4 - Hero
4 - Hero
Modun looked up at the sound of a distant scream, different in timbre from the wails of broken units.
He saw a figure falling from on high, screaming, shimmering.
"That’s a Lord! He’s falling!"
Janks looked up, mouth gaping, stunned by the sight.
Modun didn’t even stop to think. Wrecked buildings were nothing. Broken Units were nothing. But this was a Lord! It had to be! Nothing else lived up above the Deck! So they were told, and so it must be.
He snapped the leviplat’s tether-beam from Stumptooth and pushed hard on the controls, rising fast. He had no idea how high one of these things could go; catching the falling Lord would be tricky.
He rose almost as high as the meteoric Lord, who screamed like a freshling seeing his first Big Lifter. Jockeying the controls, pushing the leviplat way past the limits of his training, Modun reversed the lift-fields and started falling, accelerating downward, matching the Lord’s velocity. The Lord stopped screaming enough to reach out and grab the railing with one hand. Modun took his hand and hauled him onto the leviplat.
They were still falling, scant hundreds of feet from the ground. Modun reversed the fields again, gently, seeking the sweet spot between too little thrust and way too much. He felt crushed under his own weight. He collapsed to his knees, almost kicking the crumpled Lord off the leviplat. But he kept his hands on the controls, keeping the leviplat balanced, thrusting down, gobbling up their velocity, hoping he had enough time to slow them down without crushing them under the gees of hard braking. His guts didn’t feel right, and red oxygenation fluid ran from his nose and ears. Small price. Nothing at all. He was just a Unit anyway. If there was anything that would keep the Bosses from rending him for the damage he’d done, it would be saving a Lord.
They stopped.
Modun cranked open one eye and peeked over the edge. Ten feet to spare. He wiped his brow. "Heh... easy as breathin’." He collapsed back against the console, succumbing to the shakes. He wanted to pass out.
The Lord lay in a pile on his leviplat, His back to Modun, moaning.
"My Lord. We’re safe Lord." Modun tripped on his tongue, unsure how to proceed. How did a Unit address a Lord? Units didn’t, no more than a socket wrench addressed a Hunter. Lords lived above the Deck, in a different existence from Modun’s. Suddenly terrified, Modun kept silent.
"Hmm?" the Lord whimpered.
No, not whimpered, thought Modun. Aberrant notion. Whimpering is for damaged Biological Labor Units. Lords do not whimper... do they?
The Lord stirred, then rolled over.
Modun gasped, then clamped his grimy, soot-stained hand over his mouth.
The Lord looked like... but could not be! He shimmered, covered in a barrier. His clothes were clean, fresh, but rumpled and simple. Nothing Lordly about him. The Lord held some sort of tiny, hairy Unit in his arms. But, though he lacked scars, dirt, stains, sores and wrinkles, the Lord looked like a Unit – a short, thin-armed Grimer!
"Why do you--" said Modun, at the same time the Lord blurted, "H- how--"
A Boss appeared over Modun’s leviplat. It projected an egg-shaped bubble-field over the Lord. Clutching the little hairy Unit tighter, the Lord curled up, eyes on the Boss, almost as if he were...
Modun reached for the Lord, not knowing what he meant to do but meaning to do something, but the Boss took off, rocketing for the Deck, hauling the fallen Lord behind him like scrap in a sack.
Modun stared after them, mind reeling.
The Lord looked like a Unit!
And at the end, when the Lord had looked at the Boss, he had seemed... afraid!
The Boss and Lord dwindled to a shining point, then disappeared into the Deck.
Why would a Lord fear a Boss?