Chapter Fifty-Five – Making an Entrance

Chapter Fifty-Five – Making an Entrance

“Post-2020 saw a massive surge of people moving into the cities and new megacities appearing all over the world. A surge that hadn’t been seen since the height of the industrial revolution.

That does not mean that small towns are perfect hamlets of civility. All the issues of poverty, hunger, and the gulf between rich and poor are just as prevalent in these towns, especially in the many, many ‘corpo-burgs’–corporate-owned towns–that started to appear near larger cities.”

–Commentary on the Shift in Small Town Thoughts, Tim Butcher, 2038

***

I gave Lucy a kiss before going. Then, because Gomorrah hadn’t arrived yet, I gave her another, then another.

Unfortunately, we were both still dressed when Myalis pinged me to inform me that Gomorrah had landed out front.

“Be careful,” Lucy ordered.

I gave her a last hug for the road, pressing her close to me. She fit the way only Lucy did. “I will be,” I promised before letting go.

I ducked my ears down flat on my head as I stepped out into the rain, then belatedly tucked my helmet on. Gomorrah had parked God’s Righteous Fury right in the middle of our landing zone, the car all wet and sleek as if it was posing for one of those hyper-real commercials. I could almost hear the snobbish narrator telling the audience that they would never be able to afford a car this awesome.

I ran to the passenger side just as the door opened with a pneumatic hiss, then I flung my Whisper in the back and placed my new grenade launcher on my lap as I fell onto the seat. “Yo.”

“Are your feet in?” she asked as she pressed the gas. We were off the edge before the door had even sealed.

I leaned into the cushions as Gomorrah aimed us into the greyed sky. “So, uh, what’s up?”

“You’re really not good at pleasantries, you know?”

“Oh yeah, I know, but it’s polite to pretend to be nice to your friends,” I said.

“Hmph,” she said. “Do you have any idea what the sisters at the monastery would say if they saw you calling me a friend?”

“They’d ask who the smoking hot girl you’re with is?” I tried.

She shook her head. “If they didn’t think I was some sort of saint they’d pull out the ruler and go on about bad influences for an hour.”

“The ruler, huh?” I asked. “You should tell Lucy about that, she was always really keen on spanking disobedient girls… do you think Lucy could cut it as a nun?”

“No,” Gomorrah said. “How is it that we’ve been together for less than a minute and you’re already being a pervert?”

I shrugged. “I’ve got a very simple mind. Half of it is filled with snark, the other half is loaded up with images of Lucy being lewd. Speaking of which, do you think I could borrow a nun costume?”

Gomorrah made a disgusted little noise. I figured she was actually amused by it all though. “I’d need to burn it, like how they disposed of unclean things in the past. And it’s called a habit, not a costume.”

“I’ll try not to make a habit of calling it a costume then,” I said.

She glanced my way, and while I knew she couldn’t see my smug grin through my helmet, I liked to think that she could sense it.

“Where are we heading to again?”

“Black Bear, I think. Some little mining town about an hour north from here.”

A map appeared, superimposed over the rainy city on the other side of the windshield. Our location was a glowing dot, and our destination another. Gomorrah manipulated the yoke and we shifted just a little bit. “An hour north, huh,” she muttered.

I only-just had time to grab onto my launcher before we accelerated forwards and everything became a whole lot heavier for a moment. A glance at the speedometer before Gomorrah showed it shooting past the two-hundreds, then the threes, before slowing down in the four-hundreds.

“I guess it won’t take an hour then,” I said.

“I’d hope not,” she shot back. “So, details?”

“Right. Deus Ex was about as enlightening as usual, which is to say, not very. Basically, some stealth aliens settled down near the town. We need to keep it safe until the big guns hit the hive. Probably going to send the aliens running.”

Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.

“So, we’ll be playing a defensive game, then,” Gomorrah said. “I can work with that.”