Free Infidel by Kameron Hurley Page B

 
    “Why do we need—” Eshe began again.
    He was stubborn. She’d give him that.  
    “Because I retired all my good gear three years ago. You think you need an acid rifle or perimeter mines to look after some drunk kid? You fight bel dames with bel dame weapons.”
    “You really think they’re coming after us?”
    “Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe we’ll go after them.”
    “Suha says you’re crazy.”
    “Suha’s one to talk. C’mon.”  
    They finished packing and loading the bakkie. Nyx pulled the bug door closed over the cache. They spread dirt and sand over the scar in the soil and headed to the bakkie.  
    As Nyx opened the driver’s side door, something in the air trembled. She paused.  
    A boom rolled over the city. The ground beneath her shook. She ducked behind the bakkie door. The rolling wave swept over them.  
    The world trembled, and was still.  
    Eshe scrambled out from behind the bakkie. Nyx poked her head over the door.  
    They looked over the city.  
    Mushtallah was the oldest city in Nasheen, built back when the only dangers to a city in the interior were wild sand cats and virulent strains of magician-tailored bugs, usually the ones coming from the Khairian wasteland in the north. The city stretched over and among seven prominent hills. The First Families lived on five of those hills, the bel dames on another. The seventh, the one nearest the center of the city sprawl, was Palace Hill, seat of the Nasheenian monarchy for the last three hundred years and the Caliphate for a thousand years before that. The city’s ancient walls had long since fallen into ruin. After the first time the city was burned out by the Chenjans, the Queen and the high council authorized the installation of an organic filter that barred all bugs and non-authorized organics from the city.  
    So the first thing Nyx looked for when she gazed over the city was the organic filter. Even this far out, she and Eshe were still inside the filter; it protected a refueling station just a mile west of them. Just beyond the filter was a freight rail station that unloaded the raw components of bug juice and station gear and loaded up goods destined for the front. The filter was visible as a hazy sheen along the periphery of the city.  
    The sun was too low and bright to make out much of anything on the other side of the city, so Nyx looked behind her for the filter. She had to rub at her eyes a couple times, but yes, there it was; the filter that kept out the worst of Chenja’s munitions and mutant bug swarms. They hadn’t taken that out, at least.  
    “That’s bad, isn’t it?” Eshe said, pointing.  
    Nyx looked.  
    If she squinted, a thread of smoke was just visible at the city center, a soft tail curling above Mushtallah’s central hill.  
    The Queen’s palace.
    Nyx saw the tail of smoke grow wider and darken into a blue-black plume. Something was licking around the palace compound and surrounding hillside, alive.  
    “Hand me the specs,” she said.
    Eshe unpacked a pair of specs and tossed them to her.  
    Nyx pinched the specs to the bridge of her nose. The palace compound jumped into sharp, magnified relief. Too magnified. A blaze of white fire filled Nyx’s vision. She squinted twice to zoom out. The center of the palace compound was a fiery, white-hot ruin. A black plague was crawling from the center of the wound and enveloping the palace grounds.  
    Nyx pulled off the specs. She knew what that was.  
    “What?” Eshe asked.  
    Nyx jumped into the bakkie and started it up. The bakkie belched and coughed. “Let’s go!”
    Eshe threw the rifles in front and squeezed into the jump seat.  
    Nyx yanked her transceiver out from under the dash. She put the bakkie in reverse and hit the quick button pattern for the hub. The connection opened.  
    “Checking in. We’re in one piece,” Nyx said.  
    “I’m headed to the keg now. No idea of the damage,” Suha said. “I have the radio on, but I’m not