ON THE MARX

Entry 61

10 Brahma

Amber had a lot to say en route to the Trident Chasm. The amount of Chatter she had heard that could be significant was plenty.

“There are a number of key words they keep using,” Amber explained.

“Like?” I asked.

“Well I have deduced at least 10 different ones,” Amber said. “Some of which we already knew about, such as the Falcon.” I nodded as I watched the street in front of me roll by.

There was a speedway called the ES7R Speedway. It was what one took to drive the ES7Rs on. The ES7R was a military vehicle so only people with military clearance could drive on it. I of course was able to drive on it, being a Colonel and the leader of the Black Knights.

The ES7R Speedway made stops in all the possible cities of Golordia Prime from Glycol, this was because an ES7R troop should be able to reach any city with little standing in its way. The good thing about the Speedway was that it was never used by any non-military vehicles, so it was usually empty.

Today was no different. I looked down at my speed it was hoovering at exactly 800 miles per hour and I watched a bunch of the speedway just zoom by as if flickers.

“Alright how about the other ones?” I asked.

“Well like I said there are at least 10 key words, or phrases rather.” Amber corrected herself. “I say phrases because there are references to specific things that is more than one word. For example, chatter includes key phrases such as the Horn of Jericho whatever that is, and things as simple as the Locust.”

“Locust?!” I said and I remember that damn gold insect that was on top of the raven in that picture of the animals. How that thing looked like it was summoning whatever the hell was in that shard out of the shard. That thing the Locust was key.

“Things involving the Locust have been mostly meaningless to the casual observer.” Amber said.

“Like what?” I asked and Sal echoed behind me.

“Well just the other day the Chatter said something like, ‘The Locust is plaguing the city of Kin.’” Amber said.

“Kin?” I said.

A map popped up in my vision, it showed the southern territory of Primal, some 1000 miles south of Glycol. A dot sparkled with an arrow that said Kin next to it.

“Oh, down in Primal?” I said.

“Yes sir, we assessed that too,” Amber said.

“And that lead me chasing down whatever the hell they meant by Plaguing,” Sal added. “I thought they meant something to do with the Sigmosis Plague. So, we looked into it.”

“Did you find anything?” I asked.

I saw a sign zoom past too fast too see what it said but I knew it was just a mile marker saying that some city or another was only a certain number of miles away.

“Big o’ negative on that Colonel,” Sal said. “No signs of the plague, not even a step up on the alert level down there. Not like the main city of Primus.”

Primus was one of the biggest cities in Golordia Prime, and it was also supposedly one of the most infected cities of Golordia Prime. It was classified as a Red Zone and no traffic was allowed into the city. I wondered if they were conveniently using that quarantine for whatever nefarious reasoning.

“Okay so that went nowhere,” I said. “Anything else?”

“They mentioned the Cathedral,” Amber said. “Which we both assumed meant the Cathedral of Mickhael in Albadios.”

“What sort of mentioning did that mean?” I asked looking at the speedway before giving a glance at Amber and Sal.

“The chatter talked about an Altar that is in the Cathedral,” Amber said.

“Not just any Altar,” Sal corrected.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“They called it the Rudra Altar,” Amber said her voice choked at the end as if she had a hard time saying what she had to report.

“You’re joking?” I said.

“Wish we were Colonel,” Sal said.

“The Altar of Rudra, in the Cathedral of Mickhael?” Olga suddenly spoke up.

In honesty I had forgotten she was here.

“You’ve heard of it, O?” Sal asked.

“I mean I’ve heard legends of it.” Olga said. “From the description of what they were saying it sounded almost like a computer panel.”

“Computer panel?” I asked.

“I don’t remember exactly,” Olga said.

There was a beep. I looked around and noticed it was someone contacting me via the belt. I wondered what that was about for a minute. I wanted to answer it out loud but knowing how this worked, I had this idea that I should answer it by thought.

I did that and saw Michelle’s face appear.

I tried not to look surprised to see her.

“Colonel,” Michelle said in a very fast whisper. “Have you seen my mom lately?”

“Yes,” I thought.

“Oh f**k…” Michelle cursed. “Is she there with you?”

“Yes,” I thought.

Michelle looked nervous and then looked like she had gotten her resolve.

“How are you contacting me?” I asked.

“Lord Hanuman gave me this,” Michelle said showing the same belt I had around her. “He also told me to get in contact with you.”

“So this computer thing,” I said out loud trying to distract everyone.

I looked back at where Heather was. I tried to see if I could see anything about her. Aside for the pink s**t glowing on her, I didn’t really see anything, at first. But I kept staring at it.

“Thoth filters,” I told Thoth in my mind.

The pink s**t disappeared around Heather revealing Silver.

I looked at the other ones with me.

Amber was green, I filtered her still green.

Sal was also green, I filtered him he was still green.

Olga was very pink still, I filtered it and revealed it was green underneath.

“What does it do exactly?” I asked. Only a few seconds past since I had started my question so there was none-the-wiser.

“The chatter says that the Locust wants to activate the Savage Moon with it.” Amber said and that made me look at her. She looked like she was going to say something but must have picked up something because the next thing I knew.

“What’s going on?” I heard her voice in my head.

“Trouble,” I said I looked at the rearview mirror and got Sal’s attention.

“Sir?” Sal’s voice said in my head.

“Good you guys figured out this stuff works by thought,” I said.

“Trouble,” I told him.

I patched Michelle to the others, except for Michelle. Olga also joined in.

“What’s the matter?” she asked.

“Michelle,” I told Michelle to start off talking.

“That person with you is not my mom,” Michelle said.

“Mom?” Olga said sounding shocked.

Only a few seconds later Amber realized she had to say something.

“The chatter just said that the Locust was supposed to use whatever computer panel it was in the Cathedral and summon the Savage Moon.” Amber said.

“But the Savage Moon did not belong to Rudra,” I said quoting the thing I had said earlier. “It was older than Rudra from what I remember.”

“Wasn’t it after Rudra?” Sal asked.

“What do we do?” Olga asked in our thoughts. “Krishna I can’t believe I f****d her without knowing it was actually her.”

“Wait what?” Sal said.

“Oh you guys…” Olga said.

“They didn’t know,” I said.

“f**k,” Olga said.

“That doesn’t matter,” Michelle interjected.

“She’s right,” I said. “I think the important thing is who the hell is in the car with us?”

I suddenly remembered the picture of those animals. The one that I had seen of all those animals around that shard of glass. For some reason, the one that was the cat was coming to my mind. If the cat was here…where was that Jackal?

“Colonel watch out!” Amber suddenly said.

I turned and saw a man standing in the middle of the speedway and I was heading right at him at 800 miles per hour!