Thandiwe stirred a pot simmering over an electric fire. A near-constant wind trapped the aroma of meat and spices inside her small home ringed by red rock walls. A series of towers stood beyond the window as mountainous silhouettes sketched within the clouds; their little lights blinked through the cloud cover as crafts came and went from Sinyambar’s largest official starport. Thandiwe lifted the ladle up, sniffed, then tasted the brewing stew.
“Hm. Needs more salt.” She reached for a small container when three red pings flashed in her peripheral vision. Could be nothing, she thought, but still she pulled the hair band up from around her neck to keep her thick braids at bay in case she needed to move. Another set of pings ringed her vision; five in all. Thandiwe frowned, closed one eye, and made a frame using the thumbs and forefingers of each hand. A map of the surrounding area pulled up in her vision. It looked like a small caravan was heading west away from Sinyambar City. The other pings waited fifty clicks ahead of them.
“Shit.”
She wordlessly mouthed a command. The same cyberneural that displayed the pings moments before now deciphered her jaw movement, and clicked the stove off. Thandiwe threw a lid on top of the pot and darted into her small living space. She spared a glance at the bare walls, the sagging roof less than a meter over her head, the tiny room closing in around her. It was suffocating. But every day that she endured poverty was a constant reminder of her purpose. She had sold everything she had, traded all of her hard-earned wealth, for the most advanced cyberneural system and cybernetic weapon she could find. All to accomplish her goal...
The red pings beeped again, snapping Thandiwe out of her thoughts. She needed to focus. She mouthed another non-verbal command, and her neural implant connected to the console in her room. A screen beeped on, blue letters appearing across a black backdrop. Her eye twitched as she navigated through the raw data to find the passenger manifests and guide reservations matching the caravan heading out of the city. She found one, but the manifest only read two parties with registered transport to the mines in the southwest. There were three groups of pings. She disconnected from the network and ordered her sentry drones to relocate. She sent a brief wish to the winds of fate.
"Don't let it be what I fear it is. An ambush."
Thandiwe ran out of the door and toward the old, partially rusted motorbike resting in the solar charging station. The salesman had tried to talk her into a higher-end model of transport, and a cheaper (and more easier to find) cybernetic rifle. Thandiwe had refused. With a better weapon, she could always find transport, by force if necessary. Plus, rebuilding the bike by hand helped her learn basic mechanical and electrical skills. She had used that skill countless times since...
Thandiwe shook her head vigorously. She was reminiscing again. Focus.
She snapped her fingers. Orange lines lit up along her forearm. A rifle lay disassembled on a crate to her left. The stock lit up with matching orange lines. Thandiwe deftly assembled the rifle while rechecking her cyberneural map for updated pings. She didn't need to watch what she was doing, she could disassemble and reassemble the rifle blindfolded. She slid the bolt into place with a sharp rack, and shouldered the rifle. The lights on her arm pulsed twice, changed to green, and then disappeared into the familiar dark brown of her skin tone. With her gun properly synced to her arm, she attached it to a metal plate on her back beneath her black cloak and leaped onto the seat of her bike. Its frame rattled and whined as the individual motors on the front and back wheels hummed to life. Thandiwe’s arm synced to the pad on the front of the bike and her HUD displayed a power output warning for the rear motor. A climbing path overlayed the rock in front of her. Thandiwe accepted the trail, but added 50% more acceleration. She didn't have much time. The bike launched itself forward, up the stone façade, and into the air. She hung weightless with her stomach in her throat. The bike bottomed out, bounced, and then righted itself all while blaring alarms at her. She silenced them, hit the throttle, and raced across the rocky terrain.
Thandiwe cut across the plains and slowed her bike to a stop in the middle of the only road in the valley. She could see dust rising from the caravan headed her way. They wouldn't be able to avoid her; there was a steep ditch to the left of the road, and a large rocky outcropping to the right. She had scouted this area many times before. Avad, she had probably examined each individual rock in this valley three times each. Looking for evidence, looking for a trail, looking for any sign....
Thandiwe slammed her hand down into her thigh, and grimaced. Snap out of it! Focus! The caravan was almost upon her. Whether or not the driver would see her, or the automatic sensors would stop the truck to avoid a collision, Thandiwe wasn't sure yet.
She didn't have to wait long for the answer. The first vehicle in the caravan slammed on its brakes. The big truck’s airless wheels thudded and skittered over the red dirt and came to a stop inches from Thandiwe. A man’s head with an afro shaved into a short mohawk poked out of the driver’s side window.
“Are you crazy, woman?” He yelled. Thandiwe stepped closer and pulled down her face mask. The man switched to Xhosa. “Thandiwe? What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing, Trey. Your caravan doesn’t match up to manifests, and somebody other than me noticed.”
He uttered a string of curses and glanced behind him at the other members of the caravan: two small cars with black tinted windows.
Something thumped behind him in the truck. Thandiwe heard voices, hushes. She frowned. The wild zones of Sinyambar were no place for children.
She turned to the driver.
“How much are they paying you?” Thandiwe asked him. He shook his head. Nothing.
“They’re—” he started, but Thandiwe cut him off by lifting her arm.
“No. The less I know the better. I’ll go ahead, you wait a couple minutes before continuing.” Thandiwe glanced to the passenger seat. There sat a man with cuts and half-healed bruises on his face.
Refugees
Thandiwe muttered curses of her own as she stalked back to her bike. She took off down the winding road, stopping at a tall stone outcropping one click away from the awaiting ambush.
She climbed up the rocks, slipping her rifle from her shoulder. Thandiwe selected long-range from her HUD, then double squeezed the grip of the rifle. The barrel telescoped out. She then reached over with her left hand, and input a code into recessed buttons on her cybernetic right arm. The forearm lit up, clicked, and disconnected at the elbow. Thandiwe grabbed the now disconnected lower half, wordlessly spoke a command, and three spindly, metallic stands popped out of the forearm, forming an adjustable tripod. She set the arm down with her other hand, and the tripod stabilized into the rock. Thandiwe attached the rifle to her cybernetic forearm-turned-turret. She set the targeting to sync with her neural implant, slid down the rock face back to the bike, and pulled a worn, basic prosthetic from a satchel.
A quick ride on her bike later, she dismounted near the pings on her map. The ambushers had not chosen a very strategic attack point. It would stop a caravan, sure, but her experienced eye saw how little cover they had given themselves. It was rare for a caravan to have a security detail in these parts, but not unheard of. The ambushers would be outgunned if the caravan had a ranger with them. A ranger like Thandiwe.
She looked around. A squat tree with a thick trunk hid a group of men and women laying in wait, and another large cluster of boulders concealed three more. Seven people in total. A thick-bearded man sauntered out from behind the tree. Her sensor drones, paired with her cyberneural, silhouetted the man red as a potential threat in her HUD. Thandiwe waited until he stopped moving, then marked his left foot with her cyberneural.
“Thandiwe.” The man didn't mask the contempt from his voice.
“Samuel.” Thandiwe clasped her hands behind her back. He would be someone that noticed the quality of her arm. “Don’t suppose I could persuade you to go home early, could I?”
“Boss was crystal clear about the repercussions if we come back empty-handed.” A compartment on his back hissed open, and a pistol dropped to his side. “This ain’t your fight. Don’t make me ask you twice.”
The pistol didn't look like a targeting-sync model. That was good news.
“It would be much better for you if you let this one go.” Thandiwe's drones were marking 3meter x 3meter target areas where they were detecting potential threats. Using her eyes, Thandiwe quickly verified the hostiles as targets for her rifle. She could only see 5 of the 7 in her field of view. The two out of sight turned grey on her HUD.
"I sure don't wanna fight you. But better you than Ezekiel." Samuel looked around him. "I figger... you'll get three of my men before we get you."
Thandiwe's tight lips turned into a growl. "The only reason I haven't killed each and every one of you yet is because every day that I let you live is another day Maria lives. But trust me, the day I am able to rescue her, you will meet your end."
Samuel spat, and unholstered the pistol. He held it by his side. He looked twitchy.
A gust of wind kicked up a whirl of dust and rippled his cloak. There was a pause. A standoff. A showdown. A duel.
Samuel whipped his hand up. Thandiwe blinked. The bullet hit at the same time the crack of the rifle reached them. Thandiwe wasn't sure if the bullet had hit Samuel's marked foot, or if he had moved slightly while drawing his gun. Either way, the large caliber round would have done some damage to his leg. A red cloud burst from the ground. Thandiwe couldn't tell if it was blood or the red dirt of this region. Samuel screamed and fell.
The other six would-be ambushers rushed out of cover in different directions. Some fired at her with various weapons. They looked sloppy, poorly trained. Thandiwe held her ground. Bullets hissed by her. None sounded particularly close to hitting.
All six were now red in her HUD. The rifle would hit a stationary target... Thandiwe needed to get them to stop moving. She pulled out a pistol with her left hand, and started firing rapidly. She didn't care where the bullets went, she just needed to create her own covering fire. The red targets in her HUD started to take cover, and therefore stop moving, one by one. One by one they turned black as rifle cracks split the air. Six shots, five hits. Thandiwe's HUD reacquired the remaining target. The woman was running away. Thandiwe would let her go.
One of them, an old, weathered man, lay sputtering in a pool of blood and dirt. The round from Thandiwe's rifle had punched a hole the size of a fist through him. The violent gore had stopped bothering Thandiwe long ago.
Silence fell as the last reverberation from the rifle left the air. Thandiwe shook her head, and walked over to Samuel, who was laying on the ground holding his leg in a small pool of blood.
Thandiwe spoke first. “Tell Ezekiel: kids are always off-limits. I gave you a chance to back off.”
Samuel cursed her through gritted teeth. “You might as well kill me now. It’ll be better than what he does to me,” he said.
“Do you think I would let Ezekiel take his anger out on my daughter instead of you? No. You will go and endure it. As always, make sure Ezekiel knows that if he ever harms Maria... what I will do to him will be much worse than he could ever imagine.”
Thandiwe grabbed Samuel, and dragged him to his electric double-seated four wheeler. He'd return to Ezekiel quickly. They both knew he'd probably bleed out if he didn't.
Samuel hit the ignition. “This ain’t the end of it. You know that, right? You're dead one day!” He tore off, spraying mounds of dirt behind him. The rolling of the large tires vibrated her chest.
One day...
A few minutes later, Trey brought the truck to a halt next to Thandiwe. She went to the passenger side and opened the door. The refugee’s haunted visage stared back at her.
“Thank you,” he said in an indecipherable accent.
“Don’t. Whatever you are, whoever you are, the rules stopped existing when you left Sinyambar City. Get where you need to go fast and disappear as best you can. I killed most of them, so that will buy you some time. Don’t waste it.”
She slammed the door and smacked the hood of the truck. It wheeled off, crunching the rocks beneath it. Thandiwe watched them go, heartbeat pressing against her ribs. Sunset would come soon, and with it, more pressing dangers than desperate people. Her gaze drifted to the town off in the distance. At least she kept another mother’s child from ever meeting Ezekiel, and that would have to be good enough.