Chapter 15: Chapter 14 - In Which We Begin Not to Understand

Ogolvy and Abldin looked, eye to eye, white eyes flat-topped in boredom through midnight eyelids while the opposing brown face sagged, void of the nervous excitement previously displayed. On this fine summer morning, with plenty clouds to keep the heat at bay, the pavements rejoiced with bustling crowds murmuring between eateries and trinket-stores, divided by roads of metal cars roaring past. “Packed like vermin look at them scurry.” She said, voice extinguished by car-cacophany.

“What?” He shouted, a little louder.

She responded in appropriate volume “Nothing.” As if to get back at him for mishearing. But he was hungry, focused on food, so the disrespect registered to him as an extreme issue and he was pissed off. But he was also a foot shorter than Abldin and what was he supposed to do. “Come on, I see it.” He shouted at her.

“Just so you know, you don’t have to shout.” Ogolvy rolled his eyes. The Golden Arches spread out before them, nestled in between two other buildings, a bank and some other lame fast food store they didn't at all care about in the moment. The hills like rising mounds brought up the horizon above the burger restaurant

The glass doors opened and closed behind to dim the outside noise, in here, on the grease-stained floors and the mediocre stock-photo art printed on the walls, it was blissfully quiet, and every breath smelled like heart-disease. “I’ll pay” Abldin said, Ogolvy gave gratitude quietly. They both took the same thing they had taken the last couple times. A sharebox of twenty Chicken Nuggets, presumably more of a nugget than a chicken nugget, it tasted like a concoction of spices impossible to discern from a bite. Ogolvy had eaten half the box before realising they should probably not be eating like a pig. He held the smallest pudge of organ-protecting fat on his belly which kept him from wearing the crop-top he otherwise would have. They watched Abldin’s weird ritual, the favourite moment of the dinner, when she would individually ‘peel’ each nugget, leaving a pile of crusts on the side, cooling down to lukewarm in the air, as she then horked down the steaming, naked nugget only to be completely finished and to look greedily at the empty nugget-husks. Ogolvy would question her, as always, and, as always the expected answer would come. “Actually I’m saving the skins for last, saving the best for last. Mmph” Then she would eat the cold shells while her companion ate full nuggets like a normal person only in the spaces where Abldin wasn’t watching. This time he felt special so he added a chuckle to his "what the hell is wrong with you." To which she shrugged comedically.

"If this freaks you out then I'm sorry for you."

They sat, eating for a while, but Ogolvy began feeling the burdensome silence pressing in on him.

“So Juj are real. We’ve found out.” He said. Smacking his lip awkwardly.

“Yep. Juj are real.”

“Can you say that a little louder for the audience?”

“Yes! The Mythical Juj are Real Entities!” Ogolvy laughed nervously.

“Right, who's gonna believe us anyway. There's probably a drunk hobo out there right now saying the same shit.”

“You think they escaped the bombs?”

“Did they fuck. Our government can’t fill a pothole. They’ve been using artillery on Limbus orphanages and primary schools for some” she paused to slurp on her Pilkshake “-twelve years.” Ogolvy looked around to see that now strangers eyed them judgementally. She stuffed a half-handful of nuggetskin in her mouth. “Yeah so you think they can actually fuck this up anything less than 100%, just not possible.”

“Why not be optimistic, give them 99%" He laughed, chewing his nuggets for so long they turned into flavoured spit, which was not visible to be called out as freaky.

“Yeah and also.” She loudly slurped the remaining Pilkshake. “The Juj are supposed to have pre-collapse tech and shit, I’m completely calling it, I’m calling it, there’s gonna be a big fuck-off conflict. Loads of casualties.” She spread out her arms to show just how loads it will be. “And only then is anyone going to get there shit together while bullshit cuckhold Oneka at the Marbledorms is gonna do the "smart choice" of not telling anyone about how serious the situation is until the situation is so serious that the news gets dibs to talk about it.” She stuffed a final peel in her mouth, crunching loudly with a grin. And then, a Prophresia with waning G-oil reserves,” she moved her hands enthusiastically, counting down on her fingers, “blamed by every other country for the Methane crisis, and despised by our precious southern Principate allies.” A family of three moved away from the neighbouring table, the father giving nasty looks. “Ogolvy, I’m telling you, Cycons are gonna move in in the whole, the, the pretext of charitable aid, it’s gonna be a shitshow. Military coming right in. Then, three-way war, maybe two-way.”

“With the Juj?”

“Well let’s see if they’re here to do war, or ee-xterrmeenatiooon."

“Why is that fun for you, why is it amusing.”

“I mean fucking hell, finally. The world could use some stirring up, ever seen a Glaswegian Knight in action?”

“I expect we will.” Ogolvy looked up and around at the pissed off and silent other customers. “Let’s go, there’s something we should check out.”

"You're such a character you, talking to you always makes me feel better, you have such a, such a way of talking, you know that?"

Ogolvy had a vague idea, playing into it he answered with a deadpan "Do I, now?"

They up and left. Golden Arches food always makes you hungrier than when you start, which the pair griped to one-another about. But as they passed the restaurant, they made their way to the riverside, of the river Ingalung, murky brown and yellow and stained iridescent from G-oil, being so close to the stuff gave Ogolvy a headache. They admired the running water, extremely deep here, even with fish still wriggling under the surface; in spite of everything they were forced to ingest.

“Being this close to the stuff gives me a headache.” Abldin said, squatting down. She pointed to the opposite side of the hill, where the bombed out buildings and rubble, split by another river tributary of the same river, gave way to green grass and fields and strips of yellow gold running horizontal on the hills, on little carved out stars of crops.

“Beautiful. The lifeblood of Prophrecia.” But now the other surveyor of the Kyros Defence Force was watching the gleaming yellow oil in the river. “Breaks nearly over.”

“UGH!” Ogolvy grunted into small fists, allowing themselves to knock backwards onto the bricks.

Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“It’s good to be productive. Work keeps you healthy.”

“Tell that to my lower-back and carpal-tunnel.”

“Alright old bastard, come on. Don’t be lazy, Warner is up there.”

"Your beloved wifey." He said, obnoxiously, then he clambered up, "wait I think you’ll want to see this, there’s an exhibition of some old war machines.”

"Warner can wait, where is it?” She stomped her heavy black boots on the tiles.

"Just around this corner.” Through the crowds gathering as normal, with news anchors on televisions talking about the Limbuster war’s most recent ceasefire and the local countryside disappearances.

Then the two came to a miniature museum out on the streets, machines motionless in the sun with showwomen and fancy-dressed boys displaying the things. From a

“A boregun Panther 2.” to a “A Mausoleum warcasket!” All nicely on pedestals on the closed down roads. "Oh Core how did I not know about this!" The boregun was splayed out, much wider than tall, two heavy sets of treads that could disperse weight on sand as easily as crushing smaller machines, the tank was something 210cm tall but still looking squat. “Look at the welding on this. This is from when they still used pre-collapse factories, look at that, immaculate, no bolts, just sheets of metal fused together. And the cannon!” Ogolvy smiled, it was far better than listening to her political drivel, which was a chore. He liked seeing her excited, and listening to the gun-talk was at least enjoyable. “This is designed to deliver a low-explosive payload, at high accuracy, high range, to bore through bunkers, titans, and skyships. Look at the length of the barrel.”

“Very sensual description, thanks.”

She glanced at the warcasket, a bulk of metal machinery and motors behind thick, cylindrical armour plates bolted to the frame, legs like pillars holding the body four metres tall. Two cannons as thick as people and long as cars dangling to either side, connecting to the thick torso where more guns sprouted like flowers along the half-cylindrical body, as much as was sensible, especially on the top where it became longer, forwards and backwards, like the mech was a sideways T, like a boat with legs. The false head underneath where the body jutted forward, the dome where the pilot was enclosed, was rigged unusually like a pyramid, looking like a modern-architect’s version of a rhino’s horn. “Wow. The Mausoleum Mobile Artillery Emplacement. The May. In the flesh.”

“Do you think it’s still got flesh inside?”

“Herr herr – probably. D’you want to know what fighting one of these was like? It’s called Mobile Artillery but in practice it was mostly used for direct engagements, see they normally used things like flak, illegal for use against soldiers, it was marketed as a mobile artillery unit to basically sugarcoat it, but really it was more of a direct squadron melter.”

“Woah.”

“Ah but this is the real winner of the war. This is what they don’t teach you in school.” She waved at an armoured lorry, rigged wide and with each of the 8 wheels able to articulate nearly independently. Girl, THAT would be far easier to drive than our shitmobile. Ogolvy thought to himself. Its armour was heavy, its pieces secure.

“I tell you, this is what Prophresia USED to do well, it’s fucking logistics, that's how we won the collapse wars and colonised the midlands, I’m telling you, this is what our limpdick government just doesn’t understand, or it does but they want us to fail."

“Right we should probably get back to base.”

“God I love him. An oil engine, pre-troubles, not G-oil, not gotten from some weirdo shit, just real fossil fuels like they used to do. It works in the mud, the rain, he’s THE Moonhog, and that’s what wins wars, I tell you.”

“Right.” Ogolvy pulled her sleeve.

“Let’s go.” She said, as if it was her idea; and they made the trip back to base which Ogolvy was more disappointed about than Abldin, in spite of the show.

The sun began peering over the buildings around them, to which Abldin had to squint, though Ogolvy’s deep brown eyes were more resistant to the glare – not that he wasn’t bothered by the sun in his eyes, but he’d boasted about being resistant to the shine in the past so now he had to endure the pain in penance for the brag.

They then approached the fence around the KDF, in the western most part of the city-centre, they handed their passes to the lady at the booth, and entered, the tarmac walkway to the entrance of the KDF building, shitmobiles, with easily damaged wheels and easily choked engines, piling in the usually unused road, leading into the garage door thing which nobody previously paid attention to, the potholes in the road were replaced by flat black patches of tarmac, still soft.

“The fuck.” Ogolvy muttered. He was already dreading having to go ask for a task to do from some random lackey or superior. He could check his emails to pretend he was busy though. Shit. Emails. They bust into the observation deck, which was still running at half capacity, but at full effort, with each employee now frenzied at their desk clicking and clacking away. Pretending to be working would be a lot of effort with Warner hanging over everyone’s heads. At least... at least it's still better than working.

As Abldin went to chat up the general supreme, the white haired boy logged onto his computer, did the stupid phone verification thing, logged into his email, confirmed that he wasn’t a robot, and yelled over at Warner, “Home Defence sent a squad to investigate a village of people that went missing and the entire PIET squad got wiped, KIA, all except for one, she’s talking about Juj that killed everyone.” The room fell silent, and he scrolled down. “Also another neighbouring village got wiped.” He paused. “They sent a video, actually, it got posted to Grinko, the HD apparently deleted the video but-”

Amanda Warner’s enormity was suddenly behind the aspiring astronomer. “Show the video.”

It was just a QD4 file, shakey camera, portrait mode, violently thrashed from side to side as the camerawoman, or man, ran away, Limbusters and Prophresians were in the small crowd, suddenly some force ripped a person out of the crowd, it was like they’d been pulled by invisible strings, the camera swung to the side, then for 1.9 seconds the attackers were visible, some sort of giant velvet worm appeared to the side, and in the centre of the camera was something like a gorilla made of stone with a face that looked like its sculptor had randomly battered it with chisel and mallet alike. Soundlessly, with each frame, the stone behemoth grew larger, then larger, stutteringly, as it got closer, at what must have been the speed of at least a car. In the final frame the light was dimmed by the creature and the phone dropped to the ground before some kind of blue woman, or man, with a giant translucent blue-white head, appeared, then the video ended.

Ogolvy turned to the supreme general who had gone shades paler, with some kind of awareness which Ogolvy noted and was apathetic to. Abldin interjected, “mutants?” And Warner responded, a strained hatred in her voice that sounded extremely pathetic, “We need to send this to our data analysts, whatever this is, I suspect it’s a product of the Juj, or perhaps what killed the PIET team was actually these… things.” She looked at Abldin, as if Abldin was somehow the one with authority here. “We need every possible PIET team out in the countryside West of the river. Full patrol, every inch of ground, ever empty house, every old truck, every forest, stat!”

“Yes, Ma’am.” Said the woman, an ivory crescent splitting her brown skin in a smile somehow unnoticed.

Warner didn't even register it, those teeth showing, just turned away from the gleeful warmonger, put a heavy hand on Ogolvy's shoulder, and said exactly what Ogolvy didn't want to hear. "You're crucial to the success of this operation."