Ragamuffin (27 page)

H
ad Pepper taken any longer to reach Jerome, he might have been too late. That bugged him. Was he getting soft? Comfortable in his ways? Nanagada might look like a tropical vacation, but Pepper wondered if he’d grown accustomed to it.

The steam car stopped on the edge of a plaza dominated by Tenochtilanome’s main sacrificial pyramid. Already today blood ran down the sides of it. A Teotl spacecraft had landed in the plaza.

“The boy stays,” Ahexotl said.

Pepper looked over and considered killing him. “Why?”

“So you don’t try anything strange, like attacking our gods.”

“Fair enough.” Pepper smiled. They had each other figured out all too well. He looked over at Jerome. “Remain calm. I’ll be back shortly.”

He stepped out of the car. Every muscle tensed, ready to spring at any second, Pepper walked forward with the several armed Azteca at either side. The wide-winged craft crouched above the stones, the pyramid rising up behind it.

Azteca warriors made a wall of bodies on either side of Pepper, feathered capes flapping slightly in the soft wind, rifles at the ready.

At the far end of the honor guard two Teotl stood. Warrior Teotl. Vaguely bipedal, they turned and faced Pepper. He noted the black, razorlike forearms, spiked fingers, and mirrored eyeplates. The creatures’ thick, chitinous skin would be almost impervious to low-caliber gunfire and edged objects.

Hard nuts to crack.

And behind the warrior-grown Teotl sat the divans on which the Teotl leaders sat, watching him from the shadows with their beady eyes.

The Azteca guided him to the shaded pavilion under the protection of one of the swooping wings. Throngs of Azteca honor guards stood in the background, looking over the proceedings.

The Teotl had returned from the skies and adapted to the local conditions quite quickly.

“Proceed to within five paces. No more. No less.” The voice came out of the air. The two warrior Teotl, polished and armored skins gleaming in the sun, moved to either side of him.

The three creatures in the couches stirred to stare at Pepper. Highly
modified Teotl for thinking and planning, their bodies were crafted to support superfast brains. Radiator fans crested their skulls, the air above them rippling from dumped heat.

“Your body is laced with devices.” The center Teotl spoke Anglic. “Your physical abilities are amplified. You are not a part of this fallow world here.” A stubby, pale flipper flapped, as if it to indicate the city around them. “You come from beyond the outleading wormhole?”

“Yes.” He saw no reason to lie to them. Yet. Pepper looked up at the smooth underbelly of the craft. It looked like metal from the distance, but up close he wasn’t so sure.

“Did you come recently? The wormhole out to other worlds of your kind is closed.”

“I came before it closed.”

“And that was hundreds of years ago,” they said in a chorus.

“Yes.”

Three simultaneous sighs filled the air between the couches. They seemed disappointed. Or at least, were choosing to project it to him. A sigh was just as much a language marker as anything else.

Pepper regarded the mounds of flesh before him. “Why?”

A single measured tick of time passed as they conferred with each other with quick glances. “We have a deep need for emissaries.” More shifting. “We can reopen the wormhole to the next system by shoring open the mouth with exotic matter. But our species has a history of antagonism with yours, and presumably a reputation out there. We need help and advice to cross over.”

“Why?” Pepper folded his arms. Even though he didn’t trust them, if they were really going back to the other worlds, it might be a way to get back out to civilization decades earlier than planned. The
Ma Wi Jung
still languished on the bottom somewhere near Capitol City, useless to him. And even if fixed, it would require hundreds of years to cross the space required to get to a working wormhole.

If the wormhole back could just be fired up again, that was appealing to him.

“Your kind manipulates.” He spread his arms out. “We fell for your lies once.”

“We are now refugees. We have no time for deceptions and deceit,” the Teotl said.

Pepper stared at them. “Yes?”

“Our worlds have been destroyed for technological violations.” The words
dripped out of the air and continued. “We have been deemed dangerous, our lease on existence terminated. We orbit this planet because we flee those who would destroy us. The wormhole we came through is temporarily closed again, but we will eventually need help keeping it closed. We seek to open and travel through the other wormhole to the worlds you once knew, but we need ambassadors and assistance.”

The beady eyes regarded him.

Pepper looked up at the craft. A working spaceship. Unlike the
Ma Wi Jung
. “I’m still listening,” he said.

“There are others like you. Ahexotl and Xippilli will be working to find more of them in the other large city. We’ll take you there to join up with these others, and there we will discuss terms and needs. Eventually we’ll take you to our home.”

“A whole other planet?”

“Our home orbits here right now.”

Pepper looked around at the Azteca. The original Teotl had manipulated humanity enough. This new set of lies would probably mean even more danger. But a quick ride back to Capitol City to get Jerome reunited with his father, that was worth a quick flirt.

“Okay,” Pepper said. “I’ll take the shuttle ride to Capitol City.”

The aliens hissed their satisfaction, and Pepper looked up at the giant wing overhead. Complex plots were not his thing, he preferred direct approaches.

But he would remain checked for now.

X
ippilli followed Ahexotl toward the giant flying machine, looking at the Teotl with trepidation. He might know they were just creatures, as Ahexotl said, but somewhere deep inside he still retained the belief that these were gods.

He watched as a second flying machine climbed up into the air over the city. More than one had landed, and they had all filled their holds with Azteca warriors bound for Capitol City.

The strange creatures in their divans didn’t so much as glance his way as he walked toward the machine and the crowd of twenty warriors standing around Jerome and Pepper.

“Pepper is what they seek,” Ahexotl told him. “Eventually you can do what you want with the boy, but for now, I want him chained and guarded. Encouragement for Pepper. He’s dangerous. I don’t want him causing trouble.”

Xippilli looked over. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“He needs controlled.” Ahexotl looked over at the man. “He’s dangerous. We know there are other immortal Nanagadans that have been here from the beginning, but these people are always hard to ferret out, and we already have what we need to please the gods. My thanks to you. Our task is already over, and we are in the gods’ favor.”

Xippilli nodded and continued to stare at the machine. Ahexotl waved at the warriors and they circled Jerome, cutting him off from Pepper.

“Hey,” Pepper snapped. Xippilli flinched. “What are you doing?”

“We need to make sure you fulfill your end of the bargain.” Ahexotl waved again, and the warriors clapped a collar on the boy’s neck. “It is a prong collar. He’ll be fine, as long as he doesn’t struggle.”

Nasty tips dug into Jerome’s neck. Xippilli avoided both their eyes. No doubt they viewed him as the worst kind of traitor right now.

Maybe they were right.

“Please,” Xippilli said. “Don’t struggle against this.”

He wanted to crawl into a hole and not come out as the warriors pulled Jerome with them, and they followed a spiked, gleaming Teotl into the great machine.

Ahexotl waited until Pepper followed, then spoke to Xippilli. “The attack will be over by the time you arrive to take control. You make sure to give the gods what they need and send me what I need, and all will be well.”

“And the outlying areas?” Xippilli asked.

“We’ll start with the city. I will decide what to do with the rest of Nanagada.”

Xippilli nodded, then followed the warriors into the heart of the machine. Faint light glimmered and Xippilli waited for his eyes to adjust as the hull behind him sealed itself shut. The machine started to shake as it rose into the sky.

Xippilli swallowed.

The thundering pitched higher, and inside everything shook. Xippilli grabbed the wall.

Pepper balanced easily enough while crouched on the floor, staring at him. He was also poking at the wall, using a fingernail to probe at it.

Xippilli stared at the tiny crenellations all along the domelike chamber whose smooth floor they sat on. At the front, a tiny niche hooked off from the chamber. Fibrous strands draped from the walls of it to swaddle the yellowed, fat Teotl as he leaned back with eyes closed to control the ship.

A glass of some sort separated the niche from them, and on their side of it an inky black and spiked Teotl stared back at them. Xippilli had no doubt it would kill them if they tried anything. That and the packed crowd of warriors in here made this a very, very secure space.

Yet still he felt like frayed rope about to snap. Pepper
did things
, he did not sit around waiting unless it ended in something. But the Teotl didn’t really know what Pepper was truly capable of or they wouldn’t have let him aboard. Would they?

Pepper versus the spiked Teotl. Xippilli wasn’t sure who would win.

“Relax,” Pepper told Jerome, folding his arms and leaning back against the wall. He closed his eyes. “Now’s the time you need to take a nap. Even in this thing it’s going to take another hour.”

Xippilli stared at the man, then at Jerome. Jerome leaned closer. “I will kill you one day, traitor,” the young man hissed.

Xippilli turned his back and moved toward the warriors, who reverently whispered among each other in awe about being so close to the Teotl.

Pepper shifted just as Xippilli felt his ears start to hurt. The ship settled down, thudded, and the vibrating slowly wound down.

“And here we come,” Pepper said, and stretched slowly, while keeping an eye on the twenty warriors packed in with them. “Xippilli, do me a favor? Step to your left two paces, and remain calm.”

“Calm?” Xippilli frowned. But he stepped over. Teotl or not, he would not trifle with the man.

“You have a collar on Jerome, who I promised John nothing would happen to. I’m getting off, and I’m going my own way for a while.”

“Your promise to assist the gods?”

“I might yet. But I disdain being told what to do.” Pepper reached over to the nearest warrior and pulled his rifle away in a smooth, relaxed movement. Then kicked the man back into the tightly packed crowd.

The Teotl behind him leapt. Pepper rolled forward with the impact and threw it into the group. Its head bounced off to the side and clear fluid pooled quickly at the warriors’ feet. Pepper raised the rifle and Xippilli grabbed the barrel.

“Wait.” He had do
something
to avoid the bloodshed.

Pepper hesitated.

Xippilli pointed the barrel of Pepper’s gun at the side of his own head and said in Nahautl, “You know who this man is and what he is capable of?”

They nodded.

“Then he’s taking me prisoner for now,” Xippilli said. “He does not want to currently go with us, and by fighting in here we endanger the god at the front.” By offering himself as a temporary hostage he could calm Pepper and get the man out of the ship without causing more damage. And Pepper would owe him. That would be valuable in the future.

The warriors nodded in agreement, and Xippilli let out the tight knot of fear in his stomach. He faced forward to the Teotl at the front. “Great sir, please open the hull for us so that no one further is killed.”

The hull cracked open and light spilled in. Judging by the carefully trimmed shrubs outside, Xippilli guessed they were in the gardens near the very center of Capitol City.

“I want that man’s clothes.” Pepper pointed at a jaguar-masked warrior with a long cape.

He handed the gun to Jerome once the items were handed over and changed, adjusting his dreadlocks. It was, Xippilli thought, convincing enough. Pepper as a Jaguar warrior.

Pepper looked forward at the Teotl in its niche, then walked over to where the hull had puckered, pushing Xippilli and Jerome in front of him. “You all wait for two minutes before following us out, or I’ll kill Xippilli.”

The hull opened further, more light stabbing into the dim interior. Xippilli
walked out, and Pepper kept the rifle pointed at him. Ten Azteca waited outside in the bright sun, arrayed in a half circle.

Xippilli kept a cool expression as the Azteca stared at him. Pepper continued to push them forward.

“Where are our headquarters?” Xippilli asked the group, switching to Nahautl to talk to them. He looked around. The carefully kept grounds of the central gardens lay between the Ministerial Mansion and the docks. The mansion was behind them, and the closest Azteca in the welcoming reception pointed back at it.

Xippilli, Pepper, and Jerome moved toward it, and the Azteca fell in beside them.

“I am Atlahuah,” the nearest man said. “I command the men for Ahexotl, and for the gods.
What is going here?
” They were obviously not sure whether they should be trying to shoot Pepper, but Xippilli seemed quite calm and okay.

“I’m temporarily being used as a hostage to get to that road.” Xippilli handed Atlahuah a piece of parchment with Ahexhotl’s instructions on it. “There is nothing we can do right now, so I’m going to walk with them, and then return. I know the mansion. Come find me in the lobby, but don’t endanger your life by trying to rescue me right now, or shoot these two men. The gods want them for some reason.”

Atlahuah looked slightly offended, but obeyed and left with his men for the mansion.

The three of them continued through the high shrubs and walkways until they came to the street, and Xippilli stopped.

Pepper leaned in. “You jumped quickly to becoming the Azteca ruler of the city.”