"Is it safe?" Dey asked. A moment later, Loki managed to translate her question, which came out of her cellphone in what the locals sometimes referred to as 'English'. The muggy heat of the uptown Georgetown was filled with the babble of dozens of human languages and dozens of alien languages and a truly preposterous number of mosquito. Despite the best efforts of mosquito tracking lasers, semi-intelligent electrical webbing, and a few pushes to genetically engineer the pests into extinction, the mosquito thrived in Georgetown. Fortunately, while the bloodsuckers weren't gone, malaria had been kicked in the head in the seventies.
It still made Dey viciously glad for her implanted force fields.
A mosquito tried to land on her shoulder, crumpled into a tiny spec of carapace and folded wings and she brushed it off onto the grated floor, where it skittered down to land on one of the streets underneath this one.
The man who looked old enough to have survived the Trump administration puffed on his pipe and nodded. He spoke in flowing creole, worlds stumbling together as if they had been partially melted by a glancing nuclear explosion, waving his hand to brush away a mosquito.
He says that if you came this far to insult him, American, at the very least take off your shirt,
Loki said.
"Don't tempt me," Dey muttered.
Muggy implied something livable. But the near equator had been whacked as hard as everywhere else by the pressure of climate change - and despite the best efforts of shades and cooling devices built throughout the rickety, multi-level scrapology of the city, it remained murderously hot. People here seemed to have adapted. For some meaning of the word adapted.
Dey looked down at the fruit on a stick that she was thinking of spending some of her greenbacks on. The plants looked thick and faintly phallic, and smelled of rosewater even from this distance. More, they were searing pink. Loki had been trying to identify them for the past few hours, but nothing was doing.
"Balla go do me me, ya?" he said, waving his hand.
Balder, I think,
Loki said.
"Balder would?" Dey asked.
The man, with amazing dexterity considering the thick knobbiness of his brown fingers, formed his hand into a gun and mimed shooting himself. "Drone ya?" he said.
"Balder doesn't kill people. He just bans them," Dey said. Then, sighing, she slapped down a bill with Washington's smug white face on it. "If this kills me, I go do you, you."
The man looked quietly dignified - but took the bill and folded it up. Dey picked up the fruit stick. As she walked along the grated walk, she sniffed, then bit down into the fruit. It tasted like chomping into pure sugar, and the fluid that rushed into her mouth started to turn it numb. She paused, her mouth fastened around the fruit, then held very still, ready to spit it out immediately.
Analysis done, you know, you could have just nibbled it,
Loki said.
It's safe.
[Well, in my defense, I'm hungry,] Dey muttered, then bit down on the fruit again. The numbness passed after a bit, leaving her mouth tingling with returning sensation. It was interesting. But the sugar high started to push back the tiredness she was feeling and left her almost bouncing as she came to one of the gravity bridges that connected walkway to walkway while leaving open areas in the scrapology.
Every coastal city in the world had had to deal with melting ice caps in their own ways. Some moved, at great expense. Others built sea walls. Others let the sea come in and reconfigured themselves to deal with it. Georgetown had run into a unique situation that let them deal with the changes in a way few others had. Their fortune - and Dey's fruit stick - came from the same place: Brazil's misfortune. It had been before Dey's time, but she remembered reading about it while going through school programs.
The Brazilians had called it the Praga da Selva. The Jungle Plague. It had happened shortly after first contact, back in the fifties. Like every other nation-state, Brazil had been eager to get their hands on fantastic technologies, alien contacts, and other goodies. They had opened their boarders. Three years later, all the rainforest that their farming had cleared away had been replaced by alien jungles, cattle dead by the billions, their corpses flowering and blooming into fungal growths. The Brazillian government had waged two unsuccessful wars of eradication on the new growths, found the alien tourist responsible for it, and had very successfully managed to get reparations from the Idorian government in the form of technology, heavy metals, and three Idorian warships that still provided the backbone to the Brazillian space fleet.
Right before said government was toppled by a Yahaag backed coup.
And they said humans were unique, huh?
Ever since then, Brazil had clamped down on alien visitation, alien tourism, alien trade, alien
anything
.
Dey couldn't
really
blame them.
Still, the fruits were good. Dey walked over the gravity bridge. Despite the term, the bridge didn't bob or shudder in the air. It was kept firmly in place by a clever combination of a DeVilbiss emitter and a few spider-thin struts. The DV emitter canceled the bridge's inertia and created a counter-gravitic field every time someone stepped on it, equal to the amount of weight put onto the bridge. End result was a bridge that could be jammed any old place, without supports and without expensive material.
Dangerous?
Yes.
Awesome example of humanity overcoming the inherent difficulties of their situation?
Also yes.
Dey walked past two Squids arguing with what looked like a mound of eyeballs contained in a floating petri dish. The Squids spoke fluent Portuguese, while the mound of eyeballs kept using its manipulator tentacles to slap at buttons on a cheapo translation and protocol drone some boob had coated in gold paint.
"Please, slow down, sirs," the drone said, bobbing with every tentacle slap.
So. Brazil had said no aliens. Brazil still wanted alien tech. Aliens wanted to sell alien tech to Brazil. The obvious solution had come shortly after. Every neighboring minor nation - including Guyana - had started enthusiastically welcoming alien visitors. The Brazilians who came got screwed roundly each way coming by the number of bribes that had to be paid, but the trade flowed and kept things in equilibrium.
[So, think that Skylar is done adding the extra engines?] Dey asked.
Should be near about-
Loki was cut off by a gunshot. The bullet pinged off a hovering anti-mosquito device, causing the device to skid crazily through the air. People screamed and dove for cover - all save for the woman that sprang over a cafe table, knocking over a haze of dishes, breads, tiny fruits, and cups filled with liquid. The woman almost ran smack dab into Dey, knocking Dey backwards against a thin railing some polite man or woman had set up to keep people from plunging down into the undercity. Dey found herself looking into a smooth faceplate, which had a glowing series of dots, formed into the shape of an emoticon.
D:<
"Please, help me!" The Huntress said, hands on Dey's shoulders.
"Stop, alien scum!"
Dey looked past the Huntress - harder than it sounded. Despite being shorter than Dey by a head, the alien was clad in a form fitting bodysuit that left very little to the imagination. But it wasn't her curvy hips or full breasts that distracted Dey. It was the long spikes that emerged from her back and shoulders - each one surrounded by a rippling haze. Those were radiators - keeping the inside of the environmental suit at the negative two hundred and fifty Celsius that Huntresses needed to not have their brains...
Melt.
Behind the woman, pushing their ways through the cowering crowds, was a motley collection of drones and rough types who had 'I'm a mercenary' printed across their chests in neon.
[Why does this happen to me?] Dey asked.
You're a cool guy who doesn't afraid of anything?
"Step away from alien!" one of the mercs said. He was holding an off brand AR-15, one that looked like it was primitive enough to still use a normal magazine. To his left was one of the drones, which had clambered up onto a table for a better vantage point, taking advantage of the fact it had been constructed from light materials. It held a hunting rifle. The other two mercs had shotguns and were keeping them lowered. Not aiming them at Dey. The last three drones were flying disks - lightened by DV emitters and armed with machine pistols strapped to their sides by duct tape, bolts and hope.
Loki targeted each and highlighted them in red, so Dey would track them later.
"And if I don't?" Dey asked. [Loki, I don't particularly want to start a firefight here. These walls aren't thick enough to stop a stray round. Let's start working on a way out.]
Hows this a we thing? I'm the one searching...
[I'll be buying time!] Dey said, cheerily. [I'm the facegirl!]
"Then we shoot you, roll you into the undercity, and let the squids play with your eyeballs, luv," the talkative merc said. His blond hair, pale features, and accent said British. English. Whatever the proper designation was.
"You make it sounds so tempting," Dey said as the Huntress hid behind her, quivering. Shaking. Dey had met one Huntress in her life - and that bitch had cut and run at the first sign of danger. Left a bunch of USAF personal in danger while cowering in an escape pod. Dey wouldn't have even minded if she hadn't promised aid before scarpering. Not that Dey had been there for that - but she had heard stories.
"Giving you to the count of one," the lead merc said, aiming his rifle at her. He held it low, casual, letting it dangle from his shoulder strap. It looked cool. It was a shit way to aim. By now, most people had gotten out of the streets.
"Don't you mean the count of five?" Dey asked.
The merc looked frustrated.
"Give her over!"
Now!
A glowing gold arrow indicated up. Dey didn't glance up. She just thrust her hand up, fired her grapnel, and felt her body yank upwards. The Huntress squeaked loudly as Dey looped her arm around her waist. A few gunshots went off - and Loki used extra power, channeling it into her DV emitters to stop the bullets dead in their tracks, rather than simply redirecting them. Dey looked up now and saw that Loki had - in his infinite wisdom - redirected an autonomous advertising hovercraft. The vehicle's engines were already groaning, despite Loki reducing Dey's weight with her implants.
The hovercraft slewed upwards, dragging them between the high buildings of the scrapology.
"Look out!" the Huntress yelped.
"I am!" Dey snarled as the three flying drones started towards them. Right now, Dey was more focused on the fact that her arm felt like it was going to be yanked from her socket, considering how she was grapnel'd to a hovercraft and holding onto a Huntress with the other arm. It left her little options. The drones whirred around their hovercraft, clearly observing it. Loki managed to get them out and over the top level of Georgetown. The scrapology stretched outwards, a kilometer in every direction, a series of metal canyons and buildings that had been built on top of one another again and again out of every piece of material that could be used.
The drones opened fire.
The hovercraft came apart.
Loki retracted the grapnel.
