Pulp Fragment

'Girl-Bravo, close your eyes.' 

A tall, broad-chested woman dressed in brightly-patinaed mail and plates; white and pale lilac. Her name is Centipede, and she is speaking to a much younger woman, nearly a girl, who dutifully shuts her eyes and turns her face upward into the sunlight. 

There are four of them. Centipede removes her left glove, and is handed a long, iron knife by one of her companions, which she uses to slit her thumb. Bright blood beads up and then flows in a thin stream. She presses the bloody finger lightly into each of the girl's eye sockets, and stains her eyelids crimson. The other two move closer to receive the same; then all four fasten their masks in position: Centipede the champion, Mantis, Mosquito, and the youngest, Spider, with a cheap half-mask made from hardwood instead of steel, which covers her face and upper jaw with sculpted mandibles and clusters of compound eyes. This is the first time she has been marked this way.

Mantis grins and says 'Now you won't lose your nerve. You won't shame us.' A thin, tall, aggressive woman, straight-backed, and expensively dressed in diamonds and coloured glass. She is also called the Murder Bitch. She could be nineteen, maybe twenty. Her harness is of almost the same quality as Centipede's, although lighter and more ornate. She wears a half-cloak across her shoulders in the gang's colours, and the knife at her belt has been doctored by city chemists at great expense.

Next to her is Mosquito, or Selinae Who Makes Corpses. She is silent for now, puffing on a reeking pipe packed with sedatives, brooding and introspective as they walk. Mosquito wears little jewellery, and her mask is bright, unpainted steel. She has a sling on her belt, next to a long, unadorned cross-knife, and across her chest she wears a harness of strange, transparent, fluid-filled ampules for ammunition. 

Centipede the champion marches in front, dressed in her finery. More even than Mantis: gold loops of chain, stones in sockets, expensive silks. Her steel centipede mask has been lacquered to match the plates of her armour. She is physically huge, and walks with a limp. She is the exemplar, the one that the others would rely on, rally around. She carries no visible weapons, and her own cross knife has been worked into the breastplate of her armour - unusable, pure ornament. 

They are close by their destination: a locked and barred iron gate across a hole that reached down in the trackless superstructure of the capital. One of hundreds of entrances to the labyrinth volume. Centipede holds the key, of course. They are working inside their own territory. 

The bright stone streets are hot and deserted, and the hole in front of them is black, like a tomb. As Centipede and Mantis make to descend the iron rungs set into the stone, Mosquito pulls Spider back and says 'Stay behind me down there. We're not expecting trouble, but stay behind me anyway. Watch how Centipede speaks, how she holds herself with our enemies. You will need to learn it one day.' 

Spider nods her head and they both check their gear and descend. Mantis is has lit a small glass lantern, already about twenty metres ahead. She yells back 'Don't listen to her new girl. She's soft, like shit is soft.' Mosquito hisses in annoyance. 'A rich girl is worthless to you in a fight. She buys her victories, and she talks too much.' 

'You're happy enough for it when you need some!' says Mantis cheerfully.  

'Yes,' Mosquito grins beneath her mask. 'Everyone wants a rich friend when they need some you dumb bitch.'

Mantis laughs like a hyena, and then pulls out a long pistol with her lead hand, aiming forward into the darkness out beyond the light of the lantern. She practices this drawing motion three or four times as they walk. A thin stream of water runs down the middle of the stone tunnel. They are silent for a time. 

After twenty minutes or so, Centipede ushers Spider forwards, so that the two of them can walk together. The top of spider's head barely reaches to Centipede's shoulders. The champion addresses her. 

'Girl-Bravo, who do we seek in this place?'

'Champion. We are here meeting representatives of the Revelry. We come to them with terms.'

'Yes, very good, we come to the Revelry with terms. What are our terms? What is our situation with the Revelry?'

'Champion, we are allies, we have been allies for a long time. We seek terms for the extradition of one of their people. He killed someone in our territory, he murdered one of ours.'

'Correct, or nearly correct. He murdered in colours, without formal declaration of war. And so our meeting is to clarify that this man acted alone, and that his killing was not a sanctioned act. Second to this is the extradition: the queens have demanded him alive, that he might face our justice, but I do not think that the Revelry will do so. Maybe as a sign of good will, but they are more likely to handle their own.'

'I understand.'

'I see that you do. You should watch me as I talk with Charlie, the Revelry's champion, and you should mark how I address him. You should mark my formalities. Me and Charlie have fought together, and against one another, since we were your age. We hold great love for one another.'

'Do you expect trouble? Why are our sisters so-armed?'

'If I expected trouble there would be ten of us, and you would be back at the barracks house. We are a colour party. We could not discuss terms out of colours, nor yet without the tools of our profession. But you have nothing to fear from... Stop.'

Centipede has frozen, and Mantis and Mosquito are instantly alert. Nothing but the soft sound of water on stone, the smells of the underground, the darkness. 

'What is it C?' Mantis hisses softly. Mosquito pulls Spider back, and the three of them draw knives. 

Centipede says softly 'I heard something ahead. We are not yet at the place,' then she shouts out into the darkness in a very different voice: 'We come armed and ready for killing, and I have marked you in the darkness. I am Centipede, champion, known as Stacey Whose Hands Reek In Gore. If I find you I will beat you until you die. Waste or fool that you be, announce yourself or flee before me.'

Nothing but silence. Centipede holds a hand out behind her back, and Mantis presses her pistol into it. Then Centipede takes a duelist's stance, erect, precise, the barrel of the gun absolutely level, tracking minutely from side to side, waiting for the softest sound from the darkness ahead. Silence. Silence. 

And then a terrible, unnatural crack, and a strange distortion in the air around Centipede's head, which is shoved violently to the side and shaken like a rattle. Many things happen at once. The pistol in her hand goes off with a bang; her enormous body drops to the floor like a piece of masonry, blood flowing freely from somewhere in her head; Mantis starts screaming with shock and fury, a high and horrible sound, and sprints forwards into the blackness with her lantern and knife; Mosquito draws the sling from her belt and shouts 'Light them up for me sister, I'll burn them alive.'

In the shuddering light of the lantern three figures become visible along the corridor: one dark, and two oddly pale. 

'Mark them sister, mark them!' The sling whirs in the air and in a blur of motion one of the strange glass bullets streaks down the corridor and impacts with the darker silhouette. It drops to the ground, smoking, and a half second later hideous shrill screaming fills the space, threading up and through Mantis's ululations. 

'Kill you, kill you, kill you, kill you...' she spits and curses, sprinting low to the ground, and then she is on them, her terrible knife flashing out at the closest of the pale, lumpen bodies. The hardened iron tip drags across the head, opening it, and then sinks to the hilt in the neck, but the strange white body does not fall. It takes Mantis a moment to realise this; a half second too long, the only opening her targets need. The two humanoid figures spin towards her with strange, jerky movements, and one of them stabs forwards with a long steel needle. The tip nearly catches her in the neck, but she parries it roughly away, redirecting the blow such that it tears a gash in her shoulder instead. Her screams grow louder, more proud and more terrible. She stabs the thing again, and then again and again, and then drops the useless knife and draws her second pistol, but as she makes puts the barrel against its 'head', the second pale thing loops a cord around her neck and pulls it taught, and then, quickly, inevitably, the terrible needle is pushed up through the back of her neck and jaw. She begins to choke on blood, and drops the lantern to paw weakly at the red point that emerges beneath her chin. 

Spider and Mosquito are sprinting forwards, watching the scene with violent horror. 'You have to tear them apart. The limbs, the heads, tear them off.' Mosquito speaks in a flat, emotionless voice as they run, readying her knife, sizing up the strange movements of the mannequins. Then, abruptly, horribly, her vision goes black. She yells with the shock of it. The third figure, the one she burned with acid. She can hear him, muttering something, readying another terrible invisible blow, like whatever killed Centipede. He has stolen her sight. She stops to listen, and drops into a low, practised duelist's stance. She can hear the mannequins moving closer now; hear them casting Mantis aside, still choking and clutching at her terrible wound, dead weight. Hear Spider's frightened breathing, her faltering steps. Mosquito fumbles in her chest harness and takes a pinch of rough powder up to her face, then inhales sharply. The rush of the powder and the narrowing of her focus. She breathes in once. Time stops. She thinks: first the psychic, then these mindless tools. She breathes once, changes the grip on her blade. She breathes once, listens, listens. Focus. 

She hears Spider crying with fear as the mannequins reach her. Not now, not yet. Focus. Her arm moves back, with the long blade balanced on her flat palm. Focus. Hear him. 

Hear him. She throws the heavy knife like a javelin and hears it sink home with a thud. The man screams and her vision returns in a rush of white light. The lantern throws insane shadows across the walls: Spider is in front of her, hacking again and again at the soft, impervious body that is binding her arms to her sides with cord. The second mannequin readies the great, bloody needle. She lurches forwards with nothing in her hands, with no plan, with no time...

And then the thing holding the needle is pulled jerkily downwards to the floor, and torn bodily to pieces. Centipede is still alive somehow, with her neck visibly broken and her jaw hanging off beneath the bloody steel mask. But her hands have kept their terrible strength. She tears the thing apart, then moves to grab the second, but Mosquito is already there, and between her and Spider they are able to tear the limbs away from the torso. They stand together over the pile of fabric, and look into one another's eyes, past the masks, past the blood. Spider is still crying, silently, and staring like a madwoman. Mosquito is utterly calm.

They hold one another's gaze for several seconds, and then both are shocked out of the moment by the bellowing voice of Centipede. The champion has regained her feet, and now walks towards the body of the psychic with her head twisted nearly off, shouting I TOLD YOU I WOULD BEAT YOU TO DEATH. I TOLD YOU I WOULD BEAT YOU TO DEATH in a high and insane voice. As she walks she flicks out a telescoping steel baton, which she uses to thrash the shuddering body to ribbons of wet flesh and shredded shards of bone. It takes her almost two minutes. Afterwards she slumps down at the base of the wall, exhausted, wounded, and runs her hands over her ruined neck. 

Mosquito tells Spider 'Run back to the queens and tell h them about this. I have to stay and defend to fallen. Tell them this: we were attacked in the volume, Mantis is dead, we don't know who yet, the Revelry are probably involved. Tell them to convene a war council, and organise retrieval of the body and medical for the champion. Say it back to me, because the details are important. And run swiftly.' 

But Centipede cuts her off in a soft, tired voice. 'Belay that. Mos I love you but you think too much. Girl-Bravo, Spider, my final order to you: run to the queens, tell them attacked by a three word, probably PES, tell them Revelry framed, tell them launch strike on PES tonight, not to wait, not to verify. Tell them my advice as champion. Go now. Take some of Mos's powder and go. You did well today, need a steel mask.' 

As Spider disappears back the way they came, Mosquito slumps down next to her friend and cradles Mantis's body absentmindedly. They pass her pipe, packed this time with painkillers, back and forth, until Centipede expires.