The Ardoon King Page 10

  Chapter 8: Rocket Man

  Disparthian held an arm high into the air and the King’s Squadron came to a halt.

  “What is it, Anax?”

  “Over there,” Ben said, pointing. There was a white haze coming from the top of a building a block away. “Is that smoke, or blowing snow?”

  “It is an odd form of smoke,” said Disparthian. “There is very little wind. I do not see snow blowing elsewhere.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “It could be a chemical agent,” muttered the Peth, concerned.

  “No. So localized and in such a small quantity, here, now?” Shaking his head, Ben raised his binoculars, as did Disparthian and the men around him.

  They soon saw what was occurring. There were four men on a distant rooftop. The first, a gray-bearded man wearing a cowboy hat, jeans, and a brown Cargill coat, held to his chest what appeared to be a large bag of flour. He had a rifle strapped to his back. Facing him were three other men, each a good twenty-years younger, wirier, and dressed in identical jackets that could be gang colors. All had handguns pointed at the man with the flour.

  “Well that’s interesting,” mumbled Ben. “If I’ve got this right, the old man has a bag of flour, and the younger guys want to take it from him. I’m guessing he had to swing his rifle on to his back to carry the bag. He’s effectively unarmed.”

  “Why don’t the other men just shoot him, then?”

  “Because he’s standing on the edge of the roof and the bag is open. He’s holding it upside down, with one hand preventing the contents from pouring out. Most of the contents, anyway. If they shoot him, most of the flour will spill out into the snow.”

  Disparthian smiled. “Clever, but he cannot stand there forever.”

  Ben nodded. “I don’t know who’s right or wrong up there. I do know it’s three against one. I don’t want anyone shot unless it’s necessary, but the man in the cowboy hat should end up with the flour, after all this trouble. Pass the order along.”

  Before Disparthian could act, Fiela held up a hand.

  “Mutu,” she said, “may I offer a suggestion?”

  The name of the man on the snow-covered roof was Samuel Richards and he was in a tough spot. His plan had been to escape the thugs by crawling up the roof access and then down the fire escape ladder. But he hadn’t realized how damn heavy a large bag of flour was – he’d never stumbled upon such a goldmine in his scavenger hunts – and he had been mistaken about the fire escape. There was none. In retrospect, he wasn’t sure why he ever thought there was, except that in the movies he used to watch the good guys always escaped on fire escapes.

  Then again, this wasn’t a multi-story apartment complex in New York.

  His arms were about to give out. A steady stream of flour was beginning to pour from the bag and soon the gang-bangers would realize they were better off taking their chances and shooting him than waiting for all the flour to spill into the snow.

  “Give us the bag,” said the leader of the gang, a short man with a long, braided ponytail. His eyes darted back and forth between the spilling flour and the man’s face. The name on his jacket identified him as Rocket Man. “We just want the flour. We’ve got families too. Give us the bag and we’ll let you go.”

  “Bullshit. You’ll kill me.”

  “We’ll kill you for sure if you spill any more of that flour,” said another of the young men.

  Sam repressed what he thought might be his final laugh. The flour pouring from the bag was like sand in an hourglass. When the sand ran out, it was “game over.” If not before.

  “Hi there!”

  Like the other three men, Sam whipped his head toward the sound of the voice. A young woman’s voice.

  What he saw almost caused him to drop his precious cargo. Not only was the voice a girl’s voice, which was bizarre enough in this setting, but the young woman was…well, not an ordinary woman. Wearing a skin-tight, olive-drab outfit with black tiger stripes, the red-haired creature was three notches above gorgeous, with full cheeks, and lips that were soft and pink. Such women could not exist, his mind told him. Not anymore. Not here.

  Her eyes, unfortunately, were hidden behind a pair of black-tinted hiking glasses.

  “What the hell?” exclaimed Rocket Man, as shocked at the woman’s sudden appearance as Sam. “Where did you come from?”

  The girl shrugged and slung a tan backpack off her shoulder to the surface of the roof. It landed with a loud thump. Sam didn’t see any weapons.

  “From down there,” the girl said, nodding toward the road behind Sam.

  “She can’t be real,” said one of the other men, rubbing his eyes. “Are we hallucinating?”

  “I’m not armed,” the girl said. She spun in place. “See?”

  The gawking men did see.

  “What are you doing here?” asked the leader, waving his gun at her.

  “I brought food. Twenty MRE’s. Military food. High calorie stuff.”

  That caught everyone’s attention. The men eyed the bag suspiciously.

  Rocket Man said, “Why? What do you want?”

  “I want the old man.”

  Old man? lamented Sam. Honey, I was just about to fall in love with you.

  The gang member laughed. “The old man? Why?”

  “Does it matter? I’m offering you a trade. Let him go and you get the food.”

  Rocket Man shook his head. “Something’s wrong here. Why are you so...so healthy?”

  “Because I eat,” she said. “Very well.”

  The man grunted a laugh. “Tell me why we shouldn’t off the man, take the food, and take you?”

  The girl put her arms behind her back. “Wow. There are many reasons.”

  “Yeah, like?”

  Holding up a hand, the girl began to count them off on her fingers. “One, I would kill all of you if you tried. Two, if you touch me, the Peth below us will draw and quarter each of you with their horses.”

  “What the hell is a Peth?” asked Rocket Man. He stood on tip-toes and peered over the edge of the roof. He frowned. Apparently Peth meant “an armored soldier with a scoped rifle pointed at the roof.” There were at least a hundred of them.

  “Three,” continued the girl, “I am a queen of the Nisirtu and could even now have you brought to Steepleguard and tortured for the rest of your miserable lives for daring to speak to me in that way.”

  “A queen of the what?”

  “Four, you won’t get the food. Five…well, five is a secret.”

  Rocket Man had not survived this long by making poor decisions. Four reasons were plenty. He didn’t understand or believe all of them, but there was no questioning the reality of the armed men on the street below him.

  Still, he had to ask. “What secret?”

  “Come here and I’ll whisper it to you.”

  Rocket Man looked at her uncertainly.

  “Go ahead, Rocket,” said one of the gangbanger’s comrades. “We got your covered, man. It’s just a chick.”

  Smiling and swaying side to side, the girl said, “You can keep your gun pointed at me. I don’t care. Like your friend said, I’m just a chick.”

  What choice did he have? Rocket man nodded and slowly – very slowly – stepped forward, his gun pointed at the girl’s abdomen. When he was just a few feet away, he said, “Okay, what?”

  “Do you think I’m pretty?” the girl asked very softly.

  The man gave a macho shrug and said, “Yeah, yeah, I guess. Sure. So what?”

  “Do you like my perfume?”

  “Yeah, I guess.” Only then did he really smell it. It was a whiff of heaven. The world became a much brighter place. “It’s nice,” he said.

  “Breathe it in,” she whispered seductively.

  Rocket Man did, not knowing that the scent was the Perfume of Gerra, a special compound Nisirtu females wore that had an inebriating effect on Ardoon men. Each compound was unique, formulated to match only a single female’s bo
dy chemistry. Its purpose was to persuade Ardoon men to do as they were told without violence. It had no effect on Ardoon women, but Rocket Man was no woman.

  “Do you have a gang?” Fiela asked.

  “Yeah,” said Rocket Man, suddenly liking this girl very much. “Kinda.”

  “How many members?”

  “Thirty or forty. I’m not in charge, though.”

  “Who is?”

  “Tabby.”

  “Tabby...okay, where do you meet?”

  Rocket Man told her. The girl had a lot of questions and he was happy to answer them. He wanted her to ask more.

  Finally, she said, “Okay, thanks Rocket Man. Take your guys and the food. No one will hurt you. Be sure to let your guys know, okay?”

  “Yeah, sure,” said the man, disappointed the conversation was at an end. He picked up the bag and walked back to the other men. “Let’s go.”

  The man to his right nodded and began to walk away with him, but the third man shook his head and stomped a foot to the ground. “Rocket, are you shitting me? You’re going to leave this specimen here, with the old man? I want this girl to have my children! You don’t think we’re going to see another like her, do you?”

  “Shut up,” said the leader, “and get over here. It’s done. Do you want to get popped from one of those dudes below us? She brought us food. We made a deal. I’ve got a kid to feed. Let’s go.”

  The other man shook his head vehemently. “They’re not going to shoot us if we have the girl.”

  “Forget her,” warned Rocket Man, “and get over here.”

  “Nuh-uh,” said the other man, and he took a step forward, indignation on his face.

  Sam cursed, dropped the bag of flour and began to reach for the .38 tucked into his pants’ cargo pocket. The girl turned toward the edge of the roof as if she was going to make a run for it, then spun around, bending the knee of her supporting leg so that she dropped lower. At the end of the rotation she released an object that had mysteriously appeared in her hand. There was a blur, and the man advancing on her stopped.

  “Shit!” screamed the man next to Rocket, scrambling backwards toward the roof access. Rocket followed his lead. The third man was still standing when his comrades abandoned him.

  Sam hadn’t moved. He stared at the knife that had struck the remaining gang member three inches above his belt buckle. The man had placed his hands around the hilt and blood spurted out between his fingers. He hadn’t screamed, at least not that Sam, in his shock, could recall. The cretin had just opened his mouth and wheezed, a twisted look of confusion on his face.

  The girl walked up to the gangbanger and, placing one hand on his neck, twisted the knife and jerked it upward. Withdrawing it, she said in a menacing voice, “You want me to have your children?”

  Tightening her grip on the man’s neck and hoisting him off his feet, she said, “Your pathetic seed will dry up in your corpse. Your only children shall be the maggots that feed upon your intestines.”

  Breathing hard, she brought the pale man’s face to hers. “My children shall be gods! I am the serretu and favorite of King Sargon. The blood of the Great Sage courses through my veins and my sister is the scourge of the Ardoon. I am a queen of the Nisirtu, you worthless piece of shit.”

  Blood seeped from the mouth of the terrified man as he tried to speak. “Please...”

  “Kneel!” the girl screamed as she dropped the man to the roof’s surface. Though the command had not been directed at him, Sam cringed from its power. Even the building seemed to quiver.

  The mortally wounded man did kneel, unsteadily, with his arms now dangling uselessly at his sides. He felt the girl lift his chin with a delicate finger in order to study his expression. His vision blurred and dimmed as the blood poured from his body, and for a moment he imagined that his killer was something other than a girl. Something other than human.

  His brain screamed, “No, no, NO!”

  He was unable to externalize the scream, and very soon his world went mercifully dark and his eyes rolled upwards until only the whites shown. He fell face forward into the snow at Fiela’s feet and died.