The quarry’s silence was a fragile thing, shattered only by the drip of condensation from fractured conduits and the ragged breaths of the freed slaves. The Reclaimers stood amid the cooling husks of Turkeyoids, Willy’s body wrapped in salvaged tarpaulin—a mute testament to futures glimpsed but not escaped. D’Can’Tr’s mind drifted to Deck 14: the cyborg-Knower’s blade across the next-in-line’s throat, androids swarming like locusts. Choices then had carved scars; choices now would etch empires from the dust.
A scuffle in the storage shed drew them. Floorboards creaked, splintered under L’Uomo Prime’s pry bar. Beneath, wedged in the dark like a tumor, huddled the last Butterball—vibro-axe abandoned, blubber quivering, eyes wide with the electric memory of slaughter. “Mercy,” it gobbled, voice a wet rasp. “Struthio’s gone. I yield.”
Grit hauled it out by the wattled neck, Foreman Grit whose hands knew the vein-maps of Splitstone better than his own scars. Lt. Faux flanked him, quills humming with restrained telekinesis. “You’ve the mine,” Grit growled, chaining the prisoner to a stanchion. “But the Amazoés’ll come howling. Anfrony’ll flay you for scuttling his trade. Here’s how you hold it without rivers of blood.”
He outlined the paths, voice steady as quarry gears: a Three-Way Accord, parleying Super Shop Mart, Bed-Land, and the miners into shared overseers, cells flowing like tribute to all; a Tribute Relay, slaves as shadowed brokers funneling ore while trades laundered clean; a Labor Exchange, binding Amazoé hunters to miner muscle in mutual watch; a Hidden Lease, subletting the pit with deniable strings pulled from afar. Faux amplified each with visions—Ursula feasting, Anfrony’s silos brimming—his precognition painting outcomes in glints of probability.
“And the fifth?” Henry Darksky spat, radiated eyes smoldering. Foreman Grit and half the Reclaimers—Henry Darksky and L’Uomo—leaned toward slaughter: wipe the Amazoés, claim the asset absolute. No middlemen, no betrayals. Steve Austin, Sheik M. Baek, D’Can’Tr pushed the Accord, diplomacy’s slow forge stronger than blades.
Eyes turned to the Butterball, chains rattling. “You. Break it.”
The creature’s beak clacked. “Accord. Hasn’t there been enough violence today?”
The split healed. They chose the parley.
Butterball gave no immediate cause for alarm, so they cut him loose. Most of the party thought it strategic: one of their own in the ranks could serve as early warning or leverage if more Turkeyoids came looking for blood. Sheik, though, wasn’t having it. “They can’t be trusted,” he growled. All the same, Butterball remained.
Dawn clawed over the Silver Wastes as they marched south, slaves trailing behind in a ragged column. The canyons narrowed, wind-whipped metal filings flaying exposed skin. Then the ambush: twin Scorplions erupted from a crevasse, carapaces gleaming like oiled obsidian, stingers dripping venom that sizzled on stone. One of the Scorplions hurled itself at Sheik M. Baek, its barbed talons slashing through the air in vicious arcs. The second beast ignored D’Can’Tr entirely, sliding past the plant-mutant with predatory indifference and coiling to strike at Steve Austin. But Steve was already rising—his flying mutation lifting him skyward in a sudden, silent surge, leaving the creature’s stinger to lash at empty space.
Frustrated, the jilted Scorplion pivoted with startling speed, abandoning the airborne target for easier prey. It scuttled low, squeezing its gleaming carapace between two jagged boulders until it emerged on Sheik’s unguarded flank. In the same heartbeat the first Scorplion struck again from the front. Sheik found himself caught between them—pincered in a deadly embrace of venom-dripping tails and crushing mandibles, the canyon wind howling around the sudden trap.
Lasers flashed, talons slashed, quills flew, and L’Uomo’s plasma bubbles cracked exoskeletons. The beasts died in spasms, ichor pooling black.
Super Shop Mart hove into view by dusk, floodlights cutting the squall. Anfrony waited at the warehouse entrance, his medic’s coat stained with engine grease, face splitting in a grin that nearly reached his cryo-unthawed eyes. “The cells are secured? But why have you brought the slaves here?” He clasped forearms, heard the tale, nodded at the Accord. “Wise. I’ll envoy to Bed-Land myself—Ursula’s no fool when fed. You lot? Rest. I’ve gotten another mission prepped for morning.”
But rest came laced with uneasy dreams for L’Uomo, for he alone had a mission yet to complete.
The following morning in front of the armory and vault, Anfrony unveiled the prize: Turkey Plissken, lone wanderer and rebel, a rogue Turkeyoid stripped of weapons, bound and ready for transport. “Me Depot’s spy. We tried interrogating him but he’s a tough, old bird. Return him, exchange him for something good, like a fabricator core that’ll print anything from scrap. Watch it though: he’s a high profile snake. Don’t let him charm you.”
Morning broke merciless. The Reclaimers moved west, Plissken trailing at the end of a chain. Butterball, their tentative new “ally,” watched the prisoner like a chickenhawk, and the entire group watched the pair of them with the same cold suspicion. In the hills, shadows stirred—starving Amazoés, ribs like ladder-rungs, eyes feral with hunger. They charged, spears makeshift from rebar. “Ours!” one shrieked, lunging. The fight was mercy’s opposite: Henry reflected blows, Sheik’s talons poisoned the air, D’Can’Tr’s light generation seared retinas. Plissken writhed, gobbling pleas. “Untie! Fight with you! Swear on the Gobble!” They ignored him, the fight dragging on.
In the end, the women collapsed, their blood darkening the sand. Though too exhausted to mount any serious resistance, their overwhelming numbers still made the Reclaimers earn every inch of ground.
Later on they discovered cacti clustered in a gully—spiked vaults of water. They pumped tanks full, the desert’s grudging gift.
Next day yielded one hex, mountains in the south hemming them like rusted teeth. Then, the anomaly: a perfectly carved entrance yawned in the cliffside, edges laser-smooth, glyphs pulsing faint biolum. It hadn’t been there yesterday—L’Uomo’s detectors confirmed it, no seismic scars, no drill residue. A zero-g whisper chilled the air from within.
Steve Austin felt the pull, memory flickering: the climate installation on Deck 14, rad-abominations birthing in the glow. The Warden hid worse than Turkeyoids.
They shouldered weapons. Entered the dark.
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