The young man looked into two mirrors, the mirror of his over-focused mind’s eye, more so than in the mirror before which he stood. That light-skinned Negro there, in days of old what would have been called an octeroon, was dressed in the colors of Old Saint George, the jacket and beret that is. The slacks were urban camo and the boots desert camo, because that is all the hiking gear he had. The face was narrow, the eyes brighter than their inner light, which was dim, for their owner was of secret ways a pessimist. The delivery case under his arm and the un sharpened sword at his hip, were his credentials. Just in case, there was the tattoo, his only one.
His mind cast back to the sermon given in a serious jest at his Calvert Hall High School Graduation, the sermon that had won him enormous “peep cred” among babbling nerdery, and had lost him his State Police Outreach Officer Posting. The Knight of Columbus had redeemed him from the brink of the social media influencer abyss that then yawned before him as his only likely career this side of the 4th Reich, wherever that boogerman nation did bloom…
“The Negro, is a curious case of misplacement. The Negro comes in two varieties: the free range Negro, found in Africa and Neo African Haiti, and the farm raised Negro; otherwise known as the African American. The farm raised Negro swims in a sea of superfluous need, entirely dependent upon his pale shepherd to fulfill his ravenous greed. As such, the American negro is, numerically speaking, a rounding error. For all of his criminality, the farm raised Negro is protected from the natural predators that had kept him trapped in Africa by a great guilt net, a very Aegeus of master remorse. This net, he fails to perceive, thinking himself free, but knowing himself slave as he feeds within his dotting sea with great sucker lips…”
And the Dean shut off the audio feed and had, Habib Jackson, the Honorary Achiever of the class of 2041, ushered off the stage by Nigerian security guards as his erstwhile classmates laughed like demons.
That had been the death of Habib and the birth of Thor, adopted into The Knights of Columbus…
Father Enzio Markakis, G.M., Parkville Columbia Club, his sponsor, and the last member of this, the Parkville, Maryland Chapter of The Knights of Columbus, stood at the door to Thor’s left.
“Son, the DOD is here.”
He turned, walked towards his validator, mentor and order superior, stopped and saluted, “Sir, I got this,” and walked out the door, to, in his mind, become a man.
The six-wheeled armored vehicle with the number 8 in red painted on the side, opened its door remotely. He stepped in low, not hitting his head, and found a seat waiting for him between two badass cracker soldiers in full battle rattle, totally gunned out and armored. They both nodded to him as he saluted. To this they grinned under their face shields. The voice on the overhead spoke, “Thor Hotep, Translator, welcome aboard. In twenty-four minutes you will arrive at you destination.”
A big gloved hand dragged him down into his seat and the man holding him growled, “This autodrive is no joke, kid. Making GPS arrival times is hard wired, which means we are driving over peoples, places and things what get in our hurried way.
The exterior was illuminated in front, side and rear screens above. Thor was strapped in by the silent man who was viewing the exterior progress of the vehicle down Harford Road: over a bicycle-riding Mexican, through a box truck, over the tents on the sidewalk next to the utility truck, tents occupied by homeless he had fed that morning, “Holy Shit,” he burst out.
“Oh, there’s some shit smeared all down our hull, but it ain’t holy. I’ve got 2 to 1 says Brokyo Doze here—our autodriver—scores 16 or more collateral casualties taking your milk-dud ass down to the Bro Boat.”
“What?”
The other man, who had spoken first, nodded and chimed in, “I’m 1 to 2 that she rolls over less then the 16 she did last time. The vehicle itself tallies the count. Sit back and enjoy—want a Butterfinger bar?”
“Sure, thanks,” and as they laughed he knew he had been made the butt of a dietary ethnic joke.
Thor refused to look at any more carnage. In exactly 24 minutes 2 to 1 collected his money from 1 to 2 as the machine hummed to a halt, the door opened, and the autodriver said, “Translator Thor, you shall meet with the Mandingo, Masi and Zulu leadership, on Deck 2, through the aperture made for you by Trooper Hansen, along the gangway dropped by trooper Olsen.”
The two goons shoved him out into a crowd-free space around the vehicle, which was deploying sub lethal cluster bursts from the turret above to disperse the people crowding Pier 6. The sea of humanity, in its many shades of brown, seethed all around. A child with a lolly pop looked at him as its eye was knocked out by a submission munition. It swooned in his path, its fellows all scattering from where they had gathered to beg candy from the soldiers. Thor darted towards the child to render aid and was held back by an arm of incredible strength. His ears were covered by two hands and a shock wave raked the ground before him, sweeping the child, a hopeful fat white sharia wife, and a dozen other children into the harbor.
The crowd had literally been “swept” away from his diplomatic space.
“Good to go, Hansen!” shouted the man who was holding him.
The other stepped forward, shouldered a laser guided breech bolt and shouted, “Trad Africans are trapped on D-2, 4 meters above the water line.”
The back blast from the rocket scorched the pier and the front end of the vehicle. A blast issued from the hull of the massive ship. As the smoke cleared and things, a body, a gun, a spear fell into the water, a great turmoil broke out on the top deck of the gigantic, tilting ship, packed with tens of thousands of Africans.
Hansen stepped around and menaced the crowd with his other big gun, a mini gun on a sling. The thousand or so people close on their right now gawked in silence under the gun of that buzz-cut, blond killing machine.
Olsen then carried him to the edge of the pier with one hand, placed a very large suit case at the edge of the harbor with the other, and let him go. Hansen unhitched two side panels, and used a voice command, “Gangway to breach, eyes on,” and painted the gaping hole in the tilting ship with a laser box sight built into the scope of his rifle.
The suit case deployed two anchor claws and extended by sections towards the gaping hole in the ship some 40 yards out. In that hole crowded a few men, Africans in traditional tribal garb, a Masi and two Zulus. With them was a Mandingo who was bleeding and wide-eyed. The two Zulus held him as the Masi drove his lion sword through the back and out the breast. The three hurled the dying man into the harbor, full already of trash and people as it was.
Within the minute, as more Zulus crowded around the hole and the sounds of battle could be heard within, and of chaos above on the open decks, the amazing little foot bridge deployed two grappling claws, latched onto the bottom of the hole and Hansen waved the Africans across, “On the double!”
Thor could hardly believe his eyes as the men at the breach parted to make way for a towering, regal figure out of history, a Trad Zulu King, armed with shield and Asagi, running down the ramp followed by his champions and generals, like some Iron Age NBA coming to skin your ass.
Olsen patted him on the back, “Good luck, kid—I’ll tender a prayer to Odin on your behalf. May the ravens be with you.”
“What, what?”
The man winked at him from on high like some super soldier that cared, then shrugged his shoulders and turned away with Hansen into the vehicle, which broadcast, “Diplomatic Envoy delivered,” and they were gone.
Thor turned back around as a flood of hide shields and short gleaming spears surrounded him, forming a hide wall with black backs all around, some hundreds of men keeping off the mob of tens of thousands.
Above him, loomed the stern countenance of a king.
He swallowed hard, ‘This is no joke,’ and saluted, taken on impulse with severe hero worship, “My King, welcome to America. I am to guide you to your Kraal.”
The man nodded, the band about his head pulsing with the beating of his lion heart, and said something short in Zulu, Thor presumed, as he only spoke English.
The vehicle revved up and plowed off through the crowd at high speed. The screams of anguish and sounds of crunching bumping death behind him did not tempt him to turn and thus affront The King.
