“I failed, we were told that politicians here were easy to seduce but I couldn’t make mind-contact with them. I hoped killing you would buy enough favor to save my life. People here no longer are deceived by our mind mask.” The succubus thought for a second. “What is a pimp?”
“Somebody who lives off the money we earn.”
“I do not get paid.”
“Then you’re a sex-slave?” The women in the bar were genuinely shocked. They frequently told their tourist clients they were poor women, tricked into a life of sin by unscrupulous brothel-owners but that was just a line to get some sympathy-money. They were all Bangkok girls, born and bred in the city. Country girls couldn’t compete with them and didn’t try. Not one of the girls in the bar had ever actually met a real sex-slave.
“Aren’t you?'
“No!” Noi, the girl with the Desert Eagle, was horrified and insulted. “We are business-women. We are free professionals and paid as such. Why last week I made more money than an office lady makes in a year. Look… What’s your name?”
“Lugasharmanaska.”
“Look Lugasharman… do you mind if we call you Luga? Nobody has the right to go around telling you who you can have sex with. Not unless they pay you for the trouble. It sounds to me like this Deumos person has been treating you pretty badly. You’d be better off staying with us that going back to him.”
“Her. Deumos is a female. A Greater Demon.”
There was another round of indignant snorts. “That’s disgusting. A woman treating you like this? A man, perhaps I can understand, they always want it for free but another woman? That’s sick. You should be free to make your own living. It’s your body.”
“I could make a living doing it here?” Lugasharmanaska’s voice was uneven, curious, confused.
The women in the bar laughed, although that didn’t affect the way they held their guns. “You bet. A real demon whore? There’d be men lining up out the door to do you. You could look like yourself, or like their favorite actress or whatever. You’d make a fortune. Why a couple of months and you’d own a bar like this. Less if an American warship pulled into Pattaya.” A chorus of happy sighs ran around the bar. To the women, an American warship full of Walking ATMs was their idea of the Great Cornucopia. Noi continued. “Look, Luga, last time one American carrier pulled in for a week, I made enough money to buy a new pickup truck. Cash down. Lin over there paid for a whole year’s college tuition for her younger sister and Dip bought a house for her parents. How do you think we all ended up with American guns? Tourists are profitable enough, we all make a good living off them. And this Deumos person makes you do it for nothing. It’s not just disgusting, its unprofessional.”
“Well what can I do?” Lugasharmanaska almost wailed out the question.
The girls did a quick conference. “Come with us, we’ll take you to the Army. They’ll look after you, they know if they don’t look after our friends, they’ll never get any in this city again. I’ll get my truck and we’ll go around to the Cavalry Depot in Thonburi.”
Five minutes later, one succubus and five ladies of the night were piling into Noi’s pickup truck, Lugasharmanaska having been strongly cautioned not to scratch the paint with her claws. A ten-minute drive took them to the depot gates where, for the second time in an evening, Lugasharmanaska was surrounded by guns.
“Hi boys.” Noi’s voice was bright and friendly.
“Sisters, you do know you got a baldrick in the back there?”
“Of course. Her name is Luga. She wants to surrender so we brought her here. We don’t trust the police.”
“I can understand that. I’ll have to call the Officer of the Guard.”
Another ten minutes and the group were telling their story to the Officer of the Guard, making it very clear that the succubus was under their protection and if she was hurt, nobody in the Second Cavalry Division would be welcome in a Bangkok bar again. Most of the troops had gulped at that threat and mentally promised to guard their prisoner with their lives. Within 30 minutes, the Thai MoD was on the telephone to Washington.
Headquarters, Randi Institute of Pneumatology, The Pentagon, Arlington, VA
“Well, it’s a step forward but it doesn’t really get us that far.”
“I thought Julie did well.”
“She did, and we told her she can use the equipment any time she likes to torment Domiklespharatu. But its one-to-one communication. It’s using a telephone and we want to use something like radio. We want to transmit to everybody and this system just can’t do that. It needs a mind-pattern to lock in to, like I said, it’s one-to-one.”
“But baldricks can deceive large numbers of people at once.”
“Sure, but we don’t know how. We’re a long way out from knowing that.”
The telephone on Randi’s desk rang and he picked it up, mouthing an apology as he did so. As he listened, his eyebrows lifted.
“Well, this might change things. That was the Ministry of Defense in Bangkok. We’ve got a defector.”
Tip of the hat to Surlethe who wrote the hell section of this installment.
Chapter Thirteen
The Royal Dragoon Guards, Al Badiyah Al Janubiyah, Western Iraq
“How shall a man die better than facing fearful odds? For the ashes of his fathers and the future of his buds. It’s showtime boys”.
Guardsman Bass put the tank intercom down. Like every good tank commander, he had anticipated the order, getting his Challenger II ready to move well before the word came down from Regimental HQ. It hadn’t taken that much anticipation in fact, just a modicum of skill and experience. Skill and experience was something that the long- term professionals that made up the British ranks had in abundance. The spams may have the shiny toys, the British tankers said, but the Brits knew how to play with them.
In the valley below, the baldrick army was slowly extricating itself from the tangle caused by the minefields and wire. What had started as a serried mass of infantry was being distorted and funneled into a confused mass, made all the worse by the pounding of the AS-90Ds. The 155mm guns were lobbing their shells into the mass of infantry still seething through the gap in the wire torn where the baldrick cavalry had died. They were concentrating on the mass targets but that meant the infantry was slowly penetrating the first line of defense, breaking through in a thin, steady stream. They were beginning to move across the valley floor, making their way towards where the Challengers were sitting in wait behind the rippling sand and gravel dunes.
Even with the snarled mess down by the wire holding up the bulk of the baldricks, Bass was appalled by the sheer number of them coming towards his position. Intellectually, he had heard the number that was expected, nearly 100,000, but he had never imagined what 100,000 infantry swarming towards him would look like. Now, he knew. It was a sight few had ever seen before even where human armies were concerned. The mass of baldrics were something that belonged out of human prehistory.
“Mark your targets as they come.” The voice over the radio was calm and collected, the boyish pitch already well-controlled and only barely a reminder of how young their officer was. It didn’t matter much, everybody knew a junior officer fresh out of Sandhurst was still being trained in his craft. This one was doing well, Bass thought. If he survived, he might go far. Even while he thought that, his hands were selecting a group of baldricks as his target.
“Lase them.”
A brief pause. “5,003 meters boss.”
Another brief pause and then Lieutenant McLeoud’s voice cut in again. “On my word boys. Hold Fast and…. shoot!”
“On the way.”
Third Legion, Southern Flank, Abigor’s Army
He had survived the snakes, he had seen their silver bodies stretched out on the ground, tape-like creatures that were threatening even in death. Those who had stepped on their bodies had screamed in agony as the snake teeth cut their feet apart. Demon skin was strong but the silver snakes were stronger.
He had avoided the yellow bars as well, taught by the fearful fate of those who had been careless enough to step on them. He had threaded his way through the maze on the ground, catching only minor injuries from the
