Methkog: City
Grabthar was a rising city back then. Wheat surrounded it, carving a place out of Lamagen’s jungles thanks to decades of aggressive agriculture from the Khettee Karana Corporation.
This same corporation owned most of the farmland on Lamagen—and nearly half the arable land on Asylum—at the time. The farmers hadn’t yet realized they had so many sharp, deadly instruments and there were so few corporate managers on the planet. Had Methkog been of a different mind he might have turned into a freedom fighter having seen the way these humans toiled for their fellow man with little reward. Yet he wasn’t.
He had his eyes set on destruction for years by the time he landed on Lamagen. He was familiar with Asylum, its air defenses, and how closely he could skirt the sensor net on Has. It was the first time he’d been working of his own volition on the planet, however. He had his own objective.
On this day he was striding through the crowd, which flowed around him like a stream around a boulder. As a farming town Grabthar was accustomed to the large farmhand, but even the most hardheaded, beer-swilling men with the reasoning capacity of a bag of hammers had to admit Methkog was something else. He stood a full foot over everyone else as he wound his way through its brick streets. Merchants, clerks, wives, husbands, all about the street during the lunch hour yielded to him, and their eyes quickly glanced at muscles threatening to rip apart old flannel and denim.
Methkog was about to turn onto the main road when Erril skipped up to him. The Outcast, an electric lime green streak in her hair, asked her boss if he had her latest report.
He rumbled something resembling a “yes.” He knew there were 25,000 yils sitting in Grabthar’s bank. Protecting such treasure were 20 guards, give or take a few, and a company of rangers spread throughout the surrounding blocks. It would take most of the forces he had at the time to take them all down, and getting away wouldn’t be likely since the human forces on Has would see it all coming.
He’d sent Erril a week prior to scout out the situation and form a plan—though it rankled his sense of being the leader in every situation. What was left of Alain’s group was the priority right now, so he was forced to leave this operation to Erril and her trusted judgment. That being said, her request for 75 pounds of explosive, a drone engine, and a hovercart made him wonder what she had in mind, but he acquiesced. When she asked for his personal involvement in the robbery he didn’t hesitate to say yes. His home was at the front of every fight.
The idea of it getting him killed genuinely never entered his mind in those days. Even in civilian flannel he believed himself indestructible.
Erril, whose head barely came up to her boss’ chest, kept in close as she relayed her latest discovery.
“The vault’s not as high tech as you’d think, boss. Yeah, it’s got titanium fused with porfum, and a diamond underlay, but there aren’t any vortexes inside. It’s old fashioned: big and heavy,” Erril whispered, talking under the street’s white noise of conversation and traffic.
Methkog nodded.
“The door is made of the same stuff, but has a nasty energy field that will fry anything that touches the locking mechanism and anything else within 5 meters,” the Outcast said. “Here’s where it gets interesting, though. The door isn’t there.”
The scars on Methkog’s face shifted into an expression of surprise.
“Yeah,” Erril said, starting to bounce as she trotted alongside the pirate king. “The thing’s stuck in transit. The Krysar haven’t handed it over to Khettee Karana yet. Something about the contract is fouled up. That door’s a thousand miles up on a freighter in orbit—has been for months. All they’ve got for a door is a military-grade laser grid.”
Erril grinned. Methkog did as well but it wasn’t nearly as pretty.
“How do we get in?”
“Simple. Blow in the wall.”
“When?”
“Now.”
Erril grabbed Methkog’s arm and jerked him across the street toward a store called Grabthar Mercantile.
The bank, squat and heavy, was next door.
A store clerk was locking up the front door when Erril nearly skipped up to it, rapping on the glass. The man, tall, thin, and balding, shook his head and pointed at the sign on the door. He mouthed “Closed” as well.
Erril, undeterred, rapped on the door again.
“Please, mister,” she said, her voice an octave higher. “Please let us in. My cousin here needs a good suit. He’s got an interview with Khettee Karana today and he can’t go like this. Please!”
The clerk shook his head again and turned from the door.
“We’ll pay double!”
That stopped him. He walked back to the door, smiling. As he unlocked the door Erril surreptitiously slid a thin knife from her vortex. When the clerk opened the door she slid it home into his chest, just under the fourth rib. Grabbing the dying man by the shirtfront, Erril strode into the store and tossed him behind a clothing display to keep him out of sight. Taking a bright blue silk dress from a rack she cleaned her knife before stowing it back in her vortex. She dropped the dress on the clerk’s face.
It was a proud moment for Methkog, and one he would remember. Finding Erril on Pormos had been a stroke of luck.
“It’s in the back, boss,” she said.
Methkog followed her through the store, taking in the displays of leather reins, iron hand tools, racks of clothing, and seeding and pesticide drones in their cases. He tucked five chrome-plated surveying lasers into his vortex, along with a particularly fine hammer, realizing they would make for a good bit of gambling cash. Erril helped herself to a short dress with a diamond pattern and a giant knife on display.
Walking to the store’s rear she cracked open the rear door and, satisfied no one was lurking in the alley, she threw it open. The hovercart, hidden under a tarp, was right where she’d left it.
The pirate lord eyed it as Erril pulled it through the door. Two lumpen bags sat on it, while the drone engine had been welded to the back.
“Here’s the plan. We blow the wall in—the vault’s just on the other side of the dressing rooms—take out whoever’s left, grab the cash, blow the back wall out for a distraction, and leave through the store here,” Erril said, pulling a machine pistol from her vortex. She retrieved a second one and tossed it to her boss.
“What’s the distraction?”
“The cart. We load up a couple of corpses and fire them out the back. The rangers’ll think that’s the getaway. There’s a road back there that goes clear out of town—straight as a razor. Khettee Karana built it for secure deposits. Nobody’s allowed on it.”
Methkog nodded, gripping the pistol. It looked like a child’s toy in his hand.
Erril pulled a homemade demolition charge from a bag, glued it against the wall, and flipped a small switch. Dashing out of the small dressing room, she crouched behind her boss, who simply knelt outside the door.
The blast rattled the building, sending mannequins crashing to the ground. Dust rolled through the store, nearly blinding the robbers as they stood, a low ringing drowning out all other sounds in their ears. Only seconds after the blast they were through the hole. Methkog led, firing on anyone still standing after getting hit with hundreds of pounds of brick and concrete. Erril followed, the hovercart trailing behind her.
As her boss advanced the vault’s laser grid, which glowed a devilish red in the dusty air, she pulled two grenades from her vortex and stared at the lone door. A moment after the last guard hit the ground the door cracked open. Both grenades, fully primed, flew through the gap. Twin explosions sounded and she could hear the screaming even through the heavy steel door.
Methkog appraised the laser grid in seconds. Interlocking emitters ringed the doorframe, each one passing the red beam not only to its partner across the way, but also to five others at various points. It created a single sheet of solid laser without using the larger, flat-plane emitters. If one, or even ten, were to fail the grid would still be intact. That made it easier for him: everything had to go.
Reaching into the red beams should have turned his hand into ash. Smoke should have flashed into the air with the stench of burnt flesh. All that happened was a faint electric tingling running across Methkog’s skin, with an accompanying warmth, as his brutal hands curled around the upper emitters. Gathering his strength in his shoulders and hands, he pulled down, shearing the emitters from their ports.
The red glow flickered.
Methkog bashed the upper emitters from their ports with a single elbow.
The red glow died.
Striding into the vault, he could see the bags of yils. Sack by sack they disappeared into his vortex. Hearing the crump of more grenades, along with the occasional crackle of gunfire, Methkog yanked only three large safety deposit boxes from the walls and stuffed them in after the yils. He’d have preferred more looting, but time was running short.
Erril already had two dead men on the hovercart by the time he walked out of the vault. On the rear wall another, much larger, charge was counting down. Erril positioned the hovercart opposite the charge and waved for her boss to follow her through the hole in the wall. She pulled a remote from her vortex.
A few bullets smacked against concrete as they dove back into the store. Methkog fired blindly back and was rewarded with a scream.
Everything shook as the bomb went off. Part of the ceiling fell in on the pair, beams crashing against Methkog’s broad shoulders. Erril squirmed under him, reaching for the remote she’d dropped. Fingers scraping against the casing she finally palmed it and pressed the center button.
Through a second round of tinnitus they could hear the drone engine spooling up. It shrieked through the new hole in the bank and quickly turned into a thin howl as it sped the cart away.
Methkog tossed the thick beam aside and strode out, brushing powdered brick and dust from his clothes. Erril followed, staggering for a few steps as she tried to clear the ringing from her ears. Seeing her boss place the machine pistol into his vortex reminded her to follow suit. She followed Methkog to the front door and outside.
Smoke was rising from behind the bank and people were streaming into the already packed street to look at the black column. Sirens wailed and the rangers were already forming a perimeter around the bank’s entrance.
Filling her lungs with fresh air, Erril regained her senses. She pressed an arm to one side, pulling Methkog behind her with the other. They bumbled through the crowd, her artfully strained voice saying how they’d been in the store when the bomb went off. They needed a doctor. Someone needed to tell her father. They needed to get away from this place.
It took the rangers an hour to find the clerk’s body. It was another hour before they had security footage from Grabthar Mercantile. It was an additional three hours before they were able to identify Methkog. Erril was identified only as Olivia Bauer, who had never existed prior to her arrival at the area spaceport.
By that time the pair was long gone, having rocketed from Asylum on Methkog’s personal shuttle. While sirens filled Grabthar’s air that afternoon Methkog heard only the sounds of clinking yils and Erril’s bubbly laughter as she tallied their haul.