Chapter 20
Back at the king’s camp, Sunny sat. She sat in the corner of the command tent, picking up scraps of data that made it back over the field radio.
Suddenly there was a cheer that almost made the red canvas bulge out.
“They have captured a spaceship and they have weaponized the zombie flesh!” cried out the king to the room, even though they already knew. He didn't get a lot of good news, you see.
Sunny walked into the center of things. Her dad looked young with his charcoal hair among the gray heads of the council.
“Is Xolo going to take them up to space? Boa Morte, I mean.”
The king looked at Sunny. She suddenly looked old to him not just those old eyes she had always had, but the way she stood. Perhaps it was the trauma of being shot down over Belaarix. No one had really had a chance to talk about that with her yet. She’d been through plenty of scrapes but falling from space and thinking death was at the bottom...that was something else.
“Yes, I want him to lead the mission. (Little pause) What do you think about that?”
“Sounds like a suicide mission. I mean, mission is a bit strong. It's more of a notion, right? Let's throw zombies at them...somehow.”
The king turned away and replied at the same time, “It's all we've got really isn't it?”
“Let me go,” she said. Not as calmly as she would have liked, but her standards were very high.
“You do know that you only get to go on one suicide mission, don't you? Why don't you wait for a better one?”
“This Boa Morte is a liability.”
“What?”
“I don't trust him. He's a fanatic. And not our kind of fanatic. He is his own fanatic.”
“He hates the galactic empire...”
“Do we? Aren't we just wanting to clean up this planet first?”
“Eventually they'll come for us, once we start messing with their sacred headnet and blackwarps.”
“Eventually a baby will swim, but that doesn't mean you should throw him in the lake. Why are we going to war with the Gukkools?”
“We need allies Sunny. Have you not figured out that we are losing the war with the zombies? Boa Morte had thousands of followers...he's like a messiah. He's our only hope.”
Oh, that was a weird feeling Sunny just had. Like the night of menarche.
“Okay, forget about it, I was being silly. Let's give it a shot, right Dad. I'm a bit...tired from all the stuff...I'm just going to...”
He bent down and kissed her forehead. In the room full of men and women who had once been barbarians but had found something like civilization in the last few years, the strange turning of this moment touched them all.
Sunny walked out. Didn't bother trying to pretend anything. Went to the trailer with the vintage motorbike in it and with the most aggressive purring you have ever heard she was off and away.
She popped over little berms, swinging to catch some air. She was not all serious, although mainly. She had a map and knew where she was going. Unlike everybody else she also knew exactly what she was doing.
For a while some geese followed her. Geese look like pointing arrows, even when you know they are following you. Sunny was very rational but only human so she allowed herself to see them like some kind of omen or some flock of familiars vindicating her choices.
She had a bad feeling about Boa Morte. She'd had a good feeling about Xolo. She was going to bring Xolo back. She had ideas how to do it. Then they would save Earth together.
She skidded down into a big valley eventually that smelled like meat or cancer. Then came the smell of expensive things burning: powdery and sophisticated variant of a blazing tire.
She saw shivering soldiers loading hundreds of kilos of meat into a shiny black paracopter as the sun gave up. All the zombies in the field lay supine, wires blowing like daisies in the breeze, stroking the grass with their fingers, hatching flies and spiders in their eyes.
At these quiet moments, Sunny had noticed a few times before, the zombies finally noticed they were dead and it seemed manageable.
Sunny rolled up next to Boa Morte.
“Princess Sunny!” he said with a hint of condescension that she had also noticed on him when he spoke to her father. “Well, what are you doing here?”
“Xolo,” she said, “I think you have maggot in your head.”
He raised an eyebrow as close to a question mark as you can get.
“Princess?”
“There's something wrong with this 'Boa Morte'. What kind of plan is this? Shoot zombies at our enemies? What about negotiation? What about...what are the zombies even supposed to do.
“If you are really Boa Morte, why did you go away? Because you were embarrassed? Why did you disguise yourself as Xolo for so long? Why can he do things that you can't do? Can a fake personality make you better at things?”
He was still like a hammer at the top of its swing.
“Tamano told us you couldn't fight ninjasautenticos. But Xolo sliced them like tofu. I don't know how this fake mind stuff works, but that doesn't sound possible to me: that you could make a fake mind that thinks better and faster than the mind it sits on top of. Or everyone would have one.”
He put his hand on her shoulder. For about half a second before she swatted it off and up in the air a little.
“Don't touch me, zombie!”
“What did you call me?”
“Zombie. Because you are not alive. I don't believe you are alive and I think the last thing we should be doing is shooting living dead onto starships.”
Boa Morte clicked his fingers imperiously.
“Gomez. Keep this child out of my sight. She's risking all of our lives with her infantile logic.”
Gomez would sooner pet a wolf than deal with Princess Sunny in high choler. But the chain of command was established. He gave her an imploring expression and she summoned all of her natural dignity to follow him to one side as Boa Morte headed over to the paracopter.
Special forces guys were tossing heads on board like they were basketballs.
“Show some respect, Earth friends,” grumbled Boa Morte with a soupçon of bitch.
Scarfe wasn't having it. His braided beard flashed as he snapped back, “These fucking heads almost had my balls off, space queen.”
As he spoke a hundred heads blinked and clacked their teeth like a bag full of beetles.
Boa More didn't back down. He unleashed a hint of the barbarian blood in him.
“They'll have your eyeballs if you endanger this mission again, sergeant. Understood?”
Scarfe considered a fist mutiny. Then he looked around him at the field of swaying rib cages and raisin hearts. He thought of a world where this was the only humanity: a vast coral of cannibal instincts. No song. No love. The art of war replaced by the intelligence of a scab.
He swallowed his massive pride, saluted and loaded up the heads with respect. Even when they winked at him.
A hundred yards away, the tanned head of Gomez bobbed with no answers.
“And so this artificial intelligence is going to kill all of the space men for us and then what? Why? It makes zero sense?”
“Boa Morte made a pact. Horned Man will kill the Gukkools.
“And then?”
“And then they have a deal where the Horned Man’ll keep the Gukkool ships but only to defend the planet from outside intervention. Then we’ll battle down here for the rest.”
“That’s the stupidest thing I…”
“Right! So it must be a double bluff, right? He’s playing 3D chess. This is the man who practically conquered the galaxy.”
“Gomez. Listen. Are you famous for your courage and good heart or for your cunning and intelligence.”
He slumped.
“Exactly,” she continued. “This Boa Morte had a breakdown, right? He admitted it when we woke him up although I bet you he would try and hide it from us now. Maybe he used to be hot stuff but not now. He’s broken. He thin
ks he is a space knight fighting a space dragon. We have to stop him.”
“How?”
“Bring Xolo back!”
“There is no Xolo.”
“Well there should be!”