As I Walk These Broken Roads

heating breakfast.

“Mind handing me some of that jerky?”

“Sure thing.”

He began preparing diagrams, and chewing on the beef. Upon finishing he glanced over and spoke. “Raxx;” the man had almost finished with the coffee. “It’s my turn to get some rack now, but before I do I’m going to set you up so you know what to watch for,” he handed over the notepad.

Raxx looked it over. “‘Salute’ — isn’t that something from the medieval era?”

“Pretty much. It’s a good aide de memoir for communicating on the battlefield — which isn’t exactly what we’re doing right here, but it’s still a good framework for organizing your thoughts. It stands for Size, Activity, Location, Uniform, Time, and Equipment — let’s start with the first one: Size.”

“You wrote down fifty.”

“Right. That was a bit of a guess, since we can’t see all of them right now. You’re going to need to double check it. If you notice them broken down into any sub-groups or teams, you should put that down there, too. Next one: Activity?”

“Well, they’re passed out still… I dunno, it looks like some of them are… couples. Maybe. And they were drinking last night… I don’t really see anything else.”

“Sounds like you’ve got the hang of it — it’s not just what they’re immediately doing that’s important, but also how they do it — whether they’re lazy or not, what times they sleep, et cetera. Anything that seems noteworthy should be marked down… but anyway, next one — Location?”

Raxx raised his eyebrow.

Wentworth fought back a jolt of irritation. The desire for sleep was dogging his heels. “I know they’re all down there, but is there anything you notice about the arrangement?”

Raxx stared down at them, considering. “Well… there might be something — I see a couple different groups, maybe three — but it might just be some accident of how they passed out. Unless if you’re talking about Slayer and his friend? I don’t see them anywhere.”

Wentworth nodded, “They disappeared into the hangar — must have a room in there, or something. Honestly, ‘Location’ normally just means the grid-coordinates — like I said, SALUTE’s usually for communication — but sometimes the location can give you hints as to what their plans are, if you consider it the right way… speaking of which: Uniform?”

“Damn — I know that word. That’s… that’s what the constabulary in Hope wears, right? So we’re looking for how many pockets they have? If they’ve got bandoliers or not?”

Wentworth chewed his lip. “Yes and no. I guess it’s a bit archaic nowadays, but what it means — in this sense — is what unit they belong to, what sort of group are they? So in this case, yeah, what you said would pretty much sum it up — I mean, if these guys had been part of something larger—” Raxx’s brows furrowed, “-then we’d be asking: Are these guys the cooks? Are these guys the elites? Are they conscripts? Stuff like that — but right now, the question basically boils down to what their individual skills are — maybe there’s a medic, or a sapper, or something else we’d want to know.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Next we’ve got Time — of course you should write down the time next to anything you write down, but I kept that one in case something important happens that doesn’t fit into one of the other categories. And if nothing much happens, you can use it as a log — I set the Datapad to beep each hour, to remind you. So that brings us to the last one: Equipment. I didn’t bother with it last night, because it was too dark to make out details, and I don’t think they have anything beyond small arms and a few vehicles — but if you want to update the list, that’d be great.”

“I can do that.”

“Good. In that case, I’m going to crash — I’ll only need a few hours, but don’t be afraid to wake me for anything.”

“Okay, but I got a question, first — why didn’t we just shoot Slayer last night? I’m pretty sure you could have hit him, and they were too drunk to do anything but shoot back and miss. We could’ve got away.”

Wentworth mulled over this for a second. “Yeah… I could have… and we could have got out of here, probably, without any of them seeing us… but something was itching at me. There was some reason I didn’t want to do it. At first I thought it was that I didn’t want to rush into things like we did last time — but that wasn’t it. I dunno… just because you think you see a tactical advantage, doesn’t mean that it’s actually there.”

“What are you saying?”

“Well… what do you think all of those guys down there would be doing today if Slayer wasn’t there to keep them in check? This isn’t a case of cut off the snake’s head, and the body will die — this is a case of kill the Master, and the hounds will be set loose. A few of them might suicide, and the others would kill each other, but the rest would just run off to spread havoc everywhere else. They’d become new Slayers… no, when this batch goes out, we take all of them out. There’s a way to do it… I just don’t know what that is yet. Shame about that kid last night, though.”

It was hard to tell at that distance, but the pile of bloody rags by the base of the broken cross might have been his remains.

“Anyway, I’m not going to figure it out without some sleep. I told you I wouldn’t rush into this.”

He turned over, and within moments Raxx was on his own. He looked over — during their conversation the fuel tab heating his coffee had burned out. He checked it — the temperature was just right.

He sipped at the cup and watched — not quite sure what he was looking at.

* * *

Uniform. The word felt strange on his lips.

His uncle had been smart. That old Mechanic he’d met in Steeltown had been smart. But Wentworth…

The man had no head for engines, but other sorts of dynamics he seemed to look through as if they were glass. The callousness he’d shown during the crucifixion had bothered him, almost as much as the crucifixion itself. His sleep had been plagued with nightmares about it — the kid tied there, screaming for mercy, as a dark mirror of himself, dressed in helmet and goggles, stood there and laughed… He’d barely been able to look at the other man after waking — but had he really been callous? Or had he just seen past it? In retrospect, Wentworth was right — if they’d tried to save the kid, they might have both died, and a lot of others…

But there was the way he spoke. He kept saying words, turns-of-phrases, which left Raxx in the dark, but… what was it he’d said about the old myths? That, even if they were unknown, they’d be recognizable to people today? Most of his sayings seemed to fit into that category… most of them. And they weren’t bad sayings, or even bad ideas; regardless if a lot of them seemed prewar… but there was that computer he trusted his life on.

The man was so damned dismissive of everyone he met, as if—

The computer beeped.

Damnit! Slaved to a device… he spent the next few minutes writing a summary for what had occurred that hour. His hand was unaccustomed to writing letters. The sloppiness frustrated him, and his hand cramped up. Occasionally he’d blush in shame, wondering whether a particular word was spelt with one ‘L’ or two. Wentworth’s writing was neat and precise.

Uniform.

Where had his thought train been? Wentworth… the man was smart, but there was something about his attitude; it was bad enough that he was unapologetic for using the computer… not just unapologetic, but arrogant about it. It was a symptom of the same thing that made him dismissive of — of everything! Every city, every person, every idea…

Of course, people were always like that — they thought their ideas the best. When you visited a foreign city you kept your manners about you, going along to get along, but Wentworth… well, to be honest, he wasn’t bad with people. For a man who incited so much wariness upon first impression, with Raxx’s help they’d managed to woo their hotel-manager, to get Tracy and her staff to fall in love with them… he treated people…

He treated people the same way you treat a pack of pariah dogs.

It wasn’t that he demanded his city be above all others — he accepted that it was, and they were all beneath it! He treated everyone like the deformed waiter at the Roadhouse — as if it would be unfair to expect more than failure!