The Worldshift Chronicles: Monday

Chapter 1

Chapter 1

We reached the summit at twilight.

Lieutenant Jack Cracker’s wagon was a smooth ride, a joy to command. Auto-cruise, climate control, full armaments, extended cargo hold, a high-end rig compared to my rattletrap bumble-bug. The heated seats were max ‘luxe. Usually when I hopped the Sierra in my jalopy, I’d be wrapped in blankets over a suit of rad gear to void the cold outside.

I took a beeline route through the ruins of the old capitol, where our heavy armor plowed through the locals’ barricades at a rate of speed where checking for pursuit vehicles hadn’t been necessary. Then it’d been a straight run up the foothills. Though I enjoyed its amenities, Jack’s ritzy set of wheels was too bulky to maneuver in tight quarters. It didn’t have the zip of my bug, where I enjoyed more Newtons per kilogram and could fly a little higher and faster as needed. Not much higher, of course…all hover craft and aerial bot-ware were limited to a mere few meters of altitude before their circuits fried. The levitation fields required to sustain flight would fail unless they remained in close proximity of the surface, the once predictable spectrum of electromagnetic gravity soured by lingering effects of the worldshift spell.

Womankind was grounded, for the most part.

I’d have found the trip a veritable vacation, other than the rig’s repulsive odor of fried eggs, and far more troublesome, Jack’s incessant yapping. The man just didn’t shut up. Ever. He had something to say about everything, be it the hierarchy of House Cheyenne ranks, or his badgering of the head cook at a roadside diner for a soup recipe, or pestering me for intel on outland settlements I’d visited. I endured his prattle as he rode shotgun in the passenger seat. I nodded. I shrugged. I played dumb and demure, to the point where he grew angry several times.

Whatever he was angling, he was taking his sweet time about it. I wondered what exactly he had in store for me. I’d already cubbied he wasn’t standard taxi fare. There was something in his eyes. Something nasty. Something broken. I saw it as soon as I met him back at Bard’s saloon. If he’d only wanted a New Gen courier who knew how to work steel, he could’ve hired many less expensive prospects. He wouldn’t have needed to travel deep in the Darkheart to find a guide, and if he truly was the commander of the Ditch as he’d claimed, it was highly suspect he left his post to haul common freight up to Washoe.

The pass was covered in ice hard as concrete. Radioactive permafrost cast the road in a pale, greenish glow as Jack’s rig whizzed through forested slopes and valleys. It was said the Lake of the Sky was the last untouched haven of beauty on earth, via the ongoing vigilance of the village of Washoe. As we made the treacherous descent into its northernmost valley, the settlement’s towering lighthouse cast its oscillating beam about the land, circling crystal blue waters to the south and evergreen forests to the north. The beacon was an impressive feat of engineering, sixty stories tall and as pearly white as the pellucid lands from which it sprouted. On clear days, its light could be seen a hundred clicks out.

Many tried to determine the secrets of how Indigenous locals cleansed the region of the radiation and pollution that spoiled all other expanses between the four cities. None succeeded. Armed battalions from House Li attempted to take the village by force once, and vanished without a trace. Nobody approached Washoe without its explicit consent.

I fancied myself one of the more traveled couriers in the network, but I had only been there a single time and that only in a drop-off capacity. From outside its well-guarded gates, Washoe had been amazing, with sparkling spires of crystallized granite and tech-augmented tipis festooned in beaded artwork. Flocks of golden eagles and bald eagles flew about village heights between their aeries atop crystal obelisks, swooping over and under swaying rope bridges. The convocations of eagles in Washoe were legendary.

“It’s incredible, isn’t it,” Jack said, pointing toward the light of the watchtower in the distance. “I never cease to marvel at the power of its illumination. If it weren’t for the Sierra’s peaks, we’d see that torch all the way down south at the Ditch. I have yet to be invited to that wondrous spa resort, much to my lament. Those flocks of birdies must be a wonderful sight up close. What a feat of architecture! What know-how! That tribe of the old world is a wonder for the ages!”

“Yep,” I said.

“No doubt a master stroke of major arcana, wouldn’t you say?”

“I wouldn’t know anything about that.”

“Yes, yes, I know, you deal in lead. You’re so provincial, Miss Monday.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“You’ll still neither confirm nor deny you’ve visited Washoe?”

“Don’t you ever shut –” I said, and was interrupted, again, by a heavy thump from his livestock in the back of the rig. Once each day, Jack retired to the rear compartment to feed whatever was locked in his holds. “Tell you what,” I said, tapping on the holster of my twinkie. “I’ll give you my take on Washoe, if you tell me what kind of critter is in back.”

“At last, a measure of haggle! Alas, per the terms of my employ, I cannot reveal the contents of our cargo to anyone save its new owner.”

“See? You have your honor and I have mine. Why ask me to break my code when you refuse to do the same?” I countered.

“It’s rooted in simple curiosities. I merely wish to expand my knowledge on the horizons of the times in which we live, and there’s no way to do that thoroughly without vicarious reporting from other travelers. Yet mine is locked in the ethics of business, while yours, well, it’s just ego.”

“For all you know, my own kept counsel keeps me alive that much longer.”

“That much can’t be argued. I bow to your superior wisdom once more.”

Thump! Another bump from the back, hard enough to affect the heavy rig’s passage. The auto gyroscope adjusted our levitation rate accordingly. “Whatever you got back there, it’s getting h’angry,” I noted. “If it’s beefy enough to move this tank, I hope you have it secured.”

“Oh, it’s in chains. I don’t take chances with my freight.”

I steered the rig to the side, maneuvering around a sizable chunk of ice fallen onto the road. I checked the GPS system and was satisfied with our current position. We were a few clicks away from the rendezvous point, an ancient, roadside casino north of Washoe’s outer borders, fifty-odd clicks due west of the Citadel.

“Bard, he’s quite the entrepreneur, isn’t he?” Jack posed.

“Makes a living,” I replied.

“A trader in the art.”

“Among other things.”

“There are whispers, about his rumored ability to practice.”

“I’d know if that were the case.”

“Would you?”

“I would.”

“Why is that?”

“Because nobody knows Bard like I do…” I trailed off, dejected.

He’d managed to make a dent in my armor.

Jack giggled. “Is that a fact? Then you certainly would know, wouldn’t you?” He knew he’d taken a win at last, after two days of peppering me with the mundane. The grin on his face was sycophantic, a cat which had found its taste of canary. I was silent. Resisting the impulse to pistol-whip my fare’s thick head if he negged me further was becoming difficult.

“Do you know why they call this the pass of cannibals?” he queried, waving to the mountains around us. “Most folk think it’s because of a sect of screes that found a way to survive at these altitudes. In fact, it’s a reference to the second age. Apparently when these lands were first settled, an expedition of explorers found themselves lost and out of supplies during a brutal winter, and ended up having to feed on their dead to stay alive.”

“Fascinating. People eat each other all the time.”

“These days, yes. Not as much in that age. It was much more frowned upon, at least in more developed regions of the world. There were certain segments of society that would rather perish than subsist on their own.”

“How do you know this?”

“As I’ve told you, I’m a scholarly sort of brute. Knowledge is power, Miss Monday. On the subject of academics, let’s consider you New Gen children. There are those who claim you’re tough because of genetic mutation, and that the worldshift spell altered your cellular structure, wherein it gained the ability to process and refine radiation into more organic avenues; increased energy, stamina, strength, speed, and so on. There are others who say toxic environments have lesser effects on New Gen kiddies because they exist at a different vibrational state than plebes like myself.”

“Ridiculous,” I said.  

“Maybe. The thought titillates, though, doesn’t it? There are even radicalized scientists who pose the astonishing possibility that for some New Gen children, former limits of basic physics, gravity, space, and dimension become…ah…inconsistent.”

“Meaningless. The world itself, and all its peoples, are inconsistent.”

“Exactly right! From your lips to the never-gods’ ears! Formerly predictable entities, systems, balances, all of it has become unstable, no longer beholden to any one paradigm. Worldshift changed everything we knew about what we were. and where we resided in a heartless universe.”

“All that’s side dish bunk. It’s nice you have the time to hem and haw about what’s what and why’s why. Most of us are just trying to get dinner or to not be dinner.”

“Yes...of course,” he mused. “Still, if you could, it would be good to know the extent of your immuno-radioactive endurance, don’t you think?”

“The sun sets at the same time for me as it does for everyone else,” I replied.

Our headlamps caught a darkened building around the next turn. It was the rendezvous point. I pulled into its parking lot. Not a soul or vehicle was in sight. The building was near a point of collapse. Its ancient, dreary marquee hung to the side. A number of rusted slot machines, wrecked hover bikes, and botware lay piled in a frozen mass of waste off to the side.

“Nobody here,” I said. “Maybe your hot date stood you up.”

“Let’s find out,” Jack replied.

He slipped his ventilator into his mouth and went back to the rear section of the rig, grabbing a couple of all-weather parkas from a storage unit and held one out to me. I shook my head as I adjusted a tactical vest over my jumpsuit, fitting shells into ammo loops.

“I’m fine. My blood runs hot. Whether or not your party shows, you owe me.”

“All debts will be paid, Miss Monday,” He put the parka on over his rad gear and hit the release button for the side door. Three metal tread boards fit with maglev pads unfolded from a floor compartment and hovered into a diagonal pattern, providing steps to the ground. I keyed off the hover plates and the vehicle powered down. I stood up, thought about putting in my respirator, and decided against it. I drew my .30 caliber pistols from their back straps, one in each hand, and followed Jack outside.

We walked to the pile of waste on the side of the casino. He kicked at a robotic head crusted with ice. It gave off an iridescent glow.

“See what I mean, Miss Monday? A perfect example of what I was discussing. This building is defunct, a hall of ghosts, where folks assembled once upon a time to enjoy friendly games of chance, and yet also encased in this frost, are hover bikes and automaton parts, technology which wouldn’t have co-existed with the rest of what lies here. Inconsistency! Space, dimension, time. It’s all wonky now, after worldshift. And what a good thing that is! As you yourself are a testament to that which doesn’t fit, a rare square peg in a field of circles and triangles. Better to be ostracized, than a faceless one of many, am I right?”

I raised my twin pistols, one in each hand, and pointed them at him.

Jack’s teeth gleamed as the ray from Washoe’s lighthouse tower swept across us, lighting up the darkened, snowy clearing. His cheeks were rosy from the bitter cold in that dead of night.

“You think this is my first rodeo? I don’t know what you want with me, but whatever you have in mind, it couldn’t possibly be worse than your endless jabbering,” I said.

“Ouch. Take thy poison barb from my wounded paw. What can I say. I had hoped to wear you down, gather information about your origins, and determine whether you’re aware of what your arcane skills mean for the rest of us commoners. And I’ll have you know my banter is considered quite compelling by many. A shame my efforts went unappreciated.”

“Know your audience, kitten. Though I’m usually bound to honor the terms of my contract, you’ve broken our agreement with your pretenses, so here’s what’s going to happen. I’m jacking your fancy pants rig here. I’ll be confiscating whatever I can find in its payload as compensation for my troubles. You can stay here and freeze, or better yet, try to hike out of here and answer to the Washoe scouts in the woods,” I said as I backed slowly toward his wagon floating behind me.

“You have been to the esteemed village over yonder. I thought so. It’s said arcana draws to itself, and what bigger beacon than the mysterious crown jewel of the Sierra? I doubt anyone else saw you fire your mojo up, back at your bartender’s cow-punching arena. You hide it well, I admit. I happen to be an astute observer, always looking for telltale signs, and yes, you did tell a tale, brief though it was.”

“I’ll give you to the count of three to make for the forest. Or you’re going to find out the hard way how big a mistake you’ve made.”

“Too late for that,” Jack said, cackling. “The trap has already been tripped. It’s a war of futures, Miss Monday. You’re either an asset or an obstacle. The choice is entirely yours.”

Better than a dozen figures stepped out from the tree line, perhaps eighteen or twenty. They were clad in black armor, ceramic-coated plate emblazoned with the green infinity insignia of House Gammon. They wore opaque visors and helmets, and they were armed with stun batons at their sides and sonic cannons in hand. That kind of arsenal hurt, but none of it was lethal. They meant to take me alive.

Jack scrambled behind the nearby pile of frozen, industrial salvage. I ran for the rig and pulled up short when another group of armored figures rounded the hover truck and barred my way. They drew their batons in unison. Static sparks, white hot, rained down on the icy tundra beneath their feet.

All this for me?

Instinct kicked in. I might’ve bolted for cover between ranks to the opposite side of the tree line where the renegade regiment had emerged, but I wouldn’t have time before the sound cannons found me, especially while navigating slippery terrain. Standard range of New Angeles sonics tended to spray wide, and the mercs probably didn’t have to worry about crossfire as their augmented headgear suggested immunity to soundwave weaponry. 

As it stood, I was outflanked.

The only way out was under.

Slip n’ slide. Would be fun on any other day.

I charged the nearest figure. A tall shocktrooper cloaked in a weatherproof duster raised his sonic pistol and fired. I dove under the blast. Its wake washed over me, provoking an instantaneous headache. Blood poured from my nose and trickled from my ears. My teeth felt like they might shatter. I managed to keep my grip on both pistols as I rolled to the side of my attacker, thrusting myself toward Jack’s rig, sliding across the ice. I turned on my back and took aim as the rest of the squad opened fire.

My first shot struck directly in the center of the nearest trooper’s visor, spinning him backward. The vapid buzz of sonics echoed about the clearing as the ground erupted behind my crazy, sliding passage. I careened toward the rig as I took five more shots, each finding their targets in trooper chest plates. They went down like sacks of potatoes.

I skidded to a stop beneath the hover wagon. Its humming maglev field inflamed my piercing headache. The rig trembled above me. I realized they were firing on the vehicle to flush me out. Enough sonic blasts for an extended period would destroy the heaviest armored transport. Jack screeched from behind his hiding spot, then fire ceased. Apparently, his cargo was as precious as I was.

The rogue platoon surrounded the vehicle. The six troopers I’d shot point blank had risen. Whatever kind of armor they bore, it was resistant to high caliber impact. New Angeles tactical had upped their game. It wasn’t my first time coming across their ranks. They tended to be undisciplined, reckless, and they were lousy shots. Yet with sonics and cattle prods, they didn’t need to be sharpshooters.

An idea sprang to mind, as I noticed their boots were armored in the same kind of plate as their chests. I doubted that would help their sense of balance on the ice. I fired at random legs and feet. Cries of surprise ensued as several fell, their chunky armor clattering upon frozen turf. The rest of the troops ran. Jack barked orders as they scattered to take cover in the trees. My pistols ran dry. I cast them aside and drew my twinkie, emptying one of the coach gun’s barrels into a retreating soldier. Its buckshot load exploded on the back of his armor in a cloud of yellowcake dust, tossing him headfirst into a snow drift. Then I pulled the twinkie’s second trigger and another of the troopers went down. Nearby, the wounded groaned in pain, crawling away on the ice.

I wiped my nose with the back of my glove. It came away sopping wet in dark, red blood. I rubbed my eyes and moaned. The headache was excruciating. An ambush of that magnitude, I hadn’t anticipated. I figured Jack for a con, a side hustling moonlighter from House Gammon, but to have that kind of firepower behind him, so far from his post at the Ditch? No, I didn’t cubby that. I cracked the coach gun’s barrels and popped their spent shells, reloading from my belt. I’d left my reload clips for the pistols inside Jack’s rig.

“Idiots!” Jack cried. “All these heaters and she’s still kicking? Use the batons, for the luvva Pete’s crazy horse! Toss them under the wagon!”

It was a bright idea he’d doubtlessly worked up after watching me slide to cover. Crackling sounds of electrical discharge emanated from the woods. Several activated batons were thrown, underhanded style, from varied positions, skating toward me and the rig. Snaking clouds of sparks trailed behind them. If I was lucky, most would miss and fly right on by, or I’d be fast enough to dodge incoming bogeys.

But I wasn’t lucky.

Two batons hit ruptured sections in the ice sheet and went skimming in other directions. Several others found their way underneath the hovercraft. I rolled away from one, then the opposite way from another. A third struck me directly in the lower torso with its powered business end. I cried out, disoriented, my bell rung. A fourth narrowly missed my head, a fifth nicked my right foot, and a sixth caught an errant bump in the ground and struck the underside of the rig’s chassis on a rear maglev conduit, short-circuiting the system. That side of the craft crashed to the ground as I rolled away, nearly crushed. Its mechanics sputtered. Its grav system was about to fail. 

It was a rare occasion when I was caught off guard. The idea he’d laid this big a trap to corral the likes of me was preposterous. Was he another slaver, looking to shanghai new chattel for the Ditch? Was he a bottom-feeding creep show with a penchant for kidnapping young girls? Perhaps Jack was a bounty hunter after all, though I had done nothing within jurisdictions of the four cities that might warrant a price on my head, other than occasionally routing wayward opportunists, few of whom might afford the considerable fees professional trackers charged for braving the outlands.

It was possible he’d heard tell of my rare parlor tricks. In my entire life, I’d cast less than a dozen spells across the outlands, most of them in the privacy of Bard’s saloon, a handful of unintended charms when I was a kid in the ghettos at the ‘Del. There were endless rumors of magic users across the wastes. The finest trackers of the four cities (I’d sooner be a Tiwanese arena clown than count Jack among them) had never located a legit mage. The only place where arcana was routinely practiced by humans was Washoe, a forbidden territory closed to outsiders. Bard and I, we kept our magicks on the sly…for the most part.  

Maybe someone spotted you out and about, flash-frying a pod of scree, or staving off a pack of brill wolves. Maybe one of the rando scumbags you sucker punched with a telekinetic boom-boom sussed out what threw him for a loop, pegged you as mage, and passed it down the grapevine, until it got to someone who could do something about it. It’s not like you’re incognito. That blonde stripe. That crack shot rep. You’re practically begging to be exposed.

Get it together.

No choice.

You’re the rookie who took on the grift and didn’t map it proper.

It’s either the bomb or capture.

Choose.

I sheathed my twinkie, fighting through suffering flesh, and stilled my mind as best I could. My fingers trembled. I gathered my chi, drawing energy from the world around me, and forced myself to breathe slow and easy, in through the nose, out through the mouth. If my focus was cohesive enough, I’d extend a wave of arcane force that if applied in the proper fashion, incapacitated sentient life within its breadth of influence by rendering them unconscious. I’d only cast the bomb a few times before in the wilds, all of twice under Bard’s supervision. Every other option had to be exhausted before using that telekinetic as a last resort, because I was useless afterward. The stamina required to wield it was considerable. My energy reserves took days to replenish themselves.

It irked me to no end I’d been forced to fall back on arcana twice in as many days. A gunfighter worth her salt ought not to need any fail safes. I couldn’t afford to bruise my reputation.

I concentrated through a cloud of pain and expanded the collected energies outward, tempered by the will of my chi.

Then the world exploded.

A burst of golden light lit up the darkness beneath the rig. Jack’s hover wagon, sixty feet long and a four-ton weight class, blasted upward and forward and ripped in half. Jagged chunks of mechanical debris rained down over me. The two separated hulks flew across the lot in a wave of dirty snow and ice, straight into the nearby casino, demolishing the building in a frenzy of frozen wood and metal. The scrap heap where Jack had taken refuge blew apart, back into the forest, along with Jack himself. The blast from the impetum spell flattened the surrounding forest to a depth of six trees in, trunks cracking in half, thick branches shearing clean off, pine cones exploding like gunshots. Troopers behind the trees went flying in the flotsam and jetsam.

I struggled to my knees, dazed.

The spell, as I knew it, could do no such thing.

I possessed nowhere near that level of power.

Every bone in my body vibrated as the arcana subsided.

I collapsed on a patch of ice, hyperventilating, staring at the tail end of Jack’s rig sticking out of the casino demolition. Its forward half was driven into a deep snow bank. Stun batons were cold and dark, some snapped into pieces. Scattered remnants of several sonic cannons and melted power cells littered the area. A few helmets rolled about. My discarded pistols had been destroyed by the blast as well. Shards of polished bone stocks, a hollow chamber, and the length of one barrel lay nearby, fused in a smoking mass. I checked my twinkie at my hip, which seemed to be intact.

Nearly everything within a hundred yards was pulverized.

The spell wasn’t supposed to work that way. The invocation collected electromagnetic energy within its umbra to affect organic life forms, a brief short-circuiting of synaptic pathways. It had never caused grievous bodily harm nor significant property damage.

I wondered if the would-be kidnappers’ bones had turned to jelly and felt a twinge of regret. They were mercenary scum, but I still hated cheating.

I refused to implicitly trust enchantments. They were unreliable and prone to collapse at the merest distraction. When it came to the innumerable dangers of the outlands, it was all about my reaction time, the sharpness of my eyes, the quickness of my hands. Sorcery couldn’t be banked upon. Though I was a rare practitioner of arcana, perhaps its only one, save for Bard and the unknown shamans in Washoe, I found it wanting. Pulling metal from leather saved my bacon a lot more than magicks.

I rolled on my back. I grew numb from the frigid ground. Snow fell as a number of shredded trees popped and settled. I heard a reedy, whooshing sound and realized it was canopies of iced foliage falling into snowdrifts. I could hardly keep my eyes open. If I passed out, I would freeze to death. My only chance was to make it to the remains of the rig and fashion shelter to wait out the night.

I turned to crawl to the transport wreckage. It seemed a million clicks away. There was little hope I would make it before blacking out. The batons wrecked me, but the overkill arcana sapped the very last of my strength.

The hatch of the hover wagon’s tail end swung open, teetering on half-bent hinges. Then it crashed to the rubble below. A man looked out from inside the vehicle.  He whistled in astonishment as he took in the sights.

No…he wasn’t a man. He was a boy, about my age, with short, jet-black hair and alabaster skin, wearing a dark jacket, battered trek boots, and the blue jumpsuit uniform of House Gammon civilians. I grumbled, only now understanding the true nature of Jack’s livestock, and cursed myself for not inspecting his cargo bay more thoroughly before taking the commission.

His eyes widened as he saw me. He hopped down to the ground. I fumbled for my twinkie, but my frozen hands and fingers weren’t cooperating. The boy jogged over, knelt down and leaned over me.

“Hi there. Are you okay?”

“Not really,” I groaned.

“What the blazes happened out here?” he asked.

“Blazes…that’s what,” I muttered. “You were…in the rig this whole time?”

“I’m afraid so. He took me prisoner, gosh, I don’t know how many days ago,” he replied. “Maybe a week? Two? I’ve kind of lost track of time. Whatever destroyed the vehicle also busted the seal on my cage. Well, more like a box. Though I’m pretty sure whatever happened out here would’ve wasted me had I not been inside, so…small favors. I assume my captor has been overcome?”

“He’s out there somewhere…or what’s left of him,” I whispered.

“And I take it you’re the one who’s responsible? I heard the sonic fire from inside the wagon. Where’s the rest of his crew?”

He was handsome, with deep blue eyes and pursed red lips, a dimpled chin and a proud countenance. As Washoe’s beacon light once again flooded the area, I saw his hair wasn’t completely black, but rather a calico shade with cinnamon frost at his temples. He was dirty, reeking with the musk of close quarters. His chipper attitude ill-suited his recent captivity. He flashed me a warm smile full of perfect teeth untouched by outland rigors.

“Don’t worry. I’m not some lackey for that guy. Honest. He caught me down south, just outside the border perimeter of New Angeles. Embarrassing, I confess. I have no idea where he was taking me. You don’t happen to know offhand, do you? I thought he might be a slaver working for the Ditch, and I told him I was a New Angeles citizen, but he didn’t care at all. I dunno what the heck he’s doing way up here in the Sierra.”

I said nothing. I was so cold. My whole body shivered.

He took off his jacket, laying it across me.

“Well. It’s pretty easy to see whatever you did, was quite a measure of arcana. And I’ve seen my share,” he said.

I stared at him, shocked, struggling to stay conscious.

“It’s…not supposed to operate…like that,” I sputtered.  

“I’m afraid its aggravated effect may have been due to our close proximity to one another.”

“What…do you mean?”

“It seems we’re birds of a feather, friend. What’s your name?”

“Monday,” I murmured, fading fast into blackness.

His eyes blinked in surprise.

“Well, isn’t that a daisy. Nice to meet you, Monday. I’m Thursday.”

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