looked to be in her mid-thirties.
'Delicious fearfulness,' thought the Sand-Marshal, smiling even wider. It was a beautiful thing, to be feared. Around the Gehennite's neck was a necklace that had been woven with red thread, evidence that this woman was a worshipper of the Chthonianism that had taken root in the north.
The Sand-Marshal unclasped his blacksteel breastplate and dug his hand into his underwear to extract a string of shriveled and lumpen shapes—dark, desiccated things that looked like dried prunes. He licked their tips and then lowered them, grabbing hold of the Gehennite's face when she tried to shy away and forcing the charms into her mouth.
"You won't bite," the Sand-Marshal whispered, bringing his face close to hers and baring his teeth. "Or I'll pull off your skin. I will be skinning you with a sand-grater, bits at a time…"
The woman's dark eyes widened. She moaned and struggled, but kept the charms in her mouth.
They were dried boy's penises, collected exclusively from Gehennites and used as the repositories of magical energy. It was a Gehennite witch-doctor who had educated the Sand-Marshal in the mystical secrets of fortune and invincibility, teaching him of this secret and fearsome power that inhered in the blood and heart, and most of all in the phalluses of young Gehennite boys.
This charm was the foundation of the Sand-Marshal's power.
Although Gehennite women didn't carry the same amount of magical energy as the boys, they did have a small portion of it because of their origins as Chthonian creatures and as a consequence of the rite of passage that defined their culture: young boys losing their virginity to older women in their communities.
To the Sand-Marshal, the logic pointed to the fact that Gehennite women absorbed a large amount of magical energy through this rite of passage, their genitalia being a conduit for this power. The older the woman, the more magical energy they had absorbed from the boys.
As for this one… she looked a little on the young side, but old enough to have gone through the rite a few times.
Good enough. He needed the luck anyway.
"Quickly now!"
At the Sand-Marshal's urging, two Blackshirts lowered their salutes and unsheathed their knives, slicing off the Gehennite's overalls and removing her Incunabulum-pouch, in the process freeing her rather large and floppy breasts. The other Blackshirts wavered at the sight—they had been a long time without a woman—but this one was not for them. She was the Sand-Marshal's.
With one swift motion, the Sand-Marshal punched his thick fingers into the woman's chest, snapping her ribs and ripping out her still-beating heart. Blood burst from the woman's orifices, drenching the charms stuffed in her mouth.
The woman jerked and fell into the sand, already dead, her eyes staring sightlessly. Blood burst out from her chest wound clumping the sand around her.
The Sand-Marshal brought the heart over his head and squeezed. Then stepped forward to bless his Blackshirts with magical energy. Balbo, Velasco, Pug, Kilan…
He was just turning toward Bussoco when a metallic twang sounded.
The Sand-Marshal looked over at his left shoulder to see that a gaping hole had opened in his flesh. The next moment, Pug's head was blasted into mist.
"—ING DEGENERATES!—"
The Sand-Marshal turned toward the voice, taking his bowie knife in his hand and squinting his blue eyes. It was a woman dressed in an exosuit and brandishing a smoking railgun, her legs moving faster than any normal human could manage.
***
Betelgeuse shot to his feet, observing Thete sprint down the ridgeline full-throttle.
"Thete!" he transmitted. "Withdraw now! Wait for my order!"
But Thete ignored him, angling her body downwards and increasing her speed. As she passed Betelgeuse and his crew, she raised her railgun and fired at the Sand-Marshal and his biker-grunts—once, twice, three times—and then Betelgeuse knew she was out of bullets.
'Did she see something?' was his first thought. As their forward-scout, Betelgeuse had furnished Thete with the only magniculars they had, which meant she could track everything that transpired within the sand-valley from her position about a kilometer back. Was there something he missed? Something that forced her to act?
His second thought was that Thete had no business disobeying his orders. He raised his hand reflexively, about to take control of her mind, when he realized that the opportunity for that had passed. Compelling Thete now would needlessly put her in danger.
"We're going in! Use everything!" Betelgeuse transmitted, springing over the shelf of sand and racing after Thete without waiting for the rest of his crew. As he flew down the dune, he expanded his mind to encapsulate the Sand-Marshal's minions.
Feeling their variegated intentionalities, Betelgeuse realized with a start that they weren't, in fact, currently subject to the Sand-Marshal's compulsion. They were ecstatic, confused, angered, startled—some of them were more ready for battle than others—but they all seemed to be in control of themselves.
Why would they be so devoid of self-preservation?
The Sand-Marshal hollered several guttural sounds and smashed one of his own men into the ground, pointing the tip of his wicked and rusty knife at Thete, his other hand still gripped tightly around the woman's mangled heart.
Betelgeuse wasted no more time on inane thoughts. He usurped as many of the flaring intentionalities as he could, twisting them with his mind, raising his voice and commanding them against the Sand-Marshal:
"The Sand-Marshal sees all of you as nothing but meatshields. You must kill him, now!"
Their intentionalities twisted together—and then receded. The front two rows of biker-grunts fell to their knees, gibbering in fear, their minds crushed to flaccidity. They were unable to even contemplate the idea of going up against the Sand-Marshal.
Betelgeuse realized what it was.
Through some warped program of indoctrination, the Sand-Marshal had become an immovable rock in the minds of his minions. Men could be compelled to kill themselves, but could never go against their true faith. And in this wasteland of sand, their cruel god was embodied in the person of this hulking mass of flesh.
The Sand-Marshal is their god.
Betelgeuse hadn't been able to catch all of the biker-grunts with his compulsion. Some of them were already making toward their vehicles, others had their knives in their hands, their voices raised in surprise and consternation.
Armature-rounds streaked over Betelgeuse' head, killing several of the grunts. A round hit one of the sand-bikes, causing it to explode like a Nitro-canister. The open-backed truck slammed into reverse, its treaded tires raising jets of sand into the air and adding to the confusion.
Further in front of him, Thete had reached the Sand-Marshal, slamming her muzzle straight into his sternum.
The barrel crumpled like a soda can.
The Sand-Marshal's anger had turned to mirth. He stuffed his mouth with the heart and attempted to grab Thete with his bloodied hand but missed, swinging wide.
Thete ducked under his armpit, her combat knife already in her hand. She lunged, but the Sand-Marshal twisted with a speed that should have been impossible for a man that size. He slammed his knife into Thete's vest with such force that the blunted hunk of metal cut into the blacksteel plate she carried within and stuck there.
Betelgeuse was now in the midst of the furious melee. Giving up his plan to turn the biker-grunts against the Sand-Marshal, he settled on snuffing out as many of their intentionalities as he could. The open-backed truck jerked forward, accelerating full speed and running over several of the convoy's drivers.
The Sand-Marshal was yelling orders even through the confused moil, and Betelgeuse' could feel minds buckle and break as they were caught between their primal fear of the Sand-Marshal and Betelgeuse' unyielding compulsion.