Necahual | Page 2

out of the back of my exoskeleton.
There are no explosions, no shots fired at me, just a calm, blue sky and lush green forest below my feet, the rippling blue ocean up ahead. The chute canopy overhead is invisible, and not just on the visible spectrum either.
A minute later my feet hit turf.
I'm on the ground and I have no clue what's going to happen next.
#
I'm expecting shots. But I only hear wind rustling through palm fronds and the distant foaming sound of waves breaking over reef. I'm expecting Aztec priest-warriors wearing gaudy colored feathers to fan out and attack us. Instead, I'm facing a large three story concrete building painted bright yellow and pink.
It's got terracotta shingling.
I'm expecting anything except a man with his back against a mango tree, chewing a stem of grass, looking straight at me.
"Is this a friendly?" I ask.
"Okay," the Tai says. "Your regular weaponry is locked under my command. You have a tanglegun in your left pocket, if you need to use that. This is a police action, we're not here to kill anyone. There are no hostiles. We're just here to talk and gather information from the locals."
"So this is a friendly?"
"Yes."
I look down. The extendable canon I have aimed at the man is primed, but useless. I let go of the trigger.
"Go ahead," the Tai orders. "We're here to gather information about who the Azteca are, were they came from, and what, if anything, these people can do to help us. I am recording everything back up to HQ. I'll prompt you as needed. If you do this well, you'll be promoted. So will I."
The canon swings back up under my arm to fasten itself to the back of my exoskeleton armor. It's a smooth lubricated slide. A whisper.
The man by the mango tree pulls the stem of grass out of his mouth and stands up.
"So," he says to me. "We been invade or what?"
I have no idea how to respond. I stand there, still, waiting for someone besides me to do something.
"You speak English?" The man asks. He has a deep tan that almost blends into the color of oak and short tightly curled hair. His brown eyes twinkle with a sort of Huckleberry Finn look, but he's wearing a cream colored suit. With no shoes on.
I nod.
"You looking for Bouschulte, right?" He says, the words so quick they blend into each and I stumble over the accent. He ambles over to us.
I spoke my first word.
"What?"
"You. Looking. For. Bouschulte." The man from the mango tree repeats himself as if I'm slow. He looks frustrated for a second. "He up in he house."
"What is…" I swallow, "a bouschulte?"
"It a name. Frederick Bouschulte. If you have a Aztec name like 'Acolmiztli' or some stupidness like that, and you hiding with us, you don't keep calling you-self 'Acolmiztli.' Seen?"
"Seen." I agree out of sheer panic. The Tai in my head is still silent. I wouldn't mind some assistance. The man's accent is hard and I still haven't been given any damn orders.
The man reaches out to touch my face, then stops when I flinch.
"You eye them, chineeman, you do that to fit in with them?"
"It…" was done a long time ago. Far away. "An old tradition my forefathers continued." I'd been too young to protest the removal of my eye folds.
A tiger-striped cat tiptoes out from behind the building and sits down. It starts to lick its tail, working hard at ignoring the five people on the grass before it.
"What you name?"
"Kiyoshi," I say.
"Well, Kiyoshi, let we get on with this so call invasion, eh?"
My Tai must be gone for good, I realize. And looking around at the panicked faces of the three other soldiers I fell out of the sky with, I realize theirs are dead too. We're on our own. Somehow these people can jam the Tais, though I have no idea how.
The panic attack comes and goes swiftly. Old training takes over. Yes the Tais make the decisions, but we have training. We're still soldiers. We're still mobile representatives of The League.
I grab the man's shoulders, tangle gun aimed right dead in the middle of his forehead. At this range the tangle gun is lethal.
"What's going on?" I hiss. "Tell me what is going on!"
He snaps loose of me, shrugging my armored arms aside as if they were only a nuisance. The motion is quick enough I have trouble following it. There is, surprisingly enough, a small knife now shoved up between the joints in my armor.
Smith aims his tangle gun at us, but it's an empty gesture. Our tais hamstrung us, took away our lethal force. Orders…
"You conquest failing."
"There is no fucking conquest," Steve snaps. "We're here to save you from the Azteca."
"Yeah man, so I hear. But one