The EarthShakers

“CONFIRM READINESS,” THE HIGH COMMANDER ORDERED.

His voice crackled through the radio embedded in the hidden ears of Mei’s helmet, startling her. It was because he focused entirely on her that she startled. She had thought the static of the radio was, somehow, the sound of lightning come to ruin her.

“Confirm readiness.”

His Viet voice, soft but strong, told her he would not ask again. Instead he would simply strike her with lightning, let her convulse until her muscles screamed, and then order her to regain her stance.

“Checking,” she said too quickly.

Mei’s eyes flickered across the single screen inside her ONI helmet. Too wide and tall to see all at once, the screen contained every metric required to confirm her armor was ready.

“Longpi,” she chided herself, glancing at the screen to confirm the radio was, thankfully, muted. “I must remember the formal designation. Longpi. Longpi.”

All metrics signaled that her suit was ready. Still, Mei’s gloved hands clattered from the medallions adorning her collarbones, ribs, shoulders, and elbows, to the brace at the back of her neck more intended to stop her from breaking it than to redirect so much electric force, to the hermetic seals connecting her demonic helmet to the terrifyingly comfortable night-black underskin bonding armor and flesh.

Her tongue worked the radio’s mute.

“Confirm… confirming readiness.”

The last thought Mei remembered was how childish her voice sounded. A millisecond’s blue light blew out her helmet’s cameras.

She was choking when she woke. Pain would come soon, part of her stunned brain remembered, but pain mattered less than suffocation. Her armored fingertips were far too clumsy to release the helmet’s clasps.

Another hand, not unkindly, guided her frantic hands away from the helmet. The screen reset, filling with pixelated ruination that reformed just as soon into a consolidated image. Too late Mei muffled her scream at a wild-eyed demon with boar tusks jutting from its grinning mouth, serpentine tongue coiled inside, the sharp tusks threatening to gouge the monster’s blank black eyes.

The creature dropped her hand, spun in a half circle, brought a forearm into a guard while reaching for the black knife on its hip, and waited. Seconds later it returned to Mei. But she had caught her breath now, fresh oxygen bringing her normally brilliant but briefly panicked mind to alignment with reality.

“I was…” she remembered to toggle the mute, “You were, the ONI mask, it scared me, I thought it was…”

“Be silent. Count aloud to eight and back while breathing.” The demon cocked its head. “Slowly.”

Mei complied, her eyes slammed closed to avoid the monstrous stare. The screen indicated her heart rate had slowed to normal limits in the interim. She took the High Commander’s extended hand, steadying herself on her knees.

“Assessment,” he ordered.

“I… this public servant,” she restarted automatically, “likely did not create the proper stance before the strike initiated. My form was… shitty.”

He worked the seals of his own helmet, smoothly removing it to reveal the darting brown eyes, high cheekbones, and aquiline nose of her godfather, Phuong. That was how she knew him, closely-cut hair glistening with sweat despite the ONI helmet’s temperature regulation. Not as High Commander of the Xhongxhe. Not as one of Xuanlong’s most powerful people. Unusually, he was smirking.

“You remind me very much of Zumu when you speak as such.” The smirk evaporated. “There is no need to remind you that resemblance to her is not without risk in your service to the Council of Dragons, The Celestial Egg called Xuanlong, and…”

“… Civilization, the Ladder to Heaven, and all humankind,” she finished the liturgy. “Yes, High Commander.”

“Are you ready?” The ONI helmet replaced his slightly kinder face.

“May this public servant request correction in the numerous errors of her stance?”

“No. The expedition departs in thirty-three hours. You have failed to learn this life-saving technique in the traditional manner. We advance to more instructive methods.”

Mei’s own ONI was halfway on when she paused.

“You mean striking me with lightning until I learn or am paralyzed?”

The boar tusks shifted in a quick nod.

Mei choked back her sigh, secured the helmet’s seals, and winced as too much light bloomed on her screen. Suit integrity, confirmed. Magnetic seals, stable. Respiration, within range. Heart rate, within minimally acceptable range. Medallions, ninety-eight percent integrity.

“Stance,” she growled. “Shitty.”

The interruption of Phuong’s melancholy voice was so timely that she thought she had somehow unmuted herself. But no, the microphone was off. She said a small prayer of thanks to the ancestors of those who designed the armor that they defaulted the setting to MUTE. It made sense given how the Xhongxhe valued secrecy within the protection of Xuanlong and Above the World where the lightning ruled.

“A reminder that you never have been recruited into the Xhongxhe if not for assignment by the Council of Dragons,” he drawled.

Risking it, she unmuted.

“This public servant does not understand the instructional value of being reminded she is ill-equipped for this mission.”

Was that a chuckle?

“You think too much.” The radio clicked.

Mei turned to consider him. Outside the lightning chamber, shielded by a thick glass barrier, at the controls that could erupt anywhere from a thousand to three hundred million volts of electricity into her exhausted form, clad in the High Commander’s specialized combat armor, with three decades of training from a childhood in the swamps of Yuenan to his position atop the military might of the planet’s last bastion of civilization… he must have a point. She did think too much. Isn’t that why the Council demanded she join this ignorant expedition?

The young researcher resumed her Modified Tiger Stance. Right foot back and planted. Left leg bent at the knee. Foot rolled onto its ball. Waist tucked but not bent. Left arm up and forward in a tiger’s claw to catch the fatal electromagnetic rupture while the right hand, altering a thousand years of martial tradition, tucked back but pointed directly away from her heaving chest instead of protecting her exposed neck.

Allowing a single deep exhale, she tongued the radio control. Phuong must have heard the soft click because a blinding atom of light formed before she could begin to say, “This public servant is ready.”

This time she did not fall. One of the universe’s fundamental forces seized her outstretched left arm, locking the elbow in its inevitable grip, tightening her chest so violently that she was grateful she had exhaled already, arcing from medallion to medallion as they buffered the worst of the electric death until its path completed not out of her right gauntlet but from her right shoulder, elbow, shoulder, fist.

The lightning stopped. Only the seizure of her trembling legs left her standing. She inspected her right arm. Smoke rose from the still-unmarred black surfaces of the Spindle material. Layers of the window protecting the control booth were melted, their reddish molten glow confusing her.

Mei chuckled, wheezed as she remembered to inhale, then began to laugh.

A hundred thousand volts collided with her chest.

She woke still gasping but remembering this time to let the ONI compensate. Removing the helmet broke the circuit created by the armor. If she forgot this in the field and was struck by second bolt then she would surely die.

The Devil Boar stood over her.

“You are not ready.”

A FADED YELLOW ROAD SIGN TOLD THE TRAVELER SHE HAD, FINALLY, ARRIVED: WILLKOMMEN IN EISENACH.

The peeled letters, repainted many times over the decades by careful hands using inferior supplies, fluttered on a pleasant autumn wind. She shivered, drawing her tattered green cloak closer, mouthing the words. She knew German of course, like she knew English, French, Spanish, Italian, passable Russian, and a smattering of less relevant European languages. This should not be so hard.

The faceplate of her helmet, a manufactured mimic of a barn owl’s kind black eyes, white face elongated by the pretense of a flat nose, tawny fringe encircling it all, split into quadrants as it retracted into her hooded helmet. No use scaring the locals.

“Welcome to… Eisenach. Thuringia,” she remembered. “Germany. I was coming here to… the castle. I have to capture Konig. Chuck, how did I forget?”

Because you’ve been gone a bloody long time where the hell were you eliza it’s been weeks dragging me along down some dusty road it’s like you just deactivated like a zombie care to explain didn’t realize we started taking ketamine again i have been so bored

Eliza Reyes beat a hand against her ear as though water sloshed inside. The road ahead, pavement long ruined by rain and time, dirt hard packed by routine foot traffic, led to a little village. She headed down it. Numb pressure grew at the base of her skull that she chose to ignore; Chuck’s mania would have to wait.

Night had fallen. The village, perhaps twenty buildings mostly cannibalized from the structures of the pre-Tzacol township, was farther than she had guessed.

“Should have used the sensors. Ah well. That’s a tavern.”

Her step livened at the promise of the local brew, however sour it might be. Light greeted her through the squat structure’s clean windows. A thatched roof meant warmth. The path to the tavern was hardest packed of all. People had likely never fled this town. It was far enough inland and they had been smart enough to shutter the car factory before the lightning came.

Eliza struggled to open the heavy wooden door. Cursing fantastically, she braced one foot on the wall, gripped the black iron handle with gloved hands, and pulled with her not-inconsiderable strength. Then she was tumbling away and two drunk men were laughing, one of them eyeing her while the other drained his mug before setting it carefully on the ground outside.

She let her comical fall end in apparent shame. The drunks would think less of her that way. Her hand found a pair of throwing knives sheathed near her hip. It would only take a moment.

But they headed for home, laughing at her as though she was drunker than they.

“Oh give it time,” she said to the air.

Please drink some water first just like a pint nothing crazy turns out we do need water

“Hush, you.”

A quiet crowd met her. Twenty people sat at three long wooden tables flanked by similarly built benches. Only a few cared to notice the newest guest.

“Do your thing,” she said from the corner of her mouth.

Drink water

“Chuck.” She grunted loud enough to draw attention that she deflected by clearing her throat.

Drink water make a pinky promise whatever you took to go all numb on the way here left us parched

“Ugh, alright. But I didn’t take anything. You would have noticed.” She curled a pinky. “Now pay rent.”

Fine okay plenty of people they don’t flinch when the door opens didn’t care about an anonymous traveler fireplace is warm bartender watches us though big woman blonde strong give her a beard and she’s your type drink the damned water there are no threats in here

People, mostly Germanic and Northern European, occupied almost every seat. They were doing what weary travelers do: drinking, eating, smoking, gambling, and occasionally slipping a hand somewhere it didn’t belong.

Eliza found the bar. Chuck was right, of course. The barkeep was twenty centimeters taller than Eliza with rounded shoulders betraying years at the plow or the oar. But her face was pretty. She spoke with a wide-open mouth in raunchy German that revealed healthy teeth. A constellation of reckless freckles covered rosy cheeks. Eyes flashed from patron to glass, patron to glass, in a practiced cycle.

“Wie viel kostet dein größtes bier?" The lonely traveler garbled.

“Your German is awful,” the barkeep replied in English without looking up. “The first drink is always free at Forni Hall.”

She vanished, returning with a clay mug filled with a warm beer entirely lacking foam, an identical mug filled with what looked like relatively clean water, and a brick of black bread. The beer smelled only slightly sour.

Eliza drained the water first. Then she turned to the bread but found it unbreakable. Relenting, she dipped it into the beer. It softened enough to gnaw on.

She proceeded like this for ten minutes until the bread and half the beer were gone. Then she began the hard work of draining the remnant ale. Only when she was finished, the faintly pleasant buzz of alcohol working on her unique brain, did she call for the woman.

“Barkeep! Another. And you need to tell me the cost so that I don’t drink up a tab I can’t pay. It’s been known to happen.”

The woman finished pouring beers from an ancient aluminum keg. She served a trio of farmers, two women and a man who looked remarkably like each other.

“Cash is useless here. Gold and silver, of course. Barter if you like. We have fish in the larder to last through Fimbulwinter so that is no good. What do you have to offer?”

“Well,” Eliza patted her pants in search of a wallet that didn’t exist, “Not much other than my charming personality. Knife tricks if that’s your thing. And stories, too. Three guesses if you can figure where I’m from.”

“Stories do not pay for ale.” The woman lingered. “Your voice is strange. England?”

“Technically correct though I’m guessing that’s not special here.” Eliza turned from her stool to look around the room. “Guess again.”

The woman wiped her hands on her apron and then leaned forward on the bar.

“Eire.”

“Hardly,” Eliza snorted. “Come on, it can’t be all that hard.”

This is stupidly risky even for you come on now it would take a spy about two seconds to figure out who you are if they know where you’re from don’t get me killed

“Don’t tempt me,” Eliza muttered. “What’s your name?”

“Lina.”

“Lina, the German barkeep, in Eisenach. What if I told you that I was from America? Would you know what that is?”

Laughter boomed from the woman’s broad chest. She whirled, still laughing as she drew another draught of the awful ale. Deeper laughter as she slammed the drink onto the bar.

“I have kept this bar for ten years. It is rare for someone to say anything new. That is a new lie. Tell me a story of America, little woman.”

“Nothing’s free, you know.” Eliza smirked.

The woman frowned, which drew her freckled face taut and made her notably prettier. A new brick of better bread appeared, followed by a butter bell.

“Now,” Eliza said between ravenous bites, “I bet your customers,” another bite, “would love to hear,” a third bite, “stories from an American woman.”

She paused while chewing.

“Since it’s been destroyed for so long. How did I escape? What brought me here? Am I going to install a democracy? Do you have any oil? Oh, the ale they would buy as they listened to me jabber.”

Lina’s mouth gaped. She closed it, opened it again, and shouted something that sounded like a harsh threat. The bar fell silent. Eliza craned to see the crowd. The entire bar, now thirty people, stared.

“Mein deutsch ist schrecklich,” she said to their impatient faces.

Lina’s rough hand rested on hers. An electric jolt raced up Eliza’s arm.

Oh it’s been a while since someone touched us eliza you need to behave now wait this was your plan didn’t you use all the sedative on yourself for fun

“I will translate. Come. Tell us,” Lina said, her face again shifting the freckles into new designs.