Kyra rolled over on her side, sat up, and stretched. Looking down at her right arm she inspected the servos and gears that had replaced everything below her right elbow. It would appear that her success would not equal that of her old Matriarch, and she sighed. She was satisfied as she listened to the whir of machinery when the fingers were flexed. It was not a Van Saar model, but it worked.
Looking around her hab it was a wreck. Crushed out tox-sticks, a nasty habit that most of her current ‘family’ indulged in, lay everywhere. Empty bottles of Wildsnake and dishes, some still with food on them, also were strewn about the place.
“At least I have a place to call my own,” Kyra thought to herself. Most of them have to share rooms.
Behind her a form stirred to get out from under the blankets. Kyra smiled and turned around.
“Morning Logan, did you sleep well?”
“You move around too much,” the emerging head said.
Slowly a young man, maybe nine or ten, stirred to life. He rubbed his head and looked around and wondered if he had slept through yet another ‘meeting’ his mother always held in their one room hab.
Out of nowhere the boy asked, “Mom, why do we live here? I mean, why can’t we live among those who are like us?”
A gentle smile creased Kyra’s weary face. “Because these people took us in when we had no where else to go. I owe them my life.”
Even though he did not understand, the boy nodded his head as if he did.
“Well, I need to get going,” Kyra said as she strapped her pistol holster to her thigh, just above the edge of her very, very long boots. “Clean this place up Logan; I’ll be back after my shift.” And like that she was gone, off to who knew where. Although she worked at their ‘benefactors’ gambling den as a table dealer, she often held secondary jobs in the evening to make ends meet. Their hosts often came down on the two of them hard, especially since they remained strangers among them. “Some haven,” he thought to himself.
Logan looked around the room. He too had to get out the door to work. Since he was not considered worthy Logan was not allowed to attend the trade schools of his ‘brothers’. Instead he was put to work in the nutrient fields. A few months back ‘The Couriers’ had cleared out a small band of Scavvies that had occupied a small dome where septic lines from who knows where above, dumped into. Although it was incredibly noxious, the deposits were rich in nutrients and had fertilized large patches of ground. Mushrooms, and other underhive crops, thrived there. Not wanting to waste their own manpower Logan was pressed into service in the fields, along with others, to harvest the bounty. Then their hosts would come along and take their ‘fair share’, which always seemed to be most of it.
Still, Logan was able to see a lot that went on around him. For example, he knew ‘The Couriers’ were a very large Delaque gang, perhaps fifty or more in number. They had a lot of connections up hive (he knew this because they were always dressed very well – meaning in clean clothes), and they dealt directly with Guilders. When his work for the day was done, usually after fourteen hours out in the fields, he headed back to the hab block.
Back on the block he continued to watch the other kids. It was the only thing he could do since he was never allowed to join in their activities. The other kids shunned him because he was different. Logan and his mother were the only ones in the whole hab block that had hair and did not wear the dark-lensed goggles. It did not matter the age, all of the Delaque looked the same to him. Today was different though. His mother was going to be home early, or so she said. So, despite being bone weary from working all day, he set to work cleaning up the hab he shared with his mother.
-=-=-=O=-=-=-
“Quiet, you’ll wake him.”
Logan woke, but did not stir. It was his mother... and someone else.
“He’s alright. He never wakes up, come on we have things to discuss.”
Logan recognized the voice. It was man known as ‘Lusion’, a member of the “Couriers”.
“There’s nothing to discuss ‘Lus’. Krav would never allow you to be joined with a woman from House Escher.”
“But you are not Escher anymore, you’re Delaque.”
Logan noticeably cringed under the covers. He knew his mother was proud to be an Escher. A point that had caused them both considerable inconvenience, but she was proud and would never back down.
“I am Escher, I will always be Escher. Just because I have come to see you men as equals does not make me any less Escher. I still know how to handle myself; you would be wise to not forget that... again.”
“Easy, easy. I meant no offense.”
The sound of distant gunfire broke the tension. Without thinking Logan looked over the edge of the blankets to look toward the door. His mother had her auto pistol gripped tightly in her artificial hand while Lusion gripped a bolt pistol in his left. The pair moved to the door and threw it open. Lusion was through first, followed quickly by his mother.
“Stay in here Logan, no matter what.”
Logan just nodded, but had no intention of sitting still. He waited for a full minute before getting out of bed. Once up and moving he crossed over to where his work clothes were dumped in the corner. Reaching under the pile he found what he was looking for, a thirty centimeter long knife that Lusion had given him for his ninth birthday. It was a simple design with a synth-leather grip and a snakehead shaped pommel.
Drawing out his prize Logan crept out onto the walkway that joined their hab unit with all the others along the exterior wall. It overlooked a large clearing five floors below that had once held a fountain. It was now nothing more than a plascrete circle.
Down below twenty or so Goliaths, easily identifiable by their sheer mass, moved into the square, hooting and hollering, and shooting their weapons in random directions. One autogun round ricocheted off the wall three meters to Logan’s right.
Logan was transfixed by the chaos below as Delaque responding to the invasion of their territory flooded into the far side of the clearing. Once the battle was joined it was impossible to isolate individuals, except for his mother. Her long blue hair and lighter color clothing making her easily distinguishable among the throng.
It seemed like she was everywhere. Logan had never seen her move like that. It was as if everyone else was in slow motion, but then time seemed to freeze.
A monster of a man wielding what looked like a mill wheel as a club charged forward. Logan realized that it was Lusion who faced this thing now, but the Delaque seemed transfixed with fear and was not responding to his impending doom.
Finally, as the man-mountain closed the final few meters, Lusion started to raise his Bolt Pistol, but there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that it was too little too late.
As the massive club began to fall Kyra darted in and knocked Lusion out of its path. The club was not going to stop until it hit something, and it hit Kyra heavily on the shoulder. Logan could hear his mother’s painful cry from here. In the blink of an eye though she was back on her feet, her left arm hanging limp, but her right hand still gripped her auto pistol.
Both combatants began to move simultaneously, both screaming at the top of their lungs as they tried to best the other. Kyra beat the Goliath by a split second, her finger squeezed tightly on the trigger sending a stream of bullets impacting up and down the torso of the raging man. But once a mass is in motion it cannot be stopped until the energy has been completely consumed. And there was a lot of energy in the movement of that giant club, and it caught Kyra full force across her torso. The impact tossed the petite woman aside as child would discard a rag doll.
Before the woman’s body slumped to the ground Logan was up and running for the stairs. It took forever to reach the ground level. When he did the battle was over, but he did not notice, he was across the yard and leaning over his mother’s broken body. The woman’s neck and head were at an odd angle, and there were already deep purple marks across her upper body and face.
Try as he might he could not get her to respond to his cries.
“Stand up boy,” Lusion said as he stood from the other side of Kyra’s body. “She is gone, and there is nothing you can do about it.”
Logan looked up and wiped the tears from his cheeks, not knowing what to say or do. Slowly he lowered his mother’s body to the ground and stood up.
“The hospitality we extended to your mother is supposed to end with her.” The Delaque let that sink in before he continued. “But I want you to know... you have my word that I will watch over you in honor of what Kyra did for me. It is a matter of honor.”
“I thought the Delaque had no honor,” Logan thought to himself.
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