Nigella Vibra's Arc

Chapter 1 of 3

Nigella Vibra crouched behind a rusted camper and counted the raiders on the ridge. She counted nine. Nine armed men held the only road out of Shiver Valley, and Nigella had three days to reach the far city-state before its council voted to break the peace accord for good. She was an android built for talk, not gunfire. Her whole reason for being was stitching the last three city-states of the scorched frontier back together, and she could not stitch anything from the wrong side of a blockade. The camper belonged to Duncan McCoy. He sat in the driver's seat in his kilt and hockey mask, hands folded on the wheel like a man waiting for a bus. In the back, packed in straw, sat forty tubs of hand-churned ice cream. Duncan had agreed to drive her as far as the next city-state in exchange for a stall permit in its market. He wanted to open a shop. Nigella wanted to stop a war. Both plans died on this road. "They'll take the tubs," Duncan said through the mask. His Scottish voice was soft. "And they'll take you apart for parts, lass." Nigella watched the raiders through the cracked windshield. They had set up beside a squat icehouse painted pink and orange, its eaves dripping meltwater into the sand. She thought about the ice inside. She thought about the tubs in the back. She thought about the heat. "Duncan," she said. "How much of your stock can you spare?" "All of it, if we live." She climbed out with her hands up and walked the road alone. The raiders raised rifles. Their leader, a woman with a sun-bleached scarf, told her to stop. Nigella stopped. She said she was an android, worth nothing broken and less as scrap. She said the man in the truck made ice cream. She said the icehouse behind them was empty and their water skins were flat, and she had watched them pour the last of a canteen an hour ago. She said she could trade. Forty tubs. Safe passage. One trip. The leader lowered the rifle a finger's width and asked what flavors. Duncan served them off the tailgate. The raiders ate standing, rifles slung, jaws working. The leader tasted a spoon of something pink and closed her eyes. She told her people to let the camper through. She told Nigella that the deal was for today only, and that the next android who tried this road would be shot on sight. Nigella said that was fair. Duncan handed over the last tub and climbed back behind the wheel. They rolled past the icehouse with an empty truck bed and a full tank. Duncan asked what she would sell at the next checkpoint. Nigella watched the road unspool through the cracked glass and did not answer. She had bought one day. She had nothing left to trade, and two city-states still to reach.