"Well, Vera, she became leader the day after you fell."
"By whose authority?" I said indignantly.
"Don't play dumb recruit. You know our system. We had no way of knowing
you'd return. Naomi and half a dozen others declared for title, and
Naomi won out in a fair gang fight. Just like you did before her."
"So it seems we have two leaders now," I said, limbering my python whip.
"That's something you and Naomi will have to work out," Ginger intoned.
"I'll leave you here to choose your own tunnel."
This was part of the ritual of our gang. When a new girl arrived, the
tunnel she selected, blindly, determined her branch of service on
Callisto. One tunnel led to commissary, another to transport, another
to ordnance, another to facilities, and the remaining four to combat
training units. A girl had to be rather unlucky to miss out on the
fighting branch, but in the other units she at least learned a great
deal about thievery, heavy drinking and the use of dope.
Knowing where each tunnel led, my present choice was simple: by seven
tunnels I could postpone an immediate showdown with Naomi, since
these went to barracks and work rooms and supply centers. The eighth
tunnel led directly to the great assembly hall and administrative
headquarters. There, Naomi would be holding council. This was the
tunnel I chose.
I was halfway through it when a bunch of the senior gang members met me
head on. They were battle-tested gals of seventeen and eighteen with
hair waved in the short Grecian style and short sleeveless tunics of
green, red, yellow or black, depending on their unit.
They hailed me enthusiastically. "Vera, welcome back! Beautiful ship
you brought. Hey, your hair: you look like a kid again. No more scars!
Are you going to challenge Naomi?"
Somehow everyone else shut up in time for this question to stand out
like a band instrument taking the wrong repeat. They were all eyeing me
expectantly.
I threw my head back with a short laugh. "I'm still the leader of this
gang."
To lend point to the declaration I cracked the coils of my python whip,
flooring but not badly hurting a young recruit rushing up the tunnel to
meet us. The girl shrieked.
"Wow!" one senior exclaimed. "A showdown between two leaders! That's
never happened before. This is going to be interesting."
We helped the recruit to her feet. She limped along but knew better
than to reveal her pain. "Girls," she said, gasping, "Naomi has called
a formation! Hurry!"
The words were hardly out of her mouth when the formation alarm
reverberated in the passageway. That gave everybody just thirty seconds
to line up with their units in the assembly hall, and my escort of
girls plunged on ahead of me. When I reached the great spiral-shaped
hall at my own more deliberate pace, the gang already stood in
formation.
* * * * *
I paused at the entrance, for this is always an impressive moment on
barren Callisto. The hall was a natural cavity half a mile deep, palely
illuminated by the artificial sun hanging from a ceiling stalactite.
The place was warm and moist-smelling like a greenhouse. Generations
of girls before us had gradually modified the rock interior with hand
blasters, carving out a series of broad, steplike plateaus along one
rim. On each level a unit kneeled at attention on one knee, forming a
circle around their respective hussies (our term for captain) who stood
rigidly erect holding a green nuclear torch, emblem of our gang. To me
it was a beautiful sight, especially the raising of the degravity dais.
Up, out of the verdant depths of the cave, overgrown with Earth-style
trees and tropical foliage, rose the great ceremonial platform reserved
for the gangleader and her administrative aides. As this cleared the
rim and stabilized in midair, Naomi became visible to all and a raucous
female cheer went up from the ranks.
Jeanette, my former protocol officer, stepped forward waving the
'parade rest' command. She was a tall lanky farm girl with lots of
common sense, and evidently she'd been promoted to second in command.
"Girls," she said in her steady, emotionless voice, amplified a hundred
times by her throat piece projector, "just a brief announcement before
we hear from our leader. Yesterday a brawl took place in the Spilka
Skating Palace in Ganny City, and one of our girls failed to return.
Some of you may remember what a beautiful job Phyllis did of poisoning
the Io gang's food shipment a while back, and we think the boys must've
found out she was the one. Anyway, they kidnapped her and we have every
reason to believe she's being tortured right now in that fort of theirs
on Io.
"Let's just assume she'll crack eventually and tell them our code. From
now on all external communication will use code O-97, and you new
girls will have to see your hussy right after this formation ends if
you expect to have it memorized by tomorrow morning."
Jeanette nodded with the barest trace of a sadistic grin as a murmur
of consternation rippled through the ranks of our rookies. "That's all
from me," she added, "and now here's Naomi."
I hadn't moved from the entrance. Now, as Naomi spoke, I began my calm,
unhurried, and, I hoped, supremely dignified march towards the dais.
"Girls, I want to add this to what Jeanette told you," Naomi began.
"We're going to revenge this outrageous kidnapping at the earliest
possible moment. My staff and I are working countermeasures that will
make the Ios rue the day they ever pulled this stunt on one of our
girls."
At first, all eyes were centered on Naomi, and no one observed my
approach from the rear of the hall. And I don't believe Naomi herself
could see me with the lights focussed on her face, though obviously she
knew of my arrival. She was a short, shapely sixteen-year-old, full of
gestures and animation. She wore her brown hair in bangs, her features
forming an attractive oval, her dark eyes flashing with self-assurance.
Her clothes were a green version of my own leotards, only tighter. But
as usual, claw marks marred her appearance, and it seemed to me even
from a distance that she had lost the use of her left eye.
"Today, we want to welcome back one of our former leaders," Naomi
continued, "a girl who has just returned from the Matrix Center, and
is once again ready to do battle for the glory of our gang. This great
Callisto had the misfortune to be killed in a fight with private
detectives during that costly, but on the whole successful, raid on
the ration warehouse on Eros. I refer, of course, to our own immortal
Vera ... whom I believe is ..." (here Naomi peered out into the darker
recesses of the hall) "... among us right now."
Another cheer went up, and everybody looked about in various directions
until a spotlight finally caught my deliberate striding figure working
its way towards the platform.
"Because this is sort of an unusual situation," said Naomi in cool
candor, "one that doesn't seem to be covered by any of our bylaws,
it appears that Vera will have to start at the bottom again as a new
recruit. Because, you see, for all practical purposes, she's a new
person altogether."
An angry flush shot through my body.
"However," Naomi added patronizingly, "we're all sure that Vera's
abilities will be recognized quite soon, even as a recruit, and that
she will rapidly rise to a new position of leadership within our
organization."
"More rapidly than you can imagine!" I shouted at the top of my voice.
Unaided by an amplifier it must have sounded feeble even to the front
ranks. But in the same instant I wound up on one foot and cracked my
whip resoundingly in her direction, and there was no mistaking this
defiant gesture.
* * * * *
A roar of excitement arose from the gang. For a moment there was
confusion on the dais as Naomi and her aides consulted. The clamor grew
louder. "Duel! Duel!" echoed through the hall. I knew this wasn't a
case of loyalty to me; everyone was eager to watch a nice bloody fight,
any moment of the day or night.
Putting on my steel claws, I advanced to the edge of the chasm,
opposite the leader's platform. Here the seven-eighths Earth gravity we
artificially maintained in our hideout began to fade. The ravine itself
was subject only to Callisto's feeble attraction. Twenty-five feet
away, Naomi came out of the huddle and signalled for silence. While
the clamor was subsiding I saw Jeanette jump off the dais onto one of
the lower plateaus and disappear in one of the tunnels. I poised myself
for the leap.
"Now look, gang," said Naomi. "Jeanette is our protocol expert and
it's her opinion that no challenge is in order. She doesn't remember
any precedent for a leader returning from Matrix, but she's just taken
off for the archive room to look up the records." A chorus of boos and
catcalls broke out, and this got under Naomi's skin.
"Well, as far as I'm concerned, we can have this business over with
right now," she shouted, snapping claws over her wrists.
I hurled myself across space, landing on the far corner of the
platform, whip upraised to strike the first blow. Almost in the same
instant, half a dozen aides leaped to safety on the lower plateau.
Naomi cocked her whip with lightning speed, to my surprise, lashing
out ahead of me. But because of her bad eye it was a poorly aimed
blow which I dodged easily, and before she could regain her balance I
brought my whip down with full force across her shoulders.
She shuddered in pain, and a great red welt opened up along her neck.
First blood. A roar went up from the spectators, who had now broken
formation to crowd along the edges of the chasm.
Instinctively Naomi clutched for my whip, but I recoiled it in time and
swung a second time. It cut searingly into her side, winding about her
waist with a python action that crushed out her breath. I moved in for
the kill with uplifted claws. Suddenly Naomi leaped from the dais, high
into the air.
It was a brilliant defensive move. I had no time to think, but the
alternatives were simple: hold onto the whip handle and be pulled after
her, or let go and be minus a whip.
I held on and we went rocketing to the rough-hewn ceiling. We bounced
off the rock roof, I barely managing to switch my feet to where my head
had been to absorb the ricochet. Then we went sailing down, almost
leisurely in the weak gravity, to the bottom of the cavern. And this
time I was absorbing the whiplash, as Naomi, knotting mine about her
waist, so that I couldn't retract it, swung her own whip with vicious
skill. _Whff!_ My thighs. _Whff!_ My face. _Whff!_ My breast.
She was cutting me to pieces; I was in agony as we fell that half mile.
Desperately I tried to ward off her blows. Then I realized there was
only one solution: in-fighting.
I tugged with all my strength at my whip handle. She kept thrashing
and I kept pulling at my line, pulling her closer and closer, until
she could no longer use her whip effectively at such close range. My
head was foggy from the beating. I gave a final tug and lurched at her
throat with my steel claws.
She deflected one claw, but the other sank in, and I remember how her
eyes began to widen in terror. Then ... darkness hit me.
* * * * *
I awoke staring up at tall lanky Jeanette, as my brain slowly stopped
revolving inside my cranium.
"You battered your head against the rock wall, my dear Vera," she said.
"Naomi?" I asked. "Is she--?"
"She lost consciousness too, but for a different reason. Loss of blood.
You tore open her jugular vein. We picked both of you up off the
cavern floor."