Chapter Eleven

Roland visits Waco, gets laid, and takes a trip to the City of Wheels.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Chapter eleven, Rowland Roland loved fighting men in powered armor.
The increased firepower and durability gave them an outside chance,
which made it fun, and the sheer expense of modern
suits made it feel a little like wailing on rich
kids with fancy toys. But Roland did not like fighting
normal humans. He'd hoped the infantry coming up behind the

(00:22):
armored troopers would run like hell once he popped their vanguard,
but instead they'd insisted on a fight and started shooting
at him with very large guns. One explosive munition had
hit nine yards ahead of his position, and the other
had impacted close enough to pepper Roland's torso and face
with shrapnel, so regretfully he charged the enemy. The martyr
shot back. They hit him a few times, but Roland

(00:44):
paid their bullets as much mind as he would a
mild rein. He drew close enough for visual contact. These
martyrs were a motley sight. Several of them fought shirtless,
with white crosses daubed across their chests. Most of them
wore body armor, very little of it. Modern. Roland saw
a lot of old pre war plate carriers and surplus
police vests that crap wouldn't stop military grade rifle rounds,

(01:06):
although since the only weapon in Roland's hand was a
big gas wrench, how these men were armored hardly mattered.
They were mostly armed with old enforce and a smattering
of newer assault rifles, probably pilfered from the Republic of Texas.
Fifty men, six technicals, two drone carriers. Roland hit their
skirmishing line before the teams on the recoilist rifles. His
first target could reload. Roland's wrench broke jaws and orbital bones.

(01:30):
It cracked pelvises and shattered thighs. He dispatched the rifle
teams and then danced through the on rushing mob of
militia like some sort of compound fracture dispensing ballerina. And
as he fought, Roland felt the familiar sunlight warmth of
serotonin flowed his synapses. He remembered a little of how
the army had explained the battle. Drugs now flowing through
his brain a guarantee of sustained aggression. The longer he fought,

(01:54):
the harder would be for him to stop fighting and
to avoid killing. Rowland felt his self control will begin
to fade. As he knocked out his dozenth martyr, he
started swinging harder, his blows increasingly connected with clavicles instead
of coxyxes, and jaws instead of elbows. His hindbrain warned him.
As the kill likelihoods jumped from ford to six percent

(02:14):
up to twenty thirty, he felt his conscience fade beneath
the uphoric red haze of narcotic splendor. Before he knew it,
the whole platoon of martyrs was either on the ground
or fleeing for the relative safety of their technicals. Roland
laughed a madman's laughed. Tickled that they thought a bunch
of old Toyota trucks with machine guns in the beds
might slow him down. He put a fist through the

(02:36):
engine block of one and made a burst of fifty
caliber fire from the other. As he pivoted and launched
his wrench through the driver's side window. The improvised missile
connected with the face of the driver, who spun his
wheel hard to the left. The truck flipped forward onto
its cabin. Something about the wet crunch had maid sounded
so familiar. Oh God, oh dear sweet Jesus, Please, sir,

(02:57):
The National guardsman was nineteen years old. Randall Pallas was
his name. Roland knew that because his hindbrain had sucked
in every piece of publicly available data on the boy
once it had scanned his face. It had done that
with all the occupants of the humvey and the four
seconds before Rowland had blown it on its side. Wallace
was just the only member of the crew unlucky enough
to survive. Please, Sir, Roland stepped towards the broken, bloody boy.

(03:20):
He came back to himself, a bit disoriented, but none
the worse for wear. His hindbrain and a lifetime of
combat memories had kept his body fighting in his mind's absence.
Now wrinchless, Roland used his bare hands to tear open
doors and break faces. The gunners on the remaining technicals
tried to fire back, but their maneuverability was limited by
the rubble choked streets and their own fleeing infantry. One

(03:41):
minute after first contact, the martyr contingent had been reduced
to a dozen shell shocked soldiers, piled hastily on to
the tops of the retreating drone carriers. Roland hopped onto
the last of the technicals. He disabled it by pulling
the driver out through the front windshield and using the
man's body to beat the gunner into unconsciousness. Roland tore
the vehicle's twenty millimeter cannon free from its swivel mount

(04:03):
and sided in on the fleeing troops. His synapses promised
him more chemical rewards if only he'd pulled the trigger,
but something in Roland's forebrains stopped him. Under the joyous
miasma of the battle drugs, his conscience reasserted itself. He
lowered his weapon and watched as his enemies beat hell
for leather in the opposite direction. His hands shook, and
he felt the first symptoms of withdrawal. As his heart

(04:25):
rate dropped and the adrenaline drips stopped its flow, Roland
closed his eyes. He breathed in and out, and centered himself.
The crash came. Now that the fighting was done, Roland
had time to process the since data he'd pulled from
his enemies. He knew what the driver he'd ripped out
of the windshield had eaten for breakfast. He knew which
of the militia he'd crippled were fathers. He knew which

(04:46):
had wives or at least girl friends. He could smell
traces of football leather on some of their hands. One
man he'd wrenched had smelled of rosin a violinist. Roland
couldn't fight a man without learning much more about him
than any killer should know about their victims. That knowledge
crashed down on him in a hail storm of guilt.
Roland dropped the cannon into the truck's bed. He hopped down,

(05:06):
pulled Sardar's wrench free from the wreck of the Second Technical,
and headed back towards Biggsby and his squad with a
heavy heart. Madine and Asimee both looked pretty seriously wounded.
Biggsby was helping to carry them both back to the
APC while Will handled over watch with his grenade launcher.
Roland caught up with them and fell into step. Biggsby
looked over at him and grunted, Are you gonna try

(05:27):
to take my nipple now? Roland shrugged. He wasn't in
the mood. His brain was in the dark, ugly place
it always went after a bloody fight, when the raw
data about all the men he'd killed or battered lingered
in his brain like a fart in the back of
a hum v They reached the APC. Sardar gasped when
he saw them, Pedro vomited. Roland was confused until he

(05:48):
realized Biggsby and Will had also started to stare. Roland
looked down at himself and saw that he looked like
a literal dead man walking. He'd been shot forty seven
times by his hindbrain's best count, and peppered with shrapnel.
Top of that, he had ribbs showing through holes blasted
in his biceps, in his belly, and the bone on
his left thigh was completely exposed. It looks worse than

(06:09):
it is, Roland said, it looks like you should be
dead about five times over, Sardar replied. Roland looked Sardar
up and down. His hind brain did the math eleven times.
If I were you, Jesus, he handed Sarda the wrench,
now dented and bloodstained. A large clump of hair and
scalp was still stuck to the heel jaw. The mechanic

(06:29):
took his tool with one hesitant hand. He stared at
the gore on it until Biggsby started to yell again,
Oi fucos. In case you've forgotten, there's an army breathing
up our asses. Sar, you get to drive man, Sardar
NodD at his head. Then let's get the wounded in
the cab and power the funk out of here. Will
stay on watch. Will grunted and jerked his head at Roland.

(06:49):
This funk erota cover us. He just took out half
a company on his lonesome. You trust him to watch
your six Biggsby, asked Roland. Only half heard them. He
stared off into the distance. We're his jaw and clenched
his left fist so hard his finger nails drew blood.
He was lost in his head, scanning scent memories and
analyzing the men he'd just beaten. He was drawn again

(07:09):
and again to the memory of one man in particular.
He'd worn a tattered U. S Army issue vest and
an M sixteen that posed as much of a threat
to Rowland as a drunken hornet. He'd had the scent
of a woman on him. He wasn't alone in that,
but the rich wave of oxytocin that had poured off
him was intense and real. In his memory. The man's
face kept twisting and morphing into the face of Randall Wallace,

(07:30):
Roland started to cry. Bigsby and Sardar loaded Ryan, Nadine,
and Asime into the transport. Will just stared at him,
his gaze locked on Roland's tears, as if each one
were the lockneest monster. Roland didn't care. His hind brain
kept up its glitchy feet of data, a mix of
information on the men he'd just killed and the men
he'd killed years ago. Once the wounded were loaded up,

(07:51):
everyone filed into the Maddis APC. Will popped the top
hatch and sat Gunner with his grenade launcher. Inside the APC,
Bigsby and Pedro did their best version of first aid
on their wounded companions. There wasn't much for them to do,
though everyone in the squad had fairly advanced healing suites.
Roland trudged into the a PC and took his seat.
No one made eye contact with him. Sardark kicked it

(08:13):
into gear, and off they went. Waco had always been
one of the worst cities in Texas. In the late
eighteen hundreds, that had been a refuge for former Confederate loyalists.
In the nineteen hundreds, that had developed a reputation as
a haven for coups and religious extremists. Caught between the

(08:36):
economic powerhouse of Dallas and the relative cultural mecca of Austin.
Waco was a second rate college town at best, and
at worst, a meth filled rest stop between Texas's good cities.
The revolution had changed that. After the lake would blast,
Dallas had bled sixty percent of its population. Most of
those people had fled to Austin since constant flooding had

(08:57):
rendered much of Houston uninhabitable, but half a million of
them ish had swelled Waco into something resembling a worthwhile
place to exist. The city had thrived in the post
revolutionary years. It was nominally controlled by the Austin regional government,
and so it had been spared the worst of the
Republic of Texas's corruption. But now it looked like Waco

(09:17):
would be the next city eaten by the expanding Heavenly Kingdom.
Roland could smell the stink of fear in the air
when they were still a half dozen miles out from
the city limits. Once they hit the city proper, their
convoy halted at a military checkpoint. Power armored Austin Republican
guardsmen opened the side hatch of the Maddis a PC
and inspected the squad bigsby spoke for them, beamed over

(09:39):
some credentials from the SDF, and they were waved in.
They stopped at a fueling depot with the rest of
the SDF column, and Roland hopped out of the a
PC to stretch his legs and roll another blunt. He
picked a cherry apple rap he dipped in a vat
of extra strength hydrocodone syrup earlier that morning. As he
rolled it tight and sealed the scene with his saliva,
he watched the stf unload hundreds of wounded warriors from

(10:02):
half tracks and a PC's in the beds of flatbed trucks.
Many of the walking men and women looked wounded too.
Most of the vehicles were damaged. Roland lit the blunt
and stared off towards Dallas. It was still early in
the morning, and the sky was streaked with red and orange.
On the horizon, black smoke rose to meet the sunrise.
Rowland was struck with a powerful sense of dejah vou.

(10:24):
This wasn't the first time he'd watched a great city
burn in the light of the rising sun. According to
his hind brain, it was around the thirtieth time. He
recalled a few of those cities Denver, Baltimore, d C. Richmond,
but the particulars of each calamity were lost to his memory.
He wondered, not for the first time, if his broken
brain might be a blessing boy it was, Sardar. He

(10:47):
approached from the rear and stepped up to Roland's right side.
Rowland offered the mechanic his blunt, now half smoked, and
Sardar accepted it. He drew in a deep lungful of
medicated smoke, held it in his lungs for three long seconds,
and then exhaled with only a small fit of coughing.
It tastes like fucking cough, Sarah man. Yep. Roland agreed,
there's enough opiates on that to kill a small cat.

(11:10):
That's a weird thing to say. Yep, Roland agreed. Sardar
took a second hit and then passed the blunt back
to Roland. They stood in companionable silence for a minute
and watched the distant smoke mingle with the morning light.
Sardar spoke first, Jim's on his way out here. He's
flying in with three more squads. Austin's approved emergency funding

(11:30):
to stabilize the front. Apparently a chunk of that's coming
our way. Grats, said Roland. Then he asked, what's the
money mean, do you? Sardar shrugged, Cascadia. Probably been saving
for a couple of years. Now, fifty grand buy residency.
Another hundred grand or so to set me up for
the first year while I find work. Roland finished another

(11:51):
deep poll on the blunt and offered it to Sardar.
The other man declined with a polite wave of his hand.
Now thanks. Roland puffed again and asked, so, what's the
Pacific Northwest got that you want the future? Sardar said,
I mean, that's what it always meant my head. I
grew up in al Passo, got trained up by that
army blooded in their first little civil war, the a

(12:13):
Albuquerque Secession. Right, Sardar nodded. Didn't see much action then,
but I got Jim's attention. He made me an offer
when my term of service expired. The idea was I'd
be with him for five years and retire with enough
money to make a new start out west. I always
dreamed of a life in Portland. It seems nice there,
it is. Roland agreed, or at least I got nice memories.

(12:35):
I met a girl out there when I was younger.
I remember watching the fog rolland with her he ran
a hand over the stubble on his head. It was
weird to him that he'd been given so much control
over his bodily functions, and yet he still found himself
making nervous gestures. For some reason, talking about her made
him want to cover his face. The impulse was wired
into him deeper than the carbon fiber that laced his bones.

(12:57):
That er sounds tough, Sardar said. He managed to look
concerned without showing pity. I can't imagine having all these
memories floating around with no through line to connect them together.
It must hurt, Roland shrugged. What hurts most is knowing
that it should hurt more. I don't remember enough to
give the pain its proper due. They were quiet for

(13:19):
a bit. Roland finished the blunt and put it out
on his right and next finger, Sardar pulled a bronze
flask out from his jacket pocket, took a belt, and
then offered it to Roland. It was Lafroy whiskey. Even
if he hadn't been chromeed to the gills, Rowland would
have recognized that smell from three feet away. He took
a gulp from the flask and passed it back. Sardar
broke the silence again. Look, maybe I'm reading things wrong,

(13:43):
but we've got some tents set up near the a PC.
You up for a fuck? Roland looked the man up
and down again. Sardar was a good looking guy, short,
broad and muscular, with a neat trimmed beard and curly
black hair. Yeah, all right, it was pretty good sex.
Nothing to blow Roland's mind, but the release provided a

(14:04):
quantum of chill to calm the pangs of memory. Afterwards,
Sardar fell asleep, nuzzled into his shoulder. Roland didn't particularly
feel like cuddling, but he since the other man needed
the human contact, so he laid there with him for
a couple of hours, rolled and smoked two more blunts,
and tried not to think about the lives he'd ended
that morning. A little afternoon, Biggsby came by and knocked

(14:26):
on the tent flap Czar, Roland, elife's here, clean up, ye,
fuck stenk and meet us by the a PC. They
did five minutes later, the whole squad had assembled around
the maddis. Ryan looked more or less recovered from his injuries,
Asimee also seemed good as new. Nadine was still pretty
bandaged and her eyes were litted and unfocussed from blood

(14:46):
loss and opiates. Will had brewed up a large French
press of coffee. He busied himself pouring measures of it
out into himp foam cups. Roland took one and drained
it in a single mighty gulp. It was proper post
human strength coffee. The caffeine rush mingled with the opiates
and THHC already flooding his synapses, and brought him to
a lovely, half lucid state of quasi awareness. Did you

(15:09):
guys fuck? Pedro finally asked, after about a minute of
staring at Roland and Tardar and asking the same question
with his eyes. Yes. Biggsby and Nadine both replied. Sardar
laughed at that, so did Rowland. For one beautiful moment
he felt nice, a kind of nice he was pretty
sure he hadn't felt in a long time. And then
came a familiar pattern of bootsteps, tickling, Roland's ears. Jim

(15:32):
Roland turned just as Jim walked into view. His legs
were covered by a pair of armored red leather chaps.
His groin was wrapped up in a thick kevlar thong,
but his penis and ass were otherwise unguarded. He wore
a double shoulder holster with a pair of bone handled
wheelguns under his arms. The snake tattoos on Jim's chest
and shoulders danced to a melody Rowland eventually recognized as Lakucaracha.

(15:56):
Your ink looks good today, boss, said, Bigsby asked liquor, said,
Sardar takes one to no one. I don't lick ass,
Sarda replied haughtily. I eat it like a starving hyena.
More laughter and another fleeting moment of community that was
broken when Jim addressed the squad. All right, so several
bunks have been hummed here. This heavenly Kingdom's got at

(16:17):
least ten thousand effectives in theater with Almah artillery drones
the works. A new employer, Austin has about three thousand
fighters here in Waco, plus now the fifteen au Lot
I flew in with AJAX and flooring. They're prepping their
squads now. Bigsby spat Ajax fights about as well as
a drunk dog in a burlap sack. Will replied, you

(16:39):
just saying that because he choked you out in the
blood Dume last year. Biggsby responded with a middle finger. Ahem.
Jim hemmed, plenty of time for Dick, measuring later, time
enough for the rest of you. At least this city
doesn't have a ruler long enough for my dick. He
paused for a laugh. No one obliged. Jim rolled his eyes,
ass holes. So look, we're in a bad position with

(17:01):
funk All for reinforcements coming in. Austin might be able
to scrape up a couple of Italians if they suddenly
clear out the Houston front, but that don't look likely.
Enemy has another ten thousand men there. Fuck. Startar was
the only one to actually say it, but everyone else
in the group mouth the word or some equivalent curse.
How is that even possible? As Amee's voice was still

(17:22):
a little slurred from the painkillers, but her eyes were
focused now. Jim shrugged hard to say exactly masked affections
from the Republic at Texas Intel suspects the u c
S probably sent in some spec ops guys. I don't know,
some sort of skulduggerous bullshit went down. The how of
it ain't really our problem today, but now we've got

(17:42):
to deal with the reality. The snakes on Jim's torso
stopped writhing. He locked eyes with Roland, and Rowland felt
compelled to meet his old friend's gaze. Can we count
on your help? Jim asked, fuck no. Roland said, I've
killed enough naive young men today. I don't aim to
kill anymore. To his rise, Jim nodded an acceptance, understandable.

(18:03):
This kind of fighting was a violation of our contract.
I regret that, Rowland. If I'd known this was going
to be a meat grinder, I wouldn't have interrupted your retirement.
Roland wasn't sure he believed that, but he kept his
mouth shut as Jim continued, I'd like to propose a
renegotiation of our contract in a lot of the changing
situation on the ground. I'm not blowing anything else up

(18:25):
for you. That's fine. Jim put his hands out in
the sort of placating gesture one would use on an
angry dog. I don't need you killing us. I need
you sneakiness. You can still take faces right. Roland's memories
of his time in the army were as patchy as
his memories of everything else. He didn't remember much about
how they'd used him, but he knew that some of

(18:45):
the wet where they'd installed in him allowed him to
modify his skin and bone structure to full facial recognition scanners,
thumb print readers, and of course human beings. Yes, he said,
but Jim cut him off. You don't need to kill anyone.
The face you'll need is already dead. And what do
you want me to do with this man's face that
isn't more murder? Jim's lips curled up into a grin.

(19:08):
The expression sent shivers arching down Roland's spine. He felt
like he'd seen that grin before. Never proceeding good things.
Rolling Fuck is near by and in the city of
Wheels a six hundred or so real scary bastards. I
have it on good authority that they'd be happy to
throw down on our side. But it turns out some
of the negotiators were captured back at the start all

(19:31):
this ship. No one in the city will risk fighting
until they pulled out safely. Roland raised an eyebrow. So
a rescue mission, then that's right, Jim grinned in a
way Roland didn't quite trust you'll be saving lives. Roland's
gut twisted into knots. The shades of a thousand Memories
spoke up and warned him not to trust Jim at

(19:52):
his word. But those shades also drove him to take
Jim up on the offer. He wanted his memories back.
Jim smiled that hackle, Ray and smile again. You don't
have to agree and come to rolland Funk with me.
We'll talk things over with the Eldas. You can do
some of the fancy space drugs, and then you can
make your decision. All right, rolland Side, but only because

(20:13):
you said fancy space drugs. They flew to Rolling Funk
in Jim's hellicraft. It had been military issue originally, but
the interior had been redone to Jim's tastes. That mostly
meant a lot of the lure and a full wet bar.
There were four beers on tap just to the right

(20:35):
of a double barreled thirty five millimeter grenade launcher mounted
beside the door. Roland drank for the duration of the
ten minute flight. You know, Jim said, Topez lives there now,
been with the city a while Topaz, Roland asked. Something
shuddered in his gut. He felt his hippocampus flicker with
the dim light of recognition. He saw that face again,

(20:56):
the woman from so many of his dreams and a
few of his shattered memories. That was her name, It
felt right now that he knew it again. Do you
remember her at all, Roland, Jim asked, his voice uncharacteristically tender.
Roland nodded and swirled the beer in his hands to
buy some time. I remember snatches of her, he said,
I remember loving her. I remember enough that it hurts sometimes.

(21:20):
Mostly it hurts that I don't remember enough to be
as sad as I ought to be. There was a
spark of real sorrow in Jim's eyes. The other man's
hand twitched in a way that made Roland think he
might have been about to reach out to him, but
Jim kept his hand to himself. I'm not sure how
much I should say, he said, I'm sorry. There was
something in Jim's face when he said that it resembled regret.

(21:43):
Or guilt, but it passed quickly and nothing else was
said during the flight. They landed on one of the
top spires of Rolling Fuck, on a landing pad that
doubled as a nude bar. He and Jim grabbed another
round of drinks before they proceeded down through the infinite
party that was the City of Wheels and on to
the top of the mad Roller. They grabbed another round
of drinks there and sat at the bar table while

(22:04):
Jim waited for the word to go down. It was
late afternoon by this point, and the evening had started
to close in. The normal boiling Texas heat was cut
by a cool breeze. White clouds rolled in around them.
Roland's hindbrain told him there was at best a twelve
percent chance of rain, but the clouds were still welcome.
He and Jim drank in silence for a few minutes
until the other man tapped his shoulder and said, they

(22:26):
are ready for us. They stood a bit unsteadily and
headed towards the ladder down into the main roller. They
reached the ladder just as two other people came up it,
a man and a woman. The man's face triggered a
flurry of memory fragments, fighting back to back in the
choking streets of Baltimore, drinking heavily on the edge of
a canyon in the Arizona Desert, charging a riot line
with pipes and hammers in their hands. A name bubbled

(22:49):
up from inside the memories. Mike, he shouted, before he
really thought about it. Hey, brother, schofucker, Mike Froze. Roland
was already half way to a hug when he realized
Mike wasn't feeling it. And then he caught his first
good look at the woman coming up the ladder behind him.
She had short, cropped teal hair, damascene fangs, and eyes
so loud he could almost hear her thoughts, Topaz. She

(23:14):
started to say his name, and then her voice caught
He heard the ghost of tears beneath it, and then
she finished, Roland, Yes, he said, not sure of what
else to say. Do you remember me? No, he admitted.
Part of him wanted to lie, but he couldn't. The
broken scraps that remained of his love for her made

(23:34):
it impossible. So we gave the honest answer, and he
watched her die a little inside. Topaz nodded, she closed
her eyes for a second, bit down on her bottom lip,
and then she put a quick hand on Mike's shoulder
before she walked away up one of the gantries and
into the chaos night of rolling fuck. Roland looked to Mike,
I'm sorry, skullfucker. Mike smiled sadly back, I know, buddy,

(23:59):
and then he left two. Roland felt confusion and a
distant hurt. He had a feeling that he should have
been crying, but for some reason he couldn't, and so
he didn't. Instead, he took a fistful of OxyContin and
stumbled down the ladder following Jim rolling Fox. Conference room
was sumptuous, elegant, and surprisingly professional. Two old people sat

(24:20):
at the far end of the conference table. Roland had
a vague memory tingle of having met the man before,
long ago, but neither of their faces brought a name
to his mind. Jim introduced them, but their names fled
his head a few seconds later. In fact, the first
minute or so of conversation flowed around him in an
indistinct haze that may have had something to do with
a soft ball sized mass of oxycontent he'd eaten as

(24:42):
he'd climbed down the ladder with Jim. Roland had assumed
the drugs would help him focus through the boredom. Apparently
he'd miscalculated. Okay, so the old lady said, with a
hint of finality, that's the situation we're in. Are you
willing to help us in response? Role and blacked out
just for a few seconds. He was reawokened by the

(25:03):
thud of his head hitting the conference room table. Fuck,
that's good oxy. He wished he could remember where he'd
gotten it. Oh, dear, said the lady. He's fun, Jim sighed,
but we've probably gone a need to start over. The
lady brought him some coffee and reintroduced herself as Nana Yazzi.
Thanks to the coffee and Roland's clearing head, her name stuck.

(25:24):
This time. It was hard not to marvel at her age,
and harder still to stop his hindbrain from calculating how
much longer till her human heart gave out. Roland smelled
cancer on the old man, not serious cancer, nothing basic
medicine couldn't handle, but all the same, the odor that
wafted off him brought Roland a sort of primal discomfort.
Or maybe it was the old man's eyes that made

(25:45):
his guts warble. It was hard to say. There was
something disconcerting in the way he looked at Roland Rowland,
Jim shouted. Roland shook himself out of the haze and
refocused on Nana Yazzi. Sorry, he grunted. It's fine, she said,
and set into her spiel again. She showed him pictures
of her captured friends, explained the dire situation in North

(26:06):
Texas and the doom that marched towards Waco and Austin.
It was a sad story, but not one that compelled
Roland to action. Other than Topaz and Skullfucker Mike, the
citizens of Rolling Funk were total strangers to him. Austin
was just another little ailing republic in a continent full
of them. I'm sorry for your people, he told her.
And I'm sorry for Austin, but I really don't see

(26:26):
how any of this is MI damn business. Jim took
those words as his cue. Toullian Topaz are close, said Jim.
His voice was low, his tone smooth. The silk like
sisters from what I hear, Marigold vouched for Topaz and
Skullfunk A Mike when they joined the city. She's all
funked up over this, from what I hear, he added,

(26:48):
so let her do something about it. Then Roland muttered,
she's got enough chrome to choke a river ship. The
city's got enough monster people to burn the eastern seaboard.
What do you need me? Because the Mata's aren't stupid,
Jim sa. They are scanning for chrome, for bile mods
for everything but the ship you've got, because no one
left alive as packing the ship you've got, Roland grunted again.

(27:10):
His nostrils flared. There was something strange about the words
Jim had chosen. No one left alive? Had there been others?
He knew his mods had come courtesy of the old
U S Defense Department, but he didn't remember which unit
he'd been a part of, or what he'd done. There
was a bit of memory, hazy and fragmented, that popped
into his dreams from time to time. He was stuck
inside a long, cool metal pod. The cold black of

(27:32):
space unfolded around him. Roland felt warm bodies to his
left and right, smelled the comforting sense of men he trusted.
Red lights blinked above his field of vision. Something tugged
at his belly. There was a powerful feeling of inertia.
Roland closed his eyes, leaned forward, pinched the bridge of
his nose, and groaned just a little bit. When he
came back up, Nana Yazi stared at him in confusion.

(27:53):
Jim looked, perhaps worried. It was hard to tell with
that guy. What's gonna happen if I don't do it?
He Nana Yazzi to you nothing, Roland shook his head.
Not to me. What are you guys gonna do if
I don't help? Oh, she frowned. I suppose we'll have
to mount an assault, send in a small team, four
or six commandos and try to pull them out. It'll

(28:16):
be bloody, Jim said. The old man frowned at that.
He opened his mouth like he wanted to say something,
but the lady put her hand on his and gave
him a significant look. That's true, she said, it will
be bloody. Roland felt a twinge of anger, but he
couldn't blame Nana Yazzi for trying to manipulate him. The
lives of her friends were on the line. Roland knew himself, though,

(28:37):
and he knew that missions like this always went wrong.
If he took this job, Roland knew he'd take more lives.
You'll save lives by being there, Jim insisted, smiling that
fucking smile. Roland was sure that smile had tricked him
into dumb, violent things in the past. You're the only
one who can handle this with a minimum of death.

(28:58):
Roland didn't believe that, and at the same time he
had to admit it was technically true. He just didn't
trust himself, or reality or Jim. And yet I'll do it,
he said. I'm sure I'll regret agreeing to do it,
but whatever, I'll do it. Jim looked satisfied with himself.
Nanayazi looked relieved. The old man looked somehow angry. Most

(29:20):
of Rowland's reason for agreeing to help came down to Topaz.
He hated to admit that, even to himself, but it
was true. The thought of her in pain twisted something
in the center of his heart. He wasn't used to
pain there, and his tolerance was pretty low. This is
so dumb, he told himself. You couldn't even remember her
name this morning. He and Jim and the old woman
shook hands on the deal. Then they let him loosen

(29:42):
their city, to imbibe and fornicate and test the limits
of his wet wear. We have things to plan, she said. Hey, everybody,
Robert Evans here. I hope you just enjoyed the chapter
you listen to. I hope you enjoyed the chapters to come.
If you would like to read the text version of
this book either on the web or on your e

(30:04):
reader as an e pub, you can find those on
the website a t r book dot com. So again,
the free ad free e pub and the text of
every chapter will be on a t r book dot com.
Thanks