Ben Chaney - Son of Sedonia

Next to him at the bar, a woman drank blue, smoking liquid from a fragile, long-stemmed glass. As Matteo focused on the drink, a highlight appeared around it and summoned a block of information in his periphery. Something called a ‘Blue Motherfucker.’ A button reading ‘Buy’ appeared underneath the profile. He laughed, shrugged, and tapped it.

“Really?” The bartender smirked. Matteo nodded. “Coming right up.” Moments later, she returned with the drink, spilling the strange smoke on the bar.

“One BMF for his Highness,” she said.

“That’s not my name,” Matteo said, gently taking the drink from her. “It’s Mat—It’s… Aden. My name is Aden.” Alien as it was, the sound coming out of his mouth seemed to click into place somewhere deep inside him. She offered him her hand.

“I’m Liani,” she said with a wicked smile. Her silky fingers wrapped around his weathered palm. Heart racing, he released her hand. Raised the drink to his lips. The cool, tart sweetness hit his jaw first, followed by a slight burn. He felt it warm his insides as it traveled down his throat and splashed in his stomach. The glass was empty in seconds. A horrible pounding vice-grip squeezed his temples. He winced. Liani threw her head back and laughed hysterically.

“You know what, kid, you’re alright! Careful with that brain freeze, though, you’ll blow a fuse. Another?”

“Hell—,” he coughed, “Hell yeah!”

IN THE SQUAD leader’s shotgun seat of the IG-6 dropship, Shima began to regret giving up his medical leave. The patched bullet-wound underneath his leg Augmentors was, for all intents and purposes, healed. But the phantom ache left behind by the nano-fuse stitches got worse in the dropship’s rigid bucket seats. His eyes compulsively focused on the medication timer in his head’s-up display. “- 30:09 minutes until next dose.” He winced, then leaned forward to look out the cockpit windshield. The Border drifted underneath them as they entered Slum airspace. The heaped landscape of tangled hovels, bridges, and rooflines seemed asleep below them in gentle, corroded twilight. Shima knew better.

“I could walk faster than this,” he muttered. The pilot ignored the remark and maintained regulation speed. Shima dug his palm into the side of his Augmentors. A walk would probably work out some of the stiffness. And the idea of taking a stroll in a war zone was strangely sweet to him. He gnashed his teeth.

This recon op was a milk run. All that HQ would give him until his leg was a hundred percent. Better than being laid up on his shitty couch at home, but still “‘on the bench,’” so to speak. Confined to the cockpit for the duration of the mission. Better make myself useful. He swept his gloved hand in front of him, pulling the mission details into center focus. Not much to it. He played the audio from the initial civilian report.

“Uhh…Randyll Jackson,” said the recorded voice, “Class B Operator for FTL Shipping & Freight LLC. I wanna report a near miss—naw, reckless ‘dangerment and criminal negligence on the part of them Junker boys. A whole fleet of the bastards nearly knocked me outta my lane on their way down to them Pits! No warning lights, no approach communique, nothin’! I know these fellas got quotas for this garbage, but they don’t have to junk me in the process! Y’all better hit ’em with more than just a pussy-ass fine this time, too. I want ’em arreste—”

Shima scrubbed back in the audio.

“No warning lights, no approach communique, nothin’!” the recording repeated. The official wrecker logs showed only two deliveries made during the day. Two tankers. Nothing out of the ordinary. Shima sucked his teeth.

“Whaddya think, sir?” asked the Pilot. “Another Dust Swap?” No doubt. City thugs couldn’t get enough of the stuff, and Rasalla chefs cooked the best. Millions of credits-worth of Sway traded for a few hundred-worth of seeds. Too good for some to pass up. SCPD had been breathing down the department’s neck for months to keep the shit on the right side of the Border. Something about Sway addiction making implanted citizens feel invincible. Even homicidal. Just like the SCPD to bitch about real work.

“Sir?” the pilot prodded.

“Sorry, son, I was ignoring you,” Shima said, staring off in the opposite direction. In the following quiet, the pilot’s bruised pride throbbed in Shima’s ear. He rolled his eyes.

“Yeah, probably a Dust Swap,” Shima sat up and squinted at the live satellite feed streaming in his Neural. A few random thermal readings showed up across the Pits, but nothing out of the ordinary.

“Long done now, though. Looks like another rousing night of lifting serial numbers and pushing pixels for me. Hell yeah ,” Shima drew a circle in the air with his index finger. The white heat from their afterburners appeared on the sat-feed. Shima touched a section of the terrain next to the beached ships, dropping a digital waypoint.

“Bring us down there,” Shima said.

“Yes, sir.” The braking thrusters kicked on and the IG-6 banked into its descent. Shima hissed at the shooting pain in his leg as he stood up.

“You okay, sir?”

“Fuck off, son.” Shima swung from the ceiling rails to the rest of his squad, “Alright boys and girls, let’s go see if we can find a serial number that hasn’t been filed off.” The IG-6 lurched as its heavy legs pressed down into the packed dirt.

“Mount up!” Shima shouted. Buckles clicked and straps retracted as the team stood. The IG-6 ramp yawned open, spilling the pale blue light of the cabin out onto the dirt. Shima and the others stormed down the ramp with submachine guns drawn. All quiet. Shima touched his throat mic.

“Delta-Three is on the ground. Button up and climb to observation altitude.”

“Roger,” said the Pilot over comms. The ramp hummed shut and the IG-6 engines belched blue fire. Soon the ship was nothing more than a pair of glowing specs against the night sky. Shima turned to his squad.

“Eyes on, legs off,” he said. Each EXO touched his temple and blinked three times. Shima watched the Pits flash to pale gray-green daylight. A few bright blooms of sparks burst out of the distant haze, showering down at intervals. Dumbasses . Cutting during the day was bad enough, but doing it at night was usually a death sentence. Only the most desperate ever dared, but there were always a few. None worked on the so-called ‘fleet’ from the esteemed Mr. Jackson’s incident report.

“Let’s hit that fat fucker over there first,” said Shima, nodding toward the over-sized, fish-shaped personnel carrier. “And stay sharp , dammit! We may have clipped the T99 hierarchy, but that doesn’t make this a casual stroll.”

The five of them started walking. Shima pushed out in front to hide his grimacing from the others, but there was little he could do about the limp. He focused on the small, blurry lettering on the side of the ship’s nose. Too hard to make out at 1-X view. Tracing a light circle on his temple, the image jumped to 10-X. ‘Virton Energy.’

Walking in 10-X, his left foot tagged a bent chunk of rebar on the ground, sending him into a painful stumble. He winced, dialed back to 1-X, and limped onward.

“Virton,” said Ackley, one of the smarter rookies in the squad, “Not like them to dump gear off the books…is it?”

“With a greaseball like Finley running it, who knows,” said Shima. It didn’t help him shake the same feeling. An itch up and down his spine. They came to the base of the ship and fanned out. Ackley came through moments later.

“Got one! ‘Alpha-Tango-Alpha 37859-8842,’” said Ackley over the comms.