Chapter 201: The Powder Keg

Chapter 201: The Powder Keg

On Terra, Irene and Sascha were sitting at the bar of the "Fire and Ash", an "Old-Earth" bar favored by the OG crowd.

They were well into their third set of drinks and second plate of tapas, a little board of nibbles, and enjoying the pugilball game.

"Oh!" Irene exclaimed as a Black Raven's pugilstick (basically a reinforced lacrosse stick designed for beating people) sent a rival player flying. "That's gonna hurt tomorrow."

The Black Raven player drove the haft of their pugilstick downward into the chest plate of the downed player, to the delight of the bar.

"First melee!" the bartender shouted as chaos broke out on the field, "Second quarter, six minutes, fifteen seconds!"

Someone's name appeared with, "Winner! Second quarter, four minutes."

"So," Sascha laughed as he applauded along with the rest of the bar, "what did you have?"

"First quarter," Irene laughed. "Damn, son!" she exclaimed as a Red Knight's helmet shell cracked as a Black Raven's stick shattered over it. "I think they need to test that motherfucker. He has to be boosted."

Kallo looked away from the violence on screen and drew his spindly brown and amber shell-clad body in tight as he gathered empty glasses. The pure viciousness of the Terrans always frightened him...

... especially the old ones...

... and especially on game night.

He was unintentionally jostled by a cheering pink-haired woman who threw her arms back, nearly sending him sprawling as she lept chest first into a bald-headed muscular man with a long braided beard and crossed axes tattooed on the sides of his head.

As Kallo desperately tried not to drop the tub of mugs and glasses, he could see the same mark on the pink-haired woman's neck.

It was probably a tribal or clan marking of some kind, denoting their membership in one of the war clans that fought in the lawless ashes of a dying world.

Kallo had always wondered how someone could survive something like that. I mean, what would they eat?

He wished with every fiber of his core that he hadn't found out. The "Fire and Ash" was usually a cheerful place, almost manically so, but every now and then, late at night...

... The OG's would start talking and remembering the fallen.

Kallo hated those times. The sheer... horror of it all...

I mean, he thought they had it bad on his homeworld, but what happened here... By the False and the True Gods...

And pretty much everyone in this bar lived through it...

What did they have to do in order to achieve that?

He shuddered at the thought as he made his way into the dance room where people nearly two hundred years old stomped and writhed to music he had never heard before he came to work here. He was told that much of it was "folk" from during the wars and pre-Yellowstone stuff.

The lyrics could be awful!

He hated the dance floor most of all. On his world, the elders were serene and wise, filled with grace. Here, they were perhaps worse than the young cavorting with their fangs exposed (some with grossly exaggerated ones) in various states of undress, exposing sacrilegious artificial limbs and strange obscene devices implanted into their very flesh to prolong their already unnaturally long lives. He heard that some chose to age and pass as the False and the True Gods intended. Others, however, still clung to life, doing whatever it took to survive.

He once made the mistake of asking one of the 'Droids' why they profaned their flesh, and the answer would haunt him for the rest of his days.

The old woman smiled, revealing a skeletal titanium jaw and jeweled chrome teeth. Her bionic eye flashed a little "smiley face" at him. Most prosthetics were discreet and tasteful, as natural appearing as possible. The droids, however, abandoned any pretense and, if anything, enhanced and embellished their unnatural obscene forms.

"When they came for us," she said, her eye flashing a skull emoticon, "my mother told me to run and to live, not to just lay down and die, no matter what."

Her eye flashed a heart emoticon with the word "Mom" in it.

"So," she replied, "I have, and I will."

As Kallo stood there, absolutely horrified, she laughed.

"Besides, we 'droids' have a running contest now to see who can last the longest. Dredd is still in the lead, but when he croaks, it's anyone's game!"

Averting his eyes from what two of the 'droids' were doing in the shadows (sometimes he really disliked his low light vision), he quickly gathered the glasses, napkins, empty injectors, pill wrappers, and the like and rushed to the bar area.

He hated the 'garage' as the bar called it. Other people would dance sometimes, but it was dominated by the droids. After all, their legs worked better.

As he hurried back into the bar and dining area, a burly human drunkenly turned, causing Kallo to collide with him, sending both his beer and Kallo tumbling, scattering (shatterproof) empty glasses across the floor.

"Watch it!" the muscular young man with a sun and sword tattoo on his arm slurred, "You fucking xeno!"

"Stupid fuck can't even carry glasses!" one of his companions sneered.

"What the fuck are they doing here?" Irene muttered, reaching into her old-style armored waistcoat.

"Easy now," Sascha replied as he laid his hand on her arm. "We don't need to start any shit here."

"Sorry!... Sorry!" Kallo squeak-clicked as he started crawling around, trying to gather the glasses.

"What's that?" The first man asked with an ugly tone, "Speak Terran, you fucking cockroach!"

He kicked the glass Kallo was reaching for, sending it skittering across the floor.

"Sorry!" Kallo squeaked more carefully. He did have a problem with Terran vowels when he was stressed. "I will try to be more—"

Kallo squealed in pain as the second man stepped on one of his legs. Fortunately, he had plenty.

"Oops," the second man said with a sneer, "wasn't expecting a leg there."

The bar suddenly fell silent as all eyes fell on the pair, unfriendly ones.

"That's it!" Irene shouted as she rose, sending her bar stool tumbling to the ground.

She marched up to the pair putting herself between the two men and the rapidly retreating Kallo.

"Got a problem?" the first guy sneered.

"Yeah," Irene growled, "Kallo is part of this bar, and you ain't! This bar has an age limit, and you are about a hundred years shy of it. Go home to your mommy before you get hurt."

The guy flexed, showing his tattoo.

"Ooo," Irene sneered, "pretty. Did you get it out of a vending machine, or did your 'daddy' draw it on you when he was finished? I ran with the Tunnel Snakes! We ruled!... Whole Sol Wars... Ruled! I had a bigger 'movement' than yours this morning!"

"What the fuck are you assholes doing in here, anyway?" someone else yelled.

"They are with me," a grizzled old man replied. "I booked the upstairs for a 'heritage gathering'."

"Of course, you'd be in with those bitches," Irene snorted.

"What's that supposed to mean?" the old man shouted.

"Nom, nom, nom," Irene said, mimicking chewing on a rib. "I heard about you, asshole. All of you should have been sent to the cold dark with the rest of them!"

"Please," Kallo implored, "I'm fine, really. Please don't..."

"I'm sorry," the old man hissed, "what did you say?"

"Oh, sorry," Irene said in a patronizing voice. "Let me be more clear. I implied that you were a fucking cannibal and should have been sent out into the dark with all the other Porkies, you True Terran Nazi," Irene smiled, "both you and that cunt Patricia Hu. She was worse than any of them. She only got to stay because she sucked the right dick."

The crowd broke out into shouts as everyone started arguing with everybody. That particular issue was quite the sore topic. (Yeah, don't bring that up.)

Kallo backed into a corner, covering himself and cradling his bruised leg, completely overwhelmed.

***

Kallo crouched miserably in an alleyway, holding his leg. He lived above the bar.

He couldn't go back there.

Irene was nice.

She was always kind and gave him headpats...

... and called him 'cricket'. It was a 'bug name,' but it was a 'nice insult' that friends give each other. It's a human thing.

But, in an instant, she turned... horrible...

He had learned how to read humans a little, and Irene...

... she was happy when she broke the mandible of that other human... broke it...

Kallo shuddered at the memory of the sound.

Is that what was going to happen here again? Was it going to go back to those days again? He had no way to leave!

Oh, False and True Gods, what was he going to do?

He knelt and started to pray, pray for help, pray for guidance, pray for someone, anyone, to hear him. Sometimes he prayed. Sometimes he just wept. He was completely and totally alone.

He just called out like a lost child.

As he wept and prayed, an auto-cab pulled into the alley and flashed its lights.

The door opened.

"Your Zipcab is here!" a cheerful voice announced.

"I... I didn't call for a cab," Kallo replied.

"Really?" the cab replied. "I'm certain you did. At least your app did."

He pulled out his phone and gasped.

Somehow, the Zipnet app was open! He must have fumbled it somehow.

"Your cab is here," the cab replied. "your verbal instructions were... confusing at best..."

What instructions? Kallo wondered.

Then it hit him. He had been praying.

"You mean what I was saying just before you pulled up?"

"Yeah!" the cab replied. "it was first disregarded as spurious input, as sometimes people accidentally trigger the app, especially if the phone is in someone's pocket. However, you kept repeating it, so Zipnet, the premier personal transportation solution, decided that it must be your desired destination. It took some figuring, but we at Zipnet, the premier personal transportation solution, are ready to take you there!"

The cab's headlights blinked happily.

"So, Kallo, hop aboard," the cab said cheerily, "your trip awaits!"

False and True Gods, is this your answer?

Kallo shrugged.

It didn't matter.

He had nowhere else to go.

With a silent prayer to the False and True Gods, he entered the cab.

"Welcome to Zipcab," the cab said happily as it backed out of the alley. "part of Zipnet, the premier personal transportation solution. We know where you are heading even if you don't!"

"What?!?" Kallo asked.

"I said," the cab replied, "Welcome to Zipcab, part of Zipnet, the premier personal transportation solution!"

"No, you said something else."

"I am certain I didn't," the cab replied cheerfully as the seats leaned back and reconfigured.

"Now try to get some rest," the cab said soothingly, "it seems that you have had a rough night, and perhaps a nap will help. I will wake you when we approach the next rest stop."

"Rest stop?!?"

"Welcome to Zipnet transport and conveyance, part of Zipnet, the premier long-haul cargo transport solution!"

The locks on the doors snapped shut, and the cab moved into the express lane as Kallo tried to open the door in vain.

***

The Prime Minister watched the news with a frown.

She then consulted the tablet in her hands.

The numbers were NOT good. Violent crime was up. The True Terrans, emboldened by Patricia Hu's supposed 'takeover,' were getting into actual shootouts with the populace...

... or, more precisely, the populace was shooting them.

It was a mess.

But that wasn't what had her concerned. It was the numbers.

Spending was dropping and shifting. She had learned not to worry when her people bought guns and ammo...

... but when they started buying seeds, you had a problem.

People were buying seeds. Fusion generators, already scarce, were simply not to be had. Theft was becoming a problem.

People were also leaving the inner solar system in droves, especially vital industry such as mining outfits where it was all too easy to set up housekeeping God knows where.

It was going to be a huge problem. For every ten companies that move to the outer solar system, two would likely stay where monitoring and control would be nigh impossible.

Those who weren't moving out were clumping up. According to the data she shouldn't have, family and tribe members were reaching out, even those who were estranged. Some were actually relocating to old turf. Others were choosing new gathering spots... and fortifying them.

She sighed and rubbed her temples.

Playtime was over. People were buying seeds.

It was time for Patricia to go away.

She picked up the phone.

"Prime Minister?"

"Schedule a press conference," she replied.