Trigun Fan Fiction ❯ Midvalley's Serenade ❯ The Light That Took Augusta ( Chapter 26 )

The Light that Took Augusta

I never did make it to the city of December. Agents of The Mouth of Gabriel who were part of the caravan to Fondrique finally came up with a solid lead on Vash the Stampede. Some of the operatives near Fondrique managed to get access to a car he was driving, meddled with the mechanics and caused it to break down more than half-way to a town called Jeneora Rock.

I was more than a little surprised when I received a wire from Legato instructing me to meet him there as soon as possible. Never one to drag my feet when it came to following orders from headquarters, I booked a ticket on the next sand steamer east, and said hurried good-byes to Lenny, Hot Lips and the rest of the band. Just before I left, McCoy pulled me aside, probably about some last minute Mouth of Gabriel business, I thought.

"Midvalley," he said, "I know you're an empath. Be careful about using your link until you find out what's causing your illness," he said and gave me a hug. I waved good-bye and boarded the steamer a scant hour after I received the summons with my mind troubled as it grappled with the implications of his advice. But in the bustle of getting my ticket stamped and finding my berth, his words slipped my mind and I thought no more about it.

It had taken nearly a month and a half to tour the cities from May City to November, but the trip from November to Augusta, nearly the same distance, took only a day and a half. There was no steamer to Jeneora Rock, but the bus I took arrived there in a little over six hours. It was not difficult to find Legato. Even without opening my link, I got a sense of the man because he broadcasted his aura so strongly and I headed towards a saloon carrying Silvia in her case in my left hand and a luggage duffle over my shoulder.

The saloon was called the Blue Moon and when I came in Legato was registering for a room.

"Ah, Midvalley," he said, looking up from signing the ledger, "I appreciate your promptness. I knew I could count on you."

Legato looked different. His face was markedly thinner and he had made changes to the white coat he usually wore. A strange armature of spikes now jutted from the right shoulder pad and he had lashed a small skull to the sleeve that covered his left arm. I knitted my eyebrows when I saw the skull but said nothing. I assumed he would comment on the changes if and when he wanted to.

"I've taken the liberty of booking us a room," he said with a small smile.

Alarm bells went off in my head and I responded, "I wouldn't want to intrude on your privacy."

"Rooms are in short supply at present and you know Master Knives prefers that we double up to cut expenses."

What he said was, in general, true. I knew he sensed my discomfort and was aware of the reasons for it. If he had any doubts, had he wished, he could have entered my mind and forcibly read my thoughts. I was grateful that he didn't, not that he would have found anything that he didn't already suspect. I found the man's power unnerving, still I wasn't afraid to challenge him, so I said, "I believe the rule applies only to field agents, not to the higher echelon staff."

"Well, Midvalley, it's not as if the rule book were sacred to you, now is it? The official policy of headquarters discourages long term affairs between agents because of loyalty concerns. You know my unofficial policy. I'm not against liaisons as long as they don't interfere with your duties. I begin to think that your close friendship with Chapel is making it difficult for you to prioritize. Are you that afraid I'll seduce you from your precious priest? I had no idea that your bond was so fragile."

The bond I had with Nick was not fragile, but Legato had put his finger directly on my fear. He had attempted to influence me before. The way Legato put it made my concerns sound ridiculous though I knew they were not. Still, out of respect for the man, I yielded to his persuasion and carried my luggage to the room. I had assumed the room would have two beds, and was oddly reassured when I saw them on different ends of the room, not that that would pose any obstacle to intimacy. Intimacy? Shit! Why had the thought even crossed my mind?

The only sure way to avoid Legato's influence was to play Silvia and I planned to use every opportunity to do so, I decided, and took her down with me to the saloon.

Legato was sitting at the counter and asked me to join him. I took the seat beside him. I wasn't particularly hungry, so I ordered a coffee. Legato ordered a slice of cheesecake and coffee, and proceeded to talk business. His first subject was my health, a matter of concern for me the past month and a half.

"You've lost weight, Midvalley and you don't look well. Agent McCoy reported that you were ill a number of times. I have been worried about you."

"It hasn't seemed to have affected my ability to do the job."

"True. McCoy also reported you've been quick to learn the ropes of the intelligence network and I understood that we owe it to your operatives that we finally got a fix on Vash the Stampede. I must confess I'm looking forward to seeing him again in the flesh."

"So, you've met The Humanoid Typhoon. What are our orders? Execution?"

"Execution would be too merciful for a man who has caused so much destruction, and yet…"Legato's voice tapered off.

"I'm inclined to agree with you. I passed through the Valley of the Dead on my way to Augusta on the tour. It reminded me again of why he is the most hated man on the planet."

"The Valley of the Dead," said Legato with the faintest trace of bitterness. " Most of my family is buried there…"he began to say and then broke off, only to start again, "He's quite the hypocrite, this Vash the Stampede, always preaching love and peace and yet…it was he who crippled Master Knives, firing upon him when he was unarmed. The bonds of family mean nothing to him."

"What do you mean the bonds of family?"

"I forget you've never actually met Master Knives. He and Vash the Stampede are brothers."

I was more than a little surprised by this piece of information and by what Legato had volunteered about his family. He must have been about five years old when he lost them. I could not help feeling sympathy for the man. I know what it is to be a motherless child. My instinct was to offer him what comfort I could, but pulled back warily before I opened the link when I recalled McCoy's warning about using my empathic ability.

Legato fell into a reverie and seemed to forget I was there. I took the opportunity to ask the bartender if there were any musicians booked in to play there. I was pleased to discover that a guitar player, Eddy "Fast Fingers" Wilson was playing a gig that day. I'd heard the name from Sunny, who'd told me the man could play a low-down blues.

I asked the bartender if he'd mind if I played a little. He had no objection, so while Legato ate his cheesecake, I closed my eyes and grooved on Silvia and everything fell away. At some point, I heard the guitarist join in with me and follow the flow of Silvia's voice.

I was vaguely conscious of a commotion on the street, but paid no heed to it and went deeper into my playing. I was completely aware when the rowdies entered the bar but chose to ignore them. Legato was more than capable of dealing with out-of-control troublemakers. One began to beat a woman who was with him. She had apparently been staring at Legato and her captor got jealous.

"You listenin', Slick? You think you're too good for us?"

The voice was addressing Legato. I would have pitied the fool had he not disgusted me so.

I knew the tone and the attitude, the same kind of boasting swagger that the gang that raped me had. My thoughts grew dark and I kept on playing.

"Punk, you're not paying attention," said the voice. A gunshot rang out.

"A fork, please," said Legato. I wondered how much longer his patience would last. Gunshots peppered the wall around Legato and I took my lips off Silvia's mouthpiece. I was ready to assist Legato if he needed my help, but it soon became apparent that he had things well in hand, and I began to play again in concert with the agonized shrieks and yells of the gang.

The rest of the story is pretty much common knowledge published in the local papers and picked up by the satellite. The gist was that agents of Master Knives annihilated the gang known as the Roderick thieves. Odd how the reporters always seemed to get the facts wrong.

After Legato finished what the gang started in the saloon, I heard him speak to the women they had held captive.

"The day it all ends is near. I advise you to make good use of the time you have left." His voice gave me cold chills.

A little later, he gave one of the surviving gang members a message to deliver to the chief of the Roderick Thieves, to meet him before first sundown at the top of Jeneora Rock. I doubt the gang knew that the Gung-ho Guns were lying in wait for them.

Just about everyone showed up except Chapel the Evergreen, Jake Berkis, Ben Evans and Nick. Nick was still out on his assignment. I didn't know why Chapel the Evergreen failed to show. The summons had been quite specific. All agents except those with special dispensations, Nick was one of these, were to come to the town of Jeneora Rock and wait for further instructions. But the Evergreen didn't show and I was a bit surprised by the absence of Ben Evans, especially since his mentor, Hoppered the Gauntlet was there.

Because of the security leak at headquarters, the Evergreen had fallen under suspicion, a hard pill to swallow for a man who had been such a support to Master Knives over the years. I personally doubted the truth of the accusations, but it looked bad, and when he didn't show up at Jeneora Rock, it tended to confirm rumors that he had become unreliable.

I didn't feel sorry for the Roderick Thieves. The paper reported that the entire gang was slaughtered. In truth half were spared, but slaughter was as good a description as any, mostly because of the overkill of E.G. Mine's spikes and the massive volume of fire from Grey Nine Lives. He shot no three round bursts, this time.

The way I looked at things, the gang had it coming, but what the papers didn't know was that the shootout was peripheral to our attempt to apprehend Vash the Stampede.

Each of the Gung-Ho Guns, myself included, was ready and eager to take him on. Several of us had good reason to hate him, but in the end it was Dominique who ended up facing him…and failing. I saw her return from the encounter with her demon's eye shattered. I took her final debriefing and with a queasy feeling, signed the order that would end her life.

I have thought about it since then and wondered if her contempt for the male sex caused her to underestimate Vash the Stampede. I convinced myself at the time that that was the case, but the events that transpired in Augusta two weeks later, caused me to rethink the scenario.

Legato invited me to travel with him to Augusta in his armored car. I accepted the offer, thinking as I did, that the man treated me differently than he did the rest of the Gung-ho Guns. I had been concerned at first when we shared the hotel room in Jeneora Rock that he might make sexual overtures, but nothing of the sort happened. We ended up sharing a room in Augusta as well, but Legato seemed so preoccupied with whatever was on his mind, we talked of nothing personal. We were both focussed on the mission.

What can I say about the destruction of Augusta that hasn't been said before? It had been a beautiful city in so many ways. It used to be referred to as "The Rose that Bloomed in the Desert," because of its fine architecture and the many groves of trees and shrubs that grew there. The seed ship that had crashed in Augusta over a century and a half before had an unprecedented number of viable plant offshoots that survived the catastrophe and took root in Augusta.

On the day that the architecture came crashing down and crushed the beautiful groves, I was watching the drama that led to the destruction from a hilltop that overlooked the city.

Even before the disaster, I was feeling low and spent far more time thinking about Dominique than I wanted to. Yes, foul-mouthed, pushy, aggressive, bitchy Dominique dominated my thoughts. Sitting in the stall of the men's lavatory in the Hot Spot Saloon, I ended up with tears in my eyes when I recalled the time we had made love. She'd let down her defenses that night. I remembered how tough she came on, and then how vulnerable she had been about the bullet hole scar on her breast. Sweetness was not a word generally associated with Dominique, but she had been.

She'd been dependable, trustworthy and hardworking and ended up executed. I had signed the order, but hadn't assigned the duty. Legato had let E. G. Mine draw straws with Zazie the Beast for the job. It made me sick to watch them so eager for the privilege laughing and joking about how they'd do her. Zazie had never forgiven her for dumping him from the bleachers on graduation day. E.G. Mine, who had kissed her for nearly a solid hour and slept with a picture of her near his bed, now was hot to kill her. Either he was a total mercenary or the sickest fuck I ever met in my life.

Dominique dead and E.G. Mine alive. I didn't like where the train of thought was leading me. It was an article of faith with me that Master Knives had good reason for the decisions he made. Fairness wasn't an issue. We all knew the 100% success rate policy. You fail, you die. But still, her death bothered me.

I felt the need for a woman's touch and ended up sitting with my arms around two beauties that afternoon while I waited with Legato for Vash the Stampede to show up.

As I held the women, I thought about Dominique and my mother, two women dead from violence in our harsh world. The bartender put a platter in the juke box and the sound of my sax filled the room. The song was "Serenade" and as always when I played or heard it, it reminded me of Nick. With all the deaths I had witnessed the past two weeks and the way Legato had talked about the end of the world, I wondered if I would ever see my lover again.

Vash the Stampede finally arrived a few days after we did. I was puzzled by his behavior. He spent a good deal of time, energy and ammunition threatening people with death and destruction, but harmed no one. For some reason, he wanted to evacuate the town. I gave up trying to understand the man's motives and assumed time would tell.

I wondered who Legato would send against Vash the Stampede, and spent some time thinking about how Silvia and I might fare against the Humanoid Typhoon. As I thought, I could hear E.G. Mine pestering Legato about it with his annoying whine. In the final analysis, I think Legato sent Mine just to get rid of him. There was never a more irritating Gung-ho gun. But ever prudent, Legato sent Rai-dei the Blade along for back-up.

Legato teleported the two of us to the top of Vista Hill to see how the battle played out. I had never seen Vash the Stampede in action before and I have to admit I was impressed. His speed was phenomenal and just as Nick and I had warned Mine, disabled the suit of spikes while Mine stood unaware that he was defenseless. Rai-dei showed up and summarily executed Mine for his failure. I wondered if the samurai would need to resort to trickery to beat the Stampede.

I could see that Vash the Stampede had dozens of chances to kill his opponent, but never followed through on his advantage. I wasn't surprised when Rai-dei used a concealed weapon to wound the blond outlaw, but I was surprised that Vash the Stampede never fought back. I knew from Dominique's debriefing that the man's left arm was a machine gun, but he never even tried to use it.

Legato's left arm seemed to be paining him and he massaged it frequently. The odd thought that Vash the Stampede and Legato had something in common flitted across my mind. They had both lost their left arms.

The sound of gunshots roused me from the random thought and I saw that Rai-dei had wounded Vash the Stampede again. I wondered what was taking Rai-dei so long to finish him off. A minute later, it could have been no more, a strange light showed in the battleground.

"What is that horrific light," I asked Legato. "Is he the one creating it? Vash the Stampede?"

"Yes, this is the second time," he said. "The first was the explosion that took July twenty-three years ago."

The light gave off the oddest nightmare glow and then pierced heavenward, a beacon that bored through the fifth moon and fissured it with cracks. As I watched the changes in the moon, the city of Augusta was overcome by a shockwave so intense that it shattered every window and tumbled every building.

And so it was that I saw the great city of Augusta fall to ruins. One hundred and fifty years of progress brought to rubble in the space of a few minutes by Vash the Stampede.

As for the man himself, he disappeared without a trace, hiding himself in the huge stream of refugees from the ruined city, just another lost homeless soul among countless thousands.

For two weeks, agents from the Mouth of Gabriel tried to pick up a scent, but despite the best efforts of informants, there wasn't the slightest shred of a real clue as to the whereabouts of Vash the Stampede. In a few more days, after agents had chased down over a thousand frivolous dead-end leads, Knives gave Legato the word to suspend the search, and we were all recalled to Headquarters.

When I arrived at the administration building, my first stop was the mail room. I was elated to see that there were three letters from Nick. I checked the dates and read the earliest first.

Dear Midvalley,

I hope by now, my father sent you a copy of my schedule. As you can imagine, I've really got my hands full, but will be in and out of Mei City from time to time in the next few weeks and will try to get updates on your tour from Kima. Looking forward to a consultation.

Nick

I smiled to myself as I read.

Dear Midvalley,

I was hoping to get a note or letter or something, anything from you, but I heard about the security lock down. Still I'm going to send this anyway on the off chance it may reach you. I'm going to be in the city of Augusta on the fourth. I checked your tour dates with Kima. I've got business in town that day, but if all goes well, I'll catch your concert if I can, and we can consult.

Nick

Damn, I had just missed him, probably only by hours.

Dear Midvalley,

I don't know if this letter will reach you. I've had no mail from you. I wrote to my father and asked him to forward any letters. I'm beginning to get a little paranoid about the silence on your end. It's probably just the security breach.

I finished off the extra work I took on. It was harder than I thought. I had hoped to see you by now, but I have a new assignment and I don't know how long it will take to accomplish my objectives. I can't really say more than that. You know the rules. God, I miss you. Don't forget me.

Nick

This last letter was dated a month ago. Don't forget me, he'd written. As if I could.

I knocked on Chapel the Evergreen's door and entered when he said, "Come in."

I thought he was looking rather cheerful, not always easy to tell because of his infra-red eye implants.

But I commented on it.

"You look happy, Evergreen. Did you track down the source of the security leak?"

"It was Jake Berkis and Ben Evans. Those two tried to frame me. They found out how Welch died. They got the impression that I had a hand in it, held me responsible for Welch's death and decided to get revenge. They'll cause no more trouble. It's a pity they couldn't understand that Welch's death was just business. It wasn't personal."

I didn't ask where they were. I assumed they were dead, probably sharing the same ground as Bernie Welch and Ned Pitts, all four of the Randall City boys dead. It gave me a melancholy feeling. So many deaths and the Evergreen looked so happy. Maybe he'd heard from Nick.

"Have you had any recent mail from Nicholas," I asked him.

"Yes, I just received one yesterday, and this just arrived," he said and he handed me an envelope. "It's for you."

I walked up the corridor, stepped outside, and sat down on the stone steps in front of the building and opened the letter.

Dear Midvalley,

It feels like ages since I saw you last. I have some business in the city of December, but will head back your way when things on this end are handled.

Nick

I felt a sense of letdown when I finished reading the note. I had hoped there would be a date of arrival. Then, in every other letter, Nick had made a point of mentioning consultation or that he missed me, but not in this one. The tone was business-like, matter-of-fact. We'd been apart so long. Did he even care for me any more? The question opened a dark abyss in my soul, but I hesitated before diving in, and re-read the note.

` It feels like ages', he had written. I am still in his feelings, I reassured myself. He wrote the letter with his own hands. He had handled this very piece of paper. I refolded the letter carefully, slid it into the envelope and put it in the breast pocket of my jacket and sat for a while with my hand pressed there. I closed my eyes and thought of him. It had been a long time.

I tried to bring his face into my mind. I couldn't remember it whole, but his lower lip was the first image that came clearly to me and I recalled sitting in the chair with him, the night I had taught him how to kiss. I smiled thinking how fearful and shy he had been, how his eyes had popped open and I saw them now, the dark blue liquid depths I longed to drown myself in again. His face and body took on shape and substance in my mind's eye. I recalled the texture of his skin, the feel of his hair, my lips on his nipple…I swallowed and inhaled, now aroused as I thought of his slim elegant body with its sculpted planes and curves, his legs gripping me as I thrust into his tightness…

Before I was aware, I opened my link and my longing poured through it and I found him. He was tired and sad, but I could also sense his strong feelings for me. With my fears at rest, I felt very close to him and reached out with my healing ability to ease his pain in whatever way I could. I emptied myself and let the power fill me.

For a few moments, I felt cool serenity, but then heard a high-pitched buzzing in my ears and my vision went black. An overpowering claustrophobia overtook me. I couldn't see. I couldn't breathe. I knew I was dying and felt the onset of panic as the life in me drained away. I tried to stand, to call for help, but my legs faltered and I fell. I felt a sharp pain as my head hit the sandstone steps. My last memory was of harsh laughter, a maniacal gleeful cackle that mocked me, until creeping blackness swallowed me whole.