This is a boy’s adventure tale.
But this is not a boy’s adventure tale prepared by a stuffy old man in a tweed jacket with elbow patches. This is the sort of story that a boy might imagine for himself, filled with action, mystery, a red-hot space queen, and nary a whiff of precious moral instruction.
Well, maybe there is some moral instruction. But this is Reversed Black Maria. Nothing is as it seems, and the thread is very fine, indeed.
A Reversed Black Maria Novelette in Multiple Parts
Thump!
Thump!
Thump!
Something rough scraped across Oskar’s cheek. It broke the skin. Blood flowed.
Thump!
Thump!
Oskar stirred, fighting for consciousness against the clammy fuzz in his head. His forearms ached as if they were caught in a vise, and with every shock his chin slapped against something as firm and unrelenting as the stem of an icebreaker. The rhythmic jolts kept coming. Each one hurt worse than the last...
He snapped awake. He was riding on Inna’s back as she ran through a spruce forest. She held his arms secure with a single hand. Her grip might have anchored a flyer. Her muscular neck was the bruising ship’s prow. He pulled his head upright. “Inna...” he slurred.
“Shh, not now. Grab my waist with your legs, if you can.”
He complied as best he could. On the third try, he managed it, and locked his ankles together against her flat, stone-hard abdomen.
It was then he noticed she was covered in blood.
At first, he thought it was his own, dribbled from his smarting cheek. But there was far too much. Inna’s beautiful mantle was soggy with the stuff, and droplets of it flew from her face as she run. One struck Oskar in the eye.
“Are you alright?” he gasped.
“Never better,” she replied. “Keep it down, we’re on the run!”
“From who? Where’s farmor and farfar?”
“Not now, I said!” Inna hissed.
They burst out of the forest onto a grassy glade. It was filled with nude sunbathers catching the last rays of the October sun. They were the first real people Oskar had seen all day. Inna didn’t slow down. She maneuvered between their blankets like a jet fighter, kicking up dust and thatch as she cut the curves. Her passage caused a stir.
“Hei!”
“Slow down! What’s the rush?”
A group of young men ran to head her off, laughing as they came. Inna easily avoided the first few interceptors, but soon found her path blocked by a ragged line of bright, grinning youth. She halted before them, panting from her exertions. She released Oskar’s arms, and he slid awkwardly off her back.
“Get out of my way,” she said, in a voice that might have convinced mountains to move.
Her order was met with impolite laughter. One of the cheekier boys approached her. “Sorry, we didn’t hear you. What with the emergency and all that, we’re getting tired of being ordered around,” he said.
Inna wasn’t listening to him. “Oskar. Drop,” she commanded.
“Huh? Why?”
There was quick movement off to the side, at the tree line. Oskar turned to see a squad of black riflemen materialize out of thin air. Their masked faces were festooned with black lenses–Nil’s “too many eyes”–and their weapons were trained on Inna.
Moving faster than the eye, she shoved Oskar to the ground. With her free hand, she plucked the cheeky nudist off his feet and flung him at the soldiers. Two were mowed down by his flying body.
The glade erupted in pandemonium. There was a roar of gunfire. Shrieking sunbathers scattered in all directions. But Inna charged her attackers. Oskar watched her through a hail of flechettes and flying gore.
The first man, she killed with punch to the face. Glistening brains splattered the golden grass.
The second man, she impaled on the rifle of the first. Blood speckled the overhanging leaves.
The third man, she tore open with a heavy limb scooped from the ground. His shocking yellow guts spilled out.
On she fought, slaying and slaying, though flechettes shredded her flesh, and her back was thorny with the knife-hilts of her victims. She had no strategy or technique, just inhuman speed, strength, and endurance. Not once did she slacken, nor did she cry out in pain. But pain must surely have maddened her, for when she came to the last soldier, she fell on him and tore out his throat with her teeth. Her mannish Adam’s apple bobbed as she swallowed.
It was over almost before it began. A hush descended on the forest. The grassy glade was littered with helmets, bent and broken gauss rifles, and corpses torn asunder, as if by an immense wild beast. An arm wrapped in the black tatters of a Casper suit lay at Oskar’s feet, still leaking into the thirsty soil.
Inna stood tall in the middle of a universe of crimson destruction, a stark colossus clad in blood and the hanging tatters of shredded clothes. She shrugged, and the blades and bullets of her enemies slurped out of her flesh. A stubborn plasma knife remained embedded in the mighty buttress of her trapezius. She plucked it out and tossed it aside. “Are you okay?” she asked.
Oskar forced words out of his mouth. “You...killed them. You ate one, even.”
Inna wiped black gore from her lips. “I won’t turn down a willing sacrifice.”
Something snapped inside of Oskar. “You call that willing?” he shouted. “They were only human. They never had a chance against you. What about their rights?!”
“They lost those when they came before me. They became my chattels, to dispose of as I saw fit. For your sake, I consumed them.”
“You can’t kill people! What gives you the authority?!”
Inna’s expression hardened. Her reply was sharp and precise as a scalpel. “You haven’t been listening. Whether I like it or not, I Am. I am authority, and I am law. Nothing is forbidden to me. The universe is my table, and everything within it is my meat.”
Oskar stood slack-jawed. He’d never heard such a mad thing said before, not even by the pasteboard villains of holonovels. Hearing it from Inna’s gory lips terrified him inexpressibly. “That stuff about being a goddess...you believe it?” he demanded.
She nodded. “I do. But it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t. Belief means nothing. Nature means everything. What is, is.”
Oskar took an involuntary step backwards, away from the immense, blood-soaked destroyer. “You’re crazy. It’s all crazy. Where are farfar and farmor? Where is Tante Karina?!”
“They’re in good hands, Oskar.”
“Where?!”
“I don’t know, exactly. I’m...”
“No, no good! I’m going to find them!” Oskar exclaimed, cutting her off. He darted for the forest, toward the trail they’d come by, toward his family, toward a place that wasn’t full of death and madness.
“Oskar, no! Not that way!!” Inna shouted after him.
Oskar hadn’t gone a dozen steps before he plowed into an invisible man. Ungentle hands grabbed him and shoved him to his knees. A plasma knife ignited at his neck. A filtered voice crackled. “Target secured.”
“Let me go!” Oskar hollered.
A rough glove clamped down on his mouth, and the knife at his throat bit, just enough to draw blood. “Shut up.”
Oskar shut up.
The air curdled, and resolved into heavily armed soldiers wearing inky black Casper suits and carrying massive shackles like the kind used to restrain Rottwald meatpanzers. The man with the knife was their leader. Oskar could feel stress radiating from him. These guys were terrified, and rightly so.
“Your Imperial Majesty, drop your weapons and submit to restraint, or the kid dies,” the leader barked.
Inna shrugged off the remnants of her ruined jacket and stood naked from the waist. With bloody hands on her hips, she was an image to shame even proud Nike of Samothrace. “Where would I hide a weapon?” she retorted.
“Do you think I’m joking? Submit to restraints, or he dies!”
She smiled carnivorously. “Joking no, lying yes. My friend is the only thing standing between you and hell. If you cut his throat, you’ll be dead before he will.”
“You’re in no position to make threats!”
“Neither are you. The difference is, I can make good on mine. Miriam, now!”
“Miri...?” the leader said, but his voice cut off in a disgusting plastic gobble. Something heavy struck Oskar’s shoulder, and rolled off. It was his captor’s head. Scrambling away, he discovered that the remaining soldiers were equally dead, all neatly decapitated. Behind their crumpled bodies stood a singular woman clothed in silver and sable. She had dark eyes, flawless olive skin, and long, sharp blades in place of arms. She was one of the dreaded Ersatzengel, or Oskar had never heard of them.
He leapt away from this awful new visitant. Inna caught him and pulled him close. “Oskar, are you alright?” she asked.
He nodded. There were no words left in him.
Inna acknowledged the Ersatzengel. “Thank you, Miriam. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t arrived.”
The dark woman’s blades melted, and reformed into graceful arms. She fell to one knee and bowed. “Exalted One, Please forgive my tardiness. I was far away, guarding the approaches of the Coreward Loop. The Arzenekoi are restless. Many of my order are fighting to hold the shunts open. But seeing what has happened to you, I suspect the attacks are just a diversion.” Her voice was soft, yet clear.
Raina waved away her apology. “You were right on time, as always. I think you’re right. We’re experiencing another coup. What’s our situation? I’ve been out of the loop for twenty minutes.”
“The others are safe aboard ship. But there are many enemies massing to attack, both by land and air. Unless we leave immediately, we will be cut off. I have conserved enough power for a single ghostride.”
“Excellent. We go, then.”
Oskar looked up at the cloudless sky. “Do we have a flyer? I don’t see anything.”
Inna grinned. “We don’t need one. Miriam, if you please.”
Immediately, without a discernible transition, the trio stood inside the domed bridge of a gigantic starship, surrounded by empty consoles and colorful constellations of holographic controls and monitors. The walls were transparent. A pair of thick crescents hung in the blackness ahead, one pale blue, and the other bone-white. Earth and moon. Once Oskar shook off his disorientation, he realized that he could see the golden scar of the Sahara desert, half-obscured by a mighty arc of clouds.
Inna laid a friendly hand on his back. “Oskar, welcome aboard the Imperatrix Galaxia.”
New chapter coming Feb 17!
