THE GUARDSMAN: Book 2: Blood Debts – Chapters 59
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The Guardsman, Book 2: Blood Debts:
Chapter 59)
“Lady Persephone, I have been dying to ask this question but never found a place for it, I might as well shoehorn it in now, ‘Why are you coming to these … factories’?”
Persephone’s easy, musical laughter rolled from her as she and April strolled above the automated materials receiving area. “Well that’s easy, I’ve never seen it before and I’m curious. I know you can ask a harder question than that … the meaning of life perhaps?”
April offered directly, “No, not today,” April took the liberty to joke back, “Maybe we should cover that topic in a sit-down studio interview someday, where we can have less noise and fewer of your adoring fans.” If the studio didn’t like it, they could edit on their own dime and rebroadcast, after they paid her.
Not to be outdone Persephone replied airily, “Well then, in that case, I suppose we will need to do a studio date, I don’t suppose my answer will be anything more than ‘I don’t know’.” Persephone smiled her charming smile back at April and the camera while leaning over the railing to see some anonymous rail car lifted from the tracks, as one of their scores of guides pointed out the movement from ground level to the receiving bin, many meters above.
Her head cocked slightly further to the far side as she leaned forward again, and her shadow stepped past Guillermo and into the shot. Poor Guillermo only stepped to his left to try and reopen a decent picture on the shot, but he didn’t speak up when recording, he never spoke, ever. He was frustrated, April could tell by the look in his eyes. Reaching her hand out, April pushed the shadow’s shoulder, “Excuse me! You are in the shot!” His hand closed around the back of Persephone’s shirt and belt, instead of pulling her back as April expected, he allowed Persephone to lean further out into the open.
April recoiled her hand at the modest twitch of the hood in her direction. In the noise of the open-air receiving bay, she couldn’t tell if he had growled at her or not. That man never spoke on camera and did his best to always hide his face.
One of the drab little workers who was hounding them, and constantly interrupting her interview, hounding shots, and getting in the background, pointed down at the rail car drifting up off the tracks far below. “See that Lady Persephone? That over there is where the raw iron enters our plant.”
Persephone asked, “Just iron?” April thought the stupid question would need to come out before broadcast, no one would be interested in that.
The dirty gray little man replied, “No, Lady. Just today, on this one shipment, we can handle all manner of inputs from plastics, to ceramics, to iron and steel, to exotic metals. They might come in slightly different ways, but they are all sorted and processed along with the others. We know what is coming in based on the cargo bill of lading on the cars so the receiving line can actually switch between cars if someone decides to get cute with their delivery and mix everything up into alternating cars.”
April wondered silently to herself, ‘Perhaps the question was not so bad after all, she may actually be interested and paying attention’.
The shadow retreated while Persephone firmly planted her feet on the expansive catwalk over the rail yard and receiving ports. The gantry crane neared the gaping hopper. Persephone’s hand traced the most likely path to the hopper and asked, “You are pulling the whole railcar up from the ground level. How do you prevent biological infection of the plant?”
April was somewhat shocked by the pointed question, coming from a soft royal aristocrat lady.
The little man in the coveralls laughed lightly, while the gantry slowly pulled the railcar to just below eye-level. “Ya’ mean the creepy-crawlies? Watch this…” Pointing below the massive hopper began to swing on what had been solid supports a moment before. The car didn’t traverse the horizontal distance, the hopper moved to cover it and catch what might fall.
The car began to slowly tip in the grip of the gantry crane. The hopper thumped into place shaking the entire catwalk, startling the visitors, and drawing smiles from the laborers. They were tougher than these richy-rich tower dwellers, they knew it and took pride in it. The four visitors probably all had private windows, where they could at least see the fog and air cars skimming by all day. If the laborers ever got a window in their own dwellings, half of them would call in sick, just to look out all day.
The incineration security field snapped into place, angry red around the entrance to the hopper, as a resonant warning siren blared at the car seconds before it began to tilt precariously over the field.
Persephone cocked her head again and scowled at the car. Guillermo caught the look on the vid and April was puzzled to the point of inability to ask a new question. The iron ingots began to shift and thunder out of the car into the hopper. Occasional flashes of incandescent light snapped into and out of existence as various bugs and pests exploded as fast as gravity could pull them into the field that shredded their biological makeup.
The drab little man beat April to it, “Wha’s wrong Lady Persephone?”
Flashing her hand irritably at the siren next to the field, she snapped, “What is the point of that?”
The worker said, “Well, warning siren letting anyone freeloading in the car know that they are about to hit the field and get stripped to pieces and atomic parts, along with all the biological creepy-crawlies.”
Frustrated, she growled, “Well of course I understand that part, but it serves no purpose. All it does is blow out your hearing here and if you are in the car by the time it goes off the car is already dumping you into a field you can’t avoid … it is almost special torture.”
The grizzled laborer, looked unsure and asked, “I dun’a un’nerstand Princess Persephone?”
Adding more heat to her voice than she probably intended, and definitely losing her schooled presence in front of a forgotten camera, “It’s stupid! What is the point!? If you are in that railcar, the gantry has already picked you ten meters off the ground before it begins to empty, so you can’t jump. If you are in the car, hear the siren, or start getting tipped, you have nothing to grab onto, and even if you did you would be knocked out by tons of iron. If you managed to somehow climb out of the car, there is nothing to hold onto, as the gantry turns the car you would just fall out, if you ran around the car as it turned you would need to be perfect or you would fall. If you fall, you hit the hopper and are atomized. If you miss the hopper you fall ten meters to the concrete, gravel, and steel of the track yard below and die. It is stupid!”
Unsure the response was hesitant, ” … Well … Lady … that’s … well, that’s the rules, that’s how i’s done … We don’a make ’em, we jus’ follow ’em.”
The camera caught Persephone’s fury abating as she turned from the car as it was righting in the gantry, and she smiled sadly at the innocent and honest response, “I know. I’m not angry at you…” Her frustrated exhale punctuated her sentence, “Things just made so much sense from my perspective,” gesturing her hand at the ever-present support beams above their heads and the fabled sky somewhere above many, many layers of ceiling, “Way up there somewhere. It doesn’t make as much sense when I see it face to face.”
Unsure the worker apologized, “I’m’a sorry my Lady … I … well, I didn’t mean to upset you…”
Persephone’s amused, childlike, and eminently radiant smile lit the drab interior of the receiving bay and shone on the man who was apologizing for ‘her’ mistake. “It’s not your fault.” She shone bright and massive in the cavernous loading bay, “The more I wander our world the more things I see that we could fix for the better of us all that would cost next to nothing to do.”
The camera caught every gentle flick of her eye, the curve of her smile, and the cascade of her dark hair as she proclaimed the fate of hundreds of worlds, with her simple sentence.
April just had to ask. She stepped forward into the brief silence, “Sir, could you please share with our viewers your name and position here?”
The hard old manual laborer offered, “A’course, missy! I’m’a Sven Tobarious Lee. I’m’a the super for this here level. Pleas’a’mee’ya!” Extending his right hand at the unexpected honor accorded him while in the presence of the most beautiful and powerful woman on the planet, Sven smiled through broken, but relatively clean teeth.
Persephone smiled her amused smile at Sven, to flick back to Samson’s hidden eyes, and on past him and the camera, then settled on April while she occupied the background of the shot between Sven and April. Persephone knew the next few seconds could make or break April’s career with the viewing public. April would never have a chance like this again to step up to this particular opportunity without looking like a self-effacing phony.
April extended her hand to Sven and was caught by his grasp.
In that instant April knew that this stranger Sven was not just the ‘dirty little man’ she had presupposed. He was as hard as the steel and iron he worked all day. His hard hands felt like they could crush walnuts, the cords and cables of his hands neither bent nor twitched under her gentle grasp. He stopped his hand so he grasped but where she knew he could easily crush every bone in her hand. As he shook her hand gently but firmly, he asked, “Nice to meet you, young lady, what’s your name?”
April offered, “I’m April Nightingale, I’m a…”
Sven interrupted, “Ah! My li’l lady loves your shows! ‘S all I ‘ear about over dinner. She’d’a have me ‘ome watchin’ with ‘er if she could. ‘Er shift ends jus’ in time fur ‘er da git back ‘n watch ya from ‘er commu’.”
April accepted, “Well I’m honored!” Trying some of Persephone’s off-color charm, “I suppose I can forgive you for not scheduling your shifts around my show.” Sven kept shaking her hand as he and the rest guffawed obscenely at April’s simplistic joke. Something was still wrong with the handshake and April couldn’t put her mind to it.
Frustrated, she turned her hand, palm up, and looked at the area that was bothering her. Sven’s hand played lightly under her manipulations. “Oh my God! Sven, you are missing two fingers!”
Sven shrugged noncommittally, “Nah … It ain’t tha’d’a bad … Jus’ the li’l one ‘n the part’a the’other.”
April’s shock and horror registered clear on the vid as she shook, “What do you mean ‘isn’t that bad’! You are missing fingers! How did that happen?”
Dismissively, Sven shared, “Ah, ‘t’was years ‘n years ‘go … I was workin’ a machine press upstairs ‘n pressed ‘da button too soon. Sheet metal wasn’ set right, ‘n kicked, pull’t ‘da hand in’da press and as I pulled it back, press closed. Only hurt fur’a secon’. Then it di’n’ matter none.”
Horrified April gasped, “What do you mean it only hurt for a second!? You almost lost your hand! What did you do about it?” She was near hyperventilating.
Sven stated the obvious, “Well, not like I could’a got’em back … went ta ‘da med, wrappe’t ’em up ‘n wen’a back ta work. Had’a shift’da finish … I’m’a sorry Miss April. Ma’ ol’ lady ‘el kill me if I keep’a go’n clog up y’er show wit’ my words. I’ll git’outa y’er way. I’m’a sorry Miss April.”
April accepted, “No! Thank you! It is always nice to meet a fan, even if you are only a fan at the dinner table, thanks to your wife. But really, all I do is record what nice things there are to talk about to fill network time. I’m really not all that important.”
Sven’s attention shifted from April to Persephone and slipped April under his arm, between himself and Persephone. Turning back to April as she passed him, “Y’all go ‘n ‘ave fun seein’ da rest,” deliberately but briefly pausing to correct his lazy grammar in front of the proper ladies, “of our plant. I’m sure you will see lots more things of interest than just our little scoop ‘n bucket here. All we really do all day is stand here and make sure the right rocks fall into the buckets they are supposed to fall into.”
April shook her head in confusion after hearing Persephone’s ‘Thank you Sven’ followed by the rising cheers from the floor as their party of four filtered through the mob. April would never understand the Empire’s common people. So easily impressed one instant, yet so unforgiving the next, they were truly an enigma.
After countless floors and stairs, levels of confounding complexity leading farther and farther up from the loading dock, probably some thousand meters up, ore and ingots were turning into things that looked like parts of things April might actually recognize. Still too far removed from her reality to click into place but looking like pieces to a picture puzzle she might recognize eventually given enough time and assembled pieces.
The higher they climbed the closer the raw materials and components became to parts. Those parts eventually coalesce into useful products at the very top of the tower or as components to other larger parts that would be finished elsewhere.
Finally, at some absurd floor number, every level equaling a flight of stairs climbed, April couldn’t take it anymore. April kicked off her shoe and rubbed her throbbing foot while Persephone blathered with some new worker type.
Looking at Guillermo, his steady hand still holding the camera on the Royal Lady and the worker, April allowed herself to drop her carefully maintained screen persona while kicking off her shoe and standing on the grating. Forgetting the shoe, April caught the raised heel of the left in the cross-hatched catwalk and pulled that one off too. After a quick rub, she couldn’t take it anymore and was standing on her feet allowing her weight to sink into the gaps in the catwalk grating.
The simple pleasure of scratching her throbbing foot over the iron catwalk was pure ecstasy. Content, April given a choice at that very moment would have picked the impromptu foot rub to sex.
The stupid shadow was twitching uncontrollably in what had to be a silent laugh while his master was busy talking to the worker who was explaining the flow of ‘this’s ‘n that’s’ from lower levels onto this one and out some innocuous hole into the next level. Persephone had in fact used Samson’s name before in her presence, but April was just so annoyed and pained that she had forgotten all about the exchange weeks before with the school administrators. She just dwelled on the silently obnoxious, condescending bastard who only received them, and would never tell her his name, he hardly ever talked but in cryptic military speak, and never even did the slightest to improve the interview.
The face disappeared every time they got close to a final destination. The man was like clockwork, precise and consistent. As she scraped her abused foot across the metal grating, she wondered how many hard copy forms the bastard needed to fill in and file in stamped triplicate before cutting a fart. He was so consistent that they never knew where they were going but could just watch him and know when they were close, usually seven to eight minutes out from a landing. That meant he knew exactly where he wanted to put up his hood and maintain silence. Like he had flown all the routes before she and Guillermo had joined the ‘Royal Lady’.
He may have in fact flown all the routes. The anal jerk probably planned trips to the bathroom. As her foot sunk deeper into the grating, April felt slightly less irritable. Almost like her tension and soreness were pouring through the gaps in the metal. A few more minutes of rocking her feet back and forth and she couldn’t care what the jerk thought.
Rocking her right foot back onto her bare heel, April felt a shiver of orgasmic delight shoot up the back of her leg, tingle up her spine, and disappear into her brain, followed by an involuntary sigh. Stretching and rolling her neck and shoulders. Eyes closed while abused muscles and joints worked harder than the gym ever achieved.
Guillermo continued to orbit Persephone while she chatted with the ‘no-body’, about whatever his tedious job was, in this infinite stack of stairs and obscure machinery and pounding, deliberate noise.
April hurt from hair down to feet, and she was wishing her feet could drip through the floor grating.
The aching slabs of muscle on her neck and shoulder felt pressure and sudden delight. As April realized that the shadow was next to her it spoke, “Thank you for doing this.” Persephone’s eyes flashed an irate thunderclap in her direction. The shock stood April straight against the guard rail. His fingers traced down from the base of her skull down to her shoulders, buckled her knees, and pulled a groan of delight from her core. “This means more to my Lady than you could possibly know. Thank you.” The exquisite hand dropped callously from her and the marvelous sensation disappeared.
April felt herself dripping through the grating, under the stranger’s touch. The employee was pointing out through the cavernous space of the enormous multi-level automated machine shop. His rambling was tracked, dutifully along his arm, by Guillermo. Guillermo dutifully tracked from metal presses to machine tools, to finishing-something-or-other machines, farther and farther away from the exchange that mattered, to their quartet.
The plasma burns from Persephone’s irate eyes, clenched jaw, and balled fist was lost on April as she dripped more of her soul through the iron catwalk floor.
When the shadow’s hand closed over her entire neck. She felt like she was a wet cloth and his firm hands were closing over her and draining her toxic tension out of her bottom and toes at the same time, like he was squeezing her neck and flushing all the crap out of her system, allowing it to drip from her heels.
April’s eyes rolled into the back of her head, so far, they hurt, at the bottom of her eyeballs, with the straining muscle, but she didn’t care. It was only a second as he moved behind her, but April didn’t care.
The wonderful pressure dropped away from her soul, as the remnants filtered out of her feet, then through the catwalk. While reality settled back into slow pieces, in her brain, April never noticed Persephone’s jealous glare at the shadow.
Bumping through more and more levels of the factory, and finally to within sight of the upper levels, April kept her shoes in her left hand, below the camera frame, while the microphone in her right hand flicked back and forth to Persephone.
April was so bored with this never-ending interview she was ready to just walk out and be done with it. The tedium was numbing. Stairs, followed by stairs, followed by stairs, followed by a drab coverall-wrapped person, and repeating the tedium, just went on and on into the sky.
April wanted to call it quits but the stupid princess just would not stop climbing stairs!
Then that silly princess was irritable all of a sudden, dropping hard, clipped replies and clenched looks, to simple questions. The irritation of the whole situation was oppressing. April just wanted to go home and be comfortably ignored by her husband, in the comforts of her own apartment, and order some food delivery.
Dragged up another interminable set of stairs the irritatingly physically fit princess continued to jabber with the next in an infinite succession of ‘Joe-Worker-Someone-Whoevers’.
The tedium was stretching on, and on, and on with every level, and every step farther up the tower’s infinite iron skeleton and crisscrossing footpaths. She could finally see the top of the building, but it was like every step took them no closer.
Flicking an eye to the camera, in Guillermo’s steady hand, to make sure it wasn’t on her, April flicked her eyes to her left, the ‘Marathon Princess’ was plodding along at her tireless pace. To Guillermo’s right, the shadow hung silent as ever at some turn in the wall, looking to his left over his shoulder and past her to some innocuous point down the walkway, then to the right, up and past the turn in the catwalk that transitioned into the narrowing, final assembly levels that pulled all those obscure components together into parts of useful products. April thought she recognized pieces of utility machine and various disposable and durable goods, but again, could never be sure because there was no packaging, labels, or pricing, as there would be in a proper store, somewhere up in civilized society.
April groaned as the infinite progression, turned to yet again more infinite and less progression.
Persephone took Guillermo into her eye and discarded him as quickly as she realized he was focused on that beyond.
April’s stiff groaning neck, aching back, abused feet, and all without shoes for the last ridiculous number of levels, would not let her move another step. The irritation and agony were indescribable.
Persephone bored into Samson for the hundredth time in the last few levels, ever since he laid hands on … that woman. If her eyes could flay, Samson would be cellular thin sheets of film in her hands.
April was oblivious and missed it.
April was scratching her feet on the rough grating of the non-slip catwalk. The purrs from her new hobby rolled her eyes back into her head and set her shoulders to sinking.
Content with her place in life and Guillermo steadily collecting every piece of narrated explanation, in perfect form and artistic balance, she could relax against the railing.
How they had worked their way up from the very bottom, of the eighteen-hundred-meter tower, was beyond her. All April cared about was that Persephone was drifting off on her own little cloud, leaving her alone, while they received video capture of every piece of minutia at the final assembly and packaging level of the absurdly large structure.
Leaning back and rolling her neck, eyes lidded, April flexed her shoulders, and was completely oblivious to Persephone’s pointed, accusing finger at Samson and silently mouthed ‘I’m going to kill you,’
Samson’s hooded, but desperate and silently mouthed ‘For what?!’, and appropriate hand motions, were again completely missed by April and Guillermo. Her aching body cried with every fiber of her brain. He focused tirelessly on some piece of machinery the worker was narrating.
April’s hands crossed as they rose, turned outward, clasped against each other, and stretched her shoulders, eyes still closed and rolled back into her head. Persephone’s irate but still silent ‘You know God damn well for what … We’re going to have a long talk about this!’
Samson’s rolled eyes, confusion, and frustration did nothing to placate the fury of the Heiress to the Empire or extricate himself from his self-made doghouse.
April’s hands slipped apart and slapped to the rail behind her back as her head rolled and the tension slipped further away. She didn’t know how much further she could push this streak of good luck. But she intended to ride it as long as possible.
Groaning muscles did nothing to her mental benefit. Considering the absurdity of the situation where stairs were killing her, she considered the utility of maintaining her personal trainer at the gym, her personal trainer was looking more and more like a waste of money. She could get this walking stairs and standing around, why pay the extra credits out of her wages to someone who just watched her sweat and the annoying trip to the silly room with other sweating people.
While her eyes opened slowly to check on the world inflicting its pain on her form, April saw the scowling Persephone, and the dutiful Guillermo, and completed the circuit with a glance at the shadow.
As the shadow’s overcoat fell back, parting, from his moving hands, some part deep in the back of her brain applied a swift kick to the rest of her brain, registering danger, as the shadow pulled two pistols from the black interior of the overcoat.
Mouth falling open April struggled to pull in enough air to shout, something … anything.
The shadow beat her to it, “Move!” The right pistol jumped twice. The hypersonic cracks and ionized atmosphere didn’t even register in April’s shocked brain.
The left, then right cracked in rapid succession, following the first two rounds.
His step to the catwalk’s railing set her face level with the pistol barrels. Her eyes grew wide, and she felt her jaw drop.
Again he shouted, this time in her face “Move, God damn it!” The forearm at the back of her head set her in motion, but in motion to the wall, opposite the catwalk’s railing.
He tossed her spinning back out of his way.
The slapping impact with the wall sent stars and pain ripping through April’s mind and body. As April’s mind reeled as she turned from the wall and the pistols barked death again, this time the silvery-white streaks were at her eye level after she had bounced off the far wall, and turned to face Samson then looking to her left to the offending perpetrator.
Samson snapped, “Persephone! Behind the corner! Go now!” The twist of Persephone’s hair receding to her right sent April after her. The man was there to protect her, the safest place to be was next to what he was protecting. April scrambled down the catwalk grabbing Guillermo’s shoulder as she passed.
His mass and her speed turned her back to face him, as she saw something long and dark gray spinning down into the chasm of the factory. The crumpled gray form at the far corner of the structure, she was attempting to cover behind, twitched and rolled violently as blood poured from his form, dripping lazily down the levels. April realized it was a wounded man.
A second rifleman leaned out, over his fallen companion, and fired three rounds that cut the air twice over the outside of Samson’s right shoulder and the third round passed his left ear and parted the space between April and Guillermo, at eye level, with crackling white light.
The round that passed between their faces slammed into the concrete and exploded into a dirty concrete-colored cloud and sharp stinging shards that peppered the sides of their faces.
Samson’s pistols cracked four more rounds in rapid succession, making the streaks of lightning even more real to April. Three stabbed the second attacker chest high, with wet thwacking sounds, the fourth went wide to the outside just over his shoulder. The rifle slapped and clattered off the wall while the body was tossed back, and their feet came level with his chest before his back smacked to the grating of the wall without a twitch.
The shadow growled as he backed over April and Guillermo, “Amateur mistake of me.” Looking back at her, he barked, as she peaked around the corner behind Guillermo “Move! Get the hell out of my way and around that corner before I toss you over this railing and am done with you.”
Turning back to the lethal action, the wounded first attacker rolled back as the second attacker’s rifle fell across his fallen buddy’s useless legs. His right hand closed over the receiver while his left held his shredded guts in place.
As April neared the corner and turned back to look, the man covered in blood and fluids across the chasm, tossed the weapon in his hand and across his legs to reach the grip. Samson grunted in annoyance as April fell behind the wall with Guillermo. April tried to pull Guillermo back around the corner, but he was locked into place with his elbow and hands supporting the camera perfectly level and steady along the wall recording the unfolding action. Instead, she slipped free and turned into the cold blank face of Persephone.
The final single crack of a pistol and the immediate clatter of a weapon on the catwalk told her the wounded combatant was no longer wounded.
Samson grumbled, “Dumb-ass, I would have left you alone if you had stayed there. But stupid me, I gave you that weapon though.” Tilting his pistol’s muzzle down a flick of his thumbs across the back of both weapons showed him rounds remaining in both weapons magazines.
He swapped pistols in his hands, rounded the corner, and looked up into a new barrage, this time from Persephone, “I can’t believe you did that!”
Persephone’s assault caught him off guard, “Persephone! What are you talking about?”
Persephone snapped, “Samson Rockpoint! You know very well what I’m talking about…”
Frustrated, Samson barked, “No, I don’t,” peeking quickly around the corner as Guillermo recorded the bodies being dragged back around the corner, “I had to kill that guy, he was going for a weapon. He was still a combatant at that point.”
Persephone complained, “No! You big … clod! I don’t care about that.”
April realized her mouth was hanging open as the two fired words back and forth across her nose.
Frustrated and busy, he snapped, “Well then, what are you mad about!”
The little woman barked, “I’m not ‘mad’, Samson!” The venom in her use of the name was drained by the crack of three more shots.
Guillermo didn’t twitch. Samson leaned back with an irritated expression on his face, fired three rounds over Guillermo’s right shoulder, looked back at the fuming Princess, then back over his sights, and sent four more rounds down the catwalk to the opposite corner.
Facing back to Persephone, “What the hell!? If you’re not mad about something, why are you so mad?!”
She sniped, “I’m not mad. I’m … disappointed.”
Baffled, Samson repeated, “‘Disappointed’? Disappointed in what?!”
Two more three-round bursts cracked the air behind him. He uttered an annoyed grunt and stepped backward with his right leg allowing him to lean past the corner, with very little of himself exposed, and cracked a dozen rounds down the wall.
Sneaking a peek over Guillermo’s shoulder at the display on the camera, April could see that one of the men in gray was down halfway between their corner and the one the attackers were using for cover. The wall at the far end looked chewed to pieces by the rounds ripping into the structural materials.
Samson demanded, “How can you possibly be ‘disappointed’, Persephone!? I don’t even know what you are talking about … It is not like I’m the one who planned these guys to crash your party is it?!” She hadn’t seen him do it, but at some point, during the chaos he had thrown back his hood, no longer trying to avoid the cameras.
Persephone’s pouting came to a head as she snapped, “Because you … you’re handling … her!” Turning to the Princess, April saw the finger pointed in her own face.
Incensed he snapped, “What!? I never ‘handled’ her! You can’t think of anything better to do than worry about this now, of all times?” The sudden fusillade of rounds cracking into the corner and wall sent Guillermo falling backward, and Samson’s attention was drawn back down the catwalk. His right hand poked around the corner and he fired the remainder of his magazine blind down the wall at the attackers.
Guillermo had hardly finished falling and rocking back and forth from the shocked impact with the floor that had saved his life. Guillermo’s eyes were wide and unblinking as he clutched the camera in his hands and sucked in several rapid breaths. Samson had expended the remainder of his fifty-round magazine during Guillermo’s fall.
Turning back to Persephone, Samson calmly ejected the magazine from his right weapon and caught it in his left fingertips as the rest of his hand held the second pistol. They were behind cover and in a relative lull, so she ignored Samson’s cool logic and pressed her hot issue, “Yes … You … Did!” His frustrated exhale and glance at the heavens didn’t slow down his fingers as they pulled a fresh magazine from his waist bandoleer hidden under his outer shirt. It slipped smoothly into the magazine well and snapped into place while the empty returned to the pouch in its place.
Still confused, April was just glad that Persephone’s finger was no longer in her face and was planted firmly on her hip to match the other hand, as she stared down her guard.
Samson ordered, “We need to move soon. We can’t stay on this catwalk forever.” Helping Guillermo up Samson continued, “I need you all to follow this wall back along the exterior. I need you to get all the way over to that next support, fifty meters down the way there, and wait.” He leaned back to check the enemy. “I’ll set a base of fire here and I need you all to run around the boxed-off support to the other side, just like this one. Is that clear?”
April and Guillermo nodded and were instantly ready to move. Persephone didn’t reply as she bristled, turned, and strolled away down the catwalk like she was walking to a closet to get a pair of shoes, head held high, she was that insanely jealous. April and Guillermo tripped over themselves catching up with her.
Until Persephone slammed to a halt and crossed her arms glaring over at Samson, April thought she had done a pretty good job keeping things together. However, she almost lost it and fell off the walk when Persephone turned and glared at her.
Pinned in place, the Royal Lady flicked her eyes over to her guard and nodded once. The steady crack of pistols set her turning to walk deliberately the twenty meters around the support, while April and Guillermo scrambled to get past her and around the corner to safety. The Lady’s contempt splashed over them like a bow wake from a ship as she passed them and turned back the way she came while recrossing her arms.
The air split into lines of white lightning, as the tempo and cadence of the fire changed, and the attackers replied in kind to both Samson’s provocation and covering fire.
Seconds later the tempo changed again, back to Samson’s smaller less powerful pistols. The pistol in his left hand made a soft ‘tick’ sound while his back smacked into the wall, as he joined them.
The man was actually smiling.
Samson cheered, “Looks like I cut that one a little close, didn’t I?” He beamed to the group. Tipping the right-hand pistol forward, and flicking a finger over the back, while still smiling he practically giggled while he spoke, “This one’s out too. Pretty good fire control if I do say so myself.” Popping both magazines and pulling two more replacements, he seated the new ones into place. He then slipped the two expended magazines into the belt pouch. “I knocked another down, and I winged one, and I think maybe I winged a second.”
Persephone’s frustrated exhale drew attention back to her, as the heat drained from her voice, “Yes, a little too close apparently,” he traced her finger down the line of his jacket to the two new holes in the right side-back where rounds had passed so close they had passed between the open front, skimmed past his side and blown out the back of the overcoat, under his firing arm.
He exclaimed, “Those bastards!” Incensed, Samson shouted, “They put holes in my jacket! This is my favorite jacket!”
A second frustrated exhale drew his eye from the fingers poking out the back of his overcoat back to her, “Watch your language, Samson. And don’t think you are getting out of this so easily. I don’t care about your jacket; I’m still disappointed in you.”
Samson demanded, “For what?!”
The cameraman spoke for the first time ever, “Oh, would you two shut up!” Guillermo’s outburst was a first for him on a job, he never spoke when he had his camera running. “You two fight like a couple of old married people!”
April realized to her own horror why Persephone was so unhappy.
Samson still didn’t get it. Instead, he grumbled to Guillermo, “Give me that camera,” snatching the device out of Guillermo’s hands, twisting, flipping, and turning the device, “Does this thing let you turn the view screen?” Samson fumbled with the camera between his two pistols with the ends of his fingers.
The offended cameraman pressed a button on the underside of the still-recording camera’s view screen and unlocked the device. There was no point arguing with a man holding, not one, but two guns, and who had just killed or wounded up to six people in the last few seconds.
Allowing Guillermo to roll the viewer to the typically useless horizontal, Samson placed it on the interwoven iron of the catwalk floor. April leaned forward confused by the image of the wall. Samson’s gently guiding foot eased the camera out past the corner, pointing back the way they had come.
The same instant it cleared the wall, his right pistol rose to chest height, while still behind cover. Samson slipped it around the corner like a striking snake and cracked five shots down the walkway. His profound profanity made April cringe before he said, “There’s more of them now…”
April gasped, “What?”
At the same time April spoke, Guillermo blurted, “What do you mean ‘more’?”
Persephone’s tired patience forced her to speak overly calmly, “Samson … elaborate please…” Following April and Guillermo’s unconstructive outbursts, Persephone’s instruction pulled his attention away from the small monitor on the camera. The other two were ignored.
Samson shared, “They started with between six and eight. That was about fifteen minutes ago. Now there are at least twice that number. Even with the four I have knocked down, and two I winged. We are in deep shit.”
Fearful, April demanded, “What do we do?”
Samson ordered, “Well … we need to keep falling back. The exit to the upper areas is not too far ahead. We can move up or down from there. Up is probably best.” Looking down at the camera, then over to Guillermo, “Can you make this thing broadcast live? From here I mean?”
The unflappable cameraman told them, “Yes. All I need to do is put in the codes, and up-link a priority broadcast, and…”
Disinterested in the technical requirements, Samson snapped, “Yeah-yeah fine … shut up and do it.” A peek and a dozen quick shots later Samson slammed his back into the wall wide-eyed, as the hail of return fire ripped the air and thumped through the railing in several places cutting an eighteen-inch section free to fall into the interior of the building.
Looking back at the group smiling, Samson chirped, “I think that pissed ’em off. I think I got three more and winged two.” He added as a brief afterthought, “By the way, they are bounding forward by sections now. I caught them ducks in a row on the far column’s catwalk. They are pulling the rest up to the other side of this column. They are pretty disciplined, and maintain good order, even under fire.” The cracks of return and covering fire sent large chunks of the wall spinning and spraying into the air far past the railing. Looking to his right at Persephone, “So what the hell are you mad at me for?”
The crack of rifle shots was deadened by the large noisy interior space and the thick structural member between the shooters and them as targets. The zipping crack of hypersonic rounds was only more apparent with the crack of the rifles so deadened.
Persephone pouted, “You want to know why I’m mad at you?! Because you are a big, selfish jerk and only think of yourself!”
Irritated, Samson snapped, “How the hell is that?” The fire slackened after many long seconds of furious fire, Samson turned back to face the wall, pistols low, breathing slowly through his open mouth. His final inhale, sidestep, six quick shots, and immediate recoil, were followed by another furious pandemonium of exploding walls, cracking rounds, and “How am I selfish? I’m getting shot for you!”
Persephone’s fury outweighed her fear of death, “Because you were laying hands on…” sticking an accusing finger a mere centimeter from April’s face, “Her!”
Samson instantly objected, “What!? I did no such thing.”
Persephone filled in the blanks, “Yes, you did. You gave her a neck massage! I watched you!”
Heated with the distraction, Samson snapped, “I didn’t!” The inbound fire slackened for a few seconds, while Guillermo kept playing with the camera, “Hold on.” Samson leaned out snapped off a quick seven rounds and pulled back to face the wall just in time for his overcoat to settle back around him. He scratched his right shoulder with his left hand still holding the pistol and looked disappointedly into the wall.
Persephone growled, “Yes, you did, you gave her a neck rub, I watched. You give me neck rubs, nobody else, ever!”
Samson’s exhale knocked his head against the wall, with a soft thump, clearly audible among the chorus of cracking rounds, “Persephone, that wasn’t a massage, neck rub, or anything else. I had tried to talk to her twice before that and she was off in her own world or couldn’t hear me … I was pulling her head to me to get her attention and make sure she could hear me. Woman, I’m being shot for you today, I don’t think you need to worry about me grabbing April’s neck.”
Fussy and irritable Persephone snapped, “Fine you big baby, I’ll take you at your word. But you’re not being shot!”
Samson exhaled into the wall as he shook his head. When he stepped back from the wall and raised his right hand to the slackening fire, his left-hand middle and index fingers left the far side of the pistol’s grip together, and came off red. “Upper arm graze. Nothing to worry about. But I would rather not have any more holes than I already have.”
Before Persephone could reply, Guillermo’s delighted, “Got it,” cut her off as Samson looked at the kneeling, and momentarily forgotten, cameraman. “I had cut us off for a little while to set up the up-link but it’s working now, and I’m dumping the record as a data buffer and the live action is working.”
Samson ordered, “You,” bloody fingers on his left hand pointing to April, “Start doing your thing and talking. We need to displace soon, and we could use some help. Start filling people in.”
April launched into a steady stream of narrative connecting to the outside world while more rounds cracked past and Guillermo held the camera out along the floor, so he didn’t interfere with Samson’s movement. Side-stepping and leaning over to get a better view of the image the camera was capturing; Samson got an idea of what he was facing without needing to expose himself to look around the chipped and shattered wall corner.
April continued to hyperventilate into her microphone, running the last thirty minutes into one sentence. Persephone stepped close to add a few narrations of her own and to include ‘unimportant’ little details like, where they were, descriptions of who was attacking them, and where the bad guys were firing from.
Guillermo shouted and pointed, “Catwalk above!” That drew Samson’s attention away from the advancing foes along their own level, while firing rounds at them he recoiled and looked up to follow Guillermo’s fingers. A second squad was deployed across the facility, which was much narrower at this height, but still over two hundred meters across.
There was no way he could hit a point target at that range. Looking back to Persephone, he shouted, “Run! Now!” Persephone turned and bolted along the wall, Guillermo scoped up his camera and April tailed Persephone. Samson held the corner again, while the others fell back to a position waiting to bound around the next support.
As the squad, one level up continued to deploy across the building, Samson raised his weapons and emptied both fifty-round magazines at the newcomers.
He checked their advance and began to drive the point men back to their entry. With no cover from their front-facing Samson, they were vulnerable to his weapons even at a substantial range where any shot that landed would be pure luck.
While the point men were driven back into each other and the last few deploying from the hatch, the two men in the middle bumped into and became tangled with the man behind them who was still moving forward. All three were focusing their attention on suppressing fire on Samson. They were using individual and section movements, reacting to Samson’s fire, with the rest of the squad still pouring onto the catwalk from behind. Their attention immediately split between the moving target of Persephone and the lethal threat Samson posed. The well-oiled combat machine on the enemy’s side of the factory malfunctioned and produced an error.
The two middle shooters bumped into each other, one was advancing to the attack position, and one was retreating from Samson’s area fire. Their weapons tangled and knocked both men’s aim off. As more of Samson’s rounds thumped into the far walls, a third shooter, who was also backing up, tripped over the suddenly stopped tangle in the middle of the squad. The man toppled to his left, landing on the pile, in a clatter of weapons and assault gear, and slipped to the front. The middle man in the sandwich had his wind knocked out at the least, as he was dragged and knocked over the precipice by the man on top, whose gear he was tangled with the man landed on top of the pile and they fell off the edge of the catwalk.
As the dazed middle shooter tumbled out of the pile, toward the edge, he caught his feet before flipping over and falling, his weapon’s harness caught in the top man’s weapon harness and pulled him forward toward the edge.
Samson popped his empty magazines and slipped two reloads into the magazine wells.
The third man who had landed on top and fallen off the stack was pulled over the edge by the rolling falling second man who was slipping and disoriented from the tangle. The man who had fallen third swiped a hand desperately and clung to the catwalk railing post. The rest of his team caught them both, the second man dangling desperately from the tangled equipment, until the third man’s weapon’s harness broke at the quick release. His weapon followed his battle buddy over the ledge. The rest of the squad pulled the dangling man to safety, while their other teammate’s plunging screams faded and ended with a single crack when the falling man ended himself with his own pistol sidearm, somewhere before he landed far below. The rescued man was now useless until he claimed a new weapon since his weapon had fallen with his buddy.
Three dozen rounds, not a single hit, but one kill by falling and an ‘almost’. Samson shook his head laughing and looked over to Persephone and nodded to her readiness. The squad across the factory was still recovering and reorganizing.
Samson crouched low, took a deep calming breath, and lunged forward. His firing combat crouch lunge onto the platform brought him so close to the advancing point man on Samson’s side that if Samson had been standing when the man pulled the trigger, Samson would have been cut in half.
Instead, the assailant’s reflex action on the trigger clamped open on auto, caused the recoil to pull his weapon up and away from the intended target. Samson’s rounds passed up and through the point man’s midsection and out the back of his chest. They lifted the man and his weapon’s muzzle ever higher as the assailant fell backward and the weapon’s recoil, in the now lifeless arm, carried it even higher until the weapon’s magazine emptied.
Standing to get clear shots over the falling mass of the dead point man, Samson methodically began to pull the triggers in rapid succession sending a hail of lethal suppressing fire into the team advancing behind the dead point man. The team had to maintain fire discipline in the narrow file along the catwalk. Samson could and did blast rounds in their direction unconcerned about hitting friendlies to his front.
Immediately after walking his devastating fire up along the catwalk and emptying his pistols, Samson turned and sprinted around the three sides to where Persephone had waited a moment before. Samson slapped new magazines into his weapons as he ran.
The squad across the building was still recovering from pulling at their dangling comrade trying to get him to safety from over the ledge. Their two trailing squad members were in good order and firing at a point well behind Samson that had to be where Persephone and the reporters had taken shelter. Samson fired a dozen suppressing rounds their way and drew their attention. The surprise of Samson’s returned fire almost sent the squad member who had been dangling, toppling back over the ledge as the reorganizing squad scrambled for renewed firing positions, suddenly abandoning the shaking man.
While the flanking squad tracked Samson from the far side of the structure Samson backpedaled along the catwalk as fast as he could, move firing at the decimated squad Samson had just left while they tried to recover their two wounded men, from the tangle of dead, and at the following squad moving up behind the squad on Samson’s side of the factory.
The rounds from the two kneeling riflemen across the building struck the wall and lanced through Samson’s vision as he slammed into the railing, toppling backward. The blow was so hard on his kidneys that he felt a squirt of piss in his pants. He also felt a hand grabbing his coat and pulling him right and back around the corner to relative safety.
Guillermo’s right hand was pulling him in. There was the camera still in his left hand as they pirouetted wildly along the backdrop of the factory. Samson heard a detached voice that floated somewhere outside the pain in Samson’s lower back that was bad enough to white out his vision for a second, “I’ve gotcha.”
As Samson smacked face-first into the wall harder than he intended, he muttered, “Thanks.”
Pressing his back into the wall next to Samson, the camera held at eye level and looking out over the chaos and snapping rounds from the two maneuvering enemy forces, as they closed in on their position. Guillermo burst into coherent sentences, for the first time, “Don’t mention it. You just forced me to break my journalistic integrity and interfere with the action I’m supposed to be recording, not participating in.”
Samson scoffed at the horrible joke, “I’ll write a letter to your editor apologizing for breaking your ‘journalist oath’, and I promise I’ll use only the small words I know how to spell.” Samson’s sarcastic humor during the brief lull in action allowed both to smile.
Leaning back from the wall, Samson’s right hand came up and fired across the building at the annoying and increasingly accurate and voluminous fire from the far side enemy riflemen. They had fully recovered their man and were quickly reorganizing. Samson unleashed fifteen rounds at the riflemen across the building, through the horizontal streaks from the closer enemy, now moving forward again on their level.
A metallic crack sound, louder than a strike on a wall, sent Samson spinning and cursing, “ouw-damb it-shit-fuck!” Persephone stepped forward as he dropped the pistol from his right hand shaking it furiously. When he stopped stomping and cursing and waving his hand, his right trigger finger was cocked up at an absurd angle. “Bastards! They fucking shot my fucking pistol!”
Three sets of eyes and the camera tracked down the pistol. The pistol had a neat and clean hole burned through the upper coils, missing the barrel, but still in the middle of the weapon. The five-centimeter hole still smoked and cooled on the grating.
Samson’s newly stomping foot drew their attention to his closed eyes and face contorted in pain, where he gripped his dislocated finger in front of his nose. He held it at shoulder height, in his left hand. His teeth were grinding behind rolled lips, and his jaw muscles clenched repeatedly, distorting his face.
The sickly wet crunch of the finger and his pained grunt caused the three to jump. Samson worked his bruised and swelling hand by rapidly opening and closing and rolling his fingers through his palm.
He swept up his damaged pistol into his damaged right hand and dropped its magazine into his left. He then drew an empty magazine and replaced the partial in his pouch. Finally, he slapped the empty magazine into his damaged weapon. It found its way into his right hip holster. He redrew his second weapon from his shoulder holster, he looked to be genuinely enjoying himself before he smiled to the camera, “And that girls and boys, is why we always carry two weapons.” Rolling the backup weapon in his hand and testing his abused wrist. “We don’t have much time either.” As he spoke his last syllable the fire from across the plant lifted. Shaking his head in frustration, “I hate being right all the time.”
Without target or preamble, Samson began firing rapidly through the corner of the wall sending rounds and debris that direction, while sidestepping in a crouch, out onto the catwalk. His weapon cracked again every half second. Not four rounds into his movement, he pulled his head aside as he was kicked in the shoulders, upper arms, and head by a pair of combat boots, flopping and flailing lifelessly. The split-second pause in his fire was just enough to hear the body thump onto, then scrape and fall off the catwalk. The point man he had anticipated and killed with the insane maneuver of firing through the wall while ducking was dead before his back hit the catwalk.
The manic pandemonium that answered his rapid-fire assault, drove Samson back grudgingly as another hail of rifle rounds splintered building materials from the nearby wall.
Samson said to his companions, “It’s about to get rough around here. You all might want to back up a little.” His pistol fell to his side now clutched in his left hand. Samson’s right disappeared down into the folds of his coat at the small of his back and he silently pulled his sword from his back sheath.
The blade glinted pure silver light along his black coat and bloodied right forearm. In his customary reverse grip, his bruised index finger touched his lips for silence, from his three companions. His vertically shaking pistol pointed to the thin metal deck as he worked himself into a calm state.
Thank You!
Thank you for reading this chapter!
Your next chapter is HERE.
If you liked what you read and you are interested in the full book the links are HERE on the Honor of the Fallen book page…
However, if you are more interested in the narrated version, you can catch the start of your author-narrated series HERE:
Enjoy!