Night Raiders (Memories of Earth Book 3) by James David Victor

Author:James David Victor [Victor, James David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Fairfield Publishing
Published: 2019-11-03T22:00:00+00:00

12

Gantry

It was hard for Anders not to be extremely aware of the peril of his situation, especially as the mesh gantry beneath his feet creaked and swayed alarmingly.

How old are these catwalks? The man froze and gripped the railings. He didn’t actually want to know the answer to his question, but his treacherous mind supplied it anyway—at least four centuries. Maybe five.

The gantry was essentially a suspended bridge, held up by ridiculously thin-looking chains, all with bent or broken links somewhere in their line. Luckily, however, there were lots of them.

Some twenty or more feet below were the great unwashed, greasy, shaved, sculpted, bald or else helmeted heads of the Night Raider throng. The sound of their bloodlust, in the form of catcalls and whoops, would have been deafening if Anders’s suit didn’t have automatic noise reduction.

“Damn savages,” Patch muttered behind him. He appeared more comfortable walking the gantry, perhaps not at being above a few hundred murderous Night Raiders, but Anders reckoned it was because the Voider must be used to a fair bit of scavenging in dangerous environments. Behind Patch was Jake, wide-eyed and not able to take his hands off of the railings at all. Bringing up the rear came Dalia, who also didn’t look too perturbed by their predicament.

“Only three meals,” Anders muttered over their suit-to-suit channel, in response to Patch’s comment.

“Huh?” the young Voider asked.

Anders shook his head, trying to focus on the task at hand. “Oh, it’s an old saying, but one that we keep alive at the MPB,” he said dismissively. “Civilization is only three square meals away from collapse. I can’t remember who said it, but if you’ve worked a double graveyard shift in any throne city, then I bet you’d agree.”

Anders didn’t think that the people below were savages, or lunatics. Perhaps some of them were. Perhaps all of Patch’s spooky talk about ‘the dark’ of the Void was true, but Anders also knew how groups of people acted and reacted when you took away all higher purpose. Integrity, nobility, honor, loyalty, it all meant nothing to those with nothing left.

Just like down there. He forgot to stop his eyes from peering down between the mesh, just in time to see the two scrapyard swords brought out from the bonfire by the heavy leather gauntlets of the guards.

Each of the unique swords were long, almost a meter, by Anders’s reckoning. And their last third was now a cheery, steaming red where the flames had superheated it.

“Dear god…” Anders frowned as he saw the guards place the swords on the ground between the two combatants, then strip off their leather gloves and hand them to the would-be fighters.

It was hard for the officer to take his eyes from the horror of what was about to happen. He knew that there was no earthly need for those swords to be heated so much that they smoldered. It was purely for theater.

“Fight!” the bell ringer roared in glee.

Anders saw both men—the guard ‘August’ and the heavyset challenger from the floor—race to the nearest sword.

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