RECAP: Abbis leads Iver on her quest toward Bellgast Mines, while she experiences the chaotic and unfamiliar world outside Avalon Protectorate for the first time. A short moment of respite is shattered when a Consortium military drone attacks the roadside depot where they were resting.
Iver didn’t remember how she made it to the driver’s side door. She couldn’t recall opening the door and sliding Abis’ body aside to climb behind the steering wheel. Her ears were ringing, vision blurred as she pressed down on the accelerator until the wheeler lurched down the slope and onto a dirt trail below. It was the first time she’d operated a vehicle and struggled mightily to stay on the trail. She cursed, cranking the steering wheel, almost colliding with a tight-knit row of squats.
She took a tight corner and slammed on the brakes. Shut down the rattling engine and listened. No more sounds of explosions from the road above. Iver tapped her tacbelt, releasing the cam m-drone.
She maneuvered it up the incline to hover above the road. Images of smoke billowing from behind a bend transmitted to her neurolink. Two wheelers and a skitter fled in the opposite direction, quickly disappearing from view. She moved the tiny drone closer to the scene of the attack, trying to recall if Phaen had told her what the range limit of her link was. Iver activated the mag drive clipped to her tacbelt to begin storing the footage recorded from the m-drone.
She gasped as the drone flew around the ridge and the images of destruction came into focus. Multiple vehicles were in flames. Bodies littered the road, some burned, others in bloody ruin. The blitz drone still hovered above the massacre, lights blinking. Iver guided her m-drone close enough to record the CCDF insignia on the side of the deadly aircraft. In the distance, three CCDF troop carriers rumbled up the road.
Abis grunted, lurching forward as he woke up. He wiped a trickle of blood from his brow and shook his head. “Not dead?” He blinked, taking in the scene of Iver hunched in the driver’s seat. “You can drive?”
“Not really.”
“You got us far enough.” Abis clapped his hands. “Glory on you!” He leaned closer when Iver didn’t respond. “You hurt?”
Iver shook her head. “So many dead.” Her voice felt disconnected from her throat.
“You don’t know that. Bet most got away. Come on, best we keep moving.”
Iver stepped out of the wheeler and recalled her drone as Abis slid into the driver’s seat.
“CCDF troops are on the way.” She tried to keep her voice from cracking. Tried to push images of the carnage to the back of her mind. The m-drone flew in through the opening where the rear window used to be. Iver maneuvered the device into her hand and out of Abis’ sight.
Abis gunned the wheeler, kicking up dirt as they sped down the trail.
“I wish I’d been awake to see you jig this thing down that hill,” Abis laughed. “You’ll be a rigwallah by the time you get back to Avalon.”
Iver looked behind them. She could still glimpse smoke rising from the upper road.
“You’re still despo over the woman?” Abis asked. “Don’t. I’ve been run down three times. Survived ‘em all. Most likely she jumped up, dusted herself off, and outran that blitzer. That’s what skids do.”
“She’s dead. Don’t try and slink away from reality.”
“I’m not as bad as you think.”
“Those women you have trapped in Avalon may say otherwise.”
Abis took his eyes off the trail to glare at her, blinking from the blood still trickling down his forehead. “Trapped? You’re igged. Vaddu and the others are free. They’re free from all this smoke and blood and fire. Because of me. Me. They’re inside Avalon and they’ll be racking tokens like they could never do out here. I’m the best thing to happen to those gizzes.”
Iver picked a greasy rag hanging between two console panels and tossed it to Abis.
“Keep the blood out of your eyes.”
They drove the rest of the night and by dawn had reached the tract leading to Bellgast Mines. As Abis had predicted, traffic lessened once they passed the district core. The roads and alleys were mostly empty as streaks of daylight began to cut through the haze. The congested squats and hovels in this tract were taller than others Iver had seen along the way, some reaching five stories high. Iver had started to drift into sleep along the way, only to be jolted awake by a coughing fit.
Abis had stopped talking to her, which Iver was grateful for. Abis tossed her his locator without a word. Iver considered tossing it back at him, but entered the coordinates instead. After a quick look at the display, Abis turned onto a street leading up a gentle hill.
As the wheeler crested the top, the vast trenches of Bellgast Mine came into view. To Iver it looked like a massive lesion across the earth. The images Phaen had downloaded failed to capture the enormity of it, an expanse that dwarfed even the largest public spaces inside Avalon.
Abis cursed under his breath as they rounded a corner and saw a group of men standing at the junction of a street barricaded by metal drums and girders. One wore a battered ballistic helmet, others sported tactical vests and mismatched protective pads. They all carried UXP submachine guns and wore green armbands marked “DAM” in thick black letters.
“Motherfuck,” Abis said. “That street leads to the location on the coordinates.”
“Who are they?”
“Dammers. The District Authority Militia. The next thing worse than CCDF.” Abis drove past the barricade, avoiding the hard stares of the armed men as they rolled by.
Iver noticed a small crowd of women gathered on the street a few meters from the blockade. Abis pulled to a stop near the rubble of what once was a three-story building.
“So, these militia. They work with the CCDF?” Iver asked.
“Skids who like kicking their own people for a little power from the Authority.”
“That’s – that’s absurd.”
Abis snorted, shaking his head at her naivety. “You’re finally starting to see how the world works.”
Iver checked the locator, trying to suppress her embarrassment. “Why would they be guarding Bellgast?”
Abis shrugged. “These mines were empty as long as I remember hearing about them.”
“I’m going to see if I can find out more.” Iver pulled the shawl over her hair and climbed from the wheeler.
Abis sighed as he exited the vehicle. “Do what you want. I’m not getting any closer to those trigger-loving shitlickers.” He crossed the street toward a two-wheeled trailer painted in swirling colors and hooked to a skitter. Chairs were set up in a small circle outside the trailer, where men were sitting, smoking garda pipes.
Iver approached the group of women gathered close to the barricade. She saw some carrying screenpads displaying images of faces, mostly young men. One of the women, short with deep creases on her face, stepped away from the others to drink from a flask of water.
“What’s going on?” Iver asked, using the best neutral outer district accent she could muster. She pulled the shawl tight.
The woman looked up with immediate suspicion that quickly faded when Iver smiled at her.
“You ain’t heard? The dammers have our boys trapped inside Bellgast. Been starving them for weeks. How do you not know?”
Iver hesitated, struggling to choose words that wouldn’t give her away as a lux. “I’m from AlphaSec. First day in Teris.”
The woman nodded. “Last week the Sixth drove the dammers back. Even got some folks out of the mine. But they just came back, magged and better armed, forced the faction to scatter. Now you see, they moved their slaggin’ blockade further up to this road. They say CCDF troopers are coming. If so, there’s no hope for the boys down there… for my boy.” She blinked back a tear from the corner of her eye, then turned to glare at the militia members.
“I thought the mine was closed,” Iver said.
“The company closed it, sure. Left it and their mess back when I was young. But there’s still rocks down there. Folks have been digging in there for years, no problem. Until a few weeks ago, all of a sudden the dammers took notice. They start nabbing anyone working the mine. When the boys fought back, they trapped them down there. Telling them to come and get locked up or stay down there in the dark.”
Iver looked at the image of the young man with wide eyes and curly hair on the woman’s screenpad. Was this the truth that the mystery pinger wanted her to uncover? How could this possibly be connected to the Dolvac Heights burner attack?
“Rada! Quick!” one of the women near the barricade called.
A flatbed hauler rumbled down the road toward them, carrying twenty dammers in the back, submachine guns glinting in the daylight. The men guarding the barricade snapped into action, quickly rolling steel barrels and lifting girders so the hauler could pass through. Rada and the other women moved close, holding their sceenpads up for the militia members to see as they drove past.
Iver felt her gut seize as uncertainty took hold. The location sent to her was now under the control of the militia, and soon the CCDF. And she had no way to contact Phaen to see if she’d been sent new information. She turned back down the street, her mind racing as she tried to plot her next move.
She held her breath when she saw Abis on the corner past the garda trailer. He was surrounded by four teenage girls, giggling as he spoke to them in exaggerated tones, waving his hands to show off his flashy rings. The misgivings that had held her a moment ago were instantly banished and she stormed toward the xolo.
“Do you know this man?” she asked the girls in a steely tone that startled them.
“Stub the attitude,” growled Abis. “This ain’t your biz.”
“Did he tell you he can get you inside Avalon?” Iver focused on the tallest of the girls, who shrunk in the face of her anger. Some of the men smoking garda stood to look toward the commotion.
“Don’t mind her,” Abis said. He tried to steer the girls further down the street. “She’s a little loc. Come, let me treat you –“
“No!” Iver shoved Abis, lunging between him and the girls. She turned and grabbed the confused tall girl by the shoulders. “He’ll get you to Avalon and then you’ll be trapped, under his control –“
“Hey!”
Everyone froze as the dammer wearing the ballistic helmet slowly walked down the street toward them. “What’s the problem?”
Abis chuckled, held up his arms in surrender. “No problem here, migo. We’re good.” His eyes darted toward Iver. She could see him weighing his options, calculating outcomes.
“You all need to come with us,” barked Ballistic. “Move.”
“Ah, we don’t want to take you away from your post,” Abis said, taking a step backward.
Ballistic raised his UXP. Two other dammers left the blockade to march toward them. “Nobody fuckin’ move! Stay where you are!”
Iver’s mind raced as a dammer with a shaved head grabbed her arm. The other dammer reached for Abis but he jumped back.
“That one there,” he said, pointing at Iver. “She’s a lux! Yeah, she’s the one you want.”
All eyes turned to Iver. Shaved Head yanked the shawl from her head, revealing her precisely trimmed ash blond hair and unblemished skin. Some of the garda smokers whooped in shock. Abis bolted, quickly scurrying around the corner and out of sight.
“Grab him,” shouted Ballistic. The dammer took off after Abis as the girls scattered.
Iver used the moment of confusion to elbow Shaved Head in the face, freeing herself from his grip. He swung the UXP at her like a bat. She ducked the blow, triggering another round of whoops from the garda men. Before he could react, Iver shoved him as she swept her leg behind his heel. He flipped backward, crashing onto the concrete.
She could see Ballistic charging toward her. The garda men were on their feet, cheering and slapping hands. Iver spun, jumping onto a nearby knee wall and springing upward to catch hold of a steel mount clinging to the side of a two-story hovel. Ballistic bellowed as he leapt for her, but Iver swung herself up and onto the top of the tumbledown roof.
Bullets from a UXP sprayed the edge of the rooftop. Iver jumped to the far side, almost tumbling off. She could hear Ballistic barking orders from below. Then the sound of him climbing the mount.
Iver skipped to her feet and leapt, landing on a small, sloped roof below. She clambered to the upper edge and jumped again, catching the lip of a narrow parapet and pulling herself up. Before her, it looked like an endless sea of hovels and squats along the edge of the Bellgast Mine crater.
Behind her, Ballistic sprang onto the rooftop, with Shaved Head close behind.
Check out this map to find locations referenced in the story.
If you want to read another story in the From Our Ashes series, The Lancer is available on Amazon.