Chapter 606: No Time for Tears (2/2)
”Me,” Dee said. She stared at Casey. ”In or out, Ring Breaker?”
”In,” Casey said, looking up. His eyes looked sunken, hollow, and dark. ”I'm in.”
Peel looked at him, then at Dee. ”You want him in his armor,” she accused, her voice hot.
”Of course I do, don't be foolish,” Dee snapped. ”If you walk in with an explosive vest, you best have Semtex and not hot dogs.”
”NO!” Peel said, coming to her feet. ”No! How can you ask him that? Don't you care what it will do to him? How can you ask something so monstrous?”
Dee stood up, expanding into the huge demonic figure. She bent forward, until her massive muscle was nearly touching Peel's pert upturned nose. ”Because I'm the Detainee, girl.”
”What you ask is cruel. You ask him to risk his soul,” Peel snapped, not stepping back even when the smoke from the Detainee's nostrils washed over her face. ”No.”
”You have no idea what I ask of him. Wrapping him in armor is the least of what I may ask of him,” the Detainee growled. ”If I must unveil the Ring Breaker, I'll be the biggest mass murderer in the history of the galaxy as we know it,” she puffed out more smoke. ”I'll kill more people than the Great Flood and do it without a second's hesitation.”
Peel frowned.
”But that decision will not be on him. He's a weapon, not a man, plain and simple. I don't need the man, I can find a man in any dive bar bathroom I bother to check with my tits hanging out, I need the weapon, and he's the only one that exists,” the Detainee growled. ”He may fire the weapon, but it'll be me that pulls the trigger.”
Peel looked uncertain for a moment, looking at Casey, then back at the massive face of the Detainee.
She suddenly shrunk, back into a short woman that only came up mid-chest on Peel. She stared up into Peel's eyes, her gun-metal gray eyes hot and full of some kind of burning emotion that Vuxten didn't understand.
”I know more keenly what I will be asking him to do than you can ever know, girl,” Dee said softly. Her eyes burned with something, something that made her eyes look like burning liquid iron. ”I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” she said softly. ”Look into my eyes, girl.”
Peel clenched her jaw and stared into the other woman's eyes.
Vuxten was at the right angle to see it, the reflection in Peel's eyes.
An atomic explosion in a desert.
”I was there,” Dee whispered. ”It was mine own hand that wrote the complex equations to understand the waveform of the implosion trigger. It was mine own hands that helped craft it. I was there.”
Peel swallowed.
”Victory at any price,” Dee whispered.
Peel suddenly looked away.
”Monster,” she whispered, rubbing at the goosebumps that had suddenly appeared on her upper arms.
Dee just shrugged.
Vuxten just stared at the small woman as she turned to face him, ignoring how Lady Keena got up and moved over to embrace Peel with Casey.
”Ever look into the Devil's eyes,” Casey said softly.
”You come highly recommended, fox boy,” Dee smiled. She walked back over and sat on the rock, picking up her beer and taking a swallow. ”Enraged Phillip, Bellona the Grave Bound Beauty, Legion. All of them sang your praises.”
Vuxten nodded and swallowed, his hand drifting of its own accord to the ornate stubber on his hip.
”Now that I can see you with my own eyes I can make my own decision,” she said. She stared for a long time at him. She suddenly gave a solemn nod. ”You carry the weapon of a man who stood back to back with Enraged Phillip on the sands of Anthill,” she leaned forward slightly as she exhaled smoke.
”You're Enraged,” her voice was a crackling whisper. ”You alone, among the Telkan, are Enraged.”
Vuxten nodded jerkily.
”You fell beneath the mountain, pulled into the depths by the Balrog of Morgoth,” Dee said. Vuxten realized he could see her eyes perfectly through the cloud of cigarette smoke. ”You arose from the depths, you and 471 both, your sins and wounds washed by the water.”
Vuxten nodded. He remembered very little, only pain, from the end of the fight when everything turned white.
”You fear contaminating your podlings, your wife, your broodcarriers, with the rage you carry inside of yourself,” Dee said softly.
”Leave him alone,” Casey said, letting go of Peel and starting to step forward.
Vuxten held up his hand. ”She's right,” he said. He nodded. ”I do fear that, which is why I am out here with Lady Keena every day.”
”And now the Devil's come for your soul,” Dee smiled.
Vuxten nodded slowly. Before Dee could say anything else he spoke.
”I'm in.”
Dee smiled.
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471 stood in the middle of his fellow engineers, his bladearms and work arms upraised, his hands clenched over his his head. They were cheering, complex mathematical equations being tossed out even as they made rare vocalizations of approval.
He wore an MRE wrapped on his torso, holes ripped in the sides for his arms, a hole for his head.
His fellow engineers showered him with droplets of beer.
He chanted with them.
The Devil had been to see him. Fearsome in her matronly glory.
Had reminded all of them.
Of him.
Now, like them, he was being called to service beyond what any could expect by something almost beyond comprehension, who had seen the value in the smallest.
They chanted the name of the First around him even as he yelled the name with his voice.
”GRAVITY!”