Jokertown Shuffle

CRUMP!

The bed shook ever so slightly. Tachyon reacted as if it had suddenly bucked. She spilled out of the bed and was running before her time, place, and situation had fully penetrated.

Artillery fire, automatic weapons. A raid! Get outside, find the guards, hide. Father! Papa! Daddy!

It was the sight of Tommy's solid form on the front porch that banished dreams and returned her to a sense of reality. But the gunfire continued, and the predawn sky was lit by the trails of tracer fire like peripatetic fireflies, muzzle flashes from the helicopter gunships. Tommy was in a red-and-bluestriped bathrobe, one hand dug deep into a pocket, the other cradling a coffee mug. A suburban homeowner calmly assessing the dawn of Armageddon.

Tachyon moved to his side and closed her hands around his upper arm. He looked down at her. They both knew, but there was a sense that someone had to say it.

Tommy spoke first. "The Rox. They're finally doing it." Almost inaudibly, Tach said, "My body's there."

"They're gonna kill everybody." He either hadn't heard or didn't think. Probably a little of both.

"Then you must take me there. You've got to take me there."

That penetrated. "You're nuts."

Dawn was beginning to paint the eastern sky with a leprous white light.

"Tommy, please."

The ace looked from her white, desperate face toward the battle raging to the north. It was almost full light now. Liberty was a tiny porcelain figure standing dauntless as the killers flashed past heading for Ellis Island. As they watched, a Huey, its steel belly packed with assault troops, choppered north toward the battle. Suddenly it began to pitch and yaw as if the pilot were drunk or mad. Rotor blades clawing at the air, it fell at an ever-steeper angle until it slammed into the upraised arm of the statue. For an instant the fireball obscured their view, then burning debris rained down, fiery outriders for the torch and arm, which had been sheared away by the impact. The arm spun once, almost lazily, until it plunged, torch first, into the black waters of the bay.

Liberty stood crippled and forlorn, her sides blacked from burning fuel, her fire extinguished, her message drowned in the polluted waters of the harbor.

Tommy pushed his cup at Tachyon. Walked down the steps and vanished into the jumble of dead cars. Minutes passed. Then the shell rose slowly over the mountains of junk. He was coming for her. Her steel knight.

The Temptation of Hieronymus Bloat