Degastani Delinquents, Part 4 - The Long Walk
09 Nov 2017Monolith Preacher
[[OOC: This is the final part of a story written from two perspectives by myself and Stryker Aune. Read his side of the story here!]]Preacher turned around and cast a dissatisfied glance over the scene he was about to leave. His detainee had told him painfully little, although it was hard to judge which word to emphasise in that equation. Regardless, there would be little left to tell the tale. The tools of the trade were quite behind the times down here, but he had learnt a little something of their cultural significance during his interrogations. He didn't learn much about her Bashar, but she did stand up quite well to scrutiny. Unfortunately, as had been the case recently, he had indulged his tendency to overscrutinise his own work some what. Still, at least he had a spare master key.
As he exited the chamber he'd spent the last few days of his waking life the first thing that hit him was the sand. It was wet, and it was cold. He wondered which rock might be used in the construction of the place to insulate it so well, but then decided that he was a preacher and not a geologist. He spent the better part of his first night out trying to tail local guard duties within the cavern and learn where he was in relation to the rest of the local amenities. By the end of the second night he had a fair amount of knowledge as to the layout of the place, and had heard the local gossip concerning their return and his escape. By this point he was also rather sleep deprived, so he found a place to sleep outside for a three hour window in the sandstorm that evening.
He awoke to a smell of cinnamon in the air, and arose to see a sandwall coming in on the horizon. The air was tinged with purple streaks of nebulae strewn across an ocean of peach-heavy bellini. Giant lama necks extended from the sand, echoing a subdued chorus of undulating rumbly bleating from their hairless forms as they cascaded upwards towards the vultures above them. The sand gave the whole scenario a pitted sepia filter, and it all seemed as though other must be a deeper meaning to the whole purpose of his being here at this precise point in time to see this event.
As he set to pondering the possible implications of having awoken to such a majestic sight, the vultures exploded as the lamas bit them, and they began dissolving into each other in a rather uncouth display of bubbling flesh and guttural screeching. It was at this point Preacher decided it was probably best to get inside and check his suits parameters. He stood up from his current squatting position he had slept in and carefully massaged his limbs awake. He had not eaten in a while now, and his body had begun eating itself after his recycled water became scarce. He could only assume he must be approaching a week and a half since he had left the port. He carefully gazed under the awning he was resting on, and noticed there was no-one in the patio of the spire he had chosen. He hopped down and ran a quick slicer through the back door's security terminal. The place was empty, and the security measures were down by the time he finished checking the cams.
He closed the back door and set up a loop to play the last half hour for the current half hour. It was risky, but he figured the pit fights tonight would be the best time to get sloppy. The Fredegi were some of the most violent people he'd ever met within the Black Omega bubble. They were tenacious to their faith, but their pecking orders all seemed to rotate around varied rites of combat which were convoluted enough that he had no idea what any of the ranks he had read about made any sense when compared to the alleged statuses they held within the society. The best explanation which anyone could offer was that their extreme notions of adaptation to a constantly changing battlefield of insurgents meant that their combat skills might be more lauded within certain generations of combat, leading to a convoluted restructuring at a base level whenever their system changed hands. Preacher thought they were just a bit too busy killing each other on a Friday night considering how much everyone had talked about it whilst he was following them. If he didn't know better, he'd have suspected a trap.
The only thing which made him certain that they were excited enough to get lax in their duties was that they were discussing the new offworlder that had bested some pretty well-known people in a longform bout. Apparently it was going to be a long weekend, because he'd been going for eighteen hours already when Preach had found his napping spot, and he'd have to wait a while longer whilst he waited for his suit to seal and the filters to pump the spice out his suit. He hoped the rockets belonged to his side and not the planes, but it wasn't really the time to be thinking about such macroscopic concepts right now. As much as he wanted to go exploring around for clues as to the heretic that had passed through, the priority here had to be getting Stryker out alive. Preach was sure his mechanised erstwhile shipmate could hold out for another day or so before he started to cramp up, maybe more if he was doing anything to keep himself pumped. Mono had taken enough time in his little excursion with the mechanic to ascertain it was rather unlikely his muscle mass had added water to it. This meant that he should probably get in and help out so his friend had the time to run and get to the chopper before the lactic acid started rusting his shiny appendages. Twelve hour fights were one thing, but everyone has their limits.
The rocky complex was big. If the eight patrols he had shadowed around a good five square labyrinthine miles of burrows strewn with dead ends and endless covert stashes and security measures were to be believed, this place went down thrice as far as is went up, and even had some odd book of pilgrimage ascribing certain rituals to perform at differing intersections to "divine" the correct route which served as a method too thick with shadow language for anyone outside of the Fredegi to understand. It was unfortunate none of the guard patrols were literate in Basic, as they could probably have made their squad's weight in Palladium each if they went to the right people with their cypher. As it was, Jaquel was probably going to have to capture a platoon just to kill enough of someone's friends to get him to help with the escape. But that was the quiet way of doing things, and Preach was just hoping he'd be able to steal some hardware stash somewhere and find a creative way out of the complex. He was sure that with all the fancy extraction and decompression they were playing around with to live here, there must be a few military applications going on somewhere. Being honest with himself, he felt it was as much a growing claustrophobia from scurrying down four foot wide corridors caked with dust being dragged by listless gale remnants influencing this idea as much as it was a need for more direct egress from a hairy situation down the line.
The great thing about a warren is that it's not generally as confusing as it first appears. The creation of a warren usually comes about due to a group consensus for a maze which will serve one or many purposes. There will be a structure which emerges to follow this purpose which will conform to a preset logic despite its need to appear chaotic, and someone with a keen eye for patterns and knowledge of the cultural conceptions of a society may be able to extrapolate a fairly close structure to any warren they find themselves in given enough insight and information. The Preacher was rather terrible with maths however, and therefore his understanding of the number puzzles utilised by one patrol completely missed his understanding. He had worked out how to correlate the basic structure of facilities within sub-sections linked up in his head, but the specifics of co-ordinating caches was something he didn't have the time to waste on. Regrettably, having wasted another hour trying to work out which direction everyone had gone in, after the aforementioned puzzle, Preach decided to just go up until he hit the top and see if there was a decent overview of the place from up there.
So he spent the better part of the next seven hours climbing his way through a series of half-sensical tunnel systems slowly leading upwards towards the summit of the mountainous complex. He still had no luck finding any caches, although he did manage to find a few shrines on the way. Grizzly affairs, he felt their religion could do with a finer touch to its sacrificial proceedings, and endeavoured to attempt to implement that when he took over. He hadn't seen a scalping so roughly done since reading about the days before laser cutters, and he dreaded to think of the infection risk to the scalpers involved. He was lucky enough that the guard patrol had been reduced to a skeleton crew due to the fight tonight, but could not help but feel annoyed that he wasn't important enough to have been checked on by any of the actual elders of the operation before he left where he was being interrogated. Whilst it might have made escaping harder, he would have likely been able to extract some more useful information than he did during his interrogations. His head started to swim again, and he checked his vitals on his suit only for them to tell him the obvious. The spice had been cleared from his system, and the air was getting mighty thin up here.
Preacher took a moment to catch his breath by leaning against the sandcrusted rock wall four inches from his face. He focused on steadying his breathing down to a slower and more even pace to account for the extra lack of oxygen. It took a couple of minutes to really steady himself, and he noted in his head to train more in areas light on oxygen. As he walked up to the next intersection, a pair of Fredegi approached from the split in front of him in a purposeful manner. It was unlike Preach to fail to notice people, but he couldn't afford to drop the hood of his suit lest he end up with an ear infection which would further damage his sense of balance. Cursing the catch-22 scenario of being stuck in such inhospitable climes, he decided to judge their ability from their approach. They held their blades backhand, and their walk had something of a stoop to it which either was to fill the remaining space to their sides, or to facilitate faster pouncing when they got within range for their inevitable downward thrusts towards his clavicles. Squaring up a mere five feet from him, they slowly intone a ritual greeting:
"May your blade..."
A knife tears open arteries beneath the shoulder.
"...chip and shatter!"
Two knives hit dead air.
"Now, that doesn't happen..."
One lung breathes liquid.
"...often."
Preacher lets the Fredegi warrior fall limp to the floor, and turns to address his fellow patrolman.
"Now I don't know if you're better or worse than our friend here, but all I want to do is go and watch the fight, so if you could take me down there of your own accord it'll save me maneuvering you around the whole crowd with the tip of my knife stuck in your kidneys."
The remaining Fredegi made one thing clear on the way down towards the pits. He said that every person had the right to serve in the pits. He said that once you'd seen how you could shape society from the pits, you were in. There was a sixty five percent mortality rate on the basic training, but he reckoned Preacher could last a few rounds. At least, he would on any other day. Today, however, he was going to be broken, quartered, and literally pulped. This Fredegi was taking him to the pits to throw him in, and as such the Preacher was walking in front. Considering the way forward was the way he had come once he started talking about going back down from the spire he had found his hostage come captor, there wasn't much of a way to swing that deal. Another three boring hours of trundling down empty warrens whilst trying to crack jokes about galactic seafaring to a man with the funny bone of a stunted mealworm later, and the rush of static subsided to a definitive din of laboured shouting with a salted mist to go with it.
So here he was, being herded through sweating meat towards some central cavern within a set of caverns, to be thrown into a hole which knowing his luck probably had a floor made of sand. He almost hoped it would be quicksand just to give him a change of pace. Then, he would have to hope that he could take some time in the cells after killing a few kids in the pits to ascertain what happened to Stryker after his longform match. He wouldn't be able to assume he would be put in the same holding cells as his wingmate, so he might have to barter with some local gladiators for that intelligence over the next month. By that time, he should be able to gleam enough understanding of the local customs from an emic viewpoint that he would be able to drum up quite a furore the next time he an Stryker were due to be on the same night. It might take a while, but it was better than the alternative. If Stryker was dead then Preach was going to have to kill everyone in that mountain before he left, and that might take him a year. Possibly two if he started to enjoy himself. Heck, if he wanted to make up some brownie points with the MPEF he could probably even tag a few months on to that for the sake of conversion rates ex mortis.
As he was shoved forward through the cattle racks which served to line up fresh meat for the fodder, he heard such stamping from the stands above that he couldn't even hear the cries of the dying within the main fighting forecourt. He reckoned there couldn't be more than thirty people in here, excluding the couple of dead bodies strewn around. It seems that the inside must've been pretty well insulated from the looks of the charring on one stiff, but luckily the smell had subsided from the awful stink of a fresh cook to the subtle tang of turmeric which accompanies the carbonated decomposition of one of the feline species. Preacher forgot which ones were which, as the distinctions between alien species were so hard to get right when talking to the press without a resulting PR campaign that Preacher just used indefinite articles most of the time. Either way, it seemed that there might be some interesting weapons in the arena if people weren't getting thrown out of the dressing room for having explosives. This could all make things a bit easier all round.
The queue proceeded at quite a brisk pace, which Preach was thankful for. He was never much one for queues, and having the need to fidget in a gladiatorial waiting room always equated to half the people destroying the whole system as they watch you do butterfly knife tricks just to keep your hands moving. Then it's just a matter of time before some hotshot starts spinning his guns and some mug starts thinking there's enough space to do a full kata of "The LeMans 24hr school of Taijiquan and Bagua under the venerable Sifu Beatbox Krieg III, the first arcade machine to reach sentience", often shortened to LeMansQuan. You can't judge a shepherd by their followers, but the sections which required ceiling squats kind of made a mockery of the ethics of gladiatorial queuing in the early days of trans-galactic pit fighting. Besides all this, Jake found it uncouth.
Preacher traded the butterfly knife he had on him for a good luck charm which a local was loathe to part with. He didn't condsider it likely he would know what to do with it, but he wanted something which might make him seem more culturally relevant when he started talking to people down then line. The girl in question thought she could use her knife to distract the current target in the pit whilst a friend of hers flanked him. Preach decided that whatever help she could get for a five credit knife was fine by him. By the time she'd explained the basic gist of the traded charm's meaning she was getting called away to try her luck, but it seemed to have something to do with either transporting children or the children workers themselves. He wasn't too sure of the phrasing as the stamping had been getting louder as he reached the end of the queue.
As he saw the grates come up in front of him, and realised he was going to be in the next batch of people out, Preach allowed himself to become very calm. He sunk to the centre of the group and waited for the door to open. There was a single fight going on presently, then more people would be let in for the next round which was to involve some local wildlife. The crowd cheered and roared, but most of it was still muffled by the stamping above our heads. Eventually the stomping suddenly stopped, and all that could be heard was the screeching of a metal drill and the bones it was cracking.
The noise persisted for five minutes before there was a great roaring from the crowd once more, and a voice intoned through a loudspeaker that the final was about to begin. The gates opened, and Preach stayed central in the group as it ran out of the gates and began to fan as it spread. He took quick stock of the situation and realised that there were indeed a few differing species pouring out of the sides, but that everyone was running to center. Whomever was on the slab, the killing yields must be pretty high for the fervour he was seeing in his fellow participants. Usually there's a few people who crack in arenas, but if everyone is wild eyed then it probably means someone's got enough fame that you'll get some serious favours if you can take them down.
As he approached the front of the melee, Preach noticed Stryker was fighting within a semicircle with his back to another participant who was doing likewise. Individuals and groups of up to five people were entering the area, and the individuals were fighting the intruders to the death or to the maim, depending upon the spirit of the attackers. After every incapacitation, the crowd would chant another number. Separate skirmishes lasted as long as they needed to, and there appeared to be a rather sophisticated energy shield around the semicircles which kept the proceedings running rather smoothly. It did still take a while for the hundred people who had just been let into the pits to cycle through, and Preach noted that both defenders were showing signs of being tired. Opponents who would have taken Stryker seconds to kill in the bars were taking him towards a minute to maim, and his fighting of groups was turning into a zoning nightmare. His fellow fighter, however, was doing a lot worse. It wasn't just that he was a good fifty points behind, but also that he was having trouble with his quickdraw. Preach couldn't help but laugh. Going into an arena with a gun means you're going to get shot. Sure you're allowed to bring anything up to and including a miniaturised nuclear warhead depending upon the specific pit rules you're fighting under, but if someone spends their time fighting with a bat or your mitts, well, people tend to treat you better. Doesn't always work out like that, but the prouder the society...
A voice from the rafters boomed out within the pits. 500. Everyone except the defenders stopped fighting and sat down. We'd all been briefed on the way in. Do it if that number comes or you're sniped within five seconds. Ten seconds later we had three more casualties, but no-one kept score of those casualties. Simple Dawrwin awards don't count for anyone. Stryker turned, his mechanical talon in desperate need of grease, his sinew sapped of sweat by the sand, and his ankle quite sceptically broken, and faced to face his fellow defender. They strode together, Stryker's damage mirrored by the heavy scarring borne on the other's stomach and chest. Meeting in the middle, each man gazed a stoic look at the other, each having some great depth of respect for the other for having been through such an ordeal. Preacher had seen it many times in an arena, but it rarely lasted past the bar.
The voice from the rafters intoned again. Stryker. The word sent the whole arena into thrilled calls of exultation, with people laughing and cheering and pouring all sorts of liquids everywhere. For a society worreid about wasting water, they certainly weren't lax about using less natural fluids. He was annoyed so much of it was sinking into the sand, as some of the nano-enriched designs being thrown around had a pretty good street value in a black market he knew a few systems back. You could tell from the neon colours falling to the ground that there were millions of credits being poured to sate whatever god they believed had blessed the arena with such a good fight.He looked up to see the defendants still staring at each other, and wondered if they had started to feel light-headed or perhaps their natural adrenaline was wearing off.
The crowd chanted alongside the frenzied announcer: "Qiblat alzawj! Qiblat alzawj!"
The two men looked at each other uneasily for a moment, then almost collapsed into each other's bulging arms before throating each other quite vigorously. Jaquel was unsure whether he was seeing a genuine display of homo erotica or some weird type of machismo powerplay considering the social norms of the society, but considering what he knew of weightlifting he decided the point was likely moot. The onlookers took it upon themselves to swarm the arena, some of them breaking their legs during the fall but allowing for their fellows to use them as useful padding for their own leaps downwards. They picked up their heroes and dragged them asunder.
As the crowd surrounding Stryker began carrying his limp form away en masse, Preach managed to dart inwards and get the champion's attention as the procession went along. He called up from beside him and barely got his attention amongst the din. "Where are you being held?"
A groggy Stryker called out in triumph: "The Luxury Suite!"
Preach decided it was easier to just have Stryker's fame carry "he's with me" through the checkpoints on the way, and ended up alone in some rather agreeable bubble of a boudoir complete with a slight draft which smelt of frankincense rather than grit.
"We'll need to get out of here quickly before they realise what's going on. I think our troops might be outside, I just need to call them in an-"
"Leave it, Preach." said Stryker as he rolled over to sleep in a luxury hammock made of lama fur his adoring public had lain him in before leaving haphazardly to talk about his brilliance at watering holes....or possibly spice imbibing holes, considering the scarcity of water.
"I can't leave it, you look ready to go into shock from that fight you were having today and we need to get out whilst you've still got something barring regurgitated duck fat in your legs. There'll be all hell breaking loose when the skirmish happens. I'm pretty sure they've got at least one of our files up in their sec room...or whatever bubble of rock they've put their GalNet receivers in."
Stryker half-laughed and half-coughed, although he would later claim he merely coughed.
"You're wrong. I've been having that fight since we got here. You're a few days later than I thought you would be turning up."
Preacher looked askance at his friend's gradual sinking into unconsciousness. He tried to do some quick maths, and then dismissed the notion entirely as implausible. He decided to change the subject.
"Well, I reckon we should find a nice ice planet on the way home from all this and forget that sand even exists, whaddaya say?"
Stryker sighed and yawned simultaneously
"Doesn't matter what I say, Preacher man. It matters what Deggie says."
--------------------
It turned out Deggie was impressed.
He was impressed with Stryker. Something about going ten rounds with a blue frog when he was a younger man. He wasn't to bothered with Preacher's learning about the local cultural norms considering Stryker had just overthrown the Fredegi basically on his own. Apparently marrying their clan chief meant he was owed a life debt by the whole clan as far as legalities were concerned. In some way, Preacher felt there was something to be learned from the more...experiential approach the mechanic had shown him. Sometimes the best laid plans could go to waste, but if the result was better then you just had to make do with having made a good plan b that never needed to be used.
Obviously this meant Stryker was at the helm of a bunch of religious extremists, but Preacher felt that by the time they'd undergone their basic orientation, most of them would be fine with allowing the Monolith into their lives. It was good to see him triumph at something he had built himself for. The idea of a self made man had taken on a lot of permutations since the advent of cyber- and nano-technology, and Stryker embodied the core of those principles. He had taken advantage of a situation which presented itself, and through sheer determination and countless hours of training and tinkering had created himself to come fit to purpose. Preach felt bad he'd missed so much of the show, and thought about buying some explosives in case he needed to take a more direct approach to any coming situations.
A party was held, obstensibly for Stryker but in reality that tied in to the need for an event to hype our newest resident DJ. DJ Nanite was found flying around in orbit around different planets in Tjakiri every night broadcasting a pyrat radio station from their chrome clipper. When system authorities came round to compare music playlists, the DJ was invited to try out for a spot in Deggie's. Apparently they'd been rather popular. They tended towards more antiquarian styles of music, although their methods of mixing seemed rather unique. Odd frequencies would shimmer just on the edge of one's perception when listening attentively, and create polyrhythms which underlied multiple main song changes. Also, the fact they were apparently created entirely by nanobots for nanobots of nanobots was seen as kind of cool even if no-one could find any nanobots besides DJ Nanite who had sentience enough to comment. We all know how far ahead military technology is from civillian use, so he's probably a weaponised audio interface that some big wigs decided to test out on the galaxy. Preacher bought none of it, but the punters were lapping it up.
As he moved around the crowd attempting to find the best acoustics, he eventually noticed a familiar face bouncing about. Marra had been working overtime recently, and it was good to see her finding some space to let off steam. Preach tapped her on the shoulder and told her the result of the Degastani operation.
"That's useful, although I thought it was more your area of expertise than his"
"True enough, but by the time I got to him he was knee deep in the dead. Kinda made an impression"
Marra pondered something for a couple of seconds, missing a beat on her dance.
"You'll need to change your face..."
That was something of a first. He wondered if she was about to lamp him one for something he was unaware he did wrong.
"...because you're gonna be taking over PR."
Preach was stunned. He took a moment watching Marra dance, assuming she was about to start giggling. He realised as she kept moving that she was falling into her own head, and decided he should leave her to her own devices whlist he found his.
He wandered over to the bar, ordered some supplies to go, and left with a new suitcase to his Beluga. He then proceeded to methodically work through the contents of the suitcase whilst being hermetically sealed within one of his size 6 luxury passenger cabins. By the time he came out, he had a different face, a different accent, had created 3 different ways to mix the deadly Lavianhead cocktail dependent upon one's reasoning for drinking it, and decided it was time to get busy. He updated his GalNet picture, and looked through Black Omega's public site. Everything seemed to be in order. He patched through from the bridge to the archives and looked over what the current operations status was. Everything seemed to be going smoothly. There could be a worse time to get into public relations. He just needed to smooth over a few administration details over the next few weeks and then a bit of corporate restructuring could take place.
Preacher rarely ate cake, but it seemed like he might need to enjoy this slice.