Tales from the Wheel

“The Children of Wyrd- This strange group of individuals have somehow adapted to thrive in the old toxic sewers that run throughout the Stretch. They are highly xenophobic but will occasionally trade with Scav town. They are often seen as possessing ‘mystical’ powers by locals. In reality, their ‘priests’ are highly skilled self-taught chemists, which they themselves see as “practicing magic.”  

- From “Gangs of the Stretch- Episode #3- The Mad Mystics of the Sewers!” produced by Celebu-Sleaze Scoops

The Dusters in Tunnel Land.

Summer, Earth Year 2901- Old Sewer Tunnels’, The Stretch District, Mars.

“Right up here at the next junction and then straight for about 15 minutes.” Gibson whispered. Charles nodded as they cautiously approached. A small silver lining with it being so dam creepy down here was that Gibson had barley opened his mouth in the last little while, other than trying to keep his teeth from chattering. Bambi was also in full focus mode, One finger on the light switch and another on Oliver’s trigger. Unlike the nice break in thin nasal whining Gibs silence afforded Charles, Bambi’s was a reminder that they were in a tense situation. They were in an alien environment and another gang’s territory with no back up and no way to communicate with the rest of the Dusters. Why the hell had he made the call he made to jump on this? He’d thought he was long past such recklessness. “Communication.” He thought suddenly. Where they really as isolated as he thought?

“Hey Gibs, I never asked, can we get a signal to the rest of the crew, or even above ground…” he quietly began to ask, but Gibson was already shaking his head, “No chance on either front. But… Gods dam it, I should have thought of this sooner. Would have if I hadn’t been dragged to a bloody sewer without a chance to…”

“All right, all right, but keep it down!” Big C hissed more loudly than he intended. Lowering his own voice again he stated, “This wasn’t one of my better ideas Gibson. You got me, okay. Now what should you have thought about sooner?” Gibson opened his mouth and seemed to be on the verge of victory lapping about Charles’s admission, but he paused and just nodded before speaking, “In case we get split up, take these.” He pulled two small earpiece style com links from one of his duster’s pockets and handed them to Charles and Bambi. “Linked to my glasses and they have a two-kilometer range, but just to note, material density can definitely mess with them, and they aren’t that difficult for others to tap into.”

“Nice,” Bambi spoke up for the first time in a spell, “So if we get split up, I’ll be able to hear all your pathetic begging and crying as the muties and rats close in? That’s something I guess.” Gibson just snorted, “You can be such a bloody bitch sometimes.” Bambi slapped the com link into her ear with a smile, “Yeah, I really fuckin’ can be, can’t I.”

*****

“Breaker, breaker Gibson! No sign of anything down the right tunnel.” Bambi mockingly activated the com link, “It’s safe to not piss yourself.” Charles, not trying that hard to hide his smile as Gibson sputtered signaled with a ‘shushing’ gesture to cut any further chatter now that the coms were tested. He gestured for measured movement and Bambi nodded, Oliver drawn and projecting that shallow light she took the lead, moving carefully down the tunnel that according to Darby’s map and the sewer schematics should lead to the junction they were looking for in about 35 to 40 minutes.

About ten minutes into the journey down the way, Bambi paused and sniffed the air. She was hardly any sort of nature-based tracker. Hell, she had never even seen a real tree in her life so far. But when they entered the sewers there had been a distinct odor of old and stale human waste. Faint but ever present, like a permanent bad taste in the air. The air she tasted now had shifted. For lack of better term, it was more… chemical then before. She sniffed again and glanced at Big C while switching the light off. Charles had noticed it too, but Gibson silently squeaked as it went completely dark again. Activating his com link, Charles whispered, “Good call B. And quiet Gibs! We aren’t alone.”

*****

“Time is almost up!”  The King’s own mind screamed at him. The limits of indirect reading were hitting him almost as hard as the limits of Drone itself. Everything was a shadow of thoughts and actions, like a stage performance where you can only either see the performers’ movement clearly or hear their thoughts and dialog clearly, but not both at the same time. The summoned were clever. They knew something was wrong, but it was almost too late. This was the Children’s home turf, and they knew how to defend it. The chemical released by patrol nine would slowly dull the senses and cloud the minds of those that breathed it in, eventually causing the victim to pass out. The Patrol would just shadow them until the summoned couldn’t fight back and move in to deal the final blow.

“There!” Triumph finally! Maybe there is still a chance to avoid disaster. Patrol nine consisted of six individuals and two of Hynes ‘special’ modified cyborg guard dogs. The partial mechanical nature of their brains made them incredibly easy to train; it was almost like being able to program them. But there was enough gray matter left that the King was finally able to dig down into that well of animal instinct the still existed in the creature. Two overwhelming thoughts were implanted.

Danger and fear! The cyborg mut suddenly jumped up, pulling away from its handler and began barking, snaring and howling at the top of its lungs as it ran back down the path the patrol had come from. “Hell and damnation.” The patrol leader cursed, pulling out an old-style powdered pistol. “What’s up with Bartrand? That racket will get us made!”

*****

“Listen!” Bambi hissed softly, switching the light off again. The clear sounds of barking, although it had a slightly metallic tint, echoed up ahead. As the light dimed her vision blurred as well.

“That smell… there’s something wrong with the air...” Charles stumbled and learned heavily against the wall. His enhanced physique required an increased oxygen intake, so he was getting ‘dosed’ at a much faster rate. “He’s right!” Gibson’s own vision began to waiver like Bambi’s. Franticly he searched his pockets. Where is it, where is it? There it is! The nose filters he picked up after a job at a Dawson City chemical plant had nearly scared his lungs. “That had been one bitch of a medical bill.”

The relief was almost instant as he slapped them in, “I’ve only got the one set…” He began. “No time!” Bambi rasped. She drew Edgar even as she struggled to keep her eyes from closing, “Help Big C… first, quick, give me two shots of the Hop… no time to fight. Two shots of Hop and one of the frags, now!”

*****

“Bartrand, dam it!” The Patrol leader cursed one more time. He told the wrangler “Link him with Shelia quick! Set them both to stalker mode to see if that snaps him out…” The patrol’s sighter interrupted with a yelp as she pointed at her scanner. “One of the objects is on the move! Heading directly for us. Fast, gods dammed fast!”

“Send Shelia at the other two now!” The leader barked. Stalker mode set, the large cyborg canine sprinted towards its targets. Just as it was vanishing from their line of sight, the silhouette of a form in a black duster flew over its head and continued barrowing directly for them. However, instead of the collision that appeared certain, the form flipped down at the last second and landed with near perfect precision two meters in front of the patrol.

The leader’s dim light revealed an attractive young lady with purple hair, a feverish sweaty glow and violet eyes with irises currently the size of frying pans. “You’ve made this a bad fuckin’ day for me and my boys. It’s about to be a worse one for you. Catch!”

*****

Gibson watched gingerly as Bambi took the two jolts of copper hop, snapped up straight awake and charged down the tunnel. He could make out her form until it suddenly sailed away and up at rapid speed, indicating to Gibs she was at least in control enough use her spring heel jack mod. “I hope you keep a clean nose, Charles.” Taking one more deep breath with the filters on, he ripped them out stuck each in Charles’s nostrils. Big C’s chest had been heaving with ragged breaths, and he was almost completely comatose. Things steadied and his eyes slowly started to flicker open.

He should have a few minutes before he’d needed to use them again and hopefully Charles would recover quickly enough to help Bambi… His train of thought was interrupted by a low growl as a large four-legged shape came into his periphery sight, stalking towards them. “Shit!” He fumbled for his pistol and fired a couple wild shots that completely missed the approaching animal but did force it to back up for a second. “The frags. Indeed, quick!” he shouted in his own head. Reaching into a pocket stash, he grabbed one and pulled the pin. Just as he was about to lob it an explosion sounded from up ahead, rocking the whole corridor. The grenade slipped from his hand as he nearly lost his balance, landing directly in front of him just as the dog suddenly lunged forward as well. “Shit, shit, shit!” was all the usually verbose and brainy tech could think to scream.

*****

“Grenade!” The patrol leader shouted as it flew past him. Bambi jumped back, Edgar’s deadly kiss dropping the sighter before she could flee. While most lept to the right or the left, the large disciple near the leader roared forward and tackled the young pistoleer before she could get another shot off. His face, covered by a gas mask like the rest of the patrol’s, was indiscernible. Less than a second after they collided the frag blew, sending them flying a few more meters back down the tunnel. The large one’s grip slipped as they hit the ground. The leader and two other disciples took the brunt of the explosion. All were killed immediately. The blast had also blown a swoop bike sized hole in the east wall for the tunnel, revealing a drop to an even lower level.

“Wow!” Bambi didn’t mean to giggle, but the HOP was really starting to kick in. “Way bigger than I thought. The Skulls must have stolen those. They sure as shit didn’t make ‘em themselves.” She considered this in what seemed to her like slow motion as she pushed herself out from under the dazed large one. “The Chemical satchel!” The wounded wrangler yelled in terror as a secondary explosion suddenly shredded him nearly in half as more booms began. “Time to jet.” The violet enforcer’s increasingly fractured preceptive still registered the danger, even as the cascade of colors rising from the satchel’s unfortunate death attempted to enrapture her.

The large one had made it to his knees. Bambi went as though to kick him in the chest, but with that foot. Just as she connected spring heel jack activated, throwing the large one back even further while shattering his breastbone and rib cage. At the same time Bambi rocketed through the hole in the east wall just as the beautiful and colorful chemical terror reached its final boiling point. Its heat licked at her back as she plunged down into the darkness. How far?  Her foot mod could only absorb so much force before she became a stain like anyone else. Trying not to panic, she couldn’t stop the HOP induced giggles from returning as she fell further and further.

*****

“Shit, shit, shit!” Charles’s head was starting to clear a little as he heard Gibson’s shrill yelps. His still blurry vison clocked something at their feet… A frag! He reached out and batted it further down the tunnel the way they had come with as much strength as he could muster with one hand while grabbing Gibson close to try and shield him as well. The grenade went off an instant later, but even in a diminished state, Big C’s might had propelled the doomed frag far enough away that the blast only scorched the back of his duster a little. The much bigger issue was the combination of fur, teeth and hydraulics that now slammed into his left shoulder.

Pushing Gibson to the ground beside him as he stumbled back a little from the collision, Charles’s vison had finally nearly fully cleared just in time to see Sheila lunging directly at him again, saliva and grease dripping from her mostly titanium jaws. Throwing his left arm up in instinctive defensive posture, The cyborg dog bit down on it hard. Big C roared with a mixture of pain and warrior adrenaline as razor sharp titanium and intense pressure did what bullets could not. Blood flowed from heavily pierced super dense skin, soaking the arm of his duster and running down the jaws and face of his attacker.

Sheila looked a little surprised as she continued to latch on and attempt to pull Charles down. He realized quickly that given the pain he was in, the dog was likely used to biting limbs clean off with one attack and its partially machine brain was struggling to process a next move. Capitalizing on that disconnect, Charles reached out with his right arm and lifted the heavy Shelia off the ground like she was a pillow. She remained stubbornly clamped to his arm. He then smashed her against the tunnel wall repeatedly, thinking the whole time, “I hate this, it’s never an animal’s fault, but Bambi may be in trouble, and this thing is way too dangerous…”  It took three such grim blows to finish Shelia and even then, Charles had to pry her jaws open himself.

Gibson, huddled on the ground where Charles left him, struggled to his feet with a woozy look. “…might need those filters again for a few minutes…” Big C handed them over and then took about a minute to bandage his arm as best he could, “Gods dam it,” he thought. His arm felt like a combination of the worst case of pins and needles while also being set on fire. It had been a while since something had been able to hurt him like this. Gibson quickly filled him in while trying to avoid looking directly at the blood that still dripped in-between the seams of Charles's jury rigged medical wrap job. “Down here, that will get infected for certain…” Gibs started to comment. “No time, let’s move!” Big C cut him off.

Gibson nodded and as they proceeded down the tunnel with increased concern about the sudden silence at what that meant for Bambi’s well-being, he handed the filters off to Charles again. As they rounded a bend, they saw a dull glow as the fires caused by the unexpected secondary blast produced by the Wyrd’s chemical concoctions slowly burnt out. A rasping moan directly in front of them revealed the large one sprawled out on the ground where Bambi’s brilliant but brutal escape left him.

Charles reached down and pulled the still intact gas mask off the shattered disciple. His face was nearly as bruised and broken as his torso. With a quick clean job hopefully he and Gibs wouldn’t need to keep swapping the dam filters. “Poor bugger. We shouldn’t leave him to die like this I suppose. This will be a mercy.” Gibson stated as he gingerly pulled his pistol and with a shaky hand pointed it at the large one’s head and squeezed the trigger… missing the center of the temple completely and instead blowing off the poor bastard’s left ear, which had been mostly intact.

The broken form let out a rasping yelp and Charles quickly clamped down on his mouth to stifle the noise and then snapped his neck with one clean twist he hoped felt as quick for the poor wretch as it did for him. “Titans’ balls Gibs!” He just looked at his companion and shook his head, “Why do you even bother carrying a piece?” As the fires continued to die down they both scanned the area quickly and saw several more shredded corpses, but all appeared to be Children of the Wyrd. The gas mask now on and seemingly working, Charles looked at the hole in the wall that led down into deeper darkness with a sinking feeling. Time to break comm silence. “Bambi, Bambi.” He activated the earpiece. “Bambi, can you hear us?”           

*****

“…ashes, ashes, we all fall down.”  Bambi couldn’t get that old song, Mandy and some of the other youngsters used to sing years ago when they were playing and dancing, out of her head. The terror giggles continued as the spring heel mod flipped her from head to feet first close to its maximum “fall cushion” of about 60 to 65 meters and she continued to plummet. Smash! She landed an instant later. The crunching sound from her cyborg foot as it tried to perform beyond its design specifications was accompanied by a jolt of incredible pain that shot up her leg and permeated her entire body. Her head now spun in a different way as the agony overrode the drugs. As she collapsed and everything went dark a last stray thought filtered through the mess, “What the fuck where posies anyway?”  

*****

Danger and fear! The Cyborg dog Bartrand had sprinted nearly a quarter of the way back home when the sudden compulsions gave away and his programing kicked back in. The attempt to stabilize him via a link to Sheila had come too late for the rest of the ill-fated patrol nine, but the stalker setting began to assert itself fully now. Two targets were assigned and needed to be dealt with. The machine portion of the dog’s mind replayed the last images recorded by his pair bonded female Shelia, starting to devise alternate tactics. As for the animal portion of the brain… many scientists, philosophers and scholars throughout history have argued that thoughts like ‘vengeance’ where beyond the scope of animal understanding. The raised hackles of his fur and the low, hate filled grow that emanated from Bartrand as he began to stalk his prey seemed to indicate otherwise…